Feb11 ARPC Match Pix: 2

The Wall

Much has been said about The Wall. Mostly, by me.

Here's more:

ARPC build a very wide bay, and found that they needed two smaller bays more. Toward this end, they built a wall of huge concrete blocks between the two halves of the bay. During most club matches, one half of the bay is used as either a safety area or remains available for the use of Club Members who are not competing. The 'other' half is used to build a stage for the monthly IPSC match.

The Wall doesn't extend quite the entire length of the bay. There were concerns that somebody might be replacing targets at the extreme downrange end of the "club" side of the bay while someone was engaging a target 'obliquely' on the other side, causing rounds to impact the berm of the club side ... possibly causing consternation or even minor injury to the club members on that side because of bullet fragments splashing off foreign objects on the berm.

To avoid even the least chance of that occurance, the IPSC stages on the 'other' side of the bay are always carefully designed so that their is no possibility of bullet impact on the 'club' side.

Thus, all of the stages presented there feature a number of targets placed so they can only be engaged parallel to the wall, and the targets are always sited uprange of the end of The Wall.

In the most common configuration, the IPSC shooter starts standing immediately adjacent to the wall, engages a few targets directly downrange, and then engages the rest of the targets at an acute angle to The Wall. Charge lines are placed, or other design considerations are imposed, to prevent the IPSC shooters or any other people in the squad from wandering past the end of the wall where they may incur injury from rounds fired from the club side.

You'll see this in the videos. I promised in Part 1 of this two-part series to show you more videos of people shooting this stage ...

And here they are.

Big Dawg shoots the stage with an Open Gun.

Doug shoots it with a Production Gun.


Fish shoots the stage carefully, but fairly quickly. (Note the magazine dropping during the reload in the thumbnail.) Because this is the last stage of the match, he is overjoyed at shooting "a non-open gun cleanly". He does a Happy Dance. SWMBO gives him "a round of applause". Fish expresses his joy verbally, and does another Happy Dance.


Fred (no photo available) shoots the stage very conservatively, in Limited 10.

SWMBO is careful to keep the gun mounted when moving between shooting positions.

Walt - has a lot of jams. This film is 7mb long, which shows how frustrating to the shooter a series of jams will inevitably be. Take a close look at the closing seconds of the film. Walt doesn't actually sweep his knee as he tries to Unload and Show Clear with a live round caught in the extractor, but it does look like it from this angle.

Editor unrepentant over cartoons

The Australian: Editor unrepentant over cartoons [February 16, 2006]

I offer this without comment. I report, you decide:

THE cultural editor of a Danish newspaper that started a global row over cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed today stood by his decision to publish the controversial caricatures, saying they were aimed at promoting debate.

. . .

"There was a legitimate news story we had to cover and we chose to cover it in a not very ordinary way," he said, referring to the letter he sent in September to 40 cartoonists asking them to draw the prophet as they saw him.

. . .

"But because we do have a tradition of satire in Denmark, some of the cartoonists, in fact, did make satirical cartoons, but that is what we do with Jesus Christ and that is what we do with the royal family and with politicians," he said.

. . .

When asked whether he regretted his decision to publish the Mohammed cartoons, in light of the firestorm they unleashed in the Islamic world and threats against him, Flemming said it was like asking a rape victim whether she regretted wearing a short skirt.

"What I did did not transcend normal practice," he said.

(Emphasis added)

Gentlemen of IPSC: Walt

I use to play golf.

I wasn't very good at it, but I played it anyway (see "I Hate Golf")

One of the reasons I didn't enjoy it was because of the crummy people I ended up playing with. For example, I played for several years in the Portland, Oregon "City League". Businesses within the community would form teams, and we would go golfing, one team against another, at local golf courses around The City. There were about a half-dozen courses we played at, and we would play nine holes every Wednesday after work in a Round Robin arrangement. I mention this only because it explains why we ended up playing with strangers so often. Many of the people I wouldn't have associated with, given a choice.

I can't count the number of tantrums I witnessed. Somebody would get a bad lie (is that the right word), or slice the ball, or hook it, or skull it, or miss a putt. There are as many ways to err in Golf as there are in IPSC competition, but they don't send you home for being a dodo-head in Golf. More's the pity. After a couple of repetitions of these errors, they would start muttering to themselves, and sometimes end up throwing a club, or a ball, or breaking their 5-iron against a convenient tree. I swear, I'm not making this up. It's amazing how easily some people blame their inadequacies on a tool with no moving parts.

