What are the odds?

Unc looks at the actions the gun grabbers are trying to take.

"Because ATF allowed guns to be smuggled into Mexico and those guns were later used in murders and showed up at crime scenes in US neighborhoods, we clearly need to pass more gun laws. You know, to better equip law enforcement to combat this sort of thing. Why, it’s almost like it went exactly according to ATF’s plan.

And more on the parade of fellow travelers and useful idiots
exploiting the sitution.

Because nothing says Give Agency X more power than a congresional hearing on Agency X's hidiously moronic and rather evil actions.

More on the same subject from Ace of Spades.

DoJ: Fast & Furious Was Definitely Not About Creating A Pretext For
Increasing Gun Control
Elijah Cummings: Hey, Let's Expand Fast & Furious To Consider
Increasing Gun Control

And and example of the "weapon effect" at work.

Speaking of what motivates the gun grabbers, Jay G wonders why they do it, given what they have to know.

And it kicked over something I've thought about, off and on, for nearly 15 years now. The anti-gun people know. They know there won't be "blood in the streets" or people shot over parking lot disputes as a result of concealed carry. The past 25 years of evidence states otherwise. They know that allowing people to carry concealed firearms into bars and restaurants that serve alcohol will not lead to drunken shootings; many states do not have such restrictions and have no such incidents.

They know that posting a sign on a door is not going to stop a lunatic from shooting the place up just as surely as they know that a woman getting a piece of paper against an estranged lover will not keep her safe. Police logs and news reports are filled with incidents of violence; yet they claim we don't need to carry weapons. "That's what the police are for" even though they know that the police are under no obligation to protect anyone.

There's plenty more evidence.
His conclusion?

Is it that they view an individual with a permit to carry as a threat to the monopoly of force they would prefer the state enjoy? It explains their opposition to concealed carry as well as the idea behind so-called "assault weapons" bans - and the current state of heavily regulated and slowly dwindling supply of machine guns. They want the state to be the only entity that can employ force - their reasons for this are known only to themselves, but there can be no good outcome when only the agents of the state have arms.

As Alan says, there's a term for countries where only the police are armed: Police state.

Dirty, Smelly, Difficult and Short.

Dr. Roy Spencer and Bill Whittle team up to give a primer on the Global Warming scare.



Via Hot Air.


I knew that it hasn't warmed in the last 10 years, but it's always intersting when that "inconvenient fact" comes up. Like the Mideval Warm period or the Little Ice Age. Or that global warming models can't predict beans.


The vid even took Glen Reynold's theme of: "I’ll believe it’s a crisis when the people who keep telling me it’s a crisis start acting like it’s a crisis."

What really struck me was that environmentalism also has the seductive call of a "simpler life" back when things were "better".

It makes sense given the anti-development and progress initiative. I just never thought of it in that light before.

I'm reminded by this bit from Roger L. Simon on how stuborn the Democratic party is in the face of reality, namely that the government is out of money and their pet policies are unafordable.

So what’s the explanation? Why is it that, in these times, there is nothing less liberal than a “liberal,” less progressive than a “progressive”? Why do they and their party adhere to an ideology so shopworn and stultified — forget about tie-dyes and bell bottoms — they should all be running around in jodhpurs and crinolines?

Evil and Stupid.

So a bunch of young people are at a party. Robbers come in and steal their phones and money. Then the women are split off from the men, and the robbers start counting how much ammo they have. You can guess what the criminals were planning.

Thankfully one of the victims, a Marine named Barner, was able to get to his gun and save the lives of his friends.

Robb Allen has some thoughts and cuts right to the bone.

Having a gun will not prevent things like this from happening, it’s not a magical talisman that wards off danger, but it does give people a chance. The Brady Campaign, the VPC, and the Joyce Foundation would have preferred a room full of dead, raped people than allow Ensign Barner to carry a tool for self defense. And this is why I consider them evil.

And Weer'd Beard looks further into it.

This story has been very close to my heart because it covers so many gun rights issues. First these were college students….you know the ones who should never have guns, right? Second it was a massive assault where the robbers mentioned their plans to rape all the women, then execute the entire party. “Give them What they Want?” What if what they want is to rape you and then kill you and your friends?

He's also incensed that the story seems to be deliberately suppressed in the media. Yes, can't have examples showing that self defense might be a viable option. No better to bury that story and push for more empowerment of criminals.

If stories of self defense were reported well.. it'd make this chump's claims even easier to dismiss.

The move is being hailed as a major victory by those who believe concealed carry provides a much-needed safety net for law-abiding citizens who can now feel free to summon up their inner Clint Eastwood on demand to defend their loved ones.

Of course, that's a crock.

That's just the start of Eugene Kane's whine about Wisconsin's new CCW law.

Also via Robb: "Gotta love how the author dismisses the hundreds of thousands of successful self defense events each year as ‘a crock’."


James R. Rummel ran a charity where he would teach defensive firearm use to those victimized in crimes. He specialized in the disabled and elderly and was reminiscing in a recent post.

A disabled student found comfort in the lock I installed on the inside of her bathroom door. She would routinely take her gun in with her while using the facilities, carefully keeping it within reach while making an effort to keep it dry.

This level of concern was not surprising, considering that she had lost both legs below the knees. When her own home invasion took place she was completely helpless, and was determined that it was not to be like that the next time.

Consider that. If the gun banners had their way, that woman would have nothing. Like Robb said before, the Brady Campaign, the VPC, the Joyce Foundation and their fellow travelers would rather an elderly woman be rendered defenseless than let her have a firearm.

Weer'd also looks closer to home at aspecial kind of stupid coming out of Boston.

Boston Mayor Thomas Menino is calling for a ban on motorized dirt bikes in the city, partly in response to a shooting in a Dorchester playground that wounded a four-year-old boy.

It's natural that they'd blame the tool and not the person isn't it?

The Dorchester neighborhood of Boston is totally in the grips of the gangs, and most of the murders go unsolved because witnesses refuse to come forward because they and their families will be killed by the gangs for “Snitching”.

So we have what are likely underage gang members with illegally acquired guns, in a state that requires a permit and training to own a gun, registers all guns, demands background checks on all sales, and has a “Safety Roster” that restricts the sale of many types of handguns.

And the solution is to ban mopeds.

Well, they already banned "assault weapons".

And also from Mass, Jay G looks at the scams that universities are coming up with to keep their magical "No guns allowed" force fields up. He's.. not inspired by the level of thought coming from academia.

