Snowflakes in Hell

I agree with Clayton’s sentiment here about wolves.  He quotes from a reader:

Currently Federal Rule 10-J allows commercially licensed OUTFITTERS only to shoot wolves that attacking their horses, we non-outfitter licensed horsemen must simply sit and watch the wolves eat our horses.

On Thursday, July 19th at 6pm at the Boise Center on the Grove the US Fish & Wildlife Service will hold an open house on a proposed rule change to allow us peasants to defend our horses if they are attacked. The open house will be 6pm to 7pm and a public hearing from 7pm to 9pm will follow.

Then states:

I am generally prepared to let wolves be wolves, but if the choice is shooting a wolf, or letting it destroy a domesticated animal in the presence of a human being–I’m hard pressed to see why the wolf should have a higher priority than a horse or a dog.

This seems sensible to me.  Horses and other pets are like family members to those that own them.  I can tell you that were I out in the wilderness, and a pack of wolves threatened my pet, the feds can shove rule 10-J where the sun don’t shine; we will be practicing the three S’s (normally Shoot, Shovel, and Shut-up, but in this case Shoot, Scoot, and Shut-up).

I’m generally in favor of the reintroduction of wolves into wilderness areas, but when they have encounters with people, the people ought to be allowed to win.  There’s a difference between actively going out and hunting down wolves and killing them, and defending yourself, your family, property and livelihood.

The evil twin has a story from Virginia about an open carry arrest in Norfolk (open carry is legal in Virginia).  My advice to folks who choose the route of challenging local authorities on state preemption matters such as this is to retain an attorney, and make sure your spouse understands exactly what she needs to do if you get pinched, and is prepared to do it.  After being arrested isn’t the time to go find a lawyer.

VCDL is going a good job here though, and I wish them well in their lawsuit against the City of Norfolk on this matter.

I have to disagree with Scalawag over this one (which was linked earlier by David Codrea, talking about the dumbass gun shop owner) I have absolutely no fear of an AK-47 as a rifle, but if I see someone walking down my neighborhood toting a loaded rifle, then yes, I’m going to call the police. Context matters, and that’s something that’s way way out of place in a suburban setting.

Rifles are something you carry to deal with an expected threat, in other words, if the shit has already hit the fan. We carry pistols to deal with unexpected threats. While I would agree that disorderly charges against someone with a holstered, visible side arm would be unjust and unwarranted, and there are many contexts where I would accept the carrying of a loaded rifle, the streets of suburbia aren’t one of them.

I might think a stern talking to would be better than charges here, but we don’t live in a world where you can expect the kind of encounters on foot where a rifle can be effectively employed. Keep one in your home, keep one in your vehicle, but being out on the streets, you’re better off carrying a pistol for close encounters of the criminal variety, and not just so you don’t scare the sheeple.

Sure, I do wish we lived in a world where you could sling a rifle and carry it over to a friend’s house to work on that trigger job, but that’s not the world we inhabit. No one gets educated or relieved of their ignorance by seeing an AK-47 being carrying down the streets of their neighborhood. If anything, it will only feed it.

Feel free to disagree.

Instapundit points us to a demo of the Taser C2 over at popular mechanics.  I have always been a big proponent of pepper spray as the best option for less than lethal force, and I still believe that.

Electrical weapons are replete with problems.   For one, you only get once chance to hit.  There’s the issue of the probes being able to get through clothing to the attacker.  What do you do once you run out of the 30 second charge?  Remember, that was a demo.  A real attacker will be hopped up on adrenaline, drugs, or both.

If my friend Jym is reading this, he can tell you the story of the time he volunteered to get nailed by his friend’s stun gun and felt he would have been completely able to fight through it if he had to.  The big problem with less than lethals is that any force that’s powerful enough to incapacitate someone to the extent that they are no longer a threat to you is quite likely to kill that person.  The root problem is not that technology hasn’t advanced enough, it’s that the human body is surprisingly resilient.  Perhaps someday electrical weapons will advance far enough to be able to reliably disable someone for a sufficient period of time to make a safe exit from a deadly encounter possible, but that weapon will probably also be liable enough to kill, that it’ll be treated legally as a deadly weapon.

So I’ll stick to my assertion that Tasers and stun guns are poor substitutes for an effective pepper spray, which are poor substitutes for firearms, when talking about deadly encounters with criminals.  Less than lethals have their place, certainly.  Definitely in police work.  But I wouldn’t rely on them to get myself out of a deadly encounter.

Talking about a gun shop owner who needs to stop talking to the press before he does more damage.  Gun shop owners should be very wary of talking to the press, and if they do, they need to be careful of what comes out of their pie hole.  Don’t try to make yourself look good at the expense of other gun owners.  Educate, don’t feed the public’s irrational fears.

