I go on at great length about seventeenth-century England. But trust me, it’s relevant. Even interesting. And it’s got to do with how we came by our gun rights and why we’ll keep them if we’re wise and worthy.
Honesty is the best policy will screw up your life. When what you’re being honest about is firearms. Powerfully sad article from Nicki Kenyon at JPFO.
The above is also an example of what can happen when you entrust government with your rights. So is this. Activist, denied “shall-issue” carry permit, needs help fighting back. (H/T MWD)
Target security officer spots shoplifter. Takes standard action. Turns out shoplifter is a cop. Guess who gets fired?
Carjacker forces way into vehicle with gun. Intended victim grabs it and shoots him. (This is also a case of another carjacker flummoxed by a stick shift. Gadzooks, you’d think if you’re going to steal vehicles you’d at least learn to drive them.) (H/T New Jovian Thunderbolt)
The curious case of passive voice in reports of police shootings. Radley Balko says what has long needed saying.
Former cop confirms what the Living Freedom Collective said in Rats!, the anti-snitch book.
NOTE: The following document was found in the ruins of the Mount Weather complex in the year C.E. 2715 and has been in the keeping of the staff of the Interglobal History Museum since then. Although our scholars and scientists are still analyzing this material, it is believed to date from the era of Malia Rodham-Bloomberg (reigned C.E. 2044-2067) or her successor Mitt Kennedy Bush (reigned C.E. 2067-?).
Below is our translation.
…..
REPORT TO THE NATION ON THE EFFECTIVENESS OF GUN CONTROL
By the Blue-Ribbon Panel on the Current Crisis
BACKGROUND: Following the Sunnyside Nursery School Massacre and similar disasters, Americans in the mid decades of the twenty-first century realized that “NO GUNS” signs and similarly stringent security measures were no longer sufficient to totally eliminate deadly violence from society.
Although the gun-rights movement had experienced decades of successes, Americans finally rose up and demanded sweeping reforms. Some notable pacifists called for the slaughter of all gun owners and the torture of any politicians perceived to be pro gun. Police chiefs threatened to have their officers shoot any armed person on sight. The nation was in crisis.
With Congress in its 23rd consecutive year of disarray, the president moved to calm the fury with a unilateral series of moderate but firm measures. The president issued a comprehensive series of Executive Orders targeting firearms and their owners.
It has been five years since these Orders took effect. We, the members of this impartial Blue-Ribbon Panel, are now charged with analyzing their effectiveness and making recommendations …
Since the “dispatch” contains only what I was able to come up with in a few hours, feel free to make your own additions and corrections to the Blue-Ribbon report in comments.
On Monday I did something I shouldn’t have. It’s been gnawing at me all week.
Monday morning, first thing after booting up my computer and before I even had a sip of tea, I clicked on a link. Yes, the same thing most of us do hundreds, if not thousands, of times per week. You’d think by now the brain would be numbed to any creepiness that might be hiding behind any link. But no.
This particular link was to an anti-gun thread on a forum I used to (until that moment) visit daily. The forum generally has nothing to do with politics, but when political discussions do arise, they can get … heated. I know that. Most of the politically engaged people on the site are also liberal or progressive or whatever they’re calling themselves these days. I know that, too. I also know that there are a handful of people on that site who, when the subject is guns, are foaming-at-the-mouth rabid. Normally I stay away, but I noticed that the most recent post in that thread was by somebody I respect. He’s not pro-gun, but he’s sensible, moderate, and often witty. So I clicked.
My eye strayed to the post right above that one. It was that post that blighted my day and much of my week.
I won’t quote it here lest it mess up your Friday, but basically, in two short paragraphs, it contained so much prejudice, ignorance, and downright irrational loathing that I was stunned. The majority of gun owners are murderers. They’re killing all the rest of us. The usual. But this person — who in other contexts has seemed friendly, smart, and reasonable — added that since gun owners are a minority nobody should have to respect their rights, anyway, so whatever the government does to us is okay.
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What got to me, what still gets to me, what has gotten to me before, isn’t the sheer hatred. It isn’t the bigotry. It isn’t the fact that people like this won’t even look at facts, won’t even consider considering an opponent’s point of view. (Although that, too.)
It’s that there are so many people who froth with loathing in the name of “tolerance” or “civility” or “decency.” It’s that there are so many people who view themselves as noble defenders of minorities while wanting to wipe other minorities of the face of the earth. It’s that there are people out there who are ripe to be whipped into a deadly frenzy against some politically chosen “other” — and who don’t know it.
They’re totally unaware. They’re so mindlessly righteous of their cause that they have no grasp of the fact that all of history’s witch-burnings and pogroms and genocides have been enabled by minds functioning exactly like theirs.
It’s not the ignorance and bigotry that are the worst of it (though that, too). It’s their total absence of self-awareness.
