A Detroit gun owner shot and killed an intruder who, along with an accomplice, tried to break into his home on Thursday. The second intruder managed to escape with his life and is currently being hunted by police.

via Police Say This Gun Owner Just Sent a Deadly Message to Detroit Criminals | TheBlaze.com.

This makes like the 5th or 6th story with a happy ending for Law Abiding Citizens in Detroit in the last two or three weeks. A person’s home is his/her castle and they have the absolute right to defend it against those who want to prey on them…or try if the homeowner is armed. Castle Doctrine just makes sense.

Yet in the Florida Legislature, there are a couple of bills (SB 116 & HB 4003) that would mandate Duty to Retreat even in your own dwelling.  Why would anybody think that basically giving criminals free access to private home is a good idea is beyond me.  The best I can imagine is that the originators of the bill have an insatiable thirst for blood and more government control. The good news is that HB 4003 has already been given an unfavorable vote by the Criminal Justice Subcommittee in the tune of 11 to 2.  Let’s hope SB 116 meets the same faith.

As for Detroit, let’s hope that the whinny heads of the city do not succumb to the temptation of canning the chief if some of those exalted individuals concerned for the rights of felons start complaining about their sacred right to sustain their meth and heroin habit with the property taken out of homes not of their own.

I am still mulling Michael Bane’s latest podcast about the 800 pound gorilla that is the situation with Connecticut. One of the things that I concur with him is that there is a lot of folks on the sidelines cheering for the mass arrests and/or killing of Gun Owners and that is not a healthy thing for a country.

Of course, their talk is propelled by the fact they think they are above any consequence if things go south.  They are not the ones that will be on either side of the door being kicked down so they think they are safe. They love to have some “morcilla” (blood sausage) but they do not want to dirty their pretty hands mixing the ingredients or cranking the grinder.

If you Google “why are anti gunners so violent” you get almost 7 million hits. From demanding that bounties be put on our heads to the death of our families to send us to camps to summary executions and all the gamut in between is fair play according to those pushing for the final solution to Gun Control. And I am not talking some two-bit hipster posting a raving reply while having a croissant at the local Panera, but heads of organized Gun Control organizations. In a world where somebody on our side gets tagged as dangerous and terrorist by the Southern Poverty Law Center if we tell anybody Molon Labe, the same rules apparently do not apply to those who are on the side of fewer Rights for the individual and they can get away with wishing us to re-education camps.

I fear that if it comes to showdown, the casualty list will reach far beyond those on either side of the door.  There is a stack of bills long overdue and only the smallest amount of reason is holding the collection services. And trying to hide behind the First Amendment will have the same power as giving the Nuremberg Defense: remember, Tokio Rose paid the piper. Aiding and abetting the extermination of your fellow citizens will not be easily swept under the rug.

And my brain keeps coming back to this scene from Band of Brothers “Why we fight.”

Webster: Shut up you Nazi fuck!
Baker: (in German) I’m not a Nazi!
Webster: Not a Nazi, sorry my mistake you fat fucking prick, what about a human being? Are you one of those? Or are you going to tell me you’ve never smelled the fucking stench!

When you click away in the interwebs without rhyme or reason, you are bound to find some interesting stuff. 

On September 18, 1926, a category 4 hurricane struck South Florida dead on. After the event was over, “372 persons had died in the storm and over 6,000 persons were injured.  Damages in 1926 dollars were estimated at $105 million, [which would be more than $100 billion in today’s dollar]” according to the Red Cross report of October of the same year.

Miami and the surrounding areas were young back then. The city was incorporated barely 30 years before and was still a mixture of agricultural land and escape destination for the rich of the times. Both got pretty much banged by an estimated 140 mph wind.

Experience with hurricanes, specially big ones was nonexistent. It is said that the biggest loss of life happened when the eye of the hurricane passed over Miami and people flocked to the street unaware that  they were only halfway through the experience.

The National Weather Service has a very decent page with the historical records including the actual weather bureau report of the hurricane and pictures like the ones I posted here.

Rich T. sent me a link to a news item on the local Chicago ABC station. “covering” Illinois Gun Owners Lobby Day but “balanced with Moms Demand Action.

“There is still quite the disparity in coverage. The four Moms got 1 minute 10 seconds air time in the news broadcast. That’s 17.5 seconds per person. There was only 34 seconds showing the march and speeches at IGOLD; that’s 0.0085 seconds per person assuming there were 4,000 people at the event.

Another way to look at it is four people received 60% of the airtime in the segment, 4,000 people received 20% of the available airtime. The missing 20% was a talking head (not David Byrne).

Rich “

These five mistakes share some common factors: they almost all involve lies and deception to sell the problem. In the lone exception – Colorado – they skipped selling it altogether and went straight to instituting policy without popular support. This is the second shared characteristic: they all involve attempts to push policy without broad support from ‘We the People’. Finally, each of the proposed policies do nothing to make people legitimately safer. While outside the scope of this article, they all, in fact, are counter-productive.

via Top 5 Gun Control Failures of 2013.

Read the article, it is right on the nose and we have discussed the points over and over in this and other blogs. I would add as mega-mistake allowing Dianne Feinstein’s over-sweeping Gun Ban bill to even hit the floor of Congress. It was an obvious chicken-kaka bill and lifted the mask about their true intentions. Then again they were 100% sure that they were going to win.

They were popping the corks of the organically grown, non-alcoholic champagne at MDA yesterday, trying to celebrate an equally fake victory.

But not even their fellow Gun Control buddies could swallow the lump of dung:

But what is so bad about the new Facebook regulations that have the Bradys fuming? Basically is a syphilitic hog with a liberal application of Mary Kay products that Shannon Watts wants to parade: It does nothing to curtail the status quo and at most, it will be a short-lasting nuisance.

