Author: Kevin

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Quote of the Day.

From Looking Iraqis in the Eye by Rocco DiPippo:

I am an American. I have never had to live in fear that something as harmless as a joke about my president could get me, my parents, brothers, sisters and cousins, tortured and murdered by my government. I had never lived in a place where a slip of the tongue could get me killed. My country is the United States of America, where just about anything goes, even when criticizing one’s government — where calling one’s president a liar, an idiot, a murderer or someone worse than Hitler is far, far more likely to get you a seat at the Oscars than a bullet to the brain.

That should leave a mark, but the intended recipients won’t acknowledge it. Commentary on the rest of the piece in the next post below.

Why Defeatism Matters

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One of those people the Left decries as “economic mercenaries” writes about progress in Iraq, and how it is affected by the enemy loyal opposition here in Congress, the media, and the Left in general in Looking Iraqis in the Eye. I strongly recommend you read the whole thing, but here are a few choice excerpts:

Who can say that the morale of ordinary Iraqis and American soldiers was not damaged when one of the most powerful men in America, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, stood in front of the world and declared, “I believe… that this war is lost.” Who can expect them to ignore the defeatist postures of men and women like John Kerry, Richard Durbin, Edward Kennedy, John Murtha, Jack Reed, John Conyers and Nancy Pelosi? Who can forget the media deification of people like Cindy Sheehan and groups like International A.N.S.W.E.R and Code Pink, who are far more concerned with pushing a radical social and political agenda than they are with bringing peace and stability to Iraq?

Iraqis watch us, and they listen to us. What they hear from some of our politicians, political activists and cultural elites has made many of them reluctant to work with the Americans in bringing security to their country. Many Iraqis are afraid of what they are hearing from the Democratic Party leadership and their media shills – that America will abandon them. And as long as they are afraid, they will be reluctant to seize the initiative in their towns and villages and chase out those who are murdering their families.

That reluctance makes sense, since if the Americans leave now, as the Democrats are urging, the murderers will rule them. And the murderers will hunt down and kill anyone who ever worked with or cooperated with Americans.

I imagine they were none to happy to hear news reports that Barack Hussein Obama said that preventing genocide was not sufficient reason to keep American troops in Iraq. Nor will they be too happy to hear that the Iraqi government has failed to achieve the “benchmarks” set by our Congress in a self-fulfilling prophecy.

It is very easy to pass judgment and make flippant statements on the Iraq situation from the comfort and safety of American soil. It is even easier to push lies and misinformation from the newsroom while nestled amongst those in agreement with your world view, where there is near total disconnect between words written and their effects on the ground in Iraq. But who would push to abandon Iraq if they were face-to-face with Iraqis as I was? Would Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Charles Schumer or Charles Rangel be able to listen to their frightful stories, to smell their fear, to feel their disappointments and still tell them that it would be right to leave them before delivering on our promises? Would you be able to look an Iraqi in the eye while saying that?

Now there’s a question I’d like to hear at the next Democrat debate.

Please, RTWT. Fortunately, most of my audience doesn’t need to hear it. Unfortunately, most people who do will never see it.

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“Authorized Journalist” Misses the Key Facts.

Big freaking surprise.

A Keyboard and a .45 has the real scoop on how the legacy media once again allowed itself to be manipulated in the battle against those eeeevil guns, the giant gun industry and its all-powerful lobby that wants to see a gun in every child’s hand!

Hie thee hence. And maybe write a short letter to the editor when you’re done reading.

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“You’re an American!!! We don’t do that sort of thing!”.

A reader sent me an email with a link to a really outstanding first-person account over at OpenCarry.org. It seems a young American serving in the Israeli Defense Forces had an encounter with a couple of New Yorkers in Tel Aviv.

I imagine that couple counted themselves among those who have “been against violence and guns their whole lives.” I think he rocked their world a little bit.

Give it a read.

Thanks for the link, Chuck!

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Total Eclipse.

My Kimber Eclipse is back from the factory. I get to try it this weekend to see if it has been repaired properly, but I’m pretty sure it has. Kimber certainly didn’t seem to cut any corners.

Before:

and after:

Gee, I wonder what they did to fix it?

Can’t complain, though. Turnaround was fast, and I didn’t even have to pay the freight.

