Shall Not Be Questioned – Page 29 – The right of the citizens to bear arms in defense of themselves and the State …

Cameron Kasky Leaves “March for our Lives” Board

He hasn’t done a 180 on the issue, but it looks like he’s capable of humility, which is a personality trait that will serve a person well their whole life and career. That’s my big issue with Hogg: I doubt you can tell that kid anything. At 17 he already knows everything he needs to know, and you’re just a dumb adult who won’t accept his truth. I can pretty much guarantee he’ll be the same at 40.

When it comes to politics and other social topics my position is increasingly becoming, “There are no easy answers, and if you think there are, you’ve either been duped by someone, or you’re a fool who doesn’t think things through.” What bothers me on social media is not that people overshare their political opinions… it’s that the people who tend to overshare their political opinions only see things in only black and white, and have generally closed their minds that The Truth might not be so cut and dry, or might not exist at all.

It’s never as simple as “we’re right, they’re wrong” and it definitely isn’t as simple as “we’re good, and they’re evil!”

It’s not that I don’t believe in right and wrong, and good and evil: I’ve spent more than a decade defending gun rights and trying to convince people I’m right about this. But when you start talking to real people you quickly realize there’s a lot of nuance, and none of this is as easy as you think.

Through the gun rights issue, I’ve discovered I’m a poor grassroots organizer. I tried it, but I think I suck at it. I’ve come to understand that my personality and intellectual traits are better suited to logistical support than leading troops in the field. The best organizers are actually people who believe, 100%, that they are engaged in an epic struggle between good and evil, but who are more concerned about getting a team moving forward than they are about their own self-aggrandizement. The types of people who are good at organizing will tend to struggle with that balance. Certainly most great generals have. I think Hogg will flame out, if he hasn’t already, because he trends too much toward self-aggrandizement.

Cameron Kasky is starting a new podcast “Cameron Knows Nothing.” It’s a good title. If I were starting another blog now, I might have to borrow it. I’d like to tell the kid that it’ll get better with age, but if you’re the kind of person who looks around and sees shades of grey, I’m afraid that’s only going to get worse with age.

Wilson on the Lam?

Seems Cody Wilson has fled to Taiwan. Hey bud, thanks for opening up this whole can of worms and leaving the gun community holding the bag. I appreciate it. I’d say careful who you hitch your wagon to, but often when people warn of that they are working on an understanding that you can help that. Sometimes someone hitches his wagon to you, and I think that was the case here. Then your only choices are to stop pulling, or keep pulling and try to make the best of a bad situation. In politics, if you do the former, you lose. The latter is usually what ends up happening.

Apparently the girl is 16-years old, and if the investigating detective is to be believed, she looks younger than she is. They say they have video of the two at the hotel, which corroborates the victim’s story.

There are two things about Cody Wilson I have believed: first that he’s a narcissistic egomaniac who thinks the rules that apply to ordinary mortals don’t apply to him, and two that he’s a brilliant showman and provocateur. Sadly, all this fits within my understanding of him, so I’m not liable to believe this was a setup. I think events have caught up with him. There is no escaping this issue. It will come up again, hopefully with a different plaintiff. Maybe DD can hang on without Wilson, but I’m doubtful of that. My impression is that if Wilson remains on the lam, or even if he doesn’t and goes to jail, it will greatly complicate the lawsuit to defend 3D printing and sharing of technical documentation, CAD drawings, and plans. While SAF is also on the lawsuit, DD is at the center of the controversy. SAF’s standing is based on: “SAF members reside in the Defendantsâ€™ jurisdictions and seek to receive the computer files that Defense Distributed seeks to publish on the internet via its website.”

Looks Like Cody Wilson Could be Going to Jail

Breaking news, it seems:

The affidavit said a counselor called Austin police on Aug. 22 to report that a girl under the age of 17 told her she had sex with a 30-year-old man on Aug. 15 and was paid $500.

