More Away Game

BobS at 3 Boxes of BS has an update to (relatively) recent changes in Texas' CHL legislation.

This removes considerable worry about a shirt riding up or the wind blowing a cover garment up and exposing the firearm.Combine that with the protection of displaying in situations where the use of force or deadly force would be appropriate and the really helps the gun owner.      

Not quite Open Carry but on the way. Even more importantly was the fact this bill wasn’t a stretch, it wasn’t an oddity in an otherwise hostile legislative session; it was 1 of 14 bills that generally improved the rights of the people.

Never one to simply bask in my admittedly very faint share of the glow of satisfaction resulting from all this, it absolutely was not beneath me to poke a stick into the corner of this series of tubes where the determinedly down-spirited portion of the 2A community like to point and pout, and give it a vigorous stir:

This right here is one of the strong arguments against the fatalist position that “we can’t/won’t vote our way out of this”. Over the past 20+ years, Texans have worked within the standard legislative process to indeed vote ourselves out of the restrictive legal environment we owned and carried firearms in. The same is achievable in any other state or Federal District, Possession or Territory within the Union too; it only needs the citizens resident there to not meekly accept the denial of their rights by those who profit from doing so.

3-pers Rejoice! Your model of success is before you!

 Running counter to form, I'm not being the least bit tongue-in-cheek there either.  We live in a Republic; the responsibility is ours to each work within that political process to keep the legal and regulatory burden our form of government imposes at a level we collectively find least intolerable.  If you aren't willing to do that, you're as much a part of the problem as those who work to increase the burden to deny exercise of our rights.

And, just for the record, if you're one of those posturing narcissists who claim to anticipate "another American Revolution", I direct your attention to the "...and Domestic" language in the Oath administered to all members of the US armed forces upon entering service.  They follow right after the "Enemies Foreign ..." verbiage.

Americans change our own government without shooting* at each other.  Don't be that other guy.

*Yeah, Yeah ... ACW/War of Somebody's Aggression; look how well that turned out for us.

Quick Thinker

If this story doesn't have you laughing around watering eyes, you need to smack both elbows into the concrete very hard to stimulate your funny bone.

Thanks Joe.

That's Right(s)!

At his blog Alpha Game novelist Vox Day offers commentary on how rights are expressed and offers an interesting conclusion:

Either my observations and Roissy's observations are true or they are not true. That is the sole relevant metric. They cannot be undermined by racial preferences anymore than they are undermined by sports team or ice cream preferences.

My only objection to the above would be the lack of the qualification "personal" in the statement.  "... by personal racial preferences ..." and "personal sports team or ice cream preferences."

Many people (though Vox Day does not number among them by my reading) fail to acknowledge that the American Revolution of 1776 was a political revolution only.  Indeed, considerations other than the strictly political were rather ruthlessly bargained over to keep proceedings as narrowly focused on the political dispute with Britain as possible.  The phrase, "all men are created equal", is an explicit declaration of political condition, and no other.  This has resulted in most of modern America being dominated by attempts to resolve social and ethical perceived injustices by the political process developed as a result of determinedly ignoring those same social and economic inequities.  That the political shoe pinches is only to be expected really.

Arguably the fundamental precept of the United States of America is that everyone has "rights".  Government is the means by which we by-and-large agree to regulate the means and manner in which we each get to express those rights equilaterally.  The Men's Rights Movement is the response to the modern assertion that women have greater claim to government support of expression of their rights than do men.

As can be seen, we can and do quibble and remonstrate with each other over when, how and to what degree we get to exercise our rights.  To the point that we effectively deny expression of rights entirely sometimes as a means of entrenching expression of the rights of some over others.  Government exists for the sole purpose of guaranteeing the expression of rights by the individual through the collective mechanism of partial regulation of the means chosen to express those rights.

The foundational viewpoint that underlies classical strategy is that the concepts are explained hierarchically, but they are exercised as a closed circle of actions that must be balanced in the totality of their individual expression.

Much like human/civil rights in the modern world.

We discuss our rights in a hierarchical fashion because that's just how language works; point A is supported by point B and etc.  Actual expression of those rights is as part of a balanced whole of actions taken.  Individual preferences influence how and with whom we choose to exercise our individual rights, but that fact cannot deny us the exercise of our rights at all, except as we allow it to.  Actively denying someone the ability to express his rights makes you the legitimate target of his efforts to do so anyway.  If you insist upon hanging a target around your own neck, don't cry when the inevitable happens afterward.

