To those who have offered support for the announced attempt by Obama and the Congress to go full out for gun control — be they unprincipled and timid Republicans, liberty-snatching and opportunistic leftists, or even just mostly apolitical adults who’ve become so Oprahfied that they think with their syrupy hearts, that is, like children — here is your chance to venture out of your consensus circle and actually defend your position.
The text of the second amendment reads: “A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”
And what the President wants to do — with many in Congress along with him — is infringe on the rights of the people. This is a political power grab, opportunism masquerading as compassion. And I defy gun control advocates to show me how this isn’t so.
An “assault weapon,” which is a military term defined militarily as “selective firearms (full auto-continuous, or burst fire plus auto-loading) of sub-caliber” [source: second amendment foundation] is already subject to onerous taxes, long wait times, and special approval for ownership — and is not the kind of weapon, legally purchased, you ever see in spree killings. That is, they are under a de facto ban already to nearly everyone who legally owns other types of firearms.
Which means that, as with “marriage”, the progressive left (and some pro-gun control advocates on the right) is looking to broaden the definition of “assault weapon” to include things that are by established definition not assault weapons. Essentially, they wish to place a ban on anything that looks scary, and what makes a rifle look scary is some combination of features that in no way change the lethality of the weapon. They just change the cosmetics — cosmetics that, for many gun enthusiasts, create a more enjoyable and comfortable shooting experience. For instance, in the 1994 ban, what came to count as an “assault rifle” was “semi-automatic rifles able to accept detachable magazines and two or more of the following:
*Folding or telescoping stock
*Pistol grip
*Bayonet mount
*Flash suppressor, or threaded barrel designed to accommodate one
*Grenade launcher (more precisely, a muzzle device that enables launching or firing rifle grenades, though this applies only to muzzle mounted grenade launchers and not those mounted externally).”
As a Special Forces friend of mine noted last evening, “Those are meaningless features, as to its capability to kill a bunch of kids in a school rapidly. So you take an AR-15, cut the flash suppressor and bayonet lug off, don’t install a grenade launcher, and you’re good to go. No more school shootings, right?
“Dumb.”
Precisely right. Folding or telescoping stocks are what allow people of various sizes within a family, eg., to share a rifle. Flash suppressors or compensators offer better control over the rifle — and a threaded barrel can be used to add an (already difficult to come by) suppressor, which in certain parts of the world is mandatory, because they dampen the sound of gunfire and so curb noise pollution. What they don’t do is impact the lethality of the weapon.
Too, the idea that by banning “high capacity magazines” you are likely to do anything other than increase sales of smaller mags — or perhaps convince someone to carry two guns to make up for the loss of ready firepower — is more leftist magical thinking that serves only one purpose: showing who has the power.
As with Commissar Bloomberg’s ridiculous soda sizing restrictions, the way to circumvent such a petty tyrannical law, as Mark Levin noted last evening, is to buy 2 sodas — which uses up more resources and creates more waste — or two guns, which has the effect of putting more firearms into public hands.
Yesterday on Facebook I carried on several “debates” simultaneously with the pro-gun control crowd. And what became readily apparent is that most of them knew not a thing about firearms — and those who did were simply interested in positioning themselves on what they perceived to be the “compassionate” side of the issue. These latter folks are easily recognizable because they tend to introduce themselves into the debate by way of asserting some appeal to authority — eg., “I’m a gun owner and an avid hunter and outdoorsman, but even I would tell you that no one needs an assault weapon” — as if his having purchased a gun of his choosing gives him the moral authority to determine what someone else might “need.”
But here’s the thing: the second amendment was intended to protect a natural right, the right to life, to self-preservation, to autonomy outside of the sphere of governmental molestation; and in fact, it is the right that protects all the other individual rights laid forth in the Bill of Rights. Hunting, someone needs to tell Joe Manchin and others, is incidental to the second amendment’s design and purpose — an activity made either easier or more enjoyable to some that comes as a result of the primary right itself, which is intended to keep the individual (and the nation) free and protected.
And it is absolute. “Shall not be infringed” being about as straightforward as it gets, legislatively speaking.
During my Facebook “debates” I was able to point out, for instance, to one woman — a gun owner who carries a 9mm Sig Sauer, but who claims no one “needs” more to defend themselves or their families — that her weapon has a 15 round magazine. 2 of those magazines make up a “high capacity” magazine as it is currently conceived outside of the few states who seem to think 11 is the magic number (making her a potential gun nut / fringe loon already by the standards of those states). And how much time does it take to change magazines? As someone who’s fired a gun and changed out the magazine herself, she was forced to concede that it can be done in a matter of seconds by even the most unpracticed shooter, and much faster by those who practice rapid fire exercises.
Another debate, as is always the case, centered around the oft-repeated, oft-misunderstood “militia” argument, wherein we’re to believe that the modern-day National Guard is what the Framers had in mind when they noted that the right of the PEOPLE to keep and bear arms should not be infringed. But this is easy enough to check, even if you haven’t read Heller. To the Framers, militias had two compositions: those men between 17-45 who were citizens or wished to become citizens, referred to as the ready militia; and then everybody else, who made up the reserve militia. That is, the militia, as George Mason explained, was and is the people. As is evident by language both in the federal code and in many state statutes and constitutions.
