Mass Murder: An Oblique Approach

The solemn nature of this post, along with yesterday's, prompts me to abandon my typical whimsical opening. Be sure, though, that I do care for those who read this, and ALL my posts. 

Yesterday, I called for a return to federal and state support of mental health services. I referenced a WORKABLE solution to the specific problem of school shootings, which I had personally been involved in establishing in my home county, about 30 years ago. 

My gift-from-God, happily-ever-after trophy wife Vanessa, the elegant, foxy, praying black grandmother of Woodstock, GA, had some mild concern that my linking the shooting with mental health would serve to further stigmatize that problem. This was troubling to her. As is the case with many, if not most, of you, there are people we know, and love, who are struggling with some mental health issues. I hope NEVER to add to the burden these must bear already.

As I said, Vanessa had some mild concern. This she expressed in both digital and analogue form. The digital manifestations were comments that she added to yesterday's post, as well  as on my BootFace posting. These were written in brief, in passion, and on her scant lunch break.

However, when she got home, she expressed those same concerns in analogue fashion; although, her approach COULD be termed as analogue digital, as she used her DIGITS (fingers, get it?) to get my attention. After grasping my mat off chest hair and drawing me close, and driving her knee into an area I'll not be using for much of anything for a while, she whispered gently, directly into my ear, at about 120 decibels: 

"It's not mental health, dear. It's sin."

I disagree not at all with my wife, for her scintillating exposition gently brushed away any objections I might have. In addition, even before she explained her position to me in a way I could understand, I, too, believe the root problem is one of sin. In fact, I'm inclined to say the sin runs far deeper than what my Sweet One was suggesting.

Vanessa, despite my jokes about her affirmative approach, is above all a nurturing mother (and grandmother and great-grandmother). When she heard of the shootings, her heart  turned first to the families of the eight dead, and the wounded, and almost simultaneously to the family of the shooter. (My policy is NEVER to mention the name of shooters, thus I can't identify them here.) Vanessa is appalled and horrified that the innocents are paying a terrible price for something they bear no responsibility for. 

And thus, not ONLY does she wish to protect the people suffering from mental illness from being compared to a murderer, she also can NOT tolerate the idea of the bringer of so much suffering and grief being excused by a casual classification as "he is mentally ill." Who could NOT appreciate her perspective?

I agree with her. One of the FEW things we know about the shooter, is that he stated that he was driven to eliminate sources of sexual temptation, stating that he was a sex addict. Clearly, treating other humans as an object, only useful as a means of gratifying lust, is sin. If you are willing to admit that such a thing as 'sin' exists, then treating other humans as things has to qualify. 

In fact, I regard a core element of most, if not EVERY vile action to be regarding humans as things. Genocide: get rid of those things; they aren't us, therefore they aren't worth anything. Looting pension plans: the people who invested their life savings aren't real; they are barely significant as entries in a ledger somewhere. Slavery; Rape; Pedophilia; all have at the core the concept that these are not humans to be considered, but objects to exploit. Even trivial, misdemeanor crimes likely have some element of objectifying humans. Would you speed in traffic, if you were thinking about the people in the other cars as people, not barriers to your progress?

Four dead; one wounded.

I do NOT know what transpired inside the three businesses that were attacked on Tuesday. I know the names of the businesses; I know that seven of the eight people killed were women, and six of those were Korean; and, I know that the shooter regraded them as temptations. I have ZERO evidence that they did anything unethical, immoral, or illegal. And Atlanta Mayor Keisha Bottoms quickly, and correctly stated that there was NEVER going to be any blaming of the victims. She is right, she is right. SHE IS RIGHT.

But, let us return to the concept of sin, and to the idea of victims.

Even without the assumption that the employees of these businesses were performing lewd acts, I maintain that they were already victims, before the shooter entered the building.

About five years ago, my family lost a close friend, a smart, charming, beautiful young single mom who had grown up eating meals and hanging out at Vanessa's house, classmates of our (now adult) daughters. Struggling to make it on her own, while earning a degree in psychology, she took a job as an "exotic dancer." In other words, a stripper. 

She was a victim. Men paid outrageous sums of money to see her take her clothes off, and that is all they valued her for. She was a victim, in part because there was NO WAY that she could make the money she needed to support herself and her little girl, and pay for school, without being a stripper. 

