Sunday, September 23, 2012

On the subject of idiot laws and nanny-state morons

However, as I read more about this new California law, I found that I was even more felonious than I thought. The law bans "a knife or other instrument with or without a handguard that is capable of ready use as a stabbing weapon that may inflict great bodily injury or death."

I looked around my desk for "other instruments." There they were, six BiC round stick ball-point pens. When I was a college student in Texas many years ago, a highway patrol officer once told my government class that a BiC pen made a dandy self-defense weapon—just stab frequently about the face and neck with it. And here I am, 30 years later, committing a six-count felony with them. It gets worse, folks. I've also got one of the 0.5-mm mechanical pencils on my desk. I've actually once accidentally stabbed myself with one, so I have no doubt that they can inflict great bodily injury, or even death.
The felony counts are now over 10, counting the mechanical pencil, the six BiC pens (three of which are the dreaded fine-point assault pens), my pocket knife with the vile locking blade, concealed in my pocket, as I set here in my office at a university, committing felonies left and right, thereby giving up my civil rights forever... if I get caught. 
..
There's going to be a revolution in this country. There are going to be firing squads and lynch mobs, and the people being shot and lynched are going to be the idiotic little creeps who pass laws like these. It's going to be a terrible time for our country, a terrible time. But you know, when I think of standing there in a firing squad getting ready to shoot the idiots who passed this law, I'm not going to feel quite so bad about it after all


Kind of connected, found this by L. Neil Smith:

Over the past 30 years, I've been paid to write almost two million words, every one of which, sooner or later, came back to the issue of guns and gun-ownership. Naturally, I've thought about the issue a lot, and it has always determined the way I vote. 

People accuse me of being a single-issue writer, a single- issue thinker, and a single- issue voter, but it isn't true. What I've chosen, in a world where there's never enough time and energy, is to focus on the one political issue which most clearly and unmistakably demonstrates what any politician—or political philosophy—is made of, right down to the creamy liquid center. 

Make no mistake: all politicians—even those ostensibly on the side of guns and gun ownership—hate the issue and anyone, like me, who insists on bringing it up. They hate it because it's an X-ray machine. It's a Vulcan mind-meld. It's the ultimate test to which any politician—or political philosophy—can be put. 

If a politician isn't perfectly comfortable with the idea of his average constituent, any man, woman, or responsible child, walking into a hardware store and paying cash—for any rifle, shotgun, handgun, machinegun, anything—without producing ID or signing one scrap of paper, he isn't your friend no matter what he tells you. 

If he isn't genuinely enthusiastic about his average constituent stuffing that weapon into a purse or pocket or tucking it under a coat and walking home without asking anybody's permission, he's a four-flusher, no matter what he claims. 

What his attitude—toward your ownership and use of weapons—conveys is his real attitude about you. And if he doesn't trust you, then why in the name of John Moses Browning should you trust him? 

If he doesn't want you to have the means of defending your life, do you want him in a position to control it?
Found here

2 comments:

Luton Ian said...

In 1979 there was a steel workers strike.

at the local (still nationalized) steel works, the union would not even permit a skeleton crew to keep the furnaces warm.

a year later, they were pleading for their jobs and how hard working they were, when Ian McGregor's review of the nationalised steel industry called for that plant's closure.

It closed.

Very much a mistake, it should have been auctioned to the highest bidder, whether they were steel maker, coal miner (the coal seams under the plant were never mined) or property developer.

There are houses being built on the site now, the coal remains un-mined.

Luton Ian said...

In 1979 there was a steel workers strike.

at the local (still nationalized) steel works, the union would not even permit a skeleton crew to keep the furnaces warm.

a year later, they were pleading for their jobs and how hard working they were, when Ian McGregor's review of the nationalised steel industry called for that plant's closure.

It closed.

Very much a mistake, it should have been auctioned to the highest bidder, whether they were steel maker, coal miner (the coal seams under the plant were never mined) or property developer.

There are houses being built on the site now, the coal remains un-mined.