Psychos and Gun Control

The tragedy in Connecticut is nearly unbearable. In our anger and hurt a lot of us are going to knee jerk into demands for more gun control. Notwithstanding all the other valid arguments about why that is such a bad idea, consider this.  Did you know the crazy bastard in the recent Oregon Mall shooting was stopped by a citizen with a concealed carry pistol? Didn't hear that on the news did you? Nick Meli is his name. Funny how CNN and the New York Times didn't mention him.

When Mr. Meli pulled his piece and aimed it at the bad guy, the fellow was trying to unjam his semi-automatic rifle. Meli did not immediately pull the trigger because there were people behind the bad guy and he was afraid of missing and hitting an innocent bystander. But, the bad guy definitely saw Meli aiming at him and immediately retreated, ran into a stairwell, unjammed the weapon he was carrying and killed himself. My guess is the bad guy was participating in a bizarre suicide and, seeing Meli drawing down on him, he realized that he might be shot but not killed and yet be unable to kill himself as a result of wounds. He was unwilling to face what he had done in the event of that possibility, decided to not risk surviving and so shot himself. 

I have no doubt that if Mr. Meli had not been there with his pistol, the madman would have kept on shooting and killing even more people once he cleared his weapon's jam. Some of those who would have died probably are enthusiastic gun control supporters. Indeed, some of them, and their friends and families, may now be even more resolved than ever to eliminate private citizen gun ownership because of the experience. How ironic, is it not, that they are alive today and able to hold these beliefs rather be among a larger number of dead or injured because a private citizen exercised his right to keep and bear arms.

The guns genie is out of the bottle, whether we like it or not. There is no putting them back in. The Founders saw to that. They had very good reasons for creating the second amendment. But, those reasons are not the point I want to make, as valid and true as they still are. The point is there are so many guns in so many private citizens hands that there is no way to eliminate them. That means that people will always be able to lay hands on a firearm if they really want to do so. Wail and grind your teeth at the thought if you must, it will make it no less true. Psychotic turds bent on killing others are always going to be able to get guns, no matter how many laws and controls and enforcers we create. The only way to stop them is for the rest of us to also be armed so we can defend ourselves.

Another way to look at this is that many people don't want to have to defend themselves. It may sound harsh, but in a way many of these people are cowards thinking only about themselves. To defend yourself is to put yourself in harms way. There is a chance the bad guy will kill you rather than you kill the bad guy. So, one way to limit your risk is to let someone else take on the danger, to brave the bullets. That's the policeman's job. That's what we pay the security guard to do. For many people, telling them they will have to fight for themselves scares the holy crap out of them, and so they grasp at any alternative to avoid it, no matter how absurd or unworkable it might be. If we could just take away everyone's ability to do us harm then we won't have to worry about harm coming to us, right? Pie in the sky.

It works the other way, too. Sometimes the cowards do have the guns. That bastard in CT was a coward, don't think he wasn't. He went to that school with the intention of dying. He simply didn't have the balls to face his demons or whatever was bothering him, but he also couldn't kill himself quietly in his basement all alone either. Instead, he needed to share the pain and suffering with a sort of involuntary and gruesome support group.  Another thought bothers me even more. He was too cowardly to kill himself just for his own reasons. Perhaps he knew them to be trivial or false or something. The solution was to commit such a horrendous sin and pile up the guilt so high that in the end the only justifiable thing, the only way to atone, was to kill himself. Cute little mind trick: I'm too chickenshit to kill myself, so I put myself in a position where not only do I deserve to die but I'm even more scared of living.

The psychos target schools on purpose. It's the easiest place for them to create a big body count, whatever their reasons. Schools are among our most sacrosanct gun free zones, along with court houses and government buildings. All sorts of penalties apply to anyone who would dare to bring a gun onto school property. Those laws work really well, don't they? A variation on an old favorite saying is, keep all the law abiding citizens with guns off the school property and only the psychos there will have guns. Oh, and the difference between our schools and those court houses and government buildings is the latter have security checkpoints and armed guards and metal detectors and on and on; schools don't. Do we really think that if this piece of crap in CT knew that some of the teachers, the principal, other administrators and even the janitors were packing that he would have chosen to go out this way? More to the point, even if he had, it is likely that some of those kids and teachers would be alive now if some of the adults in the school were armed that day. I sincerely believe that to be true. God knows I wish some of them had been carrying in that school in Connecticut.

