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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  
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Monday, July 07, 2003 Lest Ye Think I'm a Bible-Thumping Right-Winger Over on AR15.com, someone asked a series of questions of those of us who are non-believers (and if you have to ask "Non-believers of what?" where have you been the last couple of decades?). Sort of an eight-question quiz of the type that have been so, um, popular around the blogosphere of late. Here are his questions (in bold) and my responses (in grey): Our initial kickoff to the USA was the Declaration which says;Your thoughts? | Did You Have a Good Weekend? I did. Celebrated my parent's 49th wedding anniversary on Friday, took a couple of newbies shooting on Saturday, went in to the office on Sunday and programmed. This looks like a really busy week, so posting will be light. Sorry about that. So, to give you something to think about (and possibly more information than you really wanted to know about me,) I'm going to follow Steven Den Beste's lead and answer Acidman's 25 questions. 1. Do you have a personal hero? If so, who is it? Um, no. There are a lot of people I really admire, but no single person I'd consider a hero. 2. What is your favorite book of all time and what made it so fucking good? The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Anson Heinlein. I think this book is mostly responsible for my political outlook. 3. What does “diversity” mean to you? Let me quote from someone who put it better than I could: Diversity is: "...a white guy driving his chinese girlfriend in an Italian car to a Mexican restaurant, and getting pulled over by a black cop." Mix ethnicities and genders as desired. That's America, baby! 4. What is the wildest thing you’ve ever done? Spun a 5.0 liter Mustang off an on-ramp at about 70mph. 5. Do you regret doing it? No. No harm, no foul. And I think it really proved to me I'd chosen the right woman to marry when she (sitting in the passenger seat) didn't rip me a new one for showing my ass. 6. Can you drive a stick shift? Not only can I, I prefer it. I'd much rather stir my own gears. 7. What’s the highest speed you ever traveled in a car? 120 mph indicated. In that same Mustang. It had more in it, but the road didn't. 8. Were you driving, or riding at the time? Driving. 9. Which is better: snakes or spiders? I prefer snakes. Spiders give me the willies. 10. What is the most disgusting thing you ever ate? Asparagus. Sue me, but I find asparagus disgusting. 11. Have you ever shit your pants? Be HONEST! Yup. Syncoptic episode, voided my bowels. Not pleasant. When I regained consciousness someone was looking down at me and said "Are you OK?" To which I replied: "If I was OK, would I be laying here?" 12. Was losing your virginity an enjoyable experience? No. Educational, yes. Enjoyable, no. 13. Should oral sex be outlawed or encouraged? Who in their right mind would want to outlaw it? 14. Name one man with a fine ass. Not my cuppa. I suppose you could pick any random Chippendale dancer. At least that's what my wife says. 15. Do you watch golf on television? If not, will you iron my shirts? No, and no. 16. Who is Martha Burk? A laughingstock, I hope. 17. If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be? I'd drop at least 50 lbs. 18. Do you eat raw oysters? I don't eat anything that resembles snot. 19. Are you claustrophobic? No. 20. If you rode a motorcycle, would you wear a helmet even if the law said you didn‘t have to? Yes. I've studied physics, which is why I wear a seatbelt regardless of the seatbelt laws. 21. Name five great Presidents. Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Reagan, 22. Name three shitty Presidents. Carter is the only shitty President I can come up with. Everything he did turned eventually to shit. There were certainly some that were no gems, but I wouldn't hang the term "shitty" even on Bubba. He was merely bad. 23. Now call me fanny and slap my ass. Just kidding. Ha ha. 24. This is the 4th of July. Did you set off any fireworks? No, but I went shooting Saturday. Does that count? 25. If you could have dinner and conversation with anyone in the history of the planet, who would you choose? Robert Heinlein, I think. | Friday, July 04, 2003 THE WAIT IS OVER! TRINITY is up! More later. I need to read & savor. UPDATE: Done - although I had to go back and get the rest. Apparently even Moveable Type has a length limit. Worth the wait, too. Trinity: Capitalism, Freedom, Ingenuity. Get out of the way, we don't know what this thing can do! (But it'll be great!) Go spend some time. Read. Improve yourself. | Thursday, July 03, 2003 Quote of the Day, Last Post of the Night From Tex's Whacking Day blog: Tex's first law of government: The inevitable failure of legislation will be seen as a justification for even more legislation.Ayup. | Emperor Misha Addresses an Excellent Question As you all know, we Americans are extremely proud of being the freest country on the planet, and rightfully so.Go to the post. Leave a comment. Make it a good one. | Well THIS is an Interesting Question. New blogger Wince and Nod asks: Sofia Sideshow commented a while back about how a shotgun is Hollywood's weapon of choice when it comes to dealing with monsters. I wonder what Rachel Lucas, Kim du Toit or Kevin Baker at The Smallest Minority would have to say about this.This is reminiscent of the oft-recurring question "What caliber is best for defeating flesh-eating zombies?" that somebody brings up on AR15.com at least once every two or three months. Sofia Sideshow's site puts it this way: Shotguns are also good demon-killing tools. Shotguns are really the action-movie Leatherman. They're so useful. Aliens, Terminators, Demons, Raptors...whoever grabs the shotgun at the "we better grab some weapons" part of a movie usually lives.To go along with that, I've got a quotation archived by a "K.R. Murphy": "There are precious few horror films that couldn't be cut well short by a single loaded 12 gauge and someone with the sense to use it."Truer words...
Shotguns are quite effective defensive weapons. That's one reason that police cruisers were for years equipped with a riot gun. Nothing gets someone's attention quite like racking the slide on a pump-action, and very little else makes as much an impression as 12 .33 caliber 00 buckshot pellets from a 12 gauge shell, or a 1-1/8 ounce slug. At close range, the shotgun is a devastating weapon, even against the undead! No demon will remain unaffected after receiving the contents of both barrels of a boomstick, no zombie will be munching on your brain after you've removed his lower jaw with a well-aimed blast of buck, and even though you risk getting splashed with blood with a pH of zero, no alien exoskeleton will withstand a point-blank impact of a slug. Of course, not too much is effective against the polymer alloy of a T-1000 Terminator, but a shotgun at least slows one down - more than a 9mm Europellet anyway. I think the defensive shotgun is an excellent choice against goblins of all types, which is one reason I own one of these:
Thanks for asking. | Isn't This Nice: Sean Penn Gets One of His Guns Back In April, Sean Penn's Buick Grand National was stolen while he ate lunch at a Berkley restaurant, and in it were two handguns, a 9mm Glock and a .38 revolver. Turns out that Mr. Penn (who has a conviction for assault and spent a month in jail for it) has a California concealed-carry permit! The car was recovered five days later, but not the guns. Well, at least one of them has turned up, and Mr. Penn is going to get it back. The Glock might have turned up. A Glock matching Penn's was found, but it has spent at least a month in the ocean and barnacles obscure the serial number. Per the article: Police said there is no evidence that Penn's .38 was involved in any crimes, and it will likely be returned to the actor, who is currently filming his latest movie called "The Assassination of Richard Nixon" in Oakland.OFF the street? I thought that people with CCW's put more guns on the streets! I cannot help but wonder if, should this have happened to John Q. Public (who probably would have had a much harder time getting a CCW), would the police have been so enthusiastic about giving it back? I feel safer already. | Wednesday, July 02, 2003 If You Didn't See This in the Carnival of the Vanities... Read it now. Via Nikita Demosthenes, Orson Scott Card's article Moral Stupidity. Money quote: It makes me ashamed of the Democratic Party that this seems to be the only moral process available to the party's leadership. I used to call myself a "Moynihan Democrat."Much, much more crunchy goodness. I've always liked Orson Scott Card, although I find his fiction writing hit-or-miss. | The Global Disarmament of the Law Abiding Continues... First, for your reading displeasure, Rachel Lucas has an excellent post about Australia's latest exercise in And our neighbors to the North now have a whole lot more criminals in their midst. Their registration deadline ran out Monday, so an estimated 300,000 new criminals exist! Don't you feel safer already? | "I Know, Let's Make Guns REALLY Illegal!!" Britain's Evening Mail provides the following wrenching and earnest op-ed piece, Let's end gun misery: The anguished mothers of Birmingham's New Year party victims will brief a powerful body of MPs on the problems of gun crime in Britain's inner cities.What they don't tell you is that the shooter used a submachine gun - illegal to possess in England since the 1930's. But they're available on the black market along with other goodies like hand grenades. Now the mothers will tell politicians of the heart-rending and long-lasting impact gun crime has had on them and the community.And apparently risking getting killed for speaking up, since the criminals don't seem to fear the police very much. "They are a credit to the community and we will be interested to hear their views on tackling the menace of guns and the gang culture that spawns such violence.Now, bear in mind that this is in a country where there are only about 600,000 legal shotgun owners and about 125,000 legal rifle owners, and ZERO legal handgun owners or submachine owners, or "assault rifle" owners outside the government. (The London police did recently upgun to the H&K G36 assault rifle.) And the legal ownership levels are declining each year. But NOW there's a SURGE of firearms involved violence. NOW there's an "emergent gun culture." No, they killed the good "gun culture" and are left with the unfettered bad one. What's next, really really banning guns? Let's really end "gun misery" in England - teach people to defend themselves, and then let them carry and keep guns in the home. Nothing else seems to work. Banning sure as hell proved useless. | Tuesday, July 01, 2003 Build a Better Mousetrap... At last Saturday's AR15.com Casa Grande shoot, one of the guys showed up with his new invention, the SST-870:
Introducing the SST-870 AR15 buttstock adapter for the Remington 870 shotgun.Which is too cool, because I own a 590 myself. Can you say "Patent?" Here's the first production run out of the machine shop:
| Alphecca Has It Jeff has the straight skinny on the current status of the amendments to the Constitution as practiced today. Give it a read. One quibble, Jeff. The 17th Amendment should be REPEALED. | Why Didn't They Consider This BEFORE? Say Uncle has the scoop on a new joint Violence Policy Center / Brady Center press release that fixes the whole problem. Why they couldn't have done this years ago is beyond me. (And I have given credit where credit is due for the AWB clock!) | Cannot Find Weapons of Mass Destruction From Clayton Cramer's blog: Follow these instructions exactly:That's freaking funny! | "Stroke of the Pen, Law of the Land. Kinda Cool."
