For Cowboy Blob's Weekend Contest.

You'll have to scroll down for it.  It happened in Wilmington:

At 10:30 p.m., officers were called to the 700 block of E. Sixth St., where they discovered a fight had broken out and 18-year-old Brian Miles -- an alleged participant in the fight -- was seen walking away. Police stopped him and found he had a loaded .380-caliber Magnum handgun, [Master Sgt. Mark] Lemon said.

A 380 Magnum! Who'd a thunk it?  Is it a case of a journalist throwing in "magnum" to make it sound scarier, or a case of a Master Sergeant who didn't know what he was talking about?  Hard to tell.

I don't usually participate in online discussion forums.  It's just sort of a "been there, done that" kind of thing and I'd rather use my online time doing the blogging bit.  However, this post is in reference to a thread at the USCCA Forum.  Don't bother clicking unless you're a member, because only paying members can read it.  I'm not going to quote the whole story, but I think I can get away with quoting the pertinent bits.  Fair Use, and all that.

The poster relates his first interaction with a law enforcement officer while carrying.  This interaction occurred because the poster was witness to a crime.

The poster begins, "First, I have to make it clear that I have nothing but respect and appreciation for LEOs and those who work in related fields."  This shouldn't even be important to the topic of the post, unless he intends to criticize a LEO or LEOs.  So why did he say it?  We'll see.

When exiting the store (7:38pm CST) and scanning the area, I noticed a man to my right, who immediately clicked in my mind as being a concern, just a gut feeling. I gave the guy a good stare to let him know I was a sheepdog. (Wanted to use that line since I first read it!)

Like one of the commenters said, "What does this even mean?"  He probably thought you were just some weird freak just giving him the eye.

As the story continues, it turns out that this man who was a "concern" was there to slash someone's tires--an employee of the store, it turned out.

I backed out of my parking spot to get into a position where I could observe his license plate number as he left; at this point he was slicing the back tire of the truck.

Good. That's where he should have stopped. A license number and a description of the perpetrator was all that was required. Sure, it was an act of crass vandalism, but it was targeted to a specific person and the welfare of not one person was endangered.

Here's where our strip-mall ninja hero screws up, big time.

I waited as he entered his vehicle and started to back out. Honestly, I made the mistake of assuming he would leave in the direction away from me, going around the back of the strip mall. But no this BG backs out and starts to come in my direction, before I knew what I was doing I'd turned my car to block the lanes so he couldn't get any closer to me. I then decided to exit my vehicle to have the option of either getting out of the way if he decided to ram me and/or have more cover options should this turn into a gun fight. I was carrying my XD in the small of my back and at this point I'm standing behind my car with my hand on my gun, ready but not drawn, there is about 15 feet between my passenger headlight and his bumper, he is stopped. I can now clearly see there is also a female occupant. I decide that if his engine revs my gun is going from holstered to drawn and on target. Lucky for both of us, he took the option of backing up down the lane. I re-entered my car and followed as he reversed. The portion of the parking lot behind him is completely empty, large ditch and empty parking spots to his right and strip mall to his left with a service drive at the rear of the building. I followed him at a good distance, hoping he would pull a 180 exposing his license plate, he did and I stopped, not turning down the service drive. I wrote down the license plate number turned to return to the front of the store and started to dial 911...

"Before I knew what I was doing"??? What's the matter, cowboy, your brain has a mind of its own?

So, it's true that an act of vandalism has been committed.  But who is initiating force here?  I think the answer to that is clear.  Our mall ninja first blocks the perp's initial path of escape, gets ready to start shooting if this person gets too close to his car--after he has blocked the guy's path--and then follows him when he leaves by another route.  There is another person, a woman, in the vandal's car who has not so far committed any transgression.  How does mall ninja guy know that she's even there willingly?

It seems to me that if Mr. Ninja had begun shooting, he would have had absolutely no defense against prosecution--nor would he have deserved any.

The rest of the post just goes on to recount his interaction with the LEO, which isn't completely relevant to my topic.

The majority of commenters at the USCCA Forum raked him over the coals for this.  His last reply to the comments gives me the impression that the advice he originally solicited had about as much effect as dirt clods thrown at a fence post.  A few grains might stick, but eventually it all blows away in the wind.  I wonder if he realizes that this post could even be used against him if he's forced to use lethal self defense in the future.  If his first-person report of this incident is accurate, he is obviously someone who is actually looking for trouble.

I would not go so far as to agree with some of the commenters who said he has no business carrying a gun, because even idiots have the right of self defense, but he definitely needs a trip to the woodshed.

I think when he at first said, "First, I have to make it clear that I have nothing but respect and appreciation for LEOs and those who work in related fields," he was thinking, "but I was there with a gun and they weren't so obviously I needed to do their job."

I would never have put myself into a situation like this.  I would have done my best to get the guy's license plate and a general description of him.  And then I would have probably driven to the far side of the parking lot before I called it in.  Why?  Because I want my children to grow up with their father.  I want to grow old with my wife.  I'm not going to put myself in danger.  Someone else is going to have to put me (or another innocent) in danger.  I don't ever want to use my gun against another person unless there is no other option.  This poster had plenty of other options, and intentionally putting himself into this dangerous position was wrong.  If I ever do anything so stupid, I hope one of my cherished loved ones gives me the severe butt-whomping I will so desperately deserve.

