Confessions of a Former Smoker

I smoked a pipe for about 20 years.  I enjoyed smoking a pipe.  I found relaxation in it as well as time to think.  I had largely stopped smoking the pipe when we moved to Raleigh, NC, but I still attended a pipe club meeting once a month until the restaurant that hosted the meetings went non smoking as well.  While I enjoyed the company, the idea that I can not smoke at a pipe club meeting, or at a tobacconist shop, is irritating to me.  This smoking ban took place ironically in a state where tobacco is grown in huge fields. 

Now, I can not defend smoking as an activity, and therefore I will not.  Nor will I claim that the anti smokers do not have a point that smoking leaves a lot of debris and detritus that no longer seems to pollute the streetscape.  Rather, let me state that just as anti marijuana laws are reviled because, after all, shouldn't an adult be allowed to consume what he or she wishes, so one must be consistent and revile anti smoking laws.  Except anti smokers are not consistent.  While condemning the cigarette smoker as a low class, trailer trash types, will themselves smoke a joint as if that were any better.  It is not.  Then of course, because the people doing the banning know little of what they ban, pipes and cigars, which are not inhaled, get thrown into the ban as well.  Remind you of anything?  Read on.

Today, at the American Thinker, Robert Hoffman asks whether  Smoking Bans and Mirrors. Is it about Health? Or Control?. Back when smoking bans were being enacted, each state trying to one up the last state that had enacted a ban, and even localities seemed to be getting into the act with even more stringent bans of their own, I read a number of articles citing studies that showed no actual causation between second hand smoke and lung cancer. These were roundly ingored. As note at Slate.com in their article Second Hand Smoke Isn't As Bad As You Thought:

Early arguments for smoking bans at least paid lip service to the idea that restrictions were necessary to protect unwilling bystanders’ health. But as bans have grown ever more intrusive even as the case for expanding them has withered, that justification has been revealed as a polite fiction by which nonsmokers shunted smokers to the fringes of society. It was never just about saving lives.

Indeed, I have always believed that to many, such as Stanton Glantz, who enjoyed a hey day during the tobacco wars performing biased research, smoking is a vile habit, and in his mind, and it turns out, many others, the habit must be stamped out by any means necessary. From the start, the war on tobacco used Alinsky's rules for radicals, naming the "enemy" freezing it, and attacking it from all sides. Of course, smokers, always a minority, were caught in the middle. But the anti smokers learned valuable lessons which they are using today on gun owners.  It isn't about health, it is about control.

The argument for smoking bans fell of deaf ears until the anti smoking zealots hit on just the right thing: second hand smoke.  Many smokers who were married to non smokers realized they would have to give up smoking for their spouses sake, if what they said about second hand smoke was true.  But as it turns out, it wasn't true.  Glantz and others had been doing biased research in an effort to make the public believe it was true.  Anti smoking groups exaggerated the claims even further.  Now, the Left thinks it has found the formula for getting rid of guns: school shootings.  While no one can defend the indefensible, like smoking, we can certainly  point out that banning guns is not the solution to school shootings.  We don't have a right to smoke, but we do have a right to bear arms for our protection and the protection of those we love. 

Buy Ammunition. You never know ho much you will need

Here's a post from 2016 by Kurt Schlichter entitled Buy Ammo. Schlichter gives a number of reasons to buy ammunition, not the least of which is because:

Buying ammo is a no-lose proposition. Look, the worst thing that happens if you buy more ammo is that you have more ammo. Plus, much of our consumer ammo is made by hardworking Americans, and many of those ammo makers are located in red states where the right to keep and bear arms is celebrated and respected. So you’re helping fellow conservative Americans, which is good. And you’re infuriating people like that sanctimonious, Second Amendment-hating incompetent infesting the White House, which is great.

Remember that Schlichter was writing this during the Obama years. But, you should always keep on hand a number of rounds that you rotate as you use them up. In other words, as you use up the rounds in your stash, you buy more. Or, if you are a reloader, you make more, and then buy more components. The Obama years were a time of shortages of ammunition, which then spurred panic buying. I remember seeing men coming out of the gun show carrying big boxes filled with .223 Remington on their shoulders, that probably amounted to 1000 rounds each. I did not have to panic buy because I had sufficient rounds on hand, and sufficient components on hand, to weather 8 years of Obama.  I could buy strategically.

Schlichter does not give us a fixed number of rounds we should have per gun.  I am reluctant to as well, because each person must evaluate his or her own situation.  In the final analysis, the number of rounds on maintains is an arbitrary number.  You may need exactly 0 rounds, or the end of the world as we know it (abbreviated TEOTWAWKI) may happen, and you will be scrounging for anything you can throw at your enemies.  But start buying now, in whatever amount you think you might need.

