2007 – Page 67 – Shall Not Be Questioned

Self-Defense In New Jersey

Sometimes self-defense stories illustrate important points.Â We’ve all seen a lot of stories that contradict a lot of the myths out there, on both sides, about using firearms to defend your life.Â Â This is an important one from New Jersey.Â Why is it important?Â This is why:

The woman ran to her bedroom, locked the door and grabbed her husband’s handgun and ammunition, Traina said.

The gun is legally registered to the woman’s husband, he said.

She then ran into the bathroom, locked that door and loaded the weapon while sitting on the floor.

Emphasis mine.Â The Garden State has decreed that, once the technology is available, all firearms sold in New Jersey will only be operable by the authorized user, except to law enforcement, who apparently didn’t want anything to do with the technology.

I suppose this woman could have thrown the smart gun at the man trying to attack her.Â It might be kind of heavy with all those electronic and mechanical extras in it, after all.

Pretty Outrageous

Squeaky talks about some funny business in the Texas legislature, in regards to votes legislators cast, or rather, cast for other members who are absent.Â I think the rules of the legislative body in Texas needs to be changed to stop this from happening, but this probably doesn’t mean the legislator is voting twice.Â Remember, these votes are on record, and it one of their colleagues comes up on record as having voted for something he needed to be against for political reasons, you can imagine the trouble that would cause.

What is likely happening here, is legislators are casting votes on their colleague’s behalf.Â I agree this should change, but not because it’s double voting, but because it’s lazy and unprofessional. Â If you want to cast a vote, at the very least, you should show up.Â Otherwise, how are the folks back home to know how uninvolved you are?

Breaking News: oIoo From Google

Hopefully you get my little ASCII illustration there. SayUncle gets removed from the AdSense program because of firearms content. I don’t keep ads on Snowflakes in Hell, and have no intention to take ads. I especially won’t take ads from Google, even if I decide to start for some reason. Next time I take a call from a Google recruiter, I’m going to remind them why I’ll never work for them.

UPDATE: The ASCII art is a middle finger, for those of you who didn’t get it.

Animal Rights Activists Are Bozos

What a shocker this article is:

According to McNally, their tactics have ranged from chants and name-calling (addressing individuals as “duck rapists”) to firing bullhorns directly in her face. Other restaurant owners have taken foie gras items off their menus, but so far, McNally hasn’t backed down. “We don’t believe that, overall, we should be told what to eat,” she says.

As we talked on the drive, it became clear that there is more at issue than animal welfare â€” the way McNally sees it, her business is at stake as well. London has 70 outdoor seats that she needs to turn over at least twice a night to make payroll. “With the bullhorns and the screaming, you can’t sit there and dine,” she says. “That’s taking money away from the waiter and from us.”

Everyone has a right to free speech, but that doesn’t cross into disrupting your neighborhood such that your neighbors “quiet enjoyment” is disrupted.Â The Philadelphia Police should be allowed to arrest these people for disturbing the peace.

Turns out that maybe Foie Gras isn’t as cruel as theÂ animal rights psychos are making it out to be:

McNally and I arrived at the farm around noon and met Izzay Yanay, co-owner of Hudson Valley. A former member of the Israeli Defense Force, Yanay projects an intense, almost defiant pride when showing off his farm. “Make them come â€” all of them,” he says. He’s entertained roughly two tours a week for the past 20 years, hosting chefs and journalists alike. He promises unrestricted access and encourages me to take pictures.

Dr. Lawrence Bartholf, a practicing livestock veterinarian who operates independent of the farm, accompanies us. Bartholf often chaperones Hudson Valley tours to answer questions related to the birds’ physiology “It’s one thing to use facts to argue a point,” he says. “But when [protesters] use outright lies and distortions and half-truths, that’s where I draw the line.”

Leftist activists using outright lies, distortions and half-truths?Â Nah…. you don’t say?Â What a pity Philadelphia City Council is buying this crap, instead of arresting these people.

