Gun Free Zone

Perfection is the deadly enemy of results.

Republican lawmakers in Tallahassee are now showing strong signs of support for the unlicensed carry of concealed handguns by law-abiding Floridians, according to sources familiar with the discussions. However, these same lawmakers strongly oppose the open carry of handguns or other weapons.

Gov. Ron DeSantis has promised to sign a constitutional carry bill if the Republican-controlled state legislature can get one to his desk, and now it appears as though we are closer than we have ever been before.

While this is definitely a step in the right direction and might be seen by some as cause to celebrate — finally — it is not the “Gold Standard” of constitutional carry seen in other states, which allow their law-abiding citizens to carry firearms openly or concealed without a permit or license. In other words, these states allow their citizens to decide for themselves how to exercise their constitutional rights.

Florida lawmakers considering watered-down constitutional carry (substack.com)

The gun laws’ history in Florida has been a constant war of attrition. We (I still consider myself a Floridian) have made slow inroads, but made them even when the Media and Liberal strongholds were against. It was only when the Chest Thumpers appeared in our mist that the forward movement was stopped.  Wethere we liked it or not, we faced a huge PR campaign against us. The bombardment tagging us as dangerous and killers was constant, so we had to fight it and the Chest Thumpers parading themselves fishing with rifles and kitted like they were going to war played into the image the Gun Control cabal was good at advertising.

It is the old question: How do you eat an elephant? One bite at the time.

Get Constitutional Carry and then keep moving. Don’t get greedy and assure the win.

And just because you won’t get OC this time, do not throw a tantrum and crap on Constitutional Carry.  Every time we lose because we act like toddlers, the enemy score propaganda victories.

In 1337 the “Hundred Years’ War” started. Great armies marched to meet each other in the fields of battle. They fought and 2.3 to 3.3 million men died.

In 1792 the French Revolutionary war started. It lasted 7 years and between 1.2 million and 1.4 million men died in the fields of battle.

In 1803 the Napoleonic wars started. Somewhere between 3.5 million and 7.0 million men died in the fields of battle and in the misery of being on campaign.

Between 1955 and 1975 somewhere between 0.9 million and 3.8 million people died in the Vietnam War. There were around 300 thousand soldiers killed in Vietnam, 58 thousand Americans and 254 thousand South Vietnam.

What was the significant change between the previous wars and Vietnam?

Asymmetrical Warfare.

The civilians and the enemy combatants wore the same clothing. They wore the same footwear. They ate the same food. The man sharing a meal with a soldier might be stalking that same soldier later that night.

During the 20 years of “The Troubles” in Ireland 8 to 10 thousand people were active members of the IRA. By the 1980’s it was believed that there were around 450 active members and 300 support members. Yet this small number of dedicated people were able to keep the British at bay.

This equates to around 9/100,000 at the low point and 10/100,000 at the high point. If there was this level of asymmetric warfare in the US that would be around 30,000 active participants every year. Even with people rotating in and out.

In 2021 there were 38.5 million hunting licenses issued. If we assume 12/100,000 this would be 4632 people with the right equipment in hand to take a deer sized target at 100 to 200 yards. Not to mention all the other firearm owners that don’t hunt but are proficient with their firearms.

So at a low end we would have somewhere around 5000 and at the high end about 50,000 actives in the such warfare in America.

All of these people look just like the people they are living with. We saw what this was like in Iraq and Afghanistan. In addition there is a higher probability of members of the resistance existing unseen within the government/military complex.

We look at what people with minimal industrial knowledge were able to accomplish. Their ability to make hand crafted firearms, their ability to create IEDs. All of that knowledge from people that don’t have the same level of education as most of the people that read this blog.

If it comes to conflict it will be asymmetrical. One or two man teams working to harass and torment occupying forces. Supply lines that are long and undefended. Convoys traveling on wide open express ways with good sightines to them from good cover and concealment.

People with the money to buy and train with tactical gear.

As more than one person has stated “I’m not about to trade MY AR-15 for a milspec M-4 or M-16, my rifle is much better than that.”

