Gun Free Zone

Attention Subjects: You are not to contradict what comes from the Government. Your elected representatives not only do not represent you anymore but actually order you to do their bidding forgetting that they work for you. Dissension must be curbed by ridicule (calling it AstroTurf as in fake grassroots) or to denounce it by emailing the White House and snitching on the dissenters. Just to be sure that these disruptors don’t take over Town Hall Meetings with their pesky questions, Union volunteers are now sucking up all available spaces in any room a Town Hall meeting is being held and removing (by force if necessary) those heathens who dare to oppose Obamacare.

Disclaimer: If you find this post offensive, racist and politically contrary against the Exalted One and his political bootlickers, please be free to contact SNITCH@WHITHEHOUSE.GOV … wait, I got it wrong, you must contact flag@whitehouse.gov and let them know that an enemy of the state is deeply conspiring against the Government by using that fishy First Amendment Right.

I read these words in an article by Pat Rogers about 2-3 years ago in a magazine. The first thing it did to me was to put a dent in the desire to obtaining a crapload of ancillary tactical “cool stuff” that I really did not need. The second thing was that made me sit down and figure out what do I really need according to the way I live.  Even though I might drool over the latest tactical fashion statement out of Blackhawk or have the urge to get me a very cool tactical vest with trauma plate and enough webbing to molle a lawnmower, Does my lifestyle and threats actually require it? The answers was enlightening and also made my wife happy because it would not deplete our meager bank account.

I live in South Florida. Heat and humidity are more than plain annoyances: wearing the wrong clothing will send you to the ER with a severe case of heat exhaustion and might even kill you (ask me how I know).  Does it make sense to wear an EOTac denim jacket? Heck no, no matter how many cool and hidden pockets to carry stuff it has. I am a sucker for vests, I’ve been wearing one type or another for 30+ years but considering the weather plus the unstoppable force of the calendar against my body,  I am forced to wear the lightest one I can buy. It does not have all the bells and whistles but I won’t have to pull over every 5 blocks for prompt hydration. I am even about to try a EOTac’s Tropical Sport Shirt and IWB holster because all those times I overdid it under the sun add up and I do not want to end up being berated by the wife while I lay in front of an AC vent and chugging Gatorade or in the hospital being hydrated with a bag full of liquid via needle sticking up my arm. I know I look cool in a bitchin’ tactical vest, but I do not have the desire to look that cool in ICU.

At home I am the typical SoFla (South Florida) guy wearing shorts and flip-flops so that sexy thigh holster in coyote brown not only look weird but it will chaff the hell off my delicate skin.  Solution? If I am not carrying a J-frame in the shorts pocket, there will be a weapon placed within three to five steps of wherever I am located.  Before you cry safety!, I must inform that I have no kids so gun access to minors is not an issue, specially since both cats have no opposable thumbs and have been trained in the Four Rules of Gun Safety. Very few friends ever come over and with one exception, the guns go into the safe while they are around. One gun will be holstered on me for the duration of the visit because Bad Guys will not hesitate to be impolite enough to ply their trade with people in the house.

An honest evaluation of your needs and conditions is fundamental to determine what gear you really need. You might be a young buck with tons of health to spare and a strong back which can withstand carrying an M4 all day, but if you live in any city or suburban area there is a great chance that somebody will see you when you go outside to mow the lawn and call the local authorities.  A sudden picnic with a dynamic entry courtesy of  your local SWAT team is not a enjoyable prospect in anybody’s schedule. If you are an old fart like myself, you are going to get tired soon and start ditching crap or losing your sharpness and attention to your surroundings which are more important than any gear you may carry.

Now let’s be real, if you hear somebody breaking in in the middle of the nigh,  Are you really going to waste time putting on the above mentioned very cool tactical vest with trauma plate with 6 spare mag for your Ugly Black Rifle, 2 sets of trauma kits, hydration bag and pouch for IPod? No, you will grab a secured yet readily accessible long or handgun, perhaps a spare mag, cell phone dialing 911 and you will make a stand in the safe room or your bedroom. No, you are not going to get the chance to use all the 6 pounds of cool gadgets (light, lasers in red and green, ACOG, range finder and bottle opener all in picatinny rails) because it would be the dumbest crap you can do since you bough the Barret .50 caliber rifle to kill the possums in your small city backyard.

