Tag: You’re Doing it Wrong

I Don’t Think You Thought Your Clever Plan All the Way Through

Every Day, No Days Off demonstrates that lunacy isn’t confined to gun control advocates in the United States. Some rather creative, although short sighted, anti-gunners in Germany are trying to crowdsource funding to bury the Heckler and Koch factory in cement:

We plan to put a sarcophagus, similar to the one that encases the Chernobyl reactor, over Germany’s deadliest factory, so that none of its lethal “products” can illegally escape.

We will drop a sand and concrete mixture from helicopters onto the weapons factory in Oberndorf – a work of art changing reality. We need to shut down this gigantic wreck of humanity now, the German factory of Heckler & Koch in Oberndorf, once and for all!
Tons of sand and concrete will bring all deadly activities to a halt (see video). We need at least €4.000 ($5.200) to rent helicopters! For a donation of €10 ($13), you will receive a poster of the sarcophagus (Format: A1 – see below)!

The site has some really shitty renders of the Heckler and Koch factory (along with several neighboring houses by the looks of it) encased in cement. They’re goal is to raise €3,400 (even though they state they need €4,000 to rent a helicopter, obviously they’re not good at math), which isn’t going to be enough to rent and fuel a helicopter for enough trips that it will take to bury the entire factory in cement. Needless to say anti-gunner craziness is an international phenomenon.

The Failing NRA

The National Rifle Association (NRA) is the largest gun rights advocacy group in the United States (and probably the world). They’re feared by gun control advocates and cheered by most gun rights advocates. It’s easy to see why since the NRA has a notable history of success when it comes to fighting gun control legislation. Unfortunately success is often followed by stagnation and it has become apparent that the NRA has become stagnant.

The NRA’s primary power is its influence in the political system. When the NRA throws their support behind a politician gun control and gun rights advocates perk up. In the case of gun control advocates they take the NRA’s endorsement as a reason to oppose a politician while gun rights activists take the NRA’s endorsement as a reason to support a politician. This presidential election is important to note because both of the leading candidates have a history of opposing gun rights. It would seem in order to remain consistent supporters of gun rights the NRA would have to either endorse a third-party candidate or nobody. Instead they have decided to officially endorse Mitt Romney:

NRA Executive vice president Wayne LaPierre and NRA Political Victory Fund chairman Chris Cox will formally announce the endorsement at a Romney rally in Virginia later Thursday evening. Vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan will also be on hand.

When all you have is a hammer it’s easy to see every problem as a nail. Let’s consider the situation, the NRA’s most effective tool to defend gun rights cannot be applied in this presidential election because both leading candidates oppose gun rights. Instead of searching their toolbox for a different tool they’ve allowed themselves to give their support to a candidate who open supports an “assault weapon” ban.

I’m glad the NRA isn’t the only game in town. If organizations like the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) didn’t exist we would soon find ourselves stuck between a rock and a hard place. The NRA exhibits typic behavior or a large behemoth organization, wild success has cause it to be entirely unable to innovate. While the NRA continues with its strategy of endorsing candidates even though no pro-gun candidates exist SAF has opted for the strategy of filing lawsuits against violators of gun rights. Both District of Columbia v. Heller and McDonald v. Chicago were SAF lead initiatives (which the NRA later tried to claim credit for) that ended up being very successful. Being smaller and more nimble SAF was able to recognize a failure in the NRA’s strategy and try something else.

It’s come to the point where I wish an NRA membership wasn’t required to maintain my Oakdale Gun Club membership. That requirement is the only reason I keep renewing my NRA membership. Instead of sending additional money to the NRA’s Political Victory Fund I send money to other organizations like SAF. Endorsing Romney is an overt move against gun rights and I don’t support organizations that oppose gun rights.

The Dangers of Leasing Equipment

Leading equipment can be a dangerous proposition, especially when you’re doing something controversial with it:

Cody Wilson planned in the coming weeks to make and test a 3-D printed pistol. Now those plans have been put on hold as desktop-manufacturing company Stratasys pulled the lease on a printer rented out for Wiki Weapon, the internet project lead by Wilson and dedicated to sharing open-source blueprints for 3-D printed guns. Stratasys even sent a team to seize the printer from Wilson’s home.