Look, I GET it. Consenting adults. Freedom of speech. And so on. ALL of those are good ideas, and I will not speak against them. 

It's just that I happen to know, via private sources, that the women in the clubs are paid as independent contractors, and thus are denied ALL fringe benefits, INCLUDING employer payments into Social Security, any health insurance; AND!!!! they are not truly in the status of independent contractors.

So, let us NOT blame the victims, but let us DO consider the sins against them. 

Mayor Bottoms: you had four women killed in your city. Were these women essentially forced into working in these environments because there was NO OTHER WAY they could support themselves and their families? I think that's systematic, institutional sin. Were they ALSO being paid as independent contractors, without really qualifying? Also institutional sin. 

Also: two of those killed in Cherokee County, and all four killed in Atlanta, were Korean women. I don't know; perhaps those six consisted of ALL the Korean women working in massage parlors. Maybe the shooter went after them specifically, although the cops are saying that doesn't seem to be the case. But if we were to investigate, and find that Korean women are vastly over-represented in employees of massage parlors, then I think that is evidence of a systematic sin. 

I'm sick about this. I'm sick thinking about the way things were before the shooting, and I'm sick thinking about the fact that unless the institutional sin is addressed, victims will still suffer.

SO: I'm going to start by writing my congressman, to address the mental health issues I discussed yesterday, and I'm going to contact the IRS to see if they will investigate the employment status of the women in the shadowy industry. And, I'm gonna pray, too.

Peace be on your household. 

  

When Will We Pay The Price To Stop Random Mass Murder?

I had written something else for today, but then I discovered that a 21-year-old Woodstock man had murdered eight people in three separate shootings last night.

Police identified the shooter, and somehow discovered he was heading south. He was arrested in Crisp County (county seat = Cordele)  in a combined Georgia State Patrol and Crisp County Sheriff's Office pursuit. The location is a little more than halfway to Florida from the Atlanta area. 

I'm a little confused about the locations where he committed the murders. The one a few miles from me had the word "Massage" in the business name; the other two , "Spa;" some of the articles have identified all three as massage parlors. We do know that most of the victims were female, and reportedly at least four were Korean. (And so far, Newsweek has the best information.)

I believe that it is inevitable that the same tired old arguments are going to be dragged out again. 

One group will shriek "No more thoughts and prayers! Time to pass sensible gun control legislation!" and then move to ban, or restrict...something. Or, all things related to firearms.

One group will shriek "The only solution to a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun!" and then decry any attempt to take action as un-American, wicked, and dictatorial.

And they will BOTH have missed the point. 

I know this, because EVERY time there has been violence, they have missed the point. Actually, I don't think most of the Big Mouths on either side REALLY are invested in solving the problem. That's because it will require them to advocate for something that will IMMEDIATELY cost money.

The problem is mental health, and it's a problem because:

1. Our country, and individual states, made the decision to get out of the mental health business
2. A few private hospital groups discovered they could charge insurance companies $900/day to provide mental health beds (including addiction issues), and keep people in the hospital for a year or more
3. Insurance companies finally got fed up at the ABUSE of the system, and cracked down under the umbrella of  'managed care.'

It was GREAT for taxpayers! At first. And the ability of insurance companies to limit just how many days they would pay for helped their bottom line. But it was AWFUL for the general public.

First, it tossed a LOT of people with poor social skill out on the street, and we had an immediate homeless problem.

Second, as mental hospitals and treatment centers had their income slashed, the budgets for services got slashed as well, and what USED to be a pretty good safety net vanished. I addressed some of that in my post about solving school shootings . 

Here's what we have now:

• You have reason to believe that someone is a danger to themselves or others.
• You report that to your doc, or the cops, or county mental health
• A designated professional person evaluates them, and makes a recommendation
• Pretty much, nothing happens.

You see, there are only a tiny number of mental health beds. The evaluators KNOW this. So, if there are not beds to place a person for treatment, then something OTHER than hospitalization is recommended. Sometime after I wrote my post on school shootings, I discovered that at least ONE time, the Parkland shooter had been referred for an evaluation, and: nothing happened. So, 17 people DIED, more were wounded. And nothing of significance has changed.

