Shall Not Be Questioned – Page 1668 – The right of the citizens to bear arms in defense of themselves and the State …

Public Schools Teach Valuable Life Lessons?

Dr. Helen writes about gifted kids in public schools:

It seems to me that the main source of socialization for many kids, especially smart ones in public school, is found in learning how to cope with the egos of teachers who can’t teach and other kids who are uninterested in learning anything beyond dominating the social hierarchy.

I don’t think we can discount the value of this lesson, because, let’s face it, one could easily say:

It seems to me that the main source of ~~socialization~~ frustration for many ~~kids~~ adults, especially smart ones in ~~public school~~ the corporate world, is found in learning how to cope with the egos of ~~teachers~~ managers who can’t ~~teach~~ manage and ~~other kids~~ worthless petty coworkers, who are uninterested in ~~learning~~ contributing anything useful beyond dominating the social hierarchy.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.Â I often find myself thinking that 95% of the people who occupy professional positions aren’t really doing much beyond consuming oxygen and turning into more greenhouse gases.Â I think that’s a good lesson for kids to learn early, so they are prepared to deal with it when they get into the “real world”.

Defense of Others

CNN has an odd but interesting defense of other story:

A man says he broke into an apartment with a cavalry sword because he thought he heard a woman being raped, but the sound actually was from a pornographic movie his upstairs neighbor was watching.

“Now I feel stupid,” said James Van Iveren, who has been charged in the case. “This really is nothing, nothing but a mistake.”

According to a criminal complaint, the neighbor told police that Van Iveren pounded on the door and kicked it open without warning February 12, damaging the frame and lock.

I don’t honestly think charges in this case are appropriate. A reasonable person, hearing what sound like screams of help coming from a neighboring apartment, I think is perfectly justified in doing something here, even if I wouldn’t do exactly what Mr. Van Iveren ended up doing. I think Van Iveren is civilly liable for the damage he caused, but what he did should not be criminal, and society ought not encourage the “don’t get involved, let the professionals deal with this” mentality that prevails among government officials.

This does illustrate the risks we face in coming to the defense of others; it’s something we do at our legal peril. I think the real lesson here is that if you like loud, screaming pornos, keep the volume down.

I see Bitter is running the same story, from a different source.

UPDATE: Bitter updates on the post linked above that it turns out it’s not particularly screeching porn, which I suppose would make a difference.Â At the very least, this should keep things interesting for whoever ends up on that jury :)

Today’s Dilbert

Check out today’s Dilbert!Â What makes it funny for us is that Dogbert could be working for Sarah Brady or Josh Sugarman, and it will stillÂ be perfectly valid.Â The sad thing is, crap like that probably actually happens on a regular basis.

The Not Quite Apology Interview

Smallest Minority has a long but also rather good post up with a transcript of part of Jim Zumbo’s interview with Tom Gresham.Â Â IÂ pretty much agree withÂ Kevin’s take on it.Â As I mentioned yesterday, Zumbo can still make it up to me, because I can forgive ignorance on the political aspect of this issue.Â But outright anti-gun sentiments I can’t abide by.Â Being a hunter doesn’t get you a free pass there.

“People are often stupid”…

… and “Bureaucrats are the same stupid people, with bad incentives.”

So says Megan, referencing an earlier post:

Which brings up one of my perennial peeves about people advocating national health insurance or any other big programme: they point out all the ways in which public choice problems make the current system suck, and then proceed to outline their future plans as if those problems will somehow magically fall away in their system. Companies won’t lobby. Voters won’t demand that every stupid alternative procedure they can complain about be covered, much less react to the lack of a price signal by using more of everything. People employed in that sector won’t band together to keep wages high and productivity as low as possible. Bureaucrats won’t shift priorities to minimizing their own political risk, rather than maximizing the level of service provided to the public.

Both her first and second observations I think are quite good.Â I’d also recommend reading the original Tyler Cowen post linked to if you follow the last link to the quoted post.

I don’t talk much about health care because it’s one of those subjects where I don’t trust anyone who tells me they have a good solution to the problem.Â The more I understand about the problem, the less I think I understand it, and the less I think anyone else understands it either. Â This is, of course, going to naturally make me skeptical about government solutions to the problem.

History of Maryland Concealed Weapon Laws

Clayton Cramer has a good history of Maryland’s concealed carry history up on his site.Â As one might expect, the roots of this law, like most other southern states prohibitions against carrying weapons, were aimed squarely at blacks, and were rarely enforced against whites.

They Can Have My Lightbulbs…

… when they pry them from my cold, dead hands:

[Australian] Federal Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull this morning announced standard incandescent light bulbs would be phased out within three years in a bid to reduce energy consumption.

