Summer Camp that Goes Boom

I suffered a minor disappointment today. I glanced at the New York Times before starting my work day and saw a summer camp that teaches participants how to use explosives properly.

I can't say that I've ever been into blowing things up, but I certainly could have a lot of fun doing just that. It seems like the camp is only for high school kids who are planning a mining or explosives engineering career. I wonder if I could pass as a high school kid....

The Ten Ring is X-rated?

There's a little blog thing I've seen recently. It gives your blog a movie rating. I tried it out and was surprised to see this:

It is based on having "gun" appear 27 times, "hell" twice, and "bitch" once.

Since when do I live in a country where gun is a dirty word? I have tried, believe it or not, to keep the tone of this blog reasonable. I try not to swear too much, although Lord knows its a struggle. I don't even put up boobie pictures--or for that matter beefcake.

Well, in order to get a PG rating, I wll spell gun, g*n. I will use only respectable words like shit, cock, damn, motherfucker (yippee-ki-yay), and other such PG words. Just kidding of course.

Who the hell thought gun should be listed as a dirty word in the first place? Must have been some latte-sipping, Birkenstock-wearing, lamppost-hugging city dweller.

No more voting for RINO's

Today, the U.S. Senate finally listened to the American people and denied the final cloture vote on the Senate Immigration bill.

Unfortunately, one of my Senators, Judd Gregg, voted for this shameful bill. I’ve known for some time that Senator Gregg is a squishy RINO ; he voted for an extension of the Assault Weapon ban.

However, I still voted for Gregg in the subsequent election because I felt that his opponent was much worse. No more.

In no way, will I vote for Senator Gregg again, even if his opponent is to the left of Hillary. I’m tired of voting for politicians who are only slightly better than their opponent. For now on, if I am presented with a choice between a RINO like Gregg and an avowed socialist, I will leave that choice blank.

Better a Socialist who actually stands for something than a wishy-washy RINO who will end up voting the same way as the socialist. If this country is going to go down the tubes, better a swift trip down the drain than the drip-drip of incrementalism.

My Email to Senator Judd Gregg

Dear Senator Gregg,

I am writing to urge you to vote no on cloture on the immigration bill before the Senate. This bill is bad for New Hampshire and bad for the United States. The path to citizenship rewards people who have violated our laws and harms working Americans by driving down wages.

I feel strongly enough about this issue that I regret to say that I cannot support you in your next election if you vote for this bill. I voted for you in your last election and generally vote for Republicans, but I have to say that the direction of the Republican leadership in the Senate has been shameful on this issue and at odds with the wishes of the Republican rank and file and the American people as a whole.

Again, I urge you to not support this bill.

Respectfully,

----------------
----, NH

Update:

Senator Gregg voted for cloture on the amnesty bill.
NH needs to remove this RINO from office.

Musings and Camping

I don't have an essay today and don't really have much to say on gun rights. That's a problem with blogging on guns; no matter how many victories we win, and we do win some, there's always someone making emotional yawps and getting good press.

Gun control evokes the emotions--we have to do something about the violence and who needs something that kills anyway. I feel like I have said everything, made every argument, and dotted every "i" without doing any good.

So, instead of that, I'll blog a little about our weekend. Yosemite Sam, Cooper (the Ten Ring's Basset Hound mascot), and I went to Lake Umbagog State Park in northern New Hampshire. It's only a few miles from Errol, NH which is only a few miles from nowhere. We froze our asses off, to put it bluntly.

A thunderstorm crashed down on us Friday and night time temperatures were in the 40s with the wind coming off the lake. We stayed in a tent. Talk about cold. I woke up early Saturday morning with chattering teeth.

You see, I hate sleeping bags because they confine me too much. Maybe I have a few latent claustrophobia issues, who knows. So, I sleep on a cot with an open sleeping bag as a mattress and blankets for warmth. Somehow, I had kicked off the blankets. Talk about cold. I didn't know I could get that cold in the summer.