"War On Women" indeed.

Pimping My Away Game Stats

Og posts some political insights and, having nothing particularly cogent to offer, I nonetheless observe in comments (#14):

What so many people never seem to realize about politics is that nobody ever wins, the objective is to lose less than everybody else. The strategy of politics is to ensure that no-one is violently unhappy with government policy. The art of politics is to successfully re-define “happiness” every electoral cycle.

The basic point (with which I wholeheartedly agree) is that "incrementalism" isn't a failure to achieve one's objective, it's how one achieves said objective.  The idea isn't to vote ourselves out of this this time, it's to keep voting ourselves just that little bit closer to what we regard as the most desirable political state of being.  That's what "sustainability" really is; the process of sustaining something in a viable state or condition. 

Dear Vox Day

I believe that's why it is called The Theory Of Evolution and not "The Fact ..."

Much like the gentleman you quote, I don't know how the theory works either, but here's a thought.

I suggest that a stipulated set of amino acids (and I nominate Dr. Tour as having the last word here) be given a computer code representation, that (a very large number of) the conditions that an (also large number) of that same theoretical collection of amino acids might have been confronted with in both a series and parallel method of exposure, with a series of random (but not inconsistent with modern climatic patterns) selection of physical conditions as well.  Let the computer simulation program run to some reasonable approximation of the geologic time scale of Earth and, I suggest, we might have a first-order approximation of TENS.  Or not.  If nothing else, it's a way to help better decide where to throw away allocate our research funding.  I suspect learning how to develop better computer simulation models from the existing evidence.

Don't look at me to do it though, I have neither the finances nor the mental horsepower to put it all together.

Just to be clear, I remain unconvinced of any proposed theory that purports to explain physical existence - even your apparent first choice.  Personally, I endorse the Fart Theory of Physical Existence; I fart, therefore I am.  The odoriferous evidence is irrefutable I am consistently told.

Also, I have no trouble recreating the effect ad initio either.

How Can A Wrong Be A Right?

I'm working on something having to do with rights and I want to get some added perspective to part of that issue.

I'm not a commenter at Neanderpundit, but I am a semi-regular reader.  Some time back, Og wrote an entry that in passing well captures one of the issues I hope to discuss.  He wrote:  

Beginning with Roe vs Wade, we have institutionalized slaughter of innocents on a scale the likes of which could not be imagined. Something on the order of 57 million abortions have been performed since 1973. More than twenty times the US casualty rates in every war since 1776. More than twice the population of the top 15 cities in America ...  If you have faith in a Creator and you meditate on this it becomes clearer and clearer. The lesson of Abraham and Jesus is clear; Only the Creator is empowered to give and thus take human life.

Stipulated for the sake of discussion, it is a given that it is both wrong to kill another while also legal to do so sometimes.

I want to posit a circumstance for specific discussion (should anyone actually read this - I'm mostly just putting this down in exposition for later adaptation):  since self-defense is an explicit legal concept in US law, to what degree can abortion be justified under that legal construct?  If a man does not contribute to the conception of a child/human fetus, he can still find himself legally and financially responsible for the child for at least the first 18 years of his/her's life.  Is that man ethically exercising his self-defense rights by facilitating (not a euphemism for "forcing") the newly pregnant woman (presumably his legal spouse) to seek out an abortion?  Could this same justification be equally ethically extended to all US taxpayers in the case of an unwed woman becoming pregnant?  Given that "self-defense" requires an imminent threat being present, can it be logically asserted that the certainty of legal and financial obligation being inflicted on the man immediately upon the child becoming a legal person is ethically (and ought arguably be legally) equivalent to imminent threat?

I'm well aware of the moral/religious doctrine on these questions, I'm deliberately confining this to the legal issue.  When is a person ethically justified to assert his/her rights?  What are some of the ethical justifications for denying someone the exercise of those same rights?  Specifically, the right of self-defense.

I deliberately choose an extreme example, but I think it relevant to offer my own belief that abortion is justified in US law because US legislators have taken the position (if only by default) that a "person" is one who exists physiologically independent from any other and is at least theoretically able to exercise a human being's rights and responsibilities (vote, pay taxes, etc either directly or by proxy) independently from any other (which absolutely requires a specific exemption for conjoined twins).  By that logic, an unborn child cannot  meet the legal definition of "person", therefore cannot be subject to the protections the law provides to such.

