Question of the Day

by Ben Small

With all the trillions of dollars we're borrowing from the Chinese to fund our soldiers to make wastelands the world over safe for...well...nobody, why don't we bring them home and maybe use them to secure our borders?

We have a full-blown war going on in Mexico, led by drug and human smuggling cartels originally set up years ago in Columbia, and a Mexican government seemingly incapable of stopping it, a government so corrupt that many -- including our envoy to Mexico -- believe it's a major part of the problem. The response when WikiLeaks exposed our government's suspicions? The Ambassador resigned. Seems our government didn't want to upset President Felipe Calderon. Ambassador Resigns  Meanwhile, over 35,000 Mexicans have died in Calderon's so far unsuccessful war against the cartels.

Janet Napolitano, whose responsibility it is to keep our Homeland safe, says our borders are safer and more secure than ever before; however, those who live near one, especially in the Southwest, who find the spent AK-47 shells in their back yards and who hear the gunshots in the night, disagree. Ask the residents of Green Valley, AZ, one of the earliest and largest planned retirement communities, situated along Interstate 19, known locally as Smugglers Alley. Or ask the ranchers who live within a hundred miles of the border. They find the detritus of smuggling activities on their land every day, and they fear being shot like Robert Krentz, who died on his land, shot by an illegal who simply walked back across the border.

And what happens when a landowner catches illegals on his land and holds them at gunpoint waiting for a law enforcement official to pick them up? One guy did it, over and over. He caught hundreds of illegals on his property. One would think this country would be proud of this man's activities; instead, he got sued in a Phoenix court and lost. He has to pay the illegals and their U.S. lawyers, sponsored by Open Border groups, over a hundred thousand dollars. Seems he caused these illegals emotional pain and suffering by restraining their free movement.

And what do we do when government officials catch illegals? Do we deport them or stick them to rot in our over-crowded jails? Well, our Justice Department has changed its policy on deportment; it wants to slow or stop deportment proceedings, and it's suing state government officials to block their enforcement of federal immigration law.

If our borders are safer and more secure than ever, as Napolitano says, then why have National Parks along our southern border been closed to American citizens due to dangerous smuggling traffic across that border? And why won't the Department of the Interior let Border Patrol agents enter those parks without permission to seek out and destroy the smugglers?

The funny (sarcasm full and screaming) thing about these closures, about all the Park Service signs warning hikers or bikers trailing in Southwest Forest Service lands? Both instruct folks who see illegal activities to dial 911. Who answers 911 calls? The same sheriffs sued to block border enforcement.

Is this a Catch 22 or what? More important, is this serious border enforcement?

Oh sure, Napolitano assigned some National Guard troops to border enforcement, but not nearly enough to do the job, and those she sent, she instructed not to do anything but report illegal activities they see. And what about those federal agents assigned to drug enforcement coordination activities in Mexico? They report inefficiencies due to understaffing, inability to understand Spanish and fear for their lives. (Arizona Daily Star) Indeed, President Obama even barred these enforcers from carrying weapons. (Agents Disarmed)  So these enforcers push paper, and they're frustrated. Maybe that's why ICE gave Napolitano a vote of No Confidence.

Yeah, no kidding.

Sure, we've made some progress along our southern borders. We've scared many of the illegal immigrants back to Mexico, and yes, we see the daily reports of captures of massive amounts of smuggled drugs and the victims of human traffickers, but our Government Accounting Office, the agency charged with monitoring the efficiency and effectiveness of our governmental actions admits that the Border Patrol can only stop illegal entries along 129 miles of our 1,954-mile Mexican border. And our 3,918-mile long northern border, the GAO says, is virtually wide open. (GAO Report)

We tried building a fence along our southern border, but environmentalists -- tree huggers to some -- blocked that project. They worried coyotes, javelina and rattlesnakes would not migrate.

