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I know, I know, that's kind of a sad picture for so early in the morning. They aren't actual birds, we assure you. It's a wax mockup going into Safeco to commemorate the 2010-11 Mariners' attempts to bat against Jered Weaver.
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=== Duece Hultzen ===
Seriously, do ALL lefties with (1) good fastballs and (2) even halfway polished games, (3) do well? Or is it just 90% of them? Or 70%? Or what?
Now I'm sitting here trying to think of LHP's who threw 90+, and could get ahead in the count, and who had an offspeed pitch, who wasn't above average. Certainly there was never such a pitcher who played for the Seattle Mariners. My wife's first heart-throb was Floyd Bannister. "Classy" lefthander with the basic pitches, a decent fastball, and pretty much the only good starter the M's had in their first fifteen years.
I kind of remember Matt Young looking good, and pitching bad ... nooooooppe. He was real wild.
Join me in the new mini-fantasy baseball game. Name LHP's with 92 fastballs, WITHOUT stupidly glaring flaws such as 5 BB's or zero offspeed pitches or whatever, who failed to impress .... how rare, exactly, is that?
Blake Beavan throws 92 and has decent polish. I ain't predicting him to win. But who are the lefties like that who aren't going to win.... hmmmmm.
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=== Got You One! ===
Of course, it could be that the above qualified leaderboard selects for the good LHP's, leaving off the ones who flamed out.
Here, let's set the minimum innings pitched at 80 .... Okay, here's one guy, Phil Coke. He throws 92, can throw some strikes, has a decent slider. He didn't pitch well in 2011 ... well, he was attempting a bullpen/starter transition. Still, I wonder why Detroit didn't get a Coke and a smile... maybe the right conclusion is that Coke is going to win in 2012. After all, his career FIP is 3.64.
Would you be surprised to learn that Dr. D had sniped Phil Coke for his roto teams in 2011? You can't stop Dr. Roto D, you can only hope to contain him... well, Taro can stop him. But you can't.
.............
Anyway, we know it can't be true that all LHP's of Danny Hultzen's approximate toolbox go on to win in the bigs. We're sure that the Gentle Readers will find some 92 lefties who lost for no apparent reason.
But it's also obvious that 90+ LHP's odds are better than I'd realized. And I'd thought the odds were gooo-oood.
Considering the 12-for-12 lefty SP riff in MLB 2011, a new question arises. Maybe Hultzen actually is a better bet than Trevor Bauer or Gerrit Cole?
I know, I know, that's kind of a sad picture for so early in the morning. They aren't actual birds, we assure you......
Man, it would be sad IF they weren't actual birds. Sad in an off the planet, politically correct tear-jerking way.
Imagine, a mock up of actual dead birds?
That's a nice side-by-side, a beautiful limit of birds, and a great coat.
Beautiful side-by-side.....Hmmmmmm?
Like Paxton and Hultzen?
Hmmmmmm.......
moe
And did The Grey make you want to rent a helicopter? :- )
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REALLY nice side-by-side. All my life I've wanted one 18 inches with the stock cut down to the handle, like Mad Max. ... I wonder if those are legal in Idaho or Montana?
Sawed off shotguns are semi-illegal because of the National Firearms Act of 1934. In the twenties and thirties, the sawed off shotgun was a great favorite of gansters like John Dillinger, who usually wore the weapon under a trench coat to perpetuate a string of bank robberies and kidnappings.
The NFA outlawed fully automatic machine guns, as well as cut down rifles and shotguns. The NFA was supposed to apply to pistols as well, but that part was dropped before it passed. This law leads to some absurd results. For example, there are several models of pistols that are chambered for the .410 shotgun, such as any number of .410 derringers, or the Taurus Judge, and all pistols can shoot bird shot as long as it is chambered for that pistol. If you were to possess one of these weapons, it would not be a crime, but if you were to have a sawed off .410 shotgun, it would be a crime. Wierd hunh.
You can still legally own a sawed off shotgun, or a machine gun, IF you are an FFA dealer, which, I think requires that you fill out a lot of forms, have a clean record, and pay $300 per year. Then you have to register the gun, and never sell it to anyone who is not an FFA dealer.
In addition to the federal law, California has its own gun control laws which outlaw certain types of guns from being possessed in California.
Didn't realize it worked that way - for the $300 FFL, I can own a sawed-off shotgun but can't sell except to other FFL dealers, eh?
Would that apply to cutting off the stock as well? And would my Mad Max gun look real good to a jury, if I ever wasted an intruder and the D.A. started selling me as a lunatic? :- )
I'm not sure about cutting off the stock. I don't believe that is against federal law, but if you want me to look it up its going to cost you. :)
As far as juries go, its never good to actually assault someone with an assault specific weapon. Is WA a state where you can shoot burglars on site?
Never much of a bird hunter (deer/elk/antelope). Used to chase pigeons, mostly I just whiffed on them. Tough little buggers to hit. They come in high and hard.
