Massad Ayoob's Blog, page 132

WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE EASTER BUNNY AND A CERTAIN KIND OF POLITICIAN?

The difference is, the Easter Bunny doesn’t defecate all over your rights.

It ain’t a “those damn liberals” thing. Many true liberals have realized that the right to protect self and family is one that should be spread to all socio-economic levels of society, and not restricted to the wealthy and influential. Liberal law professor Don Kates and former Amnesty International leader Mark Benenson come to mind.  So does the late Charlton Heston, whom too many forget marched with Martin Luther King.

But, hey, it’s a holiday weekend and time to lighten up.  Whether you’re a devout Christian or a secular humanist about to enjoy a traditional time for American families and friends to gather, or anywhere in between, I wish you a Happy Easter.

And, should holiday discussions turn toward controversial topics, you might find some very useful ammunition here: http://www.michaelzwilliamson.com/blog/item/the-post-in-which-i-piss-off-everybody .

Oops, did I slip on the “lightening up”?  To compensate, here’s the recipe for a way cool Easter treat:

  Cottontail bottoms up…

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JACK SPIRKO’S PODCAST

I’ve enjoyed Jack Spirko’s free Survival Podcast for some time, and my significant other is a huge fan of his show.  Jack recognizes that it ain’t just a “Panic In the Year Zero” apocalypse scenario that justifies being prepared for bad things…it’s life itself that constantly reminds us we need to be so prepared.  Whether you live in hurricane country, earthquake country, tornado country, flood country, or wherever, Mother Nature can deliver some nasty large-scale surprises.

No matter where you make your abode, life can also give you some smaller-scale surprises which are no less terrifying if you aren’t prepared to handle them.  It was with that in mind that he recently interviewed me for the show: http://www.thesurvivalpodcast.com/episode-1094-massad-ayoob-on-lethal-force-aftermath .

In going on six and a half decades on this planet, I’ve learned that really bad things are most likely to happen to people who aren’t prepared for them.  From medical emergency to a cutoff of power and food supply to self-defense, preparedness seems to downgrade bad things from “horrible disaster” to “memorable adventure you’d just as soon not have had to go through.”

If you’re not familiar with Spirko’s podcast, check it out.  He strikes me as A Thinking Man.

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A GOOD CAUSE

If the name Keith Jones rings a bell with you, you’ve probably traveled in circles that involved officer survival training or armed citizen training.  A Vietnam veteran who saw heavy hand to hand combat, Keith came back to the USA to become a police officer in a major city for some four decades.  During that time, he won half a dozen gunfights himself and studied many more.  The lessons he imparts have kept a lot of good people alive.

 

If you haven’t listened to one of his lectures, you can catch him on the Pro-Arms Podcast at no charge, here.

 

Keith’s lovely wife Kathy was recently diagnosed with Stage 3 cancer of the pancreas.  Friends are working to help.  Ashley Gibbons at Sand Burr Gun Ranch is kicking off with an auction for one of my 40-hour Massad Ayoob Group classes.  Or, simply send a donation to the fund listed at the end.  Ashley explains it below:

 

 

What: MAG 40 with Massad Ayoob

Where: Sand Burr Gun Ranch   Rochester, IN

When: June 20-23, 2013

MAG and SBGR are offering for auction to the highest bidder the tuition for one MAG 40 student.

100% of the proceeds go to Kathryn Jones, wife of Keith Jones to aid in medical expenses as Kathy fights pancreatic cancer.

 

How the auction works:

Bids for the auction will be accepted by calling Sand Burr Gun Ranch at 574-223-3316.

The winning bidder will be contacted at the end of auction by Sand Burr.

Winning bidder must meet the same requirements as all MAG students.

Auction starts March 22 @ 10 am EST  auction ends May 1@noon

Opening Bid $500.00

Sand Burr Gun Ranch will post current top bid amounts on their Facebook page.

 

 

Course details can be found at  http://massadayoobgroup.com

www.sandburrgunranch.com

 

 

Bid often and Good Luck.

 

 

 

If you want to help without placing a bid:

Kathryn L. Jones Cancer Relief Fund

c/o Huntington National Bank

3460 N. High School Rd

Indianapolis, IN 46224

Donations can be mailed in or deposited to any Huntington National Bank branch office.

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A BATTLE, NOT THE WAR

I think we all have a right to a “high five” over Harry Reid’s announcement that the assault weapons ban is going to be dropped from the Democrats’ current legislative package in the Senate.  However, it’s far too early to declare victory and go home.

