More Defensive Gun Use

If the Brady's had their way, these two women would not have been rescued and very well might now be dead. It is my belief that the criminal in this story got what he deserved, and now thanks to a Good Samaritan with a gun, this piece of trash won't be clogging up our already heavily overcrowded prison system and costing the tax payers thousands and thousands of dollars.

-Yuri

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Sex offender fatally shot

Brighton man kills man attacking pair of women

By Sherri Drake (Contact)
Wednesday, February 20, 2008

A Brighton man shot and killed a 44-year-old registered sex offender who attacked two women in their home early Tuesday morning, officials said.

According to Dist. Atty. Gen. Mike Dunavant, David Fleming charged into the home of two women at about 3 a.m. Tuesday.

Fleming bound the women but one escaped and ran to a nearby home. Dunavant said Fleming, who lived in Munford, intended to rape the women.

The woman who escaped went to the home of Keith Ingram for help, Dunavant said.

Ingram, carrying a .40-caliber handgun, ran to the house and found Fleming attacking the other woman, officials said.

When Fleming tried to attack Ingram, Dunavant said Ingram shot Fleming once.

Tipton County Sheriff's deputies and Brighton Police officers found Fleming dead on the front porch of the home.

Fleming had been convicted of attempted rape in Tipton County. He's listed on the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation's sex-offender registry.

Dunavant said Ingram has no criminal record and has a permit to carry the handgun.

The women who were attacked were treated at Baptist Memorial Hospital-Tipton.

TBI officials are assisting with the case. The Shelby County Medical Examiner will conduct an autopsy. Investigators took statements from several witnesses Tuesday. The shooting is still under investigation.

Disaster Preparedness

I've been thinking for a long time about improving my preparedness for an emergency situation. I have food in the pantry to last a short time, but no water, which bothers me. Plus, a lot of the food I have needs to be cooked.

According to the American Red Cross, I should have at least three days worth of food and water on hand at all times. They go on to say that the food should be of the ready to eat variety and require no water or cooking. It seems to me that three days food is actually too little based on the length of some recent emergencies. Katrina anyone?

As far as ammunition goes, I've got a decent amount for the guns that I have, but not enough to last in a prolonged emergency. As soon as I get ahead financially I intend to rectify that situation.

As for the gun situation, I have a decent shotgun and some old, but still very capable mil-surp rifles and decent handguns in common calibers. I have to say though that I'm considering selling the SKS. No matter what I do I can't seem to hit the broadside of a barn with it. *sigh*

I'd like to get peoples opinions on what consumables and ammunition I should be stocking for a "rainy day". I feel uncomfortable in my current situation, supplies wise.

Any suggestions?

Good Tunes

Marty Robbins has always been one of my favorite singers. He died in 1982 of complications following cardiac surgery, and the world is poorer for his absence. Here's a couple of songs by him for your listening pleasure.

The first is one of my favorites, "El Paso." I tried to find a good video of the follow up song "El Paso City" but the one I found had severe problems with the audio. I do however suggest that you all give it a listen. It and "El Paso" bookend each other nicely. The second song here is the gun fighter classic "Big Iron" over scenes from one of my favorite animes Cowboy Bebop. Enjoy!

I'm alive

Reports of my demise have been greatly exaggerated...

Some of you may or may not have noticed I haven't posted anything in over a week. There is an explanation for this, and if you're interested read on. If not, then don't worry about it.

The Sunday before last I started feeling sick around 1pm or so; a kind of crampy, nauseous feeling in my stomach. Thinking I was hungry, I went with my brother to get some lunch, but the feeling didn't go away. Later on it turned into a familiar achy, throbbing, sharp abdominal pain I've had before. No amount of Vicodin or Percocet would make it go away. About 11:30pm I drove myself to the emergency room of the local hospital and waited another 2.5 hours before being able to seeing a doctor and getting some pain relief through my IV. At the end of this ordeal a doctor suggested I go home and take some pain medicine (the doctors notes disagree on this, CYA). I really thought I should have been admitted, but I went along with this.

Stupid stupid stupid...

Later on Monday in the early evening I was in still in agony. It seriously felt like I had a baby Alien trying to claw it's way out of my stomach. My brother drove me this time and stayed with me until I got into the back to see the doctor, only a 1.75 hour wait this time. This time the doctor (a different one) himself suggested I be admitted and I agreed. I was admitted into the hospital to deal with a bowel obstruction.

The various x-ray's and CAT scans showed I had a section of distended bowel. Another doctor there suggested I talk with a surgeon colleague of his and I agreed. The surgeon suggested that he would be able to laparoscopically go in and correct the problem and I'd only have a few small incisions instead of being opened wide. Seeing as how I've had this pain several times before and I had every expectation that I would again in the future, I decided to have the procedure.

Now for the complication. I have a serious problem with my blood clotting too fast and I take medicine every day to keep that from happening. This medicine takes 3-4 days to take affect and the same to wear off. This meant that I had to be switched from Warfarin to Heparin, which has a much faster response time. Several days passed with me in bed doing nothing, in pain and having my blood drawn twice a day to see if my clotting time was right. I was poked with needles around 60+ times during my hospital stay.

Finally on Saturday morning it was time for the operation. The operating table looked identical to the ones I'd seen on TV that are used to strap prisoners down to for lethal injection. I'll admit it, I was scared. The OR was as cold as an ice box too. They asked me some questions and then had me breath some oxygen from a mask. Shortly afterward the anesthesiologist injected something through my IV that burned like fire and then my head felt like it was being pricked by a thousand needles and I went out.

After a short dream about cowboys (I'd been watching Wild West Tech just before they took me down) that made no sense I awoke in the recovery room.

