More Gun Laws Won't Stop Criminals, or Criminal Government

Alan Korwin is a recent addition to the Townhall.com stable of conservative writers, but I have known about him, and have read his work for many years.  Korwin writes the poplular and usefull books on gun laws in the various States, as well as articles on gun topics in various publications.  I personally have been a gun owner since around 1975, and have studied the Second Amendment longer than that.

Korwin's article in today's Townhall is entitled If only gun control worked, every pro-gun group wishes it did. The difference between pro-gun groups who wish that gun control worked, and gun grabbers who insist that we need still more, is that the pro-gun groups know that laws do not keep criminals from being armed, and committing crimes with those arms.

Gun control won’t disarm the Syrian rebels. Or the Syrian Army. It can’t disarm the Russians, or the Kurds, or any of the combatants in the Middle East. If only gun control (and explosives-control laws!) could disarm the European jihadis, currently under some of the strictest gun- and crime-control laws in the civilized world. That way, the murderous factions over there could stop murdering everyone. But it just doesn’t work, doggone it.

This is the great flaw with law. It doesn’t work. It gives you legal options after the action, and it deters good people, sometimes, but it doesn’t do much other good. Gun control deters no one intent on evil acts. Only some of us understand this unfortunately. If laws against armed bank robbery worked, we’d have no armed bank robbers, right?

Furthermore, what every police officer, security guard, body guard, soldier, or civilian carrier knows is that when you need your gun is unknowable, but that there is no substitute for a gun. Crimes do not happen as in the movies.  Movie directors have the luxury of choreographing the action to make the hero look good.  In real life it is much more confusing, and the criminals almost always have the upper hand.

Korwin points to the 20,000 laws already on the books controlling who and how guns can be obtained, carried, and used legally in this country.  He, correctly, states that these many laws are already not doing anything to stop the criminals among us.  Indeed, if they were better enforced, that might do something, but they are not enforced.

The worst part—new gun laws being proposed don’t even confront crime. They don’t have to, because the crimes are already outlawed. But I repeat myself. The new laws make crimes out of things that aren’t crime—by banning legal activity Americans do every day. Look at gun-transfer laws, pitched as more background checks* for example, the current rallying cry of more-gun-law proponents.

It’s already illegal for criminals to transfer guns, buy guns, have guns, giveaway guns, get guns, anything. More background checks will increasingly burden the innocent, but it won’t disarm or stop criminals who are already armed. Enhanced enforcement and arrests will have that desired effect, but these aren’t proposed.** Armed criminals are armed now despite all the laws banning it already. You do understand that, don’t you? Such questions are mysteriously not posed to gun-control advocates by the media. Instead, reporters virtually cheerlead and campaign for new laws that will incrementally disarm or subarm the public.

It’s already illegal for criminals to transfer guns, buy guns, have guns, giveaway guns, get guns, anything. More background checks will increasingly burden the innocent, but it won’t disarm or stop criminals who are already armed. Enhanced enforcement and arrests will have that desired effect, but these aren’t proposed.** Armed criminals are armed now despite all the laws banning it already. You do understand that, don’t you? Such questions are mysteriously not posed to gun-control advocates by the media. Instead, reporters virtually cheerlead and campaign for new laws that will incrementally disarm or subarm the public.

Korwin will not say it, but I will. The reason the press does not ask the question is a combination of ignorance, and the certainty that the public is out there killing off people at rates that would depopulate the country if left unchecked. That belief comes from the many news reports coming into their newsrooms about shootings every day. What they don't see, of course, is that the overwhelming majority of people DID NOT shoot anyone today, or ever.  The other thing not considered is that the overwhelming majority of these shootings are related to criminal activity, as as said before, criminals will remain armed no matter what the law says.

 A similar bias exists with respect to motorcycles. Because of the criminal motorcycle gangs, most drivers view all motorcyclists with a certain amount of suspicion. The fact that the overwhelming bulk of motorcyclists are hardworking, salt of the earth types is never considered.  Doctors are particularly down on both motorcycles and guns, because they often have to treat the victims of gun violence and motorcycle accidents.  Sure enough, when journalists talk to doctors, their prejudice is confirmed.

The primary purpose of the Second Amendment was to prevent the government from having a monopoly of force.  As Korwin notes, whenever gun control laws are written, the government seems to always exclude itself.  So, police officers, security guards and body guards, agents of every kind, and various officials all have access to items that you, the citizen do not.  Would the master of a great house allow his servants to tell him that they may be armed, but he can not?  In point of fact, the master is more likely to be armed himself, and forbid his servants to be armed except under special circumstances.  In case you do not know, the citizen in this analogy is the master, and the government is supposed to be his servant.  Too many of us have somehow forgotten this relationship.

The truth is that prosecutors and the police (our servants, remember?) have the tools to put away the criminals among us if they would use them.  The fact is that the Left left the bounds of sanity on the issue long ago,  Their real goal, from the beginning, has been to disarm you and me, and turn the tables on the master servant relationship.  They have largely succeeded.

The "Religion of Peace" strikes again

Townhall.com is reporting that Fr. Tom Uzhunallil was crucified on Good Friday.  You can find the brief post at this tipsheet by Christine Rouselle. Ms. Rouselle also reports that there are some who still believe the kidnapped priest is alive.

I noticed again another COEXIST bumper sticker on yet another car. The ignorance such sentiments represents leaves me astounded. The only religion on the "coexist" list that can not coexist is the first one: Islam. The god to whom Muslims give their allegiance is not the God, the Creator of the Universe and of everything that is and is not, the Almighty, Omnicient, One who, loving mankind so much, He decided that He, Himself must pay the price to reconcile sinful man with Himself. Therefore, He came into the world to die on the cross, and rise again on the third day.  This is the good news, the Gospel.

Christianity is a proselytizing religion, precisely because the Good News must be shared with everyone!  It can not be contained!  Telling someone you love (and we should love everyone) is in itself an act of love.  Christianity spread throughout the ancient world by simply convincing people of the Truth of these claims.  In the first 300 years after the Crucifixion, the Middle East had become majority Christian without bloodshed.  It was not until Constantine declared Christianity to legal, along with other religions it should be noted, the Church unwisely made its unholy alliance with Government.   Constantine, in his role as Emperor, was more concerned that disputes over religion did not erupt into open warfare, and so settled a number of claims in support of the Orthodox Church.

