"When dealing with guns, the citizen acts at his peril."

 - New Jersey v. Pelleteri, 1996

Alternate title, "RESPECT MAH AUTHORITAH!"

Ah, the BATFu_ers have been busy little beavers again, ruining someone else's life and livelihood for "not cooperating." Ayn Rand put it best:

There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What's there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced nor objectively interpreted - and you create a nation of law-breakers - and then you cash in on the guilt. Now that’s the system! - Atlas Shrugged

And if you can't get them for actually breaking one of those laws, all you have to do is convince a judge and jury that they have.

Here's the background on the case of Mr. Albert K. Kwan, a gun collector in Bellevue, Washington:

Assistant U.S. Attorney Thomas Wales was an 18 year veteran of the U.S. Attorney's office in Seattle. He was also, in his spare time, the president of the Seattle branch of CeaseFire, a gun control group. Mr. Wales was shot in his home the evening of October 11, 2001 and died the next day. The firearm used was a Makarov pistol, but ballistic examination of the recovered evidence lead the investigators to conclude that the pistol - a cheap, reliable, compact imported handgun - had been rebarreled. The original four-groove, right-hand twist barrel had been replaced with a six-groove, left-hand twist barrel. This led investigators to conclude that the barrel was one manufactured by Federal Arms Corporation. The FBI did a little research and determined that some 3500 of the suspected replacement barrels had been sold prior to AUSA Wales' murder.

Initially the investigation focused on a man who had been prosecuted by Wales for fraud, but who had eventually had the charges dropped. When that investigation reached a dead end, they decided to track each and every replacement barrel down.

Apparently records showed that Mr. Kwan had purchased two of the "barrels of interest," but when the FBI showed up, he could only produce one and stated that he did not remember having purchased the second. In addition, Mr. Kwan had lived only a few miles from the original suspect, and though they could not connect the two men, this set off alarm bells with the FBI. Mr. Kwan was apparently less than cooperative, and got himself arrested as a "material witness" in 2005. While he was in custody, with a little "inter-agency cooperation," Mr. Kwan's gun collection got a once-over by the BATF.

Things went completely to hell at that point.

Mr. Kwan was charged with illegal possession of a machinegun - in this case, a "re-weld" M-14 rifle that had been converted to semi-automatic. Another machinegun that he legally possessed - a Heckler & Koch VP70M machine pistol with a detachable stock - was also confiscated, along with several other firearms from his collection. Cue now Heartless Libertarian for more on the case:

Now, about that M-14. Here's what the ATF agent had to do to it to make it fire more than one round per trigger pull. Testimony comes from the Oct 10, 2006 dead tree edition of Gun Week (article not available online.)

"I examined (the firearm) and determined that it was originally manufactured as a machinegun by the Winchester Company in New Haven, Connecticut. (The rifle) can accept machinegun components and has machinegun components installed, but the engagement surface of the sear release has been removed, and the sear release has been welded to the selector shaft. In this condition, (the rifle) is functional as a semi-automatic firearm, but the machinegun parts have been locked in place by the welded sear release/selector shaft.

"To determine if (the rifle) could be readily restored to shoot in an automatic manner, I used a multipurpose rotary tool with a cutting wheel to cut through the sear release. I then removed the sear release, selector shaft, and selector-shaft lock from (the rifle) and installed a sear release, selector shaft, selector spring, and selector from an M-14 machinegun."

The technician did not modify the receiver during all of reassembly, and then fired the gun to see if it would fire full auto. At that point, he wrote, "I discovered that the sear ... did not have an engagement surface for the sear release." So, he replaced the trigger group of the rifle with another trigger group which contained the sear with an engagement surface and eventually got the rifle to fire three rounds with a single press of the trigger.

The jury had more common sense than the ATF and decided that this did not meet the standard of "readily convertible."

But the .gov never goes to trial with only one charge. They also charged Mr. Kwan with possession of a short-barreled rifle. How? Well, in addition to the (legally possessed) VP70M and two detachable stocks Mr. Kwan also owned a semi-automatic VP70Z.

Put a buttstock on the semi-automatic pistol, and you've got an unregistered short-barreled rifle!

Or so their "logic" went.

Except we've already been all through this with Thompson/Center and their Contender model.

But the jury didn't know about this, so:

Bellevue collector convicted of firearms charge

A Bellevue gun collector once arrested as a material witness in the 2001 slaying of Assistant U.S. Attorney Thomas Wales was convicted Thursday of illegally possessing a short-barreled rifle, a felony that will require him to give up his arsenal.

However, a federal jury acquitted Albert K. Kwan, 53, of another charge of unlawful possession of a machine gun.

The jury deliberated for three hours after a three-day trial.

Kwan, who is not suspected of killing Wales, has been a person of interest because sales records indicate he purchased two Makarov gun barrels in the mid-1990s that were like the one used in the slaying of the longtime federal prosecutor. Kwan has turned over one such barrel but insists he does not remember buying a second one. Prosecutors said he failed a polygraph test about the second barrel.

The judge, however, has apparently been made aware:

Gun collector to get new trial

A federal judge has granted a new trial to Albert K. Kwan, a Bellevue gun collector who was found guilty of illegally possessing a short-barrel rifle after a three-day jury trial in June.

U.S. District Judge Thomas Zilly granted the new trial Aug. 3 after concluding the jury received flawed instructions about the short-barrel rifle charge. Joseph Conte, Kwan's attorney, contended the jury should have been told that a pistol and stock seized from Kwan had to be connected in order for the jury to conclude he illegally possessed a short-barrel rifle. Zilly agreed with Conte's argument Friday, according to Conte and a spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney's Office in Seattle.

Now Mr. Kwan did fail a polygraph that he volunteered to take. Here's a newsflash for you. I've failed a polygraph, too. And I'll never take another one. In my case it was a matter of someone at a place I worked stealing cash from the registers. I got fired. Other people got fired. The theft continued after I and a couple of others were let go. Apparently the polygraph didn't catch the guy that was doing it, but he sure tagged at least one innocent.

