This one slipped through the cracks for a few days, but Kansas legislators passed a bill last Saturday that would seem to encourage the practice of open carry in that state. Open carry is already legal in Kansas, but HB 2578 reinforces that with a state level preemption, saying that cities and counties are prohibited from adopting or enforcing regulations regarding firearms, and further prohibits any regulations relating to federal firearms licensees that are more restrictive than similar regulations regarding the sale of any other commercial goods. The new law specifically and categorically nullifies any ordinances, resolutions or regulations already in place prior to the effective date of the bill. Read on for one of the more ridiculous Lockdowns in recent memory . . .
Your Lockdown of the Day™ comes from Norwell, Massachusetts. School staff at South Shore Charter Public School called police at 8:28 a.m. Monday morning to report that a single empty bullet casing [sic] was found in the lobby of the school. One single case. (Our tipster said it was a .22 case, but I was unable to confirm that.) The school was locked down at that time, and according to Norwell Deputy Police Chief Carol A. Brzuszek, police and a ballistics team (including at least one K-9) from the regional Metropolitan Law Enforcement Council made “a comprehensive search” of the school, and found no ammunition or firearms. The lockdown was lifted and classes and normal activities resumed at noon. At noon. Three and a half hours of lockdown for a single bullet casing. I have no words…
If you’ve sent in submissions within the last couple weeks and not heard anything (especially if they were directly to me), please accept my apologies. I just discovered that several of our regular contributors’ emails were going straight to the Spam folder for no reason I can discern. I’ve rescued all of them (I think), but it’s going to take me a little while to look through them, as there are several dozen.
More firearm FUD from the ignorant media. An article about a house fire in Niles, Michigan leads with the statement that the 5,000 rounds of ammunition made fighting the fire more “difficult and dangerous.” But when you read the actual quotes from the Fire Chief, he doesn’t even mention the ammo. Instead, he says what made it difficult was a lack of manpower due to many of the area fire companies being all-volunteer, and what made it dangerous was that the basement was fully engulfed, leading to concerns that the structure might collapse into the basement. But none of that was sexy enough to get the headline, so instead, “ammunition is dangerous.”
This month’s Field & Stream online edition has a brief piece about a visit to Federal Cartridge Company’s gun room, where they keep the more than 3700 firearms they use for testing ammunition. Highlighted in the piece is Federal’s first test gun, a Model 12 Winchester purchased on August 28, 1937. It’s been in use for 76 years, but an employee of the gun room recently realized its history and pulled it from circulation for possible display in the future. To me, that seems a little sad. The gun has done precisely what it’s designed to do for 76 years, and if the plans hold, it’ll probably never be fired again, or only very rarely. I don’t see hanging it on the wall as honoring its history, but rather, keep using it until something major breaks, and then hang it up, as a testament to how long it went. Maybe that’ll be another 76 years.
I don’t have any guns in need of this treatment, but I’m saving this for later…
I keep a couple of “emergency $50s” folded up in the back of my wallet. I suppose that’s the modern version of keeping “burying money” in your revolver.
By the way, I’m curious how many of you keep an “emergency stash” in your wallet. I’ve had people look at me like I’m crazy for doing it, but I learned it from my dad, and I’ve been doing it for more than 20 years now.
always keep $100 cash, what happens if your debit or credit cards suddenly do not work ?
Yup, learned that in the East Coast blackout of summer 2004.
2003
I keep $100 in my car and $40 in my motorcycle, on the off chance I forget my wallet and need gas. For more cash than that, I’d have to open up the safe at home.
The image of the “Cash Only” signs at gas stations during media coverage of Hurricane Katrina is burned in my mind. Since that very day I have always made a point to never be without at least a couple of hundred dollars.
I don’t consider that stash to be discretionary income, the same way I would’t use personal defense ammo for target practice. It will only come out as a last resort.
It’s a good idea to have a little cash stashed in case of an emergency. Where and how you stash the cash is up to you. I keep cash and silver coins and 1 ounce bullion coins in a safe.
Cash and silver in the safe, same here.
Geez, the idiot media does not even watch Mythbusters, otherwise they’d know a bullet is not a lethal projectile unless it is in the barrel. Simple physics, the lighter casing breaks off from the heavier bullet and bounces around harmlessly. Apparently too simple physics for the media, or much more likely, the media couldn’t be that honest, they couldn’t help themselves but to be the extremely dishonest and misleading evil fraud artists
I usually keep a stash. A friend’s wife admitted she kept some and she called it her “mad money.” My wife never kept such a stash, though I asked her to and sometimes kidded her about it. My wife told me she never got mad, and if she ever has, she did not let me see it for now nigh to 50 years.
I used to keep a few bullets in my boots until one day I forgot I had them and wore my boots into a place where metal detectors were in use. After that I no longer keep the shells or bullets in my boots, but rather in another place, not on my person.
“Every gentleman has 2 folded $100 bills tucked away in his wallet.”
That was told to me when I was about fifteen. Made sense then, makes sense now.
