Category Archives: Uncategorized

Over the past couple days there were some serious server issues which is a long story abbreviated here.

So if you’re seeing this, it means you’re at the new server.  Look around if you see something broken leave a comment or let Sean know.

-B

A gun store owner went on the radio in support of the internet ammunition sales ban that the usual suspects are pushing. I’m with Tam when she says,

Dear Jeremy Alcede of Tactical Firearms, Katy, TX: I hope you freeze in the dark, you gutless quisling punk.

When your children are crying “Daddy, why are we on food stamps?” you can tell them “It’s because your Daddy was a selfish, pusillanimous sellout who put his personal bottom line ahead of the Bill of Rights, kids, and so nobody would buy anything from his store ever again.”

 Sadly I don’t live in Katy, Texas so I can’t go and tell him personally I won’t be buying anything from him. I did use his contact page to let him know how I felt. You might want to do likewise.

This is probably a topic better suited to being ripped apart by LabRat, but I’ll give it the thumbnail sketch. (Via Shall Not Be Questioned)

One of the ongoing debates simmering in evolutionary biology lately is the competition versus cooperation argument. On one side, we have the more traditional Darwinian position that competition is the primary driver of adaptation, and hence survival of any given species.

But more recently, the idea is gaining traction that humans may have evolved most successfully not due to “survival of the fittest” but rather, “survival of the kindest,” quoting Dr. Dacher Keltner, Co-Director of the Greater Good Society at UC Berkeley.

Oh, dear God. Where do we get these people? It’s a classic rhetorical fallacy of False Dilemma. Either we are purely competitive psychopaths always ripping each other apart for the smallest advantage, or we’re wonderfully cooperative creatures who live in a fantasy world.

Horseshit. We are both. How we treat you is determined by what sort of group we feel you fall into. If you are of our tribe, great, we’ll help you out. That is assuming that you are following the tribal rules. If you aren’t of our tribe, we will compete with you unless helping you is to our advantage. It’s not that hard. Insiders get cooperation, outsiders get shot in the face.

This is one area where Western culture is clearly superior to most non-Western culture. We haven’t so much trancended tribalism as we have expanded the definition of it to include people who share our belief systems. Somalia is filled with people who owe their allegiance to their clan, where we’re filled with people who believe that if you act like an American, you’re as good as a brother. We’ve defined our tribe, American, to be anyone who accepts and espouses American ideals. That doesn’t mean we will universally like you, but you’ll be family. We’ll at least invite you to Thanksgiving dinner and talk bad about you rather than talk bad about you behind your back.

The real problem with this “Survival of the Kindest” malarkey is that it makes people think that competition and warfare are somehow set in opposition to cooperation. They aren’t. Competition is rarely one on one. Most competition is a team sport. All of warfare is a team sport. You cooperate with the people on your team and you compete with those who are not.

If you’ve got the time, pick up the Harry Turtledove “Worldwar” series. I am convinced that Turtledove doesn’t write to tell a story, he writes to answer a question. The question that this series answers is, “War, what is it good for?”

The series pits humans against an invading alien race who happen to show up in the middle of World War II. The aliens have been planning the invasion for hundreds of years, and are just certain that they are going to crush the pitiful humans. The problem is that due to constant warfare between competing groups of humans, we’re no longer riding horses clad in maille while trying to whack each other with swords. For the aliens, 500 years isn’t enough time to change anything, but for us we’ve gone from knights almost to atomic weapons.

Turtledove’s answer appears to be ”the constant competition of war, coupled with the cooperation within the various warring groups, leads to intense technological advancement. Those groups that didn’t adapt and improve were swept away by those that did.”

I think he’s right.

There’s been a lot of talk about Associate Judge Antonin Scalia’s interview on Fox News. A lot of it seems to have been hype.

Let’s go to the tape. Watch the whole thing, it’s good. You might even want to buy the book. But for the Gun Control stuff skip to 6:55

 

(RSS Readers click HERE for video) 

He is saying that there are undoubtedly some restrictions on the right to keep and bear arms. He’s also saying that those particular limits have to be explored in future cases.

