The Mad Hatter

The Consistent Economic Failures of the Øbama Admin

2012-01-27T21:38:00.002-09:00

Mark Levin often ascribes a scatological Midas Touch to Chairman Zero, saying that everything he touches turns to crap.

Now, I usually just chalk it up to editorial hyperbole. However, after reviewing the Summers Memo, and coming across several articles that just happen to show failure after failure of the Obama Agenda, I'm seeing that, well, it just might be true.

The Stimulus Package fell way below expectations, and left us much deeper in debt.

Turns out the bailouts (TARP, Auto bailouts) still left taxpayers in the hole by some $133 Billion. Weren't we told they were paid off?

ObamaCare will not bring down the cost of health insurance.

High Speed Rail is flopping. It is proving both unnecessary, and a lot more expensive than originally projected.

And don't forget the consistent failure in his Energy Policies.

Damning Evidence from the Secret Memo - Part 3

2012-01-26T22:40:00.001-09:00

WRAPPING IT UP

So far, it seems that Doug Ross' and AEI's assessment of the Summers memo from 2008 seems to line up.

AEI's checklist:

1. The stimulus was about implementing the Obama agenda. Check.
2. Team Obama knows these deficits are dangerous (although it has offered no long-term plan to deal with them). Check
3. Obamanomics was pricier than advertised. Check
4. Even Washington can only spend so much money so fast. Check
5. Liberals can complain about the stimulus having too many tax cuts, but even Team Obama thought more spending was unrealistic. Check
6. Team Obama wanted to use courts to force massive mortgage principal writedowns. Check
7. Team Obama thought a stimulus plan of more than $1 trillion would spook financial markets and send interest rates climbing. Check
8. Greg Mankiw, economic adviser to Mitt Romney, was dubious about the stimulus. Check
9. But the Fed was a stimulus enabler. Check
10. IPAB was there at the very beginning. Check
11. The financial crisis wasn’t just Wall Street’s fault. Check.
And I'm only at page 34. 23 more pages to go.

Thing of it is, even AEI and Investors' Business Daily didn't get into all the details that taking my own look into the memo did, and even the article in the New Yorker (which started this whole discussion), while it gives the story of this memo in a nice, flowing, narrative, and even includes Summers' bombshell, that none of his recommendations “returns the unemployment rate to its normal, pre-recession level," it leaves much out that proves that the Obama administration has not been up-front with us about his economic policies. Some might even call it outright lying.

The remaining pages of the memo (34-57) go into (among other things) technical details regarding bank regulation, continued auto industry bailout, and plans for education improvement. One particular comment by Summers stood out to me in this last section:

"This section outlines our strategy for stabilizing the U.S. financial system based on work led by Tim Geithner. Our judgment is that we need to move quickly to put in place a program that satisfies the critical imperative of decisively restoring public confidence in the health of our financial institutions and improving overall market functioning. Doing so will require more resources--potentially considerably more--than those authorized under the TARP. An effective program for stabilizing the financial system is a necessary complement to your Economic Recovery Plan and to more targeted efforts to support the housing market. Without healthy institutions and robust markets, our efforts toward repair and recovery for the broader U.S. economy are likely to be compromised."

It's funny that it took a crisis for the Dems to see what is economic common sense for us fiscal conservatives.

Lesson learned: if you put your political agenda ahead of the economic health of the country, you wind up with the cluster schtupp-laden nightmare that finally manifested itself in '08.

And yes, I largely blame the Dems for '08. It was government-forced (and therefore, funded) "fairness" (in this case for the housing market) that created an unstable housing market, leading to the crash. The GOP has its part as well for letting it go (ever since 1977) in the interest of scoring political points themselves, but this, too, proves my main point.

But was the lesson really learned by Dems? Two items in the appendix (the memo's final ten pages) don't really inspire that much confidence.

The first is a Green Energy agenda. Now, the memo makes a rather optimistic, if not unrealistic, assessment of what pursuing such an agenda ought to yield.

However, it fails to ask a central question: is it economically viable? Well, the downfall of Solyndra and other Green Energy Enterprises doesn't inspire much confidence at all.

And how in the hell can we dump billions of dollars into these boondoggles when we can ill afford them? But, like I said, the memo didn't discuss the economics of Green Energy much. But it does say that it was a "campaign commitment."

Once again, it proves my point. And Spain proved how much of a jobs-wrecker Green Energy was.

The second point was education. But I'm seeing about 90% attention being paid to physical matters (building maintenance/improvement), and not a whole lot to teacher accountability--which, in my view, is a lot more central to effective education than a nice building.

This item, however, really showed how economically clueless the Left is:

"The plan sets forth measures to assist more Americans enroll in college and job training
programs during this economic downturn. The plan will help ensure that every academically qualified student can realize the potential of a postsecondary education."

Think about this. #1: Economic downturn. #2: Encouraging people to undertake an expensive endeavor like college during an economic downturn. #3: Letting the government pay for an expensive endeavor like college during an economic downturn.

What could the end result of this economically genius approach be?

The so-called "99 Percenter," who has spent $86K on an esoteric degree and can't find a job for it. So, instead of using that supposedly agile mind to adapt to other work, he spends months in a tent whining about the success of others (and getting nowhere closer to paying off that degree).

Not taking into account that said success stories probably started out in the same boat as he, only this person decided to do something about it instead of expecting someone else to take care of him.

But that could be an entirely different post in itself.

Bottom line: Obama lied, the Economy Died.

More Damning Evidence from the Secret Memo - Part 2

2012-01-25T21:43:00.001-09:00

In the last post, we found out that the Stimulus was egged on by Union interests, and despite a "bipartisan" veneer, was really only looking for confirmation bias along Keynesian lines.

This next section, covering pages 12-33, there are a few passages that hint that this Stimulus scam wasn't the best of ideas.

So far, in my reading, only one bit of forecasting in this memo seems to have held true:

"An excessive recovery package could spook markets or the public and be counterproductive."

If you see the graphs I put up the last post, that seems to have been the case, and we would have been better off not having passed the Stimulus bill.

Further on down, it seems that a political agenda was a chief consideration for this stimulus bill. It wasn't necessarily doled out by need. The "Core" package included "key campaign priorities." And the "short-run economic imperative" was to address as many campaign promises as possible.

But here is another critical factor--so critical, in fact, that it was in bold, underlined, and italicized in the memo itself:

"But it is important to recognize that we can only generate about $225 billion of actual spending on priority investments over next two years. and this is after making what some might argue are optimistic assumptions about the scale of investments in areas like Health IT that are feasible over this period."

In short, you have only so much money you can spend. This was a point the memo felt a need to spell out twice. Unfortunately, there seems to be nothing in this memo that takes seriously the notion that spending cuts might be something to consider for the country's economic health.

And speaking of spending, the memo's preparers had a thing or two to say about Obama's campaign promises: they were unsustainable.

"Closing the gap between what the campaign proposed and the estimates of the campaign offsets would require scaling back proposals by about $100 billion annually or adding new offsets totaling the same. Even this, however, would leave an average deficit over the next decade that would be worse than any post-World War II decade. This would be entirely unsustainable and could cause serious economic problems in the both the short run and the long run."

What's more, the memo says if Obama were able to implement his campaign promises in 2007, before the crash,

"...the deficit would rise by another $100 billion annually. The consequence would be the largest run-up in the debt since World War II and the highest debt as a share of the economy since the 1950s. Figure 4 shows the projected increases."

Let's have a look at that figure, shall we?

Holy crap! And this was supposed to help our economy how again?

But take a look at that slump in the graph (and here, a slump is a good thing). That happened after the GOP took control of the House & Senate after Clinton had pissed off the public enough (and after just a year in office, to boot). Compare this with the 2006 Dem takeover of House & Senate (which occurs about where the red leaves off after 2005):

I really do not see how, especially after looking at this chart, Obama and the Dems could possibly see this massive spending bill as a good thing.

And this was the reason the people revolted in the form of the Tea Party in February of 2009.

People tend to want to blame the President for bad economic policy. He may have some hand in it, but according to the Constitution, the purse strings belong to the House. Which brings up another interesting point, the memo encouraged Obama to take on a familiar line that Obama has used pretty much throughout his presidency:

"With a short-term economic recovery package, the deficit in fiscal year 2009 is likely to
be about $1.3 trillion, which at 9 percent of GOP will be by far the largest deficit in American history excluding the two world wars and the Civil War. Most economists are not concerned about the near-term deficit deterioration, but the public may be more concerned. As noted above, it is therefore crucial in early January that we make it clear to the American public that you inherited this large deficit rather than created it." (Emphasis mine)

But, in comparison to the debt projections post-Stimulus, the Bush years, even at their worst, were far better than what the Stimulus slapped onto us.

You would think Obama & Company would see this clearly, but unfortunately, even the memo points out Obama's economic cluelessness as a senator, citing the failed "Hope for Homeowners Act" that he co-sponsored:

"You were an original co-sponsor of the Hope for Homeowners Act- a foreclosure mitigation policy which sought to encourage principal write-downs among investors by splitting the cost with the government. Unfortunately, largely due to the unwillingness of lenders to write down principal, the program completely failed: 400,000 mortgages were eligible for writedowns but only 111 applied."

And why did it fail? Borrowers and lenders were more familiar with economic realities than pie-in-the sky idealism:

"Our conversations with industry and community groups have led us to believe that
lenders will continue to resist the idea in most cases (and hence our core proposal is the
affordability program outlined in Part 1). However, there were some flaws in H4H that remain: fees that push interest rates up for borrowers, fees that deter lenders, and requirements that lenders eat too much of the mortgage losses for them to be willing to participate."

Nonetheless, the memo proposes a mortgage restructuring program that could modify 2.5 million loans, "profitably," with the caveat that 1 million of those would probably redefault.

Did you get that? 1 million of those would probably redefault! This is the sort of thinking that got us into the whole subprime cluster-schtupp in the first place! A plan that expects about a 40% rate of failure is a plan that should not be considered!

But, you know, the Proglodytes of the Left have this habit of letting their ideologies trump reality.

As a final note of disgust, the precursor to Obamacare's "Death Panel" is mentioned in this section of the memo. I've highlighted the bothersome part.

"The health board idea, proposed by Sen. Daschle in his book, allows for timely and oftentimes difficult policy changes to be made to Medicare and Medicaid and possibly other parts of the health system with a degree of independence from the Congressional process and special interests. This idea is included in Sen. Baucus's white paper on health reform. The Health and Economic Teams consider a Board an essential ingredient to improving the value of health care in the long run."

Congressional circumvention. It's been a hallmark of these past three years.

Damning Evidence from the Secret Memo - Part 1

2012-01-24T14:08:00.002-09:00

Yesterday, I read at Doug Ross' site how a "Sensitive/Confidential" Memo to President-Elect Øbama from 2008 that the White House knew the Stimulus was a scam. Make sure you follow the link to the original article from AEI.

The 57-page document is available for download. I'm running through it right now to see if it's so.

And I'm finding a lot of other stuff that further convinces me why Øbama SHOULD NOT BE RE-ELECTED IN 2012.

At this point, I'm only at page 11, but there are a few things I've already found in the memo that are well worth reporting.

Starting off, the second and third bullet points on Page 2 admonish the President-Elect to "establish serious reform and fiscal discipline credentials" and "committing to a responsible budget."

Continuing on to page 3, the team that put together this memo also said, "Your campaign proposals add about $100B per year to the deficit largely because rescoring indicates some of your revenue raisers do not raise as much as the campaign assumed and some of your proposals cost more than the campaign assumed."

Chairman Zero. The faux Constitutional scholar who would wind up circumventing Constitutional principles showed even worse economic sense. And that was before he took office.

Well, how well has he done with that advice so far? It kind of reminds me of the sort of advice Rehoboam took when he was crowned King of Israel (1. Kings 12). Instead of listening to the wisdom of the older generations, Rehoboam took with the inexperience of his own. And it spelled the beginning of the end for Israel.

Well, there's that Stimulus that was rammed through Congress, and set off the Tea Party Movement. The official line fed to us from the Hill was controlling unemployment. Then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi even went so far with her "500 million jobs lost per month" gaffe.

In the memo, the team put together projected rates of unemployment without the Stimulus, as shown by the graph below (taken from the memo itself):

How well did the memo-preparing eggheads do with their predictions? Miserably. Here are the unemployment numbers reported from January 2009 to January 2012 (Source: tradingeconomics.com)

Now to give you a rough idea as to the difference between projected non-stimulus unemployment and actual numbers after the stimulus had been passed:

In short, it seems we would have been better off NOT passing the Stimulus.

To bolster the case for the Stimulus, on pages 10 and 11, a handful of economists are briefly quoted. Now, economists from the Left and Right are presented, apparently to show a sort of bipartisan consensus for the Stimulus, but there is some fudging of the truth here.

From the Memo:

"This is standard macroeconomic analysis and it has led most leading economists to callfor substantial stimulus packages. Based on our consultations and published accounts:

Progressive Economists:
• Robert Reich believes it should be $1.2 trillion over two years, but also indicated it could be larger.

• Joe Stiglitz believes it should be $1 trillion over two years.

• Paul Krugman: at least $600 billion in one year

• Jamie Galbraith: $900 billion in one year

• Institute for America's future (signed by Dean Baker, Andy Stern, Leo Gerard, John
Sweeney, and others): at least $900 billion

First of all, why use the label "Progressive?" They don't use the label "Conservative" when listing "Republican" economists.

Secondly, any report involving Robert Reich and Paul Krugman should not be taken seriously. Robert Reich has a tendency to emphasize the facts only convenient to his ideology. Krugman, despite his Nobel Prize (whose worth has been cheapened over the years) has striked out consistently on his economic predictions.

The majority of the IAF signatories mentioned here is very troubling: Andy Stern, Leo Gerard, and John Sweeney are all major figures in the Union scene. Of course they would advocate anything that would pour money into their interests!

But all of the economists listed here--Krugman, Reich, Baker, and Galbraith--have one thing in common: They're all Keynesians. That is to say, they believe in the notion that you can spend yourself into prosperity, as opposed to exercising fiscal discipline.

And this is what is problematic about their choice of "Republican Economists":

Republican Economists:
• Marty Feldstein was an early proponent of a spending-only package and currently
believes it should be $400 billion in the first year.

• Larry Lindsey, a former Federal Reserve Governor and NEC Director, estimates that
$800 billion to $1 trillion is desirable.

• Ken Rogoff (widely respected macroeconomist, former chief economist of the IMF,former McCain adviser): $1 trillion over two years

• Mark Zandi (widely quoted economist, fom1er McCain adviser): at least $600 billion in one year

• Greg Mankiw is the only economist we have consulted with who refused to name a
number and was generally skeptical about stimulus.

Ken Rogoff is a Keynesian.

Feldman and Lindsey are not, but their names are attached to a memo supporting a Keynesian approach without telling the whole story. Both expressed concern about where exactly the money was going to go. As it turned out, the money went more towards political interests, so this confirms at least one point of Doug Ross' and AEI's findings about the Stimulus being a scam.

Mark Zandi's inclusion in this list is outright deception. He was an "informal advisor" to the McCain campaign, but he himself is a registered Democrat.

Then there are all the "Others:"

Others:
• Senior Federal Reserve officials appear to be of the view that a plan that well exceeds
$600 billion would be desirable.

• Adam Posen (Deputy Director of the Peterson Institute): $500 to $700 billion in one year
• Goldman Sachs: $600 billion in one year

• Open Letter signed by 387 economists including Nobel Laureates Robert Solow, George Akerlof, and Joe Stiglitz on November 19th [note that most economists, including Stiglitz, support higher stimulus numbers today than they did a month ago]: $300 to $400 billion per year

Funny how they felt the need to quite Joe Stiglitz a second time.

Peter Klein of The (non-Keynesian) Mises Institute had this much to say on the whole lot of them:

"So, we’ve got left-wing Keynesians, right-wing Keynesians, moderate Keynesians, Robert Reich who wouldn’t know a Keynesian from a Kenyan, and Goldman Sachs. How’s that for diversity of opinion?"

The only really honest alternative opinion to all this Keynesianism and special Union interest was Greg Mankiw.

Autocracy In Progress

2012-01-18T19:50:00.001-09:00

David Limbaugh had an excellent recap of Chairman Zero's last three years, just in case we on the Right forget, and in the very likely case that the Left never heard it.

"We can endlessly debate whether he is such a devoted ideologue that he's blind to his policy failures, whether he's willing to sacrifice the economy and the fiscal integrity of the United States for his perceived higher good of radical redistribution, or whether he really intends to do harm, but these are moot questions anymore. Under any of these possibilities, the fact remains that he is hellbent on accelerating his present course, not reversing it, on dictating, not working within his constitutional constraints, much less building a bipartisan consensus."

One of the problems with Øbamacare, certainly the one that has received the most press in the last year, has been the constitutionality of the individual mandate. Mona Charen goes into detail about another: the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB).

"IPAB is a new thing in American government. Unlike most other boards and commissions, the panel’s 15 members (appointed by the president and approved by the Senate) need not be bipartisan. Also unlike other boards, commissions, and federal agencies, the IPAB’s decisions are virtually unreviewable. IPAB doesn’t have to adhere to the notice and comment rules of federal agencies, which permit citizens to respond to proposed rule-makings. IPAB dictates automatically become law unless Congress itself intervenes. Ah, but they’ve thought of that and made it virtually impossible. The law prescribes that Congress has a limited period of time in which it can modify IPAB rulings and then it must do so by a three-fifths majority. Even ratifying treaties and proposing amendments to the Constitution require only two-thirds majorities. As for the courts, forget it. The judiciary is forbidden to review IPAB decisions."

Furthermore, abolition of IPAB is only possible in a narrow time window.

Way to stick it to the people, Dems!

Wow, I'm a Finalist!

2012-01-17T22:04:00.001-09:00

I'm a regular over at iOwnTheWorld, and every now and then I'll submit an article or graphic. BigFurHat held an end-of-year review of all the graphic submissions, judged by none other than the venerable Pamela Geller of Atlas Shrugs.

I nominated my own art, done in commemoration of Obama's support for the OWS losers.

And it got me to the finalists' page, which, apparently, earns me the right to put this on my blog:

Voter Fraud Case in NY

2012-01-17T21:46:00.001-09:00

Massive Voter Fraud Trial in NY: "Two veteran Democratic political operatives in Troy said voter fraud is an accepted way of winning elections, and faking absentee ballots was commonplace"

How is it that whenever these come up, a Dem is involved?
You know, Holder took the occasion of MLK Day to further whine and squall about Voter ID, because, you know, it "disenfranchises" voters.

Well, Vocal Minority treats us to this graphic:

I'll also add that if poor people are really the issue, why on earth do limited-income admissions discounts to the Carnegie Museum of Natural History and the Science Museum of Minnesota require Photo ID and an EBT card?

Furthermore, the State of New York requires additional ID for EBT applicants. That includes a photo ID. For all members of the applying household!

The Children's Hospital at Philadelphia offers free child car seats at no cost to qualified applicants. But you need to present an EBT and...guess what...a photo ID.

In New Jersey, in order to get a replacement for a lost or damaged EBT card, you must present photo ID.

Now, this one is wacky. You can get a special rate to have your pet spayed or neutered in Honolulu. But you have to show both an EBT card and a photo ID.

And, the coup de grâce, photo ID, or some other form of verification, is generally required in all states for some form of EBT application.

Go stick it, Holder. We know your real concern is for preserving a time-honored Dem election-stealing tactic.

So, He Wants to be Like Teddy, Eh?

2012-01-15T14:24:00.001-09:00

I'm reading through Andrew Breitbart's Righteous Indignation, and am very much enjoying his tale of everything he has seen since his political awakening and re-education in the 1990s. Mostly because he's only nine months older than I, and I well remember everything he recalls from then until now.

He gives a little history lesson on the development of progtardianism, starting with Marx's materialistic dialectic, and going on to other major figures in proglodytianism as they have affected our country. I am now at the point where he discusses Teddy Roosevelt, who was not a Conservative, but a Progressive.

Breitbart relates two quotes. One, the famous "We grudge no man a fortune in civil life" line which morphs into "only so long as the gaining represents benefit to the community."

The second quote is far more ominous: "To hell with the Constitution when the people want coal!" The link leads to The Mises Institute's book review on Thomas Woods' 33 Questions About American History You're Not Supposed to Ask. In the review, the article's author states:

"But who bears responsibility for this 'imperial presidency'? Woods places much of the blame on Theodore Roosevelt, who 'loathed inactivity' (p. 136). Though highly intelligent — my late friend Mel Bradford rated him the brightest of all the presidents — he was dominated by passions he made little effort to control."

Such passions led him to hold the Constitution in contempt every so often.

So, Obama's speech in Kansas two weeks ago, with his attempt to invoke the ghost of TR, should have prompted more foreboding about how worse things can get if this type of mentality occupies the Oval Office for another four years.

Just Think What He Could Do in Four More Years!

2012-01-14T16:44:00.002-09:00

President Pee Wee. (h/t Doug Ross)

But, it's the excessive abuses of power to push an incredibly stupid agenda that gets me. Make absolutely sure we don't get this dolt in again.

No, No, No!

2012-01-13T20:36:00.000-09:00

Obama Seeks New Powers from Congress

President Obama will reveal a new proposal to consolidate federal agencies at a White House event later this morning, an official tells Fox News. The problem is that the authority he seeks to carry out the plan will have to come from a Congress he's had bitter battles with over the past year.

I do hope that House & Senate Republicans and the more reasonable Dems (I know I'm asking a lot there) will not grant this to Øbama.

Not just because he's Øbama. Let's establish that right off-hand. But, Chairman Zero has demonstrated over the last three years quite the disdain for Rule of Law if it stands in the way of his agenda.

I suppose if we needed to put someone in office to point out the weaknesses of the system, cracks through which authoritarianism can establish itself instead of the principles of a Democratic Republic, Øbama has been the perfect man for the job.

And he does not need any further help in that department.

Now, supposedly, the request is meant to cut down on the cost and bulk of government. That sounds fine, right down to invoking Reagan, but I get nervous whenever someone uses the term "consolidate" in reference to the Executive Branch. Reminds me too much of the years leading up to Mussolini.

Autocratic Hypocrisy

2012-01-10T20:34:00.001-09:00

Those of us who lived through the Cold War well remember the rather paradoxical names of the Communist countries. The "Deutsche Demokratische Republik" (German Democratic Republic), The "Democratic People's Republic of Korea", "People's Republic of China," "People's Democratic Republic of Ethiopia," "Democratic Republic of Vietnam," and so on.

And, we well remember that none of the above were Democratic Republics.

Well, here's another misleading name: "Constitutional Scholar," as applied to Øbama. Remember back in 2007 when he said, "I was a constitutional law professor, which means unlike the current president I actually respect the Constitution."

My, how times have changed. Too bad there isn't any published works attached to his name, his academic transcripts are still not available to the public, and I don't think there have been any interviews with any former students of his.

And how's this for another whopper, as found over at Cato (Will Congress Stop King Barack the First?):

"But the worst hypocrisy here is Obama's. 'I've studied the Constitution as a student, I've taught it as a teacher,' he piously intoned in 2009: 'I know that we must never, ever, turn our back on its enduring principles for expedience's sake.'"

*snort* *guffaw*

Well, we've already had a good look at how enduring these principles are in the eyes of Obama when his agenda must be expedited.

