Reading the President’s “sweeping” new “gun regulations”, it occurs to me – I was right.

The “war on guns” is one of this electoral season’s candidates for “war on women”; it’s an attempt to get Democrat, especially Black, voters, to come out for an election where there won’t be The First Black President Ever sending tingles up peoples’ legs, and vote for a geriatric white woman.   If Obama, or any president, were serious about violence, he’d send the National Guard into Saint Louis, Baltimore, Oakland, Newark, Camden…

It is, like everything Obama has ever done, a lot of big talk combined with a few little nuggets of unconstitutional abuse of power.

With the help of our friends at the Minnesota Gun Owners Civil Rights Alliance, rather than read the bill, let’s just sort it out.

You’re Being Redundant, Again, All Over:  Restating things that are currently law, including:

• Background checks
• Calling for enforcement of existing federal gun laws; Obama’s prosecutions are down 30% over Dubya’s.
• Ensuring dealers notify law enforcement if guns are stolen.
• Denying the mentally ill the right to keep and bear arms, with due process, (although the Administration seems to want to remove due process from this)
• Asking communities to keep guns out of the wrong hands.  Paging Rahm Emanuel.  And Eric Holder.
• Ensuring dealers have federal licenses, and have criminal penalties for not complying with the rules
• Watching for large numbers of sales, in conjunction with other factors. This already happens.
• Ensure criminal data is forwarded to the NICS database from the states completely and promptly.

Talk, Talk, Talk:  Stuff the President can ask for, but needs Congressional approval and, most of all, funding:

• Funding for 200 new Keystone Kops.  Er, ATF agents.  Tomayto, tomahto.
• 500 million in mental health funding.
• Mining Social Security information for info about mental health.
• Funding for “Smart guns”.  Good luck with that.

Peace And Joy Through Memos:  Calls for sternly worded memos and announcements, including:

• Demanding the AGO write a letter to the states about coughing up mental health info
• Telling the AGO to write a memo about domestic violence

Even A Blind Squirrel Can Find A Nut:  There are a few things buried in the proposal that aren’t actually stupid:

• Overhauling the background check system to make it open 24/7, and cut down on bottlenecks.  This is especially important if Obama insists on constantly launching waves of panic-buying.
• Investigating illegal online trafficking in guns.  Presumably excluding Eric Holder.  But still.
• Defining responsibility for reporting thefts at the manufacturer/carrier/dealer level (might be good, provided it doesn’t merely serve as the basis for endless litigation)
• Help for the mentally-ill.

Have You Really Thought About This?:  The President mentioons “removing the stigma” of mental illness – in the same metaphorical breath as he demands taking guns from people at slightest sign of it.

Would You Like Hobnails With Those Boots?:  These are proposals that are completely unacceptable, and pretty much stupid to boot, including:

• If the President really is trying to put firearms trusts in the hands of politicized local cops, this will be a big problem.
• Denying guns to people whose finances are being a managed by Social Security, for no other reason.

You First, Barry:  Things like:

• “Smart” guns”.  I’ll use them, Mr. President, when your Secret Service detail does.
  • Not to mention the police, to say nothing of the military.  They won’t.  Either will I.

While the Democrats love to prate and gabble about “gun violence”, they stay rigorously clear on the one “gun safety” measure that has a proven record of, y’know, reducing gun crime – prosecuting criminals who use guns.

The federal legal framework for going after gun criminals has existed for a long, long time – but different administrations, shall we say, approach the issue with different degrees of vigor:

Hinderaker:

The Clinton administration talked a good game on guns–remember the “assault weapons” ban?–but when it came to actual law enforcement, its record was horrendous. (Someone should mention that to Hillary.) Things shaped up considerably under the Bush administration, which achieved record levels of gun-crime-related convictions. But when Barack Obama became president and Eric Holder took over the Department of Justice, enforcement went straight downhill. Over the course of the Obama administration, it has only gotten worse. Today, gun convictions are down 35% since the Bush administration peak in 2005 and 2006. Obama and Holder had an agenda, but it wasn’t law enforcement.

