The Millennium was nice. I never had a failure in it, the gun felt sturdy, and it concealed well. It even had the manual safety I prefer in my handguns. I’ve stopped carrying it, though, because I’ve lost faith in the Taurus pistols. The 24/7 I owned in 9mm was nothing but trouble. When I shot for my CHL renewal in November I had two failures within 50 rounds, both of them due to the weak striker. Even though the Taurus handguns offer a unique DA/SA trigger, I just can’t accept a pistol with a poor striker or hammer. Both of the Taurus pistols I used to own are now gone, and I’ve moved on…

Directly to a Glock 19. I picked it up yesterday, along with a set of Trijicon 3-dot sights and a Don Hume OWB holster. I’m going to see if I can pack this thing daily on my hip under an unucked shirt and get away with it. I’m afraid the length of the Glock will show when I sit, so I’m likely to switch to another IWB holster eventually. If I can get away with it outside, though, I’m going to stick with it for comfort.

Walking out the door right now I’m carrying 16 rounds without the need for a spare magazine. A year ago I only carried 14 with the extra magazine.

I can’t tell you any one reason why I want to carry more rounds on my person. Something about the world just concerns me – like we’re right on the edge of something breaking. We live within a system permanently stretched to its limits. Nothing is ever humming along on an even keel. We’ve learned to accept panic and overcrowding as a way of life, but its unnatural. We all know something is wrong. Everyone is at that same precipice, waiting for something to break, inside them or outside.

You just can’t carry enough bullets. People break when they’re stretched, and we’re still a long way from the bottom of where this broken, irresponsible, and irrational federal government construct is going to take us. People are going to break because we’re all-in, as a society, as an economy, and as a nation. We’ve put our collective futures into the hands of the few, and they’ve been failing us egregiously for a hundred consecutive years. Sooner or later they’re going to break someone near you and I, and whether or not we’re ready to deal with it is a matter we all have to decide for ourselves.

I’ve never felt so prepared. The Glock 19 is clearly an unapologetic tool for the discriminating carrier. It’s not going to fail at critical moments, is not going to slow you down with extra buttons or levers, and is going to destroy whatever is in front of it when the trigger is pulled, whether you like it or not. It’s a dangerous gun in the wrong hands, and according to statistics is also a dangerous gun in trained hands. Without a good holster the threat of self-inflicted gunshot wounds from a Glock is significant, so it is certainly not a firearm to be treated with anything other than absolute reverence. When the time is right it’s a gun that can be counted on.

Being prepared feels good today.

Technorati Tags: 9mm, concealed carry, Glock 19, holster, millennium, pt111, self defense, taurus

Her options were simple: she could either pay the fine or request something called  an “adjudicative hearing.” Since the civil penalty had been imposed in a manner contrary to the City’s own laws, she could not possibly choose to pay the fine. That the money would be spent on further red light camera programs, which have been repeatedly proven to endanger the public, gave her little choice but to contest the violation.

An adjudicative hearing is not the same as court. There are no judges or lawyers, but rather City employees making determinations of guilt or innocence based on a lacking and biased sense of the law as explained by individuals committed more to revenue generation than civil rights. Rather than subject herself to such a kangaroo court, my wife demanded that her Texas Constitution Article I, Section 15 right to a trial by jury be recognized.

Article I, Section 15. The right of trial by jury shall remain inviolate. The Legislature shall pass such laws as may be needed to regulate the same, and to maintain its purity and efficiency.

We had to pay extra shipping to ensure that her letter was delivered by the “due date” on the ticket, so late was the City in sending it to her.

Instead of impaneling the jury, the only legitimate course of action available to the City of Fort Worth, they awarded themselves a default win in her case. Her penalty rose from $75.00 to $100.00, and the City is now considering turning her account over to a collections agency.

My wife and I have both spent countless hours on the telephone with City attorneys and employees, explaining to them that municipal code cannot possibly hold precedence over the Texas Constitution’s Bill of Rights. As of today the City has chosen to ignore its lawful mandate and to end its communication with us on the matter. Fort Worth Deputy City Attorney Gerald Pruitt made this clear just before hanging up on me earlier this afternoon.

What concerns us even more is that the Fort Worth Star Telegram seems to be taking its cues from the City in this case. I originally wrote a long and detailed account of this matter to be published as a letter to the editor, which editor Paul K. Harral then requested that I shorten for publication. After limiting my statement to fewer than 300 words, Mr. Harral contacted me again to inform me that he was going to “try for the focus letter position” with my editorial. Three hours later I received another note from Mr. Harral, this time rescinding his promise to publish the letter and instead prompting my wife to simply accept the adjudicative hearing as offered by the City and repeat her request for her constitutionally inviolate right to a jury trial from the City during that hearing. What happened between 7:30 and 10:30 this morning that would convince Mr. Harrel to decide not to publish an editorial critical of the City of Fort Worth? Only he knows. Whatever responsibility he might have had to promoting dissenting opinins, a fundamental charge of a free press, went out the window in those three hours.

