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Labels: telescopes Labels: abortion Labels: deinstitutionalization Though Kazmierczak seemed friendly and normal, he had a troubled past. After high school, Kazmierczak's parents sent him to Thresholds-Mary Hill House, a psychiatric treatment center for teens, where he lived for a year while getting therapy and medication for what was described as "unruly" behavior. Louise Gbadamashi, a former employee at the Chicago treatment center, told the Associated Press that he used to cut himself, and had resisted taking his medications. "He never wanted to identify with being mentally ill," she said. "That was part of the problem." A criminal background check is performed for every applicant, said Lt. Scott Compton, a State Police spokesman. He said State Police are also required to check a person's mental health history. Compton said a person who has been to a facility for mental illness almost never receives an FOID card. However, applicants and cardholders are not required to report any medication they may be taking. Labels: gun rights Stephen Kazmierczak, the 27-year-old who opened fire on a crowded Northern Illinois University lecture hall, killing five, and then himself on Thursday, was discharged from the United States Army in February 2002 for unknown reasons, ABC News has learned. Kazmierczak enlisted in September 2001, and was separated before he completed basic training, a defense official told ABC News. The Privacy Act forbids the Army from characterizing the reason for Kazmierczak's discharge. Kazmierczak had most recently been studying mental health issues at the University of Illinois, and had taken a job at a prison, according to his academic adviser. But his career as a correction officer at the Rockville County Correctional Facility was short-lived, according to Doug Garrison, a spokesman for the Indiana Department of Correction. "[Kazmierczak] was employed, starting the 24th of September 2007, as a correction officer at the Rockville Correctional Facility," Garrison told ABCNEWS.com. "He left employment on the 9th of October 2007." The gunman who fatally shot five students before killing himself in a Northern Illinois University lecture hall likely planned his murder spree at least a week in advance, investigators said today. The graduate student bought two of his four guns at a Champaign, Ill., gun store Saturday — indicating that he had been planning his assault for at least six days, ABC News' Richard Esposito and Pierre Thomas report. The other weapons were purchased from the same store in December and August 2007. Labels: deinstitutionalization No one would be able to buy cigarettes without the permit, under the idea proposed by Health England. Its chairman, Professor Julian Le Grand, told BBC Radio 5 Live the scheme would make a big difference to the number of people giving up smoking. ... Professor Le Grand, a former adviser to ex-PM Tony Blair, said cash raised by the proposed scheme would go to the NHS. He said it was the inconvenience of getting a permit - as much as the cost - that would deter people from persisting with the smoking habit. "You've got to get a form, a complex form - the government's good at complex forms; you have got to get a photograph. "It's a little bit of a problem to actually do it, so you have got to make a conscious decision every year to opt in to being a smoker." Labels: health care Labels: immigration Labels: deinstitutionalization Labels: deinstitutionalization, gun rights From February 15, 2008 TransWorld News: The man responsible for killing six students at a lecture hall on the campus of Northern Illinois University before killing himself had been a well received student at the school and had earned a pair of honors while an undergraduate. Labels: deinstitutionalization Labels: gun self-defense The Republican Blood Feud The present Republican infighting is as if Sherman marched on Grant while Lee headed toward Washington. I wrote this recently for NRO, since I think nothing is scarier than 8 more years of the Clintons. Labels: 2008 presidential candidates Labels: telescopes Labels: gun rights February 13, 2008 -- The kinky college professor who was almost strangled during an S&M session at a Midtown club told The Post yesterday he's deeply ashamed and is finally through with the double life he's lived since he was kid. "I don't want this to spoil my marriage," said Robert Benjamin, 67, still disoriented from the three days he spent in a coma but sitting upright in a chair in his room at St. Vincent's Hospital. "I don't want my wife to leave me, but I have to tell her the truth," he said. "I'm going to share everything with her. I think my family will forgive me," Benjamin said he's desperately trying to break his addiction. "It's like when you crave a turkey," he said. "You eat it and you eat it and you eat it, but you still want it. But now I've had enough. I don't want turkey anymore. I'm full." His life was saved last Friday by a dominatrix at the Nutcracker Suite on East 33rd Street, who was assigned to check on him after her colleague left him with a dog collar around his neck and a leather mask over his face, suspended a few inches off the floor. She realized his foot was turning blue because one of his high heels had slipped off. "I don't want to go to the clubs anymore," Benjamin said. "I'm trying to learn to control myself and my emotions. I've seen doctors to help me," he said, adding that he's been unable to control his desires "from very early on in my life." Labels: homosexuality Labels: drug laws Labels: gun rights, gun self-defense A resolution to address the denial of citizen's second amendment rights. Whereas: The right to self defense is absolute and granted by God. The second amendment of the US Constitution recognizes and affirms the God given right of the individual to arm themselves against aggression. Whereas: Employers have usurped their employee's right to self defense by instituting rules governing the possession of weapons on the employer's property by employees, including leaving weapons in their vehicles. Such rules impair the employee's ability to protect themselves in transit to and from their place of employment. Therefore Be it Resolved: The Harris County Republican Party calls for the passage of legislation that requires that employers that interfere with their employee's right to self defense, including weapons bans, to be held liable for any injury that befalls the employee in transit to and from his or her workplace or in the course of his or her duties for the employer as a result of their right of self defense being impaired by the employer. Be it further Resolved: That the Harris County Republican Party calls for legislation giving employers that do not restrict the possession or legal use of weapons by its employees during the course of their employment, immunity from liability for any use of a weapon by an employee. Such liability would solely rest on the employee him or herself. and Be it further Resolved: Labels: gun rights, gun self-defense Labels: Islamism Labels: terrorism Labels: gun self-defense Labels: gun rights Labels: hypocrisy Labels: gun history, gun rights
Never forget!