So on guns, as with regard to most other issues, Barack Obama is all talk. He isn’t interested in solving problems, he is just seeking political advantage. His corrupt administration can’t end soon enough.

Unless, of course, it’s replaced by something worse.

…on John Hinderaker’s new career move.

To: Governor Dayton

From: Mitch Berg, Irascible Peasant

Re:  Tomorrow’s Faux Pas, Today.

Governor,

You should be getting used to the fact that your most “progressive” left of center advisers routinely lead you into policy statements that sound disconnected from reality. I say “should” be learning it; clearly you have not yet. Because your latest announcement on second amendment issues – “no-fly, no buy”, barring people who are on the federal “no fly” list from buying guns – is quite clearly an attempt to ramp up the left’s turnout in the upcoming election.

But – as we on the right, and among the second amendment Human Rights movement told you – it’s unconstitutional.

You should be getting used to this by now; they’re wrong, we are right. Every time. No exceptions.

Are we detecting a pattern, yet?

That is all.

(PS:  But by all means, keep going.  The right needs all the rallying points it can get).

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Good article on the War on Cash, but I suspect the most important motive is if Liberals can ban cash, they can control what you buy and when you buy it.  Want to buy bullets or donate to the Republicans?  Sorry, cash card not working.

Once the government gets that control, it never ends.  Trying to buy Twinkies at Cub?  Sorry, the items you scanned to purchase are not on the approved list maintained by your Health Care Provider and forwarded to the IRS to demonstrate compliance with Obamacare.  So we’ve automatically deducted $10 from your bank account as a surtax to off-set your Attempted Weight-Loss Sabotage.

Joe Doakes

Too bad we The People can’t give government a debit card.

Yet another pedestrian has been killed along the Rail Of Death Line from downtown Minneapolis to the Airport.  I’ll urge prayers for his family and the people in his life.

Map borrowed from “iridetheharlemline.com”. I do not ride the Harlem line, but it’s one of the better maps of the TC rail system I’ve seen…

This follows on two more train-pedestrian accidents on the Rail of Death Line, as well as the Gore Line through Saint Paul, last month.

If It Saves Even One Life…:That brings death totals to:

• Twelve dead on the Blue Line of Death in a little over ten years.
• Three dead on the Gore Line in about 18 months.
• And – I didn’t know this at all – four deaths on the Northstar.

That’s more deaths than in every spree killing in Minnesota history – and we’re paying for it.

Minnesota doesn’t need any spree killers, Kim Norton.  We have our transit system.

Shhh.  You didn’t get it from me.

Oh, why the cloak and dagger?  Because apparently I’m revealing a state secret.  Or at least that’s how the media’s treatment of the story feels.

It’s the story of the US homicide rate over the past 120 years.  And it elaborates on the bit I wrote about here a while back – that while murder rates are down over the past twenty years by something like 50%, a rate that the media would have hailed as a miracle if it’d applied to drunk driving or cancer deaths.

But 56% of the American people had no idea – because the media made sure they had no idea.

And if they don’t know about the past twenty years, you can bet the last hundred are as opaque as the pit of Michael Moore’s soul.

The graph is based on FBI stats from 1900 to 1991 and from 1992 to 2011. 

But what else does it track with?

Why, gun control efforts, naturally:

The source of this graph is opaque (which is why I ran the first graph at the top), but the numbers generally jibe with the FBI figures.

The first major post-civil-war gun control measures – mostly aimed at immigrants and blacks – were a little over 100 years ago.  Murder spiked during our first big experiment with prohibition.  A second major surge began around the time of the 1968 “Gun Control Act” and the “War on Drugs”, and tailed off as not only the ownership but the carry of guns by civilians became ubiquitous outside “progressive” circles and Demcrat-run crime cesspools.

Correlation doesn’t equal causation, of course.

But that’s a lot of correlation.

A lot.  Of.  Correlation.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Islam teaches it’s okay to lie to support of the spread of Islam.  A lie told in support of The Objective is not wrong.

 

Liberal reporter, activists and politicians believe a lie told in support of The Narrative is not wrong; see, for example, Dan Rather’s “Fake But Accurate” report, Mattress Girl’s fake rape campaign, Black hate crime hoaxes, and data tortured to support Global Warming or the notion that Barack Obama’s economy is robust.

