Not digging it. Apparently I’m not alone in this. I used to use bloglines, but they were so unreliable, I switched over to Google Reader,which was much better. It seems like every online provider is getting into the business of fixing what ain’t broken.
Year: 2011
Megan McArdle on the Greek Referendum
If EU economic policy were a soap opera–and apparently, it is–Greece would be the sultry, irresponsible beauty in a tumultuous love-hate relationship with rigid, authoritarian Germany. Â Obviously after years of tumultuous breakups and teary reunions, this is the season finale where he finally beats the hell out of her during a screaming fight over thier impending bankruptcy, and in despair, she drives both of them, and his prize Volkswagen, off a cliff.
She doesn’t see how this will end well. I don’t either. I never quite understood why the Germans would want to be in a monetary union with basket cases like Spain, Greece and Italy to begin with.
How Being Stupid Changed His Life
Plaxico Burress speaks at Brady’s New York Gala:
“I never thought my gun would accidentally discharge”
Really? I think that’s an entirely predictable result of carrying an unholstered Glock in a pair of sweat pants. He says he no longer owns a firearm. That’s good, since I’m pretty sure he’s a prohibited person at this point.
And They Say We’re Fearful
From Eugene Kane, of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:
You can’t be flipping anybody off in the age of concealed carry, that’s for sure.
In regards to pedestrian traffic, I’m going to have to start watching for the hunched-over posture that could signal a concealed gun carrier.
Maybe a telltale bump or protrusion under their clothing. Of course, as it gets colder, that’s going to be a lot more difficult to decipher.
Who knows who’s packing heat under those puffy down jackets in the middle of January?
Thankfully, the “No Weapons Allowed in the Building” sign has been posted at my job, which was a great relief for some of us who write the kind of stories that occasionally get the public agitated.
I hate to tell you Mr. Kane, but someone intent on assaulting you has already been carrying without a permit, and that same kind of person is just going to walk right past that sign your employer posted without giving it a second thought.
I also wonder why Eugene Kane is so fearful of his fellow citizens and co-workers. Do you think as soon as you put a gun in someone’s hands they magically turn into murderers? Are people in Minnesota, which has a lower violent crime rate than Wisconsin, less safe because they have allowed shall-issue carry permits for years? What about Iowa, who’s violent crime rate is roughly the same as Wisconsin and also has shall-issue carry?
No, Eugene Kane would prefer to emulate Illinois, which has a dramatically higher violent crime rate. News flash… the criminals don’t follow the law, and don’t get permits. The only people Wisconsin’s law has been disarming are the law abiding.
Common Ground With Bigots
The gun control crowd are quick to call us radicals, despite the fact that yesterday we showed they are indeed the radicals. But apparently Crockett Keller (the TX certified instructor discussed here and here) is someone they’ll look to find common ground with:
Are there really any of us who would argue that a gun is not dangerous in the wrong hands? The problem here is that Keller thinks the wrong hands are anyone who doesn’t share his political beliefs and religious outlook.
The implication here also is that Brady agrees Keller is wrong not to offer CHL instruction to Muslims or Obama supporters. In that case I’ll find myself pleased that Brady is taking a position that runs contrary to what seems to be their normal position; that the more people we disenfranchise of their right to bear arms, the better.
Is Wisconsin Still There?
Shall-issue Concealed Carry takes effect today, and by the predictions of our opponents, the storm drains and rivers should be running a dark shade of red, and the corpses should be piling up on the sidewalks. I feel for those of you on the other side of the wire. I know it’s rough, but hang in there. Pretty soon those irresponsible and dangerous gun owners will run out of bullets for their shooting spree.
The Madison paper speaks about a change in lifestyle, but otherwise does a pretty decent job of describing the new process. Bishops in Wisconsin are concerned about people bringing weapons into church, and though they won’t force churches to post, they are asking parishioners not to carry in church. The local NBC News station actually covers the topic very well, I think. They report gun sales are way up in Wisconsin, probably as people buy pistols appropriate for concealed carry.
