OUR MISS BROOKS DOESN'T HAVE TO BE A STONE KILLER

Just idly wondering about the correlation between those who say only police should have guns and those who go nuts when a cop busts a cap on someone.  I'm thinking it's probably pretty high, but certainly not 100%.

In the article about the deputy sheriff in Colorado who stopped the shooting at the school last week, some of the remarks from readers pointed out that the deputy was trained professional, and highly skilled in the use of arms, as opposed to teachers and janitors who are hopelessly and eternally unskilled.

Before I write another word, I want it understood that I am NOT impugning the dedication, integrity, or courage of police officers, in general.  Yes, there are a few who shouldn’t be in uniform, but that is only because we are limited to choosing our officers from the human race, a notoriously un-omniscient population – which is actually trenchant to this essay.

In this particular incident, the officer never fired a shot, so his skill or lack of it is not even a matter for discussion.  In fact, the very presence of an armed person stopped the attack.  Just the PRESENCE of an armed person.  How much skill and training is required to be PRESENT?  This fact is actually consistent with another statistic you won’t hear in the news:  Americans use firearms in defense of themselves or others at least 3 million times a year.  As much as the dipsticks in DC and the media would like us to believe we shoot 3 million of our neighbors every year, I hope it is obvious that we don’t.  That means that in millions of instances, firearms are used in the defense of life WITHOUT A SHOT BEING FIRED

See?  When you are speaking the truth, it can be verified from other perspectives.  I have been in at least a half-dozen situations in which my being armed prevented an assault or worse, without having to fire a shot – usually without even having to draw my weapon.  Just having it gave me the presence and the confidence to stand firm in the face of a threat.  No, that’s not true.  Just having a weapon did nothing, and if that’s all there were to me, I’d be a hazard to myself and others.  A more accurate statement is that having a weapon and knowing that I know how to use it effectively gave me confidence and presence, and I got that knowledge by spending a lot of time on the range with some great coaches.

Police officers are not a specific sub-species of humanity.  They are just men and women who have a fully-developed sense of duty and honor, and anyone could achieve that with the requisite effort.  Police officers have neither a gene nor an implant that gives them superlative powers of perception and tactical sense.  Nothing makes them infallible in any way.  They make mistakes of judgment.  They make mistakes in tactics.  They make mistakes when firing their weapons.  How many times in the last few years have NYPD officers shot innocent bystanders?  (It has been said that due to the ammunition shortage, NYPD has set a limit of five rounds per innocent bystander.)  That’s a vicious and demeaning joke, but it is not without reference to fact.

I started shooting a Colt 1911 pistol when I was 17 and borrowed my mom’s .38 Super.  I continued to learn in the Marines, and even though the pistol wasn’t officially my standard arm, I qualified expert with it.  Since I got out of the Marines, I have probably fired 10,000 rounds in concentrated practice.  I could count on one hand the number of state or city police officers whom I have met who have fired half that much.   The training plans for metropolitan departments devote orders of magnitude more time to filling out reports and sensitivity training than to focused marksmanship and gunfighting.  (And there’s a huge difference between those two!)  I personally know career officers who fire their weapons less than 100 times a year.  I have seen them turn their backs on potentially armed suspects.  I saw one take a pistol from a homeowner who had called about a burglary in progress, then lay the pistol on the hood of his car, in full view of that woman, and walk away!  I have shot next to them at target ranges, and observed that a lot of them couldn’t hit a bull in the butt with a bass fiddle.  I have heard them utter the most idiotic ideas about how guns and bullets work.

There is no reason in the world why any citizen possessed of normal intelligence and physical strength and coordination could not be as tactically savvy as the vast majority of police officers, and a hell of a lot better shot.  They will need training, and I’ll bet you a dollar to a donut the NRA would provide it for free.  I know I would gladly participate in that effort!  There is no question that it takes a special breed to become a hardened professional gunfighter.  There is also no question that few police officers fit that description, and even fewer teachers.

But it doesn’t matter.

We aren’t talking about turning Our Miss Brooks into Bonnie Parker or Annie Oakley.  We are talking about giving her enough training to protect herself and her students one time in her life, and the odds of any one teacher being called upon to do that are nearly zero.  We have the resources to train them.  Front Sight, in Nevada, has a 4-day defensive handgun course that would make any graduate a better, more savvy, more skilled gunfighter than the majority of professional police officers.  We have the resources to comfort and nurture and heal them if they ever have to shoot someone.  I submit that the resources we have spent on therapy for Sandy Hook survivors would have paid many times over for the training of a single teacher who might have put a stop to that outrage, and for any counseling or therapy she might need afterward.  Getting roses and apples and hugs from all those little children she kept safe would probably help as much as anything.

