A Bit'o the Ole Ultraviolence, What!

After all this deep thinking, I thought I'd throw a little levity into our Thursday discussions. This from the Times of London, reporting on a fracus between 35 Greenpeace protestors and the young petroleum traders of the International Petroleum Exchange:

WHEN 35 Greenpeace protesters stormed the International Petroleum Exchange (IPE) yesterday they had planned the operation in great detail.

What they were not prepared for was the post-prandial aggression of oil traders who kicked and punched them back on to the pavement.

“We bit off more than we could chew. They were just Cockney barrow boy spivs. Total thugs,” one protester said, rubbing his bruised skull. “I’ve never seen anyone less amenable to listening to our point of view.”

Sounds like fun! Even in England — where, I suppose, our plucky lads will be lucky not to be executed by the simpering weasels who run the country — having the words "stormed" and "listening to our point of view" in the same article seems sort of oxymoronic. Maybe just moronic.

And NO, I am not suggesting we pound the crap out of Greenpeace demonstrators, at least as long as they are exercising their right of peaceful protest. So don't pester me about it. I do, however, subscribe to "Tennessee rules," or as my old moonshinner grandfather used to say, "Your rights end where my nose begins."

Comments on CCW Comments...

I received this thoughtful comment from Barry yesterday, and I think it deserves its own post and response:

Ok, since you and TSM are dredging up this 2-yr-old controversy, let me just spell out the fears of the non-gun-carrying community.

That, if more and more people start carrying weapons on their person, readily available, that regardless how much "training" they've had, there will be a gun fired in anger.

Unless you can stand here and prove to me that proper training removes the potential of humans to kill or injure one another out of hatred, revenge, rage, or just plain insanity then I will never consider allowing the general CCW possession of firearms safe or desirable.

We had an incident here in town yesterday where two (probably drunk) yahoos were tailgating each other on the highway - they stopped, one got out and started wreaking some mayhem on the other's car. He finished and started walking away, and the other guy capped him. From behind.

Self-defense? No, the guy was leaving. Proper apprehension of a subject? No, he wasn't a cop or even trying to restrain.

Anger. Pure rage provoked a shooting. The guy's lucky he only winged him in the leg.

So you see, you can't train out hostility or genuine human emotion, and a firearm makes it too easy and too safe to inflict deadly harm from a distance.

And that's just the people who do have some training. What about the people who obtain firearms and carry them around, but have no training to speak of?

Hi Barry, and thanks for writing! The worst thing that can happen to any of us is spending too much time breathing our own air. Let me take a shot, so to speak, at this, and I would also ask some of my regular readers to weigh in.

In truth, I can't repeal human nature. We are truly the children of the killer apes, both for better and for worse. Our genetic legacy — intelligence, adaptability, aggression — has given us the planet and may yet give us the stars...as akido master George Leonard has noted in his wonderful book Mastery, we are the most formidable predator to ever walk the planet, and our potential is by any rational measurements unlimited.

That same legacy has given us uncontrolled aggression, spree murderers, serial killers, road rage...all the way to genocide.

Let's move from macro to micro. The reality is that the criminal class, the people my mentor Walt Rauch refers to as otherhumans, are already armed. They have always been armed, whether with guns, knives, crossbows, staves, a big piece of leg bone, because they are our predators. They prey on us.

One of the realities of nature is that predators who prey on predators have to be extraordinarily vicious — think of saber-toothed tigers who hunt other lions and tigers as opposed to cattle — because the prey itself is potentially dangerous.

When we talk about CCW firearms carriers, we are talking about a very specific subset of, for lack of better words, the good guys. Remember, the bad guys are already armed. The very people you don't want carry guns — hell, sharp sticks for that matter! — are already carrying them. They are unaffected by laws regulating firearms carry because their entire careers are outside the law.

CCW carriers as a group share certain characteristics:

1) They have already given thought to the issue of potentially lethal response to attack.
2) They have considered their own personal limits in terms of response to an attack.
3) They have sought additional training with a firearm to prepare for a potential attack.
4) They have opened their lives to a higher level of official scrutiny than non-CCW carriers. I've seen my police file, which is about an inch-and-a-half thick — more than your average career felon — and the biggest "crime" I've ever committed was a speeding ticket in college.

Essentially, you have created a self-selected group of people who are very unlikely to perform criminal acts, including acts of violence. Can I "prove" this to you? No...I can certainly deluge you with statistics about the low rate of acts of violence among CCW holders, but "proof" is a mathematical concept and poorly suited to human discussions, where the very nature of "facts" is subjective.

Remember, the bad guys are armed anyway! Those jackasses you referenced in your post will be armed with or without official sanction. The only question is whether you will be armed when you run into one of them.

That still leaves us with "crimes of passions," the escalation of anger into violence. Barry, I'm afraid this is a world-view issue. As a journalist (including years on police and court beats), as a self-defense trainer and as a person, a civilian, with an extremely high level of access to military and police trainers, administrators and experts, I have found that when you scratch the surface of a "crime of passion," you almost always find a long history of increasingly escalating violence. The idea of people "just snapping" is much, much rarer than television would have you believe. I''ve personally interviewed murderers who "just snapped," (a man who beat his fiance to death with a claw hammer comes to mind) and what I saw in each case was a history of violence, usually over years and years, steadily increasing. I refer you to Gavin De becker's great book The Gift of Fear. De Becker is probably one of the world's top authorities on violent behavior; read what he has to say about crimes of passion.

So can people just snap? Back in the Dawn of Time, when I went to college, after I got over my obsession with math and physics, I studied mass media and statistical analysis. I believe that, given a large enough sample, anything is possible. Someone does win the lottery; someone gets struck by lightning three times in a row.

However, I want to be sure that should I be present when such a thing happens, or when one of the armed criminal class decides to target me or mine, or when the enemies of my country decide the Acme Mall might be an interesting place to make a statement, that I HAVE THE SKILL, THE TRAINING AND THE TOOLS TO SAVE MY LIFE AND THE LIVES OF OTHER INNOCENTS! I am truly sorry you are uncomfortable with my decision, but that doesn't change my decision.

Again, thanks for writing! I suspect we will have to agree to disagree...

The Wednesday Between Wednesday and Friday...

...a.k.a. Thursday. Tomorrow I've got to decant my cowboy hat and go to Phoenix to shoot an episode of COWBOYS on Winter Range, the cowboy action shooting national championships. That will actually be fun, and COWBOYS host Richard TEQUILA Young makes it easy. I was actually planning to shoot the match, but reality intruded. You can work or you can shoot. And never the twain shall meet.

I like going to the range and practicing cowboy stuff. A lot of that is the guns. When I was a "real" competition shooter in practical pistol, it was sort of like having a second job, A fun job, but a job nonetheless. Three practice sessions a week, each focusing on a different aspect of practical shooting; dry-firing every evening; a match every weekend. In my spare time, I pulled the lever on a reloading machine. I can probably operate a 1911 in my sleep. I did that seriously for about eight years; haphazardly for another decade or so.

