The New York Times, much, much smarter than you.

So you have a segment of the population that commits crime at a rate far less than the general population. You'd normally consider said segment to be responsible and relatively law-abiding.

From Gleen's link Robert VerBruggen does some basic math that the NYT couldn't be bothered with.

North Carolina has a statewide murder rate of about 5 per 100,000. Even without counting manslaughter, that’s 25 murders committed per 100,000 North Carolinians every five years. There are about 230,000 valid concealed-carry permits in North Carolina, so by pure chance, you’d expect these folks to be responsible for nearly 60 murders over five years. And yet only ten of them committed murder or manslaughter. Instead of “rais[ing] questions,” the Times has demonstrated yet again that permit holders are more peaceful than the general population.

That's New York Times. They can use innumeracy to justify their paranoid hand wringing and calls to restrict civil rights of people that have committed no crime.

Consider that you have a mainstream and "respected" press organ taking the actions of 0.08% and blaming the whole group. Interesting bigotry at work.

So they're not just bad at math, but monstrous too! They consider the worst of the law abiding while excusing the actions of the criminals.

And speaking of monstrous siding with criminals over others. Joan Peterson makes excuses for a man willing to commit armed robbery but casts a suspicious eye on the man that stopped him.


Bob Owens also reminds us that just because one area the news reports on is completely bunk doesn't mean the rest can't be too.

What would happen if all of the stories in the Times – or the Washington Post, or your local newspaper or television news – were subject to the sort of expert scrutiny as this Luo article, in a given day or week? What percentage of reporting would we discover is marginally biased, seriously slanted, or even fabricated?

I strongly suspect that the resulting scrutiny would reveal a dark and ugly secret that the media isn’t remotely interested in reporting the news, it’s interested in shaping the news, and your perception of the world.

...

If you doubt this, please tell me how much you’ve read (for example) about Operation Fast and Furious outside of the blogosphere, and ask yourself if a Republican government would still be standing after orchestrating crimes that left hundreds of citizens of a neighboring state dead.

Ah yes, Eric Holder. Guess who is using increased police deaths as an excuse for more gun control?

Carry Your Damn Guns.

If you think you'll only carry when "things are dangerous" you're deluding yourself.

If you think a situation is risky then you shouldn't go there.

And if you think it's paranoid to always be strapped, like say when going to the grocery store well... from Jay G here's a story that proves otherwise.

Man comes into the store at 6pm and forces an employee into a back room as part of a robbery (and it's never a good sign when a goblin moves his intended victims). Fortunately, one of her coworkers was armed and ended the situation. Nothing reduces repeat offenses quite like a lethal shot to the head.

This has resonance with me because this is one of 2 Krogers near where I live. I've been there several times. Though never disarmed.

Don't think that crime is something that happens to other people. It can happen at work, at the store, when doing errands.

That's why one needs to be prepared materially, physically, and mentally.

Papers Please

A roundup on the administration's attack on voter ID laws (for some reason South Carolina and Texas can't do it, but states like Indiana can) from Glenn Reynolds.

Remember it's racist to show your ID to vote but not to buy a gun (and let's not even get into background checks.

Why yes, Eric Holder is behind this, but if you want to listen to his explanation then you'd better pony of an ID to get into the event.

Only Ones, Dead Rats, Prostitute Police Taxis, and A European perspective.

Via Jay G we have some grand creepy "only one" abuse.

BOSTON (CBS) – An MBTA police officer is suspended after he was caught mailing dead rats. The I-Team has learned it stemmed from possible involvement with prostitutes.

Why? Well the rats were sent to a John that didn't pay. And the officer's involvement? Well he was using his police cruiser to provide escort for the... escorts.

And Jay G does title his post: Remember, Only the Police Should Have Guns...

I was talking with someone, mentioned this story, and got this response: "Stories like this make me glad our police aren't armed."

Now she lives in a European nation where handguns are illegal, so are semi-auto rifles, and the rest shotguns and bolts are the toys of the rich.

There's almost a bit of honesty in the idea that everyone should be disarmed. Not just the "proles" but also the agents of the state.

Of course it's a fantasy, because there will always be some agents of the state (special police or military) that are armed with guns. The whole threat of force is what makes a person comply with the state. And then there's those that will simply smuggle or make their own guns.

But even if you suppose a state somehow existed with no guns at all what would you have?
Well... look to the past. Violence and crime are not new.

In fact removing guns turns violence into the field of muscle and vigor. Now age and physical fitness and size become paramount.

So there's still violence, and it becomes truly Darwinian where the smaller and weaker and older have far far less power against the younger and stronger. But at least it won't be any "Gun Death".

Hey Look a Cliff and everyone's jumping!

So Unc, JayG. Zercool, and Weer'd have shown off what's in their pockets'.

I figured I might as well join in.

My primary is a full government size 1911 (early TLE II Kimber so not too bad) carried in a DeSantis OWB. Two spare magainzes are on my opposite hip. My backup is a PM45 in pocket carry. DeSantis

In situations where I can't carry my full-size I sometimes carry a 4 inch barrel aluminum frame 1911. That's often a lawn mowing and gardening gun, but more and more I just use the fullsize.

If I can't have something draped over my waist I just carry the Kahr.

And last is my LCP. That's often a jogging or shorts gun. It's when I can't carry anything bigger.

Edit: Thanks for the Chance-lance. If anyone wonders why I have that defensive Kimber aside well look here.

No one's a villain their own eyes.

But they're oven a victim. Of course it helps to have the New York Times at your back.
You see Holder's a victim. All these challenges for him to explain his actions and turn over documents as ordered by the House of Representatives... it's all for racism.

Never mind why the ATF put thousands of guns into the hands of drug gangs in Mexico, without tracking the weapons and without even informing the Mexican government.

Never mind that the operation resulted in the deaths of hundreds of Mexicans and at least one US citizen border agent Brian Terry.

Never mind that the ATF has been documented saying they'll use the blood bath resulting from said operation to call for more gun control.

Never mind that there is documentation that the Justice Department and the ATF have lied to Congress about said operation.

Never mind that Holder continues to cover for said operation and stonewall the Congressional investigation.

And never mind that if Holder really did not know about the opeartion it somply raises more questions:

If you didn’t know about Operation Fast and Furious then why aren’t you outraged? Why aren’t you firing those who are responsible for the operation? Why aren’t you cleaning house? Why aren’t you outraged that the people who started this operation haven’t been identified? Why aren’t you outraged that when people found out about Operation Fast and Furious (including your second in command) did nothing to stop it and more importantly did not tell you? I can’t speak for the others, but the fact it appears you don’t care something like this happened bothers me a lot.

Yes, if you look at the idea of limited, representation government.

This is literally agents of the US government involved in a false-flag operation illegally smuggling arms in another nation and then using the result and bloodshed to justify restricting a constitutional right.

And here we have the US Attorney General himself, the head of the United States Justice department stonewalling a congressional investigation and acting like he's the aggrieved party.

There you have it. Racism in America: Asking Democrats about a conspiracy that killed hundreds of Mexican citizens.

Or maybe Racist Realpolitik in America. Because we bitter-clingers couldn't possibly care about those dead people or about rights, no it's all because we were tough on Ashcroft and Gonzales so you're just looking for some tit-for-tat.

This is the lens they see the world through: it's all about race (Gonzales doesn't count because he was a Republican you know) and politics.

Let's give them more power over our lives! I'm sure they won't abuse it.

Kimber "Quality". They can't even make basic parts.

Well, this is pathetic.

I picked up a Kimber Pro-Carry for my father. He always wanted one, which got more intense when he saw mine.

My father is left handed like me and thus needs and ambidextrous safety.

I've written before about Kimber's issues, but this is the first it's happened to me.

There are a couple methods of retaining the ambidextrous thumb safety on a 1911. There's using a modified sear pin (which I haven't seen). There's extending a paddle out that slides under the right grip. And there's the Kimber/King method of engaging a dovetail on the hammer pin.

I like this latter method the most for it's reliability, ease of installation and removal, and its "clean" look.

