Heartless Libertarian

Um, Mr. President? NATO? Anyone?

2011-06-05T13:12:00.002-04:00

Wasn't the intervention in Libya supposed to be about saving civilian lives? So why aren't we intervening in Syria? I mean, the Syrian government is actually shooting civilian protesters, unlike the Libyans, who were only endangering them in the crossfire while fighting armed rebels. Quite honestly, they were probably within the Laws of Land Warfare, too.

You know what I think? I think there were two elements to The One's decision-making on this: first, the Europeans were going to go in with or without us, and he didn't want to look like a wimp, even though the Euros were protecting their own interests (oil supply, and avoiding a wave of refugees) whereas we had no interests at play.

Second, I think The One figured that Quadaffy would cave when faced with the awesome might of the USAF, and he could score an easy foreign policy victory. Instead, Quadaffy didn't cave, and now we're stuck backing one side in a stalemated civil war. Instead of looking like a strong, competant statesman, The One looks like a Newb who's in over his head. Which is exactly what he is.

Sargeant Major of the Marines Has A Hissy Fit

2011-06-05T12:25:00.002-04:00

Over the possibility of the Army using MARPAT.

“The main concern for the Marine Corps when it comes to other services testing our patterns is that they don’t exactly mimic them,” said Kent, who is scheduled to retire June 9. “The MARPAT design is proprietary, and it’s important those designs are reserved for Marines. We just need to make sure each of our designs is unique to each service.”

Really, Sar' Major? I know you've been around long enough to remember when everyone wore woodland BDUs or DCUs. Ya'll still had your 8-corner hats and rolled your sleeves. I don't remember it causing any problems.

And BTW, if it's proprietary, the rights are owned by the US taxpayer. Who also employs the Army. Oh yeah, and the pattern was developed by the Army's Natick Labs. With Army money.

And finally, unless I got close enough to see national flag patches or the color of web gear and body armor, I usually couldn't tell US Marines from Canadian troops in Afghanistan. So what was it you were saying about being unique?

I suggest you shut up and color, before you further embarrass the Corps.

China Accuses US of Launching 'Internet War'

2011-06-05T12:05:00.002-04:00

From Foxnews.com:

BEIJING – The Chinese military accused the U.S. on Friday of launching a global "Internet war" to bring down Arab and other governments, redirecting the spotlight away from allegations of major online attacks on Western targets originating in China.
....
Writing in the Communist Party-controlled China Youth Daily newspaper, the scholars did not mention Google's claims, but said recent computer attacks and incidents employing the Internet to promote regime change in Arab nations appeared to have originated with the U.S. government.

"Of late, an Internet tornado has swept across the world ... massively impacting and shocking the globe. Behind all this lies the shadow of America," said the article, signed by Ye Zheng and Zhao Baoxian, identified as scholars with the Academy of Military Sciences.

"Faced with this warmup for an Internet war, every nation and military can't be passive but is making preparations to fight the Internet war," it said.

So, the Red Chinese are accusing the US of using the free flow of information as a weapon. Of course, free information is immensely dangerous to totalitarian regimes, and I'd like to think our government is competent enough to actually use it as a weapon to advance the cause of liberty around the world. But personally, I think they're giving the folks at Foggy Bottom and Langely more credit than they deserve.

China needs to "express to the world its principled stance of maintaining an 'Internet border' and protecting its 'Internet sovereignty,' unite all advanced forces to dive into the raging torrent of the age of peaceful use of the Internet, and return to the Internet world a healthy, orderly environment," the article said.

And, thank you very much for letting us know that you regard this as a threat. Not we know where to concentrate our efforts.

Remember, the Internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it. Information wants to be free, and will find a way to be so.

