Where was the security?

Prosecutors say Alkebular attacked the 14-year-old boy twice on April 25 inside and outside the zoo. According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, the victim recognized the group Alkebular was with and tried to avoid it. Several people attacked the victim inside the zoo led by Akebular, who stabbed him twice in the arm before his group fled.

He then went on to catch up with the victim later and stab him in the guts repeatedly.

Uuuummmmm, the Smithsonian Zoo is a Gun Free Zone that is protected by a full time staff of security personnel. A quick check confirms the stipulation right there on their webpage that they "ensure your safety," and that carrying knives there is against the rules. I'm thinking the victim's parents have grounds for a claim against the Smithsonian, as getting stabbed multiple times by a group of youths runs counter to the idea of ensured safety. Notice the specific mention of knives and weapons:

Do not bring any sharp items into the museums such as knives (including pocket or "Swiss Army"-style knives), screwdrivers, scissors, nail files, corkscrews, etc. Firearms, pepper spray, and Mace are also prohibited.

Officer friendly at the top of the page, who appears to be gleefully handing out a parking ticket, looks to have a firearm on his duty belt. Lots of good it did the victim. If kids can wander into an allegedly secure area and stab people with impunity, than it's not really secure, and all you're doing with a policy like that is disarming everyone else. This sort of attack can happen to anyone at that zoo, and is the reason why I have/will never take my family there. I have actual knowledge that the Virginia Beach Zoo and the Virginia Beach Aquarium does not disarm its visitors, so I'll stick with going there.

An instrument of criminal intent

We must ban Twitter. Do it for the children!

Called “flash robs,” these crimes are being organized by young teenagers through various social media outlets, most notably Twitter. Police say the suspects select a time and place and enter the store in droves taking what they want and leaving before security or police can catch them.

Interesting. Looking at some of the examples at the bottom of the article, like the robbery in Las Vegas, makes me reconsider carrying a Glock 17. Twenty plus dudes bursting into a small store and getting violent, taking anything they can get their hands on - I wouldn't want to be standing there when it happens with only six rounds of .380 acp standing between me and the crowd.

What happens if they decide that one of the things they would like to have is your wife? Puts things into perspective now, doesn't it? If they are brazen enough to assemble for a mass shoplifting, maybe if a couple of them decides that that is not enough and there's more fun to be had, the rest will be brazen enough to join in.

A special thanks goes out to the fearless investigator from St. Paul telling people that if they are in such a situation, to make sure to be an especially good witness. Nothing in there about surviving the encounter; just pay close attention to the forty people in the store and hope that one of them doesn't take you out for your troubles.

Those videos really make me miss my Glock 20 that I had to sell years ago. Pity.

Robbery/Murder in a NYC pharmacy

I'm not trying to dance in the blood of the dead, but I thought I would again point out that you can never place your faith in the hands of a scumbag. The mantra of "just give them what they want" and the "don't resist or you'll only get hurt" policies wore through here, and a great tragedy happened:

The man was armed with a handgun, stole prescription drugs and killed everyone in the shop before fleeing with a black backpack.

The shootings happened at about 10:20 a.m. inside a family-owned pharmacy in a small cluster of medical offices in Medford, a middle-class hamlet on Long Island about 60 miles east of New York City.

Sometimes it's just not about the robbery. Why on earth did that man decide to kill those four people? Maybe to get rid of the witnesses? Who knows. I hope they catch the scumbag soon.

The murder happened in a decent part of town according to the statements from those who live there. My guess is that's why the scumbag sought out that particular store.

Probably has been posted before, but. . .

A fully functioning, magazine fed, bolt action sniper rifle. . . . . made of legos. Too cool!

Not gun related, but cool none the less

Checking out this morning's Over Night Thread at Ace of Spades yielded this video of industrial shredding machines and the things they are capable of destroying, which is everything.

I guess whirling blades eating a couch is appropriate material for this blog!

Making high tech weaponry for warfighting

The Libyan rebels are manufacturing some very advanced weapons to fight their government with. When I used to think about rebels building weapons, I thought about the cave dwelling folks who make knock-off Browning High Powers by forging pot metal against rocks, not former cab drivers making robots with remote controlled machine guns.



Technology rules!

