Today’s User Friendly cartoon – a recycled one, as a matter of fact, but still funny and (unfortunately) accurate:
Month: May 2012
Moms Shoot Free!
Bowling Pin match, Sunday May 13.
Yes, that’s Mother’s Day.
Usual place, the Tucson Rifle Club action range.
Time: 8:00 AM sign-up, first rounds downrange about 8:20
Handguns only: .22 rimfire, centerfire revolver (.38 caliber minimum), semi-autos (9mm minimum).
You’re welcome to shoot your revolver against the semi-auto crowd, but we think it’s more fun to shoot wheelgun-vs.-wheelgun.
Cost: $10 for the first gun, $5 for any additional guns. Moms shoot free! Bring about 100 rounds for each. (Gun, not Mom.) You probably won’t need ’em all unless you’re really good at missing fast.
Hope to see you there!
Lasik
I am myopic and suffer from astigmatism. I am also presbyopic, which would normally mean my arms are too short, but in my case just means I can’t read in dim light anymore. I’m tired of it. I want to get my eyes fixed. Lasik can’t fix presbyopia, but it can fix myopia and astigmatism. I can always wear cheap reading glasses.
So, who has had Lasik surgery, and what was your outcome? I really want to know.
John Wayne on Liberals
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btvSE6tVHzQ?rel=0]
Worth your time.
“Fill Your Hands….”
Damon from York Arms sent me a picture tonight of my new AR-15 receiver in progress:
It’ll look better, he says, after it’s been anodized. I think it looks cool as hell already.
Note the caliber and custom serial number.
UPDATE: The upper is on order. Now I just have to wait three months….
Quote of the Day – Lawdog Edition
Personally, I think Loyalty Day should follow in the footsteps of our ancestors and involve fire. A Big Fire. A Big Fire in front of various State and Federal Capitals, and involving the ceremonial burning of effigies. Dancing and flowers mandatory; drinking and partying encouraged; and fertility rites optional.
To my mind I’m thinking that watching papier maiche versions of themselves burned at the stake every year would go a nice way towards reminding various political critters of where their loyalties better damn-well stay.
— The LawDog Files, Beltane
Can I get an “AMEN!”?
The Economy in Rifle Prices
A fascinating (for gunnies) economics article from The Market Oracle: It Can’t Happen in America? It Already Did! Excerpts:
I am sure more than one Southern gentleman desired to own the Spencer rifle to protect his hearth and home during this era, but the 1866 Spencer Repeating Arms Catalog shows the rifle in the 44 caliber retailed for a whopping $45.00.
To a present day buyer this may not sound like a lot but let’s put this in perspective; a frame of reference, which will remain constant throughout the rest of the article.
In 1866, according to nber.org, the average weekly wage of working Americans was $41.18, (adjusted to 1866 dollar), with the average work week being estimated at sixty-four hours. The results were an hourly wage of $0.64. With this in mind it would take a worker dedicating everything they earned from 70 hours of labor to purchase a Spencer rifle.
—
In 1870 the Montgomery Wards catalog (of 1870,) advertised the Sharps (?) 7 shot repeating rifle at $50.00 still requiring the American worker to dedicate 59.25 hours a 15% reduction in hours needed to work before purchasing the rifle.
—
The 1876 Winchester catalog shows the least expensive standard New Model ‘73’ Sporting Rifle with 24 inch barrel in the 44 caliber sold for $45.00; requiring the purchaser to contribute his earning from slightly more than 47 hours of toil before claiming it, as opposed to 70 hours in 1866.
—
As the end of 1880 approached Winchester Repeating Arms August catalog reports that the Model 73 had been reduced in price by 33% to $30.00 from $45.00 in 1876. The American buying public now was able, with less then twenty-nine and a half hours of labor to purchase a Winchester, down nearly 58% from 1866.
I won’t give away the conclusion. Instead, I urge you to give it a read.
Carry Your Gun
It’s a much lighter burden than regret. – Breda
So a couple of young reporters were beaten by a mob:
Wave after wave of young men surged forward to take turns punching and kicking their victim.
