Stuff Worth Owning: Bear & Son Cutlery

Last summer I had the chance to visit my grandmother, whom I love very dearly.  Gram is getting up there in years, closer to 100 than 80, I think.  And yet even though she can't get around quite as well as she used to, she's still Grandma, and only getting to see her for a single afternoon would have been worth the trip.

We got to see her much more than just the once, of course.  We even went to church with her, the first time I'd been to church with my grandmother since one late Christmas Eve service when I was about four years old.  And I very much enjoyed that.

But to get to see Grandma means taking a flight.  It could mean driving for two days, but we took the flight instead.  Flying ain't cheap, but it has its upsides - avoiding two days of driving being chief among them.  But there are other encumbrances that go along with flying.

You can't take your pocketknife with you.  The TSA has their own idea of what is and isn't acceptable aboard a domestic flight from East Tennessee to Minnesota, two hotspots of insurgent violence to be sure, but they're also pretty intractable when you try to challenge them on their mission, and things can get ugly.  So my pocketknife, keys, Leatherman multitool and even my nicer hat all had to stay behind.  I had the very basic-est of possessions in my carry-on bag and as little metal as I could possibly have.  And even so I wound having to pause while the agent waved his wand over me.  Rivets on the jeans, forgot about those.  Ah well.

Get to Minnesota, connect with my dad with whom we were staying (Gram has moved to an assisted-living apartment and has no room for guests), and kept feeling like I'd left something on the plane.

I hadn't, of course.  But the feeling stuck with me until two days later when I finally decided my entire problem was the utter emptiness of my pockets.

Well.  Can't have that.  While visiting Gram, I popped downtown (this requires walking three blocks in Grandma's little town) to the local Hardware Hank store and bought a knife.

My computer's card reader isn't behaving, so I can't upload pictures of the knife, but let's go to the manufacturer.

That's the one.

This is the Bear and Son Cutlery Model 247R, the rosewood-handled "Large Stockman."  And I like it.  It's in the current catalog as the 47R, but it's the same knife.

It's actually a decently large pocketknife, 4" long and pleasantly heavy.  I don't have especially large hands but some of those cute little Swiss Army pocketknives are just too small.  You don't handle them as much as finger them; this knife you can hold and know you've got a decent grip on it.  And with that in my pocket, I could relax.

I think part of the discomfort of having nothing in my pockets is that I'm a handyman.  As a handyman, having no tools is like having a hand tied behind my back.  Now, with a tool on hand, I was suddenly much more capable.

Straight out of the box, it was wicked sharp and even now, six months later, I haven't had to sharpen it.  Bear & Son uses a high-carbon stainless steel, the higher carbon content makes it a harder steel that can be a bit of a pain to sharpen...but you don't need to sharpen it very often, so it's a wash.  And it's still stainless enough that owning it isn't an exercise in rust prevention.

Now that I've had the knife for six months, I find myself making room in my pocket for it, even though I'm back home and have my Leatherman on my belt.  It's not that much extra weight, most days if I don't need it I won't even remember it's there...but there are those rare occasions when you need an extra knife - or I have a helper who is using the Leatherman, and then I need a knife.

If I have any complaints, it's this: the spay blade is pretty darned stiff.  Opening that out felt like I was going to fold my fingernails backwards, and it hasn't loosened up much.  I don't do much animal spaying so getting that blade out is a deliberate act, a choice to work the blade against its resistance in the hope of having it available when needed.

That's it.  Folding it back up, back onto the "pocket shelf," where all my pocket and belt gear waits until the morning loadout.

Update: Automatic Weapons and Legitimate Sporting Use

I had the opportunity to speak to an actual hunter last week and he told me that not only would you not likely get the chance to use a second bullet in your clip, let alone a third...

"'Cause if you miss him with the first shot, that buck is gone.  Forget it, he's just gone."

...but if you're inspected by a game warden while out hunting, there are restrictions on exactly how many rounds you can have in a clip in your gun.  And the limit isn't somewhere close to the 30-round capacity of an AR-15, it's more like five.  FIVE.

And like my hunting acquaintance pointed out, it's really only the first one that you're likely to get to use.

