My Morning In Gun Owner Heaven

I went to the Bob and Rocco Gun Show this past Saturday.  I was looking to trade in a pistol and my old .50 cal Thompson Center Hawken rifle.  I hadn’t been to a gun show in years and had never been to one of Bob Pucci’s shows.  The last general gun show I attended was probably 20 years ago.  I had gone to a couple of Civil War collectors shows where a lot of antique guns were for sale.  But nothing like a Bob and Rocco show.

 

With all of the silly blather about gun shows being a means for criminals, specifically Milwaukeegangs, to get their guns, I was somewhat concerned that I would be surrounded by members of the Crips and Bloods, the Spanish Cobras, and the Latin Kings.  Sure enough, they were all there—disguised as elderly white men.  There were probably more elderly white men than anyone else there.

 

I’ve bought a lot of guns in my day.  Indeed, at the gun show I bought myself a new in the box 9mm Glock 19 with my trade-ins.  I had to fill out all of the same forms that I fill out at a gun shop.  Wait a second, I said to myself, what about this gun show loophole that Doyle and his buddies all pratter on about?  I thought that I was supposed to walk in there with $10 in my pocket and walk out with a couple dozen “cheap” handguns.  Instead my Glock cost me about $500 bucks and I can’t take possession until Monday night.

 

To be sure, there were a lot of AR-15’s and AK-47 types of rifles for sale.  And there were also a lot of shotguns, pistols, and antique firearms.  There were a ton of hunting rifles and “sporterized” World War II era military rifle.  But you know what?  There were few if any deals.  I saw a lot of big numbers on the price tags.  True, you can negotiate at a gun show. But you can negotiate just as well at a gun shop.  The difference is that it is the quintessential free market at a gun show.  You can get an instant second opinion on the value of a gun.  You can immediately work on dealer against another.  But the dealers know that and also know what the market prices are.  You have to be really, really savvy to walk out with a super deal.  But it is amazing how you can go about selling your gun.  I saw guys walking around with pistols, rifles, and shotguns that they had for sale.  Many of them had signs taped onto the gun case or even their shirts, describing what they were selling.

 

But that gets me thinking:  What reasonably sober “gangsta” would buy a gun at a place where he’d stick out like a sore thumb?  The dealers are all on alert for these characters.  Rumor has it, and I certainly wouldn’t doubt it, that undercover BATF and state DOJ agents were all over the show building.  The dealers and show organizers are not idiots.  They know that they are being watched and watched closely.  These guys pay a ton for their federal firearms licenses and selling guns is their livelihood.  The guy who sold me my Glock picked up the $20 transfer fee to transfer the gun to a dealer from New Berlin because he was from Marshfield and after the waiting period I didn’t want to have to run up to Marshfield to pick it up.

 

Now, my Glock cost about $500 before the trade-ins.  When a gang member wants a Glock and knows that he can pick one up for $25 on a street corner without state and federal registration hassles and fees, why go to a gun show?  Heck, since a lot of these thugs aren’t even 21 years old (the age necessary to buy a handgun) and might well already have a felony record, they couldn’t even buy one at a gun show.  Further, any one trying to buy say a dozen of these guns by proxy for gang-bangers, would trigger horns and sirens all over the place.  You see, these dealers all know one another and work alongside each other on a pretty regular basis.  The grapevine is alive and well a gun shows.  These guys chat all day long. Again, they want to protect their right to own and sell firearms.

 

Again, I was amazed at the freedom taking place there.  Many of the buyers seemed to be serious collectors.  At one time the dominant firearm for sale was from the Civil War era or the Old West.  Now, it is predominantly World War II era weaponry.  There were a few full automatic weapons and a fair amount of collector and hunting knives as well.  But it was the age of the people there that surprised me.  Since this was my first show in a number of years, maybe there are normally a lot of younger guys at gun shows.  I left around noon.  So, perhaps all of the younger folks showed up after I left.  About 10% of the people that I saw at the show were women.  Indeed, the dealer’s 21 year old daughter wrote up my sale.

