I have definite preferences in personal defense handguns. I carried capable and effective big bore handguns as a peace officer. I strongly prefer the 1911 handgun. But I could not do without certain types of revolvers and often carry a revolver as the primary handgun. The author finds the .44 Magnum Taurus and Inova light a good combination, pictured on the right. .I am serious about revolvers, and I have a dog in the fight. I care about the good guys and girls and do not want you or yours injured by our protein fed ex con criminal class. I am more interested in an individual being well armed with a firearm that suits them than in seeing them adopt my personal gear. I have on hand examples of handguns that are far from my first choice but which I use to further an individuals raining. A type that I both train with and carry is the revolver. I have noted a move toward speed and high capacity among permit holders and hat is fine if you are able to control and utilize I these traits. But there remains much to be said for an accurate first shot and a heavy blow-delivered quickly. We have to ask if shooting fast in a volley of shots is the answer. I reiterate-hit hard and hit first.

 There are tactical nuances that must be discerned in each person's lifestyle. The frequency of practice and personal preference is always important. The shooters size, statue, and personal experience are important. This young woman is practicing with her .44 against a knife attack. The revolver may be placed against an opponents body and fired repeatably if need be. The individual should choose wisely based upon many things. Whiter you decide upon manually operated (revolver) or recoil operated (automatic) you have to stay behind the situation with modern handguns and most of us would be able to find a suitable defensive handgun. Most of us will be able to find something that fits our hands and something we are able to conceal. If you choose a revolver holster  technology is important. The holster needs to get the cylinder off the belt and high enough to avoid the boa that swallowed the mongoose look. That are good holsters that handle the revolver in high fashion. These include a number of good designs from GDS holsters.

 A perceived downside of the revolver is a meager capacity of five to eight rounds depending upon the design. The revolver will only go bang six times but it can be counted on to deliver these shots without fail. I firmly believe that you will win the fight with the ammunition in the handgun. If you do not solve the problem with the gunload in the handgun then your battle is probably going to be short. If the revolver's limited capacity bothers you there are two options. The first option is well respected and was adopted by Bill Hickock, Jesse James, Jim Cirillo and others. In Mexico General George Patton ran out of ammunition during a gun battle and thereafter adopted the carry of two handguns. Quite a few handgunners prefer using two revolvers to carrying a high capacity automatic pistol. General Patton stated that to scare people you should carry an automatic but to kill them use a revolver. It worked for him. Carrying a pair of revolvers, whether a large one and a small one or a pair of snub .38s is a proven tactic. The second alternative is to learn to execute a rapid speedload with the revolver. You will not equal the slap dash of the automatic but with practice-and you have probably been loading the revolver wrong-you can get pretty smart. While carrying a pair of revolvers and learning to speed load is a laudable pursuit hitting with the first shot is preferred.

 How does the revolver shoot? The long rolling double action of the revolver is ideal for those who sometimes clutch a light automatic pistol trigger. Once this action is learned, to press the double action trigger, reset, and press again in the same sequence, the revolver is capable of producing excellent accuracy in a combat situation. The revolver presents clutching and offers excellent control at moderate range. The revolver barrel may be laid against cover in a defensive situation and allows the shooter to fire accuracy from a braced position. If we do not have a perfect grip on the handgun, the revolver will still fire. There is no limp wristing a revolver.

The ammunition that may be fired in a revolver is worthy of note. While there are good automatic pistol cartridges few are as versatile and effective as the .357 Magnum, yet the Magnum may be chambered in relatively light revolvers. My light Taurus six shot two inch barrel revolver is controllable but offers excellent wound potential. The revolver may be fired with light loads for practice, shotshell for pests, and heavy loads for personal defense. The Cor Bon PowRBall 100 grain load is controllable but jolts a bullet to 1300 fps. The 110 grain JHP is about as fast. For more penetration Cor Bon offers a 125 grain JHP. This type of load is proven in personal defense. You simply have to master the handgun.

                I sometimes carry a four inch barrel .44 Magnum revolver in a Milt Sparks belt holster. This revolver is very accurate and gives me an edge in accuracy and penetration over practically anything the opposition will field. One shot, one stop is the rule with the .44 Magnum. I often deploy this handgun with the Cor Bon 165 grain JHP load. This is a fine urban load, controllable and frangible. When in a more rural setting I often load up with a good deer load to put meat on the table, such as Fiocchi’s 200 gr. JHP. Full power 240s are a bit much for the four inch gun. That is versatility and some of the choice is about lifestyle. Take a hard look at the revolver. This is lifesaver going into the third century.

Funded and trained by Iran, the Islamic jihadists position their rocket and/or mortar launching sites inside school yards, hospital courtyards and high-density residential areas and fire them into Israel. Predictably, Israel exercises its inherent right of self-defense under international law and under Article 51 of the United Nations Charter. And, as is intended by the Islamic jihadists, the Israeli counterattacks unintentionally cause collateral damage.

