There be guns in Mars!

Astronomer Joe White could hardly believe his eyes while studying footage beamed back from the planet by NASA’s Curiosity rover.

The 45-year-old, from Bristol, spotted what seems to be an old-fashioned pistol lying on the face of the Red Planet.

The handle and barrel of the gun-shaped rock are clearly defined, sitting amongst much smaller pieces of rubble on the surface of Mars.

“This object is about five to eight inches long and looks very much like an old flintlock pistol with a trigger, barrel and handle clearly visible.

via A gun on Mars? Astronomer spots weapon in Curiosity rover pictures | Nature | News | Daily Express.

OK., you can stop laughing now, they are being serious.

But just imagine the downfall. The Conspiracy Theory people are gonna have multicolored kitties, specially after Senator Ted Cruz became the chairman of the Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Science, Space, and Competitiveness which oversees NASA. Obviously a Libertarian/Conservative/Tea Party conspiracy to bring the invasion of the planet and the resurrection of Ronald Reagan.

In New York, Everytown and Moms Demand are trying to figure out how to send the No More Names tour bus all the way to Mars. I figure they are talking to either the Russians or the Virgin Atlantic guy and they may end up sending a black Golf cart with a Moms Demand T-Shirt and beer cozy.

The good news? There is one NRA member who lost that gun and now he is very happy it was found!

Hat Tip to Bryan K.

A 45-year-old suspect in a Monday morning home invasion remains hospitalized, a day after he was stabbed multiple times by a teen that lived inside the home the suspect broke into.

Investigators say the teen used a Swiss Army knife to stab the suspect several times before the suspect ran away.

Officers found the suspect a few blocks away from the home. The suspect was taken into custody and transported to a Wichita hospital.

via Injured home invasion suspect remains in critical condition | Local News – Home.

I am just gonna quote Colonel Cooper in his Principles of Personal Defense:

In defense we do not initiate violence. We must grant
our attacker the vast advantage of striking the first blow, or
at least attempting to do so. But thereafter we may return
the attention with what should optimally be overwhelming
violence.

I am back again with the “Fair Fight”  doctrine I discussed yesterday. The bad guy had the advantage (or so he thought) when he broke into a house and attacked a minor who was probably less experienced about worldly things and the reality of crime than he was. By all measures, the bad guy was in a position of advantage and thus unfair. But you don’t see the Opposition complaining about that unfair advantage, only when it comes from our side.

The young man took more than appropriate action and went crazy chef on his attacker. He was well inside that legal window of self-defense and used whatever force was needed to protect his life.

Well done.

PS: If you were to have ONE book in your Self-Defense library, make it The Principles of Self Defense. Anything else comes second. And make it a point on re-reading it every three months (some say every month) to keep yourself with the proper operating system in your head.

Via Reddit

Via Wikipedia:

The HAHO technique is used to airdrop personnel at high altitudes when aircraft are unable to fly above enemy skies without posing a threat to the jumpers. In addition, HAHO parachute jumps are employed in the covert insertion of military personnel (generally special operations forces) into enemy territory, in circumstances where the covert nature of an operation may be compromised by the loud noise of parachutes opening at low altitude.

HAHO jumps also allow a longer travel distance due to increased under canopy time, allowing travelling distances of more than 40 miles.

And just to put some perspective: The guy is way way up (commercial plane up) there ridding a piece of fabric.

RIVERVIEW (FOX 13) –
Hillsborough deputies arrested a man who spotted someone with a gun, followed him into a Walmart, and tackled him. The problem? The man with the gun had a concealed weapons permit, and the man who rushed him didn’t call 911 or alert store security.

According to the sheriff’s office, Michael Foster, 43, saw Clarence Daniels, 62, in the Walmart parking lot with a gun holstered under his coat.

Foster followed Daniels into the store, put him in a choke-hold and brought him to the ground, the sheriff’s office said. He then started yelling that Daniels had a gun

via Man arrested after tackling shopper carrying gun – FOX 13 News.

The attacked:

And the attacker:

And Mr. Foster is lucky Mr. Daniels is only 62; in Florida you get an automatic charge enhancement for crimes against people 65 years of age and older. In his case, instead of a misdemeanor, he would get a felonious charge, maybe aggravated assault on the elderly.

And of course, our friends at CSGV give us the comic relief:

They are better than SNL when Belushi, Akroyd, Chase and company were the stars.

A Lauderdale Lakes lawmaker is again trying to direct taxes from the sale of firearms and ammunition in Florida into a trust fund for school safety instead of the general revenue stream.

via Safe Schools Trust Fund legislation back.

On principle, any tax that targets guns and ammo for pure political BS can kiss my less than well-rounded set of buttocks. In fact, you can apply that rule to taxes in general, specially since more than half of my property taxes already go to schools and I have no kids that are either going or even went through the school system thus there was never a load I should have to be paying to begin with.

However, what this bill seems to be doing is establishing a sterile zone of 500 feet around school property where nobody can have a gun, period. No exceptions made for driving by, living or working near/next to the school. I might be reading it wrong, but the only chance you have to save yourself from being charged is to surrender your weapon to a school authority once you find out you have violated the sterile zone. So, as usual we are bound to have a certain amount of stupid laws introduced, this time by Rep Hazel Rogers of District 95 (Lauderdale) who surprising nobody is a Democrat import from New York.

This bill need to take a short trip down Memory Hole.

http://www.flsenate.gov/laws/statutes/2011/810.0975

http://www.myfloridahouse.gov/Sections/Bills/billsdetail.aspx?BillId=53277

I am not gonna delve on the Michael Moore/American Sniper thing, but I do want to use a part of his Facebook page comment to address once again how disconnected they are from reality.

It is not a secret that the US Military hated the concept of the sniper basically since the Civil War and we did not have a proper policy and permanent units until the Vietnam War. Snipers from back then will tell you about the ostracism coming from regular soldiers and officers (Murder Inc. was one of the derogatory names used) who viewed them as stone cold killers…. that is until a sniper from the other side started to pick them off and the US Sniper suddenly became their best friend in the world.

But war is war. And in war, the idea is to destroy the enemy preferably by the most efficient way. To ask for a fair fight is an idiocy that will surely get you killed. In fact, the same people who bemoaned snipers had no problems setting ambushes which is also rather inconsiderate and unfair towards the enemy.

But we are not snipers nor we are at war, so what the heck does that apply to this mess? As civilians, we are lawfully given a very narrow window in which we can exercise deadly force and if we deviate just a little from that set of parameters, we will be facing dire consequences. Knowing that and knowing that our lives are in danger, it strikes me as supreme imbecility that some people expect us to “play fair” and give the criminal, a person not subjecting itself to the same norms we face, a chance to kill us just because they have some idiotic notion that all fights must be fair.

I recall an interview during Desert Storm where an officer with an armor unit was asked about the total whooping Saddam’s tanks were getting and that our side was destroying it like they were standing still and made of paper mache. The journalist indeed ask this officer if he considered it a fair fight and the officer responded:

“A fair fight means all my people go back home alive.”

And that is our goal, plain and simple.

According to The Seattle Times, on January 16 Lt. Gov. and state senate president Brad Owen (D) announced “the public will no longer be able to openly carry firearms in the state Senate chamber’s public viewing area.” He said: “We’re just noting that open carry is a form of demonstration and it’s not different than carrying a placard or anything else of that nature.”

via Washington Senate Dems Ban Open Carry To Stifle I-594 Protests – Breitbart.

They should go ahead and try to get all types of carry banned from the State. I am sure Shannon Watts will appreciate the effort.