“This could’ve been stopped,” she said. “The Nashville Marriott could’ve just called me and said, ‘We’re putting this man who requested to be next to you, is this O.K.?’ And I would’ve called the cops and we would’ve gotten him. I’m so angry. I’m so mad.”

Source: Erin Andrews Says Hotel Could Have Prevented Stalker From Filming Her – The New York Times

Go read the article and then come back for my observations

If the Marriott Front Desk did place Ms. Andrew’s stalker in the room next door just on his word, they truly screwed up. That was lack of basic hotel security training or just plain irresponsibility. It may sound chauvinistic in this day and age, but hotels must take extra steps to protect female guests and do so with religious fervor since they are a favored target by sexual predators both from the outside the location and among the guests.  The response from the Front Desk should have been “I am sorry, but all the rooms in that floor are taken. Maybe tomorrow there will be something available and we will accommodate you.” followed immediately by a call to Security who would contact the possible victim and inquire if they are acquainted. If not, then there is the choice of calling the cops and evicting the person or just plain evicting. I personally favor the first just to put the fear of God into the bastard.

But… even the best hotels will screw up as this case shows. That means it is up to you to make sure you can avoid and ultimately defend yourself against attackers. I have no idea why normal and usually secure-conscious people just drop all precautions when they are away from home and leave their safety to the hands of people who are dealing with several hundred other guests. That is not smart.

We are in an era that everybody has a cell phone so, you can start by asking the Front Desk not to allow calls to your room. If you want to be even safer, do not use your regular cell but buy a cheap pre-paid phone and use it during the trip as contact phone for the hotel those not on your regular circle. The other thing you do is to also ask Front Desk not to send Housekeeping to clean your room during your stay. Let’s face it, you can do with fresh bed-sheets for a couple of three days and you can always call for fresh towels or if there is a Houskeeper in sight, trade your used ones for new ones. Same for toiletries and coffee and in fact, you should have spares in your luggage. In case of emergency at night, the Front Desk always has coffee even though they may not want to share it.

The door is the weakest link in your room. Don’t let yourself be fooled by how solid it looks: that is fireproofing, not security against human critters. Peephole? A simple piece of tape holding a business card will block the darn thing while allowing you to use it as you need. Use all the devices that come with the door and lock although frankly, they are not much of a stop for a determined criminal. Do tie the door handle to the door chain with a piece of para-cord and wedge a rolled towel in the gap at the bottom of the door as there is a cute little tool that will defeat the lock in seconds.  I go as far as placing the luggage and anything else not nailed down against the door as to give whomever breaks in a nice distraction or even trip while I go for other means of defense. And obviously, if you are alone, do not stay in a room with a connecting door to another room. If there is no other choice, make sure your side is locked and place a big piece of furniture in front of it.

Here is a link to other tips to stay safe at a hotel, you may even recognize the author.

Stay Safe Away From Home.

So some Australians travel to the US and decide that “visiting some of these gun-loving towns is like stepping onto another planet.”

I’m not going to fisk this article, because what would be the point.  I’m a little tired of point by point arguments against Australians, or Canadians, or Brits as to why Americans and non-Americans can’t see eye-to-eye on the issue of gun safety and how Americans just can’t seem to get with the rest of the world on this.

Here is the one thing that non-Americans (and even some Americans) need to understand.

The Deceleration of Independence was ratified on July 4, 1776.  At that moment, every resident of the Colonies with loyalty to America became a citizen of these United States.

Until 1949, there was not really such a thing as a “British Citizen,” every resident of the United Kingdom was a British Subject.  A Subject.  Let that sink in for a second… a Subject.  Even today in the UK, the British still haven’t figured out what they are.  Canadians and New Zealanders were Subjects of the Crown until 1977 with the passage of the Canadian and New Zealand Citizenship Acts.  Australians were Subjects of the Crown until 1984 with the passage of the Australian Citizenship Amendment Act.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines the word Subject as “Under the control or domination of (another ruler, country, or government),” the classical definition being “under the dominion of a monarch.”