Predictably, the world media blame the victim, Israel, instead of the perpetrators – the Islamic jihadists. At some point, one would think the “innocent” Palestinians of Gaza would catch on to this deadly scam and expel Hamas -- the root cause of the Israeli counter-fires and ground incursions.

But then, the Palestinians have been scammed before. In 2000, at Camp David, President Bill Clinton badgered Israeli Prime Minister, Barak Ehud, into giving Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, virtually all Arafat had asked for, to include providing Israeli-held land for the creation of an independent Palestinian state in exchange for recognition of the State of Israel’s right to exist. Arafat refused because peace in the Middle East peace was not the objective of Arafat or Iran. Their objective was the elimination of Israeli, along with enriching Arafat’s Swiss bank accounts.

If ordinary Palestinians had to suffer, so be it. Given the 1981 assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat for signing a peace treaty with Israel, Arafat probably felt that signing the Camp David Accords of 2000 would be signing his own death warrant.

But, for a change, the world media blamed Arafat for the Camp David collapse. Stung by the hitherto not seen media response, Arafat ordered a terrorist intifada, to include suicide bombings of Israeli civilians. When the Israelis retaliated, causing unintended collateral damage, the world media returned to Arafat’s side. Soon, there were calls for a cease fire, calls for boycotts of Israeli goods, calls for the withdrawal of foreign aid for Israeli, and even talk of war crimes. Arafat and Iran had hit upon a sure-fire formula for success. Just as we saw the IDF forced to quell rocket fire from Lebanon in 2006, we are seeing the formula repeated in Gaza.

At the root of all this violence is Iran. Since coming to power in 1979, a coalition of Sunnis and Shiites, under the then leadership of Ayatollah Kohmeini (now under the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei), have plotted the destruction of Israel. Michael Ledeen, a scholar at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies says, “…when you hear people saying that Sunnis and Shiites can’t work together, you should run, because those people don’t know what they are talking about.” In today’s Iraq, that is exactly what we see: a coalition of Shiites and Sunnis. While not a Jeffersonian democracy, the Iraqi government is pleasantly pluralistic.

It is conflict with Israel and the West that feeds the warring frenzy of the “Arab youth bubble,” (cited by the late Samuel P. Huntington in his The Clash of Civilizations) and gives unemployed Muslims something to do. (In the 1960s, the U.S. experienced a “youth bubble,” resulting in thousands of youth eager to go to war – but only on college campuses against the Johnson and Nixon Administrations.)

The Israelis say, “If the Muslims would put down their weapons today, there would be no more violence. If we put down our weapons today, there would be no more Israel.” Michael Ledeen opines that Iran already has nuclear weapons. Of course, the time to nuke Israeli would be when the Iranians figure U.S. foreign policy has shifted toward them and away from Israel. For sure, that won’t happen prior to January 20, 2009.

William Hamilton, a syndicated columnist and a featured commentator for USA Today, studied at Harvard’s JFK School of Government. Dr. Hamilton is a former assistant professor of political science and history at Nebraska Wesleyan University.

©2009. William Hamilton.

John Ross

             There are several good makers who offer excellent IWB designs. I am glade there are good makers because some of them are backlogged.  I recently waited three years to finish up a custom handgun and six months for a holster. This is not something we wish to do if we are not certain of what we want and if we do not have a spare shooting iron. Other makers have a very good turn around time. I have used Lou Alessi, Graham Gunleather,  Ken Null, Little Bear, and a few others with excellent results. I have even used a new Kydex design from Mach 2 Tactical called the Honorman, and it is among the very few truly comfortable IWB holsters in a non leather material. But some cannot tolerate IWB holsters. Some cannot tolerate a shoulder holster either.

            When choosing a handgun and IWB combination, we have to consider all the options. We often say that an IWB allows the carrying of a longer, heavier service type handgun. This is true as far as it goes, but a too long pistol will pinch your butt when you set down. A five inch Government Model or Glock 34 isn’t going to work for everyone. A Commander .45 or a Glock Model 23 will work for most of us. A Commander or Officer’s Model in a Summer Special is just about right. The handgun is short enough for comfortable carry and a rapid draw. A Milt Sparks Summer Special is the standard by which all others are judged. With a strong spine, reinforced holster welt and a built in sight track, the Summer Special is a credible choice.

            A word on a neat little holster for ‘light use’.  For those who own several handguns, JBP holsters offers a belt slide/belt clip IWB that works fine. Be certain the fit is good and the clip fits under the belt and you have a rough and ready fit for most uses.

