Winning? (Part Whatever)

You know there's something going on when NBC of all places has an positive article about a book on Woman and Guns that touches on the millions (15+) of female gun owners in the US. And not just cops and fudds: sport shooting, collecting, and self defense is included.

And they have quotes such as this : “I’m a single mom and I’ve got two kids, so I feel like if I’m ever put in a situation where I need to protect them, I’d prefer to have a gun."

McCrum said almost every woman she encountered while working on this project talked passionately about gun safety. Many also were completely conversant on the gun laws in their states. McCrum, who doesn’t own a gun herself, was struck by the ease and confidence so many women had with their weapons after years of training with a huge emphasis on safety.

I will note that in the slideshow there's not one EBR or semi-auto handgun (other than one on a policewoman's hip). However there is a 44 magnum and 454 Casull which are more than most auto's.

Perhaps the book would have pictures of some "scary" guns.

Still. Interesting

Via Ace's ONT

“North Carolinians who are eligible to vote have a constitutionally guaranteed right to cast their ballots, and no one should put up obstacles to citizens exercising that right.”

-June 23, 2011 Governor Perdue

So let that be an important lesson.

Showing ID to vote... a horrible obstacle.

Simply canceling the whole election due to a bad economy... vital to get things done.

Via Ed Driscoll

Who has another roundup on the Totalitarian Temptation

Constitutional Limits on Government, Representative democracy? Feh.

Frank Burns once said on TV’s M*A*S*H that “individuality is fine, as long as we all do it together.” For the left, democracy is fine, as long as it’s moving the left’s agenda forward. When democracy isn’t working in their favor, it’s remarkable how quick self-described Democrats are willing to junk the notion for which their party is named.

It seems that the voting still has power, otherwise there goobers wouldn't be so afraid of it.
And there's still a difference between the Parties. Can you imagine a Republican publicly wishing elections could be canceled...

and not being hounded out of office (and rightly so) by the media?

Futility and Progress.

Roberta X looks at the progress of Homemade Fabs and small scale MFG.

For example the upper and receiver for my AR 45 were built in small shop the latter being custom CNC'd.

People being able to build their own parts as they needed is very freeing for do it yourself work and self determination.

It also shows the futility of gun control. What'll the gun grabbers do if the base metal parts can just be printed up? Ban springs?

An ammunition ban only goes so far.

The Weight Of Law.

Silly proles, the system is too complicated for you to know when you've broken a law. But don't worry, the state will tell you when you do. Follow the link to read As Federal Crime List Grows, Threshold of Guilt Declines by By Gary Fields and John R. Emswiller.

For centuries, a bedrock principle of criminal law has held that people must know they are doing something wrong before they can be found guilty. The concept is known as mens rea, Latin for a "guilty mind."
Federal Offenses

This legal protection is now being eroded as the U.S. federal criminal code dramatically swells. In recent decades, Congress has repeatedly crafted laws that weaken or disregard the notion of criminal intent. Today not only are there thousands more criminal laws than before, but it is easier to fall afoul of them.

As a result, what once might have been considered simply a mistake is now sometimes punishable by jail time.

Hell, in Massachusetts the threshold is so low you can win in court and still have to pay a fine!

It's nice to see that the State no longer has to worry about little things like actually getting a guilty verdict. And guess what would happen if you failed to pay the fine, despite having a court prove you committed no crime.

What? No Taurus Judge?

Cracked looks at 9 Self-Defense Gadgets Your Mugger Will Find Hilarious

The last one ends on a bit of a weak note but funny enough. Does underscore the stupidity of self defense gadgets. If your plan for defending your life depends on a novelty item, you might want to rethink things.

Paging C.S. Lewis...

It seems for many the problem with representative democracy is all that nasty representation.

Peter Orszag former White House economic adviser laments all that nasty democracy.

To solve the serious problems facing our country, we need to minimize the harm from legislative inertia by relying more on automatic policies and depoliticized commissions for certain policy decisions. In other words, radical as it sounds, we need to counter the gridlock of our political institutions by making them a bit less democratic.

Well, well. Isn't that NICE?

At least Orszag didn't suggest that we need a third way between the uncaring greed of Capitalism and the poverty-stricken incompetence of Communism.

