When the FBI Guys Come Knocking...

[David Honig]

At 09:51 AM 9/26/01 -0700, Tim May wrote:
>On Wednesday, September 26, 2001, at 08:03 AM, David Honig wrote:

>I've had the fire department wandering through my back yard. I saw a guy 
>in a blue uniform walking around my back yard, so I yelled "Can I help 

Its the blue *helmets* not uniforms that one should worry about :-) 


>> This thread is an advertisement for big noisy dogs, too.
>
>
>The neighbor closer to the main road than I am has just such a big, 
>noisy dog. "Shadow" is part-wolf, and is mean, vicious, and loud. 

Not sociopath dogs, just guard-like dogs that would hassle an agent
hanging out on your front bench.  A nice slobbery dog with a loud
voice and some reasonable sense of territorial sovereignty.  Maybe
some hostility to men in suits.

>The point being, dogs are usually either so vicious they are chained  or 
>locked-up, or are docile enough to just wag their tails when the nice 
>men in the FBI suits approach.

My cat agrees that dogs are in general useless noisy and annoying but 
consider how useful they are in secure installations (jails, mil bases,
gulags, etc.)  
For physical security and alarms, dogs are pretty good.  

>Anyway, my cats would probably not like a dog around. Nor would I. (Dogs 
>are fine, but they take a lot of care and they interfere with trips away 
>from home.)

Dogs are drunk football players.  

Cats are considered *public good* and allowed to roam freely, in Calif.  
Cats also reduce the incidence of allergies (by altering
immunoglobin levels differently from other antigens like mites) among children
living with them (as reported in _Science_).  And of course they have
hackernature.

> Chief Justice Warren Burger used to answer the door at 
>his Washington-area house with a handgun in his hand. 

Nice.  Do not taunt *that* happy fun judge.

> He no doubt could have gotten one of the 
>various exemptions, as he was not one of the proles.)

Yeah, slightly, a supreme...

>(For the curious, it is not a violation of the carry laws to have a 
>handgun on one's person in one's own property, even, interestingly, a 
>tent. Unless barred by other laws (National Parks, etc.).

Or work.  Many companies have private rules against that, but otherwise
its legally protected.  Lots of gun store employees wear open carry at
work, not many
others.  Pilots I suppose, now.