             When I traveled to London in 1978, police at Heathrow airport wore sharp looking blazers with a police crest. The word in London was that cops needed to be armed in some places but the guns had to be discreet. These cops carried their SIG pistols under their jackets in the original small of the back (S.O.B.) holster. For those who cannot tolerate an IWB, the SOB offers an alternative. The handgun is parallel to the belt line but offset enough that the handle is tilted up enough that the handgun will not fall out during movement. A bit of bending the wrist is needed and you must not wear the SOB in the middle of the back. Injury could result if you fall. But the SOB is a belt holster that is nearly as concealable as the IWB. I have tested an SOB from JBP in the Master leather line that is a good example of the breed. It is worth consideration if you cannot use an IWB.

            Holster selection is important. The holster may impede the draw if not properly selected, and the draw is very important. The draw moves into the stance and an improper draw slows down acquisition of the sight picture. Choose well. After all it is your hide.

R. K. Campbell 

Editors note: - I have been using R.K.'s information for a long time in discussions with my CCW students. If you get a chance, buy his book at: Amazon.com.

            The handguns I trust the most include the 1911, CZ 75 and High Power, about in that order. As for caliber the choice is obvious. The bigger bullets let out more blood and let more air in. We may pick and choose over any number of loads for the individual caliber and spend sleepless nights agonizing over the choice. Those who use a small bore handgun must take more time in load selection. No matter the caliber the shooter must be able to control his handgun. Retention is not necessarily being able to control the handgun on the range but in a wide range of shooting scenarios. You must be able to control the handgun with the load of choice. As an example, among the most accurate Glock models I have ever fired is the Glock Model 20 in 10mm. With the Cor Bon 180 gr. hunting load, I managed a 1.25 inch five shot group off the bench. This is much better than anything I have done with the Glock M 21 .45 and particularly better than the .40 caliber Glock. But the handgun is too large for my hands in a control situation.  My short fingers just won’t stretch.

            The handgun must have good handfit and we must be able to control with piece with our load of choice. Reliability is perhaps 1,000,000 times more important than anything else. Ammunition selection must center upon reliability first. My criteria for a combat load is different than most. But I hope you will consider my words and at least give it a try. The National Institute of Justice stresses that reliability is defined as the propensity of a firearm to fire with each press of the trigger and continue firing with each trigger press. Makes sense to me. The standard is 300 rounds between cleaning, not a very stringent test. To my mind, this is simply a good beginning. With reliability established first then we will look at other factors. Feed and cycle reliability are the first consideration. The handgun must be proofed. If new, it should have fired a few hundred rounds of ball ammunition without any problem. It is increasingly less common for modern handguns to require a break in period. As an example, I recently obtained a new High Standard 1911. This is a Philippine produced GI type. My experience with 1911s dating back to the 1970s indicates that a hundred rounds of hardball is needed to in order to break in a too long link, rough spots or burrs. One hundred rounds of Winchester USA ball were fired. I enjoyed firing the pistol and found the sights were well regulated. There were no malfunctions of any type.

            With modern handguns it seems that with a modest 50-60 rounds of test ammunition you are in like Flint. Should we consider ballistic properties next? Well, lets not hurry. There is something called cartridge integrity. I place a respective sample of the chosen load in water, oil, and solvent, respectively. I let them soak overnight. If the cartridge does not have sufficient primer or case mouth seal there will be a failure to fire. Interestingly it is powder failure more often than primer failure and occasionally the powder partially ignites. I don’t use primer seal in most of my handloads and that’s fine if the factory doesn’t for practice ammunition. Defense ammunition is another matter. No matter how ‘devastating’ the ad guys tell us a cartridge is, if it doesn’t go bang then it isn’t going to help us.  Another test I run on prospective service ammunition is to run a few rounds through the action of the pistol. This simulates loading and unloading the cartridge during the course of the month at inspections or simply during cleaning. Many shooters will unload their duty loads and practice with ball ammo, then reload the service loads. If the bullet’s case mouth seal if broken and the bullet pressed back into the case after a few chamberings, then the load is not suitable for personal defense duty. You need to get the micrometer out, some budge just a little. Others are knocked into the case on the first chambering or two. A deeply seated bullet raises chamber pressure considerably. Once the case mouth seal is broken, the chances of contamination are much greater. Such a test makes you take quality control with a jaundiced eye. Revolver loads should be tested as well.

            Many years ago I purchased one of the first Charter Arms Bulldog .44 Special revolvers. Two brands of factory ammunition tied up on the Bulldog. The culprit was heavy recoil. The soft lead 246 grain bullets were loosened in the case during recoil and moved forward, tying the cylinder gun up. I used my RCBS crimping die to heavily crimp my factory ammunition. The same situation exists today with some lead bullet loads in .38 Special. All are not suitable for use in airweight .38 snubs. Recoil will jerk the lead bullet loose. But all jacketed bullets are not created equal and may also give a problem. At present, it seems the smart money is on the Speer Gold Dot 135 grain +P, especially designed for the .38 snub. Another great load I have tested is the Buffalo Bore 125 grain JHP, using the Speer 125 grain short barrel Gold Dot. I would test my load extensively in a Scandium frame, but these two work just fine for me. 20 rounds isn’t much of a test and you should fire more if you can afford it.