Nearly 240 years of being citizens and not subjects have given most Americans a healthy disrespect for overbearing authority.  For the most part, we don’t like politicians trying to micromanage our lives.  We don’t like bullies in uniform.  We don’t like people telling us what to do, what to think, and how to live.  When some elected narcissistic tells us we can’t buy a 20 oz of our favorite sparkling beverage, we tell him to “get bent” and that said narcissist can stick his law someplace that wont be seen until his next colonoscopy.

And yes, there are plenty Americans who’d have no moral qualms against shooting a politician to preserve the sacred right of being able to deep fry a donut in trans fats.

You can take my deep fried Snickers bar when you pry it from my cold dead hands.

Americans’ favorite movies mostly involve some Regular Joe having to kill his way through an oppressive government for freedom.  We really don’t care what the contrived reason is – invasion by a totalitarian regime (Red Dawn), corrupt backwoods sheriff (First Blood), or space opera Planetary Alliance (Serenity) – nothing makes Americans stop stuffing their faces with popcorn and cheer like watching some nameless government stooge  get turned into pink mist by the patriotic hero’s bullet.

The growing gun rights movement is a direct result of the growing onerous and burdensome expansion of government power.  Every time some politician assumes a little more power, the people buy a few million more guns.

That is why they don’t “get” us.  There are a lot of Americans who grew up saying “this is a free country and I can do what I want” and still believe it.  Guns are a part of that.  The motto of this country is e pluribus unum only because F*ck you and get off my lawn wouldn’t look classy on the money.

The ability and the desire of the people to push back is ingrained in us in a way no one, one generation removed from being a subject, would understand.  Sure, we’d like it if there was less crime and fewer total nut jobs.  But were not going to give up our gun rights just because it’s what the historically oppressed think we should.  We are citizens, not subjects.

A young man, Peter Mielke, 19, was an employee at a pizza parlor in Bellaire, Texas, and was shot and killed during an armed robbery.  The news report says that Peter complied with the robbers demand for money and then was shot multiple times.  The murderer’s identity is as of yet unknown and police are asking for help from anybody that might know something about the crime.

This is a sad story.

Moms Demand Action managed to make it worse.

“Help us fight our nationa’s lax gun laws and ‘guns everywhere’ culture, which endangers our families.”

Um… WTF!?!  When MDA screeches about “guns everywhere culture” they are usually talking about concealed carry.  Even when ranting about open carry in Texas, that still requires the carrier to have a permit, which in the state of Texas involves a fingerprint background check.  So it MDA going out on the limb that the murderer who robbed a pizza parlor was a CCW permit holder?  Color me skeptical on that one.

I don’t think Texas’ lax gun laws or “guns everywhere culture” are responsible for this one.  Why?  Because New York City has some of the toughest gun laws on the books and virtually no concealed carry, yet a quick search of the NYC CBS local news shows that armed robbery is a pretty common occurrence there.

This murder isn’t the product of Texas’ love of guns.  This is the result of a bad guy engaged in criminal activity.  If there is a culture responsible for this, isn’t not the one where loving families go to the range and target shoot together.

The Georgia Legislature is pushing forward with a campus carry bill.

The anti-gun Georgia establishment whipped out the dog-eared old script of anti-gun, anti-carry platitudes.

“Persons have to be trained to use a weapon in a matter to fight back. Georgia doesn’t do any kind of training to allow you to carry even if you have a permit. It doesn’t guarantee that you will protect anyone or that the law is going to work.” – State Sen. Harold Jones II, D-Augusta

Concealed carriers are all dumb amateurs. Check.

“We’re putting (students) in volatile situations with alcohol and hormones.” –  State Rep. Virgil Fludd, D-Tyrone

Kids will get drunk and start shooting each other. Check.

“You have people who walk around and they become vigilantes. Someone can be upset with someone and they immediately pull out the weapon, so the police force becomes ineffective.  You also have people who show up to campus who are up to no good, who now know that people are now carrying, who shoot first and ask questions later.” – Clark Atlanta University President Ronald Johnson

Shoot first/blood in the streets/OK Corral histrionics. Check.

