An Armed society is a Polite Society

About 40 years ago (I'm no Spring Chicken), my father and I went on  Antelope hunt in southern Wyoming.  We had hunted the area before .. we knew the people who owned the land, and we had received permission to hunt the land.

The Section was divided into several grazing ranges for cattle, so there were fences which we had to navigate and gates which we needed to cross through from time to time.

We were in his 1960 Dodge Pick-up truck, and I was driving. I had chosen to drive, so that when we crossed through a fence-line he would be the one who had to get out and open/close the gate.  (We scrambled for the drivers seat, like teenagers! )    This was in an area many miles away from developed roads, so we were traveling on the same rough dirt roads which the landowner traveled to ensure that the stock-ponds were filled, and to move his cattle.  No residences nearby .. it was wild country.

As we approached a gate through one of the fences, we encountered a party of four or five men on foot, coming out of the fenced area.  They had already opened the gate, so we waited until they had exited the gate.  They were on foot, and armed with rifles; apparently they had been hunting the area.

As they came along the side of our truck, we said hello and they replied most discourteously.  In fact, they were not only rude, but they were aggressive.  They made comments to the effect that they didn't have to walk when here was a truck and they could ride home.  It was obvious that they held no good will toward us, although we had never met any of them before and so they had no reason to mean us ill will.

Gun-Blog Topics Which Have Become Boring because they are so repetitive

• Why are Anti-gunners so mean?  (Because they don't like you)
• 
  
• Oh, look!  A New Gun!  (Duh)

• Oh, look!  A New Holster (Double Duh)
• 
  
• What's the best way to Carry Concealed?  (see: new holster)
• 
  
• Why do people think I'm a dork go crazy in the store just because I open carry?  (Could it be .. because they can't tell whether you are making a political statement, or you're about to shoot everybody in sight?)
• 
  
• Why should I believe that "nobody wants to take my guns" is a lie?  (They Do want to take your guns, but they also know that you have guns and .. uh .. well, it's kind of obvious that they want someone ELSE to take your guns but they can't talk them into confronting you, either, because they already think that you're some kind of suicidal freak-job)

• I think that xmm caliber guns are much better than Ymm caliber guns for Z purposes, because of (a) modern bullet design, or (b) bigger is better.  (Yes, you are correct.  Of course.)

• There's this new technology which is suppose to make our country safer because it provides a 'tool' for law enforcement to more easily find the bad guys when they do bad things.  But I think it's just going to make guns/ammunition/components so expensive that they will become unavailable.  (Yes, it's only going to infringe on legitimate gun owners.  And your point is?)

• This girl in Amarillo has posted an anti-gun opinion to Salon, and she's so DUH because she doesn't know anything about guns and yet she's telling us how we should live our lives.   Isn't that a perfect target to dis her?  (Yes, she's a dork. But telling her so won't do any good, because (a) 2,134 gun nuts have already explained the zillion ways she's an ignoramus, and (b) it really helped to build up her stats on Salon when you reply to her article, and (c) she isn't reading anything you said anyway, and (d) she's not your type and you are DEFINITELY not her type, so (e) don't bother fisking her; she will not be impressed.)

A Veterans View of ... Fear

Folks are talking about the Sniper movie, which seems controversial.

Blogger: Sipsey Street Irregulars - Post a Comment:

Dakota said... I took my son to see American Sniper last weekend. ... . My biggest shock of the movie amazingly came at the end of the movie. The last portion is the funeral of Chris Kyle and it is all actual footage and there are some credits that are rolling as this is happening...... not one person got up early to leave!!! When the screen went to nothing but credits people began to file out of the theatre in very orderly fashion and "NO ONE" was talking, it was this eerie silence that I have never experienced at the end of a movie. This lasted into the hallway and into the mens room. I have spoke to my friend in Albuquerque who said that the theatre stood in unison and clapped but did not speak. I must say that I thought of starting to clap but the somber mood that I was in it did not seem proper at the time to me so I did not and neither did anyone else.     January 20, 2015 at 10:09 AM

Thirty-something years ago, I took my wife to see "Platoon".  I didn't expect the visceral reaction I experienced.

