By all means, leave.

Before I get started on this post I remember that the half-gallon Jack Daniels bottle I use for iced tea in the nice weather bit the dust.

If any of you readers have an empty you would like to contribute to the cause, please let me know.

I don't drink Jack but the label is universally recognized and while the neighbors know there is iced tea in it, poeple that drive by don't.

Besides, in the summer there is a fairly steady stream of kids going up and down the hill I live on and a few times in July and August a kid will see me in the yard and ask if he can have a drink out of the garden hose.

I generally offer him some iced tea instead because there in nothing funnier than watching a nine year old guzzle down about 12 ounces of an amber colored liquid of a Jack Daniels bottle and say, "Thanks, Mr. Pic. You're a pal!"

Our local partol officer has seen it and he told me "It looks like hell. Funny as all git-go, but it does look like hell."

Anyway, I am looking for a half-gallon JD bottle.

　

In Wyoming there is a state representative named Hans Hunt.

Recently a woman wrote him explaining that she had moved there to have a nice place to bring her children up and so on and disagreed with the current policy Wyoming has on firearms and fracking.

She said that she and her husband had just arrived and were reconsidering their move to that state.

Hans Hunt minced no words and told he that if she didn't like it, then "By all means, leave."

I like guys like him. He met her threat of leaving head on and let her know she isn't as high and mighty as she thinks she is.

"I’ll be blunt," he wrote back. "If you don’t like the political atmosphere of Wyoming, then by all means, leave. We, who have been here a very long time (I am proudly 4th generation) are quite proud of our independent heritage."

I have to give Hunt credit because he didn't answer her in typical political doublespeak like I have received from my senators here in Pennsylvania. He simply told her that if she didn't like it, she was free to go back to where she came from.

Of course, the woman said that it would be a shame if educated people of childbearing years left, but the way I see it there are educated people and college idiots. This woman is likely one of the latter.

Why did she move there in the first place?

This kind of stuff happens all the time in this country and I have written about people from New Jersey moving to North Carolina before and dragging the reasons they left Jersey along with them. North Carolina isn't far from becoming another sewer if the Jerseyites keep moving south.

The left one sewer and arrive at a paradise on earth only to bring the crap they left and turn their new home into a sewer like the one they left.

One of the neatest guys I ever met was from India and moved to Texas. I met him in the airport in Mobile, Alabama a while back. I posted about him a while ago. Neat guy.

He looked a little out of place with his obvious dark Indian complexion and a western cut suit. He had the big Stetson, the silver belt buckle, bolo tie and the boots.

If his complexion wasn't so dark he'd fit right in standing next to Boss Hogg or someone.

I approached him and politely told him I was curious as to why a guy like him was dressed in such a manner and his face lit up.

His face lit up. "Because I live in Texas," he said, proudly.

He went on to explain that when he moved from India he did his homework and decided to move to Texas and raise his family there because Texan children are brought up with manners.

He pointed out that when he moved there he made it a point to become a Texan, accept their ways and go about his business.

I asked him how he got along with the locals and he somewhat surprised me. Sometimes Texans can be a little difficult toward outsiders, but I'd bet it's just to the ones that move there and try and change things.

He said he had no problems with the locals and in fact he felt he had been taken in by them as one of them. I have to admit I was mildly surprised until he explained that he had moved to Texas to become a Texan and left India behind him when he arrived.

I asked him what he thought of Tex-Mex food and he grinned and said he made a pretty good bowl of red. Chili making in Texas is pretty much a guy thing and he had a recipe he was proud of.

I was glad to have spent an hour with him while waiting for my plane.

The Wyoming new arrival, Rev. Audette Fulbright, it seems has not done here homework and didn't know where she had moved to and apparently doesn't like it there very much.

If she did like it she would not be trying to change things and threatening to leave if she doesn't get her way. People like that amuse me. I had a coworker threaten to quit once if he wasn't promoted. He was promptly told that if he meant it he should start packing up his stuff. I'll admit, Iaughed.

She goes into the category of those imbiciles that move into a house at the end of a runway of a large airport that has been there for decades and want the airport to close.

Apparently Hans Hunt has just informed her that he has no plans on closing the airport, so to speak.

I hope she leaves and takes a bunch of college idiots with her. She obviously has mistaken having a degree for having an education.

I also hope she doesn't move to Pennsylvania. She's not welcome here as far as I'm concerned. We have enough idiots like that.

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One of my favorite incidents in life

 took place when a police officer got called to in work for something during a shooting match at the local club. He was there with his 11 year old son that was competing.

I wasn't shooting, it was my turn to score and I offered to take over for the cop and pull targets and score from the pits. I also told him to leave the kid with me and I'd run him home afterwards. He and the boy gratefully accepted.

After the match we hopped into my pickup and I started heading off to drop the kid off.

Neighbor Bob's pickup was in the shop and he had asked me to pick up a pack of Marlboro reds for him on my way home so I pulled into the local convenience store and offered the kid a coke.

The store was a little busy and in addition to a handful of customers there were a pair of policemen getting a cup of coffee. They got into line just like everybody else to pay for their purchases.

There was one nosy looking guy between us and the two officers.

Two cokes hit the counter and I asked for the Marlboros which the clerk put on the counter.

That's when Mr. Nosy behind me commented on how cigarettes were bad for one's health and gave me a brief lecture which I cut short.

"I quit fifteen years ago. I'm just picking them up for my kid," I said, stuffing the smokes into the kid's shirt pocket.

He was outraged and went off on me, much to the amusement of the two policemen that knew exactly what I was doing. People that think cops don't have a sense of humor are wrong. One of the two cops almost snarfed on his coffee and the other one had a pretty hard time not laughing outright.

I let the nosy guy run on for a while and when he slowed down a bit, I interrupted.

"He's a good kid," I said, defensively. "He only smokes when he drinks."

Of course that added to the amusement of the two policemen and threw more gasoline on the fire created by the nosy guy.

He went on and on and then realized there were two policemen behind him that had seen everything. He turned to them and indignantly demanded to know why they hadn't stepped in and put an end to this disgraceful outrage.

I suppose he had expected the cops to club me senseless and take the kid to a very nice foster home where he would be raised by a pair of sweatpants-clad alcoholic bull dykes with braided armpits along with 17 smelly cats. The women would then use the money the state gave them to buy beer with.

To Mr. Nosy this sounded like a win/win situation. The boy would be taken from someone that he thought was unsuitable and passed on to someone else that was more unsuitable and with a source of income the two women wouldn't have to whore around anymore to buy their beer. They'd get state foster care money to buy it with,

The hapless officers were in somewhat of a spot because they knew that if they shined the guy on he would likely call the chief of police and raise hell.

I suppose the two of them could have explained what happened to the chief the three of them would have had a pretty good laugh, but nobody likes being called up on the carpet in the first place.

The had their hand forced and had to do something. They looked at each other and one of the officers came up to the boy. In a fatherly way he asked him how old he was.

"Eleven," said the kid.

"Now why would an eleven year old boy be smoking and drinking?" asked the cop.

The clouds parted, allowing the sun to shine through in a beam that shone on the young man's cherubic face. In a most angelic way, his face glistened of sweet childhood innocence as he looked up in a saintly manner at the fine policeman standing there with a warm smile on his face.

"Because my uncle Piccolo says that whisky washes the dope out of my system," he said.

It took quite some time before two cops, two clerks and five other customers stopped laughing as the idiot looked on aghast and humiliated when he figured out he'd been had by an eleven year old kid.


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Someone sent me this.

I got this from a retired Marine I have known for a while.

I usually write  my own posts but this one I found too interesting to let pass.

Semper Fi, Marine.





From the Podium:
J. D. Pendry, Retired Sergeant Major, USMC


This retired USMC Sgt. Major has his Stuff together.

Jimmy Carter, you are the father of the Islamic Nazi movement. You threw the Shah under the bus, welcomed the Ayatollah home, and then lacked the spine to confront the terrorists when they took our embassy and our people hostage. You're the "runner-in-chief."

Bill Clinton, you played ring around the Lewinsky while the terrorists were at war with us. You got us into a fight with them in Somalia and then you ran from it. Your weak-willed responses to the USS Cole and the First Trade Center Bombing and Our Embassy Bombings emboldened the killers. Each time you failed to respond adequately, they grew bolder, until 9/11/2001.

John Kerry, dishonesty is your most prominent attribute. You lied about American Soldiers in Vietnam ... Your military service, like your life, is more fiction than fact. You've accused our military of terrorizing women and children in Iraq .. You called Iraq the wrong war, wrong place, wrong time, and the same words you used to describe Vietnam . You're a fake! You want to run from Iraq and abandon the Iraqis to murderers just as you did to the Vietnamese. Iraq , like Vietnam, is another war that you were for, before you were against it.

The late John Murtha, said our military was broken. He said we can't win militarily in Iraq .He accused United States Marines of cold-blooded murder without proof and said we should redeploy to Okinawa . Okinawa ??? And the Democrats called him their military expert! Maybe he suffered a traumatic brain injury while he was off building his war hero resume? He was a sad, pitiable, corrupt, and washed up old fool, not a true Marine. He wouldn't amount to a good pimple on a real Marine's ass, a phony and a disgrace.

Dick Durbin, you accused our Soldiers at Guantanamo of being Nazis, tenders of Soviet style gulags and as bad as the regime of Pol Pot, who murdered two million of his own people after your party abandoned Southeast Asia to the Communists. Then you wanted to abandon the Iraqis to the same fate. History was not a good teacher for you, was it? Lord help us! See Dick run!

Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Carl Levine, Barbara Boxer, Diane Feinstein, Russ Feingold, Pat Leahy, Barack Obama, Chuck Schumer, the Hollywood Leftist morons, et al, to name a few ad nauseam: Every time you stand in front of television cameras and broadcast to the Islamic Nazis that we went to war because our former President lied, that the war is wrong and our Soldiers are torturers, that we should leave Iraq, you give the Islamic butchers - the same ones that tortured and mutilated American Soldiers - cause to think that we'll run away again, and all they have to do is hang on a little longer. It is inevitable that we, the infidels, will have to defeat the Islamic jihadists. Better to do it on their turf, than later on ours after they may gain both strength and momentum.

American news media, the New York Times particularly: Each time you publish stories about national defense secrets and our intelligence gathering methods, you become one united with the sub-human pieces of camel dung that torture and mutilate the bodies of American Soldiers. You can't strike up the courage to publish cartoons, but you can help Al Qaeda destroy my country. Actually, you are more dangerous to us than Al Qaeda is. Think about that each time you face Mecca to admire your Pulitzer.

You are America 's 'AXIS OF IDIOTS.' Your Collective Stupidity will destroy us.. Self-serving politics and terrorist-abetting news scoops are more important to you than our national security or the lives of innocent civilians and Soldiers It bothers you that defending ourselves gets in the way of your elitist sport of politics and your ignorant editorializing. There is as much blood on your hands as is on the hands of murdering terrorists. Don't ever doubt that. Your frolics will only serve to extend this war as they extended Vietnam . If you want our Soldiers home as you claim, knock off the crap and try supporting your country ahead of supporting your silly political aims and aiding our enemies.

Yes, I'm questioning your patriotism. Your loyalty ends with self. I'm also questioning why you're stealing air that decent Americans could be breathing. You don't deserve the protection of our men and women in uniform. You need to run away from this war, this country. Leave the war to the people who have the will to see it through and the country to people who are willing to defend it.

Our country has two enemies: Those who want to destroy us from the outside and those who attempt it from within.

Semper Fi,
J. D. Pendry - Sergeant Major, USMC, Retired

This is a savvy man. He has nailed it down pretty well. Too bad it won't do any good.



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There is a Gunny USMC I know that recently retired and I told

 him I'd let the cat out of the bag and tell him what I did to a couple of his guys last summer at Camp Perry when I set up my ham rig there.
Generally when I go to places like Camp Perry I cram the biggest cooler I can find full of beer, soda, and water for visitors and drag it with me when I crash a party.

During the day shooters will occasionally swing by and grab a water or soda and after the guns are cases they will swing by for a beer or two.

In top of that I generally bring a jug. At Camp Perry this past summer it was a bottle of Jim Beam I snagged somewhere along the line. I toss it into my pack and every now and then I hand out a snort to guys that don't drink beer.

The bottle I generally keep in the bag so as not to advertise even though if I were to drink out of it anyone seeing me would know I was brown bagging.

Still, there it was, still in the bag several days into the National Matches and I guess a few guys had downed a pull or two. The jug was down about a solid half-pint.

In came a couple of young Marines and they sat down and had a beer and told me about their day.

These two were not shooters, they were a Marine reporter and a cameraman. Of course, the guys on the shooting team referred to them as Joker and Rafterman.

Joker and Rafterman dropped by my little radio station just about every night and would share their day with me. It was kind of fun listening to them. Joker was actually pretty sharp and was pretty knowledgable about a lot of things that were well before his time and never ceased to amaze me.

One night he asked me if I felt less able to defend myself because I was older.

I said to him, "Nope. I'm Old School" and headed quietly reached into my toolbox.

"How Old School?" he asked.

I pulled a switchblade knife out of my toolbox and snapped it open and the blade shone in the lights coming off of the barracks in the distance.

"West Side Story, huh? That's pretty Old School!" he said, somewhat startled.

Anyway it was getting late and while I didn't want to run them off. I did want to rack out so I picked up the bottle of Jim Beam and slipped the bag down exposing the tip of the neck of the bottle and grabbed the top and twisted it. My body english looked like I was unsealing a new bottle.

Then I put the jug to my lips and started blowing a little air into the bottle and acting like I was guzzling down straight bourbon whiskey. In truth I has only taken a small sip but it looked like I had sure pounded down a lot.

I pulled the bottle out of the bag and put it on the table and said, "Help yourself."

A good half-pint was missing out of what they assumed had been a full bottle and they looked at me pretty wide-eyed waiting for me to fall over or something.

One thing about young guys is they feel a need to compete with older ones and these were no exception. If an old man could down a half-pint in a single gulp, so could they.

So in turn the pair of them did just what they thought they had seem me do. They downed a pretty good sized snort and when they were done showing off there was about a third of the bottle left.

It wasn't long before the whirlies set in on the pair of them and they made up some damned fool excuse and headed off to the barracks. They were about halfway across the field and I watched them start stumbling a bit and I kept an eye on them until I saw they had made it.

Then I had myself a little sensible sized taste before bed and hit the rack.

Of course, the next morning at breakfast I showed up bright eyed and bushy tailed and watched the two of them sitting there picking at their breakfast as I wolfed down a double order of biscuits and gravy, four eggs, a quart of orange juice and a couple of cups of coffee and got ready for a long day.

From the looks of them I knew their day would drag on until early afternoon when they would finally recover.

It was fun watching them and just one more fine example that old age and treachery can alway overcome youth and skill.
&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

In other news here's a pretty good Craigslist ad if it hasn't been flagged.

http://pittsburgh.craigslist.org/bar/3641557908.html



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More people that can't count

There are a lot of people out there that simply do not know how to count.

I have a scar on my side from a surgical proceedure and once whaile I was shooting a summer match in 100+ degree weather I peeled off my outer clothes consisting of a heavy quilted shooter's jacket, and a hooded sweatshirt.

The sweatshirt lifted my T-shirt with it and exposed the scar to the guy on my right that happened to be a history teacher. He asked me about the scar and I told him it was from when I had caught a Jap bayonet at Tarawa.

Now I was born in 1951 and Tarawa was fought in 1943 which means that I would 26 years older than I am to have been there. It went over the teacher's head and he asked me if I would like to tell his history class about fighting the Japanese Empire.

I simply suggested he take a remedial course in math and he blushed but I realized that maybe the next time anyone asked I ought to back things up a bit.

It is now a scar from a Spanish bayonet I got in Cuba when I served with Colonel Roosevelt.

　

　

I showed this picture to someone and they asked me, "Is that really you?"

"Aboslutely," I replied.

　

Actually one time I was wearing my grubby old flight jacket and some kid asked me if I was a pilot. I replied that I had flown for Colonel Roosevelt in Cuba, figuring the kid to be a box of rocks.

He surprised me when he said I must have been a hot air balloon pilot because that was 5 years before the airplane had been invented. He also said I must be at least 130 years old.

I told him that I was only 128 because I sneaked in with my big brother's birth certificate.

There was an old WW2 Marine behind me listening trying not to wet his pants laughing as I was giving the kid my line of BS. He looked like a real character and in his mid 80s.

The kid asked me why I didn't look 128 years old so I told him it was because I don't drink any cheap booze. "I drink good whiskey off the top shelf, and plenty of it," I said to the kid.

The kid was just about ready to call me on my BS when the old guy stuck his nose into the fray.

"Listen to him, Sonny. He's telling you the truth! Look what rotgut whiskey done to me! I'm going to be 24 years old next week and look at me!"

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One of the things I sometimes

 do to the young bucks out here is feed them a bunch of hoople about what I did on my time off.

I'm 61 years old and I show it, yet there is nothing as much fun as watching the face of some kid in his late teens or early twenties when I tell him that I woke up as sick as a dog in a cheap motel covered with glitter and stinking of cheap perfume next to a stripper I picked up at the Kit Kat club.

Of course, everyone else knows it's a bunch of crap and afterwards they chew me out for making them keep a straight face while I am feeding the kid a line of bull$hit a mile long but they are laughing when they chew me out.

This actually goes back to my army days when some of the single guys would brag about their sexual exploits and I would respond with something totally wild and outrageous. Generally it would involve some non-existant depravty like sticking my wife's head in a gas oven and taking advantage of the resulting spasms as she passed out or some other sick, twisted crap.

What was funny about this is that I would often come home and tell my wife. The first couple of times she would get annoyed and tell me that it wasn't funny but after a while she started doing pretty much the same thing to her coworkers.

Why not? Some things are really nobody's business but it is a lot of fun feeding them something outrageous. If they are stupid enough to believe it, it's their problem.

Once I decided that because it was an election month that I was going to run for mayor in the small town I lived in. I got some support in the form of a 20 year old Caddy convertable, a friend that had some time off and his cousin, a woman built like Jessica Rabbit. A lot of fishermen contributed to my campaign by keeping my whiskey glass full.

The woman was about a head taller than I am in her stocking feet so we put her in 5 inch spikes and poured her into a dress that would make a stripper blush and off we went for a week of campaigning through the downtown bars.

It was fun being seen all over town with a glass of scotch in one hand and what appeared to be a World Class bimbo draped on my arm. A lot of other people were amused, too. Most everyone in town that had half of a brain knew it was a spoof.

The town had a small radio station and as I was driving past it the DJ made a comment that he would like to interview me so my driver whipped a U turn and we walked in.

