Category: Uncategorized

Mike Spenis of Feces Flinging Monkey Comments

on the recent Ohio Supreme Court concealed-carry decision here.

Read the whole comment, but the money quote is this:

“I’ve long believed that democracies live and die by the education of their people. I suppose we should add that constitutions live and die by the whims of our judges.”

As I’ve written, a right is what the majority of people believes it is. If the majority of Ohioans believed that the right to arms enumerated in the state constitution really existed, then the Ohio Supreme Court would reflect that belief, not decide 5-2 that making concealed-carry illegal somehow didn’t infringe on “the right to bear arms for their defense and security.”

Which, I believe, is why our school system is collapsing or has collapsed. Connie du Toit said recently:

The other day our Carpenter’s helper heard me say something along the lines of, “it is difficult to conclude that incompetence is the reason why our public schools have deteriorated. There comes a point where you have to suspect sabotage, or a conspiracy.”

He asked me if I really meant that.

—

I then went on to tell him about how public schools changed at the turn of the last century. That there were others involved in turning Americans from free-thinking individualists to factory drones. I also added that many people probably went along with it because it seemed like a good idea, but there were certainly enough people behind the scenes, who knew that the goal posts had been moved. THAT is a conspiracy.

Yes. There does come that time when you are forced to don the tinfoil hat.

And then there’s this quotation attributed to Justice Antonin Scalia (though I’ve not been able to verify it):

To some degree, a constitutional guarantee is like a commercial loan, you can only get it if, at the time, you don’t really need it. The most important, enduring, and stable portions of the Constitution represent such a deep social consensus that one suspects if they were entirely eliminated, very little would change. And the converse is also true. A guarantee may appear in the words of the Constitution, but when the society ceases to possess an abiding belief in it, it has no living effect. Consider the fate of the principle expressed in the Tenth Amendment that the federal government is a government of limited powers. I do not suggest that constitutionalization has no effect in helping the society to preserve allegiance to its fundamental principles. That is the whole purpose of a constitution. But the allegiance comes first and the preservation afterwards.

Make sure that the children you are educating don’t believe in the fundametal principles that founded the nation, and those principles will, inevitably, vanish. The Constitution will become merely words, and words will begin to mean what we want them to mean – and that meaning can change at a whim.

Just like George Orwell described in 1984.

Yes, the Ohio constitution, Article 4 states:

The people have the right to bear arms for their defense and security;

but standing armies, in time of peace, are dangerous to liberty, and shall not be kept up;

and the military shall be in strict subordination to the civil power.

But try to carry a firearm for your “defense and security” in Ohio – either open or concealed – and see how long it takes you to end up in police custody.

A right is what the majority of a society believes it is.

And those of us who really believe in the rights of the individual are losing to the education system that is teaching our children that those rights aren’t real.

Tinfoil hat ON.

UPDATE: Clayton Cramer discusses the Ohio Supreme Court decision with his usual thoroughness.

I Want One of These

Next year we are going to try expanding attendance at our IHMSA (International Handgun Metallic Silhouette) matches by also running (very similar) NRA handgun metallic silhouette (the only difference being that the smallbore and Field Pistol chickens are shot at 25 yards in IHMSA, and at 40 yards in NRA). We’re also going to start shooting Cowboy Rifle (an offshoot of Cowboy Action shooting.)

Cowboy rifle rules allow the use of lever-action rifles on the Hunter Pistol (small targets at 40, 50, 75, and 100 yards) and Big Bore (full size targets at 50, 100, 150 and 200 yards) targets.

So I want one of these:

The Marlin 1894SS, chambered in .44 Magnum. Ten-round magazine capacity, 20″ barrel, and it weighs about 6 pounds. The .44 Mag out of a handgun is sufficient to knock down the Big Bore targets, so out of a 20″ rifle barrel, it won’t have ANY problem. The problem would be my eyes and iron sights.

I’m really not much of a fan of Cowboy Action Shooting (I believe it was Oscar Wilde who said “beware of any hobby that requires a new wardrobe”) but I know I’d enjoy this, and I’m enough of a Western fan that I’d kinda like at least one lever-action. I’ve seen them on sale used between $325 and $500. It’s got an MSRP of $680, which I think’s a bit pricey for a lever-gun, but the popularity of CAS has put them in demand, I guess.

Maybe when I win the lottery.

