Britain Proves Once Again They are THE Nanny State

Wow Britain I have to hand it to you, when it comes to being a nanny state no other can touch you. The Home Office commissioned a new design for pub pint glasses. Well glasses will no longer be the word since the newly designed ones are made of shatter resistance plastic. The reason? They don’t want pint glasses to be used as weapons:

The Home Office has commissioned a new design, in an attempt to stop glasses being used as weapons.

Official figures show 5,500 people are attacked with glasses and bottles every year in England and Wales.

Yes that’s right now that there are no guns to be scared of and the anti-knife campaign is well under way they are looking at the next available weapon. Broken glass appears to be it. Next they will require all beer to come in shatter resistance bottles, house windows will have to be replaced with plexiglass, and owning crystal drinking apparatuses will be illegal.

But remember they are doing all of this to protect you.

More on Consumer Product Safety Act

Remember my post a while back about many children’s books being banned due to poorly worded points in the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act? Well via View From the Porch we have another story of government abuse using this act.

Federal agents are visiting garage sales looking for children’s toys that could fall under the above mentioned act. From the article:

The initiative, which targets toys and other products for children, enforces a new provision that makes it a crime to resell anything that’s been recalled by its manufacturer.

That’s right not only are objects made primarily for children that contain lead banned but any product that has been recalled by its manufacturer is also banned. Of course who here knows what products they own have been recalled? With the rare exception of some items like automobiles most products aren’t tied to the person who bought them and hence manufacturers can’t contact people who have bought their product when they do a recall.

Further Research


The Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008. (PDF)

Overstepping Bounds

Sorry about the slow news day here. I promise the project I previously mentioned will be good and will be dealing with gun rights. Anyways back in the world of overreaching government power I bring you a story obtained from Says Uncle.

Apparently Michelle Obama likes to eat food, no surprise we all do. Like most of use Americans she like burgers and hence was found in Spike Mendelsohn’s Good Stuff Eatery. As the chefs made the burgers Secret Service agents towered over them. Once again nothing surprising going on here as it is their job to ensure the protection of the President and the President’s family. The overreaching power comes with this statement though:

Fellow patrons had their cellphones temporarily confiscated to prevent pictures from being taken.

Yes the Secret Service confiscated the cellular phones of people in the restaurant so they couldn’t take pictures. Of course in this country there is no expectation of privacy when out in public and hence it is legal to take pictures of anybody in public. Well almost anybody apparently. I think a statement involving code dead hands should go here.

Slow Day

Hey I’m just posting to let everybody know today is probably going to be a little slow here. I’m working on a major project which I’ll announce when it’s ready to go. I’ll probably get some news updates going here later today.

Just Stop, When the Author Dies Just Stop

For those of you coming here for gun news this post isn’t gun news. In fact it’s more of a rant and a post dealing with a comedy/science fiction series. OK disclaimer done, onto the rant.

Those of you who partook in any form of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series most likely came across the books at some point. Douglas Adam’s, who sadly died passed away (you can’t say somebody died anymore, it’s too harsh apparently) in 2001, was a comic genius. He had a very eloquent way with words that could make almost anybody laugh. Because of this his series The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy became quite a hit.

Sadly after his passing his widow authorized some chump to continue the trilogy of five. And not surprisingly it’s not up to snuff with the late Adam’s works. Of course this doesn’t surprise me since nobody to my knowledge has successfully picked up a late author’s series and did it any form of justice. This makes sense considering nobody is going to be able to fully get into the mind of another person and hence can’t hope to replicate what was once done.

Just look at the examples. After Frank Herbert died his son has picked up the Dune series and ran with it. The problem is his son isn’t nearly as good at writing. What Herbert could fit into a 300 to 400ish page novel his son needs far more pages. That’s not to knock his son in any way but he’s just not doing Dune justice. He would do far better to establish himself with a unique series and let his late father’s work stand on the pedestal of greatness it deserves. Likewise countless people have tried to continue the Sherlock Holmes series. But nobody has the required skill set of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (before he started injecting his newfound religion into his later works) to do the characters of the series justice.