And finally, one commentator, citing Heller, pointed out that the Justices considered as anachronistic certain trajectories the second amendment might take, noting that tanks or modern day bomber planes are clearly deserving of some controls, while things like restrictions on where guns could be carried were also open to legislation. This, he suggested, opens the path to removing the more dangerous weapons from the hands of civilians. Like, for instance, assault weapons.
Leaving aside his rather dubious rhetorical stretch that hopes to conflate Air Force bombers and Bradley Fighting Vehicles with civilian versions of military rifles, what he means by assault weapons is not an assault weapon at all. It is the civilian version of a military assault weapon, clearly defined — with the very things that make an assault weapon an assault weapon having already been removed. That is, it is styled after a military weapon, but functions just like a typical semi-automatic pistol, which most gun-control advocates, hoping to appear sensible, agree are perfectly fine to keep for self defense, so long as it’s kept in a safe, separated from its cartridges, and never carried into many public spaces.
That is, they support the right to own semi-automatic weapons if those weapons look one way; but they support banning semi-automatic weapons styled after military weapons because, well, because.
This is all nonsensical.
I asked a lot of pro-gun control advocates if they supported a ban on sniper rifles. Those who knew nothing about guns replied with “of course!” Those who had begun by proclaiming themselves hunters and gun owners who nevertheless supported “assault weapons bans” didn’t reply at all, having caught on to where the argument was going.
Because there is no practical difference between a “sniper” rifle and a hunting rifle — most sniper rifles are bolt action and scoped — just a semantic one. And if the government can turn what isn’t an assault rifle into an “assault rifle” merely by arbitrary changes to the definition, clearly they can do the same thing to hunters by classifying their weapons as “sniper rifles.” Add to that the fact that many hunters use rounds far more powerful than those used in a Bushmaster AR-15-style rifle (which takes Remington 223 or 5.56×45 Nato; whereas a SCAR-17 “assault rifle” takes .308 Win / 7.62×51; and a 30 06 hunting round is 7.62×63), and one can begin to anticipate the emotional arguments for forcing us all to begin hunting with BB guns or bows and arrows.
Now. Since the day of the shooting in Connecticut I’ve known where Obama and the progressives would take us. And I advised immediately that we go on the offensive — something many on the right, fearing the press or calls that they don’t care about the children, etc., refused to do, with a few notable exceptions. Some on the right even tried to join the emotionalist cascade being driven by the progressives and their media enablers and immediately and without thought agreed with calls to revisit gun control.
Today I’m going to reissue my earlier call to go on the offensive, and I believe it should be done thusly: House Republicans and Republican Governors who enjoy majorities in their state legislatures, should coordinate a legislative effort — going around the feckless orange crybaby Boehner — to remove “gun free zone” ordinances and laws from public schools, and encourage private businesses [by way of addressing civil liability claims, as Ernst points out in a comment, below] to do away with their own gun-free zone restrictions. They should call this effort the “Protect the Children Act” or the “Anti-Sitting Duck Act”, argue that advertising to crazy people –many of whom use nothing but ordinary handguns to produce a great number of casualties — where the softest targets are, and where they are nearly guaranteed to meet the least lethal resistance to their slaughter fantasies, is the height of legislative stupidity, a fact borne out by the number of spree killings that have occurred in gun-free zones, and be done with it legislatively. National conversation on gun violence addressed.
Take the emotional argument away from ignorant or opportunistic leftists. Do something based in first principles. And provide the means to protect children and other living things currently not afforded us.
More, by doing so we can create the state “experiments” envisioned under a federalist system. Spree killers look for soft targets. The way to stop them is not to disarm law abiding citizens who are in the most immediate position to stop such attacks.
Merely the threat of armed teachers, or pilots, or movie theater patrons and managers with concealed carry permits (meaning, they’ve taken classes, been finger-printed and added to some database, had their backgrounds checked, and been vetted by a Sheriff or other law enforcement entity) would likely deter many of these efforts, and could almost certainly minimize the loss of life.
Those states that implement such common sense reforms can then see how they stack up against those states that maintain the most restrictive gun laws. We already see that those cities with the most restrictive gun laws often have the highest rate of gun crime.
It’s time to stop being afraid of the press and the left and the academics who wish to mold us and stand up for principle by forcing facts into the debate.
And it’s time for gun control advocates to make their case rationally and logically, because once their arguments are stripped of a knee-jerk emotionalist appeal, they cease to make any kind of coherent sense. Suggesting to me that they are merely opportunistic and have no connection whatsoever to wanting to keep people safe. Rather, they want removed what they don’t understand simply because they don’t wish to understand what it is they want removed.
As it’s a natural right of mine they’re hoping to take away, the onus needs to be placed on them to make the case — and then take the issue to the states for a constitutional amendment battle.
I encourage anyone reading this who has a Twitter account to please Tweet this out. Post it to Facebook. Email it to your lefty friends.
The President says he wants to have a national discussion. Let’s us here do our part in precipitating just that. And let’s have it known up front that we will not accept as an extra-legal assault on one of our natural rights the pre-fabbed decisions of some handpicked, poltically-motivated politburo.
Bring it.
You realize that speaking honestly and plainly is why you’ve become anathema to many on “our side”, right? I think that you and Bill Whittle should team up and beat the living crap out of the douchebags, starting with Mister Orange Tears himself.
The president doesn’t want to have a discussion. He wants to tell us what to do and we’re supposed to do it. Pronto. And none of your belly-aching.
