Snowflakes in Hell

This rather odd tragedy caught my eye:

Minneapolis police are trying to find out how a 2-year-old boy allegedly ended up with a gun and shot his father. The 24-year-old man walked into Abbott Northwestern Hospital last Saturday with a gunshot wound to his arm. The man told police that his 2-year-old son had taken the gun from his mother’s purse and fired it at him.

I say odd because two year olds typically do not have the hand size or finger strength to manipulate and pull the trigger on a firearm. But a local gun range operator had this to say:

However, Joe Penaz, who teaches local gun safety classes at gun clubs and gun stores, said that it was possible for a small child to fire a gun if it was an automatic, which are as light as 7 ounces.

“Women seem to gravitate to small automatics,” he said. Penaz said he carries an automatic that requires only 16 ounces of pressure on the trigger to fire.

The facts in this case haven’t come out yet, and may never, but this brings up a number of things we should all remember:

1. Lightweight triggers should be for competitive and range use only. A carry gun should have a minimum trigger pull weight of 5 lbs. You’re asking for trouble if you carry something with a hair trigger.
2. You must be exceedingly careful with off-body carry. The best place for a gun to be is on your person, if it’s not, it should be unloaded and/or secured. Purse carry is often the only choice for women. There are purses out there that work well for this, but you must be careful not to leave the purse lying around. If this woman had a gun with a hair trigger loose in a purse, she’s an idiot at best.
3. If you’re a gun dealer, instructor, or just plain shooter, do not talk to the press about stuff like this. You’re going to say something stupid that will be taken out of context. They will be looking for stuff to make us look bad. If you do talk to the press, I’d keep it to e-mail, where it’s easier to police yourself.

We’re fortunate that stuff like this is exceedingly rare, and generally holders of license to carry have been responsible. But every incident gets used by our opponents to show we’re all a bunch of reckless fools who can’t be trusted, and the press is only happy to help. We must be careful.

While I’m occupied, I’ll leave you with my video where I take out my technological frustrations on a bunch of hard drives.

Bitter got a picture of the undearly departed.

The IBM hard drives have glass plates instead of aluminum, so it was like breaking several mirrors.   I figure I have at least a century of bad luck coming to me now.  Most hard drives these days are using glass platters, I think, because glass has a lower coefficient of expansion than most metals, so the magnetic tracks on the platter surface don’t move as greatly with the expanding platter.

Slow blogging today.   Trying to get a new firewall set up at work, and it’s taking more concentration than required for usual work because of snags.

I’ll post pictures of Texas when I get bored, and over this weekend. Not really many of Bitter, I’m sorry to say, because she blogs anonymously. So do I, but I don’t have to be as concerned about images as she does. But fear not readers, I would not deprive you of pictures of chicks and guns, so Carrie will fill in for Bitter.

We spent our first day in Texas scouting out some good shooting places. Carrie’s brother had told me I could expect long range shooting opportunities. About the most that could be reasonably done was 200 yards, due to lack of back stoppage. For small bore shooting I set up some logs to act as a stop for the bullets, mostly shooting at spinners and cans.

Carrie shooting my 10/22, that I tricked out after the Assault Weapons Ban expired. The folding stock really makes it a menace to society, or makes it fit in the rifle case easier… one of the two. You’ll have to forgive our appearances. It was kind of muddy out, and we weren’t dressing for success.

Loading up the 10/22 magazine. Bitter took this because she likes my Smith & Wesson 629 Classic. Unfortunately, it also shows how much work I have to do on the bike and hiking trail when the weather turns this spring. I have to wear the belt tight to hold up a pistol that heavy. I hate that holster too because it exposes the trigger. Any suggestions for a better holster for a 629? Any suggestions for losing weight? :)

Shooting the 10/22, probably at the spinner targets. For bench we were shooting at about 75 meters. Standing, I have to get to about 25 to be able to hit the spinners consistently. You’ll notice something different about the 10/22 when I’m shooting it, as opposed to when Carrie is. Can you see what’s different?

Bitter thought I should get a least one pic of myself shooting something that wasn’t an evil black rifle. I have to admit, I enjoyed shooting Carrie’s bolt action .22. I’ll have a lot of respect for anyone who can ID that rifle. I had never seen one, as they stopped making them long before I was born.

That night we tried to make a fire using the damp mesquite wood from the wood pile.  Despite being near desert, it had rained a lot the night before.  I’ll post the resulting video o’ blackness from that failed effort sometime later.