On Consolidation of Power

2012-01-10T17:46:00.001-09:00

By James Madison from Federalist Papers 47 (h/t Flopping Aces)

“When the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person or body, there can be no liberty, because apprehensions may arise lest the same monarch or senate should enact tyrannical laws, to execute them in a tyrannical manner.”

That's why we have Separation of Powers.

Occupy Candidates?

2012-01-10T13:50:00.001-09:00

Funny how you don't hear about 'em. I think we can easily point to several "Tea Party Candidates" and "Tea Party Favorites"—Bachmann, DeMint, Rubio, and Rand Paul, for example.

We heard—still hear—about them in the legacy and alternate media, both left and right-leaning.

But where are the OWS favorites & candidates? It is an election year, you know.

Maybe the reason we haven't heard about them is because #OWS is politically irrelevant.

It is Good to be the King?

2012-01-09T20:40:00.002-09:00

Sometime between Øbama's election and inauguration, I remember this cartoon being featured on the Op-Ed page of Newsweek:

Now we understand why that rag was sold for $1, and is a shade of its former self (but a more honest shade, admittedly. Beforehand, they pretended to be a collection of objective journalists. Now it's more hard-left Op-Ed). They didn't realize that "Hope & Change" was a euphemism for "Bait & Switch."

This, however, is a more fitting caricature:

And it just happens to dovetail nicely with an IBD Editorial podcast I was listening to today: Acting Like a King Isn't Among the President's Duties (article).

"In Wednesday's Cleveland speech when he announced the CFPB and NLRB appointments, Obama said anyone who 'plays by the rules can get ahead.' Yet the president is playing outside the rules and pretending he's doing it as a favor for the country. His motives, though, are clear. He wants to wield power that exceeds what the Constitution delegated to the president.

"Maybe First Lady Michelle Obama wasn't acting when she said on a kids television sitcom that she enjoyed being called 'your excellency.' Maybe she was speaking for her husband, too."

In a more recent TownHall article (Steven Chapman: Czar Barack), Øbama's own words get turned against him, as his executive overreaches extend, even overshadow, those he criticized of the last administration, giving more credence that Øbama actually prefers the idea of an Imperial President than is opposed to it:

"as a candidate, [Øbama] suggested that emperors are for other countries. 'The president,' he insisted, 'does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.'"

I know Lefties are notoriously weak in the history department, but come on, it's only been three years!

And Michelle Malkin catalogues a veritable rogues' gallery of the Obama solution to Rule of Law: Executive Orders and Czars:

"Can’t delude legislators into adopting a $1.5 billion Kabuki summer-jobs makework boondoggle? Create an unfunded program through executive fiat.

"Can’t muster up a filibuster-proof majority for radical nominees? Czar-ify ‘em.

"Can’t get Congress to approve vast wild lands designations? Grab them under cover of a holiday lame-duck session.

"Can’t get the illegal alien bailout DREAM Act passed on Capitol Hill? Executive-order it.

“'So let it be written, so let it be done!'”

Autocracy in Education

2012-01-07T23:17:00.002-09:00

You know, it seems to me that the ~~Democrats~~ Autocrats' slogan "Yes We Can" is morphing into "Yes You Will."

Fox News: DC Lawmakers Propose Requiring Students to Apply to College

This law will require students to attend workshops on admissions processes and will require students to take the SAT or ACT. Whether or not the student has any interest in pursuing college will be irrelevant.

The article doesn't mention DC Councilman Kwame Brown's political affiliation. I had to do a little extra digging to confirm my suspicions myself.

Yep, a ~~Democrat~~ Autocrat. Quelle surprise. If there's a piece of legislation requiring you to do anything (you must buy THIS lightbulb! You must buy THIS health insurance!), chances are, it was crafted by the jackass party.

In Soviet Russia, Jackass Drives You! Jackass Beats You! Jackass Puts Burden On You!

Excuse me, did anyone inform him that these tests are not offered for free? According to the private company that creates the SAT, the current fee is $49. An unnecessary expense for those who might not be interested in college. Especially if you're poor.

Speaking of poor, you're required to bring a photo ID to the test. Kwame, your racism is showing. I'm surprised AG "Why is everyone hung up on race except me" Holder isn't all over your hiney on this one.

But another thing this screams to me is a closer relationship between State and School, something that really ought not to be in a free society.

But of course, liberty is inimical to autocracy.

Appointment By Autocracy

2012-01-06T23:16:00.000-09:00

In case you haven't already heard it, Chairman Zero's speech naming the Director of yet another government-bloating executive agency tips his hand over his contempt for Rule of Law.

"Now, every day that Richard waited to be confirmed -- and we were pretty patient. I mean, we kept on saying to Mitch McConnell and the other folks, let’s go ahead and confirm him. Why isn’t he being called up? Let’s go. Every day that we waited was another day when millions of Americans were left unprotected. Because without a director in place, the consumer watchdog agency that we’ve set up doesn’t have all the tools it needs to protect consumers against dishonest mortgage brokers or payday lenders and debt collectors who are taking advantage of consumers. And that’s inexcusable. It’s wrong. And I refuse to take no for an answer"

Well, it seems like you're dealing with that question now, Chairman. The real question is, what are you going to do about it?

"So I’ve said before that I want to look for every possible opportunity to work with Congress to move this country forward and create jobs. I’m going to look for every opportunity to try to bridge the partisan divide and get things done."

Yeah, just like you all did with the stimulus bill? Like you did with Obamacare? I recall a lot of closed-door sessions effectively locking out certain elected Representatives and Senators along party lines.

But since you lost control of the House in 2010, it seems you are intent on cutting the House out of the process. Problem is, the Constitution doesn't allow for it. You'd think a "Constitutional Scholar" would know that.

Apparently not:

"But when Congress refuses to act, and as a result, hurts our economy and puts our people at risk, then I have an obligation as President to do what I can without them."

I kind of wonder what Obama means by "our people," especially in light of attempts to circumvent Congress over illegal immigration policy. I tend to think he means ~~Democrats~~ Autocrats, and their potential enablers.

And is the GOP really to blame? Over at The Daily Caller, it seems that the narrative regarding Obama appointees being obstructed by GOP Senators doesn't hold up. In the case of two NRLB appointees, it seems an attempt was made to squeak them in between gavels--so fast, in fact, that they couldn't clear background and criminal checks. Much less giving them time to be vetted by the Senate.

Audrey Hudson over at Human Events also shoots down Obama's "I'm always trying to be bipartisan" rhetoric in this matter: “Apparently, advise and consent called for in the Constitution doesn’t apply to this Chicago-style politician. He’s more interested in rewarding his friends than living under the law Americans need to abide by,” [WY Senator John] Barrasso said.

But do you really want to enjoy a Keystone Cops moment? Cordray apparently can't be appointed outside formal Senate approval. The law establishing the agency, drafted in 2010, calls for it. Obama's drive for his agenda, regardless of Constitutional restraints, has left him with his pants around his knees.

I LIKE IT!

2012-01-06T21:53:00.003-09:00

From The Looking Spoon.
I

Extremist?

2012-01-06T13:25:00.001-09:00

I get these emails from Obama For (sodomizing) America. I really didn't ask for them. All I wanted to do was give Obama a snarky question about how a Constitutional Scholar can have nothing published to his name, and in return, I get these "gimme" emails from the likes of Chairman Zero, his body man Love, the Wookiee, and Jim Messina.

It's interesting to see the sort of message being promulgated by the White House. Here's one of the latest ones I've gotten:

Vidarebefordrat brev:

Från: "Jim Messina, BarackObama.com"
Datum: 3. jan. 2012 23.50.32 GMT-09.00
Till: Mad Hatter
Ämne: This is not a joke
Svara till: info@barackobama.com

Friend --

These Republican candidates spent in some cases more than a year -- in Mitt Romney's case seven years -- campaigning in Iowa to be the next president.

But tonight, GOP voters there couldn't decisively get behind anyone.

Who exactly leads the Republican race going forward isn't clear, but we do know two things:

1) The extremist Tea Party agenda won a clear victory. No matter who the Republicans nominate, we'll be running against someone who has embraced that agenda in order to win -- vowing to let Wall Street write its own rules, end Medicare as we know it, roll back gay rights, leave the troops in Iraq indefinitely, restrict a woman's right to choose, and gut Social Security to pay for more tax cuts for millionaires and corporations.

*snip*

"The extremist Tea Party." I've heard this thrown around a lot. "That Tea Party--it's extremist." When I ask a Leftie to clarify "extremist," I usually get a lot of stammering. They can parrot the punch-words and party lines circulating in their circles, but they can't back them up.

I'll tell you what "extremist" is--an extremist circumvents Rule of Law for the sake of an agenda.

- An Extremist will Violate the War Powers Act to engage in a conflict we have no national interest in, to score political points.

- An Extremist will Ignore the Constitution to install political appointees.

- An Extremist will Ignore Judicial Ruling on a matter unfavorable to his agenda.

- An Extremist will Circumvent the Legislative Process when his agenda is not pushed through.

- An Extremist will Arbitrarily Wave Off Items in a Law He Signed that he does not agree with.

- An Extremist will Confide in His Allies that the Constitution can be Circumvented.

You get the idea. I'm telling you, Obama is a member of the Autocrat Party, not Democrat.

But here's another thing about "extremist" and "right-wing." People who throw these terms around usually tend to be so far to the Left that even Woodrow Wilson looks Conservative.

The main disseminators of information in this country--Media and Academia, are demonstrably left-leaning. And since both groups tend to move in ideologically incestuous circles (the likes of which would make the rednecks they like to mock blush), the lack of cross-pollination leaves them to conclude that their views are "normal" while all others are "extreme."

So, when I hear a Leftie--be it a Progtard, Occupooper, Demorrhoid, what have you--talk about the Tea Party as "extremist," I know it's because they really don't get out much.

Back from the Edge

2012-01-05T23:42:00.001-09:00

Amazing how long blogs stay around. I hadn't posted anything on TMH for nearly three years. I am surprised Blogger kept it around.

My last post, 21 Jan 2009, had already seen the rise of a nobody from Illinois who managed to make himself President. The circumstances surrounding his inauguration should have been quite auspicious:

The Trash was Historic, Too

This would be something that would characterize Proggie rallies for the next three years.

Now, in all fairness, Leftie rallies improved somewhat, at least in terms of trash. I think we can thank the Tea Party for that. Funny the difference made when adults finally arrive on the scene. Shook up the place, too--wresting House control from Pelousy and giving us some hope of putting brakes on Progressivism...that is to say, Progress towards the Cliff

Not to be outdone, the Left had to answer with its own movement (which can be interpreted in more than one way): the nebulous, vapid, clueless OWS (Occupy...Whatever...Something).

And the trash came back. With poop. And rape. And assault. And vandalism. And Jew hatred.

Everything the Left accused the Tea Party of being, it got paid back in spades. From its own ranks (which can also be taken in more than one way). All the while receiving support from the highest profile figures among the Democrats. Namely, Obama and Pelosi.

Just in time for his campaign, too.

It's mainly because of the campaign that I'm resurrecting this blog (that, and MJA's fairly frequent prodding--what can I say...I am easily beguiled by the charm of a lovely ladeh). Obama and his comrades have proven their party to be unnamed.

They're not Democrats. In our representative democracy, the will of their constituents is supposed to be taken into consideration. In our republic, this is supposed to happen within the framework of law.

They do none of this. Instead, they behave like Autocrats. That alone should be reason to throw them out.

And so, I rededicate this blog to getting the word out about what they are doing, and giving you reasons to vote for someone who still believes in the Republic.

Occupuncture!

2012-01-05T21:41:00.005-09:00

From my post on The People's Cube:

Comrades, I am astounded at the progress the new Collective Health Care Plan has made. As to be expected, it manifested itself first in the most progressive element of our society...the Re-Occupy Wall Street Putsch!

But first, the "official" account, as rendered in the Bourgeois Media. The actual story, as issued by the State Program for Impeccable News (SPIN) will follow.

Wall Street Occupiers Stab NYPD Officer, Surround Ambulance Trying To Rush Him To The Hospital…

(NY Post) — Some 800 Occupy Wall Street protesters began the new
year by trying to retake Zuccotti Park last night, starting a massive
clash with police in which one officer was stabbed in the hand with a
pair of scissors.

A suspect was arrested in the 11:30 p.m. incident, according to a
law enforcement source.

Hundreds in the crowd of occupiers then surrounded the ambulance
as it tried to leave with the wounded officer, the source said.

The officer, who was not identified, was taken to Bellevue
Hospital in stable condition.

Is there no end to the assaults upon and vilification of this Peaceful People's Movement?

There have been no rapes--it is involuntary redistribution of sexual favors!

There has been no "Child Endangerment"-- it is parental initiative in the education of the next generation of Progressives!

And THERE HAS BEEN NO POOP! Banks and Police Cars have simply had the misfortune of being placed right at a designated site of a People's Recycled Food Reclamation Center!

But the assault on the People by the Bourgeois Fascist Jackboots was very real. Fortunately, the People responded with Compassion.

The officer wasn't stabbed...he was administered a treatment of alternative medicine for a headache he had been complaining about. A quick-thinking Progressive with a degree in Cross Cultural Studies put his $90K education to good use by combining Eastern Medicine (acupuncture) with Ancient Egyptian Surgery (bloodletting), improvising with Western tools (scissors).

Surely this selfless act of compassion and multiculturalism is worthy of complete forgiveness of his student debt!

The crowd around the ambulance was also serving several functions at once. They were chanting for the officer's continued well-being, and delaying his arrival into the emergency room in case a more needy case arrived first.

Yes, the best and brightest were on the scene! But what else do you expect from a Progressive Education?

Now THAT is my kind of date

2009-01-21T20:17:00.002-09:00

h/t A Gun Blobber

The video features, among other things, a couple on a date (about 2.42 into the video). He just wanted to do something different than dinner and a movie.

You know, I enjoy the company of being around someone who knows what they're talking about. And if a woman can intelligently talk about or be demonstrative about a certain subject (minds out of the gutters, you sickos), hey, that makes for a great evening.

Why shouldn't I treat a woman to a very informative, hands-on approach to something I know about? I mean, if I could spend a few evenings out of the week going through Dürrenmatt's Der Richter und Sein Henker with a girlfriend who wanted to improve her German, why not break someone else of her (gun) virginity?

Seriously...educate someone of a very practical life skill, make some good personal contact, and show off your manliness without taking your clothes off. Chivalry at its finest.

Gotta Love Barrett

2009-01-21T19:37:00.003-09:00

Came across this while perusing Moonbattery.

You think all Gun Manufacturers are just profit-driven thugs that don't care what their customers say or do? Ron Barrett certainly isn't one of them.

Ten Tools of Countermoonbattery

If there's one page on the Web guaranteed to make moonbats' heads explode, it's The Ten Manliest Firearms at Arthur's Hall. Number One is the Barrett M82 .50 caliber rifle, which comes with an inspirational tale of countermoonbattery:

Ronnie Barrett is a true modern Viking. He hunts big game. He plays with guns. One day in the late 70s, he thought to himself, "Wouldn't it be cool if there was a RIFLE that fired the same .50 BMG cartridge as Saint John Browning's Heavy Machine Gun?" So he built it.

This did nothing to endear him to moonbats, who decided that a ban on assault weapons didn't go far enough.

So, even with a ban on "assault weapons" that included most self-loading rifles, including Barrett's M82 Light Fifty, the People's Republic of Kalifornija wanted more. They dragged one of his rifles from the LA SWAT armory and used it (Illegal for civilians to own, mind you), as a horrible example of weapons that Must Be Banned Lest They Pollute Our Precious, Bodily Fluids.

As usual, the moonbats got their ban.

A few weeks later, LA SWAT sent one of these rifles that they use for shooting fleeing mopeds back to Barrett for maintenance… and Ronnie sent it right back to them, untouched, contract cancelled, with polite instructions to stick it somewhere dark and smelly and ride it straight to hell. Not only that, he publicly and proudly announces in all his advertising that he WILL NOT sell to or deal with ANY government entity in communist third world Kali.

Barrett went on to redesign his gun for 25 mm — twice the size of .50 caliber.

Time to pull a James Brown and say, "Heh!"

The Hatter Grins

2008-10-23T20:53:00.002-08:00

The first semi-auto I shot when I lived in FL was a Glock. Friend and coworker owned it. 'Twas a Glock 19, and I think between the two of us, we easily burned through 300 rounds of ammo.

Fun gun to shoot, but not one I would seriously consider owning if I had other alternatives.

Xavier seems to echo some of my reservations against this very popular brand of autoloader, especially in the lack-of-a-manual-safety department. This tends to be among the top three complaints against Glocks (the other two being their plastic frames, and the fact they are not a ).

However, he puts an angle on it that I really hadn't thought of before:

I dislike the safety on the trigger. The whole idea seems silly to me. A gun ought not go off unless the trigger is pulled. So to make the gun safer through a mechanical means, it only follows that the mechanical safety be independent of the trigger.

Sagely observation, if I do say so myself.

I will echo his respect for the firearm, though. They are reliable, and their modularity allows you to exchange certain parts between them if one breaks. And if a person shoots well with a Glock, more power to them.

But otherwise, nothing beats a H&K.

Pius XII up for beatification

2008-10-11T11:40:00.002-08:00

Read it while perusing Der Spiegel yesterday.

Go ahead and read the article. It's in English.

Some of the regular readers (who have probably dropped off after I had pretty much fallen off the blogging scene) are probably wondering "what's with all the foreign newspapers?"

I can read them (along with Spanish and French...working on Dutch this winter), and sometimes you get a different perspective than what is found in the US media.

Take Sarah Palin's nomination as VP running mate, for example. I went through several Norwegian, German, Spanish, Danish, Swedish, and French online newspapers a good part of that day. Whereas the U.S. leftist propaganda machine was pretty quick to try to find dirt on something that took attention from their anointed one

Most of the European press looked on with what I would describe as "positive curiosity." Interestingly enough, as much as our propaganda machine likes to look at "world opinion," they didn't seem all that hot on sharing in the relatively positive attitude the Euro newspapers I looked at had.

But anyway, getting back to the story at hand...

Pius XII was the Pope during WWII. He is currently up for "beatification," which is the Catholics' way of putting someone on the track toward sainthood.

I'm not all that familiar with the process, and my own theological proclivities find it to be something of a waste of time and energy, but regardless of which side of the confessional fence you stand on, beatification pretty much points out a Catholic personality of note.

Whether or not you were a Jew during this time, "note" might bear some pretty negative connotations. A fair amount of people are not terribly thrilled with Benedict XVI's motion to go on with the beatification process, partially out of speculation that Pius XII (né Eugenio Pacelli) did not do nearly enough to help save persecuted Jews during the Holocaust.

My interest in this matter comes from the research I did on the topic of the Churches during the Holocaust when I was in grad school. By virtue of that research, I'm something of an expert on the topic.

Those of you interested in reading my master's thesis can email me or find it yourself at UT's library or obtain it through interlibrary loan. Here's the pertinent information:

Hatfield, Jeremy Todd, 1969-

An overview of the two faces of the church in German Holocaust literature : passivity and opposition / Jeremy Todd Hatfield.

1995.

vi, 66 leaves : ill. ; 28 cm.

Call number Thesis95.H38

The conclusions that I drew from the Vaticans' dealings during this time are mixed--on the one hand, the Church was very much interested in its own survival, and did factor in the Nazis in consideration of the rise of Communism that was also going on at the time. In this, it limited itself in official, high-profile actions against the Nazis.

On the other hand, there were a handful of notable priests, f. eks. von Galen, Lichtenberg (ditto on his beatification in 1996), and Maximilian Kolbe (canonized in 1982), who did not just stand idly by, but largely acted outside the Church's directives in its dealings with the Nazis.

Despite this, von Galen was beatified in 2005; Lichtenberg in 1996. Kolbe was canonized in 1982. Despite my views on Catholic sainthood, I can stand behind the elections of these individuals to there revered statuses. But Pacelli himself? That's a hard call to make, especially having the luxury of looking back 60 years after the fact.

Anyway, it pushed my history button, and I wound up buying two books on Half.com. One was "Hitler's Pope," and the other a rebutting work called "The Myth of Hitler's Pope." I'll reserve judgement until I have read both of these.

80s Music Quiz

2008-10-11T11:35:00.003-08:00

Taken from today's online edition of Aftenposten.

It's in Norwegian, but all the tunes are from the U.S. of A. Simply start the quiz by clicking on the arrow, and you have a few seconds to recognize who wrote the song playing.

I got 96 out of 100. But that's no surprise. I grew up with '80s music.

Chavez Strikes again

2008-10-10T17:18:00.005-08:00

And this time, he hopes to undermine America's Capitalist stranglehold on his revolutionary domain...

By attacking McDonald's.

More to read about it here (in German, from Der Spiegel)

And for those of you who only ready English, here's another news agency's take on it.

Boo-frickin' hoo.

Socialist medicine leaves us with a mess like Canada.
Socialist government leaves us with a wreck like the former East Bloc Countries
Socialist food services will starve the people out.

I don't think Chavez would be able to placate Venezuelans with state-approved Bolivar Burritos.

Whatever Happened to Ex-Post Facto?

2008-10-10T13:57:00.002-08:00

h/t Xavier Thoughts

Orange County, PRC, is in the process of revoking some 146 CCW permits it had already issued.

The reason comes in a letter the revokees will receive:

"The Department has determined that your identified risk does not meet the good cause threshold as required under the new CCW policy based upon the information you provided. As a result of this determination, the Department's present intention is to revoke your CCW license."

Now, what caught my attention was "under the new CCW policy."

Fischig. Now, I am not entirely certain what all getting an Orange County CCW permit entails, or if they can be revoked so easily. But my limited legal understanding remembers something called "ex-post facto," which means that if a standard changes, it should not violate another's right, even if it were acquired under an older set of standards.

Take, for instance, speed limits. If Alaska should invoke a strict 55 mph statewide highway speed limit today, it could not revoke my license for having driven 65 mph on its highways for the last few years.

But yet, the new Sherriff of Orange County seems to be doing exactly this sort of thing for legally-acquired CCW permits.

At any rate, I went ahead and read the original article, to see what on earth is going on over there, and found out something that pissed me off even more.

Turns out that Mike Carona, the former Sherriff of Orange County, and who I remember appearing on Full Disclosure about 3 years ago debating L.A. Sherriff Lee Baca over the CCW issue, was indicted on some sort of corruption charge fairly recently. Seems that he showed a little bit of favoritism in handing out permits.

Well, hell. As if an Arschlecker like Lee Baca is any cleaner. He's reknowned for exactly the same sort of behavior, only catering to his county's elite.

But, you see, Baca knows who's in power over in the PRC, and bends over for them like a good...*cough* *cough*. Trying to keep it clean here.

He keeps his position (take that as a double-entendre if you want), while Carona (more favorable to the federal interpretation of 2A--unpopular with the so-called elite) gets canned. Someone else more faithful to the PRC's party line moves in, and the disease keeps spreading.

Thank God I am NOT a subject of the PRC.

Gun Control is People Control

2008-09-28T15:20:00.002-08:00

And this bit of history proves further that the ones who benefit are those in power. No surprise there. The examples of Adolf Hitler, Communist Russia, and other autocratic regimes have been used enough to demonstrate that point.

These are probably the more blatant examples of forceful policy used to keep the underlings in line. But on a more subtle level, gun privileges can be dangled out like a carrot on a stick to keep a person or party in power.

