Entitlement attitude

From the Seattle Police Department:

Around 1 pm Thursday, two teens were sitting on the steps of Franklin High School when a woman climbed out of a blue Audi parked on the street, approached the teens, and asked to use one of the teens’ cell phones.

One of the teens reluctantly handed her iPhone over to the woman, who walked off with the victim’s phone, climbed into the Audi and sped away.

The victim immediately went inside the school and called 911.

Patrol officers spotted the Audi near Rainier Avenue and S. Othello Street, pulled the car over and contacted the two 18-year-old women inside.

One of the women in the car then pulled the victim’s iPhone out of her purse, handed it back to officers., and said [s]he had taken it because her phone had died and she needed a new one.

Officers booked both women into the King County Jail, where they’re undoubtedly enjoying the jail’s excellent cell coverage.

Interesting response. Did the thief actually believe she was entitled to replace her phone in this manner? I think a case can be made that people have been getting “free” stuff from via government theft for so long that some believe they are improving the system by removing the middle-man.

Quote of the day—C.D. Michel

So the police are not obligated to help, can sue you if they do, and you get to pay for the privilege.

Such government shenanigans are part of the drive behind “stand your ground” laws. With the police often unable to help, or even openly hostile once they do, self-protection becomes a necessity. Legal protections like stand your ground laws are essential. They provide that in the absence of police assistance, or under the threat of police litigation, one can keep their life without losing their liberty.

C.D. Michel
September 2, 2013
When Police Sue You
[The back story is that a woman called the cops because of a man in her house (who she presumably knew) who had been using illegal recreational drugs for days. The cop shows up, gets beat up, shoots and kills the man, then sues the woman.

One has to wonder; Would the woman have been better off just shooting the man herself then calling the cops to take the trash out?—Joe]

Gun Song – Pistol Packin’ Mama by Bing Crosby

Bing Crosby is a famous singer and actor to people of a certain age, performing from the mid 1920s to the mid 1970s. He was a number of musicals and comedy shows, both movies and TV. Very talented guy.

This is his 1943 rendition of the then-well-known song, singing with the Andrews Sisters, a popular trio from the era.

Quote of the day—David Hardy

Therefore be it enacted:

I. Limitation on Use of Force in Self-Defense.

A. The victim of attempted murder, rape, robbery or other violent offense is not justified in using force to resist unless the said victim is unable to retreat from the person attempting the violent offence.

B. A person attempting to prevent the commission of murder, rape, robbery or other violent offense against another person is not justified unless the victim is unable to retreat from the person attempting the violent offense.

C. This Act shall be entitled “The Violent Criminals’ Protection Act of 2013.”

David Hardy
September 5, 2013
“No retreat” law repeal
[Hardy is a very pro-gun lawyer who has written (or ghost-written) many briefs on firearms cases for the Supreme Court. The above is him mocking the anti-gun people.

There is more at the post that is worthy of your time. It gives you a great deal of clarity into the apparent mindset of those who oppose “Stand your ground” laws.—Joe]

Al Capone reincarnated?

Robb Allen recently tweeted:

This reminded me of something Al Capone once said:

You can get much further with a kind word and a gun than you can with a kind word alone.

I’d suggest Capone had been reincarnated as Robb Allen but Capone was a syphilis infected, booze running, Chicago mobster and Robb lives in Florida*.


*Robb is also a really nice family guy who writes software for a living.

Quote of the day—Chris Cox

We’ll never match Bloomberg dollar for dollar, but we don’t have to. The hearts and minds of the American people certainly aren’t for sale to a billionaire mayor from New York City.

Chris Cox
September 1, 2013
Mayor Bloomberg is the best friend of 2nd Amendment advocates
[What is just as interesting to me about the above quote is that it, and about half of the opinion piece by Emily Miller, has been removed. Even Emily’s name was removed! The full opinion piece was there and more of it can be seen here.—Joe]

I sweat easily

It doesn’t take much to cause me to break out into a sweat. A tiny bit of exercise and I start sweating. Even the spices in the mildest spaghetti sauce will cause my forehead to start sweating.

It turns out my fear of heights triggers an increased heart rate and sweat—just from looking at this picture I took when I was in Yosemite last month:

IMG_8544


Update: Here is a cropped version of the same picture:

IMG_8544Cropped

Visualize where his center of gravity is versus his right foot. He’s taking a picture so he isn’t using much more than his proprioception and ears to maintain his balance.

Now give me a towel to wipe the sweat off.


I had to look away after taking the picture. It made me way too uncomfortable.

Barb wanted to look over a similar edge about 50 yards away. When she got within about eight feet I asked her to stop. It was making me too uncomfortable. She got down on her hands and knees and continued. As she got to within about two feet I again asked her to stop. She stretched out and looked over to my extreme discomfort. She pulled back and said, “That’s a long way down.”

