Packing a Pistol – away

Amid all the noise about handguns to automatic weapons, who should or shouldn’t own them and how they should be acquired, no one is asking the key question.

Can you kill someone, up close and personal?

That’s not an easy question to answer.

Years ago, I purchased a handgun. It was a Smith & Wesson Magnum .357 with a barely two-inch barrel. It was made for close-up work – messy and lots of noise. I bought that particular model at the suggestion of a man who taught the police how to shoot.

The man said a bullet from that gun would put someone down. Nothing funny or glamorous about it. When I was at the range with him one afternoon, he pulled my ear protection off for a moment and had a chat with me.

“You buy a speed loader for that thing,” he said. “If it’s 3 a.m. and there’s someone you don’t know in your living room, you fire and keep on firing. When it clicks empty, you load up again and keep firing. Don’t take any chances on someone firing back. Ever.”

The next piece of advice came from a man who had spent two decades with the Michigan State Police, part of that time as an undercover narcotics agent. After his police work he got a job where I worked at the time. I used to cover the police beat as a journalist, he used to be the police, so we came to know each other pretty well.

We met at the range once. Contrary to what I was expecting, he was not a very good shot. I mean, he could hit the bull’s-eye and all, but he couldn’t send bullets booming one after another through one hole in the target, which was about 40 feet away.

After our session, standing in front of his car, he told me that other than undercover work, he hadn’t pulled his gun for years. He was proud of that fact because it meant he found other ways around whatever situation he was in.

“Only unholster your weapon if you’re going to kill someone. Not wing them, not scare them. There is no other reason to have your weapon in your hand. Make up your mind to that. If you cannot kill someone, then you have no business having a gun,” he said.

That prompted a lot of soul searching on my part.

I kept the gun unloaded in my nightstand, but with the speed loader right next to it. At the time I had no children in the house. My son was in the U.S. Army and playing with much bigger weapons.

Years passed. One day, my wife weighed in. Out of nowhere, she came to me and said having a gun in the house made her nervous and she would appreciate it if I got rid of it. My wife comes first. The gun was gone the same day.

I didn’t sell it because I didn’t want the police coming back to me in case it was used in a crime. I took it to the police department and surrendered it. A sergeant tagged it for an incinerator in Lansing and gave me a receipt.

As for the question of whether I could kill someone if, say, a shooter was threatening my wife, the answer is yes, I could. I learned that about myself.

Don’t let these yahoos who scream about gun rights distract you. Think about whether you have it in you to take a life before you go to the gun store and heft that nicely machined weapon in your hand. If you buy one, know in your heart that you can use it. If you don’t know that, put it down on  the counter and walk away.

Gun magazines, yes; Vanity Fair, no

You can tell a lot about people by a quick look at their bookshelves.

And as of now I know what my high school geometry was for. The famous “If-Then” statement -- meaning that if you state something, then it follows that something else should be true, based on the preceding statement -- has finally come into play. I’ve waited a long time for this.                                                                                                                                        

Here’s my extrapolation: If bookshelves tell you about people, then the books and magazines for sale in that community tell you a lot about the community.

The grocery store where I shop is nice -- lots of hard-to-find items, wide aisles and helpful clerks.

But it has drastically trimmed its magazine selection, mostly women’s magazines such as Cosmopolitan, Elle, Women’s Day, and even Vanity Fair. They’re gone.

There were empty spots on the magazine rack where these periodicals used to be just last week. Left untouched were:

·         Guns & Ammo

·         Gun Collector

·         AR-15

·         Shooting Times

·         Handguns

·         Trigger

·         and Combat Techniques

I asked a clerk what happened to all the other magazines.

 “You don’t like the type to buy Cosmo.”

Judging by the few other magazines that looked out of place next to Guns & Ammo, such as Weddings, I can only conclude that the neighborhood anti-fun crowd complained to the manager to get those other magazines off the shelves.

We had an example of this in Metro Detroit not too long ago. Remember that batty woman who wanted The Metro Times to stop putting its weekly paper in the Grosse Pointes because of the sex ads in the back?

I wonder if she made it up north to Royal Oak and went grocery shopping where I shop. Unlike most places, The Metro Times never had a rack at this store. Metro Parent does, though. Quite a difference. I know someone who worked there, once upon a time. She was … well, I’m sure she found a nice man with no spine to marry.

So this is my community, eh? A bunch of tough-guy magazine readers.

One wonders what they’re reading on the internet, assuming they can put their guns down long enough to work the mouse and keyboard. Takes two hands, you know.

I’m going to go shopping at this store next weekend and see if Cosmo et al have reappeared. If they haven’t, I’m shopping elsewhere.

I’ll follow up here next week.

