blogs

Amazing

Posted on by Caleb

If it weren’t for the more kindly written comments, I can safely say I never would have come around to the conclusion that I was originally wrong about gun control.

That is posted in this entry on Progressive U, which was a follow up to an original piece wherein the author initially supported gun control.  The author admits to having her mind changed on the gun control issue, which is a solid bravo zulu to the people who wrote the calm, intelligent comments on her original article.

The other valuable lesson to take away from this is that while a lot of us (myself included) are often quite…passionate about this issue, we can do more harm than good some times when we let our emotions and passion take control.  This person at Progressive U is a perfect example of both how we can win hearts and minds (through calm, well reasoned logic) as well as how we often endanger our own cause with passion and hot-headed statements.

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Explain this one to me

Posted on by Caleb

So, you work for McDonalds. Someone purporting to be a police officer calls your MickeyD’s and says that he’s investigating a claim of a stolen purse. Over the phone, he orders you to remove your clothes AND YOU DO.

So, you of course sue McDonalds for 200 million.

Now, here’s what I don’t get. Sure, the girl’s manager probably should have uh, stopped the search, and realized that the guy on the phone was a crank caller, but seriously, what kind of idiot do you have to be to consent to a strip search OVER THE PHONE?

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The Voldemort Amendment

Posted on by Caleb

The new name for the 2nd Amendment – I like it.

This term, the Supreme Court may finally take up the Voldemort Amendment, the part of the Bill of Rights that shall not be named by liberals. For more than 200 years, progressives and polite people have avoided acknowledging that following the rights of free speech, free exercise of religion and free assembly, there is “the right of the people to keep and bear arms.”

Now, there are some “progressives” that acknowledge the 2nd Amendment, but I will agree that they are not in the majority. The essay that I’ve linked to in McPaper USA Today is actually an excellent argument for the 2nd Amendment, and I strongly encourage you to go over there and read it.

Principle is a terrible thing, because it demands not what is convenient but what is right. It is hard to read the Second Amendment and not honestly conclude that the Framers intended gun ownership to be an individual right.

Honestly, go read the rest of the entry.  There are few things I enjoy more than reading about how a progressive/liberal/whatever has really seen the light.

blogs/gun control

Misguided Enthusiasm

Posted on by Caleb

I could have alternately titled this “David vs. Goliath”, with the proviso that even though I represent David in terms of blog size, I will probably lose exchange.  You see, I stumbled across this entry on the juggernaut that is Pajamas Media, and while I appreciate his enthusiasm in recommending that the NRA take action; the entry itself contains a lot of incorrect information.   My concern about that again is that PJ-Media has a lot of exposure, and I don’t want to see misinformation of any type being spread.

The author recommends a gun ban based on the text of the Second Amendment, specifically where it says “the right of the people“.  He goes on to explain in the following excerpt.

By “people” is meant the citizens of these United States and here is the crux of my gun ban:

“No person who is not a citizen of the United States or is an agent, or member of an organization that is an agent, of a foreign power or potentate or is reasonably believed to be engaged or about to engage in international terrorist or international narcotics activities, shall have the right to possess, transfer, keep, hold, or train with any form make and model of firearm.”

That is a gun ban I think America needs – a ban on illegal immigrants, terrorists or insurgents owning guns.

The problem with that right there is that it is already illegal for illegal immigrants, terrorists, and enemies of the US to own firearms.  One of the questions on the federal form that every gun purchaser has to fill out is “are you an alien illegally in the US”; and if you check “yes”, then it disqualifies you from owning a firearm.  Same goes for known members of terrorist organizations – which is different from the terrorist watch list.  A known member of a criminal organization, whether it’s a narcotics trafficking organization or a street gang is already prohibited by federal law from owning firearms.

This ban would make it unlawful for illegal aliens to own, possess, hold or transfer a firearm. That would mean that the Virginia Tech shooter, Cho Seung-Hui, who massacred 32 students, would not have been legally able to purchase the firearms he used in those killings.

That’s actually just not true.  Like I’ve said, it’s already illegal to for people not in the country legally to own firearms, but it’s a documented fact that the Va Tech shooter had been fully naturalized into the country, making him legal to posses firearms from a naturalization standpoint.  While he should have been disqualified from owning guns due to his mental health background, that issue is being addressed with the current legislation HR 2640.

It would mean that Jose Carranza the illegal immigrant from Peru and two accomplices, who executed the four college students in Newark, N.J., already committed a crime by the mere possession of firearms. They would not have legally been allowed to buy their guns.

