QotD: Money Where Your Mouth Is Edition

On Magpul's going from Hero to Zero overnight with certain elements of the online firearms community, ToddG offered a pithy counterpoint:

What I see is a lot of people on the internet making demands of "someone else's company" that they would not make of their own employer.

Does your (generic "your") employer allow you to carry a loaded gun at work? If not, how do you tolerate working for such an anti-2A company while simultaneously complaining that a company like Magpul which has demonstrably supported 2A rights isn't doing enough? Quit your job to make a statement and then I'll be impressed. All the people demanding that Magpul do more and more to make a political statement while they do nothing more than sit on their butts complaining to the internet is just getting old.

That's something worth pondering while one is cinching the saddle girth on the Drama Llama...

The fickle finger of fate.

Man, you can live right, eat healthy, exercise, keep all your insurance paid up, carry a gun for self-protection, keep three months of supplies stored in a pantry, fill your car's tank every time the gas gauge dips below the halfway mark...

...and get swallowed by a sinkhole in your sleep.

Sometimes I think the universe just doesn't play fair.

A moment of gun nerdiness...

Since I bought the M&P 9, it has been stoked with Winchester Ranger-T 127gr +P+ ammo. I bought a bunch of it at the Indy 1500 around the time I bought the gun, and I buy a little more at every show to keep ahead of shrinkage.

I have a bunch of other types of JHP ammo on hand, too, just in case I ever decide to become a whore test T&E samples of handguns on this blog, and it's all neatly stacked in boxes in a corner.

When I was finishing the saddling-up procedure to depart for New Hamster, rather than unloading the magazine that was in my pistol, I just dropped it, cleared the chamber, and grabbed two empty magazines and a box of JHPs to put in the poor man's Pelican*. As I did so, I noticed that the ammo box I had grabbed was not 127gr +P+, but rather the identically-packaged 147gr Ranger Bonded JHP, and I swear to you on the grave of Jeff Cooper that the very first thought that flickered through my head was not "Oh, I grabbed the wrong bullets," but rather "Well, it's winter up there so the heavier bullets are probably a good idea," and threw them in the case†.

I am such a dork.


*Well, SKB used to be the poor man's Pelican. Nowadays it appears to be the upper-middle-class man's Pelican.
†Yes, I've run about a box and a half of the stuff through the gun before. It cycled fine, and actually seemed slightly more accurate than my regular carry load, but it's not "Ranger-T" or" +P+", and I can be successfully marketed to just like anybody else.

Where do you go from there?

So what's the Pope Emeritus going to be doing now? I mean, a few years of popin' has to be a pretty serious resumé builder, but you know that it's also going to lead to him being considered "overqualified" for a lot of more entry-level gigs.

"Well, Mr. Ratzinger, while I agree that you are more than capable of handling the duties of a shift supervisor in our call center, we're worried that you won't find the work challenging or remunerative enough and that, should an opening come available to head a major world religion, we'd wind up losing our investment in you and be forced to fill the position again. Certainly you understand our reservations here?"

If they let him keep the Popemobile as part of his severance package, I bet it'd haul a hella lot of pizzas.

A day in the life...

...as told in pictures...

The morning began in Castle Frostbite, and there were dachshunds. Seen here: Henry, Ban, and Raven.

...and then came the snowy drive to the place where the airplanes land...

...where yr crrspndnt was launched into the sky like a bird, and took a self-portrait using the book she was reading ...

...whereupon, after a brief stop in Cleveland...

...the day ended in Roseholme Cottage, and there were cats.

I can't remember which of you guys referred to the seats on the emergency exit row as "Redneck First Class", but I've been using it faithfully ever since. Perhaps unsurprisingly, United calls it "Economy Comfort" and will let you pay an extra $30 to sit there. I did. I still referred to it as Redneck First Class.

I shared the little executive mailing tube on the CLE-IND leg with the Skidmore College women's tennis team and all their carry-on racquet. Perhaps not coincidentally, I bought a pair of cheap Sony noise-cancelling headphones and considered it a good purchase, even at extortionate airport pricing.

And now I am home.

Homeward bound...

Now departing Upper Cryogenica, leaving Castle Frostbite to return to Roseholme Cottage. I enjoy travel, and the very best part of traveling is heading home.

Sometimes the jokes write themselves...

Via NC Gun Blog comes news that New York, the state that has deemed deadly "assault weapons" such a threat to public order that they can only be entrusted to people who are supposed to be upholding public order, is hosting the 2013 Tactical Expo.

The best part? The three-day event will even have a "Comedy Night"!

Those jokes ought to be hilarious:

"Knock, knock."

"Who's there?"

