PA Bill Number: HB335
Title: In inchoate crimes, further providing for prohibited offensive weapons.
Description: In inchoate crimes, further providing for prohibited offensive weapons. ...
Last Action: Re-committed to APPROPRIATIONS
Last Action Date: May 6, 2024
It's All About Response Time :: 08/05/2015
So there I was on the hillside, a term that over-dignifies the erosion gully I was working to turn into safe access to a fantastic beach. My mind was on finishing the ballast for the railroad tie I’d just put in to make what most people would call a step, but which I’d learned to refer to as a “human erosion mitigation device” because the volunteer project had to be about erosion in order to comply with certain regulations. But that’s a different story.
My mind was on that ballast because once it was packed in firmly, the step would be safe for use and I wouldn’t have to keep standing there in the sun, smelling the creosote baking out of every tie on the slope . . .
While I was working, human passage on the path — we didn’t dignify it by calling it a trail yet — was single-file. So out of politeness and in hopes of watching more donations to our project plop into the jar screwed to the nearest support post, I greeted each person with a smile as they all descended. I had two tools at hand, one in my hands to pound at ballast as another volunteer dumped it, the other on my hip in accordance with the old motto, “be prepared.”
Then the line of eager beachgoers halted. I felt the glare before I saw it, and looked up to behold a woman’s face contorted in disgust at the sight of the tool on my hip. She recognized the shiny Ruger .357 snuggled in its place on my belt in the same way I recognized a fresh dog dropping found by kneeling on it in the flower bed, something unwanted, fit to be disposed of.
“Why would you wear that… thing?!” she exclaimed — or something to that effect. “Out where regular people can see it?!!!”
My thoughts went to the fact that given my shirtless condition in the heat and humidity with sweat everywhere, if I’d tried to keep it where no one could see it, I’d have been dousing it with oily human skin emissions made acidic by hard labor. I tried to formulate an answer that would be polite while shutting her up so she’d move on and let others get to the surf and sand.
But her son had my response time beat.
“Mom, the cops are twenty minutes away! If he needs protection, a pizza would get here faster!”
I hardly believed I was hearing that old comparison in real life, and from a ten-year-old trying to squeeze past his parent to get on with the important matter of enjoyment of the border of King Neptune’s realm.
The woman glared at her son, glowered at me, stomped her foot, and moved on. My eyes met the boy’s and we exchanged a solemn fist-bump before he skipped down the clay slope with a grin.
“Pizza”, I thought, and shook my head. It would take too long to arrive; the ballast would be set before then so I settled for a granola bar and a cold beer. After all, when something is really important, it’s response time that really matters, isn’t it?
http://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/2015/08/daniel-zimmerman/its-all-about-response-time/