UPDATE:  Just to clarify my opinion (in case someone actually cares).  I personally would have had no gripe with Our Hero if he had threatened lethal force to prevent this crime from occurring.  Some people might.  He may or may not have gotten away with it, depending on where he was.  But I personally (I repeat) would have no problem with that.  However, that's not what he did.  He sat there and watched the crime to its completion and only then tried to put himself in a position to have an excuse to use lethal force.  This, to me, seems like someone who isn't interested in stopping an act of violence.  It seems more like someone who was just looking for an excuse to shoot someone.

Ninth Stage is looking for information on an unidentified magazine.  So if you consider yourself a gun expert, go take a look and see if you can help.

Buckeye Firearms Association has been hammering the Sandusky Register into a greasy little pulp.  Check out their site for plenty of info and commentary on this newspaper that published a list of all of Ohio's concealed handgun licensees.  Here's the latest:

Mr. Westerhold openly concedes that Ohio law says that concealed carry lists are not public records. Think about that for a moment. The people, by and through their elected officials, have determined, as a matter of law, that these lists are not public records and the release of these lists is not in the public interest. Not some administrative agency trying to shield their meetings or who they meet with, not some bureaucrat trying to hide the fact he gave a no-bid contract to his brother-in-law, not a renegade school board member trying to change curriculum… The people, by and through their elected representatives, made a decision. Those who exercise a right, like praying, writing an idiotic editorial or obtaining an abortion, are not required to face public scrutiny. These are not public records, and their release is not in the public interest. So Sayeth The People.

But Westerhold got the information because of the journalist loophole.  The people of Ohio used their legislative process to say that these records are NOT public information, except to "authorized journalists" of course.  So he has taken it upon himself to publish this information, not because it's necessary, but because he can.

It's hard to believe, after the trouncing other newspapers have taken after doing the same, that he thinks he can get away with it.

And though I'm used to seeing hypocrisy, it stills boggles my mind that he can publish this information "with a straight face," and then call it "harassment" when the people of Ohio and elsewhere promise to boycott the advertisers of that newspaper.

I think it won't be long now before Ohio gets rid of the journalist loophole.

Michele at Reformed Chicks Blabbing has written a very good article on the topic of Christianity, Politics and Blogging.   I've been trying to find a good "money quote" but the whole thing should be read to get the big picture.  Here's a good passage.

One final point about blogging. I think that visitors to this blog might want to look at it in a similar way to a Christian mommy blog or a Christian fishing blog, or Christian crafting blog, where the blogger shares their passion for their hobby or their vocation as well as their love of the Lord. Would you go to a mommy blog and complain that they aren't blogging enough about the kingdom of God if they are blogging about their children? Maybe not because motherhood is kingdom work, which leads me to my next point -- for the reformed all of life is about the kingdom. You can't really separate the kingdom from the believer. There is no such think as a secular anything for the Christian. It's all been sanctified by God and should be viewed from the perspective of his kingdom.

Or, we could add, a Christian gun blog.  Go read it if this kind of thing interests you.

As found at Gun Culture.

Another good one at Damn Interesting, about a little-known pioneer of cryobiology:

One afternoon in the early 1950s, a young biochemist left his suburban lab bench at Britain’s Mill Hill National Institute of Medical Research and boarded a tube train to Leicester Square. His destination was on nearby Lisle Street, in an area which today makes up part of London's glittering West End theatre district. But in the post-war years the sector was better known as a hectic hub for two of humanity's oldest professions. Only one of these was of interest to the young scientist. The girls hawking their wares seemed to sense his single-mindedness and kept their distance as the greenhorn scientist turned his attention to his true quarry: the vast abundance of second-hand military hardware that could be found in the shops lining Lisle Street.

Specifically, he was looking for war surplus radar equipment. His intention was to cannibalize a suitable radio frequency transmitter for the purpose of reanimating dead, frozen hamsters.

"Do you want to help me load my gun?"

She had been in one of her grouchy moods so I thought I'd do something to cheer her up.  And I did need to load it up with ratshot, since snake weather has set in.  She sat down next to me on the edge of the bed and took the gun from me, awkwardly but correctly keeping her finger off the trigger.  I had just checked it to make sure it wasn't loaded.  It had been a long time since I had drilled her on the old single-action, but she still remembered.

With the gun in her lap, she flipped open the loading gate and slowly rotated the cylinder until it had clicked two or three times more than necessary--ensuring herself that the gun was not loaded.  I dumped six cartridges of CCI .22 long rifle shotshells in her small hand, and she slowly slid each one into a chamber.  She missed one chamber, and struggled with it for a few seconds before she remembered that it rotates in only one direction.  She spun the cylinder around and filled the empty chamber.



She snapped the loading gate closed and handed it back to me, still keeping her finger away from the trigger and making sure the barrel stayed pointing away from both of us.  Her grouchy mood had evaporated.

I started out on handguns with a single action revolver.  Someday she will learn to shoot with such a gun.

The single action revolver is a universal handgun, especially one as solid and reliable as a Ruger Single-Six.  And it's so simple to operate, even an eight-year-old can handle it.

Graphic found at The High Road.

Click for larger version.

From JPFO.

Don't miss this one, at Freedom's Phoenix:

Richard Mack was raised in Safford, Arizona. He graduated from BYU and stayed in Provo as a policeman for about 11 years. He left a promising career to move back to Arizona and run for Graham County sheriff. He was elected in 1988 and again in 1992. In 1993 Bill Clinton signed the Brady Bill (named for James Brady) into law and the wheels of Sheriff Mack's lawsuit opposing the Brady Bill began to turn.

