Recent thoughts, and National Ammo day 2012

I try to avoid too much posting on here about political topics unrelated to Texas Independence or gun ownership, but this current Federal Presidential election doesn't want to be left unnoticed. It has completely polarized the nation, with very few undecideds out there. On the one side, is the avowed socialists who want to further their goals of punishing big business and enriching "the little guy." On the other side are those who want to put a full stop to that march toward socialism, and rebuild what made our country great by removing govt restrictions against business. By my reckoning, removing the roadblocks to business would be a much-needed kickstart to the economy, as I think the business owners have been hesitant to invest in their own companies if the govt would come along and take it under Federal management because it was "too big to fail." Pff, more like too big to lose union donations to the democrat party. See: Fed takeover of GM and the pushing of the Volt car, at a loss to the company for every one that's sold, and the govt's trying to make us buy them by offering tax rebates on them.

How does this relate to National Ammo Day, you might ask? As has been joked about in many gun forums and gun shoppes, the current President has been the best motivation for buying guns and ammo, as many citizens are understandably scared that he could place more restrictions on the ownership of said small arms and ammo, as he has done with many other things, with his electro-signature on an Executive Order, without any of the pesky checks-and-balances of Congress or the Supreme Court to stop him or hold him accountable. Meanwhile, many gun owners have been stocking up as best they can, while supplies in the gun stores fluctuate. Still, it's better than those months between the last Presidential election and the Inauguration Day, when demand shot up (no pun intended) and the shelves were bare, after people realized an avowed damnyankee democrat "community organizer" from Chicago, a place not known for its love of private gun ownership, was on the way to the White House with his entourage. Do I think the President *would* sign an Executive Order banning gun ownership in another term if he's reelected? Not if he wants to prevent the current political cold civil war from going very hot, he won't! Even if current democrats and republicans hate each other, they can still manage to be civil in public, unlike the good old days of fistfights and knife duels breaking out in Congress. (Can you say, Aaron Burr?) However, I'm pretty sure the same cannot be said for their fans, especially the ones who think they are entitled to certain benefits, and said benefits would be completely cut if their guy doesn't get reelected. Like many police departments across the country geared up before the Inauguration in expectation of "celebratory riots," like after any sports team wins the national championship, I'm sure they are quietly gearing up for similar events next month, in the event that such candidate doesn't win reelection. However, I can't be certain that he and his administration wouldn't do something stupid, like has happened with the Fast and Furious operation, or the Libyan consulate attacks and coverup-- nobody brings an RPG or two to a "protest"!

So, I would strongly suggest that you go ahead and purchase any ammo now, in case you might need it before next month's official day of buying, perhaps if your neighborhood watch is called out and you have to put up a sign that reads "You loot, we shoot," as has been done many times before after a hurricane blows thru and disrupts power and emergency services. And either we will all give out a big sigh of relief and you can make another purchase of ammo on the official day, or, as some places online have half-joked about the future, we'll be too busy reloading. This would also be a great time to go ahead and pick up that gun you've been eyeing as a Christmas gift; your loved one might get to unwrap it early if needed.

National Ammo Day, 2011!

Another National Ammo day is upon us, where we buy 100 rounds of our preferred caliber, gauge, and/or reloading components, so that the bean-counters at the ATF can pass up their chain of command that We the People have plenty of ammo, lest they think that we will be easy pickings for disarming. Wherever you are, happy birthday, Kim du Toit!

This year I will add that the Appleseed Project is a great program, a combination of marksmanship and heritage, in teaching citizens how to accurately shoot and what is important about our history in being armed against a tyrannical government. I plan on making it in the next year to one of the classes they offer, tho the closest ones are still a couple hours' drive away.

Cancer, bad! Kilts, good!

I wish I had found out about this earlier in the month, perhaps even the end of last month to help, but it is Prostate Cancer Awareness Month, and as a fundraiser, several bloggers are in a contest for Kilted to Kick Cancer. Ambulance Driver has several posts about other bloggers who are kilting themselves this month, including a link to DIY instructions on making your own utility kilt. They're collecting donations for the Prostate Cancer Foundation and Livestrong, so all my loyal readers (both of you!) should go find someone among the many and donate! With a $40 donation to any of the contestants (or straight to PCF.org), Magnum Boots and Alt.Kilt will send you a KTKC t-shirt as a sign of their gratitude.

