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Today’s Daily Digest is brought to you by the letter “S,” as in “sneakers.” Saturday morning people were lined up early outside a shoe store in Atlanta, Georgia, waiting to buy one of 22 pairs of the new $180 LeBron James sneakers the store would be selling when it opened at noon.  Around 5:30 AM an armed man showed up, trying to rob them.  One of the customers waiting in line pulled out his own (legal) weapon and shot the would-be robber, killing him. Police ruled it self-defense and did not charge the customer who shot and killed the suspect. After taking care of business, the customer got back in line. They didn’t say if he was successful at getting his sneakers. “S” also stands for…

…”starter,” as in “starter pistol.” Parents are “outraged” that a 10-year old took a starter pistol to school with him to show his friends in Davidson County, North Carolina and the school didn’t “send them a letter or any type of notification about what happened.” The school explained that a starter pistol is not considered a weapon so legally they could do nothing. From the way these people reacted, let’s hope they never use a starter pistol at track meets there or we’ll have parents hitting the dirt and making “shots fired” calls to 911.

“Stupidity” also starts with ‘s’ and the news was rife with stupid gun owners today.  In Hallowell, Maine, the father of a four-year-old who took his dad’s loaded “.380 caliber semi-automatic handgun” to his day care in April has been charged with reckless conduct.  The gun’s safety was on, but there was a round in the chamber. In Huntsville, Alabama, police were called about a shooting when a gun owner “tripped while carrying his handgun” and shot his pinky Sunday morning.

And in Herndon, Virginia, a bicyclist was shot in the abdomen Saturday evening when a gun owner was “loading his gun inside his home when it discharged. The bullet struck the cyclist outside.” When will gun owners stop providing fodder for the anti-gun crowd through their own stupidity?

Also under ‘S’ we find the word “shame,” which Jim Carrey says he feels for his role in the upcoming film Kick-Ass 2 for it’s “level of violence.” He tweeted “I did Kickass a month b4 Sandy Hook and now in all good conscience I cannot support that level of violence. My apologies to e— Jim Carrey (@JimCarrey) June 23, 2013” then “I meant to say my apologies to others involve with the film. I am not ashamed of it but recent events have caused a change in my heart.— Jim Carrey (@JimCarrey) June 23, 2013.:”  I’ll bet that “change” in his heart isn’t great enough for him to give back the all money he’s made (and will make) off of gun-rich movies like this and The Mask.

“Sad” starts with “S,” too and that’s what I felt after reading of a gun “take-back” (nee “buy-back”) held in East Haven, Connecticut Saturday. A guy showed up with a “small five-round pistol.” All he knew about it was that it was “a .38 caliber and it belonged to his grandfather.” He no longer wanted it so he exchanged it for a $50 gift card from a convenience store. Police found “a small inscription revealing the maker as Harrington and Richardson of Worcester, Mass. A date on the barrel indicated the pistol was made in 1896.” And its fate? “Police will take the guns to state police for melting.” We shall now observe a moment of silence over this.

And finally, “S” stands for “Sabine” as in Sabine Pearlman Photography.  She has published a collection of cross-section photos of 900 cartridges she took inside a WWII Swiss bunker last October. Some of them are in a slide show at her web site.  She doesn’t say what any of them are, but a few are identified at io9.com.

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40 COMMENTS

  1. DATS HOW WE ROLL HERE IN THE ATL…don’t be stealing no sneakers up in here…we will fade yo ass! WORD!

      • LOL, those shoes are selling for $400 to $500 right now on eBay. It’s amazing that some people are willing to pay that much for shoes.

  2. 180 bucks for a pair of sneaks? That’s a bigger crime than the robbery attempt. And anybody that’s willing to wait on line at 0530 for a 180 buck pair of sneaks probably shouldn’t be trusted with a gun.

    Jim who? When did azz man become relevant?

    And the soullesss cretin that turned in his grandfather’s pistol should be caned in the city square at noon. The person that took it should be next.

    Rant over.

    • $180 for shoes is outrageous, but a whole lot of us have spent a perty penny on some extra less practical firearm related merchandise. ex. collectible firearms.

      • There’s no such thing as wasted money on guns or gun related products. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

        • At least they have a purpose and you will wear them. These Lebron shoes are the just the same quality as much lower priced sneaker and most people will buy them and hardly ever wear them choosing instead to make them part of their sneaker shrine.

        • Redwing boots and shoes aren’t sneaks. They’re what a working man wears when he’s taking care of his family.

    • Those folks are buying them for resale online at up to $500/pair. Personally, I think that’s pretty smart.

      • 500 bucks for a pair of sneaks? Nuke the site from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure we get them all.

        • Nearly coated my keyboard in coffee…

          I can’t wrap my head around paying hundreds of dollars for a pair of kicks, but a lot of folks do. There are Nike “Dunks” that go for $1000+. I applaud the wormy little capitalists making a buck (or 400) on ugly shoes.

          As an aside, it’s hard to justify shooting a bad guy when he’s running away! I don’t know if the video included shows the pitcher/catcher, but the guy took the round/s in the back. Can’t be much of an immediate threat to you or the people around you when he’s running scared, right?

        • Matt-

          So long as the robber still had a gun in his hand he could be considered a threat. Retreat does not, by itself, signal an end to potential hostilities. The bad guy could be seeking cover from which to return fire, could fire blindly behind himself as he runs away, could fire on bystanders in the direction of his travel, or could stop and turn around to return fire at any moment.

