Gotta love the MSM...

In regards to the mess in California...

The man at the center of a massive manhunt in California is potentially armed with armor-piercing ammunition and semi-automatic rifles, could likely hit a target more than 50 yards away, thinks like a police officer and, perhaps most troublesome, is not abiding by any rules.
(Emphasis mine...)

I guess that is quite the accomplishment for most Navy guys (no offense, but unless you're on a SEAL Team, they just don't do much small arms training.)

Sensationalizm for the sake of selling paper

What Does NBC Have Against Remington?

NBC has had a few "stories" out lately about the Remington trigger group, and Remington is understandably not pleased with the press.  I just watched this video they put out in response on The Firearm Blog, and it seems pretty interesting.

"Journalists" and Bloggers

So I was sitting here poking around the interwebs (ordering a J-Frame kit from Apex and a set of screwdrivers... look for that next week) and sipping my coffee when a guy approached me and said he's a writer for the local newspaper, and if I'd be interested in talking to him for a bit.

This... could be fun.

He's writing a piece about some of the local businesses closing, and looking for opinions on the local economy, which overall, is about normal for the country right now (a local medical manufacturer just announced they were moving shop yesterday though, so 200 jobs evaporated and people are worried again.)

Anyways, we chatted for a bit, and his visible level of respect went up a few notches when I mentioned I'm a combat vet, and in the National Guard, and have lived in town nearly three times as long as he has (we moved here when I was like six months old.)  I then knocked it back down after he complimented me on my Eee PC and I mentioned I was a blogger... he seemed to close up a little bit and ended the interview shortly after that.

Just thought that was interesting, make of it what you will.

MSM...

Apparently the only things happening in the world is that a certain Republican Candidate likes to touch women, and some college football coach would rather touch little girls.  Oh, plus some doctor messed up and killed a guy, only this time it's some guy a lot of people had heard of, so "we" actually care for once.

Some mornings I think I should just crawl back in bed...

New Media vs. MSM

Caleb posted a bit this morning about the MSM (Main-Stream Media) failing miserably with the whole ATF gun smuggling story.  He makes some good points, primarily that those MSM outlets are pretty much the walking dead.

The last paragraph really hits the whole point home though:

Of course, that doesn’t mean that we as bloggers should now sit around and pat ourselves on the backs either.  Because the problem is now that we’ve established that online media generators are the future, how do we forge that path forward into credibility?  I’m not talking just about the gun blogosphere either, but rather the entire world of online media/journalism.  Are bloggers the new investigative journalists?  And a better question, or at least one that interests me is how do we collective put CNN out of its misery?  I’ve got lots of questions, but not a lot of answers.

To be honest, I don't have any more answers than Caleb.  At this point really it's just "keep it up."  Bloggers keep blogging, readers keep reading.  Tell your friends to check out your favorite blogs, and support those bloggers that write them.

GunUp and Twitter

Tomorrow (June 28) Dan from GunUp will be giving a presentation to industry reps at the NSSF Marketing Symposium in Dallas.

Dan has one simple request for blog readers, mainly those of you who use Twitter-

"I want to utterly and demonstrably show the industry how powerful bloggers can be. I will be setting up a live twitter feed to run in concert with my presentation on June 28th between 1045 and 1115 central time. Would you be willing to rally your readers to tweet a 'I support my gun blogger and want new media events during #SHOT 2012' (or some variation with a #SHOT hash tag) tweet during my presentation? A continuous stream of tweets would be absolutely amazing."

I never got the whole Twitter thing, but if those of you who do could do this, it'd be pretty cool.

Hmm... Not in the "Big" News Sources...

 Apparently this happened earlier today-

Almurisi, described as a burly man, emerged from a bathroom in the back of the plane and "walked briskly" toward the front, where he began yelling unintelligibly and pounding on the cockpit door, police and witnesses said.

