The greatest delusion is the hope that the evils in this world can be cured by Progressive legislation.
Bonzer Wolf
Tag line
[At this point in time I am of the opinion that most of the evils in the world are the result of Progressive legislation. This is especially true if you include the Progressive movement of the early 20th century in Eastern Europe.—Joe]
Robb Allen sent me an email asking if the name of my wife is Barbara Scott (it is) with a link to this article:
For months, her friends and daughter kept asking where Barbara Scott’s husband was. At first, she said he was back home in Oklahoma, but on Tuesday police reportedly dug up the truth in the backyard of their Tampa Bay home.
The man … was buried in the garden of the couple’s Lake Alfred home beneath the oregano, basil and banana peppers, MyFoxTampaBay.com reported.
My Barbara Scott has not had good luck with growing plants so it is unlikely she would do this to me.
I protect my family, my property, my interests and my life. If you did the same we wouldn’t need a Neighborhood Watch. Or Democrats.
Fred
March 28, 2012
Comment to New Happenings in the Zimmerman Case.
[That is overstating things a little bit but it does have a lot of truth in it too.—Joe]
With all the crazy stuff Joan Peterson says I wonder how large her team of psychologists is. And the authorities locked up Sarah Conner for months, who appears to be far more sane, and took her guns away.
This is how we win:
The Brady Campaign has no response to this sort of thing.
In this age of the rule of brute force, it is almost impossible for anyone to believe that anyone else could possibly reject the law of the final supremacy of brute force.
Mahatma Gandhi
August 11, 1920
The Doctrine of the sword
[But he did successfully reject brute force. By nearly every measure he won his political objectives.
He changed the course of history not only by winning critically important battles but by teaching the world the methods by which non-violent methods can achieve revolutionary political ends. This is something those advocating violence in the Martin/Zimmerman case would do well to learn and remember.—Joe]
Ry relates the short version of a conversation we overheard at class on Saturday. It did shutdown the direction of that conversation really fast.
If it weren’t a derogatory phrase I would start calling “Guy two”, whose name is Bob, “Baghdad Bob“.
It’s one thing to issue an executive order during peacetime saying private property “required” by the government can be taken if there is a national emergency. It’s quite another thing to enforce it during a national emergency.
There is only one question I want answered at this point. There might be more questions once I get the answer but I suspect I’ll know all I need to know with that one answer. I would like to think that answer would enough for everyone else as well but for the people chanting for Zimmerman’s arrest and those putting up “dead or alive” rewards for Zimmerman little things like facts probably won’t make much of a difference.
I strongly suspect Zimmerman is innocent of a crime. I need one more fact to convince me it was a lawful use of deadly force or that we cannot know the answer.
It is possible that Zimmerman instigated the confrontation in such a way that Martin attacked him. Taunting or “picking a fight” with Martin would have Zimmerman sharing a significant amount of responsibility in the death of Martin. But I have heard zero reports of a beginning to the confrontation in this manner. Hence I am of the opinion it did not happen this way or that as long as Zimmerman does not change his story we will never know about it.
I realize the police can’t always be trusted that concern is usually associated with the facts in regard to police conduct, the conduct of those with significant political power, or the conduct of groups being discriminated against. In the case of Zimmerman I don’t think there is any particular reason to believe the police are “fact challenged”. I realize witnesses can be mistaken and/or have a bias. If possible I would like to be able to reach a conclusion based entirely upon physical evidence that is difficult to convincingly fake in a timely manner without getting caught. Hence the particular facts that I think are most relevant are:
The one question I have that will probably settle the issue for me is when the authorities said, “Zimmerman then shot Martin once in the chest at very close range”; What was that range? I’ve probably spent more time and money than most on learning about such things and if the investigators know what they are doing, and I have no reason to believe they don’t, then they should be able to determine that range quite accurately. If the range was under 12 inches they can probably determine the range to within a fraction of an inch. And of course the angle can be determine quite closely as well.
If the range is determined to be within six inches and the bullet path matches Zimmerman’s story then I have to conclude the two were in a fight at contact distance and Zimmerman was losing badly. If I were on a jury I would insist that Zimmerman was in reasonable fear of imminent permanent physical injury or death and was justified in using deadly force to protect himself.
End of story for me.
Remember:
Birth control is not cleaning your guns…on the couch… in your underwear… every time she brings a boy over. It’s doing it on his couch.
Christopher Pearson
March 26, 2012
Via the gun email list at work.
[While this parenting technique has its merits it’s also probably a pretty good way to get your daughter pissed at you.
Not that I have any experience in that regard. But I will say that being about a foot taller than your daughter’s date, wearing all black, armed, wearing a Boomershoot coat and silently following about eight feet behind them for 50 yards as they leave the movie theater in the mall and out into the parking lot before they notice leaves an impression too.—Joe]
We are going to have some other (I already mentioned the bloggers I knew about) high profile shooters at Boomershoot 2012.
I knew this was in the works and finally saw the entry come in this morning making it far more certain. But I didn’t want to say anything until I saw this from 30 Cal Gal:
Shelley Rae and I are a 2 woman team sponsored by ESS Eyepro. They are paying us to go shoot things that explode!
