core/dump

You should also go re-read my old post titled “Bang!”.

Continuing to capture some of my own posts for posterity… these were written about 3 months from the date of this post.

When talking about issues of human error, so many factors come into play it is staggering.

If I bet someone’s life every day that I had unloaded and verified a weapon then there is a strong chance that sometime during my lifetime I would be wrong. This is because humans are not perfect, I am not perfect… no one is. Cops fuck this up. Marines fuck this up. FBI agents fuck this up.

Eventually, everyone will fuck up. This is a given.

That does NOT make gunplay, FOR ME AND MINE, so dangerous as to be "off the table. What you do is, like everything else, manage the risk. 99% of the time in my gunplay a single error simply would not be fatal even if I made one. The few times I do go through the whole motion to a trigger pull (extremely rare) the weapon is pointed in a relatively safe direction… so even a series of errors (by multiple people) would not result in serious harm. That last minuscule percentage of the time? It is a risk I have managed to the absolutely best of mine (and others) abilities and it is a risk I accept. Of course, I do NOT recommend this to anyone. I am just being honest about my life.

As for the fear of the "target"? Fear of weapons is often visceral and non rational. This is true in knife play as well. What you "know" and what your body "knows" are radically differing things. You can enhance this in a number of ways. it is trivially easy for someone to lose count of sounds they hear… or mistake one sound for another. Loading a spare magazine where they can hear it and then putting an EMPTY mag in the weapon, for instance or any one of a million other tricks.

Good times.

I think the whole point of many who feel this play is off limits is simply this - nothing would make it safe enough for them.

I am sort of interested by the emphasis some have on this as "play" in the sort of "is it really worth the risk for play". The answer is - yes, sometimes it is.

Properly done this is no more risky that skydiving, recreational Ju-Jitsu or a lot of breath play. Those risks are braved often int he name of play

The other answer is that there is a potential here for more than just play. How someone reacts with a gun at their temple has the potential to be much more intimate than play

Some thoughts.

• Knives are meant to wound and kill.

• Bullwhips were certainly never intended for use on humans.

• Half the Ju-Jitsu moves I use in breath play are intended to kill.

• Fire is certainly Not something to be taken lightly.

• Interrogation techniques are dangerous and were never meant for recreational use.

• Rape play is emotionally dangerous

• Scalpels and other surgical tools were not built as toys.

• Putting a restrained persons head under water is on non ones “this is totally safe” list.

In other words there is lot and lots of stuff I and many others do that are adaptations of tools and acts never meant to be used in the way we use them. Somehow though guns bring out a special brand of paranoia.

If I make a mistake with a gun, someone can die… that is true. Of course that is also true when I am cutting of someone’s air, doing one of any number of throws or using a knife on them. Realistically? There is a MUCH greater chance I will misjudge a breath play scene than that two separate mechanical safeties and a misjudgment on my part will cause that firearm to discharge when I don’t want it to.

Could it happen? Sure. I could also make a mistake when I am driving my girls to the store and kill us all in a collision with a bus.

Often you will get folks (well meaning usually) attempting to make declarations and issue orders about safety issues. They try and back that up with the assumed authority of their experiences or their jobs. “I am a cop, and I work with guns every day so just do what I tell you!”. I am unimpressed. I don’t usually get into the credential game, but I can play it well enough if I have to.

• Shooting guns competitively since I was 12

• Safety instructor at the local police run, youth oriented gun range

• Range officer for years and years

• Ex military

• Instructor for Police, Swat, FBI, corrections and military counter-terrorism teams (granted, mostly for unarmed tactics and close combat but weapons play a large role)

Doesn’t all that make me special? Here is the thing – none of that puts me in a position to tell others to just shut up and use my judgment instead of their own brains. Arguing from authority is just silly.

The fact remains that some of us do use guns in this way. We are not all stupid. We are not all fools. We are not all leaving a trail of bodies behind us. I know cops, FBI agents and military folks who play with weapons this way so frankly the “I work with guns, do what I say” routine doesn’t carry any weight with me.

If you are not 100% comfortable with this, don’t do it. See how simple that is? Just like knives, breath play, bullwhips, fire, rape, interrogation, permanent marks and a whole lot of other stuff that is less than entirely safe.

I am very, very honest about the risks. I am also very honest about how I mitigate and manage them.

All that aside… let’s talk about the loaded / unloaded thing.

Fortunately, even a weapon that the “target” knows is unloaded is still scary as all hell. That means it is possible to play with an unloaded weapon with the safeties on and still get a kick out of it.

