Repeat After Me…

If I carry a concealed weapon, I will not be a dumbass and will use a holster unlike this individual.

A Flagstaff man accidentally fired his gun inside a crowded McDonald’s into a wall, which ended with debris hitting fellow customers, police said.

The 24-year-old man had the firearm in his waist band, the police report states, and when he leaned against the back wall, the weapon discharged.

Young man, tell me you aren’t a sports fan because you should have learned from Plaxico’s mistake.  This is not how responsible people carry firearms.  We use a good sturdy holster.  Not that cheap nylon crap from Uncle Mike either.  It should be in a real freaking holster.

You were aware of the mass shooting and you did not want people freaking out about your gun, yet you couldn’t be bothered with using a real holster?  Tell me, how did that negligent discharge work for keeping it all on the down low?

I would like to point out however this is yet another example of the hole in “training requirements” assuming boy wonder here had a CCW, which he probably is, obviously satisfied the training requirement but evidently he skipped class on buy a holster day.*  The bottom line is there are many people that live in states that have no training requirement and they don’t do this type of crap.  Then within states with the training requirement you still have people who do.  Maybe it isn’t as much the training but the attitude of the person carrying the gun.  You can lead a horse to water but you can not make him drink.

My guess on what happened given the description is that clothing got within the trigger guard and when he leaned back it applied pressure and went bang.  The other option is he violated rule 5 but I don’t think he would have put a hole through his jeans without also penetrating himself.

*Though it seems that military service satisfies the requirement, maybe they never told him to use a holster for sidearms.  About the best alternative option is participation in organized shooting sports.  I do not know specifically what sports they consider acceptable, however if it’s IDPA or USPSA they don’t let you do Mexican carry.  They tell you to use a freaking holster and what happened is exactly why.  Small-bore rifle and bullseye on the other hand, that just means you can hit the broad side of a barn, not that you know how to carry.

SSCC #386 – Opa-locka

A suspended Florida police officer—who’s been fired six times over the years for alleged misconduct, only to be reinstated—says he’s the victim of a “witch hunt” and wants to go back to work, even though he’s being paid $60,000 a year to stay home.

At least they have sent his ass home, but $60k a year still?  Not to mention that under the statement, “once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three or more times is enemy action,” what is six incidents?

Who knows maybe they were incidents that in the grand scheme aren’t actually that bad…

Bosque—who has been accused of “cracking the head of a handcuffed suspect, beating juveniles, hiding drugs in his police car, stealing from suspects, defying direct orders and lying and falsifying police reports”—was suspended with pay in May after he allowed a newspaper reporter to ride along in his patrol car without permission. (During the ride-along, Bosque told the reporter, “I’m an excellent police officer, but I break the rules.”)

He admits to breaking the rules, yet he continues to be paid for nothing and wants his job back.  This is why many people are loosing their faith in law enforcement professionals.  While not all are like this individual, their willingness to not expel him from their ranks taints them all.

State Sponsored Criminal #386: German Bosque

Because rules are for the little guy.  Why? Because if you want to make an omelette you’re gonna need to break a few eggs.

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]

What Stupid Looks Like

I have done some not too bright things around explosives.  Last week a particular individual did something incredibly stupid.

Initially I was going to just leave it at the comment I made over at Caleb’s place.  Then there was this incident brought to my attention by Lyle.  That gave me the inkling to do a post, then Weer’d posted the video of what exactly happened in the FPS Russia incident.   After watching the video I had to pick my jaw up off the floor at this idiocy.

First a note, do not recreate anything in this video, if you survive it will be either because of blind dumb luck or because God has a soft spot for you and your idiocy.

If you want to skip to 4:46 to save yourself 4 minutes and 46 seconds of pure garbage.

Does anyone see what he did wrong there?  Anyone?  Bueller?

He violated the first rule of explosives.  He placed something between him and the explosive.  You see when you detonate an explosive inside of something it propels the surrounding material out at extremely high velocity.  This is the basic principle behind a pipe bomb.  The pipe itself becomes extra shrapnel in the explosion.

This is why when we Idaho Stress test an object we ALWAYS place the explosives in front of the target.  We never place the object in front of the explosive, that is how you take shrapnel to the face.

This is serious and this isn’t a joke.  That camera man is lucky he isn’t dead or more seriously injured right now.  Just because the object is larger in size doesn’t mean that it’s safe.  What is a safe distance then?  Lets use the 2008 toilet as an example.

