The Smallest Minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities. – Ayn Rand
I’m getting ready for tomorrow’s Central Arizona Blog Shoot. I’ve decided to take the .458 SOCOM, the Garand (a perennial favorite at these things), the 1917 Enfield (as it shoots the same ammo as the Garand), the new Smith 629, the Power Tool™, and my XP-100. Oddly, I don’t have pictures of either the SOCOM or the ’17. Looks like turnout is going to be a dozen or so.
Should be a good time. Hope you can make it.
Last year I almost didn’t do this post. This year, I forgot about it until about 11PM, so it goes up today. Next year…?
January:
I did not post all that much in January, just 39 pieces and only one long one – a fisking of an op-ed by Dr. James J. Magee, Professor of Political Science and International Relations for the University of Delaware. I may not have a doctorate, but I know more history and law than the good Professor apparently does.
I got my first new gun of the year by trading in an old one: my ’94 Winchester rifle for a ’92 Winchester carbine clone made by Rossi. It was a good trade. The Rossi is very handy as opposed to the 24″ barreled ’94.
February:
I was a little more prolific in February, but then Tucson got SNOWPOCALYPSED! Dr. Benjamin Carson appeared on the political scene and rapidly became an un-person. The LAPD went completely insane when one of their own went rogue, and they decided to shoot at anything… well, ANYTHING. Apparently the LAPD has been using these targets in their firearms training.
The nice ladies they shot up are OK. None of the cops involved suffered disciplinary action of any kind.
Joe Biden advised people – women especially – that they don’t need “assault rifles,” they need double-barreled shotguns! Which he then advised them to use in an illegal manner. Way to go, Joe.
March:
I cranked it up in March. One Quote of the Day has particular application to a much more recent one. I got my second new (to me) gun of the year (one gun a month! Yea!!!) And I first noticed that all of the .22 ammo was gone. I had my first disagreement with 9th Circuit Judge Alex Kozinski. Hey, nobody’s perfect. Magpul announced that, in the wake of Colorado’s anti-gun legislation, they would be leaving the state. It took them a while to get their ducks in a row, but they’re following through with it.
I got ANOTHER gun (two in one month!!) But I sold my .308 700-5R to finance the purchase.
In perhaps the most important post of that month (or possibly the year), the question of the reliability of the UK’s homicide statistics was raised. That question has still not been answered to my satisfaction.
And, finally, as the implementation of Obamacare bore down upon us, I reviewed the predictions made about it before, during, and immediately after its passage.
We were wrong. It was worse.
April:
I started April off with a bang with Burying Them Won’t Save Them. It was not an April Fool’s post. I discovered that it wasn’t just .22 ammo you couldn’t get – I couldn’t find .300 Win Mag brass either. A post I really liked: What Takes 55,000 Hp Just to Run the Fuel Pump? I spent two weeks in Houston for training, and then got to spend the following weekend at the NRA convention. April’s überpost Gun Control was written after it became apparent that no new federal gun-control legislation was going to be passed in 2013.
I still need to get this T-shirt.
May:
I cranked out more posts in May (52) than any other month. I got to meet a bunch of bloggers for the first time at the NRA convention and associated dinners. And the enthusiasm of the gun-control crowd at the convention was awe-inspiring. (I actually said “Awwwwww.”) The media, of course, has not let up its constant drumbeat. They breathlessly informed us that, despite skyrocketing gun sales since 2008, in fact there are fewer gun owners now than some arbitrary number of years ago. I fisked, but this meme still has legs today.
The blog turned ten. That’s what, seventy in Internet years?
The media, in the guise of the Chicago Tribune, showed its first cracks in covering up for Obama. I wrote about it. Even Piers Morgan gave pause.
May’s überpost was Government v3.0, Confidence and Preference Cascades wherein I discussed the idea that we’re on the cusp of a transformation equivalent to the Industrial Revolution as far as .gov is concerned. I was not sanguine about the possibility (and remain so).
June:
June posting started off with a bang, literally. The IRS scandal was making waves (though the media has done as much as possible to ignore it.) The New York Times took up the “overreach” meme, as further cracks in the Obama media armor opened.
The post with possibly the highest number of comments for the year was I Don’t Like Your Face, Obama. Either One of Them. Not a lot of words, but three videos. 252 comments. The Usual Suspect was involved.
I got my Arizona CCW renewed. 114 days after submitting the application. They’re a little busy, even though Arizona is now a Constitutional Carry state and you don’t need a permit unless you want reciprocity with other states.
