Really, about the only thing I would significantly change about CCA is their range – I would love to have an indoor, air conditioned, rifle range, but such a thing does not exist in this area, sadly. I wonder how much such backstops would cost…
Anywise, thanks again, Coal Creek Armory! Maybe now my range times will be more frequent than once or twice a month…
(Oh, and do not worry – WizardPC and Shane both received passes as well, though I am not sure how often either will be able to use them.)
If your personal agenda involves completely ridding the planet of human beings, people aren’t likely to listen until you go completely bonkers and take hostages (and even then, you’re still out of your mind and in the minority). That’s the long and short of what happened at The Discovery Channel’s building yesterday, when a whackjob decided that he was tired of the network not meeting his manifesto’s ridiculous demands.
This nutbag (who shall remain nameless at this site, simply because I do not believe in feeding the attention-whoring desires of people like him) firmly believed that humans were a blight upon the world, and wanted the Discovery Channel to start airing shows encouraging people to cut down on the population in any way they can think of. Yeah. Because that makes sense. Look, I do not really understand what motivates the Duggars to have the family they do, and even though Better Half watches the show semi-regularly, I do not really see the attraction… but using their existance and publicization as a springboard for your own whackjob agenda? Yeah, that is a special kind of frakking nuts.
My hypothesis is that at some level they know that is the only method by which they can achieve their goals. They, almost by definition, believe in the power of government to “do good” no matter what domain they enter into.
[...]
Those who want to expand government, by definition, want to expand the use of force to achieve their goals. It should therefore come as no surprise that liberal individuals and groups are inclined to use violence to further their goals even outside the domain of government.
There is no way on God’s Green Earth (which seems to be puttering along relatively well in light of all those horrific things that environuts like this one claim we have done to it) that the Discovery Network would have even considered this loon’s … er… “suggestions”… if he had presented them in a rational, reasonable manner, so he knew that the only way they stood a snowball’s chance in a fusion reactor of getting any airtime was through force.
And, lo and behold, he did get his airtime… and reduce the overall population of the world at the same time. Win / win, with an extra “win” for the rest of us, what with getting rid of a violent lunatic and all.
On the flip side, Robb has this to say about this whackadoodle’s suicide-by-cop:
Sometimes, crazy is just crazy. It’s a cheap and easy ‘point for your team’ to be able to point out that someone on the other side is a few fries short of a Happy Meal, but it’s not necessarily true. Sure, this Darwin Award Winner espoused radical views that find a better home on the left, but to insist that the left ‘claim him as one of their own’ makes as much sense as saying those on the right are equally responsible for McVeigh.
… which brings me to my happy little middle-ground – imagine, for a second, that this particular armed creep publicly proclaimed that he was personally motivated by such individuals as Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and other decidedly right-leaning voices. Now, imagine what the reaction would be from the “progressives”/”liberals” of America. Hell, you do not really need to imagine, just consider the reaction to late-term abortion doctor George Tiller’s murder – those selfsame, supposedly accepting, tolerant “liberals”/”progressives” were slathering for the blood of Rush, Beck, any right-oriented public speaker, and, hell, anyone who even remotely might be against abortion in any of its various flavors. They were desperately and aggresively trying to spread blame, responsibility, and accountability as far and as wide as they possibly could, regardless of the fact that Tiller’s murderer acted alone, and of his own free will.
Where is the corrresponding outrage against environmentalists, Al Gore, Daniel Quinn, and the other greenies and leftists who apparently inspried this frakwit?
If all pro-life activists are to blame for the unfortunate murder of an abortion doctor, then all environmentalists are to blame for this hostage situation… right?
What is with folks obnoxiously demanding to know where other people’s proverbial “lines in the sand” are (see here, here, and, hell, all the way back here)? (1) It is rude (both the question, and how it is delivered the vast majority of the time). (B) It is none of your gorramed business. And (III), do you honestly think I would be stupid enough to publicize when I might start taking a… more-proactive stance… in protecting my rights?
Look, if you want to go braying from the rooftops about the exact place and time when you will start voting from those same structures, shiny – but for the love of all that is Holy and Good, stop acting so offended and put-out when people understandably tell you to piss off after you make some kind of half-assed, condescending accusation (sometimes) cloaked in an insulting question. Act like a jerk, get treated like a jerk – deal with it already.
… which is probably just as well, considering that their fried catfish was so bland and grease-soaked, I am honestly not sure if it actually was catfish.
At any rate, travelling to distant corners of the world with the Navy taught me to try food from strange and unusual places… Granted, a lot of the time, you will probably strike out, but sometimes you find something truly remarkable. The last town we lived in had a restaurant that crafted a positively amazing cashew chicken, but its external appearance was… well… not exactly inspiring.
This time around, I was spelunking the depths of the restaurants in our general area, happened across Captain Ernie’s Fish House, and figured that, despite being in a strip mall, it might be worth a shot. I called them up, put in a pick-up order, stopped by their particular hole in the wall… and was confronted with the following sign (the blockquote, not the image):
PURSUANT TO § 39-17-1359, THE OWNER/OPERATOR OF THIS PROPERTY HAS BANNED WEAPONS ON THIS PROPERTY, OR WITHIN THIS BUILDING OR THIS PORTION OF THIS BUILDING. FAILURE TO COMPLY WITH THIS PROHIBITION IS PUNISHABLE AS A CRIMINAL ACT UNDER STATE LAW AND MAY SUBJECT THE VIOLATOR TO A FINE OF NOT MORE THAN FIVE HUNDRED DOLLARS ($500).
Sighing, I made arrangements for the firearm I was carrying at the time, since I was out running errands, went inside, paid for and accepted the meal I had already ordered, and left… but I can guarantee I will not return.
Overfried, dripping in grease, might not have actually been the fish I ordered, and a restaurant that would rather discriminate against me trying to lawfully exercise my rights, rather than accept my patronage. Yeah. Not going to waste my money there. Thanks.
Using the Leading Causes of Death tool, and limiting it to 2007; the top 20 causes; all age groups, genders, and ethnicities; and only violence-related injuries, one discovers a predictable chart giving us these numbers:
17,352 people took their own lives using firearms. 12,632 people were murdered by other people using firearms. 1,981 people were murdered by people using cutting/piercing implements. 619 people took their own lives using a cutting/piercing implement.
As I said, fairly expected numbers.
Now head on over to the Leading Causes of Nonfatal Injuries tool, and set it to 2007 (so we compare like years); top 20 causes; all age groups, genders, and ethnicities; and violence-related injuries, and you get these figures:
93,325 people were injured in an assault by other people wielding cutting/piercing implements. 77,024 people hurt themselves with a cutting/piercing implment. 48,676 people were injured in an assault by other people wielding a firearm. 4,291 people hurt themselves with a firearm.
Both of those datasets understandably omitted deaths and injuries resulting from legal intervention, for obvious reasons, and all of these fatalities and injuries are violence-related, which rules out accidents.
So why am I putting these numbers up? I find them interesting – you are more than welcome, however, to draw your own conclusions. We can note a few things, though – when it comes to “lives being impacted” by inanimate tools being wielded by those with malicious intent, knives certainly have the upper hand. This calls into question the anti-rights bigots claims that they are working to ensure “public safety”… if that were the case, why not go after the tool that accounts for more total injuries, and that does not have a Constitutional amendment specifically protecting it. I mean, that is working so well in once-Great Britain.
