Gun Free Zone

BLUF: Words have meaning, and while that meaning can change over time, we need to take the time to understand. This means looking at words in context, at the time they were written, while still using a modern eye to examine them.

A number of years ago, I was attending a local church service, and the pastor alluded to the idea that shepherds were dirty social outcasts who everyone thought poorly of. His proof for this was that, when Samuel called David in from the sheepfold, he was filthy when he arrived, that David was, “just a shepherd.” I was a bit taken aback by this, because that’s not what history (or Biblical literature, btw) teaches us. I first learned about this from a Jewish scholar named Joel Hoffman, author of And God Said: How Translations Conceal the Bible’s Original Meaning. I went to a talk he was having at a local synagogue, and the history of shepherds was the first thing he talked about.

Shepherds were tasked with protecting their flocks of sheep, out in the wilderness at the edge of the farmland surrounding their cities and towns. So you had a social center, a city or town, and outside that was farmland, and outside that was grazing for the sheep. Out there, shepherds had to contend with wolves, panthers, hyenas, feral pigs, foxes, jackals, and lions. Today, when we face up to those kinds of odds, we go armed with an AR-15 or other firearm. They had, and I kid you not, a stick (shepherd’s staff) and a sling with whatever rocks they could find (and the shepherd’s staff became the king’s scepter, and the rocks became the orb, later in history). That was it. Shepherds were, to say the least, bad ass.

In Biblical times, shepherds were seen as a form of superhero. They were the combat veterans, the first line of defense in case of an attack (by animal or human enemy). They had to defend their sheep with their lives, because those sheep were literally their livelihood. They were, indeed, dirty fellows because they lived out in the fields with greasy and filthy sheep. They slept in the open. They didn’t bathe often. So yes, when Samuel called David in to proclaim him the new leader of Israel, he was probably stinky and dirty. When the High Priest of your people summons you, you don’t stop long enough to grab a shower and a change of clothes; you hightail it to his presence, at all speed. No one thought David was stupid or idiotic. He was just young, the youngest of all his brothers, with a lot less life experience.

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There was a snarky comment recently wondering what language I dream in.

Not so snarky, actually.

If you were to ask my lady what language I dream in, she would be likely to answer, “I don’t know, but he types on my back in his sleep.”

Yes, I program in my sleep. I code while in the shower. I solve problems, regardless of what I’m doing.

I started programming experience with “procedural programming”. That is to say, a series of procedures that call each other and return results.

As part of that training, I quickly realized that any problem in programming could be broken into smaller and smaller “functions” or “procedures” until you were at the single machine instruction level.

For me, programming is broken into developing a series of black boxes that are connected to produce results.

If you look at a problem, “I want to layout a line of text on a screen with word wrapping”, it can be broken into smaller questions.

“I want to know the number of characters that will fit on the remainder of this line.” When black boxing, you put a function or procedure in place and assume it works. It doesn’t matter if it does or not. You can even fake it. Instead of actually doing a calculation, it can just return a constant.

Now that I’ve made this “magic” black box, I use it to solve the harder problem. Once that is solved, I can address the black box and make it work correctly.

I combine this with what I call “railroad structuring”.

Suppose that the final step in a black box is to draw a text on the screen. You are given a data structure that contains strings of text with markup. The data structure imparts formatting on the text as well.

You could write code that looks at the data structure and “does the right thing”. You would then end up with dozens of pieces of code, all that are supposed to do “the right thing”. Needless to say, this is seldom the case, at least a few of those places will do the wrong thing. And if you fix it in one place, you have to fix it in all other places.

So I create the end game, “draw the string ‘text’ at ‘position’ using ‘formatting'”. The rest of the code works to create “text”, “position” and “formatting”.

if the original text had markup in it, then that little section would modify text and create formatting to match the requirements of the markup. After that is done, we have ‘text’, ‘position’ and ‘formatting’. At each step, the result is always ‘text’, ‘position’ and ‘formatting’.

