In Training

11 Year Old Saves the Day (and his Mom)

By shooting at two masked robbers in his house.  After they SHOT HIM the HIP.  Mom and son were in the bathroom bedroom and the bad guys were trying to get in.  Bad guy(s) shot through the door and hit the 11 year old.  11 year old shoots back and bad guys run away!  Boy is in stable condition, thank goodness.

People like to freak out when they hear that an 11 year old was in possession of a gun.  These are (normally) people that haven't been around guns much themselves.  Which is the whole point, of course.  EDUCATION is the key to everything.  Whether you are teaching your kids manners and how to behave in public or how to properly handle firearms.

I'm one of the lucky few that was brought up from Day 1 with the proper firearm rules and etiquette.  Literally, there are photos and photos of me as a baby in my Dad's arms at a campground somewhere in Southern Arizona before or after a day of hunting.  My parents took the appropriate safety precautions but also raised me to understand that a gun is a gun.  An inanimate object.  Nothing to be afraid of, but something to respect.

I remember once as a young teen, maybe 12, being told by my Mom to hide in the walk in closet in her room with my little brother and cousin while she answered the door.  She quickly reminded me the shotgun was there if someone tried to come in.  I was scared, but capable.  Us kids were hiding in the closet because a family member was going through a very nasty divorce and custody battle with his extremely powerful Chinese wife.  We'd been receiving threatening faxes at the house, phone calls and sometimes we were sure we were being followed.  The blinds were always drawn.  The doorbell happened to catch my Mom home alone, and that's why we were sent to the very back of the house and the best room to be in if you're trying to defend yourself.  Luckily, it was the county Sheriff and a minute later Mom gave us the all clear.  But what if it had been someone else?

Well, I'd like to think that I would have been as brave as that 11 year old.  One thing is for sure, my parents prepared me to handle the situation.  Thank God for that.

Article via Sharp as a Marble via Say Uncle.

The Milestones of our Marriage

are directly linked to the guns my husband owns. 

His very first handgun - a Sig 226 - was given to him by me early in our marriage, but after we'd moved from Britain to the U.S. 
Two reasons:
1. I wanted to present him with a small, but lasting thank you for being my husband and making a huge move to a foreign land so that our life might be better, our future brighter. 
2. I wanted to be the one to give him his very first handgun!  As handguns have been banned in Britain since 1997, this was the gun he was most looking forward to. 

His very first shotgun - a Remington 870 Pump - was purchased at Cabela's immediately after we completed our long awaited green card interview with USCIS.  At the very end of the interview the lady told us that we passed and should be expecting the card within a month!  We joke that he took advantage of me in a moment of weakness - such a long and stressful process was finally, finally over with.  I probably would have agreed to anything I was so happy!

His very first bolt action rifle - a Howa/Hogue .308 was given to him today, our three year wedding anniversary.  Just because he's wonderful.  And three years living with me is a challenge, I'm sure!

Happy Anniversary!

New to intraining: Link Posts!

In between working full time, going to school and hanging with my husband I spend time online.  On blogs, on news sites, food, history, fashion, military, gossip... I love the internet!  Throughout the day I bookmark articles, photos, etc. that I find interesting and at the end of the day I put them all into an email for people I think will enjoy them (parents, brother, husband, friends, other parents = in-laws!). 

It occurred to me this very morning that I should do that here, too.  Many blogs have link posts, don't know why I didn't think of it before.  So here's your warning.  I don't know how often yet.  Guess whenever I have links!

From Blackfive: The Best Phone Call. Simply awesome. Tissue alert, though.

Cannot stop looking at every inch of London photographer Tim Walker's photographs! Click on 'selected images' and go to town.

One of the first xkcd comics I ever saw and fell in love with. Reminds me of dating my husband!

From Women of Caliber: What I Did for Love.  As my Dad says, this is a must read for everyone.

Enjoy!

Fashion Branded Guns & Such

Your "Hey, that's actually kinda cool" moment for the day.

I like the Alexander McQueen M-60E4 and the Tiffany & Co. hand grenade. That is stylin'.

Found at Say Uncle. You should totally read there, by the way.

The British called --

They want their guns back.+



I got this in my email inbox, apparently it's not new but I hadn't seen it before (as a matter of fact, when Royal watched it he said he had been there, so that's several years ago).
It's long-ish, but worth it.

+ I didn't come up with that as much as I would have liked to, it's the YouTube title.

Firearm education is the key

This is exactly why firearm education is so very important. A woman in England gets sent a police firearm by mistake and...

Mrs Roots, who is her 50s and runs a small-holding at Winfrith, said: 'I was absolutely and totally shocked, and petrified. 'I get a lot of packages and I signed for it thinking it was a harness for one of my horses.'I just plonked it down and didn't think about it, but when I later opened it up I was terrified.
'You don't expect something like that to to arrive. I was petrified and I didn't touch it - I didn't know if it would go off.
'I couldn't believe my eyes. Later I found underneath it a letter addressed to the Dorset Police firearms unit with the correct address.
....
'I think something as a big and as serious as a sub machine gun shouldn't be sent by a domestic courier that just travels around the roads and delivers to ordinary private addresses.'

Mrs Roots was later told the weapon was in fact a frighteningly realistic training gun that fires infra-red beams. It teaches firearm officers to make split-second decisions on whether to shoot or not without using live rounds.