Saturday's day time was not much better, but it didn't rain. There we were, in late June, wearing jackets and long underwear like it was late October. Tell me why we live in New England again? Of course, Sunday dawned nice and warmed up to the 70s. It only did that because we were leaving.

We did get a lot of fresh air. All of us including Cooper managed to get some exercise. Time in the forest is worth some rain and freezing one's toes off. Saturday, I cooked a couple of rib eye steaks on an open fire and roasted potatoes in the coals. Something about a wood fire makes steaks even better. Needless to say, we didn't go into the forest unarmed, so I won't say it.

All in all, it was nice crawling into my own bed last night and not listening to the incessant whine of mosquitoes.

National Concealed Carry Licensing

Instapundit mentioned a national concealed carry permit and Say Uncle mentioned his concerns about such a license. He wondered how it would be administered (see comments too).

I don’t think we need a national concealed carry license. All we need is for states to follow the “full faith and credit” provisions of the Constitution. My driver’s license is just as valid in Florida as it is in New Hampshire where it was issued. My New Hampshire concealed carry license (CCL) should be just as valid anywhere in the country.

One issue that comes up is some states have a CCL that’s harder to get than in other states. Well, bully for them. Some states have stricter driver’s license permits than others and they still honor the driver’s license.

Some states have different marriage laws, but still honor a marriage license from other states (Massachusetts allows gay marriage and a gay couple’s license would not be honored elsewhere, so this is a difference now that will one day be adjudicated one way or the other).

I admit to certain concerns with licensing concealed carry. I’d prefer that we could, as a nation, adopt permitless carry, which works well in Vermont and Alaska. I know that it would not be feasible politically. We can say “…shall not be infringed” all we want, but laws are passed and enforced and not declared unconstitutional.

Therefore, I pragmatically accept the need to have a permit before I carry a gun, especially because I really don’t want to go to jail. I don’t like stale bologna sandwiches, public showers, toilets in my bedroom, and so much more.

Since I accept having to beg for a CCL, is it too much to ask that it be accepted everywhere in the country just like my driver’s and marriage licenses?

Fred for President

The Ten Ring is proud to announce our support for Fred Thompson in his run for the White House in 2008. We think Fred will make a refreshing change from the current direction of the Republican Party and he is a steadfast supporter of our right to keep and bear arms. Click on the link on the sidebar if you wish to contribute to his campaign.

I've had all I can stand.......

In 2000, I learned that my now deceased Grandfather was not going to vote in the Presidential election. Grandfather was a man of strong opinions and was a staunch Conservative, much more than myself, truth be told. I learned that he was sitting out the election because he refused to vote for George Bush. In fact, he despised the entire family. At the time, I scratched my head and wondered: What was his problem with Bush? But now, I realize that, as with most things, he was 100% in the right.

I’ve never been a staunch supporter of George Bush. I’ve known, since he was my governor in Texas, that he was never, truly a Conservative. In fact I suspected that he held more than a bit of disdain for Conservatives. But given the choice between him and Al Gore, I, like many, voted for the better of two evils. I thought that he had to be better than Al Gore, who actually campaigned on expanding gun control. But, I have to wonder at this juncture, if we all would have been better off with Gore in the White House.

Stay with me here. I will explain.

It pains me to admit it, but the Left has been somewhat right about President Bush. Not about the Bush is Hitler thing (if he was, his critics would be in internment camps) but about his complete unsuitability for the office of President of the United States and his utter stupidity.

This man has virtually destroyed the Republican Party and has brought back the Left from the political graveyard.

Think back to the 1990’s. Capitalism and the Free Market had triumphed. The Soviet Union had fallen and the Left was in retreat all around the world. Even Bill Clinton had to make a speech about how the era of Big Government was over. Can you imagine any politician, Republican or Democrat who would say this today?

