Sebastian – Page 491 – Shall Not Be Questioned

Training in Wisconsin

It’s now up to the Attorney General to prescribe regulations in regards to how much training is necessary to be able to get a concealed handgun license. And now the range operators come out to try to get their slice of the pie:

At Fletcher Arms in Waukesha owner Sean Eaton says the more gun safety training the better.

“Wisconsin’s never had concealed carry, so anyone who is not a police officer has never had concealed carry,” Eaton said.

It’s a good rule that if you’re an FFL, you should never speak to the media. I agree that the more training the better, saw a general rule, but the question is how much should be mandated. Shooting is a skill, much like playing the piano. You can’t learn to play the piano well with 8, or even 180 hours of training, and neither can you become an expert with a gun. This is true of cops as well as citizens. What we want is for people to understand the law, and have enough basic knowledge to get them started on a safe path toward being a competent shooter on their own. That can be successfully taught in a couple of hours. Mandating further training would have no effective purpose other than frustrating people out of getting permits.

Personally, I think a better way to do it, rather than training, is to quiz people on the law in regards to deadly force, and then a live shooting test. As long as the standards are reasonable, and in line with the same qualifier police have to take (which is easy, BTW), I don’t see why this wouldn’t be an acceptable substitute for a training regimen. That way the requirement is competence, rather than some arbitrary number of hours, or mandating courses that are expensive. This way, you only have to pay someone to administer the shooting test. The legal quiz could easily be done online.

Shall-Issue Nation

No Lawyers, Only Guns and Money has a stunning visual of the progress of shall-issue reform over the year. Still, a lot of people live in may-issue states. To be more accurate, you’d have to break this out by jurisdiction, however. There are jurisdictions in California now that are shall-issue. More than ever before. That’s going to cover a lot of people. Delaware is also a permissive may-issue state, especially in Kent and Sussex counties. Many jurisdictions in New York will issue carry permits on a shall-issue basis. Same with Massachusetts.

Of the states that are may-issue as a matter of law, only New Jersey, Hawaii, Rhode Island, and Maryland are broadly restrictive on a state-wide basis. So as a practical matter, the picture looks even better than it would appear here. Still, it’s pretty apparent that carry is the next major battle we’ll be fighting in the Courts, and it’ll be interesting to see what direction the Court decides to go in. I think most likely, it’ll be a recognition that carry is protected, but with the states retaining a fair degree of leeway in regulating how arms are permitted to be worn. It would be interesting, in that case, to see how many restrictive jurisdictions legalize open carry, but keep their concealed weapons licensing regimes highly restrictive. I’m also interested in seeing how the courts deal with carry in a vehicle.

Voting the Wallet: Dwight Evans in Trouble?

Capitol Ideas is reporting that Dwight Evans could be in trouble this coming election. Those of us in the shooting community in PA certainly know Rep. Evans well, as he’s one of the leaders of our opposition. Evans has been in his seat as long as I can remember, so the idea that he might be in trouble shows just how pissed off people are over economic conditions, and the African-American communities that Rep. Evans represents have been hit the hardest by the financial crisis.

Home ownership losses among the black community are of historic proportions, and they’ve taken a larger pounding on their net worth than any other community. That must be why Obama’s favorability ratings are slipping even among black voters. I don’t care what color you are, or what language you speak, or what country you originally came from, there’s a universal truth in politics that when you boil away all the bullshit, people vote their pocketbooks. Something like a financial crisis of this magnitude has a tendency to boil away an awful lot of bullshit, and make things a lot more real.

I’ve never been of the opinion that there’s any politician that owes me a living. Obama didn’t start the Financial Crisis, and things would still suck pretty bad had McCain been elected instead of Obama. What I do blame Obama for is passing a massive, expensive, and incomprehensible entitlement program in the middle of a financial crisis. What I’ve been noticing in the job market is an abundance of contract positions, and a relative dearth of full time positions. Those hiring full time are taking their time about it. It’s my opinion that no one wants to hire full-time people because no one has any real clue how much Obamacare is going to cost, and the mandates on employers are not insignificant.

In my volunteering with NRA, I’ve talked to businesspeople who say they have work, but don’t want to hire because they have no idea what they are going to be paying for health care for workers in a few years. This is going to affect lower wage workers a lot more than upper middle class professionals who already had gold plated health plans.

Politicians of all stripes are going to have to face angry voters in the 2012 elections. Dwight Evans will certainly not be alone. I just hope some of the people replacing these long time left-wing politicos start to understand that the money for free lunches has run out, and the only way we’re getting back on track is to get out of the way, and give people the opportunity to make their own living. That doesn’t mean we can’t solve most people’s health care anxieties, or at least ease them, but those solutions are going to have to come with the understanding about free lunches.

UPDATE: Speaking of easing people’s health care anxieties, repealing this stupid law, and letting employees pay for their own health care with pre-tax money would be a good start. My main anxiety is that my health care is tied to my job. Since the job loss, I got a cheap, major medical plan. A plan, that, ironically, will be illegal under Obamacare. Glad I didn’t become unemployed after 2014.

Getting a Gun in DC

SayUncle has the photos, and a link to a story from a Washington Times reporter who set out to test the system. What other constitutional right do we allow to be regulated in such a manner?

Careful Picking up Spent Brass in Texas Without Permission

Looks like the legislature, likely trying to deter theft of metals from infrastructure, inadvertently made it a felony to pick up brass from a range that isn’t yours. Seems to me it would be possible to make a statute to apply to theft of metal necessary for the operation of public works, that would cover most conceivable situations.

Little Nibbles

Getting some nibbles in the job search again. Had to respond to a few people today on that front. Then the drip tray under my grill gave out because it had rusted through. I had my eye on a nice 500 dollar Weber grill, but then the job went away. I’m going to try to rig a makeshift drip tray so I can keep grilling.