          I know most folks might not be square with idea of shooting a man in the back, but when that man is armed and has already displayed hostile intent, shooting to end the threat is justified, even if you hit him in the back.

  3. Aside from sentimental value, are H&R pistols worth having? The one i have is complete junk but i was given it by my grandmother. $50 was probably a fair price.

    • My dad had one. It shoots… well, not so good. I sold it to a neighbor, like six years after my dad passed away.

    • The USRA single-shot from H&R is worth pretty good money, kind of like a poor man’s Colt Camp Perry.

      • Yep….I have an H&R model 12 with the Palma sights. It is more accurate than 99% of any guns that the readers here will ever shoot.

      • They can make the hell out of a single shot for sure. I love my pardner. but the old revolvers…

  4. Starter pistol = not a weapon. Poptart pistol = weapon? Well I guess its got fat and sugar and stuff and you could choke on it. Whatever.

    • I’ll take my victories where I can get them. If we can start a trend of schools treating non-weapons as… not weapons, that is a good thing.

  6. If you watch the video you hear the reporter saying. One man pulled a gun of his own then later saying he was shot by another man in line 3 times. That is 2 concealed carriers in atlanta helping protect fellow shoppers at 5:30 am. Carry on

  7. So Jim Carrey is donating his entire salary to MAIG, RIGHT?

    I doubt it. I read “regret”. Translation: Don’t blame ME! I wash my hands of this movie I accepted a million bucks for. Good AMERICAN bucks! O CANADA!

  8. Buy back… take back… I don’t like the “back” in these things. It’s like some government agency had given a temporary permission to own a gun, and now it’s over.

    Can’t we call it something else? Maybe “gun grab”, or “wholesale from the public” or “evidence sanitation”. Maybe even “gun bye buy”?

    Maybe you could run a contest to name these events. Give away a $50 grocery card to the winner. Or a box of 9mm from CheaperThanRealEstate.com – same cost.

  9. Huh..wait, what? So a rug rat gnaws a Pop-tart into the shape of a gun,
    allegedly, and the school goes on lock-down and suspends the hungry,
    gun obsessed rodent. That”ll teach him. But here, a 3rd grade student
    brings a starter PISTOL to SCHOOL, and the school is fine with that?
    The first case was as oversold to everybody as the second case was
    undersold to almost nobody. With a little less of each, we should be
    able to find a good a balance of prudent alarm, and a proper response.

      • I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the upset parents weren’t largely unfamiliar with firearms and transplants from areas that look down on gun ownership and freak at the first sight of a pop tart.

        • Seconded Rosco. There are a lot of NE transplants in NC. Davidson is still pretty rural but it’s close enough to Greensboro and Winston-Salem for some transplants to commute. I suspect most of the locals are wondering why it’s news at all.

    • “Rodent”, gotta love it. The Pop-tart “gun” looked more like a small boomerang. But I suppose, in the wrong location even a flaky boomerang with frosting drizzled on it could be grounds for a suspension.

  10. Pat sounds like a Moron. The ghost of his grandfather is probably snickering and glad that his pistol is in the hands of an idiot no longer.

  12. Wonder why the MSM didn’t cover the robbery in Badlanta?You would think that responsible gun owners would store guns better.On the H&R revolver,heck I would have given him more money than that 50 dollar gift certificate,the guns in circulation now don’t need to be destroyed,these guns should be sold back to the public,this would help with a lot of revenue short fall in a lot of communities!Be prepared and ready.Keep your powder dry.

  13. If Jim Carrey really felt that strongly about the use of guns in this movie, he would donate the money he would have received from it to an anti-gun organization, or even better, an anti-gun organization. I’m not holding my breath for either one.

    —

    From the article about the gun buy-off: “All anyone had to do was bring a gun, prove their residency, and pick up their gift card.”

    So, you have to prove residency to turn in a gun for $50, but not to cast a vote for the people who run the country. Sure, that makes sense to me.

  14. The bullet cross-section photos are neat. At some point I’d like to see the rest of the set, because all I’ve been able to find is the same 15 or so that are shown here.

    Why does it matter that the photos were taken in a WWII Swiss bunker? It’s not like you see the bunker in any of the photos… Sounds like something the artist did and said just to be pretentious. With the bright lighting and white background, you could have taken these photos in my bathtub. Matter of fact, if you had an old cast iron tub, you could take them there and claim they were taken in a “WWII bomb shelter.”

  15. Whenever I see crap like this from people like Jim Carrey I always think of the scene from Road Warrior where Pappagallo is trying to convince his people to no give up and the old woman yells out, “Words! Just Words!”

  17. How much you wanna bet that the shooter, regardless of “self defense” or not, wasn’t carrying legally…

    Here in Los Angeles… wooo…. you would get locked up so fast.

    Brandishing a firearm in public.
    Discharging a firearm within city limits.
    Inciting mayhem.
    Second degree murder.
    Voluntary manslaughter
    Assault with a deadly weapon.
    Possession of a concealed weapon.
    Commission of a felony while in possession of a firearm.
    … the list could go on for a while.

    Good luck beating 2/3rds of those without a plea bargain (read: admission of guilt to at least 1/3 or the charges). Oh and don’t forget… The following civil suit where you’re sued by Mr. Scumbag’s family for wrongful death.

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