It's Official, RC Church Declares For Fascism

One Sister Mary Ann Walsh, who glories in the title Director of Media Relations for the U. S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, has publish an article in the Washington Post in which she proclaims that the Catholic Church equivocates the church's historic stance against abortion, along with its more recent rejection of the death penalty, as being as morally objectionable as individual self defense ownership of fictional firearms:

Some things seem naturally abhorrent – forceps to crush a cranium in an abortion, a needle to deliver a sentence intravenously on death row, and an assault weapon in the hands of the man on the street. Each instrument may have a purpose some time, somewhere, but as used above, each reflects brutality in our society.
The Catholic Church opposes use of all three instruments to take a life. The church’s pro-life stand against abortion is undisputed. So is its pro-life stand in opposition to the death penalty. It can only be justified if there is no other way to keep a deadly criminal from hurting more people. And in the most recent – and all too common – threat to human life, the church opposes the growing preponderance of lethal weapons on the streets. It stands as another important pro-life position.

I'm not clear on a few points raised in her article.  Is the church declaring certain tools to be inherently "abhorrent"?  The actions people might take with those tools?  The people who might have those tools, irrespective of anything else?  As far as I can tell, the good Sister declares the entirety of American Catholic Bishops to be logically incoherent in declaring whatever position it is they are apparently publicly laying claim to.

Yes, I understand the Catholic Church wants to declare the position "pro-life" as being in moral opposition to the individual exercise of the "God-given inalienable right" to defend that same life.  Or something.

What this is, in my opinion, is the latest example of the Catholic Church betraying the interests of its parishioners so as to advance some of its politically objectionable positions at their expense.  The Catholic Church has historically been willing to sacrifice the laity whenever doing so was convenient for the "elect".  This is just more of the same and further proof that the US constitutional prohibition against establishment of a state religion remains just as valid and necessary a political position as it was nearly 2 1/2 centuries ago at the founding of the USA.

Pope Francis has an opportunity to make the Catholic Church much more viable to the rest of 21st century planet Earth; I wonder how he feels about his American Bishops political grandstanding this way?

Stop Helping The Opposition

Say Uncle says:

Gabby Gifford’s hubby continues having a rough few weeks. The latest is that he tried to buy a handgun out of state and illegally. He was denied because we already have background checks and you can’t buy handguns out of state. He went to the same gun store and tried to purchase an AR-15 illegally earlier.

In comments, I replied:

Ok, just to make sure I haven’t missed something in this saga of ineptitude, what was the illegality in the AR purchase? And please don’t say “straw purchase”; it is entirely legal to purchase a firearm as a gift as long as both the buyer and recipient aren’t “prohibited persons” (for whatever reason, criminal background, age restriction, etc). Kelly himself is still legally permitted to buy a gun (after jumping through the oh-so-noninfringing hoops we all do), the Tucson PD (the stated giftee of the AR) isn’t prohibited, so straw purchase won’t wash (see the instructions to buyers on the back of any Form 4473, something the seller might consider as well per Breitbart). The seller not wanting to deal with a dick is also perfectly legal btw, but what was Kellys crime in the AR purchase?

As to the pistol, the story clearly says the AZ ID he presented on the second attempt passed the background check; simple ignorance of the law is a more likely seeming explanation for this fool presenting an out of state ID than does deliberate subterfuge. Other than posting a misleading (if not quite outright fraudulent) video online, what crime did Kelly commit on the second attempt at a successful purchase of a pistol? He presented a legal (apparently, he did pass the background check he submitted it to) AZ drivers license and, despite speculation above, there is no evidence he didn’t surrender his TX license to get the AZ version, so again, where is the crime?

Agreed that he’s a dick (and possible wife abuser – psychologically at least) and a publisher of an apparently deliberately misleading video; neither of those fails the requirements to qualify as a gun buyer without formal legal sanction of that despicable behavior. Fault the guy deservedly all you like, but please stop promoting his name and cause falsely. That hurts the rest of us gun owners more than either Kelly or his cause ever could on their own.

Which leads me to ponder; if I were to hang a gun shaped dog turd on a hook and call it jewelry, would all of the gun bloggers line up to misrepresent the facts while helping me advertise the sale?  How is that example materially different from what so many seem anxious to do for this tosser?