I've installed them on both of my 1911's and on my father's full size without a problem.

Then we get to this year. I made the same purchase and install my 4th ambi-safety. On the 27th of November. And today, less than a month later, after a bare 300 rounds we have this:

From another angle:

The safety sheared off right on the shoulder next to the pin.

That's... pathetic.

Comparing with the ambidextrous safeties in my 1911's the parts look very similar but mine have worn a bit and are still going strong. While this new one has broken after just a couple T&E trips to the range.


What's worse is that of the two suppliers that make the ambidextrous safety I like one has reduced its quality to a pathetic joke (Kimber), while the other has a webpage with a dead email, and an invalid phone number for orders (King).

I did manage to get an answering machine on King's other phone number for an actual gun shop. So maybe they're still in business.

I've also sent a charge ticket off to Kimber, but I have my doubts.

Kimber, this is just an unacceptable degradation in quality.

The new Blacklist.

Paul Tassi talks about the SOPA bill and the sweeping effects it will have.

Why is this? Am I a pirate, who feeds my users stolen content every day and deserves to be slain by a new law like this? Not at all, and this is the fundamental problem with SOPA and other prospective laws like it (Protect IP most recently). . . . The fine print of the law says sites that distribute copyrighted content could be subject to summary censorship, ie Torrent sites and the like. But it also encompasses any sites that LINK to copyrighted content, which is the bomb that blows up any semblance of sense this bill might have had. . . . Watching the House debate this bill yesterday was beyond pathetic. These representatives, if they deserve to be called that, have no idea the amount of power they’re giving the entertainment industry.

Via Glenn Reynolds.

Wow, politicians regulating something they have no idea about that will be intrusive and liberty destroying. How... familiar.

Also from Prof Reynolds, Eris S Raymond has similar thoughts on the familiarity.

It’s a bad bill, all right. It’s a terrible bill – awful from start to finish, idiotic to the core, corruptly pandering to a powerful special-interest group at the cost of everyone else’s liberty.

But I can’t help noticing that a lot of the righteous panic about it is being ginned up by people who were cheerfully on board for the last seventeen or so government power grabs – cap and trade, campaign finance “reform”, the incandescent lightbulb ban, Obamacare, you name it – and I have to wonder…

Don’t these people ever learn? Anything? Do they even listen to themselves?

It’s bizarre and entertaining to hear people who yesterday were all about allegedly benign and intelligent government interventions suddenly discovering that in practice, what they get is stupid and vicious legislation that has been captured by a venal and evil interest group.

Rice-bowls, cannibal pots, and cell phone bans. Well maybe some people will realize that using the power of the state to "make people better" is nothing more than a fantasy covering a bloody nightmare.

Maybe.

But I'm not being too hopeful. No matter what happens, it looks like we'll be stuck with this crap.

Here's Tam showing the few reversals and wins. Asside from the CCW revolution (which is big) the rest of the wins can be counted on one hand.

Scotland: Not anti Gun, not anti knife, but anti freedom

From Soft Green Glow (via Tam). Scotland's utter descent to madness:

Anyone caught carrying a knife in town and city centres in Scotland in the coming weeks faces a potential four years in prison, under a new crackdown announced today.

The six-week pilot scheme will see cases automatically prosecuted as more serious offences, increasing the length of jail terms available to sheriffs from one year to four.

...

Scotland’s top law officer, Lord Advocate Frank Mulholland, QC, said the pilot would involve a zero-tolerance approach to the problem. He said: “The public will wish to enjoy the festive period in our towns and cities without fear. The zero-tolerance crackdown should help to deter anyone stupid enough to think about carrying a knife.

Ah yes, live without fear. Because the criminals will surely fall in line if there's just one more law.

And it's not like the public will live in fear of the police. As Phil notes:

What if you buy a knife for someone for Christmas? How do you get it to the car? And what about scissors? You know, for wrapping gifts. What if you need a new pair?

A gun is a tool, so is a knife. And you'll be more likely to use a knife in every day use. Here's something Tam wrote a few days ago that seems prophetic.

Some people get all clutch-the-pearls at the sight of a knife, which strikes me as utterly bizarre. How come H. habilis could see the utility of keeping a sharp rock handy, but the concept seems to elude H. cubiculum? Hardly a day goes by that my pocket knife doesn't see use: opening letters, opening packages, breaking down boxes, trimming loose threads on clothing...

And now Scotland wants to ban basic, basic tools. How's that for "enlightened" for you. Maybe next they'll ban possession of matches and lighters in order to prevent arson and "fire-crime".

Oh yes, there's the beloved "zero-tolerance". Now where have we seen zero-tolerance policies before? Policies where people are convicted on ridiculous charges (like having a cake-knife for *gasp* cake) or for drawing (that is making a picture) of a gun?

Edited: Or a piece of pizza shaped as a gun. Yeah, nice to see Scotland treating its subjects like children.

That's right. Schools.

As we see in Scotland, the antis think of the general population as children. Children that need to be told what to do.

Birthdays

I can agree with this. My friends can attest to that.

Ron Swanson is amusing. And it's interesting to see a TV show portray an unabashed Libertarian in a positive light.
And he's even trying to reduce the state from the inside... with mixed results.

Shame the show's other characters seem weaker and more annoying. Makes me enjoy the character but be ambivalent towards the show itself.

Also in the poorly remembered words of another Tam "Surprise parties are not seen as wise among my people."

Yeah... that's pretty much New Jersey.

Ed Driscoll has the link.


For reference I grew up in the "farmers and sub developers" portion of the state.

Horrid, horrid drivers. People everywhere, and some of the most inane gun laws.

But I haven't set foot in NJ for over a decade so I've got that going for me.

Winning? Sure how about some cute hats.

More evidence of the re-normalization of firearms.

This comic.

Now look at the comments. Nothing negative about guns. In fact there's many anecdotes of stores like "Gowns and Guns" and "Handbags and Handguns", and a universal positive response to them.

And bonus, redneck being used as a compliment.

Then again, this is a comic that celebrates manliness, and not the ironic or overblown-overweening man-child manliness either.

And here's another example of normalization and the difficulty of finding opposition.

Blast from the Past

Here's something Glenn Reynolds wrote.

Even lamer was the claim that the Sept. 11 attacks were an argument for closing the (nonexistent) "gun show loophole." This claim, made first in a Brady Campaign press release and then in a suspiciously similar op-ed bearing the byline of former Clinton Administration official Eric Holder, just plain flopped. Nobody could be persuaded that Usama bin Laden’s boys would have trouble laying their hands on an AK-47, regardless of what rules govern gun shows.

If the September 11 line wasn't enough, here's the dateline: November 4 2001

Over a decade ago Eric Holder was working hand in glove with gun control organizations to restrict gun rights by using the fears of foreign terrorists buying arms from American gun dealers.

Familiar, eh?

Well, at least Holder wasn't overseeing a plan to send arms to said terrorists back then.


Via Instapundit who remarks "At least."

Here's some more thoughts by Prof. Reynolds.

Properly understood, the gun control movement has always rested on certain essentially religious notions (indeed, though it is little publicized, much of the gun-control movement’s financial and institutional support comes from non-evangelical Protestant denominations). These notions are that violence – even against a criminal – is always bad, that ordinary people are not to be trusted, and that it is best to let the authorities look out for you.

In addition, the movement has always contained a rather strong undercurrent of hostility toward traditional American standards of masculinity, of which it sees the gun as a symbol.

It is here that things seem to have changed the most. Americans have learned that being harmless does not guarantee that they will not be harmed: in fact, it seems that terrorists (like ordinary criminals) actually prefer victims who cannot strike back.

And here's a demotivational that seems quote appropriate: Zombie Free Zone.

Blogmeet

Welp... I really missed the train here.

Went to a real good blogmeet on Saturday organized by Roberta X

Lucky 13 of us sat around the big round table. Much knife talking, aviation, and engineering... mishaps. Disk-bursts are bad. And while electricity is not actually invisible it will screw you up.

Brigid has pics. And Tam has a good roundup of people that can actually write a summary within 24 hours.

