Officer Involved

There have been a number of officer involved shootings in the news recently.  Mike Brown and Tamir Rice are two of the more high profile ones, while there are several lesser known officer involved shooting around the country.


We here in Rapid City are no different.  Last night (20 Dec), officers responding to a call wound up shooting and killing a man who allegedly charged them with a knife.


The story is just 12 hours old, and already the parallels between this incident and the ones I mentioned above are already being drawn.


"He didn't have to shoot"


"He could have used a taser"


"He could have shot to wound"


The problem with all the above scenarios is they miss some very salient points. 


1) When being charged by someone with a knife, the Tueller drill becomes very prescient.


2) It's winter time in South Dakota.  This means that heavy outer garments are the order of the day, whether it's a flannel shirt, heavy Carhart-type jackets, or even hoodies.  Prongs from tasers have a hard time penetrating these materials meaning there is absolutely no guarantee that deploying one would have been successful.


3)  Police officers and concealed carriers alike are trained to shoot to stop the threat, whether that takes one shot or 20.  Add to that the adrenaline rush of an unknown situation, the inherent instability of aiming a handgun in a stressful situation, it may take more than one shot to stop the threat.


4) This situation reportedly took place inside a residence.  Adding to the confusion of an unwanted individual in a home, you have all the nooks and crannies of a home that provide little hidey holes for someone to hide in.


Now, since this incident took place in a Native American housing area, the charges of racism on the part of the Rapid City Police are already being thrown about by commenters on Facebook and other outlets, even though the race, age, and other pertinent information about the suspect have not been released by the department.


This coming on the heels of an anti-police brutality march on Friday.


What these protesters and the ones throwing race into this don't tell you is that officer involved shootings are an equal opportunity affair.


In 2012, a man was shot by deputies after leading them on a chase.


Also 2012, a Wyoming man was shot after leading police on a chase.


Then, there's the one that rocked the city in 2011 and left two officers and the suspect dead.


in June of this year, a man ran from police on a four wheeler and pulled a gun.  The results are pretty typical.


2013:  Man with a butcher knife.


Seems to me the one thing all of these incidents have in common is someone was doing something they weren't supposed to and made some bad decisions with weaponry in the face of an armed person.

Talismans

In every conversation that revolves around firearms, particularly with the anti-gun left, the subject always comes around to "if  guns didn't exist, there'd be no more murder" or some close facsimile thereof.

In their minds, the gun is the cause of the crime.  Whether it's an armed robbery, a domestic dispute, or flat out murder; it's always the gun's fault.  The person behind the gun, with evil intent in their heart and on their brain, is completely blameless.

For such a supposedly enlightened bunch, they sure do fixate on the inanimate object first and completely forget about the intent of the person holding it.

Think of it this way.  Millennia ago, our ancestors thought certain objects were imbued with magical powers that could ward off, or attract, all kinds of mythical things.  Rocks, statues, trees,  hills, medallions, and even people were thought to be possessed of these 'powers'.  Though I must give them credit, they aren't the first to think a weapon could imbue power on it's wielder.  Excalibur comes to mind.

To the rest of us, these objects are just that.  Objects.  That possess no power whatsoever.  They may look pretty or may appear scary, but at the end of the day they are still just rocks, statues, trees, hills, medallions, swords, and even guns.

I saw this same mindset 20 yrs ago when I was ordered to attend an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting as part of punishment for an incident I was involved in regarding a drunk SOB who thought my Stetson hat would look better on the floor than on my head.  I heard a bunch of supposedly intelligent people blaming all the ills in their lives on an inanimate bottle of liquor.  The 'Bottle' made me do it, they'd exclaim.  It made me get drunk and get into a fight, or sleep around on my wife, or beat my kids, or drive drunk, I heard around the room.  It was the bottle's fault they were in the mess they were in, not theirs.

Yet these are the same people who will scream about science, and against religion because there can't be any such thing as an all-knowing mythical Old Man in the sky.  Will absolutely rant and rave against religion and spirituality, yet see no hypocrisy in telling everyone that an inanimate object has the power to overtake the free will of the average human being and make them commit murder.

Am I the only one who sees this?

Tag...You're It!