I am cognizant of the fact that during the last election, the Democrats expected to win big, and they became over self confident.  Today, we are hearing everywhere that the "blue wave" will not materialize, and that the Republicans will actually take more seats.  Between you and me, I don't believe it.  I may be wrong, but if the Democrats win, even by a small margin, they will consider it a landslide, and the gun grabbers will be out in force.  If the elections turn out as the polls say they will, well, see above..

It doesn't work unless you work it

It seems to always come down to the fault of a human being.  Today we learn from Mairead Mcardle at NRO that Florida skipped background checks on concealed carry applications for a year. I have been guilty of pointing out that concealed carriers were some of the most vetted people in the country, certainly more than a certain former President.  Now we find that:

Over a month after Lisa Wilde, the employee in charge of conducting background checks, found that she could not log into the NICBC system, she reported it to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, but did not follow up or fix the problem. Another employee finally noticed that the department was not receiving any denial notices and reached out to the FDLE to get to the bottom of the mystery, according to the June 5, 2017 state investigation report obtained by the Times.

Wilde, who said claimed she worked in the FDACS mail room until 2013, said she “didn’t understand why I was put in charge of” conducting the background checks. She has since been fired.

How does the saying go? It works if you work it. Contrarily, it doesn't work if nobody inquires of the system whether an applicant might have a disqualifying record.

Note that I am not a supporter of either requiring a permit to concealed carry, or of the NICS.  Anyone is allowed to walk around at large in society should be allowed to carry a weapon, and if a person can not be trusted with a weapon, he should not be allowed to walk around at large.  The Leftist idea that prisoners are there for political reasons, while the citizenry should at all times be treated like prisoners is balderdash.  But since we find ourselves in this situation, we have to make the best of it, and the permit system combined with NICS seems to be the best we can currently do.  We need, however, to do better.

Hogg SWATed

From Mike at Cold Fury we learn that someone has called in to authorities SWATing the Hogg...that's David Hogg, the loudmouthed know nothing of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School fame, who goes about the country accusing NRA and the millions of legal gun owners who had nothing to do with the shooting of being somehow complicit in the murders there.  How this is supposed to work is not entirely clear, but never mind for Hogg goes for evoking emotion rather than logic.  No one will accuse this gun grabber of using logic.

On the one hand, we don't like it when one of us gets SWATed.  It is dangerous, and at least one person has been killed after being SWATed.  It is also illegal.  On the other hand, it is hard not to harbor a sense of schadenfreude over it.  Well, I am a Christian, not a saint.  It could not happen to a nicer guy after all, and its nice to see it happen to someone on the left for a change.

I am glad nobody was hurt.

The Boy Scouts Did Not Live Up To Their Own Principles

The recent announcement that the Boy Scouts will shortly change the name of the organization to "Scouts BSA", and with the change will now come the admission of girls to the ranks brought a bit of sadness to me. The Boy Scouts have taught generations of boys how to grow up to become gentlemen. How to be a man is simple enough.  Biology takes care of that.  But to become a gentleman is a different matter entirely, and the old Scout Oath and Scout Law embodied these ideals. Scout programs then taught these boys how to live these ideals in everyday life through doing. Many scout activities involved enduring pain, hardship and  frustration, and forced a boy to face himself and decide who he was going to become. It also taught responsibility. I remember one year I was the "logistics officer" for our Scout Troop and had charge of the camping equipment. Besides keeping an inventory of the camping equipment, I also had to clean everything up, dry it out, and pack it up after every use so it would be ready for the next trip. It was a big responsibility for a boy of 12.

With these thoughts in mind, I read Paul Kengor's piece over at The American Spectator entitled The Marxist Progressive War on the Boy Scouts. Kengor shows, through links to original sources that the Communists have had a goal of destroying the Boy Scouts of America since at least a year after its founding. The first article against scouting appeared in The Young Socialist Magazine in 1911! You need to read the whole article, and follow the links to the original sources. Even Kengor admits that this story will sound like the old red scare stuff of the 1950s, but the original sources prove its all true. Finally, the Marxist have marched through the institution of the Boy Scouts and as they always do, have left their trash thrown about, have shat on the carpets, and urinated in the corners. What is left of a fine organization is not worth joining.