Okay, obviously I don't expect people to know everything about every gun ever made, BUT this lady was "terrified" - she was "petrified" thinking if she touched/moved the gun it might fire. Think about that. That's ridiculous. Guns don't just go off, especially if they aren't loaded and you don't put your finger on the trigger! Not to mention that it was a training firearm.

If the British government and the British people hadn't given life to inanimate objects, if they hadn't given these inanimate objects the power to create fear, this kind of thing would not happen.
Mrs. Roots would have said, "Oh, that's not the AR-15 I ordered, and hey, looks like it was supposed to go to the police department, I'll give them a call." She then would have put the gun in a safe place and that would have been the end. No scary feelings, no biased news article (I mean really, "frighteningly realistic training gun" and "Red-faced officers" Give me a break!) This is why you teach teach teach. Teach kids, (yes, kids!) teach teens, teach adults.

There is nothing to be afraid of if you know.

I own more guns than my husband.

And it drives him a little bit crazy.  Me, I like it. 

I personally own an AR-15, .243 Winchester model 7, a 20 gauge, and two handguns (Browning and CZ. My personal Browning can be seen here ).  I also claim to own a shotgun that my Mom says is hers.  Doesn't seem to matter that I'm the one that shot it in state tournaments.  Yeah, it's mine really. 

Royal has two shotguns in Britain that we are trying to sell, really to save the trouble of getting them over here.  He can't wait to get over here with me to buy...
well let's just say he's got a list.  A long one. 

I love that he loves to shoot, and that he's bloody good at it.  It's something we'll be able to do together for the rest of our lives (that's the great thing about the shooting sports, it doesn't matter how tall, short, fast, slow, big, or small you are!  Doesn't matter about age, skin color, gender, or where you're from.  It lets everyone play.)

I'm just wondering how long it's going to be before I come home to every make and model.

Actually, it just occurred to me that I own more guns than pairs of shoes.

England teachers now allowed to search for knives

Back in the old days, the teachers had to call the police to search the kids.  The regs are that there must be at least two teachers/staff members at each search, they must be the same gender as the student and they must do it in a way that keeps the rest of the students and faculty safe.

Okay, so here's a funny part:

-- "It is the kind of thing we expect to hear in the US but it is a major concern that it now applies to our own schools."

-- "This side of the Atlantic we’ve sat comfortably for years and watched the violence grow in the US, falsely believing it wouldn’t catch on here. But just as the latest Nike trainers or hip hop star in the US sooner or later becomes hot property in the UK, the violence was bound to come to our shores eventually. The US is the trend setter for youth culture in the UK whether we like it or not.  We shouldn’t have ignored the warning signs from US society, but that’s just what we’ve done. That is not to say that the US is responsible for the current environment in Britain. It is just that the combination of factors that got the US into the position it finds itself today with regard to violence in schools, was bound to come to Britain and when it did, we should have been ready to ensure the end result was not the same."

I was going to bold some important parts but let's face it, it's all bullsh*t. 

It's so easy to blame someone else isn't it.  It always strikes me as odd the way some people (not just the British, though I hear that ALL the time here) use America to make themselves feel better.  No matter that Scotland, for example, has an enormously high crime rate, higher than much of the U.S. if not all (as this article indicates).  I guess they don't really take into account that we've only been around about 230 years - or they do, but then their arguments are fueled by jealousy - but you'd think we invented violence, invented war, invented killing and torture. 
Yeah well, we learned from the best didn't we?  The difference is we have a heart and a soul.  But that doesn't fit in to the rest of the world's master plan.  Very sad. 

That's that, now on to the knives.  Obviously from past posts I've made my position on firearms and knives very clear.  I'm proud of that. 
But I'm not for school age kids bringing bowie knives or machetes to the playground (though there were several times when I made excellent use of my swiss army knife, which was indeed pink as shown).  I'm not for messed up in the head naive tryin' to be big kids kids tearing each other apart.

I am for a teacher protecting their students and themselves. Even so far as to allow them to carry items to use for their protection.  Like, just off the top of my head, a Para .45ACP Warthog, or even pepper spray. 
Not gonna happen on this side of the ocean, but there you go.   

Firearms: US vs. UK

Not really a competition, just two articles I found today.  See if you can tell the difference!

Gun laws that constrain the law-abiding

-- "For James Andre Smartt-Ford, 16, Michael Dosunmu, 15, and Billy Cox, 15, the hand-wringing by police and politicians over the escalation of gun crime comes a little late: all three have been shot dead in south London over the past 10 days.
....
We have, post-Dunblane, what are said to be the toughest gun control laws in the world. They have actually proved strikingly ineffectual.  Gun crime has doubled since they were introduced."

Mother fires three shots at intruder

-- "A woman home alone with her two children in Morgan County's Coalfield community fired a gun three times Friday morning to protect herself and her family."

Article 1 c/o Of Arms and the Law, Article 2 c/o T.J.

Told you so!

Knife amnesties 'have no effect'

Damn it feels good to be right. 

-- "... an analysis of the concurrent but longer eight-week amnesty by the Metropolitan Police - between May and July - appears to question the effectiveness of the operation. The report said "no changing trends" had been visible during the first five weeks of the operation from 15 May.
For the final three weeks of the operation and in the following weeks "a small downward trend appeared"."

Of course they are still fooling themselves with the last sentence, but other than that I applaud their telling the truth.

Previous posts (oldest to newest):
U.K. crime: cutting down on knives
The world is ending
That damn knife amnesty
Don't bring back sharp pointy things
Heartbreaking
Hasta