Vietnam part II?

You don’t need to read yet another person’s opinion on what to do about ISIS.

Instead, let’s talk history, specifically Vietnam’s.

I didn’t fight in Vietnam, so I have no first-hand knowledge to share with you. I only got so far as an Army physical in the Cadillac Tower in downtown Detroit when I was 18. My draft number was never called.

And it’s a good thing my number wasn’t called, too. I’d burned my draft card as soon as it arrived in the mail. With so many people burning their draft cards, a rumor began that the newer cards were printed on asbestos. I had to try it.

But even though I didn’t fight in Vietnam, I could read. I read a lot about the war. There are strong parallels between Vietnam and the war we’re getting drawn into in the Middle East.

Carpet bombing doesn’t work. For those who weren’t around, the United States tried to turn Vietnam into an air war by unloading tons and tons of explosives. It didn’t work, in part, because the foliage was so deep that pilots couldn’t see what, if anything, they were bombing.

Lack of visibility led us to defoliate Vietnam by dusting the countryside with Agent Orange, a highly toxic chemical agent that took out plants and, supposedly, would allow us to see what we were bombing. That didn’t work either, but it made thousands of American troops sick. All told, during the 20 years (1955-75) of the Vietnam War, just over 211,000 American troops were killed.

There isn’t anything to defoliate in the Middle East, so ISIS has taken to hiding in plain sight, just as the Vietnamese did. Our Middle Eastern enemy hides in hospitals, homes and neighborhoods – places we dare not bomb for fear of wiping out civilians.

We are bombing everything we can in the Middle East. Now we have a coalition working alongside us, bombing everything they can, trying to keep the fighting in the air. That’s a problem, because we’ve already proved it doesn’t work.

Why are we pushing the air war? Because no one wants to be the guy who sends troops in, that’s why. We learned, or I thought we learned, the dangers of sending in ground troops.

During a lucid moment, Sen. John McCann said, not too long ago, that we can fight ISIS over there, or here. It just so happens that he’s right.

ISIS has already brought the war here. If we’re learning anything about ISIS, it is that they are a very patient enemy, willing to plot for more than a year to execute one of their terrorist plots, such as San Bernardino. From what I’ve read, the Vietnamese were the same way: Wait ‘em out.

We know who won in Vietnam.

We have two choices: commit to ground troops in the Middle East or get out now and shore up our defenses at home. Ask a United States’ Vietnam veteran if he thinks another prolonged ground war thousands of miles from home, a war of inches, would be a bright thing to do.

P.S. Whether you like him or not, Barack Obama is still our president. GOP candidates for the office Obama holds should stop criticizing everything the president says. It shows everyone who is watching disunity and a splintering of those who would lead the country. Before they can lead, they need to learn to follow.                                                                                

Fear and Loathing at Umpqua College

Takeaways on the Umpqua College shootings:

·         -- I saw a Facebook posting featuring the National Rifle Association’s circular logo with the words, Not Relevant Anymore.

·         --  Another Facebook posting said that in an emergency, people without guns inevitably call people with guns.

·        --   I don’t think President Obama said in his speech that he was going to go door-to-door collecting rifles and handguns. I think he said it’s up to the American people to make changes to the gun laws if they want to.

·         --  The South seems to howl loudest about taking away their weapons, whether the tragedy had anything to do with them of not. The biggest example of that came earlier this year, when Texans became convinced the president was going to invade Texas. Texans weren’t clear on why the president was going to invade, but they knew he was going to. We’re still waiting for the invasion.

·         --  The NRA has been at its most vocal during the past 8 years, setting fires about President Obama taking away their guns. It just hasn’t happened. Move on.

·         --  I agree with those who think Chris Mintz, the U.S. Army veteran who was shot seven times trying to take down the gunman, is a hero.

·        --   Fear isn’t working for us. There have been 11 shootings similar to the one at Umpqua College this year alone. I can only wonder what might have happened if at any of these shootings, a roomful of people had charged the lone gunman.

·          -- We are programmed for flight or fight in a dangerous situation. It’s very difficult to think during such a highly stressful time, hence the built-in response. That has to change. It takes a lot of effort to make that change, but if someone were about to kill me, I wouldn’t just sit there and let it happen.

·          -- Donald Trump has it half right. He said shooters in these circumstances are mentally ill. He didn’t say that if elected president, he would do one thing to make it more difficult for the certifiably mentally ill to get guns.

·         --  “Look, stuff happens, there’s always a crisis and the impulse is always to do something and it’s not always the right thing to do.” Jeb Bush said that after the shooting. He also said, after the shooting, that there’s no need for better gun control.

·         --  Not saying the shooter’s name won’t undo anything he did. Know your enemy. His name was Christopher Sean Harper-Mercer.

