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Clayton Cramer's BLOG |
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Clayton's commentary on news and events of the day. Broadly speaking, I'm a conservative with libertarian sympathies (getting more conservative as my children get older).
 Never forget! I'm running for Idaho state senate I've written a number of history books, as well as scholarly and popular articles, (see my web page).
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Saturday, March 03, 2007
Slow Learner is Better Than No Learner Ian Bell, one of the Scottish journalists who banged the drum for replacing Britain's insanely restrictive handgun licensing scheme with a complete ban after the Dunblane Massacre in 1996, shows evidence that he might be capable of learning: First, I was not ever going to attempt to "explain" Hamilton: the bereaved deserved better. Secondly, in my small way, I was going to take on anyone who failed to support the banning of handguns.After repeating the usual nonsense about how guns are evil, and it was almost self-evident that they all need to be banned: America had, and has, too many of the instruments that Thomas Hamilton found so alluring. Yet almost 11 years on, what do I read, and what do I say?Bell is still far too enamored of gun control and hating guns--rather than confronting the real problems--but he at least is beginning to see that laws are not self-enforcing, and that the coverup of local police allowing Hamilton handgun licenses when he was known to be a pedophile, and was in clear violation of the existing licensing standards should have been as big a scandal as the murders themselves. I don't know exactly how seriously to take this website, which claims that an off-duty police officer who first arrived on the scene gave a statement to the police--and that statement was not shown to the Cullen Inquiry--probably because it raises serious questions about whether Hamilton committed suicide or not. This website indicates that many of the documents sealed for one hundred years include letters from British politicians that mentioned Hamilton, as well as Hamilton autopsy (which again raises questions about whether Hamilton killed himself or not). There have been repeated hints that perhaps the reason that Hamilton was allowed a handgun permit contrary to policy was because he and some police officials may have had some common membership. It isn't clear whether this is Freemasonry or pedophilia. Again, I'm not sure how seriously to take these claims, but the Guardian, a respectable if left-wing British paper also has covered some of this material. This entry of mine from last year points out that credible sources are suggesting that the coverup might have been because Hamilton was supplying police officials with child pornography for their own use. Thanks to Dave Hardy for pointing me to the news story. Labels: gun rights The Brady Campaign Wants To Hear From You! Gun Law News tells us that Handgun Control, Inc. (now the Brady Campaign) is running a survey about gun control: Being a democratic guy, I feel compelled to share this with others concerned about the gun control issue so the Brady's get a very clear picture of just what the public really thinks about their issues.Yes, let's let them know what we think! Labels: gun rights Narcissism My wife heard one of these psychologists (probably Twenge) being interviewed a few days ago: Today’s college students are more narcissistic and self-centered than their predecessors, according to a comprehensive new study by five psychologists who worry that the trend could be harmful to personal relationships and American society.My wife saw this "self-esteem" nonsense starting when our kids were in school. Self-esteem doesn't come from being told, "You're special" for one week; it comes from being able to say to yourself, "I'm good at something." Unfortunately, part of what drove this liberal cause was the fear that to create real self-esteeem, instead of this faux version, would require teaching kids how to be competent at the skills that generations of American kids managed to learn without too much difficulty. The U.S. Army's Ordnance Museum at Aberdeen Proving Grounds, Maryland I stopped in there on my way from Philadelphia to Baltimore--and it was well worth the trip. Sorry about the picture quality--I was using the cheap Photosmart E427, and under low light conditions, when you aren't close enough for the flash to fully illuminate the target, the results are something a bit disappointing. I would have to say that this is the dumbest idea in the history of warfare--the nuclear mortar.  Click to enlarge Here's the explanatory display:  Click to enlarge I just love the warning labels on the warhead:  Click to enlarge Yes, I suppose that you would handle with care! I think that I have mentioned the Liberator single shot pistol before--one of those ideas that sounds like something out of a gun nut fantasy--drop cheap, single shot pistols over France, and the Resistance will use them to kill a German soldier, take his rifle or submachine gun, and repeat.  