It was great to meetup with OldNFO for the first time. And talk aviation and engines. Also with Uncle Jay who has a great Cuba story.

Mr.B, and Midwest Chick can't escape a mention either. And Old Grouch and the Lurker 1 and 2.

And oh yes... I solved the riddle of the Karl and won a free hat. Warm for winter and customizable for all your alt history and future needs.

It's never Ever enough.

So some in Japan are mulling over loosening some of their draconian gun laws.

Like reducing a waiting period for a rifle license from a "common sense" 10 years so a "blood in the streets" 5... years. In Japan the way to get a hunting rifle license is if you've had a shot gun license for 10 years. And no civilian handgun ownership at all, and no self defense or carry, and the expected storage and capacitance laws.

But these fairly mild changes... aimed and reducing crop damage due to animals are drawing some ire.


The comments are also illustrative. Runs from "nobody needs a gun" to "penis-penis-penis" to "gun owners are cowards and sociopaths - real men defend themselves with knives" to "hunting is a crime" to "civilized countries realize that guns only hurt people" to "I'm so glad to be in a country with no crime" to "You need NO freedom to..." to "a gun won't address those fears nearly as well as a good therapist" to "Hurr-hurr-Americans" to "If you have a gun you *will* kill yourself or someone else" and of course "But generally speaking I agree with the posters that keeping guns out of the hands of the general populace in Japan is for the best."

Ah, the special kind of arrogance that it takes to look at a population and go "Yes, one must keep the firearms and firewater out of the hands of the savage redyellow-man, it's for the best."

Their rage is based on the idea that Japan has low-crime because it has draconian gun laws and thus low "gun death". Thus the idea that any loosening of gun rights would result in blood in the streets. Hmm... sounds so familiar.

Though you gotta love people who see the proposal of reducing the waiting period to own a rifle reduced from 10 years to 5 years to be unreasonable. As one of the sensible commenters pointed out that the people on the waiting list already have a shotgun permit so it's not rapidly increasing the total number of gun owners (the horror if it were!).

And then you have the "I had to run the gauntlet so do the rest of you" gun owner.
Special bonus for Fudd-ism.

I have a Japanese gun licence and hunting licence. I think the current system is fine. It is longwinded and quite expensive, but this tends to ensure only serious people can be bothered to go through with it. Getting a gun on a whim here is just not possible. In rural communities, the local deer and boar populations are causing a lot of damage. With the aging hunter population and the unwillingness of younger people to take up hunting, this problem is only going to get worse... I seriously doubt relaxing the current laws would encourage many extra would-be hunters from taking up hunting. The lack of gun ownership/hunters isn't down to the current law; it's due to people increasingly being out of touch with the nature around them and the ease of popping to the supermarket.

Get that? Only serious people can be bothered. Sure there's a demographic shortage of hunters, but somehow the idea of it being a decades long process with repeat mandatory safety lectures *isn't* a restrictor on potential hunters.


I will give one of the commenters a bit of honesty. He wants guns totally banned from Japan, not just among the "serfs" but also among the government. Police and all.

There's also some fine ignorance on display and strong naivetee. Apparently, US gun laws are monolithically uniform and NYC has Wal-Mart giving AK15's to toddlers. Mexico and Columbia and South Africa all have loose gun laws just like the US. All civilized nations have gun laws on par with Japan (somebody tell Canada and Finland and Switzerland and hell Italy). Heck compared to Japan, Australia is an easy country to get arms. As for the naivete, well remember you can always outrun a man with a knife, and if you give the criminal what he wants you won't ever be hurt.


What all this does show is that nothing, *nothing* is enough for the anti's. 10 years to get a rifle? Too short. Swords (as much a part of Japanese culture as British) are just as banned as guns over there as they are in England. The comemnters even talked about knife crime and Japan's "slashing sprees" and how knives need to be looked at.

There's also the old gun-death chestnut specifically that suicide by a firearm is specifically worse than other types of suicide. And was cited by why the Swiss shouldn't be armed.

There's also an element of spite. (Some good old US do-gooder spite can be found here). They, specifically and emotionally, recoil at the idea of making things a bit easier for a gun owner in any way shape or form.

It is NEVER enough for these folks.

Via Unc

And that's enough happy talk.

Here have some doom.



Watch the whole thing, down to the manufacturing jobs that cannot be filled. High unemployment and a labor shortage. And then the demographics. In Alabama 1/3 of their skilled workforce is over 55.

And then remember that something like this is tossed around by all the "smart" people as a big chuckle.

I do have a graduate degree, but in engineering. I got a job in the field and I'm no longer in debt, not even my car. I also don't look down on "hand workers" given my parents are truckers and have had jobs ranging from construction to real estate to farming.

I also never thought I was entitled to a job or that I could coast to a degree or that I was "better". I was also only able to afford college (remember the no debt thing) by scholarship, work, and the sacrifices my parents made for me. Which is a debt that I cannot truly repay but will gladly bear.

Via Carteach0

Winning? (Part Whatever II)

As some can guess, I got back from Buffalo and have been thinking about it some.

NYS laws for handguns are quite hideous. CCW (which is may issue and often comes with target only or hunting limits) is required to even posses a handgun let alone carry. There is no reciprocity and no non-resident permits. There's also no person to person sales and the requirement for a purchase slip from the state for each handgun bought.

It's a system that quite handily pushes aside anyone with a casual interest or from out of state.

Frankly, I'm amazed it's even legal in New York to rent a handgun. Still people are going through the process. Which at least in western New York, even in Buffalo, is getting faster and somewhat easier.

I am seeing an attitude change where even in mixed company with people who don't shoot and have never touched a gun, seeing ammunition and talking about firearms does not cause a rote gun control response.

I'm thinking that maybe the gun control movement has a generational divide. Or maybe firearms are renormalizing into the culture. The conceal carry change has been huge and it could be spreading. People stuck in May Issue states can see what it's like in Shall issue states and despite the anti's claims the streets haven't yet run red with blood.

And as bad as the state is, NYC is far far worse. Permits that are home-only, carry restricted to friends of city hall, and limit of one gun purchase every 90 days regardless of type.

Edit: And before I forget here's a post Unc's that also got me thinking along those lines. 47% of US households own a gun. And a post of Jay G's on *Another* Compact Single Stack 9

From the standpoint of someone who grew up in the late 1980s and came of carrying age in the bad ol' Clinton years, it is nothing short of amazing to see so many guns dedicated to concealed carry now. Back when I first got my permit in 1994, we had the J-frame, the Detective Special, Baby Brownings, and the Makarov for small guns, and not much more. Now the options are staggering, as are the number of states in which one can legally tote them...

Some Perspective.

Gun Safety from Cracked.

5 Terrible Things You Can't Stop Your Children From Doing.

Number 2 is about firearms.

Writer John Cheese has worries about his children and firearms.

Now, here's where things really start making me nervous. Every contact my kids have had with guns has been on a fantasy level. Playing Halo and Modern Warfare on the Xbox. Playing with their Nerf guns, which are designed to be shot at humans ... the newest set is comprised of Velcro darts that stick to special T-shirts.

I'm not one of those people who thinks that movies and games turn ordinary people into raging psychopaths, shooting up schools while shouting out the Ten Commandments. But I'm also not ignoring the fact that the only lesson they've had about guns so far is, "Point at a human and pull the trigger to make fun occur."

Sounds like a problem. How does this man confront the issue?

So this year, I went back on my word and got them BB guns for Christmas. Yes, it's not quite the same thing as a 12-gauge shotgun, but it makes me feel a lot better knowing that I can teach them about gun safety without the fear of becoming a newspaper headline.

It's yet another compromise, and you've probably noticed that's pretty much the running theme of this article.

Depending on the ages of his sons the BB gun makes perfect sense. And once they learn and grow maybe a shotgun would become appropriate. But the key is again teaching gun safety. So that when his sons are with friends, or when they're older they'll know how to use a firearm safely.

