The right of the citizens to bear arms in defense of themselves and the State …
This is great news. The Senate Committee was most hostile. I’ve been unplugged enough I forgot to update everyone that there was going to be a vote. It passed 13-1 out of committee.
More importantly, there’s no Florida Loophole fix attached to the bill, for those who were insistent that the deal was in the works to do that.
Now it’s onto the Senate floor where hopefully this will gain quick passage and be off to Governor Corbett.
There’s a candidate running in California with this as a major platform. To be honest, these folks don’t annoy me that much because they at least recognize the Second Amendment as an obstacle. They are at least honest in what needs to be done. Suggesting we need to repeal the Second Amendment is at least taking the Constitution and the Bill of Rights seriously, even if I might believe repealing the Second Amendment would disparage the document.
Today I decommissioned and removed the last piece of functioning IT equipment at my employer’s now nearly evacuated building. I have rather ambivalent feelings about all this. I first started with this company in its inception back in June of 2001, when it was still in the basement of another company that was incubating it. I built up the IT infrastructure in this company before there were even walls in the building I’m in the process of emptying now. I still remember those early days like they just happened.
But at the same time I also remember the management imposed on us which departed greatly from the original vision, and proceeded to destroy what were trying to build. I remember the imposition of a working environment that was thoroughly miserable and degrading. I remember the valiant efforts of later management, who were good people, to try to salvage what turned out to be a hopelessly wounded animal.
We did not fail because our idea failed. We failed because our investors flushed an A idea down the toilet bowl of a D- management team. We lost a lot of very good talent due to that. In the past two years things got much better, and particularly the past year we’ve been much more focused, but the wounds we were bearing still impeded progress. I am not really sad to execute the closing of this chapter, but I’m very keen on what happens next. I’m looking forward to it.
Only Cemetery would be crazy enough to work up a load for the AR-15 in black powder. Just keep scrolling. Looks like the black doesn’t quite have the energy to cycle the action, but I just think it’s great to try it at all.
UPDATE: Looking at this a bit further, it looks to me like the black powder isn’t even providing the recoil system with enough gas to unlock the bolt. I’m wondering if a heavier bullet would help force more gas back into the gas system? I don’t know much about the characteristics of black powder, so I’d be reluctant to make suggestions, but to me it looks like there’s just not enough gas pressure in the system. If you were getting enough gas pressure in the system to unlock the bolt, you’d just get a short cycle, so I don’t think the buffer spring is really an issue here. The issue here is that you need a bolt that takes less force to unlock, and that’s an inherent design characteristic. Could be the black just doesn’t have the energy to work an AR-15 gas system.
Steve at the Firearms Blog describes why the price of small arms in Libya is skyrocketing. IANSA should be welcoming this. Can’t have those rebels hurting anyone, now, can we? The problem in the world has never been that there are too many small arms and light weapons out there, it’s that there are too many small arms and light weapons out there in the wrong hands.
The real question is who’s hands are the right hands? That’s a more difficult question. This country has had, and indeed is founded on, a strong respect for individual liberty and individual worth. There are plenty of oppressed people who, given the power, will become oppressors themselves. In fact, the world probably has a lot more experience with that kind of revolution than it does with something like ours, which was rather unique. Just seeing how hard it is to maintain some semblance of freedom left in this country, I’m not all that comfortable saying freedom is a universal human value. I think there are a great many thing humans value more than freedom.
That said, I believe the kind of massacre happening in Syria and Libya right now is so horrible I’d be willing to roll the dice, and suggest dropping crates of small arms into the parts of the country the rebels control would not be a terrible idea. Every human being, I don’t care what your ideology, has the basic human right to defend themselves against that kind of tyranny and horror, and as free people we ought to be willing to lend a hand.
Watching some of the last equipment from our chemistry labs head out the door today with the people who won the auctions, I noticed this:
My first thought was, I know someone who’d see about that. My money would be that Boomerite beats refrigerator. If we were located in Idaho, I would have bid on this freezer just to put that to the test :)
The Boston Herald seems to be surprised their their state ranks near the bottom in a freedom index:
“The big takeaway is that Massachusetts is not doing well overall in terms of freedom,†said study co-author William Ruger, despite the state’s laissez faire attitude toward gay marriage and pot. “There’s this kind of stereotype or myth that the deep blue states are more economically restrictive but more personally free. But the data doesn’t actually bear that out . . . Liberals tend to want to constrain your freedom in all areas.â€
Now I support gay marriage and a laissez attitude towards pot, but let’s face it, “rules on smoking, seat belts, transfats and firecrackers,” affect a lot more people. I, for one, have long believed it’s a core tenent of freedom that on certain holidays, we be able to celebrate our nation’s freedom by blowing up a small chunk of it.
Apparently they’ve raised the age limit on handgun licenses, and made applicants prove they’ve been involved in shooting activities before being issued. At least some Finns realize the Catch 22 here:
“How one can prove that one has been active in a hobby for two years, if one cannot own the equipment,” asked Teemu Simelius, organisation chief at the Finnish hunters’association.
These are the common sense gun laws our opponents would love to bring here.
At your leg, because you decided to stupidly Mexican carry a Glock in your sweat pants to a New York night club and drink, without a license to do so. Apparently that makes you qualified to help our opponents. Next time our opponents try to tell you we’re in league with gun criminals, throw this in their faces.
I have to disagree with John Richardson about NRA’s attempt to repeal North Carolina’s emergency powers law, which was opposed publicly by Grassroots North Carolina because it would moot their lawsuit.
I’m not in favor of scuttling an opportunity for a legislative fix to preserve a court case that may or may not ultimately win. If you have an opportunity to fix something legislatively, you take it. If you lose the vote in a legislature, you can always take another shot at goal. Fixing bad precedent because you came short on votes for a panel of judges is considerably more difficult. I hope I don’t again have to see again the absurdity of a pro-gun organization coming out against a piece of legislation that would strip states of the ability to disarm people in an emergency.
I’m reminded of the story of Patrick Ferguson, a famous British Sharp Shooter. who at the Battle of Brandywine found an officer in his sights, decided not to take the shot, because it would be ungentlemanly. Lucky for us. Not very lucky for the British cause in North America. The officer he had in his sights was none other than George Washington. The lesson is that when you have that kind of shot lined up, you take it.