09:55 – Last night was the first of the season where our low got down into the 30’s (~ 3C). When I took Colin out first thing this morning, the breeze made the wind chill below freezing. Our first night below actual freezing is normally on 10/31. We may beat that this year.
With four weeks to go until the election, things are getting messy, as was predictable and predicted. As Buffalo Springfield sang nearly 50 years ago, “There’s battle lines being drawn…”. Literally, not figuratively. Trump, who not long ago would have been considered a moderate left Democrat, is bizarrely now the right’s last best hope. The Alinskyite/Trotksyite progressives now own both the Democrat and Republican parties. Candidates who not long ago would have been considered middle-of-the-road are now cast as hard right, if not outright Nazis. Something’s going to break, and break badly. Meanwhile, we Normals stand aghast watching this Kabuki theater, without a candidate to call our own. We’re a patient, well-behaved bunch, but patience has its limits. We can be pushed too far, and that point is rapidly approaching, if it hasn’t occurred already. I’m seeing one sentiment expressed more and more often: “Is it time yet to start shooting?” I’m afraid for the more radical Normals, the answer is becoming, “Yes!”
You’ll know it’s happening when you start to see news stories about left-wing politicians, which is to say nearly all of them, being assassinated. There must be a million or more Normals with the equipment and skills to take down a human-size target at 300 yards or more. If even 0.01% of them start shooting, things would get very interesting very fast.
There is an important article on the Daily Mail that should be of great interest to Mr. SteveF:
Why do some farts smell worse than others?
A new chapter in his Book of Fart Jokes.
“There must be a million or more Normals with the equipment and skills to take down a human-size target at 300 yards or more.”
Including me. It’s tricky but I can still do it, and with iron sights, no scope. That’s three football fields. With my bifocals, I have 20-30 vision. This, of course, assumes a stationary or very slowly moving target. It’s meant getting out and shooting the gun, surprisingly. Less time watching innernet, Toob and DVDs. The range up the road is adjacent to a fairly substantial sand and gravel operation and lots of woods, and on most days I might be the only fummamucker out there. I can’t afford to blow tons of ammo every week but I get out every month.
This is with the economically priced S&W AR15 Sporter, and the only thing I’ve put on it is a standard-issue G.I. sling. I read through the Marine Corps manual of rifle skillz and that was it. I wanna see if I can extend the range a bit at some point with a good optic, and with the Ruger American in .308 and a decent scope.
Where I will need hands-on training is with CQB skillz and the AR- and AK-type carbines.
But let’s not forget that the biggest likelihood of us having to use firearms to defend ourselves, families and property is gonna be with a handgun. At home or out somewhere. Right now I’m working the disassembly, cleaning and tinkering with various handguns but again, I’ll need hands-on for the CQB skillz. When I worked for Uncle all those years ago I was mainly a machine gunner, and in the cop jobs, we only “qualified” with revolvers once a year, plus whatever shooting we did at stationary targets on our own.
So my advice is learn your handguns really well FIRST. Weekly if not daily practice with drawing, weak hand, malfunctions, low-light conditions, etc.
With regard to the “election;” anything can indeed happen in the next month, however my best guess now is that the Evil Half of the Party will engineer or finagle something to ensure that the Creature will nail down the Electoral College votes. And that will be that. Despite Pat Buchanan’s current cheerleading for Trump allegedly “winning” the “debate” the other night.
If that’s the case, then we can reckon on her attempting to accelerate the loss of our national sovereignty, her dream of “open borders” and mass immigration hordes, the next world war (possibly with nukes), and the absolute repression and continued machinations of our national security surveillance state. The question then becomes, how long will she last? As we have seen over the decades, that office beats the shit out of its occupants; their hair turns gray, they age dramatically, and the constant rapid-treadmill of shit to deal with never stops. And she’s a physical, medical and mental wreck already.
If she becomes totally incapacitated or dead (oh please!) we’ll end up with the VP drone, unless they really pull out the stops and give it to Larry again, but he might croak before she does.
Or The Prophet, Barack Hussein Soetero may decide that Russian interference is a cause for major “national security” concerns, and he’ll cancel the election or declare it null and void and remain in office for a while longer.
It’s gonna be a wild ride, kids; wheeeeeeeeeee!
Wikileaks has proven without a doubt that CNN is in the tank for crusty Cankles. Will anybody give a shit?
