So a news story caught my eye today.  An 11 year old shot and killed a 16 year old in what the police are saying was an attempted break in.  I have no details on the case besides what was reported through various media sources.  The police say there was some evidence that the teen tried to break in a few times before.  On the other hand, a neighbor claims that it wasn’t a home invasion and that two boys had argued before the shooting.

Beyond that I know nothing about the case.  But seeing as this story has been covered by everybody so far, with the predictable politically polarized differing slants.  Because of this, and the fact that it took place in St. Louis (with everything else that has happened there in the last year) it has all the makings of a summer blockbuster of a media circus.

Thoughts?

So an 8 foot cobra is on the loose in Orlando.

This begs the question: what’s good CCW for a poisonous snake?

When I lived in South Dakota I shot a 6 foot rattle snake with a load of CCI 38 special bird shot.  It was effective but only up close, a lot closer than I’d ever like to get to a cobra.

Then again, most of Orlando is a gun free zone  (a lot of land is owned by Disney and is private property even if it is not inside one of the parks) so it may be a moot point.  I wonder if they are going to have to implement a snake free zone policy too?  I feel it will be just as effective in preventing snake related disaster.

There is a political theory known as the “Horseshoe Theory” that states that the political spectrum is not a straight line from far-left to far-right, but that as you go from the center towards either extreme, the political spectrum folds back on itself to the point where the far-left and far-right are nearly touching.

This has lead to a the creation of an interesting internet game, StormFront or  SJW.  It takes statements made in various internet posting from either the White Supremacist website StormFront or from SJW Tumblr and edits out key words and asks you to decide who said it.

Watching the coverage of the VA shooting, I think Vester Flanagan/Bryce William took the horseshoe and made it go full circle.  I remember when kicking off a race war was the paranoid fantasy of ultra-far-right-wing white supremacists.  It was easy for the media and the rest of society to dismiss those people as nut jobs.

With Flanagan, not so much.  Flanagan is the left-wing grievance industry personified, and this has led to some very odd reactions by those in on the left.  Community activist, liberal think tank CEO, and CNN commentator Sally Kohn made this tweet:

Kohn then goes on to explain how she believes violence is not justified… blah, blah, blah.  But the point is NOT ONE RESPECTABLE JOURNALIST looked at Dylan Roof’s manifesto and said “you know, he’s right about some stuff.”  Make no mistake about it: Flanagan/Williams is Roof, Roof is Flanagan/Williams.

A quick peek at some of Miguel’s previous posts, the internet, twitter, are just full of far-left wing/SJW hate.  Rather than tamp this down, the “thinkers” in the media are justifying it.  The media had to explain why violence in Ferguson and Baltimore was justified for reasons of Social Justice.  The #BlackLivesMatter activists have been emboldened to become more and more aggressive with candidates, ultimately shutting down an event by Bernie Sanders.  There has been a rise in police ambush shootings  which is believed to stem from a sense of social justice retribution.  And some of the other things the SJW crowd is calling for is downright horrifying (not a Poe’s Law parody), I’ve seen this movie, I don’t want to experience the sequel.

Here is the ultimate danger.  There were thousands of members of various far-right-wing, white supremacist, “militia” groups that rallied around the Waco Siege and Ruby Ridge massacre.  They published newsletters and had meetings, but were mostly harmless.  Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols killed 168 people following that rhetoric.  So if Flanagan/Williams is Roof, is there a SJW McVeigh around the corner?  And if that does happen, will we have the privilege of watching the smartest people on the news say “bombing a building is bad, but these people were justified in feeling that is it was because of oppression.”

I for one don’t want a race war.  I don’t want riots.  I don’t want want to be targeted for extermination or mutilation.  The social justice movement is reaching a critical mass.  I just hope it doesn’t blow us all to hell.

You know you are a gun nut when you measure your weight loss increments in what you can comfortably carry IWB.

(Actual conversation with the wife)

Her: “How is the new gym membership going?”

Me: “Good, I’ve already lost some weight.”

Her: “How much?”

Me: “Enough to go from my P238 to my LCR.”

Her: “What!?”

I have been working on this post for a while now, I apologize if it seems to ramble a little.  I was motivated to revive it because of a news story about an attack on a CCW permit holder.  This is not the first story I have read about a CCW permit holder getting taken down and not firing a shot.  I first started this post as a response to a post by Miguel regarding a failed DGU that resulted in the death of the defending party.  And of course there is the oft repeated anti-CCW argument that women are too weak to have or carry guns.

In each one of these cases, and those like them that I didn’t link to, the scenario begs the question: why have a gun if you are not prepared to use it effectively?  This post is my attempt to answer that question.

Many years ago when I was In ROTC in college, I would read whatever I could get my hands on regarding military strategy, tactics, and doctrine.  I was going to be a general.  Rommel you magnificent bastard, I read your book.  Needless to say, those plans did not come to fruition.

One of the more interesting books I read was by Samuel Lyman Atwood Marshall, the Chief Military Historian of the US Army for WWII.  Marshall discovered that about 80% of soldiers would no fire at the enemy with the intent to kill them.  Many never fired their weapon at all.  Of those who did, many would “pray and spray” or provide covering fire.  That is not to say the remaining soldiers were cowards.  They carried ammo, water, wounded, etc,. and provided for the war effort.  But it was a small minority of soldiers that could line up their sights on an enemy and pull the trigger with the intent to kill them.

