Why I Am Willing

A friend and co-worker with whom I enjoy frequent -and sometimes spirited- polite debates, recently pointed out that some folks make entirely too light of the prospect of killing another person face-to-face. There was even a hint of a whiff of the inference that *I* might be taking life-taking too lightly. Allow me to explain.

If I am awake, generally speaking, I will be found in Condition Yellow, at least. My Little Friend or one of his big brothers will be hiding in Condition One somewhere *very* close by.

I did not start this way.

In a previous part of my life, I owned zero weapons (for those in UK: a knife carried about the person is a tool, not a weapon). I walked around in Condition White just like those around me. A little time and a few near-death experiences in the US Navy, combined with reading about 'accidents' involving my shipmates, started to wake me up a little. Reading the self-defence stories from old Guns & Ammo magazines (similar to websites like this) shook me a little closer to awake. Mostly, it was thinking that did it. When I began to consider that the only thing between me, my wife, and my kids, and eternity was a piece of warm steel and plastic, It began to sink in.

I bought a rifle, and something that had been missing without me knowing about it clicked into place. A man with a (n evil assault) rifle can't be told to Give Them What They Want. I had all the appropriate Life Experience boxes ticked, but I finally realized another part of the responsibility of being a Man when I took this pile of sticks and tubes to the range and killed some paper with it.

Armed with my own weapon at last, reality began to dawn in earnest. Here I held in my hands the power to destroy. What would I be willing to do with it? Would I give it if the Government demanded it of me? Would I use it in defense of me and mine? Would I use it in defense of the country as a Militiaman?

At first, it was a new thing to have a 'gun' in the house. It stayed unloaded. I got used to the idea of it being there. I left it loaded and then, on nights when the News was ugly, by the bedside.

Now I have an undisclosed nonzero integer number of guns, including one I can usually (at the farthest) reach out and grab. Usually one is ready to Go on my person. Even in my house.

How do you get here from there?

By thinking.

You have to understand one thing about someone who is willing to use deadly force on you to get what he wants (drugs, money, car, etc.): They are not worried about your kids not having a daddy. Not worried about how you will get home without your truck. Not worried that the cash in your pockets is food for your kids. You are not a People to them. You are a Mark. A target, a rube, a Thing to be used to achieve whatever end they have in mind. They do not regard you as the same type of entity as they are. To the criminal willing to kill an innocent, the innocent is NOT a person with the same rights and dignities as they have.

Since they will not class themselves with the decent people of the world, they deserve the appelation Col. Cooper gave them: Goblin. They are a subhuman race comprising all ethnicities and sexes.

To kill one is a last resort. You might even want to give up that wallet. But to remove a Goblin from the world is not the same thing as killing a People, as far as the righteous shooter is concerned. No sleep need be lost over a Goblin. If a People dies, their family is bereft of a breadwinner. Society is down a productive member that was going about at the very least driving the engine of the national economy. If a Goblin is put down, society is improved. They are parasites that may at need be removed with a 9-gram pill. to remove one from the picture means that they will NOT harm another People. Their recidivism rate is reduced to zero, instantly. Another wallet, truck, life, or innocence will not be stolen, which all means: another life will not be stolen.

This boils down to the libertarian concept of property rights: all your property came at the expense of your life. If you buy a car that costs 3 months' wages, that car is, in a very real sense, 3 months of your life in tangible form. Would you like it if, at the end of your life, someone came along and said "I'll be killing you 3 months early" and offed you, just because they wanted to?

Would you go softly into that night?

Would you let yourself be killed a year early? If you knew that you would be hit by a bus next year, would you sacrifice that year to the whim of someone who hates you?

Would you? I wouldn't.

Then why would you let them take your truck & boat? Didn't you give an entire year of your life to pay for them? Sure they can be replaced. That's not the point. The point is, you have a natural RIGHT to the fruit of your labor. "They" have NO right to take it from you. It's the same as killing you early. If you don't understand the concept of the right of property, then you don't understand that it is worth defending from those who would

steal

your life.