About ten years ago I completely gave up on Golf and took up IPSC as my primary weekend activity. I had been competing in IPSC off and on for about 10 years already, and I knew what I was getting into. I'm no better at it than I was at Golf, but I realized that I meet a better class of people on the Pistol Range than I did on the Golf Links.

I would much rather spend my time with gentlemen (and gentle women) than with overgrown adolescents.

After yesterdays column about the ARPC Club match, with pictures, I received an email from my friend Walt. He's the "recovering Revolver shooter" who spent the day coping with a recalcitrant pistol. It just didn't want to work right, and while The Good Lord and John Moses Browning know that a pistol match is not the best time to try out a new gun, sometimes you just can't resist the temptation. (I found myself in much the same situation around 2000, while I was trying to find a usable load for my 10mm Edge. I had loaded the ammo too long, and spent an uncomfortable day at Dundee having to manually rack the slide for every shot during the first stage. Fortunately, I had more than one load, and the gun was working fairly well by the end of the match.)

Walt wrote to thank me for posting the match films. He likes the moving pictures almost as much as I do, and wasn't at all bothered that so many of them displayed his nervousness and frustration while trying to clear one jam after another.

I was glad that he understood the reasons why I posted the videos. Maybe someone watching them would be able to offer a reason why the jams happened, and help him resolve the problem. And there may be some people who see only film of guns that work perfectly, every time, and don't realize that a reliable pistol doesn't always just happen. They may not be aware that a large part of The Game involves technical stuff such as tuning your ammunition to the idiosyncrasies of the gun.

But the primary reason why I featured Walt so prominently was because he was having a terrible day . . . and he was enjoying it.

Early in the match, every time he shot a stage there would be three or four people gathering around Walt to analyze the things they saw, and offering suggestions to cure the things they THOUGHT they saw. Try a lighter lubricant. Can you get a stronger recoil spring? Maybe the gun isn't going completely into battery. Is the problem occurring only with certain magazines?

Walt wasn't dealing with the problem all by himself. Everyone there was on his side, and showed it by being as supportive as possible.

Why?

Because Walt isn't a whiner.

It doesn't matter how his game is going, he's always even-tempered, cordial, and open. No sulking in the corners or snapping at his friends when things go wrong. He has no anger to take out on others. He doesn't swear, even under his breath. If something goes wrong, it's something that can be either fixed or endured. His ego doesn't get in his way. He's not there to impress anybody, but he does because he is Real Person.

Because Walt is a gentleman.

IPSC seems to attract this kind of people. Many of us have been around the block a few times, and have learned how to handle disappointment, and frustration. Sure, we see the occasional over-aged adolescent from time to time, but they don't seem to last very long. Nobody says anything (unless you have an unrelenting potty-mouth), but the camaraderie that typifies IPSC competition just doesn't embrace under-developed personalities.

If a person can't control his temper, we don't want to go shooting with him. Or her.

We like Gentlemen, of any age, of any gender.

Walt is one of The Good Guys.

Feb11 ARPC Match Pix: 1

JerrytheGeek's Shooting Gallery: Albany, February 11, 2006

As I mentioned three days ago, I did get some videos of the latest club match. Some of them embarassing, some of them funny, some of them must curious. (All videos are 3mb to 5mb in size. Clicking on the video links should bring up Windows Media Player in a new window.)

These may not be of interest to everyone, but the selection does provide a look at what a club match is like. Most telling is the commeraderie, and the friendly atmosphere.

(Incidentally, not all of the videos are presented in this article. I have seven of the videos yet to be edited and loaded, which I'll present in a separate article Feb11 ARPC Match Pix 2.)

The videos are best justified as showing that it can be Winter in Oregon and STILL be warm, dry and sunny. Since the weatherman will have his revenge on us this weekend (freezing temperatures, wind, and snow mixed with rain is forcast for the Sunday match) I'm glad I have this record to look back at.

The lineup of 17 videos can be taken in haphazard order by clicking on the link at the top of this page. For those who know the Columbia Cascade Section members, and especially for those who were there, I'll try to organize them a bit better and provide a directory here. The videos are presented in the same sequence here as in the Gallery, but I've linked directly to the files here so you don't have to make a separate step through the website to see them.

I don't have the score sheet handy, and the actual names of the stages doesn't really matter, so I've assigned arbitrary names to each stage.