President Calderon blames the United States for the drug cartel activities. He says drugs are moving north across our borders and guns are moving south to the cartels. And there's no question the drugs are moving into the United States. There's huge demand for them, and the money involved in that trade is staggering. As for the guns, however, very few have been traced to the United States, and some of those that have been identified as originating from our country have been tracked to a BATFE program to smuggle them there. You remember those buffoons: the Ruby Ridge and Waco screw-ups. (ATF Smuggling Operation; CBS Report; Report 3; KVOA Report) Indeed, some of these BATFE rifles killed a couple of our agents working south of the border.

The Feds don't want state officials to ask for ID. Yet you and I must show ID when we make a purchase at Best Buy. The Feds say state requirements to show ID illegally profile Hispanics. Yet, who is crossing our borders? Most are Mexican, but also a number of Guatemalans, Hondurans and Latinos from other Central American countries. Not many white grandmas from Norway sneak across the U.S. border.

Recently -- actually just a couple days ago -- Larry Dever, the Sheriff of Cochise County, one of the Arizona border counties suffering the most smuggling activity spoke out. "Janet Napolitano says the border is more secure than it's ever been. I've been here for 60 years, and I'm telling you that's not true."

Dever also says, "The senior supervisor agent [Border Patrol] is telling me about how their mission is now to scare people back. I had to go back to my guys and tell them not to catch anybody, that their job is to chase people away. They were not to catch anyone, arrest anyone. Their job was to set up posture, to intimidate people, to get them to go back." (Fox News)

Dever (Left)

Just over a month ago, Dever quit representing Arizona sheriffs in the Alliance to Combat Transnational Threats, citing politicization of border security. (KGUN 9) Meanwhile, sheriffs of counties north and west of Tucson are reporting cartel snipers in the hills, equipped with high power rifles, scopes and night vision, who spot for cartels or bandits waiting for them. (AZCentral)

You think the smuggling and violence in Mexico isn't spilling over onto U.S. soil? The Border Patrol set up Operation Detour, an education program now provided in Southwestern schools, intended to convince middle-and-high school kids not to become cartel mules. Cartel members like mules for an obvious reason: Somebody else gets caught. So they use American teenagers, juveniles, often paid big bucks or intimidated to cooperate by kidnapping or other forms of extortion. American teenagers crossing the border, dressed in wild colors, tank tops and driving U.S. vehicles are less likely to be nabbed than somebody wearing a sombrero who doesn't speak English. (Operation Detour)

And now the Mexican cartels -- Is it politically incorrect or profiling to call them "Mexican" cartels? -- are threatening Border Patrol and ICE agents. The Monitor

So again, why don't we stop spending our money defending deserts overseas where there's no imminent U.S. threat and have our troops do something useful in our country -- like secure our border?

Are our government's efforts to block enforcement of federal immigration laws, closing down some of our National Parks and the resulting increase in smuggling activities and border violence all part of Change We Can Believe In? Gee, it's too bad securing our border isn't as vital a U.S. interest or as imminent a danger as the deserts of Libya, Iraq or Afghanistan.

Illegal

by Ben Small

By now, surely everyone is aware that Arizona has passed into law a bill making illegal presence in this state a felony. Boycotts in response to this legislation are in process, and demonstrations against Arizona and the law are occurring in various cities across the country.

But what to boycott? Arizona Tea? It's manufactured in the Northeast. The Diamondbacks? Would anybody care? I've been boycotting baseball since the 1994 strike/lockout, whichever -- I don't remember who closed down that season. Baseball lost me then, and they haven't recaptured my interest. Lettuce? How do you know where your restaurant salad came from?

It all seems a bit silly to me. Especially when those who are urging boycotts, for the most part, don't live in Arizona and have no idea what's going on here.

Arizona is being overrun by illegal smuggling. It's everywhere, and the effects of it are being felt throughout Arizona. No doubt you've heard of the murder of prominent rancher Robert Krenze. Krenze had found tons of marijuana on his vast, thirty-five thousand acre ranch and turned it over to the Border Patrol. He'd suffered the destruction of his fences, his cattle and damage to his grounds, not to mention a vast amount of littering. Then last week, a deputy sheriff in Pinal County, just north of Tucson at Case Grande, was on regular patrol when he discovered bales of marijuana and five smugglers. They shot him with an AK-47. The deputy will survive, but the next day, a sweep of the area discovered seventeen more smugglers, all of whom were arrested, three of whom fit the descriptions of those who'd shot the sheriff.