So, when somebody asks, “What language do you dream in?” The answer is, “my programming language.”

Because all computer languages look the same to me, but for syntax, it doesn’t matter. I always know what I want the language to do. I might have to look up the syntax for a particular thing, but that’s never an issue.

As an example:

for i in range(0,9):
print(i)


and


for (i=0; i<10; i++) {
fprintf("%d", i);
}


Do the same thing, I think. Because ‘range()’ is python and I’m never sure about it, I’ll look it up to find out if it gives me 0 through 8 or 0 through 9.

Still, the logic is the same and correct for me.

This is a follow up of the post Disappointing AR9 news.

For those coming late to the festivities, I acquired from different sources a 9mm KVP upper and a Spike’s Tactical lower (Glock mag compatible) and they refused to mate properly.

On a rare attack of common sense, I decided to email both Kaw Valley Precision and Spike’s Tactical to get some answer. First of all, both companies were exceedingly fast on replying to my query for which I am happy and encouraged since past experiences with other companies have been utterly disgraceful.

Ian Reel from KVP was upfront and stated that he had not seen many lowers like mine.  I won’t deny I would have been a tad incredulous, but reader @Snarkyposters from X (thankyouthankyou) had already pointed me to several AR9 sources of information and I formed the suspicion that this platform is a cluster flock of seagulls.

And then I got the email from John Dowhy of Spike’s Tactical which gave me the final answer to my question(s):

Hi Miguel,

Our Glock-style 9mm Lower has a LRBHO bracket that runs along the side of the magwell. Our 9mm Uppers have a relief cut (in the picture attached) to accommodate for that bracket. Other brands of Uppers often do not fit with our Lower because of just what you highlighted. The Upper hits the bracket and cannot close.

There is no Milspec for 9mm AR’s so mixing brands can be problematic. We have had customers make a relief cut themselves in other brands of Uppers or abandon the other brand and use our Upper.

Bingo! Let me show again the photo of my upper:

The arrow points to the point of unwanted contact between upper an lower and the upper does not have the relief cut.

Mystery solved. Problem? Not so much.

There is no Milspec for 9mm AR’s so mixing brands can be problematic.

Those are words you need to live by if you want to build your AR9.

Right now, I see myself with two AR9 half builds and nowhere to go unless I decide to sink more money in the project which I am not happy to do. I may go with a regular 5,56 lower and one of those adapters for the magwell, but the good ones cost almost as much as a dedicated lower.

I’ll just hit the pause button for a while till some smarts come to me.

The Left is killing gun control.

Yes, they want it and want to implement it, but their actions in other areas are driving people away from supporting it.

Californians are buying up guns after Border Patrol starts dumping thousands of migrants on streets

Customers packed Cory Gautereaux’s small gun store northeast of San Diego on a recent Friday afternoon.

Many of the people buying pistols at Firearms Unlimited California said they were concerned about the massive number of migrants being released onto the local streets after the area became a hub for the crisis at the border — which is just 25 miles from El Cajon, a Southern California suburb of 105,000 people.

Roughly 125,000 migrants have been released onto the streets in the San Diego area since September, which has been unsettling for Firearms Unlimited California owner Cory Gautereaux and his customers.

The US Border Patrol has begun busing migrants who claim asylum into the community and releasing them onto the streets, he said.

“That’s driven business to us,” he added.

Local Sharie Finn told The Post that the border issue “1,000%” plays a role in her decision to buy a gun, pointing to the Glock pistol in her bag.

El Cajon Mayor Bill Wells acknowledges his residents don’t feel safe because of the flood of illegal border crossers in his city.

“We see the massive amounts of violence that’s happening, a lot from the immigrant situation, but a lot from the homeless situation as well,” Wells told The Post, adding: “People are frightened and I do believe they’re arming themselves more.”

Gun control, like open borders sounds wonderful to Leftists in gated communities where they don’t suffer consequences.

