What do hunting in Ireland and our Second Amendment have to do with each other? A few things. Let me explain. As a kid, growing up in the 1960’s-70’s, I followed the fighting in Northern Ireland. The news we Americans were getting was being filtered by the British Broadcasting Company. Therefore, we only got to hear the British point of view and knowing the Americans had revolted successfully against the Crown. Even as a teenager, I suspected we were not getting the whole story. I’m making no claims of expertise after the recent trip my wife and I made to Ireland and England, but I’ll share my experience and what both countries taught me.
HUNTING IN IRELAND
Hunting in Ireland, like much of Europe, is still a tradition. However, with their weapons ownership and storage laws, it’s getting harder to own firearms. You can own three firearms, but when you want to increase that number to six, it requires a major upgrade in the home vault and security system. Beyond six firearms, the rules are almost unbelievable.
Typically when I’ve traveled abroad to hunt, I have taken my own rifles. That is very difficult in England and Ireland. On my Irish Sika Stag hunt with Norm Mulvany @IrishSafaris, I was able to use his custom 270 Winchester rifle.
“On day one of my hunt, I walked in and this old boy was crossing the field in the fog. One shot at about 80-100 meters, he ran less than 60 meters with his heart, lungs, and liver destroyed. This was less than ten minutes after we left the hunting vehicle on the first day! His initial SCI score was 137”, putting him into the top ten all-time Sika, and maybe as high as number five.”
As I get older, my hunting trips are less about the size of the trophy, and more about the whole experience including the people, the countryside, and the local customs. But now and then, you have to “Take What The Bush Gives You”. I know I got lucky with this trophy.
My fellow hunters asked me what rifle cartridge I use for hunting in the U.S. When I told them that I had several dozen firearms they could not believe it! We forget how good we have it in the United States. Note the suppressor in my photo. It’s considered bad manners to hunt and shoot in most of Europe without one, and they are unregulated.
TALKING POLITICS WITH THE LOCALS
Amazingly, every person we spoke with about America wanted to know if we were President Trump supporters. Once they understood that we were, they opened up about how much they wanted Trump to win. They told us about how over-regulated life is across the European Union and warned us that we are facing the same future in America under the Leftists in power now.
We cannot survive as a nation with these dangerous quacks in power. We are a few days out. Get out and vote next Tuesday!
Please stay Ready at All Times, and help us defend all of Iowa’s rights by donating to IFC-PAC today. Those small recurring monthly donations of $10, $25, or $100 make a huge difference in our ability to get the message of freedom out there.
Shoot Straight, Speak The Truth, and Never Surrender Our Liberties.
Dave Funk Member, Board of Directors Iowa Firearms Coalition #2A4IA
The Biden-Harris Administration has overreached its authority again, and even more FBI lies have been exposed.
OVERREACH AGAIN
Many of you know I was the President of the Iowa Chapter of Safari Club International (SCI) for four years before I later served as your IFC president. SCI is now calling out the Biden-Harris
Administration for its anti-hunting/anti-gun overreach on Federal Lands. From SCI:
Safari Club International Opposes Biden-Harris Administration’s Bears Ears National Monument Resource Management Plan
“In promulgating this proposal, the Biden-Harris administration’s Department of the Interior and Department of Agriculture have exceeded their regulatory authorities by closing off these public lands to responsible recreational activities, thereby threatening vital conservation funding.
The plan also imposes severe restrictions on vehicle access and establishes a total ban on recreational shooting on the entirety of Bears Ears National Monument’s (BENM) 1.3 MILLION acres, a move that will have substantial economic and conservation consequences.
“This policy doesn’t just hurt sportsmen and women—it undermines the entire ecosystem of conservation funding,” said SCI CEO W. Laird Hamberlin. “By shutting down recreational shooting, the plan takes a sledgehammer to a critical funding source for conservation projects and disregards the public’s right to access the lands they help sustain. SCI is proud to oppose this proposed resource management plan as part of our longstanding mission to be First for Hunters.””
