"OK, That Was Awesome!"

This is what terrifies them - the smile:






Those are screenshots from this CBS News piece about the increasing number of female shooters in the U.S. - up 47% since 2001, according to the piece.  The shooter is CBS's Katrina Szish, and I suspect that was her first experience with a firearm.

It probably won't be her last.

That's the smile you get from a new shooter - Every. Single. Time.

The anti's are terrified of that - the realization that shooting is fun. Or as the interview subjects put it, exciting, empowering, relaxing.

Also from the piece:

Katrina Szish, CBS: "A lot of people would not expect shooting to be a sport that women would be interested in. And a lot of people would say guns are masculine."

Lesa Ellanson, NRA certified shooting instructor: "It would depend on how you define femininity. I think a capable woman is the most feminine expression of power that there is."

Which reminded me of this post from quite a while back. Unfortunately, it's so old the links are broken, and the comments are gone, but I agree whole-heartedly with another subject of the CBS interview, Jill Kargman:

"I always dress up. I'm very traditional feminine in certain ways. But when I'm shooting a gun, I guess I feel empowered, and empowerment is sexy."

Damned straight.

"A fábrica está fechada."

Wretchard riffed recently about the decline in fertility among Western nations in If Tomorrow Comes, with several references to Mark Steyn's repeated observations about the negative population growth in Europe.  Richard, quoting Steyn, blames it on socialism,

The problem as Steyn succinctly puts it, is that socialism not only "runs out of other people's money", as Margaret Thatcher once put it. It simply runs out of people. Future historians, if there are any left, will puzzle over how this came about. The economists will have an easier time explaining it. Through some process, socialism has apparently increased the discount rate to the point where the future is consumed for the sake of the present. Not only is investment taxed to feed consumption, tomorrow is hocked to pay for today.

If the fiscal deficit is the direct monetary expression of this high discount rate, the collapsing population is its equivalent demographic expression. Both are saying the same thing, in different terms. In incentives terms, the future is no longer real; so people don't save up for it nor do they have any incentive to sacrifice for it.

I don't think it's quite that simple.  Take, for example, Brazil.  A recent piece in National Geographic, Brazil's Girl Power, explores how that nation's fertility rate dropped precipitously from 6.1 in 1960 to 1.86 in 2009. In Brazil,

where the Roman Catholic Church dominates, abortion is illegal (except in rare cases), and no official government policy has ever promoted birth control

this is a pretty astonishing change over what is essentially just a bit more than two generations. In addition:

And it's not simply wealthy and professional women who have stopped bearing multiple children in Brazil. There's a common perception that the countryside and favelas, as Brazilians call urban slums, are still crowded with women having one baby after another—but it isn't true.

--

In a working-class neighborhood on the outskirts of Belo Horizonte, an unmarried 18-year-old affectionately watched her toddler son one evening as he roared his toy truck toward us; she loved him very much, the young woman said, but she was finished with childbearing. The expression she used was one I'd heard from Brazilian women before: "A fábrica está fechada." The factory is closed.

The National Geographic piece concentrates on two primary influences: Television, and culture. Specifically, the effect television has on culture.

An example of the effect:

Encountering women under 35 who've already had sterilization surgery is an everyday occurrence in Brazil, and they seem to have no compunctions about discussing it. "I was 18 when the first baby was born—wanted to stop there, but the second came by accident, and I am done," a 28-year-old crafts shop worker told me in the northeastern city of Recife, as she was showing me how to dance the regional two-step called the forró. She was 26 when she had her tubal ligation, and when I asked why she'd chosen irreversible contraception at such a young age—she's married, what if she and her husband change their minds?—she reminded me of son number two, the accident. Birth control pills made her fat and sick, she said. And in case I'd missed this part: She was done.

So why two? Why not four? Why not the eight your grandmother had? Always the same answer—"Impossible! Too expensive! Too much work!" With the facial expression, the widened eyes and the startled grin that I came to know well: It's the 21st century, senhora, are you nuts?