"And if you're caught with that many rounds in the gun, the warden'll just take your gun.  Confiscate it, slap with you a fine, and you deserve it.  Those aren't armored-up deer out there, you don't need that many rounds in your gun."

I asked him about having an AR-15 for "home defense."

"Not useful.  Rounds go right through walls, so if you miss you might hit your own family on the other side of the wall.  If you're worried about home defense, a shotgun full of birdshot is better.  Won't go through the walls.  Of course, if I was really worried about home defense, I'd move."

And there you have it.

Not a Good Kid

It's become a thing in the news just lately, that a young girl in Steubenville, Ohio was raped in August 2012.  Exactly how the circumstances came to be what they were, that she was apparently unconscious and in the company of some high school football players, is unknown to me.  The word "party" has been uttered more than once, but in my experience the combination of the words "party" and "high school football" usually translates to "lots of unsupervised, underage drinking."

What happens next?  Well, given no supervision and lots of adulation from fans, evidently high school football players figure they can do whatever they want.  They raped the girl.

Several voices can be heard on the video.  None of the voices express any concern for the girl's well-being, let alone her consent to any of what was going on; in fact one even jokes that in light of her unresponsiveness to the ongoing sexual assault, she must be dead.

They also briefly debate whether it could even be construed as rape, since they didn't know whether she would have "wanted it" or not.  "Maybe that was her final wish."

Well, I can certainly understand where the young lady's father is coming from.  He wants the attackers hanged.  I think he has a point.

Those young men are old enough to make some smart choices with their lives.  They've seen enough about crime on the TV and seen enough of those crime shows to know what is and isn't a crime.  There has been too much glorification of taking when the taking can be done, of being "owed" or "deserving" access, privilege, superiority.  But they aren't using what little wisdom they could have developed.  Instead they are taking advantage of another person's incapacitation for their own wants and desires.  Their victim's wants and desires?  Not acknowledged, only mocked.

So why am I writing about this?  Certainly there's enough outrage going around but let me drop a little more. One of the kids' names is Michael Nodianos, and his attorney Dennis McNamara has this to say about him: "Michael is a really good kid from a really good family who did a really dumb thing and regrets it,"

A RAPIST IS NOT A GOOD KID.  A good kid would have recognized that the young lady was in harm's way and defended her.  Nodianos didn't do that.  He didn't even rise to the level of ambivalence; even mocking commentary in this instance cannot do anything but harm her psychologically.  At best, ambivalence would have been to walk away, but that didn't happen either.

Other bad kids, even worse ones, include Trent Mays - accused rapist.
Malik Richmond, accused rapist.

As soon as I learn more names, I will post them here.  No one should ever be permitted to get away with stuff like this.  It's the worst sort of behavior, and I would hope that the parents are tearing their hair, wondering exactly what the hell they did wrong that their kids turned out to be such monsters.

I don't support the death penalty.  But as a father, if it were my daughter in this situation, I would be murderously angry.

Breaking: A Fiscal Cliff Deal is Confirmed

But the central detail, the one that sticks out the most, is this: they're going to postpone deciding anything else for a couple of months.

Whaddaya wanna bet that means we go through this last-minute, headless chicken scramble again? 

Breaking: A Tentative Deal on the Fiscal Cliff

They may have pulled something out of their hats.

I have no faith.  Once again, our nation's "best and brightest" have failed us with their worst and dimmest.  They have waited until the last minute, scrambled like middle schoolers caught without their homework, trying to cobble some disastrous, ill-conceived half measure at the last. possible. moment.

I'm disgusted with all of them.

I'm so angy and frustrated I can't even think straight.  If you can stand it, check out the latest.  When I wake up in the morning, we'll see exactly how much poo is in the blower, and see what's next.

http://bostonglobe.com/editorial/2012/12/31/fiscal-cliff-congress-does-least-could/cTOgL5A1cCKQMVViFdUjeI/story.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/fiscal-cliff-gridlock-in-washington/2012/12/30/6ce7dafc-52cf-11e2-bf3e-76c0a789346f_gallery.html

http://www.nbcnews.com/business/economywatch/fiscal-cliff-showdown-already-damaged-economy-1C7785091?google_editors_picks=true

At the Precipice, A Decision

Can Obama and Congress come to a conclusion that averts the fiscal cliff?  We'll know in three days.

