The Wu Also Rises...

Thank god DEADWOOD starts on Sunday — I haven't heard anyone called a "motherf%$&*&g c%$%sucker" in months! I watched the "Mr. Wu" episode repeat tonight, and it was spectacular. I would try to explain, but it's hopeless.

I'll be in GUNSITE in Arizona all next week filming. We'll be doing subguns and machine pistols, a day of working with the new Remington .223 pump carbines (think a 20 gauge Remington 870 pump in .223 that takes AR magazines) and some precision rifle work.

I also plan to hit Pizzeria Bianco in Phoenix, since it's alledged to be the best pizza on earth! Hey, I've eaten at John's in NYC and the original Uno's in Chicago, not to mention assorted strange pizza places in Italy. Pizza is important!

Sorta Snow

I took the day off and went snowboarding with my Sweetie, who perversely insists on skiing — tres embarrassing! Skis! Yesterday's technology...old news...an excellent sport for people with walkers or on crutches...well, if it makes her happy, it can't be that bad, to crib a phrase from La Crowe.

It was about 50 degrees, so it was hardly a world-class powder day. I hauled out my old Burton all-mountain board, which I figured will run in just about anything; I've used it at A-Basin in June in a mix of slush and mud, so I figured it was perfect for today. It was. You know, of coursed, that boards sing. Skis may, too, but I was never good enough on skis to hear it. I started out with some big, looping carves until the board found its way and began to sing. Nothing quite like watching that roostertail of ice crystals behind you.

Hey, it was a good day!

The Antigunners Stumble

First read the Brady press release on the Five=seveN 5.7 X 28 pistol, especially this part:

The National Rifle Association has defended the weapon and questioned the Brady Campaign's testing. In response to their comments, Barnes today suggested that the NRA's President, Wayne LaPierre, "put on a bullet proof vest, and we'll fire the weapon at him, and see what happens. He should put his body where his mouth is."

Now read the NRA response:

It is pathetic to see the gun control lobby make hysterical statements to resurrect their failed political agenda. According to the BATFE, this armor-piercing ammunition is only available to the military and police. The Brady Campaign continues to deceive the American people in their effort to ban firearm ownership by all law-abiding Americans.

I'm waiting to see what Bitter Bitch of the Bitch Girls has to say about what she doesn't like about the response. As pour moi (the only legacy of my ill-fated attempt to learn Frenchie in college to meet the language requirement...remember requirements?), I refer you back to my Two Front War post. I thought the Brady release stank of desperation, which quite frankly lifted my spirits.

To quote the robot Daleks from the old Dr. Who television series: ATTACK ATTACK ATTACK...

Sign 'O The Times!

Well, you knew it would come to this:

Less Swearing on TV, Demands Former Sex Pistol

LONDON (Reuters) - "Wanna be an anarchist?"

At least one of the Sex Pistols, now middle-aged and a father of two, no longer does.

Former Pistols bassist Glen Matlock has called for swearing on British television to be curbed, nearly 30 years after the provocative punk rockers sent shock waves through Britain by using derivations of the dreaded "f"-word on live TV.

"It's pathetic when people swear for the sake of it," Matlock told a television show to be broadcast Sunday. "Something ought to be done about it."

Matlock wrote my all time favorite Sex Pistols' song, God Save the Queen:

God save the queen she ain’t no human being
There is no future in England’s dreaming

What the heck? They were right! Still, I suppose Sid Vicious is spinning in his grave, or hell, or Pittsburg, or wherever you go when you kick, to think that another fellow Sex Pistols bandmate, Johnny Rotten, is doing a series on Discovery about helping people really understand insects. I am not making this up. I wish I was.

M1 Carbine Questions...

...that arrived out of nowhere following the last post. There are apparently a lot of M1 Carbine fans out there! Who'd'a thunk it?

Here are a couple of quick histories of the little gun, and here are some answers to questions.

1) As near as I can tell, the 5.7 MMJ wildcat and the 5.7 Johnson are the same cartridge masquerading under different names — in any case, a necked down .30 Carbine cartridge.

2) Yes, as a matter for fact, you can still get Carbines in the 5.7 caliber. Try Fulton Armory for a "lovingly restored" version. Fulton also offers a 5.7 barrel for $169 and installation services if you've got a Carbine stuffed in the gunsafe.

3) IAI, the Israeli company, had 5.7 M1 Carbines for sale a couple of years ago (I handled one at a SHOT Show a while back). Here's an ad from 2003, but I can't find them now and there are posts to the effect that the company is out of business. There are still IAI versions (usually the .30 caliver versions) around for sale...here's one for sale currently at gunsamerica.com.

