StinkFight.com

Professionalism

(from the YouTube book)

We had a great sidebar by Michael on the subject of Professionalism. Michael and Alan are so darned professional that they over-wrote this book, and this sidebar is one of the parts that had to be cut for length. We’ve posted the whole inspirational piece up on Alan’s site, and we highly recommend that you read it if you want to really be a success story on the ‘Tube (or off).

HERE:
http://viralvideowannabe.com/professionalism

Love, the O’Reilly tarsier

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=02zpXmFEUaY

I’m voting for Nader. He’s on the ballet in 45 states, including California (write-in in the other five.) His site is here, if you want more info.

To those who say that Nader “is responsible for George W. Bush”, that Gore would have won and Nader siphoned Gore votes away, Nope. Bush’s cronies fudging (allegedly) the Florida ballot is why Gore lost.

Also, the other two third-parties in that election, Constitution Party and Libertarian Party, votes for those two parties combined “siphoned” more votes than the Green party.

I hate that third-parties are not taken seriously in America. Both prevaling parties, Dems and Repubs, were “third parties” when they started. Why settle for the least of two evils? (Obama, I don’t think he’s evil, but I hate his gun-control ideas. Nadar’s aren’t as bad.)

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Obama says “I am not in favor of concealed weapons,”  and he wants to Ban the sale or transfer of all forms of semi-automatic weapons.

Obama says:

You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years….And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion…

More info on Obama’s heavy-handed gun control here.

Nader quoted on gun control (more control than I’d like, but not nearly as bad as Obama)

Focus would be on gun safety, not hunters and sportsmen. Guns would be licensed by states, but do not need to be registered. Would institute no special lawsuit protection for gun makers. Would make background checks and child safety locks mandatory. Supports the Brady Law and would ban assault weapons.

Would make the government pay for voluntary trigger locks. Supports “Project Sentry,” including juvenile gun laws and school accountability. Would restrict lawsuits against gun makers. Would raise the legal age for guns to age 21. Would ban automatic weapons and high-capacity ammunition clips.

Supports the Brady Bill and thoughtful gun control, including trigger locks, licensing, & banning some guns. “Make sure the weapons are designed safely with trigger lock — Look at a weapon the way you look at a car. You’ve got to know how to handle it. You should be licensed.” From “Nader Q and A,” Rocky Mountain News, June 24, 2000

Would faithfully protect the Second Amendment, except for felons. “[A]dditional legislation is not the answer. The urban barbarism that has turned our streets into battlegrounds and our classrooms into killing fields will not be stopped by an assault on the Second Amendment right of American gun-owners to keep and bear arms.” From “Issues: Right to Keep & Bear Arms,” www.GoPatGo.org, June 5, 1999

I talked to a good longtime friend, smallGod on the phone tonight. I talked about how I have a very powerless feeling with what’s going on with the Wall Street bailout tonight. I told him “I think this ‘immediate crisis’ with the ‘congress better authorize giving a trillion dollars to the guys who fucked it up, by Friday (tomorrow) or the sky will fall’ deadline seems made up, to serve some purpose of swaying the election, or Bush just getting a last unbelievable favor for his buddies when he’s no longer worried about getting reelected.”

My friend totally agreed. Then we got into a discussion of other rights being eroded, and he told me about NORTHCOM which is a plan to deploy US soldiers as police in the US, which is a violation of the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, which limits such powers.

My friend sent me this NORTHCOM article, from an official Army publication:

http://www.armytimes.com/news/2008/09/army_homeland_090708w/

I told him “Yup. You should get and read this book, The Redneck Manifesto.
http://www.stinkfight.com/2008/01/09/jim-goads-redneck-manifesto

“Goad has very interesting things to say, and says them very well. One of his chapters is about tax-protest militia groups. They’re painted by the media as “insane.” But goad asks ‘why?’

“When the gov is about to give a trillion dollars of our money to Wall Street to reward them for fucking up by being too greedy to even be good Wall Streeters, being upset about paying taxes doesn’t sound so crazy, does it?