Not just CNN; all of the MSM is in the tank for her. Totally. One of the previous moderators is an adviser to her campaign. Meanwhile the nooz came out recently that Feebie Director Comey has taken MILLIONS from the Clinton Foundation while his brother does their fucking taxes.
Did anybody give a shit about THAT?
Crickets.
As RBT and I have said many times; they can do whatever the fuck they want and get away with it.
“Why Microsoft doesn’t need Windows anymore”
http://www.infoworld.com/article/3128394/microsoft-windows/why-microsoft-doesnt-need-windows-anymore.html
“It was a crazy idea, really: one operating system that would run on a zillion different hardware combinations. Yet Windows turned out to be the foundation of Microsoft’s incredibly dominant empire.”
“But there were problems with Windows from the beginning. It was mainly the responsibility of the hardware vendor to build a system that was Windows-compatible, but then there were updates, drivers, service packs, new versions … and decades later we’re still dealing with the compatibility mess InfoWorld’s Woody Leonhard reports on day after day.”
Crazy.
You’ll know it’s happening when you start to see news stories about left-wing politicians, which is to say nearly all of them, being assassinated. There must be a million or more Normals with the equipment and skills to take down a human-size target at 300 yards or more. If even 0.01% of them start shooting, things would get very interesting very fast.
Scary. And if Clinton wins, there are a lot of good old boys in the South gonna be real upset if she goes after the first amendment, the second amendment, and the fourth amendment. I am still extremely amazed that “journalists” support her when she wants to only give 1A freedom to “registered” and “government approved” journalists. Of course, Bracken wrote a story about this:
https://westernrifleshooters.wordpress.com/2014/04/17/repost-brackens-what-i-saw-at-the-coup/
The real question is, did either Comey say “pussy” on tape? Well, then, who cares what else they did or did not do?
On that topic, given than Trump is obviously unfit to be Prez, I think I should be the nominee. If anyone comes up with a tape of me saying pussy in reference to naughty bits, it’s a fake, on account of practically the only time I use the word is in calling a man a coward. I mean, sure, I have no notable accomplishments to my name and I’m not conspicuously law-abiding and I don’t even want to be Prez… uh, well, those first two put me pretty well on par with Coffin Illary (and I’m much more honest than that lying bitch, talk about damning with faint praise) and the third should damned well be a requirement, but… uh, really, don’t vote for me. I don’t wanna be Prez and you can’t make me!
“And if Clinton wins, there are a lot of good old boys in the South gonna be real upset if she goes after the first amendment, the second amendment, and the fourth amendment.”
Most of the vociferous resistance that I’ve been reading online and hearing about otherwise seems to be coming from the southern states, and if I had to pick a couple that stand out in my mind, they’d be NC and WV. Further south, Georgia and Alabama. I consider Texas a western state.
Good ol’ boys up here in the Northeast can be found in the small towns and rural areas, but we’ve been pretty quiet for a while now. We’re surrounded, for one thing, and living in the belly of the purple beast. If SHTF like Selco has seen and written about, this whole quarter of the U.S. will become like the former Yugoslavia. Neighbor against neighbor.
I’m probably OK with the immediately local neighbors in the village here and surrounding town out to about a mile or two, but even here we have several SJW and prog types. But my brothers down in MA are truly surrounded by idiots and typical Murkan derps with not too much between their ears, and their AOs are controlled politically by the usual lefty suspects. MA also has truly nasty firearms laws, regulations and ordinances, which get worse by the week with that insane AG they have now. My memories of the political atmosphere down there stink; we were/are always BADLY outnumbered, a tiny ragtag band of miscreants who spent more time fighting among ourselves while the progs all worked off the same playbook, ingrained upon their putrid souls.
As for “journalists,” the genuine people doing this work have been utterly marginalized and operate in the pages between all the MSM crap that inundates us all every minute of the day. We can count on one hand, if that, reliable news sources in this country now. Those in the MSM who support the demolition of the Bill of Rights must think they’re gonna be exempt, like their political masters. I have news for them.
“…practically the only time I use the word is in calling a man a coward.”
Same here, but the fems don’t like that word anyway, no matter how we use it, almost as bad as the c-word. Mrs. OFD doesn’t even like me using the word “douche” or its variants, one of which has entered the public lexicon via a MrAtoz, reportedly working voting scams out there in Lost Wages.
“I don’t wanna be Prez and you can’t make me!”
There is no genuine “President” anymore, anyway. We have a National Administrator, who does the bidding of his or her masters among the actual ruling junta in this gigantic banana republic empire.
