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The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities. - Ayn Rand Liberty is an inherently offensive lifestyle. Living in a free society guarantees that each one of us will see our most cherished principles and beliefs questioned and in some cases mocked. That psychic discomfort is the price we pay for basic civic peace. It's worth it. It's a pragmatic principle. Defend everyone else's rights, because if you don't there is no one to defend yours. - MaxedOutMama I don't just want gun rights... I want individual liberty, a culture of self-reliance....I want the whole bloody thing. Kim du Toit
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. . . and so are you Wahabism Delenda Est      Hey, FEC!  BITE ME! I'm a Member of the McCain-Feingold INSURRECTION!    "Jeez, Kevin... calling you an asshole would be a huge understatement, wouldn't it?" -Jack Cluth, The People's Republic of Seabrook (Coming from you, Jack, it's an honor.)  email: gunrightsAT comcastDOTnet INVITATION: If you have never shot a firearm, regardless of your position on the right to arms, and if you live near or visit the Tucson, AZ metropolitan area, I invite you to go shooting for a day. I will provide the arms, ammunition, targets, safety equipment, range fees and instruction. All you have to do is show up. 6 Takers To Date DO YOU LIVE SOMEWHERE ELSE and want to try shooting? Click HERE  Proud Gun-blogging member of the Pajamahadeen since May, 2003!
Debates: "The Commentary" A OLD discussion on gun control between me and an Irishman living in London Start here. UPDATED! Now with archive! Post #1 by Alex, a Guest A multi-post discussion hosted here at TSM My short exchange with Professor Saul Cornell of the Second Amendment Research Center Best Posts: The "Rights" Discussion: What is a "Right?" What is a "Right"? Revisited, Part I Part II Rights, Morality, Idealism & Pragmatism, Part I Part II Part III Part IV The United Federation of Planets Is the Government Responsible for Your Protection? Part I & Part II 1975 in Washington, D.C. vs. 2004 in Canton, Ohio Go Ahead, Rely on the Government for Your Protection The Other Side Liberal vs. Conservative: Both are Necessary The Mystery of Government The Blog that Ate Poughkeepsie Updated and restated as: Of Laws and Sausages Militias A Mistake a Free People Get to Make Only Once The George Orwell Daycare Center This is NOT What I Wanted to Read TRUST The Lying "News" Media, Pt. II Say WHAT? Bias? What Bias? Agenda? What Agenda? The Church of the MSM and the New Reformation Let's See if I Can "Germinate an Intelligent Thought" Here The ACLU Hasn't Changed its Tune They Never EVER Stop It is Not the Business of Government Five Reasons Why It ISN'T They Keep Making Better Fools Five Month Investigation, 10 Tracer Rounds, Two Felony Convictions That Sumbitch Ain't been BORN! On Guillotines and Gibbets England Slides Further Towards Bondage Pressing the "RESET" Button Freedom's Just Another Word for Nothin' Left To Lose A Terrible Resolve The Courts Will Not Save Us Trilogy: The Road to Hell is Paved with Good Intentions "Game Over, Man. Game Over." An Important Question And the denouement: Hudson Was Wrong The Dangerous Victims Trilogy: "(I)t's most important that all potential victims be as dangerous as they can" Violence and the Social Contract Governments, Criminals, and Dangerous Victims In the same vein: Those Without Swords Can Still Die Upon Them The True Believers Trilogy: True Believers March of the Lemmings Reasonable People Also in the same vein: Tough History Coming The Culture Trilogy Culture Hubris Weltanschauung And its follow-on: In Re: Culture Technical Dissertations Why Ballistic Fingerprinting Doesn't (And Won't) Work Spin, Spin, Spin Speaking of Teddy Kennedy... This is the Kind of Thing That REALLY IRRITATES ME Questions from the Audience?
BLOGROLL:
PROTESTWARRIOR Some people who are taking the fight to the Left. And some GREAT T-shirts, too. DAILY READS I need a longer day! Day by Day InstaPundit Lileks' The Bleat Mostly Cajun View from the Porch Of Arms and the Law TFS Magnum Ravenwood's Universe Irons in the Fire Say Uncle The Adventures of Roberta X TRUE EXCELLENCE American Digest The Belmont Club Boobs, Injuries, and Dr. Pepper The Volokh Conspiracy Michael Yon Varifrank Eject!Eject!Eject! Eternity Road Oleg Volk ON INDEFINITE HIATUS USS Clueless The Safety Valve Ipse Dixit The Lopsided Poopdeck Acidman (RIP) Skywritings Publicola D.C. Thorton Kim du Toit Personal Effects Smoke on the Water OTHER GUN/RIGHTS BLOGS Airborne Combat Engineer AlphaPatriot Alphecca American Dinosaur A Day in the Life of an Ambulance Driver The Anarchangel Mrs. Anarchangel The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler Argghhh! The Bitch Girls Boots and Sabers The Breda Fallacy Gun Nuts Media Carnaby Fudge Clayton Cramer Cogito Ergo Geek Countertop Chronicles Cowboy Blob Critical Mastiff Cryptic Subterranean Found: One Troll FreedomSight From the Heartland Fun Turns to Tragedy!!! The Geek with a .45 Gunwatch Heartless Libertarian Hecate's Crossroad Hell in a Handbasket Individ Justin Buist's Blog The LawDog Files Lead and Gold Les Jones Live from the (upper) Texas Gulf Coast Mad Ogre The Michael Bane Blog Moral Flexibility Mr. Completely Murdoc Online The Munchkin Wrangler Ninth Stage No Looking Backwards No Quarters Oscar Poppa Outrageous Malfunction Pass the ammo Posse Incitatus Random Nuclear Strikes Reasonablenut Resistance is Futile! Sandcastles and Cubicles SlagleRock's Slaughterhouse Snowflakes in Hell Surly Curmudgeon Texican Tattler The Ten Ring South Park Pundit Triggerfinger The View From North Central Idaho Vox The War on Guns Weck Up To Thees! Wince and Nod Xavier Thoughts .45 Caliber Justice BLOGGERS I'VE MET A Keyboard and a .45  
| Tuesday, June 10, 2003 The Debate Continues Over at The Commentary. (Sorry, permalinks don't work there.) It looks like we're having a communication problem, even though I've refrained from the 5,000 word posts. No blogging tomorrow. I'll be out of state all day, probably returning late. Sorry. | It's Not Justice, But It Could Have Been Worse Thanks to Kim du Toit, I now know what happened in the case of Ronald Dixon, the Navy vet who shot an intruder in his home. Dixon discovered the intruder in his son's bedroom. Said intruder had a LONG criminal record. Dixon was charged for using an unlicensed handgun to defend himself and his family. This was, after all, New York City - where they consider deporting resident aliens who shoot robbers because said alien used an unlicensed handgun while defending his life. Of course, if you WANT a permit in NYC, it costs a minimum of $329 and takes a minimum of six months to get - unless, of course, you're politically connected or a celebrity (but I repeat myself.) In Mr. Dixon's case, enough people raised enough stink that the prosecutor found it necessary to reduce (but not drop) the charges to "disorderly conduct." Dixon will, unfortunately, serve three days, but the conviction will not show up on his record. So, supposedly he could still qualify for a permit. But seeing that the number of permits in NYC has been declining, and given the difficulty and expense involved in getting one (especially since Mr. Dixon currently works two jobs) I don't see how he's going to have the time. Now, how about we raise a stink and get Sr. Acosta's charges reduced to "disorderly conduct." And let's see if we can get some NYC District Attorneys out of office next year. One other thing: The NY Post editorial called Acosta and others who recently defended themselves in NYC "vigilantes." Note to NY Post: Use a dictionary. A vigilante is defined as "a member of a volunteer committee organized to suppress and punish crime summarily." What these guys did was self-defense. Let me see if I can clarify the difference. A vigilante is someone like, oh, say Barbara Lipscomb, (AKA Barbara Graham) who shot a young man who she thought was responsible for the death of her son. He wasn't. But even if he had been, that would have been the act of a vigilante, as per the dictionary definition. But shooting someone who is directly threatening your life and property? That's called self-defense - not "vilgilantism." Oh, and Mrs. Graham/Lipscomb/Martin? She was one of the organizers of the original Million Mom March. And she was supported during her trial by Bernadette Trowell, the President of the MMM organization. Odd, that. | Real Quick: The tidal wave of hits from getting Instalaunched seems to have passed. For those of you who decided to hang around like driftwood washed ashore, welcome! I promise In the meantime, read up on Canada's complete disaster otherwise known as their attempt to register all (legal, honest) gun owners and their firearms. It seems that they had recent computer crashes that wiped out quite an unknown number of names in the registry. But that's just the latest in a long series of problems. Here's what has happened since May 7:I cannot help but wonder if The Brady Center or The Violence Policy Center receives federal dollars. I know that the Centers for Disease Control are using tax dollars to promote gun control as a "health care" topic. - The former head of the centre said no one was fired at the centre despite Prime Minister Jean Chretien's claim that people were dismissed or demoted as the costs of the registry soared;You mean he lied? But, but, he's a government official! - It turns out the government had spent at least $17 million more on the firearms registry than the outrageous $1 billion cost cited by Auditor General Sheila Fraser last fall; andThe registry, which was sold to Parliament and the general public on the promise that it would only cost taxpayers $2 million, and then be self-supported from fees. Now, according to this piece, the bill has exceeded the $1 billion that the Auditor General projected. I have to give her the benefit of the doubt - she did say that the accounting was so screwed up and that the information was so hard to drag out of anybody that at best the $1BN was a guess, but she figured it would take until 2005 to hit that mark. It's only 2003. And estimates are that at least a quarter of Canadian gun owners have not registered. There's some question as to just how many gun owners there are in Canada, but the government estmates that 500,000 owners have not complied. They have until the end of this month. On the good side, five of Canada's provinces have refused to prosecute violators, leaving it up to the federal government to enforce. But gun control proponents here think, for some reason, that American gun owners would go along with the idea. Not bleeding likely. | Monday, June 09, 2003 Great, Juuuuust Great... I get linked by the 800lb gorilla of blogdom, and I'm swamped and unable to post new, gripping, insightful stuff. Not only do I not have time to blind you with brilliance, I don't have time to baffle you with bull#^!t. My posting will be restricted all week, and possibly for some time. Apparently the economy is improving. Hopefully I be able to get something worthwhile in in the evenings, but I'm not promising much. To new visitors, please read the "Best Posts." They might make your visit worthwhile. And remember, this is a new blog. Don't expect War and Peace. Thank you for your attention. We now return you to our regular programming. | Mystery Solved Now I know what it's like to be linked to by the Blogfather. YOWZA! Talk about traffic! Thank you, Professor Reynolds! UPDATED 6/17/03 because of image server problems Want to see the power of Instapundit? I started this blog May 14. On June 2 I won the inaugural New Blog Showcase competition. The evening of June 8 Glenn Reynolds linked to the Chuck Asay cartoon. Here's the hit trend for the last month:
Nothing further need be said. | Sunday, June 08, 2003 OK, Who Linked to Me? According to Sitemeter, over the last two hours this site has been hammered by visitors. Who do I thank? | Whittle Alert! Whittle Alert! Bill has an extended dance remix version of Magic up, by popular demand. It is, he says: "by far the longest (essay) to date." Great! I'll make popcorn! Go read! And we might get to see Trinity (the essay, not the Matrix star) by next weekend. But I wouldn't count on it. I imagine Bill's going to polish and buff that one to a high gloss before putting it on display. | Another Golden Oldie Long, long ago, in a galaxy far away.... Wait, that was Star Wars. A couple of years ago there was a failed experiment called Themestream.com that was, for all intents and purposes, a really BIG multiuser blog. The primary difference between Themestream and the blogs was that contributors were supposed to post not just little bits and pieces they found interesting, but essays. It was a site for aspiring writers, whether those writers were op-ed producers or poets or fiction authors, and the site paid you to write, (at least at first) based on the number of hits your pieces garnered. It produced a surprising amount of really good stuff. C.D. Harris, of Ipse Dixit was one of the better contributors. There was one author, C.D. Cameron, I wish I could find again. Hopefully he's blogging somewhere if he's not writing professionally (which he should be.) Alas, the experiment failed and Themestream bit the dust. I was a contributor there almost from inception, and I learned to polish my writing quite a bit. I also practiced the then-unamed art of "fisking" on some of the pieces written by others. In perusing The Truth Laid Bear's New Blog Showcase (see post below), I noticed that there were several contributors of the I entitled it: Liberal v. Conservative: Both are Necessary (Names have been changed to protect the John Doe's article "The Aims and Abilities of Liberals and Conservatives" was quite interesting and thought-provoking. As a conservative-leaning libertarian type, I thought I'd comment on the article, but there was so much to comment on, I thought that perhaps a response article would be a better choice. On Basic Philosophy: Mr. Doe writes that "Liberals are nomads" who are open-minded and have widely varying viewpoints due to their "various travels", and who have a hard time getting together because they "live in separate truths, with no single reality dominating their lives". This is, he says, in opposition to conservatives who "exist in cliques" because they "largely possess one mind." ("We are Borg. Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated.") Conservatives, he writes, "have the ability to mobilize very quickly by repeating the same thought until they convince themselves of it." (I cannot help, however, in reflecting just how fast the Liberals mobilized themselves and repeated "we must count all the votes" until they convinced themselves that it had not happened.) ("No Blood for Ooooiiiiilllllll!!!!" comes to mind presently. And "BUSH LIED!" And others, but I digress.) "Conservatives", he says, "may not communicate the truth, but they have the ability to change reality so that it reflects their truth." Excuse me? If Liberals "live in separate truths" then what makes the Conservative version of "truth" any less valid than the myriad Liberal versions? Because more than one person believes it at any one time? This strikes me as psychobabble. Is there "truth" at all? How does one judge? It seems to me that the objective criteria is: is your version of "truth" consistent with observable reality? If not, it doesn't matter if you're Liberal or Conservative, you're wrong. On Liberal v. Conservative and Government: He continues with a discussion of the difference in how Liberals and Conservatives view the role of government. I agree with his description to a large extent, but not his reasoning. "Liberals", he writes, "believe in the power of government, and people, because they fundamentally believe that human beings have the ability to improve themselves and their behavior." Ok, well and good. He also writes "Liberals have a fundamental faith in the ability of humans to better themselves and act appropriately when the situation calls for it." Oh really? Then why do Liberals find it necessary to use Government to coerce people to do things they think are obvious and necessary? If Liberals truly believe that humans will "act appropriately when the situation calls for it", then isn't legally mandated behavior contraindicated? Why, for example, is it necessary for us to pass a law requiring the government to take hard-earned money from its citizens and use it to support those less fortunate than ourselves? If humans will "act appropriately when the situation calls for it", shouldn't that behavior be voluntary and automatic? "Conservatives", he writes, "believe humans are mostly stuck with a terrible nature, and cannot really do much to over come (sic) it, at least not with human help. They believe that any organized efforts to improve the human condition will only make things worse." Well, yes and no. We believe that some people are stuck with a "terrible nature", and that given the opportunity, those few can cause some real damage. Overall, however, we believe that most people are good and decent or at least neutral, and will do the right thing when the situation calls for it without being forced to by law. You see, we've looked at history and noted those occasions when those few with that "terrible nature" have taken control and the mayhem that has resulted. He writes further, "Thus governments, while necessary to prevent total chaos - which can lead to the worst of human behavior - are inherently evil because they are simply the tools of humans to either coerce other humans into evil acts, or to make humans the slaves of evil acts. Government is supposed to be held at bay, like a dog on a leash. If there must be government, conservatives don't trust people to run it. They trust written laws and procedures to make sure human behavior stays in check." Again, yes and no. Again, Conservatives trust most people to do the right thing MOST of the time, but we understand that there are those who will not. We understand that those who will not are attracted to power, and government is nothing if not power. In that vein, I must disagree with his assertion that "the worst of human behavior" results from total chaos. That is not correct. The worst of human behavior occurs when humans are directed by a malignant governing force. That is why government should be held at bay like a dog on a leash. Examples: the organized slaughter of Native Americans by our own government (in violation of our own laws, by the way), the Holocaust under Hitler, the Stalinist purges, China's "Cultural Revolution", the "Killing Fields" of the Khmer Rouge... the list is nearly endless of governments who have killed large numbers of their own people. This does not even touch on wars between nations. Therefore it is simply prudent to make the accumulation of power very difficult through written law and procedure and to enforce those laws and procedures. These limits aren't there to stop the majority from doing what is necessary, but to restrict the few who will abuse the system for their own gain at the cost of the rest of us. "Liberals", he writes, "believe that collective human efforts bring out the best in people". On the other hand, he says: "Conservatives believe that collective human efforts can only bring out the worst in people, robbing people of their individuality and coercing people with the 'General Will' ". BZZZT! I don't think so! The difference, Mr. Doe, is in whether the "collective human effort" is voluntary, or coerced. The space program of the 1960's was a perfect example. It was a government program. It was a "collective human effort" that was incredibly well supported by those directly involved. In fact, I daresay that if those who worked on the project hadn't involved themselves to the incredible levels that they did, it would have failed. The "general will" was behind it, but those involved were dedicated on a voluntary basis. Contrast this project with the democratically popular idea of "universal health care" in which all people have access to government sponsored medical attention. Sounds great, but one of the restrictions in the original plan was if you paid the doctor for better care, you both went to jail. This means that you are coerced into settling for a lower standard of health care than you might otherwise afford. You'll note, that idea died a rapid death here. It does work to varying degrees in other countries, but you'll note that our system - as obviously flawed as it is - attracts people from all over the world (including our neighbor to the North) for better health care than they can get at home. On the Constitution and Government Expansion: Mr. Doe writes: "Liberals apply a loose-constructionist interpretation to the Constitution. Conservatives apply a strict-constructionist interpretation." Truer words were never written. I sometimes wonder if Liberals have actually bothered to read the Constitution before attempting to "interpret" it. It's a clearly written document, not overly long. It even includes rules by which it can be modified. But instead of actually following those rules in order to form the kind of government Liberals think we should be living under, they'd rather just "interpret" what they think it should mean. I object to that. I guess that makes me a "strict-constructionist". Guilty as charged. "Liberals believe", Mr. Doe writes, "society is getting better and better, if it simply has the framework to grow. Conservatives believe society gets worse and worse as it moves further away, temporally and intellectually, from the values and ideals of historical thinkers." Pardon me if I disagree again. Conservatives recognize that society is changing. Change is the one thing we can never escape, nor should we wish to. However, the Constitution provides the framework to grow. In an earlier article a writer commented that we'd freed the slaves, and given blacks and women the right to vote, and I pointed out that we certainly had - using the rules set up in the Constitution, not by "interpreting" it. By using the framework of the Constitution it ensures that we will have a government that always recognizes the rights of that smallest minority - the individual. (So that's where that came from! I'd forgotten!) What Conservatives actually believe is that "interpreting" the Constitution is a grievous error. If it needs to be changed, by all means change it, but you ignore its rules at everyone's peril. Remember, those "historical thinkers" put the rules by which the Constitution can be changed right into the document. They understood that times do indeed change, and our government must be able to change along with them. "Interpret" that. Conservative v. Liberal Thought: "...liberals always have to play catch-up with conservatives in acting, but conservatives usually have to play catch-up with liberals in thinking. The conservative's thought is eventually debunked, while society suffers for their actions based on anachronistic thought. The liberal's thought is eventually vindicated, and society is only able to act upon it after it has become fed up with the actions of conservatives." My first reaction to this was "Oh, bunk", but he does have a point. Conservatism does act as a brake on rapid change. This does tend to extend the period between when a real injustice is recognized and when a corrective change occurs. The examples given above - slavery and universal suffrage - are good examples of this. However, rapid knee-jerk reactions that are not restrained can also cause problems. The braking action that conservatism provides is a good thing for the health of a nation overall. If the change is truly needed, the majority of people will eventually overcome the inertia of the society and change it. Hey, that's what democracy is all about, no? If the liberal's initial reaction to "DO SOMETHING!" isn't immediately acted upon, and eventually turns out to not have been such a great idea after all, it disappears without a whimper and is never heard from again. No foul, no error. This beats having to live with the consequences of a bad idea passed in haste, doesn't it? The question, then, is "Is it better to have a few old bad ideas last too long while we come up with a workable solution, or have a whole lot of new bad ideas get implemented while we try to fix our problems?" I'll skip over a good chunk of the article to the next important point he makes: Liberals, Conservatives, and History: "Liberals are so scattered, always turning over a new leaf to adapt to today's circumstances and trying to figure out what the next big idea is to reflect society, that they really don't remember anything past today." I don't really get the "reflecting society" reference, but boy, am I glad he admitted to the part about ignoring history. Who was it who said "Those who do not learn from history are bound to repeat it"? (Ed.: Santayana) Conservatives, he writes "...act today and tomorrow on the basis of yesterday." I don't have a problem with that. Past behavior has been proven to be a good predictor of future behavior. Why would anyone simply ignore it? "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me." Liberals, it seems, can be fooled every time? Liberals, Conservatives, and Ideas: "The tendency of conservatives is based on a fundamental premise: some ideas are superior to others, and their ideas are better, and truer, than all the rest. The tendency of liberals is based on the opposite premise: all ideas have equal merit, and the ideas that should be implemented are those that match the needs of the moment." Now, given that Liberals admittedly tend to ignore history while Conservatives study it, might it seem a novel idea that some of the ideas Liberals propose have been attempted in the past? And failed? That Conservatives might actually be right when they suggest that a proposed Liberal idea is unworkable or counterproductive? It is demonstrably untrue that all ideas have equal merit, and it is demonstrably true that some ideas are superior to others. Whose position does this more accurately reflect? Liberals, Conservatives, and Individuals: "Many liberals...would willingly have the government take from them (obligatory charity, in their view) to help causes that are greater than them. The liberal perspective is that the cause - the idea or ideal - is greater than any one person, and thus the individual should serve the cause.... The conservative perspective is the opposite: instead of the individual serving the cause, the individual is the cause, and all ideas serve the individual." That's a bit convoluted but an essentially correct observation. And it illustrates the primary disagreement I had with Mr. Doe's entire essay. Remember, at the beginning he wrote: "Liberals have a fundamental faith in the ability of humans to better themselves and act appropriately when the situation calls for it." And: "Conservatives believe humans are mostly stuck with a terrible nature, and cannot really do much to over come (sic) it, at least not with human help." You see, if Liberals really believed that humans will voluntarily act "appropriately when the situation calls for it" then "obligatory charity" would be unnecessary. In reality (and yes, Virginia, there is a reality) what he refers to as "obligatory charity" is an oxymoron. If it's obligatory it cannot be charity. It's extortion at gunpoint. Conservatives understand that, and rightfully object when they see "liberals and liberal government are continuously by overt and covert action, plotting to "take things from me" in order to meet their objectives...." To Conservatives, if the cause is worthy it will be voluntarily supported by people who actually believe in doing the right thing. To Liberals, if they believe the cause is worthy, well then they must immediately coerce the rest of the population into supporting this obviously worthy cause. And they cannot understand when "conservatives" object. You will note that nowhere in Mr. Doe's essay did he state that Liberal ideas are majority ideas until after these ideas overcome Conservative inertia. I therefore submit to you that both groups are necessary for a healthy, functioning society. Without Liberals our society cannot advance, and will die from stagnation. Without Conservatives our society will die from chaotically running in search of the next "truth." Liberals provide the wind in the sails. (Being largely blowhards...) Conservatives provide the rudder. The Constitution provides the ship in which we all sail. Forgive me if I think it appropriate for some of the crew to object when others start pulling up the planking for a bonfire just because some of the passengers are cold. | In the Interest of Paying Back The Truth Laid Bear's New Blog Showcase is up for its second week of competition. In a stunning come-from-behind fashion (and no one was more stunned than I) my blog won the inaugural competition last week. As a result, I got a LOT of traffic, and quite a few links. It seems only fair that I pay back that largesse by voting on a couple of contenders out of this week's entries. I believe that blogging is about to take off like CB radio did back in the late 70's. Steven Den Beste stated that 90% of the blogs out there right now are crap, and I'm afraid that he's largely correct, but the difference between CB and blogging is that feedback is immediate, and it's a positive loop correction mechanism. If you're crap, nobody links to you or reads you. There is no equivalent to slapping a 100W booster on your station and using a Moonraker to wipe out everybody within 50 miles. And good bloggers have come to act as really excellent corrective feedback loops on the mainstream media, as the recent New York Times debacle, and the even more recent Guardian fauxs pax have proven. So I found this entry by The Blog Herald really interesting: Europe goes to the Blogs. Freedom of speech is a wonderful thing. Lets hope that it reaches Iraq very, very soon. I also liked Rkayn Knowledge's post of Tuesday, June 3 (scroll down, the link may be bloggered) concerning the state of judicial nominees. Fact checking Elanor Clift of (and) Newsweak. See what I'm talking about? Corrective feedback. Pass this one around. The Truth Shall Make You Free. I WANT to read Graham Lester's column, "A Nonbeliever's Defense of Religion," just on the strength of the blurb he put up on TruthLaidBear's site, but apparently Blogger isn't the only service to have problems. I get a "Cannot find server" error at this time. I'll give him a vote anyway. My final vote this go-round goes to DANEgeurs's quite well-done fisking of Gary Hart. More feedback! It will be interesting to see who wins this week. | I've Started Reading Atlas Shrugged I'm probably not the first to mention this, but when Rand wants to make a point, she's certainly not subtle about it, is she? Not when she can bludgeon the reader a few dozen times, just to make sure he gets it. One-thousand sixty-nine pages. I hope it gets better. Soon. | That It, This Guy Goes on the Blogroll Feces Flinging Monkey points to this really cool animated illustration of the growth of "shall issue" CCW in the U.S. He notes that he found the link at Lead and Gold. Ah, I love interconnectedness. | Back from the Range Just one picture, a 5-shot 100 yard group from the Enfield, off sandbags. Remember, this is open sights, where the front bead is the diameter of the black bull at that range: 
No one is more surprised than I am. Of course, I wasn't able to duplicate that group, but I'm blaming that on the wind. Yeah, that's the ticket! | Saturday, June 07, 2003 My 1917 Enfield Just a few pictures as a test. 