Before anyone offers up the silly argument that letting school officials and teachers pack a gun puts our children at risk, I offer this: if we can't trust our teachers to carry guns in school then how can we trust them with our children at all? No I don't really expect a Kindergarten teacher to have a Glock in her purse or in her desk. However, I wouldn't prevent her from having it if she demonstrated the same level of proficiency required of other conceal carry licensees.

Remember all the silly righteous outrage spewing from peoples mouths and in the press about the TSA allowing airline pilots to carry arms in the cockpit after 911? We can trust the pilots to take off and fly at 35,000 feet at 500 mph with 150 passengers on board, but not with a revolver in their briefcase while they do it. Asinine.You will hear all the same supercilious arguments against allowing school officials to be armed. Let me pull a Meryl Streep: Think of the children! What are we doing to our children?!

Back to the teachers, there is a photo going around the internet and on Facebook of an Israeli woman with an assault rifle on a sling over her shoulder and a purse or book bag with a bunch of young students around her. By all accounts this is probably not a teacher. A number of reputable sources indicate that Israeli teachers are not armed in their classrooms. However, the picture according to those same sources is probably of a guard whose job is to protect the kids at school and on outings. Islamic terrorists will cause you to have to do that. For my money its six of one or half a dozen of another. Either way, there are responsible people with guns in the Israeli schools to protect the kids.

I will be blunt. Anyone who would rather take away the guns of honest law abiding citizens than allow protecting armed adults in the schools is as morally culpable every time a child is killed as is the monster who killed that child.

Finally, if we must pass some sort of unconstitutional law, then lets choose one that really would be effective at stopping some of this: make it illegal to publicly refer to these crazy monsters by name in the press or anywhere else. At least that way we take away the motivation for many of them.You will notice here that I did not once use the names of the inhuman butchering scum in Connecticut or Oregon. They should be completely shunned by history as non-persons. Perhaps some others who are thinking about going out in a similar way will think differently when they discover that not only will they not go into the history books, no one will ever know who they were or care.

Goodbye, Bob!

Bob died on Monday.

Bob is/was my father-in-law.

Bob was a pedantic, obstinate, anal retentive, opinionated SOB.

He had his own BOB way of doing things. Every tool had its place and only its place on the shelf or rack, to the point that the outline of the tool was drawn on the wall to help one find where it went. Every bottle of liquor had its spot on the shelf. Every piece of meat was cooked to a certain temperature.  Every smoked salmon was done the same way every time.

But it was good (no read excellent) smoked salmon.

All of that tended to piss the rest of us off sometimes.

He ripped into me one night at dinner because I teased my wife in good fun though perhaps somewhat rigorously. I was told to “Be quiet! That’s my daughter you’re speaking to!”

I wanted to reply “She’s my wife and I will speak to her as I wish.”

But I did not, because he was being a protective father and I was being trivial.

I wasn’t very nice to Bob the last time I saw him. He wanted help in programming his new TV, DVD player, cable box, and sound bar all on one remote.  It was complicated and required three or four steps done in the right order on the universal remote we bought to make it all work. Bob had trouble getting it. I explained it several times and walked him through the steps. A little while later he asked another question that indicated he still didn’t get it. I got frustrated, and probably let that show in my tone of voice and facial expression.

I regret that very much.

What do I know about cutting precise dovetail joints? Not much. Bob did.

What do I know about raising a steer or training up a horse to ride? Nothing. Bob did.

What do I know about plywood and all its various kinds and types? Bob knew all of it and more.  I don’t think there is anything that Bob didn’t know about the wood industry and its products.

So I know some stuff that Bob didn’t. Whoopee! What he knew could probably make my brain explode if I had to learn it.

Everyone I know was frustrated by Bob. He had a way of clinging to his opinions and making sure you knew that whatever your opinions were, if they did not match his, they were wrong. He never said that out loud, mind you. You just sort of knew it.