 

But you don’t have to be a shooter or a buyer or a seller to attend a gun show.  Folks who seek to stop or seriously impair this traditional marketplace should attend one just to walk around and talk to people and look at the amazing display of weaponry.  Look at the people making deals and tell me if they are dangerous gun nuts, psychopaths looking to shoot up a school, or dangerous drug dealers.  Mostly they are guys and gals interested in the marvelous mechanical precision of the firearm.

 

When Did We Give Up On A Color-blind Society?

Today I heard how Jesse Jackson accused Barack Obama of “acting white”.  This whole “Jena 6″ thing has me flummoxed because folks are acting surprised that it happened.  But it was a predictable as the next sunrise.  The deeper question, and the one that I think explains the situation is this:  When did we as a country give up on a color-blind society?

Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. proudly proclaimed that he looked forward to the day when all of us would be judged “by the content of our character rather than the color of our skin.”  But now we have become a nation that is near insanely focused on skin color.  People who once demanded that schools be desegregated now want special schools for various races, special dormitories divided by race, special days commemorating their race, and so forth.

What caused us to give up on a color-blind society? I have no firm answers.  Really, no one has ANY answers.  And certainly no one is willing to discuss the solution. We went from a dream of equality for all to a dream that each race separately be equal to the other races.  Put another way, think of each race being a bar on a bar chart with total equality being at the top.  True equality, in my way of thinking, would be only having only one bar and it would extend all the way from the bottom to the top.  No races, just all Americans.  But some folks want to see equality as being dozens of bars, each striving for the top yet maintaining their individuality and not mixing with the other bars.  That to me is segregation.

You see, some folks have got in their heads that if one of the bars on the chart is slightly ahead of another bar, that that means that the bar that is lagging is less equal.  And it is, because in that sort of set up it is a zero-sum game.  There is, in that mindset, a total quantity of X amount of equality.  If you are ahead, then others must be behind.  And that is why a race-conscious society is a dangerous society.  That sort of set up is asking for constant sectarian and racial and ethnic violence. 

I am astounded and disgusted that we keep trying to perfect the multi-bar strategy.  The main reason that I hate that idea, besides it never having been successful EVER, is that it creates a creature that I like to call an “equality pimp”.  This is the professional agitator that goes around making his living off of getting his feelings hurt.  Think of Al Sharpton, think of Jesse Jackson, think of Ibrahaim Hooper, think of any number of folks who arrive on the scene when racial tension erupts.  Now think of this:  What situation have they ever made better by their presence?  These guys have a vested interest in the situation not improving since then they would no longer be needed and would no longer live int he lifestyle to which they have become accustomed.  The last thing that an “equality pimp” wants is actual equality.

Our goal should be elimination of racial distinction.  But somehow we’ve gotten sidetracked onto a goal of hyper-sensitivity of race.  Racial identity get enumerated at almost every government agency.  Some bray about how many of each race that they have employed.  Some white liberals brag about how many blacks that they have as friends.  There are scholarships and set asides for just about every race.  Schools insist that they must have a means to insure that their campuses are “diverse”.  So they crunch racial numbers in hopes of finding a mathematical nirvana that  they can call “Diversity”.  The strangest result out of all of this is that folks get surprised when whites start clustering together under a “white tree”, that a campus Republican club offered a scholarship for Caucasians only, that there are white separatists.  Folks scratch their head wondering where kids got the idea of spray painting the N-word on a school building, or that there are racial fights at a basketball game, or that each year we seem to spend more and more time shouting at each other about race. 

Make no mistake about it:  I hate and detest racial and ethnic separatism in all of its forms.  There is never any excuse for it whether it be a bunch of thugs stringing nooses in a tree or another bunch of thugs beating up a kid of a different race.  Taunting and name calling have no place either. 