Islam came along around 300 years after Constantine.  Unlike the Bible, which was written down over the course of 1500 years, but tells a surprisingly consistent story, the Koran was written by one man, and reflects his growing impatience that so many rejected his claims.  At first, he expressed many sentiments which seem similar to Christian and Jewish morality.  But as time went on, and the people rejected him, he turns ever more to criminality and murder to get his way.  Eventually, his armies swept out of Arabia, and brutally conquered the largely Christian Middle East and North Africa.  Today's Islamic terrorists are following in the footsteps of this delusional man.  Today, as in the ancient Roman empire, Christians are being martyred for simply practicing their faith.

Islam, through the example of its prophet, condones raids on competing businesses (as long as they aren't Muslim), the taking of sexual slaves (as long as they aren't Muslim), pedophilia, and murder.  Except that they do.  The Muslim claim that they do not have prostitution is belied by the fact that a Muslim man can walk into houses of unmarried girls, select and marry his victim, have sex, and divorce her all in the space of an hour.  And it is legal!  Only in the most technical reading of the law would anyone come up with such a notion, and what must be the mindset of those who would conceive of such a thing?

What happens if, God forbid, the entire world does become Muslim, just as they desire?  Will there then be peace?  Not likely, because while the Muslims seem to be able to kill, there isn't much else they produce.  We extract the oil under Arabia, and pay them royalties for it.  We make the weapons they use against us.   Indeed, the fruits of innovation and technology that led to the industrial revolution, that led to, as Bernie Sanders deplores, 25 kinds of under arm deodorant, is a direct outgrowth of Christian thought and morality, and worldview.  In this you will find the quote:

According to Alfred North Whitehead and J. Robert Oppenheimer, both renowned philosophers and scientists of our era (but not Christians themselves), modern science was born out of the Christian world view. Whitehead said that Christianity is the "mother of science" because of the insistence on the rationality of God.[1] Entomologist Stanley Beck,though not a Christian himself, acknowledged the corner-stone premises of science which the Judeo-Christian world view offers: "The first of the unprovable premises on which science has been based is the belief that the world is real and the human mind is capable of knowing its real nature. The second and best-known postulate underlying the structure of scientific knowledge is that of cause and effect. The third basic scientific premise is that nature is unified."[2] In other words, the epistemological foundation of technology has been the Judeo-Christian world view presented in the Bible.

Islam will never bring peace, because it was designed from the start to justify war, criminality and misery.  It can not coexist, because it offers nothing but hate, And hate is ultimately self destructive.  It is said that darkness is the absence of light, and that evil is the absence of good.  It God is good, and wants nothing but good things for us, then what is Islam?

Happy Easter

Jerry Newcombe has an article over at Townhall.com entitled On the Resurrection...Just the Facts, Ma'am making the case, in a short article, for the fact of Jesus' death and resurrection. It is sort of a very short version Lee Strobel's book A Case for Christ, which I recommend highly. Living in American society today, one can even believe that the facts, as outlined in Newcombe's article are true, and not "get" why these facts are of earth shattering importance. If the average person today was to put the things he is most concerned about in order, Jesus death and resurrection would not even make the list. Yet, it is the most important thing ever done, and it was done by God, because man could not do it for himself.  Indeed, God so wanted us to know the truth, that he spent thousands of years telling us that the Christ was coming, and after He had done his work, wanted us to know what He had done and why.  For a good book telling that story, I suggest The Emmaus Code by David Limbaugh.

Easter, celebrating the resurrection of the Christ is the most important holiday in the Christian calendar.  Everything leading up to that moment was important for God to be able to reconcile a sinful world to Himself.  It was only by the sacrifice of a perfect man, the spilling of his blood, that man's sins could be forgiven.  And only God Himself could serve as the "perfect man."  So, God determined to enter His creation, become flesh and blood, live a perfect life, be executed, only to rise again, triumphant.

Jesus died on that cross to save the world from itself.  Today we celebrate the living God.  Christ Died, Christ is risen.  He is risen indeed!

NC Legislature does the right thing

After reading this article, I was reminded of the gay activist (I don't know his name) I heard protesting the passage in the North Carolina legislature of a bill that would take away the ability of cities like Charlotte to pass ordinances that make it legal for so called transgender men to enter and use the women's bathrooms in public places like restaurants. He said something to the effect that the "transgendered were our friends and neighbors, and deserved equal rights." Of course, anyone looking at this definition of equal rights can see that they have turned the term into its very opposite. What they have now is equal. Men go to the Men's bathroom, women go to the Womens's bathroom. What they want are special rights, rights the rest of us do not have, because they are special, and different, and...well just special.  They also want to destroy the culture,  Because of rage over their own alienation for society, they want to burn the entire edifice down.

Let me tell you, pal, the entire world is filled with people who have a fundamentally spiritual illness, that manifests itself in all sorts of perverse ways.  Your particular way of manifesting that sickness is no different in kind from mine, or, indeed anyone's.  It is why He came into the world and took upon Himself the role of the sacrificial Lamb, that He might reconcile man to Himself.  Too many who need Him desperately despise Him.  I will pray for you, that you come to know Him, and repent.

Anyone with half a brain can see where this was going, and it wasn't good.  Pedophiles and rapists would have hung out in the women's room waiting for their prey.  Since it was legal to do so, no body could stop them.  No mother in her right mind would have allowed their girls to go to the women's room alone..  Indeed, most women would lose the convenience of women's rest rooms because of fears of exactly the things I mentioned.  The legislature has done right by the people of North Carolina, The City Council of Charlotte should be ashamed of themselves.  

When the Last American Leaves, Turn out the Lights and Shut the Door. Thankyou.

As if Selwyn Duke was reading my post yesterday (he wasn't, by the way) he offers up a bit of horror here at the American Thinker entitled Death of America: Why the Presidential Election Isn't as Important as People Think. Duke:

Do you really want to save America? Okay, then completely transform the media, academia and entertainment so they’re not brainwashing citizens 24/7 with anti-American, anti-Christian, multiculturalist, socialist, feminist and a multitude of other lies. End legal immigration, which, via the importation of massive numbers of Third Worlders, is changing our country into a socialistic non-Western culture. Even more significantly, convince the 70-plus percent of Americans who are moral relativists to believe in Truth; these are people who, as the Barna Group research company put it, believe that what we call “truth is always relative to the person and their situation” and whose most common basis for moral decision-making is “doing whatever feels right….”