He could be plodding in his preparations, as if he was going down a mental check list that extended to some 50 or 60 pages.

The closest Bob and I came to a serious disagreement was when I argued that flag burners should be allowed to do that thing without penalty. My thought was that the constitutional guarantee of free speech allowed flag burners the right to express themselves in this way. In my defense, this was a very libertarian view. I was not defending flag burners; I was defending their right to free speech. Bob did not see it that way. To him it was unpatriotic. It was criminal. If you burned the flag, you deserved to be tarred and feathered at the least. I was told in no uncertain terms that I was not allowed to discuss this topic with him again. I did not.

The bottom line is Bob was a man. He had his own views of what the world should be and he stuck to them. Whether you agreed with him or not was not important.

I will miss Bob. Very much. He was a man’s man, with his own values and insights to the world. Too many of us rely on others to shape our world view. Bob did not.  He helped shape ours.

Fishing Stories

Earlier this month I went to Ontario Canada fishing. Last February here in Columbus, my friend Denny and I  first met John the owner of a fly in fishing camp. We were in a bar, across from the convention center and the Easyrider Motorcycle show, and we was drinkin’. Go figure. John had a booth at the Vacation show in a different part of the convention center trying to drum up business for his camp and had come into the bar for a few beers and hot wings.

John told us about his fishing camp, gave us his website information and the price. They would give us a cabin, with all the amenities (pots, stove, fridge, toilet and shower, beds, linens, etc), a boat with motor and fish finder, and the float plane ride to get there all for $870 apiece for a week. We had to provide our own food. That sounded ridiculously cheap…I mean quite reasonable. Later I looked at the website, liked what I saw and decided to go. So did Denny. So we signed up.

The fishing was good, once we figured it out. We caught mostly walleye. We ate a lot of walleye, too. It was fantastic. Denny caught the most fish, but I caught the largest one. The scenery was gorgeous. The cabin was clean and entirely functional. John and his wife Shannon, the owners were wonderful. We spent an extra hundred dollars each and upgraded to the bigger, faster, newer, much more comfortable boat and thought it well worth the extra cost. Aside from both of us getting a stomach bug, which I am still feeling the effects of a couple of weeks later, we had a great time. I’ll go back again next summer.

It isn’t really the fishing week itself I want to share with you but two stories from our drive there. To get to the float plane in Hornepayne, Ontario is nearly 800 miles or 13 hours with limited stops from Columbus. Since we had to catch the plane at 7:30 on Sunday morning, we decided to drive up in two stages starting on Friday, so we could be in Hornepayne on Saturday. It’s a small town, about 1,000 people, and the only place to get a room for the night is Uncle’s Restaurant and Lodge. I made a reservation for us for a two person cabin there for Saturday night. We planned on stopping on Friday night on the US side at Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan (pronounced Sue Saint Marie) which is a little more than halfway there.  Having been been to Soo (as the locals call it) before, I knew it had a number of hotels and motels, so I didn’t bother to get a reservation.

To properly tell this story, you need to understand that with Denny and me and all the other boys from the bar most of the really good stories start with “We was drinkin’...” You will notice this rant did just that. The first little story I want to tell, however, starts with “We wanted to be drinkin’…” So our priority on Friday night in Sault Ste. Marie was to find a hotel that either had a bar or was within walking distance of one.

We drove down hotel strip and finally found the perfect spot, the Studebaker Restaurant and Lounge sandwiched between a Days Inn and some other similar type motel. Yippee! We stopped at the Days Inn, said “give us each a room”, and the nice clerk said “ain’t got any.” Neither did the place on the other side. None of the other motels and hotels in town had rooms either. Who knew they were having some sort of baseball tournament that weekend and all the hotels were sold out? Finally at the Best Western, which was charging $90 a night before tax for a room they didn't have, the clerk said maybe we should try the Indian Casino 4 miles or so outside of town. She said they might have rooms but were likely to be expensive. Now, it was 6 pm, we hadn't had our first cocktail/beer yet, and we did not want to backtrack 45 miles to Mackinaw or cross over into Canada. We decided to give the casino a shot.