C'mon people; thimk.

Is Marriage Unconstitutional?

This began as a comment at The Conservative Sociologist in response to her reaction to the GMM (Gay Marriage Movement).  She isn't opposed, but finds the logic and media presentation to be flawed and annoying - she writes an interesting blog, you should check it out.

What I said was:

What I rarely see discussed is the unconstitutional nature of government regulated marriage in the USA.

In English Common Law (the law of the land when what would become the USA was still British colonies) the State is the Church and thus there is no conflict between the governments regulation and sanction of an expressly religious ceremony. The US Constitution explicitly forbids government sanction or recognition of religion. On its face, this would seem to make (federal of a certainty and arguably state as well) government involvement in marriage unconstitutional as a matter of constitutional prohibition.

Making this all so much about anything other than the gender of either participant is the acknowledged transfer of ownership of real property (to include at least one of the participants for the historical purists amongst us) that is part and parcel of the religious ceremony in contention. I don't know about a crisis necessarily, but it is certain that no government will waste an opportunity to claim taxes and fees so I don't expect the Supreme Court to take up this issue any time soon.

Of course, anyone seriously advancing this argument can be certain pretty much everyone will have the knives out in response ... literally; virtually all of human society bases property rights and law on this explicitly religious arrangement, whatever particular religion may be the facilitator.

To be constitutionally consistent in the USA, marriage would have to be strictly a religious commitment and property rights associated with that arrangement would have to be explicitly made a contractual and entirely separate agreement between the involved parties, whether part of a civil union type contract or otherwise.

I think we can take it as a given that the GMM will be among the most fervently opposed to this question ever arising.

Marriage as it is commonly practiced in the US is an historical relic from a time when the state and church were functionally combined; the US constitution explicitly forbids state and religious union (I know that's not a direct quote).  The US Supreme Court has a history of straining social camels through the constitutional needles eye, so that isn't a realistic objection.  If all that be true, to be constitutionally consistent shouldn't we either amend the document to grant explicit exception to the "no established religion" prohibition regarding the institution of marriage or write a law that makes formal the distinction between the religious commitment of marriage and the issue(s) of property rights and inheritance and all the rest?

Along with everybody else (to include Mrs. [and Mr. for all of that] Supreme Court Justice), I think it a given the gay folks amongst us will be just as much up in arms about such a ruling as pretty much everybody else will be; they are the stars of the marriage movement at the moment, in this circumstance they aren't any different from their parents and that can't be what equality is all about can it?

I expect this is all built on very shaky constitutional ground and has long since been resolved, but it applies an interesting filter to the questions surrounding marriage nonetheless, I think.

Further (Retail) Evolution In Action

Last month, I wrote about a rumor public accusation that Amazon.com was getting out of firearms-related product sales.  As part of that, I communicated with Amazon's customer relations staff and received the following reply:

Hi William,

I'm Amanda Nix of Amazon.com's Executive Customer Relations team. Jeff Bezos received your email and asked me to respond on his behalf.

We appreciate your feedback and have forwarded it to the correct team internally.

Thanks for choosing Amazon.com.

Regards,

Amanda Nix
Executive Customer Relations
Amazon.com

Now, I am very definitely not calling Ms. Nix anything remotely like a fibber based solely on my own cynicism regarding Jeff Bezos' reading habits, but ...  :)

Subsequent to that email exchange I have noticed several examples of this type of semi-specific link to Amazon.com's continuing to offer a product line-up that specifically caters to firearms shooters interests, without any sort of obvious exterior motivation for the notice (a topically related holiday or other public event for example).

Causation?  Correlation? Wish-fulfillment fantasy?

Other than the last (all too possible) suggestion, I can't say - and Jeff remains conspicuously enigmatic on the question, but as an exercise in strategy this offers an excellent example of the principle of defeating an attack via indirect (and less expensive) means.

By having arguably the most influential individual Amazon.com affiliate periodically make note of an otherwise unremarkable retail product offered by Amazon.com (and there may well be others; I don't keep track of Jeff and the gang's sales metrics per se), Amazon.com is able to apply the sales leverage generated by its affiliate program directly to its advertising needs of the moment at no additional cost beyond that intrinsic to the affiliate program structure itself.

Sun Tzu would approve, I think.