The Brady Bill was a federal law which required the local Sheriff to conduct background checks on all of Sheriff Mack’s constituents who wished to purchase a handgun. The sheriff was responsible for all costs associated with the checks, keeping files on each purchase and notifying the gun shops and customers of his findings. Sheriff Mack told me that the most offensive portion of this legislation was that the bill contained a provision that threatened to arrest "anyone who knowingly failed to comply." Well, sheriff Mack intended to do just that; he would not comply and instead filed a lawsuit in Federal District Court in Tucson to have the Brady Bill ruled unconstitutional.

[...]

It is now 10 years later and Mack has sent a letter to Wisconsin Gunowners that were upset about increased background checks of the federal mandate that required access to mental records (unfunded mandates) first step to submitting to mental evaluation to purchase a firearm. “State legislatures are not subject to federal direction” NRA supported the Mack V. Brady litigation to the tune of almost half a million dollars and now is supporting federal legislation (HR 2640) that rips at the heart of this court victory.

Is the NRA just trying to fit in to political correctness or is there another agenda they are supporting? Sarah Brady put out a statement saying that this bill was a victory for gun control and was shocked that the NRA was supporting this.

Read the whole thing.  Give it a link and spread it far and wide.

Via The Real Gun Guys.

Related:  The Brady Bill That Never Was.

Just to join the fun.  I first tried it and got only a PG, but then I realized it was rating only the front page.  So I punched in the archives for 2007, and got this.  I'm not so embarrassed now.

My daughter says the rating is stupid because it's only because of the word "gun" being used 16 times.

At 3:30 in the morning.  The dogs did a good job pinning it down, but I wish it had waited another 90 minutes or so to get caught.

Read today's Shooting Wire.  It's a good one.

I expect a long hard week of work ahead, and I'm pretty sure I'm even working next Saturday, so there probably won't be much activity here.  Everything that's newsworthy has already been covered by someone else, anyway.

It has been a long time since an update was required, but this week a new blog joined the list.

Welcome to Freedom Fighter Radio.

This hasn't happened in a while, but it looks like I'll run out of bandwidth this month.  It looks like I'll have about three more days before it shuts down.  It will be back, of course, on the first of next month.

This is apparently due to that high-traffic post I mentioned a few days ago.  The traffic is dying down now, so it shouldn't be an issue next month.

First, here's an old essay that I wrote in July 1997 about our family reunions.  It's one of my old Ramblings, and is long, so ignore it if you want.

---

"Alan," said Mary Ann, looking only slightly puzzled, "how did we ever manage to do all this outside?"

I knew what she meant. I had been thinking the same thing only recently. I finished shuffling the dominoes, pushed them into the center of the table, leaned back, took a long swallow of iced tea, and grinned.

We were sitting inside an air-conditioned building that felt like it was out in the more or less middle of nowhere, but was actually near the small town of Christine, about 50 miles south of San Antonio, just on the edge of where the south Texas brush country begins to turn wild. A few feet from our table, balls clacked as they ricocheted around a pool table. At the other end of this long room, a distant relative of ours had claimed the old piano, and my dad as well as several of my cousins, aunts, and uncles had gathered around her to sing. She had a nearly endless repertoire of gospel hymns and old country-western songs. A few minutes earlier the curious sequence of "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry" followed by "Amazing Grace" had almost brought tears to my eyes.  It was right there that I also realized the words of either song fit perfectly with the music of the other.  Try it sometime.

We were playing a domino game called "42." For the reader who may not be familiar with it, this is a game that--I have read--originated in Texas. I read that long ago, a Baptist preacher had some sons who learned to play Spades (the card game), but this preacher considered cards tools of the devil, and forbade them to play any card games. So they got out some dominoes and devised a game based on Spades. This could be true, I don't know. In any case, 42 is similar to Spades except that the high bidder for each hand gets to declare which suit is the trump for that hand, instead of being stuck with only one suit always being trumps like in Spades. My cousin Mary Ann was sitting to my right. To my left was her sister Carol, and across from me her husband Alfred. We had been doing this almost as long as we could remember.

To tell the truth, I do remember learning to play 42. I don't remember the exact year, but I suppose I was 12 or 13 years old, and it was at another family reunion--one of those outside family reunions Mary Ann was talking about. My dad's side of my family has been having these kinds of reunions for years--before I ever came along, I suppose. After so many years, they have tended to blur together somewhat, but the earliest ones I can remember were at a park on the Pedernales River in the hill country near Marble Falls. We camped out in tents, and our parents cooked for us on Coleman camp stoves. The smell of the stove fuel is still fresh in my memory, and the sound of my dad working the little pump to build up pressure in the fuel tank...the hiss of the fire as it ignited, and finally the salty smell of bacon sizzling in a frying pan. We usually managed to come up with a portable barbecue pit from somewhere, and on Saturday noon we would have a huge meal centered around barbecued meats of all kinds.

I mention Saturday noon because this shindig lasted three days. It was customary to take a small vacation for the reunion, get there on Friday--sometimes even on Thursday--and not leave until Sunday. So for two nights we slept in tents or, as I always did, outside on a cot with nothing but the sky for a ceiling.  The sleeping  bag I used always smelled of the citronella I had accidentally spilled on it one time. During the day we would swim in the river, at night we would fish in it. If the fish weren't biting my cousins and I might sit all crowded into one tent, telling ghost stories by the light of a flashlight.  I remember once completely creeping everyone out with a paraphrased rendition of Lovecraft's "The Shadow Over Innsmouth," made even creepier by the sounds and smells of the nearby river.