Mr. Harrel did point out that “there are all sorts of examples in law – medical malpractice for example – that require a hearing before proceeding to trial,” as well as trotting out a lot of the same arguments, largely verbatim, that the City has been using to give us the runaround. Of course he’s right about the medical malpractice suits, but what he fails to recognize is that in these cases the individuals signed contracts requiring them to submit to arbitration or hearings prior to trial as conditions of their employment. My wife is a not a contract employe, but a citizen, and as such is not bound to follow any municipal code which violates her civil rights. Were we to begin allowing municipalities to determine by decree which cases may be heard in front of a judge and jury, our future as Texans and as Americans would indeed be bleak. By accepting the City’s hearing my wife would in fact be waiving her right to a real trial, placing the decision into the hands of a system which is clearly operating outside of its mandate. That Mr. Harrel, a journalist, would so blindly follow the lead of a City in this matter gives us grave concerns about the legitimacy of his newspaper and his capacity as a journalist.

At this point the City of Fort Worth is unlawfully exercising compelling force against my wife by refusing to register her vehicle, and will soon be committing outright criminal acts by attempting to force a collection through punitive measures. She has repeatedly and lawfully demanded a legitimate trial, and has been denied at every turn by the City.

This is why we carry. This is why we protect ourselves. It is not always going to be a home invasion, carjacking, robbery, or any other sort of violent crime. It may instead be a City attempting to ensure a revenue stream that is clearly unconstitutional and dangerous to the public health. When we stand up for our rights we often place ourselves in the unenviable position of being whipping posts for unelected and unaccountable lawyers such as Gerald Pruitt who are more committed to the rule of revenue than the rule of law.

And sometimes these people can be dangerous. Sometimes the protection of a City revenue stream is such that the unlawful use of compelling force becomes the dangerous use of police force. I don’t truly believe that this is one of those circumstances, and I have no reason whatsoever to suspect that Mr. Pruitt or any of his colleagues would ever do something so sinister as asking any individual or force to take unlawful action against us. But the possibility exists, and it’s the same sort of possibility which exists each and every time we walk out our doors. To stand for liberty is to stand against tyranny. Mr. Pruitt and his colleagues are, whether they know and accept it or not, agents of tyranny, and as such are not to be trusted in any capacity.

Always remember, enemies foreign and domestic.

Technorati Tags: civil rights, red light enforcement, revenue, unamerican

The question I’m most often asked is “why?” Why do I take preparation so seriously? Why am I so concerned about being able to survive any situation? Why do I carry a gun everywhere I go? Why can I quote the Bills of Rights of both Texas and the United States? There are a lot of answers to those questions, but one single idea lies at the root of all of them. I am prepared to defend myself and everyone around me from any wrongdoing, foreign or domestic, because the vast majority of you are not willing to defend yourself. In fact, as far as I can see society has gotten too stupid to defend itself from much at all anymore.

Seriously, when was the last time you looked around and took a rational accounting of what you’re living in? Right now we’re being told to believe that the two most capable people to lead the country are Barack Obama and John McCain. In an even more bizarre twist of stupidity, most of us believe that those two people are our only choices!

The current government has failed at literally everything it has ever done in our lives. Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, welfare, and every other program currently administered by the federal government are complete disasters. There is no competition, and the one invariable fact of business is that an organization which exists with no competition will not only fail its customers, but will do so in the most spectacular fashion possible. There is not an American alive who believes that his or her tax money is being spent wisely. Everyone in the country knows that we continue to elect people who rob us, cheat us, and are even willing to see us die for profit, or even worse, vanity.

So many of us stand around and talk about how messed up it all is every day. We complain that Obama wants to spend too much of our money or that McCain wants to send all of our kids off to die. We whine about our taxes, warrantless snooping, and even torture. Seriously, here we all are, Americans, and somehow we haven’t gotten it across that it is not okay to torture our fellow human beings under any circumstances.

We must seriously be the single stupidest collection of people on the planet. Somehow, despite knowing for a fact that the people that we’re electing are criminals who would quite literally be working in telemarketing call centers if we hadn’t somehow allowed their families to get into politics, we still allow them to represent us. For some unknown reason we’ve all decided to look the other way when logic and reason call, preferring to ignore the very reality of the truth that if we continue electing these people to our highest offices they will eventually kill every last one of us through sheer incompetence.

So why do I prepare for anything? Because I look around and I see the real world. I see a bunch of people who don’t value human life at all, and they’re the ones with the keys to the bombs. I see a federal government that has long since stopped caring that its sole function is to protect the very rights that it has taken from us. Most importantly, I see a bunch of people who are not only too stupid not to notice that it’s their own damn fault that things are so bad, but are so dense as to fail to realize that they’re all doing the most terrible things that they could possibly be doing for the future of our nation and for their very survival by continuing to believe a single word from the federal government and by continuing to elect from the pools of criminals we call the Republican and Democratic parties.