So, what do you do when your not a gentleman? Keep a couple of ones in your sock!
I used to do that when I traveled overseas to 2nd and 3rd world counties. Kept a hundred in American and various amount of the host country’s currency tucked in my sock.
It’s wasn’t incase you were robbed by criminals, it was incase you got a shake down by the local police.
When I was in the police academy in 1980, we were told a story of a wanted felon in western Kansas, who had kept a folded up hundred in his shoe. When he needed it and went to use it, it stank so bad, that the recipient got suspicious and called the police. Needless to say he was caught. For some reason that story always stuck in my mind. I wonder if they still tell that same story.
My instruction was similarly worded, though it was only $100. Of course, that was 20 years ago, and $100 doesn’t have the same buying power now that it did then. I still only have $100, but I carry it as two fifties (stored in different spots in my wallet), because there are many places that won’t take anything over a fifty.
When I was younger, I kept a roll of quarters in my emergency road kit, so I could use a pay phone to call a tow truck. Now that the pay phone is all but extinct (and I have a smartphone) I instead keep $100 cash in there, just in case I need it.
I still keep a couple rolls of quarters.
Car washes, vending machines…
Works good rolled up in your hand too, in case you forgot your knife, and you weapon is hopelessly jammed.
It works for what? Ensuring that you break your hand with one punch?
A roll of quarters in my backpack once got extra attention when I was going through airport security. The guy told me a roll of coins looks sort of like like a gun barrel on a scanner. Go figure.
Ah, the good old days.
“Mom, I’m leaving.”
“Take a couple quarters from my purse in case you need to make a call.”
Lol.
Kudos to Kansas! At least one urban hoplophobe has his panties in a wad over the whole thing.
http://www.kansascity.com/2014/04/06/4942066/kansas-lawmakers-to-johnson-county.html
I’ve only open carried here once. I didn’t go anywhere like walmart or downtown, but it was nice not having my gun sticking me in an IWB holster. I have never seen anyone open carrying since I have been here.
I think the closest town to me that sucked for gun laws was Overland Park.
Your wallet is the wrong place to keep your ’emergency cash’ as it will be pretty useless if you lose your wallet, which would be an excellent opportunity to use your emergency cash. I keep $100 in the Bible in my glove box (1 Thessalonians 4:11 – ‘mind your own business’). I use the console to store firearms, the Bible goes in the glove box. The console is closer. In retrospect I probably should reverse the two.
If you carry a cell phone with a removable battery, a folded bill will usually fit inside there, under the battery cover.
Thanks for the tip. I will do that now.
Just don’t forget about it if you get a new phone…
That’s a good thought, but sadly it won’t work for me. I plow through batteries at work, so I end up swapping in a spare about midafternoon most days.
Maybe a charger would be a nice xmas present?
You have to plug it in to charge it, and that’s hard to do when you’re constantly on the move. That’s why I swap batteries.
One of the more interesting videos I’ve seen about burning (etc) ammunition. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3SlOXowwC4c
Money in your wallet? HA! I can tell YOU don’t have any kids! I got so used to not having any money in my wallet that it is still empty most of the time even now that the kids are gone.
Like I said above, your wallet is the wrong place for extra cash. In your case I’d suggest a bank safe deposit box you wife and kids have no knowledge of.
In 2004, a few live .22 rounds were found in my middle school’s science and math wing. They were thrown away by a teacher and nobody cared a whole lot past that. Honest mistake by someone. 10 Years later this is grounds for a full blown evac.
Then again, this was rural Maine, not Mass.
The only “zero tolerance” I like are the ZT knives.
I spent a great deal of my yoot in Norwell, MA but since it’s become a liberal enclave south of Boston, I think we can expect more of this type of reaction. If it were a .308 case they just would have adjourned school for the summer.
Kansas passed a bill guaranteeing open carry? Horrors–why, it’ll be Dodge City all over again! (At least no one can say that it’ll be just like the Wild West since it is after all the Wild West….)
money is in a money clip not the wallet, just in case I lose my wallet
also keep significant cash in the gun safe (along with passport) . . . . just in case
Along with the list of the 39 countries that don’t extradite to the U.S.?
Or do you just have that memorized?
Used to be a 20 stashed in the wallet. Then it was a couple of them. Then it was a Benjamin.
Now it’s a bit more. You never know when you need to buy something.
“Three and a half hours of lockdown” for a single 22 casing. Wow! I should have thought of that when I was a kid. I could have slipped a whole belt of 50 BMG in the school just as I was leaving for the day, and probably not had to go back to school for a couple of months while they were trying to figure out where it came from!
My wife is a school teacher in an inner city school where she loves to teach. When I brought up the situation detailed in this report, she told me, “Don’t tell any of my students about this. They will bring a bullet or shell casing and toss it over the fence every night to get out of class the next day!” ha. You are so right.
That’s probably what happened here. With all the media coverage of these dumb-ass “lockdowns”, it doesn’t take a very smart kid to figure out that an empty shell casing is a lot harder to trace back to them than a phoned-in bomb threat.