It would be easy to slip into a mode of saying “Well, white got charged with a hate crime when they beat up black kids.  Why shouldn’t blacks get charged with a hate crime when they beat up white kids?”  Because that is the WRONG QUESTION!!!!!!  The correct question is who put the idea into their head in the first place and why is it still there?  We need to teach our kids that racial distinctions are meaningless.  You don’t advance on the color of your skin, you advance on your skill, energy, intelligence, dedication, and perseverance.  And don’t forget that the blessing of this country is that you get a chance, not that you get a result.  You are going to fail and you might even face injustice.  Forget about it and keep trying.  The thing that has always kept me moving ahead is that I had a number of folks tell me that I couldn’t do it.  I did.

A while back some dolt asked me how many friends of different races that I have.  My answer:  “I don’t know.  I don’t keep track.”  Then this idiot went on to brag about how many blacks and Hispanics and Native Americans that he counts as friends.  The sorry sap actually felt that he had an obligation to keep track of this statistic. 

Sadly, he is all too common in this country.

 

Those Poor Folks With BDS

Today I came across an example of the sorriest of all sorry lots, a person with Bush Derangement Syndrome.  He had signs declaring “Impeach Bush and Cheney Now!” all over his yard.  I could see in his garage and there were all sort of protest signs from what must have been the multitude of anti-war rallies that he had attended. He even had one of my personal favorites “Stop The War Now!”.  Sadly, like the rest of these deluded saps, the signs are in their front yards and not in Iraq where the alQaida terrorists can actually see them.

I have great sympathy for folks (but not the cause) with BDS.  You see, they know that their raison d’etre is slowly slipping away each day we come closer to January 2009.  The day after the inauguration these folks will become like the lonely old hippie with the bald head and graying beard and tie-died t-shirt barely covering his gut.  You see these guys all of the time hanging around college campuses refusing to graduate.  What are the victims of BDS going to do with their time?  What is going to be their reason for living? 

Perhaps they will become like the “UFologists” who for some strange reason keep hanging around Roswell, New Mexico in hopes of a another visitation by whatever never visited there in the first place.  Maybe they will hold reunions ala the Woodstock set where they can sit around and swap tall tales and reminisce about the kooky conspiracy theories that they convinced themselves were of-so-real.

It is sad to see these folks these days.  They put so much energy into their deranged beliefs that somehow Bush, Cheney, Halliburton, and Blackwater were plotting something, anything, ha is he consummate evil.  If only they coul convince someone other than themselves they could make this all come true.  My thoughts are:  What could these folks have accomplished had they put their minds to work on something good and productive?

 

I Wonder Where Russ Feingold Stands on This

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,297133,00.html

“Let’s get the big money out of politcs”–yeah, sure.  Anything that you say Russ.  Wonder if the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has asked him about this.

 

Gun Laws–My Way

OK, you want to do something about gun crime?  Do you REALLY want to get guns off the street?  Then here is how to do it:  Stop trying to get guns off the street and start trying to get criminals off the street.

This morning on a local TV news program there was some local alderman spewing about all of the guns that were apparently causing crimes independent of the idiots pulling the trigger.  In this cad’s entire diatribe he never once mentioned getting the criminals off of the street. It was, needless to say, an amazing performance.

Here’s how I would go about reducing gun crime:  Make possession of a firearm in the commission of a felony punishable by a minimum mandatory sentence of 15 years in prison.  Make it double that if you are a felon in possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony.   If you get caught with a ounce of crack in your car, enough to make it a felony, and there is a gun in your car, consider that a ticket to prison.  And let’s take it a step further–if you pretend that you have a firearm in possession when trying to rob a liquor store, that will get a minimum mandatory sentence of 5 years in prison.

Oh yeah, and if you are a juvenile and you commit a felony-level crime with a gun in your possession, you not only serve your 15 years until age 19, if there is any left over you head to prison and finish it up. 

Going after the gun is not going to stop the criminal.  Going after the criminal is goign to stop the gun crime.