Why does this matter? Well, if we saw a child who didn’t obey rules and simply made up his own “rules” — changing them as was convenient — would we say that he was governed by anything worthy of being called “rules” (principles)? Or would we conclude that the word had simply become a euphemism for flights of fancy and feelings-based decisions? Alright now, is it any different when an adult does it? Furthermore:

Is it any different when large groups of adults do it — even country-size groups?

This gets at the heart of the effect of the Lefts long march through the institutions; that they now dictate what most people "think" or more importantly, feel. Our only hope, and it will take generations to achieve, is a long march back through them to take them back. It will be more costly for us, though. Like an army taking back a position once held, but turned over without a fight, the Left knows the value of these institutions, and they will not let go so freely. But, Duke is not so sanguine about the prospects, and frankly, history shows him to very probably be right. Duke concludes:

We can echo Donald Trump echoing Ronald Reagan and say “Make America great again!” But as an apocryphal quotation oft repeated by Reagan goes, “America is great because America is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, she will cease to be great.”

And we can bellow “Freedom!” Braveheart-style. But as British philosopher Edmund Burke noted, “It is written in the eternal constitution of things that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters."

Intemperate minds abound. Passions we’ve got. Fetters we’re getting. Of course, I’ll choose to, if possible, add a few more pages to the American republic’s story. But I know that, even now, her last chapter is being written..

As always, Selwyn Duke writes well, but don't read it unless you are prepared to face the truth. My eyes watered up.

Conservatism is Dead

At least for now, conservatism, meaning fealty to the Constitution of the United States, as written... you know,  the black markings on the page, not the white spaces in between...is a dead letter. We have finally gotten a candidate, in the form of Ted Cruz, who is wicked smart, principled, and happy to stand and fight, and that candidate is rapidly losing ground in the race. Instead, Republican voters seem to be flocking to Trump, a candidate who will say anything he thinks voters want to hear. But, as always, another says it all better than I can. Ben Shapiro, formerly of Breitbart News, has an article today over at Townhall.com entitled What Trump Nomination Means for Conservatives. Shapiro writes:

For years, conservatives have told themselves the pretty bedtime story that they represent a silent majority in America -- that most Americans want smaller government, individual rights and personal responsibility. We've suggested that if only we nominated precisely the right guy who says the right words -- some illegally grown Ronald Reagan clone, perhaps -- we'd win.

Donald Trump's impending nomination puts all of that to bed.

There can be no doubt: The Republican Party has successful(ly) killed the legacy of Ronald Reagan. By consistently moving to the left in every presidential election, by granting the left its general premise that government is generally a tool for good rather than a risky potential instrument of tyranny and by teaching Americans that the problem isn't government itself, but who runs it, Republicans have ensured that the vast majority of Americans no longer hold to conservative principles.

Glenn Beck spent a year assuring us that "We Surround Them," based on polls that showed huge number of self identified conservative voters. In retrospect, what we didn't do in these polls is ask them what it means, in their minds, to be "conservative." We didn't drill down and find out whether they believed the words written in the Constitution were the best way to govern a nation with so many individuals holding divergent views. I have heard people tell me that they are pretty conservative, and then start spouting the most far left talking points one could imagine. Jeb(!) Bush and a number of other Republican Governors championed the Common Core, for crying out loud. The truth is that Leftist often live conservatively because if they lived as they preached, the consequences would be disastrous. As an example, when Joe Biden was trying to argue that Republicans wanting to pay less taxes was Un-American, the address for sending more tax money to the Treasury was advertised. Anyone who felt that the IRS didn't take a big enough bite could send whatever they wanted into the Treasury. Nobody did.

The meaning of conservatism as a political philosophy has more a specific meaning, and we conservatives have failed miserably to convince the average voter that it is the only way we can survive as a nation.  Conservative means we must be "conserving" something, and not just standing athwart history while the train runs over us.

So, let's look at the facts. Today, at low ebb, Trump garners approximately 4 in 10 Republican voters. Let's assume that at least half of those Americans aren't conservative -- a fair guess, given that many have admitted bias in polls in favor of government interventionism in the economy, a sneaking love for government entitlement programs and a strong position against immigration -- not for safety reasons, but to prevent economic competition. Meanwhile, more than 4 in 10 Americans support Democrats outright.

This means that at least 6 in 10 Americans support a big government vision of the world.

Which means conservatives have failed.

I have long argued that conservatives should take a page out of the Leftist handbook, and begin our own "march through the institutions." We need to take back the education establishment, the legal profession, the media, and the cultural establishment. Conservatives do not have to be a bunch of frowning Carrie Nation types harshing everyone's mellow, and worrying that someone, somewhere, might be having a good time, as we are often parodied. That is not what conservatism is about, and the public scolds will get as many tomatoes thrown at them for my direction as from the Leftists. And while conservatives believe in the rights of the individual over the rights of the collective, we hardly advocate narcissistic endeavors that hurt or run roughshod over others.  Mainly, we want the Federal Government to stay within the bounds set by the Constitution, which means a much smaller, much cheaper to operate, less active in interfering in our daily lives government.  Today the Federal Government sucks the oxygen out of every room it enters.  There is no room left for people to try different things, to experiment, and innovate.

Trump claims to want "Make America Great Again."  What made America great was the dynamism of its people.  Each individual had the opportunity to discover his or her own potential, and each individual made his or her place in society on his own merits.  Today we are smothered in myriad Federal Regulations so numerous and all encompassing that it is beyond the power of anyone to know.  Trump can't make American great, nor Hillary or Bernie, or for that matter Cruz.  But only Cruz seems to recognize it, and is humble enough to want to stay within the Constitutional bonds.

A Take on Global Warming from a Toxicologist

Jack Hellner has a blog post at the American Thinker entitled A Few Simple Question for Climate Fanatics that asks the same questions I was asking years ago when I first became involved with it. My employer asked me to "keep an eye on it," and soon enough I was attending conferences and talking to "experts" in the field. This was the at the time of the run up to signing Kyoto Protocol by Al Gore (inventor of the interwebs.)  I asked exactly these kinds of questions, not being an expert myself, and wanting my employer to have the best knowledge available to him. The answers I got could be all boiled down to "I don't know, but I am sure we are causing global warming now." The natural follow up question of course is, "If you don't understand these past climate conditions, how can you be so sure?" The answers I got back followed a circular reasoning pattern that struck me as participating in a religious experience more than a scientific inquiry.

