Shall Not Be Questioned – Page 185 – The right of the citizens to bear arms in defense of themselves and the State …

Mark Steyn on Ferguson: Where Were the Dash Cams?

I haven’t had much to say about the Ferguson situation, because I’m just not sure there are any good guys here. Everyone seems to be acting badly. I’m also glad Mark Steyn channels my major issue about the case, which is why there wasn’t any dash cam:

The most basic problem is that we will never know for certain what happened. Why? Because the Ferguson cruiser did not have a camera recording the incident. That’s simply not credible. “Law” “enforcement” in Ferguson apparently has at its disposal tear gas, riot gear, armored vehicles and machine guns …but not a dashcam. That’s ridiculous. I remember a few years ago when my one-man police department in New Hampshire purchased a camera for its cruiser. It’s about as cheap and basic a police expense as there is…

… In 2014, when a police cruiser doesn’t have a camera, it’s a conscious choice. And it should be regarded as such. And, if we have to have federal subsidy programs for municipal police departments, we should scrap the one that gives them the second-hand military hardware from Tikrit and Kandahar and replace it with one that ensures every patrol car has a camera.

I couldn’t agree more. The state still has to prove its case (should there be one) beyond a reasonable doubt, but that’s going to end up being “he said, she said” rather than hard evidence, thanks to the lack of dash cam footage. In addition to the initial disproportionate response when all this got started, I also think it says something profound about the Ferguson, MO police department that in this day in age it’s elected to forego dash cams.

You don’t seem to hear the media speaking much about the lack of dash cams, probably because they are too busy showing the world what uneducated nitwits they are.

A New Day, A New Gun Ban Initiative

After the embarrassing political loss for a county office, we knew Bloomberg wouldn’t sit back and let that slide. Now he’s sending the Moms who are continuing to use their brand, despite being rolled into Everytown Against Illegal Mayors Who Hate Guns (or whatever their name is), after grocery stores thanks to images offered up by open carry activists with rifles.

So far, it seems like Kroger is willing to stand by their policy of just letting state and local laws prevail. The company spokesman told HuffPo, “We know that our customers are passionate on both sides of this issue and we trust them to be responsible in our stores.”

Our Drunk Founding Fathers

A few years ago, a bar tab was discovered from a farewell dinner for George Washington, and it went around the Internet, stunning people with disbelief that any group of people could drink that much and still be able to walk home. Bitter was researching lineage societies in Philadelphia, and came across the St. Andrew’s Society of Philadelphia, for Pennsylvanians of Scottish birth or ancestry. I’m not really into joining lineage societies, but most of them keep genealogical records. Bitter came across this amusing account:

“At the Annual Dinner in 1762 Benjamin Franklin was one of the guests. It was reported that the [St. Andrew’s] Society was charged for replacing a considerable number of broken wine glasses and also for replacing three chairs, all reputedly broken by Mr. Franklin. A member of the Society subsequently waited upon Franklin and called to his attention the amount of damage he had caused. Mr. Franklin, however, far from offering to pay up, suggested he come to the next meeting to see how much more damage he could do. He apparently was a perennial guest at the Society’s annual dinners, but not the following year, when the members unanimously declined to extend an invitation!”

So I guess Dr. Franklin wasn’t the kind of guy you wanted to invite to dinner if the liquor was going to be relatively free flowing.

C-SPAN BookTV: Gun Control in the Third Reich

There’s always a lot of myths that go around about German gun control laws from the 1930s, and the rise of the Nazis to power. Stephen Halbrook has actually done the research, and you can see the talk he recently gave on C-SPAN. I’d love to be able to embed it, but it looks like C-SPAN isn’t blog friendly with their videos.

Giffords & Kelly Group: Get Help? Surrender Your 2A Rights

If you look at all the mental health “reforms” that the gun control crowd is pushing these days, if even half of them passed, the end result would be that I’d never seek medical help for any problem I might have with depression, alcohol abuse, or anything like that. I’d suffer through it. Since I’ve generally not had those kinds of mental health issues, I don’t anticipate needing that kind of help, but I do sometimes have issues managing stress, and these proposals would make me wary of even getting help there.

When it comes to guns, I simply don’t trust the medical profession, soÂ I wouldn’t trust that if I went to see a medical professional, he wouldn’t report me to “the authorities,” and next thing you know I have a SWAT team pointing guns at my family while they torch the safe to get the guns. I don’t believe I’m on the only one who feels this way.

So do the anti-gun folks want to create even more stigmas that prevent people from seeking the help they need? We don’t even bother to keep people who are obviously and dangerously mentally ill off the streets. Also, what of the practical aspects? Where are all these “temporarily confiscated” guns going to end up stored? And at whose expense?

Criminal Everything

This isn’t gun related, and it’s not really a case of true over-criminalization (though it easily could be if the state wanted to go after the family for truancy caused by the school), but it’s still something that pisses me off about the nanny culture getting its panties in a twist over any type of non-conformity.

If you’re a school administrator, there are some battles worth fighting. Students who fight, drug or alcohol abuse that impacts the school environment, and maybe even a few slaps on the wrist for overly revealing clothing. Then there are things that aren’t actually disruptive to anyone other than a tight ass who feels an absurd need to punish those who do not engage in groupthink. The principal of Muscle Shoals, Alabama appears to be one of those people.

He kicked out a girl for dying her hair red. Yup, red. Not purple, not blue, not green, not glittery silver, just red.