Now look where we are today. The Left is expanding everywhere. Latin America is voting in Leftist tyrants and Russia is returning to its old, thuggish ways. Things haven’t looked this grim since the late 1970’s when another idiotic, clueless man was sitting in the Oval Office.

George Bush isn’t completely responsible for these problems, but I believe he has to shoulder a lot of the blame.

Let’s start at the beginning.

The defining moment of George W. Bush’s presidency was September 11, 2001. Conservative’s cheered his defiant speech at the site of the World Trade Center and we thought: now here is a man who will get the job done.
For a while, that’s exactly what he did. In a matter of months, the Taliban in Afghanistan was defeated. President Bush then began to make the case for a campaign in Iraq. Iraq seemed to be a logical, next step in the War on Terror. Saddam Hussein was a supporter and financer of Islamic Terrorists (eg. the fund for Palestinian suicide bombers) and was a serial violator of the cease-fire agreement that ended the Gulf War.

Unlike the Afghanistan campaign though, Bush carefully attempted to build a coalition, with the help of Prime Minister Tony Blair and even went to the UN and got some resolutions passed. The UN balked about the use of force and eventually, a year after the initial hints about a campaign in Iraq, the U.S. military finally invaded. That campaign was a brilliant success and Baghdad fell shortly afterwards.

So what happened after that?

George Bush happened.

George Bush tried to run a politically correct war. Our soldiers were burdened with ridiculous rules of engagement against enemies who violated every rule of war. Instead of a quick firing squad that is the penalty under the Geneva Convention for combatants fighting out of uniform, we were subjected to Constitution bending military tribunals and detention camps halfway around the world from the site of capture.
But it’s not just about Iraq.

• George Bush signed into law a blatantly unconstitutional violation of the First Amendment: The McCain-Feingold Campaign finance bill.

• George Bush has supported government spending that would have made Conservatives scream in the days of Bill Clinton. His support of Ted Kennedy’s education bill is a particularly egregious example.

• George Bush has been no real friend of gun owners. The only real pro-gun act of his administration was Attorney General John Ashcroft’s decision that the 2nd Amendment was in fact an individual right. The current Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales wants to expand the powers of the ATF. George Bush also cynically used the support of gun owners when he stated that he would sign a renewed assault weapons ban even though he knew fully well that it would never pass the Republican Congress. With friends like this….

• George Bush has presided over the most enormous expansion of the Federal Government in my lifetime. If Clinton had even tried to expand the Federal Government at the scale that Bush has over the last 6 ½ years, the Republican would have been up in arms.

• and finally, the cause of this post and the straw that finally broke the camels back, Illegal Immigration. Bush’s pandering to the Kennedy wing of the Democratic Party on this issue is bad enough, but his patronizing and condescending attitude to those who had been his most stalwart supporters is too much to take. I find it impossible to support a man whose administration thinks that a gun store owner that makes a few minor paper work violations should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, but feels that people who have blatantly and arrogantly violated our immigration laws should be forgiven and even praised.
  

So there you have it. As I said above, I believe now that it would have been better for America if Al Gore had become President in 2000. When I told this to Denise, she was flabbergasted. But let me explain. If Al Gore had become President, I suspect he would have been a disaster after the September 11 attacks. He would have sought the Diplomatic route and would have made an attempt to find out why they hate us. Islamic attacks would have increased and this method of dealing with terrorism would have been shown to be a failure. The Republicans would have won overwhelmingly in 2004 and a new Republican president would have robustly attacked Islamic terrorism with the country more or less united behind him; thus, no anti-war movement and no revanchist Left.

Compare that with where we are today.
The Democratic Party holds the House and Senate where the Speaker of the House is a far Left moonbat from San Francisco.
The Left is on the march and has expanded into formerly staunch Conservative bastions like New Hampshire. Where in 1992, the Democrats had to run as Conservatives to win (remember Bill Clinton’s promise of a middle income tax cut), they now run openly as Leftists and have a good chance of winning with that tactic.

