Month: August 2009

Assault weapons and the President – part 2

/ hsoi / 8 Comments

This started as an update to this post, but it got long enough that I felt it deserved its own posting. If you haven’t read the original posting, go back and read it first.

Linoge chimes in with a different perspective. Reading his take, then going back and looking at my initial reaction on it, I guess I am reevaluating things.

First, I do agree that a right not exercised is a right lost. Plus, I also had, but didn’t initially express, some similar feelings to the notion of carrying a gun being “normal” or not, but Linoge put it well:

Simply put, a right not exercised is a right well and truly lost. It is not “normal” for citizens to carry rifles because citizens do not carry rifles, and citizens do not carry rifles because it is not “normal”. Now, when given the option of first changing the definition of “normal” by words alone, or first carrying rifles, which do you think will actually result in honest change?

If we all carried guns and rifles out in the open all day long every day, no one would care. This is only a “scary” event because it is out of the norm, and because the media wants to burst into hysterics. Again tho I think it was probably well-played that the man carrying the AR was a well-dressed, educated, and Libertarian black man… kinda throws a wrench in the works of those that thrive on “gun nut hysteria” and blaming the white rednecks and “birthers” for all the woes. 🙂

Now having seen the video of the man in his own words and what they were up to, it’s obvious they did it purely for the attention it would grab. Upon further reflection, it was well-played for that aspect because it did succeed. I’m still not convinced it was the best avenue to take. This is now going back to my college education in speech communication and my graduate school teaching of public speaking: again, know your audience. Was this the right device for getting your message across? What side-effects would use of this device have? Linoge makes a good point:

Let us be honest: the press and the anti-rights advocates (but I repeat myself) are going to to demonize us no matter what we do, so we might as well exercise our rights and educate people while we can. All the better that Chris was able to both simultaneously.

This is true. Plus if you consider how “shock value” works, it only works the first time and subsequent times the impact is less until it’s just normal. Look at Elvis and his pelvis. Look at heavy metal music (being on VH-1 proves Marilyn Manson is not considered a dangerous threat any more). Going back to Linoge’s prior point, if more and more people openly carry firearms, the shock goes down, it becomes the norm.

What was the intended goal? If the goal was to promote 2A rights, you can do that all day every day. To come and carry openly at an Obama event given how high tensions are running in this country already, it just adds to the tension and IMHO is out to do more than promoting 2A rights. Now if the guy carries that AR around every day, I might think differently; that is, he’s just going about his business the same as it always was and it only looks odd because we’re only seeing this small slice of his life. But if he doesn’t do that every day, then the actions were quite explicitly chosen and again… why? Is that meeting your goals? That’s still a bit of an unanswered question, even after watching the video.

Linoge’s perspective is a welcome perspective. I think some of the other “think of how that looks” perspectives are still valid too. As I originally stated, I do think much of this is still based upon ignorant hysterics from folks like Helmke and the rarely-gun-friendly media who also knows that hysterics sells. It’d be welcome to see if “Libertarian black man with an AR” offers up any further explanation for his actions. Not that he has to justify anything, but I’m curious to understand his course of action and to evaluate if it was really a successful and good means towards achieving his ends or not. It’s still unknown.

Updated: White House response.

Updated 2: Sebastian clarifies his sentiments, and I think he too makes good points.

If we are to win this struggle, it will have to be through common American values, and there I think we have a lot more to work with than the other side.  But I don’t think there’s any context in which most people can understand taking a loaded rifle to a political rally.  I think we’re lucky if most people are taking this for the publicity stunt that it is.  In that context, most people can probably understand it and dismiss it.  But political violence is a touchy thing for most of the public, and there’s no appeal to it that’s going to find acceptance.  Gun rights has to be a mainstream issue if it’s going to win out in the end.  If it’s seen as a fringe issue, exercised by “dangerous” people, we’re going to suffer for it over the long run.

How not to do it

/ hsoi

Via SayUncle, this is a collection of videos on how not to introduce women to firearms.

I watched video #9 a few times

I swear that’s the indoor gun range that I sometime frequent. And it demonstrates why I prefer to be an infrequent customer.

Assault weapons and the President

/ hsoi / 2 Comments

So everyone’s in a tizzy about the folks showing up open carrying at some Obama event.

About a dozen people carrying guns, including one with a military-style rifle…

Because as we know, scary looking guns are more dangerous than non-scary looking guns.

He said he’s never heard of someone bringing an assault weapon near a presidential event. “The larger the gun, the more menacing the situation,” he said.

There’s a “penis size compensation” joke in there somewhere.

“To me, this is craziness,” [Paul Helmke] said. “When you bring a loaded gun, particularly a loaded assault rifle, to any political event, but particularly to one where the president is appearing, you’re just making the situation dangerous for everyone.”