            As a rule foreign produced ammunition is not as reliable as USA produced loads. An exception is Fiocchi. Fiocchi of America produces excellent ammunition in their Ozark Missouri plant but the Italian produced loadings are also very good. I have limited experience with Lapua loads, but the few boxes of 9mm CEPP I tested were reliable and accurate. Sometimes a good company produces inexpensive ammunition that is very, very good. During my time as a peace officer I saw at least 30,000 rounds of Zero remanufactured loads fired during qualifications. I cannot recall a single failure to feed, chamber fire or eject. There are folks who have the same good experience with other brands but my experience with Zero is first hand and that means something.

            Once feed and cycle reliability and cartridge integrity are established, we may move to exterior ballistics. The load should exhibit a minimum of muzzle blast. If properly concocted the load will burn the powder inside the barrel and not ignite unburned powder at the muzzle. There should be a minimum of unburned powder in the action. Next we will look to wound potential. There are rules that may be ignored at your own peril. Penetration is important. Some loads seek to limit penetration, and this is a dangerous course for the shooter. If the adversary is heavily clothed the wrong load will underpenetrate. If the adversary is firing at you with his arms outstretched your bullet may have to penetrate heavy arm bones and heavy clothing in order to take effect. I have learned that any number of felons are large, heavy men. A six foot two inch 325 pound man is not going to be impressed by a load that penetrates 5 – 6 inches and stops, fully expanded. The heavily muscled human form causes expanding bullets to open more quickly. A bullet that fragment in gelatin may underpenetrate in flesh and blood. I suffered an underpenetration during a critical incident with a 200 grain .45 that was the darling of the popular press at the time. The bullet penetrated about 4.5 inches and expanded to 1.00 –one inch- in a tough shoulder. The second bullet took effect, the first did not. I went back to .45 caliber 230 grain hardball and did not use a hollow point in the .45 for nearly a decade. I also qualified a number of incidents in which 9mm hollowpoints stopped short. In once incident two 9mms stopped in 3 centimeters of bone and gristle in a pit bull’s shoulder. The officer who fired those shots was bitten in the testicles and spent several months recovering. Obviously adequate penetration is needed. A JHP bullet needs a balance of expansion and penetration. 12-14 inches of penetration is a realistic standard. You don’t necessarily need ballistic gelatin to test these bullets. For many years I have used soaking wet newsprint. My results are usually within ten per cent of factory gelatin figures. Penetration in newsprint is a little less and expansion a little more, perhaps five per cent more. The real difference in effect between similar loads in the same caliber will be controlled by marksmanship. The difference between a hit in the arterial region of the heart and a hit in the intestines is what will count.

I have seen some pretty dumb thing in print. This means the writer had the idea and the editor seconded the thought. One writer tells us that load selection is more important as we can control load selection but not shot placement. This is flying in the face of every thought I have ever had on shot placement.  Accuracy can make up for power. The reverse is seldom true.  Choosing a personal defense load that is reliable and which exhibits a good balance of penetration and expansion is essential. Control is very important.

            As for control, quite a few handguns do not meet my standards for control.  Control matters.  Pictured on the right, this shooter finds the SIG GSR good. My baseline is the Government Model 1911 with 230 grain .45 caliber JHP loads. A bit heavier recoil is found in the aluminum frame 1911s. I carry them but work hard to master them. In the 9mm I find the Winchester 127 grain SXT +P+ among the best loads ever fielded in 9mm.  A local agency has had a run of well over a dozen one shot incidents with this load. In my personal 35 ounce Armalite AR 24 the load is controllable. In the 26 ounce Smith and Wesson Military and Police recoil is more pronounced. In the SIG P 226 or Beretta 92, this is a fine load. In lighter guns we have to carefully consider control factors. Perhaps the Speer Gold Dot +P, 124 grains at over 1200 fps, might be an alternative.

            I am moved to retching by those who claim a certain small caliber load ‘turns a 9mm into a .45.’ Until the laws of physics are changed, this isn’t possible. Big bullets do the business. When fashion, custom and convenience interfere with packing a big bore than we may adopt a smaller handgun. But we must choose loads carefully and the bottom line is reliability and marksmanship. If the adversary is heavily clothed and you have the wrong load in the gun you may find yourself enumerated among the dead. Choose well, shoot straight.

R.K. Campbell

(Carryconcealed.net would like to thank R.K for his work. If you get the chance, buy any of his books that you can get your hands on!) 

