I Wonder ...

Gov. Rick Perry signed Senate Bill 321 (the one allowing people to keep guns locked in their cars in company parking lots) yesterday, how long will it take my employer to try and weasel out of compliance in some way? I'm confident that they will make the effort and that at least one of my fellow assailants of the bastions of Capitalism workers will not actually comply with the law as written in some obvious fashion giving the company all the "justification" it needs.

And maybe not; if we make it through September without incident everybody should adjust happily enough. I hope so.

In any case, well done to Rick Perry and those members of the states legislature who supported this effort. Now, about that idea to remove the word "concealed" from Texas' handgun legislation ...

Words Mean Things

It seems my viewpoint on what actions rise to the level of self defense, but not exceed it, differs in significant degree from other's (see comments).

'Nuff said.

For the record though, there is a recognised and established standard for matters such as these despite the severe lack of snarkiness in their expression:

self-defense n. the use of reasonable force to protect oneself or members of the family from bodily harm from the attack of an aggressor, if the defender has reason to believe he/she/they is/are in danger. Self-defense is a common defense by a person accused of assault, battery, or homicide. The force used in self-defense may be sufficient for protection from apparent harm (not just an empty verbal threat) or to halt any danger from attack, but cannot be an excuse to continue the attack or use excessive force. Examples: an unarmed man punches Allen Alibi, who hits the attacker with a baseball bat. That is legitimate self-defense, but Alibi cannot chase after the attacker and shoot him or beat him senseless. If the attacker has a gun or a butcher knife and is verbally threatening, Alibi is probably warranted in shooting him. Basically, appropriate self-defense is judged on all the circumstances. Reasonable force can also be used to protect property from theft or destruction. Self-defense cannot include killing or great bodily harm to defend property, unless personal danger is also involved, as is the case in most burglaries, muggings or vandalism.

[My bold]

I see no advantage in providing any potential courtroom adversary with free material to use against me should such a circumstance ever confront me, especially in a vain effort to convince another of their "error". Sufficient to acknowledge that opinions differ on what activity rises to the level of self defense and confine my efforts to matters closer to home.

And that's my final word on this topic on anyone else's blog.

Uncomfortable Question

In the opening minutes of his shows third hour segment today, Rush Limbaugh asks, "What would a modern Paul Revere be warning about?" He goes on to posit that it wouldn't be "the Chi-Coms" or the Russians coming, so who would be the object of such a warning given Limbaugh's viewpoint on the current US political climate?

Ask yourself, who do "the authorities" send in to register their displeasure with the "inappropriate behavior" of We the People?

That's right, James Carville's "imminently possible" civil unrest will be directed at the cops, 'cause you can bet it won't be Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid or Barack Obama on the streets asserting control over the "extremists" nor their Republican accomplices either.

Kinda doubt this was the answer Rush was looking for.

That Weiner - What A Wag

And that's pretty much all I have to say about Congressman Clown Pants.

Adapting Strategy

Weer'd Beard writes today about the Taliban's recent effort to promote jihad in the US by encouraging American Muslims to purchase weapons at gun shows and indiscriminately using them on the rest of the American populace. Weer'd easily disproves the validity of the information, but kind of surprisingly may have overlooked the general usefulness of the strategy as I pointed out in comments:

Another possibility might be a conscious effort to emulate the Brady’s and Joyce Foundation mouthpieces; make the (however erroneous) case of ease of access to firearms to their local audience and then cite any criminal use of firearms as an example of “jihad in America” to same. This “proves” the universal nature of Islam and Jihad, doesn’t it?

They’re misogynistic* (sp?) predators, but they’re not stupid. They are also reported to be well established in the UK university system, so access to modern western (US) political philosophy and policy tracts is readily available to jihadi supporters.

Weer'd Beard regularly posts on Joyce Foundation efforts to manipulate news reports of criminal use of firearms in his "gun death" series of posts. This gun show effort by Al Qaeda/Taliban leadership strikes me as being almost identical in both practice and intent; lie about the state of American gun ownership and manipulate crime news reports to destabilize American social and political structures so as to better advance an opposition alternate viewpoint. The strategy offers the minor possibility of changing US domestic law/policy as well as serving to validate leadership credentials within the Taliban/Al Qaeda organizational structure and the general Islamic populace outside the US.

EDIT: SAILORCURT reaches a similar conclusion by a different contextual structure. Well worth a read.

*Spelling errors corrected.

Wait A Minute!

There was a contretemps on the gunblogs this weekend over the recent Lucky Gunner.com sponsored "Ammo Girls" ammo handlers at the Memorial Day Weekend shooting event. As part of that back-and-forth, the most exciting bit of gunblogger-related news ever released on the web was revealed:

(And accusing somebody who's posed for nekkid photos of "prudery" is good for a horse laugh.)

If ever there was a time for universal insistence upon the forum diktat of "didn't happen without pictures", this is that time!

What's wrong with you people? Who cares whether or not some hypothetical female is or is not repelled by another's bared arms; join me in proclaiming the hot issue of the 21st Century and demand digital revelation of TamaraK in all her bared-arms glory!

Later: Edited to fix a bad link.

Failure To Grok

I keep reading about unemployed people "giving up" looking for work; Instapundit links to yet another example here, full story from Yahoo! News here.

What the fuck? How does any grown person give up looking for a means to keep feeding him/her self short of seppuku? You'd think that some of those reported 244,000 "added jobs" Yahoo! mentions would have been filled by some of those people previously filing unemployment claims, but the story makes no mention of any of that;

Others have probably just given up looking for work.

So where did they physically go? I understand they no longer exist as part of the "labor force", but does that mean they get physically deleted too?

It's a modern quandary ...