Yeah, that "Constitution thingy" does tend to get in the way, don't it? Day by Day | Monday, June 30, 2003 BIG POST ERROR, POST ID 105702478749413506 REPORT IT You have NO idea just how infuriating this error message is. A long, involved, link-filled post that I've been working on for AN HOUR AND A HALF is GONE! You think the Incredible Hulk gets pissed? The expression "going Postal" FITS. | Clayton Cramer Reiterates My Question In his post Why The NRA May Be Right To Not Rush a Second Amendment Case to the Supreme Court There are a lot of gun rights activists who are upset with NRA's reluctance to go to court with a Second Amendment case. These recent decisions by the Supreme Court are strong arguments for why that reluctance is sensible. In the University of Michigan law school case, the Supreme Court decided that even though the Fourteenth Amendment is explicit that there will be no discrimination based on race, discrimination based on race, as long as it's not made too explicit, is okay. In the other case, the Supreme Court ignored precedent, rewrote some of Colonial America's sodomy laws, and then used due process and a lot of armwaving to strike down a state law of the sort that has been present for centuries--and then discounted everything more than 50 years old as not particularly relevant to their decision. And you suddenly are going to trust the Supreme Court to make a decision about the meaning of the Second Amendment? All your arguments in favor of an individual right are based on:I disagree. I don't think that waiting will do us any good. I think that the Silviera case is the most cut-and-dried violation of the Second Amendment extant, and I think it's the perfect one with which to overturn U.S. v Cruikshank and Presser v. Illinois. But he's right: SCOTUS could very well ignore historical evidence. It very well could ignore older precedents and uphold Cruikshank. It could ignore that the right to arms was held as an individual one since before the ratification of the Constitution. It's a hard question to consider: Do individual citizens have a Constitutionally guaranteed right to keep and bear weapons of military usefulness? And are the States restricted by the 14th Amendment from infringing on this right? Yes or no? SCOTUS might very well answer: "No." It might (probably would) be a 5-4 decision, and the dissents might be philosophical works of art. BUT: That would be, to me, the signal that the system is broken beyond repair. Right now, I still believe the system can work as designed. I think, though, that if SCOTUS can take it upon itself to render meaningless a part of the Bill of Rights that is explicit, then the Constitution is, for all intents and purposes, null and void. I've often wondered if SCOTUS has denied cert. on Second Amendment cases just because the Justices couldn't bring themselves to be that blatant in violating the Constitution. Easier to avoid than to do that. I'm betting about 60-40 that they'll deny cert. to Silviera, too. THEN where will that put us? In one circuit the right to arms will be legally recognized, but in another (the one where I live) it will not. UPDATE: Given the newness of my Comments, I'm going to copy and reply here: AlphaPatriot responds: I'm going to quote an earlier post on my website because I think it's relevant:However, the issue that mitigates for granting a writ of certiorari is the fact that two Circuit Courts are in disagreement on a key issue. This often prompts SCOTUS to step in and settle the dispute. I fully expect them to dodge if they do grant cert. The 5th Circuit certainly did - ruling as narrowly as the could get away with and avoiding addressing anything outside the question at hand. The 9th did not. They stated plainly that the right was not individual, and that individuals had no standing in bringing the question before the Court. Somehow, I don't see how SCOTUS can let that slide given the decision in Emerson. But you might be right - they very well could decide that it's a "reasonable regulation" of an individual right. That, I think, would be a not-quite-phyrric victory for gun owners. I'm not a lawyer, nor do I play one on TV, but I've read a LOT of case law concerning the right to arms. Since Silviera appears to hinge on whether or not the right is indivdual (as that's how it was decided: "The district court dismissed all of the plaintiffs’ claims. Because the Second Amendment does not confer an individual right to own or possess arms, we affirm the dismissal of all claims brought pursuant to that constitutional provision" citing Hickman v. Block.) At a minimum it would mean remanding the case to the 9th Circuit for re-hearing on the basis that Hickman was in error. THEN the 9th would just find it a "reasonable regulation." Let's be honest here: I'm not expecting a Brown v. Board of Education-like earth-shattering decision, should they decide to hear it at all. But I can hope. Oh, and go read AlphaPatriot's older post on this topic. Very good. | Beware of Engineers with Screwdrivers Sometimes I really hate my job. I'm an engineer by profession. I've got the State license and everything. I've got a customer's machine that refuses to behave. It's got a (Star Trek Technobabble Alert!) single-ended 1024ppr quadrature encoder on it that yeilds 129 pulses per inch - most of the time. Except occasionally when moving in one direction, it will drop some counts. Like several inches worth. And since we're trying to measure to 1/64" accuracy, that's not a good thing. The encoder is connected to an Allen-Bradley high-speed counter card that just counts, 0-999, then rolls over. The counter card communicates with an Allen-Bradley PLC 5/20 processor that totalizes the count. There are three other IDENTICAL encoders on the machine, and they all work hunky-dory. We've changed the encoder, we've changed the high-speed counter card, today we changed the CABLE. It's still thumbing its nose at us. (Edited to add: It's not mechanical, either. Rack & pinion gearing, positive keyed zero slip coupling. Anybody got a chicken to sacrifice?) UPDATE! Problem solved! Of course, after the fact it was something simple, and blindingly obvious - the 5VDC power supply was only putting out 3.5V - just barely enough to make the encoder card work - most of the time. Engineers with screwdrivers? Should be engineers with voltmeters. | Dept. of Our Collapsing Schools Connie du Toit has an excellent post up on the state of education in this country - the difference between learning versus memorizing, and much, much more. I forwarded it to my sister, who is a math and science teacher, for comment. If you have children, you need to read this. If you don't, you need to read it to understand why we're graduating people who are essentially illiterate ignorants. | Sunday, June 29, 2003 Oh Yeah, Gun Control is a Critical Issue Thanks to Ravenwood, I just discovered that the Million Moms March organization had a gathering at the West Palm Beach City Hall to commemorate national ASK Day. Four (4) people came. Yup, those Democratic Presidential hopefuls really need to beat the gun-control drum so they can reach their electoral base. | I Just...Aww Screw It. Go read THIS (I can't improve on it,) then watch the piece. (7Mb - broadband is recommended, but if you're on dialup, it's worth the wait.) | Another "Bankrupt the Gun Manufacturers & Dealers" Lawsuit Bites the Dust According to the Associated Press, Appeals court affirms dismissal of state's lawsuit against gun makers June 24, 2003, 5:59 PM EDTAnd really massive numbers into the hands of people who use them legally, and that's what really bothers you, Spitz, isn't it? "Defendants know that a significant portion of their guns become crime guns but turn a blind eye so as to increase profits, at the cost of many human lives and much human suffering," Spitzer said in his original complaint.How about that - logic and reason from two New York courts. They said the defendants were engaged in "the lawful manufacture, marketing and sale of a defect-free product in a highly regulated activity (!!!) far removed from the downstream, unlawful use of handguns."Not to mention, illegal. The making of laws is restricted to the legislative branch, not the judicial branch. The legislative and executive branches of government might be "better suited to address the societal problems" at issue in this case, the appellate majority wrote.And you fail there, every time. Juanita Scarlett, a spokeswoman for Spitzer, said, "We believe that the court misapplied certain doctrinal principles. We are considering an appeal."Let's see, you've been slapped down by a State court, then bitch-slapped by the Appeals court, but you're going to appeal again. Another example of the bottomless pockets of the State (financed by the citizens) trying to punish the gun manufacturers and distributors financially through the court system because they cannot accomplish what they want in the legislature. Lawyers for the gun manufacturers could not be reached by telephone for comment.At the rates they charge, I hope not. Spitzer's lawsuit was similar to one brought in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. The civil rights group alleged that gun makers knew corrupt dealers were selling firearms to criminals in minority communities and did nothing to stop it.This was another of the nine lawsuits so far thrown out or defeated out of something around 33 that have been filed. Then there's the case of Bryco manufacturing losing a lawsuit when a moron failed the first rule of gun safety and didn't keep a gun pointed in a safe direction. A babysitter, trying to unload a Bryco .380 took the gun off safe to clear the chamber (just as you must with a 1911) and PUT HIS FINGER ON THE TRIGGER. The gun discharged and 16 year-old Brandon Maxfield was struck in the jaw. The jury found Bryco liable for $50.9 MILLION. Bryco makes crappy guns, but that one wasn't defective. It worked as it was designed to. Bryco