Tag Archives: Gun Rights

Carry On Calm, Swampy Meadows

The AZ permit came through. Woot! So Utah, AZ (which gives NV, so now I don’t have to go over to Minden and take a two-day class), and CA. Grails are reachable.

Working with the guy who was right-hand to the previous owner/contractor, we will do the walls and maybe even a ceiling (with insulation), anyhow it’s going to go forwards.

But not a Olympic sized pool. “Problem” being that the water table here is really quite high, in winter a pool could become a boat and lift off it’s base. That low spot noticed out in the meadow might mean free water, so perhaps a row or two of grapes is in order and also not requiring an ditch-tender irrigation system.

First other things first though, carpet up at the Low Granite Outcropping Thursday.

Class tonight

UPDATE: Map corrected, click to enlarge:34-StateCCWComboMapx800
Signed up for the 4-hour Utah & Arizona class (and fingerprinting) that gets me 34-State Concealed Weapons Permit. (Green or Blue states) “Colorado reportedly to be added soon.” – whatever that means. Still need to get up to Tahoe and spend a few nights, and go over to take a class in Minden, for Nevada.
UPDATE: The 34-State course material was presented in a friendly, instructive and inviting manner. 2-hours was spent on the Utah LE perspective that drives the acceptance of the AZ permit and produces the overall 34-state blanket of reciprocity. Utah being fairly different from California in attitude, acceptance, and emphasis was a welcome eye-opener. But mainly being able to complete the Utah and Arizona CCW fingerprint cards and application forms correctly is absolutely crucial, and after the step-by-step instructions I felt confidant in the process. Our instructor and company-owner John was there with his dad and elder son, and was well equipped, well informed, and friendly – and presented some of the rote (and mandatory, I’m sure) Gunstruction well. As a former LEO was he insightful on a variety of ancillary topics – but we didn’t get side-tracked and there was no Rambo-Cop in the room. Most importantly he guided us step-by-step through the bureaucratic paperwork/fingerprinting maze in a way that made a daunting task recognizable and easy to complete. I’m looking forward to taking further actual defensive shooting instruction with John at the private range where rapid-fire is not limited, now that this hurdle has been overcome.

Update: Weather and Whether-to-Warrior, Pilgrim…

We’re watching the precious liquid drip (and hose) out of a sodden gray sky, surrounded by a thick blanket of clouds…not much to look at really.
Friday I have a CCW appointment at the Sheriff’s office to check the carry pistols on the list (there is a list you have to keep up-to-date). It will be a new world for me to enter into: Carryland – not to be taken lightly, I get to participate in my own defense.

UPDATE: Meanwhile, Miguel has a fantastic post at Gun Free Zone titled “The warrior mystique and its non-application to the average citizen.” regarding the concept of an(y) armed populace and their use of imagery and metaphors including especially “the somewhat “cultish” admiration for the Knight and the Samurai.” Hear-hear and bravo! Re: Musashi’s statement, “Generally speaking the Way of the warrior is resolute acceptance of death.” Miguel says (and I agree, and I think General Patton might also):

I am sorry but I do not “accept” death. I carry a gun and have gone through training and changed my head-in-the-clouds lifestyle because I do not want to be either harmed or killed by a Yakuza burakumin. I do understand that in a confrontation with a criminal, Death can happen to me as I am not perfect, but understanding the consequences and accepting it as fait accompli and making it part of my lifestyle are two very different things. If I were to accept Death, why would I even care to have a gun or prepare myself? The same goes for the Knight who would cheerfully die in battle doing the King’s business according to what they call honor.
… …
So who do Civilians should seek as role model? My very own choice (yours may vary) is the Pioneer/Homesteader: Somebody who wanted to live his life doing his work without interfering with others, but ready to lay down firepower to defend his family and his land from those who wish them harm.

Never start a fight; but always finish it.

Back to the various “Warrior” concepts bandied about; there’s another and different warrior tradition, ALSO from the EAST, a tradition that pre-dates Buddhism and the rock-ribbed tough-guy concepts expressed by Musashi – the Iron-Age era of the Mahābhārata, has a different opinions/conclusions too. Anyhow it works for me because I lived and studied there, and was a defenseless kid too. There’s something of the Arjuna and Krishna/Vishnu war-dialog from the Bhagavad-Gita in there. The great archer Arjuna is a man conflicted, he’s at war with his cousins (like the Hatfields and McCoys might have been) and with a heavy heart he hesitates pauses before shooting. His chariot-driver is (unbeknownst to him) Lord Vishnu, who’s advice he seeks. What he gets is somethign like:

Nothing personal (literally) kid, but in War, for the attainment of Liberation and Enlightenment (Moksha) and in defense of family (you) must stop hesitating and fulfill the/your Kṣatriya-Warrior duty – and kill as necessary. It’s not taken lightly, nor without conscience or guilt – but to hesitate is to fail more than yourself.

