Tag: You Can’t Cure Stupid

Use a Damn Holster

If you’ve read any gun blogs or forums for more than a day you’ve likely come across a post or thread urging you to use a fucking holster. There’s a reason for that. Not using a holster can lead to a personal injury (or worse) that makes you look like a fool:

A Connecticut man, who accidentally shot himself while riding a bicycle, was arrested this week after lying to police and saying that a “gang” of men wearing black hoodies had attacked him.

[…]

But Docteur finally admitted that the gun in his waistband had gone off and he had shot himself after he was not able to explain why there was only a hole where the bullet exited from his pants. He was also not able to tell police what happened to his handgun after the incident.

I’ve mentioned the fact that I bike armed. When I ride my bike I lock my Glock 30SF into a Safariland ALS holster. My ALS serves two purposes: it prevents me from looking like a jackass like Mr. Docteur mentioned above and it prevents my firearm from coming out of the holster (it’s a potential problem when I’m mountain biking).

If you’re going to carry a gun buy a holster. Even a cheap, flimsy nylon holster made by Uncle Mike’s is better than nothing. An it’s far cheaper than the medical bills that you be accrue from sliding an unholstered gun down your waistband.

Being a Bad Person

Poe’s law, which states “Without a blatant display of humor, it is impossible to create a parody of extremism or fundamentalism that someone won’t mistake for the real thing.” That’s the first thing that popped into my head when I read this:

You are a bad person if you send your children to private school. Not bad like murderer bad—but bad like ruining-one-of-our-nation’s-most-essential-institutions-in-order-to-get-what’s-best-for-your-kid bad. So, pretty bad.

Considering the source of the article I’m left to belief the author is being sincere. The article can only be an attempt for the gold metal in mental gymnastics. What the author proposes, that any parent who doesn’t send their child to a public school is a bad person, is asinine. The author actually encourages parents to disadvantage their children in the hopes of improving public schools for their potential great grandchildren:

I am not an education policy wonk: I’m just judgmental. But it seems to me that if every single parent sent every single child to public school, public schools would improve. This would not happen immediately. It could take generations. Your children and grandchildren might get mediocre educations in the meantime, but it will be worth it, for the eventual common good. (Yes, rich people might cluster. But rich people will always find a way to game the system: That shouldn’t be an argument against an all-in approach to public education any more than it is a case against single-payer health care.)

It seems that the author hasn’t thought her clever plan all the way through. Let’s assume that you, a highly educated parent who wants to improve the public education system, decides to inflict a mediocre education on your children. Because your plan requires generations to work you must plan for your children to pick up the fight after you’re gone. How is a child with a mediocre education going to properly articulate the need for improving public schools? Where is that child’s motivation going to come from? If a mediocre education is all he or she knows then they are unlikely to fight for something greater. The author has the advantage of private schools to compare public schools to. This advantage would disappear if people actually followed her plan because private schools would disappear. After a generation or two without any alternative to public education the number of people fighting to improve the system would dwindle. Instead of creating a society of brilliant people the author’s plan would create an idiocracy.

Authoritarians often fail to see the inevitable outcome of their plans. While us anti-authoritarians often suffer the same failure we aren’t trying to force everybody to follow our plans, we simply state what we’re going to do and let any interested parties join us if they want. If our plans fail there are other plans that may succeed. If the author’s plan fails America becomes the society envisioned by Mike Judge in Idiocracy.

Instead of demanding every parent send their child to a public school, the author should be demanding every parent try something different. Perhaps public education isn’t the best option. Charter schools, private schools, Montessories, home schooling, and unschooling are all alternatives to public education currently being perused by parents. If one of these alternatives ends up failing then the others are still free to continue. Survivors can learn from the mistakes of the failures and improve.

You’re not a bad person for sending your children to a private school but you are a bad person if you attempt to inflict what you think is best on everybody else.

Why I Hate Politics: Everybody is Right, Everybody is Wrong

It’s fairly common for gun bloggers to be active in politics. I used to be active in politics but I gave it up. My reason for doing so was simple: politics is pointless. It’s the single biggest waste of time and energy in any society. Although I’ve performed no scientific study I theorize that as a nation’s bureaucracy increases, that is to say as the amount of time sunk into politics increase, its productivity decreases.