is also being sued in New Mexico for what amouts to the same thing. The Brady Center (hawk, spit) reports that both Bryco (manufacturer) and Jennings (distributor) should be held liable for making handguns that can be accidentally fired by children. Their argument: the Jennings J-22 doesn't have a magazine disconnect. Again, neither does a 1911. And the magazine disconnect is usually one of the first things removed from a Browning Hi Power in order to give it a better trigger pull. I don't think Glocks have a magazine disconnect, do they? (I'm not a Glock fan.) As far as Brady and the VPC and the rest are concerned, if it can go "BANG!" it's too dangerous for anyone outside of the government to have. Interestingly, there's some retaliatory action going on. Valor Corp., the distributor that was found to be 5% at fault when 13 year-old Nathaniel Brazill shot teacher Barry Grunow with a .25 caliber Raven that had been purchased several years before, has had the $1.2 million judgment against it thrown out. Brazill STOLE the gun from a family friend (found 50% responsible - the school district was found to be 45% responsible. The shooter was apparently not responsible at all, though he's serving a 28 year sentence for the killing.) So, according to the Sun-Sentinel, Valor is suing the Grunow widow for court costs and legal fees. Payback's a bitch, ain't it? You can bet the lawyer rich from the tobacco settlement that represented her last time won't be available for this, and I doubt that the Brady Center will pay her bills, either. Let's get the lawsuit pre-emption bill passed and signed and end this crap. If a gun manufacturer really makes a defective product, they can still be sued for product liability, but if it works as designed there should be no lawsuit. PLEASE CALL OR WRITE YOUR U.S. SENATORS. URGE THEM TO: 1) Support S. 659 and 2) Defeat a filibuster of the bill. E-MAIL your Senators. WRITE or FAX your Senators CALL your Senators via the Capitol Switchboard at: 202-224-3121. Please contact your Senator today, and help keep the rights of gun owners intact! | Saturday, June 28, 2003 Comments Are Functional But I've switched services, so all the old comments are, unfortunately, gone. Sorry about that. But this site is only six weeks or so old, and there weren't that many comments anyway. Hopefully Haloscan will be more reliable. (It's free too, so I won't hold my breath.) | Back from the Casa Grande Shoot We knocked off early due to the increasing heat and had lunch at Famous Sam's, but a great time was had by all. I got to set off the one tannerite charge (one shot, thank you,) and I found out that the 1917 Enfield makes a pretty decent skeet gun. (No kidding! I have witnesses!) I've gotta do some more of that! Still have quite a bit of ammo left, but not a single round of .30-06. I plan on taking care of THAT little problem shortly. | Open Mouth, Insert Foot, Shoot Foot
(Off to the AR15.com Casa Grade shoot. I'll write about it later. I've got 450 rounds of .223, about 200 rounds of .45, about 100 rounds of .30-06, and 200 rounds of .22. That ought to last until about noon, I hope.) | Friday, June 27, 2003 7,000 Hits At 7:56 tonight, someone from the Mindspring.com domain was my 7,000th visitor since I started running Sitemeter. I started this blog May 14th. I believe I got sitemeter running a couple of days later. 7,000 hits in six weeks. Whoa. | Sorry About the Light Posting Life intrudes, you know. But, a quick one - today's Friday Five: 1. How are you planning to spend the summer? Working 2. What was your first summer job? I worked in a hobby/crafts shop. (I was seriously into building scale models at the time.) 3. If you could go anywhere this summer, where would you go? The Florida Keys. 4. What was your worst vacation ever? Last year's. I didn't get one. 5. What was your best vacation ever? My honeymoon. In the Florida Keys. | Thursday, June 26, 2003 Comments are Down, and Blogging Will be Light I'm really busy, and there's an AR15.com shoot this weekend, so I've got a lot of ammo to load tonight and tomorrow. Having said this, I did want to mention the recent decisions of the Supreme Court. They don't fill me with confidence should they grant cert. to Silviera v. Lockyer. The majority has demonstrated that they don't consider the Constitution as any kind of limit to their power. The 14th Amendment apparenty doesn't mean what it says (University of Michigan decisions). On the other hand, they're willing to use the 9th Amendment to recognize an unenumerated right of privacy, and use that to overcome the democratically passed laws of some states. The Founders did fear that, by enumerating some rights but not others, that future societies might denigrate the unenumerated rights. In the case of the Second Amendment, we have an enumerated right that has been denigrated. So here's the question: If Silviera makes it to SCOTUS will they ignore the meaning of the Second Amendment and the Fourteenth Amendment on the basis of "public good?" Or will they decide that the Bill of Rights really means what it says, even if an individual right to arms means that bad things with guns can happen? You can bet your ass it will be a "divided court" again. And O'Connor will probably be the swing vote. If you wish to discuss this, e-mail me and I'll put up the interesting ones in a post. | Wednesday, June 25, 2003 Dept. of "Kill all the Lawyers" According to the Detroit News, Ford will no longer lease vehicles in the state of New York because of New York's ah, unique liability laws. It seems that the law in NY prevents lessors from being held responsible for accidents. Ford cited a $1-million verdict against its consumer loan unit resulting from a suit by a girl whose father, while driving a leased car, ran over her while she was sunbathing.Well, hell, that was obviously Ford's fault. Jebus. | Tuesday, June 24, 2003
I Wasn't Going to Comment on This Member of the Deep Space Nine, But... (Thanks to Charles Austin who's filling in for Dodd over at Ipse Dixit for the oh-so-apt allusion.) Well, I won't, really. I'll just repeat what Glen Reynolds said. When Gephardt said during a C-Span televised rally: "When I'm president, we'll do executive orders to overcome any wrong thing the Supreme Court does tomorrow or any other day."I didn't find it surprising at all. As Glen said: "Gephardt's not a constitutional ignoramus, or an incipient dictator. He's just your standard-model lying politician!"Indeed. | Somebody Needs to Take This Kid to a Range Carly's Story And let her learn some of the REALITY about firearms. | In Other Words, LIE Our friends at Jointogether.org have some Suggestions for Discussing Gun Safety with Other Parents: Emphasize your child's curious nature:Perhaps you should keep a closer eye on little Timmy, then. What if he gets into the kitchen where the knives are? Localize the issue:If THAT bothers you, my house would give you the willies. Set the example:Really? Your pediatrician? And he got his gun training from....? What kind of gun to you have? Sporting-clays shotgun? Deer rifle? No? A 9mm handgun you bought for self-protection? Lots of good that bad boy's going to do you if you need it in the middle of the night, huh? "Sorry, Mr. Burglar, can you wait until I unlock the gun safe, unlock the ammo, and get this thing loaded?" Since it's useless to you, I'd offer to buy it, but I'm not all that enamored of the 9mm Europellet. Have you considered a quick-access safe? Oh, right, precocious Timmy. Well, how about wearing the gun during the day, and then putting it in the quick-access safe at night while you sleep? Make it a joint effort:No, I don't feel funny (uncomfortable) at all. If you're that worried about it, keep little Timmy at home. I don't need him prowling around my house, taking my remote controls apart, and looking for my guns. Oh, and here's a nice sign for your front yard:
| Dept. of Oh for Jebus's Sake: From the Seattle Post (lack of) Intelligencer comes this little op-ed, Gun recklessness should be a crime One of the reasons commonly given for legislators repeatedly blocking a bill to punish adults for unsafe storage of firearms is that the existing reckless endangerment law is sufficient to protect children.Yes, it's always for the Children™ We'll see.(All emphasis mine.) OK, what do we have here? Morons. And so is Ms. Levitt. Let's get this straight - she can receive a YEAR IN JAIL and a $5K fine, but THIS IS NOT ENOUGH TO DETER HER FROM BEING A MORON. Noooooo, we need a bright & shiny NEW LAW that will make it REALLY, REALLY illegal to be a moron. THAT will stop people from being stupid! THAT will make them lock up their guns that we shouldn't allow them to have, but can't prevent because of that useless pesky Second Amendment thing. Get this straight, members of the Seattle P.I. editorial board: Laws like this punish people after the fact. They aren't going to prevent stupid people from being stupid, even if you threaten them with death. And they aren't going to make them good parents, either. | Monday, June 23, 2003 So This Means I Have About 22 Regular Readers?
Of course, there's probably some regulars among the "Only ISP" and "Miscellaneous" groups, too. Thank's, y'all! | What Do You Think Dachau and Auschwitz WERE?
Artist: Mike Ramirez, LA Times. And what do you think all those mass graves represented? | This Could Have Been Very Ugly. The British newspaper Guardian Unlimited reports that a freighter was boarded by the Greek Special Forces. The ship was carrying 680 tons of dynamite and 8,000 detonators. "The cargo was destined for a company with a post office box in Khartoum [the capital of Sudan] that does not exist," Mr Anomeritis added.I keep expecting something like this to sail into the Port of Los Angeles. That gives me the heebies. | Sunday, June 22, 2003 Holy Recognition, Batman! What a Time to Be on Vacation! C. Dodd Harris IV is on vacation in Belize with his family, when Chris Muir immortalizes him for blogdom!