Liberals aren’t the only ones prone to this, of course. Millions of “patriots” have marched off to slaughter, totally unaware of how they’ve been manipulated into feeling what someone else wants them to feel. During the Cold War, there were plenty of “conservatives” who were so rabidly anti-Communist that they’d have turned the U.S. into a Soviet-style police state to “protect” us from those monstrous, villainous Commies (that they themselves so came to resemble). Religious fanatics everywhere and at all times have been stirred into handy political manias, having no idea that their quest to make the world a better place by eliminating “heretics” or “infidels” would only bring catastrophe. (Oh yes, and bring profit and power to the already powerful.)
And none of them see how much alike they are. That spittle-flecked hoplophobe who scared me so much on Monday has no idea how much he’s like the “good German” who believed that political paradise could be obtained, if only the world could be rid of a few million inconvenient Jews and “defectives.” He has no idea how much he’s like the jihad supporters whose eyes gleam as they envision “improving” their world by eliminating Westerners and Western ways.
No, because totally, totally unlike them — and totally, totally unlike us drooling, unreasoning, inferior, downright murdering gun owners — he’s on the side of the angels. So what could possibly go wrong? Just annihilate a few million and …
And so the cycle of hysteria-driven disasters goes on and on and on through all of history.
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I have a JPFO article due today and I plan to write about this. But frankly, beyond talking about being gobsmacked by the depth of self-unawareness I witness in the most rabid hoplophobes, I don’t know what to say.
This week’s video of two pathetic gangsta wannabes trying to rob a jewelry store inspired me to doggerel poetry. Over at JPFO, I celebrate several notable acts of self-defense (and defense of others) from the last several years.
There were so many to choose from the only trouble was winnowing them down.
I thought the Hobby Lobby decision was the right one. I also think the owners of Hobby Lobby appear to be flaming hypocrites on the subject of contraception.
Right from the moment of legalization, Washington state authorities have treated cannabis use with gentle good humor. The latest: a series of ads about things that it’s now legal — but not necessarily smart — to do while stoned.
It might be no surprise the Microsoft security people just broke a chunk of the Internet The surprise (to me at least) is why the fedgov would give one private company control over another private company’s e-turf in the first place.
The way various govs have been treating Uber and Lyft is such a perfect example of the real agenda of government: protect the cartels.
So apparently Chris Christie still thinks he has a shot at running for president. He’s playing pro-gun this week.
Dog just hanging out in its own backyard. Cops canvassing neighborhood for a lost toddler (who turns out to be snoozing in his own family basement). Guess what cop does? Yeah. Again. But once again, the dog’s dad is on a take-no-prisoners quest for justice. (H/T furrydoc)
Okay, let’s have some better dog stories. Including this happy cop and “vicious” pit bull story via naturegirl.
New study warns against trying to cheer some folks up. Yeah, I can see that, for sure. Sometimes you just need validation and sometimes those cheery platitudes are just plain grating. Still … where comes the point where you just tell Debbie Downer to quit whining and fix her own life?
So former shooting hotshot and alleged historian Dick Metcalf. still hasn’t bothered to learn the meaning of the term “well-regulated.” And now the left is loving on him. (H/T RC) Bob Owens gives the useful idiot a touch of what he deserves.
Forget that. Cartoon time. Here’s one for Joel (via Never Yet Melted):
And one for all us makin’-a-livin’ arty types lost out here in Cyberland:
Is anybody surprised by the latest creepiness from F*c*b**k? And why do so many people not get that when the service is free, you’re not the customer; you’re the product?
Ninety-nine things that make people happy. The article itself is short. Following the links will take you down various informational rabbit holes.
After several decades of increasingly warlike violence against Americans, the ACLU finally takes serious note (pdf). (H/T RL)
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Bonus read (to cheer you up after the ACLU report): My latest at JPFO, “What We Owe Ourselves Alone.” That one comes with a hat tip to MJR, whose comment here the other day inspired it.
I guess this has been around a while, but I just saw it: David Codrea’s Physician Liability Form. Print this out and hand it to any boundary-violating doctor who tries to poke into your gun ownership!
I found that via Kurt Hofmann who delivers a hearty smackdown to Mike the anti-gun “Gun Guy.” Anti-gun Mike’s latest BS is that the doesn’t think disabled people should be “allowed” to defend themselves.
Speaking of people who want to determine what’s good for you, the push to data-mine more of our health info is getting stronger and creepier.
Larry Page of the increasingly Don’t Be Evil Google thinks he could save “100,000 lives” a year if we’d all just trust him more. This is the same Google that’s basically an arm of the NSA. The same Google that just announced plans to ban all “dangerous” advertising. Which (she sighs with weary resignation) of course includes ads for you-know-what.
Oh yes, and it’s the same Google whose already-creepy surveillance products can be hacked so pathetically easily that real hackers wouldn’t even consider it a challenge.
But that ain’t nothin’, folks. Ain’t nothin’. You want to see real fanboy worship of Total Control Through Technology (TM)? Read this Economist article on birth-to-death e-ID. Wow. Such glowing. Much foolish. (Doge meme for anyone who thinks I’ve just lost all sense of grammar.)
