Box-Killing.

 I had bought a finished-out cargo container with windows and door and an air conditioner and insulation, and had it placed in my back yard on a pad that I placed there. I even had electricians pull a permit and run proper electricity out there. It was to be my "man-cave," but really was just a place for me to do some reloading. Dad had said that I could take over his handloading operation. Among gun people, there is often a "gun room." I cleared my father's out, completely, of all reloading stuff. It took me most of a week, and I put it all into cargo container/shed/"mancave." I did some organization, but not enough, really. 

Then my father died in August. 

I had a friend tell me that he wanted to go hog hunting. He didn't have a suitable rifle. I did. I got some .35 Whelen loads ready for him. In the meantime, this meant organizing a lifetime of relatively disorganized reloading detritus, all in loosely-packed boxes. 

I got to where my sport was "box-killing," which I had originally coined when I had helped move my father back in the 1980s and 1990s. Dad would put basically trash, pocket change, loose brass, and maybe a $1000 tool into a loosely-packed box, and mark  it "Misc. Crap." In this case, I had mostly boxes full of old metal coffee cans full of brass, marked "Brass." If I was lucky, it might be marked "sorted brass." (I think that I had ONE of these.) Usually the best that I could hope for was "misc. handgun brass." One box was marked, "Loose, dirty, unsorted brass," onto which I had at some point appended with a marker: "the worst sort of all!"

"Brass" is simply the casing of a metallic cartridge. In reloading, I polish it, size and decap it, prime it, charge it, and seat a bullet to the case, resulting in a complete metallic cartridge. 

To organize the over-full room, I have been consolidating the boxes of components, and throwing out the unnecessary boxes and the trash. I usually transfer the brass to clear giant ziplock bags. The empty boxes get broken down and taken to recycling. I have killed dozens of boxes from my man cave over the past year. Over the past month, I've probably killed a dozen or so. 

I never got a full set of cartridges loaded for my co-worker in time. I found a dozen rounds, and he took my rifle and killed a nice hog with it at 77 yards. 

Once I get the scale up and running, I'll have another 80 rounds of .35 Whelen loaded by the end of the week, and hopefully another dozen boxes reduced. 

Sometimes, it's about something else.

I wrote this last weekend, on December 31st:
_______________________________________-

“Burglar Bob,” the semi-self-healing full-sized plastic shooting dummy which I had used for Shooting Incident Reconstruction back in grad school, was in the way again. My teenaged daughter Allie and her boyfriend had set him up on the porch during Halloween, and his clothed leg was sticking out into the main lane of travel in my cluttered garage while we put up holiday decorations. My wife, aggravated, yelled at Allie to come fix this mess, and stow ol’ Bob away properly. The joints on Bob’s limbs locked at 22.5 degree increments, and his pants had to be removed to adjust the wingnuts on the stupid system, and Allie wasn’t getting it, right away.

Allie had been called away from trying to get Oliver the family cat to drink something, and was realizing that tomorrow she would be taking the 9 year-old cat with kidney problems to the vet, perhaps (probably?) for his last ride. She fumbled with the scarred plastic mannequin fruitlessly for a few seconds before tears became sobs over this task which she felt helpless to effect.

I realized that I hadn’t done any shooting at “Burglar Bob” in years. Years of leaving this... thing... in our way. Years of not doing more of the kind of training that I had planned to conduct. Years of annoying my sweet wife.

I ripped “Bob” from his 2x4 mount, pushing past my crying daughter and startled wife. Though man-sized, the dummy was much lighter than I remembered, dressed in a cheap polo shirt, an old pair of Dockers, a belt, and tennis shoes. I honestly don’t recall if I threw him to the frozen ground next to the driveway, or just fell atop him, but I found in my hand a very large screwdriver which we use as a garage door track lock. I began to use it on the plastic dummy as an implement of rage. The detached part of my mind noted that the plastic had none of its self-healing properties at 20 degrees Fahrenheit, as the half-inch flat-head bit gored hole after hole into the torso of the dummy.

I left the screwdriver in “Bob’s” chest, and beat the ugly patched plastic head with my right fist, knocking it off the torso to roll somewhat comically across the lawn. I ripped the arms off of him, surprised a bit at how easily the brittle cold plastic threaded bolts popped, with a touch of rage. I beat “Bob’s” body with his own limbs, breaking them down segment by segment. I again took up the screwdriver and began stabbing again and again, until I became aware of the scrapes on my knees and bruises and cuts on my knuckles, and my deep breathing.

I stood up, brushed myself off, and began picking up the remnants of my old training dummy, and stuffing them into the garbage can. I assured my wife that “Burglar Bob” wouldn’t be in the way anymore. I thought it would be a little funny, but my daughter was still crying.

That damned cat. I didn’t want him in the first place. Now look at me. What a mess. I’m going to find some ibuprofen.

September, this and that. Curmudgeon.

--I'm training a rookie. He's a nice guy, but I'm not used to having another guy in my patrol car. We're joined at the hip all shift.

--My daughter just turned 16, and I won't let her take her driving test until I'm completely satisfied with her ability with the manual transmission Honda that I'm giving her. She's really coming along, though. Something finally just clicked with regard to her feathering the clutch while revving an underpowered engine (there's just not that much compression left after all these years). I want her to really GET the joy of using your gears to maintain a perfect speed and keep you at the top of your power curve while downshifting through a downhill double-S curve, and then accelerating out of it, never touching the brake. I also love that she will know how to drive whatever she chooses to drive.

