Importance of a CCW and CCW reciprocity

Until recently, I thought it was just a bonus that my conceal and carry waiver or conceal and carry weapons license was accepted in several states that surround Tennessee. I just assumed that was icing on the cake, until the twin sisters of death arrived (Katrina and Rita). In both of those cases when the call came to evacuate you had a hard time finding lodging close to home. Many people had to leave the state in order to evacuate. If you had a CCW in a state like California where only one state touching your state honors your permit you would be either breaking the law or defenseless when you cross state lines (neither of those is a good thing.)

Admittedly, you can get away with a lot more in a evacuation situation than you can in a normal situation, but if you get caught it only adds to your troubles.

The evacuations also point out another thing many people who have CCW's may have not thought about. Many people took both cars when they evacuated. That means both drivers would need a gun and a license to carry, to be legal. Even if you wife does not want a CCW it is still a good thing to have just in case.

cube

Funny story

Well a couple of days ago I was in the local sushi place and heard this really funny conversation or it was really a monologue for the entire restaurant to hear. I had my back to the person until I got up to pay and leave, so I will not pre-bias with a description of the person. I don't remember word per work, but I will give you the basic idea.

Really Annoying Chick (or RAC) : "So I get into this fight with a guy who was the best man."
RAC:"He made a comment about Bush, so I tell him to go back to his country. Well, I though he was from England because most of the wedding party was from England, but it turns out that he was from New York."
RAC:"He really started it when he brought it up later on that night."
RAC:"He said something about what I had said before and I told him that he was fat. I couldn't think of a comeback, you how that happens when you have been drinking and cannot think of a good comeback."
RAC:"It just so happens that he is sensitive about that..."

I hope this makes up for how little I have been posting lately.

cube

Government Handgun Study

After the run around for my FOIA request. It finally came in the mail the other day. I have access to a REALLY nice scanner at work, so I used their machine to put the baby in a picture file. I could lose my job or get displined for that, so thank me before I am gone. I then took that picture file and printed it to PDF, though the Acrobat PDFWriter functionality. I then took the pdf file and loaded it up to yahoo briefcase. I could not give public access to the file because I was not paying for it, but I could email it to my friends. That is when I remembered I have the ablity to email things to blogger, so i found the loop hole. Please download it while you can.

What makes me mad is that I did not get the answers that I wanted. I wanted complete and full disclosure of which companies participated, which ones made the cut, which ones dropped out, detailed reason why they made the cut or did not. Basically, all I got was information I already knew.

There might be enough information to purse it further if you want. I wanted the study to help me in deciding which handgun to buy, and I have made the decision long ago.

Sent to Carnival of the Cordite.

cube

Yahoo! Briefcase: cyrusmckormick's file(s)

cyrusmckormick is sharing a file with you! 1. Procurement Study Please access files only from people you trust. Get started today -- visit Yahoo! Briefcase ! Upload up to 30MB of files for free. Access your files from any Web browser, anywhere, anytime. Save Yahoo! Mail attachments directly to your Yahoo! Briefcase

The Case Against Iraq

Don Boudreaux at Cafe Hayek recently posted a very relevant critique of the war in Iraq. The original reasons given for the war have proven untrue or unfounded, and a war is something too big to be entered in lightly. At best, the war in Iraq was a great mistake. At worst, it was a deliberate deception of the American people. Hindsight is 20/20, but knowing now that there are no weapons of mass destruction, that Saddam was not connected to the events that took place on September 11th, and that Iraq posed no credible threat to any American interests, how can people support the war? We have lost over 2,000 American lives, and spents several billion dollars. To what end?

Bored to Death

This is more of a plea than a post. As some of the readers know, I have been deployed in Iraq for the last nine months, with three more to go. I am going out of my mind with boredom. If you can suggest any interesting books, tv shows that are available on DVD, websites, or just time killing activities, please post them as comments. My sanity thanks you in advance.

-Sandcastle

A gallon of gas

The Washington Post just ran an article about global fuel prices. Apparently, many developing nations have been using subsidies to keep the price of gasoline and heating oil down. As oil prices continue to rise, these subsidies have not been able to withstand the increases. While Americans are unhappy, citizens of many countries are rioting. Nigeria produces oil, but even with subsidies the article reports that a gallon of unleaded costs $5 in a country with a median income of $5000. The report blames the rising prices on increased global demand due to increased imports by China and shortages in the Gulf of Mexico caused by the hurricanes.