4) The best news for M1 Carbine fanciers is that Kahr Arms is now producing an M1 Carbine through their Auto-Ordnance division, which they purchased a couple of years back. Kahr did a hell of a job overhauling A-O's Thompsons (one of my all-time favorite guns; watch for a SHOOTING GALLERY special on 'em!); the currently available versions are very nice. The Carbines I saw at SHOT this year were excellent, and after this post I'm thinking of getting one for myself and putting it through the wringer. Unfortunately, there's no 5.7 version yet.

5) And, yes, there are WWII original M1 Carbines around for sale, but I have not seen an original 5.7 for sale in the proverbial coon's age, which is actually two years younger than me. And PLEASE, if you've got a WWII vintage M1 Carbine in excellent condition, don't modify it! Ship it directly to my FFL dealer, and I will, in return, send you my thanks.

3) Quality Cartridge is offering components and loaded ammo for the 5.7 MMJ. Redding lists both forming dies and reloading dies, and I'm sure all the other major reloading companies can provide you with dies. Tank's Rifle Shop does a lot of work on M1 Carbines and offers a 5.7 case-length gauge, an indispensible tool for reloaders. BTW, here's an article on the .30 Caliber wildcats from The Gun Zone that's definitely worth reading.

I think the interest in the little Carbine is that it has always had the potential to be an excellent self-defense rifle while flying under the "assault weapon" nonsense. I've always heard that the old New York Police Department Stake-out Squad made excellent use of the .30 Carbine loaded with hollow-points (I'll ask Stake-out Squad legend Jim Cirillo when I talk to him for the show in May). Essentially, you're getting jacked up .357 Magnum ballistics in a rifle that has barely any recoil. Five, 10, 15 (the mainstay) and some original 30 round magazines are readily available (read this article before you buy 30-rounders!). There are zillions of accessories; heck, you can even get an Airsoft M1 Carbine for simulations!

I'd really like to see an M1 Carbine in 5.7 X 28...that would be, as Cartman is fond of saying on South Park, hella-cool!

The Two Front War

Things are heating up on the "sceond front" of the current antigun offense, the attack on little bitty bullets going really fast, the 5.7 X 28 and the guns that chamber the round. This from Newsday:

Armor-piercing Gun Targeted

WASHINGTON -- In late December, police in South Jersey moved in to arrest a local drug dealer and made an unsettling discovery in his car.

Besides more than a kilo of crack cocaine, they found a new type of handgun that was capable of piercing police body armor, according to Camden County Prosecutor Vincent Sarubbi.

The weapon, called the Five-seveN by its Belgian manufacturer, FN Herstal, began showing up on U.S. streets last fall, according to law enforcement officials.

The gun is now itself a target - of legislation introduced yesterday by four lawmakers from New York and New Jersey that would ban it from the United States. The sponsors are Rep. Eliot Engel (D-Bronx), Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Sens. Frank Lautenberg and Jon Corzine, both New Jersey Democrats.

First. let me point out the intentional disinformation — armor-piercing gun, as if the gun has anything to do with it with the penetration capabilities of a bullet! Second quick point...all the parties involved on the antigun side acknowledge that the armor-piercing 5.7 X 28 ammo, SS190, is not available for sale in the United States. Newsday also points out that according to ATF, the SS192 hollowpoints current available for the FNH Five-seveN (and recently announced P90 semiauto carbine) are NOT armor-piercing.

So what?

This is just the next stage an intentional disinformation campaign engineered by the Brady Center, Violence Policy Center (VPC) and their running dog political lackies like Charles Schumer, Frank Lautenberg, Diane Fienstein, Barbara Boxer, etc. Brady is taking the lead on the 5.7 X 28; the VPC are the shock troops against the .50 caliber.

Notice the focus of This Year's War is on specific ammunition; the guns that fire the ammo are almost tangental in the battle. That's because the antigun forces are, as I've said before, on the ropes. Fund-raising has collapsed; with the exception of CNN, the mainstream media (MSM) has been burned so badly that they're leery of overblown antigun claims (after all, the AWB expired and no one seems to be handing out AK-47s on streetcorners, as predicted). So the antigun lobby has gone back to its biggest pre-AWB success...banning "cop-killer" bullets.

After all, Winchester Black Talon bullets had never killed a cop, were no more penetrative than a dozen other specialty rounds and were arguably no more "lethal" than many other hollowpoints or specialty ammunition. But they had a scary name, and the antigunners were able to mount their strategy and get it running before we as an industry were able to respond. And we lost.

