Welcome to the January 31st edition of the (almost) Weekly Check on the Bias. This is the post where I examine instances of the bias larger outfits in the Main Stream Media exibit (usually) against guns, gun ownership, and the Second Amendment.
I thought I'd define the purpose of this post again because one person emailed me last week and said:
...You rarely mention all of the stories about people using guns to defend themselves...
But in the interests of favorable stories, I'll start off with a quick one. It's 5:40 AM as I write this and I have the local TV news (WNNE 31) on. They just had a feature about local biathlon contenders training for the next Winter Olympics. They showed them with their rifles, skiing through the snow, showed them getting off some shots at one of the target stops. All a positive portrayal of how there is much more to guns than just crime. But this is a local TV station in Vermont. Guns are an accepted way of life up here and negative stories (as opposed to op-eds, I should add) are a rarity. As I reported during the past Summer, this same station often reports on local gun shows and such.
And maybe that should be the theme of this week's edition: Local vs National reporting on gun issues. You will rarely read ANYTHING positive about firearms in any national newspaper such as the Washington Post, LA Times, et al. Naturally you can add the New York Times to that list, too, but truth in commentary requires that I DID mention a story from them in a Weekly Report last Spring about fishing with guns in Vermont.
All right, enough of that.
A bold ballot initiative could make the city a pioneer in gun control. But will it cut crime, or simply infuriate the gun lobby?
In a city so often intent on making brash political statements, Chris Daly's tone is decidedly practical.
Daly insists that his proposal is simply about making San Francisco safer - being the vanguard of gun control is just a fringe benefit. Yet most experts are not convinced that handgun bans have any significant effect on crime, and some add that the ban's most likely outcome would be to provoke the national gun lobby in the same way that San Francisco's gay marriages riled cultural conservatives.
The reporter/writer of this story, Mark Sappenfield does take the time (after several more paragraphs about cities with gun control) to say this:
The long-term trends, though, have not been positive. Washington and Chicago perennially have some of the highest homicide rates in the US. Last year, when Chicago's homicide count dropped an unprecedented 25 percent, the reason was not the ban so much as a new vigilance in getting guns out of the hands of criminals - using laws already on the books in many states."They were not trying to get guns out of law-abiding homeowners' hands," says Arthur Lurigio, chairman of the Department of Criminal Justice at Loyola University in Chicago. "But when they encountered suspects, they were vigorously confiscating guns and trying to figure out where they can find more guns."
Others agree that the greatest success in lowering murder rates has come when law-enforcement officials have made taking guns from criminals a top priority.
"There is no cheap way out of this," says Philip Cook, a public-policy professor at Duke University in Durham, N.C. "Criminals have a way of getting guns no matter what the law is."
Taken as a whole, the article isn't too bad -- bias wise -- but if you only read the lead (not necessarily written by Sappenfield) and the first part of the story, you would draw the conclusion that this ballot measure initiative is a bold cutting-edge measure to fight crime and all of the following nay-sayers are just gun-nuts. I am one of those.
I do need to mention here that there are several bills moving their way through the State of Washington's legislature that would dramatically curtail the Second Amendment rights of law abiding citizens including the usual "assault weapons" ban and a ban on .50 caliber guns. Here's a brief synopsis from KATU TV:
OLYMPIA, Wash. - Hundreds of gun control opponents packed a Senate hearing Tuesday in Olympia on several bills that would ban assault weapons, close the gun show loophole, and ban weapons from the Capitol.In the largest committee meeting since the legislative session began January 10th, about 200 people filled the Senate judiciary hearing room and an overflow room.
Citizen opponents appeared to far outnumber the proponents, who were mostly lawmakers, public officials and anti-gun groups.
Bills that have been filed or drafted on the issue include the banning of assault weapons and .50-caliber guns, regulating the the sale of firearms at guns shows and events and banning guns from the Capitol.
State Senator Darlene Fairley, a Lake Forest Democrat, sponsored SB 5344 regulating firearms at the Capitol. She said those with permits can put their weapons in a lockbox and retrieve them when they leave.
I'm not sure how many times you can mention the NRA in a single news story and still be considered unbiased... Anyway, Brian DeBose of the Washington Times had a piece yesterday (which I couldn't find this morning on their site so am relying on a "reprint" via the World Peace Herald which says there are still hurdles to Congress passing a bill to sheild the gun manufactures from frivolous lawsuits but that there is some hope:
"There were a number of obstacles in 2004, not only the political climate and the 'poison pill' amendments, and we worked in good faith with [Senate Minority Leader] Tom Daschle, who didn't work in good faith with us," said Chris Cox, federal director for the National Rifle Association.
Mr. Daschle, the South Dakota Democrat who voted for all three amendments, has been replaced by Sen. John R. Thune, South Dakota Republican and an avid supporter of the Second Amendment right to bear arms.
Also gone are Democratic Sens. Ernest F. Hollings of South Carolina, Bob Graham of Florida, John B. Breaux of Louisiana and John Edwards of North Carolina. All except Mr. Edwards voted for the "poison pills." Mr. Edwards' presidential run prevented him from voting on all but the extension of the assault-weapons ban.
Coming in as replacements are all Republicans: Mr. Isakson, Mr. Thune, Sens. Jim DeMint of South Carolina, David Vitter of Louisiana and Richard M. Burr of North Carolina, all of whom supported similar legislation when they were in the House.
"I supported it in the House and I would again," Mr. DeMint said. "I think it is ridiculous that a manufacturer would be sued for a crime committed by someone else."
The NRA also is counting as allies freshman Republican Sens. Mel Martinez of Florida and Tom Coburn of Oklahoma.
It is clear that extending the assault-weapons ban is the backbreaker, Mr. Cox said. But when asked if the NRA and gun-rights advocates could accept any of the other amendments, he said: "Last year, [President Bush] called for a clean bill without amendments that would prevent it from reaching his desk. We don't see a need to water the bill down for unnecessary reasons, and we hope the efforts of the gun-control groups and their allies to kill this legislation with 'poison pill' amendments will fail."
This next story has nothing to do with bias per se but there isn't a whole lot to yak about this week so... I heard about this story -- of an actress in NYC being murdered during a robbery -- over the weekend on NBC's Today Show and wasn't going to comment on it because I do feel sad for the victim but, well, you'll see... From the Star Tribune (MN):
Three older teenagers came from nowhere, demanding money. DuFresne's fiancé, Jeffrey Sparks, said he didn't take the threat seriously and tried to brush by them. That's when he got hit in the face with a handgun.After making sure he was OK, DuFresne, 28, walked toward the muggers, who were now trying to swipe her friend's purse. In the commotion, an agitated DuFresne shouted, "What are you going to do, shoot us?"
About 10 seconds later, Sparks heard a gunshot. As friends called for help, he held the woman he followed from Seattle to New York City to marry and watched her die in his arms.
As he talked Friday about the aspiring actress and playwright, Sparks had to deal with his grief as a horde of New York reporters followed him through the streets.
First of all, when a group of thugs try to rob you, you had REALLY BETTER take it seriously even if you are with a group of people yourself. Just as most convenience stores teach their employees to just "give them the money", so too Sparks should have done the same, especially as he was not armed and had a gun in his face.
Compounding matters, the murder victim, actress DuFresne should have kept her big mouth shut instead of issuing a challenge to a band of armed mutants. How the hell can you possibly say something as stupid as, "What are you going to do, shoot us?" to a probably drug-infested immature youth holding a gun on you?
The first rule of staying alive is that you don't try to put out a fire by pouring gasoline on it. I'm sorry she was shot. I'm upset anytime I read about someone being shot by a criminal. But there is such a thing as common sense. None of the news stories reported this but I wouldn't be supprised if DuFresne and her fiance and friends (after a night of "celebration") weren't a little drunk and I'm sure this led to their inopportune actions.
Lastly, DuFresne's fiance was dealing "with his grief" as "hordes of NY reporters followed him" yet found time to sit in the studios of NBC and talk to Lester Holt the next morning!
Something stinks about this whole incident but my real problem is that as with any story of someone being killed with a firearm, it reflects badly for the rest of us who are law-abiding owners.
Okay, end of brief rant. Folks, even if you ARE armed, unless you know you have time to draw your weapon and defend yourself, the moral of this story is to just "give them the money". You stand a much better chance of surviving.
Well, I guess this is a shorter report than most. What the heck, here's some of what is going on elsewhere:
Joe Huffman is -- of course -- the organizer of BoomerShoot coming up at the end of April. While I don't travel, most of you all are normal and do and I encourage you to attend this remarkable event. Anyway... Now he's being asked to provide special effects for a movie! Let's face it folks, CGE or not, there are some things you have to film for real.
Triticale is a gun owner who provides one more reason why he moved from Illinois. He provides the gory details on an anti-gun event.
Geek With a .45 goes knife shopping and he has pictures. I like pictures. I'm kinda' simple that way...
Carnaby Fudge reports on household defense regarding the question of what's better, a dog or a gun? The statistics he provides are rather illuminating. Oh, and the gun wins. So just get the dog for love!
Les Jones has his Weekly Gun Links Up. A valuable service.
Denise at The Ten Ring is rueing the day she didn't buy a Thompson machine gun. We've all been there for one gun or another (and in my case, guitars, too.)
And one more pro-2A blogger you should be checking out, Cowboy Blob. Good stuff.
Okay, I gotta get this posted. Thanks for stopping by!
I've probably put up more posts today than I did all last week so I'll give it a rest. Back tomorrow with the Weekly Report.
And I have no problem with that. From Yahoo News:
OPEC (news - web sites) producers agreed Sunday to keep output limits on hold, convinced that oil prices near $50 a barrel are not stifling world growth.The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries wasted little time in deciding on no change to supply quotas, despite worries among consumer nations about inflated fuel costs.
Besides, China is now buying a goodly percentage of oil themselves as their economy grows and if oil is too cheap, they'll be just as wasteful as others while their exports continue to trounce other countrys'.
Steven Malcolm Anderson is discussing it (and it's rather interesting, actually) in a series of posts over at Up With Beauty. Here's a quote from one of them:
Liberals: Feed their pets organic foods. Watch Dick Cavett. Try to see the other guy's point of view while being mugged. Bicycle. Say, "Peace!". Take up yoga. Support non-profit TV. Have tried pot. Secretly wish William F. Buckley was a Liberal. Secretly wish David Susskind wasn't. Walk around nude in front of the children. Know the name of their Congressman. Sign petitions. Are cremated. Get psychoanalyzed. Distrust Nixon. Subscribe to "Consumer Reports". Grind their own coffee. Make it a habit to call Negroes "Blacks". Hate being called "Leftists".
Kirk at Fun Turns To Tragedy!!! is showing off his new Savage 10FLP. I'm jealous.
Eric Trimmer would like to see local-access cable turned into a national channel. I think it would be hilarious.
Like most folks, I've been in awe of how long the Mars Rovers have lasted beyond their stated mission length. Now, the secret is out:
...Melko took a stack of Star Trek photos from his desk, picking one showing the original Star Trek character Mister Scott talking to a younger actor"Remember this episode? Mister Scott is explaining to the young engineer how to come across as a miracle worker. He says something like: 'Tell the captain it will take you 3 hours to fix the problem, lad, when you know it will only take about 1. That way, when you leisurely fix it in 2, you'll still come across as a miracle worker!'"
Melko took out a pair of wax Spock ears and put them on, giving the 'live long and prosper' symbol with his right hand
"Err...well, we did the same thing. We knew the twin rovers might even last a year on Mars, so we pulled a Scotty, so we'd look like heroes. We got the idea at a Star Trek convention in Orlando a few years back."
I stopped watching the Grammy Awards years ago because of how irrelevant they'd become. GQ Magazine offers a hilarious open letter to them. Here's a quote:
See, that's your problem, Grammy. You're about as edgy as a Saturn full of Creed fans. Judging Amy is cooler than you. It's even worse when you try to act cool—it's like watching our mom and dad try to dance to Chingy's "Holidae In."We have to admit you've gotten better lately. This year you gave Kanye West ten nominations. But something tells us that if Santana had put out a record this year, Kanye would be sitting at home on February 13, ordering Kanye some Domino's. And what's up with the Sting fetish? Sting could fart in a Ziploc and you guys would give it five nominations.
Face it, Grammy: You've got a lame track record. You gave a heavy-metal Grammy to Jethro Tull over Metallica. You nominated Fountains of Wayne for Best New Artist—after they'd been performing for eight years. Milli Vanilli. And here's just a brief list of the nobodies who've never received one of your chintzy trophies: Jimi Hendrix, Bob Marley, Neil Young, Guns N' Roses, and that raunchy little indie band from England, Led Zeppelin.
Well, that's not the best lead I could have come up with but it does sum it up. Patrick Moore was one of the founders of Greenpeace but left the organization for, among several reasons, policy differences. He saw the light that (as I mentioned in a post a couple days ago) there has to be a balance between industry and environmental policy. He has a must-read op-ed in today's Miami Herald. Here's a taste of it:
...Environmentalism has become anti-globalization and anti-industry. Activists have abandoned science in favor of sensationalism. Their zero-tolerance, fear-mongering campaigns would ultimately prevent a cure for Vitamin A deficiency blindness, increase pesticide use, increase heart disease, deplete wild salmon stocks, raise the cost and reduce the safety of healthcare, raise construction costs, deprive developing nations of clean electricity, stop renewable wind energy, block a solution to global warming and contribute to deforestation. How sick is that?
Much to the dismay of the UN, Democrats, the Left, etc., reports so far show a 72% turnout among registered voters in Iraq. From the AP:
BAGHDAD, Iraq - Iraqis danced and clapped with joy Sunday as they voted in their country's first free election in a half-century, defying insurgents who launched eight suicide bombings and mortar strikes at polling stations. The attacks killed at least 36 people.Polling stations officially closed as of 5 p.m., but the elecion commission said anyone still in line would be allowed to vote. An Iraqi election official said that 72 percent of eligible Iraqi voters had turned out so far nationwide.
The official, Adel al-Lami of the Independent Electoral Commission, offered no overall figures of the actual number of Iraqis who have voted to back up the claim.
Combine that with the successful elections in Afghanistan and with this news from Israel and suddenly I don't feel so pessimistic myself.
Failed presidential candidate John Kerry is on Meet the Press as I type this. Folks, this guy could depress a stone. There was an intro-report from Brian Williams from Baghdad saying that things are going better than expected. Then, Tim turns to Kerry and says that the elections are going better than expected, what do you think and Kerry responds, "I think they're going AS expected". Then Kerry launches into how he's met all sorts of Arab leaders and how this is George Bush's last chance to "get it right" and on and on. Nothing is going right, Iraqi's aren't being trained in sufficient numbers, "President Bush made a mistake in the way he went into Iraq" and blah, blah, blah...
Thank God this manic-depressive partisan hack wasn't elected himself!
But look beyond the numbers. When you consider the behavior of the Shia and Kurdish parties, they've been remarkably shrewd, restrained and responsible. They don't want to blow their big rendezvous with history and rejoin the rest of the Middle East in the fetid swamp of stable despotism. The naysayers in the Democratic Party and the U.S. media are so obsessed with Rumsfeld getting this wrong and Condi getting that wrong and Bush getting everything wrong that they've failed to notice just how surefooted both the Kurds and Shiites have been -- which in the end is far more important. The latter, for example, have adopted a moderate secular pitch entirely different from their co-religionist mullahs over the border. In fact, as partisan pols go, they sound a lot less loopy than, say, Barbara Boxer. Even on the Sunni side of the street, there are signs the smarter fellows understand their plans to destroy the election have flopped and it's time to cut themselves into the picture. The IMF noted in November that the Iraqi economy is already outperforming all its Arab neighbors.You might not have gained that impression from watching CNN or reading the Los Angeles Times. The Western press are all holed up in the same part of Baghdad, and the insurgents very conveniently set off bombs visible from their hotel windows in perfect synchronization with the U.S. TV news cycle. But, if they could look beyond the plumes of smoke, they'd see that Iraq's going to be better than OK, that it will be the economic powerhouse of the region, and that the various small nods toward democracy going on in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan and elsewhere suggest that the Arab world has figured out what the foreign policy ''realists'' haven't: that the trend is in the Bush direction. When Amr Moussa, secretary-general of the Arab League, warned that the U.S. invasion of Iraq would ''destabilize'' the entire region, he was right. That's why it was such a great idea.
Why do I even bother saying that I take weekends off when I never do?
Because minding your manners is important, a conservative group is giving a deserved thanks to Hollywood by placing several billboards near the site of this year's Oscar Awards:
Hat-tip to Joe's Dartblog.
Let me end this week with something different. Something not heavy.