Dianne Feinstein has already announced that she’ll try to restore it as a late amendment to other legislation before the session is over.  And there are still the matters of the proposed ban on standard capacity magazines, and the “universal background check” remaining before Congress.  The latter, of course, has particularly huge loopholes which promise to criminalize the innocent, and create the gun registration which, historically, has been a precursor to gun confiscation.

And, the fight continues in numerous theaters.  New York, where the already passed and ironically named “SAFE Act” waits to trickbag citizens of the Empire State.  Colorado, where Governor Hickenlooper is expected to sign a truly Draconian anti-gun package into law this very day.  Connecticut, where some totally off-the-wall legislation is under discussion at the state house. And the rest of the country.

An excellent perspective on the hidden dangers in some of this poorly conceived legislation is seen here: http://completecolorado.com/pagetwo/2013/03/19/colorado-magazine-ban-range-officer-perspective/ .

At best, we’ve won one round of a long fight.

That’s my take, anyway…what’s yours?

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“VIGILANTE,” MY BUTT

So, this hefty mammal is stomping the crap out of a woman he once claimed to love, and a passerby who has fought for his country stops to help.  The Creature From the Testosterone Lagoon decides he’ll stomp him into jelly, too.  Ordinary size military vet with concealed carry permit from Wisconsin basically says, “Uh, no” and draws his 9mm pistol and takes the woman -beater now assaulting him at gunpoint. Woman-beater decides not to push the matter.

Street-savvy cops arrive, sort things out, can tell good guy from bad guy.  Bad guy arrested, good guy is recognized as such, and gets accolades from the sheriff, as seen here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/16/charlie-blackmore-marine-veteran-draws-gun_n_2891176.html?icid=maing-grid7%7Cmain5%7Cdl8%7Csec1_lnk3%26pLid%3D284796 .

HuffPost, not exactly what you’d call a pro-gun entity, gives him props.  Cool so far.

Read all the way to the bottom, to where Huffington Post compares him to other “vigilantes.” In a bizarre twist of journalism, they include a high profile case not yet adjudicated in Florida as an example of “vigilante justice,” along with Jack Ruby and some guy who threw marbles at a traffic control camera.

Uh…does anyone who writes for HuffPost understand words like “research”?  Do they understand that “words mean things”?

The term “vigilante” comes from “vigilance committees,” folks on the nineteenth-century American frontier who gathered together without benefit of government authority – in a time and place where there WAS no such thing to speak of – and became judge, jury, and occasionally executioner of those they felt were wrong-doers.

In the instant case, we have a man who fought for his country and carried a pistol to protect himself, his loved ones, and others within what the law would call “the mantle of his protection.” He made, essentially, an absolutely appropriate citizen’s arrest, and kept a helpless woman from being beaten to death.

“Vigilante,” my ass.

The words you were groping for, HuffPost, were “Good Samaritan.” Or, if that’s too many syllables for your current generation of reporters and editors, maybe just…”Hero.”

But, hey, I’m an old dinosaur who thinks in the Old Ways.

What do you, reading this, think?

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HYPOCRISY ALERT

By now, you’ve all heard about Mark Kelly, former astronaut and the husband of Gabby Giffords, who was grievously brain-damaged in the mass murder spree by the madman Loughner in Tucson.  After establishing his territory as a high-profile opponent of “assault rifles” and “high capacity magazines,” he was observed and photographed buying an AR15 to go with his new 1911 .45 pistol.

As soon as he was “outed,” he claimed he was doing it to show how easily such armament could be acquired. (Like it wasn’t already legal for law-abiding people to buy those guns.) He added that he planned to give it to the Tucson Police.

This strikes me as right up there with, “Your Honor, I only bought that heroin and cocaine to get it off the street and show the world the scope of our drug problem…and then I was gonna turn it over to the DEA.”

David Codrea, one of our most indefatigable fighters for gun owners’ civil rights, deconstructs Kelly’s lame excuse here.

And of course, the gun control propaganda machine mainstream media comes to Kelly’s aid. For him, it’s not an “assault weapon,” it’s just a different kind of rifle. Dissected by Dave Workman, here.

Whew.  It’s chilly out today, but I feel an urge to go to the shooting range nonetheless.

It should be at least one place that’s free from blatant hypocrisy.