We shot that toilet from approximately 400 yards away.  When I say we in this case, I mean the entire shooting line.  We found pieces of that toilet well over 100 yards away.  Note we found them in a field meaning they had to be big enough to be easily seen above the grass.

We can also look at the pumpkin examples.

I know we had approximately 6 lbs inside the large pumpkin in the second video.  We found chunks, not bits, 125 yards away.  Many of those chunks were also relatively light in weight and had a lower B.C.  In that case we were shooting from about 30 yards, however it should be noted the object was not metal or dense in nature.   Metal merely rips and turns in to shrapnel which is nothing more than a knife flying through the air.

Given those above examples, I honestly wouldn’t blow anything up that had metal in it from within 200 yards, and due to my love of cushion, I’d double it to 400 for extra safety.

Joe, Ry, and I all almost made this fatal mistake by accident.  That is a wonderful example of how much power and force there is behind explosives and why you really need to pay attention.  So please, if you want to go out and play with explosives, pay attention and pay heed to the first rule:

Never Place Anything Between You and The Explosive.

Remember to be careful out there and use your head.  Sometimes well all forget to think things through, but the more you think about it, the better off you’ll be in the long run.

Update: Ry just posted a reminder of the results of an experiment he and Lyle did.  Note what it did to the steel and how far it went.

Morons of the male persuasion

Bloomberg is such an asshole!

Mayor Bloomberg is pushing hospitals to hide their baby formula behind locked doors so more new mothers will breast-feed.

Really?! Blocking the accessibility of formula to new mothers?  For some women, they are not able to produce milk with their pregnancy.  Some, even though they are producing, aren’t producing enough colostrum and therefore are starving their child.  I wonder if they will charge the mother with child abuse if the pharmacy is closed and the baby wants to feed?

Legislative fiat and nanny statism does not change biology or the way the real world works.

Women don’t need a lecture about choosing formula over breast-feeding.  Breast is not always best.  Especially since not every mother produces enough milk.  My husband was raised on formula because his mother was unable to produce milk as he was born by C-section.  A friend of mine didn’t produce milk for her child and didn’t realize it until she had starved her child for a day not knowing she wasn’t producing enough milk.

Some asshat politician who doesn’t understand biology or the medical sciences has no business telling me, my doctor, or any one else what is best for me or my child.

This is one big reason why I don’t want to be in a hospital when I have kids.  I don’t need some moron telling me what to do with my own body!

If you’re female and work in his office, do the rest of us of the female gender a big favor and kick him right between the uprights.  Then again I’m reasonably sure he’s lacking functional equipment down there which is why he’s spouting off about shit he doesn’t know about.

h/t Weer’d

Today’s Reminder and Lesson

When you end up in a rush is usually when you do something wrong.  Last Thursday night, before leaving on my current trip, I spent a bunch of time cleaning a gift for the in-laws.  I cleaned it from top to bottom after test firing it.  After I was done I did a full functional test to make sure everything still was working correctly.  Packed it up and all was well.

While I was busy doing all of that I decided that I should clean my XD.  It hadn’t been cleaned since April and it was looking pretty crusty.  While cleaning it was about 85 degrees in my shop, I was sweating like mad and mid cleaning my latex gloves bit the bucket.  I couldn’t get a new set on so I just gave up and decided to soak my hands in chemicals.  I hate doing that because many of them will absorb through the skin but the biggest dangers were already done.

I quickly finished scrubbing and cleaning the weapon. Put it back together and in a rush to go pack other stuff for the trip I missed a step.  I put all the parts back in.  I didn’t break anything either.  What I didn’t do though was dry fire it before reloading.  Normally I test every part individually before loading the weapon and holstering it.  Verify all the safeties, make sure all feels well and nothing is out-of-place.  Since I decided I didn’t need to test all the safeties I didn’t bother with functional testing.  Well there was one test I really still should have performed but didn’t.

I pulled out the gun and unloaded it today for the mother-in-law to take a look at.  She squeezed the trigger but nothing happened.  She hands it to me and I say, “there’s the slack and it should break about here.”  Nope trigger is total mush.  I promptly start trying to remove the slide.  There is one problem though, you have to drop the striker to remove the slide and barrel assembly.  I start playing with the slide and notice that the striker will fall if I slightly pull the slide back out of battery.