They did commit a crime by possessing their guns.  I’m going to keep beating this drum for a while, but it is already illegal for illegal immigrants to posses firearms.  Jose Carranza is a murderous piece of human filth, and had slipped through the cracks in our shoddy immigration system repeatedly.  It was illegal for him to own guns both as an illegal immigrant, as well as a know member of a criminal organization.

The Second Amendment to the Constitution exists to defend Americans and American civilization and our very Constitution against threats foreign and domestic. It should never be construed to allow illegal aliens to be armed to murder our citizens or to arm transnational criminal and terrorist organizations and foreign insurgencies like the Muslim Brotherhood.

It doesn’t.  To assume that terrorists, foreign nationals, and illegal immigrants are somehow allowed to own firearms in the US demonstrates a gross misunderstanding of federal law as related to firearms ownership.

We don’t need the ban suggested by Mr. Myers – because it’s already in place.  All the people that he would like to see barred from purchasing firearms cannot legally purchase firearms.  To place a “ban” on that would only serve to create a completely redundant federal law.

I don’t want terrorists, or illegal immigrants, or known members of criminal organizations to have access to firearms any more than Mr. Myers does.  But I do recognize that since it is already illegal, the solution doesn’t lie in banning something that is already illegal, but rather in aggressive enforcement of our existing immigration laws, as well as our laws against narcotics trafficking, terrorism, etc.

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Word of the now

Posted on by Caleb

The Word of the Now for today is “gem”.

To find a definition of gem, you need look no further than Josh Beckett’s performance last night against the Angels.  Complete game, four hit shutout.  At one point I believe he retired 18 (or 19) consecutive hitters – absolutely amazing pitching.

The offense showed up as well; not with a huge explosion but enough “oomph” to get one win in the bag.  A shot from Big Papi, and good hitting from the most underrated hitter in baseball (Kevin Youkilis) got the job done on offense.

Game 2 is tomorrow at 8:30, which will be a special treat for me as my wife’s best friend (who is also a Yankees fan) from college is coming into town to visit.  GO SOX

hoplophobia

CBS Lied…again

Posted on by Caleb

CBS seems to be struggling with their credibility issues again; as evidenced in a recent piece that they did on “assault weapons“. The story itself has been pretty thoroughly debunked all over the internet, however the blogs that have really done a good job in the debunking of the story don’t necessarily have the “oomph” to really get the word out there to the moderate community.

The problem that arises out of something like this is that the CBS news report is sensationalism at its worst. The majority of the people who watch the CBS Evening news are going to take this as the truth, because CBS didn’t bother to present any opposing viewpoints, or really do anything at all to try to present a balanced report.

The goal of the CBS show was to highlight how police agencies in Florida are issuing AR-15s (the semi-automatic version of the M-16) to the officers – now CBS claims that this is because criminals in the area are arming themselves with AK47s and other automatic weapons. To “prove” their point, they filmed a cache of weapons that had been confiscated by the Broward County Sheriff. I’ve included the image for reference, as well as a full sized version here.

Immediately, you begin to see a problem with their reporting. According to CBS, AK-47s (which is a specific firearm) have been popping up all over the place, and yet the confiscated weapons presented as justification for the up-arming of the police do not include a single AK-47. Certainly, there are two SKS carbines, and an AR15 variant present, but the focus of the story is nowhere to be found.

The problem lies in that while many pro-gun activists could readily identify the falsehoods in the CBS story, the average member of the public cannot. They would see the SKS carbine with extended magazine and simply assume that what was reported was true. Unfortunately, CBS wasn’t content with simply presenting misleading facts.

The story also contains an interview with an individual who purports to be an illegal gun owner. The person is only named as “Grady”, and on the show he claims to be in possession of both a fully automatic AK-47 as well as a fully-automatic Uzi sub-machine gun. This presents a serious credibility issue for CBS, because if this person’s claims are true, then he has just confessed to two major felonies on national TV; however apparently CBS has no moral qualms about that.

There are numerous other issues with the “report” as well. For example, they make the claim that AK-47s are going for $200 “on the street”, without providing a reference for where this number comes from. Seeing as the retail cost of a semi-automatic AK type rifle is well over $400, the “$200” figure becomes somewhat unbelievable. Furthermore, the Uzi is described as being able to fire 600 rounds “with a flick of the trigger”, which is quite simply hyperbole at its worst. While the stated rate of fire for the Uzi submachine gun is 600 rounds per minute, the last time I checked there were no 600 round magazines. A “flick of the trigger” certainly doesn’t indicate that the user would have to change magazines at least 12 times to fire those 600 rounds.

I’m troubled by CBS’s reporting on this – while I have come to expect sensationalism from the mainstream media when it covers the issue of firearms, the fact that the CBS report contains outright lies in addition to the usual amounts of half-truths is especially bothersome. As I mentioned above, the average person who watches the CBS Evening news isn’t going to pick up on the lies. And while the pro-gun blog community has done an excellent job of exposing said lies, without additional exposure CBS will essentially get away with lying to America…again.

