I Need to Get a Set of These

My family is Appalachian Scots-Irish from way back - redneck runs deep in our veins.  So when I ran across these redneck wine glasses, I was transported with joy:

But then I found some that are even better:

Yup, gotta get me sum a these!

Bowling Pin Match, Sunday January 8

Usual place, the Tucson Rifle Club action range.

Time: 8:00 AM sign-up, first rounds downrange about 8:20

Handguns only: .22 rimfire, centerfire revolver (.38 caliber minimum), semi-autos (9mm minimum).

You're welcome to shoot your revolver against the semi-auto crowd, but we think it's more fun to shoot wheelgun-vs.-wheelgun.

Cost: $10 for the first gun, $5 for any additional guns. Bring about 100 rounds for each. You probably won't need 'em all unless you're really good at missing fast. I fired 64 rounds to lose the revolver match last month.

Hope to see you there!

In the Spirit of the 2008 Presidential Election

I've come up with a new bumper sticker design, inspired by a post at Tam's today.  Remember 2008's "Least Repulsive Democrat Running"?



Well, here's the slogan for 2012:

OK, The Date is Set - UPDATED! (Again.)

So now where do we eat?

The Central Arizona Blogshoot will be Sunday, January 29 at the Elsy Pearson public shooting range just off Trekell Road and I-8. The range opens at 7:00AM. There are no rangenazis rangemasters. There are no chairs - bring something to sit on. The firing line is covered and there are concrete shooting benches, however.





And the city has porta-potties out there on a permanent basis now, so we don't have to rent our own (but bring your own TP just in case.)

The rules are pretty simple:


No explosives, no .50BMG rifles, clean up after yourself, don't be a dick.

ETA: In comments, ExurbanKevin notes:

A coupla item of note: The ground there is reinforced concrete disguised as sun-baked clay/ Fugetabout any target stand that needs to stuck into the ground, it ain't happenin'. Steel and targets that don't need taping are best. And the benches are funky-shaped. Regular camping chairs are marginal, stools are better.

Yup. I bring folding chairs, I have a 2" PVC target stand, and a half-dozen steel swinger targets. End edit.

I plan on being there when the range opens. We'll shoot until noon or 1 o'clock, then pack up and have lunch. I can't remember the name of the place we went last year, but there's a fairly well-ranked restaurant just up the road called the Creative Café, or we can bring grills and meat and bread and chips and tailgate it right there at the range, or others can suggest someplace else to eat in the comments. I'm open.

UPDATE: Guffaw emails me to say that Creative Café is not open weekends. So much for THAT idea.

So, where do we eat?

UPDATE II:  OK, not a lot of options. 

Where do we have lunch?
	Tailgate it at the range
	Iron Skillet Restaurant
	TandM Pizza
	Eva's Fine Mexican Food
	Other
pollcode.com free polls

If "Other," leave a comment with a suggestion.

Why is it?

Why is it that when I get an Instalanche (twice for this one), it's always for someone else's work? Oh well. If you're new here, the really good stuff is on the left sidebar under "The Best of TSM." Please avail yourself!

From My Brother

It's recycled, but I like it:

The kids filed into class Monday morning. They were very excited. Their weekend assignment was to sell something, then give a talk on productive salesmanship.

Little Sally led off: "I sold girl scout cookies and I made $30" she said proudly, "My sales approach was to appeal to the customer's civil spirit and I credit that approach for my obvious success."

"Very good" said the teacher.

Little Jenny was next: "I sold magazines" she said, "I made $45 and I explained to everyone that magazines would keep them up on current events."

"Very good, Jenny," said the teacher.

Eventually, it was Little Johnny's turn. The teacher held her
breath....

Little Johnny walked to the front of the classroom and dumped a box full of cash on the teacher's desk. "$2,467" he said.

"$2,467!" cried the teacher, "What in the world were you selling?"

"Toothbrushes" said Little Johnny.

"Toothbrushes?" echoed the teacher, "How could you possibly sell enough tooth brushes to make that much money?"

