All Crossed Up

This is the story of five shooters who shot stage 5 ("All Crossed Up") at the June, 2009 Points Match at Dundee Oregon.

The stage itself was another sperm donation from Evil Bill.

Who else could include Classic "Amoeba Targets", Pepper Poppers, U.S. Poppers, small plates that "Pop Up" a shoot target, nearly as many penalty targets as shoot targets, arrays which could only be seen, let alone engaged, from the very furthest (real word, I looked it up) corner of the legal shooting box, fault lines and vision barriers and barrels, oh my!

All of that effort for Evil Bill to construct his demonic playground.

It's enough to say that the stage, while not exactly a 'memory stage', was enough to make strong men weep, women to batter their men, horses bolt in terror, and small children to have nightmares which will doubtless be passed via genetically damaged DNA unto the seventh generation.

In a word: I liked it.

Starting with an unloaded pistol lying flat ("no props!") on the table, fingers interlaced on top of your beanie, grab the gun and run ... loading the first mag as you go. Some of us managed this more gracefully than others, but when you got to the corner of the railroad-track shooting box, you were permitted to shoot a small plate and two Amoeba targets at the far, downrange opposite corner of the range. This distance was, by actual measurement, approximately 1.5 kilometers away. Or, far enough that the blurry fat front sight on my STI Edge covered the plate entirely. Note to self: if you can't see the plate, you can't hit it. The bullet is still rising, so aim LOW for goodness sake!

After a flurry of shooting and making up misses, screaming like a banshee "I Am So F***ED" (actual fact, you'll see it but you won't hear it in the video), and dodging no-shoots as if you were stepping carefully over an open sewer, you arrive at the other side of the bay to discover that you had another teensy tiny plate to knock down before you are allowed to engage the final Amoeba Target.

The Texas Star was hard, but I mean this Mother of Demons was HARD!

But maybe it was just me. I did actually see my front sight a couple of times. I ignored it, it ignored me. I and my Front Sight have a dysfunctional relationship, and it showed.

Getting back to the Five Shooters, this is who and what you will see in the video:

• The Hobo Brasser, with his new 'shorty' open gun which shoots as flat as a carpenter's level. I never liked that man.
• The Geek, shooting the Iron-Sight EDGE in 10mm, experiencing the first ever SQUIB and dropping 5 penalties for one FTE and 4 mikes when it was shown that there were lights on but Nobody Home.
• Dave, doing his best to Make The Geek Look Good with his jam-o-matic singlestack. You may miss the caption in the video, but he ended up with one ... ONE! ... bullet left when he finished this, the last stage in the match for the squad.
• Adam, also shooting Open, with the gun that wouldn't quit and acting like it was just another (Ho Hum) 28 round stage. Again, you'll have to watch the video closer than I did (another guy I never liked ... no problems, what's the fun in that?) but I'm not sure that he even bothered to reload. Okay, he probably did. Once.
• Ken, the new shooter who safely completed his first ever USPSA match. The guy is cold steel, man. Even though he temporarily lost count of his targets, he managed to turn and kill the last diagonal plate-and-popup with the grace of a Princess and the finesse of a bull-dozer. He liked it. He's good. He's hooked. Two Thumbs Up for a newly minted IPSC fanatic.

Enough talk. Let's play. The 5 minute video (link) has some slow spots, but it's got a good beat and I can dance to it. (damned lie!) I'll give it an 85, Dick. (Doors, "Roadhouse Blues", seemed appropriate. Choreography counts more than spelling or good penmanship.)
[Don't bother watching it. YouTube has completely deleted the audio track, including the stage sounds. Instead, scroll down and watch the video embedded by Blogspot. I only left it in here because somebody might want to see a large-format version of the video -- with crappy music dubbed in.]

UPDATE:
YouTube has been emasculated. It won't allow inclusion of an audio track which has not been 'pre-approved'. Most of these tracks (including those labeled "rock") are Elevator Music. Ptfffff! on them.

Okay, I'll include the video with the least-wimpy audio track I could find, something named ... hell, I don't know. Who cares?

Now that you've seen it in big format with wuss music, I'll embed the original (small format ... sorry) version with The Doors doing "Roadhouse Blues".






[This takes forever to upload ... I sincerely hope it downloads faster.]

Anybody actually shown in this video, email me and I'll send you the original (16MB, 5'20")l version, with music to match the action.

What a bunch of maroons. YouTube, you have lost your kewl and I am outta your teensy weensy world for future serious action videos.

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Can You Count?

Despite my best intentions to edit and post all 19 of the videos I filmed at last weekend's match at Dundee, I have only been able to compile two of them in one video.

"Can You Count?" (CM 06-03 USPSA Classifier) is a 20-round stage which challenges the participant to draw, shoot and reload quickly. It also requires that the shooter can break the habit of shooting each target only two times -- sometimes, this is the more difficult challenge, because you know we get into a rut.

It's not very exciting to watch this stage, until someone screws it up. That's the signal for your friends to tease you mercilessly ... if they have already shot the stage successfully.

But when you don't perform to your own expectations, and it's because your gun isn't running right, jocularity is not the most welcome response from the Peanut Gallery. (youtube link here)


One thing about this classifier: the stage procedures are flawed.

It's not fatally flawed, it just doesn't make it clear about the penalties for failing to follow the written procedure.

Here's the situation we encountered (not involving the two gentlemen shown in the video).
The course procedures read:

On signal, from Box A only:
String 1: Engage T1 with five rounds only. Perform a
mandatory reload and engage T2 with five rounds
only.
String 2: Engage T3 with five rounds only. Perform a
mandatory reload and engage T4 with five rounds
only.
Targets within a string may be engaged in any
order without penalty

One of the squad members got a couple of shots into T2 before he remembered that he was suppose to reload. So he reloaded, and completed the rest of the stage without error.

I was keeping score, and the Range Officer asked me what the penalty should be.

"One procedural, for not reloading when he was suppose to" I replied.

Some of the folks in the squad took issue with that call. I reminded them that there was no advantage gained, so only one procedural penalty ... for not strictly abiding by the written stage procedure ... was justifiable.

In return, they quoted the sub-text in the stage procedures:

Failure to perform reload is per-shotfired [sic]
penalty.

"Yes", I agreed, "... there is a significant advantage gained if NO reload occurs, especially in a stage with a total elapsed time of something like 10 seconds. But the shooter DID reload. He just didn't reload when he should have. He should only be penalized for not strictly following the stage procedure. The per-shot penalty is invoked ONLY if he didn't reload -- which he did."

However, I suggested that they (the dissenting squad members) take the question to the Match Director. In the absence of a Range Master, in a club match the M.D. gets to make these difficult decisions.

They returned from their discussion with the M.D. with the word that it was officially ruled that "per-shot" penalties would be applied.

