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‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less.’

‘The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’

‘The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master – that’s all.’

Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There, 1871.

“It takes but a little thought to realize that the power to decide when words mean what they say and when they do not is the power to do so whenever one wants, for whatever purpose. After all, the reason that kings have traditionally opposed constitutions is that if a constitution has any meaning at all, it is some kind of restraint on government. But if government can decide that the constitution contains things that it does not, and allows things that it forbids, then adieu to the rule of law.

“By 2010, some in the Ruling Class felt confident enough to dispense with the charade. Asked what in the Constitution allows Congress and the president to force every American to purchase health insurance, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi replied: “Are you kidding? Are you kidding?” It’s no surprise, then, that lower court judges and bureaucrats take liberties with laws, regulations, and contracts. That’s why legal words that say you are in the right avail you less in today’s America than being on the right side of the persons who decide what they want those words to mean.”

Angelo Codevilla, The Ruling Class: How they Corrupted America and What We Can Do About It, 2010

More quotes from this will follow. Strongly recommended read.

I check in on the blog every other day or so that I haven’t posted to wipe the spam comment cache. Today I found this one:

“Brief but very precise information.”

On an ­überpost, no less!

I can’t recall a single time I’ve ever been referred to as “brief.”

On my way home from work yesterday I was at the intersection that leads into my neighborhood waiting for the left-turn light to change to green, when I saw a young man riding his skateboard across the crosswalk. On that corner of the street was a small memorial for someone who apparently died in an accident there – white cross, flowers, etc.

The young man saw the memorial, stopped, stepped off his board, read the name on the cross, crossed himself, nodded his head at the memorial, climbed back on his board and rolled off.

I didn’t get a picture of him, but I did get a shot of the memorial:

This song speaks to me. Give it a listen.

From a Facebook friend:

Well said, Stephen. Well said.

Someone else offered up this:

He’s been waiting his entire professional career to write this opinion, and he made the very most of it. Line by line, detail by meticulous detail. It’s a Masterpiece.

One more:

Shot:

“Because the State of New York issues public-carry licenses only when an applicant demonstrates a special need for self-defense, we conclude that the State’s licensing regime violates the Constitution.” – NEW YORK STATE RIFLE & PISTOL ASSOCIATION, INC., ET AL. v. BRUEN, SUPERINTENDENT OF NEW YORK STATE POLICE, ET AL.

IOW, “Shall-issue” concealed carry for all!

Chaser:

Hangover:

“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 from a decision not to rehear en banc the Silveira v. Lockyer case, May 6, 2003

And now this map will eventually lose all yellow and be either green or blue:

In relation to my previous post “If Personal Firearm Ownership Protects…, here’s an exhibit A:

West Virginia: Legally-Armed Woman Saves Lives By Shooting Would-be Mass Shooter. Details:

A good guy with a gun, in this case a woman, saved lives in West Virginia when she shot and fatally wounded 37-year-old Dennis Butler at a party taking place outside an apartment complex.  Butler was reportedly randomly firing his rifle at the attendees, miraculously not actually hitting anyone, when he was gunned down by the heroic woman who was legally carrying.

Shooter was a black male, 37, armed reportedly with an AR-15 style rifle. Defender was female, age and race not reported or necessary. This incident met only one requirement to be national headline news – an AR-15 was involved. Media boxes not checked:

1: White Male shooter. Nope.
2: Multiple dead/wounded people, preferably children, preferably of a race other than white. Nope.
3: Incident stopped by an officer of the law. Nope.

And to add insult to injury, the defender was female, and we are told that private citizens, women in particular, can’t defend themselves with handguns against attackers. Further, this was a graduation party, so there were “youths” in the crowd. She defended kids.

So this won’t appear in the national news for more than 30 seconds, if at all. A quick search of ABCNNBCBS and PBS found that CBS repeated the AP wire story on May 27, but none of the other major outlets have any record of it. CBS did not do a followup.

Doesn’t fit the Narrative™. It’s therefore mis- dis- or mal-information and must be suppressed.

…the Public, then why do mass shootings occur?”

Because when an armed citizen is present, it isn’t a “mass shooting.”

FBI Reveals How Many Active Shooters Were Stopped by Citizens Excerpt;

The FBI announced Monday that citizens stopped six active shooters in 2021, according to a report on active shooting incidents.

Citizens stopped six active shooters, whom the FBI defines as “one or more individuals actively engaged in killing or attempting to kill people in a populated area,” in 2021, killing four of them, according to the report “Active Shooter Incidents In The United States In 2021.” There were 61 active shooter incidents in 2021, 12 of which met the FBI’s criteria for a “mass killing,” up from 40 the previous year.

Carry your gun. It’s a much lighter burden than regret.

A couple of years ago I answered a question over at Quora: Why did the Gun Control Act of 1968 fail to solve the issue of mass shootings?

In light of recent events, I thought I’d share my answer:

Mathematics.

Because a mass shooting requires only three things: A gun, someone willing to acquire, load, point and shoot the gun, and a group of three or more people other than the shooter.

There are, by several estimates, something between 300,000,000 and 500,000,000 guns currently in private hands in the United States. We have population in excess of 330,000,000 people. If 0.001% of that population meets criteria #2, they can get criteria #1. Every single day you’re probably part of criteria #3.

You’re looking at 3,300 potential shooters based on that off-the-cuff estimate.

Welcome to reality. Life is not safe.