Check out Detroit's proposed parking meter rates

The City of Birmingham is widely believed to be the most prosperous in Southeast Michigan.

The fee for parking at a meter in Birmingham ranges from fifty cents to $1 per hour. Birmingham also has parking structures, where the first two hours are free before 5 p.m.

The City of Detroit is not the most prosperous in Southeast Michigan.

But that isn’t stopping Detroit’s parking department from proposing an ordinance that would increase the hourly parking rate downtown from $1 to $2 per hour. The department also wants to raise the parking meter rate from $1 to $1.50 per hour for the Midtown and Eastern Market areas. The rate in the neighborhoods would remain $1 an hour.

Hiking parking rates is wrong.

These neighborhoods are finally feeling something of a resurrection. Mayor Duggan wants new business in downtown Detroit and Midtown.

A day in Detroit is expensive as it stands. Increasing the parking rate is premature. It would be best to wait until Detroit businesses have a little bit of a clientele before charging them the most expensive parking rates in the region.

If Detroit’s parking department had a little sense, it would look at cities like Clawson in Oakland County and Plymouth in Wayne County. Both cities have something in common.

Their downtowns are prospering for several reasons, the way Detroit would like to. One of the reasons is that it doesn’t cost anything to park curbside in either city.

That attracts people to come to their cities. I know this sounds simplistic, but apparently this idea hasn’t crossed the minds of the people running Detroit’s parking department.

You can’t generate revenue if people don’t play along and pay the increased rates.

Tickets for parking at Detroit meters that have run out of money are $45 or $10 if you pay the ticket within 48 hours. Isn’t that enough for the time being?

What’s really confusing here is that Detroit’s City Council hasn’t voted on the parking meter increase as of today.

Yet that isn’t stopping the parking department from installing new meters and pay stations. According to The Detroit Free Press, the new meter and pay station installations should be complete by the end of the month.

Isn’t that doing things backward? Who’s paying for the new meters that haven’t yet been voted on?

These are the types of backward decisions that got Detroit into financial trouble in the first place.

The council should consider making meter parking free in Detroit. Detroit should offer a moratorium on parking meter fees until business has picked up in the city. If Clawson and Plymouth offer free parking as an incentive to come to their cities, Detroit should consider it, too. 

Man tries to kill dog; governor kills film industry

Two issues have come up in the past week that need to be kept on the surface rather than allowed to sink: the man who shot his dog in the head with a crossbow, and Gov. Snyder signing a bill killing the film industry in Michigan.

Christopher Scott, 28 of Goodland Township, shot his dog in the head with a bolt from a crossbow. He was in Lapeer District Court July 8, charged with felony animal cruelty, which carries a 4-year prison sentence.

Scott’s attorney, Denis McCarthy, tried to get Visiting Judge John Conover to dismiss the case. The judge did not rule on McCarthy’s motion, which means the pretrial exam will be continued, in this case to July 23.

Scott previously admitted shooting the dog in the head. He said the dog, Gemma, had killed another dog, a pug. Scott also is on record as saying he had five children in the home and was concerned about their safety.

He didn’t have to shoot Gemma. There were alternatives.

Scott could have turned Gemma in to Lapeer County Animal Control. That’s where Gemma is right now, recovering from her wound. The staff has said that Gemma is a good dog and if you didn’t know her history, you’d never know what happened.

I’ve covered court in the past. Often, when a judge does not rule on a motion, that kills the motion. I’m hoping that’s true in this case. Scott’s action cannot be allowed to stand. He was wrong and if his case is dismissed, all sorts of people will forget about humane methods of euthanizing their pets and follow Scott’s example.

Christina Hall of The Detroit Free Press has been doing an excellent job of covering this case.

Now on to Gov. Snyder, who signed legislation Friday, July 10 snuffing out tax incentives for Hollywood to make pictures in Michigan.

Good PR is something that cannot be bought. Having actors, directors and producers walking around Hollywood talking up Michigan was a good thing. It put Michigan on the map as an up-and-coming, forward-thinking state.

It all started in August 2007, when then-Governor Jennifer Granholm decided Michigan’s movie-making incentive program was too weak, so she changed things. She offered much higher tax breaks to movie houses if they would film in Michigan, to the tune of almost 50 cents on the dollar.

Did it work? Within two months, 24 movies had signed up to film in Michigan, up from two movies the year before.

And for a few years, Michigan became known as the go-to state for Hollywood. HERE is a list of films made in Michigan, including those prior to 2007.

Gov. Snyder’s short-sightedness in killing this industry robs Michigan of a chance to shine nationally and internationally. Michigan doesn’t have many chances like that.