Mr. Kwan's crime was apparently being uncooperative. The reaction of the FBI was to arrest him, hold him for 23 days, and bring in the F-troop who then manufactured charges against him.

This is known as "justice." It's not strictly limited to gun owners, but we sure seem to be high on the .gov's dance card.

Like the New Jersey court decision in Pelleteri said, "When dealing with guns, the citizen acts at his peril."

UPDATE: Via Dave Hardy, a link to the decision granting a retrial. This piece has been edited to reflect the facts as related in that decision.

More Validation from the Left

(And more references to old posts, too!) Back in October of last year I wrote a really long piece, The United Federation of Planets. It was another piece on the topic of the "reality" of rights, but in that piece I wrote this:

The "state of nature" is the ultimate objective reality. In it, people will do whatever is necessary to survive, or they don't survive. In point of fact, throughout history - even today - people have not only defended their lives, liberty and property, they have taken life, liberty, and property from others not of their society. And they have done so secure in the knowledge that their philosophy tells them that it's the right thing to do. This is true of the The Brow-Ridged Hairy People That Live Among the Distant Mountains, the Egyptians, the Inca, the Maori, the British Empire, and the United States of America. It's called warfare, and it's the use of lethal force against people outside ones own society. Rand explained that:

A 'right' is a moral principle defining and sanctioning a man's freedom of action in a social context.

That's a critical definition. If a society truly believes that:

...all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness

then that society cannot wage war. It cannot even defend itself - because to take human life, to destroy property, even to take prisoners of war is anathema to such a society, for it would be in violation of the fundamental rights of the victims of such action. (See: the Moriori. Or the Amish.)

This creates a cognitive bind, then, unless you rationalize that the rights you believe in are valid for your society, but not necessarily for those outside it. Those members that violate the sanctions on freedom of action within the society are treated differently from those outside the society that do the same. Those within the society are handled by the legal system, and are subject to capture, judicial review, and punishment under law, whether that's issuance of an "Anti-Social Behavior Order" in London, or a death by stoning in Tehran. Those outside of a society who act against that society may be ignored, or may risk retaliatory sanctions up to and including open warfare, depending on the situation. (See: Kim Jong Il, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, nuclear weapons.)

In every successful society the majority must share a common philosophy and believe that philosophy is superior to all others. It must, or that society will change. The philosophy of any society can be one of aggressive evangelism, or quiet comfort, or anywhere in between, but successful societies are marked by one key characteristic: confidence.

--

If you examine (the Left) closely, it has wrapped itself in a philosophy that attempts to extend all of the West's "rights of man" to the entire world - up to and including those who are actively seeking our destruction, and the Left holds itself as morally superior for doing so. Attempting to intercept terrorist communications is "illegal domestic wiretapping" - a violation of the right to privacy. Media outlets showing acknowledged Islamist propaganda is exercise of the right of free speech, but suppression of images from the 9/11 attacks - specifically, the aircraft crashing into the World Trade Center, or its victims jumping to their deaths - is not censorship. The humiliation of prisoners at Abu Ghraib is described as a "human rights violation," as is the detainment of prisoners at Guantanimo without trial. For the Left, the war between the West and radical Islamists should not be handled as a war - it should be handled as a police matter - as a society would handle internal violators. Our enemies shouldn't be killed, they should be, at worst, captured and counseled. Our enemies are not at fault, WE are, because we are hypocrites that don't live up to our professed belief in absolute, positive, unquestionable, fundamental, ultimate rights. If we just lived up to our professed beliefs, the rest of the world would not hate us. Yet to believe this, the Left must ignore objective reality. It acts, as the Moriori acted, to negotiate and appease, because that's what its philosophy demands - and the results would be identical.

(Bold emphasis added.)

My validation came in an August 8 New York Times (natch) op-ed by General Wesley Clark and Kal Raustiala:

Why Terrorists Aren't Soldiers

THE line between soldier and civilian has long been central to the law of war. Today that line is being blurred in the struggle against transnational terrorists. Since 9/11 the Bush administration has sought to categorize members of Al Qaeda and other jihadists as “unlawful combatants” rather than treat them as criminals. (My emphasis.)

The federal courts are increasingly wary of this approach, and rightly so. In a stinging rebuke, this summer a federal appeals court in Richmond, Va., struck down the government’s indefinite detention of a civilian, Ali al-Marri, by the military. The case illustrates once again the pitfalls of our current approach.

Treating terrorists as combatants is a mistake for two reasons. First, it dignifies criminality by according terrorist killers the status of soldiers. Under the law of war, military service members receive several privileges. They are permitted to kill the enemy and are immune from prosecution for doing so. They must, however, carefully distinguish between combatant and civilian and ensure that harm to civilians is limited.

Critics have rightly pointed out that traditional categories of combatant and civilian are muddled in a struggle against terrorists. In a traditional war, combatants and civilians are relatively easy to distinguish. The 9/11 hijackers, by contrast, dressed in ordinary clothes and hid their weapons. They acted not as citizens of Saudi Arabia, an ally of America, but as members of Al Qaeda, a shadowy transnational network. And their prime targets were innocent civilians.

By treating such terrorists as combatants, however, we accord them a mark of respect and dignify their acts.

Oh HORSESHIT!! By treating them as combatants we allow ourselves to unleash military firepower and dispense with the legal chains that go along with judicial process.

And we undercut our own efforts against them in the process. Al Qaeda represents no state, nor does it carry out any of a state’s responsibilities for the welfare of its citizens. Labeling its members as combatants elevates its cause and gives Al Qaeda an undeserved status.

As targets for JDAMs and Hellfire missiles, Marines and Army Rangers rather than FBI agents and Federal Marshalls?

