Still here. Hands, dogs, Oregon, etc.

Sorry for the dearth of posts. This inability to use one hand really makes typing much more of a chore than it should be.

Still, I've not been idle. Lots of house cleaning (not that you can tell...sigh) and lots of this crap from the hounds.

All. Day. Long.

Fun for them, annoying to me.

In other news, there are still four remaining "Y'all Qeada" types barricaded in that federal wildlife refuge in Oregon. Eleven have been locked up, dozens have been released or were allowed to leave without charges, and one, "Quick Draw Finicum", is still dead. I note that the feds and Oregon State Police were very selective in who they decided to arrest, singling out those whom they wanted after watching them in action for a month and viewing all of their interviews and non-stop Youtube ramblings. The ones who made threats, harassed citizens in town, or committed other specific acts are being treated differently than the average "playtriot" who just showed up and hung out. The arrests appear to have planned well, and they probably would have come off without any injury to anyone had not Finicum decided that he had some right to refuse to comply with the officers and tried to drive off. Some people are now claiming that in his warped belief system, he only recognized county sheriffs as legitimate authority, as if that somehow justifies either his attempt to flee or his reaching for a gun. My theory is that he just committed "Suicide by Cop", as commenter Old 1811 mentioned in the previous post's comment section. Finicum had ranted numerous times about how he could not handle prison and wanted to die free, and even in the anti-government novel that he self-published, he reportedly had the lead character, modeled after himself, die in a gun battle with the police rather than submit to lawful arrest. Yeah, he came out of the truck with his hands up, but in the videos that I saw he quickly squared off to an officer and made what appeared to be a clumsy effort to reach into a pocket...a pocket that was subsequently found to have a pistol in it. Based on what I saw, he took the coward's way out and I'm not feeling any sympathy for him. Those who call it "murder by ambush" seem to have a hard time explaining why none of the others in either vehicle were killed. Obviously that wasn't the intent of the authorities, nor does it appear that "hundreds of rounds were fired at the truck" as passenger Victoria Sharp is claiming. Her credibility is gone right there, ans so is that of anyone who cites her as a source.

Now as to the four still holed up, their internet was apparently just cut, according to the reporting being done by OregonLive, which is right on top of this topic and doing an excellent job, IMHO. These four now say that they'll only come out if the feds promise to let them go without arresting them AND pardon the other arrestees. I get the idea that they don't really understand how this sort of thing works. They definitely don't grasp the concept of Civil Disobedience even though they claim it's all they were doing. Civil Disobedience involves breaking laws as a protest, and there's a long history of it in America. I can respect and applaud that, personally when done to protest an injustice. But it also entails accepting the punishment that comes with it, either for the opportunity to argue the merits of the law at trial or in the media. Martin Luther King Jr. spent a lot of time in jail as a result of his protests, and so did a lot of other civil rights protesters. And they made a difference in the end by shifting public opinion through their suffering on behalf of their beliefs. But these characters seem to want to just go home scott-free after their disobedience and skip that whole "accepting the consequences" part. That just makes them cowards or dimwits in my book, and even dimwits should know that the police are not just going to let barricaded gunmen walk away without a few charges and an eventual day in court. I'm thinking that few if any of these folks really sat down and thought about what they were doing and how it might go. Heck, they didn't even bring food in with them--just guns. I kinda feel bad for people that stupid, but not too bad. Stupid is supposed to be painful, both to motivate the stupid people to not be stupid again and to serve as an object lesson for other would-be stupid people.

Hopefully this ends soon, and without any further bloodshed.

By the way...anyone else see the irony in every one of those charged so far (other than ringleader Ammon Bundy) begging for free legal assistance from the Federal Public Defender's office? I thought that they hated the federal government, but I guess that changes when they want something from it.

And if you want to know who these folks are, OregonLive has done profiles on most of them. It's interesting, especially when you start to count up the felony convictions, bankruptcies and other clues that indicate that these folks are not exactly the Best and Brightest. In fact, more appear to be convicted felons than actual military vets.


Range time tomorrow...and with a newbie shooter. And me with just one hand. Stay tuned for that AAR.