Quora and the Rights Debate (Updated & Bumped)

So, over at Quora someone asked, What would you do if guns became illegal in the US? I responded:

As the saying goes, "When guns are outlawed, only the government and outlaws will have guns."

There's another saying: "After the first felony, the rest are free."

But there's an even more appropriate saying: "...an act of the Legislature repugnant to the Constitution is void." (Marbury v. Madison, 1803) And yes, I believe I understand what is and isn't "repugnant to the Constitution," and more importantly, I have the right to make that judgement.

That drew this comment:

I agree with most of what you have written Kevin, right up to the end. You DON'T have a right to make that judgment. That decision is reserved for the courts and until such time as a lawfully passed law has been approved, it is the law of the land. Once the courts declare it unconstitutional, then it is no longer a law.

This is the whole scenario with the wackadoos out at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, and with the Bundys in Nevada. You are not free to interpret the Constitution nor the laws in any way you choose...

To which I replied:

"You DON'T have a right to make that judgment. That decision is reserved for the courts and until such time as a lawfully passed law has been approved, it is the law of the land. Once the courts declare it unconstitutional, then it is no longer a law."

Here I'll quote Judge Alex Kozinski of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals:

"The Second Amendment is a doomsday provision, one designed for those exceptionally rare circumstances where all other rights have failed - where the government refuses to stand for reelection and silences those who protest; where courts have lost the courage to oppose, or can find no one to enforce their decrees. However improbable these contingencies may seem today, facing them unprepared is a mistake a free people get to make only once."

If I wait for "the courts to declare it unconstitutional" I would already be disarmed.

Fuck. That.

The response?

Yeah sorry Kevin....didn't realize you were part of the tin foil hat crowd. Please just nevermind.

You know me, I couldn't stop there:

No, not the tinfoil hat crowd. They think Armageddon is imminent. I'm with the tinfoil yarmulke crowd. We don't think it likely, (see "exceptionally rare circumstances" above) but we also don't consider it impossible. We've read history.

Apparently he wasn't finished either:

LOL...OK, poor analogy on my part !

But while I recognize that laws can be unconstitutional, PEOPLE don't get to decide that. That is the purpose of the court system...

So I decided to take him to school:

Yes, PEOPLE do. As law professor Mike O'Shea put it, "So the Constitution says Roe, but it doesn't say I have the right to keep a gun to defend my home, huh?"

The court system is made up of PEOPLE. People we should hold to a higher standard, but people nonetheless. Have you ever READ any court decisions? Here's another of my favorite Kozinski quotes:

"Judges know very well how to read the Constitution broadly when they are sympathetic to the right being asserted. We have held, without much ado, that “speech, or...the press” also means the Internet...and that "persons, houses, papers, and effects" also means public telephone booths....When a particular right comports especially well with our notions of good social policy, we build magnificent legal edifices on elliptical constitutional phrases - or even the white spaces between lines of constitutional text. But, as the panel amply demonstrates, when we're none too keen on a particular constitutional guarantee, we can be equally ingenious in burying language that is incontrovertibly there.

"It is wrong to use some constitutional provisions as springboards for major social change while treating others like senile relatives to be cooped up in a nursing home until they quit annoying us. As guardians of the Constitution, we must be consistent in interpreting its provisions. If we adopt a jurisprudence sympathetic to individual rights, we must give broad compass to all constitutional provisions that protect individuals from tyranny. If we take a more statist approach, we must give all such provisions narrow scope. Expanding some to gargantuan proportions while discarding others like a crumpled gum wrapper is not faithfully applying the Constitution; it's using our power as federal judges to constitutionalize our personal preferences."

What you're advocating is surrender to authority. You've abandoned your responsibility as a citizen to understand and defend your rights "against all enemies, foreign and domestic" when you insist that we're just supposed to accept what five black-robed officials on a panel decide. You can read, study, and understand what you've been promised by the system that was set up to protect those rights yourself.

Your argument boils down to "You're not qualified!"

Like hell we're not.

That got him warmed up:

Not a question of "qualified" Kevin. It is a question of what our Constitution says is how our government works. You don't have to like the Roe vs. Wade decision anymore than I like the Heller decision. But those are the law of the land now since they are the decisions of the SUPREME Court. I capitalize that for a reason, because it is the ULTIMATE decider and serves as a check on the Legislative and Executive Branches.

Kozinski can write whatever he wants to, just like you or I can. The difference is that his writings nor yours or mine carry any legal weight. If you want to change the Constitution to make the way the US government operates different, that is fine and there is a procedure for amending it that is clearly laid out in the document itself. But as a citizen of this country, you are governed by the laws passed in your state and by the federal government. No place in any of those laws does it say you get to interpret the laws as you personally see fit.

"What you're advocating is surrender to authority". Yes, that is exactly what living in a country is all about. We have a common system of laws that supposedly apply equally to call citizens and visitors. You don't get to make up your own laws, nor disregard those made up by the governments who govern where you are.

