Gratitude for Beto

Beto O’Rourke is a pretty risible character even among the clown show that is the 2020 cycle’s Democratic candidate-aspirants. A faux-populist with a history of burglary and DUI, he married the heiress of a billionaire and money-bombed his way to a seat in the House of Representatives, only to fail when he ran for the Senate six years later because Texas had had enough of his bullshit. Beneath the boyish good looks on which he trades so heavily, his track record reveals him to be a rather dimwitted and ineffectual manchild with a severe case of Dunning-Kruger effect.

Beto’s Presidential aspirations are doomed, though he and the uncontacted aborigines of the Andaman Islands are possibly the only inhabitants of planet Earth who do not yet grasp this. Before flaming out of the 2020 race to a life of well-deserved obscurity, however, Beto has done the American polity one great service for which I must express my most sincere and enduring gratitude.

In September 12th, 2019, at third televised debate among the Democratic aspirants, Beto O.Rourke said “Hell, yes, we’re going to take your AR-15”. And nobody on stage demurred, then or afterwards. And the audience applauded thunderously.

At a stroke, Beto irrecoverably destroyed a critical part of the smokescreen gun-control advocates have been laying over their intentions since the 1960s. He put gun confiscation with the threat of door-to-door enforcement by violence on the table, and nobody in the Democratic Party auditorium backed away.

It’s that last clause that is really telling. Beto’s own intentions will soon cease to be of interest to anyone but specialist historians. What matters is how he has made “Nobody is coming to take your guns” a disclaimer that no Democrat – and, extension, any advocate of soi-disant “common-sense” firearms restrictions – can ever hide behind again.

His talk of “military weapons” was, of course, obfuscatory bullshit. The AR-15 is a civilianized rifle the lacks exactly the capability to fire full auto or bursts that is essential for a battlefield weapon. Over ten million AR-15-pattern variants are in civilian hands; it’s the single most popular sport and hunting rifle in the U.S. or for that matter the entire world.

Every single AR-15 owner is on notice. The Democratic presidential candidates and their audience are down with the concept of LEOs raiding your home and forcibly confiscating your guns, even if you’re a model citizen with no criminal record or red flags. The fact that you, your family, or your pets could get shot dead through malice or incompetence does not really signify to them. Got to break a few eggs to make that omelette, comrade!

Hell, if you happen to be white or male today’s Democrats might consider it – what’s the currently fashionable phrase? – “redistributive justice”. No worries though; there are statistical reasons to expect that blacks and Hispanics will be over-represented in the actual body count.

This is horrible – it’s a nightmare and a bad sign for our republic that advocating police-state behavior like this doesn’t get politicians driven from public life – but it’s also very clarifying.

Consider registration and licensing laws, background checks, and other requirements that allow the government to identify and target gun owners. Our civil-rights advocates have been saying for decades that these were intolerable because they have the corrupt purpose of enabling future confiscations. In response, we’ve been treated to endless condescending repetitions of “Nobody is coming to take your guns”.

We knew that was a lie, that forcible confiscation was always the endgame once lesser restrictions had shifted the Overton Window far enough, but way too many people outside the gun culture were fooled. The great service Beto O’Rourke has done is that the pretense will now be very much more difficult, and perhaps entirely impossible.

Thank you, Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke. You did not intend it, but you have provided a teachable moment for which everyone who takes the Second Amendment seriously should be grateful.

EDIT: Now lightly altered to reflect that at least one Democratic legislator has demurred. Senator Chris Coons said he disagreed with Beto: “We need to focus on what we can get done.” This of course is code for “You idiot! You let the mask slip! We need to continue with the slow strangulation!”

917 comments

  1. The irony of him saying this on September 12th; the day after the anniversary of Let’s Roll Day, makes it even better.

    1. There’s a good chance he could double down by flogging confiscation on the anniversary of the Battle of Gonzales. We can hope, anyway. It’s only a few weeks from now.

  2. Well, Senator Chris Coons (D-Delaware) did say:

    “I frankly think that that clip will be played for years at Second Amendment rallies with organizations that try to scare people by saying Democrats are coming for your guns,” Sen. Chris Coons, D-Delaware, told CNN’s Poppy Harlow on “Newsroom” Friday morning.

    Asked if he’s supportive of O’Rourke’s pledge, Coons responded, “I am not.”

    “I don’t think a majority of the Senate or the country is going to embrace mandatory buybacks. We need to focus on what we can get done,” Coons added.

    The “focus on what we can get done” today of course gives the game away. Clicking through, the source article says Senator Joe Manchin, (D-West Virginia), long the face of “moderate” Democratic gun grabbing, agreed on Twitter, but they didn’t link to it and it’s not currently in his Twitter feed.

    While you’re at it, you might comment on the conceit embedded in the label “buy back”, of something the government never owned, except to these people….

    1. Indeed, I too have wondered how someone can “buy back” that which they never owned. That they insist on using this terminology suggests to me that they think a “buy back” polls better than a “buy out” or “just compensation for property required by that pesky 5th Amendment Takings Clause, dammit!”

      1. I was going to let them “buy back” my guns, but I didn’t think they would pass the Background Check….
        Or even the credit-check…

  3. I don’t understand why this one gaffe will make the rhetoric of gun moderation unusable. Anyone who bought into it was already ignoring an overwhelming amount of evidence; why would one slip snap them into reality? Maybe my view of the modern “well-meaning” Democrat is too pessimistic, but I imagine that most of them would ignore this incident and continue to live in fantasy land.

    Is the idea that all candidates on the left will now need to explicitly support confiscation explicitly to remain politically viable? That result seems plausible, but I would also expect the Democrat’s eventual nominee to code-switch and lie like hell after winning the primary.

    1. The best definition for “gaffe” is “when a politician says what he really thinks”.

    2. The difference is that Beto’s statement was an open threat. Previous anti-gun statements by various and sundry Democratic Party politicians were, or could be passed off as, mere statements of desire.

      The idea is that candidates can no longer express their desires for anti-gun policies without implicitly endorsing Beto’s threat, and that makes the rhetoric of “moderate” anti-gun policies unusable.

      1. Huh? Wasn’t all the moderate anti-gun rhetoric *already* implicitly signaling support for confiscation? Beto’s threat doesn’t seem like anything new to me but for its appalling frankness. I don’t understand why the frankness matters; who would it sway? It validates my map of the territory, which is nice, but I don’t see why else it matters.

        I’m having trouble visualizing someone simultaneously smart enough to support guns, stupid enough to believe the Democrat’s motte-and-bailey tactics, and open-minded enough to change their mind when presented with evidence contrary to their tribal beliefs.

        (I think I’m still missing Eric’s point, somehow… thank you for trying to help me achieve enlightenment.)

        1. I can’t find it at the moment, but someone had compiled a two-minute montage of politicians and pundits saying “No one wants to take your guns!”; the very first person saying this in the montage was Beto O’Roark himself. The montage ends with Beto saying “We’re coming for your AR-15s and AK-47s.”

          To be sure, gun rights activists never believed anyone who said “We don’t want to take your guns”, but this montage highlights the fact that yes, these people *would* take our guns, if given the opportunity. It is a refreshing break from their gaslighting!

  4. I’m astonished at how far left the Democrats have gone. At least in part it can be explained by the tendency of activists and progressives to keep pushing in the “correct direction.” They can’t lead us into the future if they say “OK, that’s far enough,” so there’s always a new cause. But it keeps sounding like the absurdities of 1960s dope-smoking hippies. “Yeah, man! [takes toke] Health care should just be free!” Bernie recently said that there should be no co-pays, no deductibles. In the first debate, all the candidates agreed that illegal immigrants should get free health care. More current Democratic Party positions (from one or more candidates) include abolishing ICE, emptying all detainment camps, tearing down all existing border walls, abolishing cash bail, nobody ever jailed for non-violent crime (Bernie Madoff approves!), free college for all (including illegals), banning internal combustion vehicles, the federal government should be the only ISP….

    That all sounds practical, affordable, and popular with voters, right? What could possibly go wrong?

    It feels like more than the standard progression of leftist activism. I’m not sure what’s going on, but I think it’s some of these things. 1) Leftism is reaching a sort of crisis point, trapped in its own internal contradictions. 2) Trump’s trolling is driving them crazy. He makes them think he’s a fascist dictator, so they think the proper response is (essentially) communism. 3) I am starting to consider an idea from the sometimes insightful, sometimes wacky Thomas Wictor. Trump is known to be a fan of Sun Tzu, who wrote about the use of spies. Wictor thinks Trump has Judas goats in the enemy camp, giving intentionally bad advice. I’m not sure that is necessary to explain what we see, but it sure looks like that. Combined with Spygate and the other counterattacks Trump will unleash in the next year, I think the Democratic Party will be a smoking crater by November 2020.

    1. An excellent observation, but there’s a much simpler explanation, this is a repeat of 1972 due to rules changes based on the previous disastrous election. Although this time as far as I know none of the candidates played a major role in drafting the new rules as McGovern did back then.

      The new rules to be and stay in the game of these catastrophic debates (whether the party wins or loses in 2020) demand playing to the activist base, they require scoring well enough in blessed polls, and donations following a certain wide shape.

    2. Wictor also thought I was lying and blocked me on Twitter when I told him that I lost a brother to a drunk driver, because he couldn’t square that with my position that either the drinking age should be lowered to 18 or the voting age increased to at least the drinking age. [I consider voting an exercise of power, not of individual liberty, and the standards for wielding power over others should be at least as high as for enjoying liberty. That’s why I want a middle option for cops accused of bad behavior, that takes away their badges without also incarcerating them, when they’ve shown they shouldn’t have power over others, but also haven’t shown they shouldn’t have personal liberty.]

      So “sometimes wacky” is appropriate, to say the least.

    3. Cross-party corruption risks a one party system that effectively abolishes voting! That’s called fascism.

      We need more parties and more ranges of ideas, not fewer. Treating politics as a team sport harms humanity in general.

  5. I thought the preceding discussion was just as telling:

    MUIR: … Biden saying, “There’s no constitutional authority to issue that executive order when they say ‘I’m going to eliminate assault weapons,'” saying, “you can’t do it by executive order any more than Trump can do things when he says he can do it by executive order.”

    HARRIS: Well, I mean, I would just say, hey, Joe, instead of saying, no, we can’t, let’s say yes, we can.

    BIDEN: Let’s be constitutional. We’ve got a Constitution.

    HARRIS: And yes, we can, because I’ll tell you something. The way that I think about this is, I’ve seen more autopsy photographs than I care to tell you. I have attended more police officer funerals than I care to tell you. I have hugged more mothers of homicide victims than I care to tell you.

    And the idea that we would wait for this Congress, which has just done nothing, to act, is just — it is overlooking the fact that every day in America, our babies are going to school to have drills, elementary, middle and high school students, where they are learning about how they have to hide in a closet or crouch in a corner if there is a mass shooter roaming the hallways of their school.

    So we have one candidate who’s against a self-coup, and one who’s in favor; I really wish they’d asked the rest to get on the record either way.

    1. I’ve seen more autopsy photographs than I care to tell you.

      “Bitch, you tried to murder a man by withholding the DNA evidence that sprung him from death row. Don’t even try to pretend that you care about human life, you lying, power-grubbing whore.”

    2. Brilliant. Of course the fact of someone having died somewhere under some circumstances is a completely legitimate reason for removing the rights of the remaining citizens.

      But why stop at the pesky Bill of Rights? The existence of theft, say, should be an inarguable justification for abolishing property rights.

      1. We have some cities in the US that are working on that; the police won’t take a report or even respond unless a theft exceeds some dollar value. Which the local skeevies figured means you can steal anything you want without reprisal, as long as it doesn’t exceed that value.

        As “police resources are stretched” I’m sure we’ll see those dollar limits rise…

        1. In 2014 in Los Angeles County, I could not get the sheriff’s department to even take a report for $15,000 worth of theft. Nor could I get them to investigate, even tho some of my stolen property was lying in plain sight where the culprit was living at the time.

          Their lame-ass excuse was, “Well, if you can’t prove it’s yours…” (expecting a receipt from 20 years ago).

          So, yeah, I can tell you where at least one threshold falls.

  6. It’s tempting to buy his “HELL YES WE’RE GOING TO TAKE YOUR AR-15” T-shirt and start wearing it to my Gun Club. . .

    1. I think we need shirts in approximately the same style, font, etc, that say “????? ????, motherfucker.”

  7. Did you miss the part about his Twitter fight with a Texas state assemblyman?

    O’Rourke posted one of his “Hell, yeah, we’re taking them!” posts. Briscoe Cain told him his AR was waiting for him.

    Wannabe tough guy O’Rourke immediately ran shrieking to the FBI.

    O’Rourke: “There’s a new sheriff in town. And his name is–oh, I forget, but it was some dude on the FBI hotline.”

    1. For those of us with the good sense to stay off Twitter, do you have a link to the discussion?

  8. This from a guy who nominally represents the state in which a commune of religious families were arson-ated by Bill Clinton’s attorney general Janet Reno. Hell, yes. Fire and brimstone. If we think you are building a bunch of rifles in there, we’ll set fire to you, your wives, your kids … Hell has little more to offer than the BATF.

    1. Nit, but it was the FBI’s death squad that finished off the Branch Davidians the BATF didn’t kill, as they did Randy Weaver’s wife after a similar first contact screwup with the US Marshals killed his son. They were also caught shooting, and lying about that, in the only death to come out of the Oregon National Wildlife Refuge occupation.

    2. On the subject of guns, what do we do? I’m all for Eric’s plan of better mental-health treatment, but that’s only a partial solution.

      That will only work if we return force as a tool to keep the severely mentally ill medicated and/or locked up, and that’s a non-starter in an era where our betters are declaring us to be mentally ill and worthy of being Red Flagged and SWATted because we own guns or vote the wrong way.

      I can’t think of anything we can do in the current environment. I mean, armed citizens have stopped more than a few mass murders before they got started, but allowing and encouraging more people to go armed is unthinkable to our betters.

      1. Beto testing.

        I don’t have any AR-15s, just uppers, 80% Lowers, and a Ghost Gunner 2 from Defense Distributed…

        Mental Health – I’m waiting for them to end Typhus (and maybe the upcoming Plague) in the west coast deep blue areas. I can only hope the outbreak causes an election day quarantine.

        Also note how the Left goes ballistic when there is any proposal to requrie ID to vote – A license, or something!

        Here is a simple test – you should be able to buy a gun or vote on the same basis, or moreso with Guns as it is the 2nd amendment. Prove who you are? Save records?

        1. I’m no leftist, but I’m strongly against
          requiring ID to vote. Or to work, or to
          open a bank account, or to travel, or to
          enter a federal courthouse. Or to buy a
          gun. Millions of Americans have no
          government-issued picture ID. They lack the
          papers to get the papers. The transition to
          “REAL ID” will add millions more.

          1. I’m no leftist, but I’m strongly against
            requiring ID to vote.

            So how do you make sure the voter is who he says he is? This is not a hypothetical. There are inner city precincts with >100% turnout.

            1. You don’t. But that’s the beauty of a federal system, you don’t have to, because you don’t have to care how other areas decide who gets to vote. The people in states with a large urban population center are the ones who should care, but the solution there is to split those states down to more reasonable sizes.

              I think it’s also worth noting that, while the constitution now requires (via several amendments) states to allow all citizens who have not been specifically disenfranchised, and are over the age of majority to vote, it does not restrict the states from allowing others to vote. Historically, the requirements varied from time to time and place to place. In many cases, the requirement was owning land, in other cases, mostly in the west, the requirement was ‘show up’. Obviously, that was in addition to other requirements (be male, look white), but the point is if a state wants to say anyone who physically shows up can vote, that’s a matter for the people in that state to handle.

                1. Aye, and they ought to be able to. Of course, there is the question ‘what are the feds gonna do about it?’ Sure, the feds can say they aren’t allowed to, but that’s also something that falls outside the purview of the general government, so the states ought to ignore them. At the end of the day, the feds don’t have the resources to force states to let people vote without ID, at least if enough states decide to require it.

              1. >You don’t. But that’s the beauty of a federal system, you don’t have to,

                Unless that silly national popular vote compact happens.

                1. Unless that silly national popular vote compact happens.

                  It’s a non-starter unless and until Purple states join it, and it’ll die very quickly the election season a Republican candidate wins the national election and California et. al. are forced to vote for him in the Electoral College or renege on it.

          2. Millions of Americans have no government-issued picture ID.

            See, this is a very clever lie.

            It is quite literally true–there are millions of Americans–probably about 65 million of them–do not have government ID.

            This is, of course, because they’re CHILDREN, and until they turn 16 or travel outside the country they have no need of government ID.

            There may be “millions” of Americans without IDs, but with roughly 250 million adult Americans, that’s less than 1 percent, and they do it by choice.

            ibiblio is REALLY flaky.

            1. There is a difference between not having ID at all, and not having ID on your person. Of course, even having it on your person is no guarantee, as the people ‘detaining’ you can easily lose it… Why on earth would you trust the same people who regularly lie to us, who want to take our guns, who run the post office (et cetera, et cetera) to wield the power to expel anyone they want? And yes, it’s already happening (1).

              Also note that, while naturalization is a federal issue, immigration is noticeable in its absence from the constitution, which means it falls under amendment 10. In fact, it was managed exclusively by the states until about 1870 (2).

              1: https://mises.org/wire/us-immigration-enforcement-guilty-until-proven-innocent
              2: https://mises.org/wire/american-immigration-policy-160-years-ago

              1. Um, immigration is effectively a federal issue unless you plan to set up border controls along state borders.

                1. Except it *wasn’t* until about 1870… Just because something has been done a certain way doesn’t mean it *must* be done that way, especially when the conservative position was to oppose the current way of doing it so recently. If technology or geopolitics require borders to be controlled by the general government, that would take a constitutional amendment. You can’t be consistent in demanding a return to the constitution and then ignore it when it’s inconvenient.

                  Kevin Gutzman argues that, had the feds not assumed the power to regulate immigration, the states would have continued to do so themselves. I have no reason to doubt his analysis, nor am I saying that there should be open borders because the feds lack the remit to close them.

                  The fact is that, under the constitution, as written, the sanctuary cities are resisting federal overreach. That’s a problem.

                  And no, there’d be no reason for inter-state borders, for the same reason there isn’t now. First, the logistics don’t work well. Second, most of the border states actually would happily control the border, probably better than the feds do (as a general rule, if it’s something not done by the feds, it’s something done better than the feds can do). See Arizona’s law from about 10 years ago. California is a bit of a problem, but honestly it’s not like native-born Californians are much better when they move elsewhere.

                2. > unless you plan to set up border controls along state borders.

                  Like California? I’ve been stopped and searched by California’s own version of Checkpoint Charlie before, as they looked under the seats in in my luggage for… contraband fruit?!

                  But apparently people have already taken them to Federal court, which ruled it’s totally okay, because fruit trumps Federal law, by some reasoning they don’t bother to explain.

              2. BS. (I like Ilya Somin, but he’s wrong on this.) Article I, Sec. 9, Para. 1 is clear:

                The Migration or Importation of such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the Year one thousand eight hundred and eight, but a tax or duty may be imposed on such Importation, not exceeding ten dollars for each Person.

                If this meant to deny Congress authority over immigration, there wouldn’t have been an expiration date on this limitation. The obvious intent, therefore, is that effective 1 Jan 1808, Congress has the authority under the Supremacy Clause to control “Migration and Importation of Persons”. And in that very year, Congress prohibited the importation of slaves, long before 1870. That Congress chose to allow states to exercise a lot of concurrent power does not mean it didn’t have the constitutional authority to take exclusive control over the matter when it chose to do so. That courts didn’t rule against state power during the time Congress saw fit to allow them to exercise concurrent power tells us nothing about the limits of Congressional authority over immigration.

            2. No, I meant that millions of *adult* US citizens don’t have current
              government-issued picture ID, and can’t get it, at least not for
              a reasonable amount of time, effort, and money. Plenty of adult
              Americans don’t drive, don’t travel overseas, and have never been in
              the military. How and why would they have gotten an ID before 9/11?
              And after 9/11 “loopholes” such as having people vouch for you under
              oath were closed. The Washington Post estimated that 450,000 people
              would be disenfranchised in Virginia alone.

              Yes, there’s a risk of someone voting twice if the state doesn’t purge
              the polls of dead people, though it would become obvious when the
              second person with the same name, address, and birth date tries to
              vote. Is that such a terrible thing that it’s worth disenfranchising
              a thousand people to prevent each wrongful vote? Ten thousand?

              I’m puzzled by the negative votes on my post. How can people strongly
              support gun rights but strongly oppose voting rights? The only
              explanation I can think of is that those are both Republican
              positions. I am not a Republican or a Democrat since both platforms
              are random collections of unrelated and inconsistent ideas. Not
              to mention that the current president holds ideas that no previous
              Republican president has ever held.

              1. No, I meant that millions of *adult* US citizens don’t have current government-issued picture ID, and can’t get it, at least not for a reasonable amount of time, effort, and money.

                Things you need an ID for:

                alcohol
                cigarettes
                a bank account
                welfare
                Medicaid
                Social Security
                a mortgage
                buying or renting a car
                air travel
                renting a hotel room
                hunting/fishing license
                picking up a prescription

                You’re telling me there are millions of voters who do none of those things? Absurd. And they are not that hard to get.

              2. >No, I meant that millions of *adult* US citizens don’t have current
                government-issued picture ID, and can’t get it, at least not for
                a reasonable amount of time, effort, and money.

                Keith, that’s just silly. At the county courthouse nearest me, in Westchester PA, you can get the police to issue you a PA state photo ID for 15 minutes’ investment of time and a nominal filing fee. They don’t even insist on a birth certificate – a current utility bill verifying your address will do. For ID purposes it’s as good as a driver’s license – in fact it looks so much like one that it’s hard to tell the difference without close scrutiny. They don’t run your prints or anything.

                Pennsylvania is not exceptional. Cops everywhere like people to have photo IDs, it simplifies their lives when they do things like traffic stops, so they make it easy to get one. Democratic huffing and puffing about this being a huge barrier to minorities and the poor is bullshit emitted to protect their vote-fraud machine.

                1. > nominal filing fee

                  It’s $5 in my state.

                  Not only that, if somehow $5 is beyond someone’s ability to pay, the Republican and Democratic parties(*) have announced they’ll not only pay for it, they’ll also provide transportation to the DMV office.

                  (*)there are three other parties recognized by the state, but last I heard they were cheapskates who couldn’t be bothered…)

                2. REAL ID is gonna either shut that down or make it a useless ID for most purposes.

                  It’s actually harder to get an NJ Driver’s License/photo ID (despite not being RID compliant, NJ has had the “6 points of identity proof” since sometime around 2002-03) than it is to get a passport; to the point that I’m seriously considering getting a passport card rather than go through the rigmarole necessary to get the Gold Star on my DL.

          3. If you’re an American, you have the papers to get a gov’t issued ID, because you have either a state-issued birth certificate, or a whatever-they-call the certificate of Naturalization.

            Anyone lacking both had better have a durn good story to explain why. I think the most likely explanation is that they’re illegal aliens, and even then there’s little excuse:

            I have personally seen obviously-hispanic Spanish-speakers with NO papers being issued ID/DL at a California DMV. Pretty much that’s all it takes — “No hablo Ingles.”

            And under CA state law, anyone who is issued an ID is also registered to vote.

            1. “A birth certificate exists” != “person has a copy they can use to get an ID”.
              (And ignores the issue that it’s not that hard to fraudulently obtain someone else’s birth certificate if one is so inclined)

        2. > Also note how the Left goes ballistic when there is any proposal to requrie ID to vote – A license, or something!

          Here in racist, *phobic, hillbilly Arkansas, a state-issued photo ID is required to vote. My concealed carry permit almost always gets a positive comment from the election workers.

          I also have to vote at my assigned precinct, and they locate my name in a big stack of fanfold printout and cross it out with a ball-point pen before I get to vote.

          While people from “enlightened” states fair swoon with the injustice of it all, we’re rather fond of our ignorant and hateful ways.

          1. Just out of curiosity, do your State’s laws oblige you to disarm in order to cast your vote? Here in Texas, polling places are on the CHL no-go list, as are public schools and government buildings.

            1. As I understand the current law (things have been changing rapidly here) a normal CCW may not bring his gun to a polling place if it is posted “no guns”, but people with the Enhanced CCW are free to ignore that. Ordinary schmucks with no license can do as they please.

              Yes, the CHCL *restricts* your RKBA… but you only need one if you plan to carry out of state, and we’re working on it. [it’s law, not common sense, you know…]

              The last bits of Constitutional Carry were signed by the Governor earlier this year. The anti-gun lobby apparently missed the whole Constitutonal Carry thing, which went through the legislature and was signed off roughly in parallel with the Enhanced Carry permit, which is what they were losing their collective rag over.

              As usual, “internet information, worth what you paid for it.”

      2. It does seem to me that there’s a symptomology of mass shooters, but I don’t know whether this is so common a pattern among gun-owners that it’s actually non-diagnostic (and maybe someone can advise me on this.) That’s the combination of certain kinds of purchases, particularly the whole “bullet-proof black tactical” thing, lots of guns, extremism (either left or right,) a presence on the very worst kinds of social media, a belief in some kind of oncoming race/class/ideological war, the belief that this war is desirable, plus maybe some kind of military-ish training (but not actually being a soldier.)

        The fact that the gun-lobby would prefer that we not study this kind of thing is not necessarily good in the long term for gun people.

        1. particularly the whole “bullet-proof black tactical” thing

          Meh, tacticool isn’t even limited to gun owners.

          lots of guns

          6 guns is rookie numbers.

          I suppose if you looked at ammo purchases…. the guy who only makes a small purchase (<1000rds) might be planning something. Or far more likely doesn't have the money/space/etc to buy a decent chunk at once, or is just starting out and doesn't know what to get, etc, etc, etc.

          extremism (either left or right,)

          Defined by whom? Fox News is extreme right wing propaganda according to one narrative, milquetoast centrist according to another.

          a presence on the very worst kinds of social media

          Not being a leftist extremist (or keeping your mouth shut if you aren’t) is a good way to get shunted off of the ones you don’t consider “the very worst”.

          a belief in some kind of oncoming race/class/ideological war

          In $CURRENT_YEAR is there anyone who doesn’t at least worry that we are heading in this general direction? That is if you don’t count what is already happening as a war.

          the belief that this war is desirable

          The only people on the right who believe this do so because they think it is inevitable, and they want to fight Hitler in 1938. Most are hoping that the left will calm the fuck down and stop forcing everyone closer to the edge.

          plus maybe some kind of military-ish training

          Why do I have the sneaking suspicion that going to the range every week would count in your definition? Guess what: the mass shooters are LOSERS. The number of times they manage to screw up basic operations like, oh I don’t know, having a functioning gun, is appalling (though welcome). There is a reason I’ve started referring to these shootings as “Loser Pride Events”. And why I hope the term spreads.

          1. >Most are hoping that the left will calm the fuck down and stop forcing everyone closer to the edge.

            That includes me. But optimism on this score gets more difficult to sustain pretty much every time a Democrat opens his mouth.

          2. @Ian:

            >The only people on the right who believe this do so because they think it is inevitable, and they want to fight Hitler in 1938. Most are hoping that the left will calm the fuck down and stop forcing everyone closer to the edge.

            Heck, I think it’s next thing to inevitable, and I’d sure as hell like to fight Hitler in 1938, but an awareness of history shows one thousands of Hitlers in 1939 who thought that they were getting ready to fight Hitler in 1938, including most of the current crop of leftists in this country, a good chunk of the right, *and* the original Hitler, for whom Stalin was his “Hitler in 1938”.

            It’s an unfortunate fact that those who study history still find themselves repeating it: The ignorant repeat the mistakes of their fathers, the students of history repeat the mistakes of their grandfathers.

          3. >In $CURRENT_YEAR is there anyone who doesn’t at least worry that we are heading in this general direction?

            To be honest, I thought we were closer in $CURRENT_YEAR-1…six months of escalating tit-for-tat violence culminating in the Hodgkinson/Charlottsville events was a scary period.

            Fortunately, President Trump’s famous call for peace seems to have calmed things down a bit.

        2. The fact that the gun-lobby would prefer that we not study this kind of thing…

          You sure ’bout that? I haven’t seen any opposition from “gun people” to searching for real solutions to mass shooters & violent crime in general.

          (I do see plenty of appropriate opposition to the assumption that the presence of guns is the cause and therefore the people that own them are obviously the problem.)

          1. https://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-hiltzik-gun-research-funding-20160614-snap-story.html

            In the short term this is probably good for gun owners. In the long term it is likely to fuel a backlash because we haven’t figured out what makes a mass shooter (or even someone who simply shoots a spouse) tick. The problem is a stance like Beto’s: We know we can take your gun, but we have no other ideas about how to solve the problem of gun violence, so we’re just going to take your gun.

            Studying the problem gives gun-enthusiasts and anti-violence-enthusiasts the possibility of finding some common ground.

            1. That article is just a hit piece. You won’t learn anything from it.

              The reason CDC studies were so widely opposed is because it was purely a leftist ploy to sell policymakers on gun control. It wasn’t science, it was politics.

              That article makes lots of hay with the infamous Kellermann gun study. Google it and you’ll find plenty of debunking of that bit of political junk science.

              As regards “common ground”, I wish you were right, but I believe you are naive. The left does not want to find solutions to mass shootings or criminal violence. They want gun confiscation. They will consider no other solution. And any other solution no matter how harmless is vehemently opposed as it might show that gun confiscation is unnecessary.

              TL;DR: Their motives are not honorable.

              1. “The left does not want to find solutions to mass shootings or criminal violence. They want gun confiscation. They will consider no other solution.”

                Here’s the thing. If you’ve got a decent bone in your body the El Paso shooting made you sick to your stomach. So did the Scalise shooting. And so on.

                Getting rid of guns is the “OBVIOUS” solution to that sick feeling in your stomach.

                Here’s the problem. The “OBVIOUS” solution is not necessarily the “CORRECT” solution. But positing some kind of “conspiracy to take our guns” doesn’t help either. It’s the “OBVIOUS” response. (Cue Dana Carvey: “Could it be… Stalin?”)

                But assuming that people who disagree with you are in the possession of some undead Russian’s ghost doesn’t help the situation either. The “non-obvious” questions are “why was that guy so fscked up?” and “What could we have done to make sure he couldn’t take his fscked-upness out on other people.” If it’s naive to assume that we can cooperate on that basis, I’m happy to be “naive” and hope others will join me. IMHO A “third way” on gun issues has a lot of political possibilities.

                1. When Dianne Feinstein’s protected-by-federal-and-private-gendarmerie ass gets on ABC News and says she wanted a complete gun ban, “Mr. and Mrs. America, turn them all in” — as she did in the 90s — you lose hour basis on which to pronounce as crazy those on the right who fear a leftist gun grab. And this was well before Beto’s slip of the mask.

                    1. I don’t disagree with Jeff. It’s tough to have any credibility with that position, any more than a “pro-choice Republican” has credibility. If you’re pro-choice, why did you join that particular party?

                    2. I am a pro-choice Republican. I joined the party because abortion is lower on my list of priorities than having a strong economy, a strong defense, and the right to keep and bear arms.

                    3. There was an old Chris Rock routine in which he said of OJ Simpson: “I’m not saying he shoulda done it… but I understand.”

                      I’m not saying that American gun culture, or the easy availability of guns it has enabled, are good things for the country as a whole. But if you grew up in that culture, particularly in the rural parts of the country where your gun may be your best bet to protect yourself and your property from criminals and natural predators, I can see where you might be a teeny tiny bit peeved that powerful, well-respected Democrats like Feinstein would seek to take that protection away. (And let’s not kid ourselves here, Feinstein didn’t lose any credibility by taking that position. She still gets elected for term after term, and she’s still influential within the Democratic party.)

                2. You seem to miss the OBVIOUS that there IS a conspiracy to take our guns. That conspiracy is widespread, mainstream, and has real power. What “doesn’t help” is to bury one’s head in the sand about it.

                  You also seem to miss that it is the non-left that wants to examine the mental health (etc.) angle of mass shootings. We’re all for that “third way”. Our enemies are not.

                  Show me real willingness of the left to cooperate on that and I’ll gladly retract my “naive” accusation.

                  1. The left doesn’t want the mental health angle investigated because:

                    1) over 95% of mass shootings are committed by leftists.

                    2) consistently, in surveys in which party affiliation and mental health are investigated, over 50% of those calling themselves Democrats, Socialists, or otherwise to the political left ALSO admit that they are either recieving psychiatric treatment or in need of psychiatric treatment.

                    They can’t admit that the only “common sense gun control laws” (i.e that focus on the mental health of the person) would disarm them.

                    Also, note that those of Irish descent are very very big on gun control (as is Ireland). Why? Because people with a genetic and cultural predisposition for alcohol abuse wisely decide that having guns around their own home is probably a bad idea. So they project THEIR “alcohol abuse+guns=bad” problem onto everybody.

                    1. >1) over 95% of mass shootings are committed by leftists.

                      Source? I’ve studied the epidemiology of mass shootings in some depth and I don’t believe this.

                    2. I noticed, back when I was regularly reading SJW type blogs, that a staggering number of the commenters admitted to having an anxiety disorder. Many a discussion would devolve into a comparison of Lexapro vs. other prescribed drugs.
                      I’m not so sure about your last point. Finland, for example, has a big alcohol problem, lots of guns and very few shootings.

                  1. The problem here is that you don’t actually have to commit a crime to be entered into a gang-database. Police track people and talk to people then “decide” they are gangbangers without an arrest or conviction in sight.

                    1. You don’t have to actually commit a crime to be targeted under “red flag” laws, either. That’s what makes them unconstitutional.

                  2. Cuz it might show that 95% of “America’s gun problem” is actually a black and latino gang problem. (Gangs being in turn almost entirely black and latino.) That, as those who dumped the gang database remarked, would be racist.

                    I recall seeing an analysis that concluded absent gang shootings, U.S. homicide rate would be among the world’s lowest, at 0.3 per 100k.

                    So the obvious solution is to ban gangs, so we can concentrate our manpower on catching crazies, and perhaps those suffering from Sudden Jihad Syndrome.

                3. The fact that the anti-gunners always go to the snarky “Gun owners have small dicks” meme, and the fact that they always eventually end up using phrases like “redneck,” “toothless,” and “inbred” while discussing the issue indicates to me that they don’t have a sick feeling in their stomachs about mass shootings. If anything, they probably get an erection from it.

                  (See, I can go to sex jokes too! Wow, I thought all pro-2A types were frightened Christians who had to pray to Jesus to get aroused!)

                  Every one I’ve ever seen has had a sleazy bohemian lifestyle, and even if they wouldn’t say it, they mostly wanted to get back at gun owners for having wives and kids. Yes, I know I’m overgeneralizing.

                  1. I think that’s more broadly true — I’ve never seen a leftist argue their position (or rather, argue against the opposition, since leftists seldom actually argue the *merits* of their position) without resorting to that style of insult.

                    I’ve concluded it’s less about us being wrong than about them getting off on how wrong we are.

                4. >Getting rid of guns is the “OBVIOUS”
                  > solution to that sick feeling in
                  > your stomach

                  No more than getting ride of cars is an “obvious” solution to me getting sick to my stomach when I was 12 years old and saw what was likely my first dead body–a kid who had tried to cross the street and been hit by a car and had a rather large puddle of blood coming out of his head.

                  If you want to stop violent crime stop focusing on the *guns* and focus on the *crime*.

                  That you don’t tells us a lot about your motives.

                5. Our host has blogged about this before.
                  After decades and decades of bad faith argumentation by confiscationists, by them using persons such as yourself as a mask to hide behind, and always coming back for more when previously proposed measures didn’t work, those who correctly intuited sometime between 50 years ago and today the actual end-goal of confiscationists are quite frankly done with their shit.

                  I do mean it when I say using you as a mask, Troutwaxer. It is hard to tell whether you are genuinely reaching for a solution to the horrible problem of mass violence, or cynically standing upon the dead bodies of the victims to demand that Something Must Be Done, because you know that those victims will let you play the emotions of others and gather support for your real or ostensible position.

                  In the post linked above there is a key remark in the comments section, which I will quote here, but you really should go read the linked post in full, and meditate it upon it for a while.

                  >I dislike the idea that we have to react to extremists by jumping down the throats of moderates.

                  I’m not a big fan of it either. But reality is what it is; if you can’t tell the venomous snakes from the non-venomous ones, you have to treat all snakes as venomous. The fact that your inability isn’t the non-venomous snake’s fault is irrelevant.

                  1. Interesting that Eric wrote that. Seems to me it could be used against the Pro 2FA side quite easily. If you can’t tell who’s likely to be venomous (i.e. use their gun to kill people) then you have to treat all people who want a gun as though they were (potentially) venomous. Which is, IIUC, the stance of the gun control side in a nutshell.

                    1. >If you can’t tell who’s likely to be venomous (i.e. use their gun to kill people) then you have to treat all people who want a gun as though they were (potentially) venomous.

                      The difference is the prior probabilities. Very, very few people who want guns want to kill anyone; given the number of civilian weapons in circulation in circulation, this has to be true otherwise the streets would run with blood.

                      On the other hand, the track record of the gun-grabbers is that lying about their intentions is very, very common. A good index is the frequency with which they’re caught saying different things to different audiences. They routinely fundraise on Ban All The Things, then pretend for public consumption not to be confiscationists.

                  2. I don’t have a particular agenda, and wouldn’t claim any brilliance in my search for solutions – I think my brightest idea is probably about band-aid level. I’m not a gun-grabber, just a guy who’s appalled by some of what I’m seeing these days.

                6. Troutwaxer,

                  Why do you think any more data would better inform these policy position? As Michael pointed out the anti-gun crowd has not been honorable about this.

                  Following the ’94 assault weapon ban Fed studies show it didn’t have an applicable affect on crime, yet here we are again.

                  The US is at historic, 30 year lows in crimes of all kinds, gun crimes included.

                  Over that same time period, laws for owning and carrying firearms have become less restrictive, and the raw number of privately owned firearms has certainly increased.

                  There is already plenty of evidence that more firearms don’t result in more firearms violence, but this is consistently ignored.

                  1. We’re definitely at a 30-year-low for crimes, gun and otherwise. But it’s hard to read about a guy going to a border city and “defending” his country from people shopping at Walmart…

                    I think what appalls me is not so much the deaths, but the utterly sick toxicity of that thinking and the hope that it won’t spread. Sometimes the question isn’t the amount of violence, but who it’s aimed at and why.

                    1. How about the utterly sick toxicity of the thinking that law-abiding gun owners and the NRA are hte problem and need to be slapped down, hard and permanently, and that gun owners need to be punished and tiehr firearms taken away? Doesn’t that appall you at all?

                    2. Then why do you want to aim the punishment (taking away guns) at the widest possible target (gun owners) ??

                      This is like saying — a few dogs went rabid and bit someone, so let’s kill all dogs.

                    3. Jay and Reziac, how many times do I need to tell you that I’m not a gun-grabber. It’s both contrary to the 2nd amendment and a political impossibility, and if I were in office I wouldn’t waste any time pursuing the idea.

                      I’ve got a couple ideas about how to fix stuff that might be useful, but I haven’t posted about them because I don’t think they’re remotely brilliant or a far-reaching as necessary.

              2. Want to see the bad faith of the statists? https://youtu.be/dfYdocZppmY?t=1268. The guest is a professional firearms instructor. He offered free basic firearms safety courses for all the kids in Saint Louis (basic course, no firearms present), only required someone from the city, or the media, to provide a venue. Wonder of wonders, none of them were willing to furnish a venue to teach kids how to avoid killing each other.

            2. > we have no other ideas about how to solve the problem of gun violence

              Sure you do. It’s just that they are less appealing to your side. Two solutions (with synergistic possibilities!):

              1) Ban all media coverage of mass shootings until at least 90 days after the event.
              2) Deport all poor inner-city black folks.

              They are at *least* as reasonable as stripping rights from 100 million citizens because of the acts of a handful.

              1. Reversed Stupidity is not Intelegence. There are better options than burning the Constitution to save it.

                1. Stop treating boys like defective girls.

                2. Stop treating every male trait as evil, and every female trait as perfect.

                3. Stop promoting the hellishly evil post-modern / Marxist hybrid view of the world as anything but a failed cesspit of omnicidal destruction.

                Funnily enough this can all be fixed very simply (in terms of actions taken, not difficulty getting people to accept it): Get the government out of the school system.

            3. There has also been the cynical use of anti-gun “Scholarship” by the courts. ESR has written about Michael A. Bellesiles Arming America. It is worth remember that Bellesiles’ fraudulent research was cited in a gun restrictionist decision in the 9th Circuit.

              When it was demonstrated that this was based on a fraud, the decision wasn’t revisited, the 9th circuit simply removed the footnotes.

              This is not a case of policy following the research wherever the facts indicate. Rather its Anti-gun jurist using any convenient ‘study’ as a cover for their cause, and the facts be damned.

        3. Someone who was getting into 3 Gun competition would buy at least 3 guns, one of which would be an AR pattern rifle, all at once.

          So that would be diagnostic only of someone having a fat bank account.

        4. > It does seem to me that there’s a
          > symptomology of mass shooters,

          Remember that a “mass shooting” is anytime 4 or more people get killed INCLUDING THE SHOOTER. This puts the murder-suicide of a family in the same bucket as the Aurora Theater shooting and Chicago land Drive-by.

          There isn’t one. There’s at least two:
          1) Psychotic break.
          2) Turf wars/gangland

          I have trouble putting “work related” shootings in the same bucket with a father shooting the whole family then himself, but both of those to me seem like mental health issues.

          > The fact that the gun-lobby would prefer that we not study this
          > kind of thing is not necessarily good in the long term for gun people.

          Yet another fucking lie.

          The “Gun Lobby” is and was against the CDC “studying” this issue because (1) It’s not the sort of “disease” the CDC was founded and funded to study, and (2) Because when they WERE using taxpayer dollars to do it was was politically motivated hit job, not competent science.

          1. Remember that a “mass shooting” is anytime 4 or more people get killed INCLUDING THE SHOOTER. This puts the murder-suicide of a family in the same bucket as the Aurora Theater shooting and Chicago land Drive-by.

            For newer readers, note that this is according to Mass Shooting Tracker. It’s their definition, and it isn’t objective; at least three other major sources have their own definitions. FBI doesn’t even have a definition (which surprised me); they just have the raw data. See table here:

            https://www.rand.org/research/gun-policy/analysis/essays/mass-shootings.html

            That table also shows how much difference a definition can make. In 2015, MST counted 371 mass shootings. Mother Jones used their own definition: 3+ fatal injuries, not counting the shooter, and motive was indiscriminate. Their count: 7.

            1. One other note: some organizations are not above outright lying. A Federal government study I looked at, maybe from the GAO?, on “white nationalist” or perhaps just non-Muslim domestic “terrorism” murders, vs. Muslim terrorist murders, lied to achieve its results by scoring on the former people who were completely nuts and had no coherent political position, and for the latter ignored several notorious cases, like the one that really activates almonds when in Oklahoma a black Muslim convert radicalized by the usual suspects of foreign origin beheaded a coworker, and was brought to heel by a company executive who kept an AR-15 in his office.

  9. One definitely gets the idea that Beto isn’t very bright, and he did just render himself unelectable – at this point getting a left-leaning gun-owner to hold his nose and vote for the man will be damn-near impossible.

    If he were a right-winger, he’d have just told the crowd, “throughout America, any abortion will lead to a federal first-degree murder charge,” with the clip being played at Democratic fundraisers for the next ten years.

    Electorally speaking, this is how we separate the adults from the children, I guess.

    On the subject of guns, what do we do? I’m all for Eric’s plan of better mental-health treatment, but that’s only a partial solution.

    (Eric, Ibiblio is acting up again. If this turns out to be a double or triple post, please erase all-but-one of them.)

    1. If not being very bright rendered one unelectable, Congress nor the Senate would have a quorum today.

      1. If not being very bright rendered one unelectable, Congress nor the Senate would have a quorum today.

        I fail to see the downside.

      2. If not being very bright rendered one unelectable, Congress nor the Senate would have a quorum today.
        Um, that makes little sense. Someone has to win every election, unless there are no candidates. Even if it were the case (and I very much doubt that it is) that in the majority of contests no bright candidates bother entering the race, our hypothetical would radically change that.

        1. > Someone has to win every election, unless there are no candidates.

          My local county government, which styles itself as the “quorum court”, seldom has all its positions filled, as nobody can be bothered even to run unopposed.

          I have yet to decide if this is most excellent, or rather alarming…

          1. Probably alarming since it means anyone who wants and is willing to spend a little money to could easily take over. For example, Bloomberg, et al., have been trying to get pro-gun control people elected to various positions. They could easily take over your county.

    2. >> “Eric, Ibiblio is acting up again.”

      It never really stopped as far as I can tell and it’s been going on for over two weeks. I’m starting to wonder if it’s even going to get fixed.

      1. >I’m starting to wonder if it’s even going to get fixed.

        I got a response from an admin yesterday. I believe they’re working the problem.

    3. First, you must accept the fact that there are some problems government cannot solve and some crises that governments can only exacerbate by their involvement. The problems we have as a society must be resolved by private action and cooperation among citizens not answering any mandate of the State. We do need to find a way to undo the Long March through the Institution, but no government can do that.

      As a step 0, you must accept the fact that the United States does not, in fact, even have a “gun violence” problem. Certain localities are war zones, but on the whole, the very notion that mass shootings are on the rise and that therefore, we must Do! Something! is a lie peddled by the powerful to disabuse us of our rights. Places not governed by democrats are generally free of the murder and mayhem that accompany the Doing! of the Something! that they insist we must make universal. Likewise, discard as an insult to your intelligence the notions that gun ownership is uncivilized, or a risk factor, or a public health issue, or evidence of latent homicidal tendency, or anything of the sort.

      The simple truth is that those who would rule us are trying to solve a problem they have – our ownership of guns useful for making criminals flee, bleed, or die – by pretending to solve a problem they would like us to believe we have, which they call “gun violence.” Gun control laws create second-class citizens. They are racist, sexist, class-ist, able-ist, and evil. They are a violation of our national charter and the principles that underlie it. They must all go. All of them.

      1. >The simple truth is that those who would rule us are trying to solve a problem they have – our ownership of guns. . .

        That’s an insightful way to look at it.

        1. Here’s a good bit of recent rhetoric along those lines: “If you need a disarmed society to govern you suck at governing.

        2. More accurately, they have a problem with the fact that we own guns. And they’re in denial, so the fact that it’s their problem has not sunk in.

    4. A closer analogy would be if a right-winger were to say “Hell yes, if you’re black, if you’re a woman we’re going to take away your right to vote, to make contracts, and to be treated as an adult. We will not let your fellow Americans continue to suffer from your inherent childishness and criminality.”

      1. You’re saying I’ve underestimated the level of extremism with which Beto’s statement is viewed by the right?

        1. Yes. Robert Francis O’Rourke has gone full Redcoat and full jack-booted thug. And the crowd in Houston cheered. Of those two facts, the second is the more disturbing by far.

          1. And let’s be honest: every one of those cheering had a raging hard-on thinking about all the “rednecks” and their wives and children getting killed during the confiscations.

            O’Rourke was implicitly calling not just for confiscation, but for mass murder. And every last parasite in that crowd knew that damned well.

        2. By several orders of magnitude.

          As far as we are concerned he should have been arrested by the end of the night for high treason.

          1. It’s also prima-facia evidence that any elected official who agreed with him had defaulted on their oath to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic”.

        3. Yes. Or possibly I’ve underestimated the level of extremism with which your abortion statement example would be viewed by the left.

          1. To the left — no, scratch that, to virtually all but the most religiously conservative women — banning abortion is step one toward denying women their rights and full personhood. Kinda like how the right feels about banning AR-15s being step one towards full gun confiscation.

            1. For any single-party voter A (not necessarily even close to “extreme”), “all but the most X in group B”, where X is a trait that predicts some position that A’s party disagrees with, generally includes all members of group B that vote for the Scary Other Party, as well as most or all swing voters and non voters.

              There’s not actually that much difference between women and men on actual position on abortion: the real difference is on the salience of the issue either way: women are more likely to be at one extreme or the other.

              The thing is, women on the left have some valid concerns about abortion bans on issues that conservatives actually are fairly sympathetic to, if there was a shared vocabulary for that to be communicated. To name a few: concerns about procedures being banned because of a high risk of fetal death (prior restraint targeted at abortion impacting other procedures), medical providers fearing to perform such procedures lest they be prosecuted (due process, presumption of innocence, medical liability issues), or women being unwilling to request such procedures for fear of prosecution (due process, presumption of innocence).

              To put the issue to rest, a Constitutional amendment something like the following would likely need to be adopted:

              1) Abortion affirmed to be homicide.
              2) An automatic pardon for the mother, without exception, in all abortion cases, only abortion providers to be prosecuted.
              3) When a threat to the life of the mother is evident, abortion does not constitute a crime, no medical personnel shall be prosecuted in such cases.
              4) Presumption of innocence reaffirmed, medical personnel not to be prosecuted for any fetal death in which intent to cause fetal death cannot be proved.
              5) Prior restraint against abortions forbidden, no crime occurs unless and until an abortion actually takes place. No vague blanket provisions for the government to protect the life of the fetus. Actually, it would be great to constrain prior restraint across the board, not just in the matter of abortion.
              6) Affirmation of the complete control of patients in general over their own medical care, and of expectant mothers over their pregnancies in all matters but abortion.

            2. >>”To the left — no, scratch that, to virtually all but the most religiously conservative women— banning abortion is step one toward denying women their rights and full personhood”

              To the left, yes. To women, no. In this country women are split for/against abortion at roughly the same rates as men, but are more polarized. An extreme anti-abortion law would have more defectors among republican men.

            3. That’s you not listening to or understanding the position of people on the other side of the argument from you.

              I am lukewarm[1] on the abortion thing because I “get” both sides at a fundamental level.

              The “pro-choice” crowd–most of them–really sees this as an autonomy issue–and like most on the left, to one degree or another they want to be able to do whatever they want and minimize or eliminate the consequences. You can see this playing out in the arguments over late term abortions. It is absolutely INSANE to be killing a baby **AS THE HEAD IS CROWNING**.