In the wake of the Zimmerman Trial, one word has been thrown out so much it almost doesn't matter anymore.  What you see below started out as a comment to a piece by Thomas Sowell that appeared on last week's editorial page in the Rapid City Journal.  For some reason, the filter on the comments wouldn't allow it, something about it being profane.  So instead, I'll post it hear.

The use of the term 'racist' has been cheapened in the last 5 yrs to the point it's almost pathetic.  I can remember a time in the not-so-distant-past where to be called a racist was a death knell for one's professional career and livelihood and was the proverbial 'scarlet letter' that haunted you for the rest of your days.  Even in the wake of the Paula Dean 'scandal', I wasn't really sure what to make of it.  Everyone screams 'Racist' now.  How do you know if what you're dealing with is actual, you know, Racism? 

David Duke was a racist.  Bull Connor was a racist.  George Wallace was a racist.  Grandma down the street who wants to keep her health care and wants to keep out those who have not come to this country through legal means is now suddenly a racist.  If you believe in the founding principles of this country that the government is supposed to be seen and not heard, you're now a racist.

Not any more.  Any disagreement with a protected minority leads to charges of racism, whether there is any proof of said injustice or not.  Disagree with Dear Leader?  Because Racist!  Disagree with Sharpton/Jackson/et al?  Why, you're a no-good Racist!  Want to discuss actual border security, and not the theater act currently playing the part?  RACIST!  RACIST!  RACIST! 

My personal favorites are if you have a friend of color, you do so because you're a closet racist.  And we can't forget the secret code words that liberals love to ascribe to conservatives like...socialist, or communist, or Chicago, or any other word that gets anointed as such by the slobbering boogereaters over on BSNBC.

Wolf.  That's exactly what the word has become.  Same thing has happened to words like 'nazi' and 'fascist', and is quickly happening to 'communist' and 'socialist'.  People hear them now, they simply shrug their shoulders and move on.

It's become almost a version of Godwin's Law, just replace the word 'nazi' with 'racist'.

QOTD - Me

So I've been following the George Zimmerman thing rather loosely.  I admit, I didn't sit glued to the TV watching every waking second of the trial, but then again, I didn't have to.  This case has been so much a part of the last 18 months, you'd be hard pressed to find anyone who hasn't heard of it some way, shape, or form.

Now, thanks to Kevin Baker over at The Smallest Minority, I've started reading Thomas Sowell's columns as they appear in my local catbox liner. 

This last week's column was about the Zimmerman case, and Mr. Sowell opined about it.

Evidently, one commentor  to the column didn't much care for his commentary, so he opined:

Yes Mr. Sowell, "this is still America", where like decades and centuries before it still legal to racially profile, stalk, confront, and murder a young black man barely into his 17th year.

Yes Mr. Sowell, "this is still America" where we honor our First Amendment Right and the Freedom of Speech, this freedom also extends to the President, even if he is black

While many people were shocked by the not guilty verdict, I wasn't. There are those that say this case should never have come to trial and I agree with them to a certain degree. This case should never have seen a courtroom because the state of Florida did not want to win it as proven by their shoddy prosecution. Given the facts as we know them, Zimmerman should have been convicted of 2nd degree murder.

All that this trial has proven is that racist murderers enjoy more rights and freedoms than young black teenagers. Conservatives often lament that criminals have to many rights, Zimmerman and his attorneys have proven it to be true.

"Stand Your Ground" should be changed to "Get Out of Jail Free"!

So, I had to pipe in:

You do realize Thomas Sowell is black, right? And that he's 83 yrs old?

He's probably seen more real racism in his life than anyone on these forums, who mostly call racism like Dug hollers 'Squirrel' in the movie 'Up'. 

I think I'll listen to him in these matters over others.

 

The Tally?

Six amendments offered in Reid's bill, S 649 and thus far all have failed.  Some more spectacularly than others.

*Coughfeinsteinbancough*

The last one up is Laughtenburg's perennial magazine capacity ban.  Vote total is 54 against, 46 for.  He can't win for losing with his bill.  You'd think he'd learn, but you and I both know that's just not gonna happen, now is it?

Assault Weapons Ban, v2.0

Debate starting on AWB v.2.0 beginning.  The Sea Hag is speaking now, we've had enough blah blah blah...

Complaining about needing 60 votes to pass..Cry whimper piss and moan.