And, in truth, the antigunners have gotten better at what they do in the insuing years. Let's take a look at their strategy:

1) They play to our biggest weakness, which is that, "The facts are on our side." The facts are on our side, but that does not matter! Instead, it allows us to expend our energies and resources on "proving" them wrong. They, on the other hand, understand perfectly they're in a Media War, not the Yale Club's debate society. One sound byte on morning television is worth $100 million in studies disproving said byte, because the larger whole of society doesn't care. Folks, the other side intentionally puts out disinformation to draw our fire, and just like Charlie Brown and Lucy's "football game," it works every time! How do I know this? I have my cherubs and seraphim; besides, it's what I would do in their place!

2) They pick their battles — and their enemies — carefully. Notice they have gone after the 5.7 X 28 (a roughly .22 caliber bullet in the 30 grain range that can be fired in a handgun with a velocity of more than 2000 fps) and not the .22 Hornet (a roughly .22 caliber bullet in the 40 grain range that can be fired from a handgun — the superb Taurus Raging Hornet — with a velocity of more than 2000 fps). Why? Because the antigun spinners understand perfectly well that ballistics is ballistics...properly loaded, a .22 Hornet (or another dozen cartridges I could name, including the .22 Jet, the .218 Bee, the .221 Fireball, the new WSSM .223, the venerable .30 Carbine or it's .22 caliber clone, the 5.7 Johnson, wildcats like the .19 Calhoun or the ancient 5.7 MMJ and even the rimfire .17 Remington Mach II) can do anything a 5.7 X 28 can do fired from a handgun. My long-range handgun, a custom (from J.D. Jones/SSK Industries) T/C Contender single shot in .223, makes the 5.7 X 28 look like a sad puppy in every category and is spot-on accurate out to 500 yards. The antigunners took on the 5.7 X 28 because they get a free ride off the military descriptions of a cartridge not available in the United States and because FNH, while a huge international arms conglomerate, is basically a small player in the U.S. Is there anybody out there willing to bet me that a .17 Mach II won't zip right through a Level IIA vest? But all the major arms companies have handgun and rifle offerings in .17 Mach II (the hottest new cartridge since the .40 S&W), and believe me, the outcry over such an attack would be staggering. Notice that the antigunners aren't willing to go up against even a single powerhouse like Taurus — popular, heavily funded, headed an aggressive chief executive with a "take no prisoners" attitude.

The same rationale defines the attacks on .50 calibers. The cartridge is a military exotic, most of the manufacturers are small and the antigunners are betting that the whole of the industry — as well as the larger body of gunowners — will be unwilling to go to the mattresses over such niche cartridges.

3) The other side plays for precedents; we play for absolutes. For example, what are the long-term potential consequences of losing .50s? We say, well, we lost ,50 caliber rifles, which only effects a tiny number of shooters. They say, we now have a precedent on the books giving us grounds to ban cartridges and guns built for long-range accuracy, penetration, lethality, etc. HMMMMM, doesn't that sound like any rifle cartridge? Give up the 5.7 X 28? Heck, that's only a handful of pistols, so it really has zero effect...right? Except that there will be a precedent for banning any cartridge that can penetrate a Level IIA vest, which, as I have written earlier, is CAN OF REALLY NASTY WORMS!

4) The other side knows we like to play defense, so they make sure we have that opportunity. Why? Because if you're ever watched Monday Night Football, you know that ultimately, defense can never win the game against a good opponent. We've played defense for decades and won most of the battle; in the closing years of the Clinton administration we came damn close to losing the war! Of course defense is important, but so is an aggressive offense. If we have such an offense, would someone please point it out to me?

5) We like "wait and see." See if it will blow over. See if we dodge a bullet this time. See if the other side runs out of steam, funding or initiative. See if the topic gains any traction. Sort of like the first President Bush stopping "Stormin' Norman" Schwarzkopf at the gates of Baghdad to see of Sadam would settle down. "Wait and see" only buys you another war on odwn the line. Or to use a more current example, if John Kerry's spinners had been faster to respond ont he Swift Boat Veterans' controversy, we might be haviing a very different conversation here today! Six or seven years ago, the industry's unstated policy on the VPC was that it was a fringe antigun group and would eventually go away like the festering pimple it was. Now it's one of the most aggressive — and most successful — of our enemies.

IF YOU MADE IT THIS FAR, CONGRAT!

Send Flowers & Drawn Butter...

