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The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities. - Ayn Rand "I don't just want gun rights... I want individual liberty, a culture of self-reliance....I want the whole bloody thing." KdT
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Wahabism Delenda Est    
Hey, FEC!  BITE ME! I'm a Member of the McCain-Feingold INSURRECTION!    "Jeez, Kevin... calling you an asshole would be a huge understatement, wouldn't it?" -Jack Cluth, The People's Republic of Seabrook (Coming from you, Jack, it's an honor.)  email: gunrightsAT comcastDOTnet INVITATION: If you have never shot a firearm, regardless of your position on the right to arms, and if you live near or visit the Tucson, AZ metropolitan area, I invite you to go shooting for a day. I will provide the arms, ammunition, targets, safety equipment, range fees and instruction. All you have to do is show up. 4 Takers To Date DO YOU LIVE SOMEWHERE ELSE and want to try shooting? Click HERE   Proud Gun-blogging member of the Pajamahadeen since May, 2003!
Debates: "The Commentary" A OLD discussion on gun control between me and an Irishman living in London Start here. UPDATED! Now with archive! Post #1 by Alex, a Guest A multi-post discussion hosted here at TSM My short exchange with Professor Saul Cornell of the Second Amendment Research Center Best Posts: The "Rights" Discussion: What is a "Right?" What is a "Right"? Revisited, Part I Part II Rights, Morality, Idealism & Pragmatism, Part I Part II Part III Part IV The United Federation of Planets Is the Government Responsible for Your Protection? Part I & Part II 1975 in Washington, D.C. vs. 2004 in Canton, Ohio Go Ahead, Rely on the Government for Your Protection The Other Side Liberal vs. Conservative: Both are Necessary The Blog that Ate Poughkeepsie Updated and restated as: Of Laws and Sausages Militias A Mistake a Free People Get to Make Only Once This is NOT What I Wanted to Read TRUST The Lying "News" Media, Pt. II Say WHAT? Bias? What Bias? Agenda? What Agenda? The Church of the MSM and the New Reformation Let's See if I Can "Germinate an Intelligent Thought" Here The ACLU Hasn't Changed its Tune They Never EVER Stop It is Not the Business of Government Five Reasons Why It ISN'T They Keep Making Better Fools Five Month Investigation, 10 Tracer Rounds, Two Felony Convictions That Sumbitch Ain't been BORN! On Guillotines and Gibbets England Slides Further Towards Bondage Pressing the "RESET" Button Freedom's Just Another Word for Nothin' Left To Lose A Terrible Resolve The Courts Will Not Save Us Trilogy: The Road to Hell is Paved with Good Intentions "Game Over, Man. Game Over." An Important Question And the denouement: Hudson Was Wrong The Dangerous Victims Trilogy: "(I)t's most important that all potential victims be as dangerous as they can" Violence and the Social Contract Governments, Criminals, and Dangerous Victims In the same vein: Those Without Swords Can Still Die Upon Them The True Believers Trilogy: True Believers March of the Lemmings Reasonable People Also in the same vein: Tough History Coming Technical Dissertations Why Ballistic Fingerprinting Doesn't (And Won't) Work Spin, Spin, Spin Speaking of Teddy Kennedy... This is the Kind of Thing That REALLY IRRITATES ME Questions from the Audience?
