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Why, yes, that is .308 on the shelves. For sale, even.

And the ammo restrictions for this chain have changed from one box per caliber, three total to two boxes per caliber. Maybe I’ll be able to buy .22 by Christmas!

So, my mom, the hoplophobe, recently went on a European vacation and brought me back a T-shirt from Greece.  It features a Spartan warrior and the phrase “molan labe” on it.

She had no idea what it meant.

I told her the historical context of it, but not the current popular use for that phrase.

Looks like Erin Palette’s mom got bite by a rattle snake while gardening this morning, and then had the extra joy of having an allergic reaction to the anti-venom and will be in the ICU over night.

Please keep her in your thoughts today, and take this as a lesson as to why it’s a good idea to wear work gloves when doing such things.  I can say that I’ve been guilty of not wearing the proper clothing or gloves when clearing some brush recently, and it was damn stupid of me.  If nothing else, it’s a good thing I didn’t run into any poison ivy.

Something that I’ve noticed that keeps coming up again and again as I talk to people about the Zimmerman case is that Zimmerman started the altercation when he decided to follow Martin.  Martin wouldn’t have attacked Zimmerman if he didn’t feel threatened because this guy was obviously following him.  This is pretty disturbing to me.

Let’s roll the clock back two years.  Naienko and I were meeting some friends at their hotel the day before Dragoncon started.  For those that don’t know, Dragoncon is the largest fan-based scifi/fantasy con in the US, and is held every year over Labor Day weekend in downtown Atlanta.  It’s spread across 5 hotels, and, as is the case of our friends, many attendees stay in one of the hotels within a few blocks due to the host hotels filling up quickly after accepting reservations.  There is a not so great part of town not far away, but the city deploys a lot of police during the convention, so those up to no good tend to stay away that weekend.  Of course, like I said, this was the night before and the cops hadn’t been deployed yet.

Anyways, Our friend’s hotel was a few blocks from our hotel.  Our hotel was on a fairly major street that has lots of foot traffic well into the night.  Their hotel was on a quieter street, and we had to walk a couple blocks down a side street that had pretty much zero foot traffic since there were no store fronts on it.

As we crossed the street from their hotel to make that couple block walk, my danger sense started tingling.  I noticed a… umm… “gentlemen” standing in the shadows of a door way looking like he was planning on crossing the street going the opposite way.  As we passed him, he quickly turned around, and started following us.  If I turned to look his direction, he would slow down and let some distance come between us.  He would speed up slightly if I wasn’t obviously looking in his direction.  After quickly thinking about my surroundings, I walked sideways with the cement wall of the building next to us to my back.  The “gentleman” kept his distance until we were in spitting distance of the crowd on the main street, at which point someone walked by the other way.  As the poor soul walked by this “gentleman,” the guy decided that he was an easier mark, turned around, and started following him.

I could be wrong.  This person may have just been out for a stroll, he could have thought he forgot something, and then remembered differently, or maybe I was right and he was intending me and my loved one harm for a quick buck.  Thankfully, I’ll never know for certain, but I’m pretty sure I know where it fell.

Now… according to many that I’ve talked to or read lately, I had the right to bash this guy’s head into the pavement.  I had no doubt in my mind that this man was following me with no good intentions.  According to some, the man clearly had it coming.  Oddly enough, these are also the same people that generally think that people that feel the need to carry guns are paranoid and violent.

Oh… by the way… the guy that was following me was black.  How do you think they would have responded to the news story of a white man bashing a black man’s head in “because he was following me?”

The Justice Department says it is looking into the shooting death of Trayvon Martin to determine whether federal prosecutors should file criminal civil rights charges now that George Zimmerman has been acquitted in the state case.

EDIT: WaPo link instead of the now-dead AP link.

With exactly what you’d expect from folks who got all their information about the case from MSNBC and Twitter:

For all of you parents of teenagers; you are no longer able to tell your children to be wary of strangers following them. The rule now is, do what ever the nice man says, or he can legally kill you.

Well, if the nice man is telling you “Please stop bashing my skull into the sidewalk” then….wait, that’s always been the rule.

Person A:  It’s common fucking sense.  we’re defending a moron that
created a situation that led to the death of a possibly
innocent person.  if he hadn’t followed martin, if he hadn’t
gotten out of his vehicle would this have happened?

Person B:  Yeah, but you’re framing the events of the evening in
too short a frame.  Oddball, I assume, goes everywhere
with his handgun concealed on his person.  If he got
out of his car with his handgun, you’re making the
assumption that he started a confrontation

You can probably guess the context (hint: a high profile case in Florida).  The important part to me is that this is a wonderful example of why you shouldn’t cause people to think of you as “the asshole with guns.”  Me being considered generally a good guy has caused someone to use me as an example to show that the idea that a guy that carries is looking for trouble is a false assumption.

Of course, Person B still thinks that Zimmerman is guilty, but due to a bit more reasonable argument than “he got out of the car when the 911 operator told him not to.”