This snippet of history comes from 1800s Italy. Sicily, to be precise. I've been reading John Dickie's Cosa Nostra: A History of the Sicilian Mafia when I came across this paragraph, and found it very apropos to how the right to self-defense can be manipulated for purposes of political influence:

"Gun licenses are a good example of the chain of favours linking men like [Don Raffaele] Palizzolo [a prominent man in mid-to-late 1800s Palermo] and the mafia. They could only be obtained with a reference from a leading citizen, such as a politician. This was an obvious opportunity to curry favour. In the run-up to elections the deal became more systematic. On the order of the Minister of the Interior, the prefect could withdraw all gun permits. His declared aim was to prevent the political contest spilling over into violence, but the real aim was to influence the vote. Only sponsoring letters from the central government's favoured electoral candidate would allow the licenses to be returned. The politicians would sell such letters for electoral funds, votes, or favours."

If that isn't an example of what can happen if we allow our 2A rights to be "reinterpreted," then I don't know what is. What was once a right becomes a plaything in the hands of someone wanting to hold onto power.

FactCheck goes down in flames

2008-09-23T11:44:00.003-08:00

My Brother and I had been going over Palin vs. Obama a couple of weeks ago.

I am a gun owning, religious minded business owner from Alaska. Guess whose side I take.

He is an actor engaged to a teacher from eastern North Carolina. Guess whose side he takes.

Anyway, he told me about this great "non-partisan" website he found regarding where candidates really stand on the issues--FactCheck.org. Which he had been using to try to debunk some of the attacks against Obama and reinforce those against McCain and Palin.

Well, I'd heard about similar sites, like snopes.com, and many of them take pains to make sure the record is set straight. I figured FC was no different.

Flashback to 1995. I am writing my Master's Thesis, and Professor Höyng makes a remark about a comment I made regarding Friedrich Schiller and his approach to presenting history in drama. He says that basically, there is no difference between Schiller and how others report facts--everyone writes their own perspectives into what they are expressing.

Seems that this was not lost on FC.org. If you follow the link embedded in the title, you'll find some pretty blatant falsehoods regarding Obama's activities regarding 2A. The friendly front-end he puts on for the gun crowd is incompatible with the back-end votes he has cast while in the State and Federal senates.

Seems that FC.org has some left-leaning biases. So much for non-partisanship.

hat tip to Sharp as a Marble.

After all this time...

2008-09-20T19:59:00.003-08:00

The idea of "Muscle Memory" holds up.

I took the H&K out to the trash heap this evening, in the interests of perforating tin and styrofoam. I wasn't terribly impressed with my marksmanship at first--the first twenty rounds went left and low of my mark, but once I got past flinching, and got into my focus, I hit my targets (paper plates and the top of a soup can, from 15-20 yards) a good 80% of the time for the remaining 30 rounds I had brought with me.

Not impressive, but satisfactory, and certainly encouraging for someone who hasn't squeezed off rounds since this past March or April.

I experimented with a new grip I had seen on one of the other gun blogs. Here's my approximation of it:

It's OK, not that much of a change from the grip I normally use:

While I feel a little more in control of the gun with the first grip, I'll have to shoot with it some more to see if it really offers any better benefits for me than the one I have been using for about 10 years. I'm comfortable with it, am accurate with it, and I'm pretty sure that in a stress situation, this is the grip I'd naturally fall into.

I saved most of my brass from the plinking spree. Once I get some more cash, I'll have to look into reloading components for .45 ACP. If anyone has any recipes they like for self-defense loads, I'll be happy to look at them.

Normally, I'd just buy a couple of boxes of Cor-Bon, but given the rising cost of ammunition, it may behoove me to roll my own for this caliber.

Some More Thoughts...

2008-09-20T11:50:00.005-08:00

I was near a near-shootout a couple of weeks ago. Delta had a standoff situation about two Wednesdays ago. A fellow who thought he had enough of life's bad hands decided to take a shotgun and high-power rifle, walk into a Texaco station, and hold two girls hostage.

I was in town making the mail run, when I noticed the barricades. I thought "this is odd," but made my rounds. Along the way, I heard more of the story...about two hours before I arrived in town was when the whole thing started. The guy took hostages, holed up in a room upstairs, and shot out the window when State Troopers tried to approach.

I was supposed to have dropped off a tire at that same Texaco. Obviously, I didn't get to do it.

Now, I was armed that day...which is not terribly unusual when I go into town. But I got to thinking about what I would have done if I had been one of the ones taken upstairs in that Texaco that day.

Someone threatens me with a firearm. Same person shoots at State LEOs. Under those conditions, I would have tried to bury at least 2 230gr slugs in his head at the best opportunity I would have had.

I'm not saying this to be macho. I'm telling you what my reaction would have been. Unstable guy, with weapons, threatens me, others, and actually shoots at others. Someone may very well die by his hands. I have a .45. I am going to make sure the person to die isn't me.

The State Troopers handled the situation better than I would have, I will admit. They brought in a negotiator from Anchorage. He managed to talk the guy into releasing the hostages and getting the guy to surrender.

No one was hurt. Happy ending, I guess.

On McCain's VP pick: I am an Alaskan. You can guess the rest.

This was no doubt the best thing McCain could have done. I had pretty much lost interest in the race...actually, I had ever since Fred Thompson stepped out of the race. I really thought he was the best choice out of all of them.

But once it got down to Boy Wonder and the Angry Maverick...meh. I was seriously thinking about voting Libertarian, if only out of protest.

Then comes along our governor and SHAZAM! It just got interesting again.

I'm not reacting too much to the lame attempts the lefties are making to try to find some fault with her...Bristol's pregnancy...Todd's former AIP affiliations...it just shows how desperate the propaganda department is to find dirt on the best female executive prospect this nation has seen. Remember the furor they made over Quayle and Murphy Brown and "Potatoe"? They couldn't find any real dirt on him. And it drove them nuts.

Nope, they're just jealous because there's a lot more enthusiasm over her than Hillary.

Heh. Now, as far as my take on experience is concerned, I was doing a little research myself on Boy Wonder. He's been in the Illinois State Senate. He's been junior federal state senator for Illinois for about three years.

What I've read about his activity doesn't impress me. He's able to cast his vote on issues, go along with the crowd on issues...but I haven't seen him take much initiative at all. And yet his people have gotten on our CIC's case for being too reliant on Dick Cheney for decisions.

Now, Sarah hasn't played in senate arenas much, but being the main figurehead of a town and a state, she has been the one to steer issues along (and has done a fine job of it, too). In short, she shows a lot more resolve and initiative than Boy Wonder.

My only concern about Sarah is that I hope that life at the Federal level doesn't corrupt her.

Here's a reaction to an entry found on A Keyboard and a .45:
Demorrhoids want to call those of us not under the spell of Boy Wonder's white teeth "mentally ill, mentally disabled, or mentally disturbed."

But, if I recall correctly, people seeking psychiatric help in 2004 were not conservatives. C'mon, going to a shrink because of an election? Who's really wearing the straitjacket?

Finally, a little errata to post. My last post back in April represented something not entirely true. The numbers involving our casualties under GW's rule have not been less than Clinton's during peacetime. Armed conflict tends to raise the casualty rates any way you look at it.

Here's some food for thought

2008-04-23T16:16:00.002-08:00

The more I see stuff like this, the more I know the MSM is not trustworthy.

I have long heard that the war on terror is actually doing better than the media would have you think.

Found this commentary in cartoon form over at Red Planet Cartoons:

Leftists Being Less than Honest?

2008-04-21T15:28:00.004-08:00

The horror!

According to Michelle Malkin, Obama has been getting some support from a Hunting/Shooting sports organization that wants to ban handguns.

Sound fishy to you? I mean, what shooting sports enthusiast would endorse a stance that could very well lead up to outlawing his sport? It makes no sense.

Well, it turns out to be a bogus organization, and it's called the American Hunters and Shooters Association (AHSA).

But the truth of the organization is as follows:

It was founded in 2005 by Ray Schoenke, a Kos diarist who, in fairness, really does shoot ducks, apparently. At least, most of his conversations seem to take place in a duck blind. Schoenke has pissed away thousands on Handgun Control, Inc., Americans Coming Together and a dozen of the sleazeballingest Democrats ever to run for public office. So when Schoenke says “nonpartisan” you can be sure he’s just said a word that has four syllables.

More about the organization and how it reveals Obama's gun stance at Conservative Superiority.

Bloating votes and bloating opinion. I used to think Obama to be fairly decent. Now I know better.

I'll tell you what this "Gun Nut" is not

2008-04-13T22:21:00.002-08:00

You've heard the emotionally-charged labels before, all alluding to some sort of mental deficiency simply because we have safely locked somewhere in our homes a piece of hardware that we have had a right to own ever since the 1780s.

I just feel the need to set the record straight.

My name is Jeremy T. Hatfield, and I am a gun owner. Been owning guns ever since August of 1999. Longer, if you count the BB guns I grew up with as a kid.

I have owned five firearms in my lifetime: four pistols, and one rifle.

I am not a member of any firearm advocacy group, although I definitely advocate 2A. I've never given a dime to the NRA nor GOA. My support for 2A comes in the form of writing on the matter fairly infrequently, reading regularly national happenings regarding firearms, supervising neighbors' kids when they go plinking, teaching them how to responsibly use them, and safely handling my own firearms.

I was raised in the South. Appalachia, to be specific. I have lived in a trailer at one time in my life (for about a month, before I left for TN to start grad school).

I'll also say that I hold two degrees, including a Master's in German Literature, am an expert on a certain period of Germany's History, speak five languages other than English (working on my sixth) and can read from a dozen others.

I have worked in Europe. Been there twice, as a matter of fact. Set foot on three continents and seven foreign countries.

I've had friends from every continent, and meet Europeans on a regular basis, so, no, you can't honestly say that I am ignorant of the world.

I am a believer in God--and come from matters of faith as someone who used to be a skeptic.

So much for stereotypes.

Requiescat in Pace, Charlton Heston

2008-04-06T14:05:00.003-08:00

October 4, 1923 - April 5, 2008

I am a recent newcomer to 2A issues. I got my first handgun in 1999, along with my concealed carry permit from the State of Florida. Because of the potential legal issues involved with concealed carry, I have since then made effort to find out about issues concerning gun rights.

In doing so, you can't help but come across the NRA and Charlton Heston. Oh, the way the left vilifies both! Even at his death, your more encephalitic lib (i.e. your typical Democratic Underground poster) can't help but spit on his grave.

Here are some jewels as quoted by The Jawa Report:

"1 less right wingnut to worry about"
"Quick, someone pry out his gun!"

"Is he soylent green yet??"

"If Heston lived another 20 years would the world be a better place? no. I think not. Its just that simple. So break out the good wine. Drink to vanquished enemies."

"Their brain-eroding diseases coincided with their rightwing turns." (referencing Heston and Reagan)

"I'll see you at Nancy Reagan's funeral. I will be the guy with the air horn and a big ol' grin."

"Rest in Hell is where I am coming from."

"I had no empathy for the aging Nazis, either."

"he was scum"

"He was a mediocre actor who believed he was Moses."

"If "liberal" means...feeling any sense of loss that some sorry piece of shithumanity such as C Heston has checked out?...Then sign me out."

In my experience, though, vitriol often follows a man of character. Heston most definitely had that. I recall a published speech given by him that put his character on open display, and I found it over here. It had to do with the Culture War that was very much noticeable in the late 1990s. Excerpt:

As I've stood in the crosshairs of those who target Second Amendment freedoms, I've realized that firearms are -- are not the only issue. No, it's much, much bigger than that. I've come to understand that a cultural war is raging across our land, in which, with Orwellian fervor, certain accepted thoughts and speech are mandated.

For example, I marched for civil rights with Dr. King in 1963 -- and long before Hollywood found it acceptable, I may say. But when I told an audience last year that white pride is just as valid as black pride or red pride or anyone else's pride, they called me a racist.

I've worked with brilliantly talented homosexuals all my life -- throughout my whole career. But when I told an audience that gay rights should extend no further than your rights or my rights, I was called a homophobe.

I served in World War II against the Axis powers. But during a speech, when I drew an analogy between singling out the innocent Jews and singling out innocent gun owners, I was called an anti-Semite.

Everyone I know knows I would never raise a closed fist against my country. But when I asked an audience to oppose this cultural persecution I'm talking about, I was compared to Timothy McVeigh.

From Time magazine to friends and colleagues, they're essentially saying, "Chuck, how dare you speak your mind like that. You are using language not authorized for public consumption."

But I am not afraid. If Americans believed in political correctness, we'd still be King George's boys -- subjects bound to the British crown.

This is the part of the speech that I remembered, talking about the price of standing up for what you believe:

In that same spirit, I' m asking you to disavow cultural correctness with massive disobedience of rogue authority, social directives, and onerous laws that weaken personal freedom.

But be careful. It hurts. Disobedience demands that you put yourself at risk. Dr. King stood on lots of balconies. You must be willing to be humiliated, to endure the modern-day equivalent of the police dogs at Montgomery and the water Cannons at Selma. You must be willing to experience discomfort. Now, I'm not complaining, but my own decades of social activism have left their mark on me. Let me tell you a story.

A few years ago, I heard about a -- a rapper named Ice-T who was selling a CD called "Cop Killer," celebrating the ambushing and of murdering police officers. It was being marketed by none other than Time/Warner, the biggest entertainment conglomerate in the country -- in the world. Police across the country were outraged. And rightfully so. At least one of them had been murdered. But Time/Warner was stonewalling because the -- the CD was a cash cow for them, and the media were tiptoeing around because the rapper was black. I heard Time/Warner had a stockholders meeting scheduled in Beverly Hills, and I owned some shares of Time/Warner at the time, so I decided to attend the meeting.

What I did was against the advice of my family and my colleagues. I asked for the floor. To a hushed room of a thousand average American stockholders, I simply read the full lyrics of "Cop Killer" -- every vicious, vulgar, instructional word:

I got my 12-Gauge sawed-off. I got my headlights turned off. I'm about to bust some shots off. I'm about to dust some cops off.

It got worse, a lot worse. Now, I won't read the rest of it to you. But trust me, the room was a sea of shocked, frozen, blanched faces. Time/Warner executives squirmed in their chairs and stared at their shoes. They hated me for that. Then I delivered another volley of sick lyrics brimming with racist filth, where Ice-T fantasizes about sodomizing the two 12-year-old nieces of Al and Tipper Gore:

She pushed her butt against my --

No. No, I won't do to you here what I did to them. Let's just say I left the room in stunned silence. When I read the lyrics to the waiting press corps outside, one of them said, "We can't print that, you know." "I know," I said, "but Time/Warner is still selling it."

Two months later, Time/Warner terminated Ice-T's contract. I'll never be offered another film by Warner Brothers, or get a good review from Time magazine. But disobedience means you have to be willing to act, not just talk.

That is character, friends. That is proper use of 1A to address serious problems. But the left-leaning radical ideologues, for all the value they put on 1A, will only sing its praises for as long as it is used to distribute their views and agendas. All others are seen as a good reason for censorship.

Especially if the views come from a former member of their number. Another great conservative was the same way: Ronald Reagan.

This is the sort of opposition you and I have to be ready to face, and some of us do. We have a very good example in Charlton Heston.

As far as his acting is concerned, I'm no theatrical critic. I can't say if Charlton were among the best actors America ever produced. But I will say that The Ten Commandments and Ben-Hur were both a regular part of my viewing diet at certain times of the year, even before I took my relationship with Christ seriously.

There was also The Planet of the Apes, which I do remember with fondness from my childhood. But the last bit of acting I ever saw him take a leading role was his son's production of A Man For All Seasons. Partially because of his acting, and his choice for a well-written drama with a worthwhile message, it became my favorite drama in English.

We'll see you on the other side, Charles.

U.S. News & World Report article from Last Month

2008-04-01T16:52:00.004-08:00

It's not that I'm slow to read. It's just that I stopped subscribing to mainstream media rags the very day I got an issue of Newsweek (a magazine I grew up with) that featured Saddam's capture on the cover, but only gave a page-long story, and a very lukewarm one at that.

If ever there were an evident lack of media support for our military and our efforts to bring order to Iraq, that was it.

My folks in N.C. asked me if I wanted them to renew the subscription. I said flat-out, "No."

At any rate, someone apparently was done with the March 6 issue of USN & WR, covering the Heller case. On the cover, for those of you who remember, was a prominently-displayed Beretta 92 and something about the new battle over guns in bold block print.

Naturally, it aroused my curiosity. So, I flipped through the articles featured.

They were all written by an Emma Schwartz. And the articles appearing in that issue can be found here, here, here, and here. Since that issue, she has written another article concerning the Heller case, appearing March 18, here.

In the March 6 issue, she seems to be rather confounded that most people saw 2A as an individual right. The tone of her articles seem to take on the assumption that the collective right view is the normal way to look at 2A. She even tries to say that Circuit Courts have often ruled in favor of the collective.

But that is simply not the case. Let us refer again to Guy Smith's Gun Facts 4.2:

St. George Tucker, any early legal commentator and authority of the original meaning of the constitution wrote in Blackstone’s Commentaries "… nor will the constitution permit any prohibition of arms to the people”

The Second Amendment was listed in a Supreme Court ruling as an individual right.

The Supreme Court specifically reaffirmed that the right to keep and bear arms did not belong to the government.

In 22 of the 27 instances where the Supreme Court mentions the Second Amendment, they quote the rights clause and not the justification clause.

Now, you would figure that someone who graduated with honors in history would have been able to dig this stuff up. But, her degree was from California at Berkeley. She herself is from San Francisco. It adds up.

It would also explain the other assumptions she makes in her articles--the typical media angle of focusing on guns used in crime, while any meaningful discussion over the successful use of firearms in self-defense is very lacking. Painting the NRA in a negative light. Blaming the Bush administration for doing nothing about gun-control issues.

So, it's not all that hard to understand how someone who graduated from UCB in 2004 managed to land a job writing major articles for major news corporations almost straight out of school. The leftists take care of their own.

But getting back to her confusion over collective vs. individual right--the reality is, if it were indeed a collective right as opposed to an individual one, then I would not have been able to obtain the five firearms I have owned in my lifetime (3 bought during the Clinton years), nor my fathers before me. And there would have been no way 250 million firearms would be in private possession here in our country (this is her own quote of a Virginia gun-control group).

That explains the opinions on 2A that she came across, and the Supreme Court's leaning towards individual rights that she reports about in the March 18 article.

There is a world that functions outside your ideology, sweetie. It's a shame that someone who reports about this world can't see that.

Hand to Face Time: Gun Control has Helped D.C.!

2008-03-30T21:51:00.003-08:00

Hoo boy. The budding journalists in academia are at it again.

A friend of mine asked me this afternoon if I had been keeping up with the gun rights issue in DC. Admittedly, I had not. So, I decided to look it up.

The first article I came across was from Georgetown's campus newspaper, The Hoya:

Gun Ban has Triggered Safety

The editorial board makes the comment that the gun ban worked in reducing crime:

"By 2005, the murder rate had dropped to 29 per 100,000, and the number of violent crimes had been reduced to 8,032."

Problem is, the gun ban was enacted in 1976. It took 29 years for it to show any marginally favorable results, during which, DC was crowned the murder capital of the nation (in 1991, according to the editors' own research).

Furthermore, the gun ban still doesn't seem to have eliminated crime involving firearms. In their own words, "in the past four years, at least two students have experienced the terror of being on the receiving end of a pistol’s bullet. Countless muggings and robberies have plagued the campus and surrounding community for several years, and the criminals who commit these crimes frequently carry firearms."

Happily, though, no criminals were injured by the law-abiding folk who respected the ban.

Read the comments on the article. Especially the police officer's take on the article:

Look at the crime rates just on the other side of the Potomac River from Georgetown. Almost zero! Yet Hoyas are robbed and shot constantly in DC. Why? Because the bad guys know you are not packing heat and that if they do get caught they will serve very little or no time due to the incompetent court system in DC.
On the Virginia side of the Potomac River any citizen can own a handguna nd even carry it with them, without any special permit being required. Are people walking around Arlington blowing each other away? No! The opposite is the case, Arlington's violent crime rate is very low, while DC is astronomical.

But what is even more telling is the perspective from the other side of the law--an ex-convict:

For 22 years I dealt drugs and preyed upon anyone weaker than me. With the exception of crimes against children & women I committed most every crime known to man. I did not care about the law or how much anyone suffered as long as I got my way. I have never owned a legal gun but you can rest assured I kept guns with me at all times. Not any of those guns were legally purchased. Why would I want a gun that could be traced back to me and connect me to a crime? Why would any criminal buy a legal gun ever? May as well as leave a business card at the crime scene. When I went to rob or assault anyone rest assured I looked for victims not opponents. I picked people and places that were unarmed and defenseless. If I wanted to work for a living I'd have gotten a job. I looked for and found easy prey. That is why 7/11s get robbed more than banks. Banks have a lot more money, they also have armed guards. While 7/11 does not allow employees to have guns. Some even ban customers from having guns. They call those Gun Free Zones, we call them easy pickings, Stop & Robs or Free Crimes zones. After all they made sure I was safe from being hurt.

I'll leave the rest for you guys to read.

Now's the time to get your reloading components

2008-03-30T20:47:00.004-08:00

I was visiting one of our sister churches here in Delta, and after service, talked with one of the guys there who I shoot the bull with on guns and hunting.

He told me, "If you're planning on getting any ammo, do it now. The price of lead and copper is going to go up."

He mentioned that China is gearing up for war, and we are already involved in a couple of conflicts. So, military demand for lead and copper, naturally, is going to affect market prices for us civilians.

Matter of fact, Dave told me that if you look at a Cabela's catalog, flip over to the ammo section. Under .223 there is a disclaimer about the availability of that caliber due to military and law enforcement demand.

I looked up the matter, trying to see how much truth there was to the China deal. I mean, why would China be gearing up for war? Against whom?

I came across this article in The Statesman. Excerpts:

In a move that surprised the international strategic community, it was announced at the Fifth Session of the 10th National People’s Congress that China’s defence budget for 2007 would be 350.92 billion Yuan (US $45 billion), an increase of 17.8 per cent ($6.8 billion) over the previous year. Though Chinese analysts sought to pass off the rather steep hike as having been “caused by the sharp increase in the wages, living expenses and pensions of 2.3 million People’s Liberation Army officers, civilian personnel, soldiers and army retirees,” the world was skeptical.

Indeed. I don't think army retirees are really that much in need of the following:

...aircraft carrier under construction, the acquisition of SU-30 fighter-bombers and air-to-air refuelling capability, the drive towards acquiring re-entry vehicle technology to equip China’s ICBMs with MIRVs...

Along the way, I had discovered several articles mentioning alliances between China and Russia, and, of course, Putin's anti-Western rhetoric. It's the 1970s all over again (only this time, without all the polyester).

Confirming increasing copper prices can be seen here, and lead and ammunition prices in a very informative article right here.

Excerpt from the latter:

There are, however, other things that are going to affect the cost of enjoying the outdoors in the coming years. One of those is the cost of metal, which is on a steady climb upward for several reasons, one of the biggest of which is the export of scrap metals and raw materials to China and other emerging industrial nations. Much of the goods we buy today are manufactured in countries where it is cheaper to produce them because of cheaper labor and less stringent, (non-existent) pollution regulations. These countries, besides producing inferior goods (just look at all the recent recalls), are scarfing up metal at an alarming rate.

With the material cost of outdoor sports rising, it seems that the only outdoor enthusiasts who won't be affected by will be nudists. Not a terribly viable pastime here in Alaska, where it is cold 8 months out of the year, and mosquito-infested the remaining four.

