Blog-o-Sph33r

My dream of armored pillows

I had a dream last night that has mostly faded from my mind except for a single scene. If I were to try to interpret that scene, I’d say it fell in line with the old standard of participating in a fight and not being able to throw a punch. It’s odd how often my dreams seem to encompass not being able to perform a particular motor skill. I’ve often found myself in situations where I must run but cannot. Or where I must hit the brakes in my car to avoid an accident but cannot find them. This dream seems to be the same but involving a rather interesting defense scenario.

For reasons I cannot recall, several people, myself included, were engaged in battle against a single man. He was a towering figure, much taller than us, and his chest was an impressive diameter to boot. As I moved closer, I realized he was wearing body armor which, in the wonders of dreamland, was simply a pillow stuffed under his shirt. Despite the real world futility of a pillow as protection from bullets, he was able to take shots to his center of mass (COM) and not be stopped.

It is roughly about this time that I realize I am holding a handgun. While most everything else about this dream is blurry, the gun details are quit distinct in my mind. I was holding a Para Ordnance PXT series handgun with a shiny stainless finish, a 3.5″ barrel, and their LDA trigger system. I remember pausing and staring down at it and wondering about the trigger.

Side note…

One might claim that I had read about, or at least looked at, a Para Ordnance before retiring to bed and that would explain the appearance in my dream. This is not true as I read nothing gun related whatsoever yesterday. Thus I’m quite confused as to why my mind chose that particular firearm. Perhaps I am supposed to buy one? I’m sure the girlfriend would understand my purchase if I told her that it appeared to me in a dream.
Back to the story…

Jerked from my momentary gun ogling, I emptied my first magazine COM as the attacker closed in. As you might have guessed, the “body armor” stopped these rounds from slowing him whatsoever. I switched tactics and took aim at the most vulnerable and unprotected area of his body, the forehead. As I fired the little .45, I watched 7 red holes appear in a tight group in the center of his forehead and yet, he did not appear to be affected by it. I stood there, horrified, as he turned toward me and started laughing.

I jerked awake, my body covered in goose pimples and my mind desperately trying to grasp where I was. The fog lifted a second or two later and I realized I was safe in my bed, and quickly fell back to sleep.

To be honest, this isn’t really that different than a lot of my dreams. Perhaps if I were to blog about my other dreams, I might actually get some readers.

Posted in Guns, Randomocity | No Comments »

The psychology of fear

Don’t let the title fool you, I’m not actually going to talk about psychology. In fact, I am in no way qualified to even act like I can. But, bear with me now, I think I might have a point to make.

I am afraid of flying. If you know me, you’ve probably heard me say that. I like to use the phrase “man was not intended to fly” to anyone who tries to argue that planes are safe. It’s a fairly empty argument, void of any fact or reason and wildly blinded by emotion. I have been on an airplane for a single round trip flight  and I was scared to death.

The reactions to my irrational fear of flight is varied depending who I am speaking with. We all know people who don’t fly and those are my most sympathetic audience. Those who fly on a regular basis, or refuse to be a victim to fear of objects, will most certainly try to pull out facts and figures on how safe air travel is. These fall on deaf ears with me because I have been on an airplane and I have felt the sheer terror that is called turbulence. Your facts and figures mean nothing, I am afraid and that’s  it.

Now, imagine if I were to spend some time facing this fear. Say I went down to a local airfield and paid some money to be taken up in a small airplane. Or perhaps I took some flying lessons. Over time, my fear of flying would diminish to nothing. I would understand the physics of flight, I would understand how things worked in the air, and from an even more basic point, I’d be accustom to it. Do I want to do this? No of course not! If you want to fly, go for it, but it is not for me.

Surely you see my point here. My emotion based argument could be defeated by simply attempting to learn of the thing I hate. If I were to spend hours upon hours trying to learn to like flying and still hated it, I’d have a much less emotional reasoning behind it. I could probably say with some certainty why I disliked flying vs. simply using fear. And, despite my fear, you won’t hear me out on the street corners decrying the evil that is airplanes simply because I’m frightened by them. Logically it doesn’t make sense to dislike an object and then spend my days crying to whoever is within earshot of the evil and horrible nature of that object. If I were to walk into a group of pilots and begin a diatribe of such, they’d laugh me out of their circle.

