Just happened to check the stats and this happened:

Stage 16 halted as riders hit by pepper spray at Tour de France

https://cyclingtips.com/2018/07/stage-16-halted-as-riders-hit-by-pepper-spray-at-tour-de-france/

A protest by local farmers resulted in a 15-minute neutralization on Stage 16 of the Tour de France after a police officer used pepper spray on protestors, which then blew into the peloton.

To be fair, who among us has not wanted to pepper spray a group of cyclists for taking up two lanes of traffic on a road?

Good science fiction takes a concern that already exists and explores it with fictional technology that enhances the issue.

What does it mean to be “human” is an age old question philosophers have been thinking about for thousands of years.  Combine that with artificial intelligence and you have I, Robot, half the works of Phillip K. Dick, even Data from Star Trek: TNG.

The expansion of communism was terrifying, add space travel and you get Starship Troopers.

The latest hysterics from Shannon Watts about 3-D printed guns is just bad Sci-Fi.  It takes a concern they have (guns) and mixes it with a technology they don’t understand (3-D printing).  The problem is, 3-D printing is not like warp drive, it exists and rational people understand its limitations.

The @NRA admits they support homemade guns. Starting August 1, Americans can legally print an AR-15 at home. There is no way to track DIY guns and they have already been used by gangs.

The NRA knows the best way to sell more guns is to arm even more dangerous people. https://t.co/OyH1FYS1Qv

— Shannon Watts (@shannonrwatts) July 24, 2018

That’s a lot of nonsense.

First:

Does Shannon Watts know that it’s already legal to make a gun at home without an FFL if it is not for sale?

I’m not into it, but there are people who just love to make ARs and AKs out of 80% lowers, either unfinished forgings or flat sheets of sheet metal.

If you’re willing to invest the time and effort into it, you can build an AR out of a 0% receiver – i.e. a slab of billet aluminum.

There is a reason laws like these exist.  Inventors.  John Moses Browning didn’t have and FFL or SOT.  He designed his first gun out of his dad’s blacksmith shop.  If an inventor has to get an FFL and all the permits just to tinker with an idea part time after his day job, innovation with be hampered.

Second:

The issue isn’t that people were not allowed to build guns at home, the issue was a designer selling the CAD models that allow someone with a 3-D printer to print a gun.  This wasn’t even a 2A case, it was a 1A case with the argument being that the goverment can’t stop someone from publishing blueprints.  Freedom of the press.

Third:

Show me one case in which a gang member has used a 3D printed gun to commit a crime.

The above article contains this quote:

Gun control advocates were alarmed. Nick Suplina, managing director of law and policy at Everytown for Gun Safety, said the settlement was “incredibly dangerous” and called on the state department to continue to block the publication of what he described as “deadly information”.

Oh no, not information.  It’s not like I can’t look up all the dimensions of an AR receiver already and put that into Solid Works.

You can’t stop the signal, Mal.

“This settlement would enable convicted felons and domestic abusers to download schematics online and print their own illegal and untraceable guns,” he said.

All those “convicted felons and domestic abusers” with tens of thousands of dollars in 3-D printers and experience in fabrication.

It would actually be easier to build a gun out of pipe and sheet metal like they do in Brazil than to buy and set up a 3-D printer and computer capable of making a gun.

Of course, that is harder than buying a stolen gun from the local drug dealer.  I’m pretty sure anybody who has spent any time in prison knows a guy that they can buy an illegal gun off of for less than the cost of a single spool of ABS printer plastic.

Looking through Shannon’s feedback, we see just how many people have bought into this bullshit.

And in the state of Florida, these people can make these guns, initiate a situation, shoot and kill someone, and claim they were in fear for their safety or life… The country is going crazy.

— Blenus M (@cameraman1961) July 24, 2018

No, no they can’t.

I think “don’t use a 3-D printed gun you made yourself” is above “don’t use hand loads” in advice by lawyers how not to go to prison in case of a defensive shoot.

https://twitter.com/HaleGaming/status/1021783030128668672

https://twitter.com/RiDavlo/status/1021783024202129418

Yeah, the NRA and gun companies are done for because anybody can just print whatever gun they want.

Anybody with more than a million dollars in 3-D printers, CNC equipment, heat treat ovens, finishers, etc.  Even if you just make a receiver and buy every other component, 3-D printed plastic is not smooth and must be finished to produce a functioning part. That is why 3-D printing will not replace injection molding for production anytime soon.

I swear, these people must think that you can buy a desktop 3-D printer off Amazon for $200, download the CAD model, and 30 minutes later have a fully functioning AR-15 lying on your desk ready to shoot up a school.

This is the new Glock 7, undetectable porcelain gun made in Germany myth.

The reality is that it will take two days to print the components for a single shot pistol that doesn’t always work, out of a $1,300 printer and is about as likely to blow up in your face as not.  Also it has no effective rifling so accuracy is null and I can’t imagine the barrel life being more than two or three rounds.