“They came for it straight up,” Cody Wilson, director of Defense Distributed, the online collective that oversees the Wiki project, tells Danger Room. “I didn’t even have it out of the box.” Wilson, who is a second-year law student at the University of Texas at Austin, had leased the printer earlier in September after his group raised $20,000 online. As well as using the funds to build a pistol, the Wiki Weapon project aimed to eventually provide a platform for anyone to share 3-D weapons schematics online. Eventually, the group hoped, anyone could download the open source blueprints and build weapons at home.

Stratasys is simply trying to delay the inevitable. Gun control is impossible because guns are mechanically simple devices that can be manufactured with little in the way of tooling. 3D printers could revolutionize the speed in which an individual can manufacture their own firearm but some companies are scrambling to put the genie back in the bottle.

If we’re going to make firearms with 3D printers we must relay on printers that are owned outright. If we rely on leased equipment we’ll face the equipment owners pulling the lease after a minimal amount of pressure from gun control advocates.

The State Protects Its Own

Remember that police officer that decided it would be a jolly good idea to pepper spray some peaceful protesters in the face? What do you think happened to him? If you think he was prosecuted for assault you would be wrong. He was found innocent of all wrongdoing:

The pepper-spraying of students by UC Davis police officers last November was not criminal conduct, Yolo County District Attorney’s office concluded Wednesday following an inquiry into officers’ response to protestors on the campus.

“(V)iewing the incident through the totality of the circumstances, there is insufficient evidence to establish proof beyond a reasonable doubt that the use of force involved in the November 18, 2011, pepper spraying was unlawful and therefore warrants the filing of criminal charges,” officials said in a statement announcing the report’s findings.

What the District Attorney meant to say was, “The officer in question works for the same violent state that I do. In return for lenient treatment by my fellow state employees I’m being lenient on my fellow state employee. After all he only pepper sprayed a stupid serf so nobody important was hurt.”

This just goes to show that allowing the state to both wield force and determine if its wielding of force is warrant is a bad idea. It only ensures that state employees remain free of consequences resulting from their violent behavior.

Enforcing Equality at All Costs

One of the more interesting aspects of modern American society is the fixation with equality. I’m not talking about equality under the law, people seem content with the fact that a certain group of people have legal privileges not enjoyed by everybody else. No, I’m talking about equality in all other aspects of life. Americans have become obsessed with mental equality, physical equality, and family equality. In fact things have gotten so out of hand that father-daughter and mother-son dances are being banned:

In a move that has taken some parents by surprise, the school department has announced that it is banning traditional “father-daughter” and “mother-son” activities, saying they violate state law.
Did the Cranston School Department do the right thing in banning “father-daughter” dances? (3,477 votes)

Supt. Judith Lundsten said the move was triggered by a letter ifrom the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of a single mom who had complained that her daughter had not been able to attend her father-daughter dance.

Lundsten said school attorneys found while federal Title IX legislation banning gender discrimination gives an exemption for “father-son” and “mother-daughter” events, Rhode Island law doesn’t.

This story also exemplifies my love-hate relationship with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Because a child lacked a father she was unable to attend the father-daughter dance. In a sane world no consequences would come of this and the dance would be allowed to go on. This isn’t a sane world so the ACLU sued and caused the dance to be cancelled. Everybody suffered because one child faced inequality with those who had both parents.

Perusing perfect equality is a foolhardy mission because it’s impossible. Some people are stronger than others, some are smarter than others, and some have both parents while others have only one. These circumstances exist because reality has no concern for human equality. Yet we continue to punish everybody because one or two people face inequality due to circumstances inflicted on them by life. At this rate everybody with two legs will have to have one amputated so those missing a leg can be equal to everybody else.

Nuking the Economy

What does the world’s most powerful military force do when it runs out of money? Spend money it doesn’t have on upgrading weapons that it doesn’t need:

They may be cash poor as the recession continues, but that doesn’t stop the Obama Administration from continuing to spend, with a new scheme to spend hundreds of billions of dollars they don’t have on thousands of nuclear weapons they don’t need.

The “modernization” plan seeks to upgrade some 5,113 nuclear warheads as well as refurbishing nuclear weapons facilities and replace delivery systems for the weapons, each capable of wiping out a major city, and combined capable of destroying virtually the sum total of human civilization.

I give up, what can you say about this story that it doesn’t say already?

