So Utah has become the first state to have a state firearm, in addition to a state flower, state bird, etc.  It’s actually surprising to me that it hasn’t happened before.  Utah’s choice, the Browning 1911 design is very appropriate considering its role in the freedom of our country.

The full CNN article can be found here.

There is a fair amount of chatter from liberal anti-gun pundits whining about it.  I hope the idea takes hold.  I would like to see the Winchester 1895 in .405 become the North Dakota state firearm in honor of Teddy Roosevelt.

Via Greg Johnson’s Thinking Outside Blog:

The Fish that Got Away

The Ice Fishing Challenge in Alexandria, MN had 2200 anglers competing this year and not a single person caught a fish.  Had anyone caught a fish of any kind, it would have been worth $10,000.  I’m always amazed at occurrences like this, but there have also been bass and walleye tournaments that failed to turn a fish in more than four hours of fishing, as well.

At least no one has to have a sense of inferiority or failure.  When 2200 people get skunked that’s just a story to tell to your grandchildren.

From the Washington Post, an article by Stephen Hunter that makes a pretty good case for the 33 round magazines that are now under scrutiny because of the recent shooting in Arizona:

Why 33 rounds makes sense in a defensive weapon

MidwayUSA and many other shooting sports suppliers are sold out of 33 round Glock magazines, although Midway lists them as backorderable.

Somewhere in my Internet travels in the last few days, I came across the nugget of information that weather prognostication by animals (a la Punxsatawney Phil) is a tradition that came from Germany. And in Europe, they didn’t have groundhogs, so they used badgers.  How they used them remains the compelling question.

Having seen the myriad of pictures of people holding up Phil the Groundhog, I shudder to think of what might happen if someone tried that with a badger.  I think the Americans who chose groundhogs for Groundhog Day chose a slightly more affable animal. 

Happy Groundhog Day!

Jesse Ventura, former governor of Minnesota, has filed a lawsuit in federal court against the TSA.  Good.  I’m glad someone is keeping the pressure on the TSA to change its policies.  In a previous post I gave my reasons for preferring profiling over body-scanning every Tom, Dick, and Grandma.  

How would you like to be the TSA employee to tell Jesse Ventura he needs a pat-down?  I think you might be on the receiving end of a smack-down.  Body scan might become body slam!  (Oh, I have way too much fun with words!)

I think there’s a reason “gate rape” was voted the word of the year by the Urban Dictionary.

As a shooter and former firearms trainer, it really irks me to see stories in the news that indicate guns firing by themselves, as if they suddenly come to life.  Case in point — headline from the Associated Press: Two Wounded at Los Angeles School When Gun in Backpack Fires.  Now, the story seems to be that the gun fired when the backpack was dropped.  There is no mention of the make and model of gun, so it is hard to speculate how that might happen.  My point is that it probably had help.  Most modern guns need a very deliberate sequence of action to fire.  Yet the press continues to report these incidents as if guns are magical, self-operating devices with murderous urges.  

The other genre of guns-firing-by-themselves stories involves the classic “the gun fired when I was cleaning it” variety.  A similar theme was reported in a news story I read yesterday in my own region of the country.  The introductory sentence of the article goes something like this: “A Grand Forks resident was cited this morning for discharging his firearm within city limits after he accidentally shot himself in his home while attempting to move his handgun.”  The story goes that the man was cleaning his apartment in the wee hours of the morning and when he moved his handgun, it fired, striking him in the hand.  The story reports the man’s first name was Darwin.

GUNS DO NOT FIRE THEMSELVES.  Accidental discharges are certainly (remotely) possible, but are mostly due to negligence.  I have heard a story, for instance, in which a man shot himself in the leg with a single action revolver because he had it stored in the console of his pickup in a sock.  Evidently, in the process of things moving around with the gun in the console, the single action hammer was cocked back, and when the man moved some other things around in the console, he caught the trigger in the fabric of the sock and fired it.  Knowing the full context in that story, it is somewhat believable, but the person who shot himself was certainly negligent in how he was storing a loaded gun, as was the high school kid in Los Angeles.  