Thankfully, I still have a sizeable stash of .45 and .44, plus reloading components for .44. I did some plinking yesterday, overseeing some boys with their .22 rifles while wowing them with the power of a .44 magnum. Probably the last time I'll do some full-out blasting for a good while.

Speaking of which, here is a shot showing some of the aftermath of yesterday's blastfest:

We were shooting cans off the drum I am sitting on. The boys were very good shots, able to hit that spent .410 casing from 25 yards out.

I managed to impress them with blasting the cans off the drum at the same distance. But, it seems that the sheer power of the .44 was more responsible for it than my own accuracy.

Please note the holes on the top of the drum. I put those there.

They're out there

2008-03-22T11:27:00.003-08:00

Now, I remember during the early days of the war on terror, when there was a trend to rename everything "French" with "freedom," sort of thumbing our noses at the nation who helped get us into Vietnam.

BUT, there are those Frenchies who seem to be less prone to PSH-itis. Here is one of them:

http://www.thedissidentfrogman.com/blog

Make sure you check out his response to Agence France Presse's coverage about the woman who held up two unfired cartridges as evidence that our troops had shot her house a good while back.

http://www.thedissidentfrogman.com/blog/link/like-a-suppository-only-stronger/

Now, there are three things I generally tend to associate with liberalism: women, Europeans, and youth. The first I have little understanding of, being a male myself. The second I understand somewhat, having spent a good 20+ years associated with European culture (a result of my language studies).

The latter part I can understand; when I was in my teens, I had some pretty good liberal leanings myself, thus proving something I read somewhere: if you're not liberal when you are in your teens or 20s, it's because you have no heart. If you're not conservative by the time you're in your 30s, it's because you have no head.

At any rate, here is someone young, european, and female, who also happens to be conservative:

http://no-pasaran.blogspot.com/

And with that goes the first two new links I've put on my good list in a long time.

More on Clothing and CCW

2008-03-07T16:05:00.003-09:00

As a part-time caregiver for a paraplegic, I sometimes get to take my client to Fairbanks for his appointments. Oftentimes, on these trips, I have my urban hardware with me.

Now, those of us who have and do carry understand that concealed carry, while for the primary purpose of self-defense, nonetheless means keeping aforementioned hardware out of sight. Especially if the public at large is prone to PSH attacks, which, happily, generally isn't the situation here in interior Alaska. Still, you've got to keep your iron covered.

...which has the potential to make an everyday situation less-than-everyday. Yesterday, mine happened in the Men's bathroom at Fred Meyers'.

Usually, when I'm carrying, I'll get a stall, and take the USP out and rest it on the tank or TP dispenser or somewhere off the ground while I'm doing my business. Zip up, reholster, wash up, head out.

This time, though, no stall was available.

My carry gear involves a Bianchi Black Widow holster, which I've bought for both USPs I've owned. It's your typical strong-side high CC holster, meant to be worn with a 1" belt.

For it to work, said belt must be fastened, lest the holster droop down with the hardware. Not a desirable situation in a public rest room.

This is made more complicated by the fact that I was wearing button-fly jeans at the time. Which means the top button must be loosened. Which often means the above-mentioned belt had to be loosened.

So, here I am, trying to maintain tension on the belt with my right hand while managing bladder relief operations with the other...

In short, button-fly jeans are not the best choice for CC on a belt holster. Doable, but not the best.

New Leftist Organizations

2008-03-02T13:44:00.003-09:00

Brought to you courtesy of the People's Cube.

TWITS
Trotskyite Workers Imagining Transcontinental Socialism

FRAUDS
Free-thinking Radicals for Awareness, Understanding, Diversity, and Sensitivity

SORROW
Socialist Operatives Rallying for Redistribution Of the Wealth

AIRHEADS
Academic Iconoclasts Representing Hedonism, Environmental Activism, Disarmament, and Sandal-wearing

EMPIRE
Empower Marginalized Peoples, Intern Rich Exploiters

VERMIN
Vegan Environmentalists Rejecting Masculinity, Imperialism, and Narrow-mindedness

LARD
League of Animal Rights' Defenders

GARGOYLE
Greens Advocating Recycling, Gardening Organically, Yoga, and Loving the Earth

WANKERS
West-coast Altruists, Naderites, & Kleptocrats for Enforcing Redistribution and Self-sacrifice

WINDBAGS
World Institute of Nihilists Deconstructing Bourgeois Assumptions and Glorifying Subjectivism

POTEMKIN
Pacifists Opposed To Escalation and the Military's Killing of Innocent Non-combatants

HERPES
Humanitarians Extending Relief to Poorly Endowed Sex-workers

Are we really #1?

2008-03-02T12:06:00.004-09:00

Spurred again by our up and coming Journalist Daniel Agnew of Washington State. One of the comments brought up in his last post--about how we are #1 in per-capita gun deaths--pointed out some different online resources that position the United States further on down the scale when it comes to guns and crime.

Ctone of Legions Fate turned to Nationmaster for some stats. Guess what he found?

Regarding our international standing on murders with firearms, we rank not #1, but #8. The #1 position belongs to South Africa. They outdo us per capita by a factor of 25. 31,918 murders to our 8,259 according to a U.N. study--The seventh such study made by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, Centre for International Crime Prevention. This one covered the years 1998-2000.

Matter of fact, the top three--South Africa, Colombia, and Thailand--all have total firearm murder numbers above 20,000! In terms of raw numbers, we rank #4, but we are less than half than the next country above us in the rankings.

New Addition to the Birdcage List!

2008-03-01T11:21:00.003-09:00

Haven't messed with the Template in over a year. Hadn't really a reason to. Now I've added another one to the "Bottom of the Birdcage" list.

It's the VPC Blog.

Now, I'm not entirely sure what the author's agenda is. Because his posts are so out there, I'm kind of wondering if he isn't just making a big caricature of Antis.

Kind of like what The People's Cube has done for liberalism in general.

Speaking of which...TPC invites you to...

Obama: Play up Class Warfare

2008-02-29T22:00:00.006-09:00

This one will be more "stream of consciousness" as I peruse Obama's official campaign website...looking specifically for the official stance on issues, then compare with his voting record as reported elsewhere.

First of all, I'm impressed with his speaking voice and presentation. But I've known cheap furniture with good veneer before. People weren't terribly impressed with Fred Thompson (who was my first choice), but I think we'll look back and say he was probably the best the Republicans had to offer.

As good a place to begin with would be Civil Rights, since 2A definitely falls under that category.

"Pay Inequity Continues...Hate Crimes on the Rise...Efforts to Suppress the Vote...Disparities to Plague Criminal Justice System." I don't care for the class-warfare approach he's started out with. I thought he was for change. I could easily have heard this from Hillary or any other post-sixties hippie.

Not a thing about 2A mentioned at all on his site.

Over at OnTheIssues.org, there are four quotes related to gun control issues. Allow me to interpolate my thoughts along the way.

"You know, when the massacre happened at Virginia Tech, I think all of us were grief stricken and shocked by the carnage. But in this year alone, in Chicago, we've had 34 Chicago public school students gunned down and killed. And for the most part, there has been silence."

Not really. There is always the Anti knee-jerk response "ban guns! ban guns! 2A is the root of it all! The NRA is killing us!" And sundry other...what did Robb Allen call them...ah yes, PSHs...Which goes on for a few days until the psychiatrists up the Thioridazine dosages for the Demorrhoids that need them.

"We know what to do."

Do you, really? Like the way that congresswoman "knew" barrel shrouds?

"We've got to enforce the gun laws that are on the books. We've got to make sure that unscrupulous gun dealers aren't loading up vans and dumping guns in our communities"

Enforcing existing gun laws, yes. Fearmongering hyperbole, no.

"because we know they're not made in our communities. There aren't any gun manufacturers here, right here in the middle of Detroit."

Ahhh...so if people die in cars manufactured by VW, BMW, Porsche, and Renault, he'd be all for banning them, right?

I believe in keeping guns out of our inner cities, and that our leaders must say so in the face of the gun manfuacturer's lobby. But I also believe that when a gangbanger shoots indiscriminately into a crowd because he feels someone disrespected him, we have a problem of morality.

OK, he goes from gun manufacturers to gangbangers. The two are not related. Also, if Mr. O is all for creating more gun-free zones in inner cities, he's going to wind up with a greater problem.

Here's a 1998 list of principles that Obama supports regarding Gun Issues:

Ban the sale or transfer of all forms of semi-automatic weapons.
Increase state restrictions on the purchase and possession of firearms.
Require manufacturers to provide child-safety locks with firearms.

Nannystateism and addressing unrelated symptoms.

By the way, criminals' choice of firearms are not semiautos. They still tend to favor cheap revolvers:

Studies of the guns used in homicides show that
large caliber revolvers are the most frequent type
of gun used in murder, but the number of large
caliber semiautomatic guns used in murders is
increasing.

Nope, I'm not terribly impressed by Barack Obama. He's better than Hillary, but not by that much.

Hillary, 2A, and the Nanny State

2008-02-28T15:52:00.004-09:00

(Click on the title for the link)

I came across this site, while seeing how the other guys were skewering Riceman603's report on the U.S. and gun crime (feel free to drop by and add to the analysis--we may yet save another budding journalist from the path of mainstream media thinking).

He has links on how some of the potential presidential candidates handle 2A. In particular, there is Hitlery:

"We need to have a registry that really works with good information about people who are felons, people who have been committed to mental institutions."

"I would also work to reinstate the assault weapons ban."

"I think it's important to remember that the crime rate was driven down, & gun violence was driven down in the 1990s because of a combination of policies, like 100,000 police on the street and getting assault weapons off the street"

"We need to stand firm on behalf of sensible gun control legislation. We have to enact laws that will keep guns out of the hand of children and criminals and mentally unbalanced persons."

This is very telling about her philosophy on American government: The State is the answer to all your ills. Let the State handle them for you! And increase the Police to enforce the will of the State!

No thanks. Obama's preemptive jab on the Democratic Primaries no doubt held some truth to it:

I'll look into Obama shortly.

...and I carry concealed

2008-02-27T09:59:00.003-09:00

Excellent article that Sharp as a Marble found regarding a personal commentary on concealed carry.

Since permissions were explicitly by madrocketscientist on his post, here is his article in all its glory:

At any given moment, on any given day, I can legally conceal a firearm on my person for the defense of myself or others.

As a person who carries concealed, I have accepted an enormous responsibility to myself, my family, and to my community at large. I bear the responsibility to be aware, at all times, of my surroundings and of myself. I bear the responsibility of being trained and confident in the use of my firearm, and to take any and all measures to maintain control of myself, and my firearm, whether it is riding in the holster, or I have drawn it to confront a threat.

Before I can accept this responsibility, I had to be certain of my own moral center, to know that, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the two pounds of steel and plastic on my hip is more than an uncomfortable bit of weight. To know that should I reveal my weapon, the situation may escalate to a point where I must use deadly force in defense of myself or others, and to know that my skill and training may not be up to the task, and despite the firearm, I may die, and that I am OK with that

Before I can accept this responsibility, I must be old enough, I must have enough money for the permit fee, and I must subject myself to a complete background check, one that involves local, national, and possibly international police agencies. If I have any instances of violence in my background, or events that have demonstrated my inability to be careful, lawful, and responsible, I will be denied this responsibility.

Before I can accept this responsibility, I need to know how to use a firearm safely. I need to know the four rules and have them such a regular part of my daily regimen that I am always aware of them and never forget them. Depending on where I live, I may be required to bear the expense to attend firearms training, or demonstrate my skill with a firearm at the range, or demonstrate it during a mock combat scenario.

Before I can accept this responsibility, I have to have a firearm. I must do my research and choose a firearm that fits my needs, my lifestyle, and my hands. I must again have the financial resources to purchase this firearm, which can range from $200 to $2000. I must have a holster that can safely secure my firearm on my person for carry, and it is likely a good idea to have different holsters for different occasions or seasons.

Before I accept this responsibility, I must know the law governing it. I must know how I may carry, where I may or may not carry, and under what circumstances I may reveal, draw, or discharge my firearm; and I must know the consequences of being wrong in my ability to discriminate these circumstances.

As I accept this responsibility, I must understand that I will be expected to maintain a higher standard of behavior than my fellow citizen, and, it could be argued, a higher standard than even the Police, as should I make a mistake with my firearm, I will be required to defend myself against criminal charges, and I will not have the resources and influence of the Police Union to support me.

As I accept the responsibility, I must understand that I can not be allowed to make a mistake with my firearm, as one mistake will result, at the very least, in the suspension of my responsibility, and should I be convicted, the permanent revocation of that responsibility, and possible loss of my freedom.

As I accept this responsibility, I must understand the following:

I can not verbally reveal to anyone that I have a firearm in a manner that could be considered threatening, intimidating, or otherwise hostile without the existence of a credible threat.
I can not visually expose my firearm in a manner that could be considered threatening, intimidating, or otherwise hostile without the existence of a credible threat.
I can not draw my firearm in any manner without the existence of a lethal threat.
I can not discharge my firearm for any reason without the existence of a lethal threat.

As I accept this responsibility, I must understand that I can not allow myself to become involved in an easily avoidable physical, or even verbal, altercation while in possession of my firearm, and that I am required to attempt to leave or defuse a tense situation that may escalate. I must make every reasonable effort to "turn the other cheek" so that should I be forced to fight, it is only in self-defense. I must always stay in control and keep a cool head. I can not give someone a piece of my mind in the parking lot, I can not belt the guy who is talking smack about my mother, I can not go drinking and get into a fight, I must avoid confrontation whenever possible.

As I accept this responsibility, I must understand that I can never be complacent as I carry, as I can not allow another to gain control of my sidearm, nor can I ever place an innocent in jeopardy because I am careless. I must make every effort, and bear every expense, in order to improve my skill with a firearm and my ability to safely use it.

I have to be better than a model citizen, I have to an exemplary citizen.

I accept this responsibility not because I think "guns are cool" or because I want to be a gangsta, or because I want to make someone my "beyotch", or because I want to be a hero, or because I am expecting trouble and want to be tough; I am not so shallow in my self.

I accept this responsibility because the police, as honorable and courageous as they may be, can not be everywhere. I accept this responsibility because criminals, and those that would do violence for their own purposes, respect no boundaries, and can ply their trade anywhere, from the slums to the gated communities.

I accept this responsibility because I firmly believe that the only person that is responsible for my defense is me, and that every citizen, not just the police, are responsible for the defense of the community. I accept this responsibility with the same honor and courage that calls me to the aid of others, whether they are in peril for their life, or they merely stumbled on the sidewalk.

I bear this responsibility willingly and with love because I am a citizen of this great nation, and I want to protect it and all her people, and this desire imposes on me a duty to defend her with my skill, my determination, and possibly my life.

My name is The Mad Rocket Scientist, and I carry concealed.

Ode to a Moonbat Bishop

2008-02-23T15:29:00.003-09:00

Iowahawk as a modern day Geoffrey Chaucer...

...cranking out a modern day Canterbury Tales

43 I liketh bigge buttes and I cannot lye,

44 You othere faelows can't denye,

...and lambasting moonbats in the process!

Grading the Graders, Revisited

2008-02-23T13:26:00.000-09:00

The Brady Grades are out! New! Improved! Instead of giving out letters, they're giving out numbers! Wow!

Actually, the grades have been out for a while. The new format is a little more detailed, and the results tell a little more about the unrealistic expectations of the Brady Bunch.

And, as I stated in my last post, the great state of Alaska scored 4 points out of a possible hundred, and ranked 44th out of 50. I guess we must be doing something right.

I was looking at the list of the places where the Last Frontier came up short. I'd have to say, yeah, it pretty much describes how liberal we are in Alaska when it comes to 2A.

But I also saw some things in their lists that I don't think were entirely truthful:

JUVENILE SALE
Is it illegal to sell handguns to anyone under 21 years of age? No
State law does not restrict selling handguns to juveniles under the age of 21 by unlicensed sellers. Under federal law, only federally licensed dealers are prohibited from selling or delivering handguns or ammunition for handguns to any person under the age of 21. A strong state law is needed to stop unlicensed persons from selling handguns to those under the age of 21.

If you just did a cursory check on the list, you'd think that Alaska takes pride in flouting the under-21 law. Nope. Firstly, this is a little sticky in that it deals with personal property between private individuals, and I don't need to go into the ramifications of that. Those who prefer living in an Orwellian society might not see it as a bad thing, but I personally would prefer erring on the side of civil liberties.

Another thing this bit of propaganda fails to mention are the criminal codes against selling guns to unqualified individuals (felons, mentally unstable, etc).

WAITING PERIOD
Is there a waiting period on gun sales? No
Alaska: No state requirement that there be a waiting period for gun sales beyond the "instant check" in federal law. Police are not given any additional time to run a criminal background check to make sure the gun buyer is not prohibited from acquiring firearms. There is no "cooling off" period to help prevent crimes of passion.

Not entirely true. Gun dealers are governed by Federal Law, and all first-time resident handgun buyers within the State of Alaska must undergo a 5-day waiting period. Subsequent purchases are not subject to the waiting period. Nor are people who have a CCW permit.

But again, the wording of the line-item suggests that, by golly, you come to Alaska, and you can get yourself a pimped-out Desert Eagle with a minimum of hassle.

Another thing that caught my attention were the rankings vs. scores. 50 states were featured. Not a one scored 100% (the best was California, at 79). The overwhelming majority (43) of states scored less than 50%. Of those 43, 41 scored less than 30%.

That alone should tell you that the Bradys' expectations are totally unrealistic.

Here's another telling statistic. The Bradys' top performers (California, New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maryland, New York, Rhode Island, and Hawaii) are all blue states.

As a matter of fact, the top 12-ranked states in Brady's list are all blue. Once you get to North Carolina (#13), you start seeing some mixture of red and blue, but I find it rather interesting the correspondence between political affiliation and favor on the Brady scale. Further evidence suggesting the Bradys are not the "non-partisan" organization their website claims they are.

At any rate, it's time to see if the Bradys really have a good feel for what prevents gun violence. Referring to the FBI's Uniform Crime Reports they make available online, 2006 edition, I found that the Brady's consistent top performer in terms of gun ownership legislation, The People's Republik of Kalifornia, is also the biggest offender in gun-related crimes.

Combining reported instances of Murder, Robbery, and Aggravated Assault with a firearm, California's tight gun restrictions could not stop 49,700 people from being victims.

This, by the way, is close to twice of the combined firearm-related incidents reported by the bottom ten states--the poorest performers by the Brady grading system--whose total is 27,349 in all.

Some would come up with the argument, "Well, that's because California is so huge, and naturally, bigger populations will have bigger problems. What we really need to look at are per-capita totals for a more accurate picture of guns and crime."

Fine. The total population of the bottom ten states comes to around 21,505,087, about 59% of California's population of 36,332,437. Do the math, and you'll find that the combined per-capita firearm-related crime rate is still less than California's. Maybe not by the widest of margins (8% difference), but you would think that if the Brady grading system were an accurate picture of the measures needed to stop gun violence, the results would be much more in the favor of the Brady's highest performer.

Conclusion: The Brady measures don't really help prevent crime.

CCW on campus proposed by TN legislator

2008-02-22T11:40:00.002-09:00

I sent off an email to the editors of UT's Daily Beacon yesterday, doing my best to try to enlighten the overopinionated and underinformed (the two generally go hand in hand) about CCW issues. In short, I said:

- CCW doesn't apply to everyone--people seem to jump to the conclusion that, once it's passed--hoo boy, everybody will be packing heat under their coats. Nope, only licensees get to do it. Legally, that is.

- The process of licensing involves a fair amount of money, time, and background checks. This both serves to ensure that only those serious about taking up this responsibility do so, and winds up with citizens better capable of doing just that.

- Freedom of speech doesn't require quality of content, but if there is ever going to be any real meaningful discussions on CCW, 2A, or any other topic, the anti crowd really needs to do their homework and approach the forum from a more informed POV.

But, getting back to my native state--apparently, there has been a long-standing discussion in the Volunteer State about Concealed Carry on campus. State Representative Stacey Campfield is proposing a bill allowing full-time faculty and staff who are CCW licensees to be allowed to exercise their 2A rights.

Naturally, there's opposition among liberalism's clergy and laity to let one of their temples be defiled with anything conservative.

A UTPD special operations captain doesn't like the idea, saying that students and faculty need to be more familiar with evacuation routes.

I can see his point, but to me, it's almost like he's instructing people to be better targets...the school shootings that have happened were generally not committed by outsiders, but students also familiar with the schools they terrorized. That includes emergency procedures and evacuation routes, neither of which help stop a perp in a timely fashion.

I remember as a grad student at UT (1993-1995) waking up to the sound of gunfire one night in the parking lot behind my dorm (Andy Holt Apartments). At least, I thought it was gunfire. The police sirens that sounded a good half hour gave further credence to my suspicions, and it was confirmed in the Beacon a day or two later. Some kid still in high school was upset over a breakup with his girlfriend (a student at UT) and decided to take a SKS to her car. Riddled it with about a score of holes (maybe 30) before fleeing the scene.

KPD caught up with him (they are the only ones authorized to have a weapon on campus), but by then, the damage had been long done. Police simply cannot be everywhere, and cannot respond instantaneously to a crisis.

VA Tech, 10 months later

2008-02-21T14:53:00.005-09:00

It was the VA Tech massacre that brought me out of my previous hiatus. It's almost been a year since then, and since I've been gone from the Campus Attitudes Towards RKBA scene for a while, I'm curious as to what the discussions have been in Blacksburg since then.

For starters, we have a Feb 6 article lamenting Virginia's low Brady grade.

I missed the latest round of Brady report cards. From what I understand, they've revamped their system--slightly. Lemme check and see how my state did...we got an F in 2006.

Under their new system, Alaska scored 4 out of 100 points, and is ranked 44 out of 50.

Heh. We did better than the last time I reported on the Brady grades. But I'll focus on that in another post.

Virginia ranked 14, something that the president of VA's chapter of the Million Moonbat March is disappointed about, but not terribly surprised. She blames the so-called "gun show loophole" for VA's lackluster performance.

No additional commentary from the article's author, but it drew a spate of reactions from the pro-2A crowd (you have to love online papers that allow comments), calling the piece a nice, unbiased bit of reporting on behalf of the Brady Campaign.

I do remember immediately following the shootings how some pointed to the Appalachian Law School situation, and how allowing Concealed Carry could have significantly lowered the damage PsyCho did. Around February 8, this debate was revived by students and faculty visiting Richmond to help support legislation being discussed which they supported. One of the issues standing out was concealed carry on campus.

Well, someone didn't like the idea, and is his right, he wrote about it. And with it, the usual symptoms that this person probably needs his Thioridazine prescription refilled. Fears about concealed carry have been proven time and again to be nothing more than tales of the boogie-man. But unfortunately, when you're short on facts, what do you use to fill your argument's void? Emotion coming out of vain imagination.

In reality, Concealed Carry has with it a price tag that by and large screens out the riff-raff. The states that license it requires some sort of training--basic gun handling skills, situation awareness, and awareness of legal responsibilities and consequences. Furthermore, you are fingerprinted, subjected to a background check, and the cost of all this can run you half a month's pay and several nights' worth of classes. All of these factors pretty much insure that your licensees are solid citizens.

Happily, there are a few students on VT's campus who know this, and attempt to explain how things really work with CCW (as well as the Brady Bunch's campaign of misinformation). And this one's a freshman, to boot.