My point is, I think every single person reading this has a similar story. Yep, violence is bad. Nonviolence is awesome. But you want to tell me that there's never a time to fight? Bullshit.

The first time my own kids encountered a bully, I had to sit down with them and tell them as honestly as I could that they should never go out starting fights or specifically looking for one. But if they found themselves in a situation where nobody could help, they wouldn't be in trouble with me or their mom if they had to throw punches in order to protect themselves.

No, it's not always the best solution. But, standing there and taking punches while nobody comes to your rescue is the quickest way to tell a bully, "You can do this to me anytime you want. I'm easy prey."

And that lesson doesn't stop when you become and adult.


And then there's this bit at the start.

So, when Clusterfuck approaches them, what are they supposed to do? It's really goddamned easy for me to tell my kids, "Just say that you don't want to be friends any more." Sure. Have you ever done that? Looked somebody right in the eyes and said, "I can't talk to you because a third party has determined that you're a bad person."

Okay, now imagine being a ten year old boy and not only having to say that, but also having to explain to your group of mutual friends that either Clusterfuck goes, or he goes.

At least as parents they're in an authority figure. It's far harder when a peer pulls rank with a mutual friend. And it's worse on said mutual friend because they're been placed in a situation of emotional blackmail. Distance and past history also makes it harder, but when someone has proven by his actions to be... unreasonable cutting off contact is the only action.

Though not being in Buffalo made things easier for me in many ways.

But Cheese's ending line is rather poinent on that too.

So yes, kids, sometimes the world is an imperfect place, riddled with assholes. And no, we won't always be there to protect you. If we're not honest about that as parents, what good are we?

Rule 4: Be sure of your target and what is beyond it.

MythBusters crew, you guys really screwed up here.

They were test firing a cannon at some water barrels and missed. Thankfully no one was hurt, but there's a reason ranges are limited on the kind of ordinance you can use and what is a safe direction to fire.

And they also report that this was a "misfire". So that's a violation of rule 1 and a potential violation of rules 2 and 3.

1. All guns are always loaded.
2. Never let the muzzle cover anything you are not willing to destroy.
3. Keep your finger off the trigger until your sights are on the target.
4. Be sure of your target and what is beyond it.

There's a reason it takes breaking at least 2 rules for something bad to happen. Depending on the details the Mythbusters could have broken all four (at the very least they broke 2). 4 is especially important since the cannon ball bounced out of the range.

They were very lucky no one got hurt. This also shows that for a group that has been doing this for years and normally has a pretty good safety record that complacency and sloppy safety *will* catch up to you.

One lesson that can be taken from this is the importance of range capacity and limits. What size projectiles can the range's berms, walls, whatever soak up. What angles of fire are acceptable. How much kinetic energy can be used before there's a risk of a projectile ricocheting or bouncing out of the range. How far can a projectile reasonably travel if it is not stopped.

Another interesting thing was the reaction. Last night I was with a mixed crowd when I learned of this story. Those who were more on the gun control side or even just inexperienced with guns were more willing to make excuses for the Mythbusters. While those that were pro-firearms or at least knowledgeable placed the blame on those operating the canon.

The former group treated it like some sort of natural disaster or random accident and underscored how hard the situation would be to repeat. They saw the weapon itself as some sort of actor, bearing some of the blame. One person even pointed to the house that got hit and blamed California building codes.

Meanwhile the latter group admitted that randomness played a big role but that was besides the point on where the responsibility lay. The Mythbusters clearly violated safety rules when operating a large firearm. The weapon was only a danger when people started playing with it in an unsafe manner.

Link via Ace.

Quote of the day... me?

Yes I made Weerd's Quote of the day.

Here's my reaction to a childish morality play on why we need "gum control".
An anti named Baldr likens gun control to a school trying to clean up gum.

Once again we see that the Anti’s dream world is the school. A place of total top down order and control where no mater who started a fight both parties are equally punished, where anything can be banned, and most importantly where there are two classes of people: the teachers and the children.

That they don’t see people as adult citizens but instead as children that *need* the guiding hand and wise judgment of the Mrs. Cali’s of the world.

On further thinking it's even worse.

Say you want to go from a “strong gum control” class (gum is banned) to a “weak gum control” class (studends can chew gum)? You can’t! Not without the administration’s permission. Internal Passports Ho!

Also students don’t elect teachers, administration, or have any say in school spending or policy. The only representative “government” they have are powerless student councils and a figurehead of a Class President.

Weerd's original post also has a good deconstruction of the anti's mentality too.

Now they ask.

The New York Times is asking if maybe the police are getting a bit too militarized.

Geee... I wonder what gave them that idea.

Hat tip Glenn Reynolds.

Nanny Bloomberg's Empire... State

Bloomberg's getting even more out there...

While bragging about how his city is like a nation unto itself, with it's own diplomatic representation, and state department, Bloomberg says this.

I have my own army in the NYPD, which is the seventh biggest army in the world.

There you have it, militarization of the police from the mouth of NannyBloomberg himself.

And what nation is the Number seven that Bloomberg's mighty gendarmerie would supplant? Why the US. And how big is the US Army? 550,000

Wait... so the NYPD has more than half a million people on the payroll?

Well no. The NYPD has about 44,500 officers, auxiliary officers, and school safety agents.

Only off by over an order of magnitude eh Bloomberg?

Gross gross delusions of grandeur aside. This very man who crowing about the mass numbers of gunmen in his employ is the head of and financier of the leading Anti-Second Smendment Rights organization in the country.

Isn't it great when a "great leader", who has broken term limit rules to stay in office, brags about his power?


And Bloomberg's crusades against salt and transfats and other nannying nonsense is also well known.

As Weer'd is wont to say, they're not anti-gun, but anti-freedom.


Bloomberg antigun? Clearly, he loves armed people... but only if they've taken the "king's shilling" as it were. In fact, he seems to wish that he had a literal army of guys with guns at his beck and call.


Via: Uncle

But if you question them you're Anti-science.

Oh those wacky Fins.

The answer he gave, which was either extremely Finnish or extremely religious, is that it has to come from a genuine, bottom-up commitment. That's why turning off lightbulbs is important. To turn off the light when you leave a room is an act of piety just as much as lighting a candle in church. It has no measurable effect on the crisis at all in itself. It doesn't even have a notable effect on your own electricity bill, and if it ever does, the world economy will be in a dreadful mess. But it is a token of seriousness. It is, if you like, a gesture of faith.

Damn anti-science skeptics questioning their faith!

Great Search String: empathy for robot uprising

3rd on Google for that string.

Not bad.

Heh, and there's already a couple searches for OWS jokes.

Nannystatish Food-Control Neo-Puritanism backfires?

So San Francisco tried to ban the Happy Meal.
Because clearly parents were helpless and happless at raising children and the State had to come in to keep that eeeevvvviiil Clown from bribing kids with those nefarious toys.

Turns out... their law didn't quite work the way they intended it to.

It turns out San Francisco has not entirely vanquished the Happy Meal as we know it. Come Dec. 1, you can still buy the Happy Meal. But it doesn't come with a toy. For that, you'll have to pay an extra 10 cents.

Huh. That hardly seems to have solved the problem (though adults and children purchasing unhealthy food can at least take solace that the 10 cents is going to Ronald McDonald House charities). But it actually gets worse from here. Thanks to Supervisor Eric Mar's much-ballyhooed new law, parents browbeaten into supplementing their preteens' Happy Meal toy collections are now mandated to buy the Happy Meals.

Today and tomorrow mark the last days that put-upon parents can satiate their youngsters by simply throwing down $2.18 for a Happy Meal toy. But, thanks to the new law taking effect on Dec. 1, this is no longer permitted. Now, in order to have the privilege of making a 10-cent charitable donation in exchange for the toy, you must buy the Happy Meal. Hilariously, it appears Mar et al., in their desire to keep McDonald's from selling grease and fat to kids with the lure of a toy have now actually incentivized the purchase of that grease and fat -- when, beforehand, a put-upon parent could get out cheaper and healthier with just the damn toy.

That's right.

