Antis Tip Their Hand Again

Via David Codrea at The War On Guns, comes this, on the issue of arming campus police:

Soneson, an associate professor of philosophy and religion, worries more about the potential for mistakes. Last month he shared several stories, including that of Eric Shaw, a 31-year-old man killed by an Iowa City police officer while working in his downtown studio. Officers were in the building looking for a burglar and entered Shaw's apartment. The officer accused of firing the weapon originally said he thought the cell phone in Shaw's hand was a gun. He later admitted firing the gun when he flinched.
"These were highly trained police officers," Soneson said during an open forum on campus last month. "The UNI campus security guards have asked to carry guns for years now. ... Guns are unsafe."

Whaaat? You mean The Only Ones make mistakes TOO? Who'da thunk it?
And of course, leave it to that f**ktard Paul Helmke to take that ball and actually run with it! Or maybe it's the scissors he's running with...

I urge everyone, regardless of your point of view on the subject, to watch this short video.

The video clip shows a Federal law enforcement agent, doubtless fully trained in firearm safety, shooting himself in the foot in front of a stunned classroom full of people.

This reinforces the point that guns in school are inherently dangerous. Even trained law enforcement officers can have potentially serious accidents. Teachers should focus on teaching, and janitors on cleaning. If we are concerned about safety in the schools, any guns should be in the hands of trained law enforcement officers.

The Federal agent in question is none other than Lee Paige, the only one professional enough to handle that Glock Fotay. Chutzpah indeed, Mr. Codrea...
But here's the thing. Time after time, the antis clumsily attempt to hammer home the point that trained LEOs are a step above the ordinary citizens when it comes to handling guns. Yet here we are with one of them bringing up a supposedly trained agent's mistake. Mr. Codrea makes the observation that the police would eventually be required to turn in their duty weapons when not on duty. Somehow I can't help but think that they'd go a step further -- after they disarmed everyone without a badge, they'd start in on disarming everyone WITH a badge -- using, of course, the premise that "guns...are inherently dangerous." Which over time could very likely lead to only the larger, more physically fit among us being accepted into the law enforcement community. Somehow I can't help but think that'd be nothing but a very bad thing, that we would indeed be going back to the rule by the young, the strong and the many, as Marko Kloos so artfully put it. I for one really wouldn't want to risk that, less so since I'd be one of the unfortunates on the wrong end of the stick...and it irks me tremendously that asshats like Paul Helmke would want to take that chance. You wonder why I think antis are either stupid or evil? Well, that's why...

Another Judgment Of Our Culture

...and, as JR says, this is just completely beyond fiskage. Although there are a couple of "points" (and I use that term in its loosest possible sense) that deserve to be addressed:

If it is really that hard for one to lay down their arms and live a life of peace and prosperity, then perhaps it is due to a lack of better things to do. I have thus constructed a list of possible activities to take the place of killing in your weekly planner.
Options range from, but are not limited to: ice skating, basket weaving (a UConn specialty), planting a tree, learning to play an instrument, helping the poor, helping yourself, taking long walks on the beach, and finally, my personal favorite, survivalism taught first hand in the 21st -century epic that you and I know as "Man vs. Wild."

First up, let's talk about "helping yourself." I would argue that becoming versed in the art of the boomstick is "helping yourself" in more ways than one. Off the top of my head? It will aid you in the task of gathering food, make it a lot easier to defend yourself from two- or four-legged predators, and it's quite the stress reliever; an additional side benefit is the good feeling you get from learning these skills -- "Hey, I can do this, it's really cool that I can rely on myself."
Taking long walks on the beach? Anyone want to take bets that this guy likes pina coladas and getting caught in the rain too? I'd see that bet, go you one better and say it's his favorite song. Hey, if he gets to make half-witted snarks, then by-george, so do I!
Survivalism -- oh, now this one's just too easy! Anyone wanna pitch in and buy this guy a ticket to, say, the Alaskan backcountry, along with everything he needs, sans projectile weaponry? Unless, of course, he was speaking merely of "survivalism" in, say, a town with no Starbucks. I'd say that's a safe bet too, but I'd still buy him that plane ticket to Alaska. He'd find out what that whole "survival of the fittest" thing is all about. Bet he'd be rethinking that whole "get rid of the guns" bit as a bear was preparing him for dinner. Call it cruel and unusual, but some people need to experience firsthand the consequences of their misguided idealism.

In case you didn't get the memo, contrary to what is shown on TV, violence is not an acceptable form of conflict resolution, and the simple, little process called 'speech' is much easier and better at solving problems.

For some strange and unknown reason, a quote from sci-fi author Robert Heinlein comes to mind:

Anyone who clings to the historically untrue—and thoroughly immoral—doctrine that "violence never settles anything" I would advise to conjure the ghosts of Napoleon Bonaparte and the Duke of Wellington and let them debate it. The ghost of Hitler could referee, and the jury might well be the Dodo, the Great Auk and the Passenger Pigeon. Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. Breeds that forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and freedom.

I don't know much about Heinlein, but I would think he has a much better grasp of history and human nature than does Chris Donnelly, and the same could be said for the peerless Bill Whittle:

To the many who scorn the 2nd Amendment of the US Constitution as the dangerous plaything of illiterate, mindless oafs who enjoy loud noises, let me simply refer you to that great unbiased and incorruptible teacher: History.
Ask yourselves why intellectual elites so love totalitarian states where people are unarmed and dependent sheep. Look at the examples of Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao, and Saddam, and the horrors they have inflicted at will on their own people. And when contemplating your ever-so-sophisticated foreign policy, ask yourselves what compassionate and non-violent options you are left with when facing a determined, heartless bastard like Hitler, Napoleon, Ghengis Khan or Attila.
Some say that the time for real evil like that has finally gone. I hope you are right, I really do. I don't want to go fight those bastards; I'd rather barbeque and watch the Gators. I'm sure the Jews in 1930 Germany thought such things could never happen again, not in the heart of European culture and civilization. I'm sure every bound and beaten musician, surgeon, philosopher and painter being lined up at the side of a ditch thought exactly that.

No doubt they did think exactly that, Mr. Whittle...no doubt at all.
As for Mr. Donnelly and his pathetic writing and reasoning "skills" (once again, loosest possible sense here)...when I see things like that in print, I am reminded of nothing so much as monkeys flinging shit at the zoo and screeching at whatever it is they screech at. The fact that this is what passes for Reasoned Discourse (tm) at a media outlet at a major American university is more than enough to make one think that the apocalypse is indeed nigh. I'd like to think that Mr. Donnelly's future potential employers would think twice about giving him a job after seeing this tripe, but I am afraid they won't...and that's a truly frightening prospect. Trust in the mainstream media may be low now, but seeing things like this, I can't help but think it's really going to be scraping the bottom of the barrel in years to come.

Something to Make You Feel Better About Yourself

If ever your sense of self-esteem is deflated, if you're feeling down on yourself, just think, it could be worse. Much worse. You could be this guy:


And leave it up to the coastal leftist asshats at MSNBC to give this guy an air of credibility by actually giving him an interview:

And while it’s easy to dismiss Chris’s videos as attention-seeking schtick, he’s more like a young Candy Darling, sensitive and dramatic, with the Internet as his Andy Warhol.

Uh, ok, folks, whatever. I don't know if I'd dismiss it as attention-seeking schtick, so much as point and laugh and show all my friends and ask them, "can you believe this shit? How pathetic!" It's really comforting to know while this Chris Crocker kid cries himself to sleep tomorrow night over someone he doesn't even know, I'll be rocking out with Cross Canadian Ragweed in Lake Charles.
As for Britney's "person" status? Well, sure she's a human; I don't think anyone ever really denied that. But, well, mother or not, when you pull stunts like she has, topped off by her "performance" on the Video Music Awards, well, quite simply, you DESERVE to be pointed and laughed at. And, well, so does this guy, for the video and spouting such inanities as "Britney's a national treasure." (Yes, if you click the link, you'll see it -- and a drop-dead hilarious spoof!)
I don't hate Chris Crocker, and neither do I care about his sexuality. But, once again, seeing things like this, all I can say is, to quote the great Bugs Bunny, "What a maroon..."
(h/t Ambulance Driver)

Still In One Piece...

...and as it is, the only casualty around here is the power. So I can't stay long, but I am doing fine. With luck I'll be back up and running by tonight or tomorrow....
UPDATE, 7:55 p.m.: Power's back on, everything's just as it was last night when I went to bed, and I am pretty sure the same can be said for many other Southeast Texas residents. Humberto was but a glancing blow compared to Rita, a mild inconvenience -- I had to go to work with the five o' clock shadow because I couldn't run my electric razor -- and for that I am thankful. I did wake up about 3:30 this morning by the sounds of howling winds and my surge protector beeping, indicating the power was out, and I jumped on the Web, where I found out Humberto was a Cat 1 hurricane. Scary stuff indeed, but I am sure it could have been worse. Let's hope this is the worst we get this season, and for a while.