The Sword and the Pen

2008-02-20T16:10:00.006-09:00

I had always wondered if Leftists would treat the 1st Amendment the same way they jump on the 2nd when it comes to trying to control crime.

I found in an Illinois campus editorial something exactly along those lines. And, the double standard over 1st and 2nd gets played out pretty good.

Another piece of evidence came up in the NIU shootings, and people are looking at a book that was left by the gunman for his girlfriend in hopes to shed some light on why he did what he did. The book in question was a copy of Nietzsche's The Anti Christ.

The author of this article, that appeared in the op-ed pages of another Illinois university, states that this has spurred consideration for banning the works of Nietzsche.

I tried looking for articles supporting this suggested ban, but came up short. I don't know where he got the idea for even the suggestion of the ban, unless it came out of the usual scuttlebutt. Still, regardless of any attempts, real or imagined, to take this book out of general circulation, this fellow's reaction is what I want to call attention to.

On the one hand, he is all for gun control, if only to include it in a battery of preventive measures:

I am 100 percent for: increased gun control laws, increased preventive measures of universities and a continual search for trying to find out a motive for the event.

This event has compelled several laws and actions to be considered and possibly implemented so that such events will not happen again.

Typical Anti-2A knee-jerk reaction to a crime involving a gun--"I'll gladly sell that right if it will make me feel safer."

However, if covering all the bases in the interests of prevention also meant taking books off the shelves that could inflame certain ideas (that is, something related to 1A), he goes in exactly the opposite direction:

However, there is one action being considered that I don't support it at all.

That is the banning of teachings by Nietzsche, particularly his book, "The Anti-Christ."

Further on down:

I am against banning books in any situation, but banning this one as a causal result of what happened last Thursday isn't the right thing to do, will not erase what happened and will not positively prevent future occurrences.

Now, I tend to agree with him on the book-banning question. I certainly would not care to see a 1A right taken away, even if it meant a little extra security.

But I hope everyone sees the hypocrisy here. I remember once during the 1990s how someone mentioned that if Libs treated 2A like 1A, then everyone would have a right to a fully automatic rocket launcher.

He sees a lack of causality between Nietzsche and the shootings. In similar measure, while the gun was the instrument, it in of itself is not to blame. It was not the cause of the crime. And yet, people like this would gladly promote infringements on the Second, which generally haven't been the right thing to do, do not erase past tragedies, and have proven quite ineffective at curbing crime.

But more importantly, the Second shares space with nine other amendments that define our rights. Disregard one, and you set dangerous legal precedent for the rest.

RKBA Campus Watch # 12.1

2008-02-17T10:18:00.005-09:00

Things sure have been busy while I was gone. In the past, my graduate Alma Mater, the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, hasn't shown up on radar regarding gun issues. At least, not in its campus newspaper, The Daily Beacon.

But in running a search through its archives, I found that this month has seen a debate revolving around Concealed Carry among those whose blood runs orange and white.

Therefore, I dub this iteration of the RKBA Campus Watch

The Volunteer Edition

The debate seems to have started February 1, with an article entitled, "UT campus should allow permit-carrying people to have guns." Written by a Sophomore in Finance, he expresses some concern about recent recurring attacks on campus. The author, who holds a CCW permit, puts forth the suggestion that licensed individuals should be allowed to carry their guns on campus.

Now, I want everyone to be aware of his approach to presenting the issue. He's not acting on some emotional response to a past campus shooting elsewhere in the country. He's focused on local problems. And the solution he offers, he presents from the instruction he got from the class he had to take prior to applying for his permit.

His key argument:

My handgun carrying permit instructor pointed out something very eye-catching and that is the fact that a person is less likely to go to a place where he knows someone else has a gun. By not being able to carry on the campus with a permit, the campus then becomes a prime place to attack someone, because those people who are going to do the crime obviously do not follow the campus guidelines for guns.

I think he could have worded this a little better, by saying that people with ill intent are less likely to go into places were the potential victims may be armed.

He even went so far as to conduct his own personal survey on the matter, and found opinion to be almost evenly split.

Published reactions were also split. Two of them, no doubt printed side by side, appeared four days later in the Beacon. The negative reaction came from a graduate student in computer engineering, and exemplifies the Finance Sophomore's observations of closed-mindedness among the antis.

It's not so much of a rebuttal as it is a rant. "Let's make it an integral part of campus life--pop quizzes where you have to clean guns! Hey, why stop there--let's throw guns out to the homeless, too! That'll stop crime."

It's amazing the depth of analytical ability that manages to get into the graduate school nowadays. Sheesh.

The positive reaction comes from a fellow who recently graduated from the Political Science department--again, stressing the issue of the state of campus safety, with adding additional comment about the rights of the citizen. Note that he was not advocating everyone carrying a gun, unlike the overboard reaction of the grad student above. That wasn't the stance of the original author, for that matter--only those who had taken the time to educate themselves about the responsibilities of carrying a concealed weapon for self-defense.

He said that guns are already around campus--carried by punk gangsta wannabes. Why should the good guys--those who put their guns away when the authorities says so--suffer for obeying the law?

A freshman in chemistry counter-reacts to this with more fear over "what if?" scenarios. What the boy needs to do is look at the results of what is.

Fact: Gun Free Zones are ripe targets for crime.

Fact: Concealed Carry deters crime.

RKBA Campus Round-Up #12

2008-02-16T21:20:00.009-09:00

Been away for six, seven months, and that means I have missed a whole semester's worth of Campus Editorials.

After doing the bit on Yale this morning, I figured I'd give the good 'ol Badger Herald a look-see. If ever there was a campus rag that regularly publishes gun-related student op-ed pieces, it's them.

And, so, I dedicate this edition of the RKBA Campus Watch to the Badgers, whose mascot's red sweater (I well remember the Cold War, despite the juxtaposition the MSM did with "Red" and "Blue" in 2004) and marching-to-the-left orientation is not lost on me.

Still, surprisingly, there was a pretty balanced representation of pro and con articles that were put out in the Fall semester of 2007. The leftists drone on with their stats to justify their fears. The gunners try their best to educate them. But the left keep coming back with the same tired, recycled points and figures that have been debunked for years.

Anyway, let's have a look at what the Herald put out since June 21, 2007, shall we?

First article...Sept. 27, 2007...starts off on a pretty positive note. For the President of UW's College Republicans put in a very sensible article about the right to Concealed Carry, and used an example that shows the sensibilities of the court system. Seems a pizza delivery fellow got robbed four times while at work. Twice he shot perps in self-defense. While he was cleared of any murder or assault charges because it was clearly evident he acted in self-defense, he nonetheless faced concealed weapons charges. It took the fourth mugging to get a ruling in his favor.

This isn't lost on the article's author. She quotes the state constitution, which allows for gun ownership specifically for the purposes of security and defense. But the way the courts see it, you have to survive violent attacks several times to show you have a security/defense need.

And, that, Mr. Xan White of Fail University, is the sort of death coming from a misinterpretation of law that I was talking about.

Good article, Sara. I hope your Dad got you a H&K for your 21st birthday, in at least .40, with 2 boxes of good practice ammo, and a box of Cor-Bon for carry.

I would that the rest of the articles were as reasonable, but unfortunately, Ivory Tower cluelessness reasserts itself the next month by a student who has wasted his academic career in that less-than-useful field of study known as Political Science (we'll see you behind the counter at the Chick-Fil-A come next September, bud).

His tack attempts to draw on "world opinion"via his travel experiences in Europe, which entails all the crime you could experience this side of the Atlantic, only without gun violence. Then he goes on to sing the praises of Europe, with its alleged lower gun crime rate than the United States, based on a 1998 study from an organization focusing on Epidemiology. Now, what germs and guns have in common is anyone's guess, apart from the title of a book by Jared Diamond, but then again, liberals have been known to make crazier connections in the not-too-distant past (Bush and Hurricanes, for example). But I digress.

But what about the rest of the crime you can enjoy in Europe, or the rest of the world, for that matter? The United States doesn't rank in the Top Ten as far as homicide is concerned. But according to GunFacts 4.2, p. 57 (hence the previous link), four European countries are in that list. And that comes from a U.N. study focusing on international crime.

Europe ain't safer--you'll get molested all sorts of ways, but hallelujah, it won't involve a gun!

T.S. Eliot said that April is the cruelest month, but it seems that October 2007 was the thoughtless-est month, at least in the town of Madison. A week after Mr. Europhile published his article, a Sophomore in English puts in her two cents' worth.

Her lament: that background checks are no guarantee of future mental stability.

Blink. Blink.

Twitch.

I don't think I have to say much more about that one. But I wonder if she would be as willing to be denied furthering her academic career on the grounds that her degree is no guarantee of future ignorance.

Fast-forward five days later to another Op-Ed by another Political Science major. Now, this guy seems a little smarter than the last one--he's backed up his hobby degree with something more practical--a degree in Sociology, which is something I can respect. Social workers are some of the more harder working, less-thanked selfless individuals I have ever known.

His article tends to reflect the sort of compassion you find in potential social workers--concern about children. Unfortunately, he makes the gross mistake of putting a lot of the blame on inanimate objects. And he isn't just talking about guns--he's talking about 2A as well, and how "accessible" it makes guns to kids.

However, there has been no correlation between gun availability and crime. Again, I turn you to GunFacts 4.2, page 19. As far as school shootings are concerned, it seems to be largely an urban phenomenon--rural areas have more ready access to guns, yet school shootings are nowhere near as common (pp. 17-18).

Personally, I'd blame it on a lack of supervision and parental involvement in the kids' lives. I had access to my Dad's guns (he kept a 1911 in the foyer closet), but had tasted enough discipline to know better than do something stupid or thoughtless with them.

It's kind of hard to tack down the next guy's position. A freshman in Computer Engineering points out the pros and cons of both sides, but swings towards the anti-side of Wisconsin's Concealed Carry debate. He shows some promise in that he has looked into what both sides have to say, but unfortunately, seems to have taken in too much of the assumptions that riddle the antis' thinking. Those assumptions all too often tend to be rooted in fear.

Take, for instance, his concern over the number of concealed guns making more guns accessible. Concealed carry in Wisconsin would be by license, and licensing is governed by certain criteria a person has to meet. It does not guarantee that everyone and their uncle would be carrying a gun. A right is not a requirement. You can easily decline to exercise it.

Then, there are concerns over "loopholes" in reciprocity. This, too, is taken into consideration by the powers that be.

But whatever his concerns are, most of them seemed to be based in the erroneous assumption that all guns will be used for criminal activity. And the overwhelming number of guns not used in crime simply does not justify that fear.

And, winding down 2007, a November article from another Political Science major--linked with History--which means that, unless he's going for a teacher position, going to grad school, or taking up a career writing books, he'll probably wind up behind the same Chick-Fil-A counter as Mr. Europhile, but as his shift manager.

Still, his training in history leads him to look deeper at the background of the Second Amendment--and unlike most of his other PoliSci compadres, and definitely most of his detractors in the comments section--finds it to assure individuals of the right to keep and bear arms.

No doubt there's lots more to dig up on other campuses elsewhere...watch this blog for more!

Warming back up on Campus Editorials

2008-02-15T22:12:00.005-09:00

It's certainly been a while since I've reported on the state of the higher-level ideological puppy farms known as the University Campus.

This time, the victim of my scrutiny is none other than the prestigious Yale, which just happens to rhyme with:

The article's thesis? "Death is human cost of misreading 2nd Amendment," which I wholeheartedly agree with, although not in the way Mr. White, a junior at Yale, presents his argument.

From the very get-go, Mr. White's article attempts to connect two unrelated incidents (and to which he admits are unrelated), and this is rather telling of his mindset. For example, he blames the death of Sean Taylor on a particular interpretation of the Second Amendment--but somehow manages to miss the criminal connections of the incident.

He also tries to connect legislation with public safety--unaware that, historically speaking, an increase of ink on paper in the lawmaking chambers around this country have made absolutely no impact on crime. A shining example was the Assault Weapons Ban of 1994.

And, following true to form, Mr. Xan "Condition" White attempts to connect the number of guns in this country with blood running in the streets--totally unaware that the number of gun related crimes in this country amount to less than .15% of estimated total gun ownership in this country.

Finally, there is the attempt to connect White's narrative with serious research. The 36 comments given this article have found none.

Like Barbarossa from the Kyffhäuser...

2008-02-15T14:02:00.008-09:00

OK, long enough of a hiatus for everyone? Yeah, me too.

A friend stopped by from Florida last month, and told me that everyone-- everyone--back where I used to live really missed my writing. He was given specific instructions to give me one word from everyone when he saw me--WRITE!

He was my boss at the computer consulting firm I worked for in South Florida, and I made my mark on the company writing articles and putting together advertisements for them. He said I had a gift in that area, and I shouldn't let it just fall by the wayside.

So...on the heels of a CPR class I took earlier this week, it's time to breathe some more life back into this beotch!

And just in time to vent about elections, too. Barbarossa has arisen, honks (even though my beard has more grey in it nowadays than red)! Phear the Southern Expatriate of the North with the HK on his hip!

February Surprise?
All the gunbloggers know about the Illinois shootings. Seems the cruel month of April came early this year. No known motive as of yet, although the gunman has been identified as a NIU alumnus.

To nobody's surprise--certainly not mine--the Left's instrument of propaganda and thought manipulation known as Big Media starts leading the bleating chorus about the evils of guns, republicans, and the NRA.

But, as the folks over at Hot Air point out, as can anyone with a few hundred brain cells not damaged thanks to the recreational pharmaceutical activity en vogue in the '60s and '70s, the article does not mention how the notion of Gun Free Zones fails once again!

Neither does it mention how the shooter was off some medication he was supposed to be taking. How convenient.

What's worse, said article from the NYT tries somehow to make a connection between campuses and national parks, but only succeeds in showing that they really don't pay attention to what they're reporting about.

The Idiotorial Board sees "Parks." They automatically assume "Ford's Theater." But there is ZERO mention of that sort of park in a December 14, 2007 Letter to Secretary Kempthorne. Mentions lands managed by Fish and Wildlife Service, even mentions National Wildlife Refuges. Maybe the National Mall falls under these sort of "Lands," but I highly doubt it.

Most letters to Interior Secretary Kempthorne that I am finding online have nothing to do with national monuments. A lot have to do with undeveloped areas. And that's only from a cursory online search by an amateur blogger. You'd think the "professionals" would have picked up on that--especially those given editorial responsibilities.

Speaking of editorials, in the process of looking at some of the reactions to the NIU shootings and the once-again revived gun debate (don't worry, folks, it will die down as soon as it loses its marketability. Remember, Big Media isn't about the truth--it's about what makes money), I'm seeing again how journalists are so ill-informed about the Second Amendment.

Take this editorial, for instance, which I also found in the Anchorage Daily News from about two days ago. It's the old individual rights vs. militia argument again. He takes the latter, saying, in effect, that this position has been "buttressed" by about 70 years' worth of legal rulings.

Well, if that were the case, and 2A has indeed been officially interpreted as being relevant only to militias, then could someone please explain to me how I managed to buy five guns--including a military-style "assault rifle"--since 1999? Seems like this guy needs to look at theory vs. the real world just a little more closely.

OK, but that's Big Media. We'd expect that sort of a reaction from them. What is really interesting to see is how a few people who stand the most to gain or lose from this will leverage this incident.

Obama: "I think there is an individual right to bear arms, but it's subject to commonsense regulation"

Well, chalk one up for a proper interpretation of the Constitution, but his support for the DC ban on handguns shows a little too much inconsistency. Let me see your voting record, pretty boy.

Hitlary: recently slammed Obama for what she considered an about-face on the stereotypical gun-control stance. Yet, she mentioned "safeguarding and respecting our Second Amendment rights." Read that statement real carefully...what does she mean by "our?"

This is the same witch whose husband signed the AWB. Whatever she says, given her record on gun rights issues, I'm not that apt to believe it.

McCain: An article in the Sun puts him right of Bloomberg two days ago. However, this blogger says our memory needs to be longer than that.

Good to be writing again, guys. More to come, at varying paces, in the days to come!

As Above, So Below

2007-06-21T23:44:00.001-08:00

While investigating the opinions of students regarding Gun issues, I came across what I thought was a trend among them...that journalism majors tended towards the left. I haven't done any solid statistical research on the matter, but if the apple stems from this sort of tree:

MSNBC.com identified 144 journalists who made political contributions from 2004 through the start of the 2008 campaign, according to the public records of the Federal Election Commission. Most of the newsroom checkbooks leaned to the left: 125 journalists gave to Democrats and liberal causes. Only 17 gave to Republicans. Two gave to both parties.

Then it stands to reason that up and coming journalists would follow suit.

There IS hope for Hawaii, after all

2007-06-19T11:47:00.001-08:00

While working at the park yesterday (and enjoying the company of another babe--helps take the edge off my recent disappointment), I saw a guy wandering through. He looked oriental, middle-aged, and was wearing a black NRA cap.

I thought to myself, "Huh...that's novel." I haven't seen too much in the way of pro-2A apparel worn among our tourists. Lots of other stuff, namely the usual Tourist fare (shirts with "Alaska," "Denali," "Tok," even "Chicken")--and at least one tourist wearing a button advertising Mazo Beach, which is a famous (or notorious, depending on your position) nude beach out in Wisconsin.

I kind of figured the guy just wore it for the novelty factor. But, I decided to ask him where he got it from anyway.

Turns out, the guy was from Hawaii, and is a NRA member.

Now, since I usually associate Hawaii with the Far Left, I asked him, "isn't Hawaii, like, very stringent on Gun Control policies." The guy rolled his eyes and said, "Is it ever! They've wanted to ban .50 cal handguns, put limits on personal ammo ownership..." you know the story. It's kind of like how California will look once the San Andreas Fault finally breaks the state from the rest of the mainland.

I didn't ask him what hardware he owned, but I showed off my H&K had I was wearing at the time, which he greatly appreciated. He also showed envy at my ownership of a Desert Eagle.

Feel sorry for you, man, but I'm happy that there are some reasonable folk still around, even in a place like Hawaii.

Speaking of California, today's Whiskey Tango Foxtrot Moment comes courtesy of something reported by the Liberty Belles by way of David Codrea at War on Guns:

How do you pass a gun registry law without attracting too much attention? Bury it in an ammunition bill. At least that's what the State of California is trying to do.

The wording of the Bill is downright Orwellian...

Threats to Freedom...via the Environmentalist Movement

2007-06-14T15:59:00.001-08:00

This is a most thought-provoking article from Vaclav Klaus.

Excerpt:

As someone who lived under communism for most of his life, I feel obliged to say that I see the biggest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy and prosperity now in ambitious environmentalism, not in communism. This ideology wants to replace the free and spontaneous evolution of mankind by a sort of central (now global) planning.

Read the rest of it. I've always suspected something screwy with the tree-hugging, granola crowd, whether they be wearing a smelly bedsheet and Birkenstocks, or a three-piece suit. The more I read about them (in books like John Stossel's Myths, Lies, and Downright Stupidity), the more my suspicions seem to be confirmed.

I grew up during the last 20 years of the Cold War. I remember well the tensions between the Warsaw Pact and NATO, but I found it interesting, that, after the fall of the Berlin Wall in '89, environmental concerns came quickly to the fore while the red armies sublimated away into relative irrelevance.

Even as a relatively clueless 20-year-old, I didn't think this was coincidental.

And now we have a survivor of communism speaking what has been going through the back of my mind for the past 17 years.

Oh, the heartbreak!

2007-06-11T23:43:00.000-08:00

Seems the situation with the gun babe was making progress...only in my head. Just wants to be friends, and has a love interest elsewhere.

Oh well...it was a nice thought, anyway...

Time to go grab a comfort beer.

Question from the Gun Babe's Father

2007-06-08T11:06:00.001-08:00

Those of you who regularly read this blog will have found an occasional reference to a young woman I have had a crush on for years. So far, I have given her ammo instead of chocolates in February, and hung out with her around Fairbanks while both of us were armed.

Oh yeah, and I made it a point to bring her back some red wine from my trip, including some Merlot from a vineyard in the Yadkin valley out in NC. She & I both prefer reds.

I ran into her father (the one that bought her the Glock for self-defense) a couple of days ago while eating lunch & catching up with Fred. This huge grin comes across his face and he asks me, "You carrying?"

I couldn't help but laugh. He already knows I do, but I asked him if his daughter had told him about Fairbanks, and he nodded, with an approving smile.

Her Dad & I do see eye-to-eye on many conservative issues. Gun rights is most definitely one of them. I've shown him my pistols on occasion while stopping by to visit him at his shop in town, and he's shown me some of his acquisitions--like the Glock he keeps under the counter, a 1911 he had bought, and even handed me a few shells to try out a new Benelli shotgun he had recently gotten. Shot it right out in the shop's backyard (only in Alaska could you do something like this).

So, hopefully, if anything ever happens with this woman and myself, I think I'll have his approval, at least regarding matters pertaining to his daughter's security.

I certainly wouldn't be overstepping any bounds with her, knowing she packs, and her father is armed to the teeth!

Bolivarian Socialism?

2007-06-07T21:39:00.000-08:00

I was perusing Moonbattery, and some rabbit trails led me to this latest bout of Chavezian dreck.

A little fun with linguistics here. "Dreck" in German is more or less the same word as "skytt" in Norwegian (which means "dirt"). That north germanic word is pronounced much like a certain four-letter scatological expletive in English, which, by the way used to be what "dirt" referred to.

So, continuing on with my commentary on the latest skytt fra Venezuela, the article from the Miami Herald gives a brief rundown on Chavez's political dealings in Venezuela:

'BOLIVARIAN'
Chávez, a former army officer who led a failed coup in 1992 before his presidential election in 1998, has called his political agenda for Venezuela, "Bolivarian Socialism.''
He has taken over the country's main telecommunications company, the capital city's electric utility and oil production facilities from multinational corporations.
Chávez has won reelection twice, but opponents charge he has undermined Venezuelan democracy by filling the courts and other government institutions with political allies and ruling by decree after last year's election, which many voters opposing him boycotted.
Unease has prompted many Venezuelans to leave their homeland, many settling in Miami-Dade and Broward counties.
An estimated 50,000 live in South Florida, and the number of asylum claims has spiked dramatically in recent months.

Now, for those of you unfamiliar with South American history, Simon Bolivar is sort of a George Washington figure for that continent. He's closely tied with the struggle for South America's independence from Spain.

But unfortunately, gaining independence is one thing. Dealing with the aftermath is another, and South America didn't enjoy some of the successes the U.S. had in organizing itself after its own revolution.

To make a long story short, in order to maintain control over the newly liberated lands, Bolivar had to make himself dictator.

So, the term "Bolivarian Socialism," while intending to evoke some feeling of patriotism, carries within itself a certain sinister double-entendre to me.

Visit From an Old Friend

2007-06-06T21:36:00.001-08:00

The guy on the left in the below photo stopped by the area to preach at our church this evening. I lived with him and his wife in a church-owned house (not exactly a parsonage, more of a house we set up for ministry heading out to and returning from South America) when I lived in South Florida. The man has been something of a second father to me.

But as is pertinent to a blog like this one, Fred also enjoys sport shooting--or rather, enjoyed it before he moved to Canada. As a former cop, he carried a Colt Python in .357, and while in Florida, was hoping to get hold of one for a reasonable price again.

