By. J.Kb.

I just finished the 4th episode of Fear the Walking Dead.  I know, that was last week’s episode.  I have a job and a baby, if it weren’t for DVR I’d never watch anything on TV.

So, where to start…

At the very end of Episode 3, the army arrives and starts killing zombies.  At the start of Episode 4, dysfunctional family and El Salvadorian family are sharing dysfunctional family’s house which is now in a safe zone.  The military has formed about a dozen safe zones out of various neighborhoods by fencing them off and occupying them.  Dysfunctional dad is some how the civilian leader of his safe zone, at one point he is called “mayor” by the army lieutenant in charge of the safe zone.

The lieutenant in charge of the safe zone is a total a##hole.  He’s gruff, unsympathetic, callus, and jokes about shooting the civilians in the safe zone.  At first I thought this was just AMC (insert gratuitous comment about typical Hollywood liberals) being anti-military.  Since we haven’t really interacted with any other military at this point maybe, just maybe, his being an a##hole was just a personality quirk and not a statement against the military by AMC.

At the end of the episode, the military drags away drug addict son with force, actually butt-stroking him to the face with an M-16.  On a personal level, I have no sympathy for drug addict son.  He was stealing drugs from an injured person in the safe zone, hooking himself up to the patients painkiller drip.  Previously he refused to share his painkillers (the ones girlfriend stole for him to help him with withdrawal) with El Salvadorian mom, who crushed her foot.  If there is one feature that defines all drug addicts, it is selfishness.  They will do whatever it takes to get high, regardless of how much it harms other people.  This kind of person is a detriment to society, but especially in an apocalypse scenario, so I don’t mind so much that he was hauled off.  But I digress…

As I thought about the this last episode, I realized maybe AMC wasn’t just being hard on the military.  Only a month ago was the 10th anniversary of the landfall of Hurricane Katrina.  I watched the news and the President’s speech and all the yammering punditry, but the one thing that I didn’t see was mention of the door-to-door raids by police and the National Guard collecting guns.  For that I had to turn to the NRA.  One of the things I remember about Katrina, watching the disaster unfold from my dorm room, was the belligerence shown by the nine most terrifying words in the English language.

Sure, I’ll concede that there was violence by some of the citizens of NOLA, and looting and people taking advantage of the disaster.  Say what you want about providing security, but what happened in NOLA after Karina was about more than just security.  It was a crackdown on US citizens.  Not since the Civil War have US troops gone house-to-house with guns rousting residents.

One segment from the news stands out in my mind (I can’t find video of it), of General Russel Honore showing up in NOLA and yelling at soldiers to put their guns down.  Before he got there, the military was rolling through a US city like it was Fallujah.  (Yes, Yes, I know, Honore retired and turned out to be a totally anti-gun “if you like assault weapons join the army” liberal, but I’m only talking about his command in NOLA.)

Coincidentally, this, the treating of a US city like was a foreign nation to be occupied and the total erosion of civil rights was the genesis of the Oath Keepers movement.  Keep in mind, I’m not crapping on individual members of the military here.  There are many good people in uniform.  But any bureaucracy (including the military) is ultimately a big, lumbering, officious, callus, machine that will keep grinding people under it until somebody (either from within or outside) stops it.

What frightens me is that AMC’s portrayal of life in a safe zone is more accurate than I would hope.  Just ask the people of Watertown, Massachusetts what they experienced in much less dire circumstances.  Sure, those were police, but that might have been hard to tell by ordinance they were carrying.

Yes, after Katrina many people got their guns back.  There were lawsuits and settlements.  President G.W. Bush even passed an executive order which later became law preventing the government from confiscating legally possessed arms during a natural disaster.  Several states even doubled and tripled down on this by securing the right of CCW permit holders, and even non permit holders, to carry during a disaster.  But all of this only works if once the disaster ends there are courts and lawyers to secure the rights that were taken away during the disaster and order recompense.  What happens when you lose your rights today and there is no tomorrow?  Food for thought.

I still want dysfunctional dad to get munched on and El Salvadorian barber did witness atrocities during the El Salvadorian Civil War.  I’m still waiting for more of his backstory to unfold.

Switching to different zombie fiction.  One of my favorite, and the most believable, part of World War Z (the book, not the movie, don’t talk to me about the movie) was that the US military had to retake the Black Hills of South Dakota.  In WWZ, the military retreats from the East Coast and Mid West all the way to behind the Rocky Mountains which formed a natural barrier against the undead.  The residents of the Black Hills were abandoned by the military and left to fend for themselves.  They survived and when the US retook SD, they were so offended at being left behind, they declared themselves a sovereign state and resisted unification.  I lived in western South Dakota for six years.  WWZ is 100% correct.  The hill-folk of SD (or any rural state for that matter) would both survive a zombie apocalypse and be very resentful of a government showing up and wanting to take control of a group of people they had previously forsaken.