--I'm getting old or something. I've been really noticing lately how people let their kids interrupt adult conversations to have their say. I'm talking about 4 and 5 year-olds, lately. I'll be dealing with the parent in an important issue, and the parent will stop down to hear what the kid has to add. Which, of  course, means that I have to stop down to hear it, too. There is this egalitarian philosophy that seems to have pervaded the world, about how Everyone Has A Right To Give Their Opinion. Except that: that 4 year-old's opinion was not sought. It did not add to our understanding of the situation. Grownups were talking, and you have now rewarded undesired behavior.
I weep for our future.

--I get some evil looks when I casually mention that someone's kid is "kinda high maintenance, isn't he?" Oops.

--I bought some stuff from an older gent that my mother knows. He has Parkinson's and was clearing out some of his gun stuff. I got some dies and a bunch of bullets and a whole bunch of fired cases, along with some .44 Mag ammo  and some other reloading tools, for $100. I expressed interest in the old reloading manuals that he had, and he asked for $15 more. I only had a $20, and he didn't make change. Ah, well, I came away with a pretty good haul. That said, I don't have a 7mm magnum, for which a lot of the cases, bullets, and some dies were for. Also I got a bunch of cases and bullets for .22-250, which I don't have. (I would LOVE to have a Savage 99, but I'd rather it be .250-3000 or .300 Savage.)  There was a case of 12 gauge shotgun shells which touted the "New Plastic Hulls." There were 20 round boxes of .44 Magnum for under $5.00. I bought a couple of large shallow TupperTote boxes to put it all in, and put the lids on them, to keep the dust out.

--It never occurred to me to go visit the guy without taking my dad along. Those kind of treasure hunts are right up his alley.

--Now I'm the parent haranguing his 7th grade daughter into using her agenda planner every day to be organized about studying for tests and getting assignments in on time. I have to stay on her, or she won't use it. She protests that she's not organized. I answer that that is EXACTLY why she needs to use it. All the time.

--I'm wanting a new car for me. I'm thinking about a nice reliable used Tacoma 4dr pickup.

--This crappy low/no-carb diet of mine has caused me to lose a belt notch or two this past summer, and about 20 something pounds. I will grudgingly admit that the diet works. Eh.

--Some dudes are up on my house right now to put on a new roof. We're negotiating it into gutters as well. Getting excited about putting gutters on your house pretty much makes you an Old Man.

--Get your prostate checked. And donate to Kilted To Kick Cancer, which my buddy Ambulance Driver and others are raising money for.

Those who can, do.

I work in the public sector. I've got a job working for taxpayer dollars. So, incidentally, does my wife. I have worked for private companies before, but I have never made a company, risked my money, and built it up.

If I had done so, I could claim that I had been helped along the way to any success. But I haven't, even though I've got a pretty decent education.

My wife's father dropped out of school in junior high. He worked as a mechanic's assistant, and bought a near worthless piece of land and put a salvage yard on it. To drag cars to his yard, he welded up an A-frame on the back of a pickup, and installed a winch. He got married. His wife (my mother-in-law) pointed out that he could always be making money if he towed cars for a living, and had him sell the salvage yard. He bought another piece of land, and fenced it. This was his impound lot. He began putting on barbecues, and inviting local lawmen (especially the constables) to it. He got a lot of tows. He bought proper purpose-built tow trucks. He hired drivers. Soon, the man had a wrecker empire. While buying wreckers, he bought an ambulance. He got his EMT certification, and began running it to emergencies, and doing transfers.

Then he paved a five acre strip of land, and put up storage buildings, to make a U-Store-It facility. Then he passed away, sadly before I ever got to meet the man. Before he died, he had taken a modified pickup and a scrap of land and turned it into three businesses worth an accumulated million dollars, on an 8th grade education, by the late 1980s. Oh, he rightfully shared his success with someone: his wife. She minded the house, reared his kids, handled the office, performed vehicle releases, insisted on cash payments at night while he was on a call-out with a Beretta .32 in her robe pocket. There is little doubt that she was an indispensable keystone to his business success. She was his spouse. His partner in all things.

But I don't think that our president was talking about your marital partner, when he told us that our successes in private business are derived not from our own labors.  Sorry, Bernie. All of those countless times that you got out of bed to go impound a vehicle for a deputy making an arrest, or to pull out a car that went too far on the shoreline-- THOSE don't mean as much as your high school English teacher. You know-- if you'd ever gone to high school.

