Open Carry Rifle Activism - Enough Already

I am a freedom loving, 2nd Amendment supporting gun lover. I think all free men and women should have the right to carry a firearm or other tool to defend themselves. You will find fewer people with stronger stances on the 2A. One thing that is really pissing me off though - are these fools that are open carry activists who are toting Rifles around with them - and most of these guys are carrying cameras because they're looking to incite incidents with the police.

I won't give any specific persons the added fame - but search YouTube and you'll find plenty of these assholes videos. These people are doing NOTHING to help the cause of gun rights - they're not doing a damn thing to make the general public fence-sitters on the gun rights issues side with gun owners and carriers. They are scaring the shit out of people and causing outcry - and in some cases (like in California, or here in my home state of Oregon with Multnomah County/City of Portland) - they are actually responsible for push back that has banned open carry.

There have been plenty of incidents in my home state, even in my home town and nearby cities, of these clowns. Two idiots walking through downtown Portland with slung AR-15s generating 9-1-1 calls. One particular jackass has made it his mission to walk around random cities with a camera, a rifle, and an open carried pistol - trying to incite police response. He claims he is "educating them" and "normalizing open carry" - let me be clear - he's not normalizing anything - but this guy and the other clowns like him are going to get open carry rights removed for all of us eventually.

These people live in some damn fantasy world where they think it should be OK for people to walk around with rifles and that people will dig it. They don't get that MOST Americans aren't cool with it - and don't want it to be normal for people to walk around with rifles. It's one thing to carry a pistol for self defense - and most people seem to be accepting, or at least indifferent to that. But rifles are a whole nother story. It is not, and never has been, normal to walk around with a rifle in a city, in this country. And it never should be!

Rifles are NOT ideal personal defense weapons - they're big, they are clumsy in tight quarters, and they are way more prone to shoot-through over penetration. We don't live in a war zone, and despite what the chicken hawks in the government and media spout - we are NOT under the constant threat of terrorism that say, Israel, finds itself in. These open carry activists continually cite Israel as their ideal, for open carry acceptance.

What they fail to grasp - is that Israel actually has very restrictive gun laws - and the people you see pictured toting a rifle around with them, are off-duty military. And you'll notice that those rifles are almost always carried unloaded. And the people in Israel accept those few rifle-toting folk, because they ARE under constant threat of terrorism from Palestinians and other muslim groups that want to see Israel wiped off the map.

Aside from the World Trade Center attacks (both Clinton and Bush eras) - and the Boston Marathon bombing this year - we haven't seen much else in the way of foreign terrorist strikes on US soil. It's not an every day occurrence. We don't have hundreds of would-be suicide bombers walking around out midst.

And once again - let me point out - those open-carry rifle toters in Israel are off duty military personnel and they HAVE to have their weapon on them. Average citizens in Israel are NOT packing around M16s.  They have a tough time even getting a license to own and carry a handgun, and they are limited as to the amount of ammunition they may possess or purchase. Israel is NOT the shining beacon of gun rights or norms that the minority of folks on the gun rights side think it is.

The only other places in the world where it is normal to carry a rifle around - are third world shit holes like Somalia, and other war-torn lawless countries. Those folks live WROL day to day. It really seems to me, that these open-carry rifle advocates really want to see the US fall into such times just so they can live out their masturbatory fantasies.

It should never be normal or accepted for people to walk around town with rifles.

These open carry advocates cry like babies and claim they're hassled by the police "for doing nothing wrong" - no, you HAVE done something wrong. You're walking around town with a slung rifle like an asshole - drawing the attention you WANTED, and you play the victim and hope you can catch the cops in some tricky civil rights lawsuit trap. You are trying to get paid (from taxpayer funds, I remind you) for your asshattery. The police have a duty to investigate things out of the norm - and toting a rifle around town IS NOT NORMAL.  People call the cops - the cops HAVE to respond. The cops see you walking downtown with a rifle? They HAVE To check you out - they don't know if you're "sane" (which I question, since you decide that walking around a crowded area or down Main Street with a rifle is OK) or if you're about to be the next spree-shooter.

