Where to retire, follow-up…

Well, after the response to my post on Sunday, I figured I owe y’all an explanation…

That was actually posted as a humorous post… Yes, I am retiring (again) the end of the year, but I’ve already decided where to relocate the bunker…

North/Panhandle Texas is my location of choice. Close to family (but not too close), and a friendly state toward military retirees and gun owners. I’m looking at a place out in the country, and am planning on scouting out/visiting a couple of locations in the next few months.

And NO STATE TAXES! 🙂

Oh yeah, and winters that aren’t too bad… I really don’t like cold weather, and have issues with frostbite from one of my military ‘excursions’ over the years (got frostbite on both hands and both feet).

Some folks were suggesting snowbirding, but realistically I can’t afford that unless I buy TWO tents. The books are selling, but not that well. And I’ve been through hurricanes/typhoons and also lived on the coast, and those have NO attraction for me. I don’t have anybody to take long walks on the beach with, and people tend to look at old men funny when they are walking the beach by themselves.  Just sayin…

So thanks to those who ‘suggested’ various areas, and offered beers. I hope to actually be able to take some time and road trips, so I’m going to try to take y’all up on that!

Can’t Legislate???

When in doubt, REGULATE…

Remember Cap and Trade? Obama’s promise to bankrupt the coal industry???

Go HERE. From 2008…

And then there was the ‘dump’ from yesterday on the ‘new’ EPA regs for 32% emissions reductions. The goals are even steeper than previously expected.

Go HERE to see the article and video. One of my co-workers IS a climatologist, she is ‘not’ impressed… Saying this will do nothing to actually reduce global emissions!!! And the costs of these new regulations have the potential to at least double our electricity rates, if not cause other extensive problems to the grid due to lack of backup power…

This one isn’t going to be pretty…

Fact Checking…

Also known as the ‘rest of the story’!!!

For years, gun control advocates have been peddling the claim that “40 percent of gun sales do not go through background checks.” Recently the claim has made its way into several news outlets, including the Las Vegas Sun, USA Today, and the New York Times. The claim that 40 percent of gun sales do not go through a federal background check is false and comes from a decades-old survey that has been widely debunked.

The REAL facts are below.

  • Media outlets including the Richmond Times-Dispatch and the Washington Post have concluded that this claim is false.  Washington Post gave the claim 3 out of 4 Pinochios for being way off target.
  • Most of the survey covered sales before there was a federal background check system.
  • The 1994 survey was conducted eight months after the Brady Act went into effect, mandating background checks on individuals seeking to buy firearms from federally licensed dealers. Survey participants were asked about their gun acquisitions going back two years. Some of the participants likely made gun purchases before the Brady Act, when they were not required to undergo federal background checks.
  • Self-reports are inherently unreliable – not actual data of sales.
  • Only a small group of gun owners — 251 people — answered the survey question about the origin of their weapons. Some of the gun owners were not sure how they had gotten their guns, answering “probably” or “probably not” on whether they got the gun from a licensed firearm dealer. 

That’s how many people, or how few they are using to extrapolate for the rest of us. Think about that… 251…

  • Additionally, the federal survey simply asked buyers if they thought they were buying from a licensed firearms dealer. While all Federal Firearm Licensees (FFLs) do background checks, only those perceived as being FFLs were counted. Yet, there is much evidence that survey respondents who went to the smallest FFLs, especially the “kitchen table” types, had no idea that the dealer was actually “licensed.” Many buyers seemed to think that only “brick and mortar” stores were licensed dealers, and so the survey underestimating the number of sales covered by the checks.
  • The researchers gave this number for all transactions, including gifts, not just “sales.” Count only guns that were bought, traded, borrowed, rented, issued as a job requirement or won through raffles, and 85 percent went through federally licensed gun dealers; just 15 percent would’ve been transferred without a background check.
  • Economist John Lott, the author of several landmark studies on the real-world impact of gun control, has concluded that if you take out transfers of guns either between FFLs or between family members, the remaining number of transfers falls to about 10 percent. Lott stated, “We don’t know the precise number today, but it is hard to believe that it is above single digits.” (http://www.buckeyefirearms.org/op-ed-truth-background-checks)

Facts on “how criminals get their guns”:

  • How criminals get guns—According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the vast majority of criminals in state prison for gun crimes get guns through theft, on the black market, from a drug dealer or “on the street.” Less than one percent get guns from gun shows.
  • Straw purchasers—According to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (BATFE), “The most frequent type of trafficking channel identified in ATF investigations is straw purchasing from federally licensed firearms dealers. Nearly 50 percent . . . .” Straw purchasers are people who pass background checks and buy guns for criminals, defeating the background check system.
  • Stolen guns—According to the BJS, “about 1.4 million guns, or an annual average of 232,400, were stolen during burglaries and other property crimes in the six-year period from 2005 through 2010.” The FBI’s stolen firearm file contained over 2 million reports as of March 1995. The BATFE has reported “Those that steal firearms commit violent crimes with stolen guns, transfer stolen firearms to others who commit crimes, and create an unregulated secondary market for firearms, including a market for those who are prohibited by law from possessing a gun.” Even gun control supporters have said, “approximately 500,000 guns are stolen each year from private citizens. . . . Obviously, these stolen guns go directly into the hands of criminals.” A study conducted by gun control supporters found that in 1994 “About 211,000 handguns and 382,000 long guns were stolen in noncommercial thefts that year, for a total of 593,000 stolen firearms.”

Stale, outdated facts, based on an extremely small sample size with an unknown confidence factor and questionable answers… Best case, +/-6.19% confidence interval based on a 50% accuracy…

To get a ‘valid’ sample, you’d need somewhere between 9600 and 38400 people. That actually would be usable, assuming 100,000,000 gun owners…

h/t NRA Media

 

 

Where to retire???

There are choices…

You can retire to Phoenix, Arizona where:
1. You are willing to park 3 blocks away because you found shade.
2. You’ve experienced condensation on your butt from the hot water in the toilet bowl.
3. You can drive for 4 hours in one direction and never leave town.
4. You have over 100 recipes for Mexican food.
5. You know that “dry heat” is comparable to what hits you in the face when you open your oven door.
6. The 4 seasons are: tolerable, hot, really hot, and ARE YOU KIDDING ME??!!

You can retire to California where:
1. You make over $250,000 and you still can’t afford to buy a house.
2. The fastest part of your commute is going down your driveway.
3. You know how to eat an artichoke.
4. You drive your rented Mercedes to your neighbourhood block party.
5. When someone asks you how far something is, you tell them how long it will take to get there rather than how many miles away it is.
6. The 4 seasons are: Fire, Flood, Mud, and Drought.

You can retire to New York City where:
1. You say “the city” and expect everyone to know you mean Manhattan.
2. You can get into a four-hour argument about how to get from Columbus Circle to Battery Park, but can’t find Wisconsin on a map.
3. You think Central Park is “nature.”
4. You believe that being able to swear at people in their own language makes you multi-lingual.
5. You’ve worn out a car horn.
6. You think eye contact is an act of aggression.

You can retire to Maine where:
1. You only have four spices: salt, pepper, ketchup, and Tabasco.
2. Halloween costumes fit over parkas.
3. You have more than one recipe for moose.
4. Sexy lingerie is anything flannel with less than eight buttons.
5. The four seasons are: winter, still winter, almost winter, and construction.

You can retire to the Deep South where:
1. You can rent a movie and buy bait in the same store.
2. “Y’all” is singular and “all y’all” is plural.
3. “He needed killin'” is a valid defence.
4. Everyone has 2 first names: Billy Bob, Jimmy Bob, Mary Sue, Betty Jean, Mary Beth, etc.
5. Everything is either “in yonder,” “over yonder” or “out yonder.” It’s important to know the difference, too.

You can retire to Colorado where:
1. You carry your $3,000 mountain bike atop your $500 car
2. You tell your husband to pick up Granola on his way home and so he stops at the day care centre.
3. A pass does not involve a football or dating.
4. The top of your head is bald, but you still have a pony tail.

You can retire to the Midwest where:
1. You’ve never met any celebrities, but the mayor knows your name.
2. Your idea of a traffic jam is ten cars waiting to pass a tractor.
3. You have had to switch from “heat” to “A/C” on the same day.
4. You end sentences with a preposition: “Where’s my coat at?”
5. When asked how your trip was to any exotic place, you say, “It was different!”

AND you can retire to Florida where:
1. You eat dinner at 3:15 in the afternoon.
2. All purchases include a coupon of some kind – even houses and cars.
3. Everyone can recommend an excellent dermatologist.
4. Road construction never ends anywhere in the state.
5. Cars in front of you often appear to be driven by headless people.

The Grey Man, bleg…

Thanks to those other bloggers who have helped promote my books!!!

I appreciate it more than you know, since blogs are basically the ONLY way I’m getting any publicity.

All three books are selling and I hope the folks reading the books and enjoying them. I’ve been told you’re lucky if you get a 10% review rate, and based on what I’m seeing, I’m down around 5-6% on all three books.

Which brings me to my bleg…

I’d like to ask if you’ve read any of my books and haven’t put a review up, I would appreciate it if you would do so. HONEST reviews please. Reviews help other readers to wade through the literally hundreds of thousands of choices out there.