“I believe there are tax-protest militia groups who believe that Posse Comitatus Act, means that citizens of the US don’t have to recognize any police official higher than the county sheriff (which may work well, some of them are probably related to the county sheriff. lol….) That anything higher than the county sheriff (state police, federal police, FBI, CIA, ATF, etc.) is tyranny as defined by use in the US Constitution. This is a very libertarian (with a small ‘L’) idea for sure. Not sure I buy it, but it seems kinda funky-fresh hip ‘n’ happenin’ to me sometimes.

“That thing I said to you about conspiracy stuff, about how the hidden truth is mixed in with absolute insanity, and it’s easy to get sucked into a painful wormhole, both on the Internet and in your mind and soul…..nowhere is that more true than in 2ed amendment (gun rights) writings and speech. There is some of the most right-on stuff that actually makes me feel patriotic (in the way it should be, not in the knee-jerk way it is with many Americans who believe everything they’re told), and those good parts are always one or two clicks away from the most foul, toxic, nutty, destructive, racist stuff I’ve ever read.

“I was fairly amazed that someone is as political as you doesn’t know the Amendments by name. It’s important to know what’s in the Constitution, so you know when it’s being eroded. KNOW YOUR RIGHTS> here’s an audio study aid me and the wife produced:
www.debrajeandean.com

“Anyway, me and Debra Jean are enjoying our guns. A few pix are attached. The shotgun, a Remington 870, is in the two front seats in most cop cars in California. It’s the most powerful weapon a US citizen can enjoy. It feels nice to be as well armed as the cops. And I’m as responsible as any cop, even the really responsible ones.

“We have a lot of fun with all three guns at the range, and keep them handy for home defense. (Against the possibility of murderous home invasions, which are becoming more common in Southern California, especially as the economy gets worse and the media screams “WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE!!!!!” about everything….it has a ripple effect on everyone.)

“I haven’t given much thought to opposing tyranny with my guns (the original intent of the 2ed amendment), and if I did, I doubt I’d type it in an e-mail. lol……)

“Was nice chattin’ with ya tonight.”

MWD

—=

My friend also sent me this video of a guy ranting about the government:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d060fWLuVio&eurl=http://wearechange.org/

I replied:
“It’s pretty much mostly true, but I sure hate being yelled at. He’s yelling. (and that creepy mask doesn’t help.)

“Not that he’s a socialist, but one of the problems I have with most socialists and radical leftists (and radical feminists, and most “-ISTs” in general) I’ve met is that many of them have shrill voices, and I can’t stand shrill voices.

“Sarah Palin also has a shrill voice. And I think she would lead that way too. (She sounds like my third-grade teacher talking down to me like I’ve done something wrong. It’s very icky to me.)

“What was the ’surprise at the end of the video’ he promised? The way he was ranting and pissed off, I thought he was gonna blow his brains out (which I would have no desire to see.) I didn’t see any surprise at all. He just kinda stopped. (Maybe to take a throat lozenge?)”

===

By the way, our founding fathers weren’t too hot on ideas like the Federal Reserve:

Thomas Jefferson said, “If the America people ever allow private banks to control the issuance of their currencies, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all their prosperity until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.”

The Federal Reserve, contrary to popular beliefe, is not part of the US Government. It is a private institution that prints money and then rents it to the US, with interest. The Federal Reserve was hastily created under politicians threat of an imaginary deadline to deal with the Panic of 1907. This deadline was pushed by government for their friends J.P. Morgan and John D. Rockefeller, Jr. the “Wall Street” honchos of their day. (Think “Mr. Burns” from the Simpsons. He’s a cross between Rockefeller and a praying mantis.

Sweet dreams, kitties. Hope tomorrow brings good news, not that any of us have any say in it…..

(This is slightly old news, but I forgot to blog about it, and I’m still irked that it happened. I think they should find the fucking people who did it and charge them with treason.)

Olympic champion Kim Rhode’s shotgun is stolen

Authorities say the gun, which Rhode used in four Olympics, was stolen from her pickup truck in Lake Elsinore while she was shopping for her upcoming wedding….Full story here.