Click to enlarge In practice, it didn't work this way. The barrels weren't rifled, so they were very inaccurate, and the French Resistance was courageous--not stupid! It wasn't easy to get close enough to a single German soldier to kill him with one of these, and if there were two German soldiers, shooting the first just got you killed by the second, while you were frantically trying to reload. Here's the infamously ugly M3 grease gun. These were made by GM's Guide Lamp Division during World War II because they were largely metal stampings--something that Guide Lamp Division knew how to do well.  Click to enlarge It isn't apparent from the picture, but one of the barrels is the curved version, intended for shooting around corners, or from inside tanks without sticking your head up. I didn't realize until I saw this display that it wasn't just the Germans who came up with ideas this strange. This picture looks like a bunch of older rifles, right?  Click to enlarge Except in person, you can see that these are huge rifles, rather like the Barrett Light .50 of their day.  Click to enlarge A point that doesn't get made enough is that the American System (as it was known in Britain, ironically, since we only improved on the British System) or sometimes the Armory Practice, plays a major part in creating the modern world of inexpensive, high quality mass produced stuff. I was pleased to see the Ordnance Museum display on this point:  Click to enlarge  Click to enlarge  Click to enlarge Not quite as silly as the nuclear mortar, is the Atomic Cannon:  Click to enlarge They have an astonishing number of tanks and similar armored vehicles outside in all directions, but it was cold, covered in snow, and in places, slippery with ice, so I didn't walk out there.  Click to enlarge  Click to enlarge Oh, and here's the big brother to the Atomic Cannon, and it looks the part:  Click to enlarge Labels: gun history, gun technology, history Starting to Read Federal Court Decisions About Involuntary Commitment Some of them are very interesting. (Okay, all of them are very interesting.) I'll be summarizing some of them, and the interesting questions that they raise, from time to time over the next few weeks. Because the Court looks for precedents that are at least close, some of these cases involve mental illness commitment, and some involve mental retardation commitment--even though these are fundamentally different situations. A mentally ill person might get well, spontaneously or as the result of treatment; retardation, unfortunately, is not curable. O'Connor v. Donaldson, 422 U.S. 563 (1975): This is the classic abuse of the involuntary commitment process case. In 1957, a young man named Kenneth Donaldson is committed by his father in Florida for having "delusions." The hospital decides that he is paranoid schizophrenic--but when this comes to trial in 1971, the hospital superintendent can't come up with any particularly persuasive reason why Donaldson was locked up--and there's been no treatment of Donaldson the entire time he has been locked up. No one, including the hospital staff, thinks Donaldson is, or has ever been, a threat to himself or others. He wasn't incompetent to care for himself, apparently. He had worked for fourteen years before he was hospitalized in 1957, and according to the decision, "immediately upon his release he secured a responsible job in hotel administration." (I suddenly think of the words of a psychiatrist who once observed, "It is often the most sane member of the family that gets sent to me.") This is the case that decides that if someone is not a threat to themselves or others, and can either care for themselves, or be cared for by others on the outside, that a mental hospital can't hold them if they aren't being treated for their mental illness. This isn't a particularly radical idea by itself. Jackson v. Indiana (1972): This is a troubling case, because it appears to have created a "get out of jail, free" card for those who were hopelessly incurable. Theon Jackson was a deaf-mute with severe retardation--equivalent to a pre-school child. He was arrested for two robberies. His very limited sign language capabilities, plus his severe mental retardation, meant that he was not competent to stand trial. The judge set up an involuntary commitment procedure, so that Jackson would held in the state mental hospital system until he was competent to stand trial. Jackson's attorney argued that he would never be competent to stand trial, because the retardation and the inability to communicate were never going away--and so his pre-trial detention was a life sentence. This was a violation of the 