I’m a boring guy with little imagination, which is why my writing has always been focused more on fact than fiction. (Fact is easier to write than fiction. It’s already happened, and all I have to do is record it. That doesn’t take me beyond my limited writing capabilities.)

This weakness is reflected in my reading habits as well as my writing style. I read more biography and history than fiction. The “willing suspension of disbelief” thing comes pretty hard for me, and there’s little made-up stuff that makes the cut for being worth my time for entertainment.

Let me share with you two novels that made the cut.

Both are written by Lt. Dan Marcou, a cop retired from a distinguished career in municipal law enforcement in Wisconsin, where he served on a SWAT team and earned a national reputation as a trainer of lawmen. In fact, I first met Dan at a police training seminar in an international venue. I thought his course was excellent (after I was fortunate enough to get out of his demanding force-on-force role-play scenarios in one sweat-soaked piece), and he stayed on my radar screen ever since.

Recently, in well-earned retirement, Marcou came out with a couple of novels that gathered in all he learned and experienced in his decades as a street cop. Dan’s first novel is “The Calling: The Making of a Veteran Cop,” and the second is “SWAT: Blue Knights in Black Armor.” Where does it come from? Well, can we say “autobiographical novel”?

Some of the “fiction” comes from Dan’s decidedly non-fiction experience, and some from his brothers and sisters on The Job where he worked, and some from other departments. There is one chilling vignette that reads as if it came from real life. It should … it did. The female officer who experienced that particular terror was from Ohio, not Wisconsin where Dan had to place her to keep the storyline coherent, but I expect Dan and I were both in the same training hall when her story unfolded. Except for the patch on the shoulder of her uniform shirt, and the fact that Dan had to make her gun a Glock to keep the storyline consistent with the department where it’s supposed to be taking place (she actually used a 9mm Smith & Wesson), this segment of the novel is blow-for-blow, shot-for-shot what actually happened. Yes, right down to the part where the investigators thought one of her two shots had missed her savage and deranged assailant, until the autopsy revealed that both bullets had gone through the same entry hole, and came to rest next to each other in the body of the would-be cop-killer.

If you want perfect grammar and spelling, go read something written by an English teacher. If you want from-the guts, from-the-heart, you-are-there-with-us, and here is why we do it, read Lt. Dan Marcou’s two novels, The Calling and SWAT. You can get them through Barnes & Noble or Amazon, but I would suggest that you go straight to the source and order an autographed copy from the man himself. Hit http://www.ltdanmarcou.com/signed.html, and you can get it done.

I hope you enjoy reading his novels as much as I did.

American Hunters and Shooters Association is telling gun owners not to worry, that Obama and Biden don’t want to impinge their right to own and use firearms. Unfortunately, AHSA is a Trojan Horse, a false front of gun-banners masquerading as supporters of firearms owners civil rights. The truth is out there…and here’s where to find it.

Rich Pearson is head of ISRA, the Illinois State Rifle Association. I’ve known him for years and he’s a good, honest man. He and his people have been fighting for years against Obama and his ilk on their home ground. Obama voted for all sorts of gun bans, and against a state resolution that would have offered some protection to good citizens who used their firearms in self-defense. You can read about it all HERE.

The NRA and its Institute for Legislative Action have finally brought out their hard-hitting TV ads exposing the truth about Obama and Biden and where they stand on (read, against) firearms owners’ civil rights. The Obama campaign is trying desperately to ban these ad spots. (Silencing your political opponents…now there’s some meaningful “political change.”) You can read about what’s going on, and see the ads, HERE

Meanwhile, the Missouri state administration has come down hard on the Obama campaign for its unethical attempts to silence criticism in other ways. See it HERE

The disingenuous campaign of disinformation by the Obama campaign has been frighteningly effective. The outdoors people seem to be much less behind McCain over Obama this year than they were behind Bush over Kerry four years ago.