Arizonans see this sort of crime every single day. It's not unusual at all; it's become a part of life in southern Arizona. Streets in my neighborhood have signs erected by the Feds warning of illegal smuggling activity. Drive just about anywhere in southern Arizona and you will see these signs. They're hard to miss. They're large and bright orange.

Both humans and drugs are being smuggled through Arizona. Phoenix has the highest kidnapping rate in the world. Drop houses are common, and the violence associated with these activities is becoming an everyday occurrence. I-19, which runs from Nogales to Tucson, is commonly known as Smuggler's Alley, but these activities extend far beyond interstate 19. Interstates 10 and 8 are also frequent passages for the smuggled goods and people. Arizona has become part of the ongoing Mexican drug lord battleground.

But that's just the side of smuggling commonly reported. What is not reported, except locally, are the number of people killed on the state's highways because of smuggling activities. It's commonplace for a van or bus loaded with illegals to wreck on one of these highways -- usually I-10 -- tossing dead bodies across the roads, medians and berms. One such accident killed twenty-four illegals, another last week killed twelve. Often, other vehicles are involved, as these smuggling vans and buses usually travel at night, sometimes without lights.

Arizona residents are scared, and efforts by the Feds to curb or control the border have failed.  In many areas of the Arizona border region, an illegal can just walk across the border line. Indeed, Robert Krenze's murderer was tracked back to Mexico; he just stepped across the barrier.The Fence Project, which was to build a high, difficult to cross barrier, was stopped by environmentalists and those who want an open border. So many of the areas of the southeastern Arizona border, particularly those areas east of Nogales, have a barrier a cripple could cross without breaking a sweat. Home invasions, destroyed fences and robbers lying in wait for smugglers are on the increase. Homeowners who live along these smuggling routes are finding spent and unfired AK-47 rounds in their backyards, near their kids' swingsets. The border inspection stations send many smugglers through housing districts, moving much of the smuggling activity from the highways to the housing districts around them.

The Feds have been unable to stop the flow. The Border Patrol does what it can, but much of their activity is spent rescuing illegals who are dumb or desperate enough to attempt to walk across the Arizona desert in summer. The Border Patrol rescues numbers not in the hundreds but in the thousands each year in this state. And many of these poor people don't make it; they die in the desert. The death toll is unknown, but bodies are found each and every day, regardless of season.

Ironically, Janet Napolitano, Secretary of Homeland Security, demanded the National Guard patrol our borders when she was governor of Arizona. She got no response. But now that Janet's the Homeland Security Secretary, she's changed her mind and refused to bring in the Guard.

No doubt, politics are involved.

The current federal administration seems more focused on attracting Hispanic voters and granting amnesty than they are in protecting our borders. They talk of immigration reform, of a path to citizenship. But how can one have an effective immigration policy if one cannot control one's border? The Feds oppose Sheriff Joe's Maricopa County (Phoenix) policies of sweeping up illegals, claiming he's guilty of racial profiling.  The Administration even went so far as to deny Sheriff Joe the assistance of ICE, those agents who are supposed to be focusing on smuggling.

None of this makes any sense unless one looks at it from the political side.

So, lacking any effective federal response, Arizona's legislature passed a law which many, including myself, think will eventually be overturned. It's a stupid law. Instead of just passing a simple law making an illegal presence in Arizona a felony, the state legislature added nebulous, ambiguous language which guarantees that anyone attempting to enforce the law -- or refusing to enforce the law -- will get sued. Then, faced with near universal  criticism over the bill's language, they amended the statute and made the language worse. The lawsuit risk is so prominent, some county sheriffs have said they won't enforce the law, because they're in trouble no matter what they do.

