September 2012 – Page 4 – Shall Not Be Questioned

Ooops

A flight attendant at Philadelphia International left a .38 Airweight in her purse, and was caught at the security checkpoint. The firearm was confiscated, and promptly discharged negligently by a Philadelphia Police Officer when he attempted to unload the gun. You have to work pretty hard to ND a revolver. I’d really like to know how that happened.

But it does go to show, there is no magic gun handling ability cops possess, which is what our opponents want to claim. Cops, just like any other group of people, have some people who are sharp and competent, and some people who are morons. You can try to train them, but often times you just end up with a trained moron, which isn’t that much more useful than one you haven’t trained. This woman will likely lose her License to Carry, and probably won’t get her gun back. I’m fairly sure the officer in question is still carrying firearms on the streets.

Article on Gun Culture 2.0

From Human events:

Unlike the reserved approach to politics that the traditional firearms lobby has taken, the new generation is outspoken, unashamed and willing to fight for what they believe.Â They are educated on the origins of the Second Amendment and the fundamental right to be free.Â They do not advocate for the Second Amendment as a right to hunt, rather they perceive it as a guaranteed ability to resist an oppressive government.

I generally agree that there’s a Gun Culture 1.0 and a Gun Culture 2.0, but there’s a lot of minor revisions in the middle. In terms of people who are “outspoken, unashamed and willing to fight for what they believe,” I’ve found that to be more true of retirees than young people. Young people are far less likely to get involved, in my experience, than older folks. They are less likely to join pro-gun organizations, and less likely to participate in other civic aspects of gun ownership, like joining clubs, or moving in political circles to try to advocate their point of view on the Second Amendment.

I think for many in Gun Culture 2.0, guns are a lifestyle product that money can buy. If there’s troves young people who are really interested in the civic aspects of gun ownership, I haven’t seen it. Any time I’ve ever been to rallies, or had people volunteer, they’ve usually not been people we would classify as Gun Culture 2.0. In fact, I think how to get Gun Culture 2.0 folks involved in the civic aspects of gun ownership is going to be one of our biggest challenges going forward. GC 2.0 was built on top of the foundation laid by folks who were 1.0 shooters, and it’s not very hard to start going backwards if people don’t get involved.

Burgundy

I consider the ability to make alcohol an important skill. Like guns, ammunition, and gold, you’ll probably always be able to trade it for something. Now it’s the time of year when you can get fresh grape juice and grapes out of California. I ordered what’s called “bucket juice,” because it comes in large buckets. You know, the kind that kill kids in drowning accidents more often than guns.

When the season arrives, the local home brew stores put out alerts that you can put in orders for juice or grapes. After the orders are all taken, the stores put in orders to have the juice shipped from Golden State vintners to the store. Obviously this takes a few days from order to delivery, and who knows how long the stuff has been sitting in refrigeration out West. As soon as I got mine in the car, I heard hissing.

“What’s that hissing? I think that juice is already fermenting,” I told Bitter.

So I get the juice back home, and sure enough, it’s fizzing away. Apparently it’s not unusual for bucket juice to arrive fermenting. I’ve even read of cases where people have gotten bucket juice where fermentation has completely finished. We thieved a sample of the juice, and both agreed it tasted excellent. I added a bit of extra sugar, since the specific gravity wasn’t all that high. I could taste no alcohol on the juice, so I’m not sure fermentation had gone that far, but sugar also is very very effective at hiding alcohol. If I added too much, we’ll get a sweeter Burgundy. Wine yeast tends to commit environmental suicide at around 14% alcohol by volume, so if you add too much you will have some residual sweetness. I much prefer dry wines, so hopefully I did not overdo it.

I’ve generally not gotten burned in home brewing or winemaking just going with whatever happens. I’ve never had to toss a batch for being so foul it couldn’t be drunk. The juice tasted good, so even if wild yeast are going at the juice, they seem to be working well so far. I pitched my starter in, so hopefully that will be the dominant strain in a few days. We’ll see how this goes.

