Interesting Case in Illinois

Bunch of youths out looking for unlocked cars to break into. Youth approach property of homeowner. Homeowner goes outside with a .25 ACP pistol and fires three “warning” shots, one of which struck one of the youths killing him. Homeowner is facing manslaughter charges.

It’s worth noting Illinois law has no duty to retreat requirement, but that’s not at issue in this case. The homeowner’s attorney is concerned about the Martin case being in people’s minds. But I hadn’t heard about this case until someone sent it to me. Where’s the media? Why isn’t this kid’s death such a national tragedy?

Either way, his attorney should be worried, because this looks like manslaughter based on the facts that are already known.

Assault on Pennsylvania RKBA

The media has been in full force lately trying to foil our agenda here in Pennsylvania. This article in the Scranton Times Tribune speaks against preemption enforcement. The surprising thing is they don’t mention the Martin shooting at all. However, The Daily Pennsylvanian, the newspaper of the University of Pennsylvania manages to get things mostly right, with only a few aspects of the legal issues surrounding SYG misstated, which is a better track record than most of the media is doing in this case. They do, however, continue to propagate the myth that Zimmerman was not arrested.

An environmental group is suing a gun club over lead shot pollution in the Delaware River. They are also suing because they do pigeon shoots there, and dead pigeons end up polluting the river as well, alleges the suit. I’ve looked at that club’s layout, and I’m doubtful that much shot is ending up in the river. Pigeons I can’t speak to.

The Express-Times of Easton, PA things our SYG law needs to be reviewed. Not surprising, given they know nothing about the law and continue peddling ignorance to the public about self-defense laws. Meanwhile the Times Leader of Wilkes-Barre runs an abysmal editorial that is very hateful of gun owners.

I’ll reiterate my call again to starve the beast!

Would Love to Be in Some Hot Water

Many thanks for those who offered advice on water heaters. We did decide to go with a tankless gas unit because of the need to recover space to be able to reach our electrical panel. We called around to see what plumbers would charge for installation. The experience reminded me of a scene from one of my favorite movies:

I got a bid out of the gate at from Home Depot’s installers was 2500. Second bid was 4200 from a local plumber. Third bid was 1000, which is about what I expected the job to run. This is just labor for installation, and some parts. I had explained that we’ll buy the hardware. I would expect if I were to undertake doing this myself, the whole job would take me a weekend. I’d also have to buy a 250 dollar 6″ masonry coring bit to core the hole for the vent, and then rent a coring drill, if I didn’t want to feel like I was trying to escape from Alcatraz by chipping through the masonry with the tools I have.

I figure 10 hours would be a generous estimate for the number of hours it would take a pro. Given that, the 2500 bid was 250/hr and the 4200 bid was 420/hr. I don’t think the Endodontist who did my root canal was pulling down 420/hr. I could hire a decent lawyer for that kind of money! I’m wondering if the 4200/hr bidder ever gets people to accept those kinds of bids, but I guess people do or they wouldn’t be in business. Needless so say, we’re going with the 1000 dollar bid. For 4200 bucks I’ll chip through my masonry walls with an ice pick myself!

One thing I had to do yesterday was install an outlet in the area the water heater is going to be mounted to power the micro-controller on the unit. The most expensive bidder wanted a separate circuit, and I have no spare stabs in the box. That seems silly to me. I can understand a furnace, sump pump, or stove — something the integrity of the house depends on or is a heavy draw — but is it really a disaster if you lose hot water from a breaker trip? The low bidder just wanted an outlet, so that’s now done. Hopefully I can be done with taking showers out of a bucket of stove heated water by Tuesday.

A Gift For Our Side, Really

TBCKADOOT blogs about pant loads of PSH. It’s kind of like someone green lighted everyone in the media to say “It’s OK to hate on gun owners again.” One of my big fears headed into 2012 was that gun owners would be mostly asleep, and not really concerned about threats to their gun rights, since there weren’t any obvious and apparent threats, only subtle ones. Additionally, the media really did get better about the issue for a while.

Well, that’s not the case anymore. This has been a stern reminder for people on our side that they hate you. They hate everything about you just for the fact that you have a hobby and a philosophy that they find objectionable. That’s why I’m a big fan of pulling the plug and canceling your subscriptions to the local partisan rags. Starve the beast. I’ve even researched whether I could report the Bucks County Courier Times for littering on my property when they deposit one of their uninvited promotional copies on my lawn (still not sure the answer there). There are plenty of other publications and news sources out there that do a good job of reporting and analyzing the news.