"Breacher up! *K-BLAAMMM!* Freeze, police! Get on the ground! Don't move! Lemme see your hands! I said don't you $*#!ing MOVE! *BANGBANGBANG!*"

"Oh, God, they shot Lassie!"

.

I hate going Godwin this early in the morning...

I don't normally engage in the silliness of referring to politicians as "Kommisar" or "Reichsfuhrer" or any of that. It's simplistic and I can do better than that, but sometimes someone makes it really, really hard to not go there...

"The mothers, the women, the men of America have to make a decision as to whether their personal pleasure is more important than the general welfare," - Sen. Dianne Feinstein, (NSDAP-CA)

You listen to me, you meddling harpy, you jumped-up refugee from a zoning board: You don't get to pick and choose which of my constitutional rights are "personal pleasures" and further, while your job does entail a certain amount of promoting the general welfare, you don't get to compel whatever definition du jour of the "general welfare" you please.

My personal welfare, and the welfare of millions of my fellow Americans, is generally promoted by the possession of effective weapons of self-defense: trying to take them away would be very harmful to the general welfare and practically the opposite of ensuring domestic tranquility. Stop.

I keep trying to think but nothing happens.

"Knock knock!"

"Who's there?"

"I."

"I, who?"

"I haven't got a clue what I'm going to write about this morning."

Sorry for the slow start, y'all...
.

Bookmobile.

I nearly broke my laptop screen trying to give my friend Brigid a simpatico fistbump when I read these lines:

Nothing for me is worse than being in the back of an airplane or at a hotel with nothing to read. When in one mountainous far off place, I had to downsize a bag as the little airplane being piloted by what I believe was a Yeti, was weight restricted and my books were left behind for materials I had to have for the mission. I almost would have given up my tools, my poncho and my hiking boots than my little collection of paperbacks, of Earth Abides and Stranger in a Strange Land and a small leather bound book of Shakespeare sonnets.

If Bobbi and I are leaving the house to go eat at a sit-down-type restaurant, the phrase "Do you have a book?" usually comes immediately before or after "Do you have your keys?" on exiting Roseholme Cottage.

While I still generally prefer books of the paper variety, I will admit that reading electronic books, first on the Kindle Fire and then the iPad, has largely replaced them for out-of-the-house duties. Due to the unique properties of the tablet, whether I am currently reading a hardback or paperback book no longer dictates where I go eat or what I order when I get there anymore.

There was still a final book frontier, though... There were those times when I'd leave the house for what was maybe intended to be a quick errand and, since I was only going to be gone for a few minutes, I'd leave my turse at home and, one thing leading to another, find myself grabbing lunch in a restaurant across town hours later with nothing to read, or I'd be in an airplane seat and the snoring 300+ lb. sprawler in the seat next to me made accessing the laptop bag fully stowed under the seat in front of me a choice between waking them up and asking them to shift their carcass, or the WWF main event.

I may have mentioned before how handy I quickly found my first smartphone, an LG Optimus V? It was billed as a great entry-level smartphone. Little did I realize that they meant that in the same way that the Reefer Madness crowd calls marijuana an "entry-level drug". It was cool and it was handy but... it... was... so... sloooowww. And the screen was a bitty 3.2-inch one, which was fine for checking email or reading blogs that were mobile-friendly, but marginal for regular internet use.

Then, shortly after Samsung released their newest and greatest model, my no-contract cell carrier put last year's newest and greatest model, the Galaxy SII, on sale. Yeah, yeah, faster processor, better camera, lots of slick little features, rave reviews, but! The big difference is that 4.5" screen which, while pushing the limits of pocketability, is easily big enough to turn the Kindle Android app from a cute gimmick to a viable reading option. I've since found myself reading off it on planes, in the dentist's chair, at the BMV...

I may sometimes not have a book or tablet, but I never leave the house without the phone, and now that means I always have a library at my fingertips. I am loving your future world! Show me more!

Snippets from elsewhere...

• In reference to yet another dumb proposed law, the question was asked "How are we going to pay for it?" My answer: "Get the Chinese to loan us more money so the Treasury can buy more paper & ink."


• Yesterday I mentioned the Califorming* effect on the rest of the nation caused by allowing West Coast Real Estate Monopoly Money to be exchanged on a one-for-one basis with US greenbacks, but had to concede to a California reader on Facebook that it wasn't the only influence: "It happens from the other coast, too, of course. Some national TV program featured an Edwardian manse on Pennsylvania Ave just blocks from our governor's mansion on a "Look How Much House You Can Get In Some Places For Only $500k!" Yeah, Gothamite, that's because in America, half a million bucks is a lot of money for a house, not a good deal on a condo made from a windowless broom closet... "

*Totally stolen from BobG.
.