What did this smugly touted and bragged about law accomplish? It made happy meal toys a bit more expensive and it made the happy meal itself (the very part they were worried about) mandatory.

That prettymuch sums up the nanny state in a nutshell, condescending, expensive, and counter productive. Remember these same Statists thought they knew how to better feed children than their own parents, and yet they couldn't get this law right.

But at least they had good intentions!

Via Top Headlines on Ace

"Gunsmithing" Lesson Learned

Turns out a new gun will take more filing and working to get new parts in than an older version.

Case in point I'm installing a flat trigger and a steel mainspring housing in a AL frame 4in 1911 I'm making as a gift. It was a bit harder to get the parts in this time than it was on my 1911's.

Guess all that "break in" and "everyday wear" adds up.

And as always be patient and don't try to force things. Also a small metal file, calipers of some kind, and the original part are your friends.


Gunsmithing is in scare quotes because I'm just doing parts swaps.

It's interesting...

Talk with some of the "The Police are Oppressors!" groups and you get a litany of police wrongs.
And there's a lot to be worried about from no-knock raids, to random TSA checkpoints, to SWAT/Ninja/militarization to the repeal of the Peelian Principles.

There's also those who are against the police for breaking up their blockades, going against their squatting, and screaming about how they tend to arrest criminals.

The problem is often the methods the Police use on "hippie womping" can be quite wrong.

Here's a pretty good litmus test I've found. Ask them about "Only Ones". If they think the State (police, military, ect) are the only ones that should have arms, then they're not against a disparity of force among the Organs of the State. No they just want the State at their beck and call.

Similarly ask them about May Issue. If someone is perfectly fine with the Police having discretionary powers on who can and cannot bear or own a gun. Well... you have to wonder what other fundamental rights they'd be okay with the Police having control over.

Remember some people that complain about Police Brutality do so not because of the brutality but because of the Policeman's choice in target.

Obama to OWS: “You are the reason I ran for office.”

Pandering much?

This could go bad, given how fringe and violent and filthy OWS is.
Update: Here's OWS's rapsheet so far.
(Remember when the Tea Party committed hundreds of violent acts?)

Oh? The Media's got his back? Good for him.

Yes the mass media is not only trying to downplay the serial voilence at OWS but is trying to ignore any connection between them and the Democrats.

Even though Obama himself has given them great credit. In addition to the titular quote there's him saying: "We are on their side."


And somewhat related: “What kind of movement calls female supporters ‘white bitches’? And what type of women take that to be a term of endearment?”

Via Glenn

Speaking of OWS being a joke...

Here's their latest brilliant plan.

"Forgive my debt or we'll stop paying!"

Well... with a threat like that.

I'm guessing negotiation isn't their strong suit.

And here's another way to look at it: Occupiers Who Hate Bailouts Come Up with Their Own Bailout

Occupy Wall Street Jokes.

Given my old post on "Soviet Union Jokes" has been perennially popular, here's a mite of an update.

What’s the difference between Barack Obama’s nebulous whatever-you-want-it-to-mean 2008 campaign and OWS
Three years."

Not Just Anti-Gun

Bans and Registrations

After canvassing local chain drug and grocery stores, we’ve found out that you can no longer buy iodine to treat small cuts and skin abrasions. The reason is that meth dealers use it to make their product. This ban is a fairly recent development.

A law abiding citizen can’t perform simple first aid at home because somebody else might use the product illegally. Same for decongestants, but at least I was able to buy them after registering at the pharmacy desk.

The war on drugs being used as part of the statist and prohibitionist agenda?

This is my shocked face.

5Star Hotel for OWS Bagmen? Sure, Why not?

We're already in the "Some Animals are more Equal than others." stage of this little movement.

Why not ramp it up further?

For added irony, the $700 a dollar night, Gordon Gekko unleashing(in the hotel's words), hotel is called the W Hotel.

Well, what's a popular revolution without "the right" people at the helm?

Speaking of having the "right" leader in charge Tam is powerful with the snark today. Sure, the media is pushing Romney as the great white hope and only sane man in the room but really...

They assert this, of course, because only within twenty miles of Beacon Hill does Mitt qualify as "Conservative". Outside of a few coastal enclaves, he's perceived as slightly to the left of the local Democrats and viewed askance as some kind of #OCCUPY_THE_WHITE_HOUSE hippie pinko. There'd be nothing like a Romney-Obama race to encourage Republican voters to stay home in droves, and Barry would beat him like a drum.

Further, even if by some fluke Romney were to win, you'd be replacing a crony capitalist anti-gun politician who was in favor of socialized medicine with a crony capitalist anti-gun politician who was in favor of socialized medicine, but who used a higher SPF sunscreen and wore faith-based underoos.

Nothing like pushing a weak candidate to increase Dear Reader's chances of winning, while also having a safety net ensuring that even if Obama looses, the statists win.

Though as Tam points out in a latter post, the rest of the crowd isn't so hot either.

Have you really stepped back and looked at this Jim Rose Circus you're trotting out in front of the American people? Are you guys trying to throw this election? Or has the job become so onerous that no decent person with an ounce of brains would seriously apply for it anymore?

Y'all are facing the most easily-defeatable incumbent since 1980; he even just gave an actual "malaise" speech for opposing speechwriters to rip up. Whether I agree with their positions or not, I have to say that Christie, Palin, or Daniels would have beat this guy like a piñata. With none of them in the race, that leaves Ron Paul as your sober-sided elder statesman on those debate stages. Let that sink in for a minute.

The current slate is starting to look like the Island of Misfit Toys. (Romney is the Train With Square Wheels.)

And Perry is the cowboy on the ostrich. Is Paul the squirt gun that shoots jelly?

Sometimes the best tool for the job...

Is a giant 8 gauge shotgun.



Found here

Being able to propel a mass at high velocity in a controllable and reliable manner is very useful.

As Wee'rd says: "Obviously defensive, military, sport, and food-harvesting applications are where guns shine... Guns are tools, some less mature people may not LIKE the jobs they’re good for, but that doesn’t make them any less tools."

And for the curious here's my comment on Weer'd's where I explain my wiki-wander

Shorter Romney: The Fed's can't mandate you buy X or else but the States sure can.

Romney: “I am not going to walk away from that. It’s right for states to come up with their own solutions. I doubt other people are going try and follow the one we put together. Maybe learn from our experience. Maybe come up with something better. But the wrong course is to have the federal government impose its will on the entire nation.”

Get that? Statehouses and Governors can impose their will on the entire state, but somehow the same action is wrong for President and Congress to do for a nation. I wonder what size governmental organization is acceptable? Clearly Massachusetts is okay but what about a larger state? Or what about a smaller nation?

Well, Romney still clings to Romneycare being somehow "different" from Obamcare. Despite all evidence to the contrary.

Rule 34 & The Future of Gun Control

Small world, Roberta X just finished Stross' Rule 34

I did too a couple days ago, and that gave me the push to write my own thoughts on the book.

Roberta: "It's a sort of cyberdectective novel, but very different. And it's set in Scotland, so it might as well be on Ganymede..."

No kidding, the cyber-future version of the Scotland:
* Euro-philic (euros only please),
* Green-lovin'(not a dimplomat? then you can't have a car),
* Security state (the State watches everything you browse do and build can't have you making guns boyo),
* "Responsible" corporatism (Precrime has been brought to the corporate world with auditors pouring over companies that are "irresponsible" with their "corporate personhood". So don't even *think* about "immoral" layoffs or outsourcing. So corporations have to pledge their allegiance to the State? Huh, familiar.),
* Nationalized supermarkets (because they took out nearly every other shop in the nation and were deemed "too big to fail"),
* Totally disamred (having a gun is likened to having child porn)

Yeah, it's pretty alien.


Oh and while they have drug legalization, heroin smuggling is still very proffitable and making your own meth is quite illegal. Maybe the former is a revenuer situation and the latter is a safety situation. Or maybe the State doesn't want you having your own supply of "candy" and wants the State-Owned Tesco your only sorce.