In conclusion, George W. Bush has been a disaster for the Republican Party and for the United States of America. His lack of leadership, his utter lack of eloquence and sheer stupidity has made the immediate future grim for Conservatives, Libertarians and believers in limited government. I hate to agree with Jesse Jackson in anything but I have to say that he may have been on the something when he warned America to stay away from the Bushes.

New York City Thoughts

I've been in New York City on business for the last couple of days. Jeez, what a place. It's nice enough to visit, but I couldn't live there. It's too noisy, too dirty, too bustling, and too much everything. It's one of the world's best cities and it beats Boston hands down. But, I'm still glad I live in a small town in New Hampshire. I'm also glad I live where I can own guns and shoot them with a minimum of fuss. Unlike New York or Boston.

It made me think of a book I read recently; Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. She talks about relearning how to grow their own food and poultry. It partially inspired this post. Kingsolver is more than a bit of a leftist and I soon tired of reading about global warming, evil corporations, and other cant. Still, some ideas were quite good and I agree with her that it doesn't make sense to transport a watermelon from New Zealand during watermelon season in the United States.

One thing she mentioned was her family's decision to move from Tucson to rural Virginia. She was concerned about "sustainability" in Tucson pointing to water use and other issues. There may be some validity, but all cities are not "sustainable" whatever that really means.

Look at New York City. It's a hotbed of statist thought and practice. It's the home of the United Nations, Michael Bloomburg, and so much else that's a challenge to anyone who believes in individual rights and self-reliance. It's also the home of many environmentalists who decry logging in Oregon, water use in Las Vegas, drowing polar bears, and anything else that pops their corks.

These so-called environmentalists can't eat a meal unless it's brought to them. They can't live without corporate trade and support. They fear guns and want to take them away from the rest of us. They view hunting as a savage necessity at best or something that should be banned. They barely tolerate the "hicks and rubes" from flyover country that make their city-bound lives possible.

If they look in the mirror, they'll realize that they are ones who have a truly "un-sustainable" lifestyle. Yet they're always blaming someone else for global warming, corporatism, and everything else they consider wrong.

Challenge to a Governor

I was driving to work today listening to the radio, my mind more or less in neutral. I work in Massachusetts and Governor Deval Patrick high-pitched voice came on the radio. It was an ad extolling the state’s business virtues. He was talking to the president of an industrial tool company who praised Massachusetts’ work force, business climate, etc., etc., etc.

Patrick has done other ads with other company including high-tech. I have nothing against the ads. Massachusetts is losing jobs and people to other states where an even better business climate can be found.

I hope he appears with the president of Smith & Wesson. After all, it’s one of the states best known, oldest, and successful companies. C'mon, Governor give Smith & Wesson some airtime.

I’m not holding my breath, not with the state's and Patrick's anti-gun attitudes.

Ten Ring's New Addition

Yosemite Sam and I had a busy Memorial Day weekend. We finally got a dog. Given that we hunt, you might think our new addition would be a Labrador, Golden Retriever, or other mighty hunting dog. Instead, we fell in love with a Bassett Hound.

All is not lost in the hunting fields. Bassetts have the second best scenting abilities second only to boodhounds. They were bred to follow game beneath briars and other low plants. We're not going to hunt with him because we got him as a pet. We realized that we simply didn't have time to train and finish a hunting dog. Just not in the cards with work and commuting.

Introducing Ten Ring's "Best Friend"

So, our hound will be Ten Ring's official mascot. I promise that we won't be doing too much dog blogging. Just one thing though, his name is Cooper. We wanted to name him after a gunnie and thought of the late Colonel Cooper, but also John Moses Browning, Oliver Winchester, Samuel Colt and others. We made up our minds when we checked Cooper's papers and saw that his sire was named "Oakhaven's Crazy Cooper." Serendipity made up our minds.