Nor will it this time, if we leave it up to the shriekers. Oh, some legislation might get passed; in fact, there is already some ineffective (legislation) which the House passed, now in the Senate. And some of the shriekers on the other side will protest.

PLEASE HEAR THIS: if they had WANTED to solve a problem, it would have been solved! None of those who shriek WANT the problem to go away, because it makes for a GREAT fund-raiser topic. Yes, I am a life member of the NRA, and they don't want the problem solved. Not saying that's true of all members, nor of other groups, but the Big Mouth doesn't want to throw this football away.

This will ONLY get fixed when We, The People, make a demand on those in state and local government to 

SHUT UP, and TAKE OUR MONEY, 

and re-implement a public mental health safety net. 

We can choose: pay for it in money, or pay for it in blood. 

There are no other solutions.

Peace be on your household; and mine; and theirs, as well.

Rogue Magic, by Amanda S Green writing as Ellie Ferguson

 A great good morning to all my friends and neighbors out there in Internet Land! And to family members who have dropped by, I'll be seeing some of you soon, and some on the Other Side. Meanwhile, Power Llama coffee is G-o-o-d for morning Go Power.

It seems that because the house is recently paid off, therefore we need braces, dentures, a newer car, and other medical things not covered by insurance. Kenneth is a sophomore, Alicia Ann a freshman, and so, for the first time since 1992, it might be possible, or even desirable, to consider a move in a few years after they finish high school. 

Selling the Patterson Domicile would bring in stupid amounts of dough, but: where would we move? We have 15 grandchildren (with one on the way), 1 great-grandchild (with one on the way), and we have a deeply felt need to babysit. At the time of the contemplated relocation, four of the grands will be adults, and the balance are in clusters: West Virginia, north Georgia, central Georgia, and who knows? One cluster of three might move to Colorado or East McKeesport. 

What can my gift-from-God, happily-ever-after trophy wife Vanessa, the elegant, foxy, praying black grandmother of Woodstock, GA, and I do? Where ever shall we go?

Since Tara is right out, I'm thinking Mossy Creek, Texas.

Rogue Magic (Amazon Associates Link)

Cover Image: Biker Girl by Andrey Armyagov. 

Is it not lovely?

Cover design by Amanda S. Green.

Is it not lucid?

Now, don't get your panties in a wad! Sure, there are some things about Mossy Creek that are a bit bizarre, even for Texas. I've lived in San Antonio twice (1959-60, Sunset Hill ES;  1972-73, C-2, Medical AIT & BAMC, Fort Sam Houston), and while the dirt was the wrong color (not a speck of red clay anywhere!), I never saw anything more bizarre than an ancient Green Beret Master Sergeant.

And, as strange as that might be, Mossy Creek has houses that will lock the doors to intruders, and people that shape-shift (in retrospect, the Master Sergeant might be a shape-shifter).

On the other hand, Vanessa is a legal parapro, and Mossy Creek has some BODACIOUS attorneys who would hire her in a moment. AND! They now have a new veterinarian, who I expect would do WONDERS for our cats, and we could finally get those puppies I've been wanting for ages.

AND! They have BIKER CHICKS! Admittedly, they ride classier bikes than I do, but they don't have an attitude about it. (SEARCH COMPLETED : no snootiness found.)

I could go on and on about why I'd like to move to Mossy Creek, but I'll sum it up this way: If I can't be a superhero, I'd at least like to live in a superhero-friendly environment. Also, NONE of the people with non-standard abilities are primarily that. Every character HAS a character, including those who are not primaries. Green (or Ferguson, if you prefer) writes real people. 

Depending on whether you count prequels or not, this is #5 or #3 in the Mossy Creek/Eerie Side of the Tracks saga. At least, that's by my count; AND more has been published. 

It seems that there is a yearning for the otherwise, no matter what your origin is. If what I have read of some some pre-Industrial Age societies is correct, a regular part of growing up included a vision quest. It's my understanding that snooty rich people took a year-long tour of some parts of the world, before settling down to run an empire, eat bon-bons and persecute the working class; some clusters of peoples have what is referred to as a wanderjahr, and I wonder if the mission year done by some high-commitment churches might fill this role; for my cluster, it was either a term or so of military service, and/or a hitch in the pen. Whatever the reason, there are a LOT of Mossy Creek folk who have gone away, or been driven away, and are now drawn to return.