I ran for Idaho state senate in 2008--didn't win
I've written a number of history books, as well as scholarly and popular articles, (see my web page).
Sorry, high pressure isn't included.
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My civilian gun defense use blog
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Pete Drum's Web Page
Gun Laws Don't Work
instapundit.com
Dissecting Leftism -- By John Ray
A courageous Briton arguing for relaxing Britain's gun control laws
Right Thoughts
Final Protective Fire
Amitai Etzioni's Blog
Scrappleface -- Dangerously Clever Satire
Michael Williams -- Master of None
Another Conservative Blogger
A Group Blog By Iraqis
THE MESOPOTAMIAN: TO BRING ONE MORE IRAQI VOICE OF THE SILENT MAJORITY TO THE ATTENTION OF THE WORLD
Specializing in discussions of discrimination and affirmative action
An Iraqi dentist
Promoting children being raised by their own parents
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Michelle Malkin's blog
Impearls: a blog as electic and interesting as mine
Proving that the United States military does more than kill people and break things.
May not agree with this group on everything, but stopping the ACLU is high on my list
A conservative/moderate black blogger.
Another sensible American
Sex, Crime, and Corruption in the Democratic Party
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Maggie's Farm: Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
A blog dedicated to "Documenting Saddam Hussein's support of Terrorism"
The blog of one of my fellow bloggers on the Civilian Gun Self-Defense Blog
J. Norman Heath's Blog--a circus rigger and Second Amendment scholar (really!)
Buckeye Firearms Association, for you Ohio gun owners and activists
Click here for a FREE NEWSLETTER on Ohio Gun Rights from Buckeye Firearms Association!
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Neocon Blues
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Assembling Big Bertha 2.0
I have the aluminum rails, and I have started putting them together. The only difficult part of the process is getting them exactly parallel to the optical axis of the telescope. Here you can see me using a square to make sure that the rail is exactly perpendicular to the tube. I suspect that if geometry class had required me to prove some of these problems, I might have been a bit more interested! (I feel so sorry for my geometry teacher!)
Click to enlarge
I hold the square tube in position with a couple of hand clamps, and then drill through the holes in the square tube to mark where the holes go in the cylindrical tubes.
It turns out that the 1 1/2" long black oxide bolts I bought at Industrial Hardware on Thursday aren't tap bolts (the kind where the threads go all the way to the head). Therefore they are too short, so I'm using some shiny 1 1/2" hex head tap bolts as a placeholder.
Click to enlarge
Industrial Hardware, unfortunately, is like a computer: they sell me what I ask for, instead of what I need. They seem to be deficient in their ability to read my mind in the future, but that's okay, they are very nice people, and they seem to have everything I can imagine.
Here we have the first rail attached.
Click to enlarge
The holes in the cylindrical tubes are tapped 1/4"-20. I had originally drilled the holes in the square aluminum tubes at 1/4" on the drill press. While these holes were pretty accurately marked, they weren't quite accurate enough to get the bolts to slide in without a struggle, so I went up two drill sizes.
Tomorrow after church I'll try and get the other two square tubes attached. I had wondered how I was going to get these square tubes attached exactly at 120 degree angles, but it turns out that the holes in the cylindrical tubes were measured pretty carefully, so if I get one of these holes flat on the floor, I just have put the square tube exactly at the top of the tube to be in position.
I'm afraid that I am going to have to do some more paint work on the exterior of the tubes once I am done--the paint has gotten a bit scratched as I been drilling holes.
Amusing T-Shirt
The picture on the right. Don't worry, it's work-safe, unless you work at one of the abortion rights groups.
Mental Illness, Commitment, & Idaho Law
Rep. Carlos Bilbao, who represents district 11 (Gem and Canyon Counties) in the lower house of the Idaho legislature, was the speaker at Cloverdale Church of God's men's prayer breakfast this morning. To my surprise, he spoke about what both government and private organizations can do about mental illness. He is on the Health & Welfare Committee. Over breakfast, we had a chance to talk about the particular problems and what he and other members of the legislature are doing to fix it.
He agreed with me that Idaho's current mental illness commitment law isn't the major obstacle, and he agreed that deinstitutionalization was for many patients, a major mistake. What he described was an unfortunate but unsurprising consequence of Idaho's low density. He described one case where Emmett police had taken into custody a person who was mentally ill, and believed to be a danger to himself or others. The problem was: where do they put him?
He has to be held until a court hearing determine whether he should held on a temporary basis for treatment. But he can't be held in the jail. Local hospitals can't hold him without a certified psychiatric ward. The nearest available bed (public or private) was in Twin Falls--which is about three and a half hours away by ambulance. This was a Saturday night. For a relatively poor county like Gem (where Emmett is located), this means sending him by ambulance to Twin Falls on Saturday, then bringing him back on Monday for a hearing. And if (as was likely), the court ordered him to be held for treatment--another drive back to Twin Falls. At one time, some counties were reduced to handcuffing mental patients to a desk in the police station.
You don't have to have too many cases like this to destroy the mental health budget for Gem County--and there are a lot of other rural counties that aren't even as well off as Gem. So Bilbao and other members of the House are working on getting more general hospitals around the state to have at least a couple of beds that meet the certification requirement for a locked psychiatric ward, as well as expanding the number of psychiatric beds available around the state. This makes it possible to at least reduce the length of drive required to hold a mentally ill person who has been taken into custody.
This isn't the only problem associated with mental illness in Idaho, but it is at least a major problem.