Although Thomas Jefferson (co-founder of the Democratic Party) was a slave owner, he professed to be opposed, in principle, to slavery. Jefferson said that he only kept slaves as a matter of financial necessity. Right before he died, Jefferson freed his five most-trusted slaves. On his death, his remaining slaves were sold to other slave owners to pay off Jefferson’s debts.

Jefferson was reputed to be one of the more enlightened slave owners of his time. But during the time that Jefferson was the American minister to France (1785-1789), he learned some disturbing facts about the origins of the slave trade. The circumstances by which his own slaves or their ancestors came to be slaves became of great concern to Jefferson. As a result, Jefferson developed an antipathy toward the Arab slave traders, in particular, and toward Muslims, in general.

While in Paris, Jefferson bought a copy of the Koran. Jefferson’s study of what professed to be a religion of peace left him perplexed. He could not reconcile some of the teachings of the Koran with the practices of the Arab slave traders who ranged the southern coast of the Mediterranean and both coasts of Africa, capturing black slaves or buying them from black warlords who had captured them during tribal warfare.

Only interested in healthy, black males, young females and young boys, the Arab pirates often killed off entire villages of older men and women. Strong backs were in demand to work the plantations of the Caribbean and the American South. Muslim law (allowing Muslim men to possess four wives and as many concubines as they can afford) provided a ready market for the females. To provide eunuchs to work inside the Hareems, black boys as young as 9 or 10 were castrated. Few of the boys survived “surgery” performed without anesthesia and antibiotics. Most suffered a slow and painful death.

The grisly work of the Arab pirates was either unknown or an abstraction to the plantation owners of the New World. In 1776, the American Revolution changed all that. That’s when American shipping lost the protection of the English Navy. American merchant shipping became easy prey for the Arab pirates who saw the ransom of Americans ships and their crews as another cash cow. With no blue-water navy to protect American shipping, the United States temporized by paying “tribute” to Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Tripoli (Libya). By 1800, 20-percent of America’s annual revenues were being paid to ransom American citizens.

In 1786, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams (our ambassador to England) met with the Algerian ambassador to England. Jefferson and Adams asked what had Americans ever done to provoke the Arabs to violence? The Algerian ambassador explained the Koran teaches that non-Muslims are sinners who can be enslaved, and any Muslim who is killed during that process is sure to enter Paradise.

During that meeting, Jefferson discovered the roots of Islamic Jihad. Indeed, what Jefferson learned would eventually cause Jefferson to be the leading proponent of war between the fledgling United States and the “Barbary States” of Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Tripoli (Libya).

Elected President of the United States in 1801, Jefferson said of the Barbary Pirates: “Millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute.” Jefferson dispatched the nascent U.S. Navy and our Marines to “the shores of Tripoli.” To protect their throats from slashing Arab scimitars, the Marines wore stiff leather collars. To this day, they are called: “Leathernecks.” They kicked some serious Arab butt.

And so it was that the third U.S. President launched the first American war against Islamic Jihad. If the 44th U.S. President (who happens to be black) prosecutes the war against Islamic Jihad with the vigor of a Thomas Jefferson (who was repulsed by what the Arab slavers were doing to blacks), history will have come full circle. But don’t hold your breath.

William Hamilton, a syndicated columnist and a featured commentator for USA Today, studied at Harvard’s JFK School of Government. Dr. Hamilton is a former assistant professor of political science and history at Nebraska Wesleyan University.

©2008. William Hamilton. Used with permission.

Click on the link for the rest of the story and comments.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Friday, December 05, 2008

Not so, said Newsweek's Fareed Zakaria. If they'd wanted to do that, they'd have hit the Hilton or the Marriott or some other target-rich chain hotel. The Taj and the Oberoi are both Indian-owned, and popular watering holes with wealthy Indians.

OK, how about this group that's claimed responsibility for the attack? The Deccan Mujahideen. As a thousand TV anchors asked Wednesday night, "What do we know about them?"

Er, well, nothing. Because they didn't exist until they issued the press release. "Deccan" is the name of the vast plateau that covers most of the triangular peninsula that forms the lower half of the Indian subcontinent. It comes from the Prakrit word "dakkhin," which means "south." Which means nothing at all. "Deccan Mujahedeen" is like calling yourself the "Continental Shelf Liberation Front."

OK. So does that mean this operation was linked to al-Qaida? Well, no. Not if by "linked to" you mean a wholly owned subsidiary coordinating its activities with the corporate head office.

It's not an either/or scenario, it's all of the above. Yes, the terrorists targeted locally owned hotels. But they singled out Britons and Americans as hostages. Yes, they attacked prestige city landmarks like the Victoria Terminus, one of the most splendid and historic railway stations in the world. But they also attacked an obscure Jewish community center. The Islamic imperialist project is a totalitarian ideology: It is at war with Hindus, Jews, Americans, Britons, everything that is other.