Keep that in your mind; it cannot POSSIBLY be a spoiler, if it is a major plot line: folks are drawn to return.

The lady on the bike is the hard-working veterinarian Dr. Jacqueline Powell, known as Jax by people who care about her. She is one who was driven away, mostly by her parents. What kind of parents were they? Well, if Jax had been a dog, the veterinarian would have reported them for abuse, neglect, exploitation, and refusal to be nice (that's not really a thing. btw). And what draws her back is a 911-type call from her goddaughter Ali. 

Here's how important the call is: Jax KNOWS she is dumping her job in responding by immediately booking a flight. At the precise time of the call, she doesn't care for some aspects of Mossy Creek AT ALL; that matters not at all. She is DEEPLY bonded to Ali, to Ali's mother Quinn, and to Ali's aunt Annie.

I had to make a spreadsheet to diagram all the relationships. They aren't COMPLICATED, but there are four generations (at least) involved, and I've been reading this series for some small number of years.

So, what's the emergency? NOT TELLING YOU! HA HA HA HA HA!

I will say this, and it's a clue, and not a spoiler: NOTHING is more toxic than a toxic family, and nothing brings that toxicity to a boil than fights over money. (I actually think, courtesy of Bunker Hunt, that the play is not for money, it's for power, and money is just how we keep score.)

So, how do the superpowers enter?  NOT TELLING YOU! HA HA HA HA HA!

However, it's FAR more important to have a rested, resolute heart, than it is to be able to leap tall buildings at a single bound.

There is a brief, mildly explicit sex scene between two consenting adults forming a permanent pair bond. It's my understanding that this is essential for literature in this genre; it certainly isn't enough to attract porn addicts. If you don't like that, it will be easy enough to skip those two or three pages. I am strongly biased toward sexual activity as a participatory rather than spectator sport, and I didn't find it problematic; YMMV, but don't get all bluenose on us, okay?
As an exercise, I searched for the terms "love" and "lust." Of the three appearances of "lust," one of them was a biker expressing admiration for a motorcycle. That leaves the ration at 44:1, in favor of love; hardly an X rating. If there is adult language or drug use, I didn't see it. (I can't remember if there are any other things I'm supposed to notice/warn/wail about.)

"Rogue Magic" was a delightful book for me to read. I found it to be upbeat, even though there was the potential for tragedy at MULTIPLE points. Those situations are treated seriously, but the character defects of the Good Guys never tend toward betrayal of those beloved, for personal benefit. There is also a great reveal that has implications for the entire series, not just this installment.  

Peace be on your household.

A Very Strange Week

 A strange week. 

Monday, my sisters came up from Macon,  and we had a Bucket List visit, at the home of the Windsong Pattersons, Jordan and Courtney and Heath and Eliott and Miss Evelyn, Soz and Fiona.

Lunch was Chicken Garden Skillet, which was a GrandBebe special from 50+ years ago. At lunch, we talked a lot about how GrandBebe was doing, and the difficulty of visiting her under COVID restrictions. 

We also talked about GranJan, down in Jacksonville, and how the blessed McIvors had moved her back into their home, with hospice services. I wondered out loud about how they were taking on the maintenance of Jan in her final days; Carol didn't say anything, but just pointed to Heaven. Yes.

 Then we were off to the gun range at Big Woods Goods. Wendy and I both had new pistols we hadn't had the chance to try out, and Carol was trying to find something to replace the hand cannon she had carried for years. She liked my Beretta Model 81, in .32 ACP.

Carol, Wendy, and Me

Tuesday was GrandBebe's 93rd birthday, and Carol and Wendy got to do another remote visit with her at Carlisle Place. 

And I did some follow-up on firearms issues raised on the range trip.

Wednesday Alicia spent four hours in the dentist's chair in the morning, AND STILL WENT TO SCHOOL!!!! Which I find to be both virtuous and encouraging. And that evening, I used Old NFO's grandmother's recipe, and made a giant pot of jambalaya. 

Astoundingly delicious.

Thursday  started with sad news. GranJan passed away. She became a part of our family in 1971, when she married our dad, and was an amazing person. Dad passed in 2007, so they were together for 36 years. We have kept close contact as possible since then; in fact,  when she remarried a sweetheart suitor from her youth, I gave her away, in the name of her children and grandchildren.