Again, I'm clear on the moral questions (or clear enough for these purposes); my focus is on the ethical exercise of legal rights and behavior, and the process by which we make these type determinations generally and in particular as regards self-defense.

Update:  I have edited my late-night (and quite garbled) prose to make more clear the lack of biological relationship between the man potentially responsible for the welfare of the non-aborted child in US law.

Ahhh!

Finally got my desktop back from the shop.  Man, is it nice being able to use a regular keyboard and 24" screen again!

Srsly W-T-Effin-F

Will somebody (Borepatch, Vox Day, ESR - all of you have written in a knowledgeable-seeming fashion about this) please write a post on what this "Dark Enlightenment" is supposed to be in aid of?  What is it about?  What does it claim to be about?  Is there in fact any "there" there?  In terms of non-internet relevance, where would you rank its claim to moral and human ethical values on a scale between Lord of the Flies and The Alamo?

Yes, I read this Telegraph article; no, I'm still not any better informed than I was before doing so.  Neither, apparently, is Mr. Bartlett, though that doesn't slow his willingness to "explain" things.

A little help here ...

Setting The Olympic Bar As Low As It'll Go

So, it seems Putin-on-the-Olympic Games in So-Shit Russia may be best remembered for the examples of people backing away from taking any of the "glory".

And these are the people we spent 70 years being told were going to bury us.

A Circumstantial Problem Of Perspective

One of the instructors at my local Krav Maga school has written an article titled Legal Issues Surrounding Use of Force and Krav Maga which is published on the East Texas Krav Maga school web page.  While generally well written and quite informative, in my judgement the piece suffers from a particularly dangerous failure of perspective as a result of the author's contextual assumptions.

As a former police officer, Paul Landreth-Smith appears to have approached his topic from the perspective of someone who enjoys benefit of the legal notion known as qualified immunity as well as the assumption that individuals interests are best served by providing all the information possible to law enforcement agents following involvement in a violent incident.  While this may in fact be the case for a member of law enforcement (and my reading shows that opinion is not universal), I believe that advice is a particular disservice to the vast majority of non-law enforcement Krav Maga students as well as all people who lawfully carry a firearm in their own right.

The wealth of detail Paul Landreth-Smith offers regarding recording the incident you were involved in is quite comprehensive and useful to your defense counsel.  And here we see how Paul's assumption based on Qualified Immunity misinforms his thesis; Paul is quite correct that all of the data he itemizes is necessary to a proper defense of the Krav Maga student, but the assumption that law enforcement is necessarily concerned with your defense is potentially a tragically mistaken one.

The other error of assumption the author makes is to base the choice of whether or not to engage the skills learned in Krav Maga from any other standpoint than, "Does this act meet the legal standard of self defense?"  Paul Landreth-Smith rightly dismisses the nonsense notion of there being any requirement to declare your martial arts training status (and more generally, that you are armed at all), but he fails to specify the legal requirements for an individuals actions to qualify as self defense.  This, especially combined with the other error cited above, makes his article very problematic.

In brief, a claim of self defense requires that a hypothetical other person would concur that your actions were both reasonable and proper in the circumstances in which they occurred.  In my judgement, every student of Krav Maga (most especially to include anyone who owns or carries a firearm on their person) must base there decision to engage in violence with another on this principle alone.  Unlike law enforcement, as a general rule people do not have any requirement to engage in violence with other people (as I understand it, the requirement for law enforcement to do so is the fundamental justification for Qualified Immunity).  Granted, in most US states people famously have the right to "Stand Your Ground", but all that really means is there is no lawful requirement to retreat from threat.  As Krav students, this means we don't have to try to "run away, run away", but that also doesn't obviate our requirement (just like every other reasonable and law abiding person) to avoid physical conflict whenever circumstance permits.

I commend Paul Landreth-Smith for extending this discussion to specifically include Krav Maga students.  I believe I have illustrated how my fellow students might further benefit from debate about possible refinement or expansion of this discussion as part of our Krav Maga training.  In that vein, I suggest that inclusion of legal experts on this specific topic might be of value.  For now, I encourage my fellow Krav students to adopt the Self Defense legal standard as their own metric by which to weigh their decision whether or not to use their Krav training, in addition to applying as much of Paul Landreth-Smiths advice in supplying their defense council with as much data as possible, should they ever have to choose to fight.