A horrified and heart broken nation must endure more needless pain as the NRA whores for more of their gun industry pimps.
The NRA, more than anything else, has twisted and distorted the constitution. They've done it for money.
Legislation is now pending that would make suppressors more readily available in the US.
Photo by Niki Chan Wylie for NPR
They are also called "silencers." What you need to know about silencers is what you've seen in film, television or have read about in fiction.
The gun industry is now trying to say silencers will protect the hearing of hunters. That is Wayne LaPierre style bull shit at it's million dollar best. There are other ways hunters can protect their ears.
Suppressors also suppress flash, meaning in a situation like Las Vegas a silencer would have made it more difficult for law enforcement to sight where the shooter was.
The only people who "need" silencers are assassins or criminals, or the agents of government trying to combat them.
The NRA may once have provided an important role in American culture. That ended when they became shills for the gun industry. They lie and they distort and they help kill.
I hold Wayne LaPierre partially responsible for the Las Vegas slaughter. I add to that those members of the US Congress who defeated gun tightening legislation that followed the Sandy Hook Elementary school massacre in Newtown. The majority of Americans wanted the legislation and it looked as though lawmakers got the message. That is until LaPierre and the NRA began spreading their favors. They enable terror. Their fingerprints are all over Las Vegas.
The incident in Arizona is tragic. A shooting instructor is dead and a 9 year old girl must live the rest of her life with the trauma of having killed a man. Tragic yes, but avoidable and criminally stupid.
There is something repugnant. Pay a couple hundred dollars and go from your hotel in Vegas to a shooting range where your child is given a chance to handle serious and obviously deadly weapons and then finish with hamburgers?Bullets and Burgers! Has the All American vacation come to this? What impression does that leave on a young mind?
Having used an Uzi and knowing the kind of power it possesses, I think it should never be put into the hands of a child for commercial purposes. I've been instructed by FBI firearms instructors and US Army trainers and state police trainers and know from personal experience that lethal weapons are meant to be handled and used in ways other than at a tourist shooting range where sissy or junior can fire away and eat a hamburger before going back to that cultural bastion of Las Vegas.
A friend wrote yesterday she thinks the parents should be charged with manslaughter. Maybe so. But certainly age limits should be imposed or perhaps the operation shut down entirely.
ALSO NOT SMART
That is smoke above the camp chairs, drifting into the 70 degree plus late morning temperature. It comes from the fire ring located immediately adjacent to bone dry grassland scrub near a forest suffering the third year of a drought. I can think of no sane reason the state of California permits open fires. That is more so during summer, especially in drought years. A careless act or a wayward ember could create a disastrous consequence. It happens.
I've enjoyed camp fires in California parks, but during winter, near a stream or the Pacific and never in a drought. Even then I thought the practice was foolish, deep in a forest or under majestic redwoods. The potential consequence is simply too much for a practice fraught with carelessness, inexperience and hazards.
Stupidity stalks us when you see a cigarette butt on a dry and dusty trail. It is rude when people drop butts in public places, but it is idiocy A) to smoke on a trail and B) to drop a butt near tinder like scrub in a drought. Duh! How can anyway not see the folly in that? As is obvious this offender failed even to stomp and mash the butt to assure no hot ash could be left to create a fire.
AND NOW, MORE PLEASANT DIVERSIONS
NOSTALGIC
ANOTHER THROWBACK
Indianapolis Raceway Park in the '70's. There was a time I'd jump at any chance to get in any racing machine.
On this day we were running hot laps, going for speed with no one else on the track. That was probably a good thing.
So maybe it just takes the curiosity and questioning nature of an old journalist, but I've got to wonder what the federal government, or at least a sliver of it, is up to with the legendary and notorious Area 51. BACKGROUND:The National Atomic Testing Museum,an affiliate of the Smithsonian Institution, is a first class and highly informative museum. (Link to it above to see that is so.) It deals, in detail, with the history of American nuclear development and testing. It is a credible, balanced and historic record, done in an accessible and even entertaining way. I've been there before and urge all visitors to Las Vegas to leave the strip and the usual Vegas past times for something very special. Yes I know telling Vegas visitors and habitue's to visit a science museum is a kind of odd duck drill, but I persist none the less. It is of course next door to where the testing was done, so despite the Vegas address, it is a serious place and good for the public record. NOW THE CURIOSITY: As you see above Aliens are hanging around the somewhat staid and straightforward museum. It is part of a brand new AREA 51 MYTH OR REALITY exhibition. Here's the teaser video.
