There's good training, and then there's bad training

Guess which this is?


I cringed too many times to count watching this video, with yayhoos firing weapons past each other and over their heads while spinning. Yikes!  There's a guy in comments defending this shooting school, but I wouldn't go there.

The concept of "Big Boy Rules" and firing weapons over or near someone else is absurd in my opinion, and is an accident waiting to happen. The Marine Corps does live fire with people forward of the firing line, as they would in combat, but those who are forward are not in front of those who are shooting, and even with that it doesn't look anything like this clown show. For starters, there's no choreographed spinning or twisting of the shooters, flagging one another as they transition from one target to the next. And for sure, in real world shootings there are those who have to shoot real close to their fellow Marine or Soldier or Officer, but surprisingly the Marines haven't felt the need to practice that one in peacetime, and it doesn't seem to have effected their lethality. With that in mind I have to question doing it in practice. As far as I know, only a select group or two within the Special Operations community routinely practices live fire with their own down range, and that's because their job description involves shooting bad guys who are in close proximity or direct contact with hostages. I just don't see surgical shooting being a skill set that black-clad mall security needs.

Now I'm going to be all paranoid when I see armed mall security, wondering in the back of my mind if they've been to one of these monkey business shooting schools.

If it's broke, fix it

I'm a rather strange cat in that I can be completely calm and collected after crawling out of the smoldering wreckage of a car accident, but then lose my mind when I can't get the lid off a mayonnaise jar. I know it's backwards, but whatever. That being said, one of the little trifling things in life that agitates me to no end is watching two of my small children struggle to buckle their seat belts in the back of the van.

In this day and age, we have minivans with more horsepower than the V-8 sportscars I had in the 80's and 90's; we have sensors that tell you when your tires are running low; there's sensors in cars that can tell if you've been in a collision and will route a telephone call right to your upside down vehicle; there's rear facing backup-cameras, FLIR cameras, bluetooth, navigation systems. . .etc. etc. etc. ad nauseum. But for some frickin' reason we can't make inertial locking mechanisms on seatbelts to allow kids to pull the needed slack to buckle up unless every stinking millimeter of belt is first fed back into the reel. I mean, the car isn't running, hasn't moved in days, and is sitting calmly in the driveway, so why oh why does the seatbelt insist on staying locked!!! Do you have any idea at how wonderful it would be if my kids could buckle their own seatbelts?!?! Oh, the time it would save me not having to crawl to the back of the minivan to un-jam the least sophisticated safety device in the car!!

This technological blunder drives me crazy because I thought mankind could do better. It reminds me of this picture:



For all our alleged intelligence, it's a marvel mankind is still at the top of the food chain.

Whoa, dude!

If this Apache pilot had pulled this off it would have been way cool. From the caption, everybody came out of this alive, but I don't know how!


***ETA: I found the Apache video at this thread on ARFCOM, and this video was also on it:



I play inverted :(

Rules #1 and #2!!!!!

There's a firestorm going on over the pictures of a police sniper at Super Bowl XLVI. If you did not know, there are snipers at most major sporting events; but the brouhaha is not over the snipers so much, but that the guy in the picture is using a rifle as a pair of binoculars, which violates two of the four firearm safety rules.

I have to side with the folks who have their panties in a bunch: being tasked with protecting a stadium from an active shooter -- a rare occurrence -- does not make you so high speed that you can arbitrarily point a rifle at people. Being highly trained does not make one infallible, so the idea that one sudden sneeze can cause a marksman to sympathetically squeeze the trigger and lobotomize a wasted fan is just as plausible in a sniper's hide as it is on a police training range. That is why we have the four rules, which is why we don't point weapons at people.

The people who are defending this violation are under the impression that operators operating operationally in an operational environment are so Tier 1 that they can use their rifle as a spotting scope up in a skybox where nobody can see them. I say that a rifle is a rifle is a rifle. Treat it as if it were loaded and don't point it at anything you do not intend to destroy, including drunk fans and blue painted bewbies.