Feel free to send these links to your friends and relatives who believe in freedom and civil rights.

Time is short.

It isn’t just that Obama and Biden are inimical to our rights as gun owners.

It’s also that they’ve lied to every single American citizen about their position on these issues.

Tom Gresham, who does the great GunTalk call-in radio show and Personal Defense TV (which will be on the Sportsman Channel and assorted other cable venues, instead of its old home on the Outdoor Channel, when its third season airs beginning next month) was doing an interview with Alan Gura, the masterful attorney who orchestrated the free people’s victory in the Heller decision.

It occurred to Tom that this was an occasion suitable for a fine commemorative firearm. He approached Paul Pluff, the public relations guru at Smith & Wesson, and Paul was as excited about the idea as Tom. The Second Amendment Foundation got into the act, and voila: the commemorative is here.

It’s a Smith & Wesson Model 442, the “hammerless” Centennial Airweight, a short barreled five-shot .38 Special revolver. It’s an excellent choice for concealed carry, and particularly apropos since Washington, DC is fighting the Supreme Court’s decision tooth and nail. The city’s initial response was that it would register only revolvers instead of semiautomatic pistols.

This neat little pocket-size gun would fit even DC’s registration standards. I can think of no better way to thumb one’s nose at anti-rights Washington mayor Adrian Fenty…and, God knows, some well-deserved nose-thumbing is certainly due in that direction.

I’ve been in New York since yesterday. It inspires awe to see the memory of the Pearl Harbor of my generation observed with dignity by the community that lived through it. Even McCain and Obama were here, setting aside their differences for the solemn occasion.

It was a time to remember the countless ordinary citizens who helped to save the lives of others that terrible day, and to reflect upon the sacrifices of the legion of public safety personnel who did not survive the disaster. I had dinner last night with Bill Allard, a plank holder on the famous NYPD Stakeout Squad. He and his famed partner Jim Cirillo were shot at many times, and sent many violent criminals to the morgue with deadly accurate return fire. When Stakeout was disbanded by a generation of city leaders who deemed shooting violent armed criminals to be politically incorrect, Bill transferred to the legendary Emergency Services Unit. Unique in American policing, the ESU is a high-risk unit that combined rescue work – digging victims out of subway crashes, getting jumpers off bridges and skyscraper ledges – with the function other cities called SWAT. Bill had been retired by the time 23 fellow ESU officers were killed in the collapse of the Twin Towers. He had spent yesterday at a unit memorial service for the ESU’s honored dead.

The firefighters, paramedics, and cops were the ones that charged into the danger as a sea of humanity fled from it. They and the many private citizens who saved lives on 9/11/01 wrote a chapter of courage and commitment into the pages of American history. One hopes that the magnitude of that single, cataclysmic incident will not obscure the fact that such sacrifices are made every day by the same kind of good people, in crises that are smaller in scope yet every bit as life-threatening.

May they always be remembered, and appreciated.

So, me an’ my buddy Jon-Boy was sittin’ on the back porch, cleanin’ our shotguns, talkin’ ‘bout the politics of the week.

“Them TV commentators seem like they’s more interested in Hillary wearin’ that there bright orange pantsuit at the Convention, than what she was speechifyin’ whilst she was wearin’ it,” I said.

“Hell,” said Jon-Boy, “I thought it looked real good on her. Always figured she shoulda been wearin’ orange ever since that Whitewater thang, anyhow.”

“Good thang Obama picked Biden fer Vice-President,” I says. “Oughta put paid to anybody believin’ that Obama really supports the Second Amendment like he said. Weren’t it Joe Biden that said, ‘Banning guns is an idea whose time has come?’”

“Yep, back around ’93,” says Jon-Boy. “Prob’ly plagiarized it off somebody, like he did the Neil Kinnock speech.”

I tried to look on the bright side. “McCain just named that there Sarah Palin, the Governor of Alaska, for his Veep,” I says.

