Guns and Ammo

Prairie Dogs with guns

I live near the water and there are lots of those big Canadian Geese around.  They make a lot of noise, honk honk honk and poop like mad.   The closest I've ever come to eating one of them was watching Christmas Carol when Scrooge sent one off to Bob and his family on Christmas day.

The other day it was -13 degrees when I woke up and not to the sound of nature, wind and blowing snow but to the sound of shotgun fire. bam bam bam.  Down the beach a way were hunters in some sort of makeshift blind and their little noggins would pop up now and then, very much like some deranged prairie

Somewhere on here is the freezing point of the human brain

dogs, to see what they could see.

They were dumb as rocks.  When the sky is clear geese fly high - out of range. So here are these folks, all decked out in Christmas camouflage gear banging away at thin air, bourbon bottle at the ready.  I retreated quietly.

Seems a fellow named Metcalf is, or soon to be was, a big deal writer for Guns and Ammo magazine. He wrote a piece on the second amendment (pry my gun from my cold dead hands - Heston/Ben-Hur) and noted that every amendment to the constitution had some limitations.  A howl ensued and he is soon to be out of a job.

Dick Metcalf , writer under fire, with his wall
of deer that volunteered to be shot.

I think of these guys firing away at an empty sky in -13 degree weather and if there was ever a case for some sort of threshold test for gun ownership, well that was it.  They were hungry - they were fat as pigs. They didn't know what they were doing (obviously), and they were killing for fun; or trying to.

I heard an argument against the idea of not selling guns to crazy people or the mentally infirm.  The root of it was that being crazy or stupid/dumb wasn't illegal and until they shoot up some place out of lunacy or ignorance, then they can blast away.

That is the core argument; John Dillinger and Al Capone could have owned guns until they killed people or were caught doing it.  Makes perfect sense.