Seems that’s the buzz here lately, so we’ll do more. Via NIT, comes this:

So I have no fear of indoctrination. I’m afraid of people who allow themselves to be indoctrinated. Grape Flavor-Aid, anyone?

Indeed. However, I think the best thing for students and your kids is for them to be made aware that disagreement (polite, of course) with their academics is acceptable, if presented well. I personally had two political confrontations with teachers. Once, I wrote a paper. I took the opposing view than the one taught in class. I was given a D. I’d never before (or since) received a D on anything. I thought it was a decent paper. I took it to the department head, who concurred. I received an A. Then a story that I’ve written about before wherein I told my professor that I would use real words and not made up hippie words like ne and give peace a chance. In a post on Speaking Ill of the Dead:

This professor was an ideologue. For example, he had the class watch a movie on abortion that was blatantly biased toward the pro-choice side. People left in the middle of it (it was particularly offensive to any pro-lifers who may have been there) and reported him to the department head.

He also told us that when we turned in a paper, we couldn’t use the words he or she. We had to use the non-sexist word ne. I forgot the rule for his and her. Obviously, ne wasn’t an English teacher. I had written a paper and turned it in and I, while referring to a specific person who was matter-of-factly female, used the word she and her quite often. Ne tried to ding me some points for doing so but I sought out the department head and created a stink about how teachers shouldn’t allow their preferences to affect proper English.

Now, ne wasn’t an asshole. He add (sic*) various little socio-political idiosyncrasies that were annoying. Ne was ideologically obtuse. Ne allowed his ideology to consume his professional life and ne wanted to exert his influence on his students and mandate they be exposed to his worldview and that they comply.

To his benefit, ne encouraged me to think by pissing me off.

Coincidentally, the department head agreed with me again. And, you see, there’s the rub. I had no issue with these guys making me think or challenging me. I took issue with the notion that I was being punished for not going along. That’s where it is dangerous. Address ideas, make your case, but be fair. That goes for the students too.

I am happy to report I was never asked to undergo counseling.

* See AC, I even sic myself.

So, Vanderbilt equates safe storage with locked up, tied to a rock and thrown in a river:

Many parents who own firearms do not keep them locked up, nor do they keep the bullets locked away separately, according to a new survey conducted by a Vanderbilt University Medical Center researcher and her team.

Well, why would they? Assuming that people have weapons for self-defense, they probably have a desire to have one at the ready. I do. All of my weapons save two are locked up in a safe. One is locked in the glove box of my truck. The other is in the house, in a location that little people cannot see, nor can they get access to. And I even have one of those wall safes with the push buttons for when company comes over. More:

More than 3,700 parents across the country were surveyed for the research. While fewer parents reported having a firearm in the home than in previous studies (23.3 percent as compared with 35 percent), 49 percent reported the firearm was not locked up and 20 percent said the bullets were not locked away separately.

Well, we gun owners tend to lie about guns in the home when some schmuck asks us to do a survey.

Only a third of the parents in the survey reported their firearms were stored according to recommendations from safety experts.

Sorry but to any gun owner out there, don’t listen to safety experts. Listen to gun experts if you want real advice that will save your life and the lives of others. Safety experts will typically tell you not to have a gun (see?), which is not conducive to safety but more political posturing. So, take it with a grain of salt. Anti-gun hacks like Matthew Miller are not safety experts. They are hacks. Take your gun advice from someone like Col. Cooper or Massad Ayoob. Or your local firearms instructor.

More (with snarky remarky):

The survey also found that:

Parents who were raised with firearms in the home were less likely to store firearms safely. (again, you keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means)

When families had older children, they didn’t store their long guns — such as rifles — as safely as families with children just 2 to 5 years old. (because at that point, I hope the kids are out shooting)

Owners is rural areas, even if they owned guns for recreation, stored their weapons as unsafely as people in urban areas.

Looks there’s a move in Vermont to secede from the US:

Disillusioned by what they call an empire about to fall, a small cadre of writers and academics hopes to put the question before citizens in March. Eventually, they want to persuade state lawmakers to declare independence, returning Vermont to the status it held from 1777 to 1791.

Neither the state nor the U.S. Constitution explicitly forbids secession, but few people think it is politically viable.

Maybe not but I thought the Civil War kinda settled all the debate on that topic.

Yet, still no viable third party? 32.9% of us are not affiliated with a major party.

For the second year in a row after record lows, crime is up:

More murders and robberies in 2006 sent U.S. violent crimes higher for the second straight year, the FBI said Monday, with the increase blamed on gangs, youth violence, gun crimes and fewer police on beats.