Sure enough, the casino had rooms. Denny’s first question upon learning they had two rooms for us was not “how much” but “is there a bar on premises?” The answer was “Yes, of course, we have three bars.”  Okay, we’ll take two rooms and we don’t care how much they cost. The clerk signs us in then charges us each $60 per room for the night. Outstanding! That beat the Best Western by $30. And, for staying there this weekend, she said she was giving us each $10 in gambling credits loaded onto special debit cards. Cool.

We checked into our rooms, quickly cleaned up and hit the first of the three bars. A couple of drinks there, and we moved on to the second bar. It had video poker games built into the bar and Denny won about $30. I played $10, lost it and quit. After a couple more drinks, we moved to the third bar. Denny won another $30 at poker. I didn’t play. A couple more drinks in the third bar, and we went back to the first bar. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.

Finally at about midnight, I suggested we spend our $10 of free gambling credits and then go to bed, since we were both about to fall down anyway. We staggered around until we found the special slot machines for our free credits; how we found them only heaven knows. I could not for the life of me get my fuddled up brain to figure out how to get the credits off the card and into the slot machine, and ended up just sort of staring at the whole mess thinking I ought to go to bed if only I could remember where my room was. Finally a fellow comes along pushing a broom. I grabbed him and somehow explained I needed help, my English was not so good at this point. But he was a nice fellow and he helped me get the money into the machine and showed me how to bet and what buttons to push.

I pushed the button nine times and nine times I lost. I had one credit left and sort of flippantly slapped the button to set the tumbler rolling. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding! I hit a jackpot! $126. I grabbed the janitor dude, gave him a hug and a $20 bill and staggered off to bed.

Denny and I left for Canada the next morning with vicious hangovers but silly smiles on our faces. We had both paid for our rooms, and in my case all of my drinking, with our winnings at a casino we hadn’t planned to visit but did because I hadn’t bothered to make an easy hotel reservation. That’s called falling into the fish cleaning station and coming up smelling like basil.

The second mini-story does begin with “We was drinkin’...” but that is only peripheral to the story.

We made it to Hornepayne and got checked into our two person cabin. We then proceeded to settle on the small porch and have some cocktails, in my case vodka and Denny had beer. We were into our 3^rd or 4^th round when a small SUV packed with five guys screeches to a halt in front of our cabin. 

A young bearded fellow sticks his head out the front passenger window and yells, “We’re the beer patrol. We’re on the lookout for beers. You seen any?”

Denny says, “Yep, got one right here.” Holding his bottle up for all to see.

“Lots of beers hereabouts this time of year,” the fellows says.

“Glad to hear it,” Denny responds.

The young man gestures to the back seat and hollers, “My pop just got a really big beer!”

“Mine is just regular size,” Denny replies, shaking his head sadly, clearly demonstrating that it's never good to have to admit size limitations.

“Well, we gotta go check for beers on the other side of town. Folks here are counting on the beer patrol,” and with that they roared off.

“Good luck!” Denny yells after them. 

He and I were laughing our asses off by that point. It was more than just funny how the young man’s accent made “bear” sound like “beer.” Because, it seemed to us that The Patrol was finding plenty of the latter that evening.

How Festival Can You Go?

I went to ComFest this past weekend in a park in the heart of gayville near downtown Columbus.  I’m told it is the last free festival in the Midwest. It was started by a bunch of hippies way back when to celebrate something or other. They would play music, smoke some righteous weed, sell candles and tie died T-shirts to each other and generally, you know, “fest.”

That’s still pretty much what it’s about today, only they’re the “Occupy Wall Street” crowd now and not nearly so festive. It’s all a little sad. Today’s “Occupiers” are no more coherent or sensible than the drugged out hippies of my youth. But the message is much less friendly. Instead of “make love not war” it is “we hate capitalism and America.”  Though I noticed they were nicking gullible shoppers $20-25 for a badly tie died t-shirt. You don’t even want to know what the patchouli scented candles cost.

While walking through the park, we were regaled by a speaker on the stage. He was mostly on a rant about voting and the vast right wing conspiracy. He made some really interesting observations about the Electoral College, to wit: 

•  It was created to disenfranchise all voters, but more especially those who agreed with him (Democrats, progressives and liberals) than it does to Republicans and Conservatives.

