This morning on the estuary. It was 33 degrees but placid and sunny, turning the simple understructure of the pier into something complex and eye-bending.
I would have loved to stay there enjoying the beauty and avoiding work. But we had a freezing rain last night. Everything that wasn’t madly drippy was still crunchy. No sitting and relaxing; just walking. I should remember to bring a sheet of plastic to town on days like this so I can sit on the waterfront benches. Then again, days like today are so rare I don’t think about that.
—–
Since the Parkland murders I’ve had a hard time blogging. I can’t bear to make the same old arguments or listen to the same old arguments. Both the gunblogosphere and the media have been All Parkland, All the Time.
I can link to it, but I can’t be part of it.
I tell myself nobody expects me to blog about every malcontent bastard who decides to murder disarmed mobs with a gun. But after all my years as a gun-rights activist, I still expect myself at least to work up a good rant.
Yet watching the hoplophobes’ gleeful attempt to create a nationwide children’s crusade, I feel nothing. I can only look ahead, dreading the war useful idiots are unwittingly creating — a violent culture war if not outright civil war. I look ahead and think, “You do not know who you are taking on. You can’t even imagine the future you’re going to make if you succeed.”
The useful fools have no idea. Maybe they honestly believe that laws will make “bad” guns go away and mass murderers will change their minds (rather than merely their choice of weaponry). And pink unicorns will romp over rainbows throughout the land.
Our would-be masters also have no idea. Of course they know better than to believe all that peace and flowers and let’s everybody be disarmed and love each other once the Eeeeevil Guns are beaten into plowshares nonsense. But they still make a huge mistake.
Imagining themselves superior to us in wisdom, culture, and power, they fail to understand both who We the Peasants are and what skills and tech are now at our hands.
I fully understand, Claire. I’ve not written much about this mess lately either. But I did have to comment on the NRA thing… The NRA Does NOT Speak For Me https://thepriceofliberty.org/2018/02/22/the-nra-does-not-speak-for-me/
So tiresome with people screaming and scheming to control other people, and claiming to speak for them.
I have to agree. I’ve been pretty much checked out on the latest screaming match. There’s no reasoning with the grabbers and the pro-freedom side has decided to match their tactics. I look at my relatives in California and they don’t understand at all why life there is so miserable or how much worse it will get once they get the utopia they want. I use to be fairly optimistic that things were moving in the right direction (and there’s some good graphics showing the progress of shall issue and constitutional carry over the last 20-30 years), but now I fear the pendulum is swinging in the opposite direction. I fear a civil war, but some seem intent on creating one.
You summed up my feelings exactly. I recently started blogging again but I’m tired to the bone of being manipulated to rage and have no desire to echo other people’s outrage du jour. Just sifting through all the media BS has turned into a part time job.
Maybe I’m way off base. I haven’t been following this latest mass shooting that closely, but . . .
Why does no one study how many of these mass shooters were on or recently stopped taking psychiatric drugs?
Don’t many of these drugs have warnings that say they could cause either suicidal or homicidal thoughts in some people?
People scream about the NRA’s influence in prohibiting stricter gun laws and the amount of money the NRA spends lobbying lawmakers, but who spends even more than the NRA? That would be the drug manufacturers.
No major news organizations, newspapers or TV networks, have done any serious investigation into possible links between these prescription drugs and mass shootings. Who spends millions on print and TV ads? Drug manufacturers.
Who provides significant funding for drug research at our major universities? Drug makers. Do any of these universities study the effect of antidepressant or other psychoactive drugs on human behavior? We don’t know. But if they did it’s a good bet if they released any study that showed homicidal behavior as a result, that would be the end of their funding.
I am glad you spend very little time on the topic, Claire. It has almost nothing to do with the focus of your blog, and while the incident is a tragedy and a horror, it is covered ad nauseum pretty much everywhere else.
This is a nice place to visit and get a change of scenery. I like the view under your pier, and I bet there’s a geocache under there, somewhere.
Thanks for being different, because I’m sick of “all the same”.
Hi, Reno Sepulveda. I just checked your blog. Although I am neither “the NRA” nor you, these are my sentiments exactly:
https://sepulvedasrevenge.wordpress.com/2018/02/20/this-will-not-end-well/
Thanks for the reminder about the “wrong rec room.” Gotta go rent a copy of Tremors for the comic relief.
“I am glad you spend very little time on the topic, Claire.”
Thank you and blessings for that ~Qjay.
Geocaching. You know, it’s been years since I even checked what’s available around here. A friend took us gulchers geocaching when I was down in the Desert Hermitage and it was ton of fun. Useful, too. In an area where the water that comes out of the ground is undrinkable, one of the caches was up in the hills where a pure and tasty spring emerged from a hillside. Gorgeous view up there, too.
You were looking for something to paint last week I daresay you found it.
While this is a bit of a rough patch in the not so United States, I’m not worried too much about it. To put it into perspective, a few weeks ago the group who are now leading the charge were eating Tide Pods. As I have said to several of my non shooting friends, if you want to see how this is all going to turn out, the worst case scenario can be found by googling America’s war on drugs.
I’ve been spending some time, probably too much time, following the developments surrounding the shooting. At first I felt defeated because the same old tired arguments were being screamed by all the networks, pundits, politicians, and talking heads. I couldn’t see how we could hold back the popular tide…and then the information started changing. It became obvious to even the most committed anti-gunner that calling 911 helped nobody, that the police did not engage the shooter in the 5 minute eternity when he was killing kids, despite an armed guard on duty. If only SOMEBODY had a means of taking out the shooter…
Despite the astro-turf protests and staged CNN ‘town halls’, my sense of it is that the initial anti-gun impulse has muted and maybe even reversed itself. Teachers signing up for CC classes? Serious discussion of removing the ‘gun free zone’ from schools? There is a turning going on. I am hopeful.
Excellent observation, Ron Johnson. I’ve noticed that even the New York Times and other rabidly anti- media are reporting quite a bit on the cascading set of warnings that got ignored, the corruption and malfeasance from top to bottom, from the FBI to that bizarre Broward County Sheriff’s Department.
Still, I think we’re going to be facing a renewed battle, what with all those marching and manipulated students. I don’t know how much we’re going to lose, but I’m still seeing “compromise” from the powerful “friends” of the Second Amendment.
I mostly gave up the arguing a few years ago. I know where I stand and I’m a dog soldier for Liberty. They will not get my guns while I live, period. And when I die my trusted family and comrades will all know where to dig up a few guns with ammo, cleaning kits, and spare parts.
But to your point about Them not knowing who they are messing with – I would guess we ‘patrio-tizans’ (see what I did there? LOL) outnumber them probably 50 to 1 – so we only need to make it a war of attrition. And the ambush tactics Che wrote about will win that one quickly, and arm or re-arm us too.
Serious discussion of removing the ‘gun free zone’ from schools?
In 2016 I saw an article where the Texas Association of School Boards said 10 percent of Texas school districts allowed faculty to carry.
Ran across this article yesterday:
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/education/article/Armed-teachers-In-some-Texas-classrooms-the-12704933.php
“Nearly one in seven school districts across Texas allow teachers and some staff to carry concealed weapons on campus…”
10 percent –> 14 percent.
Even CNN is briefly diverting from its anti-gun agenda to call out the Broward County sheriff.
https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/27/us/parkland-shooter-cruz-sheriff-calls-invs/index.html
One thing this Florida shooting has clearly demonstrated is how limited police protection really is.
And how giving up our firearms will make us at the mercy of evil;
http://neveryetmelted.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/BrowardSheriff.jpg