- From the “Bad To Worse” Department – A man in Florida strapped a fake bomb to the underside of his car and headed off to get an oil change. A technician at the garage noticed his package and alerted authorities. Apparently the man was going through a bad divorce, so one could see this as either an attempt at “suicide by cop” or a cry for help. I see this as someone who wants to spend more quality time with his lawyer.
- From the “Get A Rope” Department – Police in Wisconsin are advising citizens to keep an eye on their air conditioners after a string of robberies. My guess is thieves are stealing them to resell the copper in the coils. In the summer, this should be a hanging offense. I’m a winter guy myself. I can always add another layer of wool or poly-pro when you’re cold. You can only get so naked when you’re hot before the neighbors start to talk. For those of you who will have that image in your head as you try to go to sleep tonight, I’m sorry.
- From the “But It Is Terminal” Department – A lawyer in Florida has coined the phrase of the day: “He’s guilty of felony stupidity…but I don’t think that should be a federal crime”. His client is charged with getting drunk on a cruise ship, breaking into a control room, and releasing one of the ship’s anchors. Personally, I believe this could have been fixed with a little something they used to call ‘keelhauling‘, but that’s just me.
- From the “How Can They Tell The Difference” Department – A transit strike in Italy caused snarled train, bus, and ferry traffic in the land of good wine and better food. Having driven in Naples, I cannot imagine how it could have been worse than normal. The streets in Naples were just big enough for two small Fiat micromachines to pass each other, and the Italians routinely try to fit five in the same space. That being said, it’s good that you can’t swing a cat in Italy without hitting a church, because I regularly had something to confess about the thoughts I had towards other drivers and the language I used in reference to their skill and breeding. Of course, I could also ask the priest to pray for me as I tried to make it across town.
News Roundup
Posted by daddybear71 on July 24, 2011
https://daddybearsden.com/2011/07/24/news-roundup-103/
Thought for the Day
This weekend, I have had the Guano Touch. Everything I’ve touched has turned to crap.
Posted by daddybear71 on July 24, 2011
https://daddybearsden.com/2011/07/24/thought-for-the-day-84/
An Hour and a Half
Reports from Norway indicate that the shooter at Utoya had an hour and a half to shoot children before the police were able to get to the the scene and arrest him. Apparently he surrendered as soon as he was confronted by police with guns. The delay in response was lengthened by the police helicopter not being available and a lack of boats for the police to use to get to the island.
Imagine being in an active shooter situation, unarmed, with little to no cover or escape route, for an hour and a half. You can hide or play dead, but until the SWAT team gets there, the shooter has nothing but time to sort the quick from the dead.
This is one of the reasons I carry. I don’t have delusions of grandeur or fantasies of being the hero in a shooting. All I want to do is survive a bad situation if it should ever happen. While active shooter situations like this are relatively rare, they do happen. More common are the usual criminals who want to rob me or the store I’m in. The thing that convinced me to learn how to shoot pistols and get a carry permit was the robbery of a store where I stopped off to get a Coke. In that case, the thief flashed a gun and left after he got his money, but all it would have taken to make a bad situation worse was for a policeman to stop off for some coffee or for the thug to decide that witnesses were a bad thing.
People, we’re not movie heroes. We don’t go out looking for trouble, and we shouldn’t fantasize about being the guy who stops a shooter in his tracks. But we have to be prepared. We have to carry, we have to know how to safely and effectively use the tools we carry, and we have to think about how we would react to the most common threats for the environments we frequent and at least spend a moment thinking about the uncommon threats. These people weren’t in a bad neighborhood or at the local Stop ‘n’ Rob. They were at a summer camp for children, and the sky fell in on them.
Like Breda says, carry your gun – it’s a lighter burden than regret.
Posted by daddybear71 on July 24, 2011
https://daddybearsden.com/2011/07/24/an-hour-and-a-half/
Which gun was she using?
A woman in Chicago was sentenced to 55 years in prison for trying to shoot a police officer in 2007. Luckily for the officer, the bullets in her gun had fallen out when she was running with it.
Which begs the question: What brand of gun was she using that allowed the bullets to fall out during a foot chase?
I want to know so that I never buy that brand. Even if she just bumped the magazine or cylinder release while running and they fell out afterwards, I want to know.
