Month: October 2009

Activism

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I went out to lunch today, planning on visiting a restaurant I haven’t been to in a while, Thunder Canyon Brewery. I don’t drink, but they’ve got pretty decent burgers.

I was stopped by the sign on the door informing me that handguns were not welcome inside, pursuant to the passage of a law that went into effect on Sept. 30 that allows CCW permit holders to carry their firearms into restaurants that serve alcohol, as long as said restaurant does not prohibit such, and as long as the carrier does not consume alcohol.

I started to turn away, but thought better of it. As I’ve noted previously, I carry in my wallet some cards just for incidents of this type:


I went inside and asked for the manager. When he arrived, I introduced myself and handed him a card. “I appreciate your right to put up your sign, but I just wanted you to know that you wouldn’t be getting my business, and I’ll do what I can to make sure others will avoid your business as well,” I said. We exchanged a few more words (pleasantly), and I went on my way.

While waiting for the manager, I noted that there were business cards at the hostess’ desk, so I’d picked one up. His name and email address were on it, so after I got back from lunch – having eaten elsewhere – I dropped him this note:

My name is Kevin Baker. We met this morning when I gave you a small “business card” protesting the posting of a “no guns” sign on the front door of your establishment. Thank you for your time.

If you have an additional moment, I’d like to expand a bit on the short discussion we had before I left. You noted that several of managers of (I assume) other facilities were gun owners, many were CCW permit holders, and “about half” were NRA members, but that you all shared a belief that “guns and alcohol don’t mix.” We agree on that point. I noted that those people who jump through the necessary hoops to get a CCW permit are not the kind of people who are likely to violate the law by drinking while armed. This is one of the points I’d like to expand on.

Can I assume that you are a gun owner? Possibly even the possessor of a CCW permit?

Would you drink while carrying?

Here is my problem with denying me (and others) the ability to carry in your restaurant: I carry a firearm for the protection of myself and (if necessary) others. Like you, I believe that guns and alcohol don’t mix. In order for me to eat in your restaurant, you oblige me to remove my firearm and leave it in my vehicle, not only disarming me but making my firearm vulnerable to being stolen. And you do this because you fear that I might violate the law by drinking alcohol – while armed – in your establishment.

This doesn’t strike you as illogical? It’s OK for me to enter your establishment disarmed, drink, and then go climb into my 3,000lb pickup truck and drive? I’m to be trusted to operate a motor vehicle safely after drinking, but I’m not to be trusted to carry a firearm and not drink?

As I noted this morning, people who are willing to carry a firearm and drink aren’t going to be dissuaded by your sign, they’re going to break the law anyway. But you’ve decided it’s better to disarm me, require me to leave my firearm in my vehicle while I have a burger and fries with friends because, well, I won’t break the law by carrying in a restaurant that has the proper signs displayed.

The argument is ludicrous on its face.

What your sign says is “WE DON’T TRUST YOU, OUR CUSTOMERS.” And it says it to the tiny fraction of the population – those of us with CCW permits – who have been proven to be the most trustworthy.

And for that reason, I won’t give you my business and I’ll encourage others not to either.

Thank you for your attention.

Kevin Baker
Tucson, AZ
http://smallestminority.blogspot.com

We’ll see if he gives me any response.

UPDATE 10/30: I did get a reply.

Kevin,

Thanks for your input, but really it’s a moot point. What I wish I would have said to you is this….The entire Foothills Mall property has not allowed firearms for quite sometime, so this new gun law hasn’t really changed anything as far as Thunder Canyon Brewery is concerned.

We’ve had a couple complaints from gun owners like yourself. We’ve also had people tell us they really appreciate the sign being there.

The reason I put the sign up in the first place was because some guy called me on the phone pissed off that we were even thinking about putting a sign up. He sounded out of his mind and promised me he was going to rush over for lunch, armed, and exercise his right because he wasn’t breaking any laws. Honestly, he sounded nuts. I put the sign up. If he did come in for lunch that day, before I put the sign up, he DID break the law. The Foothills Mall doesn’t allow firmarms(sic) on their property. We’ve decided to leave the signs up for the time being so there would not be confusion or contradiction between the Foothills Mall policy and our own.

I actually think that you and I agree on most things regarding all the issues being brought up. There are a couple of points I would disagree with however, the first being the “jumping through the necessary hoops to get a CCW”. There aren’t really many hoops. Take a class (the test is easy), hit a target 7 out of 10 times (hopefully easy if you’re a gun owner), and pass a backround(sic) check (should be easy). Everyone I’ve ever talked to has said there were people in their CCW class that they felt shouldn’t get a CCW based soley on the weird(sic) questions and situations they brought up. To say that EVERYONE who has a CCW “has proven to be the most trustworthy” is a little optimistic at least.