Blogging will resume shortly, if I can find something to blog about. I haven’t even looked yet today.

Classic Steve Jobs

When I was in college, I was a member and pseudo-leader of a group called the DUsers, which was actually the first Mac user group in the country, founded at Drexel University in 1984. There are other groups that will also claim to be the first, but they are blasphemers with no evidence to back up their claim. My friend Jason, who has occasionally co-blogged on here, wrote a Shareware game for the old black and white Macs, and last I heard still had a check from Steve Wozniak somewhere, who apparently thought his game was pretty cool and decided to pay for it. The DUsers were absorbed into another student group a number of years ago, and I don’t know what’s happened to them since. I also don’t know what happened to a lot of our vintage archival material.

Once being a Mac user went from being Geek to Chic, a lot of the old user groups died out, and while the Apple community has gained substantially, it has lost something in becoming the “in” thing. I was part of the community when Apple was getting steamrolled by Microsoft, and being an Mac aficionado was something a bit odd, rather than stylish. It is in that spirit I share this with you. It is classic Steve Jobs. Cordial, and at the same time arrogant, but also speaking the brutal truth:

For those of us who were Mac users during the days of John Scully, Michael Spindler, and Gil Amelio, what could also be charitably referred to as “the dark years,” it’s hard to imagine what Apple will be like, once again, without Steve Jobs at the helm. Does Tim Cook have the minerals? We shall see. Google is a much tougher competitor than Microsoft ever was, and operating systems, at this point, are easily commoditized.

Those of us that have been around the Apple world for a while might remember that before Apple bought NeXT back in 1996, it was also rumored to be flirting with Be Inc, maker of the BeBox, which ran BeOS. Be was lead by Jean-Louis Gassee, who was probably every bit Job’s equal when it came to personality. Gassee was once famously, and humorously quoted as saying:

“For God’s sake, don’t compare us to NeXT. We want to be a better tool for developers, not to be tasteful. We don’t cost $10,000. We have a floppy drive. We do not defecate on developers.”

Of course, Apple ultimately bought NeXT, rather than BeOS, and Steve Jobs proceeded to rearrange the Apple board, and orchestrate his return to the helm. How different of a world it would be today if instead of bringing back Steve Jobs with Apple’s acquisition of NeXT, they had bought Be Inc, and with it Jean-Louis Gassee?

We’re Winning, Again

A major paper publishes a story about how homicide rates are not linked to gun control. Did I mention the major paper is Canadian? Once you turn the issue from one where the media and other powers that be say “Well, gun control, of course,” to turning into a legitimate issue of contention, you’ve automatically started to win. Canadian gunnies are obviously a long way off from recovering serious lost ground, but they are moving in the right direction.

Our opponents only survive in “Well, gun control, of course,” political climates. Once you can shine light on the futility, ineffectiveness, and often outright intellectual and factual dishonesty of their positions, you will start pulling in more and more allies.

Parody of MeetTheNRA

I have more ideas than I have time to implement, unfortunately. But looking over the latest creation of our sad and pathetic friends at Coalition to Stop Gun ~~Violence~~ Ownership, I’m struck by how easy this Meet the NRA site would be to parody, given how pathetic many of their gotchas are. I was thinking the parody would go something like this, picking Bob Smith as a generic name to act as a stand in for any given Board member:

In 2011, Bob Smith walked into a bar for a drink. Two hours later, well known white supremacist and conspiracy theorist Bill Halfwit came into the same bar, and reportedly sat in the same seat as Mr. Smith. Mr. Smith had left his attachÃ© case under the bar. Halfwit turned the case into the bartender, and it was later returned to Mr. Smith. This demonstrates the links NRA Board Member have with the white supremacist movement. It was also reported the AttachÃ© case was made by a company that employes child labor in China.

Or maybe something like this:

In 2008, an article written by Mr. Bob Smith of the NRA Board appearing in the February 2007 issue of American Rifleman was found at a shooting bench. Three hours before, the Citizen’s Militia of Bungsucker County had been drilling at the range, occupying the majority of shooting benches. Mr. Smith’s ties to right-wing militias are clear.

Finally:

In 1946, NRA Board Member Bob Smith, just getting started in his career as a criminal defense attorney, defended a one Jimmy Billabob on a tax matter. Billabob, in 1956, gave a speech to his County Sewage Improvement Board favoring a policy segregation, declaring “There ain’t pooh from any colored feller that’s fit to mingle with mine!” During Smith’s career as a defense attorney, he associated with a large number of unsavory characters, declaring that “Every man, even racist men, have a right to fair trial,” as he defended every manner of person from murderers to Klan members. Fortunately, Mr. Smith has since retired from defending murderers, rapists, and Klan members, but rumors of involvement with defending right-wing militias still persist.

All of these are based on actual accusations, and the general tone of the site, but exaggerated to a greater level of ridiculousness make the parody. I think this was meant to help CSGV attract more members of the loony left, and probably also give them a way to fill out their day in a way that will help them forget the fact that they are being pummeled into oblivion by a bunch of people they feel are beneath them. I suspect it’s more the latter. For their sake I hope it is, since we discovered the loony left doesn’t seem to be too fond of their agenda.

Bush Did it Too

That seems to be the latest deflection from the Administration. I’m not really all that concerned about whether there were guns being walked during the Bush Administration too. If that’s the case, a pox on the Bush Administration as well. But Bush isn’t in office, Obama is, and Holder decided to let it continue rather than stopping it. Sorry guys, but trying to deflect the blame isn’t going to cut it. You want to go after Gonzalez or Mukasey? Be my guest. But this isn’t a get out of jail free card.