The world's only superstar lobster, 22-pound Bubba, has gone to that Great Lobster Trap in the Sky:

PITTSBURGH, Pa. - He spent decades dodging lobster pots, but in the end, Bubba was done in by a trip to the zoo.

The 22-pound lobster died yesterday at the Pittsburgh Zoo, about a day after he was moved there from a fish market.

Bubba's untimely death came just as he stepped onto the red carpet. He was slated for a slot on Oprah as soon as he settled into his new digs, where he was going to discuss the sexual issues surrounding supersized Crustaceans. NBC has announced that they're "putting on hiatus" a planned "The View"-type morning talk show hosted by Bubba and Today correspondent Ann Curry. "We're all thankful he didn't suffer," said Curry, reached at home in the Today bunker in midtown Manhattan. "He was the best President we ever had, and he'd still be President if that woman had known a decent dry-cleaner! No...wait...was he on the Supreme Court?"

Flowers and cocktail sauce to the Pittsburg Zoo...

Oakland Confidential...

Here's a story you didn't expect to see from California — a man defending himself with a handgun, and the police back him up!

Patrick McCullough has been complaining to Oakland police about drug dealers for the past 10 years -- and telling the young men who congregate in front of his house at 59th Street and Shattuck Avenue to beat it.

For his efforts, the 49-year-old has endured harassment, threats, vandalism and an assault in 2003.

Then, during an evening rainstorm on Feb. 18, about 15 young men surrounded McCullough and shouted "snitch" and other taunts as he walked from his front door to his driveway.

Someone hit him with a branch, and others threw punches. McCullough told police he had seen a 17-year-old reach for a gun, so he drew his own gun and shot his would-be assailant in the arm.

"I'm a man, not a mouse nor a vigilante. I'm not looking for medals, just a safe neighborhood and peaceful existence," said McCullough, who grew up in a housing project on the south side of Chicago. "I don't believe in vigilantism under any circumstances. What I did and will continue to do is take my safety in my own hands."

Here's the follow-up story from SF Gate, where the perp says he didn't do nuthin' and the police say bull!

Hegler [the perp's mom, proving I suppose that hope does spring eternal] is urging prosecutors to charge McCullough, but police who patrol North Oakland disagree. They have known McCullough for years and consider him to be a good man in an area where drug dealers from the North Pole gang have run the block and nearby Bushrod Park.

"In our opinion, her son was the aggressor -- he instigated the whole event," said Lt. Lawrence Green, who oversees patrols in North Oakland.

Green feels prosecutors should charge Melvin and his friends for assault. He dismissed Hegler's assertion that McCullough was the instigator.

McCullough used a SIG P230 in .380, if you're interested.

Elvis Cole Rides Again!

Novelist Robert Crais was on the Today Show today — thank god he didn't get interviewed by Ann Curry, which would be like Einstein having a conversation with a talking pony! — pitching his new book, The Forgotten Man. Click on the link and go buy a bunch of copies.

Crais is hands-down the best "mystery" novelist working today. How good? The best thing I could say about Crais would be to borrow the quote Ross Macdonald used about Raymond Chandler: “Chandler wrote like a slumming angel and invested the sun-blinded streets of Los Angeles with a romantic presence.”

Ditto Crais.

I mean, I hate Los Angeles, even though I go there so much I can navigate the damned freeways. But when I read Crais' novels, I see LA as this great wounded beast of a city, half-crazed with pain, doomed and in some strange way utterly noble. Elvis Cole and his lethal sidekick Joe Pike are the perfect pair for 21st Century LA, trodding Philip Marlowe's mean streets neither mean nor afraid, but armored by their sense of honor.

Crais is also stand-up. He was a very successful television writer when he started the Elvis Cole novels, which he has relentlessly refused to sell to the movies despite rumors of staggering pricetags attached to such sales. The Cole novels, as he reiterated to Al Roker (who actually seemed to have read the books!) this AM, are the work of his life, and the work of his life is not for sale. Pretty amazing, considering your average author (probably myself included) would sell his or her child's virginity to Hannibal Lector for a shot at Hollywood. For a plug on the Today Show, he or she would probably kick in some fava beans and a decent chianti.

I fell in briefly with Crais through one of those bizarre coincidences that seems define the outer perimeters of my haphazard life. The character of Joe Pike is the weapons expert, a Vietnam vet who owns a gun store and lives in a Spartan apartment above the store. He is taciturn in the extreme, habitually wears Ray-Ban aviators, grey sweatshirts with the sleeves cut off and jeans, has red lightning bolts tattooed on each delt and is as silent and deadly as a cobra after the third Starbucks.