Guess again, Jugears.
Please post this to facebook or Tweet it if you have those capabilities. We need to fight back, and especially want the idea to get the attention of GOP lawmakers and governors.
it’s important to be able to defend yourself especially as america declines into squalid impoverished sadness
Just like his “bipartisanship” on taxes and spending, leigh.
Do as I say, or I will have my friends, lackeys and lickspittle in the Media destroy you.
Spiny, I’m waiting for the day he announces that from now on it’s his way or the highway.
Probably at the State of the Union.
Our governor (Snyder, Michigan) just vetoed a bill that was passed by the legislature that would have done just that.
Apparently he couldn’t take the heat.
Definitely the most comprehensive and coherent post I’ve read on this issue, written so that anyone can understand the concepts. This needs to see wide circulation, by social networking as well as ‘traditional’ blog links. Insty, where are you?
Very well done, Jeff.
I have to say, Jeff, I agree with you. One of us should feel a little dirty about that.
This is why the GOP is moribund. ALong with most of our liberties.
Physics Geek:
Whittle is revered. I am loathed. Must be a matter of style.
Life became so much easier when I realized offending leftist pussies was so much fun.
Posted the link to my old ‘Electric Megaphone’ blog.
My first post in nearly three years.
Past time to start speaking up…
Outstanding post, Jeff. The challenge is how to best get it off this blog and circulating out and about.
To that extent, I’ve already sent it out to a dozen people I know.
I would appreciate ideas from all of you on more and better ways to reach out.
[…] The appropriately-named Jeff at protein wisdom has further thoughts. Read it all. I’ll […]
RT’d and even linked on my site. S now it’s available to all of my reader.
“For instance, in the 1994 ban, what came to count as an “assault rifle” was “semi-automatic rifles able to accept detachable magazines and two or more of the following:
*Folding or telescoping stock
*Pistol grip
*Bayonet mount
*Flash suppressor, or threaded barrel designed to accommodate one
*Grenade launcher (more precisely, a muzzle device that enables launching or firing rifle grenades, though this applies only to muzzle mounted grenade launchers and not those mounted externally).”
As originally written the Federal Assault Weapon Ban banned specific guns and guns that “looked like” them though it grandfathered weapons purchased prior to the ban. This was intentionally vague in the hopes of making all sort of guns illegal while pretending to care only about specific military style weapons that were not actually used in gun crimes very much at all or widely owned.
This “looks like a military weapon” thing was found to be unconstitutionally vague by the courts.
So a blue ribbon panel was assembled to decide what “looks like a military weapon” means. The silly list of more than two of five features is what resulted. It was an attempt to salvage a stupid and onerous law that was struck down as unconstitutional.
The ban lead to AR and AK style guns with hunting stocks and longer barrels with no bayonet lug that really had no significant changes to how they operated. It was just little convenience features were missing.
The sale of AK and AR style rifles increased dramatically following the ban. The ban seemingly created demand. Prior to the ban hunters, ranchers, and home defense purchasers had preferred hunter style rifles. Tell people they can’t have something and they start to want to want it. Suddenly tactical rifles seemed sexy and guess what? For the most part they worked just fine as hunting rifles and sporting rifles. So the tactical style rifle became something like a Harley Davidson is to a motorcycle purchaser.
Likewise internal and external magazines produced for ALL guns manufactured after the ban were to be limited to 10 rounds (10 +1 if you had one in the chamber).
This had 3 major and probably unintended results.
1. Box magazines are VERY easy and pretty inexpensive to make. Most of them are thin stamped and bent steel with a spring. They were MASS PRODUCED. Manufacturers ordered more stock and tooling, called for overtime, hired a few extra hands, and just before the ban went into effect produced a huge lot of them which were stamped as legal, and stored for legal sales at a nice ‘taboo markup’ after the ban went into effect. Thus the supply of greater than 10 round magazines was NEVER really reduced to gun purchasers. If you went to your gun store and asked they would order them for you.
2. You could rather easily remove and replace the plug in a shotgun tube magazine as you wished. Thus the restriction was silly.
3. Since they were now sold with lower capacity magazines (though you could easily get a full sized one) hand guns needed to find a way to spark buyer interest. The Gun industry went on an R&D spree and started making guns with new materials (following lots of glock imitators), hand guns got smaller, more concealable, and lighter, and more ergonomic. Handguns got cooler, better looking, and easier to handle.
The whole thing was a dumb waste of time. And massacres continued to happen.
Damn. I guess the Union thuggishness did have an effect. Or is this some aspect of his supposed Libertarian side?
Long post. Well worth the read.
If we really want more businesses to allow concealed carry, civil liability is something that’s going to have to be addressed.
How so?
Even the gun shops are caving.
Marvelous. We’re surrounded by cowards.
Yeah, Dick’s Sporting Goods yesterday was the 1st I know of to drop to their knees and show obediance to the GodKing.
I noted that yesterday, geoffb.
Ima go to BassPro right now and stock up on ammo.
I’ll let you know if they’re still selling guns.
Well I don’t have my .22 or 12 gauge anymore and I sold my old Baretta 9mm and my .30-06 (almost unused! I was merely a deer carrier and dresser disguised as a hunter for reasons of matching the group and social compassion!) a long time ago.
I guess for now, it’s just you and me ported, 8-round, .357 brazillian revolver.