              The “pro-life” crowd–most of them–sees this as a *life*. As long as you refuse to accept or understand that in *their* minds they are fighting for ANOTHER HUMAN BEING that just happens to not be born yet, then you’ll sound like a post-modern neo-marxist jackass when you say things like “denying women their rights and full personhood”.

              Also note that right now it’s the *Republicans* who want to make birth control an OTC thing, and the *democrats* who are making birth control more expensive for poor women–mostly to continue to fund Planned Parenthood. And it’s kind of funny how PP’s eugenics origins are off limits as a criticism, but EVERY OTHER institution in the country is being attacked as racist because of something that happened 150 or 200 years ago.

  10. So…

    The Democrats are a bunch of murderous, totalitarian Communists.

    The Republicans are a bunch of useless, do-nothing morons who couldn’t govern the local Quilting Club.

    Fine mess we’re in.

    Remember … despair is a sin, but cynicism is a way of life.

    1. You forgot one party: Trump. He is none of those things.
      We don’t deserve him but I’m very grateful that we have him.

      1. Trump is the Tea Party president. Take people’s attitudes toward the Tea Party, raise them to Presidential levels, and that will be a very good approximation of their attitude toward Trump.

        1. >Trump is the Tea Party president. Take people’s attitudes toward the Tea Party, raise them to Presidential levels, and that will be a very good approximation of their attitude toward Trump.

          I have occasionally explained to my lefty friends that “Trumpism is what you got because you successfully demonized and suppressed the Tea Partiers. If you succeed at demonizing and suppressing Trumpism, trust me that you are going to like what arises to replace it even less.”

  11. Is there a way to only get your updates on coding and Linux? You’re so incredibly full of shit on every other topic, but I still want to read updates on things you actually know something about.

    1. Let me see if I can spare ESR the trouble of having to speak to your disgustingly rude ass.

      At the bottom of each post is a line that notes which categories the post is in. Avoid the ones that appear in categories like “politics” or “firearms,” such as this one.

      Happy now?

      1. >Let me see if I can spare ESR the trouble of having to speak to your disgustingly rude ass.

        In case anyone wonders, the reason I often let comments like this pass without response is that I think the author already sounds like enough of an idiot that anything I said would be superfluous.

        Occasionally I poke one of these hapless nimrods for the entertainment of watching them sputter. But it’s a low form of amusement that I’m trying to give up.

        1. >> But it’s a low form of amusement that I’m trying to give up.
          Then you are a better man than I.

    2. Stacy: you sound like someone who doesn’t know anything about coding or Linux either. With that attitude, you’re probably someone who writes SJW Codes of Conduct instead of contributing anything of value. I’d gleefully kick you off any project I found you on.

    3. Wow.

      You just kicked open the door, stomped into the house, dramatically put your hands on your hips, threw back your head and haughtily announced to all and sundry
      “I AM AN OBNOXIOUS TWAT!”

      Bravo!

      1. You saying you’ve never tried that yourself? Heckuva conversation starter at parties.

        Extra fun if you have long flowing hair you can whip back as you say it.

  12. More than anything else, Progressives fear an armed citizenry in revolt against the insidious implementation of socialism once they regain political power. Firearm confiscation is the preferred preemptive remedy to armed revolution, but in our modern technological age, this tactic is a fools errand. First, most local LEOs will not comply, and even if a new federal jackboot corps is created in order to enforce it, most people will simply hide their firearms and then report them stolen. This nonsense will also have many unintended consequences (can you say epidemic black-market manufacturing?) You will also change the mindset of the majority law-abiding citizens that normally respect and aid law enforcement institutions. Even if confiscation is overturned by the Supreme Court, no one will ever again trust a Fed. That is no trivial thing.

    1. The left is now saying, “what are you going to do murder the cops when they come for your guns?”

      What they fail to grok is that there will be a ton of law enforcement agencies that will refuse the order to confiscate weapons.

      If the order goes out to confiscate weapons there will almost certainly be situations where a Sheriff’s office is under siege from federal officers trying to take over and make the confiscations happen. These battles will end up as really really ugly skirmishes in a new Civil War.

      1. You could get a bad case of whiplash watching the Left oscillate rapidly between their “Fascists Pigs!” and “You can’t point guns at cops!” talking points.

      2. I wish that were true. But law enforcement officers are now licensed by the federal government, so anyone who refused a confiscation order (once it’s a Dem administration, or now if Trump actually does sign such a law) would lose his law enforcement career.

        I expect to see more repeats of that guy getting killed in Maryland with no consequences to the bad cops involved. For the good guys to win, when we have no way to predict who would be “red flagged” next, would require forming a rebel army and pre-empting the cops by taking the fight to them. Unless we first see conditions as in Venezuela, I doubt gun owners would do this. And of course if conditions do get that bad the confiscations will happen beforehand for just that reason.

        1. Well, the left says all our immigration laws are optional, so why not their LEO licensing laws. Either all laws matter or none of them do.

          We will have more Law Enforcement Officers on our side resisting confiscation than you think.

          Although I also think I’m right that the Feds will try to kill them for it.

    2. You assume that most people trust the feds now. The reaction to Epstein’s ‘suicide’ should put paid to that notion.

    3. I haven’t trusted a Fed since Waco. Probably should have learned from Ruby Ridge, but the reporting in my home state was so skewed, it wasn’t until the trial that I realized just how corrupt the Feds were in that case.

  13. >”This is horrible – it’s a nightmare and a bad sign for our republic that advocating police-state behavior like this doesn’t get politicians driven from public life – but it’s also very clarifying.”

    It is exactly what the religion known as “America”, which long ago banned men from marrying pretty young virgin girls, deserves.

    Once America is gone, men will live the life of the Islamic Prophet, or Gaelic Warrior descendant upon Rome, again.

  14. >”This is horrible – it’s a nightmare and a bad sign for our republic that advocating police-state behavior like this doesn’t get politicians driven from public life – but it’s also very clarifying.”

    (Also) what do you expect men… sorry… males to do? Kill these people? And go to prison forever? And if somehow they rise up and have a revolution instead what will be the reward? No white-american man will award other white-american men young girls as brides (the traditional wage of a man). White men are all enemies to eachother.

    When the republic falls, men can be free to do what they actually want to do again: whether the fathers like it or whether they don’t. It will be man vs man, not man vs man+state.

    Some Proud White Staunch American men might convert to the new way after a time, defecting from their old religion of Americanism, being smart enough to sell their daughter for a bride price to a person they like. Very few though: most white men will simply be murdered by other men since white men do not want ANY man to be happy.

  15. Two minutes of clips from Democrats and the media (but I repeat myself) claiming that nobody wants to take your guns away, followed by Beto doing just that, causing cheers to erupt from the debate audience.

    BOOM. That ending is the persuasion knock-out punch. Nobody can say that “just one” Democrat wants confiscation after watching that audience erupt in cheers in favor of the federal government violating part of the Bill of Rights. That should send chills down the spine of anyone who believes in the Constitution. I can imagine the Republican commercials. “Democrats want to take away your Constitutional rights. Don’t let them. Don’t vote for any Democrats. Not even [insert local name]. They want your guns, your trucks, and your hamburgers.”

    In a selfish, desperate, and doomed attempt to get on the ticket, Beto has sent a torpedo into the side of his own party. Now, they have to either 1) support him and alienate vast numbers of centrists and blue-collar Democrats and some donors, or 2) repudiate him, but alienate their leftist/activist base and even more donors. Tough choice! As Hillary learned in 2016, it’s hard to appeal to both wings. Meanwhile, Trump captures the center and wins bigly in 2020. Prepare for world flip-out.

    1. Facebook very helpfully pointed out that the Babylon Bee story headlined “Trump Campaign to Simply Air Clips of Democrats Talking” was false, but at this point I don’t see how it could be a losing strategy.

      I’m sure they’re operating under the assumption that the media will simply ignore everything they say once they’re the nominee, allowing them to tack back towards the center and pick up the independent vote, but times have changed and the media’s ability to hide information from the electorate isn’t what it used to be.

      1. >I’m sure they’re operating under the assumption that the media will simply ignore everything they say once they’re the nominee,

        Alternatively, their strategy focuses on ‘turning out the base,’ not ‘convincing undecideds.’ IMHO, it wouldn’t be a stupid choice (for the D’s). Their base remains the more engaged.

      2. > Facebook … Babylon Bee

        It’s interesting how the Bee has become the bugbear of the Left, with everyone from Snopes to the Facebook getting their panties in a wad over Bee stories.

        It must be terrible to be born without a sense of humor *and* too stupid to tell the difference between “news” and satire.

        1. It’s much more sinister than that in terms of their censoring the Bee as Fake News. Seriously, the first major incident of the sort Jeff Gauch mentioned above is when Snopes fact checked their article claiming CNN had bought an industrial washing machine to “spin” the news, and Facebook acted on that.

          They know Alinsky’s 12 Rules for Radicals, number 5 is “Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.” They realize the Bee is an existential threat.

          A number of us are wondering how much of the web will still be operating as such by this time next year.

        2. It’s actually very difficult to tell satire from reality in many cases these days. Who would have imagined that we would see the New York Times celebrating the Deep State? That sounds like a Babylon Bee article but it is all too real.

          1. >Who would have imagined that we would see the New York Times celebrating the Deep State?

            Me. I wasn’t even a bit surprised.

        1. I think they are aware; they just don’t care. No one but no one must be allowed to point out that the Emperor has no clothes.

  16. Your site is intermittently failing with 404-not-found error pages. Whenever that happens I’m always fearful you’ve been “canceled” by a rage mob, as is the fad of the moment.

    1. >Your site is intermittently failing with 404-not-found error pages. Whenever that happens I’m always fearful you’ve been “canceled” by a rage mob, as is the fad of the moment.

      No, it’s affecting all WordPress blogs on ibiblio. I can see the message traffic from other bloggers about the issue on their answers forum.

  17. The problem is that this *will* happen eventually unless something changes. One effect of the demokrat clown show is that all of the also-rans are spouting so many far-left talking points, that they’re accelerating the Overton shift to the left. This is enabled, of course, by those two loyal branches of the demokrat party: the media and the academy.

    It’s fun to joke about nuking Hollywood, but maybe it’s time to stop joking and push the button.

  18. Another “not so fast Democrat”, “Buttigieg: Beto’s new catchphrase plays into the hands of Republicans“:

    CNN anchor Jake Tapper asked the South Bend, Indiana, mayor Sunday morning if O’Rourke’s new catchphrase, “Hell yes, we’re going to take your AR-15, your AK-47,” is “something that’s playing in the hands of Republicans.”

    “Yes,” Buttigieg answered. “Look, right now we have an amazing moment on our hands. We have agreement among the American people for, not just universal backgrounds checks, but we have a majority in favor of red flag laws, high-capacity magazines, banning the new sale of assault weapons. This is a golden moment to finally do something.”

  19. “Beto O.Rourke said “Hell, yes, we’re going to take your AR-15”. And nobody on stage demurred, then or afterwards. And the audience applauded thunderously.”

    That was good sense of the candidates as a majority of the voters actually would support such a ban:
    https://www.politico.com/story/2019/08/07/poll-most-voters-support-assault-weapons-ban-1452586

    https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/most-americans-support-stricter-gun-laws-new-poll-says

    So, supporting such a ban will actually get you more votes. It shows again that the Democrats are closer to the voters than the Republicans. Hence the GOP’s strong reliance on gerrymandering and voter suppression to win elections.

    1. And the Democrats have an extra 50 seats in the House because the Census counts illegal aliens.

      We get it, the Constitution is dead, we’re in the “Who, Whom?” stage. Do you think that favors your side?

    2. >So, supporting such a ban will actually get you more votes.

      The history of past elections in which the Democrats ran on gun control does not support this theory.

      Bill Clinton, who whatever his other failings was the most effective practical politician of my lifetime before Trump, famously told the Democrats that the “assault weapon” ban of 1994 cost the Democrats control of congress, giving the Republican their best national electroral result since 1952. That pattern has been repeated since in both national and local races. Outside of a handful of coastal urban D strongholds, to run on an aggressive gun-control platform is to lose.

      We have two observable facts here. One is those poll numbers. The other is that politicians who believe them almost always find that to be a error they keenly regret. I don’t know for sure how to reconcile them, but I have some guesses.

      One is that people for 2A rights are much more likely to make that a deciding factor in their vote than antis.

      Another is that the pollsters’ sample is seriously skewed. A lot of gunfolks have come to think of the pollsters and the press as the enemy and won’t talk to them.

      1. Another is that the pollsters’ sample is seriously skewed. A lot of gunfolks have come to think of the pollsters and the press as the enemy and won’t talk to them.

        Also that even if we ignore the political dangers (a bad idea), some random calling you up and asking if you have guns could easily be a criminal.

        But to see that possibility one would first have to accept the idea that criminals are afraid of armed citizens. And that is seriously heretical on that side of the divide.

        1. But to see that possibility one would first have to accept the idea that criminals are afraid of armed citizens. And that is seriously heretical on that side of the divide.

          Note that there’s a step left out in-between those two sentences, they don’t want criminals to be afraid. In anarcho-tyrannical fashion, which is less and less hidden, criminals are allies to people on that side of the divide. See this very recent example tied to the current push for gun control:

          Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee amended the measure during a Wednesday mark-up to authorize the federal government to issue extreme risk protection orders in some instances, but they rejected an amendment that would have red-flagged anyone who law enforcement lists as a gang member.

          Note they’re going beyond bribing states to enact Red Flag confiscation laws to give the Feds the ability to SWAT anyone who gets on their wrong side. The threat is already being widely used in American politics, from Trump on down, of course including Beto as mentioned by Ken above.

        1. >Anyone expressing gun control ideas will see a LOT of money put against them.

          You have that backwards. The big money is on the anti-2A side, through people like Michael Bloomberg, who funds Everytown and several more obscure groups. They’re pretty notorious for pumping money into House and Senate races to swamp whatever their pro-2A opponents can spend.

          The money imbalance used to worry me until I noticed that Bloomberg gets very little return on his investment. Again, I’m not sure why this is. But it is a fact that the number of constitutional-carry jurisdictions has been increasing pretty fast – not the result the gun-grabbers want.

            1. >The NRA is well known to play this game very well,

              The article you cite includes this:

              But experts have caution that the relationship between contributions from pro-gun groups and Congress’ reticence to change the nation’s gun laws is complicated at best. The NRA accounts for just a fraction of the contributions lawmakers receive, and the group doesn’t crack the top 50 in terms of spending to the lobby the federal government.

              The NRA gets its money from small-dollar donors – firearms manufacturers are terrified of bad optics if they were to fund pro-gun political lobbying, and the NRA doesn’t try to get then to do it. Thus NRA-ILA can’t match the volume that a Bloomberg or Soros can put on the table, and doesn’t actually try to.

              What really makes it powerful in DC – the way it plays the game – is that it has a briefing book ready on every firearms-related issue. Overworked Congressional staff rely on these heavily.

              1. What really makes it powerful in DC – the way it plays the game – is that it has a briefing book ready on every firearms-related issue. Overworked Congressional staff rely on these heavily.

                And a reputation for honesty according to no less than the American Library Association. In my own experience, they only lie about themselves, e.g. the internal corruption that’s recently had bright lights shined on it. But basic facts about guns, gun owners, crime I’d assume? No need to lie about that, the facts are on our side, which is why the gun grabbers are 99% Fake News and bloody shirt waving rhetoric.

                But don’t forget something McCain-Feingold specifically targeted: before elections, the NRA sends out postcards with their ratings of candidates. And members and their friends and family pay attention, are often single issue voters. For politicians who care about staying in office, votes trump money.

                This is 10X at the Presidential level, where for example the NRA on the cover if its membership magazines printed on a black background Michael Dukakis’ infamous statement that “I do not believe in people owning guns. Guns should be owned only by the police and military. I am going to do everything I can to disarm this state.

                BTW, Bloomberg alone promised to spend at least $50 million on the 2016 election cycle….

              2. “The article you cite includes this:”

                And the NRA have 5 million members. Many of which are willing to get involved with money or otherwise when their guns are threatened.

              3. The Left hates the NRA. They want it gone. What they fail to realize is that the NRA isn’t effective at fighting against 2A encroachment because they have some kind of scary power. Their effectiveness is entirely a result of the voters who will punish anyone they perceive as “gun grabbers”. If the NRA would evaporate into thin air today in a Thanos-Snap of the Left, tomorrow there would be just as many pro-RTKBA voters willing and able to keep voting the same way, and the day after tomorrow, the Left would figure out who had taken over the NRA’s position as primary pro-RTKBA lobbyist, and dream of Snapping them out of existence too.

                Lather, rinse, repeat.

              4. The NRA gets its money from small-dollar donors – firearms manufacturers are terrified of bad optics if they were to fund pro-gun political lobbying, and the NRA doesn’t try to get then to do it.

                There are a lot of firearm manufacturers that *do* support and donate to the NRA, but most of them are small, almost boutique manufacturers/small machine shops in the more “contested” spaces–AR lowers, 1911s, AKs etc. They have small margins and cutthroat competition, and just can’t afford to give a lot.

              5. I have felt for years now that NRA is a cowardly, sellout organization which is not very effective for two reasons. (1) NRA has pre-decided to always endorse Republicans regardless of their, or their opponents’, stands on gun issues. The endorsement lists they issue before elections contain “report card grades” that bear this out. In particular they will never endorse an independent or Libertarian candidate even if both the Democrat and the Republican in that race are die-hard gun grabbers. (2) In all the major gun-rights court cases (McDonald, Heller, others) NRA not only wouldn’t contribute funds, but tried to get the plaintiffs to abandon their appeals, because NRA’s lawyers were scared to death that a loss could worsen gun owners’ legal position (even though it was already about pessimum). At least that’s the reason NRA’s people gave; I wouldn’t be surprised if the real reason is that NRA’s leadership is long since infiltrated and/or corrupted by anti-gunners.

                Whatever the real reason, I urge pro-gun folk to join and contribute to GOA and CCRKBA (the orgs behind the lawsuits) instead of NRA.

                1. Remarkably, the NRA’s opposition to Heller was entirely reasonable if you’re not an accelerationist. At the time it was started Sandra Day O’Connor would have provided a 5-4 majority vote against it, it took her getting replaced by Alito in the middle of the case to get us the weak sauce of Heller.

                  As it is, since McDonald the Supremes have let the lower courts run amok on guns, except for this latest case which can be decided on the narrowest of grounds (that a polity can’t forbid its subjects from transporting their guns outside it). Unless you live in a very few places like Illinois and D.C., the two decisions have not changed the facts on the ground.

            2. The power of the NRA isn’t in the amount of money it has, it’s that there are between 5 and 6 million members.

          1. I could probably write a wall of text about this, but for the sake of brevity, I think it comes down to this: they have no earthly idea who we are or how many of us there are, so they spend money making laws we blithely ignore, say things that prompt us to load our rifles and double-check our magazines, and then respond with shock and disapprobation when we indicate that we do not intend to comply and indeed “aim to misbehave.” Even rural Southern progressives, who should understand how deeply rooted the gun culture is in our society (even if urban, left-wing Yankees who’ve never even met a gun owner don’t), don’t understand how thoroughly they’ve misunderstood us. They seem to think that because they’ve won, as it were, the Long March, that the battle-space is prepared for active operations, not realizing that the America they see in the media is no more than a projection out of their own minds. Perhaps they literally don’t know that the NRA is the tip of the iceberg and accounts for no more more than 5% of American gun owners, that it now constitutes the squishy end of the RKBA movement, or that we don’t take our marching orders from it.

            It is as if they are trying to push the North American Plate across the Mid-Atlantic Ridge by tilling salt into the soil in Nebraska.

        2. “US elections tend to be won by the candidate with the most money.”

          Tell that to President Hillary Clinton, who outspent Trump two-to-one.

          1. To be fair, “tend” doesn’t mean “always”

            Sometimes the better candidate wins despite campaign funds and media slander.

        3. “Anyone expressing gun control ideas will see a LOT of money put against them.”

          I am completely unsurprised that you have bought into the Eurosocialist gun-grabbing narrative.

          The NRA gets at most half of its money from gun makers and the like. The rest comes from individual NRA members. You know, regular guys like me.

          The NRA doesn’t have piles of money. What it does have piles of is individual voters who get very unhappy at candidates who sound like gun grabbers – which, after Beto’s gaffe, includes every single Democrat running for President.

          1. The NRA didn’t buy enough guns to make Bozo the Clown the greatest gun salesman of all time.

            The NRA didn’t keep the entire country’s ammunition production tied up for years at a time either.

            1. To put some perspective on your last comment, the US civilian industry makes over 12 billion rounds a year, only 3 billion of that rimfire like .22LR. That was before Remington broke down and bought more equipment to make centerfire rounds, companies didn’t know how long it was going to last.

              That’s not including the seconds and canceled orders that come from the US government’s Lake City plant, which has a very neat contract with the company that runs it, win-win-win for the government, taxpayers, and civilians buyers of military types of ammo. We civilians bought everything that could be made and imported for a total of 6 years.

              We haven’t been buying all these rifles of military utility and ammo to surrender them to the likes of Beto for no doubt a pittance of what they’re worth.

        4. > the most money

          Yes, the mythical “undecided voter.”

          How much money do you figure the Democratic Party would have to spend to get ESR to vote for Beetle O’Rourke or Kamala Harris?

          I doubt even an Occasional-Cortex budget would have enough zeroes for that.

          1. The only way I can imagine Eric voting for a Democrat would be if it was clearly and obviously proven that Trump was… idunno… taking bribes from space aliens or something, and it became clear that he had to be removed from office by any means necessary. But the situation would have to be truly dire.

            1. >The only way I can imagine Eric voting for a Democrat would be if it was clearly and obviously proven that Trump was… idunno… taking bribes from space aliens or something,

              I was a centrist Democrat back when that was a meaningful term. I volunteered for Henry Jackson’s Democatic presidential campaign in in 76 because I saw his attempt as the last gasp against the New Left takeover of the party. It failed.

              Since then I normally vote Libertarian, except on the occasions (two in my lifetime) that I thought the Democratic candidate was so toxic that I had to vote for the alternative with the best chance to win – a Republican in both cases, alas.

              To get my vote back, the Democrats would have to become the kind of party that would put repeal of the 1934 and 1968 National Fireams Acts and the restrictive portions in the 1986 Firearms Owners’ Protection Act in their platform. It’s not exactly that I don’t have other larger issues with the platform, it’s that I’m going by symptomology – the Ds would have to undergo a philosophical reversal and want those bad laws to go away again before I’d trust them about other things.

              I don’t expect this to happen. Department V’s ideomania is now fully in control there.

              1. I was a centrist Democrat back when that was a meaningful term. I volunteered for Henry Jackson’s Democatic presidential campaign in in 76 because I saw his attempt as the last gasp against the New Left takeover of the party. It failed.

                To my memory, Henry “Scoop” Jackson (did I ever know his real first name? :-) was the very last sane Democrat of any standing, the very last who my family and I might vote for, although I was a few years too young for 1976. Gerald Ford vs. Scoop Jackson would be a lot like 1960 was made to appear by our betters, neither decisively better or critical to keep out of the Oval Office (my Catholic mother still bitterly regrets voting for JFK).

                Since then I normally vote Libertarian, except on the occasions (two in my lifetime) that I thought the Democratic candidate was so toxic that I had to vote for the alternative with the best chance to win – a Republican in both cases, alas.

                Sorry, but that effectively makes you a Democrat, especially given that you’re a Pennsylvania resident. By my count, considering the Republican opponent, that should have been at least 6 votes, against Carter in 1980, Mondale, Dukakis, Gore, Kerry, and Hillary. On the other hand, every one of those candidate lost, and all but two lost Pennsylvania.

                To get my vote back, the Democrats would have to become the kind of party that would put repeal of the 1934 and 1968 National Fireams Acts and the restrictive portions in the 1986 Firearms Owners’ Protection Act in their platform.

                There’s no way a Republican super-majority would ever do that, and if the President were a Republican, we’d get more gun control. I suppose that allows for a very theoretical pro-gun Democratic party, but they’ve been a party of gun control since before our first Civil War.

      2. So, is Winter simply trolling? Or is this a really distorted English-as-a-second-Language problem?

        He makes sweeping and outrageous claims about the politics of a foreign (to him) nation that really don’t affect him. For proff, he links to an article that undermines his own statements.

        I keep hearing about how great the heal system in the Netherlands is, but seems Winter is off his meds. How do you get a mental health check on someone over there?

      3. Can’t find it again, but while back I saw an interesting paper on how poll results are crafted to reinforce the political opinion that the poll supposedly shows ascendant.

        Basically, to show the public that “everybody’s doing it and you should too.”

        1. Unfortunately that sort of thing is common with *any* hired-gun polling. The pollsters tend to select for what they think the client wants, because they want to get repeat business, or at least not blackballed. It’s related to the Consultant Problem; people really don’t like to pay money to get bad news.

          1. I really like the old BritCom Yes, (Prime) Minister. One of my favorite clips is about opinion polls:

            Bernard Woolley: Well the party have had an opinion poll done and it seems all the voters are in favour of bringing back National Service.

            Sir Humphrey: Well have another opinion poll done to show that voters are against bringing back National Service.

            Bernard Woolley: They can’t be for it and against …

            Sir Humphrey: Oh, of course they can Bernard!

            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0ZZJXw4MTA

        1. Make the case that you shouldn’t be Red Flagged for your unwillingness to accept the legitimately of your political opponents, which is a reliable step in the path to enacting violence upon them, as we’re already seeing in the US.

          If you own any guns (40% of those Red Flagged in Florida don’t), you can spend $15,000 trying to get the first level judge to give them and your RKBA back. $25-100K for the inevitable appeal, since what judge is going to take a chance on giving guns back to someone who clearly might use them for ill?

          1. “Make the case that you shouldn’t be Red Flagged for your unwillingness to accept the legitimately of your political opponents, ”

            I have no idea what you are talking about. I do not live in the USA.

            1. I’d appeal to your empathy, if you had any ability to put yourself in the shoes of a typical American. Instead, your vitriolic obsession with US politics tells us that if you’re not lying you’re genuinely mentally ill, in which case you need to be reported to the authorities of your current residence, who hopefully haven’t given up on forcefully treating the severely mentally ill. And if you’re ever planning on visiting the US….

              1. He lives in the Netherlands, a country whose government actually manages to get shit done without the clownshow that’s part for the course in the USA.

                Again, right up there with “never get involved in a land war in Asia” is “never argue the merits of big government with a man who would literally be underwater were it not for a strong, effective state apparatus”.

                1. This is the “strong, effective state apparatus” that legalized euthanasia…and just acquitted a doctor after killing a woman that did not wish to be euthanized and actually had to be held down by her family to administer the deadly cocktail?
                  AKA “murder”
                  The Dutch are welcome to all that…just keep it the hell over there.

                  1. Well, when you have universal government controlled health-care, you have to keep down costs somehow.

                2. “He lives in the Netherlands, a country [with an area less than the 41st largest US state, and with a population slightly larger than the 4 largest US cities combined] whose government actually manages to get shit done without the clownshow that’s part for the course in the USA.”

                  Assuming that conflicts in a group scale roughly with the square of the size of the group, one would already expect about 400 times as many such conflicts at the national level in the US as the Netherlands.

                  But even ignoring both that and the particular countries involved here, if a candidate for the highest office of a nation openly calls for nullification of a portion of the constitution of that nation, what then remains as the basis for the legitimacy of the office they intend to hold? What remains of the process (or at least their own candidcay) but a clownshow?

                  If a candidate for Netherlander high office were calling for the complete removal of the dyke and pump systems, calling them outmoded artifacts of the past that should be eschewed in a modern society (“oh those bitter pumpers”), would I be justified in calling the resulting political discussion a clownshow? Do I get to call it a clownshow if said candidate is immediately ridden out on a rail before finding any platform for their proposed pump-grabbing? Or can I still mock their clownshow if the Netherlander population politely allows said candidate to participate in the process while hoping that they won’t actually succeed in generating actual support? (I gotta admit part of me really likes the idea of being able to snidely chuckle at their “clownshowery” regardless of which candidates are actually proposing what platforms and how much support they’re getting from whom.)

                  (from Dan)
                  “a woman that did not wish to be euthanized and actually had to be held down by her family to administer the deadly cocktail”

                  Well at least they did it without a clownshow. You gotta give ’em points for that.

                3. This is sophistry. What matters is largely whether what a government does is good or not, and not whether the government or someone else does it. Building dams is good if done well. Governments or anyone being strong and effective in doing good things are entirely okay.

                  Strong and effective is a different thing than big government. A big government is something that does something bad, like engaging in systematic voter-bribing for vote-buying aka welfare meanwhile also maintaining a large bureaucracy to also buy the votes of the educated but uncompetitive by giving them jobs.

                  Strong end effective is something entirely different. “Big” is something like “fat”, strong and effective is “lean”. Strong and effective would be the Netherlands’ government if they would declare martial law and kick all the Moroccan gangs back to Morocco. Not doing so is the lack of effective strength and a violation of social contract that the government should defend the citizens from violent outsiders. Evil.

                  A government banning guns in a country that is already peaceful and low-violence is not evil. A government banning guns in a society that has a well identifiable large violent criminal element who will never give up theirs is evil as it prevents the rest from defending themselves. Now that formerly peaceful and low-violence European countries have also managed to import a large well identifiable violent criminal element now in this situation allowing guns again would be good.

                  Granted, it is not entirely a libertarian argument. Because I am not entirely a libertarian. My impression is that libertarians tend to see government as an actor itself bad because they don’t want to make value judgements and I don’t do this because I do want to make value judgements. Socialism is evil not because the government does it but because it is inherently evil. Building dams for reclaiming land is good does not matter if the government does it or someone else. Depriving people living in a dangerous situation of self-defense without being able and willing to protect them is evil. Depriving people of self-defense in the presence of a well-functioning law enforcement or lack of danger e.g. Japan is not evil. Does not matter who does it, government or someone else.

                  Moving further right from libertarianism is for me largely a process of discovering that it is not “unintended consequences” but evil, being more straightforward with value judgements. We are actually seeing more and more extragovernmental evil lately, from SJW mobs to the trans industry telling confused young people that mutilating themselves is fine and an open wound is somehow a vagina, and then they end up killing themselves. It is pure evil and has little to do with the government.

                  I was recently watching some Tucker Carlson and it seems exactly the same thing happened to him. Moving rightwards from libertarianism largely through being more straightforward with calling things good and bad.

                  1. A government banning guns in a country that is already peaceful and low-violence is not evil.

                    Without perfect foresight, it’s axiomatically evil. The authorities might turn evil, as we’ve seen in the US in a scant few decades. Or the country may face a true external invasion. Maybe “from Mars”.

                    And “low-crime” doesn’t mean “no crime”, banning guns will always put the physically weak at a disadvantage. The Instapundit has expressed a principle that it is necessary for old men to be dangerous.

                    Another thing we’ve noted from the experience of England is that to create in some number of centuries, and enforce such a “peaceful” regime, the society has to execute or exile 1-3% of its population every year. Maintaining such policy indefinitely, for centuries, seems improbable, and in the UK a steadily decreasing rate of interpersonal violence starting in the 1300’s was reversed in a scant 2 to 6 decades.

                    1. >in the UK a steadily decreasing rate of interpersonal violence starting in the 1300’s was reversed in a scant 2 to 6 decades.

                      That reversal exactly tracks the suppression of civilian firearms. As restrictions increased, so did violence.

                  2. This is based on the research of Joyce Lee Malcolm, a non-activist historian, and the correlation is unmistakable. Although the other inflection point is first the judicial nullification of effective self-defense in the 1950s, followed by Parliament outlawing it in the 1960s. One search that’ll find independent confirmation of this is on proposals to enact “have a go” laws that would allow e.g. bystanders to intervene to stop a crime.

                    Now, this week, the so called Church of England is demanding a ban on cooking knives with a point.

    3. Sure, a bunch of people who mostly don’t care very much about gun control laws, polled immediately after a mass shooting, vaguely support a “ban” on “assault weapons” without knowing in detail what the ban would cover, what it would do, or how it would be implemented.

      On the other hand, the 700,000, 640,000, 600,000 and 590,000 deer hunters respectively in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Michigan are going to be entirely aware that when someone says “Hell, yes, we’re going to take your AR-15”, that guy’s talking about taking away the most popular deer rifle in America. Even if he doesn’t personally use an AR-15, he knows that his deer rifle isn’t different enough for it to make any sense to seize the AR-15 but not his, so any seizure effort will wind up expanded to include his. And taking it away is the sort of personal impact that motivates a man who usually doesn’t vote, or usually votes Democrat, or even usually votes Republican but stayed home in 2016 because he didn’t like Trump, to go out and vote to prevent it.

      Which means that doesn’t translate into “supporting such a ban will actually get you more votes”. It translates into “that makes it massively harder to win in four states representing 12% of the Electoral College that were each decided by less than 45,000 votes in 2016”.

      1. I know a lot of jurisdictions have removed restrictions that require a minimum .30 caliber for deer, but just how widely used are .223 in general, and the AR-15 in particular, for deer hunting?

        1. “AR-15” doesn’t axiomatically mean .223/5.56 NATO. There’s everything from AR-15’s scaled back up to AR-10 sizes with battle rifle or hotter cartridges, to the fact that what’s legally the gun is the lower receiver, so you can swap uppers and maybe magazines and fire all sorts of rounds that fit the AR-15 physical form factor.

          Seriously, look at that list of around 50 calibers to gauge how popular it is in the US, much like our adopting bolt action military rifles long ago prompted a huge move to them for hunting rifles (pretty much every design is a “weapon of war”). Plenty of which are close enough to various traditional deer calibers like .30-30, and modern bullet technology also makes .223/5.56 NATO adequate for white tailed deer and probably some larger species, although laws and regulations haven’t necessarily caught up.

          The concept can also be very appealing as a single rifle which is good for both hunting and self-defense, I know one person who bought a Remington Model R-15 for that reason (plus a F-you to Obama, which is also what prompted my first “assault rifle” purchase).

          1. Yeah, I knew about the different calibers (though any AR-15s I may own are in .223/5.56). How common are they, though? Of the 15 million or so AR-15s in civilian hands, how many are in other calibers than .223/5.56?

            1. A major characteristic of the “Barbie Gun” is that it comes apart into an “upper” and a “lower.” The lower is the “gun” part according to the ATF, but the barrel and action are in the upper.

              It’s not unusual for someone to have two or three lowers and half a dozen uppers they can swap around into various configurations, like a Mr. Potato Head toy.

              Heck, I just bought a .50 Beowulf upper from Bear Creek. It was $239. That’s less than some people pay for a pair of ugly sneakers.

              1. What does it take to make an AR-15 shoot .50 Beowulf? Or .300 AAC, or 6.5 Grendel? More than just an upper and a magazine?

                1. It would depend on the cartridge. 6.5 Grendel has a larger case diamater, and so requires a different bolt in addition to the barrel. Case length is the same, so you can fit it into the standard magazine for an AR-15, granted at a slightly reduced capacity (25 vs 30). Same goes for .50 Beowulf.

                  .300 AAC just needs a barrel; its brass can be formed from .223 brass by trimming down the neck.

                  So realistically, all you need is an upper configured for the caliber. But, since all the rounds can fit in the same magazine, don’t forget which magazine contains which round!

        2. I’m not sure it matters. It won’t be long before my .280 bolt action becomes a “high powered sniper weapon.”

          1. In California, my little .22 varmint gun is legally an “assault rifle”, because the tubular magazine holds 13 rounds. (Defining limit is 10.)

          2. If it’s a .280 Ross, it *is* a high powered sniper weapon!

            Canadian snipers made good use of the .280 in WWI. The .280 is pretty much a curiosity now, though some specialty loaders make it, but it was hot stuff a century-plus ago, and can still run with the big dogs.

        3. Good stats on what rifles are used for actually hunting deer are pretty much nonexistent. So, my characterization of “most popular deer rifle” is based on 1) the fact that it does get used as a deer rifle, 2) that it is credibly called the most popular rifle in America based on sales estimates, and 3) an anecdote-level impression of how the gun mix has changed among deer hunters over the last 30 years.

          As far as .223 in particular, it’s not as forgiving as larger rounds when it comes to long-range and badly-placed shots. But it works, and AR-15s in larger calibers aren’t all that rare IME.

        4. Any “.22 centerfire” and larger is legal in my state, and deer tend to be 125-175 pounds. Plus deer favor brushy areas where 25 yards would probably be an average shot. A .223 AR would be “enough gun” despite the more modest origin of the cartridge.

          During the 1960s many states began banning the use of “.22” caliber no matter what the ballistics were. PO Ackley tried to organize opposition to that, with ballistic and live-test data, but the bureaucrats simply ignored him. So he came out with his own “.23” caliber cartridge to replace his beloved .220 Swift…

          A few states regulate by “muzzle energy”; in at least one, .30-30 Winchester doesn’t make the grade for deer. Others have restrictions bordering on the bizarre; like Ackley, I think some of them are simply to mess with hunters.

  20. How The Democrats And Woke Corporate Fascists Will Team Up To Destroy The Second Amendment

  21. So, Bobby the Burglar, the hit-and-run drunk driver, the snotty little leftard prick who’s never done an honest day’s work in his life, announces his intention to violate his oath of office if he’s elected.

    This is EXACTLY why we need guns. It’s to protect ourselves from power-seeking scumbags.

  22. My reply disappeared. Second try
    “And the Democrats have an extra 50 seats in the House because the Census counts illegal aliens.”

    Fairy tales&Myths.

    These are 9 seats according to this Testimony prepared for the House Subcommittee on Federalism and the Census. And they were not all going to the Democrats.
    https://cis.org/Testimony/Impact-NonCitizens-Congressional-Apportionment

    Furthermore, the number of illegal immigrants peaked in 2007 and has since declined.
    https://reason.com/2019/07/08/would-counting-illegal-immmigrants-make-the-census-pro-democratic-party/

  23. A “procedural” question. I have been away for some time and now I see “Vote -/+” links next to comments. Is there a place where I can find information about that?

    1. I’m not sure I’d trust Breitbart’s numbers; they tend to be much further to the right than even Fox News. However, your post brings up an interesting issue, which is that people aren’t applauding gun-grabbing. They’re applauding the simple solution. Or maybe I should say “they’re applauding the simplistic solution.”

      Assuming that we plan to keep the Second Amendment, we should find a way to reduce gun violence without confiscation. And that’s going to require thinking much more complex than “I haz grabbed U gun” and “No U can’t haz my gun.”

      I don’t particularly want a Republican. I don’t particularly want a Democrat. I want someone who can successfully engage with all the complexities. My personal take on things is that the Democrats are currently more ready to take on the complex problems, which makes Beto a real disappointment. The person above who wrote that “Beto has sent a torpedo into the side of his own party” definitely wasn’t wrong. He didn’t just provide exactly the wrong kind of publicity, he made the Dems look stupid.

      1. >Assuming that we plan to keep the Second Amendment, we should find a way to reduce gun violence without confiscation. And that’s going to require thinking much more complex than “I haz grabbed U gun” and “No U can’t haz my gun.”

        How about “no”? How about “you don’t get to handwave away my fundamental civil rights in a cloud of mumblety-mumble-that’s-complicated bafflegab”?

        “Assuming that we plan to keep the Second Amendment”. Those are the words of an arrogant ass. The fundamental Constitutional covenant of the American Republic is not yours to fuck with. Not in principle, and not in practice because a lot of angry and heavily armed people, including me, will stand to defend it.

        1. The fundamental Constitutional covenant of the American Republic is not yours to fuck with.

          Well, they can. But they will then need to answer a bunch of questions about why they have any legitimacy and all that. Recent history says they would be dumb enough to say “because we can kill you you fascists”, at which point all bets are off.

          1. Do you think the correct response to “because we can kill you you fascists” is “come on if you think you’re hard enough”, “don’t tread on me”, or “I don’t intend to start this fight, but I do intend to finish this fight.”

            I mostly favor the third. It’s been a long time since the losing side of an intra-American conflict was exiled from our shores, but there’s precedence with the Loyalists after the Revolution and if this comes to bloodshed, I wouldn’t object to the worst of the Democrats being exiled to Europe.

              1. We aren’t saying Europe has to take them. We are saying we are putting them on ships and sending them in your direction. You are free to use sea mines or sell them as slaves.

          2. The point of saying “because we can kill you you fascists” is that afterwards, when the “fascist” kills the LE or Antifa coming after him, they can say “look at the violence committed by the fascist”. At which points conservatives including the NRA and quite possibly our host fall all over themselves to hang him out to dry insisting that they’re not “fascists” like that guy.

            1. You obviously know nothing about our host.
              I have known him for many years, and I can say that he wouldn’t hang anyone out to dry for resisting actual fascism.

        2. “Assuming that we plan to keep the Second Amendment…”

          Sorry, I should have thrown a /snark tag on that one. I don’t own guns myself, but definitely feel it should be legal right.

      2. Those aren’t “Brietbart’s numbers”. It’s a Gallup poll which is sourced in the article and included in the article title.

        1. Gallup’s web site:
          “Gallup sampled landline and cellphone numbers using random-digit-dial methods.”

          Gallup wardials random phone numbers and asks questions from the subset of people who are willing to pick up on a time-wasting spammer.

          Entirely sidestepping how questions can be tailored to slant answers, and whether people will answer truthfully or with whatever they think they “should” say.

          “Seems legit…”

  24. Actually I’d suggest that the US Second Amendment is one which specifically allows individual Americans the right to military weapons. After all, it grew out of a revolution in which individual ‘minute men’ turned out to fight formed British troops, and I would suggest that was the kind of scenario that the authors were planning to deal with.

    1. Small but important detail: it forbids the government from interfering in that.

      Too many people forget that the BoR exists to tie up the government and shove it in a box, because nothing else can make it remotely safe.

      1. My “stock” response to people who seem to think the BoR grants rights to Americans is this: “I want you to name one right listed in the Ninth Amendment. Now, this isn’t a trivia question — so feel free to check the wording online — this question is really the core about how should we, as a country, understand the Constitution.” Because quite honestly, the only unacceptable answer — the one which requires mind boggling levels of failed reading comprehension and lack of self-reflection — is “none”. (Note I don’t say “wrong” and I don’t mean that, either — because if my interlocutor had a whisker’s grasp of the traditions which led to the 9A, they wouldn’t be arguing that position. It’s a practical certainty that anything they say from their 21st century perspective is quite likely to be technically wrong, but acceptable to at least advance mutual understanding.)

        1. Because quite honestly, the only unacceptable answer — the one which requires mind boggling levels of failed reading comprehension and lack of self-reflection — is “none”.

          I have a worse one: “The right to a living wage/free healthcare/free money”. And an even worse one: “The right to not be offended”.

          1. While those are bad answers in the sense that I would not agree with them, perhaps I was insufficiently clear that I don’t have this conversation to change minds away from any given policy position. What I’m really looking for is maximizing the chances that they will recognize that there are “acceptable” alternative viewpoints.

            Limiting myself to just your one example: the “right to free healthcare” is pretty much the perfect example of not pushing back or trying to change their mind directly. I haven’t heard that one in a while [not since before Obamacare], but I expect it to start making a return and my response now might look like: “Right now, Obamacare subsidizes healthcare, rather than it being zero charge whatsoever at point-of-care. The government also currently subsidizes housing and food for the needy in a very similar manner. If ensuring total coverage of healthcare requires a zero-charge design, shouldn’t we be thinking about doing the same for food and housing?”

            Note that where I must “argue”, I’m very careful to not “raise the hackles” of my interlocutor by saying anything which could be heard as saying they’re dead wrong [even when, as with this example, my actual (agorist) political philosophy ranks the position I’m taking as soundly unethical, if not nonsensical.] I prefer to think of this as “veering two steps off the path” — that is, starting off just barely different from the typical talking points, then veering into a suggestion that should simultaneously sound semi-plausible but completely alien.

      2. The federal government. The Bill of Rights didn’t apply to state governments until the Supreme Court decided it liked the idea of UNLIMITED POWER.

  25. In addition, I do consider the AR-14 a quite decent military weapon: I trained with the FC C1 which was strictly semi-automatic. Aimed fire was considered extremely important in the day.

    We now use the AR-15 (C7A2), and I’m unsure of our standard of marksmanship (:-()

    1. AR-14?

      > FC C1

      Do you mean FN C1?

      > We now use the AR-15 (C7A2), and I’m unsure of our standard of marksmanship (:-()

      Depends on what you mean by that.

      If you mean “at what level are the troops trained to”, it depends on the unit. Traditionally US Marines are expected to have a higher level of proficiency with their rifles (generally) than other services, and my experience (I served in 3 of the 4 branches, considering active and reserve time) bears this out.

      In all five branches (counting the Marines separate from the Navy for this, and including the coast guard) the *individual unit* will matter more than the branch. Generally the Navy doesn’t think much of small arms, preferring to use guns measured in inches, and distances measured in miles, but the Navy Special Warfare Units miss a *LOT* less than most. Air Force is similar, but again mess with their Security Forces, and they DO know which end of the rifle goes where. Maybe not as well as a Marine Raider, because Marines, but probably better than your average Army clerk.

      If you mean “how accurate is a rack grade M16″ the standard for acceptance is 5” at 100 yards with iron sights. In my experience all but the most heavily used ARs will do a LOT better than that if you do.

      1. Yes, I meant to type FN C1 (FN FAL). Thanks!

        I was speaking about ordinary reserve- and regular-force training standards. I was a second-class shot, and could deliver aimed fire at 200 yards with an ordinary peep sight. First class shots were effective around 300 yards, and sharpshooters were effective at silly ranges and at snap-shooting, all in the day.

        Automatic fire was considered, in my terms, “first round aimed” with non-bipod arms (;-))

        1. I was a Marine when I was younger, and we shot out to 500 meters with the M16A2.

  26. Also, let us remember that gun violence , like all violence in the USA, is at Historic 30 year Lows. The “Do Something” crowd want to imply that this is not the case.

    Among other lies that are being spread around, is that the Left are the only ones offering “solutions” and that the Gun-Rights supporters are blocking the only suggestions that have proposed. The Cruz/Grassley bill would improve the background check system by auditing the data submitted by Federal agencies. It would also direct federal agencies to pursue persons who failed a background check due to lying on the form.

    This would focus on already prohibited persons who lie on their background check- a Felony, without new restrictions on lawabiding gun owners.

    Of course, Democrats opposed this bill when it was proposed.

    1. The level of disagreement between parties, even in Canada, verges on insane.

      We’re seeing what *may* be a move from noisy-quite-left to cooperative-centrist: PEI just saw a huge shift to the Green party, who are now “Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition”

    1. Good read, thanks.

      “…and the sad truth is that 95% of the problems we have in this country could be solved tomorrow, by noon… simply by dragging 100 people out in the street and shooting them in the fucking head.”

  27. Here’s an article that describes the Briscoe Cain incident:

    https://victorygirlsblog.com/newsflash-beto-steps-on-own-crank/

    “Beto is an unoriginal, boring dolt who glommed onto Swalwell’s ‘give up your guns, or the government will nuke you’ platform and ran with it like a demented, flailing wildebeest. He thinks that having government force behind him will prompt Americans to just hand over their property, and when challenged on that assumption, he runs crying to mommy (Twitter) and daddy (FBI).

    “After Beto’s proclamation, a Texas GOP state legislator responded with a challenge that basically amounted to ‘Come and get it, bitch.’

    “Beto’s response was typical of every whimpering, pusillanimous fuckpouch who realizes that he’s a pathetic nothing without jackboots and leftist Big Tech standing behind him.

    “’That’s a death threat!’ Beto whined and immediately lodged a complaint with Twitter, getting Briscoe Cain’s reply removed from the platform. And then, to prove just what a brave soy latte-sipping furry he is, he complained to the FBI (who probably laughed at the pathetic, squealing, bucktoothed snowflake). First, he threatens violence against millions of innocent, law-abiding Americans who own the most popular rifle on the market today (and if you don’t think that isn’t a threat, ask Robert Francis what happens when Americans refuse to give up their property to the government), then when said defiant, freedom-loving citizens respond accordingly, he howls that they’re threatening him and runs to his enforcers for support.

    “If Beto had any balls at all, he would not flinch at a sarcastic response to his pathetic little diktat. But since he is a pants-shitting, force-worshiping, sniveling, petty shitgibbon, he does what any other pathetic bully does when challenged – runs back to mommy and daddy and hides behind their backs while sticking his tongue out at his would-be victim.”

    You know, they were talking about having O’Rourke challenge Jon Cornyn, who is somewhat of a so-so senator. Why not have Briscoe Cain challenge him in the GOP primary?

    1. Hey! Quit slamming furries. There’s a sizable contingent of them who are ardent Second Amendment supporters. Including me.

      1. Jay is correct. While it is true that the furry fandom leans left in the main, there are plenty who are strong supporters of the 2nd Amendment and shoot regularly. Offhand, I can think of half a dozen in my local area, and know I will find plenty more if I get off my ass and start actively looking.

        Sadly, stereotypes are not without a kernel of truth at their core. There’s plenty more furries in my local area who range from useful idiot to avowed confiscationists.

  28. Off-topic, but related to politics. The new Red Guard got another head today. RMS has resigned from MIT and the FSF.

    1. I just saw that before coming over here to see if our host had commented on it. Just to think: of all the controversy he’s caused in the past few decades, *THIS* is the thing that get’s him kicked out?

      I have not read the mailing list discussion that got him canned, but I did read the summation of the issue on the Register (which handled it quite fairly, I think).

      1. *THIS* is the thing that get’s him kicked out?

        So, at the end of the day, he’s just another leftist surprised to discover that leftism tends to through its own under the bus, and that this applies to him.

      2. Somewhat ironically, there’s even a possibility that he’s _right_ about the original object-level issue, i.e. that Minsky did not commit any sexual assault. Because apparently Giufre (a key witness in the case) claims that _she_ was in fact directed to have sex with Minsky, _and he (quite sensibly) turned her down!_ Unfortunately, that’s not quite what Stallman said. And, for whatever reason, his subsequent clarifications so far have sounded (to many) hollow and ineffective.
        IMHO, he can still turn this around, and without even renouncing the bulk of his views on the matter – but only by publicly demonstrating a _crystal-clear_ understanding of the _exacting_ ethical standards that any involvement with sex (and, for that matter, with plenty of other things as well! Including serious relationships, etc.) obviously requires of us. Consent and willingness aren’t _everything_ in the real world as we know it – no matter how much we might wish they were!