 

In Minnesota, cops are taught to lie to suspects, to gain a confession.  A lie told in pursuit of justice is not wrong.

 

No wonder conservatives say America is facing a “crisis of legitimacy;” the people empowered to run this country are not trustworthy.  Conversely, Liberals, Muslims and cops can’t trust us, because they assume “normal” for us is the same as “normal” for them: lying all the time.

 

What brought America to this point?  Abandonment of a nationally shared Judeo-Christian moral code.

 

How do we fix it?

 

Joe Doakes

Kim Norton soundbites via the MN Gun Owners Caucus.

Here’s the article on one-party cities I referenced.

And of course, here’s our song list for the show.

Today, the Northern Alliance Radio Network – America’s first grass-roots talk radio show – is on the air! I will be on live from 1-3PM today!

Today on the show, I’ll be talking about the new year, the old year, the presidential race, Obama’s executive orders on guns,

Don’t forget – King Banaian is on from 9-11AM on AM1570, and Brad Carlson has “The Closer” edition of the NARN Sundays from 1-3PM.

So tune in the Northern Alliance! You have so many options:

• AM1280 in the Metro
• Streaming at AM1280’s Website
• Streaming on IHeartRadio
• On Twitter (the Volume 2 show will use hashtag #narn2)
• Via my UStream video and chat channel.
• Send us an SMS text message – 651-243-0390
• Good ol’ telephone – 651-289-4488
• Podcasts are now available; for my show and for Brad’s
• And make sure you fan us on our new Facebook page!

Join us!

I’m told it’s a tradition now. I can live with that.

Busted last week for using public data to try to shame constituents who disagreed with her participation in a Black Lives Matter protest at the Mall of America, Alondra Cano is sorry…

…that all you dissenters are such racisssss rubes:

“It was not my intent to put anyone in danger by any means, and this was not an attempt to punish anyone,” Cano said. “But it was actually an attempt to have a public conversation about the importance of Black Lives Matter and how the public should continue to have that debate publicly without fear of having to hide your thoughts behind some rationale that doesn’t make sense.”

“…behind some rationale that doesn’t make sense”.  Hmmm.

Of course, her “public conversation” talk would seem less bullshit-y if Cano actually had a conversation.  She didn’t. She took the four dissenters contact information from a city server, and published it on Twitter – which is sort of like “having a conversation” with someone after you’ve hung up the phone with them.

And her “conversation” – like Heather Martens and Kim Norton before her – is, of course, a monologue; everyone who criticized her on Twitter got blocked; she responded to no media requests.

Which is an interesting response for someone who claims “”I did it out of a belief in government transparency and public discourse”;  intimidate dissenters, ignore questioners, hide from reporters.

Joe Doakes, or someone claiming to be Joe Doakes (you’ll see what I mean) emails:

I called the City of St. Paul’s Forestry department to ask them to look at my boulevard tree to see it if needed trimming.

They came promptly, trimmed the branches overhanging my house, raked up the twigs and hauled the mess away.  I admit it: I was pleasantly surprised so I wrote to thank them and copied my city council rep.

There’s an awful lot the City does wrong, but when they do something right, they deserve the credit.  Good job, guys.

Joe Doakes

There’s little opportunity for graft, and no political empires to be built, in city forestry – so I suspect that the city’s foresters are top-notch employees who deserve a hearty “kudos”.

Las Vegas restaurant turns limones into limonade; they turned surveillance footage of a recent break-in into one of the funniest commercials ever:

And now I’m hungry.

Over the holiday week, this story – “Here’s Why You Shouldn’t Lie To Your Kids About Santa“, by Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry – was making the rounds on social media.

According to Mr. Gobry – who, in common with a distressing number of people who lecture parents about how they should raise their kids, let the record show, has no children actually has a kid, will miracles never cease – says it’s all wrong because our rationalizations are all incorrect.

To wit:

The argument goes something like this: lying to children is bad.

