In The Mailbox: 07.09.20

It was a violent night in Chicago on the heels of a violent of Fourth of July weekend including the fatal shooting of a 7-year-old girl on the West Side.
19 people were shot, four fatally Monday in violence across Chicago including six people who were shot in Gresham on the South Side.
According to Chicago police, a group of people were hanging around 10:40 p.m. in the 1300-block of West 76th Street when someone began shooting in their direction.
A 25-year-old man was struck in the chest and taken to Stroger Hospital in critical condition, police said. Two other men, 23 and 21, were stuck in the left thigh and buttocks and taken to the same hospital in good condition.
A 19-year-old man was struck multiple times in the back and taken to the University of Chicago Medical Center in critical condition, police said. A 20-year-old man was struck in the ankle and taken to the same hospital in good condition.
A 22-year-old woman was struck in both legs and taken to Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn in good condition.
A man was killed and two other people were wound in a shooting in Lawndale on the West Side.
About 11:10 p.m. officers found a 30-year-old man unresponsive in the 3600-block of West Douglas Boulevard, with multiple gunshot wounds, Chicago police said. He was rushed to Mt. Sinai Hospital in critical condition, but died a short time later. . . .
From Thursday at 6 p.m. through Sunday night, 87 people were shot, 17 fatally in Chicago including 7-year-old Natalie Wallace who was fatally shot . . . Saturday night.

It’s not just Chicago, it’s a nationwide epidemic:

Neighborhoods in some of the largest US cities erupted in gun violence over the Fourth of July weekend, killing an estimated 160 people and leaving more than 500 wounded from Friday night to Sunday.
Georgia’s governor, Brian Kemp, declared a state of emergency on Monday after 31 people were shot and five killed over the weekend in Atlanta. He authorized 1,000 national guard troops to “protect state property and patrol our streets”. . . .
In New York, a series of shootings on Saturday and Sunday claimed at least nine lives and wounded 41 others in a rise in incidents in some neighborhoods. A 15-year-old boy was wounded in the Bronx.
And in Philadelphia, a six-year-old boy died of a gunshot wound amid five fatal shootings in about five hours on Sunday afternoon, police said.

Democrats can’t blame white racist cops for this, so they don’t care.

Category: Crime, Racism

Fireworks: Trust the Experts!

Posted on | July 6, 2020 | 1 Comment

Every year around Fourth of July, we hear the same thing from police and other public officials: “Consumer fireworks are dangerous! Leave fireworks to the professionals!” These lectures are always most strident where consumer fireworks are illegal. In New York City this year Comrade De Blasio, who can’t do anything right, created “a multi-agency task force to crack down on illegal fireworks sales.”

But but but . . . I thought police were bad?

Isn’t that the whole point of #BlackLivesMatter? If Democrats want to “defund the police,” who are you supposed to call if people are setting off illegal fireworks in your neighborhood? But facts and logic have never counted for much with liberals. On the one hand, Democrats want a draconian regime of total government control, while simultaneously complaining that police — you know, the people who actually enforce all these government regulations — are brutal racists, because people of color get arrested for disobeying the law. But I digress . . .

The assertion that fireworks are so dangerous that they can only be trusted to license professionals is not a slam-dunk case, because sometimes the licensed professionals screw it all up:

Plano’s All American 4th fireworks show did not go off as expected Saturday night.
Around 9 p.m., about 19 minutes in the show that was being held on Lavon Farms, a 6-inch mortar exploded inside its launching tube resulting in a chain reaction of explosions from nearby mortars, according to Plano Fire-Rescue.
In videos posted to social media, fireworks appeared to also shoot off toward the crowd.
The show was stopped about six minutes prior to the grand finale.
No injuries or damage to structures were reported, but several acres of the field burned. It took firefighters about an hour to contain the blaze and extinguish the hot spots, the department said.

Watch the video:

Plano City’s fireworks fell over and light up the field pic.twitter.com/69xwRUrAie

— Iba Cream (@IbrahimElnomro1) July 5, 2020

Fortunately no one was reported injured by that mishap. During our show Saturday night in West Virginia, one 16-shot cake in the finale tipped over and sent a couple of shots sideways, but it went toward the back — away from the crowd — and caused no damage. Here’s a photo from the set up, showing my son and one of his friends at work:

Click the image to see full size. What they’re doing is using white “quick” fuse — which burns instantaneously — to connect two mortar racks to a finale board filled with repeater cakes. Video of the show is in two parts. Here is the first 10 minutes:

And here is the one-minute Grand Finale:

After the show was over, I was sitting down on the steps enjoying a cold beverage when a little girl walked by with her mother and the girl said, “That was epic!” That made all the planning worth it.

Category: Fireworks

Rule 5 Sunday: Summer Musashi

Posted on | July 6, 2020 | 3 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

I suppose I could have done a rerun this week with Kate Upton and her popsicle, but Fate/Grand Order is doing a Fourth of July event in their usual berserk style, and while this character’s not in there, how could I resist the lure of Japan’s greatest swordsman…er, swordswoman…in an All-American bikini and a six-shooting katana? Oh, Type Moon, never change.