Gary Gygax, creator of Dungeons & Dragons, dead at 69. Too bad, his game was a lot of fun, and a almost necessary diversion from Academy life for me many years ago.
It’s cool, I heard that when he got to the pearly gates, her rolled a natural critical success on his Entrance Check.
Canada, land of strict gun control laws, and multiple stabbings:
Man charged with assault w/a deadly weapon with an axe
It’s almost like gun control laws have no effect whatsoever on crime. It’s funny when people point to Canada and England as models for gun control; in England citizens are effectively prohibited from fighting back, and in Canada they appear to be rendered defenseless for the most part – although still allowed to fight back. Just not with any kind of effective weapon.
I believe that if I’m going to have someone smashing the window of my car with a sword, that I’d much rather be able to fight back and defend myself with an effective weapon. It’s the same pattern time and time again, when the general populace is deprived of the means to defend themselves, people will take advantage of that. The “Risk/Reward” calculation for thugs and violent criminals has very little “Risk” from their intended victims, because they’re 99% sure that no one is armed.
From Thirdpower, I’ve got a link to UnGun.org, an anti-gun group which has pretty much the stupidest idea I’ve ever seen.
UnGun.org has been collecting guns for over 3 years in order to build one of the most unique structures in the world: Peace and Love Tower. Peace and Love will be located in downtown Manhattan and its main structure will be supported by 5,000,000 guns that have been donated to the cause.
For some reason, my gut instinct is that they’re a fake group. I think the big red flag for me is that their website refers to themselves as “anti-gun”, which even the VPC doesn’t do; normally it’s “crime prevention” or “against firearms violence” or something a bit more PC. Plus, when you try to click on their “Donate money” or “Donate Guns” button, it redirects you a “Page not found” under the master domain “www.onlinepranksters.com”.
That’s pretty much solid enough for me to conclude that they’re a fake, which leads me to my real point today, the danger of parody. You’ve probably seen the “VPC” blog, which, as parody goes is pretty damn funny. I love the “Ronnie Barrett, time traveler” bit, as well as how a .50 BMG can kill Superman.
I love parody, I really do. Nothing gets me laughing like a good satirical jab at either side of the argument, because if it’s funny – it’s funny. But the danger comes in our ability to distinguish parody from reality. I brushed up against that myself with my Gun Control – Circa 1782 piece, and I’ve already seen it with the VPC Blog, where well intentioned people don’t see the satire and think that it’s a serious piece.
I’m not saying that satire is bad, as I said, I love a good satire piece. Imagine if a satirical website were set up by an anti-gunner, specifically to lure pro-gunners into decrying satire and making us look dumb; that’s what I’m trying to avoid. Not only do we have to be more courteous and more tactful than our opponents, but we have to be smarter as well; in the court of public opinion pro-gun advocates are playing with two strikes against us from the get-go, so it’s important that we only swing at good pitches.
Don’t stop with the parodies though, because I need a good laugh.
By now, you’ve certainly heard of Sen. Obama’s gun exclusion zones, where a gun shop couldn’t operate within five miles of a school or a park.
Apparently, Sen. Obama doesn’t have the same strong feelings about keeping porn away from our youngsters as he does about “protecting them” from guns.
He also voted present on a measure to prohibit sex-related shops from opening near schools or places of worship
Now, I’ve stated before that I have no problem with porn, in the sense that adults should be allowed to do what they want, however I agree and understand that porn can have damaging affects on children, and could be considered rather objectionable to have near a school or a church. In fact, I wouldn’t want an adult bookstore opening up near my child’s school or near my church, period.
So why is Obama okay with porn stores opening up near schools and parks, but not firearms? If he’s so interested in protecting children, wouldn’t he want to protect them from something that lots of experts agree has a detrimental affect on kids? Wouldn’t it be more important to oppose children being exposed to pornagraphy than to worry about a gunstore being within five miles of their school?
Now, according to the article, Obama voted “present” on the sex-store measure because he didn’t want to impose mandates on local authories, but apparently he’s okay with imposing mandates on local authorites when it comes to firearms.
(H/T NRO)
Last night I finally got around to watching my “Sword Proof” video that I had picked up from the guys at Cold Steel during SHOT ’08. I must say that it’s pretty cool from an engineering point of view, how well the knives and swords that they’re demonstrating cut through stuff.
What does make the video interesting is that they don’t just cut through bamboo, cardboard and tatami mats, they also do some other stuff like stuff a pant leg full of meat and cut through that, cut an entire (already dead) pig in half (made me want pork chops – ed), and most impressively, cut free hanging thick ropes in two pieces.
The one part that really got my attention though was when they demonstrated the stabbing ability of some of their knives/swords by ramming the blade through the hood of a car; which while not the toughest metal in the world is still the hood of a car.
I suppose what’s really interesting is that they refer to all of their swords and such as combat weapons, and I suppose I can see why. These certainly aren’t wall-hangers or cheap pot-metal blades. Actually, I got a Cold Steel Recon Tanto for my younger brother for Christmas, and he loves the thing. I personally go back and forth on the issue of carrying a knife as a combat weapon, on the one hand, I suppose it does beat a pocket full of rocks or your bare hands, but on the flip side, if you have to use it that means you’re in a knife fight, which is the worst kind of CQB encounter out there.
The other sticky issue about edged weapon is that the legality of them varies tremendously from state to state, especially if you want to carry something more than a little folding knife. In some places, sword canes (which are probably the best concealed edge weapon, given sufficient training) are legal, and in others they’re quite illegal.
However, if you do choose to navigate the sticky waters and carry an edged weapon for personal defense, you can do a lot worse than Cold Steel. Also, you can request a copy of the Sword Proof DVD here.
Sure, I miss my wife, but at least I can get Tillamook Cheese again.
That was easily the most painless trip through the security checkpoint I’ve ever had, and it was the first time I didn’t get flagged for additional screening at the Indy airport.
Well done, I guess. Now if you could just tell the difference between a belt buckle and a derringer, we’d be in business.
Sebastian seems to have the silhouette sickness, and bad. Not being satisfied with pegging wee little metal animals with his .22 rifle, he has now graduated to the next level of silhouette madness, specifically the handgun discipline.
Handgun is a dangerous game to get into, sure it starts with your scoped .44, but the next thing you know you’re building custom single shot handguns designed to fire crazy wildcat cartridges; you’re having nightmares about metal chickens and rams, and eventually you’re telling loved ones that you can “quit whenever you want” while rocking back and forth and clutching your Encore pistol.
In other words, it’s awesome.
To my roughly 40-odd readers in the Las Vegas metro area (man, Google is awesome) I have a bleg; I need an outdoor range that allows black powder/pyrodex for shooting purposes. I’m going to be in and out of Vegas on business for the next couple of months, so I’m hoping to find a decent outdoor BP range.
You can drop me a line at my email address, or just leave a note in the comments.
By now, if you’re a Red Sox fan, or even just a baseball in general, you’ve probably heard about Hank Steinbrenner’s statements about “Red Sox nation”, and how the Yankees are the number one team in the Solar System, etc.
I will confess, it did sort of rattle my cage a little bit, and I had a very fiery post all set up and ready to go in response, until I realized that Hank was just helping my cause. Statements like that are why everyone HATES the Yankees, because they’ve been running around for umpteen years acting like their shit don’t stink. If you ask anyone who follows baseball and isn’t a Yankees fan how they feel about the team from New York that isn’t the Mets, I would be willing to bet that the vast majority would say “screw the Yankees”.
So, thank you, Hank Steinbrenner, for helping me make my case as to why we should all hate the Yankees.
GO SOX