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Movie Quotes – Day 120

 Batman… Batman… Can somebody tell me what kind of a world we live in, where a man dressed up as a *bat* gets all of my press? This town needs an enema!  — Batman

Ever notice that it’s never the reasoned, sensible people who make the news?  It’s not the responsible gun owner that gets press, it’s the wild-eyed crazy who happens to have picked a gun for his tool of insanity.  The average police officer who does her job and respects the people she serves is outshined by the jackbooted enforcer.  City folk are always represented by the worst criminal, while country folk are represented by the closet KKK member.  And the list goes on and on.

We are coming to the point where the most abrasive example of any side of an argument is the only voice that is heard in the public square  The moderates are squeezed out by the zealots, and talking and discussion is replaced by shrieking and insults.  Of course, calm discourse rarely gets anyone a Pulitzer or a larger share of ratings, so that should surprise no-one.

We have to find a better way.  We have to find a way to take the glory from the bad actors and give it to those who deserve it.  We have to find a way to talk about what is right and wrong with our country and our society, even though we may stubbornly defend our positions, without resorting to invective.

The alternative is for things to continue to circle the drain, and for rhetoric to eventually give way to violence.  If you think things are bad now, wait until we go from making the retail psychopath an instant celebrity to glorifying the psychopath who dishes out crazy wholesale.

by daddybear71 on April 30, 2014  •  Permalink
Posted in Movie Quotes

Posted by daddybear71 on April 30, 2014

https://daddybearsden.com/2014/04/30/movie-quotes-day-120/

Today’s Earworm

by daddybear71 on April 29, 2014  •  Permalink
Posted in Earworm

Posted by daddybear71 on April 29, 2014

https://daddybearsden.com/2014/04/29/todays-earworm-509/

Review – Shooter Self Care Class

As part of our trip to the NRA Annual Meeting, Girlie Bear and I attended a Shooter Self Care class put on by Ambulance Driver and his cohort, EMS Artifact.  The point of the class was to provide information on the steps and equipment a shooter could use to provide first aid to a gunshot victim or heart attack sufferer until professional first responders arrive.  This class was a shorter version of a class that AD has put together for Range Officers.  The four-hour block of instruction included such topics as:

  • Things to consider when an accident happens (Giving accurate directions to 911, clearing the range, assisting EMS)
  • Prioritization of injuries
    • Life threatening injuries – Airway, Breathing, Circulation – Kill you quick if not taken care of
    • Secondary injuries – Kill you eventually, but not before EMS gets there
  • Introduction to one person, compressions only CPR
  • Use of tourniquet on both yourself and another person
    • AD did a brief overview of improvised tourniquets, but concentrated on the SOF-T tourniquet
  • Arterial, veinal, and capillary bleeding
  • Use of chemical coagulants (Celox, Quikclot)
  • Eye Injuries
  • Burns
  • Sucking chest wounds and other injuries

These subjects filled up the four hours quite nicely.  The only thing I would have added was a short blurb on blood-borne pathogens and infection control, but I didn’t think to ask about that until the next day.

AD did an excellent job of going over the basics and describing both common injuries and methods to give first aid for them.  He used photographs and videos of actual injuries to illustrate his points, and while they could be graphic, they were not gratuitously so.  He and the other instructors were patient with questions and gave answers that neither patronized nor went over our heads.  AD used some jargon, but always made a point of explaining terms in language that we could all understand.

Hopefully the NRA, NSSF, or another shooter/outdoor organization sees the value in education such as this and fills the need in the market.  There are a lot of people coming into shooting, and having more people trained in the basics of first aid for common injuries and issues that can be found at the range or in the hunting grounds will go a long way to making everyone safer.

I’d like to thank Ambulance Driver and EMS Artifact for putting on the class, as well as Bound Tree Medical, Brownell’s, and Franciscan St. Francis Healthcare for their support of the class.  If this class or one like it is offered to you, I suggest that you spend a few hours taking it.

Contents of the first aid kit that was provided with the class. Contents included a SOF-T tourniquet, HALO seal for chest wounds, gloves, gauze, bandages, and assorted other supplies.

 

by daddybear71 on April 29, 2014  •  Permalink
Posted in Review

Posted by daddybear71 on April 29, 2014

https://daddybearsden.com/2014/04/29/review-shooter-self-care-class/

Movie Quotes – Day 119

 It’s amazing how quickly things can go from bad to total shit storm.  — Zombieland

It can always get worse.  It’s amazing how many times in my life the bottom of the well has turned out to be a flimsy false floor.  Where we will be judged is in how we handle it and how we work to make things better.  We have enough people who either freeze or flip out when the sky falls in.  We need people who will scramble to survive and thrive.

