posted by Caleb on May 20
Indianapolis has been awarded the 2012 Super Bowl. My city beat out Houston for the bid. More details as I get them.
Side note: it’s fun getting these stories up before local media.
Archive for the ‘Indy/Metro’ Category
posted by Caleb on May 15
Or local paper, try as they might, are still pretty much total n00bs at this “internets” thing, and as such I sometimes find some truly hilarious things when poking around their front page. Click it for the fullsize version.
For those not “in the know”, cornhole is essentially a bean-bag toss game, except instead of beanbags, the bags are supposed to be filled with corn. Their are two slanted boards placed about 10 yards apart, and the object is to land your bags on the board, or through the hole at the top of the board.
It’s pretty much the game of choice for fratguys and people at tailgates, because the gear is light, portable, and drinking huge amounts of beer usually won’t hurt your game too much.
posted by Caleb on May 8
One of my biggest pet peeves is bad gun owners - people who are irresponsible with their firearms in one way or another and because of their irresponsible actions people get A) killed and B) give the anti-gun faction ammo to use against us.
Such as an example is James Michael Booher, who was recently arrested by Indy Metro PD after the shooting death of his 4 year old daughter by his 5 year old son. Here is the relevant factoid that ends any support or sympathy I would have had for Mr. Booher:
A spokesman said they planned to file neglect-related criminal charges today against Booher, 26, in part because his 5-year-old son was able to get hold of Booher’s gun from the top shelf of a bookcase.
…
When the [5 year old boy] grabbed the gun, it had no magazine but did have a round in the chamber, police said.
If there are children in your house, and you have guns in your house, it is your responsibility to perform three critical actions. The first action is to secure your firearms in an area or manner that a 5 year old child can not defeat. They make these marvelous inventions called “trigger locks” which usually require a key and when properly used render a firearm inoperable. Or, if you’re too lazy for that, you could have maybe checked the goddamn chamber on the gun to ensure that it was actually unloaded. The other responsibility that is incumbent on any gun owner with children in the house is to educate those children on firearms when they reach an appropriate age. Before that age, you need to ensure that they understand that touching guns is not something they are to do, ever.
I fully support filling charges of criminal negligence against this guy, and I hope they convict him. People like Mr. Booher are the kind of gun owners that give responsible, safety-minded gun owners a bad name.
I hate seeing things like this - it is absolutely appalling to me that a 4 year old girl lost her life due to this man’s negligence. As I said, he had three critical areas in which he failed to observe intelligent safety procedures:
- Failure to properly unload his firearm - popping the magazine out doesn’t do you any good if you don’t clear the action.
- Failure to properly secure his firearm - the top of a shelf doesn’t count as “safely away” from children.
- Failure to educate his kids - even at 5, a child is old enough to understand that “you don’t touch guns”.
posted by Caleb on Apr 28
This weekend, I had the opportunity to attend a Bowling Pin Shoot at Marion County Fish and Game Association. Two of my friends are members there, and invited me along to the pin shoot in the effort to get me to join the range as well, and also because holy hell pin shooting is wicked fun.
As you can see from their website, MCF&G offers a lot of different shooting options, including pistol, rimfire, trap, muzzle loading, and even an airgun league. In addition to just having the range itself, they also have a variety of regular competitions, such as the bowling pin shoot that I went to. Like the pin shoot, they have a regular steel match one Friday a month, NRA bullseye matches, muzzleloading matches, weekly trap, and a host of other matches and activities.
At the pin shoot, I got to meet a good cross-section of the range regulars (while getting my ass handed to me), and they were a good group of guys. Everyone was interested in having fun, as well as being very welcoming of the “new guys”. The “safe” area to the side of the pin shooting area was nice, as people were talking about pin shooting, different guns, etc.
The one thing that impressed me was the level of concern for safety as well and how they went about enforcing it. During the pin shoot, I accidentally handled my firearm at the line when I shouldn’t have, but instead of having some range nazi come screaming up my backside, the RSOs assumed that I’m a semi-unretarded adult and just reminded me of the safe handling rules. As such, I was duly chastised. But the commitment to safety coupled with the courtesy with which it was enforced really impressed me.
