https://youtu.be/Lsem22DkIjw

Very clever!

I don’t think it would cause much damage, but the cobbled-together ammunition explodes with impressive force.

(Hat tip to Bryan.)

What springs to mind when you view the following pictures?

Those of you interested in armed self defense would say “Ess-Oh-Bee!  Small Of Back holster.  I mean, DUH!”

That is certainly true.  The two holsters shown are designed so a defensive handgun can be carried in the rear of the body, at the center of the waist.  But what is also true is the two people who are choosing to use such holsters must be reasonably fit, without mobility or flexibility issues.  Otherwise they wouldn’t be able to use such holsters.

Were all of my students disabled, or suffering from some sort of reduced physical capability?  Not all, but a sizable percentage certainly were.  Some were fully capable of performing all standard tasks, but some quirk of body shape kept them from using some of the most popular holster designs.

What I would like to do now is explore some of the ways that disability, age, body shape, or chronic physical ailments guided the choices my students made in how they carried the guns they needed to fend off violent criminal attack.

Continue reading →

There was a lull of activity at the workplace.  My coworker shared a dream he had, where he was living back in time during the Old West.  When a wolf ate his daughter, he gathered a posse to hunt down the beast!

The reason he wanted to relate this example of night time daring-do was because one of the posse members was equipped with a strange shotgun.  It consisted of four barrels, all lined up next to one another.

“Oh, you mean like in Phantasm II!” I piped up.

This puzzled my fellow wage slave.  “Phantasm two?”  He claimed to have never heard of the horror film franchise, let alone seen any of the movies.  But when I pulled up a picture of the quad shotgun wielded by one of the protagonists, he clapped me on the shoulder and yelled “THAT’S IT!!”

He might not remember ever seeing or hearing about the horror film that featured the quad shotgun so prominently, but his insistence that the prop is an exact match for his dreamtime weapon indicates that he must have caught a glimpse of it somewhere over the years.

This does lead to the question: Are there actual 4 barrel weapons out there that are intended for serious use, as opposed to novelty items and conversation pieces?

The answer, of course, is that there are!

Continue reading →

Long time reader Milo was kind enough to send me this article, which discusses a bakery in Yonkers, NY with an open door policy on new hires.  It seems that anyone walking in off the street will be considered for a job as long as a position is open.

The business is getting some free publicity about this policy, mainly because standard practices to filter undesirables from those seeking a job are done away with.  No resumes, background checks, letters of recommendation, or past employment history is required.  If someone is a recovering drug addict or convicted felon, they are given a job as long as they apply when workers are needed.

This hiring procedure has apparently worked well for the bakery.  Proof that society is prejudiced against those few who made a few mistakes in their past?  Vindication for the Liberal canard that all it takes to make a career criminal into a productive member of society is a job and a fair shake after they have served their time?

The author of the article I linked to above would certainly have you think so, and the people running the bakery waste no time patting themselves on the back for being oh so concerned about their fellow man.  But I notice that, while the jobs offered at the bakery are entry level positions, the workers who are hired are not treated as entry level workers.

I’ve had my share of minimum wage jobs, and management at all of them wanted me to start producing as quickly as possible.  Cookies needed to be baked, ditches needed to be dug, toilets needed to be scrubbed.

Training consisted of following around a more experienced employee for two or three days.  Monkey see, monkey do.  I had to get my ass in gear and sling that mop.  After all, the vomit on the floor in the Ladies Room wasn’t going to clean itself!

This changed when I moved up to more skilled labor.  Training would take place over weeks instead of days.  The paychecks were bigger, but there was a lot more to remember as well.

This is how the bakery trains the “entry level” workers they hire for minimum wage scutwork.  “New workers go through an intensive training period and a 10-month apprenticeship.”  This is simply remarkable!  The current job I have now is fairly technical, and I didn’t have any experience in the field, yet I was fairly well trained in less than a month.  To spend that kind of time on people who are going to haul bags of flour around and mix up batter is something I never heard of before.  With such long-term scrutiny being leveled against new employees, no wonder the company doesn’t have to bother with any sort of pre-hire screening process.  If their employees are the recidivist type, it is unlikely they will be able to control their darker impulses for such a long period of time.

Anyone who has ever worked in law enforcement will tell you that those with multiple felony convictions have probably made a lifestyle choice that they aren’t going to change anytime soon.  The same people keep committing crimes again and again.  Catch them red-handed and you will probably just have to arrest them again in a few years because they will go back to their old ways very soon after being released from jail.

It has been my experience that it is possible for someone to turn their life around and follow the straight and narrow if they have been convicted of only one felony.  If they get punished but still decide to turn their hand to crime then, the occasional exception notwithstanding, it is a pretty sure bet that they are without the quality of redemption.

There is some speculation in the article that other companies may follow the trail blazed by the bakery, and hire without bothering with a screening process.  I suppose it is possible, if the company in question is rich enough to have a supervisor follow around the new guys for ten months while they scrub out toilets.