      3. *THIS* is the thing that get’s him kicked out?

        WRT to MIT, this was a supremely bad time to say anything about Epstein, since the corruption in taking his donations after he was officially listed as an unacceptable donor runs all the way up to the President of MIT himself, per the latest report about the internal investigation. The extension to the FSF … perhaps a domino, including no doubt some people in the FSF who are tired of dealing with him? He’s pretty good as exhausting your patience.

        1. I don’t understand what’s supposed to be so bad about accepting
          donations from convicted felons such as Jeffrey Epstein, when there’s
          no allegation that he got the money from his crimes, or that the money
          the recipient received will be used to somehow further his criminal
          career. (The last I heard, the MIT Media Lab doesn’t research how to
          get away with sex crimes.) Especially these days when it’s widely
          known that a large proportion of criminal convictions are, and always
          have been, wrongful.

          I was falsely convicted of burglarizing an office 42 years ago. My
          record is otherwise perfectly clean before and since. There has never
          been any allegation that I received any money from my alleged crime.
          Is my money somehow permanently tainted? Should I stop donating time
          and money to charitable causes? Should I warn recipients before I
          offer to donate? Thanks.

          1. Epstein’s financial business was apparently directly linked to trafficking young girls. He’d take rich men on a ride with girls, acquire dirt on the men, and then suggest that they’d do well to invest money with him. Then there were some men that he targeted because of their position rather than money (Bill Clinton, Prince Andrew etc.). Epstein was smart enough to invest the money very conservatively, so the men he blackmailed did quite well with their investments (as did Epstein, of course), and therefore had that much more of a reason not to rock the boat. This explains how Epstein’s business grew the way it did, without him doing business with investors on Wall Street in conventional ways.

            So, there’s some reason to consider all money from Epstein dirty. He played this game for a long time, and it’s likely impossible to separate his ‘clean’ business from the trafficking of the girls, without actually knowing all the dirt he had, and the transactions he got because of it.

    2. I’m starting to think this was all an intelligence operation that happened to employ SJWs, instead of a bunch of SJWs engaging in espionage-like activities… Was RMS actually guilty of something? Possibly something unrelated to accusations…? Did he make a deal to retire with cover or face prosecution? These events aren’t looking natural. :/

      1. Well, he’s been creeping on women at MIT for decades, to an extent that would get anyone else fired several times over…

        1. >Well, he’s been creeping on women at MIT for decades, to an extent that would get anyone else fired several times over…

          While this is probably true, it’s not grounds for canning him unless he had some sort of authority over the women in question and exerted it to get them to play. Which is absolutely not how RMS rolls; I know him well enough to be sure of that.

          1. In the USA, literally anything is grounds for canning you except membership in a protected class, retaliation for whistleblowing or certain other narrow reasons. If a man in corporate America had been showing female coworkers the bed in his office, telling them he’d suicide if they didn’t date him or any of the shit Stallman has been up to for DECADES NOW, he would be shown the door, irrespective of his org chart position relative to the victims. Stallman got a free pass because Mr. Famous Guy, now that’s come to an end. What I’ve learned is that because of this history of toxic behavior, the FSF and MIT had been wanting to get rid of him for quite some time; the Epstein thing just provided the context to do so without bad optics.

            It doesn’t matter how good you are or what you’ve done in the past. If you’re toxic, you’re out. Values have changed since the 80s and 90s. We’ve since grown in our awareness that women are people.

            1. “Values have changed since the 80s and 90s.”

              No, they had Will to Power in the 80s and 90s.

              “We’ve since grown in our awareness that women are people.”

              In a similar fashion as Maoist China grew in its awareness that peasants were people. Female suicide rates keep going up; eventually we will reach the great and glorious age where women blow their brains out at the same rate as men.

              Think of what that means! Less back strain for the people who clean up bodies. More equal sex ratios in nursing homes. More tattoos around the wrist to hide scars. Truly each of this is a sign of progress and our advance into the great and glorious socialist future!

            2. If a man in corporate America had been showing female coworkers the bed in his office, telling them he’d suicide if they didn’t date him or any of the shit Stallman has been up to for DECADES NOW, he would be shown the door, irrespective of his org chart position relative to the victims.

              Yes, and Stallman wasn’t a corporate guy. In fact, he had set himself up as an anti-corporate rebel.

              Stallman got a free pass because Mr. Famous Guy, now that’s come to an end.

              No, he got a pass because he was a leftist rule-breaking rebel. Thus, leftist gave him a pass on “breaking the rules”.

                1. Utter bullshit, Minksy wasn’t protecting him in the early 1980s when he was committing today’s mortal sin of a low Sexual Marketplace Value (SMV) man approaching women, and Minsky died in January 2016, that’s 3.6 solid years where it was literally impossible, as cancel culture became an ever more terrible thing in our community.

                  I’ve also noted in the various discussions I’ve skimmed that no one has specific accusations about RMS, just rumor level claims they can’t even vaguely back up. If he’s been such a problem, they and you ought to be able to name some specific incidents.

                  1. >low Sexual Marketplace Value (SMV) man

                    You didn’t know RMS in the early 1980s. I did, and you have this wrong.

                    RMS was actually rather good-looking before he retreated deep into his prophet persona and started looking like an icon of some shaggy Eastern Orthodox eremite. He pursued and successfully bedded two women I was close to back in that day – and mind you this was before he was really famous, so he didn’t have the hypergamy thing going for him yet.

                    That’s how I know that “low SMV” is too simple. Some women are attracted to intelligence the way most women are to muscles, and RMS can be quite charismatic. I know exactly what kind of women find him attractive, in part because the same sort of women (and in a few cases the same individual women) orbited me.

                    RMS is nobody’s idea of a smooth operator, but I’ll give him this: I’ve never seen him come on to a woman when it was ludicrous to suppose she might be interested. He has some sense of which the right ones to chase are. Or at least had; I haven’t observed him in that kind of interaction for quite a long time, basically since he stopped going to SF conventions.

                    1. You didn’t know RMS in the early 1980s.

                      “…”

                      He was in my social circle then, to the point that we were roommates when he launched the Gnu project.

                      Although I should note that “low SMV” doesn’t equal “no SMV”, we perhaps have a difference of opinion on where to rank him.

                      Anyway:

                      […] I’ll give him this: I’ve never seen him come on to a woman when it was ludicrous to suppose she might be interested….

                      I guess you didn’t spend enough time in the Boston area. He was bad enough about that to the point that before we became roommates, every time a particular girlfriend of mine and I were walking together and RMS met us in passing, he hit on her. The single notable exception was when she was flanked on the other side with her other boyfriend, and I guess we projected enough caveman or whatever attitude he didn’t bother her.

                      By today’s SJW standards, that’s sexual assault. Back then it was just annoying, one of the least objectionable behaviors of his.

                    2. >He was in my social circle then, to the point that we were roommates when he launched the Gnu project.

                      Correction accepted. You’d know more than I would, then, at least after 1985 or so.

                      Did you and I ever meet back then?

                    3. The closest we’ve ever been in Real Life was a large outdoor party a few years later in the middle NJ community, the social circle including Mikki Barry for example. You were doing your Eric the Flute thing with a real flute, and we didn’t converse (obviously not while you were playing :-).

                      By 1985 RMS was decisively cutting ties as best he could with Software Hoarders like myself, so my deep knowledge predates that year.

                2. >Actually he got lots of passes largely because Minsky was protecting him.

                  I think it was mostly Abelson and Sussman running interference.

                  The reason I know this is something I’ve never disclosed before. Back around 1992 RMS nearly got canned for a different kind of misbehavior – towards me, which is how I know about it. The details aren’t important except that sex had nothing to do with it, just hideously bad management that called his ability to continue leading FSF into serious question. Sussman was so pissed off that he was ready to drop RMS, and I think Abelson was too though I never spoke with him directly.

                  I didn’t want RMS canned over the matter, and said so. I just wanted some adult to slap him upside the head and tell him Not To Do That Thing. I think that is what happened, out of sight of me. RMS didn’t get fired and his behavior did (somewhat) improve.

                  Anyway, Minsky wasn’t involved at any point. And when Minsky and I met FTF about six years later there was no tension in his behavior to suggest that he remembered anything unpleasant.

                  I will note that Minsky paid me at that time what I considered a much higher complement than heaping praise on my work. He just treated me matter-of-factly as a peer colleague. It’s one of my more pleasant memories from my Mr. Famous Guy years.

                  1. There should be no question that RMS’s professional behavior is so bad it should be disqualifying for governance of entities like the FSF and the Gnu Project. One example I know for an absolute fact pertains to his theft of Gosling Emacs IP, which he forked to create Gnu Emacs.

                    Unipress had licensed the rights to it from James Gosling, and published a shared source commercial version. They had every right to sue RMS and company into the ground, but the two owners who I personally knew at a relevant time were mensches who realized that would harm them a lot more than any gain they’d get it, and that Gnu Emacs increased the market for their commercially supported version.

                    (That their company’s founding was mired in a ludicrous lawsuit when they broke off from Whitesmiths, which one of them cofounded, was also likely a factor. They won that case when the opposing counsel was caught burglarizing their office….)

                    To add insult to injury, RMS was extremely nasty towards Unipress and its employees, who were “software hoarders”.

                    1. >One example I know for an absolute fact pertains to his theft of Gosling Emacs IP, which he forked to create Gnu Emacs.

                      In evaluating RMS’s actions I do not think we can forget that he was the original author of Emacs. He probably thought he had what the Berne Convention calls a “moral right” over design derivatives, and maybe the UniPress guys agreed.

                      What do you believe he stole? As it happens I worked on both codebases – one of my very first open-source contributions (maybe the first) was a rewrite of the mailreader mode in Unipress Emacs. It wasn’t at all similar to GNU Emacs internally, or at least the core interpreter was quite different. UniPress Emacs was written in an oddity called M-Lisp that lacked a true cons operation. I always thought GNU Emacs was a reimplementation of Greenberg’s Multics Emacs, which had a real LISP.

                    2. Nope, he insisted he had received an email from James Gosling authorizing a fork from an old version, but James denied that, and somehow RMS was never able to produce a copy of the email….

                      Also, while he may have felt he was the original author of Emacs, that’s flatly not true, see e.g. the relevant albeit offline Daniel Weinreb blog topic that touched on that. I knew very well the other beta tester for ITS Emacs, so I can confirm the story, I think I commented in that blog topic.

                      RMS played a role in the birth of ITS EMACS, and is the guy who took over and made it truly great, but that’s a different thing.

                      And my work on Gosling Emacs was at a lower C level, e.g. the gap buffers. There the code bases were effectively identical, he had a very solid base on which to replace the extension language.

                      And let’s not downplay the extreme risks he took, if commercial software vendors were as evil as he claimed they were then. “Free Software” could well have ended up a historical curiosity, having the connotation of stolen software (which it’s gained anyway, see the attempts at adverse possession of OpenBSD code).

                    3. >Nope, he insisted he had received an email from James Gosling authorizing a fork from an old version, but James denied that, and somehow RMS was never able to produce a copy of the email…

                      OK, that’s not good. I didn’t know that.

                      >Also, while he may have felt he was the original author of Emacs, that’s flatly not true

                      I think I’d be cautious about contesting any one of several different peoples’ claims to that, not just Richard’s (I think of Bernard S. Greenberg on particular). There’s a definitional issue about what was named Emacs vs. what was first continuous in design with what we now think of as Emacs. Some incompatibly different positions could be argued in good faith.

                      >And my work on Gosling Emacs was at a lower C level, e.g. the gap buffers.

                      Heh. I remember looking at that code sometime around ’83-’84 and thinking “I do not want to touch this”. I wasn’t a skilled enough C programmer yet, and I knew it.

          2. At least he didn’t do something fall-on-your-own-sword horrible, like wearing a wrongfun shirt at a media event…

    3. >Off-topic, but related to politics. The new Red Guard got another head today. RMS has resigned from MIT and the FSF.

      That’s terrible. He should have fought this.

      1. To what end? Maybe he quite sensibly knew he had lost once he became a target and wanted to leave in this way, before SJWs bring in the heavy artillery and he’d be accused of rape?

        1. >To what end?

          Oh, I dunno. Maybe to stand up for the free-speech and free-inquiry principles he’s been so insistent on since forever?

          I’m disappointed in him. I would have been deeply ashamed to fold so quickly, if it had been me.

          1. Has RMS ever been the target of a rage mob before? I’m only aware of people taking cheap shots at him one at a time.

            I’m not going to knock him for how he dealt with a completely novel situation, but it’s true that if he’d just told them to go fuck themselves this whole thing would have blown over in a day or two.

            As for the SJW twat who drummed up the rage mob, she’s unemployable as far as I’m concerned. She might as well drop her engineering studies and major in feminist tantrum theory, and try for a tax-funded faculty spot in some marxist infested shithole.

            1. Let’s not focus on the SJW that drummed up the hate mob, it’s not like those people deserve our attention in the first place. They’re garden-variety social predators with severely impaired empathy; goblins to be kept as far away as possible. RMS’s comments were indeed tone-deaf in a way that made him vulnerable to such a predatory attack, and this is what created a problem for him.

              1. But they do deserve our attention. In fact they deserve close scrutiny. They are dangerous.

                1. Nope. Social dynamics (including online hate mobs) deserve our attention. Political claims might, as well (see ESR’s post from some time ago, where he took the time to debunk some dangerous claims about the Epstein case). The people involved, though? They aren’t interesting in the least – you aren’t going to change their minds, that’s for sure. We all know the type, and that’s plenty enough.

                  1. Ideologies are not stand alone existences . They reside in the minds of individuals.
                    You must certainly pay attention to *what* people say and think, but *who* is just as important. Trying to oppose a ideology, social dynamic, movement, cult, etc. without knowing the participants is like trying to fight a cloud.
                    Opposing the Klan is just fine. But doing so without removing hoods is futile.

                  2. Social dynamics (including online hate mobs) deserve our attention.

                    Yes, and the way to change social dynamics is by focusing on the people involved.

              2. >RMS’s comments were indeed tone-deaf in a way that made him vulnerable to such a predatory attac

                While I don’t know if RMS is on the spectrum (looks like), tone-deafness is what people on the spectrum do, because they simply have a disability of not getting the “tone”. This IMHO is absolutely well documented and could be proven at any court by expert witnesses.

                So can’t these issues be fought on disability grounds?

                I don’t know the actual extent of US law, but from a broader perspective: people on the spectrum are attracted into software development jobs, because their overly literal minds really match the overly literal minds of computers. They do a great job at it, this disability actually becomes an advantage, and everybody else should accept and in the past did accept that they have terrible social skills. As the joke in my corner of Europe said: “Just lock the programmers in the back room, slide specifications and pizza in under the door and never ever let them talk to customer.”

                Also addressing @Jeff Read here. I don’t even want to get into the politics of toxicity as it would just make me angry. Let’s accept your version of it for now as a working hypothesis. The point is, people on the spectrum act toxic not because they are morally bad people but they have a disability that prevents them from realizing what behavior is toxic and what not. And these people make great programmers. So why not just figure out a way to deal with it?

                Our old way of dealing with it was pretty much like that joke. Isolate programmers from every employee, customer etc. Their contacts, could also say: handlers were a few system designers, the kinds who wrote the specs as back then people used to write specs, not anymore, anyway, they tended to be older maler with thick skins.

                Although my friend still managed to tell a customer’s COO right in the face “In the user interface design I did not anticipate that your users are a horde of quarter-wit prosimians.” :D Isolation failed.

                Things definitely changed into the more neurotypical direction lately here, too. To quote another joke: “These younger groups of IT specialists are all watered down. Some even have girlfriends.”

                1. The attempted purge of the improbably named Rod Vagg from Node.js was prompted by his bringing up exactly this issue, the part not captured by that archive (the Wayback Machine has it) is a link to “The Neurodiversity Case for Free Speech” at the unforgivable Quillette. First graph, the real article has lots of links to back up the points made:

                  Imagine a young Isaac Newton time-travelling from 1670s England to teach Harvard undergrads in 2017. After the time-jump, Newton still has an obsessive, paranoid personality, with Asperger’s syndrome, a bad stutter, unstable moods, and episodes of psychotic mania and depression. But now he’s subject to Harvard’s speech codes that prohibit any “disrespect for the dignity of others”; any violations will get him in trouble with Harvard’s Inquisition (the ‘Office for Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion’). Newton also wants to publish Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, to explain the laws of motion governing the universe. But his literary agent explains that he can’t get a decent book deal until Newton builds his ‘author platform’ to include at least 20k Twitter followers – without provoking any backlash for airing his eccentric views on ancient Greek alchemy, Biblical cryptography, fiat currency, Jewish mysticism, or how to predict the exact date of the Apocalypse.

                  Our betters believe that Codes of Conduct can never allow for this.

                2. The problem here is that in the discussion of RMS the writer of the article which “got him fired”* deliberately misquoted RMS, and what they didn’t “misquote” they quoted out of context. I don’t usually take paranoia about SJWs seriously, but this was a clear and obvious case of lying.

                  So discussions of neurodiversity probably aren’t very relevant here, though they might be pertinent in another case.

                  * Assuming that we know everything there is to be known about the case.

                  1. The thesis is that if he were “neurotypical”, he wouldn’t have gone off on a pedantic rant about exactly what “sexual assault” was, which context aside did no one any favors or pointed out anything anyone who can think didn’t realize. Some people just don’t get that many if not most people can’t be reached by dialectic, although I don’t how much if an understanding of that and the place of rhetoric maps onto the “neuroatypical”. But probably a fair amount.

                    He’d also probably follow the news enough and have the sense to not touch with a 39 and 1/2 foot pole the topic of Epstein at the same time the Institute was being convulsed with illegitimate donations from Epstein, ones they knew were red hot because going all the way up to the President they decided to hide them as being anonymous.

                    1. I thought about this after I posted above, and something stands out at me. If I worked at MIT and liked a neurodiverse colleague, I’d probably have a talk with them about keeping their head down and their mouth shut right now, particularly if they had a respected mentor who was involved with Epste!n. It’s mildly interesting that nobody did so in the case of RMS.

                    2. The thing is, RMS didn’t get to be the prophet and leader of the free software movement by keeping his head down and his mouth shut.

                    3. >The thing is, RMS didn’t get to be the prophet and leader of the free software movement by keeping his head down and his mouth shut.

                      I didn’t get to reform the movement and successfully sell it to the mainstream by worrying about who I offended, either. So, yeah, “RMS should have been more diplomatic” is an argument with at least one serious error in its premises that I understand very well.

                    4. The stark change in social climate is a primary reason we won’t have new nice things like FOSS in the future. Take a look at the former Silicon Valley. Where’s the next FPGA level of advance thing going to come from, as opposed to polishing existing concepts like RISC-V (actually anti-polish as a New Jersey/Worse is Better design).

                    5. “I didn’t get to reform the movement and successfully sell it to the mainstream by worrying about who I offended, either.”

                      True, but you know how to pick your battles. RMS tilts at every windmill he comes across.

                    6. And Jay Maynard for the win, well out ahead of the other competitors. Nicely done Jay!

            2. That initial SJW twat is the daughter of an Ethiopian man and Chinese woman, and she went to an elite university in the U.S… Doesn’t all that sound implausible?

              1. Conditioned on their being (1) at an elite U.S. university, (2) specifically, in some high-powered STEM program (explaining the indirect interest in CSAIL list) and (3) clearly involved in SJWish politics/activism? Not at all, actually – they’re just the random person we would _expect_ to do something like this. No tinfoil hat necessary, sometimes reality is _that_ boring.

          2. If it had been you, you _wouldn’t_ have said the same things, much less in the same way. We know this, because it has actually happened. All-in-all, I’m not sure why you disagree with his choice. It seems like the best response to a pretty bad set of circumstances.

            And yes, I do know that his words have been severely misquoted and misinterpreted. But it’s hard to make that defense in the midst of a full-blown moral panic.

            1. Actually Eric made a very similar distinction (to Stallman’s) between (rape) pedophilia and (rape) statutory/ephebophilia in the “The Rectification of Names” a couple weeks ago. Fortunately, he seems to be off everyone’s radar and isn’t employed by MIT, where I suspect that coming anywhere near a discussion of Epstein is the kiss of death.

              1. Eric was cancelled long ago. Every time he writes something and it bubbles up to Hackernews, threads grow on the story about his “batshit insane politics”, and his views on guns and race dominate the discussion.

                Eric has nothing left to lose.

                1. >Eric was cancelled long ago.

                  And yet, whenever I’m face-to-face with actual hackers, I get treated like a rock star.

                  Case in point: Sunday night Cathy and I went to a Slate Star Codex meetup in Philly, because Scott Alexander himself was going to be there and we’re personally friendly with him. Scott is an introvert and I thought he’d be grateful for some familiar faces. (He was.)

                  The SSC crowd being what it is, at least half the people there were software engineers or in adjacent jobs. I got recognized a lot, and improved a number of peoples’ evenings by being approachable and friendly. I do not have the kind of ego that would drive me to upstage a man at his own event even if he might actually be rather grateful to be relieved of performance stress – but if I had wanted to steal the spotlight I could easily have done it.

                  My point here is that the SJWs do not appear to have the social power they imagine they do.

                  1. What’s the Real World status of NTPsec, including adoption? On Hacker News, it’s hated with a burning passion because of your involvement with it. One person went so far as to say your theoretical essays on converting some of its code to Golang axiomatically made the whole project legally fraudulent….

                    1. What’s the Real World status of NTPsec, including adoption?

                      Well Cisco paid us money to implement a feature for them. Dollars weigh on the bank account more than haterbux.

                    2. A huge company like Cisco isn’t subject to the same political pressures as FOSS projects today. Different ones, especially since they’re still headquartered in Silicon Valley (how much of their work force is still there)?

                      How many other Official adoptions has it gained, in any domain?

                    3. >How many other Official adoptions has it gained, in any domain?

                      How would we know? People looking for a more secure solution often don’t advertise the fact…

                    4. I can understand you and those you work with putting up a brave face, but to the rest of us this looks like you’ve been Canceled so very hard no FOSS project you contribute to will be accepted by the FOSS community, those who by definition “advertise” their secure software solutions.

                      I’d really, truly like you to prove me wrong in the next 1-5 years, but in the meanwhile, I think I’ll focus on FOSS carried out through a parallel Internet made from e.g. dark web, mesh net, point-to-point telephone, and shortwave radio.

                    5. >to the rest of us this looks like you’ve been Canceled so very hard no FOSS project you contribute to will be accepted by the FOSS community

                      Like I said, not compatible with my face-to-face experience. There can’t be a shortage of ESR fans out there, otherwise I wouldn’t trip over them every single time I go to a social context where open-source people are likely to be found.

                2. Be aware of the sampling bias on Hacker News. HN is not the whole of the tech world; it is heavily weighted by Silicon Valley, which very much leans Left. So, while there are a few hackers (e.g. Thomas Ptacek, Matthew Garrett) who consider ESR to be an unperson and are quite vocal about it, they’re not the whole of hackerdom. I’d guess there’s plenty more hackers who are too busy focusing on their hacking to care about ESR’s supposed thoughtcrimes. Or if they have, they’ve looked at what ESR actually said/wrote, in its original context, and decided for themselves that said thoughts are perhaps not as criminal as portrayed by others.

          3. At what point would you like to fold?

            I think it’s useful to compare this to the Kohfield case. You say he’d have been justified in fighting the feds. Worst that could have happened to him in doing so would’ve been to die defending his principles in a way that is very hard to misinterpret. In doing so, he’d for his part have created a small but still existing disincentive for the feds to follow orders to confiscate guns.

            Worst outcome for fighting SJWs is having your career and reputation destroyed and getting yourself labeled as a sex offender. People reasonably differ on which outcome they consider worse. Not resigning in itself also does nothing to discourage future attacks, so the only thing gained is being able to fold at some “honorable” point, maybe at rape conviction?

            It isn’t helpful to just say he should have fought, unless you know how he should have fought to either incur losses to the enemy or to reduce his own?

            1. >It isn’t helpful to just say he should have fought, unless you know how he should have fought to either incur losses to the enemy or to reduce his own?

              You fight this sort of thing to try to hold MIT to the standards of protection for freedom of speech and academic inquiry to which it still at least nominally holds. You fight for one of two outcomes: you shame it into remembering those values and exhibiting better behavior, or to damage a reputation it no longer deserves by showing that it has failed its own best traditions.

              I think I owe it to my civilization not to back away from this kind of fight. I’m disappointed in RMS that he backed away. I would have expected better of him.

              1. MIT’s standards for freedom of speech are based on social acceptability. As the left has changed what is socially acceptable, MIT has changed their standard. You can complain he isn’t fighting against the change, but since no one is fighting for the previous standard, why should he bother?

                Fighting to shame them doesn’t work. You can’t shame people who define what is socially acceptable. Since MIT’s free speech is based on social norms, you can’t damage its reputation by showing it follows social norms.

                MIT isn’t a cornerstone of civilization. Civilization is based on the human ability to cooperate. College’s rationale is education but we have textbooks, online courses and other alternatives.

                1. RMS is nominally on the left – this is quite clear from even a cursory look at his personal website. And the ongoing retreat from norms of free speech and free inquiry is _not_ universally “socially acceptable”. Let’s not cede that ground to our enemies – _especially_ when those enemies persist in displaying sociopathic and authoritarian tendencies that become clearer and clearer by the day. We simply cannot afford to.

                  1. You forget that as Iowahawk put it, “College: an oasis of totalitarianism in a desert of freedom.” A research university like MIT? They’re at the mercy of SJW infested funding organizations, public and private. They play the game unless they’re willing to shut down most of their operations.

                    That said, they’ve been enthusiastically playing the game since at least the beginning of the current outsider president’s tenure which started in 2012. It’ll be interesting to see if he can keep his position after the revelations that he was directly and personally involved in accepting and hiding Epstein contributions.

                  2. >nd the ongoing retreat from norms of free speech and free inquiry is _not_ universally “socially acceptable”

                    There is an important principal/agent problem here: for any individual in $ORG’s leadership, it’s more important to stay in the good graces of their peers than to advance the interests of their institution. Peer reputation is the factor that opens up new opportunities, etc….including letting them ‘fail upward’ from the wreckage of their former institution.

                  3. RMS is nominally on the left – this is quite clear from even a cursory look at his personal website.

                    This. He’s used to fighting against Microsoft and being celebrated by all his far leftist friends as a cool rebel sticking it to the Man. He’s not at all used to having said far leftist friends turn against him.

                2. Fighting to shame them doesn’t work. You can’t shame people who define what is socially acceptable.

                  Boy howdy. There are known paedophiles among the SJW ranks, people who have actually abused actual children. Yet they enjoy the relative safety from public and media scrutiny that comes with having the right politics. Occasionally, one — like that Ars Technica guy — gets nailed by the cops, after which his protectors quickly close ranks and perform the proper prostrations to morality and justice, the better to avoid their role in protecting the paedophile being examined.

                  1. One of the many reasons I stopped reading PZ Myers’ blog some years back was because his horde, as he calls his fanbase, were actively protecting a pedophile in their ranks. One who had admitted in writing that he’d assaulted children, as an adult. They lied about this, said he was to be pitied because he’d been abused as a child himself and basically did the whole ‘he’s in my tribe so rules don’t apply’ thing. Retch-making.

                  2. Am I wrong to be entirely unsurprised that paedophiles (and not of the unwilling sort, to be even clearer about that) might be repeatedly found within a ‘political’ movement that is easily seen to be actively selecting for outright psychopathy? It’s no secret that the SJWs can and do eat their own, at least on occasion. Who do you think expects to ‘survive’ and maybe even thrive in such an environment?

                3. “And the ongoing retreat from norms of free speech and free inquiry is _not_ universally “socially acceptable”. ”

                  This would be more meaningful if the university system didn’t purge conservatives post 1960s. Only the tempo changed. There is a line all right thinking people are not supposed to cross that has been moving faster and faster.

              2. MIT has bigger problems than freedom for a whiny, protected manchild to continue whining on the Institute’s nickel — like ensuring women can study and work in relative safety from being harassed. Something the Institute has been neglectful of.

                1. >MIT has bigger problems than freedom

                  There is never any bigger problem than freedom. Ever.

                  if MIT canned RMS for sexual harassment, let them say so straight up. But right now there’s a pretty strong appearance that he was fired for expressing unpopular opinions. That is unacceptable and MIT should be held to account for it.

                  1. There is never any bigger problem than freedom. Ever.

                    Freedom for whom to do what? Rather than thinking in simplistic absolutes like “freedom is good”, borrow a page from Allison Parrish and ask yourself whose freedom you’re supporting and whether granting them that freedom limits or curtails essential freedoms of other, innocent parties — in this case, the freedom of women at MIT and elsewhere to conduct their work without fear and disgust of being hit on by a creepy old man.

                    Stallman wasn’t fired (technically). He resigned under pressure from MIT and the FSF. We only have his say so as to why, but it looks like both organizations reached a breaking point in terms of bad optics that result from keeping a creep like Stallman in a position of prominence. The people who called him out for his Epstein opinions have been calling him out for sexual misconduct for years while MIT and the FSF did nothing (in part because of Minsky’s protection). The Epstein stuff and Stallman’s “unpopular (read: odious and horrifying) opinions” are just the straw that broke the camel’s back.

                    Expect an entirely new board for the FSF as well, as the current board is populated by Stallman sympathizers, and pressure is mounting against them to resign.

                    1. > the freedom of women at MIT and elsewhere to conduct their work without fear and disgust of being hit on by a creepy old man.

                      Only a totalitarian leftist could come up with something so silly as freedom from fear.

                    2. And “safe spaces”. Some people should read “today” Kipling’s “The Gods of the Copybook Headings” or get or make a printed copy, so they’ll better understand the currently circulating joke, “What did socialists use before candles? Electricity.

                      Because those are exactly the stakes as termites like Mr. Read blindly gnaw on modern civilization’s technological infrastructure.

                    3. >whether granting them that freedom limits or curtails essential freedoms of other, innocent parties

                      That’s idiotic. Freedoms never conflict, because freedom just means nobody can use force on you to compel your (non-aggressive) behavior. Richard being free to speak does not compromise the freedom of women. Women have the freedom to call out his behavior as unwanted and unpleasant if he hits on them. And that is as it should be.

                      Note that I have at no point said that Richard should be exempt if he has coerced others. There’s certainly a line he could have crossed in dealing with female colleagues or students that would merit firing, but at this point we don’t know that occurred and there is substantial reason to suspect that MIT canned him out of being embarrassed by his speech. Thomas Lord thinks so and he has more on-the-ground knowledge of events than I do.

                      MIT, having accepted money from Epstein under the table, does not have clean hands in this matter. From where I sit its behavior looks pretty shabby, reminding me of how Aaron Swartz was hung out to dry.

                    4. MIT, having accepted money from Epstein under the table, with the full knowledge and complicity of its President, does not have clean hands in this matter.

                      With the above addition, I think we have all the explanation we need. One of MIT’s highest “principles” is “don’t make MIT look bad”, in the 1980s this was the best way to keep SJWs at bay, by threatening to go to the press. RMS was supremely unwise to say anything about Epstein while MIT’s President desperately tries to keep his position, in today’s context of Cancel Culture which is explicitly targeting all heterosexual male FOSS figures.

                      reminding me of how Aaron Swartz was hung out to dry

                      Why should they have acted any differently?? Aaron could have tried his aggressive stunt at his home in Harvard, but he snuck into MIT and its network to place a computer that hammered a 3rd party’s website, causing the latter to entirely cut off MIT. Maybe if he was a member of the MIT community, but….

                      And people who are depressed should avoid blatantly committing legitimate Federal crimes. The myriad attacks on MIT are just displacement from blaming the Officially sympathetic true villain … who’s attitude towards copyrights and The Greater Good curiously resemble RMS’s in the 1980s….

                    5. “the freedom […] without fear”

                      And, to drag this forcibly back on topic, “the freedom to go about our lives without the fear of being shot: is one major justification for destroying the Second Amendment. It’s as silly there as it is everywhere else.

                    6. >and ask yourself whose freedom you’re supporting and whether granting them that freedom limits or curtails essential freedoms of other, innocent parties

                      Who, whom in a nutshell.

                    7. Expect an entirely new board for the FSF as well, as the current board is populated by Stallman sympathizers, and pressure is mounting against them to resign.

                      To be followed shortly by them throwing out the Free Software Definition and replacing it with one based on Codes of Conduct.

                    8. I suspect at this point there’s more to come out where Epstein and RMS/FSF is concerned. It might be the path of wisdom to simply stop discussing the matter, depending on how much anyone has to lose and how dependent they are on outside resources.

                2. MIT has bigger problems than freedom for a whiny, protected manchild to continue whining on the Institute’s nickel

                  The manchild in question in question revolutionized the way software is written in addition to writing a lot of important software himself.

                  Leftists like yourself now insist we must all play along with the delusions of people who will never accomplish half of what Stallman did.

                  1. RMS may have made significant contributions in the past. However, continued accolades and support in the face of unpleasant behavior should require continued contributions. And I’m uncertain about what major contributions have been made by him recently. A quick look at projects on FSF, etc., doesn’t show any major new projects or rewrites. The last one I can think of is the grub2 rewrite over a decade ago.

                    My initial comment was going to be: “he may have revolutionized the way software is written, but I’m not certain he’s improved it”. But I’m not certain that point is that critical.

                    1. RMS may have made significant contributions in the past.

                      So basically, what has he done for us lately?

                      However, continued accolades and support in the face of unpleasant behavior should require continued contributions.

                      Well these days leftists now insist the delusions and unpleasant behavior are themselves worthy of accolades.

      2. My question is this: Can we say with any reliability that Epstein, who apparently donated to MIT and MIT-aligned organizations like the Media Lab, did not make some kind of anonymous/proxy donation to the FSF? If so, that would explain an awful lot.

        At this point, if I were in RMS’s shoes I might go down as quickly and quietly as possible, and maybe take a long vacation someplace without an extradition treaty. I say this not because the public record contains anything that’s remotely criminal, but because I suspect that his quick fade has to do with whatever RMS knows that we do not. It might have to do with the FSF or may involve other things; this is not the time to be a Commie who’s received donations from a guy rumored to have been running some kind of honeypot – and if those rumors are true, who was Epstein running the honeypot for? Us or someone else?

        1. >I say this not because the public record contains anything that’s remotely criminal, but because I suspect that his quick fade has to do with whatever RMS knows that we do not.

          Oh, shit. What if Epstein threw one of his girls at RMS, and RMS wasn’t as smart as Minsky and didn’t dodge?

          I can easily imagine that having happened. It was within Epstein’s M.O. to entrap people that way. We already know that RMS believes that calendar thresholds for age of consent are silly and arbitrary (and to be fair that is not even a crazy position given that they vary so much across jurisdictions). And Richard is…well, he hasn’t had a lot of nubile women throwing themselves at him. He’d be vulnerable.

          This is uncomfortably plausible, dammit.

          1. “This is uncomfortably plausible, dammit.”

            I wasn’t even thinking about sex, but you’re certainly not wrong to consider the possibility. But also consider that this is uncomfortably plausible even if it’s “only” money.

            Slightly aside to all this, (and right to the heart of all this) I find myself wanting to reread Le Carre’s “The Honourable Schoolboy.” The well-written description of pretty-much-everyone in the story going down hard on the basis of their psychological weaknesses and inabilities to process the agenda of another person just seems so appropriate these days…

          2. He’s autistic as all bugfuck, and his skills at how to girl are just a notch above Christian Weston Chandler, but I’d be willing to give him more credit than that. Hint: He also thinks copyright laws are silly, yet he obeys them fastidiously because he knows that even the slightest hint of impropriety is ammo to his opponents.

            I’m gonna call this scenario unlikely, in the absence of supporting evidence.

            1. >I’m gonna call this scenario unlikely, in the absence of supporting evidence.

              I wish I thought it was unlikely.

          3. > well, he hasn’t had a lot of nubile women throwing themselves at him. He’d be vulnerable.

            Gah. If _that’s_ what he has to deal with, MGTOW starts looking like a sensible position. And I say this as someone who is as far from _that_ overall memeplex as it’s possible to be. But yes, it seems like RMS might have been actively misled by the _dangerous_ culture of so-called ‘sexual liberation’ you denounced in your post on Epstein. Not to the point of engaging in _highly_-regrettable behavior, of course – but he _was_ at risk of falling for something shady in a lesser sense. Let this be a valuable lesson to others: ‘sexual liberation’ is a crock. “Sex positivity” (a better way of framing that attitude, anyway) is a _really, really_ hard _moral/ethical_ problem that shouldn’t be left to the whims of activists playing politics.

              1. “Men Going Their Own Way”

                Which is just a fancy way of saying “Surrender of everything that actually matters”.

                  1. It is if the game was the whole point of everything in the first place, and there are ways to get around the rigging.

              2. Heh. Yes, they’re quite a fringe faction in the broad Dark Enlightenment (wiki has the details). Not ordinarily very interesting. The point is that even _they_ (as clueless as they are) would’ve served RMS better than the sexual liberationists on the left may have.

            1. > MGTOW starts looking like a sensible position.

              MGTOW IS a sensible position, especially for young men, and will remain so until the legal/social situation as it currently obtains stops acting like women are the new aristocracy with special rights and privileges to be wielded over men with impunity.

              Pretending like this isn’t the case is foolish in the extreme, and sets up countless men for destruction at the willing hands of the state, all over some pussy. Ridiculous.

              1. Only if you consider seceding most of the disputed territory to the enemy to be a win. It’s only redeeming value is that it gives the enemy half of what they want instead of all of it.

                “We hate families and want to rule over men”

                “Fine we are going to abandon trying to have families and do our own thing”

                “REEEEEEEEEEE, we also wanted to rule over you!”

                Kind of like the “compromises” around guns, to bring the topic back around.

                1. > Only if you consider seceding most of the disputed territory to the enemy to be a win.

                  I reject your collectivist reasoning, because it’s the exact same rationale that pushed men over the top and into certain death in no-man’s-land. C’mon boys, once more into the breach! Maybe you’ll get lucky and not end up with your head on a pike! Do it for God and Country! Yeah, no, fuck you.

                  It’s not ceding territory, it’s starving an enemy of its resources. Women only get so many years of reproductive capacity; men do not have this limitation. Time is the core resource, and until, at a societal level, we fix our broken shit, it’s Perfectly Rational for young men to protect themselves AND drive change via what amounts to a general strike.

                  It’s not the ONLY way. But it is a sensible one in the current climate.

                  1. I reject your collectivist reasoning

                    Unlike the feminists or MGTOWs I’m not the one pushing the idea that All Women (or All Men) are a hivemind.

                    And I’m not even condemning the guys who got burned and then walked away; everyone has their own limits of what they can handle. In fact most of them were probably set up to be victims from the start because somehow they reached adulthood having never heard the warning that there are scummy people in the world and you need to avoid them.

                    Of course I’m also betting that a decent chunk were not in fact innocent victims, but instead the kind of human trash that has no interest and never had any interest in planting trees who’s shade they would never sit under. No less trash in fact than the women who screwed them over. How many weren’t interested in starting a family, but just wanted a hot lay that night, and it turned into an alleged “marriage” for no discernible reason?

                    All of the endless advice about dangerous women that they have… And no one has the lightbulb go off and realize that what they are building is in fact a database of Things To Avoid. The very thing their parents were supposed to teach them as children.

                    1. > Unlike the feminists or MGTOWs I’m not the one pushing the idea that All Women (or All Men) are a hivemind.

                      You don’t seem to have a problem pushing that all feminists and all MGTOW are hiveminds, though. C’mon, haha!

                      I get the sense that you simply find (your perception of) MGTOW offensive on its face and are throwing shade just to throw shade. If so, that’s fine, I’ll bow out.

                2. Only if you consider seceding most of the disputed territory to the enemy to be a win. It’s only redeeming value is that it gives the enemy half of what they want instead of all of it.

                  I think you’re looking at MGTOW the wrong way. It’s not conceding territory; it’s calling that part of feminism’s bluff. There are feminists that insist that sex is everything to men, and that if they want it, they’re gonna have to have it on feminists’ terms. MGTOW are saying they didn’t really need the sex that badly.

                  Family has nothing to do with it.

                  The irony is that this might enable those men to have family lives that actually work. Think Bill Burr. (Or, my mom, who had a notorious reputation for getting bargains on things for our family. When I asked my dad how she was able to do that, he answered that it was because she was willing to walk away from any deal.)

                  1. MGTOW are saying they didn’t really need the sex that badly.

                    Not exactly. What they’re saying is that they’re not putting their heads on the chopping block for a vague promise of regular pussy. MGTOW isn’t about celibacy, it’s about refusing to enter into any personal and especially any LEGAL entanglements with women in this society.

              2. > MGTOW IS a sensible position, especially for young men

                In general, no it is not. I feel sympathy for men who have been burned by family courts (etc.) but women are plenty capable of showing love and loyalty to their husband and the father of their children regardless of what legal options they may have available to them.

                1. You’re right: by and large, people are plenty capable of showing love and loyalty even in otherwise terrible circumstances. And we do see many examples of this, e.g. far outside of the modern West. But let’s not pretend that such loyalty is necessarily commonplace or to be expected! Particularly when some extremist political groups are constantly and _overtly_ seeking to destroy it.

                2. ” but women are plenty capable of showing love and loyalty to their husband and the father of their children regardless of what legal options they may have available to them.”

                  Well, except for the adultery and divorce. That is what- 50%?

                  1. Varies heavily by social class, though. Social capital (“soft” and “fuzzy” norms, traditions etc. of the informal and uncodified sort) still matters quite a bit. Of course, this stock of valuable social capital is precisely what the SJWs hate the most. (They got their wish in China already, courtesy of the Gang of Four. We’ll see how the West fares.)

                  2. You’re looking at the stats wrong. Only 20% of *first time* marriages end in divorce. The people who divorce and re-marry usually do so more than once, skewing the odds.

                    Also, it does depend upon your social class and particular sub-culture.

                3. > In general, no it is not.
                  > women are plenty capable of showing love and loyalty

                  MGTOW does not claim that women are incapable of this.

                  It’s much more like acknowledging that some non-trivial percentage of humanity (men AND women) are horrendously destructive, and thus making a first-pass attempt at a protective structure to defend against the female side of that, which has been either downplayed or outright denied as existing for quite a long time.

                  If one hasn’t grown up in a social environment that endlessly screams “women are all goodness and light” and takes any criticism as evil, it might not be obvious why MGTOW’s views are useful to many men.

                  1. > It’s much more like acknowledging that some non-trivial percentage of humanity (men AND women) are horrendously destructive

                    Unfortunately, neither MGTOW nor the likes of MeToo are even _close_ to reaching such an eminently sensible position. The “raised by N’s” folks are getting there, though! Add a useful database of “here’s _how_ to spot narcissists, sociopaths and toxic people of all sorts”, and we may actually have a _useful_ social movement on our hands. (And no, our parents never taught us this, either. It’s one thing to be aware that sociopathic people exist somewhere; being able to proactively spot them and even know what makes em tick is quite another!)

                  2. If having a family (or at least a partner in life) is a terminal goal for you, then MGTOW is not useful. By “going your own way” you preclude yourself from ever achieving those goals.

                    Whatever the state of the culture, I do not condone encouraging men, especially young men, to give up on the hope of marriage and family.

          4. What’s in it for Epstein to compromise RMS like that, though? It’s not like RMS, even given his exalted position in the hacker community, is useful to Epstein in the circles he travels.

            1. It’s above the level of rumor when the former Federal DA who was involved in Epstein’s initial slap on the wrist explained in the process of become a Trump cabinet member that “I was told Epstein ‘belonged to intelligence’ and to leave it alone.” Intelligence goes way beyond figuring out what X dictator is going to do, to include economic and technical things, for example we can be very sure this community should be trying to gauge the magnitude and knock on effects of the “pig ebola” that’s sweeping the PRC. Having a hold over RMS could conceivably be quite valuable.

            2. >What’s in it for Epstein to compromise RMS like that, though? It’s not like RMS, even given his exalted position in the hacker community, is useful to Epstein in the circles he travels.

              You wouldn’t think Marvin Minsky would have been either. And yet…

              Maybe he just collected geniuses.

              1. >Maybe he just collected geniuses.

                I could see Epstein playing the long game; who knows where famous tech people might end up?

              2. I would guess that someone like Epstein got a kick out of seeing just how many people, and just how different types, he could trap. It’s an obvious power trip, and he was at it for a long time. Plus, the practice of collecting lots of various influential people in his pocket, just in case, certainly paid off for him when he finally did get in trouble (2008).

            3. >What’s in it for Epstein to compromise RMS like that, though?

              Demoralization? Target the philosophical leaders of powerful and vocal liberty-minded groups to sow FUD within and without, leading to increased social fracturing that can be exploited to further disrupt and discredit opponents of current and future authoritarian power grabs?

              Doesn’t even have to be a directed attack; ideological damage seems to have this going on autopilot now. Memetic berserker.

              1. There’s a whole section of society which believes that anything you can’t make profit from must be destroyed or coopted. Killing/damaging the FSF would look like a major victory to such people.

                1. Uhm…you’re channeling Jeff Read again. This belief is only held by the far left looking to paint those to the right of Che as eeeeevil capitalist scum.

                  I mean, I’ve opposed the FSF for years, and yet I grant that it has a place in our discourse.

                  1. Nah. It’s not a large segment of society, but you see it frequently in the intelligence services. It’s not capitalists, but their self-appointed guardians.

                    1. Make up your effing mind:

                      Is it “a whole section of society”?

                      Or “not a large segment of society”?

            4. > What’s in it for Epstein to compromise RMS like that, though?

              Passing around his women cost him almost nothing. And RMS is famous. Why *not* collect him into the obligation net? You never can tell when someone might turn out to be useful.

    4. Here’s the woman who got him fired. At least there’s some pushback in the comments to her Medium piece.

      It has been pointed out that Microsoft benefits every time open source takes a hit. Interesting that Torvalds got hit with the same sort of “insensitivity” charges. Meanwhile, Bill Gates had a much closer association with Epstein and even (through employees) with child porn and abuse (e.g. “Microsoft Peter” Bright), but it doesn’t seem to start any SJW crusades.

      1. “This was not, actually, all that much about Richard Stallman.” Well, it was not _about_ this person, either. And again, let’s not _ever_ pretend that it was. We simply live in a political Mad Max world where even entirely off-handed, casual aggression by a random self-described activist can have rather extreme consequences. Then again we kinda knew that already, didn’t we?

        1. It’s beginning to feel like we’re not experiencing either government from the right or government from the left, but government by moral panic and hysteria.

          1. Says the man who recently was snarling that Brendan Eich totally should have lost his job and indeed should have suffered much worse.

            1. The misunderstanding is this: I believe that Richard Eich should have lost his job.* But I don’t think Linus Torvalds should have. Or Richard Stallman, or the guy who made a very British joke about women in STEM fields and got kicked to the curb. I don’t think Eric should lose control of his projects because of the politics. (IIRC Eric and I are actually fairly close on the subject of feminism.)

              When it comes to stories about “ebil mens in tech” I actually read multiple news stories and try to make my decisions on the merits. In the case of Brendan Eich* I didn’t think the “Mozilla” part of our infrastructure should be under the control of a fundamentalist (of any religion.)

              * In the case of Brendan Eich, I also have a close LGBTQ relative, so I am probably more passionate than I should be – the guys a menace – but the risk case for allowing him to continue is poor even without my feelings.

              1. I didn’t think the “Mozilla” part of our infrastructure should be under the control of a fundamentalist (of any religion.)

                The hell? Do you have evidence that his personal beliefs affected his job performance in any way? Because you seem to be jumping from “he is icky” to “no can work!” in an awfully cavalier manner.

                In the case of Brendan Eich, I also have a close LGBTQ relative, so I am probably more passionate than I should be – the guys a menace

                Wha… what? “I have a friend of $ProtectedClass, therefore my opinions should make sense.” Really?

                1. Indeed. My understanding is that Eich never allowed his beliefs on the legality of same-sex marriage to influence his job performance or behaviour towards his employees in any way. If there is solid evidence to the contrary then it should be put forward. Otherwise his dismissal is just as wrong as if he had been kicked out for supporting same-sex marriage.

              2. > In the case of Brendan Eich* I didn’t think the “Mozilla” part of our infrastructure should be under the control of a fundamentalist (of any religion.)

                His position on gay marriage is not *fundamentalist*. It is *orthodox* (small-o) within the broader Christian faith. Either you need to define fundamentalism more narrowly (which would likely exclude Eich) or own the claim that no person of religious faith should have a leading role in our infrastructure (goodbye Knuth! goodbye Fred Brooks!).

                Also, this assumes that people who are “fundamentalist” differ psychologically somehow from “non-fundamentalists”. This may be true in a broad statistical sense, but it doesn’t necessarily mean anything when we have the opportunity to actual evaluate a specific person. You’re just engaging in classic bigotry: judging a person by the group they belong to rather than on their own merits.

                Finally: a key strength of FLOSS is the fact that it provides a neutral ground for otherwise hostile parties in the hopes of creating something valuable to everyone. If try and claim culture war victories in said neutral ground you’re just going to make everyone mad and threaten the shared value creation.

    5. /me puts on tinfoil hat
      Between this and Brendan Eich, any chance this is an industry play to eliminate DRM opponents?

    6. @ESR – I’d really like to hear a long-form response from you on the subject (when you’ve thought it over).

      Thomas Bushnell’s take: https://medium.com/@thomas.bushnell/a-reflection-on-the-departure-of-rms-18e6a835fd84

      Thomas Lord’s take: https://twitter.com/thomas_lord/status/1174433645110513664

      Bushnell essentially argues that while the specific accusations against Stallman were false, his firing was nonetheless justified for other reasons.

      My response is in two parts:

      1) If there are truthful reasons for firing* him, then let that be the reason. The timing of this, and the fact that the firing itself was based on lies, suggests that it was done more to distract from MIT’s complicity in the Epstein debacle than to actually rectify anything.

      2) This whole “this is a time for empathy, not for debating the meanings of words” (paraphrased) is little more than just a flimsy justification for moral panic. If you want justice, real justice, then precision in our thoughts and are words becomes more important.

      *well, whatever word you want to use to describe the fact that he was forced out.

