This year’s Halloween decoration

One of the most important lessons I learned in grad school was “what don’t I know?”  The answer, of course, is “a lot.”

As you near the end of your studies as a PhD candidate, you have to take a comprehensive examination.  It is a test to see if you have a fundamental understanding of the subject you are going to get your degree in well enough that you can teach it to others.

No it’s not.  It is an academic gauntlet.  The purpose of which is to teach you humility.  You stand in front of a whiteboard while various professors bombard you with questions of increasing difficulty, on a subject, until you have no choice but you say “I don’t know.”  Then they move onto a different subject and repeat the process until they break you.

See, you just completed 10 years of schooling.  You think you know so much.  You don’t, and they have to prove it to you by showing you the boundaries of you knowledge.  You’re like a puppy, let loose into a big yard.  This is your realm.  And so you run until, ZAP!!!  You hit the electric fence.  You run in the other direction until ZAP!!!  You hit the fence again.  Soon you learn that in the whole wide world you can see, your realm is tiny.  You know a thimble’s worth in the ocean of knowledge.

This is an experience I wish more people would go through.  Especially journalists and politicians.

I am an expert on things in my thimble.  When I talk about them, I talk with authority.  For everything else, I research.   Before I opine, I try to learn as much as I can.

There is an expression my graduate adviser used all the time “know just enough to be dangerous.”  There is another one by Charles Darwin that I love: “Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science.”  Psychologists have proven that this is true, scientifically, it is called the Dunning-Kruger Effect.

For weeks the gun blogosphere has been calling out the politicians and journalists who make stupid statements and push for stupid laws regarding universal background checks, gun free zones, and everything else they claim will save lives but won’t.  How could these people say on TV or in print what they say and be so wrong with so little shame?  They have the confidence of the ignorant.

Politicians and journalists are the embodiment of the Mark Twain quote: “All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and then success is sure.”

Twain also said “Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.”  And we know that Twain was a genius.

There is one law I would love to have pass that I believe would help this country like no other, it is this:

“Before a congressperson can vote on a bill, they have to pass a qualifying exam to demonstrate a basic knowledge of the subject matter the bill will address.”

Such a law would most likely bring DC to a standstill.  But once more we yield to the wisdom of Mark Twain “No man’s life, liberty, or property are safe while the legislature is in session.”  So maybe it wouldn’t be so bad.

Caught this on the news feed:

My first thought was “Anybody want to bet me that this guy is anti-gun too?”

So I went through his feed a little and lo and behold, he is.

Regarding Ben Carson’s comments on the Holocaust:

Regarding Texas campus carry:

Ahhh… It was almost too easy.

It’s an amazing coincidence isn’t it?  The people with the attitude of “believe what we want you to believe or we will kill you” don’t like it when other people own and carry guns.

This is why WE have guns.  I don’t want to stand before a firing squad because I don’t believe that my V8 pickup is directly responsible for the weather.

I’m going to double down on Miguel’s post.

A bit of tragic news hit the airwaves.  A little girl was choking in school.  An EMT with a private medical transport company was flagged down.  He stopped to help.  The girl had been choking too long and ended up brain dead, the EMT got suspended without pay for violating company policy.

I hate this story and love this story at the same time.  I hate it because of its tragic ending for the little girl.  I love it because it illustrates, as harshly as possible, life in a CSGV-esque utopia.

It’s not about the guns with the nannies and scolds.  Guns are a tool.  It is independence that these people detest.  A self reliant people do not need the government to come in and solve all of their problems.  Consequently, a self reliant people don’t need or want a big government.  Self reliance is in direct conflict with the nanny state.

So how does the nanny state make people less self reliant?  They take away the tools of self reliance.  Eventually the ability to help oneself wastes away from lack of use.

Why am I talking about guns and a government induced loss of self reliance and this little girl who choked to death.  Because it is the same mentality.  The article wonders why none of the girl’s teachers tried to help.  I can answer that.  My wife was a teacher.  Government union rules and risk aversion.  The opinion of the union was:

“You are not a medic, you are not trained to help, all you are going to do is make things worse, you can be held liable if you hurt the student trying to help, you can’t be held liable if the student dies while you were doing nothing.  DO NOTHING. DON’T HELP.  WAIT FOR THE EXPERTS.”

Teachers who violated this code of conduct were punished.  It is better to let a student die than help the student and risk making him/her worse.

Why was the EMT suspended?  Because doing good is not covered by their insurance and his company had the same stupid rules as the teachers, when it came to anybody who was not a paying client.  Better to let a bystander die than risk company liability.

Compare this to the actions of the armored car drivers during the North Hollywood Shootout who asked their company if they could use their armored car to provide cover for the officers who were helping the wounded.  The company said yes.  They were hailed as heroes.

This is what the CSGV advocates for in an active shooter scenario.  Don’t try and do anything yourself.  Attack the shooter and risk getting hurt.  Lay low and wait for the experts.  You can’t be blamed for getting killed if you did nothing.  Better to be a victim, dying on your knees, than to get shot trying to stop the killing.

People who have been disarmed, first physically then mentally, will do that… die on other knees waiting for help from the approved source.  The nanny state will honor these people as victims and create memorials to them.

