WRSA: If you have a door on your home, you believe in borders.

Especially if you lock it.

The New Yorker:

Away from the world for August, in a house without Internet or television and only spotty, the-satellite-must-be-passing-over phone reception, I was, until Wednesday, thinking more or less benign thoughts about gun owners, if not guns. As I chronicled last year, I have only just learned how to drive, and, license in hand, or in glove compartment, I’ve been driving for the first time on the little winding roads of the beach town where we’ve spent vacations for the past thirty years. Despite having been anti-car and ostentatiously pro-bike for all those years, I have to admit that I love being in the driver’s seat. The overwhelming rush of freedom and possibility, the sense of autonomy—no need to request a lift, no UBER app to press—is overwhelming. You get in, and you go.

This in turn made me realize, a little more empathetically, what I had only intuited before—that guns, for many Americans, are a sort of secondary, symbolic car: another powerful symbol of autonomy and independence. The attachment to them that so many Americans show—unique among the civilized peoples of the world, and at a cost so grave that the rest of that world often turns away, appalled—is nonetheless understandable to anyone who comes late to driving: to have potentially lethal power within your grasp is an immensely empowering drug. Cars are obviously in a different category, because their benign use is so much greater than their lethal one. But they are tools of the same country, of which I am now a citizen.

[ … ]

For the deeper truth is that cars are not, or not only, symbols of autonomy. They are, in every sense, vehicles of it. Guns, however, have an almost entirely symbolic function. No lives are saved, and no intruders are repelled; the dense and hysterical mythology of gun love has been refuted again and again.

The few useful social functions that guns do have—in hunting or in killing varmints, as a rural man such as my father has to do—can be preserved even with tight regulations, as in Canada.

Good heavens.  What a child.  Take note: killing varmints is the only legitimate function for guns.  Here’s a fact for Adam – modern game management practices increases herd size and health.  Period.  But in order to comport with his world view, he would rather see herds suffering and starving and the herd unhealthy.  Hunting anything but varmints is anathema to him.

But that’s not the most significant illogical leap he makes.  If you took note before, take careful note now.  “No lives are saved, and no intruders are repelled.”  Adam knows.  Forget that lives are saved every day and intruders repelled on a regular basis because men and women have guns.  And forget that whether something has utility isn’t a stipulation for rights and liberties.  Adam knows better than you and (in yet another flaw in his thinking) wants the bad men in government with guns to enforce his idea of “better.”  At heart, collectivists are control freaks.

Their utility is denied because he starts there as a pre-theoretical commitment.  He presupposes that to be the case, and in logical or rhetorical parlance, it’s called presupposing the consequent.  He reasons in a circle, and most collectivists make the equivalent or some related error.  But of course, Adam is cocooned inside a world of his own making, sure to suffer himself if society breaks or even falters.  That car and newfound freedom he adores won’t save him.  My guns won’t save me either if God calls and it’s my time.  But at least I will have attempted to effect my moral duty of self defense.

Bob Unruh at WND:

I don’t go where Bob Owens does on this.  This isn’t about the second amendment to me.  I took a strong stand against illegal aliens and bearing arms before (I cannot recall where, perhaps in a comment at reddit/guns, or at Say Uncle), and was savaged, as if I was anti-gun.

There is a libertarian case against the ownership of weapons by illegal aliens.  It’s simple.  You cannot do things to take actions that adversely affect others, and the mere presence of illegal aliens on my home soil adversely affects me.

Libertarians notwithstanding, you do not have a right to do anything you want any time you want.  Your rights are circumscribed by God.  God gives me the right to own weapons.  God does not give illegal aliens the right to be in my country.  The discussion about weapons for illegal aliens shouldn’t even come up.  Let central and South America figure it out.

I don’t have to turn to the founding fathers to figure this out.  But what’s so rich about this – and Bob Unruh points this out – is that judges who would otherwise vomit at the notion of God-given rights and bearing arms, suddenly find it necessary to expand this right to people who have no right to be on this soil.  It must suck to be a progressive and face logical problems like this.  Being impaled on the horns of a dilemma is the sort of thing that sticks to your innards.

AlterNet:

A Florida family seeks justice after their son Jason Westcott, was killed by members of a SWAT team, during a “drug raid” on his house which yielded only $2.00 worth of marijuana.

An ‘internal investigation’ absolved officers of any wrongdoing though police only found .02 grams of marijuana in Westcott’s home.