Not to be outdone by the politicians, Moms Demand Action had to get into the fray.

“When we’re talking about even 21 year old kids, there’s issues with academic pressure, with drug use, alcohol abuse and putting kids in that type of situation and allowing guns is not a common sense law.” – Lindsey Donovan, MDA Chapter Leader.

Nothing more than a rehashing of same BS, but at least she got the age thing right.

The bill gets elevated and the governor steps up to the plate.  What did he say?

“We heard all the hype that we’re now hearing about campus carry, all the predictions of tragedies. All the predictions that we were going to open our state up to a Wild West scenario.  Those earlier fears don’t appear to have come true.  So, therefore, to use those kind of arguments with the campus carry discussion, I think lacks validity.” – Governor Nathaniel Deal

BOOM!  Mic drop!  I don’t know anything about any of his other positions, but on concealed carry, the man does not lie.

I’ve visited Georgia Tech and other big state schools (U Penn, UF, etc.) .  They are so integrated into the cities they are in, sometimes it’s impossible to tell you’ve walked into campus.  Why should someone who is licensed to carry a gun in downtown Atlanta suddenly find him/herself in violation of the law by crossing a street and finding him/herself on campus?  This is as illogical as the rationale behind gun free zones, that the difference between safety and danger in an arbitrary and invisible line in the ground.

What additional risk does this place on students?  None, and it seems like the Governor gets that.  In regard to those engaged in what-if hand-wringing, the governor’s repose was “I think they should be concerned about making sure that those students are taught and educated.  That’s their responsibility. The law will take care of the rest of it.”  Well said governor.

Rather, countries passed big packages of gun laws, which overhauled the nation’s firearm code fairly broadly, which all tended to share similar features. According to Santaella-Tenorio, they generally included:
Banning “weapons that are actually very powerful,” like automatic weapons.
“They all implemented background checks.”
“They all required permits and licenses for purchasing guns.”
South Africa’s comprehensive Firearm Control Act, passed in 2000, contained all these measures. One study found that firearm homicides in five major South African cities decreased by 13.6 percent per year for the next five years. “Reductions in nonfirearm homicides were also observed,” Santaella-Tenorio et al. note, “although not as pronounced as the ones observed for firearm homicides.”

Source: A huge international study of gun control finds strong evidence that it actually works – Vox

1. The homicide rate in South Africa did not begin to go down in 2000 but in 1995. And The rates have been going up again since 2012.
2. If Gun Control is your objective, something weird happened in South Africa: “As Masuku points out, the graph below shows that “murder decreased by 18% in the past seven years and by 2% in the past 12 months” (p.19. FOR BETTER AND FOR WORSE: South African crime trends in 2002). This decrease needs to be considered critically. Masuku points out that “it is unusual for murder rates to decline while other forms of violent crime are increasing, and this trend is particularly striking because the percentage of murders committed with a firearm has increased.”
3. While it is true the South Africa’s murder rate halved between 1994 and 2014, the same thing happened with the US during the same period but with a much higher percentage of guns on private hands and overall liberalization of gun laws across the nation.

Sorry Skippy. Your study just won’t wash. Do you know what reduces violent crime? Going after violent offenders. My guns are behaving quite well and you do not need to go after them.

Mind your own business, thank you.

I get that the .Gov does not want bad weapons or fully auto out there, but to settle for scrap metal prices what could bring some better prices in the open market in regards of pieces like flash suppressors, stocks, pistol grips, hand-guards, etc is just fiscal irresponsibility.

Via MHI Facebook Page.

The Pentagon has a new secret weapon to neutralize sites containing chemical or biological weapons: rocket balls. These are hollow spheres, made of rubberized rocket fuel; when ignited, they propel themselves around at random at high speed, bouncing off the walls and breaking through doors, turning the entire building into an inferno. The makers call them “kinetic fireball incendiaries.” The Pentagon doesn’t want to talk about them, but published documents show that the fireballs have undergone tests on underground bunkers.

Source: Secret Rocket Balls Target WMD Bunkers | WIRED

Tell me that this is not the first thing that came to mind.