UPDATE: One additional thought that came me while I was working on the telescope. Rep. Bilbao indicated that part of our problem was mentally ill Oregonians moving into Idaho because Oregon has pretty much given on its mentally ill. I rather doubt that it is this organized; probably more on the order of, "Oregon doesn't do much for its most severely mentally ill, and by a form of Brownian motion, some end up in Idaho."
More On the NIU Killer
He was hospitalized for a year in a psychiatric facility, according to this February 16, 2008 ABC News report:
However, federal law doesn't have that same five year limit. Kazmierczak's mental illness hospitalization didn't get noticed during the federal background check for any of the four guns that he bought through licensed dealers. I'm not sure if HR 2640, recently signed into law, would fix this or not. I would certainly hope so.
Something Else To Make You Paranoid
A reader sent me a link to this video from a local news show about a technique for picking locks called "lock bumping." There is also a Wikipedia article here about how it works, when it was discovered, and which brands are apparently resistant to this technique.
What disturbs me about this is that while it is a rather uniquely manufactured key that lock bumpers use to accomplish this, the actual use is surprisingly simple--much easier than traditional lockpicking. The video showed a 10 year old successfully using the technique to pick a lock. These special keys are in some ways like the "skeleton keys" that were a recurring deus ex machina in bad fiction of the early 20th century, where skeleton keys allow good guys and bad to enter homes without leaving any evidence of forced entry.
UPDATE: A reader tells me:A few months ago we had a file cabinet key lost, and one of our people had read about lock bumping. Used a small hammer and a similar file key, and it worked! Scary!
Stopped Taking His Medication
From AP:DEKALB, Ill. - The man who gunned down five people at Northern Illinois University in a suicidal rampage became erratic after halting his medication and carried a shotgun to campus inside a guitar case, police said Friday.
Nothing that says what the medication was, or what he was taking it for.
UPDATE: More details in this February 15, 2008 ABC News story:
There's a lot of individual red flags here--none of them terribly significant by itself, but all combined suggest to me that Kazmierczak may have been having problems for some years, although not enough to prevent him from completing his bachelor's degree. His interest in mental health issues by itself wouldn't tell us much--but it sounds like his problems became dramatically worse in the last few months.
UPDATE 2: Here's another February 15, 2008 ABC News story:
With respect to allowing concealed carry permit holders to be armed on campus, this is pretty persuasive:Police said he reloaded the shotgun in a shooting that lasted less than five minutes, before he took his own life. Police arrived on the scene within two minutes of the first reports, but it was too late to stop the gunman.
Reloading a Remington 870 shotgun, while not difficult, does require you to focus on what you are doing--it's not like swapping magazines on a pistol. If you were not in the direct line of sight while this was going on, there would have been a chance to draw, fire, and disable or kill him while he was reloading.
Britain As The Democratic Model For America
From February 15, 2008 BBC:Smokers could be forced to pay Ł10 for a permit to buy tobacco if a government health advisory body gets its way.
Press One For English
This YouTube video is an astonishingly professional production by Ron and Kay Rivoli of a song about the importance of speaking English if you move here--really well done and thoughtful!
It shows an astonshing 6,386,918 views. Wow! I have some odd suspicion that if the news media weren't so ferociously pro-illegal immigration, a politician could get elected president on a platform of shutting down illegal immigration.
The Collapse of Public Mental Health Treatment
This comes from Sonoma County, where I used to live. From the February 14, 2008 Santa Rosa Press-Democrat:Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital will close the only inpatient psychiatric care unit in Sonoma County and lay off 212 employees as part of cost-cutting efforts, hospital officials announced Wednesday.
Dr. Greensweig used to be my doctor when I lived in Sonoma County.
George Perez, the hospital's president and chief executive officer, said the cutbacks will save $7.7 million and help stave off a looming deficit.
In addition to the psychiatric unit, Memorial plans to close its skilled nursing and acute rehabilitation units. The closures and layoffs take effect in 60 days.
"We are at a loss situation," Perez said at a news conference at the hospital. "We have been able to mask the losses in these programs over 18 months, but we are losing money."
The closure of the 18-bed psychiatric care unit comes less than a year after Sonoma County essentially closed its only mental health facility, retaining only emergency services.
Memorial officials conceded the closure creates a void in the county's health care system but said it was increasingly difficult to staff a psychiatric unit.
"It is clearly a gap, we see that," said Dr. Gary Greensweig, the hospital's medical director. "It became a bigger gap when the county closed their program a year ago."
The gap has become a concern for advocates and law enforcement, with police and sheriff's deputies often being call on to assist people with mental health problems.
Three such calls have ended with officer-involved shootings in the past 11 months.
The Februrary 15, 2008 Santa Rosa Press-Democrat has this additional reporting:Sonoma County Sheriff Bill Cogbill said Thursday that closure of Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital's inpatient psychiatric unit could result in more mental health patients ending up in jail.
Now, let me emphasize: this isn't evil Republicans doing this. For many years, Republicans often ran only token candidates for legislative seats that included Sonoma County, because the chances of winning a seat were so small. I think the last time a Republican represented any part of Sonoma County in Congress was because the Green Party pulled so many votes away from a Democrat who hadn't been far enough left for them to be happy. This isn't a poor county, either. I lost track of the number of multimillionaires (and at least one billionaire) that I had worked with that lived there.
"There's not enough mental health services right now," Cogbill said, adding that jails are becoming "de facto secure mental health facilities."
...
Supervisor Mike Kerns echoed Cogbill's concern and noted that the county eliminated 16 positions in mental health services last year and closed its inpatient facility, the Norton Center, because of state cutbacks.