Since that time, I have followed global warming, read about the previous scare, global cooling, and when the predicted warming didn't materialize, the strategic change to "climate change."  I have read much that Fred Singer, Richard Lindzen, Willie Soon, and others, who have made a convincing, scientific case that the entire global warning/global cooling/ climate change enterprise can best be described as an elaborate hoax perpetrated on a scientifically ignorant population by people hoping to derive money from fleecing that population.  Big money as it turns out.  Literally trillions of dollars.

Today I discovered Frank Schnell.  Oh, he hasn't been missing: I just never ran across his work before.  Frank is a retired Toxicologist from the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, a part of the CDC. So, writing about Climate Science is a bit out of his comfort zone, as it was out of mine.  But Schnell seems to have the same attitude of following the evidence, and where it leads must lie the truth.  Frank has written a very lucid article for the layman entitled The Greenhouse Effect Fallacy. After going through an extensive discussion of just how a greenhouse gas works, he says this:

The important point here is that the interception and re-emission of ground-emitted IR by “greenhouse” gases does not add any energy to the initial packet of incoming solar radiation; it merely slows the dissipation of that packet of energy. The IR that is returned to the Earth’s surface does not represent a new source of energy in addition to the original packet of incident solar radiation. It is just a continually diminishing fraction of that original solar radiation. Thus, the “Greenhouse effect” does not result in the accumulation of energy beyond what the sun supplies. Rather, it merely slows the rate at which that energy is inexorably lost to outer space.

For those curious, the First Law of Thermodynamics states that energy can neither be created or destroyed, only changed in form. Since the only energy source the Earth receives is delivered by the Sun, the Earth fits pretty accurately the conditions needed to satisfy the First Law of Thermodynamics.  More over, water vapor in the atmosphere makes up, by far, the great majority of the greenhouse gas.  Carbon Dioxide only accounts for 400 parts per million, or around 0.04 percent.  Have you ever noticed that on a muggy day, the temperature doesn't seem to go down much after sunset?  On the other hand, the temperature drops pretty quickly when the humidity is low.  The difference is the latent heat captured by the water vapor, which is released slowly to the atmosphere and re-radiated out into space.  But, water vapor also has the effect of forming clouds, that re-radiate a significant fraction of the solar heat load before it ever gets to earth.  Interestingly enough, "space" is a vast heat sink with a temperature near absolute zero.  So, the more IR our atmosphere absorbs, the faster it radiates it into space.  Thus, the idea of a runaway greenhouse effect is not possible.

The result is a moderation of both daytime and nighttime temperatures, not a multiplying of the warming effect of the sun. In fact, the oft promoted specter of “tipping points” and “runaway greenhouse effects” represent nothing less than violations of the First Law of Thermodynamics.

Schnell includes a chart going back to the Cambrian epoch, that shows the estimated average temperatures versus the average levels of carbon dioxide. As you can see from the chart, there is no correlation between temperature and carbon dioxide, and concludes with:

Therefore, while the scientifically bankrupt concepts of “Tipping Points” and a man-made, “runaway greenhouse effect” have obvious political applications, the mere existence of the Earth’s oceans make it an impossible, and obscene fantasy.

Scientists specialize because by specializing, they can probe more deeply into an area of study and thus be more useful to mankind. But specialization has a built in weakness. By studying one very narrow area, you are inclined to forget, or ignore other areas that may prove you wrong. Its the idea of not seeing the forest for the trees. It sometimes helps to have people from other disciplines picking apart your work just to make sure you haven't overlooked something obvious, like the First Law of Thermodynamics. Of course, that applies to actual scientists looking for actual truths. When big money, and politics enter the picture, the search for truth becomes collateral damage.

If you want to be afraid, be my guest...but don't bleat to me about it.

Update:  The Jerusalem Post has an article expressing the same sentiments on banning guns as I have in this post.  Note the picture of the machine.  This type of machine, for turning metal, is available in any machine shop in America.  The article is here.

So, down in Florida, a woman who has made of herself the poster girl for gun rights was accidentally shot with her own weapon by her 4 year old son. She will recover (thank God), but has taken down her Facebook page "Jamie Gilt for Gun Sense" As Mark Griswold says, over at the American Thinker in an article entitled Another Senseless Shooting, Another Senseless Response from the Anti-gun Crowd, the whole affair is tragic.  Apparently she left her gun in the back seat of her car, unattended, and when her 4 year old son got in the car, as children are wont to do, he got a hold of it and pulled the trigger. It was sheer stupidity on her part.

Equally stupid was the response from the anti-gun crowd, as expressed in Lindy West's Guardian article. West constantly states her unreasoning and unreasonable fear of guns, all pointing apparently at her, and her children. West writes:

I grew up with the same persistent, low-grade fear of gun violence as any American – my middle school was once locked down because of a shooting at the high school up the street, and I was a junior at that same high school when we watched the Columbine massacre unfold on TV – but my family didn’t have guns, and we lived in a liberal city so most of my friends’ parents didn’t either. Guns were scary, but for the most part they felt far away.

West, in her article projects the same "low-grade fear of gun violence" on all Americans, as if we lived in a society of mutually assured destruction. In her telling, America is an armed camp, a kind of OK corral, where the only solution is more laws, because heaven knows, the 23,000 laws on the books are not enough. But most of us do not grow up with such a low-grade fear, and most of us do not seem to have West's neuroses. Rather than look at the world through a set of rose tinted glasses, most of us try to look at things as the really are. Most of the time, most of us will not be assaulted by a criminal, but when it does happen, most of us would like to have a fighting chance.  Most of us know that criminals, by definition, do not obey laws, and so they will be armed if they think they can get away with it, and they usually can.

Griswold goes on to write:

Anti-gun folks like the author, Lindy West, enjoy trotting out the old canard that the U.S. has too few laws regulating guns so their answer is to pass more laws. (More laws is de rigueur for the Left; it’s the ultimate cure for personal responsibility.) But let’s just explore that in the case of Gilt.

The law preventing children from having access to firearms didn’t work in this case. Maybe we should require gun owners to go through training? That’s fine. I think you’ll find that the vast majority of gun owners are well trained and strongly advocate that anyone using a gun be welled trained as well. But considering that Gilt runs a Facebook Page about gun “sense”, I’d be shocked if she hadn’t gone through training and, clearly, the training failed in this case. Yet, as tragic as the outcome was, let he who is without blame cast the first stone. We’re all guilty of disregarding our training at one point or another. If we weren’t, there wouldn't be more than 5 million auto accidents per year. And this is key.