At the shibboleth that 18- to 24-year-olds are stupid with booze and get all heated up by "the teaching".

This line of "reasoning" is so flawed I don't even know where to start. First off, you dolts, those immature and irrational 18-24 year olds that "make poor choices" CAN ALREADY OWN GUNS. By your own admission, they make bad choices, right? Do these imbeciles actually think that having a "No Guns Allowed" policy is going to stop some drunk 20 year old from walking on campus with a firearm? I'm frightened that they might just be thinking that...

Not to mention that drinking is already illegal if you're under 21. How's that ban working out? Also the idea that college students would shoot each other over "heated discussions" is just the ivory tower version of the old "shootouts over parking spaces" nonsense.

Jay just shakes his head at the whole stupidity.

One wonders, then, how someone allegedly so educated - we're talking college-level administrators and such - can be so close-minded and willfully ignorant of the facts. School shootings are extremely rare to begin with - but assaults, robberies, and rapes, sadly, are not. The number of illegal shootings committed by concealed weapons permit holders are miniscule, yet these are the very people against whom these laws are written.

Again they're either morons for believing this or they're evil for deliberately victimizing people or both.

And this is all coming from people who teach and think for a living!

Magical Thinking.

I knew of “the weapons effect" in Gun Control thinking, but I didn't know the actual term or how they justified it.


Interesting stuff from Volokh.

Today’s Supreme Court decision in Brown v. EMA casts doubt on one of the shibboleths of gun prohibition.

Since the 1960s, some social scientists have been attempting to prove that guns cause violence. They do not make this claim in the straightforward sense that guns, as tools, can be used for malign purposes–for example, that a criminal with a gun might attempt a robbery which would he would consider too risky if he did not have a gun. Rather, the claim is that the presence of makes ordinary people more aggressive, anti-social and violent. Thus, as one study put it, “the trigger pulls the finger.” The hypothesis is known as “the weapons effect.”

Over the subsequent decades, researchers tried, with little success, to replicate experiments proving a weapons effect. To the limited extent that any effects could be found, they tended to be confined to subjects with no prior experience with firearms, and they never succeeded in finding any actual resulting violence. Instead, they found, at most, trivial results, such as how some subjects reacted to various words after being prompted with gun imagery.

Not only is it magical thinking, but it's the infantalization of the public. The "theory" explicitly states that average citizens become dangerous when exposed not just to the physical weapons but their images and names.

Thus the thinking that to protect the public the State has to ban possession on the weapons out of fear of contamination. This also leaves open the door to even ban images and words that could cause giant, confused mobs of angry proles.

There's also how amazingly bad the experiments were to justify this theory. They would flash pairs of words and images and measure the responses and get the conclusion of well...

The researchers found that after exposure to plant pictures subjects were 0.005 seconds faster at naming aggressive target words compared to non-aggressive words. However, after exposure to weapon pictures, subject reaction time decreased, and subjects were 0.011 seconds faster at naming aggressive target words compared to non-aggressive words. . . .

Science does not work that way. The error bars alone...

And from that they reached this conclusion

The authors concluded: “These two experiments demonstrate that simply identifying weapons increases the accessibility of aggressive thoughts . . . that thinking about weapons increases accessibility of aggressive concepts in general....

That's some real quackery right there. Phrenologists had more rigor.

And despite Brown v. EMA being about videogames there's more at stake.

The studies on video games have led, at worst, to some minors being unconstitutionally deprived of video games. In contrast, the “weapons effect” has become an article of faith among many anti-gun advocates, who are convinced that guns turn peaceable people into dangerous aggressors. Many anti-gun laws have been enacted in part because of this wrongful idea, and some of those laws have deprived the victims of violent crimes from having the means of effective self-defense. Indeed, continuing belief in the non-existent weapons effect is a major reason why nine states still deny law-abiding trained adults the constitutional right to carry licensed firearms for lawful protection in public places."

Beleif in fantasies has real world costs.
And then there's this comment:

Only private citizens are vulnerable to the “weapons effect” (?)A government badge or ID Card bestows full immunity to this supposed
human malady.

Maybe it doesn't. Maybe they're okay with the "Only Ones" becoming twisted by the "weapon effect."

The Sanctity of the State

I didn't realize the State was there to keep us from Over-Indulging. National Review Online's David French gets a bit... tweaked.

In a way, it was far more discouraging to see the New York legislature pass a gay-marriage bill than it was to see the now-familiar rogue judicial declarations, like those in Massachusetts, California, and Iowa. While constitutionally preferable to judicial imposition, New York’s statute is far more culturally distressing, a symbol not of a judicial overreach but of a more fundamental cultural change. The democratic process (yes, I know there was horse-trading and money involved) worked, and the elected legislature of New York performed its constitutional function. And in so doing, they struck yet another blow for self-indulgence and for adult-focused self-actualization.

Gay marriage is the child of no-fault divorce, which was itself born of the sexual revolution. In a time when the hard-earned experience of two full generations of sexual experimentation have taught us unequivocally that the two-parent, mother-father household is our nation’s best bulwark against abuse, poverty, addiction, and criminality, we should be moving away from the notion that our culture and our lives are best-served by legally protecting sexual experimentation and tinkering with the institution of marriage. Instead, we have scrutinized the cultural toll and said, “More, please.” After all, the heart wants what it wants, and we shouldn’t be unfair in doling out the sexual goodies.

Note while many against gay marriage take some measure in solace in the fact that this passed through legitimate legislative means instead of judicial fiat. French thinks that makes it worse.

Do I even have to point out his "Won't somebody think of the children!" cry? Let's presume that a "cultural toll" of "abuse, poverty, addiction, and criminality" will result from gay marriage.

I did not realize it was the role of the State was to restrict the freedoms of consenting adults in the name of the "greater good". Can one see the slippery slope French is going to? He already bemoans no-fault divorce and single parenthood.

Would he wish it illegal to have a child if you are unmarried? The statics would show children of single parents are at greater risk of all the things he worries about.

That's the real tell. Having a child out of wed-lock, and divorcing your spouse are big no-nos for many churches. But they are legal actions. By comparing gay marriage to activities that are legal (if "immoral") and French lets the cat out of the bag.

Another question: is being raised by a gay parent is some sort of double whammy? Because then you have the gay factor and the single parent factor. Maybe one should make it so any gay that wants to raise a child has to be in a monogamous government-approved relationship. That way they only have the gay factor and not the single-parent factor.