I’d appreciate it and you can select the picture below to go directly to the book(s) you’ve read.

TGMVignettes coverBlood#4w:textTGMChanges

One other thing I hope folks are doing, is checking out the authors I’ve recommended in the last two books. These are folks that I’ve read and personally like their work (and in the full disclosure mode, I also know or have met some of them).

I can remember growing up as a reader that many paperbacks had other books recommended in the back of the book, and I know I did search out some of those authors back in the day. The question is, would you use these references, or am I wasting my time?

Your comments?

This ‘n that…

Ghost towns in California? A reality check is coming…

Possible as the water runs out, and farms turn to dust bowls… It’s so bad the illegals are going back to Mexico! And it’s going to cost $2 Mil to drill ONE well???

Story HERE, CBS Sacramento.

Then there’s Planned Parenthood… And they were founded by Margaret Sanger…

Ramirez toon

But the left and most of the MSM are ignoring this, hoping it will go away. Having said that, they’ve latched onto the dentist from Minnesota that killed the wrong lion in Zimbabwe. He’s being hounded and has apparently received death threats, story HERE.

And another illegal has committed another murder and rape… Story HERE. But a judge has said more must be released, and there is apparently a dump coming from the administration in November of more illegals due to ‘overcrowding’.  How about they deport their asses???

The Iran agreement? Whatta cluster… “Secret” side deals that nobody other than the UN negotiators have seen? Yeah, right… Pull the other one…

The House passed a bill to defund sanctuary cities, now we’ll see what the Senate will do…

The Los Angeles City Council voted unanimously Tuesday to ban the possession of firearm magazines that hold more than 10 rounds. Story HERE, but the interesting part is, Kalifornia actually has a grandfather clause on the books saying if you owned standard capacity mags prior to 2000, you can keep them… Can we say preemption?

I’m sure CALGUNS, the NRA and others will be all over this one…

Snerk, the Patriots and their fans are all butthurt over Brady’s four game suspension. Tough… They had a chance to admit they did it, $25k fine and it would have all been over… Now? $2.8M in fines and lost salary, plus a good chance at four more losses this year. Can we say hubris? How about karma bites! 🙂

Sigh… And to add insult to injury, this week has sucked workwise too! Not having fun anymore.

TBT…

Who remembers these???

Collapsable cups

If you were a Boy Scout back in the day, you probably lost as many of these as I did… Sigh…

They are collapsible cups, and we always had one or two in our backpacks. Hint- DO NOT try to drink coffee from one unless you have gloves on!!!

Only made that mistake ONCE!

In response to a side discussion…

Yes, a few of us old farts actually DO know how to fix things, and grow things, and do all kinds of work with our hands that seems to have escaped the capabilities of the younger generations…grease poster

I will admit to scratching my nose on the back of a transmission before, because it was cleaner than my hands… Sigh…

Re the other, I’ve thrown away a few pairs of tightly whiteys because there was NO way to get the grease out!

The worst ones were always the repacking of bearings or rebuilding front ends on 4WD trucks…

Here we go again…

Another judge has come down on ICE for the facilities where illegals are being held…

A federal judge in California has ruled that hundreds of illegal immigrant women and children in U.S. holding facilities should be released, another apparent setback for President Obama’s immigration policy, according to The Los Angeles Times.

The article is HERE.

I say deport their asses… And round up the other hundred thousand and send them home too. Only problem is that 100,000 are in the wind and have ‘disappeared’ into the sanctuary cities and other hidey holes and they won’t be seen again.

Since Justice and ICE never came up with a plan, I’m betting this one will go to appeals, and be drug out until after BO is gone, dumping one more problem on the next president… Sigh…

 

Colts…

So the question is what will happen with Colt?

Right now nobody knows… But I’d find it truly ironic if the Indians helped bail them out!

I was asked what I was going to do if they went under, since I’m known as a Colt guy, and I said keep shooting them… 🙂 I don’t do safe queens…

Then one of the guys asked how many I had, and I didn’t honestly remember… So I pulled them out of the safe yesterday (it was time to check/wipe them down anyway).

big pictureSo, looks like 18 Colts, dating from 1892 to 2013… At least these are the ones I have here…

And yes, before you ask, I’m a fan of revolvers… So there… 😛

I will admit to owning a couple of S&W K22s, thanks to Tam and Joe, my gunsmith. I use them for training guns. There are a few other cats and dogs in the safe, but since they didn’t say Colt, I didn’t pull them out.

Now if my knee will just get better, I can get back on the line and shoot some of them!!!