West's fear, and thus hatred, of guns, as opposed to disgust for people's occasional failures, causes her to seek out "facts" to back up her fears. She cites these "facts" from, of all places, Mother Jones News. Where will she go next, the National Enquirer?  While both papers have done some good work, I would not trust either of them implicitly.

As for "banning guns," the West article did not explicitly propose it, which allows her to deflect if pressured upon that point, but the general air of fear implies that she wants to see less ownership of guns, perhaps an outright ban.  Let's explore that for a minute.

Banning things, particularly easy to make things, has never worked out as planned.  Remember Prohibition?  Well, alright, so prohibition took place even before I was born, but, I have read about it and studied it.  The Constitutional Amendment, the 18th, in 1920, banned the sale, distribution and manufacture of alcohol, but strangely not the consumption.  The problem was that alcohol is just too easy to make.  Corn, wheat, rice, any grain can be malted, which turns the starch into sugar, and the sugar is fermented into alcohol by the action of yeast, which in the 1920s, every woman had access to for making bread.  A few more steps and you have beer.  Fruits have natural sugars, which can be fermented to produce wine.  With grapes, the wine almost makes itself.  Of course, having people making wine and beer for their own consumption was hardly the problem.  The real problem came when organized gangs began smuggling distilled spirits out of Canada.  Just as drug gangs today can not expect the law to protect them, so organized crime then had to protect themselves and their product with gun fire, resulting in many who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time being killed as well.  I think the term of art is "collateral damage."  So, Prohibition was happily (for most) ended in 1933, a failed experiment in changing people by legislation.

Then we made the same mistake with drugs, because...I suspect we forgot a good history lesson.

Now, onto banning guns.  Once again, we have forgotten the lesson.  Despite what people who never made anything may think, guns are fairly simple machines.  Quite usable guns were built in the pre-industrial age, with rifling.  The pistol is actually easier to build that the revolver that preceded it.  Any well equipped machine shop has the tools and know how to build a working handgun,  It may not run for 50,000 rounds before breaking down, but if guns were banned, a person needing a gun wouldn't be too picky.  The lesson of Prohibition applies.  Where there is demand, someone will supply it, and the other lesson, if it is easy to make, more people will supply it.  Which means that you really can not "ban" guns any more than you could "ban" alcohol, or "ban" drugs.  Such "bans" are legal fictions, and have no basis in reality.

Remember those rose colored glasses West is wearing?  She need to take them off and look around.  Some few of us feel entitled, if they even think at all, to the goods of others.  These people are known as criminals (yes, I'm looking at you Bernie supporter).  They don't obey laws, they don't fight fair, It's your job as the first responder to make sure you live to tell it to second to respond, the police when they show up.  As for Ms. Gilt, I am sure she knows exactly what she did wrong,  Guns can be dangerous unless handled correctly.  So can gasoline, automobiles, chain saws, drain cleaner...the list is endless.  If you want to be afraid all the time, be my guest, but don't come bleating to me about it.

What's Eating the Trump Supporters

In 2010, six years ago I wrote a post that now seems prescient.  The post was entitled When necessity becomes a moral imperative. I cited in that post an article by Christopher Chantrill over at the American Thinker entitled Off the books America. Chantrill pointed to the innumerable, and increasing onerous regulations that strangle businesses, and make it difficult or impossible for a person to start up a new business on his own.

 If you have never thought about starting up a business, you do not realize that the odds are against you. To start up a legal (meets all the regulatory hurdles) franchise bakery for selling bagels and coffee will cost you $100,000 to $200,000. A franchise operation of course has the personnel to evaluate locations, fund the up front costs of meeting regulations, finance construction, and train both you and your employees. They have access to bulk ingredients and many other features that make franchising in a highly regulated economy practical. If you, just you, decided you had a recipe for a great bagel, and wanted to get into the bagel business, the costs would be substantially higher, because you would have to learn all these things as you go. Financing? Forget about it. Only your relatives might give you a little money to get started. Have any millionaire relatives? Didn't think so.

This strangling of business and opportunity by onerous and over reaching regulation at all levels of government is what is driving the Trump supporters.  They are justifiable angry.  They have been lied to, betrayed, and had the rug pulled out from under them, and they are frustrated.  The American dream was never a house in the suburbs with a white picket fence.  That was some politician's take on it.  The American dream has always been that you could make anything of yourself that you desired, and that government, at whatever level, would leave you alone to do it.  But today, people find themselves hedged in at every turn by a seemingly overbearing government that has no sympathy for the struggle that is the individual's life.

I could cite many instances of abuse and over reach by the Federal government alone, but  this will suffice. A family, as a way to teach their teenage son about responsibility set up rabbit raising. They sold meat to family and friends, and sold rabbits to a pet store for pets. They kept the rabbits environment clean, and local experts extolled the quality of their rabbits. They had sold over the course of years according to the USDA some 619 rabbits and made a total profit of $200 to $400, yet were fined $90,000. They are not being fined for abuse, or mistreatment, but for failing to obtain a license. These realities lead to what Chantrill calls an "off the books" economy, separate from the legal, and highly regulated one. People work for under the table cash payments. Of course, no one knows that dimensions of this underground economy, but CNBC has estimated it at $2 trillion dollars. It also lead to this:

Every time the government enacts a new benefit or tax or economic regulation, it increases the cost of doing business for ordinary, law-abiding businesses. Every marginal business affected by the new tax or regulation has to make a decision: does it try to obey the law, or does it go "off the books"? Of course, our liberal rulers understand the problem. That is why they often exempt small businesses from the latest regulation. But what they are admitting, every time they do it, is that their high-tax social-benefit state is profoundly unjust.

One of these days, some right-wing demagogue is going to turn the general disgust with liberal injustice into a national political movement of bitter clingers.

Of course, Trump is not a true conservative, and has no particular love for, or understanding of, the Constitution. But many people simply don''t care. They are willing to burn down the house to get even. What they may find however, is that the American Revolution has become the French Revolution.

Infantile Egoism and Environmental "Science"

Betsy Gorisch is a geologist with an interesting theory, which she articulates at the American Thinker entitled Infantile Egoism and Environmental Science. I was of course aware that children often think that their thoughts and actions have great effects on the material world. One thinks of adults who practice "magic" as being a little off. No amount of incantations by you or me can change the materiel world, make someone love us, cause someone else to have a disease, and so forth. But I had not realized that the condition had a name, but it does: infantile egoism.