14th Amendment's equal protection clause, because, had he not been charged with a crime, he could not have been locked up for life. Jackson's attorney also claimed that this was a violation of the due process clause, apparently because he would not get a chance to stand trial on the charges--but that was the attorney's decision, to claim that his client wasn't fit to stand trial. I'm not quite sure that I understand the reasoning on this. Sure, if Jackson had not been charged with a crime, he wouldn't be facing life in a mental hospital--but equal protection doesn't mean that criminals have the right rights as non-criminals. I think what really happened here is that the Court saw an injustice in some guy being locked up for life for two purse-snatchings, but judges can't generally say, "Hey! You idiots in Indiana came up with a dumb system! Fix it!" Putting this on Constitutional grounds meant that Jackson could only be held for a brief period in pretrial detention, and then had to be released--without ever going to trial. Once out on the street, he could go back to purse-snatching--and repeat the cycle. It is somewhat similar to the murder of Lyman Bostock, whose killer was found not guilty by reason of insanity--and spent a total of 21 months in jail and a mental hospital before being declared cured and released. Labels: deinstitutionalization Friday, March 02, 2007
Is Homosexuality Common in Lower Animals? Homosexuals like to claim this, and there are certainly examples--but Alan K. Henderson points me to this fascinating news story from a New Zealand paper: Female koalas indulge in lesbian "sex sessions", rejecting male suitors and attempting to mate with each other, sometimes up to five at a time, according to researchers.Oh, but there's the following paragraph: The furry, eucalyptus-eating creatures appear to develop this tendency for same-sex liaisons when they are in captivity. In the wild, they remain heterosexual.Hmmm. Reminds of the examples of the weird, sometimes homosexual behavior of rats who get too crowded together. Labels: homosexuality A Fascinating Story of Change and Coming Out of the Closet But not the closet you think: Venus Magazine, a publication that for 13 years targeted the Black gay and lesbian community, is now a voice for the ex-gay movement.And this from a gay paper in Chicago! Labels: homosexuality A Little More About Gore's Purchases of Environmental Indulgences It turns out that the "carbon credits" that Gore is buying to offset his global warming sins are sold by...Al Gore: In its original story, The Tennessean newspaper in Nashville reported that Gore buys “carbon offsets” to compensate for his home’s use of energy from carbon-based fuels. What is a “carbon offset,” exactly? Essentially, it’s a payment someone makes to an environmentally friendly entity to compensate for personally using non-green energy.How interesting--he runs a company that sells carbon credits to other sinners--while telling everyone what sinners they are. And all this time, I just assumed that Gore was peddling his snake oil about what ecosinners we are because he wanted to be President. Maybe he just wants to be rich! It is as if Pope Leo X, who sold papal indulgences to build St. Peter's in Rome, had been out whoring every night, paid money to the Catholic Church to wipe away his sins--and then took a salary to go out and preach about why all the sinners in Christendom needed to buy papal indulgences. Most people would recognize that there is a conflict of interest going on there. Labels: Al Gore, global warming, hypocrisy "That's So Gay"--Part 2 Remember that story a few days ago about the school being sued for disciplining a girl for saying, "That's so gay?" A reader pointed me to this gay columnist discussing whether that expression is okay or not. He is responding to a reader who signs his query letter "Fine With Fags, Really": Officially, FWFR? It's so not okay to use "gay" as a synonym for lame. When you use "gay" like that, you're reinforcing a cultural prejudice against gay people—I mean duh, right? You may not be a homophobe, but using that expression is homophobic, and when you use it you're helping to sustain the prejudice that deprives your gay friends of their civil rights and marriage rights.I guess it's like black people using the N-word--they are allowed--the rest of us darn well better not! This news story reports the exact circumstances that led to the infamous remark--and suddenly, it would appear that if there's grounds for pursuing concerns about offensive remarks, they might be appropriately aimed elsewhere: When a few classmates razzed Rebekah Rice about her Mormon upbringing with questions such as, "Do you have 10 moms?" she shot back: "That's so gay."If this had happened in Colorado City, Arizona, or even St. George, Utah, where polygamist schisms of the Mormons exist, that might be an insensitive