Things get even more interesting with just a little bit of patter, and if you have just a little bit of skill with manipulating someone’s head. It is very, very easy to get someone to lose count of how many rounds you have in your hand even while you had them counting the as you loaded or unloaded the weapon. If they are blindfolded, this is easy to simulate.

And there you have it. The classic Dirty Harry moment.

“I know what you’re thinking. Did he fire six shots or only five? Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement I kind of lost track myself. But being as this is a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world, and would blow your head clean off, you’ve got to ask yourself one question: Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk?”

Substitute “slut” for “punk” and baby we have ourselves a scene

Sometimes there is really no substitute for the reality of a loaded weapon. Read my post up above for the precautions and issues this brings with it. I choose my weapons carefully. That pistol with no real safety other than the trigger? Bad idea. My S&W .45 with two mechanical safeties and a heavy pull? Much better idea.

If my purpose in all I did was to mindfuck the submissive then sure, a replica would work just fine. The thing is, the submissive is not always the point of everything I do

I use a real gun because I >like< them. I like that it is real. I like that they know it is real… and I like how they react.

We can call this play - but it isn’t always a game

Reading my response, it seems a bit - terse Let me expand some…

Pellet guns are fun - hell, I use my airsoft on the girls when the mood hits… but it is absolutely not the same thing as a real gun.

Could I fool THEM into thinking it was real? Sure. But I am not doing this for them

Enjoy!

In an old thread on Fetlife the topic of gunplay came up. Someone asked how risky it was, and how folks manage those risks. This was my reply, and it’s worth capturing here…

The actual risks fall into three categories. I’ll only really address two of them

The first is human error. It is possible to make a mistake in how you operate or check a gun. In fact, almost everyone I know who has been around guns for a long time has at least one story of "the mistake". Usually it happened when you got overconfident. Almost always, it only ever happens once - not because anyone gets hurt but because it scares the hell out of you. You are never complacent again.

Human error is combated with a layered defense. You do everything you can to double check everything you do, and you also set things up so no single mistake will matter.

For instance… when I desire to be maximally safe with a gun I will use in a scene I will do the following.

• Unload the magazine
• Check and clear the chamber
• Put on the thumb safety
• Do not fully insert the magazine - if I insert it at all
• Keep my finger out of the trigger guard

The S&W I use will not fire without the mag fully inserted. It will not fire with the thumb safety on. It cannot fire without a trigger pull and it is incapable of firing without ammunition. In that configuration it is simply impossible that that gun will fire.

A human error in any single, or any pair, of those precautions STILL leaves a weapon that is only as dangerous as any big chunk of metal with hard edges.

This brings us to mechanical error. It is possible that this weapon will suffer a mechanical failure that might render some of the safeties inoperable. 99% of the time that results in a weapon too broken to fire at all, but not always. In that case it is STILL empty and I am STILL nowhere near the trigger.

Granted, things get more and more risky as I get closer to a loaded and unsafe state of affairs… but the core dangers are the same. Mechanical failure and human error.

The third danger is the mental effect on the sub…and that is outside the scope of what I will discuss here

In a recent thread on Fetlife.

on the idea that people in the BDSM community are to insecure to “speak up” about the plight of the novice who is “preyed upon”.

Really? If there has been a single recurring theme in all my time in the “community” it has been the incessant hand wringing and concern for those poor apparently idiotic newbie’s who are seen as too weak and dumb to make decisions for themselves.

The endless “newbie guides” the constant “SSC” chanting, the classes, the pamphlets, the websites. the warnings and posts on mailing lists and forums. Heck, the poor newbie is more overprotected than the spotted owl for mostly the same reasons – because you can show how good a person you are by how concerned for them you make yourself appear to be.

on the concept that novices use their status as a means of abdicating their own responsibilities for their actions…

Often it is not the newbies themselves (at least not to start with) who hold this low opinion of their own decision making abilities but rather those in the scene who are seeking some advantage to being shown as a protector figure. IF there is an entire underclass of unthinking moronic novices running around then you can make all sorts of rules about how others should behave, what they should say and what they should be allowed to teach in the name of “protecting the newbies!”.

If the BDSM scene was actually acknowledged as being populated by adults then how could you use fear and concern to try and control the freedoms of those who have opinions you don’t like?

I am constantly amused by the idea that adults who have the legal ability to enter contracts, make life altering decisions (to abort or have children, sex or no sex, join the military or not, medical decisions with life / death consequences etc.) suddenly turn into little balls of cookie dough when “the scene” enters into their lives who can no longer be expected to light up a brain cell on their own behalf.

