Nighttime Gun Box

A couple of weeks ago I did some online shopping. Amazon has great prices, even on “GunVaults.” You see, with the blessing (or urging) of sweetie, I recently purchased a lock box for my Glock 27. I usually carry it, when awake, but I’m not always awake….

I shopped around, looking at features and always looking at prices. And like I said, Amazon has some good prices. Amazon’s price for MultiVault Deluxe by GunVault was $126. (Yikes! it’s since gone up to $150) But in shopping around and looking at features, I thought the Winchester EV600 for $104 from www.Safes4You.com was the best bang for the buck. (Hey, I think it use to be $99!)

I was looking for quick and easy access and Winchester box looked good. It has the “No-Look entry system” and “Spring loaded door for quick access” and it comes with a power adapter, unlike the GunVault. It also has an LCD display for battery power and locked status. So I that’s what I ordered online.

Then, I couldn’t stop looking around some more … and so I watched a Titan video at Safes4You. It looked good but was more expensive. (Hey, I think it’s gone up in price too!)

Well, I had double clicked the link and so I was watching the video at YouTube. And after I watched the video I noticed the related videos and saw one showing a GunVault.

The GunVaults and Winchester eVaults are very similar, so I was interested. I became very interested. The video showing a Mini Deluxe GunVault was titled “Unsafe Gun Safe.” Yup, the video showed the “vault” opening with a tap of a knuckle.

Then I found several other similar videos:
ADG Secure Vault opened with a bounce:

Powering a motorized electronic safe:

Hack a safe with electronic number pad and key:

So, on the following business day, I called Safes4You and canceled my order but placed a new order for a $135 V-Line Deskmate. (Oh my, and the new price is now $154.) The cancellation and re-ordering could have been smoother and done in one call instead of a couple, but the Deskmate was shipped and arrived promptly.

The Deskmate doesn’t have all the bells and whistles like the GunVault or Winchester (no really, look at the lights bells on those two) but V-Line does appear to be more solid. It’s hefty, 8 pounds of 14 gauge steel, with a reliable mechanical lock and no batteries to fail for either primary or backup power. There’s no backup lock with a key for when I forget the code—or for someone else to pop open). And I like that the box didn’t pop open when I dropped and tapped it….

The model I purchased, the DeskMate, is only big enough for one handgun, unlike the Winchester model I first ordered, but it is big enough to hold my 4″ Colt .44 magnum (with the protective plastic cover removed from the inside of the locking mechanism on the door).

Here’s a picture of the box under a shelf on my nightstand:

V-Line Deskmate Mounted under shelf

I mounted the Deskmate under the shelf for convenience. It’s readily accessible and easy to use. I had thought about mounting it to the bed frame. Although being mounted to the metal frame might have been more secure, it would have been less convenient to access quickly and conveniently—requiring bending over and lifting a dust ruffle etc. With the Deskmate mounted under the shelf, I can open the box easily, even in the dark and while still in bed.

Well, I did find one difficulty with opening the box while still in bed. Using a code with that required pressing two buttons simultaneously was a little tricky. With the Deskmate in front of me, I had no trouble, but from the angle of my bed I had trouble pressing the two buttons simultaneously.

Of course, that was my own fault. It’s easy to change the code from the factory setting and I had programmed the lock with a two-button push as part of the combination. My new combination uses only single button pushes.

Did I say it’s STURDY? Well it is, but it’s not as sturdy as the 24 pound Fort Knox Handgun Safe The Fort Knox is the epitome of secure for a handgun box, but 24 pounds and “gas strut” assistance for opening (but might fail?) made it appear less than ideal for convenience. The V-line, however, is front opening and has more mounting options that make it convenient to use. So for regular use and for the best bang for my buck the V-Line was the choice.

If you’re really interested in BIG and STURDY, Safes4You may be the place. The invoice I received was clearly for large safes, the really big ones. So for a deal on either a little box like the Deskmate, or a big fireproof safe, give Safes4You a look.

1984 in Congress Today

Sigmund Neumann wrote an article, “The Rule of the Demagogue,” that was published in the American Sociological Review in 1938. According to the German Wiki, he came to the U.S. in 1934. He describes how demagogues rely on the existence of democracy, and “the breakdown of institutions.” While twisting the meanings of words, the demagogue become the “substitute for institutions.” Modern demagogues, he says, borrow their concepts and slogans of an “ennobled democracy” from their enemies.

In concluding, he plainly writes:

In an democracy, however, there persists an absolute unwillingness to give up the search for truth and the freedom of choice in the knowledge of good and evil.

Today, we have cause to wonder about Congress’s insistence on the truth. The Congressional Record, is supposed to be, well, “the official record of the proceedings and debates of the United States Congress.” But Congressmen, apparently, do not like records of their actions. They change the “Record” all the time. Kimberley Strassel describes a recent change in which a little dialogue is inserted into the “Record.” It’s a dialogue for the purpose of bailing out the auto industry. It purports to show the intent of Congress in giving the Secretary of the Treasury $700 billion.