"I found the busiest corner in town" said Little Johnny, "I set up a Chip and Dip stand, and I gave everybody who walked by a free sample. They all said the same thing, 'Hey, this tastes like dog crap!' Then I would say, 'It is dog crap! Wanna buy a toothbrush?' I used the President Obama method of giving you something shitty, dressing it up so it looks good, telling you it's free, and then making you pay to get the bad taste out of your mouth."

Little Johnny got five stars for his efforts, bless his heart...

Quote of the Day - Electile Dysfunction Edition

A leading Republican, who was in Congress for more than 10 years, answered my question: "Who can beat Obama?" with a casual, "a mammal". Then he added sadly: "But they are all reptiles." -- Mark Mardell, BBC North American Editor, "Are the Republican candidates all crazy?"

Pithy.

And read this associated QotD from July of 2010.

KABOOM!

Earl has video of the spontaneous disassembly of an M1 Garand.  It's almost as painful to watch as it must have been for the young lady holding it when it KABOOMed.

This is what happens when you fire a live round into an obstructed barrel.

Avoid it.

Mindset

I read this morning about a woman who shot an intruder in her home in Blanchard, Oklahoma. Apparently he'd been stalking her, and when he and an accomplice broke into her home, she killed him with a shotgun:

Sarah Dawn McKinley was home alone with her three month old son at the time.

She says she heard a knock on her door and looked through the peephole to see two men, one of whom she'd met a couple times before.

"I saw that it was the same man. He had been here Thursday night and I had a bad feeling then," said McKinley.

McKinley says she moved her couch in front of the door, grabbed her son and her shotgun, called 911 and went in a back room.

She says for an agonizing 21 minutes, she listened to the men try to break in.

"He was from door to door trying to bust in, just going from door to door," said McKinley. "I waited till he got in the door. They said I couldn't shoot him until he was inside the house. So I waited until he got in the door and then I shot him."

Those twenty-one minutes must have lasted an eternity, another example of "when seconds count, the police are only minutes away." And to paraphrase Tam, if you don't have your own gun, you may have to wait the rest of your life for the police to arrive with theirs. But here's the part that has me scratching my head:

McKinley says she made the tough decision to shoot in order to protect her son. "There's nothing more dangerous than a mother with her baby. But I wouldn't have done it if it wasn't for him."

(My emphasis.)  I was reminded of a post I read recently at A Girl and Her Gun - Labels, Labels, Everywhere, But Not A Single One For Me. In that post the author talks a bit about her decision to become a gun owner. (She discusses that decision in greater depth in another post.) In "Labels-labels" however, she says something very similar to young Ms. McKinley. Discussing her recent reading of the book Boston's Gun Bible, she says:

When I read...

"Mothers defending their offspring can exhibit terrifying ferociousness, but they must be trained to become ferocious when protecting themselves."

I actually lost my breath for a minute.

That about sums it up for me.

The old me.

I wonder what would have happened if my daughter wasn't with me that day. I bought some time by doing things to distract the guy while I tried to get her to a safe place. I never one time thought about myself. In fact, for weeks, she was the only thing I thought of.

I wonder, if I had been alone, if I would have bothered to fight at all or if I would have just given up the second he approached me.

I instinctively knew she was worth every effort to protect, although I was totally unprepared, I didn't just hand her over to the creep. I didn't have to be taught that she was worth my life.

What I had to be taught was that "he" was NOT worth MINE.

I am not sure if I am a sheepdog or a warrior. I don't know if any label fit me before or if any of them fit me now.

What I do know is that I no longer have to be taught to be ferocious.

Read the whole piece, please.

But he old mindset is the one I just don't get. Being oblivious I get. But being unwilling to defend yourself?  I don't get it.  Why is it that people need to be trained to defend themselves?  I'm not talking about self-defense skills, I'm talking about self-defense mindset - as she puts it:  "I will fight and you will lose."  Honestly, I'd never even considered the question before.  It had literally not occurred to me until I read her post, and to see it twice in this short of a span makes me think that the attitude is not the exception.

Discuss.  I really want to hear what you have to say, especially those of you on the distaff side of the question.  Is it a male/female dichotomy as Boston T. Party states, or is that just a sexist papering over of something that is not uncommon regardless of plumbing?