UPDATE: Great minds think alike. Dipnut over at Isn’tapundit wants an 1894SS too, and a Ruger Vaquero to go with it. And we posted on the same day at very close to the same time.

Coincidence? I think not!

Dept. of OUR Collapsing Schools

Artist: Larry Wright, Detroit News.

It seems that the teachers decided to skip school today so they could protest charter schools:

The Detroit Public Schools abruptly canceled classes for its 153,000 students today, after teachers threatened to use personal days to protest a political deal that would have expanded charter schools in the city.

As officials announced late Wednesday that they had too few teachers to open, Gov. Granholm broke off negotiations with Republicans, apparently ending talks on charter school expansion. Nevertheless, teachers did not cancel the scheduled protest.

—

The district estimated that 3,200 of the Detroit Federation of Teachers’ 12,500 members would take personal days to attend the 10 a.m. Capitol rally.

Yup, that’s democracy – 25% of the employees get to decide what 100% are going to do. Here’s the kicker:

Union officials argued the effort to stop charter expansion was worth any inconvenience.

Of course it does. Charter schools threaten the power of the teacher’s union. To hell with what’s best for the kids – they stopped caring about that decades ago. And it’s about money too, of course:

(Schools chief executive Kenneth) Burnley and others have opposed the charter expansion, estimating the district could lose close to 25,000 students in 10 years, which would translate to a loss of about $180 million in state aid.

However, it has become blindingly obvious that throwing money at the school systems doesn’t result in better education.

Union President Janna Garrison said she was pleased Granholm hasn’t signed anything but: “We know that those who have sponsored this aren’t going away.”

Teachers will be carpooling and some have arranged for buses to take them to the Capitol, she said.

“The overwhelming support of the rally by our members show the depth of their commitment to our students,” Garrison said. “We invite the parents to come to Lansing and stand up for their children.”

One problem with that, Ms. Garrison: I doubt the majority of parents interested in protesting the actions of the teachers and their unions can afford to take the day off from their non-government, non-union jobs. They actually have to work for a living.

If it’s at all possible, home school.

Dept. of Our Their Collapsing Schools

Via Ravenwood (via…) comes this story of the education system in Mother England that, if anything, seems to be catapulting down the slippery slope faster than ours.

You Haven’t ‘Failed’ – You’ve ‘Nearly Passed’

Pupils across Lincolnshire may soon be able to sit exams without fear of failing, when new government guidelines come into effect.

The guidelines, for marking key national curriculum exams, recommend that the current F grade, for ‘fail’, should be replaced with an N grade, for ‘nearly’.

“Nearly’ what? “Nearly exhibited brain function?”

The guidelines were sent out to markers of this summer’s exams by the Government’s Qualifications and Curriculum Authority.

They include instructions that maths exam answers should be marked as either ‘creditworthy’ or ‘not creditworthy’, rather than correct or incorrect.

So, the math used to smash a probe into Mars rather than establish orbit around it would have been graded as “not creditworthy?”

This is a perfect example of George Orwell’s “Newspeak:”

The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for the world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees of Ingsoc, (English Socialism) but to make all other modes of thought impossible. It was intended that when Newspeak had been adopted once and for all and Oldspeak forgotten, a heretical thought — that is, a thought diverging from the principles of Ingsoc — should be literally unthinkable, at least so far as thought is dependent on words. Its vocabulary was so constructed as to give exact and often very subtle expression to every meaning that a Party member could properly wish to express, while excluding all other meanings and also the possibility of arriving at them by indirect methods. This was done partly by the invention of new words, but chiefly by eliminating undesirable words and by stripping such words as remained of unorthodox meanings, and so far as possible of all secondary meanings whatever. To give a single example. The word free still existed in Newspeak, but it could only be used in such statements as ‘This dog is free from lice’ or ‘This field is free from weeds’. It could not be used in its old sense of ‘politically free’ or ‘intellectually free’ since political and intellectual freedom no longer existed even as concepts, and were therefore of necessity nameless. Quite apart from the suppression of definitely heretical words, reduction of vocabulary was regarded as an end in itself, and no word that could be dispensed with was allowed to survive. Newspeak was designed not to extend but to diminish the range of thought, and this purpose was indirectly assisted by cutting the choice of words down to a minimum.

