A Modest Proposal for a new holiday: "National Take Your Granddaughter to the Range Day"

It's well known in my family that, if you're good and your parents agree, Opa will take you shooting with him someday.

In fact, it's become somewhat of a Rite of Passage among my kids and grandkids. I see them all measuring each other against some imaginary "You must be this tall for this ride" sign in my living room, until they're big enough that Opa will give them "the safety talk" and place a loaded firearm in their hands.

Opa? That's me, by the way. The "Opa-nator." "Commander Curmudgeon."

As my kids will readily attest, I was King Grump all through their childhoods. My favorite word, sometimes, seemed to be "no" or "maybe" or "we'll see." My grandkids see right through that facade, and know me for the soft touch that I really am.

But when it comes to firearms, I am the righteous Voice of Wisdom and Wrath, and I make a big deal out of instructing my grandkids in the lore of boom sticks.

I think that, when kids are raised in the presence of powerful machines -- be they automobiles or firearms -- the machines take on a kind of unearthly glamour and a hint of powerful promise. That hint, that allure, is the siren song that gets some young people killed unless someone takes them by the hand and instructs them in the respectful, safe operation of said machines.

I can remember when I was teaching Johanna to drive, she got a little giddy behind the wheel her first couple of times. When she made a silly mistake, she even started to giggle.

I squelched that right quickly. "You are behind the wheel of a machine that has killed more kids your age than all my firearms put together," I sternly told her. "This is not just a car ... it can be a killing machine! Now get your head back in the driver's seat and focus!"

I never wanted her to fear driving. I just wanted her to have a healthy respect for how quickly and irrevocably things can go wrong with automobiles. Same thing with firearms. My kids always knew they were in the house. They knew that they were forbidden territory UNLESS I put one in their hands. Then, when they gained sufficient age and maturity, I began teaching them to shoot.

Actually shooting a firearm, I find, was almost an anticlimax for them. When they realized that, under proper instruction, the lessons were going to be about patience, and muscle control and slow, almost zen-like breathing; range time then became more of a meditative practice than shoot-em-up.

Which leads me back to my modest proposal.

I will teach all my grandchildren about shooting and proper respect and care of a firearm. My three grandsons will probably love shooting and trigger time, as comes with the "Y" Chromosome.

But it's the girls, I think, that will benefit the most.

Nationally, studies still show that boys tend to dominate classroom discussions. Nationally, studies show it's the girls who still tend to hang back and defer to each other. Nationally, studies show that girls are plagued with more self-doubt than their male peers.

But when a semi-elderly grandparent takes them to the sanctum-sanctorum (rifle range), tells them they can do it, and places a loaded firearm in their hands, you can almost see the self-confidence ratchet up inside them several notches.

Then, once they get beyond their first shot jitters, and they realize the little .22 cal isn't going to hurt, they actually start to like it. Then, or so I hear, they go back to class the following day and get "I-went-shooting-with-my-grandfather" bragging rights. Even rambunctious middle school boys will back down a little to a report like that.

I've taken my three oldest granddaughters to the range now, and all three are superb markswomen-in-the-making. (The US Navy actually studied the eye/hand coordination of male and female jet pilots, and found that women out-do men in all categories, once they find their confidence.)

Hopefully, what I've done here is plant seeds of self-confidence that will see my grandkids through all the trials that life is going to throw at them in the years to come.

And, let's be frank ... our time on the planet is limited. My time with my grandkids is something like formatting a message to the Future. Hopefully the message I'm sending through my kids and grandkids equals, "I was here. I mattered in someone's life. I hope you love my family, because I did and they carry, in part, my DNA and my values."

Anyway, the look in Maddie's eyes recently as she looked at her targets, made it all worth it, message-or-no-message. "Opa, this is WAY better than school!" she said.

Amen to that.

Death sentence ... or not? (AKA, the "Good-news-bad-news-no-news-Post")

Your first realization that you're aging is when you count up the birthdays you've already had and you understand that there are fewer birthdays left in front of you than there are behind you.

Your second realization, as I've posted elsewhere on this blog, is when you retire and go on pensions plus Social Security.