Would you have a moral problem killing a coyote that was eating your chickens? Would you have a problem putting down a rabid wolf?

Would you?

Then you may not be able to understand the concept of a hooman been as a Goblin, and the moral equivalent of a rabid dog.

Would it have been unjust for someone to kill the japanese Crazy who killed 7 folks recently, while he was still in the process of so doing? If so, then

a) your moral compass has a Leftist Magnet stuck to the side of it and

b) you are wrong.

It doesn't matter if you don't think you are wrong, because it doesn't change the fact that someone who will take the life of an innocent is NOT the same as someone who will take the life of a murderer.

Changing tacks...

Every time a People so much as draws his weapon, however justified, the LawyerSharks begin to circle. Every bullet fired leaves with the weight of the GSR left on the Righteous Shooter a weight of lawsuits, legal fees, and even possible jail time. This must be considered. It must also be considered that when a People confronts an armed Goblin it doesn't always turn out so great for the People.

A citizen who will go about armed must consider under what circumstances he will introduce a Goblin to his Little Friend, and under what circumstances he will not. Do you consider your own car to be worth the risk of your life? Does it matter to you that you are as likely as not to be shot once you exit the car, in order to keep both it, and the Goblin's trail, clean? If you consider your wallet not worth even the killing of a Goblin, reach for it instead of Mr. Glock's finest. If you consider it worth the effort to aim at a Goblin who is going about shooting people in Luby's at lunctime, reach for the thing that Works Every Time. Do you make a home invader a sammich and give him what he wants, or do you drop him without so much as a by'er'leave? What do you give when a thief says "give it to me?" You must consider, or you will end up being jacked up for unjustified actions whilst a Goblin rightfully claims victim status against your Perpetrator.

I have thought about it.

I don't like killing anything more sophisticated than cockroaches.

But if you insist on breaking into my house in the middle of the night, you have a few 10mm surprises waiting for you. If you tell me to give it to you, you may not like what you get.

If I joke about it, it is not kidding. Soldiers have told grizly jokes whilst walking past piles of corpses since the beginning of time, to cover over their own inner musings. If I whistle past the Goblins' graveyard, don't think me flippant. It's not a decision I have made lightly, but I have made it.

Ex Infernis

This image is a source of happiness in my home. The global-warming orange glow you see is the heating coil in my clothes dryer. I fixed the old one about a dozen times when it kept breaking. Then one time my wife said it got too hot and wouldn't use it anymore.

Not that she could have, since the thermal fuse had gone.

A week later, having spent a couple hours' wages on eBay (thanks shopXmart!) to aqcuire a day's wages worth of parts, and the dryer is back up. With the exhaust air entirely tolerably cool (hot, but not burning), the operating thermostat switched off and the orange glow died off.

YAY!

The FLDS Folks Begin to Obtain Redress ... Soon?

The Texas supreme Court has declared that the state overstepped their authority in taking those FLDS kids from their parents because their parents belonged to a baaaaad religious group. Give back.

Let's see how long they will drag this out.

In soviet Russia, they would bring a case and (literally) beat up the "accused" because they said they were innocent. The tenor of the response would be: How dare you say you are innocent and the prosecutor is wrong, after all the effort the state has put into this investigation. You must be guilty because an accusation has been brought!

Hold on there.

Does anyone see a resemblance?

What do you mean, you should get your kids back? Didn't we have an accusation brought? Don't some of the yung'ins have children? Doesn't that mean that you shouldn't have due process of law in an individual case? How dare you say that the state in all its power does not have a right to take the children?

Whose children are they, anyhow?

Not the State's.
Not the Parents'.

The children born into this world are PEOPLE. They are not PROPERTY. I tell my kids that they are mine, and what is theirs is mine, because they are not intellectually developed enough to understand the following:

People belong to their maker. You did not make your children, you made sex. God mixed the magic juice and made the children in their mothers' wombs. "Before I formed you in the belly I knew you." and "It is he that hath made us, and not we, ourselves". Children are born to parents who, ideally, are happily, with deep commitment, truly down-for-the-struggle Married. Not "we're seeing if it will work out" shacked up. Not a one night stand, rape or incest. Married.