The Redfield rear sight. 
The front sight. 
Close-up of the receiver. Winchester, baby! There's supposed to be a screw-in aperture for the rear sight which didn't come with the rifle. I'm trying to locate one. As it is, the rear sight is about equal to a No. 4 Enfield's "battle sight." I miked it at about 0.15" Not quite big enough to drive a truck through, but... | No More Blogging Today At least not until much later. I have honeydo's to do, and I'm going to load some ammo. I'm going to the range tomorrow. I want to play with my "new" 1917 Enfield (made by Winchester in 1918) and my Kimber Custom Stainless .45. And maybe my 1896 Swede (Carl Gustaf, 1916). And yes, both rifles are sporterized (not "bubba-ized"). | Our Collapsing Schools - Update (Trying out a new header style) In my last post on this topic I covered the story of the teacher that had been attacked by the student she had suspended, the student's brother and his mother. Rachel Lucas has more on this topic. This is not, apparently, an isolated case. Why am I not surprised? | Friday, June 06, 2003 You People ELECTED This Asshat? More from the Pasadena Star News article about the proposed 10¢ per round tax: Assemblyman Mark Ridley- Thomas, D-Los Angeles, authored AB 992 because he said he believes the state's health- care system needs relief during the current fiscal crisis. Officials estimate that the state's budget shortfall is about $38 billion over the next 13 months.Really? Let's see: According to this Centers for Disease Control site, "Cigarette smoking accounts for approximately one in every five deaths in the United States." Some 2,403,351 deaths occurred in the U.S. in 2000. That would make tobacco the cause of some 480,000 deaths that year. According to this CDC page, "Excessive alcohol consumption is an important factor in more than 100,000 deaths in the United States each year." According to this CDC report alcohol is directly responsible for 19,358 deaths not including "accidents, homicides, and other causes indirectly related to alcohol use as well as deaths due to fetal alcohol syndrome." According to this site Fetal Alcohol Syndrome affects about 1 in 1,000 newborns and "(t)wo to three times that many are born with an alcohol-related developmental disorder, but they do not have any obvious physical abnormalities." There were 3,959,417 births reported in the U.S. in 1999. That means that over 3,900 infants were the victims of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. Some 8,000 to 11,000 more suffered from alcohol related disorders. I thought the big concern was over The Children(tm)? Alcohol was a contributing factor according to this CDC site, in 17,448 motor vehicle fatalities. That's on top of the 19,358 deaths caused directly by alcohol, and just a small part of the 100,000 deaths annually. Death by gunshot, both homicide and suicide accounted for 28,663 of the total, and many of them also involved alcohol or other, illicit drugs. If you take suicides out of the equation (and I do, because I don't believe that the method of suicide has much to do with the act of suicide) the number drops to 11,807. Considering that there are an acknowledged 200,000,000 plus guns in private hands, that's an awfully low number for something "designed to do destruction." Gunshot wounds, about half of them accidental, cost the health-care system more than $250 million annually, Ridley-Thomas said.Yeah? According to this site, the percentage of accidental gunshot injury nationwide over the period from 1993 to 1997 is 20%. Are Californians somehow more accident-prone than the rest of America? And according to this site, "the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reported that alcohol-related crashes in 2000 were associated with more than $51 billion in total costs." Thats Billion. With a "B." Divide equally by 50 states (although California has far in excess of 1/50th the number of automobiles in the country) and you're still looking at over a billion dollars. "We just have the proliferation of these weapons of destruction and it has a completely negative effect on society,' he said.It doesn't have a negative effect on ME. It doesn't have a negative effect on the absolute minimum 108,000 people each year who use a gun to defend themselves. Come out and say it, goddamnit. If you want to ban guns, say it. Stop this incremental death-by-a-thousand-cuts before you piss us off enough to do what the Declaration of Independence says we ought to. Put it up to the voters and let them decide. Enough of this nanny-state "we know what's best for you" bullshit! | But When a Long Train of Abuses and Usurpations, Pursuing Invariably the Same Object... KeepandBearArms.com links to this story about how the fine legislators in California, seem to want to fix the massive debt their state is running by putting a 10¢ per round tax on ammunition. Actually, they say it's to "help reimburse shooting victims and help pay their health-care costs." but we know what legislatures do with money, don't we? And if they're going to put a $500 tax on a $200 case of .22 rimfire, then all they're going to do is start a new black market. We're already seeing it with cigarettes in the Northeast. Supply and demand, you morons. They call it a "sin tax." Gee, what was once a highly regarded practice, one guaranteed to us by the Bill of Rights, is now a sin? One of the ethicists interviewed for the piece states that "sin taxes" put the legislature in charge of labelling right and wrong. And here's the money quote: "Once you start doing that, then government becomes something above and beyond what the American founders thought it should be,' Palm said. "Government becomes more of a parental figure.'I'm not sure where Mr. Palm's been, but our government's been parental since the 1914 Harrison Act. Prohibition followed close behind. Big Brother knows what's best for us chillun's. No wonder politicians are concerned about the armor-piercing capabilities of the .50 BMG cartridge. Ten cents a round, eh? How many legislators are there in Sacramento? Give me a few minutes. I have more to say on this matter. | Screw This, Time for Some Gun Stuff! I have one of these:
but I want one of these:
And while I'm at it, one of these:
MSRP is $832, $1,153, and $1,058 respectively, though you can do a bit better at your local Kimber dealer. Beautiful tools. Oh, and just so you don't think I'm an autoloader snob, I'd like a pair of these:
The S&W 627, eight-shot .357 revolver. They run around $800. But the guy responsible for putting "8 TIMES" on the barrel flat should be drawn & quartered. Here's a fine one, a Custom Shop snubbie 627:
I hate to think "How much?" | Our Collapsing Schools Remember when I said that parents were a big part of the problem? Well, here's an extreme example. Mother, Sons Charged With Beating Teacher UnconsciousThe victim's 11 year-old son witnessed the attack and called 911. I wonder why the hell anybody would want to be a teacher these days. Attacked from above and below, and unable to control your classrooms, it just sets you up to be a victim. | Oh, So THAT'S It! Ravenwood details the Democratic campaign strategy for the upcoming elections. Yeah, that about covers it. | Modest 3BR/2BA Bungalow, Ocean View... Clayton Cramer links to this quite large photo of Barbara Streisand's palatial home - the one she wants pulled off the net because of "privacy" issues. However, as Clayton says: "I suspect it's more that she doesn't want everyone to see how absurdly large her home is." Does she own an SUV, too? | Michelle Needs to Get a Life Outside the Web She holds a conversation with her cable modem. I wonder if that would work with my wife? | Rachel Lucas - Piquance. Impudence. Ordnance. Rachel rips off a rant on National Ask Day. So I don't have to. | Much Crunchy Goodness Today's Bleat is a helluva way to end the week: The reason Abby Hoffman killed himself, Andrew Sullivan channels the Force, A review of an unreleased (and really bad) film, A liberal reporter "outs" himself on Fark, And gets bitch-slapped, and, the one that made me laugh the loudest: Real-life pr0n videos are doomed; it’s all going to be CGI in a few years as the technology trickles down. And it will be just as mindless as ever. Dixar Pictures presents Finding Reamo.Unfortunately, he's probably right. Damn, that's funny. I love the Internet. | Thursday, June 05, 2003 Where the Hell Were the Parents - Follow-up Well, right on schedule: JoinTogether jumps on the "WE NEED MORE GUN LAWS!" bandwagon and fires up the calliope before the blood dries. Right. All the laws we've got now haven't helped. Let's do it some more, only harder. "Sadly, school shootings and gun suicides have become all too familiar in the United States and Pennsylvania," said Miller, "but they needn't be. These avoidable incidents don't happen in other developed countries, where guns are not readily available for disturbed youth to take to school to threaten or harm students, adults or themselves, like occurred today in Wellsboro."They don't drug their children instead of raising them in other developed countries, either. We didn't have these kinds of "disturbed kids" in the 40's or 50's or 60's or even 70's. Why was that? Guns were certainly "readily available" back then. What's changed isn't "gun availability." Edbril continued, "A law was recently passed in New Jersey which will soon require all new handguns to include childproofing technology that will prevent their use by anyone but authorized adult users, thus reducing the potential for the sort of tragedies we have seen three times in six weeks here."Which will have absolutely no effect on the 200,000,000+ guns already out there you IDIOTS. And the "child" was 12 years old. He's probably more than bright enough to defeat any "safety mechanism" including a gun safe. Miller expanded: "We don't know where the guns brought to school today were acquired by this child, but we do know that prohibited underage purchasers can obtain handguns too easily through illegal street sales. The illegal market for handguns devastates Pennsylvania. We can drastically reduce the illegal market by disrupting straw purchases of multiple handguns through passage of CeaseFire PA's Handgun Trafficking Reduction Act."Right. A 12 year old bought a duffelbag full of guns on the street. My sweet freaking jebus. GUN LAWS WILL NOT STOP THIS! | I Hate the Ignorant Media Nod to AR15.com for the story. RAP BIG ARRESTED AT NEWARK Rap entrepreneur Master P has been busted at Newark Airport with six hollow-point bullets, the deadly and illegal ammo known on the streets as "cop-killers."Like hell they are. They might be known as "perp-killers" because they're carried by damned near every police officer in America, and by most people with defensive handguns in the rest of America. "Cop-Killer" bullets, you moron, are the nearly apocryphal "armor-piercing" ammunition that hollow-points most definitely are not. The Louisiana-based hip-hop star and record executive, 36, whose real name is Percy Miller, was due to board an America West flight to Los Angeles late Tuesday when he was stopped by Transport Security Administration agents.Not quite. New Jersey law says this: So, is it illegal to possess hollowpoints or not? And just where was this guy going with his licensed, cased pistol? The story continues:f. Dum-dum or body armor penetrating bullets. (1) Any person, other than a law enforcement officer or persons engaged in activities pursuant to subsection f. of N.J.S.2C:39-6, who knowingly has in his possession any hollow nose or dum-dum bullet, or (2) any person, other than a collector of firearms or ammunition as curios or relics as defined in Title 18, United States Code, section 921 (a) (13) and has in his possession a valid Collector of Curios and Relics License issued by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, who knowingly has in his possession any body armor breaching or penetrating ammunition, which means: (a) ammunition primarily designed for use in a handgun, and (b) which is comprised of a bullet whose core or jacket, if the jacket is thicker than.025 of an inch, is made of tungsten carbide, or hard bronze, or other material which is harder than a rating of 72 or greater on the Rockwell B. Hardness Scale, and (c) is therefore capable of breaching or penetrating body armor, is guilty of a crime of the fourth degree. For purposes of this section, a collector may possess not more than three examples of each distinctive variation of the ammunition described above. A distinctive variation includes a different head stamp, composition, design, or color.New Jersey Title 2C, Section 39-1 The bust came three months after an aspiring rap producer was sentenced to a year in jail for stalking the platinum-selling Miller.So he's been threatened and has a licensed handgun for self-defense with bullets that are kinda, sorta maybe illegal in Jersey? Port Authority cops questioned the rapper, then arrested him for having the bullets. He was taken to Union County Jail in Elizabeth, issued a summons and released.Not quite right. They're outlawed for mere peons to have, but the Police carry them because they're the most effective handgun ammunition you can use. According to this site the NYPD has used the Speer 9mm 124 grain +P Gold Dot Hollowpoint as its issue ammo since 1999.
"Dum-dums." Nobody's called them that since the 60's. Why can't reporters spend ten minutes and gather FACTS? (At least he called it a "magazine" and not a "clip.") | I Would Have LOVED to Hear This Speech WindsofChange.net points to this Imprimus transcript of a recent Hillsdale College speech given by Brit Hume. Teaser: (T)he majority of the American media who were in a position to comment upon the progress of the war in the early going, and even after that, got it wrong. They didn’t get it just a little wrong. They got it completely wrong.As they say, read it all. | Where the Hell are the PARENTS? Suicidal Student Had Bag Full Of Guns At School WELLSBORO, Pa. -- A 12-year-old student who committed suicide in a middle school bathroom had brought more than one gun to school but only fired the shot that killed him, authorities said.(Sigh) I don't know about the rest of you, but when I was growing up I "had access" to guns and ammunition. Most of the kids I knew did. And they didn't do this shit! "Gun availability" is not the problem! "Making guns safer" doesn't address the problem. "Safe storage" won't keep this from happening. And concentrating on these idiocies avoids the question of "what is the cause?" "Gun availability" hasn't changed. What has? What makes a 12 year old load a duffel-bag full of guns and (I have to assume) decide to kill just himself instead of a bunch of other people first? What makes someone think this is an answer to anything? How can parents not notice that their child is that disturbed? And, finally, was this kid on prescription drugs? Prozac? Xanax? Luvox? Ritalin? Paxil? Something else? Are we trying to replace parenting with chemicals? And are the chemicals at fault, or just a symptom of a bigger problem? What the hell is warping our children? | LIBERALS: PAY ATTENTION!
We didn't "waste" a goddamned thing. [UPDATE] I was correctly reproached. The artist is Chuck Asay from The Colorado Springs Gazette. | Sorry, but Blogging Will be Light Today I've got a lot to do, and not a lot of time in which to do it. New visitors: Please peruse the archives, or just read the "Best Posts" list. And leave some comments, please. Feedback affords opportunities for improvement and an exchange of ideas. | Wednesday, June 04, 2003 Arm the Wimmin! Dept. This week's Carnival of the Vanities over at Drumwaster's Rants held a Second Amendment gem. The link belongs to WalterinDenver , but it points to this Boulder Weekly story. Follow the links. Here's a teaser: Ari tells me he hopes two things will come out of this weekend. He hopes first of all to demystify guns so that I come to see them as tools, as opposed to little metallic monsters, the embodiment of violence and evil. He also hopes to combat stereotypes I might have about people whom we in Boulder might simply call "gun nuts."Outstanding. Oh, and please inform everyone you know about the invitation on the left side of my page. | Quagmire! Quagmire! Den Beste strikes again with a (for Steven) remarkably short and (typically) razor-sharp post on the modern domino theory. As Glenn says, "Indeed." | Say WHAT? I found this piece on Yahoo! News, and overall I don't have a problem with it. But THIS left my jaw on the floor: Each day, more than 100,000 teens bring handguns to school.No attribution for the factoid, just a baldfaced - statement. Now, why should I believe anything else in the story? Here's the original piece. I think I need to ask Dr. Fow where he gets his statistics. UPDATED: I found this link that has this attribution: Each day more than 100,000 weapons were brought to school and approximately 40 children and youth are wounded or killed by these weapons (Children's Defense Fund, 1990).AH! Statistics creep! The story goes from 100,000 weapons (which includes pocketknives, clubs, brass knuckles, etc.) to 100,000 handguns. That's very much like this quote: "And what about the more than 4,000 children who die in gun-related accidents each year? That's 11 kids a day. And we're not talking about crimes, or intentional shootings. We're talking -- or not talking enough -- about accidents." "What a few good mothers can do," Salon.com, March 13, 2000Yup, give 'em a little information, and they'll stretch it all out of proportion to aid their agenda, and pass it on (without attribution, because "it's common knowledge") as gospel truth. | Follow-up to: "It's Not My Place To Second-Guess..." Apparently his shooting was effective TACOMA - Police in Tacoma have found the body of a man they believe was killed by a disabled homeowner, after he attempted to rob the bedridden man in his Tacoma home Monday afternoon.Just had to get that in, didn't they? Can't show approval of mere citizens actually defending themselves. Even when the guy is a bed-bound paraplegic. | What a Terriffic Idea! Brought to you by the good people at AR15.com (where I'm a Gooooooooold Member): 
Go have a look (Hmmm....What am I doing in October?) | Bill Whittle Has Apparently Found a Job. Or it found him... No excuses, Bill. I'm still waiting for "Trinity." | Tuesday, June 03, 2003 Just ONE more - Scary Gun Images for Our Congresscritters Does this 
Bother you? Or this? 
Too bad. They're available from DSA Arms. They start at about $1,400. I'm sure the gang-banger's love 'em. I want one. | One More Before I Call it a Night Jeff over at Alphecca is taking entries for "the biggest "howlers" involving guns that you've seen in the movies and on TV." I sent him mine: The one that comes immediately to mind is in the recent "Road to Perdition" when Tom Hanks's character executes his quarry by shooting him while he bathes.You think he'd have known better after making "Saving Private Ryan." Anyway, e-mail him yours. It should be an interesting collection. | The ACLU Hasn't Changed Its Tune ACLU President Nadine Strossen recently gave an interview to Reason magazine. In it, she was asked about the ACLU's position on the Second Amendment: Reason: So why doesn't the ACLU challenge gun-control laws on Second Amendment grounds?Pardon the hell out of me, but why the hell do you think they put it in the Bill of Rights? What this means is "We're the ACLU - WE define what is and what isn't a civil liberty." Strossen: So the question becomes, What is the civil-liberties argument of those who would say we should be opposing all gun control? What it comes down to is the very strong belief that having a gun in your home is something that can ultimately fend off the power of a tyrannical government. I find that really unpersuasive in the 20th-century context. Maybe it made sense in the 18th century. I would hope that's the kind of thing we do through words rather than through guns and that, to me, is the function that the First Amendment serves, not the Second Amendment.Let's go back to that statement: "What it comes down to is the very strong belief that having a gun in your home is something that can ultimately fend off the power of a tyrannical government. I find that really unpersuasive in the 20th-century context. " First, go look at this. I'll tell you what the civil-liberties argument of those who would say you should be opposing all gun control is, Nadine: It's the same reason you fight each new attempt to infringe the First Amendment - to keep it from coming to the point where you have to defend elimination of the right in its entirety. So you never have to fight a "total ban on ownership." If it comes that far, it's too late. Her quote reminded me of something I wrote a while back, so I'm going to dredge that up, too. I wrote the original piece back in December of 2000 on the ThemeStream site (now long gone) because of the ACLU of Massachussetts defending NAMBLA in a First Amendment case, but no ACLU chapter has ever (to my knowledge) defended a Second Amendment case. I wondered why that was, so I looked: It has been said that if the ACLU defended the Second Amendment with the same vigor that it defends the remainder of the Bill of Rights, gun ownership in America would be mandatory. I respect the ferocity with which they defend unpopular causes. I do not always agree with the ACLU position, but I understand the idea of the "slippery slope" - that any infringement on a right makes the next infringement easier. They protect every word of the Bill of Rights with the tenacity of a pit bull, regardless of the odiousness of those groups who bring the cases. Labels: one fundamental right | The Blog that Ate Poughkeepsie (I'm currently engaged (if he ever responds again) in a debate with a gentleman from Ireland who currently lives in England. The debate is going on over at The Commentary, a blog that he runs that I don't have administrator priviledges at. This is a slightly reworked post from over there that I wanted to repost here because, damnit, I'm proud of it. It was a lot of work. Bear in mind when you read this that I'm explaining this as though the reader has no first-hand knowledge of the American system of government.) The United States was established with the ideal that it would be a government of the Rule of Law. As Benjamin Franklin put it upon being asked what form of government the recently concluded Constitutional Convention had wrought, "A Republic, if you can keep it." You have to remember at all times, government is made of and run by humans. Henry Louis Mencken wrote: "The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office. Their principal device to that end is to search out groups who pant and pine for something they can't get and to promise to give it to them. Nine times out of ten that promise is worth nothing. The tenth time is made good by looting A to satisfy B. In other words, government is a broker in pillage, and every election is sort of an advance auction sale of stolen goods."That is a VERY American attitude. People call America a democracy all the time. Even our government officials do, but it was never supposed to be a democracy. It's supposed to be a representative republic, and those representatives were to be chosen from a small and self-selecting pool. The system of elections wasn't intended to be a "one man, one vote" democracy, but a meritocracy where the people making and enforcing the rules had a talent for government. And it worked very, very well for a while. Honestly, the system as it was established has worked well for over 200 years, being that it was constructed in the full knowledge that power both corrupts and attracts the corrupt. Unfortunately, the accumulated crap produced by those whom Mencken described (and he wrote that probably in the early 1930's) is apparently catching up with us. This is nowhere more apparent (if you study this stuff) than in the battle for the right to arms. It has become a litmus test for freedom. Let me explain. (And pardon me - this is going to take a while, but it directly addresses your question and is the heart of the whole right-to-arms thing.) You ask: "...let's say a liberal government came to power and wanted to ban gun ownership. It would not be able to, because of the Second Amendment, right?" That's the question, all right. Here's how the whole Rule of Law thing is supposed to work in our Representative Republic. There's a set of rules on how the government itself is supposed to be established - division of powers, rules for electing officials, appointing officials, so on and so forth. There's a list of things that the government is prohibited from screwing with, i.e., the Bill of Rights. There's a set of rules laid out in the Constitution for modifying the Constitution as times and conditions change. That modification process is made intentionally difficult, because the need must be great and there must be consensus that the change is necessary. No modifying the foundation of our government on a whim. No 50% +1 vote is sufficient to, say, expel all left-handed redheads from the nation. (Note that this hasn't stopped us from making some bonehead changes, such as Prohibition and the popular election of Senators.) On legal questions relating to the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, the various courts are supposed to defer to the intentions of the Founders. Thomas Jefferson put it this way in 1823: "On every question of construction (of the Constitution) let us carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates, and instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text, or invented against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed."When it comes to the Second Amendment there is no evidence that anything other than an individual right to arms was intended, and abundant evidence that an individual right is what was intended. Court cases dating up to the Civil War and beyond make that apparent. The most illuminative of these cases is also one of the most reviled. It is Scott v. Sanford, better known as "Dred Scott," and it occurred just prior to the Civil War. In fact, it has been called "the match that ignited the Civil War." If you're interested, go look it up. The central theme of the case was whether a slave, having been taken by his owner to a "free" state was, in fact, free. The Supreme Court in the 7-2 opinion written by Chief Justice Taney not only said "no," it said that "free" blacks were not and could not be citizens, because: (Citizenship) "would give to persons of the negro race, who were recognized as citizens in any one State of the Union, the right to enter every other State whenever they pleased, singly or in companies, without pass or passport, and without obstruction, to sojourn there as long as they pleased, to go where they pleased at every hour of the day or night without molestation, unless they committed some violation of law for which a white man would be punished; and it would give them the full liberty of speech in public and in private upon all subjects upon which its own citizens might speak; to hold public meetings upon political affairs, and to keep and carry arms wherever they went. And all of this would be done in the face of the subject race of the same color, both free and slaves, and inevitably producing discontent and insubordination among them, and endangering the peace and safety of the State." (My emphasis)FIFTY-EIGHT YEARS after the ratification of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, the highest court in the land acknowledged that the right to keep and bear arms was an individual one, and no mention of the militia, well-regulated or otherwise was made. And the court found it necessary to deny all of the rights guaranteed to citizens to free blacks - why? To ensure public safety. Further, shortly after the war (which was fought in no small part to determine just who "the People" were and was hell on the "public safety") the highest court in the land once again stepped on its penis, allowing the denial of the right to arms to the newly established citizens who had been made such by the 13th Amendment, and who were guaranteed equal protection under the law by the 14th Amendment. In U.S. v Cruikshank the Supreme Court declared not that the Second Amendment protected militias, but: "The right there specified is that of 'bearing arms for a lawful purpose.' This is not a right granted by the Constitution. Neither is it in any manner dependent upon that instrument for its existence. The second amendment declares that it shall not be infringed; but this, as has been seen, means no more than that it shall not be infringed by Congress. This is one of the amendments that has no other effect than to restrict the powers of the national government, leaving the people to look for their protection against any violation by their fellow-citizens of the rights it recognizes..."