He interviewed me on my outrageous platform of laying off most of the city employees to save money and letting certain streets fo unrepaired so as to make them self-speed limiting and a bunch of other stuff.

I also promised the taxpayers that all I would steal was enough money so I could winter in a cheap motel in St. Croix.

Then the DJ opened the phones and the first caller was a self-rightous preacher that wanted to know what my relationship was with 'That Woman'.

"She's some totally knockout bimbo I picked up in a St. Croix strip club," I shot back. "And she can match or better every nasty trick I have ever seen in any porn movie ever made up to and including 'Deep Throat'. She batter stay that way or else I'll ditch her and get another just like her!"

My moll looked delighted to hear that and had one hell of a hard time not laughing loud enough to be picked up by the microphone. She left the room for a while to keep from ruining things.

The preacher was speechless so the DJ hung up.

The next call was from a tongue in cheek supporter and we had fun with their questions before the DJ had to get back to the regularly scheduled program.

The truth of the matter is the woman was a math major of some sort with a serious theatrical bent. She was a very talented actress with an outrageously ribald sense of humor. While she was exceedingly intelligent, she really belonged on the stage.

Anyway, back to the kid I spun the yarn to.

He believed every word because a while ago there was a guy working out here that I knew back in the old days that told a couple of people some of the stuff we used to pull back then.

As for the election, everybody knew I wasn't even on the ballot but I did make the candidates that were running for office pretty nervous because I drew more attention then they did.

Although it has probably been almost four decades since I have done anything truly outrageous it's kind of fun getting a kid wound up and believing that at 61 I'm still raising more hell drinking and chasing strippers at my age than he has ever done in his life.

Eventually the kid will figure out he's been taken and feel stupid for a bit. Still, it'll make him a little less likely to believe anything someone tells him. This skill will help him come election time when he has to choose a candidate.


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How I got 67 followers is beyond me

I now have sixty-seven followers which makes me wonder why in the name of Sam Hill that sixty-seven people want to listen to the grumblings of an old sailorman.

Damned if I know why.

I don't have an education in economics and really don't understand how a country can operate on a deficeit because I sure the hell can't.

If I put something on a charge card I pay it off at the end of the month. If I buy something I pay for it.

If I decide to go off on a bender of some sort (It has been several decades since I have) I stop drinking when I run out of money.This is unlike the government that keeps spending when it runs out of money.

I have a checking account and every so often it runs out of money and needs replentishing. Generally when it does run out of money I have checks left over but because I have nothing in the account I can't write any.

I do know how to count which seems to be something few people know how to do because if the people in power knew how it is likely we would not be $16 trillion in debt.

I am not a politician because as a sailor I live in a world of absolutes. There are many absolutes out here. For example if your draft exceeds the depth of the water it is an absolute that you are aground and all the denial, hand-holding and Kumbaya singing isn't going to change that.

If that happens your only hope is that you have gone aground at low tide and you can refloat yourself when the tide comes in. If not you are screwed.

I am not a political analyst. I simply vote for whichever party wants to spend the least and do the least damage to the bill of rights.

I wish no harm on anyone and simply wish you would keep your religion or sexuality out of my face as it is simply none of my business and I don't care to hear about it.

If you are religious, fine by me. Don't beat on my door to sell it to me.

Same hold true if you are gay, straight or other. I really don't give a shit. Marry who you choose if your state permits it. If you want to marry a halibut and can reasonably prove that the halibut wants to go along with it, that's fine by me. If you two decide to have sex in a motel, please have the decency to tip the poor maid well. She is going to have one hell of a mess to clean up.

If you decide to drop by my place carrying a legal firearm that is OK by me. Please leave it in your holster unless it is needed for some good reason. If if is, please use good marksmanship.

If you want to bring something like narcotics or other contraband in my house, expect to see me call the local gendarmes. I am not going to let you endanger me with your stupidity.

I am generally a pretty easygoing guy and wish no harm on anyone that is trying to do me no harm.

I am little more than a 61 year old sailor and have lived that way for a large portion of my life. I can not fathom why sixty seven people are interested in what I have to say.




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I am NOT a Republican.

One of the things people constantly mistake me for is being a Republican which I am not.

I am most certainly not a Democrat, either.

I am like a lot of other Americans that feel disenfranchised by either party because the Democrats are the party of the Free $hit Army. The Republicans are the party of both the rich and the self-rightous.

Both parties suck.

The Democrats have created the Free $hit Army and have done little for business but to either tax it to death or strangle it with crippling rules and regulations.

They also want to stick their noses into out closets and safes to see what kind of firearms we have in them which is none of their business.

They fill the hands of the poor with EBT cards, Obamaphones, Section 8 housing and welfare checks, all of which take poor people and make all of us, including the poor, poorer for it.

The Republicans are always trying to peep into our bedrooms to make sure that our sex lives are up to snuff and the activity behind closed doors meets the approval of the Christian Coalition. This is none of their business.

Neither party has really done a whole lot to reduce deficeit spending. The Dems keep giving money to the lazy and stupid in this country and to the warlords and thieves of other countries under the guise of foriegn aid.

The Rebublicans give a lot of it to defense contractors and others for things that sometimes even the DoD doesn't want like the tanks that Congress ordered the army to take a while back. The army really didn't want the tanks because they said they had enough of them.

Neither party respects the taxpayer and both of them spend our money like there is no end to it and both parties are responsible for the $16 Trillion hole we are in.

Neither party respects the taxpayer because if they did thare would not be the terrible mess tha treasury is in. There really isn't a lot of excuse for having a $16 trillion deficeit whatsoever. We should have a $16 trillion surplus if anything.

Still, the Democrats want to simply tax and spend. They want to take money from the working class and give it to the poor instead of creating an enviornment where businesses can give them a job so they can take care of themselves.

The Republicans seem to be a little of the greedy side. While they would likely want to create businesses without government interference they most likely don't really want to pay people a whole lot and keep everything for themselves.

Of course, the Democrats on the other side of this want to punsih the rich for being successful by taxing them on their success.

Neither party really respects a the Constitution a whole lot because the Republicans rammed the Patriot act therough and the Democrats are constantly trying to destroy the Second Amendment.

What I'd like is for the Democrats to lay off the capitalists stop taxing success and make it easier for them to create a few jobs and put the Free $hit Army to work and get them out of my pockets. That doesn't sound too likely to happen in the near future.

I'd also like to see the Republicans a little more responsible in the way they run businesses and stop trying to gouge every nickel out of the workingman's pocket.

I'd also like to see the Republicans lay off the abortions and other issues that have no place in American politics and get away from the issues of a personal nature.

Incidentally, personally I abhor abortion and think it is a terrible form of birth control but I'll be damned if I am going to tell a woman how to run her life. Abortion is between a woman, her physician and her maker. However it is simply none of my business to interfere with a woman that wants to terminate a pregnancy.

Then you have the Democrats and other liberals that want to punish people for things they never did by regulating what a person can and cannot own after someone abuses something.

Both parties have spent countless billions on a war on drugs that will never be won and hasn't seemed to change anything. Drugs are still there in quantity for those that want them.

Both parties have created bureaucracies and have not done a whole lot to cull unuseful subsidies and expenses.

Both parties have promised temporary things like taxes and laws only to have them still in place. The telephone use tax is still there picking our pockets. It was put into effect to pay for the Spanish American War and still we cough up and pay it every month even though the war was paid for decades ago.

In short, I am neither a Republican, nor a Democrat.

I am simply what the country seems to be full of. I am yet one more disgusted American voter.

For the past several elections I have had nobody to vote for, just someone to vote against. I am forced to pick the lesser of two evils.

I generally go to the polls and vote for whoever I think is likely to cost us the least money and take away the fewest rights. I constantly feel like I am doing damage contron for the Bill of Rights.
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Again I am busy today but

There is still a chance I'll beable to post something intelligent this afternoon.


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Today is a very busy day

I MIGHT be able to post later on but not too sure right now.


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For a few of my old classmates

Have any of you people pushing for an assault rifle ban opened your eyes and looked around? Or are you still being naive.

Remember, there are consequences and while you may be foolish enough to think that a ban will make something go away the unintended consequences of your actions may become something you have not bargained for.

Ever since Sandy Hook the American public has been on the biggest arms buying binge I have ever seen in my life.

I have shot competitive rifle of some sort or another since 1975 and I swear that I have never seen anything like this in shooting circles since Day One. A trip to any gun store will tell you that.

There isn't an AR, and AK or a Ranch rifle to be had anywhere and the few that are still out there for sale are going for insane prices. To be honest, I took advantage of the buying panic to sell off a couple of my unused rifles. They sold like hotcakes.

I have decided that I am going to go back and shoot some competition this year after taking a break for a year or two. It's good exercise and I could use a little. I can also use the social end of it as I have been somewhat of a hermit for a while.

Several trips to several reloading outlets have proved fruitless and the proprietors have all told me the same story. The powder I want is not available as is any ammunition to speak of except for a few odd obsolete sporting calibers.

Why is that?

Because Barak Obama has decided to become gun salesman of the century and I have to give him credit and say he's done one hell of a job. Sales were up to 3.8 million, according to the NICS system but that does not include sales that have been made in states that have their own firearms ID system in place.

People have been paying very inflated prices as the panic has hit the streets and it should be mentioned that a lot of these people are first time gun buyers.

In January the numbers were down about 10% and that is simply attributed to the plain and simple fact that firearms dealers have nothing left to sell. Gunmakers are running at full tilt to meet the incredible demand.