Lately, I've been getting my competition buzz from cowboy action shooting, not because I've always wanted to be a cowboy, but because I really like the hardware. The first gun I ever shot was a .22 single action Ruger; probably the second one was my father's Winchester .30/30 lever action carbine. It's really neat to learn how to manipulate those guns efficiently, as opposed to just shooting them. It's had an effect on my viewpoints about self-defense firearms as well.

For example, I always keep a rifle in the bedroom. I live in a rural area, and I want the option of a powerful, relatively easy to shoot and longer range weapon to complement my self-defense handgun. Previously, that rifle had been an AR-15. A couple of years ago, after starting to work with cowboy guns, I made the decision to change from an AR to a Winchester lever action carbine in .44 Magnum. Here's my rationale:

1) A lever gun is amazingly fast when you know how to manipulate it. Watch an episode of COWBOYS or, if you can, take a class with Tequila or another top cowboy instructor.
2) The .44 Magnum in a rifle is a pussycat; there's very little recoil.
3) I practice regularly with my two regular cowboy rifles, a Marlin Cowboy Competition in .44 Magnum abd a Legacy 1892 carbine clone in .44.
4) More importantly, my Sweetie has takent a shine to cowboy action shooting (Indiana Jackson is her "alias"), so she practices with a lever action rifle. I have no doubt that anyone payijng an unauthorized visit to the ole homestead when I'm not around is in for a BIIIIGGGGG surprise.
5) The .44 Magnum is a more versatile cartridge than the .223...we actually have top-level predators where I live. The bear who lives in the back yard gets testy in the autumn when he's hungry and sleepy. No, I don't think I'm going to have to cap B'rer Bear, but I like to know that I have the option should he decide to traverse the house.
6) As mentioned in passing over the years by both Massad Ayoob and Frank James — two self-defense commentators with brains and experience — if you should ever have to defend yourself in a court of law for a self-defense shooting, which gun would you rather have your attorney show to the jury of your "peers," a scary black "assault weapon" or the gun that John Wayne used?

And that's not to mention the fact that lever action rifles are dirt cheap, totally debugged (heck, this is Civil War technology!) and cool. Just a few thoughts...

Little Green Men Update...

Two NASA scientists think they have evidence of current life on Mars:

WASHINGTON -- A pair of NASA scientists told a group of space officials at a private meeting here Sunday that they have found strong evidence that life may exist today on Mars, hidden away in caves and sustained by pockets of water.

God help us all...it's Ann Curry!

More CCW Fear...

Upon reflection (hard to believe, but true), I decided to post more of Inn of the Last House's comments on CCW, because I think it's germaine for all of us who do carry:

I also would feel uncomfortable knowing that anyone on the street, in the theatre, at a restaurant, at the supermarket could be carrying a loaded gun on their person. And here's why - despite training, despite temperament, despite the best of intentions: I don't trust you. That's simply it, I don't trust you. I don't trust a person who is not a licensed law enforcement officer of some kind - someone who, by virtue of their job, I would assume they have proper gun training - to carry a weapon. You may be a great person, love your kids, go to church, would never pull a gun in anger at another person - you may be supremely confident of that fact in your own mind, but I'm not. To me, you would be just as likely to be the one sticking up the fast-food clerk as the one defending him, or - in your possibly untrained and excited state - could be the one who with the best of intentions attempts to intervene but misses and hits someone else. Or you could be the one who gets pissed off at me in traffic and, instead of the flipping me the finger you pop off a few rounds at my back window.

I'm not concerned whether there are documented cases of this happening - I am afraid that they will, when more and more people are allowed to carry concealed weapons.

IMO, this has been the greatest success of the anti-gun movement — the popularization of the idea that we are all psycho killers, just waiting for the right trigger to send us off. Once in a radio interview I was told "there but for the grace of God go you..." ie, it could be me capping that 18 year-old woman at the 7-11. I stopped the host and said, "Bullshit.." BLEEP! I have been really really mad at lots of people many times, and I have never once considered shooting them. That's because there is a fundamental difference between people who do violent crimes and the rest of us. They are NOT like us! I haved looked at human beings over a set of gunsights, and it is ONLY because they wanted to do me or mine harm. I did not shoot them because of my training, which is why I am a HUGE fan of training!

Bottom line: Never, ever agree with the "situation" definition of violence! This really is a case of US vs. THEM!

FEAR of Guns...

A pretty good take from the Smallest Minority on the irrational fear of hardware:

But this is fear born of two sources: ignorance, and sensationalism. The majority in this country are like Abigail Kohn was; ignorant, fearful, and naive when it comes to firearms as she describes herself. They are made fearful of them largely because of the media, where "if it bleeds, it leads." I and many others have documented the monumental ignorance and anti-gun bigotry in the media (such as Ravenwood's recent skewering of a news report informing readers that the Bristol CT police department just up-gunned from 9mm to 40mm handguns. That's a change in bore diameter from 0.355" to over 1.5". They would have apparently decided that grenade launchers are needed, if the report had been accurate.) We've noted the media's fervent willingness to report criminal acts nationwide, while burying defensive gun uses on page D-24 of the local fishwrap. This is apparently because everybody knows that guns are only useful for criminal homicide.

It's long, but it's worth reading. One thing I found very interesting was comments from liberal blogger Inn of the Last Home's thoughts on carrying concealed weapons:

If I were to take a live, armed weapon and carry it on my person, in public, it would eat away at my sanity just as if it were emitting lethal radiation. To know that I carried an instrument of sure and certain death on my person, available and ready to be pulled out and used at a moment's notice to possibly kill...a child. A homeless person. An innocent.

That's downright creepy! Is that what the other side really thinks?

The Fight is ON...Again!

Lawsuit pre-emption is once again on the table in Congress. We need this bad!

Love Me Love Me Love Me I'm a Liberal!

Check out this great piece in New York Metro on how NYC's liberal community (a.k.a. the whole damn place) have painted themselves into a particularly nasty corner vis-a-vis Bush and Iraq: Maybe.

But now our heroic and tragic liberal-intellectual capaciousness is facing its sharpest test since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Back then, most of us were forced, against our wills, to give Ronald Reagan a large share of credit for winning the Cold War. Now the people of this Bush-hating city are being forced to grant the merest possibility that Bush, despite his annoying manner and his administration’s awful hubris and dissembling and incompetence concerning Iraq, just might—might, possibly—have been correct to invade, to occupy, and to try to enable a democratically elected government in Iraq.

Whoops! Those thoughtless bastards actually went to the polls and voted! Theuir lives on the line, and they showed up to cast their ballots. How could that be? Even Ann Curry never forsaw this nightmarish development.

But for our local antiwar supermajority, the Iraq elections were simply the most vertiginous moment of a two-year-long roller-coaster ride. By last November, they’d hoped the U.S. would see things their way—and it was some solace that by January, a solid majority of the country apparently agreed with New York that Iraq was a mess and a misadventure.

