Monday, April 30, 2007

Home Alone, the Director's Cut

What happens when criminals break into the home of a trained female shootist:

Two illegal aliens, Ralphel Resindez 23 and Enrico Garza 26, probably believed they would easily overpower a home alone 11 year old Patricia Harrington after her father had left their two story home.

It seems the two crooks never learned two things, they were in Montana and Patricia had been a clay shooting champion since she was nine. Patricia was in her upstairs room when the two men broke through the front door of the house. She quickly ran to her father's room and grabbed his 12 gauge Mossberg 500 shotgun.

Resindez was the first to get up to the second floor only to be the first to catch a near point blank blast of buck shot from the 11 year olds knee crouch aim. He suffered fatal wounds to his abdomen and genitals. When Garza ran to the foot of the stairs, he took a blast to the left shoulder and staggered out into the street where he bled to death before medical help could arrive.

It was found out later that Resindez was armed with a stolen 45 caliber handgun he took from another home invasion robbery. The victim, 50 year old David Burien, was not so lucky as he died from stab wounds to the chest.

I fear for her fate should she not been armed.

Something else the Global Warming advocates ignore

Via the Times:

Mars is being hit by rapid climate change and it is happening so fast that the red planet could lose its southern ice cap, writes Jonathan Leake.

Scientists from Nasa say that Mars has warmed by about 0.5C since the 1970s. This is similar to the warming experienced on Earth over approximately the same period.

Since there is no known life on Mars it suggests rapid changes in planetary climates could be natural phenomena.




Friday, April 27, 2007

Corruption of the Constitution to the Nth Degree

At Ace of Spades, Ace pointed to this article on gun control measures that frightened me greatly. Ace rightly tears it to pieces, but I must quote the portion that scared me so badly:

The disarmament process would begin after the initial three-month amnesty. Special squads of police would be formed and trained to carry out the work. Then, on a random basis to permit no advance warning, city blocks and stretches of suburban and rural areas would be cordoned off and searches carried out in every business, dwelling, and empty building. All firearms would be seized. The owners of weapons found in the searches would be prosecuted: $1,000 and one year in prison for each firearm.
Clearly, since such sweeps could not take place all across the country at the same time. But fairly quickly there would begin to be gun-swept, gun-free areas where there should be no firearms. If there were, those carrying them would be subject to quick confiscation and prosecution. On the streets it would be a question of stop-and-search of anyone, even grandma with her walker, with the same penalties for "carrying."
I can't believe someone would suggest something even remotely like this. It's a police state gone all wrong. No warrants...no probable cause...and two amendments from the freaking bill of rights extinguished. Wow.

Tuesday, April 24, 2007

Another arguement for more widespread Conceal and Carry

At Classically Liberal, there's an excellent post on mass shootings that were stopped...by armed citizens:

It was January 16, 2002 when Peter Odighizuwa came to campus. He had been suspended due to failing grades. Odighizuwa was angry and waving a gun calling on students to “come get me”. The students, seeing the gun, ran. A shooting spree started almost immediately. In seconds Odighizuwa had killed the school dean, a professor and one student. Three other students were shot as well, one in the chest, one in the stomach and one in the throat.

Many students heard the shots. Two who did were Mikael Gross and Tracy Bridges. Mikael was outside the school having just returned to campus from lunch when he heard the shots. Tracy was inside attending class. Both immediately ran to their cars. Each had a handgun locked in the vehicle.

Bridges pulled a .357 Magnum pistol and he later said he was prepared to shoot to kill if necessary. He and Gross both approached Odighizuwa at the same time from different directions. Both were pointing their weapons at him. Bridges yelled for Odighizuwa to drop his weapon. When the shooter realized they had the drop on him he threw his weapon down. A third student, unarmed, Ted Besen, approached the killer and was physically attacked.
Read it all and understand.

Monday, April 23, 2007

A message to the media

Heh...

Friday, April 20, 2007

Return to OCS

I just got word that I will be returning to Officer Candidates School for OCC 195. It's going to be rough. I froze to death last time...now I'm gonna cook.

Monday, April 16, 2007

OCS Prep Weekend

It's been a really busy couple weeks here, as I've assembled my OCS package. The end result is a rather large lack of blog posts.

Anyway, my CO approved of a deal to get me to an OCS prep weekend in place of my normal drill. The end result was a weekend with lots of yelling and lots of fun (if you like punishing physical training).

As I have experianced two previous "pick-ups" (where you are released into the care of your dirll/sergeant instructors), the one performed at OCS prep was nothing new. Being the only prior-enlisted to quickly respond, I ended up being the guide. My first squad-leader was a prior navy and the remander were picked at random.

As it was my leadership score that suffered at OCS, I was pleased with the opportunity to practice leading and planning. This effort was reinforced when, due to accomodations limits ended up sending myself and 10 other candidate poolees to another barracks.

The end result. I enjoyed myself in the role as guide. I got people to where they needed to be when they needed to be there.

In addition, I busted out my fastest 3-mile run. A 20:26, beating my run back at MCRD San Diego by a good 14 seconds and my previous package time by 41 seconds. This led to my current PFT score of 255. Makes me happy. Who knows, I might break into the 19s by the time I finish my second attempt at OCS...