And sure enough, there will be cowboy sheriff deputies who make dubious arrests. Count on it. Lawyers will flock to the courts filing cases on all sides of the issues.  The law should have been called the Lawyer's Economic Recovery Act.

Why oh why couldn't the Arizona legislature have made the law simple? If you're here illegally, you're here illegally. What does the term "illegal" mean? It means you're not here legally. Simple as that.

But of course, politicians rarely do anything simply.

The legislature did do one thing simply though: They approved driver's licenses as proof of legal entry. How much of a burden is it to produce your driver's license upon demand? Heck, I have to produce mine every time I make a purchase at Best Buy. Indeed, a Hispanic woman in Tucson went before the Tucson City Council Friday and made the same point. She produced her license, and said, "There. How hard was that?" She went on to say she followed the route to become a naturalized citizen. She said she resents those who seek what America has to offer, but do so illegally.

I agree with her, as do most Arizonans. Indeed, while many Arizonans agree with me that the language of the new statute sucks, over seventy percent of the Arizona population agreed with the bill's intention: We must control our borders.

So what are we to do with all these illegals we're going to arrest? Arizona is hurting just like every other state. While Sheriff Joe has no problems adding tents to his Tent City Jail, other counties won't approve that option. One suggestion I liked -- which of course has no chance of passage -- was to dump these illegals at either the California or New Mexico state lines. Los Angeles, San Francisco, Santa Fe and Albuquerque have all declared themselves to be Sanctuary Cities. Okay, if these cities want our illegals, maybe we should accommodate them.

Meanwhile, Arizona is a war zone. Gun sales are at record levels, and a new militia has formed and claims it will enforce the laws, patrolling the border armed to the teeth. Now, that's something to worry about. 

The problem is not Mexicans or other Hispanics. You can't live in Arizona without encountering Hispanics. They're everywhere, and by and large, they're hard-working, good people, with family values, and deserving of respect and admiration. The war is not against them; it's against those who are entering our country illegally. And not all of these illegals are Hispanic. Believe it or not, there are a huge number of Chinese illegally slipping across our borders. And it's not unusual to find copies of the Quran spread across the smuggling trails. The porous Arizona border makes for easy access for would-be terrorists, and there are plenty of coyotes who know the routes and will take them across for a fee.

So... while I don't support the language of the new Arizona law, which will be effective late July, I fully support the intention behind it: controlling our border.

But as is often the case, our legislators screwed it up.

Naproxen, Please

by Ben Small



Yesterday, on the way home from an especially fun Men of Mystery book convention, my wife and I stopped off at the Imperial Dunes, a sea of massive sand dunes just twenty miles west of the California/Arizona line. We’d scouted the site on the way to the festival. Apologies to Mark Danielson and his lovely wife, Lynn, for cancelling out on the planned group dinner. After an eight hour drive from Tucson and a full day’s session, and knowing what lay ahead of us the next day, the wife and I took the quick-salad-and-hit-the-sack option.

A sign of age.

These dunes stretch for over fifty miles, from Sonora, Mexico well into the California interior just east of the Salton Sea. It’s a spectacular stretch of shifting yellow, reminiscent of some of the harsher areas of the Sahara. Dunes three hundred feet tall are common; they’re formidable, with bladed edges, curving crescents, and plunging cliffs off the leeward side. The sand dune scenes of the original Star Wars trilogy were shot here. One half expects R2D2 or maybe a camel to make an appearance.

There’s no fence across the border here. And until Interstate 8, there were no roads here either, unless one counts the wooden planks dropped down in the early 1900s. You may encounter illegals on ATVs or even Humvees. Maybe that’s why one sees green-striped Border Patrol vehicles everywhere.

Luckily, we didn’t see any news reports about shoot outs with drug runners in the Imperial Dunes Recreational Area until we got home. Seems it’s not an unusual occurrence, although night battles are most common.

We rented ATVs, and for old farts, did a credible job attacking these powdery monsters and laying our tracks. (Relax, tree-huggers, there were no fragile plants to trample or rip, and blowing sand soon covered our passage.) With just a little practice, I was soon ripping across wind-blown speed bumps, using my legs to absorb the pounding as I built up speed to challenge a nearly vertical three hundred foot climb.