Shopping

Well today I had some time to kill so I decided to do a little accessory shopping. I was looking for some ear muffs to shoot with. I decided to make an afternoon of that task. This task just happened to involve going to the three biggest gun stores I know and also looking at carbines also.

First stop was Guns and Ammo here in Memphis on summer ave. Huge selection of handguns and two AK's. One AK was 400 and the other was 469 with a folding stock. Those prices are high from what I have seen. They also charge 60 dollars for a transfer. I looked for ears here, but they have a small selection and the ears were not labeled with decibel protection and I did not care to ask.

The next place was the Gun Shop (it is right next to Tennessee Sports Zone) off of Germantown road near Corky's BBQ. They also have 2 Ak's one was 369 and the other was 800 (pre ban they said, which since there is no ban it does not matter). They said the 800 dollar on was through consignment. You give them a gun to sell and they will take a bit of the profit when they sell it for you, I doubt that one is going to sell.

third place, was Sportman's warehouse here in Memphis. They had no AK's but they do have a great selection of ears. At the Gun Shop I found some ears rated for 21 decibels for 20 dollars at Sportman's warehouse I found some ears rate for 29 decibels of protection for 20 dollars. On top of that the ears were the folding kind so they pack up nicely. They had no AK's so I took at look at the Cx4 Storm, just to see what it was like. It seems like it was a nice gun, but not as rugged as the AK's I held.

Ever since I read this post at Say Uncle's I have been leaning toward an AK. It would not be for plinking, it would for the worse case scenario\truck gun. I would not love this gun, only use it like a dirty whore. If i can pick on a decent one that is cheap, i think this would be a nice fit for what I am looking for.

Though I am looking at other guns mentioned in the Ar-AK death match.

cube

A PRO CHOICE REPUBLICAN

Plenty of postings here for the weekend. I didn't want to add more but I couldn't pass this up. This clip came from the Washington Post. The comments were made by William J. Bennet on a radio talk show.

Bennett, a former U.S. education secretary and national drug policy director, is under fire from Democrats, civil rights leaders, black conservatives and, as of yesterday, the White House and the Republican Party for saying Wednesday that "you could abort every black baby in this country and your crime rate would go down."

...Bennett released a defiant statement saying critics unfairly had pulled his comment out of context: "A thought experiment about public policy, on national radio, should not have received the condemnations it has."

Partisan jabs and moral outrage followed.

Undefended Threats

9/11 and Hurricane Katrina have shown us two threats that we, the residents of the richest and most powerful nation on Earth, were not prepared for. It is up to us as citizens to identify threats and then start the call to action to protect ourselves against them. The following is a short list of threats that I identified on a recent trip to the video store.

1) Asteroid Impact. Armageddon highlights how limited our ability to deal with this threat could be. It turns out that we are not even actively scanning the skies for asteroids, and by the time we notice one it could be too late.

2) Sudden, severe climate change. The Day After Tomorrow was overly dramatic, but it was based on projections by scientists of what could happen if global warming continues. We need every student in our country to attend cold weather survival training in Alaska.

3) Rise of the Machines. With no proselytized Terminator robot to help us, we may be doomed. The Pentagon is looking to field unmanned ground vehicles by 2015, and we already used unmanned aerial drones equipped with rockets. Look for Amish people to be viewed as much cooler after the attack.

4) Mutant monsters. We were fortunate in the early Godzilla movies that he chose Japan, but the Matthew Broderick version showed us what could happen if New York became a target. We currently have no natural predators for giant reptiles. This is an area that geneticists need to explore.

5) Alien takeover. Independence Day was not enough to get America scared straight. NASA needs to do less stupid experiments and more anti-flying saucer artillery drills. Lube up for your alien probing if they don't.

6) Zombie invasion. Iraq has shown us that even an impressive military can stumble in the face of an a foe lacking technology, but possessing strength in numbers. Think about the destruction the Land of the Dead zombies could have caused if they implemented suicide bombers. I am not trying to compare insurgents to zombies, but their hygiene habits are similar.

7) A Stephen King's The Stand-style super virus would ravage the world, though in all probability the old would die first and there would be a kick ass, if briefly lived, unsupervised youth party.

Each of these scenarios could be crippling, but what if you combine two or more? What if aliens invaded, and then the machines took over their machines and ours to launch their rebellion? What if a large asteroid killed off half of the earth and in the process introduced a virus into the atmosphere that started turning people into zombies?

Thinning the herd, the natural way.

Source:" Adults who get chickenpox for the first time get a much more serious disease than do children. But even for children, chickenpox isn't a walk in the park. And every once in a while, a child gets a very serious form of the disease. One in 50,000 kids gets a brain infection that causes retardation or death. And itchy chickenpox blisters can get infected with dangerous bacteria."