Making America More Economically Competitive

2011-04-19T15:55:00.003-04:00

I originally wrote this in March of 2010, while sitting in the Atlanta airport waiting to go back to Afghanistan after mid-tour leave. IIRC, that was before Pelosi, Reid, and The One managed to ram through the still smoldering pile of shit known as ObamaCare, so the health care section had to be updated a bit - namely, by adding "Repeal ObamaCare"

OK, here we go - Radical, Painful, and Necessary Steps to Fix the Economy

I. STOP TRYING TO REINFLATE THE BUBBLE AND LET PRICES BOTTOM OUT

The real way to get the housing market moving again is to let prices settle at a level which works the inventory surplus through the system by letting prices settle at levels people can afford.

a. Terminate the homebuyer tax credit – at this point, it’s just a handout for people who were going to buy anyway. (Note - this has already expired, and prices have continued to fall.)

b. End FHA mortgage guarantees. If borrowers are judged to be too high risk to loan money to without a guarantee by Uncle Sam, they’re too high risk to loan money to, period. We don’t need to be putting the taxpayers on the hook for any more stupid private borrowing/lending decisions.

c. End the government’s involvement in Fannie and Freddie, and make it explicitly clear that under no circumstances will their loan portfolio be guaranteed by taxpayer money.

d. Repeal the Community Reinvestment Act, and remove the government’s power to coerce and/or pressure lenders to make loans based on political considerations (i.e. to ‘underserved’ –(read ‘minority’) constituencies) that they wouldn’t lend to based on considerations of risk

e. (I’ll be ending the mortgage interest tax deduction later, under Tax Reform.)

II. FORCE STATES AND MUNICIPALITIES TO FACE FISCAL REALITY, AND HELP THEM OUT WITHOUT GIVING THEM MONEY

a. Make it clearly understood to state and local governments that there will be no more bailouts. They dug their holes for themselves, and they will have to get themselves out of it. (Note: with the GOP takeover of the House, this looks unlikely to happen prior to the 2012 elections. One point for the good, at least.)

b. Repeal Davis-Bacon, to make it easier for states and localities to reduce expenditures by contracting out without ‘prevailing wage’ floors.

c. Repeal all minimum wage laws. In conjunction with repealing Davis-Bacon, this will help reduce expenditures, and will help reduce unemployment by allowing labor costs to fall further. The Law of Supply & Demand works in the labor market, too. Right now we have a surplus of available labor (aka, high unemployment and underemployment), but the .gov is keeping the price from dropping to encourage demand.

III. STOP REINFORCING FAILURE.

There is no such thing as ‘Too Big to Fail.’ In the long run, it is better to let unsuccessful businesses fail and reallocate their resources to those who can use them more productively.

a. Liquidate Uncle Sam’s interest in GM, Chrysler and any other bailed-out companies. Admit the money they were given is a sunk cost, and recover whatever we can. If the businesses are viable without government money, there will be buyers. If not, let them go bankrupt and better run companies can buy whatever is worth anything.

b. End TARP and return whatever money is still sloshing around to the Treasury. There’s too much temptation to use this as a slush fund. And as above, if companies can’t survive without government help, let them be cannibalized.

IV. INCREASE AMERICA’S COMPETITIVENESS RELATIVE TO THE REST OF THE WORLD

a. Tax Reform

i. Eliminate the Corporate Income Tax. Businesses don't pay taxes, they just collect them for the .gov. Taxes are just another expense to them. Therefore, the ideal corporate tax rate is Zero. Without the tax requirement, corporations will do one or more of the following four things:

1) Give the extra profit to shareholders (which becomes income for the shareholders, and thus taxed);
2) Increase pay to employees (which again increases tax receipts);
3) Expand their business (which means buying stuff and hiring more people, and thus, more taxes); or
4) Reducing the prices of their goods/services, which gives consumers more money to spend on other things, which expands the economy.