You're on a deserted island. You rubbed the magic lamp you found on the beach and the genie will only grant you one wish for three foods you can have stuffed into your grass-hut kitchen.
We assume you have some fresh water so, what three foods would you wish for, or can't live without and HAVE to wish for?
I need eggs, butter, and potatoes. But of course I hate that green vegetable stuff... I could live on those three things forever!
Three foods folks, what would you wish for? Talk amongst yourselves...
I'll be back sometime Monday with my Weekly Report.
Thanks so much for stopping by!
I've talked enough about guns for one week. Let me turn my attention to other things...
Eric Scheie has a post up about the ban on CCA lumber. I happen to know something about this.
I worked in fencing construction for almost ten years. In the olden days we dipped the fence posts in the most God-blessed substance known to last a long time, creosote. We had drums buried in the ground for that purpose. I fell into one once but that is another story...
Creosote could give a cedar post the life -- free from bacterial or insect rot -- of 30 or more years. In some ground soils, a hundred years. But some studies came out claiming that it caused this or that in rats when they were force-fed ten times their weight in the stuff.
Let me question the radical environmentalists about something. Which situation would you prefer?
1) Fence posts, railroad ties, telephone poles should be dipped in creosote because they will then last up to a hundred years. Supposed scientific studies which might be biased by trial lawyers show some slight correlation between creosote and ground water contamination although none have actually been conclusively linked to increased rates of cancer IN HUMANS under actual factual circumstances.
OR
2) Creosote should be heavily regulated to the point that the $50 thousand dollar license to use the stuff would mean that anyone other than utilities couldn't afford to use the treatment. This means that for the average homeowner, instead of a fence that stands up to termites and borer-bees for generations will now -- instead -- have to be replaced every 10-20 years. This means many more forest trees being cut down.
Folks, I fell into a drum of the stuff and while some might use that as a claim that my writings here are demented because of that, I haven't suffered any effects. No, that's not anywhere near scientific proof that there is no harm but in any question of the safety of a product, rational people have to ask whether the good outweighs the potential harm. I do this all the time with firearm ownership.
We've seen how Dow-Corning was totally fucked-over by trial lawyers over silicone breast implants and supposed (but now totally disproved) threats to life and safety. And isn't it interesting that DDT is now coming back into favor with some?
My blogson Eric questions the same faulty science and wisdom of banning CCA treated lumber, which is also rather bacterial and insect resistant. We worked with these a lot at the fence company and yes, the splinters caused a small pus-thing but heck, that made it easier to eject the splinter... Anyway, does the slight risk that these products might conceivably pose really outweigh the risk to our environment from having to instead cut down trees at least four-times as much to provide a "safer" alternative? And by the way, the borax-treated replacement doesn't work for shit.
The radical leftists would have all of us shelling out every last penny for what they decide is scientifically proven to be environmentally safe. I prefer that there be a balance reached between risk and cost. That is how business has to operate and frankly, that is how most of us have to lead our lives. And you know what? That applies to the Second Amendment Right as well...
I am not some "Hitler Youth" who wants to weed-out the frail among us, but there has to be some reasonable balance between risk and real life. Someone in a wheel-chair just can't play pro-football. I'm sorry, but there are limits on how much we can all compromise our existence to accommodating every single person with any sort of disability. Life sucks and sometimes it deals you a shitty hand. And I'm sorry but the 99 percent of us can't just adjust the world for the other 1 percent. I know that sounds heartless and cruel but that is what reality is all about. That's life. If God, if he exists, decides on another path, we'll follow it but until then we have to all, all of us, be reasonable.
Lastly, I think most of us believe in evolution and one of the postuates of that is that animals (and humans) will adapt. Let me explain. Yes, some folks are allergic to or will react to or will otherwise be compromised by almost any substance on the planet. Should we really ban the flu-vaccine because 1/2 of 1 percent of folks are allergic to it?
To go even farther, should peanut butter be totally banned because 1/2 of 1/2 of one percent of kids are allergic to it? There are people who suffer if they drink milk. Does banning it then outweigh the benefits it provides all of the rest of humankind?
Animals and humans will evolve (we've seen this with bees and moths and mice and -- yes -- humans!!!) and those others that are immune to a substance will do fine and reproduce and future generations will live side-by-side with such things. Is this right?
OR... Should we endeavor to eliminate any possible risk to any microscopic percentage of society regardless of the cost to society as a whole? Should we all be regulated in what we eat, drink, smoke, paint with, control pests with, play with, and on and on... Do we want to become a society that lives in perceived fear of everything around us? Is it really possible to eliminate every possible risk to us? Would that actually make us better, or weaker?
There has to be (as in everything) a cost-risk analysis involved. Is preventing something worth the damage such a ban does to our freedoms, our life-styles, our wallets, our sense of having some control over our own destiny?
The well-being of civilization rests on the decisions we make on how much or how far we go in regulating and legislating every facet of our lives. I touched on this a few days ago but as a libertarian (small "L") I think we all need to examine these issues further.
Let me be really clear here: I am not in any way in favor of eugenics. That is NOT what I'm lamely trying to speak of. I only want to stress that there are limits on how much we can accommodate those who might react badly to otherwise beneficial substances. You can't ban high-rise buildings because a few folks are scared of heights. You can't ban vaccines because a slight number of people are allergic. You shouldn't ban creosote and CCA because a tiny percentage of some people are supposedly at risk from it.
Regular readers know that while I voted for Bush, I'm not a fan of his. But I can truly say that his hope for tort reform of our legal system is wonderful, needed, and -- Democratic naysayers and their trial-lawyer supporters be damned -- admirable. I'm tired of the "nanny state" and I think most of you here are as well. What do you think?
Update 1/30: I'm trying to remember how many glasses of wine I had before writing this post...
Apparently a lot of folks still send cash in the mail through Russia's postal service. From AFP:
The Russian government decided to equip its mail carriers and their bosses with guns, the Interfax news agency reported.The guns, preferably revolvers, will be given to those who have to transport cash, the report said, without specifying how many weapons would be issued in all or when the program would begin.
The decision must still be approved by the justice ministry, the report said.
Without a viable bank checking system, prominent in the Western world, many Russian payments are made in cash, with bills stuffed in envelopes and sent across the country's 11 time zones.
(Via Fark) It appears that someone on ebay sold himself as a blogger commentor. Here's a quote from the description:
Because pundits and journalists have been raking in the dough recently by simply taking tax-payer money to endorse certain political agendas, I, a private citizen, am now offering my services for a fee to write and post comments on political blogs. I will write clear, on point comments no matter the agenda, no matter the Blog. Conservative, Liberal, Moderate, Commie-Pinko or Raging Right Wingnut. My ethics and words are completely for sale. AND, I will not disclose that I'm accepting money from you to support your point of view. I am also offering this service to any department of the government. HHS, SOS, DOD or even the EPA. If you have extra money to spend to further the administration's agenda, what better way than to hire a private citizen to be your voice in the blogosphere. For $10 a post ($40 for 5 posts) I will sign on to any blog and post your message, no matter how unpopular, inane or controversial. I will, however, never use profanity or personally attack any other blogger (except for and extra $50). So, if you're ethically challenged and have no problem paying to have your outlandish ideas endorsed on the web and not disclose who you are, I'm your hire.
That guy Brian deserved to be fired last night on The Apprentice. He was a horrible team leader. Actually, nobody was very good last night and trying to fix-up a run-down flea-bag motel in two days with $20K is a near impossible task. But heck, Brian flat-out asked for it! And he got it...
Much has been blathered about both here and elsewhere on both sides of the issue of the so-called "gun show loophole". There are valid arguments to be made either way. My position has always been that in general I'm against additional legislation of any kind. More, most of the bills that have been proposed expand the definition of a "gun show" to almost any transaction anywhere. Three friends meet in a living room and one trades or sells one of his firearms to another. That would be prohibited or would require a background check. That's just plain silly.
At the same time, I can understand -- not the same as support -- a bill where if a guy sets up a table piled high with guns at an actual gun show, then even if he isn't an FFL dealer, he's still a dealer selling to folks not known to him and there should be a NICS check performed. I can almost get behind that rational.
But if guns are being purchased by criminals this way then law makers should show that, and not by reading from a work of fiction! From the Washington Post:
The Virginia Senate rejected a bill yesterday that proponents said would have closed a loophole in state laws regarding the sale of firearms at gun shows.Under current law, only licensed dealers are required to perform criminal background checks on potential patrons before selling a firearm at gun shows. Smaller, unlicensed sellers, who have a significant presence at such shows, are not required to do so.
[...]
...Urging fellow lawmakers to adopt the measure, Sen. Janet D. Howell (D-Fairfax) read from a best-selling crime novel by David Baldacci. In the book, a character visits a Virginia gun show, knowing he can buy a gun there without undergoing a background check. "I think the time has come to close that loophole," she said.
Come to think of it, maybe we should let all of our laws be based on fiction. Let's bring in the collected works of Agatha Christie and Arthur Conan Doyle. This story was in Virginia but Congress could certainly learn a thing or two from Tom Clancy and Scott Turow. And by golly, why aren't NASA and others taking their cue from Isaac Asimov and A.E. Van Vogt?
Getting back to reality, which the Virginia legislature finally did in the end, I wonder how many criminals are actually willing to pay for a gun at a gun show when they would prefer to just steal it?
Yahoo and Fast Company list the 25 best jobs to have in 2005. Alas, being a blogger isn't one of them...
From the Virginia Richmond Times Dispatch (2nd item) comes this:
Along with borrowed books, Virginians can continue to take guns into public libraries.The Senate Local Government Committee defeated 9-6 yesterday a bill that would let local governments ban guns from libraries. A House committee dumped similar legislation last week.
Sen. Mamie Locke, D-Hampton, the sponsor, argued that libraries are a haven that don't need the potential hazard of a gun. She could not name an incident in which someone had brandished a gun in a library.
InstaPundit reports on a successful armed defense by ordinary people against the mutants who want to prey on us. As Glenn points out, the cops could not ever have been in time. Fortunately, the Second Amendment was!
San Francisco take note!
I'm not saying here that kids drawing violent pictures using pencils and crayons is necessarily a good thing -- but talk about an over-reaction! Also from News4Jax (FL):
OCALA, Fla. -- Two boys, ages 9 and 10, were charged with felonies and taken away from school in handcuffs, accused of making violent drawings of stick figures.The boys were arrested Monday on charges of making a written threat to kill or harm another person, a second-degree felony. The special education students used pencil and red crayon to draw primitive stick figure scenes on scrap paper that showed a 10-year-old classmate being stabbed and hung, police said.
"The officer found they were drawing these pictures for the sole purpose of intimidating and scaring the victim," said Ocala Police Sgt. Russ Kern.
The boy depicted in the drawings told his teacher, who took the sketches and contacted the school dean, Marty Clifford. Clifford called police, who arrested the boys after consulting with the State Attorney's Office.
They were also suspended from school.
There is a point where this "zero-tolerance" practiced by misguided school personnel where they do far more damage to the child than they would have if they had simply sat them down in a room with a guidance counselor or school psychologist.
Talk to the kids. Find out what is bothering them. Than invite their "target" in and have them make friends. Heck, just put a video game in front of the three of them and in ten minutes they'll be laughing and playing with each other.
I know this because -- and I'm sure this will outrage some of you -- I've seen it with cats. I remember when I brought home a kitten many years ago. My adult cat Crispy hissed at her and growled with what seemed to be anger. But then he noticed that the kitten liked to play, and liked all the things HE did. Within just a few hours they were inseperable.
I know some of you think that's a stupid analogy but I don't think so. Kids form "cliques" and "cop" attitudes. But when they really find they have something in common -- being a kid -- they become pals.
Arresting the two boys and tossing them from school will do nothing but ruin their future. Talking to them and trying to intermediate will. Over-reaction is the worst current thinking practiced by teachers and school administrators.
It's this same "zero-tolerance" that poisons most of our school systems and sends the wrong message. And, it is a symptom of a bigger problem in our society.
When school personnel treats a kid with aspirin with the same penalties as possession of cocaine, they are telling that child that the aspirin their parents take, that drugstores sell over the counter, that is advertised on TV, is just as dangerous and wrong and is equivalent to crack cocaine.
Of course, the child doesn't think his parents are taking a dangerous drug or are doing something wrong. And since the child (probably by a school nurse or his/her parent) was also given aspirin for a headache or something, the kid now believes the school administrator has lied to and misled him. Why should he/she believe anything else they have to say about medications. Heck, the kid's doctor told him to take aspirin. (And yes, you can substitute Tylenol or whatever...)
And the kid thinks, "Hmmm... They have lied to me about aspirin, what else have they lied to me about? Booze? Pot? Heroin?".
When you make all equal, nothing is actually bad. To compare possession of nail-clippers to an AK47 on school grounds is to tell that child that neither is wrong.
You can read much more about this farce at Zero Intelligence and OverLawyered.
Further, to insist that kids (who love to rough-house much the same as puppies and kittens) be protected from anything that might cause a bump or bruise, such as slides, swingsets, tag, et cetera, is to cripple them in the future by teaching them that nothing in life has consequences, that nothing in their future will, or should, cause any discomfort be it physical or mental. Then they grow up and engage lawyers anytime something doesn't go their way or they skin their knees on a tree-branch.
We are ruining our children for survival in life. Mankind is not evolving, it is wallowing in self-pity and a career in professional victimhood. We are doomed unless we have tort reform. This is one of the few issues I agree with President Bush on. Watch those documentaries about the brave and heroic folks who founded our nation, surviving all sorts of untold horrors and tribulations. Having to get your own food. Having to fend-off robbers and killers. Having to build your own homes, outhouses, and businesses. Having to be responsible for your own survival.
How could our current crop of the future possibly be self-sufficient? They have been babied and cajoled into believing that they are helpless beings at the mercy of evil forces within our nation.
Can any of you imagine anyone under 30-years-old today doing what Lewis and Clark did? Their extraordinary voyage through an untamed wilderness? Can anyone alive compare to the bravery of the early settlers who spent a month of horrible conditions crossing the Atlantic to start a new life, and trying to establish civilization here? And, as much as I admire our brave soldiers overseas today, can anyone expect the kind of response that our parents and grandparents gave when called to serve our great country during World War 2? Not the terrific youth heading over there, but the back-up support and sacrifice that everyone else made during those years when paper and butter and gas were rationed? Crippled, of course by the leftist liberals who excuse any transgression or act of violence upon our nation.
Meanwhile, our schools are turning out mentally crippled, perpetual victims who couldn't hold a candle to the youth of long ago. America can't survive that. There are mutant muslems willing to sacrifice their lives for their diseased interpretation of a religion. Soon, with the current crop of candy-asses being raised by liberals and their NEA cohorts, we will have no-one to fight them off. In the end, two kids being arrested for drawing pictures with a crayon will be all we have left to rely on to defend us. It might take a generation or two for the dry-rot to encompass our nation but it WILL happen.
And when the future generation of terrorists attack us, all we will have for defense is a bunch of fucking trial-lawyers. Sorry to be down about this but I suspect that Western civilization is doomed. We're all obsessed with trying to find someone to blame for any problem we encounter. The current generation of school kids will be useless because they will think only of themselves. The mutant terrorists will have a field-day decimating us.
Please tell me I'm wrong.
First, read the story from News 4, Jacksonville, FL:
Police have arrested three teenagers after they said a robbery turned deadly when the victim pulled a gun and shot at the suspects Saturday morning.Paradise Village ApartmentsNeighbors heard gunfire at the Paradise Island apartment complex near the Avenues Mall about 5:30 a.m. When police arrived, they found a 16-year-old dead.
Investigators said that boy and three others tried to rob a man at gunpoint in the parking lot, but he pulled his own gun and began firing.
Weekend Robbery Turns Deady When Victim Pulls Gun
Why not have a headline such as one of these?:
Victim thwarts attack.Victim shoots armed robber.
Victim saves his own life.
Crime prevented by armed citizen.
Tragedy averted by alert citizen.
Duane at the Forest For the Trees reports on an unusual -- but refreshing -- course at West Virginia University, about hunting and it's traditions. Go figure...
Look folks, I appreciate and remember Johnny Carson. He was a great performer. I'm sorry he died but so do a lot of people [die] and they didn't live in million dollar Malibu homes and suffer the only risk to their lives by stepping in front of a TV camera. This endless blathering about him day-after-day is too much. He was a well compensated comedian with a TV show. I'm sick of seeing the endless --same-- clips of his show, the endless tributes to his genius and career.
There are a lot of wonderful people who -- unfortunately -- die every single day. How about these morning shows and Dateline/20-20, etc., devoting some time to the brave men and women defending our nation against the mutant muslems overseas?
