Happiness is a Warm Gun

I'll call it guano. Birds at my feeders left several spots on my porch screens, and just as you don't leave guano on a vehicle or your hat you don't leave it on aluminum screening either, for more than a season. The screens are beneath the eaves and rarely washed by rain.

Removing each screen and spray washing each with the hose was too much work. Spray washing the screens while they were in place, from the outside, would force guano inward onto the porch when that was the opposite of the goal. The screen frames are also old and fragile and the screening very delicately sandwiched between their pieces -- can't power-wash. And when the porch walls get wet the paint peels.

Rooting through the garage found me the answer: the old plastic-embedded-with-glitter "Splash" squirtgun, one of two. The pink squirtgun I'd favored got clogged with hard-water residue. This one still worked, and I'd kept it for 10 years thinking someday I might need it, and smack my butt and call me Sally, after filling the squirtgun with warm water I stood inside the porch and with skillful aim squirted water outward through my screens and I was pleased as punch that probably no one else in the county did the exact same thing today.

Permit-Less Carry Starts Jan. 1

As of January 1, Missouri allows anyone to carry concealed firearms without a permit--within the state. But to enjoy concealed-carry rights in other states that have reciprocal agreements with our great state of Missouri, you still must have a Missouri concealed-carry permit. I just renewed mine ($100).

States that won't honor Missouri permits still include Illinois, darn it, the only state where I want to carry. For an Illinois permit a Missourian must prove 16 hours of firearms training and pay $300 because Illinois is such a trainwreck. Wisconsin is now reciprocal for Missouri permits issued after August 2013, but I'll have to drive there through Iowa, I guess.

States that do not honor the Missouri permits: WA, OR, CA, NV, MN, IL, NY, MA, RI, DE, NJ, MD, HI. All other states, okay. This post was inspired by the saying I saw on a truck: "An armed society is a polite society." That's true only if everyone is trained. I'd prefer permits only for those age 21 and older who graduated from high school with a 3.5 GPA.

What's Wrong With Our Country?

Taken Dec. 4, 2015

Half-staff flags again, the photo taken at the same place, on a day the wind was blowing in the opposite direction it was on November 19, just a few days ago. Why is it so often a day of mourning for our country, people are asking, and they're suggesting various remedies, mostly forms of gun control.

My view, should you care to hear it: This culture lives and feasts on murder. The U.S. is the biggest arms dealer in the world. We engineer and avidly play murderous video games and let our kids play them; we enjoy murders and autopsies and death and gun violence on TV and in our movies and books; we count on slaughter, fictional and real, for entertainment. We just love to be stunned when mass murders happen in our country (we don't care a real lot when they happen elsewhere that isn't Western Europe). We are excited and enchanted by the fuss, the video loops, cable news pornographically following every move and chasing every ambulance, the "experts" and "heads of state" and talking heads blaming guns, gun ownership, the economy, parents, mental illness, the Koran, racism, privilege, liberalism, colonialism, education, or history. Especially when white middle-class folks going to movies or school are murdered, concerned people call for a ban on all guns, or on assault weapons and not other guns, or say we should try to make it really difficult to get guns, or confiscate all guns, or change the Constitution because it's not correct or up to date.

First of all, stop loving murder. Refuse to let murderous entertainment or murder mysteries or horror movies into your house even if they're from the BBC, don't watch them, don't read them, and don't listen to TV news, which is tailored to create anxiety and fear and is a great tool for demagogues.

Second, quit turning each and every mass murderer into a celebrity, their faces on the cover of People magazine. The more attention we pay, the more murder spectacles there will be and the more half-mast flags will result.

Third, if you're so concerned, get off Facebook and get active, join an organization and work for what you believe in, donate money, support mental health clinics, befriend a troubled boy, fix it so that only those over age 21 with a high-school diploma and 3.5 grade average and no record and doctor-certified can legally obtain a firearm and require firearm education. Because we can't ban all guns, and even if we did they'd be sold on the sly and people would still leave them where kids can get at them, everyone should be trained from early youth in firearms safety. Make firearms "forbidden" items and you only increase their ability to fascinate.