It's an interesting premise, convincingly presented.  Strongly recommended.

Wretchard concludes his piece:

Imagine there's no countries.
It isn't hard to do.
Nothing to kill or die for.
And no religion too.

And then the music stopped. This was the silent scene where we came in at the beginning of the screening: the churches closing at the rate of two a week; the factories closing even faster. What Lennon failed to grasp was that any society that had nothing it would sacrifice for would find nothing worth investing in. And so here we are, dragging on the end of our smokes, tipping over any bottles that still might contain some wine. Because the vineyards are barren and will stay that way. The ultimate problem with "living for today" is that tomorrow eventually comes.

With Brazil, and I suspect most, if not all of the Western world, "living for today" is pretty much the basis of the decline in birthrates. Children? "Impossible! Too expensive! Too much work!"

Not worth the investment. It's an economic choice, not necessarily a socialist one.

Quote of the Day - Social Justice Edition

What do you call it when someone steals someone else's money secretly? Theft. What do you call it when someone takes someone else's money openly by force? Robbery. What do you call it when a politician takes someone else's money in taxes and gives it to someone who is more likely to vote for him? Social Justice. -- Thomas Sowell, Random Thoughts

OK, Christmas is Over...

...back to the depressing, pessimistic stuff again. ;-)

First, watch this:




Trust me, if you haven't seen it, it's worth your time.

OK?  Now, watch this:




Both are examples of large numbers of people performing coordinated acts. The first is, in a word, beautiful.

The second, frankly, creeps me the hell out.

The first required literally weeks, months, and in the case of the organist, years of practice to make that performance come off. The second? Merely required a bunch of willing minions.

Human beings, for the most part, are herd creatures. We have, as a species, a need to belong to something, to be a member.

It's something I personally don't do well. I don't really grasp it. I've been asked several times why, if I like firearms so much, didn't I join the military? Simple - I wouldn't fit in, and I know it. Or I would, but I'd hate every second of it, which is essentially the same thing.

I watch hundreds, perhaps a couple thousand people doing what some disembodied voice tells them to do in a public park, and I cannot understand why. Yet I can understand the group performance of the Hallelujah Chorus. One is an exercise in mind-control. The other, an act of beauty.

But at the bottom, they both make use of the human need to belong.

And I cannot help but wonder if that voice had told those "two tribes" to kill each other, if some would not have tried it without thinking...

Yes, Bethany, There is a Santa Clause

Merry Christmas, Everyone

Another one from Digital Blasphemy.

A Christmas Present from Bill Whittle

Give 'em Hell, Bill:

Grandma Got Indefinitely Detained

From the folks at Reason:





In October of 2008, when I asked Rev. Donald Sensing if he still believed what he wrote in 2003, that:

When my children are my age, they will not be free in any recognizably traditional American meaning of the word. I’d tell them to emigrate, but there’s nowhere left to go. I am left with nauseating near-conviction that I am a member of the last generation in the history of the world that is minimally truly free.

He responded:

The demise of freedom in this country has accelerated even faster than I imagined back in 2003.

--

The only difference between the outcomes of McCain's or Obama's presidency is how quickly they will accelerate the robbery of the people's rights, not whether they will.

No argument here.

Oh, and I am TJIC. I guess that makes me a domestic terrorist now?

Quote of the Day - One Can But Hope Edition

From The Corruption of America, linked yesterday:

What gives me confidence for the future? Gun sales, for one thing. U.S. citizens legally own around 270 million firearms – about 88 guns per 100 citizens (including children) today.

That's a hard population to police without its consent. America is the No. 1 country in the world as ranked by the number of guns per-capita. That plays a major factor in the kind of government you will see take root in America. Things might go too far in this country for a while... And I'd argue they've been going the wrong way for too long. But the government can only take things so far before they'll be faced with a very angry, well-armed opposition.

If the government attempts to take our guns... my opinion would change immediately. But that's one right the Supreme Court has been strengthening recently. It gives me hope that most people in America still understand that the right to bear arms has little to do with protecting ourselves from crime and everything to do with protecting ourselves from government...