Happy Birthday, Duke

Saturday is the 100th anniversary of John Wayne’s birth. Yosemite Sam and I don’t have anything real planned to commemorate it; after all we never met the man. Some of the cable channels will play his movies and we’ll probably catch one of them. If not, I’ll drag a DVD of one of his movies out of our little library.

I’ve developed a greater appreciation of John Wayne as an actor and an American. I was much more liberal when I was younger. I grew up in the tail end of the baby boom: too young for Woodstock and too old for Disco (thank God).

Many people in the 1960s'-70s reflexively supported peace, love, and “don’t harsh my buzz, man.” It was in the bong smoke of the day. Many of us saw John Wayne as an embodiment of war, violence, and the American Way. His anti-communism, his support for the Vietnam War, and his bigger than life persona were immediate turnoffs.

As I’ve grown, I realized John Wayne was right about so many things. Communism is evil as its slightly more palatable twin, socialism. It was good to fight communists in Vietnam, although we didn’t fight that war well.

Wayne’s acting centered around his persona. One he deliberately developed. He’s the taciturn hero or occasionally the villain but with a good heart. His heroes never shirk from violence if it is necessary, but never deliberately dish it out unless there's a good reason.

For that reason, many have denigrated his acting. It’s unfair, because he brought a lot more to his roles than people credit. Watch The Searchers if you don’t believe me. He didn’t have much acting range, but he dominated the screen whenever he appeared.

Wayne’s persona is summed up in a quote from The Shootist, “I won't be wronged. I won't be insulted. I won't be laid a-hand on. I don't do these things to other people, and I require the same from them.”

This is a practical expression of the Golden Rule: “do unto others as you have done unto you;” at least for an imperfect world. For a generation remembered for peace, love, rock n’ roll, and pot, Wayne’s credo was too much. Now it seems like an excellent way to live.

Urban vs. Rural and Staying Alive

I don’t really have much to say on guns today. Instead, I want to speak a little more about my post from last Friday. So you don’t have to click it (unless you really want to), I mentioned that many of the old ways are dying. If there ever was a TEOTWAKI we would need those old ways.

I appreciate the comments and advice especially about books and websites. Still, I regret I didn’t learn certain things while growing up. There are some skills that are best passed on and not learned out of a book. Our society has stopped valuing certain rural-seeming skills.

Instead there’s an urban ethos that’s centered on letting the government help. We see it in self-defense. You know, guns are bad (I knew I could get guns in here somewhere) and the don't act wait for the cops mentality. For true urbanites, meat comes only in plastic wrap or vegetarianism is the one true faith.

I work with a person who’s a true urbanite and I wonder what he would do if things collapsed in Boston. It could happen. Look at Katrina. The people in New Orleans couldn’t get help for three days—exactly the length of time that FEMA then and now says you’re on your own. If a hurricane ever hit Boston, my co-worker would be on his own. How would he feed and protect himself? He couldn’t and neither could his neighbors. No cat, rat or dog would be safe there.

My employer has adopted the urban ethos. I can’t have a gun not even in my car. I’d love to keep a shotgun or carbine in the trunk just in case I ever needed to make my forty-mile commute through Mad Max world. But, I can’t do that. Instead my employer has decided that we should shelter in place in case TEOTWAKI hits. We now have little bags, vinyl lunch boxes really, that have a few “juice” boxes of water, a dense block of food, a flashlight and some bandaids. Better than nothing I guess.

Katrina should have showed people that civilization is a thin veneer that can rub off quickly. Instead, too many people want the government to do more next time IT happens. They forget that government can’t do it. It’s up to us to remember the old ways. To remember that self-reliance is good and not look to the government to solve our problems. To remember that true self-defense with a firearm is a force for good.

The End of the Grocery Store (as we know it)

I’ve thought about how Americans eat recently (this is not a screed on vegetarianism, food fads, celebrity chefs, or anything else) and intermingled with those thoughts is just a bit of TEOTWAKI (roll over acronym) concerns.

