Gun Culture

Monday, April 30, 2007

Peltor SportTac

Just a few words about my ear protectors.  Like a lot of people I used the inner ear foam plugs for cheapness, but got frustrated by the fiddle factor and the fact that it dulls your hearing.  If you are trying to be stealthy in pursuit of quarry, you can think you are being mousey quiet but really you are crashing through the undergrowth like some kind of charging beast.  Of course normal conversation at the clay ground is impossible.
So I upgraded to an active pair of ear defenders from Attleborough Accessories, ‘own brand’.  They were a definite improvement but not ideal, the separate controls for each ear on the cups were tiresome and there was always a slight feeling of otherworldness from the electronics.  Hard to describe what I mean by that but essentially it just sounded wrong! 
I’ve been on the lookout for something better for a while but always choked at the cost.  When I saw a pair of Beretta branded SportTacs in the Local Gunshop I had a go and was very impressed, but they seemed expensive and were blue - not an ideal colour at all!  Ian at the LGS assured me that you can get spare cups in different colours but I couldn’t find any, plus of course it would be crazy to spend extra on Beretta branding only to junk the blue cups....
So I had a wee search and found Best4Headsets knocking them out for just a little over £100, which seemed to me to be a good deal.  Even better if you are VAT registered of course!  Delivery was very quick.
So in the field these are a great headset, the electronic controls are on one side and easy to get the hang of with no control knobs jutting out.  Noise cancellation is fantastic, you hear everything but the top level of noise is limited to safe levels.  If you feel so inclined you can even turn them up so that your hearing is enhanced, hearing every little rustle of leaves in the trees and still being safe from harmfull blast noise.  The low profile head band is wide and comfy, no problems getting a hat over or under. 
The cups supplied are green and orange and easily swapped around should you feel inclined to, me I’ll be sticking with the green.
Overall these are a great product, I’d recommend them to anyone.

More Thuggery

Must be the season for mindless vandalism at ‘nice places to walk your dog’.
As seen this weekend at ‘Soddy Gap’ (yes really)

This was a sign at the entry point which explained that it was a permissive path and a new woodland planting in conjunction with the land owner and some forestery commision or other.  Clearly some moron with an axe.

This is one of two trees felled by the same moron for no reason at all.  Twats.

Thursday, April 26, 2007

Village Sniper

Apparently this is from the Armando Iannucci (no I don’t really know who he is either but Wiki is your friend as ever) show, mildly amusing but keeps getting pulled from various forums for being in poor taste.  As I have no taste, I present it here for your delectation.

The BBC replies

Further to my complaint to the BBC regarding Matt Frei being a Big Fat Liar:
A representative from the BBC has responded.

I understand you have some concerns about the above [10’Clock News], in particular the information given during an item by Matt Frei.

We have raised your concerned with the programme’s editor who reviewed the report on your behalf.

His feeling was that to point out that the Bush administration had let the ban lapse was a fair point. The Bush administration certainly did not seem to have shown interest in renewing the legislation, they could have if they felt strongly about it.

Please be assured that I have registered your complaint and concerns on the daily log, this is an internal document which will be made available to the ‘Ten O’Clock News’ production team as well as the senior management of the BBC.

As much of a cop out as you could expect really.  The Bush administration wasn’t arsed, so therefore it’s W’s fault.
I’ve replied of course.

Thank you [name of BBC person removed], I fear your editor may have also misunderstood the point regarding the Assault Weapon ban.  President Bush would have had great difficulty renewing the ban even were he of a mind to do so.  This is simply because of the lack of support within the legislature for renewal.  This can be simply understood if one looks at the American electoral reaction to the implementation of the ban in the first place.  A great many of those who supported the ban lost their seats, Bill Clinton himself acknowledged that this was a major factor in losing control of the House at the time.  Therefore it was the American electorate who had the major impact on the sun setting of the ban, not GWB.
To suggest otherwise displays a lack of understanding of the political situation in the USA, not something acceptable for a Washington correspondent of some vintage.  Whilst I appreciate that a number of US media outlets also like to say that GWB ‘let’ the ban lapse, we must bear in mind that not all media in the US (just like in Britain) is entirely without bias.

I should also like to repeat my point that the assault weapon ban was not in anyway a restriction on automatic weapons as Mr Frei asserted.

Thank for taking the time to reply to me anyway.

Wednesday, April 25, 2007

Gazmick TV

Two nutters doing some bushcraft.  In some woods.
Here’s the guys having a spoon making competition, Gaz has an idea.