But it is statistically proven that CCW carriers are more law-abiding as a group than (*gasp!*) police officers.

Next, I’d like you to put yourself in my situation. I’ll give you some backround(sic). TCB is an independent business. We’re not corperate(sic). We lose a lawsuit, we’re through. 75 people lose there(sic) jobs. Let’s say someone is sitting at the bar. They have their CCW and are carrying a firearm, not drinking. A dangerous situation arises and they feel that someone elses(sic) life is in danger so they draw there(sic) weapon. A number of things could happen:

1. They shoot and kill the suspect…..they’re a hero
2. They shoot and kill the suspect but the bullet exits the suspect and hits someone else (if we don’t have a “No Firearms Sign” up, we get sued)
3. They miss the suspect and hit someone else (we get sued)
4. The suspect sees the CCW owner draw his weapon and begins shooting (we get sued)

5. The suspect starts shooting up your (unarmed) clientele. You get sued for disarming them and not providing other security.

It’s a no-win situation.

You see where I’m going? Sure, I’d love to have plain clothes police officers (we actually quite often do, a number of them are regulars) in the restaurant all the time protecting me, our employees, and our guests from dangerous situations. Do I want civilians playing the same role? The simple answer is no.

Ah, yes. Somehow drawing a .gov paycheck imbues the recipient with magical powers far beyond those of mere mortals! (Actually, it does – it’s called sovereign immunity.)

And as far as you needing to be armed while you dine at TCB? I’ve been there 12 years and never felt un-safe. If you feel it’s so un-safe that you can’t dine there unarmed, then don’t dine there. I wouldn’t dine anywhere (or work for that matter) I felt unsafe either.

You feel safe walking to your car at the end of the day? Possibly carrying the day’s receipts for night deposit? Can you tell me, honestly, where I will never need to carry? It would make my life easier. It’s far simpler just to carry everywhere than it is to put it on, take it off, put it on, take it off . . . .

And, a Breda puts it, “Carry your gun. It’s a lot lighter burden than regret.”

I won’t be carrying it to your restaurant.

Quote of the Day (Repeat)

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In keeping with my recent Education posts, here’s a repeat of a QotD from May – Ballistic Deanimation‘s discussion of the education system from a “primary source.” Do read the link.

You’re a product of the public system, they say. You turned out all right, so it must be…..

No.

Stop looking for outside influences as the root cause of problems. I drank, I smoked, I slept with girls and went to parties and ditched class and got into trouble. I also realized that the school systems are a joke, and learned to work that in my favor. Yeah, I learned…how to skirt the system, just as these jokers today are doing. But in my case, I had a genuine hunger for knowledge.

I read ceaselessly outside of school. I worked on chemistry and physics stuff at home, because I liked it. I did computer science classes at the JC. I learned…just not in that system. I played catch up in college for it, but that was easy. For me…not them.

So, no…the problem is the system.

But…

No.

The kids are getting dumber.

I have data to support this statement. It is not an opinion.

Every. Single. Year. It happens. The graduating class scores lower on their tests than the year before, and the next year is lower, and lower, etc. All this while classes are being cut due to budget constraints, schools are tightening admissions requirements and looking for higher and higher test scores and GPA’s.

They’re still being filled up, but not by local kids.

Local kids are failing. They start college level math, something for which they should be prepared, and then throw their hands up in defeat because they never learned the foundation materials.

You can’t do quadratics when your teacher let you watch TV in class instead of teaching you the order of operations.

Do you understand?

I’ve got a girl here, born in the US, schooled here to 13 years in this system, ready to receive a diploma from this system. I give her a test on college level material, and she does so poorly THE COMPUTER ASSUMES SHE MUST NOT SPEAK ENGLISH!

Does that not concern anyone else?

Ballistic Deanimation – Dumbing Down

Quote of the Day

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A week ago I was on a Southwest flight from Dallas sitting next to a very pleasant middle-aged woman who was busily grading papers. As I finished watching one of America’s greatest cinematic masterpieces on my (brand-new) MacBook Pro, I glanced over at some of the work. It looked identical to the work I see from my ten-year-old daughter and her classmates: Mostly simple sentences, a few dreadful spelling mistakes, and virtually no complex analysis. Unlike my daughter’s classmates, however, this teacher’s students skipped entire sections of their tests — failing to answer half the questions.
I was just about to open my mouth and say, “Fifth grade?” when I caught myself. Instead, I said “What grade?”
“Junior English.”
“High school?
“Yes. In suburban Chicago.”
I almost choked on my peanuts.

— David French, National Review Online – Low Graduation Rates and the Total Lack of Student Effort

Read the entire piece.

For This We Should Be Thankful

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For This We Should Be Thankful?

