Snowflakes in Hell

In my five years of being licensed to carry a gun, I’ve never once been “made” or had someone notice that I was carrying a firearm in public.  So today we spent with Bitchy Mom and Bitter’s six year old nephew.   We took him to the Air and Space Museum Annex right next to Dulles first.

Bitter’s sister-in-law is a nutty anti-gun type who doesn’t even let the kid make a gun out of his finger, so we thought his next stop should be the NRA’s National Firearms Museum in Fairfax.   Bitchy Mom thought a nice “pop” gun would be a fine souvenir for him to take him and show mom *grin*.

After we dropped them off so they could head back to Roanoke, he gave Bitter a big hug goodbye, and then came over to hug his new uncle.  I wasn’t expecting what was coming next:

“Why do you have a gun in your pocket?”

I look around nervously to make sure no one from the nearby wedding party was around to hear that.  I had my Makarov at 4:00 in a leather holster, with an unbuttoned button up shirt covering it.  Does a great job of concealment from people looking at it straight on.  Not so good a job from someone of rather short stature who’s looking up at you.   I’ll have to remember to untuck the t-shirt next time children are about, or I’m packing at a midget convention.

“I keep it in my pocket so I can get to it if I need it”

I was hoping that would be enough to answer the question.

“Why do you have a gun in your pocket?”, he asked again.

How do you explain these things to a six year old?  There wasn’t time anyway.   Earlier we had seen the Enola Gay, the B29 that dropped the atomic bomb over Hiroshima.  It was a special B29, but also something you can’t really explain to a six year old.

The funny thing is, I was embarrassed that I had been “made”.   Maybe I should suggest to Michael Nutter, you don’t need the whole “stop and frisk”.  Just get some six year old to go up to gang banger looking types and give them a hug.  “Have you hugged a drug dealer today?”  It’s the kind of touchy-feely crap that’s right up their alley!

John Lott’s Freedomnomics in my spare time, which sadly is not as plentiful as I would like.  Now I’m off to Virginia to see Bitter.

All the cool kids are doing it:

• Front Sight Firearms Training
• Ignatius Piazza - founder of Front Sight
• Ignatius Piazza Blog
• Ignatius Piazza - in Las Vegas Mercury
• Front Sight - in The Mail on Sunday Review
• Ignatius Piazza - in Times Democrat
• Front Sight - on CNN
• Ignatius Piazza - in National Enquirer
• Front Sight - in Icon Magazine
• Ignatius Piazza - in Chicago Tribune
• Ignatius Piazza - in Gun World
• Ignatius Piazza - in San Francisco Chronicle
• Ignatius Piazza - in Fort Worth Star Telegram
• Front Sight - in Financial Times
• Front Sight - on BBC News
• Front Sight - in Gun Web
• Front Sight - in New York Times
• Ignatius Piazza - in Small Arms Review
• Front Sight - in Sierra Times
• Ignatius Piazza - in Forbes Magazine
• Ignatius Piazza - on World Net Daily
• Front Sight - in Guns & Ammo
• Front Sight - on USA Today
• Front Sight - in Santa Cruz Sentinel
• Ignatius Piazza - in Handvapen Guiden
• Ignatius Piazza - in Las Vegas Sun
• Ignatius Piazza - in Las Vegas Life
• Front Sight - in US News & World Report
• Front Sight - in London Times
• Ignatius Piazza - in Washington Post
• Front Sight - in El Pais Seminal
• Front Sight - in Pajaronian Register
• Front Sight - in Black Belt Magazine
• Front Sight - in Cybercast News Service
• Ignatius Piazza - in El Mercurio
• Front Sight - in Los Angeles Times
• Ignatius Piazza - in Playboy
• My Experience at Front Sight
• Ignatius Piazza - on Reform America

I think now I have to call him John “I’m doing my job” Street. After reading this article, it’s pretty clear that despite his assertions, that no, he is not. Can you imagine what would happen to me if I decided to leave the office for a day to stand in line for an iPhone?

UPDATE: Well, at least John Street had the decency to pull up a chair and wait in line with everyone else.  Mayors of some other towns didn’t even have the decency to do that.

I have to admit, my muse has gone on vacation too.  But I haven’t so run out of things to say that I’m resorting to posting what the trolls say on the blog.  When you get people posting crazy stuff, just ignore it.  That’s what most of us do.  I mean, I’ll gladly approve someone who disagrees with me, even if it sounds a bit nuts, but if you’re completely off the reservation, to the point where I don’t know what you’re saying or why you’re babbling, the “Spam” button works pretty well for that.

In defense of the Brady Campaign, I think that was probably an actual comment, though I see some people are skeptical of this.  You’re probably seeing what they don’t approve.   But still, we all get crazy stuff as comments from time to time.  This is like having show and tell at an elementary school, and the Brady’s are the kid that brings a pencil.  We’ve seen it before, and we all have one.