I didn't agree, and I counseled the 'offending' competitor that he had the right to request arbitration. I said that I would speak on his behalf. He didn't think it was that big a deal, and quietly accepted the additional penalty points.

I don't know if this issue has been addressed by John Amidon, or if a 'ruling' has been published in this kind of situation.

But it kind of ticks me off, you know? I have the strong suspicion that clubs interpret the rules differently.

Not that it makes a big difference; in this kind of quick-and-dirty stage, if you get even one penalty point it pretty much takes you out of the running for a good stage score.

Still, it was a relatively new shooter, and I don't like it when the "Wheels of Justice" grind so exceedingly fine.

Have any of you bumped up against this stage, this vaguely worded procedure?

I would be interested in any comments which discuss the subject. Obviously, I think I'm right. It doesn't make any difference at all to the match, at this late date. But I am ... dissappointed ... at what I perceive to be an injustice.

This is what I do to relax. The competition shooting, I mean. I don't like to argue about the rules, so it makes me turn surly when the rules seem unfairly applied.

Okay, so I do enjoy a lively debate.

Anybody out there think that the "Per-Shot Penalty" should have been applied here?

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SWMBO Update

Ten days ago I mentioned that SWMBO is looking into a revolutionary new Cancer Treatment program from Massachusetts General Hospital which uses genotyping to "personalize" treatment to each patient.

Tonite she called me to say that her local Oncologist had contacted the program administrators and asked about the possibility that she could enter the program.

Their response (within 24 hours) was that the program was not available to the Pacific Northwest (I understand that to mean that the treatment was not being offered to doctors in that region of the U.S.), but if she was willing to travel to Boston they would test her to see whether she would be eligible for the program.

They also said that if she was accepted, she would have to remain available in the Boston vacinity for two or three months, and wondered if she was willing to accept that condition as well.

SWMBO said "YES!" to every question. Her Oncologist will be forwarding that information to Boston tomorrow, and now we are settling down to wait for further developments.

Although her cancer is atypical in that it has not responded to the usual treatments --
we don't know if they will accept her for testing;
we don't know if the tests will show that she is a viable candidate for the treatment;
we don't know if the treatment will prove to be successful in moving her from the category of "cancer patient" to "cancer survivor" .....

we are both wildly excited about the possibility that she can still beat this.

Please keep those prayers coming, friends. It's cause for hope.

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Glock KaBOOM!

I don't want to give the impression that Glock pistols are intrinsically unsafe, or that the reason why they occasionally blow up [KaBOOM!] has anything to do with the design.

Still, I so wish to provide you with as much information when they Glocks DO blow up.

Here's an example of what the Glock Barrel looks like when it blows up.
(Actually, I expect to show several aspects of a "Blown-Up Glock".)


Here is one example of a Glock Barrel after a "Ka-BOOM!" moment.

The accompanying photos don't shot the entire mechanical disintegration, but they are very clear about the consequences.

The owner of the Glock (Fish) was careful to stipulate that three gunsmiths, including a Glock Armorer. found no evidence of a Squib.

Similarly, they found no evidence that the round was "Double-Charged".

So why did the Glock blow up?

Damned if I know.

Fish notes that not only was the barrell effectively distroyed, but so was the trigger group. (He sent this off to a Name Brand Glock gunsmith, and two other Gunsmiths, and the consensus was that the Trigger Group could not be repaired.)

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Perhaps we have become too good at doing nothing?

Interesting video presented by Xavier this weekend.

"Thomas Paine" presumes to lecture us on our failure to protest recent Federal infringements on our Civil Rights.


The man is obnoxious, and demanding.

Still, I'm not entirely convinced that he is wrong.

What do you think?

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USPSA Area 1 Election Reminder

The following is the full text of an email from USPSA, sent to (assumedly) all USPSA members in Area 1. I further assume that this is akin to a "press release", so I feel no compunction about quoting it in full.

If you're a USPSA member residing in Area 1 (Washington, Oregon, Nevada, Utah, Idaho, Montana, Colorado, Wyoming and Alaska) take note of this announcement.

[Also, rumor has it, Bishop Practical Shooting League in California, although the Area 1 link is "Broken".]
[According to the Area 1 website, as of January 1, 2009, Colorado has transferred to Area 2]

Please think carefully about your representation on the USPSA Board of Directors, and do make the best choice you can.

USPSA Election Reminder for Area 1 Residents

Dear Area 1 Residents:

As you know Bruce Gary is stepping down as Area 1 Director effective December 31, 2009. Two candidates have submitted nominating petitions and election ballots will be mailed by August 1st. As stipulated by the USPSA bylaws (Article 6.5), those ballots must be marked and received by the accounting firm by September 15th to be counted.

The bylaws further stipulate (Article 6.3) that only current USPSA members (resident within Area 1) with an original membership date prior to May 1 of the year of the election shall be eligible to vote.

Every election cycle the office staff is contacted by members wondering why they haven't received their ballot when all their friends have received theirs. Almost without exception ballots weren't sent because on July 1st their membership was expired. They may have renewed on July 2nd, but that is too late for ballot eligibility.­

Please check to be certain that your membership is current by the end of June. Please allow ample time for your renewal to be sent. If you renew online do it at least five days before the end of the month. Sometimes the internet does strange things with digital messages and we may not receive it as instantaneously as advertised.­­

The bottom line is that it is your responsibility to insure your eligibility to vote. Our responsibility is to follow the procedure established via the bylaws. We will do our best to meet that charge.­

Thanks you for your interest in USPSA.

Regards,

Dave Thomas
USPSA Executive Director

At this time, Jerry the Geek and Cogito Ergo Geek announce support for the candidacy of Chuck Anderson, current Section Coordinator of the Columbia Cascade Section.

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Ted Nugent on the Second Amendment

He's weird.

No, I don't have any comments on this video. Although, as "Big Geek Daddy" says:

I wish ted would stop holding back and tell us how he REALLY feels.

(H/T: The Hobo Brasser)

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2009 Crazy Croc Match is ON!

The 2009 Crazy Croc match is on! It is scheduled for Sept 5 & 6, 2009, at The Dundee Practical shooters club in Dundee OR.

Info and the application can be found at www.teamcroc.com

(H/T: The Hobo Brasser)

[NB: More information later, as time permits]

Stumble It!

Message from SWMBO

I recently received this (uncredited) email from SWMBO. I don't think she wrote it, but I don't doubt that it almost perfectly matches her life philosophy.

For those of you who see me at matches and ask "How's SWMBO?", this is the primary answer. In the implied context, it speaks of growing old. In the larger context, it speaks of a heart which accepts life's travails.