Next is to show up at the polls and vote for pro-gun politicians in 2012. Our opponents are re-energized, and believe they can now beat us. I think they are counting their chickens before they hatch. They just don’t understand what a force our people can be when they get scared.

Assault on SYG Continues

The Washington Post pens a piece that shows the number of justifiable homicides are up in the wake of Stand Your Ground laws. A few questions:

  • During this period, the number of people who have concealed carry permits has risen significantly. Could this be a greater contributing factor?
  • Why is this necessarily a problem? It would seem to me that more people defending themselves successfully is going to be a consequence of more people having firearms. I don’t view this as a social negative.
  • Many of the states listed here have always had no duty to retreat. There are missing states as well. California has no such duty, and neither does Virginia. It seems to me in order for this to be accurate, you’d need to eliminate states that have traditionally had no duty to retreat, which is probably 1/3rd to 1/2 of the states on their list. There are also a number of states which require no duty to retreat when attempting to stop the commission of a forcible felony.

I think if the media are going to go the route of justifiable homicides being a social plague, they aren’t going to find much reception among the public. One reason CD and SYG have been so easy to pass is because politicians are afraid to tell people they can’t defend their homes, conveyances, and have to surrender a place they have a legal right to be in order to be able to claim self-defense. As has been mentioned here numerous times, CD and SYG don’t honestly change much, and in most states, is just adjusting the statutes to match what juries will routinely decide in most of these cases.

So When is National Review Going to Fire This Guy?

I not only find the rhetoric here to be indefensible, it’s outright racist worthy of the worst the Nazis and eugenicists could be capable of producing. John Derbyshire is a writer for National Review, and my only question to them is when they are going to fire him? I am not at all opposed to honest discussions about problems in the black community. Rates of black-on-black violent crime are a serious national problem, and not a topic that should be regarded as beneath discussion, lest we offend someone. But what Derbyshire has penned at the above link just screams the kind of racism that would make Dr. Mengele proud. The worst part is, when it starts to get really bad, it just keeps going downhill. Here’s a smattering of his advice to his children in regards to race relations:

“Avoid concentrations of blacks not all known to you personally.”

Well, hell, I don’t know how anyone could attend a meeting of the NAACP, or an evening at the Apollo Theater, and come out alive! I must also be hallucinating that I’ve attended protests where the majority of protesters were black, and protesting against what I was in Harrisburg to advocate, and got not so much as a suspicious look. I had to have dreamt all that!

“If planning a trip to a beach or amusement park at some date, find out whether it is likely to be swamped with blacks on that date.”

Yeah, cause you know, I regularly do this. I regularly plan to go places, but have second thoughts when I call ahead to find out what the melanin is averaging at the location that day. When the folks on the other end go silent like I’ve grown two heads, I know it’s a place to stay away from.

“Do not act the Good Samaritan to blacks in apparent distress, e.g., on the highway.”

Because we know that blacks never end up in any kind of trouble where they might need help. Just doesn’t happen. Clearly robbery is always the motive with “those people.” Those hapless negroes can take care of their own, right, Mr. Derbyshire?

“If accosted by a strange black in the street, smile and say something polite but keep moving.”

I’d suggest this advice regardless of skin melanin content, given the word “accosted.” Anyone accosts me on the streets is going to have me in condition red, regardless of whether they are black, white, red or purple.

“The mean intelligence of blacks is much lower than for whites. The least intelligent ten percent of whites have IQs below 81; forty percent of blacks have IQs that low.”

And my phrenologist assures me that my skull proportions ensure my just and deserved membership in the master race.

“There is a magnifying effect here, too, caused by affirmative action. In a pure meritocracy there would be very low proportions of blacks in cognitively demanding jobs. Because of affirmative action, the proportions are higher. In government work, they are very high. Thus, in those encounters with strangers that involve cognitive engagement, ceteris paribus the black stranger will be less intelligent than the white. In such encounters, therefore—for example, at a government office—you will, on average, be dealt with more competently by a white than by a black.”