Here's some factoids to chew on. (Shamelessly borrowed from AD, here.)

Prostate Cancer Facts:

* About 240,890 new cases of prostate cancer will be diagnosed in 2011.
* About 33,720 men will die of prostate cancer in 2011.
* About 1 man in 6 will be diagnosed with prostate cancer during his lifetime.
* More than 2 million men in the United States who have been diagnosed with prostate cancer at some point are still alive today.
* Prostate cancer is the second leading cause of cancer death in American men, behind only lung cancer.
* About 1 man in 36 will die of prostate cancer.

Testicular Cancer Facts:

* It most often affects men between ages 20 and 39.
* It affects 8,000 men a year, and kills 390 of them.
* It is the most common form of cancer in men ages 15-34.
* 95% of cases can be cured if detected early.

One fact mentioned on the KTCK site, that hits home for me, is this:
Prostate and testicular cancers kill just as many men as breast cancer kills women. Since my wife already went in for her first breast exam, I should probably do similar for myself, to keep that boogieman away, as we already lost my mom's younger sister to breast cancer over a year and a half ago, all because she ignored it until she couldn't anymore (it had grown and spread to her lungs, and she finally saw a doc when she had trouble breathing).

If you give a mouse an AK

If you give a mouse an AK

If you give a mouse an AK, he'll want to shoot it.
If he gets to shoot it, he'll want to bump-fire the whole magazine.
If he bump-fires the whole mag, he'll need more ammo.
When he goes to the store to get more ammo, he'll see that 75-rd drum.
If he gets that drum, he'll want to try setting his foregrip on fire!
When he sets his foregrip on fire, he'll think about what replacement parts he'll need.
If he looks into replacement parts, he'll see that a set of parts isn't much cheaper than a whole new AK.
Then he'll want another AK!

ETA Looks like I might have to change this, after seeing this vid:

A day to celebrate, a day to mourn

I suppose, first, the good news:
Happy San Jacinto Day! Today is the 175th anniversary of the Texian Army defeating the Mexicans, and winning our independence from them.

In unrelated good news, the website The Homemade Gunsmith is back up, now hosted in an undisclosed location here in the US, guarded by Dick Cheney and his guns (ok, I made up that last bit), safe from the Internet Gestapo (for now). The sad news, related to that, is that the site's founder, Philip A. Luty, has died after his battle with cancer. (Big thanks to Firehand for the notice.) I regret that I have no more information that that, since last I'd heard, he was in prison, for the Byzantine crime of aiding a criminal who used his designs for a homemade gun, even tho all Luty had done was publish the book, for which they'd already arrested and jailed him (ok, he also designed and built the first gun himself, to make sure it would work, proving the despite their laws, they could not overturn man's inventiveness and determination, and for that, he was jailed, but as we like to say over here, he served his time for the crime, then they threw him back in for someone else copying his design and building their own gun, claiming that he was "aiding terrorists").

Happy Birthday Texas!

In honor of our independence 175 years ago, this is our Declaration of Independence, written at Washington-on-the-Brazos.

The Unanimous Declaration of Independence made by the Delegates of the People of Texas in General Convention at the town of Washington on the 2nd day of March 1836.

When a government has ceased to protect the lives, liberty and property of the people, from whom its legitimate powers are derived, and for the advancement of whose happiness it was instituted, and so far from being a guarantee for the enjoyment of those inestimable and inalienable rights, becomes an instrument in the hands of evil rulers for their oppression.

When the Federal Republican Constitution of their country, which they have sworn to support, no longer has a substantial existence, and the whole nature of their government has been forcibly changed, without their consent, from a restricted federative republic, composed of sovereign states, to a consolidated central military despotism, in which every interest is disregarded but that of the army and the priesthood, both the eternal enemies of civil liberty, the everready minions of power, and the usual instruments of tyrants.