I would never trade my amazing friends, my wonderful life, my loving family for less gray hair or a flatter belly. As I've aged, I've become kinder to myself, and less critical of myself. I've become my own friend. I don't chide myself for eating that extra cookie, or for not making my bed, or for buying that silly cement gecko that I didn't need, but looks so avante garde on my patio. I am entitled to a treat, to be messy, to be extravagant.

I have seen too many dear friends leave this world too soon; before they understood the great freedom that comes with aging.

Whose business is it if I choose to read or play on the computer until 4 AM and sleep until noon? I will dance with myself to those wonderful tunes of the 60 &70's, and if I, at the same time, wish to weep over a lost love ... I will.

I will walk the beach in a swim suit that is stretched over a bulging body, and will dive into the waves with abandon if I choose to, despite the pitying glances from the jet set.

They, too, will get old.

I know I am sometimes forgetful.

But there again, some of life is just as well forgotten. And I eventually remember the important things.

Sure, over the years my heart has been broken. How can your heart not break when you lose a loved one, or when a child suffers, or even when somebody's beloved pet gets hit by a car? But broken hearts are what give us strength and understanding and compassion. A heart never broken is pristine and sterile and will never know the joy of being imperfect.

I am so blessed to have lived long enough to have my hair turning gray, and to have my youthful laughs be forever etched into deep grooves on my face.

So many have never laughed, and so many have died before their hair could turn silver.

As you get older, it is easier to be positive. You care less about what other people think. I don't question myself anymore...

I've even earned the right to be wrong.

So, to answer your question, I like being old. It has set me free. I like the person I have become.. I am not going to live forever, but while I am still here, I will not waste time lamenting what could have been, or worrying about what will be.. And I shall eat dessert every single day(if I feel like it).

In the short term, SWMBO has once again gone to The Cabin In The Woods this weekend, this time with her sister Jo. For her, this is a place of peace. A place where she fed BBQ to friends, seeds to the birds and chipmunks, and read quietly on the sun-lit porch for hours at a time.

In the more immediate present, her last CT delivered disquieting news. The cancer, only last month residing slightly, has again begun to grow. He oncologist was scheduled to go to a symposium in Portland yesterday, where he will present her 'case' in hopes that other oncologists can suggest new regimens of treatment; as mentioned here before, the chemotherapy proved to be more powerful than her body can tolerate.

She personally remains more positive. She sent me this link to a television news article titled:

"Revolutionary New Surgery May Help Cancer Patients
The most ambitious effort yet in personalized cancer care is taking place at Massachusetts General in Boston."

This reportage is backed up by this article from the McClatchy article on "Gene-based Personal Medicine"

Her oncologist has promised to see if she can get her into this program. It will "require travel", and perhaps temporary residence for some months in Boston so that she can (if accepted) receive the full treatment with frequent evaluations of her progress.

This is the most encouraging news we have received lately, and for those of you who have been praying for SWMBO ... thank you. Your intercetion helps as much as anything the doctors can do, and contributes a positive force which helps us to keep the faith.

Stumble It!

Match Prep

I have it from a reliable source that there are significant 'needs' which must be met before attending a match:

• Have a gun
• Have equipment (belt, holsters, mag carriers, magazines)
• Have ammunition

I've been just a little bit short of the third equipment requirement during recent match-days, so at the encouragement of The Hobo Brasser (who just wants SWMBO news, and to squad with someone he can beat) I set myself down to load ammunition for next weekend's Dundee match.

I figured 200 rounds should do me. I ran short of primers at the end ... not because I can't buy any, but because I rationed myself to 200 primers and I dropped two on the floor and one into the gaping "discarded primers" well in the cast-aluminum base of my Lee Turret Press. (I wasn't about to unbolt the press from the bench just to dig out one primer. By this time next month, I may rethink my position. It will still be there.)

I had loaded the first 100, was ready to powder-charge and bullet-seat the next 50, and was saving the last 50 (*47, counting the 3 lost primers) for Part II of my reloading session.

Figuring it was time for a break, I built myself a cold-cuts, crackers & dip lunch and sat down with a cold Weinhard's Ale while I watched the last half of the Donnie Brasco DVD I had bought at the Used Books store on Friday, after work.

I had never seen the movie, but I always admired the work of both Johnny Depp and Al Pacino, and the first half (perhaps two-thirds) of the movie was riveting as I watched these actors develop their characters with skill, precision and poignancy.

Just as I was slicing into the Bavarian Ham, I found myself watching Johnny Depp (Joe/Donnie) industriously using a bone-saw the hack the left foot of a fresh-slaughtered WiseGuy Corpse.

I paused, the video, carefully wrapped up the meat and cheese and put the lid on top of the cream-chease and garlic dep. Then I went up stairs and started working on my computer. Put on Henry Mancini's "Greatest Hits" album.

Maybe later tonight I'll finish my reloading; maybe tomorrow.

Whenever it happens, it will be a bit longer before I finish watching the movie. And I won't watch it while I'm eating lunch.

I've never been a friend of gore .. or Al Gore, or Gore Vidal.

They all make me lose my appetite, and make me want to wrap my head in duct tape.

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Funny, I don't LOOK Jewish

My mom always has advice for me. Well, she's 91 and with that much life-experience she ought to know what she's talking about, right?

And my sister, Omgod, she disapproves of nearly everything about the way I live my life. And she's not afraid to tell me about it.

Both of these two ladies, bless them, consider guilt to be the most effective means to civilize the errant male. Ask my father, and my brother-in-law!

So when I saw this video, I thought about how very, very happy I am that I do NOT have GPS * in my car.

*GPS = Geographic Philippine System. And no, the driver doesn't look anything like me. (Although she does have a lot more patience than I.)

[H/T: YOUTUBE & HAPPYSLIP]

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Primers = Bottleneck

I've been writing about the crisis in reloading component availability, recently, about as much as I've written about any other subject.

The reason for this is: I may not like the politics of President O, and I may easily find fault in the Socialistic Cultural trend of The Brits, but the single most immediate problem facing Competitive Shooters today is the increasing inability to expect reloading components to be readily available.

Prices have risen during the past 18 months, faster than any period in my 25-year (+) participation in Practical Shooting competition. And those of us who spend much of our "disposable income" and often some income which would ordinarily be expended on "essentials", are usually willing to pay a fair market price ... or even an exorbitant market price ... just to ensure our attendance at the next match.

Unfortunately, reloading components are not now readily available at any price.

I suspect that I am not atypical in having sufficient bullets, cases and powder to maintain a basic stock of loaded ammunition. Sure, I would have to cut back to two instead of three matches a month, but that's bearable.

The availability of most components (again: powder, bullets & brass) is fairly generous. Lots of alternative sources, and while the cost & availability of brass for 10mm and .38 super is perhaps not as varied as for 9mm, .45acp and even the forty short-and-wimpy, at least that reloading component is usable. That is to say, you can spend some time after shooting a stage and pick up many of the expended cartridge cases.

