I'm shocked! Shocked I say, to hear that the state that gave us deputies too cowardly to protect schoolkids has now turned their efforts to violating the rights of the wrong people as a matter of course:
This story didn't make the two local papers or any other local source I see, so we go to the AmmoLand newsletter today. A St. Cloud (Florida) man had his firearms confiscated and his rights revoked because he has the same name as someone else.
Carpenter was shocked and confused. What seems to have happened next is he dove right into the hornet's nest. An innocent man who believes in the goodness and fairness of the system would do that.
Figuring it was a mistake, Carpenter called the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services to clear things up since he has never committed domestic violence against anyone. The representative told him he had to get a form from the Clerk of the Courts saying that there weren't any actions against him.
Of course they did. When he went to the Clerk of the Courts, he was told there was an injunction against a Jonathon Edward Carpenter - a resident of a different address. Carpenter told the agent he was not that person, had never lived at that address and had never been accused of any domestic violence. That person directed him to the Osceola County Sheriff's office to clear things up. Still thinking the state was just confused rather than malevolent, he went to the Sheriff's office. He thought he could clear things up.
This is just one of the first such instances. It's nowhere near the last.
There's a fair and simple solution to this sort of nonsense:
Such "good faith" mistakes (which actually show nothing but contempt and malice towards the accused) should subject the clerk of any court and any sheriff responsible for enforcing same so implicated to full civil liability and penalties.
If any injury to defendant results, they should all be subject to criminal penalties as felony conspirators to the deprivation of civil rights, and that criminal prosecution should be automatic and mandatory, or else the district attorney deficient be added to the list of defendants.
In any case where resistance is offered because TPTB are in the wrong, full immunity from prosecution should be guaranteed. If anyone dies, the police responsible should face mandatory trial for murder.
When they have skin in the game, it will be a fair contest.
And when you see cops and legal apparatchiks wearing barrels and living in cardboard boxes when they screw it up like this, they might, y'know, pull their heads out of their asses long enough to check their info before they go swinging their executive branch dicks around, and end up getting them chopped off.
A moot law is no law at all, and one's original, natural rights take full precedence, and it's going to need to start costing them cops' lives to find this out. Since that's the only way they pay attention, I say "Game on".
They dealt the cards, let them play that hand, and see how long before their officers getting shot simply for getting out of the car at the wrong house is a commonplace occurrence, and they decide that lemon ain't worth the squeezin'.
"Just following orders", as a legal strategy, pretty much ran out of gas in 1946 at Nuremburg.
Red flag laws violate pretty much every tenet of common law in place since Magna Carta, and anyone killed for enforcing them deserves the full faceful of buckshot they've got coming.
Unfortunately, it's going to be the only thing to give them pause to engage their brains before enforcing such medieval Trial By Ordeal.
As guessed in comments last week, the other Elvis tribute song. And I never saw the original music video for this when it came out, but in it, Allanah Myles looks exactly like one would imagine, based on the vocals on the radio. If you're going to be a one-hit wonder, do it like this. If you please.
Conspicuous by its absence: Any mention of who commits crime disproportionately, who's soft on crime, or which party has run Philly (into the ground) for years.
Turns out we have been building one, for some time, and the 57 miles constructed just adjacent to San Diego (for the long-term retarded out there, just one of numerous similar builds underway, not the sole effort) is already helping there. Like you'd expect.
That's 57 miles where you can't just walk in. Where 1 guy watching miles has time, if you try, to call in back up to pounce on you. Where you can't cut through. Where you can't bring in 80# backpacks full of dope. Where a herd of 100 doesn't get through, including 10 guys who don't quite look like wetbacks, and are carrying Korans and prayer rugs.
For reference, the entire CA border with Mexico is only around 200 miles.
Imagine how much it's going to suck for Mexico, and their cartels, when there's 2200 miles of it, from the Gulf to the Pacific.
They might have to attempt the novel (for them, since ever) approach of unf**king their own hosed up country, instead of using the U.S as an economic tampon for their failed socialism, and then importing their misery here out of desperation.
And every time you shovel another load of illegals formerly here back over, they won't be able to just return the next day anymore.