Chuck Grassley (R-IA) speaking against right now.  Passion, I like it!

And the voting begins at 5:23 PM EDT...

And ends at 5:40 PM EDT, it goes down in flames.  60 voting against, 40 voting for.  That's got to sting.

Does His Brain Hear What His Mouth Is Saying?

Watching the votes on the gun bill, and Schumer just got up to rail against Constitutional Carry, saying that felons would be able to go to states like Florida and get a carry permit and be able to legally carry a gun.

What an abject moron.

There isn't a state that allows concealed carry that allows felons to get permits.  Just. Does.  Not.  Happen.  Period.

Waiting on the San Fran Sea Hag's bill to come up for a vote.  Though of the 8 amendments, hers will probably be last.

Been an interesting afternoon so far.  Watched Dingy Harry Reid vote against the Toomey-Manchin 'compromise', and Leahy's bill damn near made the cut, but lost out by two votes.

Anyone Else See These?

So some new-fangled gun control group with a catchy name has a new ad campaign out comparing what's banned at school and trying to gin up hysteria over certain things not being banned at school.

First, they trot out a bunch of little kids.  Probably no more than 6 or 8 years old, looking at the photos.

See, in the interest of pushing an agenda, it's OK to exploit children.  That they would first demagogue gun owners who post pictures of their children holding guns and threaten them with DSS and child endangerment charges and then turn around do something far worse is really no surprise.

Some of the commentors quoted in the article hit it right on.  Two questions that were brought up, first about why is it that only the Caucasian children the ones holding the guns, and that whoever took these photos and chaperoned this event didn't know doodleysquat about basic firearms safety.  In every single photo in the linked piece, the chirrens with the guns all have their fingers ensconced firmly on the bang switch.  Evidently, being a 'gun safety' organization concerned with gun control means never having to actually practice real gun safety.

But the larger question is this.  If a book is banned at one school district in one state but no other, and a common ball game is banned at one school in one state, and one toy is banned in school, we must make guns in schools illegaller than it already is.  Even though all firearms have been banned in and around schools since 1996 unless you have been imbued with the magical powers of the Law Enforcement Badge of Power.

Note to Moms Demand Action:  The NRA doesn't need to 'instill fear' of guns being banned or confiscated.  You're pet politicians are taking care of that all on their own.

Absolutely Disgusting

So some schmuck set off a bomb in Boston yesterday afternoon, killing 3 and wounding over 130.

The reaction of the political left?

Dance in the blood of the victims.

It doesn't surprise me, really.  They were too quick on the trigger in Tuscon, Aurora, and a host of other mass murder events around the country for the last 10 or so years.

We've seen Hissyfit Matthews blame 'Right Wingers' for this.  The head of the Park Service thinks the Tea Party is involved somehow.  Bawney Fwank thinks this is the fault of the sequester.  Like budget cuts are somehow responsible for a whackjob blowing up the finish line of the Boston Marathon.

We will find out soon enough who is responsible.  But can we at least give the politics a rest?  I mean really folks, the ambulances were still running code and you're already playing politics with this. 

Absolutely disgusting.  Each and every hack who's pointed a finger in vain should be handed a pink slip and shown the door for their rank insensitivity and lack of tact.

A Compromise Bill My Ass

So 16 Republican senators voted on a bill today that NOBODY has seen.  Nobody.  We've seen a synapsis, but nothing of substance on the actual bill itself.  Sen Mike Lee (R-VA) annouced at 1700L (1900 EDT) that the updated bill from March was supposed to be posted on line within the hour.  Of course, he'd been hearing that exact same thing for the last 48 hrs.

So I have a question for those who just sold out their Countrymen (I already know the answer, I just want to get the question itself off my chest). 

Were you born this stupid, did you have to take classes, or did it take practice?

I mean really? You voted on a bill YOU HAVEN'T EVEN SEEN YET!

I've heard of some dumb shit in my life, hell, I've even done some of it. 

But voting away your rights without even reading what it is you're even voting on?  That's even wayyyyy beyond felony stupid.  That's a class of stupid light years ahead of anything you've ever done before, and that's a hell of a long list.

Additionally, this is being touted as a 'compromise' bill.  Bullshit.  A compromise bill would be that the gun owning community gets something in return, like say the repeal of the Hughes Amendment. No, this is a compromise bill in the fact that every single politician that voted for it, voted to compromise the rights of their fellow citizens.

