Meanwhile, in Nebraska...

State Senator Ernie Chambers has apparently revealed himself to be a stark raving loon:

Included in the amendment [to the concealed carry bill] is a requirement for licensed citizens to "carry concealed the maximum number of pistols for personal protection due to paranoia and stark terror of the licensee toward the licensee's family, friends, neighbors, strangers, and possible enemy invaders."

Mr. Chambers has obviously lost his grip on reality, and should retire to bedlam.

Gun Owners of America has some reasons to support Tom DeLay

GOA Alert-- May 03, 2005:

Then, there are activities the liberal media concede are legal and legitimate -- but seek to demonize nevertheless.

For instance, a legal DeLay trip financed by a conservative non-profit organization was challenged because the non-profit, in turn, received contributions from groups which could not fund the trip directly. Even the Washington Post concedes that DeLay had no knowledge of the group's funding, had no obligation to find out, and therefore acted legally.

Funny. Bill Clinton committed perjury -- and the liberal media rallied behind them. So the members of the Washington press corps are obviously no sticklers for ethics.

The bottom line? This fight is about an effective, pro-gun congressman who is being persecuted because of his beliefs.

My solution: introduce caning. It works in Singapore.

I would never make it as a professional scumbag politician. I have no tolerance or patience for bullying behavior of any sort. I was frequently the target of bullies as a kid, often getting beaten up by punks who were a foot or more taller than me and who outweighed me by at least 50 pounds. Representative Ruben Hope (Conroe) has introduced a bill that would require transfer of a victim of bullying to a different school or class. I am so tempted to use intense language here that I can barely type. This is complete bovine feces. GET RID OF THE DAMN BULLY, YOU IDIOT!!! Show some spine and beat the punk senseless with a big wooden dowel, but don't teach the victim to be a cultural victim by running him away from the situation. The bully is only going to find a new target anyway. The bully must be stopped, dead in his tracks. I don't care if you're talking about elementary kids--the bully is not just another little kid to the victim, he is a nightmare come to life.

Bullies were completely ignored, where I went to school as a kid. My solution was eventually to go stark raving mad when I got picked on, and hit back as hard as I could with whatever I could get my hands on. This meant a rock, a jagged piece of metal, a baseball bat, or a big metal pipe that was part of a baseball backstop before I ripped it free. I was extremely fortunate that I never seriously hurt anyone. (Well, one guy did bleed, but he didn't say anything to anyone about it).

I hope I don't sound like a raving lunatic with this post, but it really makes me angry. Bullies should be punished, immediately and decisively, and be allowed absolutely no tolerance.

Senator Judith "Legs" Zaffirini has another proposal that wold require bullies to attend a sensitivity course. This also makes no sense. This kind of training only works on people who have a "mature" enough mental process to understand the consequences of their transgressal. Bullies in school don't have this. They will sit in the back, roll their eyes, and make crude jokes under their breath. It works on adults because they can get fired and lose their income (or possibly even go to jail) if they break the rules. What's going to happen to a bully? Worst case: expulsion. What kind of punishment is that? The bully doesn't want to be in school anyway. He'd much rather be cut loose on the town all day so he's free to vandalize and rob untended homes while their owners are out at work for the day. How do I know? Well, I saw it happen, and I saw it happen a lot. So take your sensitivity training and shove it. I'll take a good caning any day.

tnx to Pinkdome for this rise in blood pressure

In the mail yesterday...

Was this book:



Everything is on the Bookshelfonomicon is on hold until this one gets finished. But...err...I didn't buy it from Amazon. I ordered it from Military Book Club.

Random Observations, no comments

In 2001, State Senator Ira Silverstein (D-Chicago) pushed a bill that would ban firearms disguised as cell phones.

From about.com (emphasis mine):

Security experts say the cell phone guns, as well as other "improvised explosive devices," can be detected by screening equipment now in use at airports internationally. Though they have been the subject of security alerts in the U.S. as recently as December 2003, none have yet been sighted in North America.

From snopes (emphasis mine):

Do "cell phone guns" represent an alarming turn in concealed weaponry technology? Probably not, as a customs spokesman maintained "there's no indication that these are being mass-produced," and a spokesman for the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms noted: Though the novelty of cell-phone guns is interesting, ATF spokesman John D'Angelo says the idea of concealing firearms in common devices is not new. "Disguised weapons have been around forever. We've seen guns in the form of canes, pens, beepers. As technology progresses and becomes more prevalent, disguised weapons will change to mirror that."