Proposals abound for expanding this type of process. In the late ’90s, economist Alan Blinder proposed shifting responsibility for tax policy to a Fed-like institution of experts. Stephen Flynn of the Center for National Policy has proposed a similar process for infrastructure decisions—and, indeed, creating an infrastructure bank, as President Obama has proposed, would accomplish much the same goal. Such a bank would be empowered to select individual infrastructure projects, thereby removing some decision-making power from Congress.

So, Congress is not supine enough? They're not sufficiently enthralled to the vision of technocratic big governance? Obamacare and Stimulus and Dodd-Frank and McCain-Feingold didn't give enough power to "institutions of experts"?

So, there's really no bottom then?

Brian Preston summs up.

Putting these together, if you succeed, even despite the left’s anti-business laws, you should be grateful and be a good little leftist anyway. Capitalism is good until it enriches actual capitalists. Theocracy is bad except when a Progressive can use it to shame a conservative into becoming a Progressive. Democracy is good until non-leftists win, at which time “polarization” demands non-democratic rule by Progressive experts.

At least North Carolina Governor Bev Perdue is more direct. She simply things we should suspend elections until the current emergency has passed.

“I think we ought to suspend, perhaps, elections for Congress for two years and just tell them we won’t hold it against them, whatever decisions they make, to just let them help this country recover,”

Right... because removing accountability is sure to make a politician's decisions less corrupt and make them less inclined to totalitarian urges. Besides Emergency Laws are always temporary!

Consider this, a sitting governor is saying the US populace cannot handle the responsibility of voting for congressmen and Senators due to the economic conditions. Odd, FDR did a lot of bad things but even he didn't cancel elections.

Does the governor even know the dark road that countries go down when you start canceling elections due to "emergency"? Hell, does the Constitution mean anything to her? Why does she think it's okay to even suggest such an idea?

Ace has the answer:

Because she is a prisoner of the liberal -- or leftist -- idea that the people are incapable of making sound decisions about politics, and require a "vanguard" of the enlightened to make decisions on their behalf.

The problem is (from her perspective) is that democracy doesn't permit the vanguard to do "good;" when the vanguard ignores the (stupid, ignorant) mumblings from the citizen-morons of the republic, the citizen-morons rise up and vote them out of office.

That won't do. How can you have a revolution against the (moronic) wishes of the people if god-damned elections keep getting in the way?

It seems that some consider elections should have the same weight as when a family "votes" on where to go for vacation. Sure the children get to vote, but they only count if it agrees with what the parents want to do.

Negative Voting.

To elaborate on an idea mentioned at yesterday's blogmeet. BTW good blogmeet, lots of chat about governmental stupidity, snow, and cars. Oh, and a bit of gun stuff too.

We all know the standard voting problem:

Candidate A is a complete incompetent/cad/bastard/ect that should never ever be in office.
Candidate B is better than A but still hideous.
Candidate C is almost palatable but still a no-sell.
Candidate D might be acceptable in low light and after looking at the other clowns.

However, there's a good 95% that either A or B will win. So do you Vote for B to maximize the odds of A not getting in (or not getting reelected) or vote for the candidate closer to what you want (D) but has no hope of winning?

I'm not here to talk about such "tactical" voting.

I'm going to go into fantasy for a bit and look at the idea of negative voting.

In that system, every voter (and how we define who can vote is another can of worms) can vote for or against a candidate. That is +1 or -1 to the total of Candidate i.

Under that system you can directly vote against someone without having to pretend you're endorsing the #2 goober.

It would also introduce a new metric in polling: the spite index. That is the percent of likely voters that are going to vote negatively.

Heck, we could have a real race to the bottom where the winner in an election actually has a net negative (but is simply the least negative around). Though in that case you could be banned from reelection.

And if there's too much spite on the part of the major players some minor party could slip in by having their base actually vote *for* their candidate.

I suppose one could have an open election with a mass of candidates and then a runoff with the top three or four. And for even more fun give each voter three votes that they can use up or down on any candidate they want in any combination they want.

At least it'd make the elections more "interesting".

And how about an anti-legislature with the business of repealing laws?

And a pony? What about that?

Nah... I don't want the government to give me anything. After all... who would they take it from?