      1. On Bushnell. Funny how they are always talking about institutional this and systemic that, yet they always hurt persons, not institutions. If MIT as such is guilty at something, why not MIT as such is getting punished.

        I have observed something like this long ago but never really understood it. Back when Marxian socialism was really a thing, the story was always that the problem is not that capitalists are bad guys. It is that capitalism is a bad system. Hate the game, not the player and all that. Sounded like they don’t have any personal problems with capitalists. And yet, looking at the death toll…

        There must be some kind of trick in this but never really figured out why if someone wants to hurt other persons, why not just says down with those guys, instead of systemic this and institutional that.

        1. Alinsky rule #13:

          “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions.

        2. The early days of the SJW movement, 7-10 years ago, were like that too. Lots of disclaimers about how they weren’t against such and such a person, just what he/she said or did. Once they achieved critical mass, however, all pretence was dropped and they now are openly against the person. If they can find one thing to convict you, then you’re out forever. There’s no such thing as reprimands, correction or rehabilitation. Apart from the fact that they just appear to prefer being dishonest, I assume the prior pretence of not being personal also permitted them to build up their ranks by appearing less harmful.

          1. Ah, but SJWs are good at showing mercy and forgiveness when one of heir own falls into one of their traps. The feminists did a quick 180 when Bill Clinton got outed as a sexual harasser. Blackface is a racist costume choice, but somehow not that big a deal when a leftist does it, even repeatedly. Etc.

            1. Sometimes. They’re also perfectly willing to eat their own. Exactly which will happen in any particular instance isn’t entirely predictable, which is partially the point. However, it appears to depend on thing like how useful the individual in question currently is, how powerful he is, and the dynamics of their internal power struggles.

  29. You like to talk about how confiscations would lead to armed rebellion, so here’s a hypothetical question:

    Suppose Shane Kohfield rather than giving up his guns had shot the FBI agents sent to take them, what do you think the genral reaction of the fire arms community would have been? What would your reaction have been?

    1. >Suppose Shane Kohfield rather than giving up his guns had shot the FBI agents sent to take them, what do you think the genral reaction of the fire arms community would have been? What would your reaction have been?

      I’m not going to make any projections about the general reaction. I think Kohfield would have been justified in shooting them – the Second and Fourth Amendment violations and the conspiracy to violate civil rights under color of law are very clear here.

      1. Much ink has been spilled writing about the inevitable failure — and massive backlash — of any attempted mass confiscation. For all the idiot Blue foot-soldiers who will still say “what good is your AR-15 against a drone?”, I think by now everyone who matters realizes this.

        This implies that the most dangerous scenarios going forward are not the imposition of single massive new bans with full confiscation in the teeth of the entire gun culture, but rather frog-boiling tactics that will play out over decades. They will be aimed at pressuring gun culture from all sides, making it culturally anathema, inconveniencing its members as much as possible, and destroying prominent exponents whether via legal or extralegal means. We can already see this happening with the Obama “Chokepoint” pressure exerted against banks, and other payment processors banning gun transactions. On the cultural side, see Youtube and other major Internet platforms working to push guns off.

        Red flag laws are a major step forward in the frog-boiling strategy. They allow the state to build institutions around gun-confiscation operations and inure ordinary law enforcement to carrying out those operations; they provide an avenue for harassing gun advocates, therefore pressuring outspoken advocates to shut up; and they make confiscation raids into an ordinary law-enforcement practice in the eyes of the broader population. A long series of steadily-escalating red flag laws imposing lower and lower thresholds for action are just as capable of eventually becoming a full ban as a series of gun-type bans.

        It’s not entirely clear how is best to proceed here, but it seems clear to me at least that any gun confiscation based on “red flag” complaints with no conviction in court is just as illegitimate as a mass confiscation from all civilians in general, and any law enforcement officers carrying out such raids have similarly declared themselves enemies of liberty and the Constitution, and violence against them is self-defense.

    2. It would have been
      -outrage
      -organization
      -defeat
      -“things have always been this way and anyone who implies otherwise is a bad person who should be ignored”

  30. Dear ESR;
    The SFConservancy just attacked RMS, should they “go to hell”*, as described in this message:
    https://lkml.org/lkml/2019/9/18/279
    ?

    > Software Freedom Conservancy
    ?>Verified account @conservancy
    >
    > The fight for diversity, equality and inclusion is the fight for
    > software freedom. Our movement will only be successful
    > if it includes everyone. RMS does not speak for these values.
    > twitter.com/conservancy/status/1173603417769545734

    *(That is; should the “legal hell” described there-in be unleashed?)

  31. @personwholooks: That LKML posting is recognisably the latest sockpuppet posting account of notorious loon MikeeUSA. Even those who share his general views tend to be smart enough not to take legal advice from him.

  32. Hmm, this comment keeps going off into oblivion. Trying another variation:

    I see Eric’s original blog point is getting swamped by the Stallman story, about which FWIW I did on several S.F. Bay Area LUG mailing lists when that news broke (e.g, balug-talk and svlug).

    Getting back to Pretty Boy O’Rourke, no matter the volume of applause in that audience in Houston, I think it very, very unclear his opinion can be extrapolated to aggregate Democratic Party voters, let alone suggesting any significant nationwide political will to do as he wishes. (Note that polling data showing a shift in opinion about new registrations of so-called ‘assault weapons’ are interesting but not the same thing as support for confiscations.) So, I see noisy sizzle, but nothing they’d call a steak in Abilene or elsewhere.

    Eric, you may recall my telling you that my going on a few of the early Geeks with Guns outings from VA Linux Systems to Targetmasters in Milpitas helped me analyse these legal matters more precisely and with improved realism, and I was glad to thank you for that. I do my best to share that realism with local voters, as I tried for example three years back: web.archive.org/web/20170825202449/http://linuxmafia.com/~rick/election-2016-11-08.html#prop63

    (As you will see in the ‘outcome’ comments, that measure passed despite the damning flaws I mentioned, but also was a NO-OP for the reasons I cited.)

    Rick Moen
    rick@linuxmafia.com

    1. >no matter the volume of applause in that audience in Houston, I think it very, very unclear his opinion can be extrapolated to aggregate Democratic Party voters, let alone suggesting any significant nationwide political will to do as he wishes.

      I have no doubt you are correct on both counts. When I referred to “the Democrats” in my post, I intended to point at the party apparat, not its base.

      1. By party apparat, you might mean either or both of two things (or a third if I’m being a dolt and missing something). The first is party committees, comprising the DNC (national) and various state and county ones. The second is the collective corpus of elected politicians participating in Democratic Party caucuses. Bear with my Stallmanesque distinction-drawing, please, as I’m nearly to the point:

        During the 2017 figurative beauty contest for DNC Chair, many innocent electrons were slain decrying how horrible the ideological influence of Keith Ellison (Minnesota) would be if anointed. In the end, it was establishment politico and lawyer Tom Perez — but, before that happened, I found myself talking to some people flogging the claim about Ellison and Viewing It with Alarm: They inevitably seemed stunned when I said ‘Er, aren’t you aware that the nearly sole function of a party national chair is fundraising?’ Mr. Ellison’s political convictions, in that regard, would be (as we say out here) something that, combined with $2.50, gets you a ride on S.F. Muni.

        So, I would suggest that the party apparat in sense #1 doesn’t have plans or intentions or a particularly cunning plan, just a budget and a frequently reloaded Web link to the Cook Report. Party apparat in sense #2 doesn’t have those either, just mostly a devotion to JFK’s two rules of politics. (Rule #1: Get elected. Rule #2: Get re-elected.)

        Rick Moen
        rick@linuxmafia.com

        1. >By party apparat, you might mean either or both of two things (or a third if I’m being a dolt and missing something).

          I intended something more like the union of (a) Democratic party employees, (b) Democratic politicians in office, and (c) the party’s activist cadre – harder to define, but I know them when I see them poll-watching on election days, organizing demonstrations, and being motivated enough to buy tickets to be in the audience at a primary-contenders’ debate. On days when I am feeling particularly cynical I would add (d) almost the entirety of the Acela-corridor press corps.

          This group certainly does have opinions. If they were really focused on winning elections first and foremost, they would notice that a significant core of these opinions are losers outside the coastal metroplexes and a handful of interior university towns – but they do not in fact notice this, being seemingly ideologically blinded and under some compulsion to dismiss those who disagree with them as deplorables/nazis/racists/white-supremacists.

          1. Don’t forget Chicago and some other Blue cities mostly in the upper middle of the country, like Kansas City, St. Louis, and let’s not forget Saint Buttigieg’s South Bend, Indiana. And this article reports that Austin is following the LA and San Francisco path to perdition.

            As for the wing of the party that gave it some ideological and geographic balance, the so called Blue Dogs of Clinton era fame? Their remnants were sacrificed to enact Obamacare. Which may turn out to have been a mistake since it didn’t actually and irreversibly “nationalize” our healthcare, while immediately harming a lot of people and displaying the gross incompetence we’ve come to expect when our betters actually have to execute on their wild promises.

            Obama, only caring about himself, and certainly having nothing in common with them compared to say Bill Clinton, didn’t see a need to revive them, and didn’t need to “triangulate” like Clinton did to get reelected. Which tells us lots of thing.

        2. > Party apparat in sense #2 doesn’t have those either, just mostly a devotion to JFK’s two rules of politics.

          They *PASSED* an “Assault weapons ban” in 1994. and this year: https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-bill/66

          No, it won’t pass the house and it won’t even be heard in the Senate if it was, but there are enough of them that live in places like San FranShithole or NYC that literally don’t know anyone with a gun that isn’t for trap or skeet or some other paper game, and increasingly the Ds from the rational parts of the country seem to be getting *just* as cloistered and are drinking their own ink.

          1. The party has really gotten itself into a fix on guns. They no longer have any operatives who understand guns, gun safety, and gun culture, 1.0 or 2.0, so when they try to make a commercial for a candidate at any level actual gun owners immediately note they’re posers. For an earlier more noted example, a Republican running for some state agriculture? office in the South as I recal, who was holding a level action rifle, his keeping his finger inside the trigger guard told voters all they needed to know, he lost his election.

            1. They think they are facing a mixed sea of 1.0 and 2.0. They have no inkling of gun culture 3.0. That there could be a large and growing contingent that take “Repeal the NFA” as their starting point is incomprehensible to them.

              Or put a snarkier way: Let them destroy the NRA, and while celebrating find out what a real 2A-rights organization fights like.

              1. Oh my. Despite talking a lot about gun cultures 1.0 and 2.0 (born in the first, am mostly in the second), it didn’t occur to me that the changes we’re seeing, in part to irredeemable gun grabbers, are creating a gun culture 3.0.

                1. >are creating a gun culture 3.0.

                  I think it’s actually possible I’ve had a minor hand in that. Through this.

                  When I wrote “Ethics From The Barrel of A Gun it was around 1996-1997 – first decade or so of 2.0. By 2.0 standards the content was pretty radical. and I knew it was when I wrote it; today it reads like a 3.0 manifesto. I’ve gotten enough email and linkage since to think it quietly influenced a lot of folks.

                  1. I’m outside of gun culture myself but considering arming up in case all hell breaks loose after the next election. This is the first I’m hearing about different, numbered versions of gun culture. Is there a good guide explaining the differences anywhere?

                    1. >This is the first I’m hearing about different, numbered versions of gun culture. Is there a good guide explaining the differences anywhere?

                      I looked and didn’t find one. Here’s a summary of what I think I know – other gunfolks on the thread may correct me.

                      1.0: Focused on hunting and recreation, weapons mix dominated by traditional wooden-stock hunting rifles, has existed since time immemorial. Not very political, often indifferent to issues of 2A principle as long as nobody went near their hunting guns. Heavily rural. The NRA was a 1.0 organization before the 1977 palace coup by Harlon Carter and associates. 1.0 holdovers are sometimes referred to as “Fudds”, think Elmer Fudd hunting wabbits in a Warner Brothers cartoon.

                      2.0: Focused on self-defense and concealed carry, weapons stock dominated by handguns. I think it started to be distinguishable from 1.0 in the early 1980s soon after the NRA coup, but that was before I was involved and I’d accept correction from those with experience going farther back. More political, increased focus on 2A rights, demographics reaching into suburbs.

                      3.0: Still practically focused on self-defense and concealed carry but with common talk of the role of civilian armed revolt in the U.S. Constitutional system and skyrocketing ownership of AR-15-pattern “black rifles”. Emerged in the early 2000s, I think, though you can certainly find the tendency in earlier 2.0 – if I had to date it to one event it would be to Clayton Cramer’s exposure of the Bellesisles fraud in…2002, I think. Very political, very hard line on 2A, widespread disdain for the NRA as too accommodationist. Gun culture 3.0 dreams not just of holding off new gun-control laws but repealing existing ones.

                      The 1.0/2.0 and 2.0/3.0 transitions were both marked by large increases in gun sales and a widening demographic base.

                      The 1.0/2.0 distinction is widespread and even used by academic observers of the gun culture. However, many people who recognize the 1.0 vs. 2.0 terminology do not yet recognize or agree that 3.0 is distinct from the “extreme” wing of 2.0.

                    2. Some additions and nit correcting, as I started in 1.0:

                      1.0 is also very big on conventional bullseye target shooting, and safety rules that preclude a “hot” range, where guns are loaded when you’re not on the firing line. The coup was the Cincinnati revolt in 1977, reversing the NRA leadership’s decision to abandon the political field (they were quite active in this in the 1960s when gun control for all races became a big thing, but their political activity WRT to gun control goes back to at least the 1920s).

                      That resulted in the creation of the Institute for Legislative Action (ILA), its formal lobbying arm, which is a different type of 501 non-profit than the NRA proper. Since then, the Winning Team has made very sure another coup is impossible, by any means necessary including physical violence.

                      2.0 also included rifles for self-defense, and the “survivalist” now “prepper” strain was important. Note how attacks on civilian semi-auto versions of select-fire military battle and assault rifles started in earnest in the late 1980s. I would place its real start with Jeff Cooper and his Modern Technique (of the pistol) in the 1950s, see also the International Practical Shooting Confederation (IPSC) founding in 1976, they do non-bullseye competitions.

                      3.0, which I’m still conceptualizing, was sparked more than anything else by the US authorities’ response to 9/11, they told us citizens who they view as subjects our only duties were to shop (literally) and snitch on our neighbors, and they stated way too many times that white domestic terrorists were a greater threat than Muslim (in truth it’s the crazies as we’ve been discussing, but see also Ruby Ridge and Waco, and the OK City reply).

                      I.e. it became crystal clear we were on our own. Many things including the Official Story of the government’s response to Katrina emphasized this (and the civilian authorities really did multiply screw up, but to attack W the reporters ignored the thundering sound of Chinook heavy-lift (and smaller) helicopters delivering the rescued to that football stadium a block or so away, and made up a Lord of the Flies tale about the conditions of the rescued. There too the authorities were too often a worse threat than nature).

                    3. >Some additions and nit correcting, as I started in 1.0:

                      H, that was tremendously helpful. You’ve clarified several things in my mind.

                      I’n now prepared to pin the birth of 2.0 to either the founding of IPSC in 1976 or the NRA palace coup in ’77, acknowledging that its roots are in Jeff Cooper’s Modern Pistol Technique. That’s a great insight, because it explains how internal discoveries in the gun culture synergized with the needs of an increasingly non-rural population. 1.0 long guns simply aren’t practical in cities and suburbs – when how often do you have a long enough sight line to use their range?

                      I’m going to pin the birth of 3.0 not to the U.S. government response to 9/11 but to Fight 93. To a pretty good first approximation I think we can say that 3.0 was born when a bunch of pissed-off 2.0 gunfolks (including me) asked themselves “Why were Todd Beemer and the men who fought back disarmed?” and didn’t like the answer they got.

                      I should also note that a lot of younger 3.0 recruits got their start in first-person shooter and war-sim video games before they picked up physical guns and joined the actual gun culture – Ian is a good example of this. The difference this makes is that these kids got a pretty good grasp on tactics and movement before they learned actual gun handling.

                    4. >> “Here’s a summary of what I think I know”

                      Thanks Eric, that helps. Based on your descriptions I find that my own attitudes have been shifting more and more towards 3.0.

                    5. Birth strikes me as too much of a mathematical singularity to use for demarcation of these versions of US gun culture. For example, the official endings of both strategic and civil defense, and the 1960s urban riots, focused people powerfully on the need for self-defense, and not just with handguns.

                      In a riot in US rectangularly laid out cities, and/or from the top of a building like the Roof Koreans, you’re going to have sight lines much longer than you can shoot accurately with a handgun, a rifle is much, much easier to shoot accurately. If you’ve got an opponent with a shotgun and you only have a handgun, or rifle and you only have a shotgun, you’ll be outranged.

                      The best way I’ve found to put it is from Mel Tappan in his Survival Guns, who you might want to check out for influence in the 1970s, is that a handgun is like a first aid kit. Not your first choice if you know you’re going into combat (I add: aside from situations where weapons retention is a really big issue), but like a first aid kit it’s something you can have with you a lot more often. It’s a tool to get you to a rifle.

                      As to the type of rifle, the classic 1.0 lever action .30-30 with its ~AK-47 round ballistics would not be a terrible choice, and you can feed a hunter style bolt action as quickly. Note also that handguns are what gun grabbers have first gone after starting with the antebellum crusade against concealed handguns, so it was and still often is much easier for many city dwellers to legally own them. Cooper’s also very big on rifles; overall, I have to say your 1.0 analysis is largely wrong.

            2. The flip side of this is that the Republicans don’t have anyone who’s capable of understanding exactly how at least half the nation feels about things like the El Paso shooting. Or Dylan Roof. Or even Scalise. If the very best thing your politics has to say in reply is something like “Mr. Roof’s victims are in our thoughts and prayers,” there’s something deeply wrong with those politics.

              I have no amazing insights about how to handle this – the best ideas I can come up with are band-aids – and I personally am not a gun-grabber, but if your politics can’t do better than “thoughts and prayers” when confronted with some crazy person shooting up a mall, you’re probably going to be replaced by someone who is first of all, not a gun-grabber – the politics are definitely against it – but second of all, not you!

              I don’t know what advice I would give to a politician on either side, but for god’s sake, fix something!

              1. “Something must be done, this is something, therefore we must do it!” may be politically popular, but it isn’t good policy.

                But if you want a policy from the hard pro-gun side, there’s: “Reduce and eliminate the number of places where ccw permit holders can’t carry – especially when those places already have a special exemption for cops. These spree shootings tend to be overwhelmingly concentrated in such places, to the point where they can be considered ‘attractive nuisances’ for spree shooters.”

                1. CCW? Why? Even a couple tactical vests and baseball bats in every classroom might be enough to keep spree killers out of high-schools. You have drills every month where the two biggest kids in any classroom stand next to the door with their vests and bats. You don’t have to raise the bar very high before most people will decide that attacking isn’t worth the consequences.

                  1. baseball bats

                    Why use sub-standard equipment? Shotgun or rifle would be far more effective, and far more likely to stop a threat when used by someone who doesn’t have fighting experience.

                    1. True, but I’m deliberately aiming for a minimum here; if I was carrying a gun around a high-school campus, thinking about shooting someone, would the possibility of opening a classroom door and getting brained by a kid with a bat and a bulletproof vest convince me to go elsewhere? That’s the thought experiment, not “what’s most effective.”

              2. >If the very best thing your politics has to say in reply is something like “Mr. Roof’s victims are in our thoughts and prayers,” there’s something deeply wrong with those politics.

                The best thing libertarian and conservative politics has to say about these shootings is “Arm yourself and stop being a victim. Stop dreaming that someone else is going to solve the problem. It’s on you.

                1. Another point is that this is the best we can do to prevent a 20th Century style genocide in the US.

                2. In my current circumstances, I don’t see any need to own a gun. (If I ever do I’ll go out and buy one.) But your answer is light-years ahead of “thoughts and prayers.”

                  1. You’re missing the point. Our answer – that you can and should take responsibility for your own welfare – is morally sound, while the “Do Something” tribe’s answer – ban the thing used to commit the mayhem in the vain hope of preventing the next one – assigns agency to objects and strips it from people. It dehumanizes everyone involved, including those calling for the Something-Doing. It is morally reprehensible. We are therefore right to refuse to comply with immoral and impossible demands, even if they are made through tears.

                    Have you ever considered how the blithe and arrogant dismissal of “thoughts and prayers” plays in fly-over country? Perhaps the ruling elite are all too clever for all this faith stuff, and too busy with their fundamental transformation of these United States into the European Union of America, to offer sympathy and solace to the grieving, but out here in Red State America, a whole lot of us actually believe that prayers have power and offering comfort to folks in pain is right and good. We usually aren’t close enough to bring them a month’s supply of casseroles and fried chicken, or the local equivalent, but we can pray, and we can try to share their sorrow. That’s just common decency. I guess the aristocrat party doesn’t have time for anything so common.

                    Trying to use the grief of the sorrowing as a pretext to steal anything that isn’t nailed down doesn’t make progressives good people. It makes them heartless jerks with an agenda.

                    1. >Have you ever considered how the blithe and arrogant dismissal of “thoughts and prayers” plays in fly-over country?

                      See, this is where conservatives lose me. Petitioning a nonexistent sky spook solves no problem except making the petitioners feel like they have done something useful. But they haven’t.

                    2. Do the causes you believe in, the RKBA in particular, gain a single thing from your publicly expressing disdain for the deep held beliefs of the vast majority of your allies?

                      As always, “No friends to the right, no enemies to the left.

                    3. Now, Eric…I, like you, don’t believe that prayers have any sort of real effect.

                      Nevertheless, I do not disdain them, for the same reason that the copy of the Book of Mormon a mutual friend gave me occupies an honored place on my bookshelf: I recognize it as an expression of deep caring and friendship, the most profound way they know how to express it. I appreciate their concern for my immortal soul even if I do not, myself, share it.

                      Similarly, those who pray for others in extremis are expressing the deepest caring they know how. While I do not share their belief in its efficacy, I nevertheless appreciate and accept their best wishes.

                    4. >Now, Eric…I, like you, don’t believe that prayers have any sort of real effect.

                      Unfortunately, they do have an effect. They substitute for taking action in the real world.

                    5. Unfortunately, they do have an effect. They substitute for taking action in the real world.

                      I’d expect a neopagan to at least know better than to repeat this canard.

                    6. >I’d expect a neopagan to at least know better than to repeat this canard.

                      When you can compose a magical working that affects people who aren’t present for it, I’ll be impressed.

                      To be fair, there are some tenuous theories about how this might work that aren’t supernaturalist nonsense – Isaac Bonewits thought, for example, that humans leak into each others heads telepathically at low bandwidth. But I ain’t going to lean on them without better evidence.

                    7. “They substitute for taking action in the real world.”

                      For some folks, that is definitely true. But for others, it’s along the same lines as “praise the Lord and pass the ammunition”: bringing every force they believe in to bear to achieve their goals.

                    8. > But for others, it’s along the same lines as “praise the Lord and pass the ammunition”:

                      There’s a whole new sector of the private security industry focused on training and licensing armed church security teams. I grew up in conservative evangelical churches and can say authoritatively that no one was thinking about doing that when I was young.

                  2. Someone may not share your religious beliefs, or you may find “Thoughts and prayers” inadaquest, but for millions of Americans they are a sincere attempt to share a small amount of comfort and healing in the face of these terrible tragedies.

                    The disparagement of “Thoughts and prayers” has also been part of the cynical exercise by gun grabber leadership, who know they have the best chance to pass legislation based on outrage rather than wisdom. They are willing to dance on the bodies of the victims and use grieving Americans to sow division and to score political points.

                    Look at how many times we end up discovering that legislation quickly proposed would ultimately not have prevented any of these tragedies, the leaders proposing these actions know it.

                    Its monstrous to exploit these grieving families and then to suggest, falsely!, that their loved ones could have been spared if this or that piece of legislation had been passed.

                    1. I’ve been pondering what you and Mr Maynard have said about prayer and action, Mr Raymond. I plan to respond by popping out, because we’ve reached maximum reply depth again.
                      Before I do that, I want to apologize for miscommunicating. I had no intention of proposing that we should pray and call it a day. The folks who usually insist that “prayers are working, so let’s do something” almost invariably mean “pass new gun control.” That’s where I’m digging in my heels. I’m not rejecting the notion that there are things we could and should and indeed must do. But more about that presently.

      2. >no matter the volume of applause in that audience in Houston, I think it very, very unclear his opinion can be extrapolated to aggregate Democratic Party voters, let alone suggesting any significant nationwide political will to do as he wishes.

        Another way to look at this is “How many Democratic Candidates on that stage spoke up to reject Beto’s position?”

        None, as I recall.

        It seems like all of them are promising to run against one element of the Constitution or another and if elected, to rule as autocrats.

        1. And I don’t see any Republicans going out and making big pro-choice speeches either, or contradicting those who are anti-choice. Sometimes you have to live with the party you’ve committed to.

          1. The Republicans have glommed onto one side of a modern issue the founders could not physically have conceived of, and arguably might have considered outside the scope of the Constitution (“women want to do _that_? ok, well, that should be up to local law obviously, right?”) even if they had conceived of it.

            The Democrats have glommed onto the idea that they can by fiat say “Hell yes let’s say yes” to simply eliding whole sections of the Constitution itself.

            Personally I see a significant difference there, but if someone else doesn’t, I confess I have no idea how to make it more clear to them.

          2. Troutwaxer I have serious doubts this is being asked in good faith, the comparison is silly. No one suggested the Dems would make a “pro-gun” stance, although in the last cycle Bernie did at least try to defend his record as less gun restrictive since Vermonters tend to be pro-2nd amendment.

            Still,

            1.) Citizens Keeping and Bearing arms is explicitly called out in the Constitution in a way abortion is not.

            2.) I don’t know of any Major Republican Presidential aspirant who made a restrictive claim about abortion that parallels Beto’s on guns. However, I’ll grant “No one is saying X” may not be convincing on any side after Beto’s performance.

            3.) Even in the among most caricatured , Firebreathing, Bible-thumping, Mysoginist , Strawman version of the conservative position on abortion, no one has suggested sending Federal agents to seize abortion providers, or to jail women seeking abortions. To the extent conservatives have taken any action to restrict abortion, they have done so within the legal and legislative structures we have in place in this country, by trying pass legislation and through SCOTUS nominations, as abortion-as-a-right has been enacted via SCOTUS ruling.

            With regards to Gun Rights, Beto is not proposing a Constitutional Amendment, nor trying to move such legislation through Congress. I’d disagree with that type of proposal but it would at least be under color of law.

            Beto and Kamala Harris have expressly stated that if elected to the Presidency, they will not be constrained by the Constitution or the law on this issue. Thats the difference. If the Right wants to restrict abortion, they aren’t will to trash the Constitution to do so.

            1. >If the Right wants to restrict abortion, they aren’t will[ing] to trash the Constitution to do so.

              True, though now that the Left has put court-packing on the table I wonder how long it will take for social conservatives to pick it up as a tactic against Roe vs. Wade.

              1. Conservatives reject any tactic that could be effective as immoral, even when perfectly legitimate.

                They won’t touch this with a 100′ pole.

                1. I disagree: if the Left does succeed in packing the Court, then social conservatives will do likewise.

                2. > Conservatives reject any tactic that could be effective as immoral, even when perfectly legitimate.

                  IDK about that Ian Bruene. Refusing a hearing for Garland was playing hardball. And despite whines from the left, perfectly legitimate separation of powers.

                  Also, surprisingly effective.

  33. http://www.unz.com/anepigone/gun-city/ has absolutely blown my mind. Everybody on the Internet talks about gun control in universal, as in: everywhere-in-the-US terms and of course it is a hugely divisive issue. But the article showed that the idea of controlling guns in the city (Swaziland…) while leaving them alone in the suburbia and country (Switzerland…) has overwhelming support across all demographics, Republican, Democrat, White, Black etc. I suppose the “Independents” includes principled Libertarians, hence their support is “only” 73%. And Republicans have the HIGHEST, 81% approval to controlling guns in the city and only in the city.

    So you put the question this way and a huge divisive issue just stops being divisive at all. Mind-blowing.

    So here is the compromise everybody would agree with and yet it cannot be done because it implies that the real problem are, well…

    Is this a good idea? Well, you decide, I don’t live there. But I think if it was stable and would stay that way forever, it would be good. Democrats want gun control and Republicans not, so you do gun control in places where Democrats live and you don’t do gun control where Republicans live. And everybody who disagrees with the local majority can just move. What would be more perfect than that? The real issue is that largely it would be just a step towards full confiscation everywhere. So that there is no assurance that it would keep being stable that way. But if you could cast it in stone, it would be perfect.

    This… is a very damning evidence against democracy. That there is an idea that would absolutely win in a referendum where people vote in secret but nobody dares to propose it in public because they would be torn a new one. That is, democracy fails at the level of what policies people actually want vs. what policies they dare to support publicly, what policies they actually want vs. what kind of image they want to project about themselves.

    As neoreactionary blogger “Anomaly UK” noticed, the problem is precisely the lack of conspiracies. You cannot be a hypocrite anymore and that is bad. That everything happens in the open now, due to social media. So elites can no longer virtue-signal and hypocritically project politically correct images about themselves in public, while privately agreeing to do the sensible opposite thing. They have to be honest, and that is bad, as it does not mean they will publicly say their real opinions. That is suicide, does not work with the human species, too much social competition. Rather, they become honest by actually following the policies suggested by their publicly virtue-signalled bullshit ideas, and more or less even come to believe in it and believe their own propaganda because there is no longer this bulwark that secretly they can say it was just propaganda. Pragmatic hypocrites become true believer fanatics. And it leads to disastrous policies.

    Although of course if it would be just a step towards full confiscation everywhere then maybe it is better so.

    Still, you have to think that if democracy fails to implement popular ideas, that is a core bug in it. Formerly it was only said nondemocratic polities are better when good ideas are unpopular but worse when they are not and then you can argue how often this or that happen. But if nondemocraties polities are also better at implementing popular ideas of this kind because such a sovereign can afford to look like an asshole, while the people in general cannot afford to look like assholes even if secretly they agree…

    1. >Although of course if it would be just a step towards full confiscation everywhere then maybe it is better so.

      There is no such thing as any gun-control measure that isn’t “a step towards full confiscation everywhere”. That’s how the anti-2A people operate; they are conscious incrementalists with a long-term plan, in which every individual move is intended as much or more to set up preconditions for the next one than it is to address any actual problem.

      “Assault weapon” bans are a case in point. The use of so-called “assault weapons” in crime is statistically negligible; banning them doesn’t actually solve any problem. The move is intended to set a precedent that any category of firearms deemed “sufficiently bad” can be banned and confiscated, and you can bet that this category will always expand and never shrink until a total ban in place. That’s the actual plan! The gun-grabbers admit it to friendly audiences.

      One reason gun control in cities only is politically radioactive is that in practice it would amount to “disarm the blacks”. Statistically this would actually be an extremely effective and well-targeted intervention, reducing gun crime by almost 90% if it could actually be accomplished, but the screaming about structural racism and disparate impact would never end. I myself would have to oppose it on equal-protection grounds.

      The other reason this will never be proposed is that gun control in the U.S. has a strong component of class warfare, a way for urban elites to express contempt of and control over rural proles. Making those gap-toothed deplorables surrender their weapons and forcing them to their knees is, for many gentry liberals, a large part of the point.

      1. And let us note they also define as an “assault weapon” any gun which has or into which has been inserted a magazine with more the 10 rounds, 7 for the New York SAFE act (remarkably squashed by a Federal judge), or 1 round per Biden. They really want all semi-automatics gone, before they perhaps focus on evil sniper rifles AKA bog standard hunting rifles.

        One reason gun control in cities only is politically radioactive is that in practice it would amount to “disarm the blacks”. Statistically this would actually be an extremely effective and well-targeted intervention, reducing gun crime by almost 90% if it could actually be accomplished

        I seriously doubt that 90% metric. Guns are just a tool for good or ill, and a lack of guns will just result in substitutions, like the steadily increasing “knife crime” epidemic in the U.K., which is now seriously straining their wonderful nationalized health system while ruining their kitchens.

        The other reason this will never be proposed is that gun control in the U.S. has a strong component of class warfare, a way for urban elites to express contempt of and control over rural proles.

        Glenn “Instapundit” Reynolds, a law professor in Tennessee, i.e. flyover country, often comments on this. This is one of his best that I’ve saved:

        FEBRUARY 25, 2018
        THEY CAN’T EVEN GET PEOPLE TO COMPLY IN CONNECTICUT: What Will Gun Controllers Do When Americans Ignore an ‘Assault Weapons’ Ban?

        But since the point of gun control is to humiliate and grind down flyover people and demonstrate that the Ruling Class is ultimately the, well, Ruling Class — not to control crime — the appearance of submission is probably enough. Plus, a seldom enforced and often ignored law is ideal if you want to be able to target troublesome individuals later.

        This is one of the reasons the current very successful push for “Red Flag” laws is so dangerous. They’re massively abused, for example 95% are after the fact approved in Florida, while 40% of the targeted individuals don’t even own guns. Ignoring how our highest death toll mass murders are from arson, explosives, or planes, they’re inevitably going to be used to target gun activists. And history tells us that people who can’t own guns don’t get very excited about politics that are purely theoretical to them.

        1. >I seriously doubt that 90% metric.

          I didn’t say it would reduce violence by 90% – you’re correct about the substitution problem. Just gun crime, 85% of which is associated with the inner-city drug trade.

      2. One reason gun control in cities only is politically radioactive is that in practice it would amount to “disarm the blacks”. Statistically this would actually be an extremely effective and well-targeted intervention, reducing gun crime by almost 90% if it could actually be accomplished, but the screaming about structural racism and disparate impact would never end.

        By “if it could actually be accomplished” you mean if it actually *worked* and managed to disarm the gangs, drug dealers and ex-cons who are carrying for protection IN ADDITION to the otherwise law-abiding inner city denizens, and wasn’t replaced by knives, bats etc.?

        1. >By “if it could actually be accomplished” you mean if it actually *worked* and managed to disarm the gangs, drug dealers and ex-cons who are carrying for protection IN ADDITION to the otherwise law-abiding inner city denizens, and wasn’t replaced by knives, bats etc.?

          That’s right. The usual reasons these attempts always fail still apply.

          1. I would guess that even in the inner city, 80-90 percent of the gun owners behave lawfully* (at least in terms of what they do with their guns) to the extent that they can afford it.**

            * As opposed to maybe 98 percent of gun owners in a middle-class neighborhood, but even at 80-90 percent, still a huge majority.

            ** Law requires a gun safe, but someone can’t afford a gun safe, or something like that.

            1. >I would guess that even in the inner city, 80-90 percent of the gun owners behave lawfully* (at least in terms of what they do with their guns) to the extent that they can afford it.**

              Probably. It depends on how much the inner cities concentrate the 3% high-deviant cohort that commits almost all violent crime. If that cohort were in the same proportion there as the general population your figure would hug 97%. But it probably isn’t – blacks are overrepresented in the criminal population by about 4:1 and disproportionately low-IQ. The simplest possible model consistent with this (high-deviant 3% cohort overrepresented by about 4x) would therefore predict about 88% lawful-behavior, which is right in your ballpark.

              1. However, those inner city gun owners, for that very reason, NEED firearms to an extent that suburbanites don’t (not that those suburbanites shouldn’t have them too).

                1. Indeed, see for example how SCIENCE! says “Physics shows criminals more likely to find accomplices in big cities“.

                  “In a big city, you have the potential to meet more distinct people each day,” Daniel Abrams, researcher at Northwestern University, said in a news release. “You’re more likely to find an appropriate partner to start a business or invent something. But perhaps you’re also more likely to find the partner you need to commit a burglary.”

                  Previous studies have shown that as cities grow, crime increases exponentially — particularly, burglary, auto theft and homicide.

                  […]

                  The scientists used their model to analyze co-arrest records — when multiple people are arrested for the same crime — for robbery, motor vehicle theft, murder, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny-theft and rape.

                  Except for rape, which increased linearly, all of the different types of crime grew exponentially — or “superlinearly” — as a city’s population increased.

                  That seems to be an accurate summary of the paper’s abstract, it’s “Modeling the origin of urban-output scaling laws“. That page also has 5 freely available and very interesting graphs, they for example also plugged in data like patents, and new AIDS cases.

  34. That everything happens in the open now, due to social media. So elites can no longer virtue-signal and hypocritically project politically correct images about themselves in public, while privately agreeing to do the sensible opposite thing.

    Your thesis is interesting. But social media has only been a political force/tool in this country for maybe 15 years. 25 years if you want to stretch the definition. And this has been going on a lot longer than that.

    Although of course if it would be just a step towards full confiscation everywhere then maybe it is better so.

    This isn’t our first rodeo. The definition of whatever threshold triggers confiscation will be constantly lowered – for whatever lame excuse. The marxist urbanites (California, et al) won’t have the good grace to stay in the shitholes they’ve created but will move here in often sufficient numbers to sway elections for the worse. And if that doesn’t accomplish their agenda they will just continue importing replacement voters by the tens of millions.

    So, interesting data, interesting idea. But no. I say again: NO.

    Still, you have to think that if democracy fails to implement popular ideas, that is a core bug in it.

    Who cares? The only people who actually want democracy are the ones who haven’t really thought it through. Give me a republic with an iron-fisted constitution any day – warts & all.

    1. “Give me a republic with an iron-fisted constitution any day – warts & all.”

      It took until our second president for the government to start openly ignoring the constitution. No idea where you think you are going to find a state that acts differently.

      1. Got a better idea?

        I did say “warts & all”. And every form of human government has lots of warts. Just because something is imperfect is not a reason to reject it.

        Possibly some of the egregious mistakes made by our founders could be avoided this time. Possibly.

        1. “Got a better idea?”

          Realize that promises from politicians mean nothing and so you have to rely on self interest for how to set up your system.

          “And every form of human government has lots of warts. ”

          My criteria is strikingly simple- doesn’t auto-genocide which the developed world is going.

          As far as I’m aware if you want stability you need to go monarchy, aristocratic merchant republic or confederation. Everything else catches on fire and explodes.

  35. I used to be at Hi-Multics.ARPA, and the general opinion of the Multicians I came into contact with was that Gnu Emacs was a logical descendant of Bernie Greenberg’s Emacs, and Unipress’ was comparatively unimpressive.

    1. The reason Gnu Emacs was so quick to appear, and was quickly a reliable editor for manipulating your precious source files, is that RMS stole the source code that had been licensed to Unipress, ludicrously claiming an email he could never produce had authorized this.

      RMS then made it much more like Bernie’s Multics Emacs, which used the full power of Multics Maclisp for its extension language, by replacing its indeed “unimpressive” Mocklisp with a mainline Lisp, changing the key bindings to the general MIT (instead of CMU??) standard, etc. Technology advances also allowed him to at some point replace the ultra-complicated and ultra-performant skull and crossbones ASCII art commented redisplay that squeezed out every byte possible sent at 1200 baud to a smart terminal.

      That base which RMS started with was very solid, something I can personally attest to from when I took over the contracted IBM-PC port in 1985 (well, somewhere in the porting process a wild pointer crept in, I had to get Unipress to buy an ATRON 8088 hardware debugger to find the source…). The paired C base and byte-code compiler for the extension language were designed and primarily written by a guy named James Gosling. I’m given to understand that a while later Mr. Gosling took this approach to building software a bit further….

      1. Not to mention the two sitting Senators also running for President who agree with Beto’s position, Cory Booker and Kamala Harris. Schumer is so blatant a liar, especially on gun control … well, of course the Democratic Party operatives with bylines will push his damage control, but….

  36. Beto stands with two-thirds of Americans, according to a Fox News poll.

    And the far right has already started the stochastic terrorism against him:

    Since Republicans were already hyperbolic on this issue, O’Rourke created a real problem for them. They didn’t really have room to escalate, at least peacefully, having maxed out the hysteria. So the rhetoric escalated to violent, barely concealed threats. Alex Jones of Infowars said O’Rourke will end up dead if he keeps it up. Meghan McCain of “The View”, predicted — or, if you prefer, threatened — “a lot of violence” if there’s a buyback program. Tucker Carlson of Fox News said O’Rourke’s proposal is “incitement to violence.” There are plenty of other examples, including a Texas state representative who tweeted, “My AR is ready for” O’Rourke.

    Source.

    1. I don’t care if 99.99% of Americans want to restrict a Constitutional right. If you want to repeal the Second Amendment, you’re welcome to try. I especially don’t care if it’s a vaguely-worded question. What is an “assault weapon,” anyway?

    2. A man who threatens to wield the power of the state against millions of Americans who have committed no crime doesn’t get to complain if someone tells him he’s full of shit, or play the victim when his intended victims tell him they don’t take kindly to his thieving, and won’t stand for it should he be stupid enough to try it.

      He’s a Texan, for pity’s sake. He damn well ought to know why we have a flag with a a cannon on it.

    1. I think that has more to do with their apparent inability to sell ARs to civilians than any decision that selling ARs to civilians is inherently wrong.

      1. Indeed, note how they’ve been successively losing military contracts with the government in part due to quality problems. I gather that one of the major reasons for the Army moving to the M4 Carbine with its insane 14.5 inch barrel was that FN won the M16 contract. And now FN has the M4 contract. FN, BTW, has loved selling guns to US civilians since at least the 1930s, and we love them in return. If it was possible for me to buy a real full-auto P90….

        I gather Colt makes rifles for the civilian market of known and not bad quality, but not for a competitive price. They’ve got a host of problems, bad management for a long time, like ceding the revolver market to S&W (and later Taurus), iffy product decisions, designs and quality … it’s a very bad sign when I can outshoot one friend’s new Colt 1911 with good sights with another friend’s unmodified Argentine Sistema Colt Modelo 1927 with stock sights and trigger. Note that very action of trying out in their presence someone’s gun is something “universal background check” laws try to make a felony.

        I would say that then “At night, the ice weasels come”, but they got bought by a financial firm in 1994 which has systematically looted them. Their CEO also sparked a boycott in 1998 by saying to the Washington Post that as Wikipedia puts it accurately enough, “he would favor a federal permit system with training and testing for gun ownership”, and some of us never forgive that.

        1. I’ve heard that after getting a former Officer as their CEO Colt started hiring pretty much only ex-military, and then treating all of their non-ex-military employees like garbage. Assuming that is true it explains a lot.

          I’m pretty sure that qualifies as “embarrassment to the uniform”. Supporting gun control steps it up to “broke his oath of service”, and “active traitor”.

          1. Quite true. William M. Keys pretty much turned Colt into a pension plan for retiring brass.

        2. > M4 Carbine with its insane 14.5 inch barrel

          Why do you consider that “insane”?

          1. In the 1980s Martin Fackler discovered the real serious wounding mechanism in 5.56x45mm Full Metal Jacket (FMJ) bullets with a cannelure (the grove in the bullet that is placed so the end of the brass can be crimped into it, making it harder forrough handling to move the position of the bullet), this includes the original 55 gr M193 adopted in 1963, and the 62 gr SS109/M855 green tipped bullet (which was intended for machine guns, and the only metric of effectiveness used to pick it was penetrating a steel helmet at a long distance).

            All bullets start to tumble (yaw) when they change media, like from air to flesh. For these 5.56mm bullets, at a high enough velocity they break at the cannelure, and at higher the bottom half disintegrates more and more. This mechanism was previously unrecognized, so these bullets and their guns were never designed to support it, let alone do it reliably.

            That said, as a rule of thumb, for every inch chopped off a barrel, you lose 50 yards of effectiveness from the velocity lost. I doubt that’s linear all the way to 14.5 inches, but if so, you’d lose 275 yards effective range from the original M16’s 20 inch barrel going to the M4’s 14.5 inch.

            Not something you’ll necessarily note in clearing a house in Iraq, but it’s been a catastrophic issue in Afghanistan.

            1. There is a knee in the 5.56 velocity curve around IIRC 12″. Now that the military is using SBRs for everything the 5.56 is being pushed way outside of its design envelope… Which is why there is all the talk of testing something like 6.8SPC which is designed for shorter barrels (also why 300 blackout got developed; subsonic 5.56 is a bad joke).

              Seventy years later and we are still dealing with the problems caused by the gorram armorer cartel. I wonder how many thousands of people those idiots got killed with their fetishes.

              1. >Seventy years later and we are still dealing with the problems caused by the gorram armorer cartel.

                Explain?

                1. Given the date, 70 or 60 years ago, he’s got to be referring to the post-Garand (he retired from the US government Springfield Armory in 1953) process that resulted in the M14. It was utterly corrupt, and you’ll see a thread of this every time a vendor refuses to grant custody of a widget to the Army for testing, for they have a history of sabotaging superior alternatives to their favorite. Here, they for example replaced screws holding together AR-10s with springs, which of course caused them to quickly fail in testing.

                  The result was a warmed over Garand with a receiver than cannot be completely CNCed (Mr. Garand was very big on maneuverability), with a real gas system, a 20 round detachable machine, and a ludicrous lever that would allow it to go full auto, which simply isn’t practical with a rifle that lightweight and the full power 7.62 NATO battle rifle round. I suppose the only thing not silly about it is without it, the gun can’t go full auto, and it was seldom issued with one.

                  It retained the kludge of the operating rod, and keeping 1/2 of the action open to the elements, which is a very bad thing. Look at a diagram or picture of it from the top, and compare to anything which only exposes an ejection port, and maybe stuff having to do with the bolt handle if that’s seperate.

                  The 1950s was also the perfect time to move to an intermediate round, between battle and assault rifle rounds, as was considered and dropped between WWI and WWII because we had so much .30-06 inventory and way too little money. Instead we forced on ourselves and our allies a shorter .30-06, with the standard round having a 147 gr vs. 150 gr bullet to match the old ballistics.

                  We also ignored the opportunity shown by the AR-10 to significantly decrease the weight of our issue rifle, although that cut against its ludicrous objective to replace submachine guns, and the slightly less silly objective of replacing the BAR. A common peacetime phenomena we’re currently enjoying with the F-35, but if you can keep it running, it does do the job of a battle rifle pretty well, and can have a very good trigger, something a lot of its non-US competition ignores.

                  In the end, all of the above allowed politics to replace the M14 with the M16 derived from the AR-15, a scaled down AR-10, and that’s a whole ‘nother story.

                  1. >This is a long and intricate story, so I’m going to pop it out to top level.

                    Looking forward to it. H’s conjecture about M-14 procurement didn’t surprise me, but I’d like to hear what you think as I have every reason to believe you’ve been learning a lot about this sort of thing recently

    2. Careful, this looks like fake news.

      https://www.colt.com/news/2630

      “There have been numerous articles recently published about Colt’s participation in the commercial rifle market. Some of these articles have incorrectly stated or implied that Colt is not committed to the consumer market. We want to assure you that Colt is committed to the Second Amendment, highly values its customers and continues to manufacture the world’s finest quality firearms for the consumer market.

      The fact of the matter is that over the last few years, the market for modern sporting rifles has experienced significant excess manufacturing capacity. Given this level of manufacturing capacity, we believe there is adequate supply for modern sporting rifles for the foreseeable future. ”

      You can buy or build a basic AR15 pattern rifle for $500 or less. Its safe to say the market is saturated, and Colt at least goes on to say it is focusing on fulfilling military contracts.

      1. Another factor I’ve read that plays a role in their explanation is that they’ve got only one production line for AR-15 pattern rifles, and with an estimated by them several months of sales inventory shipped but unsold, it would be a while before it made any sense to convert the line back to civilian rifles.

  37. > One of MIT’s highest “principles” is “don’t make MIT look bad”,

    I think I can kinda understand this.

    In the late 90s / early 00s, after my first brushes with the Jargon File and pages describing the various hacks done at MIT, I knew where I wanted to go to college. That ended up not happening due to various reasons. But I still held MIT in esteem, even after I knew I hadn’t a chance in hell of attending, because of those stories of a culture where nerds didn’t have to be ashamed of actually enjoying learning difficult technical subjects, then applying that knowledge in playful and slightly irreverent ways.

    But this whole affair is making me question that. With it coming out how MITs hands aren’t clean in this matter, I can’t help but wonder if the culture I’d hoped to be a part of hadn’t already begun to die in the early-mid 00s when I began college.

    1. Yep, the culture you referred to died a very ugly death in this century:

      But I still held MIT in esteem … because of those stories of a culture where nerds didn’t have to be ashamed of actually enjoying learning difficult technical subjects, then applying that knowledge in playful and slightly irreverent ways.

      At the same time the Admissions Office was wildly promoting MIT’s cultures of hacks, the necessary because it’s in a lethally bad city and neighborhood Campus Police changed from old guys with a clue who semi-retired to the department for a slower pace of life to ambitious young guys. See for example the 27 year old one killed by the Marathon Bombers who despite becoming a real member of the Community (and of course he would be welcomed to stay in the club(s) he joined etc., you don’t stop being a member of the MIT community when you’re no longer formally a part of it) was about to move to the next door Somerville Police Department.

      And for whatever reasons started arresting and prosecuting community members who were perpetrating the very hacks the Admissions Office was using to entice applicants. A catastrophic bait and switch, given how just being arrested can ruin the future of the sorts of careers MIT students seek.

    2. > One of MIT’s highest “principles” is “don’t make MIT look bad”,

      Having worked in state government for a few years, I can tell you this “principle” is near universal in the public sector.

      In the agencies I worked, it was said simply as: “Don’t embarrass us.”

      That was rule #1. Some places it was just “understood”. Other places it was stated outright. But everyone knew it. You could mess up in a whole lot of ways and mostly walk away unscathed, but violate that rule and you were prolly done.

      1. Having worked in state government for a few years, I can tell you this “principle” is near universal in the public sector.

        In the agencies I worked, it was said simply as: “Don’t embarrass us.”

        Nailed it.

        You can basically boil down any open source code of conduct to: “Don’t embarrass our corporate sponsors.” Expanding that a bit, “Don’t give the least reasonable person you can imagine reason to believe that our corporate sponsors condone hate, discrimination, or sexual misconduct and open them up to the possibility of lawsuit and/or bad PR.”

        1. Except it’s not actually bad PR. As we’ve seen in the rare cases when corporations do stand up to SJW’s, e.g., Chick-fil-A, they aren’t hurt with their customers.

          1. Chick-fil-A is privately owned. Even if it turned out people cared more about LGBTQ politics than delicious chicken sangwiches, I think the owners would rather sell to a diminished market than compromise their Christian values.