After all, if we're governing by actuary tables why shouldn't we craft the law into something that yields the "best" results? It's not like government has any other purpose or limits to its power.

Heck, if his real problem is with the children, why not allow gay marriage but ban gay adoption and lesbian pregnancy. That way the defective gay parenting can't infect the next generation.

Here we see the natural instinct of many right and left to look to the government to "fix" things, to look to the government to regulate social justice.

It's times like this when the big government wing of the Right rears up and becomes obvious. The sad part is that the Left is still outpacing them in the vast controls of their paternalistic governance.

Is Mr. French a fan of the White House's good eating "guides"? Or how about Mayor Bloomberg's crusade to eliminate smoking and fatty foods?

Here's a related quote from Bloomberg himself

Government should not tell you what to do unless there’s a compelling public purpose.

Note that, a compelling public purpose is sufficient to intrude onto your life.

Technically, I am against gay marriage. It's for the same reason I am technically against straight marriage.

I find the idea of going to the government for approval on your spouse to be superfluous at best, creepy at worst. Why should matters of love and long term companionship depend on meeting the demands of the state?

It's also interesting that the effort in New York needed votes and financial support from several prominent members of the GOP party and caucus.

Personally, I think the government should butt out of marriage entirely, but that ain't going to happen. But my idea would be to go for two separate things: marriage and civil unions.

You marry someone by whatever means you or your church (if applicable) deems necessary. That's it. Marriage is between you, your significant other(s), your god, and whoever else you want (family, friends).

Then there is a legal contract entirely separate that shares whatever sharing property rights, powers of attorney, medical decisions and the like. That you and your spouse agree to. If you want to get married congratulations you can! If you want to get married by the Ordained North Umbrian Rail Fan Society well that's between you and the Rail-Heads

But, you see, that doesn't get the government in your pants. Right now all US marriage is polygamous: you, your sig other, and the US Gov. And sad to say, most of the gay-marriage people seem happy with that third party. And as Mr. French shows a bunch of straight marriage proponents are also just fine with Daddy-State blessing

There's also other ugly tactics at work here. The Pro side has not done much to make itself... easy to sympathize with.

Zombie has more on the same nonsense. Link not safe for work, nudity, and extremely offensive to Christians, which was the point of San Francisco's Hunky Jesus event.

This double-standard (and similar double-standards — take your pick) is destroying our national soul. I demand equal rights for all — the right to mock the target of your choice. The gay community wants to mock Christianity? Fine. Go for it. But then you necessarily must be prepared to take it on the chin uncomplainingly when it’s time to turn the tables and you are on the receiving end of the mockery.

That's another issue French touches on. He couples the suppression and harassment of anti-gay marriage speech to the advancement of pro-gay marriage laws.

I can see where he is going, especially given the prior links showing duplicity and flagrant double standards, but the connection is hard. People against X are being oppressed by State Y is not a compelling reason to not enact X.

Consider an alternate world where anti-gun activists were being kicked out of college because they would not sign onto a pro-gun platform. Is that a reason to be against enacting shall-issue conceal carry laws?

Roberta X has related thoughts.

I find myself amused by the reaction to the state of New York recognizing gay marriage; while predictable, it's also instructive. Most people -- yes, even anarcho-capitalists and libertarians -- go with what they're comfortable with rather than what's Constitutional or logical.

Again... it's not exactly constitutional to say: "The government's role is to promote a certain kind of family unit."

Still it's not like New York is a a bastion of freedom.

Now, if New York would only put the same kind of effort into reforming their firearms law. hey, I know -- they could start with that "full faith and credence" clause and recognize my License To Carry Handgun the same way they'll recognize a the marriage of a gay couple from Iowa or New Hampshire.

Consider all the people that think armed self defense is morally bankrupt and should be made illegal.

Instapundit has a similar stance.

Well, We're halfway there: So now that New York will have happily-maried gay couples, can we get started on letting them have the closets full of assault rifles?

And here's Trifecta's view on it.

More along similar lines of consistency of principles and the importance of using the proper mechanisms. And they poke a bit of fun on the President for his consistency and principles.

And I'll note that Steven Green's "perfect world" pretty-much about my stance. Basically keeping the government's big clumsy hands out of this business.

Liberty means that people are free to do things that you think are stupid, wasteful, offensive, or immoral. There is a difference between thinking an action is immoral and thinking it should be illegal. Totalitarianism is using the force of the State to make people do things you don't want them to do. Provided it is not an actual injury to another's rights, it doesn't matter why you don't like what they're doing, you are using the power of the State to take away a person's liberty.

An aside, expanded on.

DrewM is talking about how the Washington Post blames the ATF's deliberate arming of narco terrorists with weapons that they forced gun shops to sell on the NRA and gun nuts.


You see... somehow a government agency abusing its power is the vault of the staunchest critics of said agency who are dedicated to reducing that agency's power.

I guess the Post thinks that if the ATF had more power it would somehow be less inclined to abuse it via antics that get American border agents killed and are basically acts of war.

But I'm more interested in this aside of Drew's:

(isn't interesting there are people who advocate against a recognized constitutional right?)

Yes, yes it is.

Also note that they very, very rarely advocate amending the constitution to achieve their goals.

Who are these people you might ask? ThirdPower has a primer.

Weer’d Beard also looks into just who these people are.

Quote of the Day: Early Edition

From today's Basic Instructions

-Making it more civilized isn't really helping.

-Not at all.

I have no problem killing for food, but I don't have a problem buying pre-killed meat either.

And the fish part is great too, if a bit longer to quote.

Why I don't see a robot uprising

Well at least by military robots.

Craked (yes going there again) has 6 Shocking Ways Robots Are Already Becoming Human


I'll just concentrate on #6 which deals with military robots.

One colonel ordered a minefield-clearing robot (it was programmed to walk through the field, set off a mine, lose a limb, then drag itself onward until the next explosion) to cease its duties because he couldn't stand watching it anymore. He considered the treatment of this robot ... "inhumane." More than one soldier was brought to tears when their beloved battle 'bot comrade was destroyed by an IED. But the first place award for BRFFs goes to a group of soldiers who, after acquiring some much needed down time, took their robot fishing with them -- because they felt the robot had earned a day off, too.

Remember that mine clearing robot? In an inversion of the standard trope. The robot's creator was the one coldly to watch the robot blow itself up bit by bit. It was the miltiary officer who had such empathy for the robot to stop the test.