I might go down to cabellas and get some .38 special glazer ammo. While I can.
It’s my guess that the reason more businesses don’t allow concealed carry is they’re afraid of getting sued. Do something to address their exposure to civil litigation, and maybe more business owners would be open to the presence of guns in their places of business.
I haven’t thought this through a ton so it’s probably really stupid, but if a private property owner makes his property a gun free zone, and you – a CCW permit holder – are required to honor that, is the property owner liable if some wackjob shoots you when you’re in the “gun-free zone”? If not, why not?
Funny, paleo: Glaser is on my shopping list, too.
This from cheaperthandirt.com:
“Marvelous. We’re surrounded by cowards.”
It’s possible we’re seeing the same political phenomenon as we see in Afghanistan today. I’m actually beginning to wonder, for the first time in a serious sense, whether some people apprehend far better than I the end of our political order looming on the horizon — an order most of us have been happy to assume will survive well beyond our years on earth (see only our appeal to the Second Amendment in this instance, in the face of people who simply despise the whole notion of the US Constitution as grounds on which to govern these States). Yet what an Afghan can understand about the intentions of the Taliban with ready clarity, I’m not at all certain I understand about the principles of the progressive left should they choose to erect a substitute for the theory of natural right they reject.
I missed it. Sorry Slart.
If the possessor of a CCW permit has his gun taken from his holster and used to commit crimes, should those crimes be counted as having been committed by said CCW possessor? If not, does the organization using such a crime to bolster its statistics suffer from any loss of credibility for that pack of lies?
And how about suicide? If a CCW permit holder commits suicide with his/her firearm, is that countable as a gun-violence crime perpetrated by a CCW permit holder? If not, does that make counting said suicides in any total of CCW gun violent offenses a fucking pack of lies?
CTD is acting like the mom purchased her arsenal of death through them.
So if I’m reading you correctly, sdferr, it isn’t so much that CTD is suspending gun sales, as it is that they’re stockpiling them for themselves.
It was a Slartibartfast Exclusive, so you must cite.
One man’s fucking pack of lies is another man’s absolute moral authority.
“…that CTD is suspending gun sales, as it is that they’re stockpiling them for themselves.”
Not that I’d thought Squid. I’m only taking the gun-seller as the tiniest particle in a giant chaotic whirl of particles here, however. If there’s a pattern, I have a duty to produce more examples of it, I reckon. (And recognize that I’ve not done so as yet, but do have others in mind. But let me think on it for a bit more: this was a rush-job on my part, just plopping that down there like that.)
I remember a long time ago there were a lot of citations of a study about children dying in gun accidents in the home.
Eventually it came to light that some of the cases included in the study were rather inappropriate for the supposed conclusions.
The parameters allowed 26 year old males who had died after being shot by the police in a gun fight in a parking lot to be counted as a child who had accidently shot himself or been shot at home.
Here is another particle, albeit one explicitly tacit as presented. Charles Kesler, author of I Am the Change: Barack Obama and the Crisis of Liberalism in conversation with Steven Hayward at The American Mind:
Kesler: Well, first of all, conservatism should beware of economic determinism, and believing that a bad economy is necessary and sufficient — or at least sufficient to sink a President like Obama. I think Obama is extremely talented politically, and interesting intellectually, and the typical conservative mistake concerning him is to underestimate — I think that would be a very big mistake.
But the crisis I’m speaking of in this book is not a crisis that involves the immediate collapse of Liberalism. It’s a crisis in the old-fashioned sense of the term: a turning point. I think Liberalism is coming rapidly to a turning point. And at that fork there are several directions that Liberalism can take. One is indeed, a collapse. It is possible that we are much closer to the end of Liberalism than we are to the beginning of Liberalism. And one of the arguments in the book is that Liberalism as an American phenomenon can be well defined as beginning essentially in the Progressive era, and galloping across the twentieth century and, in a way, culminating in the Obama presidency, or at least culminating as far as we can tell in the Obama presidency.
It is possible that the intellectual exhaustion of Liberalism can, combined with the fiscal problems in which it is rapidly entangling itself, could lead to a failure of Liberalism, a crisis of Liberalism that would either involve the bankruptcy of the promises made in social welfare programs or the foreseeable bankruptcy approaching but not yet arrived. And that kind of crisis could precipitate a sudden collapse of something that looks like it could not possibly collapse.
Hayward: Well let me press you on both of those points a bit. On the one hand you have a — what I sometimes summarize as the brutal actuarial numbers of Liberalism — you refer to those in your book– and on the other hand among other things you can [use] to characterize modern Liberalism is its ‘Will to Power’.
Kesler: Yes.
Hayward: Now it seems to me that one of those is infinite, or inexhaustible, the will to power, and uh, I mean I’m not an economist, but I’m surprised at uh, just looking at the European situation, how long you can patch together some of these fiscal problems, such that you can put off the crisis, a real acute crisis, for a very long time. So, in other words, restate your reasons for optimism of thinking the crisis will become acute leading to a necessary change?
