Category Archives: Politics

Let’s Roll, pt 2: Redcoats, Risk, and Active Shooters

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Or

How and why: implement a classroom “CHARGE!” plan for active
shooters

 

Every year,
some students in K-12 schools are crippled or die playing football and other
sports. If you asked the players to quit because it was safer, they’d laugh at
you. We accept those risks as part of the cost of participating in life,
because the benefits for those not
seriously injured or killed are numerous and significant – physical fitness,
sportsmanship, how to work as a team, self discipline, etc. It is an acknowledgment that with life comes risk, and benefits
are not without costs. To attempt to eliminate ALL risk is to utterly
stifle life, and merely… exist. That is NOT what America is
about. That is not what being human is
about.

 

When an irate parent shows up at school, yelling that their kid should
not have failed a test, or whatever, it is usually not a mass shooting threat,
even though schools have been locked down for such events as a precaution
against a possible escalation. The same has happened for a gunman or a robbery near the school, and many other
possible-but-unlikely threats. So, in those such cases where there is a
perceived threat, the risk-averse school “locks down:” all the teachers close
their doors, turns off the light, pull the shades, and tell the kids to hide,
trying to make themselves low visibility targets, much like a rabbit in an open
field that freezes in place hoping the fox, whose vision keys very well on motion, won’t see them. In most cases, the
lockdown procedure is reasonable, and it works fine, because the threat is not an actively shooting psychopath bent on a
body-count. BUT, once the shooting starts, the picture changes radically,
and continuing to hide motionless in the dark hoping he picks another room to
shoot up, or hoping to talk the gunman into stopping, is just as stupid as the
rabbit continuing to stay motionless while the fox is running and looking
straight at it, jaws agape, with hunger in its eyes. Reasoning with a
psychopath is a non-sequitur. Once the threat is demonstrated, and the shooter
is active and closing fast, the risk-assessment of freeze-vs-action changes;
the time for hiding is over, and action
is the best path for survival. Pretending to be a motionless rabbit after being
seen is to be raptus regaliter.

 

The British
Redcoats wore red, of all the possible colors, to march in formation toward a
mass of people firing at them. Why?
It would seem like they would make good targets, what with a bright white X
across their scarlet chests. It served a couple of purposes, aside from saving
money by using cheap red dye. It identified friend from foe – an important
thing in a fight, especially in a mad melee surrounded by thick smoke and
confusion. It made the soldiers look sharp, professional, which both intimidated
the enemy AND made the Brits act more
like professionals, because self-image is vital to esprit de corps (especially
when the odds look bad on the surface). School sports teams want nice uniforms
for the exact same reason. But, most
importantly, a bright uniform makes it hard to be a coward, run away, and
escape the deadly insanity of the battle field; by keeping the unit cohesive in
the face of danger, it raised the odds of victory, decreasing the overall
casualty rate, and thus, counter-intuitively, it made staying in formation and
fighting less risky than running away. By running away, an individual
raised their personal odds of
surviving that particular battle considerably,
but it is at the cost of an increased
risk of loss by the side he deserted. In the big picture, it might mean he
survived the battle only to lose the war and die, just a little bit later, as a
deserter.

 

In a fight, as
in a union, collective, unified action, even if imperfectly coordinated, is a
powerful thing. Numbers count. Speed counts. Determination counts. Conceding a
fight invites a follow-on attack. The Japanese were stopped at the Battle of Midway
even though the first half dozen valiantly lead but almost entirely ineffective air attacks were poorly
coordinated, used mainly obsolete aircraft, and were too few planes in number
at any one time to do much more than provide target practice for the skilled
Japanese fighter pilots and gunners. BUT… they tied things up and confused the
Japanese navy just enough so that a
small squadron of dive bombers came upon them unprepared; that final wave of
planes were able to drop out of the sky and sink the centerpieces of the attacking
Japanese fleet, the carriers. The scores of airmen dying in the first,
ineffective, attacks were NOT in vain, because they paved the way to success.
The Japanese ships and weapons were first rate, their planning was meticulous
and sweeping (but flawed); the US attack disorganized, but determined. The US pilots
took risks and won the battle decisively, and changed the course of the war
dramatically.

