You Can't Silence Us

The second quote for electrical work stemming from our fire of last week is in. This one is a much more reasonable $900. I just hired the company to do the work at that price. It will be done by Friday.

The Ahmad Arbery case: my position.

By now, everyone who reads this blog is familiar with the case, where two white men (Greg McMichaels and his son Travis) allegedly harassed and shot a black man (Ahmad Arbery) who was doing nothing but jogging. When this story was getting press, I old everyone that I would be waiting for more evidence before forming an opinion, especially considering that Benjamin Crump is the family’s attorney.

Well, enough evidence has come to light that I feel comfortable forming an opinion.

There are a couple of videos that are in the public domain that show 1)Mr. Arbery charging the pair of armed men who shoot him and are later charged with his murder, and a second video that shows Mr. Arbery inside of a home that was under construction less than 2 weeks before the shooting. This second video is important, not because of what it shows, but that it establishes some ground work.

The owner of the home under construction had been having problems with break ins to the point that he installed motion sensors and security cameras on the property. Those cameras showed Arbery inside of the home on at least three different occasions in the months before the shooting.

In fact, the construction site being burglarized was so pervasive that the owner asked police for help, and one officer recommended that they contact Greg McMichaels for assistance.

Greg spotted Arbery jogging in the neighborhood and alerted his son, Travis. The two armed themselves and went to confront Arbery. Arbery ran around the truck, closed the distance between himself and Travis (who was armed with a shotgun), there was a struggle for the weapon and Armery was shot twice. The autopsy shows that Arbery had been trying to take Travis’ shotgun, because one of the shots had gone through Arbery’s wrist in an angle consistent with him holding onto the barrel of the weapon.

During this, a third man (Perez) had arrived. He had this to say:

All we knew about him was that he was the guy who kept showing up on our cameras, no one knew who it was.

I don’t see how this will be admitted at trial because Perez can’t possibly testify to what the other people there knew or didn’t know.

Arbery was no choir boy. He was confronted by a school resource officer who spotted him with a gun stuffed in his waistband while trying to enter a basketball game. Arbery ran, ditched the gun, but was caught anyway. He admitted to being armed after the gun was found on the ground. Arbery was sentenced to five years’ probation as a first offender on charges of carrying a weapon on campus and several counts of obstructing a law enforcement officer.

In December of 2017, Arbery was arrested for shoplifting a television at the local WalMart. Greg McMichaels led the investigation that resulted in Arbery having his probation violated.

So these are the important facts, IMO. Here is how it appears to me:

The McMichaels have already admitted that they shot and killed Arbery. Remember that any trial will involve the prosecution attempting to prove that, beyond a reasonable doubt this was NOT a self defense shooting. I will leave the lawyers to argue the legal minutiae, but I do know that the case will hinge on what the mindset of the shooter was at the time of the shooting. If Travis is found to have shot Arbery in self defense, then I don’t see how they can convict Greg for being his accomplice.

All the defense has to do is come up with a scenario that fits the evidence and looks like self defense. I think there is room here to paint the story as:

The McMichaels knew that there had been break ins, that Greg knew that Arbery was known to be a criminal, and that he was known to carry weapons. Greg McMichaels was working cooperatively with the police and the homeowner of the structure Arbery unlawfully entered, to keep an eye on the property, particularly in the event of unlawful intruders. When they saw Arbery, they were going to question him as to what he had been doing on the property.

When he saw them, instead of running away or stopping to talk, he charged Travis, grabbed the muzzle of the shotgun and attempted to wrest it away. Fearing for his life, Travis fired to defend himself.

My opinion is this: It will be difficult for the prosecution to get a conviction on this case, unless there is other evidence out there that somehow changes the entire story.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wants to raise taxes on the rich — just not pay her own.

Up until now, I have only owned two revolvers. One was an old RG revolver in .22LR that I traded my mother for. She actually thought it was a good home defense gun, and I traded with her so she could get a better one. I got rid of it a year later for a $100 gift card in a gun buyback. That was a good deal, since the thing was a piece of crap when it was new.

The second was my model 642 j frame Smith and Wesson. When I bought it, I discussed it with Marko, who afterwards actually wrote a blog post about it entitled “Carrying the mighty J frame,” but that was on the old Munchkin Wrangler blog which has since gone defunct.