I passed the news along to as many of the Patterson Clan as I have contact information for. The Moose was able to stop by for a bit; we had Old NFO's jambalaya, and shared joy and sorrow.

And JUST as I was going to bed, I get an email from one of my primary surplus firearms vendors, and he has a new shipment in, and it has four of the Beretta Mark 81 pistols that Carol liked.

Red Friday, and I'm writing this. The offer-to-buy MUST be emailed to the vendor at 10:00 EXACTLY, and I don't even know if Carol is ready to buy or not. 

So, what to do? 

Years ago, I learned that tasks/assignments should be classed as important/not important, and urgent/not urgent. If it's important and urgent, do it FIRST. Important & non-urgent, do second. The other two, do them as you please. 

So, writing this was first. I had some heavy things on my heart, and writing them down is a part of healing for me. "Weeping may endure for a night, But joy comes in the morning." (Ps 30:5, NKJV)

Actually, coffee and cereal was first, now that I think about it.

Next?

I guess I've got time to prepare my offer to buy a Beretta Mod 81.

Peace be on your household.

Fan fiction of the OOOPS! type: a proposal

I wish to propose a new type of fan-fic, which I think off as the OOOPS! style.

Take a well-known scene from a book written by someone in Sarah's Diner (or a Baen author) (or whoever you want) and at the height of the action, screw something up. 

It should NOT be due to a newly-introduced character defect of the protagonist, but rather from a bit of randomness that throws off the entire plot.

NO resolution is needed!

An example follows; this is from the second Belisarius novel, actually packaged in the somewhat recent omnibus version.

Background, with (limited) spoilers: 

A faction in India has the backing of an evil supercomputer from the future; the plan is to rule the world and eliminate timocracy forever, thus maintaining blood purity. Rome’s best general, Belisarius, has been provided with a supercomputer as well, sent back to prevent the changes in the timeline. His computer exists in the form of a jewel, which he keeps with him all the time. 
Belisarius has persuaded the Indian leaders of his intent to betray Rome, as a way of gaining access to their plans. However, he is forced to meet with the enemy computer, which is a near-perfect lie detector. He is forced to flee by jumping out a window into the river.

What follows is the text of Eric Flint and/or David Drake, the authors, except for the last line:

Belisarius reached the window. There was no time for anything but a blind plunge. He dove straight through the silk-mesh screen, fists clenched before him. The silk shredded under the impact. Belisarius sailed cleanly through the window. He found himself plunging through the night air toward the surface of the Jamuna. The assassin's hurled knife missed him by an inch. Belisarius watched the knife splash into the river. Less than a second later, he followed it in.

He decided that he had time, finally, to shed his clothing. He needed to wait, anyway, to observe whatever search pattern the galleys would adopt. It was the work of a minute to remove his clothing. Another minute, to remove his boots without losing them. Another minute, carefully, to make sure that the pouch carrying his small but extremely valuable pile of coins and gems was securely attached to his waist. He reached to secure the pouch containing the jewel around his neck...it was GONE! 

OOOOPS!

So, I suggest that you go back and consider your favorite works, and utterly destroy the plot, just for fun. Again: this should NOT be due to a previously unrevealed character defect by the primary players; Johnny Rico's suit can fail at bad time because he forgot to gas it up, but he shouldn't be revealed to be a vampire when he sits down to dine with Carmen. 

But you can do that if you want to, I suppose.

Peace be on your household.

Second Chance Angel, Griffin Barber and Kacey Ezell

 A great good morning to all my friends and neighbors in Internet Land! And to family members who have dropped by, I surely do miss seeing your faces. Well, some of your faces.

Cover Art, and Amazon Associates link

Since I read "Gilded Cage" in the "Fistful of Credits" anthology back in 2017, the writing of Kacy Ezell has astounded me; click here to read my review of that story. I don't recall ever devoting an entire blog post to a single story in a collection, but this one was well worth the exception. She's not my ONLY favorite author, but she is definitely at the top of the list.

All of my favorites write about why THIS exploding spaceship is significant. Sure, the suits of the Mechanized Infantry are fantastic in themselves, but it's Johnny Rico we care about it. Kipling tells us FIRST about the widow in England who weeps for her lost son, before we know about the samadh of a hundred heads. 