Gobry thinks that the Santa story is “lying to children”.  We’ll come back to that.

It’s not just a story. Parents usually defend the Santa lie by saying that it’s just a story, like Snow White. But there’s a difference between fiction and lying.

And there’s a difference between both and “shared cultural traditions”.

It doesn’t do anything for their imagination. This is usually the next line of defense: tricking kids about Santa somehow helps their imagination. But that makes no sense. You’re not asking kids to actually imagine anything, you’re feeding them beliefs.

So what?  We “feed” our kids all sorts of beliefs; “Because I’m daddy, that’s why”, “don’t trust strangers unless they’re in  uniform”, “Jesus loves me, this I know…”, and of course, “honesty is the best policy”.  We look forward to the day when they think critically – but that’s down the road a bit, and until then, we need them to know some things  just because.

Who cares if it’s tradition? For a very long time, tradition included such smart education principles as “spare the rod, spoil the child.” Now our society doesn’t believe in beating children — and that’s a good thing.

Right.  Santa’s just like that.

Families that celebrate Christmas should have Christmas traditions! …You don’t need to invent a supersonic fat man to show your children you love them.

And if Gobry thinks that’s why we still have “Santa”, then this is going to be a difficult conversation indeed.

It’s bad tactics. From the parents’ purely self-interested perspective, the Santa lie is just dumb parenting. First of all, it erodes your trust capital. Once your kids discover that you were actively lying to them for several years, how much do you think they’ll trust you?

To be honest, this is the part where I figured out Gobry has never raised a kid in his life.  He honestly thinks kids, after about 12, need any single reason not to trust their parents?  And that they won’t seek out other reasons like a Dave Matthews fan looking for Cheetos?

The Santa lie is also used to control children: if you’re “good” you’ll get presents, and if you’re “naughty” you won’t. But really, has that ever worked?

Any parent who uses “Santa Claus” seriously, with a straight face, to “control” childrens’ behavior, as opposed to “a fun excuse to share a fun moment with the family once a year”, and maybe “as a shared inside joke with other parents”, is heading for much bigger problems.

It’s just morally wrong. Sorry to repeat ourselves, but lying to children is just wrong. It is. Just because someone is gullible is no reason to lie to them, and children have a right not to be deceived like everyone else. You can make a case for some “white lies” but the Santa lie is not a white lie. It’s just a lie.

Oh, it’s not a white lie.  Glad you cleared that up for all of us, Mr. Gobry.

Actually, I think not having Santa in their lives is a moral wrong.  Yes, eventually they, like most kids, figure out that their parents have been pulling a fast one on them.  The smart kids figure out “my parents spent all those years getting up in the wee hours to put this little hint of magic in my life, because they wanted to see me be happy.  That’s odd – but the odd bit of happiness was sure cool!”   The not-so-smart ones get neurotic about Christmas and become NPR listeners – but then, if “Santa” doesn’t do it, something will.  And the real dumb ones never quite lose the idea that some beneficent supernatural being brings them stuff for nothing, and go on to support Bernie Sanders.

And why does the “always be honest with kids” thing stop with Santa Claus?  Why are we not telling our kids “There’s a 50-50 chance Mommy and I will wind up divorced”, or “Remember, Sophia, that a meteor could wipe us all out someday!”, or “You will very likely die of a chronic, wasting disease, in a nursing home, hooked up to tubes”?

I mean, is complete, utter, academically-transparent honesty with kids the best policy, or not?

And even if it’s a lie, then learning to deal with cognitive dissonance without falling apart is one of life’s great lessons.  If a kid falls apart because “my parents lied to me about Santa Claus”?  Then the kid isn’t “falling apart because of Santa Claus”, if you catch my drift.

And, frankly, I think dealing, eventually, with the fact that Santa might not be real is a great lesson for kids; having to come to terms with the fact that not all of life is black and white, and that we all have to wrestle with cognitive dissonance, is one of life’s most vital lessons.  I pity the poor kid who doesn’t figure this out until they get rejected by a college or turned down for a promotion or dumped by a boyfriend.

