A New One on Me

I had never heard of a bump stock until I saw it on the TV news this evening. They didn't give a lot of details, so I just now looked it up on Wiki. Apparently you can "bump fire" a semi auto without a bump stock, the bump stock just makes it easier to do. The Las Vegas shooter had 12 bump stock equipped weapons in his possession. According to the news, politicians of both parties, including Ted Cruz, are already in favor of banning those devices. Even the NRA has approved the proposed ban, although it wants to trade it for morel liberal concealed carry regulations. President Trump has said that he would consider it, but he wants more information first. Since bump firing sacrifices accuracy for increased rate of fire and increases the chances of jamming and backfiring, I think it's a stupid way to shoot. (I said that.)

There is another way to convert a semi to a fully automatic. You take the gun apart and file down the sear catch on the trigger mechanism. I understand that it's not difficult if you know what you're doing. The M-14s that we had in the army had a selector switch that disengaged the sear so you could choose to fire either semi or fully auto, but only two men is each squad were "AR men". The rest of us had a blocking plug where the selector switch would be and could only fire semi. I understand that, with the advent of the M-16, they dispensed with the blocking plug and made everyone an AR man. I questioned the wisdom of this at the time but I guess, with the proper training, anyone who can fire semi can fire fully auto effectively. The trick is that you have to fire three to five shot bursts and recover your aiming point between bursts. If you just lay back on the trigger, your accuracy goes out the window, and the gun will eventually overheat and jam if it doesn't run out of ammo first. Maybe that's why the Vegas shooter needed 12 guns, so he could discard one gun when it quit firing and pick up another one. Of course he was firing into a packed crowd and likely didn't care who he hit, so he probably wasn't concerned with accuracy. I understand he saved the last bullet for himself, too bad it wasn't the first bullet.

Opera is kind of an acquired taste. The hardest part is getting over the idea that you're not supposed to like it. Then there's the "too long" issue that I already told you about. The music is not all the same, well it's kind of the same only different. It's all over dramatized because there were no cameras to zoom in for close up shots in those days, and the only way that the people in the back rows could follow the action was if everything was done larger than life. Some operas, called "light" or "comic" operas, have a happy ending, and "grand" operas could inspire suicide in the faint of heart. The trick is not to take any of it too seriously, it's only a show after all.

"The Barber of Seville" is one of those light ones, full of the rapid fire singing for which Rossini was famous. "William Tell" was the last opera Rossini wrote and, although it had a happy ending, it was pretty heavy. I understand that the original version was over four hours long, and that subsequent productions commonly cut some scenes. The one I saw was about three hours, and I think they cut all the wrong scenes. It seemed like they rushed through the good parts towards the end, which I was hoping would make it worth sitting through the dreary parts. And how can you do "William Tell" without playing the "Lone Ranger" theme? We used to say that the definition of an intellectual is somebody who can hear "The William Tell Overture" without thinking of "The Lone Ranger", but I used to watch "The Lone Ranger" primarily to hear "The William Tell Overture". If it was a re-run, I might change the channel after the opening theme and come back to hear the closing theme.