At the end of the movie, while they rolled the credits, nobody moved.  Nobody said anything.  We were paralyzed ... or at least, I was ... by the sound of a man in the front row sobbing uncontrollably.

I couldn't blame him.  I was feeling emotional myself.  Everyone in the theater sat quietly and allowed him a few moments to gather himself; and then we quietly filed out.  He was still sitting there, hunched over, among the two or three people who had attended the showing with him.  I hope they helped him; I couldn't. But I could understand why he over-reacted to the "it's just a story" movie.

The moment in that story which most powerfully affected me was when the non-hero was on ambush watch, and a file of NVA soldiers moved through the night-defensive (aka "ambush") position.  The Young Soldier was too frightened to move, or even alert the men who were sleeping beside him while he was on "night watch".  And that story pointedly did not depict him telling them about the experience after it was over.  Instead, he just curled up and died a small death.

This is a recurring nightmare which I had found myself unable to cope with for years.   It was among the worst fears of many veterans .. finding yourself surprised, unprepared, terrified by the sudden imposition of the enemy in overwhelming numbers.  And there's nothing you can do except freeze in place and pray that they don't notice you.

(There are other fears, just as powerful, and just as difficult to understand without the background of living with Fear sitting in the corner of your mind like a demon who never quite leaves you alone.)

Note to Gun Bloggers: I Don't Listen To Podcasts!

Okay, short note here.   Like most people I'm more visually oriented than (what's the word?) "auditorily" oriented.  So I don't care which very knowledgeable gun bloggers have a lot of very important opinions to offer, I'm not going to listen the them.  Sorry, Michaell I haven't listened to yo since you and I and Sandie shared a dinner at the 1998 Area 1 match in Reno.

I can't think of a more boring/loser way to spend an evening than to listen to someone's podcast pontificating on the Internet.  Do NOT send me emails (or whatever) inviting me to listen to your podcast.       I DON'T CARE!

Oh ...his is too long?  Let me please make it as brief as possible:

FOAD

Go directly to jail, do not pass go: Fools that they are.

Apparently, someone DOES want to take your guns!  (Who Knew?)   And yes, it's not just the people who elected Biden as their Senator for decades!  Well .. perhaps it is.

Sandy Hook Commission: Ban guns holding more than 10 rounds, no grandfathering (VIDEO):
(January 18, 2014)

A special commission set up by Connecticut Gov. Dannel P. Malloy after the Newtown shooting is ready to recommend a total ban on the sale and possession of guns capable of holding 10 rounds or more.

[H/T: Sipsey Street]

There are a lot of issues which might make this proposed legislation "problematic", including the Second Amendment.

Any firearm which is reloaded via an 'external magazine' might be reloaded with a magazine capable of holding 11, 15, 22, 30 ... who knows how many rounds?  So right there, you've "arbitrarily and unilaterally" eliminate everything but Revolvers and Bolt Action rifles.

Which was obviously the goal of this Star Chamber Commission.

French Police Confront Terrorists!

AND the French do what they do best ....

They Retreat.

Oh, I was the incentive for him to become a MULTI-BILLIONAIRE ...

... so I expect a billion dollars as my 'found money' during our divorce.


Billionaire’s ex-wife cashes his $975M check | Fox Business Video: Sue Ann Arnall, ex-wife of Harold Hamm, cashing a $975M check from him after initially rejecting it.

Oh yeah.  I'm thinking she was a significant asset in his financial serendipity.

The FRENCH: and Why I Ain't Been Talkin' to Y'all Lately

The world is full of bloggers.  Oh my yes, Lots and Lots of folks tabbing between Fox News and CNN just drooling over the Story De Jour.