but not absurd question. In Santa Rosa? That's right up there with, "So, do all you black people have natural rhythm?" Labels: homosexuality, political correctness I Think The Anthropogenic Global Warming Idea Is About Spent... When even National Geographic, darling of liberals, admits that there are some serious evidence problems: Mars Melt Hints at Solar, Not Human, Cause for Warming, Scientist Says Labels: global warming Humor I think it may have been Peter Benchley who described what happened in a class he took at Harvard as an undergraduate where he was confronted by a final exam question for which he was completely unprepared--about the Cod War. Since he could not remember anything about it, he decided that instead of writing about it from the perspective of the two nations involved, he would write about it from the perspective of the cods. The professor was greatly amused, but gave him an "F" anyway. Anyway, I must admit to being very impressed with these examples below of students who, when suffering a complete inability to remember how to solve these problems, got "creative":  Now, this one I must have learned how to solve in the permutations and combinations section of first year calculus at USC. To solve it for some fixed value of n is easy (although perhaps tedious for n > 5)--but the general solution I can't remember at all--and this "expansion" of (a + b) to n power is about all I could do off the top of my head now:  This one--well, they did say, "find X" not "find the value of X" didn't they?  I worked somewhere once where this was close to being the right answer:  No explanation required:  If you took calculus, you'll understand the wit of the student's "counterproblem":  In physics, you learn the principles with frictionless surfaces, dimensionless points, and lines that go to infinity. Why not introduce an elephant into the problem?  Clearly, the professor didn't understand the significance of the elephant on the ramp. Labels: humor Thursday, March 01, 2007
Want Your Own, Autographed Copy of My New Book Armed America? Well, you can get it! If you are in the United States, send me a check for $30 (includes $2.07 for book rate postage and a padded envelope) to the address below, and a requested autograph, and I'll get it right out to you. Clayton E. Cramer 36 Sunburst Road Horseshoe Bend, ID 83629-9007 Remember that they make fine gifts for the history buff or gun nut in your life--and they are a nice gift for your local library. Just think of all the junior high and high school kids that run across it while doing papers about gun control over the next ten or twenty years! Labels: my books Indulgences Al Gore's excuses for his outrageous consumption of electricity at his Tennessee mansion--especially compared to plain ole folks like George Bush include: 1. His house is a lot older than Bush's house in Texas, and so it isn't as energy efficient. 2. He's done a lot to reduce his carbon footprint in other areas, so it compensates for this. As a number of bloggers have pointed out (here's just one example), this is shockingly similar to the manner in which the late medieval church sold "papal indulgences." Sinners concerned about the eternal consequences of their sins could pay the Church for (among other things) the great building projects going on in Rome. Not surprisingly, this is one of the actions that Martin Luther found objectionable--the notion that you could buy yourself a "get out of purgatory, free" card (to paraphrase the Monopoly game card) with just money, rather than something a bit more heartfelt. As others have pointed out, carbon indulgences have the net effect of allowing rich people to enjoy the benefits of being polluters, without having to suffer any real consequences. For a lot of people, the Kyoto agreement--or whatever worse montrosity that President Gore wants to unleash on us--will be something for which they can't buy their way out. They will be unemployed. Gore and the Hollywood Gulfstream liberals (so called because they can't be bothered to ride on commercial airliners--only their own private jets) aren't going to be affected by whatever carbon tax they inflict on the rest of us. By the way, a Gulfstream V is a very nice way to get around. I had a chance to hitch a ride on the DSC corporate Gulfstream V from Dallas to Sonoma County once, and I will tell you, if I were rich enough to have one of my own (like someone I used to hotrod Chevys with has), I would definitely fly that way! But I sure wouldn't be telling everyone else, "You need to learn to live with less, and be less destructive to Mother Earth!" UPDATE: A reader asks how many private jet flights Gore would have to cancel to pay for upgrading his house to be as energy efficient as President Bush's place? Labels: Al Gore, global warming Machining Question I am looking to change one of my machined parts from a cylinder into which I