It's worth noting that the median net worth of Congress - Senate and House combined - is about $880,000.  That's a hell of a lot more net worth than I can claim, including the house.  It stands to reason that there should be a lot of friction coming from these people about raising taxes - they have an awful lot to lose.  Republicans and Democrats both, they stand to take a serious bath if their taxes go up.  Most of them don't fall into the category of the so-called "ultra rich," the top one percent income-earners in the United States.

It's pretty easy to see where the distrust and unease come from.  The richest people in America, even without insurance and government-funded health care, can afford what they need.  They can simply pay for things.  The vast majority of the rest of us, however, cannot.  A tax rate hike hits a rich person pretty hard, no doubt - an extra 10 percent is an extra ten percent, and when your income is 25 million that means shelling out a lot more money than before.  But unlike somebody getting by on $30,000 or less, that guy with the $25 million income can afford his necessities.  His groceries are a tiny portion of his income, his health care premiums are a vanishingly small sliver of his take-home pay.  If he isn't an idiot trying to pay the mortgage on a private island, the super-rich guy has very little to worry about.  He could lose 90% of his income and still be considered very well-off indeed.

A guy on $30,000, losing 90% of his income, would be on the ragged edge of homelessness.  With that kind of money, you can afford a nice used van to live in.

Obama and the four Congressional leaders (majority and minority heads, Senate and House) met for an hour - c'mon, you needed a whole hour? - and Obama is coming away saying he's "modestly optimistic."

I'm not optimistic, modestly or otherwise.  I'm damned annoyed.  In that same story, Obama is quoted as saying that "the hour for immediate action is here..."  No it isn't!  The hour for immediate action was months ago!

Politicians are playing hardball against each other, and they're using our country's economy as the ball.  I'm mad as hell, utterly disgusted that this kind of important issue must fall prey to such brinskmanship.  The stakes are too damned high.

I know I keep saying "let's just go over the cliff, and deal with it."  I'm still saying that.  But the most frustrating part is seeing this last-minute scramble to try to come to some kind of agreement.  This is a large part of how the US lost its favorable credit rating just last year.  Does anybody else remember that?  That was the same sort of problem, and it would appear to me that NO ONE HAS LEARNED ANYTHING FROM IT.

Well, I've learned something from it.  I've learned something pretty important, and I hope every politician that has anything to do with my part of the country gets the message, loud and clear.

I'M NOT VOTING FOR ANY OF YOU PROCRASTINATING SHIRKERS AGAIN.  NOT A SINGLE ONE, NOT A SINGLE VOTE, NEVER.

Gun Nuts

You've seen them before, in popular culture references, in magazines, and lately in the news.

That last reference is to Nancy Lanza, mom to the crazy guy that killed her and then a slew of children and teachers at the elementary school where she worked as a kindergarten teacher.  That's right, that gun nut was a kindergarten teacher, the kind of person you usually associate with almost anything but guns.

What constitutes a gun nut?  That's a tough call.  In my lifetime I've owned a couple, though at this time I don't have any aside from an excellent pellet rifle that can shoot through a 1/2" thick piece of plywood.  As a "home defense" weapon (more on those later) it's almost worthless, since it's in a box, in the closet, unloaded.  Home defense is about preparedness in an emergency, in that regard the pellet rifle is more effective as a club in its current condition.  I think it would be safe to say I'm not a gun nut.

My dad owns a shotgun, I think.  I haven't seen it in about 35 years, which might be about as long as it's been since he saw it, assuming he even still has it.  I haven't asked, but I feel safe in saying: not a gun nut.

My brother-in-law has a couple.  He occasionally takes them to the local firing range, runs a box of ammo through them, keeping his eye in.  Not a gun nut.

I think the term "gun nut" has to apply not so much to ownership and use (more on that later, too) of guns, as to the philosophy surrounding their ownership and what that ownership means.

The point of the Second Amendment was ostensibly to ensure that the newborn American government never grow up to be a tyranny.  It's difficult to oppress and threaten with deadly force when the entire civilian population has its own weapons to bring to bear against a despotic government.  As I said when describing NPR's problems during March of 2011, when you have to take action against a force that can destroy you, you tend to work hard to keep things fair.  I'm not saying that disgruntled citizens should take up arms at every vote their Congressman makes that doesn't quite suit them, I'm saying that it would be damned hard for our governmental to become a dictatorship that disregards the needs and desires of its citizens, now that we've had legal access to our own military might for quite some time.