Fourth-Generation War and Other Myths
Fourth-generation warfare
Fourth Generation Warfare
Military History and Fourth Generation Warfare
WAR OF THE FLEA – A STUDY OF GUERILLA WARFARE – THEORY AND PRACTICE
The Guerrilla and How to Fight Him FMFRP 12-25

Facebook buddy posted this and I figure is worth passing along.

Our media, with the help of anti-gun activists, are responsible for the creation of Orlando Harris.
“I don’t have any friends, I don’t have any family. I’ve never had a girlfriend. I’ve never had a social life. I’ve been an isolated loner my entire life. This was the perfect storm for a mass shooter.”
I’m not sure what his grades were like, but I’m guessing that he was ushered through our “educational” system with few actual useful skills. Maybe he had high self-esteem – that seems to be the goal of many “educators.”
There are quite a few people who have high self-esteem, who are very confident, who actually navigate through much of life, and I still have to wonder how they are able to find their way home at the end of the day.
Harris was likely told that he was special for most of his life (not “that” special – self-esteem special).
He didn’t make friends. That’s a lot of kids. He didn’t have a family support group. That’s also a lot of kids. Hell, I never got laid until I got to college. Quite a few folks are actually that way, locker-room braggadocio aside… I’m the guy who will take a book to a party. But I never considered shooting up a school.
Why do I think Harris chose that venue for his violent temper tantrum? Some of YOU told him to. You described him to the nth degree on news programs. You PERSUADED him that he was the perfect storm for a mass shooter.
And why did he pick a school? Easy. It would get headlines. It was a safe gun-free zone. He probably knew that he wouldn’t be opposed by on-site “security.” And some of YOU kept reinforcing the concepts of the school shooter. You helped fuel that perfect storm.
You have created the Gun-Free Zones – the very places that have a magnetic draw for the deranged maniacs in search of fleeting fame at any cost. And you’re going to demand more of them. And you’re going to say that they must be fortified, their defenses bolstered with the help of millions, if not billions, of tax dollars.
And some other nutcase, who you are helping form even now, will penetrate the Gun-Free Zone, and unleash mayhem.
Because they know that all within have eschewed self-defense in a quasi-religious fervor, and that they will be unopposed by their victims.
You wanted a “safe space.” Educators don’t seem to understand the concept of self-defense – look at how those who are bullied to the point where they fight back are punished.
You created a “safe space.”
And the only people who are truly safe are the insane predators, who WILL take advantage of it.

I am not a High Fantasy fan.

When I do read books where magic is a central theme to the story, I enjoy worlds where magic is something other than wands and spells.

I loved the magic of necromancy using bells from the Abhrosen trilogy by Garth Nix.  I also enjoyed the portrayal of magic in The Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo and The Magicians trilogy by Lev Grossman.

I’m also a (mostly) observant Jew.  One of the difficulties I have with magic in books is how they make it impossible to square the circle of magic existing in a world with organized religions.  I.e., what separates magic from miracles?  For instance, in Harry Potter, they celebrate Christmas, but if you know magic to be real, why would the miracle of the death and resurrection of Christ be the cornerstone of your religion?  I’m sort of surprised that nobody said “Jesus was a wizard, Harry.”

But I digress…

So I have been fucking around with an idea for a world in which magic exists that takes a non-traditional approach to magic and ties it in with certain ideas from monotheistic religion.  I currently have no plot for a story in this world but I thought the world would be interesting.

In the beginning, there was nothing.  Then God created the heavens and the earth and all the things between and within.

This is, in the strictest sense, magic.  Magic is the creative power of God.  The power to will something into existence and create something from nothing.

We as people were made in the image of God,   we possess a soul.  That soul is the tiniest spark of divinity within us.  It is what elevates us above the animals, and one of the things that separates us from the animals is the ability to be creative, a power that derives from our soul.

If you have ever listened to a great piece of music or seen a great work of art and felt as though your soul has been moved, that is the faintest bit of magic.  It is the intangible quality in a piece of sublime creativity, channeled from the spark of divinity within a person that transcends the elements and invokes the power of God.

Among the greatest examples is Beethoven’s Ode to Joy.  Whenever it is played, virtually every person within earshot will stop and listen.  They will want to participate in the music.  The desire to sing or hum along or wave their arms like a composer is undeniable.