"We were counting on some of these other facilities to provide that service within the county," said Kerns, adding that Cogbill is "exactly right" about the implications.
"And the cost of putting people in jail is a lot more than treatment facilities," he said.
Kerns said the planned closure is further cause for concern because it comes at a time when Memorial is negotiating with Sutter Health to take over Sutter's contracted county health care obligation.
"How are they going to pick up the needed services that Sutter is now providing if they're reducing their personnel by 212 people?" Kerns asked. "That is a concern."
The Fulton Road psychiatric unit is a secure facility that employs 55 people and, its director said, provides mental health services to those who are either a danger to themselves or others; in some cases, they can no longer feed or clothe themselves.
Public mental health treatment has been destroyed in this country over the last forty years, with catastrophic effects. The problem is that mental illness often takes a while to become obvious--and in the meantime, that person with a good job and health insurance has either quit his job, or been fired. By the time it is apparent that this person has a serious problem, they are often uninsured--and Medicaid has a very limited level of assistance for mental illness.
One of the problems is a lot of people who need help can't afford it. The other problem is that the most seriously mentally ill--including some of those who become headlines--don't think that they need any help.
Idahoans: The Time For Talk Is Over
The Senate State Affairs Committee chose to reject S.1381 on Wednesday. Here's the letter that I just sent to members of that committee:I've taught at BSU. My wife teaches there. My daughter and son-in-law attend there. I am very concerned about their safety.
Idahoans, let them know how you feel. Click here to email them.
I'm not just another Idahoan. I have a long publication history related to the history of weapons regulation in America. See here for a list of my six published books, and here for scholarly journal articles.
I am writing my seventh book right now, a history of deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill. There's a reason that we didn't use to have regular mass murders in America--and it is because of the intentional destruction of the public mental health system in the 1970s. But since no one wants to deal with THAT problem (which would solve a bunch of other problems at the same time, not just this violence problem), the only realistic choice left is to allow concealed weapon permit holders to carry on campus. S.1381 was actually a good bit broader than that, and I had some objections to it for that reason. But we are fast reaching the point where we do not have the luxury of asking, "What would be the best solution? And how can we achieve that sometime in the next fifty years?"
Enough pandering to the university administrators and the Idaho Statesman. We've got a problem, it is a crisis, and it needs to be solved NOW.
Details on the NIU Killer
Proponent of social justice? This doesn't make any sense. This has to be a mental illness breakdown.
Common characteristics of schizophrenic breakdown: teens to mid-20s; often extremely smart people; a lot of the breakdowns seem to happen in college. That was the case for my brother.
I will be surprised if there weren't some warning signs. There was some disturbing graffiti found on a restroom wall in December, although it isn't clear that these were connected.
Weapons On College Campuses
I mentioned a couple of days ago my concerns about what was basically a good bill under consideration here in Idaho. Well, we can keep talking about it, or we do something about it. We don't know the story on this guy that went into a classroom at Northern Illinois University today and shot 22 people (with a shotgun and two handguns), but I think it's a good guess that they are going to find a history of untreated, or inadequately treated mental illness.
The right long-term solution is to fix the mental health system, including the commitment laws. But what do we do in the meantime? We allow--even encourage--those faculty, staff, and students who have concealed weapon permits to be armed at campus.
As Paul Huebl (a former Chicago cop) points out:Northern Illinois University, Dekalb, IL--Illinois politicians gave Mayor Richard M. Daley what he wanted. They made it a felony crime for a law abiding citizen even those holding valid Firearm Owner Identification Cards to carry a handgun for simple self-protection.
They’ve known for a long time that violent criminals and the mentally deranged never let gun laws or Gun Free Zones stop them from committing all manner of carnage. They also know it’s an extremely rare day when dangerous criminals have met any requirements to get gun permits even under the most permissive systems.
Illinois Politicians have made the entire state a Gun Free Zone, at least on paper. Again the result was to provide some whack-job the softest possible target to kill innocent victims and get himself or herself some major media face time. The politicians know these facts only too well and continue with their politics of victimization anyway.
Great Quote From Victor Davis Hanson
Concerning the conservatives who are talking about sitting out the election:
McCain has caused enormous damage to conservatives and the Republican Party. Do you want someone is wrong half the time, or someone who is wrong all the time?
Painting Telescope Parts
I couldn't get an adequately polished finish on the outside of the tubes, so I decided to go for a gloss white finish on the outside. Obviously, all interior components have to be flat black.
Click to enlarge
The exterior finish looks better in the picture than it does in real life--I'm afraid that spray paint doesn't come out as professional looking as I would like.
I'm buying the square aluminum tubes today that will hold the lower and upper assemblies in position.
UPDATE: I thought that I was buying the square aluminum tube today, but when I arrived at work, I decided to see if I could find a better deal online. I didn't find a better deal (the price s were actually somewhat higher online--and that's before figuring shipping), but I found a lot more sizes available to me, including 1" square with 1/8" wall, and 1 1/4" square with 1/8" wall. But I didn't have my handy-dandy spreadsheet for calculating deflection with me, so I waited until I got home.
The gain from going to a 1/8" wall from 1/16" wall was about 3/10,000ths of an inch less deflection at the mirror end--and it increased the weight for all three tubes from 5.03 pounds to 9.39 pounds. Why bother?
I guess I'll buy the 1/16" wall tubes tomorrow. We've been having glorious weather--not consistently clear at night, but often enough that I want to get Big Bertha 2.0 operational. The tubes cost $2.07 per foot, so it is less than $40 for all three.
