I placed my order today for the MPA 6.5 Creedmoor bolt gun…I am very excited. Of course you'll see it on SHOOTING GALLERY next season (assuming I'm renewed, of course). I've also got another rifle project under way that I'll tell you about a little later. Plus, Clint Beyer of Beyer Barrels gave me a really slick 10-22 barrel at SHOT. So while I was unpacking my Sweetie saw the barrel and asked me what I was going to do with it. I said, well of course, I'm going to build another 10-22! To which she replied, "Seriously?"
Well, yeah! I ask you, what would you do if you had a world class barrel laying around? Really, it's the only thing I can think of to do. Hmmmmmmmmmmm…a Tac-Sol X-Ring or Volquartsen stainless steel receiver? Or think out of box and get an NDS receiver in OD green? Or maybe I should just breathe into a paper bag until the feeling passes…
Want to read a REALLY stupid piece by a really smart guy? Visit TTAG for their latest incendiary screed from Dan Baum, who is a world class writer (GUN GUYS, the book, and his brilliant piece on concealed carry in Harper's), a gun guy and a homie from Boulder. Honestly, the piece on TTAG is a pile of crap, the usual recycled "If we're nice and lick the boots of our Betters, why, in no time at all they'll give us a biscuit!"
It wasn’t the riots that brought about the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts; it was African Americans demonstrating, under terrible duress, that they were decent, God-fearing, patriotic Americans to whom a great injustice had been done. It wasn’t Act Up that moved the needle on gay marriage; it was gays and lesbians showing the rest of us that their way of loving is as rich and worthy as anybody’s. Blacks and gays began enjoying their “natural, civil, and Constitutionally protected” rights, in other words, when they demonstrated to the majority, by moral example, that they deserved them.
Good Lord, Dan! Have you lost your mind? "Deserved them?" And BTW, I happened to be growing up in the South in the 1950s and 1960s, and heroes like Martin Luther King didn't "prove" he was just a good ole boy like his oppressor. He stood up and said he was willing to die, but he wasn't going to step to the back of the bus, so to speak. I was also in New York City in the mid-1970s, at the rise of "gay power." What happened there was that men and women stood up and said they were willing to die, but they weren't going back in the closet.
And BTW BTW, if someone steals my property, regardless of whether it is a hammer, a car or an AR-15, I AM NOT COMPLICIT IN ANY CRIME COMMITTED WITH THOSE STOLEN TOOLS! That is the law of the land. The criminal who stole the tool is the SOLE person with any responsibility for his or her crimes. To suggest otherwise is 1) wrong, 2) stupid, and 3) gives succor to our blood enemies. I say that as someone who has invested the money in safes, alarm systems, video surveillance and who has recommended that all gun owners take steps to secure their guns.
The idea that the government grants us those rights we "deserve" might play well at the faculty cocktail parties in Boulder, but I suggest you go north, to Loveland, to Ft. Collins or (shudder) Cheyenne, and you will learn that there are some rights that are natural, rights that are universal and inalienable, not granted at the whim of the University of Colorado faculty senate or some clown show in Washington D.C. Sooner or later, brother, you gotta choose sides...
Just my opinion.
Anyway, the rest of you guys read the whole thing and make your own decisions.
If you need a palate-clensing sorbet after that, I suggest a visit to the Art of Manliness blog (heaven knows I could use the trip!) and their article on Winston Churchill. They begin with a great quote from William Manchester's biography of the great man, The Last Lion:
“If ever there was a Renaissance man, he was it. In the age of the specialist, he was the antithesis, our Leonardo. As a writer he was a reporter, novelist, essayist, critic, historian, and biographer. As a statesman he served, before becoming His Majesty’s first magistrate, as minister for the colonies and for trade, home affairs, finance, and all three of the armed forces. Away from his desk he was at various times an airplane pilot, artist, farmer, fencer, hunter, breeder of racehorses, polo player, collector of tropical fish, and shooter of wild animals in Africa. One felt he could do anything.”
We could use a couple of Churchills about now.