Julie lives in Australia, a land that the gun-control forces here in the States want us to emulate when it comes to gun control. Here is her description of the process required to get a rifle added to her firearms license:

It was only an addition of a category A firearm – which means that the local police station can process it and it doesn’t have to go to the Firearms Branch for prior approval so it should have been a simple matter.

I went into the Police Station yesterday to make an appointment with the Firearms Officer. I initially made the appointment for Thursday but my day off was changed so I rang the Station at 8.30am this morning to change the appointment to today and check the requirements for transportation of the firearm etc.

The (Acting) Firearms Officer wasn’t in yet (he was supposed to get in at 9am) so I left a message for him to ring me. An hour and a half later I had heard nothing so I rang again to be told that he had called in sick.

Now I could have just decided to wait until another day off coincided with a firearm licensing day (Wednesday or Thursday at my local Police Station) and hope that the Firearms Officer wasn’t sick that day. However, I thought I would try and see if I could get this processed today. So I rang the Firearms Branch to see what they suggested.

They didn’t really have any ideas but they agreed with my suggestion that I try the District HQ Station. I rang that station and asked to be put through to the Firearms Officer there and after being cut off once I finally got to talk to someone.

The cop I spoke to wasn’t the Firearms Officer but he was a really nice helpful guy who decided that I should be able to get the rifle on a licence today and was going to help me make this happen. The Firearms Officer had been told off previously by his boss for processing licences for another station so he wasn’t willing to help. So the nice cop then rang my local station and arranged with a Sargent there to process it for me (he told me the Sargent’s name was Steve).

So I went back to my station and asked for Steve and, guess what, he didn’t exist 🙂 … However, the cop there, after I explained what I was trying to do decided to be helpful and process it for me.

So I filled in the application form for the licence (2 pages), a form the firearm’s details (2 pages), a statement regarding my safe (1 page) and another form for some reason (2 pages). They also took a photocopy of my Driver’s Licence and club membership card and my property letter. The statement regarding the safe had to be witnessed by a cop so the cop I was dealing with grabbed another cop walking by to do this.

The two cops then filled in a permit for me to transport the firearm from my house back to the station and I went and got the rifle.

When I got back to the station the cop checked the make and serial number and wrote it as an addition on my licence. After I paid my $28 I was free to take the rifle and go home 🙂

A half-day of waiting, run-around, and bureaucracy that at any time could have ended if any one of those same bureaucrats had decided otherwise.

But here’s the thing that stood out to me:

I was quite pleased with this experience, especially with the two cops who decided that this should be possible.

She was quite pleased with the experience. Ah, yes – the soft bigotry of low expectations!

I’m quite piqued with a society that decided that this should be necessary.

Sorry, Julie, but that’s not something anybody should be pleased about.

[millionmommarch]“England can do it! Australia can do it! We can too!”[/millionmommarch]

Not here. Not on my watch.

Memetic Warfare

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Bill Quick at Daily Pundit linked to a couple of posts here, one of which was I Say We Take Off and Nuke the Site from Orbit . . . A commenter there linked to an Eric S. Raymond post, Gramscian Damage, from which I take today’s Quote of the Day:

  • There is no truth, only competing agendas.
  • All Western (and especially American) claims to moral superiority over Communism/Fascism/Islam are vitiated by the West’s history of racism and colonialism.
  • There are no objective standards by which we may judge one culture to be better than another. Anyone who claims that there are such standards is an evil oppressor.
  • The prosperity of the West is built on ruthless exploitation of the Third World; therefore Westerners actually deserve to be impoverished and miserable.
  • Crime is the fault of society, not the individual criminal. Poor criminals are entitled to what they take. Submitting to criminal predation is more virtuous than resisting it.
  • The poor are victims. Criminals are victims. And only victims are virtuous. Therefore only the poor and criminals are virtuous. (Rich people can borrow some virtue by identifying with poor people and criminals.)
  • For a virtuous person, violence and war are never justified. It is always better to be a victim than to fight, or even to defend oneself. But ‘oppressed’ people are allowed to use violence anyway; they are merely reflecting the evil of their oppressors.
  • When confronted with terror, the only moral course for a Westerner is to apologize for past sins, understand the terrorist’s point of view, and make concessions.

As I previously observed, if you trace any of these back far enough, you’ll find a Stalinist intellectual at the bottom. (The last two items on the list, for example, came to us courtesy of Frantz Fanon. The fourth item is the Baran-Wallerstein “world system” thesis.) Most were staples of Soviet propaganda at the same time they were being promoted by “progressives” (read: Marxists and the dupes of Marxists) within the Western intelligentsia.

How’s that Gun Control Working Out for You?

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Britain now has some of the toughest gun laws in the world. We recognize that only the strictest control of firearms will protect the public.