Your last paragraph is exactly what the Cliven Bundy's and LaVoy Finicums of the world believe. "The law doesn't apply to me if I don't agree with it". Well, YES IT DOES! If you don't like it, then there is a procedure for changing the laws of this country and you need to get a majority of the people to support the changes you want to make. This is a democracy on some levels and a republic on others. Why are you willing to argue about your individual rights, while completely ignoring the process by which you were granted those rights. The true disconnect is when people (and that would include you in this discussion) think they get to define their own rights as being different from that which others believe them to be. That is the purpose of the court system...to make sure we are all on the same page as to what is and what isn't acceptable. You don't get to make that call unfortunately, no matter how much you may not like it.

Not deterred, I fired back:

"You don't get to make up your own laws, nor disregard those made up by the governments who govern where you are."

Do you routinely drive faster than the posted speed limit? Are you aware that, most likely, you commit Three Felonies a Day?

"Why are you willing to argue about your individual rights, while completely ignoring the process by which you were granted those rights."

See, that's what defines the difference between our worldviews. I wasn't granted anything. I'm supposed to be living under a government established with the duty to protect the rights I have simply by existing.

How's that working out? Rand's Atlas Shrugged and Orwell's 1984 were supposed to be warnings, not instruction manuals.

"The true disconnect is when people (and that would include you in this discussion) think they get to define their own rights as being different from that which others believe them to be."

Now here we are somewhat in agreement. I've spent a lot of time thinking about and writing about rights, and at one point I wrote:

A "right" is what the majority of a society believes it is.

To that, however, I added this:

What good is a "right to keep and bear arms" if it gets you put in jail? What good is a "right to keep and bear arms" if using a firearm to defend yourself or someone else results in the loss of your freedom, or at least your property? What good is a "right to keep and bear arms" when you live in a city that denies you the ability to keep a gun in your home for self protection?

This is a battle for public opinion, make no mistake.

It is a battle the powerful and their useful idiots have been winning.

Your rights are meaningless when the system under which you live does not recognize them. Or worse, scorns them.

If you want to keep your rights, it is up to YOU to fight for them. Liberty is NEVER unalienable. You must always fight for it.

"If you will not fight for right when you can easily win without blood shed; if you will not fight when your victory is sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves." - Winston Churchill

Welcome to the battle for public opinion. We appear to be on different sides.

That put him off:

Thanks for the dialog. Speeding is not a felony, and as soon as you started quoting Ayn Rand that ended my interest in continuing the discussion. Keep fighting the good fight.

But I wasn't done yet:

Point of fact: I didn't "quote" Rand. I gave the title of one of her books, along with the title of one of Orwell's. With respect to Rand, I like this quote (about, not by her):

"Perhaps the biggest mistake an intellectual can make is to try to parlay his one brilliant insight into a unified theory of existence. Ayn Rand made this mistake with Objectivism. Objectivism was useful for thinking in certain limited realms, but Rand sought to apply Objectivist thinking to every aspect of the human experience, including love. The result is a sterile philosophical landscape, extending out of sight in all directions.Tellingly, Rand was unable to live according to her ideals. This is part of what makes Rand so disagreeable; the almost hysterical denial of subjectivity's inevitable, essential role in our lives. And it makes her not only disagreeable, but wrong."

The fact that you reacted so viscerally to the mere mention of her name says more about you than about me.

Now I will quote Rand so you can feel justified in abandoning the dialog:

"The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities."

To which he replied:

Kevin, we just see the world very differently and arguing about that on Quora does neither of us any good. The title of this whole thread was "What would you do if guns became illegal in the US". In order for that to happen, there would need to be a constitutional amendment and that requires a 2/3 vote of the states, so I don't see that happening.

We obviously disagree on the role of the courts in interpreting the constitution and the laws passed by the legislative branches of government. That's fine. We are each entitled to our own beliefs.

My concern is with people who somehow view our government as evil and restricting their freedom. The USA is one of the freest places on the planet. I believe that in my heart. If you don't, then so be it, again, your choice, but I don't know what individual rights you believe you are not getting in this country.

Good luck and again, thanks for the dialog.

One more final parting shot by me:

"Kevin, we just see the world very differently and arguing about that on Quora does neither of us any good."

Odd, I thought that was what the internet was for!

;-)

"My concern is with people who somehow view our government as evil and restricting their freedom."

You haven't studied history much, have you? I don't view our government as evil and restricting of freedom, I view all government as evil and restricting of freedom. I share that opinion with Thomas Paine:

"Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one; for when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries by a government, which we might expect in a country without government, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer..."

However, I am not an anarchist - note the qualifier that government is a necessary evil.

"The USA is one of the freest places on the planet. I believe that in my heart."

So do I. But as a friend asked once, "When was the last time you built a bonfire on a beach, openly drank a beer and the presence of a policeman was absolutely no cause for concern? Hmmm?"

I am also constantly reminded of John Philpot Curran's warning:

"The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime and the punishment of his guilt."

I'm an atheist, but the sentiment rings true.

"...I don't know what individual rights you believe you are not getting in this country."