ETA:  Is this part of it?

Edit #2: AGirlandHerGun comments below. Excerpt:

I have read story after story in my email box and on other people's sites of similar mindsets to my old one and it does not appear to be a plumbing an issue.

Lots of men are exactly the same way. We have socialized the "aggression" right out of society.

It's a problem. To raise boys and girls to believe that everyone else's life is more valuable than theirs is stupid and it is making the bad guys job a whole lot easier.

I am reminded of another old post, Americans, Gun Controllers, and the "Aggressive Edge" about the casting of the film Aliens in the UK. Casting Agent Mary Selway spoke of the difficulties she had finding... well, let her say it:

"It was INCREDIBLY hard to do, because, um, James kept saying, 'State of the art firepower. They've got to be incredibly, sort of on the cutting edge of American military...'

"So, what often happens here when American actors come to live in England, they become a bit Anglicized, and they don't... they lose that really, sort of aggressive edge if you like, that this sort casting required."

And we've been doing that to (some) of our children for generations now.  I guess that answers the question.

Quote of the Day

More disturbing, I think, is the extent to which America has suffered not a failure of the elites, but a failure of the people. Do we measure up to the founders of this country? The fact that Americans fought a revolution against Britain in the first place continues to astonish me. When in all of history have prosperous men with property — farms and businesses — risked their lives and fortunes to establish a better political order? Only a spiritual grandeur of a depth we barely can imagine today can explain it. When in all of history has a country gone to war and sacrificed a 5% of its total population to suppress slavery? The evangelical zeal that sent the North to war, singing of the grapes of wrath in the apocalyptic vision of Isaiah 63, surpasses our understanding today. -- David P. Goldman, Has the Conservative Elite Really Failed?

A failure I blame on public education.

TSM 2011 Year in Review

I've done this annual review post  each January 1 since 2007 - I guess that makes it a tradition. According to Blogger, I wrote 453 posts in 2011, down a bit from 2010. Down a bit more from 2009. Down a bit more from 2008, the peak year here. I kinda wonder if I'm running out of things to say. Or the urge to say them. I do find myself repeating a lot, referencing older posts. Even more, I find myself using other people's words rather than my own.  Anyway, let's do this one more time:

January started off with a tragedy - the spree shooting here in Tucson that claimed the lives of six people and left twelve others wounded, including the primary target of the shooting, Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. Among the dead, nine year-old Christina Taylor Green, who had been born on September 11, 2001 - a life book-ended by tragedies, as her father put it. He had some other words that should not be forgotten.

In the aftermath of the shooting, with lots of blame cast about in the media, we got an example of how exercising your First Amendment rights could cost you your Second Amendment rights.

February was a light month for posts here. After the sh!tstorm of January, I was suffering a bit of ennui. There were a lot of QotD posts, and one link to a fascinating TED talk about how computers and the internet can be used by children to learn on their own, with adults merely providing guidance and support. If you missed it, I urge you to watch.

March got an überpost, Our Economic Titanic. Actually, I worked on that one most of February, and it was the cause of that ennui.

I didn't post much in April, either, but despite our economic Titanic, I bought a 2011 Mustang. If we're going to hell, I decided, I was going to enjoy the ride. April also brought me a comment that reminded me why I do this blogging thing.

May was a banner month, with 51 posts! Just trying to keep up with events. Osama Bin Laden assumed room temperature. I quoted Christopher Hitchens for a QotD. The blog turned eight years old (that's like, 90 in human years). I went to BulletFest 2011 in Knoxville courtesy of LuckyGunner.com and plane tickets provided by U.S. Citizen. (Thanks again!) And I reminded everyone of one of the other wonderful things about the interwebs, the ability to produce truly excellent writing that otherwise no one would ever produce and no one would ever be able to read. If you missed the three-part Perspectives stories, by all means, read them now. Larry Correia isn't the only talented writer in our midst by a long shot.

I guess I suffered some burnout after May, as June was another light month for posting. I did, however, respond to Jennifer's question and cranked out a post on How I Became a Gun Nut. Then I took another hiatus. Two weeks this time.