Mobs

• --Any large group of people can become a mob. The difference between a crowd and a mob is how unruly they are. Mobs actually can be celebratory, and some people are strangely drawn toward happy mobs. But not all mobs are angry or happy-- some are just persons simultaneously focused on a goal. There's a reason that schools conduct fire drills; if you don't put order to an evacuation (that crowd's goal), then even a bunch of kids can become a mob, and people get hurt or die.
• --The masses of shoppers flocking on store deals? They arrive as individuals, but often become a mob, if there's not some sense of order imposed.  Despite some effort to control them, some people get hurt.
• --Often a mob will then turn on those who try to control it. That makes life difficult and indeed often dangerous for those who are charged with establishing order among the mob's constituents. This has direct ramifications on the safety of individuals within the mob.
• --To counter such situations, often the people attempting to keep order with large groups will use a show of force, to either turn the mob, or keep the group of people from becoming a mob*.
• --Such shows of force are often criticized by:
• A: Rabble-rousers within the mob,
• B: People who do not know what they are talking about,
• C: People who see an opportunity to get on the news
• D: All of the above.
• --When a person joins a mob, he or she temporarily loses his individuality and personal identity. As such, he or she quite often drops his or her sense of right or wrong.  Peoples in mobs will destroy, attack, and even kill without the sense of individual consequence that most people would feel, taken alone.**
• --Some people like to take advantage of this, and utilize mobs toward their own ends. Anytime that you go to a political rally and someone starts up a chanting cheer that is taken up by the crowd, you're seeing a crowd of people giving up their individuality.  This is not to say that rallies are always (or even usually) mobs-- let's not forget that orderliness aspect of the mob.
• --People like to join such crowds, sometimes, because it feels good to be taken in as "one of them." People say all the time of such rallies, "I liked feeling like I was a part of something."  That need drives people more than you'd think.
• --Thus, I'm not a fan of big crowds. I'm not saying that nothing good ever happens from them. (Because something good can come from them.) But I myself tend to give them a wide berth.

__________________________________________________
*The best way to deal with a mob is to predict where they will form, and either impose enough order that they cannot become an effective mob, or to plan to have enough people on hand to disperse them when they form.

**While working security at large events like college football games, I have often politely insisted that attendees remove masks that they have worn to such events. Some variations of these have become quite popular. My reasoning is that crowds create enough loss of individual accountability as it is, without having the second behavior modifyer of a mask thrown in, too. Wish to wear a mask?  Not a problem-- just do it outside, please.

Self-Justification

Tam, as she often does, hit the nail on the head:

"Having a dedicated Agency responsible for "gun crimes" creates an incentive to find and, if necessary, manufacture gun crimes in order to justify their existence."

It is not because I'm a generalist that I am annoyed at the BATF. Hey, I'm all for specialization, in complicated areas. I just recently did a sexual assault investigation with the assistance of a larger city investigator who specializes in that, specifically on children. (And bless his heart for that. I would get burnt out within about 2 months of that work.) Two weeks ago, I provided some intel to a detective who specializes in copper theft. (Note: detectives who work in such areas are GOLD MINES for info on the meth trade in their area.) When I have a financial crime, I know just the detective to call on for help, and she's brilliant. Time to lift fingerprints? I call a neighboring crime lab. Specialization makes sense, in a lot of areas. Those fellows are better at it than I am, due to their familiarity with the topic. They are all subject matter experts.

Large cities generally break down their police department's investigative bureaus into sections like Property Crime, Violent Crime, Sex Crimes, Juvenile Crime, and Homicide. That's fine; there has to be some way to delegate cases. But when you create an entire agency that specializes in a specific type of crime, you run into problems. What if that type of crime is down that year? Their budget could be in jeopardy.

The problem is compounded when the premise of the crime fighting is in question, in the first place.

But we have a system in this nation, good or bad, that dictates how guns are sold from dealers. It's hackneyed, but it's followed. As FFL licencees are generally quite law-abiding folks, the prospect of committing felonies rightfully scares hell out of them. So obvious straw purchases are not permitted. Clear felonies in firearms purchases are denied. Unless. Unless the aforementioned hackneyed system is intentionally sabotaged by the agency ordering its use, to create more crimes for that agency to investigate.

This would be akin to the FBI ordering that the back door to banks be left unlocked, and the vaults be left ajar, with the alarm passcode be scrawled in pencil on the wall next to the door.

I believe that I've mentioned before that using numbers to try to promote your own crime-fighting agency is a double-edged sword. Trying to pump them up is a Bad Idea, friends. Look, you chief administrators: You're spin doctors, right? Right. If crime stats are down, we all know that you can just say "Look at what an effective job that we've done! Our agency needs more resources to continue in our quest to stamp out crime!" And if crime stats are up, you get to sound the alarm that "Now, more than ever, we need more resources to fight the growing trend of crime!" You can serve it up either way. We all know that.

You don't have to make more. Got it?
_______

While at a nearby police range recently, I had to wait for the local ATF agents to finish their stuff. One of them, a friendly lady agent, chatted with me for a few minutes. I enjoyed our talk, but wondered if she was as annoyed by my shirt as I was by her hat. Her aftermarket custom hat was similar the standard ATF ballcap, but with the words "Mt. Carmel" embroidered in smaller letters below the agency letters. Marvy.

She didn't remark on my shirt, which I had ordered a decade ago through the assistance of the now-famous author and then fellow TFL denizen, Larry Correia:


I don't know if she understood the meaning behind the words "MOLON LABE." If she did, I suspect that she would have been confused as to why I, a cop, ordered the shirt, and why I, a cop, still wear the shirt.

Meanwhile, I don't have to guess whether the sentiment would have been understood by the Texas Ranger recently seen in the area with the Gonzales battle flag scrimshawed on the outside grip panel of his ivory stocks of his 1911 pistol.

But there I go, taking up for generalists. :)

Another life lesson, learned at work.

"Sometimes, You Just Need To Know When To Give Up On A Case."

Important lessons like this are learned, when cleaning out your desk and file cabinet in preparation to move to a new office.

The argument goes on in my head: "Let it go."
"But if I could just find that other witness, we could..."
"That case is from 2008, Matt. Let it go."
"Maybe I should hold onto this tape for a bit longer...?"
"That case was adjudicated in 2010. Let it go."
"This training information would be useful..."
"...If you had a time machine, and needed to know about legislative updates for the session ending in 2009. Let it go."

The blank tape supply got a much-needed influx of newly-wiped tapes, and the shredder needed emptying twice, and the trash bin is overflowing with dead trees that gave the ultimate sacrifice sometime early in W's second term. And so it goes.

Can we just admit that the terrorists won?

Bin Laden and his ilk, as disgusting as they are, have been completely successful. They have succeeded even beyond their own wildest dreams: they've got us taking our own freedoms away, so that they don't have to.

We're handling crying little three year-old girls as they sob and scream "stop touching me!"

We're manhandling amputee librarians until they are driven to tears.

We're groping nuns.

Why? So that planes won't fall out of the sky? Or just crash for no apparent reason?

Recall that we got into this frenzy after a bunch of religious extremists took over aircraft with box cutters, 9 years ago. We mandated lockable, hardened cockpit doors. We allowed pilots to go armed. We changed policy from "do what they say at all costs." Our passengers have learned to attack their attackers.

This isn't working.

Fire the TSA, keep the locked cockpit doors and armed pilots, and use the savings to put a few more Air Marshals on the flights. Otherwise, take us back to September 10, 2001, or before.

In the mean time, opt out, and then formally lodge your complaints against what's going on.


___________________
Hat Tips:
Breda: First They Came For The Gimps "

Alan: Abolish The TSA "Like the war on (some) drugs, the negative externalities arising from the TSA are costing us dearly for no benefit."


Say Uncle: "Personally, I’ll be driving whenever it’s practical."

Cover your butt.

I've been taking a lot of Identity Theft cases lately.

A family member who works in the Driver's License Bureau of the D.P.S. has recently been railing about the issue of lost identification documents.

If there is a major flood or disaster or you are well-and-truly ripped off, and you have not identification documents, how are you going to prove that you are you?

May I suggest something? Make backups. NOW.

First, go to your most easily-available photocopy machine (I'll suggest the library, but I know most of y'all will use the machine at your job) with your documents, your cards, and a pocketful of change. Make photocopies of your credit cards, front and back. Make copies of your identification cards, front and back. (It's okay to put more than one on a scan.) Make copies of your identification documents, front and back (and inside, as the case may be.). Make copies of your vehicle titles, front and back. Make copies of your long-term insurance polices-- car, house, personal injury, whatever. Make copies of your insurance ID cards.

Stack all of this nicely, put a date on the stacking showing when you copied the documents, and put it into a one-gallon ziplock freezer bag. Seal it.

Now zip that bag into another ziplock bag.

It's a little bulky, but not too bad. It should probably be about the size of my daughter's thinner spiral-wound notebooks for school.

Now, put it in a very safe place, off the ground. Suggestions include:
In the back of a cabinet, behind the Tupperware. In the bottom of the sugar/salt/flour bin in the kitchen.
Between the pages of a large reference book on a shelf.
Inside a safe.
Behind the padding of your gun cabinet.
Inside a can or book safe.
In the back of your freezer. (Note, if a disaster sweeps the area, this may well protect your documents, but it will probably be unpleasant retrieving them.)
NOT in your car. I say again: NOT in your car.

Best is a really secure off-site option. Consider a safe-deposit box. Do you have a close friend or family member who is Utterly Dependable and trustworthy? Consider storing this packet with him or her, in their safe place.

Now, in the TRUE spirit of redundancy ("two is one, and one is none"), make TWO copies of those documents while you're merrily hitting "Print" on your boss's the library's photocopy machine. Make two packets, to be distributed at vastly different locations.

Now, you're going to need some real backup ID. Oh, that other stuff I just talked about? It's important, but do this: go to your local license bureau, and get a state-issued ID card, in addition to your driver's license. Yes, it's a little bit of expense, but trust me, it's easier than dealing with the hassle of not being able to prove who you are. You don't have to do it today-- you can do it the next time you have to go to the licensing office.

Now go get an extra copy of your birth certificate.

Got a school ID you no longer use? Get it.

Got an old expired driver's license in a drawer? That's actually worth something as a secondary (and for a few years, as a primary) form of identification.

Have you gotten a passport, yet? Too expensive? Well, consider the new Passport I.D. card.

You're not one of those people who carries around his or her Social Security Card on their person, are you? STOP that.

Put two or more of these items (I.D. card and Birth Certificate, Social Security Card and Birth certificate, passport and S.S. card) into your identity packets, double-sealed.

You understand that these are important, right? You understand how important it is NOT to leave this stuff out where it can be found, right?

Don't put it in your car.

Oh, and if you're like me, you like to carry a line of credit that you'll never use or even carry on your person. Thus, it makes perfect sense to toss a real (activated, but not active) credit card into the bags, too. I'm tempted to suggest putting some cash in there, but then it starts to become too attractive to raid occasionally, or for the lucky petty thief to take. Yes, this is a type of survival gear, but it is an extremely specific type.

About every six months to a year, you're going to have to update your packets with new copies of expired documents. Sorry. That's just business.

I hope that this most boring task is the most unnecessary one that I suggest you ever do, just like putting on your seat belt, carrying personal insurance, locking your doors, and arming yourself appropriately.

I'm just a little confused.

Serbs break into and burn up the American Embassy, and a contingent of Marines are present, and there are no reports of Serbian arsonists' corpses littering the streets of Belgrade.

"The State Department officials said no protesters got into the embassy's main chancery section, a separate area that was manned by a U.S. Marine guard unit and some security personnel."

Look, I know that they're stationed there for the protection of the embassy staff, and not for property. But There. Is. A. Point.

"In his speech, Tomislav Nikolic, a member of the ultra-nationalist Radical Party, which is Serbia's largest, accused the U.S. and the European Union of stealing Kosovo. Protesters booed and jeered at every mention of the U.S. and EU. 'We will not rest until Kosovo is again under Serbia's control. Hitler could not take it away from us, and neither will today's (Western powers),' Nikolic said."

Serbia, don't piss us off. Seriously.

Word.

I've gone back and re-read Tamara's rant about the state of our upcoming national elections, and it seems that I need to link it:

"And before you even think about puffing up and sputtering something about "Are you just going to give Hillary the White House?" just put a sock in it, because it wasn't me, brother. It was all you idiots who put candidates out there that got tied up in pointless jackassery like rearranging the 'gay marriage' and 'flag burning' and 'stem cell' deck chairs after the USS Conservative had already hit the iceberg. Your typical Republican these days is worried more about what's printed on the money than where it comes from or what it gets spent on."

Test your relationship.

Clean out the refrigerator together.

"You like that? Is it even still good? Then why haven't you eaten it?"

"Why are you putting the refrigerator shelves back there?"

"I cannot believe I married someone who would even eat that crap fresh, more less..."

[In unison] "Toss it." "Heh. Jinx."

[In unison] "Toss it. Ewww."

"We should make that, sometime."

"House rule: NO MORE Tobasco until these three --no, four-- bottles are used up."

"This is my fourth jar of that spicy mustard. It gets trashed."

We are rather condiment and spice heavy in my house. When you buy a pricey marinade or dry soup base and only use half of it, it gets the lid put on and is shoved into the fridge, in the back of a short shelf. There it resides until the Clean Out. There is nothing wrong with properly refrigerated marinades and sealed dry soup bases remaining in your 'fridge for a long while, but they do tend to take up a lot of room. In our case, the bottom right drawer of the crisper is now designated as the place for those, and the big jar of pre-grated ginger, and the jars of red, yellow, and green thai curry paste, mole, and the like.

I suspect that my already varied diet is about to step up to "circus-like," just as soon as we have vanquished the Giant Ham Of Doom (~25 lbs), and its sidekick, Traditional Black-Eyed Peas With Ham Bone. Oh, and corn bread. Always corn bread.

Burying The Lede, Yet Again. (Armed Citizens Stop Mass Murders)

Jeanne Assam said that she was "acting in her capacity as personal protection security" at the New Life Church, when she stopped a rampant shooter. The 41 year old ex-cop credits her faith in God for giving her the ability to hold steady her pistol while fire on Matthew Murry repeatedly to end his killing.

In an interview on CNN with Larry King, she sat with the pastor of the church, answering inane questions in muted, careful tones.

King: "Why do you have a security guard armed, during church services, on a Sunday?"

The pastor, Brady Boyd, began with "Well, I think it's obvious..." He finished with these telling words:

"Larry, the real story here to me is the fact that the man got 60 feet inside our building, and if he had gotten another hundred feet, there were several hundred people standing in the main rotunda. What she did, when she heard the gunshots-- we're looking at a lady who did not hesitate. When she heard the gunshots, she rushed down the hallway toward the attacker... she was under arms, she had a handgun... this is a hero, we're talking about, I'm sitting next to a real-life heroine, that... I'm tellin' you, this is the bravest woman that I've ever met. She did not flinch, she put her own life at risk. She is not on our staff; she's a volunteer. She's a worshiper at our church, who provides security as a ministry for our church."

Kudos for the pastor for pointing out part the real story. But for some reason, I suspect that some of it was also being obscured.

Matthew Murray had a semi-automatic rifle, two handguns, and supposedly about 1000 rounds of ammo, along with smoke bombs. He had previously been identified as mentally distressed, and had been making threats on a website. He killed five people (mostly in the parking lot), and wounded five others. The pastor's right; if he'd made it into the rotunda, or worse, into the worship area earlier, it would have been a complete massacre but for an armed response.

The pastor states that this is "not the wild west" and says that they have strict guidelines for people carrying at their church, but I gather by the absence of what's said that Miss Assam (yes, she's still available, gentlemen) was not OFFICIALLY a security guard. Oh, she had a permit to carry, and had been a cop for 14 years, but I'm twigging to the fact that she had another full-time job, was not paid to work at the church, and was not uniformed.

That's not a bad thing. I'm not completely sure why they're burying that.

The fact that an armed private citizen stopped a mass murder should be the lead to the story, and should be trumpeted from the rooftops.

But, ho hum. Only 5 killed and 5 injured? Not too interesting. Ridiculously, the story is diminished because she stopped the killing.

If churches are going to be "unarmed citizen zones," I frankly think that they owe it to their worshippers to post armed guards at the outer perimeter of the church as well. If your church doesn't have a disaster plan, ask why not.

I'm a police officer who works patrol. I have a degree in Criminal Justice, and am working on my master's in it. That should give me some credibility to say what you, gentle reader, already know: The police can't get there in time to save you.

