Life Imitates the Movies

Usually the movies imitate life, but in this case I think not.

The Madagascar movie series is hilarious, but I never thought I would hear about an escape that sounded like it came from that movie.  Well here it is:

Hoffmann said the kangaroos got out of their enclosure after a young fox snuck into the park and dug a hole next to the cage’s fencing. Two of the three were then able to escape the park entirely through another hole dug by a wild boar under the exterior fence.

The only way this could have been better is if it had been penguins* that did the tunnel digging.

Madagascar – Smile and Wave
Get More: Madagascar – Smile and Wave

*FYI if you don’t know, the wife and I both love penguins.

How to know your opponents are in still in denial

Last Friday I saw this did nothing but laugh, I thought about writing something up but  doing other stuff won.

“Society has to take the glory out of guns,” the so-called “.44 Caliber Killer” told the New York Daily News in a jailhouse interview. “Young people have no business carrying a gun. I would love to speak bluntly to those gangbanging teens and wanna-bes and tell them prison is nothing like what you think. If you’re packing a gun, you’re making a big mistake, and you’ll regret it.”

Your position is in a seriously losing state if the biggest names you can get to support you are pathological serial killers.

Let’s start at the beginning of this.  Mr. Serial Killer here thinks that merely carrying a gun is a big mistake.  Tell me something, did you kill those people or did the gun magically make you do it?  Yeah, you and I both know the correct answer to that question because my gun, like so many other people’s hasn’t just magically hopped out of its holster and shot someone.

Moving forward, you state that using a firearm against someone else ruins both lives.  While for the most part this is technically true because there will be a legal investigation into any death, I’d rather be judged by 12 than carried by 6 if I found myself in the company of you or some of your compatriots.  In the end I say that because if I ever have to deploy my firearm, ultimately I will not have killed my attacker, he will have killed himself, I just merely carried the bullet around for a while.  All he needed to do was walk on by and leave me be and no harm would have befallen either of us.

The real reason this man hates firearms is because the last thing he wants is for innocent victims to be able to fight back.  He wants the predator to have an assurance of overwhelming force.  The best way to get this to happen is to have the state force disarmament upon the innocent at a threat of force from the state.

This is all that our opponents can bring to the table.  Serial killers and criminal professional athletes pardon me if I’m not shivering in fear at the idea that people are going to be swayed by the words of a serial killer saying, “Leave your guns at home.”  Yeah, there’s a reason he wants you to do that, and most people with an IQ higher than a rock can figure that out.

Gun control is dying, even while in the wake of tragedy.  Overall I’m seeing more and more outbursts of Anger as this goes on.  I’m just waiting now to see a serious outburst of anger from our dear friend Ladd.  Some may never move on from the first stage, Ladd however I think will eventually become angry, he’s been pretty nasty before.

Goodbye Disqus

I got an email tonight from a reader.  He’s been trying to post comments and it has been failing.  This is not something that inspires me to happiness.

I spent a lot of time during the migration fiddling with Disqus.  Even now I’m sure not all the comments were imported successfully but I’m just tired of it after this last screw up.

So I did another sync between Disqus and WordPress tonight and then switched it back over to the internal commenting system.  If anyone has trouble please let me know.

Gloves While Shooting and Cleaning

Linoge asks a question:

Do you use gloves when shooting guns? If so, what kind?

And, more specifically, do you use gloves when cleaning your guns? If so, what kind?

For me the answers flow like this.  While shooting I normally do not wear any gloves.  Worrying about soot and lead residue is the last thing on my mind while shooting.  My rule is no drinks and food unless I wash/wipe my hands.  What I do use religiously is D-Lead wipes.  I have a package in my range bag as well as a second in the tool box of my truck.

They’re honestly worth their weight in gold.  The few times I do wear gloves it is unbelievably cold out here, read that as single digits or teens at most.  Then I am wearing military style flight gloves.