Every second you sink into politics is a second you sink into accomplishing nothing of value. Last week I pointed out that individuals involved with politics have a tendency to oversimplify complex issues. Productivity can only occur when problems can be solved and problems can only be solved when they are properly understood. Because politics lends itself to oversimplification it’s impossible to properly identify and solve problems. One of the reasons politics may lend itself to oversimplification is because matters quickly become a form of religious dogma within factions. This brings me to another thing I hate about politics: everybody believes they are right and everybody else is wrong.

Here in the Twin Cities we’re having a political debate about expanding the light rail network. Like any good debate this one has supporters and detractors. The supporters claim that light rail brings economic development and empowers the poor while the detractors claim that light rail is a boondoggle that wastes tax victim money. It’s a black and white issue for both sides. Neither side is willing to even consider what the other side is saying.

Supporters of the light rail project will often point to economic studies that conclude light rail expansions lead to economic development. These same people will marginalize studies that conclude light rail expansion simply moves economic development from one location to another and, since light rail systems require resources to build and maintain, leaves less overall resources for said economic development. Detractors wave studies that show how much building and maintaining a light rail system costs, which is almost always more than the supporters claim. These opponents of light rail will also point out the amount of economic damage done to areas where light rail construction leaves current transportation infrastructure unusable for a year or more. If nobody can get to your business then they can’t buy your wares.

Both sides have a tendency to outright ignore the other side’s arguments. There is no debate. Everybody is sure that they’re right. Being arrogant normally isn’t a problem but being arrogant and political is a recipe for disaster. This is because politics is a strategy to coerce your neighbors into doing what you want.

Consider what the supporters are really trying to do. Deciding that they want a new toy, the supporters have gone to the biggest bully on the playground, the government, and asked him to take other children’s lunch money. Detractors, on the other hand, have gone to the biggest bully and asked him to prevent the supporters from ever purchasing another toy.

Neither side is paying much attention to the people who are actually affected by this project. How do the business owners and residents feel about the light rail expansion? Knowing that light rail construction could harm their business for an extended period of time may lead business owners in the area to reject the project. Residents may want a rail system to ease their commute from home to work. But these people aren’t the ones being asked. The project is being argued by people living in different parts of the Twin Cities and Minnesota. It’s no longer about them. In fact, it was never about them. This argument, from the beginning, has been about political dogma. One side believes light rail is amazing and the other believes it’s the great evil of our time.

What’s the point of a debate when both sides already know that they are, for a fact, right? Political debates are seldom debates, they’re just two sides screaming “I’m right, you’re wrong!” at each other. Facts are quickly tossed aside in favor of talking points. Supporters are quick to claim that detractors hate the poor while detractors are quick to claim that supporters want to make everybody poor.

I see no point in wasting my time arguing with brick walls, which is what politics is. Instead of wasting my time with futile arguments I prefer to use my time actually doing things.

The Nonissue of Chelsea Manning

You have to give the state’s propaganda arm credit, they known how to cover up an important story with a unimportant one. If you were to believe the media you would think the news that the person formerly known as Bradley Manning is now Chelsea Manning is new. Truth be told, everybody who has been following this story has known that, during her deployment to Iraq, Chelsea had communications with a gender councilor. Manning even contacted her master sergeant, Paul Adkins, and informed him that she was suffering from gender dysphoria. So this news isn’t new.

But the media is giving it wall-to-wall coverage. Why? I’m unable to read minds but I’m guessing the reason major media outlets are covering this story is to discredit Manning. In the United States people suffering gender dysphoria are often treated as weird or somehow lesser. This attitude is strong enough in some people that they will now view Manning negatively no matter what good deeds she did or does.

Let’s not lose sight of the fact that Manning, regardless of her gender identity, is a hero. She provided proof that supported the accusations of war crimes being made against the United States. In my opinion she was executing a warrant against a suspected wrongdoer. Now that the collected evidence has been sifted through and proof has been found of criminal activity we should be focusing all of our attention of prosecuting the evildoers. Instead we’re wasting our time with nonissues, such as Manning’s preferred gender, and prosecuting the person who brought us the evidence.

Solving One Problem at a Time

I must say, as Bill Gates gets older I find him more and more annoying. The man becomes more of a petty authoritarian ever day. In a recent interview with Bloomberg Business Week he was asked about Google’s plan to launch weather balloons to provide Internet connectivity to developing societies:

One of Google’s (GOOG) convictions is that bringing Internet connectivity to less-developed countries can lead to all sorts of secondary benefits. It has a project to float broadband transmitters on balloons. Can bringing Internet access to parts of the world that don’t have it help solve problems?

His answer?

When you’re dying of malaria, I suppose you’ll look up and see that balloon, and I’m not sure how it’ll help you. When a kid gets diarrhea, no, there’s no website that relieves that. Certainly I’m a huge believer in the digital revolution. And connecting up primary-health-care centers, connecting up schools, those are good things. But no, those are not, for the really low-income countries, unless you directly say we’re going to do something about malaria.

Google started out saying they were going to do a broad set of things. They hired Larry Brilliant, and they got fantastic publicity. And then they shut it all down. Now they’re just doing their core thing. Fine. But the actors who just do their core thing are not going to uplift the poor.

Apparently it’s impossible to solve multiple problems at once. The reason I referred to him as an authoritarian is because of his attitude that things can only be accomplished his way. In his opinion we must cure malaria before any other problems are solved in developing societies. He doesn’t consider the possibility that getting access to the collected knowledge of mankind may allow somebody in one of those developing societies, somebody who is used to solving large problems with few resources, may be able to come up with a more efficient way of solving the malaria problem than vaccinations.

There’s no reason multiple problems can’t be worked on simultaneously. Eradicating malaria and providing Internet connectivity can be done at the same time. In fact achieving one goal may help achieve the other.

As the saying goes, there’s more than one way to skin a cat. Just because the solution you’ve developed may work in the long run doesn’t mean it’s the only, or even best, solution.

Prosperity

News outlets have been abuzz with good news about the job market here in the United States. During the second quarter the job market added 183,000 jobs:

Economists predict that employers added 183,000 jobs — a figure that would show that businesses are growing more confident despite weak economic growth. More jobs would boost consumers’ ability to spend, allowing for stronger growth in the second half of the year.

The unemployment rate is expected to have dipped last month to 7.5 percent from 7.6 percent. The Labor Department will release the report at 8:30 am EDT Friday.

The depressions is over, everybody can go home! Well, not quite. As it turns out the jobs added to the market aren’t full time positions. A majority of jobs are part time:

The 162,000 jobs the economy added in July were a disappointment. The quality of the jobs was even worse.

A disproportionate number of the added jobs were part-time or low-paying — or both.

Part-time work accounted for more than 65 percent of the positions employers added in July. Low-paying retailers, restaurants and bars supplied more than half July’s job gain.

“You’re getting jobs added, but they might not be the best-quality job,” says John Canally, an economist with LPL Financial in Boston.

So far this year, low-paying industries have provided 61 percent of the nation’s job growth, even though these industries represent just 39 percent of overall U.S. jobs, according to Labor Department numbers analyzed by Moody’s Analytics. Mid-paying industries have contributed just 22 percent of this year’s job gain.

In other words, the jobs being added aren’t jobs people can survive off of. This is one of the many problems with labor statistics in the United States. The numbers reported fail to tell the actual story. While an estimated 182,000 jobs were added to the economy makes everybody feel happy the truth is that most of those jobs are crap. In other words the labor market hasn’t actually improved any notable amount, it’s merely sucking in a different way.

I guess the depression is still on.

Bow Before the King

Last week the inevitable finally happened, Detroit finally filed for bankruptcy. Because reality is difficult to deal with a judge decided to block Detroit’s filing. That in of itself isn’t much of a news story but the judges justification for opposing the filing is:

Prior to her ruling on Friday, the judge criticized the Snyder administration and Schuette’s office over their hasty move.

“It’s cheating, sir, and it’s cheating good people who work,” the judge told assistant state Attorney General Brian Devlin. “It’s also not honoring the (United States) president, who took (Detroit’s auto companies) out of bankruptcy.”

I think somebody is jockeying for a Supreme Court nomination because that’s the only reason I can understand why a judge would bow down before a president and perform such thorough public fellatio.

Life is difficult for worshipers of the state. At some point economic realities always cause a state to crumble. When that happens the worshipers of the state resort to the only argumentative method they know, argumentum ad auctoritatem. As devout worshipers, these arguments begin to take on a religious quality. They say that the state can’t crumble because, their god or gods, who take form as the state’s rulers, said such a destiny was impossible.