Congratulations, Dodd, you lucky dog! You deserve it. Sorry you missed it! | Well, THIS is Nice to Know! Thanks to the Single Southern Guy, I just took the Brain Useage Profile test. And here are my results: Your Brain Usage ProfileDamn! I'm quite a guy, based on a single 20-question internet test. (That must be the "critical of others" and "pragmatist" part of my personality, eh?) | Let's See If I Can "Germinate an Intelligent Thought" Here A fellow Arizonan by the name of Jon Garrido has an, um, interesting site that goes by the name of "Out of Many, One", and on that site, he waxes poetic about his growing up in rural Arizona and his love for firearms on the gun control page. (Edit 5/16/04: The site has moved, and these links have been updated to the new URLs. The site is no longer called "Out of Many, One, but now Jon Garrido Writes) Example: I grew up in rural Arizona with a love for guns. I still remember my first gun. A thousand shot Red Ryder BB gun. I don't remember exactly how old I was. Somewhere around 6 or 7 years old. I moved up quickly. My second gun was a Daisy pump 50 shot BB gun. I was the only one of my gang who had a Daisy pump, much more powerful than my Red Ryder. I was the envy of all my buddies. I think I was 7 or 8 years old. We went everywhere with our BB guns and anything that moved was fair game. I remember lizards. They were fast but they always came to a stop after a short burst run.Nice, nostalgic stuff, no? Rural Americana at its best. He goes on to describe his experience with handguns: Handguns were also used then for hunting but really weren't made for out west. I had three handguns and my Dan Wesson 357 magnum with a six inch barrel was my favorite. I could hit a oil barrel one hundred yards away yet I never used it for hunting. Why use a handgun when a rifle is so much more accurate? Nor did I ever carry a handgun in the car. At home, it was always in one of my drawers.(Just as an aside, oil-barrel jerky doesn't sound too appetizing.) But here's where it turns South: I got rid of my handguns before I married and never bought another gun again.But he doesn't say why, and I find that interesting. Continuing: While I still love guns, gun ownership today has certainly changed for the worst. I hate the way most guns are used today.Non sequitur alert! Non sequitur alert! "...the way most guns are used today?" What planet does this guy live on? We've got 280,000,000 people in the U.S. and over 200,000,000 guns, and he hates the way most of them are used? What, hunting and target shooting? I thought that was what he did as a kid? No, he means this: I think senseless killings of innocent people is absolutely sinful.Well, hell, who doesn't? I strongly favor total gun control of hand guns and automatic weapons. The National Rifle Association claims it is guns that kill people and not people. Such a stupid comment.Pot? Meet kettle. Let's look at reality here. (And remember, Mr. Garrido wrote his op-ed in 2000.) According to the Department of Justice's Crime Atlas 2000, the homicide rate in the 20th Century peaked first in 1933 at 9.7/100,000 population, then dropped to a minimum of 4.5/100,00 in 1957, then increased again in the 70's, peaking at 10.1 in 1974, and at 10.7 in 1980, and at 10.5 in 1991. Since then it has been on the descent, reaching 6.3/100,000 in 1998. According to the FBI's Uniform Crime Reports, it continued its decline, reaching 5.5/100,000 in 2000, and it nudged up one tenth for 2001. We haven't seen a rate of 5.5/100,000 since 1965. Here's a good graphic showing the trend over time:
It would appear that Mr. Garrido grew up during that low period between 1945 and 1960. Too bad he didn't take some time while growing up to study history. And too bad that he hasn't bothered to study current events, either. Ignorance is not bliss. Homicide rates are back down where they were when he was a young man, and there are a lot more guns, especially handguns, in private hands today than there were then. Looks like most guns are being used just like they were when he was growing up. He continues: As I listen to spokesmen of the National Rifle Association, I can not understand how supposedly intelligent rational men can make make such ludicrous statements supporting the sale of guns with out adequate controls.Really? And just who gets to decide who's "sensible?" Is there a test? If so, administered by whom? I thought our system of government was based on rights? Since when are we tested before we're allowed to exercise them? And what do we do about all those people who own guns now? Sorry, Mr. Garrido, but there's a thing known as prior restraint, and another known as due process. The first says that you can't deny a right because someone might do something wrong, the second says you can only strip an individual of any right through the legal process. Doing it to the population wholesale is unconstitutional. It also makes perfect rational sense to make everyone wait at least one month to purchase a gun if it will lessen the amount of innocent killing. Why a person needs to buy a gun and be able to use it the same day is beyond any rational thinking.Let's see...could it be...for PROTECTION? And IF it will lessen the amount of killing? What if it doesn't? But here's the kicker - the last line in his little holier-than-thou sermon: Those that think gun control takes away any constitutional right are not capable of germinating an intelligent thought.OK, now it's obvious he hasn't been studying current events. England did everything Mr. Garrido thinks is a good idea - registration, restricting guns to "sensible people," the whole nine yards. Now not one law-abiding citizen in England has a handgun anymore. And no one can legally use a firearm for self-defense there unless they're a police officer or other government official. We're supposed to have a constitutional right, but there are people - as I illustrated here who want to take that right away. And as I illustrated here, our Constitutional right to arms currently doesn't exist in Arizona - the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has so ruled. More than once. Mr. Garrido represents a large number of gun owners who think "they'll never take my guns. I'm a sensible person." Right, Mr. Garrido. Pay attention: Tell that to a few hundred-thousand Brits who have had their handguns taken, and their semi-auto rifles and shotguns taken. Tell that to a bunch of Australians that have lost a lot of rifles and shotguns and are about to lose a lot of handguns. Tell that to the Canadians who are, even now, fighting a "common-sense" registration scheme that has wasted a billion of their tax dollars. Here's an intelligent thought, Mr. Garrido: We've seen "total control of handguns and automatic weapons." They've seen. Why haven't you seen?
(Image courtesy of Oleg Volk's A Human Right website. Go look. Excellent stuff.) (All emphasis in the quotations from Mr. Garrido's page are mine.) | How the Military Kills Snakes This is pretty funny. Acidman had an encounter with a snake a few days ago, so he's been getting snake-related e-mails. This one's pretty good! Not much posting today - I've got an IHMSA match to run and won't be back until this afternoon. It promises to be WARM today. | Saturday, June 21, 2003 Funny How This NEVER Happens Anywhere CCW is Passed, but They NEVER Stop Predicting It:
From Citizens for a Safer Minnesota. (You'd think that after 34 other states passed CCW and became safer they'd be for CCW, wouldn't you?) | Just One More Reason I'm Jealous of Kim du Toit His Mrs. has this excellent post up entitled Solving the Crime Problem. Go read. And while you're at it, read the post that inspired it. | Another Sign of the Apocalypse Mark "I don't really know what this means, what it represents, what it entails, what gay people stand for, where they come from or what they do or why they do it or how they become that way in the first place or even if they're allowed to vote or fly in airplanes," announced a very trembly George W. Bush at a hastily arranged press conference in the Super Mega Hetero Gun Room of the White House.Wow! Where do I go to get a Super Mega Hetero Gun Room installed in my house? Of course, I'm a South Park Republican, so I think these stereotypes are freaking hilarious! (Nod to Michele for the pointer. I don't read Morford as a rule.) | Friday, June 20, 2003 The Debate I've posted my latest two missives in the debate over at The Commentary. However, Jack is off on holiday at the end of this month, so I don't think I'll be hearing from him any time soon. As usual, the permalinks aren't working over there and neither are the archives, so just go in and scroll down. G'night, y'all. I'm tired. (UPDATE: I got the archives to work, but the permalinks are still bloggered. I can't get Jack to republish the archives to fix this.) | Have a Few Hours to Waste? I found this game a while back, but now it's new and improved - and it's Shareware Prairie Dog Hunt Pro '97 (hey, I didn't say I'd visited it recently.) It's got it all, but mostly it's got exploding prarie dogs! (no SARS here!)
They blow up REAL good! Give it a shot (pun intended.) Correction: Kim du Toit pointed out (damned quickly, I might add) that prarie dogs are spreaders of monkeypox not SARS. See the cartoon:
(Steve Benson, of the Arizona Republic) | This Must Be What Living Next to Vesuvius Looks Like This is a view of the smoke plume from the Aspen fire in the Catalina Mountains North of Tucson. It's taken from the Northwest suburb of Oro Valley, not too far from where I live. The smoke today isn't as bad as this, but that's because the worst of the fire has descended down the back slope of the range. Ugly.