Later we started meeting at a state park, also up in the hill country. This part of the state is a sort of meeting place for my family, because this is where my paternal ancestors settled when they first came here. My great-grandfather settled near Burnet after emigrating from Germany, and  the Scottish side of my ancestry also came from this area: Marble Falls, Travis Peak, Smithville, Lago Vista, and probably more tiny hill country communities than I can remember.

We always had our reunions where there was a creek or river so we could swim. After we moved on from this state park, we had our reunions for several years at a privately owned park halfway between Marble Falls and Travis Peak. Here we were still outdoors, sleeping in tents or on cots, but for the first time there was a small building that housed a deep freeze and a refrigerator so we had someplace besides ice chests to store food. It was a long steep downhill scramble to get to the creek, and a much longer uphill climb to get back to camp. By walking upstream perhaps a quarter of a mile, we could get to a huge, deep, beautiful swimming hole, where a waterfall drizzled a small but steady and wide stream of water to splash onto rocks about 15 feet below, and over the years the waterfall had dug out an almost perfectly round hole wide enough for several people to swim in at once without having to worry about bumping into each other. This hole, however, was only for swimmers. The sides dropped off too abruptly to allow any wading. It was here that I learned to tread water, going for long stretches without ever touching anything but deep, deep water, and maybe occasionally brushing a fish. It was also here that I learned to play 42, under the attentive tutelage of my dad and my Aunt Betty (Mary Ann's mother).

We may have kept using this park a lot longer than we did, but there was a falling out between the part of the family that owned the park and the part that didn't, so we moved the reunions to Lockhart State Park. For the first time, we didn't have a creek or river to swim in. There was a swimming pool, but we had to share it with everyone else at the park, not to mention the residents of Lockhart itself. So we didn't do much swimming. But, it was here for the first time that we had a big air-conditioned building to stay in, nearby motels for anyone to stay in if they chose, and more than one refrigerator to store plenty of food. Since there was no fishing to speak of, and not much swimming, we spent lots and lots of time playing 42. Occasionally a few of us played Dungeons & Dragons or Call of Cthulhu, but mostly we played 42.

And so we had it there every year for a long time, and eventually, we all realized that we could never go back to the old way. It was just too convenient, too comfortable. Eventually we found out about this other place near Christine, and here we've held the reunion for the past few years. Attendance was down this year, some people didn't come because of illness, some simply because they didn't feel like it, some...well, some you just never hear from, so you don't know what's going on with them.

It was a nice place. During the drive the day before, I had been remembering other times we came to this area, actually farther south past another small town called Charlotte, into the heart of the brush country on a 2,000-acre ranch where the owners had given us permission to hunt and fish whenever we wanted to. There it was common to have close encounters with javelinas and other wildlife, and it wasn't a strange thing to see at least one alligator during our stay.

But, this place wasn't quite so far into the wilderness as that. When we had arrived the day before, the first thing I did was pick up a basketball and shoot baskets for a while on the basketball court. I have never been very good at anything athletic, but I have always liked shooting baskets. In the background was the hum of the air-conditioner on the back of my dad's camper trailer, in the distance was the occasional murmer of voices as someone opened the door to the main building. Other than that and the sound of the basketball bouncing, it was very quiet.

So I grabbed my dad's bicycle and took off for parts unknown. The land in that area is fairly flat, with not too many steep hills to make bike riding difficult. Up the narrow one-lane road I went to the nearest highway, which was an only slightly wider farm road. I turned right and went to the top of the first hill, a long gentle hill that had me breathing a little hard by the time I got to the top. I sat there thinking that I really should do this more often as I caught my breath. As my breathing quieted and my heartbeat stilled, I looked around. It was just the familiar brushy surroundings that you find in that area of south Texas: mesquite trees, lots of prickly pear cactus, and the continuous runs of small brushy plants that I don't know the name of. A nice breeze was blowing, almost chilling me as the sweat evaporated, and I suddenly realized something. It was quiet. It was so quiet I could hear my own heartbeat. The nearest major highway, state highway 37, was so far away I couldn't hear the rumble of the cars that I knew should constantly be there. It had been a long time since I heard silence like that. As I rode back, I did hear a few more cars--other relatives coming to the reunion. When I got back I took a long nap and then started looking for a domino game.

So here we were. The lady at the piano had finished "Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain" and launched right into "I'll Fly Away." Everyone else had finished drawing their dominoes, so I scooped up the leftovers, which is proper domino ettiquette for the shuffler to follow. In 42, the person to the left of the shuffler bids first, and so forth clockwise so that the shuffler bids last. If everyone passes, this means the shuffler has "forced bid." This usually means bidding the absolute minimum allowed and trying to make it, usually getting "set" (losing the hand) in the process. Some folks don't play with forced bid, if such a thing happens they just reshuffle and try again. I've found this to make a pretty boring game, some of the most spectacular playing comes when you can make your forced bid on a bad hand. A "good" hand could mean having a double and three or so more dominoes in suit, which you would make your trumps. A fair hand might be a double and only two more in suit, along with a few good "offs." An off is any domino you have which is not in your trump suit. Some of these offs can be very powerful without being trumps, especially if they are doubles. Even a low domino can "catch the trick" (win that particular play of four dominoes) if no one else can follow suit and no one plays a trump on it. A low domino that still catches the trick is called a "walker." There are also hands where you may be stuck with some decent trumps but without a double to support them. I have seen some people who just refused to bother bidding with a hand like this, but 42 is a game of partners, and I always remember what my dad told me when I said I was afraid to bid without the double. "That's what your partner is for." Of course, there are two people there who aren't your partner and could also have the double, but those are the breaks.

