The Mindset is More Important than the Tool

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The Mindset is More Important than the Tool

The Gun I Didn’t Have

By Robert M. Engstrom

I was walking home a few weeks ago when two young men, one with a knife in his hand, blocked the sidewalk and demanded my wallet and camera. I’m accustomed to having a means of defense other than my fist and an umbrella at hand. I’ve been in Washington, D.C. for three months and had almost gotten used to not having a weapon handy. At home in Arizona, I regularly, and legally, carry a concealed pistol and reluctantly left my guns at home and trusted on instincts and awareness to stay out of trouble.

The hoodlum who tried to rob me was unprepared for resistance and expected compliance to his demands because thugs know that the District of Columbia’s firearm laws and security measures punish law-abiding people who might otherwise carry a defensive weapon. My umbrella didn’t survive the confrontation, but I left the scene with my wallet, camera and the punk’s knife, a cheap piece of junk that is now in a storm sewer.

Foolhardiness on my part and a bit of good luck protected me, but there have been a few nightmares of emergency rooms, lacerated livers, and worse since that night. Training, practice and preparation for carrying a concealed firearm helped me recognize the potential threat before the knife appeared, but having my .45 along that night would have eliminated the danger of the physical contact that ensued.

But without the proper mindset, the .45 wouldn’t have been helpful, either. If you have to wander around D.C. carrying an umbrella, I’d recommend this one. Pricey, but what’s your life worth?

It’s NOT About Gun Rights

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It’s NOT About Gun Rights . . .

It’s about unreasonable search and seizure:

ACLU files suit over gun rights

A New Orleans man is suing the city and its district attorney for refusing to give back a gun that police seized when he was arrested on drug and firearms charges.

The American Civil Liberties Union on Thursday filed the federal suit on behalf of Errol Houston Jr., who was arrested last year following a traffic stop.

The suit says the district attorney’s office declined to prosecute Houston but has refused to return his .40 caliber firearm.

Houston claims Orleans Parish District Attorney Leon Cannizzaro has instituted a policy that firearms seized during arrests will not be returned to their owners.

The ACLU says that policy violates Houston’s constitutional rights.

Cannizzaro says his office decides on a “case by case basis” whether to return confiscated guns.

It’s a FOURTH Amendment case, not a Second Amendment one. I’m sure they’d be doing the same thing if his car had been confiscated instead of his firearm.

I’m equally sure that the ACLU still hasn’t changed its tune with regard to the Second.

Quote of the Day

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Exactly what John Dewey heralded at the onset of the twentieth century has indeed happened. Our once highly individualized nation has evolved into a centrally managed village, an agora made up of huge special interests which regard individual voices as irrelevant. The masquerade is managed by having collective agencies speak through particular human beings. Dewey said this would mark a great advance in human affairs, but the net effect is to reduce men and women to the status of functions in whatever subsystem they are placed. Public opinion is turned on and off in laboratory fashion. All this in the name of social efficiency, one of the two main goals of forced schooling. — John Taylor Gatto, The Underground History of American Education

I can see I’m going to get a LOT of Quotes of the Day out of this book.

Oh FVCK No

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Oh FVCK No!

I’d heard grumblings about this, but didn’t believe anybody’d be that stupid. I’ve about concluded that we need term limits on every elected office, and a stipulation that elected officials can collect no government retirement pay. I sure as FVCK don’t want an American El Presidente for Life like we had with FDR.

You want to repeal a Constitutional Amendment? I’m all for repealing the 17th. (Hell, I’m all for repealing the 16th, but that has a snowball’s chance.)

(h/t to Neo-Neocon who asks the pertinent question: “Is this why Obama supports Zelaya?”)

Quote of the Day – Day Late and Dollar Short Edition

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If I demanded you give up your television to an anonymous, itinerant repairman who needed work you’d think I was crazy; if I came with a policeman who forced you to pay that repairman even after he broke your set, you would be outraged. Why are you so docile when you give up your child to a government agent called a schoolteacher?

