The right of the citizens to bear arms in defense of themselves and the State …
Via Breitbart, a story of someone whose life may have been saved by gun control. And of course there will be no consequences for the police chief or anyone else in government. Because guns cause domestic violence or something.
A restraining order is a piece of paper, and when seconds count, the police are minutes away.
Looks like islamic radicals may have made a fatal choice in the victim selection process down in Texas at a “Draw Mohammad” art exhibit featuring a number of controversial speakers, including Pam Geller and Geert Wilders. According to Gateway Pundit, ISIS is taking credit for the attack. Seen on the Internet:
There might be a Paris, Texas, but let’s get one thing straight: Texas ain’t Paris.
My favorite is this:
Remember, it’s not just guns they want to control. I find several parts of this whole fiasco disturbing. Right from the beginning of the article, DHS and FAA held a “conference was open to civilians, but explicitly closed to the press. One attendee described it as an eye-opener.” When one of those attendees (who runs a small drone shop) posted a picture and notes from the conference, DHS asked him to take it down (he complied).
Then we get to the meat of the issue – that a drone manufacturer unilaterally chose to add all of DC to their drones’ internal “no-fly” map. First, of course, that their drones have a “no-fly” map in the first place, and secondly, that “DJI is preparing an update that will increase the number of airport no fly zones from 710 to 10,000, and prevent users from flying across some national borders.” This is of course, pointless, as there are other manufacturers as the spokesam for DJI points out. Wired also points out that this won’t prevent terrorism, because there will always be workarounds, legal or otherwise.
Sebastian noted a while back about the wishes of gun-control advocates to be able to erect “no-smartgun” zones at will. It looks like their counterparts in drone control will get that wish. I can only hope that DJI gets what Smith and Wesson got from firearms enthusiasts when they kow-towed to the government.
I meant to get up a news links post yesterday, but tasks conspired against it, which seems to be happening a lot lately. At work, we had a window blow open and freeze all the pipes, which caused quite a disaster. Last week I couldn’t open my back door. Fearing the header might have failed, causing the weight from the house to fall onto the door, I went into the drywall to check. The header was fine. I think the severe dry, cold air just made the wood contract enough to jam the door. I managed to pull hard enough to get the door open, but it took a hammer to close it again. That door has always been tight, and the seal on the double pane failed years ago. It is time to replace it, which is money I wasn’t expecting to spend. Such are distractions of life, like the news:
Joe Huffman collects bigotry from the other side, something for which there is no shortage.
Gun control works! No, really, it does.
Shannon Watts is a propagandist, not an activist. She’s honestly not very good, and prone to making gaffes and mistake. If it wasn’t for Bloomberg’s money, I wouldn’t be too worried about her.
Apparently Governor Wolf’s pick to run the Pennsylvania State Police is already generating controversy. It’s worth noting that this office has, in the past with hostile Democratic administrations, been used to screw with gun owners.
What’s that? Associating with Bloomberg is bad for a Democrat’s political aspirations? Who would have guessed.
Bring handguns back to Britain!
Turning out for Constitutional Carry in Idaho.
Shocking: Some lawmakers who are friendly to the Second Amendment are (gasp!) active NRA members.
SCOTUSBlog takes a look at Henderson v. United States. A gun case, but not a Second Amendment case, at least not directly.
John Richardson has more on the M855 ban.
Tam: “It was within my lifetime (albeit barely) that you could order an actual 20mm anti-tank rifle in the mail with less drama than buying a packet of Sudafed today.” Also, “Might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb.”
Yes! Next question.
Eugene Volokh: Open Carry v. Announced Carry. I’ve also thought there might be stronger First Amendment protection for open carry than Second, given that the courts take the former more seriously than the latter.
Off Topic:
What ISIS Really Wants. A very excellent piece of journalism from The Atlantic. If you haven’t read it yet, you should.
Glad to read the French police managed to successfully storm the hostage locations with minimal loss of non-terrorist life. One starts to worry when one sees pictures like this:
I’m really hoping that’s just how the camera angle looks and that cop isn’t actually pointing his rifle at the head of the other cop keying his mic. Either way, nice shooting on the part of the French Police.
UPDATE: Ooops… I thought these were Gendarmes, but the decal on the hood says “Police Nationale,” who are the other French national police.
From Richard Fernandez. To be honest, I’m haunted by this conundrum:
One of the notable things about the Charlie Hebdo terror attack in Paris was how swiftly it was carried out. “It lasted five minutes,†said one witness. The cops were already there — guarding the newspaper offices. Two of the cops were killed.
The assailants gained admittance by forcing a cartoonist to enter the door security code at gunpoint. A large percentage of people — maybe nearly everyone — would have done the same thing, yielded to that threat, in a moment of fear. A certain smaller percentage, perhaps 2 to percent, would for some reason refuse; and refuse unreasonably without quite knowing why. Which of the two groups one belongs to nobody knows until the day.
