The National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) is holding its annual SHOT Show next week.  Basically, it allows outdoor sports media and companies that deal in guns, gear, and all the rest of things that make life fun to get together for a few days, discuss new products and services, and hobknob.  It’s invite only, as opposed to the NRA Annual Meeting, which allows the general public to come in and look at products and talk to industry representatives.

For the past few years, more and more people from new media, such as gunblogs, have been invited to attend SHOT.  Recently NSSF put out a very gracious welcome to non-traditional media on their blog.  They seem to be very open to including gunbloggers into the fold.

A growing contingent at the SHOT Show is our Internet media. In fact, more than 600 Internet media representatives — bloggers, forum leaders and website producers — will be at the show this year. When we first started registering Internet media four years ago, that number was under 100.

Apparently, some of the more established ‘journalists’ have an issue with that.  Here’s the comment that started the kerfluffle:

Now the question is when you are going to start qualifying internet media?   We have to crawl over nobodies who can install wordpress and have nobody reading anything they write, It isn’t so hard to qualify internet media using Alexa.com and Compete.com.  Why do you waste the manufacturers’ time and make the real internet media have to deal with wish I were internet journalists who are just using your stamp of approve to solicit review guns and accessories?  You’ve created this giant gorilla in the room and we all have to deal with it, and you may think the industry takes your numbers seriously, but everyone sees things for what they are.  If you are serious about bringing value to your exhibitors, you need to vet the press list. — Paul, Helinski, GunsAmerica

What are my qualifications?  Well, I’m a gunowner and shooter.  I’m not Tony Tactical or Allen Quatermain, but  I enjoy the technology of guns, the fun of shooting, hunting, and fishing.  I’m an everyman.  I’m a suburban father, gun enthusiast, and news junkie.  My perspectives on these subjects reflect that, and people like me are a rising voice that more and more people are listening to.

Look, I’m not a professional journalist, and I never claimed to be.   I don’t do this to get free stuff or make money.  I don’t consider myself a hardcore gunblogger.  I don’t compare to Tam, Uncle, or Jay.  On a typical day, I get a few hundred unique visitors and pageviews.  Posts about guns and gun rights make up between 1/4 and 1/3 of what I do.  When I do reviews, it’s almost always on stuff I bought with my own money.  I’ve gotten very few freebies.  Once I got some ammunition from Lucky Gunner, I went to their blogshoot, and I’ve recently gotten some clothing from an outfitter company, which I’m currently evaluating and will have a review for in the next few weeks.  If manufacturers or resellers want to send me stuff, I’ll take it if it’s something I’m interested in, do an honest review where I make sure I’m up front about someone providing the blogfodder, and then get on with goofy humor and ranting.

Are there gunbloggers who are in it for potential money and free stuff?  Yep, just like there are journalists in traditional media who are too.  We call those people “jerks”, and they tend to be shunned pretty quickly.  I’m not attending SHOT, and honestly, I doubt I will.  I will probably go to the NRAAM this year, and if invited to attend as media, I will take the opportunity.  Will I be intruding on traditional media?  Maybe, but I do try to not step on toes.  If gunbloggers and other Internet media types are making it hard for others to do their job, then NRA and NSSF will deal with the problem.  All it takes is one year where issues with us unwashed heathens make NSSF or NRA look bad or not get the press they want, and we’ll be shown the door.  If we’re doing good work, even if we’re getting in the way a bit, then that will be recognized.

We’re all in this together.  Excluding people like me, the everyday guy who is interested in guns and telling people about it, is counterproductive.  If I’m acting like a jerk and making it hard for you to do your job, ask me to leave.  But don’t exclude a new, dynamic part of the gun culture because they don’t do it for a living or they don’t act like you do.  We’re closer to the consumers of the gun industries products and services than most journalists, because we are consumers.  Our perspectives on new guns, clothing, and gear will reflect that.

Don’t exclude us because we’re a bunch of dorks and amateurs.  That’s what gives us a powerful voice, even if individually we don’t speak to thousands of people at a time.

OK, people!  This is it!  This is what we’ve been training for!  This is the beginning of the end for civilization as we know it!  We may have a revolution up in here after this!

Hostess is going bankrupt.

The purveyor of Twinkies, Ho-Ho’s, and a myriad of other sweet treats has fallen on hard times.  American tastes, even as we have become fatter as a whole, has turned away from the basic ingredients of Hostess’ line:  fat, sugar, flour, and coconut.  Soon you will no longer be able to get coconut covered, cream filled cholesterol bombs at the Stop ‘n’ Stab.  Nuclear fallout shelters will be bereft of food that will truly last until the end of the world as we know it, with no need to seal it in mylar with an oxygen eater.