Kesler: Well, it’s partly that the — it isn’t merely a fiscal crisis. I mean a fiscal crisis is also a moral crisis, because it involves promises that have been made with the full faith and credit of the United States’ Government and the full understanding that morality requires Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Obamacare and other such kinds of social programs. The failure to deliver on the ‘rights’ to these things, to healthcare, to a decent living, to an education, to a house and so forth — the failure to deliver on those ‘rights’ is as much a moral indictment as it is a fiscal problem for Liberalism. And so if that kind of crisis comes, it will come partly as a moment where faith in the government itself and especially faith in the modern state as Liberalism has built it could become acute, because they can’t make payroll. The two things I think would go together. That kind of crisis and collapse is certainly not the only scenario. It’s also possible for Liberalism to rebound and become stronger as a result of the crisis that is approaching. And that’s because the crisis is uh, not merely fiscal and moral, but it’s also philosophical for Liberalism.
Here’s a timely, helpful link from Instapundit:
Criminals target each other, trend shows
When progressives point to the U.S. murder-by-firearm figures, it’s important to remind them that most of them are criminals killing other criminals.
Good piece by Taranto at the WSJ.
@Bacon, in response to your question, yes, I think you have to honor private property rights. However, you can make it clear to said property owner (if it is a private business) that you will no longer be a customer and explain why you’re taking you business elsewhere.
I stopped by Cabela’s and talked with the staff yesterday. People have been lined up 40-80 deep at the gun counters. They said every day is like Black Friday now and they are selling 500 guns a day. The ARs are gone.
Unintended consquences of the gun grabbers propaganda campaign.
Great post! I wonder how this most recent inconvenient fact will factor into Obama & the Dems rush to demonize guns: Beauty queen murdered with Fast & Furious rifle.
http://dailycaller.com/2012/12/18/beauty-queen-murdered-with-fast-furious-rifle/
charles where do you live? I’m seeing that too, except I worry that maybe it’s only here in the South where gun ownership and the 2nd Amendment are considered holy. Is it just conservatives arming themselves even further? I know that liberals secretly arm themselves but probably not in the numbers like the hunting crowd etc.
I guess I don’t see that many businesses that have “no weapons” posted at the door – although I’m sure there are a good number (maybe i see them so often that I just don’t “see” them any more?). I’m not seeing how a business owner would be exposed to liability because they didn’t actively bar gun carriers. Except under the “anyone can sue anyone for anything” clause.
I suspect the end game will be to put semi-autos under NFA/Title II status.
Only real question is if this can be made retroactive to existing firearm owners.
Blake, I was thinking more of a scenario like this: say someonewent to see Dark Knight at the Cinemark up in Aurora when it opened and left their firearm in their car since Cinemark is a gun free zone. Then the wackjob shoots him and he’s paralyzed from the waist down. Should Cinemark be at least partially liable for disarming him ? I’m kind of thinking yeah.
If I don’t let you protect yourself on my property I’m liable if I fail to protect you, right?
Like I said, just throwing crap at the walls.
I was in Bass Pro (Denver) on Monday, and the handgun case was essentially picked clean. Same with semi-auto rifles…
Except, you don’t have a God given right to see a movie. If the property owner doesn’t allow firearms, and you enter anyways, it seems like you’re making a discretionary decision.
Does anybody else get the feeling that we’re gonna’ hafta’ actually [i]excercise[/i] our 2dA rights? Since they are necessary to a ‘Free State” and all.
Kesler (at a Constitution Day celebration, Sept. 20 2012): “Barack Obama and the Fourth Wave of Liberalism“
effing Facebook wouldn’t let me use the terms gun control OR right to bear arms…fucking liberals
Which would be legalized theft along with the taking away the means to refuse such theft.
I see a civil war a-coming. Hear that, Professor Kiteley?
I’m sorry, but anybody stupid enough to think that the point of the second amendment is to enable hunting isn’t worth wasting breath on.
It’s not about hunting, it’s about insurrection, enabling of.
Insurrection’s just a different kind of hunting, I s’pose.
…keep in mind he is from Ann Arbor, Geoff.
“Except, you don’t have a God given right to see a movie.”
Except of course, on the contrary, you do have a natural right to see a movie. Inherent in your pursuit of happiness, to conduct commerce, and the movie theater purveyor’s inherent right to do the same, free from interference by an external lord.
Ok, Bass Pro is fairly busy, but not inordinately so. I didn’t check out the AR-15-esque rack because that’s not my thing. Handguns were fully stocked. Ammo was running low on some calibers, notably .223 although they still had a decent selection. Surprisingly sparse was .22LR, although I got me a 500-round box of that. Last one of those on the shelf, although they had quite a few 100-count and 50-count boxes left.
0.38 special I think their base stock isn’t really all that good. They don’t seem to carry Glaser at all. So I got some Winchester PDX1 Defender +P expanding hollowpoints and called it a day. Plus fifty target rounds for continued accuracy improvement. I doubt we’ll blow through a lot more .38 after this, because we’re both getting about as good we will ever be, considering this is a 1 7/8″ barrel and resulting short sight radius.
So slipshod is staying. Oh well.
I need to learn some patience anyway.
[…] made against further restrictions on gun ownership, and Jeff Goldstein makes just about all of them here. To me the strongest arguments against the gun control crowd are the practical ones. An obviously […]
So slipshod is staying. Oh well. I need to learn some patience anyway.
I am glad to have at least a few lefties around here who are willing to share their views. It’s more fun to argue with them then with someone you agree with.
JMHO
Okay, so you don’t have a god-given right to see a movie. I assume then that anyone who thinks this was up in arms about the asserted justification for laws banning smoking in restaurants and bars (that secondhand smoke allegedly adversely affects the health of restaurant & bar patrons & employees) Because you don’t have a god-given right to eat or drink or work in a restaurant or bar.