The one thing about winemaking vs. home brewing is you put a lot more time into a wine than you do a beer. An all-grain batch of beer might take a whole day to produce, but one racking a week later, then two weeks in secondary, and you’e ready for kegging and drinking. Winemaking never will take a whole day of your time at once, but over time it will take more of your time. It takes more care and you have more invested emotionally in its outcome. On the upside, if you screw up beer, you’re generally screwed, and it’s time to make like Elliot Ness and just dump it in the storm drain. Wine is easier to fix and doctor if you make mistakes. If you’re goal is adult beverage goodness, I can’t really say one path is superior to the other.

LAPD Combat Qualification

Joe Huffman discusses the LAPD combat qualification course he set up for a local gun club in Idaho. Barron Barnett worked up this this excellent video:

I suspect the reaction of our opponents to this will be not remarkably different from the strategy ostriches employ. Ordinary citizens can never shoot better than the police. This is just not possible. They don’t have the training!

What’s On Your Desktop?

Since gun news is slow, there’s a meme going around the gun blogosphere, here, here, here and here, of what’s been on your iPod the last month. I don’t have much to say there. My iPod looks more like Mitt Romney’s than Paul Ryan’s. I haven’t been listening to music much these past few months. I will recommend this album, which I recently got off iTunes, if you want some easy listening, and like the movie music of John Williams. I feel like changing up the meme a bit though, and suggest people reveal, “What’s your desktop?”

I have a dual-head display, so I get two pictures, depending on what monitor I look at. Both of these I took myself when we were out in Hawaii a few years ago. The main display is of Rabbit Island, just off Oahu’s eastern shore. The other display is the beach of Oahu’s North Shore, and isn’t far from where the Lost beach scenes were filmed. In fact, the “Others” village was walking distance behind me in this picture.

UPDATE: Not boring, fantastic.

UPDATE: This Desktop has gone to the dogs.

Data Center Bleg

I’m wondering if anyone out there might live in Bucks or Montgomery County, and have a data center or server room they want to rent, of less than 1000 square feet, or know someone wanting to sublease such space. I’d even take space in an active server room under a sublease. Initially I’d only need room for about two racks of equipment, but the ability to expand to four would be great. I’d prefer not to enter into a traditional co-lo arrangement, because I’d prefer that it be a space not everyone and their mother has access to physically.Â This is for a new business venture I’m trying to help launch.

DOJ & MMFA Collaboration: The Nature of Media Has Changed

I’ve read the Daily Caller story about the e-mails between DOJ and Media Matters for ~~A Socialist~~ America. I haven’t blogged about it until now because I just don’t think it’s the big deal a lot on the right think it is. You can read through all the e-mails here. In the past this might have been a big story, because the media operated on the pretense that it was objective. Does MMFA even make such a pretense? I don’t believe it does. They are partisan hacks, and fully admit to being as much. It’s not like they go through any great length to hide their biases, under the pretense of being objective.

So why is this a story? I would expect any Administration of either party to work with its relevant partisan media to spin stories. With the death of “objective” media, this is how things are going to be. What’s going to be the reaction when a Republican Administration is in the White House, and the left FOIAs documents that show the Administration working closely with the Daily Caller?

This would have been a story if they were seen in a cozy collaborative relationship with the Washington Post, or CNN, or any other outlet that still likes to pretend it’s an objective news outlet. That a partisan hack of a media outfit is helping out Administration flunkies is not shocking, it’s expected.

Misinformation About Louisiana RKBA Ballot Measure

There’s a lot of folks who seem to think this is gun control, because it changes:

Section 11. The right of each citizen to keep and bear arms shall not be abridged, but this provision shall not prevent the passage of laws to prohibit the carrying of weapons concealed on the person.

to:

Section 11. The right of each citizen to keep and bear arms is fundamental and shall not be infringed. Any restriction on this right shall be subject to strict scrutiny.

