Earworm, 08/30/2016

Earworms tend to run from mildly pleasant through irritating to madding.

Those that you are actually glad to be infected with are few and far between.

Those that arise from a commercial, well...

Tamara embeds a unicorn in Commercial Art.  Had it stuck in my head all day. Not complaining, and I doubt those I shared it with are, either.

Here's the full song, with lyrics:

Lyrics with translation here: Non, je ne regrette rien lyrics + English translation (Version #7) | Édith Piaf (There are 14 different translations, in differing degrees of literal vs idiomatic.)

Looking at that last verse, I am imagining Edith signing it as Gene Wilder and Gilda Radner got back together yesterday...

Gun Skool Thoughts, Part II

So, when talking to folks who have never been to formal training that did not involve everyone wearing the same clothes and addressing others as "Sergeant" or "Sir", I've found some... odd ideas.

When you are reading the course description, make sure you read the part that says what to being with you.

Yes, they expect you to provide your own ammunition.

• Some schools will provide it for you -- read "sell it to you" -- if you make prior arrangements, but usually the only ones that provide ammo are also providing guns. 
• Check the expected round count and take extra. 
• Try to figure out what works best on your gun(s), don't just go for the cheapest bulk pack. 
• Ask me how I know that last...

One colleague at work was outraged at the thought that he was paying all this money for a class and had to provide his own ammo. Of course, usually Uncle Sam had been providing his ammo...

There are several reasons for this:

Scary thoughts

Forwarded to me by a colleague.

The Terrifying JFK Airport Shooting That Wasn’t

When the first stampede began, my plane had just landed. It started, apparently, with a group of passengers awaiting departure in John F. Kennedy Airport Terminal 8 cheering Usain Bolt’s superhuman 100-meter dash. The applause sounded like gunfire, somehow, or to someone; really, it only takes one. According to some reports, one woman screamed that she saw a gun. The cascading effect was easier to figure: When people started running, a man I met later on the tarmac said, they plowed through the metal poles strung throughout the terminal to organize lines, and the metal clacking on the tile floors sounded like gunfire. Because the clacking was caused by the crowd, wherever you were and however far you’d run already, it was always right around you.

There was a second stampede, I heard some time later, in Terminal 4. I was caught up in two separate ones, genuine stampedes, both in Terminal 1. The first was in the long, narrow, low-ceilinged second-floor hallway approaching customs that was so stuffed with restless passengers that it felt like a cattle call, even before the fire alarm and the screaming and all the contradictory squeals that sent people running and yelling and barreling over each other — as well as the dropped luggage, passports, and crouched panicked women who just wanted to take shelter between their knees and hope for it, or “them,” to pass. The second was later, after security guards had just hustled hundreds of us off of the tarmac directly into passport control, when a woman in a hijab appeared at the top of a flight of stairs, yelling out for a family member, it seemed, who had been separated from her in the chaos. The crowd seemed to rise up, squealing, and rush for the two small sets of double doors.

Easy to taunt the "sheeple" who panic and bolt, but what if you're in the middle of a panicking crowd? Do you really think standing there like Kevin Bacon saying "Remain calm, all is well" is going to do you any good?

Gun Skool Thoughts, Part I -- Pugetopolis

As word got out at work that I had attended MAG40, I started being queried about going to a shooting school. Not surprising, I guess.

One of the things I was asked (including online) was "Where can I go for classes?"

I have personal experience with two sources of instruction:

• The Firearms Academy of Seattle, Inc.. This is where I attended MAG40, and the Defensive Shotgun Course I took last October. Training here is excellent. If you are taking a multi-day class, unless you live very close you might want to stay in town. (They do have provisions for camping: "Set up camp over in that flat area under the trees.")
• Classes at  Federal Way Discount Guns. I took several classes here (Basic, "Progressive" or Intermediate, and "Urban Defensive Tactics"). At this time they only show two courses in the "catalog", Basic Handgun and "AR-15 Rifle Tactics." They also do private instruction by arrangement. 

I just received an email from Janice, the lady who was running training at FWDG which announced that her operation, Women and Guns, is now teaching in Olympia. Classes shown on that site are for women only.

Another local source of training which is  highly reputable but which I personally have no experience with is InSights Training Center, which conducts it's classes locally at West Coast Armory and West Coast Armory North.

A training operation which markets itself heavily (they have a booth at the state fair!!!) but whose instruction I have no experience with is Friday Harbor Gun Runners.
(Not gonna lie: I hate the name, and I hate the pirate logo. But if their marketing is successful, I guess my personal taste counts for nothing.)
(OTOH, their training operation is actually and formally Northwest Safety First with an Eagle-and-Flag logo, which is nice and responsible sounding, but I had to research this post to learn it...)

Most or all of the local indoor ranges and clubs have classes of some sort. Other than my "local" noted above, I cannot speak to the nature of the training.
Indoor Ranges:

• The Marksman, Puyallup, WA
• Champion Arms, Kent, Washington

Clubs usually have members who are NRA Certified Instructors and teach the NRA classes.
Listed in no particular order:

• Paul Bunyan Rifle and Sportsman's Club Home Page
• Tacoma Rifle and Revolver Club
• Tacoma Sportsmen's Club
• Renton Fish and Game Club (Only lists Hunter's Education; they have a heavy match schedule.)
• Snoqualmie Valley Rifle Club. No classes currently scheduled, which is a shame, I helped run a couple of classes there.
• Kenmore Shooting Range. 
• Cascade Shooting Facilities (FKA Cascade Rifle & Pistol Club.) Currently only lists a woman's handgun course. Pretty extensive range facility, out in the country far enough that they should have a few years before they feel urban sprawls encroachments, unlike most of the other clubs listed.