(My emphasis)In other words, the Bill of Rights didn't protect the rights of individuals against infringement - it protects them against infringement by Congress. The STATES were free to do as they damned well pleased. You had to depend on your fellow citizens for the protection of your rights there. This was blatantly in opposition to the intent of the 14th Amendment, but because government is made of men, it still flew. And gun control in this country began to take root, fertilized with the manure of racism. State laws prohibiting blacks from possessing firearms were reinstated, and not one was struck down on Second Amendment grounds. The Supreme Court had ruled! Since that time every other "right of the People" has had a Supreme Court or Appeals Court ruling that has "incorporated" it against infringement by the States - including the 3rd Amendment protection against the housing of troops in peacetime! Only the Second Amendment right of "bearing arms for a lawful purpose", "keep(ing) and carry(ing) arms wherever" we may go has not. And so we have a bewildering patchwork of gun control laws that varies from state to state, and county to county, and county to city, all over the country. Guns are licensed here, they aren't licensed there. You have to get government permission to buy a handgun in some states, but not in others. You aren't allowed to possess a handgun in some cities, but in Vermont there are no laws against carrying concealed at all. No permit required. Not even in Montpelier, the capital. The Second Amendment was last addressed by the Supreme Court in 1939, after Congress passed the 1934 National Firearms Act - an act that many people believe did infringe on the right to arms. The NFA was passed in response to the general violence and lawlessness caused by that cranial flatulence, Prohibition. The lower federal court judge in the case certainly believed it did, as he dismissed the case against Jack Miller and Frank Layton on those grounds. In fact, what he said was: "The National Firearms Act is not a revenue measure, but an attempt to usurp police power reserved to the states, and is therefore unconstitutional. Also, it offends the inhibition of the Second Amendment to the Constitution - "A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."The case was appealed directly to the Supreme Court - do not pass through the Appeals Court, go directly to jail. The decision in U.S. v Miller is a beautiful example of the judicial system dodging a bullet, so to speak. Miller and Layton were moonshiners (manufacturers of an untaxed alcoholic beverage) who were arrested by two Treasury agents for the possession and interstate transport of a "shotgun having a barrel of less than eighteen inches" which, under the 1934 National Firearms Act, was illegal unless they had a form with a stamp attached that proved they'd payed the required tax. That law said that if you had a shotgun and wanted to take it across state lines, the barrel had to be longer than 18" or you had to pay the tax. Of course, that "tax" also required you to file an application in duplicate, be fingerprinted and photographed, undergo a background check, and get the permission of the local head of law enforcement. Oh, and the tax was a mere $200. For a $10 shotgun. The same rules held for rifles having a barrel shorter than 16", and for fully-automatic weapons. And the law established a registry of all weapons so taxed. Now I ask you: was this or was this not what the lower court judge said it was? (This law is the one that most people think of when they claim that "machine guns are banned" by the federal government, but they aren't banned. Just registered and taxed and heavily restricted. There are states that ban them, but Arizona is not one of them. I know several people who legally own fully-automatic weapons.) When the case appeared before the Supreme Court, Mr. Miller was nowhere to be found. Apparently he died in the interim, but Mr. Layton was still alive. Either way, neither Mr. Miller nor Mr. Layton was represented by anybody before the Supreme Court. No briefs were filed on their behalf, no evidence was presented to support their case. The prosecution claimed before the Court that Miller and Layton's claim that their Second Amendment rights were voilated was null because neither one of them was a member of a militia. That's the argument you've been making. The Court considered this, but it didn't decide the case on those grounds. It could have done so easily. They discussed the militia question in fervent detail, but never came to a conclusion on it. Instead, the Court decided that Miller and Layton's claim was invalid because: "In the absence of any evidence tending to show that possession or use of a 'shotgun having a barrel of less than eighteen inches in length' at this time has some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia, we cannot say that the Second Amendment guarantees the right to keep and bear such an instrument."Which raises the interesting question, "what if they had some evidence?" And the more interesting question, "What if Miller and Layton had possessed a Browning Automatic Rifle instead?" The BAR was standard military equipment for the time, and was also available to the general public since its introduction in 1917. So, once again, the Supreme Court made a bad decision - in the name of "public safety." But what's worse is that the lower courts have since interpreted U.S. v Miller to say that there is no individual right to arms outside militia service, and that's a conclusion that cannot be drawn from an honest reading of the case. Since 1939 we've been fighting an uphill battle, and there have been no other cases brought before the Supreme Court. They've dodged every one. With the door now opened, gun control forces such as the ones that have stripped England of the right to arms expanded the laws to affect not just "those people," but everybody. The good-old-boys who used gun control laws to keep the blacks unarmed now saw those same laws used against themselves. Horrors! And the courts offered no respite. The courts were responsible for this. But in the last two decades our side has been fighting back, and with growing success. First, we got the legal scholars to actually look at the law. Then they started writing. And getting ostracized by their liberal coworkers, but that didn't stop them. I could quote a number of them, but I'll quote just one - Laurence Tribe. Yale Law School professor, author of the ConLaw text American Constitutional Law and one of Al Gore's lawyers in the last Presidential Election. In the first edition of his textbook, he didn't even mention the Second Amendment, but in the most recent one he has: "Perhaps the most accurate conclusion one can reach with any confidence is that the core meaning of the Second Amendment is a populist / republican / federalism one: Its central object is to arm 'We the People' so that ordinary citizens can paricipate in the collective defense of their community and their state. But it does so not through directly protecting a right on the part of states or other collectivities, assertable by them against the federal government, to arm the populace as they see fit. Rather the amendment achieves its central purpose by assuring that the federal government may not disarm individual citizens without some unusually strong justification consistent with the authority of the states to organize their own militias. That assurance in turn is provided through recognizing a right (admittedly of uncertain scope) on the part of individuals to possess and use firearms in the defense of themselves and their homes -- not a right to hunt for game, quite clearly, and certainly not a right to employ firearms to commit aggressive acts against other persons -- a right that directly limits action by Congress or by the Executive Branch and may well, in addition, be among the privileges or immunities of United States citizens protected by §1 of the Fourteenth Amendment against state or local government action."He was villified by other liberals for writing that. Then there was the recent Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals decision in US v Emerson which did (for the first time since 1939) an "original intent" review of the Second Amendment, (including a thorough review of US v Miller) and which concluded that the right to arms was an individual right. HOWEVER (and I'm finally getting back to the "nukes in the garage / RPGs in the basement" argument): "Although, as we have held, the Second Amendment does protect individual rights, that does not mean that those rights may never be made subject to any limited, narrowly tailored specific exceptions or restrictions for particular cases that are reasonable and not inconsistent with the right of Americans generally to individually keep and bear their private arms as historically understood in this country."Halleluja! The right is individual, but not unlimited! The difference is, whatever restrictions (at this time) the FEDERAL government wants to place on the right must be "narrowly tailored specific exceptions or restrictions" and (elsewhere in the decision) due process must be followed in order to deny an individual his rights. In the case of Timothy Emerson, he received due process and the restriction met the "narrowly tailored" requirement test of that court - "albeit likely minimally so". Now, you would think, we would be able to discuss just what laws were and were not "narrowly tailored" and specific enough to meet the test, but not so! The NINTH Circuit Court of Appeals handed down a decision even more recently that bitch-slapped the Fifth Circuit's decision, although several of the justices disagreed with the majority most eloquently. The Fifth Circuit is based in New Orleans. The Ninth Circuit is based in California. In San Francisco, to be exact. It's the most liberal of all the courts, and the most overturned by the Supreme Court. But there are some justices out of the 25 who still can think, and I'm going to end this post with the words of one of them. The case is Silviera v Lockyer, and it has to do with California's version of the "assault weapons ban." The Ninth Circuit rejected the claim on the basis that there is no individual right to arms, holding as precedent an earlier case where the Ninth Circuit concluded that this was what US v Miller meant. The case was then appealed to the Ninth Circuit en banc, so that instead of only a three-judge panel, all 25 would hear it. That appeal was rejected on the same grounds. There were FOUR (4) dissenting opinions. This one was, by far, the best: Judges know very well how to read the Constitution broadly when they are sympathetic to the right being asserted. We have held, without much ado, that “speech, or . . . the press” also means the Internet...and that “persons, houses, papers, and effects” also means public telephone booths....When a particular right comports especially well with our notions of good social policy, we build magnificent legal edifices on elliptical constitutional phrases - or even the white spaces between lines of constitutional text. But, as the panel amply demonstrates, when we’re none too keen on a particular constitutional guarantee, we can be equally ingenious in burying language that is incontrovertibly there.So, in answer to your question "...let's say a liberal government came to power and wanted to ban gun ownership. It would not be able to, because of the Second Amendment, right?", let's just say the jury is still out on that one. (Update: Both U.S. v. Emerson and Silveira v. Lockyer were appealed to the Supreme Court. Emerson's appeal was denied in 2002. Silveira's appeal was denied in 2003. The Supreme Court continues to avoid addressing the question of just what the Second Amendment really protects.) | It's Not My Place To Second-Guess... The Tacoma, Washington Tribnet.com has this story: Bedridden homeowner shoots burglar who entered his roomGun in one hand, phone in the other. You'll note which of the two stopped the attack. I'm not going to second-guess the man, but I'd have put half the magazine in him. And I wouldn't have been aiming for the hip. Remember - defending yourself this way in England will put you in jail. Doing it in NYC without paying the government for permission will too. | The More Things Change... Donald Sensing has an interesting piece up concerning the lessons learned from the war in Iraq. Lesson One: Infantry rifle combat distances unchanged since World War I Long range marksmanship has its place, but in combat it's still up close and personal, apparently. According to this Strategy Page piece: The role of snipers is changing. There are still, "one shot, one kill and get out" situations. But often the sniper is concealed in friendly territory and facing multiple targets that all need prompt attention. This has made semiautomatic sniper rifles like the SR25, and refurbished (and upgraded for better accuracy) M-14s popular with many combat snipers. Sniping ranges are often quite short, making a slightly less accurate (than a bolt action sniper rifle) SR25 popular. For this kind of shooting, every round does not have to hit within a inch of the cross hairs. Two or three inches will do if you are aiming for the trunk, and not the head, and at 200-300 meters, a trained sniper can do this with a high quality semi-automatic like the SR25, and do it quickly enough to make a difference. "Semi-automatic sniping" is becoming more popular with troops who have not gone through extensive sniper training. It's becoming more common to have one or two men per squad trained as designated sharpshooters. They are selected for their natural skill at shooting, given some additional training and a better scope for their M-16, and trained to be, well, the squad sharpshooter. It's also more common to equip all combat troops with some kind of scope for their M-16, and make available night vision and heat sensing scopes as well. All of this comes from the basic idea that better trained troops mean soldiers who have more practice with their infantry weapons. More skill means more can be done with additional equipment like scopes. So far, this approach seems to be working. And it should, because during both World War I and II, years of combat brought out thousands of natural snipers, who made it dangerous to stick your head out when too close to the enemy. With the introduction of the 12.7mm sniper rifle in the 1980s, it became possible to hit someone two miles away. It's dangerous out there. If you're the one with most of the snipers, that's just the way you want it.So even most "sniping" is done at relatively close range. Those incidents where extreme-range shots are taken are very, very rare. | Dept.: Our Collapsing Schools Michelle at a small victory links to this short piece at National Review's The Corner STARVE THE BEAST [John Derbyshire]Michelle's response is worth the read. I'd like to add my 2¢: My sister is a public school teacher. She's a damned good one, too. I don't know anyone who works harder at a job than she does, and anyone who believes that it's the teachers who are primarily at fault hasn't been paying attention. The problem has two origins, the top: administration, starting at the Department of Education and falling all the way down to the school district; and the bottom: the parents who use the school system as daycare. Yes, there are some really bad teachers out there, but it's the job of the administration to weed them out. And it's the job of the parents to ensure that they do. I'm with Derbyshire - STARVE THE BEAST. Perhaps then the bloated administration will have to be cut, and perhaps then the merely unaware parents will have to become involved. Every other solution I've got involves tar, feathers, and rails. | I Don't Know His Politics, but I LIKE This Guy! Keanu Reeves, according to reports, is giving away quite a bit of what he is projected to make from the two Matrix sequels. And he's giving it to the people who made the movie possible - the special effects and costume crews. The interesting thing to me is, when I ran a Google News search, 90% of the reporting on this was in the UK. I found two local outlets that picked the story up. All the others were England, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand. | Joke of the Day Just got this by e-mail with no attribution: Hillary Clinton goes to a primary school to talk about the world. | Not That This Surprises Me... I took the Thudfactor: Are You a Geek quiz
Take the Polygeek Quiz at Thudfactor.com | Damn, I'm Famous! Welcome to visitors from The Rightwing News, where "The Smallest Minority" has been named "Web Site of the Day." I'm Honored. (Now if I can just get The Brady Campaign to link to me...) | Monday, June 02, 2003 Socialized Medicine - Equally Bad Care for All England now has a Brilliant Idea: Smokers and overweight people will be asked to sign contracts with their doctors to agree a programme to quit smoking and lose weight under radical plans being drawn up by the government.Or else what? You just let them die on the front steps of the hospital? Labour sources insisted last night that the plan, outlined in a Labour party policy document as part of preparations for the next general election manifesto, did not mean patients would be denied treatment if they refused to sign.YET. Here's an example of the efficacy of socialized medicine that I wrote about last week. I wonder if John Russell was overweight and / or smoked. At least nobody in England is suing over Oreos - yet. | As a Follow-on to the Last Post: Alphecca has a good piece up on Presidential Dove, quail, duck, deer. Kerry described how to hunt and gut them, talking as he sliced through a steak at midnight after campaigning all day in Iowa for the Democratic presidential nomination. Carve out the heart, he said over dinner, pull out the entrails and cut up the meat. Bad table manners, perhaps, or good politics.Did he beat his manly chest, too? I have nothing against hunters. I have a real problem with politicians, though. And crap reporting like this: Kerry, 59, is the only combat veteran in the field. He stands 6-foot-4. He rides a Harley, plays ice hockey, snowboards, windsurfs, kitesurfs, and has such thick, aggressive hair he uses a brush with metal teeth."I AM the Alpha Male," he roars. And the women become moist and weak-kneed. Jebus! Who edited this piece? Oh, wait: "He doesn't need a consultant to tell him how to dress like an alpha male," said his friend Ivan Schlager. "He is a damn alpha male."Take THAT, Al Gore! Read Alphecca's piece and his internal link. I can't deal with too much more of the Washington Post's saccarine drivel, so let me quote a few of the choicer lines: Occasionally, he'll even write poems, like the one he reluctantly read to a reporter: "I had a talk with a deer today/ we met upon the road some way . . . between his frequent snorts/He asked me if I sought his pelt/cause if I did he said he felt/quite out of sorts!""See? I'm sensitive! This was Primal John, the pilot who flies barrel rolls, who relaxes by windsurfing in a squall, who ran with the bulls at Pamplona and, when trampled, got up, chased the bull, and grabbed for its horns.ARR! ARR! ARR! (Can't you smell the testosterone?) "This is Five Papa Juliet at 120 degrees, climbing to 7,500 feet," he told the control tower as the ground dropped away.Said Captain Steve as he checked the bombload one last time... Kerry, the son of a Berlin-based American diplomat, was sent to a Swiss boarding school at age 11."See? he's multicultural! He biked around, saw the rubble of Hitler's bunker, sneaked into bleak East Berlin (until his father found out and grounded him), and was awakened to the impact politics had on people's lives."See? He's rebellious, but he cares! Often on his own, he tested his survival skills.Oh, for jebus's sake... Kerry likes to quote the French writer Andre Gide: "Don't try to understand me too quickly.""See? He's well-read and complex! On a recent afternoon in his Senate office, Kerry was challenging himself with a piece of Spanish classical guitar music. "It's very hard," he said, mid-strum. "I broke one of my nails."Oh. My. Freakin'. GOD. That is just too cute for words. He broke a nail playing Spanish guitar. Manly and feminine. And they call him "ambivalent." Imagine that. Just one more song. A Beatles tune from 1965. He strummed the guitar and belted: "Yesterday. . . ."And he's a BEATLES FAN! Well sign me the f&*k up! And who is he, really?I thought we'd answered that. He's GI Joe, Papa Hemingway, Jimmy Doolittle, Phil Donahue, John Lennon, and Oprah, all rolled into one well-married guy. Citizen-soldier. Linking patriotism to public service. It wasn't complex after all; it was Kerry.Arrest that man! He has an unregistered finger! Oh, wait - he's a government employee, so it doesn't count. And the media wonders why the public eschews the traditional news sources these days. | They'll Blame This on the Democrats shunning gun control Democrats appear to have abandoned gun control as a political wedge, declining to push the issue in Congress despite being given the opportunity by congressional Republicans.Tired of losing seats? House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, California Democrat, upbraided President Bush earlier this month for not pushing fellow Republicans to bring the assault-weapons ban up for reauthorization before it expires in September 2004.What? These evil weapons of mass destruction aren't more important than unemployment compensation? After the press briefing, however, Mrs. Pelosi said the Democrats might revisit guns "when the issue is ripe."AKA - "When we get a chance to wallow in the blood of the next high-profile shooting incident." Republicans see that as a dodge.It's a sign that, after we kicked your ass in the legislatures we're not going to let you use the courts to accomplish what you want. He pointed to the defeat in the 2000 presidential election of Al Gore in such Democratic-leaning yet pro-gun states as West Virginia, Arkansas and his home state of Tennessee.I imagine that did get your attention. "If you look at the results of the last two elections, you see a trend that candidates who are supporters of gun rights for law-abiding citizens tend to prevail," Mr. Arulanandam said.Oh, I hope so. "No one is particularly focused on this," said Matt Bennett, spokesman for Americans for Gun Safety. "There is no hook for this issue quite yet. But when the public realizes that unless Congress acts [by September 2004], that 'street sweepers' and Tec-9s will hit the streets again, it will become hot again."Oh, yes. They were such a problem. Much like those pesky armored limousine penetrating .50 caliber rifles that politicians are so worried about. Democrats abandon the gun issue at their peril, said Blaine Rummel, spokesman for the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence.No, they abandon the gun issue to get re-elected. He disputed the NRA's political success stories, noting that Mr. Gore won Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin - states where advocates on both sides of the gun issue spent heavily on political advertising.Put down the bong and step away. Mr. Rummel also pointed to the failed campaign of Senate candidate Jean Carnahan, Missouri Democrat, who tried to woo gun owners by wearing hunting camouflage in her political advertising.We're not stupid, Mr. Rummel. You only imagine that we're all single-toothed pickup-driving relative-impregnating rural single-wide renters with single-digit IQ's. Shocks the hell out of you when we see what you're actually doing, doesn't it? "The Democrats ran away from gun safety in the 2002 elections, and look where it got them," Mr. Rummel said. "Whoever is advising them on gun control should be shot.""SHOULD BE SHOT?!?!?!" Arrest that man! He committed a thought crime! Democrats "foolishly believe the NRA is going to go easy on them" if they register a vote for the liability protection or keep quiet about the assault-weapons ban, Mr. Rummel said.The NRA "goes easy" on whoever supports the Second Amendment. Ask Zell Miller. Ask John Dingell. So long as you use "gun grabber" to define "Democrat" then, no, the NRA won't "go easy" on them. | THIS Guy Won't be Facing Charges and Deportation! 2 suspects shot dead in robbery - Store's owner `feared for his life'; drew gun after threatened A southwest Houston grocery store owner shot and killed two men Saturday night while they were allegedly robbing his business, police said.The .45 is apparently quite effective. And you'll note - he kept his head and shot the two who were obviously armed. Perhaps New York City should pay attention to how Houston treats its shop owners and workers? Y'think? | Here's an Interesting Article on the Third Amendment Concept of civilian-controlled military is American There are plenty of opinions on what the Bill of Rights says. But it would take some effort to find many media pundits opining about the neglected Third Amendment. Not these days. With the most technologically sophisticated military in human history, it is hardly likely that U.S. leadership might resort to putting soldiers in American homes anytime soon. The notion seems as antiquated as flintlock muskets.It details the history of the amendment, but it doesn't mention Engblom v. Carey an obscure 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that "incorporated" the 3rd Amendment against state infrigement under the protection of the 14th Amendment. IN 1982! From the opinion: We first address the novel claim based on the Third Amendment, a provision rarely invoked in the federal courts. We agree with the district court's conclusion that the National Guardsmen are "Soldiers" within the meaning of the Third Amendment. Moreover, we agree with the district court that the Third Amendment is incorporated into the Fourteenth Amendment for application to the states.(My emphasis.) Even the THIRD Amendment gets an incorporation decision. But not the Second. Here's hoping that the Supreme Court will hear Silviera v. Lockyer. Let's answer this question, finally. Seventy years is far too long a time to have waited. | "Unfortunately, justice can be unforgiving" Others have covered this. I did, too, last week. But now it appears that Jose Acosta, the 69 year-old man, a resident of the U.S. for 25 years, faces possible deportation for using an unlicensed firearm to defend himself during an armed robbery attempt. And all Mayor Bloomberg has to say is "Unfortunately, justice can be unforgiving." I suppose Mr. Acosta should have just submitted and let the City protect him like it protected Mohammed Conteh. And he could be pushing up daisies in a NYC graveyard rather than facing deportation. That's OK, Sr. Acosta. Our border's so pourous you can be back at your bodega in less than 30 days. Mayor Bloomberg? Voters can be unforgiving, too. One term - if you make it that long before a lynch mob comes after you. And does anybody have an update on Ronald Dixon? | HOLY @*&!, I WON! After sitting a distant third all week in N.Z. Bear's first New Blog Showcase, somehow my entry pulled ahead in the final furlong with NINE links. Thanks, y'all! And thank you very much N.Z. Bear for running the contest. Oh, and Venomous Kate? I withdraw my concession. The linkers are: Publicola AlphaPatriot Kiwi Pundit Sperari: Taking 20 Jay Solo's Verbosity RandomActOfKindness The Colorado Compound The Peoria Pundit boone country Lead and Gold A Coyote at the Dog Show Across the Atlantic Feces Flinging Monkey Courtney Obviously not all linked to the submitted post (a requirement) but all have linked to this blog. Thank you very much. I think I got you all. If I missed anyone, let me know. | Sunday, June 01, 2003 If They're So Deadly, and Only Good for "Spray Fire" - "Laying Down A High Volume of Fire Over a Wide Killing Zone" - Then WHY ARE THE POLICE ARMED WITH THEM?
And why do they get the eeeeeevil short barrels and collapsible stocks? (Thanks, Mac.) | WOOHOO! 500 Visits! (ahem!) It's not like my life revolves around this thing, but it's nice to know that blogging isn't just me playing with myself. The blog is not yet three weeks old, and it's had 500 hits. Thanks for reading. Thanks to the few of you who have commented (when the comments were actually working.) And I'm still waiting for my first hate mail. | "For one thing, I don't think it would be enforceable," I've seen this a few places, but this story is the one I found most interesting. It appears that the plan to disarm the Iraqis has racheted down a bit. The current plan has been revised to prohibit the possession of anything more powerful than 7.62mm caliber assault rifles. Handguns, shotguns, bolt-action rifles, everything up to and including AK-47's are OK for civilians to keep. Heavier weapons; crew-served machineguns, RPGs, anti-aircraft and anti-tank weapons, mortars and other "indirect fire" weapons, mines and explosives are not allowed. Here's the money quote: While U.S. officials gave no public explanation for amending what had been a much tougher plan to rid postwar Iraq of heavy weapons, military officials have said they recognize the difficulties in disarming citizens at a time when Iraqis feel their personal safety is still at risk.I have news for you. It's not enforceable here, either. Feinstien, McCarthy, Schumer et. al., take note. | REPEAL THE 17th AMENDMENT! The Plain Truth has a piece on the 17th Amendment up that I fully concur with. There is also this piece on the CNN website from back in 2002 on the same topic by John Dean. (Yes, THAT John Dean.) There's a whole movement for the idea, as exemplified by this piece from the Ludwig von Mises Institute, this column from Enter Stage Right, this site dedicated to the idea, and there are several more links at this site. I don't know how the rest of you feel about it, but as far as I'm concerned the Founders knew what the hell they were doing. The 17th Amendment was every bit as boneheaded as the 18th, and far more damaging to our Republic. It was the biggest step this country took towards becoming a true democracy, with all that that entails. Stupid, stupid, stupid. And we've been paying the price ever since. And if you don't know what the 17th Amendment was, shame on you. Go READ. | This Will Put Their Panties in a Wad I imagine if Diane Feinstien and Carolyn McCarthy saw THIS
No flash hider. No bayonet lug. No collapsable or folding stock. Yup. I expect the gang-bangers are lining up to buy these weapons of mass destruction. Robinson Armament Co. is based in Salt Lake. Somehow I doubt the Mormons would be willing to surrender their "assault weapons" if McCarthy or Feinstein got their way. (Edited to fix the cranial flatulence) | Saturday, May 31, 2003 I WANT THIS SIGN!