IMG_8502

I don’t know why she is smiling unless for some bizarre reason she likes my sweat.

Quote of the day—Alfred Hitchcock

I never said all actors are cattle; what I said was all actors should be treated like cattle.

Alfred Hitchcock
Via Robert J. Avrech in Hollywood on Hollywood
[I’m not convinced that all actors should be treated like cattle. But when actors start expressing views and getting involved in things that they either know nothing about, or worse, have firmly held erroneous beliefs, then I understand the sentiment.—Joe]

More on Markley’s law

PETA is now promoting the idea that eating chicken will result in a small penis and other problems.

Well sure– If the idea that animals are essentially equal to humans doesn’t stop us from eating animals, then we might as well take the penis angle, because apparently people care more about penises (and sex) than practically anything else. It’s bound to get a few more, uh, members.

This is part of a long term trend. Leftists used to attack people they don’t like by calling us “fags” or “queers” but since they now have to pretend that they’re promoting the rights of homosexuals, they have to turn to other methods of distraction. Hence Markley’s law, and the recent PETA story is part of the same trend of using sex as a cultural/political lever.

A common phrase used back in the 1960s and early ’70s (the Vietnam war period) was “Girls say yes to guys who say no”. It’s an appeal to young, horny men, telling them straight up that they’ll get laid more if they at least pretend to help support the Progressives and the communists.

It’s a common theme among communists, to get the vulnerable young people on board, and sex is a powerful lure. Charles Manson used young women as bait to sucker young males into the group, and Sun Myung Moon, Jim Jones, the Heavens Gate Cult and others in a long line of socialist predators (but I repeat myself) followed very similar tactics. Islamists, we are told, will be treated to a harem of dozens of virgins if they die in the great and glorious jihad (and Allah will be super happy about your killing people too, but seriously; virgins!). They could just as well promote a new scientific study which finds that reading American freedom blogs will result in sexual dysfunction, and so the 72 virgins in heaven might go unsatisfied, and we wouldn’t want THAT to happen would we? If they haven’t done it already, they will.

Nothing changes. PETA has just put a slightly different twist on it, but their new spin has a lot of precedent. It is a good one though, as the left has also been trying to make us fear our food, our water, our air, and our neighbors, and this gimmick hits on at least two fronts.

And so I say to PETA; Good one, guys! Right on! You’re in good company. Keep up the good work. You’re completely insane, sure, but you’re giving it the old college try, you’re learning from your predecessors, and that deserves some respect.

Parenthetically; if animals raised for slaughter are as good and have rights the same as people, then people are no better and have no more rights than animals raised for slaughter, which is the whole point of organizations like PETA even if most of their members are clueless kids just trying to get laid. Remember it.

Quote of the day—Sebastian

It’s not that many who support gun control want to live in a world without criminals having guns, they want to live in a world without people like you and me.

Sebastian
August 29, 2013
It’s Never Been About Crime
[There is a lot of evidence to support this thesis. Others have come to the same conclusion a well. Cam Edwards, here, is one. Alan Gottlieb once also told the Microsoft Gun Club (now “The Gun Club at Microsoft”) Chuck Schumer didn’t hate guns so much as he hated our culture.

Think about that. This isn’t really about guns. This is about destroying the individualist culture. The concept of the individual and individual rights is one of the fundamental differences between western culture and all others. And these people want to destroy it.—Joe]

Before and after

As I reported last February the shipping container at Boomershoot Mecca had a rust problem and was developing leaks. The sides were rusting too. And the color just didn’t match the surroundings very well. It needed to be repaired and painted.

Here you can see some of the evidence of decay:

IMG_2942IMG_2943 IMG_2945IMG_2949 IMG_2953

And how it doesn’t really fit in with the surroundings:

After several failed attempts on my part to get someone to fix the roof and paint the sides Barb L. (if you want something done drop her a hint and stand back) found someone. I sent them a partial payment a couple weeks ago and this morning I received a text message to my cell phone with this picture:

V__88D6

I haven’t inspected it yet but I’m pleased with what I see so far.

Update: Here are some more pictures that came in on the morning of September 3:

V__6600 V__F20E

Quote of the day—Top Conservative Cat

Trayvon Martin would’ve been 18 today, which is sad, but at least George Zimmerman was allowed to carry a gun to hide how small his penis is

Top Conservative Cat (@TeaPartyCat)
Tweeted on February 6, 2013
[It’s another Markley’s Law Monday!

The reality of it appears, at this time, that Zimmerman is alive today because his right to carry a gun was not infringed.—Joe]

Random thought of the day

Jacketed hollow points make the best rape whistles.