“They have IA, they have internal investigations but when you police yourself, you have that veil of concern by the outsider,” said attorney T.J. Grimaldi.

On Tuesday, attorney T.J. Grimaldi, representing the family of Westcott, informed the city that family would be filing a lawsuit, after finding numerous “glaring inconsistencies” in police statements in the aftermath of the killing.

“We have developed and seen what we view to be significant inconsistencies with the way that the police department portrayed this case from the get-go all the way to its conclusion,” he said. “We have put the city and the police department on notice that we are going to be filing a lawsuit,” Grimaldi said.

Westcott became the target of an intense drug trafficking investigation after a confidential informant led investigators to believe that Westcott was a dealer, as opposed to the casual cannabis smoker he was in reality. The informant has since gone public and admitted that he was lying to police in the case.

[ … ]

The fact that a young man with his whole life to live was killed by police, over a $2 dollars worth of a plant, is a direct statement on the absurdity of the “War on Drugs.” The practice of trusting the word of individuals who have a vested interest in alleviating their own criminal charges is a practice that is contrary to the highest ideals of justice.

Read the rest.  A young man is dead because he thought his home was being invaded by criminals (it was) – all over two dollars worth of pot.  A police cover-up ensues – all over two dollars worth of pot.  A huge award is forthcoming all on the taxpayer’s purse – all over two dollars worth of pot.  A CI is now the target of criminals – all over two dollars worth of pot.

There is your war on drugs.  Do you feel safer now?

Please remember my oldest son Joshua in your prayers.  He’s having a rough go of it from back surgery.

Via David Codrea:

A college student was sexually molested at LaGuardia Airport by a uniformed TSA agent who demanded she go into a bathroom with him after she got off a flight so she could be searched for a weapon, sources told The Post.

As I’ve said before, “the TSA is filled with goobers, hicks, pedophiles, perverts and criminals.”

David Codrea:

In other words, “gun control” doesn’t stop the bad guys and only serves to give them a killer advantage over the “law-abiding”?  Who knew?

In this case, surviving train passengers are lucky there were some men on board who would not go down without a fight. And the defenders are lucky their bravery, instincts, training and skills were enough to overcome all of their assailant’s advantages.

It would have been better and much easier if someone had been armed other than the criminal.  This could have ended far differently.

Via Mike Vanderboegh, black activists call for lynching white people and cops.

“Find a mother f**ker that is alone. Snap his ass, and then f***in hang him from a damn tree. Take a picture of it and then send it to the mother f**kers.”

Maybe everyone should start carrying guns, huh?

Defense News:

The Pentagon’s top weapons tester confirmed to a small group of reporters on Thursday that his team will pit the full-up F-35 joint strike fighter against the A-10 Warthog and potentially other aircraft during comparative tests slated to take place in 2018.

Because the A-10 is awesome and the F-35 sucks.

The National Interest:

For decades, naval architects have concentrated on building ships that, by the standards of the World Wars, are remarkably brittle. These ships can deal punishment at much greater ranges than their early 20th century counterparts, but they can’t take a hit. Is it time to reconsider this strategy, and once again build protected ships?

That fifth generation warfare thing not working out so well for you, boys?

CBS:

Two North Dakota State University students got a scare when armed police officers mistook their telescope for a rifle.

WDAY-TV reports that Levi Joraanstad and Colin Waldera were setting up the telescope behind their Fargo apartment Monday night when they were blinded by a bright light and told to stop moving.

They couldn’t see who was shining the light and presumed it was a prank by other students.

An officer on patrol had spotted the two and thought the telescope was a rifle. He also thought Joraanstad’s dark sweater with white lettering on the back looked like a tactical vest. He called for backup and the officers confronted the students.

According to WDAY, Joraanstad said at first the pair didn’t take the situation seriously, certain it was just some friends fooling around.

“… we were kind of wondering, what the heck’s going on? This is pretty dumb that these guys are doing this. And then they (police) started shouting to quit moving or we could be shot. And so at that moment we kind of look at each other and we’re thinking we better take this seriously.”

Police say the two were never in any danger and that it was a situation of “better safe than sorry.”

Gosh, I hate it when that happens to me.  I remember the last time I pointed a weapon at someone holding a stick – after all, I mistook it for a rifle so better safe than sorry.  In my case, I’m glad the cops understood and let me go about my business, even though I had brandished a weapon.  Better safe than sorry, you know.

Very light posting lately, many family issues, and work up to my eyeballs.  Simply no time to do it well.  Thank you for your patience.

