And then at about 3:15AM I found myself wishing I had a gun. Not an AR-15 or a sidearm but a side by side shotgun. Because I really wanted to disarm-silence our alarm system, which was screaming to high heaven that we had some kinda gas leak. Or maybe not. You see when you get a heavy snowfall in early October, and lots of leaves are still on the trees and then those tree branches break and hit power lines which results in power surges, your smart house becomes so dumb it's enough to make me reach for my Winchester under the bed and unload two rounds into the dang alarm system.
Reaching for the shotgun is never a good first option in home maintenance. But it had already been a long night. First all of the lights (and I mean every light in the house) went on and off at about midnight. This freaked my daughter out who then tried to sleep in bed with us. I relocated her to her room and fell asleep in her room until the lights did their on-off thing again (with a quick alarm chirp to add to the fun) at about 1 am. Luckily she slept through round two of the poltergeist lights. I went back to my bed, only to be woken up AGAIN by the lights at 3AM. Then at 3:15 the home security alarm went apeshit warning us of a gas leak and carbon monoxide poisoning. Of course since I am renting the home, and have never even thought of using the alarm I possessed neither the alarm company's phone number (they called the owner in sacramento to alert her--she said no worries i'ts all good) nor the code to disable the system. Ergo looking to use some lead to render the system dead. Luckily after about 10 minutes I was able to get the system shut off. At which point I have both kids, dogs, and wife all looking at me wondering if we are dying from carbon monoxide. Given that the hamster was doing fine I figured we were too. But wait, the fire department had to come by around 4 am to confirm no carbon monoxide leak (there wasn't). We had another round of poltergeist lights at 5AM, and then the blowers in the master bath tub (don't ask) went off at 5:15, 5:30 and 5:45. Being awake was good because I was able to let in the gas company rep who wanted to confirm there wasn't a gas leak (there wasn't).
Which you realize isn't really a bad night at all when you check the news at 3:30 while waiting for the fire department and see the news out of Vegas.
A bit of background about me. I won a ton of NRA sharpshoot patches as a kid. I grew up with rifles and shotguns in my house (no gun locks just sitting in my closet). However, I didn't know anyone who wasn't a cop who owned a handgun or an automatic gun (autoloader shotgun, automatic rifle etc). After school I served in delta force and then did a little bit of wet work for a 'consulting' group based near DC. The consulting job didn't pan out because my language skills suck and I am about as persuasive as a bulldozer but I could pull a trigger pretty good. And I've got a bit of extra gray hair from some hairy situations.
While I am no expert, I can tell you that the incident in Vegas is only possible because the shooter was able to get hold of and or modify weapons to near military grade. If he only had the single shot rifles of my youth the number of dead would have been cut dramatically. Load, sight, shoot, eject, reload---and repeat 100s of times. He would have collapsed of exhaustion. His fingers would be so number he wouldn't be able to load a round. We also have to thank our lucky stars that lots of the NRA's good guys didn't go to the show packing sidearms. Had 30 concert goers pulled out handguns, and started to look return fire to defend themselves there would have been many more dead, and the first responders job would have been infinitely harder. Let's also not forget that until this incident the GOP leaders were going to vote for the SHARE act which would have legalized silencers.
Talk about jumping the shark. Silencers both reduce the sound of a gun being fired and also reduce muzzle flash. This is really useful when you are hunting people and you want to avoid detection. It's a bit scary if you are hiking through the woods and you can't hear hunters, and it's really problematic if you are a first responder trying to locate a madman with an armory of automatic weapons. Oh and don't worry, silencers don't affect muzzle velocity and won't interfere with those armor piercing rounds the NRA has made sure you have access to. The fact that the NRA was a huge supporter of SHARE, and that many legislators were prepared to vote for it tells you all you need to know about who has your well being in mind vs gun manufactures wellbeing.
Some very basic facts:
- The more guns you bring to a gunfight the more people will die. There is a lovely myth about the good guy who appears right next to the bad guy and takes him out. I see it in movies all the time, in the real world not so much.
- The more automatic guns are around, the more people will die (shooting a single round straight when you are being shot at is really hard to do---all that dang adrenaline is great for a fist fight with a bear, but not so good at steadying your hands when you are trying to shoot someone 50 feet away little less 100s of feet away).
- Silencers will only make madmen more deadly and our heroes job much more difficult.
On a different note my son plans on being Kellyanne Conway for Halloween. How scary will that be? How many people will he trigger?
Full disclosure---this is my first (and hopefully) only post with some alternative facts. How many did you spot?
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