The Photo

I missed the BAC info. Booze and guns and inflamed situations rarely end well.

Spartan, several target ranges in the North Bay where you might be able to get some supervised practice - SonomaShooting.org Links

 

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I’m talking about the armed couple fencing themselves in. Don’t see your concentration camp analogy.

 

I've been to one (can't remember for the life of me where it was) and I have a clay shoot and an unsupervised range just up the road from me. My biggest problem is I can't find .22 rounds when I look for them.

That aside, me going to a range defeats the purpose of an SJ outing. When "I say teach me to shoot" I really mean "let's drink beer while talking about shooting and none of us actually fire guns."

 

Sorry I had a hard time figuring that out.

 

Hello, all. Saw this photo on social media and knew you all would be commenting on it.

Instead of this middle-aged couple, imagine a 73-year-old guy drunk off his ass who whacked me in the side of the head with a pistol that I ended up taking and his 78-year-old demented/paranoid wife pointing her gun directly at me while I'm in their driveway. The emotions I feel looking back at this image are terrifying and nightmare inducing. You have no idea what levels of danger people are willing to put you in for their own damn interests.

Mr. and Mrs. Point and Shoot have no idea how badly they could have bungled things: One split-second away from an itchy trigger finger, someone's dead and the Stand Your Ground law protects the loony toons loaded to the gills (and gun safes). In this case, the dumb-ass injury attorneys' lives will change forever -- deservedly so. I'm still trying to get mine back from the evening of May 30, 2014.

Wear a mask. Wash your hands. Above all, don't point guns at people.

Glad to be back, and thanks for all the fish. Appreciate the sabbatical and I'll hang around for as long as you will let me.

While COVID is collapsing everything around us, things are good personally for me and my wife right now. We're continuing to assume the worst and pray for the best, and remain sequestered in our mountain hideaway.

I'll try to make up for my lack of "likes" as soon as I get caught up.

 

@maumann, it is immeasurably good to have you back.

 

If the crazy drunk trigger-happy mustard-stained sleazebag lawyer couple brought back maumann, they have at least done one good thing in the world

 

When it starts with "Let's drink beer..." firing guns comes right off the table. Unless you're running with idiots, which I have done a time or two.

 

And thus the end of the sentence. I have no intention landing on a Darwin list. Unless we can shoot at an old TV in the desert, which I hear is fun...

 

So I was working in the doctor's office and he sends around a guy for a foot x-ray. He's in his early twenties, typical neighborhood redneck. He's got a through and through puncture wound in his foot, in the top and out the bottom, and the doc is trying to be sure that there is no visible foreign matter inside.

"So how'd you do that to your foot?" Neutral voice, neutral face. I wanted to know how the hell he managed this. I'd seen all sorts of funky wounds, but this was a new one.

I get something of a defensive look, but he decides I'm ok.

"You know how a lot of AK-47's have that folding spike bayonet?"

I nod. "Yup, seen those. SKS's have them too."

"Yeah. So me and some of my friends were down by the creek, shooting at cans and stuff, just kinda screwing around. My buddy called me over to help him with something, and there wasn't a tree to lean my rifle against, just sand, so I folded out the bayonet and went to just stick it in the ground and leave it there, and I , uh, I stuck it through my foot on accident."

My professionalism kicked in. Poker face, belly muscles locked tight. I didn't laugh, although I know my mouth had to twitch. Still, I held it together pretty well, considering. I gave him neutral face and asked "Was there any alcohol involved?"

He gave something between a flinch and a twitch and looked up at me and after a long pause said, "We might have had a couple of beers." I imagine the Highway Patrol hears the same phrase in roughly the same tone.

I nod, holding it together still. I have a mental picture of this kid after a few beers and hitting a couple of joints screwing up and spiking his foot to the ground by accident, then yelling bloody murder as he dances in a circle. None of his buddies can immediately help him pull it out because they've all fallen down laughing at his dumb ass. I can just see it.

I park him back in a waiting room and take the films around to the doc. Our eyes meet and we both crack up.

It was perfect.