Gun Free Zone

There are people who carry bear spray for self-defense because it’s stronger than regular pepper spray.

DO NOT DO THIS.

Bear spray is regulated by the EPA as a pesticide. I’m not joking.

Using it on a human is a violation of federal law.

In the wrong jurisdiction, the right prosecutor or DA will nail your ass to the wall for using it in self-defense.

Do not give the Progressive prosecutor who hates law abiding citizen and loves criminals a reason to make you the bad guy.

Look up you local laws on the strongest pepper spray for humans you can buy, and if there are any canister size limits, and obey the law.

Step one is defending yourself.

Step two is not going to prison.

New York City is an absolute fucking hellhole.

Guy walks home from work in NYC and this happens to him… pic.twitter.com/SqUnDSblrf

— Freakouts & Crazy Content (@FightMate) February 14, 2024

I guarantee you that if that dude wasn’t as big as he is, those kids would have tried to rob him or worse.

Faces completely covered, attacking from behind, it’s obvious they are experienced at criminal mischief.

This guy was just more prey than they were capable of taking, so they harassed him instead.

His tactic of recording them helped too, but recording doesn’t stop violence. It only let’s the police see who did it.

Carry everywhere, both lethal and non lethal, and watch your back.

Miguel talks about his hurricane kit. We have the storm kit.

The first thing we did in deciding what was needed for our storm kit was to determine what we were likely to experience, and under what circumstances.

There are three possible causes, winter storm, summer storm, social unrest.

The most likely is the winter storm. Summer storms are not as bad, in general.

Using the rule of threes, the first thing on the list is medical for a winter storm.

We have all of our medications at hand. Losing power doesn’t change that.

A massive part of the first requirement is hygiene. That is the ability to clean ourselves, clean our clothing, and to use the toilet.

If we can heat water, which we can, then we can clean ourselves. We have a propane gas kitchen stove, we have a propane burner for heating big pots of water, and we have wood to burn to make heat for heating water.

That would be enough for sponge baths. We also have solar chargers and a battery-powered shower unit. Fill a five gallon bucket with hot water. Drop the intake into the bucket. Press the button and hot water comes out the hand-held shower head.

Learn to take ship showers and 5 gals is more than enough.

We collect that water for flushing the toilet. We live at the top of a hill. There is enough “down hill” flow that we would not have to worry about back flow from the sewer lines. As mean and nasty as it might be, I know that there are houses down stream from us that would back flow, long before that shit got to us.

We have a manual washing station for clothing. Half fill a five gallon bucket with warm water, add a bit of wash soap. Use the plunger, agitator. 30 to 45 minutes of work later, you have clean clothes. We don’t have an easy way to get the water out, so that would be done manually. Painful, but not a showstopper.

We buy soap bars in bulk. I happen to use shampoo bars, which have great shelf life and are small. We have wash soap and can make more if needed. We’ve made soap in the past and can make more if needed.

In other words, some five gallon buckets, a recharging method, and a battery-powered shower head gives us our hygiene.

Our next item is shelter.

The power goes out! Everybody grab their Get Out Of Dodge Expeditiously (G.O.O.D.E) bag! We are going to live in the woods until the power comes back.

DOH! That’s not how it works. The best shelter we have is our home. It is water tight, wind tight, and insulated.

We still require some heat, but not as much as we would if we were outside in the elements.

First, we have convenient heaters. That is to say, we have both propane and kerosene indoor safe heaters. The kerosene puts out enough BTUs to heat most of the lower living area. It burns for about 10 hours on one fill.

The propane puts out heat, but I don’t like it. It is just another source of heat, if we needed it, from an alternative fuel.

We then have the wood stove. That is a primary heating method.

Finally, we have an H45 military heater. If I needed to use it, I would take the wood stove out of production to use its thimble for the H45. This thing will burn almost any sort of liquid fuel. In a worse case situation, I could pull fuel from the furnace fuel tank to run this thing.

Next in the rule of threes is water. We normally have 10 gallons of water in water cubes, ready to use in an emergency. We have the hot water tank for secondary needs. We have multiple large containers for gathering water in other ways. There is normally plenty of snow during the winter and there is the lake when it is not frozen.

The takeaway from this is that we have water, we can get water, we can filter the water to make it potable.

We have a couple of 250 gallon tanks that I’m going to setup for catching rain water. Those can be used for a source of water as well.

Food, we have lots of food put away. We can cook it on the stove, we can cook over a fire, it is easy enough to do. We have yeast and flour as well as wheat berries.

This is Hagar’s bread from the weekend. She made it at a 1700s even at a living museum. She baked it in a Dutch oven.

For tools, we have things that require power, but for the most part, we have backups that are manual and we have used all those tools.

You have to use the tools to know what they can and cannot do. As well as what you can, and cannot do.

My daughter gave me a hand generator to charge USB devices. It works. I can’t even put a 10 minute charge on my phone. My phone consumes more power than I can generate per unit time. On the other hand, the solar chargers do work.

(650 words)

When I read the filings of the plaintiffs (good guys), it is almost always respectful of the state. They might discuss the challenged statute in negative terms, but there was always a certain level of respect for the state and the courts.

That seems to be changing.

Ok, that was the gantlet across the face, not to the ground. That should leave marks.

The reply then continues by pointing out that PICA requires people to register their “naughty guns”. The Illinois State Police webpage tells the subjects of Illinois that they will be arrested and charged if they don’t register their “naughty guns”.

This is expert level trolling. This case was just vacated and remanded to the district court by the Seventh Circuit court.

The “same” Seventh Circuit court, in November, had said that it wasn’t weapons in common use that controlled, instead it was if the state or the court decided that something was more suited to the military.

They also claim that Bruen, and Heller applied circular logic. All of this because of a throw-away line in dicta in Heller which sought to protect the NFA.

This was a short filing. Only eleven pages or so.

Washington Gun Law and Mark Smith are both saying that the petitions for cert coming from the Fourth, Second(?) and Seventh Circuits are full of trolling.

I went to my local Publix and did a double take.

Good news: My Hurricane kit is still in its case ready to use.

Maratac ¼” Pen Driver

Tool one and modifications abandoned, I came back to this driver I had found in my initial searches but had passed over at the time because I wanted something that held more bits if possible. Perfect being the enemy of the good in mind, I purchased this and resolved to use it, and boy am I glad I did!

Admittedly, my time on this tool is still quite low, only about 3 weeks, but I’m very satisfied with it already. I wasn’t originally sold on the idea that this did not have a cap to help retain the bit that is in it and to protect whatever else is in your pocket/the pocket itself from the bit. However, I have found this hasn’t been a real issue. The magnet that retains the bit is super strong, and I have been keeping this clipped to the pocket like a knife, that keeps the tip from rubbing against pretty much everything. Carpenter jeans or pants with a mid leg pocket are even better for this.

The included bits were a Phillips #0, #1 and two flat heads; a large and small. I swapped the Phillips #1 and the small flat head for a T15 Torx security and a Phillips #2. As we know, Phillips #2 is the most used screw size in everyday life and the T15 Torx security bit is specific to me and my work tasks; I have a large number of computers that use that to secure the case side for some reason. I opted to keep the Phillips #0 because it will will work in a Phillips #1 screw in a pinch and let me get at smaller stuff. I kept the larger flat bit because I figured most Phillips needs are covered, so a small flat bit wasn’t needed as a Phillips backup, there are occasionally the huge flat head screws you come across that need a big bit, and if I decided to pry on anything with it, the bigger bit will probably be more handy.

Now, how do we make the perfect more perfecter? A number of ways of course! You didn’t think I’d be satisfied with this things how it is did you?

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I have referred to the Victorinox Trekker before and still stands as my regular EDC tool. The combination of a proven SAK design with a one-handed opening locking blade is just too good to ignore.

The Leatherman Kick is not carried on body (I have enough heavy crap in the pants as it is), but it is always very close by and if I need to use it repeatedly, I will clip it on the belt with a pouch I got in Amazon.
The one that I also carry constantly is the Victorinox Swiss Card. I got mine 10 years ago and it comes handy when you need to do some minor adjustments or openings, but a normal size blade or other tool may be frown upon and snitched by coworkers. It permanently resides in my wallet, and I don’t even think about it unless I need it.