Chris Johnson

A mentally troubled kid decided to take his AR-15 to school and start shooting.

The good news is that there was an SRO on site. This SRO ran to the sound of gun fire. The cowardly asshole shooter gave up as soon as a good guy with a gun arrived.

The bad news is that 2 teachers and 2 children lost their lives.

Thank god it wasn’t another Uvalde.

The father of the shooter has been arrested and charged with manslaughter. This is likely a direct result of the parents of the Michigan shooter being found guilty of their child shooting up a school.

Before the blood was cold, before the smoke had cleared, the blood vultures were at it again.

For some reason, they are big in the collective punishment game. I’m considered guilty of killing children because I have guns. Worse, I have a black gun that looks like an AR-15.

They have no issues with the actual weapons of war I have in my collection. The M1, the Springfield Trapdoor, the K98 and others are all weapons of war. They were all carried in battle.

But for some reason, that AR-15 style firearm is so evil I have to give mine up because some nut job used a gun to kill people.

Still no word on the murder capital of the US, Chicago. Oh, right, that’s black on black crime. I guess that doesn’t matter to the blood vultures.

Years ago, my eldest son, in 2nd grade, came home to report that he had been in lockdown. This was the first I had heard of “lock-downs” in schools.

When I went to talk to the principal, he explained it was a drill because a bad person could come and shoot up the kids.

He made a mistake, he asked me “What do you want me to do?”

“I want you to open the gun safe, take your gun out and run to the sound of gun fire and stop the shooter.”

He did not like that answer. Seems that he would rather children die than have the right tool to save lives.

Most schools are “weapon free”. A local high school was on lockdown for most of the day, this then extended to a local elementary school.

The cause of the lockdown? A high school student was spotted with a pocket knife. When they demanded to look into his stuff, he left. He walked home. That happened to have him walking into town. The elementary school was in the general direction.

This required therapy dogs and counselors to deal with the panic the staff instilled in the kids.

I’m sick of the blood vultures. Every one of them starts their argument with the same line of reasoning: We should break the law! It is for the good of the children!

Why do they always advocate breaking the law?

Oh, that’s right, they don’t like that law. So it must mean something else. You know, like only muskets, they say on their Wi-Fi enabled handheld magic box.

“You ignore the first part of the amendment, about well regulated! That means plenty of laws.” No, it means functioning well. It is still used in some technical fields to mean exactly that.

Or it only applies to “the militia”. The English doesn’t scan that way. The Supreme Court has said it is an individual right. The amendment says “the right of the people“. But they are dishonest.

In the best of worlds, the courts would work to enforce the laws as they were meant. We wouldn’t have judges and justices that are so goal-driven that their wants forces a predetermined outcome.

The state passes a bad law. The People file a suit challenging the law. They request a temporary injunction, a preliminary injunction, and summary judgement.

The court looks and agrees that the law is likely bad and grants the TRO. The parties file briefs, the court grants the preliminary injunction as well. The case does or does not succeed on a summary judgement and moves to arguments.

The case is heard by the court, the court issues their final judgement, or they issue the summary judgement in favor of The People

The state files an appeal. The administrative panel reads the court’s judgement, allows it to stay in place, schedules the case for a hearing before a merits panel. The merits panel looks at the case law and the lower court’s opinion and finds for The People.

The state pleads for an en banc hearing. The court denies the request.

The state file a motion for certiorari with the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court denies cert, case over. The People win.

Unfortunately, that is seldom how it works.
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About 6 months ago, I picked up a Kershaw Select Fire based on a suggestion in one of the comments.

After I wrote about it, I was asked to do a review after I had been using it for 6 months or so.

First, it is lighter than my Cold Steel. When in hand, it deploys as fast. It is easier to close than the Cold Steel. I find myself fumbling and being unhappy when I have to close the Cold Steel.

The liner lock works for me. The only locking knife that has a better release was my exchange blade Gerber. That had the release on the side. Your fingers didn’t get near the blade when closing.