If we are to defeat terrorists across the globe, we must do everything possible to deny legitimacy to their aims and means, and gain legitimacy for ourselves. As a result, terrorism should be fought first with information exchanges and law enforcement, then with more effective domestic security measures. Only as a last resort should we call on the military and label such activities “war.” The formula for defeating terrorism is well known and time-proven.

Really? It's worked so well so far.

Labeling terrorists as combatants also leads to this paradox: while the deliberate killing of civilians is never permitted in war, it is legal to target a military installation or asset. Thus the attack by Al Qaeda on the destroyer Cole in Yemen in 2000 would be allowed, as well as attacks on command and control centers like the Pentagon. For all these reasons, the more appropriate designation for terrorists is not “unlawful combatant” but the one long used by the United States: criminal.

No, the more appropriate designation for terrorists is "targets."

The second major problem with the approach of the Bush administration is that it endangers our political traditions and our commitment to liberty, and further damages America’s legitimacy in the eyes of others. Almost 50 years ago, at the height of the cold war, the Supreme Court reaffirmed the “deeply rooted and ancient opposition in this country to the extension of military control over civilians.”

Here I can agree - in principle.

A great danger in treating operatives for Al Qaeda as combatants is precisely that its members are not easily distinguished from the population at large. The government wields frightening power when it can designate who is, and who is not, subject to indefinite military detention. The Marri case turned on this issue. Mr. Marri is a legal resident of the United States and a citizen of Qatar; the government contends that he is a sleeper agent of Al Qaeda. For the last four years he has been held as an enemy combatant at the Navy brig in Charleston, S.C.

The federal court held that while the government can arrest and convict civilians, under current law the military cannot seize and detain Mr. Marri. Nor would it necessarily be constitutional to do so, even if Congress expressly authorized the military detention of civilians. At the core of the court’s reasoning is the belief that civilians and combatants are distinct. Had Ali al-Marri fought for an enemy nation, military detention would clearly be proper. But because he is accused of being a member of Al Qaeda, and is a citizen of a friendly nation, he should not be treated as a warrior.

Here is one of the points I was illustrating in United Federation. When one's philosophy runs afoul of objective reality, something's gotta give. Wesley and Kal want to continue to embrace the philosophy and deny objective reality - the reality being that treating terrorists as mere criminals allows them to use our civility as a weapon against us. It's a tactic they enthusiastically and willingly exploit.

Cases like this illustrate that in the years since 9/11, the Bush administration’s approach to terrorism has created more problems than it has solved. We need to recognize that terrorists, while dangerous, are more like modern-day pirates than warriors. They ought to be pursued, tried and convicted in the courts. At the extreme, yes, military force may be required. But the terrorists themselves are not “combatants.” They are merely criminals, albeit criminals of an especially heinous type, and that label suggests the appropriate venue for dealing with the threats they pose.

"Especially heinous" - another point of agreement. But they are making war on us, and to refuse to acknowledge that seems to me to be wishful thinking at best, suicidal at worst. They're not out for plunder. Their operatives are not afraid of dying. They want to kill as many of us as they can, as horrifically and often as they can.

They are not pirates, they aren't even the equivalent of the barbarian hordes that ushered in the Dark Ages. They're more like a plague than anything else, except this is a plague that hates.

We train our soldiers to respect the line between combatant and civilian. Our political leaders must also respect this distinction, lest we unwittingly endanger the values for which we are fighting, and further compromise our efforts to strengthen our security.

Criminal prosecution is supposed to result in correction - i.e.: imprisonment. When do convicted terrorists get parole? How many will end up on Death Row and go through endless appeals?

We deem them "unlawful combatants" because they are conducting warfare without obeying the rules of war that formal nations have agreed upon. Walter Russell Mead in his essay The Jacksonian Tradition explained it this way:

Jacksonian America has clear ideas about how wars should be fought, how enemies should be treated, and what should happen when the wars are over. It recognizes two kinds of enemies and two kinds of fighting: honorable enemies fight a clean fight and are entitled to be opposed in the same way; dishonorable enemies fight dirty wars and in that case all rules are off.

An honorable enemy is one who declares war before beginning combat; fights according to recognized rules of war, honoring such traditions as the flag of truce; treats civilians in occupied territory with due consideration; and -- a crucial point-- refrains from the mistreatment of prisoners of war. Those who surrender should be treated with generosity. Adversaries who honor the code will benefit from its protections, while those who want a dirty fight will get one.

So far, our side has done its dead-level best to fight honorably against a dishonorable enemy. The Left wants to rein even that in, and restrict us as much as possible to using law-enforcement techniques against an enemy that will use every advantage it can get.

The difficulty in separating terrorists from non-combatants is their greatest strength and our greatest weakness. Treating terrorists as unlawful combatants runs terrible risks of abusing truly innocent people. This is where our philosophy runs up against objective reality and is found wanting. So we have a terrible choice - do we, once again, put aside our beliefs for a time and do what is necessary to survive, or do we give every advantage to an enemy bent on destroying us? Or, more likely, do we tear our society asunder under the stress of our collective cognitive dissonance and the inevitable resulting loss of confidence?

My money's on the latter. So is (or was) bin Laden's.

(h/t: Jackalope Pursuivant)

Quote of the Day.

From Cabinboy at Western Rifle Shooters:

Just remember - never, ever get on the government bus to the "emergency shelter/evacuation camp".

Once you do, you are irretrievably finished.

I know it sounds paranoid, but after New Orleans, not so much any more. "I'm from the government and I'm here to help you" isn't the joke it used to be.

Another Story from the Place Where Great Britain Used to Be

(Via Oscar Poppa)

Burglar dies after falling from top-floor window following confrontation with homeowner

by JAYA NARAIN Last updated at 17:49pm on 9th August 2007

A homeowner was arrested after a burglar plunged from the balcony of his top-floor flat and later died in hospital.

The intruder suffered head injuries and died in hospital after falling around 30ft on to a concrete path.

Now, for most of us the knee-jerk reaction would be "Them's the risks you take, chum." After all, in at least some jurisdictions here in the states a homeowner is legally justified in shooting a burglar upon discovery, and that often causes severe injury and even death.

But not in formerly Great Britain:

Patrick Walsh, 56, awoke to find an intruder in his flat on Corkland Road in Chorlton-cum-Hardy, south Manchester.

Police say "following an exchange of words" the 43-year-old suspect fell from the fourth floor window on to the pavement below.

He suffered massive injuries from the fall, at around 6.10am on Monday.

The man was taken to Manchester Royal Infirmary with serious head injuries before being transferred to Hope Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at about 11am today.

Police conducted a detailed forensic examination of the flat after the incident.

Walsh was arrested on suspicion of causing serious bodily harm and bailed until November pending further police inquirers.

Mr. Walsh, awakened from a sound sleep and having done nothing other than defend his property has been arrested for that crime. It's bizzaro world.

His solicitor, Victor Wozny, said today: "My client is not at liberty to say anything because he is under police bail.

"However we appreciate that the public view might be that this is a man arrested in his own home defending his own property."

Might be, might not. Doesn't matter. The Crown Prosecution Service doesn't listen to the public. Pretty much, neither does the rest of the civil government.

A spokeswoman for Greater Manchester Police said, "Inquiries are ongoing to establish the circumstances surrounding this incident.

"A 56-year-old man from Chorlton has been arrested on suspicion of section 18 assault and bailed, pending further inquiries."

I wonder if this Inquiry will last six weeks like the one 63 year-old Thomas O'Connor suffered through before the Crown Persecution, er Prosecution service concluded that "it is not believed we would be able to disprove a case of self defence" against Mr. O'Connor, who was blind and suffered from arthritis and heart problems. Or instead will they go ahead and charge Mr. Walsh and convince him to plead to manslaughter instead of risking a murder conviction, as was done to Brett Osborn? After all, as Mr. Osborn's lawyer explained, in England:

The law...does not require the intention to kill for a prosecution for murder to succeed. All that is required is an intention to cause serious bodily harm. That intention can be fleeting and momentary. But if it is there in any form at all for just a second - that is, if the blow you struck was deliberate rather than accidental - you can be guilty of murder and spend the rest of your life in prison.

Moreover...while self-defence is a complete defence to a charge of murder, the Court of Appeal has ruled that if the force you use is not judged to have been reasonable - if a jury, that is, decides it was disproportionate - then you are guilty of murder. A conviction for murder automatically triggers the mandatory life sentence. There are no exceptions.

Mr. Osborn decided not to risk it, rather than trust his fate to his fellow subjects.

I'm curious as to what Mr. Walsh's fate holds for him.

The pair argued and the confrontation moved towards the rear window of the flat.

It is believed the intruder then smashed the window and clambered out on to a narrow ledge and fell to the ground.

Mr Walsh phoned police and at around 6.30am officers found the man on the ground outside the smart Victorian apartment block in Chorlton-cum-Hardy,

He was taken to hospital with serious head injuries.

Officers arrested Mr Walsh on suspicion of causing grievous bodily harm with intent and are trying to establish whether the intruder was forced out of the window.

Arrest first, investigate later. Nice SOP.

The arrest is expected to fuel arguments about the rights of householders to defend themselves against burglars.

Gee, ya THINK??

Patrick Walsh

Under suspicion: Patrick Walsh yesterday

The issue has been high on the law and order agenda since farmer Tony Martin was jailed for shooting dead a burglar in 1999.

Following the Martin affair the Crown Prosecution Service and the Association of Chief Police Officers said any householder can use reasonable force to protect themselves or others, or to carry out an arrest or to prevent crime.

A neighbour said: "Police arrived in what seemed to be minutes and were there for the whole day.

"It's shocking to find out what has happened but people shouldn't break into other people's houses."

Another resident said: "I presume we will have to respect the burglar's rights while his victim has the nightmare of court hanging over his head. It all seems so unfair."

That's because it is unfair. That's what happens in a pacifist society.

A spokesman for Greater Manchester Police said they had been called following reports that an intruder had fallen from a top-floor flat.

"Following an exchange of words, the alleged burglar was found unconscious on the pavement outside the flat.

"It is believed that he had fallen from the fourth-floor window."

Mr Walsh has been released on bail until November. If charged and convicted he could face a life sentence.

Because he had the temerity to defend himself in a culture that has had pacifism forced upon it.

Australian blogger Tim Lambert and I have had several long, involved exchanges over whether British subjects can legally defend themselves. I don't know what conclusion he's reached, but mine is that - while it's possible - it doesn't pay to bet that way. And, moreover, the British media, in cooperation with the Crown Prosecution Service, runs stories like this that ensure the general public knows just how risky defending yourself can be. Tim even admitted as much in the last sentence of one of his posts, but blamed it not on the Crown Prosecution Service, but upon us "Gullible Gunners." After all, who wants to spend even five years in jail - much less life - for defending yourself?

Instead, British subjects should heed the advice of the British police on how to be a good victim:

If we were attacked, we were to assume a defensive posture, such as raising our hands to block an attack. The reason was (and she spelled it out in no uncertain terms) that if a witness saw the incident and we were to attempt to defend ourselves by fighting back, the witness would be unable to tell who the agressor was. However, if we rolled up in a ball, it would be quite clear who the victim was.

That way you only risk injury or death to yourself or your loved ones. The criminal will, of course, be unharmed.

No wonder 4,000 people a week are trying to flee Britain.

UPDATE, 8/12 via Civis Proeliator:

No action to be taken against householder over intruder fall

A householder arrested after a suspected burglar died falling from the top floor window of his flat will have no further action taken against him, police confirmed today.

Patrick Walsh, 56, awoke in the early hours of last Monday to find an intruder in his flat on Corkland Road in Chorlton-cum-Hardy, south Manchester.