A pox on every one of them. 

Time To Turn The Tables

Since the anti gun forces are so quick to equate ownership of certain types of firearms, membership in certain civil rights organizations, and opposition to their hairbrained schemes as being guilty of committing the atrocious acts of a very few crazed nut jobs, I'm going to start returning the favor.

They want to call me a murderer because I'm a member of the NRA?  Fine.  Then the next time a dipstick politician talks about using call boxes and whistles and throwing up an attacker, I'm going to call them a rapist.  Why?  Since they have seen fit to deny these people the means and ability to defend themselves from such an attack, that makes them an accessory to the crime.  If you do something to facilitate a felony, doesn't that make you just as guilty as if you had actually done the deed?  I mean, we can charge an accomplice with murder if the other suspect dies when shot by a homeowner can't we?

There you go.  Next time someone gets shot and is not able to defend themselves effectively because they couldn't fight back, then the pol who supported/voted for the law that stripped the victim of the means of defense is a murderer, plain and simple.

What They Really Think Of Us

By now, it's pretty common knowledge that Sen Ted Cruz of Texas got into a little spat with Diane Feinstein of California over the Constitutionality of her exhaustive list of guns us little people are allowed to own or not.

What I haven't seen covered, is the fact that the Sea Hag of San Fran, Ms Feinstein, evidently thinks so highly of us semi-auto weapon owners, she willing to equate us to the most distasteful, reviled group of people on the planet: pedophiles.

At the end of her exchange with Sen Cruz, after repeatedly being asked why her bill is Constitutional, she had this to say:

“Assault weapons” are kind of like child pornography. She argued that although we have a First Amendment right to free speech, that doesn’t mean child pornography is protected by the Constitution. Likewise, she continued, so-called “assault weapons” can be legally banned.

So there you have it.  Owners of semiautos are no different than child pornographers.

Pissed

I've largely been silent on the gun control issues lately because folks with bigger brains and better skills have been saying exactly what I've been thinking.

(WARNING:  I'm about to break my no expletive rule.)

Today, an editorial in my old home state struck a nerve and pissed me right off.

First, to Mr Damson, hailing from my hometown I say this.  Fuck off you piece of shit.  You have no business telling me or any other gun owner what we can and cannot own.  I could give a shit less if you used to have a carry permit.  I could also give a shit that you used to be a member of the NRA and that you left the organization because they were too extreme.  Guess what fucknuts, they aren't even close.  Gunowners of America, Second Amendment Foundation, and Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms are much more extreme than the wafflers at NRA.

You're a real gun owner because you have 8 guns and go hunting.  Big fucking deal.  I have an order of magnitude more than you do, but only 3 of them were designed at the outset as a classic 'hunting' rifle.  But here's the kicker you moron.  Every single rifle I own I can hunt with.  Every one.  And since the state of Wyoming doesn't limit magazine size, I've taken some of my rifles hunting with a 75 round drum.  Do I need 75 rounds?  No.  But it pisses pants-shitting Fudds like you right off and that's the point.  Just like suppressors.  When the state allows them for hunting, I'll be taking one of those with me as well.  I originally wanted to use it to protect my hearing, but since it offends your sensibilities, I'll use it just to piss you off.

So take your dumb-ass nuclear weapon and Apache helicopter argument and go back to the sheep pen you crawled out of.

Let Me Get This Straight

I'm supposed to trust the same administration that tried it's absolute damnedest to arm the most brutal gangs in the western hemisphere with everything from Glock pistols to Barret rifles to enact sensible gun laws to get rid of the same here?

What could possibly go wrong?

Strange What You Find On The Front Page...

This started off as a comment to the below linked story and was too good not to share here.

So I've been out of town for the last 3 days.  I see this article was front page news when it appeared in print.  It's nice to see the comments.

Let me add my perspective.  The 1994 ban didn't ban a damn thing.  It banned names, such as AK 47 (which you will not find on anything available for sale with that name to this day, unless it's a pre-1989 import) and cosmetic features such as flash hiders (?), bayonet lugs (haven't heard of a good old fashioned back-alley bayoneting, you'd think something like that would at warrant a passing mention on the news or something), pistol grips (because more precise control of where one's shots go isn't important), and folding or telescoping stocks (because short people can really get behind a rifle that's about 8" too long for them), and 'high capacity magazines of 10 rounds or more" (that did little besides drive up the prices of pre-ban mags to levels usually reserved for gold and platinum market traders).

