A Compelling Reason to Avoid Baltimore

For some reason, this kind of cheered me up this morning. Here's the lesson...when someone tries to rob you and you get the drop on 'em, don't rob 'em back...from the Baltimore Sun:

Man killed while beating would-be robber

Facing the barrel of a sawed-off shotgun on a dark West Baltimore street, Roland Scott fought back. He pulled out his own weapon - a fake handgun - and wrested the shotgun away from his attacker, city police said.

Scott ordered the man to strip naked in the middle of Laurens Street, took $800 from him and forced him to march into the laundry room of a nearby apartment building.

"He starts beating him, telling him to get more money, saying, 'Get me a cell phone or I'm going to kill you,'" said Sgt. Dennis M. Raftery Jr., a supervisor in the Police Department's homicide unit. "He is beating him with the butt of a sawed-off shotgun."

Raftery said the shotgun, then pointed at Scott, discharged, hitting Scott in the stomach and killing him. Authorities said his death will be ruled accidental.
[...]
Still naked, the other man ran from the apartment building in the 400 block of Laurens St. - the incident occurred about 4 a.m. Wednesday - and went down Monroe Street. He cut his foot and was treated in the emergency room at St. Agnes Hospital.

He told homicide detectives that he was trying to steal money to pay his rent and for pharmacy school.

Well, thank god he wasn't just stealing to buy drugs!

RE: The ND in the cockpit, the Airline Pilots Security Administration has weighed in on the situation, pretty much along the lines of Thursday's blog post...this from the Washington Times:

"The pilot has to take his gun off and lock it up before he leaves the cockpit, so he was trying to secure the gun in preparation for landing, while he was trying to fly the airplane, too," said David Mackett, president of the Airline Pilots Security Alliance. "In the process of doing that, the padlock that is required to be inserted into the holster pulled the trigger and caused the gun to discharge."
[...]
APSA, an organization of pilots who lobby Congress on aviation security issues, said the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has refused to adopt standard carriage rules recommended last year by the Federal Air Marshal Service.

"We complained to DHS two years ago that this was an unsafe rule," Mr. Mackett said.

Rather than carry the weapon on their person at all times, pilots must lock it up before opening the cockpit door, meaning pilots handle the gun as many as 10 times per flight, the association estimates.

The more you Futz, the more likely something bad can happen. When antigun bureaucrats write rules about firearms, this is the kind of nonsense you get!


Through SayUncle, we note that Larry Correia, author of Monster Hunters International and I believe a regular on The High Road forums, is taking a lot of big-time heat from HK fanboys for daring to suggest that contrary to the advertising, not all Stealthy Ninja Killer Dudes are packing HKs. I haven't read MHI, but I did finally suck it up and order it based on this little snatch of the first chapter:

“You know what the difference between me and you really is? You look out there and see a horde of evil, brain eating zombies. I look out there and see a target rich environment.”
-Dillis D. Freeman Jr. 11/2/2001

Monster Hunter International
Chapter 1

On one otherwise normal Tuesday evening I had the chance to live the American dream. I was able to throw my incompetent jackass of a boss from a fourteenth-story window.

Now, I didn’t just wake up that morning and decide that I was going to kill my boss with my bare hands. It really was much more complicated than that. In my life up to that point I would never have even considered something that sounded so crazy. I was just a normal guy, a working stiff. Heck, I was an accountant. It doesn’t get much more mundane than that.

That one screwed-up event changed my life. Little did I realize that turning my boss into sidewalk pizza would have so many bizarre consequences. Well, technically, he did not actually hit the sidewalk. He landed on the roof of a double-parked Lincoln Navigator, but I digress.

My name is Owen Zastava Pitt and this is my story....

I might round Larry up and do a podcast with him...BTW, I notice from my Amazon account that you people have been buying my own novel, ALL NIGHT RADIO, lately. Well, thanks! Now you're going to bug me about the sequel, FIVE TO GO, aren't you?