Respect mah authori-tah, 'cause I am an ONLY ONE!

"respect mah authori-tah, or I will SHOW you what a cop does!"
And to think, some actually think cretins like that are the only people should carry guns. Call me crazy, but I think that's a perfect recipe for societal breakdown.

What, Exactly, Are They Worried About?

I'm gonna try to be diplomatic here and say, I really expected better from Texas peace officers than this:

Sgt. Dean Shows oversees the Beaumont shooting range. He's concerned about a new law that allows un-licensed citizens to carry concealed weapons inside their cars.
"Pistol out of his glove compartment one night on Eastex. He was going for his insurance. First thing he came out with was a pistol," said Shows.
Shows remembers a traffic stop one night where he could have lost his life.
"My partner on the other side yelled gun. He didn't have a shot. I just reached in. Got some hair. He dropped it," he said.
The new law permits anyone who's allowed to own a gun to carry it inside their car, and it has to be hidden from sight.
"I don't like it for that reason. It's going to be many guns in the wrong hands. Not saying the gun owner is the wrong person. The guy that steals it is the wrong person," said Shows.
While some argue they have the right to protect themselves against bad guys, Sgt. Shows says you can't protect people from themselves.
"Granted it might save your life. It might take your life if somebody else has got it when you come back to your car," he said.
There are restrictions built into the law.
Convicted felons, gang members, those under court order or those with a history of family violence are not allowed to own firearms or carry them inside a vehicle.

I suppose he might have a point, but for the fact that most gun owners, I would wager, secure their weapons better than that. Somebody might break into the car, but I for one just don't see that as a valid reason to say someone can't carry a gun when they're traveling. If we're going to say a person can't do something based on what someone else might do, we may as well ban gun ownership entirely because somebody might break into your house and steal all your guns. I understand the LEOs' apprehension, but honestly they probably should have had their guard up before every traffic stop anyway because your gangbangers and such are going to be carrying their illegally obtained weapons anyway, no matter what the law says.
As for the sucker who had his pistol in the same general area as his insurance card, well, why should I or anyone else be prohibited from having weapons in our vehicles because of his stupidity? We're not all so absent-minded; as a matter of fact I'd wager most of us are a fat lot more careful than that. I know I sure as hell would be. Gov. Perry, for all his flaws, made the right call here. I'd like to have seen some of the boys in blue actually back him up on it. I know they're out there.
(h/t Fits)

Just for the Sake of Posterity

The Culturologist who loves his daughter -- but apparently not enough to teach her that guns are things to be respected and enjoyed instead of hated and feared -- had this to say regarding the fate of Jeffery Albrecht, who was shot and killed as he was breaking down the door of a Dallas home:

What the hell is wrong with Texans? And how do we make sure it doesn't spread elsewhere in the country?

My comment:

For some strange reason, I was reminded of a classic exchange in the talk.politics.guns newsgroup that occurred some years ago, via Kevin Baker at The Smallest Minority.
"Why don't all of you gun-nuts go off and start your own country?"
"We did. Who let you in?"

And then, I really couldn't have said it better than Texas troubadour Brian Burns did some years ago:
We don't need your politics, we don't need your prayers,
and we don't need your moral compass leadin' us anywhere.
We don't need your business, we don't need your art,
And we don't really give a damn how you did things up north.

So you can save your self-righteous indignation. Or keep on spewing it. As a proud gun-owning Texan I don't give a damn either way.

I doubt it'll show up. We'll see. Should be quite fun to see how he responds.

A Small Measure of Justice?

It seems the two Oklahoma police officers who earlier this summer killed a 5-year-old boy fishing with his grandfather are going to face criminal charges for their criminal negligence...

NOBLE, Okla. -- Cleveland County's top prosecutor has decided to prosecute two Noble officers involved in the shooting death of a 5-year-old boy.
A Noble officer fired his gun at a snake more than a month ago, and the bullet ricocheted and hit 5-year-old Austin Haley in the head.
Cleveland County District Attorney Greg Mashburn explained on Friday that he took no pleasure in filing a pair of second-degree manslaughter charges against the officers, identified as Brad Rogers and Shawn Richardson.They could face up to four years in prison if convicted of the felony charge.However, he said that the officers failed to take reasonable care by firing shots in an open area at a non-poisonous snake. According to police reports, the officers responded on Aug. 3 to a report of a snake in a birdhouse.Jack Tracy said he was fishing with Austin that night when he saw the first shot hit the water near where they were standing. As he pulled his grandson to his side, he said, a second shot hit the boy in the head.

It won't bring little Austin back, and it won't erase the horrendous memory of his death from his grandfather's mind -- but if the officers involved can be made an example of what not to do, if firearm safety ends up being better taught because of it, then perhaps some small good can come of it. It does lead one to think of several things, though...
There are those, of course, who think that guns are a disease on American culture and that they should be banned for the good of society -- except, presumably, for the police and military. But when you (attempt to) take guns out of society, to a greater extent you're going to have people who are unfamiliar with them and afraid of them. And that would make it that much more difficult to train people in the proper use of their weapons -- which, in turn would lead to more situations like this. It makes me wonder how people like the Culturologist with the mail-order degree can say that only the police and the military should have guns. And then, of course, there's Lee Paige, the Only One Professional Enough To Handle that Glock Fotay, and more recently James Gustafson Jr., the San Francisco cop who mainlined a bullet into his neck vein as he was showing off his gun to a girl at a party. It makes one wonder...what are those people thinking?

Friday Morning Political Musings

Once again, the inimitable Rachel Lucas nails it (emphasis mine -- ed.):

Rudy Giuliani sure is proud of what he did in NYC, which is fine, but dude, NYC isn't the USA. Plus, he made no sense. He "had" to welcome the illegals because it was the only way to prevent crime against the rest of us? Or something like that? I liked what he said about focusing on criminals instead of guns themselves to reduce shootings by 75%, but I don't think he gets the fact that again, NYC is not the whole country, and most of us gun owners couldn't give two shits that a gun ban in NYC might possibly have helped reduce crime there - first of all, I don't believe in the correlation and second of all, most places where people have a lot of guns aren't overrun by illegals and gang members. It always confounds me that these big city wankers on the coasts seem to have no clue about the entire middle part of the country.

Yeah, Rachel, me too, even while it does make perfect sense that the coastal leftists in both parties have no clue -- after all, they don't call it "flyover country" for nothing. What confounds me more, though, is that so many people seem to think that Giuliani is the great hope for the GOP in 2008. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: if it were not for 9/11, everyone who's trumpeting Giuliani as the savior of the Republican Party would see him as the authoritarian fascist he is. As for this supposed focus on criminals and not on guns...if that were really the case, then he wouldn't have gotten in line with certain other mayors in the '90s to file frivolous suits against various gun manufacturers. If that really were the case, he would not have supported the so-called Assault Weapons Ban, licensing and registration for gun owners, or any other infringements of the right of the people to keep and bear arms -- including the odious Sullivan Laws in his own city. Giuliani talks a good game like any semi-decent politician -- and I mean semi-decent at the game of politics -- but his record utterly betrays him. We all would be wise to see through that.
In other news, of course, Fred Dalton Thompson has finally manned up and officially declared his run for president. Here's his 15-minute video announcement.



Like I say, it's 15 minutes long, but well worth your time. Thompson has his flaws, most notably his support of the McCain-Feingold "campaign finance reform" act, but overall I honestly believe he's the best man for taking on whoever the Democrats end up nominating. And here's something I think is pretty funny -- if you go here, and scroll through the comments, you'll see people questioning Fred's conservative bona-fides by citing his support for McCain-Feingold, but little to no calling out Giuliani or Romney for their support of gun control or pandering to hunters a la John Kerry. Bit of a double standard there, don't you think?
I wouldn't mind at all seeing a Thompson/Hunter or Thompson/Tancredo ticket before it's all said and done. Thompson/Giuliani or Thompson/Romney, not so much. Somehow I think Thompson and his people have a better reading on the conservative base than that, though. Go, Fred, go.

D.C. Mayor Defends The Indefensible...

...and uses some absolutely atrocious arguments, to boot...

The last time the Supreme Court directly addressed the provision -- which reads, "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed" -- was in 1939, in a case called United States v. Miller. The court said that the Second Amendment's "obvious purpose" is to ensure the effectiveness and continuation of state military forces (the militia mentioned in the amendment), not to provide a private right to own weapons for one's own purposes.

Actually, as I recall it did no such thing; it merely said a sawed-off shotgun was not an appropriate weapon for the Founders' well-regulated militia -- and it further went back to the definition of the militia as "all males physically capable of acting in concert for the common defense. A body of citizens enrolled for military discipline" (more here), NOT the National Guard.