When, long after the spirit of the constitution has departed, moderation is at length so far lost by those in power, that even the semblance of freedom is removed, and the forms themselves of the constitution discontinued, and so far from their petitions and remonstrances being regarded, the agents who bear them are thrown into dungeons, and mercenary armies sent forth to force a new government upon them at the point of the bayonet.

When, in consequence of such acts of malfeasance and abdication on the part of the government, anarchy prevails, and civil society is dissolved into its original elements. In such a crisis, the first law of nature, the right of self-preservation, the inherent and inalienable rights of the people to appeal to first principles, and take their political affairs into their own hands in extreme cases, enjoins it as a right towards themselves, and a sacred obligation to their posterity, to abolish such government, and create another in its stead, calculated to rescue them from impending dangers, and to secure their future welfare and happiness.

Nations, as well as individuals, are amenable for their acts to the public opinion of mankind. A statement of a part of our grievances is therefore submitted to an impartial world, in justification of the hazardous but unavoidable step now taken, of severing our political connection with the Mexican people, and assuming an independent attitude among the nations of the earth.

The Mexican government, by its colonization laws, invited and induced the Anglo-American population of Texas to colonize its wilderness under the pledged faith of a written constitution, that they should continue to enjoy that constitutional liberty and republican government to which they had been habituated in the land of their birth, the United States of America.

In this expectation they have been cruelly disappointed, inasmuch as the Mexican nation has acquiesced in the late changes made in the government by General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, who having overturned the constitution of his country, now offers us the cruel alternative, either to abandon our homes, acquired by so many privations, or submit to the most intolerable of all tyranny, the combined despotism of the sword and the priesthood.

It has sacrificed our welfare to the state of Coahuila, by which our interests have been continually depressed through a jealous and partial course of legislation, carried on at a far distant seat of government, by a hostile majority, in an unknown tongue, and this too, notwithstanding we have petitioned in the humblest terms for the establishment of a separate state government, and have, in accordance with the provisions of the national constitution, presented to the general Congress a republican constitution, which was, without just cause, contemptuously rejected.

It incarcerated in a dungeon, for a long time, one of our citizens, for no other cause but a zealous endeavor to procure the acceptance of our constitution, and the establishment of a state government.

It has failed and refused to secure, on a firm basis, the right of trial by jury, that palladium of civil liberty, and only safe guarantee for the life, liberty, and property of the citizen.

It has failed to establish any public system of education, although possessed of almost boundless resources, (the public domain,) and although it is an axiom in political science, that unless a people are educated and enlightened, it is idle to expect the continuance of civil liberty, or the capacity for self government.

It has suffered the military commandants, stationed among us, to exercise arbitrary acts of oppression and tyrrany, thus trampling upon the most sacred rights of the citizens, and rendering the military superior to the civil power.

It has dissolved, by force of arms, the state Congress of Coahuila and Texas, and obliged our representatives to fly for their lives from the seat of government, thus depriving us of the fundamental political right of representation.

It has demanded the surrender of a number of our citizens, and ordered military detachments to seize and carry them into the Interior for trial, in contempt of the civil authorities, and in defiance of the laws and the constitution.

It has made piratical attacks upon our commerce, by commissioning foreign desperadoes, and authorizing them to seize our vessels, and convey the property of our citizens to far distant ports for confiscation.

It denies us the right of worshipping the Almighty according to the dictates of our own conscience, by the support of a national religion, calculated to promote the temporal interest of its human functionaries, rather than the glory of the true and living God.

It has demanded us to deliver up our arms, which are essential to our defence, the rightful property of freemen, and formidable only to tyrannical governments.

It has invaded our country both by sea and by land, with intent to lay waste our territory, and drive us from our homes; and has now a large mercenary army advancing, to carry on against us a war of extermination.

It has, through its emissaries, incited the merciless savage, with the tomahawk and scalping knife, to massacre the inhabitants of our defenseless frontiers.

It hath been, during the whole time of our connection with it, the contemptible sport and victim of successive military revolutions, and hath continually exhibited every characteristic of a weak, corrupt, and tyrranical government.

