Snowflakes in Hell

The debate moves to Washington State:

George Coulbourn is an NRA member too but works as a volunteer backcountry ranger at Mount Rainier National Park. He sees no benefit to allowing people to carry loaded weapons in the park. Kris Paynter is the mother of two young girls and the wife of a police detective. She said allowing guns at Mount Rainier would ruin the sense of sanctuary the park now offers.

Yeah, that’s a rational reason for forcing me to run the risk of ending up like this woman.   I mean, heaven forbid we ruin anyone’s sense of sanctuary.

“If you’re not comfortable visiting the park because of animals, you don’t belong there,” Coulbourn said. “I have seen countless bears in the backcountry of Mount Rainier. But every single one of them has ignored me or run away.”

He added that the handgun a park visitor would likely carry into the park would not have enough stopping power to bring down a bear or cougar.

So basically he’s saying I have to risk being lunch if I want to visit the park?  What he says about stopping power is definitely true, but I’d take my .44 Magnum over my bare fists, or swiss army knife.  I wonder how long it took the News Tribune to track down all these gun owners who are opposed to removing the restrictions in National Parks.

Suspend foreclosures for six months.  If creditors know that the city is going to dick around with the instruments used to secure loans, they are just going to stop offering cheap credit to city residents.  No doubt this kind of thing hurts poor people the most.

Politicians in the City of Philadelphia are nothing if not stupid.

Well, not really too much glory.  Real glory would be getting one for winning a sanctioned match, but I will take what I can get as a beginner.  It takes a proud place on my shooting hat:

Now all I need is a pig and a turkey.  The turkey pin will be tough.  A brief explanation of the pins and hat.  The hat is from last years NRA Annual Meeting in St. Louis, which was hosted by the Missouri Sport Shooting Assocation, who’s pin you see thusly.  The other pins are all, save my animal pins, from exhibitors at the annual meeting, except the ILA pin, which just kind of appeared one day.

My gay friend Andrew, who has been the subject of other Random Conversations, is from Montana.  I decided to talk to him about a serious topic:

Sebastian: Is Montana depressing?
Andrew: I like the state in theory, but there’s not a lot to do and it can be lonely and frustrating.  As much as I like it here I kind of want to leave sometimes.
Sebastian: Do you ever want to kill yourself?
Andrew: Why do you ask? Are you feeling depressed?
Sebastian: I’m wondering why Montana is one of the leading suicide states in the country
Andrew: Because it’s almost all rural.  Even in Helena, even though there are people, there’s really almost nothing to do. For an awful lot of people the only thing to do on a weekend is drink.
Sebastian: According to the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, we need to take all your guns away so you don’t kill yourself so much
Andrew: Is gun the typical suicide in Montana?
Sebastian: CSGV says that guns make it easy to kill yourself
Andrew: I dunno.. I mean, it’d be easy and fast. but.. I would always be afraid the bullet would go on and kill someone else too in a freak accident.  Plus, what if you Didn’t kill yourself and only brain damaged yourself? Eww.
Andrew: The only people I personally know who have done it or attempted, none used guns
Andrew: Car is a popular one. and trains
Sebastian: What about covering yourself in honey and looking for a Grizzly Bear?
Andrew: Nah. If I ever did it it’d have to be a way where it’d be nearly certain death and quick. That way is neither.
Andrew: Probably a long fall down a straight mountain cliff in Glacier Park. Pretty view.
Andrew: As for banning guns… if they want to ban anything people can kill themselves with, they need to ban cars and level the mountains and outlaw pharmaceuticals
Sebastian: pretty much
Andrew: I just find it ironic that they use Montana as an example for why gun control is necessary. It’s not like a nanny-state city where everyone is anti-gun…  Montanans generally like being able to own guns

So there you have it.  Gays in Montana don’t seem to be contemplating suicide.  Don’t seem to be contemplating using guns to do it, or contemplating using honey and Grizzley Bears.  And before you say this isn’t a representative sample, how many gays do you think are really in Montana?  Brokeback Mountain nonwithstanding.

You can see pictures of the pilot accidental discharge that Uncle’s been talking about over here.  They include close-ups.

Philadelphia’s corruption probe that surfaced with bugs in the office of Mayor John Street a few years ago has now nabbed the governor of Puerto Rico, along with several Philadelphians.

But Luis Fraticelli, Special Agent in Charge of the FBI’s San Juan Field Office, said, “Our democratic system cannot function when public officials act as though they are above the law.

Feldman, who raised more than $1 million for Democrats, including U.S. Sen. Bob Casey Jr. and Gov. Rendell, was a former business partner of Ronald A. White, the late power-broker who was the lead defendant in the Philadelphia corruption case.

In the Philadelphia case, Feldman was not charged. In San Juan, he was charged with one count of conspiracy to violate federal election laws.

This is what happens when you let one party rule a city for decades.

