Via WRSA, Matt Bracken.

On a related note, have y’all studied much on the JTTF and Fusion Centers?  If you haven’t, you need to.

Sarah Bregel:

My 3-year-son Tener is sitting at the dining room table, coloring next to his big sister. “What are you drawing, Ten?” I ask, while staring into my screen. “A gun,” he replies, not looking up. “Oh, that’s nice,” I say, relatively unfazed by his creative choice.

His sister smirks at me. She remembers how not long ago, I would’ve maybe tried to redirect either one of them if they’d been talking, playing, or even drawing guns.

But in truth, the question of whether or not to allow my kids to play “guns” is not something I had to think much about until the past couple of years. When kids on the playground would play guns, my daughter would find something else to do. It just wasn’t of interest. But almost as soon as my son could speak, “gun” was on the tip of his tongue. He wanted to play with the other kids who were playing guns. He’d lose his mind if someone had a toy gun to play with because he wanted it for himself.

He has a few weapons at home — a wooden sword from the Renaissance Festival, a lightsaber he got for Christmas, and tons of superhero costumes — the same as his big sister. But intentionally, I had never bought any toy guns or allowed them in our home when he asked. To me, it felt wrong and dangerous to turn gun violence — a very real and serious issue, especially in America — into a game. I fiercely believe that we need common-sense gun control laws in our country. Nearly every time we flip on the news, there’s another mass shooting. How could I, in good conscience, allow that kind of play?

Regardless of the fact that we kept guns out of our home, and my son didn’t play violent video games or watch frightening stuff on TV, his interest still budded on its own. If he went to a friend’s house, he’d go straight for their Nerf guns and hold on tight until I picked him up. He’d shoot me dead with his pointer finger while I sat on the couch and then laugh at a job well done. For the record, he’d also shoot “fire” at me, burning me to the ground, or defeat me in just about any way he enjoyed. But shooting remained of high interest, too.

started to look into the issue with a more open mind. I picked up Gerard Jones’s book, Killing Monsters: Why Children Need Fantasy, Super Heroes, and Make-Believe Violence. In it, he talks specifically about this kind of play and even suggests that it actually benefits kids.

According to the book, studies showed that in British preschools when kids were allowed to play with toy guns, their games became more aggressive in the short-term, but that they were actually more relaxed later in the day. So playing fantastical games didn’t impact kids negatively or make them more aggressive. You could even say that they got their aggression out by having the freedom to play how they chose.

Some studies have suggested that watching violent shows or playing violent video games encourages violent behavior (not just play), but high amounts of screen time no matter the content, has been shown to have the same result. And it’s no surprise that context matters, too. If kids have a violent home life, their violent tendencies go up. But if they have safe surroundings and are simply playing these kinds of games, they remain just that — games.

Sarah is a feminist and that probably has a lot to do with how she’s interpreting the response of her son and what she chooses to do about it.  Her world and life view affects her actions and perspectives, as it does with us all.

But try as she might, she cannot construct a value system that can make any sense of this.  The term aggression is there, but what causes it remains unexplained.  Why poor parenting can have a negative effect on children is just taken as an axiom.  She just decides to let it happen, and it appears to me that she has found justification for all of this as opposed to being unable to stop it and also unable to find justification.  If it’s going to happen regardless of what I do, then I may as well justify it, she apparently thinks.

So let me help a little, Sarah.  Getting aggression “out of his system” isn’t why he needs to behave like a boy instead of a girl.  Evil exists in the world.  We aren’t a tabula rasa, or a blank tablet, and we do have predilections and propensities, regardless of what the nineteenth and twentieth century idiot philosophers told you.

You want to teach your children well.  We don’t learn to drive in driver’s education.  Boys learn to drive by watching their fathers, and girls by watching their mothers.  Our children generally take on our own value system, at least initially, but there are still God-given tendencies in boys and girls that will always be different.

You will want to turn your boy’s predilections towards good.  He wants to learn to protect and provide because that’s the way he is wired, no matter what your feminist friends and professors have taught you.  He can use his predilections for evil, but you want him to learn the good.

Protecting his family is good.  Defending his community is good.  Opposing tyranny is good.  All of these things are necessary by someone, because many people will not turn their children to the good, and regardless, some children will not accept their teaching because we all have volition.

You don’t want your little boy to grow up to be a man who cowers in a corner when hard times hit and a loved one or neighbor is under threat.  If he does this, he will hate himself later in life and feel worthless, and even worse, an impediment to the good.  You don’t want your little boy to grow up to hate himself, do you?