Moving on, suicides are a complicated topic – a lot of them are committed by people who do not really want to kill themselves, a lot of them are committed by people who want attention, and a lot of them are attempts that go wrong… and vice versa. The simple truth is that firearms are significantly more effective for killing yourself than a knife, so more people who are interested in doing the job right the first time use them. However, banning firearms does not make the suicides that would have been committed with firearms simply go away – in point of fact, people who do want to kill themselves do find other means:
When the firearm suicide rate for Australian males declined the hanging rate increased simultaneously, with no statistical difference in the rate of change of the two methods.
The better method of preventing suicides is unquestionably intervention and prevention strategies, rather than banning an inanimate object. Likewise, anti-rights bigots are demonstrably selective when it comes to firearm-to-suicide relationships:
One study found a statistically significant relationship between gun ownership levels and suicide rate across 14 developed nations (e.g. where survey data on gun ownership levels were available), but the association lost its statistical significance when additional countries were included.
Of course, this all disregards my own personal take on the matter of suicide, but that is another topic for another post.
Finally, firearms are demonstrably more-lethal than knives. However, if one were to take all injuries inflicted by knives, and all injuries inflicted by firearms (both fatal and non-fatal), knives are far in the lead when it comes to “being used by malicious individuals for aggressive purposes”. Do people honestly believe that those criminally-inclined individuals who used to use firearms will simply give up their life of crime, in totality, if firearms were banned in America? Or will they instead cast-about for another form of force-multiplying tool, and use that instead? Thankfully, once-Great Britain again provides us the answer:
That means that, based on these statistics, you are more than twice as likely to be a victim of knife crime in the UK as you are to be a victim of gun crime in the US.
And then there is the obvious bit about once-Great Britain having the highest violent crime rate in the EU – a rate that is higher than even America’s, and a rate that has been steadily increasing since the 1920s, despite (or perhaps due to) increasingly tightening restrictions on firearms.
So there is your daily dose of random numbers – numbers that, in the end, do not really matter. Self-defense is a natural right, regardless of whatever statistics might say about its outcome.
Over the years, I have become rather accustomed to waking up with at least one of my limbs still soundly asleep, and completely disfunctional – just one of those things. However, waking up in the middle of the night, face down in your pillow, with both arms asleep… yeah, that is going to lead to a few flail-filled, entertaining minutes…
I don’t know how I missed this yesterday, but apparently a server has filed a TOSHA complaint that argues it’s unsafe for bars not to post 1359 signage, because “an employer has a duty to protect and safeguard employees against recognized hazards to human health, safety and life.”
That sentence, from our old friend David Randolph Smith, implies that carry permit holders are recognized hazards to human life.
Of course, the anonymous server’s main argument is self defeating:
According to the complaint, the server has seen handguns carried into the restaurant and patrons forcefully ejected from the property.
Conspicuously absent from the article? Actual violence from those ejected patrons. Or accusations they were drinking. Or any evidence whatsoever that he’s been in actual danger. I’m going to see if I can find the actual complaint, but it seems to me that TOSHA will laugh this away.
LATER: It seems that last year the 10th Circuit ruled this logic was…flawed. That case was about parking lots and OSHA, but they invoked the same “general duties” clause.
Piranah 3D: Exactly as advertised – one part gratuitous bloodshed, one part gratuitous nudity, one part gratuitous 3D-ness, and one part gratuitously idiotic characters… liberally blended with appropriate cameo appearances from Richard Dreyfuss and Christopher Lloyd.
Anti-rights bigots like to make a lot of noise about how firearms that are capable of taking multiple shots before reloading are relatively recent inventions, and thus things like semi-automatic home-defense rifles (i.e. AR-15s) are not protected under the Second Amendment. Ignoring the obvious similarities between that argument, and one that can be made for the First Amendment (hellooo, Internet), that claim simply is not true:
Built with a detachable skeleton-type shoulder stock as well as a removable 21-inch octagonal barrel, the Jennings rifle was capable of firing twelve shots without reloading. This multi-shot arm was loaded with a dozen superimposed bullets and alternating powder charges, each placed one on top on another down the bore, and was fitted with twelve individual touchholes, each also being equipped with a swivel cover.
In firing, the first charge towards the barrel was discharged first, and then the movable lockplate was pulled back to the next swivel cover position.
That integral twelve-round magazine (in much the same style as the Metal Storm system… only about 175 years earlier) allows the operator to shoot, move the lockplate, recock, and fire again, and reloading was probably greatly simplified by the removable barrel giving direct access to the receiver. And this system dates back to 1821.
It is undeniably true that our Founding Fathers could not have predicted the technological advances that have transpired over the past 234 years… but it would take a true fool indeed to believe that those men would set aside rights they so ardently fought for just because we tool-using monkeys figured out how to do things better and faster. And, as I said, any technology-based argument against the rights protected by the Second Amendment can just as easily be fielded against those rights protected by the First…
It seemed appropriate to put these up together. First, Roberta X:
Americans were a free people. We used to watch in varying degrees of horror movie scenes where a hapless European was importuned by police or security guards on the street or in a train station. “Papers, please,” they’d demand, and compare the poor boob’s name against a list. It could never, we’d think, never happen here.
…I was taught that an ornery, independent streak was a hallmark of Americans; that kowtowing and forelock tugging was something foreigners did. I was a teenager before I found out that e pluribus unum wasn’t actually Latin for “You ain’t the boss of me!”
The America we have today is not the America of yesterday, and, to some people, that change alone is indicative of “progress”. I agree that it is change, but I remain wholly unconvinced as to its positive value…
A few weeks back, I posted about Sarah giving a sidearm to her brother, who was in somewhat narrow financial straits after his recent wedding. This is exactly the kind of transfer that anti-rights nuts would just love to ban by way of closing the non-existant, mythical “gun show loophole” – after all, if private parties, both of whom are legally permitted to own firearms, cannot sell or give a firearm to each other at a gun show, what is going to stop them from arranging for the deal at the gun show, and then executing it in the parking lot… or in the parking lot of the local WalMart? To the anti-rights bigots of America, Sarah’s brother’s life is not important enough for her to be able to give him a firearm without first finding a licensed FFL to do the transfer, paying for the transfer, and paying for the associated background checks.
Next morning: ringleader returns, this time with two buddies. (The previous trips had been solo.) My brother tells them to GTFO because they’re trespassing. At that point, the two accomplices hop out of their pickup and start moving toward my brother, who turns a bit so that they can clearly see the handgun that’s by his side (not pointed at them…no finger on the trigger…no verbal mention of this handgun or any threats given). And yes, I do happen to be very glad that I listened to the still, small voice telling me to leave that firearm with Bro and Cee.
They take off like they’ve just been set on fire. The ringleader runs his suck a bit longer, but quickly decides to leave. When the police officer arrived (my brother called them right after the last guy made himself scarce), he listened to Bro and Cee’s tale and told them that my brother had done the right thing.
To me, this single incident is interesting from a variety of directions.
First, if Sarah had not given her brother the firearm, or if he had not been carrying it, how would this story have gone down? The “ringleader” character has a history of alcoholism, verbal abuse, intimidation, and supposed sabotage, and apparently “has it in” for the brother and his new wife for some unknown, but very emotional, reason. Is he above raw violence in an attempt to convince Sarah’s brother and sister-in-law to go live somewhere else (which seems to be the goal)? I doubt it. So much for, “No one has a reason to carry a firearm”….
Second, no firearm was drawn, and no one was shot. Does this count as a defensive gun use? To anyone with a functioning pair of neurons, undoubtedly – its presence being made known to all defused what could have turned into a violent and dangerous situation. But due to the lack of bloodshed, it is not exactly going to make the nightly news, which means no one will mark it down against some metric – a metric that, in the end, does not really matter when it comes to individual rights.