I’m sick of making video. I’m only interested in making written word and spoken audio these days. Both are much easier to edit, file size wise, and much more expressive. And audio is quick. I can type up a few notes, yack into my Zoom H2, do a little editing, fluffing and folding on the laptop, upload it and have it heard by thousands within a day. I make a great sounding podcast in a couple hours. It takes a year to make a film of the same length, and the podcast can be just as enjoyable.

And I really feel audio on a Pod is where I want my audience. I like art you can consume while working in a factory or a cubicle. More subversive.

The stuff NRA is against didn’t make sense to me at first, but more and more it totally makes sense. Assault weapon bans? ALL guns are assault weapons. Many guns defined as assault weapons are same power as hunting rifles, but just LOOK scarier. “Assault weapon” is a term made up by politicians to make people who don’t know the difference think that semi-automatic guns are machine guns (fully automatic). They’re not. And machine guns have been illegal in the US for non-military since the 1930s.

Gun registration? Will make it easier to round up guns from honest citizens if the gov decides to do so. And almost all gun crimes are committed with UN-registered guns anyway.

Waiting periods? Women have died waiting for their gun when the restraining order doesn’t keep their stalker from trying to kill them.

“Gun-free zones”? Mass murders love ‘em. That’s why they shoot at schools and malls, because there’s no chance someone who is legally packing will fight back and end it quick. “Gun-free zones” don’t work on criminals any more than “drug-free zones” keep drugs out of neighborhood. Criminals will bring guns into a gun-free zone. Criminals do not obey laws, that is the definition of a criminal. (Note: the only place I’ve ever seen a “drug-free zone” sign is in the most drug-riddle junkie ghetto neighborhoods I’ve ever had the misfortune to live in.)

Crime goes down, not up, in states that increase issuing of concealed carry permits for law-abiding citizens.

The new thing that anti-gun politicians are pushing for is mandatory “ballistic fingerprinting”. Two firms, Smith & Wesson and Glock, are already doing it voluntarily. It was done on our new guns. Each one included one fired cartridge in a little evidence envelope, with a printed note that it had been scanned by technician number whatever. The idea being that cops can compare firing pin marks on cartridges found at a crime scene with those in the database. Only problem is, killers will hook up a baggie to catch their own shells, and get my shells or your shells, that they scooped up at a firing range, and dump them at the crime scene. Then if we don’t have an alibi, we’re gonna have to spend a lot of money on lawyers to stay out of prison. If we’re lucky.

Also, a few hits with a nail file changes the firing pin marks. Or you can replace the pin. Or barrel, if you wanna change the rifling marks. Firing pins and barrels are not considered “guns”, they are gun parts, and can be ordered through the mail, purchased at a gun store or a gun show without a waiting period or background check, and they are not used to fire a round for any database before sale.

Gun politics are something politicians use to get votes. End of story. And all politicians, even the ones who want to take guns away, are protected 24/7 by armed guards and secret service, so they’re hypocrites. They can be protected by guns but I can’t?????

I really believe in smart self-protection, not gun control. The cow is too far out of the barn for gun control. When guns are outlawed..well you know the rest.

Arm everyone without a criminal record and enact nationwide Castle Doctrine. Turn everyone into a cop, because the cops can’t be everywhere, and I wouldn’t want them to be. This works in Texas. Low violent crime rate because everyone’s packin’.

The NRA is in favor of background checks, and so am I. The NRA wants them on the spot, but the gov has squelched attempts make the databases work together to do this on the spot, because the gov likes waiting periods.

I think that the reason the NRA is against any gun control is that with politicians, if you “Give ‘em an inch, they take a mile.” Bans on “assault weapons” today can mean a ban on all guns next year.

=====-

P.S. A funny thing that store owners do in Texas is put a “No guns allowed” sign in the door. I’ve seen ‘em there a lot. But it’s only a “nod-nod wink-wink” to gun-shy people. People with carry permits in Texas can carry a concealed weapon in a business unless it has a very specific legalese wording in the sign. “No guns allowed” or a sign with a gun and a red line through it do not satisfy this requirement. Those signs are the gun-packin’ owner telling his gun-packin’ patrons “It’s OK” while assuring patrons who are nervous around an honest law-abiding armed population.

p.p.s., a very few states do allow NON-concealed carry, but I wouldn’t want to do that. In a bank robbery or mall shooting, a criminal is probably gonna shoot the one guy he knows has a gun first!