It’s selfish. That’s the biggest reason. Despite their protestations to the contrary, parents don’t do it for the benefit of the children. They do it for their own benefit. When pressed and rebutted, parents will eventually blurt out “But they’re so cute when they believe in Santa!” That’s the real reason, isn’t it?

Yep.  It’s a reason.   Not the reason, but one of them.

So what?

Mr. Gobry doesn’t know it, and I suspect never will, but when you have a kid, you’re signing up for eighteen years of joy – and eighteen years of sleepless nights, vacation days spent with sick kids, evenings in urgent care, birthday parties, out-of-tune concerts, looking through hair for nits, puberty, tension, “tough love”, shouting matches, junior high rebellion, head-butting and exhaustion.

You’re damn right I took a moment once a year to enjoy one of the short list of pure unadulterated episodes of crystalline happiness that the whole experience offers.  And f**k you, Pascal-Emanuel “childfree fop” Gobry, for thinking you know better.

UPDATE:  Sure enough, PEG has a kid.

Doesn’t change my point.

How many police killings are a combination of bad shooting habits (most usually violation of absolute imperative to “keep your finger off the trigger until you’re ready to shoot”) and a gun that is designed to shoot, with absolute reliability, after a short trigger stroke?

It’s a good question.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Some of us on the Right obsess about legal theories, which makes normal people’s eyes glaze over.  But the legal theories courts use make a difference not only in the present case, but in future cases where the theory is accepted as legitimate precedent.

A job requirement which appears innocent on its face, but which disqualifies an unusually high percentage of certain historically disadvantaged groups, is said to have a “disparate impact” and therefore constitutes unconstitutional discrimination.

For example, the job requirement that firefighters must be able to drag a heavy weight a long distance eliminates most female applicants.  In order for the job requirement to remain, the employer must show that dragging a heavy weight a long distance is a legitimate job requirement (it is, as you know if you’ve ever tried to handle a charged fire hose, much less lug an unconscious victim out the window of a burning building, down a ladder and across a lawn to safety).  There is no “team lift” on a ladder – you carry the victim or leave him to die.

Plaintiff’s lawyers love the legal theory of “disparate impact” because it doesn’t require proof intent to discriminate, only proof of unequal results.  The theory has been stretched to apply to housing and lending and now, to school discipline.

Black parents complained that Black students are suspended at higher rates than other students (see chart below).  They claim the school’s discipline policies have a disparate impact on Black students and therefore constitute racial discrimination.

In response, St. Paul schools seem to have adopted a policy that Black students would not be suspended, even for repeated attacks on other students, faculty and staff.  Violent students quickly got the message: thugs won’t be punished, violence exploded, there is no discipline.

Recently, a St. Paul teacher was attacked by a student and suffered a concussion.  The teacher is suing the school for adopting policies that create an unsafe workplace and I wouldn’t be surprised if the teacher’s union strikes for workplace safety.

This is what happens when liberal judges let liberal plaintiffs impose liberal social values on society through litigation instead of education to pass legislation.  A theory that gave like-minded Liberals in the courtroom an excuse to impose social engineering is wreaking havoc in a classroom and nobody is accountable for the foreseeable consequences that are causing real damage to the next generation’s educational success.  Any parent that can afford to flee the system, has.  The only children left are those with nowhere to go and no way out.

For shame.

Joe Doakes

And if you still have your kids in that plague-ship of a district, I gotta ask why.

A Minnesota court rules the police need a warrant to get a urine test after a DUI arrest.Slowly, Minnesota’s “implied consent” law – a statute so sweeping, draconian and intrusive that Vladimir Lenin jumped from his grave and yelled “dial it back a little, Minnesota!” is flaking away.

Good riddance.

Lemmy Kilmister of Mötörhead dead at 70.

Lemmy was lead vocalist, bassist, principal songwriter and the founding, and the only constant member of Motörhead since the band’s formation in 1975. To date, Motörhead have released twenty studio albums and achieved 30 million in sales worldwide. Their last record, Bad Magic, was released in August 2015.

Over forty years, Kilmister was simultaneously one of the gödfathers of speed metäl and pünk.