These, and other grievances, were patiently borne by the people of Texas, untill they reached that point at which forbearance ceases to be a virtue. We then took up arms in defence of the national constitution. We appealed to our Mexican brethren for assistance. Our appeal has been made in vain. Though months have elapsed, no sympathetic response has yet been heard from the Interior. We are, therefore, forced to the melancholy conclusion, that the Mexican people have acquiesced in the destruction of their liberty, and the substitution therfor of a military government; that they are unfit to be free, and incapable of self government.

The necessity of self-preservation, therefore, now decrees our eternal political separation.

We, therefore, the delegates with plenary powers of the people of Texas, in solemn convention assembled, appealing to a candid world for the necessities of our condition, do hereby resolve and declare, that our political connection with the Mexican nation has forever ended, and that the people of Texas do now constitute a free, Sovereign, and independent republic, and are fully invested with all the rights and attributes which properly belong to independent nations; and, conscious of the rectitude of our intentions, we fearlessly and confidently commit the issue to the decision of the Supreme arbiter of the destinies of nations.

Beans, bullets, bandages... what else?

Greetings, all! I'm not dead, just playing too much Bejeweled Blitz and Zuma on Facebook as of late, and wishing I could get another Blue Heeler from Texas Cattledog Rescue, tho recent events have had my brain working again. On a online discussion forum, another member posted a link to the science story about the possibility of a solar flare being stronger and more disruptive than Hurricane Katrina, followed by commenting that he should stock on gas for his camp stove and lanterns. My remark was

Beans, bullets, and bandages; what else can you really do? (Sounds kinda like my shopping/packing list for "going Grizzly Adams"!) One of the bloggers I occasionally read opined on this topic herself, about any number of possible scenarios.

Today at work I mentally turned over this list of supplies, making it into a game of what else I thought necessary of emergency preparedness, all based around words starting with the letter "B". Let's start with those three mentioned above, with brief explanations and expanded thoughts on each.

Beans- simple, dried, will keep a long time without refrigeration, tho I prefer mine served up as red beans 'n' rice.

Bullets- another item that will keep a long time without special handling, just keep it cool and dry, very useful with a later item for defense of homestead and procuring fresh meat.

Bandages- this and a fully-stocked first aid kit will help keep one breathing for a long time!

Now to the additional items:

Boomstick!- this would be the item to work with the bullets mentioned above. Either one is rather useless without the other. (As I've commented many times, an empty gun is just an awkward club!) Don't forget some way to keep it clean and in good repair.

Blades- edged tools of various types, from pocketknives, to machetes and cleavers, to axes, to more specialized ones like a spoon-carving knife, maybe even a bayonet to attach to the end of your rifle, if it's a military surplus one. And some way to keep them sharp.

Bedroll and Blankets- gotta have somewhere to rest your weary head! Ain't no good to yourself or others if you're plumb wore out! Probably would include a tent or tarp or tepee to keep the rain and cold wind off ya while sleeping.

Burro or Bicycle- a way to get around, and some of the more economical ways than some folks propose, especially in light of rising gasoline prices. (My "all-terrain" bike has folding baskets on the back for carrying groceries and gear, and I've nicknamed it my "Tin Burro," as a jibe at those who call their motorcycles "Iron Horses.")

Boombox and Bands- some type of radio to keep up with news and weather, in the event of power loss for TV and Internet, and some music to sooth nerves and boost morale during trying times. (I'd recommend a solar/handcrank-powered radio as a backup, for long-term emergencies, like this one with the American Red Cross branding, plus it's got an onboard LED flashlight, always good during an emergency. Just make sure it's not your only one!)

Bible- or whatever your preferred spiritual guidance is, just bring it with you!

This is more a listing of mostly "essentials" for any type of emergency preparedness, not just for hurricanes or solar flares or zombie attacks, and shouldn't be interpreted as all-inclusive or the order as an indicator of importance. It was a mental exercise for me while I was bored at work, simply based around the alliteration of the three basics of the beginning of this list. Your list of supplies should be longer, as would mine, because existing on just the contents of this list would get boring!