The right of the citizens to bear arms in defense of themselves and the State …
So I’m thinking about getting an iPhone 3G tomorrow. Why drink the kool aid when you can chug it?
UPDATE: No iPhone for me. I went to the AT&T store at lunch, and they told me they had sold out of them before 9:00 this morning. I did, however, reserve one. I should have an iPhone in a week’s time.
Excellent post over at The Belmont Club today on missile defense and deterrence. Well worth a read.
UPDATE: In the comments:
It’s a little disturbing when a major Presidential candidate’s first instincts after the Iranians test 9 long missiles are to blame his government for not engaging in direct talks. The real story here is to ask why, if Teheran has no WMD ambitions, it has any ballistic missile program at all. Does anyone actually believe these expensive missiles are going to be fitted with conventional warheads? That would be so cost ineffective as to be implausible. Any reasonable person, looking at the situation, would regard the firing of the 9 missiles with alarm. I think BHO’s reactions are almost unnatural.
Bitter has some stunning examples. I’ve talked about this here before. I don’t have a problem with workers organizing into unions, and bargaining collectively with employers. In a free society, people have a right to do such things. I do have a problem with Unions as they stand, which are government sanctioned extortion rackets.
Rustmeister points to Josh Sugarman calling out gun bloggers for publishing the information on his federal firearms license:
“The bloggers put my phone number out there, and people have been calling to ask how much I’ll charge to transfer guns,” Sugarman says.
Come on Josh! It’s a good business opportunity. It’ll certainly work out far better for you than what you’ve been doing. Look at who your competition is. You already have a far more widely recognized name than those other guys. We’ll even be happy to do some free bloggy marketing for you. We can hook you up.
This blogger seems to have bought the line that the laws passed recently in Georgia and Florida were intended to target airports and Disney, when they are not. Disney is not exempt from Florida’s law which allows holders of a Florida Concealed Weapons License to leave their guns in their car while at work, but it is not specifically targeted by it.
Nor did the Georgia law in question specifically target airports. It removed restrictions creating gun free zones out of public transportation vehicles and infrastructure. Atlanta’s airport has decided the law need not apply to them. Law or no law, they are determined to arrest people. That a legal authority is determined to arrest people who have broken no law should scare the hell out of any American. I should also note that this does not apply to the sterile area of the airport past the security perimeters. Airline security is a matter of federal law and regulations, and remains in place.
I may not agree with the Florida law mandating that people be permitted to have guns in privately owned parking lots, but nor do I agree with the hysterics from Disney, the media, and a lot of other people, that somehow allowing this is going to lead to bloodbaths. Despite the Brady Campaign’s machinations, they’ve never been right once. Not once, about the issue of concealed carry laws leading to more violence.
Hat Tip: Another Gun Blog
That’s what the New England Journal of Medicine is predicting in the wake of Heller. Yeah, because prior to Heller, criminals were too busy thinking “Sorry guys, it’s a collective right. We’ll have to wait until it’s individual before we go commit armed robberies.” But the study does conflate the suicide and homicide numbers. It also depends on the Loftin study, which has been thoroughly debunked.
The hysterics post Heller have been absolutely unbelievable. It’s full tilt in the media for the meme that guns do nothing but kill; they aren’t used for sport, and they aren’t used for self-defense. No. They cause crime and suicide. The suicide angle seems something particularly hounded on for some reason, I’m guessing because they know crime rates won’t go up, so they are banking on suicide rates inching up, so they might have a leg to stand on.
The speaker of the Tennessee House lied about having a concealed firearms permit. Patrick Murphy, who is my Congressman, claims to have one, even though he signed onto McCarthy’s HR 1022 assault weapons ban that would outlaw most semi-automatic firearms.
In Pennsylvania, there’s no way to verify a claim of having an LTC, but I think it’s safe to assume that any anti-gun politician claiming to have a concealed firearms permit is lying to you.
Department of Interior is stalling in hopes that an Obama administration won’t force them to change their rules on National Park Carry. The deadline for comment has been extended to August 8th, so be sure to get your comments in!
I’ll bet it never occured to my friend Jason that he could become a contemporary artist using nothing but his M11 machine pistol and a caseload of 9mm:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZu19hE70hI[/youtube]
Maybe now we can raise a first amendment argument for machine gun ownership ;)
UPDATE: Linoge actually beat me to this one. He’s actually on my RSS feed, but it doesn’t always embed videos, so I must have just missed it.
The Brady Campaign says we’re just people who haven’t committed a crime, yet. And I suppose anyone with a bottle of whisky and a Ford is someone who hasn’t driven drunk, yet.