Gun Nuts Media

Well, imagine how he makes me feel, Paul.  In all seriousness though, there is a very dire sounding piece in the New York Post about how Paul Helmke (and by extension, the Brady Campaign) is worried that Rudy is going to flip on the gun issue.

“I’d be very disappointed. I don’t know anything that has happened that justifies a change in position,” said Paul Helmke, head of the Brady Campaign.

In case you don’t know, in the 90’s when he was mayor of NYC, Rudy was very much a proponent of gun control, advocating for both the Ban on Scary Looking Rifles, as well as plenty of additional gun legislation in his city.  However, as he is currently seeking the Republican nomination for president, Rudy is wooing the pro-gun community, and is in fact speaking at the NRA headquarters on Friday.

Now, I understand why Helmke is concerned.  He doesn’t want to lose (another) advocate for gun control, especially someone who had a semi-decent shot at getting a Presidential nomination.  Oddly enough, I’m concerned about Rudy for similar reasons, albeit rather opposite.

My concern with Rudy as a presidential candidate isn’t that he is switching to pro-gun side of the debate, but rather that I feel like he’s just saying what he feels he need to say to woo pro-gun Republican votes.  I worry that if he were elected, he would immediately flop right back to his NYC gun control methods.

So, for today at least, it seems that Paul Helmke and I share a similar, if in opposite directions, concern about Rudy Giuliani.  For the record, I do think that Rudy could change his stripes.  If I felt that he had truly had a change of heart, I’d be among the first people to welcome him into the fold; but right now he’s just too much of a politician for me to trust him.

At a speech held by John Kerry.  I heard about it from Countertop, and while I disagree with the NWA song he chose to go with his post, I do have a bit to share on this.

Having a cop for a dad, and coming from a military/LE background tends to color my perception on issues like this.  If you watch the video here, and not the heavily edited video at CNN.com, you’ll see that the cops did not taser the kid until after he broke away from the officers attempting to restrain him and appeared to (start to) charge the stage.  At that juncture, someone gave him the volts, which caused the student to go down.

I hate situations like this.  I guarantee that floods of people are going to start calling this “police brutality”, excessive force, and a slew of other options.  The problem with that is that the cops didn’t exactly have another option.  I mean, what are they going to do?  Put him in an arm-bar and slam him into the deck on national TV?  That would have looked great.

The full article on CNN sheds some additional light onto the subject.

“He apparently asked several questions — he went on for quite awhile — then he was asked to stop,” university spokesman Steve Orlando said. “He had used his allotted time. His microphone was cut off, then he became upset.”

So, he was then asked to leave, and refused to leave, creating the scene you see on the video.

I wish the cops hadn’t tasered him.  I really do, because it looks bad.  There’s a lot of negative publicity about tasers, especially on the internet; but one of things that a lot of that negative press fails to mention is that tasers are pretty effective.  If you’ve got a struggling subject that for whatever reason you can’t just smack (because you’re on CNN or something), then a taser is a great way to induce compliance.

Now, this blog is a forum for my opinion.  You are free to disagree with me.  Honestly, I think that kid got exactly what he had coming to him.  He went over his time, was politely asked to leave, and threw a hissy fit.  He then started struggling with the cops (side note: the best part is when that HUGE cop is practically carrying him out), and eventually broke away from the cops and started to charge toward the stage.  He wasn’t shot, punched, kicked, or clubbed; he just got the taser.

Ultimately, he’s responsible for putting himself in that situation.  He could have asked his question, and let Mr. Kerry answer his question; instead he seemed to be asking for trouble, which in the end is precisely what he received.  It remains to be seen what he’ll be charged with.

So, football season.  I love football.  For whatever reason, the game appeals to me, both college football and professional football.  However, the thing that grips me tighter in its foul talons than any other force is Fantasy Football.  Yes, it is like D&D for the guys that use to make fun of D&D nerds.  That being said, it’s also fun.

Plus, Fantasy Football can make football accessible and interesting for people that wouldn’t otherwise be brought in.  Another advantage is for people like me – my favorite team is the San Francisco 49ers, who unfortunately for me, play on the other side of the country.  That means that I don’t see a lot of Niners games.  However, Fantasy Football gives me something to root for when I’m watching the Bears play the Packers, or some other regional game I don’t care about.

With all of the above in mind, I’m going to give the Fantasy Warriors, Neophytes, and the uninitiated a never-before-seen look at the Ahab’s Rules of Fantasy Football.