Your next one (gulp) comes when -- first your spouse, and next YOU -- are handed a life-threatening (and potentially life-ending) diagnosis.

After Kathy's diagnosis last year of cancer, it began to hit me that my "happily-ever-after" life story might not last forever. But Kathy and I dug in deep and fought the cancer with everything we had ... not to mention chemotherapy and radiation. Kathy made it fine and her five year clock to be pronounced cancer-free is ticking away happily in the background of our lives.

Then I started coughing this year. And coughing. Every night, I hacked and coughed my lungs out. At the same time, I started doing that disgusting Old Person thing of hawking up gobs of something equally bad from deep in my chest.

I may be fairly bright and well-read as old guys go ... but it took me awhile to realize that this probably wasn't just a sign of Old Personhood.

And it wouldn't go away.

And my doctors all got that straight-faced "You'd better sit down and listen carefully" look when they talked to me about it.

After biopsies and CT-scans and many other assorted medical pokings-and-proddings, we got a kind of catch-all diagnosis. The good news (sort of) is the fact that it's not cancer. The bad news is that it's not going to go away.

The worse news is that it's potentially life-ending.

The "No News" part of this is ... can someone tell me what part of getting older ISN'T life-ending?

As I tried to explain to my family in a private post, "We're all going to die of something." In a way, knowing what's coming -- the actual mechanism that's aiming for me is almost kind of ... calming. It's as though I don't have to constantly look over my shoulder now ... watching for bad stuff or cars careening out of control. Now I know what I've got, now I know how it's going to go (more or less,) and now I can get back to living my life with Kathy.

For those who have an unquenchable thirst for knowledge, it's called "Interstitial Lung Disease," and is basically a hardening and scarring of the lung tissue itself. It's progressive, and will gradually get worse.

The doctors tell me that I've got a rare-ish sub-form of this thing that MAY (and I repeat ... may) respond to some drugs that may or may not slow it down.

So one of the first questions my family asked was, "How much more time?"

A bogus question, if ever there was one. As Kathy likes to say, "None of us has an expiration date stamped on our butts."

Besides, if you do it right, living becomes and endless succession of "nows" so that each moment flows by endlessly, and tomorrow is another lifetime away. I'm not worried. It'll come when it comes.

And in the meantime, Kathy and I now have perfect excuses to go traipsing around the world and making memories.

That'll do nicely.

Got my CCW permit ... (Gulp!)

I admit I have been somewhat single-minded on the subject of being allowed ... no "permitted" ... to carry a firearm for my personal and family protection.

I want the right to do it. Period.

As a law-abiding adult citizen of this country, the U.S. Supreme Court and the Second Amendment to the Constitution say that I have that right.

But, obviously, there was some "discussion" over that at the state level.

I previously bridled at the thought that, as a law-abiding citizen of the United States who was trusted to know right-from-wrong elsewhere -- let's say in Florida -- that I suddenly ceased to be trusted to the same degree when I crossed the state line in Wisconsin. Florida, who barely knew me, assumed that I was an adult until and unless I proved otherwise, was content to grant me a CCW permit during my year there.

But coming home to Wisconsin? Not a chance!

OK ... so old news. New year, new state legislature. New CCW law in Dairyland.

I applied for and got my permit, and it just arrived in the afternoon mail.

(BTW ... it seems I wasn't alone in this. The Wisconsin Dept of Justice expected to receive about 100,000 permit applications during the month of November ... but reported that the application was downloaded from their website more than 84,000 times in the first 24 hours of the CCW law taking effect!)

Now, it suddenly hits me. Now I have the rights I want ... and now have to doubly ensure I act responsibly ... even cautiously.

My Florida friend Maj. Norm Belson (a state-licensed CCW instructor and retired police officer) assures all his students that, "If you ever have to use your firearm in your own defense, even if you were perfectly justified in doing so, your life is going to change drastically ... and not necessarily for the better." Norm presents a realistic view to his Concealed Carry Classes, reminding would-be CCW permit holders that upping the ante in an argument by drawing a weapon is folly of the worst sort.