What’s that? Oh, you see that too? Yeah, what are you doing about it? Voting for McCain? Obama?

Let me offer you another solution. Go buy some tuna and canned peaches. Get bullets, at least one good assault rifle, and flashlights. Make sure you know where you’ll go if martial law is declared. Make sure you know where you go if there is no longer any gasoline in America. Because if you can look around the country and see the shape we’re in and not see clearly that the absolute root of every single problem that we currently have, have ever had, or will ever have in this country is because of our ever-growing and overwhelmingly incompetent federal government, then you are the reason I am preparing. You are the one running us into the ground by believing that men like Barack Obama or John McCain could really bring about fiscal responsibility – the real kind, not the delusional, self-serving criminal kind that you’re probably thinking of. You are the one who buys into the absolute nonsense of global terrorist conspiracies and the need for a multi-trillion dollar war against enemies that might someday pose a threat if the people you continue electing insist on repeatedly poking them with their enormous egos.

Look around and ask yourself: are we really this stupid?

Technorati Tags: Barack Obama, federal government, incompetence, John McCain

Until recently I was working at a major telecommunications company as a systems engineer responsible for building servers and processes for large and complex projects. I took the job knowing that telecom companies had been in the hot seat regarding snooping, and that there was a possibility that I might be around some of the technology, projects, or people responsible. I rationalized my concerns by promising myself that if I ever found myself breaking the law or violating the Constitution at the request of the company I’d blow the whistle.

The job was fantastic, the people were all great, and with the lone exception of the building being short on space to house the many employees and contractors, everything was perfect. I was working with state-of-the-art technology, and was managed by a  fellow who seemed content to let me be the best technical guy I could be.

One of the many projects to which I was assigned involved moving some old server hardware to a different location. As a first step I attempted to locate the original hardware, which was operational and responding to pings, but which I couldn’t physically locate in the data center. I asked a couple of colleagues for help and one of them began running on about the “other room.” We had to borrow a badge and go through several levels of coded door to get to it, but on the other end of the facility we found the alternate server room. It was smaller and had less gear, but was obviously separated from the primary applications. We couldn’t find the server I was looking for there either, so I began to ask if there were even more server rooms.

And there were. Several more, in fact. Each successive room could only be entered by navigating and passing the security of the previous room, and the rooms eventually became just a few huge machines and massive routers locked behind a chain-link fence in the corner of another room. I never actually made it into the the chain-linked area, and could only access the immediate rooms before it by having my manager accompany me to see an old, grisly-looking dude, who then had to stay with both of us beyond a certain point.

I started talking to my colleagues in hushed tones, asking them about these rooms and what purpose the served. The details were sketchy, and I never received a good answer because no one had a good answer to give. For a few weeks I struggled with the knowledge that secret rooms were buried in the building, wondering endlessly why the core engineering team did not even know their purpose.

Then, on July 10th, Bush signed FISA, complete with retroactive immunity for telecoms.

I can’t remember exactly how long I waited to submit my resignation, but it wasn’t more than a few days. I had not been asked to do anything illegal or unconstitutional, and still hadn’t even determined what the back rooms contained. I just knew that something was wrong, and that I could not be a part of whatever it was. I still gave a proper 2-week notice, and I still worked diligently on my project load, but for a while I secretly wondered if I was doing the right thing. Maybe those rooms just held core routers or time servers or something else critical. It was possible, even probable, that I was leaving a fantastic job over nothing.

With a few days to go I sat down with my manager, who had been pretty quiet during the run-up to my departure. He knew my reasons for leaving, and hadn’t commented to that point. We sat down in a little room and began to talk. I opened by quoting the 4th Amendment, and explained that with the passage of FISA and the concern over what telecom companies were being asked to do – and being retroactively immunized after having allegedly done – I was not a good fit for the position. Had I been asked to do something illegal or unconstitutonal, I explained, I wouldn’t have even been able to give them the two-week notice.

Then he said something that I’ll remember for the rest of my life, and which marked a turning point in my understanding of liberty and freedom.

“When the men in black suits come and ask you to do something, you know, there’s just not much you can do.”

Leaving that place was the single best decision of my professional life.

Technorati Tags: black suits, Constitution, fisa, telecom, warrant, wiretap

Flush with cash, I set my sights on a $1000 Rohrbaugh R9s, a sharkskin holster, and maybe couple of spare mags. I drove over to meet my FFL guy, and while we boxed up the P7 to ship off I told him of my new concealed-carry plans. While we were on the topic, he showed me his daily carry routine, which I immediately liked so much that I’ve since decided to scrap my original idea and try a completely new carry routine instead based on his.

I am now the proud owner of a Taurus Millennium Pro PT111. It’s a pretty solid gun, doesn’t break the bank, and carries a respectable 12+1 in a compact frame that will ride well on my hip. All I need now is leather. My wait time is still a month out, but I’ve started leaving my shirt untucked more and more often at the office for when it finally comes in.