What a concept:
Plug the leaks, then bail out the boat.
Almost like the people (including this blog) who tell you "Walls work" know what they're talking about or something.
Snare wire rolls. Nota bene, Gentle Reader, I did not say "a snare". Or even two snares.
Germane-to-the-topic exchange at Mountain Warfare Training Center:
"I put out a snare, Sergeant!"
"Well, gee sir, that's really nice. Now go put out 20 more, and you might get one scraggly squirrel or rock marmot to eat before next Christmas. Your choice. It's a long evolution out here. Carry on, sir."
I mention that because it happens all the time. The dotMil, in all incarnations, even packs one or two snares, steel, in their aircrew survival kits. With a spiffy soft metal locking link, in case you get some action. Dumbasses who've never used them think two is enough.
Not hardly. Try 20-50. If you actually want to eat. Consider the number required for a single squirrel pole, of which you should try 3-4, or maybe 9 or 10, if that sort of game is on the menu:
If you live in suburbia, I highly recommend practicing with this.
Just not if you have cats. And NOT in the front yard, m'kay?
Check local laws and requirements for a hunting/trapping license too.
So you need a lot of snare wire, just for one proper pole. A snare, singular, isn't going to get it done. Ever.
Second problem. Those spiffy issue snares are made of steel. In the white. Wanna know what their lifespan is in a survival kit, even in a dry climate? Fifteen years, at which point they'll be a rusty circle of worthless shit. (Ask me how I know.) Don't even ask about in a near-ocean salt air or high-humidity climate, in which it's probably measured in months. You can oil them, which spooks game. You can use animal oils and grease. Which stinks like sh*t in your gear. Or you can use things other than the issue white steel. Things that don't rust out.
Stainless is always a good choice. You can find (and I have them) 2-3' stainless leaders in the BassPro angling aisles, that make great snares for anything up to probably raccoon and beaver-sized prey.
You can even buy some really splendiferous pre-made snares from the few remaining trapping companies that PETA hasn't driven out of existence.
Both options are rather spendy, however. And you should know how to make your own snares, with no hardware, or fancy catches, from scratch. You may be working from salvaged wire from any number of sources (vehicles, etc.), which likelihood is much higher than having a survival kit with two dozen game snares of all sizes with pre-made locking links.
A brighter choice, therefore, is to go to the hardware store, and get spools of wire that won't rust: Brass. Copper. Aluminum. Or green coated floral garden wire. Which last is the cheapest thing you'll find, and the most bang for the buck. Strength and durability is always a function of price and your desire.
Unless you're thinking of trying for deer and such, you're aiming at squirrel to rabbit sized prey. So 20-26 gauge wire will suffice. If you want more strength, braid it, like any other line. Or buy stronger wire. Generally, thicker gauge equals shorter amount on spool. So read the labels.
More strength, fewer snares. Buy more wire, make more snares.
Need a bomb-proof tightening wire?
Take one end. Roll the wire around a small diameter roundish piece of wood (twig, pencil, etc.) two times, leaving several inches left over. Take it off the stick. Take the additional length, and twist it around the wire before the double loop. Don't crush or tighten the double loop. Put the running end through the double loop. That's your won't-loosen locking loop. Make the loop the correct size for the game you seek. Anchor the other end appropriately.
When Bre'r Rabbit or Bre'r Squirrel goes in, it tightens on itself, locks up the snare loop, and won't let go. If you anchored the other end securely, and found your catch before some other predator, dinner is served.
The spool above will get you plenty of snares. A few such spools, minimum, is the correct amount. They also make, or can make, leaders for toothier prey on fishing line. And trip wires for deadfalls, spring snares, etc. You can also use military trip wire spools, which come in green and yellow.
The mil-surp stuff can be had usually for about $1/roll, in endless quantities. And it's not just for flares and land mines, okay?
(You can always paint your brass, copper, or aluminum wires, but it has to be done unrolled, then allowed to dry thoroughly before re-rolling. I would rather get blackened anodized aluminum, or other pre-coated options, but I may not have as much time to watch paint dry as you do.)
You can catch anything with a head or feet with a big and strong enough snare. But only if you have enough. (And then, a way to dispatch the prey from a distance that isn't strangled, without becoming a meal yourself.)