From another of the articles linked in Cracked.

One EOD soldier brought in a robot for repairs with tears in his eyes and asked the repair shop if it could put "Scooby-Doo" back together. Despite being assured that he would get a new robot, the soldier remained inconsolable. He only wanted Scooby-Doo.

I remember this anecdote from a couple years ago. It was part of a larger piece on a "bot hospital" in Iraq. Where damaged robots would go to be repaired.

I can't find the article on the bot-hospital right now, but that bit on Scooby-Doo stuck with me.

And then this.

Sometimes such bonds led soldiers to risk their lives for their robots, in a strange inverse of the idea that robots would spare human lives. Singer recounted another EOD soldier who ran 164 feet under machine gun fire to retrieve a robot that had been knocked out of action. And several teams have given their robots promotions, Purple Heart awards for being wounded in combat, and even a military funeral.

Treating the robots as a comrade, as a brother in arms.

It makes sense. War is the most stressful thing, and here soldiers are working with the robots. They're going to develop emotional bonds to something they work with and has helped save their lives.

Well, at least the robots aren't developing bonds back. Oh wait... that's #3 on Cracked's list.

This is why I'm not as worried about military robots. Given they'll likely face the least alienation and prejudice from the soldiers they'll be working with.

Civilian robots on the other hand...

There's a reason I have the question mark after that tag

Oh reality, proving again that you can do things that would get shot down in even the most blatant satire.

Via Hell in a Handbasket

Stephen Griffiths is 40. He has never worked and has always lived at taxpayers’ expense. At 17, he was sentenced to three years’ imprisonment for cutting the throat (not fatally) of a supermarket security guard who tried to arrest him for shoplifting. In prison, doctors reported, Griffiths had a “preoccupation with murder—particularly multiple murder.” They diagnosed him as a violent psychopath; that is, he had an intractable personality development that made him likely to commit new violent offenses.

The doctors were right. Shortly after his release from prison, Griffiths committed more violent acts, including holding a knife to a woman’s throat, and wound up imprisoned once more. He was then sent from prison to Rampton, a high-security mental hospital; but again, the doctors diagnosed him as a psychopath for whom they could do nothing, and after two months they returned him to prison, from which he was soon—much too soon, as it turned out—released.

He remained violent toward women. He managed to convince a jury that he was innocent of the charge of pouring boiling water on, and badly burning, a sleeping girlfriend who had decided to leave him. Other girlfriends went to the police but were too terrified to testify in court, knowing that he would receive a short sentence at most. One girlfriend—whose legs he had cut with broken glass, whose nose he had broken, and whom he had knocked out—later told a reporter that he would attack her if she so much as looked at another man. When she left him, he hunted her down (despite court orders to stay away from her), slashed the tires of her car, and daubed the wall outside her apartment with the word “slag.” He was convicted of harassment in 2009.

Such was the man whom the University of Bradford selected to pursue a doctorate in homicide studies, a subdivision of the Department of Criminal Justice Studies, with fees and living expenses paid by the government. Though computer checks on the criminal records of prospective employees are now routine in Britain, and medical students are checked, applicants for doctorates in homicide studies apparently are not; or if they are, no notice is taken of what is found. Griffiths did not hide his propensities with any great cunning; why should he have bothered, in these nonjudgmental times of peace and tolerance toward all men? He kept hundreds of books about serial killers in his apartment, disclosed to his psychiatrists his intention to become a serial killer, and told girlfriends that he skinned and ate rats alive, adding that his ambition was to become even more notorious than the Yorkshire Ripper, a man who had killed 13 women in the 1970s. Nor did Griffiths hesitate to proclaim his oddity to the public; he used to take his pet lizards, which he also fed with live rats, for walks on a leash.

In 2009 and 2010, while pursuing his doctorate in the program, Griffiths killed and ate three women, two cooked and one raw, according to his own account. He later told the police that he had killed other women.

There's alot I could say:

*The UK's laws being such that a woman would not even be allowed to have pepper spray let alone a handgun.

*That this "man" lived off government money for his entire life.

*That the prisons and mental institutions were such revolving doors that they let him out, repeatedly, knowing he would cause more trouble.

*That the people around him saw such, clear, clear warning signs but it took CCTV footage of him murdering a person for him to be caught.

But.. really what takes it is this bit on how the media portrays the victims.

Assuming, then, that not everyone is driven to what he does by his own equivalent of drug addiction, the Guardian must assume that Wright’s and Griffiths’s victims were fundamentally different from you and me. Unlike us, they were not responsible for their actions; they did not make choices; they were not human in the fullest sense.

It helps to objectify the victim. It helps separate them from the rest of "good society". Because if serial killers and rapists and buglers could hit anyone... well that's scary.

Yes, certain activities will put you at greater risk of bad things happening, but there's nothing you can do to make you totally safe.

And the idea of safety being largely illusionary is frightening.

Nope. Better to look at it that "good people" don't get victimized.

Added: Similar thoughts from Jay G

Unless "be vigilant" is code for "put a Mossberg 500 under the counter", what they're setting up for is more compliant victims. What the hell good does "being vigilant" help when someone comes in with the intention of slaughtering everyone in the room? The pharmacist might have an eagle eye for details and everything, but that's not going to help if the perp starts firing when he walks in the door. The likelihood of an updated police patrol happening to be exactly where Donnie Druggie opens fire are vanishingly small.

Like it or not, you are your best line of defense - have, and carry about your person, the best tools for the job.

Reserve

Well, I'm sure Obama's plan to release part of the Strategic Petroleum is a measured and sober reaction to an unprecedented...

Heh. Can't keep a straight face on that.

Obama’s release from the SPR represents the largest single release in US history. The previous record was 21 million barrels, and was set by President George W. Bush in 2005 in response to the supply disruption when Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans. Obama’s release is not in response to a strategic threat or an actual disruption to US supplies, but to a political threat: High gas prices threaten his re-election. It’s amazing that it has taken this long for the president to figure that out.

Yeah, Obama considers saving his political butt a bigger crisis than Hurricane Katrina.

Now this link has some slightly different numbers for Katrina.

The oil reserve has only been tapped two other times in its 40 year history. The first was during Operation Desert Shield and Operation Desert Storm, the outbreak in the First Gulf War. The second was in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, 21 million barrels were released during the Gulf War. Following Katrina, 11 million barrels were withdrawn. Today’s draw down of 30 million barrels is fifty percent larger than our record wartime withdrawal.