Hat tip to Instapundit

Uncle pointed out a few days ago that ballistic glass could be penetrated by a 12 gauge shotgun slug.  Alcibiades pointed out in the comments this site.   But holy polycarbonate penetration batman, do you see what a 45-70 government round does to it?  I remember a few years ago the antis pointed out that a .50 BMG could penetrate bullet proof glass, and showed it easily stopping an AK-47 round.  Interesting that one of the oldest metallic cartrdge loads is capable of doing the same thing.  It seems for penetrating ballistic glass, the best option is to be heavy.  I guess this comes back to what Joe Huffman said about momentum mattering more than energy.

A government which has the power to do unlimited good, has the power to do unlimited evil.  GeekWitha.45 tries to explain that to one of his acquaintances.  It’s a good read.

Gun Legislation & Politics in New York has some interesting background on Tim Sullivan, who’s legacy is the Sullivan Act in New York City, which was one of the early gun control laws that appeared in the United States.  It still lives on today, as a fine piece of  “common sense” gun control brought to you by Irish gangsters.

This article takes exception to Pennsylvania’s generally dour outlook on its future.

But if ever there were a case that documents what the economist Joseph Schumpeter described as “creative destruction,” it’s what happened in Pennsylvania. Steel and other manufacturing industries were indeed shattered by competition from the globalized economy that was just emerging. But new industries that nobody could then have imagined took their place, and they provided new jobs, year after year.

Employment in Pennsylvania reached an all-time high in January 2008, and then fell slightly in February. People there fear that a steep recession may be coming. But as of February, the last month for which statistics are available, unemployment Wall-Street-Layoffs in Pennsylvania was just 4.9 percent. Since January 2003, the state has added a total of 178,000 new jobs, according to the state government.

Where did all these jobs come from?  According to the article, technology and health care sectors, bolstered by our state’s large number of universities.  The big problem with this outlook is that, while unemployment may be low, young people are still leaving the state for opportunities elsewhere.  Pennsylvania’s chief problem is a high tax burden, and a regulatory environment that’s still mired in the obsolete industrial era policies.  If Pennsylvania wants to be truly dynamic, it has to find ways to cut taxes, and reign in state government.

It must suck to be Peter Hamm or Paul Helmke these days.

You actually get good articles on the shooting sports in local papers outside of Philadelphia.  I think this is actually true of most areas.  This is an area of the country where high schools still have rifle teams.   But there are still ninnies:

The event was moved after State College Area school board members refused to grant space at Mount Nittany Middle School, citing the district’s no-weapons policy.

The board’s decision in January disappointed leaders of the Tussey Mountain club, who wanted to hold it in the club’s hometown. It also sent a message to local shooting aficionados who think the sport deserves respect and support from the public.

School boards are elected, and we should get to work on putting people in there who will restore the rifle program to the middle school.  In these communities, there’s probably enough support for youth shooting programs to put significant pressure on the school board to change their policy.

Tonight I took my Mk.III Hunter to the range to shoot the e-postal match for this month, after screwing up the rules the other night, and shooting 20 rounds at the flies.  Tonight I was shooting better anyway, so it all worked out.

For the bullseye targets, I loaded two at a time.  First two shots were so spot on, I thought I had missed the target clean somehow, wondering if my sights had gotten knocked way off center.  I didn’t manage to reproduce that feat again, but I managed the 9 ring on the initial shot 3 other times.  My follow up shots tend to be not as good, which I attribute to not taking enough time between shots.  Bullseye target score 84.

For the flies, I did 7 out of 10.  Trick was being slow and deliberate.  I loaded no more than one round at a time into the my Ruger Mk.III to force myself to not rush.  Hung on the target good and long until movements dropped down, then broke the trigger.  Jerked at the last minute on three of them, but such is life.  Grand total score of 91 out of 110 possible.

I’m using a factory gun.  I think the Mk.III could stand to have a lighter trigger.  I’m also using a cheap chinese no-name holosight on top, which gets the job done, but has issues with distorting the zero if you don’t have the dot right in the middle of the glass.  It also enjoys drifting from zero, which is obnoxious.

You can actually find out what states have the highest suicide rate per capita here.  By the looks of it, Montana, Nevada, Alaska, New Mexico, and Wyoming are pretty depressing places to live, since they are 1 through 5 respectively.  Rounding out the bottom?  New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Maryland and Hawaii.

Is it really a surprise that the states VPC mentions have high rates of suicide using a gun, given they have high rates of sucides?  Also, how else are you going to kill yourself in Montana and Alaska?  There are few high bridges, few trains, no tall buildings.  I mean, I guess you could smother yourself in honey and go try to find a grizzly, but seriously, this is about as surprising as finding out that New York leads the nation in suicidal dives off tall buildings, or that San Francisco leads the nation in bridge suicides.

That’s not even getting into whether taking things away from people because they might kill themselves with it makes sense as a public public policy measure.  I don’t think it does.  I suspect most Americans would agree.

