Category Archives: Guns

Thoughts on guns and self defense

Even living in a neighborhood where the police “are just minutes away,”   (though that might be way too late) I find my guns a great comfort.

Knowing that many of my peaceful but cooperative neighbors also are armed adds to the assurance. I only fret that they and I do not get to the range to practice often enough—because a gun without practice is almost as useless as an unloaded one.

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Useful ideas from Strategy Page:

“Practice basic combat operations, like changing magazines. You must take cover when you do this as people who don’t, often get shot…

“Practice shooting at long range…While it’s true that most combat is at shorter ranges…,you will sometimes find yourselves being shot at by people farther away…

“Cars and trucks, unless armored, are not bullet proof…take cover behind concrete or steel. Fighting from behind an unarmored vehicle means you will eventually get shot when you don’t expect to. Indeed, when ambushed and in an unarmored vehicle that cannot move, the best thing to do is get away from that vehicle as soon as possible.”

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Not that I ever expect to have to fight more than one (at the most) criminal at Rancho Roly Poly, but it’s better to be prepared. Certainly that than totally reliant on the always late-arriving police and therefore, like the gun-controllers and other antigunners generally, oblivious to the possibilities.

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As Cobb puts it: “Education about protecting one’s own life is more important than education about the context of laws passed and theories about collective states and militias. I have no spiffy analogy to offer illustrating the foolishness – but look to your own martial education and re-evaluate your position.”

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This old favorite from blogger Meryl Yourish, which she appropriately headlined “What A Difference A Gun Makes,” further illustrates the comfort level.

Via Jerry Pournelle and Cobb.

UPDATE:  Study: Concealed Carry Equals Fewer Murders.

MORE:  A picture we can never expect to see in Texas. If we ever do they can rename the place New York and take down the Lone Star forever.

Our elite are avoiding military service

The recent cooperation by both of our corrupt political parties in cutting military retiree income, including war-disabled retirees, is an ominous warning we ignore at our peril.

So far (how ironic is this) militant lesbian feminist Camille Paglia is the only one I’ve seen take up the challenge.

“The entire elite class now, in finance, in politics and so on, none of them have military service—hardly anyone, there are a few. But there is no prestige attached to it anymore. That is a recipe for disaster,” she says. “These people don’t think in military ways, so there’s this illusion out there that people are basically nice, people are basically kind, if we’re just nice and benevolent to everyone they’ll be nice too. They literally don’t have any sense of evil or criminality.”

I also think people are basically kind and cooperative. But I know that some are not and so I own guns and am ready to use them if need be. But then I’m also a veteran. Fortunately not a disabled one, having to depend on our lying political class.

The elite will learn. Wormtongue won’t be in the White House forever. We just have to hope that too many of us don’t have to learn with them. But I fear that as their pathetic attitudes trickle down to corrupt the tiny fraction of the populace still eager to serve, conscription will have to come back. And if you think the military is expensive now…

Paglia’s take on this and many other contentious topics is part of a larger interview you’d do well to read. Who else is championing the old-fashioned masculine virtues? Other than Duck Dynasty, I mean.

She isn’t the first to make this argument, but she does it better than most: “Primary-school education is a crock, basically. It’s oppressive to anyone with physical energy, especially guys,” she says, pointing to the most obvious example: the way many schools have cut recess. “They’re making a toxic environment for boys. Primary education does everything in its power to turn boys into neuters.”

Via WSJ and Darkwater.

Officer Friendly is out of control

“Forced anal cavity searches have replaced pepper spraying and tasering as the most popular [police] form of degrading human beings…”

Texas has had some of these, too.

At least it’s preferable to being murdered like Miriam Carey.

Via Instapundit.

Emilie Parker and the butterflies

If ever there was a poster child for armed security in elementary schools, this little one (lower right) is she. Murdered in her first grade classroom by the Newtown maniac.

I’m a firm proponent of armed security like the good guy whose prompt response stopped the latest school shooting. I would personally tear down all those “gun free campus” invitations to the insane currently posted oh-so-righteously by self-centered idiots whose vision stops at the ends of their noses.

For all I know, though, the kiddo’s mother disagrees with me. Lots of people do. But she writes a simple, poignant essay about her lost child that’s worth reading. I’d quote from it but it’s under all-rights-reserved copyright. So click the link, please.

The badge gang, of course, was johnny-on-the-scene-at-Newtown—as always, just in time to clean up the blood and fill out the forms. And strut around in their version of security theater. I’m sure they  felt just like the fools they looked. Armed security in the school is the only way to stop these travesties.

UPDATE:  Instead, the good guys in Connecticut have to register their guns. Criminals, of course, will not obey the law and the insane? You can imagine.

Why Wendy will never be governor

I mean, besides her plan to make guns illegal and abortions in the third trimester just peachy—without calling it murder, of course.

Poor Wendy Davis, the Democrat abortion queen from Fort Worth, has to go all the way to NYC to raise money for her abortive (to coin a phrase) campaign for governor of Texas. Well, Wormtongue did promise to turn Texas blue and having Wendy for governor would sure make lots of us blue. But, really, there’s no danger. None at all.

I doubt that even Wendy really expects to win. Which is good. Realism is good for you. And if she can get some Yankee suckers to give her money for her hopeless campaign, all the better. Let the progressives pay. Through the nose.

Rule 5: Alexandria Lainez

unf-guns-bans

My kind of gal, especially because she won a lawsuit to stop UNF from banning guns on campus. Which all but a halfwit progressive would know is only an invitation to violence. “Quick: Look Over Here, Thousands of Potential Victims.”

Note Alexandria’s pink holster. I hope she’s responsible enough to practice at a range and to be mentally ready, as all who carry should be.

UPDATE: A good guy with a gun stopped that Colorado high school shooting.

The Searchers

This is one hell of a story, as Hollywood director John Ford is reputed to have said of Alan LeMay’s epic tale of two 19th century Texas plainsmen and their search for a young girl kidnapped by the Comanches who murdered her parents, and three siblings.

Years ago I read about the John Wayne movie Ford made of the novel but I never saw it or read the book. Now I’ve read the book, thanks to a tip from J.D. at Mouth of the Brazos, and I see what the fuss was all about. It’s a classic Western, beautifully told in southwestern dialect (“Far behind him, the others put the squeeze to their horses, and lifted into a hard run”), about Texas pioneers on unforgiving terrain under pitiless weather,  Indian raids in general and the bloodthirsty Comanches in particular.

No sentiment is wasted on the “spiritual” Indians of contemporary myth, but likewise no space is wasted condemning their systematic rape, torture and gruesome mutilation of their helpless captives. They were what they were and LeMay details that and the reader is as relieved as the protagonists when the Texas Rangers and the U.S. Cavalry finally run them all down.

I believe I’ll skip the movie, though. While the John Wayne character dies in the book and his younger sidekick resolves the story, the reverse happens in the flicker. The star must triumph. I’m sure it’s a dandy show but I prefer LeMay’s telling. Even great directors like Ford and great actors like Wayne seldom match the power of their written sources.