Sunday, February 25, 2018

Small Business Bites Scene 4

And the story keeps truckin' along.

Camille and Victoria are making plans for what to do about Valli's problem but things may spoil their plans.

Saturday, February 24, 2018

How do you get a Gun Control Advocate to be against armed agents of the state?

Have said agent be a teacher.

But hardening proposals also exhibit a circular logic that runs deeply counter to the spirit of the Second Amendment. Again, that provision implies a duty to resist tyranny, in all the forms of military, surveillance, and governmental overreach that helped spark the revolution. Suggestions to create a police state in American schools, however, mirror other pro-authoritarian tendencies that run counter to this instinct. In the creation of the carceral state, in the expansion of drug laws, and in the extreme militarization of police in recent years, people have argued that placing more guns in the hands of authorities is the only way to keep people safe. But why would pro-Second Amendment enthusiasts be in favor of providing more firepower to the government?
Of course the teacher in this question isn't armed as a requirement for their job.  Nor is it an issued weapon.  The object is instead to give the option for someone to legally carry a personal weapon.

Though to get to that bit you had to read through a lot of drec.

It also ends on an interesting note.

One legal theory used to oppose the preferences of many defenders of the Second Amendment is based on the fact that the militarized American police state has advanced far beyond the ability of any possible well-regulated militia to stop it. But lost in that observation is the fact that Americans—many of them staunch gun-rights advocates—have pushed repeatedly to bolster the military and the creep of militarism into other civic arenas. 

A true point.

They’ve then trapped the country in an arms race between government and civilians, one in which civilians face severe losses from both state and private violence. And now students, protected in schools by the most basic tenets of the social contract, find themselves in the line of fire.

Except the social contract doesn't work if the police refuse to do their part...

Tuesday, February 20, 2018

Cracked: Gut the NRA!

I exaggerate.  A little bit:

To hear gun control proponents out, one might think that the best, fastest solution to the mass shootings plaguing our country would be to take a shiny litigatory scalpel and excise the NRA -- with their bottomless lobbying coffers, poisonous conspiracy theories, promotion of violence against protesters, and all-around assholery -- from politics and wider society. It's hard to argue against that. We certainly wouldn't stand for that shit from, say, the dairy industry. But the NRA somehow gets a pass every damn time.

 And then Cracked goes with the old chestnut of:  Oh but the NRA used to be good when it was a hunting and marksmanship program and didn't try to rock the boat by fighting gun bans!

 And followed by a paranoid conspiracy view of the Revolt in Cincinnati.

But this is the biggest part of Cracked's conspiracy:

Enter NRA 2.0. Within years of their rebirth, a slew of law review articles -- written by scholars funded by the ILA -- began to appear that argued that this reading was "incorrect," that the Second Amendment doesn't just guarantee state militias, but everyone the right to buy, stockpile, and use guns. And not just hunting rifles, but also pistols and other firearms crafted specifically to allow human beings to kill human beings without any training or skill.

The fiends!

The support of prominent politicians such as Orrin Hatch and Ronald Reagan soon codified this definition, and as the years wore on, public opinion started to shift accordingly. By 2008, 73 percent of Americans supported the "everyone gets guns" interpretation of the Second Amendment. It was almost inevitable that when the time came, the Supreme Court would agree.

As a result of this ruling, the court refuses to hear any other gun-related cases, apparently considering the matter settled. And that's perhaps the worst thing: By refusing to hear any other cases (and remember that the old interpretation was challenged four times), they're allowing an interpretation of the Second Amendment to exist that, unlike the rest of our constitutional rights, is totally unrestrained. 

What?  Totally unrestrained?
Umm....  then how come there's ANY gun control laws at all?

If that were true then how could several states have assault weapon bans or magazine bans?  How can there be federal regulations on the sale and purchase of new guns?

Heck totally unrestrained implies that machine guns could be bought via mail order with no background check?

Though the delicious part is that Cracked points out how the NRA are suckers for supporting Reagan despite the gun control he signed.   After starting the article screaming about how Trump didn't do anything to ban bump stocks.

Except  Trump did do just that.

No gratitude.  Which is to be expected.

Sunday, February 18, 2018

Small Business Bites scene 3

Another part of the little story.

And yes the reason they were called in for this "favor for a friend of a friend" is revealed.

Sunday, February 11, 2018

Small Business Bites Scene 2

Why not?
Here's a bit more.

Bit more world building and character interaction.

Friday, February 9, 2018

Helping!

Hey I know that guy!

I still get a bit of "impostor syndrome" when someone mentions my helpfulness as a teacher...


Cracked: Have racism allegories in your stories..... No not like that!


Shorter Cracked:
But they're all female. So that has to count for something, right?


1) Stop making your fantasy-allegorical races physically /different/!
2) Stop having humans react to non-humans in a way that changes their current prejudice stack! (Why I mean it's not historically the definition of who counts as "white" can expand depending on the number of "non-white" people are around)
3) Stop giving them unique/special powers!
4) And stop giving them fantastical and interesting threats!
Gee.... and then they ponder "Gee why aren't people interested int he stories that we want to say?"

Mostly I linked this because I'm back in the saddle of writing a story that has an alien species that well... are stronger than humans, have abilities humans don't have, and oh yes look like demons.

Sunday, February 4, 2018

Small Business Bites

Got the first scene of my new short story project up on the other blog.
Can be read here.

(Temporary for now given how... hilariously dated that blog title is)