A bit further down on the original link above:

For a â€œRightâ€ to â€œnot be infringedâ€ there can be NO â€œrestrictionâ€ placed on it whatsoever. NONE. Privileges can have restrictions placed on them. â€œRightsâ€, as defined in the Declaration of Independence of 1776 cannot be â€œrestrictedâ€ in any manner, as they are â€œunalienable,â€ which means not â€˜alienableâ€™â€¦.not able to be taken away, transferred orÂ RESTRICTEDâ€¦!!

This was a fear of mine, that the uninitiated would have no idea what strict scrutiny meant, legally. Now we have that, and people latching onto the word “restricted,” and interpreting this provision as some form of gun control. Nothing could be farther from the truth. By demanding strict scrutiny in the constitutional provision, it is a detailed, specific instruction to the courts to give the right the highest protection the courts currently offer when considering the scope of fundamental rights. To date, most courts have adopted intermediate scrutiny so that they may engage in balancing tests to justify numerous restrictions on the right, and the Louisiana Supreme Court effectively gutted their RKBA constitution guarantee back in 2001:

“The State of Louisiana is entitled to restrict that right for legitimate state purposes, such as public health and safety.”Â State v. Blanchard, 776 So.2d 1165, 1168 (La. 2001).*

So really, this is a choice between any restriction the state wants to place, which is the current status quo, or any restrictions being subject to a very high level of scrutiny by the courts. Clearly the latter here would be far better.Â I really hope that people will spread the word and help relieve the ignorance at work here, especially if you know folks in Louisiana, or see people spreading this.

Unfortunately, the unscrupulous among us will also see a fundraising opportunity here, and will likely play on this ignorance to drum up support for their organization. But it’s very important that this get passed, both for the sake of Louisiana, and to send a message to the federal courts about how Americans expect their rights to be treated. If this ballot measure goes down in a sea of ignorance on the part of gun owners, the other side will be guaranteed to spin this as Americans believing that harsh restrictions on state power to regulate guns is just peachy.

* Source: Defend Your Right to Keep and Bear Arms in Louisianaâ€“Vote â€œYESâ€ on 2!

1979

People keep joking about it being the Carter years all over again, but this is getting kind of weird.Â Instapundit has much the same reaction. I’ve been looking at carpet to redo my home office, and you know what else is back? Shag carpet. They are calling it frieze carpet now, but it’s the same crap our parents were spilling their bong water on in the 70s.

The Superior Google Technology

We have a Google Voice number that answers for our NRA Election Volunteer activities. As part of that, it’ll e-mail you what it thinks is a transcription of your voice message. As much as swear at Siri for not getting things right, Google’s technology isn’t any better. There’s a certain state of the art, which isn’t that great, and no one really has advanced much past it. Take this nonsensical transcription:

HiÂ Kate,Â MyÂ nameÂ isÂ Dave Abuser. IÂ letÂ meÂ know. I’mÂ notÂ gonnaÂ member. IÂ hopeÂ you’reÂ fitÂ withÂ you. MyÂ address isÂ XXXX whenÂ youÂ bothÂ Road, NewÂ World.Â AndÂ myÂ phoneÂ numberÂ is XXXXXXXXXX too.Â ThanksÂ Kate,Â we’reÂ gonna getÂ theÂ grass. Bye.

When I listened to the audio, it makes absolutely perfect sense. I’ve XXX’d out parts it got right enough to protect the innocent, but you see how bad Google is at transcription.Â My actual name is close to, but not Kate, and the person certainly was not an Abuser. I am an NRA member, and so is he, but neither of us are “gonna member.” I am certainly not fit, and if I was, it wouldn’t be with you.Â Maybe Google just can’t understand the Philly accent very well, but it’s not even remotely unintelligible to someone raised here.

I will say, I’ve already gotten more response this year than in any year I’ve had this “position” since I started a few years back. At least 5 calls since the magazine went out a few days ago. Previously I was lucky to get one or two. So I’ll take Google transcribing “We’re gonna get this guy out,” as “We’re gonna get the grass.” I just hope Google doesn’t share their transcriptions with the DOJ.

UPDATE: Seems I’m not the only one who is amused.