I studied my dominoes as I mulled over Mary Ann's question. Carol passed. Alfred passed. Mary Ann passed. I had forced bid. I rearranged my dominoes and studied them a few long seconds more.

"Because," I replied, and looked back at Mary Ann, "we were kids, and everything was just a big adventure." And I led in sixes without the double.

---

So we had our reunion again this weekend, and I'm sad to say it was the worst yet.  The older generation is disappearing, and there aren't enough of the hard core remaining to keep it up.  Next year it will be only a one-day affair, which is about all I can stand these days anyway.  Most of the conversation deals now with health problems, which I simply am not that interested in, and besides, I don't have any such information to add to the conversation, since I am still relatively young and in good health.  If I hear "is there a Splenda recipe for that?" one more time, I think I might scream.  Our family has also seemed to churn out more than its fair share of cranks, crackpots, and social misfits (evidence is at hand).

We bailed out early.  There was nothing to do, and almost no one to do it with.  As time has gone by, I have come to value the company of many people who I have no relation to, rather than those to who I am actually related.

Since we returned a day early, I hope I can at least finish the fence tomorrow.  Mostly finish, anyway.  I'm going to have to borrow a brace and bit from my dad to drill pilot holes for the gate bolts, and I'm going to need a few more steel posts, but I think I can mostly finish it.

I think I'm the only bona-fide gun-nut in my family, but as far as I know, they are all gun-friendly.  My kids and I were passing some time blowing bubbles.  I had a cool battery-powered bubble gun that could churn out hundreds of bubbles in no time, and my son was trying to hit the floating bubbles with a squirt gun.  He squirted me, and I used the opportunity to remind him of the rule to always know what's behind his target.  My cousin Mary Ann, standing nearby, said simply, "That's a good gun rule."  Then my daughter offered the information that I had been teaching them to shoot with a BB gun.  This didn't cause any excitement at all, my cousin only asking my daughter if she was any good at it.  "Not really...not yet," she answered.

Another gun-related moment came as we were packing up to return home.  This place has a no-guns policy, and it's private property so they can do that.  However, a couple of years ago my wife saw that I was packing and mentioned it.  I told her that, just in case the odds were against us and our house was burglarized while we were gone (and they went to the trouble of ripping my home safe(s) out of the wall and taking them), I was going to be sure I still had one gun on me.  As usual, this year I packed the XD40 in my car safe.  As we were leaving, my wife simply asked if I had my gun.  Years ago, my wife at first didn't really get why I carried, but after giving her my reasons and showing her that carrying a gun didn't automatically make one a hothead looking for trouble, she has come around.  This time she asked only to be sure I hadn't forgotten it.

The XD stayed safely secured the whole time, and somehow managed not to sneak its way out of the lockbox and kill someone all on its own.

And just FYI, the "medium" safe at the above link can hold the mid-sized XD with one spare magazine.  I don't know if it would be able to contain the extended 13-round mag for the XD45, but it can hold the standard "flush-with-the-grips" magazine with no problem.

I've been gone since Friday afternoon, I just got back late tonight to find this.

Hollis Wayne Fincher has been sentenced:

A leader of the Militia of Washington County has been sentenced to 6 1/2 years in federal prison for possessing banned weapons, including machine guns and a sawed-off shotgun.

"All I can say is, I love my God and I love my country," Hollis Wayne Fincher said before U.S. District Judge Jimm L. Hendren pronounced the sentence Friday.

Fincher, 61, was ordered to serve two years of supervised probation after his release from prison and was fined $1,000.

Fincher was arrested Nov. 8 at his home in the Black Oak community south of Fayetteville in a raid by Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agents. Federal authorities said an investigation began in March 2006 after a newspaper published a story about Fincher and the militia that was accompanied by a picture of him holding a weapon.

At his trial in January, Fincher did not dispute that he had two .308-caliber machine guns, homemade versions of the Browning model 1919. Instead, he argued that the law under which he was charged is unconstitutional because it violates the 2nd Amendment's guarantee of citizens' rights to bear arms.

During Friday's sentencing hearing, Hendren commented on that defense, saying Fincher had the right to claim that the laws regarding firearms were not proper, but that did not change the fact that he must be held responsible for violating those laws.

Because the Constitution is irrelevant.

Did he get sentenced for committing acts of violence?  No.  Was he sentenced for planning to commit acts of violence?  No.

He was sentenced for possessing a weapon that the "authorities" have arbitrarily declared the common rabble must not be allowed to possess.  His actual crime was that he did not pay his permission tax.

Via The War On Guns.

A couple of erstwhile car thieves in Marietta, Georgia didn't quite have what it took to successfully complete their thievery:

Two U.S. car thieves failed to make their getaway in a car they had just stolen because they couldn't figure out how to use its manual transmission, a witness said on Wednesday.

The teenagers armed with a gun approached a man outside a pizza restaurant in Marietta, Georgia, late on Monday. They stole his wallet and the keys to his Honda Accord, got into the car but couldn't make it start because it had stick shift, according to John Williamson, 18, a restaurant employee.

"The kid was just sitting in the car trying to start it but he had no idea what to do. He looked dumbfounded. The only thing he had going was the radio," said Williamson who witnessed the scene.