Just over two weeks ago, the FBI corrected its previous year’s crime data, clearly trying to protect the Biden-Harris Administration’s election chances this November. Special thanks to America’s crime data guru Dr. John Lott and his Crime Prevention Research Center for highlighting this data “revision”. From Dr. Lott:
A week and a half ago, the FBI released its final crime data for 2023. However, the news media completely missed how the FBI had revised its “final” crime data for previous years. For a year, the media claimed that violent crime fell in 2022. Oops! What had originally been a 2.1% drop in reported violent crime was actually a 4.5% increase. By the way, that increase in 2022 was bigger than the claimed 3.5% drop in 2023. I have previously discussed the problems with the FBI’s measure of reported crime, but you would think that after a year of using the 2022 crime data to claim that crime was falling, someone in the media would mention they were wrong. I wrote an op-ed in the New York Post that goes through these points and explains why even these amazing numbers are an underestimate. I will make one other startling point: the FBI’s 2022 “final” crime data somehow missed [a] 1,699 increase in murders in 2022.
When Federal Agencies are repeatedly politicized they become slaves to the narrative. In this case, it’s the FBI, but we also saw the new job numbers revised downward by over one million just a short time ago by another Federal Agency. Between the BATFE’s war on law-abiding citizens, the COVID mess, and now FEMA showing us how utterly corrupt and incompetent it is in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, how can we ever trust our Federal Government on anything ever again?
We cannot survive as a nation with these loony toons dangerous quacks in power. Please get out and help pro-freedom candidates across Iowa and America today! Register and vote!
Please stay Ready at All Times, and help us defend all of Iowa’s rights by donating to IFC-PAC today. Those small recurring monthly donations of $10, $25, or $100 make a huge difference in our ability to get the message of freedom out there.
Shoot Straight, Speak The Truth, and Never Surrender Our Liberties.
Dave Funk Member, Board of Directors Iowa Firearms Coalition
The 2024 IFC-PAC State Legislative Endorsements are the focus for this week’s blog. With the election in just over 30 days, and early voting in Iowa starting October 16th, we will skip the news this week. I’m sorry that as a bi-partisan organization, unlike in years past, we do not have a single Democrat Party member or candidate that has earned our support.
Look into your county and city officials’ records and stances on 2A issues and vote accordingly. They are the party’s farm teams. We encourage you to bank your vote early this year so that the candidates can concentrate their efforts on those who have not yet voted.
Please stay Ready at All Times, and help us defend all of Iowa’s rights by donating to IFC-PAC today. Those small recurring monthly donations of $10, $25, or $100 make a huge difference in our ability to get the message of freedom out there.
Shoot Straight, Speak The Truth, and Never Surrender Our Liberties.
Dave Funk Member, Board of Directors Iowa Firearms Coalition
No Madam Vice-President, you can’t just do that — together with other musings from this week. Here we go folks! Hold onto your hats. Remember Joe Biden’s dumb-ass statement years ago that ‘Jill should just point the shotgun out the back door and fire a shot off if she feels threatened’? Well, that statement has just been topped by Heel’s-up-Harris!
The Babylon Bee ran a parody piece this week entitled “Oprah Releases Moving 1-Hour Special On Dangers Of Alcohol Abuse”. The Bee parody highlighted Heel’s-Up’s actual (botched) one-hour interview with The Oprah. During that interview, the sitting Vice-President stated, “If somebody breaks into my house, they’re getting shot,”. Without getting into the finer details about self-defense use of force, Castle Doctrine, or Stand Your Ground laws here, most adults understand that there are limits to the use of deadly force in our society. You would think a former prosecutor would.
…BUT WE SHOULD NEVER LOOK A GIFT HORSE IN THE MOUTH
It’s pretty clear that the VP just made the argument that she, like most Americans, has guns for self-defense. The old German word Zeitgeist comes to mind. Its meaning is the general intellectual, moral, and cultural climate of an era. When both Harris and her totalitarian governor running mate are, or claim to be, gun owners, it becomes much harder to argue that the rest of us minions should not be. Kudos to Mark W. Smith at The Four Boxes Diner for this Zeitgeist reference.
AMERICAN HISTORY AND ILLINOIS 2023 GUN BANS
AmmoLand.com senior editor F. Reihl wrote a great piece this week about recent history. He wondered aloud how things may have come out differently if Blacks in both East St. Louis and Tulsa had been armed during the race riots of 1917 and 1921. To quote Reihl’s opening paragraph:
The federal trial challenging Illinois’ gun and magazine ban took a poignant turn as U.S. District Judge Stephen McGlynn reflected on the tragic history of racial violence, questioning how events like the 1917 East St. Louis race riots and the 1921 Tulsa massacre might have unfolded differently if Black victims had access to the types of firearms now banned under the state’s Protect Illinois Communities Act.