In the 10 months before this atrocity, Muslim terrorists killed more than 200 people in India, and no one paid much attention. Just business as usual, alas. In Mumbai the perpetrators were cannier. They launched a multiple indiscriminate assault on soft targets, and then in the confusion began singling out A-list prey: Not just wealthy Western tourists, but local orthodox Jews, and municipal law enforcement. They drew prominent officials to selected sites, and then gunned down the head of the antiterrorism squad and two of his most senior lieutenants. They attacked a hospital, the place you're supposed to take the victims to, thereby destabilizing the city's emergency-response system.

And, aside from dozens of corpses, they were rewarded with instant, tangible, economic damage to India: the Bombay Stock Exchange was still closed Friday, and the England cricket team canceled their tour (a shameful act).

What's relevant about the Mumbai model is that it would work in just about any second-tier city in any democratic state: Seize multiple soft targets, and overwhelm the municipal infrastructure to the point where any emergency plan will simply be swamped by the sheer scale of events. Try it in, say, Mayor Nagin's New Orleans. All you need is the manpower. Given the numbers of gunmen, clearly there was a significant local component. On the other hand, whether or not Pakistan's deeply sinister ISI had their fingerprints all over it, it would seem unlikely that there was no external involvement. After all, if you look at every jihad front from the London Tube bombings to the Iraqi insurgency, you'll find local lads and wily outsiders: That's pretty much a given.

But we're in danger of missing the forest for the trees. The forest is the ideology. It's the ideology that determines whether you can find enough young hotshot guys in the neighborhood willing to strap on a suicide belt or (rather more promising as a long-term career) at least grab an AK-47 and shoot up a hotel lobby. Or, if active terrorists are a bit thin on the ground, whether you can count at least on some degree of broader support on the ground. You're sitting in some distant foreign capital but you're of a mind to pull off a Mumbai-style operation in, say, Amsterdam or Manchester or Toronto. Where would you start? Easy. You know the radical mosques, and the other ideological front organizations. You've already made landfall.

It's missing the point to get into debates about whether this is the "Deccan Mujahideen" or the ISI or al-Qaida or Lashkar-e-Taiba. That's a reductive argument. It could be all or none of them. The ideology has been so successfully seeded around the world that nobody needs a memo from corporate HQ to act: There are so many of these subgroups and individuals that they intersect across the planet in a million different ways. It's not the Cold War, with a small network of deep sleepers being directly controlled by Moscow. There are no membership cards, only an ideology. That's what has radicalized hitherto moderate Muslim communities from Indonesia to the central Asian 'stans to Yorkshire, and co-opted what started out as more or less conventional nationalist struggles in the Caucasus and the Balkans into mere tentacles of the global jihad.

Many of us, including the incoming Obama administration, look at this as a law-enforcement matter. Mumbai is a crime scene, so let's surround the perimeter with yellow police tape, send in the forensics squad, and then wait for the D.A. to file charges.

There was a photograph that appeared in many of the British papers, taken by a Reuters man and captioned by the news agency as follows: "A suspected gunman walks outside the premises of the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus or Victoria Terminus railway station." The photo of the "suspected gunman" showed a man holding a gun. We don't know much about him – he might be Muslim or Episcopalian, he might be an impoverished uneducated victim of Western colonialist economic oppression or a former vice-president of Lehman Brothers embarking on an exciting midlife career change – but one thing we ought to be able to say for certain is that a man pointing a gun is not a "suspected gunman" but a gunman. "This kind of silly political correctness infects reporters and news services worldwide," wrote John Hinderaker of Powerline. "They think they're being scrupulous – the man hasn't been convicted of being a gunman yet! – when, in fact, they're just being foolish. But the irrational conviction that nothing can be known unless it has been determined by a court and jury isn't just silly, it's dangerous."

Just so. This isn't law enforcement but an ideological assault – and we're fighting the symptoms not the cause. Islamic imperialists want an Islamic society, not just in Palestine and Kashmir but in the Netherlands and Britain, too. Their chances of getting it will be determined by the ideology's advance among the general Muslim population, and the general Muslim population's demographic advance among everybody else.

So Bush is history, and we have a new president who promises to heal the planet, and yet the jihadists don't seem to have got the Obama message that there are no enemies, just friends we haven't yet held talks without preconditions with. This isn't about repudiating the Bush years, or withdrawing from Iraq, or even liquidating Israel. It's bigger than that. And if you don't have a strategy for beating back the ideology, you'll lose.

Whoops, my apologies. I mean "suspected ideology."

A rush of icy air swooshes through Gunslinger’s show room every couple of minutes as customers file in and out.

“It’s insane,” owner Todd Sutherland said on a recent Monday.