BLOGROLL:
PROTESTWARRIOR Some people who are taking the fight to the Left. And some GREAT T-shirts, too. DAILY READS I need a longer day! Day by Day InstaPundit Lileks' The Bleat Kim du Toit Mostly Cajun View from the Porch Of Arms and the Law TFS Magnum Ravenwood's Universe Irons in the Fire Say Uncle TRUE EXCELLENCE American Digest The Belmont Club The Volokh Conspiracy Michael Yon Varifrank Eject!Eject!Eject! Eternity Road Oleg Volk Personal Effects ON INDEFINITE HIATUS USS Clueless The Safety Valve Ipse Dixit The Lopsided Poopdeck Acidman (RIP) Skywritings Publicola D.C. Thorton Smoke on the Water OTHER GUN/RIGHTS BLOGS Airborne Combat Engineer AlphaPatriot Alphecca American Dinosaur A Day in the Life of an Ambulance Driver The Anarchangel The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler Argghhh! The Bitch Girls Boots and Sabers The Breda Fallacy Call Me Ahab Carnaby Fudge Clayton Cramer Cogito Ergo Geek Countertop Chronicles Cowboy Blob Critical Mastiff Cryptic Subterranean FreedomSight From the Heartland Fun Turns to Tragedy!!! The Geek with a .45 Gunwatch Heartless Libertarian Hell in a Handbasket Individ Justin Buist's Blog The LawDog Files Lead and Gold Les Jones Live from the (upper) Texas Gulf Coast Mad Ogre The Michael Bane Blog Moral Flexibility Mr. Completely Murdoc Online The Munchkin Wrangler Ninth Stage No Looking Backwards No Quarters Oscar Poppa Outrageous Malfunction Pass the ammo Posse Incitatus Random Nuclear Strikes Reasonablenut Resistance is Futile! Sandcastles and Cubicles SlagleRock's Slaughterhouse Snowflakes in Hell Surly Curmudgeon Texican Tattler The Ten Ring South Park Pundit Triggerfinger The View From North Central Idaho Vox The War on Guns Weck Up To Thees! Wince and Nod Xavier Thoughts .45 Caliber Justice BLOGGERS I'VE MET A Keyboard and a .45  
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Saturday, July 19, 2008 Global Warming Slaughters Baby Penguins! In another Associated Press story (no link - on purpose), it is reported that "Hundreds of baby penguins swept from the icy shores of Antarctica and Patagonia are washing up dead on Rio de Janeiro's tropical beaches." The horror!! What's causing this eco-disaster?!?! Why, we are, of course! Several possible causes are listed by various "experts": overfishing, causing the penguins to have to range further out to find food; oil pollution from offshore drilling platforms. But no, according to one biologist: I don't think the levels of pollution are high enough to affect the birds so quickly. I think instead we're seeing more young and sick penguins because of global warming, which affects ocean currents and creates more cyclones, making the seas rougher.This man obviously stays on top of the latest scientific research in the field of Global Warming! Here's a hint: The oceans are not warmer, there aren't more cyclones. Labels: Environmentalism, media | Interesting Excerpt... ...from the WSJ piece on Alan Gura linked below: The court's close division meant that Mr. Gura needed the vote of Anthony Kennedy. Most court-watchers consider him the least predictable justice, but not Mr. Gura: "I received a lot of grief from people about Justice Kennedy going into the argument. We were told that we were not responsible, gambling on the views of this one justice who might be completely inscrutable and unpredictable. . . .However, Kennedy voted against Suzette Kelo in Kelo v New London. He even wrote a concurring opinion in that case. Almost always isn't always. Labels: miscellaneous | Quote of the Day For decades the Second Amendment might as well have been called the Second-Class Amendment. The U.S. Supreme Court spent the late 20th century expansively interpreting the First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth and Eighth amendments, not to mention unenumerated rights ranging from travel to sexual privacy. But not until last month did the court hold that the Second Amendment means what it says: that "the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed." - James Taranto, How a Young Lawyer Saved the Second Amendment(h/t - Dave Hardy) Labels: QotD | Friday, July 18, 2008 Just Like Us Only Better The AP reports (no link - on purpose) that former "Only One" and current actor Dennis Farina was given a sentence of up to two years probation and a fine of $1,991 for accidentally attempting to take a loaded .22 caliber pistol in his briefcase onto a commercial flight on May 11 of this year. According to the story, "while on probation" Farina cannot own or carry a gun. I'm curious; did the law under which he was sentenced allow for imprisonment for more than one year? Because under 18 USC section 922(g)(1) "any person who has been convicted in any court of, a crime punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year" loses his or her right to arms. As the law expresses it: It shall be unlawful for any (such) person ... to ship or transport in interstate or foreign commerce, or possess in or affecting commerce, any firearm or ammunition; or to receive any firearm or ammunition which has been shipped or transported in interstate or foreign commerce.That would pretty much mean you can't touch a gun or ammunition. Ever again. He pled guilty to "a misdemeanor charge of bringing a weapon into a secure area at Los Angeles International Airport." According to the AP, in exchange for his guilty plea the charges of carrying concealed and carrying a loaded weapon were dropped. I'm pretty sure those were felonies. Anybody taking bets on how Joe or Jane Average would have been treated? Labels: law | Quote of the Day Obama is a three-year senator without a single important legislative achievement to his name, a former Illinois state senator who voted "present" nearly 130 times. As president of the Harvard Law Review, as law professor and as legislator, has he ever produced a single notable piece of scholarship? Written a