That brought a smile to Jon-Boy’s face. “Yup. NRA Life Member, too. She’s younger’n Obama, an’ it looks like she’s done a whole lot more for folks in her time than he has. Didn’t ride no husband’s coat-tails to get herself elected, neither. Them folks in Alaska is practical, self-sufficient, an’ independent-like. When they vote somebody into office, it really says somethin’.”

“Dang,” I says, “when it gets around to the debates, I bet the Vice-Presidential one’s gonna be more interestin’ than the Presidential.”

“Could be, Cooter,” says Jon-Boy. “Bet ya a box o’ shells that if the Veep debate gets aroun’ to gun control, Biden’s gonna trot out some tired ol’ quote from Sarah Brady.” He looked down his shiny clean shotgun barrel an’ added, “Wonder if he’ll remember to attribute the quote this time?”

OK. That’s it. Enough is enough.

So Barack Obama wants to place “a heartbeat away from the Presidency” the guy who said circa 1993, “Banning firearms is an idea whose time has come”?

That’s it. I’m throwing my hat in the ring.

Actually, the above is yet another manifestation of my significant other’s evil sense of humor. This neat little Internet ditty comes from: http://www.thelopezfamilyonline.com/aol4pres.php

Bless those people for giving us some humor to share with our friends and family. Just go to the link, plug in the name of your chosen victim/candidate (as the cruel significant other did to me, sniff sniff), and email it right to ‘em.

I have a feeling that as the campaign goes on, we’ll need more of this welcome light-heartedness to keep us going.

There’s something yellow and vaguely familiar outside. It’s…it’s…sunshine! Yes, I remember now.

Tropical Storm Fay didn’t do much damage where I live. Bunch of branches down on my property, a tree down on my neighbor’s, some flood damage elsewhere in the area. The phrase I keep hearing is, “We dodged the bullet.”

That’s technically incorrect. We didn’t dodge nothin’. Basically, we were awfully lucky and it just missed. The worst part of the storm unexpectedly veered away from this particular county. Others were not so lucky: Fay killed a dozen or so people in the Caribbean and seven to eleven in Florida, depending on which source you believe. One city to the east of us saw 70,000 people without power and dealt with a lot of severe flooding, and another 12,000 people were without electricity in a community about equidistant to the west. And, as Dan predicted in a letter to this blog, there were indeed alligators in the streets, at least in Melbourne, Florida according to reports.

Folks are accusing the Governor and other officials of having overreacted in opening shelters, evacuating some communities, and all the rest. It’s easy to call it overreaction, after it’s over. However, the folks who needed evacuation and shelter were damn glad it was there, and that help appeared Johnny-on-the-spot when they needed it.

After something like this, you feel a little like the guy who got a terminal cancer diagnosis and feverishly put his affairs in order. Then the doctor calls and says, “We got your diagnosis wrong and you’re fine.” “What,” shouts the patient, “I went through all that for nothing!?!?”

It’s something on which we need to maintain perspective. I see it as having an excellent drill to prepare for the next such crisis that does hit full force. At my place, the power only went out briefly and intermittently. Didn’t mean a generator ain’t worth its price for peace of mind. I didn’t get a flat this week, either, but it doesn’t mean I’m gonna throw the spare tires and the jacks out of the vehicles.

Today, we just relaxed and looked at the bright side. It’s helped the drought conditions. The waters have receded quickly here. Last night, on the way to the Policeman’s Ball in the last of the driving rain (yes, policemen do have balls), we noticed that the water was up to Smokey Bear’s knees, on the fire danger sign, and look how low it is already.

So here I am in North Florida right now, battening down the hatches as Tropical Storm Fay makes her approach. According to the Weather Service predictions, the small community where I am is right in Fay’s crosshairs. They’re speculating that she might have achieved Hurricane status by the time she arrives.

