Coping: Dear Anti-Gun Rights Activist

I live in East Texas.

We get all kinds of critters here.

We get snakes called cotton mouth, snakes called copperheads, and snakes that eat the offspring of birds that do such a fine job of keeping down West Nile.

We have animals that will turn a finely mowed yard into a raw land digging it up.

We have wild hogs – weighing several hundred pounds – that would just as soon kill you and eat you  as walk the other way.  And God help you if you get between a wild sow and piglets in the wild.

We are now into the time of year when a gun in Texas is a working tool.  It can be my old reliable Mossberg, or an assortment of short guns (Glock, Ruger, Colt,  and Taurus just to name a few).

I appreciate having a good store of ammunition, as well.  It’s an hour into town – and thanks to government efforts, often as not, there’s none to be had.  Not the kind of “response time” that lends comfort to people living on the wild-edge of society.

I mention this this morning because it’s important to keep guns, gun ownership, the Right to Bear, and such-wise all in perspective.

People get killed with all kinds of “weapons” – poor construction, hammers, knives, prescription drug interactions, and even (sadly) the odd public official.

So with the snake season in full bloom out here in fly-over America, please understand that from the perspective of this little patch of Texas, the following is generally true..

Guns don’t killed people.  Guns kill snakes.

Thank you.

Related Note

From a reader…apparently, I’m not the only one holding this view:

HI George,

I’m a consistent reader of urbansurvival.com website and really enjoy your content.  So much great information on your site no matter what level of prepping you are at.

I was hoping as a reader of your site that it would be possible to have my site listed in your “essential links” section?  I’m still learning the ropes with prepping but my brother and I know our way around firearms and have a firearms blog at www.armsbearingcitizen.com that we try to update as frequently as time will allow.

Regardless of if you can add us or not, just wanted to say thanks and keep delivering great content to your readers. 

Thanks!

Jason@armsbearingcitizen.com

Thanks for the note.  I don’t generally post reader websites, but this one made sense.  There are too many sites on the net that seem to confuse macho with gun ownership.  A gun is a tool, just like a chainsaw is a tool.  Massacre movies aside, no one has ginned up a drive to register chain saws or, in the wake of 9/11 box cutters either.

ArmsBearingCitizen is gets my respect for putting Gun Safes and Tips & Safety at the top of their page. That’s responsible gun ownership…so amen to that.

Snakes come in a variety of sizes, though.  A few even try to kill “infidels.”   Some try to take over aircraft – which is why many pilots I know now carry snake repellant to the cockpit.

The best example of gun control I can think of it “one shot, one kill” – of a snake, of course.

This viewpoint might be useful in Logan County West Virginia, where a mom is suing the local school board for arresting her son for wearing an NRA t-shirt.

I hope she wins.  Big.

The way I see it, America has swung too far in the direction of supporting the wrong things at the expense of the big things – like the Constitution and the Amendments which is the basis of our great country. 

Or, used to be, anyway.

Almost Flying, Pride of Ownership

The FAA paperwork finished (waiting for a letter to arrive, but we have the email of approval) our alternative means of compliance (AMOC) with an airworthiness directive (AD) is good to go, transferrable, and probably far stronger than what came from the factory – by a wide margin.

As we were putting the plane back together this week, the one thing that I couldn’t help but reflect on was the high level of maintenance applied to aircraft, compared with cars.

Our A23-19 Beechcrate was born in 1966…so it will have its 50th birthday next year.  It also has about 4,657 hours on it – mostly cross-country flying which is the flying equivalent of  freeway miles. 

Here’s the point:  Let’s say the plane flies 100 MPH (way slower than we usually fly which is 135) and now pencil out the miles on it:  465,700 as a minimum. 

I know several university flight training programs have used planes exactly like ours and gone to the 13,000 hour mark, which would be 1.3-million miles.  And those are student pilot miles – which is the airplane equivalent of “off-roading.”

Our particular aircraft engine calls out a 2,000 hour zero-time overhaul.  In a car, that would be like driving to 200,000 miles and then putting in a new zero-timed engine and transmission.

I mention this because with all the talk about global warming and resource depletion, I found it depressing in yesterday’s retail sales figures to note that the only sector of the US economy hitting on all cylinders is still the auto industry.

The “great balance” seems to be we need disposable cars in order to keep enough people employed not to descend into massive unemployment and social unrest.

Hell of a paradox, is it not? 

And remember the “cash for clunkers” program?  To this day, I hold that the corporate-backed “disposable economy” was behind the cash for clunkers deal.

Because at some point, a lot of today’s young people would look at horrific vehicle pricing and conclude “there has to be another way” –  and there was.

That’s why, as soon as travel to Cuba opens, Elaine and I hope to be some of the first Americans to visit.

I want to see some of those immaculately maintained 50’s era cars that are still on the road there…because in the end, the US has something very important – but dangerous –  to learn from Cuba about working smarter, not necessarily harder.

A great deal to learn about pride of ownership and not living the “disposable life.”

The Cuban people, seem (at this distance) to have a pride of ownership that American culture hasn’t absorbed, and I think our Cuban-American friends would agree.

One of our neighbors here in the American Outback /Deliverance country just bought a new Chevy pick-up truck – set him back $58,000.  $980 a month payments.  I have to wonder how many vehicles with that kind of price point will be sold in Cuba over the next couple of years as relations warm.

And, bottom line, is that really good for the industrious, intelligence, and inventive Cubans?  Or is “warming of relations” going to wreck the place?

Disposable products – things that you keep having to buy, over and over again (like cars) are an affront to an intelligent person.  But instead, we’ve gotten wrapped around the axle of “fashion” and now, in our confusion, can’t seem to figure out an economy which isn’t going to eat the whole planet or kill off all humans in the process.

Reader Feedback on Quakes

Oh-oh…just in from our comments section:

Yo Ure,

Have you seen or heard about this? Seems some planetary alignments may correlate with your predictive dream about a 9+ quake on the west coast on or about 5/28.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0uVI8cQ3Hpo

Yeah…seen a large number of posts about this…and remember we’re just a day out from the fly-by of 1999 FN53 that we covered in Peoplenomics® yesterday.

The video is kinda long – 24-minutes worth.  Could be shortened up to just a few seconds worth:

Watch ‘yer butt at the end of the month.

In the Meantime…

…here’s a report that says “stress is good for you.”

The book mentioned in the report is  “The Upside of Stress: Why Stress Is Good for You, and How to Get Good at It.”

I should probably read a copy:  It might help explain my adrenaline-addicted skydiving son and why people in general seem to de-stress with so many chemicals….

OK, write when you break-even…  Have an extra cup of liquid stress and let’s hit it and get it…

George   george@ure.net