I want to thank Linoge for his generosity in lending a man he’s never met a bit of his personal stage. It’s been awesome, and I’ll be forever grateful for all the really cool opportunities blogging here has given me.

The new site name comes from a long tradition among gunbloggers: Name three things you want to talk about, knowing you’ll end up mostly talking about guns: Guns, Cars, and Tech. A few years ago my wife noted that when guys get together, they will end up talking guns, cars, and computers. About 6 months ago I made the decision that when I left, that’s what I’d be blogging about.

So, there it is.

Go ahead and add me to your RSS readers. The site layout is in pre-alpha right now (basically a standard WordPress theme) so there will be a lot of changes in that area.

Well, in the wake of the riots all over England, guess what they want to be able to do?

He got a little over $1 million and sent 5,000 kids to the facilities. 4,000 of those kids’ records have been cleared, but they will never get the time back.

Nice, huh? People I’m friends with are saying negative things about Obama, and Facebook helpfully collapses them so I don’t have to read them! And then they provide a link so I can “like” the President! Notice that none of the posts tag Barack Obama or even use his first name, so this is some sort of auto-tagging.

Guess that town hall meeting he had with Zuck really paid off!

(Note: I’m sure they’re just rolling out a new feature and if my friends were trashing Michelle Bachmann or Sarah Palin the same thing would happen. No, I’m not freaking out that Facebook has the ability to read status updates from their own servers.)

Later: To be clear, I’m not talking about collapsing comments or games or Twitter posts–I know those have been happening for a while. This is about regular status updates with nothing at all in common except a single word being grouped together and used as a campaign tool.

My wife won’t carry. That’s her choice, and I respect it. I suspect a lot of us are in that situation. At some point she’ll get her carry permit because of other advantages, but I doubt she’ll ever carry.

That being said, she knows what to do. Her brother (8 years her senior) spent a good deal of time training her for mindset. When we met, she was a competent shooter and now she knows how to operate every firearm we own. She has a very high level of situational awareness. She knows how to recognize a developing problem and doesn’t hesitate to react. She does this more or less naturally, pretty much like the rest of us (shooters).

In one incident, she and some female friends from out of town were walking back to her car. It was late, drinking was involved, and Mrs. wizardpc was the DD. She noticed a large sedan with tinted windows slow down to match their walking pace, then speed off and turn behind a building. In her typical brilliance, she challenged the other girls to a race to the car. As she locked the doors and started the car, that sedan came from behind another building. If they had still been walking, the sedan would have effectively blocked their path. The others never even noticed.

Now, it might not have been anything more than a confused driver, but better safe than sorry. She noticed odd behavior, recognized that three drunk twenty-somethings would be hard for her to handle in a bad situation, and acted to get them out quickly without alarming them.

This is a very valuable skill set for non-shooters. I’d much prefer that people I’m with be able to recognize that something very bad is about to happen before that very bad thing starts happening. If they get surprised they might freeze. Or worse yet, they might do something. As the old saying goes, “Professionals are predictable. Amateurs are dangerous!”

So, the moral is this: Even if they don’t carry, make sure people you are with on a somewhat regular basis (wife, parents, siblings, friends) know “the plan.” You may think they know what to do, but talk with them anyway just to be sure.

Details are a bit sketchy, but it looks like the victim, 42 year old Kim Kuhlman, stepped outside to confront her friend’s ex-husband while the friend locked herself in the house.

Ex-husband then stabbed Mrs. Kuhlman and tried to gain entry. Cops showed up before he could (thank God).

Mrs. Kuhlman was an accountant for a local property management firm, and leaves behind a husband and two sons.

ETA: I see in the logs a lot of locals are landing here searching for info. I’m sorry I don’t have any more than what’s in the news and what you can find on Google. If you have something you’d like to share (like what we can do to help either Mrs. Kuhlman’s family or the friend she died defending), email me at: wizardpc @ wallsofthecity dot net.

Tea Party: Stop spending so much money!

Democrats: STFU, we know what we’re doing! OBAMACARE!

Tea Party: Okay, we’ll vote you out.

…

Democrats: ZOMG! We didn’t do a budget for like two years, and now we’re going to max out the credit card if we don’t up the limit, Granny’s gonna die!

Tea Party: Or you could, you know, live within your means. We’d actually prefer it if you’d decrease spending.

Republicans: Yeah! Let’s do that! Oh, but we need to up the credit limit anyway.

Tea Party: WTF? Why?

Republicans: Because the Senate won’t let us.

Tea Party: But you control the purse strings! It’s totally within your power to cut spending and not raise the debt limit!

Republicans: STFU NOOB!

