Among those ready to get going at this “build party” (none of whom wanted their names used) are a father-son duo getting in some bonding time and a well-bellied sixtysomething with a white Fu Manchu who “loves” the click-ack! sound of a round being chambered. Assembling a Romanian variant is a builder wearing a camo jacket and a hat embroidered with an AR-15 rifle above the legend “Come and take it.” His knuckle tattoos read “PRAY HARD.”

Having tremulously infiltrated this gang of dangerous insurrectionists, some of whom may even be associated with Tea Party terror groups, the writer is shocked! Shocked! to learn that such atavistic horrors as “untraceable guns” are not only in existence in the enlightened environs of Southern California, not only (gasp!) legal, but also present no social problem at all…

Seeing how easy this is, are build parties monitored? Do hand-built weapons ever surface in crimes? Are the cops worried? When I call local law enforcement representatives from Los Angeles, Orange County, Santa Ana, and Garden Grove, they say they’ve never heard of such a thing.

So what was the point, exactly? Does the writer simply wish to ruin somebody else’s legal, harmless fun, to advance his own ‘right to feel safe?’

Yes.

I’m reminded of what one of the build party hosts said before I left: “Remember that thing I told you about why people do this: These builds can happen only because they aren’t blown out to the public and law enforcement.”

Wink wink, nudge nudge, alert the feds media that such awful goings-on are going on, and somebody will stick a stopper in the loophole. Right?

Wrong. Oh, I suppose it would be simple enough to change a rule and drive build parties more underground than they already are. Stroke of the pen, law of the land. Pretty cool, but you can’t stop them. You can only make them sneakier.

I don’t know how common build parties are, but I know they’re common. Parts kits have become so popular that their once-negligible prices have skyrocketed. Since a parts kit is useless without fabrication and assembly, I assume build parties happen a hell of a lot. Yet the Socal cops were completely unaware of the practice? Indicates a certain lack of adverse social effect, wouldn’t you say?

So what’s the problem?

I blame the left/right false dichotomy for the fact that some of these groups consider one another natural enemies. For example, this…

Listen up, Gays: They’re coming to recruit you

Perhaps being courted by a traditionally right-wing, conservative movement is refreshing and progressive, but it could also just be really effective concern trolling.

Are gun rights ‘traditionally right-wing conservative?’ Maybe, maybe not. In my own experience, the left/right thing is irrelevant to gun rights. I started out quite ‘left-wing’ when I first started exploring and developing my own views. That has changed radically, but my views about guns haven’t shifted an iota since I was a kid. Guns aren’t for ‘killing people,’ they’re for protection and self-determination. Killing, on the rare occasion when it happens, is incidental to that.

How can the right to be openly gay possibly be in conflict with the right to possess effective means of defense? It seems so obvious that those rights are complimentary. Gays are sometimes picked on by violent people. Effective weapons are the answer to violent people. It’s part of what they’re for. Next case.

And if you’re so certain of your position, why lie about it? Because the person who penned this is not being honest:

What better way to make people feel unsafe in gay-friendly Capitol Hill than by slyly referencing homophobia and hate crimes in pro-gun propaganda plastered on every street corner?

Are the people spreading these posters trying to ‘make people feel unsafe?’ Or are they simply pointing out that there is sometimes a problem with safety no matter where you live, that the problem is greater and more likely to arise when you’re part of a minority that is despised by some, and that arming yourself against that problem hurts nothing and might someday be a big help?

There is no natural conflict between gay rights and gun rights. The two should go together like strawberries and cream. In that regard the left/right false dichotomy is the biggest enemy freedomistas have, because its knee-jerk assumptions cause people who should be natural allies to be in useless conflict. Nobody profits but our real natural enemies.

2. Alex Jones says something silly about how the government caused it.

3. Profit!

H/T to Sipsey Street.

I lived in a little town in the Texas panhandle, and to make matters worse I was even in a trailer park. May as well give a blowjob to a 12-gauge, right? It wasn’t a question of “if” it would happen. And sonofagun, one fine evening it happened.

Joel – The Early Days

In April in the Panhandle, tornado watches happen daily. It’s no big deal. Even tornado warnings call for nothing more than heightened awareness, or you’d never get anything done at all. My practice was to tune the radio to the local station, which normally played nothing but really annoying country music. (This was during the Charlie Rich/Kenny Rogers period of cm, which I genuinely could not stand.)

If anybody ever plays “Behind Closed Doors” in my presence, ever again, I will not be responsible for my actions.

But I digress.

The theory was that as long as the radio was annoying me with bad faux-country “music,” everything was cool. If the radio stopped doing so, it was time to raise your head and pay close attention. On this occasion, the phrase I remember coming out of the radio was something like “No casualties reported yet.” It got my attention.

The front bedroom of my 2-bedroom trailer was devoted to guns, gear and ammo, because in those days I was a genuine redneck po’ white trash gun nut and made no apologies, and the reloading bench was right next to the front window with a lovely view of the parking lot and the next row of trailers. An unusual number of my neighbors seemed to be assembling in the parking lot. I thought perhaps I should join them.

You know you’re in the very heart of Tornado Alley when the Landlord’s trailer is parked on a slab of reinforced concrete, over a storm shelter big enough to hold everybody in the park. Or so I’d been told, I’d never seen it. The park was on the extreme east side of town. I mingled with a bunch of guys standing around trying to look cool about the whole thing, not at all far from the shelter’s entrance.

