Click here to download the catalog as a PDF file. To view this site you need Adobe Flash Player and your browser must allow javaScripts. Go here to get the latest Flash Player. Commander Gilmore Pls Txt Me A Brain! LOL :) t’s not specifically against the law to be text messaging while driving in Amsterdam, N.Y., though it’s gotta be one of the stupidest, most dangerous things you can do behind the wheel. It was no problem, though, for Amsterdam police to come up with a laundry list of broken codes when they found a woman stopped with her car in the middle of an intersection, engine running. She appeared to be slumped in the driver’s seat. When Officer K.S. Walters walked up and asked the lady why she was idling there, she explained she was punching in a text message on her phone, so of course she stopped. Officer Walters got the message, carried on a breeze of alcohol fumes. Amanda Murphy was charged with DUI, “standing on pavement” and unlicensed driving. What do you think those messages look like, shakily punched in on that teeny-tiny keypad, by a drunk? We’ll bet they read like an eye exam chart in an optometrist’s office, something like: AOTE NYLIR OXTUM SWADLIK. Note: In London’s financial district, so many pedestrians have banged their heads into cast iron light poles on the sidewalks while texting that the city has wrapped the poles with padded mats. Illustration by Nick Petrosino I We’ve learned the hard way: Any time you have 50 or more cops shooting a qualification course on a range, your life expectancy can be seriously shortened — but humans aren’t the only deadly dangers on some ranges. Seventy police officers from the Chiapas region in southern Mexico were hospitalized — 10 of them in very serious condition — after one of their bullets apparently struck a hive of Africanized “killer bees” downrange. “It was really bad,” Officer Miguel Serrano told reporters. “I haven’t seen anything like it, even in the movies. We tried as hard as we could, but we weren’t able to avoid getting stung. Some of us hit the ground, but that didn’t help.” Many of the victims tried to run from the swarm, but that only seemed to infuriate the already steamin’ bees. The African “killers” were imported to Brazil as part of an experiment to increase honey production in 1957. A swarm quickly escaped and have been moving steadily north and south, breeding with domesticated honey bees since then. 20 JUNE 2009 Dangers On A Range We’ll bet there have been lots of times you’ve been steamed when your cell phone gave you that “Out of Calling Area” or “No Service” signal, and times you’ve been just tickled pink to find you did have a dial tone. But we’ll doubledown the bet that you ain’t ever been happier with your cell coverage than a guy named Ben Nyaumbe. Ben, a farm manager in Kenya, was checking on some livestock in the Malindi bush area near the Indian Ocean coast when he walked under a tree, felt something big — and we mean big — moving under his feet, and the next thing he knew, he was being hauled up into the high branches. As the tire-sized coils of a huge python began wrapping around him, Ben used the only weapons available to him — his teeth. Biting as savagely as he could, he was unable to break free, but when the python momentarily loosened its grip to shift its coils, Ben frantically reached for his shirt pocket, snatched out his cell phone and — can you hear the chorus of angels singin’? — he got a signal and called his boss at the farmhouse! Can You Hear Me Now? Fortunately for all, a regional policeman was also nearby, and he and Ben’s supervisor came screechin’ up with guns, rope and an assortment of hefty hand tools. Nyaumbe managed to get his shirt over the snake’s head and bind its jaws closed, while his rescuers tied ropes to the big wiggler and pulled with all their might. “We both came down, landing with a thud,” Nyaumbe told reporters. Ben’s pals yanked him out of those rib-crunchin’ coils, but the snake was too powerful to be “sacked,” and he got away. Ben, quite possibly the luckiest guy on the African continent that day, came away with lots of compression bruises all over his body, and lacerated lips from biting at the snake’s tough hide. And, Ben completed his mission that day. He had been tasked with looking into the disappearances of some young cattle. Yup, for XXXL-sized pythons in the area, what happened to Ben is a standard heifer-hunting technique. When the sun gets high and hot, the youngest and dumbest of the cattle seek the shade of those big trees. 9 Read SI DIGITAL www.shootingindustry.com