So let’s be smart about our gear and adapt it to the reality we live in. Study your most realistic threats and plan accordingly.  We all like cool gear but it must be used in a way it helps our chances of surviving a confrontation.

So I am bored to the gills and looking in Netflix for something to watch under their recommendations when I notice this:

I am not sure what to make of this. Is it a case of search engine software gone stupid or does somebody at Neflix is afraid of hurting the feelings of sociopathic serial killers who, by definition have none? Then again we are talking about an industry that will award an Oscar for best documentary to any “film” from Michael Moore.

Next we will see Cesar Millan trying to fix the bad attitude of Fluffy the Werewolf who goes into a murdering rampage every full moon. I admit I’d unload some cash to watch the PPV and see all 45 seconds of Millan getting his ass ripped to pieces as he tries to leash a lycanthrope and taking him for a walk.

Oy!

I feel I repeat myself and I usually don’t like it, but I will make any excuse necessary to plug this book. I always found the horror genre boring and stupid in the way authors treat their readers. It seems to be engraved in the stone that is the official guidelines to write horror that the human/normal characters are highly mobile screaming morons that will not see what’s coming even though there have been plenty warnings and even then, they seem to resort to a McGyverish solution as last resort but only because they are about the only ones left, the monster is about to kill them, all their buddies have already suffered horrible deaths and they are late for the opening of the Starbucks around the corner.

So I bumped into Larry Correia’s website by chance and read the sample of his book which back then he was publishing on demand (Internet version of selling from his garage) and I got hooked. All horror creations seem to start with some poor soul being killed by the evil monster but in this book the main character decided to kick ass and park the monster on a gas guzzler. The fight is painfully real as you can almost feel every laceration and broken bone as it happens. Hell I could almost smell the blood and rotting body parts as I sped, slowed down and re-read the descriptions. Cherry on top? The good guy actually gets his own crap kicked out and must spend serious recovery time. Not your typical monster hogwash so it bade well as your non-standard horror book. I ordered the book, got it and read it two times in a row in 48 hours and only stopped under direct threat from the wife who demanded her turn with the book.

According to my dear wife who is a true horror freak, the book has the best of the great horror classics and none of the political correctness or dumbness that plagues the genre nowadays. The monsters are really monsters and not tortured souls with some stupid redeeming value or not-so-veiled sex appeal to entice lonesome bored housewives. Basically you do not imagine the lead vampire as a Fabio look-alike dressed in ruffles but bleeding, stinking, blood dripping creatures that need to be put down ASAP. From a male point of view, it answers the question that any guy has asked before “Why the hell they got into that situation without the proper amount of firepower?”. Let’s face it, when you start a book shooting a snub-nose and close it with a five kiloton tactical nuke, you know it is a damn good book. However, iIf you are a metrosexual, you may be disappointed at the lack of hair mousse, facials treatments and the extreme level of violence.

Monster Hunter International is available at most of your local chain bookstores line Barnes & Noble, Books A Million, Borders and of course via Amazon.com.

If you want to know more about Larry himself, check his blog Monster Hunter Nation and he was dragged into Facebook screaming and shooting his Saiga by his fans but he finally seems to be warming up to the idea somewhat.

So, what are you doing here? Go get the darn book!

If you don’t know it yet, the Obama Universal Health Care proposal is so bad that neither the President nor any member of Congress will be covered by it. Instead they will maintain their privately run insurance with all the great benefits that carries with it. Since this seems to be a tad hypocritical, Congressman John Flemming from Louisiana proposed and amendment that would demand that everybody our members in Congress to have the same health care they are trying to impose on the common folk.

If you think that our elected members in congress should not have special privileges and deal with the health issue as we do, I urge you to go to Congressman Fleming’s website (http://fleming.house.gov/) and sign the petition that states:

Sign up here if you believe any member of Congress who votes for a government run health care plan should be forced to participate in the plan themselves?

I mean, if the Socialized Health Care is the solution, why aren’t they taking it?

I just got off the phone with a fellow IDPA shooter who spent three days at Blackwater shooting till he dropped. My buddy is just a civilian who enjoys sports shooting and has guns for that purpose and self-defense, period. Unfortunately he had to deal with a couple of Civilian Armchair Commandos also attending who tried to indoctrinate him in the black arts of Bullshit Tactical Shooting and have him change is ways that were not “tactical enough” for the commandos.

First, some definitions: A Civilian Armchair Commando is a regular guy (as opposed to Operator or LEO) who spends time and money attending assorted shooting academies in order to become Walker Texas Ranger or Jack Bauer and equips himself with the latest and best operator gear in the market . He also expels amazing amounts of carbon dioxide telling everybody how they will react and kick the ass of any Bad Guy with the skills he acquired during his many pilgrimages through all these centers of shooting instruction. This is what I call Bullshit Tactical Shooting or believing that you as a civilian dictate the what, when, where and the outcome of a deadly force encounter.

In case you haven’t learned yet, let me spell it for you: We as Civilians do not get to choose the what, when, where and the outcome of a deadly force encounter. It is thrown on us by the Criminal who decided that a) You look like a soft target, b) He needs monies or some sort of instant gratification you can provide and c) thinks he can get away with it. A Civilian does not read minds, feel intentions or has supernatural powers or NSA electronic surveillance that will tell them that a Bad Guy is about to attack. And if by chance you get to know you are about to be attacked, the best thing to do is to get out of there! Who in his right mind will want to dance in front of a hail of bullets?  I am not a bulletproof super hero so I will exit stage left if given a quarter of a chance to avoid the situation. We are also bound by law not to be the aggressors because no crime has been committed. A Civilian will and can only react when there is imminent fear of death or grave bodily harm as stipulated in the law. If we don’t heed to this precept, we ourselves become the Bad Guys.

So, when I hear a Civilian Armchair Commando explaining in full detail about the tactics he is going to use, the super-duper equipment he will have and the dozen of magazines loaded with the latest magical man-stopper rounds, I feel the urgent need to laugh in his face. First because I know this idiot has never faced a feces-runnin’-down-your-pants situation and secondly because I can see this guy actually buying (if they were available) a set of pajamas in MARPAT with MOLLE and a whole bunch of attachments and weapons carrier to use in case the Bad Guy attacks while he goes to the fridge for a midnight snack.

We are not in a war zone so we cannot walk the streets armed with a rifle hanging from a sling and a sidearm on a thigh holster. Even at home we don’t (at least the sane majority do not) wear a MOLLE vest loaded with mag pouches, bowie knives and trauma kits or rig the doorbell to a claymore mine because you don’t know if it is the UPS guy delivering a package or an AlQeada terrorist trying to kill you. We do take the precautions, set the equipment according to our mission, capabilities and legalities which are the ones of a civilian encountering your run-of-the mill Bad Guy in the street or trying to break into our homes while we are inside.

The same apply for “Tactics” during a Deadly Force Encounter and that is to say, What frigging Tactics? The only Tactic is to pray to God you don’t get shot and for the other guy to stop being a threat. If you think you have time yo sit down and design a cohesive and invincible strategy when an attack is happening, then you better have you Life Insurance paid up and hope that the beneficiary will enjoy the monies for your hide. Some people still do not get that training is nothing more that the gathering of tools to be used instinctively in case of emergency. These tools (Mindset, Marksmanship and Gun Handling) are to be practiced over and over until they are deeply embedded in our brain and muscle memory so they are used without hesitation, without the need of retrieving them from the file cabinet of our brain; in other words, they become the instantaneous reaction to an aggressive, deadly and unlawful stimulus against you or your loved ones.

Rant Over, carry on.

Liberals consider that the life of a criminal convicted of a heinous crime is too precious and that he should spend the rest of his life being fed, clothed, housed and his health paid by our taxes instead of being executed. Yet the life of a law abiding, tax-paying senior citizen who was an example to the community, raised a family and built the American Dream can be disposed of if the computations of a bureaucrat indicate that it is not worth the money to extend his or her life under the provisions of the new Health Care Bill now being proposed in Congress.

Have politicians in Washington taken leave of their senses?