The right of the citizens to bear arms in defense of themselves and the State …
Watching some of the last equipment from our chemistry labs head out the door today with the people who won the auctions, I noticed this:
My first thought was, I know someone who’d see about that. My money would be that Boomerite beats refrigerator. If we were located in Idaho, I would have bid on this freezer just to put that to the test :)
The Boston Herald seems to be surprised their their state ranks near the bottom in a freedom index:
“The big takeaway is that Massachusetts is not doing well overall in terms of freedom,†said study co-author William Ruger, despite the state’s laissez faire attitude toward gay marriage and pot. “There’s this kind of stereotype or myth that the deep blue states are more economically restrictive but more personally free. But the data doesn’t actually bear that out . . . Liberals tend to want to constrain your freedom in all areas.â€
Now I support gay marriage and a laissez attitude towards pot, but let’s face it, “rules on smoking, seat belts, transfats and firecrackers,” affect a lot more people. I, for one, have long believed it’s a core tenent of freedom that on certain holidays, we be able to celebrate our nation’s freedom by blowing up a small chunk of it.
Apparently they’ve raised the age limit on handgun licenses, and made applicants prove they’ve been involved in shooting activities before being issued. At least some Finns realize the Catch 22 here:
“How one can prove that one has been active in a hobby for two years, if one cannot own the equipment,” asked Teemu Simelius, organisation chief at the Finnish hunters’association.
These are the common sense gun laws our opponents would love to bring here.
At your leg, because you decided to stupidly Mexican carry a Glock in your sweat pants to a New York night club and drink, without a license to do so. Apparently that makes you qualified to help our opponents. Next time our opponents try to tell you we’re in league with gun criminals, throw this in their faces.
I have to disagree with John Richardson about NRA’s attempt to repeal North Carolina’s emergency powers law, which was opposed publicly by Grassroots North Carolina because it would moot their lawsuit.
I’m not in favor of scuttling an opportunity for a legislative fix to preserve a court case that may or may not ultimately win. If you have an opportunity to fix something legislatively, you take it. If you lose the vote in a legislature, you can always take another shot at goal. Fixing bad precedent because you came short on votes for a panel of judges is considerably more difficult. I hope I don’t again have to see again the absurdity of a pro-gun organization coming out against a piece of legislation that would strip states of the ability to disarm people in an emergency.
I’m reminded of the story of Patrick Ferguson, a famous British Sharp Shooter. who at the Battle of Brandywine found an officer in his sights, decided not to take the shot, because it would be ungentlemanly. Lucky for us. Not very lucky for the British cause in North America. The officer he had in his sights was none other than George Washington. The lesson is that when you have that kind of shot lined up, you take it.
From Old Picture of the Day, courtesy of Instapundit. One of the great ironies of liquidating my company has meant going back ten years to when a terabyte was quite a lot of storage. Now I can put that on a portable USB drive. Our current technological infrastructure would be tight on a 20TB san. To me the next great leap will be shedding mechanical hard drives. After seeing Bitter’s MacBook Air, Solid State Hard Drives (SSDs) are definitely the way things will go.
I guess what’s also astonishing is that the technology that the 5MB drive was transported on is completely recognizable to us today, 55 years later. Computer technology has advanced far faster than transportation technology, or even our cultural ability to handle what the advances in computer technology is bringing.
I can’t tell you why, but I was recently inspired to type “NRA” into the search function at Etsy. I know most of you have seen a few examples of gun-related jewelry online, but I have to say that the variety available from the sellers on Etsy is the best I’ve ever seen. It doesn’t stop at your typical bullet-shaped necklace or casing cufflinks. It’s gorgeous repurposed gems and uncommon vintage pieces.
The following items are found in these stores: The Key of A, Gallo Grotte, What Once Was, resellit, With Care, The Sea Change, Andrew Modern, victoriasponge, Black Bird Creative, and Little Gems by Jax.
I really don’t know how anyone can say this with a straight face:
Leave it to Sarah Palin to turn Paul Revere’s ride into a statement about “gun-grabbing.” In a wonder of historical revisionism, she stated about Paul Revere, in one of her famous off-the-cuff blunders,
“He who warned the British that they weren’t gonna be takin’ away our arms by ringing those bells, and makin’ sure as he’s riding his horse through town to send those warning shots and bells that we were going to be sure and we were going to be free, and we were going to be armed.”
According to a professor of history, appearing on NPR, with the exception of the warning shots, Sarah Palin got her history right. I mean, seriously, who doesn’t know that General Gage was marching on Concord to seize one of the arms caches the colonials had there?
Prof. ALLISON: Yeah. She was making a Second Amendment case. But in fact, the British were going out to Concord to seize colonists’ arms, the weapons that the Massachusetts Provincial Congress was stockpiling there.
So, yeah, she is right in that. I mean, she may be pushing it too far to say this is a Second Amendment case. Of course, neither the Second Amendment nor the Constitution was in anyone’s mind at the time. But the British objective was to get the arms that were stockpiled in Concord.
BLOCK: So you think basically, on the whole, Sarah Palin got her history right.
Prof. ALLISON: Well, yeah, she did. And remember, she is a politician. She’s not an historian. And God help us when historians start acting like politicians, and I suppose when politicians start writing history.
Our opponents are either highly incredulous or ignorant to an astonishing degree. Maybe some combination of the two. Either way, the accusation that we’re attempting to rewrite history here is breathtaking in its ignorance, or outright hypocrisy.
The amended bill, sponsored by state Senator Pam Galloway (R-Wausau), allowed law-abiding citizens to carry concealed without a license for self-defense in the same manner as is available to the citizens of four other states. It also included the option of obtaining a concealed weapons license, for those who must pass through school zones or who want to be able to carry a firearm for self-defense while traveling in a number of other states through reciprocal agreements.
Wisconsin is already a state where one can open carry without a license constitutionally, and the courts seemed primed to declare a right to carry concealed in that manner if the legislature did not address the issue. I’m glad that a constitutional carry bill seems poised to be placed on the Governor’s desk.
Jennifer’s doctor is a gunnie. Gag laws are just a bad idea. Especially when you consider the number of doctors that are actually on our side. There are many. Some of them even read this blog.