To the west, we could see what looked like a dozen skinny, whippy tornadoes that from our vantage appeared to be tearing the living crap out of the town. The storm cell was clearly coming our way. The sky was a weird color. The heavy cloud cover frequently swirled overhead in a manner that made me happy I had recently visited the bathroom. Birds went by like buckshot in insane gusts of wind. There were bursts of incredibly big hail. This had a real shot at being the big one.

Everybody was facing west, so it took a while before anybody noticed what was happening to the east…

It was big. It was fat. It was incredibly well-defined. You could see things lifting off the ground, abruptly turning right, and disappearing into the cloud. Seriously, I expected Charlton Heston in full beard to show up at any moment. It looked very close. It did not appear to be moving.

There’s a rule. If it looks like it’s not moving, it’s coming toward you. The big brave guys tried not to actually knock one another out of the way as we stampeded to the shelter stairs.

The door clanged shut behind us, and things got very quiet. Somebody had brought a portable radio. The local DJ sounded like he had a pants-load. Then the station went off the air. I mean, the station was still on the air, you could hear incidental noise from the open mike. But nobody was talking.

Then the lights went out. The incidental radio noise stopped, and there was static.

Flashlights came out of pockets, helping the landlord dig out electric lanterns. There were some babies crying, but nobody freaked. I was kinda proud of my neighbors.

Nobody had any idea what was happening up above. But there was no noise. It seemed to me that if an entire park full of trailers was being torn to shreds just above our heads, it would have made some noise. There was no noise.

This went on for what seemed like a very long time. Finally the big brave guys nearest the door had to peek out and see what, if anything, was happening out there. So we did.

The sky was clearing. The weird wind gusts had stopped. Absolutely nothing was out of place. Whatever had been torn to shreds hadn’t happened here at all.

It turned out that no tornadoes had touched down in the town proper. Those skinny tornadoes had torn hell out of the wheat fields west of town, and that big fat close one (which was bigger, fatter, and farther than we guessed) had wiped a brand-new Halliburton yard out of existence. The one guy present, a security guard, had seen what was coming and didi’ed his ass out of there. Nobody was hurt, but the visuals were impressive.

The radio DJ had heard of a whirlwind directly over his building and bugged out to the cellar, leaving his mike open and scaring the hell out of a lot of people. “This ain’t no ship, and I ain’t going down with it,” he said later. He was fired in disgrace.

Ironically, years later I moved back to my native Michigan which is not particularly known for tornadoes. And the vocational school I worked in was hit by a tornado and sent two students to the hospital. Go figure.

Gun control: Cartridge ID law to take effect

A hotly contested gun-control law that was passed in 2007 is finally ready to be implemented, Attorney General Kamala Harris said Friday: a requirement that every new semiautomatic handgun contain “micro-stamping” technology that would allow police to trace a weapon from cartridges found at a crime scene.

The law, signed by then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, made California the first state to require micro-stamping, which engraves the gun’s serial number on each cartridge. But the legislation specified that it would take effect only when the technology was available and all private patents had expired.

The article says the micro-stamping gadget “would be required on newly sold semiautomatics, effective immediately.” I have absolutely no idea what would be involved in retrofitting existing unsold pistols with firing pins with itsy-bitsy serial numbers, if that’s even possible. So I assume Californians will be restricting to buying new revolvers only? Because the state gov just effectively banned new semi-autos?

Enquiring minds want to know. But not badly enough to go see for themselves.

“This is life in the big city.” I love this old lady’s attitude.

And so they sought out the help of the one man with the most time on his hands in all the land, who also worked cheap. Seeing their plight, the man kindly dropped what little he had been doing and set out to help them bring their straw to the straw-merchant in the nearest town, many many miles away.

First they put some of their straw in their wagon…

And they drove the wagon to the straw-merchant.

Then they stacked the straw very carefully. For the straw-merchant was evil, and liked his straw piles neat.

And then they drove away home. But that’s not the end of the story, because the man and his wife had miscalculated a very great deal…

…assuring that the straw-merchant will probably be buying his straw from the man and his wife for the whole rest of the summer, if not beyond.

And that’s the story of why there was no morning blog post.

It’s not like it was even a busy weekend, fer cryin’ out loud. Ian was busy with his folks, so we didn’t work on the water system. I did a little digging with Landlady, getting ready to harden the fence of former Gitmo/future chicken yard, but that didn’t take any real time. No hard labor, no sunstroke. I’ve no excuses.

But I’ve been a grumpy old man for days. Staying up too late, then waking up too damned early because Dharma shows up at the door and gets the boys all riled. Last night I must have slept weird, because I woke with a crick in my neck that still hasn’t gone away and it’s not improving my mood.

I’m trying to get back to work on the solar electric e-book, which has been languishing. There’s a lot of yard-type stuff to do and I need to go do it. Dishes to wash, bread to bake, and I’m supposed to go to town with D&L later. But what I really want to do is crawl back into bed and nap for a few hours.

Ian’s folks are really cool people and I enjoy their visits very much. But I’m afraid I’ve gotten into this “hermit” thing rather more sincerely than is good for a guy who occasionally has to be social. People prattle about loneliness, and I barely know what they’re talking about. I remember getting lonely when I was a kid – I was never one of the cool kids – but even though now I can easily go a week without even seeing a neighbor in the distance, I’m never lonely. I’m rarely bored, even though most of the time I don’t do much. I love the silence, and the solitude, and the slow pace.

But this morning I woke in a very grumpy mood, and haven’t really shaken it yet. I think I’ll go outside and commune with the boys for a while.

It might be a good idea to make friends with a doctor, if possible…