Until the Iraqi vote: surprisingly smooth and inarguably inspiring and, in some local camps, unexpectedly unsettling. Of course, for all but a nutty fringe, it is not a matter of actually wishing for an insurgent victory, but rather of hating the idea of a victory presided over by the Bush team. (I may prefer the Yankees to beat the Red Sox, but I cannot bear the spectacle of Steinbrenner’s gloating.) Three months after failing to defeat Bush in our election, plenty of New Yorkers privately, half-consciously hoped for his comeuppance in Iraq’s. You know who you are. Last week, you found yourselves secretly . . . heartened—and appalled—by the stories of the Marine general who said it was “a hell of a hoot [and] fun to shoot some people” in Afghanistan, and about the possible Islamist drift of the Shiites who will now govern Iraq. When military officers show themselves to be callous warmongers, and neocon military adventurism looks untenable, certain comfortable assumptions are reaffirmed.

Here's the nut graf:

Each of us has a Hobbesian choice concerning Iraq; either we hope for the vindication of Bush’s risky, very possibly reckless policy, or we are in a de facto alliance with the killers of American soldiers and Iraqi civilians. We can be angry with Bush for bringing us to this nasty ethical crossroads, but here we are nonetheless.

So liberals, enough of this crap about "supporting the troops but opposing the war." Throw down, one side or the other.

Sharks! Germs! Infidelity! No real news!!!

It's a No-News Wednesday! The morning shows are full of shark sightings, germs in the workplace, spouses humping strangers like rabid minks and the failure of the Zoloft defense. It's a sad commentary when the best thing on television is a Fed Ex commercial..."You mean we don't get 'French' benefits?"

On the plus side, I got a new set of AlumaGrips for one of my 1911s yesterday. As I mentioned previously, I'm a Big Fan of these aluminum grips. My goal is to change over all my "working" 1911s to AlumaGrips and the Wayne Novak integral mainspring housing/beavertail.

If you're looking for something a little different in 1911 grips, how about a silver Death? Check out wickedgrips.com for Celtic, Goth and very strange 1911 grips. If I was going to go vampire hunting in New Orleans cemetaries, these grips would be de rigeur to be sure. I wonder if you could fit a wooden stake to a light mount so it would fit on a 1911 accessory rail? I'm liking this a lot! A Novak magazine stoked with 230-grain silver bullets, silver crosses set in grips blessed with Holy Water and a quick-detach wooden stake! Be afraid, Undead! Be very afraid! Red dot site, or no?

How would you like to see Van Helsing with that bad boy?

While we're on the subject of 1911s, be sure to visit 1911.org and see the really cool animations on 1911 operations put together by my pals at STI International. I've said this before and I'll say it again — yes, they're expensive, but STI makes the best out-of-the-box pistols in America. Go to "What's New" and click on "STI Special Edition." This proves that STI prez Dave Skinner has been watch 'way too many old movies! At least the remake of The Man With The Golden Gun can at least have a golden gun that will work!

Sanguine Too Friggin' Soon...

Opened my big mouth too soon on the day...

SOOOOOOOOO...I post, go upstairs to my office, and notice one of my goldfish, Lava, is sick. He's been a little lethargic lately, so I've been watching him closely. I decide to crank up my small "hospital" tank, isolate Lava and treat him with antibiotics.

That also means I've got to do a major clean out of my big tank...okay, I'm not totally busy. I bustle around, setting up the small tank, checking online with Goldfishparadise.com (no, I'm not making this up) to disucss symptoms, cleaning out the big tank.

Thanks to the fact that multi-tasking is a MYTH, I eventually pump about five gallons of water onto my office floor — nice little waterfall, really. I've just about got that under control when I hear a spectacular crash from the bathroom, where Alf the Wonder Dog has decided that today would be an excellent time to plumb the mysteries of the small tank.

My own instant bathroom tsunami, complete with water, broken glass, pieces of heater and lights and one sick fish on an E-ticket ride!

Once I got THAT cleaned up, I decided I have to go to Boulder to get a new small tank and antibiotics...of course, it's SNOWING

Well, I guess as Brother Ice Cube once sang...

"I didn't even have to use my AK
I would say it was a good day..."

MacGyver Redux

Okay guys, check this site out. You got to admire anyone who can build his own night vision device from parts he found dumpster diving. The only thing I ever found dumpster diving was a 1950s vintage barber chair, which is still in my gunroom.

Kick 'Em When They're Up; Kick 'Em When They're Down...

Ah, a snowy Tuesday morning! I'm much more sanguine than usual because I hired a snow removal service to come plow the driveway as soon as it hits five inches. Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!

There's a really nice piece on the Bainbridge blog about how the current blog challenge to MSM is the result of the institutionalization of the '60's radical mindset within the media itself:

And so the media has reaped what it sowed. The media legitimated and perpetuated the Sixties' radicals critique of authority. In doing so, however, it sowed the seeds of its own loss of authority. Since some of those seeds turned out to be dragons' teeth, the media is now reaping the whirlwind.

It couldn't be happening to a nicer bunch of people.

I saw this myself as I came up through newspapers in the early 1970s. When Nixon resigned, the editor of the small paper I worked for in Florida made up copies of the front page (much harder and more expensive then than now!) and gave one to each of us reporters so we would always remember what we were doing when this ultimate journalists' trophy was bagged.

Implicit in this, of course, was the idea that each and every one of us starting counting coup. That launched me on a year-long campaign as an "investigative reporter" in the zillions of small Florida towns that make up the Tampa/St. Pete metro area. My job description was "hit man" — I was rotated into a small town, where I started sifting through the dirt until I found something dirty enough to drag into the light. Then I methodically pounded the offending individual into a resignation...or worse. I remember sitting in some nickel-and-dime city hall watching some functionary cry and show me pictures of his college age daughters, people whose lives I was getting ready to trash. And then they rotated me out, so I didn't have to see the wreckage I left behind. Oh, I was a smug son of a bitch!

One morning I woke up and realized that I had become exactly the person I didn't want to be. I was one of the scumbags. So I went in and demanded a transfer to Features, which was met with a stunned silence. I had scalps! Within a few months, I had quit newspapers forever and begun my haphazard drift through popular culture as a freelance writer.

What does all this have to do with anything? Nothing, but, hey, it's snowing hard...

The Hounds Pick Up the Scent...

This from yesterday's Salt Lake City Tribune, more hounds baying on the .50 cal trail:

WASHINGTON - From the headquarters of the Fifty Caliber Shooters Association in the central Utah town of Monroe, John Robertson publishes a magazine for the group's worldwide members extolling the virtues of the most powerful gun available to the public.

With a .50-caliber rifle, an experienced marksman can hit a rock the size of a Volkswagen Beetle from a distance of two miles. The gun can drop a bull moose dead in its tracks even after the bullet passes through a 5-inch-diameter tree branch. And a shot from the gun will pierce anything from a 3 1/2 -inch-thick manhole cover to a 600-pound safe or a stack of cinder blocks.

While enthusiasts revel in the gun's next-zip-code range and staggering impact velocity, those same features have some members of Congress declaring it a menace to national security.

With the entire national gun control movement sputtering like 1952 Ford truck, and Sarah Brady not only unable to reach "all three networks" with a single phone call, but having trouble getting a mention in the Wonkette's gossip blog even with La Sarah's phalanx of media spinners, the dogs badly need a win.

