Joe Huffman finds an ILA publication from around the time of the Hughes Amendment. At one point NRA was intent on getting Hughes repealed, but over time I think it became apparent there wasn’t any political support to do so in Congress. As Joe says, we’re still a ways away from being able to repeal Hughes, but the issue is moving in our direction.
Month: January 2012
Another Victim of Bloomberg
This time, a Maryland man accepts a plea deal for a lesser gun charge to avoid a 15 year prison sentence for leaving his pistol mistakenly in a hotel safe in New York City. The New York Daily news notes this is becoming more common. That is because New York City is increasingly very out of step with the rest of America when it comes to Second Amendment rights. You’ve also have people hearing “The Supreme Court says it’s a right,” without following the issue closely enough to know, even though it applies in New York City, that it’s only a technicality. Practically it does not yet, and don’t expect Bloomberg to change anything until the courts force him to, and even then, I’m not sure whether he will.
H/T to SayUncle
Sometimes Mistakes are Made
Many of you know that I took a new job about a month ago, after a few months of unemployment after my previous company shut down. Today, I went in, handed in my resignation, and walked out. I feel an awful burden lifted from my shoulders. When I got the offer, I wavered a bit on whether to accept it. The company did not come off well to me in the interviews, and the job was a step down from my previous position. But I ultimately decided to accept, thinking that any job is better than unemployment. I’ve spent the past month regretting that decision. The job turned out to be worse than I had feared. There was very little about the company that functioned, and many people put in long and difficult hours to make up for a complete lack of planning, poor product and project management, and having insufficient resources to accomplish goals. It’s one thing to work hard because sometimes it’s just necessary to make a deadline. It’s quite another to work hard because you don’t have a better strategy.
In the mean time, I had a dream job fall on my lap, and I have spend the past several weeks developing it. Rather than being an environment where careers go to die, it’s an opportunity to take what I’ve been doing for the past ten years, and take it to the next level. The pay is also comparable to what I was making. I’ve also been talking to a friend who runs an IT services company that is looking to start a new division that could use my services. We had dinner last night to talk about it a bit, and I think it’s got potential. He’s aware of the dream job opportunity, and is willing to hire me on contract basis until that job offer firms up, and then continue on a part time basis if I decide to accept. If that job falls through he’s willing to hire me full-time.
So that was basically all I needed to get the hell out of that other place. I’m employed one way or another, and both are interesting positions. They say it’s easier to find a job when you have a job, but in this case I got neither offer because I was currently employed. The dream job wasn’t aware of the current job until I told them when they started to do the background check (I didn’t want them to be surprised if they found that), and it actually complicated things a bit more than if I had just been unemployed.
So I would say I learned a lesson, not to take the first job that comes along if you have a bad feeling about it, but it was one learned could only have learned in hindsight. I couldn’t have predicted I’d have two very good opportunities fall on my lap a few weeks after accepting a job. The big lesson I’ve learned in this is never to allow yourself to become unemployed if you can help it, and I could have. I knew the company was in trouble a year ago, and decided to risk riding the bomb down. I didn’t really get the job hunt started in earnest in the two months I had while I was helping wind the previous company down, because I thought there was hope of starting over again with the same idea. I took a huge gamble on the CEO’s plan in that two months, and lost the bet. That forced me to do some things I wouldn’t, under ordinary circumstances consider doing. I always figured the reason that employers were wary of the unemployed was because of the belief that if someone didn’t want them, and doesn’t want them, they must not be very good. That might be part of it, but I also think part of why the unemployed have it harder is because they aren’t thinking carefully about whether a job is really a good fit — they need a paycheck, first and foremost. That’s going to make it much more likely they aren’t staying, especially if the job is a step down for them.
A Notable Passing
In 1942, a man named Gordon Hirabayashi was among a handful of U.S. Citizens of Japanese Ancestry to refuse to evacuate his home in Seattle to be herded into an internment camp. For that “crime” he served one year in prison, and was not exonerated until four decades later by the U.S. Supreme Court, which finally acknowledged that the mass evacuation of and internment of Japanese Americans had been based wholly on prejudice and was without justification.
I hadn’t been aware there were some who resisted. I believe that what happened to Japanese-Americans during World War II was so heinous, they would have been completely justified in resisting the government with force of arms. Unfortunately, however, compliance was probably the path of least resistance. With racism widespread in mid-20th century society, and the Japanese having just bombed Pearl Harbor, I don’t think sympathy to this path would have been widespread, and they likely would have been crushed mercilessly. It would only have confirmed everyone’s bigotry. But would they have had the moral right? Absolutely.
One reason I’ve never been able to warm up to blogger Michelle Malkin is because she wrote this book, trying to justify what I think is not at all justifiable. It’s one of the things that made me very reluctant to identify with conservatives.
This Year in History
Colt firearms sells their first revolvers to the US government. The year was 1847.
My Summary of the Iowa Caucuses
Bitter has been filling us in on the whole Iowa Caucus results, which I can only really sum up as the big mama elephant shouting “Shut up, quit complaining, and eat your Romney! There’s starving SoCo’s out there who have nothing but Santorum to eat!”
Forgive my absence today, but my career (the one that pays the bills) is currently is having to come first. I have some very positive developments I am working on. That’s all I can say for now, but I may be able to say more later.
More People Victims of New York City’s Gun Laws
Instapundit has the roundup. Apparently a US Marine is facing 15 years in the slammer. I like Professor Reynold’s proposal:
My proposal: Any state permit is valid in all 50 states. Places where carry is prohibited must be clearly marked. Maximum penalty for a simple violation — that is, not in the course of committing some real crime — $500. Attorney fees and civil-rights suits available against state and local officials who violate the law by infringing people’s rights thereunder.