The victim’s friend, a young woman, tried to pull him back into his car. Attackers came after her, pulling her hair, punching her head and causing a bloody scratch to the surface of her eye. She called 911. A recording told her all lines were busy. She called again. Busy. On her third try, she got through and, hysterical, could scream only their location.
When seconds count, the police are only minutes away!
May Victims of Communism Day
Today is the fourth annual Victims of Communism Day, a day to remember the people murdered by their own governments in their quest to achieve a “worker’s paradise” where everyone is equal, where “to each according to his needs, from each according to his abilities” is the beautiful dream lie. R.J. Rummel, Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of Hawaii, has calculated that the total number of victims of Communism – that is, the domestic victims of their own governments – in the USSR, China, Vietnam, North Korea and Cambodia is 98.4 million people. For all Communist governments during the 20th Century, he puts the estimate at approximately 110 million. And this wasn’t in warfare against other nations, this was what these governments did to their own people – “breaking eggs” to make their utopian omlette.
Six million Jews were murdered during the Holocaust, and another six million people the Nazis decided were “undesirable” went with them. “Never again” is the motto of the modern Jew, and many others just as dedicated. But “again and again and again” seems to be the rebuke of history.
The Communists are hardly alone in these crimes. Rummel estimates that the total number of people murdered by their own governments during the 20th Century is on the close order of 262 million, but the single biggest chunk of that truly frightening number is directly due to one pernicious idea: That we can make people better.
Why do I own guns? For a number of reasons, but one of them is this:
And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand? — Alexandr Solzhenitzyn, The Gulag Archipelago
—
The Second Amendment is a doomsday provision, one designed for those exceptionally rare circumstances where all other rights have failed – where the government refuses to stand for reelection and silences those who protest; where courts have lost the courage to oppose, or can find no one to enforce their decrees. However improbable these contingencies may seem today, facing them unprepared is a mistake a free people get to make only once. — Judge Alex Kozinski, dissenting, Silveira v. Lockyer, denial to re-hear en banc, 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, 2003.
I intend to repeat this post each May 1 that I continue to run this blog. This is the third time I have put it up.
Last year, Sipsey Street Irregulars had a post to go along with this one. STRONGLY RECOMMENDED.
May Victims of Communism Day
Today is the fourth annual Victims of Communism Day, a day to remember the people murdered by their own governments in their quest to achieve a “worker’s paradise” where everyone is equal, where “to each according to his needs, from each according to his abilities” is the beautiful dream lie. R.J. Rummel, Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of Hawaii, has calculated that the total number of victims of Communism – that is, the domestic victims of their own governments – in the USSR, China, Vietnam, North Korea and Cambodia is 98.4 million people. For all Communist governments during the 20th Century, he puts the estimate at approximately 110 million. And this wasn’t in warfare against other nations, this was what these governments did to their own people – “breaking eggs” to make their utopian omlette.
Six million Jews were murdered during the Holocaust, and another six million people the Nazis decided were “undesirable” went with them. “Never again” is the motto of the modern Jew, and many others just as dedicated. But “again and again and again” seems to be the rebuke of history.
The Communists are hardly alone in these crimes. Rummel estimates that the total number of people murdered by their own governments during the 20th Century is on the close order of 262 million, but the single biggest chunk of that truly frightening number is directly due to one pernicious idea: That we can make people better.
Why do I own guns? For a number of reasons, but one of them is this:
The Second Amendment is a doomsday provision, one designed for those exceptionally rare circumstances where all other rights have failed – where the government refuses to stand for reelection and silences those who protest; where courts have lost the courage to oppose, or can find no one to enforce their decrees. However improbable these contingencies may seem today, facing them unprepared is a mistake a free people get to make only once. — Judge Alex Kozinski, dissenting, Silveira v. Lockyer, denial to re-hear en banc, 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, 2003.
I intend to repeat this post each May 1 that I continue to run this blog.
And, if you’ve got a spare 51 minutes, I recommend strongly that you watch this lecture, “Why Socialism?”
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nt58gg1DQGk?rel=0]