Today?  French Marxists Muslims Islamic People who kill people for no reason related to their religion at ALL are killing people by the dozens in Paris

Parse THAT, Cambridge Scholars!

I don't want to talk about it.
But I will, anyways.

"Fight on Guns" ... 'they' don't understand why, but they don't like 'em

The great service that Op-Ed columns provide to their readers is that they provide every ignoramus a venue to vent their spleen even though they don't know a thing about their subject:

"The reason for all those guns is not for self defense, not for hunting and not for sport. The simple reason is that so many Americans are obsessed with guns and gun ownership."

Thesis:
Fight on Guns Is Being Taken to State Ballots - NYTimes.com:\

 Closing loopholes on background checks for gun owners is an area Americans support far more than steps like curbs on assault weapons or limits on magazine sizes. A recent Pew survey, for instance, showed that 52 percent of respondents said they believed it was more important to protect gun ownership rights. That figure was up from 29 percent in 2000. Still, in a 2013 poll, Pew found that nearly 75 percent of respondents supported background-check expansions.

Antithesis:
http://blogs.seattletimes.com/opinionnw/2014/12/17/a-glimpse-inside-washingtons-gun-culture-after-initiative-594/

(author: "Tom"): 

I despair that this nation will get a grip on gun control or gun safety anytime soon. The reason for all those guns is not for self defense, not for hunting and not for sport. The simple reason is that so many Americans are obsessed with guns and gun ownership. Contrast this ethos with that of other, similar cultures around the world and see what I mean.
So until the gun ownership mania goes away, guns won't go away, and the associated violence and mayhem won't either. What would cause the mania to go away? I haven't a clue.
Of course, gun advocates tell us that "guns don't kill people, people kill people." That's right. People kill people. With guns.

 Deep in the heart of Texas 3 days ago

Actually, Tom is almost half right.

Guns won't go away:

For hunting, for sport, for defense, and to protect the rights of The People;

Even to protect the rights of "Tom". Whether he likes it or not, the 2nd Amendment protects his First Amendment right to spout liberal tautology.

Respect The Gun

The hardest hardest lesson to teach "new shooters" is to RESPECT THE GUN.

When I teach people how to safely compete in IPSC matches, there all-too-frequent moments when the class members get distracted by secondary considerations, and seem to forget that they have a gun in their hand.   The muzzle of their gun may end up pointing in any direction, and they are unaware of just WHERE it is pointing.

Many people who attend gun safety classes consider themselves to be skilled, experienced  gun persons with good judgement.  They are often wrong in their self assessment.   They are not adept at "multi-tasking", which includes the ability to hold a loaded gun in one hand while fishing for a reload-magazine.

The most important lesson for them to learn is that they are holding a deadly weapon, and they alone are responsible for handling it safely; any other consideration is secondary

When they forget this lesson, their troubles multiply instantly.

Teaching Gun Safety (The REAL Story)

Some people just shouldn't have guns.  They don't understand the concept of safe gun-handling techniques, but they think it looks easy, so they want to try it out.

That's where I come in.  I teach people how to shoot safely under stress.  Not everybody is quite up to the challenge. If they can't hack it ... by the end of the afternoon, they know it better than I do.

And I know it.  I watch them pass or fail, and I never have tell them that they have failed the course:  I never see them again.   It's as simple as that.

Yeah, I bet you get tired of hearing how excited I am about teaching a new lot of folks how to compete safely in IPSC competition.

But I don't get tired of talking about it, and I don't get tired about the joy of watching new wanna-be competitors having fun shooting even the most mundane (or the most challenging) of live-fire exercises.

I've been doing this for four or five years now.

 Fifty percent of the  people I teach don't attend more than a single match, if that.  They're not all here for the competition; they're as often here to check it (competition shooting) out and see if this is something that they want to spend their time and money on.

