Shall Not Be Questioned – Page 654 – The right of the citizens to bear arms in defense of themselves and the State …

Gun Jewelry & Other Vintage Finds

I can’t tell you why, but I was recently inspired to type “NRA” into the search function at Etsy. I know most of you have seen a few examples of gun-related jewelry online, but I have to say that the variety available from the sellers on Etsy is the best I’ve ever seen. It doesn’t stop at your typical bullet-shaped necklace or casing cufflinks. It’s gorgeous repurposed gems and uncommon vintage pieces.

The following items are found in these stores: The Key of A, Gallo Grotte, What Once Was, resellit, With Care, The Sea Change, Andrew Modern, victoriasponge, Black Bird Creative, and Little Gems by Jax.

Our Opponents Make Up History

I really don’t know how anyone can say this with a straight face:

Leave it to Sarah Palin to turn Paul Revere’s ride intoÂ a statement about “gun-grabbing.”Â In a wonder of historical revisionism, she stated about Paul Revere, in one of her famous off-the-cuff blunders,

“He who warned the British that they weren’t gonna be takin’ away our arms by ringing those bells, and makin’ sure as he’s riding his horse through town to send those warning shots and bells that we were going to be sure and we were going to be free, and we were going to be armed.”

According to a professor of history, appearing on NPR, with the exception of the warning shots, Sarah Palin got her history right. I mean, seriously, who doesn’t know that General Gage was marching on Concord to seize one of the arms caches the colonials had there?

Prof. ALLISON: Yeah. She was making a Second Amendment case. But in fact, the British were going out to Concord to seize colonists’ arms, the weapons that the Massachusetts Provincial Congress was stockpiling there.

So, yeah, she is right in that. I mean, she may be pushing it too far to say this is a Second Amendment case. Of course, neither the Second Amendment nor the Constitution was in anyone’s mind at the time. But the British objective was to get the arms that were stockpiled in Concord.

BLOCK: So you think basically, on the whole, Sarah Palin got her history right.

Prof. ALLISON: Well, yeah, she did. And remember, she is a politician. She’s not an historian. And God help us when historians start acting like politicians, and I suppose when politicians start writing history.

Our opponents are either highly incredulous or ignorant to an astonishing degree. Maybe some combination of the two. Either way, the accusation that we’re attempting to rewrite history here is breathtaking in its ignorance, or outright hypocrisy.

Constitutional Carry Moving Along in Wisconsin

From NRA:

The amended bill, sponsored by state Senator Pam Galloway (R-Wausau), allowed law-abiding citizens to carry concealed without a license for self-defense in the same manner as is available to the citizens of four other states.Â It also included the option of obtaining a concealed weapons license, for those who must pass through school zones or who want to be able to carry a firearm for self-defense while traveling in a number of other states through reciprocal agreements.

Wisconsin is already a state where one can open carry without a license constitutionally, and the courts seemed primed to declare a right to carry concealed in that manner if the legislature did not address the issue. I’m glad that a constitutional carry bill seems poised to be placed on the Governor’s desk.

Another Reason NRA’s Doctor Law is Stupid

Jennifer’s doctor is a gunnie. Gag laws are just a bad idea. Especially when you consider the number of doctors that are actually on our side. There are many. Some of them even read this blog.

Without revealing too much …

… I’m in the middle of trying doing something recklessly entrepreneurial. How reckless? That is still to be determined, but I spend time on the drive home with Bitter talking about how, “This whole damned thing is crazy, and I’m crazy for staying involved in it.”

I wish I could reveal more, but for a lot of reasons I have to keep my personal life just that. I am not the one at the tip of this spear, but I am the one who knows how to put Humpty Dumpty back together again. There are many cats in need of herding between here and not having to go look for another job. This is consuming the spare CPU cycles.

The good news is that our temporary offices now have Internet access that is not hopelessly bad. We should be returning to our somewhat regularly scheduled routine somewhat soon. I appreciate your patience in the matter. Previously I had a fairly well-regulated routine for supplying the blog with fresh material, which has hence had a wrench thrown in that formula.