single memorable article? His most memorable work is a biography of his favorite subject: himself. - Charles Krauthammer, Who Does He Think He Is? | A Gunblogger First Blogiversary New Jovian Thunderbolt celebrates his first blogiversary today, and possibly his 25,000th site visit. So drop on over and wish him well. I hear there's cake and ice cream! | Thursday, July 17, 2008 Quote of the Day RTWT. I mean it. Labels: Leviathan, linkery, politics | A Concise History Lesson Fran Porretto has penned an excellent (what else?) thumbnail essay on the path the Democrat party took from its "classical liberal" roots to its "progressive" posture today in The Devolution Of Liberalism. Strongly recommended. Labels: Leviathan, linkery, politics | Public Housing, Public Transit, Public Bathrooms... Seattle sells 5 of its troubled toilets on eBay (The AP can sue me.)As of Thursday evening, still no bids. Hey, I know! Let's let the government run health care! Labels: heath care, Leviathan, snark | Wednesday, July 16, 2008 Why Michael Ramirez Wins Pulitzer Prizes
This is Ramirez's cartoon for today from Investor's Business Daily. Click on the link. Thursday's cartoon is even better. Hell, I'll post that one too:
Barack Obama should in no way be upset about the cartoon that depicts him as a Muslim extremist, because you know who gets upset about cartoons? Muslim extremists.No wonder the LA Times fired him. He made everyone else there stare into a mirror. (h/t Power Line) | It's Like Something from a Science Fiction Novel! As I mentioned recently, I finished Michael Crichton's latest novel Next over the weekend. Much like his previous novel debunking global warming hysteria, State of Fear, Crichton is out to raise awareness about something, and has written a damned good book to do it. In this case Crichton's ire is raised by the way the biological sciences are being abused by government, industry, and even (perhaps especially) research universities. Holding a special place in his catalog of horrors is the law allowing the patenting of individual genes, as though the people who figure out what the particular genetic coding does are somehow responsible for writing that code. He goes on about this at length at his website. I invite you to read his 2007 essay, Patenting Life, and this list of topics brought up in Next. What inspired this post, however, is the fact that throughout Next Crichton interspersed little "press releases" - a page or two as though torn from today's newspaper of stories concerning genetics. I kept looking for a URL so I could pull them up online. I have no idea if they were real or simply figments of his imagination, but I could recall some similar things that I had read and heard. In yesterday's USAToday was another one - this Reuter's report that could have begun any chapter in Next: Study finds genetic link to violence, delinquencyThe story goes on for another two pages. I've quoted several times in the past a bit from Grim's Hall on the topic of young men and violence: Very nearly all the violence that plagues, rather than protects, society is the work of young males between the ages of fourteen and thirty. A substantial amount of the violence that protects rather than plagues society is performed by other members of the same group. The reasons for this predisposition are generally rooted in biology, which is to say that they are not going anywhere, in spite of the current fashion that suggests doping half the young with Ritalin.According to this report, the other half (or more) is genetic. It's not their fault! They have a disease! Anyone want to bet what the reaction would/will be if someone suggests that the reason young black men in America die of homicide at six times the rate of the rest of the population is genetic? Anybody want to bet what would happen if they developed an embryonic screening test for these genes? In Next there is a scene where a group of genetic scientists and marketing people at a biotech firm are brainstorm over naming the gene they have decoded that controls (they think) sociability. I can just picture sociology professor Guang Guo and his team brainstorming "the CRIME GENE!" Edited to add this Charlie Rose interview that I found on YouTube. It's 56 minutes long: Labels: Brave New World, media, miscellaneous | Tuesday, July 15, 2008 Global Warming: Is There NOTHING it Can't Do? I've got a little unexpected time this morning, so at breakfast I scanned the free copy of USAToday that was waiting outside my door. The headline that struck me first was this: Global warming may raise kidney stone riskNo, I'm not kidding. The story states: Global warming could do more than hurt polar bears: It could force a rise in kidney stones, scientists warned Monday.In tomorrow's paper Chicken Little will be quoted stating that the sky is falling - also backed by a report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and an SUV will be indicted for deliberately killing its passengers in a rollover. GM will be named as a co-conspirator. Labels: Environmentalism, media | Monday, July 14, 2008 NO BLOG FOR YOU! I'm up in Tempe, AZ on a project for a couple of days. Won't be much in the way of blogging going on while I'm up here. Sorry. New visitors are invited to peruse the "Best Posts" on the left sidebar <------- over there, and old visitors are invited to peruse the archives. You kids! Off the lawn!! Labels: blogging, free ice cream | Remember to Pay Your Domain Fees! Somebody at Wilson Combat has some 'splainin' to do! UPDATE: Looks like it's fixed now. Move along folks, nothin' to see here. Labels: guns, miscellaneous | Quote of the Day If you pay eleven million dollars for a photograph of a still-living human, you should do a half-gainer into the Soylent Green tank without being pushed, simply out of shame. - Tam, The end times are nigh. | What in Hell... ...were the editors of The New Yorker thinking?
