More Gun Love
The Absurdity of the Gun Control Argument
"The notion that disarming ordinary citizens who pose no threat to anyone will somehow deter a psychotic who is gunning down total strangers, apparently for no reason at all, is as ridiculous as the idea that 'controlling' hunting knives would have saved Nikole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman - or that a ban on box-cutters would have stopped the September 11 hijackers.
"The person responsible for the recent spate of killings (in Maryland) probably did not buy his weapon over-the-counter. It's doubtful he patiently filled out the reams of paperwork required of law-abiding gun purchasers. No background check would have impeded his dastardly agenda. Such a person will always obtain the tools of his trade, regardless of what the law says. That's why they are called 'criminals,' after all."
- Washington Times editorial, 10/9/02
We the People - Sign the Petitions For Redress of Grievances - four petitions concerning the Federal Income Tax, the Federal Reserve, the War Powers Clauses, and the "USA PATRIOT" Act. Sign 'em. [birdman]
Rachel Lucas - Why I Love My Gun - If you read Billy Beck's essay that I linked to yesterday, you may have already followed the link to this article. Very well said, but stop picking on Ted Nugent.
Paranoia is not the reason I own a gun. The term 'paranoid' implies some unreasonable fear of being attacked. I don't think it's unreasonable to fear being attacked, raped, mugged, or murdered. It happens all the time, especially to women.
Fear of the outside world is not the reason I own a gun. I don't call wanting to protect myself from psychopaths 'fear.' Sure, I fear rapists and killers, but so does every other human. There's nothing pathological about my fear.
Ignorance is not the reason I own a gun. Quite the opposite. Unlike a lot of women, I don't think I am somehow immune to the crazies. I am well versed on the statistics concerning gun accidents and gun violence. I know stupid people have gun accidents all the time.
A callous disregard for human life is not the reason I own a gun, except in the sense that I acknowledge the fact that other people have a callous disregard for human life, including my own human life, and I must protect myself from them. I have no desire to shoot anybody. Except for rapists, murderers, child abusers, and people who put kittens in barbecue pits.
I have no sick attachment to my gun. I like it a whole lot, but I don't sit around polishing it and talking to it. Only Ted Nugent does that.
Rachel Lucas - Once again I must explain guns to stupid people - a good explanation of "when guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns," in the light the recent random murders in Maryland.
Okay. Everybody reading who thinks that the reason shootings like this happen is because of the easy availability of guns, read very carefully, slowly, and thoughtfully. You need some serious guidance.
Take note right now of your state of mind. You are feeling pretty normal and sane, right?
Now, imagine that you own a rifle, because they are really easy to come by, legal, and cheap to operate.
Now...decide to kill somebody. Specifically, decide to leave whatever you're doing, go get in your car, get your rifle, drive somewhere, hide, wait, and when you see your target, murder them. Shoot them in the head and kill them with one shot.
Have you done it yet? No? Well, why not? You have a gun. This means you can kill people from a distance. You don't even have to get your hands dirty. So why aren't you killing innocent strangers?
Hmmm....could it be that you are not a murderous psychopath? Could it be that it is impossible for you, I mean impossible, to take another person's life? Could it be that no matter how many guns you personally have access to, you cannot fathom killing someone? Could it be that even if you were in a rage of anger, you would not murder?
Al Barger at Culpepper Log - Harry Belafonte: Good liberal house Negro - concerning Mr. Belfonte's characterization of Colin Powell as a "house negro". [culpepperlog]
Colin Powell represents a grave danger to the Democrat party. He has established himself as a stalwart Republican, a power player. Worse yet, he has made himself known as a particularly independent minded Republican, free to disagree with the majority of his own party on affirmative action and abortion issues, for example. This heartily gives the lie to any possible charges of being Uncle Tom. Whatever you may think of his policy ideas, Colin Powell is nowhere near anybody's plantation but his own.
This cannot be tolerated by the Democrat party. If black folks look at Powell's example and start voting independently, the Democrats are totally screwed. Yet Ted Kennedy and Tom Daschle dare not denounce the most admired black man in America. He's a war hero and Secretary of State. If they start whipping him, they risk a slave revolt.
Sky News - Frying Squad Chase Oil Cars - some drivers in Wales were running their diesel-engined automobiles on cooking oil mixed with methanol. They were given £500 on-the-spot fines and threatened with jail for avoiding road taxes. Time for the English to follow Ghandi's example and walk to the sea to make salt, eh? [birdman]
Paul Graham - A Plan for Spam - using Bayesian statistics to filter out spam. All you need is two delete buttons in your email program (regular delete and delete-as-spam) and some simple software to accumulate statistics, and you can get incredibly good at recognizing spam with a zero rate of false positives. Yay! Mr. Graham is working on a new Lisp dialect called Arc.
I spent about six months writing software that looked for individual spam features before I tried the statistical approach. What I found was that recognizing that last few percent of spams got very hard, and that as I made the filters stricter I got more false positives.
False positives are innocent emails that get mistakenly identified as spams. For most users, missing legitimate email is an order of magnitude worse than receiving spam, so a filter that yields false positives is like an acne cure that carries a risk of death to the patient.
The more spam a user gets, the less likely he'll be to notice one innocent mail sitting in his spam folder. And strangely enough, the better your spam filters get, the more dangerous false positives become, because when the filters are really good, users will be more likely to ignore everything they catch.
Kevin Vaughan at The Rocky Mountain News - Pro-gun protester wins lawsuit - Duncan Philp, the guy who was arrested and tried by a kangaroo court for wearing his handgun in a holster on the steps of the Denver capitol building, along with Rick Stanley, has won a $20,000 settlement against two Jefferson County sheriff's deputies for an improper ticket.
