Recently in Books Etc Category

Not coincidentally, the Gotham City of the two most recent Batman films is based on Chicago, not New York City. This makes some sense, because Chicago residents are severely restricted in their methods of self defense. Masked vigilantes might be the only answer.

Eric at Classical Values has a good post up on Armed America: Portraits of Gun Owners in Their Homes

He points out a "favorable" new review by Natalie Pompilio of the Philadelphia Inquirer and adds:

I don't know what Natalie Pompilio's position is on gun control, and right now I don't care, because I am always delighted to see fair coverage of this issue -- especially the simple acknowledgement that gun owners can be regular human beings.

Like, who knew?

The Ministry of Minor Perfidy has a picture that appears to have been taken at the same event as the photo of the Iraqi police woman with an AK I posted earlier.

Go check it out.

I think the delivery of the Dirty Harry line would suffer from the layers of clothing masking the woman's expression during the delivery.

Incidentally, I've been revisiting the Dirty Harry movies recently. I plan to watch The Enforcer tonight. I haven't seen that in at least 20 years.

Legions Fate has another excellent rundown with screen captures.

A PPSh makes an appearance.

Via Rummell.

From the author of Don't Know Much About History comes America's Hidden History: Untold Tales of the First Pilgrims, Fighting Women, and Forgotten Founders Who Shaped a Nation by Kenneth C. Davis:

Kenneth C. Davis, author of the phenomenal New York Times bestseller Don't Know Much About History, presents a collection of extraordinary stories, each detailing an overlooked episode that shaped the nation's destiny and character. Davis's dramatic narratives set the record straight, busting myths and bringing to light little-known but fascinating facts from a time when the nation's fate hung in the balance.

Spanning a period from the Spanish arrival in America to George Washington's inauguration in 1789, America's Hidden History details these episodes, among others:

• The story of the first real Pilgrims in America, who were wine-making French Huguenots, not dour English Separatists
• The coming-of-age story of Queen Isabella, who suggested that Columbus pack the moving mess hall of pigs that may have spread disease to many Native Americans
• The long, bloody relationship between the Pilgrims and Indians that runs counter to the idyllic scene of the Thanksgiving feast
• The little-known story of George Washington as a headstrong young soldier who committed a war crime, signed a confession, and started a war!

Full of color, intrigue, and human interest, America's Hidden History is an iconoclastic look at America's past, connecting some of the dots between history and today's headlines, proving why Davis is truly America's Teacher.

Got this email in response to the post on the Baltimore homicide maps:

If you want to know more about Homicides in Baltimore I recommend reading Homicide: A Year in the Killing Streets by David Simon. He spent a year in the homicide division of Baltimore P.D. He also produced a show about the things he learned called The Wire, which was shown on HBO.

I haven't read the book, though I've heard good things about The Wire.

The sender maintains a map of homicides in Houston.

Kyle Cassidy is working on a new book of veterans tattoos called "War Paint". You can see some of it on his website at www.kylecassidy.com/warpaint. At the moment, he's specifically looking for WWII and Korean war vets with military tats. If you work with a VFW post or know a group of vets with ink, Kyle's interested in coming out and spending a weekend taking photographs and recording stories.

Murdoc interviewed Mr. Cassidy and discussed his book Armed America recently. The photos were great and the info was, too, so though I'm not into the whole tat scene, I'm sure "War Paint" will be a good read.

If you're interested, contact Kyle at the War Paint site by clicking become involved at the bottom of the page.

The Great New Orleans Gun Grab by Gordon Hutchinson and Todd Masson should be a must-read for all gun owners, not only because of the troubling issues it portrays but because it can help get people into the right mind-set for the aftermath of a natural disaster on the scale of Hurricane Katrina.

I knew a lot of what went down in the streets of the flooded city in late summer 2005, but my eyes were bugged as I read this book. Really, events should shock and outrage all Americans, not just gun owners. Anyone who owns a home and anyone who believes in personal liberty should be deeply disturbed by what government officials did (and did not do) during a huge disaster that should not have been completely unexpected.