From 1994 to 2004, the weapons that were supposedly banned were still readily available, they just couldn't have a name (AK 47) or be able to have 3 of the above features.  Want to use standard capacity mags in your AR?  It just couldn't have a bayonet lug, a detachable flash hider, or a telescoping stock.  So you could have your Colt HBAR Sporter or your Maadi Misr with a pistol grip and use standard capacity mags (20-75 rds depending).

Pretty stupid, huh?  Well when you stop to consider that the models specifically outlawed were taken from a catalog, you get the idea that those who write the laws, know exactly dick about what they're writing about.

Then stop to consider what has happened in the last 10 days.  Sales of sport utility rifles have surpassed anything seen before.  Not even the great Obama Gun Rush of 2008 can compare.  Magazine sales equaling 3.5 years occurred in just 72 hrs.

In 1994 the internet was in its infancy.  Information was still mostly guarded by what we now call the 'mainstream media' and all the resources they had at their disposal.  They controlled the narrative.  Gun owners were largely unable to muster the kinds of numbers to affect the legislation, other than to force the bill's authors to insert a 10 yr sunset provision in it.

Now it's 2012, bordering on 2013, and the 'mainstream media' no longer controls the narrative.  The research capabilities of the MSM are now at the fingertips of every American who can see with their own two eyes the fallacy of what has been tried before.  The anti gun groups like the Brady Campaign, the Coalition to Prevent Gun Violence, and the Violence Policy Center have all been exposed as the shysters and morally bankrupt hucksters they really are.  They no longer have the ear of the media.  They barely cling to relevancy, this in the face of two losses at the Supreme Court that completely destroyed the entirety of their core argument:  Namely that American citizens do not have an individual right to keep and bear arms.

So you see, the cat is long out of the bag.  The average American knows what's at stake.  Don't believe me?  Walk into First Stop, or Cabela's, or Scheels, or any other gun store in the country and see for yourselves.

I Think Now's The Time

I've been holding off commenting on the tragedy from last week here mainly because I thought it was the best thing to do.  Though that didn't mean I stayed out of the fray.

Monday, I got into a row with some folks here in town in the online version of the town paper.  Within hours of the event, a poster on the entry posted that if you are not in agreement with Mayor Nutter of Philadelphia regard semi automatic rifles, then you are "as evil as the gunman or gunmen that commit these acts of violence".

So I've been poking folks in the eye, mostly with tact and diplomacy, regarding their emotional outbursts.  With some it has worked, and with others, not so much.

It's been covered more in depth by bigger and better than me, but as soon as I heard there may have been a SA rifle involved, I looked up the laws in CT about these types of rifles, and surprise surprise, they have the same ban as the '94 Clinton Fiasco.

I've also been interviewed by the same paper.  No word yet on when that piece will hit the presses, but I spent the better part of 20 minutes educating the 'journalist' about gun laws and features and how with all the laws on the books that everybody has been screaming about for a week straight, not one single law stopped what happened, and another law passed won't stop the next one.

So, here we are.  Waiting for the other shoe to drop. 

M70 PAP Update #1

So I purchased a Zastava M70 PAP rifle back in Feb and rehabilitated it back in Sept.

After hunting around for a good deal on some wood for the stock set, the gods at Gunbroker smiled on me late last month and I picked up an almost complete Mitchell Arms take-off stock set for her for $80 plus shipping.

Before

 

 

 After

Now that I've got her dressed, the last thing I have to do is fabricate a piece to cover the angle cut area at the rear of the receiver.  I've also got to get a cleaning rod for her.  Other than that, I'm done.

Learned some new things getting this project done.  First, never underestimate the power of a good dial caliper.  I had all kinds of ideas about how to open up the mag well, I tried to create a template to lay over the mag well, but that didn't go very well.  What I ended up doing was measuring the width of another rifle, in this case the mag well of my M70 AB2 underfolder, and then transferring those measurements over to the Zastava.