Gorisch takes a number of examples from everyday life of people who associate phenomena with the actions of people.  This association occurs despite the fact that it has happened many times in the past, when either the technology had not been invented, or even when the human race did not yet exist.  One that I find fascinating is honey bee deaths termed Colony Collapse Disorder, or CCD.  Gorisch writes:

A species of infantile egoism appears to occur amongst humans more generally in cases where they see themselves as similarly responsible for natural environmental dysfunctions and destructions. The primary symptom is a perception that human activity is the probable cause of dysfunction and destruction in otherwise fully functional and harmonious natural systems. The by now both famed and largely, if not entirely, debunked mass extinction of honeybees is a notable recent example: honeybees have been said to be dying in the mysterious but certainly, according to believers, human-triggered phenomenon known as colony-collapse disorder (CCD). Its colloquial names include “bee-pocalypse” and “bee-mageddon.” People throughout the U.S. have been warned to prepare for life without honeybees, including the dietary deprivations that would result from an end to both honey production and, far more destructively, natural crop pollination.

Human development and use of neonicotinoid pesticides, known colloquially as neonics, and genetically modified crops are the best-known alleged culprits. The neonics have by now been largely ruled out, as CNN published in a less widely known but equally human-agent suggestion in 2010: CCD may be, at least in part, the result of cell phone use. But no evidence has ever been produced in support of the cell-phone theory.

A less well-publicized but perhaps more probable CCD cause may be a function of chaotic population decline-and-expansion patterns, which are poorly understood and unpredictable. They are also not discussed in media coverage, as they provide no guilt with which humans may rationalize imposing burdensome penitential power upon themselves. As Bjorn Lomborg pointed out in 2013,

Honeybee deaths are also nothing new. The Breakthrough Institute reports that, in 1853, Lorenzo Langstroth, the 19th-century bee-keeper who invented the modern hive, described colonies that were ‘found, on being examined one morning, to be utterly deserted. The comb was empty, and the only symptom of life was the poor queen herself.’ In 1891 and 1896, large clusters of bees vanished in a case known as May Disease. In the 1960s, bees vanished mysteriously in Texas, Louisiana and California. In 1975, a similar epidemic cropped up in Australia, Mexico and 27 U.S. states. There were heavy losses in France from 1998 to 2000 and also in California.

Bees are interesting creatures, and having time and the space, I kept a few colonies for several years. Eventually, all of my hives succumbed, and I abandoned the effort. I suspect that despite extensive reading on bees, that I simply did not provide the right environment for bees to stick around, and they absconded. So much for my career as a beekeeper.

Beekeepers are a fairly small, self select group of people, and the theories as to why the bees don't seem to want to stay where they are put don't really affect anyone outside the group.  Pollination companies that supply bees for pollination services will also develop the ability to provide bees as needed, and will continue to travel with their bees to wherever they are need.

On the other hand, though, are the alarmists who promote the theory of man caused climate change.  As Gorisch notes, the climate has been changing since the world began.  At one time, it was so warm that their were no glaciers at all.  It has also been so cold that humans barely survived.  Gorisch continues:

Much of what is adduced to support a finding of climate change by human causation in the present Holocene epoch has been altered if not both deliberately leaked and/or outright faked, rendering most (if not all) of it highly suspect. Other evidence has been denied, such as the by-now nearly 20 year period without warming that should, following the scientific method, be considered to have ruled the entire theory out -- as Richard Feynman famously said, “It doesn’t matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn’t matter how smart you are. If it doesn’t agree with experiment, it’s wrong.” I would expand his statement to include a theory’s being wrong if it does not agree with real-world evidence. Instead, frequent attempts are made to neuter the contrary evidence by claiming that the theory itself accounts for it, rendering the theory itself unfalsifiable -- it is credited with predicting everything that happens, so nothing can rule it out. There are a great many sources confirming these statements; daily high-level and in-depth updates, drawing on numerous solid research authorities on the matter, are available at the Watts Up With That blog, among others.

The unfalsifiable nature of the global warming theory should have rendered it dead on arrival, but so few people today understand science. They view it as if it were a revealed religion, instead of being the method by which men and women struggle to understand our world and God's creation.  Too, many people suffer from being too close to the earth. If you live in Manhattan, for example, the buildings seem so big, the people crush you from every angle, and you get a magnified sense of what so huanity can do. It might help if these people reflected on occasion on the apparent insignificance of our species on the face of the planet and in the universe. We are just not that big, or powerful.  Remember that 70% of the planet surface is water, and the oceans are a huge sink for carbon dioxide.

Judging by the number of shows on popular television featuring vampires, werewolves, demons, and people calling forth demons, I suspect that a lot of people sense that the world is not under their control.  Infantile egoism helps them to feel that, even if the can't do anything, they at least know why.  But a solution based in infantile egoism is not based on reality.  Instead, it might help, if more people prayed to God, and, as they used to say, minded their own knitting.  I may not be powerful, but He is omnipotent, and can in his own time, effect changes.  It also helps if you are praying for His will to be done.

We have had this conversation before...

The Tenth Amendment Center has put together a three part series based on David Kopel's paper entitled The Great Gun Control War of the Twentieth Century Part III can be found here It provides links to the other two parts. I recommend you read all three parts, and Mr. Kopel's original piece.

I sometimes forget (imagine that!) that I am now an old fart.  I can remember back to the late 1950s and the 1960s.  So, much of this history is not new to me.  But for young people, it may be.  I can remember a while back a young man saying something like "We've never had a conversation about guns.  We need a conversation, that's all."  The truth is we HAVE had a conversation, over the course of the Twentieth Century, and his side lost.  But, if we forget history, we will be doomed to repeat it.  In part Two, especially, the real goals of the gun grabbers were on display during the early phases when they thought they might win quickly and easily.

The Massachusetts referendum revealed the true objective of gun-grabbers no matter what jurisdiction they’re operating in. As the election drew near, it became apparent that the initiative was aimed at disarming law-abiding citizens, not criminals. At an anti-gun rally the week before the vote, Kopel writes, Senator Edward Kennedy admitted, “We won’t keep guns out of the hands of criminals.”

This revealing statement about the futility of gun control as a means of keeping firearms out of the hands of criminals would later be substantiated in a 1982 document published by the Senate Subcommittee on the Constitution, a part of the Judiciary Committee. The document found, among other things, that an astounding 75 percent of ATF gun prosecutions were “aimed at ordinary citizens who had neither criminal intent nor knowledge, but were enticed by agents into unknowing technical violations,” according to Kopel.

After the Massachusetts election, an official with the League of Women Voters who had vigorously supported the ban said, “I think a lot of voters have the idea this was designed to get guns away from the criminals. That’s not the real purpose.”