There's a Paxton analogy there, now that I think about it.
moe
To the best of my knowledge - that means, as far as I remember the RCW references I've seen over the years and my conversations with officers who are friends -
If you shoot an intruder inside your house (on site) with any feasible argument of fear of harm (i.e. not a 10-year-old at 3 p.m. in broad daylight coming through the sliding glass door looking for his friend your son), you are in the clear as far as the law goes ... no "challenge" even necessary (on sight) ... as you know, what a jury will say is another question...
If there are two strange men in leather jackets at 2 am and you come downstairs and find them, according to the cops I talk to, you are 100% clear to blow them away ... me personally, in most circumstances I'd give them a challenge first, though it raises my own risk quite a bit to do so...
My own home has an upstairs with a long 16-step flight straight up, so would defend the landing while phoning 911... give them the chance to stay downstairs unless they're wayyyyyy toooo into Call of Duty re-spawning :-)
Your thoughts counselor?
If you I didn't know better I'd think you were going to drug a couple of hobos and place them in your kitchen so you have a chance to have your picture in the newspaper along with the account of how you herorically defended yourself against "intruders".
If you're so concerned about what a jury might think, why not just get two guns? Have a "friendly" weapon for blasting the guy who kicks in your front door movie-style like in those ridiculous home security commercials and save the Mad Max gun for when you're sitting on your front porch while the neighbor mows his lawn.
If you want to join our discussion, you might start with this simple (left-leaning) Wikipedia article on justifiable homicide. In certain circumstances, homicide is justified when it prevents greater harm to innocents.
Police, for example, aren't armed because they have "sick plans in mind." They're armed because they may face a situation in which innocents are at risk. The police think these scenarios through before they occur, not after.
Homeowners who are armed also have the responsibility to think through the situation in which criminals enter their homes at 2:00 a.m. -- and they need to have their thoughts together, before the situation occurs.
About 40% of American families own guns, and a reasonable estimate is that 500,000 intruders per year are frightened away by unfired guns in the home. It could be much more.
A person who does not own a gun is simply at the mercy of a criminal entering his home. Often there is no mercy.
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... the bit of tongue-in-cheek that we used?, is normally not beyond your perception.
But for the record, of course I'd hate to actually have to use violence of any kind, against anybody. I'm also glad that nobody will be able to use any against my family.
An FYI as to the attitudes of a group you probably don't understand: Hunters, shooters, and gun owners are often taken with the artistry of the tools and machines in a way that is divorced from their actual use.
A guy owns a restored 1975 Corvette not really because he plans on driving 140 mph, but just because the car is a hobby and is beautiful. A shooter with a military rifle isn't really hoping to drive it 120 mph, as it were.
It's a hobby, a piece of art. Corvette ownership, shotgun ownership, and aikido training are high testosterone and are silly on a certain level, as is rooting for the Mariners.
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Mojician is a lawyer and I was interested in his expertise on the subject.
Read up on justifiable home defense, and then join us, if you like. You might exchange ideas more respectfully next time, please. Nobody sneered at you.
I have no problem with owning guns or using them for self defense. I just thought it was funny that your were putting so much thought into what look of gun would be best for shooting someone.
And it is funny.
My bad CPB. Once in a while we get that reaction for real. Sigh. :- )
It's a principle under common law and the model penal code that an individual is entitled to self-defense. In order to be found guilty of a crime there typically has to be both a criminal act and an accompanying mental state of culpability. Self-defense excuses the second half of that equation.
For you to escape liability for a criminal act via self-defense, there typically are several factors that come into play. First and foremost you have to reasonably believe that you (or your family) face the threat of imminent death or great bodily harm. A few take-aways - first you are not allowed to use deadly force unilaterally in the defense of property. Second, you must face a serious threat (the MPC uses death, serious bodily injury, forcible rape or kidnapping). Finally the issue of reasonableness is a fuzzy thing, but it's a determination of whether or not the actor's belief was reasonable - would a normal person in the same situation believe they faced an imminent threat?
Now, many jurisdictions apply a "retreat" rule to self-defense. Meaning that if an actor can safely retreat from an assailant they must do so rather than resorting to deadly force. However, the "castle doctrine" trumps this rule. You do not have an obligation to retreat from your home, it's your last line of defense. Colorado has the infamous "make my day" law and Washington has no duty to retreat if you are assaulted in a place that you have the right to be. With the advent of guns the duty to retreat has been disappearing rather rapidly.
And now the juicy bits.
It's generally held and widely believed that a home invader poses a serious risk to residents, but in order to maintain a self-defense justification you will need to be able to articulate the fear and the presence of the imminent threat. If there's a scheduled apartment inspection, or regular utility maintenance, or your roommate's given out keys to a number of buddies who indiscriminately crash out on the couch - you're going to have a much harder time establishing the reasonableness of your fear.