Great Moments in Advertising
Mythbusters this evening is investigating whether it is possible to cut down a tree with a machine gun. The test tools? A Thompson .45 ACP submachine gun; a .223 SAW; and a 7.62 NATO minigun. And in the first break? "Brought to by GE...." Who also makes the minigun.
Briefs We Can Expect To See Soon
I have to link to this uproariously funny posting by the only circus rigger I know whose work gets used (although not necessarily credited) in Supreme Court briefs:Courtesy of David Kopel at the Volokh Conspiracy, here is the ABA's amicus brief in District of Columbia v. Heller. According to the ABA, the sanctity of stare decisis means that an explicit constitutional right should not be recognized today if it has been denied to citizens in the past.
1) Check the ABA's website for forthcoming legal actions to restore the sanctity of Dred Scott, Plessy v. Ferguson, and Lochner.
Marines in Berkeley
I received this from a friend, who tells me that this firsthand account came from a friend of his in the Unlocked Ward that is Berkeley:On my way home last night I stopped by to support the Marines in light of the effort that Code Pink and the City of Berkeley have made against them. Because I did not want to raise my blood pressure I had originally decided to avoid the venue. But since it was near the trains stop on my walk home from the station, I decided to stop over. As it turns out, I am glad that I did.
As you know, whenever I run into military recruiters in Berkeley I always stop and thank them for the job they are doing. This always brings a smile to their face and some words of appreciation that there are people living in Berkeley that don't dislike them. I have had some run-ins with the Code Pink people lately but last night was special. To me it really pointed out the different worlds that I seem to inhabit with most of my fellow Berkeley residents.
First I would let you know that that reporting that I have read from the local papers and the seen on the local TV was not that accurate. From my vantage point, there were significantly more people in evidence supporting the Marines than opposed. Also, the racial makeup of the two groups was very different. The anti-war group was lily white while the pro Marine group was a real American mosaic with lots of black, brown and yellow faces. These differences were not reported either. I am sure had the anti-war group been a bunch of skin heads, the news would have been all over about the racial makeup of the Marine supporters.
What was the most striking difference though in the two groups was that of their socioeconomic status. From what the individuals were wearing, the electronic gear they were carrying and the amount of plastic surgery that was evident, it jumped out at me that the anti-war protesters where either quite privileged, or the children of privileged (this being Berkeley with a median income of $75,000 what would you expect). The pro Marine supports were from their clothes, weight and other habits quite obviously working class people who were either veterans, parents of veterans or relatives of veterans.
The difference between the two groups really summed it up for me: The parents and children of privilege chanting and screaming at the people who have protected them in the past or whose children are protecting them now, all the while knowing that they neither they nor their loved ones at risk. After five years of living here the selfishness, self delusion and entitledness of my neighbors never ceases to amaze me.
This Is a Sexual Orientation, Too
And at least this guy finally figured out, just short of death, that maybe he needs helps. From the February 13, 2008 New York Post:
A Job That Government Needs To Do
I was reluctant to say anything about this, but since my daughter is blogging about it, I'll link to what she has to say. As part of her MSW program, she has to intern in various facilities at what is called practicum:I started my new practicum today with teens and it was definitely emotionally exhausting. Kids are ALWAYS hard to work with (in my opinion) compared to adults. They have some advantages: they often lack a long laundry list of financial and legal troubles, and there is hope that you can direct them to be healthy adults. But it is still hard seeing kids so young in so much pain. 14-year-olds should not be meth addicts. 15-year-olds should not be prostituted out to support parents' drug habits. 13-year-olds should not be pregnant. Kids are not KIDS anymore and seeing your ideal of what teenagers SHOULD be like shattered is depressing.
She's told me even more over dinner (which I won't go into detail about here), and it both enrages me and sorrows me what incredibly screwed up homes a lot of kids are coming from around here. And the bad news is: I think Idaho may be better off than a lot of other places in America.
I am very pleased with what I have seen of the meth commercials that Idaho is now running on television and radio. They are hard hitting, and from what I know of the destructive effects of it, accurate and not overblown. This is certainly a valuable activity, to the extent that it causes at least some people to pause for a second before deciding to start meth.
But there are some problems that simply can't be fixed by persuasion. They require the coercion of the state. Children should not be starting to use meth before they are old enough to understand what it is, just because the parents encourage them to do meth with them.
Weapons on College Campuses
The Idaho legislature is considering S.1381, a bill that would effectively strip public institutions of higher learning of authority to ban possession of firearms on campus. I have a couple of concerns about the bill.
I confess that I have long wondered where the University of Idaho and Boise State University get the authority to ban possession of firearms. Regardless of whether this is a good idea or not, it has been well established ever since In re Brickey (Ida. 1902) that the right to bear arms is constitutionally protected. In that case, the Idaho Supreme Court ruled that a Lewiston city ordinance that completely banned the carrying of deadly weapons was contrary to the Idaho Constitution, Art. I, sec. 11. The Court found that a ban on concealed carry might be constitutional, but not a complete ban. While you might want to argue the point, it appears that they also found that this right was protected by the Second Amendment as well.
I've long felt that prohibiting concealed weapon permit holders from being armed on campus was neither wise nor constitutional. Yes, I know your concern: drunken, irresponsible college students carrying guns to class, responding to bad grades with gunfire, etc. And yes, there are certainly times that I worry about this a bit.
However: as the Virginia Tech slaughter demonstrates, people that plan on murder tend not to be discouraged by rules against carrying guns on campus. If there were a recent tradition of college students losing their tempers and pulling out deadly weapons on campus (as there was in the early 19th century), I would wonder if the risk of this was too high to justify the advantages of victims being able to shoot back. But for the most part, when there is a problem with deadly weapons on college campuses, it is tragedies like Virginia Tech, or incidents like this person with a knife at Colorado University--where the rules against having deadly weapons on campus were ignored by the killer, and obeyed by the victims.