The real purpose, then and now, has been to take away guns from the law abiding, in order that the average citizen would not be able to oppose the government in any meaningful way. So, what is the lesson, if any? Why are we still fighting this battle? Well, first of all, the gun grabbers never give up. There is no settled law if the Left is against it.  The other thing we must realize is that the gun grabbers are not arguing in good faith, and never have.  Therefore it behooves us to call them out on their bad faith arguments.  When they say "We don't want to take away your guns, we just..." don't believe them, and don't debate on their terms.  They DO want to take away your guns: make no mistake about it.

A vital lesson from this gun control war is that the unless action is taken in the states themselves to nullify and resist unconstitutional federal gun laws, the threat will exist perpetually. Gun rights activists no doubt fought with the best of intentions and attempted to thwart gun grabbers at every turn, but their strategy demonstrated that despite victory after victory at a federal level, and even at a state level, the enemy eventually recuperates and makes another attempted assault on our right to keep and bear arms. The only way to neutralize the threat is by getting states to pass Second Amendment Preservation Acts.

Had such laws been passed from the very beginning when gun control war first began, we might not be having to fight it today.

More on the Genocide of Christians in the Middle East

Katie Pavlich has an article over at Townhall.com on the continuing genocide of Christians in the Middle East and the efforts to get the Obama Administration to officially acknowledge it as "genocide." The article can be found at We Must Act: Time Running Out to Stop the Christian Genocide in Syria and Iraq. Before ISIS, the region had 1.5 million Christians in a number of communities. Today, estimates are that 250,000 still survive. Actually, before Muhammad, the region was majority Christian. These people still speak the ancient Aramaic that Jesus spoke. The communities go back almost 2000 years. These people are carrying on the tradition of the Good News first brought to them shortly after the Crucifixion, that Jesus came to save the entire world from its sins by his death on the cross, and subsequent resurrection. Katie writes:

“As many governments, legislative bodies, non-governmental organizations, and world leaders have already concluded, the available evidence demonstrates that ISIS’s actions rise to the level of genocide. Furthermore, we understand that recent information received from on-the-ground interviews in the region and other sources establishes without question that ISIS is committing genocide and makes clear that claims that it is offering jizya or dhimmi status are a publicity stunt or extortion payments that pervert these classical terms,” states the letter written by Andrews Kurths LPP and submitted on behalf of The Philos Project, The American Mesopotamian Organization, The Assyrian Aid Society of America and The Iraqi Christian Relief Council.

“The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (“Genocide Convention”) prohibits the intentional destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic or religious group by, inter alia, killing members of the group, causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group, or deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction,” the letter continues. “Publicly available information strongly suggests that ISIS is subjecting Assyrian and other Iraqi and Syrian Christians living in areas under the control of ISIS to genocidal conditions. ISIS purportedly offers the Assyrian Christians three options: (1) convert to Islam, (2) assume dhimmi status and pay an associated jizya tax, or (3) leave the territory. The facts suggest that, in reality, there is no choice. Those who refuse or are otherwise unable to comply are executed, and in many instances the option of paying the jizya tax is not made available. The evidence therefore suggests that the jizya tax is not a real option and may be just a pretext to justify ISIS’s atrocities. That ISIS purports to permit Assyrian Christians to pay a jizya tax to avoid conversion, execution, or displacement does not preclude a finding that ISIS’s persecution of such Christians violates the Genocide Convention.”

For those who think this doesn't matter, I ask you to think a little broader than that. Right now, ISIS, which claims to be the new Caliphate, the new leader of all Muslims everywhere, is executing Christians and other religious minorities as fast as they can. Barack Obama plans, indeed wants Syrian refugees to come to America. His reasons can only be speculated upon, but we can expect that 13% of the "refugees" will be trained jihadis and will carry out rapes, executions, and generally create as much havoc as possible. They will also convert as many as possible, until they reach numbers that allow them to put in place Sharia law, replacing our Constitutional laws. The process may take a generation, so imagine your daughters and grand daughters wearing burkas, not being able to drive, and, well...living like they do in Saudi Arabia. As with any enemy, we either fight them there, or we fight them here. Or, we surrender now and give up our freedoms and liberties. Islam has no tradition of unalienable rights.  Instead, it has obligations, duties, and specific pieties that must be observed.  Your children and grand children will not have a choice to be Christian or not.  Only Muslims.  You decide.

West Virginia Gets Constitutional Carry, Over the Governor's Veto

According to BearingArms.com, West Virginia has become the eighth State to adopt Constitutional Carry. Residents aged 18-21 must still obtain permits, but those over 21 may now carry, not a prohibited person, without a permit. Congratulations.

This is what I had hoped for in every State, but feared I would never see it in my lifetime, and may not see it where I live.  But it is good to see it elsewhere.  Criminals carry, and are unconcerned whether they have a permission slip from the government or not.  Why, then, should law abiding citizens have to jump through hoops, and pay fees to be able to do what their criminal opponent does with impunity?

The bill also includes a $50 tax credit for receiving training.  $50 isn't a lot, but it does cover the cost of a 100 round value pack of .45s, so it helps.  Even with training it took me a long time to get down my holster, belt, and method of carry, and to practice my draw (which still needs work.) So, I encourage anyone thinking of carrying under the new rules to seek training and become proficient.  That said, it is really up to you, the adult, responsible, gun owner to seek out and take the training you can afford, that fits with your priorities, and can be of most benefit to you.

The On Going Genocide of Christians in the Middle East

With the Republican and Democrat horse raises in the news, the continuing genocide of Christians and other minorities in the Middle East and North Africa have faded from the news cycles.  Fortunately, Eileen Toplansky has kept on top of the issue.  She has penned another piece outlining the affliction facing Christians in the Middle East entitled Muslim Responsibility and Western Inaction. The article concludes thus:

Those who insist that concerned Americans are either racist or exaggerating the danger would do well to ask themselves "[w]hat if Christian terrorists were blowing up Muslims" as liberal Saudi journalist Nadine Al-Budair posits. She asserts that Muslims consistently "absolve [themselves] of guilt and she pointedly asks the following: Imagine a Western youth coming here and carrying out a suicide mission in one of our public squares in the name of the Cross [.]

Imagine hearing the voices of monks and priests from churches and prayer houses in and out of the Arab world, screaming on loudspeakers and levelling accusations against Muslims, calling them infidels, and chanting: 'God, eliminate the Muslims and defeat them all.'