The same thing happens day after day with anti gun writers. I would love to know how many anti’s have invested the time to learn about the object of their greatest fear. Surely they realize that basing an argument on emotion never provides a solid background for debate and they’ve went out and immersed themselves in the sport. Of course, we know this isn’t true as most writers these days feel it’s perfectly ok to throw in references to beards, flannel shirts, and Neanderthals which basically broadcast to the general public that they have spent no time getting to know their enemy. If they had, they might learn that you cannot approach the argument “guns are bad” without first basing it primarily on emotion.

For me, I’ll probably never learn to love flying, but you won’t find me on the internet or in the streets decrying my unfounded fear. And while I don’t wish for any more anti writers, I’d kind of like to see one who has spent some time getting to know the object of their hatred. At least then I’d feel their beliefs might come from actual knowledge.

Now, I probably should proof read this, but I’m feeling a bit lazy.

Posted in Fearmongering, Gun Control | No Comments »

Let’s all eat Oreos!

Hmmm.. Read this.

Guns don’t kill people; people kill people. Well that is true, but the guns sure make it easier. The problem with this rationale is that you are trying to stop school shootings by putting more guns - the tool used for shootings - in the school, the place where the shootings take place.

Say your buddy is trying to cut back and lose a few pounds. ‘Today is the day I lose the weight,’ he says, as he fills his house with Oreos, Ring Dings and peanut butter cups. He is surrounding himself with the things he is trying to avoid.

I quoted the above paragraphs in case you couldn’t get past his use of the phrase “wacky NRA nut jobs”. I guess it’s pretty clear where he stands.  His first paragraph starts out pretty decent, yes, people kill people and we all know it. I also won’t disagree that guns do make killing easier, that’s why they’re used, hell, that’s why they were invented. I doubt we’d have many men or women signing up for military service if they knew it would be a hand to hand combat situation in each and every battle. The gun is an efficient killing machine and I don’t think any of us can disagree with that.

However, I do take issue with the idea that a trained competent human being who is in possession of a firearm can somehow induce a school shooting. He makes it seem as if bringing a gun into the school will somehow cause violence to occur. I dare venture that it will perhaps deter it. I’m betting that teacher’s classroom will be a bit quieter once she starts carrying. Why? Because people either respect or fear firearms. Even at a young age, we’re taught this by our parents and the people around us. We’re either taught that a firearm is a tool and how to use, appreciate, and respect what it can do, or we’re taught that the firearm is evil and scary and to avoid it at all costs. It just depends on who raised us.

But that’s beside the point. Kids are easily deterred from things. Adults still have a little bit of a hold on the child’s world although as we allow our kids to get away with more and more crap, they’re losing their respect for adults.  So for now, I would venture to say that if a kid thought he’d bring a gun into school and shoot little Tommy for saying he was fat, he’s also going to have something else going on in his head. Teacher Doe has a gun and she’s going to be able to stop him. It’s an equalizer thing and, although I’d never ever ever want a teacher to have to face the situation of shooting a student, I’d much rather we have competent armed adults in the school to be able to do such things rather than just letting these little monsters stalk from room to room killing whomever they please.

So I’ve dragged on a bit too long but it’s been a while since I typed anything and I suddenly had an interest in yammering on and on. I do want to point out that I don’t see the correlation between his gun example and the food.  The school example can be broken down into 2 parts, the child and the adult. The child is the potential shooter, and the adult is armed and competent to stop them. In the food example, he leaves out the “good” person in the equation. The fat guy has oreos and no one to stop him. I think he needs a nutritionist in there. That way the fat guy has a weight problem and wants to eat Oreos, but the Nutritionist has them and is trained in how to use them.

Or… something like that. I’m going to stop typing now.

Posted in Concealed Carry, Gun Control | No Comments »

Shameless self promotion

During this downtime, I’d love to point the handful of visitors I get to this blog, to another site that I get a handful of visitors on. That site is Michigunner.com.  It’s a little forum site for Michigan gun owners. Yes, I know, there’s already plenty of Michigan based gun forums but I was bored one day and created it. Perhaps it will grow, perhaps not.