In the beginning, when the art and science of gunsmithing was relatively new, the gun you used on the battlefield as part of a military unit was a close cousin to the gun you used as a civilian, hunting for food.  It was understood by the government and the military machine that only the cannons owned and operated by the nation's military represented superior firepower and even so, superior numbers of civilians and smart tactics could overtake slow-firing, logistically cumbersome cannon.  In short, it would be desperately unwise to attempt to overthrow the nation's own citizens.  When so much of the army was really local militia called up to service and they already owned the guns they would use in such service, it would be a doomed effort from the beginning.

But in more recent times gunsmithing has become something else entirely.  It is possible to manufacture weapons capable of firing over 600 rounds per minute.   The fastest non-automatic firing I've ever heard of is damned fast - eight rounds in a single second firing a conventional revolver.  But when the eight rounds are gone, the revolver has to reload.  The AR-15 just keeps shooting until the 30-round clip is empty.

There are people who are freakishly fast shooters. I know I can't pull the trigger eight times in a single second, but there are some who can.  And they hit their targets, so they aren't just whaling away at it.  But that doesn't change the fact that most people simply aren't going to shoot that fast or fire very many rounds in a single go.  The automatic weapon changes that.

But no problem!  You can purchase an automatic weapon if you want one.  Well, semi-auto.  The gun fires a round, resets the trigger for you, and you fire again.  That limits how quickly you can fire the gun, but that limitation isn't a big deal: you can still fire a round every second.

Now is when I ask the question: how quickly do you need to fire?  Sportsmen, legitimate hunters, will usually tell you that being able to fire another shot very quickly is pretty important, but those same hunters will tell you that if you need to fire more than three shots, you're a crap hunter.  Really.  If you can't hit the target on the first shot and need the second shot to end its suffering - suffering you, the hunter, have caused, by the way - a third round can only underline your lousy performance.  And if that third shot doesn't finish it off, that's because the wounded animal has gotten completely away.

In my book, gun control is hitting the target the first time, every time.  But the larger question is what kind of gun should I be able to have?  If actual hunters will tell you that more than three rounds at a time is poor performance, then the "legitimate sporting" argument for a 30-round magazine and a round every second is a pretty weak argument.

Here's where the gun nuts start getting their wind up.  They'll shout "Second Amendment" this and that, that the Constitution protects our legal right to own and bear arms.  They're right...to a degree.  The Amendment clearly states that the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed, so as long as the weapon can be owned, you can own it, absent legal reasons why you should not.  But in light of the Connecticut school shooting and now this nutjob in New York setting a trap for firefighters by setting his own home on fire, it points up the question, should some weapons be legal to own?

I don't hunt.  I know one guy who does, and I asked him a few questions about what kind of guns he owns, but it's been a couple of days since I asked and he hasn't gotten back to me.  I hope he does soon, because I don't want to file this essay without representing a legitimate user's view.

Having  a shorter magazine would not have stopped that murderer from killing all those kids.  It would have slowed him down, however, and maybe those heroic teachers who tried to stop him would have had a chance.  Maybe nothing would have changed.

Having to re-cock the gun for every shot would have slowed him down.  Maybe the teachers would have had a chance.  Maybe not.

Looking at the statistics, the United States isn't the worst place to worry about getting killed by somebody with a gun.  El Salvador, for instance, is way worse.  Colombia is way worse.  Brazil is way worse.  Countries, to put it bluntly, that are raddled by ultra-violent drug cartels that are killing indiscriminately are worse off than we are.  Third-world countries awash in organized crime are way worse off than we are.

I think it's high time we look very hard at whether having the capacity to deal out death at such a high rate is a good thing.  The many checks and balances already make it damned hard for our own government to take unchallenged control and become a dictatorship, a tyranny that dispossesses its constituents.

The right to own and bear arms shall not be infringed, but I think we need to look damned hard at whether the right to sell the capability of dealing death in bulk amounts should be infringed.  It really ought to be, since dealing death in any amount is by and large illegal, not useful in hunting, and a national tragedy every time it happens.