Anyhow, it’s a good read and the comments are blessed by some uncommon intelligence too.

After-Action STFU

In response to a post by Drang at ClueMeter, I was prompted to think about events and conversations in CCW class last weekend.  The instructor, a fairly young early-40’s disability-retired cop who walks with a cane and limp, said that in his experience during the high stress factors of shoot/about-to-shoot/done-shootin’ – your hands go numb and your vision tunneled, so he recommends training for clearance/charging drills  with the whole-hand grab on the slide, not the finger/thumb slingshot.

Also he mentioned, that afterwards don’t even bother to try and talk or converse because the ringing in your ears just flattens all the words and makes phone-calls just unrecognizable gibberish. AND remember to just STFU *afterwards* and DO NOT give up your right to shut-up.   It’s a hard right to remember, especially in that moment, because silence is a negative thing not a positive expression – and we are accustomed to the 1st Amendment of Free Speech (and not taking the 5th).   But “Afterwards”  is not the time or place for an outpouring of expression – especially to Cops, but despite that fact people just open-up and blab and blab when the adrenaline tapers off…

Stop the Madness

We must STOP SB 249 NOW!  



StopSB249.org is home to the Stop SB 249 campaign, a grassroots coalition of The Calguns Foundation, California Association of Federal Firearms Licensees (Cal-FFL), and thousands of interested Californians.

The Stop SB 249 campaign was established to inform the public of the dangerous Senate Bill 249 authored by California Senator Leland Yee and help connect people with their government. SB 249 has the potential of rendering nearly every single “off-list lower” (OLL), registered “assault weapon,” and other firearms and parts unlawful to import into this state, make, sell, loan, transfer or possess.
SB 249 could even shutter firearm dealers, sporting goods retailers, and accessory vendors.
SB 249 is a bill that PUTS YOU and YOUR RIGHTS AT RISK. 

1. Sending Sen. Yee a letter of opposition
2. Mailing the Assembly Committee on Public Safety a hard-copy letter of opposition (we will send it for you)
3. Signing our Change.org petition
4. Printing out our FAQ One-Pager info sheets and post them everywhere as quickly as you can. (Esp. at gun shops and shooting ranges!)

How many Lies does it take to make a Liar?

As Say Uncle reports, Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence…and three-times is…a Charm? 

Lying under oath:
<a class="grouped_elements" href="http://cdn2.dailycaller.com/2011/12/Lanny-Breuer-Getty-Images.jpg&quot; rel="dcgallery" title="Lanny Breuer and Eric Holder – Getty Images: Lanny Breuer and Eric Holder testify – Getty Images “>
Lanny Breuer and Eric Holder “testify” – Getty Images

Holder’s Department of Justice has already withdrawn two admittedly false statements made to Congress about Operation Fast and Furious. In December 2011, the DOJ withdrew a Feb. 4, 2011, letter to Sen. Chuck Grassley in which Holder’s DOJ LIE #1.

denied that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives or the DOJ ever allowed guns to walk.

Holder’s DOJ withdrew a second statement this week — one Holder himself made during a recent Senate Judiciary Committee hearing: LIE #2.

“An attorney general who I suppose you would hold in higher regard was briefed on these kinds of tactics in an operation called Wide Receiver and did nothing to stop them — nothing,”

Holder told Texas Republican Sen. John Cornyn during that hearing. “Three hundred guns, at least, walked in that instance.” The DOJ has withdrawn that statement because it’s admittedly false.

On Thursday afternoon, The Washington Times’ Kerry Picket reported that Gohmert pointed out how Holder made a similar false accusation against Mukasey during a June 7 House Judiciary Committee hearing.

Read more:

On Training

As a natural born coward, in Junior High School I got the major heebie-jeebies when I saw a couple of older-classmen (boys) dukeing it out with a serous frenzy.  One occurance was at the Senior’s (9th Grade) lunch area, and then there were a couple fights out back at the bike-racks.  One guy pulled a cake-cutter from his afro and was banging holes in the other guy, who was whaling back with a 2×4 he pulled off a bench. It was pretty raw and in-your-face – and at that age the kids had enough sinew and muscle and bone to make serious dents in each other, before even resorting to metal implements.  Another time I walked up to my locker and encountered a kid who was standing there and had opened it – to which I inquired, “What the f@%*#ng hell are you doing, that’s MY locker?”  Such an affront caused to make him angry and he prepare to do fisticuffs – but he was smaller so I just shoved him down the hall, and lashing-back he threatened me with retaliation in the form of larger friends and a later encounter.  Jeeze, of all the nerve the slimy little bastard had.
So I started to go to a night-time class in Kung-Fu, held at the “Y” conducted by a learned teacher.  It was great!  It was also a kind of discipline I heretofore lacked. I think the original idea actually originated with my friend on the water-polo team, a slight lad (at the time) but one with tremendous sprinting ability (in the water – and he did pretty well later in life too as a Triathlete winning some/several major-major races, repeatedly).  And so we rode our bikes together down to the Y at night, and we learned together, and we eventually did some light sparring that broke things in his mom’s apartment.  No more sparring.  More importantly it gave me an important tool to stand-up to my bigger and older brother and stop being his whimsical punching-bag – we evened-out that score about a year later when I had a few more pounds on my frame.
Anyhow as I think to my firearms training it has mainly been in the Hospitable and Pleasant Art of Rifle Shooting, where we lay around in the grass and shoot at distant (200-yards) pieces of paper that have black spots, and peer through expensive optical devices to see the actual teeny holes made by iron-sights.  Leisurly and fun shooting, with old and famous weapons of yore; the M1 Garand, the Krag, the Swiss-thing I sold to buy another gun…
And then I took THE handgun class. Another learned teacher. Two words: Louis Awerbuck.
The training mantra I learned/was taught is SAFETY.
I’m dinged-up already at the moment so I try to avoid walking-into the Pain-Thing – it’s like walking into an open cabinet-door in the middle of the night – or standing up quickly beaneath one. Sharp. Pain. You could put an eye out. Also I’m getting too old for jumping-around doing Ninja stuff in a clown-suit – besides just not being dignified.  I train for being an old, semi-invalid dork with a bum elbow and a (still) bad foot who is mainly capable of heart-arresting amounts of fear and panic, dumped into the bloodstream in great gouts from over-sized safety-glands – and to shoot attackers from the security of a bar-stool, like Han Solo.
I train to drop $40 magazines on the deck and try to not slip-n-slide on them, and especially not to bend-over and pick ‘em up in the middle of shooting.  After dropping a tied-up bundle of big green Simoleons on the class I’d better be ready to drop that shiny money-magazine on the floor too, because whole hand-fulls of silver dollars go steaming out the loud-end when my booger-hook is working the bang-switch.  It’s amazing how fast you can empty a gun into a 4-inch region – and it may not be enough, so you better do it twice.
My hat’s off to those who leap over benches and crawl under them, whether to shoot at steel or to hit waving wands – and getting sweaty and dirty can be a good day’s fun, especially when there’s a cool drink and a swimming pool at the end of the day with scantily clad ladies bringing the Ibuprofen.
At this stage in my solar turn-around I’m becoming more and more leery of the amount of time physical recovery takes – this pooch on my elbow is still ballooned-up and my foot still sends me messages about the ladder incident last year.  I used to be nearly bulletproof but that doesn’t seem to be the return-message I’ve been gettin’ lately. So now I’m just gonna be mean.  Meanness has a training advantage too, and takes it at every turn – like Han Solo.
I hope I learn to be mean enough at just the right time – but telling *¿what is?* the right time seems to be the hard part.  You go off half-cocked and you wind up in a crazy world of $200/hour lawyers, and a legal system that is so bent and has so many broken functions it acts as its own torture-machine.  Meanwhile the operators of said machinery stand-by in suits and ties adding oil and lubing the joints of equipment that just hammers walnuts into paste, while extracting piles of green Simoleans that they stuff in their pockets and some they hand-over to friendly Politicians who write up a new work-order for additional pieces of machinery that simply embellish the Dreadful Device, and make it’s operation more capricious and lethal.
So get your training while you’re young and can do it with a speedy recovery time because there’s no time like the present, and watch out for The Machine.
(update: Thanks Editor…)(further edits for clarity)

FactCheck Lies Paid-for by the Annenberg Foundation

In Comments Brigid notes: Just last year, FactCheck’s primary funding source, the Annenberg Foundation, also gave $50,000 to the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence for “efforts to reduce gun violence by educating the public and by enacting and enforcing regulations governing the gun industry.” Annenberg made a similar grant for $100,000 in 2005. I wonder if any of the Annenberg Foundation money made it to the phony, lying, astroturf, “American Hunters and Shooters Association” who purport to support shooting but don’t.