It's not the ones I'm not getting, it's the ones I have I'm fighting to ensure I don't lose. Ask the (former) residents of New London, CT about their property rights. Ask the Tea Party victims of the IRS about their free speech rights. Look into the abrogation of your 4th Amendment rights of protection against unreasonable search and seizure with respect to vehicle searches and "asset forfeiture." Read Glenn Reynold's Columbia Law review piece Ham Sandwich Nation: Due Process When Everything Is a Crime. Speeding isn't a felony, no, but study the expansion of felony law. Were you aware that in some jurisdictions walking out of a restaurant on a $25 check is a felony? Or staying in a multiplex cinema and catching a second feature without paying for it?

You are aware of the loss of rights that goes along with a felony conviction, aren't you?

Yes, the USA is one of the freest places on the planet, but government is power concentrated in the hands of a few, and power corrupts and attracts the already corrupt. Ignore that fact at your peril.

Supreme Court Justice Learned Hand once wrote, "Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it. While it lies there, it needs no constitution, no law, no court to save it."

Does arguing on Quora do any good? Maybe not for you, but I'm not writing to convert you. I'm writing so that others who read these threads might get exposed to ideas that they had not previously considered, and that might actually get them to think and study for themselves.

THAT is what I think the Internet is really for.

I don't expect him to reply again, but you never know.

UPDATE, 3/27:  There were some other commenters, which started this final thread:

You seem very happy to subject yourself to the authority of others.

Interesting, but not applicable to anyone else.

To which our respondent replied:

I subject myself to the legally passed laws of the Republic Robert. It is the nut jobs out there who seem to think they have the ability/right/duty or whatever else you want to call it to selectively decide which laws apply to them or must be followed.

Given that opening, I asked him:

So Rosa Parks should have stayed in the back of the bus, then. Check. And I assume you've never heard of Jury Nullification?

He seemed surprised by this:

What does this have to do with Rosa Parks or Jury Nullification? Nevermind...forget that I asked...

But I wasn't letting him off that easily.

No, no! Let's pursue this logic train all the way to the end of the tracks! You stated that you subject yourself to the legally passed laws of the Republic. The law that forced Rosa Parks to the back of the bus was one such law. You're stating that she should have obeyed it - that she had no ability/right/duty to "selectively decide" that it didn't apply to her, and that when brought to trial the jury didn't have the ability/right/duty to decide - in the face of the law and the judge - to acquit her because she had clearly violated the legally passed law, right? That we mere individual citizens don't have the RIGHT to judge those laws for ourselves.

I can draw no other conclusion from your statements. YOU can draw no other conclusion from your statements. Rosa Parks had no right to violate the legally passed law of the Republic. Period.

Or explain to me how I'm misinterpreting your position.

This was ignored or unseen until someone else asked him about it later, and I pointed him to the question.

You can almost hear the Cognitive Dissonance grinding between his ears:

Kevin, I have no interest in continuing this discussion with you so please stop posting responses to me. Civil disobedience is not a Constitutional issue and that is where this conversation began. Again, thank you for the dialog, but I do not wish to hear from you further.

Hell, I thought what were discussing WAS civil disobedience. Here's another place to quote someone quotable - Winston Churchill: "Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened." Anyway, I've apparently hurt his brain enough, and he's served his illustrative purpose, so I let him go:

I think you just answered my question, so thank you, and I'll leave you to yourself.

American Fascists

Bill Whittle's latest Firewall:

Bill Whittle - Here Be Dragons

Since today is Presidential Primary day in Arizona, here's Bill Whittle discussing the current election debacle:

Boomershoot Update

So Boomershoot is right at a month away.  I've picked the load I'm going to be using in my .300 Win Mag, but I've still got some issues with the rifle itself to iron out - scope adjustments and Loctite, mostly.

I still need a spotter/co-shooter for Position 26.  I'll be traveling from Tucson through Salt Lake City on April 21, arriving in Orofino, ID on the 22nd, departing on the 25th.  Anybody want to join me?

"For Every Complex Problem...

...there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong." - H.L. Mencken

The latest is touted in an article in New Scientist:  Could three gun laws cut US firearm deaths by 90 per cent? What are these three laws?

• Close the "gun show loophole" - that is, ban private sales of firearms.
• Require background checks on ammunition purchases. 
• Use "'fingerprinting' technology that allows a bullet to be traced back to the weapon that fired it."

The article insists that a study performed "with no funding" by Bindu Kalesan, adjunct Assistant Professor of Epidemiology at Boston University and her colleagues came up with this list after collecting

data on firearm deaths between 2008 and 2010, as well as information from 25 state laws and unemployment levels.

While most laws they studied appeared to be ineffective:

Three laws did seem to lower gun deaths, however. Extending background checks to cover the purchase of ammunition, bringing in background checks on private sales, and using “fingerprinting” technology that allows a bullet to be traced to the weapon that fired it, all seem to be linked to a significant reduction in mortality. “If we implemented these laws at the federal level, firearm mortality would drop by 90 per cent,” says Kalesan.

Wow. That's quite a prediction!