While the thief was trying to start the car, restaurant employees called the police who arrived and caught the teenagers as they tried to escape into nearby woods.

Unlike many parts of the world, the majority of cars in the United States are automatic and many drivers are unused to driving "stick shift" vehicles, in which a clutch pedal must be depressed to change gear.

This from Reuters U.K., which must be providing some chuckles for those superior Europeans.

It's providing some chuckles for me, as well.

Just popped in to check site traffic.  It's unusual to have a traffic increase when I've been so lax in posting.  Apparently a post of mine from a few days ago is getting a lot of traffic, being emailed around, and appearing on some forums.  Thanks to Syd for linking to it.  So far, no flames, which I fully expected if the link got any exposure.

Is anyone else irritated by forums that won't even allow you to read unless you register first?

I might slack off some on blogging this week.  I'm kind of preoccupied with my new job, and I still have a fence to finish.

More than $300 just for the materials to put a little fence around my house.  I shudder to think of what it will be to fence my entire 5 acres.

It would have been more than $400 if my dad hadn't had a bunch of extra fence posts that he gave me, along with a fence charger.  I still have to buy insulators and wire for the electric strand.

It will be nice, however, to have a dog moat fence around my house.

I couldn't find any McCormick Hickory Smoked Salt at the store the other day.  Just checked their website, and it turns out they discontinued it last year.  That's a bummer.

I'll have to order some other brand online.  I've already found two that look good, I just need to try and research some customer opinions on them.

I use this stuff in my jerky.

And by "funny," I mean "amusingly pathetic," of course.


The NY Times gives us a slide show of online gamer nerds and their avatars.

Some of their "special powers" are funny too.  One has "godlike powers" as a special power.  That must really come in handy.  Another one had "power hugs and ultimate wisdom."

Right.  I really don't care to speculate on what a "power hug" is.

Via The Agitator.

I'm ashamed to say that I forsook the assembly this morning, but I had a strong urge to get some fence building done and I did it.  All that's left now is to put in the last gate brace, mount the gate, and drive in a few steel t-posts to tighten things up.  I'll probably put a strand of electric wire around the bottom later to prevent the dogs from digging out, but that's no big deal.

Dad has a spare fence charger.  I'll have to get the last bit of equipment sometime this week.

And boy am I wiped out.

I also put on two batches of jerky this morning.  One that I call Sweet Hickory, and the other my Original Recipe, which I haven't made in several years.  It's only a little spicy, with garlic and onion, some black pepper and cayenne, and just a pinch of sage.

I have a spreadsheet with a bunch of my recipes on it.  There are actually four versions of the Original, each a little spicier than the last, because people where I used to work were so picky about how much heat they could handle.

In shadowed Ulthar, where the moonbeams fall
Draping the chimneys with a silver pall
Where the people work by light of day
And trade with the merchants from down Hatheg way
In Ulthar, one must all cats respect
No cat in Ulthar ever knows neglect
For the cats of Ulthar are special ones
Old ones that drowse by the light of the sun
Young ones that sing when the moon fills the sky
Wise ones that gaze with intelligent eye
Kittens that caper on slanted rooftops
Teasing the moon till the Old Man cries "Stop!"
Leaping and climbing from gable to gable
Till rooftops are seething with calico and sable
Until finally, the sunrise
When they narrow their bright eyes
Down from rooftops they gambol
And homeward they amble
To nap on the hearth till the sun should go down
And the gibbous moon rises on their little town
And the star-pinned night sky will send out its call
In shadowed Ulthar, where the moonbeams fall

---

The first "poem" I ever wrote, sixteen years ago.

One of those things you do when you get bored is Google your own website to see what turns up, right?

I just discovered that an old post of mine on the Dardick is one of the references for that firearm at Wikipedia.

Man, what a slow day.  Took the kids to our one-day Vacation Bible School today, went and picked up some fencing.  That's about it.  Here's a meme I've seen in a couple of places, most recently at When your only tool is a hammer.