The administration claims the release was required because of the daily loss of 1.5 million barrel of light, sweet high-quality crude oil from the fighting in Libya. However, hardly any of the Libyan crude ever makes it to the United States — it’s consumed mostly in Europe, specifically by Italy and France.

Further, the Libyan war is more than four months old. Except for an oil spike at the start of NATO bombing, the price of oil has been slowly dropping. Yesterday it settled to a nearly six month low of $95.

Again, Katrina, Gulf War 1... Reelecting Obama Libyan War Hostilities

And what does the Left think? Well they love it.

Raymond Learsy, writing in today’s Huffington Post, praised the president’s decision, congratulating him for releasing the oil to reduce prices at the pump. “He has stood idly by watching the price of oil rocket from $33/bbl in February 2009 to over $100/bbl these past weeks,” Learsy wrote. “Bravo Mr. President!”

Consider that: the Petroleum Strategic Reserve is exactly what its name implies.

It's a stockpile of fuel for emergencies, such as disruptions in distribution and supply due to things like war and natural disasters.

It's finite.

And here the leftists are applauding draining an emergency resource... to push down gas prices. When there is no temporary disaster.

It's a finite resource too. What ever happened to sustainability? What ever happened to the idea that increasing the oil supply wouldn't lower prices due to big oil greed? Isn't that why more domestic drilling won't lower prices at the pump?

What ever happened to consistency or basic logic?

Oh yes.

You know for a fact that if Bush did this the same people cheering Obama would be screaming bloody murder about squandering a critical reserve for cheap political points.

But hey, compared to the Stimulus this is small beer.

The Stimulus nearly doubled the deficit for, well, nothing.


And Steven Green has a reminder.

Remember, oil released from the SPR must eventually be replaced, driving demand higher than it was before. It might be possible to realize a profit — if China’s and India’s economies weaken and/or the dollar regains some strength. Anyone willing to take that end of the bet?

And Obama is going to release 30 million barrels out of a reserve of 727 million barrels.

So he can do this 24 more times. Huh... November '12 is 16 months away.
Naaaahhhh.

Some thoughts by Victor Davis Hanson.

Although we are not experiencing a Katrina-like disaster and although there is not an oil embargo, the Obama administration is releasing a sizable amount of oil from the nation’s strategic oil reserve. It may be an understandable move, but like the sudden decision to cut back troops in Afghanistan, it seems eerily to correspond to sinking polls
and reflects angst about the rapidly approaching election cycle.

But the move also raises interesting questions: Obama campaigned and governed on the dictum that increased drilling and supplies had no real effect on prices, hence his advice to inflate tires and “tune up” cars in lieu of more off-shore leasing, and his reluctance to grant exploration rights for shale, tar sands, gas, and oil in the West, Alaska, and the continental shelf. Is that theory now inoperative — or does releasing stored oil have some magical effect that new oil from the ground does not? Is there any sense that we would not have to release stored oil if we would instead look for new sources?

Then there is the seed-corn argument. This administration has a bad habit of consuming and redistributing without producing. We are borrowing trillions that our children must pay back. We are regulating and chastising companies rather than praising them for production. And now we will burn oil that we won’t explore for and which someone earlier bought and stored? Who will make up the millions of barrels withdrawn from the reserve, in case we see a real global war or natural disaster?

Lovely.

Today's Lesson

Via Freeman's Mind.
Which is what happens when someone adds an inner monolog to a silent protagonist.

Wisconsin

So we can add Wisconsin to the list of Shall Issue States.

Over a year ago wrote this post.

In it I ran the numbers, last year there were 40 shall issue or Constitutional Carry states that amounted to roughly 66.5% of the US.

Now it's 41 states and 68.3% of the population.

So that's something.

This leaves California, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, and DC,

That's a tough list. Illinois and DC are no issue, Hawaii, New Jersey, and Maryland are effectively no issue. For Massachusetts, California, and New York it depends on where you live and who you know. Some areas are basically no issue, unless you happen to be rich, famous, or a friend of the police.

Delaware has an arduous process but apparently if completed tends to issue. And Rhode Island has two provisions one is Shall Issue, the other is May. Guess which one they use?

These last 9 states (plus DC) will get tougher, but things are definitely moving forward.

Writing.

Seems I go back to the Cracked well quite often but Robert Brockway has How to Become an Author, in 5 Incredibly Difficult Steps

It's intersting stuff, and about what you'd expect if you had any experience with the process: Getting the Attention of a Publisher, Finding a Publishable Idea, Doing an Assload of Research, Editing and Editing and Editing ... and Collecting Your Shitty Money.

Note what's missing: Writing.

Because while that is a very hard part, making sure you have a publishable manuscript (research, editing, and writing) and some means of publishing is the real meat and potatoes.

Which is why in retrospect ideas like Nanowrimo are... limited at best. Yes, while getting 50,000 words in a month is useful... the quality is what counts, and unless you do a lot of legwork beforehand and afterwards you'll end up with a pile. Sure it's a big pile, but still a pile.

Say you have a flashback set in a tram in Vladivostok in the 80's: an IBM programmer in the laptop division and a soviet jet-age aviatrix ace are talking as they watch the sun set over the bay.

Just take a guess at all the things you'll have to research just to see if that one scene makes an once of sense.

I suppose a big tell is Nanowrimo's famous way to defeat writer's block: "When in doubt have a man with a gun step into the room." While apparently one of Raymond Chandler's tricks it's... yeah.

It's a pure brute force solution with the aim or producing words, regardless of the headaches such a move will have later on at the editing stage.

That's not to say that Nanowrimo isn't a potential tool to motivate. But... really a month? Novels tend to take a bit longer than that. Brockway's novel took nearly twenty times that long to write... And I'm pretty sure his book wasn't a million words long. Unless it was over three thousand words a page (hint the "standard" is about 250 words per page).

For writing: a month is a sprint a short story, while a novel is a marathon.

Now I don't mind having Nanowrimo once, but I cheated. I came up with an idea, defined the characters and the world, and then wrote about 20k words before the month even started. Then I wrote 50k in a month.

And I'm still poking at it and editing the results.

Personally, I'd rather adapt this bit of advice from Gabe of Penny Arcade.

When I was a junior in High School Mark Kistler came to visit the elementary school where my mom worked. I had grown up watching his television show and so I went down there to meet him. I took along my portfolio, which at that time pretty much consisted of shitty drawings of Wolverine. I got the chance to talk to him and show him my stuff, which he actually liked. He offered me a job working on his next book.
...
After everything was all finished and the book went off to print he paid me what I now know was fucking didly squat for the amount of work I did and gave me this advice: "Draw every day, no matter what." For some reason those words stuck with me.