screw a threaded stud into a cylinder with an extension on which I cut threads. The reason is simple: centering and tapping the hole into which the stud goes, and making sure it is exactly perpendicular to the cylinder, is harder to do in quantity than it looks. I often end up with the hole a couple degrees off. Maybe my customers won't notice, but I notice. Also, a single piece of aluminum just looks better than a piece of aluminum with a threaded stud screwed into it. So what I have been experimenting with is to start with a cylinder say, 1.875" diameter by 1" long, then cutting .5" of down to 1.1" diameter. Then I use a 1 1/16" die on that 1.1" diameter extension to thread it. I can turn this piece of aluminum down from 1.875" to 1.1" with the lathe, but at least with the Sherline lathe, the power is low enough that I can only take about .040" of an inch off at a time. That's a lot of passes! Machining is a precision process, and you use the machine tools only when you have the part roughly the right size. You wouldn't cut a 2.5" long piece of aluminum to 2.000" with a lathe, because it would slow and inefficient. You use a chop saw to cut that piece of aluminum to 2.0625" (2 1/16"), then remove the remaining 62/1000ths of an inch as part of facing the cylinder. So what's the equivalent for turning the 1.875" piece down to 1.1"? Over in the Internet news group rec.crafts.metalworking, suggestions were: 1. Get a more powerful lathe, where you can take bigger layers at a time. 2. Use a cutoff tool to make a series of slices so that turning it down with a cutting tool is faster. Any other ideas? If there were a hole saw about 1.375" outside diameter that didn't have a center arbor, I could put that in the drill press, and use it to knock the outer .6" or so of diameter off the workpiece. Then I would have something 1.2" or so in diameter at the end, and machining the extension down to 1.1" would be quite a bit less tedious. But all the hole saws that I can find seem to have a center arbor. UPDATE: A reader's suggestions led to a "duh!" solution. I can buy another of the pilot drill/arbor devices that you use with multiple sizes of hole saws, and cut off the pilot drill end. This will let me use it to just cut away the outside of the rod. I suspect that from 1.875" to 1.1" would be, at worst, using hole saws designed to cut 1.75", 1.50" and 1.375" holes. At the end, I would have something probably 1.2" outside diameter, and that would be only about five passes with the cutting tool. Since I am threading this stud, I might be able to use a 1.25" hole saw, since it doesn't have to be terribly precise when I put the die in place. Labels: machining Can We Add Something To "Don't Ask, Don't Tell"? Like "Don't rape"? EGLIN AIR FORCE BASE, Fla. — A military jury ignored an Air Force captain’s plea for leniency Wednesday, sentencing him to 50 years in prison for raping four men and attempting to rape two others.Taylor, of course, claims it was consensual (except for one who raped him) and this is an anti-gay witch hunt. Hmmmm. Which is more likely? That he drugged these guys and raped them? Or that they are lying, telling pretty similar stories? Yeah, this could have happened with a heterosexual officer drugging and raping female military as well. Absolutely, and part of the reason that I have never been completely comfortable with mixed sex accommodations for the military. But weren't there some warnings about this back when Clinton tried to get gays into the military? Oh yes, as I mentioned here. UPDATE: Thanks to Alan K. Henderson for letting me know. Labels: homosexuality I Can't Claim To Be Surprised The guy being held on kidnapping and child molestation charges for kidnapping little boys in Missouri now has another set of charges to deal with: ST. LOUIS (AP) -- A Missouri man accused of kidnapping and molesting two boys was indicted Thursday on federal charges he took pornographic pictures and videos of one of the youngsters. The indictment marked the first federal charges against Michael Devlin, 41, a former pizzeria manager from the St. Louis suburbs.I've definitely changed my stance over the years. I used to think that the most effective strategy for dealing with this sort of material was to leave it legal so that sellers couldn't use the Fifth Amendment as a way to refuse answering questions concerning from whom they received it. Prosecution of producers could then be based on the abuse of the children, rather than the production of the trash. The Internet has changed the situation on this strategy, because it has made it possible for such materials to be produced anywhere and distributed anywhere--and with sufficient anonymity that a distributor could honestly say, "I have no idea." Increasingly, I am comfortable with the idea that making child pornography criminal is a way to tell those who find such materials exciting or