Police said "following an exchange of words", the 43-year-old suspect fell from the fourth floor window on to the pavement below.

He suffered massive injuries from the fall and died in hospital on Thursday.

Mr Walsh was arrested and questioned by detectives while forensic officers conducted a detailed examination of his flat.

He was bailed until November, but police have now concluded no further action against him is necessary.

A post-mortem examination revealed the dead man died from injuries conducive with a fall and they are not treating the death as suspicious. The case has been passed to the coroner.

A spokeswoman for Greater Manchester Police said: "The 56-year-old man from Chorlton, who was arrested on suspicion of section 18 assault, has had his bail cancelled and no further action will be taken against him."

Hey! It didn't take six weeks! Looks like Mr. Walsh rolled a seven this time.

But I wonder if he'll hesitate before defending himself if anything like this ever happens to him again. And in the place that used to be Great Britain, the odds of that happening are pretty high.

Have You Made Your Reservations Yet?.

It's coming sooner than you think.

Last year's was a lot of fun.

You don't want to miss this one.

Maybe you can carpool.

Or hitchhike.

Or catch a bus.

And remember: it's where?

It's fun for the whole family!

Well, kinda. Everything you need to know to get registered is at this link. You don't have to be a gunblogger. You don't even have to be a blogger. If you just want to get together with a bunch of people who believe in liberty and enjoy shooting, it's the right place for you!

So what are you waiting for?

Another Golden Oldie.

One of the (I suppose) advantages to having authored a blog for four years is that you get to revisit stuff you wrote a long time ago (in blog years.) The Everlasting Phelps recently posted on "bright lines" - the personal lines he draws for himself that signal when things have gone just too far. Excerpt:

I am almost physically ill with the dread I am feeling right now. I've said before that I have thought about armed revolution before. It is something that I think everyone who considers himself a patriot has to think about ahead of time. You might think about it and say "never", but you need to think about it.

I am reminded of the cannibal paradox. The paradox is that there are a lot of people in starvation scenarios who turn to cannibalism and starve anyways. They starve because the cannibalism taboo is so strong that they wait too long and are past the point of no return before they do what they need to survive. There is a point of no return when it comes to revolution.

I have in my mind several bright, shining lines that shall not be crossed without retribution. I keep those lines, like Joe's Jews in the Attic Test, in mind. I have them for two reasons. One, you should decide on your actions rationally and dispassionately when possible. Being worked up in the heat of the moment is not the time to make a decision like this. And the second is because the heat of the moment is just as likely to counsel you to not act, to wait a little longer, to not make that tough decision.

RTWT.

A commenter left this:

I had one of those “scary” moments while discussing the 2000 election with my dad. He pointed out to me how close we were to a coup via the supreme court. I scoffed until I thought about it a little more carefully. The Democratic party tried to get the supreme court to disenfranchise us, and almost succeeded.

I never thought about what it would take, but I did comment the other day that I was glad the disagreements and political lines right now are not as regional as they were 150 years ago.

Now, read my September, 2004 post While Evils are Sufferable (especially you, Markadelphia) and then read this Steven Levitt New York Times piece and the 500+ comments and reflect on just how easy it would be for "we the people" to pull everything down around us.

Societies exist because the members want them too. When that desire is lost, so is the society. That's what Arnold Toynbee meant when he said "Civilizations die from suicide, not by murder.”

Yeah, Phelps, I feel a little ill myself.

UPDATE: The original JSKit/Echo comment thread is here.

I Found Ted Kennedy's Safe!.

A while back I fisked Sen. Ted "The Swimmer" Kennedy's Senate testimony on "armor piercing" ammunition. During his oration on the evils of such ammunition, he let loose with this unforgettable utterance:

Another rifle caliber, the 30.30 caliber, was responsible for penetrating three officers' armor and killing them in 1993, 1996, and 2002. This ammunition is also capable of puncturing light-armored vehicles, ballistic or armored glass, armored limousines, even a 600-pound safe with 600 pounds of safe armor plating.

Er, what??

I've always wondered where that particular non sequitur came from. Now I think I know. Watch this YouTube video (the sound goes out of time with the image towards the end)

Pay particular attention starting about 6:45. That's when they shoot a "600 pound safe."

Suffice it to say, they weren't using a .30-30, and the ammunition they were using wasn't manufactured by Hi-Vel. Nor can your average civilian purchase Mk 211 Mod 0 .50 BMG rounds.

Not that that made any difference to (hic!) Teddy.

Or the VPC for that matter.

(h/t: Sebastian)

Candidate for Quote of the YEAR.

Now, this is just my opinion, but if your money-handling skills are so poor that you can't even make a profit selling sex, then you have absolutely no business getting involved in more complicated financial areas.

In other words, if "Slam, bam, thank you ma'am, here's a hundred bucks" is too complicated for you to make a profit, then you might just want to keep your meat-hooks out of, say -- health care.

LawDog speaks a fundamental truth.

Quote of the Day.

An oldie from a comment at Xavier's by Robb Allen:

What I really want to do is keep buying guns until (a) I find the perfect one or (b) the sheer volume of firearms causes Senator McCarthy to have a massive coronary.

A respectable goal!

I Am SO Going to Bake in Heck...

Fellow gunblogger Clayton Cramer has a problem with - what's the expression? "Non-heteronormative" people. Seeing that San Francisco is ground zero for the "as far from 'heteronormative' as is possible to get and still have 23 chromosome pairs," he gets a lot of fodder from the Bay area. His most recent post on the topic covers two recent "demonstrations" - one was the "Transmarch," which I'm not even going to comment on, and the other was "The World Naked Bike Ride 2007."

An image I cached a long, long time ago came immediately to mind I'm ashamed to say, but I find myself strangely unable to refrain from posting it any longer:

(This was a poster put out by the group itself, so they had a sense of humor about it anyway.)