“Business has more than doubled, if not tripled,” Sutherland said.

Other Tri-Cities gun and ammunition shop owners are echoing similar refrains, but the sales surge is only half the story. Sullivan County, Tenn., and Washington County, Va., both report that within the past two years, the number of handgun carry permits issued has doubled, if not tripled.

People are buying guns and ammo by the handful, not only locally, but across the nation, and reports on the buying surge tend to focus on the election of Barack Obama as the impetus.

Obama is expected to run the most anti-gun administration in U.S. history, based on his votes on gun legislation while a U.S. senator.

In Appalachia, where gun culture thrives and the buying boom appears monolithic, gun enthusiasts argue the national hoopla is missing the point: It isn’t that it’s happening – but what is behind it, and why.

“It’s a right of passage for a lot of people,” said Michael Campbell, a Virginia spokesman for the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. “No matter what, guns are a very emotional issue.”

Peter Hamm, spokesman for the gun control advocacy group the Brady Campaign, said the controversy is about much more than political parties.

“It’s not a Democrat vs. Republican issue,” Hamm said. “It’s a rural vs. urban issue. And the urban people don’t do a good enough job of saying ‘Look, we need some help, people are dying here.’ And the rural people don’t do a good enough job of saying, ‘Look, I live in the country where the closest police department is 40 miles away. If someone breaks in my house, I need to be able to protect my family.’ ”

Epic milestones

Interpretation of the Second Amendment is one of the most contentious and impassioned debates of the past American century. Since a 1939 Supreme Court decision over a firearms violation said the Second Amendment must be interpreted with a view of rendering effective a militia, gun-rights and gun-control advocates have been arguing over whether the right to bear arms belongs to individuals or groups.

In the seven decades since that ruling, the collective argument has tended to prevail – but many on both sides maintain that the 1939 ruling was too ambiguous.

Then, in July, the U.S. Supreme Court tackled the Second Amendment again – and issued a landmark decision that clearly supports the individual’s right to bear arms, rather than only a right reserved for a militia.

Four months later, voters elected Obama, the Democratic candidate, as the nation’s 44th president.

Juxtaposed, those epic milestones illustrate the stark polarity that characterizes the debate over the Second Amendment.

“The Obama election represents the kind of worst-case scenario: somewhere between the end of the world as we know it and the apocalypse,” said Michael Banes, a national gun-rights advocate and founder of the National Shooting Sports Foundation Education Program.

Background checks

Federal law requires that firearms dealers check purchasers’ backgrounds before completing the sale. Those background checks provide one way to look at the number of buyers, even though the data doesn’t reflect when sales are denied.

In Tennessee, background checks are called Tennessee Instant Criminal Checks, or TICS, and they soared after the presidential election, said Kirstin Helms, spokeswoman for the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation.

“During the first 11 days in November for the last 11 years, we averaged around 11 [thousand] to 14,000 instant criminal background checks,” Helms said. “This year we’ve done 21,608. Some of those people were denied – but a certain percentage are denied every year.”

Gun carry laws differ slightly in Virginia and Tennessee, and state by state.

In Virginia, it’s legal to walk down the street with a gun holstered to your hip; the commonwealth is one of 11 “Gold Star” states as ranked by the gun-rights group OpenCarry.org. However, a permit is required to carry a concealed weapon and must be renewed every four years.

In Tennessee, a permit is required to carry a handgun, concealed or not, and must be renewed every five years.

The discrepancy explains in part why Tennessee’s permit numbers are far higher than its northern neighbor’s.

Records kept by the Washington County, Va., Circuit Court Clerk’s Office show that the number of carry permits more than doubled in 2007, the year of the Virginia Tech killings.

For several years, the average number of permits issued in Washington County, which has nearly 52,000 residents, hovered around 340, but that shot to more than 820 in 2007. So far this year, the county has issued 901 gun permits.

“I knew people around here were getting more handguns,” Washington County Sheriff Fred Newman said. “I encourage it, because the people who are buying them are law-abiding citizens.”

There was no drastic increase in Sullivan County, which ranks sixth among Tennessee’s 95 counties in the number of active handgun permits. Sullivan County has an estimated 2006 population of 153,239, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The number of gun permits in the county has climbed steadily, from 4,720 issued in 2006 to 5,042 in 2007. And so far this year, Sullivan County has issued 5,489 gun permits.

Keeping track

No one knows exactly how many guns exist in Virginia or Tennessee; in fact, there is no way of knowing exactly how many guns are in all of the United States.

Federal law prohibits the creation of a registration database of guns, and it’s a law that gun advocates ardently defend.

Tracking would be difficult anyway. Until the federal Gun Control Act was adopted in 1968, manufacturers were not even required to put a serial number on each gun. And with minimal upkeep, a firearm can last 100 years.