While sheriffs in Idaho have the discretion to issue concealed weapon permits to those who are under 18 to 21 (see sec. 11 of Idaho Code 18-3302), in practice, I don't think it is common. Certainly, few other states allow issuance to anyone under 21. What this means is that the vast majority of undergrads can't get permits to carry concealed. Some undergrads will be able to get permits, as will nearly all grad students, as well as faculty and staff.
Since about 5% of the population of Idaho has a concealed weapon permit, my guess is that not even 5% of those 21 and over college students have, or will get, concealed weapon permits. As a fraction of all students on campus, it is going to be 1-2% at most--and I would guess that relatively few of those with permits will carry to classes--except, perhaps, some female students taking night classes, who are understandably concerned about their safety on their way to the parking lot, or to a dorm room.
Where this bill would make the most positive difference is that some faculty and staff would probably carry concealed--and it is situations like this one where I find it most likely to make a difference: a woman is being stalked, and when the stalker comes for her at work at the University of Washington, he murders her and then commits suicide. Would Rebecca Griego have carried a gun to work, if it had been legal? I have no idea. But she should have had that option.
What makes me a bit uncomfortable about S.1381 is that it doesn't just require public universities and colleges to recognize concealed carry permits; it also prohibits them from doing anything about open carry. Open carry in an urban setting, while constitutionally protected in Idaho, is, to my way of thinking, bad manners. Lots of people aren't used to being around guns, and seeing one on a college campus isn't exactly going to make you any friends, nor will it, in the current climate of college, make gun rights activists any friends. This is an area where I can see colleges genuinely concerned about the atmosphere it would create.
Furthermore, the concealed carry permit has a background check that removes about 99.9% of all the people that are going to criminally misuse a gun. There is no permit required to carry a gun openly in Idaho, even in cities (although you will spend a lot of time talking to police officers about your bad manners, even if they can't arrest you). Especially since American society made the decision that we are seldom going to lock up mentally ill people until they kill someone--or get darned close to it--this creates some worrisome opportunities.
A fair number of homeless people (a which a significant minority are mentally ill, have substance abuse problems, or both) do carry knives with them for self-defense--and there is nothing particularly odd about doing so. (There might be more carrying guns, but guns are readily convertible into cash, and poor people shed guns pretty quickly for that reason.) If you live on the street, you may need a weapon for self-defense. And inevitably, some of these people are going to wander onto a public college campus, creating a rather difficult situation.
All in all, I think S.1381 would be easier to sell if it simply required public college and universities to recognize concealed weapon permits.
UPDATE: Nor is Idaho the only state considering such a change. A friend with Students for Concealed Carry on Campus provided me this list.
Arizona: SB1214: amending section 13-3102, Arizona Revised Statutes; relating to weapons.
Georgia: HB 915 - Second Amendment Protection Act of 2008
Idaho: SENATE BILL NO. 1381
Kentucky: HB114 - Allows for carry in cars
Mississippi: House Bill 1286 - License to carry concealed weapon; authorize holders to carry weapon on college campuses.
South Carolina: South Carolina Lawmakers Consider Allowing Concealed Weapons on Campus
South Dakota: South Dakota House supports guns on college campuses
HB 1261
Virginia: HOUSE BILL NO. 424 - Faculty w/permits cannot be punished
Washington: SB 6860 - Prohibiting institutions of higher education from adopting rules concerning the possession of firearms.
Employer Restrictions on Guns
As you are aware, a lot of employers have rules that prohibit not just having guns at work, but even having them in your car in the parking lot. The reasoning behind prohibiting guns in the parking lot is that an employee will lose his temper, run out to his car, and come back and go on a rampage.
However: such incidents seem to be extraordinarily rare, compared to the deranged employee who gets fired (usually with good cause), and comes back a few days later and goes on a rampage. People that are planning to commit mass murder tend not to follow company rules, for some odd reason. Employees who can get out to the parking lot and get a gun would actually be pretty useful in those situations, where lives are lost while waiting for the police to arrive.
More importantly, there are people who have to drive through bad neighborhoods to or from work, and these employer rules either require employees to park a long ways from work (increasing the risk that someone might break into the vehicle and steal the gun), or take their chances going to and from work. This isn't really an issue for me, even though my employer has such a rule, partly because I telecommute most days, and partly because there just isn't enough crime around here to make having a gun in the car at all times terribly compelling.
But there are people who aren't that lucky. They live in places that are a lot rougher than Boise (although Nampa and Caldwell at their worst look pretty good compared to even "nice" parts of California), or may have particular situations that require them to carry. I have a co-worker whose soon-to-be ex-wife had a schizophrenic breakdown some months back, and has made two attempts to kill him. She's being released from the mental hospital soon; if I were in his shoes, I would be upset about this rule.
In a few states, NRA has backed laws that effectively prohibit employers from imposing such rules on persons with permits to carry a gun, as long as the gun is properly secured in the car, and the parking lot is open to the public. I have never been completely comfortable with the state telling an employer what its working rules will be, and how to use its private property. (Although liberals are in no position to complain about such a law; if the state has the authority to prohibit employment discrimination, it certainly has the authority to prohibit discrimination against gun owners in the parking lot.)
My thought some months back was that perhaps the correct approach was to hold employers liable for injuries to employees suffered as a consequence of the prohibition on being armed. Now I see this resolution adopted by the Harris County, Texas Republican Party:
I think I like this approach.