You can access Norm's website here: http://www.staysafestreets.com/

Norm tells me that ambitious prosecutors are quite happy to publicly pillory a legally armed citizen who had to fire shots in his own defense. He added that he's known quite a few armed citizens who went bankrupt in a big way, having to sell their homes at times to come up with legal fees. Moreover, some civil attorneys are more than willing to play upon a jury's emotions with sad tales of woe caused their clients after the Big Bad Gun Guy shot their client ... and go for big payoffs in civil suits against armed citizens.

But Norm is also the guy who typified his fellow police officers as "...armed historians ..." who show up too late to prevent crime, but can only really document it after-the-fact. He stresses repeatedly that a citizens defense is in his or her own hands. "When seconds count," he says, "the cops are minutes away."

So now that I am again legally an Armed Citizen, what are my rights? More importantly, what will Wisconsin police officers expect of me should I ever have to use my gun in self-defense?

Been talking with a few of my regular customers, who also happen to be cops. One in particular seemed non-plussed at the idea of so many more firearms Milwaukee's streets all of a sudden. "The bad guys have always been able to get guns," he said, "but now maybe they'll think twice before attempting a crime ... because they know the good guys have guns, too."

He added that armed citizens coming into contact with cops in their official capacity need to be cooperative and cordial, and VERY forthcoming about the CCW permit in their wallet.

"Even if it's just a traffic stop, identify yourself up front as a permit holder, tell the officer where your gun is, and then ask how he wants to proceed." He added that permit holders shouldn't feel offended if the officer temporarily hangs onto the firearms...but that they should definitely WAIT to be told what to do about the firearm in their holster. "For God's sake, don't be reaching for it!" he said.

As my cop friend and neighbor George Sanquist says, "There's going to be no question about it ... I get all the guns for awhile."

I recall reading about Nevada troopers who, responding to an armed citizen's call about a breakin at his jewelry store, not only confiscated the innocent citizen's weapon ... but put the VICTIM in cuffs "... for everybody's protection," insisted the rookie trooper.

Obviously a training issue for that police department.

Googling Wisconsin firearms law attorneys, many lawyers' websites now are advising all CCW permit holders to carry around not only a loaded weapon, but also a reliable attorney's number. One even went to far as to suggest that, if an armed citizen is involved in a shooting, they should dial the attorney FIRST ... and 9-1-1 second.

Not sure how this is all going to shake out in the long run.

But as someone who spends quite a bit of time searching his own conscience, I can tell you that -- if I ever have to use a firearm to defend my family -- it's going to take all the fun out of gun ownership.

But there's still that old saw that goes, "I'd rather be tried by 12, than carried by 6"

OK ... so my home isn't my castle????

Let me get this straight ... I am NOT allowed to defend myself against an intruder in Wisconsin?

Hmmm ... this bears some looking into.

So let's say that I'm enjoying an evening at home, stretched out on the couch, and I hear a commotion outside my door. Before I can get to the door, it bangs open and a very large, very drunk fellow subject barges in and demands to know what I'm doing in his house. Even from across the room, I can smell the beer on his breath ... but it doesn't stop me from noticing the fact that his hands are balled into fists the size of small hams ... and he's pissed as hell, and coming straight at me.

OK, got that scene firmly fixed in your mind? Let's try another scenario.

Kathy and I are asleep upstairs. Being a light sleeper, I can't help but hear the tinkle of breaking glass downstairs. Throwing on a robe, I creep to the top of the stairs. All I can see in the dark at the bottom of the stairs is a burly arm carrying a baseball bat. (After a lifetime of working in darkrooms, I have excellent night vision.) No one in my family OWNS a baseball bat, much less uses one as a "master key" to open the patio door.

(Q) What do these two scenarios have in common? (A) Wisconsin lawmakers say I don't have any real options to defend Kathy, Zak and myself.

According to Wisconsin legislators, my only recourse is to use pepper spray on my assailant and dial 9-1-1... and hopefully keep away from swinging fists, baseball bats or worse. (According to a retired police friend of mine, in such situations the police are little better than armed historians. "When seconds count, the police are only minutes away.")