Yeah. I guess all the cops and Secret Service guys, bringing all their weaponry, that makes it dangerous for everyone. Well, there was that video floating around a week or two ago where someone was claiming a Secret Service agent in the back of a car was pointing a rifle at the crowd. I shall go get my tinfoil hat now.

To be honest, all of this reeks of ignorant hysteria. People that don’t understand guns, that are afraid of guns and people that own guns, and Paul Helmke who has his agenda to push. It’s just ignorance and fear. Gain some education — like I did — and you’ll find out that things aren’t as bad as you make them out to be.

In this particular case, these guys are out to make a political point. What that point is I’m not sure, but basically they are out exercising their First Amendment rights. The key thing about 1A and “freedom of speech” is precisely to protect unpopular speech. So what these people were doing is quite fine from a legal perspective. To abridge what they were doing would be a dangerous and unconstitutional thing. They were peaceful, no one was harmed, no laws were broken. I think the only bad thing that happened was some people may have pooped in their pants and got hysterical, and that or any other sort of “being offended” is not reason enough to abridge any sort of activity these people were involved in. The President was in no true danger (even the Secret Service commented accordingly in the article).

That said, while it might be legal and certainly all aspects Constitutionally protected, I personally feel what they did was poor judgment. What message are they trying to send? I liken this to PETA. While I agree we shouldn’t be cruel to animals, PETA takes a radical approach to their message and that turns off a great number of people. If you want to win people to your side, you have to consider who you want to win, and who you’re willing to lose. Maybe you only want to attract other radicals, but realize in doing so you are going to marginalize yourself from the majority. If you’re willing to do this, that’s fine. The key thing is to know your audience. Unfortunately in this case, the situation gets blown wildly out of proportion and I think may serve to have unintended side-effects on the greater scale. Most people are going to look at this — and how the typically gun-unfriendly media will portray it — and think that all gun owners are kooks. We’re not. But we’re going to get lumped in with the guys and it sets back a great many things.

Sebastian chimes in with similar sentiments.

I wish I knew exactly why these guys chose to do what they did. That might lend some better insight into the matter. I’m not satisfied with “exercising our 1A and/or 2A rights” because it was an explicit choice to leave the house with an AR-15 strapped over your shoulder and to attend a protest outside an Obama event. You’re trying to make a point. What’s your point?

Updated: Murdoc has more. What’s more interesting is that these folks were not just law-abiding, but coordinated. They took time to work with the local police, there was a Secret Security detail. These folks were accomodating, polite, working with law enforcement, colored within the lines… gosh, they handled things much better than most protesters. But hey, let’s not let this get in the way of a good round of PSH.

Updated 2: The black man with the gun speaks. (h/t SayUncle)

Well, I understand his point now. In general I’m in agreement with it. As for the AR, it was a simple thing. Attention. He carried the rifle, it attracted attention. That’s all it was being used for folks: a prop. And it worked. Everyone is talking about it. All the news media is buzzing about it. He wanted attention, he got the attention.

I do find it funny tho. It’s an educated black man, with a gun. How different would it have been if it was a redneck white guy? Or a more “urban” African-American? I think the media is having a tough time with this one. I notice in the AP article that there’s no mention of the “man with a gun” being a “black man with a gun.”

Updated 3: Further thoughts, part 2.

Updated 4: White House response. OK, going try to stop updating this post and just updating the later related posts. 🙂

Fancy footwork

/ hsoi / 2 Comments

tgace posts about “tactical preschool.” Some diagrams of basic manuvering, when you’re faced with multiple opponents so as to give yourself the best positioning.

Basically, you put yourself in a place where essentially you reduce their numbers so you can fight say one-on-one instead of two-on-one. Not always easy to do in the heat of the moment, but that’s what practice is for.

As I was looking at tgace’s diagrams, I swear I saw similar diagrams somewhere recently. I just remembered where. Col. Jeff Cooper’s book, To Ride, Shoot Straight, and Speak the Truth. Whether you agree with Col. Cooper or not, it’s still a useful read.

The pain of training

/ hsoi

I admit it. I’m human.

That means in my core I seek pleasure and avoid pain. It’s just how living things behave. However, as humans we have this ability to think and reframe things. We may undertake “small pain” if we know it will help us avoid “large pain” and there is some pleasure-seeking in such behavior. For example, giving a small child a spanking because they ran out into the street, that’s a small pain to help them learn to avoid the bigger pain of getting hit by a car. Letting your child turn in a term paper late and getting a failing grade is a small pain compared to the bigger pain of perhaps losing their job because they never learned how to work under deadlines. One advantage of studying a martial art that spars is you learn what it’s like to get hit and how to deal with it, a small pain compared to the first time getting hit being when someone is attacking you bent on taking your life. We can learn how to take small pain if we know it leads us towards a better end.