After the hurricane hit and the levees were breached and overtopped, the city was cast into general chaos. Many people had been unwilling or unable to leave, and without power or assistance they were left to fend for themselves. Some, realizing how things were going to unfold, had a change of heart and decided to make a run for it.

A couple of families banded together, and two women were quite disturbed that one of the men had brought some firearms with him. As they loaded the van they would use for their run for safety, a band of looters approached down the street. The man gave his 12-year-old son, familiar with guns, a rifle.

“Stand here,” he ordered, placing him at the rear of the van. “Guard us."

He left the boy, the rifle held at port arms across his chest, a young conscript in the Katrina War. He went to the front and out into the Street, checking the situation. He then went back inside.

The van pulled into the street, and three looters ran up, sloshing through the water, surrounding the front of the van, cursing, yelling for everyone to get out. The one on the passenger side stood against the door, pushing his head and upper torso through the window, almost climbing into the front seat. He twisted left to see who was in the van, saw the women in the middle seat. He then looked past them through the rear window, at the boy at the back of the van with the rifle.

His eyes bugged out, he stuttered a second, then blurted: “Is that a real gun?”

The women in the rear seat, new converts to the gun culture, snapped a quick and loud answer: “You bet your ass it’s a real gun!”

They made it out of the city safely.

The book covers a number of people, areas, and situations. LeRoy Hartley and his family rode out the storm, but the days following Katrina were tough and he had his family leave town for safety. He stayed behind with his dog Buster to protect their home from the looters that had already threated them several times.

At the SHOT Show in February I met Kyle Cassidy, and checked out his recent book Armed America: Portraits of Gun Owners in Their Homes. It's tough for me to critique photography in an artistic sense other than to say whether I like it or I don't like it. In a nutshell, I like the photographs in this book.

The collection is a sometimes surprising cross section of gun owners in the United States, with a snippet about why they own guns. Seeing a wide range of regular (and a few not-quite-so regular) folks with their guns in their homes provides a lot of food for thought.

I conducted a quick email interview with Mr. Cassidy and his answers are both informative and thought provoking.

1. There is quite a wide range of gun owners portrayed in the book. Did you "try" to get a wide sample or did it just sort of turn out that way?

It mostly just turned out that way. I've come to suspect that the set of "gun owners" is a lot more diverse than most people think. We probably all have an idea of what a gun owner looks like. I found that there are people who are happy to identify themselves as owning a gun and there are people who don't mention the fact that they do for one reason or another, maybe they don't think it's anybody's business, or maybe they don't shoot very much and it's not a huge part of their lives.... So when you're at a party and there's a guy with an NRA hat on, you think "oh, that's what gun owners look like" but there may be a dozen other people there who aren't vocal about it and you don't factor them into your idea of who gun owners are. I think I did a pretty good job at running into those other types of people because, for the most part, I wasn't finding people at gun shows or places like that, where there might have been a bit more uniformity.

The way that I tried to diversify mostly was by changing my geography. Gun owners, and people in general, are different in Choudrant, Louisiana than they are in Seattle, Washington. And even from place to place in a state, gun owners in Philadelphia were different from gun owners in central PA. So, to some extent by saying "I'm going to spend X number of days in Wisconsin" I knew I was going to get people who represented the demographics of that area. There were some types of people I did actively court to greater or lesser degrees of success. I wanted someone who would represent the "I own a gun but I'm forbidden to have it with me" contingent, and I'd found a school teacher at a boarding school in New Jersey who kept his guns at his parents house because he wasn't allowed to keep them on campus. I wanted to have him holding a photograph of his gun, but we just couldn't work out timing. And I wanted someone who actually had a gun that local laws said they couldn't have, because I think that's an important part of the story. I offered to photograph anyone who wanted anonymously, but it's a big leap of faith for someone to take. But apart from those I didn't go out of my way to find particular types of people.