Ammunition shelves are also bare now and while I saw some of this happen before the Clinton ban went into effect, there has never been anything like it. At the height of the Clinton pre-ban panic there were still reloading supplies readily available. Now these are gone.

I'm preparing for a simple match season and I am playing hell trying to get ready and have taken to driving an hour or more for a lousy pound of powder. On top of that, I am paying through the nose for it.

I have met quite a number of professional people that are arming themselves and you can pretty much bet the farm that there are not a whole lot of people that are going to turn in the firearm they paid $1500 to $2500 a couple months after they bought it. Just because some fat guys in Washington tell them to doesn't mean the laws will be obeyed.

The truth of the matter is that there are a growing number of members that are arming themselves to the teeth for what looks like a civil war in the offing. My visits to gun stores last December left me with a knot in my stomach.

In anticipation of a firearms ban as I last counted five states have enacted legislation that anyone trying to enforce a federal assault weapon of magazine ban is subject to arrest.

Twenty more states have these laws pending.

In some of these states the crime is a heavy felony.

Of course, the feds will trump these laws, but what remains clear is that a number of the states have told the Feds to leave them alone.

Recently in Albany the governor managed to get the draconian SAFE act passed by rushing it through the state assembly. The legislators were given 20 minutes to read it and it got voted on and passed. I wonder how many arms were twisted by Cuomo but that's immateriel.

While I suppose that the residents of New York City had no objections, the law didn't sit well with the people in upperstate New York. Orange County for one has refused to enforce it.

Another thing I've noticed is that quite a number of county sherrifs have said that they will refuse to enforce any federal assault weapon or magazine laws.

Which makes a person wonder who WILL enforce any federal legislation that goes through. Most local and county level law enforcement agencies have other responsibilities to tend to. Having the feds dump something else on their plate isn't going to be received with open arms.

Even those that claim they will enforce the federal law regarding these weapons are not very likely to make enforcement of them a priority.

When you talk to the owners of various gun shops and find out that a lot of individual police officers have stocked up on ammunition and purchased weapons you can be assured that there are a lot of officers that are not going to be too willing to go along with a ban.

In New York a number of organizations are taking the SAFE act to court. Things are not going to end up well there. If the state starts trying to enforce things there eventually they will end up running into someone that has decided to fight.

Judging from what I have seen there it is likely.

I watched a 'town meeting' where a state trooper was sent to explain the new law and how it effects everyone. It was, in a cowardly way, scheduled for when most people were at work and was atended by a bunch of retired people and a handful that could get time off of work.

What truly surprised me about this meeting is that the policeman that was giving the explaination along with the accompanying suits were not tarred and feathered. Resentment was incredibly high. I do believe they would have been had the meeting been scheduled for later when more could attend.

It was made pretty clear that there wasn't going to be a whole lot of compliance on the part of rural New Yorkers.

Likely this will result in casualties on both sides.

If you get a handful of younger combat veterans that draw their line in the sand then the police are going to have their hands full. Expect heavy casualties.

Trying to get the National Guard interested in this isn't going to prove very fruitful, either because there are not too many guardsmen that are particularly keen on shooting their friends and neighbors. Besides, many Guardsmen likely have an AR15 in their own closet.

Someone has suggested that the people that should enforce things in upper New York should come from the city so as to have law enforcement unbiased because the local police. Someone suggested using NYC officers.

If they do decide to use NYC cops, expect to see scenes out of 'Crocodile Dundee II'. City cops seldom if ever leave the pavement. While it is unlikely that any of New York's Finest will be killed while snooping around, I would not be surprised to find a number of them turn up mysteriously missing.

Another aspect should be looked at and that is that if certain firearms are banned there will still be a demand for them and the demand will be filled, as usual, by the same old group that has kept the public supplied with illegal drugs for the past century.

A black market for banned weapons is sure to sprout up and like all black markets, there is no legal recourse for deals gone sour. Most black market deals that turn up sour are settled out of court with force. Expect more violence to accompany non-compliance.

This seems like nothing more than feel-good legislation when you consider that a sheriffs department in New York's Saratoga county has pointed out that so-called assault rifles are were used in 5 out of 769 murders, or less than .007%.

Swimming pools kill more kids than assault rifles do. An old classmate recently told me that my comparison was rubbish but it isn't. It is a cold hard fact. Semi-automatic rifles in this country outnumber swimming pools several times over yet swimming pools kill several times more children than these rifles do.

Swimming pools are far more deadly. How come there is no hue and cry to eliminate a danger that kills several times over the number of children all firearms combined do? Answer me that one.

Of course, most areas require pool areas to be fenced in, but that rarely stops anybody. I'm an old pool-hopper from way back, most recently last Labor Day. ( I went for an after-hours dip in a pool I am welcome in during the day) Fences haven't seemed to stop me or for that matter, much of anybody else that wants to take a dip in someone else's pool.

While enjoying my after-hours swim I was joined by a couple of fence-hopping kids that wanted to swim. So much for fences.

I guess we'll just have to ban pools. Do it for the children.

The truth is that pools are far more dangerous than rifles are for children.

While we are on the subject of children, let's look at another number. Like to admit it or not, the biggest danger to school children is still going to and coming home from school. It may be sad to say, but it is the truth. The most dangerous part of school for a kid is coming and going.

A lot of people like to use the dopey argument 'that if it saves the life of one child it's worth it'. If that's so, why do we not ban pools and automobiles?

Another thing that we do that is entirely stupid is declare schools to be gun free zones. We send our children off to school and place them in killing zones. Gun free zones draw whackos to them like the moon draws water. After all, there is no chance of getting shot there because all of the law abiding citizens are disarmed.

Whackos and criminals love gun free zones because they can act out their sick fantasies with impunity. There is nobody there to stop them.

At one school meeting someone suggested the teachers charge an active shooter with scissors. That's a joke. First of all, teachers for years have told everyone never to run with scissors and now administrators tell teachers to run down a gunman with them. Anyone that has seen the first Indianna Jones movie knows you don't bring a sword to a gunfight. Scissors are definitly out of the question.

Let me ask you this. How many lives of police officers is inforcing something of questional constitutionality worth?

Meanwhile America is stocking up for a long, protracted war and arms and ammunition are selling so fast now that the makers are running full tilt to keep up with orders they have no hope of keeping up with.

Most are behind almost a year, and the one that seems to be keeping up is reporting that orders are running 60 to 90 days.

Bill Clinton has repeatedly told the Democrats to stay away from gun laws as the ban he passed cost him a Republican congress to deal with and did nothing to make the public any safer.

When the Clinton gun ban sunsetted a few years ago it was generally conceded that it had made no difference whatsoever. People still killed each other with whatever they had at hand. The Colombine tragedy happened during the ban offering additional evidence that the ban was pretty lame.

You don't need an assault weapon to mow down people. In 1966 a man named Charles Whitman managed to murder 12 people quite nicely at the University of Texas. He climbed a tower and shot people with a regular bolt action hunting rifle.

What you don't know about that little incident is who supplied the covering fire that enabled police officers to enter the building. The covering fire was laid down quite nicely by members of the student body that had fled to their dorm rooms and returned with various rifles they kept there.

Nobody mentions that part.

The truth is that while nothing could stop Whitman from committing suicide by policeman, if the campus had been a gun-free zone the casualties would have been a lot higher.

Most hunting rifles are accurate at distances far greater than so-called assault rifle. They are generally more deadly as they are specifically designed to kill game sized animals. Military firearms are simply designed to inflict casualties.

I suppose hunting rifles are to be villified next with a new name. They will next be called 'deadly sniper rifles'.

A while ago I wrote a post on where the Marine Corps got their sniper rifles from the hunting community. It's a fact. To this day the current 7.62mm long distance sniper rifle is nothing more than a hunting rifle that has been restocked in fiberglass and the parts machined to Marine Corps specifications.

Truth is the Marines still send their scouts off to war armed with their daddy's hunting rifles.

The Corps purchases basic Remington model 700 actions and builds their own. The model 700 is one of the most popular hunting rifles in the country today.

If I recall, it was Jefferson that said that the only time he expected to see the Second Amendment used is when the government tries to take it away from them.

We very well may see this happen sooner than later.

If this happens, remember this. You voted for it.



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I met a kindred soul yesterday at Lowe's.

My sense of humor seems to get me into trouble sometimes and yesterday I let my mouth run away with me.

I was in the Lawn and Garden department and saw Tiki torches and pitchforks in the same aisle and not too far apart. I looked at the nearby sales guy anc commented he could should tape a Tiki torch to a pitchfork and sell them as a package for people to use when they visit their congress critter's office.

He replied, "I'm a tar and feathers guy, myself." and took me straight over to the roofing and insulation areas and showed me around. He pointed out that feather pillows are harder to come by these days and showed me some very nice blown cellulose insulation that should substitute for feathers quite nicely.

He also explaied to me that the roofing tar they sell should be cut slightly with diesel to make it easier to apply to naked politicians and then we returned to the home and garden department and he pointed out that there were a number of very nice fence rails on sale there which should prove useful for running politicials out of town with.

I pointed out that the traditional badge of a gnarled peasant uprising is the torch and pitchfork and we came to an agreement.

While the torch and pitchfork procession should probably still lead the visit to Senator Casey's office to express displeasure, I certainly see no problem with the roofing tar and cellulose section following along.




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fresh snow.

used to be something nice to look at but these days just seeing the stuff makes me start to shiver. I hate it.