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RECHARGING THE BATTERIES

Recently got home from the 2013 Polite Society event, a/k/a National Tactical Conference, in Memphis.  A symposium like this allows you to recharge your batteries and remember what you fight for. There were roughly 150 attendees – 25 of them teaching – and damn near all of them were carrying loaded guns the whole time.  The name of the conference comes from a Robert Heinlein quote popularized by armsmaster Jeff Cooper: “An armed society is a polite society.”  One quick translation of that is, creatures with fangs and claws do not see other creatures with fangs and claws as prey…and unless it’s a mating issue or a turf issue, they generally leave them the hell alone.

There were too many fine presentations to relate here, though each is discussed on an upcoming ProArms podcast that four of our crew who attended were able to record in the car on the way home.  Yes, the drive of eleven hours each way was more than worth it for what we got out of the conference. It is not “up” yet, but should be soon; patience appreciated.

Many of the presenters and attendees alike were cops or retired cops. Across the board, there was unanimous agreement that the current trend toward private citizen disarmament was deplorable and wrong-headed.  Host Tom Givens, the founder of the program, made a telling point: real-world analysis of violent crime indicates about a one-in-thirty chance that any individual American will face it at some time in his or her life.  (Virtually ALL of the presenters had come face to face with it already, one reason they were selected to teach.) Tom pointed out that over the years, sixty or more of his civilian graduates have been involved in lethal force encounters.  All but two prevailed and survived.  The two who didn’t prevail, died.  Not coincidentally, those were the two who were unarmed when it happened.  Tom reminded us all of the advice of Jeff Cooper’s acolyte Mark Moritz, a gun-wise attorney: “The first rule of gunfighting is, Have A Gun!”

The eclectic program encompassed emergency first responder trauma care for gunshot wounds, stabs and lacerations, and blunt trauma injury, taught by MDs.  It included a veteran psychologist on one side and a homicide investigator on the other delineating how human predators think and act.  There was hand-to-hand work, and knife awareness, and recognition of assaultive behavior cues.  There was aftermath management: the blocs I taught revolved around lessons learned in some of the more recent homicide trials I’ve been involved in, including one a month ago, all of which were killings done in defense of self and/or others. (And yes, in each case the jury agreed.) The veteran cop who talked about “active shooter” scenarios deplored the fact that this has become the terminology, since human monsters such as those should be considered “active killers” or indeed, “active mass-murderers.”  He had been involved in two such incidents himself, both of which ended in the quick death of the monsters as soon as they were confronted with lethal force resistance, and he quite pointedly noted that some of the cases under discussion were ended by armed citizens who saved countless lives.

Time with people who understand the ugly reality of having to stop murderers, is time well spent for those who may have to one day face such murderers.

And “those who may have to one day face such murderers” includes everyone reading this, and indeed, everyone, period.

Thanks to Tom Givens and his team for making this top-tier level of training available to law-abiding private citizens, as well as the many cops who were in attendance.  Next year’s program will be held on February 21-23, 2014 in Memphis, and you can get more information from the Rangemaster Website.

 

 The RangeMaster complex in Memphis had room to train 150 good people.

Jon Hodoway gave an excellent lecture on the survival capabilities that can be found in an ordinary smart phone.

J

Ever heard of SouthNarc? He’s retired from police work now, so I can finally publish his picture…and I’ve long recommended his street-wise training.

Here, I’m briefing the audience on lessons learned from recent homicide trials. On screen is the Ruger .45 used in a self-defense shooting.

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UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES: THE HIDDEN COSTS OF “GUN CONTROL”

Bill Dietrick, observing from a long career serving his country and the public interest, has this to say about gun industry companies being driven from their home states by insane feel-good laws being promoted at the state house level:

Something to keep in mind in regards to firearms manufacturers, wholesalers and distributors, etc. moving their operations: the economic loss to the state is far greater than those jobs would indicate.

For instance, Remington is seriously negotiating to move out of New York, with five other states, as a result of Cuomo’s ill-considered ramming through of his new idiot bills.

Remington is the economic mainstay business of Ilion, New York. True, they’d perhaps directly lose perhaps 2,500 jobs, but consider how many other people depend on those jobs for their livelihood.

If those folks move, there goes the income for the firefighters and cops (not as many needed), the real estate agents, the car dealers, the grocers, the clothiers, etc. etc. Ilion will become a ghost town.

All directly attributable to Cuomo’s self-aggrandizing posturing.

The losses will be monstrous.

Mag-Pul and its subsidiary suppliers may actually only move 800 jobs directly out of Colorado, but figure, at minimum, double that in lost jobs.