From the North American Arms FAQ (emphasis mine):

Why has the wallet holster been discontinued?

The wallet, in and of itself, is a benign piece of folded leather. The minirevolver is a time-tested, high-quality small firearm but, when you join one with the other, watch out! you've just created what ATF defines as 'any other weapon', a rather nefarious classification which includes pen guns, cane guns and other disguised weaponry. While legal to own, AOWs require registration and payment of special taxes similar to those for fully-automatic weapons. Possession of an AOW without meeting these requirements subjects the holder to a felony charge (which further exposes us to the liability of a lawsuit).

No comments, just random observations.

It might help convict Barney Fife...

...but in the real world it's just ludicrous. Sierra Times has some comments on California's idea for bullet serialization:

Gun Owners of California understands that SB 357 is truly motivated by a subversive desire to see all guns removed from the citizens of California. What other reason could there be when the stated goals cannot be matched up to conclusive studies and actual realities prove the goals unrealistic. It has been long known, for it is not hidden, that gun control proponents seek any, every and all avenues of stifling legitimate firearm ownership in this state.

Woo hoo!

Today's check at the DPS website shows my CHL renewal as "license issued, certificate active." That means I should be getting the hard card in the mail any day now.

More on the Minuteman Project

Media Lies provides us with a link to a Christian Science Monitor article that seems more or less "balanced," but it neglects to mention what the ACLU freakazoids were up to while this was going on.

He [Salvador Zamora, Border Patrol Spokeman] says the vigil generated 1,100 phone calls to the Border Patrol and 2,000 apprehensions. Those statistics appear to differ from the minuteman's own statistics which claim that 335 apprehensions were directly facilitated by their volunteers who observed illegal crossings and called the Border Patrol. The difference can be accounted for by the number of possible calls by local residents.

Two thousand apprehensions. Wow.

Minuteman Project Wrap Up @ Lest Darkness Fall

LDF has a collection of media reports now that the Minuteman Project had ended. Somehow I have a feeling that this is going to get bigger before it's over with.

More anti self defense b.s. from Reuters

I don't blame Yahoo. They're just feeding up everything that Reuters throws into it's "odd" category. Apparently the numbnuts at Reuters think it's odd (absurd, bizarre) for it to be legal to use deadly force to defend yourself without first allowing the crook the opportunity to shoot/stab you in the back in Florida.

The fact that they're making such a big deal out of this is still more indication of their bias. Such action is already legal in many states. I'm surprised it took Florida so long to pass such legislation, seeing how they were the leader in the concealed carry movement.

This is really quite funny...

Here's a satirical article about what Ariana Huffington's upcoming celebrity mega-blog may look like. By the way, the real url for this blog is apparently www.huffingtonpost.com, and it's supposed to open May 9. It will be on my blogroll, if only for cannon fodder.

Minuteman Project Ends (for now)

Here's a Washington Post article about the close of the Minuteman Project:

Organizers said volunteers' calls to the Border Patrol resulted in the arrests of 335 illegal immigrants. Project organizers had ordered volunteers not to detain any illegal border crossers they encountered, and no major incidents were reported.

So that's 335 illegals arrested. Zero ACLU potheads arrested for illegal drug use in spite of being caught on camera. Zero ACLU extremists arrested (or even wrist-slapped) for aiding illegals and harrassing the Minutemen. I hope those guys with video cameras documented all the ACLU b.s. It would make a great documentary.

tnx to Michelle Malkin

April Readability Check

This is just something for my own curiousity. Please feel free to ignore it.

Total sentences ---------------------------------- 1,371
Total words ------------------------------------- 17,148
Average words per Sentence ----------------------- 12.51
Words with 1 Syllable --------------------------- 11,988
Words with 2 Syllables --------------------------- 3,333
Words with 3 Syllables --------------------------- 1,341
Words with 4 or more Syllables --------------------- 486
Percentage of word with three or more syllables -- 10.65%
Average Syllables per Word ------------------------ 1.44
Gunning Fog Index --------------------------------- 9.26
Flesch Reading Ease ------------------------------ 72.67
Flesch-Kincaid Grade ------------------------------ 6.23

tnx to Juicy Studio: Readability Test

Bullet energy spreadsheet

Go to energy at the North American Arms website. Here you'll find an html table of bullet energy. At the bottom is a downloadable Excel spreadsheet of same. Very handy, and you can customize the velocities and weights yourself.

