Quote of the Day - War on Women Edition

Seen at Facebook in response to Glamour Magazine's announcement of Bru... Caitlyn Jenner as "Woman of the Year":

Not only do we make better money than women, we also apparently make better WOMEN than women.

But that's not QotD.  My wife's reaction to that comment is:

They DO! They work harder at it!

Your Moment of Zen

It's been awhile.  Saw this guy's work at an art show/sale this morning - Victor Beer Photography.  He does large-scale hi-res on canvas - looks like photorealistic oil paintings, but they're oilrealistic photographs.  This image does not do justice to the real thing, but it's the best I can do:


Had I wall space, I could see a couple of his pieces hanging in my house.  They really are spectacular in person.

Blocked at Quora.com

Well, I've been temporarily blocked at Quora.com for violating their "Be Nice, Be Polite" policy.  Can't post there until October 30.  In the mean time, I guess I can still post here!

If you're unfamiliar, Quora is a site where anybody can ask anything, and anybody who joins up can respond.

Ran across this jewel over there and thought I'd share it.  The question asked was, "What will it take to radically change America's gun culture?"  Like there's only one.

Seems this guy thinks he's struck upon something original.

Avoiding getting dragged into the gun control debate and attempting to answer your original question, I would say there are at least two options, both of which would be lengthy and difficult in application. First, like cigarettes, the government could embark on a long term effort of making gun ownership and gun use difficult and expensive, while propagandizing against equating guns with generally positive terms such as "liberty" and "freedom", instead instilling in future generations the association of guns with negatives such as "murder" and "anti-social". Realizing that a goodly number of people holding social and political power in the US are themselves gun nuts, you can imagine this is a remote possibility. Equally problematic is the idea of revolutionary change in the US which removes all notions of American exceptionalism, militarism and conservative ideology from popular thought.

Summing up, the two paths I see involve public "shaming" of gun people in the same manner as smokers are publically(sic) shamed today, or the active suppression of what I think are really defining characteristics of America: conservative ideology, religious ideology, fierce individualism, a tendency towards conspiracy theory, a preference for violence as a solution to social and individual problems, and mistrust of government. As you might guess, I'm not optimistic.

As Instapundit once said, "It’s pretty irritating, being shamed by people who have none themselves."

He apparently doesn't realize that his prescription is precisely how it was done in the UK.  I have to wonder, though, at what form his "active suppression" would take.  What's most interesting to me however, is what he himself describes as the "really defining characteristics of America,"

• Conservative ideology
• Religious ideology
• Fierce individualism
• Mistrust of government 

You begin to understand Barack Obama's appeal to people like him when Obama promised to fundamentally transform the United States of America.

They're ashamed of it.  They hate it. 

So yeah, I do think they're un-American.  They admit it themselves.

Got Law?

Sorry for the hiatus.  Busy, and I've been engaging over at Quora.com.  Got a couple of essays rattling around in the back of my head, but in the meantime, here's Bill Whittle's latest:

The Steel

Bill Whittle's latest:

How to Create a Gun-Free America

I've been playing over at Quora.com recently.  Sorry I've not updated TSM much, but I do think this belongs here:


Yeah. Good luck with that.

You Should Probably Say it Now

Bill Whittle's latest Afterburner, "Very Old Men"

The Martian

I saw The Martian this morning with my dad, a former steely-eyed missile man himself.

Matt Damon or not, FREAKING OUTSTANDING film. Howard Tayler (of Schlock Mercenary fame) said of it, 

I'm now declaring that The Martian, (movie) is the best hard science fiction movie I have ever seen. It is not a perfect film, but it is an outstanding film that speaks the way only a film can, and uses the medium in ways that the very best films do.

I concur.

I will be seeing it on the big screen again.

Day 2 of the Gun Rights Policy Conference

CSPAN is here.  And it will be livestreamed here.

Quote of the Day - GRPC Edition

I asked "Why would you need to suppress a .22?" and the guy behind me said "So you can get ALL the squirrels." - Genie Jennings, Contributing Editor Guns & Women magazine

Gun Rights Policy Conference - Live Stream

You can watch here.