So far, to my knowledge, only the first law has been implemented anywhere. Background checks on ammo purchases? Where? I know some jurisdictions (*cough*Illinois*cough*) require a Firearm Owner ID card for ammo purchases, but a background check on each purchase?  People freak out now when they hear someone has a thousand rounds of anything.  Implement this law and that would be the minimum purchase by most, just to alleviate the hassle. And the only attempts at "ballistic fingerprinting" have been on cartridge cases from handguns, and they've been an abject failure.  Microstamping and serial numbers on projectiles?  Not bloody likely.

Let's look at these in turn.

• No more private sales

How do you go about enforcing that?  We have upwards of 300 million privately owned firearms, the vast majority of which are not registered with any governmental body.  Nobody knows who owns what.  Just making it illegal to give or sell your Smith & Wesson Model 19 to your cousin doesn't mean it isn't going to happen.  Who would know the difference?  If the .gov doesn't know what you own, how could they know you sold it?

• Background checks for ammunition purchases

This one is what I like to call "academic overconfidence." It's obvious these people have no idea the sheer volume of ammunition sales that occur in the U.S. Annual production of .22 Long Rifle ammo alone is estimated to be in excess of two BILLION rounds.  Seen much on store shelves recently?  There is a Federal Excise tax on all firearms and ammunition sold in the U.S.  See this graphic for some feel of the scale of the problem:


And that tax is on the wholesale price, not the retail price. We keep hearing that there have been record numbers of NICS (FBI background) checks month-on-month and they want to add ammunition to this already nearly overwhelmed system?  What about reloading components? And the same problem as the "no private sales" above exists - how do you know that someone didn't just resell the ammo? How are they supposed to prove that they didn't take it out in the desert and shoot it all?

And, finally,

• "Ballistic Fingerprinting"

I'm not going to rehash my previous technical dissertation on why the IBIS system doesn't (and can't) work, but this is another of those technological pipe-dreams that academics just love. Short version:

1. There's already 300+ million guns in circulation that there are no "ballistic fingerprints" for.
2. "Ballistic fingerprints" - that the Brady Center insists are "unique as human fingerprints" - aren't. 
3. Under ideal laboratory conditions the system fails to identify the firearm the cartridge was fired from the overwhelming majority of the time.  In the real world, it has never worked.
4. Even if you could get a match, how do you find the gun if you don't know who owns it?

What do these three proposals require to have any hope of success, much less a 90% reduction in gunshot mortality?

Universal firearm registration - the absolute prerequisite to eventual confiscation.  You'll note that "registration" isn't mentioned in the article.

You have to wonder why that is, don't you?

Bill Whittle's Latest

The Most Shameful Injustice:

Juxtaposition

Seen on Facebook:

"...what country can preserve its liberties..."

...if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? - Thomas Jefferson

Not exactly "the blood of patriots & tyrants," but I like the cut of this man's jib:

Greenwood man hangs trailer from tree in front yard to prove point

GREENWOOD, Ind. (Mar. 2, 2016)-- Greenwood councilors will hold a public hearing Wednesday evening to hear about a property rights issue after a resident decided to hang his utility trailer from a tree to make a point.

Claude Tate suspended his trailer from a tree in his front yard to express his frustration with a City ordinance.

Last year, he received a notice from the City telling him he was violating an ordinance by parking his trailer in his yard. That ordinance prohibits residents from parking trailers or RVs on top of grass.

"The City can tell you what you can and can't have in your yard," said Tate. "I find that outrageous and oppressive!"

Instead, Tate was told he'd have to put pavement down if he wanted to park in his backyard; a task that would cost hundreds of dollars out of pocket.

So he hung up his trailer just high enough above the grass to make a point.

"What you do in your backyard oughta be your own business."

I Want to Disagree, But...

Saw this over at American Digest:  ThoughtCrimes: "Why Women DESTROY NATIONS * / CIVILIZATIONS - and other UNCOMFORTABLE TRUTHS"

It's an eighteen minute video. Watch the whole thing. Read the comments.

Thoughts?

I Was Wrong

Actually, I've been wrong on a number of occasions about a variety of topics. You live and learn, or you don't live long. But on this particular topic I have to admit I should have seen it coming long before now.

Back shortly after I started this blog, I wrote a series of posts on the Right to Arms (left sidebar there under "The Right to Arms Essays"). In the one entitled Those Without Swords Can Still Die Upon Them, I concluded with this:

Individual, private possession of firearms isn't the only thing that permits individual liberty, but it is one of the essential components in a society that intends to stay free. An armed, informed, reasoning people cannot be subjugated.

So what do you do if you want to fetter a free people?

1) Remove their ability to reason.

2) Constrain their ability to access and exchange information.

3) Relieve them of the means with which to defend themselves and their property.

Which of these seems easiest, and how would it be best accomplished? And best resisted?

That was written in 2004 - almost twelve years ago. Obviously I thought at the time that the third option would be the one most vigorously attacked.

Boy, was I wrong, and I really should have seen it before now. After all, throughout the nearly thirteen-year life of this blog I have railed against the public education system and what has been done to higher education. (See the "Education" posts on the left sidebar, and all the other pieces throughout the blog tagged "Education.")