July started off with a bang, though. July 1, I posted Lend Me Your Ears!, with apologies to The Bard. On the Fourth I put up the überpost TL;DR. I did a few other posts that month, but nothing all that exciting.

In August there were riots in (formerly) Great Britain. How far they have fallen; from the Tottenham Outrage of 1909 to the Tottenham Rampage of 2011. Suddenly many Brits found themselves in a situation where being disarmed in the face of face of violence was no longer a theoretical situation, and many decided that they didn't like the odds. Still, the traditional "stiff upper lip" and understated eloquence was in evidence. My long exchanges with Australian blogger Tim Lambert on the topic paid off; I got a post out of a comment I left at SayUncle on the legality of self-defense in the UK.

Finally, my mother underwent open-heart surgery and had two valves replaced. She still hasn't fully recovered as of yet, but she hasn't lost a bit of her fiestyness.

I started off September with a prediction: I predict that the 2012 election season will be the ugliest, dirtiest, nastiest thing anyone living has ever seen. September brought us the tenth anniversary of 9/11, and I had something to say about how we as a nation have handled that, too. Actually, Mark Steyn said it. I just quoted him. September also brought Gun Blogger Rendezvous v 6.0. Much fun was had by all. GBR VII is now scheduled. You really ought to make plans to attend.

I don't know who said this, really, but it was too good not to make QotD. And here was another.

I changed jobs in September, leaving the Consulting/Specifying Engineer role to return to the retail end of electrical engineering. At the time, it didn't look like such a smart move. While I love what I'm doing now, it still looks like it might not have been such a smart move. Of course, if when econo-geddon does come, it really won't matter much what job I have.

The week after GBR VI they held the Reno Air Races. There was a crash, and one pilot and several spectators were killed. The nannies were immediately up-in-arms over the crash. Bill Whittle responded.

Expanding on using other people's words when they say it better than I can, I have started taking excerpts from fiction when I find them particularly apropos. October brought one such selection from the Sci-Fi novel Road to Damascus.  

Operation Fast and Furious was in the news (finally), and spawned one of the best Downfall bunker-scene parodies I've ever watched.

Not exactly an überpost, but I wore out my fingers with CTRL-C and CTRL-V producing a post of 90% other people's words in True Believers and the Machinery of Freedom and Oppression. Please read that one if you missed it the first time.

I spent a lot of October driving places. It gave me time to think. One result of that thinking was a multimedia post, The Selfish Gene.

I moved into my new office space, and once again experience the reality that Dilbert isn't a cartoon strip, it's a documentary.

October ended with some sage words from Robb Allen. Too good to quote from, I just linked.

I finally purchased a firearm in 2011, a Smith & Wesson 327 TRR8 revolver. One gun is well down from my normal three a year, but I'm pretty well stocked with lead delivery systems.  I spent quite a bit of money this year feeding them.  And Mustang payments.

In November I posted a QotD that echoes October's True Believers and the Machinery of Freedom and Oppression post: And This is Why the Party's Over. You might also want to read System failure on a global scale by Alan Caruba. Econo-geddon. Then again, you might not.

In December I didn't have much to say, but I strongly recommend you read The Corruption of America by Porter Stansberry.

And that concludes The Smallest Minority Year in Review. What have I learned from this exercise? I don't do a lot of deep, thoughtful posts anymore. I quote others extensively. I do a lot of linking. I'm deeply pessimistic.

Expect more (or perhaps less) of the same in 2012.

Happy friggin' New Year.

But Kids Shouldn't Have Access to Guns!

Play stupid games, win stupid prizes:

Henderson, N.C. — A Henderson teenager shot and killed an intruder Thursday morning, according to the Vance County Sheriff's Office.

When deputies arrived at 586 S. Lynnbank Road, they found a man lying in the yard. Michael Anthony Henderson Jr., 19, had been shot in the chest with a shotgun, deputies said. He was taken to Maria Parham Medical Center where he died.

Deputies did not say which of two people home at the time -- teens ages 14 and 17 -- pulled the trigger, but no charges are expected against them or their parents.

