Eight Million Ways to Die

The neighbor ... shot at the dog from an upstairs window
 with a bow and arrow. 
The dog’s owner ran back into his house 
and came out with a Walther P-38,
a World War II souvenir.
The neighbor also ran outside with his bow and arrow,
and the dog’s owner shot him dead 
--Eight Million Ways to Die, 
Lawrence Block 

In modern war ...
you will die like a dog for no good reason
--Ernest Hemingway

He who has a why 
can bear any how
--Victor Frankl

______________________

Recently, we participated in a local initiative of our mayor's office, a community dinner called "The Longest Table". It actually takes place around a lot of 6-10 person tables at venues throughout the city. The purpose is to allow community members to voice their opinions on various topical matters, and to enjoy a civil evening of hopefully provocative sharing.

Last year was our first in attendance, and each table had its own monitor to facilitate discussion and note commonalities and differences. Sadly, this year's event was more of an ad hoc affair, and lacked that direction. (Perhaps because our Mayor Gilllum's office is currently involved with an FBI investigation.)

As a result, it was interesting to see how opinionated and righteous people can be, sans helpful direction. However, most people are not professional mediators, thus can be forgiven their indiscretions.

Moreover, in today's wired world, it is a small blessing when people actually unwire from their 24/7 media feeds in order to communicate face to face. That said, the comedown in empathy was palpable at the event. Mostly, participants opted out of dialog on anything of any import, probably because they know how quickly fever-pitch would be attained.

At our table, discussion was opened by a self-proclaimed former service member who began the usual rant regarding the badness of our current president. No one took the bait, to their credit.

But Ranger did engage with the man's second concern regarding societal violence; particularly, youth crime.

Ranger observed that extreme and life-like violence was a part of many young people's lives on video and computer, and that when young minds are bathed in this toxic brew there must be some causal relation between time spent and exposure to this extreme violent depictions, and possible anxious, anti-social or violent behavior in the consumer.

A young woman, a recent college graduate, insisted there was no research to prove such a linkage. Since we had no data before us, further speculation on the topic was D.O.A.

But let us consider the matter further here. Has the opposite been proven?

Is there research showing that prolonged exposure to violent media produces sound mental health and a sense of equanimity? Perhaps, it facilitates calm and reasoned thinking?

Shy of that, is there any proof that there is no effect from repeated and early exposure to such violent images and sounds? Have we even lived this "lifestyle" long enough to have a meaningful longitudinal study?

Everyone's favorite traveling protest show --the Parkland (FL) student marchers -- are  weekly  calling for a ban on and confiscation of all semi-automatic rifles. This would mean that 100-year-old rifles would be confiscated to quell the emotional demands of the teeny-boppers and their elder fellow travelers.

Okay. So we ban semi-auto rifles. What then about semi-pistols? Does this ban extend to our police? Or do they remain as armed and dangerous as a U.S. Army rifle platoon?

Let us not be goose-steppers here at Ranger, and take our collective heads out of the ground of public boilerplate.  

To wit: Toronto and London, both sites of recent terrorist killings, have draconian gun control laws. Yet the criminally crazy may still murder and maim en masse.

Just rent a van and mow them down. No aiming, no choosing a good site position. Sure, it lacks finesse and is as brute as murder can be.

But dead is still dead, whether via a slug from an elegant Walther PPK or under the tires of a moving van, dead like a dog in the street.

Outlawing any class of individually owned firearms will not stop the killing. While Ranger is not an NRA member, he acknowledges the correctness of their position that Americans are not crazed killers, and the U.S. citizenry is not the enemy.

When one is intent on committing an act of mass violence, the means for doing so are manifold. Remember that the last 16 years of war began with the commandeering of another means of of conveyance, the airplane, to kill thousands of people. There was no move to ban planes.

Banning semi auto or black rifle clones will not eliminate the problem. There is no simple solution to these episodes of violent crime.

We have a puritanical history, so banning things that can be abused always seems like a good idea. (Though it is odd that Democrats like this approach, as it has such a patriarchal, Big Brother overtone.)

But the holes in this argument to ban-as-solution are so big you can drive a truck through them. Our own Temperance movement and the subsequent 18th Amendment (and it's subsequent repeal with the 21st) is a good example. If you want it and cannot buy it legally, you will get it another way.

In addition to alcoholism, obesity in the U.S. is a huge problem today. Big Pharma must love the profits, but the medical system is weighted down caring for the manifold illnesses consequent to a life spent in a state of Type II obesity-triggered diabetes.