I’m not saying private property owners should be forced to allow weapons on their property. Just that forcing someone to be defenseless might not be a wise business decision from a liability standpoint.
Discussion of school massacre ends in shooting at barbershop.
The libertarian in me is appalled that business can’t decide for themselves if they want to allow smoking or not.
The air breather in me is overjoyed that every where I go is smoke free. ’cause smoking is so fucking disgusting.
Your God-given right to an Obamaphone, on the other hand…
Seriously, slippery, did you even think about that statement before you posted it? Can you not see the gaping hole amidships, just below the waterline?
QED
Slippery, if every smoker in the country quit right this minute, tax revenues would fall so hard you could hear the *clank* around the country.
Politicians have been taxing the living shit out of smokers since the 60s on the premise the taxes are to pay for their health care schemes.
I’m not just a smoker: I’m a patriot. Little Timmy needs a kidney.
Our governor probably would not sign this even if it passed, because it seems like the fix is in, somehow, on certain gun-free zones in Missouri.
(When I say “the fix is in,” I mean that the legislature and/or whoever happens to be governor always seems to bow to the desires of those running higher ed, although I’m not sure why.)
Healthcare costs would fall too. And I’d rather have you alive than tax your every last breath. So there’s that.
Japan, in this article, begins to resemble an American public school of a sort, struggling with an imposed regime of safety which will bring the police to the rescue 20 minutes too late.
Probably not. The “savings” from the drop in smoking related illnesses/deaths would be offset by the increase costs in geriatric care.
We need people like leigh to die before their time, so to speak. And it’s better when they self-select than to wait for a Obama approved death panel to make the decision. Wouldn’t you agree?
I plan to live to a fine old age, just like the rest of the women in my family. Obama hasn’t quit smoking either, so I’m not a hypocrite like him.
Ernst is right. You get old: you get sick. It’s the way it works.
You get old, you get sick, the oldster kind of sick costs us all a lot of money. So better to put grandma on the iceberg and offer pious platitudes about the circle of life.
Kids making you watch The Lion King with them again, Ernst?
“every where I go is smoke free. ’cause smoking is so fucking disgusting.”
I find fascism disgusting, personally. Can we have fascism-free zones too?
Not recently, no.
Smoking makes the fascists keep at bay, Spies. They will talk loudly about how disgusting you are (from across the patio) until you turn around and give them a long look until they chicken and STFU.
missfixit, Misery.
I didn’t meant to derail the conversation. My bad.
(For the record, I used to smoke, don’t anymore, and think smoking bans are bullshit)
Honestly don’t know how you guys manage to talk politics and high-intensity subjects all the time. I’ve only been engaging in conversation for a day or so and I’m exhausted from all the bad-faith BS out there. As I said on the Twitters, it’s like eating soup with a fork. Really thin soup. Like chicken broth.
I like it when you come around here, Bacon Ninja.
Slippy, are you missing the point on purpose, or are you really just that dense? At issue is not whether one has a God-given right to watch a movie. Rather, we’re discussing our universally recognized rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Implicit in one’s right to live is one’s right to defend oneself against those who’d end one’s life prematurely.
A fundamental means for the defense of one’s life is the firearm, which is why the Founders put firearms right up at the top of the list of things the federal government can’t fuck with. Without diminishing the universal right to keep living, we can also recognize that a theater owner has rights over his property, and that these rights include his ability to prohibit firearms on his property. The question at hand attempts to get at the balance between these rights. If it is within the theater owner’s rights to disarm his patrons, does it follow that he has a responsibility to provide alternate means for protecting their lives?
Bacon’s asking what sort of changes we might make to liability law in order to find an acceptable balance between property rights and personal defense rights. He wonders whether business owners aren’t demanding that their customers disarm because they’re afraid of being liable if one customer shoots another. I would argue that the business owner should be less liable for the unlawful acts of one careless or deranged customer, and more liable for leaving the rest of his customers defenseless.
I, for one, would rather take my chances with 30 or 40 well-armed, well-behaved neighbors, than to be in a room where the host has not only disarmed everybody, but has also hung a big sign on the door telling every madman and criminal that those within are easy pickings. (I will admit that a big part of my reasoning for this is because I know that idiots like you would get yourselves shot before age 30, and thereby learn some manners and sense, or get dead. Either way, our society comes out way ahead. Some call me cold and callous, but I prefer to think of myself as a pragmatist.)
Of course not, because no one is making you go into that movie theater.
Or, the business owner is not liable in either case.
So open your own theater and run it however you like. Call it Pistol Pack’n Premiers.
Again, the point flies right over your pointy head.
I thought it was a really good question actually, Bacon Ninja.
If you were to go digging through Instapundit’s archives, I think you’ll find that the subject has come up before. After a shooting in a Nebraska mall seveal years ago, and after the Aurora shooting last summer, for sure.
That’s the reason why I like to answer the hyterical hypothetical what if some guy turned angry drunk in a bar and started shooting the place up with his concealed weapon?!? with “then he’s a dead angry drunk after everybody else with a gun starts returning fire.”
Also, “you shouldn’t believe everything you see in movies.”
No one made that gay couple go into that professional photographer’s studio, either, but public accomodation seems to apply differently in the case of the photographer’s rights.