            Wall Street isn’t so uncompromising.

              1. I think the folks who targeted them mistook them for just another fast-food chain, but Chick-Fil-a had set itself apart before the LGBTQ decided that hate tastes like chicken. No one else closes on Sunday, at least in the fast food business. It’s a bit of a bummer sometimes to want chicken on Sunday but not be able to get it, but on the other hand, corporations that honor the Sabbath Day are rarer than hen’s teeth. I frankly think a lot of their corporate culture and success flows from that. Folks at Whataburger are nice. Folks at Chick-Fil-A go the extra mile.

        2. It seems a lot is lost when “Dictator for Life” is traded for a foundation and sponsorship.

          1. It doesn’t take that much. SQLite is written and maintained by one guy, and yet even he was pressured to adopt a Code of Conduct by some of his contracting clients.

            These days the rule of thumb is if you don’t have a CoC, you are not really doing open source.

            1. Oh yeah? Where, exactly, does that appear in the Open Source Definition?

              One project I spend a lot of time working on just got a JIRA requesting demanding we adopt a code of conduct, and suggesting Coraline Ada Ehmke’s notorious Contributor Covenant. My reply was “not only no but hell no, and I will leave the project if we do”. I wasn’t the only one.

              The original proponent’s reply to all this?

              of course the only people to reply are white men and you are all aganst it
              how about letting a POC or woman have a voice instead of mansplaining your prevelige to me. this isnt about you go cry somewhere else.

              (spelling errors in original)

              Never mind that the team is seriously diverse, under any SJW-approved criterion you can specify. We need a CoC to guarantee diversity.

              Fuck that noise.

              1. Where, exactly, does that appear in the Open Source Definition?

                Well, given recent events I expect it to be added to the Free Software Definition shortly.

                1. Yeah. Great. RMS expressed an opinion about ethical matters, but this one wasn’t acceptable, so he’s gone. Dumped from MIT is a real shame, but dumped from the FSF? That is deeply fucked.

              2. This is evil. It seems what is needed is a… named idea? a meme? a catch-phrase? – like the phrase “Open Source” – that gets enough media attention that people can use it to make the point: This is a software project – it is not a diversity project, and it certainly isn’t a medium to give women and POC a “voice”.

                This is a job for Mr. Famous Guy!

                I keep thinking….. Are women really so pathetically incapable of dealing with the world as adults that they need special rules/laws/codes to protect them? Are they fucking equal or aren’t they? You can’t have it both ways.

            2. Right. The SQLite guy needs a CoC. He needs a good one…

              CoC = “This project is about software. In project communications, try not to be offensive when it is not appropriate. It is always appropriate to be offensive to SJWs.”

    3. Yeah, me too, man. MIT used to be Nerd Hogwarts. Now it seems most of that legendary status is gone, except the warts.

      Guess there’s a lesson: Love the values an institution stands for, but don’t fall too madly in love with the institution. It will betray you in the end. (Do you remember when Google’s motto was “don’t be evil”?)

      1. Love the values an institution stands for, but don’t fall too madly in love with the institution. It will betray you in the end. (Do you remember when Google’s motto was “don’t be evil”?)

        In particular, avoid creating institutions that can’t be easily replace, or at least avoid giving such institutions (like government bureaucracies) too much power.

  38. >One of MIT’s highest “principles” is “don’t make MIT look bad”

    And when he is replaced with someone of less ability, MIT looks politically/”morally” better, but intellectually worse.

    You see, SJW morality being bad morality is just one aspect. I think in the past America was simply less moralistic in general, that is, more willing to tolerate high ability people who broke or supposedly broke the surely very different moral rules of the era.

    Consider Fritz Zwicky: http://www.ginandtacos.com/2016/04/12/affirming-the-consequent/

    “Nobody could stand this guy. The only person who did, his gentle co-author Walter Baade, refused to be alone with Zwicky because he was so violent, aggressive, and unpredictable. Oh, and he regularly made death threats to Baade. And that guy was his friend.
    (…) Yet universities and, no matter how much they complained, other scientists grudgingly tolerated, even demanded, his presence. This was so because Zwicky was brilliant.”

    I think this rather shocking thing about American moralism or idealism ESR explained to me at: http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=7701#comment-1904175 must be relatively new. See above example.

    So it is two different things, one thing is what kind moral system is popular in a given era, and the other thing is how much willingness is there to allow high ability people deviate from it.

    This, second is the bigger problem, because SJW morality might end one day, but if American culture cannot go back to just generally being able to consider ability more important than the currently popular system of morality, whatever it might be, Zwicky types will never be allowed to contribute and that would be a big loss.

    I mean, people generally think the more you go back in time in history, the more conservative a culture is. While this is not necessarily true, what does conservative actually mean? It is rooted in pessimism about human nature. It is rooted in the idea that people are generally and by large, assholes. So a more conservative culture did not simply mean that the moral system in that era considered blaspheming against Jesus a bigger sin than, say, saying something racist. It also meant that it was more willing to forgive it, at least to high ability people because it knew and accepted that no one can be good all the time. The conservative idea of morality was to figure out how to make a bunch of assholes cooperative enough, not how to cut the assholes out entirely. You just lose too much productivity that way. Especially if they aren’t even real assholes.

    1. Excellent, spot on essay, although going further I and I think esr contend that technological civilization itself it threatened, because the white men like RMS who maintain everything from electrical power systems to Linux are high priority targets for the SJWs. (And RMS is absolutely an “asshole”.)

      MIT, though, has removed itself from the Free Software game, RMS didn’t have a position and office there because of what he did in that domain, vs. before then being a serious hacker on the computer infrastructure used by the AI and much of the CS researchers as well as a high level thinker useful to have around (I gather he did a bit of real AI research before moving to infrastructure), and in that process had created personal ties to many Top Men like Abelson and Sussman.

      To the extent he gets replaced as a FOSS figure, which I doubt will happen as such, only random chance will result in that person also being a member of significant stature in the MIT community.

  39. This is a very summarized version, and there are parts where I can’t remember exact sequences of events (like the AR-10 development). Not Fake, and Mostly Accurate…

    During WWII the German designers come up with the idea of the assault rifle. Being a good idea Hitler of course hates it and cancels the project. The designers repeatedly sneak the project around the system until finally they produce the Sturmgewehr ’44, which sees limited deployment on the Russian front to devastating effect.

    Post-war nearly everyone takes the lessons of the war to heart and realizes that the capabilities of full power rifle cartridges are mostly wasted. Combat does not happen at 1000 yards. Maneuverability in CQB is very important, etc. Nearly everyone agrees that the way forward is select fire rifles in intermediate calibers.

    At this same time NATO is being formed, and one of the early decisions is that they need to standardize on a rifle and cartridge for logistical purposes. One of the primary competitors in this field is the prototype of what would eventually become the FAL, chambered in something called .280 British.

    At the same time an American officer (can’t remember the name, or name of his position) has recently risen to control the armories. With the war over there isn’t much room for glory, but here is a project he can leave his mark on.

    After a lot of back and forth between the American armorers, the NATO people, and the designers at Fabrique Nationale the armorers finally come right out and say they will not accept anything with ballistics that do not at least match the 30-06. Adopting a full power rifle round defeats the point, but having just won a war means you get to call the shots, uh, literally. This leads to the development of the 7.62x54NATO round, which is more or less a 30-06 with a shorter case due to improvements in powder chemistry.

    Eventually the officer strikes a deal: if FN changes the proto-FAL to use 7.62NATO the U.S. will adopt the FAL. FN agrees and redesigns the FAL. Then the U.S. Armorers design, build, and adopt the M14.

    The M14 is basically an M1 Garand, but with a 20 round detachable magazine, some fuckery with the gas system, and a full auto setting. The 20 round mag was supposed to have been on the M1, but the armorers were obsessed with the idea of not letting soldiers waste ammo. The full auto setting was almost worthless as the gun was uncontrollable unless the user was built like an 80’s Action Hero. M14s had the full auto fire control group, but most of them shipped with the feature disabled (with the option for the field armorer to enable it) because it was so useless. As a bonus while the the gun was not heavy enough to stabilize full auto like the BAR that preceded it, it was still very heavy. The M14 would go on to only be in service for 7 years it was such a failure.

    Somewhere around this time Eugene Stoner starts development on the AR-10 and offers it to the military. They didn’t build it or come up with the design so they aren’t interested. He also tinkers with what will become the AR-15.

    Then Vietnam happens.

    American troops go into the field with an unwieldy and slow firing (or uncontrollable) rifle that wants to hit targets at 800 yards. The commies go into the field with a true assault rifle in the form of the AK-47. In the jungle. This goes about as well as one would expect.

    At some point Stoner has developed the AR-15, using all the latest materials to make it extremely lightweight and easy to use, and chambered in a new caliber that bases it’s killing power on sheer bat-out-of-hell speed. He submits it for testing and the Armorers grudgingly run the tests. Even against outright cheating the AR-15 does fantastically well in the testing, including amazing reliability. But it is rejected because anything less than .30 cal is blasphemy.

    Either because of that, or some time later the Air Force tries out the AR-15 for issue to guards. They absolutely love the rifle and order several thousand of them. Also American forces in Vietnam run into an unexpected problem: the WWII-era milsurp weapons they give to the Vietnamese are too heavy and bulky for their slighter builds. Some general orders a batch of AR-15s for testing and they work very well, also some American specialist troops use them with great success.

    Some time after that (can’t remember what causes it) the Armorers are forced by presidential and McNamaraian decree to adopt a single procurement system for all the branches, and to adopt the Ar-15. There may have been a second set of cheating tests, but I can’t remember.

    The Armorers are certain that this is a fad, and soon enough they will be able to go back to their .30 cal full power cartridges (Praise Them!). But in the meantime they have to adopt this thing. So they get the AR-15 and start tinkering with it to create the M16. First thing is to add a forward assist.

    (note that from here on the rantiness is likely to increase exponentially)

    Why a forward assist? Well, there were two reasons given. The first is to assist the bolt if a round didn’t chamber properly. Because the most brilliant idea possible when faced with a gun not going into battery is to force it into battery and then fire the grenade you possibly just made. The second excuse given was that all the previous rifles that had been issued to American troops had something the soldier could push on so they added it because reasons.

    Second change: The 5.56 round was developed in conjunction with the AR-15 as a system. It used a certain powder with certain burning characteristics. When tested in extreme arctic conditions there was a reduction of muzzle velocity of a couple hundred fps. Despite the extreme conditions this crossed an fps threshold the Armorers had set (reasons unknown) and so they switched to WWII ball powder that they had massive stockpiles of (I’ve also heard that there were supply problems with the IMR powder the 5.56 used). No changes were made to the gas system to compensate for this.

    After this the rifle that had been famous for its extreme reliability suddenly started having all sorts of wacky and hilarious problems. Instead of running at 600 rpm, it would surge to 900 or 1000 rpm. Not being designed for this the gun would of course jam. Also extraction pressure was far higher, leading to frequent failures to extract. If you were lucky the gun would just leave the case in the chamber. If you weren’t lucky the extractor would rip the back of the case off and leave the rest in the chamber. Colt (who had the contract to make them) couldn’t get rifles to qualify after this change, so the Armorers told them to use the IMR powder to qualify, after which they were shipped to Vietnam where they were used with the ammo that didn’t work properly.

    Oh but wait: this gets even better!

    Because this was just a fad until they could go back to Real Man’s Calibers, the guns were not issued with cleaning kits. Soldiers were told that the guns were self-cleaning, and self-lubricating (this is actually partly true). So guess who didn’t have cleaning rods to kick stuck case fragments out of the chambers when they failed in combat?

    But wait! It gets even better!

    The fucking idiot saboteurs (because at this point we are way past simple mistake territory) didn’t chrome-line the barrels. This after the U.S. had spent lots of time fighting through jungles and salt water across the Pacific. Turns out when you have a non-lined barrel in hot, humid conditions it starts corroding, including the chamber. Remember those problems caused by too-high extraction pressure? Now try it with a chamber that is pitted from corrosion.

    So some time passed this way, with entire squad’s rifles failing as the one guy with a cleaning rod ran up and down the line un-jamming them until the squad was killed. Eventually the news trickled back, with people writing their parents begging them to send cleaning kits and oil, anything at all. And then the parents started contacting their congressmen.

    After a while this resulted in a congressional hearing. When they questioned Stoner on various aspects of the design he repeatedly answered that such and such a feature was not how he designed the gun, and was changed without consulting him. The Armorers couldn’t account for half the shit they pulled, and in the end their little stunt got the entire national armory system disbanded. Ironic, given that one of their goals was to only adopt rifles that they personally built.

    Since then the problems with the AR-15/M16 platform have been mostly solved. We still use the ball powder, but the gas system is designed for it. Barrels are chrome lined, etc.

    End result? Lots of dead soldiers who died for reasons that make WWI look smart by comparison. Boomer Fudds still think the M16 is a garbage rifle because it got their friends killed. And because the Armorers rejected .280 British we got 5.56, which is far more reliant on high velocity. That is a problem now because everyone is using short barrels that waste the potential of the round. Additionally while the 5.56 was wonderful in Vietnam it isn’t so good in the sandbox: you need better range. Something in-between the 5.56 and 7.62 (like, ohhh, .280 British) would have been better at that.

    Just to be clear I’m not ragging on the 5.56 light-bullet-high-speed idea. As far as I’m concerned the bullet isn’t going fast enough until it is detonating on impact from sheer Ke. But there is a certain envelope that the 5.56 was designed for, and it is being pushed to the edges of what it can do.

    1. >This is a very summarized version

      Thanks. I knew about 75% of that (more in the the earlier parts) but in semi-disconnected bits with the full perfidy of the armorer mafia quite soft-pedaled. The biggest part I was missing was why the early M16s got such a bad rep in Vietnam. Very helpful to have it all laid out like that.

      1. Strictly speaking this was active sabotage. By people within the military command structure. In wartime.

        They should count themselves lucky that they weren’t dragged in front of a firing squad. It would have been Just.

        1. I think you overlooked the biggest sin of them all. As a result of all this malfeasance, the grunt lost faith in his weapon. That alone would have justified a hanging or three.

      2. Remember when the Atlantic was not poorly specced toilet paper? They had a piece on this. Tells a similar story. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1981/06/m-16-a-bureaucratic-horror-story/545153/

        I would have liked it to mention that Army Ordnance clearly preferred the .30 because larger things are manlier and thus higher status, while actually defeating your enemy is at best a distant second. “The soldiers want lighter gear? What are they, little girls?” However, explicit status-awareness is dark knowledge and habitual explicit status-awareness is newer than ’81 in any case.

    2. Nits, what I believe to be corrections, etc.:

      something called .280 British.

      Our and e.g. Swiss standards say you want something that’s flat shooting out to 300 yards, and that has tolerable drop at 400 yards. Even if “most” or almost all of your shots are at shorter ranges, if you’re facing someone with longer range rifles or a machine gun you need to be able reach out and touch them. Just eyeing the stats the .280 British looks like it might make that, vs. the 7.62x39mm of e.g. the AK-47.

      Note also the short range and forget about marksmanship obsession comes in large part from fraudulent research by SLA Marshall.

      This leads to the development of the 7.62x54NATO round, which is more or less a 30-06 with a shorter case due to improvements in powder chemistry.

      This is based on an original sin of the .30-06 (as in final version in 1906), our smokeless powder wasn’t as good as Europeans’, compared to the German round introduced in 1888 and then improved in 1905 the case is 10% longer and the case capacity 8% greater.

      Then Vietnam happens.

      American troops go into the field with an unwieldy and slow firing (or uncontrollable) rifle that wants to hit targets at 800 yards. The commies go into the field with a true assault rifle in the form of the AK-47. In the jungle….

      Actually, a whole lot of Vietnam was fought outside “the jungle”. There’s reasons snipers like Carlos Hathcock became famous for their long range kills there.

      At some point Stoner has developed the AR-15, using all the latest materials to make it extremely lightweight and easy to use

      That was the whole point of Fairchild creating an Armalite division in 1954, to see what could be done with guns using modern materials.

      […] so [the Armorers] switched to WWII ball powder that they had massive stockpiles of (I’ve also heard that there were supply problems with the IMR powder the 5.56 used). No changes were made to the gas system to compensate for this.

      DuPont flatly couldn’t produce mass quantities of IMR within the tolerances required for loading the round (powder sold to reloaders is selected from specific lots and/or blended to achieve the promised standard. The companies that in the US make over 12 billion rounds per year test the lots of powder they buy from manufacturers and adjust the amount to achieve the promised pressure and velocity for the round).

      Ball powder is great stuff, but as manufactured then had a fatal flaw for the fatally flawed “direct impingement” gas system of the AR-10/AR-15 family. Which as the name suggests, uses a simple tube to direct hot gas straight from the barrel into the receiver. This reduces moving parts, makes the front lighter compared to a gas operated design since it doesn’t have a piston, and makes the rifle type inherently more accurate since you don’t have moving parts up front, but requires levels of cleanliness that are unrealistic in the field, which doesn’t for example include Air Force men guarding static sites.

      Calcium carbonate was in the powder, either the result of acid neutralization (vague memory) or a stabilizer (Wikipedia), and caused a subset of the mentioned problems.

      After this the rifle that had been famous for its extreme reliability

      BZZZT: It hadn’t been put to the test in the field in the hands of a lot of common soldiers or Marines. But the Armorers made very sure it would be much less reliable when fielded en masse in Vietnam, but that’s pretty much par for the course for government fuckery in the 1960s.

      The fucking idiot saboteurs (because at this point we are way past simple mistake territory) didn’t chrome-line the barrels. This after the U.S. had spent lots of time fighting through jungles and salt water across the Pacific. Turns out when you have a non-lined barrel in hot, humid conditions it starts corroding, including the chamber.

      With non-corrosive primers??? Per Wikipedia they were used for 7.56 NATO years earlier, I can’t imagine them not being used for the M16. Although it should also be noted that ball powder is more finicky about ignition.

      The Armorers couldn’t account for half the shit they pulled, and in the end their little stunt got the entire national armory system disbanded.

      And thus Springfield Armory today is a sketchy company in Geneseo, Illinois, not the legendary government outfit in Springfield, Massachusetts.

      1. Thanks for the corrections. I knew there were probably errors somewhere but… *shuffles deck* I was starting a conversation.

        fatally flawed “direct impingement” gas system of the AR-10/AR-15 family.

        A correction for your correction….

        The Stoner system is absolutely not direct impingement, though it is often mistaken for one. DI works by channeling gas to the bolt where it simply pushes the bolt back and vents. See a number of early semi-auto French rifles for examples.

        The ARs are piston guns that use the bolt and bolt carrier as the two halves of the piston, putting the force directly in line with the bore. This has the side effect of distributing carbon into the operating parts, which (with good powder and environment) is where the self lubricating idea comes from.

        Military Arms Channel is doing a long term test of a commercial AR where they are not cleaning or lubricating it at all, and putting 1-2 thousand rounds through it every few weeks until it fails. I think they are up to six or seven thousand at this point, with only a couple failures that were the fault of the magazine.

      2. “Ball powder is great stuff, but as manufactured then had a fatal flaw for the fatally flawed “direct impingement” gas system of the AR-10/AR-15 family. Which as the name suggests, uses a simple tube to direct hot gas straight from the barrel into the receiver. This reduces moving parts, makes the front lighter compared to a gas operated design since it doesn’t have a piston, and makes the rifle type inherently more accurate since you don’t have moving parts up front, but requires levels of cleanliness that are unrealistic in the field, which doesn’t for example include Air Force men guarding static sites.”

        With all due respect, that’s absolute rubbish. The AR pattern rifle is dead reliable if built to spec and properly maintained. Note, maintained, not cleaned. Excessive cleaning will give you far more problems than not cleaning at all.

        1. You are absolutely right. They need to be lubricated, but don’t need to be kept clean. As illustrated in the tale of “Filthy 14”, the BCM M4-pattern carbine that Pat Rogers used in his training classes just to see how long it would run without being cleaned. Ran hard for close to 30K rounds without ever being cleaned (but spray-lubed daily).

    3. With a bullet optimized for shorter barrels (MK318, M855A1, etc.), the 5.56 does the job.

    4. The issues with cleaning and chamber corrosion are sideshows. After the powder change jumped the bolt carrier velocity by 50%, that rifle was never going to run reliably.

  40. A great read. Thanks.

    This leads to the development of the 7.62x54NATO round,

    This had its upsides. It’s now the cartridge of choice in the medium machine gun space (e.g. M240). A Marine machine gunner Sgt I know thinks very highly of it. It’s a nice in-between, with the squad automatics on the low end (5.56mm) and the big .50BMG M2 on the high side.

  41. IMHO, humans have nasty dis-economies of scale. I worked for a company with 100-person logical units, and we still had problems with the salescritters hating the developers we hired in the Canadian office. “100 hunter-gatherers” seems to be an upper limit rather than a natural size (;-))

    My current organization has 20- to 30-person natural units, and I’m a liaison officer between mine and another unit. Gee, sounds like platoons! The company is maybe 500 people, so it’s a battalion (;-))

  42. Red HatIBM didn’t waste any time in throwing RMS and future competition under the bus:

    Red Hat urges the FSF board to seize the opportunity during its current leadership succession by appointing a president and members of its board that are more diverse, including from a national, racial and gender perspective.

  43. Beto was Recently on Fredo Cuomo’s show and regurgitated the “AR cartridges are uniquely destructive” urban legend.

    Anyone recall where that claim originated?

    I thought this was originally Soviet propaganda since, if true, it would violate the Hague Conventions. However, I can’t find the source now.

    It would be entertaining if this was textbook example of Gramscian Damage.

    1. It was part of the propaganda package Josh Sugarman and his Violence Policy Center, came up with in the late 1980s in preparation for an “assault weapon” shooting they could then use it for. Examples when that happened included a news organization filming police shooting at a melon having them change to a hollowpoint pistol round to make it “blow up”, since the rile rounds were just punching holes through it.

      It got so bad that doctors in emergency rooms started excessively debriding wounds, causing worse patient outcomes (I’m pretty sure Martin Fackler got involved in trying to correct that if you want a source).

      This is another example where revolutionary truth trumps bourgeois truth, like that politician who claimed to have treated a bunch of victims from I think the gay nightclub shooting (another example of a gun free zone + authorities setting up a parameter and giving the shooter hours to finish his job), when she wasn’t even a healthcare giver as I recall.

      Sugarman has long the 2nd most important US gun grabber, only exceeded by first Mrs. Bunch, and now Bloomberg.

      Oh, that 1899 Hague Convention and its IV,3 deceleration about bullets? The US never signed it, nor would we observe it if we gave a damn about the lives of our fighting men.

      1. > Oh, that 1899 Hague Convention and its IV,3 deceleration about bullets? The US never signed it, nor would we observe it if we gave a damn about the lives of our fighting men.

        Agrred that the US is not a signatory, but IIRC, the US voluntarily abides by the prohibition against using hollowpoint bullets in warfare.

        This is the dumpster fire that is international law. My understanding is that Hollowpoints are ‘prohibited’ by the Hague conventions due to the incorrect wisdom at the time that such bullets less lethal but more likely to wound.

        Beyond being false, and even though the US is not a signatory, legal scholarship says this is ‘settled’ international law due to its age and a majority of nations be signatories and abiding by it, and would want to level war crimes claims against the US if we did field hollowpoints.

        1. Sounds like another case where the U.S. needs to tell everyone to take a hike. We don’t do it nearly enough.

        2. My understanding is that Hollowpoints are ‘prohibited’ by the Hague conventions due to the incorrect wisdom at the time that such bullets less lethal but more likely to wound.

          From my memory of about a bazillion “classes” on laws of land warfare part of the issue was “unnecessary suffering”–that things like hollowpoints caused more damage than was necessary and lead to worse wounds than solid projectiles.

          Remember that hollow point bullets today are significantly different from even 30 years ago–they *expand*–retaining mass–rather more than they used to and fragment a lot less.

  44. Bottom line here: Yes, there is a culture problem that has lead to the rise of the mass shooting. However, it isn’t a culture problem on the left, it is not an atheist culture problem, it is not a feminism culture problem, it isn’t a minority culture problem.

    It is a culture problem within white, male, conservative, gun culture itself.

    And, as a gun owner myself, I give this warning: guys (and it is mostly guys), you need to fix this problem. Or it will eventually be fixed for you, and you won’t like the result.

    https://fiddlrts.blogspot.com/2019/09/culture-and-gun-violence-white.html

    I’m not sure I agree with everything this guy has to say; maybe every other sentence or something off-kilter like that, but he’s at least trying to talk about the elephant in the room where mass shootings are concerned. I may comment more on this after everyone’s had a chance to read it.

    1. It is a culture problem within white, male, conservative, gun culture itself.

      he’s at least trying to talk about the elephant in the room

      Sounds like you believe white conservative men have a terminal case of Original Sin, the source of all their obvious WrongThink, and they need only repent and change their ways and all will be glorious in the Kingdom of Heaven. Pretty fascinating.

      It is always shocking how often racist Progressive bigots can be completely blind to their bigotry and dress it up with attempts at pleasant conversation. You know, like aristocratic courtesans talking in hushed tones behind gloved hands, slipping sly glances as they discuss the impropriety we all just know is true about those people. It shouldn’t be so surprising, I guess, but it is.

    2. I just read it. The guy’s basically been brainwashed by the SJWs. That article is simply full of wrong. I don’t have time to fisk it now, but, for one example, he lays the blame for Philando Castile’s death at the feet of racist cops. Central to this is his statement that Castile did everything right and got shot anyway.

      The only problem is that he’s flat out wrong. Castile told the officer he was carrying with a permit. So far, so good. Where he went wrong is that he then disobeyed the officer’s instructions and went for his wallet. That was his fatal mistake, and one that carry permit holders are taught not to make. You tell the cop that you’re carrying with a permit, where the gun is, and then you do nothing else but exactly what the cop tells you to do. That mistake put the cop in reasonable fear for his life, and the results were predictable.

      I have exactly zero problem with law-abiding black people, or law-abiding women, or law-abiding Mexicans, or law-abiding gay men, or law-abiding transwomen (I know one of the latter who has a really nice holster for her LCP with laser sight she made for herself), going around armed .See the common thread? Obey the law, and we’ll have no trouble.

    3. >he’s at least trying to talk about the elephant in the room where mass shootings are concerned

      No he isn’t.

      The actual elephant in the room is that most mass shooters are black and kill multiple victims in connection with the drug trade.

      If you don’t like a definition of “mass shooter” that includes that, then I’m going to have to ask why you so undervalue the lives of black and brown people. I guarantee you the families of the victims aren’t grieving any less.

      Mentally ill “conservative” white males commit only a tiny, tiny fraction of the shootings out there. The media obsession with them doesn’t reflect a rational aim at reducing gun mortality; it’s straining at a gnat while swallowing a camel. The camel is the conditions that make being black in the South Side of Chicago more dangerous than being serving military in Iraq.

      But of course we can’t talk about the shitty dysfunctional culture created by multigenerational welfare. We can’t talk about how insane the War on Drugs is. And we absolutely cannot touch the implications of low average IQ and high average time preference in blacks. Heaven forfend we notice how these synergize.

      No, we must demonize white male gun owners who aren’t killing anyone, instead.

      1. If you don’t like a definition of “mass shooter” that includes that, then I’m going to have to ask why you so undervalue the lives of black and brown people. I guarantee you the families of the victims aren’t grieving any less.

        I don’t like the definition; because gang wars are a different pathology from a hopeless person who stared into the void a little too long without any support.

        They do have some of the same roots (which is why the ocean of blood is on the Progressive’s hands), but the point where the roots join up is far enough upstream that it makes sense to treat them as separate phenomena.

        1. >I don’t like the definition; because gang wars are a different pathology from a hopeless person who stared into the void a little too long without any support.

          But if your goal is actually harm reduction, you tackle the ocean of blood before the comparative trickle.

          Besides, if the media were really honest about these mental-illness cases they’d notice that they do not, in aggregate, fit the “conservative white male” stereotype any better than they fit a “deranged lefty moonbat” stereotype (see for example the Dayton shooter, or the nutcase that shot Gabby Giffords, or the BLM shooter that killed cops in St. Louis).

          Since we know in advance they’re not going to be honest about this, the best thing to do is refuse to accept their framing.

          1. I find it telling that in this fairly long thread you’re the first person to mention Dayton. There were 2 mass shootings that day, yet within hours a collective decision was made to only ever mention one of them. I’ve seen El Paso brought up so many times in media and social media while Dayton has been buried. I’m sure this has nothing to do with the fact that the Dayton shooter was a supporter of SJW causes, including Antifa. /sarc

      2. I’m definitely with you on the drug wars.

        As for the elephant in the room, there is more than one toxic culture out there. Note his last paragraph:

        “And one more: a third category that gets lumped with “mass shootings” is gang-related violence. I need not say more than to note that right wingers LOVE to blame the culture for gang-related violence. Which, sure. And let’s note the prevalence of toxic masculinity in that culture as well. But what is good for the goose is good for the gander. If culture is the problem causing gang violence, it surely is a factor for white male domestic terrorists too, right? Look in the mirror.

        His main difference with you, I think, is emphasis on which toxic culture is more to blame. And you might note my post below about other factors which the author didn’t catch.

        1. >His main difference with you, I think, is emphasis on which toxic culture is more to blame.

          No, there are two other issues here. One is that the distribution of mass-shooter wackos doesn’t actually skew right-wing. It looks that way because of what the media chooses to cover and how they choose to cover it, but it doesn’t. Mental illness doesn’t have politics.

          The other is that you need to be careful about calling “culture” a causative factor when you’re talking about nutcases. By definition these are people who have come unmoored from reality and the social conversation. If you read what they write it becomes clear that their own accounts of their motivations are noise over a yawning void – there is no reason where there is no reason. They are gonna do what some cluster of diseased neurons is gonna do and any explanation they give after the fact is meaningless to a degree of which they themselves are tragically unaware. Culture? What’s culture?

          (Studying these people, as I have, is dizzying and frightening. Because, as Nietzsche might put it, when you look into that void, it looks back at you. It’s easy to start wondering if any account of human motivation ever means anything…)

          Gang-bangers aren’t like that. Their explanations may be criminal but they are embedded in culture and responsive to it. It tells them how to strive for sex and status. They are instrumentally rational within that culture, even if it doesn’t look that way to somebody with lower time preference and better forward-planning capability.

          1. Gang-bangers aren’t like that. Their explanations may be criminal but they are embedded in culture and responsive to it. It tells them how to strive for sex and status. They are instrumentally rational within that culture, even if it doesn’t look that way to somebody with lower time preference and better forward-planning capability.

            Freakonomics has a bit about an economist who spent some time among the drug gangs in Chicago, in neighborhoods where cops don’t go. One of the things he noticed was their meticulous accounting techniques. All done in spiral-bound Mead notebooks rather than Quicken, but the numbers added up.

            I also find it interesting how drug gangs are structured, a bit like a multi-level marketing scheme. All the rich gangbangers, with the solid gold grills and what not, are at the top. The dealers actually selling in the streets aren’t making much of anything, having to pay most of their profits up to the guys above them in the hierarchy. What they are doing is competing for an opportunity to advance, through provably high sales. Hence the carefully maintained spiral-bound accounting notebooks; that record of sales means life or death in the drug trade. And any student of MLM knows what happens when you have open competition for a scarcity of high-ranking, high-paying positions: too many salespeople chasing ever smaller and smaller segments of the market. The major difference with the drug gangs is when one salesperson, inadvertently or not, encroaches on another’s turf, as will inevitably happen under such a sales structure — that’s when the guns come out.

            1. Freakonomics call drug dealing a tournament for that reason. Very few advance, most are eliminated. Often literally.

              The guy who studied the gangs was a sociologist and he wrote an interesting book on the experience, ‘Gang Leader for a Day’. Well worth reading. I think of people like him when the anti culture crowd start yelling about how all these humanities degrees are a waste of time and money.

        2. > I’m definitely with you on the drug wars.

          Really? Excellent. Maybe we can discuss…

          > As for the elephant in the room

          Oh, right, never mind.

          Yes, yes, we all see your elephant. And yes, it’s a really _huge_ elephant, you should be very proud. And yes, despite your sneering dismissal of our “tears and prayers” we really do find the elephant quite upsetting.

          What I find objectionable is your attempt to convince us that your elephant is vastly larger than the blue whale (inner city gang violence, conducted almost universally in urban jurisdictions that _already_ have strong gun control) you have shoved in the closet, while furiously attempting to sweep away the water gushing out from under the closet door. “But it’s an _elephant_!!!”

          Unless there is a more substantive response to an issue that affects many more orders of magnitude of victims annually than a mumbled “with ya” followed by more “zomg ELEPHANT!!!”, I will be forced to side with Occam and esr that the explanation is indeed a case of “undervalu[ing] the lives of black and brown people”.

          Which also handily serves as an explanation of the proponents’ behavior all the way up to the top. I’d find Beto’s posturing, despite its aconstitutionality, somewhat more impressive if it were delivered not merely to an audience of white urban elites. Let him come here to the south side of Chicago with a nice big Santa Claus bag, walk up to each drug gang leader in turn, look ’em in the eye, and in a nice cowboy movie Texan drawl declare, “Sorry, boy, gonna’ hafta ask y’all to put that there smoke wagon in the bag. Can’t have y’all killin’ any more Americans on MY watch.”

          1. “What I find objectionable is your attempt to convince us that your elephant is vastly larger than the blue whale (inner city gang violence, conducted almost universally in urban jurisdictions that _already_ have strong gun control) you have shoved in the closet, while furiously attempting to sweep away the water gushing out from under the closet door. “But it’s an _elephant_!!!””

            I’ve discussed this before, right here on this blog; I don’t think you can find anything at all about the modern inner-city culture of violence composed of Black and Brown people than you’d find of previous culture’s of inner-city White people; the Irish gangs of New York, for example, or the Jewish gangsters of Murder Incorporated, or a modern population of poor and despairing White People. But when I point out that poverty, racism, and despair are potent forces which effect everyone caught up in them, all I hear in return is crickets (or maybe some sputtering followed by a forlorn cry of “-but the Negroes!”)

            Fuck that shit. Fuck it hard.

            It’s like talking about the current population of real Blue Whales without talking about pollution or whaling boats – the conversation doesn’t go anyplace useful.

            But I’ve tried many times before.

            1. But when I point out that poverty, racism, and despair are potent forces which effect everyone caught up in them

              You don’t do that. You point at $EvilGroup and start gibbering like a pod person that we simply aren’t arbitrarily punishing the Correct People (identified by the color of their skin, the existence of a Y chromosome, and political opinions you have deemed WrongThink), and keep gibbering when people point out your empty, bigoted rhetoric. You pretend to care about treating people as individuals, then pull a 180 and do exactly what you claim to be against, just wrapped in a veneer of pleasant speech.

              It isn’t very convincing.

            2. >But when I point out that poverty, racism, and despair are potent forces which effect everyone caught up in them, all I hear in return is crickets (or maybe some sputtering followed by a forlorn cry of “-but the Negroes!”)

              >Fuck that shit.

              Umm…. What??? :o

              I’m not the one ignoring the orders of magnitude greater numbers of deaths from said inner-city violence, while leaping up and down shrieking “ELEPHANT!!!1!!” regarding murders committed by isolated schizophrenic psychopaths.

              By all means, if you have a solution to advance for the problems of poverty, racism, and despair, I am all ears, and I can solemnly assure you that bullshit like “but the negroes” will never come from me in response. You won’t have to “Fuck that shit”, hard or otherwise, because that shit will never be uttered by me. (For the record a _large_ part of my support for strong gun rights comes from having learned — on this blog I believe — that the first gun control laws were specifically passed with the intent to criminalize black citizens living in dangerous areas trying to defend themselves. “Fuck that shit” indeed.)

              What I can predict is that “strong gun control” won’t be on your list of proposed solutions to any of those problems, because, again as has been stated repeatedly, those jurisdictions where inner city gun violence is rampant universally already have strong gun control.

              >It’s like talking about the current population of real Blue Whales without talking about pollution or whaling boats

              Again, you’re the one turning your back on both whales and boats alike, pointing in the opposite direction and demanding we (first) do something about the elephant.

              No, I fucking _don’t_ have a solution to poverty. I don’t have a solution to racism (other than very much not wanting to behave in a racist fashion myself). And my wife and psychiatrist will cheerfully inform you that I don’t have a solution to despair either. Do you? Do you (while we’re here wishing for ponies) have a solution for the problem of isolated psychopaths, or are all four of those problems on me? Do you have a principled theory for why strong gun control is certainly going to help with the latter problem even though it hasn’t at all with the cluster of the first three? (And has arguably made it worse… Gosh I feel stupid having to drag out an ancient chestnut like “then only criminals will have guns”, but what can you do.)

              Above all, under what principle is my exercising my constitutional and civil rights contingent on my personally first finding solutions to those and presumably all of society’s other problems?

              1. “Above all, under what principle is my exercising my constitutional and civil rights contingent on my personally first finding solutions to those and presumably all of society’s other problems?”

                That’s not what I’m saying at all. I’m saying that politically speaking, if you don’t want to have a particular solution imposed on you, that you might want to propose something else and push it strongly.

                I’m not setting any kind of condition on you. I’m just telling you how the politics of the situation look to me. That’s all.

                1. >I’m not setting any kind of condition on you. I’m just telling you how the politics of the situation look to me. That’s all.

                  Troutwaxer, if you want to know why we can’t find solutions, look in the mirror. If it “looks to you” like Second Amendment supporting Americans honestly don’t care about mass murder, take you blinders off. Thats shameful.

                  Rational ignorance can explain a lot about politics of the general public, but how many hundred words have you written in this very thread out of ignorance on this topic, when you could have the the answers at your fingertips in another browser tab.

                  Claiming Gun Rights supporters haven’t “Done Anything”, while 30 years of expanded firearms access has corresponded to 30 years of reduced violence. Even a reasonable case for a direct relationship could be made.

                  Cruz/Grassley proposed a bill auditing the background check system for accuracy and prosecuting people who lie on their background check Form 4437. This would have a realistic chance of stopping several recent mass shootings without imposing more restrictions on the gun buying public. This was presented after Sandy Hook, and if passed, could plausibly have saved lives in the intervening years. It was blocked by the Harry Reid and the Democrat Leadership in the Senate at the time.

                  Gun Rights supporters don’t want violence studied, but not a word is said for misuse and misrepresentations of studies, Kellerman, Bellesiles et al. , and CDC leadership that said firearm restriction was a goal before any studies had even taken place.

                  This has been Lie, after Lie, after Lie.

                  If these were simple mistakes, I encourage you to consider how you became so mal-informed on the issue.

                2. “I’m saying that politically speaking, if you don’t want to have a particular solution imposed on you…”

                  What I “want” is of zero importance here. I’m not some whiny three-year-old who doesn’t want to finish his broccoli. This is the Constitution of the United States, which will either be respected, or it won’t; and if it isn’t, I will be far from the only person “imposed on” in the aftermath.

                  “…that you might want to propose something else and push it strongly.”

                  _Me_ again? Fuck me, I do have a day job you know, I am just a programmer. And not an esr-level “change the world and rewrite a 100KLOC masterpiece and still be home in time for tea” type, just a grunt.

                  Fortunately (for me at least) I am not required to propose _anything_. The Second Amendment does not actually conclude with the clause “not be infringed, PROVIDED those desirous of bearing said arms constantly and continually propose effective remedies to any and all aspects of society of a less than utopian nature that shall unfold in the course of human events.”

                  None of the amendments do. You did see Deep Lurker’s analogy to the 14th amendment upthread? “Hell yes we are taking away your right to vote if you are in ” $VARIOUS_GROUPS? Would you tell a woman or black person that if they didn’t want restrictions on their “right” to vote “imposed” on them, they’d better get cracking on proposing “something” to fix all o’ them “societal problems” they were (allegedly) part and parcel to? (“Hey now missy/sonny, don’t be blamin’ the man/whitey fer yer problems, look in the _mirror_, that’s one mighty toxic culture you got there.” Gosh, when you rewrite it as a “far right” screed instead of “far left”, it _still_ sounds like an awesome argument, not at all like something that would get the shit beat out of one in polite society.)

                  Hate speech kills plenty of innocent victims every year, arguably a lot more racially clear-cut (white supremacist fucktards attacking blacks / gays / etc) sadly than even the mass shootings under discussion here. It’s not hard to imagine an Alt-Beto screaming “Hell yes, we are gonna take your computers, your smart phones, even your pens and paper, we’re not going to allow them to be used to incite violence against your fellow Americans any more.” Anyone worried about the Bureau of Alcohol, Twitter, and Firearms breaking into their home had better start proposing something “else”, right? Not that we’re _opposed_ to the First Amendment mind you, but you sure better look in that mirror first.

                  Why is it that those two sound completely and utterly ridiculous and stupid (and thank you no, you don’t have to point out how stupid they are, I _felt_ stupid writing them, because of _course_ they are ridiculous), and yet, when it comes to the Second Amendment, that stupidity and ridiculousness magically evaporates, and candidates for the presidency (not fringe nobodies but _already sitting_ congressman and senators) can blithely discuss ignoring this particular amendment, not merely without being dismissed immediately as ridiculous and stupid, but to the thunderous applause not just of the room but to a large fraction of the nation?

                  Forget for a moment that it’s the _second_ amendment. (Like Fry said to Bender, “Don’t worry, there’s no such thing as two.”) Forget the bearing arms and the regulated militias, “Fuck that shit hard” as you just said. Is there _any_ amendment to the Constitution, or portion of the Constitution proper, that you _do_ consider worth defending? (And I mean actually defending as-is, not some “well, assuming you want to keep it, you gotta propose some solutions to all these societal ills first.”)

            3. I think part of the resistance stems from the notion that the violence rate these days seems to be higher than before and is affecting more people. The Mafia and other crime gangs tend to just shoot their opponents, not $opponent plus the 3 other people standing nearby. An idea I’ve come across once or twice, which seems to me to be a more fruitful avenue to explore than despair, is that there’s a toxic honor culture operating. The Hatfield-McCoy feud might be a better comparison.

    4. My comment on the post here:

      https://fiddlrts.blogspot.com/2019/09/culture-and-gun-violence-white.html

      Goes something like this: What’s wrong with the picture this guy is painting? It’s accurate in some terms; there are some very toxic and racist forms of Christianity out there, and some of those people are being taught a kind of unnecessary paranoia, but I’m not sure I’d call that alone a key to politically motivated mass shootings.

      What’s missing are two other factors. The first is the idea that White people are in competition against Black/brown people for jobs. If this is true, then it makes a certain amount of sense to eliminate the competition, and that adds to the pressure on anyone’s sanity. (I don’t think this idea is true, BTW. I think that as the economy improves, everyone’s chance of getting a job improves. And vice versa. So the way to have a better, longer-lasting job is to vote for the party which does a better job with the economy. YMMV, but that’s the more productive way to think.)

      The other thing is that rural/flyover America is getting screwed and neither party is doing much about it. Naturally, this affects both mental health and also mental health care.

      Add all these things together and you have a seriously toxic brew which much of the U.S. is being steeped in.

      But that’s not why I posted the article. The issues he points at are a longstanding argument I don’t expect anyone to win. Note, again, the following words from the piece, written by a Christian gun owner who at one point had a concealed carry permit: “And, as a gun owner myself, I give this warning: guys (and it is mostly guys), you need to fix this problem. Or it will eventually be fixed for you, and you won’t like the result.”

      That’s the way the politics reads to me too.

      1. The only thing wrong with that is that he totally misdiagnoses the problem as “toxic masculinity”. We ca no more fix that non-existent problem as we can fix the non-existent problem of CAGW, yet both “problems” are going to be used as justification to destroy our society and economy.

        Fuck that noise. You’ll get any AR-15s I may possibly own only from my cold, dead hands.

        1. That stuff about toxic masculinity is really telling. “Conservatives who think violence is a good way to solve problems” is very much in the same ballpark as “Our real problem is that people aren’t angels. At least, people who aren’t me.” It is a nearly content-free virtue-signal.

        2. Greta Thunberg probably forgot more than you know about the climate, dude. I wouldn’t open that can of worms if I were you.

          1. Greta is a sad victim of her parent’s and handler’s programming.. She has stated her multiple mental illnesses in a TED talk. Instead of being paraded as a new Jean d’Arc she should be left alone to rebuild her mind..

            She has been programmed well, but I doubt she actually *knows* much of anything about climatology.

            1. Oh, I know she’s being used in some sort of publicity stunt.

              But she’s still an expert when
              compared to pig-ignorant denialism.

      2. Troutwaxer, that article is just stupid.

        I didn’t get 2 dozen paragraphs into it before I realized this writer has zero ability to do a credible analysis on anything.

        No-one should waste the time it would require to take down that article sentence-by-sentence. (And make no mistake, almost every sentence begs an easy rebuttal.)

        So I’ll waste the time on just one of the first examples that stick out. These 2 sentences: “… and ignores the role that the easy availability of guns plays in violence…”, “After all, the “mass shooting” phenomenon is a modern one.”

        Just one simple little problem: Guns are much harder to get and far more restricted now than back when we didn’t seem to have a “mass shooting” problem. The causality he takes for granted is *backwards*.

        His analysis goes downhill from there.

        TL;DR: He’s an idiot.

        So please stop posting that link as if it has *anything* worthwhile. Please.

  45. Y’all are increasingly sounding like angry old men with joint pain who have decided that the modern world is dangerous, dangerous, because they’re feeling frail and all too mortal. This used to be more often an insightful and interesting place to be. Now it seems to involve a lot of shouting at clouds.

  46. Canada effectively has assault-rifle controls (an on-again, off-again prohibition) and we got the same mass murder, just a change of weapons. I suspect we have a “let’s kill everyone” problem.

    1. To be fair, our response included
      – not ever mentioning the assailant’s name
      – calling it the “Yonge Street van attack”
      – capturing him alive
      – broadly discussing the incels, “involuntary celibates”
      This continues for gun and non-gun attacks alike.

      1. > broadly discussing the incels, “involuntary celibates”

        Has anybody provided any serious policy suggestions other than “make those people go away” or “find them and force them into psychiatric care”? If this group is somehow part of the problem, for whatever reason, it seems to me that making their lives better through policy interventions would be a goal, yes? We have a lot of policy around ameliorating the lives of the financially-deprived, right? Maybe it’s time to focus on those disconnected from key aspects of society and community. Or is this just a way to “outgroup” the people responsible so that no further introspection is required.

        1. >Has anybody provided any serious policy suggestions other than “make those people go away” or “find them and force them into psychiatric care”?

          The underlying qyuetion is: how can society teach women to have realistic expectations about their SMV?

          A large cohort of incels is the flip-side of high-status women not being able to find men who tickle their hypergamic instincts.

          Looks like the ideology of female empowerment has created a problem here.

          1. No, the problem is with the incels and _their_ unrealistic expectations of their SMV. They invariably insist they’re really nice guys and not bad-looking. They also invariably insist they will only accept a high-SMV woman. This tends to be implicit in what they write rather than openly stated but the message is clear: dogs need not apply. Their chastity is not involuntary at all. There are plenty of single women out there.

            1. >No, the problem is with the incels and _their_ unrealistic expectations of their SMV.

              I might believe this if I hadn’t read about the effects of hypergamic drive on dating websites. It seems the average woman in that context is unwilling to settle for a man at lower than 80th-percentile SMV.

              >This tends to be implicit in what they write rather than openly stated but the message is clear: dogs need not apply.

              My very limited exposure to their complaints does not seem to bear this out.

              1. Let’s be clear, the biggest objection to “incels” and other less than 80% SMV men is that for women involuntary interactions with them is “literally” rape, as “literally” is used today. Jim of Jim’s blog puts it in his usual rhetoric first, fact secondary style WRT to codes of conduct, and quoting the more insightful Spandrel:

                Observe “women in tech”. As Spandrel observes “Women in tech” are women trying to get nerds out of tech. Nerds protest. “We were here first! We built this from scratch!”. Yeah whatever. There’s money to be made, so women want in. Then they saw nerds there, and then they can’t help their instincts. Nerds must go. Women just won’t live close to them; the same way humans don’t like living close to snakes or rats. That getting rid of the nerds would destroy the whole ecosystem is secondary. When tech collapses after women chase the nerds away, women will just migrate to somewhere else built by some other males, as if nothing had happened.

                Hypergamy means that all women want the top men. The top 20%, the top 5%, definitions vary. Here’s some data. But even with the most generous definition, women see 80% of men as being completely out of consideration for sex. They just won’t sleep with them. If they do (and they do every now and then for money or other motives), and other women find out, well that automatically means they’re lower status, certainly lower status than women who sleep with better men. Not even sex really, the mere company of undeserving men is like a skin disease for women. It’s like an old rag worn by a leper. The attention of mediocre men is low status itself, it defiles women in their own eyes. So it follows that if possible, mediocre men should disappear. Just die.

                Incel men being the most mediocre among the mediocre, they are at the top of the list for things women want to eradicate. They just don’t want them to exist. Wherever they meet them they try to make them disappear.

                I strongly suggest reading the Spandrel link, he points out why incels have suddenly become a big “threat” using his Bioleninist framework; TL;DR they’re organizing as a class, which for people like them is just not allowed.

              2. And a related critical, and correct in my experience bit of insight from Jim:

                Consider what happens at work. The boss is talking and a woman interrupts him and talks over him, in a supposedly helpful, respectful, friendly, and supportive manner. When a woman interrupts a man she always sounds friendly, helpful, and supportive at first, because women always play one man against another man, are always soliciting white knights.

                The boss is trying to say X, but she is not letting him say X, and is insisting that he is actually saying Y. Y is usually something stupid, disruptive, and damaging to the business and the cohesion of the team, and even if it is something perfectly reasonable, it is not what the boss was attempting to say.

                This is a shit test. If he raises his voice and insists on X and ignores this Y disruption, he is being mean to this supposedly sweet innocent girl who has supposedly done nothing wrong, was sweetly, politely, and supportively interrupting him and speaking over him.