The story is here. I guess I won't be going up to Summerhaven for a while. | Sometimes It Feels Like This
I think I spend entirely too much time on-line. | The Catholic Church Brought This On Themselves, I Think If you haven't been following this story, Bishop O'Brien of the Phoenix, AZ diocese made a deal with Maricopa County Attorney Rick Romley to admit that he'd sheltered preists who had sexually abused parishoners. Worse than that, it appears that Phoenix was made the dumping-ground for "troubled priests" as Boston's Cardinal Law (no saint, himself) considered Phoenix a diocese "with policies that are less restrictive than ours." Then, O'Brien backpedalled on his statement. Then O'Brien was involved in a fatal hit-and-run accident. He is now the first Bishop to have felony charges pressed against him. Frank Keating, former governor of Oklahoma and a member of an investigative board examining the breadth and scope of sexually abusive priests in the Catholic church was recently forced to resigned from the board after he "compared the Catholic Church's instinct for secrecy to that of La Cosa Nostra." Chuck Asay, once again, hits the nail on the head:
| Thursday, June 19, 2003 I'm 3-for-3! Pickings must be slim. The local lefty rag here in Tucson, the Tucson Weekly, is a fairly amusing paper I read every now and then just to see what the other side is up to. And, give them credit, they do a better job of bird-dogging the local government than either of the two local "mainstream" yellow-journals. They even print stuff by conservatives! (Well, one conservative, and he's pretty close to where the right-wing raving lunatics meet the left-wing barking moonbats.) What they do print, though, is letters to the editor, and I'm three-for-three now. The Weekly has a far-left columnist by the name of Renée Downing who publishes every other week or so, who wrote a column for the April 3 edition entitled "A Fine Line" that - to put it bluntly - pissed me off. So I wrote a letter to the editor. And they printed it, almost verbatim. They only edited it for length, and the cut was minor. If you want, you can read it here. (It's entitled "Meet Renée Downing, Hateful Liberal" - I'm not responsible for the title. Scroll down, it's the last one on the page.) That column drew fire from at least one other person. In the April 24 issue, see the letter entitled "Renée Downing's Biggest Fan". The same week they published my first missive (and after the taking of Baghdad) Renée equivocated with her column, "In Search of Some Good Amusement" and I felt I ought to task her for it, so I wrote another submission. It was accepted. It's in the May 8 issue, entitled "Yet More Love for Renée Downing" (next to last letter on the page). Well, apparently the criticism got to old Renée, so in the June 12 issue she wrote a column entitled "I Can See Clearly Now" that, once again, inspired my In order to spare you the wait, (like you really care) here it is in its entirety now: I see Ms. Downing's been affected by the volume (and vitriol) of the mail responding to her op-eds. ("I Can See Clearly Now.")I cannot help but wonder if she'll take me up on the offer.... | Have You Taken the Political Compass Test? Here's my result:
About what I expected. You can take it here. | More on Atlas Shrugged As I noted here I have started reading Ayn Rand's seminal work, Atlas Shrugged, a book that at least one survey deterimined was the most important book after the Bible to a good number of people. Normally I'm a voracious reader, and I read quite quickly. No offense to people who love this book, but IMHO it's dreck. Her characters are cardboard cutouts with psychoses for personalities - all of them. Her prose is stilted, repetative, and bombastic. Her world-model has all the intricacy and detail of a Leggo construction, but less color. And the BIG Leggo blocks, not the little ones. I'm not a third of the way in, and it's almost painful to read. Dagny and Reardon have (in the modern vernacular) "hooked up" and they're so dysfunctional that I keep expecting Francisco to show up in leather and dominate them both. Methinks Rand had some pretty severe issues with sex. Her essays are interesting, though her style even there is heavy. (Struggle through The Comprachicos some time. I think her analysis is correct, and a few decades after she wrote it we're paying the cost of what she accurately described, but a stylish and engaging writer she was not.) I give her the benefit of the doubt because English was not her native language, but this manifesto badly camoflaged as a novel is almost more than I can deal with. I have been promised that it will improve, but there's this thing called "suspension of disbelief" and it requires better writing than Ms. Rand seems capable of. If I haven't suspended disbelief by now you can bet your a** I'm not going to. I'm going to slog to the finish, I'll read all the essays she writes as dialog and cringe at the relationships between the pricipals, but I doubt that I'll enjoy the experience as so many others seem to have. (I wonder if this will result in hate-mail?) | Our Collapsing Schools Dept.: This news is from Canada, but it's an idea that I think is probably a good one: Hamilton school to offer single-sex classrooms Learning improves when boys, girls are separated, studies sayThere's more, go read the rest. I think that there's a lot wrong in the school systems here that single-sex classrooms aren't going to affect, but any effort to actually improve things is welcome. I've become convinced that the destruction wrought on our schools cannot have been an accident - at least not completely. | On a Lighter Note
There's nothing that can't be fixed with the proper application of a little high-explosive, I always say. Artist is David Jacobson, Journal-News, NY. | Oh, so THAT Explains It!
Day by Day Then There's This:
Isn't THAT the truth. Artist is Chuck Asay,  again, from the Colorado Springs Gazette.| Tuesday, June 17, 2003 Rand Simberg Weighs in on the O'Reilly Controversy I can't compete with that. Go read it. Now. (Nod to the Blogfather for the link. Who else?) | Another Opportunity for Free Enterprise and the Internet JoinTogether.org continues to be an unending font of material for me. In this piece they report that More Newspapers Banning Gun Classifieds. This happened here in Tucson a couple of years ago. The result? UsedGunsTucson.com, a web-based classified system for people buying and selling their firearms privately. At no cost, mind you. This guy runs the site on his own dime. And I've used it. It works quite well. I hope others establish sites like this to replace their newspaper classifieds. | "...they know [guns] are trouble and anytime there is one around, someone is going to get hurt." That quote from this San Francisco Bay Guardian column on the local chapter of the Pink Pistols who are trying to get San Francisco's CCW permit process changed. According to the article there are only "five permits issued to non-law enforcement personnel in the city." Five. And you can bet they're either celebrities or government officials. Mere peons need not apply. And, of course, the header of the section on this push is entitled "Licensed to kill". Here's the whole quote: "This is an antigun city, and I'm proud to say that our District Attorney's Office has the highest gun-prosecution rate of any county in the state," District Attorney Terence Hallinan said. "San Franciscans don't like guns; they know [guns] are trouble and anytime there is one around, someone is going to get hurt."Yeah, all those armed police officers sure are dangerous. The article does get in this excellent zinger: In California it's up to the discretion of the chief law enforcement agency in each county to grant a CCW permit. Evidently Marin County is lenient about CCW permits, as it issued one to actor and resident Sean Penn, who recently made the news when his car was stolen, along with two of his handguns, when he was in Berkeley. It is no secret that Penn has been convicted of assault and domestic violence, a history that would normally disqualify any applicant from permission to carry a concealed weapon.But he's not a peon - he's one of the priviledged class. And, of course, there's this inevitable question that comes up every time "shall-issue" is mentioned: What would be the implications if more people were issued CCW permits in San Francisco? Would there be shoot-outs over parking spaces and taxis? Would queer bashing decrease but homicides by queers increase? Will there be a day when you'll have to check your gun at the bar, like in San Francisco of 150 years ago?At least the author answers that question - "Not likely" he says. | I Think He'll be Charged with "Assault with a Deadly Weapon." Nod to Acidman for the pointer. Business Owner Chases, Runs Over Robbery Suspects In HummerI don't think he can claim self-defense here. The attached poll is running 85% against charging him, though. I'd like to be on that grand jury. Man, the Hummer did a job on that car.
You can bet it wasn't an H2. | Just Googling Around, and I Find This: From the Timberjay News in Minnesota, comes this little op-ed (I don't know how long the link will be valid - I suspect only one day) entitled: "Public's fear the biggest issue with concealed carry law" Why, yes indeed, that is the biggest issue. And that fear is well fed by the gun-phobic groups and by the media. But the part of the editorial that really grabbed my attention was this: Whether they are used or not, guns are intimidating to many people - and with good reason. Police officers carry guns and most never use them. But the presence of the gun is a reminder to the public that they have the ability to use deadly force if needed - and the intimidation factor that provides gives police officers an upper hand over the rest of us.That's quite correct - government is essentially exercised through the threat of force against its citizenry. But it continues: That’s acceptable when they are highly trained and their job is to enforce the law and keep the peace. But statewide polls have already demonstrated that the idea of the average Joe walking around with the same intimidating firearms isn’t appealing to most Minnesotans.And why is that? Because most people have been taught that defending yourself isn't your job - it's the job of the state. You aren't "highly trained" or qualified to do that job. Leave it to the experts. The column continues, though, with this: Are such fears irrational? Perhaps. The data is far from clear on the point, despite the rhetoric of supporters.The data is far from clear??? We've got data from 35 states dating back years that proves "such fears irrational." The piece concludes: In the end, this debate isn’t really about guns—it’s about fear and public perception. And as public officials and polls around the state have been stating loudly and clearly, this new law will make more Minnesotans feel fearful, while offering an ineffective security blanket to a very small minority. Some of that fear will likely dissipate over time. Five years from now, many people will probably have forgotten about this and moved on to worry about something else. And as one letter writer pointed out, most people will stop carrying guns once the novelty wears off and they realize it’s mostly just an unnecessary burden.If the strongest argument you can make against concealed carry is that it inspires a little temporary fear in the brainwashed populace, then please explain to me why fifteen states still don't offer "shall-issue" - 'cause that's a piss-poor excuse. | Eugene Volohk Fisks the "Guns in the Home = Risk" Meme And well. In a National Review Online column today, Professor Volokh fisks a recent repeat of this nugget of half-truth that gets repeated as often as "thirteen kids a day" does. What the University of Pennsylvania study found was a statistical correlation: Gun ownership is correlated with gun deaths. But that two things are correlated doesn't prove that one causes the other. The sex-crime rate is correlated over time with the use of air conditioning, but not because air conditioning causes sex crime; rather, both rise during the summer months. Likewise, whether someone in your home has been to the hospital recently is correlated with death in your home, but not because hospital care tends to kill people (though sometimes it does). Rather, both hospital stays and deaths often have a common cause: serious illness.Logically what they are practicing is the fallacy of post hoc, ergo propter hoc - "after this, therefore because of this" - and it doesn't work that way, as he deftly illustrates. But here's the money quote, and the thing I find so angering about "studies" of this type: Unfortunately, this is how conventional wisdom is molded. A badly flawed study leads to an even more flawed New York Times article. Readers read it and say "Wow, it's dangerous for me to own a gun" — or "Since guns endanger even their owners, there's really no reason to keep them legal." Precisely because the study seems so authoritative, so scientific, it's likely to be influential, even when it's misdesigned and misreported. And this is especially so when these flaws are repeated in study after study, as they have routinely been in the gun debate. Bad social science leads to bad legal policy.Amen. His piece concludes with a comment on the suggestion that medical professionals should make recommendations to their patients: Finally, the study concludes with a recommendation to the medical profession: Physicians should "discuss with all patients" "the consequences of having access to guns." But "discussions" are only helpful if the physician actually knows what he's talking about. Many physicians have little personal knowledge about guns, and haven't read the rebuttals to these studies. If they start spreading this erroneous information to their patients, the results won't be good either for the patients or for the reputation of the medical profession.They're way ahead of the curve on this one, Professor. Just look below at my post "This is the Kind of Thing That REALLY IRRITATES ME!" | I Can SEE! Back from the eye doctor a couple of hours ago. My pupils are starting to come back down (very freaky having vampire eyes). So now I can read the computer screen. Man, I missed some stuff. | Monday, June 16, 2003 This Concludes the Blogging for Today I'm going to load some ammo. Blogging will be light tomorrow, as I have an appointment with my opthalmologist, and she's going to dialate my pupils and Have a pleasant evening. Leave a comment, if you would. | Steven Den Beste Weighs In On Europe's Proposed "Right of Reply" In which he states again that the EU is being set up as a benevolent dictatorship. For now. Rachel Lucas weighs in on the topic, too. I predict this is going to get ugly in a few years or less. This always reminds me of the (possibly apocryphal) 18th Century quotation from Sir Alexander Frasier Tytler: A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largess from the public treasury. From that time on the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the results that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship.I think the Europeans are just a bit ahead of us on the curve. They've hit "dependency" and are about to descend - voluntarily - back into bondage. | On a More Serious Note, In relation to the Doctors for the Reduction of Handgun Injury piece below, comes this link from Prof. Volokh concerning a 52 year-old woman who used instructions she found on the internet to take her own life. Now St. Louis Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce wants to prosecute the provider of that information for voluntary manslaughter. Where do these people get law degrees? Ms. Joyce believes that the suicide victim would not have killed herself if she hadn't found that information. What planet is she from? She'd have found some way to end her life, if that's what she'd decided to do. As I noted, 29,350 people offed themselves in the U.S. in 1999. Women don't use a firearm as much as men do. The tend to use asphyxiation or poisoning, generally by drug overdose. This woman could have just as easily used the Japanese method of throwing herself in front of a train. Question to Ms. Joyce: What if this information had been printed in a novel? I'm quite tired of the government trying to protect us from ourselves. | Department of "What the Hell Were They THINKING?"! Thanks to some sharp-eyes over at AR15.com, I found this extremely humorous link. It would appear that someone at Mattel wasn't thinking when they created the Harry Potter Nimbus 2000 Broomstick toy. Then again, maybe they were...and they should be investigated. It appears that the toy is extremely popular with the young ladies.  Bzzzzz......Oh, and Amazon no longer carries the item for some reason.... (I predict a comment from the Reverend Falwell on the pernicious evil of making witchcraft into childs-play after this hits general circulation.)  UPDATE: Get your pre-ban's at ebay! It went for $51! I'm sure she'll really enjoy it! | Kim du Toit provides the link to the followup on this story. Big Lake pastor to stand trial in killing of chapel intrudersHad this happened in Texas, no charges would have been filed. Note the money quote: The location of the men's wounds probably swayed the jury, as did the distance between the chapel and Mielke's home and the fact that the pastor chose to confront the men rather than call 911, Kalytiak said.Yup. Depend on the State. They'll show up after a while and take a report. I bet the spree of church break-ins has stopped. | I Can't IMAGINE Why No One Has Interviewed BILL on Hill's New Book!