This is less a weapon for criminals as much as a novel though experiment for Libertarians.  For the price of a 3-D printer, you can buy three or four guns on the street.  If undetectability is your thing, you might as well file off the serial number because if you murder someone with your printed gun, you’re going to prison anyway.

Same with magazines.  Sure a guy in California can print some high capacity magazines.  But for less than the cost of the 3-D printer, he can drive to Arizona and fill the trunk of his car with Magpul.

Nothing about this is remotely frightening to a thinking person.

To unthinking activists, this make them crap their pants.

The Conversation is a publication with a decidedly population disarmament point of view. I was surprised they published Dr. Hasset-Walker’s article. The good doctor inserted a deft virus into the gun debate. She called for those in the reflexive anti-gun culture to educate themselves. She called for them to reach outside their comfort zone and consider the possibility that ownership of guns might have positive aspects.
People who have been in the gun culture for a while know the best way to convert someone from the other side is to take them shooting. It destroys their preconceptions.

People in the gun culture, however, are seldom converted to the other side. There views are nearly always held in opposition to the dominant culture in the media. They do not have to look up anti-gun videos on the Internets. They are constantly bombarded with them in the dominant media.
Education has a tremendous bias here. It is tremendously biased in favor of the gun culture. That is why anti-Second Amendment types work so hard to keep gun education out of the schools. It is why they work so hard to shut down debate. It is why they are committed to emotional slogans instead of facts.

Researcher Watches Gun Videos, Develops Empathy with Gun Owners

The demonization of the Gun Owners is not just hateful advertising: it is a crafted strategy to scare regular and even anti gun folks into not taking the chance to know us.

Don’t you think that Miami Herald’s Jim Morin is not very damn aware that in a county with a population of almost 70% minorities, a good representation of an NRA member would be a Hispanic rather than a White guy always foaming at the mouth and looking crazy? He knows, but it would defeat the Narrative that NRA members all White racist that want to lynch Brown and Black people.  But if he can convince one person not to accept an invitation from a Gun Person to go to the range, his side wins.

I know you are tired of seeing this but I will keep repeating it:

If your cause is righteous, why lie?

Hat Tip Dave H

I saw this in the news:

Man arrested for exercising naked at Planet Fitness gym

Here is his defense:

A man who stripped naked before working out at a New Hampshire gym told police officers that he thought he was in a “Judgement Free Zone” before being arrested.

That’s stupid.  If this guy’s lawyer ever reads this, here is some free advice.

Get the manager of Planet Fitness to call the facility a “gymnasium.”

That is important.

Then bring up the etymology of the word gymnasium.

1590s, “place of exercise,” from Latin gymnasium “school for gymnastics,” from Greek gymnasion “public place where athletic exercises are practiced; gymnastics school,” in plural, “bodily exercises,” from gymnazein “to exercise or train,” literally or figuratively, literally “to train naked,” from gymnos “naked,” from a metathesis of PIE *nogw-mo-, suffixed form of *nogw- “naked”

Technically, exercising naked is exactly what a gymnasium is for.  It’s what the word means.

Maybe the guy just knows more about classical Greek than most people.

That’s a better defense than “he was in a ‘Judgement Free Zone.'”

He thought his Chihuahua escaped and fell seven stories. The truth was more sinister, SF cops say

Wakeen Best, a 35-year-old homeless woman, was arrested in connection with the dog’s death, according to police.

A jury found Best guilty on felony animal cruelty, vandalism and burglary charges on Friday, according to San Francisco District Attorney George Gascón. The trial lasted three weeks, but jury deliberations only took a day.

“This defendant showed no remorse and is responsible for the death of a little, defenseless animal,” Gascón said in a statement, adding that the verdict is “a small step toward bringing justice for Dunky.”

Best targeted the man’s Mercedes because it was “the fanciest car she saw” on the seventh story of the garage that afternoon, according to prosecutors.

Video and audio from the parking garage captured the crime as it happened, according to police. The perpetrator can be heard on the video screaming profanity at Dunky for yapping, though the video doesn’t show the attacker, the San Francisco Chronicle reports.

“Shut yo ass up,” the culprit yells twice at the dog in the recording, according to the Chronicle.

Meanwhile, the car’s alarm is screeching in the background.

Best’s public defender said it wasn’t her client who killed the dog or who was heard in that recording, according to the Chronicle. But the public defender did admit that another recording caught Best at the crime scene.

“We know that she knows how to do a standard smash and grab,” Deputy Public Defender Alexandra Pray said, conceding that her client has stolen from cars before, according to the San Francisco Examiner. “She is just a regular ol’ auto burglar. She’s not someone who murders animals. She’s not someone who hurts animals.”

Being a San Francisco newspaper, SacBee doesn’t mention it but Wakeen Best is a trans woman.

