Disgruntled woman enters grocery store with a gun ...

… in plain sight and 49 rounds of ammunition and nothing happened. Well, except that she walked out in a better mood than when she walked in.

On some level, I felt obligated. I have often said I feel like such a poseur in the gun community – my knowledge consists little more than The Four Rules, knowing which end of the gun is the most dangerous, and that a .45 is bigger than a .38. I know to roll my eyes when my coworker tells me that if the caliber doesn’t start with a “.4”, it’s not worth carrying. (Especially when I ask what he carries and he tells me he doesn’t have a pistol.) And I know that January 23rd should be a national holiday.

While in Pittsburgh, I open carried for the first time. It was cool, but when you’re surrounded by 69,999 like-minded people, it’s not such a big deal. When we got back home, JayG posted his thoughts.

And Mike W., who open carries regularly chimed in.

And then Breda goes and knocks one out of the park, summed up with “You can create the future while securing your own.”

Then Alan piles on with a plea to contact Texas representatives to get an open carry bill pushed along. Here in VA, open carry is legal, and I’m not taking advantage of it.

Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it. ~Thomas Paine

And I realized I have a responsibility as a role model for Sweet Daughter to push the envelope of my comfort zone in order to support those freedoms, because

I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations. ~James Madison, speech, Virginia Convention, 1788

Last weekend, Michael W. took my Miami Vice II shoulder rig from Galco orange to a beautiful dark brown. And tonight, I wore it to the grocery store, unconcealed, and nobody cared. One gentleman did look at me a little funny, but that’s not unusual even when I’m not wearing a gun. And the cashier was especially friendly, reminding me that if I bought my wine in quantity, I’d get 10% off AND a free wine bag.

I’m not an evangelist of any sort. I don’t particularly like talking to strangers, but I do feel like this is a way in which I can make some small contribution back to the gunnie community. I can help desensitize John Q. Public to the sight of a regular person with a gun. And Sweet Daughter will be right there helping. When someone asks me why I’m carrying, I’ll ask SD “What’s the best defense against a bad guy with a gun?” And she’ll answer “A good guy with a gun!”

You can create the future while securing your own.

Thank you for pointing that out, Breda. Because, really – how many people have that opportunity?

New shiny!

1848 Colt Baby Dragoon pocket revolver, and it’s my first percussion gun. Because one can never have too many obscure calibers.

.31 caliber. And, no. I can't get the picture stay in landscape orientation.

.

(Thanks, Michael W.!)

Pictures from Saturday night

Photos are courtesy of my Blogfather, JayG, and his new camera. 

With my blogfather, JayG at the "after party".

With Weer'd Beard at the 2A Blog Bash.

With the cool-beyond-belief Breda at the 2A Blog Bash

Werewolf Shoes

Mid-life crisis shoes -- cheaper than a convertable.

It's not easy taking pictures of your own feet from this angle. This is the best I've got for now -- I'll update if I get any better ones to add. (That's a hint. If you've got anything from Saturday, please send them to me. If I don't have pictures, it didn't happen, right?)

UPDATED to add:

Thanks Blogfather!

Anti-gun Protest

Sweet Daughter got to see the her first demonstration on Saturday. We went out with the other bloggers to watch the antis* march in and …

Crickets.

We hung around, got a bite to eat, visited a bit, and Sweet Daughter asked for a pen and paper. All I had was a napkin, but she sat down and proceeded to draw this.

That’s a demonstrator trying to take her guns away. She’s the one saying “No No No”. That object with the circle in the middle off to the left is a target.

When she was done with that, she begged a piece of paper from JayG and walked around copying names off of NRA attendee badges for her “People I Like” list. It wasn’t technically a “Bloggers I’ve Met” list as she pointed out that she doesn’t have her own blog, and it included friends from her kindergarten class.

After waiting for around an hour with nobody showing up, we went back inside to stand in line to meet “Gunny” when the call came through that the demonstrators had finally shown up. We went back out, and I listened to their spokesperson being interviewed by the local news station. Near as I could tell, they wanted to make it very, very difficult for people to get guns legally as that would solve the problem of drugs in their neighborhood. Or something. I explained to SD that while I did not agree with what they were saying, they had a right to say it. Just like we could tell them how we felt.

And then I saw the woman across the street with the sign that said “Give your children hugs, not guns!” and something flipped the little switch in my brain from “rational discourse” to “THAT PERSON IS A THREAT TO SD’S SAFETY!”

Yeah. It wasn’t pretty. I yelled, and I was not logical, rational, or coherant. I learned that counter-demonstrating is not my strong point, and next time I’ll follow SD's exampole, and just point and laugh.

* On another note, it was determined that a group of hippies, like a murder of crows or a parliament of owls, should be referred to as a "Patchouli of Hippies".

Photo bleg

I didn't get any pictures of the shoes last Saturday. Can anybody help me out?

Thanks ...

Nancy

Just got the good news!

Shanksville, PA, May 1, 2011

They got Osama. How very fitting that we stopped at the Shanksville Memorial on the way home from the NRA Convention yesterday. As Shorter Half pointed out to Sweet Daughter – it was not a graveyard, it was a battlefield. She understands that there are bad guys out there that want to do us harm simply because they are bad guys, but it was still difficult explaining the magnitude of what happened on September 11th, 2001. Her alarm clock just went off, and I got to tell her that the bad guy who decided those planes should crash into building was dead.

We’ve already run up our special occasion Colors. This flag flew in the skies of Afghanistan aboard the RQ-1B Predator, tail #96-3053, on November 7th, 2002 in support of Operation ENDURING FREEDOM to aid in the capture of Al Queda and Taliban terrorists.