True story:  When I transferred to my first duty station in Germany, it was just a few weeks after the end of the first Gulf War.  During the war, shipments of non-essential items, such as snack cakes, to the exchanges and commissaries in Europe had been suspended so that the shipping could be used to support the war effort.   You can imagine the deprivation of military families having to subsist on German pastries when the supply of Ding-Dong’s dried up.  A month or so after we got there, my wife and I went to the commissary one Saturday afternoon.  Apparently, the first shipment of chips, snack cakes, and American candy had come in.  The scene we encountered after getting our shopping cart was right out of a nightmare.  There were housewives arguing over the last bag of Dorito’s, soldiers pulling rank over a box of Hershey bars, and even worse.  I heard, and may the Lord strike me down if I’m exaggerating, the wife of the local garrison commander exclaim “Hey bitch!  Get away from those Ho-Ho’s!”.

Now imagine that scene replicated all over the world as the last of the cupcakes and chocolate cakes runs out.  We are talking fat men playing chicken with grocery store scooters, housewives ripping at each other’s hair, and grandmothers knifing anyone who gets between them and those sweet, sweet Twinkies.  Blood will run red in the snack foods aisle!

If you haven’t stocked your larder high with Twinkies, then you should do so as soon as you can.  It’s like bulk .308 and 7.62x54r:  It stacks well and it never goes bad.

A Girl and Her Gun articulates something that I’ve felt for a long time.  The first time I wandered into GBC and started commenting on gun blogs, I was treated as someone who belonged.  There was no “newbie” period where I had to sit and listen to my betters, and when I disagreed with someone, they didn’t take it personally. If I was factually wrong, I was gently corrected.  If it was a disagreement of opinion, our differences were respected.

These are our people.  We don’t have a real leader, just firsts among equals.  Showing respect for each other and being there when real life intrudes on our microcosm has been the way it’s always been. 

Go give her letter a read.  She says it so much better than I could.

A man in Florida decided to make a fashion statement by wearing a special shirt to court.  The shirt in question had a cartoon with the directions for making crack cocaine on it.  Ladies and gentlemen, I am awed by the genius it takes to go to court on drug trafficking charges wearing such apparel.  It takes some kind of stupid to think that this was a good look.

Other bad fashion ideas:

• Eric Holder wearing an “I heart Tijuana!” tee shirt to testify before Congress
• Bill Clinton wearing a suit made out of Playboy centerfolds to a NOW convention
• Lady GaGa wearing a meat suit worn to the vegan love-in
• Barack Obama wearing a Malcolm X hat to golf at Augusta

Today is Armed Forces Day in our wonderful ally, Iraq.

So here’s to the Iraqi Armed Forces!

What a difference a couple of months makes, huh?

Velociman tells a story about a bull his family once owned, and it reminded me of one of my families legends:

Grandma once told me how she met my grandfather.  My grandmother was a teenager at the time, and my grandfather was a grown man.  He was leading a bull to market, and it wasn’t cooperating.  Imagine a large farmer pulling a rope attached to a large bull’s nose ring and the bull having nothing of it.  Two steps forward, stop to grunt and pull, then a step back.  Grandma was sitting on her father’s front porch watching this happen out in the road.  Finally, Grandpa Martinius had had enough.  He shortened that rope up until he was close enough to that bull to touch it, drew back his fist, and punched him square between the eyes.  Grandma says the bull went to its knees for a moment, shook its head a bit, then stood up and let Grandpa lead it along with no more issues.

Kind of explains a few things about me, actually.

Question:  What do the following movies have in common?

• The Lord of the Rings Trilogy
• Pirates of the Caribbean
• The Princess Bride
• Highlander
• The Empire Strikes Back
• The Return of the Jedi

Answer:  They all had swordplay choreography and some actual swordplay acting by the same man, Bob Anderson.

If you’ve watched a movie with swashbuckling or someone swinging a mighty broadsword around in the past 50 years, you’ve probably seen Mr. Anderson’s work.  His work as a stuntman goes back even further.  He was also an Olympic fencer for his home country, Great Britain.

I didn’t know this, but he stood in as Darth Vader during the light-saber duels in Empire and Jedi.  To me, those scenes were the best in the original trilogy, and were a damn sight better than the CGI kung-fu Yoda in the second.