Furthermore, this will end, or at least reduce, the so-called ‘Benedict Arnold Corporations’ moving parts of their operations overseas for tax reasons, as well as ending the practice of keeping overseas earnings out of the country to avoid having them taxed a second time.

ii. Scrap the current income tax and replace it with a flat tax. The trigger for American independence was taxes, and historically, America’s low tax rates have attracted a disproportionate share of the world’s most productive people to our shores. Furthermore, tax compliance costs impose an estimated $200 billion drag on our economy – money that could be put to more productive uses than paying tax attorneys and H&R Block. We should regain that low-tax crown and eliminate that drag with a flat tax set at least 1% below the current lowest country.

iii. Repeal the inheritance tax entirely. It’s a class-warfare relic enacted to fund World War I, which ended over 90 years ago. Furthermore, it causes inefficiency as people make economic decisions based on avoiding the tax, rather than on maximizing utility.

b. Health Insurance Reform. The kind that won’t cost the government anything.

i. Repeal ObamaCare. It's a giant flaming pile of shit that is sure to cost far, far more than the Troika of Assholes told us.

ii. Eliminate state barriers to buying insurance across state lines. These barriers are blatantly unconstitutional, given that the Constitution reserves to Congress the power to “regulate commerce among the several states.” Furthermore, increasing the size and thus competitiveness of the market will reduce in lower prices for insurance.

iii. Eliminate mandatory policy coverages, and allow consumers to choose what coverage they want. Again, this will reduce the cost of insurance to individual consumers.

iv. Level the tax playing field between employer-purchased and privately purchased insurance. More consumer control and choice, once again, means more competition and lower prices. Ideally, this would be done by IV.a.i and .ii, above. (No corporate income tax means no employer deduction/credit, as would a flat tax with no deductions or a single standard deduction in the case of personally owned businesses.)

v. (Note that these health insurance reforms are designed only to reduce costs. They are not designed nor intended to address issues such as increasing access to/cost of coverage for people with pre-existing conditions or tort reform.)

c. Regulatory Reform

i. Reassert the sole authority of Congress to promulgate laws. The vast bulk of the impenetrable thicket of red tape which threatens to strangle America is generated by Executive Branch agencies which have no authority to make laws, but which still carry penalties for violating said rules, regulations, etc. Congress should re-assert its authority by passing a law stating that all rules, regulations, etc, promulgated by executive agencies, which carry any penalty whatsoever for non-compliance, are repealed, and that executive branch agencies have no authority under the Constitution to generate any such rules, regulations, etc, and that any authority that may have been granted under previous statute law was in error and is thus revoked and reserved exclusively to Congress.
Some will complain that Congress lacks the expertise and the time to pass laws to regulate all the things that needs controlling, and thus won't be able to do enough, but I see that as a feature rather than a bug.

I Thought Holland Had Gun Control...

2011-04-09T16:00:00.001-04:00

7 killed, 15 wounded in Dutch mall shooting

As Uncle would say (and probably already has): Unpossible!

Strykers and LAVs and Rosimaks, Oh My!

2011-03-22T15:00:00.002-04:00

Plus a couple of other random 8 Wheeled Combat Vehicles, from the Brigade.

FYI: The Rosimaks are the ones that look like turretless Strykers on steroids, sometimes with chain link fence bolted to the sides (they belong to the Polish troops in Ghazni province, Afghanistan). They also have turreted (30mm) versions.

And no, those aren't Strykers with 25mm turrets. Those are Canadian LAV IIIs. The Stryker was built on the LAV III chassis.

QOTD

2011-03-22T12:16:00.003-04:00

From Marko:

Chernobyl resulted in fewer than a hundred deaths, and a few thousand people with radiation-related health problems, mostly from the area 20 miles around the plant. That’s the worst nuclear accident in history, and that death toll is unacceptable, and proof that nukes aren’t safe, despite the fact that hundreds of reactors worldwide have been running for decades without any accidents...More miners die every year digging for the coal that runs coal-powered plants than people have died of nuclear accidents in the history of the technology.

And I will remind everyone out there with green-energy delusions: Cheap energy is the key to the modern economy, and to improving the standard of living for everyone. The only reliable, renewable energy source that can even come close to supplying cheap energy on a reliable basis is hydropower. Which ya'll hate. Don't try to give me any of that "We should use solar/wind/unicorn farts" BS because it can't even come close to supplying what we need, when we need it, on a reliable basis.

