Monthly Archives: February 2012

Quote of the day—Roberta X

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Why apply prior restraint to a Constitutionally-protected right, then? Barring stupidity, deliberate ignorance or outright insanity, … unreasoning prejudice is the only motive.

Roberta X
February 21, 2012
Running The Numbers
[For a simple one-word answer “prejudice” is close enough and probably should be used in those contexts where sound bytes are important. But the real answer is probably much more complex. There is more than a little ignorance, a fair amount of stupidity and a lot of near insanity as well. Read about Peterson Syndrome for a more complete story on that mix.

But what Roberta left out was hatred, maliciousness, and evil. There are those that would disarm us because they know that if we have arms we will forcefully resist their final ultimate solution to what they believe to be the problems of the world.—Joe]

How to make Potassium Chlorate

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Potassium Chlorate is one of the ingredients in Boomerite. I’ve often fantasized about making it myself because it’s the most expensive component, it requires an ATF explosives license to purchase in the quantities I need, and my sole supplier is in New Jersey.

Here is how to make it in your garage/kitchen/basement:

I think I will continue to purchase it. We use about 350 pounds per year and scaling up the process above to meet our needs just doesn’t look worthwhile.

It a government rule! It doesn’t have to make sense

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Now that my ATF license to manufacture explosives has been successfully renewed I’m going to take a chance and poke a little fun at them.

First off let me say that the people I dealt with were all very professional and went out of their way to help resolve the problem with far less hassle than they could have had they just wanted to be bureaucratic jerks. I find no fault whatsoever with the ATF people I dealt with. The problem is with the regulations. Regulations sometimes aren’t really applicable to every situation. But that doesn’t mean that the bureaucrats enforcing the regulations or the peons subject to those regulations can decide to ignore them. We are mostly just stuck with them.

With those caveats imagine my surprise when after several years of using the Taj Mahal for storage of explosives as a “Type 1” explosives magazine I was told it was actually an “indoor magazine” and hence a “Type 2” magazine. See the applicable regulations here.

The Taj Mahal looks like this:

The door you see inside the metal shed is the theft and bullet resistant portion of the magazine and is 3’x6’x6′. The metal shed is 10’x14’xHeadScalpingHeight. I considered the shed part of the magazine. The shed provides protection from the rain and snow and the heavy steel and locks provides the theft and bullet resistance. For several years the ATF inspectors apparently saw it the same way.

The new inspector and her supervisor didn’t see it that way:

It is not considered a permanent structure because it is a shed that can be moved. Am I correct in the fact that the building is not attached to the ground (with cement, etc)?

It is attached to the concrete with bolts. But that wasn’t good enough:

I have reviewed the report and photographs of the magazine and have determined it to be an indoor Type II magazine.   Even though the magazine is bolted into the concrete, does not make it permanent and the shed is not incidental.    For purposes of establishing an indoor magazine, ATF has determined that the building or structure in which the magazine is placed:

1.     Is of suitable, stable construction to provide protection from wind and other inclement weather conditions.
2.    The structure’s walls and roof are constructed of metal, wood, brick, cement or concrete and makes the structure unsusceptible to mobility or intrusion.
3.    The base or floor of the structure consists of earth or other flat, level material which can sustain the weight of the magazine.
4.    The doors are secured to provide additional security and theft-resistance to the magazine.

In my review, I have determined that the shed meets the requirements, as stated above, for a building or structure.   Even though the magazine may weigh 3000 lbs and is bolted to the concrete it still does not meet the definition of a Type 01 magazine.  As it is currently constructed, this magazine is classified as a Type 2 indoor magazine.  Thus it can only hold a maximum of 50 lbs of explosives materials. 

Okay, so what?

The issue is that the maximum amount of explosives you can store in an “Type 2 Indoor Magazine” is 50 pounds. For a “Type 1” magazine it is determined by the distance to the nearest inhabited building or public road or railway. With a distance of 1950 feet to the nearest inhabited building I was previously allowed to store up to 18,000 pounds of high explosives at that site (sorry Barron, I was mistaken, it has to be 2000 feet before we could store 180,000 pounds). The Taj couldn’t hold that much because it was too small but it was nice to know I could pack it full without worrying about getting in trouble with the ATF.

A 50 pound limit just doesn’t work for our situation. We store about 1600 pounds at the Taj on the Saturday night before Boomershoot.

After getting the bad news from the ATF I started asking questions:

Would it become a Type I magazine, and hence be allowed more than 50 pounds of explosives material, if the shed were removed and the magazine were exposed?

I didn’t get a reply so some time later I sent another email:

I would like to know if a solution to Type I/Type II problem is for me to remove the metal shed.

It would also be useful for me to find out the definition you are using for the word “permanent” in this sentence:

Even though the magazine is bolted into the concrete, does not make it permanent and the shed is not incidental.

According to the American Heritage Dictionary (used by the ATF in ATF Ruling 2005-3) permanent means:

1. Lasting or remaining without essential change: “the universal human yearning for something permanent, enduring, without shadow of change” (Willa Cather).
2. Not expected to change in status, condition, or place: a permanent address; permanent secretary to the president.

By that definition the shed and magazine are permanent. I am having difficulty in imaging how it can be considered a Type II magazine because according to 555.208, “A Type II magazine is a box, trailer, semitrailer, or other mobile facility”.  Below is a picture of the base of the magazine and shed while it was under construction:

Four inches of concrete were poured into the forms above and the shed and magazine was bolted to it. I am unable to find any definition of “mobile” for which the concrete slab and attached structures qualifies. If it would make a difference I would be glad to weld the magazine to the slab instead of just bolting it.

If necessary what I can also do is only use it to store materials “In the process of manufacture” as per 555.205 since if it is “In the process of manufacture” the materials don’t need to be kept in a locked magazine.

Please advise.

In response the story changed just a little bit:

Just to make sure that I have classified this magazine correctly, I am forwarding your e-mail to our Explosives Industry Programs Branch for review.  They will make a classification of your magazine. 

I have one question, I agree that the shed would be permanent but it is not part of the magazine.  The shed is what makes it an indoor magazine.  Since the regulations do not have a description of an indoor Type 1 we must classify this as a Type II.   Even though difficult, can the bolts be removed and thus making the magazine mobile?

Less than hour later (I’m impressed the bureaucracy could move this fast) I received the following email:

The Explosives Industry Programs Branch (EIPB) also has classified this as an indoor magazine.  Since there is no definition for a Type I indoor magazine, it must be classified as a Type II.  EIPB stated that you can remove the shed and that would resolve the 50 lb limitation.  The limitation for the magazine would be 18,000 lbs.  The other possible solution is that you can apply for a variance to store in excess of 50 lbs in an indoor magazine.  The magazine must meet the Tables of Distance and construction requirements.  I am not sure it will be approved but you may want to make that request before taking down the shed.

So it’s the existence of the shed and not the “mobility” of the shed that makes it a Type 2! That give me an opening for more questions:

Assumi
ng I remove the shed I would then need to cover the magazine with a more weather resistant covering such as the metal from the shed. What would the maximum spacing between the magazine and the metal covering before it would become an indoor magazine again?

You can see where I’m going with this, right? Apparently so could the ATF because they responded with:

I am trying to find a simpler solution to the problem.   I have a few suggestions into our EIPB that may not be an extensive as building a new structure but changing the old one.   I should have an answer in the morning.

Early the next morning I received the following email:

Here is the easiest solution that we could come up with.  Empty the shed of all materials except the magazine, remove the doors or a wall of the shed.  Since the magazine is not totally enclosed in the shed it would no longer be an indoor magazine.   I think that would resolve all of the issues.  Let me know what you think.

So the bottom line is that if I remove the doors from the shed I can store 18,000 pounds of explosives. If I put the doors on I can only store 50 pounds.

It doesn’t have to make sense. It’s just a government rule.

Quote of the day—Anne Laurie

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Starbucks? This is your bold, patriotic idea of a dangerous venue in which to flaunt your precious Second Amendment pacifiers? Because laptop-wielding hipsters are soooo freaking terrifying? Because the baristers are armed with… scalding hot milk foam?

If your gun is a tool, it is something to be treated with the respect you’d show any potentially dangerous tool. Somehow I don’t see a spontaneous uprising of lumberjacks carrying chainsaws and construction workers flourishing jackhammers at the local Starbucks, because this is the real world, not a badly scripted porno movie. Semi-retired CPAs who listen to a lot of Rush Limbaugh, please copy.

Anyone who has to demonstrate his political allegiances by flashing a gun at a Starbucks has presumably decided that it’s too risky to “support the Second Amendment” at a Dunkin Donuts… where the professional security forces hang out. Or even at the local McDonald’s, where some safety-conscious mommy at the ball pit would be liable to give you a very hurtful talking-to.

Anne Laurie
March 3, 2010
Open Thread: Penis Substitutes At the Ready!
[It’s another Markley’s Law Monday!

From the title to any hint of substance in the post itself Laurie demonstrates her total clueness of what the Starbucks conflict was about.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Ronald Reagan

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Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same.

Ronald Reagan
[The freedom to ingest whatever mind altering chemical you desired was lost in the last century. They had to have a Constitutional Amendment to outlaw alcohol, But for some reason they didn’t bother with giving themselves the power to ban Marijuana, heroin, or “magic mushrooms”. Politicians just assumed they had the power and almost magically they did have the power.

The same thing almost happened with firearms. From GCA68 to AWB ‘94 (slightly more than a generation) we came within a hair breadth of losing the freedom guaranteed by the 2nd Amendment.. It’s possible we did loose a part of it (machine guns and destructive devices) to not be recovered in out lifetime–if ever.

There is a lesson to be learned here. It’s a slippery slope and minor, almost tolerable, infringements must not be tolerated.—Joe]

Boomerite testing

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Barron and I went out to the Boomershoot site today. Barron has the full report, with video but the bottom line is that Boomerite stored via a new packaging technique appears work well even after being stored for 13 days.

We put the Boomerite directly in the cardboard boxes then wrapped the cardboard boxes with plastic wrap. They way we have done it for years was to put the Boomerite in zip lock bags and put the bags in the cardboard boxes. This new method is faster, cheaper, allows us to put more Boomerite in each box, and it fills the box all the way to three edges. There is still a bit of a gap at the top edge but less so that before.

Message for Rick Santorum

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I read the book this guy wrote. It is awesome: Sex at Dawn: How We Mate, Why We Stray, and What It Means for Modern Relationships.

Reading the book you find your jaw sort of dropping and thinking, “Wow! That make so much sense and explains so much.”

I was reminded of this after Say Uncle pointed out Rick Santorum says he will fight the dangers of contraception—some people will want to have sex without any intention of had a child result from it. As a commenter pointed out, “I thought Ron Paul is supposed to be the kook…”

Quote of the day—Elias Isquith

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I’m a great example of why it is that the NRA simply mops the floor with its opponents when it comes to influencing DC. As Bloomberg rightly notes, they — gun fetishists or simply Second Amendment absolutists — care way, way more. In fact, it’s not uncommon for that to be the only thing an NRA member cares about. A lifetime of political activism funneled into simply one tiny and, I would argue, frivolous niche.

Elias Isquith
February 17, 2012
Mike Bloomberg And The Politics Of Gun Control
[Regardless of his distain for gun owners there is a certain amount of truth in his statement. Many of us are willing to vote for (or against) someone strictly on the basis of their stand on specific enumerated right to keep and bear arms. Yes, many of us use the Second Amendment as a strong indicator of a politician’s support for freedom in general. But conversely the anti-freedom people could claim the same thing with a sign change, “If a politician supports gun ownership then you know he is not going to support the type of government that is going to send all the people we don’t like off to the reeducation camps.” But for some reason it doesn’t work for them that way.

It is my suspicion the anti-freedom people can only succeed when they are deceptive. They have to hide their true intentions. They have to express their goals in terms of free unicorns for everyone instead of jack-booted thugs crushing human skulls. Raw anti-freedom simply doesn’t generate that many votes. Gun owners understand that guns are a strong indicator, and a requirement, of free society. Hence we do care more about guns and are willing to vote on that single issue.—Joe]

Skynet is near

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I’ve been listening to the book The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology. If you never have had any concerns about Skynet becoming reality this book will shake you up. If you thought Skynet was science fiction but plausible this book will put you on full alert.

Wow!

Author Ray Kurzweil makes a strong case that technology (and as an aside, biological evolution) advances at an exponential rate. I forget the exact numbers but he claims that we can now expect to see the equivalent of all the advances we saw in the entire 20th century to happen in the something like first 20 years of the 21st Century. Then those advances again in something like 10 years. He also claims a case can be made that the exponent in the exponential growth equation is itself increasing exponentially!

The reason the technological growth can increase so rapidly is that we have created tools to create technology more easily. And we create tools to create tools. We have computers that can be taught to see and track objects. We have computers sitting under our desks that have the “brain power” for some task that exceed the capacity of several planets of sentient beings. Soon we will have computers that can not only be used technological levers guided by humans but can create their own tools.

The maximum communication speed of biochemical signals of animals is about 100 meters per second. And the distances those signals need to travel during thinking are on the order of centimeters. These factors are hard physical limits on how fast we can think. A computer has similar problems but the physical limits are not nearly as constraining. Communication speed is approximately 300,000,000 meters per second and the distances are on the order of millimeters. This gives a computer an speed advantage of approximately 30,000,000.

In communication and teaching others humans are limited by our language and our ability to learn a new skill. How many words per minute can a person read or hear and understand and apply? If you are skilled in the field you may be able to read and understand what another subject matter expert tells you but it will still take practice before you can perform at the same level as your teacher. With a computer it can “teach” another computer at whatever rate it takes to transfer the software. The cellphone in your pocket “learns” a new skill with perfect repeatability from other computers in the few seconds it takes to download the app through the sky via the nearest cell tower from the ‘net.

Today that ‘net is the Internet.

Update: Sarah recommended the book to me. She has more to offer on the topic.

Astute observation

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Commenter FlyGuy at Robb’s points out that many articles of safety equipment such as seat belts, child safety caps, fire extinguishers, etc. are mandated by government. But yet many governments attempt to ban or heavily regulated another article of safety equipment—firearms.

As he says, “Very eeenteresting…”

Quote of the day—Brandoch Daha

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In real life, you solve problems by breaking them down into smaller problems that are trivial by themselves. But if you respond to crazy circular logic by refuting each step as you go along, you lose track of the fact that you’re actually talking to a crazy person, and you lose the argument. Because by the time you’ve proven to a anti-gunner that he’s not Napoleon, he’s already telling you, with equally invincible conviction, that he’s Jesus. So you ask him if he was in fact born in a manger, and he tells you that Buckingham Palace is in fact a manger, you redneck, and before you’re done explaining what a manger is, he’s already tired of being Mary Queen of Scots, at which point you’re like “Wait, Buckingham Palace was built after she died!”, and you know what he says?

“Kiss me, Josephine, I’ve beaten Wellington again!”

Brandoch Daha
February 16, 2012
Comment to Fear driven society
[Awesome!

It reminds me of one of the responses to Just One Question, “What colour is orange: True or False?”

Many of these people are truly nuts and cannot be reasoned with. They simply don’t have the mental capacity. We should be alert for the signs then change our method of engagement or stop entirely when the crazy becomes apparent.—Joe]

Mercedes Benz (revisited)

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Janis Lyn Joplin, also known as Pearl, The Queen of Rock and Roll, The Queen of Psychedelic Soul, or The Queen of Rocking The Blues, made some good music, to be sure.  Mercedes Benz though was pure snark against capitalism– the straw man hypocrite, Christian American materialist that her generation thought defined “The (American) System”.  They still think much the same today.  They’re the Obama voters and the Madison protesters.  Their kids are the Occupy movement.

I wrote new words in response to the old tune, as snark against the socialists.  I call it Lifetime Free Ride;

Obama
Won’t you give me
A lifetime free ride
My friends all have trust funds
An’ it’s hur,tin’ my pride
Tax the productive
Until they die
Obama
Won’t you give me
A lifetime free ride

Obama
Won’t you give me
My own Occ,u,py crowd
I’m ig’n’r’nt and stupid
But I like bein’ loud
Never worked a day in my lifetime
I’m worth,less an’ proud
Obama
Won’t you give me
My own Occ,u,py crowd

Obama
Won’t you buy me
Uncondi,tio,nal love
I’m countin’ on you, Sir
There’s no one else above
I’ll need you on my side
When push comes to shove
Obama
Won’t you buy me
Uncondi,tio,nal love

(everybody)

Obama
Won’t you give me
A lifetime free ride
My friends all have trust funds
An’ it’s hur,tin’ my pride
Tax the productive
Until they die
Obama
Won’t you give me
A lifetime free ride

(That’s it…heh heh heh)

I have a picture of her pointing a finger of blame at the camera (at all of us), mocking us, while she was in the throes of self-destruction.  To me it’s iconic of the left.

Quote of the day—Patrick Kerkstra

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The gunfight is over, and the cities lost. The question is: Do they realize it yet?

Patrick Kerkstra
February 14, 2012
Cities facing a tough fight on gun control
[If they were to think about it rationally they cannot help but realize it. But most are probably in denial. Those that are not in denial have only moved to the anger stage. They have quite a way to go before reaching acceptance.

Even though Kerkstra has arrived at the correct conclusion he doesn’t seem to consider that it is even plausible that guns are useful for protection. To him, “guns represent a plague, not protection”.

A suggestion to Kerkstra: answer Just One Question then get back to me.

I’d leave a comment for him but it appears they have implemented “Reasoned Discourse”.—Joe]

Here Come De Judge

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Via Uncle;

I don’t know the whole back story, but I sure liked all the “what ifs”.  Yes; Ronald Reagan, The One, to whom all others must be compared, Ronaldus Magnus, presided over a near doubling of the federal budget, and was all in on the drug war.  I hadn’t previously heard of the things he said about Santorum.  Oh goody.

So how can we fix it?  It’s already been push verses shove for a long time (my neighbor, the political prisoner, gets out of the federal poke in a few months, but his business is totally gone)(I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been told, “You’d better watch what you say…!”).  Ours has just been less violent than, say, the Bolshevik Revolution and the Cultural Revolution.  So far.  I for one would like to keep it that way, but only if it can be going the opposite direction (away from statism and toward liberty).  We’d had far too much of this shit by the time I was born, during the Eisenhower administration.

I suppose then, what we need in a presidential campaign is someone who has a plan to “maintain the revolution, but turn it around the other way and without unnecessary killing”.

I’ll be interested to know where De Judge goes from here.

Random thought of the day

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Time travel is obviously possible. Everyone does it all the time. Just sitting around doing nothing we travel through time at a rate of 1 second per 1000 milliseconds. What’s more interesting is how we can travel through time at a different rate and how this prohibits any time paradoxes from occurring such traveling into the future to meet an older version of yourself.

As I have posted before we are always traveling at a constant speed. This is the speed of light and we cannot change that. What we can change is the direction in which we travel. Nearly all of our velocity is on the time axis but as soon as we move in the conventional sense our velocity in time slows down such that the magnitude of our velocity vector remains constant.

What this means is that every time you travel away from someone and come back you are out of synch with them in regards to time. In nearly all cases the difference is in femtoseconds and is totally irrelevant. What is be more interesting and is conceptually possible is to spend a year (in your perception) and travel two (or ten) years in time as perceived by the people you left behind.