I got a new T-shirt. It inspired a post.
July:
The big news for July was the overturning of Chicago’s ban on concealed carry: And Then There Were None.
A couple of young men took the law into their own hands took Robert Peel’s Seventh Principal at face value and saved a young child from a predator. Stuff like this should get wider coverage.
George Zimmerman was found not guilty by a jury of his peers in a court of law after being tried in the press. Iowahawk got a QotD on the topic as well.
And, after six years here and uncounted comment threads 100 responses or longer, our lone perpetual Leftist was voted off the island. It was a very close thing. Apparently he still visits frequently, but has made it quite clear I’m not wanted in his comments. Fair enough.
But that’s OK, a post very shortly afterward drew over 100 comments without him.
August:
I was kinda busy in August. Lots of Quotes of the Day, not much original content.
Not my content, but worth the read: I Love My People.
And I discovered the webcomic Failure to Fire. Definitely NSFW, but fun, nonetheless.
September:
The Gun Blogger Rendezvous, of course! Drove up this year in my 2002 F-250 diesel, 13 hours and 40 minutes door-to-door. Sure could carry a lot more people and their stuff than the ‘Stang. Fuel costs, though… STILL haven’t won a gun there, but I did get TWO Crimson trace lasers. (Haven’t sent in the certificate for the second one yet.)
Before the Rendezvous, though, I introduced my readers to Dr. Grover Furr, Stalin denialist.
Good news from Colorado. After passing gun control legislation, two State Senators lost their seats in a recall election. Think THAT got politician’s attention nationwide?
Dilbert’s mom came out as a Tea Partier.
There was another rampage shooting, this time at the Navy Yard in D.C. The media was its usual self, with layers of fact-checkers and editorial oversight. Oddly, when the perpetrator turned out not to be a middle-aged white male member of the Tea Party who used a shotgun instead of an “assault rifle,” they lost interest. Instead, they brought out the drums made from the skins of dead children.
The Pima County Sheriff’s Department got a slap on the wrist for killing veteran José Guerena in 2011 for the crime of having a scummy brother. No officers were disciplined, not even for the Keystone Kops routine they performed in front of Guerena’s home as they killed him.
And we all prepared for a .gov shutdown!
October:
As Obamacare implementation loomed ever closer and the healthcare.gov website fired up, those cracks in the façade we were seeing started to widen.
A .gov shutdown? I guess dead kids aren’t really that important when politics are involved!
I got another gun! (Traded in for it, too.) What is that now, four for the year?
With the .gov shutdown in full swing, the Obama administration, through the mechanism of the National Park Service, cranked up the pettiness to eleven. The media, of course, paid little attention. Cracks in the façade, yes, but lots of spackle to cover ’em up. Bill Whittle, however, was paying attention.
The Republicans surrendered, of course, but they just play the game badly – not realizing that the old rules no longer apply.
The For the CHIIIILLLLDREN! drumbeat was taken up again. Spackle over the cracks, distract, obfuscate. Still, the Obamacare debacle pushed those cracks wider. “It’s like peeling an onion of fail,” said Instapundit.
November:
In November, I received an email from someone who claimed to be an Obamacare insider. I see no reason to doubt their story.
More and more people began feeling the bite of the “Affordable” “Care” Act.
I got my last new gun of the year, a Lew Horton custom .44 Magnum, circa 2001. Five guns this year, but only two additions to my collection arsenal.
In desperation over the disastrous implementation of his signature legislation, Obama keeps making law up on the fly. Eleven state Attorney’s General have sent a letter to HHS head Sebelius declaring his actions illegal. But that doesn’t matter – they’re all Republicans. Which makes this QotD more telling.
The Chicago Tribune doubled-down on its position first expressed in May. I was starting to have some glimmer of hope. Nah, not really.
And, in November, the Democrats finally detonated the “nuclear option” in the Senate, after railing against it most eloquently (and accurately) in 2005. I called them on their hypocrisy.
Former Enron adviser Paul Krugman compared Obamacare with Benghazi. He said it, I didn’t.
And, finally, December:
It was a light month for posting, as I’ve been VERY busy. The only real post of note that month was about a legal decision in the 9th Circus with ANOTHER outstanding dissent by Chief Judge Alex Kozinski. Too bad his best work seems to be in dissent of poor decisions.
And another calendar year slips by. Amazing how they seem to do that faster and faster each year. Five more months, and this blog will be eleven years old. I’m not sure at this point how much longer I’ll keep it up. It’s time-consuming as hell, and I find I am repeating and repeating and repeating what I’ve said years before. I don’t know. We’ll see what comes.