Why do Squid’s rights and the photographer’s rights both end at the entrance, even though they’re on opposite sides of the counter?
I just thought of something. You guys should get some tea party congress member to introduce legislation to get “armed” added to the list of protected classes. By adding one word it would immediately be illegal to discriminate against people carrying weapons in just about every circumstance.
Because one’s a protected class and the other is not. Seriously, you should work to get “armed” added to the list of protected classes.
I just got an email from Cheaper than Dirt, and they are going to continue to sell guns online.
I’m adopting a stance of civil disobedience: if you don’t have a metal detector in your gun-free zone, then I’m not carrying. As far as you know.
Unless it’s a federal building or some other place where it’s actually against the law, you’re fine in doing this. A shop owner that has “no guns” on their door can ask you to leave if they find out you’re packing, but that’s all. It’s not like the cops get called if someone violates the “no shirt, no shoes…” placard.
Or maybe instead we do away with this “protected classes” nonsense.
Or os treating everybody equally under the law too crazy to work?
Actually, a state trooper I know and despise recently called in the local police because he saw a friend of mine, a former SF, with a gun on his belt. The proprietors of the place had no problem with it. But he called in to complain anonymously that he felt threatened. Or his wife did. And the cops did come, and they made my firend call his wife to come pick up the gun and take it home.
I just think it would make liberal’s heads explode to think about all the battles they’ve fought to blanket protected classes across the country and drag people into court for discrimination – to then be in a position of being sued for discrimination because they don’t want someone with a gun in their business.
Even I think that’s bullshit. I’m telling you – protected class. In one fell swoop. Imagine.
It just proves liberals are anything but.
It’s an interesting notion, but I’d rather not validate the principle all animals are equal some (protected classes of) animals are more equal.
Because who guards the guardians (of protected classes)?
Or to try to put it more clearly,
It’s going to be hard to maintain the illusion that you are an individual in possession of individual rights when the rights you actually posess are determined for you by the group to which you are assigned.
From a comment at Belmont which fits right in here.
Government mandated “no smoking zones” are a response to a government created problem.
If a business owner decides, on his own, to “discriminate” against smokers, there’s a decent chance the business owner will get hit with some sort of discrimination lawsuit.
However, since government is not willing to entertain the possibility it screwed up, in the name of “public health” no smoking became the law, rather than a choice by the owner of the establishment.
Generally known as “freedom through lack of choice.”
Just received by email.
I think guns should be tax deductible for teachers is what I think. Also those bullet thingies.
Probably not. I mean, I’m sure you can find a law suit for *anything*, but outside of some odd case, you could run a non-smoking establishment.
not for tax eating school teachers
Cool, geoff. So they weren’t cowed. Just overrun.
“They will talk loudly about how disgusting you are (from across the patio) until you turn around and give them a long look”
Yep. The Look works. I was sitting in the outdoor area of a restaurant a year or two ago (so I could enjoy a post-lunch smoke — it was a cold and blustery day and I was the only one out there) when a guy came and sat at the table right next to me along with his small child. He immediately started in with the passive-aggressive fake mini-cough, accompanied by meaningful glances at the kid.
I gave him The Look. They left.
we have to SEND A MESSAGE mr newrouter
Ashleigh Banfield said so
she was very very clear
Yeah, sure, slippery, walk up to a black man and tell him to put out that cigarette. Same goes for any “protected” class.
Idiot.
link
Too bad more of you aren’t black. You could tote firearms with impunity.
*cyber fistbump*, Spies.
“Too bad more of you aren’t black.”
And you know this how, exactly?
“Too bad more of you aren’t black.”
“And you know this how, exactly?”
Divine inspiration
“Divine inspiration”
Hint: you’re wrong.
oh my
Pistol purchased by ATF agent found at alleged cartel crime scene in Mexico
Well. All the other kids at the well-heeled Sandy Hill school are going to get free tuition at U of Conn.
They better get that in writing.
Maybe I’m reading way too much into this, but that sounds to me like they’re scared witless that the guns used last Friday were purchased through them.
free tuition i don’t think even that bitch julia gets free tuition
Hooeee, that slipshod sure added a lot of value to this post! I’m so glad he’s still here!
I will quit complaining at some point in the future, though I will not say when.
Yes! If Lanza guns prettier, debate focus more important issue: whether dead bodies of 6-year-olds artfully arranged in classroom! Also is blood spatter more like Jackson Pollock or finger-painting? TROLL love Gold-stein-man focus on big picture!
Your unkempt hair is pink, you’re naked, and you’ve got no genitalia.
So we understand why you have trouble with comprehend
Also, no guns! Everyone use club! It work in Middle-Earth, it can work America!
Weren’t we banning slippery?
Can that happen now?
no more taxpayer money for education. we have enough stupid peeps.
Troll has to be absolutely the worst horror movie ever made. Ever.
Trolls should be embarrassed.
Troll agree! Halloween best horror movie ever made, hands down! Young Jamie Lee Curtis! Yowza!
This is interesting: The Amendments, Ranked.
It’s on one of the Gawker-affiliated websites, meaning they are ranked just about how you’d expect by someone who writes for Gawker.
Guess which one is last.
cranky-d wrote:
Some people have doubts as to exactly how mendacious a progressive can be. Slip is doing his part to provide blatant examples of that mendacity…
Hm. Mildly useful, but more annoying than anything.
This is a good point. We (and by that I mean I) need to think how new readers would see it.