While cleaning, yes, yes, and yes.  Here’s the trick through, buy two different types, seriously.  Vinyl, Latex/Nitrile all react differently to the different solvents and other things used to clean firearms.  If all you’re using is standard Hoppe’s No. 9 as a solvent you can get away with just using Latex/Nitrile.

In my experience though Barnes CR-10 chews up Latex and Nitrile but the Vinyl handles it well.  Butch’s Bore Shine eats up the Vinyl making it brittle.  Further if you use things like brake cleaner to strip the oils and grease it will go through the vinyl.  I recommend using a wire to hold the object and avoid your hand in general in that case.  The active ingredient in Brake Kleen for example will absorb through the skin and take anything with it it’s stripped off.  Gloves will help prevent or slow it but that little bugger of an ingredient as it likes to go through your skin.

Wearing gloves while cleaning is important.  While growing up I mainly just cleaned with No. 9 and didn’t really bother with the gloves.  Again you can probably get away with it but I look back on it now and it was stupid.  Your skin is porous and absorbs whatever is on it.  Honestly I don’t want it absorbing any of that crap.

Butch’s Bore Shine I think is the biggest lesson in, “Wear Gloves!”  There is a warning label telling you not to use it bare handed, use of it bare handed can allow the chemicals to be absorbed and they have been known to cause liver failure.

Gloves are cheap, your body is not, when cleaning your guns at least wear latex or nitrile and expect to change them often as they break and die from the solvents.

As for cleaning my rifles I use a mix of No. 9, CR-10, and Butch’s.  CR-10 and Butch’s both get used on the barrel.  The CR-10 is much better at getting out heavy copper fouling, the Butch’s does a fantastic job at getting any lead and powder out and leaving the barrel in a pristine state. Butch’s takes out the copper too, it just takes forever if you have a lot of it.

The No. 9 I use on my pistols and actions to clean out the gunk and other crap that has collected up.  Oil and lube it all back up and put it back together.

So yes, wear gloves when cleaning, don’t worry so much about shooting.  Just make sure to wipe down and wash your hands after and you’ll be fine.

What say you other readers?

It Is Done…

Looks like I’ll be meeting and hanging out with a bunch of you the beginning of September. Joe mentioned the Gun Blogger Rendezvous last May and I was planning on going.  I saw this and really started itching.

Then I had some unexpected expenses and well the wife an I live in a budget.  We’ve stopped using our credit cards and are paying down our debt as quickly as possible so when I dipped into the savings fund I said, “Well there’s always next year.”

I saw Joe last weekend and we ended up talking about it and his travel plans have changed.  Initially it still seemed like it wouldn’t work and it was going to kill a bunch of extra time since the point of departure wouldn’t equal the point of return.  On the way home from the Boomershoot site I had an idea on how to make that work.  I told Joe I’d let him know this week yea or nay.

Then earlier this week I got an email at work, the company calendar uses photos taken by employees.  I didn’t get a submission in this year because I didn’t have time to prep the photos I was going to submit.  They did however look at my submissions from last year and they want to use some of them.  They pay the employees for the use of the pictures.  It’s not set it in stone, it’s a risk we can take it though because even without it we could do it, it would just be tight.  I suspect it’s one of the following though:

So this morning I dropped my check to Mr. Completely into my mail box along with the GBR-VII form.  My leave request has been approved so at this point I will be at GBR!  So it looks like I’ll be seeing David, Kevin (for the first time since 2009) and Derek (again since 2009) again.  If you’re going, find me and say hi.  Seriously I’m kind of hard to miss.

SSCC #384–Phoenix

It’s been a while since we’ve seen one like this.

A Phoenix police officer has been arrested and could face several felony charges of sexual misconduct with two teenage boys.

Garcia said the alleged victims were 14 and 17-year-old Phoenix boys who knowingly entered into a relationship with Wilson. He said Wilson met them through his job as a community outreach officer.