This information is reinforced by the whole history of technology in combat, which served to separate the soldier from the killing he was expected to do.  The greater the distance, the better the solider was as killing: clubs to swords to spears to arrows to the long bow to muskets to artillery to bomber aircraft to ICBMs.  The further a soldier was from the casualties he was producing the easier it was for him to kill.  Arial bombardment and artillery produced far more casualties in war than small arms fire.

There is a reason for this, of course.  Humans are social animals; we do better in groups than on our own.  Empathy is part of that.  Evolution or nature or god or whatever has programmed us to be empathetic to our fellow humans, so that we don’t kill each other and instead work together.  The stronger the bond – family, clan, tribe, nation – the more empathetic we are.  It is hard to look someone in the face and kill them.  It goes against our empathetic nature.

So to get back to the original point of this post.  Why do I believe that a woman, fearing for her life from an ex didn’t kill him?  Why did two CCW permit holders not use their permitted guns to defend themselves?  I believe that despite owning a gun, obtaining a permit, and perhaps years of target practice, they weren’t prepared to kill.  That is a major emotional hurtle for a person to climb.

The military developed an entirely new training regiment prior to Vietnam with the goal of making 80% of solders combat effective.  There has been a downside to this.  It is believed that one of the reasons that America soldiers have suffered so much more emotional trauma (PTSD) in Vietnam  and the Middle East, compared to WWII, is that these young men and women have been trained to kill in combat, but do not know how to cope with the emotional ramifications of that when they return home.

So where does that leave us?  It is possible for a person to overcome their good, empathetic nature and defend themselves with lethal force.  If you choose to own and/or carry a gun for self defense, you must be emotionally prepared to use it.    If not, you may get killed by the psychopath who has no empathetic qualms about ending you.

Rest safe citizens of Ferguson, the Oath Keepers are on patrol!

On second thought… this is EXACTLY the wrong kind of image to be center state in Ferguson right now.  I get it, there is civil unrest.  A year ago there was looting and vandalism and riots.  You want somebody to keep the peace.  But this isn’t helping.

The reality as to what happened in Missouri a year ago are irrelevant at this point.  The narrative is in control this particular train and has the throttle wide open going into a dead man’s curve.  As far as the media and the public conscience are concerned there are only three important facts: dead black kid, white shooter, militaristic response by police to social injustice.  Guess what, the media just can’t wait for you to take a shot at another unarmed black kid to use you as an exemplar of the “racist, paranoid, white assault rifle owner.”

Go away.  I don’t care if you really were a Ranger or if you only played one online, you are fanning the flames and making the rest of us look bad.  And before you call me a hypocrite, the Koreans on the rooftops during the LA Riots were defending their business, not patrolling the streets looking like a Blackwater contractor guarding a VIP in the Green Zone.  Go home and get out of the spot light.  I don’t want to lose my AR because you didn’t know when to leave yours locked in the safe.

I’m a doctor and I play one on the Internet.  Not an MD mind you, but a PhD.  I have a dual concentration Metallurgy and Biomedical Engineering.  I bring this up not for braggadocio but for credentials.  So when I touch on matters of biomechanics, anatomy, and physiology, I am speaking with some level of authority.

In one of Miguel’s previous posts he quoted from some CSGV blowhard (emphasis mine):

“They are so terrified of having a simple physical confrontation (i.e., shoving match, fistfight)–and so bitter about what it might do to their pride and reputation if they come out on the losing side of the equation–that they would rather shoot and kill another human being than stand up and face that situation (which frequently is of their own making).” 

I’ll admit it, I am terrified of getting into a fistfight.  I’m not gonna take it outside.  I’m not gonna settle it like a man.  I will do everything I can to avoid a fight, and if that means I have to shoot you, guess what, I’m gonna shoot you (which believe me, I’d much rather not).

Here is why, in three words, I do not want to get into a fistfight: Traumatic Brain Injury.  The human brain is made up of relatively inelastic tissue, neurons and capillaries.  The brain sits in a sack of fluid called the dura matter.  This is inside the skull. When you take a punch to the head, your head goes from still to moving very quickly.  This linear and rotational acceleration causes the brain to smash around inside of your skull like dice in a shaker.

Every time your brain hits skull, it stretches.  When your brain stretches it tears, neurons rip away from each other and capillarities rupture.  Your brain starts to bleed.  Blood collects in the spongy tissue of the brain compressing it.  The brain starts to swell, squeezing it inside of the skull.  This compression and the torn blood vessels causes a loss of blood flow to regions of the brain.  Without blood, there is no oxygen, without oxygen, parts of the brain shut down.  Long enough without oxygen, the brain dies.  When the brain dies, so do you.

A solid punch can cause your brain to smack around inside your skull with the force of a high speed car accident.  And no, it doesn’t take a professional boxer to kill with with a punch.

I like my brain.  I spend long enough in school stuffing it full of facts.  I’m not going to let somebody try an kill it to prove my manliness.  Assuming that I survive, of course, it would me nice to still be able to come away remembering how to do math, or even my kid’s name.

So no.  I’m not going to fight you.  I really don’t want to.  It’s not so much that I’m a yellow bellied chicken.  I just don’t feel like having my neurons torn apart to prove to you that I’m a man.