I don't think he did, but I did sell him my SW99 and several boxes of 9mm so I could get a ticket to come out to Alaska and check things out here. After I left, he followed my lead in getting a Florida CCW (I think I was the first in my church to get one), and upgraded to a handgun in .40.

Unfortunately, he had to leave those behind when he returned to a church he used to pastor in Canada. You well know Canada's hysterical crusade against handgun ownership. So, he left his hardware with his son-in-law.

When he crossed the border into Canada, they did a background check on him, discovered he was from FL, and had a CCW. So, they asked him if he owned any handguns. He said, yes. But, as I said before, he had left them back in FL.

They tore through everything he had in their search for guns. But they didn't bother helping him put things back in order.

"It's a fantasy world they're living in," he told me at lunch this afternoon. "They think that all this fuss over gun control is going to do a thing towards cutting down crime." I then related to him an article I had read a couple of years ago regarding Ontario's finger-pointing at the U.S. for smuggling guns across the border and keeping crime rates high in that province.

But, the truth was told by a Magistrate who said that the overwhelming majority of gun-related crimes in Ontario were committed with guns stolen from Ontario homes.

Fred got a good chuckle out of that one.

RKBA Campus Watch: Going for the Bite Size approach

2007-06-05T22:03:00.000-08:00

Well, school's out for most of the campuses, but it will afford me time to get caught up on all the op-ed's I can scrounge.

Given my schedule, I don't think I'll have quite the time to do as extensive a round-up as I have been, so I will post them as I find them.

My favorite starting-off point, Wisconsin-Madison, ends off an interesting school year on a positive note: One guest columnist and a student rebutting all the hand-wringing published directly in the wake of VT.

The guest columnist, a sophomore in Economics, Math, and History, takes an interesting angle on the issue. He says gun control stats support both sides of the argument: pro and con. So, the question is, who really benefits?

If more gun control doesn’t mitigate crime, then what does it do? Look no further than any authoritarian state or society in history.

Lines straight up with that Jared Diamond quote I gave a while back. Furthermore, this boy has done his own research, and reached the same conclusions I did about the number of guns used in crime versus the number of guns in the country, only he looks at gun owners. This yields slightly different numbers, but the end result is the same--the overwhelming majority of gun owners in this country do not commit crimes:

If you don’t believe me when I say many gun owners follow the law, just look at the numbers. According to a survey administered by the Harvard School of Public Health, there were 57 million adult gun owners in 2004. According to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, there were 338,587 instances of firearms related crime in 2004. Do the math and we’ll find that, in 2004, at most 0.59 percent of gun owners committed a crime with their firearms. Additionally, we’ll find that at least 99.41 percent of gun owners in 2004 were law-abiding citizens. Run the same analysis on every year for the past 20 and you’ll get roughly the same results. In any given year, a super-super-majority of gun owners used their firearms in a responsible and lawful manner. (emphasis mine)

That, my friends, is one to keep in the back of your head.

Column number two, appearing April 25, surprises me. This comes from another underclassman, a freshman, and a journalism major to boot. He rebuts the notion that 2A is out of date, and takes a lot of time to quote several historical examples. To sum up:

Why? Because these infamous leaders knew that they could never consolidate power, disregard the opinions of the minority (or even the majority), or commit the atrocities they committed with an armed populace. As Aristotle said, “Both the oligarch and Tyrant mistrust the people, and therefore deprive them of arms.”

So, it seems there are sensible journalism majors out there.

Eat Yer Heart Out, Glockheads

2007-06-03T22:36:00.001-08:00

When it comes to plastic pistols, usually the first brand name that comes to mind is Glock. Less-educated folks will see a polymer frame pistol and immediately spout "Glock" much like a person sees a dark-colored soft-drink and calls it "Coke" (even though it may be Pepsi). I know this has happened to me once when I was carrying the H&K around the farm, looking for grouse. Someone said, "There's Hatfield, carrying his Glock."

Sheesh. That's like equating Cordon Bleu with Colonel Sanders.

Regular readers probably already know this, but Glock wasn't the first to mass-produce a pistol with a polymer frame.

No, sirs, that honor belongs to Heckler & Koch. Glock may have taken a good idea, made it cheaper, and marketed it like hell (kind of like Microsoft, only without the cheap part), but H&K beat them to the punch with the below handgun:

The VP70 (found the image here on Flickr). From various articles I've read about H&K over the years, I remember discussion over this pistol--18 round capacity, military version could affix a stock that gave it full-auto ability (leave it to H&K to come up with something to make their weapons stand out from the others--not just in terms of quality, but functionality as well).

Other ramblings...

I was looking around at other H&K pistols featured on Flickr. I saw a very interesting USP Compact--Limited Edition, with a two-tone frame:
I've never really been a fan of compacts. As regards to the USP, you sacrifice the patented buffer spring (which noticeably affects the pistol's controllability) for the size.

But as far as small H&K pistols go, this one is an absolute beauty:

P7M8 with custom grips. I had an opportunity to buy one of these (sans grips) out at a Police Supply store in Ft. Lauderdale for $600 in the late '90s. I should have bought it up.

Anyway, the picture takes you to the Flickr link, where you have some Aussie dirtying his shorts over the gun, getting "confused" over their role in society. Happily, the owner of this piece sets him straight, saying, to the effect, "Well, being from OZ, I don't expect you to understand, seeing you have surrendered your rights." And goes on to explain its use as a legitimate tool.

Fearmongering over guns is something I have never understood, even when I didn't own one.

Finally, this pic ought to provoke envy in any pistol owner:
A little big for Concealed Carry, perfect for Open Carry. There are few .45s that impress me more than my USP. This is one of them.

The other is the upcoming HK45, while the USP Tactical comes in third.

Anyone kindly willing to donate one shall not find his offer lightly appreciated...

Gratuitous Gun Pr0n Galore!

2007-06-01T14:17:00.001-08:00

H&K Enthusiasts will greatly appreciate this video about H&K's production facilities:

And those fascinated with all that goes into gun manufacturing will like it as well (even if you don't speak German, which I, happily, do--I'll translate it for the benefit of the rest of you later on).

EDIT: The video is very enjoyable, very informative, talking about everything that goes into the manufacture and testing of various H&K firearms, from the P2000, MP7, and the machine guns.

Testing includes deep-freezing, sand testing for desert conditions, immersing a weapon totally in water then firing it almost right out of the water, burying it in mud and digging it up and firing it.

Then there are individial firing tests, and factory zeroing for the rifles.

An absolutely worthy video!

Kleptocrats and Gun Control

2007-05-29T21:35:00.001-08:00

For the past two years, I have been reading Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel, which is his attempt to explain why societies developed along different lines throughout the ages. It's a fascinating read, although I personally think Francis Schaeffer's How Then Shall We Live offers a better explanation for how things have turned out (at least in western society).

Now, the reason it takes me so long to finish a particularly long book is that I start it until I get tired of it, then go to something else, then return to it after a while. I've been doing that with Rise and Fall of the Third Reich for some ten years now and The Conservative Mind for seven.

At any rate, a couple of days ago, I started Chapter 14 of Guns, Germs, and Steel, which has to do with the development of government, from bands to tribes to chiefdoms to states. He uses a particularly interesting word, "Kleptocracy," to describe a governmental entity that takes away the fruit of others' labors to sustain itself.

He poses the question, why would anyone tolerate that? Or rather, as he puts it, "What should an elite do to gain popular support while still maintaining a more comfortable lifestyle than commoners?"

His first of four possible solutions is very interesting:

"1. Disarm the populace, and arm the elite. That's much easier in these days of high-tech weaponry, produced only in industrial plants and easily monopolized by an elite, than in ancient times of spears and clubs easily made at home."(Diamond, Jared. Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1999. pp. 276-277, emphasis mine)

He gives a famous example of a society that did this very thing in the previous chapter on technological innovation. Around the mid-1500s, the Japanese were introduced to firearms. At first, they were very impressed with the weapons, so much so that they made their own versions, which proliferated so much that by 1600, they had more guns than anyone else in the world.

But there was one class that didn't care for them: the ruling elite. Now, Diamond explains that the Samurai preferred the older, ritualistic, more elegant way of combat, but what it really boils down to is that the elite no longer held the corner on martial power, when even a peasant could blast them with an arquebus. So, they started outlawing the weapons, restricting accessibility and production measure by measure until they pretty much no longer existed in Japan, and ensured that the elite remained in power.

The experts agree: Gun Control Works!

THIS is why I carry while hiking

2007-05-27T18:17:00.000-08:00

Several months ago, this op-ed appeared from Butler University, and started the whole Campus RKBA Round-Up thing.

If you will remember (click on the link if you don't), Ms. Maire Gurevitz found it hard to understand why anyone would want to take a gun to a state park.

I can give you one reason:

And some more, elsewhere during my wanderings...

I wear a size 10 and a half shoe. Not a terribly huge bear, but more than a match for my strength. I've butchered a couple of bears that we have shot (legally) on our property, and can personally attest to the density of their muscles.

Yesterday, I spent the whole morning hiking along the Tanana River. I came across so many tracks like these, as well as other evidence of roaming bears (like bear scat). They can even be found near the outlying houses on our farm.

I live in rural Alaska, with lots of undeveloped land. Not terribly unlike most state parks.

And there you have your rationale for hiking armed. Bears tend to shun encounters with humans, but you don't want to take your chances.

Do the Moonbats really Care about our Rights?

2007-05-24T20:21:00.001-08:00

Apparently not, if two sites brought to you by the paranoid diaperwaists of the "Freedom" States Alliance have anything to say about it. They would do away with not only the Second Amendment, but would gladly let other rights fall in the interests of pursuing their crusade against that particular part of the constitution.

For example, personal property. The Fourth Amendment acknowledges this right, but no right is sacred to the moonbat on jihad against 2A, as exemplified by this "campaign:"

What these puppets of the Brady mentality don't get are the ramifications of controlling the sale of personal private property. This approach threatens not only Second Amendment rights, but could set the tone for eroding Fourth Amendment rights as well.

Other things to bear in mind: How many of the crimes "facilitated" by "loopholes" comprise the total number of violent crimes in the U.S.? I am willing to wager it is a very low percentage, which would make it an even more miniscule portion of the total number of guns in this country. You can't really justify throwing tons of money into legislation (and, if it were to pass, the implementation) for such a tiny problem.

The poop overflows the Depends in this next site, decrying the "Shoot First" measures taken by several states to defend would-be victims' rights when it comes to using deadly force in self-defense.

This is the logical conclusion of this Stockholm Syndrome these moonbats have for criminals. Take it easy on the perps and punish the victims--the idea doesn't sit well in the 16 states (and the 8 that are considering passing similar measures) whose citizens believe in the right to defend themselves.

Thing of it is, every self-defense incident where a perp got perforated undergoes an investigation. That involves legal measures, with the very distinct possibility of a ruling NOT in the victim's favor, and the loss of freedoms that ensue.

Even one story this site puts up acknowledges that not every situation where a person uses a gun to stop a crime ends up with the gunner getting off scot-free. There are criteria a case needs to pass before exonerating a gunner.

But it's lost on the moonbats, who have always valued hysteria over rational thinking; in fact, their attitudes seem to override a person's Fifth Amendment rights, assuming that every gun used in self-defense is murder.

That's three Constitutional Amendments these folks would gladly shove aside.

Friday Catblogging!

2007-05-24T20:06:00.000-08:00

(or, at least, my perversion of it)

While over in NC, my folks' cats got acquainted with my hardware.

Gracie liked the H&K...couldn't stop admiring it!

You can almost hear the purring...

Meanwhile, Smoky, being the larger of the two, preferred the larger hand-cannon...

Dad, I said it's TREAT time!

Flying with Guns!

2007-05-23T09:35:00.000-08:00

(The compleat experience)

I made it back to Alaska, but it took being awake for 24 hours and traveling for about 21 of them. Taking the day off today to recuperate. More on that adventure in a bit.

While I didn't get any range time in while over in the Tarheel State, it did give me some valuable experience in traveling with firearms on the airlines. I'll give you the complete account right here.

First, it started out with research. I've already related some about that in earlier posts just before my flight.

Now, it's amazing just how ignorant your typical American is on these matters...even gun owners. When I said I was taking them to NC, it raised eyebrows from everyone I talked to--family, friends, even those who own more guns than I. Even one or two who carry (and these tend to be, but not always, more informed about what you can and cannot do with guns). They couldn't believe that, with all the terrorism mess going on, that you can take guns with you on a plane.

You can, there are just certain protocols you need to follow.

For me, I started following those protocols by taking my pistol case and doing a little custom work to make it fit for transporting my H&K and Desert Eagle.

The case I currently have is a large aluminum one with a combination lock. It can contain the pistols and accessories (holsters, spare magazines, extra barrel, scope, etc), but not securely. I decided to keep the spare mags and holsters in my suitcase, along with a box of .44 magnum and .45 ACP in their original factory packaging.

But the pistols would be tucked in some foam insulation, cut away to allow them to be snugly secured in the case:

While cutting away the foam, I made sure the mold would fit the safety locks I was going to include for both pistols, as you can see in the picture here.

Satisfied that the pistols weren't going anywhere, I closed and locked the case.

Following some advice on the web, I also made a few copies of the TSA's guidelines for transporting firearms, as well as those for the two airlines I would be flying with: Alaska Airlines and Northwest. This would be for the check-in agents' edification, if it were needed.

It didn't turn out to be necessary. The agents I came across for Alaska Air and Northwest seemed to know what to do when it came to firearms.

When I checked in, I stated that I had two unloaded firearms to declare. They handed me their airlines' version of the unloaded firearms certificate which I had to sign, date, and store with the guns (the below is Northwest's version--you can see Alaska's version to the right of the case in the above photo).

Basically, it says that you have taken measures to secure your firearms and firearm-related items (such as ammunition) according to Federal guidelines.

Then, the check-in agent had me go over to the TSA station to hand over the case. What you will actually have to do may vary with the airline and the airport--at Fairbanks, all I had to do was hand over the locked case to the TSA agent on duty. At Greensboro, I had to keep the case unlocked and hand it over to the TSA agent (they would lock the case and clear the combination when they were done.

Then, I boarded the plane and went where I needed to go. Once I arrived, all my goods--all of them, from the guns themselves to the ammunition and accessories I had in my suitcase--made it along with me.

Even on the last leg of my flight. You see, I came into Anchorage at about 2.30p yesterday, and my flight to Fairbanks was supposed to leave at around 3.11p. It was supposed to arrive at 8.30p.

It doesn't take 5 hours to get to Fairbanks from Anchorage. I know, I've done it enough. I figured there was some screwup in how the tickets were printed.

As it turned out, I would be heading further north, to the Deadhorse terminal in Prudhoe Bay, and then to Barrow, before coming to Fairbanks.

I figured...what the hell. The flight's paid for, and I'll get to see a part of my home state I usually don't get to see. So, I enjoyed the extra detour. Always wanted to go to Barrow, if only to say that I've been to America's northernmost city.

While there, we picked up a State Trooper escorting two natives in handcuffs. He got to carry his gun on the plane, lucky guy.

Now, the aluminum case has suffered some dents. The guns are both fine, but I'll need to invest in something by Pelican the next time I decide to take them with me.

And that, readers, was my adventure involving firearms and flying.

My Inheritance

2007-05-21T13:49:00.000-08:00

I'm leaving NC tomorrow to return to Alaska. NC is a fine state, has a lot of good things going for it, and it was good to see family after several years, but I am aching to return home.

Sadly, though, I never got a chance to get in some range time. I suppose if gas were cheaper, I would have had a little more freedom to borrow my parents' vehicles (they don't make a lot of frivolous trips, especially since both are retired now) to visit the closest range to Ocean Isle (in Seaport, about 20 minutes away), or the one or two in Wilmington, or the one in Statesville (closest to where my folks live in Lenoir).

Honestly, I was rather amazed at how expensive gas is down here. Please note the Whiskey Tango Foxtrot expression on my face--both at the price of gas, and the fact that my folks decided to fuel up at a station that puts money in Hugo Chavez's pocket.

Seriously, gas is about 40 cents cheaper in Fairbanks than what I found here in NC...or in TN when I went to visit my Grandmother Wilson out in east TN.

The cheapest I saw (and it fluctuated a few cents every day) was about $2.95 for the low-grade unleaded.

Oh, well--at least the family got to see my hardware.

Speaking of which, Dad pulled out his collection of firearms--weapons that we've had in the house since we've lived in South Carolina. Just, he never took us shooting. Kind of a shame, really.

At any rate, the prize among the collection (as I see it) is the Colt 1911 my Great-Grandfather Friend carried with him when he served in WWI:

This is a 1911, NOT a 1911A1. Here is the engraving on the other side of the slide:

Now, I have handled this gun before. As a kid, I came across it in a foyer closet while bored and rummaging through the house. I thought it was cool, but was a little scared handling it. Didn't know what all I'd have to do to make it fire (Single Action, with the squeeze safety built into the frame), but I handled it with care.

And, it has served as a personal lesson to me just how accessible a gun can be in the house if you don't take measures to secure it.

Anyway, some 22 years later, and a firearms owner myself, I had a look at the pistol. It is old, and has obviously been neglected somewhat (even though Dad oils his guns regularly)--there was some rust inside the slide, it looked like, and, personally, I don't think I would put any Cor-Bon through the barrel, but otherwise, it's in very good condition.

One thing, though--and this comes from the larger handguns I personally have owned--the 1911 is skinny! My USP is probably one and a half times wider than this handgun (even the 9mm would have been bigger), and the Desert Eagle simply dwarfs it.

Sidenote for a little family history here--my Great-Grandfather Friend was born to German immigrants (original name was Frehn, anglicized to Friend over at Ellis Island). He was part of the German community he lived in over in Chicago, and spoke German fluently.

When WWI came about, he fought for his country--the U.S. of A. In light of our current war on terror, I wonder if he had to put up with any of the suspicion that muslims wearing our uniforms are going through given this war against jihadists we're now in.

Anyway, if there is anything I want willed to me, this pistol is one of them.

The other two things I'd want willed to me are the two rifles on the right:

One is a Springfield 1903A3, the other a M1 Carbine. If I remember what my Dad said right, my Granddad Hatfield bought both the Springfield and the carbine and modified them for sporting purposes. What sort of modifications needed to be made, I don't know. Both feature bayonet lugs, and the carbine can take a banana magazine.

These features kind of make me laugh at the Clinton's gesture to make the U.S. a kinder, gentled nation (that's no typo--I used that term deliberately) back in 1994.

That 03A3 is simply beautiful. Don't know how usable it still is as a sporting firearm (I have a friend that hunts with an old Mauser in .30-06), but it is most certainly a conversation piece.

The Mad Hatter's Non-Violent Rant

2007-05-19T15:32:00.000-08:00

Greetings from North Carolina! Where you can enjoy the ocean in the east, mountains in the west, but if you're not licensed to carry, you might as well not own a handgun.

By the way, my first experience flying with guns was a success. Both pieces, accessories, and ammunition survived several thousand miles of flight and three plane changes. More on that when I get back home.

Speaking of which, I miss Alaska. I'm in a state where I am not licensed to carry, and I feel rather naked. I should have taken that course from Joe Nava the last time I spent a week in Fairbanks, and followed through with the process of getting licensed again, if only for the benefits of reciprocity.

Then, at least, I wouldn't have to keep my hardware locked up in a vehicle. Seriously, I can understand the concern about drive-by shootings, but it seriously hinders the ability of the rest of us to protect ourselves in our own property.

"Excuse me, Mr. Gangsta"--and I learned that groups like MS-13 have gotten many footholds in the Tarheel State--"let me get into my trunk and unlock my case so we can get on more equal footing." Not gonna happen, methinks.

An anonymous commenter from the last post brought this to my attention. I honestly think that some people eat a full bowl of stupid in the morning, washed down with some freshly squeezed paranoia.

It comes, more or less, on the heels of another story Miss Non-Violent Marilyn covered earlier this week about a 10-month-old getting "a gun and a license." Now, tying it in with the other story about the blind man getting a CCW, you would assume that by "license," the baby is also licensed to carry. Not true, if you actually bothered to read the articles, but knowing how well liberals love to shoot first and ask questions later when it comes to relating social matters, I can see a whole herd of them jumping to some wild conclusions about gun issues in this country, armed with only half the facts.

Anyway, time to throw some reasonable sense on the matters. True, the baby was given a license, but it was JUST TO OWN A FIREARM! The grandfather followed all the legal proceedings, and it was granted. If something was amiss, the permit would have been denied.

Marilyn's tone carries with it the assumption that parents are absent from the process of child rearing. Now, since liberals are lovers of the nanny state, this comes as no surprise. Happily, though, the owners of the overwhelming majority (99.8%) of firearms in this country not used in crimes seem to show a certain degree of responsibility that the fearmongers only dream we do not possess.

Hell, I don't have kids, and when I take some shooting, I DO educate them about firearms safety!

As regards the blind man who takes his personal defense seriously, read the actual article instead of the hysterical commentary. There, you will find that the fellow has taken more pains to train himself on gun safety (right down to his choice of ammo) than most of the sanctimonious knee-jerk dipwads who fill their diapers at the first sight of a firearm.

And note that there is absolutely NO consideration for this guy's safety--none mentioned AT ALL in Marilyn's article! This guy is concerned about being taken advantage of because of his condition. Who is going to cover his six? The police? Marilyn? Hello?

I applaud the guy for having the guts to do this.

Well, the trip's gotten off to a good start...

2007-05-10T22:25:00.000-08:00

...and I haven't even entered the airport yet!

Some of you might recall my pre-emptive Valentine's Day post, where, instead of flowers, or chocolates, I gave a young woman a box of Cor-Bon self-defense ammo.

Well, as I am waiting here in Fairbanks for my flight to leave tomorrow morning (less than 8 hours away now--which means I have to leave here before 4.00a to check-in on time), I met up with said young woman, and she invited me to hang out with her.

Being a farm girl and whatnot, she's a little unused to urban life--the offers for rides, the catcalls, and so on that a very attractive woman would elicit from the many lonely men (?) of Fairbanks. She's never come into any real crises yet that would escalate into having to pull out the .40 she keeps in her purse--neither does she really desire to be in such a situation. So, she was happy to have an escort.

And I, for one, was very happy to escort her. Chivalry ain't dead as long as this white boy lives! I may live in the northernmost state, but there are some Southern traits indelibly burned into my character.

I was tempted to tell her that if it came to such a situation as she had described, the potential offender would be looking down TWO barrels, since I was also carrying the USP on my hip that evening.

I let the cat out of the bag as we were going through town--she wasn't nervous! If anything, she expressed some concern about me carrying the pistol onto my plane. I told her that's not how I intended to bring it on board.

So, we hung out over at Barnes & Noble. She introduced me to an Orson Scott Card novel I hadn't read--one of the Ender's Game series (Ender's Shadow). And, we chatted a lot about this and that.

Wow. What a woman. Christian, Beautiful, carries a gun, and reads some science fiction on occasion!

My kind of woman!

Heh...it's catching on...

2007-05-10T11:26:00.000-08:00

(h/t Cowboy Blob):

...Cuba? Venezuela? Funny how you don't hear of mass Leftist exodi to these shining examples of the "Workers' Paradise" when "fascists" come to power.

I heard a conversation at the breakfast table this morning about Hillary being our next president. I still don't see it happening. Everyone with half a brain that lived through the '90s well remembers the First Beoch's tenure in the White House...how she tried to leverage her own policies when she was not even an elected official.

Nope, all the hype that's heard about Hillary being the next president is just the effect of a lot of money at work from a really loud minority.