Here’s another little contradiction in the hoplophobe’s vast array of contradictions.  They say the lack of training prevents average citizens from competing with criminals in gunfights, but…  wait a minute… WHO TRAINED THE DAMNED CRIMINALS?  Criminals are, for the most art, mentally unstable and stupid.  That’s why they can’t work out their lives in other channels.  They are not gifted with superlative skill at arms any more than are police officers.  For the most part, they are not trained, at all.  Some, like the Aurora theater shooter, have gained some skill by playing violent video games for thousands of hours, but that doesn’t make them infallible.

Most significantly, it doesn’t make ‘em bulletproof, and THAT is where we can defeat them.

Rebsarge

17 Dec., 2013

DAMON AND ZINN VIE FOR PEABRAIN OF THE CENTURY

A friend posted a video of Matt Damon reading a speech that was given by Howard Zinn several years ago.   http://vimeo.com/48834336

This is my response.

Apart from the fact that Zinn was an idiot of jaw-dropping proportions, there is some merit to this speech. The main point of agreement for me is that in order to break the present cycle of ever-more unjust law, we're going to have to break hell out of some of those laws. We have been bullied and brainwashed into this non-violent form of prolonged suicide for so long that the only people who can really visualize themselves breaking hell out of some laws are the people who are part and parcel of the problem.

The problem in Germany did not start with people obeying Hitler. It started when Hitler was elected on a socialist/environmentalist platform that promised to smash the rich and redistribute wealth. Hitler said he was going to do all those things, and the German people thought that sounded like a good idea and elected him. None of them asked, "Just how does he figure on doing all that stuff," until it was too late. Hitler did what he did without the consent or assistance of the German people. If anyone spoke up, they died.

In Russia, the people accepted socialism/communism years before Uncle Joe came along, so there was no consent involved with his accession to power. As for obedience, it was pretty much the same thing in Russia as in Germany: obey or die. I've heard people say, "Hitler [or Stalin] couldn't murder a million people if they stood up to him. I think the scoreboard indicates either of them could murder way over a million.

So when Zinn compared the state of the American Sheelple to that of the Germans or Russians, he was miles off target - about average for him.

The single most thundering bit of idiocy is his reference to how the law allocates wealth. Only a Keynsian or a Bolshevik could make such a stunning error. Zinn, if I'm not mistaken, had spent a great deal of time around professors, and was, in fact, a professor, himself, which explains that advanced level of brain damage.

Wealth is created by human action. You can have all the berries in the world laying around, but until someone goes out and picks them, you'll starve. When that someone picks them, it is reasonable for him to say, "Hey, guys. I spent the day picking these berries, so I don't have any firewood. I'll swap berries for wood, K?" And there you have a very rudimentary economy, one based on human action and trade. Oh, and the firewood didn't just happen, either; somebody busted his hump getting that in, too. Keynsians don't understand that. They think wealth just happens, or, as Keynes, himself said, wealth is whatever people decide to call wealth. I can see him now, trying to make a living selling cordwood in hell: "Aw, come on, guys! Wood is worth as much as ice water; you just have to open your minds to a different definition of wealth!"

Government creates one thing, and one thing, only: force. The only way government can allocate wealth is to take it from those who produced it ('cause those who didn't produce it don't have none, and you can't take it from them 'cause they don't have it. K?) So the government can forcibly take wealth from those who produced it and give it to those who don't. Somebody's gettin' screwed in this deal, I can tell already. That's why the best government is a limited one, and specifically, one limited by a written body of law. (Zinn's contempt for the law amazes me. If it weren't for laws against littering and discharging a firearm in the city limits, he'd have been a sack of guts on the sidewalk a long time ago.) Government can allocate ONLY the use of force. Does that scare you? It damned well should. That's why the people need to be armed on par with the government. If the government's only product was pancake batter, the people might not need battle rifles, but that ain't the way it is.