For the average person, watching illegal immigrants bring crime to their communities where the police have been defunded or hamstrung, they want guns to protect themselves.

California Leftists will still push gun control, but the average Californian is learning how important having a gun to defend yourself actually is.

This will happen all over the country as the cloistered Left makes things worse.

I grew up listening to my parents’ music. I later started listening to WCMS 99.9FM. “Almost Perfect Radio” Their original was “Western and Country Music Station”.

Most of the music my parents owned had been transferred to reel-to-reel tape. This is actually a real problem. There were a couple of “albums” that I wish I knew the names of.

When I went to University, I was exposed to different music. Mostly because, being a collage town, they had no country music radio station. If I would rather not listen to the latest pop music, I had to find my own.

Then a fantastic thing happened, CD’s. Because the CD was not harmed when played, the CD emporium would let you listen to a CD before you purchased it. And boy did I listen to a lot. I purchased even more.

When I divorced my first wife, that CD collection was a sticking point. I ripped all of those CDs. All 500+ of them.

And then google ate it. GRRRRR

Not having the CDs in front of me, I’ve had to remember albums I used to listen to. The other night I listened to the London stage recording of ‘Cats’. Why? Because it was one of those albums I used to own.

So here is a song from a group I use to listen to:

Sadly, more and more that is getting to be a shitty wishful thinking.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WSMV) – A woman was kidnapped, brutally beaten and raped by a man at a Nashville apartment on Friday, according to the Metro Nashville Police Department.

Carl Rouse Jr., 49, is charged with especially aggravated kidnapping and rape, among other charges.

On April 12, Hermitage patrol officers responded to 644 Glastonbury Road to a reported assault at Glastonbury Woods Apartments. The victim was transported to Vanderbilt University Medical Center, where police interviewed her. The victim told police she and friends were hanging out at an apartment when Rouse entered and began yelling at them.

She said he took her phone and wallet and began punching her in her head repeatedly, saying she was not leaving, and he was not going to let her go, according to an arrest report. Rouse then dragged the woman to a bedroom, threw her on a bed and raped her, according to police. The woman’s husband later walked into the apartment and got her help.

At VUMC, the woman went through medical scans which revealed she had a fractured neck and face, along with a severe cut on her head. She had additional bruising on the face, arms and head, police said.

Man charged after woman brutally beaten, raped in Nashville (wsmv.com)

I found Carl Rouse’s criminal history and it dates back to the 90s. This fucker should have been in prison, but they kept letting him go. From drug dealing to Felon in possession of a firearm and even a prior case similar to this one last year, this guy has over 50 felonies charge in his record, but mostly were either dismissed or he was given parole which he went to violate.

He remains jailed Monday morning on more than $200,000 bond.

He’ll be walking free soon.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WSMV) – This week the Tennessee House could pass a bill that would let teachers carry a concealed gun. The bill would allow staff members in private and public schools to carry if they do the required 40-hour training and get approved by authorities.

Monday, Melissa Alexander came to the Cordell Hull Building with her son, a Covenant School student, for a press conference about the bill.

“My son is sitting right here because he was protected by his teacher that day,” she pointed out.

 

Covenant School moms try to stall House bill to arm teachers (wsmv.com)

No lady, your son is sitting right here because people with guns and the willpower to use them showed up and put the asshole Audrey Hale down.

They read a statement from a Covenant School teacher to try and stop the bill before it passes the House.

“I simply cannot imagine how I could have pulled out a gun with 10 children underfoot and in my arms,” Alexander read from the statement.

The words are from a preschool teacher who watched 13 students in a small closet the day of the shooting.

 

If you cannot figure that one out, you have no business being a teacher. I bet she has a car and drives it every day, something a bit more complex than drawing a gun and pulling the trigger at somebody threatening the kids she claims to want safe. Yet, she sends an anonymous message seeking pity and support for not doing what was right.

I understand why more parents want to homeschool and they are 100% right.