The FBI reported that the number of violent crimes nationwide went up by 1.3 percent last year, following a 2.3 percent increase in 2005. That had been the first rise in four years and the biggest percentage gain in 15 years.

And the cities:

Cities with big increases in the number of murders included Orlando and Miami in Florida; Oakland and San Diego in California; Phoenix, Arizona; Corpus Christi, Texas; Grand Rapids, Michigan; Reno, Nevada and Little Rock, Arkansas.

I’m sure this microstamping business will fix Oakland and San Diego.

Yeah, we know that. But the press is catching up.

isn’t quite as dumb as I thought.

Pants-shitting hysterics about guns from a newspaper in Cali. Remember, this bill could:

But then, restriction is the point. Not common sense. I’m guessing police would be exempt. And, if they are, there’s a good reason for it.

Update: Another idiot named Bill Cavala:

Legislation that would require “micro stamping” of cartridges from semi-automatic weapons (which typically eject their spent cartridges after firing) hasegendered (sic) virulent criticisms from the usual suspects.

Their basic argument is the same they have used for decades. They posit a brilliant criminal who will think of ways to evade the laws, leaving only us dumb honest people to get entangled in a “legal web”, unconstitutional bureaucracy and so on.

Yeah, ’cause no criminal would buy a gun out of state. Nor would they think to get a revolver.

Cali’s got some of the strictest gun laws in the nation. But they still have a gun crime problem. Gun control: what we do instead of something.

Hah.

The Tennessean thinks a shooting shines light on deadly force laws:

Jefferson Bilbrey, who worked as a clerk at Shell Market, at 197 Haywood Lane, was released on bond this week after his arrest on a charge of second-degree murder in the death of Richard Huddleston. Surveillance video shows Huddleston stealing beer and ball caps from the store moments before the shooting.

But Bilbrey, 45, violated the law by chasing Huddleston out of the store and shooting him dead March 10 as the unarmed 22-year-old tried to climb into a car near the gas pumps, police said.

Based on the description, I buy the police version. And that would not be protected under Tennessee’s pending self defense bills, which is self defense and not property defense. The rest of the Tennessean’s article has nothing to do with this shooting.

Or when a shotgun is a shotgun.

As a kid, I watched those shows about lions and them killing critters. And I thought to myself Self, those critters are 1) large; 2) have horns; and 3) there’s a ton of them. Why not fight back?

Long video. The epic battle of lions v. buffalo; then lions v. crocodile; then lions v. buffalo again.

Apprently, Monster Pig was a domesticated pig. Reportedly, he liked to be hand-fed sweet potatoes. The alleged hunt occured on a hunting preserve. Doesn’t sound much like a hunt to me. The kid who shot him and his father say they were both under the impression that it was a feral hog.

It’s true. Red Envelope sells, well, I dunno what you’d call their specialty but basically it’s stuff that’s cool but you’d never really buy for yourself. Anyway, my wife’s on this picture kick and as a gift, I bought her this nifty little frame set from there. So, I filled out all their online stuff. So, they send me junk email like every day. They also send my monthly specials/catalogs/flier to my home and my office (where I had stuff shipped). Constantly. It never ends. Ever.

Outside just now.

Heh.

Is there a place in the United States that will not allow free speech?

Sadly yes. They call them Universities.

See the film they don’t want you to see. See Indoctrinate U.

From the website:

Speech codes. Censorship. Enforced political conformity. Hostility to diversity of opinion. Sensitivity training. We usually associate such things with the worst excesses of fascism and communism, not with the American universities that nurtured the free speech movement. But American higher education bears a disturbing resemblance to the totalitarian societies that are anathema to our nation’s ideal of liberty. Evan Coyne Maloney’s documentary film, Indoctrinate U, reveals the breathtaking institutional intolerance you won’t read about in the glossy marketing brochures of Harvard, Berkeley, Michigan, Yale, and hundreds of other American colleges and universities.

“When we think of going to college, we think of intellectual freedom. We imagine four years of exploring ideas through energetic, ongoing, critical thinking and debate,” Maloney said. “But the reality is very far from the ideal. What most of us don’t know is that American college students check their First Amendment rights and individual freedom at the door.”

So, Junior now makes the shape of a handgun with her fingers, points it, and says: Pow, pow, pow. We asked her where she picked that up and she said Little Johnny* says Pow, pow, pow. Little Johnny is a kid in her class at school. The Mrs. asks her what the teacher says when Little Johnny says Pow, pow, pow. And Junior says She says don’t say pow, pow, pow. I’m taking it all in. And I finally pipe up and say Junior, we don’t point our weapons at people. The wife shoots me a glance and says let’s not go there yet.