And they smell blood with the big .50s, partly because The Governator knows less than nothing about "live" guns and way too much about California politics and partly because disinformation specialists (a.k.a. lying weasels) like Tom Diaz at the Violence Policy Center are betting that the rank and file gun owners won't rally around something as obscure and scary-looking as a .50 BMG rifle.

Let me give you a hint of what's waiting in the wings. Check out this article on Brady's newest attacks on the 5.7 X 28 Five-seveN pistol. IMO, the anti-little-bitty-bullet and the anti-great-big-bullet people are working on a common strategy to define virtually every rifle bullet on earth as "armor-piercing." This is the coming battlefield, folks. And before you say, "hey, hey, hey, it ain't me, babe," let's talk about shotgun slugs against body armor!

Hey Loretta! I Love You More Than an Irish Setter!

Real title from a Conway Twitty duet. So I thought I would weigh in this morning on last night's Grammy's, but not too much because Usher makes me think of hemorrhoids. Here, in no particular order, are the thoughts of an aging rock critic:

• I've never been a fan of Green Day, and their dingbat politics makes me want to throw up, but Billy Joe Armstrong and the boys know how to rock! Green Day came out screaming on American Idiot, and just for a moment I was transported back to New York City and CBGBs at the height of the punk rock "revolution" in the mid-1970s. Just for a minute there, rock was dangerous again.

• Compare that to the phoned-in performance from U2. A couple of times, I expected Bono to swoon on a chaise lounge and sip some Creme de Menthe. Even The Edge, one of the greatest guitarist to stalk the face of the earth, seemed to be listening to his own personal iPod.

• Was it just me, or did Jennifer Lopez's ass seem large enough to have a couple of moons orbiting around it?

• Kanye West! Dude! Andrew Lloyd Weber's Jesus Christ Superstar as performed by a raving psychotic! I loved this! There's nothing a music critic loves more than to see somebody chuck all the safe stuff and swing away for the bleachers. West's screamin' Jesus Walks, followed by the best speech of the night, made a living breathing superstar. Reminded me of LL Cool J's amazing performance at the MTV Music Awards many, many years back with his scortching answer to the posturing gansta rappers on both coasts.

• The Southern Rock tribute performance...I haven't seen that much coke and Miller since the first Willie Nelson picnic. Seeing Dickie Betts functional was awesome in and of itself.

• Somebody needs to take that simpering twit John Mayer, bitch-slap him silly and send him home to his mommy. He's the musical equivalent of Jude Law, a foppish, pretentious collection of calculated mannerisms with all the talent of a $2 hooker on Sunday morning. I'd rather hear Sheryl Crow fart than him open his mouth.

• And speaking of Sheryl Crow, it was another No Underwear Night, Mom! You go, Lance!

• Ray Charles was a once-in-a-lifetime talent, and we were lucky to have him with us for so long.

• Melissa Ethridge. Bald from chemo; blue jean rocker with a guitar, belting out what may be one of the hardest cover of all time, Janis Joplin's Piece of My Heart. Folks, I saw the Sainted Janis do Piece of My Heart, and it was a crystal clear moment of pure, radiant talent. I believe Melissa Ethride matched Janis' performance last night. I believe that even after all this time, it may be possible to be saved by rock and roll.

• Tsumani relief's gigantoid Across the Universe download-this-right-now history-in-the-blah-blah-blah...it was creepy. They needed Dickie Betts, ten cases of Miller High Life and a couple of tanks of nitrous oxide. This baby was so dull I thought I heard a couple of tectonic plates snoring.

• Finally, you gotta love Loretta Lynn and her new best budd, White Stripes frontman Jack White. She ordered him around like a disobedient Lab puppy, and he did everything but roll over and ask to have his tummy rubbed. Loved it! Plus, Portland Oregon was a breathtaking song, a virtual summation of Loretta Lynn's life and proof positive Jack White is one hell of a producer. Maybe Loretta needs to get her hands on that simp Mayer!

FNH Five-seveN 5.7 X 28 pistol

Okay, unlike some of my 1911-fixated brethern, I really like the FNH Five-seveN pistol. Yes, it is BUTT-UGLY and appears to be DESIGNED BY ALIENS. Yes, a single-action gun with the saftey mounted forward of the trigger guard and designed is be knocked off with the trigger finger would make John Browning ROLL OVER IN HIS GRAVE. Yes, the ammo is DREADFULLY EXPENSIVE.

Let's balance that against the gun's good points:

• It's light (20 ounces or so fully loaded)
• It hold a lot of bullets (flush mount 20-round mags)
• It has the recoil of a .22 Magnum
• The round has been devastating in real world shootings (I've seen the reports, kids!)
• It points fiercely well
• It's a perfect match for the new civilian P90 carbine
I could probably teach my beagle to shoot this gun well

I think this is probably the best "bedroom gun" ever made. Fit a Streamlight M-6 illuminator/laser, and this gun is just about perfect...

More later, when I figure out what's wrong with Blogger!

SG Announcement

We decided we're going to throw ourselves into the .50 caliber fray Big Time!

SHOOTING GALLERY is going to do a special (either 2 regular shows or a special 1 hour show) over and above our regular 13 shows that examines the controversy around the Big .50s, the myths — a nice word for lies!!! — that have grown up around the big guns and show you normal everyday people actually shooting the things for fun! Hey, both Producer Robin Berg and I have shot .50s a bunch, and we're both crazy about the rifles!

I've given this a lot of thought, conferred with MBB (Michael Bane Blog) Man of the Year Ronnie Barrett and the powers-that-be in Gun World, and the overwhelming concensus is that we need this show.

Again, The Outdoor Channel is to be congratulated for allowing me to inject the show into a political firestorm! Imagine OLN or the Disney-ites at ESPN doing that! Support the people who support you!

Problems With Blogger...

Which is why I haven't been posting...

More when I get this crap sorted out!

Octopuses Garden

Here's a really fascinating piece in National Geographic on octopuses (octopii???) and how they use their eight arms, speculating that the octopus solution made be ideal for robotic arms:

Theoretically, there are any number of ways an octopus could use its long flexible arms to move an object. But the method they actually use is surprisingly close to how animals with rigid skeletons—including humans—do it, scientists say.

When hunting and grabbing dinner, the octopus uses all the flexibility the arm is capable of. But to bring captured prey to its mouth, the octopus turns the arm into a semi-rigid structure that bends to form quasi joints. Just as a human arm has joints at the shoulder, elbow, and wrist that allow our arms to bend and rotate, the octopus bends its arm to forming three segments of roughly equal length.

Understanding how the octopus controls eight flexible arms all at once could be the basis for developing the next generation of flexible robotic arms—long a goal among robotics engineers.

Cool stuff! As I'm update, I've been slacking on my robot because of the Ebola-Thon, which is now in its fifth day. I hate to try and solder a circuitboard under the influence of Nyquel.

London Calling...

I feel obligated to point this out, but since it's Friday I'm a little at a loss for comment:

Sex in a can for women...Whether your feet smell or the cat has fleas, there's usually an aerosol to solve every health dilemma.