You can use a wide variety of bullet weights, designs and dimensions; there must be at least a dozen different powders by as many manufacturers who provide a gunpowder which is at least marginally usable ... if not optimal ... for whatever caliber you or I choose to reload.

But primers seem to be another situation entirely.

How hard can it be?

I can load .38 super with ANY small primer, although I would prefer the small rifle primer because it is said to be less likely to puncture and/or leak under high pressures.

And I can use either rifle or pistol Large Primers for .45acp and 10mm.

What's the problem?

NSH: Not Stocked Here.

Why are primers so hard to find for pistols & rifles, when we still see shotgun primers almost everywhere we look?

It may be because there are not as many people competing for the available stores. True, Military and Police purchasers need to build some stock of shotgun ammunition, but certainly less than, say, two percent. (Yes, I needed to bend over to grab this statistic out ofr thin air.)

Pistol ammunition is more commonly expended in military and LEO arms, as is rifle ammunition. They are more extensively reloaded by civilian users, too. Consequently, the proportional supply of primers for shotguns is less burdoned by demand.

The results we are all well aware is that primers which will fit in pistol or rifle cartridges are in much greater damand than shotgun reloading components, including primers.

Is this due to "hoarding"? Perhaps. Michael Bane links to a commentary which seems to summarize the reason why the demand far outpaces the supply in his recent article "Primer Shortages To Continue".

To summarize:

1. primers are needed to fill an increasing need for LEO, Military and public ammunition;
2. the increased demand of loaded ammunition is evinced also by private citizens who reacted to shortage of components, and the fewer primers are perceived as being available, the higher the demand.

This is exacerbated by the concerns that the Obama Administration will eventually impose draconian controls on the availability of ammunition, and reloading components, in a Liberal attempt to restrict the effective availability of firearms to private citizens.

Realistic? Maybe not, you say. So far, however, even if this is not part of the Obama agenda, it seems to be working out that way.

The Gun Grabbers policy has ever been:

• Nobody ever NEEDS a gun;
• Even if you do NEED a gun, you don't need more than one;
• And if you NEED a gun, for hunting or even [gasp!] for self defense, how much ammunition would you need? Surely one, perhaps two, cartridges should be sufficient to either get your deer or save your ass.

Well, they may not publically put it so baldly, but read between the lines and that is the best interpretation you can put on what they say.

Stumble It!

Bullshit! See it; know it!

Last week (June 7) I wrote about the rumor that American Fire-Fighter Team Chiefs were being fired (let go, demoted, bypassed ... you choose the expression) because they had spanish-only speaking team members and they, the Supervisors, could not communicate with them in their native language.

Titled "What we have here ... is a failure, to communicate!" I made the points that:

• The issue was not current, but several years old;
• The original article was biased in being written by a reporter who failed to check the facts with multiple sources;
• And the primary source was a 'crew chief' who was demoted not because of inadequate language skills, but because of being unqualified for the position.
• Multiple other sources supported the statements of the Oregon Department of Forestry, in the person of spokesman Rod Nichols.
• No other sources were available which supported the charges in the original Portland Television Channel KATU article.

My sources were easily found on the Internet, and consisted primarily of the legitimate spokesmen for the Oregon Department of Forestry, Rod Nichols, and sources quoting Mr. Nichols.

Since that time, I found a comment from Mr. Nichols. (I invite you to go to the cited link and read his comments, where he very clearly describes the difficulty in defending ones self or ones employer against unsubstantiated rumor.)

The thing is, as I mentioned before, the MainStream Medis -- despite it's protestations that it is a more legitimate news-source because its published articles are subject to "multiple layers of checks and balances".

In this case, we see that this supposed oversight protection of Truth and Reality does not necessarily exist. Even the most junior reporter in a local news-gathering environment is often not subject to even the most cursory review and confirmation process befoe being broadcast.

And we, in our trust and naivete, are inclined to accept their published stories as fact without the most elementary attempt to determine the veracity of their assertions.

________________________


The steps I took to confirm or disavow the 'facts' presented in the original story ... and in the resulting Fox news broadcast video ... are not beyond anyone who is sufficiently Internet-savvy to access and read the story. I simply plugged in the basic story key-words to GOOGLE, and pushed the SEND button. I was presented with a plethora of hits and it was up to me to find those which were no more than second-echelon sources. (First echelon is the Story; second echelon is the "Story about the Story", or either rebuttals or conformations of the information contained in the original story.)

It's not more difficult than referring to WWW.DICTIONARY.COM to determine if the word you use is the correct word for the meaning you intended. It should be the basic minimum of background checking for anyone who desires to forward what seems to be controversial statement.
_______________________

The purpose of this article is to encourage everyone who reads it to check the facts before you forward that tittilating YouTube video to your friends and family.

The folks who write to me have often sent me Urban Legend warnings about computer Urban Legends ("Forward this email to all of your friends, and Microsoft will pay you money for each person who receives it") which cause you to proliferate lies to your friends and family; and "nuisance viruses" ("The Oregon Forestry Department is firing Fire Crew Chiefs Because They Don't Speak Spanish").

Because the basic premise is not true, the only effect is the proliferation of junk mail and often some people become upset because they honestly believe that the cited situation ... either positive or negative, is true.

In fact, a minimum amount of research will completely dispell your belief in the concept. But instead of investing that time and effort to research the Legend, the proposition is proliferated to many other people.

Often the perceptions of the general public causes damage to well-intentioned publics works, such as the Oregon Department of Forestry.

If nothing else, it not only upsets the recipients of these Viral emails, but it encourages them to write to the appropriate agency to speak out against a situation which does not, in fact, exist.

My advise to you is that if you receive an email which claims to represent a great Public Wrong, research it yourself before you forward it to your unsuspecting friends and family.

One of my primary sources to determine the veracity of a rumor is Snopes.

In this case, no results were found in SNOPES.COM, so it is obvious that SNOPES is not the only reliable source to confirm or dispute a rumor.

However a simple search on "oregon forestry spanish" to GOOGLE returns sufficient hits (302,000) to satisfy the moste determined searcher.
_________________________

So, before you sent that email to your friends, I encourage you to do your own preliminary research. This may not be sufficient for you to definitively determine that an assertion is or is not true; however, it may help you determine whether a question is absolutely true, or that it is sufficientl controversial for you to forward the question to other folks.

After all, their research skills may not be any better than yours, but they may be more determined to get to the bottom of the question. And if they provide evidence that the assertion which you have proclaimed is not reasonable, won't you feel silly to have forwarded it to everybody you know?

And well you should!

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YouTube - Jon Voight speaks about "This False Prophet Obama"

YouTube - Jon Voight speaks about "This False Prophet Obama"
--
I apoligise in advance for hosting a baldly political event.