Our Opponents Really Are Un-American
I don’t really require someone to buy into much to consider themselves a good American. As long as you accept our basic tenants of human liberty, and foundational principles of our nation, I’m pretty open to the idea that we may disagree, but we disagree as fellow Americans. But one of those foundational principles, I think has to be that the Declaration of Independence is the moral justification for this country’s entire being. If you don’t accept the Declaration, well, then we really aren’t anything more than some misguided subjects of the British Crown. You might be an American in the sense that you were born here, but pardon me if I don’t agree you’re a good American. Such is the case with some of our opponents:
I am having a really difficult time figuring out what is so controversial about what Herman Cain is saying. Here’s the video they are so roundly criticizing:
It seems to me that Cain is speaking of “alter and abolish” in the terms of our normal democratic process of putting our government up before the people every 2 to 4 years and the people deciding whether they want to keep it or toss it.
Pardon me, but if you can watch this segment here, and think Cain is calling for every member of that audience to take up arms, and March down to Washington, and overthrow the government, you not the ones that should be calling us paranoid. You are, in fact, delusional, or just very much out of touch with the kind of crowd Cain is speaking to.
I am also comfortable in saying that if you don’t believe that Americans have the power to “alter or abolish” their government, even if it’s through peaceful means, through the ballot box, and through the hearts and minds of fellow Americans, this isn’t the country for you to be living in. If the Declaration of Independence makes you uncomfortable, I am quite fine with saying you’re a poor American. I think some of our opponents need to think long and hard about which country they belong in.
MAIG Mayor Makes Ridiculous Argument Against HR822
The Mayor of Milwaukee, and MAIG Mayor Tom Barrett says that HR822 is a bill fit for the nation’s gun traffickers:
Gun traffickers with a permit to carry concealed weapons from another state would be able to easily travel to our state with a variety of firearms in tow, and police would be unable to stop them until they actually witnessed an illegal gun sale.
Do we have evidence of a wave of gun traffickers are getting concealed carry permits? And since when can the police in Wisconsin “stop” someone for transporting a firearm with no other probable cause to believe a crime is being committed. Last I checked transporting firearms was not a crime.
This just goes to show the utter ridiculousness of MAIG and our opponents. It’s like Bloomberg is asking all his flunkies to do op-eds and the Mayor of Milwaukee decided to phone it in instead of spending any time making a serious argument.
Some Technical Difficulties
It turns out our WordPress caching plugin has been broken since we did the migration. That might help explain some of the issues I’ve been noticing with performance. It might also explain why some people weren’t seeing the posts from today while others were.
I should be fixed now, and hopefully pages should be loading a bit faster.
Let Us Review the Definition of “Assault Rifle”
Since some folks can’t seem to get it straight, and are undermining efforts to get away from the boat anchor our opponents tied around our necks, it’s worth a review:
- Can be fired from the shoulder.
- Capable of Select Fire
- Fires a cartridge of intermediate power, between a pistol and full length rifle cartridge.
- Feeds from a detachable magazine.
If any one of these aren’t true, it’s not an assault rifle by definition. Even the dictionary on this computer says:
A rapid-fire, magazine-fed automatic rifle designed for infantry use.
Last I checked, there weren’t any infantry that were issued semi-auto rifles. The fact of the matter is when people hear the word “assault” being used as an adjective to describe a noun, they are automatically going to be more inclined to agree that whatever that noun is describing ought to be banned. Assault is a crime, after all, or something you do in war. It would be interesting, for instance, to poll on “assault weapons” verses “personal defense weapon,” and see how the results differ, even though PDWs are nearly universally NFA weapons, with the exception of civilianized versions that are made carbine length and only fire semi-automatically.
The fact that we’ve not gotten to just over half of Americans opposing a ban on “assault weapons” is mostly through a decades long education among the general public, and other gun owners in particular, to make them understand the truth in the issue. Had it not been for that term, this would likely have happened much faster, and it’s questionable whether there ever would have been support enough to pass the 1994 ban in the first place.
While I’m not a huge fan of the particular term NSSF has chosen to label semi-automatic rifles that are based on military patterns, I completely understand why they feel the need to do it, and support efforts to move away from a term that automatically makes folks think of a crime. To the extent that people on our side have embraced that term, it’s done nothing but play into the hands of our opponents.
Any politician is going to take polls with a grain of salt, but they largely do this on the gun issue because they all believed the polls about how people felt about assault weapons, until they passed the ban, and many of them lost their seats over it. Even Bill Clinton acknowledges that. Maybe it’s arguable that MSR isn’t the best term… but what I don’t think is arguable is that the “assault weapon” boat anchor has been a huge problem for our side, and we should move away from that language.