A convention of celebrities

Here we are in Pittsburgh and after a quick stop to the NRA store to get our T-shirts and mugs before the best stuff sold out we hit the exhibit floor. . .



and wow it was crowded! Even taking into account the people attending the Leadership Seminar, who like to listen to politicians drone on, there was still a sea of humanity to fight to get at the free tote bags and to gawk at semi-famous people. Then there was the problem of fighting through the ginormous lines of people who for some reason wanted to pay ridiculous amounts of money to buy crappy hot dogs and hamburgers. One common factor in the 7 conventions I've attended has been the god-awful overpriced food on the convention floor.

One unusual thing about today was that wherever we turned we ran into a celebrity.

Here is convention favorite R. Lee Ermey:



Here is the Nuge:

No surprise there. R Lee Ermey and the Nuge are at every convention

But we turned the corner and what do we see at the Thompson-Kahr booth. The incompetent gold miners from Gold Rush Alaska: Jack and Todd Hoffman. I think they may have tapped a vein of "gold" that will never play out. Maybe they aren't so incompetent after all.



Denise also ran into Chris Reed from Season 2 of Top Shot. Unfortunately I was not able to get a picture. The NRA convention seems to be really popular with the reality show set this year.

Finally we have Hero to all supporters of the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, Dick Heller:



Thanks again!

We spent a couple of hours of wading through the exhibit area and saw a lot of gunny goodness. But then we found out there was another entire floor of exhibits downstairs! We only had the stamina for a couple of rows but we ran into this strange exhibit:



Now, I have never had the desire to use chewing tobacco, but I have to admit that I have the urge to show my ID and enter into this shrouded domain. Yes, they require an ID to enter. It all seems so naughty, like the darkened adult store at the end of the block that you have to screw up your courage to enter. I never thought I would see the day when chewing tobacco was something to be hidden and whispered about and guns would be cool and openly displayed for all to see. Strange times.

YS

Pittsburgh Bound

Well. It's been awhile. I guess it's more than past time to dust off this blog and put up a new post. As the title implies, we are on our way to Pittsburgh tomorrow at noon. This will be our seventh NRA convention. Time sure does fly by.

We are planning on doing things a little different for this convention. We are going to take our time and not rush as we usually do on the exhibit floor.

We also are not going to attend the Celebration of American Freedom Mom and Apple Pie Experience or whatever they call it.

This year I am calling it the Hucklefuck.

I really have no desire to listen to Mike Hucklebee gas on about whatever he gasses on about. I particularly don't want to partake the experience from uncomfortable stadium seats.

Denise and I really miss the banquet. But I suspect the banquet in Phoenix is the last one we'll enjoy. No, Denise and I will spend Saturday having a nice dinner at one of Pittsburgh's better restaurant's.

We'll raise a toast to the memory of banquet's past and T. Bubba Bechtol (I miss that guy).

We also plan to attend more of the seminars than we have in the past. We've always had to cut short our attendence to one seminar or the other because we were always rushing hither and yon to one event or the other. We plan to rush alot less this time around.

One of the plans we have for this convention is to sample a few of Pittsburgh's eating establishments. One of the places that we might try is famous locally: Primanti Brothers
Unfortunately, they have seem to have been involved in hosting a local event of Mayor Bloomberg's anti-gun jihad, MAIG(Mayor's Against Illegal Guns) More Here

Now my knee jerk reaction is to say: No way in hell am I going to visit this establishment.

But, my more thoughtful side has this reaction: Wouldn't it be better to kill them with kindness as the saying goes.

Think about it.

Instead of empty shops, thousands of hungry, POLITE, gun owners sporting NRA T-shirts and caps show up at Pittsburgh area Primanti Brothers shops and spend money like its going out of style. This shows the owners of Primanti Bros. that NRA members blow away :) the anti-gun community in both wealth and influence.

In fact this policy works well wherever we go in Pittsburgh. Let's show the dour, doommongering bitter enders that gun owners are happy, wealthy forward marching people and that the other side represents the ass end of history.

Couldn't hurt to try.

Anyway, hope to see some of you there!

YS

Last NRA Convention Thoughts and Maudlin Meanderings

Yosemite Sam and I are back. I had a deskful of stuff waiting for me at work, including a couple of fires I had to put out.

My job entails a bunch of coordination and almost constant writing. That's one reason I don't blog much anymore. It's awfully hard to face the monitor when I've been staring into its depths all day. Besides, I feel I've said everything I ever wanted to say. Put those two together and you get little bloggy. Enough whining.

Yosemite and I attended the "Celebration of American Values: Freedom Experience" held in the Time-Warner Arena on Saturday night. I understand that Charlotte did not have a large enough venue to host a banquet, but I missed the banquet. I like sitting around the table and meeting gunnies and bloggers from anyplace in the country. I even like the excuse to throw on a bit of makeup and dress better than my work casual.

So, some thoughts to tie it together.... We enjoyed meeting and renewing long-distance friendships with all the bloggers that were there. We liked the cavalcade of guns and gear on the convention floor. We attended Ted Nugent's session on Sunday and he always gets one fired up to support gun rights.

