Kel-Tec RFB Write-Up
I’ve posted about this weapon before but now Max Popenker has posted his write-up on the Kel-Tec RFB.
It’s certainly worth a look.
Chuck Norris Eats Wood
Chuck Norris has been taking chunks like this out of our deck for a while now. I’m not pissed, I want to replace the thing anyway, and I’m just glad he’s not doing that kind of damage inside the house.
Chuck’s 9 months old now:
We took him to a party/dog party the other weekend and te host said he looked like he had some Staffordshire Terrier in him. Makes sense — as he’s getting older we’re realizing he’s got some kind of pit bull in him.
He’s shredding dog toys, even the ones meant for critters his size.
Still, he’s just a big lovable lunkhead.
New Blade.
I lost my latest knife purchase during the house move somehow, so I hit up the gun an knife show this weekend with Abjet Disapointment in search of a new one.
Or anything else that caught my fancy.
Fortunately, for my checking account, I came home with only a new knife for me and a little itty-bitty keychain knife for the woman.
There’s a guy at these gun shows that sells random “odd” knives — overruns, test products, stuff that failed QC, etc. at some good discount prices. Found one that really seemed to fit me and the price was right.
It’s a Kershaw Leek, like this one with a trout on it, but mine’s got ‘Jeep’ scrawled on it with an outdoor landscape. For 30% off MSRP I can deal with having a handle that most folks wouldn’t want, especially when I drive a Jeep myself.
So, for $50 I got a decent pocket knife again. Awesome.
What’s new about this one is it has the assisted opening technology in it. Folding the blade into the handle sets a spring and upon opening just a teeny bit the spring, err, springs into action and flips the blade out the rest of the way for you. It sort of acts like a switchblade but isn’t one in the legal sense. Further, because it operates like a regular folding knife you’re not SOL if the spring breaks and you still have all the hardiness of a typical folding knife.
I’ve actually kept myself away from this technoloy as I didn’t think it was of any use but it’s really started to grow on me.
Confession: My House Gun
So, I’m a guy that’s got a better selection of firearms in his own basement than you can find, in stock, at any one gun store in my area.
It’s kinda nice.
Given that I can pretty much pick anything I want to be my “house gun” at the drop of a hat. I consider the house gun to be one that’s always loaded and kept handy for whatever might arise. The most important scenario, but one that isn’t very likely, is a home intruder.
A Remington 870 with a nice short barrel isn’t a bad idea, and I’ve got one of those. A good full sized pistol isn’t a bad idea, and I’ve got more than a few of those too. Heck, for the area I’m in an AR or an AK aren’t terrible choices either.
That said, I rely on one of my least “tactical” firearms in the armory for house gun duty: A Marlin 1984C. Worse: I keep it loaded up with .38spl LRN ammunition and don’t even bother with a proper .357 loading.
Why? Simple: That’s the gun that goes with to the range almost every time I venture out. It’s fun to shoot and damnit, I can peg a paper plate at in-home distances without even having to think about what I’m doing. I can then repeat this simple feat 8 more times and dump 9 rounds into a grouping smaller than a man’s head.
Reflecting upon this I’ve decided that from here on out my advice to first time guy buyers looking for a piece to defend their homestead with is going to be: Pick that one that you think will be the most fun to shoot.
Do that, feed it ammo on a regular basis, learn it, love it, enjoy it, and be confident that while it might not be the high speed, low drag, uber-tactical wundergun that everybody says you should get, at least you know how to use it effectively.
The Real Variable
An excercise I often use when looking at physics problems is to blow them up to their extremes on each side. It helps me to visualize things. For instance when I’m thinking about vehicle collisions and mass vs. speed I picture a crotch rocket vs. a semi truck. I find this helps with a lot of problems: You take one point of the equation and examine the polar opposites and evaluate the different outcomes.
Now, lets apply this to the Virginia Tech shooting situation, but we’ll use age.
For the sake of argument we’ll presume a number of even variables betwen two different groups. There are no legal firearms present, and the strength of the victims is roughly equal. I would hazard a guess and say that your average 16 year old is about as strong as your average 72 year old. That is, at least on paper.
Any young whipper-snapper knows that going up against an older man leaves you at a disadvantage. In my youth we termed it “old man strength.” Some of us experienced it first hand.
So, let’s think about this one: A man breaks into a room of 30 16 years old and opens fire. What happens? Well, we’ve seen what happens there, ala Columbine, and it’s pretty much a free-for-all for the gunmen.
Think the same would happen with a group full of 72 year old men? Sure, they lack the strength, on paper, to do much more than the 16 year olds, but theyv’e got experience working in their favor.
It’s been said, “Never fight an old man. He’s got nothing to lose and knows every dirty trick in the book.”
If you absolutely must, to visualize the dichotomy between the two different mindsets likely prevalent within these two age groups feel free to imagine that the group of 72 year old men are WWII vets.
It’s the experience that gives the group of old men the edge, at least in my mind.
Now, let’s up the force of the inexperienced group a bit, lower their experience level, and keep the 72 year olds disarmed. Like I said, I like to think in extremes to figure out which particular point of data is the most imporant.
Take 30 boys, age 8, all armed with .22LR rifles at a Cub Scout training outing. Armed gunman shows up, blows away the instructor, and sets in on the boys.
Tragedy will ensue, and I’d imagine greater than that of my hypothetical room of random 72 year old men.