Then, how about the loss to the state in the form of property tax, sales tax, vehicle tax, gasoline tax, etc? These politicians think Mag-Pul is bluffing. I assure you they are not.

Neither are Remington, Beretta, etc.

They may piss off their constituents to the point we’ll not see another Democrat majority for decades, which wouldn’t hurt my feelings at all.

…And here is a New Jersey employer explaining to legislators how their proposed anti-gun law is making it harder for him to import qualified personnel, and is driving New Jersey workers to other states.

Meanwhile, a lady in Florida who got herself elected to the state house there now proposes a law that no one can purchase ammunition unless they show proof of having taken an anger management class.  (You know: the kind of class the young mass-murderers Klebold and Harris reportedly took before they slaughtered their classmates at Columbine High School in 1999.) Read about it here: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/03/06/florida-lawmaker-wants-anger-management-courses-for-ammunition-buyers/

 

Madam, if your goal is to achieve anger management, why do you provoke general public anger by insulting the intelligence and mental competence of your entire constituency? Talk about unintended consequences…

 

Senator Gibson, if you wish to reduce collective anger in the Sunshine State, I respectfully suggest that you withdraw your asinine bill.

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GUNS AND EQUALITY

The gun has long been called an equalizer.  As in, “God made men, and Colonel Colt made them equal.”

My friends and colleagues at the Second Amendment Foundation have a new push for this theme: see it here. http://www.examiner.com/article/saf-launches-equal-gun-rights-campaign?cid=db_articles

The gun is a force multiplier. As has been noted in this blog more than once, it allows a handful of beleaguered black Americans to fend off larger numbers of Klansmen.

The gun allows the righteous few to hold their own against many who are doing violent wrong. Do a Google search for Elfego Baca. Wise modern gun experts from Don Kates to Tamara Keel have pointed out that if you want to know how warm and fuzzy it would be to have a world without guns, you have only to look back to the outlawry and oppression of the Middle Ages.

The gun allows the female of our species – generally smaller and lighter, and always with proportionately less upper body strength and less cultural predispositioning to using physical force – to defeat men attempting to rape her.  The modern feminist version of the Old West saying about Colonel Colt and equality is the popular tee-shirt slogan that says, “God made men and women equal…and Smith & Wesson keeps them that way.” I remember one of my graduates who confronted a burglar in her home. She drew her gun and snapped, “Don’t move!” He came at her. She shot him in one of his upper limbs. He came at her again.  She shot him dead with a bullet to center chest. The shooting was, of course, ruled justified. To this day, I shudder to think what this aggressor would have done to her if she hadn’t had her SIG-Sauer.

The gun allows the poor and powerless to protect themselves as well as the rich and powerful. It is axiomatic in our country that any citizen should be able to become President. A poor kid raised by his grandparents recently did so, and got re-elected.  He and his family are surrounded by Secret Service agents with high cartridge capacity firearms. Us ordinary po’ folks don’t have heavily armed security guards provided by taxpayer funding to guard us and our families like Barack Obama, Rahm Emanuel, or Michael Bloomberg.  How sad and ironic that the poor kid who grew up to be President doesn’t want your potential-future-President kids to be protected as his own potential-future-President children are.

Equality. Freedom. Guns.

Yes, they all do belong in the same sentence.

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TIME GROWS SHORT

We’re getting to crunch time. According to the folks at Breitbart, the Feinstein “assault weapon” ban bill goes before the Senate committee Thursday, February 28. Details here: http://www.breitbart.com.

People, we’re up against the heaviest and most underhanded full-court press against the civil rights of gun owners that this nation has ever seen.  Mayor Michael Bloomberg reportedly threatened Democrats in the Colorado state legislature that if they didn’t vote for Draconian gun bans, he’d use his billions to finance Democrat challengers to unseat them in the next election.  The White House is calling state legislators to intimidate them into voting for gun bans at the state level.

And now, we are told that the Obama White House has fielded Internet ninjas, apparently with liberal use of fraudulent accounts, to create the illusion that a huge majority of Americans want our legislators to take our rights away: http://www.thedailysheeple.com/obama-admin-aims-keyboard-commandos-at-gun-control_022013 .

If you haven’t yet contacted those who represent you on Capitol Hill, now is the time. If you have, contact them again and remind them.

I hear a lot of gun people saying, “Aw, they’ll never pass the ban.”  I think they’re whistling past the graveyard.  Remember that any bill which includes a provision for registering firearms will be a precursor to confiscation, as it has virtually always been in the past.

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