"It's Painful To Watch A Giant Tree Being Killed"

That's a comment recorded on an earlier post "Wildlife Photos", in response to a 1940-1950 era photo of two "lumberjacks" halfway through the onerous job of cutting down a tree with a diameter of over twenty feet.

The thing about my readership is that they are generally fine people with a truly droll sense of humor.   (I don't get a lot of readers who are tree huggers and PETA members, for obvious reasons.)

Anyway, it's not always easy to tell if a sensitive person might have stumbled on my website and made a SINCERE comment.

But I really liked that photo of two small men hewing mightily at a mighty forest leviathan.  Because my father was one of those brotherhood of manly men, and so were most of his brothers.   So I'm going to assume that someone who sincerely mourned the felling of a "Giant Tree" might have seen the photo, and might really have felt that that commercial act was a travesty of nature.

Or yadda-yadda something-or-other.

Anyway ....

Just like a bad neighbor, Microstamping is still there

"Microstamping" is a technique which will invariably, under all circumstances, positively stamp information about the gun which fired a specific cartridge (supposedly recovered at a Crime Scene) and thus lead the police to solve the crime.

The only problem is .. it doesn't work.

Other than that, it's perfect!

Here's the reason why Oregon NEEDS an ASSISTED SUICIDE law ..

Police say Oregon woman self-immolated, crashed car and jumped off bridge | Fox News:

 Police in Oregon say an apparently suicidal woman was being treated for critical injuries (she apparently lived through it) after she intentionally set herself on fire, crashed her car into a guardrail, and jumped 40 feet off a bridge Thursday. According to The Eugene Register-Guard, the 39-year-old woman had recently been reported missing by her family. The paper reported that a 911 caller first spotted the woman's car at around 12:30 p.m. local time. The caller told emergency responders that the interior of the woman's car appeared to be on fire, and she was driving recklessly. After the car crashed into a bridge guardrail, witnesses told police the woman jumped out — on fire — and began taking her clothes off as she ran to the edge of the span. Truck drivers tried to put out the flames with fire extinguishers and another person tried to grab the woman, but she was still able to jump, police said.

-emphasis added-

... we're obviously too stupid to manage the job by ourselves!

Wildlife Photos

My friend, "Big John", is an avid shooter.  He competed in international rifle competition (I know there's a proper name for it, but it's a lot like HighPower) a couple of years ago.  He also surfs the net for wildlife photos. HERE is a link to an amazing series of photos from the Rivermen Rod & Gun Club.

Some of these just scream out for captions, so I'll include a small representative sample:

"You can take your "Task Completion Time" estimate and ...."

HillaryLove

Ready for Hillary dumps 'email poster' in 3 for 1 deal | WashingtonExaminer.com: Hillary Clinton's campaign in waiting, Ready for Hillary, is dumping its poster of the now infamous image of Hillary Rodham Clinton in sunglasses reading her Blackberry. An email sent today offered the poster, titled #Ready and that sells for $20.16, in a three for one deal for the very same price.

Where have I seen that picture before?

I'm sure .. oh, wait.  I KNOW!

Training, Practice, Experience. And now ... shame?

Tam had a good look at a loaded muzzle at a gun show, as recounted below:

View From The Porch: The Safety Dance: He mulled that over for a second as I turned away to see what was going on down Mike's way when, out of the corner of my eye, I see the cop unholster his sidearm. I got a real good look at the muzzle in my peripheral vision, and also took extremely good note of the fact that, even if his lack of muzzle discipline was appalling, at least his trigger finger was in register against the frame. Thank heavens.

One only assumes that this Uniformed Officer of the Law (you know, one of the "Only Ones") had been trained in gun safety practices and procedures.  Also that he was experienced.   So we can only conjecture about why he didn't actually PRACTICE safe gun handling.

My guess is a combination of things:

• The only time he draws his firearms is on the range, and
• he doesn't spend a lot of time on the range, and
• that time is not under the direct supervision of a Range Officer, and
• he just never got called on his shoddy skills, so
• safe gun handling was never made to be (in the words of our revered Vice President of the United States of America)  "... A Big F*CKING DEAL!"

I recognize this.   I train new shooters for USPSA competition, and I see a LOT of people who are supposedly experienced, competent gun owners.

They do some really stupid shit.  Like, keeping their finger on the trigger when moving, loading, unloading, or clearing a malfunction.  or waving their pistol around when they're distracted by non-shooting activity.  (One of the more common errors: reaching down to pick up a dropped magazine at the end of the stage without holstering their pistol ... possibly sweeping themselves.)   Or they forget that one of the primary rules is to always keep the muzzle pointed in a safe direction.

You okay?

There are four ways you can insure that people who are new to shooting guns have a 'bad experience', resulting in YOU voicing the hopeful question:

You okay?

If you hear yourself saying that, you have probably done something stupid.  And someone else will pay the price.  Either that 'other person' will never again think that shooting a gun is "a good idea", or they will think that continuing their association with you is "a good idea".

The first is problematic; the second is unquestionable.  You are a Gun Dork, and your friends will never be "OKAY".

Here are the four ways to absolutely turn your friendships .. and your prospective shooting partners .. off:

Teaching Pistol Safety: Knuckle-Duster Alert

Have you ever seen someone shoot a semi-automatic pistol with his/her thumb wrapped around his/her wrist?

I have .. and I have ALWAYS stopped it!   That's a good way to hurt yourself ... badly!

Here's how it looks (sorry, it's a staged presentation, It looks kind of crummy, but it DOES demonstrate the problem!)

Selfie Alert: It's difficult to get a good picture of your hands, when you've nestled your digital camera under your chin.  I'm sure you're all familiar with that situation.

Anyway ... looking at the user-end of a 1911 (here, 2011 EDGE from STI), you can see that the knuckle of the off-hand thumb is sticking up into ... or at least near ... the 'glide path' of the slide.

I've seen a LOT of 'new shooters' use this grip, and it's perfectly acceptable if you're a revolver shooter.

But if you're shooting a semi-automatic pistol of ANY brand, make or model ... using this grip is terribly dangerous.

A Day Late and a Shamrock Short

I'm Irish.

Well, a quarter Irish ... blame it on my Paternal Grandmother, who was a Dildine.  (That's an Irish name, trust me on this.)

And I failed to observe St. Patrick's day properly.

I was sober.

Sure, and I'm happy to drink my friends' Jameson's, but I actually prefer Canadian Whiskey (MacNaughton's) when I have to buy my own liqueur.  And that's just wrong, in so many ways.  On the other hand, I'm a quarter Scots, so perhaps that explains my moral error.

I feel I've let the Ould Sod down, somehow, by not getting stinking drunk.   I hope my family doesn't learn about this ... my daughter married an Irishman (hope that's not a racial term, like "Chinaman", which got a Fox News commentator fired) and I have enjoyed many a tipple while celebrating National Holidays.  You know, like Independence Day, and Friday?

Hopefully, my Irish brethren will forgive me for not making a public spectacle of myself.  I promise to be a better Irishman in the future.

Makin' Bacon .. the Full Auto Way!

How to Cook Bacon Using Automatic Weapons and Suppressors [VIDEO]:

Bacon. Suppressors. Automatic Weapons. These are a few of my favorite things. In what maybe the most American video ever posted to YouTube, Top Shot Season 3 champion Dustin Ellerman managed to combine all three and prevent trichinosis all in one awesome video.

Perhaps my destiny is to point my readers to quality content available on other blogspots.

But I'm not too proud to steal their videos!