• It was created to have an effect on the outcome of an election only in swing states, and he was here to tell us that Ohio is a swing state.

• One of its main purposes, disenfranchisement and swings states aside, was to allow southern slave owners the ability to vote for their slaves and thus rig the election, which they are still doing today, the South being more conservative than the rest of the country.

Honest, he really said these things. It was not clear how exactly he came to believe that the Founding Fathers understood that 200+ years later Ohio would be in a position to affect the election, or indeed that there would be a state called Ohio. Nor did he explain how those racist southern conservatives, who just a generation ago were the staunchest of Democrats, were still stealing elections by voting their slaves. But in fairness, his first point wasn’t so far off.  The Founders motivation for creating the Electoral College really was because they feared stupid voters in large numbers. This fellow and his friends are surely lending credence to the Founders’ point.

He went off on electronic voting machines. What he seemed to be saying, or as best I could parse it, is that they are rigged. Apparently the machines are programmed to not count the votes of those who agree with the speaker. Of course, what I just said in two sentences, it took him several minutes and about a thousand words to relate.  On its surface what he had to say was, shall we say, far fetched, considering that Democrats win elections all the time.  On the other hand, he may have been onto a far reaching and subtle Conservative conspiratorial plot. What if these Democratic wins, like in 2006 and 2008, are nothing more than part of a plan to lull honest peace loving Democrats, progressives and liberals into a sort of drugged-like euphoria before swooping in with rigged voting machines and destroying them forever? Figuratively at the ballot box I mean. If only.

He did make one statement and exhortation to the crowd, who for the most part were agreeing with most of what he had to say, that I had to wholeheartedly agree with. In reference to the electronic voting machines, he told the crowd not to waste their time voting because it wouldn’t count anyway. Here’s to hoping they all do as he suggests.

**************************

I was typing some notes the other day and I came across one of those typos that make you stop and think.

Is “reslut” a noun or verb? I don’t think it can be a preposition, though I suppose as a conjunction it entertains some possibilities. Does it mean it is false to say: once a slut always a slut? What is the cause of sluttish recidivism?  Is it possible for one person to reslut another, or is it entirely a self imposed condition? Are original sluts more expensive or valuable than resluts, like unblemished cars cost more than repaired ones? Does it take the same level or amount of behavior to become a reslut as it does a slut in the first place? Think of it like falling off the wagon: how many drinks does it take?

I certainly would enjoy hearing your thoughts about this whole reslut thing.

I Just Want to Thank...

I was talking to my friend Clark the other day. As we were finishing up, he did not fail to do that which he has done every time we have talked for the last two years. You see, Clark retired two years ago. He draws a pension or two, and Social Security retirement benefits. As always, he thanked me for continuing to work and pay my taxes, especially my FICA tax so that there would still be money in the Social Security system from which he could continue to draw his retirement benefit.

Now, you can say a great many things about Clark, but ungrateful is not one of them. Nor is not knowing on which side of the bed his golden goose is buttered or forgetting to grease its gears. (That is such a convoluted comparative metaphor I just couldn’t help myself; see if you can keep up with it.)

It is great fun and a yuck or two every time he says it.

But it got me thinking, and ranting, which is the whole point, right?

Who among all the recipients of entitlements, such as welfare, public union retirement benefits, food stamps, and cash for clunkers has bothered to thank you for paying taxes so that they could collect those benefits? I have never been in the checkout line at the grocery store and ever once heard, “I just want to thank you for paying the taxes that pay for the food stamps I’m using to buy food for my babies.”

If that has happened to anyone reading this, I want to hear about it. But, frankly, I don’t know of a single case.

Has the United Autoworkers Union or the AFL-CIO ever run an ad thanking us tax payers for bailing out Chrysler and GM and all the other related companies so they could keep their jobs and continue to earn a living? I haven’t heard one. They did give plenty of money to the Wisconsin recall elections by all accounts. Oh, and they continue to give generously to Democratic political campaigns. But, sadly, not a single published thank you to the rest of us who made all of that possible.

At least if you drop some coins in the Salvation Army bucket you get a mumbled “Thanks” or at least a nod from the guy ringing the bell. Even the homeless guys mumble thank you as they get a bowl of soup in the food line.