Even the NRA doesn’t keep state-by-state membership numbers, so it’s impossible to gauge the prevalence of guns or even gun owners in a single community or state. The NRA does boast 4 million members nationwide.

Yet surveys by the Harvard Injury Control Research Center, part of the Harvard School of Public Health, put the number of privately owned guns at about 288 million in 2004, the most recent year for which the data is available. The center’s surveys also reveal that gun ownership is increasingly concentrated: 20 percent of gun owners had 65 percent of the nation’s guns.

Buying binge

Sutherland’s store, which typically stocks about 400 guns, sells an average of 125 firearms each month. Since the election, Sutherland has sold 288.

“I would say it has as much to do with the economy as it does the election. We all know that when the economy goes bad, crime goes up,” Sutherland said. “Coupled with the election, you’ve got a lot of people who were thinking about getting a handgun, toying with the idea, and they’re going ahead and doing it now because they don’t know if they’ll be able to later.”

Hamm, with the Brady Campaign, said there is no dispute about the surge in gun sales.

“We’re sure there has been a legitimate surge,” he said. “But we think the people who feel the need to run out and buy a particular gun are being overly concerned about gun laws in our country. When they [the laws] do change, they change very, very slowly.”

John Paul Blevins, owner of the GunRunners store in Blountville, Tenn., has been a private gun dealer in the region for 22 years and is somewhat of an encyclopedia of all things firearm. His store, like others, has seen a nearly threefold increase in business.

Blevins said that many of the guns selling the fastest – semi-automatic weapons included – are misunderstood.

Media reports call those in highest demand “military assault” rifles, he said, and it’s a term gun people hate because of its pejorative connotations.

Assault applies to all guns that shoot as fast as you can pull the trigger. One tug, one round. You don’t reload, you just tug again. That’s considered a semi-automatic weapon because it reloads a round automatically. But it does not shoot automatically.

A fully automatic weapon, also known as a machine gun, is not part of the debate, both sides agree. Heavily regulated, machine guns are capable of continued firing: When you pull the trigger, you don’t let go. The gun keeps firing. That’s why people use the word “spray” when talking about machine guns.

Blevins said the reason the term “military-style weapon” is used so often in popular culture is because some guns are styled to resemble military weapons that are illegal for civilian use. They’re pretty close, he said, but they don’t have the same capabilities.

“People fear that assault weapons and high-capacity magazines will be banned again, and this time it will be permanent,” Blevins said, referring to President Bill Clinton’s 1994 10-year ban on such weapons. “It’s Simple Economics 101. If you ban or curtail supply, the demand goes up with the price.

“Why would you want a gun like that?” Blevins asked rhetorically. “Well, why would you want to drive a Corvette instead of a Ford?”

Hamm faults the gun industry for romanticizing such weapons.

“Like any American company selling a product, the industry is telling them they need these weapons,” Hamm said. “I don’t blame them because it’s what they sell. It’s capitalism, it’s allowed.”

Gun bans

The Brady Campaign pushes for stiff regulations on a whole group of weapons it labels as military-style assault weapons, which includes semi-automatic weapons. On its Web site, the campaign cites statistics regarding crime since the 10-year ban expired in 2004; 165 people were killed as a result, the group says.

“It’s a small percentage,” Hamm said. “I mean, we lose 30,000 people to gun violence in this country each year.”

Hamm said part of the issue is, “We’ve never tried gun control in this country.

“We can’t resolve this issue because there isn’t enough data about gun laws to determine what is successful and what is not,” Hamm said. “We don’t in this society do a good enough job of explaining both points of view. Urban people belittle rural people’s point of view and rural people think urban people are out of touch.”

At the center of the gun-control debate is its impact on crime. Gun-control advocates say crime decreases when guns are restricted. Those for less gun control say with equal certitude that guns are a deterrent and the more there are, the more crime decreases.

“To sit here and tell you, ‘No, firearms don’t play a role in crime,’ well, they always do, no matter what,” Bristol Virginia police Sgt. Charles Robinette said. “But I’ve been an officer for 13 years, and I haven’t specifically noticed a difference as far as the ban or gun control is concerned. I haven’t ever seen a difference.”

Newman agrees.

“From a standpoint of gun control, if a person wants a gun, then he’s going to get it,” the sheriff said. “Nine times out of 10, it’s not a person who has a legal gun. It’s going to be someone who stole it, or got it from somewhere else.” Nationwide, gun crime is down, and save for a brief spike in 2005, has been since 1993. Still, FBI crime studies show that 66 percent of the 16,137 murders in 2004 were committed with firearms.

“What could really change the gun issue in America is that the Supreme Court made it clear that there is no secret conspiracy to take away guns,” Hamm said. “I think it’s great progress. Now we can talk about gun control that works.”