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I’ve Been a Baaaad Blogger.

Sorry about that. I’ve been busier than the proverbial cat covering…, um, one-legged man in an…, er, one-armed paper-hanger. I managed to have a bout of porphyria over the weekend. (My episodes are comparatively mild – compared, that is, to what they could be. They’re no damned fun, I’ll tell you that.) I spent a lot of last week getting ready for the meet-n-shoot (that just doesn’t sound right…) then didn’t get to really attend it.

And yes, y’all, I am that asocial normally. As I noted in comments, I’m a much more outgoing person in print.

But I haven’t been posting much. My apologies. Anyway, I’m working on not one, but two new essays. One is in response to Sarah’s question from March. (No, I’m not avoiding it. Just haven’t gotten around to it.) The other, which I’ll finish first – because in part it’s a lead-in to the second piece (I hope) – will be one more component of “The ‘Rights’ Discussion” series. Hopefully (but doubtfully) it will provide closure on that particular topic.

I’d also like to note that Publicola has fired another shot across the bow concerning the philosophical differences between the Absolutists and the Incrementalists. I’m not sure if I’m going to comment on that again or not.

OK, I will, very briefly. Publicola wrote:

While it may seem so, in reality the Shall Issue permit laws are simply reinforcing the legislature’s belief that they have the authority to regulate, condone or prohibit what is a Right. It’s just that in the case of Shall Issue they’re condoning the carrying of arms, albeit conditionally, so those who don’t look deeper than the surface see this as a good thing.

But once a legislature establishes that they may permit something it is fallacy to believe they cannot prohibit something. The same states that permit you to carry with the right piece of paper can turn around at any time & prohibit carrying arms permission slip or no.

Where my “greedy” solution is preferable is that once a Right is established & recognized by law it’s much harder to do away with it at a legislature’s whim.

Where “shall issue” didn’t (or did) previously exist, the legislature already had the power to regulate, condone, or prohibit what is a Right. The Supreme Court said so in U.S. v. Cruikshank in 1875, and again in Presser v. Illinois in 1886. No Court since has overturned that power.

I’ve said it before: The Courts Will Not Save Us. (Hint: See left sidebar.)

Anyway, I will again be posting excruciatingly long, verbose, intricately linked pieces. Just not right at the moment.

And hopefully, I’ll get some short posts in every now and then, too.

Quote of the Week.

Comedian Stephen Colbert to Ohio Representative Stephanie Tubbs-Jones:

Twenty-two astronauts were born in Ohio. What is it about your state that makes people want to flee the earth?

I don’t know why, but that made me laugh out loud when I read it.

I Shoulda Stayed Home.

No offense to the other attendees of the Nation of Riflemen Spring get-together, but seeing the sign over the freeway “Accident, Freeway closed 43 miles ahead” should have given me a clue. What should have been a two-hour trip became a four-hour ordeal through back roads and the middle of Phoenix rush-hour traffic. Dinner Friday night was good, but looking back on it, I don’t think I was feeling well even then, and when everything came back up at midnight, I could tell that this wasn’t going to be my weekend.

Saturday I damned near literally dragged my ass to the range, put a hundred rounds through my AR, twenty rounds through the Winchester 94, and one bandoleer of .30-06 though the Garand (which drew a lot of compliments). In fact, I let one old gentlemen there with his grandson put the last clip through it before I packed it in for the day. I drug my butt back to the hotel, got some Sprite, some Gatorade, and some crackers, and pretty much spent the next 20 hours in a fugue state. I wanted to go to the dinner Saturday, but it just didn’t happen. At about 8:00 PM, I pulled up the covers, turned out the lights, and went to sleep.

I got up this morning about eight, showered, shaved, dressed, and lugged my stuff back down to the truck, but instead of heading for the range, I drove over to my brother’s house, and spent the day with him and his wife. I just got home a little while ago, still feeling crappy.

Rumpshot, you picked a damned fine weekend for the get-together. The weather could not have been better, Ben Avery is a fine facility, and the company (excluding me) was excellent. Maybe next year?

Update: NOW I understand. I’m having a flare-up of Porphyria. Usually I get some warning, but apparently not this time. Oh well, time for the pasta and hard-candy treatment (which isn’t all that pleasant when you’re nauseous – let me tell you.)

Off to See the Wizard…

…er, well, off to the center of the universe Phoenix, anyway. As I noted below, I’m going to attend this weekend’s NoR shoot at Ben Avery. I don’t own a laptop, and I didn’t borrow mine from work, so no posting until I get home Sunday, if then.

Hope to see you there!

What She Said.

Tam said:

It makes one look like a savage to say so, but if your house burns down, blows over, or floats away, it’s not the job of the federal government to fix it for you. Charity is one thing, but federal tax dollars coerced at 1040-point from a single working mother of two in Dubuque (and then filtered through a morbidly obese federal agency) to rebuild your bungalow in Destin is not charity, okay? It’s extortion.

Perpetuating a Stereotype.

Scott at Rules for Rulers sent me a link to something kind of interesting (in a “haven’t seen one of those in a while” way.) A true, dyed-in-the-wool Million Mommy, unabashed, and willing to display her deliberate ignorance and spread her disinformation on a gun board.

Damn, but these women are getting rare. We’re going to have to put them on the endangered species list soon.

Anyway, “Randy” went to a site by the name of Bastards, Inc., to a post on the evil high-capacity armor-piercing tank-destroying jumbo-jet-downing FiveseveN pistol, and proceeded to villify the NRA and champion the Brady Campaign (she’s a high-level member if you believe her posts) before a somewhat restrained and, to be honest, condescending crowd. But not hostile! Well, not very hostile.

Seeing as the posts in question date back to February of 2005, perhaps by this time some semblance of reality has sunk into Randy’s little pointed head.

But I doubt it.

The Funniest Post in the Blogosphere.

Actually, the cleverest. The comments are the funniest. And if you hurry, yours might be comment #1,000!

A Question for You Cast Bullet Guys.

I’m using Mt. Baldy Bullets’ .452″ 270-SAA bullet in my .45LC loads and it has an advertised Brinell hardness of 11-12. Now, I know that hard-cast bullets and heat-treated bullets with hardnesses of 18 or more won’t expand, but with a hardness of a relatively soft 12, would this bullet expand in ballistic gelatin at velocities of 900fps or so?

Slow Suicide.

The upcoming elections don’t promise much to give anyone hope. From Transterrestrial Musings, a comment that pretty much says it all:

I pretty much have to wear a gas mask when pulling the level for the Republicans these days, but it would take an armored hazmat suit for me to vote for most Democrat or third-party candidates these days.
Posted by John Irving at April 19, 2006 07:32 AM

I’m strongly tempted to stay home this time, and try to watch with detached bemusement as we as a nation commit slow suicide.

Maybe I should just become a AnarchoCapitalist and pop a