So how do we change this poor behavioral pattern of overeating bad food choices?

Do we ban sugar? If we did, there are substitutes in defilade which still trigger the insulin response, and which would probably produce even worse bodily results.

Remember the Good Thing that liberals espouse, namely, that we are one world and irrevocably interconnected? If isolationism is not a good, and not even possible, then how can a ban on transnationally available goods work?

And yet, for a determined person, banning things within our borders begs only the simple question: how then do we get it here? Whether it is a moonshiner or an importer, someone will gladly oblige, if the price is right.

How does a waiting period to take possession of a legally-purchased firearm a measure that improves our security posture?

A resourceful mind can weaponize many objects. With any will, there is a way. Therefore, limiting access to discrete objects are not where the solution is to be found.

Guns, knives, planes, trains and automobiles are not the problem we are addressing when considering the problem of mass killings.

Words as Saltambiques

 

Let me hear you say
The words I want to hear
Darling when you're near 
--Words of Love,
Buddy Holly 

Now what I want is Facts. ...
In this life, we want nothing but Facts, sir;
nothing but facts! 
--Hard Times, Charles Dickens 

I've believed as many as six
 impossible things before breakfast 
--Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carrol
_________________

Outside of last weekend's local gun show stood an animated crowd of young Republicans swinging placards declaring of our Teabagger-friendly Congressman Steve Southerland, "He'll protect your 2nd Amendment rights!"

Ranger thought, "What's a right if it has to be protected?" Of course, no one has a "right" to own a gun -- our rights are delegated to us, and protected by the proper authorities. This implies they may be yanked from us just as easily.

Ditto all rights: just because we have a voice box does not guarantee us the right to use it in any manner we see fit, or in any circumstance. Our "rights" are curtailed once they enter the public sphere, and protections must be issued and guarded in order to allow our expectation of continuity in our lives. So perhaps the word "rights" is not the best one for these privileges accorded by our guiding societal agreements.

An enumerated right might be an offense, in another context. Words are symbols, and may only approximate the actuality (presuming an actuality exists.) As Alfred Korzybski wrote, "the map is not the territory." This is not to say that the deconstructionists are correct when they strip the possibility of fixed meaning from words. It is simply that absolute definitions are really only valid within an agreed upon construct.

In context then, terms like "situational ethics" are revealed as the excuse and cloaking mechanism which they are. Situational ethics imply no ethics at all, or no fixed ethics, which throws the reference point for knowledge (in this case, "ethics") into question.

Words can be used to communicate or to obfuscate. They can be constructive or destructive. The goal of communication is not necessarily positive. Words in the service of communications have become more emotive, as it is easier to sway people with emotion.

Some words are forbidden, and euphemisms can become mandatory. Entire swathes of our population engage in a private lexicon understood only by acolytes. However, as in the classic "All in the Family" episode in which husband Archie forbade Edith from using the term "cling peaches", a way around the matter was found, and a careful and discreet listener can divine the meaning behind the rhetoric.

Today, when words are generated at such a rapid pace, and replicated through the push of a button into myriad other platforms, words often fail to clarify, instead taking up their role as saboteurs of meaning. By blurring hard definitions, words wear a cloak of impenetrability. This confusion over simple meanings causes the listener to block attempts to hear and decode what the saboteurs are producing in their sound bytes, or simply to question when those sound bytes do not seem to be consistent with observed reality, or even what was said prior.

For example, the word "invasion" has gone from being a word describing an offensive act to an ostensibly protective concept with the addition of "preemptive". Invasions become prophylaxis to a future invasion. The aggressor (= "preemptive invader") becomes a gatekeeper.

In this context, the 2003 United States invasion of Iraq becomes a positive and protective gesture, like Congressman Southerland's protection of my rights. However, in Russia's current actions in the restive nation on its border (the Crimea in Ukraine), invasion is once again configured as an untoward and aggressive action. How does an individual make sense of one word with so many intonations and connotations?

Contributing to the problem is the panoply of issues which occupy a life, and the concomitant number of platforms on which we receive our news, gobbling up any free time which might be used in contemplation. Not only have facts blurred into opinions, but the opinion generators have gained their own followings, such is the need for material to fill up the cable airspace, and comedians who can keep our attention better than the dry newscasters are often our main sources of data. But while comedians may hold our attention, they cannot do the deep thinking for us, something required of an informed electorate.