From the the press release by the Facebook Newsroom:

Facebook, at its heart, is about helping people connect and communicate. Because of the diversity of people and cultures on our services, we know that people sometimes post or share things that may be controversial or objectionable. We work hard to find a balance between enabling people to express themselves about topics that are important to them, and creating an environment that is safe and respectful.

So they know there is stuff out there that some people may not like, but they  are also caught in the debacle that if they start shunning user because some other idiots dislike what they say, do, trade or sale, Facebook will find itself sharing notes with My Space.

This balance is important to how we view commercial activity on Facebook or Instagram. We have strict rules about how businesses can use our advertising tools. For example, we do not permit advertising for illegal drugs, tobacco products, prescription pharmaceuticals, weapons, and several other products and services, and restrict advertising for products such as alcohol, adult products, and gaming. In all cases, we have systems in place to review and remove advertising that violates our policies, is false, deceptive, or misleading.

And they don’t which it is OK as they own the place.

Of course, most of our tools are free to use, and many people and organizations use them to establish a presence on Facebook, including to promote commercial transactions. While people can’t use our services to actually sell things to each other, they can set up a Page or make an occasional post to their Timeline to find a roommate, sell a home, or solicit contributions for a church or nonprofit organization. Just like posting on a bulletin board at a supermarket or community center, these activities may be considered commercial, but we treat this type of sharing like any other type of sharing on our services – and we respond to reports when something violates our Community Standards.

They are saying here: “If it is legal, we would look like idiots trying to ban it. And we really don’t want to start pissing people off and having them move to Google Plus.”

People sometimes use our free tools to discuss products that are regulated or controversial. In some cases they promote these products for sale or use, even though it’s not possible to complete a sale on Facebook or Instagram. While we’ve recently heard specific concerns from people about offers for the private sales of firearms, this is one of many areas where we face a difficult challenge balancing individuals’ desire to express themselves on our services, and recognizing that this speech may have consequences elsewhere.

Translation: “What do you want us to do? It is LEGAL. And if they are doing something illegal, we ain’t cops!”

Today, we are introducing a series of new educational and enforcement efforts for people discussing the private sale of regulated items:

• Any time we receive a report on Facebook about a post promoting the private sale of a commonly regulated item, we will send a message to that person reminding him or her to comply with relevant laws and regulations. We will also limit access to that post to people over the age of 18.

• We will require Pages that are primarily used by people to promote the private sale of commonly regulated goods or services to include language that clearly reminds people of the importance of understanding and complying with relevant laws and regulations, and limit access to people over the age of 18 or older if required by applicable law.

• We will provide special in-app education on Instagram for those who search for sales or promotions of firearms.

• We will not permit people to post offers to sell regulated items that indicate a willingness to evade or help others evade the law. For example, private sellers of firearms in the U.S. will not be permitted to specify “no background check required,” nor can they offer to transact across state lines without a licensed firearms dealer.

And somebody just got her new Pink Cadillac somewhere near Facebook HQ. These new “efforts” have the same power of prevention as a Gun Free Zone sign but with the advantage that you can post a picture of a kitty at the same time.

I think even Facebook Intelligentsia realized that Moms were not after curbing possible violation of state or federal firearms laws but just to silence Gun Owners in general. The monetary consequences of censoring such a large group of people just because another group of people do not like them is a risky play, specially when they have a tradition of not banning offensive pages that go against the grain of Mainstream America. They would make them a bunch of progressive-influenced hypocrites and that would piss off about 2/3 of the US Market.

At most, expect Moms Acolytes going from Gun page to Gun page, reporting them to Facebook…. basically annoying both parties till they get spanked for trolling.

Moms Demand would have been more effective if they just opened another lemonade stand in the middle of a highway.

URGENT UPDATE!

A preview of Facebook’s New Gun Sales Restriction System

And Sharp as a Marble wins the Internets today.

PS: about the original title, I was not drunk, I just had not ingested enough coffee then 😛

It is easy to get caught up in the mystique and history of the 1911, but the design is over 100 years old, and we have learned a few things about designing and manufacturing since then.  If you enjoy the craftsmanship of a finely built 1911 or you enjoy tinkering on your own, by all means continue to enjoy them.  However, if training, shooting, and performance is your primary goal and you lack the resources, time, patience, or knowledge to keep after a 1911, then be realistic and choose something more modern.

via My Personal Path Away From The 1911 | Modern Service Weapons.

The Cult of the 1911 is a funny one. The acolytes scream a top of their lungs that the venerable gun is the best semi auto ever designed and that J.M Browning was a genius, but the next thing they do is screw around with the gun to make it “better.”

And the darn thing is a good gun or used to be. Stories of 1911s found in attic stashed away since WWII shooting without a hiccup without even the benefit of a dose of lubrication are not unheard of. But if you have spent any time at a range, specially at a competition, you cannot see but seeing a 1911 throwing a tantrum and acting like a congressman.  But both guns are not the same: one was made for warfare and to survive its dirty and challenging environment with loose tolerances and the other is a distant cousin tuned for the mythical high performance and tolerances so tight, air molecules have trouble existing inside.

A true-to-Browning 1911 is more $400 AK-47 than $3,000 M-4. But 1911 owners for generations now have treated and built it more like a finely tuned Ferrari than the do-all tractor in the farm. And the sad part is that I don’t think there is one single manufacturer that builds the 1911 to the original specs (Cylinder & Slide built a special batch of 100 following the original blueprints) so we are stuck with a bunch of possible maniac girlfriends that can go south on us at any second.

JMB would go Mormon on us.