I want to open up concealed aspects of modern schooling such as the deterioration it forces in the morality of parenting. You have no say at all in choosing your teachers. You know nothing about their backgrounds or families. And the state knows little more than you do. This is as radical a piece of social engineering as the human imagination can conceive.

—

Before you hire a company to build a house, you would, I expect, insist on detailed plans showing what the finished structure was going to look like. Building a child’s mind and character is what public schools do, their justification for prematurely breaking family and neighborhood learning. Where is documentary evidence to prove this assumption that trained and certified professionals do it better than people who know and love them can? There isn’t any.

The cost in New York State for building a well-schooled child in the year 2000 is $200,000 per body when lost interest is calculated. That capital sum invested in the child’s name over the past twelve years would have delivered a million dollars to each kid as a nest egg to compensate for having no school. The original $200,000 is more than the average home in New York costs. You wouldn’t build a home without some idea what it would look like when finished, but you are compelled to let a corps of perfect strangers tinker with your child’s mind and personality without the foggiest idea what they want to do with it.

Law courts and legislatures have totally absolved school people from liability. You can sue a doctor for malpractice, not a schoolteacher. Every homebuilder is accountable to customers years after the home is built; not schoolteachers, though. You can’t sue a priest, minister, or rabbi either; that should be a clue.

If you can’t be guaranteed even minimal results by these institutions, not even physical safety; if you can’t be guaranteed anything except that you’ll be arrested if you fail to surrender your kid, just what does the public in public schools mean?

What exactly is public about public schools? That’s a question to take seriously. If schools were public as libraries, parks, and swimming pools are public, as highways and sidewalks are public, then the public would be satisfied with them most of the time. Instead, a situation of constant dissatisfaction has spanned many decades. Only in Orwell’s Newspeak, as perfected by legendary spin doctors of the twentieth century such as Ed Bernays or Ivy Lee or great advertising combines, is there anything public about public schools.

— John Taylor Gatto, The Underground History of American Education

I’m looking forward to reading all of this.

How’s that Gun Control Working Out for You

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How’s that Gun Control Working Out for You?

The Daily Mail reports:

The most violent country in Europe: Britain is also worse than South Africa and U.S.

Britain’s violent crime record is worse than any other country in the European union, it is revealed today.

Official crime figures show the UK also has a worse rate for all types of violence than the U.S. and even South Africa – widely considered one of the world’s most dangerous countries.

The figures comes on the day new Home Secretary Alan Johnson makes his first major speech on crime, promising to be tough on loutish behaviour.

“Loutish behavior”?? Would that be the kind of behavior that leads British police to give victims “spit kits” so they can collect DNA evidence from their attackers?

The Tories said Labour had presided over a decade of spiralling violence.

In the decade following the party’s election in 1997,

Remember: all legally-owned handguns were banned after the 1996 Dunblane massacre

the number of recorded violent attacks soared by 77 per cent to 1.158 million – or more than two every minute.

The figures, compiled from reports released by the European Commission and United Nations, also show:

* The UK has the second highest overall crime rate in the EU.
* It has a higher homicide rate than most of our western European neighbours, including France, Germany, Italy and Spain.

And this is DESPITE THE FACT that the UK has “the toughest gun laws in the world” – laws that the government promised would “protect the public.”

* The UK has the fifth highest robbery rate in the EU.
* It has the fourth highest burglary rate and the highest absolute number of burglaries in the EU, with double the number of offences than recorded in Germany and France.

But it is the naming of Britain as the most violent country in the EU that is most shocking. The analysis is based on the number of crimes per 100,000 residents.

In the UK, there are 2,034 offences per 100,000 people, way ahead of second-placed Austria with a rate of 1,677.

The U.S. has a violence rate of 466 crimes per 100,000 residents, Canada 935, Australia 92 and South Africa 1,609.

Shadow Home Secretary Chris Grayling said: ‘This is a damning indictment of this government’s comprehensive failure over more than a decade to tackle the deep rooted social problems in our society, and the knock on effect on crime and anti-social behaviour.

No, instead they kept pursuing “gun control” and civilian victim disarmament. As Say Uncle puts it: “Gun control – what you do instead of something.”