How about investigating the strangely frequent deaths of micro-biologists?
How about mentioning the decent, poor folks gunned-down by mutant criminals?
How about giving notice to cops and firemen who die in the line of duty serving all of us?
Oh, they weren't Hollywood stars. And besides, there's no good film-footage of them. And besides, we're all so star-struck that the death of anyone actually doing some good isn't worth mention. The young bravehearts who gave up their lives to protect ours aren't news while a 79-year-old who smoked all his life and died of emphysema is somehow worthy of three days of non-stop cock-sucking by the MSM.
Would we have given such tributes to Jonas Salk? Of course not! He only saved millions of lives.
NO, we certainly don't have OUR priorities wrong around here...
Adjust your dials and bookmarks and linkage; Tom has a new address for Undercaffeinated.
Nick Borst has a new blog, Between Red and Blue. Go welcome him to the blogosphere.
Because I Say So has been snow blogging, too. From my old stomping grounds in NJ.
My fellow Vermonter, blogger Cool Blue Blog praises Fox TV for an episode of 24 which pays tribute to a co-worker of his that died in Iraq. Incidentally, don't forget that The Cool Blue Blog features a daily wrap-up of news...
James R. Rummel is the proprietor of Hell in a Handbasket and he's a good friend of Alphecca. He's also an ardent supporter of the Second Amendment. BUT -- he has a secret life as a commentator over at another blog I like a lot, Chicago Boyz. I mention that because I was born in the now-torn-down old Cook County Hospital. Yes, I was born in Chicago. Anyway, he has a post there about an al-quada mutant who claims to be responsible for 75% of the Baghdad bombings. I say "claims" because as James points out, he could simply be a common-variety-mutant trying to "puff-up" his own importance. And bombings there have not decreased...
The Brady Bunch have their latest (2004) "report card" up. (PDF is HERE). Once again, all the Northern New England states receive low marks for allowing citizens to exercise their right to bear arms. Naturally, California and Massachusetts and other liberal bastions all received "A's". Download it for your amusement.
...Then we just need to fear the cops. From the Arizona Daily Star:
An off-duty Drug Enforcement Administration agent was arrested this weekend after he allegedly fired a gun as he walked near East River and North Swan roads, officials said.
Christopher Thompson, 36, was arrested about 10:20 p.m. Saturday on a charge of felony endangerment, said Deputy Dawn Barkman, a spokeswoman for the Pima County Sheriff's Department.
[...]
Thompson was arrested without incident after he reportedly fired four rounds from his service weapon, a .40-caliber handgun, Barkman said. He told deputies he had been drinking, she said.
Yes, that's right folks, while overall crime in the UK has been dropping slightly, violent crime involving guns is increasing! From Bloomberg Radio:
Violent crime in the U.K. rose 6 percent in the three months through September, led by an increase in alcohol-fueled offenses and gun crime, police figures show.Violence against the person, excluding sexual offences, rose 7 percent from the year-earlier period, U.K. Home Secretary Charles Clarke said, citing police statistics, while firearms offences increased 5 percent in the year through September, to 10,670 incidents. Total crime across the U.K. fell 6 percent from the year-earlier period, the figures show.
"Violent crime remains our biggest challenge,'' said Clarke at a London press conference, his first on crime figures since he took over from David Blunkett in December. "It's a difficult task, but we are going in the right direction. It will be my number one priority to drive down violent crime.''
I worry about violent crime, where a mutant sticks a gun or knife in my face and demands my wallet. Or I worry about gang-bangers wrecking havoc in the community or trying a push-in robbery. I'm sure it's the same for the honest, er, subjects in the UK. They don't want to hear that their car is safer this year; they want to know that they are safer and this report clearly indicates that they aren't.
Making it all the worse is how England's laws are designed to protect the criminal rather than the victim. Even if they were allowed to arm themselves, they have to stand back and let the mutant have his way with them because (as we saw in the Tony Martin case) elsewise they suffer a worse penalty than the perpetrators.
When the law-abiding bleated and turned-in their legal guns, for some mysterious reason the criminals didn't follow suit! Instead, they saw an open doorway into a paradise world of disarmed victims.
San Francisco, take note!
I have simplistically stated that I am "pro-life" and against abortion. Right Side of the Rainbow has an intelligent post about it and I think that -- damn the condemnation I will probably receive -- I will offer my own thoughts shortly.
So, the Northeast digs out from a large snowstorm, especially in Boston so that there's a clear path for the victory parade for the New England Patriots when they CRUSH the Philadelphia Eagles on February 6th ("Don't hate me, I'm only the messenger"...). We here at Alphecca (that's an editorial "we" as in me and two cats) have other things on our minds and now present for your pleasure the Weekly Check on the Bias.
You might call this one the guns in schools edition.
Why do children sneak a gun out of their home and bring it to school? Some of them are just trying to "show off" to their friends (and that's usually the reason they're caught at it) but some are also intimidated or bullied enough to think that this is the proper way to deal with situations. I have no intentions of spending the next ten paragraphs trying to analyze such psychologies -- that's not the purpose of this weekly report.
I certainly think that parents who own firearms (about 50% of the country) should be teaching their children "gun safety" and the fact that criminal incidents involving guns and kids are actually (the MSM -- Main Stream Media -- notwithstanding in their hysteria) extremely rare indicate that most DO.
In addition, for those few schools that still have riflery teams, teens should be allowed to keep their target guns in the trunk of their car (or even their locker, or a secure locker in an appropriate place within the school). And how many kids used to bring their hunting rifles to school so they could head-out after classes... It get complicated, doesn't it?
What brings all of this up is a couple of stories during the past week involving -- obviously -- guns in schools. Yahoo quickly linked to this LA Times story:
Internationally known artists Chris Burden and Nancy Rubins have retired abruptly from their longtime professorships at UCLA in part because the university refused to suspend a graduate student who used a gun during a classroom performance art piece, a spokeswoman for the artists said Friday."They feel this was sort of domestic terrorism. There should have been more outrage and a firmer response," said Sarah Watson, a director at Gagosian Gallery in Beverly Hills, which represents Burden and Rubins. "People feared for their lives."
Neither Burden nor Rubins would comment when contacted by The Times. They submitted their retirement paperwork Dec. 20, over the school's winter break.
The handgun incident occurred Nov. 29 at UCLA's graduate art studio annex in Culver City.
The brief performance involved a simulation of Russian roulette, in which the student appeared before the class holding a handgun, put in what appeared to be a bullet, spun the cylinder, then pointed the gun at his head and pulled the trigger, according to one student's account that was confirmed by law enforcement sources. The weapon didn't fire. The student quickly left the room, then the audience heard a shot from outside. What ensued is not clear, but police said no one was hurt.
My first three thoughts when I heard about this: (1) Anyone who plays around either with real guns or with fake guns that others are likely to think are real is an idiot, a jerk, or both. (2) I guess sometimes transgressive art gets too transgressive even for artists. (3) A teacher who gets shot (presumably not really) with a rifle complaining about a student who pretends to play Russian roulette, and a follow-up meeting conducted by someone who pierces and cuts his body — the modern art world is quite a place.
You would read the hysterical Sarah Watson, who I suppose "speaks" for one of the resigning teachers, Burden, claiming that this is "domestic terrorism" which I guess means she is placing it on par with the bombing of the Oklahoma City Federal Building.
See, this is where the bias of the LA Times writer creeps in. All of the liberals in LA are scanning the story and nodding their heads saying, "yes, guns are terrible, no wonder the professors resigned. We need MORE gun laws...".
Now remember, this was a "performance" of a skit in a "performance art" class. Hollywood shows guns blasting away all the time. In this case, the handgun was just a prop, indeed -- a replica firing blanks. It isn't until the 17th paragraph that we read:
The student who did the performance is Joseph Deutch, 25, according to the campus police log entry on the case. Campus police said that in the course of the investigation, Deutch handed over a gun that was not a real firearm. Robison, the district attorney's spokeswoman, said there was "insufficient evidence to show a gun was discharged or any bullet fired."
Well, apparently NOT, for those brave readers who made it all the way to the 19th paragraph:
A graduate student who attended the meeting said a few students expressed safety concerns but more were alarmed that the university, if it disciplined the artist, would be cracking down on freedom of expression.
After all, it is the self-righteous Burden himself who caused the following stir:
Burden made his name in the early 1970s with influential and controversial performance art. In his best-known piece, "Shoot," performed in a Santa Ana gallery while he was a graduate student at UC Irvine, Burden had an assistant stand 15 feet away and shoot him in the upper arm with a .22-caliber rifle.
The Associated Press reported a much condensed version that pretty much left out the last 2/3rds of the LA Times story which would have explained to their readers much of the "much ado about nothing" of the incident. I consider THAT to be bias, too.
The other story I found interesting this week was a recruiting effort by the US Army on a high school campus -- also in California -- that involved a display of air-compressor driven replica guns.
Let me state at the outset that if other businesses (companies, sports teams, environmental groups, et al) are allowed to talk to students on the school grounds, then certainly our military can or should be allowed to do the same. We ARE talking about serving our great nation in our armed forces. And our armed forces offer stunning benefits, such as college tuition, in exchange for a few years of service defending all of us. This recruiting effort might have been slightly misguided though. You'll have to decide. From the Contra Costa Times:
U.S. Army recruiters turned College Park High School's quad into a lunchtime shooting range Wednesday, much to the consternation of teachers and students.Recruiters arrived on the College Park campus in a glossy big rig, bearing realistic-looking handguns with air compressors to provide the recoil kick. And they gave the student shooters prizes.
Military recruiters are no strangers on high school campuses, but they usually restrict themselves to flier distribution, strolling about the quad or putting in an occasional appearance in the college and career center.
"It's not a soldier issue," said teacher Jen Kennedy. "In this post-Columbine era, target practice with high school students leaves me speechless."
U.S. Army Sgt. Delbert Miller said he and the Fort Knox marksmanship team visited College Park as just one stop on an annual tour of hundreds of schools and colleges.
"We presented it as an event for the kids," Miller said. "(We used) plastic pistols hooked up to an air compressor."
Naturally we have the "crunchy granola" teacher dragging in the rare event of a school shooting to claim that any target practice (much less supervised by the US Army) as leaving him "speechless". Then we have this blather:
Morgenstern and fellow senior Jayme Farrell-Ranker had set up the school's tsunami relief fund-raising effort on the quad early Wednesday and soon found themselves sharing plaza space with the recruiters and shooting range."We're trying to do something nice and they come with their games and guns," said Farrell-Ranker.
Let me briefly sum up here again: I don't think it is "all right" for kids to simply bring firearms to school to intimidate, show-off, or ward-off bullies. Parents should be supervising their children (see last week's post) and securing their firearms. But when guns -- or in the two cases I've yakked about this week, replica guns -- are brought in to make a point, whether for artistic purposes or for recruitment purposes by legitamate organizations such as our military -- then I think the teachers, administrators, and students need to get a grip on the hysteria that has been instilled in them by the main stream media. Guns aren't a problem. Misuse of them is.
So! Another single-theme edition here...
Okay, so here's some other good stuff by folks much better than me:
Kirk at Fun Turns To Trajedy has more on Maryland's new "assault rifle" ban bill. I wonder though, if Governor Ehrlich will sign such a bill? He's been all over the place on gun control but mostly he's been against such legislation.
Denise at The Ten Ring has the latest installment on being a gun-nut. Not that I would know anything about that...
I've blathered many a time about the so-called "gun show loophole" and how most of the proposed laws to close it would classify any gun sale, even in your own home to a relative of yours, would suddenly be covered by such misguided legislation. My message doesn't reach too many people and Say Uncle shows proof.
Kim du Toit does more to encourage folks to become new shooters than most -- maybe even more than the NRA -- and he has a continuing series of posts on his blog from beginners, or just people coming back to the fold. Here's his latest. He's another blogger I would like to spend a day at the range with.
Good friend to Alphecca, blogger Publicola is celebrating his second anniversary in the blogosphere. We're all better for it and there are precious few like him who are fighting as hard for our Second Amendment rights. One day I'll get over my fear of flying and head to Colorado too.
Benjamin at ReasonableNut is preparing for Joe Huffman's Boomershoot. Benjamin is also playing with scopes. I do that...
Oops, just discovered that James at Hell in a Handbasket has also covered the pathetic LA professors.
So Bitter, how do you really feel about the MA DA in a probable justified shooting case?
Heartless Libertarian reports that some Brits are getting it regarding gun control.
Another good friend of Alphecca is Zendo Deb at TFS Magnum who wants you to start thinking about where you spend your money.
Okay, it's almost noon so I better get this posted... Thanks as always for your support, your visits, your donations, your comments; thanks for stopping by!
I'll return (he said, threateningly) on Monday with my Weekly Check on the Bias...
Stay warm, safe, and don't drive in the snow if you don't know how. Your SUV isn't a magic carriage.
My buddy Fuz (I can't figure out how to do all the fancy font work for his name) at WeckUpToThees! is discussing the ballot vote for the NRA. So, uh, head on over there and talk-amongst-yourselves...
Another new blogfriend, Individ who is "...dedicated to the worth and dignity of each INDIVIDual person..." Check out his well-thought-out postings such as this one about the "left" vs "the rest of us". Blue vs Red as it were.
Keep him in your sights...
Here in the Northeast, folks are talking about the current blizzard as if it was the end of the world. Here up North, we (meaning all who live near the North of the US near the border) laugh as the rest of you struggle with a bit of snow.
Michele (living in the "end times" in NY) understands this perfectly. You can just go to A Small Victory and start scrolling for her "Blizzard Blogging" or start here and then go here and... Oh, just go read her. You should be, anyway...
As for me, I got home safe, I've opened a cheap bottle of wine, and will watch TV and chill-out (the high today was 4) and go to work tomorrow.
Anyway, have a great weekend folks, stay warm and safe, and thank you so much for stopping by. I'll see you Monday with my "Weekly Report".
Eric Scheie has given himself an award... He is, of course, the brilliant proprietor of Classical Values but is now practicing self-flagellation. All because of a link. Kinky, eh?
But I love you, Eric, and a whole lot more folks should be reading you. By the way, folks, he's another of those dangerous gay gun-nuts that others are trying to discourage...
Well, not exactly, but that's what you'd think from some of the comments related by Jackie Burrell in this Contra Costa Times story:
U.S. Army recruiters turned College Park High School's quad into a lunchtime shooting range Wednesday, much to the consternation of teachers and students.Recruiters arrived on the College Park campus in a glossy big rig, bearing realistic-looking handguns with air compressors to provide the recoil kick. And they gave the student shooters prizes.
Military recruiters are no strangers on high school campuses, but they usually restrict themselves to flier distribution, strolling about the quad or putting in an occasional appearance in the college and career center.
"It's not a soldier issue," said teacher Jen Kennedy. "In this post-Columbine era, target practice with high school students leaves me speechless."
U.S. Army Sgt. Delbert Miller said he and the Fort Knox marksmanship team visited College Park as just one stop on an annual tour of hundreds of schools and colleges.
"We presented it as an event for the kids," Miller said. "(We used) plastic pistols hooked up to an air compressor."
No, not here -- I'm used to that -- but in a forum at ar15.com. This was pointed out to me the other day by Ry at Mindless Bit Spew and he wrote asking what I thought about it. At the time, there were just a few comments and they were pretty tame compared to many I have seen in the past but they are starting to get a bit nastier. Ry left a well thought out comment on the forum that perhaps such a place was better left to the discussion of guns and gun rights.
Further, he, as well as James R. Rummel at Hell in a Handbasket and Joe Huffman at The View From North Central Idaho have -- and they're all straight -- tried to encourage various minorities including gays and lesbians to look beyond the stereotypes of the typical gun owner and become gun owners themselves, both for the sport of it and for their personal defense.
As was pointed out, all it takes is a few foolish comments to scare these folks off or convince them that their support of the Second Amendment isn't needed. But it is. Gays tend to vote Democratic (myself excepted) and by including or at least educating them about gun issues, they can influence the thinking and voting of the Party. That's not to say anyone is trying to use them for a political agenda. I have written here many times that it is completely logical for gays to take their personal protection into their own hands and not to rely on the police, or laws to come to their aid when bashers target them.
Anyway, I thank the three gentlemen above for their support of the Pink Pistols and other organizations as well as their words of moderation towards some of the people who work at cross-purposes within the gun rights community.
There's an interesting debate between two commenters in this post of mine from last week, in case others would like to join in. It involves the .50 caliber rifle "profiled" by 60 minutes, the 2nd Amendment, and curtailing that amendment for "safety"...
Remember that comments on my posts close after two weeks so get your shots in now...