For decades, the lower courts followed that pronouncement. They repeatedly rejected claims that the Second Amendment provides a defense against laws regulating gun possession and use that have no connection with service in a state militia. Although gun proponents vigorously insisted that the Second Amendment protects their right to possess and use guns for private purposes, the courts recognized that their view lacks support in its language and history.

...except, of course, the Founders' views as established repeatedly in their pre-Constitution writings...

...it makes perfect sense to ask that residents who want firearms at home choose something other than handguns.

Except, of course, the District doesn't merely ask that, it mandates it by force of blatantly unconstitutional law...

The more handguns a jurisdiction has, the more people die in homicides.

...once again, as is the gun-banners' wont, NO EVIDENCE to support this...

The handgun ban has saved countless lives

...once again, NO EVIDENCE (are you seeing a pattern here?!), in fact, there's a truckload of evidence to the contrary, one piece of which is D.C.'s on-again-off-again title as Murder Capital of the United States...

It is plainly relevant that the District allows residents to possess other perfectly effective firearms, especially given how much more death and misery handguns have caused than those other firearms.

It's also plainly relevant, Mr. Fenty, that the District requires the firearms you allow them to possess to be in such a state that they're about as effective as a butter knife against the criminals breaking down your subjects' doors. And the fact that you fail to mention this is but one thing that makes you painfully unfit for public office.
Lord, but I am glad I live in Texas. If that kind of talk was ever made by a public official here, they'd likely be ridden out of town on a rail, tarred and feathered, and maybe even hung by the neck until dead pour encourager les autres.
Well, maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration, but I can guarantee you more than a few would be thinking it to be the perfect solution...

(via Nicki, Bitter makes a great point too...)

More Anti Media Mendacity

Welcome, visitors from A Keyboard And A .45 and SayUncle!

Via JR over at A Keyboard And A .45 comes yet more evidence that the folks in the mainstream media must think gun people are blithering idiots:

Two years ago, Florida enacted a law that allows anyone who feels threatened anywhere to use deadly force. Today the National Rifle Association (NRA) is shepherding similar laws through legislatures across the country.

Uh, no, Ms. Graves, that law did no such thing; it merely codified into the law that you don't have to take the seldom-prudent option of running away before using such force. If you're gonna tell people about the law, at least be accurate about it. I realize that's a lot to ask for many mainstream journalists when it comes to any gun-related issue, but your credibility demands no less. I see you're all too willing to flush that.

Paradoxically, the NRA's Goliath status forces the group to work harder to make people believe that it has potent enemies – a challenge to which it has risen. The cover of one issue of America's 1st Freedom, one of the NRA's several magazines, threatened that the United Nations will seize Americans' guns, an idea that is laughably implausible. The NRA also exaggerates the impact of other stock enemies, including the Brady Campaign itself, the French, and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who is trying single-handedly to curb the flow of illegal guns into his city.

After hurricane Katrina, officials tried to ban guns from the streets of New Orleans and from temporary housing for refugees. The NRA halted the efforts in federal court. Wayne LaPierre, the NRA's chief executive officer, painted the attempts to check violence as proof that the US government would take away its citizens' guns.

Whoa...so much inaccuracy and misinformation packed into two paragraphs that, once again, I don't know where to begin!
Gun owners don't need any help whatsoever from the NRA to believe we have some very potent enemies, from these shores and others as well. From Joe Biden's deriding AR-15 owners as mentally unstable morons to Rebecca Peters' contention that we shouldn't be able to own rifles that can hit anything more than 110 yards away, most of us gun owners -- indeed, all but very few of us -- know good and well that there are people out there who will stop at nothing to see us all disarmed (and once again, no evidence is offered of the "laughable implausibility" of UN disarmament of Americans), no matter what supposedly good intentions they try to wrap their proposals in.
As for the New Orleans situation -- checking violence seems to be an incredibly thin reed to hang your argument on, considering people were being disarmed who were doing nothing but trying to protect their property from looters and such. And then there's the fact that members of the police and the National Guard joined said lawlessness. I seem to recall New Orleans police being caught on tape looting one of the local Walmarts. It wasn't an attempt to check violence; it was a brazen violation of the Second, Fourth and Fifth Amendments to the United States Constitution. And it's a beyond-shameful commentary on the Christian Science Monitor that they would let one of their employees pass off such an outrageous untruth to their audience.

Certainly, most Americans would say that the shootings at Virginia Tech should never, ever be forgotten either. But somehow, though school shootings continue, though an average of 32 homicides are committed with guns in the United States each day, though dozens of suspected terrorists are known to have passed background checks to legally purchase guns, the gun-control side cannot gain traction.

And of course we all know it's the guns' fault, right (and, of course, that of the eeevil gun lobby)? Never mind the fact that the creature that shot those kids at Virginia Tech was a deranged lunatic who should have been locked up tighter than Dick's hatband, never mind that none of his victims were able to shoot back, no, it's all the gun lobby's fault and those evil, evil hunks of metal and wood. I guess I should be trembling with fear right about now, as I glance back to where the Ruger .45 sits beside my bed...and I guess it's just a good thing my Kimber 10mm is locked up, because the ammo I roll for it is pretty hot...there's no telling what that thing would do if it weren't locked up tight in that steel safe.
Once again, there are many factors behind the violence committed by thugs with or without guns, that go far beyond the supposed easy availability of weapons. (Which, by the way, is an anti argument I don't quite understand. Have these morons ever tried to get a quality sidearm in a gun store? They're not cheap, at least not if you want a quality weapon -- even one of the Ruger P-Series pistols will run you at least $400 -- and don't even get me started on what I've paid for my 1911s...) Many factors are behind said violence, and until we get a handle on those, absolutely nothing is going to change. Why the media just focuses on the tool I will never understand. Granted, the tool is important to an extent -- consider what Tim McVeigh did with a Ryder truck full of ammonium nitrate fertilizer and diesel fuel -- but if that's all we focus on, nothing is ever going to change. One would think someone supposedly so educated as a journalist would grasp that simple fact. But we're not done with Ms. Graves yet:

What the two sides don't acknowledge is that reasonable people can oppose civilian ownership of machine guns or .50-caliber rifles so powerful they must be shot using a tripod while still supporting hunting and owning guns for self-defense. Americans can support background checks on guns sold everywhere – not just by licensed dealers – without putting gun companies out of business. The United States can require registration of guns and proficiency tests for gun owners, just as we do with cars, without making it impossible, or even difficult, for law-abiding citizens to buy guns.

Ah, yes, the old "reasonable people/middle ground" canard. I'm sorry to disappoint you, Ms. Graves, but I don't see the first thing wrong with .50-caliber rifles or fully automatic weapons, as it can and should be argued that both of those weapons are exactly what the Founding Founding Fathers intended the common citizen to have as a check on a tyrannical government. Once again, it's not pretty or romantic, but it's the truth -- which is exactly what you should be trying to present instead of so much emotion-driven rhetorical bullshit. And I would argue that you absolutely cannot support registration of guns without supporting their ultimate confiscation, because what registration does is make it that much easier for those who would take our tools of liberty from us -- without any sort of attendant crime prevention benefit. Not that said benefit would actually justify registration, as it would be another case of the cure being worse than the disease, I think -- but of course we see all too many journalists think of guns as some sort of disease anyway. As for the other side supporting guns for self-defense -- well, it should be obvious to anyone who's actually been paying attention that the other side by and large doesn't support the private citizen using guns even for self-defense. I recall very clearly in November 2005, after Arlington grandmother Susan Buxton made national headlines for being recorded on tape shooting an intruder in her home, Michael Beard of the Coalition To Stop Gun Violence went on Hannity and Colmes and said, "The privatization of public safety is a dangerous issue in our society. And I've always seen that as the beginning of the loss of liberty." Which is really weird, because I always thought self-reliance was an integral part of liberty, as opposed to, well, depending on the police to pull your chestnuts out of the fire.
And, of course, there's the concluding restatement of the previously dissected canard:

The name-calling and breath-holding have made us all forget that a middle ground is possible.

It's not that all of us have forgotten it; it's that some of us were keen enough from the start to realize that there is no middle ground. Mark my words -- the antis won't stop at registration, banning and confiscation of handguns, AR-15s or .50BMG rifles. Nothing, absolutely nothing they've gotten so far has been good enough to get them to leave us alone, from the outright ban of all guns in Washington, D.C. and Chicago, to the Scary-Looking Weapons Ban in New Jersey, to the .50BMG ban in California, to the background checks conducted nationwide as per the Brady Bill. Nothing has been good enough for them. They're not going to stop. And as long as they don't, neither will we. At least we certainly had better not, if we treasure our liberties.

Another Judgment Of Our Culture

...by a supposed "man of God," no less! (Welcome, visitors from SayUncle! Main page is here, pull up a seat and stay a while!) On to the fiskage...

THERE is no other way to say it, our current gun culture is leading the country down a path to mayhem.