Speaking of that Scotland is independent... sort of, but still depends on England for defense and is subsumed into the Greater European Union. Reading it I got an eerie feeling of those late 80's scifi authors who talked about the USSR.


Reading it, I thought it was an okay book, a bit too "by the numbers" for Stross: too similar to its predecessor "Halting State". Then the ending came and it all clicked. And his choices of narrative strcuture and perspective became abundantly clear. I still think the ending was rushed in execution and rather unpolishsed though, but all in all it was a fun book.


On the other hand, it shows how a hyper gun control state could exist in a world where 3D printers are ubiquitous. For one metal fabrication is a rare thing in that world, two your raw materials are tracked by the goverment (yes plastic pellets are a controled substance), three there's a near constant surveillance state so if you try to use whatever you've fabbed you'll be spotted.


Meanwhile in the US it seems that gun control didn't happen but a 90% top marginal tax rate did. With the expected wealth flight. Amusingly, Stross says that the mass US debt was all due to US imperialism and military spending, and glosses over the debts and resultant taxation European nations would have incurred.

Oh yes, and Scotland still has functional single-payer healthcare. Which is all a piece of the same perspective that felt that all the economic woes were caused purely by greedy irresponsible corporations.

And this really made me chuckle sadly: In one scene two detectives run into a perp on the stairs and they're reduced to trying "good old fisticuffs" against him. Needless to say the perp just womps 'em with a suitcase. That's a pretty good example of how mass disarmament makes bullies into kings.

What makes it more chilling is another character who was afraid of the perp came to one of the cops for protection and stayed with her for a bit. So... if the perp had attacked them... what exactly would the cop have done?

There's also the higher education bubble popping. Where a previously mentioned cop, mid level police inspector, still can't pay off her student loans.

And of course, in the back story there's a paranoid American family that lives out in Nevada on a compound with a bunker. And the father of the family is "a man of faith" with this as his "bible" The End of America: How the Federal Government, the IRS and the Insurance Industry plan to use the UN to Destroy America, and how you can resist.

And that made me really laugh. Given Stross had painted a weakened, impoverished US with hideously high taxes, massive regulation, a fishbowl panopticon. And a Scotland with much the same, save for even more surveillance, no personal car ownership, no guns, company loyalty inspections, and, oh yes, government controlled food distribution.

Yeah... kinda makes a book with a title like that seem pretty sensible.

Still was a fun book, but you may have to put it down every once in a while and shake your head at the dystopia painted within. Not that it's not too far from the current UK.

The bad old days.

Tam looks at how far the Second Amendment Rights movement has come in the last couple decades.

If you had showed up in that gun store of 1995 and told everybody that you were a time traveler from a 2011 where the AWB had sunset; 'Vermont-style' carry was now 'Vermont/Alaska/Arizona/Wyoming-style'; the House of Representatives had just passed, by a hefty margin, a national CCW reciprocity bill; there was a shooting-based game show on prime-time national TV; and you could buy a collapsible-stock AR carbine with a bayonet lug in Wal-Mart, the people in the gun shop would have laughed in your face and told you to stop telling tall tales. And not about the 'time travel' part, either, because that was plausible by comparison.

This was all a bit before my time. I grew up in Jersey but my parents were gunnies so that helped. By the time I was old enough to really "get" the headaches of gun laws in NJ we had moved to Upstate New York. And yes, they both had carry permits up there, and a "pre ban" AR15. Again I liked guns but was too young and too poor to have my own.

Then I moved to Indiana and started buying my own stuff, and it was night and day.
And given my westward move this line from Tam is a bit chilling.


And Joe Huffman looks at how bad it was back in the day.

And it is a big sign the progress that has been made.


But go back to Joe's post, those politicians who endorsed for full confiscation and British style gun control are still around. And they have the same goals.

Just look at Sebastian's live blogging on yesterday's HR822 National Reciprocity debate in congress. Same lies, same insanity, much of the same face.

The big difference is how much further they have to move, and that the Bradys are on the downfall and Nanny Bloomberg is on the upswing.

Gee... maybe you should have READ that bill before passing it.

Turns out Obamacare(aka PPACA) has yet another flaw... and this one's a biggie.

Under ObamaCare, the IRS becomes the arbiter of health-insurance acceptability. Now Barack Obama needs the IRS to rescue ObamaCare entirely, thanks to a massive legislative defect that the President has no hope of rectifying in the new Congress. Thanks to sloppy legislative work, the PPACA’s subsidies to taxpayers won’t apply in states that refuse to create exchanges — which means that the states have a clear mechanism to block ObamaCare’s implementation.

Whoopsie? Talk about passing the bill to find out what's in it.

You can guess the "solution" the admin wants. Just have the IRS "fix" the law. We're seeing a pretty good example of "Living Constitution" logic at work here. The law as written is a massive boondoggle that's shot itself in the foot? Never-fear, we'll just pretend that we passed the bill we wanted to pass.

Unfortunately for Obama, federal agencies can create rules — but they cannot amend statutes. Neither can executive orders. If the statute does not authorize premium assistance in federal exchanges, then it would require an act of Congress to amend the statute to allow it.

Though again, the administration might see this failure as a feature not a bug, and use it to force states to comply. Isn't that nice?

Ace has similar thoughts

Click on the link to read (or re-read) Obama's attempt to legislate as president-- the IRS is claiming it can, on its own power, re-write the law.

Time was we used to think laws had to be passed by Congress. Under Obama, not so much.

And people were worried that Obamacare would make healthcare more like the DMV. Turns out it'll be the IRS.

Alex Wagner and friends Sad Pandas

Ahh, what better way to start a new show on MSNBC with a new host than by decrying US gun culture while singing the praises of the enlightened British.


Alex Wagner: "Gun violence increases and yet people still believe handgun bans are bad. What's the logic there?"

Ahhh. Well firstly, that said violence is increasing is factually wrong. Secondly, it's "Gun Death" all over again. The idea that certain crimes are especially bad because of the tool used. And finally, there's magical thinking, that the item is at fault here.


Via: Alphecca


Though topping it all off is this lovely sentiment by a co-panelist.

For his part, panelist John Heilemann theorized that a drop in violent crime has made "gun violence" largely "theoretical" to most Americans.

"The urgency around it is leached out because of the fact that there's actually, in a paradoxical way, a very big good news story that's happened with respect to crime in America," Heilemann added

So not only does this directly contradict Wagner's initial claims, but it shows how the Anti's think. They're sad that more Americans aren't hurt by violent criminals.

A Tale of 2 Kahr PM45's

For me the hardest part of acquiring Kahr's sub-compact 45 was buying one of the dang things. At the time they were in short supply. However, once I found one at a gun shop I was able to make the purchase, clear NCIS and take it home immediately. That's how it works in Indiana and the bulk of the US

Let's compare Indiana, and the bulk of the US, to Massachusetts.

Here's Weer'd and The Story of Eleanor. Same gun, different states.

Let's look at some real loopholes:

Now for those who don’t know we have a bullshit system here in Mass where guns first need to be approved for “Safety”. BTW some well-known guns that are “Unsafe” for Massachusetts are everything in the Glock line, as well as all handguns made by Springfield Armory or Colt. Now Colt and Springer just didn’t want to play with the Attorney General’s stupid games and never submitted a single unit for testing. Companies like Kahr and Glock submitted EVERYTHING they had (this was destructive testing and likely cost millions), the guns passed the safety tests…but the AG decided in his infinite wisdom that the guns were still “Unsafe” and couldn’t be sold.

Ok so how does one get around this. First the law ONLY effects FFL transfers, so you can privately sell these guns all you want. (well we’re allowed 4 sales per year) There is one exception, is an FFL can transfer guns that are given to you through a will estate. I didn’t feel like asking one of my friends or relatives to buy one and then die…I like the gun but not that much, I needed to look at the other options. One way is to have an officer buy a gun (cops are exempted from all our bullshit laws) and then sell the gun to you. There are several cops in the state that run a racket like that. The other is to get somebody to move into state, get their LTC and then sell it.