 

So, what can teachers and students do differently, so that things don’t
go badly for the “false positive” scares, but gives them a fighting chance when
things take a dramatic turn for the worse, and the shooter is at the door? What
can be done that doesn’t require massive bureaucratic intervention and
interference? The police come to stop the violence by displaying a willingness and ability to use
counter-violence – why can we, the average person, not do the same?

 

Use history and human nature as guides. Most mass shootings (just
talking about in the developed world, and not government-sponsored or drug-war
stuff) have been lone gunmen, so you likely only need to stop one and you are
done – that’s the history. Secondly, it is human nature to duck and dodge
things flying into your face or at your body, and it is very hard to focus on
something precision (like aiming and shooting) when you are in pain and blind.
So, when a lockdown occurs, rather than immediately cowering in fear hoping to
be shot last, everybody grab something they can throw, or hit with, to use as a
weapon, or get out a BRIGHT flashlight (or even a cell phone camera flash;
temporary blinding and disorientation is a MAJOR help in a fight). When hiding,
arrange yourselves around the door or other most likely entry point, with the
biggest and strongest nearest the door, but at least a few paces back. Those
nearest the door should be holding stuff that makes a good club (be creative –
like the heavy iron 3-hole punch, a meter stick, using a marker or Sharpie like
a kubotan, or a shovel from the wetlands ecology project last month you just
“happen” to still have), or a couple of them might use a desk they can push or
hold up in front of themselves. If an active shooter comes in the door,
everyone shine lights in his eyes, throw stuff at him, scream a battle cry, and
CHARGE! The folks in the first rank charge in, planning on knocking the weapon
up, jamming the action, hitting or blinding or disabling the shooter in any way
possible. Bury him in weight of numbers, use knees, biting, clubbing, anything
that causes pain, distraction, immobility, damage, or blindness. The second
rank should be ready to dive in to help, pull back the injured to clear the way
for more counter-attackers, or whatever. The physically weakest should shine
flashlights into the attacker’s eyes to blind him, watch for other shooters, or
prepare to lend a hand in any way possible (such as keeping a power-cord or
other tie-‘em-up handy to give to the primary counter-attackers once the
shooter is subdued).  If the event
happens in a cafeteria or gym, throw your lunch, a can of soda, hot soup or
coffee, a ball, or anything else handy, and charge in for the take-down.

 

This sort of plan does not interfere with the normal lock-down
procedures of “lock-lights-hide”, can be implemented independently by
individual teachers, and can be modified and adapted to specific classroom
layouts and student age and abilities. 
It empowers kids, and trains them that the proper reaction to senseless
violence is not cowering in fear or meek compliance but to do what the police do and use determined and
purposeful counter-violence, to raise the
price of being anti-social. It creates an anti-victim mindset.  It lays
the groundwork for a stronger appreciation of what it is to be an American, and
a free human.  It also inculcates a recognition that action is what stops psychopaths.

 

Now, to be sure, many police departments are likely to oppose this idea
– it’s their job we are talking about taking from them. If after an attempted school
shooting, two rookies, a sergeant, and a coroner with a spatula can clean up
and document the mess, then there are a whole lot of neat toys the local PD
can’t justify buying, and a lot of security programs that won’t get funded, a
lot of grief councilors won’t be hired. It is in their best interests for you to be dependent on them; it is not in your best interests, however. Some teachers will be opposed to it
too, on the grounds that it flies in the face of their ideology of “violence
never solved anything,” which is laughably, provably, wrong, as well as being
quite at odds with American history.