What job does OFD want? Military Governor of Novacadia. Among my first tasks will be the hanging, shooting, and beheading of several million progs and SJWs, if they can’t be re-educated. I predict most of them will come from the MA cities, primarily Boston/Cambridge, which will likely become ghost towns after I’m done and we can give that land back to my Native American brothers and sisters, lol.
“…practically the only time I use the word is in calling a man a coward.”
Same here, but the fems don’t like that word anyway, no matter how we use it, almost as bad as the c-word. Mrs. OFD doesn’t even like me using the word “douche” or its variants, one of which has entered the public lexicon via a MrAtoz, reportedly working voting scams out there in Lost Wages.
You are whipped. And sadly, so am I.
As Heinlein said:
The perfect demonstration of this is my mother in law. She regularly complains about the high cost of her insulin, which is the only thing keeping her from being a corpse. The number one reason her insulin costs so much is that the manufacturer keeps spending money on stupid things, for example they spent $1 billion in 1978 to pay Genentech to genetically engineer E. coli bacteria to produce insulin. Mind you that was just to create the bacteria.
“The GOP civil war is finally here. And Trump is winning.”
http://www.cnbc.com/2016/10/11/the-gop-civil-war-is-finally-here-and-trump-is-winning-commentary.html
“There may be no winners in the end of this intramural battle, but the only one who can win is Trump. And that’s why Trump should not just continue to play up this growing rift with the establishment, he should play it up as much as possible.”
“Democracy can be ugly.”
“Trump still looks like he wants to fight and fight hard. The Republicans in Congress look like they want to run and hide. Because that’s what losers do.”
I agree. But there is a problem. Trump is having to shore up his base right now when he should be making googly eyes at the “independent voters”. I think that Trump is toast.
Unless, unless, there is a significant surge of voters who have not voted in the federal elections in years. I am hearing of incredible numbers, such as 20%, of the electorate voting for the first time in decades. I don’t believe that the number will be 20% though, probably more like 5%. And 5% cannot push Trump across the finish line. Shoot, Illary will have somewhere between 5 to 10% of the dead rising and voting again.
“if I had to pick a couple that stand out in my mind, they’d be NC and WV”
Rather the mountains of western NC and VA and eastern TN, along with all of WV, up into far SE OH and SW PA, and down into GA. Basically, the southern Appalachians.
I don’t wanna be Prez and you can’t make me!
I will vote for anyone who says this and actually means it. The person should be still screaming this after ten lashes in order to be the perfect candidate for me.
“Basically, the southern Appalachians.”
That’s about what I figure, too; throw in the northern Appalachians, where folks have spent many a winter choosing between heating oil and groceries while they watch and listen to what is happening in this country and who makes out like big dawgs and who doesn’t. A lot of hunters in this crowd, which has generally been pretty quiet. But they’re tired of being constantly screwed. The northern Apps end at Baxter Peak/Mount Katahdin in Maine, which is the largest and poorest New England state.
” I think that Trump is toast.”
I tend to agree. The ruling oligarchy doesn’t want him; he’ll upset too many more applecarts of theirs. They’ll rig the EC to let her win in a virtual landslide but like I say, she won’t last very long. It’s a win-win for the oligarchs; she gets to be Prez for a short while and all who focused on how there just hadda be a woman Prez will be happy, briefly. But once she can no longer function, the “safe” caretaker/janitor VP will get the job and things can return back to “normal” as they see it, i.e., continued looting and war-making while the getting is still good.
Try lashing me and I will kick your ass!
Unless you mean it in the sense of “lash him to some cute 20-something” … in which case I will still kick your ass. I’m not big on being compelled to do any damned thing, and it would be pretty rude to the girl, too.
That’s about what I figure, too; throw in the northern Appalachians, where folks have spent many a winter choosing between heating oil and groceries while they watch and listen to what is happening in this country and who makes out like big dawgs and who doesn’t. A lot of hunters in this crowd, which has generally been pretty quiet. But they’re tired of being constantly screwed. The northern Apps end at Baxter Peak/Mount Katahdin in Maine, which is the largest and poorest New England state.
This is where my father-in-law is from. North of Binghamton, NY, in Chenango Forks. 40 acres at 4,000 ft elevation. Very poor country and and now an average age of 60+ ??? My FIL has told me several times that eating potatoes three times a day for six months in the winter gets a little old. But seven kids eat a lot of food and they did have lots of potatoes in the basement bin. His father went to NYC for a week at time to work as a carpenter.