It's Official

2011-03-20T08:58:00.002-04:00

CNN can no longer be considered a serious news network. (From DailyCaller via Insty)

400 reporters for Prince Billy's wedding, but only 50 for Japan? Why don't ya'll just go ahead and change your name to something more fitting, like TMZ-2?

And interesting thought: I wonder what the BBC's ratio is? How about al-Jazeera? (I'm not going to add Fox News; I'm sure they're just as royal/celeb addled as CNN.)

Russians in Afghanistan

2011-03-18T22:07:00.001-04:00

Interesting pictures from English Russia. The more things change...

I Seem to Recall Hearing That Before

2011-03-13T20:45:00.002-04:00

Instapundit, via CBS News, posts that the massive quake/tsunami combo could happen here - something I blogged about almost five years ago.

Also, the first episode of History Channel's Mega Disasters was titled West Coast Tsunami, featuring a rupture of the Cascadia Subduction Zone.

Lying with Statistics

2011-03-08T09:50:00.003-05:00

This story, which says the US military is "too white and too male at the top," is yet another example of using misleading statistics to advance the agenda of political correctness.

The report states that, as of 2008,

seventy-seven percent of senior officers in the active-duty military are white, while only 8 percent are black, 5 percent are Hispanic and 16 percent are women

It then determines that there is problems with the military's recruiting, promotion, and ground combat exclusion policies. (Actually, the ground combat arms exclusion is a law, not DoD policy.)

The problem with this is, they're not comparing the percentages of senior officers to the appropriate populations. The appriate comparisons are not, as they seem to be doing, the percentages of women and minorities in today's general population. The story doesn't define 'senior officerm,' but I'll call them O-5s and above. So Commander for the squids, Leiutenant Colonel for everyone else. You can't just take someone off the street, send them to some training, and have a senior officer come out the other side. It takes at least 15 years of service, from time of commissioning, to make O-5. Second, all commissioned officers are required to hold a bachelor's degree. So, your relevant population would be college grads from at least 15-20 years ago.

The best stats I could find are in this report from the Dept. of Education, which breaks down college graduates from academic year 1997-98. For that year, 8.3% of college graduates were black, and 5.6% Hispanic. This correlates pretty well to the racial breakdown of senior officers quoted in the story, at 8% blacks and 5% Hispanics. Not exactly a reason for panic. If anything, the problem is not the military, but the civilian education system which turns out minority college graduates at rates below their representation in the general population.

Now, on to the women. What's relevant here is not the percentage of women in the overall population or the percentage of women college graduates. What's relevant is the percentage of women in the force. That's because the military - whose primary function is killing people and breaking things in furtherance of national security policy - has never been a popular career choice for women. Which is not necessarily a problem. There aren't a lot of women in construction, or the NFL, or working on offshore oil rigs, either. I didn't look up the other services, but in the Army, 17.2% of the overall force is female. And according to the story, 16% of the military's senior officers are female. A difference of just over 1% isn't exactly something to panic over.

The story does not contain a link to the actual report, so it's impossible to say if it examined attrition, but my personal experience has been that female officers tend to leave the services in higher percentages than their male counterparts, in large part due to children. Understanding that the plural of anecdote is not data, I've known 5 dual military officer couples in my career, 1 Navy, 4 Army. Of those, the Navy couple had no children. Of the four remaining, 3 of the wives left the Army, either when they got pregnant or within a year after giving birth.

Overall, the data cited in the article does not make any argument for any needed changes.

Wait a Minute...

2011-03-02T13:13:00.003-05:00

Doesn't Germany, and most of Europe, have incredibly restrictive gun control laws?

So how does this happen?

Two U.S. Airmen Killed in Shooting at Germany's Frankfurt Airport

The shooter is described as being a native of Mitrovica, Kosovo. The story doesn't say, but most Kosovars are Muslims. Interestingly, the US has a generally positive image in Kosovo and Albania thanks to our intervention n their behalf in 1999.

Less so with the ethnic Serb minority population of Kosovo. So it is entirely possible that it could be a pissed off Serb trying to get revenge. Just wanted to throw that note out before folks jump to the "self-radicalized lone wolf radical Islamofascist jihadi" conclusion.

