A guy at a seattle folk festival, who probably shouldn’t have had a concealed carry license in the first place, commits aggrevated assault, among other things on a few people. The response from the Mayor of Seattle?  City employees can no longer carry on city property. Yes, collective punishment for an individual misdeed; the hallmark of a free society.
Year: 2008
Bar Owners in KS Not Happy About Change in Law
Apparently a few tavern owners don’t like the fact that Kansas eased restrictions on carry in taverns, even though it’s unlawful to be above the 0.08 legal limit and carry a firearm. One has to wonder why they aren’t concerned about people coming into their establishment, drinking, and plowing into a family minivan on the way home. Drunk driving is a far greater social problem than people with concealed carry licenses carrying while intoxicated. It seems to me if we allow people to drive at 0.07, it’s unreasonable to suggest they are too intoxicated at that level to successfully handle the much simpler task of using a firearm should they need to defend themselves.
The Root of Reasoned DiscourseTM
We’ve seen reasoned discourse rearing it’s ugly head again, both in the comment section (comments go most recent first, rather than last, start at the end to see the anti-gun commenters) of the LA Times story I linked to earlier, and also at this place, which Dave Hardy linked to over the weekend. You’ll notice that, for the most part, our side is appearing with facts, and reasonable arguments, and their side is slinging personal insults, stereotypes, and various other manners of prejudices.
I think the reason for the vitriol is that we have unwittingly hit on a nerve. The LA Times article presented gun owners in a human light. For those who have their identities wrapped up in who they are not, which is ignorant, paranoid, rednecks compensating for some kind of inadequacy and reacting to an irrational fear of crime stoked by the right wing establishment, it’s horribly destabilizing to a smug sense of self to read that those types of people might actually have things in common with you. They may even have a serious point of view!
No, no. Can’t have that. That’s a threat to our every sense of superiority.  Those aren’t people. Those are paranoid knuckle draggers.  Real people are enlightened. Real people don’t feel a need to carry a gun to the grocery store. The reason they hate articles like this is because it makes them face an unpleasant reality; we’re ordinary people, and we’re getting better at getting that message out.
We dominate, and are courageous in new media. They can’t come here without dealing with us. Folks like we’ve seen on the LA Times comment page avoid the gun blogosphere like the plague, because if they spent enough time with us, they’d realize we’re not easily crammed into the nice box they’ve made for us in their narrow minds. One thing I’ve often pondered about the Brady Bunch, is that I know they read gun blogs, so they surely have to know us to some degree.  I’ve joked often that they believe we’re shills of the NRA, but in reality I don’t think it’s a joke. They really believe that. They have to believe that. They’ve spent their whole careers battling NRA as an evil monolith representing the powers of darkness. If we don’t fit neatly into that, well then hell, what have they been doing with their whole career? That’s why I often get upset with people like for doing the same thing to the other side, because it lets them off easy. If we fit the stereotype of everything they want to believe, it’s easy for them to justify to themselves why we have to be steamrollered.
We do not have to demonize the other side in order to have persuasive arguments. We don’t need to do it to feel right, because we’re not advocating that people’s freedoms be taken away. We’re the people who want to be able to keep shooting competitively with an AR-15s. We’re the people who don’t want to have to wait 10 minutes for the police to show up when seconds count. We’re the people who think our constitution means something. I think we ought to have the courage to be able to stand up to the other side, as fellow citizens, and say “Sorry, you’re wrong, and here’s why.” That is our power. The other side can’t do that, and it shows in how they approach the issue.
What we ideally want is for the Brady Campaign to have a hard time retaining qualified staff, because their hearts just aren’t in it anymore. Let them move on to other progressive causes, or the for-profit sector. Politics isn’t war. Sometimes you can win by humanizing yourself to the other side. Ultimately we will win by breaking down stereotypes and fighting ignorance, just like every other civil rights movement in recorded history. The Black Panthers didn’t end Jim Crow, that was ended by African Americans humanizing themselves to America, and demanding fair treatment. The lesson is already there in history if we’re willing to follow it.
Where’s It All Going to Fit?
Bitter arrived with the moving truck on Thursday.  On Saturday, the movers came to move everything from the truck to my living room.  The first picture was taken after Bitter had already moved and put away a good portion of the kitchen boxes.
The kitchen stuff is getting put away first. Naturally, since we’ve both been living on our own for a while, there’s a lot of duplicate equipment. Most of my knives and silverware are inferior to hers, and so are departing. Same with pots and pans. Of course, now we have four fondue pots, two food processors, and two bread machines. Not stuff that’s typically thrown out, so I’m guessing we’ll be craigslisting a lot of it. 
Of course, we both had the same type of Corelware, so now we just have a lot of it. She has a lot more cooking stuff than I do, such as a press for making raviolis, actually, I think there are two of those. One in case you want to make a flat ravioli, and another for making folded ones. It’s a good thing I have a big drawer in the kitchen for stuff I almost never use :)
Obama on Your Shoulder
The last broadcast of HamNation. Mary Katharine is moving on to bigger and better things. It’s good to go out with a bang:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BtJG0BonMQ[/youtube]
Seven People Dead in Japan Mass Killing
In a mass killing involving a guy with, what I’m guessing must have been a rather large knife.
“The suspect told police that he came to Akihabara to kill people,” said Jiro Akaogi, a spokesman for the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department. “He said he was tired of life. He said he was sick of everything.”
News reports said the man crashed a rented, two-ton truck into pedestrians, then jumped out of the truck and began stabbing the people he’d knocked down before turning on horrified onlookers.
Maybe we need some restrictions on two ton trucks and sharp pointy things.
Two Things to Read
There’s two things I missed this week that I would like to have linked to, but because I was frantically cleaning in anticipation of Bitter’s imepnding arrival, I had to cut back on my regular blog reading.
First, Tam has an excellent response to Uncle’s post on serial numbered parts.
Second, Kevin Baker has written a thought provoking piece on education, and how it’s creating more and more kids each generation that look to government to solve our problems. I agree, but think education is only one prong of the problem. The drift toward ever bigger government is also largely driven by the people opposing it having better things to do than get involved in government and fix it. I think there’s also a problem with the cultural notion that everyone has a civic duty to vote. I think that’s hogwash. We have no vested interest in people who have only a peripheral understanding of government and politics casting a ballot. Someone who doesn’t care enough to vote without being guilted into it by MTV, or some other activist group, probably ought not to be voting.
BPCRs
Tam has an excellent essay on Black Powder Cartridge Rifles up over at The Arms Room.
Contributing to Global Warming
I normally get the air conditioning ready to go until late June or July, but since it’s supposed to hit 100 on Monday, I decided to flip the switch early this year. Last night there was no way I was getting to sleep without it, and with Bitter unpacking lots of boxes and with moving furniture around, I figured now was a good time.
So coal will be burned, and atoms will be split to further my appetite for cool comfort. Thanks be to thermodynamics.