The attempt by some in Colorado to change Amendment 22 of the state constitution, that tried to close the "gun show loophole", is running into interference, reports the Rocky Mountain News:
House Democrats postponed action late Thursday on a measure that attempts to change Amendment 22, the voter-approved law that closed the so- called gun show loophole.Saying he wanted more information, Rep. Terrance Carroll, D-Denver and the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, ended a committee hearing and said the panel won't vote on House Bill 1023 until next week.
[...]
Rose said he had no plans to end the background checks, but that his bill was simply a technical change.The law now says that a background check is needed even if "an attempt" is made to buy a gun. That provision isn't enforced, Rose said, and should be removed.
"If we don't enforce everything, it's akin to putting a 25 mph speed limit on I-70. Nobody's going to go 25 mph on I-70," Rose said. "It breeds contempt for the law."
Sorry for the light posting, I've just returned home and will try to catch-up with emails and news this weekend.
By the way, It Comes in Pints is having issues. Hopefully they'll be back shortly.
Update 1/22: Everything is fine now. *Whew*
From Hollis, NH comes just one more example of why folks should arm themselves. From the Telegraph Online:
Donald Narkis said he’s glad he had a gun handy to confront an intoxicated intruder who was smashing furniture in his house.He’s equally glad he didn’t need to shoot the intruder.
“I think it’s important that people realize that the first line of protection is themselves. By the time the police arrived, there could have been three bodies here,” Narkis said of the incident at his home early Monday morning.
“This could have been a tragedy, and fortunately for all of us, it wasn’t,” Narkis said. “I was told specifically from police, ‘It’s a good thing you have a gun, because it could have been very bad for you.’ ”Peter Camplin, 38, of 22 Maple Knoll Drive, posted $10,000 cash bail and was released after his arraignment Tuesday in Nashua District Court. He faces a felony burglary charge, punishable by up to 7½ to 15 years in prison, and a probable cause hearing set for Jan. 27.
And notice the positive attitude of the cops. In NYC or other big cities they would have been admonishing the home owner and telling everyone to "just dial 911".
Posting will be light the next few days but I might be able to sneak in a few posts tomorrow morning...
Welcome to the January 17th edition of my Weekly Check on the Bias of media regarding guns and gun control.
Just yesterday I was subject to having to watch all sorts of violence and assaults on my TV screen. I have to admit, it didn't bother me that much. But enough about the New England Patriots crushing the hapless Colts...
My "lead" today is about a story making the rounds internationally that is casting the US pro-gun lobby in an unfavorable light and it should disturb all of us because it isn't really true.
Anytime someone is randomly killed by any means, normal human beings feel bad about it. When that someone is a child, we call it a tragedy. (In fact, any untimely death is a tragedy.) When it's by a firearm, many of us who support gun-rights cringe and worry about how it will play in the press. We know the problem was with the mutant who pulled the trigger, not the gun itself. Others don't see it that way and while they would never (trial lawyers excepted) blame the car for a DUI accident, many are all too willing to blame the firearm and call for it's extinction.
This concerns a random shooting of a two-year-old in Turkey back in 2003. He was in a baby carriage and a Turkish hoodlum opened fire in a cafe and killed the boy. The British parents of the boy started a campaign to enact stricter gun control in Turkey. Well, that's their right although I think it's misguided. A Turkish court found the mutant gangster who committed the crime guilty and sentenced him to life in prison.
The problem is that the international press (and several US newspapers as well) have used random criticism from various sources as the spring-board to claim that the "pro-gun lobby in the US" has started a hate campaign against the parents. From Sky News (UK):
The parents of a British boy killed by stray gunfire in Turkey have become hate figures for the US pro-gun lobby.David and Ozlem Grimason, whose two-year-old Alistair son was killed as he slept in his pram, have been described as "idiots" by incensed critics of their pleas for tighter gun control.The couple, from Edinburgh, stumbled across websites attacking their efforts but are determined not to be put off.
Even yesterday's Telegraph joined the fray:
The parents of a two-year-old British boy who was shot and killed in Turkey have become hate figures for the US pro-gun lobby.David and Ozlem Grimason, whose son Alistair was killed in 2003 as he slept in his pram in a cafe, have been targeted over their campaign for gun control.
Alphecca isn't a "pro-gun lobby". I'm a pundit with a web site who supports the right to bear arms. I'm a blogger but I have no contact with legislators, congressmen, the President. I've never been to Washington DC. I comment on the news and offer my opinions. So do a bunch of other bloggers. But we're not lobbyists. Now, while I've never mentioned this story in the past, I've mentioned plenty of others. And I have comments by others. They're not lobbyists either. So where is the "hate" coming from? The Sunday Herald (UK) gets more specific:
But the couple's actions have enraged the US gun lobby, which has long supported the right of individuals to bear arms and believes that "foreigners" should not campaign for firearms restrictions, despite the fact that Ozlem Grimason is a Turkish national. The website of Keep And Bear Arms, a self-declared "grassroots movement for the people" that demands the repeal of all gun laws, includes a number of scathing attacks on the couple.In one posting, an un- named gun owner railed against the Turkish government itself. "What bothers me more are the countries and leaders who give these idiots their attention," it reads.
Another contributor to the site said: "Not satisfied with their own gun control failures, the Brits are attempting to disarm citizens of other countries as well."
Yet another asked, with more than a tinge of sarcasm: "If I were to travel to Turkey to ask that they rescind most of their gun laws, since all evidence shows that gun control kills, would [Turkish prime minister] Tayyip Erdogan meet with me? Highly unlikely."
Other gun groups have defended the sentiments of the Bear Arms postings. The Second Amendment Sisters, a women's advocacy movement, believes the Grimasons were "pathetic" for trying to change the law in another country.
A spokeswoman said: "I cannot imagine why anyone would mess about in another country's way of life. These people should stick to their country and mind their own business."
She also took a swipe at the couple's continued campaign to deal with gun violence in Turkey. "The Grimasons have made Turkey more dangerous. They are well meaning people who have not thought this situation through. We have got enough home-grown idiots without importing any more."
Larry Pratt, the executive director of Gun Owners of America, mocked the Grimasons by saying that he hoped they would campaign for gun control in the US .
"I would pay their trip. Let me know when I can buy the Grimasons their fare," he said.
But many conservative groups in the US believe stories of families affected by firearm deaths are a potent weapon for the gun control advocates.
In recent years, Jonesboro, Paducah and Springfield joined a growing list of small US towns blighted by massacres in schools where guns were involved. Perhaps the worst atrocity of all was at Columbine High School in Littleton, a suburb of Denver, where 15 pupils were gunned down in 1999 by two of their classmates.
Each tragedy gave gun control groups a boost as bereaved parents, backed by large swathes of public opinion, demanded tough restrictions. This kind of reaction is what the gun lobby fears could be repeated were the Grimasons to campaign in America.
The bias of all these articles of late is that they consider any comments by anyone who doesn't agree with the Grimasons, or with the liberal British writers of these stories, to be engaging in HATE. To draw a parallel, many on the left in the US consider that anyone who doesn't think that homosexuality should be celebrated or that marriage should include same-sex couples must be full of bigotry and are engaging in "hate speech". If YOU don't agree with me, YOU are hateful! Disagreement for any reason on any subject is not allowed. Just witness what Bill Cosby is being subject to for criticizing parts of the current state of Black culture and home life.
Maybe I'm making a bigger deal out of this than it calls for but these newspapers, and many today, really don't understand what "hate" actually is. We throw words around and overuse them so much that they lose all original meaning. Someone says "I love pizza" and that's hardly the same as "I love you" under any context. Similarly, not agreeing with someone's point of view is hardly hating them as in the context of loathing and wishing them harm. British newspaper writers should learn the difference.
Recently, following Prince Harry's brilliant decision to wear a Nazi uniform to a costume party, several commentators referred to him as "an idiot". Was THAT "hate" speech? By the way, you might find this thread from the BBC soliciting comments about the Prince Harry incident interesting. Many thought it was much ado about nothing. Others thought otherwise and their comments are no less harsh then many of the ones quoted above regarding the Grimasons. It isn't "hate". Just scorn and legitimate critique.
In other news... BB guns seem to be under fire these days, or rather, they're being fired a lot these days. First we had the crackdown in England:
POLICE chiefs are winning the war against misuse of BB guns thanks to tough new laws - but they warned the threat from real firearms remained high.Inspector Clive Benneworth, head of Suffolk police's firearms and support training, said there had been a dramatic drop in the number of young people reported brandishing potentially-lethal ball-bearing (BB) guns, thanks to new legislation.
[...]
Insp Benneworth recalled one incident in Suffolk in which a member of staff at a supermarket was convinced an armed robbery was about to take place after spotting a BB gun being brandished by youths outside."That's a prime example of an incident which prompts an armed response. The young individuals were arrested," he added.
"That's exactly what the Anti-Social Behaviour Act was brought in to stop. Obviously there is still a long way to go. We would urge members of the public to be very responsible."
Police in Laconia are investigating a rash of BB gun shootings that occurred in the city over the weekend.Police say that a group of people vandalized the windows of 17 downtown businesses sometime during the early morning Sunday, causing around $10,000 of damage.
All of us as individuals and as parents have a responsibility to ensure our children handle BB guns and similarly potentially dangerous toys responsibly. Moreover, we must recognize we will be liable if such use results in harm to persons or property. Before the Cobb County Commission moves to outlaw air guns, or so severely restrict their use that they might as well be outlawed, I suggest we take a collective deep breath and rest easy.The fact of the matter is, the irresponsible use of a BB gun is already illegal. I recall a young man I represented years ago - before I served in the Congress - who had fired a BB gun irresponsibly, and damaged a neighbor's glass patio door. Charges were brought and, if my memory serves me correctly, the case was handled without the young man receiving a permanent criminal stain on his record as a result of his foolish actions. However, the seriousness with which the local prosecutor addressed the matter drove the point home to the young man and his parents that his behavior was very dangerous and possibly criminal.
The laws today in Cobb, under both county ordinances and state law, remain very clear - if you discharge a BB gun in an irresponsible manner or cause harm or property damage, or if you fire it onto someone else's property without permission, you can - and should be - held accountable.
Why then are some citizens in Cobb now clamoring for tougher anti-BB gun measures; designed essentially to make it so difficult to fire a BB gun and meet ordinance limitations, that their use anywhere in the county would be virtually impossible? Why? Because we live in an age in which every problem or perceived problem is seen not as the responsibility of parents and citizens to resolve, but the responsibility of the government - federal, state or local - to prohibit. It's the "Patriot Act syndrome": if some action is deemed undesirable in any way, shape or form, it must be outlawed. Thus, we see the Patriot Act now being used to prosecute, under threat of 25 years in federal prison, a stupid resident of New Jersey for aiming a lawful, though dangerous laser measuring device at an aircraft, just to "see what it did." Even though the FBI and the New Jersey U.S. Attorney conceded there was no evidence whatsoever this New Jersey jerk was a terrorist or wanted to cause any harm, he is now being prosecuted under the full weight of the Patriot Act, a law enacted to provide the federal government tools to fight terrorists.
Actually taking part in your childrens' lives, supervising them, even snooping on them if you have to, would go a long way towards keeping them out of gangs, away from drugs, and preventing them from taking a BB gun and shooting out windows. But I'm just an old fashioned kind of guy...
Not the longest of my blatherings but focused for a change. I better get this posted now so you can all read it from work... Thanks for stopping by!
I just got home from work (yes, I work Saturdays and Sundays) and spent the past hour de-spamming and now that includes de-ping-spamming... *Sigh* Anyway, my current schedule at my real job is that I am off Mondays and Tuesdays.
My Weekly Report will be up around Noon tomorrow, I'll put it together in the morning. Tonight I'm going to take it easy and drink cheap wine and watch -- how sick is this? -- the first season of Green Acres... Nobody ever said my taste wasn't in my mouth... I like the old comedies I grew-up with.
And I have to say, to me, you could have crappy writing but with a good ensemble cast of pro's, you'd have a great TV show. Maybe that's why some of my favorite sit-coms include, besides Green Acres, such shows as the Mary Tyler Moore Show, The Odd Couple, The Dick Van Dyke Show, Petticoat Junction, the first couple seasons of Mash, and who could forget the Adams Family, News Radio (the late Phil Hartman was a one-man comedy team), and one of my all time favorites, The Carol Burnett Show.
A lot of shows are currently being remade. Folks, the only reason to remake something is if you can add something new and fresh to it or improve it. If the old movie was superb, don't bother trying again. You'll usually (Titanic was an exception) have a flop on your hands. Special effects don't make for a story to me although I suppose it's enough for those under 15-years-old. I never thought much of the original Gilligan's Island (although others think differently) so I don't really care if there's a remake.
But The Honeymooners is different. Simply put, this was one of the best shows ever put on TV. The cast, Jackie Gleason, Art Carney, Audrey Meadows, and Joyce Randolph, were so good, so perfect, so brilliant in their performances, that any new actor or actress who even attempts to recreate these roles is doomed to failure.
By the way, I never speak of my family but two of them played in the CBS orchestra and knew Gleason. Unfailingly they state that he WAS the greatest, and he was kind, generous, funny, loved to party and made sure that all who worked on his shows -- even the janitors -- partied with him. And he liked to party. But that's besides the point.
The point is that this was an unusual show (even by today's standards) showing a struggling couple (financially, if nothing else) who were supremely likable, had their fights, but always made-up in the end. The show needed no, and resorted to no sexual innuendo. Granted, it was the fifties. But I guarantee you the remake will resort to such. That's all Hollywood has to offer these days, along with tired special effects.
There would be no point, and indeed it would be considered folly, to try to improve on da Vinci's Mona Lisa. So too, how stupid could any movie studio be to try to do another version of the Honeymooners?
Anyway, that's my story and I'm sticking to it. Call me an old fuddy-duddy.
Check back around lunch time for my Weekly Thing. And thanks to another kind person who hit the tip-jar. That makes four this month which is more than the previous three put together. Thanks so much!
Now where's that chablis?
I thought one of the reasons given for the overall murder rate dropping in the US was that members of street gangs were aging and leaving the fold. At least that's what anti-gunners claimed -- while also claiming that the drop had nothing to do with more states allowing concealed-carry. Yet in today's New York Times, the redoubtable Fox Butterfield now reports:
"Witness intimidation has become so pervasive that it is ruining the public's faith in the criminal justice system to protect them," said Judge John M. Glynn of Baltimore City Circuit Court. "We are not much better off than the legal system in Mexico or Colombia or some other sad places."The intimidation has gone hand in hand with a sharp increase in the number of youth street gangs, not just in their traditional strongholds like Los Angeles and Chicago but also in affluent parts of Northern Virginia, as well as in Denver and in Raleigh-Durham, N.C. In New York City, hundreds of witnesses in court cases report being threatened every year, and at least 19 have been killed since 1980, according to law enforcement officials.
The latest F.B.I. Uniform Crime Report, for 2003, showed that while overall crime has stayed level or has fallen slightly in the past four years, juvenile gang homicides have jumped 25 percent since 2000.
DOJ graphics
And while the brazen -- and unworldly -- mutant youths who populate street gangs might feel no fear and are increasing their drug-hazed activities, your everyday garden variety criminal does seem to be relenting a bit. Why?
Let's all put our thinking caps on...hmmm...Well, here's just one idea that pops into my head: Maybe it actually IS the fact that more citizens are now arming themselves and their homes. Maybe it is the fact that more states allow concealed-carry. Maybe career criminals are becoming scared in some locales because they now know their intended victim might fight back! Anyone have a better suggestion?
This is my monthly obligatory "gay post". In yesterdays Boston Herald, right on page three, I read this story:
The Gay Bomb, a Pentagon spokesman confirmed yesterday, was a real proposal - an idea floated by Air Force researchers to render enemy troops ineffective by rendering them homosexual.It was 1994. Some creative thinkers at a Wright Patterson Air Force Base lab were brainstorming on possible non-lethal weapon projects. Someone hit on this:
"Category # 3: Chemicals that affect human behavior so that discipline and morale in enemy units is adversely affected. One distasteful but completely non-lethal example would be strong aphrodisiacs, especially if the chemical also caused homosexual behavior.''
It is unclear what substance would jack up the sex drive and break down the inhibitions of normally heterosexual troops. Presumeably, the idea was that rampant homosexual activity would cause shame and confusion, destroying unit cohesion.
The Pentagon didn't bite.
A couple more folks have hit the "tip jar" on the side panel. Thanks so much, it really helps!
Granted, anyone who leads a life of crime isn't too bright but here's the story of an especially dim bulb from the AP:
SHREVEPORT, La. - A man who used a cardboard gun to rob a bank apparently wasn't paying much attention when he cased the building earlier and failed to notice it was across the street from an office used by Caddo Parish sheriff's detectives.