Snare wire rolls, kids. Not *a* snare or two. Survival is hungry work.
You irrepressible commie halfwits think you've got the cards. You're the idiot talking tough with the shotgun in your hand, and you're about to get comeuppance. In Louis L'Amour's memorable phrase, you're about to have your meathouse torn down. With a mere couple of nutbags (mainly your own nutbags, nota bene) doing what nutbags do, you imagine you've got enough pull now to leverage your way into more asinine abridgments of the Constitution.
You haven't, you won't, and you really, really need to knock it off.
I remind you of this while you've got your limbs and most of your teeth all still attached.
We're really not kidding.
You've had all the slices of our cake you're ever getting.
Step. AWAY. From the table.
STFU, keep your hands in plain sight, and walk away, and you might live through this.
And for the cynical timid souls on the other side suffering from Stockholm Syndrome and normalcy bias, desist.
Re-think.
Heller and McDonald, and the appellate decisions that set that table, are now settled black-letter law, and everyone who cares knows that. In their bones.
You cannot unring that bell.
And ammo is as much a part of "arms" in the 2nd A. as the guns themselves, so that dog won't hunt either.
People in CA watched one lone lunatic, Dorner, tie this state up from Oregon to Mexico, for a week...for one rogue ex-cop.
The CHP wasn't writing any tickets, because every cruiser was sitting on a freeway onramp, looking for him to show up. The paper-tiger LAPD was shooting at anything that moved, they were so fearful of the wrath of just one guy, and not a very bright one at that. (Which made it a fair fight, in the end.)
So the limits of your actual power are now common knowledge, even in the bluest states.
A lot of people thought we'd be facing ramped up anti-gun legislation long before now, because Shrillary and the Clinton Family Crime Syndicate looked like a shoe-in...until she wasn't.
And serious people were ready, then, to open the ball you're itching for now.
If TPTB were to decide they could set the last vestiges of the Constitution on fire, there's more than a few that would take it upon themselves as a point of honor, not to wait cowering inside their homes, but to go out hunting OPFOR, 24/7/365. And they'd get more than one scalp apiece.
Two lunkhead "snipers" in D.C. tied the District up for a month, and none of their shots over 100 yards. What do you suppose will happen when the people involved can hit their targets at 600 yards all the live long day?
Twenty such would turn this country on its head.
A hundred would mean guerrilla war and martial law.
A thousand such, and it's a war that Team Oppression will never win.
(Afghanistan ring a bell? Vietnam? Stop me if you've heard this one...)
And the conservative odds are that once it started, it wouldn't stay twenty, a hundred, or a thousand. It would be a million. Maybe several.
We barely have that many full-time military troops in the Army and Marines combined, right now, and were those troops to join in, they'd be attrited to nothing in a season or two, at the outside. And if they ever opened fire on anyone, they'd just swell the ranks of the insurgency a thousandfold, with every volley.
Not to mention a non-zero number who would switch sides at the first opportunity.
The military you think you'll use wouldn't be a force, it would be a resupply point.
Public officials would be in hiding.
And at that point, government ceases to function, or exist, in any real sense.
Once you have open warfare, you don't have any America to save any more.
All you Leftards have is B.S. and bluster, and that never even won a playground fight, let alone a shooting war.
And most of the people you'd be facing have seen the elephant already, and been in shooting wars, real ones, not Antifa airsoft cosplay slapfights, nor the likes of Pete Williams and Shrillary remembering that time they parachuted into combat on a flying unicorn under sniper fire with the 82nd Airborne.
They already know what they're doing, they have their logistics on their closet shelf, and they'll take Leviathan apart with millions of bites, the same way ants eat an elephant.
This is not a zipper you ought to pull, but if you do, what falls on you after is going to be so awesomely terrible that you'll stare in wonderment, right up until it smacks the ever-loving shit right out of your heads, and kills you with as much compassion as a bulldozer running over maggots.
All it needs is a single match, and the your side is flicking lighters in a room full of gasoline and gunpowder.
Now is not the time to bet on things going like they always went.
It's not headed that way, and the physics of what will ensue guarantee the pieces won't even come back after the explosions in the same time zone.