WERE YOU NAMED AFTER ANYONE? No, although my name sounds like I was named after a character from "Robin Hood."
DO YOU LIKE YOUR HANDWRITING? No, it's messy.  I print all the time so people can read it.
WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE LUNCH MEAT? Uh...HEB used to have some expensive mesquite-smoked turkey slices that I really liked.
DO YOU HAVE KIDS? Yes.
IF YOU WERE ANOTHER PERSON WOULD YOU BE FRIENDS WITH YOU? Sure.
DO YOU USE SARCASM A LOT?  You must be kidding.
DO YOU STILL HAVE YOUR TONSILS? Yes, and appendix too.
WOULD YOU BUNGEE JUMP? No.
WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE CEREAL? Stuff like Honey & Nut Crunch, Honey Nut Cheerios, Nut & Honey, etc.
DO YOU UNTIE YOUR SHOES WHEN YOU TAKE THEM OFF? Yes.
DO YOU THINK YOU ARE STRONG? No.
WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE ICE CREAM? Bluebell Homemade Vanilla slathered with butterscotch syrup.
WHAT IS THE FIRST THING YOU NOTICE ABOUT PEOPLE? Their eyes.
RED OR PINK? What?
WHAT IS THE LEAST FAVORITE THING ABOUT YOURSELF? I procrastinate.
WHO DO YOU MISS THE MOST?  Don't really know.  There are a lot of people I've known that I often think about and wonder what ever became of them.
WHAT COLOR PANTS AND SHOES ARE YOU WEARING? Blue jeans, no shoes.
WHAT WAS THE LAST THING YOU ATE? Bacon & cheese sandwich.
WHAT ARE YOU LISTENING TO RIGHT NOW? The Sirius new age channel on Dish Network, thunder rumbling in the distance.
IF YOU WHERE A CRAYON, WHAT COLOR WOULD YOU BE? Blue violet.
FAVORITE SMELLS? Rain, freshly plowed earth, wood smoke.
WHO WAS THE LAST PERSON YOU TALKED TO ON THE PHONE? The HR person from SAWS.
FAVORITE SPORTS TO WATCH? Women's gymnastics.
HAIR COLOR[S]? Brown.
EYE COLOR?  Blue.
DO YOU WEAR CONTACTS? No, but I've worn spectacles most of my life.
FAVORITE FOOD? Pizza, hamburgers, venison, barbecued beef (not a big fan of chicken), mashed potatoes, homegrown peas & beans.
SCARY MOVIES OR HAPPY ENDINGS? Both.
LAST MOVIE YOU WATCHED? Howl's Moving Castle.
WHAT COLOR SHIRT ARE YOU WEARING? White.
SUMMER OR WINTER?  Autumn.
HUGS OR KISSES? I'm not really a touchy-feely kind of person.
FAVORITE DESSERT?  Apple pie, lemon meringue pie, cheesecake, fresh strawberries dusted with a little sugar (fructose instead of sucrose, if I can find it).
MOST LIKELY TO RESPOND?
LEAST LIKELY TO RESPOND? Not sure what these questions are talking about.
WHAT BOOK ARE YOU READING NOW? Carpe Jugulum by Terry Pratchett.
WHAT IS ON YOUR MOUSE PAD? I don't use no stinkin' mouse pad.
WHAT DID YOU WATCH ON T.V. LAST NIGHT? Tonight I watched that cartoon "The Replacements" and I thought it was pretty funny.  It had a lot of joke references that the kids didn't get.
FAVORITE SOUND[S]?  The wind through pine trees, thunder and rain, whippoorwills and owls calling at night.  And coyotes, too.
ROLLING STONES OR BEATLES? Beatles, except I think "Tattoo You" is the best album ever (see sarcasm above).
WHAT IS THE FARTHEST YOU HAVE BEEN FROM HOME? Jasper, British Columbia.
DO YOU HAVE A SPECIAL TALENT? I can sing a little.
WHERE WERE YOU BORN? The hospital (there's only one) in Floresville, Texas.

Not so good news today.  One more doe gave birth, this time--oddly--to non-identical twins, one buck and one doe.  The baby doe was stillborn, and it looks like the little buck will have to be bottle-fed to survive.

This doe was, for some reason, always getting chased by the other deer.  It's very strange, but they never let her rest.  She'll have to go into the new pen when it gets built.  Or we might just have to sell her.

Londonderry, NH:

A mother kicked, chased and eventually pinned down a rabid fox that bit her 8-year-old daughter while the girl was on a swing set. Pamela Berube, 39, of Hudson, had taken her eldest daughter to a flute lesson at a private home in Londonderry on Thursday.

Her other two children, 8-year-old Deena and 10-year-old Joshua, were playing in the flute teacher's back yard when Berube heard a scream - "and it was not a regular scream," she said.

She ran outside to discover a fox chasing the children around the yard. Deena fell, and her mother kicked the fox away from her.

"Apparently not hard enough, because he kept going after Deena," said the flute instructor, Cindy Winsor, who also ran to help.

Winsor grabbed a plastic baseball bat and hit the fox with it, but the blow didn't stop him. Berube chased the fox until it bit her arm. Then she grabbed it by the neck and pinned it to the ground for 10 minutes, until police arrived and shot it.

I have to give credit to her for keeping a rabid fox pinned to the ground for 10 minutes.  That must have been terrifying.

But what if this had been a crazed human intent on murder?  What might have happened in those 10 minutes if she had tried to stop him/her with a plastic bat?

American Freedom Agenda is asking presidential candidates to sign the Freedom Pledge.  Follow the link to read the details, but the basic points are these:

1.  No military commissions except on the battlefield.
2.  No evidence extracted by torture or coercion.
3.  No detaining [United States] citizens as unlawful enemy combatants.
4.  Restoring habeus corpus for suspeced alien enemy combatants.
5.  Prohibiting warrantless spying by the National Security Agency in violation of law.
6.  Renouncing Presidential signing statements.
7.  Ending secret government by invoking State Secrets Privilege.
8.  Stopping extraordinary renditions.
9.  Stopping threats to prosecute journalists under the Espionage Act.
10.  Ending the listing of individuals or organizations as terrorists based on secret evidence.

The American Freedom Agenda’s (AFA) mission is twofold: the enactment of a cluster of statutes that would restore the Constitution’s checks and balances as enshrined by the Founding Fathers; and, making the subject a staple of political campaigns and of foremost concern to Members of Congress and to voters and educators. Especially since 9/11, the executive branch has chronically usurped legislative or judicial power, and repeatedly claims that the President is the law. The constitutional grievances against the White House are chilling, reminiscent of the kingly abuses that provoked the Declaration of Independence.

So far only one candidate has signed the Pledge.  You can guess who.

Via The Liberty Papers.

Hammer made comment #900.

When comment #1,000 rolls around, whoever makes it will get a sidebar ad for a while.

Thanks to all of you who read this stuff and leave comments.

I went over to my dad's house this morning to pick up some fence posts.  One more doe had given birth to twins yesterday, so I helped tag them.  Twin doe fawns this time.  We're going to have to start building more pens pretty soon.