Words can also be the basis of disinformation when used by propagandists, and are used to confuse and confound, eliciting a desired effect that may be unreasonable, emotional or inappropriate. Sometimes, the propagandists look like good guys, such as those in our National Security Agency.

But back to the gun show.

How can a  congressman protect my rights from anything? If they are rights, as conferred by foundational documents which have created and guide my government, then he is only charged with getting out of the way. Congress critters should disabuse themselves of the notion that they are doing anything besides functioning as obedient public servants.


--Jim and Lisa

Equal Rights

Everybody's high on consolation
Everybody's trying to tell me what's right for me
My daddy tried to bore me with a sermon
but it's plain to see that they can't comfort me 
--She's Gone, Hall and Oates 

Someone's gonna feel the pain
Hit the floor, she's takin' aim
Is it you - is it you, is it me - is it me
Who's the next in the line gonna be? 
--Hot Shot, Barry Blue
 ___________________ 

The complexion of gun shows is changing, and the most recent Tallahassee Gun Show was no exception.

• The price of ammunition has skyrocketed, and people are acting crazy trying to buy it all up

• Gun shows have become monthly extravaganzas; they used to be quarterly events 

• The news media was crawling all over the event, and they seemed interested in speaking only to people wearing tree bark of those covered in tattoos.  Soundbites rule.

The flyer for the concealed weapons class (pictured above) indicates that the CCW permit is a "license".  One must pay for the class, fingerprinting, photograph, notarization, background check and for the license itself. Who determined that the exercise of the Second Amendment would be abridged in this manner?  Our freedom of speech or religion is not regulated in such a manner.  Our right to vote may not be constrained by poll tax, so why must the right to bear arms be sliced and diced?

Ranger understands the need for gun regulation (much as free speech is constrained), but not the requirement to pay the state for his right to exercise this individual right delegated to him by the Bill of Rights. We understand, too, that rights are a quaint notion and not an absolute possession when living in a social structure.  They are delegated, and as such, they are precious freedoms which must be safeguarded at all costs; a right given up to or usurped by a power structure is a right not likely to return.

If one right is fungible and frangible, then so too are all rights. We should not rush to throw away our rights by the fistful out of fear or coercion.

Hatfields and McCoys

From Sea to Shining Sea

 ___________________

Washington Post animated cartoonist Telnaes can be good and she enjoys a large following.  Her post today -- "From Sea to Shining Sea" depicts the fear of the NRA, and it is doubtful she consulted with the group to discover if this was an accurate portrayal of their position.

Her vision is not RangerAgainstWar's view of a healthy society, and we bemoan the image Telnaes presents for us.  But the doleful image outstrips the animation.  The image which she unwittingly conveys is an "Us'ns agin' them'ins" -- a Hatfields and McCoys, ad infinitum.  No sensible middle ground is allowed.

"Kids are getting murdered!" they cry. The "Other Side" says, "Curtailing gun rights is a slippery slope towards fascism!"  Both are unfortunate realities we have been facing for a while now.  In the same edition Tom Toles echoed our problem:

How do we grow past our fierce sectarianism? One thing is for sure: Not talking about problems -- saying, "He is an idiot", solves nothing.

Scattershot

This is the argument of a totalitarian. 
You can't know what we're doing to protect you, 
even if we're doing it to you, 
because then we can't protect you 
and you will be killed by bad people 
and it will be your own fault 
--Should Auld Civil Liberties Be Forgot, 
Charles Pierce 

What a wonder is a gun
What a versatile invention!
First of all, when you've a gun-
Everybody pays attention 
--Gun Song, Assassins soundtrack

 They who can give up essential liberty
to obtain a little temporary safety,
deserve neither liberty nor safety 
--Benjamin Franklin
 ________________

Along with death and taxes, gambling remains Big Business in the United States.

As the mega-million dollar state lotteries roll on despite the player's incredibly slim odds of winning, this metaphor seems right for a society that accepts odds of thousand-to-one of winning. The  
Lotto Mentality was the impetus behind entering the Phony War on Terror (PWOT ©) and drives much of our legislation, including our gun laws.  We buy Lotto tickets, fight wars and legislate with only the slightest chance of winning.

Betting on a legal solution to our domestic violence issue is as losing a proposition as is buying a Florida Lottery ticket.  It is a response to the cry to "do something", but it is as well thought out as an grade school teacher denying the entire class recess because someone threw a spitball. (This is not to dismiss a spree killing as being akin to such a classroom transgression, but to compare the punishment of all for the crime of one.)