Why?

That is the magic, the divine creativity in such a beautiful piece of music, reaching out and drawing power from the souls of all who hear it to become something more powerful than just the compression and rarefaction of air molecules in a sound wave.

Consider the Pieta or the Veiled Christ (Giuseppe Sanmartino), statues carved from marble so perfectly that you swear that if you were to reach out and touch the folds of the Virgin Mother’s robe Christ’s veil, they would be soft and move like cloth.

In the Jewish tradition, we have the story of the Golem.  A wise and ancient Rabbi who creates a man from mud and whispers into its ear the name of God causing the mud man to come to life.  That is an act of creativity that draws directly from the power of God.

So how do we get from that concept of magic to practicing magicians?

A magician is someone who studies and hones the skill of sublime creativity.

The power of magic in the magician’s ability to borrow the power of God and will something into existence.

A sculptor who creates a sculpture of a man that is so perfect he comes to life.

A painter that can manifest the subject of a painting into reality.

A musician who can play a piece of music so deep that it doesn’t just stir the soul like the 9th Symphony, but actually dominates the listener’s free will and manipulates them.

Being more of a technical person myself, I thought of having magical technopaths that can create clockwork machines so complex that they manipulate the universe.  I wanted to tie this one into the Antikythera Mechanism.  Rather than a machine that predicts the movement of the stars and the tides, a clockwork that actually controlled the motion of the moon in its elliptical and ebb and flow of the sea.

I also had an idea for an ancient order of of magical lissiers or tapissiers who slowly manipulate events and human civilization by weaving an unending tapestry of life on earth.

Magic in this world would be more subtle and deeply impactful.

Also, anyone can make the effort to become a magician, people are not born into it, but it is a closely guarded secret and not well known outside of the practitioners.

It would be lots of master and apprentice-type education, perhaps with some small schools led by guilds in specific magical arts.  Masters would seek out people who display extraordinary talents and then show them what the true unlocking of their talent can do.

Of course, since people are literally playing with the power of God, problems are bound to happen, which is where I can start to stick in the plot.

It’s an idea in the raw that needs a lot of fleshing out.  I just wanted to come up with a novel form of a magical universe that has a vaguely plausible magic origin story.

–

Update:

Based on a comment, I wanted to explain just a little more on what separates a magician from a great master.  I don’t think I was clear enough.

Like the Rabbi of the Golem story, a magician is someone who knows the secret of how to deliberately channel the spark of divinity for creation.

A great artist will do it by accident but the difference between a great artist and a magician is the knowledge and purposeful skill of engaging in an act of sublime creativity.

That said, in this world, a lot of great masters would be magicians.  Leonardo Di Vinci would be a perfect example.  So would Michelangelo and Beethoven.

Clearly, people with the skills of being great masters would be people capable of learning to control of the spark of sublime diving creation.  But they would also engage in lesser great works of art.

So the closely guarded secret from above that is kept within the magic community is the transcendent knowledge that separates great skill from sublime creativity.

As I noted before, Kanye West has been saying some antisemitic bullshit about the Jews running this and that and profiting off the death of black people.

Then he went to Twitter with this bullshit quote:

https://twitter.com/HiPics90/status/1585208989440016384?s=20&t=InAQmRBBa0SHJHSi-CVf-A

See, you’re not allowed to criticize the Jews because they are in charge.

The justification for antisemitic statements is antisemitic conspiracy theories.

Circular logic is circular.

Of course, this puts Jews in a position where we can’t prove the negative.

“What Kanye said was antisemitic.  Abortion is not a conspiracy by Jewish doctors to kill black babies.”

“If you’re saying you can’t criticize the Jews that means the Jews are in charge and are crushing criticism of them.”

The more the Jews push back the more the conspiracy theory is reinforced in its believers.

Thats the problem with conspiracy theories, and antisemitic conspiracy theories in particular, the attempt to disprove them is taken as evidence that reinforces them.

We have already been the targeted by the Woke Left for their antisemitic conspiracy theories about Jews as oppressive interlopers, now we have Kanye leading some weird pro-life alt-right against us too.