Motörhead saw far more commercial success in the UK, though they achieved a cult status in the US. Their ferocious hard-rock style rejuvenated the metal genre in the late 1970s and inspired everyone from Metallica to Guns N’ Roses to Dave Grohl. Albums such as Ace of Spades, Orgasmatron, and Rock N’ Roll were critically lauded, though ironically the band’s only Grammy Award came via a cover of Metallica’s “Whiplash”, which they recorded for a tribute CD.

They were cult figures in the US – but I remember going to Europe in 1983.  And while that was a great year for a lot of bands – U2, Little Steven, Duran Duran, Madness, Big Country and many others – what band did I see in the most graffiti, all over Europe, from Scotland to Switzerland?

Yep.  Mötörhead.

Kilmister bragged of drinking a bottle of whiskey a day for the past forty years, and was a vocal advocate of amphetamines.  As such, he makes Keith Richard look like Pat Boone.

And that’s the real kick in the teeth.  Rock stars – in the romance of the genre – aren’t supposed to die of cancer at 70.  They’re supposed to go out in a blaze of alcohol-and-drug-fueled glory at 29.

We’ll always have “Ace of Spades”.

RI whatever passes for P in your worldview, Lemmy.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

People who enter the United States without proper documentation (sneaking across the border from Mexico, for example) can apply for affirmative political asylum.  Asylum decisions are made by immigration court but the system is swamped so applicants are given a notice to appear for a future court date and released.  While the court case is pending, they can live anywhere in the country and can work while waiting for a decision.  If they miss their court date, or if they appear but fail to persuade the court, they are denied asylum and an order is issued to remove them from the country.  The Obama administration reports these people as “deported” and claims this proves the administration has been vigorously enforcing the immigration law.

But many who were ordered to leave do not leave, maybe as many as a million.  Failure to obey the court order is a crime: they are now truly illegal aliens.  They hide in sanctuary cities, where law enforcement is forbidden to check their status.  They work illegally, shop at food shelves, feed their children at public school – three meals a day in some districts – and receive medical care at emergency rooms. They are waiting for the next wave of amnesty.

After months of pounding by Donald Trump, President Obama now proposes to enforce those court orders by finding and removing the people who have exhausted their due process rights and shouldn’t be in the United States any more.  Democrats are aghast.

My question: what is the Democrat vision of America?  If we refuse to exercise control over our borders, if we reject the immigration court’s decision, if we accept any immigrant at any time for any reason . . . what makes us America anymore?

Joe Doakes

They’re trying to obscure that as fast as they can.

Listen to, or read, the left talking about gun control for a while.  (It’s OK if you don’t want to; I do it so you don’t have to).

You eventually run into three basic tracks of thought:

1. The Stupid Track:  Best summed up by lefty commenter and triteness merchant John Fugelsang’s line “I don’t have a gun because I’m satisfied with my penis size”.  Which is typical of this crowd; we’re trying to save lives, lower crime and secure liberty, and they’re focused on genitals.  Conversation is difficult, and pointless, and of dubious utility with people this smugly (and unjustifiably), er, self-satisfied.
2. The Thundering Herd:  The vast swarm of (often) well-meaning people whose only frame of reference is what they hear in the media; “we’ve got to dooooooo something”, “gun show loopholes”, “355 mass murders so far this year” and other chanting points.  Many are otherwise intelligent people who’ve been swayed by the “Lie First, Lie Always” campaign of emotional manipulation that gun controllers have been running for decades.
3. The Root Causers:  The are the ones that swerve into Deep Thoughts.  Their latest?  Rumination about this nation’s “Gun Culture”.

Let’s talk about #III for a bit.

Culcha:  The notion that America has a “Gun Culture” – a part of society that embraces guns on a social, intellectual and philosophical level – isn’t an earth-shaking one.  A significant part of this country…:

• Believes the Second Amendment recognizes a right granted us by our creator, whatever that is
• Owns guns, and treats them like utilitarian tools
• Makes shooting sports – hunting, target shooting, self-defense training – a part of their lives, shooting for relaxation, fun, exercise,  mental stimulation, food, and personal and family security
• Passes these beliefs down through the generations, making shooting sports and self-defense a part of family life
• Believes that guns in the hands of the law-abiding are an awesome responsibility, with horrendous consequences for misuse, but immense benefits for legal, proper use
• Passionately defends the right to keep and bear arms, supporting gun rights groups with their time, money and political interest in numbers that many other grassroots movements would love to be able to harness.