All American Bravado

2011-03-02T13:04:00.000-05:00

Overheard in the hall today, reference (indirectly) the ongoing interestingness in the Arabic speaking portion of the world:

"If they ask, we can be anywhere in the world in 4 hours, and sustain forever. Our reach-back is incredible. Our rucksacks are bigger than any other rucksacks in the world."

I believe the G3's tongue was planted firmly in his cheek. Unless DARPA has some cool toys capable of Starship Troopers-style orbital drops that we haven't heard about yet. Which would be awesome. And which would definitely need 'AA' logos all over them.

I will put the Kool-AAid down now.

Chicks with Guns

2011-02-08T13:07:00.002-05:00

FNC story on the women of Top Shot (new season, tonight at 2200 EST)

One question: why is the safety off on that AK?

Army Carbine Competition

2011-02-02T15:12:00.002-05:00

From a story in the Military Times, the Army earlier this week announced details of the new parallel programs to upgrade the M4, while also developing a potential replacement.

A few things from the article that stood out for me:

No caliber restriction has been placed on a new design. It will be at least a 500-meter weapon and have a higher incapacitation percentage.

So something other than the standard M855 5.56 is at least possible. Whether this would be an improved 5.56 cartridge, an existing round in a heavier caliber (something in the 6.5-6.8 range) that fits the existing M4/M16 magazine envelope, or an entirely new round apparently will be a matter to be tested. More on this in a bit.

It can have a gas or piston system.

I think the author means direct gas or piston system. I'd love to see the actual Army solicitation, to see if other operating system types (such as the Kiraly lever-delayed blowback, a la the FA-MAS and TKB-517) would be allowed.

Once the carbine competition’s winner is determined, the Army chief of staff will determine whether the service should go with the top carbine or the improved M4 as it recapitalizes the force. In an era of diminishing budgets, the winning carbine must hit financial goals as well as it hits targets.

Now I keep seeing echoes of the .276 Pederson - even if a new cartridge were to prove better suited than the existing 5.56, the suggested new cartridge may well fall victim to budgetary concerns. Just like in 1932, the Army again faces tightening budgets, and has significant stockpiles of existing 5.56 ammo and weapons. Even a somewhat compromise of a new round that fits the existing M4/M16 magazine envelope would entail significant costs to convert existing weapons (not just the M4/M16, but also the M249 SAW) and build supplies of the new round.

Another strike against both a new round as well as a new carbine design is the LSAT program, which may well provide the Army's long term replacements for both the rifle/carbine and light machinegun.

In sum, if I were a betting man, I'd put my money on some sort of product improved M4/M16, with at least a 50/50 chance of the addition of something like the Mk 262 Mod 1 being adopted as a new 5.56 round.

Gunnies According to Cracked

2011-02-02T14:59:00.002-05:00

Actually, it's not bad at all. Found at WTA.

Rate me somewhere between Paranoid and Because I F***ing Can!

Al Jazeera Calls Out Obama

2011-01-28T13:36:00.002-05:00

President Obama, say the 'D-Word'

The most depressing and even frightening part of the tepid US response to the protests across the region is the lack of appreciation of what kind of gift the US, and West more broadly, are being handed by these movements. Their very existence is bringing unprecedented levels of hope and productive activism to a region and as such constitutes a direct rebuttal to the power and prestige of al-Qaeda.
...
Obama doesn't seem to understand that the US doesn't need to "take the fight" to al-Qaeda, or even fire a single shot, to score its greatest victory in the "war on terror". Supporting real democratisation will do more to downgrade al-Qaeda's capabilities than any number of military attacks. He had better gain this understanding quickly because in the next hours or days the Egypt's revolution will likely face its moment of truth. And right behind Egypt are Yemen, Jordan, Algeria, and who knows what other countries, all looking to free themselves of governments that the US and its European allies have uncritically supported for decades.

RTWT.

