An 18 year-old.

MANCHESTER, N.H. — Police said four men have been charged with assault and other crimes in the beating of an 18-year-old, who was struck in the head with a firearm.

One of the most pervasive and incorrect thoughts the media feeds to the public on a daily basis is the idea that without guns we’re all safer. A gun is an object, not a risk. This kid might as well have been hit over the head with a toaster. Violence does not produce itself from thin air because of the presence of an object.

Getting back into the blogging swing … I’ve got a few things to respond to (I’ve been tagged … YIPES!), but first … one of my all time favorite topics.

Zombies.

I’ll have you know I LOVE zombies. Terrifying, infected, brain-munching killers that just keep coming in wave after wave. Survival horror. Oh yeah. The first time I fired up Resident Evil 2 on the original Playstation it was a magical immersion into that world. Been hooked ever since.

Uncle ponders Zombie-killing music. This is a topic near and dear to my horror-loving heart.

So top Zombie killing songs? Oh, so many to choose from. Let’s start with a little Bud Dwyer tribute that should be toward the tops on everyone’s list … It has those low and slow moments for when you’re reloading and catching your breath, and those furious refrains when you’re emptying the magazine into the heads of a horde of on-rushing undead. While the subject of the song doesn’t quite match up to the task, tell me this doesn’t sound as if though you’ve just emptied a magazine only to realize it’s done nothing to stop a zombie advance:

Now that the smokes gone
And the air is all clear
Those who were right there
Got a new kind of fear

Next up … a looooong time ago, I was wandering around some independent music store and made it to their “electronica” bin. Now, I’ve been known to listen to some Leather Strip from time to time just for a bit of that hardcore electronic drum & bass type stuff. It’s excellent coding music. I can’t code with some idiot singing all sorts of crap in my ear, so I have a very particular selection of coding music that I keep around for the occassion.

So I’m wandering around and I notice a CD by a band called “Lunatic Calm.” The album is “Metropol.” Sounds like a winner. Never heard them before, don’t know anything about them, so I pick it up hoping to get a pleasant surprise.

I got a hard kick in the nuts instead.

I’ve been in love with them ever since. I’d describe them as audiological cyberpunk. A few years later some movie comes out called … oh what was it … Something about some guy named Neo and a bunch of giant human-harvesting robots. This song was on the soundtrack. Anyway, Lunatic Calm ended up being all over the place and with good reason. When I want to whip myself up into a fury before any type of competition, I listen to this. Loud.

Next up. Man, I’m so conflicted on Trent Reznor. There’s no denying he’s produced some seriously ass-kicking stuff. But the guy’s a tool. For the sake of my Zombie Onslaught Soundtrack, however, I’ve got to give a wide-open free pass to Head Like a Hole.

The video’s corny. The song’s corny, but with a groove like this and lyrics like this:

Head like a hole
Black as your soul
I’d rather die
Than give you control

I mean … come on. That’s perfected zombie-battling prose right there. It’s the soundtrack for that final moment … our hero is a mere 50 yards from a train station he needs to reach in order to escape. Before him is a field of hungry undead. He hits the ground. Dirt kicks up from his feet. Grits his teeth, swings the gatling gun up in front of him, recites some cheesy “come and get it” type line, and dives into the carnage …

That’s really all I can do for now. Three offerings with many more that are completely worthy. Firestarter by Prodigy. Shoot to Thrill by AC/DC (though that’s a little too “light” for my zombie-battling tastes).

Man, what a fun exercise. One of these days I’m going to create the perfect zombie-killing music mix, grab some of these, and listen to it loud on the way to the range.

Light blogging only for the past few days … something about traveling, tickets, boarding passes and TSA just kind of sucks the life out of you. More coming as my mind slowly catches up to where my body has traveled to.

Where do they grow these people?

He took an AR-15 assault rifle to work and fired one round into the street, Sharonville police said. The bullet hit a black Dodge Durango through the passenger side door while the vehicle was stopped for traffic in the 3700 block of Hauck Road, police wrote in court records.

The bullet hit the thigh of a 14-year-old girl sitting in the passenger seat, police said. She was taken to Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center with non-life threatening injuries.

But wait a minute … that’s against the law … which proves that you cannot legislate away criminals, ignorance OR stupidity.

If you don’t know it by now, get out of hibernation.

I’ll say this … back when I had a more liberal frame of mind many of my friends nearly convinced me that the man was an evil demon. He wasn’t, of course. He was a conservative Hollywood movie star who loved the 2nd Amendment. That doesn’t make him an evil demon, it makes him fucking Satan incarnate in the eyes of most vapid, brainless celebs, producers, and big-shot movie folk. That’s something I can respect.

No wonder they stopped doing it … that officer looks familiar, too …

Governor signs bill allowing 18-year-olds to own handguns

COLUMBIA, S.C. –
People as young as 18 can now buy and own handguns in South Carolina.

Gov. Mark Sanford signed a bill into law Wednesday to lower the minimum age from 21.

“People who are old enough to fight and die in the military should be able to purchase handguns, and the bill will put our laws more in line with those of other states,” Sanford spokesman Joel Sawyer said.

I’ve got to tell you, I absolutely LOVE that argument, and that logic. We have a set of standards in this country that are all over the place. A 15 year old girl can go to a judge to bypass parental notice if they want an abortion, however they can’t buy cigarettes. At 17 you can enlist for the Army (with parental consent, if I’m not mistaken), but you can’t buy a beer, buy a gun, and in some states can’t drive.

The law went into effect immediately. Federal law still prohibits firearm retailers and dealers from selling handguns to people younger than 21. But the state law now allows individuals to sell handguns to anyone 18 or over.

South Carolina is one of 18 states - and the only one in the South - that had set 21 as the age for handgun ownership, according to the National Rifle Association. The group says Wyoming has no handgun age requirement. In Montana, it’s set at 14; in Vermont, 16.

Vermont always surprises me. Burlington, VT is probably one of the most liberal-leaning locations right of San Fran, and the rest of the state is pretty wild and rural. Unfortunately, that screws up VT when it comes to things like elected officials and taxes. But I like their gun laws. I can carry mine across the border from NH to VT concealed without any worry of breaking a law. Not so with Maine or MA, unfortunately.

Rep. Mike Pitts, a Laurens Republican and retired police officer, had filed the bill to help out a national gun wholesaler located in Lexington County where employees younger than 21 were filling orders over the phone. A legal opinion by state Attorney General Henry McMaster had said that was not allowed because of their age and Pitts argued it would cost half the company’s workers their jobs.

Good on ya.

Pitts said gun retailers will still have to comply with state and federal firearms laws.

He said he sees no need to change the minimum age of 21 for a concealed weapons permit in South Carolina.

Hey, take what we can get, right. All in all, a nice victory for SC.

UPDATE: Thanks for the link David! Bring on the ArmsandtheLawalanche … or something.

Armed Canadian positively demolishes an anti-gun screed. That was a LOT of fun to read.

In there, he makes mention of the swimming pool statistic. Observe:

Estimated guns in the United States: 275 million (roughly).

Estimated swimming pools in the United States: 2.5 million (roughly - according to Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, 2004)

Unintentional firearm deaths ages 0-14 (according to the CDC) from 2000 to 2005: 412.

Unintentional drowning deaths from 2000 to 2005 ages 0-14: 4,993.

Clearly the only solution is to make sure we have diving board locks installed on all pools in this country. And no pool should be installed within 5 miles of a water source of any kind. Registration, chlorine microstamping, and some way to prevent the exploited “diving in” loophole are necessary.

Swimming pools … the silent suburban killer stalking your children in your own backyard …