 

To The Folks Who Hate George W. Bush

THIS IS CROSS POSTED FROM MY FOX6 WEB SITE 

I’m really getting unnerved by the degree of hatred that I’m seeing (reading) lately.  The visceral degree of hatred of our president is something that I’ve not seen ever before.  It seems that some folks wake up in the morning in a state of burning hatred for the president and the rest of the day is spent venting that hatred.

I cannot understand understand hate like that.  In fact, I dispise it. I’ve been on the opposite side of the political power game.  But I will only speak from my experience when Clinton was president.  There were conservatives like myself who disliked Clinton’s policies and behavior.  To be sure, there were also conservatives who hated the guy and wished all sorts of bad things on him.  But I can honestly say that those folks were were very much in the minority and were scorned by mainline conservatives.  I heard Rush Limbaugh read the riot act to more than one conspiracy monger and those who merely wanted to vent their hate of Bill Clinton.  He also often encouraged listeners to be of good cheer, to not let our political disagreements lead us to hate the other side. I remember the day after George Bush 41 lost the 1992 election.  “Be of good cheer my friends,”Rush said.  “Stay positive, stay productive.”

But where are the folks on the left who are counseling a similar line when it comes to George W. Bush?  I’ve read right here on these pages people come right out and express their hatred for George W. Bush.  Not for what he’s done, but for who he is.  They’ve equated George W. Bush with some of the worst tyrants of history.  Yet, where are the liberals upbrading the haters?  Indeed, it seems as if expressing one’s hatred of George Bush is the necessary bona fides for proper liberals.

But now they seem to have gotten worn out by focusing their hate on George W. Bush. Now it seems as if they are moving towards hating the USA–at least as long as George W. Bush is president.  But if they take it to that level, how will they return to loving this country when George W. Bush is out of office?  How can a person on one day express their unabashed hate for the leadership of this country and all that it stands for, and then turn around and say how much they love this country the day after the general election? When a person’s hate knows no boundries, how will they keep it in check when the next administration, regardless of party, doesn’t live up to their expectations?

For Heaven’s sake people!  How can we be a productive nation with so many people running around filled with hate, not just for our president (that’s bad enough!), but for our government?  There are people so filled with hate that it controls every aspect of their lives.  Hate consumes everything in their lives.  It becomes the virtual eyeglassses that they wear.  Everything from waking up to going to bed is sen through the glass of hate. Folks who disagree with these people become a focus of their hate just as much as the president is.  I can’t understand how anyone can live like that.  And I really can’t understand how a person can transmit their hate from one generation to the next.  When you sit around at night and express your hatred for the president (an I have seen this happen) in front of your kids and even school them in hating he president, then you have to wonder about the stability of those people.

 A few months back I inspected a building in Madison that contained a bookstore that must be some sort of Nirvana for the people who almost smoke with hatred of the president.  Inside of the bookstore were posters showing just about every depraved means of punishing the president that one could conceivably imagine.  Yet, in talking to the men at the store, their hatred of the president was genuine, visceral, and at the basest level.  I think that they thought that they were being funny.  But really, a normal person would not be amused by something like that.  At least I hope so.

Frankly, I can’t tolerate hate like that.  To be sure, there are folks and things that can get me fighting mad.  There are politicians that I probably wouldn’t want to be around for fear that my disagreement with them would lead me to say something stupid.  But I don’t hate them.  If Russ Feingold were suddenly to die, I would definitely not rejoice.  In fact, I’d probably be sad for his family and friends.  It would be a terrible shame.  I’d grieve. I certainly would not rejoice as one Bush-hater said that he would if the president were to die.  Indeed, this person was genuinely disappointed when one day there was a bulletin on the TV news that said that there had been “an incident” involving Air Force One.  When it was reported later that it was a minor problem with an engine or something, this guy was genuinely disappointment.  “I really wanted to read that he went down in flames.”  Sadly, that sort of mindset is increasing and not decreasing.