While armed to deal with the attacker those 8 year old boys posess only the hardware to deal with the problem and not the software and there is nothing wrong with that.
This is what makes mass school shootings possible more than any other single criteria out there.
Yes, I said it, it’s not the “gun free zones” that create these great shooting pools for mass murderers. It’s that we pool people that are so vulnerable into nice tight spaces that make them such easy pickings.
Unfortunately that’s not something we can get away from.
New Territory
I signed my first affidavit today.
Tomorrow afternoon Tony Pham will be in a court room.
Those two events are directly related.
I’ll let y’all know what happens.
UPDATE: Absolutely nothing.
Patriot’s Day
April 19th marks the day of the battles of Lexington and Concord and the start of the American Revolution.
And The Beat Goes On
I’m replicating my response to this comment on TechMedica just for shits and giggles.
1) Google Maps is not always right!
They have a Google Map link to their place just below that photo. If it’s good enough for them it’s good enough for me to call bullshit on it.
2) Techmedica has two locations. The building you refer to is supposed to be their office. I called them on this and I asked the same question. They do have another location where everything is put together (the capsules).
I referred to two locations, one in Grand Rapids, one in Nevada. They have a picture of a building in Grand Rapids with a Las Vegas address below it. Does that make any sense? No. It’s a less than honest representation of their company.
That, and I’ll bet you dollars to donuts that the building they picture on their website has been Photoshopped. The lettering on the signs with the company logo is too clean, too white, and is entirely off center.
That and when you zoom in you see that the letters are prefectly shaded — just as they would be if placed there via Photoshop.
I’ll swing by tomorrow and take a picture of the actual building. I could be wrong, but I’d bet 100:1 odds that I’m right.
I am not sure why so many people are bent on talking bad about a company.
Because we believe it’s a scam run by a con artist that’s defrauding people left and right? Thats my motivation. Hell, I threw away the possibility of makin some spare cash by firing off an email to every email address I could find within the company railing against Tony Pham.
Why would somebody throw away a money making opportunity? Ethics? Yeah, that sounds about right.
If things were this bad the gov would have shut them down for good.
Give it time. Eventually the market or the government will shut this one down.
Many people point to the fda doc / request which in the end Techmedica fixed the labels to where their would not be any problems. How do I know this you might be asking, because I called and asked the same thing.
I usually don’t have to place multiple calls to a supplier of a health product to verify that they’re legitimate. That should throw up a nice big red flag.
I also read the fda doc thoroughly as well and I understood it as a bad label or bad marking on the product and, they needed to change the way the customer reviews - to show no “cures” and to make sure the heading didn’t say “here is the proof” etc.
In other word they were illegally labeling their product. All that research on a super-duper advanced cure-all drug and they never had anybody on staff that knew about FDA regulations with regards to product labeling?
Yeah that sounds like an honest mistake.
Update: Comments are closed. I’m sick of people astroturfing here.
TechMedica: Gotta Love the Lies
I last wrote about this over a year ago and you can find that post about TechMedica right here.
Recently I’ve been getting comments on my original post which lead me to believe that the company is coming apart. I’m also occasionally searching for references to the company on other blogs which leads me to stuff like this about TechMedica.
The first comment on there surprised me, one for citing me, and two for showing something that I seemingly stumbled upon on my own but they also noticed. Truth be told I may have read it earlier, filed it away, then subliminally searched for it myself tonight. I cannot say for sure.
From the TechMedica company webpage I took this snapshot:
Note the address in the caption. This differs slightly (as in every single fuckin digit) from the address in the picture.
Take a gander at the lovely water. Thats gotta be a sight in Los Vegas, Nevada! Especially when you consider what the area looks like according to the address when you map it out with satelite images in Google Maps:
Hmm, not much water there. Lots of asphalt, not much water.
So, what happens when you look up the address for TechMedica in Grand Rapids, MI via Google? You find that their building indeed had the address of that in the picture, complete with body of water out front.
Why lie about the location? I’m not sure, but if I had to take a guess, and my guess is biased, I’d say it was done simply because the founder/president/whatever role he plays in the company, Tony Pham, is a pathological liar.
I could see lieing about the primary business location if you were a scammer in the middle of some slum in a 3rd world country, but I don’t see why it would be a bad thing to inform customers that you’re located in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Hell, look at the picture! Not a bad place!
Why lie about something so non essential? Why make it so obvious? Anybody with half a clue knows that a) bodies of water in Las Vegas are rare, and b) lush pine trees aren’t found in the area. You should note that off to the right of the building in the original picture there’s one sitting there.
I’m going to try and stay on top of this one. It could get interesting, and I’m vastly fascinated that people have picked up my blog on this subject when it was only something I’ve briefly visited on here.
Update: Comments are closed. I’m sick of people astroturfing here.
Virginia Tech Shootings
I’m sure you’ve all heard, so I won’t spend much time of this topic. That is, at least for now. I might poke at it, but for now I’m going to keep quiet because emotions are running high at this point.
Even mine.
Still I can’t resist giving a quick honest opinion: I wish this fuck would have used a shotgun, but revsered the order of executions, starting with himself first.
There.
What I do plan on looking at, after I’ve thought about it more, is why colleges are excellent tagerts of opportunity. What I will not be harping on is their tendency to ban the carrying of arms in dorms and classrooms, or even state policies that forbid such.