Rebrand, Refresh

 I see that Cracker Barrel is going through a rebrand.  The internet is going crazy, which is to say that it is just another day on the internet.

I've always liked Cracker Barrel.  It was a roadside standard, like McDonalds or Popeye's.  You knew what you were getting. Lunch served on a plate rather than a cardboard box.  Belle liked walking through the gift shop.  Looking at the shirts.  All I cared about was the meatloaf and the mashed potatoes.

But, it is fun watching the internet go crazy.  On both sides.

Now, if you will excuse me, I have Saturday to get to.  About 20 shooters will show up in an hour, and I have to get the range ready.

Drop Safe

 Dropping a handgun is bad juju. We all remember the old Colt SAA, where if you loaded all six chambers, the gun was demonstrably unsafe because the firing pin was resting on a live primer.  There were ways to get around that, the most common being to load only five chambers and letting the hammer rest on an empty chamber. Very safe.

The original 1911 had an inertial firing pin but if dropped directly on the muzzle on a live cargridge, the gun could fire when dropped.  Having an empty chamber kinda-sorta negated the idea of a semiauto, so in the 70s, Colt introduced the Series 70 which had a firing pin block to lock th firing pin until the trigger was pulled. The engineering on how to do that is well known and the patents have expired.

Other manufacturers have other ways to skin that cat.  The Glock dingus on the trigger, the Savage Accutrigger,  are other ways to deep us safe.  This is not rocket science.

I spend a lot of time shooting Cowboy Fast Draw, using Ruger single actions and Colt reproductions to play a shooting game. Occasionally a shooter will drop his or her revolver and we have a procedure for that eventuality. The shooter cannot retrieve his own dropped handgun. The gun must be retrieved and made safe by a match official.  It's a process, but invariably, when the gun comes to rest, it is cocked and pointed toward the fringe line. Again, there is a process for making the gun safe, but the one thing that you never see is that the gun fired during the drop or impact with the ground. I've never seen one fire when it hits the ground.

Odd, isn't it?  It must have something to do with the trigger geometry.

Even though we use safety ammunition, we still consider a dropped gun to be a safety violation. If you drop the gun once, you lose that round.  If you drop it twice, you are disqualified.  But I've never seen one fire when it hits the ground.

Can SIG Recover?

 Back in the early 90s, the Louisiana State Police bought a bunch of SIG handguns, and used them for a year before finish problems became an issue. The finish on the Sigs to that date siply couuld not stand up to the humidity of the Louisiana roads. LSP went to Glock and never looked back.

Couple of years ago, my grandson was in the Army and attended 93F (Small Arms Repairer) training at Fort Lee, VA.  He worked with the then new M17 and M18 pistols.  He liked then well enough but was not at all a fan of the modular fire control group in those pistols.

More recently, the P320 has gained a reputation for un-commanded firing of the pistol.  They just go off, occasionally.  I dropped down that rabbit hole today and it seems to be quite the problem, including one death of an Air Force member. I went to the Sig website and can't seem to find where Sig is addressing what is becoming a huge problem.  Whether the problem is poor design, out-of-spec parts, poor quality control, a statistical anomaly, or simply an internet perception, the idea that Sig is not addressing it is the main problem.

A problem with perception is still a problem.  As Ian McCollum pointed out, there are people who still refuse to shoot Springfield 1903s because of a perceived heat-treat problem from 100 years ago.

Ignoring the problem won't make it go away.  I, for one, have my pistols.  I won't be buying any Sigs, simply because I don't need one.

Here is Brian Herrera's take on it.

Fried Bologna

 Fried bologna is probably one of the most Southern recipes I know.  Simply put a slice of bologna in a lightly oiled skillet and fry it until it is brown.  Many of us cut slices in the edges of the bologna so that it won't curl up as it fries.

I had mine today on toast with mayo and provolone cheese.  It's what's for lunch.

Watching the Tropics

 A quick check of the National Hurricane Center map this morning shows that the tropics are becoming more dynamic.

Nothing to get too excited about, at least in the short term.  Nothing there that might hit my acre in the next several days.  We awoke this morning to overcast and drizzly.  Moderate temps, but the humidity is like walking into a wet blanket.  It's going to be a quiet day, I don't even expect to cook today.  I have salad fixings in the fridge and sandwich makings as well.  Lunch is likely to be a tossed salad and a fried bologna sandwich.

