Category: Uncategorized

I just informed Naienko of the existence of tennis ball launchers for AK-47 pattern rifles and golf ball launchers for AR-15s.

I have hurt her brain meats.

By now, you’ve probably heard of the shooting at the Empire State Building this morning.  Some may call this a mass shooting (hey, there were 11 shot, 2 of which died), but that’s not the real story.  The real story is that the NYPD desperately needs to bump up their firearms training.

Per the article, the attacker was out to shoot an ex-coworker.  He very much succeeded in this task.  Using a .45 caliber pistol with an 8 round magazine (probably a 1911), he shot 5 rounds into the former coworker, which killed him.  When two of New York’s finest responded to the gun fire, the attacker reportedly pulled the gun on the cops and may or may not have fired a single round at them.  The two cops then pulled their pistols and fired a combined 16 round at the attacker.  This trade happened at approximately 8 feet.  9 bystanders were injured and both the initial victim and the attacker were dead at the scene.

First, let me make this clear, the situation as described in the article is absolutely a recipe for a righteous shooting by the officers.  I’m glad that they’re alive and the attacker is dead, rather than the other way around.  That’s not my issue.

My issue is a case of shots fired vs shots hit.  The attacker fired 6 rounds (there were 2 rounds left in the 8 round magazine.  He may have fired 7 if he topped off).  5 of those rounds hit the intended victim, and, I assume, failed to harm anyone else.  That means that, by the official report, there was only 1 stray round that could have struck a bystander.  There were 9 other folks injured at the scene.  Even giving the police the benefit of the doubt, that means that a large majority of those stray rounds came from a cop’s gun.

I realize that shooting a moving target that’s possibly slinging lead back at you from 8 feet on a busy sidewalk is not the same as hitting a target that’s standing still at the range, but dear lord!  Get this cops back to training, and make sure they can hit what they’re aiming at!  Especially if you’re going to say that those that wear the shiny little badge are better trained and will handle situations better than a carry permit holder could.

It’s not when you’re sore the next day.  It’s when it doesn’t kick in until 2 days later.

I tested (and received) my second degree black belt in TKD on Saturday.  I managed to remember all my forms (all 18 of them), survived sparring, and broke many boards without difficulty (once it was determined that I had brought the wrong kind of boards).

Today, I’m still tired, sore, and a bit bruised, but I did enjoy it and I’m a better person for going through it.

Just wanted to give a nod to Linoge and his continuing efforts to get back into martial arts.  Like him, I took Tae Kwon Do in high school, almost made it to black belt, and then quit when I went to college.  For years after that, I kept meaning to go back but either work got in the way or I’d hide behind the all to common excuse of “well, I’ll start again after I get back in shape.”

Ten years of that went by, and I was still sitting on my ass not doing it.  Fortunately, my girlfriend decided that she needed to do something to be more confident and learn how to defend herself.  I looked up my old instructor, saw that she was still teaching, and went down to rejoin the class.  After some “where the hell have you been?” from the instructor, we started class.  I became painfully aware that I was horribly out of shape, and those first few classes were painful.

Fast forward a few years, and I’m still out of shape.  Much better shape than I was when I started the second time, but I still have more work to do.  On the other hand, I am now a black belt and will be testing for my second degree tomorrow.  Oh, and it’s been made perfectly clear by my instructor that if I disappear again, she will hunt me down and hurt me.  Much more so than she does in class.

Anyway, it sounds like Linoge has found a school that he fits in this time.  I was fortunate enough to stumble into one straight away, but I know people that have bounced around many schools before finding the right one.

Something that causes cursing:
having a pin punch jump and take a chunk out of your finger
Something else that causes cursing:
having that last blow bend the pin that was supposed to be driven into the hole.

On the plus side, I did manage to bend the pin back and get it driven into the gas block I was installing.

How bloody difficult can that be to remember?  It seems to happen a lot that people (specifically “Only Ones”) have this tendency to take their pistols out of their holsters when they need to use the bathroom.  This leads to the possibility of someone finding a nice shiny loaded weapon on the toilet.

Yep, it’s happened again.  This time, at the Detroit Metro Airport.  This time it was an air marshal who left his piece on the porcelain throne.  Some random passenger found it, and decided to turn it over to the local law.  No word in the story as to which side of the secured area it was on, but I’m hoping that it was on the unsecured side since there was also no mention of screening or mass panic.

That I have never heard of this case before today.

Now, if you will excuse me, I have to go pick up my wookie suit from the dry cleaners.

Via ace

last weekend, I was at Libertycon.  Truly a great con, which was good, since I needed to blow off some steam.  Maybe one of these years, I’ll get in with the cool crowd enough that I’ll get to go to the gun range with the Baen guys.

Anyways, I was playing Descent with some folks, when my buddy rolled this:

Notice something odd about the blue die?  After taking a couple pictures, we checked, and there were no divots in the table that we could find.

This is up there with flipping a coin and having it land on its edge.

So a guy open carried into a showing of “The Dark Knight Rises” in Cookeville this weekend. This caused a theater employee to call police, since the theater is posted “no guns allowed.”

The cops show up and try to find the guy amongst the other guests, but can’t. The decision was made to stop the movie and ask to speak with the gentleman with the gun.

Three guys stand up.

No arrests, because all three had permits and our statute requires the posting to be “prominent.” Police decided the theater’s sign did not meet that criteria.

Betcha they have a bigger sign now.