On the Road Again…

I’m in Austin, Texas through Thursday for some software training. First impressions: flat, warm, muggy. And it’s supposed to rain tomorrow. My hotel room was 83°F when I checked in. The A/C’s been running an hour now and it’s still 79°. Wait… 78°. Woohoo!

So, any bloggers/readers in the Austin area? What is there for a non-drinking, crowd-hating, unarmed gunblogger to do here in his off-hours? Any restaurant recommendations? I’ve got five nights to kill, and Showtime®™ looks like it’s going to wear very thin very fast. I brought two books, but I think I’ll have finished them by Wednesday.

One Million.

Sometime tomorrow morning TSM will have received its one millionth site visit (according to Sitemeter.) Not bad for a third-tier gun blog.

Thanks, y’all.

Another Long Essay Coming.

I worked on it most of the evening, but it isn’t finished. It needs some extensive rework. Hopefully it will be up tomorrow. If not, don’t expect to see it until Sunday.

For Those Attending the Second Amendment Blog Bash,.

Where are y’all staying? I’d like to make hotel reservations where, you know, other bloggers will be.

UPDATE: Reservations made, but I’d rather not spend $120/night +15.08% tax, etc. and sleeping at the end of the Louisville Int’l Airport runway. I will be getting a rental vehicle, so if there’s somewhere else a bit less expensive, I’m open to canceling that reservation and staying elsewhere, and I can provide transport.

Requiem.

Major Andrew Olmsted, “G’kar” in comments around the blogosphere, and a blogger for Rocky Mountain News was killed in action on January 3 in Diyala province in Iraq. He had made arrangements, in the event of his death, to have a final blog post put up at Obsidian Wings.

Go read.

(Thank you juris_imprudent for the email notification.)

The 2007 TSM Year In Review:.

In a rehash of last year’s first post of the year, I again offer a month-by-month retrospective of posts for those of you suffering recovering from the evening’s festivities. Nothing to overstress your gray matter.

January of 2006 brought the conclusion of another of my exchanges with the forces of evil anti-gun “experts” who seem to have no problem getting column space in the local (and sometimes national) press. This time it was John D. Kelly IV, a physician in Philadelphia who places the blame for Philly’s skyrocketing homicide problem on (as always) the easy target – guns. The concluding piece of this three-parter was I’m Finished with THIS Particular Windmill…

February brought us The Great Zumbo Incident of 2007, and much sound and fury ensued across the blogosphere and into the real world. My post of choice for this month is The Sport of Kings. It was a difficult call, but this one gets the nod.

March brought the D.C. Federal Court of Appeals Parker v D.C. decision, and this time the choice was simple: Light a Seegar, it’s the Best Birthday Present EVER! The reaction of our opponents was swift and predictable, so I got some fisks in that month, too.

April was another story. That month brought the Virginia Tech massacre. But instead of bolstering the gun-control side I think it made a lot more people understand the realities of life, so again the choice was simple – The Right to Feel Safe. There isn’t one. You can choose to address your safety, or ignore it, but signs saying “Gun Free Zone” only disarm the people you don’t need to worry about.

May was a more normal month, but AlGore published a new book about how stupid we all are, and Time published an excerpt, so I fisked it in Al Gore’s Internet.

In June I was busy and didn’t post much, but there were a couple that I think deserve re-reading. The first was about a defensive shooting in which we got a little more background information than normal – An Update on the Cape Coral Defensive Shooting. And another on someone who finally decided that feeling safe was their own responsibility – Ignorance = Fear. Education is the Key.

In July a Connecticut family found out that their safe, quiet neighborhood, wasn’t, and a popular and respected physician lost his family in about the most horrible way possible. I wrote about it, and the community reaction, in Awakenings.

In not-so-related news, I bought my first firearm of the year in July. My apologies for slacking, but I did change jobs in April.

August brought a reminder of why I will never license nor register my firearms. I also discovered that my new (to me) pistol didn’t work, but that was OK, because I won her sister.

In September I did a rather long and detailed post on introductory handloading that has proven quite popular – probably more because of the cost of factory ammunition than my writing skills.

October brought us the Second Annual Gunblogger’s Rendezvous which I enjoyed very much, but if comments are any judge, my post The Mystery of Government was more popular.

November brought my third gun for the year (I want to buy one-gun-a-month, but my income won’t support that!) but the most popular post (by commentary) was a remarkably short one, for me: Why the Left Believes the Media is “Right-Wing” I blame credit commenter Markadelphia for the really long comment threads over the last few months. I gigged him over a post of his from the Great Zumbo Incident and he followed me home!

December brought another überpost, this one inspired by a film recommended by Markadelphia – Why We Fight. It’s probably the longest thing I’ve written here in one piece, but I’ve gotten good feedback on it.

And, to end the year, I received an Instalanche! (OK, so it was a YouTube video I found elsewhere, but Glenn linked to me! Hahahahah! 2,000+ hits in one day! I realize this is nothing for big-time bloggers, but for lil’ old me, it’s a lot!)

My best wishes to you all for a happy, healthy, and prosperous new year. Remember, it’s going to be nothing but politics until November, so buy aspirin, Pepto Bismol, waders, gloves, and ear and nose plugs. It’s going to get thick and deep.

Hiatus.

Barring some unforeseen urge to post, I’m taking the rest of the year off. Posting to resume on or about Jan. 1, 2008. I may still be commenting from time to time, though.

Thanks for visiting! The archives remain open for those who are jonesin’ for a fix.

Bloggers: The New Watchdogs.

We may not be the Gatekeepers (we tore the gates down), but we’re the watchdogs of both old and new media. Three examples:

Earlier this week Roger Simon of The Politico wrote a very negative piece on a campaign stop by Fred Thompson. The Riehl World View examined his story, and the CBS video, and called foul. Instapundit picked it up, and that, as they say, was that. (UPDATE: It ain’t over yet.)

Congress passes a gun bill, HR 2640. Nobody much hears about it except us gunnies. It’s a compete oddity – supported by the Brady Campaign and the NRA. So, of course the (only gun) Violence (counts) Policy Center opines in opposition, as does the Gun Owners of America, and the Brady Center for the Prevention of Gun Ownership claims that the law does a lot of things it doesn’t. Who do you hear about this from? Not the legacy media. You hear about it from gunbloggers – people who, you know, actually understand the topic on which they write. Sebastian at Snowflakes in Hell disassembles the GOA argument, and Say Uncle counters both the VPC and Paul Helmke.

If you want to know this stuff, the New York Times isn’t going to tell you.

Third one: While Dennis Kucinich has about as good a shot at the Oval Office as I do, he is still a sitting Congressman. It’s good to know what our elected officials really think and do.

It would seem that someone doesn’t want us to know some interesting things about Mr. Kucinich, according to David Drake, and he’s got the screenshots to prove it.

The old saying is true: the internet treats censorship as damage and simply routes around it. And, as Tam recently said, “The internet, much like Soylent Green, is people.” People with voices we never had before.

No wonder governments fear the Internet.

Another Beautiful Triptych.

A terrific “Perspective” story in three parts by Lawdog, AD, and Babs.

Bring a hankie. You’ll need it.

Those three ought to become screenwriters. They wrote a better story than 99.99% of the stuff you see on TV today.