Creating Green Jobs

The state has been on a kick about generating green jobs. In the pursuit of demonstrating its awesomeness the state has been showing off statistics that show a large increase in the number of green jobs. As with most state developed statistics its statistics regarding the number of created green jobs are a bit… inflated:

BLS compiled a list of 333 industries that can be classified as green, and those who are employed in those industries can be counted as “green workers.” Thus, the definition is extremely broad and includes both direct jobs and indirect jobs. Some examples of jobs considered to be green by this definition are[v]:

  • A person who sweeps the floor in a solar panel manufacturing facility
  • A driver of a hybrid bus
  • A school bus driver
  • An employee who fills the bus with fuel
  • An employee involved in waste collection or water and sewer operations
  • A clerk at a bicycle repair shop
  • A manufacturer of rail cars
  • An oil lobbyist whose company is engaged in environmental issues.
  • An employee of an environment or science museum.

I wonder how oil lobbyists managed to get their job on the green list. It’s not like they spend all of their time greasing politician’s palms or anything. Either way, as you can see, the statistics regarding the number of green jobs in this country are artificially inflated malarkey.

Pay Not Based on Results

In this time of economic hardship the teacher union in Chicago has decided to go on strike:

As many as 26,000 teachers were expected to stay away, with picket lines forming around the city.

About 350,000 students were affected by the strike in the nation’s third-largest district.

The walkout was called after all-day talks broke down on Sunday, following months of negotiations.

The two sides met again on Monday to continue negotiations, but failed to reach a settlement, meaning the strike will extend into at least a second day.

“This is not a strike I wanted,” the mayor said. “It’s unnecessary, it’s avoidable and it’s wrong.”

School officials said they had doubled the pay rise offered, for a total of 16% over four years.

“This is about as much as we can do,” Chicago school board chief David Vitale told the Chicago Tribune. “There is only so much money in the system.”

Considering the drop out rate in Chicago is roughly 40% I see no reason to give the teachers any raise. In fact I would argue they should have their paid decreased to reflect the poor job they’re doing at creating an environment where students want to come and learn.

Supporting Civil Liberties Only When it’s Convenient

People often claim that Democratic Party is the political party of civil liberties. Unfortunately this is only true when it’s convenient for them to support civil liberties:

What a difference four years makes.

In 2008, Democrats were eager to draw a contrast with what they then portrayed as Republican excesses in the fight against Al Qaeda. Since then, the Obama administration has in many cases continued the national security policies of its predecessor—and the Democratic Party’s 2012 platform highlights this reversal, abandoning much of the substance and all of the bombast of the 2008 platform.

The article goes on to show that the new Democratic Party platform has removed references to opposing indefinite detention, prohibiting warrantless surveillance and repealing the PATRIOT Act, closing Guantanamo Bay, opposing racial profiling, and opposing torture.

When Bush was in office the Democratic Party was entirely against everything Bush did. Now that their guy is in office they are entirely supportive of Bush’s tactics. It’s not about what’s right and what’s wrong, it’s about who is in power. So long as the man in power is on “their” team whatever he does is fine.

I hope the Democratic and Republican parties get everything they want and I hope they get it hard.

More of the Same

During the Democratic National Convention (DNC) Dianne Feinstein announced that she was going to continue being bigoted towards gun owners:

Dianne Feinstein announced Wednesday that she’s re-entering the battle over gun control during her keynote speech to the California delegates to the Democratic National Convention.

[…]

She promised California delegates she’d return to Congress to reintroduce “an updated assault weapons bill.”

At the delegates’ breakfast, she said that, “Weapons of war do not belong on our streets, in our classrooms, in our schools or in our movie theatres.”

Bigotry is irrational so it’s not surprising to see Feinstein invalidate her own argument for introducing a new “assault” weapon ban. Specifically she stated that, “Weapons of war do not belong on our streets, in our classrooms, in our schools or in our movie theatres.” In many states it’s illegal to carry long arms of any sort unless they are unloaded and in a locked case. There is a federal prohibition against carrying firearms into public schools so one cannot legally bring an “assault” weapon into a classroom. Many theaters, including most of the theaters in the Twin Cities, post notification against carry weapons on the property. Each of the locations she mentioned have currently established restrictions (some are prohibitions left up to the property owner while others are legal prohibitions) against carrying “assault” weapons within. If current gun control laws have failed to stop weapons from entering gun-free zones how will passing more gun control laws change anything?

Feinstein is so obsessed with her crusade against gun owners that she doesn’t even see the fallacy in her own arguments.