The Smallest Minority |
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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?
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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, May 14, 2007 Four Years and Counting.... Four years ago I pressed "PUBLISH" on my first post at The Smallest Minority. I was the Blogosphere's newest member. For about .0003 seconds. I was not, however, completely new to the intarw3bz, as the current cyberpunk generation mangles it. I'd been online since 1995, first in the moshpit of UseNet, then the late lamented Themestream.com, then the message boards - AR15.com, followed by a concurrent six-month stint in the target-rich environment that is DemocraticUnderground.com. I read a lot. I wrote a lot. I learned a lot. Then I discovered blogs. I'm pretty sure (time fades my memory) that Instapundit was the first blog I ever read, but Insty has quite a blogroll, and as everyone knows is a prolific linker. Through him I found Gut Rumbles, the open, intimate, hilarious, filthy, sad, gut-wrenching - and above all else, exquisitely written - daily diary of Rob Smith, and I was hooked. Not long after I discovered blogs, Rob excoriated a commenter on the topic of gun control. The commenter was an Irishman living in London, and suffice it to say, he was supportive of the idea. Rob was not. His "Acidman" moniker was well earned. Well, I had at that point some seven years of concentrated study and discussion on the topic, so I offered to debate Rob's commenter. Thinking that we would do it at a neutral site, I took advantage of Blogger's free offer and created TSM. It seems he had the same idea, as he (already a blogger) created The Commentary. I became not only the proprietor of my own blog, but debate partner at another on almost the same day. The debate at The Commentary ran for four months. I did not convert my opponent, Jack, but we did conclude the exchange on this note: So, what has been achieved? Well,Not quite a victory. Far from a defeat, though. And here I've been ever since. Blogger informs me that this is my 2,429th post. HaloScan tells me that it has archived 13,946 comments. Sitemeter tells me that it has recorded 797,726 visits and 964,923 page views since I added it to TSM in early June 2003, and at the present time I average 1048 visits a day. Technorati tells me that 180 unique blogs have linked to TSM in the last six months, and it is the 22,944th ranked blog out of the 71 million it tracks. I am a "Marauding Marsupial' in the Truth Laid Bear's recently repaired Blogosphere Ecosystem, ranked #1,731 out of the nearly 70,000 it monitors. And none of those numbers mean all that much, really, when you think about it. Not in a nation of 300 million in a world of six and a half billion. For some people a blog is just a diary, a place to write their thoughts and log their daily lives. To some, it's a bulletin board for the others in their lives to catch up on. For others their blog is a newspaper or a magazine directed at their particular interest. For still others like me, it's a soapbox and a megaphone. But out of 71 million blogs, most do it poorly - the majority for only a few days or weeks before abandoning the effort. There is a large grain of truth in Theodore Sturgeon's 90% Law. When it comes to blogs, I'd say that percentage approaches 99%. But 1% of 71,000,000 is 710,000. That's a lot of good stuff out there - for free. I greatly appreciate my loyal readership, which I estimate is realistically about 2-300 regular (daily/weekly/monthly) readers. I cherish (most of) my commenters. Y'all are highly intelligent, erudite, and passionate. You other bloggers who have me on your blogrolls? I'm eternally grateful. I find very rewarding all the links this blog receives from other web sites - blogs, message boards, LiveJournals - where someone says "Hey, go read this. It's got information you won't find anywhere else," or "You're wrong. Go check this out, and the sources linked there." But what I find most rewarding of all are the emails or the comments (few and far between, I must admit) where someone says "you changed my mind," or "you taught me something," or at least "you made me think." So I think I'll hang around for a while longer. And yes, I'm going to stay with Blogger unless they kick me off. There are a lot of links to the stuff in the archives, not to mention the 13k-plus comments, and I don't want those going anywhere. Labels: blogging | | |
