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Time is fleeting

With the recent departure of my departmental number two at work, my free time has dropped from little to none.

I will mention in passing a few developments that have meaning in my life. I am only a few credits away from a bachelor’s degree in information technology. That is exciting, as I have been working on the degree nights and weekends for five years (minus a year off for war duties). I’ll move on to a graduate degree, but I haven’t decided what yet.

I bought my wife a Beretta Tomcat as her primary carry gun thanks to a recommendation from Gringo Malo. I wish she was as excited about shooting it as I am, but not everyone loves shooting for the sake of shooting. My wife used her .22 only once that I am aware of when she came upon an opossum which had just been run over and was suffering. She fired an entire clip into the wounded creature in order to end its pain. I hated that little .22 - it had three safeties on it. Three! If you are clumsy enough or forgetful enough or careless enough that you need three safeties on your pistol, you shouldn’t have a pistol. That’s just my opinion, and I’m glad I sold that gun to someone who liked the idea of three safeties.

Last but not least, my post requesting a Tasmanian pen pal has borne fruit, and I am in the beginning stages of a correspondence that I hope will prove educational and interesting in the long term.

Have you ever been reflecting on how quickly you run out of time to do something? I have run out of time to do almost everything I enjoy most. Luckily, I know that these things tend to come in cycles and so I do not despair when the work pace becomes outrageous. I will make up for it by stealing back minutes here and hours there at some point in the future.

Popularity: 2% [?]

Posted 09 July 2007 † Trevor § Apropos Rumination § Gun Ownership § Personal Notes ‡ Comments (3)

Celebrating Independence Day my way

A lot of Americans call this holiday the Fourth of July. I call it Independence Day because, for me, this day is a celebration of the ideas that make the United States of America a great nation. For many of you, this day means no work, shopping, fireworks and cool beverages on a hot day. All those things are fine. However, I need something deeper from this national holiday. I need reinforcement of what it actually means to be free to make my own choices. That’s why today, I packed up some of my guns and went to the range.

I spent about four hours practicing marksmanship. First, I worked on the 25-yard pistol range. I shot my Kel-Tec P-32 first. The P-32 is a fun little gun, but I would hate to find myself in a situation where my life depended on it. It’s quite accurate for hitting a human sized target in the chest area at the 25-yard distance - I can do so with about 90% accuracy. The problem with the Kel-Tec P-32 is that it (mine at least) jams quite frequently. I was using PMC .32 Auto ammo and it is possible that the pistol simply doesn’t like that round. Since PMC is out of business, I’ll try switching to something else next time. The Kel-Tec is a great ankle carry, but only as a backup until I figure why it jams so much.

Next I shot my HK .45 USP Compact. The USP Compact is a well engineered weapon, with no useless “safety” features at all. It’s highly accurate at 25 yards. I managed to put 9 of 10 rounds in the target today, but I pulled one round by breathing while pulling the trigger. Darn it! If I had to pick any single handgun to be stranded on an island full of cannibals with, it would be my HK .45 Compact. Why? It never, ever jams. The trigger pull is just right, and I like the factory sights. It’s as accurate for me as my longer barreled SA XD .40 Tactical at 25-yards. Let’s move on to that weapon.

I love the way the XD .40 Tactical feels in my hands except for one thing - the stupid rear safety. A grip safety is completely unnecessary for experienced shooters. If I don’t have a good grip on the pistol, then I deserve what I get when the trigger is pulled. I wish Springfield Armory would remove this “feature.” The only safety needed on a pistol is a good trigger guard. I don’t mind the trigger safety as much, although I prefer pistols without it. I am not going to drop my pistol or accidentally catch the trigger on something. The XD .40 is fun to shoot though, and it’s accurate enough to make a good primary carry weapon. I would stake my life on the pistol any day. I hit 10 of 10 at the 25-yard mark today with the XD.

Last but certainly not least, I fired about 75 rounds through my Bushmaster Varminter today. I warmed up at 50 yards and shot five groups of five rounds each. Then I went out to 200 yards and squeezed off another 40 rounds. Every one hit my Big Burst target, although I didn’t have very tight groups at 200. I’ll get better once I buy a spotting scope so I can adjust my shots better from one trigger squeeze to the next. The Varminter is my favorite weapon to shoot. I love the way it feels and the confidence it inspires at 500 yards.

The right to privately own guns is the one that keeps all the rest in place. Today, on Independence Day, I reminded myself of that fact. I was all by myself on the range, and that kind of worries me. I wish more Americans realized that without guns in private hands, good intentions wouldn’t be enough to keep us making most of our decisions without some bureaucrat constantly interfering in the name of someone else who has no stake in the life he or she is interfering with.

Popularity: 5% [?]