Most folks are preparing as usual. The last of these storms that hit this part of the state was more of an adventure than a disaster for me and those I hang with. Generators, food, chainsaws et al were in place and ready to go. They are this time, too.

Some folks overlook less common preparations until it’s too late. Have extra cash and keep it on your person. I like it folded into secure ZipLoc bags in a money belt. When power goes out, so do credit card machines, and many of today’s generation of moneychangers don’t seem to know how to process a charge card other than electronically. Stock up on bleach. Yes, it can be used to purify water in a pinch (retch!) but mainly, there are cleanup issues. Floods tend to accompany hurricanes, and floods float sewage everywhere. Friends who were in New Orleans for weeks after Katrina reported sometimes being chest-high in water that was brown with feces. Bleach is a most effective field decontaminant. Stock up on pre-moistened towelettes, a.k.a. “baby wipes.” They’ll seem worth their weight in gold when the water stops running.

My corner of the Backwoods Home bailiwick is the gun room. When emergency services are stretched to the breaking point by natural disaster, the Bad Guys know they are more likely to be able to literally get away with murder. Ask Miamians about the aftermath of Hurricane Andrew, or New Orleans survivors about what happened after Katrina. In such situations, I would be keeping a semiautomatic .223 carbine close to hand at all times. Where I’m posting from right now, that sort of thing is low on my list of concerns. In time of disaster, the back-country folks here come out in force, but to help others, not to plunder.

Greater concerns are suddenly-homeless dogs that go desperately feral…large livestock maddened by terror sufficiently to attack humans after escaping from blown-down fencing…and, here, venomous water moccasins that get very temperamental when flood waters move them unwillingly from their swamp to your front yard.

Every piece of equipment you deploy is going to face a ruinous hostile weather environment. My fancier sporting guns with their deep blue finishes and Circassian walnut stocks will stay in their (dessicant-filled) gun safes. On my hip will be a Glock 31 pistol with polymer frame and Tenifer finish. The cops who worked Katrina told me that the Glocks were the only firearms among them that didn’t rust in constant exposure to that environment. It will be in a synthetic holster on a synthetic belt: the septic environment you face in floods will ruin leather, but the pathogenic filth can be wiped off plastic and machine-washed out of heavy duty nylon. The G31 holds 16 .357 SIG cartridges – powerful, likely to penetrate deeply enough into large animals, flat-shooting enough for long shots – and will be backed up with its subcompact 10-shot baby brother in the same caliber, a Glock 33, where my other hand can reach it. The smaller gun will take the 15-shot spare magazine for the larger.

For any serious shooting needs, my “hurricane gun” is an old beater 12-gauge pump shotgun, a Remington 870 traded in by a police department on AR15 rifles. Mechanically perfect on the inside, it has enough pitting on the outside that I no longer worry about what will happen to it in the rain or the muck. One-ounce 12-gauge rifled slugs at about 1400 feet per second should take care of any large, “hard target” that requires emergency shooting.

As they like to say at the police Street Survival© Seminars, it’s about “preparation, not paranoia.” The longer I’m alive, the more experience confirms for me that bad things are most likely to happen to the people least prepared for them.

Mas loads a well-worn Remington pump gun with Remington 12-gauge rifled slugs, with spare shells attached to the stock in a butt cuff. Glock .357 pistol rides in Kydex holster by FIN on nylon mountaineer belt by Jack DeShong.

Next year will make three decades that I’ve been involved in shooting cases as an expert witness in the courts. I took my first case in New York City in 1979. It’s been an instructive part of my life.

One thing I’ve learned is that most private citizens who go through legal ordeals after they’ve had to use a gun in self-defense find themselves feeling terribly, terribly alone. They’re being demonized by the anti-gun media locally, and find themselves shunned by neighbors, friends, co-workers, and customers. Their identity as the good person, the good neighbor, the competent professional at whatever they do, has been subsumed by the new identity given them by the press: He Who Kills.