Third, more specifically, no one was hurt. Would the same have happened if the firearm was not present? Would Sarah’s brother have been able to intimidate the ringleader into leaving before the situation devolved to physical blows? Again, I doubt it… and thanks to the presence of the firearm, no one had to go to the hospital that night, on either side.
Fourth, the police officer said Sarah’s brother did the right thing. To be perfectly clear, the police officer – an official, trained, sworn law enforcement agent and representative of their state – approved of the brother’s decision to expose his firearm in an implied promise to meet possible physical violence with even stronger physical violence, should the situation demand it. If that alone does not screw with a fair number of anti-rights nuts’ arguments, I am not sure what does.
Fifth, Sarah’s brother did not whip out his piece and start bustin’ some caps. He did not even brandish his sidearm, by most states’ definitions of the act. And here I thought us gun-packers were looking for any and every excuse available to shoot someone… right?
One simple incident that could have gone horribly wrong without the presence of a firearm, and the only casualties are numerous anti-rights bigots’ arguments… and Sarah’s brother and his new wife are not only safe and sound, they are also understandably evacuating the area, and recovered some property that was stolen from them (like by the “ringleader” mentioned above, or one of his cronies).
It kind of says something about anti-rights nuts, in that they would have preferred a significantly different outcome than the as-happy-as-it-can-get one we are now observing…
I would like to remind anyone that believes such a thing that 100+ million people died in the last century because of attempts to create just that type of utopia [where "some government (people with guns) taking goods and services from some set of people and giving it to others"]. If she and others would like to volunteer themselves for the next experiment doomed to failure I only request they take it to some place where my family and friends don’t have to contend with defending our lives and property and disposing of the rotting flesh.
Really, it is those last five words that makes it for me…
The comment thread (to which I would link directly, if Echo was not a piece of gos-se) at this post over at Kevin’s is so completely full of stupidity and fail, I am genuinely surprised that the internet does not somehow start to collapse in on itself around it… If you are unwilling to wade through all 100+ 200+ comments (and I can hardly blame you), the short answer is that a certain individual who has been trolling at Kevin’s weblog over the course of the past three years very clearly, definitively, and voluntarily demonstrated that he honestly does not comprehend the meanings of the words revenue, deficit, disingenuous, estimate, correlation, causation, rate, valid, true, false, resulted, none, proof, demonstrate, spending, and a few others that are not leaping out at me at the moment. Worse, still, the individual in question is militantly defensive of his self-imposed ignorance, not only proclaiming himself to be right when his words obviously disprove that artciulation, but also flippantly ignoring, dismissing, or otherwise degrading any attempt to point out how very wrong he actually is, and, finally, haughtily disdaining the company of us mere mortals when we refuse to acknowledge his self-proclaimed superiority.
Remember, ladies and gentlemen, self-delusional, oblivious fools such as this one vote. They have children (to whom they will undoubtedly pass on a culture of ignorance). And, worse, in this specific instance, this particular benighted bore teaches children – yes, the idiot I have been obliquely referring to is none other than the thankfully-inimitable, and all too infamous, Markadelphia. So, yes, remember that, the next time you consider skipping voting one year, or not speaking up when you hear something fallacious being spread, or sitting by and allowing authoritarians rule our country without objection… Idiocy only prevails when men who know better do nothing.
(All this said, the thread was not without its merits, most notably this comment from Russell: “‘If that happens, I will comment.’ So does denying sex work for you at home?”. *giggle*)
I don’t worry about someone coming after me–I may be a jerk sometimes but I don’t do anything worth getting shot over. I do worry about being collateral damage, for the reasons outlined above.
… and I still remember it like it was yesterday, even if, as Pistolero points out, parts of it are being intentionally forgotten. Rather than just ramble about, as I often do, I will just share what few pictures I took of the post-Katrina disaster – though these were taken about two weeks after the storm itself. Captions for the images will come before them.
This was my apartment complex in Ocean Springs – a series of buildings with garages underneath, two stories of apartments above, and a marina in the U the buildings describe. That blueish structure in the bottom of the U was a dockside convenience store / gas station about half a mile down the road from the complex, and was deposited there by the storm:
Another view of the same convenience store, showing some of the damages inflicted to the apartments – note the docks folded up on the ground, the suitcoat still hanging in a closet, and the X’s from the disaster response teams noting whether people were found:
The counterpoint of the boats lined up semi-neatly in the parking lot caught my eye:
The water rose to about midway up the second story of the complex; thankfully, my apartment was on the third story, but you could see where those same boats in the previous picture bounced off the building during the storm:
For reference, my apartments were right about where that “A” marker is – I understand they are condos now, though I have no idea how much or what repairs were done to them:
This was the Interstate 10 bridge across the marshes to the northwest of Pascagoula – more specifically, that destroyed span was the northern side – a barge had cut loose from its moorings and repeatedly smashed against the bridge during the storm:
As we drove around, these trucks were everywhere – open-topped semi rigs with mechanical manipulator arms between the cabs and the trailers. They would drive down the road, grabbing up piles of debris that people had piled on the kerb:
Of course, all that debris had to end up somehwere:
These pictures do not do the piles justice… this particular grass field was easily half a mile long and a quarter deep, and was about 75% covered with about 20 feet of trash:
Entire houses, clothing, food, trees, cars, train cars, semi rigs, buildings, and Lord alone knows what else was in these piles:
We drove past about five separate areas slowly being filled in with the waste, but I have no idea how many total there were:
Looking back, I sincerely wish I had taken more pictures than I did… but, at the time, we were helping people out and getting what we could packed up and moved out, and it seemed rather… insensitive… to be standing around taking pictures of people’s lives entirely and completely destroyed. And the smell… it was everywhere, and even after spending three or so days in it, you never quite got used to it…
Which is pretty much the point of this post – New Orleans was pretty much flattened by the storm, as cities built under the sea level tend to be when waves come along, but they are far from the only people who are still recovering from the disaster. The entire Gulf Coast from about Mobile, Alabama to about Corpus Christie, Texas was affected by the storm, and it is probably fair to say that far more people outside of New Orleans were displaced, rendered homeless, injured, and killed than in the city, despite the media’s seemingly unending focus on that particular urban area – I wish more people would remember that.
It is always good to welcome yet another pro-rights activist to the blogosphere – I had noticed Alpheus commenting at some weblogs I frequent, and it would appear as though he just launched one of his own: The Power of Epsilon. Offhand, I would say that he is off to a strong start:
When you deny the right to self defense, you deny the right to life itself. You expose yourself as the Collectivist you are…and you side yourself with those Collectivists–the Robespierres, the Nazis, the Communists, the Socialists of the world–who sacrificed millions for the Greater Good, and in the end, created a living hell for those who weren’t executed.
My only small suggestion is that it is typically better to use TinyURLs or other link-obfuscators when hyperlinking to MikeB302000‘s place, simply beacuse he says that nonsensical, offensive, illogical gos-se exactly because he knows it will provoke a rise out of someone, and he glories in the attention he receives from it. Denying him that traffic, small though it may be, takes a little of that noxious wind out of his cheesecloth sails…
‘Course, that said, given his signficantly-more-extensive-than-mine background in statistics, perhaps Alpheus would be willing to lend his mathematical prowess to next year’s “graphics matter” installment… Just sayin’…
Regardless, welcome, best of luck, and consider yourself added to my RSS aggregator and blogroll!