As I’ve said before, it looks like Orwell just missed by a decade or four. To continue:

The changes cover English, maths and science exams at key stages one, two and three, which are taken by seven-, 11- and 14-year-olds.

Youngsters who do not achieve a minimum mark, where the tests have a target of levels three to five, can be given a ‘compensatory level two’ award.

Which means what? “Well, Johnny, you nearly passed the test, so here’s your level two award!“

A spokesman for the authority denied that the marking scheme blurred the distinction between passing and failing.

The spokesman said the use of ‘creditworthy’ was appropriate because some answers to maths questions were worth several marks, and it was possible to get some marks even if the final answer was wrong.

Nick Seaton, the chairman of the Campaign for Real Education, described the changes as “political correctness gone stark raving bonkers”.

He said educational managers were afraid to use the words ‘right’, ‘wrong’ and ‘fail’.

They’re not afraid, Mr. Seaton, they’re doing this with deliberate intent.

The local Junior High Middle School I drive by every morning on my way to work has a marquee out front on which they post, generally weekly, a slogan or the names of the latest award winners or some such. For the last two weeks or so the slogan has been (IIRC)

“Failure is success if you learn from it.”

Particularly if you learn that failing nearly passing the seventh grade does not mean you get promoted to the eighth grade anyway.

And this is another example that Connie du Toit is right.

That’s OK, the Supreme Court Would Overturn

Day By Day

Personal Responsibility

The Laughing Wolf has an excellent piece up on the topic, entitled And The Parents Are Responsible How?:

There was an ad I saw on TV this morning at the gym, which brought up a fundamental question, and flaw with much of what is socially conscious right now. The ad focused on teen drinking, and the problems therein. It called for tough actions on the people who sold or gave alcohol to minors. It demanded that corporations be made to pay for the damage done by alcohol and to be harshly and fully regulated. In all the individuals and entities it demanded be held accountable, it left out the most important of all: the parents.

Nowhere in this screed was there any hint that parents have any responsibility for their children. No suggestion that parents need to keep up with what the kids are doing, much less take the responsibility to raise them such that the kids could make intelligent choices about alcohol and behavior.

Go read the whole thing.

That piece has much in common with several other pieces I’ve seen recently that decry the belief (justified, IMHO) that our society does not want to hold people (and thus, ourselves) responsible for their behavior. It must be someone else’s fault. As The Laughing Wolf put it:

The commercial, and the group behind it, are a part of the societal responsibility group that feels that we need a nanny state to monitor and control all. To them, there is no such thing as individual responsibility, only a threat that demands immediate action to prevent harm “to the children.”

And you ought to know by now how I feel when someone makes an appeal “for the CHILDREN!” (Hide the silver!) Overlawyered.com has a page dedicated to personal responsibility cases. Take a look. Have some antacid nearby.

And just to tie this into the overall gun-centric theme of this blog, here’s a firearms training center that goes by the name of Personal Responsibility, Inc. in Nashville, Tennessee.

Good marketing.

I Don’t Know Exactly Where to File This One

Seems an ex-officer stole an assault weapon (you know, those guns that are only good for killing a large number of people without carefully aimed fire) out of a police cruiser, and then used it to rob a bank.

Ex-officer pleads guilty to robbery (Registration required)

Ex-police officer Gary Sahlin pleaded guilty in federal court yesterday to robbing a Fleet Bank branch of $23,960 with a semiautomatic assault weapon he stole from a Manchester police cruiser.

Under a plea agreement, the 26-year-old former Manchester patrolman will likely spend 25 years or less in federal prison for pulling the bizarre Aug. 6 heist using a stolen cruiser as a getaway car.

—

If Sahlin had gone to trial and been convicted on two indictments, he faced a mandatory sentence of 30 years for using a machine gun in the robbery — on top of a sentence for bank robbery. In exchange for his plea, the government dropped the machine gun charge and substituted the lesser charge of using a firearm during a crime of violence.

But here’s the fascinating part:

Sahlin’s lawyer, federal defender Bjorn Lange, said if the case had gone to trial, a jury would have had to decide whether the weapon could be converted into a machine gun and therefore fit the legal definition of a machine gun; Lange contended it wasn’t.

The prosecutor said the U.S. government’s position was that it was a machine gun and Sahlin knew it was a machine gun.

Government information describes the weapon as a Colt M16A1, 5.56-caliber semiautomatic assault weapon. Ollila said it had been a machine gun when owned by the military and had been converted into a semiautomatic for local police.