Imagine that we had provided an endless number of foreign groups with visas, ID cards, citizenships, proper jobs, free education, free modern healthcare, social security, . . . and later a member of one of these groups came out, consumed by hatred and bloodlust, and killed our sons on our streets, in our buildings, in our newspaper [offices], in our mosques and in our schools.

It is strange that we condemn [the West] instead of addressing what is happening in our midst - the extremist ways in which we interpret the shari'a and our reactionary attitudes towards each other and the world. It is strange that we condemn instead of apologizing to the world

Jesus, of course, admonishes a different approach. He insists we as Christians should pray for our enemies. Believe me it is hard to do. I pray that God will guard the Christian communities from their Muslim attackers, and then pray that he will soften the hearts of the Muslims and turn them toward himself and away from the wretched book they are following. It is hard, but it is also necessary. For He died for them as much as for me.

Toplansky goes through the gory details of the genocide that continues under ISIS, and you can read all about it by clicking the link above.  She also says that:

The ongoing ISIS slaughter of Christians has resulted in the European Parliament unanimously passing a resolution referring to the Islamic State's (ISIS) killing of religious minorities under its control as "genocide" in the Middle East. But the Obama administration dithers and when asked, White House spokesman Josh Earnest claims that the word genocide "involves a very specific legal determination that has, at this point, not been reached." This should come as no surprise since the FBI has "released a new edition of its anti-terror video game, 'Don't Be a Puppet' that scrubs all references to Islamic terrorism" per the demands of the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR). Thus, as Clare M. Lopez explains, "Islamic jihad is now excluded from a list of potential terror threats."

Additionally, in Canada "Conservative MP Cheryl Gallant has called out Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau over his refusal to recognize as 'genocide' the sweeping targeting of Christians by ISIS in the Middle East." And so, “[t]housands of Yazidis have been summarily executed, killed, or, in the case of Yazidi women, kidnapped and sold into slavery by ISIS.

The lack of action by the Obama administration is a cause of concern, and we can do something by urging the administration to take action, and if they won't, as it appears thhe will not, we can ask our Congressional representative to at least pass a resolution stating that the Congress recognizes the genocide going on. Congressmen will be anxious to appear to be listening to their constituents. Until ISIS brings the war to our shores, we can not do more, but with God, all things are possible.

Gravity Waves and God

What may arguably be the greatest scientific discovery of the last 50 years is explained over at the American Thinker by Tom Sheahen in an article entitled The Discovery of Gravitational Waves. The discovery of gravitational waves places Einstein's theory of General Relativity on a par with Newton's Principia; as close to iron clad law as theories in physics get. Go read the article. I can not explain it better.

The discovery of gravitational waves was one of Einstein's predictions and shows that Einstein was on the right track with his theory. But, subsequent work has proven that objects that appear quite solid are in fact made up largely of empty space. A massive concrete wall seems solid enough, and if you crash your car into it, it will destroy your vehicle in spectacular ways. But the massive concrete wall is in fact mostly empty space. Which begs the question, why does matter have mass, and why does matter seem to attract other matter giving rise to the phenomenon known as gravity?

To answer the first question, the Higgs boson was proposed in 1964. The Higgs boson is a "particle" or a "field" or ..a field that appears as a particle.  The fact is that Heisenberg's theory applies, namely that you can't observe the object without changing it. In any case, the discovery of the Higgs boson, in 2013 is reported in Physics here. The theory behind it not only accounts for why matter has mass, but why mass attracts mass, making gravity possible, which in turn makes beings capable of understanding gravity possible. One can only wonder at the genius of the Creator, who could design a system so complex as to appear simple. What does all this say about the God who loves us so much?

Electric Vehicles Still Do Not Make Sense, Six Years Later

Dexter Wright makes a point that has been known since the all electric vehicle made a splash in the imaginations of people who have forgotten history. The history most people forget is that all electric vehicles have been tried before. See History of Electric Vehicles here. Wright calls his point The Dirty Little Secret About All Electric Vehicles Of course, it isn't a secret at all. But most do not want to hear it. However, Wright blurts it out for everyone to see:

As Elon Musk doubles down with the debut of new and more affordable models of his Tesla all-electric vehicles at the Geneva Auto Show, there is a dirty little secret that once exposed, will burst the mythology of the all-electric car. There is a myth that the all-electric vehicle is more efficient than conventional vehicles and that big oil hates the all-electric niche carved out by Musk and others. The reality is that the all-electric vehicle is less efficient, and has a larger carbon footprint than a Ford F-150.

Yes, I know that you know this, since those who read this blog are a pretty informed group of people, yet the degree to which the all electric vehicle suffers in efficiency compared to gasoline and diesel engined vehicles is shocking.  There are losses, significant losses, all along the chain that produces the electricity that we use. Fossil fuel is burned to produce steam, the steam spins turbines, which in turn spin generators. The electricity is sent out at high voltage, and at several stages is stepped down, until we get to your household voltage. Adding up all the losses results in an efficiency of less than 15% of the energy contained in the original fossil fuel reaching your house as usable energy.

Years ago I confronted a fellow engineer about this, and his reply was that while the efficiency analysis is true, the pollution itself was contained at the power plant site, and therefore more easily controlled. So, if our goal is to contain specific pollutants, he is right. A centralized facility emitting pollution (power plant) can be outfitted with scrubbers and other pollution control devises, and can afford to fund these devises, far easier that putting them on thousands of mobile pollution emitting devices (cars and trucks). Furthermore, maintaining these devises is more easily achieved on a centralized power plant than on thousands of cars and trucks. On the other hand, if we grant the global warming assumptions are true for this analysis, then if our goal is to stop global warming, the all electric vehicle makes things worse.  Carbon Dioxide, in any case, is not technically speaking, a pollutant, since it is an essential part of the life cycle on this planet.

Hybrid technology has been proven with actual buyers making the decision to buy hybrid vehicles despite the premium price paid.  For example, a Ford Fusion MSRP cost is $23,000, with EPA rating of 22/34 MPG city/highway.  The hybrid version costs $30K, buy achieves 44/41 MPG.  Depending on your type of driving, and your analysis of future gasoline prices, the hybrid may be the best option.  But the all electric vehicle does not make economic sense any way it is analysed.  As my earlier post, The Volt is a Joke pointed out that the Chevrolet product was at best an expensive toy, and Tesla's offering is at best a rich man's toy.  I'll stick with my Trailblazer, thank you.