Although I could see the advertisement now: “Brand X handguns. Easiest to unload in a hurry”.
Posted by daddybear71 on July 23, 2011
https://daddybearsden.com/2011/07/23/which-gun-was-she-using/
Alt for Norge
Today, a children’s camp on Utoya Island was shot up and a government building in Oslo was blown up. At the time of this writing, casualties number 16 dead with many more injured. I expect the death toll to climb as some of those who were wounded at Utoya die and more bodies are uncovered in Oslo.
At the moment, no-one has taken responsibility for these atrocities, so we don’t know if it was a terrorist group or the Norwegian equivalent of Timothy McVeigh. My gut tells me it was some Islamic terror group, but we will see in the coming days. Norway, like most European countries, has had its share of problems with Muslim immigrants and the terrorist fish that swim through that particular sea. However, the gunman at Utoya is described as Norwegian.
Norway is a NATO ally, and has stood with us in Afghanistan and elsewhere even as a fifth column of Islamists has threatened her. Through the Cold War, Norway was one of the few NATO countries to actually border the Soviet Union. Now is the time for us to repay 60 years of allegiance by standing with her.
In the late 1900‘s 1800’s, my grandfather boarded a boat in Oslo. He left behind the fishing and farming that his family had been doing for generations in the hard, cold land of Norway and sought a new life of hard work and prosperity in the hard cold land of North Dakota. He found a job, raised two families, and passed on pride of being Norwegian to his sons and their sons. Today, pride in being Norwegian needs to go beyond “Kiss me, I’m Norwegian” shirts, lefse, and krumkake.
My thoughts and prayers go out to my grandfather’s countrymen and our allies in Norway. We Norse have a reputation for being strong, stubborn, and hard to beat, and I hope that Norway lives up to that reputation in response to this atrocity. With everything I have this day, I stand with Norway.
Posted by daddybear71 on July 22, 2011
https://daddybearsden.com/2011/07/22/alt-for-norge/
No Sympathy Part II
Three people died the other day when they went over the 317 foot Vernal Falls at Yosemite National Park. Witnesses report that two of them crossed safety barriers and waded out into the water above the falls to take a picture. One of them slipped, the other slipped trying to help the first one, and a third person crossed barriers to get to the first two. The rest of their group, including several children, watched all three go over the falls, apparently to their death.
In the same vein, a 50 year old hiker in south-eastern Arizona was rescued after being lost in the Cochise Stronghold for seven hours. She apparently was on a hike with family and got lost. Since she was able to walk out, I’m going to assume she had at least a little water. 7 hours in the open in Cochise County during high summer without water is a good way to die. I’ve hiked that area, and this lady is lucky to have been found alive.
Every year someone decides to try to climb Mount Hood a little too late or a little early in the year, which causes huge search and rescue efforts, sometimes leading to the injury or death of rescuers. Do people not look at weather predictions and the news before heading out?
The Coast Guard regularly rescues people who try to take a little boat in bad repair or improperly equipped out onto the big ocean. These dedicated people take their lives in their own hands to save the lives of people who shouldn’t have gotten off the dock.
Every summer you hear about people who get mauled and killed by bears who attack after being fed or are startled while raiding coolers and food boxes in camping areas. Apparently people never learn to tie their food up in trees while in bear country. I know people who are shocked when I tell them they shouldn’t be storing food in the same tent they sleep in.
I could go on and on, but you get the idea. People regularly do stupid things when leaving civilization and don’t realize how quickly Mother Nature can kill you.
For those who die because of their own stupidity, I feel nothing. They put their own lives and the lives of everyone who tries to rescue themselves at risk by being morons. If there is a guardrail and signs telling you to not get any closer to the waterfall, don’t cross it. If you’re going to go for a hike in anywhere more rugged than the local golf course, you need to go prepared. That means taking food, water, a first aid kit, a knife, and a way to make fire. If you think the world is going to take pity on you because you don’t know what you’re doing, you’re dead wrong. And if you’re taking your family with you when you take your dumbass act on the trail, you’re killing your children while you commit slow suicide.
In the Yosemite incident, I feel for the people who watched the hikers die, and I feel for the person who sacrificed herself trying to save two other human beings. The other two were dead as soon as they left the parking area.