Both blogs have approved more comments.  They only seem to be approving comments that they feel like responding to, so pretty clearly they aren’t willing to engage in unmoderated, or even reasonably moderated debate on the subject.  One of my posts not approved questioned their statistics.  I’ll give them credit, their moderating policy is smarter (from their point of view) than the Brady’s.  Make it look like you have comments, and only let the people see the comments that make your argument look good.  Let’s take a look at some of their claims:

Phelps, that’s actually not true. If you look at CDC data for 2005 and analyze the states by gun death rate per capita, the states with the highest per capita gun death rates are (in order): Louisiana, Alaska, Montana, Tennessee, Alabama, Nevada, Arkansas, Arizona, Mississippi, West Virginia, and Wyoming. There’s not a state in that group with tough gun laws. Interestingly, the bottom six states with the lowest gun death rates per capita are: Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and Hawaii (lowest). All states with tough, smart gun laws.

Except they are conflating gun deaths with gun violence again.  What they are referring to is a VPC study using CDC data.  The problem, again, is these statistics include suicide by gun, which is going to be higher in areas where guns are more common in homes.  Would CSGV feel better if people threw themselves in front of trains instead?  If you remove suicides, Alaska, Montana, West Virginia, and Wyoming all have homicide by gun rates lower than the national average, and in the case of Alaska, Montana and Wyoming, far lower than New Jersey or New York.  And keep in mind this is just gun homicide, not overall violence.

There’s an old saying, “Beware of Greeks bearing gifts.”  There is a correlary here that should go “Beware of gun control groups bearing statistics.”

UPDATE: Sailorcurt shows some of the samples that haven’t been approved.  Pretty clearly they aren’t going to let through any argument they can’t refute.  At this point, I’ll go back to ignoring them, since pretty clearly before the pro-gun folks came along, they had no commenters.

Hat tip to Professor Kerr for pointing out this interesting photo montage of the things people carry around with them.  There is a Glock among the pictures.  I have to wonder how many of these people who are carrying around half the contents of a Radio Shack around with them every day would suggest that we were all stark raving mad for thinking carrying a firearm for self-defense is really no big deal.

As I’ve told people, if they made little pocket sized fire extinguishers that could put out even a large raging fire, I’d probably have one in my book bag.  I already keep a conventional fire extinguisher in my vehicle.  It just makes sense to be prepared.

UPDATE: Countertop shows his entry.  John Moses Browning would be proud.

For those of you who missed the interview Cam Edwards did of Russel Ford, the inventor of Ammunition Encoding, and president of Ammunition Coding Systems, you can watch here:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Pretty astounding.

Get used to articles like this.  There are many interests out there which are very threatened by the Heller case, and they aren’t going to go away quietly.  It’s the same pattern as many other articles we’ve seen.  This isn’t a coincidence.  Look at the familiar names.  We notice John Timoney, who’s name always appears in articles of this pattern.

It shouldn’t be surprising.  We have the anti-gun forces on the ropes politically, and continue to whale away.  They will turn to their traditional strengths, which is manipulating the media to create a public sentiment against guns and gun owners.  They are very good at this, and they have a lot of allies in the media to count on.

This is one of the many things that keeps the city down, but it’s a big one.

Cam Edwards has a good post up on the recent push by DC and Boston authorities to go door to door asking homeowners whether they can voluntarily search the house for drugs and guns:

This effort may end up leading to more violent crime. If it’s already leading to police being referred to as “vampires”, you’d have to think it’s not a great boon to establishing rapport between the beat cops and the people who live in these high-crime communities. It seems designed mostly to get positive press coverage rather than achieving any real benefit.

The politicians in D.C. have become so used to taking away liberty in the name of the common good that it’s fair to say they really don’t see anything wrong with this. And that’s the scariest part of all.

Indeed.

Nope, no need at all.  They are perfectly safe places, really.

Apparently Alternative News Media in Idaho are run by a bunch of juvenile high school students.  At least that’s about the grade level this editorial is written on.  Actually, strike that.  That’s insulting to high school newspapers everywhere.

Kansas is about to join the twenty other states that have passed “Katrina Bills” which prohibit mass confiscations of firearms during states of emergency.  Not everyone is happy about this:

I understand the unfairness of disarming citizens and not criminals, but Greensburg isn’t New Orleans.

It just seems silly to craft a bill to guard against something that never happened in Kansas and probably never will.

I don’t see how whether or not this ever happened in Kansas is really at issue, and pardon me if I don’t take a reporter’s word that it’ll never happen there.  What harm is there in passing this law?  I don’t know about you, but it sounds like a case of sour grapes to me.

You could break something.

New Jersey is a long ways down the slippery slope, thanks to people like, this who now see their goal of banning all hunting and gun ownership within political reach:

Hunting makes an unnecessary contribution to a world already plagued by too much violence and suffering.Wildlife and the outdoors can and should be experienced through activities such as camping, hiking and wildlife watching; ways to get close to nature without having to cause suffering and death.

Joe Miele, President, Committee to Abolish Sport Hunting
Maywood, NJ

Anti-hunting forces in New Jersey were dealt a pretty significant blow in New Jersey’s last election, but they aren’t going away.  Joe Meile and his ilk are not biologists, they do not understand the role hunters play in conservation and wilflife management efforts.   He also, apparently, isn’t above telling people from Mississippi how they ought to be living their lives.  People like this need to be vigorously opposed.