Guns, Cars, and Tech

Author: oddball

  • The problem with pysch exams

    One of the common things that some of my left leaning friends bring up when ever their talking about “reasonable” gun laws is that they think there should be a mandatory psych exam before you can own/carry a firearm.  I understand their reasoning, and, in a perfect world, it would be a decent idea.  Of course, in a perfect world, there would be no need to carry firearms for defense because we all would be too busy laughing, dancing, and playing all day.

    During one of these conversations, I randomly flashed on a short story I had to read in middle school.  I’m sure my English teacher would be shocked to learn that I was actually paying attention.  Unfortunately, I’m horrible remembering things like names, so I long since forgot the name of the author and the title of the short story.  Thanks to the power of the internet, I was able to track it down and even find an online copy of it here.

    The story is of a man that has a car wreck.  The accident results in the death of the protagonist (Robert Proctor) and most certainly his mother, at least one other driver, and a small girl that was in the wrong place at the wrong time.  Except it doesn’t.  He wakes up to find that he’s been hypnotized as part of his driver’s test.  He’s told that if he still wants a license, to sign on the dotted line.  Reassured that it was all a dream, he signs and is promptly declared a crazy person and drug off.

    I can see psychologists quickly deciding that anyone that has a desire to own a firearm wishes to use said firearm, and therefore wishes to kill someone.  I know I’ve been the target of some rather pointed questions when a psycologist learned that I owned guns, like collecting knives, and practiced a martial arts.  People need to remember that a psychologist’s opinion is just that: the opinion of one person.  Not only that, but a person that has been trained to look for problems and see symbolism and deeper meaning in everything.  Whether there actually is anything or not.

    “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.”

  • Note to self…

    Gun auctions can be dangerous things.

    If you need me, I’ll be in the dog house.

  • So… umm… yeah…

    So, all across the gun blogosphere, people have been talking about Bob Costas’ anti-gun comments in response to Jovan Belcher’s murder-suicide where he shot his girlfriend and then himself.  Costas is apparently under the firm opinion that if Belcher didn’t have a firearm, they would still be alive.

    I don’t know the exact details of the case.

    Heck, the only details I know of his career is what I read at wikipedia for this post.

    I do know that we do have a shining example of what can happen when a highly athletic man that’s taken more than his fair share of hits to the head (I go ahead and assume any veteran linebacker falls into this category) decides to do such a thing.

    Chris Benoit was a wrestler who decided that time had come.  He strangled his wife and child before hanging himself.

    I guess Costas would have rather seen Belcher strangle his girlfriend instead of shoot her?  Maybe that’s the more civilized thing to do?

  • Stupidity at the gun range

    I went with a couple buddies to the unregulated state run range yesterday, and had to deal with a little more stupidity than usual.  Mostly from the same group of guys.

    First off, they were the “hunters sighting in their rifle” types.  Which means they’d take three shots, then immediately want to go cold so they could go check their targets.  This just pisses me off from a courtesy point of view.  Just because you’re done with your giant string of 3 shots in less than a minute, doesn’t mean the rest of us are.  Hell, there were several times when they called out to go cold just as either I or one of my buddies had just raised our rifle or pistol to shoot.

    Oh, and going hot?  Apparently they just assumed that if everyone is back at the firing line that they didn’t have to say anything.  There were several times that I had to ask “so, you ready to go hot?” as they were loading a round into their rifle.  Granted, they were the only ones shooting at 100 yards (the other folks there were either shooting at the 50 or 25 yard berms), so it’s a pretty safe bet that if they were ready, the rest of were too, but still.  This did cause some confusion, and I know of a few shots fired by these guys or another group when I thought the range was cold.  Oh, and they thought the range was cold at one point when everyone else thought it was hot.

    Annnnnd then there’s protection.  I was asking one of the guys a question and noticed that he had no ears on (he had prescription glasses, or else those probably would have been missing as well).  His response “eh, I left them at home.”  He thanked me when I offered some cheap earbuds from my range bag and stuck those in.  Later, when I walked away for a minute and found the guy’s 10 year old son hovering over my guns that were sitting on the bench (He was obviously bored and was honestly just looking, but still, that’s another thing…).  I noticed that he didn’t have eyes or ears either!  I quickly handed him some plugs and told him to put them in.  I probably would have asked him to go ask his dad if it was ok for him to try one or two of my .22 rifles, but I don’t let folks shoot without both eyes and ears.  The dad should have known better, but is an adult and it’s his choice if he wants to go deaf.  The kid not having eyes and ears made me want to punch the father in the face.

    Oh, and notice how I keep referring to “rifle” when talking about this group?  Best I can tell, there were two guys, and one of their sons there, but only the one rifle.  Which the kid wasn’t shooting.  No wonder the kid was bored and wandering around to see what trouble he could find.