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Stick that in your pipe

Posted on by Caleb

And smoke it, Larry Pratt.  You might have noticed, but I have had it up to here with the Larry Pratt and the GOA using HR 2640 to slander the NRA, as well as just lie outright about the bill itself, calling it the “Veteran’s Disarmament Act”.

Thankfully, Larry Scott at Military.com has the must read editorial on the issue, pointing out quite accurately that HR 2640 will in fact provide a road for veterans who have been disallowed from owning firearms to regain their right to keep and bear arms.

Let’s use some common sense instead of nonsense. If veterans were to lose the right to own firearms, you’d have a lot of unemployed cops. If those who have PTSD were to lose that right, there’d be even more unemployed cops and other first responders, as well. The arguments about a “Veterans Disarmament Act” are, quite simply, ridiculous and illogical.

I strongly encourage you to read the entire article, it’s excellent.  It addresses all the points brought up by the Anti-2640 bunch, and shoots them clean out of the sky.

Dealing with this has been frustrating – I am tired of defending a good bill from people that are ostensibly on the same side as I am.

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Sox-Angels

Posted on by Caleb

Here we go – as much as I like football, this is what October is all about.  Baseball playoff time, and this matchup should be a pretty good one.  We’ve got the Angels, out of my old home state of California against my beloved Red Sox.

Beckett vs. Lackey, Big Papi and Vlad…I am looking forward to this series.

So, here are my playoff predictions.  Sox take the Angels in 4 games, advancing to the ALCS where they meet the Indians, who are coming off a 3 three game sweep of the (spit) Yankees.

Over in the NL, the NLCS will be Phillies vs. Cubs.  As much as I’d like to see a D’Backs vs. Rockies NLCS, I don’t think it’s going to happen.

The World Series will be the Red Sox vs. the Phillies, because the Cubbies will collapse in the NLCS.

My goals for the playoffs go as follows.

1.  Red Sox win it all

2.  Barring that, the Yankees do not win.

3.  If the Sox can’t win, I’d like to see either the Angels or the Rockies win it.

GO SOX

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Pick your Candidate

Posted on by Caleb

Kind of a cool pseudo-meme found here – you answer 11 questions about hot-button issues and then you get matched with the candidates that match your position.  It’s worth noting that Gun Control was not one of the topics available.

For my two top matches, it gave me Rudy G. in the number 1 spot, and John McCain in the number 2 spot.  I think a big reason for that is because it didn’t have gun control as an issue, and I’m a lot more moderate than most people think.

As a “for example”, let’s take a look at the issue of abortion.  I am opposed to abortion, as I cannot get around the simple fact that you are killing a person.  However, I accept that abortion is legalized in the United States, and that it is a procedure that is going to be sought out legal or otherwise.  As such, I would prefer that it remain legal, so that it can be regulated like any medical procedure.

Another “conservative” issue that I oft disagree with the right on is the issue of gay marriage.  The next person who says to me that there should be a Constitutional Amendment against gay marriage is going to get punched in the face.  I really, really, really don’t care if gay people want to get married, and I’m not really concerned with defending “the sanctity of marriage”.  The only marriage that is sacred as far as I am concerned is my marriage to my wife.

There you see a small slice of my politics – I vote Republican because I’m a Libertarian, and (usually) the Republican party comes the closest to espousing my positions on (most of) the issues.

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Hunting again

Posted on by Caleb

I mentioned that I met Countertop (from The Counter Top Chronicles) last night, and during the many topics of conversation, we had a bit of discussion on hunting.

I’ve mentioned that I’ve never really been much of a hunter, having only gone for deer twice – the bulk of my hunting activities have been largely constrained to squirrels and coyotes.  Now, prior to my conversation, I had pretty much dismissed most deer hunting as “sitting around waiting for Bambi to wander through my sights”, and while there isn’t anything wrong with that, it wasn’t really for me.

However, I had never actually had the strategy of a good deer hunt explained to me.  After some explanation from CT, I came to the conclusion that my previous deer hunting experiences had only been boring because I was hunting with the wrong people.

So today, I was checking out deer season information, and I misclicked into the page about migratory waterfowl.  I am so glad I did that now.  I had no idea that Indiana had a Canada Goose season.

I hate geese.  Where I live in the suburbs, they are all over the place.  They crap everywhere, they get really territorial, and they have even interfered with traffic on the street in front of my subdivision.  Canada goose season opens for 2 days on October 20th, and then re-opens again in November.  I guess I am going to need a shotgun.