I have to wonder if Chamois Butt'r would help with that? (Somebody, please stop me...)

Negligent Homicide by One of "The Only Ones"

I've seen this story all over the gunblogosphere:

5-year-old shot and killed

By Johnny Johnson
Staff Writer

NOBLE (OK) — The first shot was so loud it made the hair stand straight up on Jack Tracy's arm. The bullet hit the water just a few feet in front of the boat dock where he was standing.

Instinctively, he pulled his 5-year-old grandson, Austin Haley, close to his left side and began yelling that there were people down by the pond.

Then came the second shot, and the unforgettable thump of a 9 mm bullet penetrating a young boy's skull.

"It went right through the back of his head and came out the front,” Tracy said. "He was just bleeding severely and I knew, right then, he was most likely dead, right there.”

Tracy thought he and his grandson were under attack by someone trying to kill them both, so he threw the boy into the back of a 4-wheeler and drove to his daughter's house about 200 yards away.

"Then two officers came out of the brush over there,” he said. "They didn't tell us they were the ones who had been shooting or that they had shot him. They didn't admit a doggone thing.”

Much later, Tracy said, he found out one of the officers had fired two shots in the Crest Lane neighborhood, trying to kill a snake that had become lodged in a birdhouse on the back porch of a house just up the hill from Tracy's pond.

‘I just feel really bad'
Police had gotten a call of a snake complaint from a woman on Crest Lane, whose 16-year-old daughter saw the snake hanging about 3 feet of its body outside a neighbor's bird house.

The woman, who would not identify herself, told The Oklahoman she called the police station to see if animal control could respond and take care of the snake, which she believed to be a diamondback rattlesnake.

She was told that the city, which lost its only animal control officer recently, would send a police officer over to help.

"This was just a freak and tragic accident,” the woman said, "and I just feel really bad for everyone involved.”

Yes, it was freakish and tragic, but it was not exactly an accident.

Other neighbors weren't as sympathetic.

Crest Lane resident Kara Johnson said there was no excuse for shooting a gun at a snake in a residential area.

"It's a shame that someone had to lose their 5-year-old child over a snake,” Johnson said. "And that's their only child. They'll never get their kid back.”

Neighbor G.W. Henderson said his wife heard a woman screaming within minutes of the shots.

"She was shouting ‘You shot my boy! You shot my boy!'” Henderson said.

Second shot hit snake
City Manager Bob Wade said rumors of overeager Noble officers are inaccurate. "I was told that they tried several ways to get the snake down, but it was still hissing at them and firmly lodged,” Wade said. "What I was told is that the owner of the home either suggested or agreed that they should go ahead and shoot the snake, and then everything happened from there.”

First of all, the homeowner had no business suggesting or agreeing to any discharge of a firearm in a residential area, and the officers had no business discharging a firearm in a non-life-threatening situation. This was not an Uncle Jimbo "It's coming right for us!" scenario.

Wade refused to identify the officer suspected of firing the shots but said the officer has been placed on paid administrative leave pending the outcome of the investigation.

Said outcome should be charges of negligent homicide, but I have little doubt that he'll walk with "administrative discipline" alone. After all, he's an "only one."

Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation agents were told that officers decided to shoot the animal after being told there was a field behind them, said Jessica Brown, bureau spokeswoman.

It doesn't matter. Rule 4: "Be sure of your target and what is beyond it." Don't take someone else's word for it.

"The first shot grazed the snake, and the second killed it,” Brown said.

Wade said he is 90 percent sure that the same bullet that killed the snake also killed Austin, but due to the trajectory of the shot and the fact that Austin and his grandfather were downhill, investigators have to be 100 percent certain.

"This is so bizarre it has to be fully investigated. ... We're pretty sure circumstantially that it is the bullet from the police officer's gun, but it might be a bullet from someone else,” Wade said.

I'm sure that will be the conclusion of the investigation, since the bullet with the boy's brain tissue is somewhere in the pond, never to be recovered. It must have been space aliens.

Tracy has little doubt about what happened.

"I was standing right beside him when they shot him in the head,” he said. "There just wasn't anything I could do for this baby. He was dead. And he was just the finest Christian boy. His mother just bought him a Bible not a week before this — he wanted one that was camouflage because he was in the Lord's army.'”

Tracy said that when he saw the news reports and heard the police chief saying it was an "unfortunate accident,” the remark seemed too trivial and dismissive.

"I'm not saying the cop shot him on purpose,” Tracy said. "It was an accident. But let me tell you — if I had a kid and put him in this car and didn't put him in a car seat and he got killed on the way to town, they'd charge me with murder ... and what this cop did is a lot worse than that. ... There was no reason for him to kill my grandson.”

Absolutely correct. I'm sure the officer feels horrible about what happened, but I'm also convinced that he thought the idea of popping a snake with his service pistol would be pretty cool.

Unfortunately, once you pull the trigger all the "oh shit!"s and "I'm sorry"s in the world cannot put that bullet back in the cartridge case, or bring a 5 year-old boy back to life. And when it happens, police officers shouldn't get breaks that private citizens don't.

Quote of the Day

From Clayton Cramer:

My guess is that violent criminals are disproportionately of average or less intelligence; people with criminal tendencies and superior intelligence usually get themselves elected to public office instead.

Can I get a witness?

Hey! LabRat's Finally Got a Blog!.

Perennial (and brilliant) commenter LabRat has opened her very own blog, Atomic Nerds. She shares it with "Stingray," but that's OK. Sometimes I wish I shared this blog. I expect great things, and without much surprise, she delivers right off with "Goddamn lazy hippies."

Life is good!

The Replacement Kimber.

While I wait for the Eclipse to come back, I can console myself with the new Ultra CDP II:

Damn, ain't that pretty? Look at the figure in the grip panel! The other one is just as beautiful.

Now I have a complete set: Government, Commander, and Officer's size!