But if you think about it during your daily prayers, my oldest son Joshua has back surgery on the 27th.  Say a prayer for him.

I had missed it when it happened, but the LA Times reminds us on one incident with the Stockton Police Department that ought to calibrate your expectations concerning police.

The more than 600 rounds that Stockton police fired during a rolling gun battle with bank robbers last year that left a hostage dead by officers’ bullets was “excessive” and “unnecessary,” an independent review found.

The Police Foundation, a research group based in Washington, D.C., released a detailed report Monday on how Stockton police responded to the July 16, 2014, armed robbery of a Bank of the West branch, where three gunmen took three women hostage and fired at officers from a speeding SUV.

The group found that 32 officers unloaded more than 600 rounds during the hour-long rolling gun battle, which spanned three counties, 63 miles of highway and reached speeds of 120 mph. One of the hostages, Misty Holt-Singh, was killed when she was struck by 10 police bullets, authorities said. The two other hostages jumped or were thrown from the vehicle during the chase and survived.

Police officials said they fired on the vehicle to potentially save lives because the men in the car were shooting indiscriminately. The gunmen disabled 14 police cars with gunshots, the report stated.

[ … ]

The report said that a few officers engaged in “sympathetic fire,” in which officers fired their weapons because others were shooting.

In some cases, officers opened fire while colleagues were in front of them. The report highlighted an example during the final standoff, in which one officer lay prone on the ground and did not shoot while an officer next to him, standing, fired “round after round.”

“‘What’s your target?’ the prone officer yelled, thinking he was missing something,” the report stated.

“‘The car!’ responded the officer,” according to the report.

Good Lord.  This is even worse than the New York Police in the empire state building three years ago.  600 rounds, indiscriminate shooting, lack of muzzle awareness and discipline, rolling gun battle in a urban and suburban settings, lack of awareness of their backstop, lack of precision fire, and the list could go on.

Ridiculous.

From reader Mack, in other news, the anti-gun movement’s intellectual elevator runs a few floors short of the top.

Lori Haas, director of the Educational Fund to Stop Gun Violence’s Virginians for Responsible Gun Laws campaign, says that requirements for a concealed carry permit are too lax, especially compared to the hundreds of hours of training required for police officers.

“We feel that the current regulations regarding concealed handgun permits in Virginia are woefully inadequate in regard to training,” said Haas, referencing online concealed permit classes that count toward a permit. “The notion that someone can sit in front of a computer and learn about firearm safety and be considered able to physically, actively handle an active shooter situation is fantasy.”

Uh huh.  Well, no more so that believing the police will protect you.  Apparently it was safer for the hostages in the Stockton gun battle to jump out of moving cars than be around when the police got busy.

But okay, I’ll bite.  So if Ms. Haas wants you to have more tactical training, then get more tactical training.  No, not training she or the state approves, but training you think you need to do the job of self defense.  And collectivist Haas can kiss our collective asses.

Breitbart:

Babeu was on a helicopter tour of Mexican drug cartel scout locations in caves in the side of mountains throughout the desert about 70 miles inside the U.S. border. Essentially, that means U.S. sovereignty is gone for hundreds, perhaps thousands, of square miles throughout the American southwest.

Babeu was leading the helicopter tour with Dr. Ben Carson, a GOP presidential candidate, after briefing Carson on everything happening at the border.

Among other things that Babeu showed Carson and Breitbart News on this helicopter tour were how this far inside the border on high ground there are scores of scout sites where cartel operatives serve as lookouts for smugglers bringing drugs, people and other contraband into the country.

“If they can operate up to this degree, 70 miles north of the border, in law enforcement we call that a clue,” Babeu said in a brief exclusive interview outside the helicopter after landing back at the Pinal County Sheriff’s Office. The lack of United States sovereignty this deep into the country is highly concerning to Carson, who told Breitbart News that this shouldn’t be happening.

“We should stop them at the border,” Carson said. “They shouldn’t be 70 miles inside the border. We should stop them at the border. As the sheriff indicated, if we were to take like 6,000 troops and put them at the border, you wouldn’t have those people coming inside the border.”

Seriously?  You mean actually stick troops on the border and give them robust rules of engagement where they shoot at bad guys?  Gosh, I wish I had thought of that!

Because they thought his crutch was a weapon. No, I’m not kidding.

No charges filed.  Meanwhile, gangs run free and citizens have to deal with more onerous laws every day on their right to own and carry real weapons – not the prosthetic leg kind.