It’s not often that one man has such an impact on the best action scenes in so many of my favorite films, and now he has passed on.  Tonight, I’m raising a glass to a sword master who got a kid from the middle of the prairie to believe that he could be a pirate, if only for just one snowy afternoon.

OK, now that the 30 Days of Heinlein are done, I know there are RAH quotes that I didn’t include.

Come on, he wrote so much that is quotable that I had a hard time winnowing the list down to 30.

So what are your favorite Heinleinisms that I didn’t include?

• Ever heard the term “Twin brothers from different mothers”?  Last night I had “triplet sisters from different mothers”.  Three 13 year old girls having a sleepover means dear old DaddyBear retreats to the bedroom to shoot electronic Nazi’s after Boo goes to bed.
• Seriously, when you get three or more girls together, they almost set up a choral of talking where two are talking while one is breathing.  This causes a continuous chatter that can last for days.
• Two adults, three teenage girls, and one three year old were somehow able to eat three large pizzas, two dozen leftover Christmas cookies, two batches of jalapeno poppers, two bowls of popcorn, a bag of potato chips, and four two-liter bottles of soda. 
• Somehow, the father in this scenario went to bed a bit hungry.
• Apparently turning off the TV and telling the girls to go to bed at 12:05 was fruitless.  Irish Woman reports they were up talking all night long. 
• I made it to 12:20, an improvement over years past.
• Breakfast this morning was banana bread, fruit, milk, and orange juice.  The girls wanted leftover pizza, but there wasn’t any.
• As expected, I heard the not too distant sound of gunfire at midnight last night.  No impacts on our property.
• Hopefully, there will be a nap in my future.

So, a new year just begun.

This is going to be a busy year, both for me personally and for all of us.

For me, there’s a lot that’s going to happen, and a lot that I want to do.  First, Girlie Bear will be starting high school in the fall and starting that short climb up to adulthood.  Little Bear will be halfway through with his journey through high school this year too.

It’s going to be a tumultuous year for Irish Woman at work.  An expected big deal at work was just cancelled or put off and she’s a bit worried about what that means to her.  But she’s working for a good boss who recognizes her abilities and contributions, so the worries are a bit dampened.

My plans for the year are to continue and improve my shooting, get into better physical shape, and get a bunch of things done on the house.  Irish Woman is hinting at renovations in the kitchen and basement, so I should probably start thinking of what tools I will have to buy in order to accomplish what she wants.  I’m thinking table saw.

Of course, in the U.S., we’re looking at another presidential election this year.  A lot of people are calling this the MOST IMPORTANT ELECTION EVER!!!!!!  I’m not sure if this election, while as important as any, is any more important than 1980, or 2000.  How different would our world be without the Reagan or Bush 2 presidencies?  Yes, I think that President Obama needs to be fired, but if the Republicans gain the Senate, hold the House, and Obama gets re-elected, the resulting gridlock will be as good as having a Republican in the White House with a compliant Congress.  Heck, it might even be better.  The things that Bush did that I disagree with mostly happened while he had a majority to work with in both the Senate and the House.

One thing I don’t see improving is the fiscal situation of our government and our world.  The Democrats won’t cut spending far enough because doing so would impact their core constituencies of welfare recipients and retirees.  Republicans won’t cut spending enough because doing so would confirm the stereotype that conservatives hate babies, black women, and old people.  So, we’re going to continue down the path to financial armageddon.  Not sure if the final meltdown will happen this year, but it’s going to come unless we make some pretty fundamental changes.

Internationally, Europe will continue to be a bleeding sore.  The poor and unproductive will drag down the productive and comfortable, as they have since the Romans figured out that if you give free food to the poor, they vote for you.

Iran will continue to rattle its saber, enrich its uranium, and be a pain in our ass that would have been taken care of 30+ years ago if Jimmy Carter had been more of a president and less of a nursemaid.  If Iraq goes as badly as I fear it may, then Iran may have to divert resources from its atomic program to fight a shooting war, but they will continue the program and will eventually be successful.  Physics and engineering are physics and engineering.  Once someone knows something can be done, it only takes time, talent, and treasure to actually do it.

North Korea may or not be interesting to watch this year.  Kim Jong Un could hunker down and just keep making faces at the world like his father, he could try to ease up a bit or make changes that could cause turbulence, or he could go for broke if he feels our attentions are elsewhere and try to make a move across the DMZ.  I honestly don’t know enough to make a good prediction about this, and I honestly doubt that anyone else does.

So, Happy New Year.  I hope everyone has a good year. I’ll see you in 366 days.