I first stumbled across this nut job on Bushcraft UK sadly the powers that be didn’t appreciate their brand of bushcraft or seemingly the fact that Gaz was trying to spread the gospel about the videos so he got banned.  Can’t help but think that if he’d been one of the clique doing the same the videos would have been praised up hill and down vale.

Alan Ball Dies

Sorry to hear that Alan Ball died yesteday.
Shame, I always used to like him in that Think of A Number

Bubba fat ass

Now here in Blighty we are fond of sneering at those fat assed American’s, because of course we are so superior and generally more civilised than those uncouth bunch.  Forgetting of course that there are no shortage of fatties over here and certainly no shortage of uncouthery, still it remains a truism in the vile chattering classes that Americans are fair game.  Except perhaps for that nice Mr Moore who is clearly both slim and well spoken.
Sorry to have to reinforce the stereotype then with this picture from Because I Say So

How are those tyres not running on the rims?  Bubba must have a million psi in those bad boys.
A much more appealing post over there is the trip to Cabelas.
Oh. My. Fucking. God.
So much wonderful gear, and probably half the price of what we get here.  Trainer thinks it a little expensive, I bet he’d have a seizure if he saw what we have to pay for stuff over here.

Tuesday, April 24, 2007

Some Thuggery

A couple of pictures of the result of some ‘anti-social behaviour’ or criminal damage as I prefer to call it.

This is at a popular riverside walk in Cockermouth, near the castle.  This ramp is to a style for a permissive path, it crosses an old sluice gate.

Yup, that’s the sluice gate.  As you might suspect, until very recently that was in situ beside the walk way.
Disgusting mindless vandalism, I’d like to see the perpertrators (not that they’ll ever be brought to book) made to pay for repairs and forced to pick up dogshit on the walk.  With their mouths.

Camerons “Revolution in civic responsibility”

What to make of Cameron’s speech on civic responsibility?

What he says is of course correct.  People need to be the guardians of society, responsible for upholding the Queen’s Peace according to our duty under Common Law. 

Cameron claims that it is the Blair government which has dismantled the compact which meant that the ordinary citizen would be the vanguard against petty yobbishness and ‘anti-social behaviour’.  This is of course only partly correct.  The Blair Goverment has continued the hatchet job on the framework of society but the assualt started many years ago with the rise of leftist thinking and the industrialisation of the welfare state.  Successive Governments have presided over the mantra that law and order is the privilige of the state, that people should not ‘take the law in to their own hands’.  I have spoken many times about how the law belongs to the people and not to the organisations we subcontract to administer it.  Hence we have a nation by and large afraid to look to themselves to stare down criminal and thuggish activity, knowing that the very best they can hope for is a torrent of abuse in return.  Should a confrontation escalate to violence, the civic minded citizen can be sure that should they come off best then they can look forward to a conviction.  More probably they will come off worst on account of the State’s disarmament of the law abiding.  Thugs and criminals will carry knives and guns with no fear of using them and yet our Government will not even allow us to possess irritant sprays.

Tom Grant was a civic minded young man who stepped up to the plate on behalf of a young woman being assaulted on a train, he was killed.  Hardly a great encouragement for the rest of us to follow suit.
Cameron offers no solutions or remedies other than not introducing knee-jerk legislation, sadly the so-called Conservative party don’t have a very good history on this topic.  Semi-auto rifle ban?  Dangerous Dogs Act?  Pistol ban?  I’m sure if we were to think back we could come up with any number of bullshit initiatives and legislation brought in by the last CONservative governement.  Talk is cheap.

Cameron doesn’t give any positive suggestions which may help turn the tide.  I’ll suggest a couple.
Firstly make it 100% clear to the CPS that the prosecution of homeowners attacking intruders is not in the public interest.  An Englishman’s home should once more become his castle, our final sanctuary.  We should not be required to second guess the intentions of intruders, gambling our lives on the outcome.
Similarly any police spokesman who utters the words “taking the law into their own hands” should be sacked instantly, police school 101 should include sections on the Common Law and the origins of police powers.  The concept that the police are just citizens employed to carry out the duties required of every citizen should be once more actual reality.  With this in mind the citizenry should be able to carry any instrument that the police do to carry out their task, specifically extending batons and irritant spray.  The police’s lawful authority derives from the same lawful authority of the citizen, even though this has been neutered by statute in recent years - unlawfully in my opinion.

