Author: hsoi

Fantastic Fest Filmmakers Fun with Firearms

/ hsoi

Fantastic Fest is a film festival held annual here in Austin at the Alamo Drafthouse. I don’t attend FF (I couldn’t take the endless hours of movie watching), but my buddy W loves it and attends as a VIP every year. W sent me this video:

My understanding is Tim League, owner of the Drafthouse and co-founder of FF, does this sort of thing every year. He takes the foreign film producers out for some shooting of machine guns, sporting clays, and then some good BBQ. Shows them a little bit of Texas. Heh.

I will say, watching some of the video is cringeworthy. Shooting that full auto Glock… watching the angle of the muzzle… I know of the facility they were shooting at but I don’t know the geography of the location. I hope there’s nothing important within 2 miles behind that berm. 😯  It should be noted that many people in that video have never shot a gun before (if it wasn’t obvious), and I do question how responsible it was for people that don’t know how to shoot to shoot a difficult to control gun like a full-auto Glock.

Apart from that, it was really cool to see the host of firearms they got to play with. I’m a little envious. 🙂

Obama won’t meet with the Dalai Lama

/ hsoi

Via Blackfork it seems that President Obama has decided to not meet with the Dalai Lama to appease China.

Hrm.

It means Mr Obama will become the first president not to welcome the Nobel peace prize winner to the White House since the Dalai Lama began visiting Washington in 1991.

In 2007, President Bush gave the Congressional Gold Medal to the Dalai Lama. In 2009, Obama won’t meet with the man, because we know who holds onto the USA’s purse strings.

Change you can believe in.

New grips for my 442

/ hsoi / 9 Comments

My Smith & Wesson 442 snub nose revolver is a gun designed for concealed carry. It’s small, it’s lightweight, and everything about it is designed to help minimize its profile. To further this end, the 442 comes with very small grips. I didn’t like the grips so I went looking for a replacement set. This is what I found…. with pictures!!

Continue reading →

Endorsements

/ hsoi / 1 Comment

So the FTC says that bloggers must disclose.

When did the FTC start having jurisdiction over blogging? I obviously missed the memo. Actually they don’t, it’s still regulation over advertisers, but it’s acknowledging that blogging is one new avenue for marketing. Macworld has more.

Conceptually all of this bugs me and I could rant on for a while about it. However in the end, I have a degree of “OK” with all of this. The thing is that the Internet is a place ripe for transmission of information that’s less than truthful. When you couple in the ease of anonymity, it makes it hard to always believe your sources. Of course, one remedy to this is to trust your sources, do the work to vet them, and if you can’t be sure of the source then don’t be sure of the information. It’s one reason I make no bones about who I am on my blog: I’m willing to stand behind what I write and willing to let you know the source of the material. I am human, I will make mistakes, I will evolve my ideas and opinions and knowledge over time, but I do my best to be solid.

But of course, the reality is if someone wants to be unscrupulous, they will be and no law or guidelines or regulation will stop them. Thus in the end what the FTC did amounts to a whole lot of nothing useful and a whole lot of regulatory burden placed upon law-abiding citizens that are just trying to live their lives without hassle.

For the record, all of the “endorsements” and “reviews” and such that I’ve done on this blog are purely my own personal opinion. Anything I’ve reviewed or endorsed has been from my own personal experience, paying for the thing out of my own pocket, and either being a satisfied or unsatisfied customer. If I ever did receive something free, I’d say so regardless of the FTC ruling, because my own personal integrity depends upon it.

Updated: I like what Linoge did: made a “For Hire” category and any such actual paid/compensated endorsements/reviews/etc. and such get classified under that. Makes a nice way to corral things together and make context evident. So, I’ve created such a category and you’ll note that, at least as of this writing, this posting is the only thing under that category so some context to the category can be retained.

A Photo Essay

/ hsoi

Apparently a man mugs a woman in Chicago’s Chinatown then takes off running. Two citizens chase after the mugger and restrain him, waiting for police to arrive. A photojournalist happens upon the scene (his office was nearby, he was going out for lunch). This is what he captured on film.

What I took from it:

  • Crime happens at any time of the day, any where.
  • When a mugger, robber, burglar, rapist, or any other assorted scumbag says “Do this and I won’t do that”, why should you believe him? The scumbag has already demonstrated they’re a scumbag and untrustworthy.
  • It took the police 7-8 minutes to arrive, and then all they did was clean up.
  • There are good people in this world, willing to step up and help. We need more such people.
  • Don’t go messing around in Chinatown… people will “put moves” on you. 😉

I’m speechless

/ hsoi / 2 Comments

Reading this posting from Linoge… I’m speechless. Well almost speechless.

Not at Linoge, but the crime he discusses. I don’t even know where to begin… but what Linoge writes is a good start.

Happy Birthday, Monty Python

/ hsoi / 2 Comments

Today marks the 40th anniversary of the first airing of Monty Python’s Flying Circus.

Since I like to blog about self-defense, I figure it’s only fitting that we learn how to defend yourself against anyone who attacks you armed with a piece of fresh fruit. No pointed sticks (SHUT UP!).

Rules FAIL

/ hsoi / 7 Comments

Darwin Award candidate.

Police say the accidental shooting happened as the group was planning to go to the gun range. One of the adults raised concern about the 25-year-old man handling the firearm because of the infant being in the room, according to a police press release. The adult also was concerned that the rifle was loaded.

“The man joked that there was one way to find out if it was loaded and, at that point, he reportedly put the rifle in his mouth and pulled the trigger,” according to the release.

This isn’t accidental, this is negligent.

If you want to find out if a gun is loaded or not, you point it in a safe direction (i.e. a direction where if a bullet is discharged the bullet will come to rest without causing unwanted damage), you unload the gun (e.g. remove the magazine, open the floor plate, open the cylinder, whatever is proper for that particular firearm), you then peek into the chamber and perhaps even put a finger in there: visually and tactilely verify it’s unloaded — that there are no rounds in the gun in any place or any where. All the while, you follow The Rules; this guy violated just about all of them.

This also points out that small calibers (it was a .22) can be dangerous. It also demonstrates that shot placement greatly affects lethality.

Neither alcohol nor drugs appear to have played a role in the incident, police reported.

But apparently a lot of stupidity.