MWD

(DJ asleep wrapped in the West Virginia flag we bought online. By the way, Skip, you’ll be happy to know that the flag is made in China.)

Well, we’re not moving there for probably 10 or 15 more years. But DJ and I have put a lot of thought into trying to retire a little early, and do it somewhere else. Somewhere in the US that we could have some land, not have close neighbors, and pretty much be left the fuck alone. (Including being able to target practice off the back porch.)

We picked West Virginia by the process of elimination. Here’s what we were looking for: No earthquakes. (Eliminates the West Coast.) No hurricanes or floods. (Eliminates much of the South East, and much of Texas.) No tornadoes. (Eliminates everything from Texas up to North Dakota.) Not hot as fuck (eliminates much of the South and Southwest.)  Lots of leafy shade trees (Eliminates much of the Southwest.) Not a lot of snow. (Eliminates the north and upper east coast, including New York and New England.) Plus we want cheap land, low property taxes, and want a state with Castle Doctrine and easier-to-get pistol carry permits (Take a close look at the photo above. The flag even has two guns in the design! And dig the state motto. It means “Mountaineers are always free.”)

That whole list of our “demands” pretty much only leaves West Virginia. Plus, West Virginia has a low crime rate, it’s number 43 out of 50 lowest crime per capita in the USA.

Beautiful land is cheap in West Virginia. The price of a house with no land in our town in California (let’s say 300,000 bucks) will buy you a lot in WV.

Here’s an 85-acre farm and a cute house for $300,000:

In West Virginia, for $289,000 you can buy this 100-acre farm with a really pretty house:

If you wanna go a little more low-rent than that, here’s a house and 8 acres for $84,900:

Yay! We’re looking forward to doing this. (Let’s hope my new YouTube book does really really well!)

I thought of something about people at the gun range who aren’t experienced shooters, people who rent, not own, guns:
“Shooting is the new bowling.”

Going to a range, renting a gun and firing off some shots to blow off some steam is kind of the new “hip” thing for youngsters to do. I fairly frequently see people, usually between 21 and 25, at the range, renting a gun. I don’t like shooting around them. They don’t always practice gun safety as much as I do. I especially don’t trust someone to know gun safety when I see them picking out a gun to rent and they’re asking questions like “What’s the difference between a 9mm and a .45?” Or worse yet, “What’s the difference between one of those cowboy guns (they point at a revolver) and that other kind?” (They point at a semi-auto.)

And in California, you have to pass a criminal/mental background check, take a written safety test, and wait ten days to buy a gun. But any murderous felon or suicidal psycho can rent a gun at a range, on the spot, as long as he’s 21 and not visibly drunk or high. (In fact, a gun range two towns over from me, not the range I go to, but this one, is closing for good, partially because they’ve had a total of eight suicides there over the years. Mostly gun renters.)

DJ and I are thinking of joining a gun club. We’ll have to drive twice as far to shoot, and pay more, but we will be shooting next to gun owners only, not gun renters. I haven’t been shooting that long, but have been shooting long enough to recognize incompetence in the next lane when I see it.

I don’t mind bowling three lanes down from a careless bowler, but I do mind shooting  three lanes down from a careless shooter.

Also, I think I need to be around better shooters to get better myself. DJ and I are getting good quickly, and we are often the best shots on the lanes on a given day at the range. I wanna be somewhere where everyone is a better shot than us. That’s part of how I learn anything: hang out with experts and ask questions, and watch them work. That’s how I learned music, filmmaking, writing, podcasting and more.

As for gun safety, it’s not just citizens who don’t know and/or practice the rules. Here’s one of my favorite YouTube videos, Cop Shoots himself in the leg. Not that I don’t like cops, I kinda do like cops, but this guy is bragging about gun safety, to school kids, as he does it.

Here’s the basic rules, in case you don’t know. There are more, but these are paramount:

RULE I: ASSUME EVERY GUN IS LOADED, EVEN IF YOU ARE TOLD IT IS NOT. CHECK IT YOURSELF.

RULE II: ALWAYS POINT A FIREARM IN A SAFE DIRECTION

RULE III: KEEP YOUR FINGER OFF THE TRIGGER UNTIL YOUR SIGHTS ARE ON THE TARGET.

RULE IV: BE SURE OF YOUR TARGET, AND WHAT’S BEHIND IT, AND WHAT’S BEYOND IT.

Here are more good gun safety rules, (from the NRA site.)

The Whole Earth Catalog was an amazing, large “Access to tools” book in the late 60s, early 70s that influenced EVERYTHING: Internet sharing of technology and media, affordable housing, Craigslist, BitTorrent, green energy, and more. And the visionary who started it, Stewart Brand, ran The Well (Whole Earth ‘Lectronic Link), the first commercial online service company, even before the Web. (If you ever get an e-mail from someone and their e-mail address ends in @well.net, you can be sure they were using the Internet before you were.)

I had The Whole Earth Catalog as a kid, from my sister, Connie. I found her copy in the attic after she went off to college. I loved the WEC, and it influenced me a lot, opened my mind to ideas that I did not hear about in school, or anywhere else, in my little town.

Reading the WEC also made me want to seek out and meet inventor and visionary Buckminster Fuller. (The Whole Earth Catalog people loved Fuller, because he invented the Geodesic dome, which the WEC touted as cheap housing for hippies wanting to “get back to the land.”

(I met Fuller in Chautauqua, New York, when he was in his 80s and I was 12. Changed my life. He was the first famous person I ever met. Back then, my “rock stars” were scientists.)

Wikipedia says, “Apple Inc. founder and entrepreneur Steve Jobs has described the Catalog as the conceptual forerunner of the World Wide Web….”The WEC was sort of like Google in  paperback form, 35 years before Google came along. It was idealistic and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.”

Article in Time Magazine by Stewart Brand called “WE OWE IT ALL TO THE HIPPIES.”

(My view of the Internet is much like Stewart Brand’s. That it’s majestic and spiritual. Which is part of why I don’t like social networking, even though social networking came out of those ideas. I just think most people doing social networking are not people I’d want to talk with in real life. There are a lot of weenies and dolts in the world, and before the Internet, I was blissfully unaware of what they were thinking and doing. I really don’t want to see pictures of your cat, I don’t want to hear your dumb jokes, and I really don’t want to take a “Do you like me?” quiz. I thought those were stupid in third grade. I still think they’re stupid.)

Here’s a cool article about the Whole Earth Catalog. Here’s some quotes from it:

Richard Wurman: A West Coast catalog for hippies that won the National Book Award [in 1972, in the Contemporary Affairs category]? It was a paradigm shift in information distribution. In the early ’70s, the public didn’t know what a yurt was, or where to buy one. But if you were interested in moving back to the land and needed sturdy, cheap housing, this was invaluable information. I think you can draw a pretty straight line from the WEC to a lot of today’s culture. It created an aroma that’s so pervasive, most people don’t even know the source of the smell.

Kevin Kelly: For this new countercultural movement, information was a precious commodity. In the ’60s, there was no Internet; no 500 cable channels. Bookstores were usually small and bad; libraries, worse. The WEC not only gave you permission to invent your life, it gave you the reasoning and the tools to do just that. And you believed you could do it, because on every page of the catalog were other people doing it. This was a great example of user-generated content, without advertising, before the Internet. Basically, Brand invented the blogosphere long before there was any such thing as a blog.

John Perry Barlow: Before the WEC came out, business was big and ugly. It was a kingdom of acronyms like IBM and GE. But Stewart saw sustainable small business as a virtue.

Fred Turner: The WEC set the stage for all of today’s social networks. This kind of collaborative communication and the emphasis on small-scale technology really hit home in early Silicon Valley. You have to remember that the first Xerox PARC [the Palo Alto Research Center, a division of Xerox credited with inventing laser printing and the Ethernet, among other things] library consisted of books selected from the WEC by computer guru Alan Kay.

Details here on how to win a copy of YouTube: An Insider’s Guide to Climbing the Charts.
New book by Alan Lastufka and Michael W. Dean

The book ships in November 2008. You can also pre-order the book here.

I love shooting, but I pretty much hate guns in films, TV and video games, most of the time. They are
1. Overused - they create instant conflict and are used as a shortcut to avoid having to come up with good writing.
2. Used in a very unrealistic way:

A. People (even trained soldiers and cops) with guns in films can’t shoot straight (and can’t hit anything, even with automatic weapons), so gunfights in films go on for minutes, instead of seconds, like in real life.
B. People deliver lines after being shot. Not bloody likely.

C. Other people can hear those lines after the gun fight. Not at all possible. Guns are loud as fuck and you can’t hear right after one bullet is fired, let alone after hundreds of rounds.

D. That RIDICULOUS shit of holding the gun sideways. It makes you less able to control your shot, no matter how cool you think it looks. Nobody serious about hitting anything would hold their gun sideways.
3. I really think the way guns are used in the media increases actual violence in the real world, rather than just reflecting it. I think kids today think shooting people is an appropriate solution for a verbal dissing. I think shooting people is appropriate only to save your life when someone’s aiming to kill you.

4. I really think the way guns are used in the media makes people have worse opinions of all guns, including those owned legally by sane non-criminal people.

Thoughts?

(Extra credit thought: thoughts on Airsoft guns as toys for kids? I fucking hate it. There’s two ten-year-olds who run around my hood shooting exact visual replicas of 9mm semi-auto pistols, and they’ve painted the red tip black. Aside from me having to clean up all the fucking pellets in my garden, kids get shot from playing with those things, by cops with real guns who think the Airsoft guns are the real thing.)

Michael “grumpy old man” Dean

(post inspired by Ayoob)

More of me and the wife on guns (and everything else under the sun) at our podcast, Radio Free Nestlandia (the voice of a two-person nation in suburbia.)

“I’ve told people this before and I’ll say it again: Michael Dean laughs at deadlines. And then he gets mad at them and pulls out a stick and chases them around and whacks them into submission. And then he puts on his shades, throws his head back, and laughs yet again with the glee of a man who knows how to wield his willpower like a billy club. That’s what I say to people.

“(Finishing the book) eleven days ahead of schedule, good gawd yawl…”

–Steve Weiss Executive Editor, O’Reilly Media

==================================
“Michael has the work ethic of a Kansas farmer, the brain of a Harvard professor, and the niceness of June Cleaver. And he beats deadlines into mincemeat!

“And now I’m adding Alan (”Fallofautumndistro” Lastufka) to my list of all time favorite authors too. You both totally rock!

“I’ve worked with hundreds of authors too, and that “all time favorite list” includes about five, so you guys are among the few. You just have no idea how nice it is to work with cooperative authors who stay with me until the book is done.

–Sandy Doell, editor on $30 Film School (by Michael W. Dean), $30 Music School (by Michael W. Dean), and YouTube: An Insider’s Guide to Climbing the Charts (by Alan Lastufka and Michael W. Dean), and a few hundred other books by other people.

SO….We’ve finally become comfy enough around guns to keep them loaded in the house. Because you know, an unloaded gun isn’t really a gun, and there may not be time to load it in an emergency.

I put a notice by the gun to remind me. Will keep that up for a while. Seems like a silly thing to need to do, but I’ve been practicing loading dummy shells so long that grabbing the gun from the corner and  flipping it around has become second nature, so I need to un-do that thinking.

Also, we went and fired our new pistols today. Took a one-hour lesson, then shot 125 rounds each, at 25 feet. We were pretty good for first time with new guns. (DJ and I have both fired pistols before, but it’s been many years.) I think we did pretty good, below is the last target we did…the 10 head shots are mine, the 30 center body shots are DJ’s (she’s a better shot than me):

I actually think that shooting with the shotgun made us better shots with pistols. I wasn’t sure it would transfer over, but I think it did.

We shoot without our glasses, as we want to practice under adverse conditions, rather than under optimum conditions.

After shooting that much, we both felt kind of mellow and excited at the same time. Kinda high almost. Went to McDonalds drive through on the way home, then both napped, hard, for an hour and a half.

When we woke up, we took the guns apart to clean and oil them:

I found an amazingly helpful video on YouTube, here, on the disassembly of this particular model. I love the video, it’s the only one this dude’s put up on YouTube, but it blows most “how-to” videos about anything out of the water. It’s very no-nonsense, and shows you exactly how to take it apart and put it back together.

It’s not that hard once you see it done, but I really doubt I could have figured it out on my own, and the owner’s manual that came with the guns is pretty useless. It’s not for our particular model, but rather a generic manual for all Smith & Wesson pistols.

We’re really enjoying the handguns, and plan to shoot at least 125 rounds a night each, two nights a week, until we’re really really good.

The handguns somehow feel more like “guns” to me. Maybe because I used to associate handguns with criminals but associated shotguns with my kindly old grandfather. Or maybe it’s because the bullet and the noise come out closer to your ears than with a shotgun (even though a shotgun is louder).

We love our new hobby, and love that there’s a lot to learn. I’d kinda gotten bored with filmmaking and audio production, because I know so much about both. It’s nice to have a new hobby. And our hands hurt from loading, shooting and taking the guns apart. We got little raw spots on the tip of our thumbs from loading all those bullets into the mags….It sort of reminds me of when I first started playing guitar, when I was 14, and the pads of my fingers would be sore after, but I got callous and the pain eventually went away.

I think it will work the same with this.

(Coming in 2010:$30 Gun School. lol…)

MEW!

MWD and DJD

Treatise I wrote about gun control:

GUNS IN SCHOOLS, GUNS IN THE HOME
A few thoughts from a sane gun owner on gun politics, gun ownership, the second Amendment and self-protection.
I’m not what a lot of people think of when they think of a typical gun owner. I’ve never voted Republican. I don’t hunt. I don’t go to church. I don’t blindly accept everything an authoritarian source tells me, and I question virtually everything I hear, especially on TV. I don’t drink, I have all my teeth, I can read, and I don’t drive a pickup truck.

But is there a typical gun owner? Between 1/3 and ½ of all adults in the US own guns (it’s hard to get an exact statistic, because not everyone will admit to owning them, for fear of getting them taken away.)

I am in favor of a strong military, but I think that the US Military has overstepped their bounds in almost every conflict they’ve ever been in, except the Revolutionary War and WW 2. I’m for a strong defensive military, and feel our military should never be used in a offensive way, particularly to line the pockets of the friends of those in power.

I don’t hunt, but when I was a teenager, I shot a rabbit, skinned it and cooked it. And I feel that anyone who eats meat should do that at least once, to know what’s really involved when they buy meat in the supermarket neatly wrapped in plastic.

I own a gun for home protection, and for hobby target shooting at the range. My wife and I love shooting our Remington 870 shotgun at the range, and we’re buying a Smith & Wesson MP 9 MM handgun next week.

I practice all the rules of gun safety, and believe that owning a gun, if done right, is safer than driving a car. Statistics back this up.

I AM a member of the NRA, but don’t agree with them on legalizing fully automatic weapons or doing away with waiting periods. I do agree with the NRA on background checks to make it harder for criminals and the mentally ill to get guns, and on increasing penalties for using a gun in the commission of a crime.

I am very into safe, sane and responsible gun ownership for level-headed adults. And increasing gun laws will not keep guns out of the hands of criminals. Like the saying says, “When guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns.”

I love all parts of the Constitution of the United States, particularly the first, second and fourth amendments. The first amendment protects free speech, the second amendment protects the right to bear arms and the fourth amendment protects against unlawful search, seizure and detainment. I have studied the Constitution, and find it to be a brilliantly written document. I don’t believe that it was divinely inspired, but I think that the fellows who put it together were amazingly smart.

I can’t vote for John McCaine, but I’m not sure I can vote for Barak Obama either. He probably is the lesser of two bad choices for me. I love democracy in theory, but am sick of voting for the less offensive guy my whole life. Barak Obama is in favor of stronger gun control, but being a politician, he doesn’t entirely come out and say that, because he knows he’ll lose votes over it. Like most great politicians, he couches his statements in terms that will get him the most votes, rather than simply speaking from the heart.

And keep in mind that the politicians who want to take your guns away are themselves protected by 24-7 armed secret service and military. Some politicians don’t want citizens to have guns for protection, but these politicians don’t need to carry guns. The government provides them with someone to carry the gun for them.

I am in favor of the recent decision in one Texas town to allow teachers to carry concealed weapons. I think this will prevent violence, not encourage it. Teachers devote their lives to teaching, know the students, and generally have the best interests of students in mind, unlike hired armed guards. And many towns in Texas have high gun ownership rates and very low crime. Criminals are reluctant to attack victims whom they believe to be armed.

I disagree with the recent Texas decision that set free a guy who shot two robbers leaving his neighbor’s house. I do not believe it is right to shoot someone over property, only to protect a life. And shooting someone in the back while they’re fleeing breaks the common-sense code that goes back to the cowboys. When someone is retreating, they are becoming less of a threat, not more.

If someone breaks into my house in the middle of the night, or even in the afternoon, and steps toward me, I will shoot them. A stranger breaking in and advancing toward me in my own home is a threat. But if I come home and they’re climbing out my window with my stereo, I’ll just call 911. But that’s a crap shoot for anyone who would try. I’m usually awake all night, I’m a light sleeper, and I have really good hearing.

Unlike a few gun owners, I’m not hoping someone breaks in so I can shoot a human. The last thing I’d ever want to do is kill someone. It would bother me the rest of my life, even if I didn’t go to prison, which you can do even when it’s self-defense, especially in California, where I live.

I would only shoot someone to protect myself or my wife from grievous bodily harm or death. But there are two sayings that I entirely agree with: “It’s better to be judged by 12 than carried by 6.” And “When seconds count, the police are only minutes away.”

OK, now I’ll sit back and wait for the comment war that seems to accompany every video on YouTube about gun rights. The comments are usually people from countries where private gun ownership is illegal calling the vlogger “Idiot American pussy who needs a gun to feel like a man”, as well as armchair liberals in American who’ve never held a gun joining in on that side, sane gun owners arguing back, and one or two nutty gun owners making it really interesting for everyone. I’m looking forward to reading all of it.

As for people who’ve never held a gun having opinions on guns, the only person I know who was ever involved in an accidental shooting was when someone who had never held a gun picked one up, thought it was a toy, cocked it, shot it at the wall, and the ricochet shot a woman in the leg. She lived, but it wasn’t a good day for anyone. It wasn’t my gun, but I was at the scene, upstairs from where it happened.

And I’ll make a preemptive strike, because I know that a lot of the comments will be people calling all Americans “rednecks.” While I don’t dislike someone immediately just because they fit that description, I will tell you this: The two counties in America with the highest gun ownership rates are Los Angeles County and King’s County New York (which is where Brooklyn is.) And those two counties are geographically and socially about as un-redneck as you can get.

Let the flames begin…..

Download this as a Word Doc. Feel free to reprint anywhere, if you send me an e-mail and let me know.

Got two Smith & Wesson 9mms. Yay! (I love how the photos of me with glasses and the gun make me look responsible, but without the glasses, I look criminal. I’m not. They’re fully legal, registered, and for target shooting and personal protection only.)

Update: I just saw Palin speak on TV. I’m pretty terrified that she could end up being president. I’m gonna vote for Obama. Palin’s evil is so great, I’m going to settle for “the lesser of the evils” (again.)

MWD

My wonderful wife and best friend, Debra Jean Dean, holding her pump-action Remington 870 twelve-gauge shotgun, (which she calls “Li’l Debbie”) while wearing her kitty ears, which she made.

“I’m pro-gun and pro-choice…so I have no choice!”

That’s the election motto Debra Jean came up with. I love it, it sums up my feelings exactly.

We can’t vote for McCain because he wants to reverse a woman’s write to abortion. (And his VP choice wants to eliminate that choice even in cases of rape or incest!). And we can’t vote for Obama because he wants to make it hard for law-abiding people to own guns for home protection. And Libertarian candidate Bob Barr is pro gun, but anti-abortion, even though his wife had an abortion.

Bleah! I CAN’T VOTE for any of these guys. I’m probably gonna write in my friend Reverend Kenneth V. F. Blanchard, author of Black Man With a Gun.

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UPDATE: I’m voting for Obama