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.

GBRX Recap

So, the Tenth Annual Gun Blogger Rendezvous is complete.  I skipped the Sunday simulator session, and left for home just after 8AM.  Had to stop in Vegas about 4PM because I was flat exhausted.  Got home Monday afternoon.

There were 25 registered attendees at this year's event, and together we raised almost $3,000 for Honored American Veterans Afield.  Sponsors of the event were:

Lucky Gunner - primary sponsor, and supplier of ammunition to attendees.  My thanks to Anthony W. of Lucky Gunner for getting everything set up and organized, and for running things so well.  Lucky Gunner is set up to run next year's event also.  Anthony took a lot of photos and video.  As soon as those are up, I'll be linking.

The Silver Legacy Resort and Casino - Nice place to stay, and very accommodating!  When we asked about wheeling in the Gardner Gun, they were all for it.

Special Interest Arms - Richard Brengman is a local out of Gardnerville, NV, about an hour south of Reno.  This year, in addition to the Gardner Gun, he brought a variety of Class III items for us to shoot - most suppressed, a couple full-auto.  I'm kinda interested in his 9mm bolt-action rifle with integral suppressor.  One tax stamp.  Sucker is about as loud as a dropped paperback in a library.  Richard also donated a stripped AR-15 lower to the HAVA raffle.

Springfield Armory - Donated T-shirts, beer glasses and coffee mugs, a couple of banners and some other things.  Maybe we can wangle a pistol out of them next year.

Ruger - Provided a range bag, a backpack and some coffee mugs.  No repeat of the MkIII Hunter of last year, but....

Sig Sauer - Sponser of shooter and GBR attendee Jaci Janes provided caps, keychains and stickers.  Hmm...  I think I'm sensing a trend here.

Dillon Precision - donated one of their "border shift" ammo bags and some hats.

Brownell's - No ultimate range bag this year, but Brownell's did donate one of their new ESG  Backpacks, some AR10 magazines, and a slew of oil samples as they usually do.  We missed having Larry Weeks join us, but he's enjoying retirement by running around to various competitions.

Allchin Gun Parts - donated optics mounts and machined magazine base pads.  Nice stuff!

Burris Optics - Again this year Lori Yunker (former GBR attendee) kindly donated an AR-F³ red dot sight on a Picatinny mount.  That got snapped up.

MOA Targets - another local, Mitch Gerlinger makes AR plate targets for rifles and pistols.  I won one of their Freedom Wheel units rated for rifle.  Can't wait to see if I can hit it at 500+ yards with the .300 Mag.  Mitch also brought out his full-auto M14 to the Friday shoot, and let anyone who wanted to rip off a magazine.  Pretty cool.

Target Barn - Provided the IDPA target cardboards that we used during the Saturday "paper steel" shoot, and also some pretty cool shoot-'n-see zombie varmint targets.  I got a set of those.

Front Sight Training Academy - again donated a four-day training course valued at over $2k.

Self Defense Association - Sponsor of shooter Great Satan (Jaci Janes' other half), Self Defense Association is an insurance company for anybody who might need financial security after a shooting.  SDA provides insurance policies to cover both criminal and civil legal fees should you need to defend yourself against prosecution or a lawsuit after a self-defense shooting.  They donated a $250k policy.

The National Shooting Sports Foundation - the REAL "gun lobby," the NSSF provided us with way too much Godfather's Pizza for the Saturday night festivities as they have for the last several years. 

CigarsCity.com donated cigars and a small humidor.  Something different, and also something snapped up almost immediately.

Repeat attendee Bill Llewellen of Billlls Idle Mind brought some laser-cut aperture sights for Ruger pistols, and donated a couple to the cause.

And last, but FAR from least, Reno Guns and Range (formerly U.S. Firearms Academy).  They allowed us to ship our stuff to them for safekeeping prior to our arrival, even though they were in the middle of trying to get ready for a grand re-opening at their entirely new and extremely state-of-the-art facilities.  And, ladies and gentlemen, if you're in the Reno area I strongly urge you to check them out.  That place will make the Scottsdale Gun Club look pale by comparison when they get it complete.  On Saturday they gave us the run of their 10-lane bay to conduct our "paper steel" shoot on opening day.  On Sunday they ran their simulator training for us again as we had done the previous year, but in a newer, more spacious facility.  We got the full tour of the place, which has not only the 10-lane 25 yard range (rated for rifles), but also a private four-lane range with attached "meeting room" complete with conference table, pool table, and mini-galley.  They will eventually have a "shoot house" complete with garage for realistic training using simunitions.  This place is AWESOME.  I kinda wish I lived in Reno.