So that is the risk from getting small pox as a kid...What are the risks of the vaccination?

According to the CDC (on page two)

"Moderate Problems
Seizure (jerking or staring) caused by fever (less than 1 person out of 1,000).

Severe Problems

Pneumonia (very rare)
Other serious problems, including severe brain reactions and low blood count, have been reported after chickenpox vaccination. These happen so rarely experts cannot tell whether they are caused by the vaccine or not. If they are, it is extremely rare."

How rare? 1 in 49,999?

Of course the doctors are raging mad and are upset that you are finding way to cut then out of the money loop. They will use fear to get you back in line.... ""Imagine losing a child because you were dumb enough to bring him to a pox party," Gershon says."

The problem i have with that statement is that you kids is about as likely to die from the vaccine as from the actual disease. He is using blatant scare tactics whose facts directly conflict with the information earlier in the article. Imagine if you were dumb enough to allow you child to get the vaccination in the first place?

I am not saying it is a good idea to take you kid to these parties, but we do not understand everything about the human body. We don't even know why white kids is suburbia get allergies, i doubt it is because they have been locked away in their homes and have never experienced any foreign substance.

cube

Odd

Source:"The class action case, certified Wednesday, includes an estimated 10,000 current and former hourly workers and about 1,000 low-level management employees in Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington, Wyoming and parts of Texas.

The suit contends the delivery service paid thousands of current and former minority employees less than their white counterparts, passed over them for promotions and gave minorities poor work evaluations.

James Finberg, an attorney representing the class, said FedEx normally promotes from within, yet three times the number of package handlers and loaders are minorities compared to drivers, who earn more. Twice the number of minorities fail promotional tests than do whites, Finberg added.

"FedEx knows that black and Hispanics fail at a much higher rate, but yet has not changed the test," Finberg said."

First, I would like to point out the odd fact that Tennessee is not mentioned in the list of states that are included in the class action lawsuit. I think this is odd for several reasons. One, Fedex is based in Memphis, TN. They also have several main areas of distribution, which means a large number of workers in Memphis are associated with FedEx. Two the demographics of Memphis. Memphis is about 60 percent African American. If there was going to be discrimination I doubt it would be everywhere but their backyard.

Secondly, Finberg wants FedEx to change the test. To me that does not get more absurd. I wish my professors changed my tests to be easier in college so that I would have gotten higher grades, but they did not.

cube

Stratification

As America sees record numbers of new millionaires (see posts on Justus for All) the poverty rate also continues to increase. America has the highest poverty rate of any industrialized nation, and it continues to slowly climb each year. According to the US Census, the poverty rate was 11.7% in 2001, and up to 12.7% by 2004 (the latest figures). This shows wealth being concentrated in the hands of a smaller elite. When the upper class and the impoverished class both continue to grow, the middle class necessarily decreases. This effect is more pronounced in the rest of the world. Between 1989 and 1998, the number of people living in Latin America on two dollars a day or less grew from 33.7% to 35.8%. This number is even worse taking into consideration that those are real dollars, not inflation adjusted.

UPDATE: As an example I lifted this chart from the IMF webpage. It shows growth in per capita income for all people in the world, but more striking is the growing difference in the income of the upper quartile and lower quartile. Not shown is a chart of inflation to compare this against. Also, it is noted on the IMF website that although this chart gives the impression that all per capita incomes have increased, some poor countries have actually seen an inflation adjusted decrease in per capita income. Others have seen a real decrease in actual dollars. I am still looking for a chart that breaks down exactly how much wealth is controlled by the upper quartile versus the other three.

Corruption in America

John Gotti, Jr was recently acquitted (although by a hung jury) and House Majority Leader Tom Delay was recently indicted by a grand jury. Is it possible that the Mafia is more upstanding than our own Congress? If Delay is convicted will that be a sign that we need to change some of the fundamentals of the way we choose our leaders?