The artist is Steve Benson of the (Phoenix) Arizona Republic. | "We Come from Hearty Stock" - or - Our Ancestors Said: "Fuck You, We'll Leave!" Mrs. du Toit has an excellent essay up on the kind of people who came to America - the ruly, unrepentant non-conformists. What the hell happened to us? I've said before that when a society becomes too restrictive, then the individualists will head for the new frontier. Unfortunately we no longer have much of a new frontier. We'd better figure out a way to exploit space, and soon. I hate to think what will happen when the pressure builds up because there's no longer a safety valve. | The Sun May Have Set, But Some Brits Still Have A Pair Also from Samizdata comes this story of Geoff Bean an unrepentant and belligerent Brit who has no patience with government bureaucrats. Here's part of what he wrote to his government: Were I a one-legged homosexual Afghan refugee/terrorist living on the welfare state, you and your ilk would not dare write in such a manner for fear of having all the human rights lawyers in creation round your necks, but as you are speaking to an honest, hard-working and overstressed Englishman, you appear to think you can behave like all too many of the vast and ever-increasing army of totally useless, non-productive, arrogant and bloody-minded officialdom, who are now only too successfully doing more damage to this once great and free nation than was ever achieved by Adolf Hitler.That's the kind of attitude we need more of here before we become more like there. Go read it. Buy that man a beer! | Socialized Medicine - Equally Bad Care for All Samizdata reports on the status of socialized medicine in England - this time in how it relates to soldiers injured in service. Seems that if you were injured and need to see a specialist or require surgery, you get to wait six months to a year to see a government-paid doctor. Or you can get it taken care of expeditiously if you want to pay for it yourself. "I'm sorry leftenant, but that mine fairly mangled your foot. We can have it off and get you fitted for a prosthetic in, oh, eight months. What? What do you do until then? Well, here's a prescription for painkillers, and stay off that...foot. Eh wot?" Remember Hillarycare? With that plan you couldn't pay for it yourself. | Lileks on the Wellstone Assassination Theorists “Before you write me off as a crank . . . ” - ink’s dry, sir. Ink’s dry. “. . let me ask you a simple question. Do you know what caused the crash?” I’m guessing gravity had something to do with it. “If you don’t know, then how can you know that I am wrong?” He’s got me there. I also don’t know why the shuttle crashed, which is why I cannot rule out the possibility that Romulan warbirds fired their disruptors as the ship began its descent. But I suspect you are wrong about this, because you are wrong about nearly everything else. Want proof? Mr. Fetzer’s U of M website links to his other sites, assassinationscience.com and assassinationresearch.com.Oh, and Lileks also assassinates some ants. Good read. | Saturday, June 14, 2003 More Control Loop Feedback from the Blogosphere Mr. Harris over at Ipse Dixit has an excellent analysis and disassembly of Michael Kinsley's latest Slate piece, "Return of the Class War". This is why I loved reading his stuff back on Themestream and why I'm happy to find him still writing. An excerpt: Gaze, my friends, at the living, beating heart of the Left. Here, in its natural habitat (an op-ed in an elitist, left-leaning publication), is the very essence of liberalism: The care and feeding of envy. No-one is wealthy but that they were blessed by "the luck of the draw." Capitalism in America is a massive, US$10 trillion lottery in which the lucky few get to drive Rolls-Royces while the rest of us toil and sweat to make their lives of ease and idleness possible. But they accept this dreary lot because - hey! who knows? - maybe one day they'll get the lucky hand and be given a key to the secret inner kingdom.Go read every damned word. Oh, and I happen to work for two of those 80-percenters. In 1981 they risked everything they had to build a company - the company I've worked for the last 17 years, and that pays me a pretty damned good salary. I don't begrudge them their money at all. They busted their asses for it, and I helped them get where they are. And if I want to take the risk they did, perhaps in ten or fifteen years I too can have the kind of income they draw now. This is America - land of opportunity, not the land of handouts. | The Sun Has Set on the British Empire Emperor Misha has this post about the current status of English farmer Tony Martin, who was convicted for shooting two burglars in his home. I've written about Martin before, as I studied what was available in detail during his trial. Unlike many gun-right supporters, I have said that even here (except in Texas, South Carolina, and some other localities) what Mr. Martin did would have put him in jail here, too. He set up an ambush, and he shot the perps with (regardless of how you feel about registration) an unregistered pump-action shotgun. Then he lied to the cops and claimed self-defense. The evidence proved otherwise. HOWEVER, what's going on over there now doesn't border on the ridicuolous, it goes way over that line. Go read it and be pissed off. | This is the Kind of Thing That REALLY IRRITATES ME The organization Doctors Against Handgun Injury has produced a pamphlet that YOUR doctor can give you to help you recognize the dangers of keeping a firearm in your home. It's an Adobe Acrobat PDF file, entitled Is Your Family Safe? It's a two-page tri-fold, made up of little soundbite-sized blurbs of statistics and recommendations. Mixed in with a little reasonably good advice, is a lot of (I believe) intentionally misleading statistics, which I will illustrate here. I'm not going to quote the whole thing, just selected parts. Why having a gun in the home is a problemWell! Let's just start off with a blatent assertion! We're doctors, after all, and the only difference between a doctor and God is that God doesn't believe he's a doctor! Having a gun in the home IS a problem? Not "may be" a problem? Not "can be" a problem? Not "is sometimes" a problem? Only "IS" a problem? When some 40% of households in this country have a firearm in them? Next: Doctors treat the victims of gun violence every day. We want to reduce the number of deaths and injuries and prevent you and your family from being a statistic.Ah, yes, the "guns are the cause of suicide" argument. Except they don't tell you some other interesting information. Yes indeed, according to CDC statistics 16,599 Americans did kill themselves with firearms in 1999. Another 12,764 killed themselves by other means. The total number of suicides was 29,350, and the rate per 100,000 population was 10.66. That puts the United States, with its 200,000,000+ firearms, over 65 MILLION of which are handguns firmly in the MIDDLE OF THE PACK for suicide internationally. If firearms actually cause suicide, then our population should have offed itself a few generations ago. Let's look at some comparitives, shall we? Japan, a nation with a population of about 126,600,000 in 1999, a little less than half our own, suffered 31,385 suicides - a rate of 24.8 per hundred thousand population. And there are essentially NO privately owned firearms in Japan. Even Japanese police officers leave their firearms at work when they go home. The Japanese kill themselves by asphyxiation (either by hanging or car exhaust) or by jumping off of buildings or in front of moving trains. To be fair, Japan's suicide rates have skyrocketed with their recent economic downturn (it would appear that a bad economy represents a much higher risk of suicide than individual ownership of a firearm.) On average, the suicide rate in Japan has run at about 17 per 100,000. Considerably higher than the U.S. but not more than double. But most people are aware of the high rate of suicide in Japan, and dismiss it as being "cultural." Are they also aware, however, of the suicide rates in France? According to this CDC report from 1998, France had a suicide rate of 21 per 100,000. Leading method? Suffocation. France is followed closely by Denmark with a suicide rate of 18 per 100,000. Leading method? Pretty much evenly split between suffocation and poisoning. According to this table, in 1997 of the eleven countries with the top per capita Gross National Products (the US ranks in the middle), the US has the second lowest suicide rate. Only the Netherlands was lower. See the chart:
Yup. All those guns CAUSE suicide. But the pamphlet reinforces this claim: • 10,828 Americans died in firearm homicides in 1999The source of this assertion? "Suicide in the Home in Relation to Gun Ownership" from the New England Journal of Medicine, August 13, 1992. Primary author? Dr. Arthur Kellermann of Emory University, and staunch defender of thorougly discredited history professor Michael Bellisiles. They were, after all, both professors at Emory, and they are both apparently practicing deliberate mendacity when it comes to firearms statistics. Dr. Kellermann is also the source of the "43 to 1" claim of guns in the home being more deadly to the occupants than to criminals. The organization Jews for the Preservation of Firearm Ownership (an admittedly biased group) produced this excellent piece: Disarming the Data Doctors: How to Debunk the "Public Health" Basis for "Gun Control" where it disassembled that "study." Kellermann's biased research resulted in Congress pulling $2.6 million from the CDC's budget in 1997 - precisely the amount the CDC had spent on the National Centers for Injury Prevention and Control research into gun-related injury - because of blatant bias in their research. This article by Dr. Miguel Faria on that topic is worth the read. Dr. Faria is Editor-Emeritus of The Medical Sentinel of the American Association of Physicians and Surgeons, and a neurosurgeon. This piece entitled "Guns in the Medical Literature - A Failure of Peer Review" by Dr. Edgar A. Suter of the Doctors for Integrity in Research & Public Policy is also a good one. Pardon me if I take Dr. Kellermann's statistics with a Next: • 824 Americans died from unintentional firearm incidents during 1999THIS is the part that REALLY CHAPS MY ASS. Indeed, in 1999 the CDC reports that there were 824 unintentional firearms deaths in the U.S., but associated with this fact comes the line Research shows that educational programs designed to teach children not to touch guns do not work. If kids find guns, they usually play with them. Such play can quickly turn deadly.And right next to it, this picture of a toddler reaching into a dresser drawer:
Now, what are you to infer from this? That the overwhelming majority of those 824 accidental deaths were that of very young children, no? This is pure propaganda, and it's propaganda that works, as illustrated by my favorite reference, Jean Hanff Korelitz's Salon.com piece "What a few good women can do" from March of 2000: 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.She believes not 824 little kids, but 4,000 die from gun accidents. Let's look at the facts, as unpleasant as they actually are. In 1999, as the piece says, 824 accidental deaths by gunshot were recorded. But how many of these were children? If you define it as I do as "under the age of 18" then the total number of "children" who died by accidental gunshot wound was 158. If you mean small children, such as the one in the picture - say, under the age of 10? 31. Not 4,000. Not 824. Thirty-one. Compare that to the number of children under the age of 10 who died by drowning in 1999: 750. The number under the age of 10 who died in bicycle accidents? 81. But we're told endlessly that they're no longer interested in gun-control any more, but now it's gun-safety they pursue. I'm sorry, but guns are apparently safer than water or bicycles, at least for small children. Next: • Firearms are the second leading cause of death among adolescents and young adultsAgain, the intention to mislead. Firearms ARE the second leading cause of death among adolescents and young adults. Between the ages of 15 and 24, it isn't accidental death, it's homicide. "Safe storage" doesn't have any effect on that. The third leading cause of death in that age group is suicide, and hopefully I've already covered that topic in sufficient detail. But here's something really interesting that will undoubtedly get me labled as a racist: Who makes up the overwhelming majority of the homicide victims? In 1999 a total of 4,998 young people between the ages of 15 and 24 (inclusive) died from homicide. Of those, 2,453 were black males - 49%. But black males between the ages of 15 and 24 (inclusive) represent only 7.6% of the population of the US of that age. Read that again - 7.6% of all Americans between the ages of 15 and 24 provide 49% of the victims of homicide by all methods for that age group. Now, is it a "gun storage" problem, or is it something else? Finally: • For every time a gun in the home is used in self-defense, there are 22 criminal, unintentional or intentional self-inflicted shootingsSource? "Injuries and Deaths due to Firearms in the Home," Journal of Trauma, 1998. Author? Dr. Kellermann again. You think they'd try and find someone else just to be a bit more broad, but you'll notice in the pamphlet that they don't tell you who the author is, just the prestigious journal the "statistic" was published in. This is toned down from his "43 times more likely" claim, but only barely. Now I ask you, given the statistics provided by the CDC itself, do you think "guns in the home" are the problem? (Extensive use of the CDC WISQARS tools were used to compile the data in this post.) | Friday, June 13, 2003 Sometimes I REALLY, REALLY Hate Myself I just spent the last hour and a half working on a killer post, and I just deleted it - BY ACCIDENT. Rule #1: Back up your work. Rule #2: See rule #1. It's too late to generate it again tonight, but rest assured I'll do it tomorrow. DAMNIT! | Reloader's Alert! If you reload, especially if you reload military rifle calibers (.223, .308, .30-06 & such) then you might want to look at Widener's, specifically their military surplus pulldown powder. "Pulldown" powder is powder recovered from unfired surplus ammunition. They are apparently having a sale on WCC-844 (equivalent to Hodgdon H335) and WC-846 (equivalent to Hodgdon BL(C)-2). They're selling both for $49 per 8lb. keg, plus freight and hazmat charges. I just bought one of each, and it worked out to $8.25/lb. Considerably better than the $20/lb. plus tax that I pay for the commercial versions here in town. I've seen the same powder elsewhere at $64 per 8lb. keg. Oh, and that nice group I shot with the Enfield? The powder was WCC-844. Get it while you can. | The Friday the 13th Five 1. What's one thing you've always wanted to do, but never have? Shoot a 40x40 in IHMSA competition. Several 39's but no 40's. I guess I choke. (Or the damned turkeys dodge.) 2. When someone asks your opinion about a new haircut/outfit/etc, are you always honest? "Honey, does this look good on me?" (Translation: "Honey, do you ever want to have sex with me again?") Suuuuurrre. I'm always brutally honest. Right. 3. Have you ever found out something about a friend and then wished you hadn't? What happened? Not that I can remember. 4. If you could live in any fictional world (from a book/movie/game/etc.) which would it be and why? The Captain Kirk era of the Star Trek universe seems appealing. Not too PC and merit still counted for something. And pre-holodeck. If I had access to a holodeck, I'd never come out. My wife can attest to this. 5. What's one talent/skill you don't have but always wanted? A real talent? I'd like to have an excellent singing voice. ANY talent? I'd like to fly like Neo in The Matrix. THAT would be BAD. | Thursday, June 12, 2003 More Time Wasted When They Could be Doing Something USEFUL JoinTogether has this little nugget about cops wasting valuable N.Y. Police Collect Forgotten FirearmsOh, yeah, I'm sure this is really effective at keeping guns off the streets. People are just waiting for their relatives to die so they can sell their firearms on the black market. Jeebus. In addition, the Department of Vital Statistics in Syracuse is including a form letter when it sends out death certificates to encourage surviving family members to contact the sheriff's department if the deceased had weapons.Wow! Five hundred recovered and a whopping 1,100 unaccounted for! In three years! Be still my beating heart! How about doing something about the drug dealers who do a side business out of the trunks of their cars? Think that might be a bit more effective? Or is Onondaga County kinda like Mayberry there, Herrick said many of the guns being turned in are loaded, and many family members don't even realize there are bullets inside.Then don't you think if sex-ed is so important, that gun safety might not be a bad thing to teach? "It's just crazy out there -- guns under people's beds, in bookcases, linen closets, attics, basements and sometimes there are guns people living there don't even know about," he said.Yeah, that's crazy alright. Everybody in the house ought to know what guns are there, and how to use them. It's no business of the government. [UPDATE:] C. Dodd Harris has an excellent take on this over at Ipse Dixit.. Go read. | Interesting How Little Media Attention THIS Gets, Isn't It? Seen on several blogs, comes this bit of news: Alaska Gov. Frank Murkowski, New 'No License Required' CCW Law, and No permit needed to carry concealed guns. It seems that we now have two states that have no requirement for a permit to carry concealed. Did NBC, CBS, or ABC cover it? CNN? MSNBC? Fox News? The Yahoo! Gun Control Page? No. Just one little Associated Press story in the Anchorage Daily News, and coverage on the gun rights forums and on gun bloggers pages. Interesting, no? Minnesota just goes through histrionics to pass permitted concealed carry, and it's NATIONAL NEWS! Colorado makes gun regulation unform across the state, and it's covered everywhere! But Alaska passes "Vermont Carry" and *YAWN*. Damn, isn't anyone outraged? Even JoinTogether hasn't had anything to say on this - yet. Perhaps they're hoping none of us in the flyover states will notice. Oh, and doesn't Minnesota make it 35 states with either no permit required or "shall-issue" concealed-carry? | Sometimes Summary Execution IS Called For And, once again, Child Abductive Services screws the pooch: Police find emaciated boy, 7, locked in closet; parents held PHOENIX - A 7-year-old boy was found bruised and emaciated locked in a closet at a Phoenix home, police said.Oh, but that's not the best of it! CPS boss 'reeling' over case of boy kept in closet He'd better be reeling. His head ought to be rolling: Child Protective Services could have done more in the case of a 7-year-old Phoenix boy found Sunday locked in a dark closet and severely malnourished, Department of Economic Security acting Director Bill Bell said Wednesday.Oh, really? Some "significant issues," eh? You don't say? Former neighbors and friends of the Phoenix family said they had called CPS over the past several years to report abuse, but nothing was ever done. Isaac was found Sunday at his family's north Phoenix apartment after his grandmother asked police to check on him because she hadn't seen him in months.Where they'll probably end up in the "care" of child molesters. AAAAAAGGGHHHH! This shit pisses me off! It seems in the actual occasions that removal of children from abusive households should occur, these incompetent assnuggets don't do anything at all And the title of this post? I'd have given the cops a medal if they'd capped the so-called "parents" immediately after finding the boy. No trial was necessary here. | Somebody ALWAYS Beats Me to It. Publicola dissects an op-ed in the Denver Post by the ironically named Tom Mauser (permalinks bloggered, the post is June 11, 10:02PM). Mr. Mauser lost his son at Columbine, so his bias is at least understandable, but he's disconnected from reality here. I suppose losing a son explains that, but I don't forgive him for it. Anyway, Publicola does a good job dismantling his arguments against the lawsuit protection legislation. Excerpt: Go read."Imagine a world in which one of its most dangerous products is exempt from consumer-protection