She’ll be three this month. My thinking is go ahead and start, err, planting the seed about gun handling. At the same time, she’s a kid and needs to have some fun. Is it too soon to say things like that? I have no intention of enforcing said rule with toys and fingers but just want to lay the foundation.

* name changed, for obvious reasons.

I had this clipped to comment on last week. Never quite got around to, well, forming my thoughts in an eloquent fashion. I won’t try. Instead, I’ll say fuck that:

The film shows various cases of conservatives, libertarians or even liberals who do not toe the leftist line 100% being shut down, shut out or shut up on “liberal” college campuses around the US. One thing that struck me about the cases is that several of those who had conservative or pro-American leanings were told by administrators that in order to stay at the university, they would need to see a psychologist who, I suppose, could vouch for their mental condition.

She has some examples. What I find a bit more surprising is that therapy and evaluation appear to be a punishment and not a legitimate therapeutic exercise. Ideas are not inherently dangerous. These folks were simply shouted down for not going along with the program. And that seems to make a mockery of the whole mental health field, if you ask me. And the psychologists in this case will likely report their findings about these miscreants who dare not agree to the administration.

No, not that scary one that the Brits are afraid of (of course, they’re afraid of knives and pointy things), but the real one:

The biggest problem, in my experience, was the nervousness that was brought on by decades of anti-gun spin in the media.

Ooh, Brens.

Tam had a run in with Knoxville’s red light cameras:

1) I haven’t been through that intersection in the last year.

2) The license plate on my BMW convertible is 123ABC, not 122ABC.

3) The vehicle in the accompanying photos is a white Toyota Tacoma, license number 122ABC. I realize it was dark, but a white pickup doesn’t look much like a silver Nazi rollerskate, no matter how hard you squint.

The sad thing is that it will probably be easier (maybe even cheaper) for her to just pay the damn ticket than to take R2D2 on in a court of law.

Short version: Man was horseback riding with a .454 revolver in a holster. He dismounted the horse and his coat caught the hammer of the gun*, which blew a 5 by 8 inch hole out of the front of his leg. His leg was later amputated. He sued and won. The jury felt that the weapon’s lack of a transfer bar allowed the firing pin to travel forward even if the weapon was not cocked.

Now, I thought the mean ol’ Republicans and NRA passed that mean ol’ Protection of Lawful Arms in Commerce Act which prohibited lawsuits against mean ol’ gun makers. At least, that’s what the anti-gunners would have you believe. Shockingly, they were wrong.

* quotes because that is what the press says and, to me, it doesn’t sound likely. More likely is the coat was heavy and hit the hammer pretty darn hard.

Bloomberg is not only the #1 enemy of gun rights but, generally, the #1 enemy of personal responsibility. Somebody ought to inform Knoxville Mayor Bill Haslam who he has chosen to ally himself with.

The Justice Department will not press charges against officer Deval Bullock. Bullock, by every account I’ve read, neglected to follow the rules of gun safety. He claims to have accidentally shot a man making a sports bet.

And, seriously, it’s 2007 and there are stings for sports betting?

Why I’ll never vote for Giuliani.

Not those but the other kind:

Help me connect the dots: A few weeks ago Teresa Lavenue bid $810 and bought a pink Glock 9 mm pistol at an auction run by the Northern Virginia Friends of NRA. Around the same time, the member of a female gang in Southeast D.C. showed off a pink-handled pistol to a volunteer trying to quell teen violence in Anacostia.

Two women attracted to a Weapon of Human Destruction simply by its color. Pink pistols — cute and deadly — are the latest marketing gimmick by our makers of Saturday night specials and sophisticated semiautomatic weapons.

“They are targeting a female market,” says Ronald “Moe” Moten, co-founder of Peaceoholics. “It’s just like cell phones. These guns are not for hunting.”

Now, I don’t care if gun makers make pink guns or blue ones or whatever. Different folks like different colors, I suppose. But I don’t know that Glock makes a pink one. That’s only relevant to the fact that this guy is accusing them of making them with nefarious purpose: to get women to shoot. And it’s bullshit. I have seen the pink ones but they are expensive custom jobs. I don’t personally care what gets women to shoot so long as something does. And they are the fastest growing demographic in terms of gun ownership. It doesn’t really make one bit of difference to me what color your weapons are. I prefer black but it’s preference. If they came in bright orange only, I’d still have one.