She doesn’t think I should have bent over backwards over the Pat Brown thing.

Wyatt Earp over at Support Your Local Gunfighter is a Philadelphia police officer, and marks an unfortunate milestone for the city: the 200th murder of the year.   Read the whole thing.   He doesn’t have good things to say about Commissioner Johnson’s last act of “leadership”:

Look, when you take someone who has been behind a desk for half their career and put them in patrol for the summer, who is that helping? No one. They don’t want to be there, so they’re not going to be stopping cars and rushing to priority jobs. But, when the media asks, the brass can say, “We’ve increased the amount of officers on the streets!” It’s a shell game.

Yup.  I talked about that a few months ago here.  Until the city politicians actually face the problem, instead of deflecting blame to Harrisburg or elsewhere, this is going to continue.  The city’s politicians lack the political courage to do anything.  The only thing that will work is taking the criminals off the streets and keeping them off the streets.  It’s my understanding that the courts, jails and prisons in the city have become a revolving door.

I think it’s a tough thing to for the politicians to face, because to go into a bad neighborhood and say “We’re getting the criminals off the streets, and we need your help” means telling folks that you’re going to lock up someone’s brother, child, nephew, husband or other loved one.  It means people will have to take responsibility.  It’s far easier for the politicians to deflect blame, whether it to be to Harrisburg, guns, drugs, what have you, so no one has to take responsibility.   There may be things Harrisburg can do to help, but the problem won’t abate until someone stands up and admits what the problem is.   I may have my disagreements with Michael Nutter, but he’ll be an improvement over the circus clowns that currently run city hall.  Hopefully he’ll impress me.

Buying a new surplus SKS is not for those who don’t know how to completely strip down a rifle and reassemble it. I don’t mean field strip either, I mean strip down every part, clean, and reassemble. I picked it up from the UPS depot on Tuesday, and got to work immediately. I learned that Bitter frowns on the practice of using a tin foil tray in the toaster oven to melt off the excess cosmoline from the smaller parts. After a mishap, I ended up with a new toaster oven. It was a tough battle, but I think I’m happy with the result:

It’s now ready to take to the range. I can’t wait to shoot it. It had quite a lot of cosmoline on it that had to be removed. Turns out Gunzilla doesn’t work as well as Hoppes No. 9 on cosmoline. It works decently, but just not quite as well. That’s probably because Hoppes is mostly kerosene, which is going to solvate a heavy grease better than most other things.

What has me stoked is that it’s in really good shape. No rust, very little wear on the finish. Shiny barrel without any evidence of pitting. Good stock, which looks like it’s seen some use, but in decent shape. The kit that came with it has someone’s name written inside, which I thought was a nice added touch.

Joe takes some local reporters to the range. I’m curious to see what they write. It’s good that they sought out someone with first hand experience and knowledge, rather than talk to the first “expert” willing to offer a quote. I notice Omie is left handed, and rather cute. Of course, any chick behind an AR-15 automatically gets a +5 in the looks department!

That looks like the same fiberglass Israeli mag that was my favorite for a while.

We screwed up. It seems that not only is Pat Brown not anti-gun, but she’s actually pretty pro-gun. In the interest of not eating our own, I’m hoping everyone gets the word out that we misunderstood what she was saying.

It’s difficult, when you don’t know someone from jack, and hear a statement on the air that can be taken a certain way, to decide how to take it. Given CNN’s reputation on our issue, it’s easy to misunderstand something, or take it the wrong way, as I did with this statement. The great thing about the blogosphere, is it offers a forum where people can defend themselves when they feel they are being unfairly maligned, as Ms. Brown has chosen to do in this case. Unlike a newspaper, we don’t put the correction on page E9.

So I admit that I was in error as to her orientation towards our issue. I’m hoping everyone that linked to the CNN video will update the post with a link to her comment.

SayUncle used to be in a band. Well, if he ever decided to get back into it, this would be the perfect guitar:

Don’t know if they make a bass version of that. But you gotta like it.

From the comments:

Wasn’t it just a few months ago when I got wailed on by the left during the Virginia Tech massacre for suggesting kids should carry guns to school to protect themselves? Sometime during the many interviews I did that week I said something to the effect that if we allowed concealed carry on campuses maybe someone would have taken Cho out. I am a big fan of concealed carry because I know criminals carry concealed weapons all the time and I would like to even the field with some honest citizens carrying a few themselves so criminals don’t think no one will shoot back. I think of how many lives would be saved if only someone in the school or company could defend against mass murderers instead of allowing these killers from mowing down a bunch of sitting ducks who are desperately try to hide behind furniture to save their lives.