Which leads me to conclude that this understated-but-determined support of peoples beliefs deserves recognition.  With that in mind, I propose that this April 15th, we who participate in gun ownership acknowledge Amazon.com's refusal to bow to political (or other public and private) pressure to abandon our market interests by purchasing something gun-related from Amazon.com on that calendar date. 

I expect most firearms shooters at least are familiar with the concept of April 15th being BAG (Buy A Gun) Day by now; I first learned of it from Kim du Toit's now-defunct blog some 10-or-so years ago.  The idea being to deliberately correlate exercising our freedom to own a firearm with the (for Americans anyway) mandated federal income tax filing date.  In similar fashion, I think extending this notion to include Amazon.com this year would be an excellent means of recognizing their willingness to continue serving our market interests just as they have historically done.  Steadfast support deserves its own reward, I suggest.

This doesn't have to be a special purchase, or even especially large financially; just be sure you submit an order on April 15th and include something gun related along with all the rest.

Worth doing?

If It's Good Enough For Tam ...

... I'm going with some "away game" content too.

Rand Simberg has a post up about the Aurora, CO shooter reportedly having converted to Islam while in prison.  He says:

And no, I don’t really know what kind of conclusions to draw from this, about either him or Islam.

Not only did I have the rare opportunity to be the first commenter, the snark almost wrote itself:

“… I don’t really know what kind of conclusions to draw …”

I think we can reasonably conjecture that we now know which prison gang successfully recruited him into its ranks.

 Which prompted this question; if Pope Francis were to re-instate the Ordo Templari specifically to advance the strategy of actively converting from within the worlds prisons, would that have the effect of organizing inmates into a "union" of peace-enforcing warriors for Christ?  Further, how would these men (and presumably women too) be successfully embraced into the non-incarcerated Church upon their release from prison?  Would this have the effect of countering the criminal gang dominance of prisons?  How well might this influence extend into the "street" cohorts of the worlds established crime organizations?  Might this be an effective counter to jihad being advanced through prison populations?

Riddle me that, Padre.

Habemus papum*

So the Porteneo gets the new kicks.  He's going to need every bit of that famed Jesuitical casuistry - and maybe an assist from the Greek pantheon - to get through all he faces next.  The sainted Francis likely wasn't put off by the sight of a broom and shovel, so who knows, maybe this latest one is just the man to clean out the Pauline stable.

Not being one of your team as it were I don't have a dog in this fight, but well done you anyway, Jorge.

Now go show us how it's done.  :)

* I suppose this will be the most common blog post title for this date, but I wrote mine before I read Peters so I'm keeping the title as is.  I have to say, while Peter offers much more detail, and an opinion informed as only an active insiders can be, I think our general first impressions and expectations regarding Pope Francis are quite similar given the fact I have never shared in the Catholic faith.

In Which The Question Is Asked, What's Up With Those Gun Guys?

Via Instapundit I learned of this article in The Atlantic by Dan Baum titled What Liberals Need To Understand About 'Gun Guys'.

Formatted as a Q&A interview, Mr. Baum asks and answers:

At one point in your trip, you switched from open carry to concealed carry. What was that like?
In some ways I really liked it. It's physically uncomfortable, it's heavy and it digs into you, and you have to be very conscious of your clothing to make sure you're not displaying it, because you really don't want anyone knowing you're carrying it. But it kept me vigilant. You really have your shit together when you're carrying a gun. You never forget you're wearing it. Maybe cops who've been wearing a gun for 30 years forget they're wearing it, but I certainly never did, and I wore it for about 18 months.
It also made me really calm. When you're wearing a gun, you do not get upset if someone takes your parking space, or if someone cuts you in line. You have this quite noble sense of being the sheepdog, being the protector. And I liked that.
But then you start wondering -- what is my responsibility here? It's really complicated. Say you're in a shopping mall and somebody starts shooting. What do you do? If you run away, are you like a doctor who doesn't respond when someone starts choking in a restaurant? If you're wearing a gun, do you have an obligation to run towards the sound of the guns?