The arousal aerosol contains testosterone, which is absorbed in the skin over 24 hours. It was originally designed for post-menopausal women with low levels of the male sex hormone.

But it can also work for young women with low libidos, scientists said yesterday.

They tested 261 women over four months. Most noted more satisfying experiences at the end of the experiment.

I suppose this means women need to beware of men with aerosal cans, which is probably good advice anyway. On a day where the big news is Prince Charles is marrying What's Her Name with the horsey face and that Cory Feldman is turning state's evidence against Michael "Jacko" Jackson, I'm ready for a spray can of anything...

Get-A-Long-Little-Doggie, or Whatever

In one of those rare moments of weakness, I've agreed to go to South Dakota, or one of those places up there, and round up cattle in June, for our COWBOYS show. Luckily, I already have a cowboy hat, so I'm 50% there. It's really going to be tough on our host, Tequila, who hates horses. That's right...he's from Texas...he's a cowboy shooter...he looks like a cowboy...but it nada horsey!

Although he is game. When we were in Canada, freezing our butts off on the Great Buffalo Hunt, he was on horseback much of the time, albeit frozen in place. A couple of times I thought he was so frozen he'd crack when he tried to get off the horse (which was, as they say, spirited, which is an equestrian term for "possessed by Satan"). This will give him another opportunity to become one with our four-legged friends.

I actually did one of those cattle drives, back before City Slickers outed 'em. It was for a week or so before TNN filmed a special out in Montana, and the execs at the network thought it would be funny to invite me, then your basic celebrity journalist, to ride the trail until I was too chaffed to walk. After about three days riding, the execs from TNN were, indeed, too chaffed to walk, too sore to stand and complaining bitterly. They kept giving me the Evil Eye, especially after I'd stopped trying to assemble the Rube Goldberg cots and canvas tents and started sleeping in a blanket out with the wranglers. "It's just not right," one of the execs said over the morning coffee and tequila. 'Why aren't you crippled with the rest of us?" I stood up and dropped tro', revealing a set of Lycra tiger-striped bicycling tights. "I'm very adaptable," I said.

I loved my horse, Jeff-The-Couch, who (like Ann Curry) couldn't meet all the criteria of a living organism. He was like a stuffed animal on Thorazine, sentenced to the Sysiphusian task of hauling my fat ass around the mountains. I fully expected to wake up one morning and discover that in the night he's put one of those Artist Formerly And Once Again Known As Prince "slave" marks on his cheek. I swear, the whole time we were riding he was mumbling something about, "tearing down the Massa's barn..." After a week, one of the wranglers said, "Jeff likes you."

"How can you tell?" I asked. "I'm not even sure he's alive."

"Has he tossed your butt into a creek?" he responded.

"Piece of carrot, Jeff?"

Make America a Better Place!

Sign the STOP ASHLEE SIMPSON petition:

To: Geffen/DGC Records & JT Simpson Entertainment

We, the undersigned, are disgusted with Ashlee Simpson's horrible singing and hereby ask her to stop. Stop recording, touring, modeling and performing. We do not wish to see her again.

She cannot match the sound of her voice that can be found on her CDs, when she sings live. She simply yells the words (sometimes the wrong ones) into the mic.

We are so sickened by her "performing" that we are taking this opportunity to demand that she stop.

I kinda thought that her lip-sync bit on Saturday Night Live was the funniest thing that crippled old warhorse had trotted out in a while. If it wasn't for Tina Fey, I can't imagien why anyone would tune in.

Still, I like the idea of petition campaigns to rid the world of faux celebrities. My next choice? A toss-up between Liza Minelli and Mary-Kate Olsen.

E.T., Phone 1-900-GREEN BABES!

From MSNBC's science columnist, some thoughts on how we might want to contact any aliens bopping around out there:

Such messages usually use intricate coding, including hieroglyphs that refer to the wavelength of the hydrogen transition and mathematical functions. But Seth Shostak, senior astronomer at the California-based SETI Institute, suggests that you needn't bother with all that cosmic cryptography. Streaming a cached copy of the Internet should do just fine, he says.

"What we should send is the content of the Google servers on a light beam," Shostak told me. "Don't worry about the coding. That's like the artists in the Lascaux cave worrying about how to paint an antelope so that anthropologists could figure it out 17,000 years later."

I'm going to have to give this some thought. First off, I suspect aliens might get the wrong idea about human reproductive techniques. Study the Internet, and you're going to have the Mothership landing with a stock of almond-flavored oil, alien-shaped rubber dohickies and handcuffs to trade with the natives. Plus, what if they're disappointed that all Earth females don't look like Japanese anime chicks, all big eyes, long legs and impossibly huge breasts? Well, I guess if they landed at the Academy Awards we could dodge that bullet.

I can see it all now...PEOPLE OF EARTH! WE COME IN PEACE! WE WOULD LIKE TO MEET THE PENIS ENLARGERS...AND CAN WE ARRANGE REFINANCING ON OUR PLANET? RESISTANCE IS FUTILE! AND WE'D LIKE OUR $40 MILLION FROM THE MINISTER OF FINANCE OF GHANA! WHERE IS MATT DRUDGE???

.50 Caliber "Insanity"

Let's start the day with a little insanity. From Jeff Johnson, a really good journalist at the Cybercast News Service, this piece on Rep. Patrick Kennedy and the reintroduction of the "50 Caliber Sniper Rifle Reduction Act," a bill to ban the manufacture of the big .50s and rigidly control the transfer of existing rifles.

U.S. Rep. Patrick Kennedy implied Tuesday that congressional colleagues who do not share his support for a failed gun ban being reintroduced in the House are mentally ill. The Rhode Island Democrat also accused lawmakers who oppose the anti-gun legislation of not caring about police safety.

Kennedy is the son of U.S. Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) and the nephew of the late President John F. Kennedy and U.S. Sen. Robert Kennedy, both of whom were shot to death.

Well, heaven knows Patrick Kennedy should be intimately acquainted with mental illness, given his lineage. Still, I'm thinking this is the gun control battle of the next couple of years.

By any measuring standards, the gun control movement is on life-support. With the exception of the hosts of the morning television shows and some Washington D.C. lobbyists, nobody supports the tenents of the movement. Pro-gun screamer Howard Dean will be running the Democratic Party (Dean's biggest competition, former Denver mayor Wellington Webb, bet heavy on gun control as the next big thing, and lost big); even here in the People's Republic of Boulder the easiest way to create panic at a Democratic party is to whisper, "gun registration..." They scatter like frightened quail. The Brady Bunch blather on about "gun safety" and nobody's listening (remember when Sarah Brady said she could make the evening news on all three networks with a single phonecall? Now she's having trouble making the Wonkette's gossip blog with a couterie of "media specialists;" the only person who regularly listens to La Brady is Katie Couric, in between recipes).

But the reminents of the gun control movement believe that can get the big .50s, which will lay the groundwork for the next round of battles in four or eight years. Our Man of the Year, Ronnie Barrett of Barrett Rifles, isn't taking this laying down. Our little cherubs and seraphim tell us that Ronnie is preparing to fund a serious documentary that will shoot half-inch holes through all the .50 caliber nonsense being spewed by Kennedy and his ilk.