Don't re-chamber your self defense loads

Me personally, if I empty my pistol for whatever reason, the round I eject gets stacked at the very bottom of the magazine so that it will only ever be chambered twice. If I'm at all uncertain I have a drawer where I put them for range use. I don't re-chamber rounds over and over again.

Reason I bring this up is because there's a discussion at Pistol-Forum.com on how to cycle duty ammo, and the constant re-chambering came up. Here's a story from that thread that I think may influence people to be more careful:

THE FOLLOWING TRAINING ADVISORY WAS FORWARDED FROM GWINETT COUNTY POLICE DEPARTMENT - LAWRENCEVILLE, GA

In September of this year a GCPD officer was involved in a situation which quickly became a use of deadly force incident. When the officer made the decision to use deadly force, the chambered round in his duty pistol did not fire. Fortunately, the officer used good tactics, remembered his training and cleared the malfunction, successfully ending the encounter.

The misfired round, which had a full firing pin strike, was collected and was later sent to the manufacturer for analysis. Their analysis showed the following: "...the cause of the misfire was determined to be from the primer mix being knocked out of the primer when the round was cycled through the firearm multiple times". We also sent an additional 2,000 rounds of the Winchester 9mm duty ammunition to the manufacturer. All 2,000 rounds were successfully fired.

In discussions with the officer, we discovered that since he has small children at home, he unloads his duty weapon daily. His routine is to eject the chambered round to store the weapon. Prior to returning to duty he chambers the top round in his primary magazine, then takes the previously ejected round and puts in back in the magazine. Those two rounds were repeatedly cycled and had been since duty ammunition was issued in February or March of 2011, resulting in as many as 100 chambering and extracting cycles. This caused an internal failure of the primer, not discernible by external inspection.

This advisory is to inform all sworn personnel that repeated cycling of duty rounds is to be avoided. As a reminder, when loading the weapon, load from the magazine and do not drop the round directly into the chamber. If an officer's only method of safe home storage is to unload the weapon, the Firearms Training Unit suggests that you unload an entire magazine and rotate those rounds. In addition, you should also rotate through all 3 duty magazines, so that all 52 duty rounds are cycled, not just a few rounds. A more practical method of home storage is probably to use a trigger lock or a locked storage box.

FURTHER GUIDANCE:
The primer compound separation is a risk of repeatedly chambering the same round. The more common issue is bullet setback, which increases the chamber pressures often resulting in more negative effects.

RECOMMENDATION:
In addition to following the guidance provided above of constantly rotating duty ammunition that is removed during the unloading/reloading of the weapon, training ammunition utilized during firearm sustainment and weapon manipulation drills, should also be discarded if it has been inserted into the chamber more than twice. This practice lessens the likelihood of a failure to fire or more catastrophic results.

Of note about the above advisory is that if you do use a trigger lock, do not use it if the weapon is loaded. That's bad.

It's not just the primer that's effected by re-chambering; the seating depth is also effected, which is more critical in handgun cartridges because small movements of a thousandth of an inch can be all it takes to overpressure the load when fired, blowing your gun to smithereens. This is even more so with +P loads that are already running hot. If you're as safety minded as I am, it's not worth the $.50 in savings to keep reusing that Gold Dot, so stick in a range-fodder box after you eject it.

US Army uniform insanity

The Army is again looking at changing the camouflage pattern and uniform for combat. There are some really crappy patterns in there that they're looking at, which means that that's what the Army is likely to chose if the past tells us anything.

The Marine Corps did it right with the Woodland and Desert digital camo, as they realized early on that one pattern does not work in every environment. With that, the uniform is designed well, is rugged, and feels like pajamas compared to the starched Woodland BDU. If you've never had the pleasure of wearing the Army ACU, it's a shitty piece of shit; quite literally the opposite of the Marine Corps uniform. Going to the Multicam pattern was a smart move overall, I think, but now the Army is poised to piss away more funds on camouflage pattern trials.

