Sebastian – Page 392 – Shall Not Be Questioned

Competitive Shooting

SayUncle ponders whether those who can’t shoot, blogÂ after getting beat by a law professor. There may be truth to this. I haven’t really been shooting since the job situation went crazy about two years ago, but even when I was quite active, and practicing and shooting regularly, the most I could muster was the middle of the pack in competition. To be a competent shooter doesn’t take a whole lot of practice. A trip to the range once a month or so will keep you competent. To be a good shooter, you’re looking at once a week. In my experience, to be a great shooter, you really have to live shooting, or just have a natural talent for is, which some people do. I can generally stay good without a whole lot of work, but I’ve never been willing, or had the time, to put in the work to be great, nor do I have the natural talent to get to the head of the pack without a lot of work to do it.

And so I blog.

What’s your experience in regards to the amount of work to go from just a good shooter, to a great shooter?

Interesting Post about Anti-SLAPP Laws

For those who have never heard of SLAPP, look here. Looks like the California Legislature actually got something right. A few other states seems to have decent laws in this regard as well. Pennsylvania’s anti-SLAPP statute looks very narrow, however. We should fix that.

Victory in Kentucky

The are repealing the requirement to have a concealed weapons permit to carry in a business or a home. Pretty ridiculous for a state like Kentucky that was ever a requirement. But clearly we are reeling under the newfound momentum of our opponents. They have stopped the “gun lobby” in its tracks. Florida was their Battle of Midway.

Registration Gone Wrong

Apparently criminals can get a hold of gun owner registries, and use them to target residences for theft. This is one thing that’s always kind of annoyed me about our opponents proposals. If you enacted drastic measures to cut down on criminal access to firearms from the primary, legal market (by limiting or frustrating everyone’s access to firearms, like Chicago or D.C.), there would be a greater incentive to engage in theft of firearms to keep the black market supplied. Especially if, as many of our opponents want, the registries were made public information. I don’t see that shifting criminal sources of guns more heavily to theft is a net public good.

Quote of the Day: Mike Bloomberg Edition

From Glenn Reynolds over at Instapundit:

Let me be clear. These people are not well-meaning do-gooders who have just gone a bit too far. They donâ€™t actually â€œmean wellâ€ at all. They donâ€™t mean well, they mean to be in control. They are power-fetishists, drunk on the joys of bossing the little people around. They are not good people. They are evil. They should be ashamed of themselves, but shame â€” like taxes â€” is for the little people.

And I think we have to get into the habit of telling them that more often. It’s much the same with many (not all) of our opponents.

An Important Anniversary

Given that the people who risked their lives and livelihoods, to defeat one of the greatest evils the mind of mankind has ever concocted, are quickly succumbing to old age, it’s important to continue to remember what they did:

today on the anniversary of the Invasion of Europe, June 6, 1944. Here we are now, 68 years later.

The Menace of Armed Public Urination

They must be getting pretty desperate in the Philly media to highlight “Florida Loophole” stories, given the best they managed to round up for this article was a pair of public tinklers. Clearly Florida permitees are causing chaos on the streets of Philadelphia, or at least contributing to that dank urine smell that permeates some parts of the city.

I’m sympathetic to the notion that maybe a guy with ten prior arrests isn’t the kind of guy you want carrying a firearm in public, but the solution to that is to seek convictions, and as we’ve pointed out many times here, the City of Philadelphia is not in the habit of that until you basically kill somebody. Otherwise it’s catch and release.

Reasons We Don’t Get Legalization of Pot

Some of the folks who argue for it would do better for their cause not to argue for it. If you look at the RKBA movement, it’s generally lead by the people who are most into shooting. Most bloggers either are active competitive shooters, or have been competitive shooters at some point. In other words, shooting is a big part of our lives, so we are quite motivated to protect it. This is probably also true of marijuana legalization. But it presents a problem when having it be a large part of your life interferes with the ability to make good and coherent arguments.

For those of you who still have any doubts as to the miraculous healing powers of cannabis and THC Oil or do not believe that there is an ongoing international effort dead set on keeping this free and 100% organic medicine, along with all organic foods, supplements, and natural medicines from a diseased and dying global population… I am about to BLOW YOUR MINDS……

Apparently the government has a patent on some cannibinoid research. Unfortunately Cannabinoids are a class of compounds, and not necessary compounds which are psychoactive. There’s a fair amount of research into these classes of compounds and their receptors, with a goal to make drugs that can specifically target them. For instance, pot gives you the munchies. That’s a specific receptor. If it could be targeted specifically, it would be beneficial to people who, for medical reasons, need to enhance their appetite and eat more. None of this research is a good reason to legalize pot. In fact, the whole medical marijuana argument is a giant scam.

THC is not difficult to synthesize, and a synthetic version is already availableÂ as a Schedule III Compound, and an inhaler version will soon be on the market. For those who point to natural THC as being 100% organic, I would point out that Hemlock is also 100% organic. So is the extract of the castor bean. Nature can kill you, folks. She makes some of the most potent poisons known to man. While THC is not poisonous, inhaling smoke into your lungs will tend to damage your health.

That said, I support medical marijuana and decriminalization of weed, but just on general freedom principles, rather than on the principal that it’s necessary strictly from a pharmaceutical viewpoint. Some folks in the legalization movement act like if we just unschedule weed, it will be the end of human disease as we know it, and that’s just patently ridiculous.

New Information in Fast and Furious

From Fox News:

A House investigative committee said Tuesday it has obtained new information from wiretaps related to the Obama administrationâ€™s Operation Fast and Furious that suggests high-ranking officials know more than they are telling Congress about the flawed weapons sting.

Of course they did. If this was really a concoction of lower level functionaries, the most politically expedient way of disposing of this scandal would have been full cooperation with the Congressional oversight and heads on a platter. Their reaction almost guarantees there is more to the story than what the DOJ and White House are letting on.

Holder is going to be counting on Congressional Republican leadership not wanting to take forward any repercussions (contempt charges) for his lack of cooperation in the investigation and hearings. Republican leadership is going to be concerned that if pressed, Holder will successfully play the victim in all this, with a media establishment that will be quite happy to help Holder carry his victimhood narrative forward. We’ll see if sometime between now and the election, Boehner grows a pair and goes after Holder directly. But the best hope to punish Holder is to remove them from office in November. I don’t put much faith in the Speaker.

The Law as a Game

When I write about the law or politics being a game, or sometimes even go so far as to say it’s a joke, this is the kind of thing I’m speaking of. A lot of very rational people look at the law and view it as a rational system. Engineers, especially, and people with analytical minds, read the plain language think that’s what it’s supposed to mean, clearly, and surely judges are rational people who will see it that way.

But the law is administered by people, and people, for the most part, suck. The judge in the Walker case is a pretty clear example of an imbecile in a robe who has decided he is the law, and nothing else. In his courtroom, the law is going to be a game at best, and if you don’t wish to play along, a farce. You have to play around his eccentricity. These are the people the Second Amendment is now in the hands of. God help us.

UPDATE: More here.