Posted 04 July 2007 † Trevor § Gun Ownership ‡ Comments (7)

Electrons floating in the ether

Some words have the irrefutable power of truth behind them, despite the fact that they exist only as collections of zeros and ones suspended on magnetic metal platters floating in time and space.

A Nation of Cowards is such a collection of words.

Is your life worth protecting? If so, whose responsibility is it to protect it? If you believe that it is the police’s, not only are you wrong — since the courts universally rule that they have no legal obligation to do so — but you face some difficult moral quandaries. How can you rightfully ask another human being to risk his life to protect yours, when you will assume no responsibility yourself? Because that is his job and we pay him to do it? Because your life is of incalculable value, but his is only worth the $30,000 salary we pay him? If you believe it reprehensible to possess the means and will to use lethal force to repel a criminal assault, how can you call upon another to do so for you?

Do you believe that you are forbidden to protect yourself because the police are better qualified to protect you, because they know what they are doing but you’re a rank amateur? Put aside that this is equivalent to believing that only concert pianists may play the piano and only professional athletes may play sports. What exactly are these special qualities possessed only by the police and beyond the rest of us mere mortals?

One who values his life and takes seriously his responsibilities to his family and community will possess and cultivate the means of fighting back, and will retaliate when threatened with death or grievous injury to himself or a loved one. He will never be content to rely solely on others for his safety, or to think he has done all that is possible by being aware of his surroundings and taking measures of avoidance. Let’s not mince words: He will be armed, will be trained in the use of his weapon, and will defend himself when faced with lethal violence.

In a society that increasingly subcontracts out the right of self-defense, against the principles outlined clearly in the founding documents of that society, is a nation in need of education. No one is more motivated than the individual whose very existence is threatened to protect said existence. So why would we let someone else, a stranger, take over the responsibility of protecting our very existence? Because we are taught to do so.

I do not find myself willing to subcontract out the responsibility for protecting my own presence here on this Earth. Rather, I am am the prime advocate of me. And that is why I spent another Saturday on the range. I sold a .22 caliber pistol to someone this weekend. He is a soldier, like myself, but he is also a typical American in this new nation of ours - educated to respect authority and trained to sublet his life out to others.

He asked me who he needed to register the gun with. “No one,” I said. In this state, you have the right to carry a gun in your vehicle, or to keep one in your home. You are allowed to defend your existence with a firearm. He had a hard time believing me. Much like his assigned bureaucrats must have, I used the technique of repetition to reinforce ideas in his brain - the center of his existence. While he practiced with the ammunition I had purchased on his behalf, and I practiced with my larger caliber weapons, we talked about the basic ideas that every American should have an awareness of.

“When do I have the right to use a gun in self-defense?” he wanted to know. “Anytime you feel like you are in danger,” was my answer. “What will the authorities think?” he asked. “That really doesn’t matter,” I told him. Then I explained that I would rather take my chances with a jury than I would with a being not bound by allegiance to the laws of man. He understood I think. He is starting to break the mental chains we are all wrapped in as soon as we enter the public education system of this United States of America. I hope he will practice often with his new gun.

Now, dear reader, I direct your attention back to a most potent compendium of logic, that essay entitled A Nation of Cowards. Read it. Then read it again. Who is in charge of your life? Ask yourself if you are brave enough to take ultimate responsibility for your own existence.

Popularity: 6% [?]

Posted 02 July 2007 † Trevor § Memewars § Apropos Rumination § Gun Ownership § Ideas ‡ Comments (0)

The only important Presidential question

Hillary Clinton wants your villageWhat are you going to do to shrink the bloated federal government and get focused on its original mission? That is the most important question we should be demanding an answer to from the bevy of suitors for the highest office in the land.

I am tired of reading pap about this crop of Presidential candidates. I don’t care about Mitt Romney’s family trip in 1983. I don’t care about whether Barack Obama is a smoker. I am not in the least interested in what women see when they see Hillary. John McCain is a war hero. Don’t care. Tommy Thompson has gigantic ears. I don’t want to read a story about that. John Edwards’ wife’s body is riddled with cancer. Not my problem. I could go on about all the things I do not need to know about the various candidates, but I think you get my point.

What I want to know is why I should vote for any of these fools? Not a single one of them is going to get the government off my back, out of my affairs and away from my pocketbook. Not a single one of them is going to tread lightly in my life. They all want a bigger piece of me, and for that matter YOU!

They can all go to hell as far as I am concerned. I don’t want them to do anything for me. I can do what needs doing myself, please and thank you. All I want from a President is strong national defense, secure borders and an occasional speech about how great it is to be free, and maybe the President could throw in a reminder or two regarding the awesome responsibility that comes with liberty. I’d like that speech to be based on reality. Can we work on that?