People, don’t assume that anything is safe. Enjoy the world that doesn’t include hotels and paved parking lots, but be aware of how quickly things can go bad. Know what you’re walking into, know the expected weather, follow posted safety notices, and have what you need to keep you and yours alive when things go to hell. I won’t feel bad for you when you die because of stupidity, but I will feel horrible for those who love you and those who are injured or die trying to find and rescue you.
Posted by daddybear71 on July 22, 2011
https://daddybearsden.com/2011/07/22/no-sympathy-part-ii/
No Sympathy
Two American citizens were arrested and spent 5 days in a Canadian jail after trying to cross the border with several undeclared guns.
The Canadian Border Service Agency said when officers searched their 2008 Winnebago after the pair said they had nothing to declare, agents found a derringer-type pistol, a revolver, three semi-automatic pistols and a shotgun.
While I fully support all of the rights of our citizens, including rights to firearms, those rights don’t extend once you leave our borders. When you leave the jurisdiction of the United States, you have to follow the laws of the country you visit. The same goes for any behavior, but firearms laws are probably enforced just as stringently as drug laws.
Even when you travel from one of our states to another, you have to know what the laws are. For example, in Kentucky, you can put a loaded pistol in the glove compartment of your automobile without having a concealed carry permit and you are perfectly legal. The same does not go for all of the neighboring states, and it certainly isn’t legal in less gun friendly states such as Illinois and California. An excuse of “But it’s legal in my state!” isn’t going to fly.
When you’re travelling, you have to learn what is legal and what is not in all of the states you will be going through. If your CCW license isn’t recognized in one of the states you will be crossing, then you can either play felony bingo and hope you don’t get stopped by the local police or you can stop before crossing the state line and secure your firearm in the manner that’s legal in that state. If you’re crossing an international border, it is incumbent on you to know the laws that deal with bringing your firearms with you and to follow them.
We as gun owners will be judged as a group by the actions of the most stupid of our brethren. We have two things to do. First, don’t be that guy. Don’t impede the progress we’ve been making by willfully breaking the law because you think it’s garbage. Second, we have to educate and police ourselves. If our lowest common denominator messes up, we should make sure they aren’t having their rights abused, but we shouldn’t defend someone just because he’s a member of our tribe.
Posted by daddybear71 on July 22, 2011
https://daddybearsden.com/2011/07/22/no-sympathy/
Canton CCW Controversy
A video from a police dash camera is making the rounds. In a nutshell, an Ohio CCW carrier is approached by police at a traffic stop, tells the officer that seems to be in charge that he is legally carrying a gun, and the officer becomes very angry, to say the least.
Here’s the video (Language warning):
My initial thoughts:
- The situation the officers roll up on seems suspicious, but I’m not qualified to judge whether it was probable cause for the tactics they use. It’s possible that this took place in an area known for high levels of prostitution, and the officers seem to recognize the passenger and the woman outside the car.
- I did vehicle searches at checkpoints in the Army, and removing the driver and passengers prior to starting one is pretty basic. I’m not a police officer, but if the officers had taken the driver out, after forcefully taking charge of the situation as they did, they would have given him an opportunity to inform them sooner without interrupting them. There is also the issue of safety. If the driver had tried to flee or fight, the officer in the car would have been at a disadvantage.
- The only place I can fault the CCW carrier is that there was indeed a police officer in the car with him for several minutes, and he could have notified him then, even if he had to assert himself and initiate communication after being told to be quiet. It is possible that after the forceful way that the officers took control of the situation and made sure that all communications were initiated by the police that the driver was cowed into silence.
- That being said, when the driver tried to tell the officer, the officer prevented him from finishing a sentence. The driver was hesitant, and was obviously very nervous. The officer raising his voice and cursing didn’t help. Even when the driver tried to hand his CCW license over with his drivers license, the officer refused to take it. The driver was handcuffed while holding his CCW license, so the officer knew he had something in his hand.
- The officer’s abusive use of profanity and threats of both physical harm and future harassment were unprofessional and probably actionable. Note that most of these happen after the driver is disarmed and neutralized by being handcuffed. At that point, even if the officer initially felt threatened, he was in no danger whatsoever.