Read the whole thing. I would think that an outfit as threatened as Charlie Hebdo would have anticipated a scenario where a code is entered, but where an enterer could indicate it was entered under duress. But that would probably require more depth of defense than 21st century French society is capable of providing. I still want o know whether the police assigned were armed police. I’ve heard multiple reports, I don’t know how credible, of police responding, but not having weapons to deal with it, could not confront the situation.
There are plenty of jurisdictions in this country that are just about, if not more gun free than Paris. Jim Geraghty notes:
We watch chilling scenes like that and wonder whether a small group of Islamist terrorists could do the same here. One might figure that the much higher rate of gun ownership among Americans makes it likely that any attempted attack would face armed response from ordinary citizens much quicker. (Two policemen were among those killed in the Paris attack.)
But this was an attack on a satirical magazine, in the country’s biggest city and capital. How many people in media offices in New York City or Washington, D.C. own guns and carry them with them to work?
I have little doubt the Islamists are noting the non-reaction to brunch interruption in polite society in the blue model cities. A similar attack in New York City would be just as effective.
I know I’m jumping the gun a bit, but let’s face it, we celebrate the New Year when the clock ticks over, and then nurse hangovers on the actual holiday. I’m glad to see 2014 go, and am optimistic that 2015 is going to be pretty good.
No champagne for us tonight. I don’t really like champaign. Back in November I made a Belgian Wit and a German Hefeweizen. Both have been in secondary for a few weeks, so today I kegged the brew and force carbonated it. It’s chilling and settling now.
I’m only mildly satisfied with both. The hefeweizen lacks body, and is too watery. I probably should have fermented it at a higher temperature. I also had problem with yeast viability pitching. I’ll have to make some more attempts at this style. The Wit is better, but I think I’d prefer a more citrusy profile. The bitter citrus rinds they sell in the home-brew shop aren’t quite up to making the right flavor, I think.
So, we have had two cases recently of police officers who committed homicide in the line of duty and were later not indicted by grand jury. And we have heard a clamor that they should have been tried anyway, that the grand jury process in both cases was unusually deferential to the officers (in contrast to the process in which a regular citizen’s actions are judged by a grand jury), and that “it should be settled in court!”
My question for those people clamoring for a trial is: What makes you think the result will be any different, save that a vaster amount of money will be spent?  Regardless of the unusual deference given to the officers in the grand jury process in these cases, an actual trial in front of an actual jury will give them even more deference. It only takes a majority of a grand jury to indict, but it takes a unanimous petit jury to convict. And the usual financial and temporal difficulties experienced by  defendants not employed as police officers will not apply – their defenses will be paid for not out of their own pocket, but by the same taxpayer who is paying to prosecute them. The prosecutor will be the same one who presented the case in front of the grand jury and supposedly softballed it.
In short, what do they expect from a trial that they didn’t get from the grand jury at a much lower expense and effort?
(The cynic in me says “another 6 months of media frenzy.”)
This isn’t gun related, and it’s not really a case of true over-criminalization (though it easily could be if the state wanted to go after the family for truancy caused by the school), but it’s still something that pisses me off about the nanny culture getting its panties in a twist over any type of non-conformity.
If you’re a school administrator, there are some battles worth fighting. Students who fight, drug or alcohol abuse that impacts the school environment, and maybe even a few slaps on the wrist for overly revealing clothing. Then there are things that aren’t actually disruptive to anyone other than a tight ass who feels an absurd need to punish those who do not engage in groupthink. The principal of Muscle Shoals, Alabama appears to be one of those people.
He kicked out a girl for dying her hair red. Yup, red. Not purple, not blue, not green, not glittery silver, just red.
For the record, those other colors were all colors that I dyed my hair in high school without ever disrupting the school. The closest you might consider a disruption was at the end of my junior year when the school newspaper used me for a trivia question and asked what my normal hair color really was, and no one could remember so they kept asking me throughout the day. Yup, that’s the extent of “disruption” that hair color caused.
Her mother seems to understand how to distinguish between actual problematic behavior in teens and a bottle of red hair dye:
“I dyed my hair when I was her age. I was excited it was that, [that] it wasn’t a tattoo that she wanted or piercings, or something. There are so many girls that do it and there could be worse things. As long as she’s a good student, hair is the least of my worries.”
I framed things the same way to my mom when she was initially skeptical of my blue hair experiment. I could do drugs. I could engage in risky sexual activity. I could get myself arrested. I could “rebel” in any number of harmful ways. Instead, I was an honor student goodie two shoes who rarely did anything against the rules and I just dyed my hair. Hair that grows back. Hair that can be dyed back.
Even though I said at the beginning that this isn’t related to gun issues, I think I need to take that back a bit. The principal’s inability to handle a student who dyes her hair red is engaged in the same kind of thinking of not knowing how to distinguish between a real disruption or threat and something that’s just a little bit outside of the lines of “group” behavior that leads to actions like Six Flags banning veterans wearing military-themed shirts from their parks because the military shirt has a firearm. I’m not sure how you fix that kind of stupid by people who simply refuse to think critically and use a little common sense.
