DIY Thanksgiving

These paper targets for turkey and other critters were sold at Sears. I don't know the dates of when the store sold J.C. Higgins branded targets and when they sold their own brand, but I was struck by the difference in the bird renderings.

Before you run out and shoot a turkey, you might want to note the instructions. For a decorative, happy-looking turkey, like the one above, be aware that "For Best Results Always Use SEARS Ammunition." If it's a more organic, introspective turkey you are after, like the one below, then you must keep in mind that "For Best Results Always Use J.C. Higgins Ammunition."

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Dodging Bullets

This ad is for real, from a real website.

How ever powerful gunfire becomes, the technology of bullet-deflection will always need to match and surpass it. The weapons, in turn, become more powerful still. It’s an arms race, albeit inter-human, with no end in sight.

WIll the number of gun deaths decrease with legislation? Perhaps we will get to find out in the near future. In the meantime, some images of bulletproofing, which, sadly, is the only form of gun control we really have now.

And no, the BulletBlocker Backpack would not have saved the lives of those gunned down in Newtown.

"The best marksman of the New York Police is shooting at

a man behind bulletproof glass," 1931. (source)

Kevlar vest test

Another BulletBlocker product.

Soft-body armor testing

Library of Congress photo, 1923

Popular Science, April, 1933 (source)

Bullets crashed and ricocheted recently in an exciting test of a new shield for policemen at Chicago, Ill. Mounted on casters, the four-foot shield of specially hardened metal affords protection for one police officer in storming barricades or entering besieged houses in the face of gangster fire. As he pushes the shield forward on its casters, the policeman can look ahead through a slot in the metal and tire through a small loophole beneath it. The shield guards against machine guns.

Test for a bulletproof material called Dur-o-lite.

Handy BulletBlocker chart!