Starting Them Young

Isn’t just precious when you can include the little ones in your hobby?

Pay attention to the front wheel in the beginning and the license plate during the 360.

My nephew might be a bit old for this sequel, but I’m hoping that he goes to see it.

We’ll See How Long the Power Lasts

Yay for backup power! We lost our main power a few minutes ago. Everything was fine and stifling hot, and then the wind came up out of no where. It went nuts. I regret having put the garbage out already since it is already knocked over. I checked radar on my phone and there’s a wall of red headed this way. Sebastian is at the gun club a few minutes east of here, so I called to give him a warning since they are shooting outside.

(And now we’re back on for a few more minutes.) What a world we live in that I can call him to tell him exactly what the radar looks like even as the power starts to flicker here at home. I guess it shouldn’t amuse me any more than tweeting during the multiple blizzards we had just a couple of winters ago.

Sorry for the somewhat off-topic commentary about home life. But I just have to admit that while we don’t have flying cars yet, life is still pretty damn cool.

UPDATE (By Sebastian): Â UPS power is definitely a Godsend, but one interesting thing is that no one bid on our natural gas powered generator at work. It could be had for three grand. This is a 30,000 KVA three phase setup. If I had the land, and a pad, I’d totally go for it. As it stands now the blog is backed up by about an hour’s worth of battery. The downside to natural gas power is that you still need some kind of grid to run it. Diesel engines could probably run off fish oil if you needed them to.

Feminists Love Their Bodies

In fact, a women’s rights group loves women’s bodies so much that they believe clinics which provide services exclusively for women shouldn’t have any of the regulations applying to other outpatient facilities applied to them. Because safety and sanitation, those are things only men deserve, right?

Pardon me as I step away from the main topic of this blog and ponder an issue that baffles me as a modern women who actually does consider herself a feminist – at least one who doesn’t hate men.

I can’t fathom exactly how pro-choice groups oppose regulating abortion clinics as ambulatory surgical centers. While I understand their goal is to make abortion as accessible as possible, it is still a fairly major procedure that can have a long-term impact on the reproductive health of a woman. Shouldn’t they be in favor of making sure that such facilities have the same kind of oversight and safety requirements as similar medical centers that provide services for men?

I’m not even getting into the moral issue of abortion, this is a matter of looking at it strictly as a legal medical procedure – which it currently is right now. After the horrors in Philadelphia with agencies in dispute over who controls what in the process, why is there opposition to providing a clear regulation structure that can allow abortion clinics to remain open, but also require the same quality of treatment and safety conditions required for clinics that also serve the needs of men? Instead, a woman’s group calls on such equitable standards as a “public health crisis.”

Even beyond the question of whether abortion should be legal, the fact remains that it is legal. But I’m really shocked when proposals that ultimately do protect the lives and health of the women who seek abortions are actually opposed by women’s groups on the grounds that it will somehow cut off all access to the procedure. This isn’t a notification law, it’s not a mandate to get an ultrasound with a waiting period imposed afterwards, or any of the medically-dubious types of rules that many pro-life lawmakers try to push around the country. It’s regulating an abortion clinic for what it is – an outpatient surgical center.

I’m not a doctor, and I don’t play one on tv. I also don’t follow the abortion debate or politics very closely because it’s not an issue that’s ever going to change in any substantial manner. But, I am a woman. And when I hear groups that are supposedly all for equality getting their panties in a twist over regulating surgical services for women the same way that men’s medical services are treated, it doesn’t really add up on how this advances feminism if the current structure allowed a clinic that killed live babies and a woman. That seems very anti-woman to me.

Doctors Sue to Overturn Florida Gun Gag Law

I believe this should be an easy case for our opponents to win, and it was for this reason, plus a general conviction that we have a thing called free speech in this country, that I oppose NRA pushing these bills in state legislatures.