Well, we can’t have that. Treating it like a right, and all. I think Mayor Bloomberg has made it pretty clear what he thinks about that. Meanwhile, this is now looking to be more true than ever.
Libertarian Leadership
I am starting to think that the message Ron Paul wants to send is that leadership under a Libertarian is best described as, “I didn’t personally do it, so you can’t blame me!”
First, we have the newsletter debacle. He made money off of them, and he signed his name to the mailers, and he knows who was writing them, but refuses to name them. But since he says that he didn’t actually pen the words, he has no responsibility to be held accountable for things printed under his name and in his business.
Now, we have the Twitter crap. What Twitter crap? Well, Ron Paul now says he can’t be held accountable for things published on his verified campaign Twitter account.
When pressed about the fact that the message was sent under his official Twitter handle, Paul said, “I have some help on tweeting,†and continued to dismiss the whole episode as “irrelevant.”
When a former colleague posted this on Facebook, a jokester decided to give us some insight into Ron Paul’s leadership style in the White House: “‎I have some help with the missiles. Someone else launched that one. I wasn’t involved.”
If people are serious about a libertarian message, these missteps should be alarm bells blaring very loudly. I do realize that you can’t blame a candidate for every bad decision an underling makes, but the candidate still needs to step up and accept responsibility for the problem. A real leader would also explain whether they have actually addressed the problem. Personal responsibility doesn’t mean an end to leadership, especially when you’re running for the White House.
Is This Supposed to be Controversial?
I suspect this Drudge headline is supposed to be controversial: “REPORT: 911 operator tells woman it’s OK to shoot intruder…”
Then, you click on the story. Perhaps it’s because I’m from Oklahoma, but I don’t see anything remotely controversial about the actual report.
McKinley told ABC News Oklahoma City affiliate KOCO that she quickly got her 12 gauge, went into her bedroom and got a pistol, put the bottle in the baby’s mouth and called 911.
“I’ve got two guns in my hand — is it okay to shoot him if he comes in this door?” the young mother asked the 911 dispatcher. “I’m here by myself with my infant baby, can I please get a dispatcher out here immediately?”
The 911 dispatcher confirmed with McKinley that the doors to her home were locked as she asked again if it was okay to shoot the intruder if he were to come through her door.
“I can’t tell you that you can do that but you do what you have to do to protect your baby,” the dispatcher told her. McKinley was on the phone with 911 for a total of 21 minutes.
When Martin kicked in the door and came after her with the knife, the teen mom shot and killed the 24-year-old. Police are calling the shooting justified.
In other words, the 911 dispatcher didn’t tell her to kill the intruder, the dispatcher ran through things that could delay the intruders until police arrive, and just told the mom that she could do what she needed to do to protect her baby. And this is worthy of a headline why?
Two Ricks Entered Iowa…
…and only one came out. I just stole that from Jim Geraghty this morning, but it seems to be the headline of the day. Rick Perry is effectively out, and Rick Santorum is the so-co anti-Mitt now. I don’t see him doing well in New Hampshire, so the question will be whether he maintains any of the “surge” into other states. He could end up being in the same position as the Huckabeast in 2008, in that he largely ends up being a protest vote by more socially conservative states down the line, but won’t take the nomination. He did so well, in part, because he spent so much time on the ground in Iowa. There simply aren’t enough days between primaries to do that in many other states. Consider that out of all of the candidates in Iowa, only two are even on the ballot in Virginia.
By the way, when Santorum runs on the fact that he’s the only candidate to have won a swing state like Pennsylvania before, feel free to remind people that he also lost Pennsylvania to a guy whose own staff doesn’t know if he’s alive.
I will also steal this bit of commentary from him to put it in context of why Iowa shouldn’t be any more relevant than any other small state:
The Hawkeye State killed off the chances of a perfectly good candidate, Tim Pawlenty, in favor of his Minnesota rival Michele Bachmann, only to drop her like seventh-period Spanish by the time the actual caucuses rolled around. The caucuses weren’t even over when the Fox News Decision Desk could project, with confidence, that she would finish sixth out of six major candidates in the caucus. As of this writing, she is set to finish 5 percentage points ahead of Jon Huntsman, who effectively conceded the state.
For all the surges we’ve seen of potential “anti-Romneys,” Pawlenty likely would be the best one.
Some of you might think that Ron Paul’s third place showing is the story of the night, but it isn’t. Here’s an interesting tidbit as to why that momentum won’t hold as we head into races where people who actually vote for Republicans have a chance to vote:
According to the entrance polls, 38 percent of caucus-goers had never voted in a GOP caucus before; of those, by far the largest share, 37 percent, voted for Ron Paul. Among the registered so-called independents who took part in the caucus, 48 percent voted for Ron Paul, way ahead of anyone else. Next highest was Romney with 16 percent.
Closed primaries in future states will largely keep this number down as we progress through the primary calendar. The exception to that being Virginia where he will be the only protest vote against Mitt available, save for write-ins.
UPDATE: Well, I admit that I’m wrong. It looks like two Ricks stay in the race. That’s wise for Perry. Iowa shouldn’t be in a position to coronate any candidate, and he could do well in South Carolina.
UPDATE II: I stand corrected on write-ins in Virginia primary in the comments. Also, I take back what I said about Perry. He may still have a campaign going, but apparently he plans to take a couple of days off. Ummm…let’s see, NH is next week, and South Carolina shortly after that. I don’t think he can afford days off right now. So while there might be a campaign that exists, I don’t think this bodes well for the future vitality of it.