Joe has talked about this afewtimes, so the concept is not a terribly new one to me, but this new playing field and application is still a little disturbing:
Government agents can sneak onto your property in the middle of the night, put a GPS device on the bottom of your car and keep track of everywhere you go. This doesn’t violate your Fourth Amendment rights, because you do not have any reasonable expectation of privacy in your own driveway – and no reasonable expectation that the government isn’t tracking your movements.
However, like anything that is transmitted over the airwaves, there are countermeasures – what are available in this particular case? Well, the first step is, of course, finding the device, and leaving it strapped to some shopping cart in the grocery store somewhere… but, unfortunately, most of us do not rountinely put our cars up on a machine shop lift, and do comprehensive inspections of its undercarriage (or would even know what we were looking for). “Bug” detectors do exist, and are commercially available, but it is anyone’s guess as to how effective they actually are, and a lot of it depends on the training and experience of the operator, especially given how clogged our radio frequencies are getting – is that a bug, or a loose connection?
Ok, so assume the average American cannot locate and remove the GPS tracker. Likewise, assume we cannot stop this program from running, cannot disable the police / FBI / etc. receiver, and cannot disable the GPS satellites. The only remaining options are the tramissions methods – for the device to send its information home, all it really needs to do is record, and be picked up by a cop again in the future, so that may not be your best option. However, there is no “pick up and drop off” option for GPS transmissions, which makes them your best option for jamming.
Unfortunately, rolling down the road in a Faraday Cage is not really an option, and since we are assuming you cannot find the transmitter, neither is wrapping it in a lead blanket. So, we move on to active jamming – which, conveniently enough, is illegal. In fact, since 1934, it has been illegal to use any device specifically intended to jam radio frequencies, and GPS systems, of course, use radio to transmit their data (specifically frequencies 1575.42 Mhz, 1227.60 Mhz, 1381.05 Mhz, 1379.913 Mhz, and 1176.45 Mhz). However, just like gun bans, prohibiting the jamming of radio frequences has not made the knowledge of how to do so simply disappear, nor has it stopped the market for the devices.
The good news is that jamming is a hell of a lot easier than transmitting, and especially easier than transmitting useful things (like GPS satellite locations and such) over distances – for our purposes, the jamming is very short-ranged (you are only trying to black out your car, while the satellites are trying to blanket as much of the world as they can with their signals), very limited in frequencies (between 1000 and 1600 Mhz), and does not need to be that powerful (GPS satellites are not exactly capable of burn-through). The bad news is that, no matter how simple it is, jamming is still illegal.
However, for the do-it-yourselfers out there, constructing your own radio jammer is notexactlydifficult – on the scale of “afternoon science project”, if you are at all familiar with circuits and soldering.
For those of us with a little less hands-on knowledge, though, there are a metric crapton of options out there (I have it on good, trustworthy authority that this little device works exactly as advertised – granted, it is a cell phone jammer, not a GPS jammer, but the concept is the same), where all you need to do is flip a switch, and electronic gadgets within a few meters of you go blind.
And that is the twitchy part of all this (and why the FCC banned jamming all those years ago) – there is no real way to localize or control the jamming to just one device unless you have that device on hand. If you buy/build a GPS-frequency-jamming device, and activate it, all GPS-receiving devices in your immediate area will go blind – the tracker (which might or might not be there), your car’s GPS system, and the Tom-Toms, Garmins, and whatever the hell else within about 40 feet of you. In short, on a four-lane highway, you could blank out the GPS devices on both sides of it as you scoot along. Same for cell phone jammers, and anything else like them.
So is it worth it? Well, that is pretty much up to you. It is illegal, it is unlikely that the readers of this weblog will actually be tagged with GPS trackers (cost of equipment and monitoring precludes using them more than needed… for now), it inconveniences/endangers other people around you, and it is still illegal (as in the FCC has taken people to court over it and won) – up to you. This ruling, and the activities it permits, is inherently abuseable, and governments everywhere (including America’s) have a documented history of misusing this kind of information for unquestionably wrong purposes… but stopping them from collecting it is now illegal. Of course, in a police state (and I am not saying we are in a police state, just speaking hypothetically), it is illegal to go somewhere without telling your overlords first…
*shrug* Given the Ninth Circuit Court’s absurd verdict reversal rate, I am not counting on this particular ruling standing for very long, but knowing how to or being able to if the need arises has always been one of my favorite reasons for learning/having a lot of things, and this situation seems to fall into that category…
(Oh, and for those idiots out there making noises about how if I am not doing anything illegal, I would not be concerned about this new development, really, just go away. Now.)
Incompetent cable technicians who use two-way cable splitters in places where they should use inline couplers deserve to be forced to use 56k dialup for the remainder of their natural lives.
In other news, I positively despise drop/suspended/tile/whateveryouwanttocallthem ceilings – sure, in this case, it let me fix this particular frak-up, but I still hate them.
Here is the letter I just spammed off to my specific representatives, largely cribbed from the form provided by the NSSF:
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is considering banning all traditional ammunition — ammunition containing lead-core components. This is something that would affect all hunters, target shooters, recreational shooters, and law enforcement due to the significant price difference between lead-cored ammunition and the alternatives.
A petition filed with the EPA by several agenda-driven groups including the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD), erroneously claims that the use of traditional ammunition poses a danger to (1) wildlife, in particular raptors such as bald eagles, that may feed on entrails or unrecovered game left in the field and (2) that there is a human health risk from consuming game harvested using traditional ammunition. Also falsely alleged in the petition is that the use of traditional ammunition by hunters is inconsistent with the Toxic Substance Control Act of 1976; in fact, Congress expressly exempted ammunition from being regulated as a “toxic substance” in that Act.
As your constituent, I am urging you to do whatever you can to stop the EPA, which has no jurisdiction over such matters, from banning our ammunition. Please consider the following points:
- There is no scientific evidence that the use of traditional ammunition is having an adverse impact on wildlife populations.
- Wildlife management is the proper jurisdiction of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services and the 50 state wildlife agencies.
- A 2008 study by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on blood lead levels of North Dakota hunters confirmed that consuming game harvested with traditional ammunition does not pose a human health risk.
- A ban on traditional ammunition would have a negative impact on wildlife conservation. The federal excise tax that manufacturers pay on the sale of the ammunition (11 percent) is a primary source of wildlife conservation funding. The bald eagle’s recovery, considered to be a great conservation success story, was made possible and funded by hunters using traditional ammunition – the very ammunition organizations like the CBD are now demonizing.
- Recent statistics from the United States Fish and Wildlife Service show that from 1981 to 2006 the number of breeding pairs of bald eagles in the United States increased 724 percent. And much like the bald eagle, raptor populations throughout the United States are soaring.
- Lead-free ammunition can cost over twice as much as lead-cored ammunition, directly reducing the amount of available rounds police departments, recreational shooters, and hunters have to practice with and use; furthermore, if demand were to increase for that lead-free ammunition due to banning traditional ammunition, you can rest assured the costs would rise above their current levels.
Thank you for your time. I will be watching your actions on this matter closely, and keeping them in mind for future elections.
Make no mistake, ladies and gentlefolk, this is nothing more than a backdoor attack at our rights – thanks to Heller and McDonald, the anti-rights nuts of America are now well-aware that even specific gun bans are off the table in terms of “gun control”, and other forms of restrictions are going to be subject to lengthy and costly court battles. However, as I am quite sure those same anti-rights nuts are eager to point out, the Constitution mentions nothing about ammunition for those arms we have the right to own and carry, and We All Know (TM) that lead is bad for everyone, so this is acceptable, right?
Wrong. This is a completely unacceptable overreach of power based off lies and misdirection, and I can guarantee you Tam and Kevin will not be alone.