QotD: Misdirection Edition

While an Assault Weapons Ban pounds loudly on the front door, keep an eye out for de facto Registration trying to jimmy the lock out back.

As Robb Allen writes:

Registration is confiscation. No criminal is going to register their guns, and they’re not going to report that they stole them either. I’ve yet to see a proposed law that will target criminals. Well, technically they’ll turn us all into criminals, so there’s that.

Actual criminals are hard to catch, but threatening to turn honest people into bogus paperwork "criminals" is easy.

Without some form of registration, a requirement for background checks on private transfers turns into a capriciously and randomly-enforced farce. Indiana apparently had a requirement that all handgun transfers had to go through an FFL from the mid-'80s through the mid-'90s and by all accounts the law was flouted left and right by good guys and bad guys alike; not so when a registration requirement ups the ante of good guys getting caught.

The bad guys? Well, they're going to break the law anyway, so what do they care?

Good reading.

Remember that dude whose blog I linked to the other day? Chris Hernandez? If you're like me, you pretty much read his whole blog already and has a sad because there's no more to read, but that's okay! Because he has a book!

It's a novel about the war in Afghanistan that is practically unique in A) being written by someone who's been there and 2) written very well and iii) not being about SOF ninjas helicoptering around with knives in their teeth, but rather a platoon of TX National Guard dudes.

Unfortunately, I downloaded it Saturday afternoon and finished it yesterday evening, so now I'm stuck waiting for him to put more free ice cream on his blog.

Speaking of which, I need to go plug the ice cream machine in, too...
.

Tab Clearing...

• The strangest gun safety post you will ever see.


• They'll tell you what they want, what they really, really want...


• CTD: "Who farted?"


• A petition is posted here on which I'd happily put my John Hancock.

.

Hmmm...

That totally wasn't what I was going to write about this morning, but that Magpul balloon picture was still atop my Facebook wall when I woke the computer up, sending me off on a little rant.

Now I can't for the life of me remember what it was I had actually planned to say when I sat down...

Part of the problem we have...

Any Californians reading this, please don't take it personally; I'm sure you're not part of the problem.

As some of you may know, California is the state where a Tijuana drug mule can take a break in LA to get that disc he herniated while hauling bales of Sinaloa dope treated and send his kid to school on the taxpayer dime, while the state government vigilantly mans the ramparts at the Nevada border, ever alert for invasive avocados. This demonstrates a shocking lack of a sense of proportion when it comes to threats to the state's economic viability.

Meanwhile, during the first decade of this century, we in the rest of the country allowed Californians to sell their 1br/1ba 750sq ft cinder block cracker boxes to each other for $1,000,000 and then come spend that Monopoly money on the housing market in the rest of the country like it was real cash.

California has border checkpoints because they're worried about invasive species? How do you think Coloradans are feeling about "invasive species" right about now? A generation's unfettered immigration has almost finished waxing Colorado's hairy chest and is about to start on giving the old mountain man a mountain mani-pedi; you have to flee to the far corners of the state to get away from the latte fumes emanating from the statehouse these days.

I think the rest of the nation would take it as a kindness if Nevada, Arizona, and Oregon were to seize those California Department of Food and Agriculture border checkpoints and turn their guns the other way and start shaking cars down for signs of dangerous invasive species, like voter's registration cards and real estate brochures.

QotD: This Pizza Ain't Worth Your Life Edition

It appears that a couple of thugs in the Circle City made a serious mistake in the victim selection process, attempting to jack up a pizza delivery driver who promptly skinned his own smokewagon and aired out the young hoodlum brandishing the gun, causing young hoodlum's partner to drop the pizza and take to his heels.

While this is a heartwarming tale in its own right, the cherry on the icing of the cake of the whole thing is that it inspired my genius roomie to rewrite the lyrics to BÖC's "(Don't Fear) The Reaper" as "(Don't Steal) The Pizza":

Piiiizzzza time has come
With pepperoni please have some
But please don't steal the pizza
No the drinks or the car or the tip
(Just don't be like they are)

You should go and read the whole thing because it's awesome.

I hope that Roseholme Cottage is within their delivery radius... (EDIT: Whoah! Just checked the location. Hella glad that Roseholme Cottage is not in that delivery radius!)

The Nineties called. They want their "Look! A Girl! With A Gun!™" back.

"Hey, Tam!"

"What?"

"I said 'Hey, Tam!'"

"Yeah?"

"Did you hear that Piers Morgan had Paxton Quigley on last night?"