I’ll likely keep the pocket pistol, and I might even carry it now and again. I’m excited about upgrading to a 9mm from the .380 though, and with the addition of night sights and maybe a more corrosion-resistant finish think that the Millennium could be a great sidekick.

Technorati Tags: 9mm, concealed carry, holster, millennium, pt111, taurus

A reasonable person would compare what they know of the world to be true with the proposal I’ve put forth. They would examine the possibility of an alien species living in my backyard in the light of their world. They would ask themselves whether or not they’d ever heard of an alien species or an invisibility quilt, and when my claim could not be reconciled with reality would conclude that they have not.

Now what if I tried to prove the existence of my alien species by making their society more complex, detailing the most minute elements of the world only I can see? What if I told you of their seven-legged pets? Does my depth of knowledge somehow validate my claim of their existence? Is any description of anything in my backyard rendered moot by the fact that its very existence is based on a complete delusion? A reasonable person might believe so. Seven-legged pets are not even worthy of consideration in a world which does not exist.

This is how I feel about the majority of the anti-gun arguments I hear. Any argument put forth which relies on the very first supposition being completely delusional cannot coexist with reality. More specifically, any gun control effort which begins with the complete removal of firearms from the entirety of the population cannot be taken seriously because it is based on the presupposition that all guns could be removed from the population. A reasonable person has to examine that against what they know of the world.

Somewhere around half of the households in America have at least one gun in them. There are roughly as many guns as there are Americans, if not more. Of all Americans, let’s say 60% are adults. Of them, 5% are felons. America would fight her second Civil War, short and bloody as the full weight of the U.S. Armed Forces would be brought to bear against her own, should we choose to take that path. The criminals would hide their guns though. Many decent, ordinary people would do the same. Gangs would start bringing them across our absurdly loose borders.

The people least likely to commit a crime would be the very people turning in the their guns without incident. We would criminalize the exercise of self-defense while allowing those who acquiesce to a dangerous law to be killed needlessly by thugs working with virtual impunity.

A reasonable person would look at the War on Drugs and conclude that its promises are delusional because there are still drugs. The War On Terror cannot reasonably be won until there are no more terrorists, which is a fallacy in the real world as well. A War on Guns would naturally be the same. It cannot and will not be won, because there will always be guns available, regardless of the restrictions and penalties placed on their ownership. To suggest otherwise would be to deny reality itself.

It is for this reason that I refuse to consider any gun control argument which begins with “if there were no guns.” It is not possible to have an America with no guns, just as it is not possible to have an America with no cheeseburgers, no Viagra, and no delusional maniacs.

Making suppositions based on a delusion cannot be reconciled with reality. I agree that the world would be a far better place if human beings did not have the capability of killing one another with such ease, but we cannot seek solutions based on such reason. We live in the real world. Sometimes people get messed up in the head and walk into a school with a rifle. The world would be better if no one ever did anything of the sort. Taking guns away from everyone would never solve that problem though. There will always be firearms available, some as easily obtained as a bag of marijuana. Millions of Americans handle firearms daily. They occasionally make a mistake, and it is occasionally tragic. Reasonable people will consider this against what they know the world. Drivers, scientists, and doctors occasionally make mistakes too, and sometimes the results are equally tragic. The fact that something which exists ubiquitously within society is dangerous is not a valid reason to secure its removal.

The point I’m trying to make is that reason and delusion cannot coexist. One cannot propose a delusional solution to a real problem. It’s irresponsible and only makes the problem worse.

I’m not denying that we do have an obstacle to overcome in America when it comes to guns. There are some people who are sick, and they crack up violently sometimes. There is always room to take steps to protect America against these types of things. All citizens deserve the very best solutions available, and that requires reasonable people thinking rationally. We should make it more difficult for sick people to obtain guns. We should take every step possible to protect students and families. We should impose strict sentences for those caught with illegal weapons. Not even a hardened gun guy will disagree with those things. But we have to do it without shooting ourselves in the proverbial foot. It’s delusional to think that we can start by getting all of the guns out of the hands of Americans, and further leads to the loss of more life by wasting critical resources arguing about something tantamount to the existence of seven-legged pets in an alien colony shrouded by the magical power of a hand-stitched quilt in my backyard.

I’m not going to tell you that the only option is more guns, because that argument is also based on a delusion. There are not enough people willing to take upon themselves the responsibility required for carrying a firearm. Even with increased numbers we might stop or mitigate one in ten mass shootings, but that still doesn’t solve the problem. Moreover, the argument that an armed citizen might inadvertently hurt an innocent person can be considered reasonable. People react strangely in tense situations, and the possibility for error will always exist. Some reasonable gun owners will recognize this and will train themselves, occasionally even better than law enforcement. Most will not. More armed individuals will help the problem by reducing the number of victims, but at the expense of a stray victim now and again. It simply isn’t an ideal solution.