And, if you are a responsible firearms owner, keep them and stay responsible. The first thing Mao did when he wanted "cultural revolution" was require all citizens to give up all guns, then gave them to mobs of brainless teenage boys, Red Guards, who had no problem at all threatening, beating, and killing their parents and teachers.

It's Deer Hunting Season

The first Missouri deer-hunting firearms Youth Weekend begins tomorrow, Nov. 2-3.

Regular November firearms deer season is Nov. 16-26. (Out near here it'll be "bang, bang, bang!" all day.)

Antlerless deer firearms season: Nov. 27-Dec. 8, in selected areas. In my area, hunters can take only one antlerless deer.

Alternative deer-hunting methods: Dec. 21-31. This includes deer-baiting and hunting on food plots.

The second youth deer-hunting firearms weekend: Jan 4-5. (Hey, kids, you can take only one deer.)

Information from MDC.mo.gov. I liked the T-shirt.

She's an Easy Target

Driving on the highway I saw a woman my age walking alone on the road shoulder, an unusual sight. She was hiking. Before thinking anything else I thought, "There's an easy target."

Then I thought: That's what I look like.

I go on solo hikes all the time, and take daily walks on back roads and trails mostly, sometimes crossing highways. City walks were filled with fears about being jumped or followed or harassed. That's not special; that was life as an urban female. In a better part of the city we women wore sweatsuits and sneakers while on walks to indicate that we were exercising and not out on the streets to make money. I gladly moved to the country where walks were carefree and I could forget I was female.

But I had no idea until now what I looked like to others. I tried to think of the last female solo hiker I met on a trail. There are almost none. That's because women are afraid. They're told they should be. There are those horror stories broadcast on TV into our minds. Once when I was fishing in a remote area three hunters emerged from the woods with their firearms and I thought, they're probably harmless--but what if they're not? So now, so as not to be defenseless, I'm armed; now very consistently armed. I'm aware that this isn't a perfect solution. You might tell me to get a man or a pit bull or at least another woman companion. Why? I have the right to walk and hike free of fear. I sure do.

Cabin Fever

You know how spring gets you thinking about home-improvement projects? How about this rec room makeover for family fun?  Beats a ping-pong table. From The Pistol Shooters Treasury, 2nd edition, 1973. Ahh, the olden days....that looks like a Ruger Mark II in his hand. He can't be shooting larger caliber than a .22 if he's doing it at such short range, one-handed...I can't think of anything more ludicrous or dangerous than a home basement firing range. A figment of somebody's cabin fever.

Gun Shopping 101

Written for ladies, but anyone can visit this informative article by my sister, rulalenska, city girl and one tuff cookie. Above: Colt .38 Police Special revolver, standard-issue for police departments 1940s-1970s; this one pre-1945.

Made for You and Me

Who's the leader of the club? The first rule about gun club is that you do not talk about gun club. The second rule of gun club is that you do not talk about gun club. Nor clay pigeons, nor the mechanical thing that throws them, nor targets shaped like groundhogs, nor Cabelas which has good sales. Nor about getting this year's license and hunting for ducks, doves, turkeys in the Missouri River bottoms, and roasting 'em up, or if there is any firearm that can take a grizzly bear. As far as I have heard, the only thing that can stop a grizzly bear is a really riled-up wolverine. Nor do you talk about Sept. 11, 2001 and how firearm sales have soared since then.

Homemade Rifle Range

To build this I could use only what was in my garage, & only what I could lift. The foundation had to be weatherproof and windproof and require no digging. So I placed 4 concrete blocks on end. Over these I stuck five-gallon plastic paint buckets, jamming them tightly or less tightly to make their tops level. On top of these went a sheet of plastic, about ¼ inch thick, weighted with barbell weights, those chintzy ones with concrete centers. (Demetrius the Gardener became a health nut late in life, too late, and left them in my garage. But his spirit – “make do, or do without” -- helped guide me in this construction project.) More paint buckets on top of stacked weights brace the bale of straw which is the backstop. The photo shows one bale; I need another to bring the backstop to the best height. But that’s all I will need to buy. I used to buy 6 bales and build a pyramid of straw. Precip made them rot and collapse. I wanted something better.

Photos show the the finished version, the foundation (left), and the rear view. Tell me I did good!