Now, after doing interviews on the Jesse Davis murder, those from the right are taking one statement out of context and going nuts about it. It seems they think that I believe any man who owns a gun is a danger to women. If I thought that, I guess I would be talking about my own father and my own son. They have guns for personal protection. For that matter, my daughter has guns for personal protection and I also own firearms for personal protection. I am all for gun ownership for personal protection. Clearly, I was not saying a man with a gun is a psychopath.

Nor was I saying a man who might have a collection of guns is a psychopath. I know many of these men as well. They are hunters or lovers of antiques or do a lot of target shooting. What I was talking about during the Paula Zahn Show was the combination of psychopathic behavior and an obsession with weaponry as psychopath love weapons as it gives them a feeling of power and control. Psychopaths do indeed have a fascination with guns and knives and just because the rest of us might happen to own weapons or even have a number of them as a hobby doesn’t eliminate the fact that psychopaths may also be shopping at the gun store with us.

Women must learn to differentiate between psychological healthy men and unpsychologically healthy men if they want to keep from getting into a dangerous life threatening situation. No one trait will be proof that an individual is a psychopath but add a bunch of traits together and this is a warning. A kind, honorable, honest man with a gun collection is not a psychopath or a danger to anyone but a lying, manipulative, arrogant creep who has a cache of twenty weapons is someone a woman wants to get the hell away from. A man who teaches history at the local junior high school and happens to have a collection of Asian swords is not someone a woman should be frightened of but a man who obsessively watches ninja flicks, brags about how he used to be in the CIA, can’t keep a job, calls women sluts and whores, and owns a huge collection of swords and daggers, now there is a guy a woman wants should avoid like the plague.

Anyone who watched the actual Paula Zahn Show and paid attention to the whole conversation and intent would clearly know I was not labeling gun owners psychopaths. Unfortunately, when words are taken out of context and printed on the Internet, often the meaning of those words get misunderstood. I apologize to any gun owners (who aren’t psychopaths) who thought they were the target of my statements. I respect your constitutional rights to own firearms and would never want to see those taken away. I, like you, want to be sure I can protect myself and my family. I wouldn’t want it any other way.

Criminal Profiler Pat Brown

I’m glad she responded.   For the record, I don’t think I took her statement out of context.   The context was pretty much in tact in the video.  I think she misspoke.  In other words, said something that sounded different than what she really meant.   That’s fine.   I can’t imagine I wouldn’t say something the wrong way on camera if I was in the media spotlight a lot.   Now that she’s clarified, I don’t think her sentiment is unreasonable or that she meant to malign gun owners.

It’s getting tiring posting about this, but it’s important, so I’ll keep doing it.  Via SayUncle, I found a pretty good article opposing HR2640:

No one knows how many of the 21 million records Congress seeks will truly identify Americans who lack the legal right to have a firearm. The effect on guns already owned by people in the 21 million records seems clear — they would be subject to confiscation. At least, a transfer of ownership seems a likely requirement if the law is enacted and those people’s names are poured into the list. There are no plans to notify these people.

Well, you see, the problem is these 21 million or so people are likely already prohibited persons, and thus aren’t able to legally own firearms even currently.   I agree that there are likely to be mistakes, but we have that now with the system the way it is, and there’s little recourse for getting your name out.  There’s also a lot of veterans who get screwed in 2000 who will get unscrewed by HR2640.

It’s also important to note that the reason the bill is moving so fast is so that amendments can’t be tacked on during debate.  We want this to move fast.

It seems to me that this article, though well written and well argued, is really arguing against the Brady Act altogether.  I think that’s a reasonable argument to make, because background checks can be infringing if the records are not accurate.  I wish we could have gotten more out of Congress in this regard.   But we did get something, and something is pretty good for a law that doesn’t really add any new legal restrictions on who may or may not own guns.

Over at Jeff’s, the Black Caucus in the General Assembly is holding up the budget over gun control.

Philadelphia is now the sixth largest city.   Congratulations Phoenix!  I heard on the radio this morning it was because Phoenix cheated, by annexing land.  I also think it might have something to do with the city not being a sewer, but I could be wrong.

You all remember the case up in New Hampshire of the Marine who shot dead a perpetrator that had previously shot a police officer and run him over. My friend Jason dug up the video (he also dug up that Pat Brown video from the other day, but I forgot to credit him). The video serves as a reminder to us that pepper spray is not always effective. This perp takes a blast in a confined space of a car and still manages to come out shooting, hitting the officer 4 times in the torso, and then run him over:

For those that can’t see the YouTube, here is a link to QuickTime video. Officer McCay was foolish to turn his back on the perpetrator. At best, pepper spray is useful for getting out of fist fight situations, but I wouldn’t rely on it to overcome deadly force. It has a place, but I’ve always thought of it as a double edged sword, both tactically and legally. Aside from the tactical issue of blowback at you, and different people’s ability to fight through it, I’d hate to be in a situation where a prosecutor asks “You had pepper spray. Why didn’t you just use that?”