It's a self-fulfilling prophesy:  They get some trigger time in, realize that *(a) they don't think they're good enough to do this, or *(b) they think they might be good enough ... in time .. but they don't care enough to spend the time to be 'good at it'.

Sometimes ... enough to make it worth my effort ... they prove to be safe, accurate, interested competitors that I wouldn't mind squading with.

The more things change, the more they stay the same

Florida Man Charged With Decapitating Mom With Ax - NBC News.com:

 A schizophrenic Florida man chopped off his mother's head with an ax because she kept nagging him about chores, police said Thursday. Christian Jose Gomez, 23, who has several previous arrests, was booked on a charge of first-degree murder for the grisly New Year's Eve crime in Oldsmar. He allegedly told police he had been planning the attack for two days because he was angry over his mother's requests that he put some boxes in the attic, NBC station WFLA reported. Gomez put his mother's head in a garbage can but couldn't lift her body so he left it outside.

Welcome to 2015.

It's a good thing that no guns were involved; otherwise, people would think that guns are the reason why people kill people.

Some people are inherently violent.  In this case, the story made the news specifically because the crime was so horrendous.

If the murder was committed by a firearm, the story would have appeared low down on Page 7.  The people who think that people kill people because it's so easy to kill with a gun would have been all over this story.

Axe murders have always been "popular": Lizzie Borden (1892) found this an easily ready weapon.

The case was memorialized in a popular skipping-rope rhyme:

Lizzie Borden took an ax

And gave her mother forty whacks.

When she saw what she had done,

She gave her father forty-one.

There were no axe-control advocates back then.

Perhaps there should have been?

If only for the children.

Yawn.

Two people shot to death on Detroit's east side - Fox 2 News Headlines:

 DETROIT, Mich. (WJBK) - Two people were shot to death on Detroit's east side Wednesday. Both victims were getting into a vehicle in the 4000 block of University Place near Mack Avenue at about 6 p.m. according to Detroit Police. Another vehicle arrived and opened fire, killing a man and woman in their 30s in a driveway of a residence.

Understatement of the year!

TV on-the-scene reporter's comment:
  "Not the way you want to celebrate the end of 2014."

And the "Top Commenter" (the ONLY commenter") has this to say:

Marlean Dubry Leach ·  Top Commenter · The College Of Life

Yawn.

Reply · 

 · 8 hours ago

Given the apathetic state of Detroit Denizens, perhaps they should change the name from "Motor City" to "Motiveless City".

NOTE:   This is NOT the incident reported here.

Russian target ONLINE shooting game

Screw politics.  I wanna shoot something ... and it's raining outside!

So you think you can shoot a handgun. Check this one out.  Try it: see how good you are with a Russian pistol.( All text is in Russian. ) Save money and ammunition too!
The virtual pistol is a Soviet Tokarev Model 40, in caliber 7.62 mm.  It is quite accurate.Being virtual, it will lack the actual 'feel' and the recoil.  In real life, at each shot, the recoil will throw your aim off the target.
When the pistol appears, click on the trigger, take aim, and fire.  It’s very much like the real thing.The longer you hold the pistol, the more your aim will wander.
You have 3 shots in 30 seconds to hit the target and get your score.
CAUTION: It’s addictive.
click here:
Russian Shooting Range
Click on the white dot on the trigger guard to start, after your 3 shots click on first line in box to try again.Enjoy!

(H/T:  Big Dawg)

The link opens in the same window ... you may wish to right-click it.

Geek addendum:  yes, I tried and and it is addictive.  I got a lot of high-twenty scores out of 30 possible, but never got the perfect score.  I quit after 10 minutes.  

Here's the real challenge: can you do this for 10 minutes and quit?

Merry Christmas ... early, and horrible!

Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer original video - YouTube:

How's that Catch 'n Release program working?