It’s not to say another author can’t make a good series based on another author’s previous series. They just can’t make it in the same way and hence it doesn’t feel as good. When you read an author’s books you get a feel for their writing style and method of story telling. If you like the series you often don’t realize that how the author does things makes up as much of your opinion as the story itself. So when the author dies and somebody else continues you end up finding the continuation to be lacking and not as good. It’s not always because the new writer isn’t good, instead it’s often because the new author’s style isn’t the same and hence things don’t flow like they originally did.

This is why I wish people would let the works of dead authors be left alone. Face it you don’t have the same world experience and outlook on life to form your opinion as any other person. You can’t match that person’s ability exactly. Hence if you try to continue their work the fans are going to feel it’s lacking.

The Badge Doesn’t Give +1 to Accuracy

People who are against citizens carrying firearms always like to point that the police will protect us. They said only law enforcement should have guns because they are the only ones trained properly. Well thanks to Says Uncle I can point at another story where the police don’t seem to be very good shots.

Police in London shot at a robbery suspect 19 times without hitting him even once. That’s a lot of rounds flying around. In fact that’s very irresponsible in my opinion. Each one of those bullets could have hit an innocent bystander which the police are supposed to be trained not to do (that’s what the anti-gunners say). And how far away was he? Well:

O’Connell estimated he was less than 10 metres and possibly as few as six metres away when the officer opened fire.

That’s somewhere between roughly 20 and 33 feet. If you can’t hit a man at that range you probably shouldn’t be carrying a gun on your person. Just remember police officers aren’t better shots than other civilians, that badge does not give +1 to accuracy.

A Holiday I can Get Behind

The things you find on the NRA ILA news site. Louisiana is having it’s annual Second Amendment Sales Tax Holiday from September 4th to the 6th. What is this holiday?

Well it’s a holiday where the purchase of firearms, ammunition, and hunting supplies are exempt from local and state sales and use taxes. I hope Minnesota tries this out, I certainly wouldn’t mind purchasing a firearm without having to pay for part of a Twins Stadium that I’m never going to use (nor get free admission to if I did use it).

MSNBC Try to Create Racism Where it Doesn’t Exist

From View From the Porch comes some very incriminating evidence against MSNBC. They did a story that tries to link the Obamessiah’s critics to racism, specifically gun owning critics of their god. The problem? Well they showed a man with a rifle at a health care rally to talk about evil white supremacists. They only show a close in of the rifle across the man’s back, the man was the black man with a gun in Arizona:

Yup just call of Obama’s critics racist, even if they are black.

You Can’t Rely on Police Protection

You simply can’t rely on the police for you personal protection as this article via Says Uncle shows. Two police officers in San Pablo stood by and watched as a gun name on a bridge killed two people. They made no effort to stop the gun name, apprehend him, or even get the license plate number of the criminal’s vehicle. They did radio for backup and block traffic from entering the bridge though, I guess that earns them a point out of 100 possible points.

Another thing to note is the amount of time it took to kill the two men:

The attack lasted less than half a minute.

So even if the police will protect you if they aren’t within 30 seconds travel distance you can be totally boned.

Remember people you are responsible for your own personal protection. Nobody is going to do it for you.

Stupidity in Quotations

So I’ve been talking about the people legally brining guns with them to these health care rallies. Of course I mentioned I bring my gun with me everywhere I legally can. Of course common sense went out the window because we were talking about guns near the Obamessiah.

Me: “I don’t know who there might try to cause me harm. I carry a gun so if somebody means to cause me harm they are going to have to work for it.”

Other Person: “And what are the chances of you being attacked at one of these rallies. I’m guessing pretty slim.”

Me: “The chances of me getting into a car accident on my way home tonight are pretty slim as well but I still wear my seat belt.”

And that is where the conversation ended. Seriously people just don’t grasp the concept that carrying the gun has no downside for me and greatly lowers my risk. On the other hand not carrying the gun with me has many downsides and greatly increases my risk. I swear simple math is beyond the scope of many people.