My wife and I think that is what happened as well. Today, my wife told me that a student at her school pulled a fire alarm to get out of a class in which he was having a test. With all the students exiting and not getting back into their classroom after the all clear, more than an hour elapsed and the student was in his next class and did not have to take the test. However, by the end of the day, the identity of the student was discovered and the principal sent him home for 3 days, so he will get a 0 on the test when it is scheduled tomorrow…ha.
Maybe not too dumb from our perspective, either. Just suppose, for example, that everyone with school-age kids gave them a box each of fired .22 brass and a bit of training how not to get caught, and every school in the country had 10-20 fired .22 cases EVERY MORNING. Think someone might eventually decide this carp was overkill?
Both my wife and I keep an extra hundred handy for emergencies.
Additionally, we use cash for most purchases, it makes running the weekly budget a lot easier when you see exactly how much cash you have available at any point.
Seriously. When I was in high school, .22 was about $10 a brick. If only we’d known, we could’ve taken the semester off!
I keep a couple 20s in my medic bag. At home, I try to keep mostly silver coins. Spends like money, only better.
I WISH I had $100 on me all the time. Life of the self employed antique dealer. Usually a hidden $20LOL.
I have gone to work Monday after a range session with my Son on Sunday and had 3 or 4 .22lr empties stuck in the sole of my boots (Nicks 16″) not to mention the 500 rolling around in the back of the pickup that may have fallen out when I drove away (they seem to clean out all by themselves). We all just laughed about it at work and wondered if the idiots locked down my kid’s school if some were left behind when I dropped them off for the day.
I retired from a public high school in CA. The bay area, no less. The bed of my truck was always littered with brass. If anybody noticed it, nothing was said.
Sadly it seems things have changed for the worst. I’m glad it hasn’t found its way to our 1 stop light town…….yet.
The F&S article mentioned that since the Federal test guns are locked in a rest instead of recoiling freely strange things break and there are almost no original parts in them. The historic Model 12 was likely saved from being cannibalized to fix another Model 12.
I keep a bout 100 on me then some stashed elsewhere in my home an at my office for work. It’s something I always thought was a good idea
I keep some emergency money behind my phone (I have a protective case on it). Don’t have to worry about it, and I always have it with me.
Hickock45: Put the bill in the chamber the other way ’round, with the folded edge toward the hammer and the edge edge toward the hot end.
Yeah, that’d work! Now, tell me which round I should replace in a double stack 16 rd mag!?
“Yeah, that’d work! Now, tell me which round I should replace in a double stack 16 rd mag!?”
This is a trick question, right? 😉
“where they keep the more than 3700 firearms they use for testing ammunition”
You had me at “more than 3,700” ….
Yowzers.
I met an old rabbi once and during the course of the discussion he gave me the advice that most people on this Earth have never seen a $100 bill in person, let alone touched one. If I were to keep one in my wallet I’d always feel fortunate. Ever since then I have, and I do.
True story.
GOOD story, as well. Thanx.
All these stashed hundreds make me think of survivalists running around the ramshackle impromptu post-apocalyptic marketplace looking for someone who can break a C-note.
I keep a fifty tucked discretely in my wallet, but that’s just “get home money” for gas and whatnot in an emergency.
I don’t keep lots of cash on hand, if things go south, the price gouging will commence.
Better to have the things you need at home stashed away, water, food, med supplies, and some gasoline. You don’t have to to go all doomsday prepper, but at least a week’s worth of supplies couldn’t hurt.
I would keep at least a months supply of canned goods. Then again my parents did survive a war so I got that from them.
It isn’t expensive to do, every time you go grocery shopping buy canned goods for 5, 10 or 20 dollars that you stash away. Over a while it builds up.
Water can easily be stored pre crisis by filling up your sink and bathtub (if you have one), otherwise just fill up a drum or several canisters.
Don’t forget about the water left in your water heater…
The average houshold water heater hold 40-80 gallons and has an external nozzle that be used to manually drain the water out.
Holy crap, I just remembered somebody bringing a spent .50BMG shell to my high school circa 2000-2002. I think they said it was a 30mm GAU-8 shell, but looking back, no way. Anyhow, dude showed it off, no panic, no lockdown, not even a second glance. All this in metropolitan Sacramento. I’d completely forgotten about that, heh.
I don’t understand this stashing stuff. The first thing a mugger takes is your phone, and the second is your wallet….Most people don’t carry, and for them this just increases the amount of their loss.
For me, it’s not about “if I get mugged” security, it’s about “if I get a flat tire and I can’t reach AAA and the tow truck driver doesn’t take plastic” security. Or if I need to grease the palm of a maitre d’ or the like.
Tuck a 100 in your holster, that’ll do for the mugging concept! “here, don’t forget this!”
My wife and I both keep $100 bill on our key chains (in a cash can from Sunshine) and I keep a extra $10 in the ID section of my wallet. As noted above, some places will not accept hundreds, at least not for a small purchase.