When I first Fell Into the Rabbit Hole, I hung around with a weapons expert just back from Vietnam, who owned a gun store and lived in a Spartan apartment above the store, who didn't talk much at all, habitually wore Ray-Ban aviators, gret sweatshirts with the sleeves cut off and jeans, had lightning bolt tattoos on each arm and was one of the most profoundly dangerous people I've ever met. He introduced me to rappelling, det cord, lock picking, weird beer, M-16s, and, in general, a world I'd only dimly imagined. He taught me how to set booby traps to trip up cops in simulations, and we once pissed on a famous SWAT team from the roof of a building we'd "seized." Not surprisingly, one day he dropped off the grid.

He WAS NOT Joe Pike, but I have to say the first time I read an Elvis Cole novel you could have knocked me over with the proverbial 5.56 hollowpoint. I told Crais that I had apparently apprenticed with Joe Pike, or a reasonable fascimile. After a couple of beers, he concurred that truth was often stranger than publicity, and he told me how he'd once quit a lucrative job writing for a science fiction television show when some pissy assistant editor said, "Oh, no dophin would EVER say that!"

He also wrote the novel Hostage, now a movie opening in a week or so with Bruce Willis starring. It is NOT an Elvis Cole novel! Kick ass, dude!

And yes, I've got my trashy colors back!

"It's Scary for Democrats..."

Fascinating interview by John Stewart on THE DAILY SHOW with Nancy Soderberg, author of The Superpower Myth; The Use and Misues of American Might, your basic handwringing liberal text. This is from James Taranto's Best of the Web on OpinionJounal.com:

Stewart: This could be unbelievable!

Soderberg:---series of Nobel Peace Prizes here, which--it may well work. I think that, um, it's--

Stewart: [buries head in hands] Oh my God! [audience laughter] He's got, you know, here's--

Soderberg: It's scary for Democrats, I have to say.

Stewart: He's gonna be a great--pretty soon, Republicans are gonna be like, "Reagan was nothing compared to this guy." Like, my kid's gonna go to a high school named after him, I just know it.

Soderberg: Well, there's still Iran and North Korea, don't forget. There's hope for the rest of us.

Stewart: [crossing fingers] Iran and North Korea, that's true, that is true [audience laughter]. No, it's--it is--I absolutely agree with you, this is--this is the most difficult thing for me to--because, I think, I don't care for the tactics, I don't care for this, the weird arrogance, the setting up. But I gotta say, I haven't seen results like this ever in that region.

Soderberg: Well wait. It hasn't actually gotten very far. I mean, we've had--

Stewart: Oh, I'm shallow! I'm very shallow!

Soderberg: There's always hope that this might not work. No, but I think, um, it's--you know, you have changes going on in Egypt; Saudi Arabia finally had a few votes, although women couldn't participate. What's going on here in--you know, Syria's been living in the 1960s since the 1960s--it's, part of this is--

Stewart: You mean free love and that kind of stuff? [audience laughter] Like, free love, drugs?

Soderberg: If you're a terrorist, yeah.

And, no, I haven't given up on trashy colored type! I'm posting this off my main machine, which only marginally works with Blogger, the AOL of blog software. I can't access all the features, most notably colored type, but I wanted to see if it was actually allowing me to post again. BTW, Blogger says in an email to me that they have no idea why some of their features come and go on Mac OS-X machines...some of their programming monkeys must have been subpoenaed for the Michael Jackson trial...

In Case You Missed It...

I think it's time for George Bush to send Special Forces troops into New York City to head off the impending war between rapper 50 Cent and his ungrateful and less talented protege The Game. 50 Cent dropped The Game from the G-Unit, and the proverbial 9-mil hit the fan.

Of course, you're aware that one of The Game's posse was wounded in a shooting at a NYC radio station Monday night. "Security shot my li'l homie," wrote The Game's brother, Big Fase, on the rapper's website. "I'm holdin' 50 Cent responsible." Immediately thereafter, somebody hosed the front of Violator Management, who reps 50 Cent, with bullets. The Game is from Compton...nuff said!