The Bobber Stage:

This was the first stage of the day for our squad. Facing a wall, there are double IPSC targets on both sides. Moving downrange, maneuvering around a couple of inconveniently placed barrels, there are mirror arrays on the left and right sides: three static IPSC targets, and a 'bobbing' IPSC target which is initiated by hitting a Pepper Popper. It's possible to hit the Pepper Poppers from the starting box, and our two exampler competitors both used that to their advantage, as the bobbers slowed down to an easy-to-hit cyclic rate in ten seconds or less.



Fred started shooting IPSC a couple of years ago, and spent quite a while being very deliberate in his approach. This year he has exhibited more confidence and more aggressiveness. He has always been an excellent shot, but now he is hitting the targets much more quickly. We were all glad to see him turn in an exceptional performance at this match, and I wish I had more film of him so he could see how good he looked.

SWMBO took on the same stage, using approximately the same strategy, but using an Open gun. She benefits from much more experience and is prettier, too!


The Classifier Stage:

As I mentioned before, we were tested on TAKE 'EM DOWN CM03-03, an 11-round Comstock classifier stage which presents a mix of IPSC targets (two 2-target arrays, with no-shoot targets between each pair) engaged from behind a Bianchi barricade, and then three Pepper Poppers engaged from behind another Bianchi barricade. It's a hoser stage, with a kicker: the penalty targets!

Geek pain -- I missed the far-right IPSC target and hit the penalty target instead. I had 41 points out of 55 possible, but with 40 penalty points subtracted from that score I ended up with ONE point. I had a good time (in both senses of the expression) and it looks good on the video because you can't see the penalty hits on the film. One other shooter on the squad, Doug S., had got double no-shoots on an earlier stage, so I'm seen yelling to him "I did it for you, Doug!" Then you see Doug walking downrange to tape the targets, thanking me for my thoughtfulness. "No mission too difficult; no sacrifice too great" where your pals are concerned.

No, they didn't believe me, either.

Walt, "The Shooter Formerly Known As The Revolver Guy", had JUST given up his revolver (for the time being) and bought a Limited-class auto-pistol in .38 Super caliber from Fred. It's not clear how much Walt had shot the new gun before the match, but (as is not uncommon) he was starting out with a mish-mash of ammunition from various sources. He started out using some 20-year old Egyptian military ammunition, and it just wasn't working for him. By the time we got around to the Classifier stage, he had dumped about half of it on the ground and finally got his snoot into a box of 'the good stuff'. You'll hear some cheering at the end of this video, because this was one of the very few stages where he managed to make the entire run without a malfunction.

The Poker Stage:

The start position was "gun on the table, elbows on the table". It looked like a social situation to me. There were 4 IPSC targets in front of the table, with a lot of hard-cover and some ugly white stuff. Around the corner to the far left were a few more IPSC targets, then you had to run back half-way, turn another corner and snake down-range to engage the last three ISPC targets. Lots of places to lose time, but it was essentially a Hoser stage with many temptations to go faster than you could shoot accurately.

Big Dawg started us off with a demonstration of just how quickly a big man can move when he really wants to. He lost 20 pounds over the winter, and is working on another 20 pounds. At this rate, he'll be so tiny by next winter that he'll have to stay on the porch.

The Geek run wasn't as bad as I had feared. At least I got my shots and didn't hit any penalty targets.

And The Shipster turned in his usual smooth, no-errors performance. It's fun to watch him shoot, because every time he comes out he gets a little better. He should be bumping up a class before the year is over, if he keeps working at it.

There was an interesting rules question on this run: The Range Officer is suppose to make sure that every competitor starts with protective glasses and hearing protection, but who watches to make sure that the RO has HER ears on?

The it was Walt's turn. He's still experimenting with odd-lot ammo at this point in the match, and I moved in closely to see just what was happening to cause the jams. I thought it might be that his recoil spring was too light for the load, and perhaps the slide wasn't returning to battery, but that isn't apparent from the good view I had. Sometimes the hammer would drop but the round wouldn't go off; sometimes the hammer wouldn't even drop, which means he had to rack the slide for the next shot. You might run through this sequence a few times, perhaps you can spot something I couldn't. Let me know if you do, please. (I cut the film short after Walt moved away from the 2nd array.)

The Steel Stage:

This was a nice 'field course' with three Pepper Poppers ... left, right, and center ... that must be engaged from the starting box. Moving downrange, there are targets left and right which are placed so you almost MUST stop to engage them to keep from breaking the 180. We did, in fact, have one DQ in our squad because the shooter over-ran the array, then backed up to engage it, and lacked just one step from having moved far enough back that he could legally engage the uprange target in the array. SWMBO had to DQ him, and later reported that it was one of the hardest things she has ever had to do. She has been a certified Range Officer for several years, works as an RO at almost every club match she attends, and has worked two USPSA National Matches, but this is the first time she ever had to DQ anyone. It helped that the competitor realized what he had done as soon as he took the shots, and he was just standing there waiting for the inevitable.