During the lockdown, I rewatched all of the old “Dirty Harry” movies. Suddenly, I wanted a revolver, because reasons. I was at the LGS the other day and saw a model 686 in .357 magnum for a pretty good price, so I bought it. Now I am looking for recommendations for holsters to fit it. My normal leather guys don’t have what I am looking for. So, I would appreciate anyone who is familiar with custom leather makers: help me out here.

*** EDITED TO ADD: The shopping spree for ammo and a new gun were for shopping therapy. It always makes me happy to buy new toys, whether that be guns, radios, electronics, or other neat gadgets. I add this so some idiot doesn’t try to red flag me for saying that I have had enough so I went ammo shopping. ***

We had been having problems with devices dropping out of the network, so on Monday I updated us to a mesh network. There are now three repeaters around the house. It initially was pretty easy, but there were a few stubborn devices that would not make the switch. I finally got the last device to switch over- on Friday morning.

On Tuesday, we had a house fire.

On Wednesday, the TV in the living room stopped working. The picture and sound would cut out for about 20 seconds and then come on for 10. Over and over. Troubleshooting showed that the HDMI cable was bad. The TV is on the wall, with all of the wiring inside the wall. It had to come down. This required a trip to Best Buy, who won’t let you in the store- you have to order online and pick it up at the store, 30 minutes away. When we got there, they didn’t have it. So that required a trip to WalMart. That in itself was an adventure.

On Thursday, the electrician came by and looked at the wiring job.

Today, the estimate for $1600 came in for the electrical job. Then the dishwasher broke. It seems to be a water sensor that looks for leaks and shuts the washer down if it detects one. The good news is that it is relatively new, and the warranty people will be here on Wednesday. Until then, we will be hand washing. I also need to drain the hot tub, since it won’t have power for awhile.

I had enough. I went shopping for some more ammo and discovered that the ammo shelves are almost empty, despite a notice that there is a 1 box limit per person. 9mm FMJ is selling for $20 a box. Instead, I decided to buy a new Smith and Wesson  686 in .357 Magnum. They gave me a decent price, I think. I could have paid less from an online source, but by the time I paid transfer fees, the cost would have been the same. I blame the Dirty Harry movie I watched this weekend for my sudden desire to own a revolver.

The electrician came by yesterday to break the hot tub off on to its own circuit. He said the job looked easy. It is a 50 foot run from the load center to where the hot tub is located. The attic is large with s straight shot from the load center to the wall where the disconnect will go. He said it would take less than 3 hours in total, not counting time for inspections. I figured it would be near $500.

The quote came in. Holy cow.

They quoted $900 in labor, $600 in parts, and another $150 for a permit. 900 in labor for an “easy” job? I spoke with another electrician who said that no permit is needed to wire in an existing hot tub, only for new installations.

I priced out the parts at home depot:
45 amp breaker: $16.49
60 amp non fuse disconnect: $19.23
60 feet 6/3 romex: $130
40 amp gfi breaker: 12.67
conduit and fittings for the non-attic portion should be around $40.
So, total for parts is less than $250.

This quote looks heavily padded.

I will be getting more quotes.

When my wife and I first combined households, she had no problem with me installing my HF radio in the house. We have a bedroom that I can use, but the HOA won’t let me have a visible antenna, so I ran 2 pieces of coax up the wall and into the attic, where I mounted a dual band stick and a G5RV wire antenna. At 52 feet long, it stretches most of the way across the house, but this antenna allows me to transmit in all bands from 10 meters down to 40 meters.

Anyway, I transmitted on low power to check SWR, and once that was good, I began scanning the 20 meter band. I found a guy in Texas who wanted to talk, cranked it up to 50 watts, and hit the transmit key. Every light in the house went off.

My wife was cooking dinner at the time. She was not happy. I reset the breaker, and figured it was harmonics, so I moved to a different band and began to transmit. Lights out, again. Being a smart man, I decided to stop for the night and figure things out later.

It turns out that Eaton, the maker of the circuit breaker didn’t know that they needed to make sure their product was tolerant of stray radio transmissions. They had to go to the Amateur Radio Relay League for assistance. The really bad part in all of this is that Amateur (HAM) radio operators took a lot of blame for this. If you do a Google search for “HAM radio fault arc circuit breaker” you find out that contractors in Florida were blaming HAM radio operators for the issue in at least one Florida community.