Britain's Future
The intellectuals of Britain are working overtime to make Muslims feel comfortable in Britain. Why am I not surprised by news stories like this one, from February 11, 2008 BBC?A man has been remanded in custody accused of murdering another man whose headless body was found in London.
Over at Gateway Pundit, where I found this disturbing news story, commenters are falling all over themselves to engage in parody of multiculturalist idiocy, like this:
Mohamed Boudjenane, 45, of Kingsgate Road, Kilburn, appeared before Highbury Corner magistrates on Monday and will appear at the Old Bailey on 19 May.
Lakhdar Ouyahia, who was 43 and an Algerian national, was found wrapped in a blood-stained duvet in a supermarket goods cage in Kilburn last Wednesday.
His head was found in the Grand Union Canal in St John's Wood on Saturday.
Mr Ouyahia, who lived in Kilburn, was discovered by a member of the public. Before we condemn the beheading, we need to step back from our parochial views and ask some questions. Fundamentally, did the headless man deserve it? In every culture, there are countless ways to deserve to be killed. But the UK is no simple mono-culture. So, to answer these questions we need to understand sharia.
and:
Unfortunately, there are at least four major schools of sharia in the Sunni tradition, plus the Shiite approach. There is the Quran (some passages of which are abrogated by other passages) and all the haddith (with their varying degrees of authenticity.) It makes no sense to think that white Englishmen can apply that law effectively!
We should turn the culprit over to the legal process within his community. They alone can decide whether the dead man deserved to be beheaded and dumped in the street.For all we know the fellow may have deserved it. Perhaps is was an honor killing of some sort or perhaps this man was involved with the selling of pork or perhaps he was a pet shop owner trafficking in dogs. He may have just completed a provocative public reading of "The Three Little Pigs". He may well have been drunk at the time and because of that just asking for it. Let's keep this in perspective until we know the facts.
and:Why is everyone blindly assuming that the perpetrator of this act was a Muslim?
To which the only appropriate response was this:
We all know that Lutherans are notorious for this sort of thing ..."Daniel Pearl, Nick Berg, Theo Van Gogh, Paul Johnson, and Kim Sun-Il were not immediately available for comment on this case."
If you move to America, you should do so with the expectation of accepting American values of tolerance. If you want to live in an Islamic country, move to an Islamic country.
A Lot of Good Stuff At Murdoc Online
I wandered over to Murdoc Online, and found a lot of good stuff! He links to this report from the Department of Defense on how well military recruiting goals are being met and summarizes it:Army: 101%
Navy: 100%
Marines: 111%
Air Force: 103%
The Army National Guard also pulled in 103% of its goal, and both the Army and Marines are exceeding their YTD retention goal.
Shilling For My Employer
I've been pretty critical of those HP products that haven't met my expectations; it is only fair to praise the products that work well. I bought an HP Photosmart C6280 All-in-One yesterday. This is a combination color inkjet printer, scanner, and copier.
It is surprisingly compact and dense, compared to previous inkjet printers that I have owned. This uses a six ink system to print photographs that I can't distinguish from professional photo labs. (Perhaps someone can; the next step up in photo quality from HP is an eight ink system--but that was more than $300, even with the employee discount.)
In text mode, the first page out is a bit slow, because the printer goes to sleep when not in use. Once the first page is printing, the rest come out pretty quickly--and the claimed speed of 32 pages per minute doesn't seem hopelessly optimistic.
When printing pictures, of course, it is a good bit slower--figure on at least a couple of minutes to print out a six megapixel picture on 8.5" x 11" photo paper. But my, does it look good!
For those who don't like downloading pictures from the camera into the computer, then printing them out, the C6280 has slots for inserting the more popular camera memory cards into it, such as CF, SD-MMC, XD, and MS/DUO. There's a little color display that walks you through viewing the pictures, doing some limited processing of the images, and then printing them out.
For several years now, I have had an HP 4100 MFP here at home which provides me a very fast laser printer, scanner, and copier. This was a laboratory rat during the development process, which is part of why they let me bring it home. It has more than 400,000 pages through it, and as you might expect, it is showing its age, both in terms of its condition, and the limitations of the scanner technology of the time, so I was looking forward to getting something with higher resolution scanning.
The scanner part of the C6280 works very nicely--much more quickly than the 4100 MFP's scanner. It is possible to start a scan from the C6280's front panel, but I'm told by someone with expertise with this product that starting the scan from your PC gives you more control over scan resolution. It defaults to 200 dpi (usually sufficient for archiving documents), but the included software lets you select resolutions as high as 19,200 dpi (although everything above 2400 or 4800 dpi is an interpolated resolution--above the physical scanner's limitations). Unless you are scanning 35mm negatives or slides, I can't imagine that you would ever use those resolutions--the images just get enormous.
The C6280's copier also has the virtue that it can copy in color--and the results are stunning. I copied a very fancy piece of marketing collateral from Sky & Telescope. It was less than a minute to make the copy--and I could not see any degradation of resolution of the pictures from the original--and if anything, the colors were a bit more intense on the copy.
Setup instructions seem to have been actually written for someone who doesn't know much about computers--which is a nice change from some previous HP products. They were simple, didn't make a lot of assumptions of prior knowledge, and everything went very smoothly.
The C6280 has the option of using either a USB or Ethernet cable. Since I share this printer across the local network, I went ahead and used Ethernet. This required pulling out a spare Ethernet hub from the closet, but everything otherwise was painless and simple.
Best of all: it's not made in China! The printer comes from Malaysia; the ink cartridges come from Singapore.
UPDATE: I've heard some grousing from readers about how expensive the inkjet cartridges are--and this Popular Science column points out that the ink costs several thousand dollars a gallon, because that's where printer companies make their money.