Get that? Whole product lines from major companies are "banned", but only for the proles. If you're police, well, not only can you buy them but you can sell them. Oh, and if you happen to move to Mass and then are deemed worthy of a licencee to posses... then you can pick up your guns and sell them.

Clearly, safety is at the forefront of the Attorney General's mind here.

And by the way... both guns (in fact all of Karh's guns) were made in Worcester... Massachusetts.

Safe enough to make (and tax) in Mass, safe enough for the police to own, safe enough for the police to sell, safe enough to bring into the state... but not safe enough to for the commoner to buy.

This is what the Anti's think of as Common Sense.

Eleven/Eleven

Today is a day to honor all veterans but it is for a specific war and a specific event.

It's Armistice Day. The day the guns fell silent.[1] And no matter how much Congress or your Social Studies teacher wants to retcon it to a safely generic holiday for "Veterans," that is why this day falls on this date. The Brits, somewhat more felicitously, call it "Remembrance Day," and it should indeed be that.

You can't express your gratitude to the men who fought the first mechanized war. Even the ones who were not ground in the gears are gone now; all that's left are scars on the landscape [2], redrawn maps that were scribbled over again a generation later, histories, monuments.

Roberta then tells you what you can do.

Tam has more thoughts.

So go an thank a Veteran for the sacrifices they have endured, even if they will demure and be humble.


Even if they'll be laconic.

Make the offer to take one to lunch(as Jay G suggests) or by a drink. Or donate your time or money to a cause.

It is good to know that there are sill men and women that actually take their jobs as a public service and will sacrifice and endure to ensure the liberty for the rest of us.

So, thank the real public servants.

And back to JayG for a bit of gun porn and a great salutation
Thank you, veterans - may you all have as long a tenure as the 1911!

I told you so.

So Bill Clinton wants a repeal of the 22nd Amendment.

Lovely.

Well he's a bit behind the curve. Rep. José Serrano wanted this before Obama was even sworn in.

Well, at least Obama doesn't want to be president-for-life.

A good Cause.

Going into Veteran's day there's a lot of things you can donate too and support.

I'll at another one. Bring Chuck Home.

Raising funds to bring a soldier's adopted dog back home from Afghanistan.

Just as planned.

You know... this is making it real hard to see Fast and Furious as anything other than an excuse for more gun control.

And isn't that a classic example of flogging the peasants because the princes were bad.

Agents of the State illegally ship weapons to Mexico and the Democrats demand that private citizens need tighter regulation. Yeah... sounds like the antis all right.

What kind of movement needs anti-rape shelters?

OWS needs women only tents to keep down on the rape and sexual abuse.

Classy.

The large, metal-framed “safety tent” — which will be guarded by an all-female patrol — can accommodate as many as 18 people and will be used during the day for women-only meetings, said Occupy Wall Street organizers.

Talk about rebuilding from day one. They've got the basic tenants of state-sanctioned force and the risk of harriers and bandits absconding and abusing women.

Soon they'll discover agriculture.

Also this is in New York City where legal ownership of self defense tools (from handguns to even tasers and such) is only for agents of the state and the very highest of the elite.

But why would someone need a tool that can inflict massive pain and physical damage no mater the physique of the user?

Allahpundit stresses the seriousness.

Let it sink in: Their protests now need rape shelters. This is actually happening. And New York City lets it go on.

...

This can’t be repeated enough: With a few exceptions, foremost among them the New York Post, the coverage of OWS protests compared to the coverage of tea-party protests is the worst media double standard in recent history. Nothing compares, because nothing else involves this much distortion on both ends of the coverage. It’s not just that most press outlets (like the protesters themselves) look the other way at depravity happening inside Obamaville, it’s that for years they treated the tea-party movement as some sort of feral mob that was forever on the brink of rampaging through the streets — like, say, Occupy Oakland just did. If you missed it when I posted it last week, go watch the ad the DNC ran in August 2009 when tea partiers first started showing up to town halls on ObamaCare. That set the tone. We began the year with tea-party pols being smeared as killers over a shooting they had nothing to do with and we end it with actual rapes being shrugged off by the press because they’re bad PR for a movement they support. Disgrace.

Remember this next time you hear the media click their tongues over a protest they don't like or when they gush over one they do like.

Via Insty.

This time, this TIME! It'll work!

Totalitarian Hope Springs Eternal

This compilation of old hippies pining for revolution amongst college kids who simply don’t want to make their own way is the unsurprising result of liberalism in America today. This is what happens when children are fed faux lessons in self esteem and tolerance from broken family systems and then taught in school that the theory of communism is noble, if only the implementation could be mastered. American students are engulfed in a sea of liberalism from kindergarten through university, often void of any opposing views and without prompting to study the historical precedent and common sense consequences of the ideology with which they’re being indoctrinated.

Well, surely these folks ccan master the implementation.

Nope, not so much

In a hilariously idiotic display of irony, Occupy Wall Street is experiencing firsthand the failure of the system they are clamoring for. They squabbled over how to properly distribute the over half a million dollars in donations they received. Some people felt they deserved more because they were doing more activist work, versus those who spent their occupying days playing drum circles or doing, well, nothing. What's incredible is that the same people arguing over how to redistribute the wealth given them are pushing for a complete American system of wealth redistribution. They see no correlation between their own inability to "fairly" distribute money and that government mandated wealth distribution would just assuredly fail as well, but on a massive, nation-shaking economic scale.

Clearly, the problem is that they don't have enough power to enforce their ideas.

Via: The Morning Jolt and Ace


Hey, remember when the Tea Partiers went around breaking into buildings to vandalise them and had to be scared off by armed property owners?

Nanny Bloomberg's "Cheap" Date

Indy Mayoral candidate Melina Kennedy doesn't seem to realize the limitations of her office.

Two big planks of her platform are "fixing the schools" and controlling those evil guns.
Problem is that Indianapolis schools are not under the control of the Mayor.
And neither is gun laws, since Indiana passed a state level preemption law banning any locality from making their own laws.

But that hasn't stopped Melina Kennedy!

Now she's attacking the incumbent Ballard for... not being in Mayors Against Illegal Guns!

Yes how dare he not be in an organization with a membership more likely to commit crime than the population at large, which is involved in illegal "sting" operations, and is really Mayor Bloomberg's gun control mouth piece.

And by pure coincidence guess who got 25 large from Bloomberg just before she started this new line of attack.

Classy.

Hat tip to Roberta and Tam

More Magic!

Eugene Kane frets about Wisconsin joining the bulk of America.


Sebastian at his new digs at Shall Not be Questioned looks at the fear:

I also wonder why Eugene Kane is so fearful of his fellow citizens and co-workers. Do you think as soon as you put a gun in someone’s hands they magically turn into murderers? Are people in Minnesota, which has a lower violent crime rate than Wisconsin, less safe because they have allowed shall-issue carry permits for years? What about Iowa, who’s violent crime rate is roughly the same as Wisconsin and also has shall-issue carry?

He's brimming with fear of all those proles being able to legally carry concealed now (nevermind that they could have illegally carried concealed or legally open carried previously...)

But then it gets silly:

Thankfully, the “No Weapons Allowed in the Building” sign has been posted at my job, which was a great relief for some of us who write the kind of stories that occasionally get the public agitated.

Seriously? He actually thinks that a sign would stop someone intent on harm? How?
In what world would a person who is willing to risk a murder rap be unwilling to risk an armed trespass charge?

Maybe the world of magic.

I guess it's a good thing these guys didn't use guns to destroy the french magazine Charlie Hebdo's offices.

I'm seeing the publication equivalent of Wee'rd "Gun Death" series.

Though Time's taking a novel approach on that story.

Time Magazine Writer: That French Magazine knew what it was doing tarting itself up with that short skirt, high heels, and walking past those men. She knew they couldn't control themselves.

Ace looks into the original headline of the article.

Like I said, the web-based headline -- that continues in the URL -- is:

firebombed-french-paper-a-victim-of-islamistsor-its-own-obnoxious-islamophobia/

So the original headline was: "Firebombed French Paper: A Victim of Islam, Or Its Own Obnoxious Islamaphobia?"