Too little speed and one learns the hard way how to turn around a five hundred pound vehicle on a vertical face in knee deep sand. Too much speed, and you fly over the crescent and drop thirty or more feet, screaming because you know this is not good news. Ostriches do face plants; people tend to break their necks. Just a few weeks ago, the Border Patrol had to helicopter out a woman who’d tried to play ostrich.



Needless to say, my wife was a bit more cautious than me, but then, she’s got some common sense. I’m a guy; guys do stupid things, it's in our genetic structure. I thought I'd lost my stupid guy trick-bag sometime during my fifties, when my wife was re-ordering my priorities and forcing me to grow up, but put me on an ATV and Wa-Hoo, testosterone and idiocy blossom once again.

Watch out Poncho. The Cisco Kid is back.

We sandblasted our exposed body parts for an hour-and-a-half. Enough for a first taste. But we’ll be back. Fun like that doesn’t come every day. Next time we’ll plan a weekend, and maybe rent more powerful machines.

In the meantime, we’re struggling to figure out how get the sand out. Two showers later, and we’re still finding sand: in our mouths, our eyelashes, our hair ― even under our nails.

You see some strange things in places like this. Like some guy in a late model SUV, flying an enormous Italian flag, backing up a quarter mile, and then roaring forward, getting a head of steam as he charges up a three hundred foot vertical face. He gets to the top and turns around, charges down the face again. He gets out and waves the flag, then climbs back in and does it all over again.

Don’cha just love Italians?

I’m so sore, I may not move for a week. Pass the Naproxen, please.

Day at the Range

by Ben Small

We Americans celebrate our holidays, and we’re creative in ginning up new ones. Washington’s Birthday, Columbus Day, St. Patrick’s Day, Vasco da Gama Day, Casper the Friendly Ghost Day…

And these are just proper name holidays.

We also honor bosses, secretaries ― even though nobody has one any more ― dogs, April Fools, groundhogs, mothers, fathers, and black history.

Very few things we don’t honor with a day, week or month.

But not the NRA, the group that gave us the Denver celebration after Columbine. Who can forget Charlton Heston, a Juda Ben Hur oarlock grimace set on his face, as his strong hands pumped a rifle over his head and a dare slid from gritted teeth?

“From my cold dead hands...”

Moses waving his staff. Impressive. The French surrendered.

No, the NRA doesn’t get a holiday.

And that’s not fair.

I went to the local constabulary. Thought I might pump up some NRA support and maybe get some gun totin’ ideas from toters. Nope. The sheriff didn’t like my suggestion: standing at the U of A gates and chanting while firing AK-47s Mid-East-style into the air.

I think feds followed me home. There’s a black service van parked just outside my driveway. It’s got more antennas than NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

Black, a Fed’s favorite color. Black, in the Arizona summer sun.

The Blues Brothers had more sense.

I called the NRA, hopeful they’d turn their lobbying clout on Congress. But a spokeswoman said Congress wanted to adjourn, that Congressional leadership was closing out the session working up new taxes to bail broke buddies who’d contributed heavily to campaign coffers.

Stuffed to the gills with Fanny-and-Freddy money. Something fishy going on.

Forced to curry NRA support locally and on my own, I donned my range gear, jeans, red John Wayne cavalry shirt, cowboy boots, wide leather belt with a gold-plated bull-head buckle, red patterned kerchief, and a straw cowboy hat with a fake eagle feather. On the top of my hat, on the flat spot under the furl, I stuck an NRA sticker.

Then I took my guns to the range.

The black van followed me.

The two best gun ranges in Tucson are almost next to each other, about thirty miles southwest, along the I-19 corridor, also known as Smuggler’s Alley, because it’s not far from Mexico is the preferred drug and human cargo smuggling route. County planners must have figured that so many guns were going off there anyway, local residents wouldn’t mind a few more. And smugglers and illegals need gun practice, too. Why not make the location convenient for everybody?