Its asshats like this that will push people to the anti-gun side.

The more people pull this crap - the more I'm OK with cities, states, and counties banning long-gun carry in urban areas.  For the illiterate about to jump me for saying I"m OK with banning open carry - read that again. I said I'm OK with banning open carry of long arms - not handguns. A handgun in a hip holster is NOT as threatening, as some assclown carrying an AR, an AK, a shotgun, or an MP5 clone - by appearance alone.

These clowns are going to wind up causing enough push back to ban open carry entirely - including in the woods. If you want to go on a woods walk or a hike with a slung rifle - great. I'm all for it. In town - not so much. 

There was a case just a couple days ago - in Edmonds, Washington, of a man with a rifle being shot.

Edmonds, WA Police Shoot Man Carrying Rifle

This is going to happen more and more. Cops don't like dealing with armed public to begin with - they don't know if you're going to try shooting them, or if you're a Good Guy. What they do know - is that you have a gun, and that makes you a potential threat to them. Cops are going to err on the side of you being a badguy until they prove differently. They roll up on you toting a rifle around, and you're way more of a threat to them than some guy with a pistol - and any gun nut will instantly recognize why - rifle rounds pierce soft body armor. Your .223 - even with jacket soft point hunting ammo - will slice through level 3a armor like it wasn't there.  The cops are certainly going to handle you like a suspect until they determine otherwise - it's their job. If you do something retarded like give them a hard time, start fucking around with your rifle, or refuse to disarm when they order you to, expect to get shot, and don't expect sympathy from me or most of the gun rights community.

Stop living in the fantasy world where rifle toting is normal and okay - it is NOT. You will never make it so, until the country falls into a WROL state. Even then - anyone with a visible rifle is an instant target of everyone else. WROL - Without rule of law - means just that. You walking around strapped up with your AR and a dozen mags makes you a delicious target for predators. Expect to be in a firefight with that fancy long gun. Expect to be in more than one, if you're lucky enough to live through the first.

Stop using your rifle as a stand in for your penis. Seriously - you're not macho, manly, or cool walking around with a rifle. YOu are scaring soccer moms, little children, and normal people who are not used to seeing guns in general - and definitely not used to seeing someone toting a rifle around on their shoulder or worse, in their hands. Stop putting MY freedoms at risk over your childish need for attention. Stop putting MY tax dollars at risk by seeking confrontations with police. It wastes their time, and taxpayer money having to deal with your stupid asses. You want them to focus on "real criminals" STOP WALKING AROUND WITH A RIFLE AND DRAWING ATTENTION TO YOURSELF - they'll have plenty of time to deal with "real criminals".  You're wasting tax payer money - and you're really risking wasting money if they wind up shooting you (I'm sure your family would love to capitalize on your corpse and sue the cops for wrongful death - and I'm sure you'll sue them if you live) or if they DO find something to take you to jail for - you're going to waste our money by jailing you, trial costs, appeals costs, etc. And again - you're only pushing fence sitters to the anti-side!

Scaring people will not make carrying a gun any more accepted. It's going to turn the rest of the country into California. STOP IT ALREADY.

We are winning in most aspects of gun control - Colorado just booted two legislators that helped push their new gun control laws. We're winning on getting concealed handgun license laws in every state. But for every small victory we make - there's ass clowns pulling stupid shit like walking around with a long gun - giving the antis the ammunition they need to paint us all to be crazy ass Rambo wannabes.

These people will cause us to loose the fight. Knock it off!

If you want to seriously promote gun rights, get involved with the NRA, the GOA, SAF - bring new shooters into the community. Get involved - don't just walk around scaring people, unless your goal is more gun bans, more carry bans, and making life tougher for the rest of us. 

Storms

Storms are part of life and nature. Storms make for good fishing - fish go bonkers before a storm moves in, and some fish eat best when a storm is happening. Storms aren't much fun for fishermen though, the natural storms, and the man made storms that interrupt our lives.