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Jenny Masche Isn’t Afraid of Buying Big Jars of Mayonnaise

You know, as I get older my memory is going to hell. I thought for sure I’d written something on the Amy Richards story when it came out, but checking the archives I find that I did not. Let’s get this out of the way right up front: I do not believe we should ban abortions. I think there should be some limits on when abortions should be performed (first trimester) at the discretion of the mother, and past that it should be only for actual medical need. At some point a fetus does become a human being, with all attendant rights. The disagreement is apparently over just when this occurs. I’ve picked my arbitrary point. Others have picked theirs.

But I was, admittedly, appalled at the choice Amy Richards made, and her “reasoning” behind it.

I applaud the choice Jenny Masche and her husband made. Here’s the key quote from the article:

When she had got over the shock of a scan which showed she was carrying six babies, Jenny says she was offered the opportunity of a selective reduction. “Even though we were in a complete state of shock, we just couldn’t do it. How do you choose which three of the little heartbeats to remove?

That question was apparently easy for Amy Richards. Since she was carrying identical twins and a fraternal, the twins got it, and spared Amy the horror of having to buy “big jars of mayonnaise.” Congratulations to the Masche family.

Well, DUH!

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Reuter-Rooter reports: U.S. most armed country with 90 guns per 100 people. This according to the Small Arms Survey, 2007 coming out in September. Per the report, we 300 million Americans own some 270 million of the estimated 875 million small arms that exist worldwide. We apparently are buying about 4.5 million of the estimated 8 million new guns rolling off production lines each year, worldwide. Even better, the number of guns estimated to be in private hands worldwide is only 650 million, so we own over 40% of them. The other 225 million are held by police and military forces. And best yet, “Only about 12 percent of civilian weapons are thought to be registered with authorities.”

Yeah, baby!

Our closest competitor? India with 45 million privately held arms, but a population of over a billion. Per capita, Yemen comes in second with 61 guns per hundred population. How big is Yemen? About the size of Connecticut? Many of theirs, I would bet, are full-auto capable AK-47s. I bet they’d be amazed to know what they would be worth over here – if they could just sell them legally.

It is the gun-controller’s mantra that “the number of guns” is the cause of violent crime. This report reminds me once again of the conclusion of the 1983 report of a meta-study of gun control research, Under the Gun: Weapons, Crime and Violence in America:

The progressive’s indictment of American firearms policy is well known and is one that both the senior authors of this study once shared. (My emphasis.) This indictment includes the following particulars: (1) Guns are involved in an astonishing number of crimes in this country. (2) In other countries with stricter firearms laws and fewer guns in private hands, gun crime is rare. (3) Most of the firearms involved in crime are cheap Saturday Night Specials, for which no legitimate use or need exists. (4) Many families acquire such a gun because they feel the need to protect themselves; eventually they end up shooting one another. (5) If there were fewer guns around, there would obviously be less crime. (6) Most of the public also believes this and has favored stricter gun control laws for as long as anyone has asked the question. (7) Only the gun lobby prevents us from embarking on the road to a safer and more civilized society.

The more deeply we have explored the empirical implications of this indictment, the less plausible it has become. (My emphasis.) We wonder, first, given the number of firearms presently available in the United States, whether the time to “do something” about them has not long since passed. If we take the highest plausible value for the total number of gun incidents in any given year – 1,000,000 – and the lowest plausible value for the total number of firearms now in private hands – 100,000,000 – we see rather quickly that the guns now owned exceed the annual incident count by a factor of at least 100. This means that the existing stock is adequate to supply all conceivable criminal purposes for at least the entire next century, even if the worldwide manufacture of new guns were halted today and if each presently owned firearm were used criminally once and only once. Short of an outright house-to-house search and seizure mission, just how are we going to achieve some significant reduction in the number of firearms available?