Anyway, a happy new year to you all, and let’s hope 2014 turns out to be better than any of us have any right to expect.
Yes, it is important for all potential victims to be as dangerous as they can… (Edited for a better story link.)
Victims Strip Suspect Naked, Take His Gun During Robbery In OKC
OKLAHOMA CITY –
Several victims fought back against a suspect armed with a gun, leaving the man naked and injured outside an Oklahoma City hair salon.
Employees told police due to the busy holiday, they were working late at “Head Honchos” near N.E. 36th Street and Lottie. Just after midnight on Christmas Eve, a woman said a suspect identified as 23-year-old Corneilyus Howeth jumped into her car and pointed a gun at her.
The victim managed to call her brother, who was inside the hair salon just a few feet away. He rushed outside to help, but said Howeth pointed the gun at him and pushed him back into the salon. The victims said Howeth demanded all their money and kept asking for someone who wasn’t there.
A few moments later, someone else walked into the salon. Witnesses said Howeth turned to point the gun at the newcomer, and that’s when one of the victims tackled the suspect.
According to the police report, the two struggled over the weapon. The victim hit Howeth with a table leg, and another person in the salon jumped into the fight to help subdue Howeth. The victims told police they managed to take the gun from Howeth. They then stripped off his clothes, pushed him outside, and locked the door before telling someone to call 911.
The victims were not seriously injured. Howeth did sustain some minor injuries and was taken to a hospital for treatment before being booked into the Oklahoma County jail for robbery with a firearm.
Here’s the perp:
I don’t think he was expecting that.
Over at AR15.com in the “General Discussion” forum, someone posted that the short-lived TV Fox series Firefly is better than the ABC series Castle, both starring Nathan Fillion.
I had to share my response:
I’m a 51 year-old male. I watch Castle because of Stana Katic.
And because I like Nathan Fillion as an actor. It’s not Firefly, but nothing else is or will ever be.
ETA:
THIS sealed Firefly for me – from the pilot:
My reaction:
Happy New Year, y’all.
I’m still playing over at Quora.com. I’ve recently had an interesting exchange on the question “What can gun owners learn from non-gun owners?” with REDACTED who advertises himself as a Theoretical Biologist at MIT. I won’t reproduce the whole thread, but I will pick out two excerpts from his comments:
(A)s soon as I learn that someone owns a gun, and is pro-gun ownership without heavy regulations, I totally judge them to be uneducated and conservative. Responsible or not, having a gun comes with a mentality of thinking it is ok to buy a killing device. I am happy to do that, because I have yet to meet an intelligent, well educated person who is pro-guns in real life.
But that’s not QotD. This is:
I was never against having guns for shooting ranges, I am against them as means of self-defense (or freedom).
So rare to find one willing to state that in public.
UPDATE: With respect to the comments here, do you see why I like playing over there? Talk about a target-rich environment! ;D
UPDATE 2: Now that I’ve made him aware that I quoted him here, he’s apparently deleted the comment that started the thread these were taken from, thus eliminating the entire thread. Interestingly enough, I can still access them, just not from the post in question. Reasoned Discourse™ strikes again! The guy IS the archetype!
For archival purposes, here’s the last part of that thread-in-question:
Kevin Baker
With respect to your admitted bias, I received a very interesting email this evening and got permission to pass it on. To wit:“I work in downtown Boston…right across the river from REDACTED. If you can get him to commit to a definition of intelligent and well-educated that isn’t equal to ‘agrees with me,’ I would be happy to produce myself at a Boston Starbucks/Dunkin Donuts so he can, in real life, see a ‘well educated’ pro-2A person, who is also not a conservative.
“Although there’s a reason I normally stay quiet and listen while people like yourself are talking, I should be able to meet any bar for reasonably intelligent that he’s likely to pick. Credentials =/= intelligent or educated, but I wouldn’t trust his personal assessment, so credentials as a proxy would seem to be the way to go. In that vein – I have a Ph.D. from Harvard in Genetics, a Mensa membership card, and am a former Goldwater scholar.
“I self-identify as mostly libertarian – while he’s likely to see some of my views as conservative, I also have plenty that fit well with the liberal stereotype (e.g. I am an atheist that has no problem with gay marriage and would very much like the government to refrain from any involvement in reproductive health/decisions).
“My gunnie creds are pretty solid. In my own right, I am a NRA instructor, former SAS instructor/coordinator, former Hunter Ed instructor, former Board Member for a state 2A-rights organization, etc.