- The driver did himself a big favor by remaining calm, being polite, and not becoming emotional or resisting. Even when he was uncomfortable, he apologized for complaining to the officers.
- Incidents like this are the reason I believe that any interaction with the government should be recorded. Without that tape, the driver would have no reliable third party to act as a witness for him.
When I took my CCW class here in Kentucky, how to interact with police was covered pretty extensively. Basically, we were told it was a bad idea to surprise a police officer. What we were advised to do, and what seems to work very well, is to hand over your license along with your identification. Not have it in your hand, not try to hand it over after the license has changed hands. Do it in the same action. I have only had to inform an officer once, and that was when I was a witness to a traffic accident. By giving him both my driver’s license for his report and my CCW license, he knew to ask the “Are you carrying and where is it?” question without me surprising him. The officer was pleasant and professional after making sure I knew not to touch my gun or make any movements toward it.
I am curious to hear from those of you who live in Ohio as to how you were instructed on this responsibility to inform. Was a specific time frame discussed, or was it as nebulous as the notes in the video from Ohio Concealed Carry lead us to believe? What methods for informing were you told about in your training? Is there a way to inform that is more common than others? While one would hope that this officer’s reaction to being informed, late or not, is an aberration, is a negative reaction to being informed the norm, or do the majority of officers react in a polite and professional manner?
Hopefully, the officer in this incident is reminded of his obligation, even when he is angry or going through an adrenaline dump, to be professional. I also hope that this incident, now that it is getting so much exposure, can be used to improve police conduct with CCW holders, as well as help CCW holders know how to better meet this responsibility to inform.
Update — I asked Breda how she was told to inform an officer that she was carrying, and she looked it up. She says that a CCW holder is supposed to keep their hands on the steering wheel and verbally inform the officer that they are a CCW holder and they have a gun. In this case, I think the driver should have done this as the officer was coming up to the car, even if the officer was interacting with the woman on the side of the road. Interrupting the officer might have pissed him off, but the driver would have been legally in the right from the get go, taking away any excuse to berate and threaten him. I’m not saying the officer would have reacted differently, but the driver would have definitely been on the side of the angels in that circumstance. David Hardy reports are that the officer has been suspended pending an investigation and the charges against the driver have been dropped.
Posted by daddybear71 on July 21, 2011
https://daddybearsden.com/2011/07/21/canton-ccw-controversy/
Today’s Earworm
Posted by daddybear71 on July 21, 2011
https://daddybearsden.com/2011/07/21/todays-earworm-123/
Progress
One of the main complaints about the X-ray booths at airport security has been the perception that a realistic nude image of the person being scanned is viewed by TSA personnel. Frankly, it’s one of the reasons I’ve kept myself and the rest of my family away from flying, especially since the alternative is to be groped by a TSA agent.
Now, the TSA has announced that new software will only show a generic picture of a person and highlight anything unusual on them. So you see a blocky humanoid figure with alerts for non-normal things, which could range from terrorist weapons and narcotics to prosthetics and insulin pumps.
If it works as advertised, I suppose this will alleviate one of the arguments against the perv-o-tron scanners. And that’s a big ‘if’. I want to see it in action. It would help if a projection of what the TSA guy can see is put up on a screen so that the scanned passenger can see what the TSA is looking at. Something as simple as a mirror reflecting the agent’s monitor to the passenger would work.
On the other hand, there are unanswered questions about the amount of radiation the scanner puts out. Before I get down off of my soapbox and stop railing against this technology, the TSA is going to have to come across with independent documentation about the dose of radiation that thing puts out. For someone like me who flies infrequently, it might be like having one extra chest X-ray over the course of my lifetime. For someone who flies all the time, such as OldNFO or flight crew, it could be a huge problem.
So I look at this as a start. As to why they didn’t just put up blocky cartoon graphics instead of the more lifelike images in the first place, we will probably never know. Someone had to have known there would be an outcry over it, but probably didn’t care. If the TSA is being honest about the new images and provides some verifiable documentation about radiation doses, then I will probably drop my opposition to their use. Mind you, I won’t be holding my breath.
Posted by daddybear71 on July 21, 2011
https://daddybearsden.com/2011/07/21/progress/
DaddyBear