How odd. I've been immersed in this "gun culture" for a good while now and have had nothing but good experiences in my interaction with the members of said culture, all of whom are fine, upstanding citizens who make an honest living at whatever career they choose. I don't understand how the simple ownership of a Glock 19 or AR-15 makes them part of a culture that's "leading our country down a path to mayhem." I mean, if you ran into them on the street they'd appear to be just like anyone else. Carrying a gun or owning one doesn't make them any different from any other John or Jane Doe, other than the fact that they've made the choice to be able to protect themselves or their fellow man if evil came calling.

According to the Small Arms Survey 2007 by the Graduate Institute of International Studies, U.S. citizens own 270 million of the world's 875 million known firearms — that translates to roughly 90 guns for every 100 Americans. Moreover, the survey estimates that 4.5 million of the 8 million new guns manufactured worldwide each year are purchased in the United States.
Does it make me a tree-hugging, overbearing, politically correct, socialist, anti-American liberal because I find these statistics problematic?

"Not necessarily, but the fact that you seem to make me and my fellow gun owners responsible for all the crime committed with guns in this country in the opening words of your screed makes you a judgmental asshole."

Since our country no longer possesses a well-regulated militia, I am not certain of the right of the people to keep assault weapons. Why does suspended NFL defensive tackle Tank Johnson, who weighs more than 300 pounds, stock his home with AR-15 and .223 caliber assault rifles, .44 Magnum, .50 caliber, and .45 caliber handguns, and a .308 Winchester hunting rifle? Protection?

Well, first off, one would think this supposed "man of God" would be at least somewhat educated on the concept of God-given rights, foremost of which is the right to life and a natural extension of which is the right to defend said life by any means he can manage or afford, no matter how much he weighs. As for that well-regulated militia in the Second Amendment, stand by.

For all of the discussion about law-abiding citizens' rights, should one surmise that nothing can be done to keep guns away from those who are committing crimes? Is this merely a flaw in our Constitution?

Lock them up and melt the key. It's not a flaw in the Constitution, but a flaw in the American justice system and its priorities, i.e. the War On Some Drugs and its millions of casualties.

I would love to hear from an assault weapons owner. Explain why you need this weapon. What is the purpose? Short of preparing venison pate, why would a sportsman need such a gun?

I am not an "assault weapons owner," but I'll answer the question anyway, and leave the good pastor's woeful ignorance of ballistics alone. Now, about the Second Amendment, which basically goes to why we need such a gun -- I am reminded of a quote I saw on The High Road not long ago, that went something like, "Shooting a deer is great fun and games. The Second Amendment is about protecting our grandchildren's ability to shoot the next Hitler when he comes to take them to a death camp." Once again, it's not pretty, it's not romantic, but it really is the cold hard truth. One would think a man of God would welcome the truth, or at least accept it, as opposed to talk out of his fourth point of contact about things he obviously has no knowledge of.
Speaking of talking out of the fourth point of contact, get a load of this:

The problem lies in our permissive gun culture that, in part through effective lobbying by the National Rifle Association, has not only repealed certain laws, but also extended others, such as carrying concealed weapons in certain states, making it easier for guns to fall into the wrong hands.

I don't understand how making it easier for a law-abiding citizen carrying a gun makes it easier for a criminal to get his hands on one, unless of course we go back to the old long-discredited canard about the criminal taking the gun and using it against the defender in a defensive encounter. And then it would make sense that this character would say something like that, as he seems to have drunk the entire pitcher of HCI Kool-Aid.

Perhaps there are those who do indeed want to take away everyone's guns, but I suspect they represent a small minority.

I don't. I think most of them just don't have the balls to come right out and say it. Maybe deep down they know what it would mean -- an all-out shooting war that would make Iraq look like a day at the candy store -- or maybe they're just afraid of losing the shred of credibility they have left, but I for one don't see any reason not to think that every last one of the anti-gunners has the same goal: the total abolition of all private firearms ownership in America.

It would be helpful if responsible gun owners led the charge so that the 90 guns for every 100 people were in the hands of law-abiding citizens. I know that's somewhat utopian, but it is the least they could do if they are truly committed to the Second Amendment.

I loved what one of SayUncle's readers said to that: "Well, we’re failing your desires then because we’re working on the 99.7 percent level - not your puny 90 percent level....We both know that 99.7 percent of the gun owners in America will never use their gun in a way to bring dishonor to either them, their family, or the gun. Instead of using the dishonorable one percent to guide your decisions and influence your ideas why not use the collective wisdom of the other 99%?"

And as I said on The High Road:
As for "permissive gun culture"...why not just "permissive culture," period? There are myriad reasons for crime, not the least of which is kids being raised with no sense -- or at best a rather distorted sense -- of right and wrong, which leads to philosophies such as those best embodied by the "Stop Snitchin'" paraphernalia. And then, there's another huge problem in the fact that our justice system is set up to let violent criminals walk free eventually in the first place -- that somehow, if they can't get their hands on a gun, they'll be less dangerous to society. (And of course, we all know that keeping criminals from getting guns is more than a little bit of a fool's errand.) But it seems to be so much easier to blame the guns. Which, coming from a supposed "man of God," disappoints and greatly saddens me.

A Diamond in the Lump of Coal

As much as I like the older country music, as much as I agree with Jack Sparks about why country music (as heard on country radio) has gotten to be the way it is, every now and then something good comes along.
One of those good things was this song, Diamond Rio's 2003 No. 1 hit "I Believe." The song all by itself was very touching, but the video just takes the song to an entirely new level. I am not a terribly big fan of videos in general, but the video here takes the concept of the song and slams it home in a way that most videos just can't. Sparks might categorize this song as one of those hackneyed ditties about angels, but I'll still admit this video brings a tear to my eye and a lump to my throat every time I see it, especially the end of it. An absolutely exquisite work.

An Old Favorite Song

So I work up my little rant about modern country music, and just a few days later comes an oh-so-welcome blast from the past.
From YouTube, via Big White Hat, comes something I haven't seen in ages: the video to one of the best country songs of the 1980s -- indeed, one of the greatest songs of all-time from any genre -- Dan Seals' "Everything That Glitters (Is Not Gold)."



Hearing Seals back in his days as England Dan (with John Ford Coley), I for one would have never guessed he had something like this in him...but he did, and some other great songs as well. Seals co-wrote this particular piece with Beaumont native and Lamar University graduate Bob McDill; it was a No. 1 hit the week of July 5, 1986. I was only 8 years old then, and I can't say I really remembered much of what I was listening to at that age, but I remember hearing the song and other songs from Dan Seals' country days in later years and I liked them all, even the ones with a more contemporary sound to them. I think this one and "One Friend" are my favorites, though. Both of them bring back some great memories of days gone by, as they were just a couple of songs I'd hear on what was then Solid Gold Sunday, the Sunday night classic country show on Houston's heritage country station, FM 100.3 KILT. They'd play oldies mixed in during the week too, but from 7 to midnight on Sundays they'd play nothing but music from the '60s, '70s and '80s. Some of great songs I heard during that time slot were Cal Smith's "Country Bumpkin," John Conlee's "Old School" and Gary Stewart's "Out Of Hand." I can hear those songs, close my eyes and I am back there again...
I'd like to say thanks to JR at A Keyboard And A .45 for bringing my attention to the Big White Hat blog via the link on his sidebar. He'll be a regular read of mine from now on.

More Rich Gun-Hater Rhetoric

More BS from the Culturologist with the mail-order degree:

If even a small minority of the vast majority of the rest of us, the Americans who are not deluded into believing the dishonest and self-serving propaganda of the gun lobby, the Americans who don't buy the 'war of all against all' narrative that the isolated, paranoid, wannabe militiaman NRA member takes as his Gospel, the Americans who care more about our children than about some Daniel Boone fantasy of the American frontier that was never true and is all the more obviously false today, we will win.

We will win.

That's just rich, considering the "we" he speaks of is the contingent of people who go unarmed. Oh, wait...you mean they're going to send other people with guns to come and get ours? I guess that's only logical, as you know well what they say about not bringing a knife or club to a gunfight. Still, though, would it be too much to ask for those who would so undermine our rights, to man up and come take our guns themselves? With only said knife, club, or whatever weapon they have at their personal disposal? Why send others to do their dirty work? Why, indeed...because these people are cowards, despicable cowards, not worth even the clumps of mud on the shoes of our Founding Fathers. Even the term "man up" is a misnomer. I keep thinking of the words of Julia Gorin:

LET'S be honest. He's scared of the thing. That's understandable -- so am I. But as a girl I have the luxury of being able to admit it. I don't have to masquerade squeamishness as grand principle-in the interest of mankind, no less.
A man does. He has to say things like "One Taniqua Hall is one too many," as a New York radio talk show host did in referring to the 9-year old New York girl who was accidentally shot last year by her 12-year old cousin playing with his uncle's gun. But the truth is he desperately needs Taniqua Hall, just like he needs as many Columbines and Santees as can be mustered, until they spell an end to the Second Amendment. And not for the benefit of the masses, but for the benefit of his self-esteem.
He often accuses men with guns of "compensating for something." The truth is quite the reverse. After all, how is he supposed to feel knowing there are men out there who aren't intimidated by the big bad inanimate villain? How is he to feel in the face of adolescent boys who have used the family gun effectively in defending the family from an armed intruder? So if he can't touch a gun, he doesn't want other men to be able to either. And to achieve his ends, he'll use the only weapon he knows how to manipulate: the law.