I knew we were boned as a nation when a majority of voters picked Obama for a second term, but now? It's looking more and more like our "choices" will be between Hillary and Trump with a possible third-party option of Bloomberg. It's like the joke says, choosing between this lot is like picking which venereal disease is right for me.

Obviously #1 was the plan all along, and they've finally succeeded.

Let Me Play You the Song of My People

Over at Quora one of the contributors is Chris Knox, son of Neal Knox, gunwriter and one of the original NRA "Cincinnati Revolution" members.  Chris is pretty active at Quora, but I had to share this one answer to the question What are the Basic Types of Gun Owner? (reproduced with permission)

Legal Gun Owner Types

The Tacticool (ooda orbus fictus)
Recognizable by his 5.11 tactical pants and shirt, and his IDPA "shoot me first" vest. Peppers his vocabulary with terms from Tacti-tard Trainer Buzzword Bingo.  His warrior mindset is completely wrapped up in his OODA loop. From his Oakley shades to his desert boots, this sheepdog is a genuine tier-one operator. A cynic might wonder if he might not move faster if he were to shed about fifty pounds.  See also Mall Ninja.

Statistics (Approximate)
Murders committed: 0
Robberies committed: 0
Assaults committed: 0

The Real Tactical (ooda orbus veritus)
What the Tacticool wishes he were. Has a part-time job as a weapons instructor for Special Forces. Nobody knows what he actually does for a living. Disappears for weeks at a time. Close reading of Foreignpolicy.com may reveal that a third-world government has fallen during that time.

Statistics (Approximate)
Murders committed: 0 (at least none that were unsanctioned)
Robberies committed: 0
Assaults committed: 0

The Fudd (vewwyus quietus)

Another gun owner type recognizable by clothing and branding on the pickup. Color stages alternate between tan, Realtree®, and blaze orange. May be found in a duck blind holding a Browning Auto-5 grumbling about "assault weapons" and suggesting they be banned. Variations may appear on trap, skeet or sporting clays fields, typically changing chokes on a shotgun with the action closed. The Fudd's numbers have been in decline in recent years since a prime example of the species Jim Zumbo was discovered with an advanced case of foot-in-mouth disease.  Other factors in the declining numbers include the AR-15 dominating the firing line at Camp Perry where the Gravel-Bellied variety of the Fudd (see also v.q. sabulum) discovered that gun laws also affected his target rifle. 

​
​​Statistics (Approximate)
Murders committed: 0
Robberies committed: 0
Assaults committed: 0

The Reloading Oracle (oneratis iterum omnisciens)
Used to know a guy who knew Elmer Keith. Sits near the reloading counter of the local gun shop dispensing wisdom to anyone who will stand still long enough to receive it.  Has memorized maximum loads and velocities for every caliber from .218 Bee to .460 Rigby. Once went rabbit hunting.

Statistics (Approximate)
Murders committed: 0
Robberies committed: 0
Assaults committed: 0

The Tinkerer (munitor fucilis)
Owns one rifle. Has replaced every part except the receiver. Has worked up perfect loads for every target from prairie dogs to elk. Shoots all year round. Has replaced barrels because they were shot out.  Has several subgenera, including the Cheapskate Tinkerer (m.f. frugalis) whose one rifle is a Mosin-Nagant, the Tactical Tinkerer (m.f. militaris) whose one rifle is an AR15 in .300 Blackout, the Woodsman Tinkerer (m.f. exterus) whose one rifle is a 1963 Model 70 in .30-'06, and the Gravel-Bellied Tinkerer (m.f. sabulum) which gathers in large numbers at Camp Perry, Ohio every summer.

Statistics (Approximate)
Murders committed: 0
Robberies committed: 0
Assaults committed: 0

The Pistol Packin' Parent (pater pistolus)
At one time believed extremely rare, this species has either become more common or less shy. Male of the species teaches the Eddie Eagle dance (Stop! Don't touch! Leave the area! Tell an adult!) to random four-year-olds it encounters. Argues gun control with teachers.  Female does not display as much, but may be recognized by a thin-lipped smile when encountering its natural enemy, the Demanding Mom (mega mater confusus). Either gender can be extremely dangerous when offspring are threatened.

Statistics (Approximate)
Murders committed: 0
Robberies committed: 0
Assaults committed: 0

The Negligent Gun Owner (armatus negligencis)
Owns three guns. Or is it two? That's right, his meth-head cousin "borrowed" that one pistol. Was it a revolver? Yes, thats it, owns two guns, a .22 rifle inherited from an uncle, and then bought the Glock after cousin took that one revolver. Wanted a gun in the house, especially after cousin's friends started hanging out. Fired one clip (isn't it called a clip?) and put it in the bedside table.  Pretty sure it's there. Believes in the Second Amendment. Votes Democratic.

Statistics (Approximate)*
Murders committed: 0
Robberies committed: 0
Assaults committed: 0
*May be an unwitting accessory to criminal acts.