In a forensic interview on Aug. 27, the girl told authorities that she created an account on SugarDaddyMeet.com, and began exchanging messages with a man who used the username â€œSanjuro,â€ the affidavit said.

The pair messaged online, then began exchanging text messages.

â€œDuring this conversation, â€˜Sanjuroâ€™ identified himself as â€˜Cody Wilson.â€™ Victim said that â€˜Sanjuroâ€™ described himself to the victim as a â€˜big deal,â€™ â€ the affidavit said.

Sanjuro? Really? Even Anthony Weiner came up with better names for his alter egos. If there’s anything that all sides can agree on, it’s that Cody Wilson has more panache than using a name like Sanjuro.

According to the document, Wilson sent the girl images of his penis, and she sent him nude photos of herself.

Why does everyone and their mother send dick pics these days? You know what I’ve never ever done? Send a dick pic. If this is true, he could be screwed on the pictures alone if she was under 18. The age of consent in Texas is 17, and federally the pictures are a problem if she’s under 18.

This is disappointing. There are very serious First and Second Amendment issues at the heart of what Cody Wilson is doing, and this will seriously complicate things. But this issue is bigger than Wilson, and it will come to the front one way or another.

UPDATE: Just as SAF announces they are expanding their lawsuit to include Pennsylvania’s AG and Governor, among other state pols as well.

Good Article on Dana Loesch

“We are in the middle of a grand political realignment, and the S.S. Second Amendment is going to get tossed around by the storm along with everything else. When we find a new political equilibrium, I don’t know where the Second Amendment and a host of other cultural issues will be, and neither does anyone else.”

From “St. Louis”: “The making of NRA’s Dana Loesch” I would encourage everyone to read it, and maybe read it again. NRA should be very concerned about polling numbers. While I believe there’s an argument to be made that polling increasingly doesn’t work, that’s another post. It concerns me that you can trace movement in public opinion back to the point where Bloomberg really got his act together and started dumping serious money into gun control.You can see the expected spike post-Sandy Hook, but then around 2015 it really starts headed in a direction we don’t want. That also happens to coincide with NRA adopting what I’ve called the Angry Dana Strategy. Anger is only going to get you so far. People eventually tire of anger. I know I’m tired of seeing shit like this.

Look, I get it was a joke that was taken out of context.Â ButÂ what the fuck does diversity or the lack thereof on Tommy the Tank have to do with the Second Amendment, shooting, or gun rights? I’m finding I’m having to ask this question way too often these days. Who thought it was a good idea to do this? What are you smoking? This isn’t just poor judgement on Dana Loesch’s part, it took a team effort to fail this hard.Â Mockery is a lot more powerful than anger, and I’d cheer NRA shifting away from anger to mockery, but it has to work. You need people who can pull it off. It’s hard to do well. It takes sharp writers and a host that can deliver it.

Unfortunately, I don’t believe any of this is going to change as long as membership holds stable or goes up. Eventually the Angry Dana Strategy won’t hold back the tide of public opinion if Bloomberg can keep it going in his direction, and we’re all going to pay the price for that when the dam eventually breaks. NRA needs to get back to basics and start making grassroots organizing the heart of its strategy. The tools to accomplish that are a lot more powerful today than they were in the 1980s.

We are in the middle of a grand political realignment, and the S.S. Second Amendment is going to get tossed around by the storm along with everything else. When we find a new political equilibrium, I don’t know where the Second Amendment and a host of other cultural issues will be, and neither does anyone else. If Ack-Mac thinks they know, they are kidding themselves. Is NRA being lashed together with sinking ships? I don’t know.

Ack-Mac won’t get NRA through this. What can get them through it is their core membership, sometimes members, and aspirant members. But you have to do something with them. Feeding them a firehose of media isn’t organizing them.

A Big Fear of Mine

I’ve recently gotten into progressive reloading, and have several thousand rounds under my belt at the point. Enough to worry about this as a real possibility. While there are things I can get for my Hornady LnL press to boost the level of automation, a certain reduction in speed and some amount of manual steps forces me to pay more attention to what I’m doing, and offers more opportunity to catch something.