That said, the small pain is still pain, and at least speaking for myself, I still don’t like it. 🙂

I was reading this quip from John Farnam about training. It helped me reframe my mindset.

Good training is ever scary, demanding, and makes you feel inadequate and stupid. When you finish and ‘feel good about it,’ you probably weren’t pushing yourself hard enough. Learning takes place when you fail, not when you succeed!

I disagree that learning can’t take place when you succeed, but the overall point remains valid.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve felt inadequate and stupid during training. I didn’t shoot well enough, I got my butt handed to me, I got choked out, I totally botched this, I feel embarrassed about that. People learn who I am and due to my résumé/credentials think that I should be some badass, but then I get out there and while afterwards others may tell me I did great I still feel like I suck.

Next month I’ll be participating in a weekend-long seminar. It promises to be very intensive both in terms of shooting skills and hand-to-hand skills. I admit, I’ve been a bit anxious about the class because I know the teachers are demanding yet some of the best in the business. I know my skills will be pushed to the limit. I want to do well in the class, but I think my measure of doing well was “succeeding” at things: that I would shoot in the top 10% of the class, that my empty-hand skills would always lead me to victory in all the drills. After reading the quip, I have reassessed my measure of success: how much I learn. Even if I wind up at the bottom of the heap, that tells me what I need to do to improve. Deep down I know this, but being human, I guess there’s some need to satisfy ego, some need to save face and not look like a total doofus out there. I just have to make a bigger effort to be, as Bruce Lee said, “be a doll made of wood.”

Thus, any training worthy of the name is going to be both frustrating and ‘dangerous,’ no matter what safety procedures are in place. But, failing to train is even more dangerous, and the consequences ever appalling and irrevocable. Ask any commander who has lost a battle!

That’s the more important thing. To get out and train. To push myself beyond my limits. Allow myself to be humbled and embarrassed, so long as it means I’m learning something about myself. The only external opinions I should care about are those of the instructor, but then only so far as it takes to allow me to continue to learn. As a human, it’s tough to allow yourself to go through these small pains. I just have to keep reminding myself that the small pain will help me alleviate the bigger pain. 🙂

Winners and losers

/ hsoi

When you have kids, sooner or later you have to teach them about winning and losing. What a winner is, and what a loser is. This isn’t just in the scope of say games/sports and sportsmanship, but just about anything in life and having a truly winner attitude so they can succeed in life in anything they do.

Some people grow up and never learn what it is to be a winner; they’re content being losers. John Farnam just wrote a piece discussing how as an instructor he encounters winners and losers in his classes.

Winners are unafraid! They spend their time finding a way to win, rather than looking for an excuse to lose. Winners fear neither victory nor failure.

Losers are deathly afraid of both!

Yes, losers are afraid! Fear ever haunts the base of their being and prevents them from ever walking upright, confidently, proudly.

Losers mumble! They don’t speak clearly, nor with conviction. They can’ t even seem to speak in complete sentences, because their thought processes are confused and perverse. They are afraid of truth, afraid of reality in all forms. They doubt their ability to handle life, so they hide their faces from the light of day.

Losers are bitter and resentful! They are angry with everyone. They can’t handle correction. They savagely defend their every mistake, every blunder, every crime like a lioness her young! Their elaborate rationalizations are sadly comical.

Losers are afraid of growing up! They prefer to be “taken care of.” Accepting full, personal responsibility for anything is unthinkable.

Losers snivel, whine, and make excuses! They take personal responsibility for nothing, always blaming others and “bad luck” for every gloomy hand they’re dealt.

Losers surround themselves with enablers and coddlers who never challenge them! Losers associate only with other losers!

Losers are chronically unproductive! They run their mouths continuously, but habitually shun productive work.

Losers know right from wrong, but conduct their lives as if they didn’t! They’re into “situation ethics,” offering up endless excuses for lying and other misdeeds.

Most of all, losers are ashamed, and should be! They cheerlessly watch themselves missing out on all the best life has to offer, but personal vanity and cowardice ever prevent them from sincerely repenting, and then boldly claiming their own magnificence.

This isn’t the new-agey “everyone’s a winner” sort of b.s.. This is truly having a positive attitude, one geared towards succeeding. As a father, it’s my duty to ensure my children grow up being winners. As a member of my community, it’s my responsibility to help the children I work with (Scouts, 4-H, etc.) be winners.

Take a moment and share the above with your children. Help them learn to be winners. If it can improve our own attitudes as well, all the better.

The quest for simple beer

/ hsoi / 4 Comments

I love a good beer.