The Red-Necked Idiot (armatus imbecilis rosocollum)
Recognizable by its common call, "Hold my beer and watch this!" Similarities to the Negligent Gun Owner, may indicate inter-breeding with the Meth-Head Cousin (not a Legal Gun Owner).  The Red-Necked Idiot is often a transitory stage to a Prohibited Person under the U.S. Gun Control Act of 1968. Non-Gun Owners, particularly those native to the northern corners of the United States, frequently assume the a. negligencis and a.i. rosocollum are typical of the entire genus of Legal Gun Owner. This is particularly true if the Non-Gun Owner has been exposed to the works of Jesco White (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Je...).  To the contrary, the Red-Necked Idiot is fairly rare. Evolutionary forces keep the species in check. They can appear to be more common than they actually are due to the number that show up in YouTube videos doing stupid stuff. The attractive power of video to this species needs further research.

Statistics
Accounts for a significant percentage of accidental (other Legal Gun Owners say "negligent") injuries, but the overall rate of crime remains low. 

The Low-Information Gun Owner (armatus disinformatus)
Marked by a common call pattern rarely heard in other species:  "I own guns and I believe in the Second Amendment, but...."  What follows the "but" is usually proof that the the Low Information Gun Owner fails to understand either guns or the Second Amendment.  Was satisfied with the 1994 Clinton-Feinstein ban since it exempted his Ruger Mini-14 and Browning Auto-5 by name, even though his guns differed from guns that were banned only in cosmetic features.  Supports idea of "Universal Background Checks" while copying the phone number from the range bulletin board to look at a used .38 revolver for the house.  There is speculation that the Low-Information Gun Owner may be a transition stage to Ex-Gun Owner (armatus priorus).

Statistics (Approximate)
Murders committed: 0
Robberies committed: 0
Assaults committed: 0

The Libertarian Gun Nerd (cerebrum libertatem fucilis)
Interest in guns arises from from viewing the gun as an intellectual exercise. The original interest may have been sparked by a class in Newtonian Physics, or from reading political theory. Often works in a highly technical field, such as System Administration. As a sysadmin, the LGN may express as the Technical Thug (c.f. http://pages.swcp.com/~mccurley/humor/thug.html). Some Unix shops have been known to require that System Administrators own either a pickup or a gun, and preferably both.   The Libertarian Gun Nerd may be a transitory stage to some variety of Tinkerer, or possibly a Collector.  Factors determining the final stage are unknown.

Statistics (Approximate)
Murders committed: 0
Robberies committed: 0
Assaults committed: 0

The Collector (accumulus fucilis)
Similar in habits and life cycle to its close relative, the Coin (a. numismaticus), Stamp (a. philatelus), and Model Railroad (a. ferrovias) Collectors and similar creatures of the Collector genus. Virtually all are male, although they may sometimes be seen in the company of female-dominated Collector species such as Figurine Collectors (a. adorabilis). Whether and how the entire genus reproduces is unknown and, it appears, will remain so since no one wants to know. Many subspecies exist, breaking down to astounding levels of specialization. A few examples follow:

• Smith & Wesson Revolver Collector (a.f. smithus cylindrus) Given a serial number and model, can tell from memory the date of manufacture. Knows whether the barrel was pinned, or whether the grip checkering forms a diamond around the grip screw. Subgroups exist around particular models (e.g. Model 29, Model 27). Similar groups exist for virtually every manufacturer, with subgroups around particular classes or models.
• Colt Single Action Collector (a.f. monoactio)  Among the best-known members of this species was singer Mel Torme who once owned this piece:

​

• Class III Collector (a.f. automaticus) Solely interested in automatic arms. Unlike many members of the Collector, is likely to shoot the guns in his collection.

The Stereotype Breakers (Genus stereotypicus rupturus)
Once rarely seen, but increasingly common, particularly in urban environments with a suitable habitat. Thrives in urban areas of Texas and Arizona, for example.  Long-established populations of gun owners have been known to react with suspicion, but have become more acclimated as environmental hazards to gun ownership have arisen.  Unlike traditional species of Gun Owners who come to guns through cultural and familial connections, Stereotype Breakers are often drawn to gun ownership by frequently unpleasant circumstances. 

Statistics (Approximate, for entire species and subspecies)
Murders committed: 0
Robberies committed: 0
Assaults committed: 0

Subspecies

• The Black Man With A Gun (Title borrowed from my friend, podcaster and very cool guy, Kenn Blanchard, the real Black Man With A Gun™.  Before Colion Noir there was Kenn) (s. r. souljus) Many early gun control laws originated as Black Codes in the post-Reconstruction South. As the learned justices of the Supreme Court wrote in the infamous Dredd Scott decision, giving African-Americans full citizenship would, among other things give them the right to "keep and carry arms wherever they went." It was to prevent just that horror that the Court ruled that Mr. Scott had no standing to sue his master in a free state. Rural African-Americans have long been hunters.  Martin Luther King was refused a Concealed Carry License.  Contrast that with the fact that in recent years an increasingly affluent urban middle class has become common in the once lily-white confines of the shooting clubhouse. Of course, no one said anything to Sammy Davis Junior:

• The Gay Gunner (s.r. queeribus) The derogatory term faggot comes from the ancient sport of burning gay men at the stake. In other words, gay bashing is nothing new. Like other members of the Stereotype Breakers genus, the Gay Gunner may have been unexpectedly common for years. Often congregate in gregarious flocks such as Pink Pistols. May be a closeted Republican. Marriage equality is nice and all, but self-defense trumps in the privacy of the voting booth.