Sorry – not only is the premise (the poor newbies) deeply flawed but the idea that this si a topic no one speaks up about is at odds with reality. The single most overused argument, overplayed tactic and overwrought concern is the plight of the poor helpless newbie.

My suggestion is this – if these poor novices are really incapable of making decisions as if they were adults they don’t need to be protected, they need to be sent away from your group. The last thing the scene needs is a influx of people who are apparently incapable of exercising meaningful consent because they are mentally feeble.

Enjoy

Well, at least I hope eventually I won’t be. There will be lots more detail later but for now those of you who are stalking me shoudl go over to the Fitness Blog on Atomalon where I am video blogging my progress towards a newer, smaller me.

A sample, you ask? Sure. But go check out Atomalon itself… there are more videos and Kimiko is also involved.

Note: Special thanks to Tatsumi for all the encouragement and holding the camera.

This is funny.

Here is is.

I have gotten a lot of folks who are looking for updates on Flagg and his current condition. Here is what we know…

• He has pneumonia in at least one lung
• The infection does seem to be responding to treatment
• His spirits seem good
• He is in an ICU unit right now, it is unknown how long he will stay this time
• To the best of my knowledge he is not in serious, life threatening danger

Kimiko and I will be up to see him tonight, and I will twitter more info as I get it and update this blog when I can.

Yup. I created a Twitter account for political commentary. This way my friends and clients don’t get a lot of political spam.

If you want to follow my google calander I am putting in the dragoncon events I am attending so Click here to see it!

I am outta here! If you want to keep track of stuff…

• My Flickr is http://www.flickr.com/photos/soulhuntre/
• My Twitter is http://www.twitter.com/soulhuntre

But frankly, my FriendFeed is bringing it all together at http://www.friendfeed.com/soulhuntre

Enjoy the weekend and if your dying to give me a shout out, call 201.830.1586 just for fun!

Less than 4 days have passed since I put a big ass dragon on my arm. The dragon itself is a variation on the concept known as the Leviathan. Why did I choose this art? Because it describes my views on power well… when it is all going right it is below the surfaces gliding freely and effortlessly. When it has to breech the surface, it does so unflinchingly. This is relevant because this is one of those times. Much sooner than I would have expected that power has had to remind us all that there can be no compromise on some things. I will look it all straight in the eye.

As many of you know Kimiko has been in my continuous service for much more than a decade. In addition to this I have also considered her my property for much of that. Last but by no means least Kimiko is family, and she is one of my girls. She has been my friend and my confidant. Of those three relationships (property, servant and Daddy’s girl) that existed at least in theory when I woke up this morning only one remains.

I stopped considering Kimiko my property earlier this afternoon when it became clear to me that she no longer could replace her own judgment with my own. There were limits to how far Kimiko would follow an order that I would not accept.

Later in the day, we spent time trying to decide if she could remain in my service. There is more flexibility in service than there is in ownership so this might have been possible. The opportunity to remain in my service at this time collapsed a little while ago when it became clear that Kimiko has violated the honor of this house by having an affair.

Why blog about this? I speak and educate often on topics related to “extreme dominance”. This is not really a term I use myself but it is one others use to describe my ideas. The core concept of which I speak is the uncrossable line. What do you do when faced with a “this far and no further” choice. My stance on this is what people often mean when they call me “extreme”. Many have listened to me speak on these things… and some have told me that they are following my example. They have often asked me how  should someone react in a situation like this.

Here then is my answer and my action: When pushed, you will either hold fast to your ideals or you will not. I will and I have. 

There will be people looking at this situation (the BDSM community is small, this will no doubt make the rounds) who will wonder how this relates to another topic I speak on – poaching. I have said in the past that the sanctity of a collar is only as important to me as my relationship with the dominant who owns it. I owe no one the privilege of recognizing their domain unless they have earned that from me. In all the world there are only a very small handful of people who are not in my household who I would never cross because they are my pack and a scattering of others who I consider allies and thus protected by what amounts to “treaty”.

Everyone else is to some extent fair game. This reality is harsh, honest and unpopular but frankly trying to stay popular is the least of my issues this evening.

In my own turn I do not blame the poacher who was on my land. They owed me no loyalty. They owed me no allegiance of any kind. My property was, by my standards, fair game for them. Had the situations been reversed I would have not hesitated a moment to take something from them if I wanted it. They have earned my enmity by acting against my interests – but that enmity is not motivated by anger or a feeling of betrayal. They owed me nothing, and so I am not angry or betrayed by them.

