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.