You see, in Wisconsin, a person's home ISN'T his/her castle, because we have no Castle Doctrine in our state laws here. We are obliged to retreat before home intruders.

Castle Doctrine exists in 31 states, and is defined thus: A homeowner CAN use deadly force to defend himself or his property, under the following conditions:

*An intruder must be making (or have made) an attempt to unlawfully and/or forcibly enter an occupied residence, business or vehicle.The intruder must be acting illegally—e.g. the Castle Doctrine does not give the right to attack officers of the law acting in the course of their legal duties

*The occupant(s) of the home must reasonably believe that the intruder intends to inflict serious bodily harm or death upon an occupant of the home

*The occupant(s) of the home must reasonably believe that the intruder intends to commit some other felony, such as arson or burglary

*The occupant(s) of the home must not have provoked or instigated an intrusion, or provoked or instigated an intruder to threaten or use deadly force

*The occupant(s) of the home may be required to attempt to exit the house or otherwise retreat (this is called the "Duty to retreat" and most self-defense statutes referred to as examples of "Castle Doctrine" expressly state that the homeowner has no such duty).

We almost had a reasonable law here, once.

The Wisconsin Assembly passed a Castle Doctrine bill in 2007, but the heavily-liberal State Senate allowed the law to die. The bill would have created immunity for an act of self-defense for any person who uses deadly force while in his/her residence and is not engaged in illegal activity.

Liberal politicians scoffed at the proposal, calling it the "Shoot the Milkman Law." (Although, I should point out that, even here in the Dairy State of Wisconsin, we haven't had milkmen in decades ... but I digress.) Media loudmouths decried a return to the shootouts of the Wild West if such a law were to pass.

But in Florida, where I was licensed to carry a weapon, no such state of armed anarchy ever materialized, despite the fact that Florida takes Castle Doctrine one step further to the "Stand your Ground Law." As my cop friend explained it, if someone was breaking into my condo (I lived on the ground floor,) all the rights in the case were with me -- the law-abiding citizen -- not the intruder.

A friend of mine on the West Coast is probably going to get pissed when she reads this. She'll likely say something like, "So, if Zak is coming home late some night, and had to break in because he forgot his keys, you'd load up a handgun and shoot?" She makes an excellent point.

The answer, by the way, to Mary's question, is "No." (Besides, if Zak ever breaks into this house because he left his keys and lost his mind, thus preventing him from using his cell phone to gain entrance, he's got bigger worries.)

As an armed citizen and resident of Wisconsin, I may have -- hopefully soon -- some rights to self defense in such a case. However, I truly feel I also have the responsibility to myself and my family to ensure that deadly force is necessary and that no other way exists to protect myself and my property.

But I want the right to make that call! I want the backing of the law!

But I don't expect such a law to make it any easier on me.

This sort of reminds me of the time I was teaching my daughter Johanna to drive. A teenage girl, she was a little giddy at the prospect of freedom, as symbolized by the car keys I'd placed in her hands. I quickly quashed that with a dose of reality.

"This isn't just a car," I told her, "it's a killing machine if you use it wrong!" She quickly doused the giggles and got her head back into the driver's seat.

That "killing machine" label, obviously, applies even more to the .40 cal Springfield Armory XD pistol I now intend to keep handy. I feel that having the pistol nearby, and not needing it, is FAR better than needing it some dark night, but not having it.

But frankly, Mary's "friendly fire" scenario is going all-but-guarantee that I probably won't sleep any more soundly because of it.

Passion for photography? Oh, yeah ... I remember that!

Thanks to my daughter, Christine, I was introduced to a young (younger than me, anyway,) firebrand of a photographer today.

Erinn Finlan, red-headed, mid-30s, enters the room about 15 minutes ahead of herself, so barely contained and energetic she is. She's tall enough to be an imposing figure ... I would say she HAS to be tall in order to compactly package up the passion and energy for photography she brings with her.

Until she walked in, I had almost forgotten about that passion part.

You see, I have always loved being a photographer. I love everything about it.