Saturday Night Special #2

In the second installment of gun links, here are some links in no particular order which you may or may not find useful. These are the rest of the links in the "Manufacturers" category of my bookmarks.

North American Arms -- Makers of the famous .22 mini-revolvers. Get one, they're cool!
STURM, RUGER & CO., INC.
Kahr Arms
Kel-Tec
Beretta USA
GLOCK
Springfield Armory
Charles Daly -- Pistols, rifles, and shotguns.
Smith & Wesson
Taurus USA
Freedom Arms -- Big, fine revolvers.
Spartan Gunworks -- Break action (or breech-loading) shotguns, rifles, and combos.

"Range" Report

Today I broke out the new Daisy BB gun and a sticky target, stuck the target to a cardboard box, backed off about 20 feet, and started the lesson. My students were my two kids, a 6-year-old girl and a 4-year-old boy. The daughter is hereafter referred to as "G" and the son as "L."

Before they touched anything we started with muzzle control. After a long sermon on how and where to keep the muzzle pointed, as well as additonal little things like "don't run in front of it when someone else is holding it, either," I gave them some info on the gun itself. No, I don't expect them to learn everything all at once, and though this was only a BB gun, it was never handled by either of them without my strict and immediate supervision, usually involving me helping them physically hold the gun. We went over how the safety works, how not to touch the trigger until you were really going to shoot, how to load, and how to safely make sure it was no longer cocked when it came time to put it away.

This is the Daisy Buck, the smallest BB rifle they make, which weighs 1.6 pounds unloaded and shoots a BB at about 275 fps. Still, they are small kids and haven't developed rifle-holding muscles, so they needed help handling it. An outdoor canvas chair provided a convenient barrel rest.

"G" did most of the shooting. She had a bad habit of trying to grab the gun by the trigger, which I came down on pretty hard, and by the end she was conciously lying her finger along the lever beneath the trigger until she had lined up the sights on the box. Just teaching her to find both sights and get them lined up somewhere in the vicinity of the black circle took quite a while, but she was beginning to get the hang of it. Out of the ten or so shots she took, she got 6 or 7 to hit the box (about 2 feet square). I felt that was a pretty good start for a 6-year-old who had never done any such thing before in her life. By the end of the session she was even beginning to get the hang of the safety, but the trigger pull was still a little stiff for her little hand.

With "L" I didn't attempt too much, focusing mainly on just letting him get the feel of how to properly hold a rifle. My final summation: it was a great start, but there's a long way to go, which is good. Shooting with my kids is great fun. I expect it will be even more fun when they get old enough to handle firearms.

After our session with the rifle, I broke out my Crosman 1008 pellet pistol and fired off 40 or 50 shots. It's a fun gun, but has a lousy trigger. I did a lock of cocking so that I could fire single-action, which more closely simulates the trigger pull of my XD40. When it came time to put everything away, I made sure the pistol was unloaded and then put it down on the tailgate of the pickup. While we were cleaning up, neither of them tried to pick it up. I brought them both together and asked what they should do if they found a gun just lying around somewhere like that. "G" immediately answered, "Don't pick it up, and get an adult." I don't remember having given this speech before, so I told her that was exactly right, and asked who had taught her that. "I don't know," she answered, "it was just in my brain." Hm. Maybe I did something right, sometime, and don't remember doing it.

The Buck is the same model that my sister had when we were kids. It has changed somewhat since then (25 years ago?). It now has a fiber-optic front sight that is very easy to see. It also has a cross-bolt safety that blocks the trigger. That's a nice touch for such a cheap gun, but then, it's a Daisy. It has a fixed rear sight but it still shoots quite accurately for what it is.

I have previously let the kids "help" me when cleaning my firearms after a range session, and with me, that usually involves cleaning up a minimum of three guns. They also helped me go through about 150 .40 S&W rounds to check for bad reloads (some reloads I got at a gun show a while back, one of which severely jammed the XD). I have done this with them to try and get them over the "fascination" attitude that many kids have who have not handled guns much.

Both kids want to do it again tomorrow.

Not extinct!

In case you haven't heard already, the ivory billed woodpecker has been confirmed as not extinct and living in Arkansas:

'For those of us who tenaciously cling to the idea that man can live alongside fellow species, this is the most incredible ray of hope.'