Actually I have never liked snow very much since I was little and used to go sledding down Suicide Hill at about three or four times the speed of light. There was a frozen pond at the bottom and we'd got maybe 50 or 60 yards out onto that if the hill was slick.

Yesterday was a day of preperation for the upcoming shooting match in late March and I prepped about 120 rounds.

Like I said the other day, it is a slow, tedious process because instead of just prepping the brass and loading it up I have to disassemble a round, rezize it, retrim it, reweigh the charge and reassemble it. Using an inertia puller to take the rounds apart makes for a slow process.

One thing about the inertia puller is that it does not damage the bullet and that is a very good thing.

I am now set up for another season almost. As soon as I can score some powder I will be good to go, although I do have enough to start the season with.

ANyway, I may just have to go out in the snow up to the range and crony a few rounds so as to get some idea of how to lay out my sight adjustment from a 200 yard zero. The muzzle velocity means a lot when you are doing this kind of shooting. You have to be able to calculate drop to be able to adjust your sights.

One other thing, last night a neighbor accidentally broks a garage door window which I have to fix today and that will cost me time. The pane is a single pane that they put in back in '48 when GI Joe had the house built so he could be fruitful and multiply.

And now I have to deal with God the Toaster in which there is a bagel. The toaster started being called 'God the Toaster' because it works in strange and mysterious ways.











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It's Friday

Hich means for the average working guy he's off after work today for a couple of days.

To a sailor on shore leave that really doesn't mean anything except that the guys will be off and I am likely to have a couple more visitoras than I do during the week.

One of the things I like about my job is the time off. I work equal time which means 2 weeks off, 2 weeks on. WHile I am not home during the weeks I am at work I do get uninterrupted free time to tackle projects. Some years ago I remodeled a few things and it was great in that I could wake up, grab a cup of joe and just start right in and get things done.

If I wanted to after supper I could chip away at thiings and by the time I hit the rack I'd have a lot of things done.

Right now I'm chipping away at getting some ammo ready for a match I have coming up. There's a lot of work involved because I found out that my old m14 load is accurate in the bolt gun I am shooting in the match.

The problem is that the bolt gun chamber is a lot tighter than the gas gun the load was made for. When I made the load up I resized the brass to about .003" over and it will not fit in the bolt gun.

Every single round has to have the bullet pulled with an inertia bullet puller, the case resized to about .003 to .004 undersize, the charge reweighed and the bullet reseated. It's tedious at best but I have to do it.

I have commented on the fact that it appears that a nation is gearing up for a civil war and I sure can see it. I'm presently looking for an 8 pound keg of IMR 4064 to take me through the upcoming match season and I can't seem to find it anywhere. It is just not out there except for a can or two on the auction sites where it is running three times retail.

It is crazy that I can't find reloading supplies anywhere, although I did manage to score enough primers to get me by for the season. They cost me a fortune because they are bench rest primers, meaning the most expensive ones out there.

When I located the bullets I wanted they were a little spendy but not too bad as the guy selling them isn't gouging too bad. I'm going to make a few calls today and see if any of the guys that I used to shoot with but have retired from the sport have any leftovers. A couple of these guys owe me a few favors. We'll see.

The load I am running is really not too hot so I'm not too worried about it but I do get leery of hot loads worked up in the wintertime and fired on hot summer days. I've heard that IMR 4064, while my favorite powder for 7.62 NATO is a little temperature sensitive, that Varget isn't so much so if I can snag a keg of Varget I'll just work up a load for that.

I found out about temperature sensitivity a while ago at Camp Perry when one of the Marines was telling me about the results they got by putting some Black Hills match ammo in the freezer and then firing it when it was still cold. He told me the groups just knotted up. Interesting.

I've heard of guys keeping their ammo on ice while varmint hunting and maybe I'll do that when I go to a summer match just for the hell of it.

Anyway, I think I'm going to call around and see if there is anyone out there that is retiring from the 7.62 match game that wants to make a few bucks even though it is doubtful. Actually yesterday I dropped by on another guy that is still shooting actively and damned near died when I got inside his shop. It was a massive collection of hoarded ammo, cases of the stuff. Floor to ceiling.

He told me he was praying for peace but preparing for war and I can state for fact he is not alone, as I can see that .223 ammo these days is running well over a buck a round. I was thinking of ditching a lot of leftovers from other disciplines but I think I'll wait and see what happens.

WHile I am on the subject of ammo, a few years back when I was shooting service rifle competition practically every chance I had I remember two things. Lots of driving to matches and lots of reloading afterwards. There was the year I shot about 5000 rounds for score and X 3 or 4 for practice.

If I recall that season I rebarreled four times that year. It cost me a lot of money and I realized I couldn't sustain it when I added up the cost of the season including travel.

During this time a guy I know dropped by for something and saw about 3 or 4000 rounds stacked upand seemed aghast until I explained that I would go through that as a match shooter three or four time during the course of the season.

This season I intend to find bolt gun and F-class matches and maybe a couple 1000 yard matches if I can, but I sure the hell am not going to do what I did when I was shooting service rifle. I simply can't afford it.










I ought to go on the air today as I have not in some time.





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Now I have to think up something to post today

WHich I guess won't take a whole lot to do because I have just gotten the worst part of the daily posting out of the way. Theworst part of just about any project is simply getting started.

Once you get started the rest of whatever you are doing will generally take care of itself until you finish. A while ago I had to move a bunch of cinder blocks and sat there thinking about it for a couple of days. When I simply got to the point where I realized it simply had to be done I went out there and picked up the first one and after that I simply repeated the process for a little more than an hourand then the job was done.

I felt foolish for a bit because I had put things off for a while but it was good remembering the truth of things and when I got started all of the annoyance and apprehension went away and simple basic instinct took over.

Just getting started was enough to break the inertia and get things rolling.

If you drive a manual transmission and I do, then you realize that first gear is just there to break the inertia and get you going. Nobody ever goes anywhere in first gear, they just get started and shift to a higher gear almost instantly.

Same goes for life. You get something started and generally the rest of things tend to take care of themselves.

And because I got started and wrote about it, you readers have another post to peruse.





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I just finished Eugene Sledge's second book

and it is interesting.

After they dropped the bomb on Japan and the war ended, Sledge left Okinawa for duty in China  who was in the middle of a civil war. Post war duty in China was nowhere near as good as pre war duty was and the book was interesting enough.

People that reaqd it might gripe that it wasn't as good as his first but in my opinion they are comparine apples to oranges. It wasajust as interesting as his first book was inmy opinion.

ANyway, it was a pretty good read.




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Getting a car inspected takes 2 days

mainly because the timing on my insurance cards sucks.

I am due to get inspected on February which is OK but my insurance card comes in late January and is dated as being effective in March.

Of course when it comes I simply replace the old one with the new one in my wallet and when I go to use it to get  my car inspected it looks like I don't have insurance. Of course, every cop out there knows that my post dated insurance card is good and they pay no attention to it.

However, mechanics that inspect cars donot havethe luxury of being able to use common sense so I have to call my insurance company and get another one. This in itself is a niusance, but what is worse is that it takes a couple of times because people do not listen.

They simply send me another card dated for March and I have to call back and reexplain and when I do they always say "Why didn't you say that in the first place!" which, of course, I did.

Sometimes I get the second one back with the wrong VIN on it because we have three cars on the policy or they give me the wrong middle initial.

Getting the insurance card generally takes all day and then the next day I get inspected which generally takes just a couple of hours.

I suppose I am to blame for part of this because I throw the old card away as soon as the new one comes in. Still, you'd think they's allow the mechanics to exercise a little common sense in regards to something like this.

I guess it's just partof the price I pay to live in Pennsylvania because it's a commonwealth and as a result they do a few things front-assed backwards.

Anyway, I talked to the mechanic yesterday and I think I have found one with a can do attitude because after I had tried to get squared away a couple of times he told me he knew how to fix it.

I gave him my insurance information and he didn't call my broker, he called someone he knows in a district office and today I will be good to go.

I do need tires,though and seeing the OEM ones have lasted 47,500 miles I spent a couple extra bucks to replace them with the ones Toyota put on the truck at the factory.



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Well, it's Monday and I have a lot of stuff to do.

and will get right on it in about an hour and a half.

Yesterday my books arrived as I read interesting things from time to time.

Eugense Sledge's "China Marine' came in and I have started that one. It is about what happened to him right after the war when the Corps sent him to China.

Most people had contracts for 'the duration plus six months' and when you remember we had a 12 million man military at the fime you have to realize that putting so many men on the street at once would have been a recipe for economic disaister. They discharged people by a point system and spread things out.

Eugene Sledge wrote one of the best books ever written about the war in the Pacific, "With  the Old Breed at Peleliu and Okinawa". It is a classic.

But you have to remember that his hitch didn't end in Okinawa.

Sometimes the non-combat points of view of a war are more interesting than the combat side of things. We'll see how Sledge made out in China.

One of the things you have to remember is that for every guy in the $hit there were 8, 9 or even 10 required to keep him there. These people contributed, also and they have a different perspective, too.

I recall a guy I met growing up that spent his entire hitch in the Aleutians as a weather observer fighting weather and nature to keep the Pacific fleet informed as to what the weather was going to be.

Even though it's likely fiction, the play "Mister Roberts' is likely more truth than fiction as you have a crew of guys moving supplies and being bored out of their minds while working their asses off in the blistering heat.