I'm so sorry about that fact. Sometimes, we get lucky. And usually, we stop it before it gets to the very worst that it could get to. But generally, we help pick up the pieces.

And whether or not you're the type to give thanks to your God, remember Jeanne Assam. And consider how you'll get your own oxen out of that well, Sabbath or no.

No, I don't think we need that.

There's a staunch movement afoot to give Washington D.C. a vote in the House.

Um, no. I don't personally think that the D. of C. is representative of this nation. We are talking, of course about a city that re-elects Marion Barry, and elects Adrian Fenty, who doesn't want his citizens to be allowed to own the means even to protect themselves in their own house.

Washington D.C. is one of the most crime-ridden cities in this nation. Their own chief has declared a "crime emergency."

I don't want these people owning a voting seat in Congress and depriving a state of their own seat.

No post today:

You come back tomorrow.

ListingHouse-YardWork-FriendsOver-PorkLoin-FamilyStuff-AllThatStuff-

Mud in the welt,

...spear grass in the laces, crap on the uppers.

It sucks that I'm expected, if I am to appear professional, to maintain sharp creases on my uniform trousers and shirt sleeves, have no spots, and maintain a spit-shine on my boots fit for court, while at the same time I have to chase critters (4-legged and 2-legged) through the brush and mud.

My next house will have a utility slop sink outside or in a shop or in a mud room. At present, I must use my kitchen sink and a vinyl brush to get the mud and crap out of the corners of my uniform boots. This is effective, but causes something of a mess, which makes my wife unhappy. Heck, it makes me unhappy. Then, after my boots dry, they desperately (!) need a good shine.

Occasionally, I can make it into town during daylight hours and hit the jail and get a trustee to shine 'em. Some of 'em are pretty good. Others... not so much. You never know what you're going to get. But for a dollar, it ain't bad.

Lately, I've been dropping my uniforms off at the dry cleaners. When I first started, I never did this. Frankly, I wasn't paid enough, and also, I hadn't fully grasped why those guys that always looked great looked so good. I'm pretty handy with a steam iron and a washing machine, but my very best days pale in comparison to what the couple of better local dry cleaners do to my uniforms. They give a minor discount to cop uniforms (which is smart-- gets cops, who are generally kind of blue-collar, to bring their stuff in, which in the long run brings in more business from themselves and other cops, and from word of mouth. It also puts good guys in badges and uniforms in your shop at unpredictable times all day long, which is very nice to have for a largely cash-oriented business.), and both of the shops I hit are small in-house family-owned businesses. I like supporting such businesses-- the counter lady at each one took to calling me by name the very first time I walked in, and they provide rush service when I need it. I try not to abuse that privilege, though-- they've got a rhythm to maintain, and I'm screwing it up when I ask before 0800 for my order to be ready by 1430. Like those old-timers that I used to notice always looked professional when I started, I figure that I'm making an investment in my overall outlook.

The price I pay is a couple or three of sawbucks a week, and the necessity of being organized enough to drop my stuff off and pick it up in time.

Right now I've got the dryer running on Permanent Press, trying to dry out my vest carrier, which reeked from last night's activities. The ballistic panels are lying in the sun on the back porch, airing out.

I need to move the collar brass and badge and pins and keys to the new uniform, which is just a daily thing, like shaving.

Yeah, it's part of the job. But like cleaning guns after shooting, it's not the fun part.

Frickin' bovines.

When I heard our local deputy check out with about 40 head of Hereford mix cattle running loose a half mile outside of our city, I thought about bug spray.

I had bought a can for my patrol bag during the early summer about 6 years ago, while looking for the missing driver from a wreck. I had run by a convenience store, asked if they had bug spray, and after they poured a bottle of water over me to revive me from the faint I felt at the sticker shock, I paid $5.97 for a can of Cutter bug spray. And it lived in that bag for years. But recently, it went missing, and I've been thinking about that.

It is my understanding that some of y'all up north and in other areas don't have chiggers; consider yourselves lucky. They're a bane down here, and it's just now entering their season. What you can empathize with me on is mosquitoes. As I have alluded to, this last month has been one of the wettest on record for north Texas. Fact is, we've got standing water everywhere. Mosquitoes swarm around every light shining. I've actually seen them swarming around the license plate lamp of a car stopped briefly at a stop sign. Fueling under a lighted awning at night is utter hell on earth. Until we've got some wind and some hot dry sun to dry things up, it's going to be like the worst part of the tropics around here.

So I checked my bag again, and finding that my spray was still missing, I went down to the convenience store, the only place open after 8:00 PM. They were happy to sell me a 6 ounce can of Deep Wood Off... for (I'm not making this up) $6.95, plus tax. It came to $7.53. This is not poetic license-- I have the damned receipt.

I thought about it.

The clerk double checked it with wide eyes. Yep-- they really wanted that much. She shook her head.

I bought the can. If I didn't, the Irony Gods would smite me.

5 minutes later, the deputy hollered for me to come help him.

- - - -

The grass wasn't too bad-- only knee high in lots of places. Waist high in others. Chest high in others. I left the thicker stuff alone.

Our plan was to let the cattle owner push 'em toward us, and we would haze 'em into the open gate, with our cars and our persons creating a diversion in their natural path. It was a great plan, that only required me to wait with my car, and to stand mostly on pavement. I just put on a little bug spray on my ankles and arms and neck, and rubbed some on my face.