See, I knew I couldn't just stop...
Countertop Chronicles is fisking an anti-gun editorial. So, uh, go check it out. I'll wait...
And FreedomSight is fisking the Brady Bunch over a gun mentioned a few posts ago somewhere in another link...in another universe...
And further more, John Lott is fisking the 60 Minutes segment I mentioned earlier this week about the .50 caliber rifle over at NRO.
So there's some more bloggy gunness for you all.
And one kind person has made a donation tonight. The first this month. Thank you!
Let's see if I can now pull myself away from this computer until Sunday night when I start assembling the Weekly Report...
So this brings to a close another week here at Alphecca. I try to take weekends off to recharge my batteries. I'll be back very soon (sooner than I think if something dramatic happens) with my Weekly Check on the Bias report on Monday.
Thanks so much for your comments, links, donations if you are so inclined, and general good vibes.
Thanks for stopping by and have a great weekend. I wish you and yours well.
The European Space Agency has landed a probe on Titan, one of Saturn's huge moons. From the AP:
NASA photo
A European space probe Friday sent back the first detailed pictures of the frozen surface of Saturn's moon Titan, showing stunning black and white images of what appeared to be hilly terrain riddled with channels or riverbeds carved by a liquid.One picture, taken about 10 miles above the surface as the Huygens spacecraft descended by parachute to a safe landing after a seven-year voyage from Earth, showed snaking, dark lines cut into the light-colored surface.
"Clearly there is liquid matter flowing on the surface of Titan," said scientist Marty Tomasko of the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory at the University of Arizona, in Tucson, which made the probe's camera.He said the liquid appeared to be flowing into a dark area at the right side of the image.
"It almost looks like a river delta," he said. "It could be liquid methane, or hydrocarbons that settled out of the haze" that envelops Titan.
Another image, taken about five miles above the surface, showed light and dark masses, which Tomasko said seemed to be shadows, indicating a varied terrain. The dark areas appeared to be flooded or to have been so at an earlier time.A third image taken at the surface showed several large white chunks and boulders or blocks of water ice in the foreground and a stretch of gray surface behind them.
"There aren't too many planets with liquid," Tomasko said. "There's Earth, and now there's Titan."
Titan is the first moon other than the Earth's to be explored. Scientists believe its atmosphere is similar to that of the young Earth, and studying it could provide clues to how life arose here.
Yes, we have expensive problems now but taking a tiny slice (a fraction, actually) of our budget and exploring the mysteries of the universe is one of the last links we have left with our ancestors and their inclinations to solve questions about the world around them.
The left is convinced, and astoundingly unimaginative enough to think that every free penny from workers should go to supporting those who refuse to. I prefer to see just a bit of that going to keeping the human imagination alive, the drive to explore the unknown and to try to figure out some of the baffling questions about the nature of where we are, why we are, what we are, and maybe, where we are destined to go.
I've written often about science books exploring String Theory and such. I've mentioned such shows as Coast-to-Coast AM and the scientists they feature. I've long expressed my pleasure at reading science fiction.
Folks, without a dream that there is more to life and being than the squalor of our present condition, we cease being the pinacle of life. Of late, cats show more curiosity than we do. The quest for knowledge is worth every cent of what we spend. We need to keep the thing that makes us truly human, our intelligent need for answers, alive.
I have followed the meanderings of our Mars rovers and the discovery of a strange metallic object:
What the hell happened to man's sense of wonder? Are we really so limited to our own problems that we wish to stop examining the world, the universe around us?
This is exciting stuff. If I could go back in time and slap my younger-self silly, I would tell him to get good grades, go to college, and get a job at Jet Propulsion Laboratories.
Liberals would rather we just give it (along with everything else) to some drug addict in South LA. No Thanks. They contribute nothing, are largely responsible for their own condition, and will never move humans forward in evolution. Take some of my tax dollars and waste it on them, but not all of my tax dollars. Preserve some of them for expanding our frontiers.
Further updates can be found at the website of our official blog scientist. That would be Jay Manifold, of course!
...Instead, consider buying me a drink. Or helping me out in general here at Alphecca. Even a $5 donation goes a long way. Think of me (nobody ever does) as the REAL conservative gay-guy of the blogosphere. I'm pro-gun, pro-life, pro-God, I voted (with qualms) for Bush. For two and (almost) a half-years I've been on YOUR side. Your support is vital. THANK YOU!
While the left still maintains a stranglehold on most of our institutions of higher education, there are some good signs that things are changing. In the Winter 2005 edition of City Journal, a terrific essay by Brian c. Anderson. Here's a sample:
...But the Left’s long dominion over the university—the last place on earth that lefty power would break up, conservatives believed—is showing its first signs of weakening. The change isn’t coming from the schools’ faculty lounges and administrative offices, of course. It’s coming from self-organizing right-of-center students and several innovative outside groups working to bypass the academy’s elite gatekeepers.There have always been conservative students on campus: more than a half-century has passed since a just-matriculated William F. Buckley published God and Man at Yale, lamenting his alma mater’s secularism and launching the author on his now-legendary career. But never has the Right flourished among college kids as it does today.
The number of College Republicans, for instance, has almost tripled, from 400 or so campus chapters six years ago, to 1,148 today, with 120,000-plus members (compared with the College Democrats’ 900 or so chapters and 100,000 members). And College Republicans are thriving even on elite campuses. “We’ve doubled in size over the last few years, to more than 400 students,” reports Evan Baehr, the square-jawed future pol heading the Princeton chapter. The number of College Republicans at Penn has also rocketed upward, says chapter president Stephanie Steward, from 25 or so members a couple of years ago to 700 members today. Same story at Harvard. These young Republican activists, trudging into battleground states this fall in get-out-the vote efforts, helped George W. Bush win.
Other conservative organizations, ranging from gun clubs (Harvard’s has more than 100 students blasting away) to impudent newspapers and magazines, are budding at schools everywhere—even at Berkeley, crucible of the sixties’ student Left. And right-of-center speakers invited by these clubs are drawing large and approving crowds. “At many schools, those speeches have become the biggest events of the semester,” Time reports. One such talk at Duke by conservative author and former Comedy Central host Ben Stein, notes Time, attracted “a bigger crowd than the one that had come to hear Maya Angelou two months earlier.”
The bustle reflects a general rightward shift in college students’ views. Back in 1995, reports UCLA’s Higher Education Research Institute, 66 percent of freshmen wanted the wealthy to pay higher taxes. Today, only 50 percent do. Some 17 percent of students now value taking part in environmental programs, half of 1992’s percentage. Support for abortion stood at two-thirds of students in the early nineties; now it’s just over half. A late-2003 Harvard Institute of Politics study found that college students had moved to the right of the overall population, with 31 percent identifying themselves as Republicans, 27 percent as Democrats, and the rest independent or unaffiliated. “College campuses aren’t a hotbed of liberalism any more,” institute director Dan Glickman comments. “It’s a different world.”
You'll be shocked, shocked I'm sure, to learn that the San Francisco Bay Guardian has an op-ed by two anti-gun flunkies that want all handguns out of the city (SF). Get some mouthwash ready because here's a taste:
The truth is, the Second Amendment doesn't apply to individuals. Since 1939, the Supreme Court has found that the Second Amendment doesn't give an individual a Constitutional right to own a gun. The amendment clearly focuses on granting that right only to a "well-regulated militia." Even though the NRA and its powerful friends convinced former attorney general John Ashcroft to opine that it did apply to individuals, federal courts have ruled it doesn't, upholding Washington, D.C.'s handgun ban in Seegars v. Ashcroft.Handguns make our homes more dangerous. Scientific data indicates that, far from providing protection, owning a handgun makes it more likely that a gun-related death will occur that isn't in self-defense. The New England Journal of Medicine found that a handgun in the home makes it 43 times more likely that a friend, family member, or acquaintance will be killed than an intruder. According to data collected by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, firearms are the second leading cause of death for kids 19 and younger. In addition, rates of successful suicide increase fivefold with a handgun.
The 1939 SCOTUS case focused on one particular firearm and did not address the individual right to bear arms. Just because some liberal activist judges since have tried to prevent DC residents from exercising their rights doesn't mean that the body of constitutional writings out there is wrong.
The New England Journal of Medicine study was debunked long ago.
Lumping suicides in with murders is playing with statistics by distortion.
I have to go to work but I'm sure other bloggers will address this silly editorial in greater depth.
I might try to sneak in a few more posts during the day...
mAss Backwards examines a new defensive er, weapon designed for women. He finds it rather lacking...
Confederate Yankee is also doing a fisking, of NBC News.
Reader Jay Fishman points me to this employment opportunity as public affairs director of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence. Just in case one of you wants to apply as "a mole" for our side. Heh.
Say Uncle reports that the State of Maryland is finally admitting that ballistic fingerprinting doesn't work. Heck, I could have, in fact, I DID tell them that the very first week of Alphecca's existence!
Posse Incitatus looks at some of the falsity in the NAS gun report.
And speaking of which, John R. Lott, Jr responds to some of the comments from the Volokh Conspiracy blog.
offers his comments on the 60 Minutes piece featuring his .50 caliber firearms. I've appended them to the end of the Weekly Report below.
A distributor for Glock sells guns to a police department. The police department sells one of the guns to a gun shop. The gun shop sells it to a private collector. The private collector sells it to a mutant who goes on a shooting rampage. All of the transactions -- under current law -- were legal except for the purchase by the mutant himself who was prohibited from owning guns as an ex-convict. Therefore, the maker of the gun -- Glock -- and their distributor must be guilty and liable for the crimes eventually committed three transactions down the road.
No, that doesn't make a shred of sense to me, either, but the 9th Circuit Court in San Francisco thought it did when reinstating the liability case in 2003. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court [SCOTUS] has declined without comment to hear the case. From the AP:
The Supreme Court declined Monday to consider dismissing a lawsuit seeking to hold gun manufacturers responsible for the 1999 shooting of a letter carrier by a white supremacist.
Without comment, justices let stand a ruling of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that reinstated a lawsuit against gun manufacturers and distributors. The companies' weapons were used by Buford Furrow to kill Filipino-American Joseph Ileto and wound five people at a Jewish day care center in a Los Angeles-area rampage.
The high court's move, which allows the lawsuit to proceed toward trial, is good news for gun-control groups who say increased liability will stop industry sales tactics that put weapons into the hands of criminals. Several cities nationwide have sought to sue gun manufacturers, but with little success.
[...]
Christopher Renzulli, the attorney for Glock and the RSR companies, has said the gun Furrow used to kill Ileto was originally sold to the police department in Cosmopolis, Wash., by the RSR companies.According to court records, the police department sold the weapon to a gun shop in exchange for a different model. The shop sold it to a gun collector who is alleged to have sold it to Furrow, an ex-convict prohibited from purchasing weapons, at a gun show in Spokane, Wash.
The appeal filed by China North Industries Corp. argued that the San Francisco-based 9th Circuit overstepped its authority in expanding potential liability for gun manufacturers, a role the company says should be reserved for legislatures.
In the original decision reinstating the case, Judge Richard Paez of the 9th Circuit wrote that Glock's marketing strategy creates a "supply of post-police guns that can be sold through unlicensed dealers without background checks to illegal buyers."
I suppose we're left with hoping that whatever jury hears this case will realize how phony it is and find for the defendents. Somehow I don't have much faith that will be the case with a California jury pool...
Greetings from the land of an unfettered Second Amendment. I say that because while Vermont (only 4 GUN murders last year) has repeatedly -- backed by the state Supreme Court -- upheld the individual right to bear any type of arms you might like, many other states are frothing at the mouth to infringe on your Constitutional rights.
What brings this to my mind is a story that I mentioned last week about a law in California banning the sale, distribution, and new purchase of .50 caliber guns. From the New York Times:
California has become the first state to ban a powerful .50-caliber long-range rifle that gun control advocates portray as a military firearm that could easily fall into the hands of terrorists bent on assassination or shooting down an airplane.Under the ban, which was signed into law by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in September and took effect on Jan. 1, it is now illegal to manufacture, sell, distribute or import a weapon known as the .50-caliber BMG, or Browning machine gun rifle, a single-shot weapon widely used not only by law enforcement officers and the military but, more recently, by civilian sport shooters as well.
It is. It weighs almost 30 pounds and is over five feet long! Hardly the choice of criminals who might like to hold-up the local liquar store. And judging by the comments of supporters of the California ban, that isn't who they are worried about. Once again, the spectre of "terrorism" is used as an excuse to demonize what, when you strip away the bells and whistles, is just another rifle. Here's another quote from the NY Times article:
The .50 BMG rifle, patented in 1987 by Barrett Firearms Manufacturing of Murfreesboro, Tenn., was designed as a sniper weapon for law enforcement and the military; it was widely used by American troops during the Persian Gulf war of 1991.Manufacturers say the rifle is accurate at a range of up to 2,000 yards, more than a mile. It fires bullets five and a half inches long described as powerful enough to rip through armor, much less the thin aluminum skin that covers commercial airliners.
"They can pierce the skin of an aircraft," said Daniel R. Vice, a lawyer with the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, a central supporter of the law. "It could be used to shoot down an airplane. And we certainly don't want to wait until a terrorist buys one before we ban it."
Could someone aim one of these things at a jet passing overhead? I suppose so but with a target moving at 600 miles per hour, the chances of a terrorist hitting something on the plane are slight, and hitting something that would cause a catastrophic event, such as a fuel tank exploding, are almost nil. But I suppose, truth in blogging, that it could happen. But, it hasn't. In fact, as all the articles decrying this firearm have pointed out, there is not one instance of the .50 caliber rifle being used criminally or terroristically in the United States.
Now, there are reports that Bin Ladin and his band of mutants have purchased some of these guns but there is no anecdotal evidence that they have employed them here in the US (or elsewhere, for that matter -- but we're talking about gun control here in America and that is what counts to me). There are also claims that the Branch Davidians in Waco used .50 rifles but was that terrorism? I don't consider it so. In fact, I consider their actions to be purely defensive in an onslaught by Janet Reno and her minions using trumped-up charges to kill innocent people. I'm sure that last sentence will get me plenty of nasty comments...
One final point about the Times story: They originally claimed that the bullets fired were 5 1/2 inches long. They did issue a correction this morning:
Correction Monday, Dec. 10, 2005
An article on Tuesday about California's ban on a long-range rifle, the .50-caliber BMG, referred incorrectly to its ammunition. It is the cartridges that are five and a half inches long; the bullets are about two and a quarter inches long.
Getting back to the original point of all this, California has banned further sales of the Barrett rifle. Many other states have tried but -- to this point -- failed. This disturbs the media to no-end and they are letting their blathers be heard...
Here's one From the Daytona Beach News:
A .50-caliber sniper rifle can hit a target at 4,500 feet, shatter bulletproof limousines, penetrate sandbags, earth berms, armored vehicles, commercial planes, and drill through the walls (and living rooms) of 10 suburban houses lined up one after another. The Geneva Conventions don't prohibit .50-caliber weapons' use against military personnel, and army manuals describe its usefulness in battle. But the weapon's use on civilians and in civilian areas is prohibited.Oddly enough -- or maybe not so oddly in the twilight zone of Second Amendment zealotry -- you can buy a .50-caliber weapon from your friendly mail-order gun dealer. The Barrett line of .50-caliber sniper rifles, patented in 1987, is the "One Shot One Kill" enthusiasts' gun of choice. After its introduction and wide use in the first Gulf War, it made some famous cameos in the arsenals of infamous separatists in the 1990s (Timothy McVeigh owned one, the Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas, had some). The .50-caliber weapon is also used by civilian police forces, although not by the area's largest forces -- the Daytona Beach Police Department and Volusia's and Flagler's sheriff's offices.
Instead, I'll use his own words to debunk the writer! If, as he (un-named) says, this [.50 caliber gun] is as dangerous as he claims, then what or why are civilian police forces using them? Since the police are not trying to take-out mutants from two miles away, and since their primary concern (or at least it should be their primary concern) is to minimize collateral damage and loss of life to innocent bystanders, why would they employ such a powerful and dangerous weapon?
You know, there's a blurb on the box of Remington .22 ammo in my closet warning that bullets can travel a mile and a half. That doesn't mean that they do. Please don't misunderstand me; I am not trying to down-play the force of the .50 caliber rifle, just some of the hype that opponents of it use to describe it. Folks, it's still just a rifle. And for those who enjoy owning and target shooting or big-game hunting rifles, it's a cool gun. It is NOT the type of firearm that your average mutant or terrorist could easily afford or carry undetected.