Police are now looking for the deceased's accomplice. I wonder if in North Carolina he can be charged with murder, since someone died in the commission of the felony he was helping commit.

From the comments to the story:

According to other news sources, there was a 14 year old son and a 17 year old daughter home at the time. The son shot the intruder to protect his sister.

I'm sure Mr. Henderson was just a misunderstood boy hard at work getting his life on track.  According to this story:

Henderson appears on the Vance County court records system with a firearm charge and numerous driving infractions that had been due for hearings in District Court on Jan. 19 and March 15.

He also carried a record of numerous trespass, assault, affray, bodily injury and property damage charges against him, with offense dates spanning his late teen years including April and July of this year.

Henderson had been given a sentence of 16 hours community service for a Sept. 29, 2009, assault, then months later committed another assault on Feb. 23, 2010, for which he was sentenced to serve 30 days in jail.

Yup.  Choir boy.

UPDATE:  The 911 call.  Yup, the 14 year-old was the shooter.

Here We Go Again

In September of 2009 the website MomLogic posted a piece:  Gun Accidents Kill 500 Kids Each Year.  The gunblogosphere found it in May of 2010, courtesy of Damnum Absque Injuria.  Apparently a couple of propagandists journalists at the Denver Post recently discovered it, and took it as Gospel. Instapundit links to the blog Free Colorado where - professional journalist - Ari Armstrong did to the Denver Post writers what I did to the MomLogic column, only he went directly to the authors of the piece.  (I know I left a detailed comment there, but it's gone now.)

At least he got a retraction out of the Post. I still haven't seen Salon retract their much more outrageous "statistic" of 4,000 deaths a year.

And they keep telling us that the professionals have all these layers of editorial oversight, which is what makes them better than bloggers.

I don't bloody think so.

"OK, That Was Awesome!"

This is what terrifies them - the smile:






Those are screenshots from this CBS News piece about the increasing number of female shooters in the U.S. - up 47% since 2001, according to the piece.  The shooter is CBS's Katrina Szish, and I suspect that was her first experience with a firearm.

It probably won't be her last.

That's the smile you get from a new shooter - Every. Single. Time.

The anti's are terrified of that - the realization that shooting is fun. Or as the interview subjects put it, exciting, empowering, relaxing.

Also from the piece:

Katrina Szish, CBS: "A lot of people would not expect shooting to be a sport that women would be interested in. And a lot of people would say guns are masculine."

Lesa Ellanson, NRA certified shooting instructor: "It would depend on how you define femininity. I think a capable woman is the most feminine expression of power that there is."

Which reminded me of this post from quite a while back. Unfortunately, it's so old the links are broken, and the comments are gone, but I agree whole-heartedly with another subject of the CBS interview, Jill Kargman:

"I always dress up. I'm very traditional feminine in certain ways. But when I'm shooting a gun, I guess I feel empowered, and empowerment is sexy."

Damned straight.

"A fábrica está fechada."

Wretchard riffed recently about the decline in fertility among Western nations in If Tomorrow Comes, with several references to Mark Steyn's repeated observations about the negative population growth in Europe.  Richard, quoting Steyn, blames it on socialism,

The problem as Steyn succinctly puts it, is that socialism not only "runs out of other people's money", as Margaret Thatcher once put it. It simply runs out of people. Future historians, if there are any left, will puzzle over how this came about. The economists will have an easier time explaining it. Through some process, socialism has apparently increased the discount rate to the point where the future is consumed for the sake of the present. Not only is investment taxed to feed consumption, tomorrow is hocked to pay for today.

If the fiscal deficit is the direct monetary expression of this high discount rate, the collapsing population is its equivalent demographic expression. Both are saying the same thing, in different terms. In incentives terms, the future is no longer real; so people don't save up for it nor do they have any incentive to sacrifice for it.

I don't think it's quite that simple.  Take, for example, Brazil.  A recent piece in National Geographic, Brazil's Girl Power, explores how that nation's fertility rate dropped precipitously from 6.1 in 1960 to 1.86 in 2009. In Brazil,

where the Roman Catholic Church dominates, abortion is illegal (except in rare cases), and no official government policy has ever promoted birth control

this is a pretty astonishing change over what is essentially just a bit more than two generations. In addition:

And it's not simply wealthy and professional women who have stopped bearing multiple children in Brazil. There's a common perception that the countryside and favelas, as Brazilians call urban slums, are still crowded with women having one baby after another—but it isn't true.

