The Stories and Novels By Derek Ward
I’m mostly commenting on the fact that a simple request from The Wife kept me from verbally taking apart the partisan witch collecting signatures to put an assault weapons ban on the next ballot.
That woman (the partisan hack, not The Wife) somehow in three sentences spoke more errors than she had words.
One hopes for a repeat meeting sans civilizing influence.
The media insists that crime is a major concern of the American public today. In this connection they generally push the point that a disarmed society would be a crime-free society. They will not accept the truth that if you have take all the guns off the street you will still have a crime problem, whereas if you take the criminals off the street you will not have a gun problem.
Bunch of odds and ends I’m not going to have time to make full posts on, but you should RTWT.
A column from the New York Post on why people distrust journalists. Letting your political bias and disdain for fully half the country ain’t helping.
Surviving Your 15 Minutes of Hate I’m not going to lie and say that this does not worry me. It’s one reason I write under a pseudonym.
From Volokh Conspiracy, 3 Rules About Hate Speech This is one thing I dread is having to explain this to my niece and nephew.
From USCarry, 5 Types of People You Should Avoid While Concealed Carry A lot of don’t go stupid places with stupid people doing stupid things.
And for something completely different, how to cook perfect rice in an Instant Pot. Which is the main thing the Wife To Be and I use ours for these days.
A year ago, a student walked into his old school. He murdered seventeen and injured seventeen more. This became a rallying cry for gun control in a way the Las Vegas shooting four months previously was not.
The gun control groups were quick to press their advantage by riding on the backs of telegenic children to manipulate quisling legislators. Florida passed its first major gun control legislation in decades. Other states did the same. The mantra was the same. Easy guns, lack of universal background checks, and no red flag laws allowed this monster to kill children. Oh, and bumpstocks too.
Except, if anything, this proved the hollowness of gun control arguments. The Sun Sentinel – not exactly a friend to gun owners on their editorial pages – did amazing work showing the failures of Broward County.From how the schools failed to get the shooter help and then covered it up to how the Broward County Sheriffs Office and the local school authorities failed to take action when it happened. The failures documented in the official report were so bad, that the chair of the commission – the previously anti-gun Pinellas County Sherriff – reversed his position and called for armed staff in schools.
Every authority that we are told by our opponents need additional authority to protect us failed. Not because they did not have enough power, but because they did everything to subvert the controls in place to achieve other politically-motivated goals. I don’t believe that the individuals in place wanted a school shooting, but in light of their actions, is there any difference? About the only thing they people in charge could have done more to facilitate this tragedy would have been to give the murderer the money for the gun and ammo.
If someone tells me that Parkland is why we need gun control, I can honestly agree with them. Parkland is why we need gun control, in that we do not need it at all.
In much nicer terms. The Daily Caller relates a study published by American Outdoor Brands, who owns S&W, at the behest of an “investment group.” I use the scare quotes because this “investment group” (which includes some nuns as mouthpieces) are buying into companies not to profit, but for social change. The report had one of the sickest burns I’ve read in some time:
The Company’s reputation as a strong defender of the Second Amendment is not worth risking for a vague goal of improving the Company’s reputation among non-customers or special interest groups with an anti-Second Amendment agenda…
That’s a nice way of saying “Why the fuck would we care what people who don’t give us money and hate us think?”
I came across this article comparing the gun control debate with the debates over mutants in the Marvel universe.
From the article:
The human tendency is to judge all people by their worst examples and to act accordingly. This is silly and frankly bigoted, but it’s what people do and you just have to argue around it. Almost all transgender people want to do is use a bathroom in peace and not molest children under pretext; however, people are ready to judge the 99.9% who obey the law by the rare example who actually does commit a bathroom molestation. Most immigrants, particularly from Islamic countries, want to immigrate to the United States for peace and prosperity; however, people are ready to judge all of them because of the few who come here and commit terrorism. I maintain that 9/11 was far more catastrophic than any school shooting, but we shouldn’t block Muslim immigrants because of the dozen or so who killed 3,000 Americans on one very bad day, or the one who killed numerous LGBTQ people in Orlando.
So the X-Men deal with the same crap. Some mutants have gone terrorist; all are judged by that standard. One mutant could commit a crime; therefore, people assume that they will.
To borrow a phrase, snip:
Still, readers connect with the X-Men despite the bona fide concerns of the world around them. Why?
Because we read the X-Men as “real” people. We know that not all mutants are not the Brotherhood and Magneto. We follow them as ordinary people who come from ordinary backgrounds. While they have extraordinarily dangerous powers, they’re not dangerous people. They date, play baseball, go to bars and movies, and are generally not interested in hurting anyone who isn’t out to hurt them first. For the most part, they want to help.
Joss Whedon had a run on Astonishing X-Men, which was the first comic I picked up after a fifteen-year hiatus. There was a scene where Cyclops confronts the rest of the team over who’s being mind controlled. The team is freaked out because Cyclops is holding a handgun. Cyclops. The mutant whose eye blasts can take down giant robots. And his team is more scared of the 1911 in his hand. Let’s just say it was something that yanked me out of the narrative right quick.
The FBI closes its investigation into the Las Vegas shooter without coming to a definitive conclusion as to why.
While the agency found no “single or clear motivating factor” to explain why Stephen Paddock opened fire from his suite in a high-rise casino hotel, Paddock may have been seeking to follow in his father’s criminal footsteps, the FBI said.
Honestly, I’m not surprised. I figured if we were going to find the reason, it would have come out within the first month. Personally, I’m going with Alfred’s explanation.
I came across this article on things to consider if you, as a concealed carrier decide to engage an active shooter. For me, this definitely reinforces my opinion of getting my family and friends the fuck out and only engaging if needed.
Still, even with that stance, this article explained some things that have to be considered if that active shooter does cross my path. My big takeaways were:
There is a lot more in the article, so read the whole thing.
This came is as the jury request in the case of Brian Aitken, who was convicted of running afoul of New Jersey gun laws. This is a prime example of why I support jury nullification.
Why did you make us aware at the start of the trial that the law allows a person to carry a weapon if the person is moving or going to the range, and during the trial both the defense and prosecution presented testimony as to whether or not the defendant was in the process of moving, and then in your charge for us to deliberate we are not permitted to take into consideration whether or not we believe the defendant was moving?
Time to clear out some open tabs on the browser.
You Think You Know Me looks like an interesting party card game. Particularly if you have people you’d rather not play Cards Against Humanity with.
Tam recommended Thyrm lens covers for your weapon mounted light. These are disposable covers for range time to keep the lens clear.
What do you call a guy who is a decorated Navy SEAL, a Harvard-trained medical doctor, and an astronaut? I’m going with “Dr. Kim.” The best comment I’ve heard is this is the kid who when asked what he wanted to be when he grew up answered “Everything!”