If you take time every single day to draw you cannot help but improve. Just take a sketchbook with you to school and draw the kids in your class. Or take one into meetings with you, the boss will think your taking notes. If you can just draw something everyday you will be surprised how much and how fast you improve.

Note he said that in 2003. In the meantime, PA has grown to include a dozen full time people, run a multimillion dollar charity, two annual conventions, and so on.

Obviously, the my point is the value of consistent practice. Set a daily goal and meet it.

Every damn day of your life.

Oh and track it too. So you can see how often you're missing the goal.

This way instead of writing becoming an grueling ordeal one that is done once or twice a year and put aside with relief the rest of the time, it becomes a daily habit.

And people are creatures of habit.

Now that's a gun.

The GAU-8/A, better known as the A-10 Warthog's gun.

The plane itself is also impressive.

See those engines. One of them alone will fly this puppy. The pilot sits in a very thick titanium alloy "bathtub."

That's typical of the design.

They were smart enough to make every part the same whether mounted on the left side or right side of the plane, like landing gear, for instance.

Because the engines are mounted so high (away from ground debris) and the landing gear uses such low pressure tires, it can operate from a damaged airport, interstate highway, plowed field, or dirt road.

The landing gears are also designed so they can be "blown down" in case of hydraulic failure. If they're still stuck the wheels stick out so the plane can do a fairly safe "belly landing".

It's an ugly, rugged, relatively cheap but effective airplane.

Naturally, the USAF hates it.

But back to the gun.

The .50 BMG is really big. Mike Beasley has one on his desk. Everyone who picks it up thinks it's some sort of fake, unless they know big ammo. It's really huge with a bullet that weighs 750 grains and goes as fast the Lapua.

I don't have data on the Vulcan, but hang on to your hat.

The bullet for the 30x173 Avenger has an aluminum jacket around a spent uranium core and weighs 6560 grains (yes, over 100 times as heavy as the M16 bullet, and flies through the air at 3500 fps (which is faster
than the M16 as well).

The gun shoots at a rate of 4200 rounds per minute. Yes, four thousand. Pilots typically shoot either one- or two-second burst which set loose 70 to 150 rounds. The system is optimized for shooting at 4,000 feet.

Quite the beast.

Go to the link for more.


Via Robb Allen.

Who quips: "My God, a projectile that is just south of a pound, moving at 3500 feet per second. 178,427 foot pounds of energy / 242,661 joules."

As for scale go to the link to see Exurban Kevin's comment. Milk indeed.

Ballots and Bottle Rockets

Yesterday I talked of the link between 2nd amendment rights and voting.

Here's something in the same vein.

If you’re too dumb to handle a bottle rocket, then you’re too dumb to handle a ballot.

And brother, does state Fire Marshal Stephen Coan think you’re dumb.

Coan opposes a bill by Rep. Rich Bastien (R-Gardner) that would let Bay Staters do what people in 46 other states take for granted: Buy fireworks.

And it's Massachusetts natch.

Via Glen Reynolds who quips: "Massachusetts: Another anti-science, reactionary Blue State?"

Some rights need special papers, some don't

Ann Althouse takes apart E.J. Dionne Jr.'s latest freak-out about the evils of Voter ID laws.

WaPo's E.J. Dionne Jr. is getting histrionic about voter ID laws in his piece called "How States Are Rigging the 2012 Election.

Complete with the obligatory Jim Crow comment and conspiracy theories of conservative racism.

Althouse concludes with: "he himself propagates racism in the form of an assumption that black people have trouble performing the simplest task."


Though I found this bit of Dionne's particularly telling:

Sometimes the partisan motivation is so clear that if Stephen Colbert reported on what’s transpiring, his audience would assume he was making it up. In Texas, for example, the law allows concealed handgun licenses as identification but not student IDs. And guess what? Nationwide exit polls show that John McCain carried households in which someone owned a gun by 25 percentage points but lost voters in households without a gun by 32 points.

Yes, that's right. Dionne is saying that because the Right is more supportive of gun rights, that a government ID required by law in order to carry a firearm has to be biased..

He draws a direct equivalence between University ID's and Carry Permits. Why accept one and not the other?

It's not like an ID from a Texas university would be valid proof of one's residency, or citizenship. Or is even a form of identification from the government. Try using college ID to get a home loan or to fly. Or buy a drink.

While on the other hand a Texas carry permit proves that you are a citizen, old enough to vote, and clearly states one's residency. Oh, and it is also issued by the state.

But other than, no difference!

Here's the real point Dionee misses. He's all angry at the mere thought of asking a person for ID, let alone government ID to vote because he feels it will disenfranchise people from expressing a fundamental right.

Well what does he thing of carry permits?
And the hoops someone has to jump through to get one?
What about May Issue states where expressing Second Amendment rights are dependent on a policeman deeming you worthy?

Or is he a staunch Constitutional Carry advocate?

A commenter Jay at Atlhouse sums it up nicely:

So when I have to provide a passport type photo graph, $14 for fingerprints, and a certificate saying I passed a gun safety course (cost $30) in order to carry a concealed handgun, that isn't a poll tax, right?

Again, that comment's not from Dione's article which is a fever swamp of Left wing talking points on how the Republicans are insanely racist, how there's no real voter fraud ever (unless it's republican!), and the young and elderly and minorities are unable to get government ID's.

It's interesting that the Dems consider people unwilling or unable to get basic identification a critical voting block.

To repeat: want to bet that these principled leftists are staunch Constitutional Carry supporters?

If they believe that a person should be able to vote without having to show ID why shouldn't it be legal to carry a firearm without any special ID?

And this isn't even going into the NICS background check.

If you have to say "I'm not a crazy person."

A literal example of someone thinking academic credentials are a surrogate for class, intelligence, or even debating skills.

Here's a hint, if you have to tell people how smart you are, then you've failed as much as if you had to tell them that you're not crazy.

And the woman's accent and sneering condescension just sells the whole thing.

Gah, I went to university (and grad school look-at my degrees!) in Buffalo, and despite being the far west end of the state that place had its share of people with that exact accent and sense of shrill entitlement.

Oddly enough not many within my degree program and field of research. So let's just say I doubt our little-Miss-educated is a member of the hard or applied sciences.