The Boy Scouts of America thus points out once again the folly of any organization giving an inch to the left.  Just as gun owners have said "not one inch" so should every American institution do.  Yes, the Boy Scouts were under near constant attack from so called "gay rights" and "transgendered" groups, and the cost was no doubt expensive.  But appeasement is not an option.  The idea that if you throw a bit of flesh to the jackals that they will be satisfied and go away is not reality.  From the start, they want it all, and a bit of flesh will just encourage them.  The Boy Scouts, being a private organization, could have withstood the onslaught, but they didn't live up to their own principles.  The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America has done the same thing, by not living up to Martin Luther's theology, they have soiled the name of Lutheranism, and become a shell of what they were.  Do not give an inch. 

The Specter of Global Cooling Returns

So, the first article in decades I have seen now warning that Global Cooling is in the offing. This comes from the American Thinker so the emphasis is on the foolish attempt by greenies to halt the supposed Global Warming...er...Global Climate Change. Still, we have been through this before. Back on April 28, 1975, News Week published an article entitled The Cooling World. Of course, News Week has since recanted the story. After all, there can be no deviation from orthodox thought.

Of course, along with speculation that we may be entering a new ice age, comes the concern that millions of us will starve to death due to famine.  One doesn't want to make light of this, though, because famine has haunted the human race since the first man walked the earth.  While most of us could stand to miss a meal or two, the fact is that it would not take long to die of starvation in a true famine.  Viv Forbes has the goods on what happens if we let the greenies have their way in Are We Fostering Food or Famine. Forbes:

The fierce dog of famine is tethered outside the city gate. Our abundant supplies of reliable energy for the production, harvesting, transport, processing, storage and distribution of food have kept him at bay. But still he waits patiently for foolish politicians or dreadful weather to let him loose.

Just one decent regional blackout will empty supermarket shelves and create long queues at every service station; two frigid winters will see food prices soar; and a return of the Little Ice Age or worse will see starvation stalking the cities.

Greens are inviting famine, humanity’s ancient enemy, into our cities via the green door.

But go read the whole piece.

Gun Control: It Doesn't Work...Unless Your Goal is Tyranny. Then It Works Great

I have been too busy to post lately, but I am taking just a little time to post some gun control items that have come up lately.

The first item is an article by Eileen F. Toplansky at the American Thinker yesterday entitled Does gun Control Lead to Genocide? Ms. Toplansky's point is that while all gun control efforts have not led to genocides, all genocides have first been preceded by disarming the target society. She then spends a lot of electrons telling us about the genocides in the twentieth century alone. The number of such is appalling, not to mention the reasons for them.  As to the latter, let us just say that people are murdered industrially because a politician gets it into his head that he has the right to tell others how they should live their lives.  When people don't listen, these politicians tend to turn murderous to get their way.

Go read Toplanksy's article.  Most longtime readers of this blog will be familiar with most of the genocides that occurred in the twentieth century, but it is good to remind yourself of these facts as armor against the emotional arguments of the gun grabbers.

The next article comes from Alan Korwin's blog, The Uninvited Ombudsman and is entitled Background Checks--Just Like Red Flag Laws Korwin's point here is that Background Checks, so beloved of the gun grabbing left, have not stopped a single killer from getting a gun. Not one. Just as laws against illegal drugs do not stop people who want drugs from getting them, so people who want guns are going to get them. What background checks do is collect the names of innocent, law abiding people who have guns. Its a scam, pure and simple.

Of course the law says that dealers are to keep the books with the form 4473s private to keep the government from finding out (wink wink), but do you really believe that, given what we now know about government lawlessness?  If you do, I've got a bridge I can sell you real cheap.

So, where do so called "Red Flag" laws come in, because Korwin doesn't address these.  Red Flag laws give anti gun family members and acquaintances carte blanche to report people they disagree with to the police, who will obligingly come and take their guns without due process.  In some cases, gun owners may be notified later that they can petition the court for a hearing, but of course the damage has been done.  And good luck getting your property back.  Oh, and the penalty for lying to the court about the reasons for seeking the so called "protection" of a Red Flag law?  A small fine. Why, its practically Les Miserabe-esqu

If you live in a state where the news papers have published the names and addresses of concealed permit holders, you can go down the list, find out who lives in your neighborhood, and begin a Red Flag proceding against him in total secrecy, and lying about any face, including whether you actually know the person, brings just a slap on the wrist.  Gun grabbers should just love these new laws that violate the 4th and 5th Amendment rights of gun owners and provide a way for vindictive gun grabbers to "stick it to" gun owners who have done nothing wrong.  Meanwhile, the laws will not affect the truly guilty gang banger or psychotic killer.  Nobody will know these individuals have guns because they are not on anybody's list.