To claim that the gun has only one purpose -- to kill humans at a distance -- is as specious as declaring that high-performance cars such as Porches and Ferraris are designed only for breaking speed limits and driving recklessly and therefore should be banned...
I would also point out, aside from the previous comments I've made that there are many ammos that travel far distances and can pierce the walls of a house, that half-inch bullets are nothing new. Muskets have been firing .50 ball rounds for three hundred years. No, they don't have the travel force of modern ammo but recent attempts in New Jersey didn't even make that distinction in [failing] attempts to ban the caliber.
Which brings us to the CBS 60 Minutes report last night by Ed Bradley. I didn't see it because I don't receive a CBS station where I live. And while the video isn't yet up on their site, CBS has provided a semi-transcript. Here's some of it:
This past week, a new law went into effect in California banning that weapon. It's the .50-caliber rifle, the Rolls Royce of sniper rifles. It's a big gun, a favorite of armies around the world, and it's still available in 49 states in this country to anyone over 18 with a clean record.It is, without a doubt, the most powerful weapon you can buy. And, as Correspondent Ed Bradley reports, it's powerful enough to kill a man or pierce armor from more than a mile away.
A Senate report said that a bullet from a .50-caliber rifle, even at 1.5 miles, crashes into a target with more energy than a bullet fired at point-blank range from Dirty Harry's famous .44 Magnum.
The difference is that while the examples of everyday items have indeed been used as weapons here in the US, the Barrett rifle hasn't. But apparently Ed Bradley forgot about the destruction of the federal building in Oklahoma City (or the first attempt on the World Trade Center) and has also forgotten that the original plan by the Columbine mutants was to set-off propane tanks by shooting at them in the school cafeteria.
The CBS segment went on (at least according to the transcript) to interview rather extensively, gun control advocate Tom Diaz:
It's not convenience store robberies that worry Tom Diaz, a gun control advocate who was an expert witness in the California campaign to ban the gun.Diaz says the .50-caliber rifle made by Barrett and other manufacturers is a menace in the hands of terrorists. "This gun is designed and built to smash things up and to set things on fire," says Diaz. "It's a battlefield weapon. Yet it is sold as freely on the American civilian market as a .22 bolt action rifle."
What's wrong with Barrett's product?
"I'm glad Ronnie Barrett makes his rifle for our military forces. I think it's a great thing on the battlefield," says Diaz. "I just think that there are certain occasions when we say in our society, this product is such a threat to our health and safety, and in this case, our national security, we will not allow it."
But isn't any gun in the hands of a terrorist a threat?
"Well of course any gun is. But it is a gun that is unparalleled by any other small arm available to civilians," says Diaz. "We control every other kind of weapon of war you can think of – machine guns, plastic explosives, rockets. But this thing has flown under the radar for about 20 years."
If Diaz's argument is really that the .50 caliber rifle "is such a threat to our health and safety" then why isn't he advocating banning all things in our world that can cause harm? Do we really want to live in a super-controlled society? Should we all just exist in padded-cells? Will America soon look like the medicated world depicted in movies such as THX-1138?
To Bradley's credit, there were plenty of quotes by the maker of the Barrett rifle, Ronnie Barrett:
Why would you need a weapon this powerful if you're not fighting a war? "It's a target rifle. It's a toy," says Barrett. "It's a high-end adult recreational toy. Any rifle in the hands of a terrorist is a deadly weapon."
[...]
But he scoffs at critics who claim that .50-caliber rifles are too dangerous in the hands of civilians. "The .50 has an excellent record. You know, as far as the abuses with .50-caliber rifles, they are so few, if any, that all other calibers ought to aspire to have as good a record as it has," says Barrett. "And it's a long rifle. When you hear people say it's a criminal's weapon, this is 5-and-a-half feet tall, or something like that. This is not a weapon that a criminal would use."
"Went right through," says Kelly. "It is clearly a weapon of war, a round to be used in a wartime situation. It's appropriate for the military. The effective range is about 2,000 yards. It's a very formidable weapon."
Update 1/11/05: Following the airing of the 60 Minutes report, Ronnie Barrett had this to say in the Daily News Journal:
One day after Murfreesboro-based Barrett's Firearms Manufacturing was featured on CBS' "60 Minutes," the company's owner said coverage went as expected but may provide a toehold for anti-gun activists to push legislation he believes violates the Second Amendment."This is only the tip of the iceberg," said Ronnie Barrett, founder, CEO and president of the local weapons manufacturer. "This is a slippery slope for gun control, and I think '60 Minutes' played fairly well into it."
[...]
Barrett agreed that his rifles can be potentially dangerous but added that any weapon is dangerous in the hands of a terrorist. Under federal law, Barrett's rifles are treated no differently than a common hunting rifle."I fear Diaz played '60 Minutes' right down where he wanted them," said Barrett. "The effect the segment had is it left people thinking there is a dangerous gun out there that legislation needs to be done against."
In defense of the legality of his product, Barrett cited the media war waged in the 1980s by anti-gun activists bent on banning "Saturday Night Specials," another term for small, easily concealed pistols. When that failed, they attempted to ban assault-style rifles, which held up in the courts but expired in 2004. Now they have a new target, he said, a rifle that has made headlines for its effectiveness and versatility in Iraq and other combat theaters.
"There's other cartridges that would blast through half-inch steel plate," Barrett said, referring to the ability of his rifles to punch through armor at long distances. "What they didn't tell you on the '60 Minutes' interview is there are cartridges right on the heels of the .50-caliber."
Another important aspect of his product Barrett said '60 Minutes' misrepresented concerns records of ownership. Diaz wants Congress to pass a law requiring the names of owners of .50-caliber rifles to be kept on file. Barrett maintains that all firearms transactions and ownership records are already kept on file with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms in a 4473 form.
"I feel like (Ed) Bradley didn't know, and that's the answer he got from the VPC, and any answer that usually comes out of them is false," Barrett said. "The only thing they get correct is the spelling of my name."
This edition of my Weekly Check on the Bias is unusual in that I've focused exclusively on just one issue, but I thought it was important.
Anyway, here's what some other pro-2A bloggers are up to:
Say Uncle and team have all sorts of stuff up including more on the CBS report. So does Publicola.
Great post by James at Hell in a Handbasket about pocket guns. To bastardize a commercial, "What's in YOUR pocket?"
Zendo Deb at TFS Magnum reports on a defensive shooting and the unbiased report about it.
Posse Incitatus wants to know your thoughts on Colt vs S&W. I will always come down on the side of Smith and Wesson. My .38 Airweight is a thing of beauty and a trusted carry companion...
Picking up on what I mentioned in my post today, Reasonable Nut reports on hunting vs boating safety. Guess what? Hunting is safer. We knew that...
Alright, let me get this post up. Thanks to all of you for stopping by. I'll be on Cam Edwards tomorrow and I'll be back here soon.
I'm being lazy tonight. I just got home from work, I'm enjoying a glass of wine and surfing the net. Normally on Sunday nights I work on the Weekly Report but there was no real coherent theme so I'm just lounging about. I'll do it tomorrow morning. My Weekly Report should be up around Noon.
I'm doing a lot of spur-of-the-moment things tonight. Vermont Public Television is showing one of my favorite comedies tonight, It's a Mad, Mad, Mad World starring just about everyone who was funny in the early sixties. I actually saw this in the movie theater and laughed my (at that time in 1963) 9-year-old ass off. This is one of few precious memories I have of going to the moviehouse as a kid.
Other flicks I saw included the strangest double-feature of The Great Escape with Steve McQueen paired with King Kong VS Godzilla. My older brother took me to see that dynamic duo. Four hours of pure pleasure for a kid like me!
So while I'm being lazy, here are some good reads around town...
Gunscribe at From The Heartland announces that a proposed bill in Nebraska would limit cellphone use while driving to emergencies only. Vermont has such a law on the interstates and while it is rarely enforced, the outside salesman for my company recently got a ticket because he actually pulled over and stopped in the breakdown lane to answer a call. A statie pulled over and actually gave him a ticket for doing that! He said that stopping on the highway was only for emergencies. The salesman thought he was doing the right thing by pulling over to answer a call. This cop was a total asshole. Most would have -- at most -- given a warning.
You know how weird I'm being tonight? I've dug-out some old Balsam Fir Incense and am stinking up my home with it...
Joe Huffman at the View From North Cental Idaho has several interesting posts up including reasons why he isn't a joiner.
Eric Scheie has low standards? I don't think so. His writing is brilliant. But this is all relating to the problems of Armstrong Williams taking money -- undisclosed, and there-in lies the problem -- to promote a White House initiative.
I have long admired gun engraving. So does Zendo Deb at TFS Magnum with an appreciation of Westley Richards.
Sean at The White Peril has more on my favorite author Agatha Christie in this post.
I love Angela Bowers and she thinks about the same things I do when having a few... Angela, all of your questions will be answered late at night....
Okay, I'm now going to cook-up a bunch of eggs and pig-out and sleep like a baby and tomorrow morning will get to work on the Weekly Report. See you soon...
For those of you who like to stay home on a Saturday night, and it's about 6:55pm as I write this, you are in for a true treat if you can stay up long enough. I have often mentioned the radio show Coast to Coast AM which, during the week is hosted by George Noory and on the weekends by Art Bell.
If you are up tonight, Art will have another interview with one of the most brilliant theoretical physicists, Dr. Michio Kaku who manages to do (I've listened to two previous in-depth interviews with him) what few others such as Brian Greene (PBS - The Elegant Universe) and David Deutsch (The Fabric of Reality have managed to do: Make the nature and physics of the Universe understandable to all of the rest of us.
Dr. Michio Kaku is simply brilliant and humerous and a wonderful interview. While Art Bell is a lousy interviewer (I wish George Noory was doing it, he's very good) I still think this will be a fascinating three hours for you. Kaku is on the forefront of string-theory and the quest for the final answer, theory, of the nature of our world, our universe, our multiverse.
Coast-to-Coast AM is carried by almost 500 radio stations around the US so if you tune in at 1 AM you should pick it up. Just do it. Expand your mind. I have listened to Dr. Kaku several times and he always delivers the goods, he always gets you thinking. He is better than the late great Isaac Asimov and Stephan Jay Gould. There's more to life than just guns, politics, and our squalid world... Visit the Universe tonight. Enjoy! I'll be back here Monday sometime...
Because Apple Computer is run by some of the stupidest fucking people in the world, they've decided to start suing anyone who publishes anything that might encourage new customers. From Yahoo:
Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL - news) Computer has filed suit against ThinkSecret.com, a Mac rumor site, alleging that proprietary information and trade secrets were posted there.The company claims that technical specifications, product plans and code names were solicited by ThinkSecret and given to the site by individuals who had signed non-disclosure agreements.
Rumors on the site include plans for a budget-priced Mac, an Apple-developed line of office software and potential marketing plans that the company claims are confidential.
In court documents, Apple does not disclose whether the rumors are true.
Rather, the company has issued a general statement confirming that the civil complaint has been filed, and that confidentiality agreements allegedly have been broken.
[...]
The current lawsuit follows similar actions by Apple in December, when the company asked a California court to subpoena rumor sites so the identity of individual discussion participants could be discovered.Apple's actions highlight the tricky balance between free information and trade secrets. When non-disclosure agreements are involved, the boundaries are clear, but in other cases, they might be blurred.
"It raises questions about how information is distributed online," said Gartenberg. "I think we'll see more of this in the future from companies trying to plug internal leaks."
I doubt they even have much of a case, certainly not much more than a reporter for a major newspaper that solicits a source to disclose information about something. You can go after the people who made the leaks, not the ones publishing them. If you have a leaky bucket of water, you plug the holes. You don't blame the ground for soaking that water up.
Most companies that have marketing people with IQ's in the three digits range would love to feed rumor mills and generate early "buzz" about new products. Heck, a lot of them intentionally do it. Look at automotive companies for an example. Apple should be thanking their stars that there are still web sites following and promoting their tired-old products.
I feel like ripping the Apple logo off my sites. I just inherited an older Pentium (only 733mhz) but it works just fine. Maybe it's time I joined the rest of the world and enjoyed a hell of a lot more choices in software and peripherals.
Thanks Apple, you just blew off another user. Idiots.
In today's Wall Street Journal Online, Jess Bravin has a piece on the Justice Department's report regarding the Second Ammendment conferring a personal right to bear arms. I'm at work so can't comment on it now but will try to tonight.
Update: Well, I guess I didn't get to it but will try to mention it in the Weekly Check on Monday...
Mayor Daley just won't give up on his demented dream of a gun-free Chicago. Since it's already illegal to own a handgun in the city with one of the highest rates of violent crime in the nation, he has apparently come to the conclusion that the mutant criminals who violate gun laws aren't to blame. He tried suing gun makers but that was thrown out of court. Now he is proposing legislation that would require gun store workers to employ ESP and telepathy. From the Chicago Sun Times:
One bill would amend the Public Nuisance Act to make it an offense to sell guns without taking reasonable precautions to ensure they are not used illegally.The other would allow victims of gun violence and their families to sue gun dealers who "knew or should have known" that the gun used in the crime had either been sold illegally or that the buyer intended to use the gun to commit a crime.
And when you have vague requirements such as "should have known" that the purchaser was a mutant and "intended to use..." you pretty much leave the gun store open to any frivolous claim by the state or a crime victim's attorney. Such specious legal arguments have no place in state law.
And once again, it targets the legal sellers of firearms and places the culpability for future crimes on their shoulders rather than on those of the criminals themselves. Hopefully the Illinois house will reject enacting such faulty legislation.
...in emails. I'll get to them tonight...
The City Council of New York City has decided that even though courts have ruled against all sorts of lawsuits holding gun makers and dealers responsible for the actions of mutants, THEY are going to pass a law holding out of state (!) gun dealers liable if they sell someone too many guns. From AP/Yahoo:
NEW YORK - The City Council passed a package of measures Wednesday aimed at discouraging bulk purchases of guns outside New York that later are sold in the city on the black market.One measure, approved 43-2, would hold liable dealers nationwide who sell more than one gun to the same person within 30 days. Another measure, which passed 41-4, restricts dealers from selling more than one rifle or shotgun to an individual within 90 days.
Violators could be sued for damages in New York civil court.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg said he would sign the legislation into law.
Does the City Council really think they now have the power to regulate out-of-state businesses? I'm not a lawyer (but I play one on TV) but I can't see how something like this would fly in court. Maybe some of you can. Enlighten me...
What they stood for? What the hell did they stand for other than trying to obstruct anything that Bush and the Republicans did? What did Kerry stand for? Can anyone even remember (if they ever knew) a single clear policy position of Kerry's?
If you have no real ideas, stating them more aggressively isn't going to make them any more coherant. The left is clueless and if they keep taking their cues from pigs like Moore and fascists such as MoveOn they are assured of losing many more elections in the future.
Thanks to reader Jay Fishman for the following...
Dave Kopel and company have a post up at NRO (dated, oddly, tomorrow) speculating on A World Without Guns:
So let's imagine, instead, a nationwide gun ban, or maybe even a worldwide ban.Then again, heroin and cocaine have been illegal in the United States, and most of the world, for nearly a century. Huge resources have been devoted to suppressing their production, sale, and use, and many innocent people have been sacrificed in the crossfire of the "drug war." Yet heroin and cocaine are readily available on the streets of almost all large American cities, and at prices that today are lower than in previous decades.
Perhaps a global prohibition law isn't good enough. Maybe imposing the harshest penalty possible for violation of such a law will give it real teeth: mandatory life in prison for possession of a gun, or even for possession of a single bullet. (We won't imagine the death penalty, since the Yoko crowd doesn't like the death penalty.)
On second thought, Jamaica's Gun Court Act of 1974 contained just such a penalty, and even that wasn't sufficient. On August 18, 2001, Jamaican Melville Cooke observed that today, "the only people who do not have an illegal firearm [in this country], are those who do not want one." Violent crime in Jamaica is worse than ever, as gangsters and trigger-happy police commit homicides with impunity, and only the law-abiding are disarmed.
The second story Jay mentioned was one I had read but dismissed but let me give give the link to it although I can't actually go there because there's a graphic call that bombs-out Netscape and sends it into freeze-up... Hopefully your browser doesn't. It's about how the murder capital of the world, Chicago, has seen a drop in crime. Jay offers his own comments:
As is traditional, Chicago first turned to gun control to attempt to deal with its plague of homicides. Unable to come up with additional ideas with which to harass its few remaining legal gunowners, Chicago embarked upon an ambitious campaign to persuade the state of Illinois to pass an assortment of anti-gunowner legislation.Despite the election of an anti-gunowner governor two years before, the new reality (as seen in the 2004 election) is that more and more people are recognizing the failure of gun control as a remedy for violent crime. As a result, Chicago's anti-gunowner proposals went nowhere in the Illinois legislature.