I take my trips to the grocery store for granted and would seriously miss them if everything ground to a halt for whatever reason. Preparedness is a lot more than having guns, ammo, and a bug-out bag handy. Those could get us through the first few critical days of the collapse of civilization due to the coming zombie apocalypse, terrorism, asteroid strike, or civil war (the latter seems more likely as we seem to be dividing further and further).

It may not come about because of something as dramatic as a zombie attack (and yes I know it’s fiction, but it’s a good metaphor) or civil war. We could face collapse of our food supply due to a pathogen (Irish Potato Famine), we could face a severe energy shortage.

If there ever is a TEOTWAKI situation (and I really hope not, I’m getting too old for that), too many of us have forgotten what our grandparents knew. Our society moved from farms to cities in just a few generations. We lost much that could help if we ever had to go back to the farm thanks to the collapse of civilization.

Compared to my co-workers, I’m self-reliant. Still, I don’t know how to can vegetables even though I "helped" my mom do it when I was a very small girl. I don’t know what types of farm animals are the easiest to raise and propagate. I don’t know the seasonality of plants here in New England although I’ve had a garden a long time ago in a much warmer place.

On the other hand, I know how to hunt. I can dress and butcher game with Yosemite Sam’s help. I know a few edible wild plants and mushrooms.

Because of my hunting and shooting skills, I’m far better off than a stereotypical urban liberal. They need to realize that cities are tenuous constructs of our technology and copious energy use. Cities are not sustainable to use one of their favorite terms. If TEOTWAKI ever occurs they’ll die like mayflies.

We need to keep old ways alive. Our grand- or great-grandparents developed ways to live off the land. They lived hardscrabble lives a lot of times, but they lived.

Maybe the back to the land hippies had something right. I think I might buy one or two of the Foxfire books I once thought were so strange. I could have worse things in a bug-out bag.

Thought For The Day

If 20 million people can pick and choose the laws they want to obey, and then be granted amnesty, why should they expect the rest of us to obey their "sensible" gun laws?

No Law Against Stupidity

No matter how many laws anti-gun states pass against gun and ammo ownership, someone will find a way around them. Today, we read about a candidate for the Darwin Awards. An 18-year old somehow gets (the story is not detailed on this point) some .223 ammo.

He decides to sell the brass and needs to separate the bullet from the casing. He puts a cartridge in a vise and whacks it with a hammer. The story also doesn't tell if he used a nail or something to set off the primer, assumably he was hammering on the bullet trying to force it out. He succeeded somehow with several cartridges until one went off and shot him in the stomach.

Of course, without a chamber and barrel to pass through, the bullet didn't have much force and it lodged about a half-inch into his torso. Still, he has figured out a way to shoot himself without a gun.

OMG, He Killed Kenney!

(Sorry, couldn't resist the title.)
A cop died in Franconia, New Hampshire this weekend. The bare bones story is that a cop, Bruce McKay, stopped a speeder named Liko Kenney. Kenney shot and drove over McKay. A passing motorist, former Marine Gregory Floyd, stopped to give aid and defend the officer. Floyd grabbed the officer’s gun and shot Kenney. The officer died, Kenney died, and the District Attorney will not prosecute Floyd.

The story has gotten more complicated. Kenny and McKay had a history and McKay was supposed to call for backup before dealing with Kenney. On the other hand, Franconia has a very small police department and McKay may not have had backup readily available. No matter what issues were between the two men, Kenney had no right to shoot the officer. Floyd did what needed to be done.

That hasn’t stopped a small number of moonbats in Democratic Underground. Someone nicknamed Krispos42 mentioned the case and supported Floyd as did a majority of other posters. But the minority really shows their craziness by calling Floyd a vigilante. Keopeli said, “I find it odd that a passerby would stop, take the cops gun and kill the suspect, yet he's being portrayed as a hero rather than a vigilante. You can't take the law into your own hands and self-defense is a bit of a stretch given this man put himself into this situation.”