To answer Mr. Baum's question, No Sir, you have no obligation to "run towards the sound of the guns" simply because you are carrying a complimentary tool yourself.  You may or may not have a moral/legal/ethical responsibility to live up to the American urge to "do something" in an emergency, but simple ownership of a potentially useful tool doesn't automatically infer obligation to do so directly.   BTW, your choking comparison isn't really apropos as a choking person offers little if any direct physical danger to any but those in immediate close contact; a shooter does.  You have the potential ability to effectively and (more) safely respond to a shooter if you are yourself wearing a gun, but that doesn't automatically translate into obligation/responsibility to do so.

Later in the piece he asks/answers:

Nick Kristoff wrote a column in the New York Times about a gun standoff that was the result of a disagreement over a goose. He argued that instead of preventing conflict, guns actually escalate it. What's your response to this?
I think we are all too cavalier with our guns. I fault both sides, really. The NRA and its handmaidens want us to believe that the whole problem is criminals, and they will not take responsibility. We need to lock guns up. Training should be better. And I think the anti-gun side needs to show gun guys more respect and needs to summon gun guys to respect themselves more. I think we all need to take this more seriously. We have 300 million privately owned guns in this country. Let's really talk about how we can be safer.
Joe Nocera at the Times runs a daily tally of gun killings. He's not running a daily tally of how many people defend themselves with guns. For one thing we don't know about it most of the time. David Hemenway at Harvard is very pro gun-control and he thinks it happens about 80,000 times a year. If that's true, that means that guns are saving 10 times as many people as they're killing.
I call for my fellow liberals to approach gun owners with respect. These are the people who understand guns, these are the people who can help us figure out how to be safer around guns. Instead, you drive them into a defensive crouch by calling gun culture the problem.

I suggest the phrase you're tip-toeing around Mr. Baum is: as a political issue, gun control is more about "control" and less about "guns".

A final observation; Mr. Baum asks/answers:

At the end of this trip, did you feel any less conflicted about your place in the gun world?
No. I still don't really belong in either camp. If you watch the reaction to the book when it comes out, you will see that. I'm no less a Democrat than I was, but I am more attuned to the gun guy complaint -- "I am over-managed and I am under-respected as a citizen and a human being." I think the right has a point there. We need to stop fearing capable, empowered, independent-thinking individuals.

Mr. Baum associates guns and gun ownership with "conservatives" and fair enough, lots of my gun-owning friends are actual conservatives politically.  That said, I believe the attitude Mr. Baum closes his article with is more aligned with the libertarian political attitude than it is with the conservative view point. 

I heartily endorse his final words; We need to stop fearing capable, empowered, independent-thinking individuals.  Indeed Sir, indeed.

Making Work = Job

There is an on-going lament about "Where have all the jobs gone?" or variations on that theme.  The single most common aspect of the question seemingly being that "job" is a tangible item which some diffuse other retains control over and to whom you must apply in order to be paid for work performed.

In the now-past Industrial Revolution there was a quite deliberate truth behind that belief.  Welcome to the 21st century.

One of the most widely occurring and historically repeated models of attaining economic self reliance is that of the story teller.  In the modern world, this most often takes the form of being a writer of some niche application or expertise; technical manuals or instructions, computer code, science fiction (some overlap in those three, I think), poetry, screenplay, music and on and on.  This post is about making that sort of work into an income producing job for far more of us than is ordinarily believed possible, and Jobster is its name-o.

My Second Time Shooting IDPA

Lock & Load (under "Where I Shoot" over on the right there) sponsors an IDPA club and held a rare Sunday afternoon match today.  Even though I'm not properly a member (the whole works second shift thing gets in the way), this is my second try at it.  I don't try for "fast", but focus on accurate - and abiding by the competition rules (which seem about evenly divided between straightforward safety and trying to dull Occam's razor).  Let's just say, if the shooting stage requires you to shoot from behind cover, they mean behind.  You can expose your gun and as much of your head and hands to the target as is putatively necessary to shoot the target - and I fully understand the reasoning - but it is truly not a shooting stance most ranges will be happy to see you trying in the ordinary course of a casual range date.

As I said, I don't get the opportunity often, and I really appreciate the actual club members acknowledging my entirely accidental Mozambique shooting weak-hand at a rocker target (pivots back-and-forth across the shooter's field of view), but the IDPA claim that physical fitness isn't a requirement must pertain to membership eligibility only - you don't have to be a Conan body-type, but us Louie Anderson body types bring our own unscored level of difficulty to the thing let me tell you.