 

If people are trained to do this in schools, then mass-shootings
elsewhere in public become less likely, too, because a “counter-attack”
mentality means they are more likely to be dragged down promptly, ending the
spree. It will teach teamwork and coordination, self-defense, and an active
rather than passive mentality.  It will
also help in building self-confidence, by creating an independent outlook on
life. Research shows that people who are targeted in a violent
confrontation  have much less PTSD and
other psychiatric recovery issues if they fought back and won, even if
injured,  than if they were a passive
receiver of violence. When the would-be victims fight back, it allows for
heroes worthy of emulation on the good guys side, and destroys the image the
sociopath has of themselves.

 

Is this a perfect solution to the problem of mass shooting and
murderous psychopaths? Will it guarantee no casualties? Will it always work
perfectly? Well, no, of course not. All
choices and actions are an exercise in trade-offs. But it is virtually free to
implement, may be laid out in a very short time to a class if an emergency
arises elsewhere in the building that you fear might head your way, has many
potential positive side-effects, and few downsides. It’s a start toward
creating a mindset in the nation of refusing to be a victim.

 

 

Know any teachers? Mail a link to this page on to them for thinking
about. This essay is a more school-specific follow-on to my original, more
general, “Let’s
Roll” article, which lays out the case why fighting back is the best way to
both stop and prevent mass shootings.

It’s good to have clarity

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After I had forcefully expressed my extreme frustration with my insane boss at Microsoft a manager higher in the chain of command told me, “It’s good to have clarity.” Although I was infuriated at the time the phrase stuck with me and I see it’s application to many situations.

Obviously, with clarity of the problem the solution set is smaller and more likely to succeed. What’s even more interesting to me is that in so many of the cases the clarity of widely varying situations lead to the exact same, obviously correct, solution.

Some examples will make my point. The following are not even half of the things that immediately come to mind. But some were close enough telling the stories would have been somewhat repetitive.

Nearly a dozen years ago I met a young woman, Patrycja, at a party who after learning I was an engineer cheerfully told me of all the money she had been making recently. She was a stripper at a club (no, she wasn’t working the party I was at, she was fully clothed) and although she made very good money there it was nothing to what she made from a recent “gold mine” she had been working. Some middle aged engineer who had near zero social skills and had never had a girl friend had been paying her for private visits to his home. No, she never had sex with him. She would strip and/or just spend time with him a couple times a week for a few hours. He had lived alone and frugally for many years while making good money. He had a lot of savings. In the last few weeks he had paid her over $20,000. He had another $80,000 or so left in savings and in a few months she expected she would have collected all of it.

Maybe the guy thought he was getting his money’s worth but my thoughts were different. I never, ever, wanted to have anything to do with this person again. I knew I probably wouldn’t remember what she looked like a year (or 20) later but I wrote down her unusual name so that I wouldn’t forget.

It was good to have clarity. That relationship, even though just a few minutes at a party, needed to be terminated.

Over 30 years ago my boss repeatedly told me, “You’re the project engineer on this, make the decisions and get it done.” But then a few weeks later a group meeting he was telling us how important my project was and how it was going to make such a huge impact to the company and especially those that had stock options. “Who gets stock options?”, I asked. His answer floored me, “I of course have stock options and at review time the company allocates options that I can distribute to the people I manage. I give them to my project managers.” I was shocked that he would say this in front of everyone in our group because most of them were clearly not project managers. Still, it would be good for me even though I hadn’t been awarded any stock options yet. But then he continued, “And my project managers are Jim and Bill.”

When he told me I was the project manager on the project he just meant he wanted me to assume that role. He didn’t mean that was my actual title or that it meant anything beyond assuming responsibility for making the decisions. And further research indicated that the two people with the actual title of Project Manager were more than we really should have for the number of people in the group. I wasn’t going to be promoted anytime soon.

It was good to have clarity. I terminated the relationship and moved on to another company.

For many years I unsuccessfully tried to get my wife to go to counseling with me. I finally got a highly recommended book for couples and we listened to it as we driving from the Seattle area to Idaho. After a couple chapters she asked me what I thought of our marriage and what needed to change. I told her we needed to work on some things and I enumerated some items that could be improved. She unfastened her seatbelt, opened the door, and tried to jump out as we were driving 60 MPH down the freeway.

That was sufficient clarity that something was seriously wrong and further investigation was instigated. There were compelling signs there was a personality disorder involved. If true then there was no chemical imbalance that drugs could mitigate. Counseling and therapy is so rarely helpful and problematic that most therapists refuse these type of patients.

I was 95% sure but not entirely convinced it was time to terminate the relationship. Within an hour and 20 minutes after having been served papers she tried to kill herself again.

A few days later when talking to my counselor she said the last suicide attempt pretty much confirmed my suspicion about the personality disorder. But what was odd, she said, was that my wife had only one husband for 35+ years. Most women with her condition would have had three or four by her age. “Mere mortals,” she said, “Would have left her years ago.”

It was good to have clarity. There are no second thoughts or wondering if terminating the relationship was the right thing to do.

The government deliberately gave and let sales go through for thousands of guns to known violent criminals hoping to “recover them at crime scenes.” And just what sort of crime scenes would they expect those guns to show up at? It sure wasn’t going to be jaywalking, tax evasion, or running a lemonade stand without a license. If they had two or more brain cells to rub together they had to know some of those guns would be used to murder and injure innocent victims. Hundreds died from the use of those guns and there are laws that if enforced against the government for those gun transfers would put people in jail for decades if not life sentences. As far as I know there are no exceptions in the law for government agents and I know for certain there aren’t going to be any prosecutions for those gun transfers. Those people believe they are above the law. U.S. Attorney General Holder and President Obama all but.admit that by refusing to cooperate with investigators.

Although it is not yet certain the leading hypothesis for the motivation was to justify another assault weapon ban. The direct infringement of a specific enumerated right under the color of law which results in the death of innocent people is punishable by death under 18 USC 242. Hence, a case can be made for the death penalty for the government perpetrators. But that will not be given even a second’s thought by prosecutors.

It was good to have clarity. It was clear to me but perhaps not the general population who really don’t know the law and the details of Operation Fast and Furious.

The day Obama Care was ruled constitutional Ry told me something like, “Things are clear now. There is no mistaking where we stand.”

The constitutional limits of power are relegated to the status of a myth. If taxes and/or penalties can be levied and collected for failure to buy a product or service imagine the corruption that enables. What kind of return on “investment” can made by a company which bribes enough politicians such that every family or person in this country had to buy a particular service or product?

The only limits to government corruption and power in our country are the limits of physics and economics.

It’s good to have clarity. It’s time to terminate the relationship.

I need a new frontier.

Quote of the day—Repeal the 2nd Amendment

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Is the reason conservatives are in love with guns they are a phallic symbol?

Repeal the 2nd Amendment
July 21, 2012
[It’s another Markley’s Law Monday!—Joe]

Quote of the day–Jennifer Agiesta and Jack Gillum

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Gun control advocates sputter at their own impotence. The National Rifle Association is politically ascendant. And Barack Obama’s White House pledges to safeguard the Second Amendment in its first official response to the deaths of at least 12 people in a mass shooting at a new Batman movie screening in suburban Denver.

Jennifer Agiesta and Jack Gillum
July 21, 2012
Calls for gun control stir little support
[This is good but we need to keep pushing while the enemies of freedom are on the defensive.

Why do you need a gun in the mall, the restaurant, or the movie theater? Because the mentally ill and others with evil intent know no boundaries.—Joe]

How stupid do they think we are?

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The Obama campaign is running a video ad that claims Romney of misquoting President Obama. The problem is that even in Obama’s ad, a few seconds later, Obama is shown saying exactly what Romney quoted him as saying.

Do they think we are incapable of remembering things that happened 30 seconds ago? Or do they think we are that mind boggling stupid?

I suspect the real answer is that they are suffering from cognitive distortion (CD). I’ve had occasion to read up on CD and some other mental health issues in the last few months and I think a good case can be made, in a more scientific manner than expressed by Michael Savage, that Liberalism is a Mental Disorder. In fact it is a fairly well known and understood disorder. It just, to the best of my knowledge, hasn’t been explicitly connected to liberalism.

The problem is there appears to be no cure. It’s not a chemical imbalance. It’s not something that can be treated with counseling or therapy. If you can’t completely avoid contact with them the best you can do is give them firm boundaries, deal with their outbursts of anger and irrational behavior, and try to keep them from hurting themselves or others.

Some day when I have lots of time I’m going to write up a post on the topic.

Go shooting with the sheriff

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I just might attend this. I have a life membership at the gun range and it’s only a few miles away:

As Seattle and the state weigh tighter gun control measures the King County Sheriff is locked and loaded. He’s ready to take the gun control debate to the firing range.

It’s an upcoming campaign event called, “Shootin’ With the Sheriff,” and some say the timing couldn’t be worse.

…

Strachan’s “Shootin With the Sheriff” campaign fundraiser happens July 27 from 6-8pm at Wade’s Gun Shop in Bellevue.

And that the anti-gun people are wringing their hands and whining makes it all the more attractive to me.

Quote of the day—Simon Black

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Today, it’s nice to know that human beings are a lot more enlightened. We know that the dimensions of someone’s skull or nose don’t matter much in the way of intelligence or integrity.

And we can wonder with absolute incredulity how anyone could have passed off such nonsense as science.

Here’s the irony, though. In the future, they’ll wonder the same thing about us. The difference is that our faux-science is economics.

In the future, they’ll wonder with utter incredulity how these ridiculous assertions about conjuring money out of thin air and borrowing your way out of debt could possibly pass as science.

They’ll be mystified at how political leaders listen to these modern day soothsayers, directing national policy and robbing wealth from hundreds of millions of people based on this faux-science.

And they’ll be completely floored when they see that we actually award our most esteemed prizes to these men who tell us that we can spend our way out of recession and tax our way into prosperity.

To give you an example, I’ve just finished Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz’s new book The Price of Inequality in which he writes something that may be the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard from an economist:

“[T]he success of [Apple and Google], and indeed the viability of our entire economy, depends heavily on a well-performing public sector. There are creative entrepreneurs all over the world. What makes a difference. . . is the government.”

Simon Black
July 17, 2012
Guest Post: Quite Possibly The Dumbest Thing I’ve Heard An Economist Say
[I’ll grant that government makes a difference. A government that enforces contracts, protects the rights of individuals to own property, and to exchange in free trade is what makes for a thriving economy. Government involvement to a greater or lesser amount may reap short term benefits for some people but the long term result is a less successful economy and society.

Or as Presidential candidate Mitt Romney said, it’s both startling and revealing (H/T to son James) that the President of the United States also adheres to that philosophy:

President Obama either demonstrated profound ignorance and/or ill-intent and deserves all the ridicule he gets. He does not deserve to be president of anything in our country.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Ted Nugent

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The United Nations is flea-infested, hygiene challenged hellhole of soulless despots, tyrants, anti-freedom, human-rights violating global gangbangers who wish to shore up their power by having the United Nations put forth a treaty that would restrict the access to guns by their people, thereby ensuring the tyrants can continue to kill, control, rape and plunder innocents with impunity.

Let’s get one thing straight: more access to guns leads to more freedom. Limiting access to guns leads to more innocent death, destruction and tyranny.

Once again, the United Nations is on the wrong side of freedom. This isn’t surprising since the United Nations has a statue of a handgun with a barrel tied in a knot in front of their rat-infested New York building. We should melt that statue and turn it into bullets for free Americans.

Ted Nugent
July 17, 2012
More guns equal less goons
[I suspect Nugent may be exaggerating. I’m not convinced the UN is flea-infested.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Cliff Schecter

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They distinguished themselves by being the first group of ruffians to hold a sitting Attorney General in criminal contempt over the so-called Fast and Furious “scandal”. Let me translate: They pandered to the ageing-fat-white guy demographic that makes up their base and the Board of the National Rifle Association (NRA), by attacking the black Attorney General who happens to work for the black President.

Cliff Schecter
July 15, 2012
Fraudulent and fictitious
Congress’ latest vote is another example of political nihilism – this time with Democrat support.
[Let me translate: Argumentum ad hominem is the best he can do. And, no surprise, he has a history of this when it comes to the NRA.

But what do you expect from a bigot? 300+ dead Mexicans, as planned by this administration (H/T Kevin and Robb), just don’t matter to them or Schecter.—Joe]

Quote of the day—James Q. Wilson

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Government, in my humble opinion, should be formed to secure and to enlarge the exercise of the natural rights of its members; and every government, which as not this in view, as its principal object, is not a government of the legitimate kind.

James Q. Wilson
[It is clear that our present government and that of governments world-wide have either abandoned this viewpoint or never even considered such a viewpoint.

I need a new frontier.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Alan Gottlieb

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How many times must Bloomberg be told to keep his own house in order before he runs around complaining about the rest of the country?

Alan Gottlieb
CCRKBA Chairman
July 13, 2012
BLOOMBERG NEEDS TO PLUG POLICE LOCKER ROOM LOOPHOLE, SAYS CCRKBA
[I understand Gottlieb was asking a rhetorical question but I’m going to treat it as if it were serious.

Alan, your question presumes facts not in evidence. There is no evidence that Bloomberg responds to being told anything. This is true no matter how many times he has been told.

The more appropriate questions are:

—Joe]

Communication

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I was weeding my garden the other day.  A neighbor sees me out there and remarks; “Nice looking garden you have there.”
“Thanks” I reply, “Other than some deer nipping the tops off a few of my beets, it’s doing pretty well.  I have some nice 
radishes coming in right now.  Would you like some radishes?”
“Rabbit stew!” he replies, with enthusiasm.
(I paused a moment) “No; radishes.  Would you like some radishes?”
Without another word, he turned around and walked away.


That one was quick in getting to the point where both parties realized that they were engaging in a conversation which had 
nothing to do with what the other was saying.  I’ve had this sort of thing go on for a long time before I realized that the 
conversation I was having bore little or no resemblance to the conversation the other person thought he was having, even when 
the individual words were all intelligible.


A recurring theme in such instances relates to the difference between principles and group identification, or “group think”.  
There is a saying floating around lately, which says “When the government has its boot on your throat, it makes no difference 
whether it’s a left boot or a right boot.”  It makes sense, I suppose, if your world centers around group, or political party, 
identity, but it’s a blitheringly stupid statement if you care about principles.  I stated, over at Kevin’s, that if there’s a 
government boot on your neck (and you don’t deserve it) then by definition it is a left boot. QED– those who uphold the 
principles of liberty do not abuse people as a matter of policy.


The response?



“I find your lack of insight disturbing. As a libertarian, I see just as much interference in my life coming from the so-called 
right as from the so-called left.”


Fair enough– the operative term being “so-called”.  But that was my whole point after all, see.



“Maybe because I have friends from each of those camps, I can somewhat understand how each only sees the abuses of the other, 
but not their own.”


I’m sorry; my own abuses?



“The ‘giveaway’ in your case is the ‘deserve’ line: who are you, or anyone else, to be the sole arbiter of whether someone 
“deserves” abuse? Please don’t go on about breaking the law, that is not what the poster is referring to, as I would suspect you 
know. And having a boot on one’s neck is not an appropriate response to law-breaking; arrest and trial would be (if the crime is 
real and not a consensual activity of which you disapprove).”


What if they resist arrest?  Yeah, I’m going with the boot, thank you.



“No arbitrary political group is either all good or all bad; the same goes for people in general, unless you want to bring up 
mass murderers or serial child molesters. So to attribute all evil intent to your political opponents is not only facile and 
simplistic, but often leads down the path to violence, pogroms, and war.”


Umm….yes; I do attribute all (political) evil to my political opponents.  The moment someone commits an evil, I oppose them, 
see.  Individually.  Not the whole group, unless the whole group embraces the evil act in which case the whole group is leftist and I oppose it.


I was talking about principles and he was talking about political parties (group think– tribal association).  Two different 
subjects.  Lets break this down further.


If some members of the Catholic Church are found to be sex abusers, are all those who try to follow the teachings of Jesus then 
to be held accountable for the abuse?  More important; are the teachings of Jesus thereby rendered invalid and useless, or even 
evil?  If some who claim to be Christians are practicing serial child abuse, then Christ himself was an evil man, and 
anything he said should be dismissed out of hand?  That would have to be the conclusion of the tribalist, and of course it would 
be insane.


If I’d left out the “and you don’t deserve it” bit, someone would have said, “Oh yeah?  What if you just murdered someone?  Does 
that mean that anyone who comes after you for it is a leftist?!!!”  Since I put it in, I got criticized with “…who are you, 
or anyone else, to be the sole arbiter of whether someone ‘deserves’ abuse?”  Either way it’s a change of subject– a diversion 
from the point.  I’m talking about principles and he’s talking about something else– anything but the point.  It’s a 
sophisticated version of “Oh yeah?  Well your mother wears Army boots!” after which I suppose I am to argue about my mother’s 
fashion sense instead of the fact that leftists are all authoritarians and all authoritarians are leftists whereas those on the 
right are for liberty.  That someone may falsely claim to be on the right, or that someone on the right might commit a crime of 
some kind, is not my fault, and it certainly does not say anything whatsoever about the validity of my principles.


What that self-described libertarian is actually saying (probably without thinking about it) is that the principles of liberty 
are invalid because, for generations, leftists have been posing as Republicans.  Therefore, if I espouse the principles of liberty, I’m a hypocrite.

It was Racist from the Beginning

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Hat tip; Uncle


This is the first I’ve heard about it.  I can’t say I’d be surprised.  Federal gun restriction has always had racial motivations, among others.  One of the “problems” of recognizing black people’s citizenship rights was stated openly– that such would allow them to go about armed anywhere they went.  We could fix this gigantic mess by simply repealing the NFA of 1934 and the GCA of ’68.  This country got along just fine without them.  As it is, we’re still festering in FDR’s aftermath.


Meanwhile, the Republicans are busy trying to figure out what it is they should pretend to believe during the upcoming election.

Quote of the day—Motor-T

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I always thought it was odd to describe capitalism as a system. Nobody arranged capitalism, or put it into place. Capitalism is the name for what happens (economically) when people are left alone.

Motor-T
July 6, 2012
Comment to Quote of the day—John Aziz
[It gets even weirder when people start whining about the government “forcing freedom” and the CIA “forcing free trade” on people. I have to conclude there is some sort of cognitive distortion going on. Either that or these people have more than few pages in their dictionaries filled in by two-year olds with crayons.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Thomas Sowell

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Fallacies abound in economic policies affecting everything from housing to international trade. Where the unintended consequences of these policies take years to unfold, the effects may not be traced back to their causes by many people. Even when the bad consequences follow closely after a given policy, many people may not connect the dots, and advocates of policies that backfire often attribute these bad consequences to something else. Sometimes they claim that the bad situation would have been even worse if it had not been for the wonderful policies they advocated.


There are many reasons why fallacies have staying power, even in the face of hard evidence against them. Elected officials, for example, cannot readily admit that some policy or program that they advocated, perhaps with great fanfare, has turned out badly, without risking their whole careers. Similarly for leaders of various causes and movements. Even intellectuals or academics with tenure stand to lose prestige and suffer embarrassment when their notions turn out to be counterproductive. Others who think of themselves as supporters of things that will help the less fortunate would find it painful to confront evidence that they have in fact made the less fortunate worse off than before. In other words, evidence is too dangerous— politically, financially and psychologically— for some people to allow it to become a threat to their interests or to their own sense of themselves.