| Sunday, July 13, 2008 Of the Kind in Common Use... (Bumped. Eric's taking orders for one more week. 7/21 is the cutoff date.) It is time once again for one of our favorite T-shirts to re-enter production. Please read the following: OK, guys and gals, I have gotten a lot of emails in the past few months about people wanting Kalashnikitty shirts and have decided to do up another special run.Remember: THE SMALLEST MINORITY IS NOT INVOLVED IN THE SALE OF THESE SHIRTS. I just provide advertising space for Eric. All communication needs to be with Eric. Labels: Kalashnikitty | Quote of the Day She knows what she is doing. A lawyer who goes to the shooting range. The worst kind. - Michael Crichton, Next, pg. 500A great quote from one of the more disturbing novels I've read this year. Hell, this decade. | Saturday, July 12, 2008 No, They Don't. Dr. Helen links to this interesting PJM column by Mike McNally, Teaching Human Rights to Toddlers. Here's the portion I take exception to: According to the UK's Telegraph, the project "will see teachers explaining to children as young as three that people across the world live different lives but everyone has a right to food, water, and shelter."No. They don't. If they did, some other entity would be obligated to provide them. They have the right to seek food, water, and shelter, but no inherent right to have them. Further down in McNally's piece comes this gem of observation: Parents reading about this new obsession with teaching “rights” could be forgiven for thinking that schools should focus on doing a better job of teaching the existing three R’s before adding a fourth to the syllabus. Because, while a decade and more of bar-lowering by Labour has led to more British pupils leaving school with more paper qualifications every year, anecdotal evidence from universities and employers suggests that educational standards are plummeting.Robert Heinlein published Starship Troopers in 1959, and from it came this canny observation: The basis of all morality is duty, a concept with the same relation to group that self-interest has to individual. Nobody preached duty to these kids in a way they could understand -- that is, with a spanking. But the society they were in told them endlessly about their 'rights.'Looks like we're still right on schedule. UPDATE: Rachel has another example of a society where children are told endlessly about their rights, and nothing about their duties. ‘You can't touch us, we're 15, we can do what the f*** we like.Heinlein would be so proud... Labels: books, Education, EUtopia, linkery | Tony Snow has Died I can't bring myself to go look at the vicious gloating from the Nutroots. Sometimes I really can hate my fellow man. UPDATE 7/14: Patterico looked in the LA Times online comments. Labels: politics | Thursday, July 10, 2008 Weaker Ideas Kim du Toit has an excellent education post up at Geopoliticus, The "Power" Elite, inspired by the piece from which I got last Saturday's Quote of the Day, and another piece from Pajamas Media by Mary Grabar that I strongly recommend as well. Kim's pretty insistent that you read both before his essay. I concur. Read 'em all. I have one quibble. Professor Grabar says (and Kim quotes): I blame it on women, specifically those women who, instead of working their ways into the club through rules of evidence, common values, and objective scholarship, have pushed in their alternate “ways of knowing.” The feminization of education has led to the idolization of Oprah. In the matriarchal upheaval in the academy, the great works of the canon that draw from our Western tradition, like Milton’s majestic Paradise Lost, are replaced by crudely rendered emotive investigations into oppression, like Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper,” or any of the “multicultural” offerings in the latest anthology.My only quibble is that it didn't begin with women in academia. The denigration of reason began with Kant - a point Ayn Rand made, in her own inimitable way, repeatedly. | Quote of the Day America is the last thing standing between humanity's intact testicles and the quivering blade of liberalism. - Rachel Lucas, No. You cannot possibly be serious.I wish I could write like that. | Wednesday, July 09, 2008
Quote of the Day Some people go through life thinking there's a halo over their heads when that glowing ring they see is actually the sphincter of their own eternal asshat. - Pugs of WarThe majority of them go into politics. | Tuesday, July 08, 2008 The IBMeraphim* In other good news this week, my * - "IBMeraphim" is a term from the five-book series by David Drake and S.M. Stirling, The General. If you've read them, you understand. If you haven't, I don't think I can explain it to you in less than 5,000 words, so I won't even try. | | |
