David Codrea has an interview up. If you’ll be in Louisville, David Young and David Hardy will be at booth number 1551 all three days. Stop by and say hi.
Month: May 2008
We Don’t Need Guns in Parks
I Don’t Care Who You Are …
… this is really funny. As I’ve said, I plan to vote for the old bastard. But that’s fun for the whole family right there.
VCDL Response
VCDL responds to my earlier criticism about their open carry dinner. As I said in the comments, if you can go out in public openly armed, and people just don’t pay attention, shouldn’t that be considered mission accomplished? If the goal is to get concealed carry in restaurants, that will happen eventually, it just means waiting out Kaine. It seems to me that potentially rubbing restaurant goers the wrong way by making a public announcement in a place where public announcements generally aren’t socially acceptable does more to undermine that cause than to promote it.
UPDATE: Countertop in the comments:
First, I understand that the owner pressured him to stand up and say something. I wasn’t there, so I don’t know for sure – thats just what I heard.
Also, this was the culminating dinner – with full press attention (though really, I was hoping for the Washington Times or Post or something substantial) – with a whole crowd gathered.
Knowing these two fact, it strikes me that there might be more to this story and that, while certainly within the attention whore column, perhaps not as bad as if it was just another one of the VCDL dinners.
This would certainly be a mitigating circumstance.
HR1022 Momentum
Keyboard and a .45 talks about the growing momentum of HR1022. What we’re seeing here is that the gun hating faction of the Democratic party growing bolder, as polls show that the 2008 election is likely to be a bloodbath for Republicans. While the national candidates are stilll pretending to be gun shy, a lot of anti-gun Democrats are feeling brave enough to “come out,” so to speak.
If we don’t halt the Democratic momentum this fall, we’re looking at dark days for our gun rights ahead.
Quote of the Day
Ninth Stage commenting on my earlier post about interrupting dinner:
“I’m armed and so are dozens more here.â€Â Sounds like the opening line in a takeover robbery.  I’d be checking for a clear backstop in preparation for shooting the assclown before I heard another word.
Heh
Hey, That’s My Trademark!
Bruce talks about Satan’s Snowballs. It’s good to hear that Massachusetts of all places is considering repealing their income tax. Bitter has more on this.
A Self-Defense No No
Canadian authorities insist on pursuing charges against a man for defending his son from a grizzly bear attack.
“He was 16 yards away, actually, when I shot him. It’s not fun being attacked by a grizzly bear, that’s for sure.”
Lucas said he has fully co-operated with the investigation. He even rode by horseback three hours to his truck to charge his cellphone and call authorities about the death.
“They’re wanting me to become accountable for killing that bear,” he said. “I wonder who would be accountable if my son was dead or I was dead?”
You think the life of your kid means anything to government bureaucrats? You’re dirt to them. There’s a dead bear on their hands, and someone is going to pay.
Open Carry Activism
I support open carry, and support using it as a form of activism, as long as people follow the “don’t be an assclown” rule, which I think most activist tend to follow.  But I do have to say, that if a bunch of people got up an announced to the whole restaurant that they, and everyone at the whole table were all gay, I’d be pretty pissy to have my dinner interrupted over someone’s desire to attract my attention with a big steaming plate of “Don’t give a shit”.  Same goes for gun people:
The patrons at Champps, an upscale restaurant and bar chain, were eating ribs and drinking beer on a recent Saturday when customer Bruce Jackson stood up and made an announcement: He was armed, and so were dozens of other patrons.
The armed customers stood up in unison, showing off holstered pistols and revolvers. Jackson said a word or two about the rights of gun owners to carry firearms in Virginia, then thanked everyone for their attention and sat down.
To me, this violates the “Don’t be an assclown” rule, and we shouldn’t do it. Just sayin’. This just makes people think gun carriers are kooks.
Thinking About Rights
I’m really getting tired of these fascists:
Perhaps, then, the recent signs of violent times occasion an opportunity for broadening our collective sense of what ”rights” should be in terms of our social consciousness. Our political and judicial discourse would benefit from moving beyond a purely libertarian view of rights, which emphasizes freedom from governmental coercion or constraint, to incorporate also a dignitarian view of rights, which promotes freedom for the good of each other and for society as a whole. The challenge now before us is how to preserve personal independence and autonomy while also recognizing, as Prof. Mary Ann Glendon once wrote, ”that we are constituted in important ways by and through our relations with others, and that each of us develops our potential within a social network of obligations and dependencies.”
Sorry Reverend Dailey, you sir, can go to hell. Inidividual liberty and freedom is social well-being. Any government empored to create social well-being, empowered to do ulimited good, is by nature empowered to do unlimited evil. If you’d like to live in a society like that, perhaps I can suggest Venzuela, or perhaps China. But this country is founded on principles of limiting government for the sake of personal liberty, and if you don’t like that, get the hell out.