Being as this is Gun Culture I should make mention of firearms.  Just as certain officers are tasked with carrying weapons, so should the citizen be allowed so to do.  Whilst I believe in the right to keep and bear arms as affirmed in our Bill of Rights I recognise that there are certain to be limits on this.  So we should have a system whereby a citizen may be certified to carry firearms for personal defence, this would involve a Firearms Certification and suitable training programme.  I don’t envisage the programme being as rigourous as the police firearms one as the citizen would not be expected to travel to the danger as our firearms response teams are, but merely to respond to incidents they become unwittingly involved in.  Self defence should also be an acceptable reason for aquiring a shotgun or firearm, without the need to prove specific danger.  What has been Home Office policy for fifty years is unlawful and should be reversed immediately.  Current, very rigourous, checks on applicants would remain.

Welfare should be removed from persistent offenders.  Why should polite society pay to be abused?  If you can’t behave yourself then you get no pocket money.  If that means you starve then tough shit, perhaps begging at soup kitchens might make you reassess your behaviour?

Community based punishment should be as high profile as possible and as demeaning as possible.  Pink jump suits and scrubbing pavements perhaps?  Reintroduce some kind of stocks, a day pegged out in the town square might knock the swagger out of some of the younger thugs.  I can’t see too many feral brats boasting about the time that a seagull shat on them when they were being laughed at by young girls in the same way that some seem to boast of their ASBO collection.

Finally prison.  Prison works.  Why so? Simply because when you are in jail then you are not on the streets intimidating your victims, commiting your crimes.  Lefties trot out statistics on reoffending rates as ‘proof’ that prison does not work.  They assume that scum are reformable, however by the time prison appears on the radar of the CJS by and large the die has been very much set.  You don’t get stir by nicking sweets from the corner shop, you get stir by committing a very serious crime or by being a persistent medium level crime offender.

What are our chances of any meaningful outcome from the fat faced wankers speech?  Bugger all.  All the solutions require taking the leftists head on, being a closet leftie and falling overhimself to appeal to the left (who aren’t going to vote for him anyway), Cameron is never going to do this.  So I have to agree with the opposing parties who claim that Cameron’s words are just fluff.

Monday, April 23, 2007

St George’s Day

Nice of Google to put up one of their themed pages such as we get on International Shrew Awareness Day or whatever.
Oh, they don’t seem to have bothered.  There’s a surprise.
You can have Paddy’s Day, St Andrew’s Day, St David’s Day but the English can fuck right off?

Squirrel-a-pult

Absolutely disgusting.  Shocking animal abuse.  Anyone laughing at this clip would be a seriously sick puppy and should get counselling immediately.

Squirrel-a-pult

Hat tip to Greywolf of Ludlow Survivors.

Wednesday, April 18, 2007

More Matt Frei

Not lying this time, well he might be but I don’t know that he isn’t.
At the end of the piece on last nights 10 O’clock news he told a little story of how he was talking to one of the surviving student who said that he wished he’d had a gun so he could have shot the killer.
Frei told that as a story of how fucked up America is, to me that shows what a fucking asshole Frei is.  He thinks it disgusting that someone would actually want to defend themselves against an agressor, that all potential victims should be disarmed in the childish hope that nutters will not be able to get the means to kill.
It seems likely from what we know so far that the nut job was mission oriented. i.e. the gun was a tool to an end not the end in itself.  Cho Seung Hui would no doubt have research other methods of mass murder had he not had a gun, would the students have been any less dead if he had blown the building up?

Tuesday, April 17, 2007

Meet the foxes

Meet the Foxes on Channel 4 last night (16/4/07).
What load of old bollocks, and yet strangely compelling watching.  I’m not quite sure who were the most bonkers between the two retired geography teachers (I may have made this up, but I’m not the only one!) and the Grizzly Adams at retirement lookalikes who were from the National Fox Welfare Society (I suspect National may be a bit of an exaggeration).
The old lib dems had a camera set up to record ‘Miss Fox’ visiting their garden and feasting on the goodies they left out, they would even try to call the fox in for it’s din-dins.  They were quite bonkers, the horror when ‘Miss Fox’s’ cub came in and tried for a bit of Oedipus style love-in was quite comical but showed just how anthromorphised their ‘relationship’ with the foxes was.
The weirdie beardies from the fox hugging gang were definitely on the eccentric side, one was certainly not playing on a full deck.  I expect they are probably harmless enough and certainly seem to understand that releasing an urban fox in the countryside is a stupid idea.
The whole show was based around a family of foxes and their growing up, but how much of the ‘story’ was real and how much was bullshit?  Certainly the sequence where we were led to believe that ‘Miss Fox’ gets hit by a car and is then nursed back to life is horse shite.  The fox huggers are called to a fox under some decking which we are allowed to believe is ‘Miss Fox’, they extract the fox from under the decking whereupon it gets a big cuddle from Grizzly Adams.  He’s keen, I wouldn’t fancy my chances doing that.  We are later shown Grizzly giving another fox a big cuddle which appears to have made friends big style, the researcher is invited to give it a stroke.  Again we are allowed to believe that this is ‘Miss Fox’, cut to a scene showing a fox being released.  Once more we are allowed to believe that this is ‘Miss Fox’.  Cut to scene of the joyful lib dems watching the video of ‘Miss Fox’s’ return.
How heartwarming.  Only it’s bullshit.
From the NFWS as posted on a Channel 4 Forum

