The Bluff

Walls of the city has a pretty cool promotion going to raise money for the organization Soldier’s Angels. Read all the details at the link, but basically you either spend money on certain websites to send presents to soldiers or you donate money and you get tickets. When the promotion ends a whole lot of very cool prizes are given away, and most are gun related.

I’ll be getting a few tickets myself here in the next week or so. I hope you will . . . → Read More: A great gunnie giveaway for a great charity! Support Soldier’s Angels!

When I was a kid, youth took to the streets to protest war and civil rights issues. Now, they take to the street to protest that other people make more money than they do.

I understand their anger, because the ongoing recession is grating on us all, and it’s easy to give up and believe there will never be a recovery and that the whole system is irreparably failed. But the system has looked irreparably failed before and with a little time and faith we’ve not only recovered, but prospered. I’m just not sure why these kids are attacking the business people who have the capacity to bail us out rather than working to vote out the current administration that keeps us stuck in the mud.

An interesting fact … my family has long generations, and I’m basically the same age during the growing OWS protests as my own WWII Veteran father was during the Vietnam protests. And it’s helping me understand the outlook he had at the time — on the one hand he and his generation knew war and understood why the younger generation was against it and certainly the reasons for the war were questionable. But he didn’t understand what . . . → Read More: Thinking about the OWS movement …

I realize that some pro-gun and conservative types have a problem registering to vote on the White House’s Petition Site,  not wanting to give the administration their email address and zip-code even though they already have our IRS history. But we’ve got to get over it, my friends! While I realize that winning a petition on this site will have no real effect, losing on an issue will bolster our opposition to claim they they actually have a grassroots following. Which they really don’t, so let’s prove it.

VOTE on these petitions, or see this anti-gun/anti-carry petition succeed where we’ve failed. It still has less votes than the pro-gun/pro-carry petition, but it’s gaining votes much faster. And again … I realize it’s not a big deal if it does succeed, but I really don’t want to see anti-gunners gloating about how they got a few more thousand people out of 300 million to choose their side than we got to choose our side. They never get to win these contests because they don’t have millions of supporters — or virtually any — so why are they getting more numbers in this case?

So here are petitions to vote on, and vote on TODAY. . . . → Read More: Are we actually losing a “Grassroots” vote to anti-gunners?

So the Obama administration has put up a website for citizens to post petitions. And they have a policy that any item that receives more than 150 votes will be made public, and any item that receives more than 5,000 votes will get a response from the administration. So please join me in bringing this subject to the attention of other firearms owners and pushing the Obama administration to remove the prohibition from the 1986 Firearms Owners’ Protection Act (FOPA) against registering automatic weapons produced after 1986 (or at least to take a position on it). It’s just common sense that if something is legal, it should be legal for everyone.

This petition doesn’t go as far as some would like by removing even the 1934 restriction that all automatic weapons be registered, but what say we take this one step at a time?

Here is the petition. And here is what I wrote:

American ownership of firearms is a constitutional right and cherished tradition. This includes thousands of automatic weapons. But though virtually none of them have been used in a crime, and for political reasons rather than public safety, ownership of this type of weapon has been limited . . . → Read More: Help me petition the Obama administration to support middle class firearms rights

First off, I’d like to apologize to the people that follow this blog in some manner that I haven’t been posting. I’ve just been too involved in family vacation, trying to keep a job that is in jeopardy (story of my freakin’ life these days) and finishing my 2nd novel, which I had hoped to have published by now  or at least have contracted. It’s the novel that keeps me away from here — I’m trying to stay in full blown writing mode and lay down 1500 fresh words an evening (a goal I’ve been regularly failing at, though I’m doing better) and I just never feel like laying down another 800 or so words for the kind of lengthy blog posts I do.

There’s certainly been plenty to post on, but just no time. Sorry. As soon as I get the first draft of my novel down I hope to jump back on in a normal fashion, so hopefully those few followers are all on RSS feeds or following me on facebook or twitter will still be doing so.

If not, I’ll just go back to posting for my own stress relief. Like when I started  .

In the meantime … congrats . . . → Read More: Still on a posting break and congratulations again to Wisconsin on CCW!

I don’t know if anyone’s still reading after my rather extended (and unapproved) leave of absence, but after almost a year Off Road is finally available on iBooks. Only 99 cents — heck, that’s not even a dollar.