1. Real life loyalties supersede  fantasy loyalty.  You always root for your favorite team, even your team winning means crushing defeat for your fantasy team.  The Fantasy Football Gods will reward your loyalty to your chosen team.
2. It’s okay to hate.  I have never had LaDanian Tomlinson on a fantasy team.  Every year, there’s a 50/50 shot that I’ll meat a team with LT in the fantasy playoffs, and I always great screwed.  I hate LT.
3. It’s not okay to wish injuries on people.  That is not cool.  Hating, and wishing for poor performances is one thing.  Wishing for injuries is not cool, and such behavior will bring swift punishment from the Fantasy Gods.
4. Go with your gut.  Seriously.  For example, last week I picked up the Bengals defense, because they were playing the Browns and the Yahoo! Sports “experts” said it was a “good matchup”.  My gut instinct was to stay as far away from the Bengals’ D as possible, but I went against it.  The Browns scored 51 points.  Shoulda gone with my gut.
5. Have fun.  Man, if you’re playing so much Fantasy football that it stresses you out, you need to back off.  This is supposed to be a fun way to compete with friends.  I am away that fantasy football has become a huge, gajillion dollar business; and I think those guys are geniuses for doing that.  However, if you’re not having fun, it’s not worth playing.

That’s it.  If you abide by those five rules, not only will you enjoy yourself, but you might not suck completely!  Of course, there are lots of other guidelines about drafts, and snagging people off waiver wire, but that can wait.

Could you please, please win some games?  Is that too much to ask?

For a little bison hunting, that is.  Not only have I wanted to go buffalo hunting since I read about it in my history books, but I’ve also wanted to visit Wyoming for a while now.

Now, I’m not sure if a .500 S&W Magnum from a rifle is enough gun for buffalo, but it seems like it ought to get the job done.

Now to convince the Mrs. that I really do “need” to go to Wyoming…

The article that I’m linking to here is about a gun buyback program in Brunswick, GA.  Now, I think gun buyback programs are pretty stupid, and have said as much on these pages before.  In short, it’s a great way to A) destroy some history, and B) destroy some evidence.  Generally, dumb.

However, this gun buyback and accompanying self-congratulatory article contains so much incorrect information and PSH that I had to say something about it.

The gun in the hand of Glynn County Deputy Sheriff Michael Johnson was hardly as long as his forearm.

“Now what you have here is a sawed-off, 12-gauge shotgun,” he said, snapping the weapon’s foldable stock into place. “A very good street sweeper. You can conceal this gun and take out a room full of people with one shot.”

A folding stock does not make a gun a sawed off shotgun.  Since there isn’t a picture of the gun, I’m going to assume that this deputy has no idea what he’s talking about, and just called a gun with a folding stock a “sawed off shotgun”.  I’m comfortable in making that assumption based on the fact that the deputy said “you could take a room full of people with one shot”, referencing the shotgun.

For those of you that don’t know, that is quite simply a lie.  A shotgun, even a sawed off shotgun, is not going be able to disperse the pellets in a wide enough pattern to “take out” an “entire room”, with one, or two, or even three shots.  Contrary to what you see in TV and movies, shotguns need to be aimed; and just sticking a sawed off shotgun into a room and pulling the trigger will not kill “an entire room”.

Additionally, I am glad to see that the Sheriff’s office in this article had a “no-questions asked” gun turn in.  The reason for that is that if this “sawed off shotgun” was actually “sawed off”, possessing it without the proper permits from the BATF is a felony.  Which means that the Sheriff’s Office let a felon literally through their fingers.  Of course, since I highly doubt that this gun was actually a sawed off shotgun, I’m not too worried about that.

Now, there was a delicious cherry that was graciously placed on my Monday morning “sundae of PSH”, and I must share it with my dear readers.

“This is a Reuger 9mm,” he said, taking the ammunition clip that was with the gun out of the bag. “But this is the 75-round clip that came with it.”

He snapped the clip into the body of the gun, completing what was already a sinister appearance.

“This gun had completely fresh, hollow-point rounds when it was brought in,” he said. “So it hadn’t gone very long without being used. It doesn’t take too much work to make a weapon like this fully automatic.”

Now, I don’t claim to know everything about guns, but I have never heard of a “Reuger” 9mm.  Perhaps the author meant to write “Ruger” 9mm, and made a pretty silly typo.  Now, the typo itself would be bad enough, but the bit about 75 round magazines and fully automatic just makes my head spin.  Assuming for a moment that this gun is a Ruger P-Series handgun, I don’t believe (and I could be wrong) that they make magazines larger than 30 rounds for those.  But somehow, I don’t think that Deputy Fife is going to know that.  The bit about “completely fresh” hollow points is almost as ludicrous as the entire article.  It makes bullets sound like some kind of produce.  I can see the article in G&A now: “Checking Hollow-Point freshness, 3 tips to ensure that your rounds don’t rot”.  Also, if anyone knows how to convert a P-Series Ruger to full-rock-and-roll, well…that would be pretty cool.

Now, if the “9mm Reuger” was a Ruger MP9, then that is a different story.  However, just like the “sawed off shotgun”, I highly doubt that.

If you look at the picture that comes with the article, it looks like for the most part the cops collected the usual assortment of junky old wheelguns and potmetal .22s.

Normally, I’d blow by a gun buyback article like this without even paying it a second glance.  My problem with this article is that it’s so poorly written, and the information being given out by deputies is so misinformed that I had to say something.  This article is a monument to the ultimate marriage of poor reporting, and Barney Fife law enforcement.