Big Dawg is the first example, and you'll see him move past the first target array before he realized he has gone too far. He DOES back up far enough to engage them safely.

The next shooter is Fish. He has two Open guns, and a Limited gun, but everything seems to be in the shop this week. Here you see how a good L10 shooter handles the confusing target arrays. I've often told him that he should give up the Open guns and shoot his Kimber all the time, but he just smiles and shakes his head. I know he has too much fun shooting Open to give it up. In Part 2, you'll see how he feels about the L10 gun at the end of a good match.


The ZigZag Stage:

No still photos available for this stage, and only one Video.

The Geek may not be pretty, but it's the only record of what this stage looks like. You can't see much of the stage, because of the extensive use of "Visquine" (SP?) as vision barriers. I'll be glad when all the vision barriers are Orange Snow-Fence, because you can see what's going on when you look at the film.

The stage forces you away from the starting position (centered on the bay, facing uprange) to engage a couple of targets around the corner on the left. Then run right past the end of the vision barrier, where you can see an array of IPSC targets. Moving left along the 2nd vision barrier, there's a large port where you can engage one, two or three IPSC targets far downrange. Finally, move back to the left and engage a mixed array of IPSC and steel targets around the end of the vision barrier.

You can go fact, or you can go slow. And you can pour a lot of rounds downrange at the last array if you choose to leave the far-left 'far downrange' target until you get closer to it instead of engaging it through the mid-range port.

That pretty much wraps up the first 5 stages. The last stage, "The Wall", will be exclusively featured in Part 2.

Vice Presidents: Gore vs Cheney

I'm sorry for US atrocities on Arabs after Sept 11, says Gore

The US committed "terrible atrocities" against Arabs after the September 11 attacks, according to Al Gore, President George W Bush's defeated rival for the White House in 2000.

Arabs had been "indiscriminately rounded up", often on minor charges, and held in "unforgiveable conditions", the former vice-president told a mainly Saudi audience at the Jeddah Economic Forum.

"Unfortunately there have been terrible abuses and it's wrong," he said. "I want you to know that it does not represent the desires or wishes or feelings of the majority of the citizens of my country."

Mr Gore said the Bush administration was playing into al-Qa'eda's hands by routinely blocking visas for Saudis but he also challenged Arabs to take a stronger stand against Iran's nuclear plans.

In other news, Vice President Cheney has invited former Vice President Gore to go quail hunting in Texas.

Happy [Geek] Valentine's Day!

Today is Valentine's Day.

Guys hate Valentine's Day.

I'm not sure why this is, but it's true. Probably it's because we see it as a phoney "go shopping, spend a lot of money, be touchey-feely or you're a bad guy" kind of holiday.

You know, like Mother's Day, Father's Day ... there's even a Children's Day, for goodness sake! (My father once told me that every day is Children's Day; I replied that I hadn't noticed. But that's another story.)

It's not that I don't like shopping for SWMBO. In fact, I enjoy buying unexpected gifts for all of my family. I just resent being coerced into buying things for my loved ones.

And I don't do "wrapping". I'm a crummy present wrapper. For example, I did 90% of my Christmas shopping almost a month before Christmas this year. But it took me six weeks to get the last of the presents wrapped and shipped out to my children and THEIR children. In fact, they would still be waiting for their "Grandpa Geek" box if SWMBO hadn't volunteered to finish the wrapping. (I can't prove it, but I suspect that SWMBO re-wrapped all of the gifts I HAD wrapped, when I wasn't looking. Thank You, SWMBO!)

That's on a "GOOD" Holiday - Christmas - which I enjoy. I have less enthusiasm for holidays which are founded only upon the wish of merchants to sell me more stuff so I can give it to somebody who doesn't really need or want it.

So this year, I bought SWMBO a set of Kitchen knives.

I had been telling her for TEN YEARS that she needed a set of kitchen knives. What she had were decent knives [LIE ALERT!] that were never sharp, and which didn't match. I mentioned again last month that she needed a decent set of knives, and I would have given them to her but I never considered them 'romantic' enough. Knives are like vacuum cleaners or blenders, or a really good mixer which is another thing I talked about for years but never gave her even though she really needed it so she finally went out and got a Kitchen-Aid mixer of her own.