Found in reddit

By J.Kb.

Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah have come and gone, happy new year 5776.

I’m Jewish.  I make my bread and butter in guns. I am a firearms enthusiast, a dyed in the wool gun nut.  One of those things is not like the other, and that drives me nuts.  When you look at the names of the Washington gun grabbers, it reads like Bar Mitzvah guest list, Schumer, Feinstein, Bloomberg, Wasserman-Schultz.  You want to pick a fight at an Oneg (the food served after Sabbath services), say something pro-gun.  I know, I’ve done it.

I have tried to wrap my mind around why so many Jews are anti-gun.  I just can’t. Name me one, just one, big government regime that was friendly to the Jewish people.  I’m waiting…  Yeah, I can’t think of one either.  One would think that such a record, from the Greek and Roman Empires to Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, would put Jews squarely in the small government supporters, but no.  I have come to the conclusion, that they are Quislings.  For those of you who are not familiar with the term, it comes from the name of the Norwegian war-time leader Vidkun Quisling, who lead a domestic Nazi collaborationist regime during WWII.  In general, a Quisling is an enemy collaborator.   I think this is an appropriate term.  The only reason I think why so many Jews are anti-gun/pro-big government is that they feel that by being part of big government, they are safe from big government.  Just ask Leon Trotsky how well that worked out, ice pick and all.

My dad recognized this.  He taught me to shoot as a kid.  In all irony, he taught me to shoot using the FN .32 ACP my grandfather took off some SS officer and brought back as a trophy from WWII.  His feeling was that when we said “never again” we mean it, with a bullet, literally.

Of course we enjoy shooing.  I love spending a day at the range.  My dad is a hunter, he’s taken my sister hunting all over the world.  We took the Orvis sporting clay class together.  But the sentiment of “never again” has always stuck with me.  It’s for this reason I resent the term MSR (modern sporting rifle) for AR-15 clones.  Sure, it’s fun to shoot, 3 Gun is great, and so on.  But at the end of the day, it is not my sporting rifle, it is my primary casualty-producing weapon.

Hopefully I will never have to use it that way.  Then again, hopefully there will never be boxcars full of Jews again.  Given the way the Iran deal is going, I can’t guarantee either, but that is a different rant.

If I go quietly into that good night, it is because my weapon is suppressed.

Say all that in a Synagogue and you’ve kicked the hornets nest.  Point out that historical precedent is on your side, and bad for the Jews, and you’ve become persona-non-grata.  The thing is, the Israelis know this.  I know Israel doesn’t have the best gun rights, and that is one reason I have no interest in living there.  For American Jews to support Israel and then totally ignore every lesson of the Haganah, who were literally rolling shell casings out of lipstick containers by hand to defend them selves from being slaughtered, is absolutely bat-poop insane.  But somehow I’m the crazy one because I have an 18 gal tote full of .223 in my garage.

Here’s the point Mr. Schumer and Bloomberg, and Ms. Feinstein and Wasserman-Schultsz.    LEAVE MY GUNS ALONE.  You are not making the world safer for our people by taking away my guns.  You making it easier to the agents of the state to haul Jewish children out of their beds.  That you helped make is easier for the state to do that will not save your children from the same fate.

To the rest of my people, big government has never, and will never, be good for the Jews.  Stop supporting it.  Go to a range, rent a gun, try shooting.  It’s fun, you might actually like it.  More importantly, what I’ve been saying might click.  Never again, with a bullet.

…are bound to screw up royally in this era of Interwebs.

From Bloomberg’s attempt of having a cool Gun Control site (A.K.A. The Trace) email alert:

It is not the first time and certainly won’t be the last that somebody sees NRA and shuts down their brain and does not take the extra minute to figure out how come that NRA logo is so different to the NRA logo we all know and love.

Well, mostly because that was the symbol for the Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s National Recovery Administration, one of his many economic schemes that instead of taking the country from the claws of The Depression, it sunk the nails deeper in.

“Damn it, Miguel! Not everybody is well versed in history! How can a non-gender-defined New Yorker 20-year-old intern is supposed to know the difference?” Well, by clicking on the frigging Flickr user link they got the picture from and gave credit to:

The National Rifle Association has done and has been accused of many things. Selling groceries and packing flour are not among them.

Hat Tip to Brian K. He is a brave soul who gets The Trace updates.

In case you never heard about it, there are great photoshop artists who dedicate themselves to restore and colorize old black and white pictures.

This version of the well known Buffalo Bill photo has been colorized by Kurt Tutschek and I have to say it is a wonderful portrait. It feels like Mr. Cody was alive just yesterday, doesn’t it?

He is not being hypocrite, all the Armed Swiss Guards are certified either Atheists or Buddhists.

There, made you feel better.