Christina the Stripper, who has guest blogged here in the past, has a new blog called Hustle and Cash Flow. I am told it will mostly be about money. I will add her to the blog roll since she’s was kind enough to guest blog for me. But in what category?

Cam Edwards has some good thoughts on the potential revival of The Fairness Doctrine:

The bottom line is this:  those who want to regulate speech live in a very bad time to do so.  Gone are the days when you needed a printing press or a broadcasting license to share your opinions with the world.  The genie’s out of the bottle, and it’s not going back in.

Yup!  Read the whole thing.

Clayton Cramer is talking about the “poisoned well” that the gun control movement has created that’s causing a lot of gun owners to see HR2640 as a gun control bill, when it’s really no such thing. He’s absolutely right that the gun control movement has created an environment where there’s substantial mistrust even on bills that ought not to be controversial. Trying to screw us every chance they get tends to do that. My main concern for the bill isn’t that it’s gun control, but that it can be spun as such by those who push for it, and build their political capital for future battles. On the flip side, they also couldn’t get anything done without having to offer significant concessions to NRA concerns.

I’m thinking about changing my blog host setup.   Currently, I host the front end of the blog on my Linux workstation, and host the back end on my MythTV DVR system.   Since I’ve gotten the MacBook Pro, I’m finding I never use the Linux workstation anymore, so all it’s doing is consuming power hosting a blog front end.   I could get a single server to act both as my DVR and blog host, and anything else I might want it to do.  If I’m going to consolidate both machines, I’ll probably get a new case, and a few larger hard disks so I can make a RAID5 array, to guard against data loss in the event of drive failure.  I might as well make it a dual core box as well.  I’ve not noticed either machine having a hard time with blog traffic.  The only time I noticed it was in the middle of an Instalaunch.

The real question is whether I want to shell out 500 or so bucks when it’ll take a while to recover that in energy savings.

Sailorcurt has the e-postal results up.  Looks like I managed to beat Ahab.  I forgot about tie breaking rules!   I am quite happy with my placement.   This is the kind of shooting I practice most often, so when we return to precision shooting, I’ll probably fall back down in the ranking again.

The cool thing about these e-postal matches is that they cover such a wide array of shooting disciplines.  You might suck up the page on one match, and dominate the field on another.   Try the next one out.  It doesn’t matter how good or bad you are, because you’ll get better.  I’m finding it’s getting me to the range a lot more, which is improving my shooting quite a bit over what it was four months ago.

Hopefully the next one will allow me to go back to .22LR, because I blew through a few hundred rounds of 9mm (not cheap these days) practicing up on double taps before heading to the range this Monday to shoot the submitted targets.

Ahab has an update on yesterday’s thread.   Which is good, because of the decosomilining last night, I have nothing this morning.

Got the new SKS today.  For the rest of the evening, I will be battling the cosmoline.  Pictures forthcoming when I’ve won.  This will be a good test of Gunzilla.

Jesse Jackson has a well deserved reputation as an attention whore.  Do we really need to go adding more federal crimes to the books because of that fact?

After denouncing the demagoguery of Rev. Jesse Jackson in his continued protests at a suburban Chicago-area gun shop, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms today announced that it has drafted federal legislation that would prevent such protests from interfering with legal businesses.

“This is not an attack on the First Amendment rights of Jesse Jackson or anyone else,” said CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb. “But it would put an end to the kind of publicity-seeking shenanigans that Jackson and his cohort, anti-gun Catholic priest Michael Pfleger, have been conducting at Chuck’s Gun Shop in suburban Riverdale for the past three weeks. We’re working on Capitol Hill right now to gather sponsors.

Jesse Jackson and Snuffy Pfleger were already arrested under state law for trespassing.   Why exactly do we need to make a federal issue out of this?

Dr. Helen has a new advice column. Hopefully, I will not be in need of relationship advice from her anytime soon. But I am interested in hearing whether Uncle is crazy.

If this guy thinks that Ahab’s blog is scary, the contents of my safe would absolutely make him crap his pants.  Why is it that no one ever asks someone into classic cars “What’s your fascination with engines?  Why do you need an engine that will do 110MPH?”  Or someone into coin collecting “What’s your fascination with coins?  Clearly you’re just a greedy bastard.”   No one ever asks a golfer what his fascination is with constantly acquiring new and better golf clubs, or finding new and challenging courses.

But all kinds of false assumptions are made about people who enjoy the shooting sports and collectors.  Ahab has it exactly right: they are just machines folks, relax, and don’t worry yourself about it.  A street urchin with a broken beer bottle should be more worrisome than a guy at the range firing a machine gun.