The Smallest Minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities. – Ayn Rand
Sorry, y’all, but I have to travel on business, and I’m going to be in central Mexico for the next seven days. Those days promise to run about 12-13 hours, and I suspect I’m going to have neither the time nor the inclination to write much after work. I’ll be lucky to keep up with the blogs I follow daily.
I’ve got to get up at 4:00 tomorrow to get to the airport by 5:30 to catch the 7-passenger plane to the job site, so tonight I’ve got to pack and get to bed early.
Later, everyone.
(P)oliticians often argue they’re just too busy to read all these bills they’re voting on and commenting on. Busy doing what, though? Don’t they get paid hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to make laws and enforce laws? Wouldn’t you think part of that generous salary would be maybe reading those laws? What exactly do they do all day to earn their money? They already have these useless jobs where just sit around and talk and occasionally vote; is it really so much to ask they do some honest work and read these important bills? The Arizona one they’re all freaking out about isn’t even that long.
Maybe we should write all our bills in Spanish. Then we can hire illegal aliens to read them since apparently that’s yet another one of those jobs Americans won’t do.
— FrankJ, Reading is Hard at IMAO
Over at Excels at Nothing Nancy R. and her husband lay down the smack on H-S Precision at the NRA convention in Charlotte. Be sure to click on the picture for the super-size version, and check out the stink-eye the guy in the upper left is giving.
I literally laughed out loud.
Seven years ago today I hit “Publish Post” on my first entry here at The Smallest Minority.
It’s been an interesting seven years.
I’ve been unemployed once, changed jobs twice, gone to two NRA conventions, watched two fronts of a war unfold, gotten three Instalanches, been to four Gun Blogger Rendezvous, met nearly a hundred other bloggers, gone from less than a thousand hits a week to over a thousand hits a day (closing in on two million total), written 4550 posts, collected something on the order of 50,000 comments, saw the Supreme Court finally declare the right to arms to be an individual right, watched the continuing march of “shall-issue” concealed-carry legislation across the nation take us from 33 “shall-issue” states to 39 – including two, Arizona and Alaska going from “no-issue” to “no permit required” . . .
As I said, it’s been interesting.
And it’s been ego-boosting. Some of the compliments I’ve collected from here and around the web over the past seven years:
Not only does your essay hit on all the major points of self defence, it is crafted with a type of cold, hard, scientific logic that I have seldom seen from anyone in my, albeit inexperienced, 19 years of existence. This logic is what sets your essay apart from other writers on the subject, as they often do not hit on very important defining details that allow logical links to be made.
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I’ve argued the case for gun rights many times using information I got right here.
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I don’t always agree with you and I have no illusions about whether you have all the answers or not, but you bring a unique perspective that always makes me look at things from a different point of view. You inspire me to think just a little bit deeper and analyze just a little more thoroughly and for that, I thank you.
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I’m now forced to reconsider my position on religion, now that I realize you share it.
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Wow… Reading your takedowns of this drivel is like watching Barry Bonds play tee ball.
It’s an easy target, but it’s still damned impressive.
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Entertaining and witty, your occasional fiskings of the anti-gun whackos is marvelously entertaining.
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You seem to be doing O.K. without their help. Madison, Jefferson and all the rest may slumber peacefully in their graves because men such as you have proved themselves to be competent caretakers of our political liberties.
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I’m going to print out a copy of this and use it on my liberal history professor. Probably best online synopsis of the various important 2A court cases I have read.
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“What has been your best blogging experience?”
Arguing with Kevin from The Smallest Minority over religion and philosophy.—
I don’t read as many blogs as a lot of other people do so I can’t say he is the best philosopher on guns and freedom. I can only say he is by far the best philosopher of the bloggers I have read.
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I warn you, The Smallest Minority is (a) addictive and (b) almost invariably “Geek Length”. The difference being, of course, that Kevin can put more concept and information into his writing than I do, he is a better writer, and a much better researcher.
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I don’t know if you read Kevin Baker’s, The Smallest Minority but if you don’t, you should. There is no finer way to spend an evening than with your feet up in front of the fire, a large glass of something dark & peaty close to hand as you read one of his Uberposts in which he will methodically & in great detail argue his position & deconstruct the opposing view.
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Your blog is one of the few I read daily. Thanks for your tireless efforts on behalf of our rights, both on your own blog and in the comments sections of others. You are far more persuasive and far more tolerant of ignorance, stupidity, emotional reasoning and bad faith than I could ever be.
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I really like the way you tackle these issues – it appeals to the (software) engineer in me. More than that, your posts are incredibly effective in getting lefties to think about guns and crime. Most profess themselves open to alternate viewpoints, so on several occasions I have pointed people at your posts – not as facts per se, but as a place to start because you always attribute your sources. One friend will now simply no longer talk about guns in any context; I’m sure that given a little more time he’ll accept that “more guns please” is the only logical step to take.
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This is one of my key sites, where I consistently see stuff I can find nowhere else.