The fox shown in one of our rescuers arms , is in fact a resident fox that can not be released back to the wild due to slight brain damage

The fox in the film being rescued was actually put to sleep at the vets within an hour of being caught due to internal injuries most likely caused by an RTA ( Road Traffic Accident). The fox shown to be released was one that was in our care in Northamptonshire and that came in suffering from a bad case of Sarcoptic Mange.

One piece I particularly enjoyed was the horror of the woman who had called in the fox catchers regarding a fox with a very bad case of mange, she seemed to think that the fellow would spend lord knows how much nursing the bugger back to health whereupon the creature would be released into peaceful woodland.  Daft bitch.  There’s no shortage of foxes love or hadn’t you noticed?  “Are you going to give it and injection?” “No love we’re going to shoot the bugger”.  Well he didn’t say that exactly but you get the idea.
Another fellow was telling his children how a captured fox would be released into the woodland, I wonder if he was stupid enough to believe it or if he was just telling his kids that?
Finally the fellow who got the fox man in to shoot the foxes taking his chickens.  Mate, if you insist on having such a half arsed chicken run then you can hardly be surprised when the foxes get in and kill them can you?  Silly bugger.  Still I must congratulate the chap shooting the foxes, I was wondering if he would struggle with the second as it was jinking around it’s dead mate quite a bit but both were felled with a good shot to the control centre - dropped instantly.
What do we learn from this show?  TV companies are strangers to the truth and quite happy to present fiction as fact.  Townies are bonkers.  Foxes are foxes.

Update:
Apparently there was some kind of disclaimer at the start of the program to the effect that was created using spliced footage of different foxes to “tell a story”, i.e. it was a crock of shite.  Cutting Edge?  Touching cloth more like.

It’s Called What?

So, you want to hold a festival.  More specifically a rock festival.  The festival is to be held in a town called Cockermouth.
Whatcha gonna call it?

Matt Frei Lies

I notice that most of my blog buddies are wisely avoiding the topic of the Virginia Tech shooting until the facts come out, if this ever happens.  Very wise.
One place where facts just don’t matter is the BBC.
Last nights 10 O’clock News included commentary from Matt Frei, now I’ve never liked this smug looking tosser and it’s been quite clear where his bias lies - he makes no attempt whatsoever to make a balanced commentary.  Now actually being biased is not a problem to me, so long as I’m not paying for it and so long as you ain’t supposed to be neutral.  A BBC reporter is paid by me via the licence fee and as a state broadcaster has an obligation to be neutral (ho ho ho!) and portray the facts not opinion.
In last nights piece Frei told Hugh (and therefore us) that George Bush had allowed the Assault Weapon Ban, which was a ban on automatic weapons, to expire.  We know that the so-called assualt weapons ban had NOTHING to do with automatic weapons, it was a restriction on semi-automatic weapons with two or more cosmetic features such as pistol grip and flash hider.  Once more with feeling - NOTHING TO DO WITH AUTOMATIC WEAPONS!
As for blaming GWB for the ban’s expiration, this is not W’s fault.  The ban had an inbuilt sunset clause because the ban was controverstial even at the time it was authored under a Clinton administration.  The ban was not renewed because it did not have the required support in the house.  Simple as.  If the ban had got to the President’s desk and he had declined to sign it, then Frei’s comments would have some basis.  As it happens W took some flak for saying that he would sign the renewal if it got to his desk, I believe this unjustified as W knew full well that the renewal wasn’t going to get there.
Now these misleading statements (lies?) would be just about understandable if Frei was a domestic reporter, but he’s been the US correspondent since 2002.  As US correspondent he has a responsibility to report accurately on these issues. 
This leads me to two possible conclusions:
Frei is deliberately lying.  I wouldn’t put this past the slimey get.
Frei is wilfully ignorant of the facts and therefore incompetent.

Either way Frei has proved himself to be unreliable and should be sacked forthwith.