Anyway, she replied that she thought Knives were a very romantic gift, so I bought them for her for Valentine's Day. I gave them to her last weekend, so we could revel in the fact that I actually gave someone a gift before it was past-due. They had red handles; she likes red.

I'm not sure she really knew how to handle that, or the three jars of Cherry, Strawberry and Raspberry yogurt I bought along to 'dress up' the package. Well, they were red; she likes red. I got her a red range bag last year 'just because', and she never did figure out what the occasion was. The answer, of course, is that I saw it and knew she would like it, so I bought it and gave it to her immediately. It was wonderful, watching her fight the impulse to tear up.

The good thing about buying 'kitchen accessories' for your sweetheart is, next year you won't have to go crazy trying to find a gift that top last year's gift.

Guys are easy to shop for, for Valentine's day.
The choices are few:

1. Beer
2. Books
   
3. Really good Irish Whiskey
4. Guns
   

(If she buys you a gun, make sure you act like it's something you would have bought for yourself even if it isn't an STI. If she buys you a book, pretend you don't already have it. Trust me, this is important.)

Did I wrap her Valentine's Day Gift?

No, I did not. I put 'em in a gift bag, with a nice card that somehow managed to express my feelings exactly. The box of knives was too big to fit into the gift bag, so I bought a curled-ribbon paste-on thingie and stuck it on the top of the knife box.

Don' t never let nobody tell you I ain't a romantic.

PS: no, we didn't go out to dinner tonight, which was a darned shame because SWMBO had a gift-card for two free meals at a local fish house. Maybe next weekend ... I hope they have a good wine.

Bring In The Clowns

Cartoon Riots in Pakistan Leave 2 Dead

You can make up your own captions for this picture. Here's mine:

Try to find the clown in this picture.





Answer: All of them.

(Note: Ronald MacDonald is reported to be recovering nicely, one billion burgers at a time. We wish we could say the same for Austin Attorney Harry Whittington.)


UPDATE:
I posted this on 2/14. By 2/16 the image was missing, leaving only a link to my image-hosting service ImageShack.us

If you don't see the image at all, it may be because ImageShack has a policy of removing images which draw complaints from people who consider them 'offensive'. In that case, please contact me (contact information available at the bottom of this page) and I will post in on the server that I use.

Okay, I probably should have hosted the photo myself in the first place, but ImageShack is extremely easy to use. Now that it has disappeared, I'm using them again just to see if they are deliberately taking it down.

The (Muslim) Empire Strikes Back!

Caricature publisher reported to police - Aftenposten.no

Aftenposten.no (Norway) is one of the news sources I regularly check; the only reason I don't have it listed on my sidebar is that I run across it in references listed on OTHER news sites so often that I rarely go directly to that english-version website.

You may have heard that Norway is not in good odor with the Muslim Community these days, because of their association with the so-called "Anti-Muslim Cartoons". (I use the phrase "so-called" advisedly, in the sense I define below.)

Last week, in an action greviously under-reported by the American Press, the Muslim Community struck back. What weapons did they use? The legal process in their adopted country.

The Muslim Al-Jinnah Foundation will charge the editor of the Christian weekly Magazinet, the journal that published the controversial caricatures of the prophet Mohammed in Norway, with endangering Norwegian lives.

Interesting that the Muslims are prepared to press charges against a media outlet which is exercising it's right to Free Speech, rather than against the people who respond to that speech with murder, arson, and assorted mayhem ... all of which are illegal in most countries, including Norway. Perhaps these actions are not illegal where Khalid Mohammad (see below) came from.

Editor Vebjørn Selbekk and Magazinet staff had no immediate comment on Thursday.

I, however, have a few comments. Read on ....

The organization delivered charges to Moss police station at noon on Thursday.

"The police must take Vebjørn Selbekk and put him in a safe place," Al-Jinnah leader Khalid Mohammad told Aftenposten.no. Mohammad emphasized that this remark was not meant as a threat to Selbekk, but rather to the threat Selbekk posed to others.

Mohammad said that Selbekk had endangered Norwegian lives and interests around the world by the provocative decision to publish the caricatures.

Veiled threats, crocodile tears. Mohammad isn't concerned about Norwegian lives. He's concerned about Norwegian freedoms, and is determined to undermine them in every manner he can.

"It is frightening that one person through so-called freedom of speech can cause such damage that he nearly sets two worlds up against each other. There are limits for what expressions are acceptable, also in a democracy. This is a case for the police, it cannot be solved by the masses," Mohammad said.