interesting that they are sick, and there is no place in our society (except in a prison cell) for people like them. It's a moral statement of repulsion and disgust, and a way to tell such a person, "Back into the closet. We can't make you go away until you actually break the law, but your interests are filth, and we do not want you to ever think of this material as anything else." Labels: child sexual abuse, freedom of speech, homosexuality It's Free This sounded like urban legend, but I checked with snopes.com, and they confirm that indeed, visiting this web site and clicking on the "Fund Free Mammograms" button really does assist in raising funds for mammograms for those who can't afford it. So do your good deed for the day--click over, click the button, and click back. You might want to bookmark that site, and go back and click it every day. Wednesday, February 28, 2007
Okay, I'm A Slow Learner Yesterday I learned that "snow" rhymes with "tow." Today I learned that "hill" rhymes with "chill." I was able to get the Corvette up Sunburst Road, and about halfway up my driveway before the combination of snow and slope made progress impossible. AAA sent out the same tow truck driver, John of Valley Tow, to extricate me. This turned out to be a much slower, much harder operation than yesterday. John was reluctant to pull me down the hill, for fear that once we started sliding, it might be hard to stop, so he decided to tow me up the driveway, until I could get into my garage. I do not think my Corvette has ever traversed less distance over such a long period of time. I didn't have enough traction to move on my own, and he didn't have enough traction to tow me on his own--but between his truck pulling (and spinning its wheels) and the Corvette pushing (and spinning its wheels), we reached the top. The Corvette is going to stay in the garage until the snow melts enough for me to see reasonably dry gravel and rock, at least in places. In the meantime, I will be doing the ecofriendly thing, and carpooling with my wife on those days that I need to go into work. Since she teaches classes at Boise State Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and leads a women's Bible study Thursday mornings, this pretty well covers us. But I fear that a 4WD or AWD is in my future. I am just not keen to spend the money on one until I'm a little more confident I will have a job next year (or, Armed America sells 100,000 copies--do your part!) John worked very hard in darkness, cold, and snow, and I can see why some tow truck operators I've met are missing a finger or two--it would be very easy to make mistakes with some of this tackle. But I'm pretty sure from the state of his teeth that John isn't getting rich (or even getting middle class) from this job. This wasn't the worst recent job for John. He towed a car out of a river earlier in the day--and was one of those involved in the recovery operations for this tragedy that I blogged about earlier. Things About Being A College Student I haven't visited my daughter's blog recently (bad father, I guess), and I found this comment by her, discussing the Boise State Social Work program that she is in: I love my practicum, and BSU is cheap. However, I am so disappointed in the program and department. I had a long day with people who are narrow and unable to accept other people's opinions. I also spent a day with professors who make fun of conservatives and Republicans. So if you happen to agree with a conservative idea, you feel like they view you as stupid. It is incredibly frustrating. Why has it become that conservatives are viewed as ignorant and stupid?What's really bizarre is that my daughter isn't anywhere near as conservative as I am. Indeed, she's politically somewhat liberal--but not lockstep enough for some of her professors, who act as though they can't bear any diversity of opinion from their students. Idaho Issues Driver's Licenses A Bit Younger Than California I'm not sure that it would have made much of a difference--this seems to be ice-related--but it is still one of those tragedies that makes you wonder if a couple more years of maturity for the driver could have helped. From today's Idaho Statesman: Emmett — Two hours after a car skidded off the road and sank into 20 feet of murky, 38-degree water Tuesday morning, rescue divers brought five young people, ages 12 to 15, to the surface. Don't Laugh: Parts of Idaho Do Have Gang Problems But unlike some other places, the legislature passed laws to deal with it, and prosecutors are using them, according to this story from today's Idaho Statesman: This morning Caldwell police arrested Simona Manzanares on charges of gang recruitment and supplying firearms to a criminal gang. This is the first use of statutes passed last year by the Legislature. Tuesday, February 27, 2007