The home of a married couple is the BEST environment in which a child can be reared. The father and mother balance each other's foibles, and their strengths and weaknesses complement each other. A child sees the way people should relate, and grows (hopefully) into a balanced individual.

The State is made BY people, FOR people. The state is supposed to protect people from damage by non-people and itself, as well as provide infrastructure that would be unfeasible to do privately (international diplomacy, armed forces, and, arguably, streets, to name a few functions). The State is not the ideal parent for a child. The State has a responsibility to to see that children are not abused, but that's a pretty narrow limitation.

I'm sorry if you don't like it, but having a kooky sending-you-to-hell religion that involves multiple wives is NOT the same as hitting a 5 year-old with a pipe wrench. Living in your own compound and having consensual relations between adults is NOT the same as starving a teenager locked in a closet. You're getting closer if you say, forcing a child into marriage at 14 and getting them pregnant, is a violation of human rights (given by God, by the way) that the State should try to punish.

That means, maybe, a couple dozen criminal cases here. it does NOT mean 440+ children arbitrarily grabbed at gunpoint, or burning down your compound with 80 people inside. Yes the examples are related.

It is only a small difference in scale, between burning your house down over your head, and stealing all your children, especially if the reasons for that action BY THE STATE are similar.

But I digress.

The State is not a parent, and the children are not the property of the State. The State does not get to say how children are to be reared, only that they are not to be abused. If the State doesn't like the way you rear your children, the proper response by ALL of us The People should be: Tough Cookies, Bite One.

God has given the responsibility for the rearing of children to the parents. The parents will do the best they can, and as they see fit. When we start acquiescing as a society to the taking of children because the parents' religion is different to ours, we are running headlong down a slippery slope.

I will lose my children for being a member of a cult with kinky sex action
I will lose my children for being a member of a cult
I will lose my children for being a member of a fundamentalist religion
I will lose my children for being a member of a religion
I will lose my children for publicly having religious ideas
I will lose my children for publicly voicing unpopular ideas
I will lose my children for suspicion of unpopular ideas
I will lose my children for unpopular actions
I will lose my children for smoking
for not seeing that they have health insurance
for not putting them in the assigned government school
for not feeding them properly
for not indoctrinating them properly
for not being a Party member
for not having a licence to have children
etc., and it gets worse.

Does it sound ridiculous? Then contact your local Elected Heroes and tell them you are outraged at the FLDS case in principle, whether or not they are responsible for it. Because YOUR children are next.

You freak.

It's Happened. The Lunatics Are Now Running the Asylum.

I used to joke, privately, to myself, that, since we are assigning all these "rights" to animals, plants would be next.

Proving once again that modern liberalism truly is a mental disorder, Switzerland is assigning rights to plants.

It is morally ok to mow a field for farming, but not to pick a flower. The next step is clear.

We must stop eating plants, as they are our moral brothers. We already have stopped eating animals for the same reason. We must only eat air. Of course, it is the essence of selfishness to drink water from a stream, as it takes from the fish. Drinking rain water as it falls from the sky, obviously takes the life-giving water from the earth itself. We must stop eating and drinking.

Fortunately, those who truly adhere to this philosophy will remove themselves from the gene pool. The problem is with the hypocrites who force socialist philosophy down our throats while eating the flesh of small children behind closed doors.

If people had stayed in their Bibles, this would not even be a concern. It says the earth, the plants, the animals, are for us to have dominion over, take care of, and even (gasp! horrors!) eat.

Don't get me wrong, I love plants and animals. They taste great. Just stay out of my garden if you think the flowers have rights.

I wonder what they would think about my right to self defense?

Range Report

or, I Know What You Did Last Memorial Day

Yesterday (Memorial Day) we observed the holiday by spending it with those living people we love, including several families from our church and their families. In the morning, our a/c at the house was acting up, so I missed the 14:00 range session, but I figured our host, M.V. would at least like to see my highway patrol surplus Glock, so I took it and the Kel-Tek and a small pile of ammunition, on the chance that he might want to do some more shooting once the party thinned out some.