I love the gear. I love the math. I love the mechanics and electronics. I love the imaging. I love looking at photographs. I love shooting photographs. I love looking down at my side and seeing my well-worn Domke bag full of Nikons and lenses. I love talking photography. I love teaching photography. Formerly, I even loved the darkroom work, even though I came out into the light at the end of the day with eyestrain and smelling of Sodium Hypo-sulfate or Formaldehyde.

So like many of my generation, who were always taught "Do what you love and the money will follow," I began shooting for a living.

I discovered I was quite good at it ... not only the image formation part, but -- and sometimes especially -- the customer care part of it. I could make a client do what I wanted them to do (so as to get a good shot,) and yet never made them feel as though I was pushing too hard. As my not-so-sainted father used to say, "Diplomacy (and sales) is the art of being able to tell someone to go to hell, and phrasing it in such a way, that they're happy to pack for the trip."

I'm frankly pretty good at that too.

One of my daughters says I turn into a one-man Mariachi band when shooting a wedding. "It's the Dad show," Johanna says. The joke around my studio always was, "There are only two people allowed to shine at one of Bill's weddings: the Bride and Bill ...the Groom is just stage-dressing."

Kathy rationalizes this process as a sense of being "... lost at sea '..." on the part of the bridal party, most of whom have never undergone the whole marriage-day thing before. Thus, when I stand up in front of everyone after the service, and say "Attention, Class! Let us now briefly review 'Bill's Rules of Group Photography,' shall we? Oh, Bill would be me!" I carry it off with enough comedic timing that everyone is glad that someone seems to know what to do next.

I liken it to being a babysitter with a camera, or perhaps an entertainer for kids' parties. But it works. My clients are always happy afterwards.

Did I mention I was good at it?

I love the sense of completion I get having met a client's expectations at the end of a shoot. Oh, yeah ... taking money for something that feels like playtime is pretty cool, too. (Although, as playtime goes, I still come home exhausted and soaked with sweat at the end of a 9-hour wedding shoot.)

But, eventually, taking money for doing something you love does seem to take some of the luster from it.

And I've been shooting for a living for so long I almost forgot about the passion part.

You see, when you shoot for a living, you are meeting Other people's needs. You are executing their vision. It's your artistry, for sure. It's your technique. It's your eye.

But they're mostly other people's images. Possibly even other people's passions, too.

But talking with another photographer today, one who is young enough to still be passionate about the 'biz,' and yet old enough to have already lived through a few photographic nightmares of her own, was not only refreshing, it was ... stimulating.

As Kathy and Christine developed the familiar "Dan-Quayle-deer-in-the-headlights" look that non-shooters get sometimes, Erinn and I got quickly dived into f/Stops and focal lengths, go-to lenses, strobe and guide numbers, and location scouting.

Beyond that, looking at her work, I feel "reignited." Self-taught as a photographer, she has a killer eye for composition ... and the courage to break the rules that many of us classically trained shooters had beaten into us at an early age.

Regardless of what comes next, I am determined to go out more with Nikons, perhaps a little less with firearms, and find out what I have left to say photographically of my own.

Thanks, Christine. Thanks, Erinn. I needed that.

Ten Years After--Who really remembers anymore? (Ans: We do!)

We in the military often are accused of being slow to adjust to change and the passage of time. We are told to "get over it and move on."

Get over it? I don't think so.

After the Imperial Japanese attacks on the US Navy Base at Pearl Harbor, HI, the entire country was aflame, just as the sad hulks continued smoldering away at their moorings on Battleship Row. Everyone in this nation was shocked and angry ... and wanted to hit back. Records show that the nation stayed involved, stayed angry, throughout most of World War II. Everyone was directly or indirectly involved with the war effort.

There were meatless and wheatless days at home, so US troops in the field wouldn't go hungry. Gas was rationed. Nylon was rationed. Scrap metal drives insured there was enough metal in the foundries to make armaments and munitions. Women's groups would meet weekly to roll bandages for the troops. Recruiters' offices were mobbed. Families proudly hung out flags with service stars, quietly boasting how many family members were in uniform. Some families shared their grief by hanging out gold service stars, mutely stating for all to see that some in their family had paid the ultimate price for freedom. US and Allied battles merited front page coverage in every newspaper.

