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Because special forces training is hard. Because ground-based gunfire just isn't sufficiently soaked in testosterone. Because helicopters. Because this is Texas, goddammit.

There have always been plenty of reasons for your average (non-G.I.) Joe to shoot assault weapons from a moving aircraft. What North Texas males have lacked is a place to properly unleash their inner Rambo.

Until now. An outfit called Sniper Helicopter Adventures recently opened up a helicopter gun range outside of Denton, which bills itself as "the ultimate opportunity to test and challenge your marksmanship skills as you fly through various obstacles while shooting from a Helicopter!"

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Exile Machine makes no bones about the fact that its primary reason for existing is to skirt California gun laws. The Irving gun manufacturer's name is a reference to its CEO, who it says lived and worked in California for most of the past 40 years. The first product the company produced was a special adapter for AR-15s to get around restrictions on rifles with pistol grips. More recently, it's begun disassembling high-capacity magazines, the sale of which is otherwise illegal in the state, and selling them as "repair/rebuild kits."

"We're all hoping for the quick overturning of the CA semiautomatic rifle ban and the other crazy restrictions," the company writes. "We want everyone in this great country to enjoy shooting as we do here in Texas."

Alas, the state of California does not share that sentiment. San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera filed a lawsuit yesterday against Exile and two other companies for illegally selling high-capacity magazines (more than 10 rounds) and "profit(ing) at the expense of public safety in California."

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Last Saturday, the folks taking in the new George W. Bush Presidential Center were briefly under the frightening misimpression that it had come under terrorist attack, as reports of an "active shooter" put the center and SMU on lockdown.

Among the visitors were Lawrence Wright, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Looming Tower and Going Clear, and Stephen Harrigan, a novelist and Texas Monthly regular. According to Harrigan's account posted yesterday on TM's website, folks prayed, weeped, fainted, ducked behind pillars and huddled on the floor, waiting for shots to ring out. The bombings in Boston and images of methodical men clearing room after room with assault weapons must have been emblazoned in their minds. Here they were, inside a monument to a president who had waged simultaneous war in Iraq and Afghanistan.

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It wasn't quite heard around the world, but the shot fired by The Liberator, the plastic gun that University of Texas law student Cody Wilson designed and fabricated using a 3-D printer, was witnessed by a lot of people. It proved beyond a doubt that the gun works.

What people are still trying to figure out is what it means to be living in an age in which anyone can simply print a gun. Some have responded by penning doom-and-gloom opinion pieces and scrambling to ban the weapons. More people -- some 100,000 -- went to their computers and downloaded the design files Wilson had posted for free online through his company, Defense Distributed.

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Office of the Governor

It's thirsty work being Rick Perry. You have to stand in the warm May sun outside a gun shop and wax poetic about the virtues of firearms, laissez-faire capitalism and how much California blows. It's no wonder then that you would promptly hightail it across town to the local brewery. After all, what could go better with guns than beer?

The correct answer is whiskey of course, but there's no commercial distillery in Shiner, where Governor Perry gave a warm Texas welcome to Shield Tactical, which is both the state's newest firearms retailer and a refugee from California's gun regulations.

In the Golden State, "it's like before you put up your range you have to be worried about whether the noise level is going to bother the 10-headed duckmouse," Shield Tactical's John Harrington explained to The New York Times. In Texas, "it's an iota of bureaucracy."

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The official logo of Gun Barrel City, a small town on the banks of the Cedar Creek Reservoir, is a pair of crossed revolvers. Its slogan is "We Shoot Straight With You." One of its main drags is Gun Barrel Lane, where you'll find the Carry Right Gun Shop. Its mayor's business attire is an American flag shirt.

But city leaders fear that their position on firearms might not be quite clear. And so they spelled it out.

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RT @psychscriv: Make sure none of these people have seats in 2014. twitter.com/PsychScriv/sta...We are in trouble when these Rs side w/ Sen Reid

— Barry Smitherman (@SmithermanTX) April 11, 2013

The U.S. Senate voted only to consider gun safety legislation Thursday, which includes expanded background checks and increased penalties for illegal gun sales. It'll need 60 votes to end debate and the consideration of amendments designed to render the rules toothless. Then, failing that, there's always the chance Senator Ted Cruz will filibuster.

If passage on a simple majority is somehow possible, there's still the matter of rounding up the votes of Democrats from conservative states. They'll probably need a few Republicans. Anyhow, the Senate is just talking now. Deliberating. That's what they're supposed to do, right? Discuss issues of gravity, like adults?

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Via.

Etiquette question: Is this what you're supposed to bring to an anti-gun rally?

Mayors Against Illegal Guns, the advocacy group funded and founded by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, is struggling to stoke the kind of grass-roots passion for gun regulation that has made its arch-nemesis, the NRA, such a political force. Organizing For America, the post-electoral version of Obama's campaign machine, is seeking to translate the energy that twice propelled the president to victory into support for progressive causes.

Those twin goals will converge Saturday in Dallas when Mayors Against Illegal Guns and OFA join forces for an event titled "We Have Not Forgotten and Demand Action."

In other words, a gun control rally.

A press release describes it as a "community event to call on members of Congress to support gun violence prevention measures." As a for instance, they cite the bipartisan bill expanding background checks recently introduced in the U.S. Senate.

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Steve Stockman

U.S. Representative Steve Stockman is not a subtle man. We could go so far as to say he has a flair for the dramatic. He is, after all, the man who brought Ted Nugent as his plus-one to the State of the Union address, and compared the Earth to a sort of fuel-filled water balloon. And even further back, he claimed that the disaster at the Branch Davidian compound in Waco was a setup by the Clinton administration.

Now, just as Connecticut Governor Dannel Malloy signed new gun control legislation on Friday, Stockman has posted an open letter to spurned gun manufacturers (sic): "Come to Texas!!! The state which believes the whole Bill of Rights should be followed, not just the 'politically correct' parts. Your rights will not be infringed upon here, unlike many current local regimes."

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Kyle Coplen can pinpoint the exact moment the idea came to him. He was visiting a 93-year-old World War II veteran on January 23 whose home had just been vandalized. Mementos were broken. The walls had been covered with spray paint. The man was distraught, and so was Coplen, who wondered whether the damage could have been avoided if the veteran had access to a gun.

He decided that it could, which led to his next thought: What if whole blocks were armed? Entire neighborhoods, even? A heavily armed populace might be able to stem the tide of burglaries, robberies, and home invasions common in areas of chronically high crime.

"If the criminal thinks there's even a 10 percent chance that they're going to take a bunch of buckshot to the gut," Coplen says, they'll probably go somewhere else.

He decided to test his theory, establishing the Armed Citizen Project, a nonprofit that, true to its name, gives people shotguns and teaches them how to shoot.

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