Sometimes I think we are becoming a nation of tranquilized zombies. What can I say to convince you not to vote for another power mongering, empty promise making lying sack of crap?

Popularity: 10% [?]

Posted 28 June 2007 † Trevor § United States § Politics ‡ Comments (7)

The panic factory

I listen to XM satellite radio every morning on my way to work, and every evening on my way home from work. Since I have a 70-mile one way commute, I get more exposure to news and politics than I would imagine a typical commuter does.

It occurred to me this morning while listening to ABC News that the United States of America has turned into a panic factory. We are fed stress all day long from hundreds of sources. You would think the world is about to end any day now based on the clamor coming out of my radio every day. Television is no different. Everything is designed and presented in a way that enhances or overstates whatever issue is being discussed. Here are some examples of the issues as presented through the eyes of ABC this morning:

Global warming - we’re all going to die underwater SOON! Luckily we have hundreds of artists who will sing about this issue until you are sick of it.
Iraq - no hope. It’s well past time to give up and get out. Nothing but death and destruction over there.
Health care - 47 million Americans are dying in the streets because we don’t have socialized hypochondria and unlimited free pills for everyone.

Man, I just don’t know how I’m going to get through my day. Everything is horrible.

Popularity: 10% [?]

Posted 27 June 2007 † Trevor § Quick Everyone Panic! § United States ‡ Comments (7)

McCain-Feingold is in the crapper

McCain-Feingold was conceived and enacted under the false premise that it is the federal government’s job to protect Americans from political speech by censoring that speech. And now that idea is being flushed down the toilet. I couldn’t be happier, as I have been preaching against this fool’s legislation from day one.

McCain-Feingold restricted what and when you could say about politicians - a horrible law that was and is completely unconstitutional. In case you have been asleep every American is guaranteed the right to free speech and there is nothing in that promise that says anything about limited censorship of certain types of speech. To a typical American politician in 2007, the Constitution is a piece of paper to be ignored, so what it says hasn’t really mattered. Since Americans are by and large lazy and uneducated about politics, it has been fairly easy for politicians to enact tens of thousands of caches of garbage legislation that ignore every principle this nation was founded on.

McCain-Feingold is one of the worst of these dishonorable little control documents conceived in the spirit of nannyism and birthed by a group of people who hide behind good intentions and the raw, lumbering power of a massive bureaucracy that would have made most colonists pick up their muskets and assemble in the town square for a good old fashioned tarring and feathering, if not a lynching or two.

Popularity: 10% [?]

Posted 27 June 2007 † Trevor § United States § Politics ‡ Comments (1)

It’s not my fault that I smoke

That is the message being sent by this study, which reports that teenagers affected by Hurricane Katrina are more likely to smoke than teenagers who didn’t have to live through the horror of George W. Bush’s indifference to black people in New Orleans, or something like that. I am not sure if the main stressors came from the hurricane or the idiots who populate the city and vote criminally inclined incompetents into office over and over again.

“The physical damage was easy to see, but the psychological damage from the hurricanes was pretty well hidden,” said Alfred L. McAlister, a behavioral scientist and an author of the study. “The hurricanes had an emotional impact on the youth and we need to recognize that and give them the help they need. Otherwise, they use tobacco as a crutch and then they become addicted.”

Almost 38 percent of students who reported they had a family member hurt or killed in the 2005 hurricanes also reported that they now were smoking, according to the study. In comparison, 13 percent who did not endure a death or injury in the family said they smoked.

Smoking rates were also higher among Jefferson County students whose homes were damaged or destroyed or if they had family or friends with damaged or destroyed homes, according to the study.

Students who still were living in temporary housing and who were absent from school for more than two months due to the hurricanes were two times more likely to smoke than their counterparts.

About 22 percent of American teenagers smoke, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

McAlister said the study shows teens turned to smoking to cope with the disruption.

“Raised stress levels lead to more smoking,” he said. “It was not shocking to find that relationship after the hurricanes.”

OK, fine, so stress leads people to smoke more. That’s not a news flash! It is still your fault you tried it in the first place. I am not sure why we spend all the time we do hyperanalyzing this kind of crap. I smoke, and I don’t blame anyone but me. When I am ready to quit, I will. Same thing applies whether you are a giant fatty, have a gambling problem, beat your spouse or have sex with anything that moves. It is your choice, and it is your fault, and you will only quit when you get sick of yourself. Quit blaming the hurricanes life throws your way for every stupid behavior you repeat on a daily basis. Put down that 2-pound cheeseburger or throw away your pack of Camels if you don’t like yourself, but don’t think it is anyone else’s fault that you ended up where you are.

Popularity: 10% [?]