US government offering $5M reward for Al Qaeda leader freed from Gitmo | Fox News:

The Obama administration is scrambling to track down an Al Qaeda terrorist released from Guantanamo Bay years ago, offering a $5 million reward for information on him and placing him on a global terrorist list.
  Ibrahim al-Rubaysh was originally released in 2006 by the George W. Bush administration and put into a Saudi Arabian "rehabilitation" program. However, al-Rubaysh returned to the battlefield and now serves as a top leader with Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula -- one of the most dangerous Al Qaeda affiliates.

(emphasis added)


Amazingly, this "catch and release" policy is one  which the Obama Administration has continued to support.

And in fact still is trying to  effect.   But he's getting some criticism as he is making the issue one of 'financial considerations"..

Silence Of The Lambs

Peshawar school attack: Taliban 'burn teacher alive in front of pupils and behead children':

Taliban terrorists allegedly burned a teacher alive and made the students watch during their attack on a Pakistan school which left over 130 people dead. According to a NBC News report, citing an unnamed military official, the terrorists stormed the Army Public school in Peshawar, in north-west Pakistan, and committed the horrific act as well as detonating a suicide bomb which killed a number of students. "They burnt a teacher in front of the students in a classroom," the unnamed military source told the US TV network. "They literally set the teacher on fire with gasoline and made the kids watch." At least six militants entered the Pakistani school wearing security uniforms, before massacring an estimated 132 people and injuring another 122.

(H/T: Irons in the Fire)

Compare this to Sandy Hook:

The Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting occurred on December 14, 2012, in Newtown, Connecticut, when 20-year-old Adam Lanza fatally shot 20 children and 6 adult staff members.Prior to driving to the school, Lanza shot and killed his mother at their Newtown home. As first responders arrived at the scene, Lanza committed suicide by shooting himself in the head.

I don't mean to denigrate the tragedy of the Sandy Hook school shooting.  I merely offer it in comparison.

In America, we acknowledge that this kind of "Silence of the Lambs" slaughter of the innocents is rightfully considered to be an aberration of of Civilized society.  In other societies, it's Business As usual.  It's political.

Here ... we hold our people and our governments to a higher standard.   

In America, Liberals hold the peaceful citizens responsible for their actions ... and acknowledge (if reluctantly) that there is perhaps a reason why citizens should be allowed cannot be prohibited from owning guns.

We say: "When Guns Are outlawed, Only Outlaws Will Own Guns"

Liberals say"  "Small Penis Gun Nuts, Fearful Of Imaginary Bad Guys, Salivate Over The Prospect Of Getting To Shoot a Burglar".

Well .. here's what it looks like when "only outlaws own guns".

With all respect to the victims of Sandy Hook and their families .. and I had no intention to minimize their grief at the tragedy .... I recently watched a video in which teachers who survived Sandy Hook discussed their experiences and announced that the solution was to remove all firearms from private hands .. by law.

Condescending Co-President

Biden to code-writing girls: ‘You’re as smart as any boy’ | Fox News:

Don't worry, girls. "You're as smart as any boy." That was the message Monday from Vice President Biden as he pep-talked a group of young women during a White House technology event, in a uniquely Biden way.

How precious that the second-best Democrat in the nation should reassure "girls" that way.

Biden is, and always has been, an idiot.  The worst thing is not that he is clue-less, but that the Democrats decided that he was ... acceptable ... to represent our nation.

After a CBS News reporter tweeted the comments, Biden's office retweeted them. 

They're proud of their boy, they are!

Go, watch this!

Never Yet Melted L Flash Mob: The U.S. Air Force Band at the Smithsonian

It will exalt you, and it will heal your heart.

Happy Anniversary

I have been thinking that December 8 was the ten-year anniversary of Cogito Ergo Geek.   But when I looked for my first post, I discovered it was published on December 01, 2004.   Not December 8.

This calls for something special.  I'm thinking ... Fireworks!

Oh ... go Full-Screen! You know you wanna!