The “gun culture” is stereotypically a rural trait – but it extends throughout America; there are advocates and activists, as well as passive members, in the largest, most blue-choked cities.

Politically, the “gun culture” is associated with conservatives – and that’s largely true.  But there are plenty who don’t care in the least about politics – and more importantly, enough on the left, especially in politically schizoid states like Minnesota who vote DFL but who support not only the shooting sports, but the armed lifestyle, to make the Minnesota Legislature, split down the middle on partisan lines, a fairly to strongly pro-2nd-Amendment body, especially outside the hapless Twin Cities DFL contingent.

And while decades ago the “gun culture” was associated with the America’s blue collar class, today it crosses most social and class lines, except the academic class and the exceptionally wealthy (who can afford all the security they want).  At its best, it’s best described by this quote from Tolkein:

“I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Two Towers

So the “gun culture” is relatively easy to identify.  It’s big, it’s passionate about its politics, and it’s been emboldened – some might say “rendered complacent” – by twenty years of relative political success.   It’s support for the Second Amendment is a mile wide and a mile deep.  It is an electoral buzz saw that has cut many a gun-grabbing politician (outside of America’s crime-choked urban cores) off at the knees.   Naturally, it’s also a common boogeyman for the left.

But what about its counterpart?

Objectors Without Object:   There is most definitely an “anti-gun culture” in the US.  It’s no more socially homogenous than the “gun culture”; it includes Hollywood titans, suburban grandées, inner-city political activists, and a whole lot of people in between.

But like the “gun culture”, they share some traits.

They are more or less illiterate about the Second Amendment:  some believe the Amendment is irrelevant; others, that it’s archaic (the whole “the founding fathers never envisioned AK47s” bit), some just don’t care.

Guns and their use are more or less foreign to them.  Don’t get me wrong; shooters can get pretty pedantic about gun terms and parts.  On the other hand, it’s hard to have a literate, much less productive, conversation with people who mix up “semi-automatic” with “machine gun”, or who think a thirty-round magazine makes a firearm uniquely deadly.

But Jonah Goldberg, in an excellent piece in National Review, notes that while part of America regards guns as just another tool, to another part they are utterly foreign and associated only with crime.

And too many of them take that fear out in the form of smug condescension:

The Second Amendment, Washington Post columnist Gene Weingarten wrote, is “the refuge of bumpkins and yeehaws who like to think they are protecting their homes against imagined swarthy marauders desperate to steal their flea-bitten sofas from their rotting front porches.”

Almost but not quite too stupid for Minnesota Progressive Project.

Many are just afraid of guns.  Being afraid of guns isn’t especially irrational; they are intimidating machines.  The irrationality comes from wanting to take them away from everyone else.

For the most part, they believe that guns are too dangerous for regular people – until those same people strap on a badge or a uniform, and become infallible.

They largely believe, deep down inside, when push comes to shove, that citizens shouldn’t have guns, and that government legitimately claims a monopoly on the use of force.

There’s one other key difference; beyond a few hyperactivists, it’s just not that big a deal to most anti-gunners.  They may oppose guns of one kind or another, to one degree or another.  They may be scared of…something, and advocate some regulation or another than one of another “leader” has proposed.  But for most of them, their support for restrictions on the law-abiding is a mile wide and an inch deep.

Ill-Informed Hysterics With Short Attention Spans:  So this combination of dilatory, poorly-read passion, slopped on top of intense fear spread by social convention (not a whole lot different than racial bigotry, when you take it apart) has yielded a small, badly-informed, but intensely powerful political force that exerts a disproportionate, universally deleterious effect on American politics.

And as it did when large minorities of American society smoked cigarettes, hated black people or treated women like chattel, it’s going to take a huge education program and changes in Americans’ attitudes to send our intractable anti-gun culture where it belongs – history’s scrap heap, along with the Klan and the glass ceiling.