Forced by public outcry to do something about the plague of homicides, Chicago turned to the new policing methods described in the NY Times article above and reaped the remarkable turnaround also reported above.
Had Chicago's anti-gunowner proposals been passed by the Illinois legislature, one would expect the usual lack of positive impact on violent crime. Even worse, there would likely have then been less immediate pressure on Chicago to implement the other measures that were taken -- the ones that seem to have worked.
Once again, we see support for my contention that opposition to more gun control is actually a positive force toward the lowering of violent crime.
Anyway, now I REALLY will take the rest of the day off to read my babe (Agatha Christie's) stuff. As always, I really appreciate when you folks take the time to hit the comment button. See you soon...
Okay, I've been off the past two days. I was supposed to help someone yesterday with painting their new apartment but they got sick. So instead, when I thought I'd take a break from blogging, I've instead put up about 15 posts... Hopefully you'll read through all of them.
NOW, I'm hitting the books. See you soon and thanks for stopping by!
A mutant is on your property. You confront him and then shoot him. You're charged with 2nd-degree murder. That's how it goes in Kerry's state... From the Worcester Telegram & Gazette:
A man who shot and killed another man on his property has been indicted for second-degree murder, according to prosecutors.The grand jury indicted Charles D. Chieppa, 56, for the July 17 shooting of 26-year-old Frank Pereira Jr. with a rifle.
The fatal shots were fired near Chieppa's property just before dawn. By sunrise, motorists drove past Mr. Pereira's body, honking their horns and shouting in support of the shooting, the Standard-Times of New Bedford reported.
Chieppa, a Vietnam War combat veteran, lived in his parent's old home and largely kept to himself, neighbors said.
The home was next to Alfie's bar, which is known for drug dealing and prostitution. Pereira had snatched a purse from an Alfie's patron just hours before he was shot, police said.
Police had initially said the shooting happened when Chieppa confronted a burglar breaking into his home around 4 a.m. A day later, detectives acknowledged that they were investigating whether Pereira had actually entered the house before Chieppa opened fire.
At the time, prosecutors said there was evidence that Pereira had tried to break into several vehicles parked in the driveway, including a camper and a trailer.
After the shooting, Pereira's family rallied within eyesight of Chieppa's front door."My son didn't deserve to die the way he did, even if he was trying to break in," said Evelina Salgueiro, the victim's mother. "You don't shoot someone in the back like that. He was shot in the street."
Questions not answered in the reports include whether Chiappa warned Pereira off before shooting him. And, did Pereira actually try to break into the home or parked vehicles. I'm inclined to side with Chieppa but I could be wrong. Your comments are welcome.
Geek With a .45 explains what I was lamely trying to say, but much better with this post about CCW in New Jersey (I did live there for ten years) and how one enterprising town will -- for a fee - "escort you" instead of arm you... Check it out.
Many workers are now seeking to leave their present employment for greener pastures. From USA Today:
The new year is expected to usher in a flurry of job hopping as employees frustrated by years of incremental raises and scarce advancement opportunities begin shopping for new employers.Nearly half of U.S. companies face an employee exodus as the economy improves, according to a survey by Novations Selection, Development and Communication, a performance improvement firm. Typically, fewer than 10% of employers would expect such turnover.
Other surveys back up Novations' findings. More than half of workers would like to leave their jobs for new opportunities, according to a survey by Spherion, a recruiting and outsourcing company. A survey by Hudson Global Resources found 42% of workers are somewhat to very likely to look for a new job in the coming year.
[...]
"In 2005, companies that don't take care of their employees are going to see people leave," says Marc Lewis, North American president of Morgan Howard Worldwide, an executive search firm.
I'm off from everything today and plan to re-read some of my favorite author's books. I consider Agatha Christie the single best writer ever. EVER. Period. Of course, it helps that I like mysteries.
Christie thought up most of the plots still being re-hashed by modern writers of the mystery form. She was clever, witty, and absolutely devestating at mis-direction. You thought you knew who the culprit was because she was 'effing with your mind the whole time.
Never mind what you've seen of her's as done-up by Hollywood, go out and get some of her books (you can buy used paperbacks for a buck or two) and enjoy having your brain taken over by her own printed version of virtual reality. She was also superb at plot-twists (her early book, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd outraged critics at the time as "not playing fair" with the reader. Boo-hoo, what she did is still being aped, with far less agility, by worse writers today. She was also brilliant at making fun of the old British caste system of servitude.
Here are some of my picks for books by Agatha Christie that you should read:
Murder on the Calais Coach (Orient Express)
Cards on the Table
And Then There Were None (Ten Little Indians -- and don't go by the movie versions you've seen...)
Death on the Nile
The Seven Dials Mystery (a favorite of mine)
Witness For the Prosecution (and other stories)
Peril at End House
The Mirror Crack'd
A Caribbean Mystery
She plays the reader like a fiddle. If you don't like having your mind messed with, better skip her. Was everything she wrote good? NO. But so much was. And there is a reason why she has outsold every single other fiction author in the world except William Shakespear. There are over 2 1/2 billion copies of her books in print. I'm going to read a couple today.
...is the perfect person to send to the flood-ravaged areas. Persnickety at Ordinary Galoot explains why.
Will at Entropy Manor just turned 40. One of the "geekier" pro-gun bloggers, he's been a good friend to Alphecca. I don't understand half the stuff he writes about but I do know where to go with questions... So go wish him a happy birthday.
Interesting post over at Posse Incitatus comparing Europe and America. Here's a great line from it:
The continent has opted for hospice care rather than treatment; it seeks only to manage its collapse, not prevent it.
Thanks to reader George C. for sending me the following link to a story about how Nebraska might become the 34th state to allow concealed-carry. From the Omaha World-Herald:
By the numbers, it would appear that Nebraskans might get a shot at packing heat next year.Two-thirds of state lawmakers responding to a survey by The World-Herald voiced support for some sort of legislation to allow carrying of concealed weapons, at least with conditions.
That would be enough votes to cut off a filibuster and pass legislation if all 33 senators hang together.
But the Nebraska Legislature has been down this road several times before. Every previous effort to pass a concealed-carry bill has failed in the face of outnumbered but determined opponents.
The most recent attempt was two years ago, when supporters couldn't find enough votes to end debate. The sponsor of that 2003 bill, Sen. Gene Tyson of Norfolk, did not seek re-election this year.
Sen. Jeanne Combs of Friend has picked up the torch. She said she plans to introduce a bill that would add Nebraska to the list of 33 "shall carry" states, which require permits be issued to anyone who meets specific requirements.
Eleven states give law enforcement varying amounts of discretion in issuing permits. Two require no permits for people to carry concealed weapons.
Nebraska is one of four states that have no provisions for permitting people to pack heat.
"We're long overdue," said Sen. Adrian Smith of Gering.
Sen. LeRoy Louden of Ellsworth, who took no position on the issue, noted that current state law allows people to carry concealed weapons in some circumstances.Nebraskans can defend themselves against a concealed-weapons charge by showing that they were justified in carrying a concealed weapon to defend themselves, their property or family.
If any of you readers have more information on that clause, please comment.
The ban on the the .50 BMG in California went into effect on the first of the year. From the New York Times:
California has become the first state to ban a powerful .50-caliber long-range rifle that gun control advocates portray as a military firearm that could easily fall into the hands of terrorists bent on assassination or shooting down an airplane.Under the ban, which was signed into law by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in September and took effect on Jan. 1, it is now illegal to manufacture, sell, distribute or import a weapon known as the .50-caliber BMG, or Browning machine gun rifle, a single-shot weapon widely used not only by law enforcement officers and the military but, more recently, by civilian sport shooters as well.
The new law limits possession to those who already own the rifle; they have until April 30, 2006, to register it or face a misdemeanor charge.
[...]
"They can pierce the skin of an aircraft," said Daniel R. Vice, a lawyer with the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, a central supporter of the law. "It could be used to shoot down an airplane. And we certainly don't want to wait until a terrorist buys one before we ban it."The legislation's author, Assemblyman Paul Koretz, a Democrat from West Hollywood, concedes that street criminals would most likely view the .50 BMG as too much gun for the typical robbery or drive-by shooting. Rather, the law is intended to help keep the weapon out of the hands of "terrorists, general nut cases and survivalists," Mr. Koretz said, citing government reports suggesting that it had been used in assassinations overseas and that at least 25 had been bought by Osama bin Laden.
It's just a rifle. It can shoot two miles. Big deal! Lots of hunting rifles can shoot two miles. Should they all be banned? Well, if you talk to folks at the Brady Bunch, I'm sure they'd quickly say, "yes".
One problem is the terminology. Barrett themselves refers to the military versions of their rifles as sniper rifles and naturally the press then assumes that all of the various versions of the guns are designed for "snipers".
The fact is, the only people who would probably buy the .50 BMG are collectors and other enthusiasts and they are the LEAST likely to use the weapon criminally. And as the article concedes, there are no recorded instances of it being used in a crime in the US.
But, it's big and "scary looking" and that is, after all, the gun-controller's definition of an "assault weapon" so let's ban it. And if it's the caliber that they find so scary, well, what about those "assault muskets" that fire .50 balls of lead? And if .50 caliber is "scary" then .45 or .44 must be a "little scary" so let's ban those calibers. And on and on.
Update: Of course, to hear Michelle Malkin tell it, you might think that California leaders were correct...
Maintain control...must maintain control...serenity now...
Folks, I'm going to try to not launch into a curse-filled rant but it seems hopeless. And this isn't even a story about something here in America. Well, not at first...
One of the more positive stories recently -- here in the US -- is that many states that once allowed local cops to make the decision as to whether to issue a gun permit or license to an individual now have "shall issue" laws. That is, if the person passes the background check (and any course requirements if they exist) must be given a license to buy and own a firearm. (Or carry in some localities.)
In the bad old days, a police chief or sheriff could deny you that permit if he didn't like you, or you were black or gay or whatever, you campaigned for his opponent, etc. In other states you had to provide a "reason" why you needed a license. And "personal defense" was not an accepted reason. It also didn't matter that you might just WANT one to practice your Second Amendment right. Sadly, this is still the case in some backward (meaning liberal) states.
But this post is about the recent situation in the country of South Africa. Last August, a new law took effect requiring that gun license applicants show sufficient "need". And apparently, the piece-of-shit cops in that country don't think that anyone, even those living in high-crime areas, have a need. From the New York Times:
GEORGE, South Africa - Rossouw Botha, beefy and billiard-ball bald, leafed through his list of customers at Redneck Tactical Supplies, dismay in his eyes, contempt in his voice, even though he was mostly repeating two words, over and over."Turned down," he spat out, and leafed another page or two. "Turned down." Four more pages, and once again, "Turned down."
Many of Mr. Botha's clients have been turned down. The rest are waiting to be approved, but many of them could be turned down, too. South Africa has a new gun-ownership law, and since it took effect last summer, Redneck Tactical Supplies, one of two firearms shops in this rather proper white-picket-fence type of beach town, has applied to the government for ownership certificates for about 250 prospective buyers.
"So far, we have yet to receive one certificate," Mr. Botha said.
The new gun law has weapons dealers and users upset. Firearms sales, once 15,000 a month, have fallen to near zero, because of the law's imposing regulatory hurdles and the glacial government bureaucracy that oversees them.
"Not a single license has been issued for a firearm that the association is aware of," said Andrew Soutar, the chairman of the South African Arms and Ammunition Dealers Association.
"Dealers who were selling 400 firearms a month have now dropped to 2 or 3," he said. "A lot of people see it as nothing more than a deliberate disarmament process, and at great expense to the nation."
On the other hand, advocates of gun control are delighted. "Obviously, we're making an impact," said Judy Bassingthwaite, the national director of the leading lobby for curbs on gun ownership, Gun Free South Africa. "That's very good news."
Here are the requirements of the new law:
The law, approved in 2000 but taking effect only last year, limits most citizens to one weapon for self-defense and a maximum of four others for other uses, like hunting or skeet shooting.But getting any gun at all, critics say, is the big task. Guns are to be automatically denied to drug or alcohol abusers, spouse abusers, people inclined to violence or "deviant behavior" and anyone who has been imprisoned for violent or sex-related crimes.
The police interview three acquaintances of each applicant before deciding whether he or she is competent to own a gun. Prospective gun owners must pass a firearms course. They also must install a safe or strongbox that meets police standards for gun storage.
More important, an applicant also must prove to the police that he or she needs a gun - a requirement, called motivation, which gun advocates complain is vague and hard to satisfy.
Vague, maybe; hard, undoubtedly. In Thembalethu, a sprawling, poor black settlement on the southern coast about seven miles southeast of George, Vuyani Dingiswayo, 25, says he applied six months ago for permission to own a gun. The reason: he manages his family's tavern, a local landmark that sells a great deal of beer, and must carry thousands of dollars in receipts to a bank in George each week.
Mr. Dingiswayo said he had slept in the tavern each night to ward off burglars. After armed robbers raided a nearby business, he said, he concluded that he needed some way to protect himself in the tavern and on trips to the bank.
[...]
In October, Mr. Dingiswayo's application was rejected. "Insufficient something," he said. "They said I don't have a good reason."
And you know who is being hurt the most?
Mr. Soutar, of the Arms and Ammunition Dealers Association, calls that obstructionism. Mr. Botha, of Redneck Tactical Supplies, goes a step further and accuses the government of hurting the very people it liberated from apartheid in 1994."Ninety-nine-point-five percent of my firearms customers are black," he said. "They live in traditional areas where crime is out of control. How come we're denying them the right to protect themselves?
"I sell 200, 300 cans of pepper spray a week," he said. "In George." He added caustically, "Maybe people are scared."
The chairman of the year-old Black Gun Owners Association, Abios Khoele, contends that the law is so strict that it is having the opposite of its intended effect. "Most of the people, they've already started to buy illegal firearms," he said. "Most of them are for self-defense, because they're living in some areas where the police are unable to protect them."
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that half of all murders could be prevented if the victims were bearing arms themselves. I'll further state that any cop or other official in South Africa who turns down a request for that firearm "ownership certificate" is responsible if that person is later murdered. And they should pay the ultimate price for deciding that the victim didn't have sufficient "need".
And by the way, folks, this bastard practice is still in effect in New York City. And piece-of-shits like former Mayor Giuliani and former NYC Police Commissioners Bratton and Kerik all supported that policy. Fuck all of them. There is blood on their hands.
And you know what, folks, I'm tired of trying to be diplomatic and nice and walk the fine line. I gave a lot of reasons for voting for Bush but of course the main one was that he wasn't the perpetually anti-Second Amendment Kerry. We have to start making our voices heard and voting above all else, above war, healthcare, economy, and everything else, we MUST vote Second Amendment for every candidate. All other rights exist because of and are defended by the right to bear arms.
England and Australia took away everyone's guns. Canada is trying to. South Africa is trying to. In every single case, their crime has skyrocketed. You (rare, occasional liberal reader) say it can't happen here? It happend in Washington DC and Chicago. You say that there is no "slippery slope"? Look at what the leftist shit of San Francisco is trying to do.
It CAN happen here and it IS happening here. Liberals will stand on their head defending the First Amendment (unless it's something they disagree with!) but when it comes to the Second Amendment, they want to turn all of us into victims because that's their voter base. They might downplay their anti-gun stance to try to fool us but make no mistake, the Democratic left (and some of the leftist Republicans) have the ultimate goal of disarming all of us.
You want to take my guns from me? Pry them from my cold dead hands. Those of you that are still standing.
And you know what else? I said this was a rant. I don't care if this post offends a bunch of you. And for those of you who want to de-link me like 16 other bloggers have in the past few months, well fuck you too. No fucking surrender.
Say Uncle has some gun porn up on his site. Rats, I'm drooling on the keyboard...
Michele at A Small Victory has the Ninth Storyblogging Carnival. Put on those drugstore glasses and start reading...
How's THIS for some bias?:
Note to waiters and waitresses: Smile when you hand out the menus, and no arguing over 5 percent tips. Gays were addressed in the Legislature last year. God will be taken up this winter, with a bill to permit the public display of the Ten Commandments on every spare section of Sheetrock in Georgia.This leaves guns as the most neglected member of the Republican trinity of sacred issues. But not for long.
Lobbyists for the National Rifle Association are quietly buttonholing the state's GOP leaders, pinning down support for legislation that would allow concealed weapons to be carried into many Georgia restaurants and food-serving bars — though not nightclubs.
It's been tried in other states, with varying degrees of success. Law enforcement officials and restaurant associations generally provide much of the opposition. But it also looks to be one of those quintessential issues that break along rural and suburban lines — a test of the state's new political climate.