The next two and a half days I spent in a really nice room with a great southern view. The doctor told me he removed some adhesions and some scar tissue where my bowel had kinked back on itself, forming a restriction in the size. He thinks I've had this all my life and it's only recently become an issue. Hopefully from now on I won't have this issue again. I can only hope.

I'm still sore, and don't expect me to post a lot until I get completely over this, but I'm back and still alive. Thank God!

Now, to catch up on the thousands of emails I'm sure have collected in my inbox while I've been out of commission...

Channeling Helmke to the masses

It's inevitable that editorial boards (typically composed of liberals who know nothing of combat, tactics, guns, life, earth, reality, etc.) are going to come out with high-minded baloney against right to carry laws on college campuses. However, you have to wonder whether or not they are actually thinking for themselves or channeling Paul Helmke while pretending to think for themselves:

In dormitories, more guns will undoubtedly mean more gun-related accidents, more suicides and more senseless tragedies brought about by immaturity, lack of judgment, impulsivity, alcohol consumption or mental illness. But whatever their root cause, each of those incidents will only have been made possible by the proximity of guns.

So there it is. They've written off all college students as immature, idiotic, impulsive, drunks and sociopaths (just like Paul has almost word-for-word). They seem to forget that there are a lot of non-traditional students out there who would like to be safe in a classroom too.

Of course, I can think of a place where there are a whole lot more people of the similar ages to the average college classroom who are all sitting in "dormitories" with fully automatic firearms. It's probably even more frightening to said editorial boards that these young people tend to be conformist and all wear the same clothes and speak respectfully of tradition, authority, and discipline.


Let's also not forget that some of these guys are coming back and going to college. And now, the editorial boards are screaming that they are too immature to handle a firearm in a dangeous situation? Come on. They've been in combat how much more training do you need?!?!

This seems to me more like a case of projection. Go back and read that description again and you'll probably get a good picture of what a bunch of hippie kids were like before they got a chance to be on editorial boards at local newspapers. You know, immature, idiotic, impulsive, drunks and sociopaths...

So now what?

Another university shooting. By now everyone knows that a nut went into a university (which had a gun-free policy) in Illinois (a state that has essentially banned all guns) and fired away at a bunch of innocent unarmed individuals. This time the shooter wasn't even a student at the school.

So now what? What are students supposed to do?

States have tried gun bans. They failed. Universities have tried gun bans. They failed too. The Brady Bunch will be capitalizing on the event again tomorrow with cries that "had only there been more stringent gun control" the whole thing could have been avoided.

Fine. Politics and idiots will keep being stupid. The question in my mind is what would I tell my kids to do if they were attending a university?

First, I would ask them if they would consider coming home. An education may be important, but you can get your stupid piece of paper rubber stamped through correspondence courses. So why live in a death trap that proclaims civil rights, but denies the right to self-defense?

Second, if they refused to or were unable to come home, I would tell them that they're going to be getting a package. It's going to have a 9mm, a box of premium hollow-point ammo, and a spare clip. The grips will be Crimson Trace. In addition, there is going to be a holster appropriate for them to carry it under deep concealment.

I know. I sound like such a radical. I would just tell my kid to violate the university laws and carry concealed anyway? Yep. An unjust law is not a law that must be followed. If the state is going to deny the right of self-defense to its citizens then the state must guarantee the safety of those same citizens. If they cannot or will not make such a guarantee then the law is fundamentally and unequivocally unjust. Therefore it is not a law my son or daughter should submit to.

This is called civil disobedience. It is the refusal to comply with certain laws as a form of political protest. However, it is more than that. It is a statement of the simple truth that you and you alone are responsible for your safety.

The police in Illinois have admitted that there was nothing they could have done to have stopped this event from starting. The university will say the same thing. However, what they will not say is that had one law-abiding student in that audience been armed and able to use a firearm in self-defense the killer would still be dead, but others might have lived and still others would not have been wounded.

As for me, I want my child to come home alive - even if it means she's charged with a felony for saving her own life.

Go ahead, call me a radical. Call me a nut. I don't care. I love my children and I want them to rely on themselves for their lives, not on a police station fifteen minutes away.

Where's the crime reduction?

We keep talking about England's out-of-control violent crime. We keep pointing out that the British government said that a drop in gun ownership would result in a drop in violent crime. We keep seeing stories where kids are being murdered anyway:

Kodjo Yenga was ambushed in a quiet London street by about a dozen youngsters armed with knives and bats. The 16-year-old tried to escape but was cornered and stabbed in the heart. The gang ran away laughing as the teenager lay bleeding in his girlfriend's arms. He died later in hospital.

There it is again folks. Guns didn't kill Yenga, people did. If they had had guns there's little doubt that they would have used them to murder him. However, even if they did not have knives and baseball bats they would have proceeded to stomp the guy to death or beat his skull in with a brick. They were out for blood and Kodjo Yenga was unarmed.

Murderers are predators. They'll kill simply because they want to, because they think it's fun, because they won't control themselves, because they want to show how powerful they are, or maybe just because they're animals. They don't kill because they have a weapon in their hands. The weapon is only a convenient tool. They would be just as lethal without weapons, just less efficient.

Yenga may have been lured into a bad situation in a moment of youthful pride, but the simple harsh reality remains that in London the criminals are armed and the citizens are easily lead to the slaughter. In the face of such a brutal reality, it is absolutely unfathomable why England has declared that the thugs can run free in the streets, but honest law-abiding subjects are not allowed to defend themselves with the only weapon available that could even the odds in such a situation.

It's worse than unfathomable. It's immoral.