I think once Lucky Gunner gets their feet under it, next year's Rendezvous will be even more outstanding than this year's.

HEAR, HEAR!

Nikki fisks.  Read the whole thing.

Bleg: Anybody Use These?

My gun safe is full.

Well, not full, but I would have a hard time getting more long guns into it the way it's configured now.

Other people have had that problem, and this is one solution that has hit the market:  Rifle Rods.


Anybody actually tried them?  It looks interesting, I'll give it that.

Lotsa Miles

I pulled out of my driveway at 05:30 this morning, and into the parking lot here at the Silver Legacy at 19:30.  Two stops for fuel, one for lunch in Vegas.  Not bad.  Best part about the trip is A) diesel doesn't cost $4/gal this year, and B) diesel actually costs less than regular gas.  Looks like the truck got pretty good mileage for a 7,000lb crew-cab beast.

Tired, hungry, and my a$$ is a little sore.  Time for some dinner and then bed, I think.  Looking forward to the next few days here at GBR X!

Planned Obsolescence Update

Remember I was bitching about my iPod not taking music I tried to put on it from iTunes?  Well, I've got a 13+ hour drive coming up tomorrow, and I thought, "Let's just wipe the thing and start over from scratch and see if that helps."  So I made a backup of the iPod, and proceeded to reset it to factory default.

And apparently I've bricked it.

Every time I try to get iTunes to recognize it now, I get:  "We could not complete your iTunes Store request.  An unknown error occurred (0x80090326)"

Which translates, as far as I can tell, to "BUY NEW HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE YOU LUDDITE!"

So my (mumble-) year-old iPod that had about 35 hours of music stored on it is now magically wiped clean, and is completely useless for its intended purpose.

Yay me.

I hope Steve Jobs is suffering on the eighth level of Hell being sodomized by a barbed-wire-wrapped fencepost.

UPDATE:  I got it working.  Connected it to the iTunes running on my wife's Windows7 laptop.  Recognized it as an iPod immediately and let me configure it as new.  Took it back to my XP machine and iTunes saw it.  Copied my music over, looks like it all took, as I listened to 13.5 hours worth without a hitch on the way to Reno.

Thanks for the suggestions.

Idiocracy

Bill Whittle on education:


Billy Beck calls it the Endarkenment.  I'm convinced that 115 years of public education has accomplished The Great Unlearning, and it has been deliberate.

UNEXPECTEDLY!

So the EPA "accidentally" released 3 million gallons of toxic spill into the Animas river.  It was completely unintentional.  No one could have predicted it.

Except someone did.  Seven days before the spill.

Why did he predict this would happen?

The "grand experiment" in my opinion will fail.  And guess what (EPA representative) Mr. Hestmark will say then?

Gee, "Plan A" didn't work so I guess we will have to build a treatment plant at a cost to taxpayers of $100 million to $500 million (who knows).

Reading between the lines, I believe that has been the EPA's plan all along.  The proposed Red & Bonita plugging plan has been their way of getting a foot in the door to justify their hidden agenda for construction of a treatment plant.  After all, with a budget of $8.2 billion and 17,000 employees, the EPA needs new, big projects to feed the beast and justify their existence.

And it was in a dead-tree publication, no less!

ETA:

Fifty Rounds of .300 Win Mag Loaded...

...Achievement Unlocked!

Got another fifty to do, then a few hundred rounds of .45ACP, 100 rounds of .44 Mag, and maybe some .38 Special pin loads.

Two Weeks to the Rendezvous!

There's still time to get signed up and make room reservations for Gun Blogger Rendezvous X.  Check out the site.  There's some good stuff to take home with this year.

The schedule has been sent out to attendees, and here's what's on tap:

Thursday, August 20:

2:45-5PM - Trip to the massive Scheel's Sports in Sparks. If you need any last-minute range gear or just want to check it out (worth the trip) a group will be leaving from the Silver Legacy. Upon our return we're having a group dinner at the El Dorado buffet. (No sponsor, attendees responsible for buffet cost.)