2. Did the gun owners write up the descriptions of the weapons?

For the most part though it was a bit of a hodge-podge. You'll notice there are a couple times where the same gun isn't listed the same way -- I can't think of an example off the top of my head, but there are a few, like one might say "Colt 1911" and another might say "Colt .45". Often people handed me a list of their guns that they'd written down, sometimes I'd write things down myself, and there were a couple of times where people just had no idea what kind of gun they had, so if it wasn't something I was familiar with, I'd take a close-up of it and try and figure it out later.

Pretty much as soon as I had the manuscript in to the publisher the story broke on the Internet and we were getting bombarded by calls from the media, the people at Krause bumped it ahead in the production schedule to get it to press as soon as possible and the thing that suffered was conformity in gun identification. There aren't many outright mistakes -- the only one I can think of is a Lee Enfield that's mis-identified as an M1, which is a big "ouch" but there were bound to be a few things that slipped by us.

3. With the exception of one which is difficult to make out, it appears that every person holding a gun has their finger clearly off the trigger. Was this always on their own? Or did you request it? If you requested it, was it for simple safety, or was it specifically for what you wanted in the book?

I decided right at the beginning that it wasn't my job to be a range safety officer and as long as I was sure that I wasn't going to get shot, or my assistant wasn't going to get shot, it wasn't my job to tell people to look responsible. I wanted to tell their stories and if that involved poor gun handling, that was part of the story. It just turned out that by and large, most people were careful, I got swept a couple of times but that's probably par for the course when dealing with such a broad range of gun owners with varying degrees of familiarity with their guns. Some people were militant about safety, they opened chambers and showed me each gun was empty, and there were other people who weren't as through.

4. Did you run into many situations where other members of the gun-owner's family didn't necessarily agree with the decision to own guns or appear in the book?

In my weekly email from the Michigan Coalition for Responsible Gun Owners:

Myth: The availability of guns causes crime. -- Fact: In 1968, the U.K. passed laws that reduced the number of licensed firearm owners, and thus reduced firearm availability. Their homicide rate has steady risen since then. "Criminals are not motivated by guns. They are motivated by opportunity. Attempts to reduce public access to firearms provide criminals more points of opportunity. It is little wonder that high-crime cities also tend to be those with the most restrictive gun control laws - which criminals tend to ignore". -- page 24 of Gun Facts 4.2

Gun Facts 4.2 is a free 96 page reference guide to gun control issues by Guy Smith.

Breaking news: Oscar-winning actor played larger-than-life figures

We'll see if his work with the NRA gets much attention. I imagine someone will make fun of him for it, though.

My favorite Heston film is probably Ben-Hur. I watched Planet of the Apes with my son a few weeks ago. Just today I was looking at the Planet of the Apes Legacy Collection and noticing that it's not a bad deal, even considering the quality of most of the rest of the films.

Murdoc's been looking for a couple of new twists to throw into his daily workout now that spring is approaching, and maybe I'll try one or two from Training for Warriors: The Ultimate Mixed Martial Arts Workout by Martin Rooney.

To be a warrior, you must train like a warrior

Discover the training secrets that have produced World Champions in MMA, Submission Grappling, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, and Judo. More than 750 color photos will show you how to perform hundreds of exercises designed to specifically target each area of your body. You'll also learn:

• Nutrition and safe weight-cutting tips
• Information on dealing with injuries
• Advice on the warrior mind and mental game
• The ultimate 8-week warrior workout plan

Whether you are a fighter or just want to look like one, Training for Warriors is a proven, comprehensive system to get you fit for whatever battle life throws at you.

About the Author
Martin Rooney is the performance coach for the 2007 IFL Champion New York Pitbulls, COO and director of training of the Parisi Speed School, and an international fitness and martial arts consultant. For more information or to join the online warrior community, go to www.trainingforwarriors.com.

Though obviously geared for those in the mixed martial arts, this photo-packed book has a lot of exercises, workouts, and training guidance that can be applied to general strength and fitness building.

If I had a tire, I could try the 'kneeling overhead hammer strike' on page 173. If I had a sledge hammer.