The Smallest Minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities. – Ayn Rand
Bill Whittle explains the decline of Hollywood:
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ns1m_aXJa58?rel=0]
Damn, I love that man.
UPDATE: I was reminded that I used “Han shot first!” way back in 2004 when I wrote “(I)t’s most important that all potential victims be as dangerous as they can”.
When engineers find something interesting, it usually involves catastrophic failure….
Carl, Vexxarr’s ship AI, Vexxarr comic, 2/6/12
Another victim of domestic violence, “protected” by a piece of tissue paper.
Friend of domestic violence victim: “She was afraid of him and he killed her”
Reporter: Corinne Hautala
TUCSON (KGUN9-TV) – A 31-year-old mother of two was found dead inside her home in the 3800 block of South Kolb Road.
Tucson Police said it responded to a caller, who told the 911 dispatcher his friend called him and said her ex-boyfriend had just arrived at her home.
When police arrived, officers said they found Claudia Pascual dead and a male suffering from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Another case of “When seconds count, the police are only minutes away.”
Pascual’s co-workers said that Pascual had a restraining order against the gunman. They said after a domestic violence incident she broke up his him and that’s when he started to stalk her.
“He was stalking her, followed her everywhere,” said Dodge-Harrison. “She couldn’t get away from him. She reported it. Nothing could be done. She was afraid of him and he killed her.”
Her friends believe the system failed to protect her.
Well, DUH.
9OYS sat down with attorney Mike Piccarreta to ask him, how effective are protection orders?
“Well it’s a piece of paper and if somebody doesn’t want to follow the law and is bent on harming you a piece of paper isn’t going to stop them,” he said.
You’ll note, it wasn’t a cop who said that.
The details in the restraining order will also determine how much police can do.
Pascual’s friends said they hope her story will encourage others to seek more protection if they too feel police aren’t doing enough.
What can the police do? They’re not responsible for protecting you. They can’t be.
Pascual’s co-workers said they are determined to turn the tragedy into something good, they want her name to live on. They’re looking into planning fundraisers and raising awareness about domestic violence.
How about about raising awareness of self-defense and firearm training? Think that might help? Think Pascual might have been willing to shoot the guy if she believed she was protecting her two kids?
The internet has been a goose that has been laying economic golden eggs for an amazing amount of time, considering the continual ham-handed efforts of the government to try and serve itself up some foie gras.
As commenter Windy Wilson observes:
Tam has a lock on uttering pithy, humorous and trenchant one liners like no one since at least Mark Twain, and possibly Ralph Waldo Emerson (who lacked the humor).
Thankfully, the internet means that millions can get a chance to read them.
“Dick”
Instapundit links to an interesting Reason piece on the decline of violence throughout history, as chronicled by Harvard University cognitive neuroscientist Steven Pinker in his new book.
The book is entitled The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined. Ronald Bailey, the author of the piece writes:
Human nature did not change, but our institutions did, encouraging people to restrain their natural tendencies toward violence.
I am reminded of a Usenet sigline by one Trefor Thomas:
To be civilized is to restrain the ability to commit mayhem. To be incapable of committing mayhem is not the mark of the civilized, merely the domesticated.
I get the uncomfortable feeling that the decline of violence is due to that violence being banked away for a rainy day. As Bailey notes, human nature hasn’t changed.
What has changed is that violence has largely gone from from personal, retail events to state-level wholesale slaughter. As Tam has noted,
Central governments have managed to turn murder from a hobby pursued at home by individual craftsmen into a wholesale industry churning out slipshod and substandard corpses in numbers that can’t be read without sounding like Carl Sagan.
True, the overall percentages have declined, but when violence is really unleashed the casualties are overwhelming. And if there’s one thing we’ve learned from economics, it’s that past performance is no guarantee of future results.
If When Iran does go nuclear, for instance ….
Or: How we do things in the Big City.
Attendance was better this month. Seven people joined me to shoot the match. A couple of regulars couldn’t make it, but a couple of others managed to rejoin us and a couple I hope will become regulars. Only two of us brought “minor” pistols, and one of us had function problems, so I managed to win minor for a change, essentially by default. All eight of us brought Major pistols, almost uniformly .45’s. I had to be different, and brought my Witness in .40 for a change. But I’ll come back to that.
Seven of us brought .22’s. Jim Burnett took that class handily. I just wasn’t fast enough this time. Five of us brought revolvers, two of them .44 Magnums with full-house loads. Let’s just say the pin damage this month was significant. But I managed to win the Revolver class this time. I have apparently learned how to hit with my S&W 327. I even managed to clean a table with five shots, double-action once. No one was more shocked than I was.
Jim Burnett also won Major with his Clark Custom pin gun, and beat me for overall pistol champion, but here was the highlight of the day: The second set of the second round of Major, we had a little… “incident.” Watch:
http://static.photobucket.com/player.swf
Thanks to Jim Bertrand and his hat-cam for catching that.
Via Dr. Pournell:
I teach at a community college, now. Kids tell me they have been taught how to think; they are no longer taught a lot of facts because they can just look stuff up. As a result, they don’t know anything. Some do, but some had more old-fashioned teachers. Most don’t and it is such a pity. All their days spent working on good classroom behavior and learning so little. What a waste.
Kate Pitrone
My emphasis.
“I was never taught that knowledge.” No shit.
From Victor Davis Hanson:
A small suggestion: given that we have let in 11 million illegal aliens without legality, capital, education, or English, why not announce that we will fast-track into citizenship 100,000 Europeans a year who speak English, have a BA degree, and can come with $50,000 in capital? Set the immigration at exactly the same number we do for legal immigrants from Mexico — and then listen and watch what happens!
Discuss.
Via Jaded Haven:
Daphne opines, “We’re Doomed”.
Nuke the site from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.