COVID-19 and Girls with Guns Redux

Staying home sucks, here's some girls with guns to ease your woes...

Let's Defeat Covid-19 with some Girls with Guns

Stuck at home? Girls with guns should help pass the time.

:)

The Border Patrol Violated My Civil Rights Yesterday - 4th Amendment

A good friend of mine called me up yesterday afternoon wanting to know if I would like gas up my Jeep and follow him (in his Jeep) for a little off-roading and landscape photography West of El Paso in the area of the Portrillo Mountains, on public land (Bureau of Land Management area), the mountains themselves are part of the Organ Mountains Desert Peaks National Monument. It's a beautiful area of open ranges and desert scrub brush on which cattle from local ranches graze lazily. There's also the Aden Lava Flow Wilderness Study Area just to the North with magnificent fields of lava rocks and dormant volcanoes which are a great place to hike and take in the sunset.

I drive out to this area with great frequency (I've been out there 3 times in the past week). During dove season we like to go out around sunset to the numerous watering holes and wait for the dove to come in (this was a bad year for dove, they must have migrated somewhere else), we go out to hunt jack rabbits, sometimes we (or I alone) go out just to enjoy the Jeep trails and I go out to do a little landscape photography. All of these activities are conducted on public lands and county dirt roads.

Back to yesterday, we had decided to make the big loop on the county roads starting on the East side of the Portrillo Mountains, travel North, make the turn on NM CR A006, head West and then back South ending up on New Mexico State Hwy. 9, which skirts the border and takes us back East into Santa Teresa and the El Paso area.

We enjoyed a fabulous afternoon, stopping on occasion to snap a few photos (see below), but for the most part, just enjoying the drive along the county roads, kicking up a littler dirt and whatnot. The sun had only just set and we began our egress from the dirt roads and made the turn back onto State Hwy. 9 when...

We were traveling East, having just made the left hand turn onto the Hwy. when I noticed a Border Patrol truck towing an ATV coming in the opposite direction. He passed us and immediately made a u-turn and got behind me, which placed his truck between my Jeep and my friends who was maybe 75 yards behind. He hit his lights and I pulled over, both Border Patrol agents exited their truck with one approaching my drivers side window and the other using his flash light to wave down my friends Jeep.

The agents were both bearded and scruffy looking, my guess is that they must have been out on their ATV that day as the agent who came to my window was wearing a neck gator or shemagh of some kind.

I said "How's it going?"

The agent replied "good thanks. The reason I pulled you over is that I saw you coming out of there and I was just curious what you were doing."

Now when he said "coming out of there" I can only assume he meant coming out of the Portrillo Mountain area on the county road, because that's where he saw my Jeep turning back onto Hwy. 9. But I'm not sure why that would raise any suspicion because it's just a public road, coming from public land and I turned back onto another public Hwy.

I told them that I live nearby and that I come out to the area frequently to enjoy the public land and with that he seemed satisfied. But herein lies the problem. The "roving patrols" that the Border Patrol conduct do not given them the authority to pull you over simply out of curiosity. Especially considering that although the area I'm describing is near the international border, the lands and roads are all public. Therefore, the act of pulling me and my friend over was a violation of our 4th Amendment rights and it falls outside of the scope of their authority.

They are authorized to pull you over if they have a reasonable suspicion of a crime or an immigration violation. But this was certainly not the case given that the agent stated to me that he was curious about why I was coming from the Portrillo Mountains area (public land).

He mentioned something about there being a lot of traffic in that area before telling me to have a nice day but again, I don't see how that justifies them pulling us over.

I am not one of those people who video tape and challenge police and/or border patrol and upload those videos to the internet (not yet). I like to lead a low stress life and confronting the border patrol for violating my rights is not tops on my list of importance at the moment. I'm an active-duty soldier and need my paycheck, so I can't afford to end up in jail regardless of whether I am right or wrong. I do however, support and sympathize with the people that do challenge authority. Because after all, police and border patrol violate peoples civil rights all the time.

I should not have to explain to the border patrol why I am spending my afternoon enjoying public lands and driving on public roads, having to is a clear example of a police state. I understand the border patrol have a job to do, but does that job include pulling over cars just because they're curious as to why someone is driving on public roads, coming from public lands? Certainly not.

Had I had the wherewithal to get the agents name and badge number, I might have made a phone call to the ACLU of New Mexico. Not to be a dickhead, but damn, that did not feel like freedom and liberty to me.

Oh, here's one of the pictures I took yesterday...

The Cody Firearms Museum is Simply AMAZING

There's a hidden gem of the firearms world located, surprisingly, in the small town Cody, Wyoming (Population 9,885 as of 2017). The Cody Firearms Museum is perhaps, the single most impressive display of firearms in the United States, perhaps the world (according to Wikipedia, it is the most comprehensive firearms collection of American firearms in the world). It is certainly the largest private firearms collection in the United States. To say that the collection housed inside this impressive museum is stunning, is putting it mildly. My experience at the museum left me... speechless, and I only spent an hour inside!

I was in Wyoming for a site visit with a unit from the Wyoming National Guard. The base where we were staying and working was located near city of Guernsey, located in the South East corner of the state. My colleague and I had decided to visit Yellowstone National Park (I've included a few images of Yellowstone for your viewing pleasure at the very end of this photo gallery), however, Yellowstone is located in the North West corner of the state, a 6 and a half hour drive from where we were staying and working. As fate would have it, we did have a 24 hour period in our schedule which might allow for a run to Yellowstone.

We mentioned our plans to the First Sergeant from the Wyoming National Guard whom we were working with for the week and he suggested we stop in Cody to see the Firearms Museum, as it is located along the route we would be taking to Yellowstone. Now, as an avid firearms enthusiast with an affinity for museums, I rarely pass up any opportunity to visit a new museum, much less a firearms museum, the problem, however, would be time. As I mentioned, Yellowstone would be at least a 6 and a half hour drive, given the fact that we had to work the next day, we would have to make sure we had enough time to drive to Yellowstone, see the park and drive back within a 24 hour window, not an easy feat, add in a visit to the Cody Firearms Museum and we would be pushing the limits of my award winning (ok not an award, but an Army Driver's Badge) driving abilities). 

We departed our hotel at 0430 hours, that's 4:30 am for you civilians, and arrived in Cody around 0930 hours. The Cody Firearms Museum is just one of 5 museums housed inside the Buffalo Bill Center of the West, which is an overly impressive complex which includes the Buffalo Bill Museum, 

 Plains Indians Museum, Whitney Western Art Museum, Draper Natural History Museum, a research library and of course, the Cody Firearms Museum. To say Buffalo Bill Center of the West is a massive complex, would still be understating it a little. To see everything, in all 5 of the museums, would take a couple of days, at least. The cost to enter the Center is $19.75 for adults, however, entry is free for active duty military AND their families.

We calculated that we could only afford to spend an hour inside the firearms museum, no big deal right? I mean, after all, I've been to a number of firearms museums and an hour is usually a good amount of time, but I had no idea of what I was about to see... (read the text located in the photo below).

This museum, is this small Wyoming town, holds over 800 years of firearms history, 10,000 objects in 40,000 square feet, on two floors. I was a bit melancholy at the sad fact that we only had an hour to see as much of this place as possible, as this was not our destination for the day trip, nor did we have an additional day to add on, we had to be back to work, 6 and a half hours away, the next day. With that in mind, we did the best we could to take in as much as our eyes and brains could handle. 

The photos here simply cannot do the immensity of the museum justice, you MUST go see and experience it for yourself. Trust me when I say, it will be worth the effort.

The displays are meticulously constructed. You can tell that whoever is responsible takes great care and puts a lot into the attention to detail. I can only imagine the time and effort it takes to clean all the guns!

Above: these wheel lock guns date to the 1700's!

The two rifles on the right were competing with the AR15 for the Army contract. Interestingly, they are chambered in .224

I don't even want to know how much these chrome plated M1's are worth. Ok, yes I do want to know.

 

The museum is generally laid out by year of manufacture, however, downstairs you can find even more guns in pull out drawers organized by country of manufacture and alphabetical order.

This is one of the very first M16 test rifles.

Some of the actual tooling from Samuel Colt's original assembly line are featured in a nice display.

A view of the downstairs displays from the staircase leading down to it.

Each of the labeled draws slides out, revealing even more guns!

On one side of the room they are organized by country of orgin, on the other side they are in alphabetical order by manufacturer.

Below, a quick look at some of the displays from the other museums housed in the Buffalo Bill Center of the West.

BELOW - a few images from Yellowstone National Park

Learn more about the Cody Firearms Museum and the Buffalo Bill Center of the West on their web site https://centerofthewest.org/