There's a few more just as good over at the Feces Flinging Monkey. I may have to blogroll him. That's good stuff. | OK, What Happened with Gutrumbles? Rob, the Acidman's last post wasn't too encouraging. Now I get a "Cannot find server" error when I try to check his blog. Pardon me for the paranoia, but... I'm worried about you, man. Please be OK. [UPDATE] I can't get into Rachel Lucas's blog, or Michelle's A Small Victory. (sniff, sniff) Another fire at HostingMatters? InstaPundit is unavailable too. Looks like it. Paranoia assuaged. (Unless it's all a conspiracy.....) | Looks Like My Archives are Bloggered Again I don't know why. This is irritating. Internal links still seem to work, though. | All Assault Weapons Ban, All the Time Here's another "striver.". "Return of Assault Weapons Feared in U.S." A Toronto Star piece. I feel a fisk'n coming on! They go by names that suggest power and danger — the "Streetsweeper," the TEC-9, the MAK90, the AK-47.As opposed to, say, the Marlin 336, the Mossberg 500, the Remington 7400, the Browning BAR, the ... but you get the idea. It's not the weapon, it's the human being behind the trigger. Now there is fear here that the bullet-spraying semi-automatic weapons are heading back to American streets.This assumes that they A) were on the "street" in any numbers to begin with, and B) the law had anything to do with them leaving. Neither of which assumption can be proven given the available data. The gun debate in the United States has moved back to the forefront as a 1994 ban on assault weapons lurches toward an expiry date and it promises to become a pivotal issue in the next presidential election.Politics. Ain't it a bitch? That would be a powerful nod-and-wink to the firearms lobby, which, by some accounts, poured $1.6 million into the 2000 Bush campaign.Wow. $1.6 mill? Out of a total of $193,088,650 according to OpenSecrets.org. Boy, I bet they really noticed that slightly less than 1%. And now he rewards them by saying he'd support extension of the ban. What a backstabber, eh? "Does George W. Bush want to be known as the pro-assault weapon president?" said Joe Sudbay, the public policy director of the Washington-based Violence Policy Center.No, he wants to be known as Mr. President. He's a politician. "He may be trying to have it both ways now, but it will be pretty clear by Sept. 13, 2004. He either supports the extension or he doesn't ... he either extends it or he doesn't."Whoa. Thanks for that stunning piece of logic. The 1994 law made it illegal to import, manufacture, transfer or possess 19 types of semi-automatic weapons, although the law was "grandfathered," meaning anyone who legally owned such weapons before that date could retain them."Loophole! Loophole!" he screams. Tom DeLay, the Texas Republican and House of Representatives majority leader, said last week he didn't believe the extension would come to a vote in the Republican-dominated House. DeLay's statement drew a surprising rebuke from the Republican Speaker of the House, Dennis Hastert, showing that the gun ban does not easily cut across Republican-Democrat lines in this country.That's the beauty of it. They don't have to "back a measure." Just not vote "yes" on any new bill proposed to revoke the sunset. White House spokesperson Ari Fleischer said last week Bush has not had any change of heart from his 2000 campaign promise. But he offered no explanation as to why Bush has given no presidential muscle to the promise. He has not been shy about stumping the country pushing for his tax-cut proposals, but has said nothing publicly about assault weapons.I think Up-Chuck overestimates just how much Bush can lead the members of the House around. The gun question is an entirely different question to constituents compared to a tax cut. Nobody except a member of the democratic party elite opposes keeping more of their own money. In 1994, the ban passed the House by a mere two votes, but it has been something less than a rousing success, even the anti-gun lobby concedes.So LETS RENEW IT! Yeah, that sounds like Democratic logic. Many weapons manufacturers simply cosmetically changed the specs on the weapons to circumvent the ban, cynically adding "AB" to their model numbers, indicating they were changed "after the ban.""Loophole! Loophole!" In 2000, 28,653 died of gunshot wounds in the U.S.; 94 children and teens in Louisiana alone. The gun death rate during that year was 10.4 per 100,000 population.Down from 34,050 and a rate of 14.84 in 1981. And your point is....? The Violence Policy Center released a study last week indicating that 41 of 211 law enforcement officers gunned down in the line of duty between Jan. 1, 1998, and Dec. 31, 2001 — almost one in five — were felled by assault weapons.A report which I illustrated misidentified 19 of the 41 weapons as "assault rifles." Five of the 19 were "banned" handguns, but the other 14 weapons identified as "assault rifles" weren't on the "banned" list either by description or name at all. As I said in my earlier piece: Four (4) with M1 Carbines, eight (8) with SKS rifles, two (2) with Mini-14's, three (3) M-11's, and two (2) TEC-9's. First, the M1, SKS, and Mini-14's are not and have not been classified as "assault weapons" - no lethal pistol grip on those guns. They look like "nice" semi-automatic rifles because they have the pretty non-lethal wood stocks, rather than the ugly, lethal plastic and metal ones. The M-11 and the TEC-9 are not rifles, they're handguns. That's NINETEEN (19) of the 41. And, if these guns were created "solely to kill people," what of the other 170 officer deaths? They were killed with weapons designed to tickle people?This piece is much the same. During a three-week reign of terror last October, the Washington snipers used a modified Bushmaster assault rifle, an XM15 M4 A3. The company's sales have soared since 1994.And, as I have pointed out elsewhere, the "Washington snipers" fired a single shot at each victim. They could just as well have used a target rifle. Their choice of weapon was irrelevant. The teens behind the 1999 Columbine massacre used modified TEC-9s.No, according to the Denver Post, only Kliebold had a Tec-9. And aren't you forgetting the SAWED-OFF SHOTGUNS BOTH OF THEM CARRIED? Not to mention the fact that they were also carrying "a backpack and a duffel bag filled with bombs." And you're worried about a TEC-9? "There's not a dime's worth of difference in the performance characteristics between the guns on the banned list and the guns not on the banned list," said NRA executive vice-president Wayne LaPierre.Hey, they didn't misquote him! Anti-gun advocates want an even tougher ban to replace the 1994 law, but, right now, there is little hope in Washington the law will be improved. It is more a question of a dogged fight to keep the status quo.It didn't work, so LET'S DO IT AGAIN ONLY HARDER! Bryan Miller of Philadelphia knows something about fight and he doesn't buy the conventional Washington spin."...but somebody was going to die, anyway." Yup. And he could have used a non-banned Browning Hi-power. Or a sawed-off shotgun. His choice of a Tec-9 was immaterial. Someone was going to die. "Tirelessly to control guns in his country?" More like "tirelessly to disarm the victims." Nothing these people want will prevent someone intent on killing from doing so. Gun control is not crime control. It didn't work in England, and it can't work here. "These guns are ugly," he said in an interview.WE HAVE A WINNER! That's it exactly. They're ugly, scary-looking guns, so we must ban them! Pitchforks! Torches! Kill the monster! Kill the monster! "We have tapes of those kids firing away in Columbine. We have families of victims and people like me who have lost loved ones to these guns.My condolences. Seriously. But you and the families didn't lose their friends and loved ones to "those guns." You lost them to the bastards pulling the triggers. And until you figure that out, you've got a helluva lot of people on my side opposing you. Wake up. | 'A Premeditated Usurpation of Authority' PublicoLa (mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa) has a link up to: Was the Congress Granted the Constitutional Authority to Regulate Firearms Through its Taxing Power? which is a Sierra Times piece. There's a link to an earlier Publicola piece too. Very good. Go read both. | Honor and Integrity The Laughing Wolf has an excellent post up (nod to WindsofChange for the pointer) on this topic. The piece opens: You know the world is changing when the anchors on the morning news show start talking about honor and integrity. Not merely talking about it, but calling for its return in near reverent tones. Strong, yes, but reverent as well.Go read. Leave a comment. | Friday, May 30, 2003 "It's frightening when you think that we started out with just ten commandments" That's the punchline of a Frank and Earnest cartoon where the two bums are standing in a law library, agog at the vast ranks of legal tomes. Now it appears that the residents of New York City are getting a feel for all the "good work" their local legislators have done over the last hundred years or so. Arthur Silber has this story about NYC's shall we say rigorous enforcement of every law they can dig up in an effort to cover the city's budget shortfall. I've long believed that legislative bodies should have to spend two-thirds of their time reviewing old laws and deciding whether they should be scrapped. At a minimum it would minimize the passing of more. I read somewhere that in 2000 the California legislature passed, and the appropriately named Gray Davis signed, over 900 new laws. NINE HUNDRED NEW LAWS IN ONE YEAR. How is anyone supposed to keep up? And who the hell is responsible for foisting bills 150 pages long? If you can't explain what you want to accomplish in five pages or less, BREAK IT UP INTO PIECES. Or don't bother. All I have to say is Ayn Rand was right on this one: "There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one *makes* them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What's there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced nor objectively interpreted - and you create a nation of law-breakers - and then you cash in on the guilt."Can you say "Zero Tolerance" boys and girls? I knew you could. (I've got to read that book.) | Now THERE'S a Mental Image that Sticks With You! Acidman posts: By the way, I prefer nipples that resemble .45 caliber bulletsI'm not touching that line. | More Serious This Time The Friday Five this week isn't a fluff piece. Here we go: 1. What do you most want to be remembered for? This assumes I place some importance on "being remembered," which I don't. I do care about being thought of as a good, honest man, though. 2. What quotation best fits your outlook on life? "It stands to reason that self-righteous, inflexible, single-minded, authoritarian true believers are politically organized. Open-minded, flexible, complex, ambiguous, anti-authoritarian people would just as soon be left to mind their own fucking business."3. What single achievement are you most proud of in the past year? Nothing in particular. 4. What about the past ten years? Convincing the woman I love to be my wife. 5. If you were asked to give a child a single piece of advice to guide them through life, what would you say? "One of the common failings among honorable people is a failure to appreciate how thoroughly dishonorable some other people can be, and how dangerous it is to trust them."Be trustworthy. Trust, but verify. And above all else - THINK! | Socially Acceptable Bigotry Glenn Reynolds points to this piece concerning the bigotry of the left. A taste: When somebody makes a prejudicial comment about Republicans in my presence, I play a private game. I replay the sentence in my mind—only I substitute a word like "black" or "lesbian" or "Mexican" in place of the word "Republican." In performing this verbal sleight-of-hand, it becomes increasingly apparent that the speaker of the sentence may harbor views not generally considered to be tolerant or open-minded.No, really? But I loved the climax of the piece: The bigotry of America's Left-leaning intelligentsia is based upon cold logic that unfolds in the following predictable, if venal, fashion: I'm very smart. I'm well educated. So are most of my friends. I give generously to liberal causes. I'm a kind and caring human being. I defer to nobody in my exemplary set of values. I care about equality. I believe in a just society. These values are integrated into the core of who I am. I work diligently to teach these values unto my progeny. And these are just the values that, generally speaking, have been represented by the policies and actions of the Democratic Party.Yup. That about covers it. It never occurs to them that they might be wrong. Go read the whole thing. And leave a comment. | OK, Can Anybody Explain What the Hell They're Saying? JoinTogether has this little blurb up: Assault-Weapons Ban Has Little Effect on Gun Makers As the debate continues on whether to extend the federal assault-weapons ban, firearms experts say the ban has had only a slight financial impact on gun manufacturers, CNS News reported May 27.Bushmaster makes nothing but "assault weapons" as defined by these morons. And they've had a 900% increase in sales! Ooooh! What a great law! Gun-control advocates argue that allowing the ban to expire would erase the progress made in fighting crime caused by assault weapons.What progress? The incidence of "assault weapons used in crimes" is so low that you can't draw a statistical conclusion! And it also depends on how you define assault weapons. In this piece I showed that the "We'll see the manufacture of what are now banned weapons returning to circulation," said Rob Wilcox, spokesman of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. "They obviously have a certain appeal to the criminal element."Oh yeah. Criminals really dig those flashhiders and bayonet lugs. Sheesh. So, what are they saying? Don't extend the ban because it didn't hurt the "assault weapon" manufacturers? Do extend the ban because it helped reduce gun crime? Does anyone else detect a bit of wishy-washyness here? | It was all About Oiiilllllll! Courtney's all over this hot story: The Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor because we made them do it by cutting off their oiiiiillllll! I never realized that liberal victimhood had been exported to Japan. No wonder their economy is in the crappper. | Our Collapsing Schools AlphaPatriot has this post about Memphis' failing schools which demonstrates in detail that throwing money at the problem isn't the answer. Go read. There's nothing that I could add except "Memphis isn't alone." | Wait...That Didn't Come Out Right... On a lighter note, the Associated Press reports that Kelly Hu, last seen as Lady Deathstrike in X2: X-Men United, is now performing "The Vagina Monologues". Says Hu: "I don't even move off the stool. It's a totally different thing going on for me - a totally different muscle to exercise..."Ahem. There goes one fantasy.... | I Thought School was OUT for Summer According to Sitemeter, the last four visitors came from the servers of: Michigan State University, Southern Illinois University, Johns Hopkins Medical Institutes, and Washington State University. Am I a source of interest to academics for some reason? | Steven Den Beste Weighs in on the Dimensions of Political Belief In another excellent logical analysis, Den Beste disassembles an essay by Michael Totten that expounds on the "Left/Right" divide, by explaining that Mr. Totten's linear scale is erroneous. Political beliefs are multidimensional, and in Steven's piece he tries to analyse just how many degrees-of-freedom (ain't that an accurate term) describe the space of political belief. Money quote: This is where Michael's argument, based on a single axis, breaks down. The people he refers to as "liberals" aren't liberal. For lack of a better term, we'll have to call them "leftists" for the moment. The vocal leftist movement which has been revealed in the last year in the US manifests as being elitist (i.e. not liberal), idealistic (not realistic) and conformist (not tolerant). There's a lesser dedication to equality (over inequality) but it's not totally consistent because it is a side effect of a basic choice of groups over individuals and to some extent of socialism over capitalism. And within the US right now, they're revolutionaries because they strongly disagree with the status quo. It is because they are revolutionaries that we tend to categorize them as being "leftist"; it has nothing to do with liberalism as such (especially since they aren't liberal).Excellent piece. Go read. | And You Should Rely On the Government that Disarms You....Why? Followup. Another nod to Kim du Toit for this link concerning recent shootings in New York City FEELING LUCKY, PERP? And this doesn't even mention the case of Ronald Dixon. The prosecutor in that case made sure that Mr. Dixon wouldn't get a jury trial by reducing (but not dropping) the charges to a point at which Mr. Dixon is not entitled to a jury trial. I guess he's still afraid of jury nullification. Mr. Dixon's story has dropped into oblivion since March. I have no idea what the outcome (if any) was. | Thursday, May 29, 2003 Last Entry on the Johns Hopkins Gun Lawsuit "Fact" Sheet I started this series here, and continued it here. I thought I'd go ahead and finish it. I'm only going to discuss one last "Myth/FACT" from this "striver": Myth:The Lawsuits are simply designed to bankrupt the gun industry.I guess no longer designing or marketing qualifies as "changing the way" it's done. In fact, the lawsuit filed by the NAACP doesn't even ask for money damages, just changes in the way manufacturers do business.But as I've pointed out, it isn't necessary that the gun control groups win. The gun manufacturing industry isn't that big. The NAACP lost its lawsuit, but not before the trial ran FIVE WEEKS. How much did the legal fees run? All the case preparation? And that's one trial. The gun-control lawyers have deep pockets - yours. Remember, 13 cities sued the gun industry. Your tax dollars at work. Suits brought by individuals and organizations are funded either by lawyers already rich from tobacco settlements or funded by chairitable organizations (according to Overlawyered.com) such as: The George Gund Fund, The Joyce Foundation, Charles Stewart Mott, Richard & Rhoda Goldman Fund, Eugene & Agnes Meyer Foundation, George Soros's Open Society Institute, the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, the YWCA, the Presbyterian Church USA, and the National Urban League. The gun manufacturers don't have those resources. How would you like it if your business was sued in 13 different jurisdictions? How long do you think you could keep your doors open under that kind of financial stress? Even getting to the point where the cases get thrown out is expensive. Go ahead, pull my other leg. That hound don't hunt. But it drops a fine striver. | Give Up Your Guns. It Will Make You Safer. No, Really!! Safer for the guys who are coming to oppress or kill you. Instapundit provides a link to this Strategy Page report: Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe is surreptitiously arming his war veterans and violent youth brigades with guns so that they can crush the planned street protests to topple his regime next week.And the eUNnuchs will sit and wring their hands and, at most send in some people to take a guess at how many died. If Mugabe lets them in. Yup. We should really get behind the UN's plans to ensure that only legitimate governments have small-arms. Sure we should. | Q: Shouldn't it be illegal? A: Only if you are a Puritan and afraid that someone, somewhere is having fun. This looks like WAY too much fun: The Palouse Practical Shooters Boomer Shoot! Great website, too. Thanks to reader Ry for the link. At the quarterly Arizona AR15.com shoots a lot of binary Tannerite gets used, but nobody uses ANFO. Idaho, eh? I don't have a 700 yard capable rifle - yet. But when I do, I might have to make a road trip. | You Like Me! You Really Like Me! Or at least I'm apparently not yet loathed. Perusing my Sitemeter data, I see I've gotten 36 hits just today, and some of you have spent some not inconsiderable time perusing the site. I also note a significant fraction of visitors come from .edu sites. Interesting. College students? (STILL curious as to who's repeat visiting from the Johns Hopkins server.) I'm still waiting for my first hatemail for true validation, though. Is anybody besides me and Jack reading our debate over on The Commentary? (Permalinks aren't working there.) Jack pointed out in his last post that my two-part "Blog that Ate Poughkeepsie" post ran over 10,000 words. Oy. Please tell me I'm reaching a wider audience than one. Please. | And You Should Rely On the Government that Disarms You....Why? Kim du Toit links to this story: CS SPRAY MAN FACES LEGAL ACTIONWhy arrest both, you might ask? A police spokesman said that they were investigating the illegal use and possession of CS spray.That's right! You can't carry mace! Or pepper spray! Or anything else the State considers an "offensive weapon" - even if you use it in self-defence as this poor guy did. England - where it's safe to be a mugger, or a home invader, or a carjacker, or... Read the whole story. | Dig Out Your Wallets I'm not going to do this except on extremely rare occasions, but here I feel I must. Keepandbeararms.com has a fund drive for the Silveira v. Lockyer appeal to the Supreme Court, and here's their 10 reasons SCOTUS should hear the case: (1) The Supreme Court has not heard a case on the fundamental right to keep and bear arms since United States v. Miller in 1939 — 64 years ago. The Court hears First, Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Amendment cases virtually every year. And if only four of the nine Justices decide to hear the case, it will be heard.If this means anything to you, go over to their site. Go to the bottom of the page AND DONATE. This is the best chance we have to get the question answered - are we or are we not still a nation of the rule of law? SCOTUS can, once again, dodge the bullet, but this is the best case we've ever had. And the NRA isn't being helpful here. | YOU Are Responsible for Your Protection I heard about this on the radio this morning, but Instapundit had the link to the story: Man tried to hijack, crash Qantas plane - TRIED being the operative phrase. Money quote: The 40-year-old man stabbed two flight attendants and injured two other people before he was overpowered by crew and passengers aboard QF1737.No more "Let the experts handle it." | Another Vote for the Competition Wyatt over at Giant City has a short post up on "Second-Guessing the Second Amendment". Money quote: Has she just gotten caught up in pop culture’s latest wave of anti-American angst, the most notable aspect of which (lately) is this notion of an outdated Second Amendment? When she declared her disdain for gun owners, she did so with great conviction and a big smile. I smiled back at the time, simply marveling at the sort of hubris - or ignorance - that must be required to second-guess some of the greatest political and philosophical minds of the 18th century. She obviously believes that the State will protect her. | Wednesday, May 28, 2003 OK, Check My Logic On This: The Violence Policy Center, that [sarcasm] stalwart unbiased source of nothing but facts in the gun debate [/sarcasm] has a new scaremongering publication out: Bullet Hoses: Semiautomatic Assault Weapons—What Are They? What's So Bad About Them? There's this ten-point list of their EEEEEEVil features: 1. Semiautomatic assault weapons (like AK and AR-15 assault rifles and UZI and MAC assault pistols) are civilian versions of military assault weapons. There are virtually no significant differences between them.Well, they're SEMI-automatic. I call that "significant." 2. Military assault weapons are "machine guns." That is, they are capable of fully automatic fire. A machine gun will continue to fire as long as the trigger is held down until the ammunition magazine is empty.Nice of you to make the distinction 3. Civilian assault weapons are not machine guns. They are semiautomatic weapons. (Since 1986 federal law has banned the sale to civilians of new machine guns.) The trigger of a semiautomatic weapon must be pulled separately for each round fired. It is a mistake to call civilian assault weapons "automatic weapons" or "machine guns."Well, hell. Nice of you to FINALLY make the distinction after telling all your buddies back in 1998: Assault weapons - just like armor-piercing bullets, machine guns, and plastic firearms—are a new topic. The weapons' menacing looks, COUPLED WITH THE PUBLIC'S CONFUSION OVER FULLY AUTOMATIC MACHINE GUNS VERSUS SEMI-AUTOMATIC ASSAULT WEAPONS - anything that looks like a machine gun is assumed to be a machine gun—can only increase the chance of public support for restrictions on these weapons."Seems you were encouraging confusion back then. 4. However, this is a distinction without a difference in terms of killing power. Civilian semiautomatic assault weapons incorporate all of the functional design features that make assault weapons so deadly. They are arguably more deadly than military versions, because most experts agree that semiautomatic fire is more accurate—and thus more lethal—than automatic fire.Wait a minute. What? 5. The distinctive "look" of assault weapons is not cosmetic. It is the visual result of specific functional design decisions. Military assault weapons were designed and developed for a specific military purpose—laying down a high volume of fire over a wide killing zone, also known as "hosing down" an area.Which is it, "accurate semi-auto fire" or "hosing down" an area? Make up your damned mind. 6. Civilian assault weapons keep the specific functional design features that make this deadly spray-firing easy. These functional features also distinguish assault weapons from traditional sporting guns.Again, accurate fire or spray fire. Which is the deadly one again? 7. The most significant assault weapon functional design features are: (1) ability to accept a high-capacity ammunition magazine, (2) a rear pistol or thumb-hole grip, and, (3) a forward grip or barrel shroud. Taken together, these are the design features that make possible the deadly and indiscriminate "spray-firing" for which assault weapons are designed. None of them are features of true hunting or sporting guns.And who said the Second Amendment was a protection for "sporting guns?" If I recall correctly, the 1939 U.S. v Miller case hinged on whether or not Miller's "shotgun having a barrel of less than eighteen inches" was a suitable militia weapon. Well, if semi-automatic "assault weapons", by your definition "incorporate all of the functional design features that make assault weapons so deadly" then they fill the bill, don't they? They meet the Miller test, and are then protected by the Second Amendment, right? 8. "Spray-firing" from the hip, a widely recognized technique for the use of assault weapons in certain combat situations, has no place in civil society. Although assault weapon advocates claim that "spray-firing" and shooting from the hip with such weapons is never done, numerous sources (including photographs and diagrams) show how the functional design features of assault weapons are used specifically for this purpose.Well, as you yourself pointed out, this is less lethal than aimed fire. Pick a position and stick to it, would you? 9. Unfortunately, most of the design features listed in the 1994 federal ban—such as bayonet mounts, grenade launchers, silencers, and flash suppressors—have nothing to do with why assault weapons are so deadly. As a result, the gun industry has easily evaded the ban by simply tinkering with these "bells and whistles" while keeping the functional design features listed above.Aw, gee, sorry that the rules were so stupid? So were we. But we were sorry that they were stupid and passed. Your buddies tell us that the "Assault Weapons Ban was a big success" and needs to be renewed, but you're telling us it was useless? And still needs to be renewed? 10. Although the gun lobby today argues that there is no such thing as civilian assault weapons, the gun industry, the National Rifle Association, gun magazines, and others in the gun lobby enthusiastically described these civilian versions as "assault rifles," "assault pistols," "assault-type," and "military assault" weapons to boost civilian assault-weapon sales throughout the 1980s. The industry and its allies only began to use the semantic argument that a "true" assault weapon is a machine gun after civilian assault weapons turned up in inordinate numbers in the hands of drug traffickers, criminal gangs, mass murderers, and other dangerous criminals.Don't lay that off on US. You guys were the biggest marketing boost these weapons ever had. Every time you try to ban something you quadruple the market, if not more. Get this straight: I bought my POST-ban AR-15 because you morons were trying to make it illegal for me to have one. It's my "militia" rifle. My "sport-utility" rifle. My "homeland security" rifle. You can't have it. Period. End of story. Bite me. Besides, if I follow your logic it means I ought to be able to get a less-lethal fully-automatic assault rifle. That would make you happier than my tack-driving precision rifle does now. Doesn't this doubleplus ungood newthink make your heads hurt? | Enough About Me. Let's Talk About What YOU Think About Me! No, I'm not narcissistic. That's a line from a Bette Midler movie that has stuck with me like a popcorn husk between molars, for some reason. (Quiz: Which movie?) This blog is precisely two weeks old today. I'm coming up on 300 site hits, and I've got a couple of readers who return and spend some time. I've got a little bit of linkage already. I've put up some pretty serious stuff, and some pretty silly stuff, and some funny stuff. Hopefully it's been enough to give you an idea of the personality sitting on the other side of the glowing phosphors or oscillating liquid crystals banging this stuff out. I thought I'd spend a few minutes fleshing out some details about moi, your gentle host. I'm 41. I spent most of my life being 35, so it was kind of a relief actually hitting that age chronologically. Then I hit 40. 40 hit back. I'm married, have been coming up on eight years. I have a daughter (step), 24, and two grandkids, 4 (girl) and 3 (boy). They all live here with us. (Those three years of just me and my wife are but a distant, glimmering memory now...) I am who I am, I think, primarily because of reading. I feel pity for people who don't or won't or can't read for pleasure. Short of a bodice-ripper, I don't think there's a book out there that can't teach you something. (Oh, wait. Battlefield Earth...No, that taught me never to read L. Ron Hubbard again.) My primary influence was Science Fiction. At about 12, I discovered The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Vol. I, and I was never the same kid again. I went for SF, and I found Robert Anson Heinlein. Exposing a pre-pubescent to R.A. Heinlein is a dangerous thing. Especially when you set him up with things like Have Spacesuit, Will Travel, and The Menace From Earth, and then you hit him between the eyes with Starship Troopers and The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. And then follow those with Stranger in a Strange Land and Time Enough for Love. Anything that man wrote, I read. Even his crap was better than most people's best work. But I also read Asimov, Clarke, Poul Anderson, Theodore Sturgeon, Robert Silverberg, James Blish, Jerry Pournelle, Larry Niven, Ben Bova, Alan Dean Foster, Piers Anthony... Many more. It's called "speculative fiction" for a reason. It awoke, or at least encouraged, an interest in how things work - from cars to guns to computers to governments. But Heinlein's responsible for my politics. I found Henry Louis Mencken and P.J. O'Rourke much later. By then the foundation had set. I'm not a Libertarian, though. Nor am I a Republican or a Democrat (though that's what my voter registration says - I like screwing with their primaries.) I'm sure as hell not a Green. I don't "affiliate." I figure that anyone willing to run for elective office should be immediately disqualified. At least, anyone willing to run for national office. I've forgotten who said it, but someone did: "Anyone who rises to the level of national politics is either a cutthroat or a useful idiot." Or both. The ones that are both are the really dangerous ones. My politics and my personal philosophy are also based in the works of two other writers: John D. MacDonald, and Robert B. Parker. Their characters of Travis McGee and Spenser, which I read through my adolescence, resonated with my personal sense of rightness and honor, socially responsible independance: in short - morality. Since this is becoming a bibliography, I thought I'd throw in a list of my favorite books. The order is not absolute, but generally accurate: 1. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Robert A. HeinleinAnd that's the SHORT list. At present, I've got something like 1,000 books in the house, and that's only because I had to get rid of 400 or so because I had no more space to store them (kids, you know.) I'm a shooter. I don't hunt, though I might eventually do some varminting. I like to go to the range with two or three guns and spend the day shooting. I like hitting small things far away, and many things fast up close. I reload, so I can afford to shoot. I still don't get to shoot as much as I'd like, and now blogging has cut seriously into my reloading time, but it's worth it. Blogging's cheaper, I'll give it that. Oh well, enough for now. I might expand on this later, or I might not. That's what blogging is about. | More on Socialism, or "Equal Misery for All! (Except for those in charge)" Samizdata has posted in full the comment of one of his readers because he believes it needs more attention. It's a short essay on "How to create a social democratic Utopia via the ballot box, rather than the bullet in the back of the neck." He's right. Go read. I had to add this, also from Samizdata:
Damn, that's funny. | Socialized Medicine - Equally Bad Care for All Dad Dies Waiting for Surgery (New Zealand - nod to Kiwi Pundit for the link) A 43-year-old father died of a heart attack at home after bypass surgery at Wellington Hospital was postponed twice this month.But there's more. According to Kiwi Pundit: Wakefield hospital was available just around the corner, but last year the state hospital board terminated a program that would have allowed patients to be referred to the private hospital if necessary.And he has a link to this business story with details about how the private hospital's cardiac surgery unit is underutilized. Oh yeah - I want the government put in charge of health care in the name of "fairness" - NOT. | So you're a feminist?...Isn't that cute! Mike S. Adams strikes a blow for the First Amendment in the college environment of "tolerance." Way to go, Mike. The piece begins:
(DISCLAIMER: And I wish this weren't necessary - I am all for the rights of individuals regardless of their plumbing. This piece isn't about feminism it's about "tolerance" in the college environment, and the Of course, this assumes that a prickly "feminist" type would be found dead here, but one can hope. Wait, that didn't come out right....) | Why I Love Lileks and want to have his....want to write as well as he does: Today's Bleat is gooooood stuff. Excerpt: Right before I woke up I dreamed I had an assignment: write a bad feature story in the style of the New York Times. When I woke I had the last sentence still in my head; I stumbled next door to the studio, woke up the Mac, and typed this sentence:ROFLMAO! Go read. He's got some interesting things to say about beer, too. | Well, There Go My Chances... I'm going to bow to inevitability here. NZ Bear's New Blog Showcase competition is starting to pick up. This blog is currently third with my post Is the Government Responsible for Your Protection, Part II, but a distant third. First place? Electric Venom's 20 Warnings About My Blog (a.k.a. "A Blogger's Manifesto"). And it's an excellent post. I think that specific post will end up on my Blogroll under "Read This if This Site Offends You." I bow in your general direction, Venomous Kate. You deserve to win. That was righteous. | Tuesday, May 27, 2003 Back from Watching The Matrix Reloaded WARNING!! SPOILER ALERT!! READ NO FURTHER IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN IT AND STILL WANT TO! I have only one question - in the climactic scene where the Trinity fights the Agent, just after she is thrown through the wall, and just before she dives out the window, WHERE THE HELL DO THOSE TWO MACHINE-PISTOLS COME FROM??? She sure as hell wasn't concealing 'em in that patent-leather catsuit. Ah well, it's just a movie. | Lileks Does Not Run My Life! Regardless of what James Lileks has to say about it, my wife and I will be going out tonight to watch The Matrix Reloaded again. ("Trixies" my rosy red....) So there. That means I won't be blogging (much) tonight. Sorry. (Obligatory gun nut spoiler: The full-auto pistol Morpheus uses is a Glock 18 - with a 33 round magazine. His kung-fu is very strong.) | Grieve for the Fallen I don't want to make this an ongoing thing, but: TPD officer killed while chasing man A Tucson police officer was fatally shot Monday afternoon while chasing a man involved in a hit-and-run collision in Midtown, authorities said.My condolences to his friends and family. My thanks for his willingness to sacrifice. | French Puzzle Over Why U.S. Got So Angry That's the title of this Sacramento Bee piece. Money quote: "What is a little disconcerting for the French is an American president who seems to be principled," said Jean Duchesne, an English literature professor at Condorcet College in Paris. "The idea that politics should be based on principles is unimaginable because principles lead to ideology, and ideology is dangerous."So, politics should be, by definition unpricipled? No wonder they thought Bill Clinton was great. Whack that man with a baguette. | Great. Juuuust Great. Here I am, in the running for Best New Blog of the Week, and, once again, Blogspot either won't let viewers in, or only shows them part of the page. Oh frabjous joy. I know that anything free is worth what you pay for it, but still.... | Godwin's Law Does Not Apply Dave Kopel and Richard Griffiths have an excellent piece up on National Review Online, entitled Hitler’s Control: The lessons of Nazi history Acquainting a new generation of television viewers with the monstrosity of Hitler is a commendable public service by CBS, for if we are serious about "Never again," then we must be serious about remembering how and why Hitler was able to accomplish what he did. Political scientist R. J. Rummel, the world's foremost scholar of the mass murders of the 20th century, estimates that the Nazis killed about 21 million people, not including war casualties. With modern technology, a modern Hitler might be able to kill even more people even more rapidly.That's simplistic, in my opinion. Simply having guns does not mean that they will be used with effect. There's a cultural / philosophical aspect to the question as well. For example, I think the philosophy of self-defense has been stripped from the English through decades of government propaganda. But without the means with which to defend yourself, there's not a philosophy out there that will save your ass, or your people's, when the excrement hits the rotating air impeller. Go read. | Welcome to Visitors Truth Laid Bear has started a New Weblog Showcase, and I'm in the running. With links to the showcase from both InstaPundit and The Volokh Conspiracy, I expect I'll get at least, oh, six new visitors. So welcome. Spend some time. Leave a comment. (Please. I'm begging.) Oh, and a link would be greatly appreciated. Thanks so much. Come again soon! | Grieve for the Fallen Grocery shootout ends in death (Nod to Publicola for the link.) Lena and Ralph Casey telephoned their daughter, Teresa, at 4 a.m. Saturday with an urgent message: A burglar was rustling through the community grocery they own next to their home.Go read the rest. My condolences to Mrs. Thompson and the rest of their family. | Monday, May 26, 2003 The British Still Aren't Getting It A recent BBC News "Talking Point" question was How can guns be made less accessible? Well, seeing as they've made damned near everything illegal, and what is left legal is under draconian restriction, I was quite interested in what the Brits had to say. Let's sample a few, shall we? The problem isn't the guns, it's the total inability of the police to police the streets! If people carrying illegal thought the might get stopped and arrested it might deter them. But the chances of them being arrested are about zero. We don't need more laws we just need to enforce the very strict ones we already have. We need less "sound-bites from Ministers and more Police on the streets. After all, when did you last see a Police Officer on the beat? Someone else who believes that the government is responsible for his safety. This Government's standard response to such problems is to launch a spin campaign to convince the public that they are taking action - it is far easier than doing something effective. A cynic! But he doesn't give any suggestions for "something effective." The new legislation should offer an amnesty for those who surrender their weapons to police within a time frame. We have seen this policy of amnesty in parts of Africa such as Angola and Sierra Leone. And those are such safe places to live, aren't they? I mean, Sierra Leone lifted their curfew just last year! We should also ban toy guns for children. I can't think of a sicker, more twisted 'toy' and corrupting influence on a child. And the age limit should be raised for movies that feature an excessive use of guns. Never mind 18, we should introduce a 21 certificate for violent films. And maybe the BBC could help by not showing as many war films at Christmas and on Sundays. Drop the violence completely. I'm rendered nearly speechless at the inanity of Mr. Harrison. Way to go, Iain! Ban gun shop websites! I just put in gun shop in a search engine and came up with at least 700 results. This is too much. Well, hell, while we're at it, let's ban pornography and news sites, too! Are these people naturally morons, or is it something in the water? The latest figures prove that the government's current legislation on firearms is not working. Will making this legislation tougher solve the problem? In a word - no. The people that are obtaining these weapons are the kind of people that have no respect for the law or their fellow citizens. Why not stop wasting money on actions that are all show and no substance and tackle the real problems like how are these weapons getting here in the first place and why aren't they getting destroyed the moments they are impounded? Apparently this Ian drinks bottled water occasionally. But not enough. Gun crime is hugely related to how guns are portrayed in the media, especially the music industry. Some gangster rappers glamorise guns in their music. If that can be tackled, then gun crime will fall. I thought it was toy guns and violent films?
How about prison for the rest of their natural lives with hard labour and no chance of parole if a gun is used in any crime? Make the punishment a good deterrent! and Warwick Deterring crime with severe sentences is a very ineffective measure. Unless one lives in a police state, criminals just assume that they won't get caught. A more effective method would be to extend the weapons amnesty concept by offering a reward for weapons that is set higher than their street value. Of course, this has to be handled carefully to avoid fuelling demand. It would also face opposition from the tabloid reading types, but if it works, so what? Fighting crime shouldn't be the crude popularity contest that it is. were to meet, would there be a particle / antiparticle annihilation? Oh, and offering more than "street value" for street weapons? First, where would they get that much money, and second, why would they want to fuel gun smuggling by the containerload? Warwick, I suggest you start drinking Evian. Perrier in a pinch. I understand the French economy needs a boost. One obvious solution is to make them illegal. If that doesn't work then, er, make them more illegal. Oops, sorry, I forgot, the government tried that and it didn't work. How about banning people from wearing clothes, so they can't hide a gun if they have it? Cynic, cynic, cynic. That last idea? I shudder to picture it. Most Brits don't look like Page3 girls. And aren't British winters brutal? Dave Tankard, eh? I bet he's not drinking water. I doubt that tougher penalties alone will work. The government should go for a complete ban on the import of all replica guns, and a ban on air guns, except in licensed clubs. If it puts a few gun shops out of business, then I would rather my taxes be used to buy them out than see the current trend in shootings continue. Yeah! You need more gun laws! Er, weren't the recent shooting deaths of two young women committed with a machine gun? Once again the government, with the backing of various police chiefs are looking at bringing in new laws to "control gun crime", despite having the most draconian laws in Europe which they appear singularly unable to enforce! I take it the law abiding will suffer as usual? Gordon seems to take offense at your suggestion, Nick. Funny isn't it - the government announce all kinds of things they're going to do about gun crime, and then days later we find out that the rate has doubled since they came to power. You don't think they're cynically managing the news (and you) do you? No, perish the thought! More cynicism. Tsk, tsk. Five years for every round possessed and 10 years for every round fired, that would be a deterrent. An Uzi clip being fired would put someone in jail for 450 years, that would deter all but the most hardened criminals. Well, that's an idea. One of the few actually presented. I don't think it would work, but it's an idea. And I have no idea where they'd put all those criminals. I understand that their jails are already full to bursting. Guns will become inaccessible to law abiding citizens. Criminals however will still be able to get their hands on weapons. "Will become", Doug? They're close enough to that now as to make no difference. According to the Home Office there were, in England & Wales, 125,363 firearm certificates on issue at the end of 2000, and 600,733 shotgun certificates. That's down from 133,600 firearm certificates and 623,100 shotgun certificates in 1997. Assuming a complete overlay between firearms certificate holders and shotgun certificate holders that's about 600,000 people out of a population of 52 million who possess at least one gun. At most, with no overlap, that's 725,000. That's 1.1 to 1.4% of the population. Oh, wait, that's legal owners. Jebus only knows how many illegal possessors there are. The last amnesty netted a reported 40,000 weapons - but almost none from the crime-ridden areas. And I doubt a single one of those 40,000 were on a certificate. Makes you wonder just how many "off certificate" weapons there are, doesn't it? Besides, it doesn't matter how many guns the law-abiding permit holders have. They can't use their guns for defense of self or society anyway, under current UK law. | Why I Still Have Hope for America Cub Scout crawls grave to grave, honoring the dead "Pivoting his body with his right arm and holding a neon-green ruler in his left hand, James Milam, 10, crawled from grave to grave at Nashville National Cemetery yesterday morning, carefully placing an American flag exactly one foot from each gravestone." Go read it. And if you have a single cynical thought while reading it, don't ever come back here. | Our Collapsing Schools Seems they're not just collapsing. Mrs. du Toit has a MUST READ post up on her site, on... No. Just go read it. It's too important to miss. Go. NOW! And read the comments, too. | Sunday, May 25, 2003 Sorry about the light posting Yesterday we celebrated my daughter's 24th birthday by having a picnic in the park in the afternoon, but I spent the majority of the morning working on "The Blog that Ate Poughkeepsie". I got home about 9:00 PM and was up until 12:30AM last night finshing it. Then I had to get up at 5:30 this morning so I could run my IHMSA pistol match. (Every 4th Sunday of the month at Tucson Rifle Club.) I got back home about 2:00 PM and took a nap. Right now, my wife, daughter, and grandkids are over at my in-laws. The silence is nice. I've been catching up on my reading. Steven Den Beste has a post up concerning England joining the EU that I find worrying. Hell, I find the EU worrying, because as far as I'm concerned there are no checks and balances to restrain the power of the EU government with relation to the member countries, nor the individual citizens of those countries. A "United States of Europe" it's not. Rachel's grandfather died. Drop her an e-mail with your condolences, if you would. Michelle's prepubescent husband had another birthday. What is he now? 16? :^) Emperor Misha is on a roll with his continuing phillipics concerning the Islamofascists™ The Volokh Conspiracy has moved. Change your bookmarks. Instapundit has links to two articles concerning Germany - one on the political ramifications of its opposition to the war in Iraq, and one on Germany's collapsing economy. And, Glenn, I'm no econoblogger either - but it worries me too. Kim du Toit has contributed again to the American economy by finding a reasonably priced M1 Carbine. And lots of ammo for it. (Why couldn't I have married Connie? Ah, well, I don't think it's possible to have done better in the wife department than I did. I'll just have to envy Kim's gun collection.) Clayton Cramer hasn't posted since Friday, but what he lacks in quantity he makes up in quality. Ravenwood has some good stuff up. Scroll down to "Government Schools at Work." Then weep for our lost children. Acidman is on hiatus. He's gone to illegally fish for trout. (At least he's not using dynamite.) Comments are still open over at Bill Whittle's Eject! Eject! Eject! for his most recent post Magic. He has over 300 now on just that one post. I will not envy, I will not envy, I will not envy..... Frank at IMAO is offering the really cool "Nuke the Moon" T-shirt. And finally, Courtney has a truly evil plan to stuff Acidman's e-mail while he is gone fishin' with - and I quote - "every annoying e-card, pics of cuddly kittens, and e-hugs we can find. Want to join in?" BUWHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! Um, no. No I do not. Really. No, I'm not kidding..... I'm off work tomorrow, but I'll have honeydo's to get done. Hopefully I'll get some blogging in. And I can't WAIT to see what Jack will have to say in response to my last two posts to The Commentary. Hopefully I didn't blow one of his frontal lobes. | The Blog that Ate Poughkeepsie, concluded: I've finally finished my response to Jack over at The Commentary. It's up Damn that was a lot of work. Somebody go read it. | Friday, May 23, 2003 "Americans for Gun Safety" is Good for Something I referenced their web site in the last post, and I took a couple of minutes to peruse the site. I found this press release for their latest report: The Enforcement Gap: Federal Gun Laws Ignored. I haven't had a chance to read the report in detail yet. (Disclosure: I do not trust AGS, as I said in an earlier post. If you missed it, Isntapundit has a post detailing AGS's founder, funder, and leader Andrew McKelvey explaining why.) Regardless, I don't think they've played too fast or loose with the numbers here, and those numbers illustrate my earlier point about the BATF not doing its job. Well, to be fair, I don't know if the BATF is at fault or if the Department of Justice is, but the fact remains that suing the gun manufacturers because some dealers are bad is the wrong thing to do. One example from the summary page: "The report points to the Washington, DC-area snipers as an example of corrupt gun dealers escaping prosecution. They obtained their murder weapon from Bulls Eye Shooters Supply, a Tacoma, Washington store that failed three audits and could not account for 238 missing firearms, including the sniper's gun. The owner has kept his firearm dealer license, and the store remains open." Hey, I'm a gun nut, and even I find that difficult to believe. Not that they failed three audits and not that 238 weapons are missing (the Bushmaster was one of the missing), but that the store still has a license. What the hell is the BATF for? "Stomping kittens" can't be in the jobscope. The report further details that only about 2% of federal gun crimes actually get prosecuted. ("That law didn't work! Let's pass a new one we won't enforce! And when that one fails, we'll blame it on the NRA and then we'll pass some more!" That's how it's been working up until just recently.) The one really interesting statistic that I've had problems hunting down is this one: "From 2000 through 2002, roughly 450,000 applicants were rejected from purchasing a firearm after signing the ATF form certifying that they had no record that would deny them a firearm. The denied applicants included: 260,000 who were denied because of a previous felony conviction. 60,000 who were denied because crime of domestic violence or a restraining order. 25,000 who were denied because of an outstanding arrest warrant. Yet, only 1,594 charges were brought by federal prosecutors..." But we're told constantly that the Brady background check prevented these "prohibited persons" from buying a gun. No it didn't. It just forced them into the black market. The black market that, by all appearances, the government isn't using the tools it has been given to combat. Don't you think it would have been a good idea to comb those applications and pick up at least the known violent offenders who were stupid enough to sign their names to a felony confession? Thank you, AGS. | More on the Johns Hopkins Fact Sheet Yesterday I started fisking a Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy "Fact Sheet" on the lawsuits against gun manufacturers brought by cities, counties, and individuals. I only had time to do three of the "myths," but I promised I'd get back to it. Promise kept. "Myth: Once the gun leaves the manufacturers's hands, there is nothing the manufacturer can do about who buys it, or how it is used. "FACT: In fact, there are many things the manufacturers can do. Gun makers can design their products with built-in safety devices so they can't be fired by young children or other unauthorized users. Like the makers of most other products, they can play an active oversight role with their dealers. Research shows that many criminals obtain guns that were first sold by a fairly small number of unscrupulous or careless gun dealers. Manufacturers can and should refuse to supply guns to these dealers. They can also train dealers to better identify and discourage illegal gun buyers." Uh-huh. I've already covered what these people think "built-in safety devices" should do - render a gun unable to shoot. If you have a gun for self-defense, it has to work when you need it. That's why the police are exempt from these requirements. They want this ostensibly to prevent "young children" from firing a gun accidentally. Yes, this does happen, but let's look at the realities, shall we? First: There are an estimated 65,000,000 handguns (just handguns) already in private hands. Any modifications to new guns will have no effect on this existing pool. If guns are as dangerous as we are led to believe, requiring us to modify newly manufactured existing designs to protect young children, then there must be an epidemic of accidental deaths of the young children who are exposed to the threat these guns pose. We've been told over the last decade that 10, 11, 12, 13 kids a day are the victims of guns. And this has been swallowed hook, line, and sinker to mean accidental deaths of small children. "And what about the more than 4,000 children who die in gun-related accidents each year? That's 11 kids a day. And we're not talking about crimes, or intentional shootings. We're talking -- or not talking enough -- about accidents." - Jean Hanff Korelitz, What a few good women can do, Salon.com, March 13, 2000. Not quite. Let's define "children" as I must assume The Johns Hopkins Center means - kids too small to know about the dangers of guns, but still able to pull a trigger. Let's be generous and put that upper limit at, say, 10 years old. (When I was 10 I knew where my father's guns - and ammo - were, and how to load and unload those guns. I also knew what those guns could do. But for the sake of argument...) I'll leave the lower limit at zero, as the worry seems to be small kids shooting themselves or other small kids. According to the Centers for Disease Control WISQARS website in 2000, out of a population of 42,971,230 children 10 years old and below, there were 41 accidental deaths by firearm. In 1999: 32. In 1998: 59. In 1997: 54. In 1996: 51. In 1995: 58. In 1990, as far back as age-specific data goes, there were 105. I'm not going to sit here and say "these numbers are insignificant." I'm not a heartless bastard no matter what you might think, but I am going to say that trying to attack this problem through forcing gun manufacturers to put new "safety features" on new guns is like trying to kill a mosquito with an icepick. While blindfolded. When the mosquito is in another room. It's obvious upon reflection that "child safety" cannot be the intent. And it's not like the industry hasn't been addressing this problem. Accidental gun deaths aren't due to defective weapons, but to unsafe handling and storage. And those aren't the responsibility of manufacturers, but end users. We don't need integral trigger locks and magazine disconnects, we need to better educate gun owners and their kids. And by and large the industry and trade associations and the NRA have provided safety training to gun owners and their families. That's something you cannot say about Johns Hopkins or Americans for Gun Safety or any other "gun control" organization. The number of accidental deaths by firearms has been declining since we started keeping track in the early 1900's. It's at its lowest point ever currently. But so long as Americans have and exercise the right to Second: "Research shows that many criminals obtain guns that were first sold by a fairly small number of unscrupulous or careless gun dealers"? Why is this the responsibility of the gun manufacturers? Note the wording. "First sold" means those guns might have been straw-purchases, where a person who is not prohibited from buying a gun does so for someone who is. It might also mean that an honest citizen bought a gun from a dealer, and then innocently sold it to someone who was prohibited. If you were not aware, private citizens do not have access to the background check system. Only licensed dealers do. Or, the guns could have been stolen from the store or from the original purchasers. Also what the Johns Hopkins Center doesn't tell you is that it's the responsibility of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms to regulate the dealers. It's their job to close down "unscrupulous" dealers. But instead they seem to spend most of their time harrassing innocent victims and stomping kittens, so much so that Illinois Democratic Congressman John Dingell detailed some of these abuses and called the BATF "jackbooted American fascists" in House testimony in 1995. Further, the BATF numbers showing "a small number" of dealers as being at fault are often not "dealers" at all. They're distributors - middlemen between the gun manufacturer and the guy with a storefront. Now I ask you: If a distributor sells to dealers in Miami or the suburbs of Chicago, isn't he far more likely to be the source of guns that end up used in crimes than a distributor who sells to dealers in, say, Nebraska? If a dealer is the problem, then why doesn't the BATF pull their license? Third: "Manufacturers can and should refuse to supply guns to these dealers." One manufacturer might, but the dealer would then be forced to pick up a different line. That hardly solves the problem. So all manufacturers should refuse to sell to that dealer, right? Really? Nope. That's grounds for a lawsuit on the basis of restraint of trade and collusion. And the dealer would win. Finally, "They can also train dealers to better identify and discourage illegal gun buyers"? Let's say you're a gun dealer in a suburb of Chigago. A young black man enters your establishment and is dressed like a gang-banger. He wants to buy a 9mm handgun, and his ID shows that he is over the age of 21. He fills out the paperwork and the dealer runs the background check, which comes out clean. The dealer suspects that this handgun is going to be used, sooner or later, in an illegal manner. So he should refuse the sale, right? He runs the very real risk of a lawsuit for "profiling." It's not politically correct to refuse to sell someone anything legal on the grounds that you don't like the way they look. Get this straight: regulating the trade in guns is the business of the legislature. The gun control organizations have pursued this path for decades, but they've run into a brick wall. So now they're trying to A) bankrupt gun manufacturers and/or B) use judicial activism to accomplish what they cannot through legislation. And it's wrong. More later, maybe. | Comments, we got comments! Hey! The comments are back up! It wasnt' Blogger, it was the comment server. Use 'em while they're hot! | I Love James Lileks And I want to have his baby....wait, no...I want to write like he does. (Yeah, that's the ticket!) Today's Bleat is a masterpiece, especially if you're a Trekker. Damnit, I missed the season finale of Enterprise. Anyway, here's some savory bits from the column: "It was all about 9/11. Proves my point, which isn’t really mine at all and is crushingly obvious besides, but one I’ve been making for years anyway: Star Trek TV shows explicitly mirror the geopolitical climate of its times. Each one is an analogy for the era in which it’s conceived. I’ve written this before but I’m too lazy to find it in the archives, so I’ll repeat myself. Warning: this will contain small fragments of unbelievably dorky insider references. Apology: I know this is of limited interest. Explanation: it’s my website. Accusation: you think I’ve cared one whit about Buffy for seven years? No. Have I said one word against the Slayer? No. I respect people’s adoration of the show. I understand these things. Hell, I still watch Twin Peaks reruns. Go read. It's all good. | On a Lighter Note... Here's today's Friday Five: 1. What brand of toothpaste do you use? Close-up original. I like cinnamon. 2. What brand of toilet paper do you prefer? Charmin Ultra Double Roll. Sooooooft. And the roll lasts longer than two days. (I live in a house with two women and two toddlers, one potty trained, one in training.) 3. What brand(s) of shoes do you wear? Boots: Red Wing. Tennies: Wally-world sweat-shop specials. And my boots are my formal shoes. I live in Arizona. 4. What brand of soda do you drink? For the longest time, original Coke. But now you have forced me to admit that I drink Diet Pepsi, and for that you must die! (Oh, wait. I'm channeling Rumsfeld) 5. What brand of gum do you chew? I don't. Or at least I don't have a preference on those odd occasions that I do. | Thursday, May 22, 2003 The Blog that Ate Poughkeepsie The first part of my debate response is up over at The Commentary. No permalinks. Whew! And I'm nowhere near finished! | Comments? We Don't Need No Steenkin' Comments! Apparently Blogger has moved me onto the new servers, and thus my comment function (unused to date anyway) has bitten the dust. Maybe I'll put it back on later. I'm working on my debate response now. Labels: blogger sucks | It isn't nice to burgle churches. Especially not when the deacon's packin'. After all, this was Texas. What do you want to bet there won't be any more church burglaries for quite a while? | Arm the Wimmin Dept: Go read Rachel's latest - her speech on guns today went very well. "The truth shall set you free." Labels: linkery | Biting the hand... Blogger seems to be working again, if you ignore having to try TWICE to get into the blog. No wonder Acidman calles Blogspot "THE HOST I WILL NOT NAME." I like blogging, but this is frustrating as hell. Labels: blogger sucks | "When I Want a Legal Opinion on Gun Control, I Ask a Doctor!" or "For the Best Advice on Health Care, Consult the NRA!" I downloaded the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy "Fact Sheet" (and those quotes are there for ALL the reasons) on "Myths and Facts: Lawsuits brought by Cities or Injured Persons Against the Gun Industry." Allow me to fisk it. (Hey, it's lunchtime. I've got an hour to kill.) "Since 1998 more than 30 cities and counties in the United States have filed lawsuits against the firearm industry for the deaths, injuries, and other costs associated with guns." Um, no. Associated with the misuse of guns. That's a critical distinction which I will return to. "Myth: Guns are a lawful product so manufacturers should not be held liable for selling them." This is a myth? Anheuser Busch isn't "held liable" for selling beer, even though alcohol is misused and is a component in more death than guns ever were. Ford isn't "held liable" for selling cars, though they're used in the commission of crimes. FACT: Makers of every other product are subject to at least some liability - especially if they fail to take some reasonable steps to reduce the chance that their product will harm someone. This is how the U.S. legal system works. Guns should be no different." Well, THAT clears it up. Question: Don't gun You see, the difference here is that the lawsuits are not protesting that guns are defective, but that they're Effective. If they filed a lawsuit against, say, Lorcin protesting that they made crappy guns that you couldn't depend on and that would fall apart if you ran more than one magazine through one (assuming you could get a magazine through one) then that would be a product liability suit. But that's not what they're doing. They're filing suit because the guns do what they're designed to do: throw a small metal pellet at high velocity in the direction the weapon is pointed, when the loose nut behind the trigger pulls said trigger. That's not a failure of the gun manufacturers, it's a failure of the operator. Case in point, watch this negligent discharge. There's not a thing wrong with that gun except the moron with her finger on the trigger. When she pulled it, the gun fired just like it's designed to do. They counter: "Myth: Holding gunmakers liable for injuries caused by guns would be like holding car manufacturers liable for injures caused by drunk drivers." Yeah, I just said that. But nooooo they claim: FACT: It is important to understand that lawsuits against gunmakers do not argue that the manufacturers should be liable simply because they make and sell guns. Instead they argue that there are things the manufacturer could do - but knowingly choose not to do - to make their products less likely to harm children and others, or to be used by criminals. It's the gun manufacturers' failure to take these reasonable and feasable steps that the lawsuits assert should make them liable. Put another way: if a car maker designed a car so that even a young child could easily operate it without permission (e.g., it didn't need a key to start), or marketed the car (somehow) to appeal directly to drunk-drivers, we would think they were liable." Well, that's interesting legerdemain. I've seen some of the things they want put on guns to make them "less likely to harm children." Locks, EXTREMELY heavy triggers, magazine disconnects. Things that POLICE DEPARTMENTS eschew because the primary purpose of a handgun is self-defense, and these things make it likely that when you NEED the gun, it won't function. It's interesting that in the laws passed requiring the implementation of "smartgun" technologies - ostensibly to do what these lawsuits are pursuing - the police are EXEMPTED from having to implement the new technology. (Question: Are car manufacturers the subject of lawsuits because the market a product (insanely fast cars) to SPEEDERS?) Regardless, the court isn't the place to go in order to force manufacturers to change their products, the legislature is. They've tried that and failed. I love this quote from an honest judge: As an individual, I believe, very strongly, that handguns should be banned and that there should be stringent, effective control of other firearms. However, as a judge, I know full well that the question of whether handguns can be sold is a political one, not an issue of products liability law, and that this is a matter for the legislatures, not the courts. The unconventional theories advanced in this case (and others) are totally without merit, a misuse of products liability laws." — Judge Buchmeyer, Patterson v. Gesellschaft, 1206 F.Supp. 1206, 1216 (N.D. Tex. 1985) Gee, ya THINK? And Judge Buchmeyer isn't alone. “The Court finds as a matter of law that the risks associated with the use of a firearm are open and obvious and matters of common knowledge.” – Judge Ruehlman, Court of Common Pleas of Ohio, City of Cincinnati v. Beretta U.S.A. Corp. et al., No. A9902369, 1999 WL 809838, *1 (Ohio Com.Pl. Oct. 7, 1999). “In the view of this Court, the City’s complaint is an improper attempt to have this Court substitute its judgment for that of the legislature, which this Court is neither inclined nor empowered to do.” Ibid. at *1. “In substance, the City and its Mayor opt to engage in efforts at arbitrary social reform by invoking the process of the Judicial Branch of Government, where apparently the City perceives, but fails to allege, irreversible failures in the appropriate Legislative Branch(s) of Government….The City should not be permitted to invoke the jurisdiction of this Court to overlay or supplement existing civil and criminal ‘gun’ statutes and processes (either state and federal) by means of a series of judicial fiats which, when taken together, would only create a body of ‘judge made gun laws’.” – Special Judge James J. Richards, Lake Superior Court, County of Lake, City of Gary v. Smith & Wesson, Cause No. 45D05-005-CT-243, slip op. 7 (Ind. Super. Ct. Jan. 12, 2001). “The County’s request that the trial court use its injunctive powers to mandate redesign of firearms and declare that the appellees’ business methods create a public nuisance, is an attempt to regulate firearms and ammunition through the medium of the judiciary…. The County’s frustration cannot be alleviated through litigation as the judiciary is not empowered to ‘enact’ regulatory measures in the guise of injunctive relief. The power to legislate belongs not to the judicial branch of government but to the legislative branch.” – Judge J.J. Fletcher, District Court of Appeal of Florida, Third District, Penelas v. Arms Technology, Inc., 778 So.2d 1042, 1045 There have been 33 lawsuits of this type filed. The majority have been rejected on the grounds Judge Buchmeyer cites, or other grounds having to do with the appropriateness of trying to use the courts to accomplish ends the courts are not there for. A couple have been dropped after wending their way through the appeals system, and a few are still pending. But it only takes one to get a judgement that will put the gun manufacturer(s) out of business, and the cost of fighting these cases is enough to severely wound the manufacturers. And THAT is the goal. Whoops! Lunchtime is over. I'll come back to this, as there is more crunchy goodness to fisk. Labels: fisk, gun control, quackery | The Department of Tinfoil Hats Now THIS is interesting. Sitemeter tracks the system origin of visitors to my blog, and tells me how much time the visitor spent, and how many page views they had. Of course, most visitors are in-and-out, spending a recorded 0 minutes and 0 seconds. I wonder if this isn't slightly in error, because a lot of these in-and-outs are apparently repeats, hitting a few times a day, or over successive days. Of course, this could be different viewers who happen to share the same domain. But I found one point of interest - a visitor or visitors from The John Hopkins Medical Institutions server. And he/she/they have spent some time perusing the blog. Welcome! And I'm curious as to how you found me. I cannot help but wonder, however, if he/she/they are visiting from The John Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research. Now I'm going to have to peruse a couple of the articles there and see what they have to say. Considering the fact that they seem to believe that suing the gun companies out of existence is "an effective public health tool for injury and gun violence prevention," I believe we will not see eye-to-eye on the topic. More later. Labels: blogging, gun control | The Debate Continues Jack has posted his riposte. I seem to have offended him. George Bernard Shaw wrote once that "England and America are two countries divided by a common language." I'll chalk it up to that, I guess. No offense was intended, but now I guess I'm going to have to strain to make myself perfectly clear. My last response to him ran six printed pages. Hoo-boy. | Just Over a Week, and Already I Hate Blogger Just checked in from work. WHEN the page loads, I get 1 and 1/10 of a post. WHERE'S THE REST OF MY BLOG!?!? AAAAAGGGGHHHH!!!! Labels: blogger sucks | Blogging will probably be light today. I DO have to work for a living. Unfortunately. Hey, would SOMEBODY leave a comment?? I Labels: blogging | Thoughts on the Weapons of War Kim du Toit has an interesting post up on his site, reviewing a recent Strategy Page article on the lessons learned from the Battle of Iraq. I read the article last night, but having no first-hand military experience, I thought that my commenting on it would be inappropriate. Kim's seen the elephant, so he knows whereof he speaks. Labels: linkery | Wednesday, May 21, 2003 Is the Government Responsible for Your Protection, Part II In Part 1 I used the transcript of the Warren v. District of Columbia decision to illustrate that the courts have uniformly held that the State (municipal, county, State or Federal) has no obligation to protect individuals, just the community at large. Were you shocked? (Well, if you're a gun nut like me, probably not. But John and Jane Q. Public probably would be.) "Why," you might ask "would the state not be liable for failure to protect?" The answer might be uncomfortable, John & Jane. First, it's logistically impossible for the police to be everywhere. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics there were about 650,000 police officers nationwide in municipal, county, and state forces in 1996. Of these, approximately 64% are "responding officers". Divide that by three shifts, and it means that there are about 140,000 police natiowide available to respond to a call at any time. And things haven't changed that much in the intervening years. The U.S. population is about 280,000,000. That's one cop on the beat for every 2,000 of us. Not good odds. And because the state can't afford to be. If the State was liable for not protecting every individual from crime, the lawsuits would bankrupt the State in no time. But this brings up a really ugly reality - one that is well illustrated in the dissenting opinion in Riss v. New York, which I will quote in whole from: "Linda Riss, an attractive young woman, was for more than six months terrorized by a rejected suitor well known to the courts of this State, one Burton Pugach. This miscreant, masquerading as a respectable attorney, repeatedly threatened to have Linda killed or maimed if she did not yield to him: "If I can't have you, no one else will have you, and when I get through with you, no one else will want you". In fear for her life, she went to those charged by law with the duty of preserving and safeguarding the lives of the citizens and residents of this State. Linda's repeated and almost pathetic pleas for aid were received with little more than indifference. Whatever help she was given was not commensurate with the identifiable danger. On June 14, 1959 Linda became engaged to another man. At a party held to celebrate the event, she received a phone call warning her that it was her "last chance". Completely distraught, she called the police, begging for help, but was refused. The next day Pugach carried out his dire threats in the very manner he had foretold by having a hired thug throw lye in Linda's face. Linda was blinded in one eye, lost a good portion of her vision in the other, and her face was permanently scarred. After the assault the authorities concluded that there was some basis for Linda's fears, and for the next three and one-half years, she was given around-the-clock protection." (My emphasis)A lot of good that did her. "Linda has turned to the courts of this State for redress, asking that the city be held liable in damages for its negligent failure to protect her from harm. With compelling logic, she can point out that, if a stranger, who had absolutely no obligation to aid her, had offered her assistance, and thereafter Burton Pugach was able to injure her as a result of the negligence of the volunteer, the courts would certainly require him to pay damages. (Restatement, 2d, Torts, § 323.) Why then should the city, whose duties are imposed by law and include the prevention of crime (New York City Charter, § 435) and, consequently, extend far beyond that of the Good Samaritan, not be responsible? If a private detective acts carelessly, no one would deny that a jury could find such conduct unacceptable. Why then is the city not required to live up to at least the same minimal standards of professional competence which would be demanded of a private detective?""Yeah! Why not!?" Because as I pointed out, the City couldn't afford to pay for all those lawsuits. They have a hard enough time making the budget as it is. "So why," you might ask yourself, "didn't Linda do something to defend herself?" And here's the answer, from that same decision: Linda's reasoning seems so eminently sensible that surely it must come as a shock to her and to every citizen to hear the city argue and to learn that this court decides that the city has no duty to provide police protection to any given individual. What makes the city's position particularly difficult to understand is that, in conformity to the dictates of the law, Linda did not carry any weapon for self-defense (former Penal Law, § 1897). Thus, by a rather bitter irony she was required to rely for protection on the City of New York which now denies all responsibility to her." (My emphasis)She was denied the means to defend herself, by a City that had no legal responsibility to defend her. And that, boys and girls, is what the practical result of "gun control" is. Denial of the means to defend yourself, while not providing any other layer of real protection. St. George Tucker in his 1803 book Blackstone's Commentaries - a review of American law - said this about the Second Amendment: This may be considered as the true palladium of liberty. . . . The right of self defence is the first law of nature: in most governments it has been the study of rulers to confine this right within the narrowest limits possible. Wherever standing armies are kept up, and the right of the people to keep and bear arms is, under any colour or pretext whatsoever, prohibited, liberty, if not already annihilated, is on the brink of destruction. In England, the people have been disarmed, generally, under the specious pretext of preserving the game: a never failing lure to bring over the landed aristocracy to support any measure, under that mask, though calculated for very different purposes. True it is, their bill of rights seems at first view to counteract this policy: but the right of bearing arms is confined to protestants, and the words suitable to their condition and degree, have been interpreted to authorise the prohibition of keeping a gun or other engine for the destruction of game, to any farmer, or inferior tradesman, or other person not qualified to kill game. So that not one man in five hundred can keep a gun in his house without being subject to a penalty." (My emphasis)St. George Tucker called the right of self-defense "the first law of nature," and he was not alone. Yet the State (in all its forms, not just the one we live under) has always worked to ensure that the general public has as little ability to defend itself as possible, rendering the populace supplicant to the State for protection that it may or may not bestow at its whim. The Second Amendment isn't about hunting, or target shooting, or even primarily about self-defense against the average criminal. It's about self-defense against government tyranny. But so long as it exists, the others follow logically. YOU are responsible for your protection. No one else can be made to be. So what am I advocating? That the government make a public announcement that they aren't capable of protecting people, and besides, it isn't their job anyway, and that everybody would be well-advised to start carrying guns in a big hurry? (I was asked that question, verbatim, once.) No. Let's take a few minutes and discuss "the proper role of government." In all my reading, at one time I found this link having to do with that very question. It’s an essay on the subject by Ezra Taft Benson, Eisenhower’s Secretary of Agriculture. He has a lot to say on the matter, some with which I concur, some I don’t, but thought-provoking nonetheless: "It is generally agreed that the most important single function of government is to secure the rights and freedoms of individual citizens. But, what are those right? And what is their source?Well, not being a “believer”, I disagree with God being the source of individual rights, but I certainly reject the premise that rights are “granted” by government. As to accepting the corollary that rights can be denied by government – certainly they can – so long as the People allow it. And I’ve said elsewhere, a “right” is what the overwhelming majority of a society believes it is. Taft continues: "In a primitive state, there is no doubt that each man would be justified in using force, if necessary, to defend himself against physical harm, against theft of the fruits of his labor, and against enslavement of another.But the sheriff's not responsible for doing that job for everybody all the time. The law says so. Even if he were held legally responsible, logistically it is impossible to accomplish everywhere, all the time. He can only do the best he humanly can, because even though he represents the power of government, he’s a human being just like the rest of us with all attendant flaws. However, Benson’s phrasing here is illustrative: "The individual citizens delegate to the sheriff their unquestionable right to protect themselves. The sheriff now does for them only what they had a right to do for themselves – nothing more."I would not have used "delegate" in that sentence, nor would I have expressed it as "what they had a right to do for themselves." "Delegate" implies a surrender of the right, and "had" reinforces that implication. Instead, I think we extend to law-enforcement the power necessary to protect us (as best they can), while still retaining that right for ourselves. It isn’t a matter of yeilding a right to a governmental authority, it’s a matter of employing government to enhance our safety above what we are able to do for ourselves alone. All-in-all a "proper role of government". So no, I don’t want the government to come out and proclaim that they cannot protect us, because by and large that’s not the case. What I do want is for the populace to understand the government's limitations in that capacity. That fact has a large bearing on the right to arms, and a much larger bearing on the responsibilities of citizens. If they are not aware of the facts, then they cannot make reasonable decisions. In programming terms: GIGO. And there’s a lot of "garbage in". Regardless of why people commit crime, active resistance to it is the only way to stop them during the commission. Relying solely on the police for that active resistance makes the job of the criminal easier and safer, as the residents of England have come to discover. Robert A. Heinlein wrote in Starship Troopers (and if you don't think it's a book on philosophy, you need to go read it): "What is 'moral sense'? It is an elaboration of the instinct to survive. The instinct to survive is human nature itself, and every aspect of our personalities derives from it.There’s an essay (and now a book) by a man named Jeff Snyder entitled A Nation of Cowards. It’s not surprisingly received little attention – even among gun nuts – because what of Snyder declares. Snyder declares that that the crime problem cannot be addressed without confronting the moral responsibility of the intended victim. He states that taking responsibility for one's life, family and community requires fighting back when threatened with violence. A friend of mine once said: "The vast majority of people are good, decent "herbivores" who just wander around, harming nobody. Unfortunately, there are a small number of carnivores out there, who would prey upon the herbivores. The fact that some of the herbivores have the ability to defend themselves and others makes ALL herbivores safer, and only makes life appreciably more dangerous to the carnivores. I don't think there is a huge amount of violence out there....but there is SOME.Snyder insists that responsible citizens must be armed and must resist when confronted with crime. I don’t think that’s the case, myself. That’s your "Dodge City" scenario with a six-shooter on every hip. I think Snyder, Heinlein, and my friend all have legitimate points, though. The base instinct of all creatures is self-preservation. If confronted with crime, the natural base reaction is "cover your ass." However, we’re part of society, and ultimately a nation. If, as Heinlein put it, our 'moral sense' is educated to the point where we value something higher than ourselves, then "avoiding trouble" when it comes to you is immoral. It is your duty to resist, in defense of the rest of society. However, duty requires protecting yourself (self-preservation) and your society (which is, admittedly, a higher order of duty not everyone accepts), but duty does not require that you risk your life to do so. Duty includes serving on juries, and serving as witness in court, too, if that's what is required. My friend's example of the “good, decent herbivores” represents the majority of the population, and this majority is largely unaware that they are the ones responsible for their own safety. They depend on the police almost exclusively for their safety and protection from crime. In their fear of violence, they fear the other "herbivores" with guns, too. They do so because some gun owners are idiots, but mostly because they’re told that guns are the cause of crime, and they don’t know any better. They don’t accept that general citizens who are willing to resist crime are an asset, not a liability to society. So what am I advocating? I am advocating educating the citizens of our society as to their rights and attendant duties. That way they can make educated decisions as to their own protection, and that of their fellow citizens. Then if they decide that, for them, actively opposing crime is not an option, they won’t be so eager to deny the means to those who decide it’s the moral thing to do. In other words, I trust my fellow-man to make the right decision if given all the information. Labels: one fundamental right, self-defense | Arm the Wimmin! Part II Yesterday Rachel linked to The Love/Hate Relationship Between Women and Guns, Part One post, and now Courtney has up Part II. She asks an interesting question in Part II: "Traditionally the female is attracted to the strong male who makes a bunch of money (breadwinner, protector), and the male is attracted to the sweet, chaste female (caregiver, baby-maker). However, more often it seems men are finding very successful women sexy. Women who pull in a huge salary or have a lot of power become sexually charged. Men, do you find this sexy?"
Um, yeah. But it's not the guns, or the implied power. It's the self-confidence. She is no shrinking-violet. (I guess, though, that is a form of power. Or at least a rejection of weakness.) Go read the post. Read both of 'em. Interesting. | All Assault Weapons Ban All the Time Or at least it seems like it. The eminently sensible Donald Sensing has an excellent little post on The falsehoods of "assault weapon" bans Good excerpt: "The thought occurs to me that politically, the Left is the modern Puritans - they want to live life their own way and make sure everyone else does, too." THAT goes on my "great quotes" list. Go read. Labels: gun control, linkery | Atlas Shrugged as a Movie? Disclosure: I have not read Atlas Shrugged. I've read a few of Rand's essays, but none of her novels. Atlas Shrugged is on my list, but I've just never gotten around to it. Arthur Silber has an interesting post concerning a possible upcoming film version here. First I'd heard of it. "Second most influential book" behind only the Bible? I think I'd better break down & read the book. Labels: miscellaneous | The Politically Correct Table of Elements (Requires Adobe Acrobat Reader) Here it is, and The Competitive Enterprise Institute offers it as a mouse pad. My favorite: "Radon: Terror in the basement. If radon could be blamed on some industry, it would be really big." Of course "Uranium: Energy this plentiful can't be legal." ranks right up there. Nod to The Volokh Conspiracy for the pointer. | The Lying News Media, Part IX The Miami Herald weighs in. BSO and CNN stepped into the fray Thursday with footage of an on-air demonstration purportedly designed to show the difference between banned weapons and their legal counterparts. When a BSO employee fired a banned weapon, the camera showed bullets ripping through a cinderblock target. When a legal semi-automatic weapon was fired, the camera showed another cinderblock seemingly unharmed. In fact, the bullets from the legal gun never hit the cinderblock. CNN spokesman Matthew Furman said the camera operator didn't realize the sheriff's employee had switched targets and was firing into the ground. ''When we learned that the demonstration was less than clear, we told our viewers that,'' Furman said. Yeah? AFTER the piece aired and all the viewers who know nothing about guns thought a POST BAN rifle couldn't damage a cinderblock. NRA officials also protested the use of a fully automatic AK-47 in the piece and the reporter's claim that it was among the targets of the 1994 ban. Fully automatic weapons have been regulated since 1934 and aren't mentioned in the 1994 law. Sheriff's spokesman Jim Leljedal said Jenne favors extending the 1994 ban but never meant to misinform the CNN audience by participating in the Thursday segment. ''There was never any intent to mislead,'' Leljedal said. ``They wanted to talk about it, so we did, and on very short notice we got some guns out and we did some demonstrations for them.'' So, you're saying Zarella was complicit in the mendacity? That it was his fault, not yours? ''The idea is that these weapons . . . will penetrate a bulletproof vest, they will go through a concrete block. And that's what our homes are made of,'' Leljedal said. Yes, but so will any centerfire rifle cartridge REGARDLESS of the type of rifle it's fired from. CNN followed up the Thursday broadcast with a taped report that aired twice Monday in the same time period and explained the ban in its full complexity. Like HELL it did. It left the impression that the weapons and magazines that were "banned" are illegal to possess. They are not. It left the impression that it is illegal to put a PRE-ban 30-round magazine in a POST-ban rifle. It is not. The only thing that report did was clear up the "firepower" question. That, said Furman of CNN, was ``a reflection of our desire to always be forthcoming, to always air all sides.'' Then how about talking to some ACTUAL EXPERTS when it comes to the topic of guns? What happened to Wolf Blitzer's "check, recheck and triple-check"? Or does that now mean "Ask the same person the same question three times?" UPDATE: Professor Volokh asks: So the question: If the sheriff's office 'never intend[ed] to mislead viewers,' then why was 'the sheriff's employee . . . firing into the ground'?" Labels: gun control, media | The Lying News Media, Part VIII, or: "It Was All a BIG Misunderstanding!" According to The Sun-Sentinel, the CNN stories covered in detail here over the last few days weren't advocacy journalism. No! "The Broward Sheriff's Office says it was an honest misunderstanding." Riiiiiight. If you believe that, I've got a great deal for you on a bridge in Brooklyn. Cash only, and in small bills.
| I WANT ARIZONA OUT OF THE NINTH CIRCUIT! Nod to Ravenwood for the link. Reuter's reports that the Ninth "A federal appeals court has tossed out the armed bank robbery conviction of a Los Angeles man after finding that -- while he admitted being armed and robbing the bank -- he did not mean to show his gun to a teller while demanding money. "The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals said Tuesday in a written ruling that that Odom should have been convicted of unarmed bank robbery -- which carries a lesser prison term -- instead of armed robbery." Does that mean that if Congress bans possession of "assault weapons" that I'm not really armed if I keep mine, so long as I don't intend for anyone to know I have it? I want to live in the Fifth Circuit. At least the majority of Justices there have brains. There's a couple in San Francisco with reasoning ability, but they are overwhelmed by the rest. Labels: law | Anybody Having Problems Opening the Site? When I log in to check the appearance of my posts, I'm often not getting the entire page. Is it just me? And reloading doesn't help. Hmm....perhaps Blogger does suck. But it's free.... Labels: blogger sucks | Mea Culpa Oh sweet jebus. In my previous post on the AJC's screed, I said, in response to the AJC's claim that "the gun industry has...spun the myth" that semi-automatic rifles are "the best guarantee of personal safety": "Hardly, and anybody who knows guns knows better." Well, apparently not everybody. This guy believes it. "Probably the optimum gun for the defense of a home is the civilian version of the military M-l6 (e.g. Colt AR 15 Sporter, ArmaLite AR-10, others)." (sigh) He makes some reasoned arguments, but they hardly convince me. (But then, he's a lawyer.) I vote for the handgun and the pump shotgun. I'm not at all enamored of the idea of firing a rifle indoors, and I have neighbors who might object to the result of a miss from one. Score one for the AJC, though. Labels: gun control, media | Agenda? What Agenda? Part II Now the Atlanta Let's start with the AJC's complete lack of foreign language skills: "Adolf Hitler was so delighted with the lethal capability of the new gun presented to him by his ordnance designers during World War II that he dubbed it the "Sterm Kever" -- or assault rifle. Uh, guys, that's sturmgewehr. Fifteen seconds on Google would have shown you that. But of course the implication is "Assault weapons are NAZI! If you support the ownership of "assault weapons," you "put on his hip-high black leather boots and strut around to Wagner arias"! You are "a runty sociopath who prongs a chubster over warby songs about leather-clad thundergods"! (Quotes by James Lileks. I've always wanted a place to use those lines!) But wait! It gets better! "Today, assault rifles still kill efficiently and quickly, as demonstrated by the Beltway snipers. John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo allegedly wielded a .223-caliber Bushmaster XM15, an assault rifle adapted to evade the 1994 ban on assault weapons." Leaving aside the fact that Muhammed and Malvo fired ONE SHOT at each victim (and could, therefore, have used a single-shot target rifle to the same effect) and that the .223 round is considered not powerful enough for anything but small-game hunting in most states. Oh no! It was the somehow magical lethality of the evil black rifle that make Muhammed and Malvo vicious killers! (I have often wondered what the press would have said if they had used, say, a 7mm Remington Magnum. You know, a DEER CARTRIDGE.) "Assault rifles were created solely to kill people; today, those people are often law enforcement officers. Forty-one of the 211 U.S. police officers killed in the line of duty between 1998 and 2001 were murdered with assault rifles, according to a new analysis by the Violence Policy Center." Well! The Violence Policy Center! That bastion of unimpeachable agendaless fairness! They would be referring to this table. Let me see.... Four (4) with M1 Carbines, eight (8) with SKS rifles, two (2) with Mini-14's, three (3) M-11's, and two (2) TEC-9's. First, the M1, SKS, and Mini-14's are not and have not been classified as "assault weapons" - no lethal pistol grip on those guns. They look like "nice" semi-automatic rifles because they have the pretty non-lethal wood stocks, rather than the ugly, lethal plastic and metal ones. The M-11 and the TEC-9 are not rifles, they're handguns. That's NINETEEN (19) of the 41. And, if these guns were created "solely to kill people," what of the other 170 officer deaths? They were killed with weapons designed to tickle people? Now, according to this site between the years of 1998 and 2001 (inclusive) there were 229 officer deaths by firearm, not 211. And according to this table the number of police deaths, at least for the last couple of decades (and excluding the 72 killed in the Twin Towers in 2001) has been apparently unaffected by the relative explosion in the mid 1980's of "assault weapons" (as defined by the law) into the general populace. They're trying to make it sound like the presence of "assault weapons" has somehow added 41 deaths that otherwise would not have occurred. The evidence does not support this. But that's the conclusion you're supposed to draw. "Ban 'em, and these cops would have lived!" "To justify assault rifles in home arsenals, the gun industry has created sporting competitions around them and spun the myth that the high-powered weapons are the best guarantee of personal safety." This is the thing that really chaps my ass. Point One: The AR-15 is the most popular competition rifle for National Match and Service Rifle competitions. It was preceded by the M1A (another "assault weapon"), the M1 Garand, and the 1903 Springfield. It's not like these sporting competitions were "created...around them." Point Two: The AR-15 and the AK-47 ARE NOT AS POWERFUL AS HUNTING RIFLES! Jebus! Point Three: "best guarantee of personal safety?" Hardly, and anybody who knows guns knows better. "The National Rifle Association wants the assault ban lifted. In its paranoid view, the banning of Uzis one day means your Colt will be confiscated tomorrow." It's not paranoia when they really are out to get you. "England can do it! Australia can do it! So can we!" (Chanted at the somewhat-less-than Million Moms March.) "The NRA leadership insists the right to own a gun accorded Americans in the Second Amendment extends to any and all guns, even those that fire off 30 rounds in less than two seconds and murder innocent children." WTF? I thought they murdered cops? "That purported right is more important to the NRA than protecting police officers, disarming street gangs or safeguarding children." THERE we go: "That purported right..." Nah, the Second Amendment doesn't mean anything. The Founding Fathers only meant to protect smoothbore muzzleloaders. "The gun lobby doesn't believe it has any moral or civic obligation to the community outside its membership and feels no responsibility for the victims of assault rifles." Sure we do. Honest gun owners have a civic obligation to protect the community against criminals. But we are not responsible for their abuse of the right to arms. Nor are we responsible for them robbing, raping, and murdering without weapons. Why the AJC (and others) seem to believe that the NRA and gun manufacturers should take responsibility for the illegal actions of others just because they use a firearm is beyond me. Do we hold the AAA, and car manufacturers responsible when someone commits murder with a car? (Apparently not, but you can, it seems, sue people for not being omniscient.) "But our senators and representatives have an obligation to the larger community. That community -- and that means all of us -- has to tell Congress and DeLay that assault weapons do not belong on our streets." No, our senators and representatives have an obligation to live up to their promise to "support and defend the Constitution of the United States" and not further gut the Second Amendment. Let the "Assault Weapons Ban" die. Labels: gun control, media | Comments! We Got Comments! I don't know how well this is going to work, but I've installed a commenting feature. Halleluja! Click on "SHOUT OUT" at the bottom of the post you want to comment on. It really works! Labels: blogging | Our Collapsing Schools History? Hell, they're not even teaching writing anymore! Much less research. Go read 2 Rs Left in High School. "High school junior Dominique Houston is a straight-A student enrolled in honors and Advanced Placement classes at Northview High School in Covina. She is a candidate for class valedictorian and hopes to double-major in marine biology and political science in college, preferably UCLA or the University of San Diego." Sounds great, doesn't she? Honor roll, straight-A's in college-prep level courses. But what's this? "But the 17-year-old said she has written only one research paper during her high school career. It was three pages long, examining the habits of beluga whales. " 'Bibliographies? We don't really even know how to do those. I don't even know how I would write a 15-page paper. I don't even know how I would begin,' she said." ADVANCED PLACEMENT. They aren't schools, they're warehouses for children. Labels: Education | If You Don't Read The Bleat, You Should (This is not gun-related) James Lileks is in Labels: linkery | Tuesday, May 20, 2003 Only COPS Should Have Guns? You've GOT to watch this footage of a negligent discharge. Finger OFF the trigger, officer! Labels: gun control, linkery, snark | Agenda? What Agenda? CBS weighs in in the person of Dick Meyer with an op-ed (at least they identify it as such, rather than as a news story) entitled: Gunning Down The 2nd Amendment. The attention-grabbing quote? "Objective truth about the meaning of the Second Amendment does not exist. Practical consensus about its meaning will not endure. The concept of a "well regulated militia" is an anachronism in the 21st century." Thank you Perhaps the concept of the "well regulated militia" is an anachronism, but "the right to keep and bear arms" isn't. I'm not going to fisk the entire editorial. I'm a little burned out by the effort my debate response last night required. I'm just going to comment on one other line: "It’s time to repeal the Second Amendment. Bag it." You're welcome to try, Dick. But unless I'm mistaken not one gun control organization has even suggested attempting that. Now, setting aside the fact that the Bill of Rights was added to the Constitution in order to enshrine the critical individual rights as inviolable, there is a detailed set of instructions in the Constitution describing how to amend said document. Nobody's started the process. I cannot help but wonder why? Hell, it would be refreshing if someone would actually try. Instead, they've worked for the last fifty-plus years to redefine the Second Amendment to render it meaningless. (It's old! It's out of date! It's anachronistic! It can't possibly mean today what it meant back then, and we don't know what it meant back then anyway!) Oops! Sorry! You're wrong Dick! "What the founders intended is unknowable"? Not if you actually study history, Dick. Those "very independent and liberal scholars" (like Laurence Tribe - you know, Al Gore's lawyer?) who bothered to and who were honest in their evaluation of the evidence (even YOU admit) "came out on the individual rights side." So even YOU recognize that the Second Amendment is the barrier that must be overcome if you want to pass the kind of gun Alan Dershowitz (that well-known conservative gun nut) has said: "Foolish liberals who are trying to read the Second Amendment out of the Constitution by claiming it's not an individual right or that it's too much of a safety hazard don't see the danger of the big picture. They're courting disaster by encouraging others to use this same means to eliminate portions of the Constitution they don't like." Thanks, Dick, for finally Asshat. Labels: fisk, gun control, media | The Lying News Media, Part VII As an addendum to this whole CNN / assault weapon ban story, I found this ironic piece. It's an excerpt from Wolf Blitzer's commencement address for the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School for Communication on Monday, the day CNN aired their retraction-that-wasn't. In it are these pearls: "Here's what worries me so much. So many Americans already have a rather low regard for journalists; so many of our viewers, readers and listeners simply don't trust us. Many of them, according to public opinion polls, believe we have political agendas and biases that taint our reporting. And many of our news consumers, no doubt, suspect we often make things up -- whether to advance a political cause, or settle personal scores, or sell newspapers and increase ratings on television. What has now happened at The New York Times has simply fueled those suspicions." No, really? "Journalism is not a perfect science. It is often referred to as a first draft of history. And as all of you know, a first draft can occasionally be sloppy. Yes, we will make mistakes. But those are unwitting mistakes. There must be zero tolerance for deliberate distortions, false reporting and fiction writing in the guise of journalism. They cannot be tolerated." Damn straight, Wolf! Tell it like it is! "Healthy skepticism is critical in doing our job. In my experience, if a story sounds too good to be true, it almost always is. Check and re-check and triple-check those sources. There are people with agendas trying to use us for their own purposes." Say, like Sheriff Ken Jenne? Um, didn't CNN say, after LaPierre called them on the (at the absolute minimum) shoddy reporting of John Zarella: "And we all stick by John Zarrella and how credible of a reporter he is."? What happened to "(c)heck and re-check and triple-check those sources."? Zero tolerance. Yup. Labels: gun control, media | WOOHOO! According to Sitemeter, the blog has had 100 hits (and they're not all me!) I've checked, and I've got at least five readers! Thanks, y'all! Address your hatemail to gunrightsATcomcastDOTnet. Labels: blogging | The Highest Praise A Writer Can Receive I like to write. I think I'm good at it. But my writing is of the essay / non-fiction genre. Still, I love the written word and am deeply appreciative of really good writers, both fiction and non-fiction. (I'd like to be able to write fiction, but as Clint Eastwood's Dirty Harry character said: "A man's got to know his limitations.") Truly engrossing fiction, however, transports me to other places to the point that my wife essentially has to whack me with a stick to get my attention. John Ross wrote a novel that is popular among the gun culture that I found informative, thought-provoking, and entertaining entitled Unintended Consequences. In an interview he was asked: "What has been your proudest moment as a writer?". Go read it. I cannot imagine greater praise. (Warning: Author accepts no responsibility for keyboard damage should the reader be consuming food or beverage while reading.) | Arm the Wimmin! Rachel Lucas has a couple of posts about women and guns that have more impact coming from her than they ever could from me. And there's an excellent post by Mrs. du Toit in the same vein. If I weren't already married.... (Nod to Kim du Toit (The Mr. in that relationship) for the pointers.) Now go read. Labels: linkery | The Lying News Media, Part VI Well! Instapundit is on top of the CNN story and has multiple interesting links such as this one that details the fully-automatic weapon bit that CNN didn't bother to mention in its retraction-that-wasn't. And they have this bit of information on Sheriff Jenne: "In 2000, Sheriff Jenne, a former Democratic state legislator, supported a bill in the Florida Legislature, HB-363, that would have banned several types of rifles under a broad definition of "assault weapons" and also would have prohibited many handguns. The bill died in committee." Whodathunkit? Labels: gun control, media | Monday, May 19, 2003
The Lying News Media, Part V, or There Aren't Enough Hours in the Day to Keep Up Well, I saw (and have a copy of) CNN's "retraction" that wasn't. For what it was, it wasn't bad, but it was still (I think intentionally) misleading. CNN has a transcript of some of the story up here, just scroll down to where it starts: "Welcome back." It is not complete when compared to the video, but they may correct that later. The transcript of the original story with Sheriff Jenne is here, and it's got more to it than the NRA piece had, but the full-auto piece is not included. This was obviously the first piece where the cinderblocks were untouched by the post-ban weapon. I have not located the transcript of the full-auto demonstration. If you're interested, the day after the original Zarella piece on Wolf Blitzer Reports, Wayne LaPierre of the NRA was on and called CNN on it in no uncertain terms. THAT transcript is here. He calls them liars to their faces. I'll come back to this topic later, but I've got a Besides, I do this better when I'm not pissed off. Labels: gun control, media | We ARE Going to Have a Debate! Jack has responded to my opening post in our debate on gun control over at The Commentary. It's going to take me a while to generate my response, but all I've got to say is, This is going to be FUN! Go on over and give it a read. | The Lying News Media, Part IV Here's that update. Ruben Mendiola, an NFA dealer (that means he's licensed to sell machine guns) reports: Today, (Sunday, May 18) Pedro Bello, Nick Davitian and I met with a CNN camera crew and two producers to demonstrate the non-existing actual differences between pre and post ban AR15 and AK47. As we know it the so-called crime bill outlaws guns strictly on cosmetics alone, IE flash hider or bayonet lug. Apparently CNN received a lot of flack over the terrible story it aired last week in which Sheriff Ken Jennings(sic) of Broward outright lied about machines guns becoming available to any and all if the crime bill sunsets and that pre-ban rifles having more power than post ban. The story will air at 5:00 PM and 7:00 PM Monday and they will air it as a retraction/correction to the previous extremely anti-gun and false story. NRA Executive Vice President, Wayne LaPierre has also done a fabulous job making CNN go nuts. I understand he will be on the ready with Rush tomorrow. Sincere thanks to Wally Phillbrick owner of IPS Gun store and range in Hollywood FL for letting us shoot 21 CBS concrete blocks in his indoor range and to Raul for becoming such a pain in the ass to CNN that they called us to do the demo. (He went up all the way to the top) One person can make a difference. Be active, just don’t sit back and bitch. Terrific work, and excellent advice. I e-mailed him to verify that those were his words and for permission to post this here. He verified, and added: Be my guest. From their attitude, I strongly feel it will be a fair story. They took a LOT OF HEAT over the stunt that the Sheriff pulled. Well, we'll see how fair it is. I don't think CNN is going to like eating crow, and I've yet to see them do anything fair when it comes to the gun question. But I could be surprised. Labels: gun control, media | Bill Whittle Has Another Essay Up! If you're one of those poor souls who has not been to Eject! Eject! Eject! I invite you to visit the eminently readable Bill Whittle and peruse his latest work of art, Magic. And while you're there, read his other essays: Honor, Freedom, Empire, Celebrity, War, Courage, Confidence, History, and Victory. Prepare to take some time. Call in sick. Pack a lunch. Order in pizza for dinner. And prepare to engage your brain. Oh, and get a box of tissues. Courage will bring you to tears, or you have no soul. Labels: linkery | Sunday, May 18, 2003 The Lying News Media, Part III UPDATE! There are reports that CNN caught a storm of outrage (unsurprisingly) and has been shown the error of its ways by some licensed dealers. It is reported that CNN will air a retraction tomorrow (May 19) between 5 and 7 PM (I assume EST, though I don't know for sure.) I'm trying to get verification from those involved now. Apparently the story is that Sheriff Jenne suckered CNN during a live feed, they didn't know any better and took it on its face. Pardon the hell out of me if I'm skeptical, but it's possible. Most people can't tell an AK from a AR. You can bet I'll have videotape ready for this, though. I'll update further when I have more. Labels: gun control, media | The Matrix: Reloaded (hey, everybody else is doing it, I don't see why I shouldn't...) I just got back from seeing The Matrix: Reloaded. I can give this sterling recommendation: My wife said "That was better than The Two Towers!" My wife is not a science fiction fan. My wife loves The Lord of the Rings. Oh, and she wants to see it again. (I've known I married the right woman since day one, but it's nice every now and again to have that choice so emphatically reconfirmed. :-) Labels: blogging | It Can't ALL Be Gunstuff Hmm, perhaps, in keeping with the Ten Commandments of Blogging I need to spread out, as it were, and do some more plebian blogging. So, I think I'll participate (two days late) in the Friday Five: 1. What drinking water do you prefer -- tap, bottle, purifier, etc.? What is this "water" of which you speak? 2. What are your favorite flavor of chips? BBQ Lays, actually. 3. Of all the things you can cook, what dish do you like the most? Hmm...I have two. A really nicely done New York Strip (easy), and lasagne (time consuming.) 4. How do you have your eggs? Scrambled, dry. Or boiled, hard. 5. Who was the last person who cooked you a meal? How did it turn out? My wife. Meatloaf, mashed potatoes. Outstanding. (She's not much of a cook, she admits this herself, but she's learned a lot.) Labels: blogging | Are We Going to Debate, or Aren't We? I started this blog because of a fairly heated exchange between a blogger I read regularly - Rob over at Gutrumbles and someone he reads, The Road Not Taken, over guns and the right to bear arms. Jack, being an Irishman living in England, has a very different take on it than Rob, (and for that matter, me) but Rob's debating skills on this topic are, shall we say, vitriolic. So I invited Jack to debate the topic, and he suggested I sign up at Blogger and we'd do it on-line. That was the last prompt I needed, so I set up The Smallest Minority. However, Jack had a little different idea, and he set up The Commentary and invited me to be a contributor there instead. OK, I've done that, and I'll keep this blog too. Anyway, I opened the debate by responding to the post that set Rob off. I don't know if The Commentary is going to go anywhere, and I'm not the administrator of that blog, and I put some time into the post, so I thought I'd repost it here as well. As of yet Jack has not responded. From here on down is my response to Jack's opening salvo: The opening thread in question is here (so long as Blogspot's links are working) or you can just go to The Road Not Taken and scroll down to the heading The Right to Bear Arms. I won't quote that section whole because it digresses from the right to arms, discussing whether or not Dubya is a doofus and Rob's bonnet, but I will take several of the statements and discuss them. Jack can then respond, refute, or clarify his positions and ask me whatever he wants. Jack opens the debate with this statement: "In the United States, a big deal is made of the right of US citizens to own and bear arms. It's laid down in the Second Amendment to their constitution, right under freedom of speech and religion." Yes, it is a big deal - at least to some of us. That much is obvious from the amount of media coverage it gets and the number of people blogging about it over here. "Or is it? The Second Amendment states (and I quote): 'A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.' " That is correct, weirdly placed commas and all. "Now, I do not believe that this gives US citizens a blanket right to own and carry weapons. Specific reference is made to a "well regulated Militia" and, to me, that does not imply that anyone who feels like owning an AK-47 should be allowed to do so. However, I do believe that it means that if a group of people form a militia, if they behave responsibly, if they liaise with the proper authorities and, as long as there are no fears that the militia will be used for any other purpose than to defend the freedom of the State, then those people should be allowed to keep and bear Arms. "On the other hand, if some kid walks into a gun store off the street with a handful of crumpled bills, I don't think he should be allowed to buy a gun. "That's my first point - that the Second Amendment does not give any fool off the street the right to keep and bear arms." First point taken. And that is the position that people espousing gun control have been using for the last thirty to fifty years. But first let me correct a misassumption. Neither the Second Amendment nor any of the other members of the Bill of Rights "gives" anybody anything. Read carefully the First Amendment: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances." The Fourth Amendment: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized." Note that the First Amendment doesn't say: "Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom of speech hereby established...", nor does the Bill of Rights say "This Constitution hereby grants the following rights..." This point is made explicitly by the Ninth Amendment: "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." The enumeration of certain rights, not the granting of them. This was universally understood at the time of ratification. In fact, ratification was held up until the Bill of Rights was agreed upon and added to the Constitution as a hedge against future infringement of our pre-existing rights. This was stated plainly: "The whole of the Bill (of Rights) is a declaration of the right of the people at large or considered as individuals.... It establishes some rights of the individual as unalienable and which consequently, no majority has a right to deprive them of." --Albert Gallatin of the New York Historical Society, October 7, 1789. (My emphasis.) So the right in question in the Second Amendment is "the right to keep and bear arms" - a right fully recognized prior to the Bill of Rights, and designated as inalienable by the Second Amendment. So why the preamble, and is it irrelevant? As many argue, does the naming of the militia make the right to keep and bear arms a right of "the people at large"? If so, as many have said it was the best kept secret of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as no known writings by any of the Founders even suggests this possibility, while numerous citations exist to support the individual rights interpretation. What the gun control people avoid is what the Second Amendment was actually there for: as a final protection for "the People" against government. It's not about hunting, or target shooting, or even self-defense against common criminals - it's there to ensure that the People have the means to oppose tyranny. Hunting, target shooting, and self-defense are givens if the people retain the right to arms against government. Samuel Adams said it best: "And that the said Constitution be never construed to authorize Congress to infringe the just liberty of the press, or the rights of conscience; or to prevent the people of the United States, who are peaceable citizens, from keeping their own arms; or to raise standing armies, unless necessary for the defense of the United States, or of some one or more of them; or to prevent the people from petitioning, in a peaceable and orderly manner, the federal legislature, for a redress of grievances; or to subject the people to unreasonable searches and seizures of their persons, papers or possessions." (My emphasis) That pretty much covers it. Now to Jack's second point: "I drive a car. In order to drive that car, I had to pass a theory test, in which you are quizzed about the rules of the road, and a practical test, in which you demonstrate that you can implement the theory you have learnt and that you can drive safely and competently. If I drive dangerously, if I speed, if I drive while drunk, I'm liable to have my licence taken away from me. "I think it should be the same with guns. Unlike most Europeans, I've used a gun. They strike me as incredibly dangerous things. Their sole purpose is to injure or cause death. I'm a kind of jocular guy and I often joke and mess around with stuff, but when I'm around weapons, I stop messing around, because it's just too dangerous. I pride myself on having passed my weapons handling test first time, and I really, really don't like being around people who aren't competent or careful with weapons. "Therefore, I can't even comprehend why you would want to give a gun to anyone without ensuring that they are competent to handle and use it and without registering the fact that they keep it. As I understand it, and feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, there are places in the United States where you can walk into a gun shop, show your driving licence to prove your age and walk out with a gun and ammunition. No competence test, no registration, no enquiry as to why you want to own something whose primary purpose is killing people. "To me, that is just plain dumb." These too are arguments - good arguments - used by gun control promoters. Let's discuss them in reverse order. I as an individual can walk into a gun shop, pick out a gun, show my driver's license or other acceptable form of photo ID, fill out a form, undergo a background check, and if I pass it lay down my money and walk out the door with a firearm I have no idea how to operate. This is a given. As to whether or not a registration has occurred, there are differing opinions. I did fill out a government form, and I did undergo a background check performed by a government entity. As to whether that information ended up on a list somewhere, we'll have to pass on that question for the time being. However, if you accept that the Second Amendment protects a RIGHT to arms, then doing what I just described was me exercising a constitutionally protected individual RIGHT. Driving a car (an admittedly lethal instrument) isn't a right. I'm not comfortable around people who are incompetent with weapons either, but I've yet to see a way to prevent those yahoos from having arms without also risking my own disarmament. However, as with other protected individual rights, we're allowed to strip people of them if they prove themselves unworthy. If Bob Mouthbreather does something felonious, his right to arms (along with his right to liberty and possibly even his right to life) can be stripped from him - but only AFTER the fact, and only after due process of law. His right to arms cannot be denied to him for something he might do, only something he's actually done and been convicted of in a court of law. (Now, however, there is an exception for people under restraining orders and for misdemeanor domestic violence. There's that slippery slope again.) If people had to prove competency and get a (government issued) license, then the government could make getting that license more and more difficult until it didn't give out any licences at all. And if all guns were registered and all gun owners licensed, then the government could come and collect them all. Or at least collect them from the people honest enough to register. England's done that already with fully automatic wepons, with semi-automatic rifles and shotguns, and with all handguns. In the name of public safety. And it hasn't made England any safer by any measure. Like the old saw goes, only the criminals (and the government) have guns there now. Which brings us to Jack's third point: "A lot of people make the argument that people should have guns for self-defence, because criminals have them. In American, the Second Amendment doesn't mention self-defence. It only mentions a militia, so, in my opinion, you can't say that the Second Amendment gives citizens the right to carry weapons in order to defend themselves against criminals. "So, remove the Second Amendment from the argument and it comes down to a straight question - if criminals use guns to commit crime, should law-abiding citizens be allowed to carry guns to defend themselves? "I don't think so. I think that if criminals have guns, you need to tackle that problem head-on, not exacerbate it by allowing everyone to carry guns to defend themselves." Again, the Bill of Rights doesn't "give" citizens anything - it protects our rights against government infringement. The question of carrying weapons in order to defend oneself is an interesting one, as the earliest court cases involving the right to arms discussed this very topic. The conclusion of the majority of those cases was that laws prohibiting concealed carry were constitutionally OK, but laws prohibiting OPEN carry were not. Self defense was one of those non-enumerated rights, and