He brings up the old law of “affrighting,” which is basically the same law we have in North Carolina called “Going Armed to the Terror.” It is a misdemeanor to take a dangerous and unusual weapon and parade around with it for the purpose of terrorizing people. It’s basically a “don’t be a dick” law.

The most important thing he is saying is that any limits on arms must be based upon the sorts of limits that were acknowledged to be appropriate at the time that the Constitution was written.

What’s going to be really interesting is when he’s presented with the historical information about crew served weapons. He thinks that cannons are not covered. He’s going to be shocked when he learns that at the founding of this country to well past the writing of the Constitution, cannons and warships were privately owned. In fact, we can prove that the writers of the Constitution considered cannon and warship ownership by private citizens to be normal.

[Congress shall have Power...] To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;

We don’t issue Letters of Marque anymore. While we are not a signatory to the treaty forbidding them, we generally follow that treaty. What is a letter of Marque? It’s basically an official commission from the government for a private person to attack enemy shipping without being branded a pirate. What do you think that a person would have to have in order to attack enemy ships with? You guessed it, a ship, armed with weapons appropriate to naval combat.

So there you have it. The very text of the Constitution tells us that it was not considered wrong for private citizens to own a ship nor to fill that ship with cannons.

Makes it pretty tough to argue that the Government has the power to prevent people from having cannons without running afoul of the Second Amendment, doesn’t it.

Want to know more about the privateers of the Revolutionary War? Here’s a list of about 2,200 of them. When you can point to a list of over 2,000 private warships in a country that had less than 4 million residents, you can’t even claim they were rare.

I’ll bet you didn’t know that another one of the stupid concealed carry rules in North Carolina is that you can’t carry a gun in a theater. That’s right, the same law that bans guns in restaurants bans guns in any place that charges admission.

§ 14‑269.3. Carrying weapons into assemblies and establishments where alcoholic beverages are sold and consumed.

(a) It shall be unlawful for any person to carry any gun, rifle, or pistol into any assembly where a fee has been charged for admission thereto, or into any establishment in which alcoholic beverages are sold and consumed. Any person violating the provisions of this section shall be guilty of a Class 1 misdemeanor.

 The Charlotte Observer, never one to miss a chance to sell newspapers on another person’s tragedy no matter how far away, discusses the “heightened” security at local theaters.

AMC Theatres, which runs the Northlake theater, released a statement Friday, saying “we are actively working with local law enforcement in communities throughout the nation and under the circumstances we are reaching out to all of our theatres to review our safety and security procedures.”

Here’s the comment that I left for them.

Hey, this is North Carolina. What do we have to worry about? The North Carolina General Assembly has made it ILLEGAL to carry a gun in any place that charges admission! Theaters charge admission, so therefore it’s ILLEGAL to carry a gun there. Isn’t that awesome?

Carrying a gun in a theater is just as illegal as using a gun to murder everyone inside that theater, so we have nothing whatsoever to fear. Anyone who wants to murder people in the theater with guns will realize that guns are BANNED in theaters and won’t even try.

Great job NC General Assembly! You guys think of everything!

Sometimes I think that “civilization” is just one giant game of “Let’s Pretend.” No one seems to have any connection with reality. They all seem to follow the Tinker Bell theory of reality creation. If they wish hard enough and believe strongly enough…

I can’t find video, but when I worked at Disneyland in the late ’80s, the announcer would say

“If you wish hard enough and believe strongly enough, Tinkerbell will appear and light this evening’s Fantasy in the Sky.”

Then Tinkerbell, who was a stuntman and was standing on top of the Matterhorn, would light her lights and slide down the zipline. She’d wave, zooming down the line, and run smack into two guys holding a mattress in a tower behind Fantasyland. She was rumored to make stunt pay of $500 a slide in the late ’80s.

From then on, this phrase is what I use to make fun of those people who think the world gives a damn about their wants and desires. Only a self-centered jackass would dream that the laws of physics would bend around their will.

Order yours now!

 

GO HERE TO ORDER