When reloading .223, I had powder stick in the mechanism and dump a light charge into one case, and then overflow the next case. Fortunately, with the powder I’m using, the charge pretty much fills the case, and all it made was a mess. But if that happened in a pistol round? Good chance I wouldn’t notice. I have Hornady’s Powder Cop, but there’s enough variation in how powder lays it would be hard to catch an overcharge. It’s useful, but not a precise instrument. It’s best, I think, for catching no-charges, which is also potentially fatal to your firearm if you plant the squib bullet in the barrel and follow up with another cartridge.

I also worry about this as a match director now. It’s not only my loads, I have to worry about the loads of the guy I’m standing behind. Shoot enough, and be around guns enough, and the law of averages will catch up with you at some point.

Feinstein v. Kavanaugh

This Should Prove the Issue Has Nothing to do With Crime and Public Safety

Bloomberg has a hit piece on the CMP, because they spread the love of shooting, to kids, and sell “hand-me-down military weapons.”

The next big payday will come later this yearÂ when CMP starts sellingÂ thousands of M1911s,Â theÂ U.S. militaryâ€™s sidearm of choice for more than 70 years.

What do you want the government to do with them? Sell them to tin pot dictators? Melt them down and make flowers? This is a win-win for the government and shooting community to sell them to shooters. The hoops that must be jumped through to get one, along with the pricing, have me reluctant to get one myself.

Also note, the CMP has never sold anything that isn’t in .30 or .22LR. Handguns are a new thing, and they are selling them as an FFL rather than under their congressional charter. But these are “military weapons” that meaningless trope trotted out by people who haven’t got a clue.

At a time when Americans are sharply divided over the place of firearms in society, the U.S. government has, in effect, subsidized the metamorphosis of CMP into a deep-pocketed, nationwide evangelist for youth gun culture.

You know, you might need those kids to fight a war for you someday, and wouldn’t it be a good idea if we had some kids that, I don’t know, knew their way around a gun and could maybe hit something they aim at? I don’t have an issue with the military selling surplus to civilian shooters. They ought to subsidize marksmanship. They depend on it. If we end up in a shooting war, everyone will depend on it. They say that’s obsolete. Says who? Who decided that?

These people are not interested in public safety. They are interested in frustrating and then ending the shooting sports and shooting culture. That’s the goal. You’d have to be blind not to see it.

Levi Strauss Being Anti-Gun is Nothing New

I haven’t worn Levi’s jeans since I was in my 20s, when I found out they donated to anti-gun causes. They were on NRA’s “blacklist” of anti-gun companies back in the day. When I do wear jeans, I wear Lee. But mostly I wear “Work Khakis” by Carthartt. They hold up pretty well even for doing real work, and they are more comfortable in the summer than jeans. The cell phone pocket is nice too.

So I can’t unfortunately announce I’ll never buy another Levi’s product again, because they are anti-gun bozos. Been riding that train for a while now.

Good Poster

To defeat I-1639 in Washington:

Labor Day Reading

I hope you find these as interesting as I did:

Fascism and the Future, Part One: Up From Newspeak

Fascism and the Future, Part Two: The Totalitarian Center

Fascism and the Future, Part Three: Weimar America

Also from the same author:

The Kek Wars, Part One: Aristocracy and its Discontents

The Kek Wars, Part Two: In the Shadow of the Cathedral

The Kek Wars, Part Three: Triumph of the Frog God

The Kek Wars, Part Four: What Moves In The Darkness

I’ve never hung out on the “chans,” so I can’t speak for how true this is, but it’s an interesting analysis. I’m not sure what I think about it yet, but it’s a damned interesting take.

One reason I haven’t been blogging as much is because everything is up in the air right now. The old order is being smashed before our eyes, and I have no idea what the new order will look like.