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Watching one of your debates is like watching a episode of Mission Impossible, you know the IMF is going to pull it off, but it’s great fun to watch the process.
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Seriously. I am going to print this out and carry it in my wallet.
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Deep down inside, you knew all this. But it is very nice to be able to read an extensively research post on the topic so that you don’t start believing you’re the only one.
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. . . it’s interesting to me that a media, namely blogs, that have long been associated with personal spleen-venting, are increasingly becoming sources for polished, focused commentary. Some of the work (e.g. Kevin Baker’s uberposts) being done on them is downright scholarly.
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In theory, controversial subjects are best resolved through a dialectical process of argument and counterargument, arriving at a conclusion. Threaded discussions are the perfect medium for this kind of debate, because they allow a topic to be broken up into component parts, and each part to be addressed individually. This should serve to simplify and clarify complicated debates.
In practice, few people (anywhere) have the discipline, patience, or intellectual honesty to carry such a debate to its conclusion. Fewer still combine these traits with sufficient subject-matter expertise to be useful in such a debate. (Kevin at The Smallest Minority keeps coming to mind. He combines an extraordinary knowledge of gun control case law, with Sisyphean patience.)
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It took me an hour to read (it is a classic Kevin Baker post) but I found the enlightenment worth my time.
As Uncle says, I do this to entertain me, not you, but stuff like this really makes all that effort worthwhile.
Thank you all for being my audience. I will continue to strive to be worthy of your time. Quite often, a LOT of your time!
This one’s in my back yard:
Man arrested, 2 others facing charges in deadly shootout
A 20-year-old man was arrested Wednesday and two others are facing charges in connection with a robbery that led to a deadly shootout Tuesday night at a north-side auto store, police said.
Carlos Peyron is facing charges of first-degree murder, attempted aggravated robbery, attempted armed robbery and kidnapping after he and three other men attempted to rob M&M Customs, which sells and installs car alarms, said Sgt. Fabian Pacheco, a Tucson Police Department spokesman.
One of the suspects, Noah Lopez, 18, was shot to death by an employee during the robbery.
Two other men, Toney Stith, 26, and Anthony Peyron, 19, were wounded in the shootout and will face charges once they are released from the hospital, Pacheco said.
All of the men are gang members, he said.
According to police, four men went into the business, at 3040 N. Stone Ave., and confronted an employee, forcing him into the back office.
The business owner, who was in the office, pulled out a shotgun and fired, wounding Anthony Peyron.
The suspects attempted to flee but encountered a locked door.
Lopez turned to the business owner and shot him in the forearm.
The employee retrieved a handgun from his tool kit and fatally shot Lopez, who turned his gun on the employee.
Lopez was pronounced dead at the scene.
So not only did the boss have a shotgun in his office, one of his employees had a PISTOL in his TOOLBOX. And get this:
Stith was wounded in the lower extremities, while Carlos Peyron was hit in the back of the head with the stock of the shotgun.
The victims held the suspects at gunpoint until police officers arrived two minutes after the shooting was reported.
The newspaper actually properly identified the victims and the perpetrators.
The good guys end up with one wounded (one hopes only superficially), and the bad guys end up with one dead, and the rest wounded and captured.
I used to live very close to where this occurred. It was not unusual to hear multiple gunshots at night, very seldom followed by sirens. I slept with a .357 Magnum on the headboard there.
Armed self-defense works.
A while back I wrote Balkanization, a piece about the Tucson Unified School District’s “Raza Studies” program, part of its broader Ethnic Studies program. It was fairly obvious from the coverage that the “Raza Studies” program was another example of Critical Pedagogy in the public school system, and its intent is to radicalize the students involved.
Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne decided to do something about it. The program, in his view, encourages students to resent a particular race.
It’s just like the old South, and it’s long past time that we prohibited it.
If you read up on Paolo Friere and Critical Pedagogy as he envisioned it, that’s exactly what it does, regardless of how it’s presented as promoting “critical thinking.”
So Horne lobbied for a bill in the state legislature, and it was recently passed and more recently signed by Governor Jan Brewer.
Of course, this is just more evidence of how racist Arizonans are.
The Tucson Unified School District says that they will have no problem complying with the new law though, while continuing their various Ethnic Studies programs.
I’ll bet.
As my parents visited there today with some relatives:
As always, click for the bigger version.
Once again our anti-gun opponents drag out scaaaary numbers! to motivate the herd. This time, courtesy of Xrlq via Uncle, we get the latest on the home-front numbers propounded by Momlogic:
Gun Accidents Kill 500 Kids Each Year
Advice every parent needs to hear about firearm safety.
This week, an 8-year-old boy accidentally shot and killed his 2-year-old sister in California.
“It’s a tragic case of a sibling who picked up a firearm, thinking it was a toy, pointed it at his sister and discharged one round from the firearm, striking her in the head,” said Vacaville Police Sgt. Charlie Spruill.
But these aren’t freak accidents. More than 500 children die annually from accidental gunshots. Some shoot themselves, while others kill friends or siblings after discovering a gun.