— Home Office Minister Alun Michael, 11/3/97 press release.

That was right after passage of the handgun ban.

Today?

Armed officers placed on routine foot patrol for first time

And not just any guns, either!

Police officers armed with submachine guns are to be deployed on routine patrol of Britain’s streets for the first time. A hand-picked team from CO19, the Metropolitan Police’s elite firearms unit, will walk the beat in gun crime hotspots where armed gangs have turned entire estates into “no go” zones.

Local politicians and anti-gun campaigners have reacted with anger at the news that the officers will carry Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine guns – capable of firing up to 800 rounds-per-minute – and Glock semi-automatic pistols.

This, in a country where at least one media outlet called the full-auto Glock 18 pistol the Most Terrifying Gun in the World!

CO19 currently provides armed support in volatile situations like sieges and terrorist attacks, with its officers on constant call in vehicles around London.

But this is the first time that armed officers will be sent on permanent foot patrol anywhere in the country outside Northern Ireland.

“Historically, CO19 was only called out when someone rang up to report a gun crime,” said Inspector Derek Carroll, head of the new unit.

“But a lot of streets in London have young people in postcode gangs, aged 14 and upwards, and a lot of communities feel that they are controlling areas of estates.

“We are looking at gangs that have access to firearms and will be robust in dealing with them and disrupting and deterring them.”

Really! Gangs have access to firearms on an island nation with “the strictest control of firearms” that they were promised would “protect the public”?

Say it ain’t so!

The team of 18 constables, led by an inspector and two sergeants, will begin their patrols of Brixton, Haringey and Tottenham on Nov 9, following successful trial schemes.

The officers – some on motorbikes – will carrying out weapon “sweeps” of their neighbourhoods in an effort to deter gang members from carrying guns, and are also intended to be a reassuring presence for residents.

Residents that have been told, literally for decades, that guns are evil, and that fully-automatic weapons are only useful for mowing down large crowds indiscriminately.

You’d think someone would comment on the dichotomy there.

“My view is that just because you carry a gun, it should not affect the way you police,” Inspector Carroll added. “We chat to people and they love it.”

Unlike their counterparts in the United States, British police officers not routinely carry guns, although armed patrols are frequently deployed in the aftermath of shootings and to guard potential terrorist targets.

In October 2000 armed officers on the beat were temporarily introduced in Nottingham after a string of drug-related deaths.

Jennette Arnold, a Labour London Assembly member for northeast London constituency, said that the patrols threatened to tear up the contract between the community and the police.

Already torn, Ms. Arnold, already torn.

“No one asked us or the people I represent if this was acceptable and when they do I shall tell them it isn’t. It isn’t acceptable to throw away the principle of policing by consent,” she said.

Gill Marshall-Andrews, chairwoman of the Gun Control Network campaign group, described the routine arming of officers as a “very retrograde step” and warned that it could lead to higher levels of gun crime.

“This is likely to raise the stakes and encourage more criminals, especially young criminals, to arm themselves,” she said.

Soooo, you’re saying that having armed foot patrols in the area might “escalate the situation”? Who do you represent, Ms. Marshall-Andrews? The residents or the thugs?

“Gun crime in this country is very low by international standards and that’s largely because there aren’t many guns about. Arming police officers sends out all the wrong messages.”

The Police Federation, which represents rank-and-file officers, has long campaigned against attempts to arm a larger section of the force, but said it had no objection to the new scheme.

Simon Reed, vice-chairman of the national federation, said that although majority of his members did not wish be to armed, forces must be free to respond to particular threats.

“The ethos will always be that the British police are unarmed, but we need officers to be able to use firearms when appropriate,” he said. “My feeling is that the current balance is just about right.”

The Home Office declined to comment, saying that the operational use of firearms was a matter for local forces.

Officers from CO19, formerly known as SO19, have been involved in a number of high-profile incidents in the capital, including the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes at Stockwell station in 2005.

No internal link to that one, but a second on Bing gets you this:

Police officers in Jean Charles de Menezes shooting escape punishment

No police officers involved in the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes will be disciplined, despite an inquest finding that catastrophic failures led to his death in London.

Same paper. Imagine that. The public should feel very secure!

Gun-related crime is on the increase in London with 1,736 gun crimes reported in London between April and September this year – up 17 per cent on 2008.

The problem of turf violence between drugs gangs was highlighted earlier this month with a spate of shootings in north London linked to two Turkish gangs, the Tottenham Boys and the Bombacilar.

Yup, Gun crime in the UK is very low by international standards, but it keeps going UP. It keeps going up in the face of Alun Michael’s proclamation that “only the strictest control of firearms will protect the public.”

It’s a stone bitch when reality won’t conform to the theory, isn’t it? And it’s even worse when someone points it out.

(h/t: TFS Magnum)