Marko has the quote of the day.
When it comes to defending one of their own, Liberals are just as capable of hypocritical excuses for shitbaggery as Conservatives.
Author: hsoi
Where’s Howard when you need him?
So there’s some new study out saying that you’re just asking for trouble if you carry a gun.
I want Howard Nemerov to get a hold of this and look at it. Howard’s great with numbers. I’m going to drop him a line. Come to think of it, I’ll mention it to Tom Givens as well.
2A incorporation
SCOTUS will hear if 2A applies to the states. Lots of stories online about it like here, and then background reading here.
Don’t see why it wouldn’t apply, given how just about everything else has been incorporated. It’s difficult to see how it couldn’t, but it will all come down to the details of the cases and how they are presented to the court.
But I don’t want to speculate on the outcome nor put the cart before the horse and figure what the outcome will mean. The devil will be in the details and we just have to wait.
Do church CHL bans violate the First Amendment?
David Kopel has an interesting legal analysis of church (or other place of worship) bans on concealed carry. And this isn’t talking about “free speech”…. remember there’s other things in 1A too.
Moreover, the CHL ban also violates the Establishment clause because it favors some denominations over others. In effect, the statute privileges pacifist denominations over non-pacifist ones, by forcing the non-pacifist religions to obey pacifist standards of conduct in their own houses of worship. This is not only a Free Exercise violation, it is an Establishment clause violation, because it plainly creates the message that the pacifist way of being is the only way of being which the state will allow in any church, anywhere in the boundaries of the state.
It seems in so many ways we create problems because we poke at things too much. Consider the large structuring of laws that got us to even have to consider the above. If those laws were stripped away, we wouldn’t be having this discussion and all involved groups would be able to freely practice whatever it is they believe.
When are we going to learn to sometimes leave things alone?
CCTV attack footage and analysis
Over at Low Tech Combat there’s some CCTV video and analysis of a subway station robbery. The analysis is good.
It takes me back to SouthNarc’s discussions of pre-assault cues. You can see a lot of them in the video. It’d be interesting if we could have heard audio.
Go watch and read. Learn from the experience.
KR Training September 2009 Newsletter
The KR Training September 2009 Newsletter is now online.
Contains a list of upcoming classes, various bits of news, hunting accident statistics, updates on Texas laws, upcoming events, some items for sale. Lots of good things in this newsletter.
Magazine Pouch Purchased
I’ve gone from pondering to purchasing.
Rangemaster October 2009 Newsletter
The Rangemaster October 2009 Newsletter is now posted.
This issue has a few things worth reading. One is a fantastic dry fire regimen which I’m about to print out and keep in my practice area (it mirrors the skills I learned in the Combined Skills course). The other is discussing some data. One of those I think is well worth sharing so I’m going to reprint it here:
The National Safety Council, chartered by an act of Congress, is a nongovernment, not-for-profit, public service organization with a mission to educate and influence people to prevent accidental injury and death. They collect and report the facts about accidental injuries and deaths from all sources. Recently, the NSC released data from 2007. Here are some facts:
Accidental Firearms Fatalities are at an All-time Low. Firearms are involved in fewer than 1 percent of all accidental fatalities in the United States. In a side by side comparison with other forms of injury, firearms have the lowest rate of accidents.
Public firearms safety education projects, like Hunter Safety Courses, Handgun Permit Courses, NRA First Steps programs, and similar educational programs are credited with contributing to the decline in firearms accidents. Firearm related fatalities in the U.S. have been decreasing consistently since record keeping began in 1903 and have reduced dramatically in the last 20 years.
During the last decade, the number of unintentional firearm related deaths for children 14 years of age and under has decreased by 61%, and by 77% in the last 20 years. Firearms are involved in 1% of accidental deaths among children 14 years of age and under, the lowest cause of accidental fatality.
Firearm related accidental deaths in the home are down 50% from 1987 levels. In the entire United States in 2007 there were only 400 accidental firearm related deaths occurring in the home, in a population of 300,000,000 people. In contrast, in 2007 about 1,000 people drowned in their own homes and another 11,600 died in accidental falls in the home. Removing bathtubs and stairs from your home would be more prudent than removing the firearms.
Hunting is a sport deeply involved with firearms, but it is one of the safest sports. The number of injuries reported for participants in various sports in 2007 included:
- Baseball – 167,661
- Bowling – 21,819
- Football – 455,193
- Golf – 36,886
- Soccer – 198,679
- Volleyball – 57,039
- HUNTING – 916
Thus, one is 22 times more likely to be injured while bowling than while hunting. Remember that the next time somebody tries to tell you how unsafe it is to have a gun in the home.
For the purposes of record keeping, the US Justice Department defines “violent crime” as Murder, Aggravated Assault, Forcible Rape, Robbery, and Kidnapping. The Justice Dept recently released figures for 2008, indicating there were 4.9 million of these offenses during last year. That is roughly a rate of one violent crime per 60 residents.
Another set of data provided in the newsletter is about where attacks occur. Some people think it’s sufficient to have a gun at home, or to just keep a gun in the car. While that’s certainly good, the likelihood of needing it in those locations isn’t as high as other locations:
To illustrate, here are some statistics from the United States Department of Justice, looking at Robbery Locations for the year 2007:
- Street – 43.8%
- Commercial- 13.9%
- Residence- 15.2%
- Banks- 2.1%
- Gas station- 2.6%
- Miscellaneous- 16.8%
So, you are almost three times as likely to be robbed on the street than at home, and in the home only accounts for 1 robbery in 6. Similar patterns exist for rape, aggravated assaults, etc. In fact, good locks, an alarm system, and proper lighting can reduce your risk of violent crime at home to very low levels. Once you leave your home, though, you have no control over such items. The one thing you can control is having your emergency safety equipment with you, so you can respond to emergencies that occur away from home. Remember, the gun you left at home won’t help you anywhere else.
Injuries suck
For the past few weeks I’ve been having some pains in my hands, especially my left hand. It’s difficult to grip things even slightly tightly. Trying to get that Todd Jarrett Kung-Fu Action grip on my gun? forget it, it’s way painful, especially in the knuckles of my left hand. 😦
I have some spring clamps in my garage for woodworking and repair needs. I sometimes just squeeze them to work on my grip strength. I can barely squeeze it with my left hand, without pain.
I don’t know what’s wrong, but I’m suspecting it’s due to typing all day and having slacked off recently in my posture. Especially with my left arm because I picked up a bad habit of resting my left elbow outward while typing thus canting my left wrist and stretching out the ligaments on the back of my hand leading up to my index finger. When I look at the mechanics of it all, it makes sense given the way the pain hits me.
I haven’t been to my martial arts classes in a couple weeks because it all involves either hitting things with my hands or having to grip/grab things. I figured there was no reason to risk making it worse. My hands are very important to me, especially given how vital they are to my earning a living.
*sigh*
But I just came in from doing my first workout in weeks. Swung my sticks around for a while, then some calisthenics like push-ups. Things to work with my hands but not work them too hard. It wasn’t too bad. I think I’m going to get back into the swing of things and just take it as it comes. Of course, I’m also kicking myself for not working out at all. I could shadow box, I could work on other empty hand things, or I could have just gone back and practiced my Kuk Sool hyung to keep my conditioning up. I don’t know why I didn’t do that stuff, but back in the saddle I go.
Perspective from Patton
General George S. Patton:
It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived.
While it came from Gen. Patton, the remark goes well beyond fighting and war to just the general notions of life and death. When people die, all too often those they left behind are stuck on mourning the loss instead of being thankful the person ever lived in the first place. We are so focused on avoiding death, I think sometimes we forget to live. You’ve only so much time and energy in a day, it’s up to you how you want to spend it: dealing with death or dealing with life. I like dealing with life.