    I won’t say it was entirely them, though.  One of my buddies brought a friend that seemed like a long time shooter.  Early on in the session, I went to set up a target, turned around, and saw him inspecting a Glock.  Guess where it was pointed while he was handling it?  Yep… right at me.  As he turned it, I could see that the slide was locked back, but we had a friendly “chat.”  At first he was wondering why I was upset that he was handling guns while the range was cold, when I told him “you had it pointed at me,” he responded that he had no idea that he was doing that.  I replied “that’s why we don’t handle guns when the range is cold.”  I’d like to think that it’s a sign of great restraint that I failed to either threaten or attempt great bodily harm on him.

    So, to sum up… I had a gun pointed at me during a cold range, there were shots fired during a presumed cold period, folks without standard safety equipment, and lack of consideration to others.  Oh, and one of my buddies recounted a recent trip where he witnessed a guy trying to clear a jam by frantically working the slide while his finger was on the trigger.  Showed up where the guy blew a hole in the concrete doing it, too.

    No wonder Naienko won’t go to that range again, and it’s not terribly surprising that a kid got shot there a little while ago.

  • Posted without comment

    Here is a picture of a T-shirt sporting the American flag (incidentally, sold around the 4th of July) from a company called Faded Glory and made in El Salvador.

  • Quick note

    Went to an open shooting competition with Wizard this weekend (think IDPA + ISPA + some steel challenge thrown in for good measure).

    Interesting match to participate in considering I’d only done one IDPA match before (way back in March). Instead of using the Beretta Px4 that I took last time, I decided to take my Bersa Thunder 9 Pro, and I think I will continue to do so. Don’t know why, I just like the feel and weight of it better than the Px4.

    By the way, I did succeed in the same goals I had last time and didn’t come in dead last! (someone got DQ’d) I might have even beat Wizard if I hadn’t gotten excited and let my fundamentals go out the window on one stage.

    Quick notes:
    I’m still in awe at the speed and accuracy of many of the guys that compete on a regular basis.
    I move like a glacier compared to everyone else.
    It’s very tempting to run up and kick a steel target that decides to rotate when shot instead of fall down.

  • Yeah… I did it…

    Because Evyl Robot is a bad influence…

    The silliness was worth the $16.

    By the way, my Buck Mark is also now sporting some Fire Sight fiber optic sights.  I’ll be posting a review of them soon.

  • /me listens to pundants, beats head against desk

    So… the question of the day, according to the news, is “how did the Republicans fail to get the presidency this time around?”

    Gee…. let me see…

    You take a your most left leaning candidate (thus failing to motivate your largely conservative base)

    You try to dress him up as a staunch conservative (thus alienating everyone else that’s not paying attention)

    Oh, and you fail to throw the guys who claim things like “women can’t get pregnant from rape” out of the damn party (thus giving the opposition plenty of ammo for their claims that Republicans are women hating racists who don’t believe in science)

    I think the real question is:

    How did the Republicans expect to win?

  • And now for something a little lighter…

    Was at a fairly major department store yesterday buying a few items, and had this conversation:

    cashier #1: Do you have a [store] card you’d like to use?

    me: nope

    cashier #1: would you like one?  It will save you %15!

    me: If it’s a credit card, I’m not interested.*

    cashier #1: Ok, think about.  It’s a good deal.

    me: I don’t use credit cards.

    cashier #1: You don’t use credit cards? [looks puzzled at other cashier]

    cashier #2: Don’t look at me.  I don’t use credit cards either!

     

    *you never know.  Target now hands out cards that tie directly to your debit card and gives you the same discount as their credit cards.

     

  • hmmm… let’s see…

    According to the Washington Post, “Obama campaigned four years ago on a promise to revamp the federal government’s disaster response functions…” and has already signed off on 9 declarations of emergency in the north east before the Hurricane Sally has even hit the shore…

    You know what I’m reminded of?  When Nashville had a 1000 year flood event, was pretty much under water (and was literally about a inch away from losing all clean drinking water), and Obama waited until 2 days *after* it stopped raining to sign off on a state of emergency declaration.  At that point, we had pretty much already given up on the feds and started trying to pick ourselves up.

    Maybe it’s the region of the country?  Maybe it’s because it’s an election year?  Maybe it’s because we didn’t wait for a hand out before trying to salvage what we could?

    I’m not saying that the folks in the path of a Cat2 hurricane are not in for a nasty ride, they are.  I’ve already seen reports of a tree falling on a coworker’s neighbor’s house, and a trampoline hung on the power lines.  Although, I’m pretty sure that Naienko’s sister (who grew up near the coast in North Carolina) is having a hurricane party at her place in DC right now.

    Oh, and Wizard has said something about northerners needing to shut up because people down here freak out over a little ice on the road.