Independent people will fight back.  A few may die in the process but more lives with be saved.  The nanny state will victim blame them for their own deaths.

Seen over at the Book of Face was this brilliance:

The responses went pretty much as you would expect, there were those who were somewhat pro gun, and those who… delved into the predictable territory of “Americans are stupid” and criticism of America’s gun culture.

Of course the “need” for assault rifles came up (i.e. why does anybody “need” them) and mandatory training was discussed.  Which resulted in typical pearl clutching.

Well, allow me to retort. 

The reason smart people go “f**king crazy and think the government is coming for [our] guns” is because that IS the end game for some politicians.  Senator Diane Feinstein (D-CA) said exactly that 20 years ago.  Don’t believe me, let her tell you herself.

When the NY SAFE act was passed, it included a provision to have all high capacity (over 10 round) magazines, including ones that had been previously grandfathered in, either turned into law enforcement or disposed of out of state.  The County of Los Angeles just passed a similar law.  Connecticut banned the sale of new high capacity mags.  Yes it’s true that magazines are not guns themselves, but they are a crucial part of the gun.  More importantly, it is a step in the direction of a confiscatory gun ban.  Get the mags first.  When people get used to that, get the guns next.  Notice how these laws all come with registration of certain, if not all, guns AND magazines.

Hillary Clinton praised Australia’s confiscatory gun ban during the DNC primary.  The article by VOX is almost giddy about Clinton wanting to confiscate guns.

Smart people see the politics of gun control like a game of chess.  It is played in small moves.

We want full 50 state CCW, that is one of our goals.  We can’t get that all at once.  We win concealed carry in Illinois, now all 50 states have a CCW law.  Next we have to win changing may issue state to shall issue. That is on the move in Maryland.  Once we have 50 state, or near 50 state, shall issue, wining national reciprocity will be easier.

We want to end the NFA.  States easing NFA restrictions has been a step in that direction.  Now there is a bill to take suppressors of the NFA.  If that passes, SBR’s and SBS’s will be next.

They want to take our guns away.  We know that.  They make it very clear that they don’t like the idea of independent armed Americans.  They know if they go for a nation wide gun ban there will be pushback.  Clinton won the Brady Bill and the Dems lost control of Congress.  So they are playing small ball.  Registration in the states they know they can get that.  Confiscatory magazine bans in states where they can get that too.  Ease people into accepting confiscation.  First take the mags then what?  Take the assault rifles?  Make a requirement for “bullet buttons” on handguns?

We are calling them out on their end game.  We don’t want to give them an inch.

I’ve covered before the fact that guns are flying off the shelves in Israel gun stores as a result of the wave of stabbings by Palestinians going on in Israel.

As is turns out, the same thing is going on in Austria.  Handgun laws in Austria, and Europe in general, are more restrictive than in Israel, so the gun buy is mostly shotguns and hunting rifles which are easier to obtain… but still.

The European presses are pushing that this is in response to fear of Syrian refugees, and that that fear is unfounded.

Well… what we are learning is that the refugee camps are a hotbed of rape and child abuse.  That particular brand of violence has been on the rise in Europe for some time, with Sweden’s rate of rape having gone through the roof.  There have been reports of Christian refugees being murdered in the refugee camps by Islamic refugees.  Crime in Europe has shot up dramatically, and in some if not many cases, the local governments have played it down or covered it up as to not be perceived as racist or Islamophobic for targeting the minority population responsible.

This is how (I believe) Europe as we know it will end.  European Democratic Socialism is sustained by the belief that if the European people hand over (nearly) half their income in taxes and much of the control they have over their lives to the government, the government will take care of them.  Of course this is unreasonable on it’s face, but the European people have a cultural history of being subjects not free citizens and a strong sense of risk aversion.  These two cultural traits make it easier for Europe to embrace Democratic Socialism.  But now the veil is coming down.  The governments of Europe can’t and/or won’t protect their citizens from Islamic immigrant crime, rape, child molestation, and violence.  The Welfare State that Europeans pride themselves on is being strained to the breaking point as immigrants and refugees collect benefits from a system they never paid into.  Immigrants and refugees, who are usually young and able bodied, are collecting more than retired Europeans who paid into the system their whole lives.

The people of Austria are figuring out they can’t trust their government to protect them any more.  They are buying guns to protect themselves.  As the violence increases, the European governments won’t be able to keep a lid on the crisis.  When enough Europeans catch on to the fact that they have been abandoned by the socialist government they trusted, the system will collapse.

I caught this on the Book of Face.

I love this idea.  I really do.  Nothing irritates people like than when somebody takes a perfectly fun holiday and ruins it with politics.

Nobody likes the cousin who goes on and on about the plight of industrialized farm turkeys and why he/she’s a vegan at Thanksgiving.

Halloween is about two things, scaring kids and CANDY.  This just shows everybody that Shannon Watts and her crew are a bunch of joyless scolds who want to ruin everybody else’s fun.

This is more of a downer than Trick or Treating for UNICEF.

The NRA should respond by handing out full bars.

I can’t wait until Shannon figures out how to ruin Christmas.