…but I understand the idea.
Do you have a dressy handgun and/or holster you only carry for nice?
My handguns are too beat-up to fit the description, but Tam (who wrote the linked article, BTW) once gave me a SERPA holster that sucks too bad for carrying but is therefore still shiny and scratch-free, and I wear it socially along with that unstained pair of pants I keep for the same purpose. So it’s a thing, but we’re weird out here. I wonder how wide-spread it is?
They say that Louis XIV had the inscription Ultima Ratio Regum cast into all the cannon of the French Army. It means “The Ultimate Argument of Kings,” and that always struck me as one of the most honest and up-front things any ruler or would-be ruler ever said. “We can dress it up prettier than this, but when it comes down to the unvarnished truth this is what it’s about: You’ll do as I say or I’ll send my goons to kill you.”
I thought about that for a long time. If there’s an ultimate argument, it seems only logical that there must be an ultimate answer. For years I thought the ultimate answer must be the bullets in my rifle, but it never seemed quite right. I’ve got bullets – he’s got frigging Cannon Balls. I mean, if there were three hundred million rifles throwing bullets at him, then maybe. But we all know that’s not going to happen. So if there’s an ultimate answer to his ultimate argument, it sure as hell ain’t bullets.
It finally came to me – and that’s when I abandoned the city and most of my stuff, and gave all that was behind me a good stiff Randian Shrug.
The ultimate answer to kings is not a bullet, but a belly laugh.
Little Bear 2009-2018
Laddie the Amazing Torso Boy 2011-2020
"Freedom Outlaw. It’s not what you do; it’s how you do it. It’s an attitude — from which actions always follow. It’s a do-it-yourself occupation. And a lifetime vocation."
- Claire Wolfe, Backwoods Home Companion, 6-07-10
I owe my success to having listened respectfully to the very best advice, and then going away and doing the exact opposite.
- G. K. Chesterton
"If every Jewish and anti-Nazi family in Germany had owned a Mauser rifle and twenty rounds of ammunition and the will to use it, Adolf Hitler would be a little-known footnote to the history of the Weimar Republic."
- Aaron Zelman
"Authority should derive from the consent of the governed, not from the threat of force."
- Barbie
"Never underestimate the ability of shit to find a fan."
- F. Paul Wilson
"You can't make an omelet without breaking eggs." The sophistry of villains - Bah!
- Robert A. Heinlein, Double Star
“Truth is, I’m not specifically interested in an armed society. What I want is a free society.”
- George Potter
I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself
A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough without ever having felt sorry for itself.
- D. H. Lawrence
Aristippus passed Diogenes as he was washing lentils.
He said, “If you could but learn to flatter the king, you would not have to live on lentils.”
Diogenes said, “And if you could learn to live on lentils, you would not have to flatter the king.”
Sandy Hook was a Gun Free Zone. So was the Westroads Mall. And the Aurora Theater. And Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. Should I go on? They were all Gun Free Zones.Â
– Reality
“Political tags — such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth — are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire. The former are idealists acting from highest motives for the greatest good of the greatest number. The latter are surly curmudgeons, suspicious and lacking in altruism. But they are more comfortable neighbors than the other sort.”
- Robert A. Heinlein
"Civilization is the process of setting man free from men."
- Ayn Rand
If ever a man should ask you
For your business or your name
Tell him to go and fuck himself
Tell his friends to do the same.
For a man who'd trade his liberty
For a safe and dreamless sleep
Doesn't deserve the both of them
And neither shall he keep.
- Frank Turner
Don't be afraid to try something big, just because you're an amateur. The Ark was built by amateurs. The Titanic was built by professionals.
- Anon
"Nothing scares a police officer more than the threat of being treated the way that they treat people every day."
- Anon
"Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everybody you meet."
- Gen. James Mattis
"Lust for power is the most flagrant of all the passions."
- Tacitus
"The man who knows what freedom means will find a way to be free."
- F.A. "Baldy" Harper
"The greatest discovery of any generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitude."
- William James
We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms -- to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.
- Viktor Frankl
The free man will ask neither what his country can do for him nor what he can do for his country.
- Milton Friedman
“We must be free not because we claim freedom, but because we practice it.”
- William Faulkner
There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self.
- Ernest Hemingway
"Everything the State says is a lie, and everything it has it has stolen."
- Friedrich Nietzsche
John Moses Browning - The most badass Mormon who ever lived.
"The nine most terrifying words in the English language are 'I'm from the government, and I'm here to help.'"
