Where a Hispanic Catholic, and a Computer Geek write about Gun Rights, Self Defense and whatever else we can think about.
I tried to renew my membership on line but since I seem to live in a dark uncharted hole of Miami Dade County, the software could not find my address. I called 1-877-NRA-2000 and found out there is a 2 year renewal for $50. Plus the young lady taking care of me could not have been any nicer and funny.
When was the last time you checked your NRA card? I bet you ain’t active!
See? Made you look.
Apparently this quiet fella got tired of being maligned by the Antis and has taken to the Interwebs to express its views. A bunch of his cousins reside in my closet and let me know about him. Assault Clip appears to be 30, of steely determination and Slav background.
Good luck to you!
Back in the Dark Ages (The 1980’s) recording engineers would religiously await for the latest issue of our favorite industry rag: Mix Magazine. A well designed, magnificently printed and very helpful audio publication dedicated to the hardest working and least appreciated sector of the recording industry. Amongst its many writers, there was one weird fella named Roger Nichols who never failed to make us laugh with his wit and drool at the chances he had of testing and abusing the greatest and latest in audio gear.
Recording Engineers are (were?) a very weird bunch. They are animals with no apparent biological clock which allows them to work any combination and quantity of unholy hours as set by the artist. Their stomachs are the envy of any alligator or great white shark since they are able to digest any load of fast, homemade and exotic foods or go hungry at will. Their ears must be so finely tuned as to detect and locate the smallest foreign noise such as a feather flying inside a hit hat during a drum solo and then edited it out of the track. Any engineer worth his salt is father confessor, couples’ counselor, luthier, concentration camp commandant, juggler, referee, accountant, quartermaster supply officer and able to know where to find avocado flavored tofu with Cheetos at two in the morning. And, let’s not forget, damn good recording what some artists call music.
They are scary loyal to brand and gear. Forget what you nowadays read in the gun forums. Glock Zombies and Magpul Fanbois mere Gerber babies compared with the fury that engineeres would unleash if you dare to criticize their gear. Otari vs Studer? War of the Hundred Years. SSL vs Neve? Japanese-Russian war. Michrophones? Don’t go there! If Mahatma Ghandi was a recording engineer who favored the Senheisser 441 for overheads, you dissed him and favored a pair of Shure 57s, he would remove his loincloth and strangle you with it.
And as weird and stubborn as we were (are,) if Roger Nichols spoke, we’d listen. We knew he would torture the crap out of any piece of equipment, extracting every and any ounce of magic out of it. He’d give you tips, share resources and kept you a bit sane once a month. We would listen to his records trying to decipher how in the hell did he achieve a particular sound and we would make a bee line for the record store whenever he recommended the recording of a particular artist. In the Church of the Vibrant Ears, Roger was our Pope.
And Great Engineer in the Sky Said it was time to finish the Roger Nichols project.
Fade out………..
Press Stop.
(Click here for part 1)
Gun Control activists both in Brazil and the US, wasted not one millisecond to clamor for more gun control. Funny thing is that very few news outlets in the US reported that the guns used by Menezes were not Evil Assault Weapons in the Glock 30 Round clip configuration but plain old six shooters with a design over a century old. Yet, if anything, this awful event destroyed several myths sponsored by those Gun Control Groups.
Myths Destroyed:
1) We need tighter gun control. Funny they should mention that. Brazil has very strick gun control laws, yet this massacre happened anyway. Sebastian provided a link to a summary of Brazil’s Gun Laws. Among them:
The minimum age for gun ownership in Brazil is 25 years. An applicant for a firearm license in Brazil must pass background checks which consider criminal, mental and employment records. An understanding of firearm safety and the law, tested in a theoretical and/or practical training course is required for a firearm license. Gun owners must re-apply and re-qualify for their firearm license every 3 years.
So, Did Menezes bypassed all those regulations? Nope, he simply ignored them and bought his guns from a pair of gun dealing criminals that, imagine that, also ignored the law since they were not allowed to possess guns.
2) Gun Control Reduces Murder. I am not even gonna talk much about this one. Here are the numbers:
Brazil (Brady Approved Gun Control): 23.8 homicides per 100,000 residents
USA (Brady Disapproved Gun Control): 5.4 homicides per 100,000 residents
3) High Capacity Magazines must be banned because they are lethal. Melezes used Safariland Comp III speedloaders with a capacity of 6 rounds. No evil 30 round magazines could be used with revolvers. Authorities still found over sixty spent cases at the crime scene.
4) Semi Automatic guns with Rapid Rate of Fire must be banned because they are lethal.
Menezes used two revolvers, one of them a Rossi which do not have a reputation among some gun owners as reliable (Not me, I own a Rossy snubnose in .357 and love the little sucker.) These revolvers are based in a technology over 100 years old, yet they managed to kill 12 innocents kids and wound 11 more. However rest assured that if the Antis manage to ban semi automatic handguns, they will use the Rio Massacre to point out we need Revolver Control.
5) The Armor Piercing/Cop Killing/Black Talon/Explosive/Hollow Point/Mercury/Teflon all killing bullets must be banned. Again the data is in and shows that plain old lead round nose ammunition was used. It proved quite lethal if it the round was placed in the right part of the anatomy which in the case of the shooter, he was aiming at the heads of the victims. Of course Anti Gunners will like to see those type of rounds banned, but they are not saying that, at least not yet. It makes for splashier headlines to use TEFLON or ARMOR PIERCING than round nose.
6) You do not need guns to protect yourself or anybody. Police will protect you. Two military Police officers were mere two blocks away from the school when the shooting started. They reacted immediately and by the time all the shooting was over and Menezes shot himself, barely 5 minutes had passed. 12 dead and 11 wounded demonstrate very gruesomely the fallacy of that statement. When Seconds Count, Police is Only Minutes Away is not a catchy slogan, it is a sad reality.
7) Gun Free Zones Save Lives. Twelve dead kids are an obvious contradiction to such stupid statement.
Wellington Menezes de Oliveira, 24 years of age, deceased by his own hand now belongs to the evil fraternity of Mass Murderers. On April 7, he entered the Tasso da Silveira Municipal School, produced two revolvers and went on a rampage killing 12 kids and wounding another 11. According to what I manage to gather in the On Dia On Line (Rio de Janeiro Newspaper) the shooter apparently used speedloaders and had plenty of time to fire over 60 shots by the number of cases found on the floor of the classroom. He also was deliberately taking head shots at his victims as in trying to make sure they were dead.
Two police officers were a couple of blocks away and took action as soon as they heard the shots. One of them shot Menezes through the stomach with his rifle as he was reloading one more time. Menezes ran away and then killed himself. According to reports, from first shots fired to the suicide, the time elapsed was about 5 minutes.
The newspaper mentions a .32 caliber revolver which I assume is the black one seen in the background. The one in the foreground is a Rossi .38 special and Safariland Comp III speedloaders. Menezes paid about $164 for both weapons from two other criminals with records for drugs and violence.
A suicide note was found:
After the attack, the killer left a letter of fundamentalist content on site. The text contained incomprehensible and disjointed phrases, with references to Islam and even terrorist practices. Then he killed himself with a bullet in the head.
“He was so focused on things related to Islam and had let his beard grow long. It was weird, was on the internet all day reading issues and he was very strange, very secretive, “said the foster sister of the Wellington to Radio Band News .