The last month has been mostly good - but lately me and mine are riding through a personal storm. I had to sell my Jeep today - which means that my boat is grounded for a while. Last week some jerk at the boat launch backed in to my trailer, busted up one of my lights, and didn't so much as leave a note.

My other car - a Ford Taurus - decided to take a bit of a crap on me, which is going to set me back about $400 to $500. That's a big hit to my pocket book I wasn't quite ready for.

To make matters even better, we just got a 30 day notice to vacate our home - the house we just rented 3 months ago. The owner sent a note to the property managers telling them he's giving us the boot to move some of his family members in here. This blind sided the property managers - they're getting fired too - as well as us. One of the things they wanted when they rented to us was a family with stable rental history - it's what the owner professed to want, and now we're getting put out. I don't mean to sound bitter - but I hope the owner's family members trash his house and don't pay him a dime - and he regrets loosing the steady income he's gotten from this place. It took me a couple months to save the cash to move here - and now I've got less than a month to come up with the money to move again. That's going to mean extra working days - fewer fishing and family days. That sucks.

One of the decisions my wife and I are trying to make - do we sell almost all of our "stuff" - pack the rest and move to Texas, where my father lives with his family, and where my grandmother and her husband live - or do we stay here in Oregon and try to find someplace new to live on such short notice. We've been batting around the idea of going to Texas for a year now - and I can't help but wonder if all this nonsense is a sign from God that it's time for a big change. My father wants to get a business going down there and would like help getting it going - but he's not quite ready to get it in full gear yet - so I would have to find another job. That's a big sticking point - I've got a decent job here, and my son has two sets of grand parents here, vs one set down there. We have to do what's right for our entire family, not just me, not just my wife - but we need to do what's right for my boy.

I'm not sure what God's plans are - I just hope they include a parting of the clouds and a little sunshine soon.

Bass

It's summer. Summer is my favorite season. The days are long, the surface water at the lake is warm and clear (usually) and the days aren't horrible weather wise. Overcast days in the high 60's are my favorites. Another one of my favorite things about summer - good bass fishing.

I've been graced with living close to one of the best bass fishing lakes in northwest Oregon, and recently actually moving much closer than I'd lived before. I can be at the boat launch 20 minutes after leaving my driveway. This means that I've been fishing every chance I get, which is once a week. I've hit the lake up just about every week now for the last six weeks. Oh, it's been open since March - but my schedule hasn't allowed for me to get out until about six weeks ago.

For the last three weeks, I've been focusing a lot of my time fishing on bass - and we're lucky in that my lake has good populations of both largemouth and smallmouth - and some of those fish are record class (something like 8 state record smallmouth have been produced by this lake - whereas most anglers would think of the Columbia and Willamette rivers, or maybe the John Day river when they think of smallmouth fishing in northern Oregon - which I'm happy with.)

I had to pare down on some of my fishing tackle about a year or so ago due to getting laid off and needing funds, as well as moving a couple times since then. Now we're nicely settled in a new home and I've got good income again - I can rebuild some of my arsenal - which has included the purchase of three new bassin' sticks with a couple more planned later on.

My first new bass rod purchase about a month ago was one of Okuma's "ReFlexions" rods - the ReFlexions are a series of one-piece bass rods in spinning and casting flavors that go from a 6' light power fast action rod to a 7' medium heavy casting rod. I've had their 6'6" medium heavy rod before and loved it -but it was one of the rods I had to liquidate (along with my much loved Abu Garcia Revo SL reel) after getting laid off. I picked up a new 6'6" medium power spinning rod that I put an Abu Garcia Cardinal spinning reel on and loaded it up with 30lb Suffix braid and a Berkley mono leader. 

I had one main goal for this rod - smallmouth. This is a perfect setup for fishing tube jigs and soft plastics for smallies. My first outing with this was rewarded by a couple nice chunky smallies - so I'm pleased as punch.

The water has warmed up a bit more since that outing and the bass have spawned (large and smallmouth) and are in their post-spawn feeding mode.  My casting rods have seen a lot more action the last couple trips out - as I've switched up from the soft plastics to fishing mostly crankbaits.