Stupid cows.

The herd made it around the guy in the 4X4 out in the muddy field, and I started walking north along the asphalt road. Half a mile up, I began cutting across a pasture, and met up with a helpful guy with a QBeam, a heavy beer buzz, and a lot of enthusiasm for a man of 46. We started an end-around maneuver that Nimitz and Chesty Puller would have been proud of. We pushed 'em into a corner, and then insinuated ourselves just so, so that they trotted to our open gate, and ran in.

All but four. A calf, a cow with a little calf, and a Bull. Frankly, I was mostly concerned about the mama with the little one. I've been charged by a mama cow before, and it makes one pucker. Hereford bulls aren't notoriously mean. I figured we'd make short work of this.

The bull had other plans.

Tasers have a laser, the beam of which created a dot that concerned the mama enough to run into the gate when I moved it over the grass to her off-side. Ha! I thought. This will be easy!

The bull had other plans.

The bull started my way, and in a flash of brilliance, I pulled off my taser cartridge and fired off an arc. The bull checked up hard, and stared at me. I put the laser on his face, and zapped the taser arc again. He looked away, and then started my way. Fast.

I put the beam of my Streamlight and the laser of my taser in his face, and backed up and...

fell right into a large stinging nettle bush. The bull came on, and I found myself wondering if this was truly about to "get western." He ran on by me. Suddenly the pain got a little intense in my lower left arm and wrist. In the dark, I thought that I was being attacked simultaneously by a large amount of fire ants (something else we are damned with here), and began trying to brush them off. Unsuccessful, I put a light to my left arm, and saw my wrist growing red splotches and bumps on it. Ah.

I ran after the bull, cussing.

A quarter mile later, I got around it, and got in front of him, calling upon help from the ghost of Lord Nelson. "Haw!" I yelled. "Git!" I spat. He kept coming, his breath casting twin puffs of steam clearly visible in the humid 70 degree night air. I stood my ground, crackled my taser in his face, and yelled at him.

He lowered his head, and sped up.

So there I was, a mile out of my city (by that time), and a quarter mile from the deputy that I was helping, putting about 4 lbs of pressure on the 8 lb trigger of the Glock 31 I had in my hand (when did that get there?), with the tritium sight standing out neatly against the white face between the horns of a bull that was about 5 feet away and coming.

I stepped aside. "This ain't my job," I thought. Why push a "Dear Chief" letter?

I headed back.

"Man, you gave it a hell of a good try," the deputy said, which helped. The old man who owned the cattle had driven up in his Cadillac, and told us dirty jokes while we awaited the professional wrangler.

I went by the convenience store, tired, bug bit, rash-encrusted, sweaty, and muddy (I had just shined my boots, too!), and bought a stick of jerky.

Yeah. That's right. Who the boss, now, huh? Don't make me snap into a Slim Jim, yo?

Haiku #4 Procrastination

Putting off writing
Reports, colaboration.
Ambo Driver's peeved.

Caleb

They said that, back when, Caleb* had skills. He had some education, and had worked at a respectable job. But somewhere along the line, he must have given up. Some kind of injury (lawnmower? car wreck? both?) had legitimately put him on disability for awhile, and the doctor put him on some painkillers, apparently, to help with the ongoing pain. Caleb discovered a new lifestyle. I'm not saying that his pain wasn't or isn't real. But he hasn't held a regular job since. When the short-term disability ran out, he was fired, and he did small jobs while awaiting his federal disability status checks. And taking completely-legally-prescribed drugs.

During this time, his depression kicked in. It wasn't just the way his body atrophied during his inactivity-- it was a continued manifestation of the way he was brought up. His father was an absentee, with drug and alcohol problems, yet Caleb to this day refers to him with reverence. His mother was an alcoholic with an unhealthy relationship with her children. Drinking of course had become a way of life for him, and I'm not sure I actually ever saw him completely sober. He was, I suppose, kind of destined to have emotional problems. And boy, did he ever have them. Prescriptions for antidepressants of all kinds were obtained, and the pharmacology of antidepressants, painkillers, and alcohol were not doing good things for his perceptions. His sleeping patterns were erratic; he got prescriptions for sleeping pills. His little-used muscles began to tie up-- he got muscle relaxants. The drug stew kept brewing.

Caleb started having anxiety attacks. I don't know what all they gave him besides Zanex, but he sure started using a lot of that. Strange thing about anti-anxiety medications, in my observations: they may very well help the patient with his anxiety, but for many, when they run out, they're more anxious than they've ever been before. Like Dumbo and the magic feather, they seem to forget that they ever lived without the drug. I've been on multiple calls with our fire department/EMS when Caleb called 911 because of anxiety attacks-- he was out of his pill. He begs them to help him, and they roll their eyes and tell him that all they can do is to give him a ride in the box to the ER. Usually an ER doc gives him a few pills just to get him out of there.