--

In a working-class neighborhood on the outskirts of Belo Horizonte, an unmarried 18-year-old affectionately watched her toddler son one evening as he roared his toy truck toward us; she loved him very much, the young woman said, but she was finished with childbearing. The expression she used was one I'd heard from Brazilian women before: "A fábrica está fechada." The factory is closed.

The National Geographic piece concentrates on two primary influences: Television, and culture. Specifically, the effect television has on culture.

An example of the effect:

Encountering women under 35 who've already had sterilization surgery is an everyday occurrence in Brazil, and they seem to have no compunctions about discussing it. "I was 18 when the first baby was born—wanted to stop there, but the second came by accident, and I am done," a 28-year-old crafts shop worker told me in the northeastern city of Recife, as she was showing me how to dance the regional two-step called the forró. She was 26 when she had her tubal ligation, and when I asked why she'd chosen irreversible contraception at such a young age—she's married, what if she and her husband change their minds?—she reminded me of son number two, the accident. Birth control pills made her fat and sick, she said. And in case I'd missed this part: She was done.

So why two? Why not four? Why not the eight your grandmother had? Always the same answer—"Impossible! Too expensive! Too much work!" With the facial expression, the widened eyes and the startled grin that I came to know well: It's the 21st century, senhora, are you nuts?

It's an interesting premise, convincingly presented.  Strongly recommended.

Wretchard concludes his piece:

Imagine there's no countries.
It isn't hard to do.
Nothing to kill or die for.
And no religion too.

And then the music stopped. This was the silent scene where we came in at the beginning of the screening: the churches closing at the rate of two a week; the factories closing even faster. What Lennon failed to grasp was that any society that had nothing it would sacrifice for would find nothing worth investing in. And so here we are, dragging on the end of our smokes, tipping over any bottles that still might contain some wine. Because the vineyards are barren and will stay that way. The ultimate problem with "living for today" is that tomorrow eventually comes.

With Brazil, and I suspect most, if not all of the Western world, "living for today" is pretty much the basis of the decline in birthrates. Children? "Impossible! Too expensive! Too much work!"

Not worth the investment. It's an economic choice, not necessarily a socialist one.

Quote of the Day - Social Justice Edition

What do you call it when someone steals someone else's money secretly? Theft. What do you call it when someone takes someone else's money openly by force? Robbery. What do you call it when a politician takes someone else's money in taxes and gives it to someone who is more likely to vote for him? Social Justice. -- Thomas Sowell, Random Thoughts

OK, Christmas is Over...

...back to the depressing, pessimistic stuff again. ;-)

First, watch this:




Trust me, if you haven't seen it, it's worth your time.

OK?  Now, watch this:




Both are examples of large numbers of people performing coordinated acts. The first is, in a word, beautiful.

The second, frankly, creeps me the hell out.

The first required literally weeks, months, and in the case of the organist, years of practice to make that performance come off. The second? Merely required a bunch of willing minions.

Human beings, for the most part, are herd creatures. We have, as a species, a need to belong to something, to be a member.

It's something I personally don't do well. I don't really grasp it. I've been asked several times why, if I like firearms so much, didn't I join the military? Simple - I wouldn't fit in, and I know it. Or I would, but I'd hate every second of it, which is essentially the same thing.

I watch hundreds, perhaps a couple thousand people doing what some disembodied voice tells them to do in a public park, and I cannot understand why. Yet I can understand the group performance of the Hallelujah Chorus. One is an exercise in mind-control. The other, an act of beauty.

But at the bottom, they both make use of the human need to belong.

And I cannot help but wonder if that voice had told those "two tribes" to kill each other, if some would not have tried it without thinking...

Yes, Bethany, There is a Santa Clause

Merry Christmas, Everyone

Another one from Digital Blasphemy.

A Christmas Present from Bill Whittle

Give 'em Hell, Bill: