I am taking a little break after spending a better part of my waking hours today filling 17 pages to apply for a Florida’s Slot Machine Individual Occupational License and Professional or Business Employee Supplemental Information. If you want to work in any casino in Florida in any capacity (may it be as owner,  a blackjack dealer or sweeping the sidewalks) you must get this license. The amount of information required by the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation is so intrusive it is ticking me off royally but I got to think that about half the people in our current administration in DC wouldn’t be able to apply for this license at all. Florida demands info for proof of citizenship as in a Birth Certificate to IRS records to having never been in an police investigation, fraud, dishonorable discharge, any civil, criminal or investigative procedure, Grand Jury investigations, pardons, local or state code violations, etc.

Geez…. To think I am more prepared to be Czar or Secretary of something than the Hope & Change Gang.

Your hard cover is way low so you must do some dirt hugging in order to avoid catching some rounds from the bad guys and return some of your own. But, curses! You are out of ammo and must reload!

My dear buddy Dale does a great job even though he is missing half his left thumb and has just had a minor procedure to his left elbow. Click on the pic for full size.

PS: Dale reminds me we in the Gun Culture, while appreciative and considerate of people’s misfortunes, tend to joke and give a hard time to anybody we can get away with specially if you partially lost a digit with a table saw because you were thinking about American Idol or some other irreverent crap.  Some of the jokes and nasties directed at Dale after his accident are: “You are the only person I know who actually stuck his thumb up his ass, but you were not supposed to leave it in there.” “There goes your career a boxing referee.” “Borg Designation: 9 1/2 of 10.” “How are you gonna hunt for boogers now?” Dale has aimed some jokes at himself “I get 10% off in manicures now.” “You know that magic trick where you make it look like you are pulling your thumb off? I overdid it.”

So we are a tad sick…. so what? 😉

Browsing through Youtube, I landed on a batch of clips titled “Why Girls (or women) shouldn’t shoot (Desert Eagle, AK 47, 12 gauge shotguns, your-pick-here.) It really pisses me off twofold: first, what kind of low life sets up an inexperienced woman with a firearm, tapes her failure and posts its in the internet for the world to laugh at her? And second, Moron Boyfriend (probably a 3per) just transformed this woman into a full fledged victim because she will probably never touch another firearm again even if her life depends on it!

Ladies, if you are dating an idiot like that, dump his ass. If you are married to one, divorce him, take all his worldly posessions and move next door to a cute firearms instructor. There is no reason to be afraid of guns other than not being trained and not knowing how to handle one. There are a lot of firearms instructors that will teach you the basics and the more advanced stuff so you can defend yourself.  And there is a program called First Shots where you can go get your first experience with firearms for free.

Even though the net is plagued with the above mentioned videos, you can easily find the good ones like this young lady shooting for the first time and getting good at it or a Liberal shooting for the first time or a 12 year old girl shooting a full size .45 or young Heather shooting full size .357 Magnum and sharing her thoughts and even a woman shooting a supressed (gasp!) fully automatic MP-5. All of them have also another thing in common: They are smiling which means they are having fun! What are the odds?

And the love of my life shooting her Rossi snub nose in .357 Magnum. She is so good at it I am a well behaved hubby!

Go get some training, get empowered and have some fun!

Great cartoon I just got in an email.

Those who ignore the past are condemned to repeat it………. Hopefully.

Reading in the latest tactical mag rag about a new knife reminded me of a gathering of shooters in a restaurant after a match. There were some 10-12 of us and a female in the group asked: “Does anybody have a knife?” some 11 arms raised and 11 clicks were heard as folding knives from Kershaw to Cold Steel were presented to the solicitor.

The restaurant got vewy vewy quiet. Next words heard were from the lady: “You a-holes.” After that, we started to comment on what we carry besides our guns and people started to unload on top of the table: knives, multitools, lights, digital cameras, cellphones, cellphones with cameras, pens, pads, PDAs, spare ammo, etc. Nobody carry less than 2 knives besides the one in the multitool. Most carried one light and some two. And I think all of us had some sort of back ailment. No kidding! In the meantime the restaurant remained vewy vewy quiet.

No wonder my wife says we shooters are a weird bunch.

I finished Jim Cirillo’s Tales of the Stakeout Squad last night. I was expecting a book full of tales of heroism and deeds of super humans. What I got was a deep class on the reality of a gun fight. Don’t misunderstand me, you do get great stories and a glimpse in the head and spirit of a great man (He is another character I will miss never meeting like the late Col. Cooper) but I was not expecting the eye opening information Jim Cirillo’s stories would provide. His work with the Stake Out Squad is just amazing: The selection of the personnel, the weapons they chose, the selection of the locales, shot placement, ammunition and the care for innocent bystanders is just amazing.  Of course kudos have to go to Paul Kirchner who interviewed and collected hours of Cirillo’s bon mots and accounts.

So get the book, read it, read it again and then read it once more. The experiences of a gunfighter  and certified good guy can only serve us well and we will honor him by learning from him. There is a quote in the book from Cirillo that says: ” In teaching a student how to shoot, that’s where I shine.” He still does through this book and I could not think of a better memorial to his life.