"so-called freedom of speech" ... I'm appalled. using the modifier "so-called" strongly implies that the expression is of dubious validity. There's nothing dubious about the freedom of speech, which Mohammad is taking advantage of here. It's just that he doesn't like the product of Free Speech, so he's trying to take it away from people who sn't think like HE does.

I presume (from his name) that Mohammad isn't a native Norwegian. If he was, his name would be Vebjørn Selbekk or some other collection of consonants and squiggly marks and crossed ohs. So this Mohammad character has immigrated to a new land, presumably because he likes it better than his home country, and now he wishes to change it to look just like the last place he lived. Is this the picture of an immigrant, or is it the picture of a viper at ones breast?

Selbekk and Magazinet are also being accused of blasphemy.

"But this is really also treason," Khalid Mohammad said. "He has damaged Norway abroad. Not least, the publication has resulted in Norwegian soldiers in Afghanistan being injured. We feel for them," Mohammad said, and also noted that innocent Muslims in Norway now feel unsafe, and hat (sic) they face greater danger.

Norway recognizes another freedom: the Freedom of Religion. Consequently, "Blasphemy" (a term which rates right up there with "Miscegenation" for odious implication) is not a legally actionable offense. Rather, it's only illegal in theocracies. Apparently, Mohammad wants to establish a body of case law supporting a change in the entire legal, religious and cultural structure in his adopted homeland.

Treason ... probably IS illegal in Norway. But I doubt it includes printing cartoons of dead terrorists who learn, once they have reached a state of endothermic morbidity, that they have been lied to and there ARE no virgins eagerly anticipating their arrival in Heaven. (Although you have to admit, there may be a certain intellectual consanguinity between the Norse concept of Valhalla and the Muslim version of Heaven.)

I honestly can't picture Mohammad worrying about the well-being of Norweigan soldiers (very few of them, presumably, Muslim) in Afghanistan. The Norwegian Soldiers in Norway are probably outnumbered by Muslims almost as much as those in Afhghanistan, which is where the real danger lies.

We can't help but feel concern for the Innocent Muslims in Norway, though, and I'm glad Mohammad politely mentions them in passing while his obvious worry is for the vile non-Muslim native Norwegians whose last name doesn't start with "AL-".

Khalid Mohammad said that the Al-Jinnah Foundation is an international network that seeks out Muslim communities when there is danger of unrest.

"Then we tell them that peace is the best road to take. Protests shall use legal means. That is in keeping with Islam," Mohammad said.

Apparently, subterfuge and misdirection are part of the political judo available to the Mohammads in Norway. Khaløid (I changed the spelling of his name to better fit within the Norwegian community ... I'm sure he appreciates that) obviiously has been doing his homework, boning up on Norwegian Law so he could use it against his benefactors.

Norway being essentially a Socialist Society, three will get you five that Khaløid Mohammad is, one way or another, on the Public Dole. This is doubtless one of the reasons he immigrated to Norway; so he could undertake a Fifth Column attack on his adopted country.

But two will get you nine, Khaløid is a very well trained agitator and is doing just what his masters 'back home' sent him to do: undermine the sovereignity and peace of another European nation.

I'm not very sure of my spelling of foreign words, such as "Norwegian" and "Mohammad". But I'm real sure about the spelling of "Quisling". Norway would be well-advised to slap this honest-to-Allah traitor in irons and leave him there to rot. His ingratitude toward the country that took him in when he came begging at their door is dispicable. His protests that " ...peace is the best road to take. Protests shall use legal means. That is in keeping with Islam" is particularly reminiscent of the Koranic admonition that it is permissible to lie to an enemy in Dar Ul Harm, or the house or land of the enemy "for any jihadi". By his words, he has marked himself as an enemy of Norway and of civilized people the world over. (See also here.)

The rats are coming out of the woodwork, and at least it makes it easier to identify them. The question now is what Norway will do with their vermin.

. . .

This is not a diatribe against Muslims. It's a diatribe against terrorists.

Terrorists are most often defined by their slaughter of innocents, but they have many tools. Their goal isn't to kill people, but to assert their will over the population by any means available. They use the tools that work in the culture they mean to suborn and overturn. In peaceful, rule-of-law socialist countries such as Norway, they attempt to undermine the law by using the law against law-abiding citizens. Their goal is to subtly (or not so subtly ... whatever it takes!) alter the culture until they have established legitimacy of their barbaric version of culture. Think of them as parasites, it's a fair analogy.