It's PERSONAL, see? 

Therefore, at least a PART of my reading/reviewing plan includes ANY of the new releases by authors who I have marked as good story-tellers. That doesn't mean ANYBODY gets an automatic pass; I've written at least one one-star review for an author at the very top of my list. I mention that because I've had a person who hate Heinlein accuse me of indiscriminately tossing out five-star reviews. (Since my reviews tend to run LONG, I also reject out the "tossing out" accusation...)

In line with my stated goal, from time to time, I get a pre-release review copy of a book, so I can post an early review on Amazon and elsewhere. Unfortunately, Life, The Universe and Everything has decided that I make a good storage location for all the disturbance not otherwise allocated, and this has interfered with my ability to read and review. I wish to point out that my gift-from-God, happily-ever-after trophy wife Vanessa, the elegant, foxy, praying black grandmother of Woodstock, GA and I have 10 adult children, 15 grandchildren, with one on the way, and one great-grandchild, with the second due this spring. Any person who loves a LOT of people is going to have multiple opportunities to Get Through Things. 

Thus, this review emerges some six months after I was given access to a review copy. I regret the delay; it is not a function of anything but the influence of LTUE.

I see from other reviews that the noir aspects of the story have been acknowledged; personally, it was a lot more specific than that. However, I mis-remembered, and had the protagonist labeled as "Sam Spade." His last name IS Muck, after all, which is something you might use a spade to eliminate. However, reviewing the hard-boiled detectives disclosed that the big Unresolved-Sexual-Tension-duo was Mike Hammer and his secretary Velda.

Ralston Muck is the Big Lug, although he's not a former cop working as a private eye in a seamy office in LA; instead, he's a former MILITARY cop, working as a bouncer in a seamy bar in Last Stop Station.

I like science as much as anybody, I guess, but science alone does NOT make for a good story. Here, the necessary-but-not-sufficient science aspects include: humans were recruited by aliens to fight a galactic war; Artificial Intelligence is advanced enough that they run major environmental functions; relatively cheap interstellar transport and communications is real; lots of aliens exist, and interact; humans can receive AI modifications that enhance various capabilities. The rest of the story is the really good part (one exception).

At the time of these events, humans have gotten over the trauma of Earth's destruction. It's something they are aware of, but nobody is bent out of shape about it anymore. The identified Bad Guys, the Xlodich, have been wiped out, and life goes on. One of the places it's going on is Last Stop Station; think Sam Spade's Los Angeles.

The presumptive heroine of the story is Siren, a singer in the dive where Muck works. She's only with us at the very beginning of the book; it's her abrupt disappearance that triggers the main plot line. Muck gets involved because he was the last person to see her alive, having escorted her home after a fan attempted to get to her while she was on stage. 

Here's the BIG event: Siren's implanted AI is somehow removed, and finds her way to Muck's shabby domicile, and inhabits his body! This implant, taking the designated term for such entities as a personal identifier (Angel) is determined to find out what happened to Siren, and get back inside her body again. For reasons explained in the story, she is a semi-welcome presence. Key passage, narrated by Angel:

"I remained silent awhile, fascinated by how thoroughly I had misread my temporary host. Muck was far more than I’d thought. I don’t know why I had thought he would be any less complex than Siren, but I had."

(Kacey Ezell and Griffin Barber. Second Chance Angel (Kindle Locations 1049-1050). Blackstone Publishing. Kindle Edition. )

This is really the beginning of what I term 'the good part,' which involves assorted entities interacting with each other. Although science is involved, frequently, it is the interactions that matter, and Barber and Ezell have a lovely ability to imagine and describe the interactions so that they are believable and compelling. I'm not familiar with Barber's other work, but Ezell has astounded me on numerous occasions with her compact characterizations of vivid, sometimes horrifying, events.

I mentioned earlier that there was one exception to the good stuff being non-science. I found that exception in the way that interactions, extending as far as mortal combat, are described between machine intelligences. The authors string together words that I don't think were ever designed to represent struggle, and make make conversations between AIs a real event, and then escalate that, so that AI combat seems as bloody as Hammer's kick to the legs and .45 slug to the guts. (You thought the Mike Hammer references were over, didn't you?) 