Original caption:  "Soldiers from special force unit 'COE' take part in a military training exercise at the military base, near  Managua, June 13, 2007."

I wonder exactly what kind of background they are supposed to be camouflaged for.  I keep thinking it has something to do with a flour factory that's being used to hide a hoard of gold bullion or something like in the old Scooby Doo Mysteries.

Ron of Reactuate has joined the ranks of the XDers.

Eventually I'm going trade my XD40 for a .45, but I still have a couple hundred rounds of ammo to use up first.

The Total Perspective Vortex.  Another interesting and somewhat pertinent article about mental stability at Damn Interesting:

Studies into clinical depression have yielded similar findings, leading to the development of an intriguing, but still controversial, concept known as depressive realism [emphasis in original--ed.]. This theory puts forward the notion that depressed individuals actually have more realistic perceptions of their own image, importance, and abilities than the average person. While it’s still generally accepted that depressed people can be negatively biased in their interpretation of events and information, depressive realism suggests that they are often merely responding rationally to realities that the average person cheerfully denies.

Those with paranoid disorders can sometimes possess a certain unusual insight as well. It has often been asserted that within every delusional system, there exists a core of truth—and in their pursuit of imagined conspiracies against them, these individuals often show an exceptionally keen eye for the real thing. People who interact with them may be taken aback as they find themselves accused of harboring some negative opinion of the person which, secretly, they actually do hold. Complicating the issue, of course, is the fact that if the supposed aversion didn’t exist before, it likely does after such an unpleasant encounter.

I have spent the last 4 years or so being forced to tolerate a "superior" who, in my opinion, is so irrationally optimistic that he should seek help.  I have been in the top two performers at my former place of employment, and for more than two years now have been doing the job that no one else was willing to do.  Yet, in spite of my job performance and putting myself at greater risk than anyone else, my annual performance evaluation was marked down because I had a "bad attitude."  And almost every paranoid prediction I gave my boss has turned out to be true.

Also, he's one of those who keeps making the same mistakes over and over, but somehow expects a different result every time.  We all know what that means.

So, if I'm depressively realistic, yet evidence supports that I was the one who was actually correct, then who really is mentally imbalanced here?

Gun Owners of America Alert-- June 14, 2007

After all, if there were such a thing as a single issue Member of Congress, it would have to be McCarthy. Rep. McCarthy ran for office to ban guns; Hollywood made a movie about her efforts to ban guns; and she is currently the lead sponsor of a bill that makes the old Clinton gun ban pale by comparison.

Even many Democrats wouldn't go near a McCarthy gun bill. They have learned that supporting gun control is a losing issue. Enter Rep. John Dingell (D-MI), the so-called Dean of the House, having served since the Eisenhower administration. Dingell is also a former NRA Board member, and was in that capacity tapped to bring the NRA leadership to the table.

The end result of the negotiations was that this small clique among the NRA leadership gave this bill the support it needed to pass.

But why was it necessary to pass the bill in such an underhanded fashion? If this is such a victory for the Second Amendment, why all the secrecy? Why was a deal forged with the anti-gun Democrat House leadership, keeping most pro-gun representatives in the dark? Why was the bill rammed through on the Suspension Calendar with no recorded vote with which to identify those who are against us?

I don't care how many reassurances I hear from the NRA (pardon me while I sarcastically genuflect for a moment), anything that gets backed up by McCarthy and the Brady Campaign is an automatic NO WAY for me.

And on the topic of these unrecorded votes:  in my opinion they should not exist, because they sidestep the principle of our allegedly representative government.

UPDATE:  Yuri Orlov comments.  Note that the email from the Brady bunch said, "Victory for Gun Control in House. NRA Sees the Light."  That light must be pretty dim, considering where they apparently have their heads.

With all the gimmicky exercise machines that have been invented just so people can simulate activity without actually participating in the activity:  treadmill, skiing machine, rowing machine, etc, why hasn't someone invented a post-hole digging machine?

Talk about a total body workout.

Jared McLaughlin of Fire Like This is posting some informational pamphlets in pdf format that could be useful for educating someone new to or unfamiliar with firearms.  Check out his blog and follow the links.

At KMVT (Twin Falls, Idaho):

As a democracy we respect and honor our constitutional rights and therefore protect them when someone abuses them. Red's Trading Post sees the ATF abusing these rights and wants to show the world their side of the story.

Owner Ryan Horsley says, “I've began speaking out. Other people have refused to speak out in hopes that if they stay quiet, they hope that the ATF will find favor with them or just let them go and not revoke their license. But as we've seen in so many instances -- that's not the case."

For several years now -- the gun shop and the ATF have had their share of battles.

From being given a temporary stay to additional violations – Horsley claimed that beyond all that -- Red's Trading Post’s record is very clean.

He says, "In the 2005 audit they went through 10,000 forms and all they could manage to find were four-percent errors in our record keeping. I remind people that these are not laws nor ordinances. These are policies set up by the ATF and those are policies that continue to change."

The KMVT report also states: "We tried to contact the ATF -- but they couldn't be reached for comment."  I'll bet Mr. Horsely gets some "comments" from them pretty soon.

Via JPFO, which has a web site about the movie at http://www.thegangmovie.com/.

The Texas Citizens Defense League has a new Yahoo forum/discussion group at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/txopencarry.

TCDL is an organization whose purpose is to promote decriminalization of open carry in the state of Texas.