“Could have been converted”? Either the parts were in the gun during the crime, or they weren’t. IOW, either the gun was capable of full-auto fire at the time of the crime, or it was not. The government’s position seems more than a little bogus to me. But then most juries are pretty ignorant about firearms, so I have no doubt the prosecutor believed he could sell it.

Finally, there’s this:

Manchester Police Chief John Jaskolka, who attended the plea hearing with Deputy Chief Richard O’Leary, said he had no idea what drove the former officer to commit such a reckless and violent crime.

He said police had had no contact with Sahlin since his resignation last December. His departure followed his Nov. 2, 2002 arrest for an alleged domestic assault on his former wife.

Jaskolka said police knew immediately that the bank robber was a police officer or a former officer because no one else could overcome the security devices on a police cruiser. He said no one would know how to start one or be able to get to the semiautomatic locked in a metal box in the trunk.

“It’s the first time a car’s been stolen. It’s not going to happen again,” Jaskolka said.

I love blanket statements like that. They’re always wrong.

“Vanquishing Your Enemies, Crushing Their Skulls, and Drinking Their Blood” – Figuratively Speaking

Author John Ross details the recent concealed-carry victory in Missouri, which he was far more involved in than I realized. Excerpt:

I moved back to Missouri in 1980. As time passed, other states abolished their Civil War-era victim disarmament laws, but not Missouri. In late December of 1991, a friend of mine and I were sitting in my study, discussing the outrage of our state leading the nation in arresting people carrying guns for self-protection. The NRA had never made any effort in the past to bring up concealed carry in the Missouri legislature, and my friend told me he had just talked to them again, and they had no interest in bringing it up now, either.

Then my friend and I looked at each other and had the exact same realization: We were ashamed of ourselves. Here we were, two smart, prosperous men, whining about the fact that a national organization wasn’t fixing an injustice in our own back yard, instead of doing something about it ourselves.

And they did.

Read the whole thing.

Ask, and Ye Shall Receive

In the post below, “Gun-Polluted” America?, I quoted a lawyer by the name of Kimberly Croyle who stated that there were an average of “20 workplace murders per week” in America, and I wondered where she got her statistic.

Now I know, and unsurprisingly her data is way out of date.

An Associated Press piece recently released (and little commented upon) informs us that:

Working got safer last year, according to the government’s annual tally of workplace deaths, released Wednesday.

Nationally, 5,524 workers died on the job in 2002 — a significant decrease from the 5,915 who died in 2001, a number that did not include those killed in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

“It’s the largest year-to-year decline we’ve ever seen,” said Scott Richardson, program manager of the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries. The bureau began publishing the data in 1992.

The decline extended a downward trend since 1997, when 6,238 workers died. Workplace homicides also declined, down to 609 last year from a 1994 peak of 1,080.

Note that. AT THE PEAK in 1994 (a bad year for homicide in total) the rate was just over “twenty per week.” It’s declined every year since to reported current rate of 11.7, a decline of almost half. But what statistic does Ms. Croyle use? The worst one she can find.

I have repeatedly said that the actual numbers are bad enough, why must gun control proponents inflate them?

Here’s the Bureau of Labor Statistics graph of workplace homicides for 1992 through 2001.

Note that during this entire period, the number of guns in private hands has been increasing at a rate of well over three million per year (33,367,000 from 1994 through 2000 according to the Violence Policy Center, 11,094,000 of which were handguns – and that’s just domestic production, not including imports) and the number of states with “shall-issue” concealed-carry laws has increased with a corresponding increase in permitted persons.

No, I am not implying causality, I’m impugning it. More Guns do NOT EQUAL More Crime.

Note also that there have been no noticeable changes in national firearms law during this time period with the exception of the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban that (according to which gun control group you listen to, and what day it is) either was circumvented by the manufacturers because of NRA engineered loopholes and was useless (thus needing to be “strengthened”) or was effective, but still needs to be “strengthened” because it didn’t do enough. I haven’t found any data indicating the relative percentages of workplace victims of “assault weapons” versus your average, say, Walther PP which was used in the recent Chicago auto parts warehouse murders.

Note: Blogger’s permalinks seem to be screwed up at the moment.

This Hits the Market the Day After The Assault Weapons Ban Sunsets