 "He was walking very fast all the way up to the front," said Angelina Marty, 35, of San Francisco, a passenger on the plane. "He kept walking faster and faster and faster. He was screaming something, and the lady in the row across from me who had spoken Arabic said, 'That's Arabic,' and she had translated it and said it was roughly, 'God is great.' "

(bold added for emphasis)

Ah, good old political correctness.  I guess printing "Allahu Akbar" would just be in poor taste.

At least it sounds like everything worked out, although I wonder how long it'll be before we hear he was on the "no fly list," yet they let him on the plane to help "build the case..."

"Snort!"

Hey, CNN, since this war was half your idea in the first place, can't you at least go 72 hours before switching sides?

So glad I didn't have a mouthful of coffee at that point...

"High Velocity Clips"

I think the only time I've had any of those is when I get in the groove with my reloads.  Oh wait, those are mags. Maybe somebody's throwing stripper clips off a really tall building?

Huh?

Not to belittle the situation, but I'm a little confused about how what was a "probability" the first half of this week, is suddenly a "miracle."

Glocks, Reload Speed, Mag Capacity...

Obviously are all currently being heavily discussed due to the events this past weekend.  Uncle just put up a decent post relating to a couple of the issues, especially in regards to why mag capacity doesn't really mean squat in such situations.  (Although in the case in question, it was sloppy reloading technique that was the shooter's downfall by most accounts.)

Predictably, the sales of Glock handguns and "high-capacity" magazines for them have spiked in the last few days.  Just surfing most gun forums will get you a slew of threads asking where to get the big mags since everybody's sold out of them.  Personally, I'm not too worried about this causing a new mag ban just yet, and I'm not a Glock fan by any means, so an extended Glock magazine wouldn't do me much good (although there are some 9mm carbines that use them out there, and that could be fun.)  I'm not going to panic buy any though.

Just as much full retard debate has been flying around regarding the political rhetoric that some claim pushed Loughner over the edge.  That's pretty much all bull___.  I don't really make it habit of backing any single politician, I'm generally disgusted by politics at large, and the games the MSM plays with it doesn't make it any better.  However, despite what you're thoughts are on Sarah Palin, she brought up a pretty good quote in a recent response to the accusations being thrown at her campaign.

"We must reject the idea that every time a law’s broken, society is guilty rather than the lawbreaker. It is time to restore the American precept that each individual is accountable for his actions.” Ronald Regan

ETA: Larry Correia's also got a pretty decent post from a couple days ago that sums up a lot of my feelings pretty well too, and it's prettier than anything I can write, since writing's kinda his thing.

Son of Guns

Looks like there's a new gun related show coming out next month.  Discover Channel is premiering "Son of Gun" on January 24.  The show looks to be following a similar format to the handful of random manufacturing businesses they follow around for a few wacky antics filled episodes.  This time it's Red Jacket Firearms, known for doing Saiga conversions and suppressors (apparently even 12ga cans... come to think of it, a suppressed SBS Saiga 12 would be quite awesome...)

If nothing else, it's nice to see firearms getting more mainstream.

Ow... my pride...

At least that's how the Brady Bunch feels.

Apparently Jon Stewart hurt Paul Helmke's fragile feelings. I guess Stewart was on Oprah (I didn't watch it... and I can't bring myself to sit her and watch it...) and said something along the lines of-

that if all the guns were gone that there would be "a 100,000 percent increase in school bludgeonings"

Some people just can't wrap their heads around the fact that tools are just tools and that some people are just prone to violence, regardless of the tools on hand.

(h/t Uncle)

Lawn Gnomes...

Somewhere there's a poor kid sitting in a newsroom lamenting the four years of liberal comm classes so they could write this.

MOH Vid'ya Game

If'n you hadn't heard, apparently the powers that be are rather butt-hurt that you can play as a Taliban in the newest MOH title and pulled it from AAFES's shelves (er, won't be putting it on them... it's not actually out yet.) For you non-.mil folks AAFES is the Army/Air Force Exchange System, better known as the PX.  There's also talk around the intertubes about boycotting the game over it too, which is just silly.