If it's 2 AM in the morning, on a weekend you were scheduled to be away on vacation, you awoke to the sound of broken glass, heard muffled urgent whispers and saw two large men with ski-masks on... you're all set, fire away.
Now, practically speaking, it's much easier to prove reasonableness when you are the only witness able to testify to what was going on. Much harder for the perp to tell his side of the story when he's unavailable to testify, if you know what I mean.
- Ben.
*The above is for discussion purposes only and in no way should be relied upon as legal advice*
But it's normally the guy who has never commented before that insists on overwrought moralizing and accusations of racism. Rest assured that if I mention drugging hobos there is no way I'm being serious.
On the model penal code: Good stuff, straight out of a law school hornbook. Notice that not every state follows the model penal code. Alaska generally does, for example, while New Mexico does not. In Alaska, you can kill for all of the model penal code reasons, and then you can kill to terminate any home (not commercial) burglary in progress. The Alaska police can also kill for the same offenses but they have a defense if they shoot mistakenly (the kid with a cap gun scenario) while a private citizen does not have this defense.
I think that killing burglars is a little cold-blooded. Most burglars are dumb meth heads looking for pills, checks, cash and collateral to trade for a fix. They often do not have any intention of harming anyone beyond stealing some cough syrup.
The "Kill home invasion burglars on sight" rule is more harsh than Biblical law.
“If a thief is caught breaking in at night and is struck a fatal blow, the defender is not guilty of bloodshed; 3 but if it happens after sunrise, the defender is guilty of bloodshed.
Exodus 22: 2-3 (NIV). The implication here (I think), is that you should only kill for a legitimate security risk, i.e. a model penal code reason, and not just because you see a harmless drunken hobo rummaging through your stuff. The Biblical standard also makes the death sound somewhat accidental, (A fatal blow is struck), rather than intentional. If you shoot someone with both barrels of your Mad Max gun, then death is a certain result, and not just an accident.
This is an important concept, the distinction between what your rights are, and what is morally right. You should do what is right, but you may act within your rights.
Mojician
Re the .410 pistols, I believe the legal difference is the rifling in the barrel. A pistol chambered in .410 will also chamber and shoot .45 Long Colt which is a traditional pistol cartridge. They are not considered shotguns. If you were to shorten a shotgun and attempt to make a pistol out of it, it would still have a smooth bore, therefor it would still be a shotgun.
As I understand it the barrel determines shotgun from rifle and pistol, not the cartridge chambering.
Matthew
That picture put a huge grin on my face!
Grew up hunting birds with my dad, mainly pheasant and ducks. I haven't hunted birds since I retired my black lab 5 years ago. She died about 2.5 years ago. After a long series of life changes I'm finally in place with enough space to own a dog again. Might pick up another pup this spring.
Matthew
Cutting the stock is fine. Cutting the barrel is fine. It's a combination of the barrel length and overall length of the shotgun that determines the legality - the barrel can't be less than 18" and the overall length can't be less than 26" in the US. I have a friend that is an NRA-certified firearm instructor and he actually recommends a 20 gauge shotgun shortened to the legal limit of 26" as the ultimate home defense weapon.
In Montana, home defense is the law. If you feel threatened by an intruder in your home, you are within your right to shoot.
Late to the party as usual.
Kudos Doc. I am constantly amazed at the breadth of subjects rationally discussed here.
Here is a website that has some good links relating to Washington State firearms laws.
http://www.gunlaws.com/links/linkswa.htm
Shortening the butt of a shotgun is not a problem as pistol gripped shotguns are perfectly legal. The regulated part is the barrel. (MtGrizzly made me go back and double check myself. He is correct, 18 and 26 are the magic numbers for shotguns. I've been focused too much on rifles lately. They are 16" on the barrel.)
I believe that Mojician is mostly correct. Machineguns are defined and spelled out in the NFA as machine guns. Sawed off shotguns, short barreled rifles (under 16”) and pistols with detachable butt stocks or a vertical forward grip are referred to in the NFA as “Any Other Weapons”. They are regulated very similarly to machineguns but are not seen as one and the same.
In most states to own a machine gun or an AOW you have to register the weapon with the feds and pay a $200 federal stamp tax. Washington State however bans machineguns and AOW’s under state law. Paying the Feds their $200 stamp tax doesn’t cut it. And not just any FFL will get you around the state law either. As I understand it to legally own a machinegun in our state you must possess a manufacturers FFL which is different than the run of the mill gun store FFL. I think it’s referred to as a class 3 license.
A really weird thing about Washington state law is in regards to silencers. Silencers are also an NFA item. To own one you must posses the federal $200 stamp and have it registered. Until this year in the state of Washington it was legal to possess a silencer provided you were straight with the feds but it was illegal to attach the silencer to a weapon. You could own it but not use it. Only state in the union with that law. The last session of the legislature cleared that up and as of this year it is now legal to use a legally possessed silencer in our state. Firearms laws can be a menagerie.
Matthew