I’m actually working fast and furious on my new novel, and it’s definitely going well. I still don’t have a publishing date, though, because this one I’m going to market more aggressively to traditional publishers before I self publish.

Self publishing has worked out surprisingly well for me, but not being in all the big bookstore chains has hurt sales by a lot, of course.

As always, plenty of info about the book is available on the left, and below is my normal self promoting plug:

Off Road

The best book ever written!

By me, anyway.

Set against the background of the American civil war of “progressives” vs. patriotic American traditionalists and a family caught in the middle, Off Road is a journey into the uniquely American world of God, guns, big trucks … and family.

More information here. Buy it at amazon.com in paperback or Kindle (only .99 for Kindle, which can also be read on a PC with a free reader). Or at Barnes and Noble in paperback or . . . → Read More: My novel, Off Road, now available on Apple iBooks!

Between this burial and the Japanese Nuclear Power accident … it’s going to be a long time before I eat any seafood. I wonder which will have the most toxic effect on the ocean?

Off Road

The best book ever written!

By me, anyway.

Set against the background of the American civil war of “progressives” vs. patriotic American traditionalists and a family caught in the middle, Off Road is a journey into the uniquely American world of God, guns, big trucks … and family.

More information here. Buy it at amazon.com in paperback or Kindle (only .99 for Kindle, which can also be read on a PC with a free reader). Or at Barnes and Noble in paperback or Nook (only .99 in Nook format). Or in any Ebook format, even .html or .pdf, for .99 . . . → Read More: Usama Bin Laden buried at sea

You’ve probably seen photoshopped pictures like this before, but while it will never happen it is a logical progression. My smart phone has taken the place of half the things I used to carry, and some things I never had and could barely imagine. Weaponize a smart phone, and fulfill a few more of the technical promises already being discussed, and pockets for men are going to become like the appendix — a vestige of a time long gone.

The logical evolution of the cell phone — at least once we get shall issue CCW to 10 more states …

My wife and I recently talked about how our reliance on our cell phones has grown over the years. For those of you who will never know life without cell phones, you might find this of interest.

The generation that followed mine will never know what it was like before ubiquitous cell phones, and that’s good. But believe it or not there was a time when pay phones were everywhere, and on any given Friday or Saturday night you’d find clusters of teenagers around them trying to find a party, track down their friends, etc. And of course you could only talk with . . . → Read More: A brief history of the evolution of the cell phone. Is an “iGlock” the next step?

My kids’ Spring Break is about over, and I just finished what’s been a brutal project at work, so we’re going to light out for a couple of days to Dodge City. And Wyatt Earp be damned … I’ll NOT be leaving my shootin’ iron at the city limits (probably won’t carry it with me all that much, either, but I at least appreciate not having to leave it at home).

The anti-gunners, who claim there was no Wild West when everyone owned guns and then claim we’re trying to turn the US back into the Wild West where everyone has guns everywhere (which never existed — damn, I’m stuck in a logic loop again!) always use Earp’s supposed rule of disarming at the city limits as proof that no one ever cared about the 2nd amendment until the NRA got political. I’m willing to bet $100 that Earp’s rule was like most early gun control, enforced only against select individuals (as in out of town cowpokes). And in any case so far as I know none of those cowpokes ever challenged it or took it to the Supreme Court, so we’ll never know what the courts would have said about it . . . → Read More: Getting the Heck into Dodge for the weekend

Here’s an article about a woman who finds effeminate pink handguns disgusting. Here’s another about a woman who used an effeminate pink handgun to defend her life and her fiance’s life against an ex-con. Who’s outlook do you hold in the highest regard?

A lovely little pink sig. Just darling!

Dee Edwards, co-founder of the UK charity Mothers Against Murder and Aggression (which would seem to do some good work other than just being anti-gun, judging from their website), said: “I am utterly disgusted by this. It is not fashion, it is not style, it is … glorifying guns and making them seem acceptable.”

Hmmm. Actually, I don’t think the color of guns has much to do with more and more Americans — and American women in particular – finding guns “acceptable.” I think it has to do with stories like that of Meghan Brown and many, many others. Although the number of American’s who use guns for self defense is much debated, I think it’s clearly in the 10′s of thousands and could very well be in the low millions (like 2.5 million times per year).

A woman who used a darling little . . . → Read More: Pink Guns are Good News for Women!