Uncategorized

Picking on legacy media is fun

Posted on by Caleb

Dear Time Magazine,

With your article “Zombies are the New Vampires” which reported on the “new” popularity of zombie entertainment media, I’d like to thank you for bringing something to my attention that I was reading about online in 2007.

It’s nice to know that if I’m looking for top notch investigative reporting and up to date information on the latest media trends, that Time magazine is only 2 years behind the curve! Good job, guys!

On an unrelated note, please do not compare zombies to vampires. Unless you’ve been living under a rock, the last 5 years have seen the utter destruction of the vampire as a cool movie monster, leaving us with vaguely homosexual teenagers that don’t even eat people. What exactly is the point of a vampire that can go outside during the day and doesn’t eat people/murder other vampires? NONE.

news

At last some good news

Posted on by Caleb

This is from yesterday:

U.S. Navy snipers fatally shot three pirates holding an American cargo-ship captain hostage after seeing that one of the pirates “had an AK-47 leveled at the captain’s back,” a military official said Sunday.

As glad as I am to see that we finally decided to deal with pirates in the only appropriate way, I also wish that we had done it a little sooner. Thankfully, blowing the guys away prevents us from having a huge bullseye painted on our merchant fleet – however you can’t escape the fact that we look indecisive on the international scene right now.

c’est la vie, I suppose – I reckon I’ll just be glad that the Administration decided that it was okay to actually shoot badguys.

gun control/news

Set up to fail

Posted on by Caleb

Last night, I watched ABC’s hit piece on firearms ownership and self defense on 20/20, which overall was pretty ridiculous and biased.  While they managed to avoid parroting the Mexican Gun Canard (which was a surprise), they spent an entire segment on setting up an experiment to “prove” that an armed student in classroom shooting wouldn’t help.  The problem is that just from watching the experiment, even the most casual observer can see that it was designed to force the students to fail.

Here’s a link to the video, watch it for yourself and see if you see what I do.

The basic scenario is that ABC took a bunch of college kids, and gave them some rudimentary training with simmunition pistols, then put that student in a faux classroom to “defend” in an active shooter situation.  Just watching the video, the students pretty much universally get their lunches fed to them by the “active shooter”.  Obviously, ABC’s editorial intent was to “prove” that an armed student wouldn’t make any difference in an active shooter scenario.  If you watch, you can deduce from context that the students were not trained – they’d been given basic range instruction, and that was it.  Additionally, the active shooter in each situation was a cop; the cop also knew where the armed student was going to be.  If you watch carefully, the cop shoots the teacher, than immediately turns to engage the armed student whether or not the student is engaging them.

In that manner, the test is set up to give the student the least possible chance for success.  You want to make it a fair test, you’d have to put people of equal skill level in the classroom as the active shooter and the armed student, move the armed student’s location around, and give them free reign to choose whether or not to engage the shooter.  It’s completely ludicrous to portray poorly trained students getting blown away by a trained cop with tactical knowledge as some kind of “fair” test.

It’s almost like ABC had an agenda to push or something.

I’d like to see this scenario recreated at one of the top tier gun schools, see how civilians with training react.

handguns

Time for a New Gun

Posted on by Caleb

Unless something extremely surprising happens, it would seem that my entry in to the world of private security is nigh.  After a quick perusal of the “approved” list of heaters, it seems I’m going to have to buy a new blaster because 1) Single Action Only (1911) guns aren’t approved, and while I’ve got my LDAs from Para, 2) Para isn’t an approved manufacturer.  Too bad for me.  Now, any gun that I would carry as a part of my job is gun I’m going to shoot the wheels off of in competition as well, because one of my bedrock principles is that any defensive weapon you’re going to carry you should also shoot a lot.  So here are the choices I’ve narrowed it down to, and now you (my readers) get to pick my blaster for me.

Personally, I’m leaning towards the Sig route, or getting a wheelgun. I could get a Glock, but that would make pdb happy, and we just can’t have that now, can we? Honestly, in a perfect world I’d just stick with a 1911, but that doesn’t seem like it’s going to happen, so I’m going to have to get a gun from elsewhere. Also, if anyone from Ruger reads this – I would have gotten an SR9, except for that damn magazine safety.

rifles

Winchester 1885 Single Shot Rifle

Posted on by Caleb

According to The Firearm Blog Winchester is once again manufacturing the 1885 Single Shot rifle in a multitude of configurations. Do you know who designed that gun?

It’s available in a wide variety of flavors as well, with something for everyone.

  • .45-70
  • .50-90 Sharps
  • .38-55
  • .405 Win.
  • .30-40 Krag
  • .32-40
  • .45-90

I’ve always had a soft spot for single shot rifles, with a Ruger #1 being on my list of “get” rifles for quite some time.  However, the concept of getting an 1885 in .30-40 Krag and running around like I’m out fighting Indians in the Black Hills is, well completely awesome.

Uncategorized

Silliness

Posted on by Caleb

Do you have a Facebook page?  Because if you have, you might have noticed the same thing I’ve noticed, which is that lately Facebook looks more like the political page of Digg or Fark than a place to read about your friend’s drunken shenanigans.  Maybe it’s just my friend list, but I’ve noticed that lately a lot of people are posting stuff about politics, gun control, etc.  I wouldn’t mind it so much if it was just links to news stories or that sort of thing, but a lot of it is, well, retarded.

For example, about two weeks ago, someone post the same story on Facebook that Uncle linked to yesterday.  It’s the usual set of black-helicopter conspiracy ‘tards with a new one about how Obama is going to confiscate all guns by September of this year.  Aside from the logistical impossibility of that, all the “facts” that they use to support their case are pretty much wild speculation.

Now, I’m 100% okay with conspiracy theories and the theorists that create them.  The 9/11 Truthers have been great for laughs, and so were the “OMFGNWOILLUMINATTI” guys during the Clinton years. The problem I’m having with it right now is that it seems to be a symptom of a much more serious problem – Obama Derangement Syndrome. The amount of focus and brain rage that has been spent on trivial things like his gifts to the PM and the Queen, or his bow to the Saudi King is completely ludicrous. He’s not “a secrit mooslim” (I actually received an email with that exact spelling – ed.) and he’s not part of some secret conspiracy to supplant the American government with a multi-national UN Regime.

There are legitimate policy and political reasons to oppose Obama. His support of gun control, his budget, his plan to put my grandkids in debt up to their eyes – all of these and many other things are perfectly sane and reasonable reasons to be not support President Obama. But all this focus on conspiracy theories and trivial bullcrap doesn’t help us win the elections in 2010, and it’s certainly not making converts.

gun control/news

CNN Poll on Gun Control

Posted on by Caleb

Shows that the number of Americans that favor stricter gun laws is down over 10% from 2007 to only 39%.  What makes this poll data interesting is that unlike the Gallup poll that the Brady Campaign is crying about, the CNN poll was conducted after the recent mulitiple homicides; but it still shows a sharp downward trend in support for more gun control.

Click here for the video

One of the favorite canards of the Brady Campaign has been “a majority of Americans favor stricter gun laws”. It’s never actually been true, but now there’s data that shows just how wrong they are.

Uncategorized

Indiana Gun Owners

Posted on by Caleb

If you’re an Indiana resident and gun owner, are you a member of the Indiana Gun Owner’s Forum?  Because if you’re not, I’ve got to wonder why.

It’s chock full info on Indiana’s carry laws, matches and events, and general gun information.  A lot of the active posters are guys who shoot Friday Night Steel, USPSA, and IDPA around here as well.