WA State Action Alert, Knife Rights

 From Knife Rights:

URGENT! Urge Chairman Hansen to Hear HB 1224 Repealing WA's Switchblade Ban

The bipartisan Washington “Spring Blade” Ban Repeal bill, HB 1224, that would repeal the state's ban on automatic knives is in danger of dying on the vine. If a hearing is not held by the end of the day on Monday, February 15, it will be dead for this session. The current agenda does not include a hearing on HB 1224!

 If you are a Washington resident, please use Knife Rights’ Legislative Action Center to ask House Civil Rights & Judiciary Committee Chairman Drew Hansen to please hold a hearing on HB 1224.  The members of the committee will be CC'd on the email to the Chairman asking them to also make the request of the Chairman to hear HB 1224.

We keep seeing bills to repeal this Blackboard Jungle-era crap filed in Olympia and then gather dust and die. I happen to know that First Responders all over this state support repeal, as does anyone who ever needed three hands to accomplish a task -- probably 20 feet up a ladder -- and realized they needed to open their knife.

Go to the link and sign the petition if you're a Washington resident.

GOAL Post 2020-8 is up

GOAL Post 2020-8, Legislative Update from Olympia 28 February 2020 - Gun Owners Action League of Washington

I haven't been posting these, since they are now regularly posted to that web site, and let's face it, I haven't been posting much at all.

Legislative season is almost over, although with the clown show Olympia has become it is no longer accurate to suggest that our money or freedom are safe if the legislature is not in session. We're talking about a state where the state tried to sue the voters for an initiative we passed, after all.

Berthold Brecht would have been right at home here.

Anyway. It sounds like most of the bills are dead, although, as Joe points out, these clowns are always willing to pull a Miracle Max on bills that should have died...

Plus there's always the possibility that Steyer and Bloomberg will finance another corrupt initiative to back an even worse law.

One good bill remains, that would remove the restriction on spring-assisted knives. I have a lot of respect for the late Glenn Ford, Capt. USNR (RET), but The Blackboard Jungle resulted in silly restrictions on knives you can open with one hand, which sounds like a minor inconvenience until you need both hands to do a job, and a third to access the tool you need to do it. ("No shit, there I was, 30 feet up a ladder...")

The majority of the rest of the remaining gun-related bills should die in a fire.

GOAL Post 2019-10

The new GOAL Post is out, and has arrived in email but is not yet posted at the Gun Owners Action League of Washington web site. Since this has some significant info in it -- and ties in with my previous post -- I'll revert to my past practice of reproducing the entire thing here, with minor editing for formatting.

***

FROM: GOAL WA goalwa@cox.net (Joe Waldron)

TO: undisclosed recipients

SENT: Fri 3/15/2019 2:14 PM

SUBJECT: GOAL Post 2019-10

Legislative Update from Olympia 15 March 2019

• SB 5954 PASSES LEGISLATURE
• CHAMBER CUT-OFF/TURNOVER DAY
• BILLS LIVE – BILLS DIE
• PUBLIC HEARINGS SCHEDULED

In an unusual move, SB 5954 (bump stock buyback funding) passed out of the Senate on 28 February, was fast-tracked through the House on March 11th  where it was amended, so it went back to the Senate, who concurred in the House amendment.  It’s on its way to the Governor.

Of the 23 bills that survived the original chamber policy committee cut-off, only 13 made it through the second cut by passing out of their chamber of origin.  House bills moving to the Senate include HBs 1225 (firearms/DV), 1465 (handgun delivery w/CPL), 1739 (undetectable/untraceable firearms – the Senate version died), 1786 (protective orders/firearms), 1934 (military CPL renewal by mail) and 1949 (single point of contact for background checks).

Senate bills moving to the House include SBs 5027 (underage extreme risk protection orders), 5181 (firearms/Mental health), 5205 (firearms/incompetent for trial), 5434 (new/expanded gun free zones), 5508 (WSP background checks for CPLs) and 5782 (spring-blade knives).  I mentioned SB 5954 above.

Bills that died include HB 1010 (WSP destruction of forfeited firearms), 1068 (high capacity magazine ban), 1381 (UAVs/contraband delivery), 5016 (arming animal control officers), 5061 (undetectable/untraceable firearms), 5062 (high capacity magazine ban), 5099 (target shooting on DNR land), 5143 (firearms/DV incidents). 5150 (college safety officers/weapons) and 5174 (CPL training).

Note BOTH “high capacity magazine” bills (HB 1068, SSB 5062) died, as did the mandatory training requirement for a CPL (SSB 5174).  