Friday, August 21:

8-9AM - Breakfast at the Silver Legacy Resort &Casino (Free, sponsored by LuckyGunner.com)
10AM-2PM - Range time at the Washoe County Shooting Facility. Shoot what you brought, and shoot what everybody else brought. This is where the Gardner Gun and various other toys, some suppressed, some full auto, will be available to shoot. The range has target frames and known-distance positions for them out to 300 yards. Steel swingers at various ranges out to 900 yards. I'm bringing my .300 Win Mag for this. Range fee is $8/person. Bring something to drink, and sunscreen is advised. You also need eye and ear protection.
6-8PM - Dinner at the Silver Legacy - (Free, sponsored by LuckyGunner.com)
8-Whenever - Mix-n-Mingle in the hospitality room.  Adult beverages and snacks (byob!).  This is the main reason I go to the Rendezvous, and I don't drink.  The range trips are just an extra added bonus.

Saturday, August 22:

8-9AM - Breakfast at the Silver Legacy Resort & Casino (Free, sponsored by LuckyGunner.com)
10AM-2PM - "Paper steel" shooting at the new indoor range at Reno Guns & Range.  $15/person.  Rimfire and centerfire handguns only.  Irons & optics.  Five white paper plates mounted on IPSC style target stands. One plate will be designated as the “Stop Plate” and it must be shot last. The other four plates may be shot in any order. Each shooter will shoot the stage multiple times, and the slowest time will be discarded. The remaining fastest times will be totaled, and added to the shooter’s overall score. Once each shooter has completed the stage, the targets will be moved to different positions, and will be shot again as “Stage 2.” Additional stages will be shot as time permits.  Each string will be shot from the "low ready" position.
5-6PM - Special Interest Arms' Richard Brengman will talk about his Gardner Gun and other toys, which you should have gotten to shoot on Friday.
6-6:15PM - Brief introduction to the organization we're sponsoring, Honored American Veterans Afield (HAVA).
6:15-7:15PM Pizza dinner, provided by the National Shooting Sports Foundation. Please don't drip pizza grease on the Gardner Gun!
7:15-7:45 - Raffle benefiting HAVA. There's some nice stuff this year.
7:45-Whenever - Mix-n-Mingle. Adult beverages, yadda yadda yadda....

Sunday, August 23

8-9AM - Breakfast at the Silver Legacy Resort & Casino (Free, sponsored by LuckyGunner.com)
9AM-1PM - Scenario simulation at Reno Guns and Range. This is a training simulator using CO2 powered simulated firearms against projected threat scenarios. We did this last year. If you carry a gun for self-protection, this is highly recommended. It will make you think. $15/person.

So get on the phone and make your reservations!

Instead of Self-flagellating Over the Atomic Bombings of Japan,

...watch Bill Whittle's righteous defense of the war-ending act.  One of his best Afterburners ever, and now no longer behind PJTV's paywall.  Worth your time, and send it to people who claim that dropping the atomic bombs on Japan was a war crime.

Hate

I just banned another commenter.  This pretty much never happens unless the commenter is a spammer.  That's not the case this time.  This time the commenter was banned because he advocates killing police officers.

I find it interesting that this happened on the same day that I was pointed to this article:  How Social Justice Warriors Are Creating An Entire Generation Of Fascists. Excerpt:

Like the far-right that they claim to be so staunchly opposed to, the far-left is based entirely around hate. Humans are perpetual morons who always need a bad guy. To neo-Nazis, the bad guys are Jews, "degenerates", and non-whites. To SJWs, the bad guys are people like Communismkills: not only is she a white person who isn't self-flagellating, but she's also a woman who doesn't see herself as a victim of some evil patriarchal conspiracy. To an SJW, that's heresy: all white people are evil and all women are victims. If a woman doesn't think that she's a victim, then she has "internalized misogyny" and she just doesn't know any better, so she needs SJWs to speak on her behalf. Likewise, if a black person doesn't tow(sic) the SJW line exactly, then they will be immediately labeled an "Uncle Tom" or "house nigger" by the extremely patronizing SJWs who see minorities as nothing more than political props and tools and who view all races as monoliths with intrinsic characteristics (which, ironically, is the absolute definition of racism).

Read the whole thing.  It's sickening, but informative.  I'm reminded once again of philosopher Eric Hoffer's seminal work The True Believer, and his observation on hate:

Hatred is the most accessible and comprehensive of all unifying agents. It pulls and whirls the individual away from his own self, makes him oblivious of his weal and future, frees him of jealousies and self-seeking. He becomes an anonymous particle quivering with a craving to fuse and coalesce with his like into one flaming mass. (Heinrich) Heine suggests that what Christian love cannot do is effected by a common hatred.

Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a God, but never without belief in a devil. Usually the strength of a mass movement is proportionate to the vividness and tangibility of its devil. When Hitler was asked whether he thought the Jew must be destroyed, he answered: "No.... We should have then to invent him. It is essential to have a tangible enemy, not merely an abstract one." F.A. Voigt tells of a Japanese mission that arrived in Berlin in 1932 to study the National Socialist movement. Voigt asked a member of the mission what he thought of the movement. He replied: "It is magnificent. I wish we could have something like it in Japan, only we can't, because we haven't got any Jews."

Another example of this came today in another article, Salem on the Thames: What Connecticut College's Andrew Pessin Affair Teaches Us. Dr. Andrew Pessin's story is an illuminating example of one college campus fusing and coalescing into one flaming mass of hatred. He'll be lucky to get another teaching job anywhere. He's been made an unperson, much like Dr. Walter Palmer, the dentist who killed a lion in Zimbabwe.

This all goes back to the piece I linked in this morning's post, Balkanization Part II, and even more to a piece I wrote the better part of ten years ago, Reasonable People.

The fabric of civil society is has been fraying noticeably for a while.  How much longer before it begins to shred?  I'm not taking any bets.

Balkanization, Part II

Awhile back I wrote a post entitled Balkanization about how the Tucson Unified School District was running elementary and secondary education courses in "Race studies."  What it appeared to be was advanced indoctrination in "The White Man is Keeping Us DOWN!"

This kind of stuff dates back to the 60's radicals - many of whom occupy (or have occupied) teaching positions in the schools of education across the country - Howard Zinn, Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn being only the most "famous."  First you teach the educators, then they teach the pupils.

And the end result?  Balkanization - defined as

to break up (as a region or group) into smaller and often hostile units

Note with particular attention the word "hostile."

Perusing Gerard Van der Leun's site the other day, I came across this really excellent essay: Liberals May Regret Their New Rules. Excerpt:

(America is) becoming a nation where an elite that is certain of its power and its moral rightness is waging a cultural war on a despised minority. Except it's not actually a minority – it only seems that way because it is marginalized by the coastal elitist liberals who run the mainstream media.

Today in America, we have a liberal president (who) refuses to recognize the majority sent to Congress as a reaction to his progressive failures, and who uses extra-Constitutional means like executive orders to stifle the voice of his opponents. We have a liberal establishment on a secular jihad against people who dare place their conscience ahead of progressive dogma. And we have two different sets of laws, one for the little people and one for liberals like Lois Lerner, Al Sharpton and Hillary Clinton, who can blatantly commit federal crimes and walk away scot free and smirking.

Today in America, a despised minority that is really no minority is the target of an establishment that considers this minority unworthy of respect, unworthy of rights, and unworthy of having a say in the direction of this country. It’s an establishment that has one law for itself, and another for its enemies. It’s an establishment that inflicts an ever-increasing series of petty humiliations on its opponents and considers this all hilarious.

That’s a recipe for disaster. You cannot expect to change the status quo for yourself and then expect those you victimize not to play by the new rules you have created. You cannot expect to be able to discard the rule of law in favor of the rule of force and have those you target not respond in kind.

RTWT. It's a cautionary tale that I don't think the Left on the whole is capable of learning.  But a few can.

"Tough history coming," indeed.

Quote of the Day - Top Gear Edition

Unless you've been living under a stump, you're most likely aware that Clarkson, May and Hammond will be returning to the small screen via Amazon Video next year.  (And there was much rejoicing!  Yeaaaa!)

I stumbled across this QotD over at Quora.com under the question "What is so special about Top Gear that it has 385 million viewers worldwide?"

The secret is that Top Gear is not about cars. It's about joy. About unabashedly, unashamedly enjoying life.

It also presents a positive image of masculinity, which is something that is entirely missing from everything else on television.-- Rúnar Óli Bjarnason

Abso-fricken-lutely.

Brains, Hard Work & Guts - Bill Whittle and the "Right" Brothers

Quote of the Day - Democratic Operatives with Bylines Edition

Seen at Glenn's, courtesy of Ed Driscoll:

Modern journalism is all about deciding which facts the public shouldn’t know because they might reflect badly on Democrats. - Jim Treacher

Yup.

The internet has gone a long way towards beating down the walls the gatekeepers seek to control, but it hasn't succeeded yet in penetrating John and Jane Doe's living rooms.  Far too many people still get all their "news" from ABCNNBCBS and the major newspapers.