Just A Little Touch Of Snow

     Still falling.

      Personally, I blame the mind-controlled yeti zombies.  YMMV.  Turn up those Bowie tunes, willya?  I think I can still hear the snowfall.

     More snow, and one less odd-eyed cat.  Sigh.

Found A Message In A Bottle

     Opened it up and it said:

     Introducing Windows 10
               More than 110M people
               have already upgraded
               to Windows 10 - FREE!
     Don't miss out!
     Schedule your free upgrade!

     I left the cork out and thew it as far out into the water as I could.*
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* I tried upgrading Roseholme's "Brainbox."  It's not Win10 compatible -- and yet the popups persist.  They're the new universal caption for New Yorker cartoons!

Range Visit

     I think it went okay.

     That's a hundred rounds of CCI through my Ruger Mk. II at 21 feet, after a hundred or so into another target using the Ruger and H&R "Sportsman" revolver.  I'm a bit irked by those four flyers out in the ten-ring; the main blob of shots also creeps into it but they're relatively tightly grouped. 

Saturday At Last

     I think I will post a nice photograph and head for the range!

     There's a trick to this one.

Oh, Darn -- I Skipped The President's Town Hall On Guns

     So that meant I missed him admitting to skeet-shooting at Camp David but calling himself "not much of a marksman."  Which may explain why his approach to talking about firearms laws is scattershot and ill-aimed.

     Reading even CNN's coverage of their own event, the President stuck to his message, which consists mostly of fantasies like implying anyone, anywhere, can purchase any firearm at all over the Internet and have it shipped to their door without any risk, any consequences.  Yeah, go looking for that; find me that site fulla machine guns that only wants a PayPal transfer-- It doesn't exist.  Look at the big gun-auction sites and it's all FFL-required: if you buy one of those guns, it gets shipped to a dealer in your state, who runs a background check on you.

     Asked why he doesn't mention the steadily-declining murder rate, even as Americans buy record numbers of gun, he tapdanced away without ever really touching it.

     But my, how the NRA was criticized, for refusing to attend an event run by a man who has never passed up a chance to paint them as bad, bad folks, airing on a network that has a long history of doing the same.

     This is campaigning and pressure-politics, make no mistake; the President hopes to stampede Congress into doing what he cannot, making all private sales illegal and, if similar laws passed in some states are any example, making it a Federal crime to lend a gun to someone else, even for a few minutes at a range.  He has no answer for how this is supposed to stop criminals, who already obtain most of their guns illegally; he wants it and refuses to see its uselessness against crime and its burden on the law-abiding.

     Online comments in local news this morning included the old, "Why don't we treat guns like we treat cars?" What, stick a unique identifying number on them and apply a special tax?  That already happens. Or maybe extend "full faith and credence" to state-issued operator's licenses among all fifty states and assorted territories?  'Cos I can legally drive my car in any of them; I can only carry my gun lawfully in a few of them.  What, not what you meant?  Shut up; grownups are talking.

Gun Stuff: Pro Tip

     Here's a hint, kids: if you're going to go gun-shopping, do not do so while obviously stoned to the gills.  In particular, do not ride around in the Magic Van inhaling the smoke from the herb of the fields (or just basking in it) and then go in to the boomstick shop reeking of ganja.  You see, on the 4473 form, Section A, question 11.e., it asks "Are you an unlawful user of, or addicted to, marijuana or any depressant, stimulant, narcotic drug, or any other controlled substance?" followed at the end of the part you fill out by, "I certify that my answers to Section A are true, correct and complete...." over your signature.

     It is quite literally a Federal crime to give false answers on that form.  If the nice clerk at the gun store takes the form you have filled out, does the seller's sections and calls in to the NICS background check knowing you have said "No" to A.11.e. while sharing pot smoke strong enough to cause sneezing fits on the other side of the showroom, they would be complicit in a Federal crime.  Generally, gun store employees are not interested in committing Federal crimes.  They're probably going to ask you nicely to come back another time, when you are, ahem, perhaps more yourself?

     This is not to say marijuana Prohibition -- or any other drug law -- is necessarily Good and Right.  Personally, I think all those laws need to go; in my opinion, all they do is enrich and empower a criminal class while turning potential misdemeanants* into for-sure felons.  It is, however, The Law, right there in ordinary typeset, and avoiding the breaking of it is trivially easy, what with the handy listing of prohibited and controlled substances. 

     In the Olden Days of, say, twenty years ago, the retail gun biz ran somewhat heavily to cigarette smokers.  Tobacco has fallen out of fashion and indoor smoking bans (another stupid law -- I like the fresher air, but it's not my store and it doesn't belong to the City Council or State Legislature, either) have become the norm.  The average salesperson at a gun store these days is a little younger, in a little better shape, and probably a non-smoker.  They're going to notice the Eau d'Mary-Jane and, having noticed, can't pretend they haven't. And then they're going to have to Just Say No.
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* Sorry kids, intoxicated is intoxicated and public overindulgence to the point of becoming a problem is not going to cease to be so just because the cause was Toledo Windowbox rather than Stoli.  Too harsh?  Too bad. 

Rotogravurism*

     People keep doing it.  It's supposed to be funny: you get an unflattering image of some outgroup or person you don't like, especially some "candid" snapshot, and you slap it up on the Internet, maybe with some stereotyped caption or a little Photoshopping.

     As an exercise in team-identification, I suppose it works fine.  But it's really not all that funny.  Yeah, yeah, George Bush or Hillary Clinton next to movie villains or venomous creatures, aren't they so much alike?  Black Lives Matter protesters or Ferguson rioters with minstrel-show dialog, open carriers or rural protesters tagged by lines filched from Hee-Haw, what the hell does that prove?