I knew that M.V. had shot a revolver and some pistol-caliber carbines, so I was somewhat surprised when he said he had never fired a pistol. C.B. may have a revolver (I'm not sure) but if he's fired off a full box of cartridges, ever, I'd be surprised.
E.M. has never been shooting.

We lit off some fireworks after a few hundred too many calories, and the majority of the guests split. Right at the crack of night, E.M. got clearance from his Wife to go shooting before they left. It was M.V.'s land, so he was good to go. C.B. joined us as we arrived on the range.

Distance: about 15yds. Target/backstop: some sacks of quickrete that had set up in the rain last summer, that were propped against some trees. I set my coke bottle on the sacks.

The 1st shot was mine. I went through the manual of arms for the Glock 22 and, with the first round, made a clean kill of my recently-emptied bottle. Everybody got a few rounds off with the Glock, and there were comments about the biggish recoil.

The next course of fire was with the Kel-Tek .380, and there were no more comments about the recoil from the foh-tay.

Then once more round with the Glock, me first. I was very pleased with the controllability in rapid-fire, and happy to put my first rapid-fire string out of it (Red's doesn't allow more than a controlled triple in rapid-fire). I also put out a much less accurate rapid-fire string from the Kel-Tek, and shot both single-handed. Fun.

We picked up some spent casings for souvenirs and recycling (and, for me, to have a quick check to see how the guns were running) and headed back up to the house. I tried to assuage E.M.'s fears when he asked how much all this shooting was costing me. The answer would have been different if we were shooting 30-06, but if you count the price cut I got on the Kel-Tek, I basically spent $0 on ammunition last night (yay!). We had a discussion with the neophytes about the relative power and size of various chamberings, including a discussion of E=MC(squared). Score: 3 made better militia members, 1 militia member got more gun time with his own weapons. Also, a 4-year old got to handle his first-ever live cartridge and got a very brief saftey & explanatory lecture, and E.M.'s wife heard from mine, that shooting really is fun. Plant the seeds!

The shooting was good. The quick-set concrete seems to be an excellent backstop for pistol fire. The Kel-Tek had zero malfunctions of any kind. The painted sights were of little use, due to low ambient light and a handheld spotlight that put daylight brightness on the target. The night sights on the G22 were of little use, also due to the spotlight's brightness. The Glock had one stoppage, a failure to feed, with a Speer Gold-Dot that had never been chambered before. That's a 5% failure rate and I think I'll be getting some Expanding Full Metal Jackets instead, in the future. Accuracy was fair, but since we were just shooting to shoot (no paper targets), the shower of cement shrapnel was much more impressive than the accuracy of the weapon.

Good times.

In the iterest of promoting familiarity with weapons of all sorts, and the advancement of the level of skill and knowledge amongst the members of the People, I will reiterate The Offer, again: if you have never shot a firearm, and are in the Central Texas region, contact me. I will take you to a well-lit, air-conditioned, controlled environment and supply the guns and ammunition. No strings attached. I want you to not be afraid of guns. I want you to know how to shoot. I want you (eventually) to be at least armed and able to defend your own home against Goblins.

w00t! GIVE BAK!

Appeals court rules: TX has NO RIGHT to take the kids from the FLDS compound.

YAY! How about a sharp stick in the eye you JERKS. Let's see how long it takes to get the traumatized youngins back home.

What Do You Mean by "Equality Under the Law?"

Okay, the FLDS compound has been raided

hundreds of kids taken

on apparently completely made-up first-hand testimony from a crazy person.

Alrighty then, the case may proceed!

That would be, removal proceedings for ALL the kids in the compound.

Nevermind if the parents are accused of abusing the kids or allowing them to be abused... they were polygamists! Didn't you read the headlines? Pregnant CHILDREN!!!!11!

And some of the mothers have the gall to ask that their children be returned since there are no accusations of abuse in their cases. Stupid womyn. Don't you know you can't be members of an unpopular minority in the United States of America?

Oh wait.

