Bad influence

03/31/2009

I’m apparently a very bad influence on my sweet, naïve, very Canadian wife. She doesn’t work outside the home so she gets to watch all the news every day. She hears all these reports about home invasions and it had gotten to the point that she was nervous about taking a shower in the middle of the day when she was home alone. I’m not sure why she feels more vulnerable in the shower than sitting on the sofa, maybe because she wouldn’t hear anybody trying to get in while she’s in the tub. As it happens I keep my firearms in the closet near the shower but she wasn’t comfortable loading one of the semi-automatic pistols or taking it off safety, and she found the action of pumping a shell into the chamber with my pump 12 ga. shotgun to be too long for her arms. I took her out with me to a gun store on Saturday to let her fondle small revolvers since that’s probably the ideal handgun for her. One store was glutted with Taurus pistols, she liked the feel and the weight but I didn’t care for the feel and quality in the Taurus models I looked at. They had a Ruger SP-101 in the case also, I liked it but it was larger and heavier and my wife preferred the smaller gun. I didn’t even try to explain to her that a little bit of weight in a handgun makes the recoil a lot more manageable because she wouldn’t have gotten what I was trying to say and I wanted this to be her choice. Anyway, we passed on the Taurus and Ruger and I went home to do some research. It seems that in the size and weight gun I’m interested in, the Smith and Wesson J-frame is the standard in the industry so I shopped for a deal on one of those guns in an aluminum frame for weight that is comparable to the Taurus she held and played with. I found one on Gunbroker that even had pink grips (the Taurus she really liked had pink grips also) as well as an interchangeable set of black grips if we decide pink’s not intimidating enough for a handgun. I placed a bid, and when the auction closed yesterday evening we had won the gun. I sent payment today, hopefully I’ll have the gun in hand by the middle of next week. I also ordered two boxes of .38 Special in 95 grain hollow point, it should be a sufficient deterrent to a bad guy while being a light enough round that it won’t recoil too uncomfortably. I added a small pocket holster and a pair of earmuffs to the order so we can take the gun out to the range and fire it for practice.

Gun pR0n:



On other topics, it rained relentlessly here on Saturday. After looking at guns we went to Sam’s Club to renew our membership then I browsed at Hobby Lobby but didn’t buy anything. Then we stopped at a pizza buffet and made hogs of ourselves. After that I came home and smoked a pork shoulder for pulled pork.

I want to get something else off my chest while I’m at it. I had written this Monday and e-mailed it home to post later but after seeing the news yesterday I feel a rant coming on. Why is it that financial companies can come to Washington after making bad bets in the more arcane areas of very sophisticated financial instruments that you and I never own or invest in, and be given carte blanche by Congress and both the outgoing and incoming Executive administrations yet when these bad bets by financial institutions constipate the credit market and make high-end manufactured goods like automobiles impossible to purchase and those manufacturing companies come asking for some help to tide them over until the financial markets can be sorted out our government treats those companies like pariahs. These manufacturing companies produce the goods that keep our entire economy going, regardless what the short-term mindset is there is no economy without money flowing into it through the production of goods. Then, our government demands the resignation of the chief executive of one of the largest corporations in the world, and fires part of the board of directors. This same government wants to abrogate valid contracts between the company and its dealers, the company and its workers, and the company and its suppliers. This government is the same one that approved financial support to AIG in February but by March was outraged that the agreement they made allowed for executive compensation that the government felt was excessive. Now, just because our government feels it was excessive even after just approving the money they are falling all over themselves to confiscate it. Confiscation = tyranny, I’m sorry but I know of no other way to look at it.

In the words of John Rich:

Shuttin' Detroit Down
Written By: John Rich, John D. Anderson

My daddy taught me that in this country everyone’s the same
You work hard for your dollar and you never pass the blame
When it don’t go your way
Now I see all these big shots whinin’ on my evening news
About how they’re losin’ billions and how it’s up to me and you
To come running to the rescue
Well pardon me if I don’t shed a tear ‘cause they’re selling make believe
And we don’t buy that here

Cause in the real world there shutting Detroit down
While the boss man takes his bonus pay and jets out of town
And DC’s bailing out the bankers as the farmers auction ground,
Yeah while they’re living it up on Wall Street in that New York City town,
Here in the real world there shuttin’ Detroit down.
They’re shuttin’ Detroit down.”

Well that old man’s been workin’ in that plant most all of his life
Now his pension plan’s been cut in half and he can’t afford to die
And it’s a crying shame, ‘cause he ain’t the one to blame
When I look down and see his caloused hands,
Let me tell you friend it gets me fightin’ mad

Cause in the real world there shutting Detroit down
While the boss man takes his bonus pay and jets out of town
And DC’s bailing out the bankers as the farmers auction ground,
Yeah while they’re living it up on Wall Street in that New York City town,
Here in the real world there shuttin’ Detroit down.
They’re shuttin’ Detroit down.”

Instrumental solo

Yeah while there’ living it up on Wall Street in that New York City town
Here in the real world there shuttin’ Detroit down
Here in the real world there shuttin’ Detroit down

In the real world they’re shuttin Detroit down, they’re shuttin’ Detroit down.