He's become kind of a fixture around town these days, and in my duties I find myself running into Caleb pretty regularly. He'll be arguing incoherently with someone on the center stripe of the highway, or he'll be compulsivly throwing trash off his porch out to the street. (His house, where he lives with his mother, is filthy.) I approach Caleb gently, as a rule-- I'm not going to take him on to raise, and Caleb's problems are now his way of life. Some of the townsfolk and my colleagues want to try to take more drastic action with him, but it just wouldn't, I don't think, do much good. Caleb's mind has now lost a lot of what questionable amount it used to have. When I talk to him, we often start congenially, but it inevitibly devolves into his paranoid accusations. I'm out to get him. I'm a jerk. I'm not showing him the respect he deserves. If he only knew how I've argued against his going to jail to other officers. While I'm worn out by my Caleb encounters, I just don't see what good we're going to do by taking the hard approach-- we pretty much never have him on anything beyond little Class C charges, and when we return him to his mother, we don't see him for a few hours or even days. Most people are fed up with him. I suspect that the times I find him out staggering around are often when even his mother kicked him out of the house out of frustration.

Given his background, did Caleb even have a chance? He had managed to get out of the house, get a job, and get an education-- what happened? Given his background, and his injury (whatever it was), could he ever have been expected to deal with the pain, without becoming what is obvious --even to a layperson-- to be a prescription drug addict? And now, what do we (society) do with him? What does his mother do with him? (Compared to Caleb, she's full-functional.) Caleb may well live for another 40 years. Or he may die next week.

What a waste.

Caleb is just now entering middle age.

-------------------------
*Name changed.

The Things We Carry.

Detailing the process of getting ready in that last entry brought to mind how, as I get ready for work some days, I recall the title short story of Tim O’Bryan’s anthology The Things They Carried (1990), which I read my senior year in high school. So here’s my shorter take on the same thing, with apologies to Mr. O’Bryan. (I’ve not read his stuff in 15 years.)

I first began detailing this list as I was losing a chase after a 19 year old liquor store robber across a 5 mile wide cow pasture. He was wearing a long-sleeved shirt, jeans, socks, and running shoes. He was a little underweight, and was running, damnably, as 19 year-olds do when sedentary guys in their 30's with too much gear attempt to pursue them-- he conserved his energy and just trotted. Heh. That was his undoing-- I arranged a 5-agency manhunt for his skinny butt, and caught him myself 4 hours later. Shoulda just sprinted away when he had the chance.

The things we carry.

We put on uniforms. Long pants with extra pockets for flashlights and ticket books and possibly backup guns. Shirts with extra reinforced vents at the sleeves and patches, with name plates and badges and collar brass and sometimes even service pins. Hats. Heavy leather boots polished black and shiny, sometimes with steel toes.

We put on belts. A wide inner belt, to hold up the pants. Over that and the belt loops, a thicker, heavier Sam Browne belt of smooth black leather, with a large vanadium buckle. On that belt is a body microphone, to project our voice to the in-car camera system. Keepers, to hold the Sam Browne to our inner belt. Rings, to clip our keys to. Keys: office, car, camera system, handcuff, and a dozen others. We carry an enormous Safariland duty holster made largely of black plastic, which houses a Glock 31 .357 Sig pistol with 15 rounds in the magazine and one in the chamber, and a Streamlight M3 light on the accessory rail. (The whole pistol with the load and light weighs 2 lbs, 5 oz.) We carry ASPs, expandable telescopic steel batons that change from a 9" padded cylinder to a 26" intermediate impact weapon with the flick of the wrist. We carry handcuff cases with Smith & Wesson, Hyatt, Peerless, or ASP handcuffs. We carry pouches wih rubber gloves inside. We carry an extra handcuff case with cuffs. We carry Stinger aluminum rechargable flashlights. We carry Motorola 2-way scanning portable radios with remote shoulder microphone-speakers. We carry double pouches with spare 15-round magazines full of Gold Dot ammunition. We carry issue cell phones and sometimes personal cell phones. We carry TASERs. We carry large alphanumeric pagers. We carry this all on our belts.

We wear our underwear. Black socks that almost never can be seen above the tops of the uniform boots. When it's chilly we wear polypropylene long underwear. We wear the shorts of our choice, as they and our socks are the only items of clothing that we buy ourselves. We wear issue UnderArmor, to keep us from overheating inside of our ballistic vests. When it's cold, we wear black turtlenecks. We wear Point Blank or Second Chance or any of a dozen other brands of bullet-resistant vests, which cover our backs and bellies and sides and chests and shoulders, and which are rated NIJ Level 2 or better, and are claimed to stop most .357 Magnum rounds. We wear trauma plates with our vests. We wear backup guns.

We carry things in our shirt pockets. We carry ink pens, and backup ink pens, and sometimes backups to the backup ink pens. We carry long handcuff keys, and spare car keys, and flash drives, and business cards, and pocket notebooks. We carry Miranda warning cards.

We carry things in our pants pockets. We carry wallets, and ID cases, and pocket badges, and licenses, and pictures of our families. We carry pocket knives, and spare pocket knives, and coins, and folding money. We carry shotgun shells, and gum or mints, and personal keys, and sometimes small pocket lights, and other backup keys. Sometimes we carry bananas.

Sometimes we also carry things that we should not. Extra weight around the middle, or cigarettes, or paperwork that we've been meaning to finish, turn in, or shred. Sometimes we carry problems-- stress, prejudices, or fear.

We always carry pride.

We carry jewelry. We all wear wrist watches. Most of us wear rings on our fingers. Some wear necklaces. Some wear tattoos. Some wear scars.

We carry personal assistance devices. Many of us wear glasses. Reading glasses. Contact lenses. Sunglasses. Orthopedic insoles. Some wear hearing aides. Some wear knee, ankle, or back braces.

All these things we carry, and more.