                Quite likely the boss fails the shit test, by allowing the woman who interrupted him and talked over him to win, the conversation proceeds to be about Y, and the boss never gets a chance to talk about X. In which case the boss becomes invisible to her, and if subsequently he forces himself on her attention, which being her boss he probably needs to do from time to time, she gets a creepy feeling as though something slimy and disgusting was trying to insert its semen into her, as though he physically forced himself on her, and she fought him off, and he slunk away ashamed. And, chances are, she will remember it as happening something like that, because that is what it is going to feel like. Women just don’t like having betas around, just as they don’t like having rats and slugs around. The distinction between a contemptible beta forcing himself on her attention, and a contemptible beta forcing himself on her body will not remain clear in her mind. Likely she will complain about him metaphorically forcing himself to her colleagues at the time, and years after the events, will genuinely remember him as literally forcing himself on her physically.

                I’ve witnessed first hand exactly this pattern destroy a very promising startup, back when I thought politeness was the correct response to a woman’s unreasonableness in the workplace.

              3. I never really got what incels actually want.

                When you look superficially, they want to force women of their choice to have sex with them. That sounds as a definition of rape. That is also not going to happen until the Handmaidens Tale has come reality.

                Is there anything more realistic, and less barbaric, they want?

                1. >Is there anything more realistic, and less barbaric, they want?

                  They appear to think they live in a world where a tiny minority of high-status males get all the sex, and to want that fixed somehow.

                  The prescriptions vary and are often nutty, but only a small minority of them think “I should be able to force women” is an answer. Those are the ones we hear about, though, because they’re the ones who act out violently.

                  Most of the rest just disappear into quiet despair and video games.

                  1. “They appear to think they live in a world where a tiny minority of high-status males get all the sex, and to want that fixed somehow.”

                    It is with sex like with money. Some people are rich and more are poor. But few are without any at all. Changing the distribution requires some massive interventions.

                    But last I knew, poor people get into long term relations too. To me, the problems seem more to be a paraphrase of Groucho Marx:
                    I would never want a man/woman who would want me.

                  2. Most of the rest just disappear into quiet despair and video games.

                    And this is what infuriates me about the MGTOW thought leaders. Their “solution” is not to warn young men of the dangers and come up with ways to avoid the minefields while still getting what they want. It is “there isn’t any hope, give up and behave like you have been conquered”.

                    Yes, on the cultural level it will have an effect of reducing the demand for lunatic women. But other paths could have had the same effect. And the doctrinaire formulation limits the number of adherents, so it limits that effect anyway.

                    Ah well, less competition I guess.

                    1. Actually, I’ve figured out how to describe it.

                      They market themselves as helping young men. But the product is not help, but another way to push them off into a corner where they won’t bother anyone.

                    2. I checked out just one website – http://www.mgtow.com – and it was a lot less nuts than I expected.

                      The primary concepts seem to be AWALT – All Women Are Like That – and that searching for a “Soul Mate” is a futile and dangerous task, because AWALT.

                      I find that overly cynical, but it does make me wonder: What proportion of married men are happy with their marriage?

                    3. >What proportion of married men are happy with their marriage?

                      /me raises hand

                      I don’t know what the incidence in the general population is, though.

                  1. Someone murdered women and claims he did it because he is an incel and calls for others to do likewise. It is not that there is a dearth of online material that advocates likewise actions.

                    Yes I know that this is “superficial”, but I also know that I am unlikely to find much more “depth” without help.

          2. How much of this is relative vs. absolute privation?

            In the economic sphere, by the standards of history, we in the West are richer than any civilization in the past. Supporting a lifestyle of quality comparable to that 300 years ago would require a few hours per week of not very difficult work at minimum wage. But yet we still have a large percentage of the population being very vocal about the *relative* differences in wealth. (See phrases such as “the rich” or “the one percent”). While there still are pockets of the US where actual absolute privation has occurred naturally, it’s such a small amount that it almost never gets found, let alone talked about or covered.

            Instead, in all contexts, are we looking at relative or absolute insufficiency. For example, when talking about “men who tickle their hypergamic instincts”, is this an absolute lack or a relative lack? If the cringy nerds were given the minimum amount of PUA training, would that be sufficient, or would that simply re-adjust the scale of competition, likely leaving the same people at the bottom, red-queen style?

            1. >If the cringy nerds were given the minimum amount of PUA training, would that be sufficient, or would that simply re-adjust the scale of competition, likely leaving the same people at the bottom, red-queen style?

              I don’t think I know the answer to this, alas.

              1. Hypergamy, like all social status, seems 100% relative. I think if society consisted only of billionaires, women would compete for the richest ones.

    2. THat’s the real answer: why is it that people feel compelled to commit mass murder, and why is the number of such people up compared to 25 years ago? Answer those questions, and we’ll fix the problem. Banning nasty eeeeevil scary black rifles or any other inanimate tool won’t fix a damned thing.

      1. @Jay Maynard
        “why is it that people feel compelled to commit mass murder, and why is the number of such people up compared to 25 years ago?”

        The ultimate “why” is difficult to get out of the heads of the people. But other facilitating circumstances have indeed been investigated.

        State gun laws, gun ownership, and mass shootings in the US: cross sectional time series
        https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6402045/

        The average restrictiveness-permissiveness score of state gun laws showed an overall shift toward permissiveness from 1998-2014;

        Compare Figure 1.

          1. “Now compare mass shootings with decades of deinstitutionalizing mental patients.”

            The ability of the insane to obtain guns might indeed play a role. The study does only investigate the “ease” with which people can obtain weapons, not the fraction of the population that is mentally ill.

          2. Low correlation in Toronto, but deinstitutionalizing was strongly correlated with shooting of the insane by police after a time lag. Instead, we seem to have a geographically localized gangs problem, one of the other concerns raised here.

  47. @ESR @Troutvaxer

    On mass shooters. They media simply focuses on the white ones. And try to paint even those conservative who aren’t. But fine, as far as whites in the pro-gun, hence, probably kinda conservative cultures go, this guy gets it:

    https://sociological-eye.blogspot.com/2015/10/even-without-gun-control-warning-signs.html

    “There is a very strong clue that a massacre is being prepared: an isolated individual (or possibly a duo) engaged in an obsessive clandestine ritual around a hidden arsenal of weapons.

    To avoid misunderstanding, let me repeat: It is not the possession of guns that is the warning sign; it is hiding an arsenal, and clandestine obsession with scenarios of violence. When clues like this appear in one’s own home, the gun-owning parent should be in the best position to recognize it.”

    That’s a pretty sensible take from a sociologist. And Randall Collins was in fact the president of the American Sociological Association! Actually Collins and Theodore Kemper are doing a good job at convincing me that there might be something in sociology after all, that it is not just a bunch of quasi-Marxist oppression studies thing but an actually useful thing. If you have the time, read Interaction Ritual Chains from Collins and Kemper’s Status, Power and Reference Groups.

    1. >“There is a very strong clue that a massacre is being prepared: an isolated individual (or possibly a duo) engaged in an obsessive clandestine ritual around a hidden arsenal of weapons.

      That’s…pretty telling, actually. What’s interesting and novel here is the focus on concealed preparation and over-accumulation. Consistent with what I’ve observed, but I hadn’t made the jump to seeing that preparation period as the primary psychological reward. With that perspective the documented behavior of, for example, the Columbine shooters really snaps into focus.

      Good catch. I think he’s on to something important. However, we need to go further and distinguish between different kinds of concealment and overaccumulation, and spot when what might look like overaccumulation is not. I, for example, have two long guns I don’t really need because I inherited them when my father died – they’re old-fashioned wooden-stock varmint rifles. And a lot of gun owners conceal their weapons (more than I do) because they’re worried about theft.

      1. I have to declare this to only be of theoretical interest, for there is no enforcement scheme or method we can hand to our betters that we know won’t be abused from decades of hard experience. Up to and including Red Flag laws, which have already resulted in the 5 am death of a black gun owner (somehow, almost all the media reports didn’t mention his race…) who was targeted by a niece, which was described by another family member as “family being family”. See also the first report on the Florida post-Stoneman Red Flag law experience, 40% of the targets never even owned any guns. But are now forbidden to own any, don’t know if that’s a limited period or lifetime ban.

        1. >I have to declare this to only be of theoretical interest, for there is no enforcement scheme or method we can hand to our betters that we know won’t be abused from decades of hard experience.

          You are, unfortunately, correct. Nevertheless, being able to identify characteristic behaviors of the type could be useful for preventing other gun owners from being demonized.

          1. What can be done here for people who can only be reached by rhetoric?

            I also see danger from my skimming of the references, the only unique thing seemed to be the “clandestine obsession with scenarios of violence” … which can’t be extended to TEOTWAWKI planning.

            Acquiring “too many” guns? A minimum of 2 sets for self-defense are recommended, each with a quasi-duplicate in case your primary weapon is seized by the police after being used for self-defense. You won’t get it back quickly, and probably won’t get it back at all, in the meantime, your need for self-defense may rise dramatically from the perp or his friends and family, or you may be chosen for a pogrom by our betters. So a rifle of military utility, and a handgun for home defense, and hopefully concealed carry (42 states, plus some parts of some very anti-gun states like California, Massachusetts, and New York), plus spares.

            Lots of people add a shotgun to that, and it opens many fun hunting opportunities which are also great for getting generally better with marksmanship, gun safety, and firing under stress. For practice, .22 LR versions of the handgun and rifle can be a good idea now that the world has been exhausted of post-Cold War surplus ammo. .22 LR is also very useful for putting down smaller varmints. If you want to be able to reach out and touch someone, or medium to big game hunting, add a scoped high accuracy rifle with a battle rifle class round, 8mm to 6.5mm.

            So that brings the total up to 8 guns, and note that typical handgun practice sessions can expend up around 200 rounds of ammo. A thousand rounds of rifle ammo is a bare minimum, and you need to keep it in stock for when the authorities shut down gun stores because there’s a riot, or you otherwise can’t access more ammo. All these numbers are inconceivable to non-gun owners, and my former just from the PRC graduate student roommates? Two guns?!?!?!!! The man was completely astounded by the reality of someone owning more than one gun.

            Concealing the existence or extent of your armory due to the dangers of theft including government confiscation? As a somewhat prominent gun owner and activist in a Purple state who’s become extraordinarily hated in the software community, you should plan on losing your RKBA and your Officially Owned guns by the middle or end of the next decade. As more and more examples are made of former citizens by the authorities, the nation’s remaining gun owners are going to get a lot more secretive.

            1. >you should plan on losing your RKBA and your Officially Owned guns by the middle or end of the next decade.

              I don’t think so. Remember, our side is winning. The count of states with Constitutional carry keeps going up. PA might have it soon.

              That’s another difference between 2.0 and 3.0. Gun culture 2.0 was defensive and pessimistic, believing it was fighting the good fight against a rising tide of pro-gun-control sentiment. Post Heller, gun culture 3.0 thinks it can win.

              1. You keep telling yourself that if it gives you piece of mind.

                In the real world, our winning streak has faltered, and perhaps decisively reversed; Constitutional Carry in really Red states like South Dakota, maybe Kentucky (don’t know its politics), and snuck through in pretty Red state Oklahoma are being countered with Purple states decisively turning Blue like Virginia, and Red or Purple states like Florida (also turning Blue) and Indiana decisively turning anti-gun.

                In my own home state with its Republican legislative supermajorities, the last legislative session was the first in a long time to pass absolutely no pro-gun legislation, and the Speaker of the House, the only vote that matters in that house, has said gun control will be a primary concern during the next session. Texas Republicans are also turning this way, and, let’s face it, most of them are and alwyas have been anti-gun, they only feel free to be openly so as of late.

                One theory for the very most recent break towards gun control is the execrable Rick Scott, who as governor pushed and signed with ceremony a post-Stoneman gun control package aimed at preventing the young from joining the gun culture, and of course a now much abused Red Flag law, and then won his Senate race.

                Bloomberg has taken the reins of the gun control movement, and is spending 10s of millions of dollars with significant accomplishments in Colorado, Nevada, and Washington state, and next door to him Pennsylvania is very much in his sights (do you follow pagunblog.com?).

                A bottom line: the fundamental RKBA that Obama didn’t dare deny is nothing to the officially Republican President, the definitely Republican Vice President, and the NRA, and of course see the reaction to Beto’s statement. The Overton Window has also been opened to political violence. Something’s going to have to change to get us back on track, and I’m not sure what that could be.

                1. And your attitude is a textbook example of someone who is still thinking in 2.0 terms.

                  Note that in that statement I am not making a claim of who is correct, but of what shibboleths the different versions hold to.

                  My equivalent to that is my repeated assertion that the NFA will be gone or meaningless within the next quarter century if not sooner.

                  As for who is correct….

                  https://opensourcedefense.org/blog/gun-rights-are-winning-and-nobody-has-realized-it

                  1. You should read more closely what you’re replying to. The article you link didn’t in my skim of it refer to the breakout of vicious gun control laws outside of the traditional slave states like Massachusetts and New York, while I cited a handful. And our betters are notorious in ignoring what the population wants, although they’ve not yet entirely delegitimized the results of elections they don’t like. The one major point it made about concealed carry is true, and it’s notable that no shall issue state has reversed any liberalizations.

                    Or let me put it this way: I’ve been in this fight since the early 1970s, and seen multiple ups and downs; we’re now in a down trend.

            2. And let’s take this a step further…

              The Great American Ammunition Shortage demonstrated that you should have enough ammunition on hand to last for at least one presidential term. In practice more like two plus some extra.

              So let’s take the most bare bones setup that doesn’t leave a massive gap in capabilities: one 9mm pistol, one AR-15.

              Take the pistol to the range every other week, shoot a measly 100 rounds. Take the rifle out once a month with 2 standard (30rd) capacity mags (60 rounds).

              That works out to 2600 rounds of 9mm per year, and 720 rounds of 5.56. Figure ten years of stock; two terms plus two years extra, works out to….

              26000 rounds of 9mm, 7200 rounds of 5.56. On hand at all times.

              The people who have a stroke at the thought of 500 rounds at once can’t even comprehend this. And remember: I pushed those numbers to near-minimal levels, and only supplying two guns.

              1. Interesting analysis but I submit your numbers are way too high.

                The 2 US Marines of my close acquaintance tell me they qual with rifle and pistol each annually and fire 70-80 rounds each. This from the branch that aspires to be the best “shooters” in US service. Note that it is the same for 03 or non-03 MOSes.

                This would reduce your numbers by more than an order of magnitude.

                I’m all for plenty of practice. But I’m not for burning up possibly irreplaceable ammo during a high-risk political era. Save it for the goons.

                1. Correcting myself. These numbers don’t include all the practice they do leading up to qual. So my minimalist numbers are too low.

                  But note they do this annually.

                  By all means please store up 30k of 9mm, 10k of 5.56mm. Add in 100k of .22LR and 1k of 12ga buckshot.

                  Store it, but most of us won’t burn that much.

                2. Those numbers aren’t for fighting.

                  A couple thousand would be enough for that; either you lose and it doesn’t matter, or you win and take advantage of the gifts the other side brought.

                  Those numbers are for maintaining skills during an extended period of politics-caused ammunition shortages. Increase those numbers somewhat and you can also bring new people in. Which is what you should be doing if you actually want to win the fight without going through a slaughterhouse or two on the way.

                  But I’m not for burning up possibly irreplaceable ammo during a high-risk political era.

                  The point is to have enough that the opportunity cost of going to the range is not excessive.

                  And there are other benefits…. like being able to sell your junkiest ammo to the people who refused to stock up, at gouging true market prices.

                  1. Those numbers aren’t for fighting.
                    Those numbers are for whatever you need them for, including fighting, practice, new trainees, barter, re-supply for allies, bribes for pseudo-allies, etc.

                    But if the excrement hits the rotating oscillator in year 9 and you’ve been acting business as usual up to then, then you might be in a hole.

                3. They’re … Marines.

                  The metric I’ve always heard is that people of average ability need to shoot around 200 rounds a month from their handguns to maintain their skills, especially when aiming to use them as primary weapons of self-defense.

                  And they need to be full power rounds, dealing with recoil is important. Those Marines are shooting M9s, which are heavy service pistols. A lot of people need much smaller and lighter guns to adequately conceal them, making recoil a bigger factor. I don’t have to worry about printing a bit, carry a lightweight version of a thinner and thus easier to conceal service pistol variety (JMB (PBUH)), 25% less dry, 15% less fully loaded, that’s pretty heavy for IWB concealed carry. The single stack 9mm that George Zimmerman carried is probably more typical but on the light size, weighs 63% less dry, and ~60% fully loaded (which the prosecution tried to paint as evil).

                  Your mileage may vary, but if you’ve got the money, or reload, you can always replace expended ammo as you go. Buying in bulk also helps. Or take the path I did, good genetics for this, started at a very early age, exceeded 10,000 rounds by the time I graduated from high school. But I still shoot 200 rounds per range trip.

                  Rifle skills are said to not atrophy like handgun skills, and that seems to be true, they’re certainly a lot easier to shoot accurately.

                  Another factor is how good do you want to get? Good enough to shoot a hostage taker in the head without hitting a loved one who’s the hostage? Shoot multiple targets quickly enough to minimize return fire? Criminals don’t play fair….

                  1. The metric I’ve always heard is that people of average ability need to shoot around 200 rounds a month…

                    I think trying to put a number to it just isn’t helpful. Too many variables.

                    My handgun training at Front Sight, Nevada recommended differently. They said most people are better served by lots of hours of dry fire practice more so than single-minded emphasis on burning a certain number of rounds. This presumes, of course, that you are maintaining a skill rather than trying to acquire a new one.

                    My experience bears this out…
                    At my first 2-day Defensive Handgun course I was not at all happy with my performance. I can handle the gun fine, but my speed/accuracy were unimpressive.

                    Until late in the day when I finally “got it” and understand that the whole program is about developing muscle memory**. So I spent 2-3 hours that night in the hotel room in Pahrump doing dry fire practice with full range of motions using the Kimber. Next day was all different.

                    ** Yeah, I’m kinda slow. Most everybody else figured out the muscle memory thing way sooner. But once I understood, it was like being slapped upside the head while hearing the hallelujah chorus. :-)

                    1. >They said most people are better served by lots of hours of dry fire practice more so than single-minded emphasis on burning a certain number of rounds.

                      I’m not saying they’re wrong – I expect that’s one effective way to train – but I’ve never spent any significant amount of time dry-firing. For me, the way forward is learning how to maintain no-mind under increasing levels of effort and combat stress.

                4. >The 2 US Marines of my close acquaintance tell me they qual with rifle and pistol each annually and fire 70-80 rounds each.

                  That’s very interesting. Because I never shoot more than 200-300 rounds or so a year, just don’t get to the range often enough. I keep hearing gunfolks insist that you need to shoot nearly that much a month to maintain proficiency, which makes me feel like a slacker.

                  And yet…last time I went shooting, I picked up my .45 cold, a year out of practice, and put 12 of 14 rounds through the 9-ring at 30 feet, semi-rapid fire. Which is pretty damn good shooting by anybody’s standards. Left me thinking that either I’m some kind of freak or, once you reach a certain proficiency level, it’s like riding a bike – you just don’t forget.

                  Your marines are, I think, an argument for the second theory.

                  1. once you reach a certain proficiency level, it’s like riding a bike – you just don’t forget.

                    Does not seem unlikely.

                    Let me just strap these JATOs to the stockpile goalposts…..

                  2. You’re talking about a M1911? Single action lightish trigger, which makes a big difference, single stack so thin grip compared to 9mm double stacks like the M9, grip the right angle for a lot of people, is different than Glock’s?

                    I say part of this is the superb ergonomics John Moses Browning (PBUH) built into the M1911, as in, it was adopted by the US in 1911. Many people believe overall it’s still the best handgun ever designed.

                    Guns are a fascinating story of ergonomics and engineering, with not necessarily exceeded peaks achieved around the turn of the last century, the bolt action battle rifles adopted back then … well, their stocks and sights generally sucked, but the ergonomics of a stripper clip fed box magazine for a bolt action are pretty good. War on land started getting really nasty around then….

                    1. >You’re talking about a M1911?

                      Yeah. Kimber Ultra II, a compact single-stack .45 very similar to a Colt Officer’s Model.

                      >grip the right angle for a lot of people

                      The right angle for me, anyway. First time I picked up an Officer’s Model it melted into my hand. I’ve never been as comfortable shooting anything else.

                      >I say part of this is the superb ergonomics John Moses Browning (PBUH) built into the M1911, as in, it was adopted by the US in 1911. Many people believe overall it’s still the best handgun ever designed.

                      Tell it, brother. No argument from me about any of that.

                      I’ll note that experimenting with other guns I’ve found my performance doesn’t seem to be at all affected by weight or length of trigger pull. The size and shape of the stock, though, that’s a big deal.

                    2. 3 inch barrel, rather a short sight radius compared to the original 5 in barrel. That’s good shooting, not unexpected from from a gun that fits many people’s hands like a glove.

                    3. >3 inch barrel, rather a short sight radius compared to the original 5 in barrel. That’s good shooting, not unexpected from from a gun that fits many people’s hands like a glove.

                      What makes it more interesting is that my normal technique is halfway to point shooting. That’s how I can fire 7 shots in less than 7 seconds and still get that kind of accuracy – I really only have to take a careful sight picture once, at the beginning of the string. The rest is just instinctive pointing where I first aimed the gun.

                      I’m respectable with other pistols, but my Kimber (or a few very similar 1911s) is the only one I can do that with.

                      And yes, I am pretty decent at point-shooting without a sight picture. If I got more time on IPSC-style ranges I would train that seriously – I think I could get very good at it.

                    4. This may go back to all the martial arts training. You’ve probably got a much better kinesthetic sense than most other people, and are better at keeping your body still while you fire.

                    5. >This may go back to all the martial arts training. You’ve probably got a much better kinesthetic sense than most other people, and are better at keeping your body still while you fire.

                      Plausible. Fits with my experience when I was first at a range taking basic pistol training. I’m on the firing line, taking a sight picture as instructed, listening to the instructor say “Relax. Breathe smoothly. Squeeze the trigger slow and gentle”…

                      …and a little voice in my head says “Oh…he wants me to drop into combat no-mind.” Which I did. And proceeded to throw a nice tight group in the center of the target, quite a bit more competently than one might expect from a first-time pistol shooter.

                      For those of you unaware, “no mind” or “empty mind” is a technical term in Asian martial arts (cf. Japanese “mushin”). It describes a state of relaxed awareness, responsive fluidity without striving or fixation on any idea, that is very helpful for responding quickly and correctly to what your opponent actually does. Some people use the terms “combat flow” or “hyperesthesia” equivalently.

                      Last year I had the entertaining experience of watching Ian Bruene respond to his first time shooting a pistol (my 1911) in exactly the same way. I could see him dropping into no-mind in his stance and breathing – it made me grin. He shot up the 9-ring like a pro. The other experienced shooters there (John Bell was one) were all, like, where the hell did that come from? I knew what Ian was doing, but not how he knew to do it.

                      Maybe some people have an innate knack for dropping into the right mindset. Whether I do or not is an interesting question; I did, after all, have seven years of empty-hand training when I started to shoot (this was 1987), and I’d been practicing Zen meditation intermittently for 15 years. Ian in 2018, with none of that background, seemed to have pulled it out of thin air.

                      Now that I think about it again…hey, Ian, do you think you might have learned no-mind playing shooter sims?

                      It is absolutely the case that I point-shoot better if my mind is serene. Even being too focused on shooting well can screw it up.

                    6. Well I had read your description of your first attempt at pistol, and thus knew what to aim for. But that wouldn’t explain how I knew the feel of no-mind so that I could target it in the first place…

                      Now that I think about it again…hey, Ian, do you think you might have learned no-mind playing shooter sims?

                      I thought about it for a while. Many years ago I learned how to control the shiver response, which seems to use the same, if a bit more forceful, cognitive tools. As for shooters nothing stuck out as major enough.

                      It wasn’t shooters: it was anti-gravity racing games (Wipeout series) and arcadish combat flight simulators.

        2. This is obviously not about legislation but an advice to responsible parents about what to look out for.

          Collins rather cleverly repurposed the term “gun control”, that it is not something the government does, it is something you do at home, control access to your guns, and also pay attention to your kids. Just personal responsibility.

          1. Spying on people is reported to be one of the things Trump is considering, search on HARPA (Defense -> Health) and, say, gun control. However the author intended his research to be used, it’s too easily abusable.

            Even then, something like 9/10 or more of the notorious mass shooters come from broken families, so the first order of business is entirely unacceptable in these enlightened days.

  48. We did learn one thing from Marc Lepine and the École Polytechnique murders: don’t encourage copy-cats.

    These days we don’t repeat the murderer’s name, and we use names like the “Toronto van attack” rather than “big scary massacre” to identify the event.

    1. Eminently sensible.

      In the US, I fear our obsession with ‘Freedom Of The Marxist Press’ works against us on this.

  49. One of the most bizarre self-owns I hear from the gun-grabby types is the one about easy access to guns in neighboring states causing the ‘gun violence’ in their home state (often trotted out with respect to IL’s disgraceful stats).

    So they’re saying that IL has much more restrictive gun laws (true) and that criminals are going to neighboring states to [illegally] obtain firearms – I imagine through a combination of theft/black market and straw purchases. An IL resident cannot buy handguns legally across state lines.

    Nevertheless, the very same guns that are *not* being used to cause carnage in neighboring states, are now brought across into IL and suddenly become agents of mayhem. Are they admitting that there is something wrong with IL people that causes them to fall into violence when presented with a firearm? Whereas neighboring states’ residents are evidently better able to handle the responsibility?

    1. Are they admitting that there is something wrong with IL people that causes them to fall into violence when presented with a firearm? Whereas neighboring states’ residents are evidently better able to handle the responsibility?

      Clearly, we need to ban IL people.

    2. We have the same phenomenon in Toronto: while assault rifles are now quite hard to come by, there is a very active black market in stolen and smuggled handguns.

      That suggest to me that we have a very ordinary economic phenomenon, that high demand and low supply causes people to go into the supply business. In our case, the folks paying the money seem predominantly to be gang members, although at least one murderer is in the mix, the “Danforth shooter”.

      I’m actually a little surprised he didn’t use a rental van. Perhaps he hoped to become better-known if he shot people.

    3. Per the gun-grabber idiot on Tucker Carlson last week, the reason the gun crime doesn’t happen in Indiana is because all the population density is in Chicago, and it’s the combination of urban density and easy access to guns brought in from Indiana with its weak gun laws that causes the violence in Chicago.

      Which doesn’t even begin to explain why Baltimore and East St. Louis have high per capita murder rates, but Houston and Dallas-Fort Worth don’t, despite having higher population densities and even better access to loosely regulated guns.

      It also doesn’t address the issue that we have an enormously porous southern border, where tens of thousands of living people are smuggled across every year despite the difficulties. Even if the US got the universal gun confiscation that the gun grabbers want, do they really think that smugglers aren’t going to smuggle guns across the border? 50 cheap semi-automatic pistols are easier to conceal that a single person and don’t require bathroom breaks or food.

  50. Looks like Beto decided to double- and triple-down on the “no more guns” rhetoric while on the campaign trail this weekend, to another round of enthusiastic crowd response. (Link below should jump directly to the relevant portion of the event.)

    https://www.c-span.org/video/?464318-1/seventeen-democratic-presidential-candidates-speak-iowa-streak-fry&start=2616

    Frankly, at this point I am starting to suspect the rhetoric and behavior Beto is campaigning with is shifting from winning the 2020 nomination, toward just influencing the party platform. [I’d normally also include a possible VP pick there, but somehow that doesn’t seem to fit — although I can’t pinpoint exactly why.]

          1. I’m willing to believe that e.g. based on his other comments in this discussion, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t fedpost, see the link I made to my previous comment defining the term.

            And, yes, any US resident who says that sort of thing today is an idiot at best.

            1. In Canasta, a neighboring nation to the north, people often object to the expression of strong opinions in a discussion because _they might need to be defended in court_ or _they might open all the discussents to charges of being bigoted_ or because the person in an _agent provocateur”_.

              I’ve done that myself, in groups about “Mad Max” Bernier, but I strongly urge everyone to be very clear about why you’re saying so. If someone sounds like is an agent provocateur, invite them or the moderator to chime in.

  51. Popping out….

    I should also note that a lot of younger 3.0 recruits got their start in first-person shooter and war-sim video games before they picked up physical guns and joined the actual gun culture – Ian is a good example of this. The difference this makes is that these kids got a pretty good grasp on tactics and movement before they learned actual gun handling.

    Many years ago I came across a story about remotely operated turrets mounted on vehicles in the sandbox (that is; remotely operated from inside the vehicle). These things used fairly crappy 4:3 ratio screens, giving very little in the way of peripheral vision. Soldiers running them borrowed the continuous sweeping scan of the environment that someone picks up from first person shooters.

    The targets of course attributed it to “American magic”. Something something sufficiently advanced technology….

    1. The US Navy has stared using XBox controllers as an alternative or replacement for the $$$ original ones for Virginia class attack subs’ photonic sensor masts, which have replaced the traditional optical periscope. See for example this short article about the USS Colorado going into service a year and a half ago.

      America is magical.

  52. This reads to me as a pointer to conspiracy-oriented groups. Out gunless mass murderer in the “Toronto van attacks” was a member of a INCEL group whose supposed beliefs sounded /barking mad/, and if the description is true, included a high degree of conspiracy theorizing.

    So in the absence of implausible weapons collecting, I should keep an eye open for conspiratorial groups, optionally bizarrely so, as well as the original point I raised, cries “let’s kill everyone”.

    Hmmn, “First, let’s kill the lawyers” (Henry VI, Part 2, Act IV, Scene 2)

  53. ESR,

    As long as we’re talking guns, didn’t you say a while back that you were thinking of writing a guide for newcomers looking to arm up for the first time? Did you decide not to?

    1. >As long as we’re talking guns, didn’t you say a while back that you were thinking of writing a guide for newcomers looking to arm up for the first time? Did you decide not to?

      Just haven’t gotten to it yet. Thanks for the reminder.

      1. My pleasure. Seems like a good time for it, what with Beto volunteering to be America’s latest top gun salesman. :P

        1. That’s pretty good. Nits etc.:

          The original version of the Four Rules, also more concise.

          And unlike some of their political efforts, training is something the NRA is uncontroversially reasonably good at.

          Multiple reliable sources say this isn’t necessarily true now. Mostly due to the NRA’s Stalingrad named Carry Guard, which specifically trashed their pistol training system including the previous host of trainers.

          Last time I checked, the International Defensive Pistol Association is your real friend, the IPSC got gamed with people using “race guns”. Although perhaps there’s been a counter-reformation. See also three gun competitions if you want to add rifle and shotgun.

          Be careful with anything unrealistic like paintball, you will perform in stress like you practiced, and unrealistic sports … well, it’s not legit to pistol whip an opponent if things get really close. Your mindset ultimately must be for real, lethal force combat. Back when cops carried revolvers, they were known to collect and pocket their brass in gun fights, because that’s what they did at the range.

          I also very strongly recommend Massad Ayoob, his books were great to transition from hunting and bullseye 1.0 expertise to 2.0. His gun safety video is superb, taught me a number of new things after having shot over 10,000 rounds in the 1.0 domain. Start here and seriously consider everything they offer.

          I also highly recommend In the Gravest Extreme, about legal and ethical use of lethal force, although it’s dated, The Truth About Self Protection a general book, the first of his I read, e.g. introduced me to Abloy locks, and especially Stressfire: Gunfighting For Police, which is very useful for civilians. A major departure from the Modern Method in recommending stances that he claims don’t fall apart under stress. Particularly the Isosceles (Triangle) vs. Weaver Stance for a threat right in front of you, which also keeps your body armor facing the right direction (if you’re serious, get some of that too, this source should offer something in your price range, tolerance to heat, etc.).

          Long guns suck for weapons retention, if your local laws allow you to own a handgun, they’re much better for checking out a sound in the middle of the night. But not as easily fired accurately under stress, and yes, you can miss at 3 to the police average of 7.5 feet.

          Pump action or semiautomatic is a matter of personal taste more than anything else.

          BZZZT! If you don’t practice a lot at least initially with a pump shotgun, you’re likely to screw up chambering fresh rounds. Semiauto, while theoretically less reliable, wins for newbies.

          Solve the 5.56 NATO/.223 stopping power problem with good ammo, like Black Hills loaded with Barnes copper hollow point bullets. Or get an (additional) upper in something more effective for the AR-15 platform. If semi-autos including the M1 Garand rifle (not carbine) are denied by local laws and customs, I’d get a “turn of the century assault weapon”, a stripper clip fed bolt action battle rifle designed around 1900 plus or minus, probably with an updated stock and better sights. Or a Scout rifle. Avoid EOTech holographic sights, they aren’t reliable for civilian self-defense use in a variety of ways.

          In all cases, for semi-autos run at least 200 rounds of self-defense ammo through your guns, you must make sure the combination including magazines is reliable.

          If you’re willing to get sufficient training, and pay enough for a good one, modern versions of the M1911 service pistol are pretty concealable. Still heavy even with an aluminum frame, but in my experience being thin counts for more than anything else. .45 ACP encourages you to make every shot count, and it doesn’t depend on pistol hollow point ammunition tricks that can be defeated with winter outer clothing to stop a target. Ayoob switched to .45 ACP in the winter. In general, a service pistol or something in-between one and a pocket pistol will encourage you to practice due to better handling of recoil, and that matters a lot.

          Philosophy issue: Glocks and a lot of other striker fired pistols (no external hammer) don’t have manual safeties. They can make it a lot easier to shoot yourself when putting in or removing from a holster, but you might forget to flick off a manual safety under stress, one instructor of mine called them “death levers”. The M1911 has a very ergonomic manual safety, I don’t think kindly of the M9’s. I personally recommend either single action pistols like the M1911, or “double action only”, DAO, I strongly disagree with the author’s stance that trigger quality is unimportant.

          Holsters are essential for handguns, and expect to “fill a closet” with ones that don’t work well for you until you find what does. They should be stiff at the mouth to allow you to reholster under stress, without looking, you don’t want to be holding a handgun when the police arrive, but it might not be safe to put your’s on the ground. See also the Ayoob video for how to be very sure your weapon is cleared under stress, in the dark, when it’s raining etc. etc. (with the slide locked back, stick your little finger in the magazine well and chamber, you’re sure it’s empty).

          1. Solve the 5.56 NATO/.223 stopping power problem with good ammo

            Good ammo and recognition that you are going to make use of the strengths of the platform (light recoil and good ammunition capacity) by firing several shots in rapid succession.

            I think that is the mental shift that a lot of people aren’t making. Modern “weaker” calibers are designed with the assumption that bullets are not death rays that insta-kill on hit. You need those follow up shots and the capacity to make those shots without depleting all of your ammunition.

            And the actual data on one hit kills tells an interesting story on the “weaker” part…

            Or get an (additional) upper in something more effective for the AR-15 platform.

            .458 SOCOM means that you totally don’t have 30 round magazines are are in compliance with 10 round mag limits *wink*. It is more or less the semi-auto version of the 45-70.

            Per-round cost is pretty mean if you don’t reload however.

            If semi-autos including the M1 Garand rifle (not carbine) are denied by local laws and customs, I’d get a “turn of the century assault weapon”, a stripper clip fed bolt action battle rifle designed around 1900 plus or minus, probably with an updated stock and better sights.

            Emphasis added. If semi-autos are available to you use one. If you are at close range a bolt action is a bad idea, at long range…. what you are looking for is a DMR not a sniper rifle. And even a lot of the snipers these days are using semis.

            1. >Modern “weaker” calibers are designed with the assumption that bullets are not death rays that insta-kill on hit.

              I ran across an interesting video recently. Ah, here it is. Built around a study of over 1700 shootings in which the author studied ability of weapons to effectively incapacitate attackers, not limiting himself to one-shot stops.

              Turns out bullet size doesn’t make any difference after you get out of the mouse-gun calibers – 25, 32, or .22LR. You might get slightly more frequent one-shot stops with my fave the 1911 or some other larger-caliber round, but the overall effectiveness difference disappears on the second shot.

              The really startling news is that at pistol ranges, shotguns only beat major-caliber pistols by 2% and center-fire rifles only beat them by 5%. That’s basically statistical noise.

              1. Yep.

                I usually dismiss .45acp peddlers because of the whole MUH STOPPIN POWER memeplex. You are actually one of the few I don’t do that with… and look! Most of the emphasis is on ability to shoot with a given platform. Which is one of the premises of the “caliber doesn’t matter” side of the debate.

                I also keep this around for the idiots.

                There is a huge mass of alleged knowledge about weapons — by people who deal with weapons — that simply isn’t true. The best ones are when they give two different stories about why a cartridge is terrible that are contradictory.

                1. >I usually dismiss .45acp peddlers because of the whole MUH STOPPIN POWER memeplex

                  To be fair to all those .45-worshipping grognards out there, I don’t think “.45 has better stopping power” is a complete myth. I think the myth is an unjustified exaggeration of a difference that is real but marginal in most circumstances and easily swamped by other factors – that video surprised me not much. Still, if I had to bet my life on a one-shot stop I would rather do it with a .45 in my hand than anything lighter.

                  No, the reasons I love that platform are ergonomics, shooter experience, reliability, and the little bit of extra confidence that comes from carrying a gun with a century of outstanding combat performance.

                  1. Everything else being equal at self-defense handgun caliber velocities and energies, stopping power scales with the diameter of the bullet, and lethality with the number of holes you put into someone (that explained in detail to a Massachusetts legislative body with a respected doctor as a member stopped cold the effort to ban hollow points for civilians, excepting New Jersey to some degree).

                    Everything else being equal, successful expansion or not, a .45 round will create a wider crush cavity as Martin Fackler put it (named it??) than 9mm.

                    All that said, this probably only really matters to military organizations hobbled by the international law and thus ball AKA FMJ bullets, which civilians and police cannot responsibly use except for practice.

                    1. Everything else being equal, successful expansion or not, a .45 round will create a wider crush cavity as Martin Fackler put it (named it??) than 9mm.

                      True enough. But the logic behind the current Standard Wisdom is that all things are very much not equal, in ways that are important.

                      Also tradeoffs of barrier penetration vs not nailing a bystander… but that is a different question.

                    2. >Also tradeoffs of barrier penetration vs not nailing a bystander… but that is a different question.

                      Another argument for Big Slow Bullet that I take seriously is that they have less tendency to overpenetrate.

              2. Not a video guy, this seems to be the study

                One thing that strikes me as bogus is ruling out one shot stops outside the head or torso. As I read this in general, and the author as well, a large fraction of criminals decide to stop their violence the first time they get injured “enough”, pain would as usual seem to be a good motivator.

                Or course, plenty don’t, and ultimately you’re depending on a CNS hit, or the perp’s blood pressure getting too low. A “mobility kill”, as in something that stops him from moving without necessarily killing him, may also work, and that’s also outside the head and torso (else it would also be a CNS hit).

                Yikes, in one shot stops, 44% .380, 34% 9mm. I don’t trust his statistical analysis, or perhaps his data set. The error bars are likely pretty damn large. Military data is also problematical since they use FMJ, especially for 9mm. Yeah, reading down he says ~1/2 of 9mm were with ball ammo, where I’ve heard “convention wisdom” says 4 9mm hits ~= 1 .45 ACP. He should have made 2 extra charts for military and civilian 9mm use.

                Hmmm, well, echoing Ian Bruene’s earlier comment, I chose my platform first, and then .45 ACP is the best to run on it. Plus that was during the Federal “assault weapons” ban, so procuring 8 round mags weren’t a hassle or legal danger (Massachusetts licensing hassle, likely no concealed carry license in the cities I lived in, and legal danger, kept me to long guns prior to that.)

                1. >A “mobility kill”, as in something that stops him from moving without necessarily killing him, may also work, and that’s also outside the head and torso

                  The video explicitly factors those in.

            2. .458 SOCOM means that you totally don’t have 30 round magazines are are in compliance with 10 round mag limits *wink*. It is more or less the semi-auto version of the 45-70.

              While the .45-70’s ballistics are wonky by today’s standards, it’s an historically proven long range battle rifle cartrige. Comparing 300 and 405 gr loads, .458 SOCOM looks better. Would be odd to put one of these on the top of your AR-15 pattern rifle, but if you’re good at estimating distances….

              Note contrary to some advertising and promotion, it is not Jeff Cooper’s Thumper concept, which specifies much lighter and shorter range .44 Magnum handgun round ballistics.

              1. When talking about 45-70 ballistics it is necessary to be clear about whether one is talking about the old (“cowboy”) pressure limits, or the modern loads.

                A modern load will blow up an old gun.

                Would be odd to put one of these on the top of your AR-15 pattern rifle, but if you’re good at estimating distances….

                *snicker*

                I almost want to do it just to see people’s heads spin.

                But 458 isn’t meant for anything beyond 100, maybe 150 yards, same with its cousin .50 Beowulf. If you want extended range out of an AR the caliber to pick is 6.5 grendel, or in an AR-10 6.5 creedmor.

          2. >Although perhaps there’s been a counter-reformation.

            There has been. The IPSC now has a competitive class limited to carry weapons. I’ve shot in it once.

            I think how one should train is more talent- and background-dependent than most instructors understand. What would work best for me, a long-term martial artist with the knack for point shooting who easily enters no-mind, would be training in a tactical shoot house the way SOCOM guys do. That’s definitely not for everybody.

            >Semiauto [shotgun], while theoretically less reliable, wins for newbies.

            Concur. I’ll be more specific and recommend something in the Mossberg 500 line. Reliable, inexpensive, and popular enough that parts and replacement will never be an issue.

            >If you’re willing to get sufficient training, and pay enough for a good one, modern versions of the M1911 service pistol are pretty concealable. Still heavy even with an aluminum frame, but in my experience being thin counts for more than anything else. .45 ACP encourages you to make every shot count, and it doesn’t depend on pistol hollow point ammunition tricks that can be defeated with winter outer clothing to stop a target. Ayoob switched to .45 ACP in the winter. In general, a service pistol or something in-between one and a pocket pistol will encourage you to practice due to better handling of recoil, and that matters a lot.

            Oh hell yeah. All of that.

            I’ve never shot anything that matches the ergonomics and shooter-friendliness of 1911s. The only thing to beware of is that 3″-barrel concealed-carry variants like my Kimber have a tendency to be picky about their ammunition and may need tuning out of the box. Generally speaking though once you’ve broken one in and found a decent grade of ammo it will be reliable forever. And nothing in a pistol has a better combat record than 1911s when shit gets real.

  54. To be followed shortly by them throwing out the Free Software Definition and replacing it with one based on Codes of Conduct.

    I think the first order of business is to change the “free software” and “open source” definitions to allow for do-no-evil riders on open source licenses. Can’t have ICE using your Node left-pad library to lock children in cages.

    Oh look, here comes one of the usual suspects now. Timing’s convenient.

    Note that despite being an acitivist against political evil, Stallman was very explicit about the fact that the GPL and any license he considered “free software” allowed use of the software for any purpose, even evil ones.

    1. As I just tweeted in reply:

      SJWs gotta SJW.

      Your license is incompatible with the GPL, which automatically means it can’t be used with a wide range of software. As much as I dislike the GPL’s viral nature, it is occasionally useful.

      Oh…and tell me: have you ever written any actual code for this to apply to, or are you just going to try to bully people into adopting it the same way you bully them into adopting your notorious Contributors’ Covenant?

      And the OSI’s official Twitter account asked her to clarify that that was not an Open Source license, sine it doesn’t comply with the Open Source Definition.

      1. She and her little circle are already telling us that open source has a problem if open source is willing to let their software be used by Trump to lock children in cages. The next step is a push for removal of the leadership at OSI.

      2. >Your license is incompatible with the GPL,

        For now… but there is a theoretical weakness. FSF.org has traditionally asked for a copyright assignment on contributions to its projects, which means it can change that fact for many key projects. FSF.org may* also own the GPL license itself, and if so, would control the “GPL x or newer” language in many projects (*or does RMS own the copyright / trademark?)

        So, any predictions about what the FSF board will do? And if they add CoC clause to the GPL, how many projects will fork?

        *Current* board of directors list –> https://www.fsf.org/about/staff-and-board/

    2. Thanks a BILLION(!!!) for alerting me to this! Going to ban this horror show at work first thing. I can’t imagine a worse legal nightmare for *any* business.

    3. Fuck me, but this is the worst case of polonium laced candy I’ve seen in ages. If you’re using *any* code covered by this abomination of a license for any work that may eventually see the light of day for any reason, you’re playing Russian roulette.

      1. Wow, he’s either being really stupid or intentionally deceptive, my favorite part:

        The real enemy is governments who use OUR LABOR to carry out mass violations of civil liberties and human rights violations.

        If he really believed that he wouldn’t trust the government’s own courts to interpret his vaguely worded license the way he wants.

  55. Moving this to the top level, since the US Gun Culture 1.0-3.0 discussion is quite buried:

    esr and others who want to know the story of US gun control from 1966-2000 might want to check out Neal Knox – The Gun Rights War. Here’s a snippet to give you an idea of its form, it’s what he wrote as events unfolded, with comments by his son Chris Knox, not to be confused with the former NRA-ILA head Chris Cox, to bring the topic up to date.

    For an earlier start, looks like 1963 in detail to 1972, and copyright held by the NRA, showing along with the contents that it was in the political game much earlier than 1977, this book looks good, but I’ve only scanned it (I came up to speed on this with a bunch of 1960s issues of The American Rifleman, the NRA’s first and back then only member magazine), e.g. the cartoons from the utterly loathsome Herblock. No real change from then to today.

      1. Wayne joined in 1977 and wasn’t very powerful in 1982 when Knox was purged from his executive position as head of the ILA, his former friend and ally Harlan Carter is said to have engineered that. The relationship with Ackerman McQuuen might have been a factor then, the PR firm was also retained in 1977, but I may be confounding that with the 1990s when the issue of the NRA’s finances and the failure by Wayne to rein in payments to it came to a head, when Knox still had some influence with the NRA as a Director and major name.

        1. I’m thinking of the 90’s purge.

          But in general regardless of the mechanism by which they leave, a person who would defend machineguns has no place in the NRA of today.

    1. For once, she’s made a blunder I can quasi-forgive, if she confused it with a M2 Browning (PBUH) machine gun. Which would fit both the weight and caliber, it’s a lot better than “the shoulder thing that goes up?” for a barrel shroud.

      I doubt she doesn’t get out much, and is reputed to be the worst and most abusive Congresscritter, she’s unlikely to get good staff work. And as previously mentioned, the Democrats no longer have any operatives who understand enough about guns to credibly stage a campaign commercial.

      We really are separating into two or more nations.

    2. >Sheila Jackson Lee Claims An AR-15 Fires a .50-Caliber Round, Weighs As Much as “10 boxes”

      …narrowly pipping perennial favorite Maxine Waters in the category “Stupidest Person of Color in Congress”.

  56. Here’s what the NRA should do: find some autistic teen girl to be their spokesperson. As I understand the new rules, autistic girls who make public policy arguments cannot be criticized.

    1. >Getting back to Beto specifically, this is amusing:

      The quality of Razorfist’s rants is uneven enough that I don’t listen to him regularly. In this one, though, he’s on fire!

      1. Agreed on both counts. I don’t care for it when he descends into toilet humor and even I – who will drop an F-bomb without even thinking about it – think he leans on profanity way too much. But when he DOES nail it it’s glorious.

        1. The really funny — or maybe really sad — thing is that Razorfist kinda didn’t even need to say anything. The whole crux is the clip where the interviewer asks “What would you do with the people who _don’t_ voluntarily surrender their semi-automatic rifles?” Beto pauses for ten or fifteen minutes, then essentially says “Yeah I’ll get the cops to shoot them.”

          Not to denigrate Razorfist’s comedy (it was the first I’d seen him) but really, what else can be added to that? =:O

  57. ESR,

    You keep talking about how useful combat no-mind is in shooting. What would you recommend as a good way to learn it? I don’t have martial training and am not in a position to easily get it. And while I am a gamer like Ian I generally don’t play action games (and no-mind isn’t going to work when you’re playing, say, Invisible Inc.).

    EDIT: Now that I say that, it occurs to me that maybe I should just play more action games?

    1. >Now that I say that, it occurs to me that maybe I should just play more action games?

      That might work, but I don’t know enough about action games to tell which ones would be effective.

      1. Hmm… I may have been unclear about what I’m asking for, so let me elaborate a little.

        I’m pretty sure I’ve been in no-mind before – or something close to it – when gaming. But until you talked about Ian’s first time shooting I didn’t think of it as something you could turn on at will. THAT’S the part I’m asking for tips on. Games may be good for practicing once I know how to flip that switch consciously, but I have to get to that point first.

        1. >THAT’S the part I’m asking for tips on.

          Ah, well then. I can say something useful about that. Relax and smoothe your breathing. If you know that no-mind is possible for you, that may suffice.

          1. Thanks.

            On the subject of which games to practice with, my understanding of no-mind is that it works with skills that can be reduced to reflex but fails when higher-level thinking is required. So my guess is this:

            Something that comes down to muscle memory – like shooting at a target or turning when a curve in the road comes up – is ideal. Hence why Ian learned on racing/simple combat games rather than shooters.

            Tactical shooters would be harder to learn it with because you need to take into account things like ammo remaining for your various guns, tactics like finding hard cover in a firefight, etc. These skills CAN be trained to the point where you do them reflexively but you wouldn’t be able to use no-mind from the start.

            At the far extreme you have tasks that require number-crunching, complex solutions to unique situations and so on. No-mind would never work with games like Invisible Inc., Into the Breach or Slay the Spire. Or with programming, as you’ve pointed out.

            Does that sound about right? Could you play Battle for Wesnoth well in no-mind mode?

            If I’m right then a beginner should start practicing with something extremely simple like, say, Super Hexagon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5mDjFdetU28

            …Which is only 3 bucks on GOG right now, so what the Hell? Unless you can poke any holes in my hypothesis I might as well pick it up and give it a shot.

            1. my understanding of no-mind is that it works with skills that can be reduced to reflex but fails when higher-level thinking is required

              Oh. So, Tetris. Or Bejeweled. Or a fair number of free online “idle” games.

              Or Nethack, if you get all the intrinsics and magic items that keep you self-sustained and fairly hard to kill, before you go chewing through Gehenna.

              1. I’d say a good one is Rez — arguably, a game designed to induce the state and best played in it. It’s a sort of musical-sensory-psychedelic shooter-experience thing — think Panzer Dragoon as imagined by Daft Punk and you have the right idea. The synchrony between the music, visuals, and game events can get you into a state of detached awareness and effortless reaction, if you know how to let it happen.