I know have said this a fewtimesbefore, but if you value your money, and you want to use it for something other than correcting his work, never, ever, ever use Hammonds Contracting LLC, of Knoxville, TN. That is all.
Not to toot my own drum too terribly much, but I just want to point out that the Acer Aspire Revo AR3610-U2002 Nettop computer I listed as “for sale” last week is, indeed, still for sale. $300, or your best offer, if it is amenable, gets him shipped to wherever you are, and Better Half and I would very much like to find him a new home before our vacation.
If that does not interest you sufficiently, and you happen to live in the Knoxville / Eastern Tennessee region, or are capable of getting here with a reasonably large truck or trailer, I might have another deal for you. To wit, 1pproximately 400-450 square feet of 4 1/4″ wide Australian Cypress 3/4″ solid hardwood flooring. This wood is left over from our recent renovation, and some planks may have been cut on end. Optimistically, the quality of the wood is “cabin grade,” and at least one of the following are in evidence on most planks: cracks, knotholes through the planks, irregular finish, broken tongues/grooves, etc. Pieces range from 6 inches to the full 96 inches, and would be suitable for such things as reflooring workshops, arts-and-crafts type things, and so forth, but do not count on it for your living room or such. Buyer must pick up from our house. Sold as-is with no guarantee on exact square footage or quality. $600 OBO takes it all.
And, yes, there will be a longer story forthcoming regarding the wood. Suffice to say it is gorgeous, but we found it of insufficient quality for our kitchen/living room/dining room.
Some of the pile while it was still in the house, also showing what it looked like down:
An example piece, straight from its box:
Some more:
And more:
And more:
And the whole pile, currently camped out in our garage:
I do not often copy-paste press releases just for the sake of copy-pasting press releases from companies that do not pay me to do so, but this one is just too much to pass up:
We are pleased to announce the new Ruger® SR-556® in 6.8 SPC, a new chambering in the popular SR-556® two-stage, piston-driven, AR-Style rifle. The new SR-556 in 6.8 SPC brings the power and downrange authority of the 6.8 SPC cartridge in a two-stage piston rifle that runs cooler and cleaner than traditional gas-driven, AR-style rifles.
Packaged with one five-round magazine and two twenty-five round magazines, the SR-556 in 6.8 SPC is an ideal hunting rifle for those who appreciate the versatility of the customizable and ergonomic AR-style platform. The 6.8 SPC has ample power for hunting medium-sized game, and the greater muzzle and downrange energy enhances the capability of the SR-556 in defensive or tactical roles as well.
According to the anti-rights nuts of America, “evil black rifles”, “assault weapons”, and so forth (like, say, the above rifle) serve no purpose for hunting, could never be used for hunting, and would never be needed for hunting. As usual, this is nothing more than a basic lie, born out of ignorance, and perpetuated out of apparent necessity, but I just love that it is the firearm manufacturers who are now shooting down that fallacy with aplomb, especially when it is a company with as as interesting a background as Ruger’s (and note that the rifle is being advertised with 25-round magazines).
Back on my most-recent post concerning open carry, JP made a comment about how his openly carrying stopped a robbery in progress. My curiosity naturally piqued, I asked him to elaborate by way of a post, and he did over at his new digs at Eyes Never Closed. The entire recollection is well worth your time, but these two segments jumped out at me:
It was that day that I decided if I was going to carry a gun for self defense, that I had better learn to use it for that reason. I decided that I must become situationally aware of all things, at all times. This instance basically changed my life. Thank god nobody god hurt.
[...]
I am also glad that I learned a very valuable lesson that day. What if he had a loaded gun? I could have put the clerks life in more danger that it was already in. I could have gotten shot and injured or killed that day. Had I been situationally aware and paying attention I very easily could have seen what was going on inside the store, from outside the window, stayed outside and called the police. Or if I went inside and, say he was loaded and was going to point his gun at me – if I was situationally aware, I may have had an opportunity to defend myself – rather than just sit there and watch him, forgetting I had a gun like I did.
The first and probably most-important rule of keeping yourself and your family safe is “always be aware of everything around you” – granted, that rule requires perfection from us, which is likely not terribly likeliy, but it is our duty to come as close to that standard as possible. However, the consequences of unawareness can be severe – a few months back, I put three people’s lives in grave danger due to my inattention while driving through town. All those years ago, JP put his own life on the line, and the cashier’s, by walking into a convenience store without being fully aware of what was transpiring within. How many times have you read news reports about people being attacked, robbed, assaulted, etc., and the victim involved says something along the lines of, “I never saw him coming”?
To be certain, there absolutely are situations where that can happen, and there is not a gorramed thing you can do about it – we cannot exactly expect you to “slice the pie” of every single corner you come across, every single day of your life. However, that is where the second rule comes in: “know your tools and how to use them”. In reality, this rule is honestly an outrgrowth of the previous one, but, in this case, you are being aware of yourself, and the reminder of a second guideline is not without merit. In JP’s situation, he completely and totally forgot that he was armed, and did not realize it until the criminal was well and gone; however, it might not have mattered, in that the robber already had his (thankfully empty) firearm out and pointing it at people. Hypotheticals aside, though, in order to be able to defend yourself, you have to first decide that you are going to do so, and then be willing and able to act on that decision. All of the firearms (and even training, though that at least helps you get in the right mindset) in the world will not help you if you stand there like the proverbial deer in the headlights (no insult intended, JP).
So, in closing, thanks, JP, for putting up the story, and being willing to point out where you went wrong – humans tend to learn best from mistakes, but we do not always have to make those mistakes ourselves!
One almost has to wonder if they grasp the gravity of their current predicament, and understand that “do it again, only harder” has not worked, is not working, and will not work in the future… or if they are capable of making that determination any more.
Green lasers have become quitethething in the firearm community, primarily due to the fact that the green light emitted by them is both brighter and more noticeable than the “old” red lasers. That said, did you know that the green light is generated by first creating infrared light, and that infrared light can sometimes be bright enough (when left unshielded, which more and more manufacturers are doing) to burn right through your retina, even if the visible light is not all that bright itself? Are lasers not fun?
The good news is that you can test your laser pointers quite easily, and with household materials you probably already have on-hand.
Anyone who traveled behind the Iron Curtain back in those days probably didn’t have to look very hard to find groups of “workers” sitting around doing pretty much nothing, except collecting a taxpayer-funded government paycheck.
The American way is better. Anti-gun group employees can still sit around doing pretty much nothing and collect a paycheck, but the money—lots of it—comes from donations, from foundations and individuals who share their ideals. While the rest of us have to contend with anything tangible they might produce, at least we don’t have to pay for it, most of the time.
Any day wherein you can rightfully call anti-rights nuts lazy, and compare them to old-school Communists, is a good one indeed.
As regular readers are probably already aware, I am going to be out of pocket for a few weeks in the coming month, and since internet access during that period will be spotty at best, I am working on queueing up prescheduled posts. Unfortunately, what I have at the moment is somewhat limited, at best, and I am looking for ideas: so what do you, my readers, want me to write about? I cannot promise that I will do your ideas justice, or even use them, but you never know.