While we are on the subject of takers, did you ever see a politician run an ad after the election thanking all the people who voted for him? I haven’t. Many of them still have lots of money in the campaign fund, but do you think they will spend 1/1000^th of the amount on a thank you that they spent on pleading for your vote?

The next time you run into someone who is drawing unemployment, or food stamps, or welfare, or is even a government employee, subtly ask them if they are thankful for it. See if they say they are thankful and why. I suspect they won’t. And if they do, it will have nothing to do with us honest, hardworking tax payers. Cynical, I know. But, just you do it and let’s see.

Need Some Cheese and Crackers with My Whine

I was at the Portland airport over the holidays, preparing to fly home. The line through security snaked through 5 or 6 switchbacks. There were 3 TSA agents checking IDs for the entire line, which had to hold at least a couple of hundred people at any given time. A person would clear the ID check and we would all shuffle forward a step. Shuffle, stop; shuffle stop; shuffle stop.

I usually fly out of Columbus, which even though it calls itself an International Airport, is really quite small in comparison to Portland or Sea-Tac. I usually fly into and out of Burbank or Kansas City, where they do things a little differently. So it took me a while to catch on. As we were shuffling and stopping in the long and winding road of that security line, I noticed people walking by our queue and right up to a fourth TSA person checking IDs. Then I noticed the sign that said this was for first class and special club members of the airlines; in other words, they had their own TSA agent and special non-line to get through security. No fuss, no shuffle-stop, just a waltz in the park. 

When I saw one overly made-up silicon sister in faux fur, crack tight jeans and thigh high boots with 4 inch spike heels prance by and wriggle right on through with barely a wave of her ID and ticket I lost it. Cheryl tried to shush me and Eric acted like he didn’t know who I was.

Last time I checked, TSA personnel are employees of the federal government. They work for all of the citizens. Our taxes pay for their equipment, their salaries, and everything else about them. So why the hell does the TSA apply special privileges for first class passengers? The TSA is essentially using their power to force those of us who did not buy a first class ticket to do the TSA shuffle step, while rewarding those who do have a first class ticket with special access. It sure sounds like the TSA is trying to help the airlines sell more first class tickets. It’s like creating special parking places in front of government buildings exclusively for Cadillacs (GM you know).

To take that analogy one more step, we can easily imagine that one actually does not have to own the Escalade to use the parking space. In fact, how you got that big fancy car is immaterial; you could be a drug dealer or porn star or borrowed it from a friend.  Just like one does not require some special need, pay more in taxes or actually be a VIP to obtain a first class ticket. In the case of the flouncing floozy, it would not be surprising to discover that she doesn’t even have a job or pay taxes, but relies on Daddy, or just as likely Sugar Daddy, to buy the ticket for her.

It seems we have it all backwards again, which is all we can expect anymore for the idiots we have in charge of things. It’s bad enough that the people who are supposed to be preserving our safety won’t use common sense in their screening procedures, such as being extra cautious about checking young, swarthy men who smell of camel for fear of being accused of racial profiling. Oh the horrors of that indignity! So all of us, even the old ladies in wheel chairs and little girls, must go through the greater indignities of luggage searches, body scans, pat downs and, for you complainers, strip searches and body cavity probes just so that our government and the TSA can smugly state that no one has been profiled and by extension prejudiced against. Of course, in this twisted no sense logic, the TSA and the airlines, and apparently the rest of us by acquiescence, have no problem accomplishing the reverse and profiling based on the type of the ticket we carry.  

As for all of you who are aghast at the idea of stereotyping and profiling let me just say: Get Over It! Stereotyping works because it’s usually true. Little old ladies and 8 year old girls do not blow up airplanes. Women with artificial breasts who dress in bosom bulging blouses, short skirts and spiky heels to ride an airplane usually do meet the definitional requirements of floozy or bimbo.

If the airlines want to charge passengers more money for a wider seat, free liquor and the ability to board the airplane first, they can do that. But, simply by virtue of holding that ticket should not extend to receiving preferential treatment from our government. When the TSA gives special access to first class ticket holders it makes second class citizens of the rest of us.