For the record, those other colors were all colors that I dyed my hair in high school without ever disrupting the school. The closest you might consider a disruption was at the end of my junior year when the school newspaper used me for a trivia question and asked what my normal hair color really was, and no one could remember so they kept asking me throughout the day. Yup, that’s the extent of “disruption” that hair color caused.

Her mother seems to understand how to distinguish between actual problematic behavior in teens and a bottle of red hair dye:

“I dyed my hair when I was her age. I was excited it was that, [that] it wasn’t a tattoo that she wanted or piercings, or something. There are so many girls that do it and there could be worse things. As long as she’s a good student, hair is the least of my worries.”

I framed things the same way to my mom when she was initially skeptical of my blue hair experiment. I could do drugs. I could engage in risky sexual activity. I could get myself arrested. I could “rebel” in any number of harmful ways. Instead, I was an honor student goodie two shoes who rarely did anything against the rules and I just dyed my hair. Hair that grows back. Hair that can be dyed back.

Even though I said at the beginning that this isn’t related to gun issues, I think I need to take that back a bit. The principal’s inability to handle a student who dyes her hair red is engaged in the same kind of thinking of not knowing how to distinguish between a real disruption or threat and something that’s just a little bit outside of the lines of “group” behavior that leads to actions like Six Flags banning veterans wearing military-themed shirts from their parks because the military shirt has a firearm. I’m not sure how you fix that kind of stupid by people who simply refuse to think critically and use a little common sense.

Cash in the Gun Control Movement

Miguel catches CSGV trying to argue that there’s just no real money in gun control, as evidenced by the salaries of Wayne LaPierre and Chris Cox. Heh. I guess they are unhappy that Mike Bloomberg, the billionaire who personally put nearly Chris’s salary into one single county campaign in recent weeks, isn’t cutting big enough checks to inflate their salaries.

Six Flags Kicks Out Veteran

Due to their perception that all depictions of firearms in all situations – even in the context of military service – are bad, the Six Flags in New Jersey detained and kicked out a veteran and his family because he was wearing a military-themed shirt with a patriotic-gun design featured on it.

According to the report, Mario Alejandro was pulled aside after he entered the gate and told that he would have to leave or purchase a new shirt at the park’s over-inflated prices to cover up his shirt which they said violated their policy on all things “vulgar, offensive or violent.”

So, Six Flags, which category do you put our veterans in? Are they in violation for being vulgar? Do you find veterans and their service offensive? Or do you have an issue with violence that is required to keep all of you safe, comfortable, and free?

This shirt wasn’t a representation of gang violence, and the shirt is clearly labeled with the logo of a foundation that serves Marines and their families. According to the article, the guy made sure to let the many people around him know – loudly – that he was a veteran and being kicked out for wearing a military-themed shirt. I’m glad. I hope they lose business over it.

Six Flags is a Texas company, so I really should be able to expect more out of them. It’s a shame to see them going so extremely anti-gun that they even kick out veterans who used firearms to defend this country.

On the St. Louis Riots

Charles C.W. Cooke thinks a lot of folks on the right are having the completely wrong reaction:

Whatever its cause, it is indisputably true that the United States has a problem with blacks killing blacks. And yet this has absolutelyÂ nothing to do with the question at hand, which is: â€œDid a police officer unjustifiably kill an unarmed black man in Missouri?â€ It is feasible, is it not, to be worried about the internecine violence in Americaâ€™s inner citiesÂ andÂ to want to get to the bottom of an allegedly unwarranted shooting? So why the conflation? After all, whether or not it is intentional, reacting to a communityâ€™s grief by raising an entirely separate topic smacks largely ofÂ distractionÂ â€” of reflexively throwing up a roadblock to what is a legitimate line of inquiry in the hope that the subject might swiftly be changed.Â

This is exactly right. If the officer in question did, then he ought to be held accountable for it. I don’t know the whole story, There’s a strong movement beginning on the more libertarian leaning portions of the “right” or “conservative movement” or whatever you want to call it, that is becoming increasingly sympathetic to the idea that there are some cops that run roughshod over the communities they serve and are never held properly accountable for it.

But I’ve never understood the tendency to react to injustice by cutting off your right leg to show everyone how angry you are. If rioters were burning city hall, or overturning police cars, I still wouldn’t condone it, but I’d understand. At least that’s where the people are that wronged you. Reacting to tragedy by destroying your own neighborhood is a reaction that baffles me.

The alleged circumstances surrounding the shooting are certainly suspicious, but there needs to be an investigation. Unlike citizens, police are often allowed to shoot fleeing suspects (whether that’s right is another question). But shooting someone who’s actively surrendering is murder. Even if it was a mistake (booger hook on the bang switch), it’s still manslaughter. But that’s not to say everything is as advertised. These are matters for investigators, prosecutors, and if the facts support it, ultimately a jury.

Pro-Gun Sheriff Wins; Defeats Bloomberg’s Money

There’s a very scary reality that someone with as much money as Bloomberg can put more than $150,000 into a county sheriff’s election and not bat an eye. Money can make things very, very tough to fight when someone saturates the airwaves with a common message during election season.

However, there’s a silver lining in that, ultimately, money doesn’t vote. People vote. That reminder was sent to Mike Bloomberg again last night when the county race he invested so heavily in managed to stay in the hands of a sheriff who believes in the right to defend yourself and your family.

David Clarke retains his office as Milwaukee County Sheriff this morning, even though the Bloomberg-backed challenger is refusing to concede today. Boy, he sure knows how to pick the classy candidates.