You want better than that for your little boy.  You want him to grow up to be a man, not a unisex, genderless robot.  A man is what God designed him to be, and it’s your job to assist in that calling.  So your husband, if you have one, has a job to do with him.  Tell your husband to get busy hunting, fishing, shooting, camping, hiking, biking, and doing all of the things a man should do with his boy.  It’s what God wants.

If you have no husband, then you’re going to have to pull double-duty.  But your son is worth it, yes?

Fox News:

Authorities plan an investigation after a video posted on Facebook on Thursday showed a Kentucky police officer’s rifle leaning up against a car unattended as a student walks past.

“It is unfortunate that this accident happened, but we as police officers are human and do make mistakes,” Dayton, Ky., police Chief David Halfhill said in a statement Thursday, Cincinnati.com reported. “We hold our police officers to a higher standard and be assured that this mistake will be fully investigated.”

Multiple officers can be seen in the video engaging with a suspect on the opposite side of the street, while what appears to be a rifle rests against a parked car. At one point, a student walks by the weapon but doesn’t seem to notice.

One police officer then walks a person down the street, while two other officers walk the opposite way with a person of their own – the weapon still left alone.

It’s not until a voice can be heard in the video yelling, “there’s an assault rifle left unattended,” that an officer saunters over to reclaim the gun and take it back to his patrol car.

Ha.  I hate it when that happens to me.  I remember the last time I laid one of my guns out on the sidewalk in my little town, and later when I went to pick it up the cops talked to me about the Youth Handgun Safety Act.  We all laughed and laughed and laughed.

I told them I just did it for fun and they understood, but said they expect better of me and will “fully investigate” if it ever happens again.

Kirkland Reporter:

A proposed bill would add harassment to a list of domestic violence crimes for which someone can have their firearm rights revoked.

SB 6298, sponsored by Senator Manka Dhingra, D-Redmond, adds harassment crimes in a domestic violence setting to existing law. The bill was heard on Tuesday.

Under both existing law and the Dhingra’s bill, a person must be convicted of a domestic violence felony or gross misdemeanor to have their firearm rights revoked.

Harassment, which is a gross misdemeanor, not a felony, would be included under the bill. Harassment includes physical threats or threats that instill reasonable fear and are likely to be carried out.

“We can’t ignore that these threats are promises to a victim,” Chris Anderson, director of the Domestic Violence Unit for the Seattle City Attorney’s Office, said.

Protective order cases, he said, often show patterns of domestic abuse, threats, and harassment that can be more serious than individual incidents reported in 911 calls.

“The most statistically significant thing we can do is remove firearms from the situation,” he said.

Anderson also said that because felony level domestic violence cases are sometimes hard to prove, the court might settle for a plea-bargained misdemeanor. Including misdemeanors, the bill would more accurately represent a perpetrator’s past history of violence.

Washington state already has a law prohibiting those convicted of domestic violence from owning a gun. That includes felonies like assault, stalking, death threats, or violating a protection order. When someone is convicted of a crime, he or she must surrender any firearms to the court. In 2014, the legislature enacted a law that someone must surrender their firearms to the court when there is a protection order issued against them. He or she can, however, petition the court to restore those rights.

Here is what she wants you to think is going to happen.  A man and woman separate, and the man calls his wife up and says something like this.  “I’m going to find myself a sniper’s hide and take you out when you walk out the door.”

In reality, it will be applied like this.  The word of the woman is all that will be needed.  No evidence beyond this will be required.  Furthermore, it might be something like this.  “I’m going to pick up my things because I need them.”

But Manka Dhingra is a social justice warrior.  It will pass in Washington because it’s just California North.  So goes the great Western American redoubt.

Army Times:

As Army leaders look to the service’s next standard issue rifle or carbine, a lot of options are on the table.

One such option has been around awhile but still strikes many U.S. troops as a futuristic form of the rifle they think they know.

This past fall, officials with the Army Maneuver Center of Excellence’s lethality branch laid out several concepts being considered for the Army’s Next Generation Squad weapon and likely new designs for the ultimate replacement for the M4.

Some of those include major advancements to the fire controls and a likely change in caliber. But one was a possible bullpup design.

Hey, that’s a swell idea.  Take the location where the explosion occurs, and the place where the initial sound wave goes greater than Mach 1 (not inside the barrel), and put it closer to the shooter’s ears.

