Entries from October 2008 ↓

Like most people, I enjoy zombie movies, zombie games, and, well, the horror genre in general. Even the bad ones. But zombie films are my favorite. And like most people who like zombie movies, I’ve given a lot of thought about what to do in the event of a zombie apocalypse.

Lots of people will, of course, snicker at the absurdity of such an idea. But the way I look at it, if you’re prepared for zombies, you’re prepared for just about anything. Given the way the economy and stuff is going now, being prepared for anything is probably a good idea..

So, yea, if you ask a dozen random people what they would do when faced with an army of the shambling undead, at least two or three of them will tell you the gun store will be their first stop. Either for looting or for shopping. The problem here, for the uninitiated, is threefold.

1. Gun shops usually have *drumroll* guns. Which means they will be able to shoot any unarmed people who try to loot the place. Especially in free States or countries where the employees can open carry a pistol.
2. Even if you intend to buy, rather than loot, chances are the employees will have already either departed with all the goodies, or they will have fortified the shop.
3. All the other people who thought it was a good idea to do some last minute shopping will either beat you there or arrive at around the same time. At best, this just means the store will have sold out already. At worst, you will have to compete with a panicked group of the living and the undead.

Unless you’re the absolute first person to know of the zombies (or any other catastrophe), someone at the gun shop will almost certainly be the second to find out after the first person goes there to stock up. Thus placing all three of the above points into play. This, in turn, brings us to my first rule of surviving a zombie apocalypse:

Have guns and ammo on hand before a zombie apocalypse.

Just thought I’d share that..

After being stuck working pretty much every day for what seems like forever, I finally got a chance to go to the range today. To make things even more interesting, they’ve got a new rental toy behind the counter: a KRISS Vector SBR/SO. Being a sucker for plastic space guns, I just had to try the thing out once my supply of 9mm ammo was depleted.

One box of .45ACP (which is always like twice as expensive at a range..), a rental fee, and a few minutes of loading later, I released the bolt, flicked off the saftey, pressed the trigger, and.. nothing happened. Not even a click. The trigger just kind of went mushy.

So, yea, I cleared it and summoned the range master to figure out WTF was going on. Given how weird the thing is, maybe it was just a simple user error on my part? Nope. No such luck. Upon taking it back to the counter and stripping it, the range guy found that a post in the receiver which the trigger spring attaches to had apparently broken off the last time someone rented it.

I dunno how old it is since they might have bought it used or had it at their other range on my previous trips. But even so, it’s not encouraging that a vital piece would just break off like that from normal use at an indoor range. Especially since it doesn’t seem like it would get a whole lot of attention with such short lanes.

Oh well. At least it wasn’t a total loss. I got a card for a free rental out of the deal and ended up feeding the expensive box of .45 through one of their 1911s too. Which reminds me I really need to buy a 1911 one of these days.

There’s probably some irony in there somewhere..

Sebastian has a new report about “assault weapons” from the desperate fools over at the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Ownership. At 64 pages long, it looks like they probably spent a lot of time and diminishing funds to come up with it. As such, it’s almost too bad that it’s easy to expose them as lying frauds simply by using two pictures.

Aww, who am I kidding? It’s hilarious.

• Assault Weapons Have No Sporting or Self-Defense Purpose
• Assault weapons have distinct features that separate them from sporting firearms.
• They are uniquely military features, with no sporting purpose
  whatsoever.
• You will not find these guns in a duck blind or at the Olympics.
• [and 26 other mentions of sports]

No sporting purpose? Never find them in the Olympics? O RLY?

See the magazine outside of the grip? That makes this Olympic target pistol into a spooky “assault weapon.” The frame might even count as a shoulder thing that goes up Barrel Shroud of Doom™ since it’s not all part of the slide..

Throughout the report, they list a bunch of crimes where “assault weapons” or “assault rifles” were involved. About a dozen of which name the SKS. Overall, the SKS is mentioned 23 times. In case you live on the moon, or have otherwise never seen one, here is what the SKS looks like:

From the factory, they are not equipped with detachable magazines, pistol grips, folding stocks, or flash hiders. For that matter, the integral mag only hold ten rounds. About the only thing “assault-ish” about it is the little metal square thingy near the muzzle which a bayonet can attach to. However, without a detachable magazine and one more eeeevil feature, even that doesn’t make it qualify under the expired, political definition of an “assault weapon.”

Furthermore, being that the SKS is neither designed to fire in full auto mode, nor a copy of something that was, it doesn’t remotely qualify as an “assault rifle” either.

Seems like one of these days they would stop parading out lies which have been debunked a brazillionty times. But if they want to continue to provide us with an endless source of pointing and laughing, who am I to complain?

It appears that some intrepid internet sleuths have uncovered information indicating that Barack Obama was an active member in a national socialist party. Is this the fabled October Surprise?

Granted, it’s not really surprising to anyone who’s been paying attention. What, with his ties to Bill Ayers, Saul Alinsky, ACORN, and so on. Or his epic, subversive quest to destroy the Second Amendment and disarm the public. Or his class warfare rhetoric and wealth redistribution schemes. Or his two decades of membership in a Marxist, Liberation Theology church. Or his Soviet propaganda style posters. Or the children’s choirs singing hymns to Dear Leader. Or, well, you get the picture.

But, yea, it might be the final piece of the puzzle needed to make the public realize exactly what kind of “change” he has in mind..

Hat tip to The Liberty Sphere.

Someone asked this on GTAF. May as well repost my reply here since I haven’t blogged in a while..

Capitalism, like most other inanimate things or systems, isn’t good or bad in and of itself. Any system can be used for either, and no system is infallible. So, given the choice of potential success or failure by government regulation over the same potential via consensual means, I will always take the latter. Even though government can smooth out some of the rapid, downward changes (and, in reverse, delay upticks), it is always backed by the threat or actual use of coercive, lethal force. Regardless of whether this force is aimed at the “right people” (usually determined by populist, mob mentality), it only serves to legitimize the authoritarian urges of the people drawn to government work. And it always desensitizes the public to further expansions of the state; or even worse, conditions the public to ask for more of it.

233 years ago, we fought a bloody revolution in large part due to sales taxes on tea and stationary. Yet after two centuries of ever increasing cries from the public to “do something” about this or that, we’ve reached the point where the government thinks it can control or tax anything. And the public demands more of it.

That said, Mike Tequeli is correct that we don’t have a true free market. This crisis was caused mostly by the Federal government forcing banks to lend out money to people who couldn’t afford it via the Community Reinvestment Act and its progeny/amendments. Lots of CRA supporters are pointing out that it only forced a fraction of the banks to do anything, and that the rest was all greed. This is true to an extent, however it ignores that the ones who weren’t forced to do so were still encouraged by the implicit Federal backing via Fannie and Freddie. Either way, it is a result of governmental social engineering, and getting mad at the executives who took the bait is akin to beating the family dog because it shit on the carpet after feeding it chili and locking it in a bedroom for twelve hours.

At any rate, I think the bailout might end up being largely symbolic. I heard somewhere that a number of the institutions who are affected by the mess aren’t going to take part in the bailout anyway because of all the strings which are attached to it. Even if a substantial number do play along, the (half-ass) plan probably won’t do anything other than drag the whole situation out for longer than it would have taken for the market to correct itself. Granted, this will probably make the damage more gradual, and perhaps limit the floor it would reach in the short-term. But overall, I feel the rewarding of bad behavior, both on the part of the market and the government, will only serve to obfuscate the lessons that should have been learned through all of this.

But, then again, I’m not an economist.