Unfortunately we find ourselves as a nation posed with a very difficult problem. We know that mass murder is happening in our midst, but we do not have a solution which will guarantee the relief we seek. While we bicker and complain about delusional solutions, human beings die. We are failing them. We are failing ourselves. There is a gap and no one will fill it. The police cannot protect everyone all the time. There aren’t enough responsible gun carriers to take up the slack. If you’re reading this, and you aren’t delusional, then by now you should have come to this conclusion: you alone are capable of filling that gap.

Someday we may grow intelligent enough to eliminate all firearm-related deaths in the United States, but it will not be through campaigns such as Brady, nor will it be through arming every adult with a high school diploma. Today, however, we do not have the ideas, the means, or even the spirit to enact such sweeping change. We must live in reality, where reason dictates that each and every one of us will probably face a point in our lives where our defense falls upon us alone. We must be prepared to defend ourselves should no one be available to guarantee our safety. It’s not about machismo or fear. It is about reason. It is about recognizing that bad things happen to normal people like you and me, and understanding that sometimes the police just aren’t close enough to bail you out. It is about respect for yourself and your family. It is about respect for your fellow man. It is the same reason that you carry car insurance, your doctor carries malpractice insurance, and your cruise line makes you sign a waiver.

We do not live in a perfect world. Utopia is a delusion. We must live in the world we have, not the one we wish we had.

Technorati Tags: concealed carry, gun control, handguns, second amendment, self defense

I’d never really considered it like that. It’s truly profound when you think about it. My brother and I both began shooting at a pretty young age under his supervision. We learned safety, accuracy, and indeed how fun it could be to spend the afternoon with a brick of .22 and a couple of Coke cans. We spent virtually every weekend during deer season at the lease, plinking away and becoming more comfortable around firearms.

Some years later, when I was a young teenager, I was spending the night at a friend’s house just down the road. Late in the evening he and I crept into the master bathroom while his parents were out, where he produced a hammerless revolver. It was fascinating to him, the wonder and amazement in his eyes betraying his lack of understanding of the seriousness of his discovery. He pointed the gun at me and mocked firing a round. Because his parents had never taken him shooting the gun was a source of mystery and fantasy. He was not comfortable with it; the pistol was special and coveted. He wanted to carry it out with him. What he intended to do with it I cannot claim to know.

I talked him down and convinced him to put the pistol away. It was nothing special to me, I’d handled many firearms before and already had several that were unofficially classified as my own. I never really told anyone about the matter of the pistol until years later, but the memory has stayed with me. When my dad made his point a couple of weeks ago it really hit me. Kids who find unlocked firearms and shoot themselves or their friends do so because they are fascinated by the taboo nature of guns. It’s the same reason teenagers have sex at a young age, do drugs, or race their cars on Friday nights. It’s dangerous and exciting, and unfortunately it also leads to tragic accidents.

Many schools used to have shooting clubs. Summer camps for children stocked .22 rifles and paper targets, and the Boy Scouts taught firearm safety and handling to all who put on the uniform. The rule used to be guns in and around the schools, and yet there were no incidents of mass murder on our campuses. There was a time in America when we were reasonable, understanding that children who grew up shielded from something would seek out whatever was new and taboo at their earliest opportunity. Human beings haven’t changed, but our social awareness has. Today we “protect” our children from exposure to firearms, not recognizing that our ill-fated efforts are quite probably the very reason that so many teenagers still pull unsecured guns from dresser drawers and shoot their friends. If guns weren’t new and exciting, they’d be largely left alone.

I carry a pistol on my person anytime I’m legally allowed to do so today, with literally no exceptions. In the office or in a government building, where carry is restricted, I feel naked without the weight of my comfortable holster and pistol on my belt. A gun itself is nothing special to me, save for the fact that I do regularly carry a pretty amazing model. It’s just a gun in the end, really no different than those I was exposed to in my youth. I’m not going to brandish it to prove anything, not inclined to use it at the earliest possible opportunity, and certainly not going to claim it to be something unique and special. It’s only a gun. I’ve been around them for as long as I can remember. It is a tool, just like a pocketknife or a flashlight or a combustion engine. It has a purpose and requires care, and if not treated with the proper respect might be dangerous.

That is why I thank my dad now and again for exposing me as a young boy to the reality of firearms. It does no good to simply pretend they don’t exist or to villainize them, and more often than not leads to the worst possible outcome. People with no exposure to guns have a difficult time understanding and accepting the basic safety and use rules when they come across them later in life. It’s easy to train these things when a person is young. It’s tougher when they come in late, trained by Hollywood.

My wife was shooting even younger than I was, and today is a better shot than me in many cases. Although she does not carry regularly and does not visit the range as often as I do, she still understands and practices safety at all times, and is mature enough to respect firearms. We don’t intend on having kids anytime soon, but it’s reassuring to know that if we did, they would be exposed to the proper use and maintenance of guns at a very young age.

Being exposed very likely saved my life once. I wonder what our country would be like if everyone was taught to respect and understand guns.