Now, substitute “270,000,000” for the “100,000,000” in that last paragraph and ask yourself the same question. And here’s part of that conclusion that I have not previously quoted:

To members of the gun subculture who have been around guns all their lives and have owned and used guns as long as it has been legal for them to do so, the indictments of gun control advocates must appear to be incomprehensible, if not simply demeaning. We should not be surprised to learn that they may resent being depicted as irresponsible, nervous, potentially dangerous, prone to accidental or careless firearms handling, or as using their firearms to bolster sagging masculine self-images. Of course, from their viewpoints, they have none of these characteristics and in all likelihood resent being depicted as a demented and bloodthirsty lot when they are only guilty of embracing a set of rather traditional, rural, and masculine values. Indeed, one can only begin to understand the virulence with which gun control initiative(sic) are opposed in these quarters when one realizes that what may be at stake is a way of life.

Again, I repeat: Well, DUH!

Like Water Off a Duck’s Back

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Say Uncle pointed to a Chicago Sun-Times op-ed yesterday by columnist and journalism professor Laura Washington. I won’t reproduce the whole piece, but here’s a taste:

Gun lovers disarm control advocates

August 27, 2007
LAURA WASHINGTON Sun-Times columnist

It looks like the petulant, gun-toting NRA stalwarts have won the first round.

Last time, I used this space to ask where you stand on the issue of gun control. A torrent of e-mails later, it’s clear: Gun-control advocates were outgunned, four to one.

The gun lovers were legion, robust and vitriolic. Many of you told me to go places where the sun doesn’t shine and the temperature is way too hot. Yet, if you believe public opinion polls, that reaction is an anomaly. For instance, last April, ABC News polled adults nationwide, and asked: “Do you favor or oppose stricter gun control laws in this country?” Sixty-one percent favored them, 36 percent were opposed, and 3 percent were “unsure.”

CBS News asked, “In general, do you feel the laws covering the sale of handguns should be made more strict, less strict, or kept as they are now?” Two-thirds of respondents nationwide opted for “more strict.”

What is the problem with the advocates of gun control? Why are their voices not being heard? They are consistently cowed and overmatched. Gun violence is out of control, yet the gun lovers are ascendant.

You think we’ve got problems now? Just listen to Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor and Republican presidential aspirant. At a recent Conservative Political Action Conference, he bragged, “I’m not a newcomer to the NRA,” the New York Times reported on its political blog. “I was the first governor to have a conceal-carry permit, so don’t mess with me.”

Huckabee, mind you, recently made a flashy second-place showing in the Iowa presidential straw poll.

Do you want to be standing in line for gas, popcorn or a gallon of milk and find yourself next to someone who’s packing heat? If he takes the White House, we can all go shopping for embossed leather holsters and pearl-handled pistols. I’ll be looking to accessorize that with rhinestone-studded boots.

You know, the usual Reasoned Discourse™ we’ve come to expect from our opposition. Please, RTWT. (And yes, I do know about the Zogby poll.)

Instead of fisking her piece, I thought I’d drop her a nice email (and copy the paper’s letters-to-the-editor while I was at it. What the hell, worth a shot.) Here’s what I sent:

Ms. Washington:

I read with interest your op-ed in the online edition of the Sun-Times, and I had some comments to make. I hope that you will see this epistle in the volume of email I am sure has been forthcoming since your little jeremiad was published. Provoking an outpour of response was, I am sure, one of your intentions. Let me apologize in advance (though it is not really my place) for those who will shower you with invective and vitriol. We on the side of the right to arms have been fighting against a decades-long slow-motion hate crime,1 and it tends to wear on our patience. I understand such responses, but I cannot countenance them.

I am eternally fascinated by people who see themselves as “gun control advocates.” I find them fascinating because they epitomize to me the phrase “cognitive dissonance.” The fact that you write from Chicago, one of the epicenters of “common-sense gun control” only adds to my fascination.

Cognitive dissonance has been defined thus:

“When someone tries to use a strategy which is dictated by their ideology, and that strategy doesn’t seem to work, then they are caught in something of a cognitive bind. If they acknowledge the failure of the strategy, then they would be forced to question their ideology. If questioning the ideology is unthinkable, then the only possible conclusion is that the strategy failed because it wasn’t executed sufficiently well. They respond by turning up the power, rather than by considering alternatives. (This is sometimes referred to as ‘escalation of failure’.)”2

Or, as I phrase it, “The philosophy cannot be wrong! Do it again, only harder!” We see this behavior in gun control advocates all the time. There’s always a “loophole” to blame. Always a “next step.” But “gun control” never improves crime rates, never reduces homicide rates. Never. Gun control advocates always – without exception – predict “blood in the streets” and “wild West shootouts” when “shall issue” concealed-carry legislation makes progress in state legislatures, but this never happens. Never. Somehow this data fails to make a dent in the “gun control” mindset. The strategy constantly fails, but the ideology cannot be questioned. Do it again, only harder!