And don’t tell me that it is Bush’s fault.  George W. Bush does not have the power or capacity to make anyone mad, glad, or sad.  No one has that power over anyone else.  YOU AND YOU ALONE, decide how you are going to respond to external stimuli.

I’m going to close this with a quote from Ronald Reagan, “The Gipper”,  a man whose infectious optimism inspired a nation…and this young man.  In 1972, after the shooting of George Wallace, Reagan made the following comment:

“And isn’t this an outgrowth of the, of the hatred that seems to have been injected into what has in the past has been simply normal competition and normal rivalry and certainly election year emotionalism and all. But if something is to be done about this kind of tragedy for anyone, isn’t it necessary that all of us review our own attitudes and say yes, it is possible for men and women of good will to differ, to have opposing viewpoints, to discuss and debate them, and perhaps never to come to agreement on them, but as God is in his heaven do we have to hate each other to the point that people with less balance are stimulated to deeds of this kind? [The shooting of Alabama Governor George Wallace in 1972]“

 

Let’s Talk Man Toys

Here is my current dream gun.  It’s a Springfield Armory XD in 45 ACP.  I’m talking with a gun store about buying one today.  I originally wanted a M1911 in military specs.  But after handling an XD and them handling a M1911 milspec, the milspec felt awkward and had really lousy sights.  True, you can get a M1911 that has had a sight upgrade.  But for what I’d like to do, competitive shooting particularly bowling pin shoots, the XD is going to work much better.  So, admire the simple beauty of the American gun.  I’ll keep you all advised. 

 

The Joy of Pistol Shooting

Well, here I go again.  Plenty of time to kill and nothing to do with it.  So, I’ll write a post.  I’ve been considering trading in my .22 Taurus double-action revolver and getting me a .45 ACP, preferably a Springfield Armory model.  I’d like something milspec or that at least looks like the original US Army Model 1911 .45.  A few weeks back I went out to a shooting club that a friend of mine belongs to.  He invited me to try the bowling pin shoot.  Well, I tried it with my 9mm S&W 5906.  Now mind you, the target bowling pins are only about 25 feet away.  My 9 would knock over the pins.  But the object is to blow them off the table.  You only get 6 shots to knock off 5 pins and the event is timed.  My friend says that most guys who shoot this event use .45’s or .44Mags.  The contest really intrigued me.  Besides, years ago a friend of mine owned an Army surplus .45 M1911 and he let me shoot it.  It was a huge challenge.  The recoil was kind of strange in that not only did it kick back and up. it also had a clockwise twist. 

Still a question nags at me:  Do I really want a .45 and would I shoot the thing to make the investment worth it?  I’d have to join the club to participate in the weekly bowling pin shoot.  But it would be a lot of fun.  Now I have to think.  Just not too much.

 

I’ve Missed the Boat

Boy!  I have not been very good about posting here.  I’ve had a rough couple of weeks trying to meet some self-imposed goals.  HOPEFULLY, I’ll be able to settle down and write a couple essays here for the blog. 

 

Thinking About Wisconsin Taxes

I stopped at a gas station the other day to grab a bottle of water.  It was a Citgo station and I won’t buy gas at Citgo’s because of Hugo Chavez.  But I do buy water or other snacks since the guys that own them don’t have a say in Venezuela.  Anyhow, there was a little sign by the cash register that showed the total gasoline tax hit in each of the 50 states.  In Wisconsin we pay a total of 51.3 cents on EACH GALLON OF GASOLINE!  Compare that to Kentucky where the combined taxes are 36.3 cents per gallon.  And now Doyle the Dunderhead wants to tax us an additional 7 cents a gallon.  And no, I don’t believe that we will be able to legally stop oil companies from passing along that tax to us.  Pricing a gallon of gasoline is just too damned complicated to prevent hiding that 7 cent tax as an increased cost.