Detroit is insolvent, there is nothing that can be done to change that fact. The judge, unable to come to terms with reality, has resorted to saying that Detroit can’t fall because her god, the president, wouldn’t be honored by such a fact. It’s no different than if she stuck her fingers in her ears and began to yell “LA LA LA I CAN’T HEAR YOU!”

Detroit Files for Bankruptcy

Eventually bad economic decisions catch up with everybody. Detroit, after suffering decades of bad economic decisions, has taken its place as the largest city in the United States to file for bankruptcy:

Detroit has become the largest US city ever to file for bankruptcy, with debts of at least $18bn (£12bn).

The city, once a symbol of US industrial power, is seeking protection from creditors who include public-sector workers and their pension funds.

Unions described the bankruptcy filing as a power grab.

Detroit has faced decades of problems linked to declining industry. Public services are nearing collapse and about 70,000 properties lie abandoned.

Governments can only survive off of stolen money and Detroit has had less and less of a base of tax victims since the collapse of its automotive industry. As people fled the city or fell so far into poverty that they no longer had anything to take the state found itself with less and less plunder.

Now we just have to wait for Omni Consumer Products to buy the city up.

One of These Things is Not Like the Other

Since Mark Dayton vetoed the legislation that would have brought “stand your ground” to Minnesota, it’s not surprise to see him attempt to justify his political position by shoehorning “stand your ground” into the Zimmerman case:

He commented on the acquittal last weekend of George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch volunteer who shot and killed the 17-year-old Martin in Sanford, Fla., in February of 2012. Florida has a law similar to the one Dayton vetoed, although it is not clear that it figured into Zimmerman’s successful claim of self-defense.

“Whether we agree or disagree with the decision, we have to carry on,” Dayton said, in his first comments on the case. “We have to learn from the mistakes of the past — learn that these kinds of laws that are supposedly empowering citizen vigilantes to take matters in their own hands have catastrophic effects.”

Of course, as pointed out by Andrew Branca at Legal Insurrection, the Zimmerman case had nothing to do with Florida’s “stand your ground” law:

Traditionally, it was required that you take advantage of a safe avenue of retreat, if such was reasonably available to you, before using deadly force in self-defense. This was what is referred to as a generalized duty to retreat. It always had exceptions, such as the Castle Doctrine which lifts the duty when you are in your home.

The “stand-your-ground” law expands the scope of the Castle Doctrine beyond your home to every place you have a right to be. So, even if there were a safe avenue of retreat reasonably available to you, you no longer have a legal duty to attempt to make use of it before using deadly force in self-defense.

The duty to retreat itself, however, only applies where safe retreat is possible. If there is no safe avenue of retreat, there is no duty. If there is no duty, the “stand-your-ground” statute that relieves you of that duty is irrelevant.

This was this situation in the Zimmerman case. When George Zimmerman made the decision to use deadly force in self-defense he had already been trying to escape for at least the 45 seconds he was screaming for help and getting his head smashed into a sidewalk. There simply was no reasonably safe avenue of retreat available to him. Therefore he had no duty to retreat, and without any such duty “stand-your-ground” has no role to play in lifting that duty.

The claim that Zimmerman got off because of Florida’s “stand your ground” law is incorrect. Zimmerman deployed deadly force only after he was pinned to the ground. Since he had no avenue of retreat he could legally use deadly force in self-defense regardless if the statute existed or not.

Sadly, the myth that Zimmerman’s verdict was determined by “stand your ground” legislation is unlikely to die, especially when you have governors like Mark Dayton perpetuating the lie.

Closed to the Public

Advocates of gun control are becoming more cult-like every day. A common feature of cults is to cut members off from outsiders. This helps prevent unwanted influences from convincing cult members to leave the cult. Gabrielle Giffords, the Arizona congresswoman who was shot in the head, decided to visit Raleigh, North Carolina to promote gun control. What makes her visit notable is this little tidbit:

Giffords and Kelly discussed ways that they say increased gun controls can coexist with the Second Amendment and the right of Americans to own guns. The event was not open to the public and was organized by Americans for Responsible Solutions.

Emphasis mine. In order to prevent dissenting opinions from messing up Gifford’s message outsiders weren’t allowed to attend. This separation was probably necessary to prevent members of Americans for Responsible Solutions from straying. It’s difficult to retain members when the entire platform your organization exists to promote is both an oxymoron and entirely impossible to achieve.