Partly cloudy with a chance of Armageddon

It's understandable that the National Weather Service could desire a ready stock of .40 SW hollow points.  It's to protect forecast flunkies from irate citizens who have had it right up to here with their lies.  Like me last evening.

The local forecast gave me only the slimmest chance of living to see the sun rise. The least I could expect ahead of the cold front was a flurry of wind-born Peterbilts and a flood making the living room attractive to large fish. There was even the possibility of "tornadic activity."

Naturally I took the precaution of laying in dry firewood, doublechecking the supply of rice, beans, and candles. Then I rearranged the vehicles. The more dependable truck with its uninsured Texsun camper was moved to a a treeless area,  as was a guest's Outback. (I parked the aging but well-insured minivan under the largest dead branch on the place. Just in hopes, y'know.)

NWS zero-hour approached.  Nothing ominous apparent to the naked eye. Check the radar. Zilch, save for a ground return of the kind you expect when the transceiver is overtuned during a period of rapidly evaporating dew. The accompanying NWS text said errrr on second thought the storms would not be severe. In fact they tuned out not to be storms at all. Not a drop of water. Not a hail stone. The fallen leaves weren't even rearranged. Made me want to shoot the b*****ds for scaring me and putting me to all the unnecessary work. As a fair-minded man, however, I would recognize right of the false prophets to shoot back, and that's why I didn't get all wookie upon learning of the NWS ammo purchase.

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Of course, it turned out to be a mistake, if you can believe mommie.guv. The hollow-point .40s were really for NOAA fish and game cops. (WTF?).

Still, you might want to check the cite above for some perspective on who in your government is stockpiling man-killer ammunition by the millions. Not that the perspective is necessarily the product of serious minds. As in:

"The DHS is also planning to purchase a further 750 million rounds of different types of ammo in a separate solicitation that also expires on August 20, including 357 mag rounds that are able to penetrate walls. "

To folks of a certain age  this will bring a nostalgic smile. We remember when it was gospel that a .357 would penetrate an engine block and retain enough power to take out three or four public enemies (usually Italians in Chicago) if you lined them up.

Still, the 750 million DHS rounds, plus another 350 million of those ubiquitous .40 hollow points ("illegal for warfare since 1899")  in the hands of a domestic non-military agency makes a fellow wonder. Doesn't that amount to about three rounds for every man, woman, and child in the United States?  Not even counting ammo for the regular cops and the federal Department of Education's Remington 870 riot guns.

Sometimes it's hard to figure out just who the enemy is.

Win a war, kiss a nurse

Happy V-J Day. This is one of them as denoted by Japanese time.  Or it is about three weeks from now if  you insist on marking it by the USS Missouri ceremonies.

It was yesterday, our time, and Times Square was the place to be. We're lucky Alfred Eisenstaedt was there.

The Navy gets the gravy...

We're still being dragged through the blood by the Brady folks and others who make a living by agitating to disarm us. None of us is surprised that this bout of hysteria is a little more intense and protracted than usual. The Colorado and Wisconsin killings were close in time, and if the anti-self-defense statists welcome one gory rally point, they find two exhilarating.

This comes to mind this morning because a blogroll friend   --  Guffaw, I just t remembered -- recently wrote that firearms deaths are statistically not terribly significant in the United States. That was in the back of my mind as I read a local report on the dangers of hydrocodone. It said 40 Americans die every day from abuse of FDA approved dope.

That number agrees with the Wiki report of just under 15,000 annual presrciption pain-killer fatalities.

Homicides committed with firearms? Fewer than 13,000.

Somebody mention this to Al Sharpton, just in case he ever decides he wants to get his priorities in some sort of logical order.

The feds weigh in on another crisis. (It's for the children.)

I'll bet you didn't know that your federal government is on guard against the vast peril of backpack disease.

"A federal study found backpack-related injuries among children and teens have risen 41%  in the past five years. The study says more than 14,000 people between the ages of 5 and 19 were treated for backpack injuries nationwide last year. The total cost for those injuries was nearly $29-million."

That works out to f $2071.43 per overburdened  kiddie, although the number might require adjustment for armed and uniformed 18- and 19-year-old children huffing and puffing under a hundred pounds or so of rifle, ammo, and MOLLE gear, etc. -- courtesy of that self-same federal government.

The  reporter even found a local and highly concerned "back-pain expert"  -- a chiropractor, and stop that giggling -- to advise parents not to put a high-school capacity back pack on their pre-schooler. Thank you Doctor. We never would have thought of that.

Dr. Crunch warned  that no child should carry more than 10 per cent of his or her body weight. If he proposed that Washington enact such a law and form a new corps of backpack police, the reporter missed it. But would you really be surprised?

Besides, I question whether the problem is widespread. My observations lead me to believe that the vast majority of tykes carry nothing heavier than Mom's Visa card.