The despotic regimes that emerged from the ruins of the Ottoman Empire have probably done more to fuel the rise of militant Islam than any other single factor. A few years ago, neo-con policy wonks talked about a democratic Iraq serving tocatalyze democracy in other countries of the region.

That future may well be now.

What She Said

2011-01-26T14:43:00.002-05:00

From Tam:

Me? I have no strong opinions one way or another on choo-choo trains, whatever their speed. If someone wants to build a railroad and drive their trains really fast on it, more power to them. If they have reasonable rates and are going somewhere I want to go and they promise to treat me like a paying customer or even just a dignified human being and not like livestock or an airline passenger, I might even purchase their services.

I think that about sums up my feelings on the matter. If Union Pacific or BNSF wants to build super-fast trains from A to B, I say go for it. Just don't ask for any of my tax money (either direct spending or tax breaks) to build it. And no loan guarantees or acres of .gov land to sell, either. That goes for light rail, slow heavy rail, and things like the DC Metro, MARTA, and BART as well. (FWIW, this also applies to things like stem cell research. You want to play with stem cells? Go right ahead. Just use your own damn money. If it was as promising was you promise, you should have no shortage of willing investors.)

My favorite saying about mass transit: "Two-thirds of those surveyed supported mass transit for other people."

I Actually Agree with Frances Fox Piven

2011-01-23T10:22:00.002-05:00

at least, on a small point.

I found this quote in a Power Line blog post on how Piven and her fellow travelers have their panties in a bunch because Glenn Beck has been quoting her.

But here's the quote:

[T]he out-of-work have to stop blaming themselves for their hard times and turn their anger on the bosses, the bureaucrats or the politicians who are in fact responsible.

Except I think we differ slightly on which set of "bosses, bureaucrats, and politicians" are responsible. My list includes the bosses of the Fed, Fannie, Freddie, and .gov unions, the bureaucrats like the clowns at the EPA who call the product of exhaling a controllable pollutant and the FDA jerks who add years and tens or hundreds of millions of dollars to the cost of developing new drugs, and politicians like FDR, LBJ, Bill Clinton, Barney Frank, Nancy Pelosi, and His Oneness who built the mammoth edifices of the welfare state that are crushing us under a mountain of government spending.

I kind of doubt that withered old Marxist bats like Piven want us to hold them responsible for the problems they created.

100 Years of Flying Squids

2011-01-18T13:27:00.003-05:00

Hockey celebrations in Detroit notwithstanding.

On this date in 1911, Eugene Ely landed a Curtis biplane on an improvised flight deck on the USS Pennsylvania anchored in San Francisco Bay. An hour later, he successfully took off again.

[Capt. Charles F. Pond, commanding officer of the Pennsylvania] praised Ely's flight as "marvelous" and "extraordinary," but also struck a cautious note. "To say what effect Ely's demonstration will have on naval development, of course," is debatable...Rear Adm. E.B. Barry, commander of the Pacific Fleet, thought flying machines would be useful for scouting, but little else. As for a plane attacking a warship, he noted that every warship carried U.S. Marine riflemen. "It seems unreasonable that the bird men could get close enough to become effective," the admiral said.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/01/16/MNDK1H97FO.DTL#ixzz1BPfqzPmb

The caution of Capt. Pond and Admiral Barry would reign at least until 1922, when the Navy commissioned its first aircraft carrier. It was left to the Japanese in 1941 to truly enlighten the US Navy.

Also of note, on Eli's landing, a display of what today would be called 'jointness':

When he landed back at San Bruno 15 minutes later, Ely was hailed as a hero by Army soldiers at the airfield.

Some folks think I'm a bit nutty for jumping out of perfectly good airplanes. But I'm not crazy enough to try to land a plane on a boat.

Just a Thought

2011-01-14T18:40:00.002-05:00

Appropos of Tam's post on the ever predictable wailing and gnashing of teeth about "high capacity" magazines in the wake of the Tuscon nutjob shooting, this thought crossed my mind:

-the shooter was finally subdued after he had successfully loaded a second thirty-one round magazine into his pistol - not while he was reloading, as has been implied by many press reports. But that magazine - an third party aftermarket one - failed to feed properly.