And, of course, people's emotions, using their own hateful rhetoric as so many do. Once again, gun-haters -- if you want our guns, come and get them yourselves. Don't you even believe that much in your cause?

No Excuse

There is absolutely no excuse for this:

Virginia Tech officials could have saved lives if they had quickly warned the campus that two students had been shot to death and a killer was on the loose, a panel that investigated the attacks said Thursday.
Instead, it took administrators more than two hours to get out an e-mail warning students and staff to be cautious. The shooter had time to leave the dormitory where the first two victims were killed, mail a letter, and then enter a classroom building, chain the doors shut and kill 31 more people, including himself.

Two hours. For two blasted hours those students were sitting ducks for that madman. If it was one of my kids that had been on that campus that day, dead or not, I'd have been trembling with rage right about the time I read that. This goes way the hell beyond bad planning if you ask me; this, folks, clearly rises to the level of flat-out criminal malfeasance. If Virginia Tech administrators were not going to allow students the means of defending themselves, then damn it, they should have come up with a better plan than the one they had in place. Seems this one takes the old saying to an entirely new level: "When seconds count, the cops are only two hours away."
And as if that wasn't bad enough, consider the response of the Virginia governor to one parent's demand that university officials be held accountable for their complete and utter failure:

Mr. Kaine, however, told the Associated Press that school officials have suffered enough, and that firing them wouldn't help prevent future incidents.

Call me crazy, but I would think "future incidents" damn well could be prevented if the fired officials' replacements came up with a better plan than the one that was in place before. And call me insensitive too, but considering said criminal malfeasance of these officials, I for one couldn't give a tinker's damn about their "suffering." It was their dropping the ball several times along the way that facilitated that massacre. Heads should roll, and sniveling bureaucrats like Larry Hincker should be called out and loudly ridiculed to boot; after all, we see how his "parents, students, faculty and visitors feel(ing) safe" remark turned out to be the verbalization of such an outrageous delusion. But it's looking as if none of this will happen, and students at Virginia Tech will remain easy targets.

Judgmental Much?

Wow, and to think some people accuse us gun people of frothing-at-the-mouth hatred...

For the people working in the various branches of the gun industry, moral considerations are apparently not a major concern. If you make the guns or sell the guns or rent the guns, and somebody kills him/herself with the gun, or kills someone else, well, you distance yourself and say 'I just made/sold/rented a tool, they chose to use it that way.'

Yeah. Sure. Whatever.

You made/sold/rented a tool that is designed to KILL PEOPLE. And somebody used it for that purpose. So, good work, eh? Feel good about yourself tonight as you're thinking about what you contribute to the human project.

I really should have taken the address of this character's blog as enough of an indication that it's a veritable eternal fount of hideously stereotypical self-righteous horseshit. But no, being the masochist I am, I had to go reading through it. Nothing really new here, just the same old Brady Campaign/Violence Policy Center trash about, for example, a lady's gun being taken from her and used against her -- and this Culturologist character claims it happens "often," but, as is the gun-haters' wont, dares not back that up with any kind of statistic, not even a biased one. Not that anyone with the sense to come in out of the rain would actually believe said statistic, but one would think they'd be trying harder than that. Maybe you could call it another indication that we on the pro-rights are actually winning -- after all, if we weren't, would people like this Culturologist be spouting such vile rhetoric?
And I'd guess he got that degree in Culturology through the mail -- because, if you'll pardon the expression, he obviously doesn't know jack shit about the culture of the American gun-owning community at large; he'll just sit on that high horse and judge us all based on what a few do with guns, as if the problem didn't go any deeper than the supposed "easy availability" of weapons.
Really now. If you wonder why people get to saying things like "they can have my gun when they pry it from my cold dead fingers," then you need look no further than people like this -- people who will not be swayed by any arguments about the natural rights of humans -- people who, due to their blind hatred combined with misguided idealism about gun-free societies, would strip us of our most fundamental right -- the right to effective self-defense. There really is absolutely only one thing we can tell these people, when one gets right down to it:

The short answer to your demands is "No." The longer answer is two words and starts with "F." You can't have our guns...We're not going to give them up. There aren't enough of you to take them from us, and if you try we will resist. Now go away.

Call it frightening, call it dangerous, but is it really anything but cold, hard reality? This may, if you wish, be distilled even more into two simple Greek words that have lived on through the ages...
Molon Labe.

My Rights Day Purchase...

...will be a box of Berry's plated 180-grain 10mm flat-nosed bullets to reload for my Kimber. Tomorrow, I'll load some more in addition to the remainder of the last box I loaded this weekend, and go out and shoot them if it doesn't rain. They make for a great little plinking load behind 12.1 grains of Accurate No. 9. I'd go hotter, but for three things: they're plated bullets, which means you can't drive them too fast lest you strip the plating off and lead the barrel; I'll be using Remington primers instead of CCI, which basically means the prudent thing to do is start again with the minimum load; and this will be firing No. 3 for my current batch of brass. Still, though, with a hollow-point it'd make a pretty decent defensive load if it has the same ballistics as the last batch of Berry's that I drove downrange, at ~1150 fps and ~528 ft-lb. of energy. We'll see how it works -- with luck it'll be tomorrow...

Not-So-Pro-2A Democrats?

Have I mentioned lately how I despise Party apparatchiks?
Via JR and David, with Fits also commenting, we have this little group, the supposedly pro-RKBA Amendment II Democrats. Seems they talk a great game on their home page -- and the rally they're holding in Dallas is a great thing indeed -- but once you get past that and dig deeper, they're not nearly as good as they sound:

Do you actively oppose Democrats who support sensible gun measures if they run for public office?
We are Democrats, and as such we will support our party's nominees for local, state, and federal office. During the primaries, however, if any Democratic candidate supports gun control measures that Amendment II Democrats oppose (such as reauthorizing the national ban on semi-automatics), that primary candidate is fair game, and we will encourage voters to support Democratic candidates who are in greater harmony with our outlook on Second Amendment rights. But once the primaries are over and the candidates for the general election have been chosen, it is important that all Democrats pull together and support our party's candidates as best as we are able. Under no circumstances will Amendment II Democrats support Republican candidates who run against anti-RKBA Democrats. We are, after all, Democrats.

So it would seem here that when we get right down to the brass tacks, party's going to trump principle. That being the case, what the hell's the point of this organization? Maybe they meant they'd stay home if anti-RKBA Dems eventually got the nomination for their respective offices, but until I hear otherwise I'm gonna guess they meant to say that if it came down to a pro-gun Republican versus an anti-gun Democrat, they would go in there and punch the ballot for the candidate who would strip them of their most vital civil liberty, for no other reason than the fact that he has a "D" behind his name. Or hers, as the case may be. And then how about the whole "sensible gun measures" bit? Who the hell gets to define "sensible"? We all know exactly how the Democratic leadership defines it. They're just too chicken to take it to the people because they know the party as a whole would be thrown out on their ear for it. And these so-called
Amendment II Democrats will sit there and vote for these gun-grabbers so long as they have the D behind their names. It would seem to me the RKBA isn't nearly as important a bedrock principle as it is an attempt to woo pro-gun voters who are moderate on other issues besides gun control -- mere bait, if you will. Call me a cynic, but if they're not willing to go against their party when it really counts, then just what good are they? I want these people on our side, really, I do. But until they stand up and withhold their votes from anti-gun Dems, then all the talk about supporting the RKBA really is just that -- talk -- and you know what they say about THAT.

Sunday Morning Musical Musings: Maybe It's A Familiar Complaint, But Still...