And we'll round out by going back to Wee'rd on the antis. They want you less free, less informed, and less able to defend yourself. But they're all about empowering criminals. Because it's not their fault they did bad things.

Because it's Halloween: Kittens and Pumpkins

Okay, so they're a bit big.

Lunch and a Book

Today's errands took me to Broadripple and I stopped by Boogie Burger for lunch.

The place is a bit twee (I can only imagine what it was like at it's old location), but the food is quite, quite good. Worth the price (which is quite modest) and the wait (which was short).

Tam is right, the place was full and the burgers are that good.

If you want some burgers, fries, or shakes, that's the place.

While there I read some more of Larry Correia's Hard Magic. I wasn't too keen on Monster Hunter, mostly because I found the characters a bit flat and the villains motivations meh. There was also the tacked on romance that required some headbangingly questionable moves on the part of a woman who just had her soft-of-but-not-yet exboyfriend kidnapped.

However, Hard Magic has deeper characterization overall, and enough gun-porn and historical fanboy squee to make it quite fun to read.

Not Science.

When you have to constantly "recalibrate" your model to get it to predict existing behavior you're not doing science or even understanding the underlying mechanism of the phenomena you're tyring to model. No, you're simply engaging in the type of thinking that if you make the bamboo plane a little bit bigger it'll attract John Frum and his silver eagles.

Poor modeling, it's not just for Global Warming anymore.

The problem, of course, is that while these different versions of the model might all match the historical data, they would in general generate different predictions going forward--and sure enough, his calibrated model produced terrible predictions compared to the "reality" originally generated by the perfect model. Calibration--a standard procedure used by all modelers in all fields, including finance--had rendered a perfect model seriously flawed. Though taken aback, he continued his study, and found that having even tiny flaws in the model or the historical data made the situation far worse. "As far as I can tell, you'd have exactly the same situation with any model that has to be calibrated," says Carter.

That financial models are plagued by calibration problems is no surprise to Wilmott--he notes that it has become routine for modelers in finance to simply keep recalibrating their models over and over again as the models continue to turn out bad predictions. "When you have to keep recalibrating a model, something is wrong with it," he says. "If you had to readjust the constant in Newton's law of gravity every time you got out of bed in the morning in order for it to agree with your scale, it wouldn't be much of a law But in finance they just keep on recalibrating and pretending that the models work."

And why yes, these are the exact same models that the political class uses to justify how they can run all the businesses in a country better than those that actually own and work in said companies.

Well, they use these models when they're not guided by their keen sense of social justice.

Via the Instapundit.

Update: Oh and also from Prof. Reynolds is this little article. For liberals, income inequality is the new global warming.

Well, Science says we have to do what our political masters tell us to.

We're protesting how the wealthy hurt the downtrodden... but first we'll kick these mooching hobos outta the camp.

Via Weer'd, DaddyBear has a great rant on the lack of perspective many have:

My point is that I'm tired of hearing people whine. If I had the power, I'd take each and every one of these class-baiting twits to the real world and let them see what poverty really looks like. I'd show them people who come from huts made out of garbage who are working their tails off to get out of that hut. I'd show them women who have to carry weapons every day, not so they don't have their purse stolen, but so that they're not kidnapped and raped. I'd show them graveyards full of the people who tried to make things better, but were rewarded with a bullet in the head for their trouble.

Then I'd show them the poorest of the poor here in America, a place that gives away free food, shelter, clothing, education, medical help, and just about anything else a person needs in order to not only stay alive, but to thrive and become a producing member of society if they would only care enough to do it.

Then, I would dare them to try to say that even the 'poor' in America aren't doing pretty good. I'd dare them to show me the thousands of children who are dieing of diseases that can be cured with a dollar's worth of medicine. I'd dare them to show me the millions of children who aren't going to school because they have to work as hard as an adult to stay alive. I'd dare them to show me the graves of the people who die from mal-nourishment in America.

Then I'd laugh in their face as they try to come up with examples, because there aren't any. Generations of Americans have bled into our soil so that these problems stayed away, and we continue to do so now.

If we don't wake up, we are going to lose the ethics of hard work, self-reliance, and ingenuity that have been all that has kept us from sliding back into the morasse that our fore-fathers sailed across oceans to get away from. Our ancestors didn't come over in steerage or worse so that their grandchildren could demand that others take care of them, and they would be ashamed if they saw how this movement is acting.

Read the rest.

This fits with Ace's post talking about how the "99%ers" and "Occupiers" are dealing with the less fortunate right here in America.

Here's the opener:

The Occupy Wall Street volunteer kitchen staff launched a “counter” revolution yesterday -- because they’re angry about working 18-hour days to provide food for “professional homeless” people and ex-cons masquerading as protesters.

Yeah, what right do the homeless and prisoners have to represent themselves as society's downtrodden. Impostors! They're not oppressed like the college graduates with too much debt from pricey private colleges!

...

Amazing... they don't want to share their own stuff with people they don't have any particular common bonds with. And they're resentful of Other people coming in and acting like they have the right to take their stuff.

Hilariously, they're also getting angry that these "derelicts" are trespassing on their encampments. My, more property rights? Well they've also started setting up their own security and police. It's like a little hothouse primative society. Emphasis on hothouse, because it only exists due to the warm bubble being provided by external forces.

So there you go, they scream and demand that someone else pay for their mistakes and pay to keep them in a lifestyle they think they deserve, but when someone from the "outside" comes to take what they've got?

Such generous and open-minded people. No wonder they feel that charity is only moral if it's forced at gunpoint.

Real Progress (26%)

Twenty years makes a big difference. Record low, just 26% favor a ban of handguns in the US. Overall support for Gun Control is down... everywhere and in every segment of the population.

If you think that’s dramatic, take a look at what happened to the demographics on this question. Guess which demos saw the biggest drop in support for stricter gun-control laws? If you guessed the Midwest, well, score a point for you; support in the heartland dropped 35 points, from 72% in 1991 to 37%. Midwesterners used to be the second-most supportive of gun control by region but now are the most opposed, even beating the South at 40%. Aaaaaaaand if you guessed Republicans, score another point. Two-thirds of Republicans in 1991 wanted more gun control, but it’s down to 31% today. Independents dropped nearly as much, from 65% to 38%.

In fact, only four demographics show a majority still favoring gun control: women (50%, down 26 points), the East (54%, down 23 points), those with no guns in the household (57%, down 21 points), and … Democrats, down just 10 points to 64%. That may not seem like much, but that’s still slightly lower than Republicans in 1991

This dovetails with the increasing number of Shall Issue and Constitutional Carry States.

Plus a bonus video at the end that is equal parts hilarious and cautionary.

The overall trend from 1959 is also very encouraging, but care has to be taken. Nothing is irreversible. Heaven forbid that this is all undone in the next twenty years.

That being said, we are winning, and we are winning by pushing back ignorance and because the truth and natural rights are on our side. More and more people are exposed to handguns to "evil black rifles" to people lawfully carrying sidearms.

And against this the Anti's become more shrill and idiotic and dated.

That's not to say that there haven't been setbacks or there isn't a lot of work to go.

For example, Weer'd talks about a proposed National CCW reciprocity bill and shows just how corrupt and illogical May issue is.

But as a Massachusetts resident I’ve seen what HR 822 will do first hand. First give a quick skim of this list, when I first moved here I lived in Medford Massachusetts where they do not issue carry permits to anybody who isn’t politically connected. Period, full stop. Unless you can hurt the chief of police politically, your rights don’t exist.

Now fast forward to today, I live in one of them “Green” towns where the permits are “Shall Issue” (BTW this is how “May Issue” states work anyway. Its not like my character changed, simply the town will issue you a permit, or it won’t there is no “Discretion” involved), Now I can carry EVERYWHERE in the state. I can, and regularly DO carry in Boston, I carry in Cambridge, I carry in my old neighborhood of Medford. You see while the permits are issued by the town police, the permit is a STATE document. Meaning if its good in my town, its good in every Massachusetts town.

Lovely ain't it?