This is not a gun post.  It is a political post.  Since I am only a guest here, if Miguel wants to take it down I will not be offended.  This opinion is entirely my own and is something that I have wanted to share for a while.  In preparing posts for this blog, I have to slough through a lot of idiocy at places like Salon and Vox to bring you nuggets worth posting about.  It is much like having to go through sewage to find peanuts.  Then I sat down to watch the Democratic Primary Debate on DVR.  I not sure that these people know which country they want to run for president in.  Listening to their plans on guns and economics, they want to be the supreme leaders of Swedestralia.

I’d like to retort to them and Vox and everybody else on that side of the aisle, why they are wrong, WITH SCIENCE.  I’m not an economist.  I’m a scientist, degreed and all.

The second law of thermodynamics states nicely defined this way: “it simply says that if you have a system that is isolated, any natural process in that system progresses in the direction of increasing disorder, or entropy, of the system.”

This often gets shortened to “everything tends towards disorder.”  This is not correct.  The best way I have found to sum up the 2nd LoT is “if you don’t continue to put energy into a system, it will eventually fall apart.”

You see this in everything.  It takes energy in the form of heat to take iron oxide and turn it into iron, then more heat to turn it into steel.  It takes mechanical energy to roll that steel into girders and then more heat to weld it together.  When you are done expending all that energy, you made a bridge, and object that exists to fight gravity.  But there is still more energy that has to go into it in maintenance and galvanic protection, because nature is constantly attacking the steel.  If you didn’t continue to add energy into the system, the bridge would corrode back into iron oxide and fall down and go back to the lowest energy state from whence it came.  The 2nd LoT applies to life as well.  If you didn’t consume chemical energy and resperate oxygen, you to would go back to your lowest energy state – dead and rotted away.

The ulitmate point is that the 2nd LoT applies to civilization as well.  Each and every one of us.  We either put in energy to maintain civilization or civilization crumbles.  Electrical energy is measured in Watts, mechanical energy in Joules.  Societal energy is measured in money.  Electrical energy is transferred by electrons through wires.  Societal energy is transferred by dollars through free exchange.  For the most part, the more you contribute in terms of energy to maintaining society, the more money you make.  I mean make.  Just as the biggest generator produces the most power, so do the hardest workers produce the most money.

This assumes that you live in a society with economic freedom.

If you don’t, the 2nd LoT still applies.  The leaders take the money and keep if for themselves.  The hard working stop working.  Society collapses, see the USSR, Venezuela, etc.  You can’t cheat the 2nd LoT.  You can’t steal energy from the Carnot Cycle, perpetual motion is impossible.

Every bit of social welfare, the free stuff that the Democratic primary candidates wanted to promise away is an attempt to cheat the 2nd LoT.  An an conditioner doesn’t make air colder.  It only moves the heat of the air from inside the house to outside.  Free government stuff doesn’t create money, it only moves it from one place to another.  And just like the AC, there is inefficiently in the system.

Now I am not a heartless person.  I have compassion.  I also don’t want to live in a society where the poor starve to death and die in the street.  I accept a certain amount of social welfare to help those in need.  But what we are taking about here is a system that shifts the majority of people to the low curve of the Carnot Cycle, where the majority of people are on the energy consuming side than the energy producing side.    It is not sustainable.  You can speechify about all your highfalutin education on Keynesian economics but YOU CAN’T CHEAT THE 2ND LoT.  If you take half my energy to build up someone else, that is less energy I have to maintain my life, and consequently I will crumble.

I think Robert A. Heinlein put it best:

“Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty. This is known as ‘bad luck.'”

A sacrificial anode an an active metal that is coupled to a less active metal and allowed to corrode to prevent the less active metal from corroding.  I WILL NOT BE THE SACRIFICIAL ANODE YOU PROMISE TO THE LESS ACTIVE TO GET THEM TO VOTE FOR YOU.

The runaway winner of my most recent online poll for best tweet of the week was this mock dialogue posted to Twitter by @TheNardvark:

“Can I get two boxes of Sudafed?”
“Sorry, by law you can only buy one at a time.”
“OK then, just the one box of Sudafed and these seven guns.”

The analogy between pseudoephedrine — the active ingredient in Sudafed and many other decongestant cold and allergy medications — and firearms is wry but apt.

Source: Controlling arguments: Sudafed control vs. gun control – Chicago Tribune

I seriously need to do a ride-along with a reporter and figure out how is it possible they can’t do a simple Google search or use two second worth of common sense.

How is it that Eric Zorn has not figured out one simple yet big difference between buying Sudafed and a gun at their respective stores? Felons can legally buy Sudafed but are not allowed by law to buy a firearm. Dear God, Felons are not even allowed to be near a frigging gun or ammunition!

But that is what happens when you do “journalism” based on Press Releases from Gun Control groups.

And next;

I believe that being shot should be requirement for gun ownership in America. It’s very simple. You need to have gun, like taking selfies with pistols, can’t live with out it? Then take a bullet and you will be granted the right to purchase the firearm of your choice.

Source: Want a gun? Take a bullet: Take this, gutless NRA cowards — you can have a gun, once you understand the pain of being shot – Salon.com

Dear D. Watkins: If you happen to have a fire extinguisher, I wanna see your self-inflicted burn scars. Otherwise, stop talking nonsense out of your rectal exit.

PS: You can’t have sex unless you pass a bowling ball through the above-mentioned rectal exit. A man should not be allowed to have carnal knowledge with a woman until he experiences the pain of childbirth… without epidural.

Hat Tip on this one goes to Brad Torgersen via Facebook.

I swear I did not know the drought in California went so…deep.

I think even the animal is surprised at the headline.

Hat Tip to Russell S.

None of that happened with my gun, of course, but after every new mass shooting, I’m reminded that I, as a responsible gun owner, bear a portion of the responsibility for our nation’s gun violence…

…My gun is being used to argue against doing anything to even try to reduce gun violence in our nation. That’s what being a responsible gun owner means now — I’m responsible…

…The Monday after the shootings, I disassembled my Ruger, clamped the pieces in a vise and cut them in half with an angle grinder. I sent the proper paperwork in to the state to report it destroyed.

Source: I’m a responsible gun owner, so I destroyed my gun – Steve Elliot- The Washington Post

Well, I don’t see him cutting his penis off, so it is a good (liberal) guess that he is all for women being raped, right?

Come on Steve, you can do it. Imagine how well the gesture will be received, how much it will advance the feminist cause and the fight against sexual violence in this country.

SLICE THAT SUCKER OFF!

If it stops just one rape!

Hat Tip: Gregg T.

There has been a rash of stabbings in Israel over the last few weeks.  The rapid escalation of violence seems to driving Israel into a third Intifada.  Never failing to make a situation worse, John Kerry helping to put the pedal to the metal in this particular metaphor.

How are the Israeli’s responding to the reality that any one of them might, at any moment, be some Palestinian’s ticket to heaven?  They are lining up around the block to buy guns.  Israeli shooting ranges are packed.  How is the Israeli government responding to this Obama-re-election-esque wave of gun buying in reaction to Palestinian terror?  By loosening restrictions on the carrying of guns in public?  Sure that’s a start.  But even better is encouraging Israeli civilians to arm and defend themselves.

The Israelis are going to bring a gun to a knife fight.

Ladies and gentlemen, take note.  That is how you do it.  The left in America mocks the idea of “a good guy with a gun.”  Israel is telling the good guy to get guns and is making it easier to do so.  Keep in mind, while Israel may be the epicenter of stab-happy Islam, it is by no means limited to the Holy Land.  Knife attacks by Muslim refugees are on the rise in the European nations taking them in like Sweden and Germany.  How did Sweden respond?  IKEA has stopped selling knives.

Which policy will be more likely to reduce the effectiveness of future attacks?

Don’t forget, the US has opened its doors to the same refugees without a comprehensive plan to weed out the potential terrorists.

All I heard from the Democratic primary debate was how we needed to restrict guns and sue the gun makers out of business.  Sorry, no.  Israel recognized the only way to stop those who want to engage in violence is to meet force with force.  Even the Wall Street Journal figured it out.  If it works in Jerusalem, it will work here as well.

“Israelis have proved before that they have the tactical ingenuity and moral will to defeat their enemies. The sooner they impress on Palestinians that they will never bow to knives or bend to terror, the sooner the stabbings will end.”

According to our president, it is easier to buy a gun than a book or fresh vegetables.

That our president can say something so ridiculously wrong in public is mind boggling.  I would write a longer post deconstructing his statements, but I am afraid even thinking about what he said for too long would damage my brain.

Although I am considering taking bets on what Obama will say “buying guns is easier than _______” next.

I think I’m just going to end this with the popular meme:

I’m sorry that I’m having a hard time believing you due to your track record of being a lying liar that constantly lies out of your lying liar hole.