NRA Annual Meeting Grassroots Workshop

NRA will be hosting a Grassroots Workshop this year at the annual meeting in Louisville.  I would like to direct you toward the bottom:

Please also plan to attend the “In Their Own Words” Special Session. This session will consist of a panel of your fellow NRA Members discussing their personal grassroots experiences. There is no registration for the “In Their Own Words” Special Session, and as with the Workshop, it is FREE to attend! The “In Their Own Words” Special Session will be held Saturday, May 17, at 2:00 p.m., in Room B104, of the Kentucky Expo Center, located at 937 Phillips Lane, Louisville, 40209.

I will be a speaker at this special session.  I will be presenting an introduction to gun blogging.  If anyone at the Annual Meeting wants to attend, you should sign up.  I will be giving the talk under my own name rather than my assumed name here.

I Couldn’t Agree More

Tam thinksY’know, if only this vapid, content-free crap was more crisp and colorful, I’d totally watch it?”  I have been pondering dropping cable TV for a long time because I never watch it, and it’s horribly expensive.  There are only a few programs I watch, but I’m not sure I like them to the tune of 80 bucks a month.

Yes, It’s Insane

Everyone should read this account of a person who’s questioning why he’s lost his right to bear arms after a non-violent conviction as a young man, and after many years of being an upstanding citizen, is unable to protect himself or his family.

There exists, as part of the Firearms Owners Protection Act of 1986, a process by which people convicted of certain crimes can petition ATF to have their firearms rights restored.  The idea of this was so that people who have been convicted of non-violent offenses could have their right to bear arms restored, if they had kept their noses clean in the intervening years.  In 1992, Congress cut off funding for ATF to be able to process these applications.  For the sake of guys like Jay, I think Congress ought to reconsider funding this program, even if they want to stipulate that it not be used to restore rights to people convicted of violent crimes.

How Do You Say Bias in Hebrew?

A tale of two news stories.   First, from CNN:

A gunman broke into the Jewish seminary about 8:30 p.m., spraying automatic-weapons fire, authorities said. Most of the victims were students in their teens and 20s, medical officials said.

At least nine others were wounded before an off-duty Israel Defense Forces officer fatally shot the gunman, Jerusalem District Police commander Aharon Franko said.

Now From Haaretz:

A student at the Jerusalem yeshiva where eight people were killed in a terrorist attack Thursday evening shot the gunman who opened fire inside the religious school’s crowded library, neutralizing him before a soldier killed him with an automatic rifle.

Yitzhak Dadon said he climbed onto the roof of a nearby building, armed with a rifle, and waited for the gunman to emerge.

What CNN doesn’t tell you is that everyone is “off duty” IDF in Israel.  Can’t feed the idea that letting concealed carry license holders carry while attending university might actually help stop mass shooters now can we?  The Israelis don’t seem to have any illusion about how to make colleges and universities safer from mass shooters.  Why do we persist?

Can’t Seem to Get Caught Up

Still answering e-mails from last night.  Silhouette was crowded, so I got back late.  Then had to watch Lost.  This morning work is kicking my ass again.  Lots of bureaucratic stuff to deal with in addition to actual work.  Happens every once in a while when the senior managers feel like they aren’t in charge, whatever that means to them (usually wasting people’s time with meaningless garbage).  I could take up blogging full time if I got into senior management, as I think collecting a paycheck to blog would do a lot less damage to productivity then pretending to contribute something.  We’ll see how things go after lunch.

Don’t Shoot the Sheeple!

I’m generally not inclined to use the word “sheeple” to describe my fellow citizens, but the guy highlighted here… I can’t honestly find a better word to describe.

You think for a minute if you had to shoot a bad guy, that guys like this aren’t going to vote to send you up the river because you didn’t take a bullet first?  Or maybe he’ll go easy on us because we don’t wear “bulletproof” vests.  If I ever find myself in a situation I have to shoot my way out of, if I have hesitation, it will be because I’m worried about having twelve guys like this second guessing everything I do.

One of the primary reasons I think law enforcement ought to support an armed citizensry is because we’ve had to think about this kind of stuff.  We know what bullets and body armor can and can’t do.  And any of us who have done competitive shooting understand how much more difficult it is to shoot under stress than in relaxed conditions.  The fewer people that have any familiarity with this stuff, the less likely that jury is really going to be one composed of your peers. Hell, in Philly and other crime ridden cities, there’s a good chance your “peers” will be those of the guy you had to shoot.