Americans

Without drama, in the absence of  televison cameras, some Boston people  you never heard of, and never will, make a difference --  undoubtedly more of a difference all of the horrified on-air performers and grandstanding politicians combined.

A simple Google place  offering a bed and a meal to other Americans and guests displaced by the terror bombing near Copley Square.

Tip-up porn

I'd have to be more careful with shot placement if I ever had to use one in a serious minx-up, but this little Beretta has always given me a mildly serious case of want. I couldn't begin to articulate why, maybe just an unhealthy fixation on oddballs.

I think it was Matt Helm who once found himself in one of those interminable arguments about "What caliber for (whatever)?" He brushed it off with, "You can kill an elephant with a .22 Short if you're willing to wait for the poor thing to bleed to death." Only metaphorically true, of course, but it makes a point.

A Monday Morning Mash

1. My friend John in ultra-urban Arizona spent hours looking for .22 Shorts for his friend who owns a Beretta Minx. This crap has been going on for a long time now -- long enough to get me questioning my usual iron resistance to goofy conspiracy theories.

2.I'll ask her to do something about the slightly frizzy hair, but Rep. Martha Blackburn of Tennessee will be offered a high position in my First Administration. This morning on the teevee she characterized the Gosnell murder/abortion case as 'horrible" rather than "horrific." This persuades me she might refrain from  using "impact" as a verb. In this language-murdering 21st Century, that qualifies anyone for cabinet-level office.

3.  Global warming, anyone? The Plains weather continues to suck. If this kind of weather hangs on for a few more weeks, we're only a middlin' Tambora eruption from a rerun of 1800-and-froze-to-death. If you look at your weather graphic on your telescreen, you'll see a splotch of white about the size of Europe splashed across the country from Oklahoma up to the western Great Lakes. That's real snow, cold and pearly white, reflecting heat back into space at a time when The Good Earth should be soaking up warmth for the 2013 growing season. We'll probably be okay, of course, but it never hurts to remind the climate politicians of how little it takes turn an 8,000-mile diameter rock into a pretty snowball.

4. Nothing else impacts on my mind this morning. So have a nice day if you can, otherwise endure.

Shall I shoot the bastard?

The fellow in St. George, Utah, did not. He racked his pistol slide.The burglar  ran.The homeowner gave chase. The thug tripped and the homeowner held him under the gun until police arrived.

I call that a near-perfect result, although I understand an opposing view that anyone who invades your bedroom at 4:45 a.m. needs killing, and even that this world is an incrementally better place for each violent criminal who is quickly and economically dispatched to the next. 

That incident is the peg on which the AP's Adam Geller hangs a report on the various views of armed self defense.  While is far from a bad report, it manages to avoid two points most of us find important.

(1) Geller cites studies and experts (often self-styled) who argue that because America suffers less reported crime now than 20 years ago, the need for armed self-defense  is reduced.

This confuses two separate issues. Fewer thugs doing violent things across a nation of 320 million souls is a welcome fact but meaningless to exactly one decent human being facing a criminal in an existential moment when his choice is life or death.  Phrased less abstractly: "This son of a bitch is in my house, threatening me and mine. Killing him immediately is one of my legitimate choices." There couldn't much urge at that moment to ponder the latest FBI crime report. 

(2) Geller reports that more Americans are arming themselves for purposes of self-defense than 20 years ago*  but misses the opportunity to explore the fact as one cause of reduced crime. 

Again,  you and I are in familiar territory here, although the generality of wire service readers probably is not. 

A thief or rapist or killer wants what is yours, but he wants it minimum risk. While he is willing to risk arrest and a protracted trip trough the criminal justice system, he is loathe to chance immediate career termination via  "bang" -- a would-be victim's gun. He looks for the truly unarmed victim from  little gun-free zones to big places governed by such as the Sullivan Act.

It would be more fun to snark the Geller piece to death, but, as I said, it seems to be a honest effort to contribute something useful to the debate.