Who doesn't want a gun like the A-10?!?

The age old arguement of which fighter plane is better leads to an ARFCOM poster dropping this beauty ***NSFW: Language***:



Being the open minded guy that I am, I have to see the awesomeness in all aircraft. I still think the Spitfire is the sexiest plane ever made.

Pro gun win in Ohio

CHICAGO (Reuters) – Ohio lawmakers on Wednesday passed a bill allowing gun owners in the state to carry concealed weapons into bars and other establishments where alcohol is served.

The General Assembly passed the bill, which also eases restrictions on how guns can be transported in vehicles, in a 55-38 vote.

Good for Ohio. The last sentence in the article mentions that opponents think mixing guns and alcohol would be bad for the public, but they must not have read the law thoroughly as it explicitly states that guns and alcohol cannot be lawfully mixed. The same thing was argued here in Virginia when a similar law was passed, but the opponents didn't read the fine print apparently.

Crazy people roundup

A shooting victim at the funeral of a shooting victim, in Chicago. Why, there aught to be a law or something to prevent stuff like this from happening. Maybe make the whole daggone city a place that is free from idiots with guns. What a swell idea.

Also, TSA screeners conducting an intense scrotum search found a bunch of heroin on a traveler. Oh wait, did I say TSA screeners? My mistake; it was Customs Inspectors, and they weren't sexually assaulting him when they found the drugs, they were interviewing him. Weird. Who would have known that old fashioned police work would produce results?

And again, hailing from Stafford, Virginia we have a psychotic woman ramming her car into another car, all the while her 1 year old is safely strapped into the back seat. Now this may come as a huge surprise, but the whole incident was allegedly started over a man. Shocking!

Kansas City shows off its lunatics with some parents who were off doing who knows what while their crazy ferret ate the fingers off their four month old. Leaving your kids in an air conditioned car while you buy a lottery ticket is grounds these days for state charges, so these people had to know that it was a bad idea to leave their infant at home alone. With an animal that is known to bite.

Now, as you go about your day, look to your left and your right at all the friendly people you encounter and know that at least one of them is batshit crazy. Pay attention to your surroundings at all times.

High end knife making

If you've ever been fortunate to see a hand made knife crafted by a true artist, you may wonder why they can fetch upwards of $750 or more. If you want to know why they cost so much, and what you can expect the knife maker to go through to build it, check out this picture thread by Stan Wilson as he takes you through countless hours building a custom knife for a customer. Lots of sweat went into making it, and it takes the use of special equipment and a steady, gifted hand to create. This man's knives are worth every penny. Simply amazing.

Who's BAD!?!?

I seem to be on a music post-title kick this morning, but that's how I'm programmed.

Haji has a review of Magpul's Battery Assist Device (BAD, get it?), which he stretched out on the range to see how it works. Looks like a quality upgrade for an AR rifle for those that shoot them often. Practicing with it looks to be key, as it slightly modifies the manual of arms, and you don't want to be they schmoe who clicks off a round into a buddy's foot while changing magazines.

My rifles are currently tasked with collecting dust samples from the inside of the safe while I feebly swat at life's little problems, so I'm thankful and intrigued of others who take the time to try out new equipment and post their findings.

Good stuff!

It's just the beast under your bed

An Idaho family was driven from their home and into bankruptcy by "hundreds and hundreds" of snakes that slithered inside the walls as they slept and left them and their children terrified.

I giggled my ass off when I read this short article, and the whole time I wrote this post. Don't judge me for my gallows humor - I feel bad for them, I really do, but there's something about a story of a family moving into a house that is literally writhing with snakes that makes me laugh insanely like an old man in an asylum that just found a piece of saltwater taffy in his pajama pocket. It's beyond awful, and terribly funny.

It reminded me of when I lived in a room by myself in the barracks on Camp Lejeune many years ago. I got some new neighbors one day, and I suspect that they did a thorough spring cleaning of that room because a few days later I woke up in the middle of the night with cockroaches crawling all over me. They were everywhere; all over the ceiling, the walls, the furniture, and they were even in my computer tower and refrigerator. Each barracks building is like its own little city, so there is no way to effectively get rid of them; they live in whatever room they feel that they get the best rent, so to speak, and will move from one room to another.