Anyway, here's the post of the day.







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Zombie Invasion

Well, it didn't take a long time for me to get Nebby Larry going again.

I'll admit that this time I didn't just respond to him when he passed by and started something. This time I was laying for him looking for him to set up.

When he passed I was taking a rifle out of my truck. He just had to ask what I was doing with a rifle so I took my cue.

"I'm staying prepared for the Zombie Appocolypse," I said.

"What is that?" he asked.

"Zombies," I said solomnly. "Coming this way. I seen 'em."

"What do you mean?"he asked,with kind of a wide-eyed look."

"Zombies are headed this way and we are probably going to have to fight them off," I replied. "You have to shoot zombies in the head to stop them. If you don't and they bite you then you become one of the. You should use special ammo for them." With that I reached into my back pocket and pulled out a box of Hornady Zombie Max ammunition.

I took the rifle into the garage and opened the inside door and put it in the cellar. On the way out I clicked on the coffeemaker I sometimes keep in the garage for festive occasions. Most of the local police officers like a cup of joe with cream and sugar. I already had a styrofoam cup prepped.

I came back out before Larry left and opened the box of Zombie Max and removed one of the cartridges and pointed out to him that Zombie Max ammunition has a special green tip designed especially for bursting the heads of zombies open and that the stuff is accurate out to almost 1000 yards.

Then I described how to hit a zombie straight in the center of the forehead and explode his brains so as to take him out of the wrold of the undead and make him truly dead.

He stood there agape listening to every word, and when I was done I told him I had to check up on things and that I had a lot to do. I went inside the garage and closed the door and peeped out as Larry shuffled off. He to the lot line when I saw his cell phone come out and looked at the fresh coffee and poured myself a cup. Then I opened the garage door.

And waited.

I didn't have to wait for long before a familiar face appeared through the window of the police cruiser he was driving. He rolled down the window.

"Are there firearms out," he asked.

"Got them secured," I replied and poured him a cup, put a lid on it and carried it out to him. He nodded gratefully.

"What's with the zombies?" he asked.

I put that special straight face on. The one that says that I am lying through my teeth. It's a very solomn look with just a touch of smirk in in.

"I am preparing for the Zombie Invasion," I said. "I was explaining it to Larry."

"Aren't we all?" he replied."Better practice your head shots."

I held out my box of Zombie Max. He put down his coffee, took the box, opened it and removed one of the cartridges.

"The green tip is a nice touch," he said. "Where can I get a box?" he chuckled.

"Maybe Dick's after the panic subsides," I replied. "I think they're A-Max with a different color tip."

He handed me back the box, smiling.

"Thanks for the coffee," he said,and drove off.


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Satiddy

It is Saturday morning and I am up a tad late.

I feel OK because I didn't drink myself goofy last night, the cat didn't pester me too much and I have breakfast started.

All in all I am back to normal more or less.

THe last four days of the touur were brutal and I arrived at Philly airport at about 1600 and went straight to bed for about 8 hours and drove home, arriving home at about 0730.

I spent the day going over a few things and put a dent into getting my neglected reloading bench up and running. It is amazing how much stuff I have collected and accumulated over the past 20 years.

I have a couple hundred rounds left over from the M-14 days but the M-14 is a gas gun and hence a couple thousands sloppy here and there. The bolt gun I just snagged is TIGHT so it looks like I am going to have to pull hundreds of bullets and fully resize the cases. Fortunately the bullets are Sierra Palmas and I can  heat them up to about 2900 feet per second and they will easily stay supersonic out past 1000 yards.

I also found bandoliers of surplus .30/06 and tons of odds and ends, including a can full of resized .223 brass and hundreds of rounds of 30/06 which I'll sell off as components. None of which I have any use for so I'll pile it all up and sell it off on a website I know that permits this sort of thing.

One thing that turned up missing is my bullet puller, of course.

I'm going to also go through my powder supply and weed out the ones I can't use anymore and simply use it as fertilizer as the nitrates in them are good for the soil around here. Expect gunpowder marigolds in the yard this spring

Today I have to collect a few bills and pay a few bills and take care of things that have gone to hell over the last 43 days.

Anyway I am going to be busy for a while.






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I am a lousy typist

 which is why this blog is generally full of typos. I suppose I could use Microsoft Word and have it make corrections and I could produce a word-perfect blog but I don't.

I write it either directly on the blog worksheet and hit 'publish' or I crank it out on the Word Pad that came with Windows 7 and cut and paste.

If you are a grammar nazi, have at it.

If you don't like it, don't read it. I write this for myself and post it because I do.

It is what it is and it is nothing more or less than the grumblings of an Old School wayward sailor and is intended to be nothing more or less.

One thing, though.

I have a right to do this and if anyone tries to take that right away from me than I will fight them.

I am an old man and old men do not box under the Rules for the Governence of Boxing as laid out by the Marquis of Queensbury.

Truth be known, I cheat.

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Sometimes i wish the government would just go away.

Someone is watching TV and the Dems are trying to tax the rich again which is a stupid thing to do because the rich will just do one of two things.

They will either leave or they will simply sit on their capital and let it do nothing.

The rich did not get rich by being stupid and they will find a way to keep their money and I'd be damned if I blamed them because I likely would do the same damned thing.

There are a lot of businesses that have moved over the years and when you look at why you can bet that the cost of taxes was either at or near the top of the list.

The next thing on the news is a bunch of Pakistanis burning the American flag which particularly frosts my ass because we give them a boatload of money every year when we should be simply napalming mobs like that simply so pilots can stay in practice.

Of course it we cut the money off then as far as I am concerned they can hate us all they want. As I write I think that if the government cut them off and let a few private charities send a few things there they would likely be less to hate us.

What I would like to know is where the money we give the Pakistanis comes from. We don't have any of our own to give away so we borrow it.

We borrow money to give away to people that hate us.

Of course the majority of Americans do not work for the government so they have a terrible time of understanding why we do this. To the average Joe this seems like a pretty stupid thing to do.

To those people in government that do this they likely think that the average Joe out there doesn't understand such matters but I think otherwise.

The average Joe deals with the same stuff on a smaller level. The average Joe doesn't pay someone to behave themselves. He simply beats the living $hit out of those that don't behave themselves and calls it good.

It makes sense to me.

I also heard we are giving money to Syria.

Screw these people except for the Kuwaitis. Back when we got clobbered with Hurricane Katrina the only people that came to try and help us out were the Kuwaitis which I suppose they did out of thanks because we booted the Iraqis out of there for them.

I actually wrote a thank you note to the Kuwaitis for that.

Why in hell do we give huge chunks of money away to people that don't appreciate it?

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I will likely be jammed up a couple more days

as I am on a mission from God of some sort.

I cannot get into it but I am very jammed up at work and hopefully by tomorrow night I will be on the way home for a little shore leave.

All jobs have periods where they suck and this is no exception. This is one of those periods.

All in all I like my job but this is just one of those few and pretty far between periods when things have just taken A Big Suck Pill.

This will pass and I'll be back to smooth sailing soon.

I'll continue posting when I get a chance.

Pic



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Busy as hell

Away from the combat laptop and things are going to be a zoo for the next 48 hours.

Have been out of internet range since my last post.



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The more the Free $hit Army gets the poorer we all get.

　

Think about it a minute. There is the obvious and that is that the poor bastard going to work gets poorer because he has to pay taxes to pay for the Free $hit Army. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure that one out.

The truth is that the more free $hit the FSA gets, the poorer we all get and that positively includes the people that are recieving the free stuff. When you think about it the recipients are the ones that really lose if you consider other non-financial factors.

By giving someone an EBT card you are not making them richer. You are making their lives poorer.

You are taking the easy way out.

If course the people that are running these programs have a vested interest in getting people to accept a government handout. If not enough people accept government charity they will be out of a pretty good paying job.

Because of this the people running the program renamed the cards a while back and started calling them 'Dignity Cards'.

Dignity, my ass.

While it is the job of a funeral director to take a person that feels bad and make them feel worse, the people in the welfare office take poor people and make them poorer.

One of the things the government welfare department robs them of is incentive to succeed. With a living coming in for no effort, why even bother?

It also propogates another attitude after a while because the law of physics comes into play. A body in motion tends to stay in mothin while a body at rest tends to stay at rest.

If a job paying $1000 a week is offered a person making $800 a week the attitude is why bother going to work for only $200 a week?

I sure wouldn't if I could skate by on $800, unless the job was interesting. Why would anyone?

The truth is that by making life easy for someone you are making them a lot poorer and stripping their life of quality. The recipients will go through life devoid of any pride and dignity that you receive from improving one's self.

Granted there are a very small handful of people that are so severely retarded that they can't take care of themselves but these are really few and far between.

A friend that once worked in a sheltered workshop told me that a lot of Down Syndrone kids that work there are grateful as hell to have something constructive to do and take an awful lot of pride in their work no matter how simple it is.

As I write this I am somewhat pissed off because my boss just handed me quite a hideous can of worms to handle and it is going to be a miserable experience.

I griped, I bitched, I raised hell over it but when it was all over and done with, I've buckled down and I am going to give it my best possible shot. I'm pretty good at my job and I would imagine I will figure out something.

Still, when I succeed I will have something to be proud about and those that are on the dole doing nothing with their lives are cheating themselves out of the thrill of victory and the sour taste of defeat.

They will be poorer for not having stood up to the plate and at least tried.

One can feel like they are poor because they don't have a cell phone or the latest technology but I fail to see why.