Next Generation Shooter

I took the boy sprout to the range for the first time today. It was beautiful, warm and sunny, the other sprout was off with a friend, the spousal unit was wanting some alone time, and it’s near the end of summer vacation, so it seemed like a good day for it. In some ways, he’s a totally typical boy – anything with water or dirt is great, and every stick is a sword, everything else it a gun, a tank, a bomber, or something that makes explody sounds for some reason. He’s always been interested in guns, and we have gone over the basic safety rules any number of times. So, off to the range it was.

FirstShoot 002 Continue reading

On Race Gunning and TV

I don’t do race gunning for the most part, which of course qualifies me as an Internet Race-gunning Expert.

I just finished watching an episode of 3 Gun Nation. By the way; Internet TV is really the best way to watch TV. You don’t have to program a recorder to catch your favorite shows. They’re all recorded on the server, so you just go and pick out what you want, whether it’s live or whether it’s two years old.

First impressions after the episode; Wow, but there are a lof of gun malfunctions! It seemed that every shooter had to deal with a malf on at least one stage. I do not know. Is it that the guns are so specialized that they’re accepting less reliability as a role of the dice, such that when the gun doesn’t fail you get a super duper stage run? OR, is the show edited so as to highlight malfs? After that experience, I can almost envision a moment in the sport wherein someone uses a stock standard gun, wins, and is accused of having had an unfair advantage.

Watching the shooters do their run-throughs prior to shooting a stage continues to mildly disturb me. I’m thinking of a skit. It’s a defensive situation, and the defender demands a run-through before the bad guy is allowed to commit his horrible act of aggression.

There’s a conflict between calling it practical shooting and having a nice and safe spectator sport in which every shooter can maximize his performance. Wouldn’t it be just as fair for the shooters, and yet more of a practical exercise, if no one got to see the stage before shooting it? Or maybe have at least one stage no one sees before shooting?

On TV in general, a camera, a microphone and an editor can be used to depict reality, or to change it all around and mix it up. Say you want to experience the taste of a new apple variety, or you want to bring that new variety to the public. So you hire a chef, and by way of impressing us with his skills he dresses up the apple by baking it and covering it with caramel, cinnamon and nutmeg and topping it with a dollop of whipped cream.

It may be a really great dish, but in the processing you are robbed of the experience of the apple itself. Same goes with TV. If it’s a motorcycle show and I want to know how the engine sounds, they rob me of that experience by ALWAYS overdubbing heavy metal music on top of it. If you want to know something of the pace of the shooting event, you have to sort of guess, because of the fast editing and the slow-mos.

Quote of the day—Barb L.

You don’t really pack a suitcase. Do you? You just put a few clothes in your gun case.

Barb L.
August 28, 2013
[There is more than a little truth in this.

This was from her watching me pack my duffle bag and before she knew about the case that had nothing but a gun, magazines, and 400 rounds of ammo in it.—Joe]

Guns safes

I’ve added a new “partner” to The View From North Central Idaho: GunSafes.com. They offer free shipping on a large line of gun (and other) safes. They are almost a neighbor being physically located in North Idaho.

I’m not so sure about the Mesa Hitch Hiker Vehicle Safe even if it is kinda cool. I wish they had a console vault for one of my vehicles.

Quote of the day–David Hardy

The law has the concept of justified homicide. The average person has the concept of “good riddance.”

Dave Hardy
August 29, 2013
No indictment, and hardly surprising
[The anti-gun people don’t understand either.–Joe]

Gun Song – Big Gun by AC/DC

From the movie soundtrack of Last Action Hero. It was an interesting movie. It absolutely tanked at the box office, got really lousy reviews, and generally totally trashed. It had all the “right” ingredients for a hit: Arnold Schwarzenegger, pithy lines, explosions and action, hot chicks, crazy villain. But it flopped. I agreed with that assessment. It was just so over the top, it was really wrong.

Then, a couple of years ago, I read a review of it that said it wasn’t a “serious” action movie; it was Arnold making satire, and we all just missed it. Arnold was spoofing the whole genre that had trapped him. Suddenly it made a LOT more sense. In that context, it’s pretty not bad. Lots of metaphors and such, when that’s what you are expecting.

AC/DC, of course, needs no introduction, so I’ll just post the link.

Quote of the day—Billll

Luring her out to the range to shoot your EBR is all well and good, but when it transpires that you have no ammo due to the national shortage, it begins to look like the old dodge of “running out of gas” at inspiration point.

Billll
August 27, 2013
Comment to Quote of the day—Amber Callipo
[I’ve “lured” women to the range with EBRs on many occasions. But in no case was there a sexual element present on my part that wasn’t established prior to the invitation to the range. I just don’t feel the connection between guns and sex like some people do and tend to be oblivious. That is until the woman makes her intentions clear that, at least for her, there is a connection.

Your mileage may vary.—Joe]