And, hey, the flip side is that if you do not give me any good ideas, you may not be getting much in the way of bloggy goodness while we are gone…
Over the weekend, anti-rights nut and noted internet troll MikeB302000accused “a lot of” pro-rights webloggers of engaging in “respect through fear and intimidation” tactics. Naturally, this accusation was completely and entirely devoid of anything even approximating facts, evidence, or substantiation – no doubt as a natural outgrowth of MikeB302000′s inability to differentiate fact from fiction – but it just turns out that today, and today only, I am more than willing to do Sparky’s heavy lifting for him. Unfortunately, given that I am the one doing the work that he is chronically incapable of performing – to wit, backing up his generally specious and fallacious claims – I get to take certain artistic… liberties with his intentionally inflammatory comment, and will therefore choose to interpret his “you guys” as a descriptor of all civil rights proponents in general (especially given that in this post-Heller world, the Second Amendment unquestionably protects a civil right), rather than the interpretation he probably intended, as mentioned above. Why? Well, this all too coincidental post on the nature of civil rights was just too much to pass up:
As illustrated in The Deacons for Defense, the Deacons provide a nearly perfect illustration of the notion that the Second Amendment ensures the other Constitutional rights; Klan terror that was aided and abetted by local police – and the resulting infringements on life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness – was stopped only when armed black men organized and showed that they no longer fulfilled the stereotypes of blacks as docile and subservient to white privilege. Unlike other Civil Rights groups that tended to ask for respect, the Deacons armed themselves to show that they would no longer sit passively, waiting for the Feds to intervene as the Klan continued to reign. As such, the Deacons demanded respect by instilling fear in white segregationists. Other Civil Rights groups benefitted both directly (by using the services of the Deacons) and indirectly (by the way in which black self-defense changed the political field in the South); within merely two years of the founding of the organization, the Deacons can claim credit to almost entirely dismantling the Klan as a political force and source of widespread terror in the state of Louisiana.
Read the whole thing – Jennifer did an outstanding job laying out the history, causalities, and realities, and it is definitely worth your time.
In their particular case, the blacks of Lousiana were being forcibly and terroristically oppressed and subjugated by the KKK, with the police, at best, simply standing by and watching, or, at worst, actively assisting and taking part in that oppression. Non-violence, while unquestionably the high road, was not doing a whole lot to stem the violence that was being repeatedly perpetrated against those blacks, so they did that which is simultaneously logical and right: took up arms to defend themselves by intimidating those who would attack them. The racist whites of Lousiana were not respecting the non-violent anti-discrimination activists, nor respecting their persons, but, strangely enough, those intolerant bigots did start respecting the blacks when they took up arms to defend themselves.
And that, right there, is the prime and important detail: just as “violent and predatory” and “violent and protective” are two entirely different concepts, so, too, are “intimidating and predatory” and “intimidating and protective”. The KKK and other segregationalists were unquestionably playing the role of “predator” in old Lousiana, in that they were, as Jennifer said, seeking to deprive the most basic of human rights from the blacks in the state – life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness – by means of their violence, intimidation, and fear. On the other hand, those blacks were unquestionably trying to protect themselves, their families, their friends, their businesses, and their property from the rampages of those discriminatory whites, by means of their intimidation, fear, and threats of violence.
So which was in the wrong, and why?
Today, anti-rights nuts are seeking to intimidate modern civil rights activists by invoking the deaths of innocents (for which the activists in question bear no responsibility), the illegal activities of criminals (over which the activists have no control), and the possibility of even more-stringent “gun control” legislation in the future (an unabashed threat upon the inalienable rights of American citizens). Today, anti-rights nuts are attempting to strike fear into the hearts of modern civil rights activists by the force-by-proxy of a capricious, whimsical organization capable of putting people behind bars by a simple administrative rule-change (to wit, the BATFE), by organizing false-flag organizations to confuse and dilute the pro-rights message (specifically, the American Hunters and Shooters Association), and by painting all firearm-owners and -carriers with brushes dipped in the blood spilled by the criminal and the irresponsible (because stereotypes are always true…). And all of these activities, and far more, are being perpetrated in order to limit, restrict, regulate, abridge, deny, and control a basic human right… one just as important, if not moreso, than the right of free association.
On the other hand, in order to defend that basic human right, we pro-rights activists are taking unconstitutional laws to court (and winning), petitioning our governments at all levels to respect the rights of American citizens, educating those who are interested, empowering people, defending ourselves and our families, finding the facts of the situations and field them against the interminable lies, writing weblogs such as these for free and without any financial or other support from the “official” firearm-related organizations, supporting organizations and corporations that respect our rights, backing politicians who understand the nature of the Constitution and its Amendments, and on… and on… and on… and, apparently, to some anti-rights nuts, those activities generate “intimidation and fear”.
So, who is in the wrong, and why?
Times change, but prejudice remains. We firearm-owners and -carriers are in nowhere near as bad a position as the blacks in 1960s Louisiana, but, by the same token, it is a bald-faced lie to claim that we are not being targeted by “intimidation and fear”, by bigotry, intolerance, and discrimination, by simple hatred. In the end, the vast, overwhelming majority of us simply want to be left alone, with our rights intact and unviolated – if it takes “fear and intimidation” to accomplish that goal, as it did 50 years ago, so be it.
Unlike its competitor (*cough*Costco*cough*), Sam’s Club (being a wholly-owned subsidiary of Wal-Mart) does not really care if you carry a firearm into their establishments, so when Better Half and I headed out to the local one yesterday to pick up some various materials (in the bulk those stores are known for), I was, of course, openly carrying my Walther PPS in my Little Bear Holsters stingray rig, like I almost always am when I am outside of the house and not at work. While we were in line waiting to order up a batch of their oh-so-unhealthy hot dogs for lunch, I noticed a nice gentleman behind us waiting with his wife and two children, one still in a stroller – he only stuck in my brain for his exceedingly military-regs haircut, being not-long separated from that world myself.
After we picked everything up, and secured a table, I went back to get some condiments, whereupon the gentleman in question approached me, and said, “Got a strange question for you…”
“Sure thing.”
“Do you ever get in any kind of trouble for carrying your gun out like that?”
“Not really, no.”
“Huh. I have a carry permit myself, and I was just wondering.”
Then, on the way out of the store, another gentleman asked me how I liked the Walther, about its decocking method (removable backstrap – no “Glock Leg” here), and what calibers it came in. Both individuals were polite and friendly, and while the first did seem a little uncomfortable talking about firearms in public, or asking me those kinds of questions, I cannot say a though I blame him – walking up to a random stranger with those kinds of inquiries is not exactly a “normal” thing. But that is kind of the point of openly carrying, is it not?
One thing I did neglect to mention with the first gentleman is that one has to be particularly mindful of establishments that prohibit firearms on their premises, especially in light of the new changes to the relevant laws – concealed means concealed, and if you were to somehow miss a two-inch sticker placed in the far corner of a store’s windows, and if you are carrying under a shirt, it is likely no one would ever know. Not so much when your sidearm is out there for the world to see, and dressed up in blue stingray at that. I find myself slowing noticeably these days as I enter stores, trying to keep up with the plethora of warnings, cautions, advertisements, licenses, and whatever-the-hell else the establishments decide to affix to their doors… better to spend a few seconds on the way in, than a few days in jail.
Oh, and suffice to say that there were no mass panics, “man with a gun” police responses, or other unexpected reactions to my openly carrying, though the armored truck deliveryman’s wary glances were somewhat amusing…
Note to self: If you open the grill, and everything inside is gloriously on fire, and I do mean everything – the coals, the wood (for smoking), the beef roast, the pork butt, even the aluminum-foil-wrapped corn-on-the-cobb – something has gone horribly, horribly wrong. That is all.
Over the past few years, I have saida fewthings about Mantis Knives, but I have never actually fooled around with or owned one of their products. Well, this past weekend, an opportunity presented itself to put the rubber to the road – Jared West, the president of that particular company, was offering his MT-1 Silver for all of $20 (half price), and he would throw in a B-3 Necessikey and shipping for free. Half price and free? Well, hell, that has “me” written all over it.