Before every gun-toting NRA member paints a red dot on my forehead, let me assure you I have owned rifles since I was a teenager. My first was a Mossberg .22 that I hunted with for years until I traded it for a canoe. I’ve used pump-action shotguns and 30-30s to hunt deer.

Of course you’re a gun owner, every one who writes an anti-gun column these days is.

But don’t tell me that painting handguns pink is cute. Don’t tell me a pink handle on a pistol isn’t attractive to girls in gangs.

Cute is irrelevant and a matter of preference. I think my G30 in basic black is cute. Color is also irrelevant.

Facts are that 12 young girls have been shot in the streets of D.C. in the last three months. Four were shot dead.

Despite the fact that handguns of any color are banned in the district.

Via Chuck.

Well, I guess by Ravenwood’s standard, I should view this as 73% would not consider voting for Bloomberg? Which is good.

A reader emails:

Thank you for your article about Pit Bull attacks. In almost every article that I have read where percentages involving Pit Bulls are mentioned I never see percentage of the total US canine population Pit Bulls represent. In searching the internet and emailing people who might know, I have received information that Pit Bulls represent 5% to 9.6% of the total US canine population of roughly 55-60 million dogs.The lower percentage of 5% translates to roughly 2 1/2 million Pit Bulls in the US. Other dog breeds involved in fatal dog attacks have dramatically smaller populations. Some breed populations numbers for the US that I did find are as follows:

Rottweilers- 900,000
German Shepherds-780,000
Chows-240,000

In addition to Pit Bulls, these 3 breeds were involved in fatal attacks from 1979-1998 as follows:

Pit Bulls-66
Rottweilers-39
German Shepherds-17
Chows-8

Other breeds of dogs that also caused fatalities were during that same 20 year period were:

Huskys-15
Malamute-12
Doberman Pinchers-9
Saint Bernards-7
Great Danes-7

I was unable to find any reliable population numbers for any the other breeds involved in fatal attacks.

I am unsure if the Chow, Rottweiler and German Shepherd population numbers are accurate but if they are even remotely close, Pit Bull population is 10 times the population of Chows and 2-3 times more than Rottweilers or German Shepherds. If this is the case, would it not be logical to conclude that the actual number of fatal attacks involving a Pit Bull would be higher than other breeds? When I used those populations and divided them by the attacks each breed was involved in, Pit Bulls were last on the list. Chows were number one. The AKC has only registered dogs in their statistics and do not even recognize Pit Bulls to be a specific breed and therefore no numbers on populations were available. I have had a difficult time getting dog populations by breed on the internet. It’s been a frustrating search and I still have not gotten any reliable numbers regarding breeds and their populations. In my opinion, without knowing the true populations of each breed involved in fatal dog attacks, all the statistics and percentages of specific dog breeds involved in these attacks are misleading if not flawed. Do you agree? When I read that Pit Bulls are responsible for 60% of all fatal dog attacks it is the same as finding out that California has more suicides than Rhode Island. Also, are there any web sites that have any information on breeds and population numbers in the US that you are aware of?

I’ve never found any info on that. Trouble with ‘pit bulls’ is that so many different ‘breeds’ are also considered to be ‘pit bulls’. So, the numbers would likely be inflated.

Make the New York Times:

Despite their menacing appearance — and in some cases, because of it — black rifles are now the guns of choice for many hunters, target shooters and would-be home defenders. Owners praise their accuracy, ease of use and versatility, as well as their potential to be customized with an array of gadgets. While the gun industry’s overall sales have plateaued and its profits have faded over the last decade, black rifles are selling briskly, says Eric Wold, an analyst in New York for Merriman Curhan Ford.

Moreover, manufacturers say, for every dollar spent on black rifles, gun buyers spend at least another customizing the guns from an arsenal of accessories. All of this has combined to make black rifles a lone bright spot for long-suffering American gunsmiths.

Yet Mr. Zumbo is not alone in finding the popularity of black rifles and the trade in them to be disquieting.

Gun-control advocates say black rifles are simply assault weapons under a different name — and just as dangerous as they were when Congress instituted a ban on some of them in 1994. The ban did not eliminate black rifles; manufacturers were able to make minor changes to comply with the law and kept selling them. (The ban expired in 2004.)

Surprisingly balanced article for the otherwise hysterically anti-gun NYT. And we gunny types like to call them evil black rifles, even if they’re pink.

Update: Pay particular attention to the graphic on tricked out rifles. It correctly notes that the collapsible stock is for comfort and adjustment and not for spray firing your bullet hose from the hip.