I do reasonably well financially but have little technology save a beat up old combat laptop and a basic cell phone. I don't bother with a smart phone. If I want to go on line I'll fire up the laptop.

Poverty that is generational is a cycle that comes from family values passed down from generation to generation and no amount of government assistance is going to overcome it. Poor people are poor because they have accepted it.

If they didn't accept poverty they would certainly find a way out of it. It may require moving to another place where the opportunities are or doing something different.

There is opportunity out there.

Over the years I have run into any number of poor people and when I told them what I did for a living they either said that they wouldn't go away from their families or asked me how to get hired.

I have done this through the years hundreds of times and given them the phone or address of people that I knew for a fact had entry level jobs open yet only one or maybe two have ever applied for the job.

A good friend of mine lost a damned good job a while ago and he moped around a bit until he got tired of being a failure and went back to work as a janitor until things change.

While he certainly isn't doing anywhere near as well as he had been before his employer's company caved in, he's at least busy and bringing in a paycheck.

While he's scratching his ass financially he's far from poor. He still has his self respect.

Besides costing a lot of working stiffs a lot of money, the government ought to do away with most of the social programs and give those that want it their dignity back.

It will be hard for the poor at first and many of them will likely stay poor but at least it will be their choice.

It will also do a lot to help making the government solvent and lowering the national debt.



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CHannel fever has set in

A couple of days ago I had a case of channel fever which happens out here. It is when a sailor can't sleep for some reason or another. Genterally it is because he is excited about something, often it happens near the end of a tour because a guy is keyed up about getting off.

I'm an old salt. Getting off of this slab doesn't key me up at all. It's just a part of things. If I get it at all, and it is rare, it is generally because I have a load or discharge I am sweating because of some problem or another.

Anyway, I got hit with it for the first time in quite a while and I am now officially over it.

What gets you over it is when you finally go under and sleep it off.

Yesterday I laid down for a brief nap and went down like Ihad been shot. A nap turned into a full eight hour sleep session which is OK except for the timing.

I am now up at midnight and wide awake and my schedule is frigged up to a fare-thee-well. At home this generally isn't any kind of real problem as about four ounces of Jameson's is enough to knock me out for another eight hours and get me back on schedule.

Jameson's is not an option out here as we are under zero tolorance and it looks like I am just going to have to make something to eat and see if I can force some more sleep.

I have to get back on schedule or I'll get beat up further on down the line. Another part of the problem is that I tend to be nocturnal by nature. Years ago I was called the Prince of Darkness because of that.

I used to work a 12 hour on, 12 off schedule and when I did that in the winter I would seldom see daylight which was fine by me at the time. It suited me well.

Now that I am running this slab I have to be up pretty much during business hours because I have to be available to answer to the office when needed. Over the past few years I have gotten used to that schedule.

We'll see what is going to happen next. I figure there is a leftover steak in the refrigerator and a shrimp ring so I can have a major fry up and in an hour or two I'll be able to sack out for a bit nd get back on schedule.

Anyway, that's what is going on in the ancient mind of an old sailor in the middle of the night.

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Handloading ammunition

is one of those things that a lot of people that are not familiar with often run their mouths about. They say it is dangerous and if you can't read directions it can be.

I suppose there have been people that have decided that they know more than the engineers and technicians that print up loading guides that have destroyed a few fine firearms by doing stupid things, but for the guy that has the ability to read the fine books printed by the people that make the stuff it's pretty safe.

I have had hunters that are interested in the hobby think that they can figure it out and I suppose to a certain extent they can because the basics are not all that difficult. The guides are there and in an evening a guy can go from never having done it to be sitting on a couple of boxes of roll-your-own hunting ammunition that will take game at about 100 yards or so.

It's not hard. The basic process is simple. You take the fired brass, resize it back to its original shape, pop out the expended primer and replace it. This can easily be done with a single stroke of the reloading press. You then add the proper amount of powder, press in the bullet and you have a loaded round.

If you can follow directions then you can reload your own ammunition. The basics are simple.

A basic handloaded round is probably good enough for the average hunter and can keep the hunter in ammo for a hefty savings, although these days the price of components are on the rise.

What gets interesting is when you get into custom reloading for a specific purpose, the most common one being accuracy.

Getting an accurate load often takes a lot of effort and experimentation, although no amount of hard work can ever replace dumb luck.

I have a rifle called a Martini Cadet that was made just before the turn of the 20th century for teaching young cadets in Australia to shoot. The last known batch of military ammo for it was made in 1942 when the then obsolete rifle was issued to Territorial Guards in Australia in preparation for an anticipated Japanese invasion.

I believe mine had never been fired when I got it a few years back. I found a place that makes custom dies and bullet molds, melted down a bunch of wheel weights and used the same powder used in M1 carbine loads. I made the brass out of .32-20 brass and I had the rifle shooting in no time at all.

My first test loads shot a nice, tight group that easily holds the X-ring so my accuracy testing ended there. With results like that why bother with tinkering?

I did a similar thing with an old British revolver they haven't made commercial or military ammunition for in decades. I got it shooting again.

Most of my load development was because I was shooting service rifle competition and I wanted to get an accurate load for my rifles.

Like a lot of people I started shooting service rifle competition with an M1 but mine was rebarreled for .308 (7.62 NATO) ammunition because at the time I was getting decent ammunition for $100/1000, delivered. The surplus ammo shot well enough and was cheaper than I could reload it for.

Although the rifle was originally chambered for the .30/06 round, the stocks of that ammo had dried up so I rebarreled it.

As the available surplus ammo dried up and the prices climbed it became time to start reloading and I did. I experimented and developed a pretty good load for the Garand.

Later I upgraded to an M14 which is a rifle that is also chambered for the 7.62 NATO cartridge and I took the M1 load and tinkered with that a while until I was getting sub-minute groups.

It should be noted that when you are looking for accuracy that every single rifle is different. You can take several different identical rifles while each of them may shoot a generic load fairly well, each of them will have a different load to bring out peak accuracy in them.It's rather odd, but that's the way it is.

When I later changed over to the AR platform for competition I changed calibers entirely and had to start from scratch and found out that the .223 (5.56 NATO) cartridge was an entirely different animal. You had to be more precise because the weights of just about everything were halved and that meant that the room for error also halved.

It also meant that Ihad to develop two entirely different loads, one for the 200 and 300 yard portion of the match and another entirely different one for the 600 yard portion.

These two loads required different powder charges (but thankfully not two different powders) and two different bullets.

One was the 68 grain match bullet made by Hornady, and the other was a Sierra 90 grain bullet. The 90 grain round had to be loaded to such a length that it would not fit in the magazine but that was OK because for the 600 yard portion of the match the rules are that the rounds have to be loaded one at a time.

During this period I was spending about 5 hours at the reloading bench for every hour at the range and this was when I learned something about stability because the 90 grain bullets would not group very well at 100 yards.

Finally curiosity took over and I tried the experimental rounds out at 200 yards and the group size actually shrank!

Later it was explained to me by an old timer that it was likely that the heavy bullet had not even stablized until past the 100 yard mark.

Interesting.

There are an awful lot of things that have to work together to make a rifle shoot its best.

First of all, of course, it has to be an inherently accurate rifle and then you are coupling in powder burning characteristics, velocity, rate of twist, harmonics and a myraid of other factors, all of which have to be in sync. It's pretty astonishing when you think about it and I have spent countless hours calculating things, speeding bullets up and slowing them down to find the magic recipe.

Most people and for that matter a large amount of shooters have no clue as to how much work goes into serious load development. The average deer hunter just goes to the store and buys a couple of boxes of tailor made and calls it good.

If the hunter does reload he more than likely just loads a generic hunting load and calls it good, figuring that 'a minute of pie plate' accuracy at fifty yards is good enough to take down an animal.

After I developed my service rifle loads I stuck with them for a number of years but it is now time to head back to the reloading bench because I have hung up my service rifles and am headed into anothe phase of shooting.

I am starting to get into long distance matches out to 1000 yards.

My eyesight is getting a little too fuzzy these days to be seriously shooting with iron sights. I can compensate for this by changing disciplines and using glass sights (scopes) to overcome this.

There are matches out there that start at 600 yards and go on out to 1000 and I think that I am going to go that route.

My plan is to take a bolt action rifle and work up a load that will remain stable and accurate all the way to a little past 1000 yards and remain supersonic to that range.

A bullet starts slowing down the minute it clears the muzzle and after a while it slows down to less than the speed of sound. While the bullet goes from supersonic to subsonic it passes through the trans sonic zone and strange things happen that effect accuracy.

The trick to having a good 1000 yard load is to push the bullet out of the muzzzle fast enough so that when it reached the 1000 yard mark it is still traveling well past the speed of sound which is about 1125 feet per second (fps) at sea level and sixty degrees F.

Keeping it out of the transonic zone means that the bullet should be traveling at about 1175-1200 fps at 1000 yards.

Right now there are two options for me on my latest project. It involves 2 different bullets of two very different weights.

One of the two options is to get a 155 grain bullet to leave the muzzle at about 2850 fps. The other is to get a 175 grain bullet to clear the muzzle at 2600 fps which is pushing the envelope a bit according to published data.

I have checked the windage characteristics of both bullets and they seem to be fairly close so I am going to tinker with the lighter bullet first and see what I can do with it.

This ought to prove interesting and because of the barrel twist of 1 turn in 12 inches I think I will have better luck with this lighter of the two.

