Pilot's Log

Last week in East Knoxville a teenage girl was killed by a stray bullet from a drive-by shooting. She was hit in her own house; the bullet came in through a wall.

Last week I read in a technical magazine how a nanotech process called "boronizing" can make ordinary fabrics bulletproof.

Idea I had overnight: Boronize the insulation in houses' external walls.

Who do I have to talk to, to make this happen?

Disgruntled Former Employee goes back to his old workplace with a pistol and tries to blow away his ex-Bosses...almost cliché.

The fact that the workplace was an Elementary School in the middle of the city? National headlines.

Only in Knoxville. We've had shootings in churches, shopping malls, the college campus, Little League baseball parks, gated communities--all over town.

And people ask why I don't want or need a gun.

I think the following ought to be a law in this nation.

In times of local emergency, people who have firearms-carry permits should be required to automatically show their identification to first-responders. ALL first-responders (law enforcement, emergency medical, search-and-rescue, fire fighter and so forth) should have the right to deputize permit holders FOR ANY REASON during an emergency. Things like directing traffic at a road accident. Carrying casualty litters. Crowd control. The governments in the appropriate jurisdictions will set up funds to compensate the ad hoc deputies for their time and risk involved.

This is covered by the "in defense of the State" clause of the Bill of Rights Second Amendment.

Yes, I know dreams are supposed to be weird...but like this?

* The mother of one of my friends was revealed to be a fugitive from justice. She was the culprit in a crime of passion and her circle of friends created a new identity for her so she could hide from the law.

* Somebody asked me if my Dad was proficient with using a guillotine. I said I doubted it, but he could have been the boss of a firing squad if one had been needed.

* There is a machine gun that shoots dimes. It can throw out thousands of dollars a minute and chew through bank vault walls. A gunsmith built the first one so he could assassinate his company's loansharks in an appropriate manner...but the ATF has bought hundreds of them and will have them on the streets soon.

Called my brother today, and he told me a story about his new job as a cellular phone salesman.

A policeman came into his shop with a phone he had confiscated from a criminal suspect. "Could you recharge this for me?" he asks Bro. So Bro gets the charger out and hooks the phone up and a while later, the phone has a charge on it. The cop notices it's a camera phone, and so asks Bro "Hey, can you bring up the pictures that are on this phone?" "Sure," Bro tells him.

The VERY FIRST picture that comes up showed a table upon which sat a gun and a "key" of marijuana.

The policeman says, "I'll buy the recharger!"

On my last trip into Gatlinburg some weeks ago, I noticed how prevalent Airsoft guns had become. I wasn't sure they were so commonly available back when I was working there (nearly nine years ago? sheesh), but it seems now there are probably a dozen tourist shops there alone--and who knows how many in Pigeon Forge?--where you could buy an ersatz automatic pistol or assault rifle.

Being as my Mom is a peacenik, the closest things I have to weapons in the house are Laser Tag sets (one an original Worlds of Wonder, the other a G.I.Joe Worlds of Wonder set that doesn't record hits the way the Star Sensor does). My father was a Marine Corps Rifle Instructor, and it's weird then that I didn't learn to shoot a gun from him--in some circles that would be proof that I'm less than American. On the other hand, it also means that being disarmed has been a blessing in disguise--yes, I've run amok. No, I haven't hurt or killed anyone. I know my limits and obligations.

The Airsoft thing is rather adolescent, you think? Too dangerous for kids but not more than a toy to the mature?

I just had this mental image of myself installing a police-cruiser type barrier between the front and back seats in Moonshine, and setting Airsoft weapons on the gun rack. But then, that's not me, is it?

And again, I'm reminded of the time I visited the local National Guard post to photograph their tank on display, and the Guardsman there offered to take pictures of me hoisting a bazooka. I demurred on the offer...and have wondered since what trouble such a picture could have gotten me into in the years since.

FP

Hey.

I think I've already mentioned here that back when I was in High School, the School Board had me investigated as a security risk. Maybe they were hoping to expel me or have me forcibly committed to a mental health care facility.

But as weird and horrible as my experiences growing up were, the powers that were didn't need to worry so much. There were a few reasons why I never took a gun to school aiming to blow the heads of my fellow students open.

1) There never was a weapon in my reach. My mother put her foot down on that matter a long time before then.

2) Years earlier, I had had a conflict with some neighborhood kids and while I was thinking about escalating and revenge, I arrived on the following value judgment: what I was planning was not only looking to be very costly and likely to get myself into serious trouble, the measures I contemplated were terribly excessive compared to what the conflict had already cost me--and it was easier to "write off" what I had already "spent" and make peace rather than continue on my present path. And so I made peace.

Sure, I still had horrible problems with other students as my growth ran its course--so much so that I wished ugly violence upon some of them and even got a little physical--but I knew where to draw the line.

3) I knew I had to think about my future.

4) I knew fate often had a way of its own when it came to rewarding bad karma.

I don't know or care what happened to my scholastic rivals. And perhaps that's how it should be. It's unhealthy to fight old wars or go looking for a fight. Be ready for a fight if you think you'll have to, but sometimes the ugly beard can be dealt with by barbering rather than barbarism. That was William Shakespeare's idea, you know.