Sometimes the “intent of Congress” is used to support Supreme Court decisions. Just last week, a case was argued before the Supreme Court in which the federal government argued for convicting a man of illegally owning a firearm because of the “intent” of Congress. Justice Scalia was skeptical about reading a law, not based on what the law says but on the “intent” of Congress.

When law is not based on what is written, but intentions, I have to wonder if we’re not becoming Byzantine. As Neumann noted, demagogues don’t like the printed word–people can think it over and criticize it, and it leaves a record. Sadly much of federal “law” is not law passed by Congress but is enforced through Byzantine regulations in conjunction with interest groups, like I described before in Barney’s Blarney with an “Appendix A” and Acorn. So the Bush administration, like the Clinton one before it, is “burrowing” political appointees into the bureaucracy in hopes of influencing the bureaucracy.

Why can’t we insist that Congress keeps a real record and passes laws that are clearly written?

Sad to say, Neumann may have the answer. He noted an “outspoken bluntness with which [demagogues] advise their henchmen.” He says that they “permit the masses to look behind the curtain of demagogic domination…. and make them admire the efficiency of their methods.”

So who are we? Are we those who admire the powerful and the “efficiency of their methods,” or are we those who persist in “an absolute unwillingness to give up the search for truth and the freedom of choice in the knowledge of god and evil”?

Will we allow that “most decisive principle of demagogical propaganda, the exclusion of counter-propaganda“? Will we allow Pelosi’s “fairness” to be twisted to silence public debate?

25 Years Ago Today

Remembering the Marine Barracks

From the Naval Institute Proceedings:

I ran outside to find myself engulfed in a dense, gray fog of ash, with debris still raining down. I felt sickened as I stumbled around to the rear of my headquarters, thinking we had taken a direct hit from a Scud missile or heavy artillery. As the acrid fog began lifting, my logistics officer, Major Bob Melton, gasped, “My God, the BLT building is gone!” A knot tightened in my gut.

After an instant of disbelief, I quickly realized we had suffered heavy casualties. I later learned that a suicide driver penetrated our southern perimeter and rammed a 19-ton truck bomb into the lobby of the Marine Battalion Landing Team (BLT) building and detonated it. Forensics and intelligence later estimated the compressed-gas-enhanced device to have an explosive equivalent in excess of 20,000 pounds of TNT.

….

At dawn this 23 October, a solemn candlelight vigil will begin the day at the foot of the Beirut Memorial, nestled in the pines of North Carolina. Families, veterans, and friends will gather to pay tribute to those who “Came in Peace” on this, the 25th anniversary.

….

In the Iranian Behesht-E-Zahra cemetery in southern Tehran, there will also be a ceremony at a monument erected in 2004 to commemorate the Beirut suicide bombers. In attendance will likely be some dressed as suicide bombers, chanting the standard “death to America” and “death to Israel.”

….

The recent revelations that Iranian weapons are killing U.S. Marines and Soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan should surprise no one. Conclusive evidence has disclosed that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard’s Quds Force has transported roadside bombs and armor-piercing “explosively formed penetrators” (EFPs) from Iran into Iraq. Other advanced Iranian weapons found in Iraq include the RPG-29 rocket-propelled grenade, 240-mm rockets, and perhaps the most ominous, the Misagh 1, a portable surface-to-air missile that uses an infrared guidance system.

….

In reality, Iran has been waging war against the United States for more than a quarter-century, from the 1979 hostage crisis and the Marine barracks bombing in 1983 to providing sophisticated weaponry to Sunni and Shia insurgents in Iraq. Iranian mullahs have chosen to wage a radically aggressive campaign to create and accelerate instability throughout the region

I Was “zealous and idealistic”

Via Sis, a story about TV and the type of person I was….

Modem Trouble….

Comcast said Friday it would be 24 to 72 hours before anything more could be done to solve my modem trouble….

Frustrated Beau from a borrowed computer….

[Today: Modem fixed yesterday afternoon, and today I see I didn't get the post from Sunday posted.... :sigh:]

Vacation

Vacation description on Lintefiniel Musing (with special Beau comments on days 2 and 5).

Carter Wore a Sweater (Pt. II)

Ronald Reagan always wore a suit.

Reagan was different. Carter described the difference. Carter said, “I believe in peace, I believe in arms control, I believe in controlling nuclear weapons. . . . In all these Governor Reagan is different from me.”

Reagan thought an arms race was the one card missing from the negotiations with the Soviet Union. He was said to be a warmonger. Reagan was different. He was change.

Reagan had a vision, too; he was anticommunist and bullish on America. Reagan asked, what’s wrong with a strong America? He called the Soviet Union an evil empire. In Berlin, Reagan said, “Bring down this wall!” He got the job done.

Reagan wore a suit, if not a tuxedo.

But Carter didn’t think patriotism would help in negotiating with the Soviet Union. He worried how the world would see the U.S. We’d be seen as warmongers if the Senate rejected the treaty he’d negotiated with the Brezhnev.

Yet Carter could be patriotic. He called for patriotism as he addressed the energy crisis. This was the “moral equivalent of war.”

Carter wore a sweater.

Greetings

… thank you to all my well-wishers….