This is one I’m just going to let stand on it’s own.

State Sponsored Criminal #384: Christopher J. Wilson

Because the best way to find underage boys is to work as a cop, you can be trusted then right?

via David N.

On Complacency

Ry bumped me this by email and it’s worth watching both video’s.  Warning people get shot and people die. (For those of you using RSS, the video isn’t embedding correctly, click here.)

Here’s a better view of the video with the section we really care about.  Watch carefully starting at 1:33.

You will see as the officer opens the door the assailant sticks his arm out and fires a gun at contact range.

Please note while often through the State Sponsored Criminal Count it seems like I’m callous and have no respect for the danger police officers are in that is anything but true.  I have plenty of respect and this video above shows exactly how dangerous it can be.  Why I do the count is for a different time because from what I could see in the video, this officer had done no wrong with regards to the rights of the people involved.

But what happened?  As Ry said “Getting behind the OODA loop,” which I can certainly see in this case.  What strikes me more though is a complacency that appears since already one individual is in cuffs and everything appears to be calm and routine.  The cops figure if there was going to be an issue it would have already happened.  Then without warning things turn south.  The calm and routine is usually where you end up in trouble because your brain expects a different outcome.

The officer that was shot at contact distance didn’t really even have a chance.  By the time he realized what was happening the hammer was starting to fall.  The other officer was obviously taken off guard as well.  The were taken so off guard he had problems integrating the new information into their OODA loop.  The officer is reacting as if they were in Condition White and have trouble, as Cooper said, transitioning the levels to “The Fight is On”.

Take away’s as a sheep dog.  Just because something seems kosher doesn’t actually mean all is well and safe.  Never leave condition yellow around anyone that might be dangerous.  In this case as an officer, I can understand being in Orange even especially during a traffic stop.  However that line to Red must be clearly defined and you must not false trip.

Further as a wolf in sheep’s clothing you can play this same trick on criminals attempting to use you as prey.  If you recognize a predator, and for some reason you passed the interview, you can make them think their crime will be routine when in the end it will be anything but.  It’s more likely to lock them up because they will not have planned for that eventuality, it normally goes south for them when they can easily make an exit.  You must be careful in that game because letting them close distance is usually a bad thing.

Anyone else pull any different lessons or observations out of those videos?

My heart goes out to that officers family because he didn’t deserve that, he was doing his job and from what I saw, he was doing it honestly and admirably which is worthy of praise. It pleases me to also be able to report the following:

Jerry Lard, who was a passenger in the back seat of the stopped car, was convicted last month of capital murder for killing Schmidt. He has been sentenced to death.

Disappointingly I’m sure it won’t happen for a very long time.

Quote of the Day – Says Uncle (8/9/2012)

And people seem to think big truck means cut them off. Seriously, people, this things don’t come to a stop fast. Knock that off. A F550 nailing your Prius won’t go well.

Say UncleBlogging Notes
8/1/2012


[It’s that time of the summer again. All the college students are coming back into town and I usually discover this is the case by narrowly avoiding accidents a couple of days in a row as people cut off and generally disrespect my truck.

It is amazing the number of people who seem to think that my truck since it doesn’t accelerate like a sports car must stop like a brick hitting the ground.  Umm, no, you see there’s this thing called Newton’s laws of motion.  That combined with momentum means that the next time you decide to whip around me and cut me off, I may not be able to slow down enough so that your right rear quarter doesn’t hit my front bumper.

If you see a full size truck on the road, respect it.  Also realize that the space he’s leaving between him and the vehicle in front of him is not so you can barely squeeze in, it’s so he doesn’t run that person over.  Also if you pull out in front of one at close range, on the highway no less, you better be testing your 0-60 time.  If that truck slams on his brakes, don’t act surprised and flip the bird when he passes you as you’re also doing 5 under.  Remember, might makes right, and well, your little Subaru isn’t a match for the truck.  [end rant] -B]