Wuushew topped that with, “Justice is not achievable through actions of individuals, only through the complex actions of the gestalt entity which is the criminal justice system. As a system it is molded and controlled through the civil and political institutions of our society. Behavior can be codified, predicted, analyzed and modified. Vigilantism introduces unpredictable [sic] and chaotic elements which in no way will achieve professed societal aims…. I am just irritated at what I perceive as in inappropriate assumption of authority to which the only response should have been a collectivist one.”

Why am I not surprised someone tossed collectivism into the argument.

I probably shouldn’t point just to Democratic Underground. The Boston Globe sponsored a reader feedback board on the story and some posters came up with their own doozies along the same lines. You can almost always predict statist rhetoric (although the person who said Kenney was unarmed because he was reloading his gun really needs to get a checkup from the neck up).

What is gratifying is that most posters on Democratic Underground and Boston Globe’s bulletin board agree that Floyd took the right action. Still, a dismaying number though called Floyd a vigilante. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Thinking about the New Generation

I was driving to work on Friday and I saw something that I've seen many times, but never gave it a thought.

Part of my usual route takes me through Lexington, MA the "home" of the American Revolution. There's a T-shaped intersection that has a crossing guard who directs traffic as well at certain times. One road is a relatively busy street. The other road has a school on it. I always try to get to that intersection before the crossing guard comes on duty because she tends to back up traffic. By the way, the street has a traffic light.

I got a slow start on Friday and indeed the traffic was well and truly backed up. I sat and watched something that gnawed on me the rest of the day. There was a boy about 12 years old riding his bike on the sidewalk of the busy road. He had on all the paraphernalia we make kids wear before they can ride a bike including a helmet, fingerless gloves, knee and elbow pads.

As he approached the intersection, the crossing guard motioned him through and he got off the bike and walked it across. He did everything right and even smiled at the guard. For some reason, though, he became a metaphor for some of what's wrong today--I know a heavy weight to put on a kid's shoulders.

When I grew up so many years ago, we never wore protective gear to ride a bike to school. Maybe we walked a bike across an intersection, but usually not. We were expected to look both ways before crossing and get ourselves to school. Where I grew up, we didn't have crossing guards (your mileage may differ) even on busy streets.

Our parents loved us just as much as I believe this kid's parents loved him. But, they knew life had risks. Today everybody seems to want to roll kids up in bubble-wrap and make sure they never get a boo-boo. Schools punish the bullied kid who finally throws a punch more severely than the bully.

All of this and more strips away American ideals of self-reliance and independence. Our kids can't ride a bike without donning armor, they can't even cross a street until a person in authority gives them the nod, they're not expected to stand up for themselves.

With such attitudes is it any wonder that so many Americans are gun-fearing wussies who don't trust themselves to even touch a gun. Who want high-tech "safeties" added to guns to make them safer. Who want to solve crime by simply passing yet one more law--including taking guns away from the people who do use them responsibly. Who want to get rid of any concept of self-defense--after all, the police are there to protect you (like the crossing guard who always screws up traffic).

As I said, that's a lot to put on pleasant looking kid who was just going to school. Still, I wonder what our society will be like when people who weren't raised believing that all risks can be eliminated are no longer here.

Staying in New Hampshire

I haven't written here for a while--longer than usual anyway. I've been away physically. Work sent me halfway across the country and back. At the same time, I've been away mentally. My job is slowly becomming a life-sucking vampire. But that's true of so many jobs and believe me, I could have it a lot worse.

I need to look for other jobs, but it's difficult to find them in the field I fell in to. I don't mention here, but there's only a handful of people in the country who do what I do, the way I do. It involves a thorough knowledge of American history, decent computer science skills, writing ability, and being able to speak in public about it all. When the job's good it's very good, but when it's bad....

I recently mentioned that I had a line on another job. It would have taken me to the Washington D.C. area--Maryland to be exact. For a number of reasons, I told the people who were interested in me "Thanks, but no thanks." It looks like I'll be staying in New Hampshire for awhile.

