Screw the news; I've beent thinking about that range time with Dad

Been several years since that's happened, and it was a lot of fun. He had a couple of rifles he'd picked up that he'd not yet had a chance to shoot, so we zeroed those and proceeded, between us, to put a bleep-load of .22lr downrange. Along with some .41 Magnum, some .38 Special and a few .380(handloading means we actually had some of the latter). Hot & humid and we didn't care. Found some pieces of clay pigeon and set them up on the 100 yard berm, along with some other suitable targets and proceeded to break them up.

Depending on which rifle, had to hold about 4-8" above where you wanted to hit with the .22 rifles, but once you figured the right amount, well, he chased a golf ball all over the berm. Made me wish I'd thought to bring some kind of swinging target. I've got one made for the kids, but it's a bit large, a steel disc about 3/8" thick and a foot across. I bored two holes about 6" apart, made two hooks so could hang it from a stand at whatever range. Kids like targets that do something when they hit it. Later on made a smaller one, but I have no idea what happened to it over the years, it would've been perfect for this. I need to find a suitable piece and make another one.

I wrote once about when I actually started paying attention to the personal-disarmament clowns and their desire to destroy the 2nd; in the years since I've done a fair amount of arguing with people and writing letters(now mostly e-mails) on the subject. Sometimes made a difference, sometimes not. Days like this make me glad for every moment spent on the subject.

Latest was with a group of people, a lady noticed my Diversity shirt and said she just didn't care for guns. Ok, no problem; can I ask why? Boiled down to 'They hurt people". Well, they also defend people, they can be used to save lives. "They're LOUD." So are drums and bagpipes and hammers on metal. She gave me That Look; you know the one, the "You've actually got responses that make sense to what I say, and I don't really want to hear them" look, and said "You've got answers to everything, don't you?"
"I've had this argument before."
She nodded toward the shirt and said "You brought the argument with you."
"No, I've had this argument LONG before I had this shirt."
And it continues. Know a lady I taught to shoot who thinks that banning 'high-capacity' magazines- which she thinks of as anything over the six rounds of the revolver she was shooting- is just fine because "It might keep a criminal from firing too many shots." Pointing out the fallacies in this makes no difference, she's made up her mind. On the other hand, she's actually gone to the range and shot a pistol, which is more than she'd ever done before; before that, they were those nasty things bad people used, etc. Now it's something she has in case of unauthorized nighttime visitors.

I've noticed that most of the people I've had the argument with didn't point to this or that figure or study, they mostly argued on emotion and feelings. Sometimes facts make a difference with them, sometimes not. You do what you can and you're glad for every small victory. Including all the ammo you can use, things like this:
AL SHARPTON: 90% OF MY LISTENERS SUPPORT THE SUPREME COURT’S GUN DECISION. “I would say 90% of the calls I received yesterday were in support of the Supreme Court and people say they want to bear guns. They’re tired of the violence and it’s very very interesting. I have had a few on both sides today, but yesterday was overwhelming, it was stunning to me.” Given that disarming black people was one of the main purposes of gun-control laws, it shouldn’t be that surprising. Some years ago we had a program at my law school where ex-Black Panther Kathleen Cleaver (with whom I went to law school) came to speak. It was heavily attended by Knoxville civil-rights veterans, and I think some of my colleagues were surprised when an elderly black preacher launched into a defense of the Second Amendment and the right to bear arms. I wasn’t.
It tends to surprise people in favor of bans and such to find out just how much of the movement they support is based on "We can't let those niggers have guns!" They don't like it, some because it's such a bad thing, some because it makes a smelly splotch on their movement, but they don't like it. And it's not surprising they'd never heard of it: the Brady Bunch and VPC and people like Sharpton never mentioned it because it hurts their cause. Having it pointed out that a bunch of early civil rights activists were armed to the teeth- and sometimes used those arms- to protect themselves and others working to get rid of Jim Crow laws and such does NOT help someone who's claiming "If we got rid of guns years ago, think how wonderful things would be!" Someone who used a shotgun or a pistol or rifle to keep some Klan dirtbag from raping/killing/beating them would disagree, and how would that aid the movement?

For that matter, it doesn't help the gun bigots when the face of gun ownership has come to so often be a picture like this:
"I mean, she's got all her teeth and everything! And she's pretty! How do we paint her as an ignorant, dirty redneck racist?"
Or something like this:
Last few years an awful lot of people woh either hadn't thought about it or been against gun ownership have, through various means, come to the conclusion that guns ARE noisy and dangerous; and that when someone's breaking into your home in the night or coming at you in a parking lot something noisy and dangerous is damn well what you need.

We've still got a lot to do; people like Obama & Kagan & Schumer & Co. are never going to stop wanting to disarm us. We've got to keep making sure that their anti-civil rights attitudes are exposed for what they are, never allow them time and leisure to attack us without opposition.

Well, that's enough of what passes for deep thought from me for one morning. The new turn signals are in so I've got to get them mounted on the bike, among other things that need doing.

By the way, the cartoon and hotty pictures I sto- borrowed from Theo's place; if you like the lady with the scattergun, check out Oleg Volk's other work; he's done some very interesting stuff.