I think the exhibit is a bit on the hokey side, but it also
contains some surprising documentation and data about
the air base, facilities, history and air craft of Area 51, Groom Lake Airbase.
The exhibit is a blend of serious and silly. The tone of the display is Men in Black, but inside are documents, records, displays and video pieces that weave an intricate fabric of
flight research, reverse engineering, investigative journalism, testing programs, schematics of the compound,
maps of the runway, including what is perhaps one of the world's longest, the government's flip flop on the infamous Roswell incident and campy culture, plus more.
It is this curious mixture of pop culture, UFO conspiracy ideas, military flight experimentation and serious science that has raised my curiosity. There is a more open acknowledgment of Area 51 history, fact and achievement than I have seen in decades. And that the museum and the cooperating government agencies mix it with the popular lore of the Area 51 myth is even more curious.
A couple of the stronger video elements include an
interview with the director of the SETI-Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, program and an appeal by a former Air Force General and scientist saying it is time to allow the military and science to consider UFO's and aliens in a serious way that does not damage reputation or credibility.
So I ponder, what is the real message here?
But then again, it is Las Vegas, and maybe this all should stay there. What do you think?
POST CARDS FROM THE EDGE
My buddy Jim is standing next to the cut out of the actual
Miss Atomic Bomb of 1957. And for those of you with visual problems, her cover up is indeed the mushroom cloud. As a kid, I had nightmares about the mushroom cloud, especially on those days we'd see a film strip of nuclear blasts and then do a "duck and cover" drill beneath our desks.
I remember Mrs. Rogers threatening to give me a "paddling if I didn't get under my desk like all of my class mates." I protested that if a nuclear bomb was to hit anywhere near Muncie Indiana, the desk would be scant protection, so what was the point? I'd rather watch the windows blow in than get under the desk.
However, I might have been less anxious if I had seen a film strip of Miss Atomic Bomb. It's all in the spin isn't it? See you down the trail.
There is a lot about Las Vegas that is, can we agree on the word "excessive?" The Scot's blood in me can't help but swirl about a bit. The place is a haven of money-spent. But at the Bellagio it has purchased beauty, on a grand scale of course. The garden is a marvel and so too is the Dale Chihuly glass art. They provided this blogger a chance to reprise some color for you.
The frame below is a tribute to the Monet exhibit on display at the Bellagio Fine Art Gallery, an affiliate of the Boston Museum of Fine Art. BTW, seeing that show is money well spent, according to this tightwad. It is nicely curated and presented.
And as you know, you can't go anywhere without going through the Casinos. That's just the way they design and lay out the foot traffic. So, despite what is a prohibition from shooting in the gaming rooms, here's an accidental snap. While it is lacking in players, don't you think it looks a bit anemic, by comparison?
ENTER ONLY IF YOU WANT TO SEE ANOTHER SIDE OF VEGAS BEAUTIFUL RED ROCKS
Less than an hour west and north of the strip is a world
apart from the Vegas that comes to mind. Magnificent mountains, light and the interplay of both. To take you "close to the action" there is a loop drive and a dozen options for hiking, walking and climbing.
The only special effects here are provided time and nature. These old Yucca heads look like old shrunken heads indeed.
As one in our party noted, they look like old spirits.
This trail takes you over and through slanting rocks.
Look carefully in the frame below. How'd you like that view?
On the mid horizon line and you can see the beginnings of the Vegas most people think of. See you down the trail.
From the days of Bugsy Siegel on, everything about
Las Vegas has been improbable. But, almost everything about it is visual, from the serene desert and ringing mountains to the phenomenal spread of civilization.
Of course Steve Wynn is the reigning patriarch of the opulent, and in his case, stylish use of architecture.
And it is a place for gawking and shooting.
It's also a place that employs lighting designers and a sense of the theatrical.
You don't need to drop a dime in a casino to get a pay out. All you need are eyes.