Technorati Tags: 2nd amendment, gun control, gun education, second amendment

Six people are dead because one man chose to make himself famous by taking their lives. Six people are dead because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Six people are dead because they consciously chose not to accept the defense of their lives as their own responsibility. An article in Christian Today has a quote which sums it all up perfectly.

“I ducked behind the seats and ran out the door,” student Zach Seward told the local Daily Chronicle newspaper.

“As I was running, I just kept waiting for something to hit me in the back. I didn’t know where to run, tried to decide where it’s safe to be, and there isn’t anywhere safe.”

Zach Seward chose to be defenseless. He decided that in his life it was more prudent to run away and wait to be shot in the back than to defend himself. Yesterday he got lucky, but six of his classmates did not. He did get one thing right though – “there isn’t anywhere safe.”

There are families out there hurting today because of this. They’re struggling to comprehend how one man just ruined their lives; one man who needed attention so badly that he murdered and maimed fellow humans. The familes don’t understand. They can’t understand. They aren’t expected to understand.

The most tragic reality of all is that these families were failed by the very people that they lost. They’re going to blame Steve Kazmierczak, the shooter, which is rational and reasonable, because in the end he is most responsible for the murders. They were also failed by their sons and their daughters though, now deceased because they chose not to be prepared to defend themselves. It’s difficult to even think about such a thing, and I’m sure a lot of folks out there will suggest that I’m “blaming the victim.” And I am.

If you lived in an aquarium and one day chose to walk outside without SCUBA gear, your drowning would be your own fault. If you went into space without a suit, no one but you could be blamed. If you ride your motorcycle on a busy highway without a helmet, you’ve consciously chosen to take the risk of death upon yourself and bear full responsibility for anything which happens to you. The same rationale applies to people who get shot in these sad cases. We all know that this happens. None of us live so sheltered a life that we’re not aware of the insane and the murderous among us, yet the vast majority of us choose not to defend ourselves. If you find yourself staring down the barrel of a gun wielded by a man or woman intent on taking your life to make a statement, you are absolutely to blame for failing to protect yourself. Running away while waiting to be shot in the back is a clear indication that you’ve failed in your primary duty to yourself and your family.

My life means more to me than that. More importantly, my duty to my wife and my family mean more to me than to allow myself to be a victim. Six people yesterday did not share the same sentiments, and today their families are struggling to cope with their failure. If anyone is getting a raw deal, it’s them. They can’t blame it all on the murderer either. They all knew he was out there. They all knew it was possible. They all chose to do nothing about it.

Not one person in a room full of 140 people properly handled the situation yesterday, yet the cries are already out that individuals should be disarmed. Unfortunately for six people, they were. Gun control legislation is what brought us the “gun-free” campus. Somehow we truly believe that stamped metal signs have the magical ability to keep people safe. It’s just another delusion in a long string of equally stupid beliefs.

This is yet another sign, according to the twisted and deluded logic of some, that no citizen should own guns. I’m willing to go along with that, but on one condition. Take the guns away from criminals and murderers first, and give me one calendar year where no person in the country is the victim of a firearm-related homicide and where no cases of self-defense are required. At the end of that year, I’ll hand over my then-unnecessary self-defense tools voluntarily. Until then, not a chance.

Another story, this one from my own backyard, jumps out at me. An 80-year-old Texan was attacked as he answered a knock on his front door recently. He was prepared, having slipped a pistol into his pocket before answering the door, but to the two brothers intent on robbing and murdering the old man he simply appeared to be easy prey. It was only after being shot several times that the brothers recognized their error. Both lived, and both will spend a considerable amount of time in prison, but it’s highly unlikely that they’ll knock on another door intent on robbing and murdering another person. The old man knew the odds. It was an unlikely stretch that the knock on his door was the harbinger of death, but he prepared nonetheless, because things like that happen now and again. His preparation saved his life. If only the students at Northern Illinois University had been as prepared.

Technorati Tags: concealed carry, school shooting, second amendment, self defense

Not long ago a man shot five women in a department store. Last week another man killed several folks in a city council meeting. Before that it was a guy in a mall with a rifle. This morning it’s two people at a Louisiana school. What do all of these have in common?

Nobody fought back. The police were too late to do much good, and innocent people are dead.

What about the church shootings a couple of months ago? How many lives were saved when a woman with a pistol stopped a would-be mass murderer in one of the world’s largest churches? How many innocent people were killed before the murdered just happened to run into the only sane person on the premises? What if the first person the killer drew a rifle on had beaten him to the punch instead of the tenth?

Our society has become irrational. We live under the blanket of mass delusions, led by sociopaths and surrounded by individuals too placated and medicated to think for themselves. We believe that the government will protect us all the time. The same government cannot comprehend its own role, cannot manage its money, and cannot function today without demanding complicity through fear. Our police officers are primarily revenue-driven, spending more time handing you and I tickets for petty issues than ensuring our collective safety from real threats. Even if they were everywhere at once, the police cannot guarantee your security, and are themselves fallible, sometimes dangerously so.

