You know, it’s occurred to me that the teletype stock photo I often use for this feature is probably a foreign piece of equipment to most people under forty. Maybe I should find a new one. It’s hard to believe it’s Thursday already? Where have the weeks been going? I appreciate everyone’s patience about the light volume of posts here. I have to get items off my rather lengthy “todo” list and that means working longer hours, with not much time left for blogging. But I do have quite a lot accumulated in my tabs, since last week we did not have a news post. So here goes:
Looks like if Hillary wins, we’ll be seeing more gun control through executive orders. Of course, the Obama Administration leaks that they had already looked at her ideas and decided it wasn’t feasible. I don’t even think she’ll win the nomination.
Oregon shooter purchased all his guns legally.
We should be thankful this kind of heroism still exists among our young people. It gives me hope for the future.
Baltimore is still a hell hole, so clearly that means we should try Maryland’s gun laws everywhere.
People on the left do seem to be getting a lot more honestly lately in regards to their intentions on the gun issue. Why do you think that is? Personally, I think when you get desperate, you don’t have much to lose. That’s what’s happening here. Only Bloomberg is foolish enough to spend millions to get crumbs.
More honestly from the left: “In other words, yes, we really do want to take your guns. Maybe not all of them. But a lot of them.”
The Atlantic: “Why Conservatives Mistrust Even Modest Efforts at Gun Control.”
Again, mass shootings are not on the rise.
NRA is 9 points ahead of Hillary in terms of approval ratings.
Glenn Reynolds: Obama saves himself by gunning down Democrats’ electoral chances.
More Glenn Reynolds: “In 2012, Room for Debate asked ‘Is the Gun Lobby Invincible?’ Since then, the answer has turned out to be ‘yeah, pretty much.’ And the reason is trust.“
Special forces on stupid internet filters: “Honey, we are a special forces company. We are all about workplace violence!“
How would you like your own 20MM? It’s only about 1000 dollars for each millimeter!
Don’t let anyone convince you that no one is after your guns.
Five reasons that the benefits that flow from guns far outweigh the risks inherent in guns.
How to sneak chocolate into a movie theater.
Why are anti-gunners so violent? Part MCMXVII.
Own an M1 Carbine in New Jersey, go to jail.
CSGV’s position on NSSF’s gun locks grant is too much even for the Hartford Courant.
Democrats doing what they do best: selling guns.
Eugene Volokh on guns and alcohol. There’s a lot of “something must be done” thinking in this world, for sure.
Charles C.W. Cooke takes on Saul Cornell’s argument that RKBA is a relic of the slave-owning south.
You’ll notice that you don’t ever hear about these victims in the media. Though, to be fair to the media, probably because NRA doesn’t go victim shopping after every mass shooting like Bloomberg’s people do.
Instapundit: Promise meets expiration date. No one who was paying attention back in 2008 thought Obama was telling the truth then.
McCarthy out for Speaker race. This is very good news.
The M1 carbine is banned by name in New Jersey. Amusingly, it’s either the first or second firearm my wife ever fired (at the NRA range in Virginia, and the owner was a Canadian citizen at the time.)
Interestingly, that story never says he was tried and convicted for possessing the gun. So, unless that was just left out, they’re treating him as a felon, and telling him he’s a felon, without any due process.
Yet another reason to never, ever set foot in that state. EVER.
That is weird. OTOH, it’s a slam-dunk case for the state to prosecute (unless the carbine really DOESN’T fire). Right now, he’s not a felon, he just can’t possess guns. If he pushes it, the state makes him a felon, and he STILL can’t possess guns. Sometimes you have to know when to fold them.
Or the article was sloppy reporting, one of the two.
Yeah, it’s a big ol’ sword of Damocles that’s going to be hanging over his head for the rest of his life, since felonies generally don’t have a statute of limitations (though NJ could be different – IANAL, YMMV, etc., etc.). They might choose not to prosecute now, but if he ever irritates the wrong person, or puts out an un-PC article or blog post, BOOM! Instant felony conviction.
Or it’s just sloppy reporting, which would not be at all surprising.
I would give serious consideration to visiting the state if they were issuing hunting tags for their politicians. Otherwise, yeah, I’ll stay away too.
Several times people like him have shown up at our range with Granddad’s M1 Carbine. Guys in the know quickly get them off the range and on their way home before the cops see.
The problem is that nobody would assume it’s a banned rifle since it went into production 4 years before the first actual assault rifle was designed. And, people are allowed to buy most types of ARs and M1A1s here, so who would think it?
This state sucks, I’m trying to get transferred to PA.
This is actually a reply to the post about anti-gunners on Facebook, but I’m posting it here because it’s more likely to be read here.
The anti-gunners to me are absolutely despicable vermin. So if I get any “friends” who post that shit, I *will not* defriend them.
Rather, I will record their personal info on Facebook and use it to fuck up their employment and their lives.
And if those people are your family, coworkers, or otherwise decent people, who just happen to disagree with you?
Decent people don’t side with vermin like Travis Gettys on Raw Story, who recently penned an article insinuating that all combat veterans are anti-gun and all NRA members are draft-dodging cowards.
Since the Left always wins in the end, this means that despite having been in the Marines for four years and received an honorable discharge, I will be remembered as a draft dodger.