More as this develops! I'll leave you with a comment from Rep. Carolyn McCarthy on the .50 cal:

"Look at this thing," McCarthy urged. "Do you want this in your home? Do you want your children to play with this?"

Works in my house!

Assorted Internet Trivia

Okay, so I'm on Day Three of my EBOLA-THON; my head still feels stuffed with discarded tissues and wadded up copies of the Washington Post, God help me. If there are any over-the-counter cold remedies I haven't taken, I'd be surprised!

So, a little catch-up. Here's a really nice site for listing gun happenings of the week. Darn handy...thanks, Les!

Also, Aphecca is weighing in heavily on Reginald Jones' appearance at Ohio University's Second Amendment Club on the topic of how gun control is racist:

Gun-rights advocate Reginald Jones used humor and a dynamic, informal speaking style to deliver his inflammatory message -- "Gun control is racist" -- at Ohio University Thursday night.

"People are surprised to hear that," Jones told a small crowd of about 25 people in Baker Center's 1804 Room. Jones maintained that gun-control laws were used to keep blacks from defending themselves against the Ku Klux Klan in the old South and against the "criminal class" in the urban ghettos of today.

[...]

"The inception of (gun-control) laws were to keep blacks down," he said. "Blacks are at the mercy of the criminal class. We can't hold criminals accountable, so we hold guns accountable."

Jones noted that no one supports the banning of knives, which also can kill.

Read the whole thing.

Interestingly enough, I'm going to be interviewed Thursday by National Public Radio's On the Media, discussing media bias regarding firearms. This is a story I pitched to them, whcih coincided with a story already in the works. We've had some really fascinating conversations leading up to the interview. I'll let you know when it's goign to air.

Back to bed...

Interesting Thoughts from Middle Earth

This is an interesting gun registration piece out of New Zealand, one of my favorite places in the world:

"With Gary Mauser attending the ANZSOC conference in Wellington this week, politicians, justice officials and police will be able to receive first-hand information as to why gun registration is the ultimate in political folly," claims Peter Linton, Libertarianz spokesman for Firearm Deregulation.

Mauser has studied the fiasco of the clumsy attempt to register firearms in Canada, the evidence showing it is a financial calamity threatening to engulf the current Canadian Government:

Costs have escalated from a projected $2 Million to a current $2 Billion, and no evidence can be found to show that the Gun Registry has accomplished anything of value.

Violent crime & suicide rates remain constant in Canada, even though they are falling in the US. The homicide rate is falling faster in the US than in Canada.

So far, NZ seems largely immune to the gun control disease that afflicts much of the old Empire. My favorite NZ story is when I was staying with a friend of a friend in a small town on the North Island. My host was giving me a hard time on how many handguns there were floating around in the States. I got up from the dinner table and walked over to his gun cabinet, opened it, and took out a .22 rifle fitted with a sound suppressor — all his small rifles were fitted with "silencers," which he'd bought for about $25 USD apiece at the local hardware store. "This," I said, pointing to the suppressor, "would be guaranteed time in the federal slammer back home. No deposit; no return."

"Get out!" my friend said. "That's just simple courtesy for the neighbors, not to mention easier on the old ears. You can't mean they're illegal in the states?"

Different countries; different laws...

Free Plug Morning

I've seen thse great "Peace Through Superior Firepower" lapel pins all over, but I haven't had a line on where to get them until now. Check out Life, Liberty, Etc., pro-gun stuff for pro-gun folks. The lapel pins are $2.00 a pop...order a dozen and pass 'em out to yor friends!

I also really like the "Your Mama's So Tactical" T-shirt, which includes such winners as "She low crawls to the mailbox."

This stuff'd get you shot in Boulder, except nobody here but me and my friends have guns!

PBS Nitwit Alert!

PBS, a.k.a. yours and my tax money, is doing another one of their "Living History" shows, this one a "Texas Ranch House:"

The latest and most ambitious experiment in living history from the makers of Frontier House and Colonial House is TEXAS RANCH HOUSE. In TEXAS RANCH HOUSE we send a group of modern-day people back to the year 1867. It is the era of Western expansion, a time of rounding up and branding free-roaming cattle. It is a time of taming wild horses and sleeping under the stars. But Texas 1867 is also a time of hard living - long cattle drives, endless, punishing days in the saddle, chowing down on pork and beans, and surviving lonely nights out on the plains.

TEXAS RANCH HOUSE will allow you to follow in the footsteps of the visionary trailblazers of this time, men and women who initiated new industries, forged great wealth and created a new mythic heroism of the West. Modern America was built on the ambition, grit and phenomenal drive of these larger than life characters. Have you got what it takes to join the experience? Could you survive and flourish at the TEXAS RANCH HOUSE for four to five months?

Well, that's a laugh...half the people I know could move in tomorrow! Now I know all you cowboy shooters like me (Wolf Bane, SASS 13557) are pure-D chompin' at the bit to git into this...hell, we already got the clothes, the hardware and a badge!

But wait! What's this turd in the punchbowl?

From the FAQs:

Will we have guns and live ammunition?
No. Our participants will not be permitted to use guns. It is something of a myth that all cowboys carried guns, and in fact guns were banned from most early ranches because they terrified cattle and could cause stampedes. Our show is about living the life of real 1867 cowboys and ranchers, not movie gunslingers.

Well, who'd a thunk it? PBS goes out and researches the Old West and discovers that cows wuz afraid of gunplay! I guess they used Michael Bellesiles' Arming America as their primary research text. Heck, I wouldn't live in Texas now without a gun! Maybe two. Or three.


A tip of the hat to Tequila for rounding up this little piece of news!

SHOOTERS

Here's a review of SHOOTERS: Myths and Realities of America's Gun Cultures, Abigail Kohn's study of, duh, shooters in the San Fran area, in Reason Online:

If there’s a gun in a scene, an old writer’s adage says, it had better go off. As that bit of advice suggests, there are few symbols more powerful than guns. They can represent liberation from oppression or serve as a weighty physical reminder of a lurking existential threat. No matter the association, the powerful emotional responses that guns elicit are largely responsible for the stagnant and vitriolic nature of the current gun control debate.

In Shooters, anthropologist Abigail Kohn argues that both sides of the debate have become so alienated from one another that they effectively form subcultures, and she studies them accordingly. Kohn calls Shooters an ethnography, an anthropological study conducted from within a culture to gain the “natives’ point of view.” Rather than studying gun enthusiasts though literature and statistics, or from behind a duck blind to ensure “objectivity,” Kohn spent time with enthusiasts, interviewing them, taking classes with them, and shooting with them.

A sort of Margaret Mead among heavily armed Samoans, if you will, with better restaurants. I liked the book, if for no other reason that Ms. Kohn took the absolutely radical crazy step of asking shooters what they called themselves! Turns out we never call ourselves "gun enthusiasts," "gun fanciers" or "gun nuts." We call ourselves "shooters." That bought her points right off the bat.