"Hang on, I can't hear you. Let me turn down my Wayne's World soundtrack here... Now, that pompous Limey sphincter had who on last night, again?"

"Paxton Quigley."

"Wow, that takes a girl back..."

It has been brought to my attention that some people may not be aware who Paxton Quigley is, but I've heard a rumor on a firearms forum that she went on CNN and "agreed that nobody needs an AR 15 asssault rifle and that Biden was right when he said a shotgun was a better choice for defending yourself."

The response from most anyone under thirty was "Paxton who?" Some folks googled her and found her website and yes, she's carrying on the good work still, but they were calling out photos of her with a revolver in the half Sabrina, booger hook firmly on bang switch... Why was this Rule Three violatin' chick being lauded as some kind of "self-defense expert"?

Their bafflement was a little understandable, especially in a mostly-dude crowd: Other than a brief trip around the talk show circuit promoting a new book in '05, she's largely been out of the mainstream media eye since the early '90s, when her book Armed & Female came out, well-timed for the ramp-up of the Shall Issue movement.

She cleaned up well, was an effective speaker and self-promoter, a fierce advocate of a woman's right to stick a .38 in her purse and shoot attempted rapists, and those talk show appearances probably sold a lot of Ladysmiths (there was even a "Paxton Quigley" edition of the Smith 640,) but she never really struck me as a serious shooter or a gun nut, just an empowerment and security moto speaker who was okay with guns. But back then, if a talk show needed a woman panelist who was ardent about women carrying firearms, it was pretty much Paxton or nobody.

In the years since, of course, there are a lot more women in the field with a lot better credentials when it comes to guns, shooting, and self-defense (*cough* buymyfriendKathy'sbook *cough*) but Paxton's still out there too, apparently, spreading the good word, if not as high-profile as before.

So Piers needed a woman for a "Women & Guns" spot, got her on his show and, in the middle of making a bunch of good points about a woman's right to carry a handgun, we get this:

QUIGLEY: Well, I agree with him that I think an AR-15 is not something that the normal, average citizen should have. And indeed, he is right that if you had a shotgun and you pull the trigger, it's going to -- it's going to scare somebody. There's no doubt about that.

Jesus, Paxton, et tu?

It only takes one awshit to erase a dozen attagirls. I'm washing my hands of her. Let the Zumboing commence.

Meanwhile, all this sudden mentioning of her name again after all these years makes me want to hop into a Supra Turbo and crank up "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and drive down to the store to buy a big-ass sweater and some stirrup pants...
.

Tab clearing...

• Great blog I was steered to today. Dude can write.


• Speaking of "dude can write", this made me cry.


• Some stories you just can't improve on, no matter how you dress them up, like the Indianapolis guy who jacked one of those Walmart Li'l Rascal scooters, which have a top speed of 6mph, and was pulled over in the oncoming lanes of a street six miles away, at 0400 on an 18°F night. It will not come as a surprise to find out that he got an F on his field sobriety test.

Speaking of that gun-grabbing busybody midget...

Now that "Faces of Meth" has scared the snot out of pretty people and pyrotechnic trailer park follies make the stuff seem déclassée, apparently prescription drug abuse is the new "drug of choice" among the fiscally solvent and melanin-deprived kids. It's been a long time since I set foot in a night club, and I'm having a hard time picturing how one would manage 150 BPM with Percocet coming out one's ears, but, you know, kids these days...

Anyway, selling stuff that is hard to get, addictive, and illegal tends to attract criminal activity, and prescription drugs are no different, and Mayor Bloomberg, America's Busybody, is going to put a stop to that, just you watch!

See, if you don't let the little people put too much soda in a cup, then they won't get fat and gross-looking unhealthy, right? And if you don't let them put too many bullets in their double-barrel shotgun's clip, then they won't do these spree killings, right? So, if you only let them take home three days' worth of narcotics at one time...

Friends and neighbors, this one hits in my wheelhouse. I spent a summer in a wheelchair with 75% of my limbs in casts from major fractures, all of which had required surgical repair. I was in a lot of pain. Every week or two, my ex- had to take time off work, a major hassle for him, to cart my wheelchair-bound carcass to the hospital for physical therapy or some other medical reason. To have expected him to take every third day off just to refill a dope bottle would have been, quite simply, an impossibility.

I was over the prescription stuff and down to a couple of Ibuprofen a day after the first month or so, and I don't think I have any of the old bottles left among my hospital souvenirs. I might still have my little four-footed cane I used to re-learn how to walk. I'd like five minutes alone in a room with me, it, and that smug know-it-all micromanaging finger-wagging putz in Gracie Mansion.

How much longer are you gonna let that cut-price Napoleon stink up your city, Gothamites?