Quote of the Day - Legal Edition

By way of preface, in 2004 I wrote the post "Game Over, Man. Game Over" which I concluded thus:

Mike Spenis said "the future of our freedom ultimately rests with the court's willingness to periodically reexamine the law," but the evidence is plain that the courts will not do that. They will use obviously flawed precedent so long as it "comports especially well with our notions of good social policy." And even if it doesn't, the courts will often bow, as Kozinski does here, to precedent they abhor. We depend upon the honor and intellectual honesty of the judges who make up the Justice system, yet it seems that those who are truly honest and honorable are outnumbered by those who are "willing to bury language that is incontrovertibly there." The honest and honorable ones abide, under the rule of law, by precedent that is otherwise insupportable. The middling honest ones, the ones Justice Brandeis labled as "men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding" "build magnificent legal edifices on elliptical constitutional phrases - or even the white spaces between lines of constitutional text." And those decisions stand, without review, periodic or otherwise, to serve as the next step down the road to Hell.

Tonight during a short discussion I had with Alan Gura he said something that boiled that paragraph down to a couple of sentences (from memory, so I may be paraphrasing):

Stare decisis is like gun control. It only affects those who respect the law.

Excellent Observation

On Vacation

Not feeling the urge to post.

Free ice cream to resume at some future date.

Well, There is at Least This:

Presented Without Additional Comment

9/11

So here we are, fourteen years after the attack, and there are finally (still mostly empty) structures where there used to be only the "National Embarrassing Vacant Lot and Monument to Red Tape & Inefficiency."  Four years ago our embassy in Benghazi, Libya was attacked and four Americans lost their lives there under the watch of President Obama and Secretary of State (and Presidential hopeful) Hillary Clinton, who proceeded to lie to us about it.

I'm kinda concerned about what might happen on this day, both here in the States and across the globe.  The "JV team" of ISIS seems to have grown into the big leagues.  Pretty much the entire Middle East is in uproar if not chaos.  Hundreds of thousands of "refugees" - the majority, military-age males - are streaming away from the conflicts - plural - and into Europe.  That'll not end well.

And our President has overseen the negotiation of a not-Treaty that will result, later if not sooner, with Iran building nuclear weapons.

And THAT will not end well.

And here?  Well, as Glenn Reynolds keeps repeating: 

My favorite part about the Obama era is all the racial healing.

Fasten your seat belts.  The ride might get bumpy over the next few years.

Quote of the Day - "Right to Be Safe" Edition

Found on Facebook via the Cornered Cat:

Someone is going to read this and think, "I have a right to go anywhere I want. Just because something is dangerous doesn't take away my rights." Let's get this over with now. Defending yourself is not and never has been about rights—rights are those things that the civilized members of society agree everyone "deserves". When you hit the ground and taste blood in your mouth, when a steel-toed boot slams your head into a curb, when a knife slips under the waistband of your skirt and a hand is wrapped around your throat, the civilized agreement on how people should be treated is not an issue. – Rory Miller

But too few people grasp this fact.

Sewing on Yellow Stars

Over on Facebook someone I know and respect wrote this in response to a local newspaper op-ed on the failures of gun control to prevent high-profile shooting incidents:

We can't continue with the argument that because we can do little, we should do nothing. Sooner or later, another bigger, badder incident will happen and in a panic, folks will do the wrong thing. Heck, the 68 control act is an example. Do you think for a minute that a political assassination or two won't rob you of support in congress PDQ?

We simply can no longer allow mentally unstable folk to possess/purchase firearms. Unfortunately, we will be forced to change the status quo a bit and attempt to judge the competency of individuals before they purchase. For lack of a better term, I'll use a loaded one--a firearms ownership ID.

Could all of the recent list of scumbags have obtained their legally purchased firearms if they, say, were required to have two or three letters of reference to sound mind and good character? Is it really too much to require that a facility for locking up firearms in the home be required?

Obvious, wording and such for laws must be carefully crafted such that devious individuals do not use such laws to abridge rights. But I believe it's doable. Also, we seem to forget about just what Reagan did with the machine gun import/manufacture ban, i.e., he bargained for lifting of other restrictions in the bill. Distasteful as that is to "purists", he knew his politics.

We absolutely need recourse if firearm possession is restricted. True and meaningful relief from disability and a fair process developed for appeal of such matters.

That a citizen should lose possession rights during a divorce is an affront. That a non-violent felon is disbarred from possession forever, is an affront. That a fully automatic firearm costs tens of thousands of dollars is an affront. That I need to trade through a licensed dealer is an affront. That the government is using an axe to cleave off thousands of "prohibited" possessors is an affront.