One bass rod that I have, that will never get sold, is a one piece G Loomis GL2 6' medium power fast action with a Shimano Curado reel. This was a rod I inherited from my late brother in law, a combo that my wife purchased him. It'll be the last rod I'd ever even think of parting with.

I did recently pick up another casting rod - because too much of my time has been spent switching from deep runners to shallow running cranks - most of my fish lately have been coming out of the deeper waters along ledges - mostly 8-15 feet deep but sometimes those fish are in 6 feet of water, or they're up in the shallows in the late afternoons / early evenings and so I'm pitching cranks right up to the bank. So I got myself another Okuma ReFlexions rod - this time the 6'6" medium action casting rod and a Diawa Leguna reel to match it. This one I filled with 20lb Tuf Line XP braid. The Okuma is a bit stiffer and a heavier power than the loomis, despite both being rated as fast action medium power rods - so I decided to use the thinner braid with this reel and throw the deep runners with it. The thin line (20lb Tuf Line has the diameter of 6lb Berkley mono) will offer less resistance in the water, and let my plugs run deeper than 10lb mono would. The Loomis rod will be setup with the shallow running cranks, and I currently have 10lb Berkley mono spooled up on it.

My other recent bass rod purchase was a Wright & McGill S-Curve gen 2 fly rod, in 7'10" 8 weight flavor. THe 7'10" length makes it legal to use in bass tournaments, but that's not why I picked it - the short length keeps the casts below the overhanging trees I've had to deal with in some of my favorite bassin' spots, since the lake is currently in it's high-water spring/early summer depth. In a month I'm sure it'll be 20 feet lower, and a 9 foot rod would be fine. But then, in a month the fish will probably be in deeper water and I'll have to chase them with sinking lines anyway, so rod length won't matter that much.

I over-lined the fly rod with a #9 line, because most of my casts will be short and to the point - so the heavier line will load the rod better on short casts. 


Since the lake has been pretty clear, I've been throwing 2-3 inch natural colored crankbaits mostly for the last couple weeks. The fish have responded very well to this. I've mixed it up and tried the outlandish neon colors, the fire-tiger patterns, and crawfish cranks in varied shades, and they have almost wholely preferred a silver sided crank. Probably because there's a lot of trout in this lake, along with lots of newly hatched baby bass, baby crappie, and baby bluegill to forage on.

As you can see from the pictures above and below - the water is nice and clear and the fish have just finished up spawning. 

 

Most of these guys were hiding right along the break line of a ledge in the deep water, waiting to pounce on some little guy dumb enough to wander out of the safety of the shallows over into the dark water of an old creek channel or drop off into open water of the main lake.

I've taken both largemouth and smallmouth from these places.

I won't get to get out and chase them this coming week - today (June 23) marks the 6th anniversary of my marriage to my lovely bride, and we're dropping our little man off with Grandma and taking a day and a half to go to the Oregon coast for some much needed mommy-daddy alone times. While there is a possibility of a fishing rod sneaking it's way into the car (we have to drive past some beautiful trout waters, and our hotel is 2 blocks from a nice lake filled with trout and largemouth) - I'm not sure I'll get to use that rod much.

When I do get to hit the lake up again in two weeks, I'm hoping I don't come back to it to find the water 15 feet lower, and the fish pushed off to different holding places. My depth finder is broken (somehow the transducer cable got cut after a recent trip - and I know it wasn't on the motor prop because the cut portion was inside the boat. I think it got pinched by one of the batteries. I'm going to try to solder it back up - but I might have to bite the bullet and get a new transducer now, since the cable is integral to the transducer itself) and it makes finding the ledges and structure much easier.

Of course, I need to check a lottery ticket to see if I won that 127 million dollar powerball jackpot. If I did, I"ll be hitting the water a lot sooner, in a bigger nicer boat. Cross your fingers for me, pretty please?

I will be writing some gear reviews on the new Okuma and Wright & McGill rods in coming posts. Check back soon.