Flying with Guns...

2007-05-10T11:08:00.000-08:00

OK, I'm going to do it. After researching the matter myself, reading several accounts, and getting one encouraging comment from my last post, the guns are coming with me.

Freepatriot has some very good guidelines to follow when flying with guns.

Matt Burkett also has some advice about packing your guns for your trip.

Still more advice is given by Custom-Glock.com.

Sooooo, after reviewing all the above, in addition to the guidelines published by the TSA, Alaska Air, and Northwest (thank you very much, Mark Solomon, for showing where all that information can be found), I packed up the guns in my lockable case (taking extra effort to further secure them), and have a few copies of the TSA and Alaska and NWA guidelines as published on their sites.

Less than 24 hours to go...I'm looking forward to this trip, and further educating others (this time, family members) about RKBA.

Flying with Guns?

2007-05-09T09:11:00.000-08:00

Mark Solomon's very informative website tells you almost everything you need to know about taking your firearms with you when you travel by air.

I'll be leaving for NC in about two days, and have been debating whether or not to take my two handguns with me. Conforming to the security guidelines laid out by the TSA, Alaska Air, and Northwest Airlines don't bother me. I can live with them.

But, what does bother me is the potential for them getting lost while being handled. I have heard that lost luggage is becoming more and more a problem nowadays, and I really do not want to deal with losing $2,000-$3,000 worth of hardware because of someone else's lack of responsibility.

So, if anyone thinks it's a real issue, or a non-issue, please leave a comment.

Free Exchange of Ideas, eh?

2007-05-04T14:38:00.000-08:00

...except when it comes to something so anti-liberal, the proles must rise up and punish those who would stand against the Revolution!

Such was the case of an Emmanuel College professor (h/t Crime, Guns, and Videotape) who was fired for discussing the notion that gun control doesn't always work.

It's a four-part video...here's the first segment:

The remaining three you can access by either clicking on the player area or following the link above it.

Stossel Refuting Gun Control (again!)

2007-05-04T10:43:00.000-08:00

(h/t: John Lott's blog)

But be careful about how far the calls for gun control go, because the idea that gun control laws lower gun crime is a myth.

After the 1997 shooting of 16 kids in Dunblane, England, the United Kingdom passed one of the strictest gun-control laws in the world, banning its citizens from owning almost all types of handguns. Britain seemed to get safer by the minute, as 162,000 newly-illegal firearms were forked over to British officials by law-abiding citizens.

But this didn't decrease the amount of gun-related crime in the U.K. In fact, gun-related crime has nearly doubled in the U.K. since the ban was enacted.

Might stricter gun laws result in more gun crime? It seems counterintuitive but makes sense if we consider one simple fact: Criminals don't obey the law. Strict gun laws, like the ban in Britain, probably only affect the actions of people who wouldn't commit crimes in the first place. . . . .

Click on the link, and watch the video in the upper right-hand corner.

And, as with David Codrea, my posting will be rather sporadic for the next couple of weeks--going out of town on vacation.

No worries...I won't be gone as long as I was my last hiatus!

Friday Catblogging!

2007-05-04T10:34:00.001-08:00

h/t Cowboy Blob

Eat your heart out, Laurence Simon!

RKBA Campus Roundup #9

2007-05-02T20:44:00.001-08:00

Now that the earthquake seems to be over, we're dealing with a few aftershocks here and there.

Still making my way through the states to find what sort of attitudes on gun issues can be found on America's college campuses, I stop over in New Hampshire, at Dartmouth.

Here, a philosopher wannabe tries to draw parallels between an Albert Camus story and the way the Second Amendment is interpreted. If you saw the YouTube links to the Penn & Teller Bullsh*t episode earlier on, you see this student takes the exact opposite approach to 2A's wording:

Additionally, take a closer look at the punctuation of the amendment, specifically the commas. If read without the two modifying clauses in the middle formed by these commas, the amendment reads, “A well regulated militia shall not be infringed.” It was the militias the Framers meant to protect, not the guns.

He's taking the classic leftist tack of emphasizing the "Militia" aspect, while completely ignoring the "Right of the People" part of the Amendment. It is not discussed once. And the conclusions he draws fall out of line with how that part of the Bill of Rights has been interpreted for over 200 years.

And so, therefore, the Albert Camus parallel does fit, but not the way our Staff Columnist probably had in mind. He, like his leftist buddies, would kill it of its meaning, strip the people of a right, and dump it in the river.

BTW, this tomfoolery with commas is really not an original idea. It comes from the Yassky Brief found in U.S. v Emerson (2001). It would be nice if Mr. Fan-of-Pessimist-French-Authors could cite where he got that idea from instead of passing it off as his own.

(The link also contains refutation of the idea, for those interested in reading it. Basically, the original draft of the Constitution only had one comma).

Happily, elsewhere, namely Mississippi, some students still understand the Amendment as it has always been interpreted. While only obliquely mentioning it in this reaction to the VT massacre, this student says:

Now let's move on to members of the Virginia General Assembly who failed to act on House Bill 1572. This bill would have made it legal for college students and employees to carry handguns on campus. What part of "shall not be infringed" did these people not understand?

A self-described Libertarian from Ole Miss responds to the VT shootings by discussing briefly the gun debate that it stirred up. He sits on the fence, but slightly leans towards preserving the 2A rights, thus holding true to his ideology:

Here in the South, guns are very much a part of our livelihood. Personally, they scare the hell out of me, and I wish they were banished from the face of the earth. But it's obvious that if you outlaw guns, the only people with them will be outlaws.

Over at St. Cloud University in Minnesota, another student rehashes the gun debate inflamed by the VT shootings. Here, the main focus falls upon fully automatic weapons.

Interestingly enough, this is an editorial board that believes that"the Second Amendment allows citizens to own firearms." And further bolsters its stance by explaining, "If there is a total ban on guns, the Second Amendment must therefore then be dissolved. No item on the Bill of Rights should ever be overturned."

Excellent! But he seems a little wary in allowing full-auto weapons to be owned by private citizens.

The Mad Hatter's official opinion? I've fired a full-auto weapon before. I personally don't have any use for one myself (expensive to obtain and expensive to shoot), but I'm not going to let my personal preferences restrict someone else's ability to acquire one legally.

The letter elicited a well-informed response from another student at St. Cloud, explaining that the full auto aspect of the debate is really rather irrelevant to the shootings at VT. But what was relevant were the following factors:

-"The Federal government already restricts persons with a mental background like Cho from legally obtaining a gun. The statute in Virginia is written slightly different, which allowed a legal gun sale under Virginia law."

-"The sale went through because the Federal government failed to provide states with funding to update the instant background check system."

-"[T]he administration at Virginia Tech adopted a gun-free zone on campus." He explains how this creates a target-rich environment.

I find it really interesting how most pro-2A articles will back their positions with facts. The Anti crowd seems to want to play the emotional card too heavily.

Speaking of facts, here's a download that every pro-2A person should have on his hard drive or PDA...click on the pic to the right and download the free .pdf file, and enjoy!

While you're at it, here is yet another worthy site to browse and arm yourself with the facts. It's the well-known Guncite website.

But continuing on with the campus op/ed's as I encounter them...the entire VT debacle started a back & forth between University Police at Brandeis and the students.

From the Brandeis Five-0's point of view, campus cops are insufficiently equipped to deal with a crisis the magnitude of the VT massacre, and therefore, should be armed, in the interests of protecting themselves as well as the students on campus.

The Director of Public Safety, however, seems to put more faith in their "Emergency Response and Notification Plan," which "includes state-of-the-art protocols for communicating a crisis situation to the campus."

Oh, wonderful. They might not be able to contain or control the crisis, but they can sure keep everyone up-to-date about it! "Now hear this! Campus Psycho has now perforated his 42nd victim over at the Cafeteria." At least the tragedy-happy media will be able to get an accurate body count.

And the system might encourage the cops to avoid the crisis area, as stated by one anonymous agent of public safety, explaining that "such an emergency would likely spur officers to leave campus rather than act unarmed:"

"Am I supposed to get shot for the sake of Brandeis?" Haley [president of the Union representing the police] asked in a phone interview Saturday. "I think it's ludicrous and ridiculous, but [the administration] won't listen to us."

Despite the inadequacies, one moonbat-in-training starts barking at the mere thought of arming the campus police, in an op/ed entitled "Safety should trump the abstract right to own guns."

Did you catch that? Abstract right? I wonder if that was a double-entendre, hinting at the irrelevancy of the Bill of Rights (which we hear so much from those who know nothing about where their civil liberties come from nor how they are preserved) as well as the conservative mindset.

At any rate, it's more blah-buh-blah-blah-blah. Pro 2A fanatics only read half of the amendment blar-blar-blar...the amendment was only written with muskets in mind blar-blar-blar... And this piece of cognitive clarity:

Though Americans are divided over the extent to which a citizen should have the right to arm himself we can learn from the recent gun-related tragedies, such as the Columbine High School massacre in 1999, the Washington sniper shootings in 2002, and last week's Virginia Polytechnic Institute shootings, what happens when individuals arm themselves.

Note that it doesn't read "what could happen when individuals arm themselves." No, Miss Libtard assumes that every time a person arms himself, he's going to commit a crime. Well paint me black and call me Toby--I am just perplexed why, while doing errands in town with my .45 on my hip and two spare magazines, no one got the Emmentaler treatment (Swiss Cheese, that is). Not one!

And why is it that, with 300 million guns out on the nation (that number just keeps on going up with every donkey-faced piece of half-baked pontification I read from these drunken monkeys), we come up with less than 30,000 fatalities, and less than 300,000 acts of violent crime involving firearms? 99.9% of the gun owners in this nation must not be doing a good enough job in keeping up with the murderous wishes of the brain-rotted ivory tower idealist.

"Although we are constitutionally allowed to own guns, the urgency and need for them isn't as apparent as during the times of our Founding Fathers."

Tell that to the 50 that were killed and wounded at VT, you clueless drone. I'm sure they would have found the outcome of the Appalachian Law School shooting much more favorable.

Happily, the blah is effectively retorted not much long thereafter by another student, who says in his own letter to the editor:

Smolyar makes a muddled argument that, on the one hand, belittles gun owners with a straw-man scenario about a British invasion, but on the other accepts the individual rights portion of the Second Amendment, provided that it is strictly curtailed in the name of the "public good." Anything can be justified provided it serves the "public good." However, Smolyar forgets that the Bill of Rights exists precisely to prevent anyone with vague ideas about the "public good" from simply overriding essential American freedoms. Perhaps she would agree to strict curtailment of her freedom of the press so that we are spared more frivolous justifications in the future?

And that rounds up this week's survey of attitudes towards gun rights this week. But don't worry...no doubt there is much more to come!

Associated Propaganda?

2007-05-01T16:46:00.000-08:00

This is what happens when puppy-farm journalism majors metamorphosize into full-fledged puppets of the mainstream propaganda machine.

I was thumbing through a few-days-old copy of the Fairbanks Daily News-Manure (hey, it serves its purpose when you've run out of pages in your Sears Catalog in the auxiliary facilities out back), when I saw it feature an AP article entitled (as it appeared in our nearest major news rag--AP links to the column here) "U.S. gun control draws foreign debate."

Erm, a word to the editorial staff of the News-Miner--foreign countries are trying to deal with their own crises in their own way, and are by no means trying to influence the U.S. with the policies they pass. If they are, they serve as no good example.

While on the subject, in my absence from blogging, I did manage to watch "The Great U.N. Gun Debate" that a friend lent to me, which you can start watching below if you so please:

If you click on the embedded video above, it will take you straight to the video as found on YouTube. And from there, you can catch the other three parts in the links just to the right.

My conclusions: the pro-UN aussie philistina with the butch haircut did a very good job of convincing me that the U.N. is not out for preserving national sovereignty, and would like very much to impose a police state on the world if it were given more real power.

And that's my two bits on "world opinion." But I'm not done today just yet.

Getting back to the AP article, it lists all sorts of countries that have tried passing various measures to limit gun ownership. And, in typical pro-populace-control fashion, attempt to sing the praises of such measures while trying to paint the U.S. with a big smear of fake blood.

I particularly liked the chart the News-Minor included with the article. It lists 26 countries and ranks them by "Gun Death Rates." Guess who leads with a 9.42 rate per 100,000 population (2004 stats)? Uh-huh. Surprised?

But if we take a closer look at the chart (source stated as the "Small Arms Survey, Geneva"--whose partners include, suspiciously enough, several organizations focused upon small arms control--which casts some doubt over an unbiased view of arms ownership), we see some things even more revealing. But, strangely enough, these points aren't discussed in the article.

The chart states that the numbers include "homicides, suicides, accidental and undetermined deaths" (emphasis mine). But the actual numbers comprising these categories are missing. It doesn't seem to be readily available through the search function on the Survey's site, either (even typing in "9.42" reveals nothing related to the matter, even though the data comes from 2004), and I suspect you'll have to do a fair amount of mining to find the source data the News-Miner decided to use.

Interestingly enough, while hunting through the links to find the numbers used, I came across this article, dated 2000 from George Mason University, which finds no correlation between availability of firearms and homicide rates. The abstract reads thus:

This article seeks to examine the common view thatwidespread availability of firearms is a major cause, or eventhe principal cause, of high American rates of homicide. Reasonablyaccurate data as to both homicide rates and the acquisitionand ownership of firearms in the United States are availableback to the mid-1940s. These data do not show a correlationover the long term between the distribution of firearms in thepopulation at large and homicide rates. The two variables docross occasionally, but they do not do so consistently. Rather,the trend in the period 1973-1997 was one of very large increasesin firearms accompanied by essentially flat, even diminishing,homicide rates. That is the general rule for the period sincethe end of World War II to date.

Nice to see that the Survey includes research that raises questions over its own raison d'etre. I can respect that.

But getting back to the chart in question, while it presents a high number for the U.S., it does nothing to explain the circumstances yielding those numbers. Take homicides and suicides, for example. Are murderous/self-destructive inclinations of unbalanced people a direct function of a tool which can neither think nor feel? No.

(Btw, the total number of suicides in the U.S. in 2004 were 32,439. I've found no hard numbers for those that have been committed by firearm, but this article says it was "more than half."--I'll say 55%=17,842. That would make up 63% of the number I'm about to give below).

Going by the numbers, the 9.42 per 100,000 for the U.S. yields some 28,260 deaths by firearm in 2004. For a population of 300 million, that still accounts for only .009% of the total U.S. population.

And if you go by the 250 million firearms that are supposedly in this country, that means only .01% of them were involved in these deaths.

That is a ridiculously low percentage to worry about, and is still surpassed by the 40,000 auto fatalities that happen every year. And, given that there are a comparable amount of passenger vehicles in the U.S. as there are guns (243,023,485 according to this Wikipedia entry), you don't hear too much about measures enacted to further restrict auto ownership, even though it is a privilege, rather than a right.

Don't fall for the hype, people.

H&K XM8

2007-04-30T19:23:00.000-08:00

While I'm on this kick of posting videos, here's one related to my favorite gun manufacturer:

Unfortunately, I don't think H&K got the bid because of the problems the XM8 had--or, at least, that's what I heard from someone who worked over at the Cold Weather Testing Center over at Ft. Greely. Kind of a shame, because the concept behind the XM8 was really good--a modular battle rifle, able to be reconfigured for a variety of roles (full auto support, marksman, and basic configuration).

Still, the below battle rifle is my absolute favorite:

The venerable G36. I wonder how that civvie got hold of one...

Reminds Me of a Billy Squier Song...

2007-04-30T15:37:00.000-08:00

(h/t Xavier Thoughts)

My kinda woman! (I know the song was "My Kind of Lover," but what the hey).

At any rate, I couldn't recommend a better firearms instructional training video...

This Got me Chuckling...

2007-04-29T22:55:00.000-08:00

Another thought-provoking picture by Oleg Volk.

I Like Bigger Numbers!

2007-04-29T14:42:00.000-08:00

In most cases, the bigger, the better. I remember when, after buying that box of Cor-Bon .40 for that young woman I've had my eye on for a while, I opened up the box and examined the goods.

After being used to .44s and .45s., .40s seemed so...small!

Anyway, this has nothing to do with comparing calibers, but rather some numbers I've been coming across while hunting up stuff for the blog.

Specifically, the number of guns in this country. If you remember last year, I quoted the Brady Bunch as estimating some 200 million guns in this country. Recently, though, I've seen someone quote 240 million, and while watching a fuller version of Penn & Teller's Bullsh*t concerning gun control, the number seems to have grown to 250 million.

This drives down the ratio of guns used in violent crime to overall guns in the country. If the 250 million estimate is correct, then the 277,868 incidents of violent crimes involving a firearm comprise a miniscule .11% of all known firearms in this country.

And for those of you who haven't seen that Penn & Teller feature, here it is in three parts. Worth a look.

Part 1:

Part 2:

And Part 3:

Still More Fallout

2007-04-27T11:13:00.000-08:00

This time from a forked-tongue apparatchik with little regard for Civil Rights (h/t: War on Guns).

Funny how tragedy fuels libs to jump to the most extreme of conclusions, without any thought to its effect on our liberties, save some oblique disparagement of the "gun lobby" who would no doubt work overtime to prevent such an overt flouting of Federal Law.

But look at this...no discussion over the Constitution whatsoever. It isn't mentioned once.

And, naturally, with that kind of disregard, the sort of scenario Mr. Simpson describes could very well happen:

- Steep financial penalties and a year in prison for exercising a human right.
- Government control of personal property.
- Police Squads searching and seizing personal property, including scenes like this little jewel:

On the streets it would be a question of stop-and-search of anyone, even grandma with her walker, with the same penalties for "carrying."

Thank God this moron isn't in office, nor running for office.

Campus RKBA Roundup #8

2007-04-25T21:49:00.000-08:00

The Fallout from Blacksburg Continues...

From the University of Oregon, we get a threefer from the Daily Emerald. The first, appearing in April 23. Elon Glücklich identifies two major parts to tragedies like this: The disturbed individual and the weapon used. Hmmm, nothing new nor necessarily profound there.

Since (says Glucklich) you can't do so well identifying a potential killer, then you "logically" must control the tools they can use. So, it seems to him that the threat he has chosen to major on are inanimate objects which don't suffer from disaffection (kind of reminds me of the "why beer is better than women" line of jokes). And, to get to them, he will gladly call the Second Amendment outdated:

The Second Amendment used to make a lot of sense. When I say "used to" I mean about 200 years ago. The United States of America was a lot different back then.

Is this sounding like a broken record to you folk? It would seem that our high schoolers are by and large spending four years under some sort of an academic Gleichschaltung, because I am hearing the exact same lines of reasoning from all these anti-2A positions.

My brother's girlfriend is a public school teacher. I'll have to check around for some handbook or something when I go visit them in a few weeks.

The article elicited two responses, explaining some of the shortcomings of Glucklich's thinking. The first response points to the need to consider the disturbed individual, and blames intolerance for Cho's state of mind (teasing, harassment, racism). In passing, he mentions the deterrent value of weaponry.

The second blasts Glucklich's ignorance on self-defense situations. We've heard and understand these sort of arguments, but it may be a first to an Ivory Towerer like Glucklich.

Ohio: The broken record plays over at Bowling Green, starting off with a very whimsical account of having attended a candlelight vigil for the victims over at VT. But then the emotionalism disengages the higher functions as the writer laments over how easy it is to get a gun at a pawn shop, and that some screening process is needed, without understanding that Cho's gun purchases were done completely by the book, including background checks.

However, Cho could have been denied the purchase by Federal law had some consideration been given to two stalking incidents that happened in 2005. However, this is definitely a case of too little, too late.

In my former home state of North Carolina, we find one short but to the point opinion expressed in the Seahawk:

Ted Nugent alluded to on CNN that gun-free zones could become targets for those who already plan illegal actions. If someone wants less resistance to his or her violent force, the best place to be is where no one can fire back at you.

But, on the flip side, a student at Wake Forest attempts a different approach at the broken record. But instead of attacking 2A outright, he vilifies the NRA and another organization (National Association of Firearms Retailers) as part of some sort of conspiracy to keep our country dangerous.

He laments the sunset of the AWB 3 years ago: "This ban did not threaten anyone’s right to bear arms; it merely restricted the purchase of automatic clips for handguns, as well as semi-automatic assault rifles." What he failed to see was the ban's ineffectiveness at stopping gun-related crime.

He says in the next sentence: "Even in the wake of horrific mass-murders, no major action has been taken to limit the availability of the weapons that facilitate these tragedies." Erm, Matthew, the AWB was in full force in April of 1999. But yet, it didn't prevent Columbine.

Come to think of it, the AWB didn't prevent any of the following school shootings, either:

Richland High School, Lynnville, TN (1995)--1 student, 1 teacher killed.
Frontier Junior High, Moses Lake, WA (1996)--2 students, 1 teacher killed.
Bethel, AK (1997)--Principal, 1 student killed.
Pearl High School, Pearl, MS (1997)--2 students killed, 7 others wounded.
Heath High School, West Paducah, KY--3 students killed, 5 wounded.
Stamps, AR (1997)--2 students killed
Westside Middle School, Jonesboro, AR (1998)--4 students and 1 teacher killed, 10 others wounded.

And some 21 others that happened during the years of the AWB. Bill Clinton's words are ringing in my head now: "Now tell me that this bill will not prevent crime!"

Point being, Matthew--the government's actions to restrict gun ownership in the interests of preventing crime have been, by and large, impotent.

Not a Force Field, but still straight out of Science Fiction

2007-04-24T19:31:00.000-08:00

In order to deal with RPG threats, Israel is developing an active point defense against these weapons to outfit its AFVs.

Now, this link's title is a little misleading. It and the commentator mention something about "force fields," but it actually uses a shotgun-like blast to set off RPGs before they contact the armor.

I saw this very thing featured in the Hammer's Slammers series of novels and short stories some 20 years ago, where their tanks and combat cars are outfitted with radar-triggered point-defense mines to destroy incoming "buzzbombs."

Upcoming 20/20 spot on firearms?

2007-04-24T11:48:00.000-08:00

According to a post I read on packing.org, 20/20 was looking for stories pertaining to the successful use of firearms in self defense. Check out this post to see the submissions and reactions of some.

Additionally, someone posted another blog which may be worth watching. It's the Civilian Gun Self-Defense Blog.

Nuge vs. UCLA prof on Gun Issues

2007-04-22T23:02:00.000-08:00

Source: Little Green Footballs.

UCLA Prof: Guns are the issue. They kill people. Too many of them are around. Ordinary citizens can't handle them. It makes my hair stand on end just thinking about it.

Professor Hatter: If guns kill people, mine are defective. If they are truly the issue, why are 99.87% of the ones in the U.S. not used in crimes? Please qualify the statement about "ordinary citizens." If you're setting yourself as the standard of what a citizen should be, and attributing your discomfort and inability to handle firearms to the whole of the U.S. population, that is pure Ivory Tower Arrogance.

As for the hair, it isn't anything a dab of Brylcreem couldn't take care of.

The Nuge:

"Evil is as evil does, and laws disarming guaranteed victims make evil people very, very happy. Shame on us.

"Already spineless gun control advocates are squawking like chickens with their tiny-brained heads chopped off, making political hay over this most recent, devastating Virginia Tech massacre, when in fact it is their own forced gun-free zone policy that enabled the unchallenged methodical murder of 32 people."

The Hat: preach it, brotha!