But all these "affronts" are not the fault of government, they are the fault of the people--those few people who have lost their morale compass and abused their right to keep and bear arms.

I replied

If you truly believe that, I have a bridge in Brooklyn I'd like to sell you.

He responded:

Then what you insist on is a death match which we will inevitable lose. The society will continue to deteriorate and the people in their panic will vote for restrictions in search of safety. There is no Constitutional right to keep and bear arms--only what 5 clowns on the Supreme Court say. It is an accepted concept that many rights are subject to reasonable restrictions, but what's reasonable? Whatever 5 justices say. We are one justice and one court case away from catastrophe.

You know me, I don't need to present my bona fides to anyone.

We suggest no potential solutions to the mentally unbalanced obtaining firearms, in that manner we are the same as the opposition--intransigent and unwilling to discuss potential solutions to what we freely admit is a people problem. I know from my personal experience and others in the community that there are any number of folk we run into that we would never sell a gun to or trust them with such. Yet we support their unrestricted right to walk into a store and buy a firearm? Do we? Should we?

My suggestion is to attempt to approach the people problem directly without depending as much as possible on government whose methods of separating good from bad are crude and flawed at best and devious and disingenuous at worse. The best defense is said to be a good offense.

What I hear is that it won't work, but few alternative suggestions. What we are experiencing plays right into the hands of prohibitions who jump on every opportunity to carve out classes of prohibited possessors in order to reach their goal of complete prohibition. The most recent, returning vets and SS recipients. There will be more.

Prohibitions play the long game. We saw a similar strategy wrt smoking. When the number of smokers reached a manageable level, approximately 25%, we saw a full court push to prohibition. We smoke now simply because it produces obscene tax revenue.

I simply offer suggestions and present some themes for discussion, not a fully laid out plan. If you have other suggestions for vetting firearms owners, then make them.

I replied:

And if we submit to "firearms ownership IDs" we will still lose, only FASTER.

Here's an alternative for you: Instead of applying for a "firearms ownership ID," how about the State runs a full background check on you when issuing a State ID: driver's license, whatever. If you're a prohibited person, that ID gets a "No Guns" symbol - you know, the pistol in the international circle with a slash through it. That way, if you go buy a gun, the seller - FFL or private person - asks to see your ID and if it doesn't have that symbol, they're free to sell to you. If you're slapped with a restraining order, arrested for domestic violence, whatever, you're required to turn in your ID for new ID. If you don't, a warrant is issued for your arrest until you do, AND they can force you to divest yourself from whatever you own (as they can now, but never seem to bother to).

That way, the government knows only who's eligible and who's not. Not specifically who legally OWNS guns, and who does not.

Will this prevent nut jobs from buying guns? Well the "War On (Some) Drugs" has done such a marvelous job of stopping people from getting stoned, I suspect that your local nutjob can probably score a Glock from the guy he gets his Oxycodone from, but it is better, I think, than your option.

I'm not happy invoking Godwin here, but fucking volunteering to sew a yellow star on my clothes because I'm a law-abiding gun owner? No.  Gun ownership IS a right.  It should only be denied through adjudication of either criminal acts or mental disability.  I shouldn't have to prove that I'm qualified to buy a gun, the government should have to prove I'm NOT.  And if we volunteer to identify ourselves to the government, when (not if) the next or the next or the next heinous act occurs, well, I'll let Charles T. Morgan, at the time Director of the Washington office of the ACLU said in Senate testimony in 1975:

I have not one doubt, even if I am in agreement with the National Rifle Association, that that kind of a record-keeping procedure is the first step to eventual confiscation under one administration or another.

The only people the government can disarm are the ones they KNOW have guns. I have no doubt they know I do, but I also have no doubt they don't know exactly what or how many I do. And I won't be informing them. Certainly not voluntarily.

Cali-Legal AK-47

Took a trip to see my favorite Merchant O'Death this afternoon.  He showed me something I hadn't seen before.  I know that residents of the UK have emasculated AR-15 rifles (converted to straight-pull bolt-actions, gas systems removed) but until now, I had never seen a pump-action AK:


Oooookay.

Keep passing those gun laws.  We'll keep figuring ways around them.