The heavy bullet, by all reports will still stablize but it is at the upper end of weights (meaning lengths) that a 1/12" twist will stablize.

I wrote this piece because there are a lot of people that have no clue whatsoever about what takes place with shooters. Most people think they just get a bunch of ammo together and go out to a range somewhere and sling lead downrange and make a lot of noise.

For serious shooters that's not really true. There are a lot of hours put in at home before many leave to shoot.

Another thing that is interesting is when a non-shooter asks about it. People with a degree in the arts seem to not understand, yet when you talk to a non-shooting engineer they get quite interested.

I had an interesting chat once with an engineer from India that was a non-shooter and it was fun watching him get excited and pull put a pad, pen and calculator and start figuring things out.

We discussed one of my failures, the time I shot a thin-skinned varmint bullet out of a 1/7" twist at a tremendous velocity of about 3300 fps. The bullets literally shed their skin because of centrifugal force.

They stayed together when I tried them in a 1/8" twist rifle. We ran the numbers and figured that the bullets were coming apart at around 300,000 RPM.

A liberal arts major I briefly spoke with had no clue as they have no science background, and likely no interest.

What the reader should know is that I have only high school math to work with but I persevere.

It is also interesting to know that a lot of this information gets passed on to the military and NOT the other way around. At places like Camp Perry it is interesting to watch the interaction between civilian shooter and military ammo tech.

Both of them pick each other's brains. I know I have swapped notes with the ammo techs.We generaly both learn something from each other.

Anyway, I wish that people that have no clue what experienters do with firearms would just shut the hell up and go away and leave us to our devices. For those that want to accuse me of being violent, think about this for a second.

Ted Kennedy's damned CAR has killed more people than my guns.


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I am going to be busy today.

Very, very busy


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Is everyone out of their minds?

We've had a school shooting and people want to put up BIGGER 'gun free zone' signs and take away firearms from law abiding citizens.

Are we really that damned stupid?

I know that there are a lot of people out there that don't like logic because when it is used on them they lose their arguments, but I'm going to use it anyway.

The school in Sandy Hook was already a gun free zone and the killer ignored the signs.

Everyone ignores signs.

If everyone obeyed signs we wouldn't have littering or speeding or people parking where they are not supposed to.

We wouldn't have people making right turns on red where they are not supposed to, everyone would stop completely at stop signs and nobody would drive drunk.

We have so many signs that out highways and byways look worse than they did back in the days of billboard advertising before Lady Bird Johnson pushed her husband to push congress to pass the highway beautification act of 1965.

There are so many signs out there that I once heard someone giving directions tell someone to go to a 'Keep Right' sign and turn left.

So now we think that keeping schools gun free zones is going to protect children.

Yeah, right.

We think that gun control is going to save lives, but places like Chicago where it is near impossible to legally get a firearm has the highest murder rates in the world.

Yet people still think that by outlawing something will make it go away.

Why don't they just outlaw the sale of cocaine? If they did that, it will go away, right?

What? You say it IS illegal?

You don't say! Who'da ever thought?

If these laws work, then how come we have a cocaine problem?

The truth is that laws don't work. If they did we would be living in Utopia. There would be no crime.

So if we have established that people do not obey signs and break the law why do we protect our children with signs?

If the cities with the most gun control have the highest murder rate why do we try and ban firearms? Are we trying to get more people killed? Because if we are, we are most certainly on the right track.

All gun control seems to do is to get people killed.

I have been out and about since Sandy Hook and witnessed the biggest civilian armament I have ever seen in my llife. I went into gun stores and saw people looking at blank walls because the dealer had nothing to sell except a couple of worn out shotguns.

I have a shooting match coming up in March and right now I can't find target ammunition anywhere because it is all sold out. People have started to stash enough firearms to start a revolution which we may very well see.

A poll I recently saw said that abut two-thirds of the people asked would not turn in anything that congress outlaws. They'll just hide them. God knows how many criminals will be made by the stroke of a pen.

Of course, the next step is that illegal firearms will be the next prohibition and because it will be outside of the law there will be no running to the police if a deal goes sour. Expect yet more violence, after all what happens when drug deals go sour?

The next thing I would like to know is who is going to enforce any federal bans?

Several of the states have already enacted legislation prohibiting anyone from the federal government from enforcing the law in their state. In some of these states the federal agents will be faced with felony charges.

While the federal law does trump state law, the point is that the feds are not likely to get a whole lot of support from the states. In short, several of the states have told the feds to stuff it.

A huge (and growing) number of county sheriffs have told the people in their respective counties that they are not going to enforce federal gun laws. A larger number of of the local departments are not going to, either.

Besides, there are an awful lot of state, county and local policemen that own firearms that are on the list of weapons they are trying to ban. Most of them are not planning on turning theirs in, either, adding to the general contempt and disobedience of the law.

A couple of weeks ago I talked with a policeman and he outright told me that there was no way in hell he was turning in his.

So who is going to enforce this? The FBI? The BATFE?

HAH! Fat chance! They don't have anywhere enough agents and besides, they have bigger fish to fry.

New York just enacted legislation overnight and it has immediately been challenged in court and it will be interesting to see just how far things go in this case.

Teddy Roosevelt once said that our freedoms are defended by four boxes. The soap box, the ballot box, the jury box and the cartridge box.

Right now the law in New York will be facing the jury box and it will be interesting to see if the people in upper state New York open the cartridge box if the jury box fails.

If that happens bring body bags. Someone's going to get hurt.

We protect our money with guns. We protect our freedoms with guns. We protect our children with little 'gun free zone' signs.

What's wrong with this picture? Are our children only worthy of a sign hung on the wall somewhere to protect them?

Why do we send our children off to a place where there is no protection for them whatsoever save a sign?

As I write this now I looked up and saw on the news that there was another school shooting but the shooter didn't get very far. Someone interfered with his plans and stopped him.

As far as I have heard he didn't stop the little thug by waving a sign in his face. He used a gun. Who would have ever thought such a thing?

It also seems like metal detectors at school entrances do not work, either because it was reported that the schools had them in place. Like a lot of things a determined kid, and the shooter was a student, found a way to get it past it.

The fools out there that want to ban firearms might just as well get their heads out of the sand and realize that we're too far down the pike to fix things here with a simple ban. Life really isn't that simple. Banning something doesn't make it go away.

The truth of the matter is that bans are likely to make things worse. The Colombine tragedy took place right in the middle of the Clinton gun ban. A lot of good that ban did.

It is time to face up to the truth here and the truth is that until the people in this country change their ways that things like this are going to go on and on and on.

It's not the guns, it's the people, most of whom have had a travesty of an education from school systems that do a piss-poor job of even trying to build character.

Hell, most teachers have not spent a whole lot of time learning anything practical themselves. I'd have to say that not a whole lot of them have any experience in the private sector. How can you teach something practical if you have no practical real world experience?

The social welfare systems also don't do a very good job of building self-esteem, either. They allow people to take the easy way out and not discover their own self-worth. It's easier to get on the system and not have to take care of yourself. It's also a ticket to a low sense of value.

It must be hard to look at yourself and see a failure in the mirrror while collecting because you see people around you working and being successful and you are not. If you were you would be taking care of yourself.

The other thing that contributes to the violence in this country is that the media goes hog wild doting all over the perpetrator of a horrible deed. They plaster his face all over the place and he becomes a household name.

For someone with no self-esteem this is a pretty good way to become notorious and get a name for one's self. Remember that Hollywood types always say that 'bad press is better than no press'.

Until things change and we get back to taking care of ourself and working on building out character then none of this is going to go away. All the gun bans in the word will do no good whatsoever.

Ever notice that crime in general is down when everyone is busy working and the economy is good? It seem that when the economy is good and everyone is working that people are too busy taking care of themselves.

Another very important thing that will help stop a lot of violence is getting people back to work and you do that by making it easier and more profitable for businesses to run.

Seems with all of the taxation, interfering rules and regulations that the government seems to be throwing to make things 'fair' that nobody wants to invest any money.

Why should they if they can't expect a decent return on it? I sure the hell wouldn't open a business in this enviornment and that leads to another thing.

In New York, with their recent ban there are a number of fine firearm makers there that have been making firearms for years. Remington has been in business for over 200 years.

I'd just bet that more than one of them are thinking of packing up and moving to a more business friendly place. If I was running the outfit I certainly would be running it past the accountants.

There are a lot of other places out there that not only are more gun friendly but a lot more business friendly than New York. If they do they ought to send a copy of every pink slip to the governor telling HIM to feed the people that just got let go.

I read that one place that has offered to let Remington operations move there will likely tune up their local community college to teach machinists so as to produce a work force for them as well as tax breaks.

Ilion, New York isn't in very good shape now financially and if Remington does move you can bet there will be another city in upper state New York on it's ass. Crime will likely increase. That's yet another unintended consequence of the New York ban.

Over the course of the nation's history the Second Amendment has done a lot more good than harm. Over two million times a year Americans use their rights to defend themselves. Generally no shots are fired becuase the forces of evil decide that maybe tangling with an armed citizen isn't such a good idea.

When you have something that works as well as the Second Amendment it's generally a good idea to leave it alone.

Then again, I'm using logic here and there's a snowball's chance that anyone in government or education is going to even consider thinking about things this way because it's a whole lot easier to hide behind emotions.

You get to feel like you have done something to change things even if you have changed them for the worse. You can go off somewhere and sing Kumbaya with your friends oblivious to the carnage you have created.

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