One of their tools is 'reasoned discourse'; although it's (here) clumsy and obvious, there are people who believe that they have a right to be heard, however wrong they are. These people are called "dimmi" ... eventually.

<>One of their tools is treason. Subtle, slow, but inexorable treason. Not treason by individuals who have, by right of birth, reason to love their country. We speak of treason by individuals who have deliberately infiltrated a country, professing affection for the country and its culture, for the sole purpose of working from within to destroy that culture and replace it with another.

Thus, this is also an diatribe against Quislings.
The last Quisling Norway had to deal with was native-born, and they executed him by firing squad.

Mohammad should have taken this historical precedent to heart before he decided to sell out Norway to its current brand of occupiers.

I only hope that Norway still has the intelligence to recognize a traitor, the heart to withstand his insidious predations, and the guts to do the right thing.

2006 Albany February Match

Saturday last (February 11), we competed in the Albany (Oregon) club match and were pleasantly surprised by the clement weather. Coming off a 38-day cycle of unremitting RAIN, we woke up to high cloud layers which didn't present any raindrops at all. If this is Global Warming, I'm all for it!

Match Director Mike McCarter, who designed and set up the match only to spend the rest of the day at WORK . . . presented a six-stage match which can only be described as a "Hoser Match", because most of the targets were easy to hit and easy to see. This which encouraged us to run&gun as quickly as we could, and therefore screw up by the numbers Big Time.

Which we did. Results are available here.

There were 64 competitors at this match, which has to be some kind of record for a "don't-mean-nothin', just come out and shoot for the fun of it" match.

The first indication that this was to be an atypical match was when Ed D. suggested that I not take photographs of him, even though we were squadded together. He had seen the photos I took a couple a months ago, the last time we were in the same squad, and announced that he didn't recognize the "fat old man" he saw. I agreed to that condition, because frankly I don't recognize the fat old man I see in pictures taken of me at IPSC matches. After all, the pictures I take depict us at our most vulnerable moments, and the embarassement factor is high. Some of the most interesting videos show us when we make mistakes, and I don't blame anyone for objecting to this sort of imagery.

We're all friends here, and while we come to shoot, we don't necessary expect to be 'shot' at our worst.

Unfortunately, I managed to fall into that trap myself.

While we were engaging the Classifier, TAKE 'EM DOWN CM03-03, I was filmed missing the T4 target (far right-hand side) incompetently. Instead of putting two shots into the edge of teh A-zone,k I put them into the penalty target which overlapped the shoot-target. I scored two misses, and two no-shoot penalties. Because I didn't call the shots as misses, and didn't even notice them until I was far downrange to Box B where I was to shoot three Pepper Poppers, I just continued my run and finished with a decent time (9.45 seconds) and a terrrible score (41 points minus 40 penalty points = ONE point for the stage!).

I ended up the lowest score of the day, except for the single DNF score which garnered zero points because the competitor didn't actually even shoot the stage.

I missed really fast, but that doesn't peel the banana.

SWMBO was right there with the camera, and I'll present the video soon. Unfortunately (or fortunately, from my personal point of view) you can't see the no-shoot hits. This distracts from the impact of the video. I can't say that I'm disappointed. When I get around to editing and posting the film, I'll link to it here. In the meantime, you can assume that I did what I said I did, and I present it here if only to serve as a good example of someone who engaged a difficult target in a risky manner (already leaning to "get out of the shooting box quickly"), gambled, and lost.

In the words of Marlon Brando, in "On The Waterfront": I could have been somebody. I could have been a contender ... instead of a palooka, which I am."

All of that is true, but the weather was fair and the companionship was excellent. I don't mind losing to people who are better than I am. I had a GREAT time, and this day will be remembered not because of the stages I screwed up on but because of the company I kept.

And if Doug S. ever reads this, I have a few words of encouragement:
Get a GOOD gun for your wife, and let her shoot it competitively. She spent all day taping targets. Such enthusiasm should not go unrewarded. It took SWMBO three years of observing, brassing and taping before she said "SCREW THIS! GET ME A GUN!"

I will guarantee that SWMBO will happily spend as much time as is needed to coach your good wife, and she will beat you at a regular club match before the year is out.

And that will be one of the best days of your life. There is no day better than a day at the range, and there is no day at the range so good that it can't be improved by the companionship of your wife.