If such a machine were built it would more properly be called a “time vehicle” than a “time machine”. To travel any interesting distance in time would require enormous amounts of energy and you cannot retrace your path or go backward in time.

Using such a machine it would be impossible to meet yourself in the future. Use of the vehicle would be exactly analogous to taking a shortcut to some geographical location your friends were traveling to. You will have traveled a shorter distance than your friends but arrive at the same location. It is not possible for you to travel both paths simultaneously.

I woke up at about 4:00 AM this morning and it took an hour or so of thinking about this before I could go back to sleep.

My blog is a reference for Wikipedia

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I’m a bit surprised but it is a valid reference.

My Sitemeter gave me the clue::

Domain Name   verizon.net ? (Network)
IP Address   96.239.233.# (Verizon Internet Services)
ISP   Verizon Internet Services
Location  
Continent : North America
Country : United States (Facts)
Lat/Long : 38, -97 (Map)
Distance : 1,180 miles
Language   English (U.S.)
en-us
Operating System   Microsoft WinNT
Browser   Internet Explorer 8.0
Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/4.0; GTB7.2; SLCC2; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.5.30729; .NET CLR 3.0.30729; Media Center PC 6.0; MDDC; .NET4.0C)
Javascript   version 1.3
Monitor  

Resolution : 1600 x 900
Color Depth : 32 bits

Time of Visit Feb 15 2012 8:52:39 am
Last Page View   Feb 15 2012 8:52:39 am
Visit Length   0 seconds
Page Views 1
Referring URL   http://en.wikipedia….of_historical_events
Visit Entry Page   http://blog.joehuffm…awrenceJohnston.aspx
Visit Exit Page   http://blog.joehuffm…awrenceJohnston.aspx
Out Click  
Time Zone   UTC-6:00
Visitor’s Time   Feb 15 2012 10:52:39 am
Visit Number   1,346,087

I asked once nicely—Now what?

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On February 3rd Linoge sent me an email telling me that CSGV was using daughter Kim’s picture from the Too Many Victims video on their blog in a manner that erroneously shows gun owners in a poor light. He suggested I might want to ask them to remove it.

On February 6th I did just that:

From: Joe Huffman
Sent: Monday, February 06, 2012 9:46 AM
To: Ladd Everitt
Cc: Kimberly Frederick
Subject: Please remove my daughters picture.

Neither my daughter nor I gave you permission to use her image on the left sidebar of this web page: http://csgv4.blogspot.com/. Please remove it.

Use of the entire video is fine because it includes the proper context.

Thank you.

-joe-
https://blog.joehuffman.org/
http://www.boomershoot.org/
http://www.modernballistics.com/

Sent via Windows Phone Seven.

On February 10th I received a reply:

From: Ladd Everitt
Sent: Friday, February 10, 2012 9:08 AM
To: Joe Huffman
Cc: Kimberly Frederick
Subject: RE: Please remove my daughters picture.

Joe,

Thanks for your email.  We’re running this by our attorneys and will get back with you soon.

Best regards,

Ladd Everitt
Director of Communications
Coalition to Stop Gun Violence
1424 L Street NW, Suite 2-1
Washington, DC 20005
W:  [deleted by Joe for privacy reasons]
Cell:  [deleted by Joe for privacy reasons]
Email:  [deleted by Joe for privacy reasons]
Website:  www.csgv.org
Twitter:  http://twitter.com/CSGV
Facebook:  http://www.facebook.com/CoalitionToStopGunViolence/

It is now five days later and I still have not heard back from them. Although I am capable and willing to get my own attorney involved are there some “magic words” involving copyrights I need to invoke that might “encourage” them to remove the picture without the involvement of my lawyers?

Thanks.