And what is this heating oil stuff ? They used coal and wood to heat their house back in the 1930s and 1940s. And two outhouses that were NOT heated. My wife has testified that those seats were awful cold in January as they did not get an indoor potty until 1980 ???.
If the election is blatantly stolen, either on Nov 8 or through Electoral College shenanigans, the answer will be Yes. If Trump loses honestly — and it has to have the appearance of honesty, none of this “120% of registered voters voted for Hillary” nonsense — that’s fine. If it’s stolen? Well, the ballot box has been taken away, and all that’s left is the bullet box.
Yep. Sounds awful familiar. I was east and north of there, but it was poor even before the Carter recession. Now the area’s aging and most everything that brings in revenue has left. On the plus side, cars are better and highways are better, so a chunk of the county works in the cities an hour away. On the minus side, a bedroom community an hour’s commute away is not sustainable long-term; people will move to have a shorter commute.
(Exceptions for major metropolises, where “only” an hour is considered a short commute.)
Not as old as eating potatoes two times a day, and only one for the last month. We weren’t quite that poor, but some of the hill kids, and poorer city kids, were. In the 1970s.
To go off on a bit of a tangent, that’s what pisses me off the most about the wreckers we have. The United States is so friggin rich that essentially no one has to miss a meal or make do with a single set of clothes or live in a lean-to. There’s a reason that 90% of everyone in the world would like to come here. And the wreckers want to not only destroy the economic engine that made us so rich, they want to allow 90% of everyone in the world to come here and share the wealth we created. If anything calls for The Night of the Long Knives, trying to reduce all but the elite to peasant status would be it.
The United States is so friggin rich that essentially no one has to miss a meal or make do with a single set of clothes or live in a lean-to.
Was rich. Now we have a $19 trillion debt and hundreds of trillions of dollars to pay out for social security, medicare, and medicaid alone. I am not even wanting to talk about federal employee pensions and the entourages of five former presidents until they and their wives pass on. Maybe even for Chelsea. Plus the ongoing costs of having troops in 65 countries. Plus the interest rates on all that debt is at 2% with an average maturity of less than a year. Just wait until it goes to 5%. Or 8%. Plus 60 million people on food stamps which is growing at 20% per year. Plus, plus, plus.
The USA is no longer rich. We just think we are. We may be driving Cadillacs but all we can afford is used Chevrolets.
HE’S HERE! HE’S HERE! THE GREAT MAN IS HERE! WE’RE SAVED!
http://www.wjhg.com/content/news/Crowd-builds-for-Trump-rally-in-Panama-City-Beach-396717731.html
it would be pretty rude to the girl, too
And disappointing.
“HE’S HERE! HE’S HERE! THE GREAT MAN IS HERE! WE’RE SAVED!”
Thanks for the guffaw you just created for me; I needed one. Excellent. Yes, the great Wizard of Oz is here! But behind the curtain is just another Cloud Person who’s always been a great pal of Killary and her wunnerful podunk husband. Maybe he really does love the country and its people, and if so, that’s a shame, ’cause they gon do his ass in with the EC or something else.
As for eating spuds every day in the Northeast winters, we never got that bad off; my dad worked his ass off at, first, steam power plant jobs, and then into mechanical boiler and machinery engineering, so he was a skilled fummamucker, and his pay got us decent houses, nothing fancy (us boys shared bedrooms), a car, and three squares a day, plus decent birthdays and Xmas. And our grandparents had done OK, too, one the water commish for the city of New Bedford and the other a 39-year mailman with a working wife, director of the school lunch program for the Fairhaven schools, and a working spinster daughter, CPA in Boston. So I guess we were middle-class yokels back then. Besides my late aunt, I’m the only one to finish college with a degree.
It was in English lit, so now I’m rightfully an unemployed loser bum who should be exterminated in a just society, but I know some chit about guns and explosives and computers so I might still be useful.
Boffo laffs here:
http://freedomoutpost.com/the-official-hillary-for-prison-theme-songs/
As for eating spuds every day in the Northeast winters, we never got that bad off;
My grandfather in north Texas was expected to bring in a squirrel or two every day for their three potato meals a day in the winter. They had pigs and a cow but those were for cash sales in town.
I wonder how many people in the USA could plant, grow, and harvest enough potatoes to feed themselves through a winter ? I’ve never grown potatoes in my life.