I'm tempted to suggest that some of the content might not be suitable for teens; then I remember that I was reading James Bond when I was 11. But, sure; if you are going to give this to your teen or pre-teen, make sure you are available to talk to them. I DO think there would be some GREAT conversations held about the relationship between Angel and Muck, concerning their reactions to initiating intimacy.  That bit HAS to be Ezell's; prove me wrong.

Peace be on your household.

The Average Joe’s Homemade Submachine Gun Prop to Deter Tyranny

The front cover, and an Amazon Associates link:

The Front Cover!

I should know better than to put certain books in my reviewing queue. They clog things up.
And yet, I do it. 
This is one of those books. I bought it back at the beginning of December, and read through it in less than a day. So, why has it taken me so long to write a review?

In the first place, I had to decide exactly how I was going to treat the content of the book: go surface, or go deep. I guess I’ll find out now what my decision was.
In the second place, since this is a “how-to-build-it” book, I had to decide whether I was going to actually build the item. That is NOT a trivial choice! In the end, I decided NOT to attempt the build, because I don’t have some of the equipment called for. 

Very clearly, this is a book on which very small resources were devoted to design choices. The front cover is actually nicely restrained, in my opinion. The title and author’s name are legible white type on a black background; I think I would have preferred larger, or at least thicker, type. For some reason, the words “gun prop” are not capitalized in the title. 
The other feature on the front cover is a nice, clear sepia-toned picture of the components of the submachine gun prop.
In my opinion, the back cover is: a mess. A wall of reddish text is placed on a tan/khaki/light brown background, and the combination makes the letters blur. I don’t know how that makes sense. Shouldn’t the covers be an advertisement, a tease? Well, the back cover is more in the line of a treatise. I would scrap the red-text-on-brown approach, and delete 90% of the text. 

Other observations on the structure of the book:

• While divided into chapters, the book is NOT paginated. 
• Other than the sepia-tone front cover pic, all of the other graphics are either black and white, or grayscale. Thus, it’s merely adequate detail; some extra attention might be necessary to truly comprehend what is depicted. 
• This is complicated by the fact that almost NONE of the photographs are adequately labeled, with directional arrows linking text to the detail in the pic. By way of contrast, the design of the solvent trap is perfectly labeled.
• No one will ever buy this book as a manual for correct usage of the English language. It doesn’t matter; language is primarily to communicate, not to be graded in a classroom setting. This manual effectively communicates via the text. However, labeling the photographs as described above would vastly improve the product. 
• Included in the first chapter is a list of the tools and materials needed. Of the tools, the only item that might not be found in a reasonably well-equipped home shop is a welder, although an angle grinder might also be absent. Helpfully, the author includes price estimates for these items. However, I think he’s over-optimistic on the price of the MIG welder. He has one sample listed at just under $100; the least expensive unit I found in my area ran $135. 

I am FAITHFULLY going to adhere to the author’s practice of referring to the item as a gun prop, and not a firearm. A person who follows the instructions given, to the letter, will not have committed a felony, but will have an amusing non-functional display item. 
Were this a functional device, it would be prohibited by a number of laws and regulations. For example, since 1986, it has been illegal to manufacture a fully-automatic firearm for use by civilians. In addition, the solvent trap, if placed on a functional firearm, would significantly reduce the sound of firing. These devices, for some bizarre reason, were proscribed in 1934 unless the owner received a tax stamp. 
Fortunately, in “Chapter 4: Bolt/Bolt carrier,” the author EXPLICITLY describes how to avoid accidentally turning this inert device into a functional fully-automatic machine gun. That’s a critical issue, because a felony is the alternative.

So: what is the value of this book?

Clearly, the value cannot be found as a guide to making a functional machine gun. Not only would that be a felony, the plans for this simple design are available for download from any number of websites. This is, after all, the most common design that turns up in police raids in Australia, which has one of the most restrictive firearms policies around.

On the other hand, the relative cheapness of the materials used to make the gun prop suggests to me that it might make a really nice project for learning techniques. At the end of the attempt, even a bungled assembly would still make an eye-catching display; after all, the item is inert, so what difference does it make if the movable parts don’t move?

It also makes for a nice addition to the library for people who like bizarre things.

Final note: the title page says that this is Title #1 in the series of “The Average Joe’s Tyranny Deterrents.” A search for subsequent titles found nothing pertinent.

Peace be on your household.