Looks like I should keep my mouth shut sometimes.

Turns out not only has the creator got it solidly classified as a pistol but Sebastian reports that he’s got the thing classified as a medical device now which might mean folks can get Medicare to help pay for one.

Kudos to the creator for charting some new territory!

Part 2: If the number was any smaller, it’d rival the Detroit Lions’ ‘08 record. in reference to the number of CCW permits that have been revoked in Florida since they went shall issue in 1987. A total of 0.27% have been revoked. If you look at how many have been revoked for a gun related crime it’s 0.01%.

The whole permit process is rather pointless in terms of public safety, but it sure makes some folks feel good.

It was fun. We set out from Grand Rapids, MI around 6pm on Wednesday night and arrived in northern Georgia around 10am Thursday morning. Yeah, we were a bit tired.

We got a small taste of what life as a parent is like while down there. See, they’ve got two boys, one 2 year old and one 10 month old. It’s pretty much semi-ordered chaos. At first I didn’t know how they managed but the secret came out pretty quick: Sleep whenever the heck you can. It wasn’t uncommon to see all of us in bed by 9pm, tuckered out from picking up kids all day long, wiping their noses (they were both sick) picking up food, yelling at the dog to keep away from the kid’s food, changing diapers, etc.

On Sunday night Theresa and I were watching TV while the mother gave the 10 month old a bath upstairs. We heard a bit of a commotion and the mom came downstairs to get something and announced: “Fred^* shit in the tub.”

I don’t care you who are, that right there is funny. The worst part was it was a bubble bath, so they’re not sure when the little shit, er, shit

Kids crack me up.

Oh, and I’d say the most rewarding point was when Ted^*, the 2 year old, would grab his toy laptop, toss it on my lap, climb up next to me on the couch and repeatedly say “computer” in 2 year old speak. I’d help him along and he’d play “find the number” or “find the letter” games. Not bad, considering he’s 2 and the toy is meant for children 3 and above. I also took the time to install Baby Banger for OS X on my laptop and let him have at it. If you pick the right options in the configuration it’ll splash a colored shape up on the screen and then announce what it is: blue circle, orange square, etc. Kinda cool. The kid can mash buttons and then point at the screen and repeat what it said. Downside: It really needs to stop using colors like cyan and magenta. No kid needs to know those colors. I might try hacking on that one a bit. It could be fun.

I’m rambling.

One last thing: You know you’ve got a good CCW rig when you can sleep on the thing at a rest stop without any discomfort.

*: Not the kid’s real names.

Even Peter is a bit thrown off by this.

It’ll be interesting to see if this affect their bottom line. I doubt it’s going to cause more than a blip on their radar, but we’ll see.

Meanwhile, Sebastian is running a PhotoShop contest on the subject. Voting is going to close about 40 minutes after I post this, but the entries are worth a look. This is how HS Precision will be remembered by members of the shooting community that know who Lon Horuchi is.

It’s an endorsement from Lon Huriuchi. Most famous among gun owners for shooting a Vicki Weaver in the head while she was holding an infant in her arms at Ruby Ridge.

I simply cannot believe anybody would be dumb enough to run this on their own catalog.

Update: David Codrea says he’s confirmed it’s real.

And then he began his kick. You’ll have to watch to see how it ends.

Oh sure, it’s a lot of crude humor, but it works.

Good news: The Senator that introduced it won’t be a Senator next year.

She’s gonna be Obama’s Secretary of State!

The other night I fired up my Xbox 360 to play some Halo 3 and got hit with a message that I needed to upgrade my software. I figured it was just another patch to prevent cheating.

With the patch installed I noticed that the interface was different and poked around. There was a new “NetFlix” channel on there. I downloaded that, fired it up, and viola — I can now stream any film NetFlix has in their “instant viewing” category right to my TV via the Xbox. Awesome. Now I can watch The A-Team on demand.

What got me is I couldn’t help but reflect upon the progression of technology that got us to this point. Back in the early ’80’s a VHS based VCR must have still been about $200 bucks and people bought them. Maybe it was $300. I don’t know. What I do know is that it was affordable but not a common expenditure. My father loves movies, and we had one in the early 80’s, but they were uncommon enough he had to drive a good 30 minutes to just rent a video at the time. We actually had a Betamax and a VHS system, though I don’t recall ever watching anything on the Betamax one.

Anyway, that’s not the point.

Roll forward to 1993 when I finally get online with a 2400 baud modem. At the time the only “pictures” you’d see were text in nature. ANSI art was as good as it got unless you wanted to wait 8 minutes for a proper JPEG image to download. Around 1996 I remember a guy pontificating, with absolute certainty, that you’d see JPEG and GIF images coming down the pipe just like we were seeing ANSI art. The bandwidth would be there.

Thought the dude was a loon. Turns out he was right.

Now, you have to remember that around 1994 to 1996 people were dialing up with modems in the 2400-14,400 baud range. At the low end we were kicking around 250 bytes per second, and at the high end 1400 bytes per second. The ISPs that we dial in to to get internet access only had 56k connections to their uplink. They were spreading that 56k connection around to the 3-4 guys that were actually on “the internet” at the time, and we were happy with it.

And then we all rolled around to 28.8k modems, and finally 56k modems, and then the masses picked up on it. In 2000 DSL lines capable of 512k or 768k started hitting. Cable services were offering up 388k and 768k services.

This shit was off the fucking hook for us old timers! I’ve come to terms with it, but I’m still blown away at times when I get a really good connection on my 6meg home connection. Hell, I worked on systems where 6meg wasn’t possible between two machines sitting 8 feet from one another.

Today I can fire up my Xbox, a $300 device which when weighed against inflation is probably cheaper than a VHS system back in the early ’80’s, use my $60/month internet connection that I use for work, and combine that with a $4.99/month NetFlix fee to watch everything in their “instant view” library.

And now we can watch movies our our TV cheaper than ever before and it only takes 30 seconds to make it happen.

So, what’s next?

Question: What is armed resistance?

David Hardy points to an article on the topic which shows a change in police tactics on the matter. It’s gone from calling in a SWAT team that would form a plan, like at Columbine, to 4-5 officers forming a diamond and roaming the hallways, like at Virginia Tech, to a lone officer confronting the gunman, which is what stopped the first major school shooting back in 1963.

Okay, so the Whitman incident didn’t just involve a single officer. There regular citizens keeping the guy’s head down with their own rifles (reminder: 1963, Texas) certainly helped and another regular civilian went up to confront Whitman in the tower. Whitman was unique in that he took up a nest in an elevated position whereas the regular school shooters these days just roam the hallways.

Shockingly, in every single incident, it ended when people started shooting at the bad guy. The quicker you start shooting them the better the outcome. Who knew?