I promptly look inside and see something that is wrong.  There is  a small piece that normally springs up and down but it is fixed in place and isn’t moving.  I pull apart the striker mechanism and find exactly what happened.  The spring fell over and was not providing positive movement to the piece to allow the safety to disengage correctly.  Fix the spring reassemble and promptly dry fire.  Works just like it should now.

So here’s the lesson.  Always functional test the most important aspect of the firearm after being reassembled.  My new rule is if it comes apart even in the most basic way, in the XD for example I remove the slide, it gets dry fired immediately when it has been reassembled. I had a gun that was useless the past couple of days, not freaking cool, but it was my own damn fault.  Learn from my mistake.

Stupid Should Hurt (Your Morning Laugh)

So Jay G posted this video and I’m sure there are a few of you who won’t find this funny.  Watch the video and then let me explain, my sympathy meter is as low as possible.

You can watch the video here in case embedding fails.

You watched it all the way through right?  Up till the end where you could tell she was walking around.  What we all just saw was the epitome of a lazy person.  There is no lazier person in the world, too lazy to walk, too lazy to read, so lazy and in a rush that she didn’t want to take the elevator.  Instead she goes and tries to balance her scooter on the escalator and fails.

I am at a loss for words since sadly Jay G is right that this woman probably will get a settlement for her negligence, but it’s a stark reminder that there is stupid in this world.  Not only is there stupid, but there is always going to be a bigger idiot.

Who know’s, maybe she’s done it many times before and this time she pushed her luck.  This woman is lucky she walked away from her moment of stupidity and all that she will have is a blow to her pride and probably a larger bank account.

Either way, I got a good laugh out of it because I’m sure it hurt as it rolled over.  Why am I laughing, because frankly, stupid should hurt.

*As an FYI for those who would dare to tell me I don’t know what it’s like to be confined to a wheelchair, listen carefully.  Shut the hell up, you don’t know me or my history.  I spent 2 months confined to a wheel chair non-weight bearing in both legs.  So yeah, been there, done that, got the freaking t-shirt.

Update:  Email from “The Short Lady With The Grey Hair” (otherwise known as my mom).

I saw a quick take on the news but was sidetracked and missed the entire episode.  BOSTON—should have known.  She better not get compensation; if anything she should be fined.  Anyone who is so stupid as to try to take a motorized wheelchair—or non-motorized wheelchair—up an escalator does not have sufficient operating brain cells to be using the wheelchairs unaccompanied.  Brain dead stupid!

I was laughing as I read that, mainly because she’s right.

Quote of the Day – Munchkin Wrangler (07/19/2012)

Nobody builds a business alone, that’s true. But Bob didn’t make all those people work for free, and he didn’t make use of public resources without writing hefty tax checks for the privilege. Bob paid everyone, including his local, state, and federal government, before he even got to make his first dollar of profits. And Bob carries all the risk here. If his business tanks, his contractors aren’t going to return the money he gave them for their work, his employees aren’t going to give back their wages, and the government isn’t going to return the taxes and fees he paid. So why is it OK that when he’s successful enough to make a profit, some populist asshole politicians can stand up and say that “he hasn’t paid his fair share to society yet”?

Munchkin Wrangleryou didn’t build that
July 16th, 2012


[I do love the comments about what it took to build a business coming from a man who’s never built or run a business in his life. Businesses take work, period. There is risk and there is one person who takes that risk and the reward for the risk is the potential for profit. But profit is the result of greed and corruption right?  That person who has poured blood sweat and tears working their ass off so they don’t fail shouldn’t get any reward.

Why should they get no reward, you see someone else actually built their business. The business owner didn’t spend late nights with no bonus pay keeping the ship afloat.  They haven’t spent hours working on a website with zero income coming from it at the beginning.  Who cares that the business operator has paid anyone who works for them a fair wage in exchange for their goods and services?

That’s the crux, people who are paid by the business owner didn’t build the business.  People who build a business invest considerable time and effort without the guarantee of a reward.  That in and of itself is the very nature of business and is known as your Return on Investment.

Building a business means you invest a lot of time and your own money that in the future you may end up with more than you had.  Evidently our fearless leader has some other shining example of what building a business looks like.

*Most annoyingly is some places charge you a fee merely for permission to conduct business.  You see you need a business license to sell things to people who would like your goods and services.  You pay for the privilege but if for one reason or another you take a year off, you get to pay the tax man for the privilege again.  See how that works?  The government has to get theirs or you can’t get yours. -B]