I lived in absolute horror for several days. The roaches were eating my mattress, the foam on my computer speakers, and anything else they wanted to feed on. They crawled on my face at night, and didn't even bother to scatter when I came home from work. I estimated their strength to be about a brigade sized element, maybe larger. It didn't matter that I kept the room clean and threw out all the food, they just kept coming. Their ingress point was the bathroom - the head, in Marine/Navy jargon - and one morning while brushing my teeth, watching the little fuckers pour out of the faucet like they were entering a DC nightclub, I grabbed a nearby can of WD-40 and tried to hose one down the drain. I swear I heard that roach scream out loud in torturous pain, his little antennae swishing back and forth, and at that moment it was like I was holding Excalibur. I laid the roaches to waste. At night I would make a slick barrier of sweet, sweet, water displacing formula forty around the doorway to the bathroom so they couldn't get in, and every morning for about four days there would be thirty or more dead roaches where the tile met the carpet -- the WD-40 had killed them on contact. I sprayed a box around my bed, and coated each of the bed's legs, too. Every roach hotel in the room was treated with WD-40 until one morning, there were no dead roaches at my bathroom door. They were gone; packed up their shit and left town.

I feel sorry for whomever or wherever they settled after that. I am certain some filthy Marines several doors down regretted leaving half empty pizza boxes on the floor, sweaty sox on the coffee table, and old Mad Dog 20-20 bottles on the counter. Sleep tiiiiiiiiiight, don't let the bedbugs bite!

Muhhuhahah!! MUHUUHAAAHAHAAAA!!!!!

Just some good ol' boys . . . .

. . . .never meanin' no har. . .

Sheriff Maj. David Decatur says Douglas Edward Turner went banging on the "victim's" door just before midnight demanding that he come outside. When the man opened his door, Turner came at him with a chainsaw. Turner cut up a handrail but did not injure the victim, who ran back inside and locked the door.

Stafford county heathens just doing what they do best. The moral of this story is never bring a chainsaw to a baseball bat fight. Tell me you knew I was going to say that. Also, if someone is braying on your door at midnight, and you hear an idling two-stroke engine on the other side, it's a safe bet that you can go ahead and back away from the door and call the cops. Hasn't the homeowner ever seen a slasher movie before?

And another thing, I don't know about you, but I qualify a chainsaw as being a deadly weapon, and not just a tool for wounding maliciously; you can bet that this crazy sumbich would have been shot the moment he breached the walls of my house with that thing. If there was one time an AR15 with all the accoutrements could be readily prepared and wielded against a bona fide madman in the process of sawing his way into your domicile at night, it was in this attack, and the homeowner grabs a stick of wood instead. At least he used it well.

Terminology fail

MISSOULA, Mont. – Authorities searching a 30-square-mile swath of rugged Montana forest for a former militia leader and survivalist say the man was prepared for his shootout with sheriff's deputies and left several caches of food in the area.

Alright, so the guy they're tracking sounds like he's not come to a peaceful agreement with his government in quite some time, but what's with branding him a survivalist? Aren't we all survivalists, or do some humans not breath air?

Slack suck: Johnny Law Edition

Capitol Police are unhappy about a new management decision banning shorts on officers assigned to the Capitol.

Oh yeah! Time to dress like a professional, motherfuckers! All the cool people are doing it. Where are you gonna put that Emerson folder now, po-po man? Not enough room for your walkie aaaaaaaaand your baton? Ha!

Oh, wait:

But union representatives told Roll Call that Inspector Donald Roullier, who oversees the department’s Capitol Division, made the decision based on appearances – particularly the fact that officers in short pants do not look good carrying large automatic rifles.

Do officers in any pants look good carrying large automatic rifles? That's like saying a hunchback look less conspicuous and deformed wearing Oxfords vice some sneakers; it doesn't make any sense. Hopefully officers will maintain professionalism despite the length of their duds. Maybe if they're lucky, the bureaucrat-in-chief will let them wear pants that have more than a couple of tiny pockets, like maybe some TAD, Woolrich, or 5.11s. My workplace has outlawed common-sense attire in favor of britches that were designed by slaves in 1622, and we all look fabulous as hell because of it. I feel so professional sitting in my cubicle with my keys digging into my ass that I want to be as productive as I can! It amuses me now to know that somebody else has to live in my hell and experience a pointless attire change.