"Snow" Rhymes With "Tow" I had to run into work this morning to some cable configuration of a Linux box and some related equipment--and the Corvette got stuck good and proper on Sunburst Road, requiring a tow truck that even had a hard time getting me unstuck. I think an AWD or 4WD is in my future. If I could just get one for three months of the year... Mr. Gore, Are You Visiting Horseshoe Bend?  Click to enlarge Blowing snow, drifts against the back sliding window--it looked really Arctic today, and not an Arctic where young ladies are wearing bikinis. Labels: Al Gore Why Using a Gun in Self-Defense Should Be the Last Resort Back when my wife and I took concealed weapons class, our instructor gave a number of reasons why using a gun in self-defense needed to be the last resort. The obvious reason is that your decision will be examined, very critically, and in the cool light of day, by the district attorney. Any mistakes you made will be used against you. Another reason is that even if your use of a gun is completely in the right, all of the relatives that haven't talked to your attacker for the last twenty years (because he was a deranged drug addict and brutal thug) will suddenly start talking about what a sweet and decent person he was, and that he didn't deserve to die! Then the lawyers will start suing you. Almost twenty years ago, we were told to plan on spending at least $15,000 defending yourself from civil suits even if you were 100% in the right. There's no question about this. When I lived in Irvine, some years ago, there was an incident in which a gas station had been repeatedly burglarized. The owner and one of his employees started to swap nights staying there. Finally, the burglar came back. The employee drew a gun on the guy who had broken in, and ordered him to put his hands up. The burglar instead put his hand into his pocket. The employee shot. The police decided it was a completely justified shooting, even though the burglar had no weapon in his pocket. The newspaper interviewed the late burglar's wife, who explained that her husband had been a good man, but a cocaine addiction problem had caused him to start committing burglaries to feed his habit. She was heartbroken, but she understood why the employee had been in fear for his life, and she had no hard feelings against him. That lasted about a week--and then the newspaper reported that she was suing the employee and the gas station owner for wrongful death. Some ambulance chaser must have gotten to her. The third reason why shooting someone in self-defense needs to be the last resort is that it is often quite traumatic--even when you were completely in the right, and the alternatives were death for yourself or loved ones. This article captures some of that: Eric Cegon's first few weeks were filled with sleeping pills, anxiety and disbelief that he had to kill a man with a shotgun.This is part of the reason why, as much as I support the right to be armed for self-defense, I would prefer that we have a working criminal justice system instead. In some parts of America, that system works well. In other places, apparently not so well. Labels: gun defense aftermath If You Haven't Already Seen This Example of Al Gore's Concern for Global Warming He wins an Oscar for An Inconvenient Truth, so Instapundit calls this, "An Inconvenient Electric Bill": Gore’s mansion, located in the posh Belle Meade area of Nashville, consumes more electricity every month than the average American household uses in an entire year, according to the Nashville Electric Service (NES).The hypocrisy of Al Gore never ceases to amaze me. I rather doubt that Gore believes much of any of what he says on this. As this article points out, there are some embarrassing pictures of Al Gore with the Rev. Fred Phelps (the "God Hates Fags" crazy) from 1988, when Gore wanted to be President--and would curry favor anywhere and everywhere to get there. Gore probably figures that global warming is a good way to get himself elected; clearly, he doesn't live as though he thinks this is the case. Oh yeah, my electric bill last month was $40--about 800 kWh. Labels: global warming, hypocrisy Monday, February 26, 2007
Guns in Workplace Parking Lots Professor Volokh points to a recent federal court decision concerning a UPS employee fired for having an unloaded and disassembled handgun in his car in the parking lot. The judge ruled that UPS had exceeded its authority in firing Plona, since the Ohio Constitution's right to keep and bear arms clause protected such possession. Now, I have two different reactions to this. On the hand, laws that prohibit you from having a gun in your car mean that you are effectively disarmed to and from work. In some parts of America, this is a very dangerous situation, forcing some employees to decide which is more important: their job, or their life. My current employer has such a rule, and I am not happy about it. I understand the reasoning behind such