Month: March 2018

Words To The Wise

Advice, The Gun Thing

Not having been a frequent visitor to Lucky Gunner, I was unaware that they don’t just sell ammo — and in case there are others like me, allow me to introduce you to their excellent shooting-for-beginners series, Shooting 101. Then look at the next series (which is equally good): Start Shooting Better.

And the website is chock full of such articles. Prepare to spend quite some time getting through all of them.

There’s a German idiom “Immer werder lernen“, which roughly translated means “There always something to learn”. Such is the case with the two Lucky Gunner series — I’m kicking myself at discovering a couple of bad habits I’ve picked up over the years — and in this age of smaller “pocket” pistols, their “How To Shoot Small Pistols Better” is an absolute gem.

And Chris Baker gets off some memorable lines, e.g. when talking about shooting revolvers:

“What it comes down to is that the long double action trigger press forces the shooter to maintain correct technique 100% of the time in order to not completely suck.”

Here’s a gratuitous picture of a beautiful gun, just because. It’s a S&W Model 24 “Heritage”, chambered in .44 Special.

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to the range… to work on eliminating some of those bad habits I discovered. And to make sure that I don’t completely suck.

 

Not In My Wheelhouse

Men & Women

Via Insty, I see that some slut is boasting of how she’s bonked three Uber drivers in the course of her travels around (duh) Manhattan. Leaving aside that the whole thing might be totally bogus — which is often the case with these “Penthouse Letters” fantasies — I suppose that the scenario is quite plausible.

Thank goodness it’ll never happen to me. This is mainly due to the fact that I work from 4am till early afternoon, because I refuse to work the “late-night-drunk” shift. Mostly, I get to take harried executives — male and female — to and from the airport, so let’s just say that it’s an unlikely scenario. Also, as the article allows, it’s against Uber’s rules and I’m kinda law-abiding when to comes to that kind of thing. And even further, I’m at an age when I’m no longer ruled by my dick — I rather outgrew this silliness when I played in a band in my teens and twenties — and even if some insane woman did offer herself to me (we’re talking Powerball odds here anyway), I’m just not gonna do it because… sheesh, do I even have to explain how wrong it is?

I’m just not interested in giving a complete stranger that kind of power over me. Nor should anyone. Not even with her…

Yeah I know, I know… but I don’t have any other pics of strange women lying in taxicabs. It’s never been a fetish of mine.

Simple Answers

Politics, The Gun Thing

Over at The Daily Wire, Matt Walsh asks:

Why Does The Media Care More About The Parkland Shooting Than It Ever Did About Las Vegas?

Well, that’s an easy one. While the Vegas shooter killed far more people than did the adolescent mope in Parkland, the Vegas victims weren’t children, ergo no outrage could be stoked up and turned into anti-gun hysteria. (And to be brutally frank, the fact that the Vegas victims were country music fans — i.e. more likely to be Deplorables or people from Flyover Country — made them  just statistics as far as the Left was concerned. Conservatives weren’t going to be converted to the anti-gun side, but with children as victims… well, all bets were off.)

Also, the Vegas shooter’s motives were, and remain inscrutable because he’s dead: he was just a lone nutcase (and maybe a Democrat, just like Steven Scalise’s would-be assassin), and anything could have triggered him off to plan so large-scale a shooting. More to the point: every single gun he purchased and used for his mayhem was purchased quite legally, and no laws — existing or projected — could have stopped him (short of a wholesale gun ban and confiscation). And he was an adult, so none of the usual hooks was going to work. The only thing the media could get a fingernail on was “bump stocks” — something which keen gun guys knew about, but few others. Banning bump stocks was never going to ruffle anyone’s hairstyle, and even a failure to ban the stupid things couldn’t be used to tar the gun industry because it’s quite useless to rave about something used by about 0.00001% of the population.

But a screwed-up kid with an AR-15, and innocent chilluns gunned down in a school? Ooooh, small wonder the anti-gun brigades ordered a general mobilization, because there were so many hooks to hang gun control on: “underage” gun buying, “assault rifle” bogeymen — you name it, there was fodder for the anti-gun movement — which is why they were so quick to organize town meetings, parades and getting the Usual Suspects (Schumer etc.) to drone on and on about how Something Must Be Done No Matter What. And even better, the NRA could be used as a scapegoat much more easily for Parkland than for Vegas, How so? Consider these two statements:

“We should ban assault rifles!”
“No we shouldn’t.”
“Oh, so then you’re in favor of killing country music fans!”

…and:

“We should ban assault rifles!”
“No we shouldn’t.”
“Oh, so then you’re in favor of killing innocent schoolchildren!”

The first argument is risible, the second compelling.

That’s why the media and the anti-gunners have been pretty much shtum about the Vegas shooting, and hair-on-fire screaming about the Parkland tragedy. It really is that simple.

Yeah, I know it’s a cold-blooded and cynical rationale for using one and not the other to further an agenda and to use children as pawns rather than country music fans. But if there’s one thing we know about the Left — in any country — it’s that they pretty much define “cold-blooded and cynical”. The end, for them, always justifies the means.

In the meantime, let’s get the fire lit under the cauldron of oil so we can boil the little Florida fucker to death.

Me, Too

Politics

Perry de Havilland of samizdata and I have had our (slight) differences in the past, but on this topic we are in precise agreement:

The Englishman, for one, still wants to see Heath’s body disinterred, quartered and the skull stuck on a pike outside Traitor’s Gate at the Tower of London.

And if the expression “drone strikes on Brussels” doesn’t give you the Warm & Fuzzies, I don’t want to talk to you anymore.

Science To The Rescue

Men & Women

Here’s another face-palming moment in our modern Zeitgeist:

Women don’t regret a one night stand as long as they made the first move and the person they are sleeping with is good in bed, study finds

And they have even less regret if their random bed partner buys them a new house too. (Okay, that part wasn’t in the study, but it’s not an illogical corollary by any means.)

So if Madame decides to grace some bloke with access to her pudenda, AND he performs like a stud muffin, she is well-pleased. We needed a study to tell us this?

And if she allowed herself to be seduced after a few cocktails and her paramour turned out to be a lousy lover, then she’s filled with remorse and self-loathing and may decide that the whole event was rapey and she needs to call the cops. I mean, making a questionable decision is one thing, but then to have the guy not satisfy Madame? It’s a crime. (And it’s doubleplusungood if he kicks her out and makes her find her own way home…)

I am so glad that I’m past this particular stage of the Sex Wars.

Good Timing

Bad News, Travels

Looks like I picked the right time to stay at The Englishman’s cottage in Boscastle (i.e. in December last year):

Fifteen flood warnings have been issued by the Environment Agency, most of which are concentrated in Cornwall and the south west of England.

And lest anyone think I’m being facetious:

The Boscastle flood of 2004 occurred on Monday, 16 August 2004 in the two villages of Boscastle and Crackington Haven in Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. The villages suffered extensive damage after flash floods caused by an exceptional amount of rain that fell over eight hours that afternoon. The floods were the worst in local memory. A study commissioned by the Environment Agency… concluded that it was among the most extreme ever experienced in Britain. The peak flow was about 140 m³/s, between 5:00pm and 6:00pm BST.

Granted, the British government has built all sorts of anti-flooding drains and such in Boscastle since then, but I’m still nervous. Government works are not always infallible, as a certain city in the Mississippi delta found out a few years back.