Speaking for myself now, I hope that the almost six years I've been blogging has done some good in support of gun rights. I hope that I've added something to my readers' days. I hope I've provided information and maybe entertainment. I even hope that my love of the shooting sports has encouraged someone to buy a gun, learn how to use it, and find their own passion for shooting. I hope to get over the funk that has led me to write few posts. Maybe a new job....

NRA Convention Gun P0rn

One of the things Yosemite Sam and I always do at the convention is drool over guns. There were many to choose from:

A Whitney Wolverine from the 1950s; so Buck Rogers, so ahead of its time.

From Buck Rogers to Queen Anne's time. These were from an exhibit of Hugenot made guns.

An early Thompson sub-machine gun.

It wasn't all guns, you could buy grips, knives, optics, clothing, tactical underwear (literally), and more.

No that's a gun; a Taurus chambered in .45 LC or 410 shotshell.

Okay, one more.

We saw pink guns, gold guns, blank guns, tan guns, but here's a spangled red, white and blue gun.

Sarah Palin's Speech

Sarah Palin visited the NRA Convention today. She received two standing ovations, one when she entered the stage and one when she exited. I've never watched her give a speech in person and have only seen snippets of other speeches. She's a much better speaker than the media wants us to believe.

Her theme included gun rights, hunting rights, and how much the media sucks on these topics. She poked fun at herself when she told us that she had collected some "You must be a Redneck" jokes and realized some of them fit her. She mentioned writing her speech on her hand.

She carries herself very well now and has learned a lot in the past two years. The progressives and media had better not underestimate her.

The speech included nothing about any of her further political hopes. If indeed she has any. But let's face it, she's laughing all the way to the bank now.

I like Sarah Palin. I don't know if she has what IT takes to be President, whatever IT is. But, she has a down home way about her that I find very appealing. She did one thing that I've never seen a speaker do that made me like her even more. After she gave her speech, she walked by the interpreter for the deaf who was standing on the corner of the stage. She turned toward the interpreter, touched her on the shoulder, and thanked her.

At one point, Governor Palin called herself an NRA gun-nut chick, or at least that's what the press thought of her. From one NRA gun-nut chick to another, you go Sarah!

Pre-Convention Travel, Petersburg, Virginia

We got here to Charlotte yesterday a little later than we planned, but not too bad. One thing we like about coming to the conventions is the chance to do side trips in different parts of the country. Yesterday, we got our history freak on and visited the battlefields around Petersburg, Virginia.

The Union troops attacked Petersburg hoping to cut off the Confederate capitol of Richmond. The first attack succeeded, but the commander didn't press his advantage and failed to take Petersburg.

A long siege ensued in terms both of time and distance. Troops built earthworks that stretched forty miles in some places. When you're driving in the National Park, you see unnatural hillocks throughout the forested land. They're the remains of the earthworks; the places where men fought, died, survived.

Petersburg is also the site of the Battle of the Crater. This was one of the most successful failures in military history. The explosion in the tunnel succeeded wildly, but the subsequent attack was a bloody disaster for the Union. Here are a few photos:

Opening to the tunnel Pennsylvania miners dug under Confederate lines.

Reproduction of the "Dictator" mortar the Union troops used to shell Petersburg.

A selection of Civil War cannon including a Dahlgren Boat Gun, Napoleon, Parrot, and a British breechloader.

NRA Thoughts and Convention

Hey, guess what?! I'm still alive.

It's the time for our annual journey to the NRA Convention. This time it's in Charlotte, North Carolina. We plan to blog about the convention as we have done for the past five six years.

As is my usual practice here, I need to discuss the NRA. There are many gunnies out there that find it too compromising. They believe the NRA has made deals in the past that hurt our gun rights. Some of that is true. The NRA has been at the table when compromises were made such as during debate on the 1968 Gun Control Act.

Here's the thing. When you see a political freight train coming at you, do you stand in front of it, wave the Bill of Rights, and order it to stop? That's moral and non-compromising. It may even be on the side of angels, but it's often not effective. There are times when it is better to coax the brakeman into slowing the damn thing down. Maybe even stopping it.

Enough metaphors. There are people in these United States who don't believe the Second Amendment means anything except maybe some nebulous forgotten right for a state to sponsor a militia now replaced by the National Guard.

They believe the Second Amendment is an anachronism that's better ignored. They do not believe you have gun rights no matter how many times you quote the Bill of Rights. No matter how good your arguments are. They think gun rights supporters are beneath contempt. They believe unicorns will descend upon us when the last handgun is melted down (well maybe not unicorns).

These people vote, they influence politicians, they have shattered the plain meaning of the Second Amendment in city after city and in a few states. The NRA had consistently been the only thing that had slowed them down and sometimes stopped them. Other gun rights organizations have done excellent work. But, the NRA is the only one that the gun banners hate and fear.

I think that's worth my support.

We hate to say we told you so......

but we told you so.

It had to start in Massachusetts: Directive 10-289