As soon as I post this, I’m going to make Thursday’s “bad” post public again. If clever people and hobby-horse riders want to make the comment section All About Them, that’s on their heads, not mine. Your encouragement, good cheer, and wisdom delivered via email and via comments on yesterday’s apology post helped me get over myself. (The irony was not lost on me that I squealed like a little girl over comments on a post titled “Live Boldly.” It was amazingly nice of y’all not to mention that. 🙂 ) I’m still going to take a week off. I…
Category: Guns and Gun Rights
Of course.
This is a companion piece to Tuesday’s “Live deliberately.” Part I defines the problem. Part II is a challenge to become the solution.
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Twenty years ago, when the Internet was barely a thing, Jeffrey R. Snyder set Fidonet and Usenet groups afire with his essay, “A Nation of Cowards.”
Snyder demolished the then-common advice, “Don’t resist criminals. Just give them what they want. Your life is more valuable than your property.” He wrote in no uncertain terms that meek submission diminishes and devalues life. And personal character. And culture. He went on to nail virtually all “gun control” as hokum. Elitist hokum. Deadly hokum.
The 9/11 hijackings (in which the majority of those airline passengers fatally followed recommendations not to resist) put an exclamation point on Snyder’s message about handling criminals. Twenty years of gun-rights activism wrote Snyder’s message in bold and underlined it.
Today, violent freelance crime is down and every crook with half a brain knows that he may lose the other half to an armed homeowner, c-store clerk, or concealed-carrying pedestrian.
Yet more than ever, we are a nation of cowards.
Kurt Hofmann: “Resolved to be a gun criminal.” Well, now there’s a resolution that should be pretty easy to keep! Starbucks orders little pub to cease and desist. Little pub tells Starbucks … This cop n gun story is so scary-weird on so many levels, I can hardly believe I exist in the same universe with it. (H/T Hobbit) Take this FWIW, but here’s a former cop on how to behave if somebody puts a gun to your head. The one time something like that happened to me, calm (which said cop recommends) was definitely an asset. But I was…
This judge wins the Ultra-Statist of the Week prize for excusing the NSA while kicking Snowden. I’ve been asking myself this question, too. When will insurance companies say, “Enough’s enough!”? We need more judges like Donald Beatty. (H/T Hobbit) Going “offshore” … in South Dakota. A sign of the times? And another sign of the times. Great one! College shooting ranges are on the rise. (Tip o’ hat to L.A.) The president of Uruguay. No matter what else you may think of him (or not think of him, since I’m guessing you spend a very, very small portion of your…
Or so it appears. The kid who used his “deadly assault shotgun” at school this week in Colorado, Karl Pierson, sneered at the free market and believed that the R-party supported “gun violence.” “I was wondering to all the neoclassicals and neoliberals, why isn’t the market correcting itself?” he wrote. “If the invisible hand is so strong, shouldn’t it be able to overpower regulations?” Pierson also appears to mock Republicans on another Facebook post, writing “you republicans are so cute” and posting an image that reads: “The Republican Party: Health Care: Let ’em Die, Climate Change: Let ’em Die, Gun…
Just what we need: a drone that hijacks other drones. (H/T MJR) “I love my guns.” MamaLiberty explains. This creepy-wierd logo was all over the Internet last week. I ignored it, figuring it was just some joker’s parody of government spies. But nooooooo. It’s what actual government spies think of themselves … and us. The German’s don’t have a word for it. Yet. But when they do, it’ll be Schottenfreude. 🙂 Long but good. Ryan Lizza of The New Yorker finally addresses the Big Question: Why the fedgov won’t rein in their spy agencies. And of course … dogs to…
Been deadlining this week and it doesn’t stop. Thinking of you all, though. Big Second-Amendment guy, Alan Korwin, is making news with a big First-Amendment case. You can always count on the FBI … to be just 61% accurate in its mass-homicide stats. Heck, they could save taxpayers’ money by using random chance. Oh. Maybe they did. “By threatening their lives as well as their budgets, Obama has created a huge class of losers, who statistically overrun the small class of winners and outweigh them in savvy…” Millennials. Fed up with Obama, Obamacare and government. Nice trend. But some of…
Bystander sees masked robber holding store clerk at gunpoint. Bystander pulls pistol and shouts, “Don’t move!” Robber turns. Bystander shoots. Family member of this (chronic) robber whines, “If his (the customer) life was not in danger, if no one had a gun up to him, if no one pointed a gun at him — what gives him the right to think that it’s okay to just shoot someone? You should have just left the store and went wherever you had to go in your car or whatever.” As sick, depraved, cruel, irresponsible, and Snopes-clan inbred as that sounds, what’s even…
Darned shame we can’t buy guns and ammo* on Amazon.com. But that doesn’t mean we can’t buy plenty of gunstuff. (And fortunately, many of us do.) It’s a little hard to come up with a highly targeted list of Amazon gunthings because … well, you know. No two gun owners have the same needs or styles. And many battles have spattered Internet forums with pixelated gore over whether steel is better than combat tupperware or .45 ACP better than 9mm parabellum. So I’m aiming here to give you some hopefully non-controversial inspiration. For the lady in your life (which, of…
Tam — The great Queen of Snark as well as the social-media director for S.W.A.T. — informs me that S.W.A.T. has put another of my recent columns online. Here you go: “‘Terrorism’ could cost you your gun rights.”