Jennifer tells a story that can help improve your personal safety, and that gives an excellent, excellent counterpoint to an earlier article of mine. She writes, “Slipping notes to bank tellers is not always a bad thing.” Actually, she really knocked out of the ballpark twice, once in the story above and once in a post titled, “Gun control is not pro-life.” Go read both.

Clayton Cramer asks, “What’s wrong with mandatory gun registration?” Very factual, with full citations to back up everything he says. The money quote:

If mandatory gun registration can’t be used to punish ex-felons in possession of a firearm, what purpose does such a law serve? If mandatory gun registration can only be used to punish people that can legally possess a gun, why bother? Because of the Haynes decision, if we want to punish ex-felons who are caught in possession of a gun, there are only two choices available: We must either skip registration, so that we can severely punish gun possession by those who aren’t allowed to own guns; or use the “sanitized” form of registration law — where the criminal is guaranteed that gun registration can’t hurt him, while the rest of us can be punished for failure to comply.

John Lott links to 10 Defensive Gun Uses in December 2012 – cases where the victims had to fire a lot of shots in self defense. Obviously, Lott posts these to make the political point (the one that does need to be made), but it’s also important for us to look at these cases for their practical lessons. For example, several of the events involved multiple people breaking into a home while the residents were there. Have you talked about this type of situation with your family? What’s your basic plan if someone, or a group of someones, crashes into your living room while you and your loved ones are relaxing?

David Kopel wrote The Torah and Self-Defense awhile back. Good theological meat for Jewish and Christian believers. If you haven’t really squared away your own ethical ideas about self-defense, this might be one place to start.

Texas Senator Ted Cruz wrote an amazing letter to bank officials and gun company CEOs – and cc’d Rahm Emmanuel. If you live in Texas, I congratulate you on your taste in Senators.

Julianna Crowder shares a good after-class review of Tom Givens’ Handgun Instructor course. Nice to know what goes on in those classes.

Daddybear wrote an excellent post, but the real gem on this link is found in the comments. The second comment made me laugh as hard as I’d laughed in a week.