• The Single Lady (s.r. unafemina) Her interest in guns arises from a relationship with the wrong guy. Michael Bloomberg's Everytown for Gun Safety was so concerned about her plight they had a video made where an abusive ex kicks in a door to threaten a woman and child:
  
  
  Police dispatcher asks whether she has a restraining order.  Yes, but he's continuing to break the door down.  Rather than get another order, or as Everytown suggests, calling a senator, Single Lady gets a gun and takes a class. Then more classes. Then more classes. She now shoots competition IDPA and USPSA. Her formerly-threatening ex has left town.

It's still a work in progress, but unquestionably accurate so far.

Just More Reasons to Support Cruz

Robert Reich lists them:



He says those like they're Bad Things.

How Many Microagressions Can a SJW Find?

Saw this over at American Digest under the title Last Gasp of Europe Just Before Everything Went Smash.  I think my title is complimentary to that observation.

All Right, It's Cruz

Thomas Sowell has endorsed Ted Cruz:

The vacancy created on the Supreme Court makes painfully clear the huge stakes involved when we choose a President of the United States, just one of whose many powers is the power to nominate justices of the Supreme Court.

Justice Scalia's passing would be a great loss at any time. But at this crucial juncture in the history of the nation -- with 5-to-4 Supreme Court decisions determining what kind of country America will be -- Scalia's death can be catastrophic in its consequences, depending on who is chosen to be his successor.

Given the advanced ages of other justices, the next president is likely to have enough vacancies to fill to be able to shape the future of the court that helps shape the future of America.

--

Senator Ted Cruz has been criticized in this column before, and will undoubtedly be criticized here again. But we can only make our choices among those actually available, and Senator Cruz is the one who comes to mind when depth and steadfastness come to mind.

As someone who once clerked for a Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, he will know how important choosing Justice Scalia's replacement will be. And he has the intellect to understand much more.

Can't argue with any of that. Cruz it is.

Let's hope the Spineless Senate can hold out until after the election.

RIP Justice Scalia

Antonin Scalia, the last Justice of the Supreme Court to receive a unanimous approval from the Senate, has died.  While I have not always agreed with his decisions, he was one of the very few practicing Originalists on the Court, and his dissents were exceptionally clear, concise and (more to the point) precise.

Take, for example, his dissent in King v. Burwell:

This case requires us to decide whether someone who buys insurance on an Exchange established by the Secretary gets tax credits. You would think the answer would be obvious—so obvious there would hardly be a need for the Supreme Court to hear a case about it. In order to receive any money under §36B, an individual must enroll in an insurance plan through an "Exchange established by the State." The Secretary of Health and Human Services is not a State. So an Exchange established by the Secretary is not an Exchange established by the State—which means people who buy health insurance through such an Exchange get no money under §36B.

Words no longer have meaning if an Exchange that is not established by a State is "established by the State." It is hard to come up with a clearer way to limit tax credits to state Exchanges than to use the words "established by the State." And it is hard to come up with a reason to include the words "by the State" other than the purpose of limiting credits to state Exchanges. "[T]he plain, obvious, and rational meaning of a statute is always to be preferred to any curious, narrow, hidden sense that nothing but the exigency of a hard case and the ingenuity and study of an acute and powerful intellect would discover." Lynch v. Alworth-Stephens Co., 267 U. S. 364, 370 (1925) (internal quotation marks omitted). Under all the usual rules of interpretation, in short, the Government should lose this case. But normal rules of interpretation seem always to yield to the overriding principle of the present Court: The Affordable Care Act must be saved.

We've lost one of the five votes that prevailed in Heller and McDonald, and now Obama gets to appoint his successor.

I guess we get to see how much spine the Republican majority in the Senate has.

Oh, wait....


RIP, Tony.  Thanks for everything you did.

First There was Fukitol,

Now there's Tryphorgetin:



And on that note, here's my next T-shirt purchase, I think:



Available here.

Wait, There's an Ammo Possession Limit in NY?

Gun nut kept small arsenal at Queens home (There's a neutral headline! Agenda? What agenda?)

A 33-year-old gun enthusiast in Queens was busted for keeping a small arsenal of weapons — and a couple hundred pounds of gunpowder — after neighbors alerted cops that he was receiving large deliveries of firearms, police said Tuesday.

Guo Shou, 33, was arrested in Flushing Monday evening after cops responded to calls from neighbors and found illegal items that included 30,000 rounds of ammo and 225 pounds of gunpowder in plastic containers, police said.