Or otherwise, make wearing hearing protection with electronic communication with all of your teammates mandatory for all engagements, even unplanned ones.  Don’t patrol listening to the people or the crunch of the sticks in the bush, or even enemy fighters.

I read some forums today on noise from shooting, and the term “perceived noise” came up by some contributors.  There is no such thing as “perceived noise.”  That’s a myth.  Noise functions as dictated by Gauss’s law, where it increases or decreases as a function of the square of the distance.

I predict that use of the bullpup design will also make the shooters less accurate at distance than with any other design.

ABC News:

A wild mustang charging across an open plain is a symbol of the untamed majesty of nature. But the predators chasing these horses are anything but natural.

Controversy has broken out over the U.S. Bureau of Land Management‘s (BLM) practice of using helicopters to herd horses off public lands and sometimes permanently put them into holding facilities in an effort to control their population.

“Sometimes these horses get stampeded for miles and miles,” said Simone Netherlands, an animal rights activist and a spokesperson for the American Wild Horse Campaign.

Now the government is considering culling these animals for the first time in nearly 50 years, putting the lives of thousands of wild horses at stake.

Most of the U.S.’s estimated 75,000 wild horses live on public lands, usually vast expanses that the government controls in the American West.

Jim Schnepel, who knows Utah’s Onaqui Range and its horses well, works with a non-profit desperately trying to find a humane and effective way to control the wild horse population.

“Anybody who loves horses can tell you there’s this natural connection you can develop with them,” Schnepel said. “Certainly with specific members, you know, there’s no doubt that a few of them recognize me and I reckon I definitely recognize them.”

Although the land seems limitless, the BLM says the resources here only allow for the survival of a certain number.

“They’ve set what they call ‘appropriate management level,’ AML,” Schnepel said. “It would be about 75 percent reduction for what we have right now.”

Yea, that’s how I want my paycheck spent.  I want idiot lawyers inside the beltway writing regulations for the management of herd size.  In fact, that’s far better than, say, natural selection, or even capture and retraining the horses to work or pleasure ride by ranchers and others.

In fact, I want to buy a BLM sniper a brand new .300 Win Mag boltie and some high powered glass, maybe a Night Force scope.  Maybe they can practice their sniping skills for future use on Americans.  Maybe that will get their rocks off.

Where do I send my money.  Oh, wait.  They already take it.

Via TFB, FN has come out with a new pistol chambered in 5.56mm (or 300 BO).

Hey, great idea.  That’s really innovative.  No one else has thought of an AR pistol in 5.56mm before.

Now.  Go back, re-engineer it for the 5.7X28, knock $400 off the price, and you may have something there.

So says John Farnam:

The 5.56×45 cartridge (“militarized” version of the 223 Rem) lacks adequate range and penetration for military applications. This range/penetration problem is not soluble within that caliber, and never will be!

For domestic law enforcement and personal defense, the 5.56×45 is acceptable.

But, in a battle rifle, the 5.56 comes up short. I’ve lived through a least half-dozen attempts to “improve” the cartridge, and provide it with satisfactory range and penetration. Each succeeding “wonder bullet,” despite all the promotion, has failed to live up to the hype!

The Pentagon needs to worry less about a new rifle, and more about a new caliber!

We need, once more, a 500m rifle that shoots bullets that actually go THROUGH things! We don’t have anything close to that now!

This is ridiculous.  The Army doesn’t even teach their soldiers to shoot 500 yards, much less can they afford the weight of carrying around heavier ammunition.

The Marine Corps doesn’t need it because they teach their Marines to shoot 500 yards and the 5.56m does fine.  Furthermore, they rely on designated marksmen for longer range shooting anyway, and some of the time they use .308 but some of the time they use 5.56mm.  For the really long range applications, they shoot a .50 Sasser.

This is a tired argument.  Before anyone makes this claim again, they need to teach soldiers to shoot and see how it goes.  If you want something heavier, switch to the 77 gr. Sierra Match King.  Much of the enemy shoots 7.62X39, and Russia shoots 5.45mm.  You don’t hear them complaining.

Via reddit/r/firearms:

I’m a female in my early 30’s in a european country where guns are absolutely forbidden.

Whenever I talk to my friends and express my opinion about firearms they get ballistic and enraged about my views, calling me all sorts and seeing me as a paranoid monster who contributes with my views to gun related deaths and crimes. I think it makes them feel more sophisticated to hate arms.