When you accept, as a matter of policy that somebody's gettin' bent over the barrel, the only thing remaining is to decide who gets bent and who stands up behind them - not to put too fine a point on it... Systems that allow this to happen are notoriously fickle. The stand-behind citizen of today is the bend-over-the-barrel citizen of tomorrow. Anyone who advocates such a system really should think about that before voting. (It's too late for America, now, but that's the way it SHOULD HAVE worked.) When you put that kind of power in the hands of the government, all you can do is say, "Yassuh, Boss," and pick dat cotton.

There's an old joke that's a perfect parable. A guy asked a gal if she'd sleep with him for a million bucks. She said she reckoned she would. He said how about a buck and a half? She snapped, what kind of woman do you think I am? He said we've already determined that, Darlin'; we're just dickering over the price.

There really are only two ways to run an economic system. You can let the producers do their thing, using the written law as a standard of behavior so they don't use force against anyone, or you can put the power in the hands of the government. In the former case, the producers are motivated by a desire for wealth, and the surest way to that in a lawful, orderly society is to provide the best product at the best price. Wages, prices, supply, and demand are controlled by natural forces. And always - ALWAYS! - there must be the law, making sure that nobody uses force on anyone else.

In the latter case, the government is motivated to run the economy in a just and fair way, allowing the producers to make enough to satisfy them, and generously allowing those who don't produce enough to be comfortable and happy. The government will recognize that a desire for more in a producer is base greed, and in a lazy shirker, a simple human desire to live better. Oops. My sarcasm got the better of me. Sorry. So, yes, a free market can go awry, but so can a controlled one. On the one hand, you must trust to human nature and to the law. On the other, you must trust to human nature and raw power.

Rebsarge
23 Nov., 2013

DOES THE ACA REDUCE THE COST OF HEALTHCARE?

The claims by the Left of “controlling health care costs” baffles me on several points.  Here’s one.  The government is talking about health care insurance, and paying all these medical bills.

Hmmm, says I.

Let’s say I were buying a loaf of bread, and the store owner wanted $100 for it.  I’m filled with despair because I have about five bucks, and I’m hungry.  Along comes this tall, good-looking black fellow in a really sharp suit, and he says, “I’ll tell you what. I’ll take some money from this fund I have, and I’ll pay the other $95.”

“Great,” says I, and out I go with the bread.  But later, I hear the black fellow say on TV that he has lowered the cost of bread.

Like bloody hell, he did!  If anything, he guaranteed bread will ALWAYS cost at LEAST a hundred bucks a loaf!  He didn’t lower the price; he just paid what the jerk in the store was asking. You don’t seriously think the store owner, having tasted blood, and knowing where he can get more, will ever actually lower his price, do you?

But then comes the really aggravating part.  I gets to thinking, “I wonder where that fund he mentioned came from?

And then it hits me; that fund was taken from me, in the first place!  That crooked sonofabitch took my money – and a lot more than the $95 he paid for the bread – and invested it in a guaranteed level of inflation that would choke a Weimar banker, and then had the unmitigated gall to brag to me that he’d lowered the cost of my bread!   He didn’t lower a flippin thing!  All he did was make sure the cost would never come below $100, and took from me the money I might have used to pay for the bread, in the first place.

Let’s break this down a little more.  The government has passed laws and allowed – nay, encouraged and mandated – practices that have caused medical costs to go through the roof.   Now, rather than actually doing anything to reduce those costs, they are going to rob me, my children, and every future generation of Americans in order to pay the costs they have created.  And, of course, pay themselves a handsome wage for their hard work.

Ah, Fascist America!  Ya gotta love it!

Sic Semper,

Rebsarge 2013

GOODBYE TO MY TEAMMATES AT VZW

I’m not sure of the emotional dynamic that is driving me this morning, but I couldn’t sleep for thinking about this.  I’ve left jobs before, but always with the single-minded obsession that I’d have another one.  This time it’s like walking a plank; I’m stepping off the end and I’ve no idea what’s beyond. With varying degrees of success, I’ve worked for others since I was about 13.  Some of it has been unpleasant, but some of it has been amazingly gratifying.  In neither case was I prepared for what happened, and comforting as it may be to think myself blameless for the former and wholly responsible for the latter, the reality is probably somewhat less comforting.    However, I have a few ideas that seem important for me to share with y’all because you’re my friends, and I feel somewhat fatherly toward many of you.

