The four rules of question safety:
With a tip o’ the hat to Jeff Cooper and, er, “jdog” (yes, I tracked that through and know who that is).
I’ve added the Sunday photos from Oleg’s Hero Gear shoot.
I ran down to Tennessee for Oleg’s Hero Gear shoot again this year.
So far I only have Saturday’s pictures up; so about this many again yet to come, I hope in the next week still.
I don't believe I've ever captured 4 empties in flight at once before
(one just short of the left edge of his shirt, even with the yellow tape in the background; one just at the cuff on his right arm; and two above his arm, about even with the hat brim).
Doesn’t take long to empty even a 37-round magazine at that rate!
I’m ashamed of my country again. I’m posting about the Peter Watts thing, of course.
I stole the title from Jo Walton, because it is perfect.
The story started popping up on my friends list after it appeared on Boing Boing this morning.
If you don’t know at least the bare outlines by now, you’re living under a rock; but you can find out at the links above, so I’m not going to repeat any of it.
Here’s what’s terrifying about this: there are quite a number of people commenting on the basic theme of “that’s the way things are.” That’s terrifying—apparently police (in the broad sense; I believe these were border guards) have been jack-booted thugs above the law for long enough that people have learned to take it for granted. That’s really, truly, deeply, terrifying.
The concept that the Constitution protects our rights is…incomplete. Nothing static can really defend against hundreds of years of political maneuvering. What it can do is give some basis for fighting back. Rights always need protecting. Ours in the USA have been fairly badly ignored over the last couple of decades, so we need to work extra hard for a while to recover from that.
There are the usual claims that Watts “must have” done something to bring this on himself. It’s entirely possible he did some things that I would describe as “inadvisable” in his situation. Nobody who knows him thinks he started hitting the policemen, though, so I don’t either. At worst, from what I’ve read, he asked questions, perhaps more than once, and he got out of his car. Those are not actions that could justify a police beating! As Jo put it, “he should have cringed more”.
We’ve given money to Watts, and to the ACLU, and I have written to one elected official already.
(Click through image for full gallery.)
