It is actually a cake of soap, and they come in various colors.

I have noticed that police officers in the United States have discovered a hunger to shoot dogs, even if they are no threat.

Sheriff Deputy approaches a fenced in yard, only to have a 35 pound (17 kilogram) dog bark at him from the other side of the chain link.  When he pulls his sidearm to dispatch the offending pooch, said deputy shoots self in the leg.

What kind of dog was it?  A pitbull, like mine.

The barking terror was a female named Precious.  Click the link in order to find a local news video, where you can watch the mankilling beast happily cavort with small children.

It seems to me that the popularity of the no-knock drug raid, where police officers forcibly burst into a residence with guns drawn and shouting at the tops of their lungs, is due in no small part to this desire to wipe out family pets.  Standard operating procedure on such raids is to shoot every dog in sight as the cops thunder into the house, no matter how small or harmless the dog happens to be.

An interesting article found on a German news website discusses how Mafia organizations from Italy are finding easy pickings in Europe’s largest economy.

Germans have long been proud of the low crime rate in their country, but that is more a result of strict social conformity and an almost religious regard for authority than anything else.   Seems most German children undergo a pretty strict indoctrination period.

As the article hints, Germany doesn’t allocate the resources for anything more than middling quality law enforcement.  Of course they hardly need to be more competent, considering the way most of the citizens are so eager to follow the rules.

This system works most of the time, but seems to have trouble dealing with criminal elements who refuse to adhere to German social standards.  Alleged Mafia ties to a conspiracy which defrauded the government made no impression on German courts, and some extremely light sentences were handed down.  The stakes were admittedly low, however, as the criminals were just scamming for social welfare checks and other government benefits.  There were hardly any gunfights in the streets, and I bet the final outcome would have been different if there had been.

It sounds like the German courts need something the the RICO Statute that is in force in the US.  I doubt they will take such a step, as any politician who proposed such a law would open themselves to charges that they are following the lead set by the United States.

It started out like any other class.  Someone who needed my help had heard of me through the grapevine, and I went over to their apartment to conduct the initial interview.  While there, the potential student proudly announced that they had already purchased a self defense handgun, a Colt Mustang chambered for the .380 ACP cartridge.

This wasn’t something that would normally be an issue.  The .380 cartridge is the least powerful cartridge that I recommend for self defense use, but it is still acceptable.  I also try to discourage those new to the shooting sports from buying 1911 style handguns as their first, but don’t make an issue about it if they set their minds on it.

The problem was that the applicant in this case was so overweight that his fingers were too fat to fit into the trigger guard.

Well, that last statement wasn’t exactly true.  He could stuff his finger in there, but it would compress the trigger and fire the gun before he could aim.  After his finger was in there, the gun was pretty much stuck.  I only managed to get it off his hand by having him point his finger at me while I unscrewed the gun from the digit as if it was a wedding ring that needed to be resized.

Why did he spend good money on a gun that was way too small for his fingers?  Why in the world had he purchased the handgun without even trying to pick it up at the gun store?  He had bought the gun without even bothering to try the most rudimentary test because, as he proudly and smugly stated, his brother had recommended it!

Well, who the hell was this brother of which he spoke?  Was he a qualified firearms instructor?

No, no, nothing like that.  He was just some guy who already owned a few handguns.  My potential student was obviously suffering from an advanced case of hero worship, even though he had somehow decided to seek me out instead of simply asking his brother to impart the basics of safe firearm handling.

Yeah, okay, whatever.  He had never even fired the gun, so I told him to take it back and trade it in on the purchase price of something with a trigger guard that could handle a finger of ample girth.  After all, as I patiently explained, there was no way such an undersized handgun was going to to do any good if he was not able to get off even a single aimed shot.

I went on my way, but returned after I received a message from our friend of the massive fingers that the equipment at hand would now work as needed.  I entered the apartment with mild curiosity as to which make and model of handgun he had finally decided upon, only to feel a great deal of frustration when he produced the very same Colt Mustang that had proven to be so unsuitable.

But all was well!  It seems the girthy subject of this story had solved the problem of small trigger guards by using a cutting wheel to remove the offending semicircle of metal!

What the hell, asshole!  The Mustang is a 1911 style handgun, carried with the hammer cocked!  You just increased the chances of a negligent discharge every time you would holster the gun!  And now you can’t take the thing back in order to get a different gun!

The smugness returned, as our friend archly replied that he was planning on foregoing a holster in order to carry the gun loose in his pocket.  After all, that is the way his brother did it!

Screw this, I was out of there!  But he said something that made me pause with my hand on the knob.

“I thought you said you were going to help me!” he plaintively cried in a rather shrill and piercing voice.

“I did help you, you jerk!  You just wouldn’t listen!”

And then I was gone, never to return.

So what is the moral of the story?  There are two, actually.

The first is that it is important to find a self defense gun that fits your needs as closely as possible without any major modifications.  If you have to buy a ton of after market parts to get it to work, or drag out the Dremel to scrape something away before you can use it for the intended purpose, then your decision was bad and you should reconsider.

The second lesson to be learned is that whiny man-children who insist on ignoring my advice should do both of us a favor and never bother to seek me out in the first place.

At least this one has an excuse as to why he can’t shoot worth a darn.