I’ll get a link for it added to the sidebar one day.

Posted in Randomocity | No Comments »

Say What?

As I’ve had a nice weekend ignoring the internet, I need a little softball pitch of a blog entry to get back into the week. Bear with me on the lack of content.

Friday night as I roamed the streets near my house pondering what kind of food to put in my belly, I happened to catch a quick NPR story on the NRA wooing the presidential candidates. It wasn’t much of an informational piece but a single sentence from the reporter stood out to me. She actually said the 2nd amendment “guaranteed the right to bear arms”. I found that to be somewhat odd coming from a person in the media.

I suppose it’s nothing to get excited over, the reporter could simply be showing her bias toward the real meaning of the 2nd. Regardless, I still had to smile.

Posted in Guns | No Comments »

Oh it’s that simple!

Apparently we all were thinking too hard about the teacher who wants to carry her concealed firearm at school. Luckily, someone explains it for us.

What should she do?

Easy enough…put a restraining order on her husband that will keep him away from the school.

Oh! I was under the impression it was just a piece of paper that really didn’t stop him from doing anything. I must have been mistaken!

Tip ‘o the hat to Robb Allen from whom I found this fantastic article.

Posted in Concealed Carry, Gun Control | No Comments »

If you need something done pay for it

Rather disturbing news about the International Association of Chiefs of Police press conference held yesterday. Both David Hardy and Cam Edwards have the information that we truly need to know.

It’s funny that the Anti’s run around claiming that gun owners refuse to compromise with them and find common ground, while they use techniques like.. oh, I don’t know.. paying someone to say what they want them to say?

Posted in Gun Control | No Comments »

Let the system handle it

More opinion on the school teacher who wishes to carry a gun to school to protect herself.

“If she is to the point where she sees carrying a gun as her only alternative, then the community and the systems that have been set up to protect all of us have failed,” Loontjens said.

I’ve never been in the situation that this lady is in, but what exactly does the community have to do with it? And what systems are set up to protect us all? As far as I’m aware, when a woman has an abusive significant other, there’s a list of things to do, all of which this woman has done. Basically they amount to having him arrested, filing a restraining order, and telling everyone about your fear. Beyond that, you’re on your own. The police aren’t going to kick down his door and arrest him on your word, they’re going to wait until he does something. That’s the way the system works.

The police are not our body guards, they cannot be around to protect her at every turn nor should they be expected to. Most cities and states are suffering financially and there’s no way we can afford to have as many police on the street as would be required to actually provide real safety. If there’s even such a thing.

I hope, for her sake, the court finds in her favor. I also hope that she has invested in some good training beyond the required CCW classes.

Posted in Concealed Carry, Gun Control | No Comments »

Airbags do save lives

Talk about lucky.

I was on my way back to the office and stopped at Burger King and bought a chicken sandwich and onion rings,” the foreman for DJ’s Painting in Vineland said Tuesday evening. “I started to choke on one of the onion rings and then I guess I just blacked out.”

His company-owned Scion swerved and crossed the road, hit a curb and then struck a tree.

“Next thing I knew, when I came back to,” he said, “I was on my side, facing the opposite direction.”

And alive.

The air bag apparently dislodged the bite of onion ring stuck in Rocco’s throat.

Apparently it wasn’t time for him to go.

Posted in Randomocity | No Comments »

It just went off

I should start a category called “Mind of its own” for stories such as this. How often do we hear that the gun “just went off”? A little too often if you ask me.

Fire officials said a 50-year-old man was cleaning the weapon in his trailer when the rifle discharged.

How do you clean it with a round in the chamber? I suppose he could have just been giving it a wipe down but you shouldn’t ever be doing that with a loaded firearm. The first thing I do when handling a firearm is to check the chamber and make sure it is empty. Seems like a common sense rule.

Homicide detectives said they are investigating the incident to see if any negligence was involved.

I’ll make it easy for them. Yes, there was.

Posted in Mind of its own | No Comments »