Here’s an ABC News article on the story.
About a year ago Joe Horn saw a couple folks exiting his neighbors house, presumed they were robbing the place, called 911, and confronted them as they entered his yard. He the shot and killed both of them with a shotgun.
This was in Texas, and all homicides there go in front of a grand jury. They let him go.
Unless you live in Texas, don’t try that at home. Heck, even if you live in Texas it’s still not a good idea.
This weekend a handgun instructor was discussing over penetration and why you want the round to stop inside an attacker’s body when a student piped up with his own story and a heavy accent. It went something like this:
“Uh, in early 90’s there was war in Bosnia. I not sure if you heard about it here. Anyway, we see guys take five round of 7.62 by 39, go right through body, blood shooting out behind them, POW POW POW! and they keep running! They take heroin or something. It scary. Made you want to throw down gun and just start running.”
There’s a mental picture I won’t forget anytime soon.
Okay, what got me thinking about that last post was Sebastian’s post on celebrating Heller in it he says:
In addition to the drinks, Bitter prepared a lovely Italian dinner, in honor of Justice Scalia, complete with cannollis. I honor Justice Kennedy merely by being Irish. For Chief Justice Roberts, the last new shooter I took to the range was a Roberts. And for Justice Alito, well, he’s another Italian! I’m still trying to figure out how I honor Justice Thomas.
Emphasis mine. I responded in comments:
Uhh… have a Coke?
I ran that bit of wit by Theresa only to be met with the, “you’re retarded, but I’m still marrying you” stare. She’s a year younger than me so I expected she wouldn’t get it.
I was 11 years old during the Clarence Thomas hearings, and obviously I was watching coverage of them at the time.
I figure when I hit 30 I’ll be yelling at kids to get off my lawn. I’ve aged way too quickly.
So, this weekend we’re hanging out with my parents and the whole tomato salmonella thing came up.
Theresa mentions that I thought I might have had a touch of that. I had eaten a bunch of raw tomatoes the night before that whole thing hit the news and I had some,err, issues, the next day.
My mom piped up, “Oh, Justin always thinks he’s got whatever’s on the news. Remember when cyanide was found in stuff a long time ago? He started complaining about having trouble swallowing and I took him to the doctor and told them it’s probably nothing, because he saw the cyanide thing on the news. They were like, ‘Your six year old watches the news?’”
It’s true. As a kid I watched the news every night, or at least a hell of a lot more than you’d expect a kid to. I don’t really watch it anymore, but I do follow it online like a crack addict.
And I’m still a hypochondriac!
Oh, and my throat issue when I was 6: Turned out I had some kind of infection and my tonsils were swollen up to the point they were actually touching.
The tomato thing: Well, eating a pound of raw tomatoes will do that to you. Tends to clean the system out.
5-4 split with Souter, Breyer, Stevens and Ginsburg dissenting.
What a shock.
Robb shares a few things he does when cleaning his guns for safety purposes. They’re good practices and none of his safety measures are required by any law.
On Monday morning I made myself a cup of coffee, ventured down to my gun room, and proceeded to take a few “essential” pieces out. The shotgun that I keep in the bedroom, the .22LR that I keep handy for critters that might pop up in the yard, and a pistol that I keep in my desk while I’m working.
These are guns that I (almost) always keep handy in the house. So, why were they locked away?
It’s because I had children in the house all weekend! My soon-to-be sister-in-law stayed with us this weekend and she, naturally, brought her children with her. I’m not going to leave loaded guns around the house when children are around, and I don’t need a law to tell me not to do that. Hell, I’m not going to leave unloaded guns out either.
So, I locked the guns (in steel cabinet, in a locked room) all up on Saturday morning before the kids got here.
I didn’t consult any legal statutes to figure out what I should do, and I sure as hell wasn’t thinking of any sage advice from the Brady Campaign when I did this because they don’t have any good advice. Instead I relied on a little common sense and advice that I’ve gathered from other law abiding gun owners over the years.
And guess what? That worked.
With the Brady Campaign doing their level best to highlight every accidental firearm death in this country on their blog lately I thought I might do a little PSA on trigger locks vs. cable locks.
You know, because I’m actually interested in saving lives instead of just banning guns.
So, below is my 8 minute video on securing a weapon for under $20.
It’s not great, and it might not even be good, but it does illustrate why I hate trigger locks.
Any suggestions y’all have on making better videos would be great. I perched the camera up on a gun cabinet sitting next to my cleaning bench and angled it downward slightly. Given that the camera is off to my right I notice that I cover the gun with my hand a fair amount, but I think I managed to keep it out of the picture enough to illustrate what I was going for.
Some things I wish I had said when recording it:
- I have actually pulled the trigger on a gun with a trigger lock on it. It was a Mosin Nagant 91/30 in a pawn shop. In that case it was on purpose as I was taking the bolt out of the gun. It might have been a good idea to show a gun that a trigger lock wouldn’t actually work on.
- The Glock 21 that I was using wasn’t able to take the trigger lock unless the striker was partially cocked. In that instance you have to put it on a cocked weapon. I don’t like that.
- I neglected to show that a gun with a loaded magazine and a round in the chamber would be rendered safe by application of a cable lock. It’s inferred, but I didn’t spell it out.
- Failed to show the trigger lock on the revolver. That would have permitted me to show that said revolver could be cocked with the damned thing still on there if it wasn’t put on right.
It’s also way too long but I’m not sure what I should have left out. After 30 seconds I was done with my starting script and just improvised. Perhaps I should have stuck with a script the entire way through.
I got an idea in my head that I should put together a short video showing what’s wrong with trigger locks and why cable locks are a better idea. Simple enough, right?
Well, there’s a bit of a problem. I’ve got a trigger lock but I don’t have the key for that. Luckily for me I’ve got a lock picking kit, know how to use it, and that lock is about the simplest damned thing in the world to pick.
Until you put it on a gun.
I don’t know why it’s behaving so much different, but I’ve been working at the thing for a half an hour now. No go. It takes about 6 seconds when it’s off the gun.
I need a beer.
Update: Okay, I got it off. Broke my rake doing it though.
I think I finally got it.
The LIbertarians are running a Republican, the Republicans are running a conservative Democrat, and the Democrats are running vaporware.