It was great fun and I look forward to having another go at it someday again.  If you like shooting, give IDPA a try.

UPDATE 2/19/13:

  Sunday17Match/Feb

February 17, 2013

Most Accurate: William Brown SSP - Unclassified 124.68 (13)

Stage 1 Stage 2 Stage 3 Stage 4 Stage 5

Match Score

--Penalties--
PD NT PE FN

CDP - Sharpshooter
1 Bohman, John 87.58 27 0 0 0 14.28 (7) 30.52 (7) 10.29(0) 19.67 (6) 12.82 (7)

ESP - Expert
1 Walker, Jim 68.52 21 0 0 0 9.76(3) 22.61(6) 10.72 (3) 13.06(4) 12.37 (5)

ESP - Sharpshooter
1 Prater, Steve 84.44 36 1 0 0 12.56 (5) 23.28 (8) 13.92 (11) 20.99 (5) 13.69 (7)

ESP - Marksman
1 Prater, Jackson 95.78 36 0 0 0 12.38 (0) 35.40 (8) 17.83 (16) 14.34 (0) 15.83 (12)

SSP - Sharpshooter
1 Sanchez, Bob 83.67 24 1 0 0 11.05 (2) 30.06 (14) 12.30 (5) 19.37 (0) 10.89(3)
2 Quates, Robert 84.07 18 0 0 0 10.27 (2) 25.70 (0) 13.30 (14) 17.20 (1) 17.60 (1)

SSP - Marksman
1 Cundieff, David 104.91 50 0 0 0 13.71 (4) 33.33 (19) 15.63 (11) 23.95 (7) 18.29 (9)
2 Endres, Jack* 122.81 21 0 1 0 17.29 (0) 43.54 (5) 17.88 (10) 24.15 (0) 19.95 (6)
3 Trimble, W.P. (Mose) 133.30 48 1 0 1 16.51 (4) 37.76 (6) 16.35 (13) 39.84 (15) 22.84 (10)

SSP - Unclassified
1 Brown, William 124.68 13 1 2 0 19.46 (0) 41.69 (1) 14.14 (8) 29.63 (0) 19.76 (4)
2 Barton, Neal 165.78 72 0 3 2 23.95 (6) 52.98 (22) 13.98 (10) 47.66 (12) 27.21 (22)

Key to Penalties:
PD =
NT =
PE = Procedural Error. Each adds 3 seconds to your score.
FN = Failure to Neutralize (no hits in the 0 or -1 zone) Each adds 5 seconds to your score.
Hit on Non Threat target. Each HNT adds 5 seconds to your score.
Target Points Down. Each point down adds 1/2 second to your score.

Key to Abbreviations:
CDP = Custom Defensive Pistol, such as 1911. Must be .45 ACP with maximum magazine load of 8 rounds
ESP = Enhanced Service Pistol, single action or SA/DA such as H&K P7 or CZ-75 or Springfield XD
SSP = Stock Service Pistol, double action or 'Safe Action' such as Glock or SIG
ESR = Enhanced Service Revolver, rimmed or rimless ammo, full moon clip, power factor of 165,000
SSR = Stock Service Revolver, rimmed case ammo, no full moon clips

 I had no idea ...

(Retail) Evolution In Action

I read at The Firearms Blog that Amazon.com may be removing shooting sport-related items from their customer fulfillment inventory.  I sent the following message to the Amazon.com PR email link just now:

Dear Sir/Madam;

 

I have today read reports that Amazon.com will no longer be willing to meet some of my retail purchases, to wit, firearms-related items like scopes, sights, slings and other such shooting sport enhancement products.  If so, I will be taking my admittedly meager business elsewhere, to an undoubtedly less satisfying transaction process, but one that doesn't blatantly dispise my purchasing preferences.

 

Amazon.com has a perfect right to make such a business decision (if in fact the company actually has done), but so too do the individual customers Amazon relies upon to complete the sales transaction process.  I do not wish to take my paltry business elsewhere, but decline to continue dealing with any business that openly despises my beliefs and, indeed, one of the fundamental  principles upon which the USA was founded.

 

Sincerely yours,

 

William Brown, Amazon.com Prime customer

Despite my having misspelled "despise" in the original, I hope the company's spokesperson's response is as serious - if more literate - than my inquiry.