I wonder how many people in the USA could plant, grow, and harvest enough potatoes to feed themselves through a winter ?
Hey, if that dude on Mars can do it, so can you! That’s a real story, you know. Start saving your shit up in those buckets you bought. You’ll need it to add bacteria to the sterile soil Putin is giving us after Cankles incites him to NUKE’EM! That’s it, Cankles, poke him in the eye a few more times. Call him a raycis, too. He’s WHITE after all and in power.
You’ll need it to add bacteria to the sterile soil Putin is giving us after Cankles incites him to NUKE’EM! That’s it, Cankles, poke him in the eye a few more times. Call him a raycis, too. He’s WHITE after all and in power.
“Russian Government Officials Told To Immediately Bring Back Children Studying Abroad”
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-10-11/russian-government-officials-told-immediately-bring-back-children-studying-abroad
Hey Illary and Obola. You know you only get so many pokes before the pokee hauls off and hits you with a two by four, right ? The problem is that we ALL get hit with the two by four.
While the media has us all looking at the Trump tape, Russia has told it’s citizens and diplomats who have children outside the country to bring them home at once. Are we told that Putin canceled his visit to Paris or that the former Soviet Union just finished the largest civil defense exercise in 40 years? Russia is upgrading and expanding it’s nuclear arsenal while we cut our aging warheads. And Hillary is talking aggressively about Syria, making things worse. I haven’t really worried about nukes for 30 years. Now I do again.
Obozo and the rest of the state dept clowns have made us vulnerable on the world stage. Our weak response to terror, treating it as a crime while calling it war, and letting our ambassadors be murdered by terrorist has emboldened our enemies everywhere. Enemies who have shown that they just don’t give a fuck what “the world” thinks of their actions.
I hope like hell we don’t reap the whirlwind.
n
Hey, sow the wind and reap the whirlwind. What? Huh? Quit bothering me, man, I’m watching “Murka’s Got Talent” and my damn pizza ain’t arrived yet and I’m almost outta ciggies! Fuck!
And speaking of the D-word…
https://www.flickr.com/photos/expd/29964547820/
A despairing view of feminism and the lunatic matriarchy:
http://thezman.com/wordpress/?p=8721
Cankles keeps piling up the corpses…
https://westernrifleshooters.wordpress.com/2016/10/11/bracken-sends-86/comment-page-1/#comment-191019
“Why Microsoft doesn’t need Windows anymore”
Not happening. Windows 10 wouldn’t include VB6 runtime files if it was that easy.
Microsoft got away with pulling the plug on XP. Sorta. Windows 7 x86_64 will be muuuuch harder to sunset.
The local PD runs its fingerprint scanning machine off Windows XP. The cop doing my prints and I had a chuckle over it. Meanwhile an aspiring young IT drone can now get certified in the marriage of Windows, Azure and Linux, a three-way!
Here is a representative excerpt from a piece on firearms and training stuff:
“The older generation of survivalists who grew up in an era when the AR15 was less reliable tend to be very fond of full size .308 battle rifles for all situations. A myriad of multi volume prepper novels will be sure to point out the superiority of the HK91 over the poodle shooter 5.56 rifles or how great God’s Gun in .45 ACP will hit someone in the arm and go back in time and kill their grandparents.”
http://zerogov.com/?p=4878
As someone who finally got rid of my last win98 box last month, and still runs winxp on a couple of laptops, MS sunsetting ANYTHING is problematic for someone. I’m sure there are still single purpose boxes running apps on obsolete OSs all over the place, from big business to military command and control. Some (most?) .mil contracts specify a 20 year life for replacement parts and machines… We bought a whole trailer load of one piece of tech and just parked it to provide spares for that system (when the particular tech went EOL.)
I know from discussions with other techs that there are building management and control systems still in use that require DOS running on hardware for config and reports, no emulation or virtualization here. I know from experience that there are Motorola radios in use that require x286 hardware and DOS for config. I recently spoke with a tech who paid really good money for a running 286 system.