            2. >Something that comes down to muscle memory – like shooting at a target or turning when a curve in the road comes up – is ideal. Hence why Ian learned on racing/simple combat games rather than shooters.

              I think this is close but not quite right. You can’t fight hand-to-hand with muscle memory alone; a certain amount of forward planning and thus conscious mentation is required, especially on offense. You can’t shoot on pure muscle memory either, though I think it requires a lower fraction of conscious mentation than hand-to-hand.

              I think what you have to do is hold your conscious-level mentation at a point where it’s sufficient for the planning you need to do, but so weighty that it breaks your serenity. Over time, as you get better at entering and maintaining your no-mind, the amount of cognitive load it can bear without breaking increases somewhat.

              >No-mind would never work with games like Invisible Inc., Into the Breach or Slay the Spire. Or with programming, as you’ve pointed out.

              Correct. Battle for Wesnoth or Nethack wouldn’t work either; too much figuring, and the pacing is wrong. You want a real-time game for this, I think.

              I can see the possibility that once you’re already pretty good at no-mind, you could train it further on tactical shooters. But this is theoretical, since I haven’t tried it.

              I think Paul Brinkley is right to focus on real-time idle games like Tetris and Bejewelled for early training – I know both of those. OTOH, I watched a playthrough of Super Hexagon and am dubious; it seems too noisy to me.

              1. There is an opensource tactical shooter that trains you in cover vs concealment, has proper ballistic penetration vs various materials, and allows you to enjoy the interiors of buildings and learn how to move through them under fire. The action of the weapons are modeled closer than other shooters (pump action requires separate action to pump, lever action: 2 separate actions, double and single action revolvers are modeled accurately (heavy trigger pull with double action is simulated), etc etc).

                freshcode.club/projects/chaosesque-anthology

                Might be what you want.

              2. >> “I think what you have to do is hold your conscious-level mentation at a point where it’s sufficient for the planning you need to do, but so weighty that it breaks your serenity. Over time, as you get better at entering and maintaining your no-mind, the amount of cognitive load it can bear without breaking increases somewhat.”

                You mean “NOT so weighty,” I assume.

                That makes sense, but the way you phrased it triggered a thought – what if a higher level of conscious mentation doesn’t rule out no-mind entirely, but rather just reduces the amount you can do at the no-mind level? Sort of like a “conservation of cognition” law?

                Take programming, for example. An experienced programmer working in a familiar language needs to think about WHETHER to declare a simple variable and what to call it if he does, but the HOW would be mindless once he made those decisions. More complex stuff like implementing a simple loop could also be done instinctively with enough practice. Could that be considered high-level mentation combined with a small amount of no-mind?

                1. Now that I’m thinking in those terms other examples occur. If a game is too complex to no-mind the gameplay itself you could still no-mind the controls once you have enough experience (if the interface is sufficiently well-designed).

                  1. >Now that I’m thinking in those terms other examples occur. If a game is too complex to no-mind the gameplay itself you could still no-mind the controls once you have enough experience

                    But I don’t think no-mind is the same as muscle memory, either.

                    Maybe it will help if I tell you that I have sometimes thought that “no-mind” and “empty mind” are bad translations. “Serene mind” or “untroubled mind” would be better. The Buddhist term “sunyatta” is relevant; in one of its senses (confusingly, it has about five different ones) it might be translated as “the void, full of potential” or “the void which is everything”.

                    In combat no-mind you are full of potential. The opponent moves, you sense an opening, thought and action are one, and the strike or counter is done. In a really intense no-mind (I have only experienced this a few times) you move correctly and fluidly and are not aware that you have done so until your move is finished.

                    The absolute spookiest version of this I have ever known happened once when I was in rondori at the center of a circle of opponents back in my TKD days. Their instruction was that someone in my field of view was to make eye contact, attack me, I would counter, and then another attack. Continuosly until the instructor called stop.

                    I got to a place where my mind was totally empty, and people would rush me and I’d throw them without thought and not really know what had happened until the next uke began to rush. To my own perception I was utterly still and people were flying away from me me without my being really aware that I had touched them to make them do that. I don’t know how many people I threw or dropped on the ground, but it was a lot…

                    I think some advanced masters are like this all the time when they fight. If I train enough years maybe I will be too.

                    1. Hmm… Okay, I think I’m getting it. But I’ll pop my response out to the top level because it’s getting a little cramped here.

                2. >You mean “NOT so weighty,” I assume.

                  Yup. Typo.

                  >what if a higher level of conscious mentation doesn’t rule out no-mind entirely, but rather just reduces the amount you can do at the no-mind level? Sort of like a “conservation of cognition” law?

                  Possible. But my experience is that you have to induce no-mind, and then too much normal mentation pops it like a balloon.

                  1. But a gamer entering that state without consciously meaning to or being able to make it happen at will happens a fair bit. Perhaps your perspective is a bit skewed because you’ve had conscious control of it for so long? Do you not remember it ever happening to you before you mastered it?

                    But let’s say you’re right. In that case, what’s happening when I have to consciously think about complex gameplay but don’t have to think at all about how to work the controls once I’ve made a decision? What’s the difference between that and no-mind?

                    1. >Do you not remember it ever happening to you before you mastered it?

                      I don’t know that I’ve “mastered” it yet. If I had, I might be able to fight effortlessly, like I did in that rondori, all the time.

                      >In that case, what’s happening when I have to consciously think about complex gameplay but don’t have to think at all about how to work the controls once I’ve made a decision? What’s the difference between that and no-mind?

                      Are you thinking about winning, or are you in an endless present where you respond to opportunities almost without thought? Either state can use muscle memory of the controls.

              1. >“In the zone” is another term that might be considered equivalent.

                The way athletes use this term may be equivalent to or at least similar to no-mind, I agree.

            1. >I wonder… is “no-mind” greatly different from “flow”, or are they related? Flow can be / is intellectual as well as sensory

              Which is why I don’t think the terms are equivalent. My referent for “flow” is what I do when I program. It’s very intellectual and it is not no-mind.

              On the other hand, I have heard the term “combat flow” used for no-mind.

              1. I have the same feeling programming, racing motorcycles or, in a life many many years past, drifting through the woods looking for “red force”. The content, though, was wildly different.

                1. “Red force?” I just searched for the term and DuckDuckGo is pointing me to a roller coaster. I assume that’s NOT what you were scouring the woods for.

                  1. Red force was guys dressed in worn-down old bush jackets re-sewn to look like WWII Russians. Blue force was guys wearing US helmets. Both were invading Canada from one direction or another.

  58. ESR,

    I think I’m starting to get what you mean by no-mind, but check my work:

    The point isn’t to minimize thought (as the term “no-mind” implies) but to minimize reaction time. And thought interposes itself between perception and response, so the more you think about it the slower you are and the more likely your opponent will feed you your own teeth.

    But… You still need some small amount of thought to grasp what’s happening and pick an appropriate response. Otherwise you just stand there like a stump or flail about like an idiot. So the real goal is not to get rid of thinking, but to get rid of overthinking by priming your brain to act as soon as it has a reasonable plan.

    In other words: no-mind is the state in which you’re still thinking but not second-guessing yourself at all, and thus are able to go straight from perception to decision to action in minimal time.

    Is that accurate? Because if so I agree with you that no-mind is a bad term for it. Something like “reactive mind” might be a better fit.

    .
    .
    .

    And concerning the other tangent of this conversation:

    >>>> “In that case, what’s happening when I have to consciously think about complex gameplay but don’t have to think at all about how to work the controls once I’ve made a decision?”

    >> “Are you thinking about winning, or are you in an endless present where you respond to opportunities almost without thought?”

    Sorry, I didn’t phrase that clearly. By “complex gameplay” I meant the kind of gameplay that no-mind doesn’t work on (like Battle for Wesnoth). So, conscious, goal-oriented thinking.

    1. >The point isn’t to minimize thought (as the term “no-mind” implies) but to minimize reaction time.

      That’s part of it. The other is not getting stuck in preconceptions about what your opponent is going to do next, being ready for anything. Minimized reaction time and non-fixation, so you can’t be surprised or blindsided.

      >And thought interposes itself between perception and response, so the more you think about it the slower you are and the more likely your opponent will feed you your own teeth.

      True!

      >So the real goal is not to get rid of thinking, but to get rid of overthinking by priming your brain to act as soon as it has a reasonable plan.

      A void, full of potential.

      >In other words: no-mind is the state in which you’re still thinking but not second-guessing yourself at all, and thus are able to go straight from perception to decision to action in minimal time.

      It’s a little broader than not second-guessing yourself. Also consider “not being fixated” in any way. Your second clause after the comma is right.

      >Because if so I agree with you that no-mind is a bad term for it. Something like “reactive mind” might be a better fit.

      Did you see the comment where I proposed “serene mind” or “untroubled mind”?

      “Reactive mind: would be pretty good…except Scientologists already use that exact term for something else.

      >By “complex gameplay” I meant the kind of gameplay that no-mind doesn’t work on (like Battle for Wesnoth). So, conscious, goal-oriented thinking.

      You’ve learned expertise that allows you to chunk control procedures without thinking about them. That’s called “skill”.

      1. >> “That’s part of it. The other is not getting stuck in preconceptions about what your opponent is going to do next, being ready for anything. Minimized reaction time and non-fixation, so you can’t be surprised or blindsided.”

        I would have filed that under “not overthinking it,” but you’d be much more familiar with the fine distinctions here.

        >> “It’s a little broader than not second-guessing yourself.”

        Hmm… I’m not seeing what you mean here.

        >> “Did you see the comment where I proposed “serene mind” or “untroubled mind”?”

        Yes, but I don’t like those terms either. The sense of serenity is a side effect, not the point. And no-mind isn’t necessarily the only way to reach that emotional state; imagine being drugged into feeling that way.

        >> ‘“Reactive mind: would be pretty good…except Scientologists already use that exact term for something else.’

        …Crap.

        I’m about ready to go to bed so now’s not the time to wrestle with it, but I still think a better term is needed.

        1. I saw this on SlashDot today – it seemed sort of relevant, and it made me think Jay would like it….

          “The three most useless things to a pilot are the altitude above you, runway behind you, and a tenth of a second ago.”

          by one JustAnotherOldGuy

        2. >> “I’m about ready to go to bed so now’s not the time to wrestle with it, but I still think a better term is needed.”

          Sorry it took me so long to get back to this, but a storm fried the modem. That’s always fun to deal with.

          Anyway, I still think associating no-mind with emptiness or void is bad; I think I’ve figured out why those in that state would THINK their mind is empty but that’s not really what’s going on. I’ve been thinking about other possible names for it and figured I’d throw them out and see if anything sticks (hey, it worked for ideomania).

          The first thing that occurred was “flowing mind” (or maybe “flow-mind” for short), but as you’ve already mentioned that you associate flow with something else I suspect you’ll object to that. But it occurs to me that “water-mind” might also work. It’s inspired by this Bruce Lee quote: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/163198-you-must-be-shapeless-formless-like-water-when-you-pour

          Personally, the more I think about it the more I think water-mind fits. While Bruce Lee unfortunately referred to it as emptying your mind the word water itself isn’t connoted with emptiness or void. It is connoted with flexibility, responsiveness and adaptation.

          On the assumption that you wouldn’t like either of those I searched deep within myself – and by “myself” I mean “www.thesaurus.com” – and came up with a couple of other ideas. I can see objections to both of them, though.

          One is “spartan mind,” with spartan being used as a synonym for “minimalist.” Of course, that may have too much association with the actual Spartans.

          The other is “battle-mind,” which I think has a nice ring to it. But people might associate it with anger and brute force rather than tranquility and adaptability. It also suggests that fighting is the only thing it’s good for.

  59. ESR: A recent slashdot piece on RMS’s resignation quoted someone who knows him that Stallman feels that his entire life’s work has been a failure.

    >” As far as I can tell, he believes his entire life’s work is a failure…”

    news.slashdot.org/story/19/09/21/0253227/gnus-former-kernel-maintainer-shares-a-reflection-on-the-departure-of-richard-stallman

    Would it be possible for you, being one of the Big Four of Free/Opensource software (RMS, Linus, ESR, Bruce Perens), to perhaps call RMS on the phone and give him some support as a friend and colleague? I know you may not be-able to visit him due to your injury, but a little support can go a long way.

    He should know who his friends are, and realize who his enemies are.

    1. >Would it be possible for you, being one of the Big Four of Free/Opensource software (RMS, Linus, ESR, Bruce Perens), to perhaps call RMS on the phone and give him some support as a friend and colleague?

      I’d be happy to do it, but I don’t have his number. I’m not even sure he has a personal phone.

      1. I wonder if Bruce Perens has it? When people are driven to despair such that they feel their life has been for nothing, bad things can happen. The technique is called: Isolation and dissolution. It is used often enough.

        It might be worthwhile to make a physical trip to RMS’ place in california if there is no other way of reaching out, to forestall any potential bad outcomes. People have chosen now as a time to try to destroy RMS it seems.

        1. >It might be worthwhile to make a physical trip to RMS’ place in california

          Huh? I’m pretty sure he lives in Boston. Somewhere. I don’t know where. I visited his home once but that was in the 1980s.

          1. Last I heard he was “squatting” in his MIT office. I have no idea where he lives now that he’s been kicked out. Come to think of it, that may be contributing to his despair.

      2. Have you tried emailing him? I was a bit worried myself, but he’s still posting a steady stream of political stuff on stallman.org, so at least he’s still alive and dedicated to activism.

      3. He doesn’t have a mobile phone (from what he says on his webpage) but he’ll often use a borrowed phone to call people, so I’m thinking an email asking him to call you might work. Rather worried about him – he’s just resigned from GNU as well, and 2 days ago he was looking for a room to rent in Boston…

  60. > Now, this week, the so called Church of England is demanding a ban on cooking knives with a point.

    It’s easy to mock the call for “pointy knife bans.” But there’s a seriously nasty view of what “civilization” means behind these calls for various weapon-bans. A view of “civilization” where self-defense is a malum in se crime, where owning items that might tempt the weak-minded into committing self-defense is a crime, and where, if the Authorities say “You must die, not for any fault of your own, but simply for the overall Good of Society,” then you have a duty to die.

    1. >“You must die, not for any fault of your own, but simply for the overall Good of Society,” then you have a duty to die.

      For the overall good of society, which in Great Britain includes holding costs down for the NHS. Away with you, useless geezer! You have cost The People too much – why, some bureaucrat in a leather chair might even have to take a cut in his annual bonus so you can live. Intolerable!

      1. Erm, as someone who is actually English (Or rather half but grew up there), there is no duty to die. We do have private cover if you wish it and you can spend what you like to prolong your life in addition to the services provided by the NHS.

        Bureaucrats in leather chairs are a problem for everyone, we also have ways of dealing with them :-D

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RcxILlCcoB4

    2. Oh, I agree completely. Making effective self-defense malum prohibitum starting in the 1950s, “effective” as in creating a Marquess of Queensberry style rule and then law that it is illegal to use any more force on a perp than he is using on you, is perhaps creating the malum in se view you’re concerned about, and/or maybe the Saxon is beginning to hate.

      For our non-US correspondents, the well nigh universal principle here is that assault and self-defense are divided into 2 domains, non-lethal and lethal. The latter admits to no proportionality limits, once the perp has elevated a conflict to lethal force, any type of reasonable lethal force in response is legitimate. The Zimmerman-Martin case is a good example of this, Martin was unarmed, but through surprise and physical strength was as established by forensics and eyewitnesses beating Zimmerman’s head into a concrete sidewalk.

      (Florida law also has a perhaps unusual principle that the normal “you started the violent conflict, you can’t then claim self-defense” has a second threshold if it starts non-lethal and one of the combatants elevates it to lethal force. In that case, even if the other combatant started the violent conflict, he can still then use lethal force in response, and claim self-defense … although that won’t look good to a jury. But it limited a line of attack invented out of thin air by the Martin partisans.)

  61. you know that dems don’t really want to take your guns away, right? thats a story the GOP concocted on their own to drive fear into the hearts of their constituents.

    the shitshow that is the current administration will do more damage than you could ever imagine the left could do. don’t you worry about that.

    1. >you know that dems don’t really want to take your guns away, right?

      I know exactly the opposite, fool. And I didn’t need any Republican to tell me that.

      1. Lol go put your foil hats back on. I’m a liberal and I don’t think guns should or will be taken. It’s just propaganda.

        1. Compare and contrast:
          – US Democrats in a country with constitutional guarantees re arms
          – Canadian liberals in a country that was on the other side in the American Revolution, and has no such guarantees.

          I see more concern about universal bans in the US, while in Canada partial bans were enacted, then reversed, then re-proposed but not continued with.

          This seems odd…

          1. >This seems odd…

            Why? It’s not complicated. There’s less controversy in Canada because there’s no foundational RKBA there.

            1. Sorry, I should have said there are more efforts toward bans in the US: I didn’t mean to ask about the level of controversy, although that was what had drawn my attention.

              I expected explicit rights to be less disagreed-with!

        2. “Lol go put your foil hats back on. I’m a liberal and I don’t think guns should or will be taken. It’s just propaganda.”

          I tend to agree with Barry,* but I do also understand that Democrats have no credibility as they say this. A couple threads back I noted Obama’s picture with a gun as an indicator of the intentions of the mainstream Democrats, but I don’t believe that’s the case anymore. I’m becoming more and more cynical about the behaviors of both sides; everyone wants the dumbest, most simplistic solution to their problems. Nobody is capable of subtlety or nuance anymore, and leaders need to understand and deal in the actual, complicated workings of the real world.

          On the other hand, the gun-owners aren’t doing their own case any good either. If you won’t come up with an intelligent, complicated solution that takes the real world into consideration, then do the political work necessary to impose it, I don’t see a super-happy future for you guys. It won’t happen immediately, but give it 3 or 5 or 10 more massacres, plus more ill-considered right-wing rhetoric about which politician should be shot, and the 2nd Amendment will definitely lose its luster.

          * My “agreement” with Barry comes with some caveats. I don’t think the political capability to take guns exists, and a serious effort to grab guns has the potential to set off ACW II. I suspect that any serious Democrat knows this. But Beto has undermined any ability to say it with any kind of credibility.

          1. >If you won’t come up with an intelligent, complicated solution that takes the real world into consideration, then do the political work necessary to impose it, I don’t see a super-happy future for you guys.

            No. And not just no, but fuck the rhetorical horse you rode in on.

            Here’s why: once we concede the premise that our rights are contingent on somehow “solving” the problem of firearms crime, we know the goalposts will be perpetually shifted away so that it’s never solved enough. We know how that game goes, and we’re not playing. The Second Amendment says “shall not be infringed”, not “shall not be infringed unless you can solve social problem X”.

            Nobody demands that people using instruments to exercise their free-speech rights solve the problems of (say) slander. Those problems are the remit of the law enforcement system and the courts. If they’re not doing their job, you don’t get to come back to some blogger and say “We’re abrogating your free-speech rights because our anti-slander enforcement is ineffective and you might damage someone’s reputation.”

            It should tell you something about how little we trust any of the potential parties to the kind of bargain you’re describing that a significant minority of us now think a hot civil war would be the lower-risk alternative to conceding our rights. I’m not in that minority myself, but I understand why they think that way and you ought to try to.

            1. It should tell you something about how little we trust any of the potential parties to the kind of bargain you’re describing that a significant minority of us now think a hot civil war would be the lower-risk alternative to conceding our rights. I’m not in that minority myself, but I understand why they think that way and you ought to try to.

              And Troutwaxer, if you think this too extreme to be believable consider one of the steps along that path: If Robert Francis O’Rourke gets his wish and AR-15s are banned a huge number of us are not merely going to not turn them in.

              We are going to convert them to select fire.

              In for a penny, in for a pound. May as well have the good stuff.

              1. >We are going to convert them to select fire.

                Damn you, Ian, now I’m going to have to spend money. I was waffling about whether to get an AR-15 myself, but you have just established that I need to both get off the fence and research the select-fire conversion.

                1. My apologies to Mrs. Raymond then :D.

                  My understanding of the legal situation at the moment is this:

                  Owning an M16 fire control group is perfectly legal (seriously you can find them for sale without much trouble). But the ATF would really prefer it if you didn’t own one unless you have a registered machine gun, pretty please?

                  Putting the M16 FCG in an Ar-15 that doesn’t have an auto-sear will not make it work like a proper machine gun. However it will malfunction on the full auto / burst fire setting, sometimes firing more than one shot, and if the ATF catches you with that they will screw you.

                  Owning a drop in auto-sear, or a normal auto-sear, or a lower with the third hole drilled is deep no-no territory. Naturally if one wishes to join the Secret NFA Club one would prefer a drop in auto-sear; because it doesn’t involve the permanent modification of the lower.

                  Fortunately the AR manufacturers (except for Colt: shame be upon them) have been good about not adding unnecessary impediments to this. Most ARs ship with M16 bolt carriers for example.

                2. Two good places to go look: Palmetto State Armory and Classic Firearms. Since you’re interested in tinkering, I suggest you get an AR-15 in kit form from PSA and build it up yourself. That will give you an appreciation for just how simple the AR-15 is to build, and also give you a leg up on understanding the select fire conversion.

                3. As a Mech Engineer and hobby ‘smith: 1) buy an AR, at least one. Start at PSA and you won’t go wrong. 2) Don’t plan on successfully converting to FA; the mechanics are simple but subtle and you’re likely to ruin lots of parts figuring it out. 3) Don’t plan on being any more effective with an FA rifle than a semi; it takes LOTS of practice to build meaningful competence.

                  If you want to close that gap, try a commercial Binary Trigger. I think you’ll find what everyone else who has one has found: It ~doubles your Dollars-to-Noise conversion rate, but doesn’t really improve your Hits-per-Second.

                  Regarding a drop-in M16 FCG, there are dimensional features in almost all commercial lowers that prevent that. Lightening Link is a clever idea, but again your not gaining much. I’d focus on learning to use the reliable rifle you have rather than fiddling with it.

                  1. >Don’t plan on being any more effective with an FA rifle than a semi; it takes LOTS of practice to build meaningful competence.

                    I’m not actually very interested in full-auto per se. What I’d like to have is the capability to fire 3- to 5-shot bursts.

                    I shot a Thompson gun at a range once. I have a grasp on the issues. :-)

                  2. +1 on binary trigger. I have an Echo in my AR.

                    NFA violations are not something to move into lightly.

                4. Ah yes, the “select-fire conversion”…turning good guns into paperweights & doorstops for many decades ;)

                  Seriously…it isn’t complex, but it does require finesse. Getting the timing right for FA is a fine line between a rifle not working or running away.

                  But if you must plan for such things, make sure your AR has a full auto BCG…or you’re going to look rather foolish ;)

            2. Here’s the thing. I’m about as close to “true neutral” as you’ll find on the subject of gun rights. It’s not my special thing, but I hope I can look at both sides of the argument without too much bias one way or another. I don’t really have an agenda where guns are concerned.

              So here’s the thing. I totally understand your talk about rights and I think we’re in general agreement.* But I’m not talking about rights and the way those work. I’m talking about politics and the way that works. And you’re very right when you say it’s not fair to gun owners, but when were politics ever fair?

              I’m not trying to convince you of anything, including the idea that gun owners should take a disadvantaged position in any kind of negotiation. I’m just telling you what the tea leaves look like to me. That’s all.

              It’s entirely possible that my insights into how the politics will play out are completely wrong; but I’m definitely not your opposite side in this argument. IMHO the very smartest thing the Democrats could do is make it an article of faith that gun control should not be discussed for fifty years and follow through by kicking anyone who discusses the matter out of the party.

              But maybe you can answer a question for me: If Gun Culture 2.0 is into self-defense, and 3.0 aims at defense against the government, who specifically does each culture expect to actually defend themselves against, given that crime has been falling for the last 30 years?

              1. >But maybe you can answer a question for me: If Gun Culture 2.0 is into self-defense, and 3.0 aims at defense against the government, who specifically does each culture expect to actually defend themselves against, given that crime has been falling for the last 30 years?

                In the case of 2.0 it’s “the crime we still have”. Overall crime rates have, as you say, been falling. But they’re not zero, and an armed citizenry is one of the most effective and efficient ways to keep them low and falling.

                You have a slightly mistaken premise. Gun culture 3.0 is not exclusively focused on defense against government. It’s founded more on the model that the world is full of natural predators, including governments, and the way you keep then from getting all up in your grille is by keeping them healthily fearful of the consequences if they try.

                The core difference between 2.0 and 3.0 is not really threat model, though – that divergence is a relatively subtle thing. The core difference is that 3.0 has a “won’t get fooled again” bitterness about it that 2.0 didn’t.

                1. In the case of 2.0 it’s “the crime we still have”. Overall crime rates have, as you say, been falling. But they’re not zero, and an armed citizenry is one of the most effective and efficient ways to keep them low and falling.

                  Overall murder rates are up, we presume due to the Ferguson Effect. The media for various reasons also presents the country as still having a terrible crime problem. As in the Ferguson Effect on big Blue cities, this is also highly variable. My home city’s crime is up due to various things, but in part by design, the city fathers are starving the police and fire departments so they can get another tax increase of fungible money, a gambit that’s been failing for years now.

                  Another relative factor is the greying population. In my concealed carry class, there were a very few young people, but it was mostly older folks, who are no longer under any delusions that they can physically handle criminals (and we’re a very bloody-minded part of the cultural South, where no one should be surprised when e.g. an unarmed man takes on an armed bank robber and foils his plans).

                  1. Speaking of the Ferguson effect, I made a little mistake today. A homeless lady knocked at the door around 5:30 this morning, claiming to be cold and wanting a place to sleep. I saw that she wasn’t wearing anything which resembled cold weather gear and I thought, ‘I can’t let her in, but I can find her some better clothes.’ So I went to the bedroom and found an old T-shirt, a flannel, and a pair of socks.

                    I opened the screen door to give her the items and while managing the dog, who was barking wildly and trying to get at the new person, she managed to slip past me and into the house. (I probably should have gone out a different door and walked around the house to bring her the clothes – what can I say, it was 5:30 am.) She wasn’t terribly coherent and wouldn’t leave after I prompted her several times, so I called the police.

                    When the officer arrived, I had the screen door locked and the dog in the bedroom. Before I unlocked the door – minding the other side of the Ferguson effect – I said very calmly, “She hasn’t done anything violent or threatening. If you could ease her out the door I’d be very grateful.”

                    Fortunately, the officer was a very calm older guy and handled the situation very professionally. But mindful of the recent news I didn’t let him in before prompting him about the methods I wanted.

                    ‘The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.’

                2. >The core difference is that 3.0 has a “won’t get fooled again” bitterness about it that 2.0 didn’t.

                  Then perhaps 4.0 incorporates an element of anticipation: we should anticipate the day when the tech moves from fixed cartridge arms to directed energy/biological code/some other SciFi solution. This is why “arms”, not “muskets” or “firearms” is an important distinction.

                  1. Legally speaking a railgun is not a firearm. And not being a firearm means it is impossible for it to violate the NFA…..

                    Of course the first time someone demonstrates a remotely usable rail-machine-gun there will be a great reeeeeing of calls for them to be banned. I expect the NRA will be leading the charge in that.

                3. Thanks. Does 3.0 mean we can shoot a corporate lobbyist who walks into a Congress-person’s office with a million dollars in “campaign funds?”

                  ‘Cause if so I might get on board.

                  1. >Does 3.0 mean we can shoot a corporate lobbyist who walks into a Congress-person’s office with a million dollars in “campaign funds?”

                    You know better than that. Though I can’t blame you for being wistful about this.

                    1. -Laughs- I do know better than that. But in my perfect world, opening fire on a lobbyist would be considered self-defense! :-)

                    2. The problem is that your “special interest corporate lobbyist” is someone out to protect the interests of many people, just like, say the leftist Common Cause is. There’s nothing fundamentally wrong with that.

                    3. Not to mention this is enshrined in the 1st Amendment:

                      Congress shall make no law … abridging … the right of the people … to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

                      Trying to remove money from politics is folly, and as we’ve been seeing for a long time, transparency requirements result in mob action against people who support the “wrong” politicians or causes, and are not used against clear abuses like Obama’s acceptance of foreign donations, something I confirmed for my home town.

          2. “Nobody is capable of subtlety or nuance anymore”

            That’s because the grabbers use “nuance” as a pretext for “we’re going to be sneaky about taking away your guns”.

            As I’ve been saying for a while now, when a leftist says “nuance”, I grab my wallet and my crotch, because they’re out to screw me or rob me.

          3. I missed this first time around

            >Nobody is capable of subtlety or nuance anymore

            Oh, we’re plenty capable of it. It’s just that decades of deception and betrayals have destroyed any willingness we might once have had to exercise that capability. All it got us was screwed – even for those of us who are much younger than me and weren’t there the folk memory is very vivid.

            You’re talking to hard, embittered people, Troutwaxer. Welcome to gun culture 3.0. It didn’t get that way by accident.

          4. You keep telling us we have to surrender something now so we can hopefully not surrender a lot more later.

            Why should we surrender anything, to anyone? We have the folks who want us dead outnumbered and outgunned. We ca defeat a lot of their stupid ideas simply by staying home and ignoring the Left’s rampant stupidity. There aren’t enough cops, enough guns, or enough jails, to hold us all, not that anyone actually knows how many guns are in circulation or how many tens of millions of us have armed themselves. We are the most heavily armed nation on the face of the Earth. Finally, we have the mixed blessing of having been treated like trash for years, if not decades, so we now clearly see who our enemies are.

            If this goes hot, it will be horrible, but our defeat is far from a foregone conclusion.

        3. All right then, how do you explain what Beto said? What’s your interpretation of “hell yes, we’re going to take your AR-15s”, and the subsequent ovation from the crowd?

    2. you know that dems don’t really want to take your guns away, right? thats a story the GOP concocted on their own to drive fear into the hearts of their constituents.

      Then why do crowds of Democrats cheer wildly at the idea?

        1. >News flash: they don’t.

          Yeah? Can you explain the wild audience cheering after O’Rourke says “You’re damn right we’re coming for your AR-15s?” Can you explain three other Democratic contenders immediately signing on for this? Can you explain Hillary Clinton talking up “Australian-style” compulsory buybacks during her 2016 campaign?

          Can you explain 30 years before that of Democratic two-facedness on the issue – saying they aimed at total bans on entire categories of firearms to sympathetic audiences in semi-private, then issuing utterly unconvincing denials of same in public?

          I was watching this behavior back in the 70s and 80s well before I was a gun owner – hell, I’m pretty sure I noticed it before I broke with the Democrats, back when gun rights were of only theoretical concern to me. But I had eyes and ears. The last Democrat I might have trusted on this issue was Henry Jackson; I was a volunteer for his campaign in ’76.

          And you talk of Republican propaganda, but the Republicans have been wet squishes on gun rights. If this weren’t so we’d have national concealed-carry reciprocity today, and no idiotic bans on suppressors, and we’d still be able to carry on airplanes.

        2. News flash: endless video evidence of democrat crowds cheering for gun confiscation.

          You can’t duck reality any longer. Your gaslighting has failed.

    3. You have it exactly backwards. When I was thinking aobut who to vote for in November 2016, I decided that we would not survive four years of Hillary, and would survive four (and likely eight) of Trump. I held my nose and voted for him.

      Next time, I won’t be holding my nose while I vote for him.

    4. One of the worst problems with this gaslighting is that you’re trying to convince us that at the national level [a major faction] doesn’t want to take our guns away. When we know very well from half a century of history that both major factions want to take our guns away, and failing that, persecute gun owners as much as they can get away with it.

      Let’s ignore FDR’s NFA and get to modern, living history, as in both esr and I were alive for these events, in my case as a child of a gun owning family watching it closely starting in the early 1970s. For the Gun Control Act of 1968, only 10 less Republicans voted for it than Democrats, 147 vs. 157, and many more of the latter voted against it, 39 vs. 79. It started to be used to persecute gun owners and gun dealers after Nixon imposed sugar price supports, which largely turned moonshining into a hobby, and rather than downsizing, the BATF moved its goons used to busting up stills to enforcing this shiny new law.

      There’s lots more history like that I can detail, a book’s worth (and it’s been done), but moving to the present, it’s clear Trump is still the liberal NYC Democrat gun grabber he was before his party switch, the one who stated in a book he wanted to ban “assault weapons”. He states the 2nd Amendment is precious, but in every single particular he’s firmly against gun owners, only his wish to be popular, I suppose, the need to get reelected, and the bad faith WRT impeachment (as he’s shown, he won’t cooperate with politicians who are at the same time trying to illegitimately destroy him), is keeping him from acting out on his frequently stated desires. If the Republicans retain the Senate, and/or regain the House, and he gets reelected, I’m not at all sure we’ll be better off than scenarios where for example a Democrat becomes President and Republicans in the Congress oppose him on general principles.

      Federal judges, with very few exceptions, whatever party appointed them, are also overall viciously anti-gun, with few exceptions covering a very few states, the 2nd Amendment does not in practice exist. And the only firearms 2nd Amendment case they’ve accepted an appeal of since McDonald can be decided on utterly narrow grounds, it’s about NYC forbidding a class of gun licensees from taking their guns out of the city. And the Solicitor General, Trump’s official administration lawyer, has carved out 10 minutes of the plaintiff’s oral arguing time to beg the Supremes to not touch Federal gun laws, with their invidious geographic restrictions.

      And you said you’re a liberal, i.e. that you’re a liar. Go peddle your lies elsewhere, we aren’t buying them, we will never believe a word you say, including ‘and’ and ‘the’.

      1. >And the only firearms 2nd Amendment case they’ve accepted an appeal of since McDonald can be decided on utterly narrow ground

        While that is true, you clearly don’t understand why the grabbers are so panicked by the NYSPRA case that they’re willing to threaten the Supreme Court over it.

        The fact pattern of the case may allow for a narrow finding not applicable outside NY, but it’s going be to very hard for the Justices to evade the issue of what level of scrutiny is appropriate for such laws – an issue ducked in the Heller majority opinion.

        What the grabbers are terrified of – and I think rightly – is that SCOTUS will set a strict-scrutiny standard resembling that applied to laws and regulations touched by the First Amendment. Then they’d remand several other pending cases back to lower courts with instructions to reconsider under strict scrutiny.

        One of those cases could gut the NFA. Another could sharply curtail the BATF’s ability to make binding regulations. For the grabbers, that’s the nightmare – a scrutiny-level finding that would put a lot more teeth in Heller.

        1. What I might claim is that you clearly don’t understand how much the Federal judiciary loathes guns and gun owners. Why accept this appeal now, after denying cert for 9 years, to the point of reversing one of Heller’s most important findings, that government’s can’t require you to store your gun in such a way that it’s not available for home self-defense (San Francisco’s “safe storage” law)?

          If they were to set a level of scrutiny of any strictness, they would also be signaling they were suddenly willing to accept appeals based on that. Instead, and what I’m expecting based on their past behavior, is that they’ll wave the magic wand of the Commerce Clause, say this is patently ridiculous as for example a lower level Federal judge said about the New York state SAFE law’s 7 round magazine limit, and continue ignoring the real issues.

          Maybe they felt stung by Thomas’ February 2018 dissent pointing out how many 1st Amendment cases they regularly accept, and how few 2nd Amendment, with no firearms related ones, but that’s not how cuckservatives roll, and they denied cert to plenty of 2nd Amendment firearms appeals cases since then, including one after Kavanaugh was seated.

          If they don’t want to hear 2nd Amendment firearms appeals, and they palpably don’t, why encourage more that’ll embarrass them further? As well as prompt the Democrats to pack the court the next time they have enough power, which I assume includes ending the ever more tattered Senate cloture (filibuster) rules.

          1. What I might claim is that you clearly don’t understand how much the Federal judiciary loathes guns and gun owners.[……..]

            Go forth and read what is happening instead of wallowing in despair.

            Who am I supposed to believe?

            That I see the grabbers resorting to desperation measures, which matches the fact that along every other facet of the culture war they are losing ground and resorting to ever more overt power plays to try and stem the tide.

            Or that some guy showing all the signs of battered conservative syndrome says that all is lost?

            1. You would do a lot better if you were to reply to what I actually say in plain text, instead of what you psychoanalyze me to be. That you can’t, aside from pointing out quite correctly that the gun grabbers are worried about what the Supremes might do, as anyone who knows anything about what can happen in a courtroom should be, says a lot about the weakness of your position.

              And to that I’d counter that NYC is only willing to say they’ll change the law, they haven’t been able to bring themselves to actually make it technically moot. Probably because that’s truly a desperation “that trick never works” move, because courts widely recognize that’s not a good faith permanent change, vs. something maybe enforced with a court decision.

              Weasel word “maybe”, because, as I note, the Supremes have refused to enforce McDonald in the 9 years since they handed it down.

              I repeat, what’s different this time? We still have at minimum a Roberts + the “liberal” 4 bloc, plus a bit of evidence saying that Kavanaugh, a former clerk for Kennedy and hand picked by Kennedy to replace himself, is making enough of a difference to grant cert in other 2nd Amendment firearms cases where the essentials would have to be addressed.

      2. it’s clear Trump is still the liberal NYC Democrat gun grabber he was before his party switch

        He is a Democrat who was left behind by the party. People keep saying this as a condemnation of him, not realizing that it is actually a condemnation of the entire right wing establishment (including themselves some of the time) for being so utterly and completely worthless that it took a party switching dem to do all the stuff they claimed they wanted for decades. After all: the left might have called them poopyheads or something.

        I believe the meme is “Trump has enacted more gun control than Obama did in his 8 years”. While possibly true (AK-74 owners would probably be a little slower to agree on that one) it is deeply misleading.

        Obama was a Democrat, spewing full throated support for gun control. This means that civil rights activists were always ready to jump on anything. Trump is a Republican, claiming to love the 2nd. So everyone goes to sleep because there clearly isn’t a threat.

        Or in the case of the treasonous slime-weasels at the NRA; push for more gun control. Yeah, Trump doesn’t get all the blame for this one: he is a 1.0 (maybe 1.5?) who thinks the NRA is the be-all and end-all of 2A support. So when they come a-knockin’ with gun control proposals he is all for it.

        The accusation that Trump is “just another grabber” cannot be true. No grabber is a million years would ever say “shoot back”, even if they were trying to make friends with 2a supporters. This is why I say that he is one of the remnant 1.0ers: he clearly understands part of the second. Yet he utterly fails to recognize its full extent. Actually some of his comments in the last few months sound like he understands a bit more than he lets on; he pulled the rug out from under Red Flag Laws with a single tweet….

        This is actually a perfect place to revive the 1.0/2.0/3.0 discussion: Trump is a perfect example of the brighter sort of remnant 1.0.

        The people who go to sleep when a republican gets into office instead of trying to start repealing stuff are remnant 2.0ers. Winning at all — let alone bigly — is a concept that does not exist in their view of the world.

        The people who pushed things like the HPA (before the GOP killed it), and are driving up suppressor usage to heights never before seen in this country are 3.0.

        Note my usage of “remnant”. A remnant 1.0 is a different animal from a 1.0. Back when 1.0 was the state of the art of political technology “Fudd” was not a concept with much meaning behind it. Then under pressure whatever percentage of the gun owning population evolves to 2.0. After that the people who stay 1.0 are the Fudds and Trumps of the world.

        Similarly when 2.0 was the state of the art there was no shame in it. Now remnant 2.0ers get slotted into, depending on the speaker’s generosity, either “beaten down by the long fight” or “cowardly surrender monkey”.

        Presumably when 4.0 happens and everyone is driving railgun battleships around 3.0ers will be seen as low-horizon milquetoasts as well.

        1. Obama was a Democrat, spewing full throated support for gun control… Trump is a Republican, claiming to love the 2nd.

          The first claim, when compared to Trump’s statements and actions, is total bullshit, the “spewing” part. While of course we all knew he was lying, and he made many anti-gun statements especially after having more “flexibility” after being reelected, Obama to my and other’s memory never publicly denied that the 2nd Amendment “gave” us a right to own guns “… and fish” (extemporaneously, in one one memorable 2008 town meeting or whatever). Trump does every time he, for example, says or follows “Take the guns first, go through due process second.” Due process that won’t exist for us peons who don’t have tens of thousands of dollars and years to fight a Red Flag seizure and RKBA removal in the courts.

          See also the bump stock ban and its dangerous precedent. Obama started to do many things like that, last I remember was a proposal on banning SS109/M855 green tip ammo, but always backed down, except for one measure WRT to Social Security recipients, which Trump and the Congress reversed, as I recall in their regulation shredding period after inauguration.

          I believe the meme is “Trump has enacted more gun control than Obama did in his 8 years”.

          It’s the simple truth. Obama + Democratic Congress = less gun control, concealed carry in National Parks, and carriage of guns on Amtrak (thanks, W). Trump + Republican Congress = more gun control, FixNICS and the bump stock ban.

          Stop pissing down my back and telling me its raining.

          1. but always backed down

            Out of the goodness of his heart.

            It would be nice to talk to you rather than the stockholm syndrome.

        2. With regards to politicians and gun rights, I think a major problem isn’t just with President Trump, but our perceptions generally. We tend to look at the Parties and say “Democrats are enemies of gun rights, and Republicans are friends”.

          It would be far better to observe that Democrats are straight-up enemies of gun rights, Republicans are very likely enemies of gun rights, and in the blue moon that a Libertarian gets into office, that Libertarian is probably an enemy of gun rights. We should trust no politician with our rights, no matter what they say.

          Always be vigilant. Always hold politicians’ feet to the fire. Always remember that the Constitution and the Bill of Rights was written as a restriction on politicians regardless of Party, because you could never trust politicians to do the right thing.

        3. >Trump is a perfect example of the brighter sort of remnant 1.0.

          That’s an interesting way to analyze Trump. I think I agree with it, but I’ll need to some more thinking and maybe more research on the topic to be sure.

          1. The problem is that he’d be a subset of a subset of 1.0 that’s so tiny and unrepresentative that I don’t think the analysis is useful. As far as we know, Trump is one of the ~60,000 New York City residents who was granted a handgun license, we assume for self-defense. (BTW, I counted the numbers myself after the full sets of handgun and long gun licensees was leaked, this is out of 8 million in the city, or as I like to point out, a significantly smaller fraction than the Soviets trusted their subjects in Tbilisi, Georgia).

            As far as we can tell, his exposure to 1.0 hunting or bulleye target shooting is effectively non-existent, what he knew directly before the campaign would be from his son Eric. Compare to JFK who liked to shoot targets at Camp David and got his own (very nice :-) CMP M1 Garand, or the Bushes who apparently hunted quail (which is not an easy sport). Reagan would also be like Trump, a celebrity who slept with a revolver and police outside his home after taking on the Communists as head of the Screen Actors Guild (and, yes, they killed and/or kidnapped plenty of US citizens in the US), and did not take kindly to Black Panthers openly carrying long guns in the state Capitol. Carter would also be from 1.0, but his team was smart enough not to push the issue despite desiring to ban handguns during that 1970’s peak of gun control.

        4. >> “Presumably when 4.0 happens and everyone is driving railgun battleships around 3.0ers will be seen as low-horizon milquetoasts as well.”

          Bah, you 4.0 holdouts are pansies. We 5.0ers know that you’re never fully dressed without your pocket nuke. :P

          Joking aside, though, it does raise a serious question. Do 3.0ers think there should be any limits to what a private citizen can have? If so, what are they?

          1. >Joking aside, though, it does raise a serious question. Do 3.0ers think there should be any limits to what a private citizen can have? If so, what are they?

            There are two classes of weapons. Those so expensive and difficult to produce that prohibition is unnecessary, and the rest – for which prohibition is basically useless because sufficiently determined villains will ignore and circumvent the prohibition, leaving disarmed only people that should not be disarmed. You don’t prevent drunk driving by forbidding sober people from driving.

            I might, speaking theoretically, be willing to allow the interdiction of certain kinds of area-effect WMDs on the grounds that even storing them is a public hazard. But I am not willing for the predicate “is a weapon” to be part of that test, lest it be turned unto a suppressive loophole.

            1. >> “I might, speaking theoretically, be willing to allow the interdiction of certain kinds of area-effect WMDs on the grounds that even storing them is a public hazard.”

              Bio-weapons, perhaps?

              I wouldn’t necessarily restrict this to WMDs, though. Unstable explosives – or even certain guns that are so badly designed they have a tendency to go off by themselves – are not the sort of thing I’d want people walking down the street with.

              On an unrelated note, is there any way (on my end, without you having to make changes) to view the comments in a wordpress blog in order of posting? Sorting through nearly 800 nested comments to find the new ones is getting old.

              1. >Bio-weapons, perhaps? I wouldn’t necessarily restrict this to WMDs, though. Unstable explosives – or even certain guns that are so badly designed they have a tendency to go off by themselves – are not the sort of thing I’d want people walking down the street with.

                You are paralleling my thinking.

                >On an unrelated note, is there any way (on my end, without you having to make changes) to view the comments in a wordpress blog in order of posting?

                Alas, no. Only the admin can change that, and it’s all or nothing.

                1. >> “You are paralleling my thinking.”

                  Yeah, I think the guiding principle here is “can this thing go off and hurt someone without being used that way intentionally?

                  >> “Alas, no. Only the admin can change that, and it’s all or nothing.”

                  Curses.

                  BTW, did you see my comment suggesting alternate names for no-mind?

                  1. >BTW, did you see my comment suggesting alternate names for no-mind?

                    Yes. Unfortunately we’re fighting a lot of deeply-entrenched martial arts tradition here. I don’t think any of those are at all likely to displace no-mind/empty-mind/mushin. I speak of “serene mind” not because I hope any hope that the term will prevail, but as a way of explaining the concept.

                    1. >> “Yes. Unfortunately we’re fighting a lot of deeply-entrenched martial arts tradition here. I don’t think any of those are at all likely to displace no-mind/empty-mind/mushin.”

                      Right. Unlike with ideomania we’re naming a new concept rather than trying to rename an old one. Didn’t think of that.

                      >> “I speak of “serene mind” not because I hope any hope that the term will prevail, but as a way of explaining the concept.”

                      Okay, but like I said I don’t think serene mind does a good job of that. If you’re going to call it something other than no-mind just as an explanatory aid, why not use a term that explains it better?

                      …Actually, perhaps I should ask exactly why you think serene is the better term to describe it. I might be missing something.

                      I should also suggest moving that conversation to the top level. The nested comment structure really doesn’t work well for some things.

                    2. >> “Unlike with ideomania we’re naming a new concept rather than trying to rename an old one.”

                      Got that backwards, and didn’t realize it until the chance to edit timed out.

              2. On an unrelated note, is there any way (on my end, without you having to make changes) to view the comments in a wordpress blog in order of posting? Sorting through nearly 800 nested comments to find the new ones is getting old.

                I just do Ctrl+F on the timestamps.

            2. I might, speaking theoretically, be willing to allow the interdiction of certain kinds of area-effect WMDs on the grounds that even storing them is a public hazard. But I am not willing for the predicate “is a weapon” to be part of that test, lest it be turned unto a suppressive loophole.

              I’ve made this argument a few times, and have now sharpened the logic to a vicious point as this: “The only branch of the government which I would theoretically concede having any remit for regulation under the 2nd Amendment is the EPA, to ensure that the biochemical weapons commonly known as ‘pesticides’ and ‘herbicides’ are being properly stored and used.” It’s much, much harder for my interlocutor to overlook the suppression effect of regulation when I explicitly call familiar / desirable products as being a WMD….

  62. This is rich. A Beto tweet from yesterday:

    Yesterday, people brought assault weapons to our rally at Kent State—where 4 students were shot dead in 1970.

    I told them nobody should show up with an AK-47 or an AR-15 to seek to intimidate us in our own democracy.

    We need to buy back every single one of them.

    Wait until he finds out who did the 1970 shootings at Kent State!

    1. He is the gift that keeps on giving. When this is all over he should be given the Congressional Medal of Honor.

  63. Not taking sides in this matter, but I personally don’t think the general public needs weaponry typically reserved for war / military.

    But hey, if they want to go out in their back yard and play grown up army boy – then more power to them. I don’t really care

    1. Not taking sides in this matter, [except for the part where I am going to immediately take a side]

      FTFY liar.

      1. Maybe it was hard for you to understand, sorry about that.

        I am not taking sides, but I have a belief that the super-powered guns are best left to war. But each to their own. I don’t think anyone should have them taken away.

        Do I need to be clearer?

        1. So what you’re saying is you’re okay with my owning a semi-automatic AR-10 in .308 Winchester, but you’re not okay with my owning a semi-automatic M1 Garand in .30-06 or a bolt-action Springfield M1903 in .30-06.

          That’s a really weird objection you have. Care to explain why you object to me owning two actual US Army rifles but not a civilian deer hunting rifle, given that they all fire just about the same bullet at just about the same velocity?

        2. Beliefs are nice, but an informed opinion based on a fundamental understanding of the subject matter is preferable.

    2. Profoundly ignorant. There is no modern firearm that doesn’t have a military pedigree, at least in part, in its design.

      And no modern Military is equipped with AR-15s.

      Care to offer a meaningful definition of “weaponry typically reserved for war / military.” that can be legislated on? Or are you as full of BS as Beto?

      1. The Constitutional answer is pretty simple: the body politic should be armed so well that ruling them without their consent is completely impossible, no matter where you bring your army from (“foreign or domestic”). That’s what’s necessary for “the security of a free state.”

        In practical terms, we should possess approximately whatever the military is using these days. Muskets in 1790, Garand/BAR/M2 in 1950, M4/M14/M240/M249 in 2019.

        1. Good points, but I’m trying to understand just why Mr. barry thinks he’s competent to determine what *anybody* “needs”. From what I’m seeing, he doesn’t know enough to be wrong.

  64. I don’t understand the constant barrage of fire against the left. I think that everyone is forgetting that we are a democracy, and that in order to succeed – everyone should have a voice, conflicting viewpoints, which are basically akin to checks and balances.

    Right now it is just a battle of wills. There are a lot of democrats who are just as much to blame as a lot of the people in the GOP. Dividing us by targeting fear and telling constituents that democrats are trying to ruin the US is not going to help anyone. It definitely won’t help the country get out of the toilet it is currently in.

