"Gone Fishing"

Back in a few weeks...

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, Part Two

Of all the idiotic...

*forehead slap*

(h/t: John Lott's place)

Still Dreaming...

Says this ignorant swine op-ed:

In the battle against gun violence, every little bit helps. Microstamping, for instance.

Poor deluded soul. Didn't you hear about the UC Davis study or the AFTE Journal report? Or maybe the Maryland State Police's take on the matter?

Or are you proving yourself merely a sock puppet for the anti-gun camp?

(Sock puppet. That means they have their hand up your ass.)

Almost....! (Again, Part Two)

The title says it all: "Deepen Gun Ownership."

I was about to cheer wildly, especially after reading:

What we need, then, is a new national strategy to reduce gun violence: Don't restrict gun rights; instead, deepen the sense of gun ownership.

Yet another person who gets it. Huzzah!

Then he writes this:

...we also need to close the gun-show loophole.

Aw, Jimmers, you crashed and burned. Here I thought you'd done your homework. Then you give us this bit of anti-gun claptrap.

(sigh)

Back to summer school with you.

Worth A Read

Ran across a couple of gems whilst rummaging the intarw3bz.

I'll let the first one speak for itself.

Should be more like this. Of note is this bit:

But make no mistake, the sanctity of a person's life and well-being should never be contingent upon them being a sworn agent of the state in order to exercise their right to self-protection.

Retired Marine Maj. L. Caudill (see note below) puts it this way, "When I carry a gun, I don't do so because I am looking for a fight, but because I'm looking to be left alone. The gun at my side means that I cannot be forced; only persuaded. I don't carry it because I'm afraid, but because it enables me to be unafraid. It doesn't limit the actions of those who would interact with me through reason, only the actions of those who would do so by force. It removes force from the equation ... and that's why carrying a gun is a civilized act."

Preach it, brother.

Then there's this op-ed from the Wall Street Journal, which observes:

Who are all these gun owners? Are they the uneducated poor, left behind? It turns out they have the same level of formal education as nongun owners, on average. Furthermore, they earn 32% more per year than nonowners. Americans with guns are neither a small nor downtrodden group.

Nor are they "bitter." In 2006, 36% of gun owners said they were "very happy," while 9% were "not too happy." Meanwhile, only 30% of people without guns were very happy, and 16% were not too happy.

In 1996, gun owners spent about 15% less of their time than nonowners feeling "outraged at something somebody had done." It's easy enough in certain precincts to caricature armed Americans as an angry and miserable fringe group. But it just isn't true. The data say that the people in the approximately 40 million American households with guns are generally happier than those people in households that don't have guns.

You wanna define "gun owner" one more time?


NOTE: Robb points out in the comments that the above quote from Maj. Caudill isn't. It's from Marko. My apologies. Time to write a letter.

Gun Blogger Spotlight: Bitter - The Bitch Girls

Age.
Older than I care to admit.

Hometown
Waurika, Oklahoma

Occupation?
Non-profit

How did you get started/involved with guns/shooting sports?
A good friend took me along with a group to the range during finals as a stress reliever. It did relieve my stress. I joined that night and went back every few weeks, usually with another new shooter in tow.

When did you first become involved in preserving 2nd Amendment rights and what prompted that involvement? Why get involved at all?
When I was filling out the range membership application and Bill, the staffer behind the desk that night, told me about the requirements of owning a gun in Massachusetts, I was appropriately appalled.

As for why I got involved after hearing that? Have you lived in Massachusetts? It's insane because even when you jump through all the hoops, you still may not get a permit. If you wore the wrong color of shirt, or the Chief is in a bad mood, you can be denied the right to even own a gun there. Or, if you dotted every i and crossed every t, you still might only end up with a restricted license that basically lets you go to the range and nothing more while your neighbor whose house falls within the next town's boundaries can carry concealed - even to the State House!

I don't deal with inequality very well.

How did the blog start? What prompted you to start it?
It started with my friends in college. Our schedules didn't allow us to meet up for dinner as much and talk about world affairs (and that annoying neighbor who blared music that expressed her emotion at that very second down the hallway) as much as we did before, so we started a blog as an online version of the conversation. It was set to public, so anyone could visit, but no one did. Then one day Eugene Volokh noticed a link from our site to his, blogged about a post and then it got very public, very fast.

How did you come up with the name and why?
Like the Spice Girls, only Bitchy! I'm only somewhat kidding with that. We were often called those Gun Toting Bitches on campus (even though we did not own nor tote guns) and figured we'd embrace it.

How do you blog? Laptop? Desktop? Mobile?
Laptop.

How often do you blog? How much time do you spend blogging?
I blog throughout the morning and evenings. It's hard to track what time I really spend blogging because I don't know how you define that. Even using the most liberal definition, I can't really pinpoint since I'd be following these issues and discussions regardless of whether I blogged.

How do you balance Life and your blog?
Are they different? No, I'm kidding.

There are times I haven't done it very well and blogging wasn't fun anymore. When it's not fun, I stop doing it and don't worry about it. My inner traffic whore was satisfied years ago, so I don't feel this need to perform for others. If I am busy, I don't blog. If I feel sharing deep thoughts, I will put the time into doing it. If I feel like posting jokes at the expense of celebrities, I'll do that, too.