I was driving around taking care of some business yesterday morning, and on the radio in the truck I heard an old favorite of mine from the early '90s. You might remember 1993, when a bunch of the country hitmakers of the day decided to get together and record Common Thread: The Songs of the Eagles. Travis Tritt's "Take It Easy" was the big hit from that record and seems to be a mainstay of country radio even now, but to my mind the best cut from that recording was Alan Jackson's rendition of "Tequila Sunrise," the song I heard as I was tooling around in the truck. Maybe it's just the way Alan sings -- he could probably make Slayer sound country -- but to my ear, that particular recording seems to be more country than a lot of what's getting spun these days. I'll freely admit to being a bit of a curmudgeon, musically speaking. I love Haggard and Jones and Charley Pride and John Conlee and all the other folks from the days gone by; we're quite lucky, I think, to have a station here in Southeast Texas that plays all that, even if they could stand to put more variety in the playlist. But I'll put my varied popular musical tastes up against anyone's. I was listening to Seether yesterday afternoon, and
Kelly Clarkson's Breakaway cd often finds its way into the player during the post-range gun-cleaning ritual, just to name a couple of examples. And I just can't help but think it's a sad commentary on what passes for mainstream "country" music now that a cover of a "rock" song from 30 years ago has so much more of that down-home country sound to it than too much of what's getting played now. I know the Eagles have often been branded as a "country-rock" band and no doubt more than a few rock fans back then had as much of a gripe with them as I do with acts like Keith Urban and Sugarland, but I'll still say it...if I wanted to listen to what's more or less middle-of-the-road pop music, I'd tune to the adult-contemporary station. (As far as non-country goes, I usually tune to contemporary hit radio.) I remember reading an article a few years back from Peter Cooper, who I think was working for the Nashville Tennessean at the time, lamenting the state of modern country music after that year's American Music Awards. He had this to say:

In Nashville, we have a Country Music Association and a country music industry. Yet we seem to blindly accept that Shania Twain's Def Leppardish drums or Billy Gilman's Star Search-y One Voice are country, merely because the songs are played on country radio and a portion of the retail proceeds end up in Tennessee wallets.
"But isn't this really just a matter of innovation, like the symphonic pop string arrangements that sounded awfully pretty on Patsy Cline's records? Wasn't the fuzz-toned rock guitar a good thing on Marty Robbins' Don't Worry? Doesn't it sound good when contemporary artist Clay Davidson lets his Southern Rock roots show?"
The difference is that Cline, Robbins, Davidson and scores of others have successfully tweaked the genre's commonly accepted norms. Innovation in country music sometimes means helping the tree to grow new branches.
At the AMAs, though, the tree was chopped and chipped and the roots were removed. Then someone put an aluminum pole where the tree once was and called it ... a tree.

Shania Twain and Billy Gilman have long disappeared from the scene, but I think Cooper's laments are every bit as valid today as they were six years ago. Incidentally, it should be noted that the "fuzz-toned rock guitar" in the 1962 Marty Robbins hit was an accident; it was supposed to be a straight-ahead bass guitar solo, but the taping mechanism they were using malfunctioned as the song was being recorded, resulting in that famous fuzz-tone.
Cooper's closing words were quite apt as well:

...if country means "whatever," it really means nothing at all. It's nothing more than an asparagus steak, or Bogart's mythical desert seaside, and the fan base is likely to further recede. No one goes to an Italian restaurant hoping for tacos.

There are those of us to whom the term "country music"still does mean something. And too much of what "country radio" and the Nashville establishment calls "country" isn't.

More East Coast Mainstream Media Idiocy

Via this morning's Chron, from Courtland Milloy of the Washington Post, the latest example of why so many of us in "fly-over country" hold the big-city mainstream media in such low regard...

Too bad Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick that people like me love dogs more than cows. Or, to put it another way, I prefer the taste of Angus and Hereford to Rottweiler and pit bull. Otherwise, the federal agents who recently charged Vick with dogfighting would have to arrest nearly all of us for participating in far worse acts of animal cruelty.
Ex-Beatle Paul McCartney is credited with having said: "If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be a vegetarian." Well, they don't -- and most of us are carnivores. We'll kill a duck, deer, turkey -- name any meat -- for the sheer entertainment of our palates or for the fun of the hunt.

*snip*

Vick's farm was raided by agents from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the same USDA that permits the wholesale slaughter of cows, chickens, pigs and lambs.
Vick's case ought to be handled by a state's attorney, but it isn't. He is being prosecuted by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Virginia. You'd think the guy had been caught smuggling a ton of heroin in the carcasses of dead poodles. U.S. District Judge Henry E. Hudson is presiding. His previous experience includes hearing cases that involve people suspected of being al-Qaeda sympathizers or "enemy combatants."
Perpetrators of gun violence ought to be taken so seriously.
According to data recently released by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, nearly half of more than 10,000 guns recovered by law enforcement authorities in the Washington area came from Virginia. Hundreds, if not thousands, of people -- human beings, not dogs -- have been killed by these guns. But you won't find any gun manufacturers -- or even many killers, for that matter -- being hauled into court on conspiracy charges.
Apparently you have to be a dogfight promoter for that.

First off...I haven't been hunting in ages, I'll admit it. So I could be wrong with what I am about to say -- but if I remember correctly, most states specify a minimum energy level that a bullet must generate to be legal for hunting. I remember Bob at Near the Salty City said something about my 10mm handloads being strong enough to take deer with in his home state of Utah, with its lower limit of 500 ft-lbs for that animal. But here's what I am getting at -- don't they have those lower energy limits to make the kill as painless and quick as possible for the animal? I can't think of any other reason, really, and it makes sense to me. But beyond that, I would argue that killing animals for food is perfectly natural. And since we as humans were born with the ability to fashion the tools to fight our way to the top of the food chain -- and they don't call it that because of the way it rolls off the tongue -- would it not follow that it was perfectly natural that we would do that, too? Mr. Milloy might not think me so enlightened, as I don't think his comparison of hunting and dogfighting makes any sense at all, but with his status as a member of the coastal media, so insulated from the realities of life outside the newsroom, that much is to be expected from him and his faux-intellectual ilk.
As for the gun manufacturers being hauled into court on what I guess would be conspiracy to flood the inner cities with guns...I can't help but think of what the great Larry Elder wrote in his book "Ten Things You Can't Say In America":

A black friend said that manufacturers conspire to "put" guns in the black community. "Larry, guns, like drugs are brought in from the outside. There's no gun manufacturer in Compton in Watts."
"Yes," I said. "And there are no pig farms or egg hatcheries there either. But I had ham and eggs this morning. Grow up."

Sounds to me like that'd pretty good advice for Milloy to take, intellectually speaking. No doubt many media professionals think ending up at the Washington Post, New York Times or San Francisco Chronicle would be the pinnacle of their career. Reading crap like this I really can't understand why. Is those people's self-esteem really THAT low?!

Gun Troubles

Remind me never again to boast out loud about my guns' reliability...
So far that Springfield Loaded has run like a top, but over the past couple of weeks trouble's started creeping up with it. About once every hundred rounds or so, the spent casing's been getting caught in the action as it cycles; when that happens, I have to drop the mag and work the action back and forth to get it out. Last Sunday was the worst, and to be honest I was in a bit of a funk by the time I left. The gun jammed on me yet again, with the 230-grain Blazer Brass ball, and I thought I'd never get that blasted spent casing out. I had a rod with me just for the possibility I'd need it, but the case looked like it was caught in the mag and I spent a good ten minutes with that thing trying to get it out, putting a scratch on the slide in the process. Not so fun, no...between that and wondering if the girl I'd gone out on a date with the night before would go out with me again, I was more than a little bit stressed this week. I've been communicating with the good folks at Springfield the last few days, and the gun as I sit here is on its way back to Illinois to be looked at by their 1911 wizards. I'll admit this is the second 1911 from them that I've had troubles with, but they fixed the last one and I don't have any reason to doubt they'll do me right this time too. They're doing inventory this coming week, and it won't be till the week after that they'll be able to look at it. She left Beaumont just after 8 tonight. In the meantime, I have other guns to shoot -- more homemade 10mm fun awaits me later this week -- and another date on the horizon, so I am feelin' better tonight...

Fred Thompson Takes Another Swing...

...and slams another one out of the park:

When I was working in television, I spent quite a bit of time in New York City. There are lots of things about the place I like, but New York gun laws don’t fall in that category.

Anybody who knows me knows I’ve always cared deeply about the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms. So I’ve always felt sort of relieved when I flew back home to where that particular civil liberty gets as much respect as the rest of the Bill of Rights.

Unfortunately, New York is trying, again, to force its ways on the rest of us, this time through the courts. First, they went after U.S. gun manufacturers, seeking through a lawsuit not only money but injunctive control over the entire industry. An act of congress in 2005 blocked, but did not end, that effort.

Now, the same activist federal judge from Brooklyn who provided Mayor Giuliani’s administration with the legal ruling it sought to sue gun makers, has done it again. Last week, he created a bizarre justification to allow New York City to sue out-of-state gun stores that sold guns that somehow ended up in criminal hands in the Big Apple.

I must say, that was a brilliant move on Thompson's part. Rudolph Giuliani is every bit as weak as either of the Clintons are on this issue, and that much more so when his party affilliation is taken into account. And I fully believe it can be his undoing if someone's smart enough to actually take advantage of it. I know the RKBA ideally shouldn't be a partisan issue, but the fact is that in the world we live in today, it more or less is just that. Mr. Giuliani may well call himself a Republican, but for his record on guns he might as well be Chuck Schumer, or Dianne Feinstein in drag. And his camp might as well face the fact that his record is going to be a deal-breaker for more than a few people. Of course, reading the official response -- or, should I say, non-response -- from Giuliani's camp, one can't help but get the idea he and his spokespeople are scared, very scared:

Says communications director Katie Levinson in an email the campaign blasted out tonight:

"Those who live in New York in the real world - not on TV - know that Rudy Giuliani's record of making the city safe for families speaks for itself. No amount of political theater will change that."