Thomas Sowell
Economic Facts and Fallacies: Second Edition Economic Facts and Fallacies: Second Edition page 2.
[See also When Prophecy Fails or my website by the same name for a quick overview.


I expect that most of those that read my blog will see the applicability of the above to our current political situation.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Steven Den Beste

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Way back in the depths of time, Greek philosophers ended up with two basic and incompatible ways of looking at the universe. One way was materialism, which says that there is a material universe which behaves in a consistent way, and if you study it you can learn the way it works.

That’s the world view of engineers and scientists — and businessmen, for that matter. It’s the world view of people who understand and use mathematics, and statistics. It is a place where cause leads to effect. It’s the place that game theory studies. It isn’t necessarily inherently atheistic; a lot of religious people live in the materialist world.

But there are people who don’t. A different epistemological view is teleology, which says that the universe is an ideal place. More or less, it exists so that we humans can live in it. And human thought is a fundamental force in the universe. Teleology says that if a mental model is esthetically pleasing then it must be true. Teleology implies that if you truly believe in something, it’ll happen.

Steven Den Beste
December 6, 2009
Government by Wishful Thinking
[H/T to wfgodbold in the comment to A process failure.

As I have said before (and here, here, and here) our opponents have a “currency” which is emotionally based. I find the dealings in this currency perplexing and frequently repugnant. But what is scary to me is the number of people that advocate this currency, deal in this currency, and hold great political power.—Joe]

Quote of the day—John Aziz

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The chief problem that Marxists face is their misidentification of the present economic system as free market capitalism. How can we meaningfully call a system where the price of money is controlled by the state a free market? How can we meaningfully call a system where financial institutions are routinely bailed out a free market? How can we meaningfully call a system where upwards of 40% of GDP is spent by the state a free market? How can we call a system where the market trades the possibility of state intervention rather than underlying fundamentals a free market?

…

I’m not sure that Marxists have ever understood capitalism; Das Kapital is a mammoth work concentrating on many facets of 19th Century industrial and economic development, but it tends to focus in on obscure minutiae without ever really considering the coherent whole. If Marxists had ever come close to grasping the broader mechanisms of capitalism — and if they truly cared about democracy — they would have been far less likely to promulgate a system based on dictatorial central planning.

John Aziz
July 5, 2012
Guest Post: Is Marxism Coming Back?
[As I said after reading the Communist Manifesto, “The typical two year old child or even the family dog wouldn’t accept the conclusions unless they were forced into compliance.”

Marxists are either profoundly ignorant or profoundly evil. In either case I believe it is intentional. I suspect most fall into the ignorant category (also known as “useful idiots”) but the those in the latter category have a high probability of obtaining all the power.—Joe]

CCRKBA video on Fast and Furious

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From the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms:

They are asking for donations so this video can be run on television.

Contempt of Congress options

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David Hardy says there are options to be considered now that Holder has been found in contempt of Congress:

The House sends out its Sergeant-at-Arms to arrest the defendant, he is tried on the spot, and the House decides whether to convict.

It is a little bit of a surprise to me but the Capital has a dungeon just for such purposes. And I find it interesting and very pleasing that:

…presidential pardons appear not to apply to civil contempt procedures such as inherent contempt because it is not an “offense against the United States” or an offense against “the dignity of public authority.”

I realize spending really needs to be cut but couldn’t we find enough money to enlarge the dungeon enough to hold a few more people? You would think that after spending a few days chained to the wall they would become more cooperative with Congressional investigations.

Good question

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Katie Pavlich, “If Operation Fast and Furious wasn’t about pushing for more gun control, then why is the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, a group with strong oppositions to the Second Amendment, coming to Attorney General Eric Holder’s defense?”

That’s a very good question.

And in case you don’t recognize the name Ms. Pavlich literally wrote the book on Fast and Furious. It’s a good book. Both Ry and I liked it.