Gun advocates refer to it as "Luby's Law," named after the 1991 incident in which an unemployed merchant seaman drove his pickup truck into a Luby's cafeteria in Killeen, Texas, leaped out and opened fire. He killed 23 people and wounded more than 20 before killing himself.
At least one restaurant customer had a handgun in a car, and a carrying permit. But Texas law barred concealed weapons in restaurants and other places that serve alcohol.
As contemplated in Georgia, the law would allow concealed weapons to be carried — by those with the proper permit — in restaurants and bars that derive 51 percent of their income from food service. One could pack heat in Applebee's, say, but not a disco.
But what is really galling is his reference to [un-named] Texas Congresswoman Susanna Hupp, who watched as her parents were gunned-down at that Luby's. He could at least of used her name and explained the circumstances.
And how the heck would anyone know the exact percentage of food-to-alcohol served at any dining establishment?
I don't know, just something about the way this story was phrased really bugged me. Maybe it's the implication that if a waitress complains about her tip, she'll face the barrel of a gun. Bias... it sucks and this article reeks of it.
World comes to an end: women and minorities hardest hit.
Bill at Peoria Pundit wants to know what is on Angela Jolie's chest! A goodly amount, I'd say, but you'll have to decide...
Fox News finally had a story about the proposed handgun ban in San Francisco yesterday and it contained the following inane comment by SF Supervisor Chris Daly, who supports the measure:
"I don't feel like I need to own a gun to protect myself. Certainly, I am a high-profile elected official and now a lot of gun owners don't like me individually, but if I'm in a situation where I feel threatened, I'll call the police," Daly said.
So you and your partner are walking down the street at night and a mutant or two jump out of an alley, pull a knife on you and demand your wallet.
Or perhaps they start taunting you by calling you (accurately or not) "faggot" or "faggot lover" and start swinging baseball bats at you.
While receiving deadly blows to the head, do you hold up your hand and say, "wait a minute, I need to call 911" and start dialing on your cell phone?
And the mutants will stop what they're doing and say, "Oh sure man, go ahead, we'll just stand here and let you make that call..."?
Or you're home, watching Will and Grace on TV and some mutants break down your door and rush in, knocking you to the floor, kicking you in the stomach. Will you say, "hey fellas', let me make you some green tea" and while they recline on the duvan, you quietly call the cops?
What an absolutely stupid comment by someone who obviously hasn't a clue how most crime occurs and goes down. Of course, this is the guy who was nearly censured for his own foul-mouthed, confrontational behavior. So Chris? Do you really think criminals are more civilized than you?
Our local newspaper, The Valley News has been running a series of interviews with local business leaders. The articles have been refreshingly non-partisan or critical of the type of business. Normally that wouldn't be a problem anyway, and these stories appear in the Sunday business section of the paper. Todays' was with Bill Ruger, Jr., CEO of Sturm, Ruger.
Reporter Sawrar A. Kashmeri has done a good job of not passing any judgements but rather just getting a VERY LARGE employer in the area (Newport, NH -- about 40 miles from where I live and not much less from the "hub" of Hanover, Lebanon, White River Junction) to discuss his business. Here's the full article and here are some selected quotes:
There is one thing missing from Newport, N.H.-based Sturm, Ruger & Co.'s balance sheet -- debt. The company has never had to use external financing since its founding in 1949, and with the exception of that first year in business, it has always been profitable.For 55 years, the respected American gunmaker has gone about its business with typical Yankee ingenuity. When it introduced a single action .22-caliber pistol in 1953, “there had never been anything like it,” William Ruger Jr., chairman and CEO of the company, told me. “It was relatively economical and inexpensive to shoot, and had the look, feel and balance of traditional ‘old West' single actions. It still does, and has continues to be one of the company's best-known products.”
The company pioneered the use of “investment casting” in the gun business. Artists create bronze sculptures by pouring molten metal into molds to produce an almost complete piece, ready for finishing. Sturm, Ruger began to make gun parts by casting their complex shapes, rather than machining them from a block of metal, and became the first to use investment casting in the gun business, and also the first gunmaker to have its own foundry.
By 1965, Sturm, Ruger had begun to do castings for other companies. “We now consider our outside casting business to be an important part of what we do. Our cast products include architectural hardware, hand-held power tools, outboard motor propellers, and for a while we made a lot of golf club heads, but that has all gone to China,” Ruger said.
Ruger runs the business from offices that are a cross between an old law firm, a venerable club, and a no-nonsense manufacturing facility. The company has had a string of lean business years. “We are still profitable, but they have not been good years,” he tells me.
Ruger has an infectious laugh and a sharp sense of humor. “Republican administrations tend to be less good for the gun industry, everyone relaxes,” he said with a grin.
The 1990s, on the other hand, were a good time for the gun industry, “because there was an anti-gun administration in Washington, and a lot of people were buying guns thinking they wouldn't be able to.”
I don't know his son and while I've heard that he is a bit "stand-offish" I can't confirm that. This is, even in large towns such as Hanover (population 10K, half of that Dartmouth students) a place where there is only ONE DEGREE of seperation. If you were to take a compass and draw a 100 mile diameter circle around the area, there are only about 80 thousand people within it.
Getting back to the article, I found it very interesting that the current Bill, Jr., finds that Republican administrations are worse for gun sales but when you think about it, it actually makes sense. People tend to buy more of something if they think it might shortly be unavailable. Remember the sudden run on toilet paper when, many years ago, Johnny Carson made a joke about a shortage?
Back to the article:
Sturm, Ruger operates its $130 million business from three locations and employs about 1,500 people, of which 1,200 are in Newport. Corporate headquarters are in Southport, Conn., and there is a manufacturing plant in Prescott, Ariz., that produces auto-loading pistols. All other guns are made in Newport.How does Ruger feel about the challenges of running his business in the Upper Valley? “I don't think this place is worse than any other place in the United States. In fact, I think that New Hampshire is a relatively good state for manufacturing.”
But the other business leaders I talked to spoke about the perennial difficulty of finding qualified people in the Upper Valley. “It is always hard to find good people, but I don't think it is different anywhere else. There just aren't too many people pursuing these careers. You simply can’t wave your hands and all of a sudden people come in to see you. You need to train these people, and you need to give them a reason to be a machinist rather than a hamburger flipper.”
And, as other employers in like situations will tell you, when all you have is a couple percentage points of unemployed, those people are mostly unemployable because they are unreliable teens, or drunks, drug users, etc. We have a very similar problem to what Bill Jr. describes at our furniture factory.
To continue with the interview:
Our conversation veers to the growing dismissals of lawsuits against gun manufacturers. I ask him what this might mean. “These lawsuits were modeled after the tobacco settlements, in which the tobacco industry decided to pay people off and make them go away thinking that would be that, which it never is,” Ruger said. “The tobacco industry is a big industry with lots of money and a lot of lawyers who thought their next move might be the gun industry. But there are some basic differences which were ultimately recognized by the courts: When guns are used as they are intended to be used they are harmless, and when tobacco is used as it is intended to be used it is allegedly harmful. That is quite a bit different.”If he could spend a few minutes with President Bush, what would he tell him? “I would say there are two things he must do. There has to be tort reform, just to keep it simple I'd suggest he institute the English system, which is that everyone has access to the courts, but the loser pays all the fees. That is point one.
“Point two, no trade with China because they are not a market economy. There is no relationship in China between the selling price of something and its cost. The price of anything is an instrumentality of government policy, not a matter of market competition. So, that is why I feel trade with China ought not to exist. I am a free trader, but you cannot have trade in that situation. I don't mind trading with India because India, while not exactly the same kind of country as France, Italy, Spain or the United States, is nevertheless by and large market driven. I mean, give me a break. Not only is it not fair, it is suicidal to have trade with China, unless you want to have no industry whatsoever left.”
It seems as if the "comment spam" bots are on holiday vacation. I've had almost none in about two weeks. Are they giving us a break? Have they realized how much we all hate them? Or as Hosting Matters (my web site host) found a way to thwart them?
Fellow gun-nut blog Cinomed's Tower has moved here. Fresh, spiffy new Blog-City digs. Stop by and say hello. We need to encourage all folks on our side of "The Force".
Also, I mentioned in the comments of a post below but really should give another here, another addition to my blogroll is The Ten Ring. Fellow gun-nuts from across the border in New Hampshire. Bill has been with us all the way and now Denise, a recovering-Democrat, have just started up. Needless to say, head over and say hello there, too.
By Now, most of you have heard the story about a woman fired for not wearing makeup (she was a bartender at Harrah's in Reno, NV) and that a court upheld that firing. I really didn't give it much thought because if a business has a dress-code, you follow the dress-code or lose your job. And if they say, wear makeup, that's part of the dress-code and you do it. If you knew up front what the requirements were, don't complain if you can't follow them. But Glenn, the seemingly tireless blogger (he says otherwise) at the new-look Hi. I'm Black! examines the issue from the woman's perspective of making more money and shows that she's still wrong!
First a couple tired old jokes:
You know, I used to have a problem with alcohol, but now I really like the stuff...
You know you've had too much to drink when you go to brush something off your shoulder and it's the floor...
But seriously, folks, a guy has actually started a magazine glorifying being soused. From the LA Times:
It's barely 3 p.m., and Frank Kelly Rich, who edits the bimonthly homage to getting soused, is draining his gin and tonic and eyeing a whiskey bottle on the top shelf. Moments later, he's drinking that as well.A huge bar dominates the office, the fridge is stocked with beer and the handful of employees is invited to drink. Smoking is OK too.
As the booze flows, Rich, 41, extols the virtues of alcohol, calling it a boon to mankind while claiming that drunks are an "oppressed minority."
Nothing can knock him off message.
What about cirrhosis of the liver? "There's a tidal wave of new evidence that drinking is actually good for you," he insists.
What of alcohol's effect on families? "I think drinking is conducive to a happy family life," he counters.
Rich lights a cigarette and smiles as the ice melts in his cocktail. His downtown Denver office is decorated with posters of Dean Martin, Jackie Gleason and other famous tipplers of yesteryear.
"The most accomplished people have been drinkers. Hemingway was a great literary drunk, and I think a lot of teetotalers would trade their lives for his in a second," he said. "Alcohol is the great socializer. Can you imagine a world without it? Well, I guess you can — it's called the Middle East."
Modern Drunkard is an irreverent, 50,000-circulation glossy magazine full of pinup girls and macho men alongside articles on drinking, getting drunk and hiding a hangover from "the Man," i.e., the boss. It also includes serious examinations of liquor, biographies of history's great drunks and selected odes to the drinking life. The magazine sells for $4.50 in bookstores across the U.S. and Europe, and free copies are available in many bars.A recent issue included the feature "You know you're a drunkard when … (you fall down a well and send Lassie to the liquor store)"; a dictionary of bar slang: "pal tax n. — the act of covertly ordering a drink on a friend's tab"; and a story titled "Booze is My Copilot," on how drinking cured one man's fear of flying.
Rich revels in the retrograde excess of his magazine. The way he sees it, reality is so awful, why not get drunk?
"People always say, 'If you drink, your problems will still be there in the morning,' " he said. "That's like telling a guy going to the Bahamas that in a week, he'll be right back where he started. Well, for a week, he'll be gone."
[...]
Rich freely admits he's an alcoholic and frequently blacks out. Regular exercise and vitamins, he said, keep him fit."I drink about eight drinks a day and maybe 30 on a heavy day," he said cheerfully. "But as long as I remain healthy and happy, I have no intention of slowing down. I mean, when you have something good going, you stick with it, right?"
I'll admit I like to pound-down a few on a Friday night as much as the next person but if I ever get like this guy I'm gonna give away my guns and check into the nearest AA.
It's a free country and he can publish whatever he wants. It's probably a rather humerous magazine, too. I can see the novelty appeal of it. But alcohol IS a destructive force in our society and it has caused much misery for so many spouses, employers, and auto-victims.
I am relatively certain that most crimes, including wife-battering, murder, and rape (never mind drunk driving) have been committed under an alcoholic (or other drug-induced) haze. Having a few drinks now and then, especially if you're not driving, is fine. It's fun. I just wish there was less of it (including in myself) and while we grin at such a magazine concept, it's also with a tinge of being repelled at such a celebration.
I am NOT in favor of prohibition and I am against the long, wasteful and futile "war on drugs". But that doesn't mean I can't find a magazine such as Modern Drunkard one of the last things we need lying around the news stand. I almost wish it had a minimum age requirement (such as skin-magazines used to have) so kids aren't encouraged to purchase it and think that having up to 30 drinks a day and blacking-out is a desirable lifestyle that will help them get ahead...
So this is a weird post. I started out laughing about the story and telling jokes, but as I wrote it, the grimness of it sunk in. What did the late Patrick Moynahan call it, "defining deviancy downward"?
Here in the land of the free, where gun control is nearly non-existent, where we all are still allowed our Bill of Rights, the state homicide rate dropped to almost half of last year... From the Burlington Free Press:
The number of Vermont homicides in 2004 fell by almost half from the previous year's tally, although several were high-profile or involved suspects who eluded capture for a time.Preliminary state data show nine homicides last year, compared with 17 in 2003, according to the Vermont Criminal Information Center in Waterbury. The total of nine marks only the third time since 1990 that the figure has been in single digits, according to the center's annual crime reports.
Center director Max Schlueter said there is no easy way to explain why the number fluctuates as widely as it does.
"Typically the numbers are so small it doesn't take much," he said. "They're so idiosyncratic."
It's not the gun, it's the mutant who misuses it. And when people are allowed to arm and defend themselves, the mutants get the message and move to a state that allows the slaughter of innocents.
But for whatever reason, it's obvious that "lax" or -- in the classical definition of -- "liberal" gun laws do NOT mean an increase in crime. I believe it is the opposite. San Francisco: Take note!
As I mentioned in last week's edition, there won't be a Weekly Check on the Bias this week. I've got stuff to do and I do usually generally only post it 3 of every 4 weeks. This is a "bye" week and I won't be on Cam's either. It will return the week after.
I went through my blogroll (which is a riciprocal one) last week to eliminate folks (quite a few) who had dropped me from theirs, or were no longer active. Just one of those unpleasant tasks one has to do. If you think I dropped you unfairly, please email me.
In the meantime, please welcome a new addition to it, Individ who supports gun rights and -- so far -- has donated more money to the recent disaster relief than Bill Gates.
Well, I'm not sure where the apostrophe should go but when ever I hear about a place in the news, I head to Yahoo and do a search of the town or city. I like to visit the sites that feature a lot of pictures and such to get a feel for a location I'll probably never visit. I don't travel at all (I've never been in an airplane -- ever) and so I live vicariously through others' photos. I love when other bloggers photo-blog. That's what Jay (stuck with a cold) is doing today with snaps from his trip a year ago to meet Deb's parents (if I remember rightly) and a visit to Marina Beach and San Juan Bautista in California.
Great pictures, and I must tell you that I have met Jay and Deb and they are two of the nicest folks in the world. I'm glad they found each other. They sent me a wonderful Christmas card this year with the cutest picture of Sadie. My thanks to them and I know that this Summer (it seems so far away at the moment) we'll meet again, either at a blog-bash or just by plan.
You know, I have a tiny $4.95 red LASER that I use as a toy for my cats to chase. I can lie on my couch and the beam remains focused and tiny all through my range of vision as the cats follow it up and down walls, across the carpet, and then I have it "hide" behind the refrigerator.
I'm smart enough to know that you don't use the thing outdoors, pointing it at cars, people, etc.
Unfortunately, there are some mutants amongst us with rather more powerful ones who are stupid enough to point them at and reach airplanes. I'm not sure what they are hoping to accomplish but it could blind a pilot or distract them from flying, and might (I suppose) even cause a crash. In the past week there have been several instances of this. In my opinion, doing something like this is or should be a crime and should be punished to the fullest extent of the law.
Fortunately, law enforcement is working to track these mutants down. From the New York Post:
Cops raided a New Jersey home last night to find a device shooting a laser beam high up in the sky and into the eyes of airline pilots passing overhead, officials said.Members of the FBI and Port Authority cops raided the home on Pitman Road in Parsippany at about 6:30 p.m. and took one man into custody, an FBI spokesman said.
"They think someone on that block was pointing a laser at a plane," said neighbor Agnes Costantino.
The beam shined into the eyes of pilots heading toward Teterboro — a distraction that could be a form of terrorism.
"We're working the investigation actively," said FBI Special Agent Steve Kodak. "We've questioned numerous people. We haven't arrested anybody."
When asked if a laser device had been recovered from the house, Kodak would say only: "I'm not commenting."