My first exposure to beer was Dad drinking Budweiser. “Dad, can I try a sip?” “Sure.” “Bleck, eww, that’s gross!!” But yet somehow that sowed the seed. When it comes to beer, wine, or liquor, my preference is beer. Used to be a heavier drinker (college and all that), but now I really don’t care to get drunk. I just enjoy a good beer now and again, like any beverage (find me a good lemonade and I’m really happy). I try to pair my beer with the meal I’m eating, and many times I don’t finish the beer because it’s not that important to me… we don’t always finish the glass of water or soda or tea with our meals, so why should there be any pressure to finish the beer? It’s just a beverage, the alcohol just happens to be there (tho I of course mind it because it will affect you). I’m not a drinker, I just like the taste of good beer.

I recall back in college (or maybe it was high school?) when Sam Adams came out, and drinking it was the first foray into “hoity-toity” beer (no more “Beast” here!). From there, you try other “fancy” things, eventually discovering Guinness and then life is never the same. I certainly love going to brew pubs, micro brewerys, discovering odd beers, adoring all things Belgian styled, preference for ales. I know what it is to be a beer snob. I can appreciate that these days beer lovers have more choices than ever before.

But that’s also part of the problem.

Yesterday I went to Spec’s. What a fantastic place to go as the selection is unmatched. But at the same time, it’s also overwhelming. You can spend hours there just looking at all that’s available, trying to figure out what you’d like to try, talking with the employees to get their opinions, maybe taste tests, maybe you can take home a pack of various singles to try them out. It’s actually quite the adventure.

On the same token, it also demonstrates that things are getting kinda silly. Everyone is on a quest to make some serious sort of beer. There’s gazillions of IPA’s out there, wheat beers, fruit beers, heck… I just discovered a “barley wine style ale” (very strong, very bitter, but good). Then trying to go for some sort of special line that’s even more special than their normal special beers, hand-crafted in small batches, blah blah blah. There’s just so much available, but it’s all trying to be more complex than the next guy, more trendy than the other micro-brewery.

What happened to simple beer?

I’m not talking Beast (piss-water is still piss-water). I’d still like the beer to taste good and have some meaning in the mouth. But can we put away the beer snobbery and try to make something simple? On a hot Texas afternoon, I just don’t find IPA’s to be refreshing… they can be very delicious, but it’s not just something I want to knock back when I’m hot and tired, or just standing around the BBQ pit with my buds while the brisket smokes. I’ve actually found myself drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon lately because it’s simple and refreshing, but still has some decent taste to it.

Maybe it’s the engineer in me that appreciates true simplicity. That to make something complex just to be complex, well, almost anyone can do that…. it’s easy to keep adding things. But to take things away, to strip down until you get to the true essence of something, to have the self-control to do so… there’s a greater beauty and challenge in that, I think.

So to my readers… can you suggest a good, simple beer?

John Mackey – I knew it

/ hsoi / 2 Comments

A few days ago John Mackey, CEO and co-founder of Whole Foods Market, wrote an opinion piece to the Wall Street journal about health care reforms.

I wrote:

But there’s something kinda fun about reading this opinion piece penned by John Mackey, CEO and co-founder of Whole Foods. I think it’s because I know the vast majority of Whole Foods’ customers wouldn’t agree with him. Something about the sort of people Whole Foods tends to attract vs. the Obama voter/supporter demographic vs. those that want socialized medicine and the government to cure all their ills.

I was right.

I guess it never occurred to them, as they bought their overpriced yuppie food, that there’s probably someone getting rich off their consumer habits. Or just the fact that they’re consumers and feeding this very beast, and to some degree probably better off that most since they can afford to shop at Whole Foods in the first place.

I love elitist arrogance, and the ignorance it brings. 🙂

Updated: Oh, some of the comments:

“I will never shop there again,” vowed Joshua

[…]

“I’m boycotting [Whole Foods] because all Americans need health care,” said Lent, 33, who used to visit his local Whole Foods “several times a week.”

[…]

“I will no longer be shopping at Whole Foods,” [Christine] Taylor told ABCNews.com. “I think a CEO should take care that if he speaks about politics, that his beliefs reflect at least the majority of his clients.”

[…]

“These are people who have already gone out of the way to find a place that is more expensive to buy certain types of food,” he said. “So in theory, they might be more willing to take the action to go somewhere else if they don’t agree with Mackey.”

First, Christine Taylor appears to affirm my prior assessment of Whole Foods’ customer base.

And isn’t it nice to see that they appreciate choice? The ability to boycott. That they appreciate an ability to disagree with something and take their business elsewhere. Gosh… don’t you love a free market? 🙂

The irony. I savor it.