010118.html

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Thu, 18 Jan 2001 13:00:00 GMT

I decided to get a .22 rifle and start target shooting once a week or so. Get the shooting chops back in shape. This was prompted partially by the unwanted appearance of the dog, partially because I've been thinking about doing it for a while, and partially because I'm getting my trombone chops back in shape by practicing with my boss on Friday evenings (our first session was last Friday). I work in Albany, NY, 40 miles from my home just this side of the MA/NY border with Pittsfield (actually Hancock). I would have stopped somewhere around work, but I had a haircut appointment near home at 6:30, so I decided to try the Walmart in Pittsfield after my haircut (looks and feels much better, thank you). Guess what? In order to buy a gun in Massachusetts, any gun, you need to present papers signed by the chief of police of the Massachusetts city where you live. He won't sign those papers unless you've lived there for at least six months. Out-of-staters need not apply. Ah, the People's Republic of Taxachusetts. I'll report on my experience in The Socialist Empire of New York after I try here (likely Friday after our music session).

I want to find an indoor gun range where I can shoot at the little target sheets I used to practice on when I was a kid (at F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Cheyenne, WY). Each sheet has 10 targets. Each target is about an inch in diameter. The bullseye (10 points) in the center of each target is about the size of a .22 bullet hole. I don't remember the distance, likely 50 feet or 25 yards. I used to score in the nineties prone or the high eighties sitting. I sucked kneeling and standing. That's where I need to work. I looked in the Yellow pages for Albany and Columbia County. No luck. So I changed my tack. I remember gun clubs being named after cities, so I looked in the white pages for each city listed on the front cover. Bingo. Six clubs in Columbia County, at least two of them close to my house. Hopefully one of them will have an indoor range.

Camille Paglia at Salon - A bland antidote for Bill 'n' Al fatigue: George W.: as if in answer to my plea of yesterday, Ms. Paglia's new article showed up sometime shortly after I went to press. The boring, but refreshing, new prez, his cabinet, Camille's visit to Mexico and reflections engendered by it on modern humanitarian education, Deidre Hall.

... The Democratic establishment was cowardly and irresponsible in backing off from insisting that Clinton resign. The nation would have been spared two horrendous years of inquests, divisiveness and legislative paralysis.
Furthermore, Vice President Al Gore could have assumed the presidency before being overwhelmed by a national campaign and unraveling before our eyes. Had he risen to the presidency by default in 1998, Gore would have gained in stature and experience in the job and, without the burden of the Clinton scandals, might have been easily reelected. It was Gore's own bizarrely frantic behavior and gross fabrications on the stump that eventually repelled me and many other Democrats who bolted to Ralph Nader. The Democratic leadership has only itself to blame for Bush's election.
...
Although the elevated Zimbabwe Plateau was largely free from the tsetse fly, which afflicts both human beings and livestock, a sanitation crisis may have been created by the large, dense urban population. Sewage breeds disease, contaminating the water supply and threatening public health in expanding societies. This squalid, putrid, intractable problem has been solved outside the Third World by the miracle of modern plumbing, the gift of Western capitalism and the industrial revolution, at which our pampered, armchair leftists like to sneer. A sign should be posted over every campus toilet: "This flush comes to you by courtesy of capitalism."

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Quotes

Government doesn't work. Never did. Never will. Can't. But there are lots of good people. Love them.

-- Bill St. Clair

The Atlanta Declaration

Every man, woman, and responsible child has an unalienable individual, civil, Constitutional, and human right to obtain, own, and carry, openly or concealed, any weapon -- rifle, shotgun, handgun, machinegun, anything -- any time, any place, without asking anyone's permission.

-- L. Neil Smith

Reread that pesky first clause of the Second Amendment. It doesn't say what any of us thought it said. What it says is that infringing the right of the people to keep and bear arms is treason. What else do you call an act that endangers "the security of a free state"? And if it's treason, then it's punishable by death. I suggest due process, speedy trials, and public hangings.

-- L. Neil Smith

A Penalty Clause for the Bill of Rights

Any official, appointed or elected, at any level of government, who attempts, through legislative act or other means, to nullify, evade, or avoid the provisions of the first ten amendments to this Constitution, or of the Thirteenth Amendment, shall be summarily removed from office, and, upon conviction, deprived of all pay and benefits including pension, and sentenced to imprisonment for life.

-- L. Neil Smith

Based on 253 journal articles, 99 books, 43 government publications, and some of its own empirical work, the panel couldn't identify a single gun control regulation that reduced violent crime, suicide or accidents.

-- John Lott, commenting on the National Academy of Sciences report on gun control laws.

Who is a libertarian?

Zero Aggression Principle ("Zap")

"A libertarian is a person who believes that no one has the right, under any circumstances, to initiate force against another human being, or to advocate or delegate its initiation. Those who act consistently with this principle are libertarians, whether they realize it or not. Those who fail to act consistently with it are not libertarians, regardless of what they may claim."

-- L. Neil Smith

(Formerly called the "Non-Aggression Principle", or "NAP")

Why Did It Have to be... Guns?

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?

-- L. Neil Smith

Concise

"Tell me," I was once asked, "What do you think about gun control? Give me the short answer." To which I replied, "If you try to take our firearms we will kill you."

-- Mike Vanderboegh

Also from The Atlanta Declaration:

... like going to the bathroom, breathing, eating, sleeping, or making love, it turns out that self-defense is a bodily function one cannot safely or effectively delegate to a second party.

-- L. Neil Smith

This does not mean that "Marijuana should be available by prescription." It means that morphine sulfate should be available in five pound bags at the supermarket for a couple of bucks, like sugar... but probably in a different aisle, to avoid confusion.

-- Vin Suprynowicz

If you refuse to pay unjust taxes, your property will be confiscated. If you attempt to defend your property, you will be arrested. If you resist arrest, you will be clubbed. If you defend yourself against clubbing, you will be shot dead. These procedures are known as the Rule of Law.

-- Edward Abbey

The state can only survive as long as a majority is programmed to believe that theft isn't wrong if it's called taxation or asset forfeiture or eminent domain, that assault and kidnapping isn't wrong if it's called arrest, that mass murder isn't wrong if it's called war.

-- Bill St. Clair