June 2012 – Page 9 – Shall Not Be Questioned

Unarmed Self-Defense

There seems to be a debate going on in the gun blogosphere about whether unarmed self-defense, or hand-to-hand combat, is a good idea or not. I haven’t been following closely enough to get an idea of what the major arguments are for or against, but I thought I’d throw my two cents into the debate, hopefully without summoning the drama llama.

There’s two types of force, legally. There’s force, and deadly force. Force is generally everything that is not deadly force, which is generally the level of force that is likely to result in grave bodily injury or death, such as a gun, knife, club, etc. Fists can be deadly force under some circumstances.

But your likelihood of running into a situation where force is allowed in self-defense, but not deadly force, are probably greater than your likelihood of encountering a deadly force situation. The force spectrum is awfully wide, before you get to deadly force, and it seems to me that it’s a good idea to have some option in that regard. In that case, I’m not likely to look down on unarmed defensive training. The more tools you have at your disposal if you have to defend yourself the better.

UPDATE: OK, I think the conversation started with this, but I didn’t put two and two together. Yeah, I’d definitely think about seeking out alternate HTH training.

UPDATE: Getting a bit more caught up on this debate, looks like it was an accident, though, I’d be open to the argument that the instructor pushed too hard. Though I’m not an expert on this to really have an opinion on that matter.

Stand Your Ground Still Under Attack

An article in the Herald Tribune speaks of the problems with the law. It’s almost like everyone is suddenly looking at self-defense cases and discovering that, shockingly, self-defense cases are all rather circumstantial, and juries can be inconsistent in how they see those circumstances as being self-defense or not.

Unfortunately for the poorly educated media, this was true before Stand your Ground laws, and it will be true after stand your ground laws.Â In the mean time, it looks like the task force is holding hearings. Our people would do well to mob these hearings so that the opponents of the law are not the only ones being heard.

Holder Contempt Vote

Scheduled for June 20th, according to CBS.

h/t Dave Hardy

UPDATE: More from Jacob. I tend to agree with him about how much impact this will have on the election.

Suing an Airline Over a Gun

Short of this case is, a guy from South Dakota, with a South Dakota permit, takes a gun to New York City. Upon checking his baggage to go back home, he’s arrested, so he’s suing Delta Airlines, suggesting they should know the law and inform him. That’s a bit of a leap for me. You’re responsible for understanding the law. You can’t expect the airline to do that for you. By the same token, can you blame the guy for assuming New York City was part of America?

Oral Arguments in Shepard & Moore

You can listen to the oral arguments here. At first I was a little worried, because the questioning of the panel seemed to be all over the place, and asking difficult questions of Mr. Gura and Mr. Cooper which to me seemed to be outside the scope of what the courts can do, but I guess reflected some concern from the panel about carrying in bars, etc.

But then the grilling of the Illinois Attorney started, and things started, to put it mildly, looking up. Go have a listen. Keep in mind, the courts can only really say Illinois’ statute is constitutional or not. It would be up to the legislature to craft a bill that would pass constitutional muster, and it should be noted a bill is already introduced that would accomplish that, and has very near the votes needed for passage.

Now if the Illinois law is tossed on Constitutional grounds, I don’t believe Illinois would be permitted to enforce it. The question is, will the legislature want to “settle out of court,” so to speak, and pass a right-to-carry bill now, rather than risk the state, essentially, going constitutional carry. Would our side be willing to take the deal? Risk is inherent for both sides. What if the courts opinion hints at may-issue being constitutional? What if we lose outright? For them, what if it invalidates the law, and essentially anyone who can legally possess a gun in Illinois can carry?

Also interesting is whether the disposition of Judge Posner to the Right to Keep and Bear Arms has changed. It seems from this case he may have warmed up to the idea.

Days of our Trailers has more.

More on Weight Loss

Bill Quick has some advice and a pretty stunning example of how low-carb can work. That’s very encouraging. I’ve had a few people say 100g a day is too high as an upper limit. I’ve seen mixed advice on this. I’ve seen advice suggesting that as long as you stay under 100 day, you’re still in low carb territory and will burn fat. South Beach Diet starts off with 50g a day based on a 2000 calorie diet, which is below the calories I need for someone of my height and weight. I know Atkins is about 20g. I’m going to do my level best to keep it around 50g, but there are going to be days when I get closer to 100g. If it doesn’t work, I’ll think about reducing further. But for me, the idea is to start something I can stick with. I’ve tried just calorie reduction before, and I end up wanting to mug someone for a bag of chips after a couple of days. Truth is, reducing carbs will reduce my calorie consumption as well, but the question is whether I will want to mug someone for a bag of chips in a few days. If I can maintain it, and I’m dropping weight, even if it’s slowly, that’s what I’m going to stick with. If I don’t drop weight, I’ll reconsider.