Ever stop to think that, had the nutjob been limited to standard or reduced capacity magazines, the odds are probably better that they would have functioned properly, allowing him to keep shooting?

SCAR Multi-Caliber Lower

2011-01-11T09:48:00.002-05:00

This looks pretty darn cool. I assume that the upper is the ATF-recognized serial numbered 'gun' for the SCAR.

Actually, when this is what I first envisioned when they announced the SCAR and claimed that it would be 'multi-caliber' - a single rifle that could change calibers by swapping out barrel, bolt, and magwell.

Might actually get me to buy a SCAR.

Some Interesting Pictures

2011-01-01T15:29:00.003-05:00

From English Russia.

First, pictures of Soviet troops in Afghanistan. Note, about 1/3 of the way down, the Soviet troop holding a Stinger missile tube. Also, the troops posing in front of the stone Buddhas of Bamian province, which were destroyed by the Taliban.

(Of note, Bamian's population is almost entirely ethnic Hazara Shiites, who were treated brutally by the Taliban. The only ISAF troops in the province are a reconstruction team from New Zealand. There are no Afghan Army troops. And also no Taliban.)

Second, pics of the Russian army in Chechnya. I do find the number of BMP-1s shown to be interesting, since back in the late 90s, when I was a mech infantry platoon leader, we were told that those had been relegated to second line use.

What Gun for Zombies?

2010-12-21T18:27:00.002-05:00

Not to get into a huge discussion, of which I'm sure there is plenty on places like THR, TFL, and arf.com, but just some commentary on a couple of recent postings I've read.

First of all, I'll agree with this author that a shotgun is not the best weapon for dealing with zeds in the wild, I'd posit that using a Saiga-12 would greatly reduce the problem of slow reloading.

And second, a post full of good advice from the inestimable Chuck Z. I will take issue, however, with his choice of the .22 LR for dealing with zeds. Firstly, because I have doubts about the ability of the .22 to penetrate a human skull reliably, especially when striking at an angle of significantly less than 90 degrees. Secondly, not every shot is going to be a head shot, especially when dealing with zeds in large numbers. A .22 which doesn't kill instantly isn't going to do much at all. But larger calibers at least have the capability to shred muscle and break bones. And shredded muscles and broken bones reduce the mobility and/or grabbing abilities of zombies just like regular people. Personally, I'd recomend something in 5.56 or 7.62x39.

Beyond GFWs...

2010-12-21T18:15:00.002-05:00

...to complete and total wussies. (HT: Uncle)

So these people are getting worked up at the thought of a few folks using bows in their backyards? How do these people get out of bed in the morning without their shadows scaring them back under the covers?

the chief expressed concerns after a resident recently asked whether he could use a compound bow in the village. It is the third or fourth such request since March 2007, Dahlberg's memo stats.[sic]

First of all, to whomever called the police to find out if they could shoot their bow: this is America. If the law doesn't say you can't, just do it.

And second, 3 or 4 questions in almost 4 years? I can see this is a raging epidemic of dangerousness. I don't think I'd trust the village police chiefs to hose out the cages at the dog pound.

Village code currently does not prohibit the use of compound bows on private property, unless the arrow is propelled onto or across public property.

And this is exactly how it should be: as long as what I'm doing stays on my own property, it's nobody else's business. If I'm negligent and my activity strays off my lot and does damage, then the law can intervene.

This last on needed to be pointed out:

Trustee John Korn said the matter is not a simple one and pointed out that confining the activity to an enclosed area does not necessarily make it safe. He said he once set up a range in his in-laws' home in Wheeling and was surprised to find bullet holes through the side of their house.

This clown set up a range inside a house...and then was surprised to find bullet holes through the exterior wall? Unless you've got solid masonry construction, even a .22 LR will punch holes in the wall more often than not. The fact that someone that deficient in judgment and common sense could get elected to public office says a lot about the judgment of the voters of the village.