One of the ranges is for shotguns, the other for pistols, rifles and machine guns. Each range covers about five square miles.

Arizona loves its guns.

I borrowed a target stand from the range master and purchased some tape-on pictures of bad guys who are fun to shoot. Folks like Dillinger, Capone, Howard Stern, and the PC guy in the Apple commercials.

I picked the hundred yard range. Target berms are set at twenty-five foot intervals. Choose your distance.

The range was crowded. Several shooters had brought family members, some of them children. The only stall open was the last one on the right, next to a Mexican group. Three men, two women, a couple young children. They stopped shooting as I approached and eyed me warily. A heavy-set fellow with a pock-marked face and Chinese-symbol tattoos on his neck, held a semi-automatic pistol ― looked to be a Glock with an elongated magazine. He swung the gun in my direction and whispered to a skinny guy, five-o'clock-shadow bald. That man lifted a pistol from the table, and racked the slide.

He looked at me. No smile in his eye.

"Hi fellas," I said, waving like a windmill. "Belong to the NRA?"

They looked at each other, and their muzzles drooped. The bald guy made an eh-shrug. His pistol went back to the table.



Numerous guns decked their stall. I'd already seen two pistols. An AR-15 rested on the stone shooting table, and two more assault rifles, an SKS and an M1A stood against a beat up wooden rife stand.

I glanced beyond them to the range. They were shooting at a giant pepper.

I pointed and laughed. “Nice pepper,” I said.

I meant my tone to be friendly, but the two men snarled at me. One of the women, her brows furled, deep leathery creases tightening across her forehead, grabbed a rifle off the stand and swung it by the sling over her shoulder.

One smooth move. She’d done that before.

I raised my hands and tried to smile. Looked to our left. Several green and white Border Patrol SUVs were parked at the next range over, a hundred yards away for the far end of our range. Machine gun fire burst from that border patrol range. Some laughter and whooping followed.

My next door neighbors made the Sign of the Cross.

Careful to make my moves slow and deliberate, I taped Howard Stern to the stand, and then signaled that I wanted to take my target onto the range. The shooting stopped, and I walked out into the firing field.

I strolled straight out. Thought about walking backwards, but didn’t want my target so inviting that someone might plug it ― and me. I wasn’t gone very long, and as soon as I returned, shooting commenced.

There’s a problem with shooting semi-and-automatic rifles. They eject spent cartridges to the right, far to the right.

Hot metal rained down on me as my neighbors riddled their pepper.

I went back to the range master, borrowed another target stand. He didn’t have the Taco Bell dog, so I taped up Che Guevara and stood him facing my neighbors. I hoped they appreciated the gesture, even though Che was Argentine. Argentina’s a Latin country, isn’t it?

Now hot cartridges bounced off Che instead of me.

I looked over at the black van, saw it parked next to the range office. A guy in a suit climbed out; he looked tumbled dry. A camera hung from his neck, and he clicked some shots of Che and me before walking into the range office. A few minutes later, the man emerged, several water bottles in his arms. He climbed back into the van.

Time for my guns.

Arsenal disclosure is like the red carpet on Oscar night: Everybody’s all eyeballs. I opened up the truck and started carrying out guns. Silence along our range; everyone turned to watch me. The van-guy climbed out once again, camera at the ready.

I pulled out a few bolt actions, an AR-15, and a Ruger 10/22, perhaps the most popular plinking rifle in the world.

I waited for applause.

More bursts from the machine gun range. Laughter. Sounded closer this time.

Well, I’d dazzle ‘em with my shooting.

Smack. Heart shot. Again. Poor Howard, he never knew what hit him.

Someone called for a cease fire, a target check. But I didn’t need one; I could see my one ragged hole from my stall. As everybody walked out to their targets, I pointed at mine, pumped my arms and shouted, “NRA! NRA!”

People on their way to targets stopped and stared at me.

A toddler from the stall next door wobbled over. Most of my collection stood on my stall’s old wooden stand. The kid was stroking my pre-’64 Winchester 70, a collector’s rifle, handmade, known to most in the gun culture as “The Rifleman’s Rifle.”