8 comments:
Baum's argument seems to be based on appealing to the masses' propensity for "preference utilitarianism," BUT his comments really just fall flat under the rule of "natural law" - they're simple embarrassing. Yes, putting your best foot forward makes you more appealing, but like you said that doesn't define the value of your "right."
Dan is right that a large segment of the population, on hearing rabid gun owners shout about their 'rights' to carry an AR through Kroger or whatever will think 'let's just rewrite that musty old 2nd amendment and those "natural rights" can hang out at the irrelevance bar with the mineral rights under my house'
Same as how a couple guys in leather straps smooching turned a different segment off gay rights until the happy-interior-decorator-next-door image appeared. Maybe one is required to counterpoint the other, but as long as the MSM continues to focus on the guys with their junk on display the other half isn't getting seen.
How can gun owners lead by moral example? I would suggest that we are. In fact, I think that "we set the example"!
There are estimates that America has from 300 to 600 million guns in circulation in a population of 320 million. With the incidence rate for gun fatalities being what it is, simple deduction would infer that gun ownership in and of itself is a safe practice. (And no, we don't accept ANY killings! So lib's out there, don't get all frothy.)
Dissecting the data further reveals that our incidence rate for gun fatalities is falling at a statistically significant rate. Further factors that make that observation even more profound is the fact that gun ownership is actually ascending upward at a higher than normal rate. Further, concealed carry of handguns is also trending upward at a similarly increasing rate.
On the other hand, the data shows clearly, that most crimes committed with guns that result in a fatality, are mostly committed by already know felons, or those with already diagnosed mental problems. The latter factor was present in all of the recent mass-killings that we suffered in not only America, but other countries. In nearly all of these cases, there was a common element; the failure to contain the problem individual.
So to suggest that somehow, gun owners need to start leading by "moral example" is simply misleading. We already are.
Can we continuously improve? I submit that there too, we already are. The data supports that assessment.
Will we continue the improving trend? The answer is "yes"! That's what we do!
Life Member
As we all know by now it was the nonsense in the Colorado legislature that prompted Magpul to move north to "shudder" Cheyenne. And YES, we are more than happy to have them here. Something else that is on the verge in the Wyo legislature is the repeal of Gun free zones.
https://www.nraila.org/articles/20150128/wyoming-gun-free-zones-act-repeal-legislation-passes-house-committee-sent-to-house-floor. Fingers crossed this would be a huge victory for self defense.
OK, Michael. I tried to read Baum's article, even though I generally stay away from TTAG...seems to me they're more about "incendiary" and less about "truth."
Anyway...
Then I read this line from Baum: "The hard truth is this: There are no 'natural, civil, and Constitutionally protected” rights.'"
There's your problem right there.
No such thing as natural rights? Baum does not get it...but I should have realized that when he said "a lot of us simply like shooting and owning guns, and we want to hold onto a hobby we enjoy."
While it may indeed be an enjoyable hobby, the right to keep and bear arms IS a natural, civil right protected by the Constitution. Until he figures that out, Dan Baum is merely playing at being a gun rights advocate.
I remember listening to an interview with one of Churhill's biographers in which he was described as the last of the Victorians. He didn't dress himself - that was the job of his valet.
I also remember reading about how he escaped from the Boers during the Boer War armed with his Mauser C96 pistol.
Churhill loved danger. We have too many politicians today who are afraid to fail unlike Churhill who failed many times, picked himself up, and got going again.
Rousseau. That's where this fellow got his notions about majorities & Rights. Rousseau. Same misguided tripe that fueled the French to set up guillotines, Marx & Engels to write off property, Keens to claim central command was where it's at.
Locke had the better answer, and the better results. Bu8t in Boulder if you even mention Locke you can actually hear people hissing and drawing out protective amulets lest they be burned by he-whose-theories-shall-not-be-named.
If you grew up believing in Rousseau then what this jerk said seems reasonable & makes perfect sense. If you grew up with Locke & his theories about Property Rights as a basis for your moral upbringing, then you'll have trouble figuring out what the hell this guy was smoking.
There are a lot of people who own guns who follow Rousseau. Oddly enough they tend to talk appeasement, or seem willing to listen to such talk. A fair few that own guns but lean towards Locke realize appeasement is for chumps.
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