Asks whether deadly force against the Colorado man was warranted considering he motioned toward his revolver but did not draw it.   I think it probably is justified.  He had the means, the motive, and opportunity, and if he wasn’t complying with orders, then yes, it would have been a justifiable use of deadly force.  If he had his hands in the air and/or was in the process of surrendering, then no.   If someone approaches you on the street, stops you, and demands your wallet while flashing a revolver stuffed in his waistband, would you give him the time or opportunity to draw?  I wouldn’t.

I agree with David that this isn’t the right thing to do.   Point out the hypocracy, point out that it’s illegal, but don’t go for the poetic justice of pushing to jail them for a law most of us think shouldn’t exist.

My last “I’m not a gun owner… but” post got me thinking that it’s probably not astroturfing by anti-gun groups.   There are a lot of gun owners in this country, and most of them aren’t activists, nor are they informed.

Most people are rather selfishly unconcerned with other people’s liberty.  If they were, you wouldn’t see the proliferation of smoking bans.  People support smoking bans because they don’t like smoking, and don’t like the smell.  So they want it banned.  They don’t do it, don’t like it, so no one should do it.   Note you don’t see people pushing for farting bans in public, even though public farting is most decidedly unpleasant.   This is because everyone farts.  People understand they could run a risk of getting fined for letting one loose in a public area, not realizing they were dropping a real stink bomb.  People concern themselves with their own liberty, when it comes to the liberty of others, their own preferences will usually win out.

So you have someone with a Remington 700 up in his closet that he used to hunt deer years ago, doesn’t like these fancy, scary looking newfangled guns, that he is mistaken to think that only criminals, nut cases, and gang bangers have any use for, and is ignorant that his 700 is a military sniper rifle by another name.  If he knew they’d be coming for that eventually, he might be more concerned, and more careful about what he says.  But his ignorance and selfishness allow him to bitch about Glocks, and other scary looking guns he doesn’t approve of, because in his mind, it doesn’t affect his own liberty.

Liberty exists as a state where the rights of the individual are protected from transgressions by others, and by society collectively.  It cannot be regarded selfishly.  To be truly committed to liberty, one can’t merely support liberty for himself, without supporting it for others as well.  This means a certain amount of tolerance behaviors and things that you find personally distasteful.

I don’t particularly like smoking myself, and I tend to think other drivers on the road are boneheads.  There are people out there who can barely drive, let alone talk on a cell phone while doing it.  But I reject smoking bans, because business owners should have to right to decide what is allowed on their own property (and don’t give me crap about second hand smoke.  A night on the town exposed to second hand smoke isn’t going to hurt anyone at all, considering you’re probably drinking livery poison while you complain about other people’s unhealthy smoke).  I oppose banning cell phones for drivers (as a primary offense, secondary offenses I have no problem with), because it makes no distinction between people making a quick call, or who know when to tell the other person to shut up and pay attention to the road, and folks gabbing on and on paying little attention.  I don’t go for “punish everyone for the few” solutions to solving problems.

Liberty means having to accept some risk and tolerance of distasteful activities so we can all continue to live in a free society.  The fact that most people don’t think that way should probably not be a surprise, but every time I read one of these “I’m not a gun owner… but” editorials, I find it hard to believe there are people out there that selfishly unconcerned with anyone other than their own freedoms.

… makes you want to drink some too.

Rendell is currently taking his budget signing on tour to several Pennsylvania towns, talking about great the extra transportation spending is, and how taxes didn’t have to be raised.

That is, unless you commute on the PA turnpike or I-80.  I pay $600 a year to the PA turnpike commission.  After this I’ll pay $750, and then 3% annually after that.  If this was going to pay for repairs strictly on the turnpike, I might not complain so much, but it’s going to pay for roads that other people drive on, and for mass transit that other people use.

You can thank me, and every other turnpike commuter, for eating Rendell’s tax toll increase, so you don’t have to.   So let me run down the list of things Ed Rendell has done for me:

1. Raise my taxes
2. Raise my taxes again
3. Uh… I’ll get back to you on the rest

Coming to a DC street corner near you!

Plumber in an apartment sees guns, calls cops, cops raid.  Ooops… guns are legal in Texas!  Who knew!   Of course, the guns were legal, the child pornography wasn’t.

See news story video here.

I’m guessing the police considered the grenades their probable cause to get the warrant.  Certainly they will argue that when Mr. Kiddy Porn’s attorney argues that the search was unlawful, and the evidence should be suppressed.