MS can do whatever they want with the crufty old POS that still has 16 bit code in it, adopted the ‘fresh catch of the day’ with an app based focus that no desktop user wants, and keeps adding ‘features’ to programs that already have so many features that the average user might use 3%. I’ll fight tooth and nail to avoid the next iteration of the behemoth, and I won’t be alone.
nick
Yo, we down to one Windows machine now, my wife’s netbook/laptop. She was OK with me moving off Windows 8.1 on our main desktop to Mint 18 and is happy with it so far. Printer prints and scans; innernet browers are FASTER loading; sound system works; email works; and still running the Perfect Privacy VPN with nary a problem. The only conceivable situation that I can think of where I might use a Windows machine again, probably a laptop, would be to run the Ghost Gunner machine. In that case, I’d simply borrow wife’s netbook/laptop for an overnight run periodically. Or spring for a cheap-ass refurbished one somewhere. It’ll run on Linux but they’re probably still at the alpha/beta stage for that working, and I won’t feel like configuring and tweaking a bunch of bash command files to get it running. Or maybe I will, we’ll see.
Wife is in Denver and not having a good time; class is OK, but her employers are increasingly being total DICKS about everything. The more boat-loads of money they haul in from their top producers, like wifey, who’s done 140 classes for them so far, the worse they get.
I’ll be sliding down to MA next Thursday to visit my 84-year-old mom-with-Pick’s-Disease at her residence/nursing home, and also my brothers and sister and nephew and nieces, if they’re around. Then over to Hartford, CT to link up with wife overnight and we’ll drive back up here the next day, Friday, when she gets done for the day. I’ll be doing a bit of SHTF-related recon between eastern MA and CT accordingly.
@ofd, yeah I’m seeing a split or change in direction in the self defense and defensive shooting world too. All that military training does very little for civilian defensive shooters. Square up to the target is great if you have on armor. Two handed weapon control also great, but look at gunfight videos and the defender rarely gets time to get into a ‘proper’ stance. The focus of fit male trainers, who shoot for a living, means NOTHING to me when I’ve got my kids along. I can’t “just don’t be there” and I can’t run away (retreat.) I’ve likely got 50 pounds hanging from my neck.
Some trainers are waking up to those realities though and beginning to develop technique for the real world. <– and that is part of it. It occurs to me that almost all of what has been 'canon' in the SD world for the last 40 years was THEORY. The truth is that very few people got in gun fights and it was NEVER the pro authors and trainers. Legal carry by ordinary folks was rare and the goblins didn't rule the earth. Now we've got a large- much larger- group of ordinary people who can and do need to defend themselves against threats that have evolved far beyond what Cooper or others thought in their worst nightmares. These people aren't use of force professionals. They can't train extensively. They probably have their kids along. Their experience is different, their SEX is different, and their tactics are by necessity different.
Yes putting rounds on target is still critical, but lots of people shot well with the 'cup and saucer' and one handed, and lots still do. You'd think they were all half retarded monkeys for all the credit most current trainers would give them. And the current defender is almost never ALONE. So much of the tactics taught have the inbuilt idea that the defender is by HIMself. Cops on patrol, vigilantes, who knows, but it's all individuals with no non-combatants along or considered.
This is slowly starting to change. And it's about time.
nick
“This is slowly starting to change. And it’s about time.”
+1,000
And there’s those of us in our senile dotage, too, who can’t dart around like frantic minnows between cover, concealment and moving off the X like some gym rat pro shooter can do, or a 22-year-old Ranger or Marine. Some of us are also large targets ourselves, lol. As I stumble around in the dark with a bad back, half-awake, I’ll get riddled like a damn Swiss cheese. Maybe. But hey, if they feel froggy, let ’em c’mon in and try it. Hopefully the noise and racket of doors being caved in and thugs rushing inside will give me a few seconds to get ready. Plus the dawg barking.
Out and about and in and outta the car? No toddlers to tote around, but I’m in at least Condition Yellow anyway and looking around all the time, situational awareness kicked up a notch; the VA peeps dealing with PTSD call this “hyper-vigilance,” derived, of course, from prior combat experiences. And in my case, additional LEO work, mostly at night and alone.
So finally the training is being developed for other than pro trainer commandos and former Seals, hooray!
@nick,
As I recall Secret Service agents are the only LEOs who train to shoot one handed.
[snip] In that case, I’d simply borrow wife’s netbook/laptop for an overnight run periodically. Or spring for a cheap-ass refurbished one somewhere. [snip]
The laptop I have was purchased as a closeout when Vista was being euthanized. I bought it specifically because it was easy to swap hard drives, and the first thing I did was pull the drive, insert a freshly purchased clean drive, and install a Linux flavor. I still have the Vista drive, and bring it up about once every six months.
