Moral-Flexibility.Net

While at the small family gathering celebrating my Grandmothers birthday, my cousin Theodore (that’s Mikes older brother) announced that he and his wife Brenda are “officially” pregnant (that is they are far enough along that they feel comfortable breaking the news to us).

Now, despite my mean and nasty comments at the time I wish them the best, and am excited that yet another munchkin is joining the family.

Congrats guys!

(Stock up on sleep now, while you can!)

My AR15 was a last hurrah before parenthood. The gathering and assembly of parts running concurrent with Lisa’s pregnancy. It was an emotionally exhausting time as I worried about Lisa and the baby, worried about money and worried about the future of all three of us. The AR15 project served as an excellent distraction, likely preventing me from developing an ulcer, it kept me busy (perhaps a shade too busy) gathering advice and reading everything I could find about the rifle and it’s history.

Continue Reading »

The last few days have been mildy chaotic.

On Friday we shuttled Jillian to K-W to spend a weekend with my mother (the last weekend available before she and my step-father fly to China to adopt another baby girl, my new sister Carolina). Of course this required us to drive through a “Tornado warning” only made more interesting by the current score of problems plaguing my poor GrandAm (the decision to replace it has been made, we’re now used car shopping for a suitable and inexpensive candidate). On the plus side this time we had enough time on the ground to get in a little social time with both sets of K-W grandparents, which is a vast improvement over our previous “blitzkrieg” style visits.

Saturday was meant to be a day of some relaxation, but clearly the gods were against us. On top of the number of normal chores that had accumulated we had to make ready for a house guest, and then discovered that the cat had an open wound on the back of her neck (it appeared to be flea related, as she had been scratching at the spot non-stop) which brough about another trip to the Vet, an attempt by me to bandage a cat, and then another trip to the Vet.

At some point I got an email from my hosting service advising that my website was approaching it’s bandwidth limit, I spent a few minutes in the referrer logs and discovered I had a couple of bandwidth thieves making use of my image directory, and had to take a few quick steps to correct this. The sad result is that we will likely drop offline around the 26th or 27th by my estimate.

C’est la vie, n’est pas?

I’m angry, angry that once again I am being penalized for the actions of criminals in our city. I have dashed off an email to our esteemed Mayor Miller (should you want to do likewise you can drop him an email yourself), it’s hardly the most eloquent letter I’ve ever written, but I think it speaks to my disappointment and disgust.

Mayor Miller,

My name is Erik Ingerman, I was born and raised here in Toronto, and after living several years in Vancouver, British Columbia I returned to this city. I returned here because I honestly believe that Toronto is the best city in our country, a city I have considered home since I was a child.

The increase in gun violence has troubled us all, but your recent comments as to creating a “gun free zone” in Toronto saddens, disturbs and even angers me.

You see, I am a gun owner. I compete with and collect firearms. These firearms are registered in accordance with the federal regulations and I am licenced to own them. I store my firearms in a manner well beyond the measures set out in the federal regulations, as do those firearms owners I know within the city. We do this because the idea of arming criminals is abhorent to us, we do this because we live here too.

What saddens me is that you didn’t appeal to us gun owners for assistance, asking that we make efforts to secure our firearms against theft. You didn’t seek a situation where we were made part of the solution. You seem to have made the decision that we are part of the problem, that even when we are the victims of theft we are somehow on par with the thugs roaming our streets.

This, Mr. Mayor, is entirely unforgivable. Far from enlisting support from the law abiding gun owners of your city, you have instead managed to isolate and alienate an entire segment of the cities population, and this at a time when unity against the criminal element is of paramount importance.

I wish you well Mr. Miller, but I for one have to question the leadership of the city when the best solution to escalating gun crime is directed not at the criminals themselves, but at law abiding contributing members of the community.

Sincerely,

Erik Ingerman

Feel free to critique, I’m not going to resubmit the email (although I’ll be mailing off a paper copy to city hall this week), but it’ll help next time I’m writing a letter I’m sure.

Following another batch of gun violence here in Toronto Mayor Miller has decided that the city is to become a “gun free zone”. A “legally owned and registered gun free zone” is perhaps a more accurate description. Presumably the justification for this is the use, by criminals, of stolen guns (although the primary case cited by Miller is the theft of a collection of guns from Port Hope, how his “gun free zone” would have helped in any way is never quite explained).

Of course it’s my contention that David Miller is an idiot who is desperate to be seen moving forward with an answer to increasing gun violence, and has latched on to this as a viable solution.

Yes, Miller seems to believe that criminals are reliant on the TTC when shopping for weapons, and that they will certainly not travel any distance to acquire firearms (like say the US, as Miller is more than happy to point out this is where 50% of the firearms used in our city originate).

Miller doesn’t propose assisting the federal firearms center with compliance inspections for registered gun owners to ensure they are storing their firearms properly, Miller doesn’t appeal to Toronto gun owners asking them to exceed the storage requirements to make their guns more difficult to steal. No, Miller proposes more Nanny Legislation as clearly us poor citizens cannot be trusted, and it’s up to our betters to ensure ineffective regulations are created to further penalize law abiding citizens for the acts of criminals.

Mayor Miller, please kiss my ass.

(Hat Tip: Says Uncle)

I have a few pet peeves, foremost among them are the ramblings and assertions made by “amateur lawyers” as to the legal ramifications of specific acts, and what dismal consequences face those that transgress these laws, bylaws or acts. I’ve spent some time dealing with these and, while they all share a few attributes, I have broken them down into two basic types.

The Labour Lawyer: This is the employee that routinely asserts that the employer is in violation of this obscure code or that unknown statute. He views these violations as carte blanche to perform substandard work, and feels they serve as a “get out of jail free card” should he ever be called out on the carpet for his own transgressions of company policy or common sense.

When asked if he has made the employer aware of these alleged violations, he usually expresses suprise. He feels the employee has no responsibility to inform the employer of “unsafe” or “illegal” duties, and is content to sit on the sidelines pointing out the problems from the moral high ground.

Continue Reading »

I did promise better photos when the daylight came, and so here without further drama is a little gun pron for you.

(My Springfield M1, with Danish Bayonet)

Continue Reading »

Well I’m overdue for a Jilly update, so here it is. Jillian began crawling last week, and I mean really crawling. Up until now she had been doing little baby three-point turns to move herself around (that is she would crawl backwards to her objective, sit up and then turn around to face it.

Well last week she left that behind, and is now busy motoring all over our little homestead, grabbing cables, attempting to eat DVDs and constantly turning the volume on the TV up.

Of course all this motoring around makes it rather difficult to get a good picture of her, but she became a little cooperative the other day and I took the opportunity to grab a few more snaps for our small collection.

A few things going on, but I’m not really in the mood to write about them just now. To keep my loyal visitors entertained heres a poorly lit shot of my 2 M1’s and my M14S, sort of an evolutionary theme. Pictured of course (from top to bottom) are my ‘42 Springfield M1, my .308 Breda M1 (FrankenGarand) and my Norinco M14S.

(The three amigos)

I like the photo, but the lighting is crap, I’ll try again later with proper daylight. In the meantime, they seem like a friendly group, no?