Because those poor, stupid blacks can only compete with the master race when pity is taken on them? I mean, if this were really true, and you believe in equal protection in the eyes of the law, wouldn’t this justify affirmative action? Shouldn’t arguments against affirmative action be that it is inherently racist, by suggesting people with too much melanin can’t compete unless the playing field is forcibly leveled?

“In that pool of forty million, there are nonetheless many intelligent and well-socialized blacks.”

Not racist at all! Not at all! We can even make “Intelligent and Well-Socialized Blacks” into an acronym IWSB. We’re glad for the intelligent and well-socialized ones. I’m sure Derbyshire’s neighbors compliment him on the same character in his dog.

“Be aware, however, that there is an issue of supply and demand here. Demand comes from organizations and businesses keen to display racial propriety by employing IWSB”

“Unfortunately the demand is greater than the supply, so IWSBs are something of a luxury good, like antique furniture or corporate jets: boasted of by upper-class whites and wealthy organizations, coveted by the less prosperous.”

Yeah, because the neighbor on the next plantation always gets the best house slaves. He has money to win auctions, you know. Always have to settle for the field hands, because those house slaves are in short supply since they are a “luxury good.”

John Derbyshire’s words here certainly do not speak well of him, and the underlying thoughts they expose are among the worst instincts in human kind. If he still has a job by Monday, my opinion of National Review will take a permanent downturn. There’s a lot of authors I like over a NR, so it upsets me to see this. Taki’s Magazine should likewise be ashamed for publishing this claptrap and NR should be ashamed for every minute they continue to employ this jackass beyond the publish date of this article.

UPDATE: Looks like they’ve done the right thing.

Some Great Company There Pugsley

Hugo Chavez celebrates Good Friday by asking God to save his life:

In a televised speech to the Catholic service in his home state of Barinas, Chavez cried and his voice broke as he eulogised Jesus, revolutionary fighter Ernesto “Che” Guevara and South American independence hero Simon Bolivar.

One a Jewish carpenter who preached love your fellow man, a mass murderer who preached killing your fellow man if he didn’t back the revolution, and a guy who could have been the South American Washington, but decided he needed to be a dictator instead.

“Give me your crown, Jesus. Give me your cross, your thorns so that I may bleed. But give me life, because I have more to do for this country and these people. Do not take me yet,” Chavez added, standing below an image of Jesus with the Crucifix.

You know, if I were God, I think I’d have a little trouble hearing.

Lynch First, And Ask Questions Later

This should be the new mantra of the anti-gun crowd: “Lynch first, and ask questions later.” The Educational Fund to Stop Gun Violence, Coalition to Stop Gun Violence’s 501(c)(3) bastard cousin who they all actually work for, funds the “Meet the NRA” web site which profiles “controversial” (in CSGV’s world) things that Board members say by taking them out of context and misleading readers. Lately they’ve been adding to Ted Nugent’s list (a long list, they don’t call him the Motor City Madman for nothing) of quotes, which he speaks against George Zimmerman being tried in the media before he’s even had a fair trial, and all the facts have come out.

I’ll be the first to admit I often find Nugent’s over the top rhetoric to be exactly that, but what’s objectionable with the idea of presumption of innocence, and the right to a trial by a fair and impartial jury? I only have to assume if CSGV believes these ideas condemn Ted Nugent, it means they reject these principles themselves. Are the fine with trial by media? Would they fine with just summarily hanging Zimmerman from a sour apple tree as long as enough voices from the mob called for it? I will be the first to suggest political activism is a necessarily ugly process, often disconnected from reality, but presumption of innocence is a bedrock principle of a free society. The fact that our opponents seem to be against that basic hallmark tells me all I need to know about the necessity of opposing them vigorously.

CSGV particularly has been quick to summon the ghosts of the Founding Fathers, to suggest we’re all suffering from delusion to believe they would have supported so much gun nuttery. They believe they are the true carriers of the Founders’ flame, and have said so on several occasions. But John Adams risked his safety and reputation to defend the sentries who were put on trial following another public outrage and trial by media, ginned up as “The Boston Massacre.” Adams abhorred the mob, probably more than he abhorred the crown. The justice of the law may not always be justice, but I don’t think the justice of the mob can ever be justice, and organizations like CSGV and the Brady Campaign ought to be ashamed of themselves for not only promoting it, but condemning those who stand up for the bedrock principles of a free Republic.