laws. Imagine a world in which the makers and sellers of that product are immune from civil lawsuits related to that product.Translation: We're not going to be dealing with much factual information, so let's try to get used to the make believe world I'm about to describe to you. Oh, and read the post right below that one too. Excellent! | I Think I'LL Vote for Kucinich in the Primary, Too. I am, after all, registered as a Democrat in Arizona. ISN'Tapundit has an outstanding fisking of a recent Salon.com column on the "Take Back America" conference. Apparently Dipnut actually paid for the Salon.com "premium" (and I use that term tongue-in-cheek) service so he had access to the entire piece. I don't, so I won't link to it here. The link is available on Isntapundit, if you too help support that...site. Carol Moseley Braun is a taco short of a combination plate, but Kucinich actually has a following, according to this piece. Nowhere has the term "barking moonbat" been more apt. Bush v. | Crossbreeding a Llama with a Vacuum Cleaner James Lileks weighs in today on the "roadmap to They don’t have helicopters, we're told, so they use suicide bombers. If they had helicopters, they would have strafed the bus and everyone waiting at the corner. Give them a nation where Hamas runs unchecked, and they’ll have helicopters. They won't be Apaches. The bill of sale will be calculated in Euros and the manual written in French.Yup. He also discusses the local weather, tax rebates, the cycle of life, and crappy hotels in New York. You know, the standard Bleat excellence. | Wednesday, June 11, 2003 "Guns offer false security" Says a Grad Student AlphaPatriot sent me this USAToday op-ed by Kimberly Shearer Palmer, hoping, I suspect, that I'd fisk it. Who am I to let a reader down? Let's begin: Before I held a revolver, I thought only police officers and psychopaths shot guns. Guns seemed uncontrollable objects that could inflict death at any moment; I preferred to avoid them.Ooh! "police officers and psychopaths!" I ought to drag out the Freud quote. Then I learned how to shoot. My friends arranged a trip to a shooting range outside Chicago. Our instructor, a former police officer, taught us how to stand and point, hunching our shoulders for accuracy. We shot at the target silhouettes' heart and lungs before aiming for its head. In real life, our instructor explained, our attackers might wear bulletproof vests.One of my absolute favorite quotes belongs to blogger and author Teresa Nielsen Hayden: "Basically, I figure guns are like gays: They seem a lot more sinister and threatening until you get to know a few; and once you have one in the house, you can get downright defensive about them." Seems she discovered the truth of that. I was thrilled with my new power. A technological advantage now would let me fight the bad guys, even ones bigger and stronger that I am — or so I thought. Guns give women equal killing ability, but they also draw us into the dangerous illusion that owning one makes us safe.Then her instructor did a piss-poor job of explaining what a gun can and cannot do. Owning a gun doesn't make you safe. NOTHING makes you "SAFE." Owning a fire-extinguisher doesn't make you safe from fire, either. It simply provides you a tool in the event that one occurs. Just as, in the event of a fire, an extinguisher provides you the means to protect yourself, your loved ones, and your property until the fire department arrives, a firearm provides you the means to protect yourself, your loved ones and your property in the event of a crime until the police can arrive. But you have to have more than that. You need to know what the tool can do and cannot do - be it a gun or a fire extinguisher. You have to have it available - keeping it locked up and/or empty or simply where you cannot reach it in an emergency renders it useless. You have to know that you will be able to use it if necessary - if you don't believe you can, having it won't do you any good. There's more to owning a gun for self-defense than simply purchasing it. More women are using guns. The number of National Rifle Association Women on Target programs — shooting clinics for women only — more than doubled between 2001 and 2002, says Stephanie Henson, manager of the NRA's women's programs. Last year, clinics were held in 38 states. Henson says women's interest is so strong that the NRA recently launched Woman's Outlook, its first magazine aimed just at women.Then I hope like hell they're getting better training than Ms. Palmer got. But gun popularity among women is based on two misconceptions. First, gun advocates often call guns the great equalizer between men and women. In reality, according to a new study by the University of California at Davis, women who own handguns are more than twice as likely to be murdered with a firearm by their partners than those who do not. While this may be partly explained by the fact that women who fear an attack are more apt to buy a gun, the study shows guns often fail to help women protect themselves.Perhaps because they don't understand, as Ms. Palmer does not understand, what having a gun for self-defense requires? Where before she seemed to believe that guns were some kind of magic talisman OF evil, now she seems to believe that they are some kind of magic talisman to WARD OFF evil. They are neither. "Having a gun gives women a false sense of security," says Naomi Seligman, communications director of the Violence Policy Center, a Washington non-profit that urges stricter gun control. "Guns can be taken away, and women can be killed by their own guns."And Naomi Seligman is an unbiased source of fact, I suppose? How often are "guns taken away" from someone? Approximately 1% of the time. If you have a gun and are prepared to use it, no one's going to take it from you. The second misconception is that guns are the only solution to help otherwise "weak" women protect themselves. In fact, a wide range of self-defense options, from chemical sprays to street fighting, gives women the tools to fight back.Except according to the National Criminal Justice Reference Service "(W)hile 33 percent of all surviving robbery victims were injured, only 25 percent of those who offered no resistance and 17 percent of those who defended themselves with guns were injured. For surviving assault victims, the corresponding injury rates were, respectively, 30 percent, 27 percent, and 12 percent." Defending yourself with a gun provides the best chance of escaping injury yourself. A 110 pound woman against a 180 pound man means, even if she gets away, she's probably going to be injured. A popular new form of self-defense training simulates attacks on the street and in the bedroom by male "attackers" wearing protective padding. This realistic-training approach includes verbal and psychological elements that prepare women for real-life situations. Fighting off a man in a simulated attack is much more likely to resemble a real incident than shooting at a target-range silhouette.I wholeheartedly agree. If you're going to carry a gun for self-protection, then training for real-life situations is an excellent idea. But that training should not denegrate the advantage that having a gun provides. Consider, if you are about to be assaulted; robbed or carjacked, and your training has prepared you, which is more likely to put off your attacker: a can of pepper spray, or a .38 revolver aimed at his abdomen? And what if he has a firearm? Which is more likely to deter him then? Self-defense classes also offer a significant psychological benefit. After taking self-defense courses with simulated attacks at The Empower Program Inc., a Washington non-profit, my younger sister and I felt more confident walking down the street. We were aware that at any time, anywhere, we knew how to fight back. The course also taught us how to avoid violent situations and how to de-escalate encounters before they become deadly. Like Jennifer Lopez's character in the 2002 movie Enough, in which she learns to fight to protect herself and her daughter against her abusive husband, we had reclaimed our right to feel safe while depending only on our own bodies.More magical thinking. She felt more confident. Yahoo to Jennifer Lopez, but I'd like to remind you that that was a movie. However, we have actual stories like this one where a woman awoke with a man on top of her. She took HIS gun and killed him with it. "In this case, the victim made the decision to struggle and fight back...She made the decision that she was going to survive this incident." It's about mental attitude. A gun is just part of that. More stories: In December, 2002 in Tucson AZ, Martha Lynn Chaney shot her abusive boyfriend when he tried to force his way into her home. (Story no longer available online) In March, 2002 in Colville WA, 71 year-old Bethan Scutchfield, an invalid woman, shot and killed a 28 year old man who was physically assaulting her. The man was her granddaughter's ex-boyfriend who was violating a restraining order. December 2001, A LaCenter OR woman, Cheryl Swenson, shot her abusive husband when he broke down a bedroom door in order to continue beating her. The June 11 issue of the Indiana StarPress reports that Charlotte Johnson shot and wounded her ex-boyfriend in self-defense. WZZM news in Grand Rapids, MI reports that Robin Trumbull used a handgun to defend herself from an attacker. The March 23 edition of the Macomb Daily online edition reports that a 40 year old woman was the victim of an attempted robbery, but she told the robber: "If you're going to shoot me then do it, 'cause I'm definitely going to kill you," when she pulled her 9mm handgun on him. He ran. Considering guns as women's only shot at self-defense is like eating fat-free cookies to ward off obesity; they can make the situation even worse. Instead of buying a gun, I'm sticking to basic street smarts that will always be there when I need them most.Try a combination, Ms. Palmer. "Street smarts" and a gun will protect you better than "street smarts" without one. But a gun without "street smarts" is still better than having neither, so long as you're willing to defend yourself. | 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! | | |
