Hey kids, it's back to school time.

In beautiful downtown Wells, Minnesota, there is a large consolidated school, a funky old place slapped together in the early 20th Century and added to over the decades in that haphazard manner which eventually produces a lovely ugliness.

This weekend it will house thousands upon thousands or guns and knives and hordes of scary individuals looking for a loophole.

It's one of the better gun shows in our part of the Plains, and we'll make the trip, a tradition for an unmentionable number of years. It's another of the kind of show I like. The professional dealers with their boring NIB stuff will be leavened with scores of hobbyists trying to sell or swap good stuff they're just tired of.

We used to do a lot of trading in Wells, but my shooting friends have in the past few years adopted the "never-get-rid-of-a-gun" stance, so we'll be armed only with the greenish paper now passing for money.  It's been weeks and weeks since any of us have been able to augment our veritable arsenals. Wish us luck.

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This is the show which brought Wells to a certain fame about ten years ago. A West Coast mother and her daughter moved to the little rural town, and Mommie evacuated a brick when she heard "guns" "in" and "school" in the same sentence. So she did what all good mommies do when their child is faced with an immediate and lethal threat. She called the teevee stations who were pleased to send their satellite trucks to the school parking lot. There, they found out that the locals and gun show attendees wouldn't talk to them, just grinned  a friendly prairie grin and waved. Of course Mommie talked into the mikes but was quickly declared boring and, by more than a few, stupid. The show went on, and the profits were given to the school, as usual.

It surely makes a man wonder why there isn't much lethal mayhem committed in Wells.

Knit one, purl two, shoot three; PRN

Combat knitters in Afghanistan.

I refuse to be cynical about this. 

(H/T Lisa)

You can oppose U.S. adventures in nation-building-via-war while at the same time standing awe-stricken at the heroism of some of our fighters.

Random acts of Patriotism  details one chapter, even if the valor was officially  recognized  42 years too late. Care to join me in saluting HM2 Dennis Noah?

Connecticut Carry Redux

Connecticut law:

"All persons shall bear arms, and every male person shall have in continual readiness a good muskitt or other gunn, fitt for service."


Things have regressed since that happy legal code of the Nutmeggers in 1650, but   we're trying to restore the spirit in Iowa where Constitutional Carry isn't quite yet dead.

A CC bill was supposed to have died last week when it failed to make it though the mid-session funnel. The bill's sponsor found a loophole -- wouldn't he just :). Tax bills are exempt from the funnel rules,  and  Rep. Tom Sands of Wapello said since the measure eliminates permit fees, it's a tax bill.  The appropriate committee will probably go along and vote it out with a do-pass recommendation.  Love it. We're getting sneakier than a Chicago alderman.

However, I doubt this will make it all the way. In the first place, our brand-new shall-issue was a big  gulp for gentle Iowans, and it isn't quite digested yet.

Republicans hold a 60-40 house margin, but even some of them are afraid of this bill. Democrats run the senate and are not under the kind of electoral pressure to back liberty measures as they were last year.

The organized cop unions are, of course, soiling their stepins.

(Carnage under the new law is so far limited to one dimwit who waved his pistol around in a bar and thereby lost his permit, his pistol, and the respect of brainier freedom advocates.)