Pure Evil

 I see that Hillary has come out of her cave, consulted with Beelzebub and offered her wisdom on the current political climate.  Seriously.

I've never been on a subway, and I doubt that Hill has been on one in the past twenty years.  I also doubt that she has walked down any city street without layers of personal and government security.  Therefore, her observed opinion is absolutely worthless.

But evidently, she is now in favor of crime and homelessness.  That is just evil.

Hillary, in the broader sense, displays the disarray of the Democrat party.  By complaining that President Trump is cleaning up the streets, they fall on the low side of an 80-20 issue.

Late Afternoon Thunderstorms

 We've been getting them this week.  Every day this week. Sometimes between 3:00 and dark, the bottom falls out.  Lots of thunder and wind.  By dark, it's done.

I don't recall ever seeing this in August.  August is normally the time for drought.  Right now, outside, the thunder is rolling.   The cats are upset, but they know where to stay dray.  Belle estimates that, based on the level of the water in the pool, we have gotten about 3 inches in the past hour.

It's Friday afternoon, and I have a good roof.  We're indoors and dry and cocktail hour approaches.

Root Causes

 We look at teen violence and try to ascribe root causes to try to rationalize behavior.  Most of that rationalization is bullshit. I watched lots of families raise kids while I was raising my kids.  Both in the social circles I cruised and as a law enforcement officer. I watched families struggle to raise kids with mixed results and it is almost impossible to predict criminality.

I watched single parents (both men and women) struggle to raise kids, and raised them successfully.  I know one family who had stable parents and good parenting skills who raised six well-adjusted successful tax paying citizens. But that same family had one child (not the oldest, not the youngest) who had been to prison three times by the time he was 40 years old. 

The sociologists try to put people in groups to explain societal problems and that is not always predictive.  There are always outliers.  Some single parents do a great job and some two-parent households experience disaster.

The best thing that a society can do to establish tranquility it to set rules and enforce them. A rule that is not enforced is useless.  We could start with the 10 Commandments, or use Hammurabi's Code but to be effective it must be enforced.

As a cop, I learned that the rules change from time to time. It was not my job to try to understand why someone would choose to break the law.  It was simply my job to enforce it.  If the legislature wanted to change the rules, they were free to do so, and I would adjust my performance to comply with those changes. If the Courts wanted to re-interpret the rules, that was okay too.

I never worried about root causes.  I left that to the academics.

Most Dangerous

 Each year, US News and World Report lists the 25 most dangerous cities in the United States.

President Trump made news this week when he announced that he was federalizing the Metro DC police department.  Judge Jeanine made news saying that she was not interested in "root causes", that her while job was prosecuting criminals and making victims whole. Evidently, roving gangs of unsupervised youth have become a problem, committing crimes that the "juvenile Justice" system is either unable or unwilling to prosecute.

The issue for juvenile crime is not what the system treats.  The issue is parenting.  Parenting is hard.  I know that I did crazy stuff when I was a kid, and I know that my kids did crazy stuff when they were kids.  Yet, I had good parents and my kids had good parents. My parents were responsible for me, and I was responsible for my kids. It works out well like that.

Changing gears to make a metaphor, if I had a vicious dog and let him roam freely, than I have no doubt that when that dog hurt someone, the police would soon be at my door to hold me accountable.  Likewise, parents should be held accountable for the actions of the child.

Imagine my surprise when I read the US News list of dangerous cities, and I found my hometown, Alexandria, LA, listed in #6.  A small metro in central Louisiana of about 45,000 folks.  Wow.  Who is responsible for a city making the list?  That is easy.

The Mayor.  The mayor is the chief executive, responsible for everything that happens or fails to happen.  The mayor sets the tone for the local police department.

The Sheriff.  The sheriff is the elected law enforcement officer in the parish. While the mayor controls the local police, the sheriff is still the elected cop running the parish.  He can augment or take over the law enforcement in the whole parish.

The District Attorney.  The District Attorney is the prosecutor.  That is his sole job.

Crime is a problem.  The reason I don't live in Alexandria any more is because crime got too bad 20 years ago. The lected leaders let too many people get away with too much.  It's time to crack down hard and make Rapides Parsh a safe place to live and work.

Here Comes Erin

 The Atlantic hurricane season is cranking up, and we're already up to the Es in named storms.  Here comes Erin.

It is too early to know if she is going to hit the continental US, but she certainly bears watching.