Monday, April 09, 2007

I can't believe it...

Newsweek/MSNBC.com posted an article I agree with (for personal/background info, I do not watch MSNBC for fear of my monitor being broken during a report on the Iraqi War via a high-speed, flying object). See it in all it's glory: Why so Gloomy?

What most commentators—and many scientists—seem to miss is that the only thing we can say with certainly about climate is that it changes. The earth is always warming or cooling by as much as a few tenths of a degree a year; periods of constant average temperatures are rare. Looking back on the earth's climate history, it's apparent that there's no such thing as an optimal temperature—a climate at which everything is just right. The current alarm rests on the false assumption not only that we live in a perfect world, temperaturewise, but also that our warming forecasts for the year 2040 are somehow more reliable than the weatherman's forecast for next week.
Read it and understand.

comeuppance

Found at Samizdata...

Brother: "Hey, you know that guy Mark who used to bully you at school a bit, you know, the one that went off to run a music shop?"

Me: "Er, yes, but it is a long time ago".

Brother: "I bankrupted him this morning."

My brother is a civil litigator.

Tuesday, April 03, 2007

Why did you join the Marines...

When I joined the Marines, I knew exactly what I was getting into. I did lots of research into the training of the different branches. I knew the requirements, the advancement opportunities, and, to some degree, how the reserve side worked. When I entered boot camp, I knew exactly what was coming.

A year and a half later, I see this: Judge orders discharge of an anti-war Marine

A federal judge has ordered the Marines to discharge a San Jose lance corporal as a "conscientious objector" who had an aversion to killing and participating in war.
First off, why did you join any brance of the ARMED services if you have an aversion to killing and participating in war?

Zabala, a UC Santa Cruz student, began boot camp in June 2003. During a three-month period that summer, one of Zabala's superiors repeatedly gave speeches about "blowing s -- up" or "kicking some f- a-," which caused him to wonder "how someone could be so motivated to kill," he wrote in his court petition in April 2006.

In August 2003, a fellow recruit committed suicide on the shooting range, and the same superior used profanities to belittle him, Zabala wrote, saying he was "abhorred by the blood lust (the superior) seemed to possess."

An instructor showed recruits a "motivational clip" showing Iraqi corpses, explosions, gunfights and rockets set to the song "Bodies," by the heavy-metal band Drowning Pool. The lyrics included "Let the bodies hit the floor," and Zabala said he cried -- his only time while in boot camp -- while other recruits nodded their heads in time with the beat and smiled.

"The sanctity of life that formed the moral center of petitioner's life was being challenged," Collier wrote in a court filing.

After Zabala returned to UC Santa Cruz, he had a conversation with a fellow Marine in May 2004. "I began to think about the thousands of people who died in the past year in war, who didn't die due to just one soldier or suicide bomber, but largely by an organization," Zabala recounted. "This organization trains to kill human life."

This is highly unclear thinking. The Marines train to take life in order to protect it. One thing many people loose on the Marine image of a killing machine, is that every Marine has family behind them. When a Marine sends those rounds downrange, two major motivations are present. The first is to his unit...his fellow Marines. He wants to help his buddies. The second is to his family. "I'm fighting them here, so my family never faces them at home."

To say that the Marines "trains to kill human life" maybe true...but it's also an over simplification. They train to "protect and defend the Constitution of the United States of America" at all costs.

This Marine was confused before he even started training. Why he joined the military is beyond me. After 4 years in, he should just finish his 2 years of service...he'd at least get the GI Bill at that point.

Disappointment and Persistance...

As I noted in my last post, there were some challenges ahead. Well, my score in leadership was lacking, and the Col. decided I should try again. After 8 and a half weeks at OCS, I was disenrolled with option to reapply. So what did I do? I reapplied the day after I got sent home, and have entered a package for OCC 195, the summer class.

I've stayed highly motivated and have maintained contact with many of the 2Lts that were my squad-mates. I've recieved some endorsements from my unit...and more. My next drill, I'm being told that I will go in a day early to follow a small unit leader around for a day to see what my duties would be as a 2Lt. To say the least, I'm speechless. I didn't quite expect this much support after failing...but others tell me that the good attitude I've been doing my best to uphold has effected how others percieve me.

So the next board meets on April 16th or thereabout...and we'll see what happens after that.

Now what about that failing grade I recieved? Well, the leadership score is built around evaluations. In those evaluations, I was told that I had a lack of force in my command presence. This is partially because I'm a terrible liar. When I'm not sure of something, I usually will say so...and this isn't what they want in a leader (would you follow someone who acted like they didn't know what was going on into any life or death situation?). To nail that problem down, I've been reading up on small unit leadership and working on how I say things. Specifically, dumping language that involves the words maybe, somewhat, sorta, kinda...anything that points to a grey area. This combined with more "this is the way it is"-type force behind it should improve my command presence.

The big question rides on my workplace and how to work out a possible 8-week working period followed by an absence. I'm actually looking at a temporary position that might work perfectly...I'll keep you posted.