I realize that most people who haven’t been in the military think we joined up out of pure saintliness and want nothing back except the sheer satisfaction of knowing WE DID THE RIGHT THING.
Except that I’ve been in the military, and I can tell you that despite the fact that at least in the USMC that servicemembers are braver, more noble, and in fact effectively smarter than others, we are nevertheless not infinitely tolerant angels. I would gladly give up all my VA benefits in exchange for being honored by the citizens of the nation for which I put my life on the line. Thanks to Travis Gettys, that honor is not forthcoming.
Decent my ass.
Travis Getty is a hater. Not everyone who believes in gun control arrives at their position through condescension or disdain. There’s a pretty broad spectrum of people who don’t necessarily agree with us on this issue.
Once again–thanks to the Left, in the future opinion of the public, my military service didn’t happen.
I intend to get a more or less legal, or at least not felonious, revenge. (Maybe tortable–is that a word?–but good luck at who finding the man who gave someone’s employer an anonymous phone call).
I know it was different for people in my father’s generation, but most younger people I’ve known in the military joined to pay for college. I and the defense industry thank them for their service, but I’m not sure that’s the most noble reason to sign up. IMHO it certainly doesn’t give them the right to lecture me or anyone else about not serving, which thankfully hasn’t happened yet.
From the VOX article:
“There are a few promising items there, especially when it comes to gun licensing. But taken together, this doesn’t look like an agenda that can get the US to European rates of gun deaths.”
You can’t compare Europe to the US for many reasons other than the number of guns in civilian hands. If you discount suicides (which is appropriate – those shouldn’t count), we have something like 8-9k murders a year involving guns. A very small fraction of these murderers and victims are “people without color”.
Simply put: it’s demographics, stupid.
“the teletype stock photo I often use for this feature is probably a foreign piece of equipment to most people under forty.”
Gee, d’ya think? :-)
I first encountered them in the Army fifty years ago, then made parts for them as a summer job while I was in college.
If you want to appreciate the quiet of your current printer, you should have experienced the racket when one of those teletypes was placed at the end of a hard, cinder block hallway exactly long enough to resonate at the frequency of the printing.
But having lived with NO computers, let me tell you that those teletypes dialed into a timesharing system and reading programs and data from punched paper tapes were a dream compared to pencils, paper, and slide rules.
Just some irrelevant nostalgia. . .
I vote for keeping the teletype.
This. But if you have to replace it, replace it with a telegraph key.
I like the teletype as well. I’m under 40 (even if it’s just barely), and I recognize it.
It’s amazing how many technologies that have been phased out, or in the process of being phased out, yet are still used as symbols for the advanced thing.
A brief list: incandescent light bulbs for lights (although I’m still bitter that they were banned); floppy disks for saving; rotary phone, or just the phone handset thingy, to represent calling numbers on a telephone; analog clock face for time (although analog clock faces will probably never be completely phased out)…
Heck, I would even point out that the teletype looks like a typewriter, which is easy to associate with news…
Learned FORTRAN on a half-duplex teletype on a time share system back in the early 60’s (Dad worked for Control Data). Used some archaic teletype to punch tape. Translating foreign languages in the Air Force in the early 80’s. I look fondly back on the slide rule, paper and pencil.
If I remember correctly didn’t those things operate at 110 BPS?
“How would you like your own 20MM? It’s only about 1000 dollars for each millimeter!”
And this is why I’m deeply annoyed by the “We can ban nuclear weapons, fighter jets and tanks, so why not guns?” arguments.
If I could afford a nuclear weapon, a fighter jet, or even a tank, and wanted to do horrible things, it doesn’t matter if these things are illegal: either I’ll be able to make one myself, or I’ll be able to buy one on the black market, or I could just save a lot of money and come up with my own method of destroying lives, that’s probably a lot less expensive.
As it stands, just give me the money to afford one of these things: I’ll happily get my finances in order with it, and perhaps even quit my job. (Not so much for a tank, to be sure, but at least I could pay off my student loans and purchase a house with a sizable down payment…)
And if a certain destructive device is cheap (machine guns, rocket launchers and perhaps artillery–although the latter is perhaps approaching the value of a tank), you can bet it would be just as easy to make it as it would be to acquire it on the black market…so again, there’s nothing to stop someone with modest resources and intent to do harm from acquiring them.
So make these things legal, for all I care. If I fear someone who can afford these things, I’ll fear them regardless of whether or not they are illegal!
Josh Marshall’s screed, above: t’s that support for unfettered rights to guns has grown tremendously over the last generation and politicians in most parts of the country don’t want to go up against that.
Oh, Josh.
You think we have support for unfettered gun rights?
You’ve never even heard someone suggest it, I assure you, unless you hang out on the more libertarian side of the Internet.
And I know you don’t.
(Unless someone is saying “anyone who can walk in to a store with money, minor or adult, convict or free man, should be able to walk out with a belt-fed grenade launcher and all the HE rounds on a belt he can carry”, you are not hearing support for unfettered gun rights.
Anything short of “anything you want, period, on demand”, is fettered.
I’m … okay with that, personally.
I think maybe some fetters along the lines of “gotta be an adult without a violent criminal record to buy that Mk. 19” are okay.)
All this time…I thought it was a typewriter.