While you're visiting LGF, check out the Penn & Teller vid on gun control. I had been looking for it online for ages!

RKBA Round Up 7.5

2007-04-21T11:39:00.000-08:00

The "making up for lost time" edition.

First, I want to dedicate #7 and #7.5 to a professor who gave his life in defense of his students:

Liviu Librescu (1930-2007)
A survivor (Holocaust, Cold-War Communist Romania) who gave his all to help the next generation do the same. Because life is worth defending. L'shanna tova tikotavu.

Continuing to scour the op-ed pages of our nation's college campuses, we start off at Texas A&M with a piece saying "Guns for everyone will just make it worse." Interesting POV from a state noted for very positive stance on RKBA, but then again, the ivory tower of academia doesn't necessarily reflect the sensibilities of surrounding society.

A very short blurb. The only remark of interest was another tired assertion that "Statistics show that the more guns a population has, the more likely people will die or get injured by one." Yep, automobile deaths and injuries have proven that, yet we have made no strides towards stricter car control.

And, if you want to compare statistics, remember that the Brady Bunch claims there are some 200 million guns in the U.S. The 2004 FBI stats I looked at last year report 277,868 violent crimes involving a firearm. That amounts to .138% of all the firearms owned in this country. That is not a bad rate.

Now, a slightly more sensible, if not rather pessimistic, editorial comes from elsewhere in the state, in UT-Arlington's Shorthorn. The subtext of the title reads "School shootings will continue, and we have only ourselves to look to."

There is a collective moan among the Jonesboro, Columbine and now Virginia Tech generation. We resist the obligatory gun-control debate, which is ineffective on a national level. We believe the Second Amendment is here to stay, and that Virginia Tech’s tragedy will not be the catalyst for gun-control reform, despite becoming the deadliest shooting in American history.

While he understands that 2A is not the source of the problem, he doesn't really pose any solutions, other than some more navel-gazing.

Meanwhile, over at UT-El Paso, the editor in chief of the Prospector decides to honk the gun control horn, especially since 2008 is not that far away: "The first step should be taking a closer look at the Second Amendment in the U.S. Constitution and make sure we elect a leader in the 2008 presidential election who will take concrete actions towards mending our outdated gun laws."

Again, another "novel" idea from a captive of the Ivory Tower. Rapunzel here has dropped her brains out the window.

I get a little irked whenever I hear these elite-wannabes talk about "taking a closer look" at our "outdated" Second Amendment. Would these same types also consider due process outdated? How about free speech? Protection against search and seizure?

Let me again quote Alan Dershowitz: "Foolish liberals who are trying to read the Second Amendment out of the Constitution by claiming that it's not an individual right or that it's too much of a safety hazard don't see the danger of the big picture. They're courting disaster by encouraging others to use the same means to eliminate portions of the Constitution they don't like."

Another response to the VT massacre, this one coming from the University of Pittsburgh's Pitt News, was written by someone who identifies more with the gun-control crowd, but interestingly enough states that gun control would not work in the U.S., simply because firearms are too embedded in our culture. He does a lot of comparisons with Western Europe, whether it be a lament that we are not more like Europe or not, I don't know.

An attempt to take the political pulse in light of the VT shootings is featured in Swarthmore College's The Phoenix. There, the writer seems to show a certain amount of astonishment at what seems to be reticence of politicians on both sides to address gun issues in light of the shootings. But I think he fails to see just how around-the-way most politicians have been over this issue, and seem to have realized the rather imprudent practice of leveraging a tragedy's emotional impact for the sake of furthering a political agenda.

Furthermore, the writer seems to be largely clueless about the state of gun rights support in Pennsylvania:

House Bill 760 was recently introduced in order to institute certain reforms, but despite Governor Rendell’s support it will face serious contention from the General Assembly, which is mostly comprised of lawmakers that support gun rights. The fact is that in Pennsylvania, as elsewhere, the minority is louder than the majority that supports gun control.

I don't think the author really thought about what he was writing when he typed out the above. He claims that PA's gun rights advocates are actually a minority (without giving any evidence--a common propaganda tactic to make it look like you have the moral high ground, when in fact, you're grasping at straws), but the previous sentence states that elected officials are mostly pro-2A. Who elected those officials? The minority?

I know Pennsylvania to be a state where there are a lot of hunting enthusiasts, so I find his assumptions about the minority and majority to be another case of ignorance borne out of Ivory-Tower isolationism.

More to come later this week, as I continue to search through the op-ed pages I can find online.

RKBA Round-Up #7

2007-04-20T09:35:00.000-08:00

The "finally got off my butt and back in the game" edition.

You know that the VT massacre is going to stir up all sorts of hype. The Bradys, within hours of the disaster, were hitting people up for money for their cause. And since campuses can be full of people with a lot of ideas to express, but not a whole lot of experience to help them discern what makes sense and what does not, I expect a lot of lamenting over gun issues from people who don't know a Glock from a doorknob.

Wisconsin-Madison, as ever, leads the way knee-jerk responses from the shortened left leg. Max Schusselberg spearheads this parade of idiotarianism as only a freshman in journalism can do:

The Second Amendment is Out of Date...here are the highlights. Tremble before the wisdom of the nascent barking moonbat!

There was a time in American history when the Second Amendment’s “right to bear arms” promoted safety and a sense of well-being among the citizenry of the United States. Today, however, the Second Amendment seems to do nothing more than act as a precipitant of violent and life-threatening behavior.

As to be expected, it's the same old stuff we hear from that corner all the time...praising the metropolitan over ruralites, paranoia over the NRA, trying hard not to paint all gun owners as unstable fanatics but failing miserably, advocating trust in the police (as if cops were somehow absent in Blacksburg this past Monday), and being very long on opinion, but short on any real research, much less original thought.

For example, despite the title of the article, there is very little discussion over 2A itself. I don't think the fellow has even read the amendment, especially the parts concerning the freedom and security of the state. I guess such notions are out of date, aren't they?

But I'll give Max a little slack. After all, he is a freshman. And, happily, you have the option to respond to such idiotarianism in the Badger-Herald. I did. The responses at the bottom of the page are probably worth more than the article itself.

Getting closer to the epicenter of our most recent social earthquake, WVU's Athenauem publishes a half-hearted attempt to address the violence. Mr. Doyle, who I guess is a regular columnist at the paper (makes me feel sorry for the rag) doesn't offer much in the way of arguments that have a lot of bite in the issue. Just the usual "2A didn't take into account these kind of weapons," "why do you need this for hunting?", "you should rely on the cops more." As if these youngsters were coming up with something really enlightening.

Again, let me say that opinions are fine. But please, give us something we can think about, not something that's been shot down time and time again. 2A isn't about what kind of hardware you may or may not have (and it mentions nothing about hunting), it's about defense--read the wording, and you will see security and freedom for the state written right into it.

As for reliance on cops, remember, Blacksburg has an armed PD. But it didn't keep Psycho Cho from ruining 50 lives this past Monday.

Jumping out west, Will Lewis of WWC's Collegian admonishes us not to let emotionalism drive the gun debate.

Out at Arizona, you have four letters to The Wildcat's editor regarding gun issues. Three express shock at just the notion of allowing guns on campus, and go so far as to say they would make no difference in averting another VT shooting. Only one advocates gun safety--and by that, I mean responsible gun ownership--as a measure to increase campus security.

One of the antis really put on a display of ivory-tower arrogance, basically painting gun owners and 2A advocates as something less than lofty as the chattering class. I personally take offense at that. I hold more degrees than this bozo, speak more languages, and have owned a total of five firearms in my life. How's that for being a "brute?"

More to come later...gotta run for now

For the worst week of the year...

2007-04-19T09:56:00.000-08:00

A friend of mine reminded me that today marks the 14th anniversary of the Branch Davidian fire in Waco, Texas.

Definitely not the ATF's brightest moment. Certainly shoots holes (no pun intended) in the leftist notion that their side of the political fence acts most in accordance with the best interests of America.

No mention of it made much in the mainstream media...CNN had an article referring to it today, only because a former Branch Davidian, and one that disagreed with Koresh, split off, and formed his own splinter sect, wanted to establish a new church on that site. From the tone of the guy, it sounded like he would be little better than Koresh.

However, there was a very good column in WorldNetDaily by Jack Cashill talking about something not many people knew about the debacle: that it involved the deaths of 27 blacks. That fact, plus a ton others (like Cashill, I strongly recommend renting out Waco: Rules of Engagement for much that didn't appear in MSM coverage of the massacre), were nicely covered up by the Clinton Administration and overlooked by the MSM. Didn't want to alienate a voting bloc, now that the Dems finally had a president in (the last and one of the worst of the XXth century, we would later find out), and control of Congress.

Additionally, this week marks the twelfth anniversary of the Oklahoma City Bombing, which was supposedly a reaction against the FUBAR'd Waco op.

But wait! It gets better! This week marks the eighth anniversary of the Columbine school shooting.

And, finally, this recent horror, ending the lives of 32 or 33 students. What is there about this particular week in the month of April that makes everyone so whackball?

Gunman Identified

2007-04-18T22:42:00.000-08:00

The fellow responsible for 50 deaths and injuries at Virginia Tech a few days ago was identified. Cho Seung-Hui was a 23-year-old senior, majoring in English.

From what I read of the article from the Badger-Herald, he was a sullen loner, obviously suffering from some intense inner turmoil. Warning signs were plenty evident in bits of creative writing he did for his classes, depicting gruesome, violent scenes.

Again, proving that it isn't the instrument that's to blame, it's the fellow behind the trigger.

He had even been referred to VT's counseling services.

One of weapons used was a Glock 9mm. Sheesh. Pretty bad advertising for Glock (of all the quality handguns used in crimes--as opposed to cheap disposable weapons generally used--that one seems to pop up the most).

The weapon had been purchased legally. Cho had no prior criminal background.

Now, naturally, the antis are getting their pontification engines warmed up. The Anti-Gun Guys have their two bits to say to try to find some explanation for what happened.

Two bits of what, I'll let you insert here...it ain't worth two copper coins, I'll tell you that much.

First, they turn to the Violence Policy Center...a very unbiased organization in such matters, to be sure, where a little history lesson is given on sidearm marketing trends since 1980, and the shift from revolvers to semi-autos as the choice of a handgun.

Naturally, the Guys chime in with their laments: "These weapons are definitely at or beyond the level of weaponry carried by even our law enforcement officers, and some of the weapons even rival what’s carried by our armies. These kinds of weapons simply don’t belong in civilian hands, and yet not only are they available to almost anyone– they are finding their way onto our streets by the millions."

Geez. Civilians outgunning LEOs and soldiers? They obviously haven't noticed too many police officers or security guards lately. All the ones I've encountered carry semis, not terribly different from the ones I keep locked in my closet. In fact, I bought my H&K from a Kentucky LEO.

But, for all their boo-hooing and hand-wringing over firearm-related tragedies, they leave out the most critical aspect of such shootings: they were carried out by a severely disturbed individual. If guns were such a critical factor to crime in this country, then why do crimes involving firearms represent about a tenth of a percent of all firearms owned in this country?

I mean, I currently own two handguns...according to the totemistic beliefs that undergird much of the antis' hysteria, I guess I stand as much of a chance to blow away my neighbors as this Cho (and since they are larger caliber than what Cho had with him, does that increase my susceptibility to some form of the "Dirty Harry" syndrome?). And since I have owned five in my lifetime, including an evil, military-style "Assault" rifle, I suppose I need a State Trooper following me around wherever I go, in the interests of public safety.

But the reality of the matter is, despite having been a gun owner since the 1990s, I have never committed a single crime with any of my weapons. So much for guns being the source of crime.

Sad that it takes this...

2007-04-16T15:19:00.000-08:00

To pull me out of my rather "blah" attitude towards blogging that had plagued me for the last two months.

I guess you guys already know the story...33 dead at VT thanks to some disturbed adolescent who couldn't get over his girlfriend troubles. My inner volcano of rage stirs at the thought that 50 unrelated people (33 dead, 17 injured at the time of this writing) had to suffer because he didn't have the balls to face his own personal problems and go on with life like the rest of us.

What will even make this situation worse is how people will use this to fuel their own agendas. Take, for example, the philistine simpletons noted by 186k per second who get the knee-jerk in their shortened left legs that this matter was somehow "staged" by the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy.

Headline: At least 29 people are dead in what may be the biggest mass shooting in modern American history — and the death toll may rise.

I could go on and on… unfortunatately.

This is staged. We need to ask questions.

I'm telling you, radical liberalism is symptomatic of a serious mental condition.

The Bradys are going to have a heyday with this, for sure. But they, like their ilk, are going to miss the point entirely. It wasn't the gun that was the root cause of the tragedy. It wasn't the tool that possessed the guy to shoot up the place. It was a disturbed fritzoid possessing the gun.

Michelle Malkin has some excellent coverage on the matter, including some correspondence from VT students:

Finally one of the guys in the front of the classroom was brave enough to get up and move the desk in front of the door to prevent outside entry. About twenty seconds later, the shooter rattled the doorknob trying to get in. When he couldn't get in he fired two shots through the door (single solid piece of wood) and left. We heard him go in to 206 (the room across the hall) and shoot the people in that room. If we hadn't put the barricade up when we did, I and all my classmates would be dead.

If a barricade was sufficient to save lives, imagine what an armed student could have prevented.

Michelle also links to an IM exchange between another blogger and a VT student while the whole thing was going on.

And the pièce de resistance, flashing back to last year, when a bill allowing CCW on campus was being deliberated over. Michelle also quotes yet another blogger commenting on the same matter, saying "Just imagine if students were armed. We no longer need to imag[in]e what will happen when they are not armed."

No doubt this will be the focal point of much discussion of RKBA matters on campus, so therefore, I will be taking back the RKBA Campus Round-Up project from A Keyboard and a .45. Thanks for taking up the burden, bro, but it's time for me to handle it again.

And while you're at it, pray for the surviving victims and the victims' survivors. Losing a loved one under any circumstance is bad enough. They need the sort of peace that only God can give.

Most Men Give Flowers...

2007-02-09T12:15:00.000-09:00

I'm back! At least, for now. Sorry to keep everyone in the dark for a couple of MONTHS now, but it hasn't been an uneventful time, nor time wasted. More to come later.

JR took over the Campus RKBA report, since he liked the idea so much. He did a great job of it, and when I fully get back to blogging...well, you'll have TWO sources for Campus gun opinions.

Anyway, since this is the month of February, and a young man's thoughts turn to flowers and edible underwear, I thought I would share with you a slight deviation from the box of chocolates approach to showing a woman your fondness for her.

Don't read too much into the word "deviation," you sickos.

I have a friend I have been keeping an eye on for a few years now. I'm a slow mover, been burnt royally one too many times, so I'm not all that keen on just rushing into something (but if I know something's good, and it's available, I am quite tenacious). At any rate, since she's studying away from home, her dad decided to get her a .40 Glock for self-defense.

If you knew her dad, you wouldn't be surprised. I went to visit his shop in town, and he was eager to show off the new Benelli he had bought. And let me shoot a few shells right in the backyard (only in backwoods AK can you do something like that)!

Come to think of it, the whole family is like that. I just finished helping her sister & brother-in-law move, including his rifles, pistols, and reloading supplies. Great! Now I won't have to go so far to reload .44s and .45s.

Anyway, she is living part time in a house our farm owns to give the guys working in Fairbanks a place to stay during the week. So, during my week out there, I had decided (probably intentionally) to take my pistols on up and clean them.

In the process, I offered to clean her Glock as well. She thanked me very much, but thought it probably didn't need it.

So, as a follow up, I went into town and bought her a box of...

Godivas?

No.

Cor-Bon!

Left it on her desk with a note attached. When she came back to the farm the next week, she thanked me very much for the ammo.

Don't know if it will lead anywhere, but hey, what a story to tell the kids if it does. "You know, the first gift I ever gave your mother was a box of ammo..."

Bad News, and Bad News

2006-11-16T15:07:00.000-09:00

Firstly, something's screwy with blogger. Can't make my posts nice and neat. Unfortunately, at the moment, I haven't the time to fool with HTML tags, so this post, in all its raw beauty, will have to do for now.

Secondly, my own computer at home is having issues. I got some errors in the boot sector, and in trying to get it fixed, the USB and LAN connectivity decided it would bug out. This is the computer I usually do a lot of my research and blogging on (as opposed to this one I'm on at work).

I don't know when I'll get it fixed. So if the RKBA Campus roundup gets delayed, you'll know why.

Finally, on a more national level, San Fran shows where its values lie.

http://news.google.com/news/url?sa=t&ct=us/0-0&fp=455c3739dfa87ebb&ei=xP1cRYuyHsagaKOg5OQE&url=http%3A//www.beyondchron.org/articles/Ousting_JROTC_A_San_Francisco_Value_3918.html&cid=1111093185

An organization known for instilling values and discipline to youth loses out to a lifestyle beset by tendencies to take advantage of youth.

Now, tell me how on earth this is supposed to show support for our country? Isn't that part of what an education is about?

Obviously, not to a loud minority, who seem to place a high premium on the right to buggery.

Hooray for the Left Coast.

Campus RKBA Roundup #5

2006-11-09T16:56:00.000-09:00

Back in full force, you regulars! Neither snow, cold, disappointing elections, nor crappy internet connections will prevent me from delivering to you:

The Mad Hatter's
Campus RKBA Roundup #5:

The "please don't beat me for being late" edition.

Now, you're probably wondering, "Where does the Mad Hatter get all his stuff?" All will be revealed in good time. But not in this edition.

But suffice it to say, I have my sources. And you can feel free to contribute your own findings by emailing them to me at vol_907@bitemycrank.com (replace "bitemycrank.com" with "yahoo.de"). I'll give you the hat tip...and if I haven't posted a reciprocal link to your blog yet, I'll do that, too.

But enough self-promotion. Let's get down to finding out what I learned about what America's supposedly best and brightest are saying about a certain Amendment to our Bill of Rights.

This comes hot off the wire--thanks to the vigilant folks over at KeepandBearArms.org. A debate was held over at Harvard between Professor Mark Tushnet and historian Saul Cornell "over the challenges and possibilities for progressive gun control policy."

Basically, you have these two lefties arguing among themselves over whether or not it's worth liberals' time to address gun control policies in a manner that would make everyone happy.

Interesting how, in the 90s, "progressives" were all about getting as many anti-gun initiatives passed as they could. Now, the focus seems to be towards taking more of the middle ground.

Big government isn't really that interested in the people's happiness. It's interested in staying in power. That's why your best friend is the Constitution. Correction: your best friend in any case is God (He's got the best answers), but not everyone wants to hear that.

Baylor University: another article responding to the Amish school shooting, calling again for less violence, once again thinks the root of the problem has been found:

These preventative measures are a good start and will probably deter some potential violence, but they ignore the bigger issue at hand: guns.

I am astounded at the Editorial Staff's wisdom. Well justifies the several thousand Mom & Dad (or the State, if they went the route of indentured servitude known as financial aid) spent on your tuition this year.

A little confusion here, which is not uncommon to those still in the hormone-dominated throes of post-adolescence. Guns are the issue, but not everyone who owns one will do evil things with them. So, they refine their argument a bit:

The only logical solution to this problem is to step up the criteria for owning a gun -- or knife or whatever -- and make it near impossible for anyone with a mental problem, diagnosed or not, to come near them.

The ramifications for those who had breakdowns over losing the 2004 presidential election are dire.

Boston College: This one comes from a year and a half ago, doing a little bit of journalistic investigation covering a 2005 GAO report entitled "Gun Control and Terrorism." The report details a whopping 44 instances in 2004 where the NICS identified people with positive matches to a terrorist watch list.

35 of them were passed because there was nothing valid to deny the transaction. Let's stop right there and ask ourselves a few questions:

- What were the details surrounding these cases? They're lacking. Some may have wanted protection because they turned their back on whatever organization they were part of.

- Would you rather civil rights be trampled upon because of suspicion without evidence? I wouldn't want a gun in the hand of another Timothy McVeigh, but if it means disarming the majority of citizens to strain out a few pesky gnats (and guns used in crime comprise about a tenth of a percent of all privately-owned guns)--I'd err on the side of civil rights here.

- Speaking of numbers, where's the comparison to the total number of NICS checks initiated?

Add all of these together, and you see why the issue really received so little attention nationally. It seems the 2nd Amendment is doing a pretty good job improving national security, despite one dweeb's pathetic attempt at hinting that it's undermining it.

When I first checked out Carnegie Mellon's Tartan Online for material, the gay wedding ring ad (Puh-lease) made me think "Oh God...I bet I can tell what kind of articles I can find here" (since pro-gay usually means pro-Left, and therefore, anti-RKBA). But you can't judge a book by the cover. There's a 2005 forum article about guns on campus--pro, by the way. So much for first impressions.

What caught my eye was the more recent (Oct. 10) article about a philosophy professor who has "an arsenal of guns bigger than the National Guard," "600 hours of deadly force firearms training," has co-authored and edited an official police weapons training document, is a sworn deputy, and is a self-proclaimed gunnie.

His stance on his students' reactions:

"They're intrigued by it, perhaps put off by it, but intrigued, and they want to know more. Which is what I would wish my effect on my students to be. Whatever kind of clown I come off as being, I would wish that the effect on my students as being they want to know more. Wonder begins inquiry and if they are wondering about me, well maybe they'll sit still long enough for the videos and the readings [that allow them to] dig into the issue."

I like this guy. An academician and a gun nut. Wish there were more like us around.

Did you guys like that? Here's some more encouragement from Drexel University. One student debunks the hype surrounding the .50BMG in a Sci-Tech article. For example:

Another claim is that the .50-caliber rifle would be the perfect weapon for criminals, since a mugger with that much firepower would be, shall we say, difficult to deal with. I think this claim is made by people that have never seen a .50-caliber rifle: the things are enormous. Five and a half feet long (that is to say, probably taller than you are,) they weigh upwards of 35 pounds. Most .50-caliber rifles are bolt-action and have to be manually reloaded after each shot. Let me be more blunt: I'm not afraid of anything that fires one bullet a minute, weighs 35 pounds, and is almost six feet long. If a mugger pulled one of these one me, I would laugh. I'd be more afraid of pretty much anything else: a different type of gun, a knife, heck, even a crowbar would scare me more.

It is well worth a read, very informative, and written in the sort of "wake up you dumb@$$" attitude I love to read every so often. While you're at it, send a copy over to the .50 caliber terror (mongering) guys.

A blast from the past from Florida A&M, lamenting last year's legislation intended to better protect those caught up in the inevitable legal process following the use of deadly force in self-defense.

People, it was not written as a measure to for citizens to "be their own police," nor does it give "entirely too much freedom to the trigger-happy, gun-toting NRA members who want an excuse to kill the people who tick them off." Check the membership of the NRA and count how many members have a criminal history. Then compare it to the Democratic Party.

I think libs confuse that organization with the IRA. With as much depth as most of them look into gun issues, it wouldn't surprise me if that were true.

More recently, a student at LSU noticed last week what the pro-RKBA crowd has been saying about "gun free zones" all along: they're open invitations to criminals.

The intent of such legislation is to provide an area where firearms are forbidden and thus make those areas "safer." In effect, two groups of people are allowed firearms: police and criminals. While a real life game of "cops and robbers" plays out in these areas, the law-abiding citizen is left out in the cold, not even able to fend for themselves.

It didn't really help prevent three armed robberies near LSU's campus shortly before the article was written.

And that's it for this week's round-up. Stay tuned next week for more of the same!