But what gets me is that here in Wisconsin we have this never-ending complaint by the state and local governments that we just don’t pay enough in taxes.  Look at the schools.  If only we paid more in taxes the kids in Milwaukee would learn how to read and might even graduate from high school.  The kids in the suburban school districts wouldn’t have to try to do with less than the very best if only we greedy taxpayers would fork over more.

But I don’t want to argue about paying the taxes.  That argument is stale and overused. No, my point is “what the hell do they do with the money that we give them?”  Look at our roads.  We pay this staggering amount of gas tax in addition to high license and registration fees.  Not to mention that a portion of our income tax goes to road work as well.  And what do we get? Have you ridden on our roads lately?  I put on about 125 miles a day on average.  Most of it is in the Milwaukee metro areabut I also get out on the interstate highways.  I’m about to lose my fillings on some of those roads.  Look at bridges and overpasses.  You can see re-rod showing through on some of them.  That’s on state and interstate roads.  My point is, what the heck are they doing with all of the money that we are sending them?  Where does all of that money go?  When I’ve complained, I’m told that there is not enough money in the budget.  Why?  At the rate that we tax in this state, we should have the finest roads in the country.  But I assure you, we don’t.  In fact, some of the best roads in the country are in states where the taxes are lower than here.  Take Kentucky, a favorite place of mine and my future home.  State, county, and interstate highways are smooth and well-maintained in spite of being pounded around the clock by coal trucks that can legally scale off to 125,000 pounds.  And eastern Kentucky, my favorite area, does get snow and freezing cold and they do use a lot of salt.

Roads are just one area of ire.  Take your schools.  Even in some of the poorest areas of Appalachia the schools are modern and well-maintained.  Yet, the taxes are about 1/5 of what they are in Wisconsin.  My house in a Waukesha County town is a modest 1300 square foot ranch.  The taxes are nearly $4000 a year.  That same house in Floyd County Kentucky would be taxed at about $900.  Yet, we are told that we have to pay all of that big money in order to build and maintain school buildings and hire great teachers.  In fact, we are told that the schools have to hit us especially hard to pay for our schools.  Where is all of that money going?  What are we getting for all of our high taxes?  Why aren’t our schools so much better than the ones in lower taxed states.  They aren’t and the education that the kids get in eastern Kentucky is, I submit to you, just as good if not better than what they get in Milwaukee.  Indeed, the graduation rate is every bit as good in Kentucky.

Parks, we are often told, are the golden jewel and why we have to pay such high taxes along with hefty daily use fees.  Interesting, state parks in Kentucky are free. (You still have to pay a modest camping fee.) You don’t have to buy an annual state park pass or buy a daily sticker.  Heck, you don’t even have to pay to launch a boat! Take a trip to a Kentucky State Park and tell me how much worse it is than the ones in Wisconsin.  I’ll take the Paintsville Lake State Park any day.  The Cumberland Falls State Park is clean and has well marked trails.  It is also huge!  Where is all of that tax and fee money going in Wisconsin?  Why aren’t our state parks meticulously groomed and all equipped with flush toilets? 

You see the point here?  It isn’t Wisconsin versus Kentucky.  It’s why aren’t our facilities and infrastructure equal to the amount that we pay in taxes?  Why isn’t everything about Wisconsin the best of the best–equal to our high level of taxation?  I’ve traveled to most of the states that have low taxes and it, frankly, pisses me off that Wisconsin’s state and local goodies are no better than what I find down there.  I have asked this question of politicians at the state, county, and local level and I can’t get a straight answer. 

It is getting to the point where we in Wisconsin are resigned to high taxes.  So, we need to start demanding solid gold services and amenities for the high prices that we pay.  Look, if I buy a Cadillac or a BMW, I expect that it will be a car way superior to a much lower cost car.  Otherwise, I’m getting screwed.  A Mercedes Benz 450 SEL is a very expensive car.  But it also comes with enough luxury and goodies to make the price paid worth it.  Well, with the high taxes that we pay, we better start demanding more for our money.