Sarcasm aside, I liked some of the stuff on Get Rich or Die Tryin'. Interesting to see 50 Cent the street thug trying to pull himself up and still remain a hard boy. This is from Many Man (Wish Death) and, yes, the lyrics are explicit:

Now these pussy niggas putting money on my head
Go on and get your refund motherfucker, I ain't dead
I'm the diamond in the dirt, that ain't been found
I'm the underground king and I ain't been crowned
...
Turn your back on me, get clapped and lose your legs
I walk around gun on my waist, chip on my shoulder
Till I bust a clip in your face, pussy, this beef ain't over

Pincushion Man

Yesterday was my fun day at the doctor's, where I got my fourth CHICKEN SLUDGE injection in my knee. So far; so good. I ran a couple of miles before I went to for Fun With Dr. Andy, and it worked pretty good. Plus it didn't wake me up screaming in the middle of the night.

As long as I was there with Dr. Andy (if you're a cyclist, read his book), I had him whop me with a shot of cortisone in my left elbow. As a rule, cortisone sucks, and I hated like hell to even suggest it. It postpones dealing with the problem — my elbows are suffering from 10 years in a dojo and half-a-million rounds downrange, coupled with the inevitability of getting older — and adds a whole host of problems on its own. That's why this was only the second cortisone shot I've ever had in my life.

BUT BUT BUT BUT BUT...I've got a week at Gunsite filming next week, including a lot of time with submachine guns. I know from experience that a thousand rounds with a buzzgun with it's short, sharp recoil impulse will translate into a couple of hellish Advil nights and enough Ben-Gay to clear the sinuses of the entire population of Milwaukee. So I took the Coward's Path and got my elbow shot. Coincidentally, for the first time in a year I slept the whole night without waking up and nursing my miscellaneous yeechy joints.

Of course, the Glock 18 will still rattle my teeth.

NYPD Blue Finale

Yeah, I teared up. At least I didn't blubber like I did when Bobby Simone died.

My favorite line from Andy Sipowitz, several years back:

"My partner John Kelly used to say, 'Don't beat nobody on spec...'"

Words to live by, Detective Sipowitz. Words to live by.

Thank you.

Tyler Update

Once again, Alphecca has proven he's the best aggregator around. Read his Weekly Bias column.

I find myself getting angrier and angrier about both the media antigun spin and the thundering silence from our side of the table. It shouldn't fall on the blogosphere — on Alphecca, on Trigger Finger, on geekwitha .45, on 10-Ring — to carry all the weight while the people we PAY to speak in our behalf are still patting themselves on their backs for the election victory. Guys, we appreciate the hell out of your work on getting George Bush back in the White House, but the war has moved on to other fronts. We've got CNN spinning out of control, .50 caliber rifles under vicious — and far too successful — attack, a hero being besmirched by a rabid collection of idiots and I have yet to hear even a hint of a strategy from the progun side.

We need a national strategy to combat this antigun barrage on a state level. The attacks on .50s, the calls for a renewed AWB, all of these things are part of a concerted attack. Where is our national strategy?

Just Look at This CRAP!

If I hadn't seen this with my own eyes, I wouldn't believe just how low antigunners can get. Go to 50 Caliber Terror and prepared to be PISSED OFF! Don't miss the flash intro.

Now that you're furious, you're probably wonder who is responsible for this P-O-S. Well, luckily, this just dropped into my e-mail box from a friend:

FWIW, the site is registered to Mark Karlin & Associates, a Chicago PR firm. Karlin is or was the chairman of the Illinois Council Against Handgun Violence, and full-on neo-Marxist psychopath as well. (At least that's how *I'd* categorize him.) He's listed as the point of contact on lots of press releases for anti-gun organizations. He also edits buzzflash.com, which appears to be the Democratic Underground crowd's answer to Drudge. Just Google him.

Isn't that sweet? It's time we called these people what they really are, domestic terrorist wannabes, heavy breathers who get off on the idea that some real terrorist group will pick up on their ideas. Only a whore of the lowest sort would create a piece of crap like this.

Finally!

From Drudge.

I've always said that monkey could blow the roof off the Michael Jackson case. Give 'em immunity and a case of bananas, and let's end this thing!

Cultural vs. Political Battles

Let me just touch on this subject a little more. In the years I've been on the front lines of Gun Wars, the single most frequent question I've gotten from Our Side is, "Why don't the antis and/or media tell the truth?"

It's an interesting question because it shows that Our Side doesn't truly understand the battlefield. We think we're in a debate; we think that if we win the debate — do more comprehensive studies, present more compelling numbers, more clearly state our case, etc. — the majority of the public will sway to our arguments.

Our opponents understand that this war is about as far from a debate as you can get and remain in the same universe. It's not about facts; it's about convincing the great middle class that guns are bad. So what if you lie if the lie is parroted by useful idiots (to borrow a term from the old USSR) like Katie Couric then retracted on page 46 of the New York Times — if anybody bothers to retract it at all?