Here are more scary stats: Americans own 200 million firearms, and 35 percent of homes contain at least one gun. Last year, a study conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that more than 1.7 million children live in homes with loaded and unlocked guns.
There’s more, but this is enough.
The part I’ve emphasized in bold? It’s a lie.
It’s a blatant, bold-faced lie.
It’s also not an isolated incident. It’s not even uncommon. For example, I have more than once pointed to a March 2000 Salon article by Jean Hanff Korelitz, What a few good women can do (still available on the site, you’ll note) where she states in no uncertain terms:
And what about the more than 4,000 children who die in gun-related accidents each year? That’s 11 kids a day. And we’re not talking about crimes, or intentional shootings. We’re talking — or not talking enough — about accidents.
Korelitz says it’s 4,000 a year. Ten years later, Momlogic says it’s 500.
Why aren’t we celebrating the eight-fold reduction in accidental gunshot deaths of children?
Because they’re lying to you. Remember, they’re The Other Side.
So what are the real numbers? Well, let’s go back to the first excerpt where Momlogic‘s piece states:
Last year, a study conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that more than 1.7 million children live in homes with loaded and unlocked guns.
Wow. 1.7 million potential accidental gunshot deaths, each and every day. But I repeat this line to illustrate that the writer of the Momlogic piece is aware of the Centers for Disease Control. This might lead one to believe that the author could be aware of the CDC’s WISQARS tools. The Momlogic piece insists that the accidental death toll is 500 children a year. Let’s stipulate that “accident” means “unintentional,” and “children” are legally defined as seventeen years old or less. How many children died of accidental gunshot in 2006 (latest available data)?
One hundred and two. (102!)
That’s a factor of FIVE fewer than the headline states.
Well! What about 2005?
127
2004? 105.
2003? 102.
2002?!? 115.
What about when Ms. Korelitz was decrying the “fact” that we “weren’t talking enough” about the “more than 4,000 children who die in gun-related accidents each year”?
Here’s the available CDC data (you trust the .gov, right?) tabulated from 1990 up through 2006:
Not 4,000. Not 500. Two hundred seventy-two in 1996 (four years before Ms. Korelitz wrote her piece) and 102 in 2006 (four years before the Momlogic piece).
Two questions:
Each and every one of those deaths is a tragedy for the family or families involved. Why aren’t the actual numbers ever enough for our opponents? Why must they inflate them?
And why aren’t we CELEBRATING a four-fold reduction in the accidental gunshot deaths of children over the past twenty years even as well over 60 million new guns have entered circulation during that same period? Remember: supposedly there are 1.7 MILLION households with loaded, unsecured firearms in them that children could be exposed to. I’d say that an annual accidental gunshot death toll of 102 is damned near miraculously small, especially given the fact that 509 children under the age of five died of accidental drowning in 2006 alone.
One more: Why hasn’t Salon or Ms. Korelitz ever published a retraction of her absurd assertion? (Never mind. That last one was rhetorical.)
I received an email today from Ted Brown:
Your stock finally came in and I will be glass bedding and doing the final assembly this week. I’ll let you know when it’s done and the final charges. I really like the stock.
It’s a McMillan M3A.
Not much longer now!
Those of you who’ve been reading TSM for a while are probably familiar with Dr. Brian Anse Patrick, Associate Professor of Communication at the University of Toledo, in Ohio. I read his book The National Rifle Association and the Media: The Motivating Force of Negative Coverage back at the end of 2007, and my überpost The Church of MSM and the New Reformation was the result. Dr. Patrick is good people.
He sent me a galley copy of his latest book, Rise of the Anti-Media: In-forming America’s Concealed Weapon Carry Movement and I’m sorry to admit that it’s taken me a couple (OK, more than a couple) of months to get around to starting it, but I did start it last night. Let me quote from the introduction a particularly pertinent passage related to the title of this post:
Based on my research, it would not be inaccurate to say that “mass” antigun organizations tend to resemble mailing lists, audiences, or abstract statistical aggregations more than true organizations of people in a state of communication regarding one another, that is, a community. Except, of course, for a relatively few true believers at the top, or sprinkled here and there, the mass antigun group is a comparatively top-down affair communication-wise; it is vertical and can be mobilized only on very special occasions, providing some powerful, moneyed sponsor supplies free bus transportation or other incentives.
Case in point, the recent brouhaha over Starbucks not prohibiting open carry in their stores.
The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Ownership Violence was one of the most outspoken opponents of Starbucks’ “leave us out of it” policy. And by sheer coincidence this evening via Dave Hardy I discovered one of the strongest affirmations of Dr. Patrick’s observation:
(Click to embiggen the screenshot.) Yup. Last updated April 27, all they’ve managed to raise is $20. Will that even buy a Vente half-caf, non-fat whole-milk foam, bone-dry, half-pump mocha, half sugar in the raw, with double cup and no lid?
I guess this IS the America We Really Want to Live In. Watch the embedded April 12 Comedy Central clip. It’s pretty funny.
Now, I must continue my reading. This book promises to be as interesting as his last.