Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Biweekly Gun Shots 15 - The Absolute Worst Gun I Have Ever Owned...

...was a RG semiautomatic pistol in .25 caliber. This by coincidence, or due to lack of any gun smarts at all at the time of purchase, was my very first pistol. I bought it, if memory serves me right, for about $40 from a dealer in Las Vegas, Nevada quite some years back now. I was probably 21 or 22 years old at the time.

What can I say about it except maybe it would have been a better fishing sinker than it was a pistol. I don't remember how many rounds it held but you can figure around 7 or 8 fully loaded. I do recall it seemed cheap to me when I bought it, what with its flimsy plastic grips and just overall cheap look to it. It seemed cheaper yet, when it jammed quite a few times when I first fired it. It seemed cheaper yet, and bear in mind it was cheap at about $40, when I field stripped it for a cleaning and a spring fell out. I got it back in sort of, but the directions that came with it did not mention anything about springs that would fall out when cleaning it. I had to go back to the dealer to have it reinserted and he admonished me heartily for basically being a dork. Oh well - not only my first experience with my own pistol and with a crappy pistol but also with a pompous gun store jerk who just had to make me feel like a fool before fixing my gun.

Back to the pistol. As I recall, I practiced with it a bit and could actually hit something on the target from about 5 yards away. While practicing I learned another two things - .25 caliber ammo was expensive. The second thing I learned was that while it did not have much of a kick it had enough power to sling that slide back with enough oomph to tear open the flesh on my left thumb's forward knuckle when I held it in a two hand grip left thumb over the right one. OUCH - those two cuts through my knuckle (one cut from each side of the underside of the slide) that smarted and bled like a stuck pig. I think I did it twice before I realized why it was happening - as I said my first pistol. I guess I learned a third thing too - never hold a pistol like that.

I bought that pistol for one purpose - as a travel companion for a road trip I was to make by myself. Well not by myself, I had that little pistol and I had a little ball of fuzz (or whatever) with eyes and feet glued to it and an advertising label attached - sort of like the Geico stack of money but instead of cash for a body it was a ball of fuzzy material and it was green - maybe a time and a half as big as a large cherry. It was glued to my dashboard. I called it Zerk; and Zerk and I had quite some one sided conversations as I drove along the many - many - miles of that trip. The RG pistol, that I did not speak to; it was my silent traveling companion - there to speak only if I needed it to give out a loud report. Luckily I did not need it. Just before arriving at my journey's end, I took it apart and disposed of it into a deep bay (salt water) one piece chucked in one direction, a second piece in another direction, and so on until all the parts had vanished beneath the briny deep. Why did I do that to a perfectly good little piece of crap pistol? Well let me just say it would have been next to impossible for me to have obtained a pistol permit for it where I was headed. I should have just bought a shotgun, I would probably still have it but as I said I was pretty inexperienced in the world of guns at the time. Most of my experience until then had been shooting rifles at summer camp years before.

Do I miss that little Rotten Gun RG Pistol? Sure I do sometimes, Nah, not really - not all that much anyhow. It would have been nice if I could have kept it for use as a paperweight or as a fishing sinker. I suppose it was better suited to being a sinker and therefore it winding up below the waves seems a perfectly fitting place for it to have ended up.

All the best,
Glenn B

I Again Ask Myself - Why Am I, Or Anyone, A Law Enforcement Officer?

Sometimes I truly wonder why I, or anyone for that matter, ever gets involved in law enforcement work. Sure it is an honest way to make a living, you have a lot of potential to do good for your community, you get to do some adventurous things, and the pay can be excellent. Then again, when faced with some of the possibilities of a day's, such as the stress you can be put, the lack of respect you encounter, the hatred that is spewn at you, and the danger you can face - well I am right back to wondering why anyone would want such a job. Of course, the thing that makes me wonder the most is probably all of the second guessing like the charges of racism if an officer interrogates, arrests, or shoots someone of a minority group, the commissions and panels formed to determine if the officer acted in good faith within the scope of his duties, the defense lawyers , the civil attornies during lawsuits, the negative media attention and so on. I suppose all the negative stuff truly outweighs the good, or at least it should, in the eyes of a normal person and therefore no normal person would ever take a job as a law enforcement officer. I eam - would you be willing to face this at your job for let's say: $25,000 - $75,000 per year - and then realize that you may very well face the same thing everyday for the rest of your 25 year career?

Watch the video then answer the question again.



Yep, it always amazes me that we have anyone at all willing to take jobs as law enforcement officers. Yet, it amazes me even much more so that people in jobs like school teacher, garbage man, baseball player (yes even the big hitters), librarian, mayor, computer technician, college professor, construction worker, electrician, truck driver all think they are not paid enough for what they do while at the same time believing law enforcement officers are overpaid way too much. These people who complain about police salaries are the same people who complain about police racism, police cronyism, abuse of police power, and on and on and on. Sometimes I truly wonder why I, or anyone for that matter, ever stayed involved in law enforcement work once we were fool enough to hire on in the first place.

All the best,
Glenn B

Video Source: http://www.krqe.com/dpp/news/crime/crime_krez_aztec_video_of_2007_shootout_released_200907221356

Stupidity In Crime

A robbery suspect in South Carolina has died after police say he spray painted his face to conceal his identity during the crime, WLTX reported.

This, you can explain to your children, is the reason they want to do well in high school, trade school and or college - so they can avoid finding themselves doing something for a living that requires no degree and no amount of intelligence. Yes I am referring to the idea of having to resort to a life of crime, although I must admit the person who wrote the above sentence could have paid more attention in school. Did the robber die only after police say he spray painted his face, or did he die after, and possibly as a result of the fact, he spray painted his face. Whatever - at least the reporter has a decent job and probably graduated high school as well as college. The robber, on the other hand, probably did not graduate high school (at least not on his own merit) and probably was not a college man. Then again, he probably never watched the James Bond movie Goldfinger either and now he is dead!

All the best,
GB