Shou, who lives at 6560 Weatherole St., had three high-power magazines of ammo, an AR-10 and an AR-15 rifle. The guns are legal and he is a licensed gun owner, but the ammo exceeded the limit of what's legal.

WTF? When did that get regulated?  Or is this just another example of Gell-Mann Amnesia effect, because neither the reporter nor the editors know anything about what they're reporting on?

I know which way I'm betting.  He's in violation of fire codes for the powder, probably.

"American Healthcare is All Over But the Screaming"

I've covered the Obamacare debacle here at TSM for quite a while, with the earliest post on the topic being Multiply by the Zip Code from 2009, and going on from there. The "Primum, Non Nocere" (First, do no harm) T-shirts (2010) are still available, too.

In 2013 I reviewed some Obamacare Predictions. A bit later in the year, the GeekWithA.45 provided post materials with a comment on the state of the healthcare industry. His conclusion: American healthcare is all over but the screaming.

Obamacare survived not one, but two Supreme Court challenges that were decided on the basis of - well, let Antonin Scalia say it, from his scathing dissent to King v. Burwell:

Under all the usual rules of interpretation, in short, the Government should lose this case. But normal rules of interpretation seem always to yield to the overriding principle of the present Court: The Affordable Care Act must be saved.

But it cannot be saved from itself.

Investors Business Daily reports this week:

Aetna Joins Growing Chorus Warning About ObamaCare Failing

A chorus, I'm sure, that has about as many members as the Mormon Tabernacle Choir at this point. IBD reports:

ObamaCare was supposed to be on a roll by now, promising 20 million signing up, low cost and stable premiums. Turns out it’s on a roll all right. It’s rolling towards the cliff.

Insurance giant Aetna (AET) has joined a growing number of insurers warning that the ObamaCare exchanges are failing in just the way critics said they would. (My emphasis - Ed.) This year’s anemic enrollment won’t help.

This week, Aetna CEO Mark Bertolini warned that “we continue to have serious concerns about the sustainability of the public exchanges.” Aetna lost more than $100 million last year on the 750,000 enrollees it has through ObamaCare exchanges.

Bertolini’s warning comes after UnitedHealth Group (UNH) announced that it might pull out of ObamaCare entirely next year, after getting hit with a $475 million loss in 2015. It expects to lose another $500 million this year. Last fall, CEO Stephen Hemsley said that “we can’t really subsidize a marketplace that doesn’t appear at the moment to be sustaining itself.” That, he said, “basically is an industry-wide proposition.”

Now, refer back to the GeekWithA.45's comment from 2013, where he said:

Coming off my yearly engagement with the think tanks, I've heard, for the first time, a series of data points coming from hospital CEOs that add up to one thing: the admission that exercising a hospital's primary function is no longer a source of value and revenue, it is viewed as entirely cost, risk, and liability. Consequently, they are no longer building any capacity, and are in fact looking for ways to reduce their capacity and eliminate hospital beds.

The aging boomers are gonna love that when it comes home to roost.

Again, I think it bears repeating: the healthcare industry now views exercising its particular expertise and primary function as primarily a source of cost, risk, and liability.

That, as they say, isn't sustainable.

Reality is what exists even when you stop believing in it.

But the Affordable Care Act must be saved!

Only the East German Judge Would Have Denied Her a 10!

Challenger

I first posted this in 2005. The link to Dr. Sanity's blog is still good.

As some of you may know, I grew up on Florida's Space Coast. My father was a Quality Control engineer for IBM, working on the Instrument Unit (guidance system) for the Saturn V rocket. I got to see all of the manned missions up through Skylab launch from just across the Indian River, except for Apollo XVII - the only night launch. I watched that one from my front yard in Titusville.

There were two dawns that day.

Consequently, I've been a space exploration enthusiast from a young age. I try to watch all the launches, or at least listen to them on the radio. 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 had just graduated from college in December and didn't have a job yet - 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.

I also found out later that the crew, at least most of them, probably survived the destruction of the Challenger, and were alive and aware all the way to impact in the Atlantic. I like to hope not, but facts are sometimes ugly things.

And I wondered if NASA could regain the spirit, professionalism, and devotion to excellence it'd had during the race to the moon - and doubted it severely. As I said, NASA has become just another government bureacracy, more interested in expanding its budget and not making waves than in the visceral excitement and attention to minute detail that space exploration should inspire. (I'm speaking of the upper-level management, and many of the lower-level drones. I'm quite certain that there are still hundreds of people there still dedicated to the dream. They're just shackled and smothered by the career bureaucrats and the nine-to-fivers who punch the clock and wait for retirement.)

Anyway, all this is leading to a blog I found while perusing my sitemeter links tonight. GM's Corner, which linked to me last month, has a recurring "new blogs" post. This month's entry is Dr. Sanity, the blog of Dr. Pat Santy - who happened to be the flight surgeon for the Challenger mission. She has a post up about that day, and it's well worth the read: Challenger - A Flight Surgeon Remembers.

Highly recommended.

And if you want to read something even more inspiring, I strongly recommend Bill Whittle's essay Courage, about the Columbia disaster. Warning: it gets dusty towards the end.