Never again

In the 28 hours that it took for my name to be approved for a new firearm transfer, I came to the conclusion that I will not go through that process ever again. Though I did willingly consent beforehand, and He who derives a benefit from a thing, ought to feel the disadvantages attending it, I've had my fill, and will stick with private sales from here on out. A man should never feel so convicted in his heart that he questions whether he is a criminal or not, or questions who he is. It is unconscionable.

To be clear, I do not blame those within the Virginia State Police or FBI who administrate background checks, as they are not the ones who placed the repulsive concept of pre-criminalization on us; that blame lies with the greater American public first and foremost for not only agreeing to this insanity up front, and perpetually consenting to it, but for also continuing to demand it, under the naive belief that scumbags would be eradicated if we could only ensnare them with a piece of paper. I'm ashamed of myself that I ever fell under that criteria.

Last night I was doing mental backflips trying to find out what it was that would make a state and federal government hesitate to approve of a transfer. Though nobody could tell, as I have a knack for taking physical, mental, and emotional punishment with a calm demeanor, I was questioning myself over and over until I was actually thinking "what did I do wrong?" It was there where I realised I had left the Line of Departure into a hostile place that I had no business being.

I recall a time when I was in sunny Ramadi, talking to my beautiful wife on a private, Iridium satellite phone, when she told me she was delayed for a transfer for a handgun. To say she was upset is an understatement, and no doubt she was feeling exactly like I was last night: convicted. Though she had harmed no one, she combed through her past out loud to me, searching for a crime she didn't commit. I tried to convince her that everything was OK, and it did turn out to be -- that moment was my first warning notice of how harmful a background check could be, and I missed it. A dear friend of mine, who was instrumental in keeping me grounded last night, was also delayed on a gun purchase some time ago, and he also felt the same convicting thoughts -- that was the second notice that I again missed. Last night was final notice.

Whether you've ever bought a gun or not, or have any intention to, feeling convicted of something you didn't do is something everyone has probably experienced at one time. It's similar to the feeling of being falsely accused of something; not a - "you're a poopie-head" accusation, but a serious one, like - "you stole from me, didn't you?!?" The latter has the tendency to cut very deep. Having to explain yourself and why you're not in the wrong used to be a viscerally unnatural act. There was a time where it used to be a man would recoil at such a thing, as it was against all human nature to stand quietly in the face of an accusation -- "Are you calling me a liar?" Perhaps it's "reality shows" and bad TV that has put us into the mindset of constantly defending who we are, that I'm-right-and-you're-wrong, and getting comfortable with conflict and confrontation in situations we do not belong in. I don't know about y'all, but I am done putting myself in the middle of situations like that.

So now I'm here, having passed through the eye of the needle, and before too long somebody will come across this post and scoff "Big deal. Get over it. It's for the greater good. Getting criminals off the street is worth making millions of good people go through a background check." My retort is to try it sometime. If you get approved in two minutes, close enough to "instant" I guess, then you most likely won't get the full effect and have an understanding. Consider though that very few transfer denials are even prosecuted (also note in there that ATF agents didn't feel that most of the prohibited persons were dangerous enough to timely retrieve a sold gun). If you still feel that catching a handful of people that probably aren't dangerous is worth criminalizing tens of millions of Americans every year, then you can have the system. Hook, line, and sinker. As for me, I'm out.

Mommas, don't let your hippies grow up to be toilet technologists

As much as it angers me to do it, I have to again revisit the topic of toilets because this shit is pissing me off (the pun - flows through me, it does)!!

This is in no way gun related, but it has to be said.

The idea of low flow toilets had to have been conceived by stinky hippie engineers who dreamed of an invention to torture the common man. Little did they know about the severe water overuse in B.F., Virginia because toilets in a certain commercial building were flushed at least three times per use. There are babies suffering somewhere, in some forgotten country probably ending in -stan, because of this insane overuse of water here. Trust me.

Secondary to the malicious intent of torturing mankind and making foreign babies suffer is the thought that by making toilets use less water, somehow polar bears and penguins would have more ice to sit on. Or some shit like that. Saving water is what hippies do, damn the reasons and consequences, and they thought that that end could be accomplished in the engineering department of American Standard. What they in fact did is create toilets that have to be flushed, re-flushed, and re-flushed again, and possibly re-flushed several more times in order to achieve the same outcome as a toilet that uses twice as much water in one flush, which runs counter to the "low flow" label that they're branded with.

"High efficiency," my ass.

When using a toilet in the building where I work, there are always leftovers if you dare to check. Every single time. Before you even use the toilet, the very first thing you have to do is flush; and once you're done, it's a mandatory two flushes at the very least, and there will still be leftovers. And if your portion size is. . . .ummmm. . . let's say larger than industry standard, sometimes you wind up with a turd stuck fast to the side of the bowl that a measly 1.6 gallons of water just can't dislodge. That's a fact. With all the snorting toilets in the men's room, and the muffled toilet snorts heard through the wall from the ladies room, you would think a sounder of agitated warthogs lived here.

So the end result is that more water is used instead of less, which could all have been avoided by leaving toilet technology well enough alone; something some folks just can't seem to do. Accept that there are some things in life that can't be improved upon: take forks for example (You now associate turds with forks. Thanks, CTone!). There isn't anything that can be done to improve how forks function. Forks design has stayed pretty much the same for hundreds of years, if not thousands, but you can bet that some hairy toed hippie has thought of shortening the fork's tines to make people use less food or something, and thus save the moose. Following in that logic, maybe we can save the Teamster population by making shovels smaller, too; or make poop disappear just as well as 3.5 gallons by using half as much.

Fix it! Or at the very least, add a selector switch. I mean, we have adjustable gas blocks. Why not adjustable toilet flow regulators?

"Oooof. This one's gonna be a doozie! Better switch from "standard" to "dirty.""

U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand targets the ATF and U.S. AG Eric Holder

U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand says she will be backing a bill to crack down on corrupt gun runners and dealers.

Alriiiiight! Keepin' the streets safe by prosecuting those who sell guns to violent scumbags! Why didn't anyone think of this before?

I know right where she can start -- prosecuting an armed gang who brokered the sale of illegally purchased firearms for violent drug cartels who used those weapons to kill innocent people. ZING!!!

Oh, wait. . . .

Recently, State Attorney General Eric Schneidermann announced that his office plans to crackdown on illegal gun distribution in the state. In fact, a probe conducted by his office revealed that many gun sellers disregard state mandated background checks, according to the Associated Press.

Ohhhhhhhhh. You mean she's backing a STATE law that would make the process of buying and selling firearms in New York even more illegal and convoluted. . . . I read you now. For a minute there I thought a member of congress actually gave a shit about preventing violent people from using firearms to commit violent crimes. My bad. I see now that state commerce has captured the interest of Rep. Gillibrand (I thought she was pro-gun? David Codrea was right about her, you know).

Well, you can't blame a snake for biting any more than you can blame a revenuer for revenuin'.

Since I'm knuckle deep in this article now, I guess I should let the mocking begin. I did find this amusing:

An individual gun seller can is legally accountable for the guns they sell, but not a gun show operator.

What's a "gun seller can?" Is that like a can of man that sells guns? I'm imagining now a secret factory run by the NRA that packages men who sell firearms into little cans in order to execute an eeeeeevil covert plot to saturate the country with individual gun sellers. The logistics of it is genius -- a pickup truck can only handle perhaps a half dozen individual gun sellers in the bed; I can't even fathom how many cans of men will fit back there. Hundreds maybe? Thousands?

And "gun show operators?" I admit to seeing one or two of those guys at every gun show I've ever been to -- they're the ones wearing old camo, and decked out in cheap nylon holsters and vests with too many pockets, handing out High Points to kids like candy. They're easy to spot, with all those patches and urine stains on their uniforms, and more than a little creepy. I had no idea they were exempt from state laws! That's totally backwards! Rep. Gillibrand is absolutely right: Gun Show Special Warfare Operators should be accountable for the guns they sell, but not canned men who sell guns. They're in a can, so they can't do much harm. Besides, how many guns will fit in a can?

Just when you though it was over, there's more:

The proposed legislation toughens penalties for illegal gun sales. Traffickers could face nearly 20 years in prisons.

Holy shit! Not *A* prison; we're talking multiple prisons! From what I'm reading here, if a gun trafficker gets caught, the court could have him torn to pieces and sent to prisons all over the state! Maybe they'll put his head on a pike in one prison, and gibbet his bloody torso in another. That's a bit morbid, but it would surely do more for placing fear in illegal gun traffickers than a bill that targets basically anyone not perfectly rehersed in the law.

New York may very well have something here. . . .

What happend to The Military Channel?

Once upon a time there were a ton of cool shows on all sorts of military disciplines on The Military Channel: Future Weapons, Weaponology, Ultimate Weapons, Weapon Masters -- all of these shows were great to watch (they're still on, but all re-runs), but now The Military Channel has turned into the Nazi Channel. Seriously; when I hit the channel guide, the lineup is all "Hitler's Shock Troops," "Hitler's War Machine," "Cooking with Hitler," "Nazi Tank Battles," "Nazi UFO Conspiracy," "Nazi Ten-Minute Ab Workout." It's a Nazi cornucopia; who wants to watch that shit 24/7?

WWII was over 65 years ago, give it a rest, would ya?

You CAN stop a train!

Many years ago I witnessed a 2,500 hp mud-bogger with 44" paddle tires puke a red-hot piston through the hood and into the air under full throttle. I thought it was bad ass. Seeing the aftermath from when a train ejects a piston is still pretty cool, but more than a little scary.

What goes up must come down!

Fast follow-up shot

With a little more control, this girl could be on to something with the new .500 S&W double-tap technique for dangerous game.

Small pistol AIWB

A couple of weeks ago my brother showed me his Kahr CW9 in its new DeSantis Sof-Tuck, and I tried it out to see how it would fare carried AWIB. I did a hasty shirt tuck, and then my brother took some pictures:




It sure is purdy! Comfy, too!

I could carry that thing all day like that with no problem. In the first picture you can spot the J-hook, and the slight bulge under my belt. Again, I just jammed the front of my shirt into my britches rather quickly for the picture; I'm sure I could do a better job of hiding it if I tried a little harder. Also, the CW9 shot great. I only put a few rounds through it, but it's certainly more shootable than my P3AT.

As an added bonus, I thought I'd include this picture as evidence of why you shouldn't shoot CB Long rounds out of your 10/22:



Oooops.

Immediately after that picture was taken, my brother then noted something I did not know: in order to punch a cleaning rod OUT of the barrel of a Ruger 10/22, you have to remove the barrel. That's not an option here because the barrel is fit so tight into the receiver that I don't think I can ever take it off. I don't know about you, but when I learned to clean a gun -- any gun -- I was taught that it's best to push the dirt and fouling and stuff from the breach end out of the muzzle, and not the other way around. I've also learned that you can count on engineers at Ruger to design shit like they're retarded, so this doesn't surprise me. The only other option is to drill a hole in the back of the receiver so that you can take the bolt out and get a cleaning rod in there, which is what I did.

Awesome job, Ruger. You build a rifle that has to have a hole drilled in it to clean. Morons.

A history of sword violence

"We've arrested him on two different occasions. Once in June where he had another sword, which is in evidence. This is not the same sword. He cut his grandmother on the foot with it that time," Miller said, according to CBS Atlanta.

Sounds like the county failed to properly intervene here and put this teenager where he belongs by using the full extent of the law. Is it that hard to keep little scumbags behind bars/glass?

I post this story like I do all the other sword attack stories to point out that despite our advanced society we are not that far separated from history. A sharpened piece of steel is easy to come by, and can inflict fatal wounds without the need to reload.

What happens when you divide by zero?

A law enforcement officer that is a commenter on ARFCOM was the victim of a felony traffic stop and arrest in front of his wife and kids at a revenueing speed trap over an out of state warrant for weapons charges and being an unregistered sex offender. The warrants turned out to be for someone else; someone of different color and birthday. The only thing that expedited his ass out of the police station was a fortuitous notice by another cop of that the victim's race was not the same as on the warrant. Since the victim is a LEO, he was treated far different at the station than someone not of that status.

It's a shame that this man will forever have this arrest and charges associated with his name, even if the record is expunged. It's permanent, and so is the sight of his kids and wife watching him be arrested and treated like a scumbag for a crime he didn't commit.

This is exactly why I now fear law enforcement. I think many good hearted Americans fear being the innocent victim of some computer glitch or human error and being yanked out of their car or having their door kicked in and dog shot over some victimless crime; the former having happened to me when I was a teenager. It's not fun. There is very permanent damage done over these sort of things, and often the whole thing is initiated over a crime that was not hurting anyone.

Up until fairly recently I strongly wanted to become law enforcement, but changed my mind as I didn't like where the trade was heading. I hope the cop in the linked story gets everything worked out, and hopefully becomes a better officer because of it.

Hiveway to the danger zone

The semi was hauling the insects from California to North Dakota on Sunday when it went off the road near Island Park. Some 400 hive boxes spilled out, according to The Associated Press. Responders sprayed fire foam on the bees, but a noisy swarm described by witnesses as a giant black cloud rose up from the site.

That's terrifying to me. I hate bees, and do everything and anything to avoid them. I've seen a black cloud of bees like that beefore, and I figure it would make for an interesting but true story:

I was fresh out of my MOS (Military Occupational Specialty) school and I was stationed at Camp Pendleton, California. My first week in the fleet, I was considered a "boot" (right out of bootcamp) "FNG" (Fucking New Guy), and as such was assigned to do menial work that nobody wants to do. My task was to join a huge working party of a hundred or so other boot Marines, as well as some NCOs who had done something to get themselves unwanted attention, in the cleanup of an impact area -- a range out in the middle of nowhere used for dropping and firing explosive ordnance.

This vast wasteland of desert was littered with fragmentation from the stuff that blew up like it was supposed to, as well as unexploded ordnance as far as the eye could see. We got a safety brief detailing that we were only to handle and dispose of "blue" (training) ordnance, and to otherwise leave the various bombs, missiles, rockets, and grenades lying around alone. . . . .and to watch our step. The big splodey items were to be directed to the attention of EOD (explosive ordnance disposal) for a C4 shampoo.

We wandered around miles of open desert that had long been the playground for pilots, mortarmen, artilleryman, and assaulters who had blown up tanks, jeeps, and such since the base was established in 1942. There were piles of chewed up dumpsters that Cobra pilots had ventilated with 20mm rounds from there frickin' awesome cannon; six-foot tall stacks of unused mortar rounds; unexploded rockets stuck in the dirt around old cars; we even found a missile sticking up in the middle of a stack of jeeps the size of a small house.

Inside many of these vehicles and hulls were large hives of Africanized honey bees, and there was a two man crew of bee-fighting folks in a Toyota Tacoma who were tasked with calming those suckers down when they got stirred up. I was more scared of the bees than I was from anything else, and Marines were getting stung left and right.

The first couple of days of cleanup were terrifying, as there was so much unexploded ordnance around that we were all trying not to trip over it. It was literally everywhere you took a step. EOD was busy blowing up stacks of mortars and missiles and such, which made for cool entertainment, and by the third day we were all in good spirits, and had become very cavalier about all the dangerous stuff around us. Nobody had been blown up, so it couldn't be all that dangerous -- that was the logic. Pictures were taken of Marines holding some reeeeeeeallly cool stuff that they had no business handling, and I even witnessed two Marines setting off 5.56mm rounds using a rock and the tip of another round. Stupidity abounded.

On the fourth day I came across a huge missile lying on its side; a large one, rusted all to shit, about 25 feet long or more and bigger around than a 55 gallon drum -- if I had wrapped my arms around it, I would have only gotten about half way. To this day I don't know what I was thinking, but I hauled back and kicked it hard, right in the middle. When I did, the outer casing ripped all the way through, and the back half of the missile rolled away from the front half exposing the largest honeycomb I had ever seen, with untold gallons of honey pouring over my black and green jungle boots. In the milliseconds that followed, I saw angry bees coming out of every rivet hole in the casing, and then it hit me. . . . .

Oh FUCK!!. . . . . . . BEEEEEEES!!!!

I took off running as fast as my legs would carry me, screaming and flailing the whole way; every Marine in the working party took off running in my direction whether they knew what was going on or not. It got everyone really worked up because they thought something big was about to explode. They had no idea! When we were about 500 yards away from my really big mistake, I breathlessly explained to Gunny what I saw, and we all watched as a cloud of pissed off bees the size of a Wal-Mart ascend into the air. I never got stung, and neither did any of the Marines; the bee-fighting crew didn't fare as well, as the task of making the bees happy again with smoke proved more than their capabilities.

The shear awe that we were all in watching those bees spared me from the well deserved ass-kicking that I should have received, as my actions could have gotten Marines hurt or killed. The swarm made some local paper from what I heard, and thankfully I was never interviewed for my stupidity. The cleanup was ended that day - it was originally scheduled for a week - because some commander somewhere realised what a bad idea it was, so in the end everyone was pretty happy.

I sometimes think back to that day as the pinnacle brain fart of my life. I'm glad nobody was hurt, and I get to laugh at myself with only a bit of shame for my troubles. I now share it with the world forever, as it's posted on the internets. Enjoy!

Terrifying testimony

NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) - Rising from his seat at the witness stand in a New Orleans courtroom, Michael Hunter lifted a model AK-47 assault rifle to demonstrate on Wednesday how a fellow police officer blasted five civilians during the chaotic aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

Hunter, in the most detailed account to date of the shooting on the Danziger Bridge, said the officer stood above three men and two women and sprayed them with bullets at close range as they lay terrified on a sidewalk on September 4, 2005.

There are multiple things to be outraged about in this accounting of how New Orleans police shot and killed unarmed people on the bridge; and even if you don't believe everything that was testified in court, any one allegation is damning on its face; you can't dismiss everything. It's accounts like this one or the one posted yesterday that are the reason for the current rift between Americans and law enforcement.

Fortunately, in Virginia, we don't get the crushing effects of mother nature like in other parts of the country, so the scenario of an apocalyptic SHTF situation in the wake of a storm or earthquake is highly unlikely, but that doesn't mean that "high risk" situations are not created out of whole cloth.

I have some friends in my local Sheriff's Departments, and with the exception of them specifically, I fear the rest of them. That doesn't mean that I don't appreciate what they do or the dangers that they face, but while they have nothing to fear from me - any interaction that they have with me will be peaceful on my part - I don't trust them to not completely trample on my rights and/or escalate things when they interact with me. It's a shame that that's how my feelings are, but I know that I'm not alone.

Spousal Unit Fail

Little initially put the gun to the dog's head and pulled the trigger several times, but nothing happened, police say the wife told them.

Knowing my wife like I do, I'm certain that if I was sitting on the porch pounding moonshine, snapping a partially loaded revolver at the dog while babbling about how bad my life sucks, she would probably end my suffering temporarily with a frying pan long enough for the state-run help to arrive and give me proper attention. But maybe my wife is different then the vast amount of them out there in that she cares about me, and wouldn't just sit on her ass while I self destructed.

The guy in the article is dead by his own hand, but I have to question the sanity of his wife. Telling the cops that her husband "got tired" of playing russian roulette with the dog means that she had plenty of time to do something to prevent such a tragedy, unless of course she's patiently waiting for that "til death do us part" clause in the marriage contract to be executed (oh, my pun!) so that she can get on with her life. It makes sense then.

Laaaaawww the doooo daaaaa daaaaay

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That won't get them far in life

Opportunistic thugs attempting to steal a van got more than they bargained for when they prised open the doors and were faced with a team of heavily-armed SAS officers.

Frickin' OOOPS! The officers wouldn't go into detail on the games that they played with the thieving scumbags, but one can use their imagination.