We've Survived!

No vamps, no witches, no werewolves and nary a zombie in sight! Yes, we have survived another Walpurgis...thank heavens for garlic!

Since I was feeling better, the Sweetie and I went to the range yesterday and spent a couple of hours in cowboy action practice (yes, mostly .22s). Was, as usual, wonderful fun. Was seriously pissed off to see the shooting area had been mildly trashed...one wonders what some of these stupid SOBs use for brains? Lots of beer cans...let me catch you drinking and shooting and I'll be calling some of my pals at the Sheriff's Department...I'll be grinning when they haul your ass off to jail. Disgusting!

Meanwhile, here's a really interesting piece on Our Sad Brothers Across the Pond from Peter Hitchens:  

Well, I said I would be misrepresented when I voiced doubts about 'gun control', and I duly was, by a contributor who seems keen to legalise a drug that destroys the brains of the young, but regards it as unthinkable to allow individuals to own guns. He says I am a 'gun nut'. Does that make him a 'dope nut'? Perhaps, though I doubt he will see it that way. Well, I don't see it his way either. Here's why.

Presumably he imagines that my house is crammed with firearms and ammunition, and that I salivate over gun porn in my bullet-proof bunker. I'm sorry to disappoint him but I neither own any guns nor wish to do so.
[...]
Since we foolishly abolished the formal death penalty, imposed after a careful trial, we have transferred the power of capital punishment to an increasingly armed police force (though no legislation has ever actually been passed to arm them, and the pretence is still maintained that they are unarmed). That police force is now the arm of the liberal state - rather than enforcers of conservative law (which is why it is nowadays called a 'service') - and so has a much wider licence to use (liberal) violence than ordinary conservative citizens. Contrast the police force's zealous efforts to stamp out private gun ownership with its own rather poor efforts at responsible gun use, as a result of which quite a few people (one stark naked in a well-lit room) have been shot by mistake or as a result of over-reaction by armed officers...But if we didn't have an armed police force, and left executions to the hangman, then these things would be a lot less likely.

But what concerns me is that members of the public in the same situation are judged so much more harshly if they make such mistakes. And, perhaps more important, how police shootings are widely accepted, though they are summary, often erroneous and inadequately investigated. Whereas a society which finds this summary execution acceptable gets into a pseudo-moral lather about the idea of lawful execution after due process, jury trial, the possibility of appeal and reprieve.

This brings me back to the USA. Americans are not so infantilised as we are. For many reasons, mainly the fact that it is still possible to live genuinely rural lives in large parts of the country, Americans are less likely to rely on others to protect them or their homes from danger.

This used to be true of us too (again I must urge those who are interested to read the relevant chapter in 'Brief History*')

[*Brief History of Crime, by Peter Hitchens]

Interesting stuff, so read the whole thing. 

In the hardware arena, the guys over at the Firearms Blog are showing an "auto-indexing shotgun loader" that looks like the manually rotated multi-tube shotguns shown at SHOT a couple of years ago. Looks heavy! 

I liked the system I looked at a couple of years ago..we'll see about this one. Here's the direct link to XRAIL. You'd need all those extra rounds Rob Haught says are in the store to feed this baby!