Here is Jon Voight's speach to the Republican Senate/House Fundraising Dinner, as hosted on YouTube.

Before you view the 10-minute video, here are just a few of the Voight quotes that you will hear:

• "I'll tell you what scares the hell out of me, because everything that Obama has recommended has turned out to be disastrous."
• "We were the Liberators of the entire world, and we are becoming a Weak Nation."
• '... we, and we alone are the right frame of mind to free the world from this 'Obama Oppression'.

(I report, you decide.)

More information about this speech is available from Newsbusters dot com.

(Voight was later interviewed by Bill O'Reilly. That interview is available here.)

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Weekend at Bernie's

SWMBO (Sandie) has 4 sisters, and one of them is named Nancy. Nancy's husband is named Bernie. They have a cabin in the woods ... actually, more sagebrush than trees ... just out of Sister's Oregon.

Nancy has been one of SWMBO's most constant supporters since SWMBO came down with lung cancer. She has taken SWMBO on overnight trips to see a nationally recognized Oncologist in Seattle; she has taken her to, or driven her home from local doctor appointments and chemotherapy treatments. Nancy has also called SWMBO at least once a day to check on her, gone shopping for her, and one time last year Nancy and Bernie completely replanted SWMBO's annuals garden with new plants while SWMBO was at a 4-hour Chemo session.

And this weekend, Nancy and Bernie offered the weekend use of their cabin in Sisters for SWMBO and me to 'retreat' for a quiet 2-day holiday in the mountains.

Of course we took them on their generous offer, and we had a wonderful 48-hour "down-time" vacation. Very romantic, except that while we were shopping in Bend on Saturday she found a Dan Brown novel and I found Lee Child's latest Jack Reacher novel "Gone Tomorrow", so perhaps you can understand that we spent much of the rest of the weekend reading. That doesn't make it any less a Romantic Getaway; we both love to read, and reading on the front porch of a cabin in the wilderness is one of the best ways to be together. (No, not the very BEST way, but part of "being alone together" that helps a serious long-term relationship grow.)

SWMBO went there with a plan.

About 5 years ago we went to the cabin as part of our participation in the 2003 USPSA Nationals match. We both served as Range Officers for this and the subsequent Nationals at the same COSSA range venue. During those matches, we invited several of our friends ... many of whom were also serving as Staff Match, and some who had chosen to only participate as competitors.

One year we served Geek-Hot Spaghetti, and the other year we had a barbeque.

This time, SWMBO decided that the ageing BBQ grill (Propane, one grill) had about completed its expected tour of duty and it was time to retire it in favor of a new, much more versitile and useful BBQ grill.

Accordingly, we set out this Saturday morning to the Home Depot, located 11 miles away in Bend.

There we found a very nice (and not terribly expensive) 4-burner propane BBQ grill with an extra warming-oven compartment. The best part about it was that it fits neatly in the back of my Ford Exploder.

We got it home, called Nancy's daughter Tanya begging for help unloading the grill onto the front porch of the cabin. Tanya, SO Jeff, and Jeff's father Dave showed up a couple of hours later (after Jeff and Dave finished a day's fishing ... they offered us some trout to initiate the BBQ but we declined) and with very little help from us the pulled the 42" high grill out of the back of the Exploder and toted it up the six steps to the front porch. There's no way that SWMBO and I could have carried that massive grill up the stairs by ourselves without dropping and denting it several times by ourselves.

When we left the cabin the next day, we had wheeled the BBQ, under it's grey plastic cover into the house to a temporary resting place against the breakfast counter by the kitchen island. SWMBO left a note explaining that this was a gift meant to express our mutual gratitude for Nancy and Bernie's continuing support during the past year.

We can't wait for them to come up to the cabin from Albany next weekend, and discover the surprise gift.

---

Here's the part which relates to the Shooting Sports:

While we were in Bend, we stopped off at the Sportsman's Warehouse in Bend. SWMBO wanted to get replacement sunglasses (hers had deteriorated ... the finish on the bows were painted on, and had chipped off), and I was looking for primers, and additions to my Emergency and Medical kits to carry in the Exploder.

We went to the counterman in the Hunting and Fishing counter and asked him if he had any primers for sale. (We had made a cursory visit to the appropriate aisles and found the cupboards nearly bare.)

The counterman spent ten minutes explaining that "Primers are the hardest to find reloading component in the world just now".

He went on to illustrate that even loaded ammunition was hard to find and dear at any price. He recounted high-end .22 ammunition selling at $20 per box of 50. They got some 9mm 'defensive' ammunition in a couple of weeks before ... only two cases ... and they were sold out by noon. The shipment had arrived in the morning, there was no advertising except word-of-mouth, and they were priced much higher than the .22 ammunition. Still, they lasted less than three hours. Once customer was reported as having bought two boxes of the .22 ammunition "to shoot at woods rats". Certainly the lowest quality ammunition would have served his purpose, but he couldn't find them at all, let alone at a lower price.

And when ammunition, or components ARE available, the retailers are 'rationing' them. They won't sell more than two boxes of loaded ammunition (for example) to a single customer.

Again: they don't advertise. They don't have to. They can't meet the public demand for ammunition or components, anyway.

Primers?

They didn't have them, for rifle or for pistol. Large, small or magnum; it made no difference. They didn't have any in stock, they had them on order, and they had no idea when the manufactureres could reasonably expect to fill outstanding orders.

He said he had "a reasonable stock of bullets". I found nothing but high-end small boxes of bullets. I did fine one 500-round box of .45-70 bullets from Laser-Cast on the shelves, but nothing for ordinary pistol calibers. (I was unwilling to check the price of these hard-cast bullets. I was afraid it would be too discouraging.)

Bottom line:

BBQ grills are available, in stock NOW, and selling for not much more than a case of .38 Super bullets from Montana Gold.

But you can't get .38 Super bullets. Or loaded pistol ammunition. Or the kind of rifle ammunition which is used in competition. Or their components, except (again) high-grade at premium prices.

I suspect that this is a trend. It has to do with the huge demand for military ammunition (which is the primary customer of ALL ammunition manufacturers). Our counterman friend explained that companys which once made "millions of rounds" of ammunition during a given period are now being asked the make "billions of rounds" in the same period ... and they are unable to meet the needs of the military, let alone set aside product for the general public.

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"What we have here is a failure ... to communicate"

This weekend I received an email from a friend with the following video attached (not this youtube link, but the same video):


While this appears to be 'timely', the actual news story was reported by KATU ...

- By Melica Johnson and KATU.com Web Staff

SALEM, Ore. - Some English-speaking firefighters are losing their jobs because of an Oregon state law that requires them to be bilingual.

The Department of Forestry enacted a law three years ago that requires them to be bilingual, but this year they're actually enforcing it.

2002 was such a devastating wildfire season, contractors were scrambling to find firefighters.