Posted 26 June 2007 † Trevor § Nanny State of Mind ‡ Comments (7)

Do states have the right to secede?

That is one of the questions currently being discussed in the U.S. History to 1865 class that I am taking. The vast majority of the class feels that states do not have the right to secede under any circumstances. That makes me sad. When the majority of the population of any geographic area is no longer being served by the dominant government, then citizens not only have a right to secede, they have a moral obligation to do so.

There are two major facets to the secession question: 1) morality and 2) self-interest. These two items do not necessarily align with one another. When the U.S. Civil War began, the rationale for war on both sides was highly complicated. The North entered the war for two primary reasons: 1) Keeping the Union from dissolving by force and 2) forcing the issue of slavery. The first reason was immoral and the second was moral. Yet the first reason was Abraham Lincoln’s primary reason for using force to bring the Confederacy back into the Union. Lincoln felt slavery was morally wrong, but he did not declare war because of slavery. He declared war because he believed the federal government should be the highest authority in the land, and that states had no right to self-determination. Abolition was not his primary goal. Lincoln himself said this:

I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races - that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And in as much as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.

Some Southerners, to be sure, fought in the Civil War to preserve the immoral institution of human slavery, but many enlisted in the war effort because they felt that the North was trying to dictate how they should live.

The outcome of the Civil War was never really in doubt. The North had vast superiority in numbers and had the industrial base. Technology is amoral, and the North held the technology - it was therefore destined for victory. While the end of the war settled the question of slavery, it did not grant equality to blacks. That issue would not be settled for another one hundred years, when the Civil Rights movement of the 1960’s forced Americans to reexamine racial inequalities in their society.

What the Civil War did accomplish was the growth of government, and the mitigation of liberty for all American citizens and residents. From the end of the war until the present day, the Federal government’s role in decision making for all Americans has grown to the point where a large segment of the American population is completely or partially dependent on theft by taxes for its well-being.

Back to the original question, though! Do states have a right to secede? What circumstances, if any, justify a declaration that a state no longer wishes to be a part of the union called the United States of America?

Popularity: 14% [?]

Posted 23 June 2007 † Trevor § United States § About Libertarians § Politics ‡ Comments (11)

Leadership, clueless style

An alert enemy of the state (of socialism in America) recently came across this picture on Nancy Pelosi’s web site:U.S. should pay for Canadian military medical care

Alert readers will note that the person in uniform on the left is a Canadian soldier. And these people want to make decisions on our behalf. Either Pelosi and her staff are suggesting that Canadian health care in the military is the model we should be following (we already have the same type of health care for military personnel), or they are clueless about the military of either country. I vote for the latter. Pelosi and her staff don’t even know the difference between a U.S. and Canadian soldier.

Hat tip: Canis Libertas

Popularity: 16% [?]

Posted 22 June 2007 † Trevor § Government § Apropos Rumination § Banality of Bureaucracy § United States ‡ Comments (3)

Maybe it is time to read ‘The Satanic Verses’

I’ve long known about Salman Rushdie, the Indian author who has lived under an Islamic death sentence since 1989. Maybe it is time for me to add The Satanic Verses or one of his other novels to my reading list.

He is the victim of renewed ire from the Muslim world because the British Empire recently knighted him for his contribution to literature.

Rushdie went into hiding after Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini issued a 1989 religious edict ordering Muslims to kill Rushdie because his novel allegedly insulted Islam. Iran’s government said in 1998 it could not retract the fatwa.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry summoned the British ambassador to complain over Britain’s decision to grant a knighthood to Rushdie.

In New York, British Home Secretary John Reid said Britain will not apologise for its decision to bestow a knighthood on Rushdie.

“We have a set of values that accrues people honours for their contribution to literature even when they don’t agree with our point of view,” Reid said in response to a question after a speech to US business leaders.

In Malaysia people protested outside the British embassy following news of the knighthood.

Chanting “Destroy Salman Rushdie” and “Destroy Britain”, some 30 members of the opposition Parti Islam se-Malaysia urged Britain to withdraw the honour or risk the consequences.

“This has tainted the whole knighthood, the whole hall of fame of the British system,” party treasurer Hatta Ramli said.

The knighthood to Rushdie has also triggered massive protests in Pakistan where hundreds of people protested in the central city of Multan.

There, an effigy of Rushdie and a British flag were burned for the third day running. Effigies of Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II were burned earlier in the week.

Traders, religious students and members of a religious party held separate demonstrations throughout the week.

Anytime someone is threatened with death because they are a vocal dissenter, especially a non-violent vocal dissenter, I feel I should probably find out why there is such a furor. Salman Rushdie must be saying something that makes sense.

Popularity: 15% [?]

Posted 21 June 2007 † Trevor § Global § Current Events ‡ Comments (5)