The sanctity of my domain is solely my responsibility and I will make no appeal to the good nature of others to protect it nor will I place any claim of brotherhood or kinship on those who are not my allies or friends. This incident will not change that. So there we are. My ownership will accept no boundaries – and thus it is ended. My house will accept no betrayal, and thus her service is ended. Exactly as I always held it had to be.

However Daddy endures. In a recent episode of Power in Practice we spoke of what “Daddy" was to us. In that I mentioned that Daddy is there for me because Daddy can love when Ownership cannot. Daddy can forgive what Ownership cannot. Daddy can endure and survive. Daddy is our safety net. Daddy is our salvation.

I love Kimiko and have for a long time. I don’t see that changing in the future. She will hopefully remain here with me and we will work on the fears and confusion that brought her to make these horribly misguided decisions. When and if she has grown and changed enough then maybe we work back into the rest of it. In the meantime she will do her chores, we will be together and that will be enough.

I would like to thank Kimiko’s sister and my other baby girl Tatsumi for her understanding and support today. She is awesome.

A recent email discussion on Fetlife brought up this quotation again…

"I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine" - John Galt from Atlas Shrugged, page 676 by Ayn Rand

I have discussed it from the dominant and submissive perspectives. If you haven’t seen them you may want to check out the posts.

• Ask not…
• …live my life for another

The other day the comment system here at core / dump let me know that there was a new comment on an old, old post. It was my old pal “Master Eso” who must have been out there Googling himself or something. Anyway, he dropped a note just to let me know that in all the intervening years he managed to still be a humorless prig.

Now this is only worth a mention because of a recent post on FetLife, from which I will quote myself…

“Oh hell… everyone I know in BDSM who is even a little bit interesting has a 5 to 1 ratio of people who would say bad things about them vs. people who would give a good "reference". – me

That about covers it.

I just posted this on a fetish website where the usual panicked discussions were going on about censoring discussion of certain fetishes. Predictably, while not one of the fetishes in question involved child molestation it showed up as the scary monster under the bed as it always does when someone wants you to back down from your support of free thought.

Here was my reply…

(ed note: I made a few minor textual changes on re-read to remove some course language and clarify one sentence… this post will be on the web forever and neither a misunderstanding or an obscenity is needed to make my point)

Here is where the rubber of freedom hits the road of panic and the desire of some to criminalize the thoughts of others.

I will be very, very clear. I absolutely object to any attempt to criminalize thoughts and fantasies regardless of their content. That includes molesting kids, murdering nuns, killing baby seals, blowing up a tall building or bringing down a nation.

Criminalizing actions that specifically violate the rights of others? That I support. As applied to the panic button topic of child molestation that means I reject the criminalization of art, communication or erotica about the topic but I absolutely support the criminalization of an adult having sex with a child.

See the line? Crimes are things that happen in REALITY. Things that happen in fantasy I do not support criminalizing.

The supreme court I might add is not at all convinced that criminalizing fantasy is a good idea either. Many of the challenges to the overly broad and repeatedly struck down "Child Online Protection Act" are on just this issue.

One of the interesting things about this discussion (and in fact any discussion involving the defense of freedom even in unpopular extremes) is that it almost always follows a pattern…

• An extreme topic is chosen (child molestation, terrorism, racism or whatever it doesn’t matter really)

• The assertion is made that anyone who thinks such a thing is dangerous and sick

• Anyone who defends freedom of thought on principle is cast as clearly either lying or being a secret member of the evil group in question and thus suspect

Overall? That means few people will stand up and defend free thought. They are intimidated and afraid of being cast as a molester, terrorist or whatever. To hell with that crap.

My answer, point blank, is that yes. I fully support and defend the rights of law abiding humans who have never acted on the fantasy to sit around at night masturbating to thoughts of having sex with the underage. I also fully support the rights of someone to sit in their house at night dreaming about bombing an airport. I fully support the freedom of someone to sit around at night dreaming about raping that hot actress on TV. THINK about what you want… hell, even get together with others and talk about how hot it all is. Draw pictures, write video games. Whatever.

When you cross the line from fantasy to reality I will come down on you like a f_cking hammer. Till then? What happens in your head is your own business.

Not only do I consider that an essential component of freedom on an ethical level - but as a practical one it is a critical line as well. As soon as the government starts criminalizing thought things get very bad very fast. We have seen that with many of the current thought crime laws (they call it "hate crime legislation" these days) and the havoc it has wrought on any concept of justice in the court system.