Sometimes Officer Friendly really is

The teevee reporter seems to have the lede right. Without much fuss, Indianapolis cop Jeff Patterson talked down  a "special needs" student who had locked himself  in a home ec room full of knives. When he threw one at the officer, Jeff grabbed a garbage can lid to shield himself as he persuaded the lad to surrender. No gunfire. No Taser. Just a cop with no yen to shoot somebody, a lone policeman thinking fast under pressure.

Two problems in the report.  One may seem a quibble, but it is important enough to note. The journalist wrote that the lad surrendered before the officer "could"  taze him.  In fact, it appears Jeff handled things so that the surrender happened for he "needed" to shoot.

The other is a journalistic sin of omission. Where is the outrage at the presence of sharp knives in a school? A school, for God's sake. Where there are children. Maybe they'll get around to it. Dare you doubt that someone, somewhere, is jotting down a plan to turn the french knives over to the proper authorities and teach the budding cooks to do their cutting with dental floss and blunt scissors?

H/T Roberta

---

Does anyone else hold a memory of sword fights in the back yard? The well-equipped 7-year-old Lancelot wielded a pine Excalibur, a long lath for the blade and a shorter one, nailed on, for the cross guard.  Universally, his shield was  zinc-plated sheet metal from Mom's outside garbage can.  It made a neat noise when struck by your foe's sword, even neater when the blackguard cheated by throwing rocks.

Pornographic gun prices

The only explanation I have is that Ben and the Feds announced QE 3 and QE 4 and QE5 yesterday and everybody heard about it except me. Am I supposed to go trade my green money for orange today?

The chief pleasure down in Spencer last evening was making a guy I dislike pay close to $300 for a fair-to-good 10 gauge Remington 1889, Grade 1.  It was tight and original, but the left hammer wouldn't cock, and I hate getting into the innards of old doubles. Otherwise I'd have laid it in against my next trip west, into serious Cowboy Action Shooting country where it would be desirable trading stock if working.

Otherwise: The rattiest old Stevens single shot .22 bolt gun you ever saw for $100.  A Ruger 10-22 of no distinction for $290. One of those rattletrap Rohm .22 single-sixes  for about $230. A post-64 Model 94 Winchester for $490. ('course that included the rubber slip-on recoil pad. Who's that frail?) And so forth.

The standout, though, was a Findy Sickle Iver Johnson .32 rimfire breaktop,  nice, bright silver thanks to a soaking in naval jelly and enthusiastic wire brushing. Bubba didn't bother to dissemble it first. Not a part would move. One hundred bucks.

---

I settled for some shooty or otherwise lethal  bric-a-brac -- a little ammunition and a nicely preserved Western 4 1/2-inch hunter from the '40s.

Next year in Sag Harbor

As a matter of principle, libertarians should rally around Karen Heaven's right to let gravity work its will. 

As a matter of good taste, this libertarian sought high and low to find just the right citation. That's why the carefully chosen site, above, contains no pictures of Karen and Karen's friends frolicking for the right to bare this and that, left and right, for camera clickers in a New York park.  (As always, TMR refuses to air any material likely to corrupt children or the clergy.) 

This extends all the way to resisting the misdemeanor known as "smirking with intent to pun," and I trust you, gentle reader, to note and applaud the absence of low-hanging fruit here -- even the delightful "titivate." 

Thank you.

The Seven-Year Snark

You can slip over to Tam's place and wish her a happy 7th anniversary of View from the Porch. That's a long time to be funny every day, especially to induce grins before 8 a.m.