by daddybear71 on April 29, 2014  •  Permalink
Posted in Movie Quotes

Posted by daddybear71 on April 29, 2014

https://daddybearsden.com/2014/04/29/movie-quotes-day-119/

Musings

  • Girlie Bear proved to have expensive tastes at the NRAAM.
    • Every gun or piece of gear she squee’d over and had to take a look at cost more than my first car.
    • Of course she loves the custom 10/22 from Tactical Solutions.  Who wouldn’t?
  • If your car is stalling out on the freeway, but hasn’t died yet, the correct thing to do is to try to use whatever power you have left to get as far off the roadway as you safely can.  The incorrect thing to do is to brake to a halt in a lane of traffic, thereby causing those behind you to have to slam on their brakes.
    • I considered trying to pull out into the other lane of traffic from a complete stop to get around said idjit, but reconsidered when I analyzed the relationship between the rapidity of my truck accelerating from 0 to 65, the distance between the semi’s in the lane next to me, and their speed.
    • Luckily the idjit got his car restarted for long enough to get off the roadway before someone slammed into the line of 25 or so vehicles behind him.
  • Of course I picked up the empty press folder from Wolf Performance Arms.  A true blogger enjoys the challenge of stalking the wild marketing manager at a gun company.
by daddybear71 on April 28, 2014  •  Permalink
Posted in Uncategorized

Posted by daddybear71 on April 28, 2014

https://daddybearsden.com/2014/04/28/musings-44/

More NRAAM 2014 Pictures

Taurus PT709, with Girlie Bear’s hands. Taurus was making a big deal about making their guns more female friendly, but it appears that just meant different colors of polymer

 

Taurus View .38 Special Revolver. I have big hands, but those are itsy, bitsy grips.

Taurus View .38 Special revolver, halfway through firing cycle. Notice how my bottom two fingers have to curl under the grip.

Beretta ARX100 Battle Rifle.  All controls are ambidexterous, including the charging handle.  The stock folds along the receiver.

Beretta ARX100 Battle Rifle. The barrel comes out by pushing up a tab and pulling it out. The 5.56 model will use GI steel AR-15 mags, but the rep at the booth said it had issues taking MagPul ProMags. Rifle can take multiple calibers with a barrel change (along with bolt change for some calibers) and has an MSRP of under $2000.

Benelli Ethos Shotguns with the classiest display in the entire show.

Remington is such a tease. These were empty.

For those who were deafened by the squeal Girlie Bear made when she saw that 10/22 from Tactical Solutions, I apologize.  BTW, she didn’t need prompting to index her finger properly in all these pictures.

ATI Scorpion Pistol Grips on Taurus Model 85. Girlie Bear’s hands for comparison

ATI Scorpion Grips on Taurus Model 85. My hands for comparison

ATI Scorpion grips on Taurus Judge. Girlie Bear’s hands for comparison

ATI Scorpion grips on Taurus Judge. My hands for comparison

Girlie Bear likes the looks of the CMMG AR-15’s.

 

by daddybear71 on April 28, 2014  •  Permalink
Posted in Guns, NRA Convention

Posted by daddybear71 on April 28, 2014

https://daddybearsden.com/2014/04/28/more-nraam-2014-pictures/

News Roundup

  • From the “UXO” Department – A California city was recently put on alert after an artillery or tank shell was found in its business district.  Fortunately, no-one was hurt.  The picture in the article doesn’t include any wires or such, so I’m going to guess that this was more of the “Hey, guys, look what I found hiking!” vein than the “Let’s blow up the capitalist scum!” vein.  Of course, it could also be PSH over someone leaving that souvenir inert shell out where ninnies could see it, but that’s not covered in the article.  Remember kids, if you didn’t drop it, you probably shouldn’t be picking it up.
  • From the “Correct Approach” Department – Former Supreme Court Justice Stevens has put out his views on six ways that the Constitution should be changed.  Altering the Constitution’s protection of gun rights makes up two of those changes.  While I don’t agree with the gentleman, at least he’s trying to do this the right way.  If you want to restrict something that the Constitution protects, you have to change the Constitution, not pass unconstitutional laws.
  • From the “Not Justified” Department – A man in Minnesota is on trial after being accused of murdering two people who broke into his house.  Normally, I’d be trumpeting how unjust it is for someone to be prosecuted for defending home and hearth, but it seems that there is a slight wrinkle in this one.  You see, evidence indicates that the gentleman in question waited for the two goblins to break into his house, and when they came into the basement, he shot them.  The most damning thing is his assertion that the last shots were done specifically to finish the suspects off.  This is why the first rule of talking to the police after an incident is to not do it until you have a chat with an attorney.   The district attorney is making a stink about the fact that he fired more than one shot at each of the intruders, but that shouldn’t matter.  If someone comes into your home as a thief in the night and catches you by surprise, causing you to feel your life or the lives of your loved ones are in danger, it wouldn’t matter to me if you fired off one shot from your great-granddaddy’s Kentucky rifle or an entire belt of ammunition from a belt-fed gun.  If you’re going to shoot, you shoot until the threat ends.  However, laying in wait for someone and then shooting them again with the specific, stated intent to kill them, apparently after the threat is over, is beyond the pale.
  • From the “Truth Hurts” Department – 9/11 apologists are decrying a decision by the group that runs the 9/11 memorial museum to show a film which discusses the religious bent of the 9/11 hijackers and al Qaeda.  Apparently they’re worried that the average visitor to the museum won’t be able to get their head around the Venn diagram that shows that, while not all Muslims are supporters or members of al Qaeda, all known supporters and members of al Qaeda are indeed Muslims.  How horrible that the facts of the matter are openly discussed, rather than the normal conversation of how the hijackers and their leadership materialized out of thin air and how the massacre of innocent people happened because of something we all did to the oppressed people of the world.
  • From the “Mama Bear” Department – A woman in Texas earned my respect recently when she fought off a dog that was attacking her child, including biting off the dog’s ear and shoving her own fist in its mouth to keep it from biting the child.  The family had been taking care of the dog, and it unexpectedly attacked the child.  The child has injuries to her head and face, and the mother sustained injuries to her arms.  Just goes to show that the most dangerous place in the world is between a protective mother and her child.
  • From the “Welcome Home” Department – The remains of a U.S. soldier, who died on Saipan during World War II, have been returned to his family and buried in Paducah, Kentucky.  PFC William T. Carneal died during a Japanese counter-attack during the retaking of Saipan, and his remains, along with the remains of four other American servicemen, were found by a Japanese organization that is searching for the bodies of Japanese soldiers.  I find it poignant that people from Japan traveled to Kentucky to take part in commemorating his life.  Welcome home, soldier.  You’ve been sorely missed.
by daddybear71 on April 28, 2014  •  Permalink
Posted in news