Democrats: You guys are totally terrorists for wanting to cut spending. Also, if we don’t raise the debt ceiling, our credit rating will be downgraded. And Granny will die.

S&P: Actually, you’ll need to cut spending, too, in order to avoid a downgrade.

Moodys: What they said.

Dagong: Too late, Yankee Dog!

Democrats, Republicans, and Obama: Behold! We have a deal! And there are massive cuts.

Democrats: Republicans are evil, and these cuts are going to kill Granny.

Republicans: These cuts are awesome. We totally won!

Tea Party: Umm…these cuts don’t amount to much more than a rounding errror. $100b a year? And most of the cuts don’t come until like 8 years from now? If those were binding, wouldn’t the current budget be the one Republicans came up with in 2003?

S&P: Yeah, remember how we said you had to be serious about budget cuts? DOWNGRADE

Democrats: This is the Tea Party’s fault!

Tea Party: WHAT!? HOW!? We didn’t get anything we wanted! [facepalm]

The ones that went through my head were, in no particular order:

• How many little boys did you get to fondle today?
• Are you here to gloat that you got another job after being fired for incompetence?
• What, no gloves?
• So what kind of cancers have you gotten yet?
• Go f#*k yourself

I ended up not saying anything because I was honestly shocked that anyone would wear the uniform without armed police close at hand. That, and Mrs wizardPC gave me the “don’t you dare” look.

I checked the Emily Post Institute but couldn’t find anything relevant.

And in this case, the monkey might have been on meth!

Have I got that right?

Now the FDA and Agriculture Department have one!

Yay for ninjas protecting us from the horrors of knowingly buying raw milk!

H/t Ace sidebar headlines

Well, she was in court yesterday. Nothing happened since she didn’t plead guilty, so her preliminary hearing was moved to Oct 13. The interesting thing was that The Tennessean has acquired video of the incident and posted it. It’s a little under 5 minutes, and since there is no audio they sped up the playback speed.

Things of note:

• I count at least three Airport cops
• I count two TSA Agents and one guy wearing suit who appears to be a manager
• When Mrs. Abbott tries to record the groping, the very large cop stands in front of her to prevent her from recording it
• At no point does the diminuitive Mrs. Abbot appear physically threatening to anyone (The female TSA agent probably has 60lbs on Mrs. Abott, plus the four other government agents standing within three feet)
• Whatever triggered the arrest must’ve been verbal, because it’s unclear from the video why officers suddenly handcuffed her.

In a perfect world, the charges would be dropped, the airport would apologize, and the officers involved would lose their jobs.

I’ll settle for an acquittal, though.

Last night, the House voted on a compromise bill that most people–people not me–claim this is an epic win for Republicans in general and the Tea Party.

So, what is the top story on the Today Show this morning?

Debbie Wasserman Shultz going on and on about how Gabby Giffords returned to the House last night to cast her vote to save the country from financial ruin. Apparently Giffords cast this vote and then hopped a plane back to Houston to continue her rehabilitaion. It was vitally important to her that she vote on this bill, even though her vote was worthless from a numbers standpoint–her vote could not change the outcome one way or the other.

Not mentioned in the story? The way Rep. Giffords voted.

Funny how a story that was looking like the Greatest Victory Boehner Ever Had suddenly switched to The Triumphant Return of a Wonderful Democrat.

Since I am likely one of those users who will be throttled, I can’t wait for the Nexus 3 to come out on Sprint so I can jump ship.

Cost so far: $1130

Recall that back in May I said I had close to enough money to get one, so I needed to narrow down my options. Well, I did finally decide that I needed an Outback IID and that I was going to use Ronnie Barrett’s shop. But first! I decided that to prevent problems later with my wife being in the house by herself and also knowing the combination to the gun safe, I would need an NFA trust. So two months and 27 emails later (most of the delay was my fault) we executed on the NFA trust last night.

So I have that now. [Note: And now that I have the trust, it's probably going to cause me to SBR just about everything I buy in the future]

I called The Outpost this morning to place my order for the Outback IID and was told that while I could order and pay for it today, it would be months before the suppressor would arrive from Gemtech(the last one they ordered was in April, and it still has not arrived). Only then could we start the multi-month NFA Transfer process.

I’ve got an email out to Gemtech support asking how long the backlog is, because really how hard is it to machine aluminium cones?

And as a reminder, in civilized countries I could buy one on my lunch break for $20 at the harware store.

If 90% [of police officers] are standing around watching those 10% violate every civil right ever defined and not doing a cursed thing about it, then they’re not fine, are they?

That pretty well sums it up, doesn’t it?

Keep up the good work!