I grabbed the rifle and caught it. Then I swatted at the kid.

Missed.

A woman, the child’s mother I guessed, overweight and all decked out in reds, oranges and purple, rushed over and snatched the kid away. The woman scowled at me, spit rapid-fire Spanish. Not throwing compliments my way, I discerned. She shook her fist at me and then slapped her backside.

“Well, keep your brat away from me,” I said. “Bang bang.”

I don’t think saying that was wise. One of the men dropped back and pointed an AR-15 at me. His finger was on the trigger.

Hands up. Just like on TV.

Another burst from the machine gun range. More laughter.

I ducked at the burst, afraid my stall-neighbor’s finger would tighten on the trigger and I’d end up air conditioned.

When I came up again, the guy’d put his rifle back on the stand. But he was still staring at me. And he wasn’t smiling.

I shrugged and went back to my Ruger. I’d mounted it on a precision Caldwell stand, a setup made for ten-ring shots. I fired round after round, emptied two twenty-five round magazines.

Somebody called for a target check. Firing stopped at our range.

I snatched the Ruger and replaced it with the Winchester. Then I opened the bolt and pulled out my .30-06 cartridges. Stood aside to await the all clear signal.

I’d expected to see those out on the range clustered around my target, marveling at my accuracy. Trophy-target, I thought. But nobody was there. People were admiring their own targets, busy measuring groups and counting holes.

Harumph. So much for lesson-giving. Some people just don’t recognize talent.

One of the men in the stall next door shouted something out onto the range. Must have been the Spanish version of “Hurry up!” because people started running. A moment later, somebody yelled, “Going hot!” and lead started flying.

Having blown out Howard Stern’s heart, I fixed my sights on his mouth.

I know: big target. Well, you should see it now.

TTFS (Tired Trigger Finger Syndrome) can strike at any time. Your finger twitches, you flinch with the twitch, and your other digits, feeling abandoned, go soft around the stock’s pistol grip. You’re at risk for Scope-Eye, when recoil drives the scope into your eye socket so hard that you look like the spotted dog from The Little Rascals.

I laid my trigger hand out on the stone table, saw the twitching digit.

Time to pack up. No Scope-Eye for this cowpoke.

Besides, the people next door were still checking me out, peeking from behind Che. They were making me nervous.

My brass was mostly nearby, so a few minutes crawling around and I’d gathered it all. I cased my rifles and deposited them in the truck. Then I went back for my targets.

There were three round holes in Che.

I hadn’t put them there.

A quick dodge to the truck, and a turn of the key. The engine fired, and my tires tore up a dust-and-rock storm.

Good cover.

I turned the wheel hard to the right, toward the machine gun range. I couldn’t see anything but dust behind me.

The border patrol agents were only too happy to listen. Their eyes lit up when I told them my stall neighbors were coyotes, people who traffic in people. And when I suggested they might want to tread carefully, that the coyotes had automatic weapons, the agents really went bonkers. Loaded magazines flew back and forth. I might have tried to snag one, but doing so would’ve affected my credibility. And stealing from the federal government ― unless you’re in Congress ― is not a sign of intelligence.

Next, I stopped at the black van. Told the surveillance team I was giving up on the NRA and was gonna join Amnesty International instead. The driver, a man wearing mirrored sunglasses, a dark suit, white shirt and black tie ― Fed-dress ― stared at me, not saying a word. The guy next to him tapped him on the shoulder and pointed out the window at the armed border patrol agents converging on the hundred yard range. “Coyotes,” I said. “Those guys,” I pointed to the running border patrol agents, “might need some help.”

I split, and watched through my rear-view as the van emptied and agents pulling their Sigs joined the stall-party.

As I turned the corner and picked up speed, I looked once more in my mirror. Alone, separate and distinct from the chaos erupting at the stall next to mine, stood Howard Stern.

No heart, no mouth, just a smiley face made of holes.

Next time, I’ll move my target a little further out. Like maybe to twenty-five yards.