We as a people, arose and answered the Call to Arms.

Now? Ehh.

Except for that tiny percentage of Americans actually in military families, almost no one is connected to the war effort. Most high school graduates are far more worried about getting into school than they are getting into their country's service.

Daily I talk to people who tell me that military service is fine for those who can't get into a good school, but their kids are going to college to get a good job. Military recruiters tell me they still treated like pariahs in Milwaukee Public Schools, even though statistics show that only 1 out of 4 high school graduates are actually cut out to finish college.

The US populace is far more interested in the fact that the Green Bay Packers beat the New Orleans Saints in the NFL opener recently, than in the fact that the job of making this country safe against terrorism is not yet finished!

I seriously doubt whether anyone in this country has actually forgotten the events of 9/11. Even if they did, the plethora of TV and Internet images depicting flaming crashes and falling towers will remind them what happened on that otherwise beautiful fall day ten years ago.

But as I reminded a Marine friend of mine on Facebook today, the nation has lost sight of its sense of anger ... righteous indignation ... of having been stabbed in the heart for virtually no other reason than the fact that we don't follow a 13th Century nightmare version of Islam.

But we in the military are your corporate memory on this issue. We remember not only the events, we remember also feeling the wrongness of what happened, and how we individually and collectively vowed to help right those wrongs.

We, each of us, vowed to carry the fight to the enemy that had reached across oceans to kill us. We, each of us, vowed not to quit and leave the job half-done.

I recall one of the Guantanamo detainees -- a Saudi Arabian cardiac surgeon who studied at Oxford and who speaks better English than I do. He likened all Americans to "insects," saying that if he could push some button somewhere that would instantly annihilate our babies, he would already have done so and lost not a moment's sleep over it.

Like insects, he said, we needed to be exterminated and forgotten about by history.

We in the military are still cold inside at the thought of those who wish to kill as many of us as they can. We are still "cold angry."

This post, then, is a plea to the rest of you.

Never forget. Never forget!

Jury Duty -- a Necessary Pain in the Ass

"In a democracy, making law is like making sausage. You may or may not love the final product, but the process for making both of them will probably make you sick." old Lawyer's aphorism

I've been required for the second time in 16 years to perform jury duty.

The fact that I'm sitting here in the jury assembly room, blogging and updating FaceBook, says much about the key survival tools for a prospective juror ... the ability to endure REALLY uncomfortable chairs, surly civil servants and hours of boredom while waiting to be selected for a trial.

I came REAL close to weaseling out. I mean, there's not much going for this gig: You only get paid about $18 per day. (Even in a tanking economy, I make a good deal more than that at work, even working part time.) But wait, it gets worse. In addition to almost no money, there's also no free lunch, no free coffee, and -- Hell -- not even free parking!!!

I came THIS close to weaseling out and asking for a medical excuse. I really did.

I wish I could claim it was my better nature and high civic virtues that made me go through with it ... but it wasn't anything like that. I was just too lazy to have to jump through all those hoops to get excused. (Maybe they design the system that way for that very reason, I'm thinking)

So anyway, here I am, digesting my $8.56 lunch from the courthouse cafeteria, listening to some of my fellow jurors snore away during their post-prandial naps, trying not to watch the second Sandra Bullock movie of the day on the jury room television .... but I'm kind of glad I'm here.

Having served once before on this gig, I can tell you that the courthouse is ALWAYS the Great Leveler.

It is within these magnificent stonepile courthouses, scattered at county seats all across America, that we all come before the scrutiny of our fellow citizens. (I know, I know ... you're about to mention O. J. Simpson and Casey Anthony. Fuck them.)

Most of only enter these halls when there's some sort of trouble or life-changing event (marriage, divorce, birth, death, buying a home, etc.) Or when we or someone in our family is in trouble.

That's when your ability to look me and my fellow jurors in the eye and speak the truth will be the determining factor in your status.

... if you can wake my fellow jurors up, that is.