It’s easier for cops. They have unions and fraternal organizations to stand up for them, and to stand with them. They’re surrounded by peers who think, “That could have been me who had to shoot that dirtbag and bring down this crapstorm. There, but for the grace of God, go I.” The private citizen forced to do the same thing generally doesn’t have much of that peer support.

One guy who understands is my old friend and colleague Marty Hayes. He’s an ex-full time cop who went from patrolman to chief law enforcement officer, and who for the last several years has worked full time to bring responsible armed self-defense training to law-abiding private citizens as well as to law enforcement. First as Director of the famous Firearms Academy of Seattle, and now also as the founder of the Armed Citizens’ Legal Defense Network, he understands that people who’ve defended themselves and their families may need support in many ways in the aftermath of the incident.

Gail Pepin recently did an interview with Marty for the ProArms Podcast. It’s on Episode 005. The interview explains what the organization is about and what it does. I’m on board with the Network as an advisor. So are John Farnam, Dennis Tueller, Jim Cirillo, Jr., and some other folks who’ve spent decades dealing with violent encounter survival at both the street level and the court level. I for one think the Armed Citizens’ Legal Defense Network is an idea whose time has come. You can go to the Network’s website, which has lots of good info. As my old friend Farnam would say, “Strongly recommended!”

I apologize for being kind of in and out on the blog lately. In the eight weeks of June and July, I was on the road for six. Internet, etc. was not always accessible.

It was fun, though, to read some headlines on the ground where the news was taking place. I was driving through Virginia and DC when the Washington Post front page headlined the story of the city’s resistance to the Supreme Court itself. Sure enough, when Dick Heller, the eponymous plaintiff in the landmark Heller v. DC SCOTUS decision went to register his Colt Government Model .45 pistol, he was turned down. Even though he had only seven-shot magazines for it, the District told him it was unacceptable. Don’t you know, they have a separate law in the city banning as “assault weapons” any firearm that can possibly take a larger than twelve-round magazine. They lump them in with prohibited “machine guns.”

Will Dick Heller take them to court again over this? Well, do bears go potty in the woods? And do winos do the same on the streets of the District, for that matter?

The aftershocks of Heller are even more amusing in the Chicago area, where Mayor Daley (aka King Richard the Second) is not handling it well and promises to fight. Uh, yeah. The vehemently anti-gun Chicago Tribune first responded to the Heller decision with the editorial suggestion that the Second Amendment be repealed. Shortly thereafter, the Trib’s editorial board apparently got smacked with the clue bat and publicly suggested that it would be unwise for the mayor to whiz away millions of taxpayers dollars fighting an unbeatable reality.

Chicago, like DC, banned handgun possession long ago within the city limits. There isn’t even a firearms retailer in the city proper, though a ring of fine gun shops surrounds Chicago in the suburbs. The satellite community of Morton Grove became notorious as the first municipality to ban handgun possession. It was followed by Wilmette, Winnetka, Oak Park, and Evanston.

Morton Grove has given up and surrendered the ordnance. Ditto, I’m told, Wilmette. Didn’t want to explain to the voters why they urinated away millions of dollars fighting the law. I’m reasonably well connected in Chicagoland for someone who doesn’t live there, and my sources tell me that while Oak Park wants to fight, Winnetka will probably cave. Evanston has reportedly been asked by the Brady Center to wait to throw in the towel until they’ve looked at the anti-gunners’ “alternate” legal proposal that they’re feverishly drawing up now.

It’s good to have the enemies of our rights on the defensive for a change. Morton Grove is where they used to manufacture those hideously kitschy plastic pink flamingoes. A few years ago, SWAT Magazine did a hilarious spoof on “Hunting the Morton Grove Pink Flamingo.” If I can lure one of those plastic pink posers onto my range, maybe I can shoot it with one of my Colt .45 auto pistols, in tribute to Dick Heller and the SCOTUS approved demise of a pathetic exercise in politically correct stupidity.