Snowflakes in Hell

I’m getting ready for the banquet where John Bolton, former Ambassador to the UN, will be speaking. Bitter was telling me of the havoc that having Dick Cheney speak at the Pittsburgh Banquet wrought. Not because he shot someone by accident or anything, but from his secret service security detail.  I doubt we’ll have any such problems with John Bolton, as he does not require security; his mustache is trained to kill.

Every time I start thinking about getting a new pistol to carry, instead of my Glock, I always end up ditching the idea, because I don’t really like much else out there.  I’m only looking at pistols with modern actions and polymer frames.   I’ve never been too keen on regular carry of a DA/SA, DAO or SA.

I tried the S&W M&P line.   Damn nice pistols, but I just didn’t like the trigger pull all that much.  I thought the break was a little sloppier than the Glock.  I noticed on some of the display models they had, the slide lock release was really tough to push down.  I would take the M&P over a lot of other offerings.  I think it’s the second best pistol I tried.

H&K P2000 LEM I didn’t really care for.  The trigger pull with the hammer “cocked” was too light.  I prefer a trigger to have a smooth, rather light take up, then a heavier, but clean break.  The P2000 trigger I think broke pretty cleanly, but at too light a pull.  The one good thing about the LEM trigger is if you fire, and nothing happens, instead of having to rack the slide, you can just fire again, only with a heavier, double action type pull.   That is kind of nice.   But I won’t buy any H&K stuff unless they start making civilianized versions of their cool stuff.  Their booth only featured pistols.   None of their cool stuff.

If I was going to ditch the Glock, the one gun I’d most prefer to do it for is the Springfield XD series.   These felt very Glock-like to me in terms of feel, trigger pull, and overall operation.  There wasn’t much I didn’t like about them.

The Walther P99 just wasn’t really for me either.   I had a hard time telling where the trigger was going to break.  Other than that, not too bad, but it’s a bulky pistol.

I think I’ll be sticking with Glocks though, to be honest.   It’s just what I’m used to, and while there are other fine pistols on the market out there, I’m just probably too wed to Glock a this point to switch.   I’d love to test shoot a Springfield XD series sometime, and a S&W M&P series.  I think those are the two most solid American alternatives just based on a quick feel.

We took a VIP tour of the Budweiser brewery here in St. Louis yesterday. We decided that a brief break from the convention was in order, so we took a cab ride over to the brewery. From a home brewer’s perspective, the tour isn’t all that interesting, because it’s not done in a lot of detail. But the brewery is architecturally a work of art:

This is the view from the outside. It’s beautifully landscaped all over the Anheiser-Busch plant.

Inside the old brewery, they have a hop chandelier, that’s quite nice.

Anheiser-Busch’s Mash Tuns.

Brew kettles. Forgive the orangeness of the picture, as the light wasn’t very good.

The tour wraps up in the hospitality room, where we sampled a few of their beers. As best I can tell, the VIP tour is a small group, of about 10 people, rather than the giagantic tour groups, plus you get an “Honorary Beermaster” certificate at the end, and get to sample two bottles in the nicely appointed hospitality room. But in a regular tour you get to see the same stuff. The brewery is architectural art, so if you’re ever in St. Louis, I’d recommend stopping by for the tour.

As I look out at the crowd at this meeting, I’m struck by the fact that most of them appear to be over 50, and I see maybe only a handful of us that are under 40.   If this is a true reflection of the NRA demographic, we’re in a lot of trouble over the long term.   I go to the range quite often, and the place is teaming with people in their 20s and 30s, yet I come here and I feel young!

Why aren’t more young people involved in this issue, when I know they are involved in shooting.  Where are all the 20-30 year olds I see at gun shows on a regular basis looking at the latest black rifles?   Something’s wrong.

I’m at the NRA members meeting.   Thank God for WiFi at the convention center.   It’s basically just a pep rally for gun nuts, but there are some good videos they showed that I’m hoping they’ll put on Youtube.  I might have to find someone to talk to about that.

So last night, after dinner and the brewery tour, we headed out for some drinks with Cam Edwards, host of Cam & Company at NRA News, Dave Kopel, Research director for the Independence Institute, and Robert Cottrol, Professor of Law, History and Sociology at George Washingon Law School.

Pretty cool company.  I like interacting with academic types, which is good because I work with those types of people on a daily basis.

Speaking of Dave Kopel, everyone should check out his paper on Gun Control in Belgium (PDF):

After the shooting incident, the Government decided to vote a complete new gun legislation. In only a couple of days, this new gun legislation was discussed and approved by the Parliament.

Several observers stated already at that time that the Parliament did not give itself enough time to be able to realize a good and workable gun legislation …

The changes in the new legislation are very drastic : Only officially licensed sporting shooters and hunters can still possess arms, all the other owners of legal weapons will have to hand-in the weapons they already possess without financial compensation.

No other democratic country, except for Jamaica, imposed a complete Gun Ban for all its citizens (except for a limited number of officially licensed sporting shooters and hunters)

Amazing.  They will be confiscating millions of firearms, ordinary firearms, without any compensation to the owners.  Also of note are his statistics on suicide:

In Japan there is no firearm ownership, but Japan has the highest number of suicides of the whole world (28 per 100.000). People commit suicide by hanging, jumping from buildings or moving objects, drowning, …
In the USA there are 4 times more weapons than in Belgium, but only 41% of the number of suicides. In the UK and Australia (both countries have a gun ban) there are more suicides than in the USA. And after the introduction of the Gun Ban there has been a sharp increase in the suicide numbers.

Switzerland has twice as many firearms than Belgium, but lower suicide rates.

Germany has 1,8 times more weapons than Belgium, but only 60 % of the suicides.

Read the whole thing.

We’ll be on the floor of the convention most of the day today. If anyone is at the convention and wants to say hi, I’ll be wearing my T-shirt with “Peace Through Superior Firepower” blazed on the back. I’m about six feet three inches tall, and 235lbs, so I’m tough to miss.  Also, you too can be one of the rare people that knows what Bitter looks like! I just hope you know the secret hand shake.

I’ll have more stuff coming up from yesterday shortly. I wish I could have kept this in chronological order, but it’s tough. I only have limited times to blog.