In all things, never do less than your flat, level best.  Whether it’s working or playing, loving or fighting, hold nothing back.  At the end of the day, if you can look in the mirror and say, “You did your best,” you should await the results in peace. 

Love money for what it is and what it can do, but never make a god of it, or love it for its own sake.  Money won’t buy happiness, but neither will poverty.  I’ve been broke and miserable and fairly well off and miserable, and being broke makes it worse.  Money will not make a man good or evil; it will only unmask the good or evil he already has in his heart.  Work hard and honestly for your money, but never for a second forget that if you spend part of your allotted span earning a dollar, whatever you trade that dollar for becomes the symbol of that minute of your life.  The money for which you trade the minutes of your life may be used to build temples or whorehouses.  It’s your choice, and rightfully so, but give a moment’s thought to what legacy you are leaving to your children.

Companies, especially big ones, like to pretend that money isn’t a motivator.  Such insanity is part of the unique form of brain damage that comes from excessive exposure to professors.  Working for wages does not make you a prostitute.  Only selling your principles for favor can do that.  Working for wages makes you a producer, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

Let your employer stay a few dollars ahead of you.  Do this by making sure you do just a little more than you are paid for.  When the time comes, and it usually does, for you to tell him to kiss your grits, you want to make damn sure you don’t owe him a nickel.  Years ago, I read a proverb titled, “Alaskan Philosophy,” and I’ve found that the further from it I drift, the more stupid and screwed up my life gets.  It is simply this:  “Live each day so you can look every man square in the eye and tell him to go to hell.”  Telling people to go to hell is NOT the objective!  The objective is to make certain you have dealt with all men fairly, and have taken advantage of none.  At the top of the list of those with whom you must be on the level is the one who looks back at you from the mirror.  That sucker will kick your butt if you don’t, and if you don’t have that kind of relationship with him or her, you have greater problems than you know.

Shakespeare said, “To thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.”  Believe it.

If you run into someone smarter than you, don’t get mad at him. It ain’t his fault.   ~Cowboy proverb.

Never get so damned smart you can’t learn something from every person you meet.  ~My dad

Read.  Read at least a few minutes every day.  Start with something that interests you, but as you grow, branch out. Read things that challenge and stretch you.  Five years from now, you will be the same person you are today with the exception of the books you read and the people with whom you associate.  Goethe said, “A man’s mind, once stretched to fit a new idea, will never return to its former size and shape.”  (He also said “Where they burn books, they will burn men.”  True dat.)

You can’t interfere with folks’ right to be stupid.   ~My mom

Being open minded does not mean accepting any damnfool drivel that happens to blow through your ears.  It means listening to the ideas of others and evaluating them honestly and fairly.  Have your own values and standards, know what they are, and live by them.  If you find something better, change, but never, ever let anyone bluff or bully you into changing your mind without a good reason.  And in your own dealings with others, remember that all you can do is offer your opinion; it’s up to them to pick it up or leave it lay.  This is at the heart of The Gospel.  We all have the right and obligation to exercise our agency, and that agency starts with what we think and believe.  God offers us His testimony and His wisdom, but He doesn’t jam it down our throats, and when people who claim to be His servants start jamming things, don’t hesitate to put a stop to it.  Don’t judge the Gospel by some of the idiots who profess to teach it, but remember you can go wrong by being too skeptical as readily as by being too trusting. 

Most folks’ idea of religion has about the same relationship to the Gospel as education does to intelligence, i.e., none to speak of.  ~Me (because I’ve used it a lot and don’t remember where I got it.)

Never let school interfere with your education, your job with being productive, nor a relationship with loving.  ~Me

You can spend all your love making time, or you can spend all your time making love. ~The Eagles

The only person who never made a mistake never did anything.  Always – always do your best to do what’s right, but understand you aren’t perfect, and you’re going to screw up.  You will hurt yourself and those you love. You will blow opportunities.  Don’t let it make you afraid to play the game.  Do your best, learn from your mistakes, and keep slugging.  God will forgive you if you ask Him sincerely, but it’s not that easy for people.  Forgiving yourself may be one of the toughest things you’ll ever do, but few things will contribute more to your personal growth or the satisfaction you take from living.  You are an amazing, stunning being, “wonderfully and fearfully made.”  Wallow in it, and be thankful.

Finally, don’t be stupid.  May Our Father in Heaven bless you all and keep you safe.

Your pard,