Some Context on the Swiss Thing

I noticed Jeff blogging about the Swiss Militia not storing ammunition at home, but letting them keep their rifles.Â I used to work with a Swiss guy, and had this explained to me once.

Basically, ammunition that’s issued by the government in the home is tightly regulated.Â You are not allowed to open that ammunition except under orders, or in a national emergency.Â The government keeps track of ammunition issued as part of your militia duty.Â AmmunitionÂ for practice and shooting is commonly available in Switzerland, so this change in law won’t affect the ability of the Swiss to store ammunition in their homes, or to buy ammunition for sport shooting, hunting, or self-defense.Â They just will no longer be issued ammunition by the Swiss government, to be kept and not used except in a national emergency.

This is entirely a symbolic victory for the gun control forces in Switzerland.Â That’s not to say this isn’t something to worry about, we know how the gun control movement operates, and they will take their symbolic victories, and use it to build a movement for greater restrictions.Â The Swiss ought to be worried, very worried, as this is just a first step. Â But as a first step, it’s a really small one.

Clearing Up Definitions

Armed Canadian offers the media some lessons in the definition of the word “loophole”

Friday Funny

What Rudy’s wife really said

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2CB0RPINuUU[/youtube]

Via Bob McCarty, Via Dave Hardy

Advocates of Regulating Black Powder Arms

All this PSH about black powder guns is reminding me of a local Congressworm by the name of Joe Hoeffel.Â Joe is the guy that unsuccessfully challenged Arlen Specter in the 2004 election.Â I don’t like Specter much at all, but I’ve still voted for him, and this is why:

After a disgruntled former employee of Norristown State Hospital took two hostages, killing one and seriously injuring the other with a replica of an antique firearm, Joe introduced legislation that would bring antique and replica firearms under the same federal regulations as modern firearms.

But then gun control advocates tell us “You want the right to bear arms?Â Fine!Â You can have muskets and flintlock pistols, just like they had during our founding father’s times.Â Our founding fathers never would have imagined an AK-47.”Â Bogus argument, made even more bogus by the PSH over black powder arms when incidents like this sprout up.

Out Here in the Wilderness

SayUncle posts about the NRA being powerful in the Republican coalition, and we are. But he seems surprised Bush scored so highly, along with James Dobson and Pat Robertson.

Libertarians are political exiles. We are not a small group of people, if you believe polling data, but politically we have very little power. Want to understand why I focus on the gun issue? It’s a libertarian issue where I can win. I can’t win on anything else, because no one listens to libertarians. Why? Quite simple. Libertarians don’t vote in sigificant enough numbers to make anyone care about them. The Libertarian Party is a joke, and in the Republican coalition, we don’t turn out voters.

Gun owners turn out voters because people are passionate about the issue, and because it’s a good unifying philosophy that can get a lot of different types of people to vote together on an issue. In other words, it helps keep the Republican coalition together.

But being on a mission to save the second amendment doesn’t get people fired up nearly as much as being on a mission from God, and that’s why religious people turn out in large numbers to vote Republican. God might not have told them to do it himself, but they will use their churches, civic organizations, and social networks to get people out to the polls on election day, and get them to vote their values.

It sucks being out in the political wilderness, where I wish that I could focus on other libertarian issues I care about, if anyone in power would just care about them, but they don’t.

Not Impressed

I’m not impressed that Michael Nutter is playing up the race issue within the Philadelphia Police Department. I have been holding out hope that Nutter will be a better leader for the city than the city’s current iPhone loving Corrupter-in-Chief. I’m getting less optimistic. It seems to me Nutty Nutter should heed the advice offered by one of Wyatt’s instructors:

“You’re not white. You’re not black. From here on out, you’re blue.”

The city’s problems aren’t going to get solved by making race an issue, which is part of the city’s problems to begin with.