So homeless trans-woman is a habitual car thief, participating in one of the 30,000 car break-ins per year in the city of San Francisco and she kills this guy’s dog because it’s yapping.  Even though the car alarm is going off.

I’m going to follow this story because I want to know what the sentence will be.

A homeless black trans-woman vs. a white guy with a Mercedes.  Under any other circumstances I’d say Best would be allowed to walk, but the only hope I have for justice is that nobody likes a person who kills animals.

At this point, I’m reminded of an old video I saw about anti-car jacking security in South Africa.  If someone can tie one of these to a glass break sensor, they will  make millions.

Desperate times call for desperate measures, and 30,000 car break-ins per year seems pretty desperate.

Besides, if you are the kind of person who will murder a dog to steal stuff out of a glove box, I really don’t care if you have your she-balls roasted with a flamethrower.

Remember the Illinois Nazi running in Chicago as a Republican who being denounced by the GOP and is guaranteed to lose?

The Democrats have gone full “hold my beer” on him.

Top Dem candidate gave millions to groups advocating for taxing families ‘to the hilt’ for ‘irresponsible breeding’

Scott Wallace, a liberal millionaire candidate running for Congress in Pennsylvania, has given millions of dollars to so-called population control groups.

Such groups have advocated for taxing parents “to the hilt” for having more than two children, calling it “irresponsible breeding,” and said abortion is “a highly effective weapon” to combat overpopulation.

Zero Population Growth (ZPG) was among the organizations that received the money from the [Wallace Global Fund]. According to public records, it received $420,000 between 1997 and 2003.

[ZPG] also blamed the overpopulation on the “white middle-class” that “use up more than their share of resources and do more than their share of polluting” and urged them to “voluntarily limit their families to two children.”

Paul Ehrlich, who co-founded the ZPG, once called abortion “a highly effective weapon in the armory of population control.” The goal of the organization, which changed its name to Population Connection in 2002, has remained the same since its inception, arguing that the world needs to contain population growth with particular emphasis on American families.

Yep, that’s pretty fucking bad.

This is an ideology that is truly anti-human.  It treats people entirely as a liability and not a benefit.  Humans are reduced to entirely what they consume, regardless of their production.  It is also viciously racist in a Social Justice way, blaming and targeting white people.

Taking a break from the moral issue for just a second, that whole part about “blamed the overpopulation on the ‘white middle-class’” is doubly insane since that is a substantial portion of the American tax base.  We, and much of Europe and Japan, are already seeing the problems associated with a reduction in the size of the productive middle class population as baby boomers retire.

This is a topic I am particularly sensitive to given the history of targeting Jews for population reduction.  Limiting the number of children people can have is genocide.  It just uses time instead of gas chambers.

It is a Malthusian evil.

He’s also (as you might expect) a raging anti-Semite.

Democratic Jewish Outreach Pennsylvania will not endorse Scott Wallace, the Democratic nominee in the 1st Congressional District, in his November race against Republican incumbent Brian Fitzpatrick, DJOP founder Jill Zipin said.

The lack of endorsement for a Democratic candidate in Pennsylvania is a first for DJOP, Zipin said.

In the wake of news that Wallace, 66, served as co-chair of a family-operated fund that was revealed to have endorsed organizations that were supportive of the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel, DJOP members met with Wallace in late May.

“Many Jewish groups are coming to the same conclusion that the families in Bucks and Montgomery counties have,” Haley Bova, a spokesperson for Team Fitzpatrick, said in a written statement. “The more you know about Scott Wallace, the less there is to like. The fact that he sat atop a family foundation that gave him access to untold wealth, and then he used his foundation to funnel literally hundreds of thousands of dollars to various extreme anti-Israel hate groups that are entrenched in the BDS movement, tells us all we need to know about Scott Wallace.”

So the Democrats are running a Jew hating racist who wants to reduce the human population in a very systematic way using the heavy hand of government.

Why do I feel like I’ve read about that platform elsewhere in history?

That sound you are not hearing is the Democratic party not denouncing this guy because:

The race in Pennsylvania’s 1st Congressional District is among the most high-stakes election in the country in the upcoming midterms. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) added Wallace’s candidacy to its “Red to Blue” program aimed at flipping the district.

Neither Fitzpatrick nor Wallace have staked a clear advantage in the race. A Monmouth University poll released June 4 has Fitzpatrick getting support of 48 percent of likely voters in a “standard” midterm electorate to Wallace’s 47 percent. But with a “surge” of Democratic voters, similar to other races in 2017-18, Wallace has the edge at 48 percent to Fitzpatrick at 47 percent.

He’s got a solid chance of winning.

There you go, ladies and gentlemen, the Democrats will run their own Nazi and back him to the hilt if it means gaining a seat in Congress.

Just add this to the list of reasons I’m looking forward to ACW2.  When a politician starts talking about targeted population control – especially an anti-Semitic one – it’s a reminder why I am such an ardent 2A advocate.