Ooooh, I can be elitist too!

The best is at the end when the train staff just leave the woman, leaving her alone with her little snit, while the rest of the passengers snicker.

Via The Tatler.

It gets better?

John Cheese writes on Cracked about how despite all the difficulties and challenges, adulthood is when life gets better.

No, you don't have to ditch the video games and take up a "grown up" hobby like golf if you don't feel like it. See, once you're an adult, you get to decide.


Want to stay up until 4 a.m. on a Wednesday? Go for it. Want to eat straight whipped cream right out of the container? Have at it. Adulthood is being able to get into your car at 2 a.m. and just drive for no reason at all. It's growing past being dragged to Mom's church every Sunday and being able to decide for yourself what you want to believe. It's eating pie for supper. It's choosing your own friends and buying your own clothes. It's sitting three feet from the TV screen, just because you fucking can. It's watching a movie for no other reason than it has a lesbian sex scene with Natalie Portman.

That's not to say that there are no repercussions for doing those things, but by God this is your life now, and you have the right to learn those lessons in any way you choose. You own those repercussions. They're yours, no one can take them from you.

And the title of that section?
"Until You're On Your Own, You Don't Know What Freedom Is."

Imagine that, freedom to make your own choices, and deal with the consequences of them. Note the unspoken alternative force at work here. The pressures from government, the media, and academia to keep people from growing up, to infantilize everyone, to remove responsibility, remove consequence, to treat people like children.

Life gets better because you're going to make it better. Because you'll have the power and the freedom to make it better.

It's incredibly difficult for a teenager in the throes of angst or a college kid knee-deep in debt and stress to see any of that. Depression is like that. It shrinks your view of the world, it chokes off the horizon.

And this from a man who has dealt with crushing poverty for much of his life.

It's interesting, and heartening to see an article expressing the virtues of adulthood, of responsibility, even the need for stable long term companionship (as opposed to a sequence of one night stands).


This reminds me a bit of Larry Correia's Fisking of an article about people squatting in a house they defaulted on their loan... for years. And after years of not paying rent they were complaining about a lack of money.

Needless to say, the article tried to paint them as the sympathetic characters.

Correia was not amused.

And that is what it all comes down to. The above morons aren’t living
for free. Somebody is paying for their free ride. There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch. All of us that have lived within our means, sacrificed, and worked hard, are paying taxes to idiot politicians that are going to bail out these idiotic financial institutions that were idiotic enough to make loans to these idiots. So how does the news spin it? We’re supposed to feel sad that poor dumb Lynn can’t have a dog. We’re supposed to feel sad that some aspiring actor has to put on a brave face for his kids.

Bull. Crap.

....

/To all of you with such mean things to say, all I have to say is…. it
must be nice to be perfect!/

And that one random internet comment sums up so much about what is wrong with our country. I never claimed to be perfect. I claimed to be a grown up."

Why be a grownup when being a hedonistic, irresponsible man-child gets
you showered with gifts?

Well, as Mr. Cheese shows, self respect and self reliance and liberty count for something.

Oy

An article about American Eugenics with some... curious omissions.

You see... it's not eugenics if our heros did it, and besides Americans have
too many kids.

And they're too dumb anyway, haven't you seen Idiocracy?

Ah, but more money to education will solve that right quick.


And it was only a couple days ago that I was talking with someone who insisted that the Republicans all secretly want to kill the "brown people".

Then the conversation went on to Mech Warrior and how awesome it was that in one of the factions (the Clans I think) only those that proved themselves were allowed to breed. But you see it's the Republicans that are those behind eugenics, not the smart set that immediately start talking about enacting it while looking up to Margaret Sanger's wisdom.

And that's not even getting into people who are ostensibly "pro-choice" wanting to put a sharp cap on pregnancy, or the horribly invasive and totalitarian state that would be required to enforce such a scheme.

Oy.

But it's not like people have to be internally consistent. Reminds me of the rash of "gay" "women" bloggers (one out of three ain't bad?).

Worse, it’s propaganda. McMaster’s fake-but-accurate lesbian was perfectly pitched to Western liberals desperate to alleviate the pain of cognitive dissonance. No longer must you think too hard or make tough choices if you’re, say, anti-Israel and pro-democracy or pro-gay rights and in favor of the self-determination of Muslim fanatics. Heck, you can even stop worrying and love a lesbian feminist who sees no big deal in wearing a religiously required sack over her head.

Of course she was a hero. Of course she didn’t exist.

via Ed Driscoll

And here's Reynolds interviewing Goldberg to expand on that "Magical Realism" idea.

One less old girl....

Jay G has a heartbreaking image.

The article itself is even more gut-wrenching.

Time can be cruel. At least the crew and passengers escaped injury.

California becomes Shall Issue!

And drops the training requirement...

If you happen to be an elected state or federal official.

So, there you go.

A literal example of the ruling class having one set of laws and the
proles having another.

Now that's a Windtunnel

It may blow air at only 120 mph but it has a cross section of 30ft by 60ft.

It was big enough to test airplanes. Not scale models but the actual aircraft. And it tested lift and drag the old fashioned way, with giant Toledo scales.

It's the Langley Research Center's Full-Scale Tunnel.

And it was built in the 30's.

A Beautiful Weekend.

On Friday night a storm came through and took with it the hot, humid weather that had been pounding down the whole week.

Just in time for the re-opening of Eagle Creek Pistol Range


Went there and much fun was had. Ran into Bobbi and Tam as well.

For a note they have tightened some of the range rules. The biggest change you'll notice is no holstered firearms. So you'll have to have your weapons all cased before you get there. They're operating a cold range and being stricter about it now.

But the weather was good, the range staff was as always helpful, and the place only started to fill up at about noon.

Which was when we went off to India Palace. I'm with Bobbi, you ever want to try Indian food for the first time? Go there.

Low prices ($10 buffet) and very good quality. I had a roomate in university who was Indian and he always brought back some home cooking. Quality, quantity and variety.

And today the weather still holds. So off to get food for the grill, and then mow the lawn, and straighten some other things out.

Perhaps a good cigar later on.

Enjoy the day.

Pink Guns.... Winning?

I've talked about Cracked before.


And now there's this The 5 Most Pointlessly Women Specific Products by Christina H. And Pink Guns come into number 4.

What's interesting is the tone.

I mean, I am really on the fence about whether I should purchase a gun for self-defense and recreation, or whether the safety hazards outweigh the benefits. But wait, pink you say? I'll take five! Look at how cute they are!