Part of my decision was the realization, I didn't really want to move to Maryland or suffer the long commute from Virginia (that would have been the best option). Another factor in my decision was I don't really want to work in the particular office in Maryland in which the job is located.

Still, I feel disappointed that in the United State of America I should have to worry about moving to a state that could infringe on my God-given, Constitutionally protected rights to own a tool that can be easily owned or bought in most other states. That is wrong. No free, non-violent, sane person should have to worry about such infringements.

Fighting such attitude is why I blog and why I proudly let the multitude of the gun-fearing wussies where I work know that I am a gun owner. I will try to do more to win back these rights, but I still feel like I'm banging my head against a wall.

We are not to blame

One of the things you can count on after a well publicized shooting is for anti-freedom advocates to wave the bloody shirt and cry that it is our freedom to own firearms that is the real cause of shooting rampages. That they will act this way is a given, but is it not too much to ask that people who are supposed to be on our side of the debate to not push this line of insanity as well.

War on Guns has a post about a gun show in Reno, Nevada, which is now being morphed into a “Sporting Goods and Accessory Show”. They are doing this because of the “recent unfortunate incident at Virginia Tech”.
This has me scratching my head and wondering what a gun show has to do with the rampage of an insane lunatic through a group of disarmed students.

But, the media, Hollywood and their ilk always make responsible gun owners the scapegoat for every nutter that goes on a rampage.

Gun owners are in no way responsible for the acts of these mass shooters. We are no more responsible than commuters are for the daily carnage on our roads due to drunk or incompetent drivers.

The ultimate outrage is that the people, who seek to make us defenseless and advocate anti self-defense zones like Virginia Tech and further seek to inculcate a passivity and submission to acts of violence, are the ones throwing these charges at our feet. But, they are the ones that have helped create the culture of passivity that had people meekly waiting for their own execution.

I expect this kind of calumny from the gun banners, but I don’t expect it from people who are supposed to be on our side.

In 1999, after the Columbine killings, the NRA cancelled the public portion of their annual meeting in Denver. I have often wondered why we as gun owners and members of the NRA had to cancel our meeting due to the actions of the Columbine killers. I understand the PR aspects of this decision by the NRA.
They decided that the negative PR was not worth going ahead with the meeting. But the anti-freedom advocates didn’t praise the NRA for its decision. They attacked the NRA for continuing with the non-public part of its annual meeting even though those meetings were planned years in advance and were required by its rules.
Denise and I enjoy attending the annual meetings and we arrange our schedule months in advance to accommodate the meeting. If we had been active in the NRA in 1999, we would have had to cancel our reservations and rearrange our vacation plans because the event was cancelled and the NRA was de facto accepting the blame for a tragedy they did not cause.

In fact, I thought about deleting the above paragraph because I was thinking that I probably would have felt bad attending a gun convention shortly after a mass shooting. But I realized that I was falling into the line of thinking that is quite common today. That guns and gun owners are responsible for every crime and tragedy involving guns. If you think about it, this is insane. Guns are merely tools. They are no different than any other tool, and people who responsibly use a tool bear no blame when others misuse that same tool. Would a car show be cancelled because someone just committed mass murder with an SUV?

We as gun owners and gun rights advocates do ourselves no favors by accepting the blame that the gun control crowd throws at us. We are not responsible for these tragedies and I suspect if our solutions were put in place, many of these tragedies would be averted. So Boomtown and Gatling Guns in Reno should hold the gun show as scheduled, call it a gun show and not accept the blame for a tragedy for which theybear no responsibility.

Update: A commenter on the above post at War on Guns states that Gatling Guns had nothing to do with this situation. If Boomtown is solely responsible, I have to ask why it was OK to hold a gun show before the Virginia Tech. Tragedy but not after. The implication is that gun owners and buyers are somehow responsible. This meme cannot stand.