Supply chain is government problem

(My Eastern New Mexico News column for November 3, 2021)

I hate to sound like a parrot repeating the only phrase he knows until everyone is sick of hearing him. Even though it's true. Squawk! Government is the problem.

If you've seen any news or visited a store recently, you may have noticed the supply chain seems to be broken. Almost every retailer is having trouble getting products, and many of them are telling customers to start trying to get what they want early. They are warning customers that the things they want may simply not be available in time for the holidays.

So far, this supply chain failure isn't as bad as is common in more completely socialist regimes, but it's worse than most of us thought would happen here in America. We are accustomed to being able to find what we want when we want it.

It will probably get a lot worse before it gets better.

Once again, those crazy "preppers" don't look so crazy.

Ever since the supply chain failure became noticeable, I've been hearing supposed experts giving their opinions on the reason behind it. Like me, you've probably heard many different reasons, not just one. All of them sound completely plausible, even though they are all different. Everyone is looking at the problem from their own angle, seeing a different part of the whole.

This inability to find one good reason usually indicates every reason you hear is wrong.

That's not the case this time. Not if you dig below the surface of every individual reason suggested for the failure. If you do so, you'll see there's one common feature connecting all of them.

At its foundation, every reason I've heard comes down to this: the "just in time" supply chain was fragile, and something was going to break it. That "something" was government interference.

It's been a long time coming, but the Covid overreactions of the recent past-- still ongoing in some backward political offices-- brought it to a head.

Regulations, licensing, legislation, handouts... they all came together to create this mess. It won't be solved by doing more of the same. Getting government out of the way is the only permanent solution, but it's one you'll not hear from the mainstream or from government (as if those are different).

Yes, government caused this problem, too. Government is the problem so often it can't be a coincidence. To pretend otherwise is to live in denial.

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"I didn't pull the trigger"

Can a Colt Peacemaker copy fire without someone pulling the trigger? Maybe...

I hate to trust anything an anti-gun bigot like Alec Baldwin says. When he said he didn't pull the trigger when he killed the person on the movie set, like probably most of you, my first inclination was to scoff. Then I wondered if it could be true.

I once had a black powder rifle fire as I pulled the hammer back to full-cock without my finger touching the trigger. Fortunately, I had it aimed downrange at the time (those gun handling safety rules work). Turns out that a sliver of wood from inside the stock, around the lock, had gotten into the sear's full-cock notch, preventing it from catching. It was a scary experience.

But my experience showed me that the common claim "a gun can never just 'go off'" isn't 100% true.

I happen to have a Colt SAA copy-- not the same one Baldwin was using, though. His was apparently a Pietta; mine is an EMF New Dakota Model made by Armi San Marcos. So I tested to see if I could get the hammer to fall while thumbing it back. 

I could.

If I thumbed the hammer back, but let it slip before it caught the first notch, it would drop back into place-- the firing pin would have contacted the cartridge primer. Since this is a very short fall, I'm not sure it would have hit hard enough to actually fire the round, but maybe. I guess it depends on spring strength and primer sensitivity.

My own accidental discharge with the black powder rifle makes me also wonder whether debris could have gotten into the sear of his gun, causing a malfunction similar to the one I experienced. 

So, yes, as much as I don't want to believe Alec Baldwin, I think it is possible for his gun to have fired without him touching the trigger, even if I think it's more likely that his finger was on the trigger after all.

None of this excuses him for sweeping people with the muzzle, for not checking for himself whether or not the gun was loaded, and for being an anti-gun bigot.

Update: I finally saw the part of the interview where Baldwin was talking about the shooting, and he talked about having the hammer cocked, but "letting it down" without pulling the trigger. That can't be done. On a SAA you have to pull the trigger to lower the hammer from a cocked position. It's the only way to do it. So, he's either lying or doesn't realize what he was doing when he shot her. Either way, it's still his fault entirely.

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