Well, duh! Take a good careful look at what one of these printers costs to buy--and then consider the engineering and manufacturing expertise that goes into designing these wondrous gadgets. I work in a building so large that I sneezed once, and the echoes from opposite walls of the building arrived at different times. (Yes, the building is that large, and yes, I sometimes sneeze that loudly.) And that's just one of several buildings at this location. We do laser printers, not inkjet printers, but I am quite sure that their engineering operations are of the same order of magnitude. If you had any idea how much code goes into this stuff, you would find the price of the printers astounding. Heck yes, we make our money on the consumables!
It is definitely cheaper to upload your pictures to WalMart, or SnapFish, or whoever, and have them print them, instead of printing the pictures at home. Just like it is cheaper to buy a hammer, instead of buying a blast furnace so that you can make your own hammer. Having a photo printer at home is a convenience, and I would not encourage you to print 1000 copies at home, anymore than I would encourage you to smelt your own iron.
This Would Have Been Unimaginable 20 Years Ago
This article by Peter Bronson in the February 3, 2008 Cincinnati Enquirer:Concealed-carry course graduates are armed but not dangerous
Mr. Bronson's email address is in that article. Go read it--and then thank him for such a positive and enlightening article.
There's a 20-something couple in the back, but most of my classmates are 40s and 50s, I'd guess. A man in bib overalls wants to legally carry the gun he uses on his farm. A husband and wife own a business. One man tells me his kids are grown and he's interested in shooting. Another guy says during a break that he worries about being mugged when he goes for walks. He says he has no doubt he'd use a gun if he has to.
But a few hours later, after we've been through the legal minefield and gritty details of what "controlled expansion" hollow-points do to a body, someone half jokes, "I'm not so sure I want to do this anymore."
I understand.
The course is excellent. We start by naming the parts of a cartridge, a revolver and a semi-automatic pistol, then move on to 25 true-false questions on dozens of topics. "Being armed is a tremendous responsibility," it says. True.
And while police cadets open fire at the indoor range across the hall, making muffled bangs like someone pounding a file cabinet with a ball bat, Lengle targets safety, safety and more safety.
He tells true stories of stupid gun tricks by trained lawmen who shot the carpet in their office, or put a 9mm round into their neighbor's car - through their own house and the garage next door. Lengle has our attention. During the state-mandated 12 hours of instruction, all 17 students are riveted.
In cover and tactics, Lengle warns that a doorway is a "vertical coffin," a "fatal funnel" for anyone silhouetted in its frame. If an intruder ignores warnings and keeps coming, "immediate incapacitation is your only goal."
And that requires accuracy.
So Sunday morning we go to the range. I start out jumpy, but get the hang of it and pass all the tests, hitting paper outlines of bad guys from five, 10, 15 and 20 feet.
Safety is drilled in as loud and clear as that booming 1911 Colt, which barks with deep authority, even through ear protection.
Everyone passes. Nobody gets hurt. From what I can tell, legal concealed carry is nothing like the anti-gun crowd made it sound when Kentucky and Ohio passed laws in 1999 and 2004. There are no cowboys. No wild shootouts. No blood in the gutters, as gun-banners predicted. Just law-abiding adults who want to exercise their Second Amendment right to self-defense.
Thanks to The Smallest Minority for linking to that article!
Donations to Academics for the Second Amendment
Over at Dave Hardy's Arms and the Law, one commenter asked if he should send contributions to Academics for the Second Amendment to help with the work that we are doing.
To those of you who are wondering: yes.
Remember: once we win this case, we then have to fight the next set of questions:
Academics for the Second Amendment
Post Office Box 131254
St. Paul, MN 55113
1. Why are national parks allowed to ban loaded handguns? (When visiting Yellowstone, I see no reason why grizzly bears should be allowed to consider me lunch.)
2. Is the Second Amendment's protections incorporated against the states through the Fourteenth Amendment?
3. The 1986 ban on new machine gun manufacturing--is that a violation of the Second Amendment? I suspect that we're never going to get machine guns unregulated (and maybe I'm not completely upset about that), but even recognizing a regulated right to them would be worthwhile.
4. Does incorporation through the Fourteenth Amendment require states to recognize other state concealed carry permits?
5. If there is an individual right incorporated through the Fourteenth Amendment, does this require states to allow open carry, or licensed concealed carry, or does it blow away license requirements completely?
These are all legitimate questions, and it may take another twenty years to get these questions answered.
UPDATE: PayPal donates can be made here.
Gun Dealer In the District of Columbia
Dave Hardy reports that he has found a federally licensed gun dealer in the District of Columbia...Josh Sugarmann, who runs the Violence Policy Center, one of the primary supporters of gun bans. The business address is listed as VPC's offices on Rhode Island Avenue.
Now, there are reasons why Sugarmann does this, other than to sell guns. It gives him access to gun trade shows, for example. But back during the 1990s, the Clinton Administration cracked down hard on people who had the FFL and were what groups like the VPC characterized as "kitchen table dealers." If you were doing this out of your home, and the zoning wasn't right for a home business--nope! That's part of why I could not get my FFL renewed.
Federal law has always required you to actually be in the business of selling guns--they don't want people to be using the FFL just to buy guns for themselves. I don't see how Sugarmann can qualify unless he is actually selling guns.
UPDATE: Red's Trading Post did a little digging--and it does indeed appear that Sugarmann's FFL doesn't conform to zoning requirements.
Academics for the Second Amendment Brief
It is now up. Not being an attorney, I only get a mention on page 1--but at least I get a mention! This was a pretty interesting experience, working with Joe Olson and Dave Hardy on this project.