rules--concern that an angry employee might go out to his car, get a gun, and come back into the building shooting. The record of workplace shootings, however, suggests that this is almost never the case. Someone gets fired, and comes back hours or days later, guns blazing. The net effect of such rules is to make sure that no one has access to a gun for self-defense when yesterday's angry termination becomes today's workplace shooting. I am not comfortable telling private employers that they do not have a right to make such rules. Respect for private property is a necessary part of our system. On the other hand, gun control liberals are in no position to criticize a state law that limits the authority of a private employer. After all, liberalism insists that private businesses may not discriminate in employment or offering of services based on race, religious, gender, sexual orientation, or disability. In Shelley v. Kraemer (1948), Look at the reasoning used in Shelley v. Kraemer (1948). In that case, the Court decided that a private contract was not enforceable because it racially discriminated, and because the government provided the means of enforcement. According to the decision above, law enforcement conducted the searches in the UPS lot. Without that governmental action, UPS would never have known about the gun, and using the same reasoning as in Shelley, UPS would not have known about this violation of their rule. I am still not completely happy with the reasoning of Shelley, which largely attempted to destroy a system that the federal government played a part in creating. The Federal Housing Authority (an agency which no longer exists under that name) had, in the 1930s and 1940s, as a condition of guaranteeing loans to developers, actually required racially restrictive covenants on new developments, presumably to protect the property values of the homes. If liberals like the reasoning of Shelley, based on the Fourteenth Amendment's equal protection clause, then they need to apply the rule that private parties may not violate the rights of individuals consistently. Labels: gun rights Cool Animation Showing How A Semiauto Pistol Works This is specifically a Glock 17, but the basic principles are the same for most of the Browning-inspired pistol designs, showing how the slide retracts, unlocks and cants the barrel, ejects a shell, resets the hammer, and so on. Make sure you click the transparency controls for various sections of the gun. Labels: gun technology Sunday, February 25, 2007
Every Use of a Gun in Self-Defense is Potentially Life Changing Most of the time that I hear from someone about entries in the Civilian Gun Self-Defense Blog, it is from the next of kin of someone who was killed--and usually, they are complaining that the police, the courts, and the newspapers are covering up a murder. On very rare occasion, when I ask for some evidence of this, I actually get it. Most of the time, what I am hearing is the very human desire to imagine the best about one's husband or son--and an inability to face the very harsh reality that their loved one had put someone else legitimately in fear of death. Today I heard from someone who was the shooter. He was not happy about what he had to do, but with the history of violence of the deceased against the deceased ex-wife, it was probably for the best. It is still a sobering experience to have to take another life--even when there is no alternative except the death of an innocent person. Let's never get too jocular about this. Labels: gun defense aftermath More About "That's So Gay" Lawsuit This article from the Santa Rosa Press-Democrat gives a bit more detail about the circumstances in which a student used the phrase, "That's so gay," which got her in trouble, which I mentioned recently: Rebekah Rice, 18, testified during trial that she was a 15-year-old freshman when she responded to her friends' teasing her about Mormonism with the phrase, ``That's so gay.''One thing you have to understand about Sonoma County--it is a fiercely hostile environment for anyone who is even slightly traditional in their values. A friend of ours who worked for one of the school districts there overheard teacher hiring decisions being made in which there was discussion of whether a candidate might be a fundamentalist--and this was definitely not a positive. When my wife was a substitute teacher there, one of the full-time teachers asked her, "So, you do have any fundamentals in your class?" The teacher meant, "fundamentalists," but being fairly ignorant, didn't even know how to ask an inappropriate question correctly. I do not find it at all hard to believe that this student was being teased about her religious beliefs, and that the school would only take action when she responded with the offensive phrase. It is a very liberal county. Labels: freedom of speech, homosexuality, political correctness |