Also, never underestimate the need for a good shop vac when using the rotary file on a Dremel tool, especially when using said tool to open up the mag well.  The metal shavings that little tool produces is amazing.  I'm still trying to clean up from it, even after vacuuming them up, cleaning my bench with Fantastic general purpose cleaner, and wiping everything down with a half a roll of paper towels.

So now it's on to the next project:  getting my M92 prepped for when I eventually get the tax stamp I put in for back in early May.  I've already got the barrel assembled, now it's getting the barrel installed in the virgin front trunion and getting it headspaced.

My Delta Elite

 

So in my return from the hinterlands of elk hunting, I was catching up on my reading and saw that Rob Allen had finished his write-up on the Colt Delta Elite.  Good read, and very informative.

 

I was tempted to respond to both the article on Gun Nuts and his site, but I think I'm going to do it here.



 

 

I went about my thing with the 10mm 180 degrees different than he did.  My first 10 was the Delta Elite.

It started out kind of by accident.  3 yrs ago this month, I was looking for a 1911 in a different caliber.  One day, while perusing Gun Broker, I happened across an auction for LNIB Colt Delta Elite 10mm 1911 for the unheard of asking price of $800.  The pistol itself was one of the early ones (low 4-digit DE serial number and all) and came with the old Colt cardboard box instead of the new plastic ones.  So I snatched it up and went about making it comfy for me to use.

What I did was replace the trigger, main spring housing, fire control group, barrel, grip safety, operating rod/spring, and manual safety.  With the exception of the barrel (Clarks Custom), grips (Night Hawk), and trigger (STI), I used Ed Brown parts.

Some would ask why?  Well, being a southpaw, the single manual safety doesn't work for me.  At all.  I have to use an ambi-safety.  Everything else was creature comfort on my part.  Since I shoot with such a high grip, I had to replace the original grip safety with something that wouldn't bite me.  And as Rob pointed out in his review, the stock trigger ain't nothing to write home about.

The barrel was replaced with a Clarks Custom match barrel due to the fact the factory one wouldn't feed hollow points worth a hoot. That, and I tried to make it work and screwed it up. 

Of all the mods I made to this pistol, the only thing I had to send it out for was the barrel.  Everything else you see was done by me, including mounting the beavertail grip safety.

One side note of interest here.  When it was all said and done, I got really good at taking apart a Series 80 pistol and putting it back together again.  When I started, it would take me about 45 minutes to take it down and back.  When I finished, matter of a couple of minutes.  What would always trip me up was the firing pin safety parts in the frame. Gad, what a PITA.

Catching Up

Sorry for the hiatus, I've been down in south central WY attepmting to deplete the population of waputi down there.  (And having zero luck at it, I might add.)

So I get back to civilization last night and set about catching up on all the goings on since I left weekend before last.

The little bit of news I got via satellite radio mentioned some loser walking through a piece of paper and taking out the source of his affection and two other folks in a spa in WI, then saving the taxpayers the hassle of putting his stupid behind on trial by introducing his own gray matter to the outside world.

This has raised howls from the civil rights revocation groups to Do Something.  I'm not sure what they're proposing would have solved anything, but hey.  Like Uncle says, gun control is what you do instead of something.

I also got to listen to the second debacle.  Lot of back and forth, but the one thing that made me stand there slack-jawed and bug-eyed was when Mittens Romney dropped Fast and Furious during the discussion about 'gun control' or as it was supposed to be about, scary looking semi-auto weapons that look scary.

Not in a million years would I have thought something as testy and oft-reported on (NOT!) would find its way into the debate.  Too bad it didn't come up in the third one. I would've loved to have seen Dear Leader try to essplain that one away.  Of course what can he say?  He invoked executive priviledge.  Still, it would've been fun to see.

We're The "Only One" Officer Safety Enough

Borrowing from David Codrea's meme on the "Only Ones" Files, I found this article from Casper, WY rather interesting.  What got me thinking was this post from "Days of Our Trailers" poster Kaveman.

See, it's OK to violate someones rights, as long as it's for 'officer safety'.  Threatening, or in this case, negotiating their way out of a bogus traffic stop by threatening the accused is wrong on a level that boggles the imagination.  "Sure, you're free to go, but we'll keep our guns pointed at you while you leave...just in case."

Wow.