There is a public hearing scheduled for HB 1949 (single POC for background checks) in Senate Law & Justice at 10:00 a.m. on Monday, 18 March.  Public hearings scheduled for SB 5508  (WSP background check) in House Civil Rights & Judiciary at 10 a.m. on Tuesday, March 19.  For SB 5181 (firearms/mental health) in House Civil Rights & Judiciary at 9 a.m. on March 20.  For SB 5782 (spring assisted knives) in House Civil Rights & Judiciary at 10 a.m. on March 22.

If you are tracking a specific bill, you might want to check the bill’s page on “Bill Information” to ensure a hearing was not added later.

(I added a note below in “Other data.”  The same bill information page for each bill that tells you where/how to get copies of bills and bill reports also mentions public hearings are available on TV Washington, both live and archived.  Links to airings are available at the very bottom of the bill page – no need to search the archives.)

{Continued after the jump -- DWD}

Souvenirs!

So, NRAAM 2015 ended a week and a half ago, and we've been home a week. I still need to write up Kelly Grayson's "Trauma Care for Shooters" class, and the two seminars we attended, but upon my return I pushed to get all of my minions' performance reviews done on time -- and I think I was the first to actually have them all done -- but now I am struggling with the common side effects of too much time on a pressurized petri dish with a hundred or more total strangers.

So actual, you know, writing will have to wait.

In the meantime, a few pics I hadn't previously posted:

In time, I realized that there's not really much differance between a kid in a candy shop, and a Bearcat in a Knife Shop*:

 So, I mentioned on Facebook that Brownell's had the best tote bags of all the vendors I saw. Theirs had a pocket on each end the right size for a water bottle, with a smaller clear plastic slot above it you could use for business cards or whatnot.

I went and grabbed one, and saw that TOPS Knives had 5 or 6 tables across from Brownell's, a very simple setup with tables full of blades for sale and sales guys ready to take your money...

Souvenirs, Hers, Mine, Ours:

 Hers: TOPS Devil's Claw.

 Mine: TOPS Lite Trekker. The tan and orange scales are an option. The fire stick is standard on this model.

ours: TOPS ATAX .
If you buy it online it comes with an instructional video, which I think might be a good idea.

*There is, however, no truth to the rumor that I only married her for her knife collection.

Guns, pipes, axes, and razors

Someone started a sort of a meme on Pistol-Forums.com about that.  In order to load the pics there, I had to have them hosted somewhere, and what the heck, I have this blog I haven't used in a week or so...

Colt Combat Commander, SOG Fusion tomahawk, William Henry Damascus folder,
Nording Danish Freehand, can of Frog Morton On The Bayou tobacco.

Who needs a razor?  I have tamahawks and knives!

Smith & Wesson 625-8 JM, Camillus Air Force Survival knife, Cold Steel Rifleman tomahawk,
Turkish meerschaum, Froggie On The Bayou.

Plus, there's always the Lumberjack Method, from the old song:

He never shaved his whiskers
From off his horny hide
He hit them with a hammer
And bit them off inside!

I have the bestest wife in the world

The stud at about 2 o'clock is the lock.  There are small quartz chips in it, and the thumb stud.

Not sure how the reddish hue snuck in there.  Trick of the light.
Also, first time using the portable photo studio she bought a few months ago, maybe I did it wrong.

Yeah, I know, Gunny would prefer I had a Glock in there... Oh, well.

More my style

Of souvenir, that is.

One of the most popular souvenirs of Alaska is an Ulu knife.

An ulu (Inuktitut syllabics: ᐅᓗ, plural: uluit, English: "woman's knife"^[1]) is an all-purpose knife traditionally used by Eskimo women, both Yupik and Inuit. It is utilized in applications as diverse as skinning and cleaning animals, cutting a child's hair, cutting food and, if necessary, trimming blocks of snow and ice used to build an igloo.

(Wikipedia, at link above)

Here's a typical souvenir, not sure where Mrs. Drang got it; she had it when we met. It's actually made of okay steel, but may well have come from A Las Ka, PRC. This is in the Savoonga style.

(An Ulu maker's leaflet that lists styles of Uluit is here.)

This one is Mrs. Drang's souvenir Ulu, a Nunavak style, I believe:

This one is actually Made in Alaska, USA. The handle hole is too small for me, which was the case with every Ulu of this style I tried. She found it in The Knife Shop in Juneau, AK.

In the same building was a small souvenir store that took a lot of our money, including for the bar of soap I posted about last week, and a nifty necktie with Northwest Native-style wolves on it. 

Bristol Bay pattern Ulu, blade of old carbon steel saw blade. 

That cutting board/bowl it's on actually came with Mrs. Drang's Ulu, and the bone stand hers is on in the photograph came with this one. This picture shows part of the reason I liked this one -- it fits!

I don't have a walrus or polar bear to butcher, but Mrs. Drang did ask me to shred some cabbage for slaw...

More info: Outdoors magazine: The Ulu Knife (.Pdf.)