the Second Amendment protected the means of self-defense. On this question Jack and I have a major disagreement. Jack continues his point, saying: "Here in the UK, there's been some debate and tabloid headlines about the police shooting and killing people who've turned out to have been brandishing replica guns. People say that the police should be more careful, et cetera, et cetera. I say fuck 'em. If you're stupid enough to go waving something that looks exactly like a gun at the police and you don't put it down when you're told to, then you deserve to be removed from the gene pool." What Jack has done here is separate out the police - people who should be allowed to remove other people from the gene pool - from the general public, who should not. I have a real problem with that. The police cannot be everywhere all the time. If they are, you are living in a de facto police state - something no one wants. If someone attempts to rob, rape, or assault me, I cannot depend on the police to be there to protect me, so I have two options: submit, or resist. England has apparently chosen to advise its subjects to submit. It has passed law after law making resistance legally dangerous. It has, in fact, made the job of the lawbreaker substantially less risky since the passage of the Prevention of Crime Act of 1953 made it illegal to carry any kind of weapon with which to defend yourself, and it's only gotten worse since. This law did what Jack wanted - it disarmed the average citizen, but left the criminals armed. So a question, Jack: Why should the police be the sole arbiters of whom is a suitable candidate to remove from the gene pool? Jack concludes his piece thus: I(n) conclusion, I'd just like to say that I'm not against gun ownership in principle. I thought it was really, really bad that the backlash after the Dunblane massacre led to a ban on sporting target pistols. British Olympic shooting competitors now have to go abroad to practise because their weapons are illegal in this country. That is just dumb." I thought it was really, really bad too, but I was not at all surprised. It was licensing and registration that made it possible. It was laws preventing the use of firearms for self-defense, and ever more stringent licensing and storage and documentation and recreational use requirements that reduced the number of law abiding gun owners in England and Wales to the point that they had no effective voice in Parliament that allowed the ban to be passed. England provides the template for "proper gun control legislation" that the supporters of such want to implement here. The Second Amendment prevent this. Those old rich white guys knew what they were doing, didn't they? Labels: debate, gun control, UK | Saturday, May 17, 2003 The Lying "News" Media Part II (Edited for better readability.) This is a transcript of a slickly produced NRA "news report" covering CNN's, shall we say, deliberate misrepresentation of fact. The piece opens with the NRA's talking head who fails to introduce herself. Transcript begins: NRA: "Welcome back to NRA Live. You've heard all about media bias. Well, what we're about to show you is clearly media manipulation of the truth.The picture then switches to the CNN story. At the bottom of the screen the story title bar reads in large letters: Assault Weapons Ban and beneath that in smaller text: LAW BANS 19 TYPES OF SEMI-AUTOMATIC WEAPONS. Remember that. SEMI-automatic weapons. Narration continues while we see some men on what is clearly a firing range. NRA: "On a live shot of the Broward County Sheriff's office firearms training range, he and Sheriff Ken Jenne did a demonstration first with a semiautomatic firearm that is on the banned list and it had 30 rounds in the magazine. And here's what they showed:"During the introduction, someone, presumably an officer, is seen handling an AK-47 type weapon. When the demonstration begins, two men are standing on the range, seen from behind, with a human silhouette shown down range past them. The CNN report is now heard in a voice-over by Sheriff Jenne. Jenne: "First the Deputy is going to demonstrate a AK-47, uh, the Chinese version which is the pre-ban version"The Deputy shoulders the AK-47 and aims it downrange. The 30-round magazine is clearly visible. He begins shooting. After the first or second round, the image shifts to a stack of cinderblocks set up like a small wall, showing clearly the impacts of the rounds. The deputy fires FOUR (4) rounds, doing obvious damage to the blocks. The fire is two rounds fairly quickly, followed two rounds, fired more carefully. All four rounds are fired in about 3 seconds. Flying dust and one cinderblock is holed. Zarella: "That's into a cinderblock."The image switches to a torso mannequin wearing a bullet resistant vest. Here's the first misrepresentation. There's no such thing as a "bullet-proof" vest. They are designed with certain "threat levels" for different useages. The threat levels are established by the National Institute of Justice The vests commonly worn by police officers are Threat Level II (capable of stopping up to a .357 Magnum handgun round) or Threat Level IIIA (capable of stopping up to a .44 Magnum handgun round). Neither of these vests is capable of stopping ANY centerfire rifle round, whether it's fired from an "assault weapon" or a deer rifle. There are Threat Levels III and IV that are designed to stop a .308 (7.62NATO) rifle bullet and an armor piercing .308 respectively, but no cop on the beat would wear one because they have heavy steel or ceramic plates in them. Level IIIA and lower vests are at least a little flexible, lighter, and can be worn under a duty blouse. Level III and IV vests are the type you saw embedded reporters wearing during the war in Iraq. Remember the funky looking semicircular chest shields there to protect their faces from bullet spatter? But you're not supposed to know that. You're supposed to think a "bullet-proof vest" will stop ANY bullet. Right? And remember this: Even a Level IV vest won't stop more than one round in the same spot. The second one will probably get through. The deputy fires THREE (3) carefully aimed rounds to the center of the mannequin's chest. Zarella: "Now that bullet's clearly fired right through there..."The NRA's talking head reappears. NRA: "Then, CNN showed Deputy Chris Worth (sp?) shooting the very same cinderblocks with a semiautomatic that had not been banned."The scene switches back to the CNN story, with Jenne trading weapons with Deputy Worth. NRA: "Only this time, as the Sheriff pointed out, there were only ten rounds in the magazine."Really? Why? The deputy in the previous demonstration fired SEVEN ROUNDS, not 30. Is there something the NRA didn't show us? The really interesting thing here, is that when the deputy shoulders the rifle, it doesn't have a TEN ROUND magazine in it, it's got a THIRTY ROUND magazine in it! That's right, boys and girls! Thirty round magazines FIT IN POST BAN WEAPONS - and they're NOT ILLEGAL! I've got several for my POST-BAN AR-15. At any rate, the deputy shoulders the weapon and aims downrange. Remember now, the first gun was an AK-47 which chambers the 7.62x39 Russian cartridge, and the second gun is ALSO an AK-47 which chambers exactly the same round. The deputy begins firing. He fires SIX (6) shots. On the third shot the image switches to that same stack of cinderblocks. AND THERE ISN'T A SINGLE HIT. What, are the sights off? No dust flying, no concrete shattering, nada. The image switches back to the NRA talking head: NRA: "Surprised? Not one shot went into the cinderblocks. No smoke, no dust, no bullet holes. Well, you're probably asking the very same questions we are: How could that happen? Was the deputy firing blanks? Or was he just a bad shot? Either way, CNN's John Zarella should have told the viewers, because we both know both guns were semi-automatics. And even though one had thirty rounds and the other one had ten, that makes no difference in the way they perform."Especially when you fire FOUR rounds out of the rifle with 30 and SIX rounds out of the one holding ten. NRA: "A semi-auto is a semi-auto is a semi-auto. And they all fire the very same cartridge, and have the same firing power."Not exactly. An AK-47 is not an AR-15 is not an M1A. They don't fire the same cartridge and have the same power, but that's beside the point for this demonstration. NRA: "Right? Well not according to CNN and the Sheriff. The whole message, in fact, behind their story was to drive home the point to viewers, whether by misfiring or staging it, that somehow the semi-automatics on the banned list have more firepower than those that are not banned."Seems pretty obvious to me. But then I'm a gun nut and know better already. NRA: "Just listen to this conversation that CNN had with the Sheriff."The image switches back to the stack of cinderblocks. Zarella: "So what makes the big difference here is the amount of, of firepower then."He's interrupted by the NRA talking head. And remember - in the demonstration of the LEGAL AK-47, it had a 30 round magazine in it! NRA: "But, as if that was not enough to mislead the public with absolute fabrication, CNN shows another demonstration on another show later that night. And although Sheriff Jenne claims his deputy is shooting with a semi-automatic firearm, that is banned, that's not the case at all. The deputy is actually using a fully automatic firearm. Take a listen."The image switches back to the deputy on the firing range. The banner at the bottom of the screen now reads: GUN BATTLE BAN ON 19 ASSAULT WEAPONS EXPIRES IN SEPTEMBER 2004 Jenne: "So you can see the destructive force. It's got a thirty, uh, rounds in it's magazine, uh, and it will be firing it now."(Hey, I just transcribe this stuff. It's what I heard.) Zarella: "OK."The deputy shoulders the weapon and aims it downrange. He fires three rounds at the stack of cinderblocks (apparently there was more than one take done, as this stack is shorter, and untouched.) He fires three more rounds. Dust & broken cinderblock, just as you'd expect. Zarella: "Now that was semi-automatic..." (He's a bit garbled as Jenne speaks) "Now your (garbled) switch'er to automatic..."The deputy is seen manipulating the weapon as they speak, and as Jenne speaks, Jenne: "This is automatic..."The deputy begins firing FULLY AUTO, and the cinderblocks are, of course, busted all to hell. Zarella: "Wow. That obliterated those blocks."Except the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban didn't affect fully automatic weapons - those are regulated under the 1934 National Firearms Act. Remember the blurb? The NRA talking head reappears. NRA: "Again, what CNN and the Sheriff don't tell you is that no guns on the banned list are fully automatic. Those guns were severely restricted in 1934. So why did they do this? Why did they concoct a story that the Sheriff should have known was not true? Well, I tried to call Sheriff Jenne to talk with him about the demonstration. He wasn't available. But I did get to speak with the director of media relations."The image shifts to the talking head sitting at a microphone. A phone ring tone is heard. Someone picks up. Cheryl Stopnick (how appropriate): "Media relations. Cheryl Stopnick."And then she goes into the NRA speil. What you're seeing here is the Violence Policy Center's tactics in action: "Assault weapons-just like armor-piercing bullets, machine guns, and plastic firearms - are a new topic. The weapons' menacing looks, coupled with the public's confusion over fully automatic machine guns versus semi-automatic assault weapons - anything that looks like a machine gun is assumed to be a machine gun - can only increase the chance of public support for restrictions on these weapons. In addition, few people can envision a practical use for these weapons." Show the rubes a machine gun and tell 'em it's an evil banned "assault weapon" and they'll believe you. Don't tell them that the only thing that makes an "assault weapon" according to the law is the name of the weapon, or whether or not it has a flash-hider or a bayonet lug, and they'll think the law did something good. SHOW THEM THAT THE "GOOD" GUNS CAN'T HURT A CINDERBLOCK AND THEY'LL BUY ANYTHING. I am OUTRAGED. (Updated. I'm reliably informed that the NRA talking head is Ginny Simone (last name pronounced Sim-o-nee)) Labels: gun control, media | The Lying News Media, Part I I can't remember the last time I got this angry. I don't watch CNN as a rule. Hell, I don't watch TV too much as a rule, but I've watched enough CNN to know that when it comes to guns and gun rights its coverage is slanted to say the least. So I don't know why I was I'm not sure how long the link will be good, but you can view the Real Media clip here. It's just over six minutes long. I'll try to post a transcript when I get my blood pressure down. Those lying sacks of shit... Labels: gun control, media | Friday, May 16, 2003 I'll Know I've Hit it Big When... I get my first hate mail. I know it's coming. Sooner or later some GFW will send me an anonymous e-mail venting his/her/its spleen. I'd really like to get a comment section going, but I know that, this being a site dedicated to guns and gun rights, it will be spammed viciously. The right to arms is like the abortion debate - lots of invective on both sides. A post on either topic at most sites (well, most sites that have an audience) will quickly draw 200 comments - a veritable flamefest. So I'm still debating whether or not I want to bother with the comment option. And of course, I've got to find one to use, too. Labels: blogging | Gun Owners are Not Without a Sense of Humor Dept. Frank, that master of dry humor over at IMAO has a new one up: TOP TEN REASONS REGULAR CITIZENS SHOULD BE ABLE TO OWN ASSAULT RIFLES Very funny! | Is the Government Responsible for Your Protection? Part 1 A lot of people seem to think so. "We need more police, better enforcement," is usually the refrain you hear when crime rates go up, or a string of crimes occurs. The police tell us that we shouldn't resist when we're being robbed or raped. It's called taking the law into your own hands when you do. It's the job of the police and the justice system - branches of the government - to protect you, according to most people. Certainly according to most police chiefs and elected officials. But is it? Let me tell you a story: In the early morning hours of March 16, 1975, Carolyn Warren, Joan Taliaferro, and Miriam Douglas were asleep in their rooming house at 1112 Lamont Street, N.W. Warren and Taliaferro shared a room on the third floor of the house; Douglas shared a room on the second floor with her four-year-old daughter. The women were awakened by the sound of the back door being broken down by two men later identified as Marvin Kent and James Morse. The men entered Douglas' second floor room, where Kent forced Douglas to sodomize him and Morse raped her. Warren and Taliaferro heard Douglas' screams from the floor below. Warren telephoned the police, told the officer on duty that the house was being burglarized, and requested immediate assistance. The department employee told her to remain quiet and assured her that police assistance would be dispatched promptly. Warren's call was received at Metropolitan Police Department Headquarters at 6:23 a. m., and was recorded as a burglary in progress. At 6:26 a. m., a call was dispatched to officers on the street as a "Code 2" assignment, although calls of a crime in progress should be given priority and designated as "Code 1." Four police cruisers responded to the broadcast; three to the Lamont Street address and one to another address to investigate a possible suspect. Meanwhile, Warren and Taliaferro crawled from their window onto an adjoining roof and waited for the police to arrive. While there, they saw one policeman drive through the alley behind their house and proceed to the front of the residence without stopping, leaning out the window, or getting out of the car to check the back entrance of the house. A second officer apparently knocked on the door in front of the residence, but left when he received no answer. The three officers departed the scene at 6:33 a. m., five minutes after they arrived. Warren and Taliaferro crawled back inside their room. They again heard Douglas' continuing screams; again called the police; told the officer that the intruders had entered the home, and requested immediate assistance. Once again, a police officer assured them that help was on the way. This second call was received at 6:42 a. m. and recorded merely as "investigate the trouble" - it was never dispatched to any police officers. Believing the police might be in the house, Warren and Taliaferro called down to Douglas, thereby alerting Kent to their presence. Kent and Morse then forced all three women, at knifepoint, to accompany them to Kent's apartment. For the next fourteen hours the women were held captive, raped, robbed, beaten, forced to commit sexual acts upon each other, and made to submit to the sexual demands of Kent and Morse. Those paragraphs are taken, with the exception of a single word, "appellants," verbatim from the opinion in Warren v. District of Columbia. Carolyn Warren, Joan Taliaferro, and Miriam Douglas were the appellants in a lawsuit against the District of Columbia and its police department for failing to protect them. Fail them it did, but the court found against them. And here is its reasoning: A publicly maintained police force constitutes a basic governmental service provided to benefit the community at large by promoting public peace, safety and good order. The extent and quality of police protection afforded to the community necessarily depends upon the availability of public resources and upon legislative or administrative determinations concerning allocation of those resources. The public, through its representative officials, recruits, trains, maintains and disciplines its police force and determines the manner in which personnel are deployed. At any given time, publicly furnished police protection may accrue to the personal benefit of individual citizens, but at all times the needs and interests of the community at large predominate. Private resources and needs have little direct effect upon the nature of police services provided to the public. Accordingly, courts have without exception concluded that when a municipality or other governmental entity undertakes to furnish police services, it assumes a duty only to the public at large and not to individual members of the community. (Emphasis is mine) Note the quote: "without exception." This is not the first time someone has sued the government for not protecting them, not by a long shot. It's one of the most egregious examples, but far from the only one. So, it isn't the government's responsibility to protect "individual members of the community," that is, you and me specifically. So whose job is it? Think on that awhile. I'll come back with Part 2 where I'll discuss just why it can't be the job of government. Labels: one fundamental right, self-defense | Somebody generally beats me to it And quite often does a better job of it. That's one of the reasons it took me so long to start my own blog. Jealous green-eyed rage. Regardless, I appreciate quality work when I see it, and I'd be remiss not to point it out to whomever might stumble in here. Isntapundit (no, not Glenn. The other guy) has a post up that perfectly illustrates the gun control movement in the personage of Andrew McKelvey, chief honcho of Americans for Gun Safety. Although the comparison to a deadly parasite was a bit graphic for dinnertime. Go read it. I'll wait. Labels: gun control | Journalistic Consistency, or: "All the news we see fit." There's an AP news story about the Case Western shooter. The headline reads: "Cleveland Shooter Had Military Training" (though they did leave off the hysterical exclamation point.) That's good. That's interesting. And it's in keeping with the general liberal position that people who receive military training are all psycho-killers-in-waiting. The story relates: The 62-year-old man accused of a shooting spree at a prestigious Cleveland university had military training with the Indian army and a grudge against an employee, authorities said Saturday. Ok, fair enough. But is it relevant? The article goes on to cover the fact that Biswanath Halder was wearing a "bullet proof" vest and some kind of helmet with a wig glued to it as he went through the building apparently firing indiscriminately. The story relates that "(Halder) never walked on the sidewalks, always down the middle of the street" according to one person interviewed. OK, that's a little weird. At the end of the article it states the source of the opening assertion: The resume Halder posts on his Web site includes service in the Indian army, as well as experience in computer programming, designing electrical measuring equipment in Germany, real estate and financial planning. Very good - cite your sources. Interest thus piqued, I ran a Google News search on Mr. Halder. There was this story told us that 425 rounds of ammunition were found in his car, this one that tells us all about the "poor man's Uzi" that Halder used (and it - as most news stories do - gets crucial information wrong concerning guns and gun laws), this one with the headline "Alleged Shooter Had Gun With 32-Round Magazine" (No exclamation point there either, but you know it's implied.) The article discusses the ammunition used, saying: "The ammunition used were hollow-point bullets, designed for maximum amount of damage and minimal penetration." Well, not exactly but then the press so seldom gets this stuff right anyway. Note too that the article quotes a "firearms expert" who says that the Cobray pistol Halder had "...could have a 32-round magazine in it and have 32 rounds in the gun." Note that - COULD have. Did he, or didn't he? Anyway, this article also contradicts the first story a bit, because the same expert is also denigrates Halder's training. "Donnett said it's clear that the alleged gunman had little training....'If this gentleman had really known what he was doing, the fatalities would've been way up,' she said." Harsh words for a man with military training. (Oh, and there's a photo on the site that's apparently supposed to be the two guns in question. One of them might be a Ruger, the other is DEFINITELY not a Cobray. Guess they didn't have one in their archives. I suppose I should be happy that they didn't use a picture of a REAL Uzi. Anyway, this story mentions Halder's web site too. It says this: Halder would write about destruction on his Web site, and there were anonymous postings calling him a moron, and a making fun of his fake hair and fake teeth. One posting said, "People around you don't like you, so take a hike and get out of our lives." This story has the headline: Case Western killing inflames gun opponents Well THERE'S a surprise. But Halder's a side-note in this story. Then there's this short blurb about the lawsuit over Halder's web site that apparently sparked the shooting. Anyway, it's pretty apparent that the news organizations not only knew he had a web site, but where it was and what was on it. So, why was there no mention of the fact that Halder was pretty rabidly against the war in Iraq, and a supporter of gun control? His site is down now, but it wasn't immediately after the shooting or the media couldn't have checked his resume. I got in before they firewalled the sites and looked. It was apparent that the guy was one bat short of a full belfry. Oh, right - Relevance. Labels: media, rampage shootings | Depending on the State for Your Safety I'll have more (much more) to say about this later, but I found this column by Dave Kopel interesting, as I have been studying the UK's approach to gun control for quite a while, specifically the legal attitude concerning self-defense. So color me unsurprised when Dave followed up on the article with this feedback from someone who's been there: "I'm an alumna of Pepperdine University, a school which proudly owns a house/campus on Exhibition Road, literally across the street from the Imperial University, in the middle of South Kensington, right near Harrods, Hyde Park, the Albert Hall. Within two days of arriving for our first semester in London, our relatively small [American] class (37 students, 10 men, 27 women) was visited by a local police officer to instruct us on living in London. Her first question was to the women, 'How many of you brought mace?' Three girls raised their hands. She told us we couldn't use it, shouldn't even carry it, it was illegal. That's correct. Mace, teargas, and pepper sprays have been outlawed since passage of the 1953 "Prevention of Crime Act." This made it illegal to carry an "offensive weapon" without being able to demonstrate a need for it. Offensive weapons included knives, pointed objects, and firearms, along with chemical sprays. In other words, you had to apply to the government and get their permission in order to carry anything with which to defend yourself. In 1953, remember. "Had any of us brought any other type of weapon, such as a knife? Several of the men in our group indicated that they carried pocket knives. She told us to leave them at home too." As mentioned above, carrying a knife for self-defense was made illegal (without permission from the State) in 1953, but what constituted a knife? That question was rectified with the Criminal Justice Act of 1988 which defined what an edged or pointed weapon was thusly: "...any article which has a blade or is sharply pointed except a folding pocketknife." and "This section applies to a folding pocketknife if the cutting edge of its blade exceeds 3 inches." So, if you carry a very small pocketknife, you're OK, right? Are you going to take that risk? Small folding lockback? Illegal. Yup. Lockbacks are not considered to be "folding knives." Carpet knife? Illegal. Boxcutter? Illegal. Leatherman? Illegal. Unless, of course you can prove in court that you had "need," i.e.: that you used in for work and that you had it on you in conjunction with your work. Woe unto you if you stop by the pub on the way home with anything considered illegal on your person or in your car. What happened to the English common-law assumption of innocence? It's turned on its head here. You have to prove your innocence, because the law assumes that if you have something that can be used as a weapon, you intend evil. If you're interested, the British Knife Collectors Guild has a site covering the specifics of the laws there. To continue: "Then she instructed us on how to properly be a victim. If we were attacked, we were to assume a defensive posture, such as raising our hands to block an attack. The reason was (and she spelled it out in no uncertain terms) that if a witness saw the incident and we were to attempt to defend ourselves by fighting back, the witness would be unable to tell who the agressor was. However, if we rolled up in a ball, it would be quite clear who the victim was. "The feeling I got was, in London, it is not permissable to defend oneself. I also understood that this police officer thought Americans were more likely to be agressive and/or cause more damage to a potential attacker. She was warning us for our own good. I have to admit, she did not make me feel particularly safe." Yup. Depend on the State to protect you. You're not qualified to protect yourself. It would sound like a Monty Python piece if it weren't true. As Joyce Lee Malcolm has documented, England's anti-self-defense laws have resulted in violent crime rates considerably higher than we have here. Update: HAH! Glen Reynolds comments on this, too. But I didn't see it until AFTER I had my post up. (How does he read all this stuff?) Labels: one fundamental right, UK | Welcome to the bathroom wall. The link goes to a post by UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh, which I will quote shamelessly (hey, I gave the link). The Internet is a bathroom wall. Consider: Anyone can write anything on a bathroom wall. There's little accountability on a bathroom wall. It's hard to tell who wrote what on a bathroom wall. Truth looks just like rumor on a bathroom wall. Great stuff is interspersed with awful, stupid stuff on a bathroom wall. Most people know instinctively not to offer as verification or a point of information the phrase "Well, you know, I read on the bathroom wall that. . ." Yet far too many seem willing to lace their discourse and communications with "facts" gleaned from bulletin boards, e-mail and Web sites. That from a 1998 Chicago Tribune piece by Eric Zorn. Now Eugene's pithy comment: The sad fact, which I've noted in many posts over the past year (and even setting aside egregious examples like the Jayson Blair affair), is that most media turn out to be a bathroom wall, too. An exaggeration, but less of an exaggeration that I'd like it to be. Precisely. So, who says that one bathroom wall is superior to another? The reader does. | DISCLOSURE I am strongly interested in the rights of individuals, in particular the restrictions upon our government to respect those rights. As such, I'm not much of a fan of the government we have. In fact, I used to use this signature line: The Constitution may not be the finest work ever set to paper, but it beats whatever the government's using these days. So it comes as no surprise that I'm not real enamored with the Republicans, and I find the Democrats abhorrent. Of course, I think the Greens are flakes, and the Libertarians tend to be flakes of a different shape. Anyway, bearing this in mind, I invite you to read Rachel Lucas's transcription of Barbara Walter's Hillary interview. Uh-huh. | Thursday, May 15, 2003 I can see I'm going to spend a considerable amount of time linking to other sites for my (hopefully only temporarily) nonexistent reader base, but this one is classic and should not be missed: Kang's Classroom: Politics 101 Warning: Don't drink anything when you read this. You'll need a new keyboard. | In relation to the "What is a right" essay... I posted below, I found this quotation attributed to Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. I don't have any other information detailing where it was published, so I'll hold off on actually laying it at his feet (though if someone can give me a pointer, I'd appreciate it). However, it says in a paragraph what took me an entire essay -- Rights are what a society believes they are. (Of course, I was trying to win something, and it was oriented specifically towards the right to arms, but....) Here it is: To some degree, a constitutional guarantee is like a commercial loan, you can only get it if, at the time, you don't really need it. The most important, enduring, and stable portions of the Constitution represent such a deep social consensus that one suspects if they were entirely eliminated, very little would change. And the converse is also true. A guarantee may appear in the words of the Constitution, but when the society ceases to possess an abiding belief in it, it has no living effect. Consider the fate of the principle expressed in the Tenth Amendment that the federal government is a government of limited powers. I do not suggest that constitutionalization has no effect in helping the society to preserve allegiance to its fundamental principles. That is the whole purpose of a constitution. But the allegiance comes first and the preservation afterwards. (My emphasis) Indeed. Labels: one fundamental right | Well, this blog can't be exclusively about guns and rights and stuff. Since I'm new to this, I think I'd better follow the Ten Commandments of Blogging as handed down Thanks to Acidman for the pointer. | Wednesday, May 14, 2003 Before I go to bed (who am I fooling, I'll stay up and read Cryptonomicon until midnight again) I thought I'd post this essay that won me membership priviledges over at AR15.com a few months ago. It was short due to the 8,000 character limit for single posts to that forum. This should be an interesting exercise in HTML coding... What is a "Right"? Webster's has several definitions: 1: qualities (as adherence to duty or obedience to lawful authority) that together constitute the ideal of moral propriety or merit moral approval 2: something to which one has a just claim: as a: the power or privilege to which one is justly entitled b: the interest that one has in a piece of property - often used in plural (mineral rights) 3: something that one may properly claim as due All accurate, but incomplete. In speaking of the "Rights of the People" we refer to definitions 2 and 3, "something that one may properly claim as due" or "to which one is justly entitled." Some would add "endowed by the Creator." What about "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?" Robert Heinlein wrote about those in his 1959 novel Starship Troopers: "Life? What 'right' to life has a man who is drowning in the Pacific? The ocean will not hearken to his cries. What 'right' to life has a man who must die if he is to save his | ||||