Before we continue, I will point out that I have reviewed a few knives before, and I will go ahead and follow roughly the same pattern again (all measurements are mine, and some differ from those quoted on the Mantis webpages).
Now that we have dispensed with the objective datapoints, what are my subjective opinions about these knives?
The Good: To the MT-1′s credit, it should fill the purpose I purchased it for quite nicely – a disposeable, 3″-or-less bladed knife that I can take overseas with me and not be terribly heartbroken over if I lose it. The knife laws in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland basically amount to “do not”, so it will be riding around in my luggage our entire time there, but while we are in Slovenia, I will, of course, be carrying it, given that country cares significantly less about law-abiding citizens carrying ancient tools. It is definitely a light knife, and while the handle is markedly longer than it needs to be (enough that even Better Half commented on it), that means its somewhat slim frame reaches all the way across my palm, ensuring that even my slightly oversize mitts can get a good grip on it – slipping while holding a knife is typically a bad thing. The silver of the aluminum is about as uniform and even as you can get it, the bead-blasted-emulating texture keeps the shine from being blinding, and the subdued red ring around the hinge bolt adds a nice accent to the overall piece. As usual, all of the nuts are Torx-based, and while I would very much prefer if knife companies were to get away from that stupid-assed screw design, it is, at least, the industry standard, meaning I already have the right tools. Finally, when open, the spine of the knife and its handle describe a continuous, smooth curve, which does make the engineer in me smile a little.
The B-3′s flashlight is definitely bright enough to help you find your car’s keyhole in the middle of the night, and being able to replace the battery for that light (rather than the entire unit) is definitely a benefit. The knife blade seems a bit too short for anything other than package opening and such, but the bottle opener would be a hit for the right kind of people, I guess.
The Bad: Speaking of slipping, while that aluminum on the MT-1 is rather attractive, and the clearcoat should keep it preserved for a while, it is also slick as snot, and rather difficult to hold onto even with dry hands. Likewise, without a pocket clip, this knife will just be riding around loose in those pockets, with naught but gravity holding it in place – with no rubber or other grippy material, there is scant little stopping it from popping out at an inopportune time. The black material on the blade seems to be nothing more than paint, with all of the durability thereof (in fact, the folded paper I was cutting was able to put a substantial scratch in it), and the black paint on the inside frame and liner lock of the knife is already starting to fade/chip (three days after I received it, mind you). And speaking of the liner lock… if they had made the jimping on it any smaller, it would be completely unuseable. Last but not least, the choil intended to make accessing the thumbstud easier is not terribly well lined up with the protrusion in question, leaving one to catch the thumbstud on an edge… an edge that, if my thumb is any indication, actually has an edge – the inside of my thumb where it caught the stud looks like it was used as a scratching post by a somewhat rabid gerbil.
Last but not least, the stamping process for the knife is horribly deficient – rather than radiusing the first of the double bevels, such that the edge maintains a constant thickness from point to the belly, that grind was simply cut straight down from the spine of the knife, all the way from stem to stern. This is kind of hard to explain in text, but the end result is an absurdly thick, and borderline blunt, tip, as pictured. This probably means the tip is stronger than most others, but it also means that, with the from-the-factory edge on it, it was unable to effectively punch through the B-3′s clamshell packaging in a controlled manner. That seems bad.
As for the B-3 itself, it seems like an overdone advertising tool than anything else, what with its unnecessarily large size, the massive logo printed on its back, and the somewhat diminutive tools contained in it. The one thing their webpage conveniently leaves out is the thickness of this keyfob, which measures in, near as I can tell without calipers, at somewhere around 0.438″, which makes this thing larger in every dimension than even my car clicker. Throw in the fact that the replaceable battery cover looks and feels like it would fall off it you looked at it funny (which is bad for something that is supposed to ride around in a pocket with keys), and you start to wonder if this was some leftover trade show hand-out.
Also, of interesting note regarding both of them, their packaging/presentation was rather shoddy. The MT-1 had no box, bag, or anything (it came wrapped in that plastic foam fabric I photographed it on), and while the B-3 did have a plastic clamshell, neither had any documentation, warranty paperwork, or much of anything. Likewise, I am fairly, if not entirely, certain that Mantis products are produced overseas, even though the company itself is housed here in the States. My understanding of America’s country of origin laws is that any products produced overseas have to be marked as “Made in [insertcountrynamehere]” and I wonder why this was not the case for either of these knives.
And for heaven’s sake, does no one at that company have a gorramed ruler? Nearly everything I measured did not match up to the website’s claims.
The Ugly: The MT-1 and B-3 are worth about exactly what I paid for them – I figure around $15 for the former, and $5 for the latter, indicating that their “list” prices are inflated, in my opinion, by between 100% and 300%. In comparison to the MT-1′s $40 pricetag, you can procure a Kershaw R.A.M. (my current EDC knife) for all of $53, and I can guarantee you it is at least 30% better than the Mantis knife – its blade is properly formed, its materials are demonstrably better, it has a grip like a mechanical gecko, its locking system, while strange, is easily deployed, and its flipper beats the MT-1s studs all to hell.
As for the B-3… really, it is probably worth less. Your money would be infinitely better spent on a Swiss Tech Transformer, which lacks a knife, but can therefore be gotten on planes easier, and packs a hell of a lot more tools into a package just barely larger; any of Tool Logic‘s numerous (and significantly smaller) tool kits; or even a CRKT Cicada, which costs just barely more, but at least has a solid company behind it… and scissors.
The elemental truth is that making attractive (for certain definitions of the word “attractive” – some of those Mantis knives are… well…) blades, and talking up a storm about them, is simply insufficient to make up for Mantis knives being scant more than overpriced, underquality, Taiwan-stamped toys. Harsh? Yeah, a little. But, honestly, I am very disappointed – for a company that makes a big deal about “breaking the mold”, “leading the charge”, and all the rest of that gos-se, and produces a product I might have been genuinely interested in, this was a hell of a let-down. Anyone have any good leads on any other relatively affordable karambits?
Are these decent products? Sure – at the price I paid for them, not at the price Mantis is asking for them. Are they the products that the forced, overhyped craze about them, and their “list” prices, would lead you to believe. Not so much. Would I recommend these knives to my readers? So long as you understand what you are purchasing, I can give them a qualified ‘maybe’, but I genuinely think your money would be better spent elsewhere.
A lot of anti-rights nuts tend to make a lot of noise about how children cannot, under any circumstances, in any potential situation, be taught to handle firearms in a safe and responsible manner. This is, of course, a patently fallacious statement, but is even more disproven by the recent Boy Scout Jamboree:
Once up on the firing line, they get personal instruction on loading the gun themselves and then they fire a .50 caliber Lyman percussion rifle at a playing card which they get to keep as a souvenir. They say that once you smell black powder on the firing line, it gets in your blood for life. At 300 Scouts a day at each of the 4 Action Centers, that adds up to a lot of future black powder enthusiasts!
1200 Boyscouts a day, and nary an indication of injuries, fatalities, or other mishaps I can find.
Now, an borderline-intelligent anti-rights nut could make the argument that the BATFEIEIO does not qualify blackpowder rifles as “firearms”, and thus this still does not demonstrate that children can be taught to handle firearms safely, and they would be absolutely right – the infernal BATFE does not categorize percussion rifles as “firearms” (meaning you can get them shipped straight to your door, but that is another matter for another post). However, anyone with an IQ above room temperature understands that blackpowder rifles can kill, and, in fact, have killed, people just as dead as any other firearm-like object.