A bigger safer budget

Does a larger defense budget make our country a safer place? The Skeptical Optimist hints that our reduced spending in the late 90s left the country vulnerable to attack, and could be responsible for our current entrenchment in two wars. Is this believable? Was Iraq emboldened by our cutbacks? Probably not, because evidence has shown that they had not resumed programs to created WMDs. Was Al Qaeda cowed by our impressive array of weaponry? Didn't look like it. We are currently involved in a "War on Terror", which makes our probable opponents terrorists. Terrorists by definition fight against overwhelming odds by attacking soft targets and avoiding direct conflict. Because of this, a military of immense size does little to deter their activities. But when the terror was connected to a state sponsor (Afghanistan's Taliban), surely our ability to shock and awe caused them to cringe? No. They still refused to hand over Bin Laden. We continue to fight insurgents in both of the countries we occupy, despite an overwhelming military superiority. So the War on Terror is not necessarily helped by building new aircraft carriers and stockpiles of missles. We are the world's biggest spender in terms of military budget. In fact, it takes the next 27 highest countries to equal our budget. Are we that much safer? Perhaps its time to focus more on providing security and quick response at home instead of expanding our network of over 700 overseas bases (not counting bases in Iraq or Afghanistan).

Delay...

I hope the fillet Delay (here is a link on how to say that word if you your are a moron) .

As much as I like some of the things the republican party does, they are still politicians. As a rule, politicians are not a group I admire for their outstanding morals. Ohh sure their are some good ones, just like some people are innocent on death row.

The GOP should exorcise Delay for several reasons. I will concentrate on the one they might relate to (as morals and ethics don't translate when you are talking to politicians). It is bad for the party even if he wins.

Also, memo to Delay, saying your are innocent does not convince anybody of that fact. Remember OJ and Micheal both do that.

cube

Go M-Town

Source: "Among those eligible to receive food stamps but not getting them, the widest gap was in Oakland, California, where an estimated 23 percent of eligible people in Alameda County get food stamps.

Next was San Diego County, California, with 26 percent of those eligible getting food stamps, and Houston, where an estimated 40 percent of Harris County residents got food stamps.

The highest levels of participation were in Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, and the Memphis area in Shelby County, Tennessee. In those communities, 90 percent of people eligible for food stamps received them."

Go memphis...oh wait....that is not a good thing.

cube

Disappointed

Today I watched "hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy". I was at the local blockbuster and I thought that I was in the mood for some Sci-fi. I then saw this movie and I thought I was in the mood for quirky Sci-fi. I now feel more depressed than I did before I watched the movie. You know sometimes Hollywood should just keep their hands off of books. Sometimes they do a great job of taking books to movies. I cite lord of the rings and the Harry potter movies as my evidence for that statement.

Other times they do a good job with the movie, but the movie fails to capture the magic of the book. I cite Hitchhiker as an example. The movie as a stand along piece was actually good. On a technical side of things, I could not find anything wrong at all. The fit and finish was good. They set was nice and the characters were fun. Though somehow this movie failed to capture even one percent of the greatness of the books. It could be that the book(s) took their time with the story. Or it could be the story in the books was better because it was spread over several books, which allowed for a better story. It could be that the magic of the book was just impossible to capture on film. I really don't know, but if you liked the books I doubt you will like the movie. If you have never read the books, I doubt that you will like the movie. You can't win with this movie, so don't even try.

cube

Skeptical Optimist

Cube linked to one of his articles, and I have found several things that I take exception to. However, he has no functioning links for commentary, so I have decided to take up the debate here. I don't know where to begin. First, he argues that any amount of debt is ok as long as we are spending it on things that we need. He assures all of us that the United States will continue to have a large, prosperous economy for the rest of our lives, and any amount of debt can be carried by this economic colossus. Because we have never had a recession before, have we? He attacks one commentator for pointing out that China owns a significant amount of US debt. Japan owns more, and he is outraged that China was the only country singled out as a threat. Could that be because Japan's economy is for better or worse heavily dependent on ours and they have no military to speak of? Anyone else see that as non-threatening? He also says that we are in better shape economically now than at the end of the Clinton presidency because we spend less of our budget (percentage wise) on debt interest. And could that be due to the balanced budget that Clinton left? I don't see how Bush's rampant spending could be the thing that saved us from debt payments. This is getting long so I will wrap it up with a quote from Optimist's blog "Every time I see this chart it makes me wonder: What if we could have mustered the courage as a nation to keep national security spending on an even keel, and managed it effectively; might we have prevented a war or two?"
Wow. Because we have seen from Bush that a large military is the best deterrent, and we won't attack anyone preemptively, even based on evidence that is later proven to be nonexistent.

Mining the Moon

The only way that I could see NASA justifying their budget is if they began to produce some useful results. If they found a resource that we could use on the moon, or even Mars, then I would be all for them building space elevators and spending millions of dollars on old rockets and space shuttles. Even if they built a permanent base on the moon I think that would help to caputre the imagination of a country that hasn't noticed them accomplish anything significant for the last 36 years.