February 2008 – Page 11 – Shall Not Be Questioned

Whistling Up a False Sense of Security

Breda takes on the notion of “rape whistles”Â I agree these are a poor substitute for fighting back, but I wouldn’t completely discount their utility.Â I mean, if you heard someone whistling frantically within close proximity of you, and after following the sound saw a man about to rape a woman, would you do nothing?Â Â I wouldn’t.Â Of course, that presumes that at least some of us have the capability to do something other than dial 911 and hope that help shows up in time.

Happy President’s Day

The good thing about today is that both Bitter and I have off from work, so we get an extra day.Â Â The bad news is, even if I didn’t have off from work today, I’d probably be taking off sick anyway, because the cold I came down with while camping made me toss and turn all night, so I feel like crud this morning.

Positive Media Spin

I’m with Dave, I can’t believe the main stream media would feature anything like this.Â Concealed carry reform was one of the greatest strokes of strategic brilliance the gun rights movement has ever had, and I’m not sure we’d be in the position we’re in today without.

Despite the fact that a relatively small number of people bother to get licenses to carry a concealed firearm, the impact has been substantial in terms of how public debate on gun control is framed.Â It has allowed us to shift the debate on this issue exlusively away from sporting uses and toward self-defense, not only in the home, but in general.Â Most Americans, even if they are wary on the gun issue, are perfectly accepting that a person has a right to defend their own life.Â Concealed carry has allowed us to tie that sentiment into the gun control debate, and created a large cadre of activists who are making for interesting stories for the media to report.

In the fact of more and more of these types of mass shooting, had we kept the debate mostly on sporting uses of firearms, and only on self-defense within the home, I believe we’d be losing; most Americans wouldn’t be willing to preserve sporting uses of firearms at, what they would believe, is the expense of their own safety, and that of their children.Â That we have the media stepping into the debate of whether young adults who are licensed to carry should be allowed to carry on campus is an amazing achievement, and should be a harbinger of doom for the gun control movement.

NRA Election Endorsements

Dave Hardy has a few of them.Â Â I’ll be talking more about this when I get my ballot.

We’re Back!

Winter camping in Luzerne & Sullivan County, up in northern Pennsylvania, went well.Â Didn’t freeze to death, despite temperatures in the teens.Â Overheard at the small roadside restaurant we stopped at this morning: two guys were talking about guns and hunting, with another couple at the table next to us talking about how much Hillary Clinton sucks.Â One town had a sign up as you entered town announcing the local sportsman’s club clay shoot the following week.Â Yep, we’re not in Philly anymore Toto, and it’s nice.

Central American Commies for Obama

Daniel Ortega likes him.Â For those of you who didn’t grow up during the cold war, and think Ortega is a line of taco products:

Ortega led a Soviet-backed government that battled U.S.-supported Contra rebels before he lost power in a 1990 election. He returned to office last year via the ballot box.

Now all we need is an endorsement from Hugo Chavez.

Holmesburg Update

At the club last night, a few members of Holmesburg were talking about their continuing struggle with the City of Philadelphia to prevent from being closed down.Â Â Their web site has:

Yes, weâ€™re still here. Yes, weâ€™re still in business. No, itâ€™s notÂ a done deal. HF&GPA has four main priorities right now. They are to lobby the Fairmount Park Commission (FPC) for a lease, to get member dues for â€™08 in, to recruit new members and to complete the work on club ground that was postponed because of the threatened closing.Â Please see the Newsletter pages for more information. Thank you all for supporting your club leadership through these trying times. Brighter days are ahead if we stay the course and if we continue in our roles as responsible and hospitable sportsmen and women.

Which is roughly the same as last time I updated.Â They are still working with the city to get the lease, but apparently the administration change is making things take a bit longer, and that they may have to seek another extension while the negotiations continue.

I do hope the city does the right thing here.Â These folks are obviously not the ones shooting each other over drug turf wars in the City of Philadelphia, but I doubt that matters to a lot of folks who run that city.Â If they secure another lease, I will consider helping them out by joining.Â At the very least, I’ll at least show up at a few of their matches for moral support.

Don’t Go Cold Turkey

One think I learned from friends who took anti-depressants, is that very bad thing happens when you go cold turkey and just quit.Â You’re supposed to wean yourself from them.Â Turns out the NIU gunman had stopped taking his:

“He had stopped taking medication and become somewhat erratic in the last couple of weeks,” Grady said, declining to name the drug or provide other details.

I’ve never known someone who went this crazy, but the friends I’ve known who have taken anti-depressants and stopped cold weren’t the same people while they were going through withdrawal.Â These are drugs that are altering your brain chemistry.Â I wouldn’t be surprised to find that psychosis is a rare side effect of the withdrawal process.

We do find out which guns the killer used:

Â Two of the weapons â€” the pump-action Remington shotgun and a Glock 9mm handgun â€” were purchased legally less than a week ago, on Feb. 9, authorities said. They were purchased in Champaign, where Kazmierczak was enrolled at the University of Illinois.

He apparently had an Illinois FID, though it doesn’t say that in this article, I read that elsewhere. Â There’s really no way you can stop someone who has no criminal or mental history, which this guy didn’t.

Expect a lot of talk from the media about how the Glock is particularly deadly, rather than a common side arm.Â No doubt there will also be calls to pass a magazine ban in Illinois in response to this, even though their licensing of gun owners provisions and various other controls did nothing to prevent this.

MagPul FMG 9 Folding Submachine Gun

Defense Review has an article up here.Â Not that it matters a whole lot, because thanks to Congressman Hughes, you’ll never own one.

Via Jacob

Obama’s Dour Optimism

Victor Davis Hanson has a pretty good read up here:

I was watching on television last week both Barack Obama and his wife Michelle speak about the supposedly depression-like conditions in the US, and a people strapped by students loans, near hungry, and without hope of betterment. Neither said anything of substance, though both were engaging, effective speakers. Still, never has so much talent been invested in saying so little.

If you were to believe them, we are in a sort of â€œItâ€™s A Wonderful Life,â€ Frank Capra-era housing depression, not a boom-and-bust cycle where for the last five years, rival television shows proliferate on â€œflippingâ€ houses (in which strapped investors and rookies borrow against rising equity to put in granite counters and stainless steel appliances for quick flip sales).

I am sincerely hoping that Americans begin to see through the flowery rhetoric soon, because the message Obama is pushing, very eloquently, is one of 1930s America.Â It’s not a message for the 21st century, and I hope voters will soon see that.

Found via Instapundit.

UPDATE: Actually this was via Clayton Cramer.Â I opened it up to blog, and forgot where I got it from, and somehow recalled it was Insty, I guess since he links VDH so often. Either way, it’s what happens when you have about 100 blogs on the RSS feed.