I’d encourage you to read the entire article referenced above. It is about the litigation surrounding the 2023 law in Illinois that:
bans over 170 specific firearms
bans magazines for rifles holding over ten rounds
bans handguns that hold more than fifteen rounds
Based on current case law (Heller & Bruen), the Illinois law is clearly unconstitutional. Never forget that gun control in America has its racist roots in the post-Civil War Jim Crow South and the Democratic Party (whose military arm was the KKK). But then, world history is rife with examples of racism being the motivation for a monopoly on power by every despotic government.
You have heard me say before that we cannot survive as a nation with these loony toons dangerous quacks in power. Now Governor “Tampon Tim” Waltz of Minnesota, agrees with me: He said at a rally the other day; “We can’t afford four more years of this!”
As Donald J Trump said as he stood up after he was shot: “Fight, Fight, Fight”.
Please stay Ready at All Times, and help us defend all of Iowa’s rights by donating to IFC-PAC today. Those small recurring monthly donations of $10, $25, or $100 make a huge difference in our ability to get the message of freedom out there.
Shoot Straight, Speak The Truth, and Never Surrender Our Liberties.
Dave Funk Member, Board of Directors Iowa Firearms Coalition
Kamala Harris lies during the debate – and it reached new lows. Like many Americans, I watched the Presidential Debate last week. I’m not going to get into the whole event here. But, I do want to touch on two major lies that should disqualify anyone for life in public office, let alone the Office of the President of the United States.
Lie #1: Crime Has Fallen under the Biden/Harris Administration
This claim is a clear case of gaslighting. I have previously covered how the FBI has under-reported crime, during the last 3.5 years of the Biden Administration. Dr. John Lott published a piece last week debunking that lie. From Dr. Lott:
“It’s no accident that violent crime is near a record 50-year low,” President Biden claimed.
In fact, the opposite is true: between 2016 and 2020, violent crime fell by 17% under Trump and soared by 43% under Biden between 2020 and 2022. Even if you take the starting period for Biden as 2019 because the numbers may have been artificially depressed during COVID, violent crime rose by 12%. Using 2019 as the end-point for Trump would imply a 6.6% increase over 2016, about half the increase under Biden. The problem is people don’t understand the difference between the number of crimes reported to police and the total number of crimes. However, as we have pointed out, there are problems with the FBI’s measure of reported crimes (seehere,here, andhere).
There are two measures of crime. The FBI’s NIBRS counts the number of crimes reported to police yearly. The Bureau of Justice Statistics uses its National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) to ask about 240,000 people each year whether they have been victims of crime, to measure reported and unreported crime. Since 2020, these two measures have been highly negatively correlated. The FBI has been finding fewer instances of crime, but people are simultaneously answering in greater numbers that they have been victims.”
As a Reserve Police Officer here in Iowa, I’m well familiar with the FBI’s NIBRS crime reporting system. I can also tell you that not all jurisdictions use it, or even uniformly report crime. Guess what? The greatest number of places that do not report, are Democrat-controlled cities and states like New York and Chicago among many others. When it’s this easy to point out the lies of the left, how can you ever trust the liberals?
Lie #2: There Are No American Troops Currently Stationed in Combat Zones Around The World
Heels-Up Harris stated during the debates:
“As of today, there is not one member of the United States military who is in active duty in a combat zone, in any war zone around the world for the first time this century.”
Well, someone should tell the DOD payroll department to start withholding income taxes from the thousands of US Military people in combat zones around the world.
But the best fact check of all came from this small group of troops watching the debate last Tuesday night and this video says it all:
We cannot survive as a nation with these loony toons dangerous quacks in power. Please get out and help pro-freedom candidates across Iowa and America today!
Please stay Ready at All Times, and help us defend all of Iowa’s rights by donating to IFC-PAC today. Those small recurring monthly donations of $10, $25, or $100 make a huge difference in our ability to get the message of freedom out there.
Shoot Straight, Speak The Truth, and Never Surrender Our Liberties.
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quacks in power. Now Governor “Tampon Tim” Waltz of Minnesota, agrees with me: He said at a rally the other day; 
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