If you keel over in the bread aisle at the grocery store, it is bad manners to come to and start screaming at your husband, the passer-by who called 911, the EMTs who are helping you, and the nice police officer who came just to lend a hand.

And we’re all going to benefit from it, again.

Alan Gura and Alan Gottlieb are taking Virginia and the federal government to court with a pretty logical claim:  If someone is legal to buy a gun in their home state, they should be legal to buy a gun in any state.  This is precipitated by the fact that the only FFL in Washington DC is closing, which means that no-one in DC can legally purchase a handgun.   It’s been illegal to cross a state line and purchase a handgun since before I was born.  Hopefully the SAF will be as successful with this case as they were with the Heller and McDonald Cases.

Their argument makes sense to me.  I can go to Indiana and buy a newspaper or participate in a political rally.  Why can’t I go to Indiana and buy that Remington 1911 that I want?  A right is a right is a right, no matter which state you’re in.

A good analogy here would be a situation in which it’s illegal to go to buy a book in a state you don’t live in, and the only bookstore in Kentucky closed its doors.  Remember, up until 1968, you could buy a gun through the mail just as easily as we buy books from Amazon now, and they almost always had to cross state lines to get from Montgomery Wards or Sears Roebuck to your front door.  Imagine if, in an effort to control the accessibility of news, the government made it illegal to order newspapers and magazines through the mail unless you had a highly regulated license as a newsdealer or a collecter of antique books.  And forget about the Internet.  That kind of thing would have to be stopped, for the children.  We can’t have dangerous information passing between people who haven’t been thoroughly checked and regularly inspected by the federal Bureau of Newspapers, Comic Books, Magazines, and Printing Presses (BNCMP).

If you’re not a member of the Second Amendment Foundation, you ought to consider it.  There’s a link for them on the right side of the page.

H/T to Scott over at MacBourne’s Musings on this one.

News Flash – when you get on a commercial airline, no matter where or which carrier, you are walking cargo.  The sooner you realize that, the easier your flight will be.  Your bags are even lower on the food chain.  Pro tip:  Always have your toothbrush and other necessities in your carry-on.

Hint – When robbing a bank, bring your own bag.  They charge a fee for the big canvas ones with dollar signs on them.

This young lady obviously has a few issues, but when I’m buried, they’re going to charge extra for the disco ball and urinal.  Heck, my ex’es will probably hire Paula Abdul to choreograph.

Young dinosaurs probably didn’t eat the same thing as adults.  Heck, I could have told them that.  Boo is in that “only food that can be bought at McDonalds” stage of life.  And a grown man can only eat so many chicken fingers.  Plus it probably helped to keep little dinosaurs from becoming an appetizer.

A study has found that a lot of the CT scans of children done in American hospitals are unnecessary.  What?  Doctors are ordering extra diagnostics in an attempt to stave off lawsuits?  Who knew?

A veterinarian has decided that a glucose monitor used by human diabetics can be used with pets.  Can you say ‘revenue stream’?  I knew you could!

Am I the only one who remembers when the news was about stuff that surprised us?

I’ve always thought the computer in the corn planter population monitors were too smart for the job they had to do. They get bored and decide to themselves “I think I’ll fuck with Frank today” 

— Frank W. James

Looks like you can’t get away from psychotically evil technology no matter what you do for a living.

Frank’s been having a heck of a time getting his crops in this year, and I fear that he’s not unique.  Remember, if the farmers can’t farm, we don’t eat.  He’s a heck of a nice guy.  I was fortunate to meet him in Pittsburgh.

Scientists have discovered huge, fast moving clouds of gas that are streaming out of galaxies and possibly taking away from their ability to foster new stars.

Reports point to a few possible processes that are causing these galaxies to emit gas at such a rate, including shock waves from exploding stars.  Personally, I blame inter-galactic kimchi.

May the kraut be with you!

A man in Florida, who was apparently a little too lubricated, entered the wrong house, cooked himself a snack, and passed out on the couch.  He was discovered and arrested the next morning by the real owners. Luckily no-one was hurt, although I can’t promise I’d be calm enough to just call the cops if I found a guy passed out on my couch.

I’d laugh at this if I hadn’t been on the receiving end of just such an incident.  Well, OK, I did laugh a bit, even at the memory of what happened to me.

As I’ve said before, life at the language school I attended early in my Army life was a mixture of hormones, stress, and alcohol.  A lot of young people, under a lot of pressure, blew off a lot of steam with a lot of booze.

One Friday night, a night during which I must point out that I was stone cold sober, I went to bed early.  Imagine my surprise when I woke up at dawn on Saturday morning to go for a run, and found my classmate Peter sleeping at the foot of my bed!

Peter was dating one of the young women who lived down the hall from me.*  When she decided to go to sleep that night, she and her roommates kicked Peter out and sent his blind drunk butt home.  Peter lived in the barracks two buildings down the street from me, but his room was on the same floor and door number as mine.  Coincidentally, his bed in his barracks room was in the same place in the room as mine.  Hey, it’s the Army, they’re anything if not consistent.  He apparently left our floor, walked down three flights of stairs, wandered around a while, walked back up three flights of stairs, somehow got back on our floor, and then let himself into my room.  Apparently my roommate had gone out for a late night run and had left the door unlocked.  As drunk as he was, he thought he was in his own room.  He found his way to my bed on the far side of the room, and passed out.  Thank Cthulhu he went unconscious before he had a chance to undress.

So there I was, a 19 year old hooah kind of guy, waking up to go for a run down at the beach, and there’s this hairy Italian guy sleeping in my bed!  I kicked him in the back a couple of times and demanded he explain himself.  To his credit, Peter immediately woke up and realized just how badly he’d screwed up.  We ‘calmly’ talked the situation over, and he left.

Thing is, our talking woke up one of my roommates, who heard me talking and initially thought I’d brought a girl home the night before.  Then he heard Peter’s deep voice, and started freaking out because he was convinced I’d brought a guy home.  This was 1990, so that kind of thing was a no-no.  Luckily, Peter explained the whole thing on his way out, and my roommate and I never discussed it again.  Of course, within a few days, everyone in the company knew about it, but Peter was the object of attention, not me.  Well, mostly not me.

So let this be a lesson to you:  Always lock your door.  You never know who’s going to come calling after having one too many.

*Yes, I lived in a co-ed dorm barracks.  I noticed this about 15 seconds after getting to my room the night I arrived from Basic when I saw one of my neighbors floating down the hallway in a negligee.  I knew at that moment that I loved the Army.

Oleg Volk has a good picture of the Coonan .357 automatic in use by a small-framed woman.  Performance by the gun was reported to be extremely accurate, and by the picture at the link above, you can see that the shooter was able to get back on  target while the brass from the last round was still in the air.

I saw and handled the Coonan when I was at NRA last weekend, and I really liked the way it felt in my hand.  Like I said, it’s a solid chunk of metal, so I’m not surprised that muzzle flip and recoil were so easily manageable.  It’s definitely going on my list of guns to add to the collection.

H/T to William the Coroner.

For two weeks, no one has, despite Hannah’s years of service in the Navy, despite an honorable discharge, despite calls and a letter to the U.S. Military Retirement Pay Division. Bureaucracy and privacy concerns (ironic for a man whom no one has claimed) bog down the process.

Pass this down the chain.  Someone knows this man, and he deserves better.