Somehow we continue to believe that all people are inherently good, that bad things only happen in faraway places, and that murder never occurs in our own malls, in our own churches, in our own schools, in our own city council meetings, or in our own homes. We go into the world unarmed and unprotected under a cloud of pure delusion, knowing full well that nothing bad could possibly happen to us. Until it does. Then we curl up in a ball and wait to die.

As a human being I feel great sadness when I read about these types of murders. It strikes me as wholly unnecessary that innocent people should bear the weight of one individual’s psychosis, yet that’s the world we have chosen to create for ourselves. It’s sad and it’s tragic, and for the victims and their families I can only feel the deepest sorrow and the greatest bewilderment. Even through the pain and the loss one thing must be made entirely and abundantly clear though: victims of murder who fail to defend themselves will never have the opportunity to be anything other than victims. By refusing to take their own safety into their own hands they have made the conscious decision to be such a victim. It doesn’t make their death any less heartbreaking, and it certainly doesn’t excuse the behavior of anyone who chooses to commit murder, but it does mean that they have failed in their responsibility to themselves.

Let’s be realistic. The United States of America is really screwed up. Our value system is derived from a disgusting mix of television morality, faith-based theivery, and pure apathy. An overwhelming percentage of the population has not the necessary mental prowess to philosophize, having been failed by their schools, their parents, their peers, their government, their media, and themselves. We live in a country where out of three hundred million individuals, we sincerely believe that one of five or six millionaires are the only options available to represent us as President. We accept that some people get treated more fairly by the justice system while concurrently touting the fairness every American supposedly enjoys. We accept the notion that our country is the greatest in the world, ignoring the fact that the primary categories the United States leads in are incarceration and mental illness.

We believe that teaching our children about sex, a completely normal and utterly mandatory function of life, is morally wrong. Meanwhile we accept an incredibly unrealistic allowance of murder, a thoroughly immoral and completely unacceptible action, both in our media and indeed in our everyday lives, failing to recognize the hypocrisy and idiocy of our double-standard. Our health is managed by corporations intent on taking profits above curing disease. Mental health, long treated with counseling and therapy, has largely given way to prescription-based solutions. Even our children are drugged up, repressing issues until they explode in a hail of bullets.

The reality is that we live in a broken nation becoming more broken by the minute, and murders are going to become more and more prevalent as we slip further into our system of mass delusion and the overall mental heath of our fellow citizens further degrades. Unfortunately this also means that we’re going to work directly against our own interests by continuing to attempt regulation of firearms until individuals are no longer allowed by law to take steps to defend themselves. Just as we fail to recognize the idiocy of our sexual education policies, we also fail to recognize that our deluded nation is winding toward a dangerous future of increased mass murders and decreased allowance for self-preservation. It’s the new American way.

Defend yourself. Educate yourself. Think. It’s not enough just not to get shot. Sooner or later that cellphone you’re carrying is going to ring, because there are people out there who want to call you. You recognize that. You prepare for that. When a person walks through the door of your church, your home, your mall, or your city council meeting intent on killing you and everyone around you, what is the appropriate response? Are you one of the people who will also curl up in a ball and prepare yourself to die? Is that fair to your husband, your wife, or your kids?

It’s time to get it together, America. Look around you and tell me we don’t live right in the middle of social insanity. What we call liberty today is actually is fading under the impending threat of corporate ownership of our very God-given rights, and that creates very angry people. We turn to our representatives, those who are supposed to be looking out for our interests, only to find them more committed to those causing the problems than the solutions right in front of them. As individuals continue to get bogged down in ignorance and fear, and as solutions more regularly fade away due to runaway spending and special interests, mass murders are going to become more and more common. The one thing we need to realize about people is that they will find a voice, even if it means going to extremes. Those who feel ignored and disenfranchised, stunted and driven insane by the very fabric of our delusional society, will take it upon themselves to use your name as a method of making their point. Will we continue to forget them, just as we continue to forget those who have been murdered in their classrooms and churches? Will we forget you and the lesson your death will bring after you fail to defend yourself too?

Protecting yourself will not solve the problem. Only an effort by all people from across the nation will remedy the seriousness of what we face as a country. Protecting yourself will not solve the worsening mental health problems America is facing. Protecting yourself will not clear up the fact that we live in a fantasy world, more concerned with meta-issues and invisible morality sticks than reality. Protecting yourself will only ensure that you remain among the living. There will be many people who believe that fixing the symptoms of our worsening disease by removing people’s ability to defend themselves is the answer to the increasing number of murders we’re facing. Protecting yourself will prove their arguments wrong.

