Ogden Nash: Realist

Tonight’s December thirty-first,
Something is about to burst.
The clock is crouching, dark and small,
Like a time bomb in the hall.
Hark, it's midnight, children dear.
Duck! Here comes another year!


Nevertheless, Happy New Year, Friends.  As Travis McGee observed, sometimes a guy gets lucky.

Proving that low-cap magazines are also dangerous

I tend to doubt the chief said this, but who knows? Anyway, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch alerts its readers to the next big thing in guns-that-ought-to-be-illegal:


He (the local police chief) also said the 9 mm gun found on the suspect had five rounds in the chamber and one round in the magazine. He also said the gun was "defaced."


Somewhere in the nation's Capital someone is drafting a new law to forbid private ownership of high-capacity chambers.

Eh, Representative Pelosi?  Eh Senators Schumer and  Warren? Those things can be even more lethal than shoulder thingies that go up.

Another Shot in the Dark (or) Fleet Street Explains All

One event.  Two headlines and two ledes:

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Tense scenes in Missouri after police shoot another black teen 


BY ERIC M. JOHNSON

(Reuters) - An 18-year-old black man was shot and killed by police late on Tuesday at a gas station in a St. Louis suburb near where unarmed teen Michael Brown was killed by a white officer in August, police and local media said.



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POLICE: MISSOURI OFFICER KILLS MAN WHO PULLED GUN
BY JIM SUHR
ASSOCIATED PRESS


BERKELEY, Mo. (AP) -- A suburban St. Louis police officer shot and killed a man who pointed a gun at him at a gas station, police said.

Well done, Reporter  Suhr, with a nod to your editors on the St. Louis bureau night desk.


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Each version appeared about the same time, shortly before 7 a.m. Each reporter  had access to the same information.

It took Reuters five paragraphs to get to the second most important point: The dead man had pointed a pistol at the cop.   Reporter Johnson and his editors decided Ferguson and  its protests were more important than the apparent facts in their spot news report. What's a little incitement to riot  when you are reaching for headline drama?

From my drystone hut

I woad my pistol with blue bullets and dream of the gentle Celtic maiden.

(The Solstice is an unpropitious day on which to announce yourself as an Angle. Or Saxon.)