Snowflakes in Hell

So tonight I took the 10/22 to Indoor Silhouette night.  We’re shooting at chickens, pigs, turkeys and rams at 25 yards.  I scored 22 and 25.  Standing position has never something I’ve been particularly good at, so I am hoping continuing to do this will improve my skills in this area.   Maybe next time I will do better.  The 10/22 was having issues because I haven’t cleaned it in a while.  I’m thinking maybe a nice bolt action 22 is in order for this type of shooting.

Bryan Miller is ho hum about the Supreme Court taking the Heller case.  Joe Huffman and Thirdpower are already on it.  Joe says:

[The second amendment is] overwhelmingly categorical and never been used to overturn a law since it was adopted, therefore we shouldn’t take it seriously and can enact laws that violate it without concern to the constitutionality of the law. Interesting logic. So, Mr. Miller, do you advocate treating the 13^th amendment in the same way?

Read the whole thing.  I actually think Bryan is right.  The ruling won’t fundamentally be earthshaking…. over the short term.  But over the long term, I wouldn’t be so ho hum.  The first amendment similarly started out absent any earthshaking ruling, and with broad license for the government to regulate speech.  Somewhere along the line, free speech went from this:

“The question in every case is whether the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent.” - Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Schenck v. US, 1919

to what we have today, which are broad free speech protections that would never allow for something like the Espionage Act to stand today.  I similarly expect the early second amendment cases to resemble the early first amendment cases.  I don’t think the Supreme Court will ever bar all regulations of firearms, but I suspect the end result of this second amendment jurisprudence will probably leave us with much less gun control than Bryan Miller would like.  I agree with Joe; you’re seeing masked frustration.

Jim Geraghty thinks Ron Paul is a non-movement, and his votes aren’t going to translate into support for other GOP candidates.

 I think that if and when Ron Paul ceases his presidential bid, his supporters will go in a thousand different directions, including many saying “to hell with politics.” They’re not inclined towards compromise, and they’re not going to be harnessed by half-a-loaf or even eighty-percent-of-the-loaf candidates. In other words, Ron Paul’s support is non-transferrable.

Ron Paul has the most traction I’ve seen a libertarian minded candidate get, but I think the war has a lot to do with that.  I have given up on libertarians for the most part, even though I still lean pretty heavily in that direction.  My disdain of gun control grew out of a generally libertarian attitude, but I’ve given up on the other aspects of libertarianism, because I’d prefer to focus my efforts on just seeing a few bits of my libertarian ideals adopted by candidates who can win.  I think that’s the only real way to be successful in politics, because politicians represent the aspirations of the various interest groups they represent, and those interest groups won’t always agree with each other.  People complain about always having a “lesser of two evils” choice, but the political process almost guarantees it.

If Ron Paul’s candidacy represents a real and permanent movement within the GOP, I think it might be able to turn into something.  It surely would drive the party, and its candidates, to adopt some more libertarian ideas.  But I agree with Jim that’s not going to happen.  When Ron loses the nomination, his supporters will scatter, and so will all the political capital they have built.  Libertarians need to be interested in playing the dirty game of politics if they want to come out of the political wilderness, but among libertarians, I don’t see too many indications of that.

Dustin offers a personal example of how you can’t depend on living in a “good neighborhood” to mean you’ll be safe from crime.  I also live in a decent neighborhood, but that didn’t stop an armed robber from trying to stick up an old man in the bathroom right down the street from me.  Fortunately, the old man pulled his mohaska, and the guy took off.

Ahab links to an editorial calling for us to recognize the “plight” of deer, and not make sport of it.  While I would not try to pass myself off as a wildlife biologist (most of whom are paid for by hunters) I’m pretty sure the plight of the deer pretty much revolves around eating, running away from shit, and humping other deer.   We have a word for things that don’t do anything except eat, run and hump: food.

Hard to hide it when things like this happen.  Now, I generally am not a “the media are a bunch of liberals out to get conservatives” kind of conservative — I generally won’t watch network news just because it’s crap, sensationalist tripe, but it’s hard for me to believe that was just coincidence, when there were 5000 videos.

It looks like The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Ownership made sure to scrub their web site of Dennis Henigan stating that “The right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed” before accusing the DC circuit of leaving certain parts out of the second amendment.  Why am I not surprised?

Both Joe Huffman and Ahab are reporting on Joyce latest efforts to push gun control, this time in Washington State. Joe says:

They have no interest in hearing anything other than their predetermined agenda. This isn’t a “conference”, it’s a conspiracy against rights and they should be arrested and be given a fair trial.

Yep, and they will keep trying. They are getting desperate to show some progress, and Washington has been one of the states they’ve thought they could turn. It’s been received wisdom in the anti-gun circles for a while that the state would be receptive to an assault weapons ban. I seem to recall before the federal ban expiring that the Brady’s, or some other gun control group, claimed that they would get several states to pass assault weapons bans if the federal ban were allowed to expire. So far their tally is a big fat zero. They are desperate, and I expect a push to be made on Washington. We beat them back in Pennsylvania, hopefully Washingtonians can too.

The big question is, will these only be available to “only ones”?  Of course, I think it’s cheating, but don’t tell Gene Simmons.