Apparently there's thought that our service members can't handle the option of playing as the bad guy and killing a digital representation of the good guys.  Nevermind that anytime you do force on force training somebody needs to be OpFor... Nevermind that in MW2's multi-player settings half the time you're playing the bad guys... The people in charge simply don't think that the unwashed enlisted masses aren't grown up enough to realize it's just a video game.


In reality, guys are still going to buy it.  All AAFES has accomplished is driving sales for Amazon.  I know I'm still planning to buy it eventually.  I just hope the single player narrative is longer than MW2's.  I suck at the online stuff.

Splat

Not to get into the various politics involved, but somebody is either very naive, or giggling hysterically in their cubicle over the fact that they got away with this.

h/t - Sharp as a Marble

Too True...

Rob Allen found some warning labels for newspapers.  The local paper around here could use some "possibly dated and disproved" stickers far too often.

Top Shot 4

So I had a similar experience to Uncle, except I was avoiding the usual places, and go figure, History Channel has "Caleb's Last Shot" as one of the first videos on the freakin' site.  Thanks...

Doesn't help that the blanketyblank thing won't go five minutes without freezing and starting over from the beginning... doubled with the heavy amount of drama in the episode, it's just frustrating as all get out.  It seems as if the level of drama in each episode has increased exponentially.  It's starting to feel less and less about shooting.  I will say though, that if the producers' plan was to make me dislike Adam, mission accomplished.  Of course it's pretty similar to what's-his-name and Kelly a few weeks back.  Eitherway, I don't know how much more of the series I'm actually going to watch.

Top Shot episode 4

Wow, four episodes already!

So I'm writing this as the opening credits are rolling, and I'm just going go ahead and guess that the guys with traditional military sniper training are going to do best this week.  Just seems like the nature of the challenge, and it's similar to some of the stalking training they do (loosely, but still similar enough.)  We'll see how that guess works out in a half hour or so.

I'm going to stop giving things away a little for those who haven't seen the episode yet, so further stuff after the jump.

Portage County Open Carry Picnic

Happened last Saturday, and I missed it.  I had other obligations across town that the powers that be deemed more pressing.  Slightly miffed about that, but Uncle Sam keeps waving money in my face.

(*disclaimer: I'm not trying to take anything away from my fellow soldiers, but having just gotten back in the Army two months ago, it seemed a bit silly going to a "welcome home" parade for a deployment I wasn't part of.)

The Stevens Point Journal ran a couple articles about it before it happened, one announcing it, and a second announcing the change in venue after the Sheriff threatened to enforce unconstitutional laws if it was held in a county park.  Amazingly, the Mayor of Stevens Point welcomed the group.  I guess I should say "thankfully," but to be honest, the guy never struck me as that sort.  He was listed in MAIG for a brief time...

Unfortunately, due to the other big event going on in town, the Journal hasn't gotten around to running anything about the picnic itself, at least not in their print edition from what I understand (I'm currently out of town, so it'll have to wait till Friday to confirm.)  However somebody did write a blog post on the Journal's website, and I can only imagine noodly appendages guided the writer's fingers.

Go read it.  It is outstandingly friendly to our movement, and I can't believe that it has any connection with the local fish-wrapper.

So from the trenches of the UN-dead, the UN-dying, the UN-traumatized children and NON-cowering barefoot and pregnant woman, I’ll tell you exactly what happened at the picnic; from a single mom’s point of view.

We ate hotdogs.

 There's much more too it, but overall, it's amazingly positive towards our movement, and towards any pro-carry movement, open or concealed.

All those present were fully clothed: there were no jammies, as you would see in Wal-Mart on a daily basis.

It was the most respectful crowd I’d ever witnessed. There was a handshake and a welcome for everyone; even the one woman who stopped by with her son, full of concerns and questions about the group’s intentions.

I think we can certainly chalk this one up as a win.