Quail 1, Veep 0

USATODAY.com - Cheney shoots at quail, hits hunting companion

Okay, Children, here's your gun-safety test for today:

Which is more dangerous: a politician with an agenda, or a politician with a gun?

If you ask Austin Attorney Harry Whittington, I bet he'll go for Door Number Two.

According to the USA Today account, Whittington managed to drop behind the group of quail hunters which included Vice President Cheney, put himsef between the 'line' and the sun, and when a quail broke between them VP Cheney scored at least One Bravo, One Charley hits on the attorney's head and chest with a shotgun.

Good thing for Whittington that Cheney was using Quail Loads. He (Whittington) is in the hospital with with a face-full of what we presume are number-8 shot strikes in the tender areas of his upper torso.

I like Cheney's politics, generally, but I would never go hunting with him. I value my eyesight too highly to risk it for the dubious honor of hunting with the VP.

Oh, sure, this stuff happens. It happened to me once, when I was a teen-ager. I went rabbit hunting with some friends, and one friend skipped a .22 Long Rifle round within yards of me while shooting at a jack rabbit.

I refused to continue the hunt, and I never went hunting with him again. Life is short enough already, there's no need to worsen he odds of honorable retirement by hunting with people who don't keep in mind the three rules of gun safety. (If you have any doubts about what they are, go read Xavier Thoughts.)

"Katharine Armstrong, a prominent Texas Republican who witnessed the incident on her family's 50,000-acre spread in South Texas", said "these things happen."

Well, yes, they do. But they don't happen to people who are more concerned with gun safety than they are about bagging a quail.

Actually, Xavier's comments about this incident are much more non-committal than I feel is justified. (No criticism intended toward Xavier ... he treats it very much 'tongue-in-cheek', which I suppose is possible if you still have a working tongue with which to speak after you have been shot in the face.)

Maybe Whittington, the victim, was somewhere on the hunting field where he shouldn't have been. Maybe it's true that 'these things happen.' But 'these things' should NOT happen, and to make your press-release spin emphasize that 'it was a shotgun, not a rifle' is just a shoddy way to minimize the political fall-out of an incident which has absolutely nothing to do with politics.

It's a matter of gun safety. There is no compromise possible in this area. I'm appalled at the mere attempt to minimize the possibility of egrigious damage due to the gun-handling of the Vice President.

Strangely enough, I tend to judge people by their demonstrated judgement. I watch people, and I judge them on whether or not I would be comfortable hunting with them. Cheney fails the sniff test here. That the victim (for so he is) was 'in front of the sun' is no excuse; if the shooter can't tell for certain that it's a safe shot, he shouldn't take the shot.

There's no justification for a hunter to shoot when he isn't certain of his 'backstop'. If you don't have that basic safety rule firmly in mind, you shouldn't take the stop.

I've violated some safety rules in my time.

Once I failed to "Unload and Show Clear" correctly at an IPSC match. Nobody got hurt, but I was wrong.

Six months (or more) ago, I talked about Grumpy Old Men, hi-lighting the time I almost shot my father's leg off because I just didnt' have a good understanding about the Rules of Gun Safety.

In fact, I even spent some time discussing how a LEO could experience an Accidental Discharge, and still not be personally responsible for it.

So I accept that shooting accidents can happen to "the best people":, and I thoroughly understand the causes and that the un-expected always happens when you least expect it. (Otherwise, it wouldn't count as an "un-expected occurrance.")

Doesn't matter.

VP Cheney mucked up, and it's a mistake for the incumbent spin-machine to pass it off as a "Shit Happens" event. It irresponsible to treat the incident that way, and it undermines what SHOULD be the message of the shooting "community" when it tries to portray itself as a responsible, safe activity.

Lesson #1: shooting can be dangerous to innocent bystanders.
Lesson #2: we exercise our sport with full understanding of the consequences.
Lesson #3: when one of our members screws up, we're the FIRST not to tolerate a lapse in judgement.
Lesson #4: Any lessoning of the acceptance of responsibility from the person holding the gun is not acceptable.

Nobody ... repeat, NOBODY ... is exempt from the high standards which we impose upon the practitioners of our sport. Any attempt to offer mitigating or extenuating circumstances for what is so patently a violation of basic safe gun-handling rules is simply unacceptable.

Because he is a politician, Cheney should volunteer for a safe-gun-handling class immediately. The NRA offers them for a reasonable cost. The price of NOT admitting that his gun-handling skills are less than they should be is not only politically unacceptable, it is practically unacceptable as well.

I wouldn't go hunting with him. Would you?

H/T: Fish or Man