The only strike to MCF&G would be that they don’t allow high-powered rifles, but then again I’ve yet to find a range in the Indy/Metro area that does allow that; other than the odious Don’s Guns. Here’s Marion County Fish & Game Association breaks down on my review list:
- Location: Not a bad location, it’s only a little bit further from my house than Eagle Creek, and since it’s “members only” the access is limited and gated. The range itself is located in a bit of backcountry woods which makes it very easy to forget that you’re 10 minutes from a major metro area.
- Range: This is obviously where MCF&G shines - their range is large with a wide variety of different guns that are supported. Again, their only knock is that no high-powered rifles are allowed, so it would get 4 stars instead of 5.
- Staff & Members: One of the best parts of this range is found in the staff and members. Everyone I encountered was courteous, friendly, and generally helpful and pleasant. Unlike a lot of ranges I’ve been to, I never once got the feeling that myself or my friends were “outsiders”. For the welcoming and open atmosphere provided by the guys at the range alone I would recommend it to a lot of people.
- Intangibles: At Marion County Fish and Game, I really felt like I was at a range populated by “gun guys” No one was waving guns around and acting stupid, everyone was responsible, safe and friendly. In short, it was everything I want in a range experience.
Bottom line: I’ll definitely be going back to Marion County Fish & Game Association; at the very least to shoot steel and pins on a monthly basis and I’m going to investigate possibly purchasing a membership as well. I firmly believe in supporting the sport locally, and I think that joining an area club would be a responsible thing to do.
posted by Caleb on Jan 2
One of the things I promised more of during this new 2008 was going to be local coverage of Indiana and Indy Metro area politics. My first official entry of 2008 makes good on that promise; one of the big stories that I’m going to following through the year is the first term of Mayor Greg Ballard, who was inaugurated yesterday.
I blogged about Mayor Ballard’s rather surprising win after the November election; I’m still sort of in shock about the whole thing. I don’t live in City of Indianapolis, so I didn’t have a direct influence on the outcome of said election (sadly).
The main aspect of Mayor Ballard’s new administration that really interests me is his desire to wrest control of the Indianapolis Metro Police Department away from Sheriff Frank Anderson, and move it back to a Chief of Police appointed by the Mayor’s office.
“All public safety agencies must be under the mayor’s chain of command,” the retired Marine lieutenant colonel (Ballard) said in his speech.
For my readers outside of the Indy area, Indianapolis has a a somewhat unusual police situation. The City of Indianapolis coincides with Marion County pretty much exactly, which means that if you’re in Marion County, you’re in Indianapolis as well. Prior to last year, we had an Indianapolis Police Department (IPD) and the Indianapolis Sheriff’s Office, which were both responsible for largely the same law enforcement duties in the Metro area. The exception to that was that there were several weird (for lack of a better word) areas of the city that were not serviced by IPD, and received emergency services from their own small PDs and the Sheriff’s office.
Last year, as part of a much larger consolidation effort, the IPD and the MCSO were merged into one force, the Indianapolis Metro Police Department, or IMPD. Former Mayor Peterson didn’t have the juice to make this happen, as during the initial stages of the proposal, it was opposed by Sheriff Anderson, who rather understandably did not want to lose control of his department. A key concession made by the planners of the merger was that the elected Sheriff would maintain operational command of the new merged police force.
So now Mayor Ballard’s fight is to have control of the IMPD moved away from Sheriff Anderson, and to a Mayor-appointed Chief of Police. Normally, I am against moving powers from elected officials to political appointees as a matter of personal policy. However, I opposed the police merger to begin with, and opposed placing the administrative power in Sheriff Anderson’s hands. So you can see my consternation here, as I don’t want Sheriff Anderson in charge of the IMPD, and yet at the same time I don’t want the main police powers to go to a political appointee. It’s not that I don’t think the new mayor would pick a good person, but rather I’m trying to have long term vision here. Only a fool would assume that more conservative elements will always control the Mayor’s office, and while I may get a Chief of Police that I like, what happens when Ballard is no longer in office?
Needless to say, I’ll be following the struggle to change control of the police to the Mayor’s Office with some interest. Currently, I’m leaning towards Mayor Ballard’s desire to take control away from the Sheriff, but we’ll see how that goes as I get more info through the year.