That's why you're seeing moronic remarks on the Tyler shooting like this AP wire story in the Kansas City Star this AM:

Tyler police spokesman Don Martin said Monday that gun owners should carefully weigh the risks before intervening in a shooting crime.

"We don't want citizens to go out there and get involved in situations if they don't have to because they don't have the training that the officers do," he said.

Kristen Rand, legislative director for the pro-gun control Violence Policy Center in Washington, D.C., said the Tyler shooting last Thursday shows that criminals are undeterred by people potentially carrying concealed weapons. All but four states allow permits for carrying concealed handguns.

This is the Sound Byte War, folks. We don't need another million dollar study on how gun ownership does not cause cancer. We need full time spokespeople who are out there every day hammering the media with OUR sound bytes! I can't believe that we DON'T have such people! We should be raising holy hell!

Hopefully, This is a Trend...

I admit I haven't seen the Overstock.com ad, which is currently lighting up the Internet. Instapundit linked to this Slate article on the actress who steams up the ad: The moment you've been waiting for—the lowdown on the Overstock hottie...the lovely Sabine Ehrenfeld (pronounced "Sa-BEAN-uh") was driving back from a snowboarding trip with her children, on her way to casting calls the following day. Still, she found time to chat in a delightful and disarming manner. I learned the following:

In addition to German and English, Sabine speaks French and Italian. She is proficient in basic tactical pistol skills, because she thought it would be a fun thing to learn. She also has a private pilot's license and 350 hours in the air. Think about that...an article in Slate, which has turned liberal handwringing into a fine art, where the words "tactical pistol skills" are mentioned without a subsequent "response quote" from the monkeys at the VPC!!! This is, as The Sainted Martha would say, a Good Thing.

Seriously, in the old days of the NSSF media education program, Paul Erhardt, Gary Mehalik and I talked a lot about "normalizing" the possession, carrying and sporting use of firearms. The idea was that victory in the apparently endless battle over firearms was often defined as convincing a majority of the people that our political position was the correct position — an example being the individual, rather than the group, interpretation of the Second Amendment. Paul,Gary and I argued that a cultural victory was far more important than a political victory. Yes, political victory is important, but when firearms are once again "normalized" — she plays golf and shoots IPSC; we decided on a week at Gunsite instead of the family trip to Panama City, etc. — it makes it much harder for the antigun forces to function.

Our goal should be to marginalize the VPC, Brady, Chuckie Schumer, Diane "Gimme Back My Bullets" Fienstein and the rest of the elitist crew. That's what they succeeded in doing with us!

Yeech!

I stumbled on this story, and I realized I had to post it...beware of skunks gnawing your knob!

"He was playing rough with him on his lap, and Ozzie bit down on my husband's penis," right through his sweat pants, she said.

Several stitches later, Dan's is fine except for the realization that he'll forever be known as the guy with a skunk on his junk.

"He always wanted to be famous. Maybe now he will be. He was hoping to do it more through hunting," Carol said.

Ozzie was just like a dismember of the family. The de-scented, chocolate-brown skunk slept under Carol and Dan's bed, and his favorite meal was a hard-boiled egg smothered in cheese. Carol had hoped he would live out his life of 10 or 15 years and then she would have him stuffed and mounted at home.

It was quite a scene at their 7-acre homestead in a rural area near Rome when warden Walz showed up along with deputies and a humane officer. Carol's macaw and cockatoo were screaming, and the family's pot-bellied pig was raising a ruckus. Walz found Ozzie hiding under a bed.

Yes, they capped Ozzie...

Heroism — An Incident Report

My old friend Michael Menduno is one of the original "technical" (hell, he coined the term "technical diving") scuba divers, one of the guys who pushed the envelope on deep dives, cave dives, etc. Not only is Michael a great bass player, but he's been to the seriously scary places. Back when he was the founding editor of the lost, lamented aquaCORP magazine, Michael made the decision to include "incident reports" in each issue of the magazine. technical/cave diving is crazy dangerous, and people do die. Michael thought that it was important to not just honor the deaths of explorers, but to analyze the circumstances of their death and see what lessons can be learned to save lives.

Michael's work yielded some very interesting results. What he discovered that there were relatively few "rules" that kept divers alive. That flew in the face of the "more is better" school of learning. Yes, he found, more information is always useful, but there was a clear difference between "useful" and "save your ass." Cave diving, for example, functions on four basic rules:

• Have specialized training.
• Always have a continuous line back to the surface.
• Have multiple redundancy for mission critical gear — regulators, lights, etc.
• Use the "rule-of-thirds" air management system as a minimum — use one-third of the air going in, one-third of the air coming out, one-third in reserve.