Why are they scared? Because they have nothing, absolutely nothing, of substance to counter Thompson calling Giuliani out on this. If they did they'd have used it instead of pulling out the same tired old rhetoric used by the Brady Bunch and every other professional gungrabber out there about "making families safe" -- or making a not-so-veiled slam at Thompson's acting career. Rudolph Giuliani's record on a deal-making-or-breaking issue for millions of Americans is woefully anti-liberty -- and no amount of weasel rhetoric about "making families safer" is going to make those millions of Americans think otherwise. As one commenter said, "This round goes to Fred Thompson and the Constitution."

(h/t Instapundit)

UPDATE: Looks like the Fred has some pretty good spokespeople working for him, too (emphasis mine - ed), and as we also see here, the verbal diarrhea is rocketing out of the mouth of at least another of Mr. Giuliani's people:

Run or keep your mouth shut!" snarled Guy Molinari, New York co-chairman for the Giuliani presidential campaign.

"If you want to bash people, jump into the pool. We're waiting for you," Molinari added.

Giuliani's adviser called Thompson out of bounds for penning a column on his blog blasting New York City's gun-control laws under Giuliani and his successor, Mayor Bloomberg.

"He's not just attacking Rudy. He's attacking every resident of New York City," Molinari charged.

Even before the column controversy, a liberal blogger had filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission accusing Thompson of violating campaign-finance laws for electioneering before filing papers for his candidacy.

"I have a serious problem with this guy. Is he running? Is he not running? Now he's going into attack mode even though he's not an announced candidate," said Molinari, a former congressman and Staten Island borough president.

Thompson - who had criticized Giuliani, Bloomberg and Brooklyn federal Judge Jack Weinstein for going after out-of-state gun dealers - laughed off Molinari's tirade.

"I am tempted to say that was a good 'shot across our bow,' " a Thompson spokesman said yesterday, "but I'm afraid that same federal judge might go after those of us who manufacture out-of-state gun metaphors."

Priceless. Absolutely priceless. And don't you worry, Mr. Molinari. Once the Fred declares, he's gonna blow Giuliani's authoritarian arse right out of your pool.

15,000

Came a little sooner than I thought it might...From Chandler, Minnesota, my 15,000th visitor came at 10:52 am today. I dunno how you got here, but I'm glad you did.
Thanks once again to all of you who make Live From the (upper) Texas Gulf Coast a part of your day. I hope you continue to find my commentary worthwhile.

I Want It Too

Shamelessly filched from Josh...

What kinds of fun can be had with it? See below.


Fun, fun, fun, till daddy takes the t-bird away...

Buy Some Ammo or Gun Stuff on Aug. 28, And Tell Your Friends To Do The Same...

...even better, buy a gun if you can...
In response to the item mentioned here:

On August 28, activists in cities across America will hold a national day of protest to focus attention on the scourge of illegal gun trafficking. August 28th is the anniversary of Martin Luther King's historic March on Washington in 1963."

"The Brady Campaign and its network of Million Mom March Chapters is supporting the efforts of Reverend Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow PUSH Coalition to draw attention to gun violence by organizing local events to be held in cities across America. So far, Brady Campaign activists have confirmed more than a dozen events, and more are expected." ...

..the peerless David Codrea over at The War On Guns came up with an excellent idea: Buy a box of ammunition or anything else gun-related on that day, and a few days before, tell the local gun shops about the protest and our little way of counter-protesting. I don't know if the local gun shops would give a discount on a gun, but I don't know why they wouldn't give a discount on things like bullets, powder, primers, targets or anything else gun-related just for a day.
Like the title says, a week from Tuesday, go buy something gun-related, and tell your friends to do the same, and tell the gun stores about it beforehand. We should take every opportunity to
step up to the plate and defend our rights, and this is one great way to do it.

Yet Another RCOB Moment: 60 Minutes, and Stop Snitchin'

Warning -- Profanity alert!
So I made the mistake of watching 60 Minutes tonight, and apparently it was a rerun of an older episode about the whole Stop Snitchin' phenomenon. And this rapper who calls himself Cam'ron actually admitted he wouldn't turn in a serial killer living next door because "it would be bad for business." And all I can say to that is what I told my folks when I heard him say that -- "Anybody who wouldn't turn in a serial killer is a piece of shit." This sentiment was further confirmed when I heard him later say, in what seemed to be a defense of the thug culture, "I just think that rap takes way more slack than the video games and the movies. We don't make guns. Smith and Wesson makes guns...Like, white people make guns and bullets and all we're doing is rhyming and putting words together." And then all I could do was yell out, "Smith and Wesson didn't pull that goddamned trigger, you motherfucker!"
Even my folks were surprised at that...I don't usually get so animated, but my, did that ever piss me off. That was just downright brazen of him to come right out with such bigotry. Rarely are bigots so honest! And it's amazing how Jesse Jackson and his fellow race hustlers never point the finger at those who have attitudes like that and call them out for what they're doing to hip-hop and black culture. Sure it's easier to blame the guns, but Jesse ought to be asking what kind of mentality is bred from the thought that turning in a serial killer is "bad for business."
At least one person sees this mentality for the danger it is, though, and the double standards that those who subscribe to it adhere to. Educator Geoffrey Canada had this to say:
"You don't need someone destroying you when your own people are the worst messengers possibly...And this is what black people in America have not come to grips with. If we had a bunch a people in robes saying this stuff, there would be a movement all over America to shut this thing down. That it's young black millionaires, we are doing nothing."
I really couldn't have said it any better than that...

teh Saturday morning funnay....

...as Tam said, "must stop laughing...hurts...can't...breathe...."
And with a little exploration, I found this. Some absolutely priceless stories. You're absolutely cheating yourself if you don't read them! No snippets, just click!
Oh, and before you do, put down your drink...

A Bad Answer To A Stupid Question

Via just about everyone, comes this, on the campaign trail with Mitt Romney:

Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney on Wednesday defended his five sons' decision not to enlist in the military, saying they're showing their support for the country by "helping me get elected."

Call that whatever you want, but if it's not the definition of asinine, I don't know what is. The woman who asked the question, the name of the organization she was identified with raises a huge red flag, but still I can't help but agree with what she said later:

The woman who asked the question, Rachel Griffiths, 41, of Milan, Ill., identified herself as a member of Quad City Progressive Action for the Common Good, as well as the sister of an Army major who had served in Iraq.

"Of course not," Griffiths said when asked if she was satisfied with Romney's answer. "He told me the way his son shows support for our military and our nation is to buy a Winnebago and ride across Iowa and help him get elected."

Progressive Action for the Common Good...I think that pretty much says it all. But as for Romney's sons thinking he'd make a great president, well, there are more of a few of us in the Republican base who beg to differ and think that his sons are indeed NOT doing the country any kind of good -- on the contrary. It would seem that in addition to being a panderer, who will do or say just about anything to get elected (click here), Romney's a bit of a narcissist. I read a comment somewhere that that particular remark from Romney sounded like something John Kerry would say, and that sounds about right to me. He's just one more RINO that needs to just mosey on back to his lefty refuge.

Yet More Contemptible GFW Inadequacy

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Via Ahab, we have this, from, well...good grief, just read it (emphasis mine -- ed.)...

"Guns are great to have around," he continues. "Just like seat belts and fire extinguishers - you don't know when you're going to need one, but when there's an intruder in my house I'll be glad to have it." I look around and watch a dozen or so gun-toting, plaid-wearing bearded guys nod in agreement. I decide now's not the time to mention that children can't accidentally kill themselves by playing with seat belts and a fire can't steal your fire extinguisher and use it against you.

My, aren't WE witty today...but for the fact that a kid can get hurt or, yes, even killed by playing with the seat belt. If kid takes off seatbelt while Mom's blasting down the highway at 75 mph and they get in a wreck, chances are kid will be hurt, or, yes, killed. As for the fire stealing the fire extinguisher, well, that's what training and practice are for, so the bad guy doesn't get the drop on you...It's been said before, but it deserves to be said again: Being in possession of a gun doesn't make you armed any more than possession of a guitar makes you a virtuoso musician. Something that was quite obviously lost on this, this...person. *spit*

Having completed my eight-second firearm tutorial, I don my safety goggles and large red earmuffs and head for the shooting range. Carefully cradling my pistol and a box of 50 .38 Specials to my chest, I ease my way down to lane number six. Every few seconds I violently twitch as another gun is fired; even with ear protection the noise is deafening. I'll be glad to get out of here without soiling my undergarments.