Posted by daddybear71 on April 28, 2014

https://daddybearsden.com/2014/04/28/news-roundup-217/

Movie Quotes – Day 118

You’ll meet someone. Someone very special. Someone who won’t press charges. — Addams Family Values

As I got home last night, I realized just how lucky I am.  You see, after wrangling a six year old all weekend, Irish Woman met me at the door with a smile, twice. The first time was when Girlie Bear and I got home from the NRA Annual Meeting.  The second time was six hours later when I came home from going into work for a few hours.  She had no complaints about Boo or how the weekend had gone, although she made sure to inform me as to the behavior of Crash, who apparently had been feeling his Siameseness at a very deep level all weekend.

I think I’m at my best as a husband when I realize that I don’t deserve such a woman, and she certainly deserves better than me.

by daddybear71 on April 28, 2014  •  Permalink
Posted in Movie Quotes

Posted by daddybear71 on April 28, 2014

https://daddybearsden.com/2014/04/28/movie-quotes-day-118a/

NRA Annual Meeting 2014 – Day 2ish

  • Girlie Bear and I got up bright and bloody early this morning to get downtown before the crowds hit, and it’s a good thing we did.
    • We got in a little after 8, doors opened to the exhibits at 10, and it was quite crowded by 11.
    • However, I must say that my experience in Pittsburg and Saint Louis were true – Gun people are good people.  Even though the crowd was thick, I never heard a harsh word or saw an impolite act.  Everyone was patient in waiting to see the more popular exhibits or to meet celebrities.  I could spend days with these people and not be as frustrated or tired as I get going to a shopping mall.
  • Kathy Jackson is a lady and a scholar.  She was very gracious to Girlie Bear when I introduced her, and took time out of her insanely busy schedule to talk about guns and life in general with both of us.  When I forgot the book I bought for her, she called and texted me until I picked up so that I could backtrack and get it.
  • I got my hands on the Remington R51 this morning.  I can see why some aren’t happy with it, especially working the action, but it seems like it might be an OK pistol with a little break-in.  Not sure I’d want one, but it might work for others.
  • Girlie Bear commented that the NRAAM is more like a family reunion than anything else, and I think she hit the nail right on the head there.
by daddybear71 on April 27, 2014  •  Permalink
Posted in Guns, NRA Convention

Posted by daddybear71 on April 27, 2014

https://daddybearsden.com/2014/04/27/nra-annual-meeting-2014-day-2ish/

Movie Quotes – Day 117

We didn’t come here to fight monsters, we’re not equipped for it. — Creature From The Black Lagoon

As Girlie Bear and I left the hotel to go to dinner this evening, we both did a quick check to make sure we had everything we needed.  My list was room key, cell phone, wallet, car keys, pistol, and reload.   I try to do something similar every morning when I leave the house, usually with help from Irish Woman.  It always helps to start the day off with what you will need the rest of the day.

We can’t predict how things are going to go, but being prepared and having your resources with you definitely makes things easier.  The thing you leave at home, be it a notebook, extra cash, or a weapon are no good to you when you need them.

by daddybear71 on April 27, 2014  •  Permalink
Posted in Movie Quotes

Posted by daddybear71 on April 27, 2014

https://daddybearsden.com/2014/04/27/movie-quotes-day-117/

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