Generally speaking, the NRA courses could be considered to be of the "Guns 101" types of thing; they have more advanced classes, but Personal Protection In The Home needs two days, and Personal Protection Outside The Home requires PPITH as a prerequisite, and another two (or more) days. And no one is willing to pay much for an NRA class; which is fine from most instructors points of view, we don't teach these to make money, but if it ties up range facilities for days....

By the way, Microsoft and Boeing both have active gun clubs for employees; Boeing used to have a corporate indoor pistol range, the backstop of which it gave to the club ("Get this out of our storage or we'll sell it for scrap!") , which donated it to a new indoor range in exchange for membership privileges.

Since I had at least one query for "My brother lives in the Puget Sound region and he wants to know where to go for training", I welcome any additions to this list that others may have. Leave a comment or shoot me an email at the address over there on the left side of your screen and I'll add it. Thanks!

EDIT TO ADD: I suspect the paucity of classes listed at the clubs is due to the effects of Initiative I-594 a couple of years ago, which made it illegal to hand a gun  to someone not your relative without a background check. The training exemption makes it legal to do so if the gun remains at the range full-time. Not a lot of help...
Note this well, you who live in states considering similar "common sense regulations."

Mr. Bad Example

So, what spare time I've had the last week or two had mostly been spent transcribing my notes from MAG40. I think I'll pass on posting a day-by-day AAR and just post the outstanding things from it.

When I'm ready.

In the meantime... I often pass on posting about things in the news, because others post about them so much better. But sometimes...

As seen on View From The Porch: See this? Don't do this?

Man, 20, killed by shotgun blast outside northeast Raleigh home | News & Observer

This. This right here is why we can't have nice things.

(And actually ties in with some of the things covered in MAG40.)

Acknowledging that the press almost always leaves important details out, and that events as described by friends and family of the deceased are biased and not to be trusted...

A bunch of young males in their late teens and early twenties at, or leaving, a party two doors down does not sound like "hoodlums and vandals."

The part that really caused me to face palm so hard I almost gave myself a concussion was this:

I fired my warning shot like I’m supposed to by law.

Not only is there no legal requirement to fire a warning shot, but police are generally prohibited from firing warning shots. 

And, sweet Jesus, if you HAVE to fire a warning shot, shoot into the ground!

The 911 calls include this:

12:50 a.m. “We’ve got a bunch of hoodlums out here. I’m locked and loaded, and I’m going outside to secure my neighborhood. You need to send PD as quickly as possible.”

and

“You need to send PD as quickly as possible, I’m on neighborhood watch. I’m gonna have the neighbors with me. There’s hoodlums out here racing up and down the street. It’s 1 o’clock in the morning, um, there’s some vandalism.”

and

12:57 a.m. “We have a lot of people outside our house, yelling and shouting profanities. I yelled at them, ‘Please leave the premises.’ They were showing a firearm, so I fired a warning shot and, uh, we got somebody that got hit.”

at which the dispatcher asked (reasonably enough)

“Someone was shot?” the operator asked.
“Well, I don’t know if they were shot or not, ma’am,” he told her. “I fired my warning shot like I’m supposed to by law. They do have firearms, and I’m trying to protect myself and my family.”
The operator asked who had come to his house.
“Ma’am, I don’t know who they are,” the man said. “There’s frigging black males outside my frigging house with firearms. Please send PD.”

Okay, so...

• Neighborhood Watch is no more a license to kill than a concealed carry permit. 
• The evidence as presented in this article makes it sound like no one got further than a few feet onto the idiot's property. 
• At this point, we only have the idiot's word that anyone had anything resembling a firearm besides him.
• And since the evidence makes it sound like he fired from inside the garage, through a window, it hard to see what made him feel he or his family were in such danger that discharging a shotgun was necessary.

The bad part, aside from all the people who have been writing and training about these things for years having apparently done so in a giant exercise in futility, is that there are people out there who will read this little screed of mine, and similar ones by others who are more experienced, have taken more training, and have more exposure, and excoriate us for "abandoning" this guy. (Not to mention NRA, SAF, etc.)

Make no mistake: There may be evidence to come that will change this to another "Good Guy With A Gun" story, but at this point this moron is a moron who deserves to be locked up, and only trotted out when a Bad Example is needed.

Someone else took pichurs!

Photos of MAG40 class Onalaska, WA Firearms Academy of Seattle 2016 | Flickr

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ouch

As wake up calls go, the knee pain caused by the barometric pressure dropping rising* two full inches in one hour ranks right down there with a cat standing on my chest pawing at my face.

Things to do but they'll have to wait until I can walk. By which time the thunder storms will have started.

Good excuse to work on my MAG40  notes, I guess.


*Stupid knees, a falling glass is supposed to hurt!