    A president that can work with both/all parties is going to be the strongest for the country, otherwise there is always going to be at least 50% of the people being pissed off and/or dissatisfied. That is why Bill Clinton was a strong president. Sure, he made a couple/lot of mistakes that resulted in him being impeached by the house. Did he deserve it? Maybe, may be not. He was playing with his dick. Trump on the other hand has invited a foreign power to get involved in our electorate system to manipulate the outcome of the 2020 election. And I have seen the transcript. While he doesn’t outright say ‘i withhold military funding until you find dirt on biden’, he did imply it – several times. That is treason. That is impeachable.

    Hell, it makes Nixon look like a playground tiff in second grade over a stick of bubblegum.

    And given the results of the investigation by Mueller, [which while was I felt a solid investigation, and settled with outcome] he was -NOT- the president of the country when that all went down. Therefore, that is not what I would consider treasonous.

    The fact that he did this while he is in office, is a clear violation of his oath of office. The WH knew this, that is why they tried to cover up/get rid of the records of the phone call. That tells us clearly that the whistleblowers claim has significant merit. Then the ‘president’ starts threatening the whistleblowers by drawing contrasts to spies/espionage who were executed for such? Really? This has projection written all over it.

    The man is in fear. The man is crumbling. He needs to be removed from office, before he gets us all killed – or incites a war that you may actually end up needing those guns for, which like I said before – I am not against you or anyone else having them.

    And before you say I only want him out of office because hes a GOP, that is not true at all. Who do you think will take his place? While I sure as heck don’t agree with a lot of Pence’s policies and beliefs, he is not crazy like the current dumpster fire. He is less likely to get us all killed.

    That’s all I want. I want to go on every day with not being killed in a sudden outbreak of conflict, either from external actors, or our own civil war.

    He is nuts.

    1. I think that everyone is forgetting that we are a democracy, and that in order to succeed – everyone should have a voice, conflicting viewpoints, which are basically akin to checks and balances.

      You are forgetting that we are not a Democracy. And the point of the Bill of Rights was to completely remove certain topics from legitimate political discussion. Access to weapons was one of those.

      Now I’m a generous soul: I’ll stop telling the grabbers to fuck off as a matter of course once the NFA, GCA, and GFSA are gone. After that I’m willing to at least talk to them a bit before going ahead and building an Iowa-class.

    2. Let me guess: you’re being paid by CTR to post crap like this.

      > And I have seen the transcript. While he doesn’t outright say ‘i withhold military funding until you find dirt on biden’, he did imply it – several times. That is treason. That is impeachable.
      So you agree that what former VP Biden did–threatening to withhold aid from the Ukraine if they didn’t stop investigating his son–was treasonous? Or that what three Democratic senators did–threaten to withhold aid from the Ukraine if they didn’t help Hillary with her phony Trump investigtion–was also treasonous? Glad we’re on the same page, here.

      > that is why they tried to cover up/get rid of the records of the phone call.
      What are you talking about? Trump not only released the records of that call, he even released the whistleblower’s complaint, and the IG’s report on the complaint. I guess gaslighting is par for the course, as far as you’re concerned, Mr. CTR Shill.

      1. Mr. CTR Shill

        You think so? BTW, it’s Shareblue Media now, more properly Shariablue.

        If so, it’s still a failure of the ML system that directed “barry” to this blog. It’s not a forum like Reddit where constant shouting can drive the good faith participants out, and “barry” is not following a script that’ll convince anyone smarter than a turtle to his side. But if he’s never been seen before, he sure does look like a shill.

        “barry”, what prompted to start posting here today?

        1. Yep, that’s the one. I actually don’t know if he really is one of CTR/Shareblue’s concern trolls, but as ‘H’ remarked above, his behavior certainly fits the profile of a shill like we’d see from there.

    3. I don’t understand the constant barrage of fire against the left.

      Well, that might be because you’re ignorant. The Left killed a bare minimum of 100 million of “its own” people in the 20th Century, and it’s clear to anyone with eyes to see they want to repeat that sort of thing here in the US. Curiously, their wild guesses as to the fraction requiring outright killing has consistently been around 10%, from Bill Ayers in the early 1970s, in who’s living room Obama launched his political career, to Hillary’s irredeemable fraction of Trump’s supporters.

      You may be willfully ignorant instead of lying about this, but don’t think the targets of your political allies aren’t.

      I think that everyone is forgetting that we are a democracy

      Yep, you’re pig ignorant, we’re a Constitutional republic. And what on earth made you think this topic was a suitable place to defecate tiresome ORANGE MAN BAD ravings?

    4. Trump on the other hand has invited a foreign power to get involved in our electorate system to manipulate the outcome of the 2020 election. And I have seen the transcript. While he doesn’t outright say ‘i withhold military funding until you find dirt on biden’,

      So Biden, while a sitting VP, threatens to stop aid to Ukraine unless the prosecutor investigating corruption at the company his son is on the board of. But according to you Trump is nuts because he wants the new Ukrainian president to investigate this.

      1. Here’s the real deal. Both Trump and Biden are unfit to hold office. And they’ve both just proved it.

        The real story is that Biden represented the U.S., the E.U., and multiple other governments who disliked the Ukranian attorney general; he was just bringing the Ukrainians the bad news. But given that Biden’s son was on the board of a Ukrainian company, Biden should not have accepted that job* – that lack of cluefulness is your proof that Biden shouldn’t be POTUS – and you’ll find editorials going back to 2015 noting that it was a conflict of interest for Biden that his son worked for a Ukrainian company.

        What’s very interesting to me is that Hunter Biden took the job on the gas company’s board after the Ukraine vs. Russia issues made the headlines in 2014, and note that Hunter is a partner at Boies, Flexner and Schiller, a very big, very important white-shoe DC law firm, and this does bring up some very interesting questions for those who are suspicious of such things. Who, exactly, was Hunter Biden representing and why?

        * The secretary of state would have been just fine as an envoy for that message.

        1. Sadly, the only alternatives are hard-left out and out socialists. We need very badly to avoid electing a socialist for president: you an vote your way into socialism, but you have to shoot your way out of it. Just look at Venezuela.

          We’re already close enough to a shooting civil war. We don’t need to push one over the edge.

    5. > While he doesn’t outright say ‘i withhold military funding until you find dirt on biden’, he did imply it – several times. That is treason. That is impeachable.

      In what way is implying that he would withhold military funding from another country “levying war upon against the United Statets, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort”? There’s a very specific definition of treason, and nothing that Trump did on that phone call possibly rises to that level.

      1. He was using his power as President, and the influence that office has with other world leaders, in an attempt to discredit a candidate for an upcoming election.

        Is this part of Trump’s glorious plan for revenge PapayaSF kept rambling about? If so I hope he goes through with it. It’s a quick path to being booted out of office.

        1. Oh but it turns out Trump–unlike some people (*cough*Biden*cough*)–never actually threatened to withhold aid to Ukraine. Seriously, the Ukrainians are saying they only heard about this just now.

          Also, the Ukrainians (re)started their corruption probe of Hunter Biden and his company before Trump called and asked about it.

        2. Yes, I understand what he is being accused of. The question was it was way does that conform to the definition of treason? How is he levying war upon the US? Which of the US’ enemies is he adhering to?

          Just saying Orange Man Bad did Bad Orange Man things is not sufficient for a charge of treason.

          1. It also signals the death of the Republic. Jeff Read is telling us that the top Federal law enforcement officer, the President under the unitary form the Constitution dictates for the Executive branch of the Federal government (compare to almost all states where the Attorney General is independently elected and doesn’t answer to the Governor), cannot take any actions about the (boasted about on video!!!) crimes of a member of the ruling class who’s running for an office.

            Does anyone really think a system that has removed almost all its feedback is going to end well? See for example this essay on what happens when an institution becomes “Too Corrupt to Fail”:

            At some point, another dynamic kicks in. Those who cannot tolerate the corruption, but lack the courage to do anything about it, are boiled off. They move on, leaving behind a mix of cowards and corrupt. Of course, the corrupt flock to corruption, so the institution becomes a magnate for the type who like rule breaking. Before long, you go from a system where rule breaking is not tolerated and the rule breakers fear exposure, to a system where rule breaking is normalized and rule enforcers fear exposure.

            […]

            Put another way, the corrupt organization or system becomes too corrupt to fail, as everyone has some reason to protect it. For some at the heart of the corruption, the reason is obvious, but all around them are people who fear being shamed for having said nothing or fear being implicated for having looked the other way. The fallacy of the sunk cost becomes an operating principle. Everyone assumes there can be no turning back, so the corruption accelerates until eventually it does collapse.

          2. “Treason” is a particular crime under the constitution.

            “Treachery” is the word everyone is looking for (whether for or against Trump.)

            1. Defining Trump’s actions as treachery is rather begging the question, and requires an implicit acceptance of the idea that it is a betrayal of the public trust for Republican presidents to investigate people related to the Democrat party. I think I’ll pass on that one.

              Nevertheless, barry is the one that used the word treason and he’s the one who needs to justify it.

              1. I’m just being pedantic. Trump is merely corrupt and Biden is… I’ll be kind… insufficiently tuned in.

                1. Either it’s acceptable to use your political office to encourage foreign nations to investigate potential criminals and turncoats who happen to be involved in opposing political campaigns or it isn’t. If it is, this phonecall isn’t evidence of Trump’s corruption. If it isn’t, then Trump is corrupt, but so are Obama and those Democratic senators who sent the threatening letter to Ukraine in 2018, explicitly demanding they investigate Trump during an election year or the senators would hold up military funding. If that’s the case, Trump shouldn’t be the only one going down for this.

                  Biden, though, was the guy who thought it was perfectly okay for his son to take a job at a large bank that regularly did politics with his Senate sub-committee and then fly with Dad on official US airplanes to drum up business for his investment firm. If he’s that sloppy about avoiding the appearance of conflicts-of-interest, I assume his actual corruption is much worse.

                  1. Biden is less obvious with his poor behaviors than Trump, but both men are past the point where I’d consider them to be people of such integrity that I would vote for them. I think Douglas Adams said it best:

                    “”On its world, the people are people. The leaders are lizards. The people hate the lizards and the lizards rule the people.”

                    “Odd,” said Arthur, “I thought you said it was a democracy.”

                    “I did,” said Ford. “It is.”

                    “So,” said Arthur, hoping he wasn’t sounding ridiculously obtuse, “why don’t people get rid of the lizards?”

                    “It honestly doesn’t occur to them,” said Ford. “They’ve all got the vote, so they all pretty much assume that the government they’ve voted in more or less approximates to the government they want.”

                    “You mean they actually vote for the lizards?”

                    “Oh yes,” said Ford with a shrug, “of course.”

                    “But,” said Arthur, going for the big one again, “why?”

                    “Because if they didn’t vote for a lizard,” said Ford, “the wrong lizard might get in.””

        3. Is this part of Trump’s glorious plan for revenge PapayaSF kept rambling about?

          Yes, I think it’s a trap. What they accuse Trump of, they will be proven to have done: corruption, collusion with foreign agents, more. Biden, Ukraine, CrowdStrike, Hillary’s emails (now being re-investigated), the Clinton Foundation, and more connect to corruption, the Russian collusion hoax, and Spygate.

          Pelosi knows it’s a trap, thus her reluctance. The left wing is emboldened, but about 30 House Democrats are in districts Trump won and thus vulnerable. Impeachment splits Democrats, but unifies Republicans and many moderates and blue collar Democrats who see it as a pointless spectacle over nothing.

          This also makes sense from a persuasion point of view. Spygate is too huge and dramatic of a scandal. The public has to be emotionally prepared, otherwise the whole thing will seem crazy. So Trump has trolled Democrats into apocalyptic rhetoric, which changes the optics of what will happen from preemptive strike (“Trump is using government to attack opponents, like a dictator!”) into a defensive counterattack. Trump hosted a hit reality TV show for 15 years. He knows drama and storytelling.

          Some say this is really about RBG, said to be nearing death. “Trump can’t nominate someone for SCOTUS because he’s under impeachment!” But I think that’s just one aspect. The hysteria is really because top Democrats (and the MSM) know they’re trapped. Horowitz, Huber, Durham, and Barr have the goods, and are coming for them. The next year will make Watergate look like a hiccup, but this time it’s Democrats facing disgrace and indictments. Trump wins reelection and takes back the House. Enjoy the show!

          1. I no longer “trust the plan” and believe in 4D underwater chess, to the extent I ever did. Horowitz has no real power, Huber as of a few months ago was reported to have convened no grand juries (required for indictments, sealed or not), Durham, well, I’ve stopped following this boob bait, and Barr is totally corrupt Deep State. For example, going back to the domain of this blog entry, he went out of his way to protect Lon Horiuchi, and is even more eager for gun control than Trump. But I’m willing to be surprised.

            Hillary’s emails (now being re-investigated)

            Officially, the investigation never stopped. Started by Obama 3.5 years ago, it takes time to sift though millions of emails, and determine which contain unmarked classified information. Only now is the State Department’s security unit sending out “We think you screwed up” letters to 130+ people.

          2. You know that if Trump uses his office to go after his political opponents, that’s like, super impeachable, right? Like I said, I hope he does it. He’s probably smug enough to think he’d pulled off another Xanatos Gambit, all while giving his opponents enough rope to hang him with.

            1. That would be why he simply displays a shelf with various kind of rope on it, and then all of his political opponents fall over each other and break their necks trying to get to it.

              I still haven’t ruled out the possibility that he is funding the campaigns of all the Democratic primary contenders…

            2. > You know that if Trump uses his office to go after his political opponents, that’s like, super impeachable, right?

              And it wasn’t when Obama did that? Or when three DemonraticDemocratic senators did exactly what the D’s would later accuse Trump of?

              Also, that only applies when the opponents are actually, you know, innocent–like Trump turned out to be. Biden, on the other hand, is hardly innocent.

              Seriously, it’s always the same with you D partisans. Every time an R goes after an enemy, especially if the enemy is actually guilty of a crime, you scream and whine about how it’s illegal and unfair and the R shouldn’t be able to do that. But when a D does that… crickets. Or worse: you’re actively cheering him on.

              I think this sentiment captures your way of thinking best: Ugh. Me tribe good. You tribe bad. Ugh. Well, fuck your tribe!

              Friggin’ lefty cavemen… destroying everything we’ve achieved since the Romans…

            3. >He’s probably smug enough to think he’d pulled off another Xanatos Gambit, all while giving his opponents enough rope to hang him with.

              Trump’s entire Presidency, and his candidacy before that, has been a remarkably successful Xanatos Gambit. Why shouldn’t he stick with what works for him?

    6. This Tweet puts ORANGE MAN BAD into its proper context:

      QOTD: “So, I turn on the radio and this preacher is talking about how the sky is going to burn and the seas are going boil, and about how the great Defiler and Corrupter is upon the land and I listened to that shit for FORTY FIVE MINUTES before I realized it was NPR.”

      Seriously, Leftism is a religion without a deity.

  65. TL;DR

    Oh, and I think Beto is nuts. And I love GW. So there.

    I am a liberal, but I feel that way. Also keep your guns. Just stop going insane and using them on innocent people.

    Deal with it

    1. Oh, and I think Beto is nuts. And I love GW. So there.

      Your completely transparent attempt at concern trolling isn’t fooling anyone.

  66. Well, as long as the issue of Trump and impeachment has come up, here’s an article that explains the Democrat’s cunning plan, “How The House Plans To Use Its ‘Inquiry’ To Instigate Impeachment.

    It hinges on how Trump handled the Russia claims, he did a Reverse Nixon: completely cooperated with the Special Prosecutor, with the exception of the request to be personally interrogated, an obvious perjury trap. Then deny House Congressional demands, pointing out they have no legitimate legislative purpose. Whereas impeachment is explicitly a Constitutional function of the House. If Trump or one of his people now deny Nadler, the latter tries to gets a court order from a partisan judge, no doubt one from the Ninth Circuit if all else fails.

  67. ESR: The random women are trying to take GNU from RMS aswell:
    https://mobile.twitter.com/sarahmei/status/1177594574073520130

    >Who pays for the gnu.org website? Are there any paid staff on the project? It sure seems like the @fsf thinks it has found a loophole enabling it to keep funding a serial harasser. #cancelstallman twitter.com/ekm_in_sf/stat…

    >If the GNU project is sponsored, funded, and run by the @fsf (which their nonprofit paperwork implies), then Stallman cannot continue to run it.

    >What part of “Stallman’s actions have disqualified him from any leadership role” does the @fsf not understand?

    Embrace (opensource is good, not just for those hacker nerds!)
    Extend (+women, +non-programmers, +foundations-run-projects(not benevolent dictator for life who created the project, anymore), +money, +people_who_chase_it, +obey_US_law, +obey_US_morals)
    Extinguish (WE don’t go to TECH conferences to get hit on by NERDS)

    It’s effective. Opensource and FreeSoftware are finished in the USA. No man is going to “join” this “movement” anymore. The programmers are ruled by random women, and non-programmers.

    I notice that Vladimir Putin does not get this treatment, at least not for long. What is his secret? I’m starting to like Putin for the things that he has tacitly ordered.

    1. “Free” software, Stallman’s creation as such is in grave danger, but I don’t see that for Open Source, besides the general SJW assault on merit, we’ve don’t have the plethora of single points of failure that come from the vision and implementation of that by just one man. To the extent we have problems along this line, they’re much broader and deeper, where absent a counter-revolution we’ll be generally shut out of the Internet along with many other deplorables (don’t go or stay paperless in your billing).

      Stallman didn’t think things through, didn’t come up with with an enforceable succession plan. Although those are wickedly difficult to arrange. that failure could in a few scant years undo his life’s work, between the FSF being able to re-license all its software it has title to, and for all the projects by people who weren’t a sharp as Linus and included the “or later version” bit in the version of the *GPL* they used.

      All that should be viewed as potentially filled with landmines, and Open Source or *GPL fixed version code should be limited in use if at all possible. Although that could cause general FUDD, if/when companies depending on GPLed FSF software find the Coraline’s Hippocratic License unacceptable.

      What is Putin’s secret? A KGB judo practitioner who will kill you dead with polonium if he sees fit to make a point.

      1. >“Free” software, Stallman’s creation as such is in grave danger, but I don’t see that for Open Source, besides the general SJW assault on merit, we’ve don’t have the plethora of single points of failure that come from the vision and implementation of that by just one man.

        I foresaw the possibility of single-point failure and didn’t want myself or anyone else to end up as the Jesus nut in this helicopter, so I planned against the possibility. Successfully. You’re welcome.

        1. That’s why their next step is to call on the entire FSF board to resign — and to nominate more gender- and ethnically diverse successors.

          If they manage to succeed in getting the FSF leadership replaced, their next step is going after the OSI.

          You may have to come to terms with the fact that the old hacker culture has passed into Valinor and we are now in the Fourth Age.

      2. >What is Putin’s secret? A KGB judo practitioner who will kill you dead with polonium if he sees fit to make a point.

        Guess you can’t survive in this world any other way.
        Is Putin’s way the right way?

        > Although those are wickedly difficult to arrange. that failure could in a few scant years undo his life’s work,
        US Copyright law never really supported the ideals of the GPL.
        1) It is unlikely that a judge is going to grant specific performance and force a derivative work to be licensed under the GPL’s terms: they will likely only grant damages. [The reason often stated is there to grant specific performance in this instance might be somewhat akin to forced labour. It is also a confiscation.] Those damages could easily be as low as 1 dollar (nominal damages), since programmers don’t seem to /ever/ register their work before a same-similar violation by party X: so no statutory damages and no attorney’s fees; just damages: what $ you were out vs if they payed your asking price or their profits. Also the programmers never sue.

        2)The free license can be revoked from any free licensee (no contractual rights to hold the distributee[copyright holder] to, on the part of the free-taker: no consideration – no contract – free(nothing) gets you nothing).

        The rest of the world doesn’t validate copyrights what-so-ever. Opensource and Free Software exist because the authors chose to release the source code. Free Software was originally a response to the US 1970s copyright law that allowed copyrights on software: it’s a rejection of those principals.

        The GPL and the other licenses should be considered political documents, and enforced through other means perhaps (ex: code “theft” from violators: ie: if a derivative work is created but not disclosed: take the code anyway by technological means). I know for a fact that opensource programmers (when I started) did not give a damn about software patents, or US civil or criminal law. The programmers simply wanted them and their fellows to be-able to do whatever they wanted with the code and their machines: US opinions on it all be damned (ex: crypto code).

        > between the FSF being able to re-license all its software it has title to, and for all the projects by people who weren’t a sharp as Linus and included the “or later version” bit in the version of the *GPL* they used.

        In some states, if you donate something to a charity with specific instructions how the donation is to be used, and they violate that, you can get damages or even possibly claw the donation back. It varies by state.

        Something to think about.

        Also 4 has the connotation of death in eastern culture. GPL4?

        1. 1) The legal uncertainty that would pervade an illegitimate fork that attempts a non-allowed by the GPL license change would normally be enough to make it nonviable.

          2) Revoking a FOSS license is simply untested as far as I know, and consideration could be construed in a variety of ways.

          Also 4 has the connotation of death in eastern culture. GPL4?

          We should use that if it comes to pass as we fear.

        2. 2)The free license can be revoked from any free licensee (no contractual rights to hold the distributee[copyright holder] to, on the part of the free-taker: no consideration – no contract – free(nothing) gets you nothing).

          The GPL does contain stipulations, and actual federal judges have ruled that those stipulations count as consideration for contract-law purposes. Despite all this, you keep repeating this nonsense. I hope you saved the receipt for your law degree. If you return it to Target, you can get a refund.

          1. The GPL does contain stipulations, and actual federal judges have ruled that those stipulations count as consideration for contract-law purposes.

            In that respect, while IANAL, I’d say that the GPL and family, the 2 or more clause BSD licenses, and the MIT license for example each stipulate at least one valuable consideration to the license grantor. For the former, it’s primarily the redistribution requirements furthering the cause of Free Software. For all of them, maintaining attribution of the license holder, which is no small thing in academia.

            And barring that, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (a circuit you can legitimately question much like the Ninth, and who’s remit on copyright is not binding on other courts, see Oracle America, Inc. v. Google, Inc., the Java on Android case on copyright of APIs), has ruled in Jacobsen v. Katzer, the Java Model Railroad Interface case, that the rather weak Artistic License 1.0 was enforceable under copyright law. That case also established a precedent that removing a copyright notice is a violation of the DMCA.

    1. >ESR and others: RMS is homeless now.

      I guess he was sleeping in his office and can’t anymore.

      This is kind of worrying. RMS has spent a very large portion of his life there; it was his cocoon. To be turned out of it must have hit him like a sledgehammer, he’s 66, and we have at least one report from someone close to him that he thinks his life is a failure.

      I hope he’s not as socially isolated as I fear he might be. If he is we’re in pretty classic suicide-risk territory at this point.

      He hasn’t answered my email.

      1. >I hope he’s not as socially isolated as I fear he might be. If he is we’re in pretty classic suicide-risk territory at this point.

        People commenting feel he will be dead within a year if no one helps. The OS programmer Terry Davis lasted a year after he was thrown out by his parents (TempleOS: an opensource (GPL) classic style PC OS built from the ground up).

        >He hasn’t answered my email.
        That is perhaps a bad sign. In the past he even answered my emails. Please help him.

        1. >Please help him.

          I’m 300 miles away, which limits my ability to intervene. Even if I flew to Boston tomorrow I wouldn’t know where to find him now that MIT has booted him out of his office.

          I think the local FSF people are his only hope at this point. Even given that he’s been forced out (presumably by the FSF board) I can’t imagine the staff would all turn their backs on him as individuals.

          1. How many of the local FSF people do you know?

            Hell, as much as he and I have gotten crosswise over the years (and I doubt fairly strongly he even remembers me), I’d help if there was something I could do.

            1. I’ve met Gerry Sussman a couple times. I don’t know if I would say I know them well enough.

            2. Heck Eric could try cold calling a few of the FSF people, express concern for Richard’s wellbeing and see if that and Eric’s name recognition is enough for Eric to to be put in contact with him.

              1. >Heck Eric could try cold calling a few of the FSF people, express concern for Richard’s wellbeing and see if that and Eric’s name recognition is enough for Eric to to be put in contact with him.

                I emailed him. And gave him my phone number. If that doesn’t get a response I don’t think going through third parties will do any good.

                  1. >Are we sure he still has access to his email and is still checking it?

                    I got the normal “I’m at the end of a long delay” reply from his autoresponder, so the address is still accepting mail

                    I have no way to know if he’s still checking it.

                    1. That’s why it may be a good idea to explore other ways of contacting him.

                    2. If it’s reassuring I E-mailed him last night after reading this and got a response back, my message was sent with GPG too.

            3. >How many of the local FSF people do you know?

              Haven’t spoken to or exchanged email with any of then since I did the Emacs repo conversion, which was 2011 I think.

        2. In keeping with the general theme of the thread, I hope the lesson is clear to everyone:
          Do not compromise with the left on anything.

          Stallman’s fate is a direct result of decades of compromises, concessions, and taking the easy way out. At this point, giving ground isn’t just cowardice, it’s damnable complicity.

          1. That should read:
            “decades of reasonable people making compromises etc”, I obviously don’t mean to blame Stallman.

          2. It’s always dangerous to try to compromise with someone with different _ends_ in mind. If one group wants liberty and another power, there’s a direct contradiction, and the liberty-seekers can get taken advantage of.

            If, on the other hand, two parties both wish to solve a problem but disagree about the methods, there’s room to variously compromise, start parallel experiments or search for a synthesis.

            1. People with different ends are exactly the sorts you can compromise with. You each get some of what you want, but not everything.

              It’s people who want to destroy you and your society that you cannot yield an inch to.

              1. With respect, those _are_ the people with different ends in mind that I was speaking of, thus the example of freedom vs power. The folks after power want to kill the folks after freedom.

                1. Well, then, instead of crying for our lost nation, we ought to be talking about how we’ll go about killing them *first.*

                  1. Great, first a shill, paid or not, and now this discussion attracts a fedposter.

                    For those not up on the lingo, that means a real live Federal agent agent provocateur, a recent example was ham handed enough to demonstrate that on one of the chans as I recall reading. Or an idiot indistinguishable from one, terrifically stupid because the Feds are now regularly arresting such posters.

                    1. >. Or an idiot indistinguishable from one, terrifically stupid because the Feds are now regularly arresting such posters.

                      That’s right: only feds may fedpost.

  68. Genuine question, what decides which version of GNU GPL counts for software licensed under version x “or later”, and if it is GNU, how likely is it, if possible, that the later version fails one of the four essential freedoms? I want to believe it will never happen because it’d be suicide to do so.

    1. You think the people pushing these changes give a damn about whether the software and software communities survive them? When for example the most vicious like Coraline Ada are themselves severely mentally ill and personally suicidal?

      1. >You think the people pushing these changes give a damn about whether the software and software communities survive them?
        Fucking hell no. If the FSF is compromised though, what does that mean for future GPL versions and software that allows “upgrading” to them?

        1. If the FSF is compromised though, what does that mean for future GPL versions and software that allows “upgrading” to them?

          Nothing good, and perhaps fatal FUDD. Note that FSF software like Gnu Emacs is owned by the FSF, and per its CONTRIBUTING page enforced this way:

          Once the cumulative amount of your submissions exceeds about 15 lines of non-trivial changes, we will need you to assign to the FSF the copyright for your contributions. Ask on emacs-devel@gnu.org, and we will send you the necessary form together with the instructions to fill and email it, in order to start this legal paperwork.

          And that in part was how it was changed to GPL 3.0. If changed to a GPL-shi (is e.g. one word for 4 in Japanese, and the same sound as a word for death as noone reminded us) at best we might see a fork from the last GPL 3.0 version, but the posited evil FSF could conceivably take action against it and the people who are doing it. There’s few limits to the downside of FSF owned open source.

          On the other hand, RMS has been crippling GCC as a tool set, and Gnu Emacs integration into compilers that don’t do that like LLVM, which has been prompting some number of people to change to other development environments.

            1. Including me. It’s amazing: Microsoft committed a Unix editor that fails to suck. What’s even more amazing to me is that it does git out of the box and Team Foundation Server only poorly with an aftermarket add-on.

              1. Anything in that which makes it significantly more productive than Gnu Emacs + magit when for example programming in C and Scheme (and when Emacs has been wired into your brain from four decades of constant use)? Debugging on Linux I could well believe. Does it have an OpenBSD story?

                1. I never got used to GNU Emacs. And not for lack of trying (just ask Eric!). But my fingers have been programmed for WordStar for a long, long time, and VSCode has gotten me away from that.

                2. Well, for one, Live Share, which enables pair programming on the same code base with two separate editor instances on two different machines. There are hacks to get something similar in Emacs, but it’s not Live Share compatible — and your teammates are likely to be using Visual Studio Code, not Emacs.

                  I don’t know about C and Scheme, but support for newer, popular languages and frameworks, such as JavaScript, Rust, and Go, tends to be better on VSCode and to come to VSCode first. The Vue mode I found for Emacs was super janky and hacky, requiring occasional keystrokes to explicitly reparse the buffer. Vue support in VSCode Just Works.

                  Relatedly, VSCode just has a bigger ecosystem and therefore is going to be better supported than Emacs. And Microsoft isn’t actively impeding efforts to make VSCode more IDE-like (the way Stallman famously did with Emacs).

                  The drawback is — yes, if your mind has already been twisted by Emacs it will take some time of forcing yourself to use VSCode and to unlearn your Emacs-based muscle memory. But the benefits are you will be instantly more productive with the languages and tools of tomorrow, and able to collaborate more smoothly with today’s developers.

                  (Yes, I know JavaScript is quite an old language. But it gets remade into something new every couple of years or so, and of course there are new frameworks coming out for it all the time.)

                  I don’t know about OpenBSD support, sorry. If it doesn’t work already, support may take some time and come from third-party builds like VSCodium rather than Microsoft itself. But the code base is open source and based on the cross-platform Electron framework.

                  1. > yes, if your mind has already been twisted by Emacs it will take some time of forcing yourself to use VSCode and to unlearn your Emacs-based muscle memory

                    Ctrl-t.
                    And her equally lovely sisters Alt-t and Ctrl-x Ctrl-t.

                    And those are just at the lowest level of editing; it’s like that all the way up. I don’t need to exert any effort “unlearning” anything when attempting to use another editor. The features I need on a regular basis simply aren’t there.

                    1. “Ctrl-t.
                      And her equally lovely sisters Alt-t and Ctrl-x Ctrl-t.”

                      EXPN?

                    2. @Jay Maynard –

                      Ctrl-t – transpose character under the cursor for the one immediately to the right.

                      Alt-t (formally “Meta-t”, for whatever value is your “Meta” key or prefix) – transpose words

                      Ctrl-x Ctrl-t – transpose lines

                      I believe @darrin is suggesting that the VSCode editor doesn’t have features like this. (I’ve never used it, and remain to this day a ViM bigot, so I won’t offer my opinions either way.)

                      [Found these on the Gnu Emacs Reference Card, for version 26.]

  69. ESR:
    RMS just resigned from his GNU project (after saying he would not).
    stallman.org/archives/2019-jul-oct.html#28_September_2019_(GNU_Project)

    >28 September 2019 (GNU Project)
    >
    >I hereby step down as head of the GNU Project, effective immediately.
    >
    >Richard Stallman

    Just previously he said he would stay on as the head GNUuance.
    (as attested by a user, from a response he recieved on Sep 26th: archive.rebeccablacktech.com/g/thread/72925863/ )
    >Sep 26, 2019, 19:20:
    >
    >On September 16 I resigned as president of the Free Software
    >Foundation, but the GNU Project and the FSF are not the same.
    >I am still the head of the GNU Project (the Chief GNUisance),
    >and I intend to continue as such
    >
    >–
    >Dr Richard Stallman
    >Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://gnu.org, https://fsf.org)
    >Internet Hall-of-Famer
    >(https://internethalloffame.org)

    This really is not a good sign.
    It suggests depression.
    Letting go of all one hoped for, and all that one created.
    A downward spiral.

      1. The video mentioned there is a common joke on 4chan’s “technology” board and similar places, so it’s probably just some smartass. That also means the housing post is likely a joke too, which, in hindsight, was too weird even for him to be posting like that.

      2. Amendment: Seems the bits mentioned in that article have been fixed, however the housing request remains. Damn.

        1. The GNU resignation and the housing request are still there. The youtube link has been removed.

          RMS only does the HTML for the announcements, not the header and footer.

          1. I’ll believe it when I see a post about it on info-gnu.

            EDIT: The GNU Project resignation appears to have been removed. The housing request is still up.

      1. Indeed. Just look at Snopes fact-checking the Babylon Bee.

        Then again, the way things are going, the Bee may well become a more reliable news organization than, say, CNN, though that’s admittedly a low bar to clear…

  70. Slashdot: Richard Stallman Is Still Head of the GNU Project Key bit:

    for what it’s worth Techrights.org posted an unconfirmed claim Sunday from “a generally reliable source” that “Stallman.org was defaced by an FSF employee. The deface has been reverted, and the domain appears to now be operating on non-FSF infrastructure…”

    Looking at the whois info for stallman.org, and fsf.org and gnu.org, the latter two are the same, the former shares nothing in common. Traceroute is the same except for the final IP address. Echoing Techright.org, if this was subversion by a FSF person that is not dealt with appropriately….

  71. ESR,

    Hopefully you’re not sick of the topic by now, but I had an epiphany this morning and I finally realized why the terms “no-mind” and “serene mind” have been bugging me. I have a hypothesis and I think it explains what you experienced in the rondori fight you described.

    “No-mind” isn’t a state of mental emptiness or tranquility, but rather a state of hyperfocus. It’s not about the amount of work your brain is doing – that’s actually a separate issue – but about how your brain is spending the effort. But the way your brain spends that effort ends up obfuscating what’s happening.

    Everything your brain does takes cognitive processing power. Being aware of your surroundings, processing emotions, introspection (as in, being consciously aware of your own thoughts), even memory formation… None of it comes free. And the more cognition you spend on one thing the less you have for anything else.

    Now apply this to your rondori match, in which you were throwing opponents left and right without even being aware that you were moving. Well, why would you need to be aware of it? You had to take note of what your opponents were doing so you could respond accordingly, but when it came to your own body you could trust your subconscious and your muscle memory to handle things. Spending mental effort to keep track of your own moves would have slowed your reaction time and you were deep enough into no-mind that you weren’t wasting your processing power on anything unnecessary.

    I can see why the masters would think their minds were “empty” and “serene,” but in real fights I’ll bet their brains were overclocking like crazy. They just didn’t notice because they weren’t spending any of their brainpower on noticing; all the attention they could spare was channeled into winning the fight and staying alive.

    Does that sound right to you?

    1. >Does that sound right to you?

      Very, except that, you know, it feels tranquil. A state of elevated calm. You are certainly right that there has to be a lot of activity going on out of sight. But it does feel serene and untroubled, subjectively. I can assure you of that.

      1. >> “But it does feel serene and untroubled, subjectively. I can assure you of that.”

        Yeah, that’s what I meant when I said I could see why the masters would feel that way. You’re still thinking – and perhaps even having emotions – on some level, but you don’t realize it because you’ve completely stopped introspecting. So when you try to analyze what happens when you’re in no-mind your memories are misleading.

        I still think a better name for it is needed – in fact I’m more convinced than ever – but I think I have a firm grip on the concept now.

      2. I really appreciate this discussion. I’m currently trying to write some fight scenes from the view of a master, and this really helps.

        1. >I’m currently trying to write some fight scenes from the view of a master, and this really helps.

          A qualification is in order, then. I would not describe myself as a master, but as a senior student who occasionally (and, alas, unreliably) exhibits master-level abilities.

          1. Out of curiosity, how long ago was that rondori fight? Or more to the point: how long has it been since you first reached that level of no-mind? I’m curious how much practice it takes to reach the point where you can do it reliably.

            1. >Out of curiosity, how long ago was that rondori fight?

              Sometimes in the late 1980s. I would have been, I think, at least seven years of serious training then.

              >I’m curious how much practice it takes to reach the point where you can do it reliably.

              Alas, it’s thirty years later and I still can’t go that deep into no-mind just by wanting to. There have been a couple of incidents in the intervening interval that suggest I might go there reliably under threat-to-life stress.

              On the other hand, I”m pretty sure I touched the edge of this ability sooner than most students. I’ve tended to be well ahead of the normal learning curve on the mindset stuff – chi, focus, mindfulness, however you want to label it.

              I don’t think one can generalize from my experience.

              1. >> “Alas, it’s thirty years later and I still can’t go that deep into no-mind just by wanting to… I”m pretty sure I touched the edge of this ability sooner than most students.”

                Heh. Guess I’ll be dying of old age before I get there, then. Unless medical science conquers the aging process first.

                >> “There have been a couple of incidents in the intervening interval that suggest I might go there reliably under threat-to-life stress.”

                One of the benefits of an adrenalin rush is that it helps focus the mind, so that make sense. It also fits perfectly with my hypothesis that no-mind is a species of hyperfocus. I wonder if it’s possible to induce an adrenalin rush at will and use it to reach no-mind?

                P.S. – It’s been days since I’ve had any trouble with your blog so I think ibiblio finally got things sorted.

              2. > On the other hand, I”m pretty sure I touched the edge of [going no-mind] sooner than most students. I’ve tended to be well ahead of the normal learning curve on the mindset stuff – chi, focus, mindfulness, however you want to label it.

                I would attribute that to your extensive practice of meditation, practical magick, etc.

  72. On a topic not directly involving Beto, but involving 2A:

    Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar are both claiming that the NRA is a terrorist and white supremacist organization. Is there a chance for a class-action libel suit here?

  73. Every political discussion here tends to become a generic individualism vs. collectivisim debate, where both sides tend to see America as inherently individualistic and Europe inherently collectvistic. I would like to show now that while it has a grain of truth, it is retarded.

    The grain of truth is that even the most right-wing European thinking has collectivistic elements, largely because we had a lot of wars on our own soil, not sending soldiers somewhere else as Americans and Brits largely did. This created a certain “siege mentality”, a military way of thinking. Everybody standing in queue for the same chow. That is how wars work and that is also how socialism works. Socialism is largely wartime mentality projected into peacetime. One does not get more right-wing than me around here, and yet I still have a certain willingness to pay for someone else’s healthcare, because that other guy might be in trenches with me and he and me in the trenches are the only thing keeping the enemy from raping our wives just a few hundred kilometers behind the front.

    So it has a grain of truth. Why is it still retarded? Because while European culture being more collectivistic does imply some amount of welfare state, the European welfare state is still far bigger than what is good for Europeans. And the American welfare state is far bigger than what is good for Americans.

    So what is the point of arguing whether to import the European welfare state to American when 1) America already has a far too big welfare state 2) the European welfare state is far too big for what is good for Europeans.

    Paying for someone else’s healthcare, something a European is willing to do, was best done by the old Dutch system: mutualist healthcare insurance societies, operating on a free market. Something like a credit union. Free market, just non-profit. Ideal. Solidarity without big government / central planning. That is what a culture with some collectvistic instincts should do if they are not stupid. And it was great. And then some greedy bastards demutualized it turning them into for-profit corporations. Yes, it is okay to be pro-market and yet criticize greed. Because non-profits are part of the market and a healthy part, not everything on the market has to be for-profit. Besides, I would emphasize: the core aspect of why the market works is NOT the profit motive! Most of the motivation is internal and social. Rather the market works by elimination. As Taleb put it, systems learn by elimination. The market, like Darwinian evolution, eliminates. That is its whole point. This means non-profits are okay, as the profit motive is not necessary and the market can also eliminate badly working non-profits. And then of course as this greedy demutualization killed the solidarity aspect so then the government rode in to enforce their own version of “solidarity” and then it is all downhill from there.

    Even this old system is not something to import into the more individualistic minded America. Now both America and Europe have far too big governmental bureaucracies, so the comparison became a moot point.

    The actually intelligent way to compare them would be the method. As a broad oversimplification, if poor people complain about too high rents, the American system tends to enact rent control, the European system spends tax money on building homes. I would argue the later is less bad as it actually matches supply with demand, while rent control hopelessly fucks with supply and demand. High taxes are bad, but market-distorting interventions that make supply and demand never meet are IMHO worse. At least this kind of spending does allow the market to clear, although at an unnatural price level.

    Another example would be that 98% of “refugees” being unemployed in Germany is a bad thing, but Affirmative Action types of regulations that would force them on employers who don’t want them, creating mutual resentment between boss and employee and destroying the trust and social harmony at the workplace would be far, far worse. Part of the reason I grudignly put up with high European taxes is that the unlike the Affirmative Action policies in the US, the government never ever forced us to hire someone we did not want to hire. So the workplace social harmony and trust level is pretty good. And the flipside is paying taxes to feed all those people who shouldn’t even be here in the first place.

    However, it would be similarly pointless to argue that America should make things this way: i.e. trade less regulations for higher taxes. Because the nature of government is to grow and grow. Offer such a trade and 100% sure you will end up with higher taxes and not less regulations at all. So it is pointless. You just have to fight every increase of government as best you can and hope the inevitable collapse will not kill you and your loved ones.

    1. @TheDividualist
      “the European welfare state is far too big for what is good for Europeans”

      “far too big” according to what criterion?

      The tax payers in these countries all vote for politicians that promise more government action that does imply more tax money needed. If anything, they complain more loudly about the government doing too little than that they complain about the taxes being too high. So, they do not consider their governments too big.

      Also, countries like Germany and Sweden are doing pretty well competing in a global world. The Germans are the ones that EXPORT technological products to China.

      So, by what criterion are these governments “far too big”.

      1. Public opinion is simply manufactured by the press and voting is a ritual to legitimize what the elites with a very slightly different left and right wing have decided. Every politics ever always everywhere is a work of elites. One way or another it gets legimitization. Consider for example how ridiculous it is that in the question of immigration the “far-right” FPÖ merely said “stop criminal refugees” instead of actually changing something about the ongoing ethnic replacement, like, promising to deport a certain quota per year or something. If something as dire and brutal as ethnic replacement leaves the voters enervated, how could they be trusted to stage a tax revolt when they are financially speaking still living relatively comfortably? Taxes are clearly a second priority to sending your kids to a school where the majority of kids are third-worlders, and yet they are doing nothing serious about it, as even AfD type parties are not promising any serious kind of change there and yet they are not winning. So the current voters are pretty much hopeless for any kind of prospect of change. Their opinions are captured by the press. The few people who see the writing on the wall are moving eastwards.

        Only exception is the Yellow Vest revolt whose persistence despite all the police brutality did at least lead to some budget cuts.

        1. Taxes are clearly a second priority to sending your kids to a school where the majority of kids are third-worlders, and yet they are doing nothing serious about it, as even AfD type parties are not promising any serious kind of change there and yet they are not winning.

          I see a direct cause and result relationship between not promising anything serious and not winning at the ballot box.

            1. Antifa has no traction outside of Blue hellholes like Berkeley and Portland. And the US doesn’t formally have a concept like “getting flat out banned as an anti-constitutional organization”.

                1. More like it’s about Europe, but when I made my reply I should have added my opinion that the principle also fully applies to the US.

                  If we focus on just Germany, official political party paramilitaries and outlawing the opposition has a Goodwin length history at minimum. Not something I can easily grok as a citizen vs. a subject.

              1. But it does have the concept of a “terrorist organization”. Officially designated terrorist organizations can exist, but it’s a felony to offer them financial services which means in practice, not really. Not within the borders of the USA, anyway.

                Oh, and fun fact: the authority to say who is and who isn’t a terrorist organization is vested in a single person: the President of the United States. His whim and caprice is law, in that regard.

        2. Yo do not really go into my question of how we should judge “too much government”.

          @TheDividualist
          “Every politics ever always everywhere is a work of elites. ”

          Sorry, but this statement is an identity, a pleonasm. Being in politics automatically makes you a part of the elite. Those who have power are part of the elite by definition. As there are no societies without power inequalities, formal or informal, there is no society without an elite.

          @TheDividualist
          “Taxes are clearly a second priority to sending your kids to a school where the majority of kids are third-worlders, and yet they are doing nothing serious about it,”

          How do you define third-worlders? Because only some 6.3% of people living in the EU were born outside of the EU. I do not see how you can fill many classrooms with a majority of third-worlders with only 6% of the population. Yes, there will be problematic schools, but that is also a question of policy. And yes, poor people get a raw deal. But that is the essence of being poor: You get a raw deal everywhere. Poor people get a miserable education in many countries, whatever the migration background of the other pupils.

          Also, the highest resistance against “immigrants” is always with the people who see the least of them. It is in the former DDR, where there are very few immigrants, that the resistance is strongest in Germany. The same in other countries, where immigrants live in the cities, and the resistance is strongest in the rural areas where they are hardly seen.

          By the way, these people ALSO want more Government intervention, not less.

          1. How do you define third-worlders? Because only some 6.3% of people living in the EU were born outside of the EU. I do not see how you can fill many classrooms with a majority of third-worlders with only 6% of the population.

            This is disingenuous on two counts: being born in an unassimilated family in e.g. Germany does not make someone a German. And because of the industrialized society birth deficit (it seems to be that wide, including Japan, but maybe not Israel), the children in school are strongly weighted to invaders. Even more so with some number of adults posing as teenagers in Europe.

            Also, the highest resistance against “immigrants” is always with the people who see the least of them. It is in the former DDR, where there are very few immigrants, that the resistance is strongest in Germany.

            Or maybe it’s just that people under Communism in living memory don’t buy the globalist bill of goods? Your next claim about rural areas being the most resistant “where they are hardly seen” needs more than a bald assertion, that’s certainly not the pattern in the part of US flyover country I’m from, and retired back to. Also doesn’t match Robert D. Putnam’s research on how community diversity has an inverse relationship with trust, which was so inconvenient that he sat on his results for 6 years after publishing the raw data.

            1. The funny thing is:
              Between 2002/3 and 2014/15 European publics became slightly more positive in their attitudes towards migrants.

              and

              Nearly all the countries with large Muslim populations (Germany, Netherlands, France, Belgium and the UK) are more favourable to Muslim immigration than is the average country.
              https://www.europeansocialsurvey.org/docs/about/conference/HEATH_FORD_how-do-Europeans-differ.pdf

              @H
              “This is disingenuous on two counts: being born in an unassimilated family in e.g. Germany does not make someone a German.”

              A German passport does make one, by definition. But your report requires information about the number of unassimilated people in Germany. Given the overall population numbers, it is questionable to get to more than even a percent of unassimilated people. Such low numbers make the number of classrooms with a majority of third-worlders even less smaller.

              @H
              “Your next claim about rural areas being the most resistant “where they are hardly seen” needs more than a bald assertion, that’s certainly not the pattern in the part of US flyover country I’m from, and retired back to. ”

              In Europe:
              “Individuals living in more diverse regions and who have more ethnically diverse friends tend to hold more pro-immigration positions.”
              https://cadmus.eui.eu/bitstream/handle/1814/46245/RSCAS_2017_25.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

              “More immigration might thus lead to a more negative evaluation of the presence of immigrants in European countries, but apparently not within the regions where most of the newcomers reside. ”
              https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0020715215571950

      2. Let me put it this way: I don’t see the government is actually achieving anything by spending upwards of 55% of my income. Infrastructure? Mostly there, just maintain it. Construction? All the cool stuff the tourists are gaping at is old. Welfare?

        I have a strong suspicion that the story of the welfare state as a poverty-relief state is a clever misdirection. Left-wingers love virtue-signalling about being compassionate and right-wingers love virtue-signalling about not being a lazy bum asking for handouts, so they just figured feed us all this story as a debate-bait but in reality probably not more than 10-20% of the budget is actually spent directly on some kind of poverty relief, after all, white / indigenous European poverty is long solved and the immigrants are not *that* many and many do work. (I mean, in the stories about terror attacks, the background is usually so that this guy was a truck driver, that guy was working at a greengrocer etc.)

        I think most of that money just disappears in the bureaucracy as a white collar job creation program for folks with a degree in medieval poetry, or is spent on old age pensions, which are not based on any rational policy but more like the retired are a huge voting block so you cannot cut pensions and the soon-to-be-retired are another huge voting block so you can’t raise the retirement age radically.

        I don’t see all that money being spent on actually achieving something. I strongly suspect welfare as poverty relief as the justification of all these taxes is mostly a myth, we could fire 90% of the bureaucracy and implement UBI also replacing old age pensions with UBI, and it would cost less. But it would piss off two influential groups, the people with shit university degrees only the government wants to employ, and those old people who have quite high pensions due to having belonged to a strong trade union.

        A friend of my wifes married a Belgian postman who is working one week 40 hours, another week off, alternating, and still getting a comfortable living wage. This is simply how to hire two people for one actual government job. THIS is what all these taxes are paid for.

  74. [ht: /u/zoink on Reddit]
    New York Times: We Surveyed the 2020 Democrats [Candidates] on Gun Control. Here Are the New Dividing Lines. [Archive]

    Unanimous support for:
    * assault weapons ban
    * red-flag laws
    * ban on high-capacity magazines
    * closing the “boyfriend loophole”, which lets convicted domestic abusers buy guns if they weren’t married to, living with or raising a child with the person they abused
    * closing the “Charleston loophole”, which lets gun sales go through without a background check if the check takes more than three days
    * federal anti-gun-trafficking law

    Most of the candidates also support a higher minimum age (generally 21) for gun purchases; a waiting period ranging from one to two weeks; a purchase limit of one gun per month; and civil liability for gun manufacturers when their weapons are used in crimes.

    * All respondents support a buyback. The following support mandatory buyback: Booker, Harris, Messam, O’Rourke, Williamson
    * Most support some kind of gun registration program. The following do not: Bennet, Bullock, Buttigieg, Sestak

    * O’Rourke also supports voluntary buyback for handguns
    * Biden, Warren, and Sanders believe all assault weapons should be registered.
    * Only Bennet, Biden Jr., Bullock do not support gun licensing requirements.
    * Biden wants to incentivize licensing requirements at state level.
    * O’Rourke and Warren believe all guns should be registered.

    Some other proposals:
    * Biden wants a ban on all online sales of guns and gun parts.
    * Warren wants a 30 percent excise tax on guns and a 50 percent excise tax on ammunition.

    …I guess that makes that pretty easy.

  75. I just heard some sad news on talk radio – former Texas representative Beto O’Rourke ended his Presidential candidacy this morning. There weren’t any more details. I’m sure everyone in the Armed and Dangerous community will miss him – even if you didn’t enjoy his work, there’s no denying his contributions to the Democratic primary. Truly an American icon.

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