In short, minions of Leftardia and Stupidia, you have blundered into a minefield, on a pogo stick.
Stop what you're doing, tiptoe out, and pray to whatever deity you think appropriate that you get away with your skins.
Because if you insist on pushing your revolution, you're going to get the war of which you cannot grasp, and the results of which you cannot even conjure in your wildest fever-swamp nightmares.
And your opponents, who've been stacking in supplies and loading magazines, are shifting from backing away, and hoping the fight you long for doesn't come, and instead coming to a feeling of thinking it's about time to roll up their sleeves, and end you.
Not your party.
Not your progressive communist utopia. You. For all values of that word.
Every goddamned traitorous last one of you. Followed by your spouses, your children, your pets, your semi-domesticated illegal alien hordes, your schemes, your putrescent institutions, your metastasizing socialist programs, and every festering vestige of pustulence you've spewed onto a country you do not understand, didn't build, and over which you and yours will never rule.
Your pendulum is out of gas (and had you the wit, you might have noticed that in 2016, and gone home to pout quietly until you could function in polite society), and the pushback if you dare it, is going to be measured in megadeaths, if not actually megatons. Stalin, Mao, Fidel, and Pol Pot all had it your way. Look for those scales to be balanced, at your expense, in the upcoming sportiness you really do not want, and cannot comprehend.
And if the Deplorables you misunderestimated ever set out to do that, in earnest, people will talk about you and your fate for millennia, the way they talk about Carthage after the Third Punic War now.
You are running out of chances, and your continued efforts in the service of igniting that fuse are rapidly transitioning, in saner minds, from being a bug in the system, to being a feature of it, and a consummation devoutly to be wished.
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what's for dinner.
But we aren't in a democracy, and never have been. A fact of which your Common Core miseducation has left you blissfully clueless.
We are and always have been a constitutional republic, which notes that the sheep hereabouts may be armed, lest the wolves forget the limits of their franchise.
And lest you misunderstand that reality, what's going on the menu if you continue to agitate beyond your bounds, is you.
I'm not an Elvis fan, in pretty much any way whatsoever. Dated music, from before my time, and the only recollection I have of him was a fat slob far beyond overweight in a jumpsuit, long past his prime, trying to resurrect a career now distantly in his own rear view mirror; and then checking out while grunting out the mother of all opiate constipation turds, while high on pretty much every drug know to man. Not my idea of any sort of idol. More of a punchline than anything else.
But a couple of songs about him long after he passed, like Marc Cohn's tribute to him, absolutely rings, and I love ever bar of it. Much like Don Mclean's American Pie, I suspect this song will outlast and outshine its nominal subject.
"Tell me, are you a Christian, child?" "Ma'am, I am tonight!"
Not counting the news outlets or websites along the full range of accuracy and veracity, I follow 10 or so actual individuals' handwritten blogs. Looking them over, 8 of the 10 are current serving or former military and 4 of those 8 are some variation of high-speed low-drag elite forces ninjas. And 2 are cops. So in other words, the same folks I trusted in the military not to wet the bed, sh*t themselves, or otherwise run around like headless Nancys, are the same folks I trust on the interwebz, for demonstrating pretty much the same trustworthiness and circumspectly responsible behavior. Color me shocked.
Comments are appreciated. They require neither prior ID nor screening for content. Anonymous abusive or rude comments will be either mocked mercilessly, or simply deleted into the internet ether, solely at the blog owner's discretion. (That would be me.) If you somehow labor under the misapprehension that free speech applies everywhere, try this experiment: put on a ski mask, go to your next door neighbor's house, urinate and defecate on his living room floor in front of him, and call him a m*****f****** @$$hole, then see whether you receive an award from the ACLU, or an ambulance and police car, who stop momentarily to help collect your teeth. If you don't get this, you're too stupid to be on the Internet, let alone posting comments on my blog. Disagreement is one thing, even ignorance can be understandable, but rude @$$holery will not be tolerated here. I have neither the time nor inclination to imbue what a public K-12 failed to instill in those folks bereft of the ability to reason intelligently or behave like well-adapted human beings in polite society.That's why for you there's a Skid Row.