“SBP says December 19, 2012 at 4:59 pm
“Divine inspiration”
Hint: you’re wrong.”
No he means AUTHENTIC. Duh!
cranky, he’s kind of a whack-a-mole. He pops up with some stupid shit and gets cracked over the head six ways to Sunday.
Enjoy!
“happyfeet says December 19, 2012 at 4:38 pm
we have to SEND A MESSAGE mr newrouter
Ashleigh Banfield said so
she was very very clear”
Oh please. We Spent most of the 90’s sending messages. All the messages should have been sent by now.
Then why do we still have to ‘have a conversation?’ I’m going to suggest that as a banned phrase to Gutfeld.
They lost this conversation previously multiple times, so now they want to have this one again while we are too upset to remember the last few times we had it. And they think the president will bull his way through it because he’s magic and that the House and SC will let him.
i think when we’re not actively engaged in sending messages cable news starts to feel socially awkward and unempowered
Frontpage Mag has a good article on Gun Culture and Gun-Control.
See:
Further down:
Detroit?
I don’t get it
8 Mile, yo.
It remains mildly amusing that Americans in general are content to presume they can define culture — standing alone as a concept — as though it were merely another familiar household object like a pencil or apple or vacuum-cleaner, (none of which they actually understand in their totality either, let’s remember), nevermind fitting it nicely into the wholesome scheme of natural right their forebears bequeathed them for a politics.
oh
“Take him to Detroit!” “NOOO!!! NOT DETROIT! ANYTHING BUT THAT!!!”
I don’t even find it particularly amusing any longer sdferr. I’m finding the whole idea of defining culture to be absurd, especially within the parameters given.
If enslavement to a lingo destined to put people in chains isn’t amusing, I’m hard pressed to think what is.
Did we ever determine when this word ‘culture’ became stock in trade? Culture/values? Culture = Values?
Now, virtues are understandable. Values and culture, as modernly understood anyway, are awfully hollow words.
They should be able to determine within a minute if that was the case. They would have name, address, product purchased in their records. They would also have the info on the FFL holder any gun was shipped to and that person would have those records too including the Form 4473s that were filled out.
I think the reaction of Dicks speaks to them being when the guns were bought.
maybe biden:
sayeth the ahole from a slave state
Biden to crowd: Romney will ‘put you all back in chains’
where not when
Allan Bloom claimed the earliest he could trace the sense (now profoundly corrupted) of use with regard to the totality of a nation or people’s inclusive holding of religious belief, artistic aims, musical attainment, political order, philosophical staging, pageant of life, culinary practice, and so on, was to Immanuel Kant. Where Kant got it, I do not know. The possibly more pertinent question however, may well be why Kant wanted it.
Kant is one of those guys I had trouble with. If that’s where Bloom determined the corruption came from, that’s good enough for me.
Try him again, may I suggest? He tries very hard to be clear, though it’s true the thing he’s tackling is none too easy.
I will. I don’t have a reason (or an excuse) to not re-read him and a lot of others. I got a Kindle paperwhite as an early Christmas/birthday gift so easy-peasy. The downloading, not the philosophers.
I have my own peculiar usage of that word but only because I needed a handle for a concept and didn’t have one, due to my own ignorance in many matters no doubt.
Its even more basic than that, Jeff.
The right of the people to keep and bear arms was intended to be the last and only real check on a government with a standing army. THAT is what the 2nd amendment is really about.
Not only did the founders want the citizens armed, they wanted them to know why.
Nonsense. Do you have any idea how puny the “cost” of smoking is ? Negligible. Health care spending in the US is on the order of 2-2.5 Trillion per year. Some studies put the cost of smoking at just short of $100 Billion, which I am quite sure is subject to some of the same scientific slight of hand you see with global warming. So, if every single manner of illness due to smoking was eliminated tomorrow, AND every one of those smokers was to then not ever get sick, the cost of health care could presumably be lowered by FIVE PERCENT. So instead of an MRI costing $1500, it would be only a paltry $1425.
Yeah, amazing.
How about we do away with the very idea of “protected classes”. What a complete distortion of the principles this nation were founded upon.
Everyone is free, but some people are a bit more free than others, you see.
[…] Jeff Goldstein has a great piece on the never-ending assault on the Second Amendment. After all, is “shall not be infringed” really that hard to understand? Like […]
sleight
Yrs respectfully,
Legions of proofreaders and fact-checkers.
Speaking of fucked-up science, though:
The link goes to a WattsUpWithThat dissection of the NIH article having that title. Pretty hilarious.
Also seen on WUWT:
That last comment refers to this Feynman video. It’s about 10 minutes long, but the crucial bit referred to happens in the first 45 seconds. He basically says this:
[…] Lame Duck President Wins Prestigious Gun CompetitionToday’s Larwyn’s Linx sponsored by: An open call to gun-control advocates and gun supportersQOTD: “The results of the Gun Free School Zone act’s passage have been devastating. The […]
[…] I haven’t thought this through a ton so it’s probably really stupid, but if a private property owner makes his property a gun free zone, and you – a CCW permit holder – are required to honor that, is the property owner liable if some wackjob … Read more […]
[…] Jeff Goldstein: The text of the second amendment reads: “A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” […]
[…] Goldstein at Protein Wisdom prepares for the gun control conversation. But here’s the thing: the second amendment was […]