Take, for instance, Senate Bill 296.

Terrence Gorman, general counsel for the Department of Military Affairs and a staff attorney for the Florida National Guard stationed in St. Augustine, had just given testimony during a Senate committee hearing critical of a bill Hammer supports.,,,,

….The legislation, sponsored by state Sen. Jeff Brandes, R-St. Petersburg, allows someone who is required to evacuate during an emergency like a hurricane to keep a gun on them even if they don’t have a permit to carry a concealed weapon.

The National Guard responds to those types of emergencies.

People without proper training shouldn’t have weapons in those high-stress situations, Gorman told the committee last week.
NRA lobbyist’s protest to Rick Scott’s office leads to reversal letter

I know it has been 21 years after Hurricane Andrew and 8 years after Hurricane Katrina, but you cannot tell me that the lessons have been lost already. The stories of people evacuating the NOLA area via car, being stopped by police and having their weapons confiscated and destroyed are well documented in places like the book The Great New Orleans Gun Grab by Gordon Hutchinson & Todd Masson. Somehow it seems that leaving people at the mercy of luck makes more sense than allowing them to defend themselves from the criminal element that prey on situations like that.

But what is really funny is that the National Guard is protesting this bill. Let’s not forget that after Andrew, they sent Guardsmen to “safeguard” the Homestead area…without ammunition in their rifles. I have heard tales of Guardsmen being robbed by criminals with boolits in their guns and leaving them pretty much naked and their superiors having to explain the idiocy of sending disarmed people out there.

If that is what qualifies as “responding to that type of emergencies” I do want that bill passed A.S.A.P.

On March 21 in the Polite Society Podcast, Paul Lathrop went on a rant about he disagrees with the concept of Sheep, Sheepdogs and Wolves.  I happen to agree and not only agree, I think that the works of  Dave Grossman are excellent but targeted to Law Enforcement and Military, not to the regular civilian that carries a gun for self-protection. That does not mean that there is stuff in his books that it does not apply or that we can learn from, but we are not warriors.

And that brings me to my personal peeve of the somewhat “cultish” admiration for the Knight and the Samurai. I think that as armed civilians we could have not chosen worst examples to “follow” and let’s start with this crap:

I am sorry but I do not “accept” death. I carry a gun and have gone through training and changed my head-in-the-clouds lifestyle because I do not want to be either harmed or killed by a Yakuza burakumin . I do understand that in a confrontation with a criminal, Death can happen to me as I am not perfect, but understanding the consequences and accepting it as fait accompli and making it part of my lifestyle are two very different things. If I were to accept Death, why would I even care to have a gun or prepare myself? The same goes for the Knight who would cheerfully die in battle doing the King’s business according to what they call honor.

Yes, you complain that both had a stick honor code that protected small children, puppies and enjoyed sunsets walking on the beach , but the reality is that both the Samurai and the Knight were pricks. Both were enforcers for a King or Daymo, they obtained riches by bloody enforcement of the rules or orders of their superiors and considered anybody under them at best a nuisance that could be hacked to pieces without fear of legal retribution. Best way for a commoner to lose his head? Somehow insult a Samurai or a Knight and see a flash of steel and a close shave to the trachea. Even the in Le Morte d’Arthur, we see how the most celebrated Knights in history have no issue slicing and dicing some unarmed commoners because they complained they were not doing their jobs. If you think about it, both behaved pretty much like what we today call Organized Crime.

The romanticism associated with these two baffles me as a civilian.  I don’t even think that our Military and LEO should consider them role models as their aim was subjugation of the lower classes and the defense of the kingdom against other pricks like them instead of liberation and protecting the People because their lives and liberty were valuable on its own and not because the Higher-Ups were worried about loss of income from taxes. And even then, the “acceptance” of Death should be eschewed or as General Patton said so succinctly: “No bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country.”

So who do Civilians should seek as role model? My very own choice (yours may vary) is the Pioneer/Homesteader: Somebody who wanted to live his life doing his work without interfering with others, but ready to lay down firepower to defend his family and his land from those who wish them harm.

Never start a fight; but always finish it.

Perhaps most significantly, the bill injects even more legal protection for defendants by shifting the burden of proof to prosecutors even before trial. It establishes that once defendants make an initial case that they used deadly force in self-defense, the burden falls to the prosecutor to show that “the defendant’s use of force was not lawful.” This is already the burden of proof when Stand Your Ground and all other self-defense claims go to trial. In fact, some have argued that this burden of proof in self-defense cases is what made it so easy for Zimmerman to be acquitted.

via Everything You Need To Know About The Stand Your Ground Bills Advancing In Florida | ThinkProgress.

From Cornell University Law.

BURDEN OF PROOF
Generally used to describe the threshold that a party seeking to prove a fact in court must reach in order to have that fact legally established.  For example, in criminal cases, the burden of proving the defendant’s guilt is on the prosecution, and they must establish that fact beyond a reasonable doubt.  In civil cases, the plaintiff has the burden of proving his case by a preponderance of the evidence.The burden of proof is often said to be comprised of two distinct but related concepts: theburden of production, and the burden of persuasion.

So, Stand Your Ground is so bad, so evil that we are supposed to toss aside one of the basic tenets of our legal system, the presumption of Innocence,  and give the Prosecution a free ride to incarcerate people? How target-fixated these idiots can be that they are ready to cut their noses off to spite the face? Or is it that somehow they think this will never be  applied to them because they are special or above reproach?

In a sense, articles like this are a good thing. It shows people how far out of touch and how dangerous this section of the population that claim to be doing things “for the common good” can be.

But we knew it already. I am just amazed that they actually went ahead and confessed it in such an open form.

Probably straight from WWI trench warfare and now in the vaults of the Spanish Guardia Civil.

Uncle John calls ’em Millennial Orphans, springing from fractured homes and forming their own “families.” Some came from big money, and walked away. Virtually all have some college, and many graduated. They were force-fed the educational establishment’s progressive propaganda-pap until they puked — too smart to become good little automatons. For many, the big awakening came about 2009.
“Our teachers and professors had hammered us with America is evil, defy authority, capitalism kills and crap like that,” Lead Dog said. “Then all of a sudden it was don’t question authority; obey the government; embrace the collective. Don’t think, just obey. That’s when we started teaching ourselves.”
They discovered new heroes, the real revolutionaries — our founding fathers — and fell deeply in love with some neglected, derided old documents: the Declaration of Independence; the Constitution; the Bill of Rights. And they saw how far we’ve drifted from them.

via Unlikely Allies? | American Handgunner.

Freedom is contagious and there is no cure for it.

Hat Tip Rob M.

From Guns For Liberties
The classy folks at CeasefirePA doing their version of open and honest dialogue which included repeated use of the word parasite.

Imagine that treatment applied to one of them in a Pro Gun Rally, we would not stop hearing the word “bully” for three months.

Tromix’d Saiga-12 with Cadiz Works Mitigator Silencer

via Saiga-12 – Imgur <— click for more pics.

God Bless them for coming up with new & ingenious stuff with guns. But I am of the belief that if you need to get the Saiga with the 20 round drum, the incoming problem is bigger than making a wee bit of noise.

The detail of the internals of the silencer are very cool.