Tuesday, September 25, 2012

Wanna get plugged full of bullet holes in a murderous and panicky crossfire? Hoo hoo! Does a chiropractor-turned-gun-school-guru have a bank for you!


Dr. Ignatius Piazza owns a firearms handling school where he is the…umm, well let’s call him a headmaster. He sells his courses and a bunch of other things, including political opinions and e-mail lists of his subscribers. Sign up for e-mail from him, as I did a couple of years ago, and you’ll start getting not only "Only five days left!" promotions to to attend his courses, but also communications addressed to “Dear Patriot” if not to your first name, from a variety of right wing causes, crazies, and fundraisers. For example, I’ve been getting a fairly steady stream of nonsense recently from Rand Paul.
Hey, it’s a free country. And it doesn’t hurt, I suppose, to teach firearms handling to people who already have firearms. It’s the political horsefeathers that come with Piazza’s appeals to improve my gun skills that get my goat. (For the record, I was trained on the .45 caliber Colt pistol, the now long-outmoded  M-1 Rifle, and the equally outmoded 30-caliber Browning machine gun, decades ago in my military days. I haven’t touched a firearm since.)
Recently, I got an e-mail from Piazza praising the Chappell Hill Bank in the town of Chappell Hill, Texas. For what? For encouraging its customers to walk into the bank packing iron, including concealed iron – licensed concealed iron, of course. Piazza even included a newspaper article quoting the bank president, Ed Smith: “No damn yankee is going to tell us what to do.”

Well, Ignatius, Ed, I'm truly grateful to both of you. I think it’s just marvelous that you warned me. Personally, now that I know the bank’s rules,I think I’ll do my banking someplace else. I can see the scene:

Robber walks into that Chappell Hill bank, yanks (no pun intended) yanks out a gun, and announces a stickup. From various corners of the bank, twenty customers and tellers (who are also encouraged to carry heat) start firing. If you happen to be somewhere in the middle of the bank floor, say on the way to make an inquiry of a teller, or to see a bank officer about refinancing your underwater mortgage, do you know what you are?

Right. You’ll be delicious with a couple of slices of ham and some mustard on rye bread.

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