RTWT. I mean it.

If You Read Nothing Else This Weekend...

...read The Corruption of America by Porter Stansberry.  It's an überpost, and it's pretty much a distillation of what I've been writing here since 2003, but it's absolutely worth your time.

Pullquote:

The situation destabilized the entire city. Most of the people who could afford to leave did. Over the next 18 months, 140,000 upper- and middle-class residents – almost all of them white – left the city.

And so, you might ask... after five years of centralized planning, higher taxes, and a fleeing population, what did the government decide to do with its grand experiment? You'll never guess...

I would. "The philosophy cannot be wrong! Do it again, only HARDER!"

Tough history coming, indeed.

Thomas Sowell: "What are they Buying?"

I've begun reading Thomas Sowell's Dismantling America, a collection of his short pieces. I just finished "What are they Buying?" and wanted to share it with you. Here it is in video. It's absolutely worth your 4:45.



Pullquote:

What are the Beltway politicians buying with all the hundreds of billions of dollars they are spending? They are buying what politicians are most interested in -- power.

If you're running an Apple product, the YouTube link is: http://youtu.be/8GWtJcPjxvE

What HE Said

Sometimes I wonder why I even bother blogging anymore.  Mostly Cajun says exactly what I would have, only better because he did it in a lot fewer words.

Dogbert Explains the "Affordable Housing" Debacle

How Do You Feel About a Central AZ Blogshoot? (Bumped)

For some time in late January?  (Poll added.)

Audrey Hepburn

There's a bunch of us now, and I haven't met half of you. Just a short list - Let me know who I've missed in comments and I'll add them:

Great Satan Inc.
Exurban League
Sandcastle Scrolls
Guffaw in AZ
Dustin's Gun Blog
Gator in the Desert
Arizona Shooter
Empty Mags
Eric Shelton
Cowboy Blob
Desert Rat
Macker's World
Misanthropic
Moonbattery
Vox
PapaTodd
Religion Press
Bill of Grace
Nine Pound Sledgehammer
Primeval Papa
flat5.net 
Vuurwapen Blog
An Inconvenient Man
Cap'n Bob and the Damsel
Of Arms and the Law
Void Where Prohibited

That's seventeen twenty-six.  Remember, they don't all have to be gun bloggers, just bloggers who might be interested in going to a shoot.  Who else?

BUMPED: It looks like the last Sunday in January is the winner.

Can't Say I Disagree...

This Made Me LOL - Quote of the Day

...no matter how highbrow your tastes, sometimes you need to just shut up and eat your awesome. -- Tam, I'm impressed.

From her review of Larry Correia's Hard Magic and Spellbound.  Good advice for all occasions, though.  (How does she do that?)

Quote of the WEEK

If a mad scientist were to repair to his laboratory to design a machine that would make white liberals uncomfortable, that machine would be Thomas Sowell

From Thomas Sowell: Peerless Nerd in the December issue of Commentary magazine. By all means, read the whole thing.

Another excerpt from the article, and an example of what the QotW is talking about:

(A)s Sowell reminds us, reality is not optional; facts must be accounted for. It is not as though he is in possession of secret, arcane knowledge. For instance, these facts are easily documented: Gun-control laws began to be passed during times when crime was declining, rather than climbing. Crime began climbing after gun-control laws were passed. Places with very strict gun-control laws typically have more crime than do places without them—a fact that holds true between countries and between regions of the United States. There is little or no relationship between the rigorousness of gun-control laws and criminals’ access to guns. Many countries have lots of guns but relatively few murders, while others have few guns but relatively many murders. Swimming pools kill many more people in accidents than guns do. You do not have to be a great scholar to look at those facts and ask: What is the point of gun-control laws?

ETA:  Dr. Sowell put in another appearance on Uncommon Knowledge back in October.  He discusses his latest book, The Thomas Sowell Reader, the subject of the Commentary piece.  You can watch it here.

"Always listen to experts.