“I am happy to be Exhibit A in this instance.”
So if you’d like to broaden your experience with an educated non-conservative, there’s a volunteer willing to meet you right there in Boston! Let me know. I think this get-together would be FASCINATING.
REDACTED
The fact that he brings up mensa, after harvard, is quite puzzling.The fact that Harvard is a rather conservative school, is well-established to me.
The fact that he contacts you, not me, for this, is also not clear.
The fact that he thinks he is exhibit A, is not too impressive either.
He is a very typical libertarian.
His gun certifications make me doubtful of whether I feel comfortable meeting him in person, I rather stay online, but I am willing to meet him if he promises not to bring any guns.
If we meet and I am proven false, I will happily change my statements and judgement about gun enthusiasts. He may define intelligence and education as he wishes.
Kevin Baker
Full disclosure: I’m a blogger, and I used a couple of excerpts from your comments there in a post this morning:The Smallest Minority (This post – Ed.)
This respondent is not a member of Quora, has not read the thread(s), and sent me an email rather than leaving a comment on my blog – thus did not see your opinion of Mensa prior. And Harvard is conservative? Compared to UC Berkeley, but …
I will forward your response and see where it goes from there.
REDACTED
I am not sure if you were allowed to do that.You put me at considerable safety hazard, by reproducing my full name and location. And by choosing specific parts of my writing you selected out of context, without my consent, in your own personal domain.
Even if this is legal ( not sure) , it is certainly unethical, which just makes me more worried that you own a gun.
You advocate individual rights, while you take the matter of my privacy completely in your own hands.
Kevin Baker
I beg your pardon? You’re posting on a public forum. Your information is available with a quick and simple Google search (as is mine). You have a Facebook page! And you’re worried about me “outing” you? And GUN OWNERS are paranoid?If gun owners were 1/10,000th as dangerous as you make us out to be, there WOULDN’T BE ANY ANTI-GUNNERS LEFT.
There’s another related question on Quora – “What can non-owners learn from gun-owners” or words to that effect. How about this? That we’re normal, everyday people who aren’t hair-trigger (pun intended) killers just waiting to snap and blow away everyone in the closest Starbucks?
Good grief man, get ahold of yourself.
Yes, I selected excerpts from your comments. They were the most telling, so that’s what got excerpted. Welcome to internet infamy! Perhaps thousands of people will see your words!
Why else did you post them in the first place?
REDACTED
Hmmm, the safety hazard is not your judgement to make. If over then next 20 years half a million people read your blog (gross overestimate), there is a good chance there is more than a crazy person among them.My uncle ( a successful surgeon) was shot paralyzed for life by a gun owner, a healthy but racist one, who profiled my uncle as an enemy foreigner in D.C. in 1980. Please give me some room to be paranoid.
What about the ethical perspective? do you think I get the right to stand by and discuss what I say when you present them out of context? No, you didn’t even inform me. That’s very very cowardly. Honestly, I thought you were radical but fair, that’s why I took a shot ( pun intended) to have a conversation. now I don’t even think that.
Why did I post them? because I was having a conversation with you, under your posting.
Thanks to this, I will never discuss these things with people like you. You get to say your stuff and applaud yourself, read some ethics, with an open mind, works on both fronts.
Also, in Quora’s terms of agreement:
(f) contains other people’s private or personally identifiable information without their express authorization and permission, and/or
Kevin Baker
We have already determined that what we were doing was NOT “having a conversation,” we were staking out our positions in a public forum. My condolences to your uncle, but there are crazies in every nation, and not all of them use guns (yes, I include homicidal bigotry as a form of insanity). And D.C. in 1980? Wasn’t that a gun-free zone then?On the “out of context” argument, please go back and read the entire thread. They ARE the context. I did inform you, admittedly after the fact, but you’re more than welcome to respond in the comments. You needn’t leave an email address – anonymous comments are accepted.
I’m not radical, I’m fanatical – defined as “won’t change my mind, won’t change the subject and won’t shut up.” But I suspect you are the same.
It has been my experience that anti-gun people are of one of two types – those who have suffered direct or indirect loss from violence involving a firearm, or the merely philosophically involved. You are obviously one of the former, and for that reason your position is somewhat more understandable.
My posting of your comments was not unethical. What moral principle did I violate? Certainly not your privacy. I’m sorry you were offended/frightened, but that’s your perception, not my fault. Perhaps ten million people may eventually read THIS thread, and they can Google you just as I did.
Welcome to the internet.