And yet those kids were able to wield them semi-accurately, safely, and responsible, through the course of their entire exposure to them. Yet another lie, knocked down.
[Update] With all posts of this nature, it is likewise important to point out a simple disparity between accidental deaths – over the period of time from 1999 to 2007, on average, 146 minors (people between the age of 0 and 18) died a year due to accidents involving firearms. On the other hand, over the same period of time, regarding the same demographic, 1,074 children died per year, on average, in drowning accidents. You would think that 1:7 ratio would have the anti-rights nuts of America, who are so very concerned with the lives of children lost to accidents, writing seven times as much about the dangers of irresponsible use of swimming pools than the dangers of irresponsible use of firearms. I wonder why this is not actually the case? [/Update]
Hi, The Combat Wombat shirt has just been released for Pre Order. We will send the shirt to the printer on October 1st. We hope to be sending them out to arrive at the same time as Larry’s second release from Baen Books in his M.H.I. Saga, “Vendetta”.
The logo is a bold 11 inches from side to side and top to bottom.
People who Pre Order will be able to have a slogan added to the back. “Now With 70% More Wombat!” for no aditional charge. After Oct 1st the logo will only be available as a Special Order and will cost $5 more.
Prices are Small to X Large – $20 XLT – $23 2X – $22 2XLT – $25 3X – $24 3XLT – $27 4X – $26 5X – $28
Shipping and handling starts at $4. We give discounts for multiple shirts.
And, really, who would not want a t-shirt with this on it?
If that demonic visage does not whet your whistle, though, you can buy your way into being an expendable red shirt in one of Larry’s upcoming novels by simultaneously helping a daughter of one of his local friends secure a kidney transplant. Win/win, right there… well, apart from your character (who was going to die anywise, just not with your name on him/her).
Is it any wonder why this guy is as well loved in the gunny community as he is?
A few months back, a member of a forum I read offered that any fellow member could come into the liquor store he owns, and get a discount on any purchase. Unfortunately, the store itself was a little out of the way for us, but we happened to be out that direction today as we were shopping for European vacation clothing and materials, and coincidentally our liquor cabinet was conveniently empty. We poked our heads into the establishment, and it turns out that I was the first forum member to ever actually identify himself and ask for about the discount. Shiny.
We grabbed a few bottles of things, and headed back to the counter, where the forum member and his employee were discussing carry pieces, and, most notably, the .38 Special Smith and Wesson the owner had just picked up. The employee asked out my PPS, I pulled it out and safed it, and we talked about how small it was, and how no one ever seemed to have one, either in stock, or on their person. In the process, the owner rang us up, and without disclosing too much, I will say that the owner of West Town Wine and Spirits is serious about his discounts, and if you live in the Knoxville region and are a member of TGO, and do not shop at WTWS, you are really missing out.
However, more to the point of this post, I was openly carrying in the liquor store (a relatively small single storefront in a strip mall), the owner had his S&W out and was fiddling around with it as he showed it off to his coworker, he had just taken his new AR-15 out to his car, and we spent about five minutes with me safing my PPS, them looking at it, and me relaoding it and reholstering.
And we were not alone in the store.
In point of fact, while I was in the process of reloading my PPS, topping off the magazine with the round that ejected when I was safing it, and re-inserting/reholstering everything, there was a lady standing right behind me in line, to whom I apologized profusely about us being in the way of her making a purchase. She went ahead and made her purchase, and headed out of the store as the owner and I were out in the parking lot discussing that particular AR-15 purchase. Likewise, no fewer than three othre customers came into the store, and at least one of those checked out, while I was openly carrying and while the owner had the diminutive five-shot revolver sitting on the counter.
And no one cared.
The people did their shopping, we chatted about firearms, hell, I even had to let the slide of my PPS go forward with the resulting sound made all too famous by Hollywood. No panic. No calls to the cops. No “man with a gun”. Nothing. Oh, and in case this was not already obvious, this was taking place in a liquor store, and yet neither I, nor the owner, nor his employee, nor the other customers were siezed by an overwhelming desire to down a fifth of vodka and go on a shooting rampage. Huh.
Now, it is entirely possible that no one noticed. It is also enirely possible that the people who were in the store with us were regulars, and were accustomed to the owner having various pieces of hardware out while he tended the store. It is also possible that they were just too scared to do anything about what they were seeing. But regardless of the why or wherefore, people went about their business almost as if nothing was happening, and the propietor of West Town Wine and Spirits earned two life-long customers in the process.
It is like anti-rights nuts and the anti-carry advocates (on both sides of the fence) simply have no clue what they are talking about…
For those interested in how the frivolous lawsuit against The Armed Citizen is progressing (which should amount to any weblogger anywhere who has ever copy-pasted so much as a paragraph from any news source online), they have an update:
One alert reader wrote telling us he e-mailed the editor of the Review-Journal, stating that lawsuits were a poor response to financial woes. The editor responded and denied the lawsuits had anything to do with finances. However, in an article by TechDirt, Gibson is quoted as stating his lawsuits were devised as a solution to newspaper financial difficulties.
The same article also reports that the spokesman for Stephens Media entertains delusional hopes the sue-first-ask-questions-later approach will cause more people to link to the Review-Journal content. Obviously, some of these aging tycoons don’t understand how the internet works. A story is written and posted online. Smalltime bloggers often wind up reposting (arguably disseminating and therefore increasing the exposure of) these articles. If it is particularly newsworthy, it spreads rapidly via social networking utilities. The number of reposts and track-backs then bumps the article to a higher ranking on Google and other search engines, thereby assigning it greater visibility.
Suing not just sources or customers, but the very engines of the internet sharing network, is hardly the way to encourage linking. Most people are now avoiding Stephens Media-owned publications entirely. In fact, here is a link and directions to a Firefox plugin which will block any Stephens Media Company website.
Thankfully, for those of us who do not use a craptacular browser, there should be a way to swing something similar with the Content Manager so have at it.
And, as always, The Armed Citizen could use some funds for their upcoming, very costly legal battle – every little bit helps.
, depending on colors. I know next to nothing about v-moda and their earbuds/headphones, but it is still a damned shiny thing for them to do. 
in places where they 
deserve to be forced to use 56k dialup for the remainder of their natural lives. 
, the Deacons provide a nearly perfect illustration of the notion that the Second Amendment ensures the other Constitutional rights; Klan terror that was aided and abetted by local police – and the resulting infringements on life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness – was stopped only when armed black men organized and showed that they no longer fulfilled the stereotypes of blacks as docile and subservient to white privilege. Unlike other Civil Rights groups that tended to ask for respect, the Deacons armed themselves to show that they would no longer sit passively, waiting for the Feds to intervene as the Klan continued to reign. As such, the Deacons demanded respect by instilling fear in white segregationists. Other Civil Rights groups benefitted both directly (by using the services of the Deacons) and indirectly (by the way in which black self-defense changed the political field in the South); within merely two years of the founding of the organization, the Deacons can claim credit to almost entirely dismantling the Klan as a political force and source of widespread terror in the state of Louisiana.
(my current EDC knife) for all of $53, and I can guarantee you it is at least 30% better than the Mantis knife – its blade is properly formed, its materials are demonstrably better, it has a grip like a mechanical gecko, its locking system, while strange, is easily deployed, and its flipper beats the MT-1s studs all to hell. 
, which lacks a knife, but can therefore be gotten on planes easier, and packs a hell of a lot more tools into a package just barely larger; any of 
, which costs just barely more, but at least has a solid company behind it… and scissors. 
English
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