     Yeah, they look like jerks.  Trip the shutter at the wrong moment and we all look like jerks, stereotypes, half-wits -- because sometimes, maybe a lot of the time, we all are.

     People who feel desperate, people who think they're unheard, often choose annoying, wrong-footed ways to try to get heard.  Others just like to watch the world burn, and want to snatch what they can from the flames.  It's not funny, it's tragic.  It's even tragic when you disagree with their message or think it's grounded in fallicies.  It's more tragic when they're just looters, scaring -- hurting -- the innocent and vulnerable.

     You don't have to like 'em, you don't even have to respect 'em much and I sure hope you're willing to present alternative opinions -- but cheap jokes are just cheap.  Leave that stuff for the Three Stooges or Abbot and Costello.  They were willing to be their own saps rather than mocking random strangers.  "Ooo, them guys, they're just stooooopid," isn't debate and it doesn't stop genuine malefactors, it's just more hostility heaped on the fire.

     How badly do you want to watch the world burn? Isn't that where you keep all your stuff?
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* As in rotogravure.  Don't ask your Mom, she won't remember either.

President Vs. Those Baaaad Guns

     So far, the score is zero and the audience -- other than ABCNNBCBS and their piping offspring -- is having trouble staying awake.

     The Administration's big-chance, don't-mess-it-up Executive Order on guns says, "What you've been doing?  Yeah, continue to do that." It didn't even make anything illegaller.

     They are going to do what crazy old Uncle Wayne LaPierre keeps saying at press conferences: enforce the laws already on the books.  How crazy does he look now?

     There's an Indy 1500 Gun Show coming up* weekend after next and it will be interesting to see the effect of the "And this time, we're serious!" Executive Order on attendance and on the two or three multi-table hobby traders I see at the shows.

     The frog-boiling side of this goes back to the Clinton-era crackdown on "kitchen table gun dealers," in which Federal Firearms Licensees who did not have a brick-and-mortar business establishment found themselves getting ratted out to zoning boards and otherwise having their business activities made more difficult.  This shut down a lot of the small-time dealers, who were (among other things) going to gun shows and running Federal background checks on prospective buyers as required of FFLs no matter the venue in which they are trading; they got out of the business, scaled way back and stopped turning a profit, and/or went with Collector Curio & Relic FFLs, a hobbyist-level license.  This was hailed as a great victory over the Forces of Evil.

     It's a new day and the Administration wanted a new great Victory.  Knowing the media know slightly less about firearms laws than pigs,† they went with a restatement of existing law and a square-jawed resolve to go enforce the laws already passed.  Oh, and they're planning to expand the FBI background check center to a 24/7 operation.  On cue, the Major Media are cheering their bold new steps...marching in place.

     All right, then, get to it.

     Throw us back into that briar patch!
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* This morning, McAfee Site Advisor has blocked www.indy1500.com: "High Risk: Weapons, Malicious Site."  Yeah, there's malice, all right -- on the part of whoever flagged it, unless the Indy 1500 site has been hacked, which I doubt.

† You can read that sentence two ways.  They're both correctly descriptive.

Monday?

     Yes, it is, and there's a whole 2016 out there, with Presidential addresses, primaries and then elections.

     I'm still not impressed.  A commenter praised their primary pick as being the best of a bad lot, and clearly felt that was sufficient.  When it comes to politicians, we're like famine victims picking over last year's potatoes, trying to find one with the least amount of rot and delighted when we do.  "Hardly any bad spots at all!"  That's not a good trend; eventually you're eating shoe leather -- or voting in the least-bad despot.  As Rome went, so are we.  Try, at least, to not cheer as it happens.  There's no eating around the bad spots in government.

     Would it help if I moped around the house all day, complaining?  

You've Been Watching This Mess In The Middle Of Nowhere?

     Apologies to Burns, Oregon, but you really are a long way past the last trolley stop.

     My prediction: the Feds will wait.  May take a long while.  Uncle Sam can have the event catered.  The guys occupying the wildlife refuge building can't.  Don't think for a minute the Feds didn't learn a little from Ruby Ridge and Waco, at least about what "bad PR" means.  I'm darned sure they learned from the Indianapolis Baptist Temple standoff  -- in which they simply stood off as long as it took.

     This situation -- look it up, you can find the long, sad history on the Web -- is a classic example of frog boiling.  By the time the frog jumps, it's too late.

     Much to be learned here.  Nothing to be won.  And that's sad.

     Note for future reference: make noise about bad situations sooner.*  Make it where's there's good cellphone service and a big airport isn't far away.  You can't whup 'em in a straight-up fight -- but play it right and you've got a chance to do so on The Internet and TV screens.  These guys?  Not a chance.  And that's a pity.
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* It's nearly always too early or too late.  Timing is critical -- too soon and you're a paranoid nut.  Too late and, surprise, you're still a paranoid nut -- and the injustice you have suffered is the new normal.

New Year's Day Meal

New Year

     I'm typing this in 2015.  You're reading it in 2016.  If it weren't for my Mom, Tamara, the cats and my few RL friends, I would not be joining you.

     I have no interest in the actual future.  It looks pretty damn bleak.  Our next President is going to be worse than what we have now (and Present Occupant at 1600 Penn. is set to take a whizz all over the Second Amendment any day now, probably in his State of the Union speech); there's not a one of the candidates who understands the Bill of Rights or has more than a lip-service grasp of the notion of "limited government."  Every last one of them would bite the had head off a bald eagle to get the job -- and that's the bowdlerized version of my opinion of them

     Meanwhile, World War Three is spinning up in the MidEast.  We can count of President Next and his or her Congress to make the most of it, at our expense.

     2016 arrives with heavy freight -- and more of the same every day.  Mind your manners, mind the gap, mind your back.