The liner lock requires your thumb to be inline with the closing blade, but only for a moment, and it is comfortable to move out of the way. With the Cold Steel, you needed to squeeze the lock on the back to release. This put your fingers in the wrong place while you didn’t have a great grip on the knife.

The Cold Steel is a win on the pocket clip. I can place the knife in any of four different positions, tip down, tip up, left or right clip. The Kershaw only allows for left/right, not tip up.

For me, this means the knife comes out of the pocket in the wrong orientation. I have to do a rotate in my hand before I can deploy the blade. It is a rapid and easy deploy.

The actual blade is nice. It has held an edge for the last 6 months. It needs a touch up. Kershaw offers free sharpening. I have not looked into that. I’m sure I can sharpen this blade, I haven’t needed to. Almost there, not quite.

I’ve used it on cardboard, carving wood, lots of plastic, sealing tape, scraping things clean, cutting food and general use. No issues.

So what about the gimmick? The folding 1/4″ socket and four bits held in spring-loaded holders on the side?

First, it is not a Gerber. This is NOT a multi-tool. The number of times I reached for it because I wanted my Gerber is unreasonably high. It just isn’t a Gerber.

That said, I wouldn’t have had the Gerber with me in those cases, I would have had the Cold Steel. This Kershaw is a replacement for my Cold Steel, NOT for the Gerber. If I leave the house, the Gerber is with me. Inside the house, the Gerber is not with me, but I have real tools instead.

The first thing I learned is that a 1/4″ socket is not the right size, most of the time. In the past 6 months, two screws have had 1/4″ heads. Those were located yesterday.

Every other screw has had a larger head size. It had gotten to the point where I was considering adding that socket to my junk to carry. Then decided against it.

When using the screwdriver bits, it works a champ. Very happy. The bits are good enough. They are well-made, The socket holds them firmly, they don’t wiggle. It feels much like using a fat handled replaceable bit screwdriver.

As such, I prefer it to my Gerber. It takes a little longer to deploy, but it fits better.

The downside, yesterday I needed to pry a clip up. The driver slid in, as it should, then I started to pry. The socket popped off.

It went back on, I was very surprised it came off. I haven’t tried to repair it yet. I’m not sure how to repair it.

This is a significant disappointment.

I am more than willing to accept that if I use a blade as a pry bar, I should expect the blade to break. I have had far too many blades destroyed or damaged because I used them to pry or twist and had a piece snap off.

Do I recommend this tool? Today, that would be “no”. If I can get the socket to stay, it will become a “yes”, with caveats.

I have also not looked into Kershaw’s repair policy.

Today my father passed. He was missing his wife, Prue, of 64 years. For the last 4 months, since her passing, he has been asking everybody that talks to him if they have seen Prue.

I believe he is in a better place, with his wife, young and joyful, once again.

My social feeds are full of people claiming that Trump’s campaign is imploding. That Kamala’s got the biggest crowds ever. That Vance has weird interactions with people.

But the one thing that I keep seeing over and over again is crowd size claims.

I’ve been aware of crowd size estimates since Glenn Beck held his tea-party rally back in the 00s. People were showing overhead shots and then doing counts.

The numbers reported by the right were much larger than the number reported by the left. Taking them from the same images.

Then there were the images from Watt’s Mommy’s Demand group. For years, it looked like they had massive crowds outside the NRA annual meeting.

Then we were able to see photos from gun owners. The crowds were staged to look very dense, but there were barely a 100 people there.

Before Kamala was installed, the media was constantly going on about how Trump’s crowds weren’t really that big.

We would see photos seeming to show a rally half full. Then we would find out that the images were taken before Trump got there or after he left.

Once Kamala was installed, suddenly the left was much more concerned with crowd sizes. They started to post images of the Kamala crowds with all their joy and excitement of getting to vote for a person who has received zero votes.

Then I started to notice something, the images, and videos posted by Kamala’s people didn’t have the numbers that her team was claiming.

“Look at this massive line of people to greet the annotated one!”. And there is maybe a block of people, barely 2 people deep.

As a child, I watched Nixon’s inauguration parade. It was January in D.C. It was cold. My brother and I were bundled up in our winter coats. There were people lining both sides of the street, shoved up on one another 4 or 5 people deep. All to get a glimpse of our new President.

That isn’t what I am seeing in the Kamala videos, posted by her people.

Here is my point, the right is poking fun at Kamala’s crowd sizes based on her videos and images. The left has to take their videos and images that are of questionable integrity to attempt to show small crowds at Trump events.

Video editing is from before CGI. An example of early VFX.

While at the Fort, one of the visitors to come through, was from Australia.

I wanted to break out into songs from Men At Work, but restrained myself.

During our conversation, we were talking about the nasties that live in Australia.

Of course, there were the spiders. We agreed that spiders were worse down under.

We agreed that koala bears are cute to look at but nasty, vicious animals if they aren’t drugged.

She explained that the big red kangaroos are nasty critters. They will lean back on their tails, then kick out with their legs in a way that will knock a strong man down.

The little gray ones are not as nasty.

Another thing I didn’t know, was that kangaroos are extremely destructive to crop land. They will eat a field bare.

This led to a discussion about the definition of varmint. I am not a lawyer, so check the regulations where you are before you depend on some random guy on the net.

It is my understanding that farmers are justified in removing destructive varmints. So when that cute deer is eating your crops, they are not deer, they are a varmint that can be removed. Same with several other animals.

Which led her to talking about American’s having guns. I described the lever actions over the sofa. Bear, Deer, Raccoon and Squirrel rifles. Or in gun culture language, 45-70, 30-30, .357 Magnum, and .22LR.

While we agreed that there were some nasty faunae in Australia, she felt that bears were worse. She wanted that 45-70, “Bear Rifle” if she was going walking in the woods of New England.

For me, the most interesting part was getting to ask her about the gun confiscation.

It was obvious that she had been asked this before. She started by trying to answer for the group. Not herself. I had asked her explicitly about her opinion, not the opinion of others.

She explained that she had turned in their rifles. Not because the state knew that she had the rifle, but because she and her family were afraid that somebody would snitch on them.

Once the guns were collected, crime started to go up. She wishes they still had guns, envoys the gun culture of America. And of course, strongly suggests that we not give up our guns.

It was a beautiful day for a visit to the Fort.

You all would have had a chuckle if you had seen me.

Remember the movie True Grit with John Wayne and Glen Campbell? Mattie Ross wore a black hat. That is the hat I felt I was wearing yesterday. Except mine didn’t have a tie strap. I kept waiting for it to fly away in the wind.

This was topped with a white linen vest, about four inches too small across the belly and 2 across the chest. But it looked period.

That was over a linen shirt. The shoulders of which were a little tight.

Black pants finished the look.

I had planned to do some spinning. I didn’t. I spent most of the day talking to people and learning and finding things that need to be fixed.

My primary learning goal was to observe and ask questions about how linen is made. They didn’t have anybody in the weaving room.

I did find a very knowledgeable lady, but she had knowledge but not skill.

A bit later, I managed to get one of the interpreters to actual show me how it was done. It is an interesting process. There are some specialized tools that are needed for the processing. I don’t have them, I think I can make them.

We bought a bound of flax seed from some monks a few years go. I think we might plant it this coming spring. Maybe at the fort.

Subsequently, I ended up talking to guests. I do not have the skill to disengage when I am done. So many interactions lasted to long.

Tomorrow’s post will be about some feedback I got from an Australian farmer who was there when they took the guns.

My daughter spent several years working for a corporation where she didn’t feel her skills were appreciated. One of her coworkers did not interact well with her.

When she changed positions and is in a new team, with a new chain of command, she was exposed to some people that she described as having “quiet competence”.

Ally came to me with a sickle. Told me it needed to be sharpened. I found some sharpening stones and did so.

I’m sitting out in the courtyard for the light on a capped well. The director took pictures.

Seems that there is a skill to sharpening, which I have been working on, but which I didn’t have on my list.

So I got another, “He just sharpened it, amazing.”

All in all, I had a good time. My bad knee hurts, but that’s a good hurt. I was outside most of the day. I meet people.

The only thing that would have enhanced it would have been if there was live fire involved.