Mark Zuckerberg’s celebrated hundred million dollar gift to the Newark NJ schools worked about as well as any huge influx of more-mundane taxpayer cash ever did; not at all.

Zuckerberg’s donation was earmarked toward merit pay, charter schools, and systemic reforms.  The charter schools worked well, but the city’s system for putting kids into charters was a goat rodeo.  The reform money got swallowed up by consulting fees.  And as to merit pay and teacher accountability?

Instead, the opposite occurred. Chris Cerf, the New Jersey commissioner of education at the time, worked with the Legislature and was able to negotiate some new accountability measures in teacher contracts.

But the teachers’ union only agreed upon those measures if the seniority protections remained intact.

Which meant that the teacher accountability money went to reinforce…unaccountability with teachers.

Reforming the public system, under its current politicized leadership, is like trying to argue with a blizzard.

Minneapolis ninth Ward representative Alondra Cano likes to paint herself as the champion of the underprivileged…

…while availing herself of that most excellent privilege, awesome vacations on the taxpayers dime.

(And that other awesome liberal privilege, using the government she works for to strong-arm those she disagrees with, all the while claiming to be the victim).

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Students at Oberlin College are upset at the food in the cafeteria.  Not because it sucks – it’s institutional food, suckage is a given – but because the recipes aren’t as good as Mom’s and that makes the college guilty of a ghastly infliction of culinary cultural appropriation. 

 I wonder if the bad food is helping them keep off the Freshman Fifteen, or if they’re like the Marine who wrote a letter to his mother: “The food here is awful, and such small portions!”

 I note the contrast between the student’s petition and my Dad’s favorite tune from the Army:

 The sushi at the college

They say is mighty keen

The fish is hard, the rice is mush

And tastes like kerosene

 Oh, I don’t want no more of college life

Gee, but I want to go,

But Mom won’t let me go,

Gee, but I want to go, home.

 Soldiers faced bad food with humor; students pretend bad food justifies moral outrage, I scoff at whining students as crybabies.  God help them the first time they tell their spouses “It’s not as good as my Mom’s cooking.”

 Joe Doakes

“Mothers” are a form of cultural appropriation.  Trigger warning.  Check your privilege.

Check and mate.

Sunday morning services had already concluded by the time the small British torpedo boats the HMS Mimi and HMS Toutou had left their port on the massive freshwater Lake Tanganyika in the Belgian Congo.  Having changed out of his Naval dress uniform and back into his usual garb of short-sleeves and a skirt (which he wrongly thought was a kilt), British Captain Geoffrey Spicer-Simson began hunting his intended prey – the German gunboat Kigani.

But the Kigani had been on its way to intercept them, and was surprised to see the small British “fleet” racing out to meet them.  In 11 quick minutes, the Kigani had been critically damaged; a shell having ripped through her deck, killing the gunboat’s captain and petty officers.  The Kigani withdrew her colors – a sign she intended to surrender.  Not content with his prey’s brief battle, Simson ordered the small wooden Mimi to ram the metal gunboat.  The Mimi‘s bow was significantly dented; Simson’s ego definitely was not.

Returning to shore, Simson, wearing a German officer’s ring he stole from one of the dead, proclaimed himself the “Horatio Nelson of Africa.”  The day after Christmas in 1915, the battle for Lake Tanganyika – the second largest freshwater lake in the world by volume – was almost over.  The battle for historic acclaim from one of the most eccentric (and incompetent) British officers in the Great War had begun.

—

Graf von Gotzen’s crew loads her 4-inch deck gun.  The weapon dwarfed anything the British or Belgians could wield in East Africa

Despite some of the first shots in the Great War being fired in Africa, the Entente had made little progress in removing the German threat to their colonial possessions.  In German East Africa, Lt. Paul Emil von Lettow-Vorbeck, who would soon become famous for his prolonged defense, had gone on the offensive, attacking and defeating the Indian Expeditionary Force sent to subdue him with an army eight times Lettow-Vorbeck’s size.   Read the rest of this entry »