Or at least I will when Kimber sends the Eclipse back, repaired.

This is just too cool. Many thanks to Kimber and to Murphy's Guns and Gunsmithing, my favorite Tucson gun shop.

It's Good to Know that Hollywood Has Our Back.

I just got back from seeing The Bourne Ultimatum - overall, not a bad flick (though being a gun nut the sound effects and continuity errors grated a bit.) But the previews - ah, the previews.

First up, a trailer for The Kingdom, a film about, well:

A team of U.S. government agents is sent to investigate the bombing of an American facility in the Middle East.

While I'm not certain, I'm pretty sure this is about Saudi Arabia. Apparently the FBI is sent in to investigate this act of terrorism, and - for some strange reason - the local government interferes! On top of that, our intrepid G-Men are attacked by terrorists themselves! Looks action-packed. Written by Matthew Michael Carnahan, directed by Peter Berg. Good cast as well.

Next up, Rendition. This film stars Reese Witherspoon as the wife of an Arab-American who is grabbed at the airport by the CIA and receives extraordinary rendition - i.e.: he's whisked off to a foreign country where he can be tortured into confessing interrogated properly. Of course a still-wet-behind-the-ears local agent is sent to "monitor" the "interrogation" and is disturbed by what he witnesses. Meanwhile back at home the distraught wife fights to find out what happened to her husband. Written by Kelly Sane, directed by Gavin Hood.

But wait! We're not done! Third up on this list is Lions for Lambs, starring no less than Glenn Close Meryl Streep, Tom Cruise, and Robert Redford, who also directs! There's not much online about this that I've been able to find, but Redford apparently plays a psychologist who can't seem to understand why young men might actually want to join the military! Tom Cruise plays an opportunistic Senator who spouts lines like "Do you want to win the War on Terror™ or don't you?!?!" Streep apparently plays the heroic newspaper reporter who is drawn like a moth to the flame of the Senator, but I'm sure is only interested in reporting the Truth™. Amazingly, this film is also written by Matthew Michael Carnahan. Mr. Carnahan's had a busy year, since IMDB shows that this and The Kingdom are his first two screen credits ever.

Remember when Hollywood made movies like Sands of Iwo Jima and Strategic Air Command? That was propaganda, too - but at least it was in favor of our side coming out victorious.

Arnold Toynbee wrote, "Civilizations die from suicide, not by murder.” He also noted, “Of the twenty-two civilizations that have appeared in history, nineteen of them collapsed when they reached the moral state the United States is in now.” Finally, "I do not believe that civilizations have to die because civilization is not an organism. It is a product of wills."

I'm amazed by the seemingly increasing will towards civil suicide exhibited by so many of my fellow countrymen. I don't like a lot of what I see happening either, but I don't outright deny the dangers we actually face for the ones that might be. Perhaps we've reached some critical mass past which we cannot stop an inevitable slide into self-destruction. I don't know. But Hollywood isn't helping stop that slide, that I do know.

"Mistakes and 'close enough' are the ways to build bridges that fail."

Quite a while back I excerpted a quote from Purple Avenger that I liked. My post was entitled The Engineer's Perspective. Here's the quote:

My best friend is a lawyer, bright, gifted, ... PhD in law; bored with his job, he decided to study engineering. After his first quarter, he came to me and said that the two "C"s he'd achieved in Engineering Calculus 101 and Engineering Physics 101 were the first two non-A grades he'd ever gotten in college, and that he had had to study harder for them than for any other dozen classes he'd had. "I now understand", he said, "why engineers and their like are so hard to examine, whether on the stand or in a deposition. When they say a thing is possible, they KNOW it is possible, and when they say a thing is not possible, they KNOW it is not. Most people don't understand know in that way; what they know is what we can persuade them to believe. You engineers live in the same world as the rest of us, but you understand that world in a way we never will."

I don't think that you have to love math to be an engineer, but you are going to have to learn it. That means that you're going to have to do the homework, correctly. Mistakes and "close enough" are the ways to build bridges that fail.
htom | 09.26.05 - 2:10 am

This week, a bridge failed. It was not, particularly, an engineering failure. The bridge had stood for some 30 years. It was a management failure.

Let me explain.

Back in March, 2005 I linked for the first time to Dr. Sanity, the blog of Dr. Pat Santy who was a flight surgeon for NASA for the Challenger mission. In that piece I reflected on the effect that the Challenger disaster had on me - at the time, a recent college graduate looking for a job:

I remember listening to the launch of the Challenger early in the morning here in Tucson, and thinking - as the station broke for a commercial - "At least this one didn't blow up on the pad."

Morbid, I know, but I'm also an engineer. I wasn't then - I was still going to college at the time (Ed. note: I actually graduated in December of 2005) - but that's been my orientation for most of my life. I knew that each manned launch was a roll of the dice, a spin of the cylinder in a big game of Russian Roulette, and that NASA had become just another government bureaucracy. (And I also knew just how close we had come to losing three men in Apollo 13 because a series of small, innocuous errors had cascaded into a catastrophic failure in a system that was almost neurotic in its quest for safety.)

It was just a matter of time.

Still, I was shocked when they came back from commercial to announce that Challenger had been destroyed in a launch accident just minutes after liftoff. I knew that all seven of the astronauts were dead. I knew that the "teacher in space" wasn't going to get there, and that a classroom of students had to be devastated by that realization. Many, many classrooms, but one in particular.

I watched the footage of the liftoff, now splayed in endless grisly loops on every network - all of which had previously declined to show the launch live and interrupt really important stuff like "Good Morning America." I watched as the flame bloomed out from a Solid Rocket Booster joint, impinging on the huge external fuel tank, and said, "That's what killed them. What the hell caused that failure?" I watched the Satan's horns of the SRB exhaust tracks as they trailed up and away from the epicenter of the blast. And then I watched it all again.

Over and over.