My correspondent has replied:
“As I work in Boston and am not a MA resident, I will of necessity be sans firearms when I meet him. He can rest easy on that count.”
Contact information: [REDACTED]
Assuming, of course, that you’re not too frightened to carry through now.
With respect to subsection f) which you added above, please see the following under “Quora’s licenses to you”:
“Quora gives you a worldwide, royalty-free, non-assignable and non-exclusive license to re-post any of the Content on Quora anywhere on the rest of the web provided that the Content was added to the Service after April 22, 2010, and provided that the user who created the content has not explicitly marked the content as not for reproduction, and provided that you: (a) do not modify the Content; (b) attribute Quora by name in readable text and with a human and machine-followable link (an HTML anchor tag) linking back to the page displaying the original source of the content on http://quora.com on every page that contains Quora content; (c) upon request, either by Quora or a user, remove the user’s name from Content which the user has subsequently made anonymous;”
I’ll remove the link and description of you in my blog post, but it seems to me that subsection f) applies to posting HERE at Quora, not elsewhere. Also, it appears that I am remiss in not linking to this page in my blog post, per Quora’s terms, so I’ll be doing that instead.
See? Understanding of the law is a very important thing. Unless, apparently, you’re the President, and can just unilaterally decide what parts of the law you want to enforce or not.
I’ve edited just a tiny bit for readability, but that’s the end of a LONG thread exchange that he apparently doesn’t want anyone to read anymore.
I guess I can add another item to my list of things gun owners can learn from non-gun owners. I’ll leave it to you to determine what that item is.
The great mystery of America today is how many of us have joined Pajama Boy nation — 20%, 40%, 60%? — and how many want nothing to do with such metrosexual visions of a huge state run by a nerdocracy, incompetently doling out other people’s money. How many were on board for Obamacare, more entitlements, and lectures from the apartheid elite on inequality and fairness, versus how many turn the channel at sound of His voice.
—
Pajama Boy is the bookend to vero possumus, the faux-Greek columns, the Obama rainbow logo, cooling the planet and lowering the seas, hope and change, Forward!, “Yes, we can!”, the Nate Silver infatuation, Barbara Walters’ “messiah,” David Brooks’ crease, Chris Matthews’ tingle, and the army of Silicon techies who can mobilize for Obama but not for Obamacare. These are the elites without identities who feed on the latest fad. They are the upper-crust versions of those who once mobbed stores to buy the last Cabbage Patch Kids doll, or had to have a pet rock on their dresser. Obama, after all, was the lava lamp and Chia Pet of the young urban progressive.
— Victor Davis Hanson, Works and Days: Pajama Boy Nation
The gorge at Watkins Glen:
One of the Top 75 Photos of 2013.
On September 1, 2010, my doctor informed me that I was Type II diabetic. Oh, joy. I’m able to control it through diet (my last A1c test came back at 5.9), but my body doesn’t regulate blood glucose real well. My doctor gave me a prescription for blood glucose test strips – Freestyle Lite – but even with my prescription coverage, these things work out to about 75¢ per test, and the prescription is for two tests a day. Basically, insurance partially defrays the cost of one 50-count pack of test strips per month. Personally, I want to keep a closer eye on things, but not at $1+ per test.
I ran across somebody saying good things about WalMart’s ReliOn Prime tester & strips. These cost only about 22¢ per test, without my medical insurance, so I bought a kit. I still had some of the Freestyle strips, so I did a side-by-side comparison with my last five Freestyles, and the readings matched ±3 mg/dl, which is close enough for me. I’ve used it for a couple of months now, testing 4-5 times a day to keep a closer eye on my blood sugar, and that, I’m sure, helped with my latest A1c test results.
So if you’re diabetic and want to save some money, I can recommend WalMart’s ReliOn brand. The strips are a little bulkier, the test results are a few seconds slower, and it took me a bit to figure out how to get them into the tester properly (it’s a tight fit), but at less than a third of the cost per test I’m not complaining. And they don’t require any more blood than the Freestyles do.
Ice cream machine is still on the fritz. Please read what I wish I’d written on the most recent Colorado school shooting.
Rampage shootings end one of two ways – when the shooter decides he’s finished, or a good guy with a gun shows up to force that decision. The Arapahoe shooting lasted 80 seconds, because a good guy with a gun showed up. The shooter was armed not only with a shotgun, but with molotov cocktails. You’ll never hear it in the media, but more people have died at the hands of arsonists than rampage shooters. He tossed one firebomb. He never got to use the others.