The right of the citizens to bear arms in defense of themselves and the State …
It’s a common theme on Scott Adams blog, the notion that many companies, in order to avoid competing on price, creating buying structures that are impossible to understand, thus hiding true cost.
I think what’s surprising to me is that I’ve only ever heard the term from Scott Adams, but anyone who buys things, particularly corporate purchasing, knows this is common, so why don’t you hear mainstream economists speaking of confusopolies?
Tam has another link to training fail, which seems to becoming more common. While I think gun bloggers have a role in pointing this stuff out, I think there’s no better evidence for the phenomena of lots of newly minted gun owners than the training fail phenomena. If it’s correct that guns and shooting are going completely mainstream as a hobby, you’re going to see a lot more unqualified people getting into the business in an attempt to cash in on the larger pool of newbs floating around out there that wouldn’t know good training from bad.
So I put this phenomena in the “good problem to have,” category, because of what it means. It would be interesting to see as well, whether NRA’s had an uptick in problem instructors, since NRA’s credential is not all that difficult to obtain, and widely recognized. While they probably would want to keep quiet about that if it were the case, it would be more evidence there are a lot of new shooters floating out there on the market looking for training.
Santa stopped by the house a little early this year and dropped off a Kindle. Yay! I kind of went nuts downloading the free books the first day. To date, I’ve only purchased one book – Brian Anse Patrick’s The Ten Commandments of Propaganda. It’s available only via Kindle at the moment, though he plans to publish a paper version next year.
I haven’t started it yet, but when I do, I’ll probably pull out some of my old communications textbooks on related topics just for fun. This reading hobby is dangerous.
Maybe I shouldn’t have changed the blog name:
Farmers in rural areas have been reporting increasing damage to their crops by wild boar, deer and other animals. To make firearms more accessible, a bill that would loosen the currently tight restrictions on hunting rifles has been proposed in the Diet. But, the Sankei Shimbun (Dec 4) reports, the police remain adamantly opposed to changes in the law.
You hear this a lot in foreign countries, but you have to wonder how often it’s true that “police” opposition in these countries is also nothing but political appointees.
The Mythbusters screwed up in a big way. It’s one of those things that’s funny since no one got hurt, but that could have very very easily been a different story, given what a cannonball is capable of doing. I’m sure the Alameda County sheriff’s office is pretty spooked too, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they don’t let them do projectile experiments there anymore.
Personally, if it were me, I’d be happy to settle with Discovery Networks in exchange for them fixing what they broke, and letting me be on a Mythbusters show :)
The real difficulty with working at a job that doesn’t have as much flexibility is that I can’t just blog when I’m inspired and make up the time. So when I come home, if I’m just not feeling it, the next day’s posts will suffer. Such was the case last night, so today I got up early to post. I appreciate everyone’s patience. If you don’t notice any difference, then success, but I have about 20 minutes to get a whole day’s worth of posts up.
Sebastian said I should report on this CBS report on documents that show it was used by ATF to push for more gun control. Sadly, my first thought was wondering how it is news at this point. Everyone who paid even scant attention to the scandal knew this was a tactic to push for more gun control. It hardly seems news now that it’s proven.
I look forward to the amusing announcement that these documents are just part of our paranoid conspiracy theories about gun rights as Media Matters so frequently likes to argue. If they were intellectually honest, they would admit that this new evidence shows it wasn’t paranoia run amok, but I wouldn’t hold my breath if I were you.
It looks like the County (my the County) officials are busy allocating public funds to cover the costs of gun buybacks in Bristol Township:
BRISTOL TOWNSHIP: $50,000 for municipal building roofing project; $35,000 for a 80 kw portable generator; $17,000 for GIS mapping services for GIS system upgrade; $200,000 for road improvements; $58,000 to the township public works department for a diesel bypass pump; $48,000 for a township public works department roofing project; $60,000 for a storm water inlet replacement project; $30,000 for a municipal complex solar lighting project; $22,000 for a municipal complex sign project; $25,000 to the township police department for a gun buyback program
The authority that is responsible for distributing these funds is the Bucks County Redevelopment Authority. No doubt Bristol Township officials requested it, but the redevelopment authority still approved. In other news, it looks like the County SWAT team will be getting some money for new toys.
My concern here is that this a waste of money that could be better spent on measures more proven to actually do something to reduce crime. The amount being allocated here would cover a decent portion of the cost to hire a whole extra police officer. I thought I’d let me local readers know in case anyone wants to go stake out the buy backs and make sure no one turns in history for destruction; my other big issue with buy back programs.
If pictures are worth a thousand words, then here are a couple of thousand to honor those who gave their lives 70 years ago.
According to this article, the ashes of another survivor from the USS Arizona who passed recently will be placed on the ship this week. As of November 14, there were 18 known survivors of the Arizona. We can also find this profile of the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association which served any veteran who survived the day that reflects on why they are being forced to shut down this year. It’s the struggle of an organization which is rapidly aging and literally has no one from which to recruit new leaders. Read it because history is wrapping up in front of us.
John Micek of the Morning Call linked to these scans of the AP bulletins from December 7, 1941. It also includes the story of what was happening behind the scenes in the newsroom as the story broke. The details on their experience of the day are incredible, including tidbit at the end about the reporter who wrote the second “flash” of the day and could never eat the peanut butter & bacon sandwiches they were all having for lunch that day again (at least until the time the account was dictated more than a month later).
Extrano’s alley speculates it could happen, and we should force the point. It wouldn’t honestly surprise me if we could be successful here. To say that the massive increase in NFA transactions, many of which are in the forms of trusts, has been a problem for ATF is an understatement. Trusts are particularly problematic because they are harder to clear than individuals. Many people are driven toward the use of trusts because of being unable to obtain LEO sign off. In this day in age, it really is a useless requirement, and should be dropped. I no more know my local police chief than I know the examiner who would process the NFA paperwork.
Granted, there are still a lot of good reasons to use trusts over individual. If Bitter and become NFA collectors, we’ll likely go the trust route, just because if both of us are on the trust, we can both be in legal possession of the same object. This is not true if you do it individually. If you lent your wife your can to take to the shooting range, unless you were with her, that would be an illegal transfer. A trust eliminates that.
The better solution to deal with the backlog would be to remove silencers from the NFA and deregulate them. They are representing most of the growth in NFA interest. Eliminating the requirement for SBRs would help as well.