Hispanics often filled their needs on the fire lines.

Jim Walker of the Department of Forestry said "what we do know is 85 percent of the crew make-up is of Hispanic decent."

But many of the Hispanic fire fighters do not speak English. Walker says the language barrier is a concern.

Those concerns led the state to draft a new rule that all firefighting bosses speak English, and the languages of crew members who don't speak English.

Jaime Pickering, a squad boss overseeing 20 firefighters, says the rule means "job losses for Americans. The white people."

Because of the state's language requirement, Pickering can no longer work as a crew boss and supervise 20 firefighters, he can only manage a squad of four.

Pickering says that "if you have one Spanish guy on the crew, as an English crew boss, you can no longer be a crew boss, you have to step back to a squad boss, which is a demotion."

While the state made the rule change in 2003, it decided to strictly monitor the law this year as Hispanics continue to fill fire lines.

As I say, this was reported by KATU ... on June 22, 2006!

Yes, the story is over three years old.

Not only that, but the interpretation of the original story has been questioned by the Oregon Department of Forestry, in an un-dated article saying "This is not the case, here are the facts ..." (see the link).

A further blog article (June 26, 2006) on the "La Shawn Barber's Corner" Blog cites a Department of Forestry employee who also states categorically that:

"Rod Nichols, an information officer for the Oregon Department of Forestry, responded to the e-mail I sent Jim Walker. He said the story I linked to is inaccurate." The article goes on to hit several bullet-points disproving the accuracy of the original reportage.

But why is this ageing canard still circulating through the Urban Legend Mill?

Perhaps it's because of this article from this forum subject in FireFighterNation.com under the topic heading "Oregon firefighters out of job becuase [sic] they speak english[sic]"
The topic was started January 15, 2008 and the last entry was date-stamped January 25, 2008. The original entry even embedded the video which (two years after the original article) was loaded to YouTube.

It is not my intention to criticize FireFighterNation.com -- open forums are subject to a lot of misinformation, and in fact it may have been the general unwillingness of forum members to accept the validity of the charge which led it to an early death. (The forum topic, not the website; it's still going strong.)

Granted my websearch was not the result of a deep and intensive effort, I only looked at a few pages (less than 100 hits) under "Oregon firefighter supervisors' and "oregon firefighters speak english". Still, I found only the single 2008 forum entry which was more recent than the original 2006 KATU article.

Given that the references I found were overwhelmingly inclined to repudiate the charge, my guess is that it was a misinterpretation of a quote from a single person, which may not have been cross-checked for accuracy prior to press time. It's unfortunate that Fox News picked it up and ran an on-line report with no further accuracy checking.

Full Disclosure: I'm no better than KATU or FOX-TV. My fact-checking took me about ten minutes. On the other hand, I turned up enough information to doubt the article, and I'm only "a guy sitting in his living room in his pajamas writting" without "multiple layers of checks and balances". Fox and KATU are those "Professional Journalists" ... like Dan Rather. Granted, KATU did make one contact with a Forestry Department Official, but that resulted in the charges by a single quoted source with (arguably) his own axe to grind. Pardon the pun.

So why are you reading all of this after-the-fact commentary on a blown story?

Because after all these years, that misleading video is still making the circuits of email mass-postings, and every time I receive an email about an "outrageous situation" it's impossible for me to resist throwing the spotlight on it.

Here's hoping that my friends and family will take this to heart and do their own fact-checking before they forward bogus Urban Legends (or in this case "Forestry Legends").

Here's the Box Score:

• A local news station to run a bogus story without confirming the facts: a reporter's career.
• A network affiliate picking up the story and running it on Network TV without confirming the facts: undermines a MSM Network's reputation.
• A lone blogger putting a stick in their professional eyes 3 years after the fact: priceless!
  

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Heller? Fugetaboudit!

The Seventh U.S. Court of Appeals has rejected an appeal by the National Rifle Association and in doing so has confirmed the legality of a Chicago, Illinois, ordnance banning handguns and "automatic weapons" within the Chicago city limits.

This is a curious ... and surprising ... decision for at least three reasons:

1. Because of the Heller decision, the Federal Government (in the persona of the Supreme Court) has determined that the Second Amendment refers to a "personal right" to possess a firearm.
2. The 14th Amendment is explicit in stating that "No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States ...", which means that if a federal law (or, in this case, interpretation of the Costitution) exists, no state may abrogate that primcipal. In detail, this extends to municipalities, such as the City Of Chicago.
3. The 7th Circuit Court (west coast) recently ruled in favor of the individual right to possess firearms, which is particularly striking in that this is the most liberal court in the nation by dint of its record.
   
   

Not to put it too delicately, if the Feds say you (as a Private Citizen) can do a thing, you can do it in any state in the union. This may be considered by some folks a "Dangerous Thing", as it is the reaso n (for example) that Roe V Wade prevails over States Rights to declare abortion unlegal.

What's good for the Goose is good for the Gander, so the states can't prohibit abortion beyond the liits set by the Federal Government; by the same token, the states cann't prohibit private possession of firearms by the private citizen And yes, this does mean that the individual state or munincipality cannot restrict firearms ownership any more than it can restrict "Pro-Choice" issues.

The Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States:

Section 1.
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

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Barbers Gone Wilde

"Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative."

Oscar Wilde

Look up in the right-hand corner of this website, and you will see SWMBO and The Geek in all our hirsute loveliness.

Well, SWMBO has lost all of her hair, started growing it back, and to our great mutual surprise her hair looks a LOT different from previous years.

For one thing, her hair is growing back grey, not red, and there's a curious white patch in her forelock. I've been tempted to refer to her as "Stripe", an homage to the lead gremlin in GREMLINS (the movie). Frankly, I haven't had the nerve to so address her in person.

That's the Geek Survival Instinct kicking in, I think.

Whatever the motivation, I have recently been reconsidering my bearded/mustachioed persona, and thinking about getting rid of some of it. Well, it's Summer and my Spidey Sense suggests that it's gonna be a scorcher. "Medium Cut, taper the back, trim the beard and 'stache", I told him to do the usual on the head-hair and as for the beard and mustache?

"Take them off. Doesn't have to be perfect, I'll shave the stubble when I get home."

So he did. Laboring industriously, he attempted to carry on a conversation about the ball-game on television while I, in turned, attempted to impress upon him how personally traumatic the shearing was to me, referring to the years and the decades since I had the beard and/or mustache, respectively, removed. The last time I had both shaved off was over 30 years ago, and it frightened my children.

When he finished, he generously observed "You look five years younger!"

(I was hoping for something more positive than that.)

Then he turned the chair around to allow me to look on my newly shorn visage.

I said: "Now I remember why I grew the beard and mustache. Please put them back."

He laughed, and sent me on my way.