And what's with cops wandering around our nation's capitol with automatic rifles? What do they think this country is - Britain?

Magnitudes of violence

I have to take this article with a grain of salt, as it is an interview from a single hidden source named "Juan" conducted by media types known for telling tall tales. If it is true, and really there's not much reason to think otherwise, than violence in Mexico is way worse than I thought.

In one of the most chilling revelations yet about the violence in Mexico, a drug cartel-connected trafficker claims fellow gangsters have kidnapped highway bus passengers and forced them into gladiatorlike fights to groom fresh assassins.

For all I knew, the cartels were only out to kill each other, and any government employees who interfered in the slaughter. I fail to see the problem in violent groups killing each other off, unless they are hurting innocent people. Mentally putting myself on a bus in Mexico, unarmed, and getting stopped by these crazies so that they can make a sport of me fighting others to the death has me a bit disconcerted though, as without a means of resistance I would be helpless. I can not adequately imagine that scenario despite my mind's capable abilities, and I suppose that's a good thing.

Comparing Mexico's violence with the US, I can see that they have taken it to a level that we will hopefully never go. We complain when a federal ABC agency shoots up a citizen in his recliner or a half dozen girls are found murdered in a swamp, and rightly so, but it still does not compare to finding 200 beheaded corpses buried in a shallow grave behind the grocery store every other weekend or full scale firefights between fifty men at the mall. I hope those things do not become commonplace here in America.

Hoarders

A discussion with pics at ARFCOM.

When I was a teenager, my dad and I went to go look at a job at a gorgeous house. . . . .on the outside. The inside of that house was so vile that I wanted desperately to take a shower after we left. The pics on the ARFCOM thread were not on par with what I saw, which was stuff and things piled all the way to the ceiling in every room, with a narrow walkway to shuffle through sideways to get around. There was cat shit and vomit all over too, just like in the thread, so that must be part of being a hoarder.

We never did take that job.

A chance encounter

BOSTON (Reuters) – A mountain lion was killed just 70 miles from New York City early on Saturday morning, and officials were trying to determine if it was the same big cat spotted a week ago roaming the posh suburb of Greenwich, Connecticut.

A mountain lion was also seen in a suburb of New York City 30 miles away last week, leading everyone to believe the dead cat is one and the same. Sounds likely to me. My thoughts though go to this:

"By and large, cougars want to stay as far away from people as they possibly can because they are so solitary," said Bob Wilson, a co-founder of The Cougar Network, an organization devoted to tracking and researching the animal.

Wilson said mountain lions like to hunt in the shadows and it would be a very remote chance to encounter the cat.

Well now, this cougar didn't conform to the little box that you placed him in, did he, considering that New York City and Connecticut suburbs are are chock full of people? The cat was wandering around really close to people, one or several of which could have had a bad encounter with it if someone hadn't encountered it to death with the grill of their Pathfinder.

People may call me paranoid, but I stay prepared for any predator, two legged or four, at all times because despite what the experts say, primitive thinking animals are unpredictable; that is how they were programmed. I don't know if .380 ACP is sufficient for stopping mountain lion, but I do believe it's far more effective than hope.

A TT-33 as the murder weapon?

I think the more likely story is that the reporter creature just Googled "handgun" and picked the first picture that came up. The article has absolutely no information other than a 16 year old was murdered in Prince George's County. Big shocker there, I know.

D.C.'s annual sausage riders protest fossil fuels

CTone, what in the hell does that even mean? I don't know, but I thought "Topless Bike Riders Take DC" was very misleading, if not outright false advertising. Well, I guess eleven dudes in thongs qualifies as "topless;" how they talked the hippie chick into coming along is the question of the day.

This massive protest consisting of a dozen people was done in the name of ending US dependence on fossil fuels. One can only presume then that their ultimate goal is to see America sit on its collective ass and do absolutely nothing, as people need to be able to travel to work and have power to run industrial equipment to facilitate commerce. Hey though, with all that spare time we would all be able to chill out, hit the bong, and think of unique ways of protesting things that cannot be changed!

Far out!