Well, when a co-worker and our boss quit on the same day, I thought that'd max out the overtime opportunities within the company. I was wrong. After that the owners decided they didn't need a supervisor over my division after all and would just run it themselves. (They bought our division from another company a little while back and judging by their decisions since they don't seem to understand the business model we're running under, which tends to make our jobs harder, thus longer hours for all.) Things were starting to stabilize when a co-worker died (and a real shame as not only was he a decent fellow but the kid was only 30). So suffice it to say time at the keyboard has been slim.
I have collected a bunch of stories that I planned to comment on if I ever got any time, so here they are in no particular order:
A clear case of political disconnect - Giron claims the Navy Yard shooter "...probably wouldn't have passed a background check..." to buy a firearm. The reporter points out that the murderer at the Navy Yard did indeed pass background checks, not only for weapons purchasing but for a secret level clearance.
Not to be outdumbed, Morse claims (in the same story linked above) that the gun owners in his district weren't responsible for voting him out of office - it was the nefarious gun lobby.
It's apparently illegal to ride a horse while intoxicated in Boulder.
Ted Trimpa - it's a name you should know. Here's his wikipedia page. He's a big mover and shaker in the Eloi culture's political wing and he had a lot to do with Colorado's current sad state. Here's an interview with him concerning the recall elections. In it Trimpa says that Giron's loss was a big surprise for everyone.
Not exactly. In this article (scroll down a ways) a polling firm correctly called Giron's recall - but"
"When we got the results back, we found that 33% of Democrats in the district supported the recall,' Jensen wrote on PPP’s blog. 'That finding made me think that respondents may not have understood what they were being asked, so I decided to hold onto it.”
Jensen also testified on behalf of the now-unemployed public servants during legal challenges to the recall. I mention to this suggest that he and his company have an agenda and therefore his numbers (the ones released pre-election at least) aren't to be trusted. I'll also point out that he suffers from the same warped view that his clients did - the perspective that the peasants can't possibly not want to be subjugated, therefore they obviously misunderstood the question. or the ballot.
(h/t to Mandy Connell, a new talk show host in Colorado, who talked about the polling story a few days ago).
The Denver PD promises to do better on response times to rapes. Really. They mean it. Course if they had more cops (and a bigger budget for more cops...) So if a rape victim waits more than an hour a cop will be dispatched immediately, and if the wait is more than 90 minutes a detective will be sent right away!
According to CBS4, in 2011 Denver PD response times for emergency calls averaged a little over 14 minutes. By the fall of 2012 the wait was around 17 minutes.
Since then they've done a lot of shuffling to get the response times down to 7 minutes or so (according to Denver PD Chief White). But the union ain't happy about it.
(There's conflicting data on response time in 2013 for the Denver PD. For example this article claims form January to July of 2013 the average response time for an emergency call was 14.9 minutes.)
Of course, no one at the Denver PD or the union even remotely suggests arming yourself. Neither do they mention that 14 minutes is a long time to hold off an attacker with a state approved 15 round magazine.
This story about a bear in Broomfield, Colorado gives tips on what to do in case of a bear sighting. Despite saying that fighting back can be effective if attacked by a bear, the article makes no mention of using a firearm - instead they suggest to use rocks, sticks or binoculars.
Here's an article on possible development of public land in Colorado for the shooting sports.
Woman attacked and injured by moose in Boulder county.
A Utah shepherd was attacked and seriously injured by an elk.
In Boulder, a bear was killed after it forced the lock down of an elementary school. That's about the only time a lockdown of any place makes sense - when a bear or other predatory animal is outside and you have good strong doors and very high windows.
In restoring an old Goldwing, I stumbled onto a site run by a fellow that goes by Randakk. He specializes in Honda GL1000 and to some extent GL1100 parts, as well as some other Honda bikes. He has two essays up that I found very interesting (in addition to the more how-to oriented items, which are real damn helpful). The first is titled Fuel Mileage Issues and the second is called More on Fuel And Fuel Additives – Fear the Corn?. Both are worth a read whether or not you ride a motorcycle. And if you have an old Honda bike his carb rebuild kits are highly recommended.
A local Colorado shooting club had an event for disabled shooters.
I found this interesting - a map of the u.S. if the states were determined by population.
An article on how to prevent animal attacks. Note the "expert" as he discusses the role of firearms in self defense against critters:
"Leave the Glock at home.
If you aren't hunting, then Anderson strongly advises against carrying a firearm as a self-defense tool against predators. 'Statistically, it's horrible,' he says. 'Like, 50 percent of people who use a firearm against an attacking grizzly end up being mauled severely.' Predators are far quicker than humans, and you just aren't Jesse James, friend. So while you might be fast enough to pop off a shot, unless you instantly kill whatever is attacking, you're only going to put the animal in enraged fight mode.
Anderson instead suggests always carrying bear pepper spray, which will dissuade any animal from getting anywhere near you. 'When you spray bears, suddenly they can't breathe and their eyes burn and their whole world is taken away,' he says. 'Bears aren't in a fight anymore – they just want to get away from this miserable moment.' An added benefit is that the animal will consequently avoid other humans from then on."
I'm not a fan of glocks but the rest of it is just bullshit. If 50% of incidents result in mauling when a gun is used for protection, that means that 50% of incidents result in not getting mauled when using a gun for protection.
And I would wonder where the "expert" gets his figures. Also, of those 50% that were injured when using a firearm against bears, how many were injured prior to using a gun versus afterwards? And there's the demeaning statement that we aren't Jesse James therefore a bear can get on us before we can dissuade it by gunfire, we somehow are quick enough to hit a bear in the face with a spray? And why exactly does shooting a bear just piss it off and encourage it to attack us, whereas bear spray, which is also painful, doesn't initiate the same response?
Again I don't like relying on "odds" for my safety. If bear spray works effectively 99% of the time I know my luck will put me in the 1% column. What I do like is having options, so I can choose how to respond. I dislike some TV host telling me I have to limit my options because he knows what's bets for me.
Finally, in Garand news I stumbled across some interesting things.
LAW483 Enterprises is making custom and semi-custom pistol gripped stocks for Garands and M1A's. They also won't honor any government exemptions in a state where their product ain't available to the general public.
A business called Shuff's Parkerizing is making a very abbreviated Garand conversion called the Mini-G. He also does mag conversion of Garands (in 7.62x51 NATO) as well as something he calls a BM14 Garand. The Mini-G seems most interesting to me though; it has a 16.1" barrel, a 35.6" overall length and it weighs in at 7.7 pounds.
Finally, the folks at Garand Gear have a ported gas plug for the Garand that they claim requires no adjustment to use any ammo, commercial or surplus. Here's a paper they did explaining how and why their ported gas plug works with G.I. and commercial ammo, complete with graphs from the testing they did regarding port pressure. I'm no engineer (though I would appreciate one's review of that last linked paper. ahem.) but from what I gather they're on to something with their design.
Ya know, I hear that some folks on the internet claim a Garand is outdated or somehow not adequate for modern needs. Silliness, I tell ya. A Garand (or any .30-06 or 7.62x51 NATO rifle) ain't ideal for home defense for apartment dwellers, but a Garand will do its job as long as you know how to use it for that job. And there just ain't too many jobs a Garand can't handle (for example I hear it makes a lousy flotation device).
My schedule remains uncertain, though at the moment it's pretty damn full, so I'll post when I can. In the meantime I do have a blogroll over on the right sidebar, chock full of folks that are dishing out ice cream at no charge damn near every day.
Posted by Publicola at September 21, 2013 06:15 AM | TrackBackHang in there.
Posted by: SPQR at September 22, 2013 08:16 PM