There is much I could say to that, but the fact that a grown man would admit -- in print -- that handling a firearm makes him want to crap on himself, well, that says volumes more than I could, even at my most eloquent. (As an aside, I personally think the .38 Special is a pussycat, relatively speaking. I guess it's a good thing this cretin didn't try .357 Magnum. He'd probably have suffered a massive heart attack right there on the spot.)

I take my target - a large off-white sheet featuring a potential intruder's head and torso - and clip it to the metal pole above me. A flick of a switch sends it flying backward into space. I load my pistol and take aim, briefly wondering how much it hurts to accidentally shoot oneself in the foot.

I squeeze off shot after shot, jumping at the sound of each one. Some people feel powerful with a pistol in their hand; I feel terror. I reload rapidly, hoping I run out of rounds before I run out of luck and end up with nine fingers.

Well, kemosabe, if you keep your hands and feet away from the hole the bullet comes out of, you won't have to wonder how much it hurts to shoot yourself, because you won't do it...but I guess that kind of logic is obviously way out of the league of some people...

It's not until I leave that I relax enough to take a look at my target. Though I aimed at my intruder's heart on every shot, most sailed wide, past his right shoulder. When I find an intruder in my house, I'll just throw a fire extinguisher at him.

You do that. But don't expect a real man to have any sympathy for you when said intruder takes that fire extinguisher and bashes your pathetic little skull in.
Sorry if I come off as harsh, but there is just no excuse for this kind of thinking. I think Eric S. Raymond said it best:

To believe one is incompetent to bear arms is, therefore, to live in corroding and almost always needless fear of the self — in fact, to affirm oneself a moral coward.

Moral coward. Sounds about right to me. They might scream and wail about me being judgmental, but the hell with them. I just call it like I see it. And a man who's so obviously unwilling to defend himself with whatever means he has at his disposal isn't a man at all, but a mere shell of one.

Cheap Sunday Range Fun

...relatively speaking, anyway...
I got a call Friday afternoon from BZ Gun & Repair in Groves. The clerk told me he had gotten some Berry's 180-grain .40S&W/10mm bullets in if I was interested in them. Never heard of 'em before. So I did some research. Come to find out they were copper-plated instead of copper-jacketed. Which means, of course, that you can't drive 'em as fast as a jacketed bullet because the plating could come off and you'd get leading. I'd seen some conflicting reports of how fast one could load them to before getting adverse effects, anywhere from 1100 to 1300 feet per second -- and one brave soul was loading them to about fourteen-and-a-half, with what I am guessing was .357 Magnum, with no leading. 'Least that's what he said. Anyway, I bit the bullet, so to speak, and swung by there yesterday morning to pick some up. Just a box of 100, to experiment with. Later I sat down at my bench and loaded 50 rounds, with the most conservative data I could find for my components. Finished product:

Cartridge: 10mm Auto
Case: Federal twice-fired American Eagle
Bullet: 180-grain plated flat-nose
Powder Charge: 12.1 grains of Accurate Arms No. 9
Primer: CCI large pistol
OAL: 1.260"


I took it to the range this morning, with my Kimber Stainless Target II. Accurate rated that load for 1086 fps, albeit with a different bullet, and I was thinking it would shoot faster than that rating as did the 155-grain Hornady XTPs I've been using so far. I figured right. I took a 20-shot string and was averaging 1153.35 feet per second, with a low of 1112 and high of 1190. Only two of the shots were below 1120, though, and if you take those out it works out to about 1157 fps, with most of the shots running between 1130 and 1170. Very nice, and accurate, little midrange plinking load, runs about even with the Remington UMCs' 1150 fps. Seems like the recoil was a little heavier with these than with the 155-grainers, even though the latter was running about 200 fps faster. But it was still very manageable, with, just as important, no leading. I think I've found a winner here, for about $20 for a box of 100 completed rounds; it could go lower than that, of course, if I order components in bulk. Beats the living hell out of $25 for a box of 50. The more I roll my own, the more I like it!

Friday Morning 1911 Musings: A 1911A1 Like Grandpa's?

An interesting question posed on this thread at THR:

Okay, so I won't bore everyone with my 1911 story. Lets just say that I am a Glock/CZ shooter who bought a Kimber some time ago and got rid of it after it continued to malfunction.

Here's my question: Why doesn't anybody make a REAL 1911-A1 pistol?

I'm talking about a real pre-series 70 1911-A1 like those that were produced in the THOUSANDS by non-firearms companies WITHOUT COMPUTERS and were generally excellent, reliable, COMBAT firearms.

I would buy a REAL 1911-A1 pistol in a heartbeat. No 1970s Colt "toilet" bushing, no 1980s firing pin block safety, no stupid front slide serrations, no dumb backstrap lawyer-lock, no "schwartz" system (I don't even know what that is, but i've heard it's no good)!

I think that's a fair question, but something that irked me on a few subsequent responses was negative commentary on things like front slide serrations and skeletonized hammers and triggers. I can understand gripes about deviations from the original designs like firing pin safeties and such, and I can take or leave front slide serrations. I never use them anyway but don't think they add or detract from the look of the pistol. But I do think that the skeletonized hammer & trigger add a lot to the aesthetics of the 1911. Personally, I think the 1911 is a thing of beauty whether it's a bare-bones military-spec pistol or a Springfield Loaded-type gun. I have both types and like them both just the way they are, and as I said at THR, I don't shoot the Loaded wondering if John Moses Browning would turn his nose up at that particular iteration of his design. He might not like the internal locking safety on it or the deviations from the original tolerances, but I've shot that gun enough to know it's a reliable weapon just as he intended it to be, as is the Springfield GI. But I loved Xavier's response to the original poster:

That's what you wanted,.......and you bought a Kimber? Well golly gee darn. If you want a '57 Chevy like Grandpa used to drive, you don't go buy a 2007 Lexus and then complain about it.

I must say, I thought that was pretty funny. But what I really don't understand is the animosity toward modern manufacturing technology. I'd say that as opposed to taking away from the quality of a modern 1911, they add to it, because I would think such technology would allow those guns to be turned out more rapidly than they used to be, thus keeping the prices lower than they'd otherwise be. As for the Kimbers, I guess I've just been lucky -- either that or the complaints about them on the Internet gun boards are blown way out of proportion. Between the two I have, the only issue I've had is a weak magazine spring with the Tactical Ultra II.
I wouldn't mind having an old gun like they used to make. I'd buy one in a heartbeat. And I know there's a world of difference between that Kimber and an old WWII-era Colt. But I just can't believe the modern-day 1911 is as much of a "big-boy toy" as so many claim it is. More than it used to be, no doubt, but I don't know why my Springfield Loaded would not be deserving of the legacy of the 1911 despite the differences between it and a World War II-era Colt.

Pathetic

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I don't think that, up until last night, I saw something that was just so unbelievably pathetic, until I ran up on this, from THR (http://www.charlotte.com/local/story/218113.html):

"Maybe we should buy a gun," I told my husband.
As I waited for him to answer, I listened to the birds chirping. I looked toward the sky, hoping for rain.
"No, we shouldn't," he said finally.
"Listen to this," I said, picking up Sunday's paper. I read aloud from the front-page story, "Forced to Kill," about four Charlotte people who had each shot someone trying to protect themselves.
The killings were legal. Necessary. The police said so.
I could slip instantly into the shoes of one south Charlotte man, who woke to the sound of the doorbell seven years ago. When he heard loud banging, he grabbed a revolver and ran downstairs.
A young man had thrown an iron patio chair against the window, shattering the glass. The older man fired two safety shots. When the young man swung the chair again, the older man aimed a third time and fired, killing the intruder.
I could imagine us in the exact situation -- without a gun -- defenseless.

Not in my house
"Can't you see that happening to us?" I said."Sure, I can," my husband said. "But we have an alarm system. And we're not getting a gun."
"Your reason?"
"Two reasons," he said. "Our granddaughters."
That stopped me cold.
About 200 people in the United States kill someone each year in self-defense.
But how many die each year -- innocently -- from guns?
Let me tell you.
In the 10 years ending in 2006, 486 children under age 18 in North Carolina, alone, died from gun-related injuries.
Amazing the figure is that low, considering that 82,000 kids in this state are exposed each year to unsafely stored firearms.

Actually, I would argue that's a tribute to gun owners' diligence, considering that in my own experience, those who own guns are quite careful with them and would never be so careless as not to teach their kids about the dangers firearms pose when said firearms are not used safely. For that "man" to stand there and cite his granddaughters as an excuse not to get a gun to defend his wife and granddaughters is a borderline criminal cop-out -- not to mention a rather frightening prospect, considering he's probably old enough to come from a generation that still believed without reservation that certain things were worth killing for, among them one's loved ones. But here was the clincher, the last couple of lines:

In our house, we'll remain unarmed.
Defenseless is better than discovering someone we love dead.

I don't think I've ever seen such tortured logic in print anywhere other than a Handgun Control press release. And I hope that poor deluded lady never wakes up to find a goblin standing at her door with a crowbar with nothing to stop him but her manicured fingernails.