Oh, but I always find time to regularly remind readers that Dave Kopel is a hottie.

What determines the topics you'll write about everyday? Do you have a "blog philosophy," i.e., a self-imposed filter you use to sort through news items? Or do you just grab stuff randomly from the web?
I grab whatever I feel like blogging at the moment. The key is that there's personality to the blog. Beyond that, I don't care. It's fun to break something, or to give a story a new angle. But most of the time I just want to have a little fun online with news, commentary, and reminding people they should take a little time to change the world - preferably that involves something that leads to increased legal gun ownership.

Top two problems you feel we face as gun rights activists?
1) People who have given up and decided we're going to lose our rights eventually so there's no use in trying anymore. There's nothing worse than knowing that there's a potential activist inside, but they feel defeated already. It's downright frustrating when they take the next step and actively try to convince others to give up, or they bash pro-gun efforts just because they've already quit the fight.

2) People who don't do anything but complain. Not only do they pull down the morale of other activists, but those of us who don't only focus on the negative have our energy and resources sapped trying to appease these people. At some point, it's going to be better to just cut them loose, but they likely won't let go because they need someone to complain to.

What's the best part about being a gun blogger?
It serves as a snark outlet.

If you had a message to the fence-sitters out there, what would it be?
Has anyone suggested that they continue sitting on the fence? Because I'm considering it just to be a contrarian.

In all honesty, without knowing exactly what fence you're talking about sitting on, it's hard to say. Fence sitting on being pro- or anti-gun? Sitting high and mighty on getting involved? There are a lot of areas and issues where a person could stake out a post to sit on, and my response would be different to address their concerns about choosing whether or not to get off (and which side to get off on).

For those who don't know if they should be pro gun or anti gun, they've heard both sides but still can't decide,they abhor gun violence but believe in the right to bear arms--what would you say to them?
Well, if they believe in the right to bear arms, doesn't that make them pro-gun? They may not be on board with the activism yet, but that would imply that they definitely aren't considering becoming an anti-gunner any day soon. They just haven't been inspired yet.

Again, I'm going to go back to no real and solid answer on this. Anyone who gives you a canned response is probably not a very effective activist and recruiter. Different people will respond to different arguments. I'm not going to walk up to a woman who lost two family members to the misuse (one criminal and one accidental) of guns and start in with the "shall not be infringed!" talk. Instead, I'll offer up a spot in the Women on Target day run by competent and friendly instructors to just give her a safe introduction. Then, if I've done my job, and the other instructors served not only as a knowledge resource, but were also sensitive in teaching, then she's going to come up to me and ask how to join the club or get more involved. (Yes, that's a true story.)

On the flip side, if there's an old school hunter who walks up to me wanting to know why anyone would waste their time with activism because they aren't coming after his shotgun, I'd outline the ways that many states have made it an undue burden to practice the sports. Again, I think the question is loaded in a way that assumes anyone should have a one-size-fits-all model which is definitely not the case. If someone has that model, they should reconsider how many converts they've won or try to tally up how many activists they've truly created vs. those they may have turned off and think about the approach.

What do you hope readers/visitors take away from your blog?
Amusement.

If you hadn't started the blog, what would you be doing? Would gun rights issues still be a focus? How much or how little?
Working, living life, volunteering - just more of what I do now. Yes, gun rights would still be a focus. As I've mentioned over the years, I'm an instructor and have been very active with that in the past several years. Before I ever got into blogging, I was a pretty big activist. I don't rely on blogging for my activism, and I don't think that new media can replace the tried and true outreach methods.

And is David Kopel aware that you think he's a hottie?
I assume he does. I kinda take the fact that he's joked about it with Glenn & Helen Smith on their podcast, posted in bright red letters that he was a "Bitch Girls Hottie" on his webpage, and we've personally talked about it as clues.

Smart Enough?

I can see where DeSaulnier is trying to go..

Will it work?

Maybe.

One argument against it:

if a man's handgun were programmed to identify only his own palm and his wife suddenly needed to defend herself in an emergency.

I wrote to NanoIdent to ask about that. The reply:

Our technology supports multiple users. So the whole family can be enrolled when authorized by the owner. Enrolled users can also be de-enrolled under the discretion of the owner.

There you have it.

But the question remains: is this the ultimate cure to gun violence?

Not likely. Even if the tech came out and new firearms had it, what about the older models? How would you prevent them from being used in the commission of a crime? Confiscate them?

And criminals with the older model guns are just going to give them up because the law says so?

And what planet are you from?

Die, Die, Die!!!

Finally! It's about frickin' time!

A ruling by the state Supreme Court has brought an end to San Francisco's attempts to ban handguns in the city.

In a ruling Wednesday, the court unanimously rejected the city's appeal of a lower-court ruling that sharply limited the ability of localities to regulate firearms.

Let's hope they get the clue.

(Probably not, the Ignorant Swines, but I'm trying to be optimistic...)

Brady Bunch PSH-filled statement on the matter in 5...4...3...2...