Tales From a Survivor

At the grocery store last night, I heard employees on their handheld radios going back and forth about a Tornado Warning as we were on the way to checkout. After we made our evil capitalist dog transaction and the kids were at the Buddy Bucks machine, they came over the 1MC and asked customers to go to the middle of the store because of the Warning.

Being in the middle of a tin can during a tornado? Not my idea of a safe place.

We, of course, being led by non-sheeple type me, bugged out. I kept to the more-travelled roads in case the car got blow'd over with us in it, they'd find us sooner. Flags standing straight out, leaves & rain blowing sideways. Nice. By the way, NewTruck needs new wiper blades.

Got home: Severe Thunderstorm Warning. One remote transponder called a possible swirly action and automatic Tornado Warning. This morning: No tornado reported.

Bugging out 1, Hunkering down in a store with 60 sheeple 0, everybody got a good night's sleep thanks to the rain on the roof soothing the baby all night.

Lesson learned: don't let "them" do your emergency action thinking for you, unless you want to be scared and unaware of what's going on around you.

Irksome.

I am irritated.

I am irritated by phony feel-good holidays.

Valentine's Day is the worst. I'm not a Catholic and I'm not a jerk. Pretty much everything I do is for my wife and family. I shouldn't have to go to some extra effort on some arbitrary day to say what my entire life says every day. Let me be clear:

Valentine's Day is for Jerks.

If you need to buy a card, candy, flowers, jewelery, etc., so your woman knows you love her, you aren't expressing it properly, or she is an ungrateful wretch, brainwashed by feminist influences in our society, including commercial advertisements. either way, if you need to do something special on V'D, somebody in your relationship is a Jerk. I actually got offended this year by all the commercials equating stuff with love. I mockingly say "happy love day" and don't celebrate it. I did the same thing this V'D as the year before and after for my wife: Nothing Special.

But today is especially irritating; Mother's Day. Who could be against mothers? I'm for mothers, and my kids have a good one, but because Congress says so I have to do Something Special? Humbug. So I sat there & stewed in my juices the entire morning and will likely do so all day.* I think I'm not the only one. I told a joke and the guy to whom I told it got all offended. Blame fake holidays.

Now a real event, I'll recognize. It's our 10-year Wedding Anniversary this year, and if I can afford it I'd like to get a diamond ring for my sweetie. But today is just another day as far as I'm concerned. Count me that man who "esteemeth every day alike". I would miss my birthday. I would forget it was Christmas. I would ignore the New Year. We know the date of Easter, so I'm glad for that day. Don't get me started on Halloween.

Oh well.

And by the way, if you think that the above makes me a Jerk, what did you do for Secretaries' Day Administrative Assistants' Day? What will you do on Armed Forces Day? How about Hurray for Buttons Day, National Third Shift Workers Day, Migratory Bird Day, or Fibromyalgia Awareness Day?

HUMBUG. Bah.

&&&&&&&&

* I wrote this while I was still irked. As we were driving home from church, it occurred to me why this day sucks so bad. It's not Mother's Day, it's the Lord's day. I'd be upset if somebody threw my next door neighbor an un-birthday party in my house on my birthday, too. What a terrible idea. At least, while my wifey is out, I'm cleaning up around the house.

The Best Laid Plans of Mice & Men

or, Why I Haven't Made Many Posts Lately.

New baby
New car / Old Garage (new car requires complete rearrangement of old garage)(including redoing the lights and shop air supply lines)
Full Time Job
and (drumroll)

College Algebra and US Government!

Yes folks, that's helping take care of a fresh #3, along with #1 and #2, AND a wife, house, cars, dogs, etc. all whilst trying to teach myself algebra at 2 in the morning.

Note: a daily combined total <6 hours sleep, mostly in <2 hour segments, is NOT conducive to lots of spare time for blogging.

My legions of faithful readers will have to suck it up a while longer, until #3 starts sleeping through the night, or until The Next Big Thing comes through.

If The Next Big Thing does happen the way it could, I could be on my way to 5x the money for 0.25x the hours worked. I'd appreciate your prayers on the subject, and we'll see what happens!