Michael also discovered that death was often the result of an accumulation of small mistakes as opposed to one cataclysmic error. Three seemed to be the magic number — a person could survive one, maybe two mistakes, but Number Three was often the killer.

I bring this up because I think it's something those of us in the firearms community should be doing on a regular basis. We do it occasionally in various magazines, but Menduno's particular genius was in regularizing the process and divorcing it from the emotionalism that surrounds those deaths (Michael and I have lost far too many friends...).

With that spirit, I want to take a look at the Tyler, TX . PLEASE, in no way do I want to denigrate Mark Wilson's heroic sacrifice (see my previous post), but there are things we need to discuss.

I've now read a number of the reports on the shooting; plus, I was able last weekend to talk to a resident of Tyler who is a bonafide firearms and self-defense expert and a number of other experts who followed the situation very closely. Their observations mirror Michael Menduno's thesis that Mark Wilson's death was the result of an accumulation of smaller mistakes, any one of which taken individually was probably survivable.

Here's what we discussed last weekend:

1) Wilson's initial choice of weaponry put him at an immediate disadvantage. He chose his regular carry gun, a Glock 9mm (sorry...don't know which one). Handgun against rifle is a classic worst-case scenario.

2) The attacker was wearing body armor. My understanding from off-the-record sources is that Wilson, a skilled shooter, shot at least a five-to-seven shot group on the attacker's chest, any one of which should have been fatal. The armor negated Wilson's marksmanship.

3) Wilson went prone behind his pickup truck to present a smaller target behind cover. Apparently, the combination of being hit and in a prone position rendered Wilson unable to escape the attacker's advance.

What can we infer from Wilson's actions? Well, Wilson's actions were in line with a lot of current training. We're taught quick reaction is critical, and the quickest reaction is with the gun closest at hand. I don't know about you, but RIGHT NOW the closest gun to my hand is a J-frame S&W in .38 Special, a pocket carry gun. There is a rifle upstairs, but the remainder of my rifles are in the safe in the gunroom. Might that be a situation I need to reevaluate? In my home, do I need better access to a rifle?

I do not own body armor. I'm going to have to think about that. If I had body armor in my house and/or in my car, I would be able to at least add an additional level of protection should I face a shooting situation either in my home or in public.

An additional point on armor...there's a lot of it out there! Does my training (and, by extension, the competitions in which I participate) accurately reflect that fact? Mine does — for decades, I have kept some variation of the "Mozambique drill," two shots center mass; one head shot, in my training. In simulations and training scenarios, I try to think in terms of three center mass shots, followed by multiple head shots. IF ALL YOUR TRAINING IS FOCUSED ON CENTER-MASS SHOTS, I SUGGEST YOU REEVALUATE YOUR TRAINING TODAY!

We need a "PLAN B...PLAN C...PLAN D...etc." training mindset, that is, a continuous flow from Pan A to Plan B, etc. Granted, this requires Real World situational awareness: "three shots center mass, head shot head shot, pelvis shot, pelvis shot, etc." UNTIL THE ATTACKER IS NEUTRALIZED! We cannot shoot...stop...evaluate...shot again if necessary. There is not enough time!

Additional point about training — marksmanship matters! Head shots are hard, especially when someone else is shooting at you. onsider. The pelvic girdle is a small target. Take an IDPA/USPSA target and draw body armor on it...now reevaluate your shot placement. Also consider trainer Dane Burns' mantra...distance from threat is good; more distance is even better. The farther you are from the target, the harder it is to make the shots. Think about it.

If we're serious about this, we must add FORCE-ON-FORCE scenarios to our training! We need to be able to train in an environment where the targets shoot back, because it profoundly changes one's approaches! I mentioned Karl Rehn's training in a previous post as being particularly effective because he intentionally inserts an element of chaos in the simulations.

We need to reevaluate our preprogrammed responses to situations. I've always considered prone firing from behind cover as an acceptable course of action. My question is now this...does the loss of mobility inherent in prone overcome the most stable marksmanship platform and smaller profile? Another question...do I practice lateral movement enough in my training? I am beginning to believe more and more that movement = survival; does my training reflect that?

Mistakes accumulate, until you've no longer got any moves on the table.

Okay, this post is long enough as it is. Comments??? Especially from the training community...