Snowflakes in Hell

Looks like he was stopped illegaly, and had his gun stolen by the Wilkes-Barre police.  I will provide further information as things develop, but for now, it’s looks as if this one is for real.

ParaUSA wants to send ten lucky bloggers, from among attendees of the Second Amendment Blogger Bash, to a weekend training session at Blackwater (Aug 22-24, 2008) with Todd Jarrett.  Follow the link for details.  I certainly hope that you will go and vote for me.  If you do, you’ll also be entering for a chance to go yourself.

I really want to thank ParaUSA for doing this for us.  Not only because it’s uber cool to be offered the chance to train with a World Champion IPSC shooter, but also because it shows that blogs are being taken seriously, and our potential is being recognized.  That’s a good thing for all of us, even if we don’t get to go.

UPDATE: Don’t listen to this guy.   A vote for Snowflakes in Hell is the only one, true vote.   Do not be tempted by a false prophet.  A vote for me is your best chance to go to Blackwater yourself!

Rachel Lucas has a very thought provoking post on the election, and says she understands now why people feel they can’t vote for McCain.  I can understand why people feel that way.  I swore a number of times after McCain took this position or that position that could never vote for the guy, but Obama’s success sobered me up on that count really quickly.  I also don’t think Rachel’s analogy between kids using pot and voting works quite neatly.

The reason is that the goal of a parent that doesn’t approve of kids taking drugs is to keep them from taking drugs.  There is a chance that the parents buying pot for their kids, so they have control over it, underestimate their ability to influence the behavior of their children.  They are essentially abdicating their responsibility with no strong evidence that they actually can’t keep their kids away from drugs, and I suspect you’d find a lot of these parents actually don’t have a problem with kids experimenting.

Except for the rare nail biting election, your individual influence over the outcome of an election is infinitesimal.  Elections are acts of collective expression, not an act of parenting, where a significant measure of responsibility and control over the child is maintained.  Either Obama or McCain are going to be taking up residence in the Oval Office next year.  There is no possibility of a different outcome that’s in the space of reality due to the collective nature of the process.  If an analogy to parenting is to be made, it’s a choice between your child dying of cancer, or having to undergo painful treatments that may or may not save their life.  The responsible parent would opt for treatment, because standing back and letting the cancer kill your child is not something a responsible parent would do.

We may not like the choice, but the outcome is decided.  Obama or McCain.  Take your pick.

The media in the DIckson City area is starting to get out Rich Banks’ side of the story in the whole ridiculous Old Country Buffet fiasco with the Dickson City police.  As far as I’m concerned, the only crime going on in that Old Country Buffet was probably their food.

Apparently guns used for making movies are showing up on the strees in Canada.  Hopefully the Mayor of Toronto won’t talk to Steven Spielberg about substituting guns in movies for walkie talkies.

A guy at a seattle folk festival, who probably shouldn’t have had a concealed carry license in the first place, commits aggrevated assault, among other things on a few people.  The response from the Mayor of Seattle?   City employees can no longer carry on city property.  Yes, collective punishment for an individual misdeed; the hallmark of a free society.

Apparently a few tavern owners don’t like the fact that Kansas eased restrictions on carry in taverns, even though it’s unlawful to be above the 0.08 legal limit and carry a firearm.  One has to wonder why they aren’t concerned about people coming into their establishment, drinking, and plowing into a family minivan on the way home.  Drunk driving is a far greater social problem than people with concealed carry licenses carrying while intoxicated.  It seems to me if we allow people to drive at 0.07, it’s unreasonable to suggest they are too intoxicated at that level to successfully handle the much simpler task of using a firearm should they need to defend themselves.

We’ve seen reasoned discourse rearing it’s ugly head again, both in the comment section (comments go most recent first, rather than last, start at the end to see the anti-gun commenters) of the LA Times story I linked to earlier, and also at this place, which Dave Hardy linked to over the weekend.  You’ll notice that, for the most part, our side is appearing with facts, and reasonable arguments, and their side is slinging personal insults, stereotypes, and various other manners of prejudices.

I think the reason for the vitriol is that we have unwittingly hit on a nerve.  The LA Times article presented gun owners in a human light.  For those who have their identities wrapped up in who they are not, which is ignorant, paranoid, rednecks compensating for some kind of inadequacy and reacting to an irrational fear of crime stoked by the right wing establishment, it’s horribly destabilizing to a smug sense of self to read that those types of people might actually have things in common with you.  They may even have a serious point of view!

No, no.  Can’t have that.  That’s a threat to our every sense of superiority.   Those aren’t people.  Those are paranoid knuckle draggers.   Real people are enlightened.  Real people don’t feel a need to carry a gun to the grocery store.  The reason they hate articles like this is because it makes them face an unpleasant reality; we’re ordinary people, and we’re getting better at getting that message out.

We dominate, and are courageous in new media.  They can’t come here without dealing with us.  Folks like we’ve seen on the LA Times comment page avoid the gun blogosphere like the plague, because if they spent enough time with us, they’d realize we’re not easily crammed into the nice box they’ve made for us in their narrow minds.  One thing I’ve often pondered about the Brady Bunch, is that I know they read gun blogs, so they surely have to know us to some degree.   I’ve joked often that they believe we’re shills of the NRA, but in reality I don’t think it’s a joke.  They really believe that.  They have to believe that.  They’ve spent their whole careers battling NRA as an evil monolith representing the powers of darkness.  If we don’t fit neatly into that, well then hell, what have they been doing with their whole career?  That’s why I often get upset with people like for doing the same thing to the other side, because it lets them off easy.  If we fit the stereotype of everything they want to believe, it’s easy for them to justify to themselves why we have to be steamrollered.

We do not have to demonize the other side in order to have persuasive arguments.  We don’t need to do it to feel right, because we’re not advocating that people’s freedoms be taken away.  We’re the people who want to be able to keep shooting competitively with an AR-15s.  We’re the people who don’t want to have to wait 10 minutes for the police to show up when seconds count.  We’re the people who think our constitution means something.  I think we ought to have the courage to be able to stand up to the other side, as fellow citizens, and say “Sorry, you’re wrong, and here’s why.”  That is our power.  The other side can’t do that, and it shows in how they approach the issue.

What we ideally want is for the Brady Campaign to have a hard time retaining qualified staff, because their hearts just aren’t in it anymore.  Let them move on to other progressive causes, or the for-profit sector.  Politics isn’t war.  Sometimes you can win by humanizing yourself to the other side.  Ultimately we will win by breaking down stereotypes and fighting ignorance, just like every other civil rights movement in recorded history.  The Black Panthers didn’t end Jim Crow, that was ended by African Americans humanizing themselves to America, and demanding fair treatment.  The lesson is already there in history if we’re willing to follow it.