They’ll tell you what can’t be done and why. Then do it." - R.A. Heinlein, The Notebooks of Lazarus Long

So a Bloomberg publication runs a pretty positive story on the increase in gun ownership among women, but - being objective journalists - they have to get a soundbite from the opposition, to wit:

Those Americans who have acquired handguns for protection are living with "serious delusions," says Caroline Brewer, a spokeswoman for the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. She contends that few are trained rigorously enough to deploy their weapons in the shock and heat of an attack, that they'll shoot innocent bystanders, that more times than not their firearms will be turned against them.

"To suggest all these guns make the world safer is pure fantasy," she says.

Really? Let's look at some "fantasy" from just the past couple of days, shall we?

First up, we have a blog report of a defensive gun use by a woman:

Short version: Cee shot at a home invader, missed, but successfully convinced him to run like hell.

--

Cee’s sleep schedule has been off this week, so she was still awake around 1:3o in the morning, when she heard something at the back door. She thought it might be the furnace making odd noises, so she peeked around that corner, down the hallway with the furnace, laundry room, and back door, and saw the doorknob jiggling.

My brother and I were fast asleep, so she chose to go grab his handgun instead of waking either of us—an excellent decision because, when she got back to the hallway with that firearm, the bad guy’s head was through the door.

--

So, the bad guy’s head was at the bottom of the doorway because he was standing on the ground. When he saw Cee, they stared at each other for what she said felt like forever. It wasn’t too hard to see the dude because, even though the back-porch light wasn’t on, there was a kitchen light shining partly into the hallway.

Then he resumed trying to open the door and climb into the trailer. Apparently, he didn’t notice that she had a handgun at her side. That’s when she shot at him. She’d used Matt’s 9mm only a couple of times before, as it’s a rather-new addition to their little collection, but she didn’t have any trouble flipping off the thumb safety or aiming. The hollow point hit the mostly closed door, about six inches to the right of the bad guy’s head.

He vanished.

Anecdote #1.

Anecdote #2:

PHOENIX - Police say a suspect who was shot in the backyard of a south Phoenix home Monday afternoon has died from his injuries.

Phoenix police Officer James Holmes said the 29-year-old man was taken to the hospital with life-threatening injuries after being shot by a female homeowner.

Holmes said what sounded like a young child called 911 stating that her mother had shot a man at the home near 45th Street and Roeser Road.

--

Holmes said the incident started earlier in the day when the woman saw two males in the backyard around noon.

She called her husband who told her to get out a gun, Holmes said.

Around 3 p.m. the woman saw two males in her backyard again and went out to check.

Holmes said one of the males pulled out a weapon and pointed it at the woman.

She reportedly raised her own weapon and fired at the man, striking him at least once.

Holmes said the suspect's weapon was recovered at the scene and at this point it looks like a case of self defense.

The woman and the girl were not hurt, Holmes said.

Anecdote #3:

Note that the woman had just purchased her .38 and had never fired it, yet she was able to defend herself against an attacker who continued to try and enter her home after being fired upon.


In none of these cases were the women apparently "rigorously trained" - especially not in the last one. In none of these cases did they shoot innocent bystanders, and in none of these cases were their weapons taken and turned on them. Granted, the plural of anecdote is not data, but would these three women have been better off disarmed?  Caroline Brewer, Brady Campaign expert, once again proves Heinlein's Rule:  listen to the "experts," then do the exact opposite of what they advise.  Brewer is the delusional one living a fantasy.

39 Years Ago Today...

Eugene Cernan left the last of these in the lunar soil:




I was ten years old.

We also left behind six American flags, six lunar module descent stages, three lunar rovers zero-emission electric vehicles, three retroreflective laser targets, the crashed remains of six ascent stages and five Saturn S-IVB third stages (what, you thought we left them in lunar orbit?), along with tools and trash and other miscellaneous and sundry items, including a two golf balls.

And 39 years later, we don't have the capability of going back, much less the will.

Your 4:43 of Zen

Yes, human beings are awesome: