Outrageous Travesty

We’re all familiar with the “registration leads to confiscation” trope.  But that’s not the only way that a gun registration regime can fuck with you.

It all started with a Righteous Shooting:

Foehner collided with our criminal justice system in May 2023 when he went out for a pack of cigarettes in the early hours of the morning. Crime in his Kew Gardens neighborhood became a problem after a now-shuttered seedy hotel had opened up in 2017, so Foehner took a revolver with him as protection.

In an eerie twist, Foehner had complained to this very paper about the disorder in 2020.

“This isn’t our nice little neighborhood anymore,” he told The Post at that time, noting the brazen drug deals taking place.

But on that fateful night, he returned from buying smokes and saw an unhinged man banging on the door of his building. It was Cody Gonzalez, who then menacingly approached Foehner, demanding a cigarette and his phone.

“He kept coming closer and clearly he was going to attack me.” Foehner said he pulled out a gun and pointed it at the ground. But Gonzalez didn’t stop. He motioned toward Foehner’s neck with an object and his instincts kicked in. Foehner shot the man dead. The ordeal was caught on security camera.

“I didn’t want to hurt anyone. He left me no choice,” said Foehner.

He called 911 and cooperated with authorities.

Of course, the corpus delicti  was a charming choirboy:

Gonzalez had at least 15 priors dating back to 2004 and a history of mental illness.

In any American state, Our Hero would have been given a pat on the back and sent home to his wife.  But this happened in Noo Yawk fucken Siddy, so now it’s time for a Red Curtain Of Blood Warning:

He wasn’t charged in the death of Gonzalez, which was deemed justified, but the DA threw the book at him for criminal weapons possession.

And so Our Hero, age 67, is going to jail, for four years.  For owning a couple of “unlicensed” guns.

Read the whole disgusting thing to get the full flavor of life in the Big City.

And this, children, is why you should resist any government which wants to register your guns.

Thursday Landscape

Astoria, OR 1992

From one of my many roadtrips with Trevor.

I was a fairly serious photographer back then:  two Pentax ME Super SLRs, a silver (for print) and a black (slides):

Shared between the two, I used five different lenses, and mostly Kodak 25- or 50 ASA film for daylight, 200- or 400 ASA for night-time.

When I get to posting the game animal pics, you’ll see the results through various Pentax lenses — 500mm, 200mm, 40-80mm zoom (my favorite), the “standard” 50mm, and very occasionally wide-angle 28mm (although the latter I used mostly for landscape pics).

I don’t want to wander too far into the Camera Dork Forest… those days are far behind me.

Bondi Reflections

Right up front, I’m going to say that I hope I’m never in a situation like one of the several mass shootings we’ve just seen.  I’m no hero, I’m too old for that kind of thing, and there are too many bad outcomes (for me) should I get involved with — i.e. by shooting back at — asshole gunmen on a spree.

That said, I also hope that if the situation is inescapable that I will have the gumption to perform my civic duty, i.e. by not running away and hoping that law enforcement will take care of everything, and doing my level best to end the threat.

I also hope I don’t get shot by the frigging cops, which is what seems to have happened in Sydney because to the untrained and panicked eye, the target becomes any guy holding a gun (or, in the case of the OzCops) and even standing next to the gun he just used, with his hands in the air.

What a shit show.

For those who think that I’m being silly to imagine such things happening, living as I do in north Texas:   let me remind everyone that there was just such a mass shooting at an outdoor mall in Allen, just up the road from my house, only a couple years ago.  (What makes it all the more chilling was that both New Wife and Mrs. Doc Russia had gone out shopping in Allen, and might well have ended up at the mall in so doing.)

So no:  if we’ve learned one thing from all this, it’s that this shit can happen anywhere.  And we would do well to be prepared to deal with it.

Once again, I’m absolutely not hoping that I get involved in some of this mayhem;  but at the same time, I will admit to doing some mental role-playing in my head, dredging up all the old “Coinops” (counter-insurgency operations) drills I learned back in those far-off days when we all carried muskets and bayonets.

One thing is for sure, though:  I will not be a helpless victim.

Malice Aforethought

I haven’t been keeping up with the Trump vs. BBC saga much, because as a rule trials make my eyes glaze over.  This one, however, may be different:

MAKE no mistake, Donald Trump’s $5billion (£3.7billion) defamation lawsuit against the BBC, filed yesterday, is a formidable document: it is a tightly constructed, meticulously argued claim that accuses the Corporation not merely of error but of intentional deception on a scale that, if proven, could be the most damaging legal defeat in its history.

Filed in the US District Court for the Southern District of Florida, the complaint names the BBC, BBC Studios Distribution, and BBC Studios Productions as defendants. It seeks $5billion in damages for defamation and for alleged violations of Florida’s consumer protection laws.

What makes the filing so potent is that it weaves the BBC’s factual admissions, internal whistleblowing, patterns of bias in BBC coverage, timing, motive and governance failure – caused essentially by the BBC acting as its own judge and jury – into a coherent narrative of wrongdoing.

…and the article just gets better and better as Dave Keighley lays it all out for TCW’s Brit readers.  Read the whole thing.

Best part of all this?  The suit has been filed in Florida, where Trump’s a longtime resident (at Mar-A-Lago, for my Brit Readers).  In Florida (as opposed to NYfC or Kollyfornia) the jury is going to be made of Floridians, nay even a goodly number of Trump voters who, if all goes Trump’s way, will deliver a sound financial wacking to the BBC’s corporate pee-pee.

Couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of smug, Leftist assholes, who will have their bias and underhanded skulduggery exposed to the entire world.

It’s just too bad that in the end, the financial penalty will be borne by the BBC’s license holders, i.e. the public, rather than by the BBC executives who perpetrated this travesty.

But hey… all the more reason for the Brits to dump the whole licensing bollocks altogether.  The public hangings can come later.

Light Posting

Sorry about the paucity of posts today, but I was busier than a $5 whore during Fleet Week yesterday, only not engaged in any sexual congress, of course.  (New Wife is out of town, and I’m just too damn old for such shenanigans.)

Anyway…

What kept me busy yesterday was that after seeing the news for the past few days (Bondi Beach Escapades, Brown University Learning Experience, Turtle Island Liberation Fun & Games, etc.), I decided that it was time to up my game.

Now should any trouble come to my door, so to speak, I am reasonably confident that I could give a good account of myself in the sense of repelling boarders.  (Cue the Son&Heir:  “Pity the fool.” )

But even though I don’t leave the house to drive around that often, the fact is that I do occasionally have to venture out Where The Wild Things Are.  And if the past week has shown us anything, it’s that The Wild Things can be just about anywhere.  I mean, if the International Asshole Set is going to sprinkle bullets around Bondi fucking Beach, FFS…

…so I decided to fortify the old Tiguan (just went over the 140,000-mile mark, it did) with something a little more than my 1911 and backup trunk gun.  Ergo:

Yup, if I’m going to have to own a damn Mattel gun chambered in 5.56 poodleshooter, then what better location for it than as a replacement for Ye Olde Trunke Gunne (of ancient vintage and slow rate of fire)?

One would think that I would have in my possession the proper-sized gun bag to hold the poodleshooter, but this proved not to be the case [sic]  when I went rummaging around in the Gun Accoutrement Closet — don’t ask — because all I had on hand was a collection of gun bags suitable for scoped bolt-action rifles and shotguns, which were all hopelessly too long.

So… off I went to find a suitable carrier, dimensions: 36″x12″.  (I know, I could have just ordered one online, but I prefer to shop for stuff like this in a store so I can handle the thing and check it out for durability, defects, etc.)

Oy.

One thing I knew for sure is that I do not want to look like some tacticool G.I. Joe:



…because apart from making me look like an idiot, those things are a.) too damn expensive, b.) too heavy and c.) too easily visible through the car windows, tinted though they are.

What I wanted, therefore, was something akin to the above, but smaller and black.  But “hen’s teeth” and “honest politician” are the mots justes  when it comes to those size/color specs.

So what did I end up getting?  This, a Ruger 10/22 “Flagstaff”:

It’s actually 40″ long, but what that does is allow me to stow the first (of several) spare mags in the toe of the thing, which makes the loaded bag more balanced to carry.

All I have to do is apply some matte black spray paint over the red bits, and I should be good to go.

So to speak.

(For those interested in such minutiae, my “load out” is 100 rounds, i.e. what you see there plus three other 20-round mags in the bag’s pockets.  Way I see it, if I were to need more than a hundred rounds — plus whatever I carry on me for the 1911 — then I won’t have been doing my job properly and deserve to die.)