That's the last time I'm giving $20 for a $15 shave-and-a-haircut from Tanaka.

So if you see an old, fat, bald guy at a Practical Pistol match in Oregon, and he looks familiar but unplaceable, it's probably me.

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Senior bowlers strike down Hillsboro purse thief – OregonLive.com

Senior bowlers strike down Hillsboro purse thief – OregonLive.com

Hillsboro is a nice town.

I lived there for a couple of years, and the only two things I have to say against it are (1) the unfortunate proclivity of developers to build "community villages", with "covenents" that can allow the property managers to fine you if you don't cut your grass once a week, and (2) the city park is ... or was, then ... the hunting ground for drug dealers (mostly undocumented immigrants") who were prepared to defent their turf with violence. The good news: The "Community Police Station", located across the road from the park, never had to bust skate-boarders.

But it retains one iconic community gathering location: bowling alleys.

Remember "Pleasantville"?

In the middle of the movie, when 'color' begins to permeat the town, J.T. Walsh gathers his cronies in a defensive position and says: "Thank God we're in a Bowling Alley!"

That's the kind of town Hillsboro represents.

On with the story.

According to the May 29 story, this kid tried to swipe a couple of purses from folks who seemed to be too intent on the serious business of bowling, when someone noticed what he was doing.
Then ... but I can't say it any better than the OregonLive reporter:

HILLSBORO - It turned out to be Pound-A-Punk day Wednesday at the Hillsboro Park Lanes Family Entertainment Center, a bowling alley in Hillsboro.

A 16-year-old would-be thief reportedly tried to swipe two purses from tables inside the bowling alley at 6360 S.E. Alexander St.

Then, at least from the teen's perspective, things went terribly awry.

The purses weren't the easy pickings he apparently thought they'd be. They belonged to two ladies from V.I.P. Summer Trio, a senior league, said Lanes owner Dean Johnson.

The women, along with other bowlers from the senior league, blocked the 16-year-old's escape through an exit on the building's west side. When he ran toward the glass doors at the building's front, league members were in hot and loud pursuit.

"One lady started screaming," said Nathan Krawitz, 44, who saw the whole thing.

Johnson said others in the league also sprang into action.

"A bunch of the senior ladies and senior men started hollering at him and chased him," Johnson said. "That's when Steve, my son, kind of held him down."

Oh, it gets even better after that. I have no wish to steal the thunder of the original author, so I implore you to go there and read the last few paragraphs.

It seem like a small story to you, but to me it's one more persuasive argument for "Bowling Ball Control"!

If it saves just one child ...

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7 killed in 6 Chicago shootings

7 killed in 6 Chicago shootings -- chicagotribune.com

Guns cause Violence, right?

We hear that all the time fromthe fine folks at such illustrious Moral Paladin organizations as The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence and the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence.


The CSV main page says:
The Coalition to Stop Gun Violence seeks to secure freedom from gun violence through research, strategic engagement and effective policy advocacy.

The Brady Campaign, no less iconoclastic, says:
We are devoted to creating an America free from gun violence, where all Americans are safe at home, at school, at work, and in our communities.

These Mission Statements strongly suggest that they have determined the cause of "gun violence", and are working to remove these causal factors from American Society.

Reading the details, their only goal is to reduce or eliminate the availability of firearms ("guns") to private citizens ... law-abiding or otherwise.

The proof of their theory, that guns are the direct cause of "gun violence", is that the communities and states which most restrict access to firearms are and should be those which most stringently restrict the private ownership of firearms.

Case in point: Chicago, Illinois.

Chicago is the municipality which, when confronted with the indisputable decision in HELLER V DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, refused to conform to the guidelines of "the second amendment defines an individual right". It is still, after all these months, almost impossible to receive 'permission' from the City of Chicago (and the State of Illinois, although who knows what will happen in the Illinois State Assembly now that Rod Blagojevich is out of office.).

Since the vast majority of its residents cannot legally possess a firearm, Chicago should logically be a bastion of peace, serenity, good citizenship and conviviality. Right?

BZZZZZZT!

Sorry, Charley, that's not the way it works.

Last weekend, seven Chicago residents (every one of which was unarmed) were shot down in the street - during a period which, judging from the Chicago Tribune Article, seems to extend for less than 12 hours.

A 30-year-old Chicagoan who was striving to be the "man of the house" in which he and his extended family lived was killed and two of his cousins were wounded Saturday evening in a shooting near their South Side home.

The shootings occurred on the 10500 block of South Indiana Avenue in the Roseland neighborhood about 11 p.m., down the block from the home of the fatal gunshot victim, Demond Stansbury.

Stansbury was among seven people slain in several shootings Saturday night and Sunday in Chicago. No one was charged in any of the slayings.

Calvin Stansbury said he, his brother Steven and Demond were talking with several other people in a vacant lot when the gunman approached them. Words were exchanged, then shots were fired.

"I got shot, my brother got shot in the knee and my cousin, one of my best friends, he's dead," said Calvin Stansbury, who was treated for a wound to the arm and released.

Steven Stansbury, 30, was treated at a hospital and released.

• Shooting incidents in one day: 6
• Shooting victims: 7
• Shooters arrested: 0

Oh, wait. One 'gunman' was arrested:

Chicago police said a 46-year-old man calmly shopped for food at the Aldi supermarket, 6621 S. Cottage Grove Ave., at 10 a.m. Sunday and was leaving when he walked up to the security guard and stuck a handgun in his face, police said. After a brief struggle, the security guard shot the man twice in his leg, police said.

(That doesn't count in the "Number of incidents/victims/arrested" stats, by the way.)

Somehow, this information doesn't seem to support the social theories of either CSV or HCI.

If I have somehow mis-interpreted or subverted the message of these incidents, I do hope you will help me out. For example, it may be that the shooting of a shopper by a security guard DOES caount in the number of incidents.

To tell the truth, in all the excitement, I kinda lost count.

So you got to ask yourself, "Do I feel lucky?"

Well, do you?

Punk?

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Kindred Geeks

I get such interesting email, sometimes I can't stop myself from sharing.

A new sidebar link (in "Hot Links Of The Week") is "The Firearms of Kid Kaos".

Kid Kaos ("Joshua") wrote me yesterday suggesting that we may be "Kindred Geeks", in the sense that we seem to share similar interests. His main topic was the Mech Tech Carbine Conversion Unit, because he bought one of the "new" versions (with the telescoping wire stock) in .45acp and has spent some time dressing it up.

I won't steal all of his thunder, but I will note that the entry page of his website includes several topics in a bar across the bottom of the page, and under "Firearms" he discusses not only Mech Tech but also the M1 Garand.

I bought a Garand about 20 years ago, shot two clips through it, and stashed it in the closet with 20 or 30 clips of .30-06 ammunition for my "Apocalypse SHTF" long-arm.