Perhaps the next news we hear will be of someone saving the lives of their city council, their church, or their children. For so long as there are victims, there will be those who prey on them. The only question is whether or not you and I make the conscious decision to allow ourselves to be such victims. I will not. I hope for the sake of everyone around you that you also will protect and defend the one life you and your fellow man enjoy. It is ultimately your responsibility alone to do so, and if the last couple of months are any indication of the future, I’d say most of us are failing ourselves and our fellow man.

Technorati Tags: concealed carry, school shooting, second amendment, self defense

In the firearms world that is one of the most often asked questions, precisely because there is no good answer for it. My personal choice is a 9mm, but that is based on my own criteria as to what is important and what is not in a defensive situation. For others it’s a .40 S&W or a .45 or even a .380. The point is that there’s really no “good” answer, but there are good followup questions which can help a person make the decision. I don’t consider myself an expert on the topic, but here are a few things to think about when choosing your caliber.

1) Some guns only come in a single caliber. The P3AT, for instance, is a straight .380 with a scant six-round capacity. For some people that won’t be enough, but if it’s the gun you really want don’t be afraid to go with it. Sometimes the gun dictates the caliber, not the other way around, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that.

2) There is no such thing as “stopping power.” Everybody knows someone who prattles on about how a .45 has so much more “stopping power” than a 9mm. More often than not these are the same people who have trouble hitting a target at 25 yards. Any round, be it a .22 or a .50, delivered to the CNS (central nervous system) is a situation-ending round. Any round not delivered to the CNS will leave a hole which may or may not be life threatening depending on the degree of blood loss and organ damage left by the round. There are cases where a larger caliber round will do more damage and cause an assailant to bleed out faster, which can potentially end a situation faster, but this is not “stopping power.”

Basically those are your two options. You either land a CNS shot and end the situation or you land one or more non-CNS shots and end the situation by causing your assailant to either bleed out or experience critical shutdowns of his or her organs. I suppose a third option would be that your assailant escapes, at which point it doesn’t really matter which caliber you were firing anyway. What it comes down to is whether or not you consider it important to force blood loss or organ shutdown on a tighter timetable with fewer rounds. A .45 will end an encounter faster in those terms, but you’ll have an abbreviated magazine capacity with which to work, which brings me to my next point.

3) Is it more important to have a lot of little bullets or a few big bullets? Again, any shot to the CNS is a closure shot. One cannot assume that one can deliver such a shot, however, so the choice of capacity must be considered. A 9mm will often hold several more bullets than the same model in .40 or .45, but at the expense of a couple of seconds bleed time. That being said, statistics suggest that the average firefight is somewhere between three and five rounds fired between both belligerents. You might not need more than a couple, which might suggest to you that a .50 is the perfect defensive caliber.

4) Handling. A .45 is a big round. It kicks, sometimes very hard. Unless you’re willing to spend some money to tune your gun or buy into a high-end manufacturer, you can generally assume that the bigger the caliber, the harder the gun is to control. Any person can become proficient with any gun, however, and regular practice can largely mitigate handling issues. Still, it’s important to consider when choosing the right caliber.

5) Price and availability. A friend of mine has a 9mm Makarov that is somewhat difficult to find bullets for. It’s a beautiful gun, one of the very best designed I’ve ever seen, but I’m sure staying armed is a chore. He pays a little more for rounds than I do, which is not of serious concern due to the limited amount of time he spends at the range. If he got into IDPA or became a regular shooter I’m sure it would become important though. Sometimes staying in an expensive or hard to equip caliber is worth it. Sometimes it’s not.

What it all comes down to is what’s important to you as a shooter. If you’re the type who likes a big hole and believes in the quick shoot-and-run, you might lean toward the .45 or the .40 S&W. If you want upwards of twenty rounds, you’ll gravitate to the 9mm or smaller. If money is no object, maybe you’re a .357 Sig shooter. The point is that there is no “perfect” defensive round. Everyone is left to decide for themselves what is important, and the round you select should be based on your own criteria.

I’m not suggesting that anyone should follow my own reasoning, but my personal selection is the 9mm. I prefer it due to its availability, relatively cheap cost, capacity, and controllability. I can stockpile more rounds for less money, carry more on my person with less weight, fill my magazines up a little taller, and am confident enough in my abilities to believe that my choice of caliber will have little, if any, impact on the overall result if the unthinkable were to occur. On top of that I like standardization, so when choosing a caliber it was important to consider my wife’s abilities. She can outshoot me most of the time, but she does not like a heavy recoil and cannot easily control a large caliber. Standardization dictates that if she needs a 9mm, so do I. Besides that virtually everything made comes in a 9mm variant, and without significant modification can be run easily. They’re cheap, efficient, and don’t need a lot of custom work to make manageable.

But that’s just me. Hopefully you’ll consider your choices carefully and make the best decision for yourself if and when the time comes. Don’t let anyone tell you what you should or shouldn’t get though, because as an individual you are expected to set your own criteria. It goes both ways, though. Now that you know, you’re no longer allowed to make fun of anyone else for whatever it is that they prefer.

Technorati Tags: concealed carry, handguns, second amendment, self defense