The general ideology here is that guns are bad and it’s good they are forbidden for own sake.

But I don’t understand why I don’t have the right to protect myself should anything happen. Forks can also be used as a deadly weapon, and you don’t see them banned or made illegal. It’s about common sense. But why can a burglar get in my house to rob me and I can’t have the right to a gun for basic protection? How many women, and men, could have saved themselves had they had a gun? How many people raped could have shot their attacker had they had the right to own a gun?

Having a gun doesn’t mean I’m gonna use it lightly or gonna shoot someone in an argument or in the heat of the moment.

I just want a weapon to protect myself and my loved ones.

About 2 years back, while working in a bar, someone came in to rob us, yielding a knife, it was a very scary experience but luckily a couple of boys from the local rugby team were there for drinks and could manage to stop him, we called the police but the guy got away.During the chaos he repeatedly threatened to rape and kill my coworker and I and said he’d come back to get us.

The police didn’t do much since the guy got away, they just drove around in their car to see if they could find someone matching the description we gave.

And he indeed came back another day after closing the bar at night when we were alone, but my coworker saw him before he could get in and closed the bar doors, then called the police.

Until the police arrived he stayed outside throwing tables and chairs on the terrace against the bar window, banging on the door, screaming he was gonna rape and kill us and detailing how, calling us names, saying he had followed us home and knew where we live.

Again the police came with the sirens on, so the guy run away again. We told the police we feared he’d do something to us and they saw we had a few huge kitchen knives placed all over the bar counter for protection, they advised against it and said we could get in big trouble if we actually used the knives, so we asked if we could buy a couple of pepper sprays for protection, but the police informed us they were illegal to use and could again get us in trouble. Same with teasers or any other weapon for protection.

We went and bought a couple of pepper sprays anyway, we had to give our ID in the shop where they registered we had bought them, because they are legal to buy but illegal to use.

During the next weeks we were lucky to have friends who would stay in the bar with us at closing time and would walk us home. Both my coworker and I quit a couple of months later for unrelated reasons, but I’ll never forget what is like having to go to work fearing some crazy weirdo would attack or rape us. I didn’t mention he was identified by the rugby guys as one of the members of a local gang, which made it scarier. We felt real fear for our lives.

That’s when I started feeling more passionate about guns and the right to protect myself. How come some weirdo can come to rob us, threaten to kill and rape us, and our only protection measure is calling the police and hoping they catch him?

We couldn’t even protect ourselves with a pepper spray, how outrageous it is that someone could hurt me and I have to let him because I have no other means to protect myself? So, I very much envy other countries where people can feel safe should anything bad happen, they have the means to protect themselves and their families.

Now I carry a 5 inches pocket knife and a pepper spray in my purse at all times, even knowing if I got attacked and used it to defend myself, I could potentially end up in legal trouble. I’d also get in trouble if I’m randomly searched by the police, since it’s illegal to carry a knife. But I rather pay a fine than being raped and not having a weapon to defend myself. Again my friends think I’m dramatic and should I get raped or attacked that’s why we have a judicial system, to put them people in jail. And then they say you can’t live like a paranoid, living in fear. But don’t see it that way, I acknowledge crimes happen and to me, the logical measure is to have protection, I don’t think I’m a ‘paranoid’ I think I’m aware of the world I live in and my right to have protection should be respected and encouraged.

As as side note, someone in my town who also had a bar and lived above it, got robbed one night, when he heard noise downstairs and realized he was being robbed, he got a crowbar, went downstairs and beat the shit out of the thief, seriously damaging him, I don’t remember the details but the guy got sent to the hospital badly injured. Now guess who ended up in jail for a long time? The bar owner, for using excessive force and bludgeoning him. Nothing happened to the thief, nothing, no time, nothing!

The system is f***** up in my country and I am being denied the right to protect myself. The system is in favor of all the wrong people, giving them advantage by depriving us the right to own firearms.

Now, I’m not a gun fanatic, when I speak about this people compare me to gun fanatics and stereotype me. Now, I lean towards the left (if any), I respect everyone, I pay my taxes and do everything by the book, I work, pay my bills, you have your opinions, I have mine, mine are not better than yours, just mine. You have the right to believe what you want, so do I, but we both have the right to protect our family and loved ones.

Being pro-gun doesn’t make me a kkk hillbilly with no teeth.

The entire continent has lost its soul.  They cannot even construct an argument for defense of their lives as being made in God’s image.

Via WRSA.