Like the writer from Reason, I think her conclusions on gun control are shaky, sort of like they were an afterthough insisted upon by some nitwit New York editor. The book is definitely worth reading, if for no other reason than Ms. Kohn's finely tuned introduction. Still,. as long as she was in San Fran, I was a little disappointed that she didn't delve into the mating habits of the indigenous cultures...

Super Bowl Sunday!

I was going to write someting about the Super Bowl, except that I didn't watch it. Instead, my Sweetie and I made onion dip, which we ate with Certified Unhealthy Ripples Potato Chips, and watched The Last Samuri, which is a good movie even though Tom Cruise is in it.

I once got paid by a magazine to attend a Super Bowl and write a "color" commentary on it. I wrote that I was amazingly distracted by the largely unclothed women jumping up and down on the sidelines, but that I had it on good authority that a football game had been played. Oh Janet Jackson...where are you now that we really need you?

Foghorn Leghorn R.I.P.

I have to say I'm off to a rocky start this week. I have either a really nasty post-SHOT Show cold or ebola. Maybe it's Spanish flu. Diptheria. Whatever it is, I feel like hammered rhino dookey. Plus, I've got to drive down to Boulder this AM to start my second series of "experimental" treatment on my blown left knee. This involves some sort of substance harvested from the combs of roosters. That's right, folks...Foghorn Leghorn died for my sins.

It does actually work...all those years of running marathons and triathlons left me with pretty much bone-to-bone contact in my left knee, which will STAND YOU UP in the middle of the night. Imagine a nail gun being used on your knee...something like that. This stuff effectively "plates" the knees with enough lubricants to allow me to continue my haphazard lifestyle for another 18 months.

My "knee guy," Andrew Pruitt, is the best knee guy in Boulder, which probably makes him the best knee guy on the planet. He has a perfect Boulder bedside manner, too. When I first went to his office, explained all those years of whacko sports, pointed out that my knee was swollen like a giant cantalope and asked his advice, he said, "What did you expect?"

I said I expected to end up in a little room just like the one I was in with someone just like him looking at the x-rays on the wall and tsk-tsk'ing.

"Well good!" Dr. Andy said. "We can dispense with all that other stuff and get right to the knee!"

In other news for the week, my old agent, Mel Burger at Wm. Morris, wants to the complete BULLET POINTS proposal ASAP, which means I'll finish it up this week (I'll post the final version). I'm also once again making headway on FIVE TO GO, the sequel to my novel ALL NIGHT RADIO. I still worry that I may have painted myself into a corner, but I'm hopeful that I can write my way out of it.

Dean and the Dems

There's an interesting piece in The Hill on the implications of Howard Dean as Chairman of the Democratic National Committee on gun control. Here's a hint...say "lights out, Sara Brady":

The expected election of former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean as chairman of the Democratic National Committee this month will strike a crippling blow to the gun-control movement, lobbyists and political observers say...

Robert Spitzer, political science professor at State University of New York-Cortland said, “The gun issue has historically been a cyclical issue, and we’re in a cycle right now where there is less interest in gun control for a variety of reasons. The Democrats feel they were burned in 2000 on the gun issue. And enough Democrats believe it to be so that the Democratic Party doesn’t have the same zeal for the issue that it did earlier.”

One More Knife Thingie...

For the record, my everyday carry it no matter what knife is an aging Benchmade/Emerson CQC-7 (it looks sort of like this, but more beat up). It's been back to Benchmade one to be overhauled, even though it hasn't been in production for a while. Every so often I run into Ernest Emerson and I always mean to buy a new knife from him. Somehow, I end up with the old Benchmade.

In an idea world, I would carry a Bali-Song butterfly knife. I love working with them, and I've spent not a little time (and more blood than I would care to admit) learning how to spin 'em. Unfortunately, too many states class butterfly knifes as "switchblades," complete with Draconian penalties for their concealed carry.

Sharp Things for Knife Junkies

Like most knife junkies, I've always been a fan of the Sykes-Fairbairn combat dagger. Here's a brief sketch of it's history:

The Sykes-Fairbairn knife is named for the two British officers who designed it, based on their experience with the Shanghai police. Major W.E. Fairbairn had been chief of police in Shanghai before the Japanese capture of the city. Eric Anthony Sykes worked with Faribairn in Shanghai where they developed the "Defendu" system of police training and combat fighting. Defendu is credited with being the first modern fighting system, a "kill or get killed" approach that was practical and effective. Both were recruited by the OSS to train American and Allied commandos and resistence fighters. Starting in 1941, their knife was a standard commando weapon in World War II for U.S. and British Commonwealth forces to the point where it was often called simply "the Commando knife".

If you want to read more, Leroy Thompson's book, Commando Dagger, is the way to go, and Leroy would probably appreciate the money.

I've had a bunch of different flavors of the S-Fs, and the week point has always been the tip. That thin, elegantly shaped blade, while perfect for slipping through all those pesky body parts on the way to vital organs-ville, is weak when it comes to other duties a knife might be put to in the field. Say all you will about using the proper tool for the right job, but on a bad day in Baghdad, a knife's got to deliver on a lot of fronts.

Enter Masters of Defense knives, now steered by SHOOTING GALLERY regular and my pal Mike Janich. At SHOT, he towed me over to the MOD booth to show me "something new under the sun," the next evolution of the combat dagger. It's the Beshara XSF-1 dagger, designed by Canadian special forces guy Brent Beshara. What's really neat is that the knife is chisel-ground on each side of the blade; the grinds come together to form a third edge at the point, solving the S-F "weak at the tip" problem.

"I've been in knives for 30 years," Janich told me. "The is the first totally original idea I've seen."

I, of course, ordered one on the spot. As they say, guns are only guns, but knives are important!

Dancing Iraqis

There's a wonderful piece in James Taranto's Best of the Web, the OpinionJournal's running blogsite, on the Iraqis who fought back against the terrorists:

It's quite understandable that Iraqis would be bolder about standing up to the terrorists now than they were last year. Just over three months ago, after all, there was a possibility, no matter how remote, that John Kerry would be elected president, which could have led to an American retreat from Iraq. Iraqis naturally kept their heads down, lest they suffer the same fate as the Vietnamese allies America abandoned at Kerry's urging three decades earlier.

And of course the Iraqi election this week reinforces that freedom is here to stay--something the Iraqis understand, even if not all Americans do.

There also, as Glenn Reynolds from Instapundit has noted, a wonderful quote from Nietzsche:

"And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music."

That's a fine quote to begin a Saturday morning! I won't lie and say that those of us with friends on the sharp edge over in Iraq weren't sweating bullets over the weekend election. I certainly knew things were going to be okay when, on Sunday, I got a message relayed from Baghdad from SEAL Team 6 plankholder Denny Chalker asking for Ted Nugent memorabilia from SHOT! (The Nuge was, of course, honored to help out!)

I think in a lot of ways many, maybe most, of us — with the notable exception of George W. Bush — underestimated both the Iraqi people and the amazing powers of democracy. As Stan on South Park would say, "I think we've all learned something here today..."

Paging the Producers of COPS!!!

Bad boys, bad boys, whatcha gonna do?