Maybe I ought to take it out and shoot up some of that really, really old ammo, but I'm not sure I can find components to reload it.

That's a topic for another post, which I have already written two or three times.

Go check out Joshua's website. If you're a Gunny (and I suspect most readers of this Blog are, in one degree or another), you may find something of interest to you there.

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'See through' swimsuits

In the words of Ella Fitzgerald: "At Last My Love Has Come Along"!

I think this is a concept whose time has come.

Kinike Swimsuits has introduced a line of swimwear made of a 'chicken-wire mesh' weave which allows sunlight to penetrate the material with little attenuation of melanoma-producing intensity. The design, unfortunately for us 'dirty old men', includes camoflauge-effecting patterns of whorls, spots and blotches which disallow the human eye from perceiving the details of the wearers' hidden charms.

I remember a cartoon from a decades-back Playboy Magazine. Two geezers lounging on a park bench, apparently in a Nudist Colony. A voluptously naked woman walks past them, one geezer turns to the other and says: "I bet she's a knockout in a swim suit".

Perhaps you had to see the actual cartoon to get the joke.

Still, you can go to the Kiniki website as I did to form your own impression.

While you're there, you can dig out the "X-Ray Vision" glasses you bought from that comic book 30 years ago and see if they work any better now than they did then.

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No Gun Zones

"Why on EARTH would anyone want to carry a gun in a ___________?"

Fill in the bland with your favorite "No Gun Zone" location, sooner or later someone is going to pack a gun in there not because they're legally authorized to Carry a Concealed Weapon, but because they have a grudge against the world and Dr. George Tiller, who was shot by a revolver-toting 51 year-old militia-man and radical anti-abortionist.

I'm sure it wasn't a huge surprise to The Good Doctor. He's been shot by anti-abortionists before, in the 1990's. AND had his clinic bombed, said clinic was often the the focus of many picket lines by less-radical, more law-abiding anti-abortionists. Whether you're Pro-Life or Pro-Choice, you probably agree that shooting a man for his profession is not usually considered to be the act of a rational person.

But Dr. Tiller was shot and killed while collecting donations this past Sunday at his church, in from of his choir-member wife.

And that's just wrong.

On the other hand, Bagdad-By-The-Bay sets the standards for late-term abortionists.

And today (Monday, June 1, 2009) a gunman stormed into an Army Recruiting Office in Little Rock, Arkansas, and opened fire on a recruiter and a couple of slick-sleeves fresh out of Basic Training. They (the recruits) were there to show that "This is what I was then, This is what I am now".

One soldier was killed. 23-year old recruit William Long couldn't crawl past the sidewalk after having been shot by 23-year old Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad (nee "Carlos Bledsoe") .

Bledsoe/Muhammed "probably had political and religious motives for the attack," the police chief said.
________________________

What other places are designated "Gun Free Zones", but have recently (within the past few years) been subject to mass-murders by deranged assasins who KNEW that honest citizens were not permitted, by law, to carry concealed firearms on the premises?

Let's see.

How about Shopping malls, school grounds (including University Campuses), and restaurants.

In response we should consider Westwoods Mall in Omaha, Columbine and Virginia Tech, and Luby's Restaurant. Right?

Xavier Thoughts (my "go-to guy" for fascinating topical sources) has a link to a Louisiana State Senator ("Gordon Hutcninson's Latest Blog") who provides an excellent review of "Gun Free Zones" as "Target Rich Enviroments for Wackos". (See here for direct link.)

I encourage you to read the whole thing. It ties together all of the cultural biases against the arming of honest citizens vis-a-vis the anti-gun bias in America.

America doesn't come out looking so smart.


You think?
_______________________

UPDATE: Wednesday, June 3, 2009

In a surprising development, website "Opposing Views" asks:
"Why is killing an abortionist like George Tiller so wrong?"

It's no wonder why they call themselves Opposing Views. If I understand the Jacob Sullum opinion piece correctly, the thesis is that Tiller is a murderer of innocents, and society has condoned his actions, so doesn't that make him fair game ("a legitimate target"?) for anyone who would stop his murder of innocents?

I haven't replied in the comments section of this article, although several people have. But if I did, the following phrases would probably be used:

• Rule of Law
• Civilization vs Barbarianism

It doesn't matter what your opinion on abortion ... even "late-term" abortion ... may be. Once we allow ourselves to condone vigilante justice, we are no longer a civilized society. In the traditional logic of the "If This Goes On ..." school of Science Fiction writing, the extension from logic to absurdity would result in videos on YouTube showing masked AMERICAN terrorist chopping heads off.

I do not choose to be a member of a sick society.

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Windows 7 - a pre-release caveat

According to Blogger Bill Pytlovany's recent "Windows 7 may come at a steep price" post, Microsoft's latest exercise in obsoleting your previous purchases by releasing a new operating system may have more than the usual potholes in the road to modernity.


ITEM: Number of versions
Yes, there will be a lot of versions, and the differences between one version and another may only be inclusion or exclusion of features which don't necessarily seem to be 'major components'. For example, ability to remote to another computer.

ITEM: Incompatibility with Major Software Packages
Yes, this OS will (or may ... not clear yet) not be compatible with Windows Office 2003. Did you buy that? Too bad, you'll have to pay for Windows Office 2007.

That's bad, but we've all cursed Microsoft for these little marketing ploys before.

What's new?

Price!
Word is, Windows 7 will cost between$150 and $350, depending on the version.

I bought a new bespoke computer last summer, all the Mods Cons, and paid $710 for it (including 2GB RAM).

If I want to keep up with the Joneses, it'll cost me half the purchase price of my custom-built computer. And that's more than I'm willing to pay, since I'll have to re-purchase Windows Office besides.

What's the good news?
Word is, I won't have to buy a lot of new hardware to accommodate W7. Maybe.

And you CAN get a duo-OS setup -- called "Windows XP Compatibility Mode". But you have to buy the top-of-the-line version (W7 Professional [Business]).

You can also get it in the "W7 Enterprise and Ultimate" version, but that's not for public consumption. it's for businesses and it sells as a corporate installation with a set dollar cost per 'seat'. Ball-park, it's for networks and corporations and the cost will be $x,000 + $z0 to $z00 per seat

For more information, go to Bill's article (presented courtesy of PITSTOP) and click on the ARTICLE CONTINUED HERE link to see details, including links to descriptions of most versions.
___________________________________________

Oh, yeah. Somebody's bound to ask if I'm going to migrate to M7.

Answer: I bought the laptop computer I'm currently posting on with VISTA installed. I spent two days trying to work with it, them bought a Windows XP Home disk and paid a competent PC technician $50 to install it.

I considered it a bargain. And I still do. This, from the guy who migrated from Windows 2000 to Windows XP and never looked back.

Enough said?

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