- Ronald Reagan
The most dangerous creation of any society is the man who has nothing to lose.
- James A. Baldwin
"It is better to be a warrior in a garden than to be a gardener in a war."
- Anon
“I tried to live in such a way that, when dying, I would rather feel happy than scared.”
– Witold Pilecki
Few men desire liberty; most men wish only for a just master.
- Sallust
"Place your clothes and weapons where you can find them in the dark."
- Lazarus Long
Read, every day, something no one else is reading.
Think, every day, something no one else is thinking.
Do, every day, something no one else would be silly enough to do.
It is bad for the mind to continually be part of unanimity.
– Â Christopher Morley
“I have found that, to make a contented slave, it is necessary to make a thoughtless one. It is necessary to darken his moral and mental vision, and, as far as possible, to annihilate the power of reason. He must be able to detect no inconsistencies in slavery; he must be made to feel that slavery is right; and he can be brought to that only when he ceases to be a man.”
-Frederick Douglass
ESSE QUAM VIDERI –
To be, rather than to seem
– Marcus Tullius Cicero
“A Winchester rifle should have a place of honor in every black home, and it should be used for that protection which the law refuses to give.”
– Ida B. Wells
Do what thy manhood bid thee do; from none but self expect applause.
He noblest lives and noblest dies, who makes and keeps his self made laws
– Sir Richard Burton
Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.
– Winston Churchill
“Happiness is a journey, not a destination. Dance as though no one is watching you. Love as though you have never been hurt before. Sing as though no one can hear you. Live as though heaven is on earth.”
― Father Alfred d’Souza
Guns (long guns and pistols) are like any other tool they should be for go not for show. Guns in a gun cabinet are all safe and shiny but that’s not what guns are made for. The are made to help protect you from the dangers of the world, to put food on the table, to be used and, as required, abused. Guns are tools not decorations nothing more, nothing less.
A “BBQ gun” is a real thing. I first heard the term about 20 years ago. Mike I respectfully disagree. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with having a beautiful tool. A car is a tool, but people still have antique or beautiful vehicles that can serve only a couple of uses, one of them being merely aesthetic. Clearly, if it were all about functionality, everyone would carry a Glock.
Brass,”everyone would carry a SIG “. FIFY
Joel: those unstained pants are the outer pair, yes? I kinda misread the sentence at first and was rather puzzled as to, well, nevermind.
Mike and billf: Brass is right; y’all are, um, misinformed . Let the flame war begin! 🙂 Kidding- carry whatever you like.
If I weren’t poor, I would probably carry a SIG instead of a Glock.
LawDog’s blog was my introduction to the term BBQ Gun. I like the idea. Too bad my family BBQs are in a gun-phobic state.
Gonna go make a gin ‘n tonic now.
Bill, I should have factored the financial aspect into my definition of “functionality.” Everyone would carry a Hi-Point. That way everyone would have a hammer. It might function as a statue-making tool: it’s uglier than Medusa.
Now we know, how LB knows, you are not taking him with you…Nice holster and britches.
Brass: You made me almost spill my drink from laughing. A hammer, heh.
My Glock is ugly, too, and I don’t care as long as it works.
Robert, ‘the outer pair” would be the only pair, I would think. Joel’s a desert hermit, but he’s not homeless; he has no reason to wear three pairs of pant at once.
As for the pistols, I always figured SIG/Sauer was one of the brands I’d never own, being too damned expensive. Then I ran across a P229 at the local merchant of death, part of an LEO trade-in lot, & got it out the door for under $500.
Oops, “pants”.
Tennessee Budd: Perhaps desert hermits go commando. Myself, I typically wear two pair of pants during daylight hours. Today’s inner pants say “Hanes” on the waistline. As for stains; no comment!
I read this and my first thought was all my stuff is more like a hammer then I remembered I actually have a perfect Executive Carry stainless Ed Brown that has zero scratches because I never had anything other than an ex wife that cost so much. I need to find a BBQ to go to I guess.
I understand the concept of a BBQ gun, but sometimes doubt the ability of the other BBQ attendees to notice.
By way of explanation, while I was at the range one weekend, I was called in to work.
Not wanting to leave my gun in the car, I grabbed a pancake holster from the bottom of my range bag, and waltzed into the office with the STI Edge on my hip.
Of the seven other people there to deal with the emergency NOT ONE NOTICED that I was openly carrying a gun, in a state where doing so was illegal.