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This makes one think of various possibilities . . . people could do as one central Ohio church did during the first stages of the pandemic. They gathered in their cars in the church parking lot, listened to the sermon on their car radios, and honked their horns in place of shouting “Amen”. (The church was out in the country, so there were few neighbors to be disturbed.) Substitute the area around Gavin Newsom’s house for the church parking lot, and a *sunrise* service could be interesting . . . just some idle random thoughts.

Solely for sake of argument, assume the “buyback” program goes into effect and the government “buys back” 15 million rifles.

Also assume they are all cheaper AR15s valued at $500.

That’s 7.5 BILLION dollars . . . has this guy even done the arithmetic?

Zeko

I don’t know if Alexander Solzhenitsyn ever celebrated Thanksgiving (he did live in the US for a while), but this excerpt from “Gulag Archipelago” seems appropriate:

“It is enough if you don’t freeze in the cold and if thirst and hunger don’t claw at your insides. If your back isn’t broken, if your feet can walk, if both arms can bend, if both eyes see, and if both ears hear, then whom should you envy? And why? Our envy for others devours us most of all. Rub your eyes and purify your heart — and prize above all else in the world those who love you and who wish you well. Do not hurt them or scold them, and never part from any of them in anger; after all, you simply do not know: it might be your last act before your arrest, and that will be how you are imprinted in their memory!”

Hopefully we don’t have to worry about arrest . . . yet . . .

Actually, even if 50 Republicans joined all the Democrats to impeach Trump, this would only mean that he would be tried . . . it takes 67 Senators to remove him, so the Democrats would have to find 19 Republican Senators to vote to convict him.

This technology has implications FAR beyond saving money on launches . . . One of the requirements for establishing a base on the Moon or on Mars is the ability to do carefully targeted landings by resupply craft. We need to do better than the 9-by-55-mile oval characteristic of our Mars probes; at the same time, the occupants of a base would like to be sure the resupply craft wouldn’t land right on top of the base. If this technology can set a resupply craft down adjacent to (but not on top of) a base structure, that’s a considerable advancement.

Ohio has in the past had even crazier gun laws. In 2004, the Ohio legislature passed what was arguably the worst concealed-carry law in the nation (filled with poison pills insisted upon by then-governor Taft). Among other things, a “concealed” handgun had to be “in plain sight” when its carrier was in a vehicle. This led to the “Buckeye tuck”: one’s coat had to be tucked up under one’s armpits when in a vehicle to put the holstered pistol “in plain sight” (btw, there was no definition of “plain sight” anywhere in the law). Thankfully, this is no longer the case.

Then there was the “loaded weapon” problem. For years there was no legal definition of a “loaded weapon”; a loaded weapon was whatever a particular court said it was. Some years ago a definition made its way into the law: a “loaded weapon” in a vehicle was defined as a weapon which had a loaded magazine or speedloader anywhere in the vehicle. In other words, if I had my totally empty AR15 (no magazine in it) locked in a safe in my trunk, and a magazine with one round in it locked in a lockbox in my glove compartment, that AR15 was legally loaded, and I was committing a felony. This also has been changed, but the new law has complications as well.

I could go on, but this post is long enough already.

Zeko

To average 30 mph, you would have to cover the 2-mile course in 4 minutes. At 15 mph, you would take the entire 4 minutes to travel the first mile; therefore you would have to cover the second (downhill) mile instantaneously.

Teleportation, anyone?

Zeko

How could this happen when Kenya has VERY STRICT gun-control laws???

Zeko

All these epidemiologically based studies (like Kellerman’s) suffer from the same basic defect: they not only conclude that correlation equals causation, but they assume a direction for the causation that has no real support. In fact, causation in the other direction is much more likely.

Specifically, they assume that possessing a gun somehow makes one more likely to get shot. It is much more logical to think that the fear of getting shot makes one more likely to possess a gun. It should therefore not be surprising that there exists the kind of correlation that Kellerman reports.

Using Kellerman’s logic, one could say that since many people die in hospitals, sick people should avoid hospitals at all costs.

Also, if I remember correctly, in Kellerman’s original study a large proportion of the subjects were either drug users or drug dealers. Participants in the illegal drug trade would likely have a greater-than-normal fear of being shot.

Zeko

Norwegians can have guns, but regulations apparently make them keep the guns locked up unless used for hunting or target shooting. Self defense is practically never recognized as a reason to own a gun, and there is no provision for the equivalent of our concealed carry. So, no matter how many guns there are in Norway, none of them would have been available for defense in a case like this.

Zeko

15 years ago Ohio (one of the states in the study) DID NOT have concealed carry — so anyone (besides law enforcement) who transported a loaded gun in an automobile, for example, was doing so illegally. This only shows that people who break one law (e.g., driving while intoxicated) are more likely to break another, and has nothing to do with legal concealed carry.

Zeko

Note the use of the word “should” in the essay. Probably without knowing it, the author has implicitly assumed what he is trying to disprove; the moment he uses words like “should” or “ought” in discussing rights, he has assumed the pre-existence of a right.

Unless he does this, he has no basis for asserting that his “hierarchy of rights” is preferable to, say, Jack London’s “law of club and fang” — oppress the weak and obey the strong (which is observed in nature far more often than his hierarchy).

Kenya has very strict gun control — no hope for the average Kenyan to (legally) own a gun. Of course the bad guys seem to get all the guns they need, mostly from Somalia . . .

From the story, it looks like she had the weapon in her room. Ohio doesn’t have gun registration, so the only ways she could get in trouble over “gun rights” would be (1) if the hotel had a “no guns” sign up (these signs have the force of law in Ohio, but apparently the hotel didn’t have one) or (2) if she were carrying a concealed weapon without a permit. Ohio has reciprocity on CCW permits with a number of states, so she may have had a permit from a state that reciprocates with Ohio.

98 rounds fired / 13 victims = more than 7 shots per victim. It doesn’t take a great deal of skill if one is simply pulling the trigger as fast as possible . . . this doesn’t look like a series of carefully aimed shots, but rather like someone shooting wildly into a helpless mass of people at close range.

Several posters have wondered why concealed-carry licensees would object to their names being published. It’s true that burglars avoid armed homeowners when the homeowners are at home; however, the fear is that burglars will case a license holder’s house and strike when he/she is NOT home, on the probability that there are more guns in the house.

You might look at a Kahr K9 or CW9 9mm semiautomatic. They are small (too small for my large hands anyway) and yet can handle 9mm Luger ammunition.

Concerning not wanting to hurt your hands, a too-light gun will increase the felt recoil from a given type of ammunition. My wife has rather severe arthritis in both hands, and as a result has to shoot a revolver heavy enough to dampen out the recoil to a manageable level.

“The dividing line between good and evil runs through the center of the human heart.” (Author unknown.)

Alexander Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago.

Solzhenitsyn declares his faith quite openly in Gulag Archipelago Book 4, “The Soul And Barbed Wire”. Part 1 of Book 4, “The Ascent”, contains the poem he wrote about his return to belief in God.

Actually, during the oral presentations on the Heller case, the DC lawyer tried to make the case that a rifle or shotgun was adequate for home defense; therefore handguns weren’t needed. This case demonstrates one of the primary problems with a rifle for home defense — weapon retention. (Also, in a crowded urban environment like DC, overpenetration would cause serious problems.) But as was said earlier, this will likely be spun the other way (possibly by some reporter/writer who isn’t sure of the difference between a rifle and a handgun anyway . . .)