That said, I can see the strategic value in our opponents having to spend money they are short on to fight it. Even though the case should be fairly slam-dunk from their point of view, and for the First Amendment’s sake, I hope it is, it’s still money they won’t be able to spend fighting a case I really do care about.

In addition, it’s a shot across the bow to the medical establishment that they really ought not insert themselves into a contentious social issue that has absolutely nothing to do with the field of medicine. It’s not the AMA, AAP or ACP the press touts as the country’s most powerful lobbying group, and they would do well to remember that.

My Story of How I Became a Gunnie

Jennifer asks:

But whether Iâ€™ve met you or not, I want to know your story.Â The vast majority of my readers are firearms enthusiasts of some stripe.Â How did that happen?Â How did you become gunnies?

I was into shooting, pretty much only air guns and smallbore, from the time I was about 12 and 13 up until maybe 15. My Uncle and cousins moved to a more rural area where you could safely do that. Now it’s been built up and you’d get a SWAT team called on you for doing some of the shit we did, but we got away with it in the late 80s.

I completely lost touch with the hobby from 16 through to my mid-20s, which is probably fairly common for most young men. I did not get back into shooting until my friend Jason (same guy who is doing the 3D magazine project) took me out one time, and I remembered I once really enjoyed this.

A few months later he informed me there was a sale on Romanian AK-47 clones on sale at a local gun store near him. I was surprised this was legal, since I was aware of the Assault Weapons Ban, so I started researching, and discovered what it actually banned. I went up there and bought one. You can see it in the picture not to long after it was purchased.

I did not buy it for anything other than a novelty. In truth, I got it because I was appalled at the Assault Weapons Ban when it passed, and was even more appalled at it after I understood what it was really about. I short, I wanted it because a certain types of people who can’t mind their own damned business frowned on the idea of me having one, and I did not aim to please them. Turned out, however, I enjoyed shooting it. My next purchase, after that, was a .22LR pistol, a Ruger Mk.II, which I loved to shoot, and it was all downhill from there.

I purchased my first gun in 2000, after the Y2K thing turned out to be nothing. I’m guessing that was the reason for the sale.Â I did not grow up in a house with guns. My mother never would have allowed it. Whether she would have allowed me to keep one in our house as an adult, I don’t know. She died when I was 20 and did not have a say in the matter. My dad was fine with it. I moved into an apartment later that year, but I was still living at home when I bought my first firearm.

I did not get a License to Carry a firearm until 2002. The first firearm I carried in public was a Bersa Thunder .380. I took it on a trip to my sister’s the day I got the license just because I could. I felt very awkward, and thought everyone could see it. By that time I knew how to be safe with a pistol, as I had been learning for two years. If I knew then what I know now, I would have sought more formal training with reputable instructors in those two years than I did.

I did not get into competitive shooting until 2007. My only classification competitively is in NRA Air Pistol Indoor/Outdoor, and IHMSA. I have never been classified in IPSC or IDPA, and have never shot a formal match in either sport. This is not because I wouldn’t like to, but because the clubs in my area either don’t allow such shooting, or if they do don’t have formally sanctioned matches by a Â Shooting Sports governing body. Ironically the best place for me to shoot those kinds of matches is over at Central Jersey Rifle and Pistol, who run a lot of great matches, but taking a gun into New Jersey is not a wise move. Just ask Brian Aitken.

Finally, I got into gun blogging to impress a girl who said I should do it. She’s now my co-blogger, among other things :) I kept gun blogging because I built an audience, which surprised the hell out of me. Through this I’ve gotten to meet some terrific people. I don’t have any current plans to stop. What’s next for me in this issue? I’d like to find more trigger time competitively, and try some practical shooting sports. I’ve gotten out of the swing, so to speak, because of my schedule. Made the IHMSA match this weekend. It was fun. Every once in a while you need a reminder that shooting is more fun than working.

So that’s my story. What’s yours?