“We are introducing new energy efficiency standards and these old lights simply won’t comply, they will be phased out and basically over a period of time they will no longer be for sale,” Mr Turnbull said.

What about sockets that won’t take compact flourescence? I like my halogen spotlights, thank you. What about the fact that those flourescent bulbs make me feel like I’ve been institutionalized? Not that it’s really a concern for those in power, because all that matters is that we’re unable to make choices for ourselves, at least not the “right” choices.

I really hope we can move to Mars eventually, because honestly, it’s just not going to stop until government runs every aspect of our lives. Oh sure, you’ll still have some freedoms, except the most important one: choice.

I Do Believe Bloglines Is Working Again

It’s hard to tell if it’s because the 20th has come and gone (confirming my theory that it was my accidentally post-dated posts and comment that scrozzled the Bloglines), or if Bloglines did something.Â If bloglines did something, thanks.Â But I’m thinking it was probably the post dating and subsequent corrections that confused Bloglines into not updating its feed for my blog.

In other news, I’m liking my MacBook Pro enough that I’m considering getting myself a desktop Mac Pro and running the blog off that, and decommissioning the old Linux server.Â It’s not that I don’t like Linux anymore, it’s just the differences between MacOS and Linux are pronounced enough that it makes going back and forth painful.

They are both Unix underneath anyway, though it’s taking some getting used to going back to the BSD universe, where I have to do ps -aux instead of ps -ef to get a process list, and no longer have things like /proc.Â Plus, true to its NeXTStep roots, I see MacOS still retains NetInfo, which always seemed to me to be NIS written by aliens.

MacOS X is pretty cool, but it’s basically NeXTStep running on top of BSD with a nicer user interface on top of it :)

Thanks For the Heads Up

The Ten Ring points out what may turn out to be a bit of floor saving advise on the Walther P-38:

You could chamber a round and then flip the safety decocking the hammer. (Given the state of Germanyâ€™s wartime production, I recommend that you donâ€™t try this feature unless youâ€™re at a range with the muzzle pointing in a safe direction.)

I wasn’t aware the safeties on late war models were a problem, and I planned to pick up a P-38 on the C&R license at some point.Â I doubt I would have ever tried to use the de-cocker on a loaded pistol, since I’m interested in this pistol as a collector rather than carry piece.Â But it’s good to know not to ever try ahead of time.

We Still Need Hunters

Michael Bane asks where we go from here as the new masters of the shooting community. My answer is we need to reach out to the hunters, because, while we’re big enough to get the industry to pay attention to us, we still need hunters because of their numbers, the amount of money spent that crosses over to ours, and the generally positive image the public has of hunting.

The black rifle shooting community has made itself known as a force, and we should be happy about that, but it’s time to reach out to hunters and outdoor writers and make sure they understand how the makeup of the shooting sports is changing, and how that affects our respective issues.

Jim Zumbo grew up in a world where more people hunted, and the idea of someone coming after his deer rifle was absurd. That world is gone. One only has to look at what’s happened in states like New Jersey, Massachusetts and California to see that if you like things that go boom, whether you like shooting deer or paper with them, the anti-gun people are coming after you. That might seem far away in Wyoming, but look at this:

Caroline alleges that a gun ban in Washington D.C. has unarmed its law abiding citizens but allowed its criminal to remain armed. The result is a high rate of criminal activity in DC. The answer to that is that no ban will be effective unless it is national in scope and is diligently enforced.

And in virtually all of these hostile jurisdictions, they came after black rifles first, then went after other things. Oh sure, you might get to keep your deer rifle for a while, but they’ll keep making it harder, more burdensome, and more expensive, until most people give up the hobby, leaving us with so little political power, that it won’t be hard to convince legislators to come for that eventually too, or outlaw hunting. Don’t think we’re just paranoid extremists with delusional fantasies, and that it can’t happen, because it’s happened elsewhere.

So what do we do? This is where I’ll suggest some heresy; that we start with Jim Zumbo. He has tremendous reach within the hunting community, and if he can be brought back from the dark side, he could be really useful for outreach to hunters. So I’ll put a challenge out there to Jim: help us spread the message to hunters on the importance of working to preserve our second amendment rights, and I mean everyone’s, whether you shoot an AR-15 at paper or a Winchester at a deer, an AR-15 at varmint, or keep a Glock in the nightstand for self-defense; tell hunters of the importance of this struggle, because both our futures depend on helping each other out with our respective issues. We don’t have the numbers to stand alone. Do that, Jim, and I’ll happily forgive and forget, and I think a lot of other people will too.