Ms. Washington, you note in your piece: “(I)t seems the gun control advocates have been outmatched. Abigail Spangler acknowledges as much. Spangler is the founder of ProtestEasyGuns.com, a Virginia-based group that has been spearheading a slew of anti-gun protests around the nation.

“Gun control activists, she wrote me, ‘are TRYING HARD but they are seriously affected in state after state by lack of funding and contributions.” She recently met, she says, with the leader of Virginia’s only gun control group. “He says they may not even be able to afford any lobbyist at all soon in Virginia!'”

Ms. Washington, the citizenry will offer an opinion to anyone. Opinions are free. But activism costs money – and the anti-gun side has shown that the hearts and wallets of the general public are not really into it. Ask any hundred random people on the street if they favor stricter gun laws and most likely the majority will say “yes.” Ask them what the current gun laws are, and they won’t be able to tell you. Gun rights activists can. The gun control side of the argument has been supported for decades with money from foundations, perhaps the largest contributor being the Joyce Foundation. Look them up. Those of us who believe in the right to arms are the true grass-rooters, and there are far more of us than the mere four million that the NRA claims as members. As someone once put it so pithily: “Poor Lefties; they’ve been playing on astroturf so long that they don’t know grassroots even when fed a mouthful of divot.” 3

Ms. Washington, our side is winning because we can see reality. We are not blinded to a flawed ideology. The ideology you operate under is expressed best as “Guns are baaad, mmmmkay?” This ideology springs from an inability or unwillingness to see a difference between “violent and predatory” and “violent but protective.” You see only “violence” and violence offends you. From this inability you mistake the tools of violence to be the cause of violence, and from that error comes the desire to eradicate the tools. But this does not address the actual cause. In other words, “Gun control is what you do instead of something.”4

When disaster strikes and civil society breaks down, when the government proves unmistakably that it cannot protect everyone, everywhere, all the time, then some people have an awakening – and they go to a gun store or a Wal-Mart and try to buy a gun.

And that’s when they discover just what the gun laws really are.

And many become gun-rights activists because, as one woman put it when she found out she had to wait a week for a gun while being stalked by an ex-boyfriend, “I’ve been against guns and violence my whole life.”5 She and those like her were responsible for that interminable week wait. She finally understood the difference between “violent and predatory” and “violent but protective,” and wanted protection – which the law denied her for a full week.

Some of us are “gun lovers,” Ms. Washington. I am, unashamedly. But many, many more simply want to be able to choose how to defend ourselves. That is a choice you wish to deny us out of a belief in a flawed ideology that you cannot bring yourselves to recognize.

I’d love to discuss this topic with you further, but I seriously doubt you’ve bothered to read this far.

Thank you for your attention, however much of it I was able to garner.

(Footnotes not in original).

Somewhat to my surprise, she replied:

Dear Mr. Baker,

Thanks for your comments on the gun control column. I appreciate you taking the time to share your thoughts.

Be consoled that you are winning the battle. And yes, I did read your entire letter.

Best, Laura

=================================================================
Laura S. Washington
Ida B. Wells-Barnett University Professor
DePaul University
Contributing Columnist, Chicago Sun-Times
Senior Editor, In These Times

The fact that she responded was surprising. The content was not.

I sent her a short reply:

Dear Laura:

Thank you for your gracious reply, and for taking the time our of your obviously busy schedule to read my missive.

Water off a duck’s back, eh?

My sincere condolences,

Kevin

But wait! There’s more! Phelps had a beautiful response of his own that I hope he sent to her. I urge you not to miss it.

Footnotes:

1Dr. Michael S. Brown
2Steven Den Beste
3Tamara K
4Say Uncle
5Seraphic Secret

Credit where credit is due.

UPDATE: Commenter Kevin P. notes that he maintains (an EXCELLENT) Wikipedia page on the Joyce Foundation and their funding efforts. Way to go, Kevin!