Starbucks Appreciation Day report

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As today was Starbucks Appreciation Day (see also posts by Robb Allen, Say Uncle, Sebastian, Tamara, and Thirdpower <-MUST READ) as well as Valentine's Day Barb took the bus into Seattle to have lunch with me. The first thing we did was visit Starbucks where I bought a "Red Velvet Whoopie pie" on the recommendation of Sebastian plus a $50 Starbucks card for Barb and a $40 card for daughter Kim:

WP_000477

Barb took a picture of me in front of the store with my NRA Life Member patch and the receipts:

WP_000476

We went on to have lunch at a nice restaurant and I made a Tweet about our purchases at Starbucks. After lunch I purchased another $40 Starbucks card online for daughter Xenia who lives in Alaska. I Tweeted the total amount spent and it was Retweeted by three others.

That was a total of $131.64 we spent at Starbucks today. By all accounts the attempted boycott of Starbucks was a huge failure and I’m proud to have contributed to that.

Thank you Starbucks for respecting our specific enumerated right to keep and bear arms and state laws.

Update: I posted the following message to Starbucks Corporate:

My wife and I visited one of your stores today in support of your refusal to bow to pressure from anti-gun rights activists who attempted a boycott of your store today. I am the blogger who started the “buycott” of your stores two years ago and happily contributed again this year. I purchased a total of $131.64 today (mostly in gift cards) and blogged about it here: https://blog.joehuffman.org/2012/02/14/starbucks-appreciation-day-report/

Thank you again for not getting involved. Keep doing what you do best–supplying a product that is enjoyed by millions.

Update 2: February 15th.

I was interviewed by the Los Angeles Times this morning about this blog post and the “buycott” of Starbucks. The main thrust was “Why did you do this?” I think it went well.

However there was some discussion of open carry and desensitization of people to the presence of guns in public and I may have messed up on this topic. In general I think there is little to be gained by this from a political perspective. There are cases where it does make sense but those cases somewhat rare. The decision to carry opening in public places needs to be carefully considered and evaluated on a case by case basis. I wrote a rather long blog post about open carry as a political statement and should be referenced before latching on to what may appear as a blanket statement by me against open carry.

Update 3: February 15th, 3:25 PM.

The Los Angeles Times article is online now. My fears were not realized. The reporter accurately reported what was said and did not take liberties.

Update 4: February 16th.

The Global Post also quotes me (via the LA Times).

Coercively Funded Schools

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I’ve been thinking about this for years, but this post of Kevin’s made something gel.

I say we should quit using the term “public school” and start using “coercively funded school”.  My wife is not a public school teacher, she is a coercively funded school teacher.  Why should we use their language when we have our own and ours is more to the point?  It is one thing to say you’re for public schools, or you’re for “Our Children” but it’s another to come right out and say you’re for coercive funding.

Now I would hope, and predict, that most (though not all) church leaders would eschew coercive funding of their church on the grounds that with government funding comes government control (actually, churches are already government subsidized, but that’s a matter for another post).

As I said in comments at Smallest Minority; the purpose of coercively funded schools is to promote coercive funding.  I.e. they’ll promote that which gave them life in the first place, and that which sustains them.  What would be the result, after all, if the coercive schools actively and consistently promoted the American principals of liberty?  They’d be working themselves into extinction of course.  “You’re right” the students would conclude, “freedom, the free market, would be far superior both morally and functionally, in every respect including education.”

No doubt about it; the American founders got it wrong.  Education should have been included with religion and the press in the first amendment, for exactly the same reasons.  As a result of that failure, our coercively funded schools have become indoctrination centers– socialist missions, if you will, churning out useful idiots if not impassioned believers.  For the life of me, I cannot understand why this was not predicted in the 1780s.

After all these years of entrenchment, what is the fix?  So many states have education funding in their constitutions, I believe it will have to come from the states.  Rex Rammell had a good plan for Idaho, but due to an incompetent campaign no one heard of it.  He acknowledged the state constitutional mandate, but would have chopped much of the top off of the coercive education infrastructure and budget.  It is currently extremely top heavy.  Other measures would have opened the doors to more private schools.