UPDATE: I should note I found this study to be interesting, which shows that a low-carb ketogenic diet still beats the low-glycemic index diet, in terms of weight loss. But suggests that since participants in both categories both lost weight, that there might be substantial benefit to a reduction in carbs, but sticking to low glycemic carbs. That’s kind of what I’m trying now. Granted, these study participants have full blown type II diabetes, which I do not have, but I’m probably on my way if I don’t do something about it.

A Changing Gun Blogosphere

In what probably ought to be a good sign that guns have gone mainstream, there’s been a pretty epic change in the gun blogosphere in the past year or so, namely the number of commercial blogs, or blogs that have been created solely for the purpose of making money, has exploded. As an indicator for the gun community, this is a positive sign, but I think it’s largely going to make it impossible for the amateur blogging community to grow, and could likely kill it over time. In other words, if you have an established amateur blog, you’ll probably hold on to your audience, but I’m betting starting a gun blog from scratch these days as a hobbyist is likely to be an exercise is failure, if your goal is to get a reasonable number (say 1000 visits a day) of eyeballs. I think this would be the case even if you’re exceptionally good at blogging. So why do I think this is the case?

Commercial blogs have a strong incentive to be self-referencing and not to link heavily, or at all, if they can help it, to outside sources. Every link you provide to another blog hurts your Google Page Rank and helps that blog’s Google Page Rank. There’s also the common wisdom that it’s good practice to keep people on your side, and not give them paths to stop reading your site and start reading someone else’s. So if you’re a commercial blog, you’re really mostly interested in generating original content, and not getting people into the habit of leaving your site to go read what someone else wrote.

In contrast, amateur blogging, which is what gun blogging has been for most of its history, thrives on the conversation that happens across the whole community, which generally means fairly gratuitous linking when it comes to hot topics. In this type of model, it’s easier for upstarts to get noticed, because if they join in the conversation, even if that means antagonizing the right people, they can carve out a place for themselves within the community. That brings me to the downsides of commercialization for the gun blogging community.

If your goal is to make money, you need a mass market product. To get a mass market product in the Googlesphere, you don’t necessary have to offer great content, or develop strong expertise in anything. You can do well just generating a lot of content and hitting on all the right keywords to draw in an audience. I think, as a community, we’ve benefitted greatly from people being able to carve out niches, and to concentrate on specific areas of knowledge, expertise, or just catering to different audiences. I think we’ve also benefited from the gun bloggers who are also activists in the issue, sharing their experiences. We’ve benefitted greatly from arguing with each other, and pissing each other off. None of these things are smart business, because they limit audiences, but they are pretty important for a community that has to be built on smart activism, and needs to argue about exactly what smart activism is. My fear with the commercialization of gun blogging, is that it will lead to lots of vanilla, mass market products. In other words, that the blogosphere turns into the online equivalent of the gun magazines many of us came here to get away from. While I believe commercialization is a positive sign, over the long run, I’m worried it’ll destroy the community of gun blogs that we’ve come to know.

DISCLAIMER: I am not suggesting that just because you make money that your blog is “commercial.” I’m speaking of blogs which are set up and run specifically with the purpose of generating income or as a business venture. If your ads pay for hosting and beer money, you’re not a commercial blog, you’re a hobbyist. I think it has to do more with why you blog than whether you’re making money at it.

Weight Loss

So I’ve decided I’m starting to resemble the stereotypical OFWG (old fat white guy) a little too much for my taste. I can’t do much about the old, and can’t do much about the white, but I can do something about the fat. I’ve looked around and done some research a bit, and believe that a reduced-carb diet is the way to go. I say reduced, because some of these low-carb diets practically have no carbs in them, which just seems unhealthy. I’m going to try to keep my carbs under 100g a day on most days, with one day a week where I don’t give a crap what I eat.

I’ve been learning French cooking as well, going through the book Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child. I’m not going to be like that women who cooked her way through the book as a publicity stunt, but I’m trying to learn the basics. The French diet is heavy on fat but relatively moderate when it comes to carbs. I decided this venture was a good segue into trying to lose some weight by cooking elegant, but smaller portion dishes that don’t heavily feature carbohydrates, but nonetheless will be filling enough I won’t feel like I’m starving myself.

Anyone out there dropped weight? What has worked for you?

More on Zimmerman Prosecutor Targeting Critics

It turns out that Angela Corey has a history of targeting critics, something that’s really getting attention ever since she threatened to sue Harvard Law School for employing a critic of her work.

She hinted at going after a newspaper columnist for libel (and called him stupid) for disagreeing with her treatment of another big case she’s handling. She also targeted the university that employees another critic of her handling of a different case by submitting records requests for the school to turn over all documents from the law professor regarding the other case Corey is handling. While there isn’t a claim in this article that she threatened to sue this critic or her employer, it does seem absurd for the prosecutor to waste her time on such an exercise.

Specifically, the act of calling a critic’s employers to rant and scream apparently isn’t a first. She has done the same thing two other times. (h/t Harold)

Ouch

This is one of the worst ideas I’ve seen in a long time.