Later I discovered that the engineers at Morton Thiokol had tried to get the launch scrubbed, knowing the problems that cold weather caused in the O-ring joint seals of the SRBs, but they had been told to "take off their engineer hats and put on their manager hats" in order to make a launch decision. The launch had been delayed too many times, and President Reagan would be making his State of the Union address that night, with a call to Crista McAuliffe - Teacher in Space.

I decided right then that I didn't ever want to be a goddamned manager.

Judging from what's being reported, engineers knew for some time that this bridge, like one in eight around the country, had "structural deficiencies" due to fatigue, corrosion, sub-standard assembly practices, and so forth. This means that there are a lot of bridges (and, one assumes, other infrastructure) out there that aren't up to their design capacities any more.

How bad was the 35W bridge? Apparently pretty bad, but not so bad that some engineer somewhere was willing to risk his job over it. I'm sure that more than one structural engineer was told to "put on his politician's hat" and make a decision based on economics and politics rather than safety.

Bridges fail. But it's more often than not due to non-engineering causes.

UPDATE: (Hat tip to Shooting the Messenger) 'Go after the designer,' says Minneapolis bridge checker. Apparently this weasel wants to avoid the fact that this bridge lasted forty years before it collapsed, and that it was his job to determine if it was still safe, not the designer. The designer did his job. Mr. Kurt Furhman, bridge inspector, probably kept being asked to put on his "politician's hat" - and did so.

But Then You Kiss Her Sister...

This never happens to me. I mean never.

In the continuing saga of the new (to me) Kimber, I neglected to mention that when I picked it up last Monday the salesman told me that they were giving away a new Ultra CDP this Saturday (today). Anybody who came in the store on Saturday would have one entry for the pistol, but anybody who bought a Kimber during the week would get an additional five entries. I filled out the tickets, but I knew it was just an exercise.

They just called me.

I won.

One of these:

Here's Kimber's stats on the Ultra CDP:

Caliber: .45 ACP

Features:

* Entirely built in the Custom Shop for enhanced concealed carry.
* Carry melt treatment rounds and blends edges to avoid snagging on clothing or holsters.
* Blackened aluminum frame with 30 lines-per-inch checkering contrasts with the premium aluminum trigger, stainless steel slide and satin ambidextrous thumb safety.
* Hand-checkered, double-diamond rosewood grips and low profile Tritium night sights finish these elegant carry pistols.

Specifications: Height (inches) 90° to barrel: 4.75
Weight (ounces) with empty magazine: 25
Length (inches): 6.8
Magazine capacity: 7
Ambidextrous thumb safety
Carry melt (frame & slide)
Recoil spring (pounds): 18
Frame: Material: Aluminum
Finish: Matte black anodized
Width (inches): 1.28
Frontstrap checkering (30 LPI)
Checkering under trigger guard (30 LPI)
Slide: Material: Stainless steel
Finish: Satin stainless steel
Barrel: Steel match grade
Length (inches): 3
Twist rate (left hand): 16
Ramped Sights: Meprolight Tritium 3-dot night, fixed
Radius (inches): 4.8
Grips: Rosewood double diamond
Trigger: Premium aluminum match grade
Factory setting (approx. pounds): 4-5

My wife comes home occasionally from the casinos with a few hundred dollars, but I pretty much never win anything.

Not today!

Now I don't mind waiting for the Eclipse to come back from the factory.

Oh - it's got an internal extractor. I asked.

No Matter How Beautiful She is...

...someone somewhere is tired of her crap.

Now I know why that Kimber Eclipse Pro II was for sale at such a discount below new.

Remember when I wrote:

It's used, apparently very gently (which I hope does not mean "returned because it doesn't work") and in excellent condition.

and continued:

Yes, it's got the firing pin safety. Yes, it's got an external extractor. No, John Moses Browning is not spinning in his grave over the sacrilege.

If you listen closely, you may hear a faint whirring sound.

It doesn't work. Using both commercial Federal hardball and my own handloads, Kimber factory, Chip McCormick, and Wilson Combat magazines, I couldn't put eight rounds through the pistol without at least two failures to extract. It would pull the case about halfway out of the chamber before the extractor slipped off the rim, and that's all she wrote.

Today, a Kimber factory representative was at the gun shop where I bought this pistol, so I headed directly from the range to the shop and had him check it out. He stripped, cleaned, and inspected the slide, extractor, and firing pin, and even checked the extractor tension. He advised me to try it again, but if it failed he recommended that I return it to Kimber for correction. I went directly to the closest indoor range.

No improvement.

It doesn't matter how pretty it is if you can't rely on it. It's going back to Kimber just as soon as I can ship it out. NOW I miss my old job. Shipping via FedEx or UPS was simple. Now I have to go to the main UPS office to ship it. What a PITA.

Tagged Again!.

I've been tagged again with a "thinking blogger award,"

...this time from Joe Huffman. Coincidentally, both Joe and JimmyB, the previous nominator, were attendees at the first Gunblogger's Rendezvous last October. I'm not suggesting there's any kind of conspiracy or collusion, but if I get another nomination out of that group...

Actually, I'm really pretty honored. It's nice to know that some of the stuff I write actually does make people think, especially since that's largely why I do it.

Thanks much, Joe. See you again at this year's Rendezvous.

Cheap Shot (No Pun Intended).

(Via Rodger)

Carnivore sex off the menu

Vegansexuals are people who do not eat any meat or animal products, and who choose not to be sexually intimate with non-vegan partners whose bodies, they say, are made up of dead animals.

--

Christchurch vegan Nichola Kriek has been married to her vegan husband, Hans, for nine years.

She would not describe herself as vegansexual, but said it would definitely be a preference.

She could understand people not wanting to get too close to non-vegan or non-vegetarians.

"When you are vegan or vegetarian, you are very aware that when people eat a meaty diet, they are kind of a graveyard for animals," she said.

Here are Nichola and Hans:

This begs one question: Being vegan, does she swallow?