Is that really how gun makers think the mind of a woman works?

And that's the most critical Christina H gets. Not complaining about the idea of guns, but the idea that the manufactures are clueless as to what women would actually want in one.

Well, she gets a bit more heated later on.

There is one thing the gun industry has a lot of trouble understanding: women. Despite the push in recent years to get women more involved in the industry and the tremendous success of that push as shown by campaigns such as Women of USPSA and the appearance of blogs such as the Girls Guide to Guns the industry is still mostly staffed by men. That means there are men in the back rooms designing us pink plastic guns and purses that my grandma would find fashionable.

NEWS FLASH: THIS ISN’T WHAT WE WANT! I don’t care how pink your piece of junk, breaking down, awful to shoot, itty bitty “adorable” gun is, I don’t want it. Women have a right to awesome guns same as anyone else.

Acutally, it should be pretty cler that that's actually that's Shelly Rae at GunNuts. But it's very interesting that the tone is the same.

Christina H is not against Pink Guns because she's against guns being marketed to women. She's against the cluelessness behind such a marketing idea.

So again, Cracked normalizes firearms.

Also... it's interesting that Pink Guns only come in at number 4. Then again number 1 is quite insane.

Common Sense

How bad is Massachusetts?

Wee'rd Beard gives a taste.

And he goes beyond the capricious corruption of "May Issue". When I lived in New Yord State there were several social groups that were "permit farms". Joined one and after making the right donations your permit (which you had to have to even own a handgun) would have a much higher chance of passing.

Not only do they have some of the most obnoxious legal hoops to simply own a gun, let alone what they require to carry, but there's a flagrant flouting of the rule of law:

As I said these additional requirements are illegal to add to the application process, and some of them may no longer be in practice, but they are rarely challenged, because who wants to be on the shit-list of your local police? Also who wants to pay thousands of dollars to contest a few hundred dollar hoop (not to mention you likely plan on putting some serious cash down on guns, ammo, cleaning, and safety gear).

Furthermore your permit can be revoked for any reason, even if you are not convicted of a crime. There are cases of people getting their permit revoked for ACCIDENTAL open carry (note open carry is 100% legal in Massachusetts if you have a Mass Permit…but its the general consensus that open carrying will get your permit revoked)

Get that? Various municipalities will add illegal requirements and fees (bribes), to the process, and they will then yank your card if you accidently do something that is actually legal.

Charming.

And it's not just guns, they also refuse to share criminal fingerprint data, but only of special criminals.

If somebody is an ILLEGAL immigrant (crime one) is arrested for an additional crime, our state government is resisting the federal request to send in fingerprint data to check weather the criminal has committed further crimes, possibly under other assumed names, given that illegals often use false or stolen identities to avoid detection.

Contempt of law and contempt of the citizens.
Hand in hand.


Edit:

And from Jay G another story of what it's like in Mass. A friend of his tries to get a carry permit and faces a 7 week wait.

Now, that's some 73 days from the time he turned in his application until he received his MA LTC. That's nearly double the amount of time it is supposed to take by law - except, of course, that there are no penalties for the town breaking the law.

And then Jay talks about while there is recourse against a denial, the flaks handing out the permits can give you a downgraded one that is only good for "hunting and target", and that you can't appeal.

Wee'rd also mentions that in the comments of his post.

Who'd have thought?

Giving government discretionary powers over rights invites petty favoritism and not so petty oppression.

Weer'd Beard talks on May Issue.

This is about taking away rights. In many towns in “May Issue” Massachusetts you can’t get a carry permit. Just can’t. None of this chickenshit minor conviction nonsense, just nobody is issued one because they chief has the right to say so.

Well not NOBODY, the Chief’s and other officers family and friends can get their permits OK, as the government officials and their family and friends, as well as those who work for the fire department. (When I hear somebody say they have a carry permit from such-and-such a town, I simply ask them “Police, or Firefighter”. I haven’t been wrong yet!)

These are bad laws, and they always lead to corruption and abuse. Furthermore the fear-mongering doesn’t seem to be all that realistic. The dude with all the minor convictions? He can legally drive a car. Buy Gasoline. Watch children in daycares or schools. Drive a public transit vehicle. Drive a heavy truck on the highway….hauling hazardous waste. This guy could be standing behind you in the elevator or in the parking garage. If he’s such a danger why would you let him walk free? If he’s not such a danger, what harm with letting him carry his gun be?

It's about fear or control.
There are those that want to control the public, and there are those that fear the public. Both require the disarmament and control of the public "for their own good".

And then there's the enablers. The ones that stand by and let the grabbers have their way, because someone else will protect them, or the grabber's not after the guns they have, or the classics like "nice people don't need guns" and "we can be reasonable and come to a common sense solution."

Again... fear and control.

Enough Beef and Cider for all!

Old school grilling.

I love how they put the sauce on.

There needs to be more cooking like that.

Kimber "Quality"

Unfortunatly this story sounds about right. Man buys new Kimber; it turns out to be a balky lemon due to faulty slide stop.


Speaking as a Kimber owner (and... "fan") I would be extremely reluctant to buy one new. For two reasons. New ones are grossly overpriced, and the quality has gone progressively downhill. I only need to look at my Father's Custom I and my Custom II (and that's an older one).

So….its now cost the price of the gun, plus a new mag catch that holds the mag higher than MILSPEC by .020″ (just a hair under 1/32″
difference from MILSPEC, which will snug it up in the Kimber with virtually no play) plus a new slidelock that IS NOT MIM, because I now DO NOT trust Kimber small-parts quality AT ALL. And the stovepipe, and failure to extract? Well…the extractor isn’t seated properly…you can see that when you look at it. Its slightly off having the extractor tooth being perfectly parallel to the rim of the round, so its not getting a full lock on the round. So, a new extractor is coming also, so I can replace THAT too, and make sure that its seated properly AND is a high-quality part, not a crap MIM part.

Yup. The problems with my Kimbers were traced to bad extractors. When I worked mine over I ended up replacing the bulk of the small parts with Wilson ones.

They now work great and it's been over half a year since a failure,
but still... not worth the premium. And I can accept some fiddling with a used weapon, but new... and at the prices they charge? Nope.

Even if they didn't have the qual issues they're not worth what they retail for new. Especially if you get any extras... not that they offer any extras that are more than cosmetic (other than night sights and ambi safeties).

Weer'd Beard has more.