[snip] As I recall Secret Service agents are the only LEOs who train to shoot one handed. [snip]
A good friend is the firearms coordinator for the local PD. Last year he went to coastal Georgia for a two week long shooting school run by the feds. It was a mixture of federal, state, and local LEOs, and according to him they did a huge amount of oddball shooting configurations. And FWIW, the top shot in the class was an air marshall, it was ‘scary’ how good the guy was. The purpose of the whole thing was so that my friend could modify & improve his department’s training.
Air marshals have an emphasis on accuracy that no other agency can match. There are even specific “air marshal” drills designed to test it. I’m not sure how much of that is ‘trained’ vs ‘talent’. If it’s required to be a good shot, you only pass and accept good shots….
“As I recall Secret Service agents are the only LEOs who train to shoot one handed”
I know most agencies have a test requirement for “off hand” competency but I would be surprised if there was much specific training of ANYTHING. Most public shooting incidents show cops to be poor shots. NYC especially.
When I had my dominant arm in a sling for much of a year, I got training on offhand, and single hand. To do it accurately takes some different technique (and practice .) Most defensive situations are ‘inside the room’ distances or even contact range. Some people are starting to train for long range headshots, due to the terrorist/active shooter threat. Most attacks though, seem to be a race to draw and fire before getting grabbed.
nick
Many ‘specialized’ devices run on Windows embeded versions. When you see devices like a fingerprint scanner or ATM look closer and you find Win XP or Win 7 embeded behind them. Some never even give you a glimpse of the OS. I seen many medical machines like that. Once they’re up and running there is very little reason to change things as they are often rock-solid.
Two years ago I saw an ATM booting up. It was running OS/2, which is still (under a different name, different supplier) supported according to Wikipedia.
Obuttwad has a boner and flaunts it (from Drudge, both sites is being swamped):
https://news.grabien.com/story-video-2008-campaign-appears-show-obama-flaunting-erection-fe
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGJIB5cO0cQ&noredirect=1
BTW, thinking things over, I believe trump was talking about a way to attract women is to use a little kitten. Unfortunately he was using the vernacular of where he grew up in New York, Jamaica Estates, Queens (considered the wrong side of the tracks).
Unless they are also hobbyist shooters, most cops are horrible shots, better than goblins (many of whom hold their pistols sideways) but nowhere near as good as civilian hobbyist pistol shooters.
The average cop fires 50 or 100 rounds per year at one or two qualification sessions, which are almost always run at known distances on fixed paper targets in broad daylight. Blame that on budget. It costs money to take a cop out of service for training, and ammo isn’t cheap.
To confirm this, the local NRA instructor is a retired police officer. He realized that cops are lousy shots with guns, so for that reason he wore his vest every day for his last ten years on the force. His job the last 10 years on the force? Firearms instructor.
“I’ve never grown potatoes in my life.”
Harvesting them manually is back-breaking and hard on the hands, even if the rows were turned over mechanically first. I used to do it as a kid for pocket money.
“The older generation … tend to be very fond of full size .308 battle rifles for all situations.
As does anyone whose concern is that the shootee fall down dead rapidly in all situations. IMHO .375 would be better than .308.
“I still have the Vista drive, and bring it up about once every six months.”
Whyever would you do that, after having upgraded to Linux?
“… the top shot in the class was an air marshall, it was ‘scary’ how good the guy was.”
Consider that the Air Marshall’s life and that of a hundred or more passengers might well depend on his landing good hits and landing them only where intended, and one sees that he has an incentive to be scary good with his weapon.
My son worked several years as a cop in a very small town in rural Oklahoma. His most frequent call was a “confused” older woman who was convinced that the FBI and Aliens were peeping in her windows and bugging her phone. When the force hired a young and attractive woman, who was assigned to 3rd shift patrols with the chief so he could give her “special training” my son knew he would have to move on. At the range for her third attempt at pistol qualification, this young woman complained that there was “something wrong” with her pistol. She couldn’t get the .45 Colt ACP cartridges to fit in her S&W .40 pistol magazine. This was the final straw. I was able to hire my son away from the force to run my business and he didn’t have to deal with the sexual drama of the force any longer.
PostScript: The woman officers husband was informed of the affair by the chiefs wife. A shootout ensued, oddly no one was hurt or even charged. followed by two divorces.
“She couldn’t get the .45 Colt ACP cartridges to fit in her S&W .40 pistol magazine.”
Didn’t she have a hammer?