In somewhat related news I have three pair of the ESS glasses that I have been using for a few weeks. I really need to make a blog post about them (I like them!). And ESS will be donating several pair to the raffle to raise money for Project Valour-IT of Soldiers Angels at the Boomershoot Dinner Saturday night.
There are still lots of High Intensity openings left and 10 long range positions available for Boomershoot 2012. Sign up here.
It will be a blast!
From John at work. We are both working on Windows 8. Occasionally we will complain about some problem or another we have run into with the prerelease bits we are dealing working with.
This morning he sent out some email:
I don’t know what all the Windows 8 bashing is about the new UI is clearly superior:
Obviously he is correct. As Greg (at work) pointed out, “This is a much more pleasing shade of blue.”
what the fuck do you need to be carrying around a gun for?
You have to go to Starbucks with the dick you have, rather than the dick you wish you had.
Ash Can
March 4, 2010
Comment to Open Thread: Penis Substitutes At the Ready!
[It’s another Markley’s Law Monday!—Joe]
I suspect even with a civilization with our level of technology and capacity for building durable shelter that nearly everyone would be dead in a few days should something like this happened. But man, what a ride if you could manage it:
Planets in tight orbits around stars that get ejected from our galaxy may actually themselves be tossed out of the Milky Way at blisteringly fast speeds of up to 30 million miles per hour, or a fraction of the speed of light, a new study finds.
Today I brought a couple rifles back to the Seattle area for cleaning and preparation for Boomershoot. I call my place “The Clock Tower”.
As I was climbing the stairs with my cased rifles and openly carried pistol on my hip I wondered what the response would be if someone in this liberal enclave saw me as I was lugging the precision rifles up the stairs. Should I hurry inside to reduce the time they have to figure out the contents of the cases? Should I stop and chat with them and invite them to the range or maybe even Boomershoot?
In either case will the friendly neighborhood SWAT team pay me a visit early tomorrow morning?
Somehow I doubt people lugging books or political signs up the stairs worry about the quite the same things I do. As long as people carrying books or guns into their home worry about the police breaking down their doors in the early morning hours we have more work to do.
Lethality is the nicotine of the gun industry. Even more than the tobacco companies, firearm manufacturers have been shielded from public scrutiny and exempt from health and safety laws that govern other products.
Tom Diaz
January 20, 1999
[“Shielded from public scrutiny and exempt from health and safety laws? Do the rights protected by the First Amendment have a Federal Agency devoted to the regulation of them? Do you need to pass a background check before you can purchase a book on religion?
Are you required take a class and get a license before you are allowed to vote? But what is more dangerous? A few million people carrying handguns in public or a Joseph Stalin implementing his progressive political views? Diaz is not only has his facts wrong he doesn’t even have a clue about the dangers facing humanity.—Joe]
Today Ry, Barron, and I finished our first day of NROI training at the Lewiston Pistol Club. Ry and I figured we had driven the furthest since we came from the Seattle area. But it turns out someone else had driven from Winnemucca, NV. Even without him we would have had to share the title with another guy from the Seattle area (Bellevue).
I have been operating on about five hours of sleep each night for the last several days so I came home and took a nap while others were doing their homework.
I’m awake again and now it’s time for me to do my homework.
It is a shame that we are still a species that feels comfortable, even celebrates, an instrument built solely to maim or kill. We are, after all, the same species that believes in persuasion and reason and has seen the efficacy of nonviolent movements. Yet ending tyranny and oppression and defending life and liberty still seem to require firearms.
John Yemma
March 12, 2012
Guns and freedom: the American paradox
[For the Christian Science Monitor it’s actually a pretty favorable opinion. My impression is that Yemma in transition from an anti-gun position to something neutral or even positive. He sees the tragedy of firearms misuse but recognizes that at least in worst case situations they are necessary.
We need to keep coming out of the closet and showing the benefits of gun ownership. It’s fun, it decreases crime, and it is a deterrent to tyranny.—Joe]
To be sure, correlation doesn’t prove causation. But the experience of Colorado State and DC should come as no surprise. By now there’s so much evidence that higher rates of gun ownership lead to lower rates of crime that it isn’t hard to fathom why fewer and fewer Americans want to ban handguns.
Jeff Jacoby
March 21, 2012
A safer society with guns
[Via David Hardy.
As David said, “It’s staggering that the Boston Globe ran this.”
We need to continue the mop up operations in many places but at this time it is just pockets of resistance that need to be cleaned up. They will scream, yell that the blood will run in the streets, and fight us as best they can but their current strategy and tactics is a losing game plan. Their only hope is to change their approach and I don’t see anything that has a reasonable chance of working. Only terrorist operations have any chance at all against us and I can’t see that working without other, extreme, complicating factors coincidently aligning in such a way as to be enable them.
On the other hand it is easy to imagine we eventually will have constitutional carry everywhere in this country.—Joe]
BrainBang.info is a blog about guns and psychology. It is brand new and already has some interesting and clever stuff. Here are some tidbits:
If the content keeps coming this will be good.