This from the police blotter of Nederland, Colorado, where I unassumingly live:

On January 27, Officer Jake Adler was on routine patrol when he observed a vehicle turn off of East St. onto Highway 119, park, turn their (sic) emergency flashers on, turn their headlights off, and the passenger jumped out and began dancing around in a circle. Upon contact the driver advised they were from Europe and the passenger was enjoying a certain song on the radio and liked to eat cookies and dance to the song at the same time. The driver further stated she did not like cookie crumbs in the car, so that's why the passenger got out to eat and dance. The couple then asked Officer Adler to pose for a photo. He declined.

Whatcha gonna do when they come for you?

Now THIS is a HOLSTER!

Also from the SHOT Show, check out David Brown's Kydex holsters.

Holsters with FLAMES on them! If you're as fast as you think you are, there's no other choice!

Tell him you heard about it here...

Mall Bombers Beware!

So well-known weasel Richard Clarke takes a look at "future history" in his cover story in The Atlantic on the future of terrorism. It's pretty grim. Here's an interesting take on it from the Lead and Gold blogsite:

He does not paint a pretty picture. His worst-case scenario has a series of devastating attacks on America- suicide bombers, mass shootings, strikes with biological and nuclear weapons. After each assault, the economy sinks a little lower and we sacrifice a few more civil liberties...

One thing Clarke totally disregards is the deterent effect of an armed populace. Yeah, yeah...I can already hear liberals laughing. But let's take the Israeli experience, where armed civilians stopping terrorists' strikes has become almost commonplace. Or how about this from...Iraq. That's right, I...R...A...Q, courtesy of the iraqilibe blog:

Citizens of Al Mudhiryiah (a small town in the "death triangle") were subjected to an attack by several militants today who were trying to punish the residents of this small town for voting in the election last Sunday.

The citizens responded and managed to stop the attack, kill 5 of the attackers, wounded 8 and burned their cars. Three citizens were injured during the fire exchange.

Perhaps someone would like to explain to Mr. Clarke the difference between "citizens" and "serfs." I suspect that if we see concerted terrorist attacks on American civilian targets — and I think it's foolish to not consider such an option — Mr. Clarke and his ilk are going to get a fascinating education in the "real" meaning of the Second Amendment. In my heart I believe we will respond like our brothers and sisters in Israel — and now our brothers and sisters in Iraq — as opposed to, say, our bleating forefathers in England or the cheese-eating surrender monkeys in France. This time, the revolution will be televised!

Bring on the Monkeys with the Bone Clubs!!!

Astronomers are puzzled by a mysterious spot on Saturn:

Astronomers using a giant telescope atop a volcano have discovered a hot spot at the tip of Saturn's south pole.

''If the increased southern temperatures are solely the result of seasonality, then the temperature should increase gradually with increasing latitude, but it doesn't,'' [Glenn S.] Orton, a scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., said. ''We see that the temperature increases abruptly by several degrees near 70 degrees south and again at 87 degrees south.

''A really hot thing within a couple degrees of the pole is something I don't understand at all,'' he said.

Finally!

It's that damned monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey!

"Open the pod bay door, HAL! It's time to boogie!"

40th Show!

So when I showed up this morning to begin filming an episode of SHOOTING GALLERY, my producer Robin Berg was far too perky.

Do you realize, he said, that this is our 40th show?

Whoa! As a matter of fact, I didn't. Three seasons...40 shows...a bunch of awards...great ratings...heaven knows I never expected anything like this. Plus, I get to travel around the country and shoot guns. At the SHOT Show, Brother Ted Nugent introduced me as, "The only dude who''s sniffed as much gunpowder as me!"

So, THANK YOU ALL, because nothing happens without you guys! I will never do anything to compromise that relationship!

Day 7 of Michael's Frightening Road Trip...

And so we leave sunny Las Vegas for even sunnier Southern California. After an 0-dark-thirty flight, I spent the entire day in a studio, reviewing episodes of SHOOTING GALLERY and COWBOYS and doing assorted voice-overs. Tomorrow we have a day of filming low-light scenarios with Simunitions — which ought to be a real riot, since I'm pretty much exhausted — then I get to go home! Covered with bruising paintball marks, I suppose, but at least at home.

Still, I wanted to make a couple of points about SHOT. A couple of years back, I wrote in a gun magazine (facetiously!) that by 2011, the only handgun made in the world would be the 1911 .45. Everybody else would just throw in the towel, call it a day, retool and knock out the old Browning warhorse by the gazillions. This year's SHOT Show did nothing to dissuade me of the notion. You could stand in the middle of the Las Vegas Convention Center, pick any direction at random, spit and hit a 1911. And most of them are amazingly good. Some of what were considered low-end guns have gone through major overhauls. The Auto Ordnance 1911s, now owned by Kahr Arms, pops up first. Charles Daly has 1911s, which look pretty good to me. CZ-USA purchased Dan Wesson — a good gun company who couldn't market to save their lives — to acquire their 1911 line. Taurus was showing a really nice 1911 prototype at an MSRP oof $525, which — if they can deliver a production line gun that comes close to the proto, will be a category killer.

Kimber introduced a billion or so new models; orders for their Marine Corp contract gun are pouring in, even though the gun isn't shipping. S&W has a natty scandium Commander-size gun. The SIG GSRs are finally filling up the pipeline. Springfield continues to grind 'em out, and there are rumors that even Colt makes a Colt .45!

My theory is that there is one guy just outside of Manhattan, Kansas, who is actually buying all these 1911s and stacking them in a series of old pay-by-the-month warehouses. How else can you explain the apparently endless demand?

BTW...Michael's choice for the best 1911 product of the SHOT Show? Gunsmith Wayne Novak's aluminum single piece mainspring housing/beavertail grip that eliminates the 1911's grip safety, a vestigial appendix of a device designed to keep the gun from firing unless the shooter has a firm grip. Unfortunately, all hands are not the same size, especially in the critical fleshy part around the thumb. If your hand isn't the right size, you run the risk of failing to engage the grip safety, which means the Finest Handgun in the World won't go bang. Tres embarrassing...and potentially fatal. Wayne's dohicky eliminates thsi problem. Plus, since it's aluminum, Wayne says he can anodize it pink for me.

As soon as I get home, Wayne's getting a 1911 Care Package from me!

My second favorite 1911 must-have thingie is a set of Alumagrips, checkered aluminum grip panels for the 1911. When I first saw these guys, I thought, "Now there is a stupid idea!" I've got really expensive highly figured whackowood hardwood grip panels from, I don't know...Mars maybe...for most of my 1911s. Aluminum is, well, metal. Yeechy-poo.

Then I got bamboozled into trying a pair...these things are great! PERFECT checkering...sharp, but not to sharp. Just the right feeling in my hand. Impervious to everything, including blood for when I inevitably snag a finger on something. You can also use their interactive grip builder to make your perfect set of Alumagrips. And do they look COOL...my latest pair is brown cammie. I'm working on the guys at Alumagrip to pop for some flashy anodizing...maybe pink, to match the Novak backstrap. We'll have an OFFICIAL AUTHORIZED SHOOTING GALLERY DUCK set available REAL SOON! Just the thing for the post-modern gunfighter. Good taste is, after all, timeless.