New Must-Add to Blogroll: Shakey Pete's Shootin' Shack

Check out the good stuff at Shakey Pete's Shootin' Shack. I especially like Child Proof Guns Or Gun Proof Children?:

Once a child is about five or so, it's time to start the gunproofing. Step one is simple enough, shoot a melon, something about head size like a cantalope or honeydew (I especially like the honeydew as it gives the the feeling that I'm shootin' those damn lists) with a gun and load big enough to blow it up. Test this first! Make sure that this load is impressive, if it's not, try another load. If you have to beg a shooting buddy for the loan of a bigbore or high velocity gun, do so. And, fa Heaven's sake, practice enough that you hit on the first shot, we're trying to impress the little bas, um, angels. Do NOT bother with hearing protection for them and don't let 'em stick their fingers in their ears. Keep them about ten feet or so behind, the noise of one shot won't cause any real damage. It will be unpleasent. Good. Just remember ten feet or so behind and a little to the side so they can see the impact. This, BTW is the only time we ever shoot around the kids without suitable hearing protection. Ever.

Assault weapon B.S.

Check out this excellent disembowelment of the New York Times assault weapons article over at The Smallest Minority.

In other words, the VPC supported the "Assault Weapons Ban" that wasn't a ban because it was: A) perceived as a great way to frighten people into supporting legislation by lying to them about what that legislation actually did; B) It looked like a great "wedge issue" to separate the NRA from the police on the beat who generally support the right to arms even though their politically connected Chiefs don't; and C) As Charles Krauthammer noted, it was a great symbolic "first step" towards eventual confiscation and widening of gun bans. (Oh, and note the "plastic" firearm bit - be afraid of a gun that doesn't exist!)

Thanks for clearing that up. I kept wondering what the heck they were talking about. Maybe they should be more worried about those double-barreled wooden guns.

tnx to Heads Bunker

Friday Night Ramble

After doing meter routes all week, we got an easy day today and only delivered overdue bill notices. After meter reading, delivering notices is like having a paid day off. Oddly, the closest dog scare this week happened today, from a dog that violently busted through a gate and came at me--or so it seemed at first. I thought my goose was cooked for about 1/2 second, until I realized that the dog was frantically doing a Scooby-Doo stop, butt dragging and all four feet desperately pushing backward. He got himself stopped and hit the gate again, this time going back in, then took up a position about six feet inside the fence and resumed barking. Apparently his gate-busting was an accident due to him slipping on some smooth concrete. It really cracked me up.

We had several people make jokes this week about spraying chihuahuas. Thanks to the CPS shenanigans this week, we have begun referring to the pepper spray as "chihuahua sauce."

While doing some news searches tonight on meter readers, I came across one "tips" list that suggested carrying doggie treats to reinforce friendliness in dogs that are prone to it (some just aren't). I might actually try that. Except that I expect there are enough paranoid freaks out there who will accuse me of trying to poison their dog if they see me do it.

Something I have been considering for some time is to start the kids on gun handling and safety. I got inspired by last night's American Shooter, so today I went and bought a small Daisy rifle and some neat silhouette targets rated for BB guns, and I plan on starting the project tomorrow. (More posts on that as it develops). I also picked up a carton of CO2 cartrdiges for my pellet pistol. While at Walmart, I saw that they also have a Walther PPK look-alike pellet pistol that has a functioning slide to simulate recoil. That looked pretty cool to me, and I might have to shell out the money for it sometime soon. I expect that the slide uses up a lot of extra air--if anyone has experience with a gun like this, give me some comments.

I had a Daisy when I was a kid, not a real Red Ryder, but something similar. My favorite targets were empty shotgun shells. I had a big shoebox full of 16-gauge shells (from my dad's gun), plus a few 12-gauge and .410 from my uncle and cousin (and later, some 20-gauge shells from my own gun). I spent uncountable hours as a kid setting these up and shooting them down, eventually even building small sand walls to provide them with "cover" and make them even smaller and harder to hit targets. I had a good collection of empty shells because, before I was big enough to hunt myself, I basically served as bird retriever and shell collector for my dad.

I have already exposed my son to firearms in a limited sense, letting him collect empties during target sessions with my various semi-autos. He has his own set of earmuffs, and loves wearing them. Lately he has been asking me, "When are we gonna shoot your big guns?" It might be time to break out the .50 Hawken and let him get a whiff of good ol' black powder.

Oh yeah. The picture in my profile has been changed to a photo of the mummified face of Ramesses II, a pharaoh who died in 1213 B.C.