Stories I generally approach with suspicion are the ones where police officers and/or security guards cleaning their weapons at home experience accidental discharges.  Those people have obviously been trained to know better, and what I usually envision behind those stories is either boredom or drunkenness leading to quick-draw practice or other unsafe stunts that lead to the discharge.

I hope for a day when the mainstream media writes gun stories with factual information and avoids personifying and/or demonizing mechanical objects.

Recent events such as the dead birds falling from the sky in various parts of the country, fish die-offs, etc. have some speculating that the cause is cold weather (although there are many other more entertaining theories). Mash up those events with the researchers working on wooly mammoth cloning (yes, they actually think they can produce an animal from an extinct species by using frozen DNA), and I think we’re getting ready for an ice age! Silly Al Gore–we’re not experiencing global warming. I’m putting my Vexilar jacket and bibs on and going ice fishing. I might have to stop at Fleet Farm and buy some auger extensions, though.

With the recent shooting in Arizona of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and several others, including a federal judge, by a nutjob with a host of fringe beliefs, I was very saddened by much of the media coverage and the response from Washington.  Politicians such as Senator Lautenberg and Rep. McCarthy have seized the opportunity to introduce gun control bills.  The left-leaning media has seized the opportunity to blame the Tea Party and talk radio for creating a vitriolic, hate-mongering atmosphere.  Paul Krugman in a New York Times op-ed column has a particularly idiotic argument tracing all of this “hatred” back to 1992, relating political opposition to Bill Clinton to the cause for the Oklahoma City bombing.

The media is also taking the opportunity to blame Sarah Palin for using “target” metaphors in the recent political campaign. Politicians also couldn’t leave that one alone, with Bob Brady, a Democrat from Pennsylvania, proposing legislation to make that type of imagery a federal crime. Glenn Reynolds has a very good analysis of the targeting of Sarah Palin in his article in the Wall Street Journal entitled The Arizona Tragedy and the Politics of Blood Libel.

The question I have is who is responsible for inciting hatred?  Perhaps it is the folks who feel the need to paint a portrait of Sarah Palin in every negative frame they can find, even in the middle of tragic events when our attention should be on recovery and healing.

Let’s put the blame squarely where it lies: with a young man who chose to do something very drastic and evil.  He acted on his deluded beliefs and will ultimately be held responsible.

And let’s remember who Gabrielle Giffords is: a Democratic politician who defied her own party at times (not voting for Nancy Pelosi for speaker, for instance), but instead chose to represent her constituents, some of them the very people the media are attacking for creating an atmosphere that led to this event, and the very people that folks like Lautenberg wish to strip of their second amendment rights by creating fear and hysteria.

God willing, Gabrielle Giffords makes a full recovery and continues to faithfully represent the good people of Arizona. Though my political leanings are far more conservative, I feel she has a passion for connecting to her constituency that much of Congress does not.  She should be a symbol of strength and grace for our nation, and the recent political/media circus around her shooting is a travesty.

Let’s hope that instead of hiding in fear, our folks in Washington take a page from Gabrielle Giffords’ playbook and get out there and meet all of the people they represent, not just the special interest groups or people from the same party.

Having once before presented attractive and humorous weather spokespeople from all over the world, I present my latest find, Jim Kosek, of Accuweather.com, presented by the always entertaining and vivacious Megyn Kelly of Fox News:  

And another example from Round 2 of “Snowmageddon.” Evidently, people in the eastern United States are having even more fun with snow than those of us in North Dakota.

The ball dropped a little bit early on us in southeastern North Dakota overnight. We’re cleaning up from Phase I. Phase II is coming this afternoon, bringing subzero weather and another 6-12″ of snow on top of what got dumped/drifted last night.

My leisurely 35 mph drive this morning on Highway 75 between Breckenridge, MN and Wolverton, MN. There were a few pillow drifts nearly the size of my pickup.

I came upon a truck that had slid from the roadway and was receiving assistance from a sheriff’s deputy:

This is what I got to do when I got home:

I know–New Year’s Eve should be a time of reflection and celebration and positivity. Maybe when the tons of snow are all moved and I’m inside with a hot toddy on New Year’s Day, I’ll make some resolutions and look ahead.  Hey, it can only get better!