We fight in Iraq and Afghanistan and call it a war while in reality it is nothing but controlled bully behavior, asserting our military dominance under the pretense of caring about their welfare.  In reality, we occupy their country because they are the enemy.

The same bullying is conducted in the United States towards its own citizens, when Ranger feels like the enemy because he believes he has the right to own weapons, including those that would be carried by a law enforcement officer.  If a government does not trust its citizenry, then it is an adversary, and is not by, of and for the people; the people are not the enemy.

Gun ownership will not protect our democracy; then again, neither will anything else, to include myriad technologies.  It is the hallmark of a cosseted democratic society to believe that we can be protected.

Did Jose Padilla think that he would be thrown in a brig, devoid of all rights of citizenship? Did "American Taliban" John Walker Lindh expect to bear the barbaric treatment thrown his way? Did Bradley Manning expect two years in prison before even being tried for an offense?  What were the odds?

Will guns make us free?  Probably not, but they are an indicator of the health of our freedoms and our status as free citizens versus subjects of our elected government.  It is ironic that so many argue for the continued abridgement of our civil rights, as though a bloated entity will be a better controller of our behavior than each of us may be himself.

Killing is wrong, whatever the source.  Handguns and assault rifles are but a piddling threat compared to what can be done in the name of the government.  Ranger for one does not fear the governed.  The abrogation of gun rights once accorded to the governed rarely bodes well for those so deprived.  Consider how the Holocaust might have played out had the slaughtered had access to small arms -- think about the doomed Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

Back to the Lotto: You can play and not win, or you can not play and not win; either way, you're a loser.  If my government does not trust me, I have lost the most important measure of citizenship.

Winning $530 million off a $1 ticket will not compensate for that loss.

Zombie Apocalypse

I'm shocked! 
--Casablanca (1942) 

War is the spectacular and bloody projection
of our everyday life
--J. Krishnamurti 

When the fight was over, nothing was solved,
but nothing mattered. We all felt saved. 
--Fight Club (1999) 

Tell me with the rapture and the
reverent in the right - right.
You vitriolic, patriotic, slam, fight, bright
light, feeling pretty psyched. 
--It's the End of the World as We Know It,
 R.E.M.

______________________

The Global War on Terror and the predictable knee-jerk reaction to the recent grotesque elementary school shooting share similarities. Both events will have elicited emotional responses that resulted in national policy based upon a feeling of vulnerability and demand for a response.

The terrorist attacks of 9-11-01 birthed the Phony War on Terror (PWOT ©), a self-proclaimed generational war the hoped-for success of which is based on no solid academic study.  The 9-11 Commission's report was an emotional cover-up for the failure.  The shouts to "Remember Newtown!" will lead the march to gun control laws, which will always be ineffective.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (BATFE) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) have thrown billions of dollars at an external threat, not an existential one as we were led to believe.  The real threat was containable and achievable without the declaration of war. So too addressing the tragedy of mass murder in America will require more than curtailing gun ownership rights.

"We Need to Protect Our Children!" is analogous to, "We must fight them there to keep us from fighting them here," or, "We must not let a mushroom cloud form over our cities." Effective policy cannot be based upon fear and irrational thought; emotionalism is not leadership.

We should trust our system of government and allow the Congress to do what they are constitutionally required to do, rejecting a unilateral Executive Order which would be created from the chaos of emotional reaction.

The problem is not high-capacity magazines or incorrectly defined assault rifles -- the problem is that our culture is death-oriented rather than life-affirming.  We have weak-minded members of society playing games disgorging blood splattering heroics, so valuable that developers stay at the top of the stock market weeks after new releases and parents line up in holiday queues to gift their young ones with this antithesis to the spirit of yuletide cheer.  We love to ask what guns should we use during the zombie apocalypse, funnin' with the idea of having power enough to shoot the undead. It would seem, by all the current renting of garments, that the Apocalypse is upon us.

Even our down time -- our relaxation mode -- is spent watching or engaging in ersatz gun violence in our commerce with various forms of media. Scientists now know that on some level, the brain assimilates ersatz actions (even gossip) as actual, lived events. We swing from angst over not being able to procure these simulacrums of violence to angst over the thought of being unable to protect our children and ourselves from the actuality of the thing.

In a monumental height of hypocrisy, those same actors in the violent films, or the makers of the violent games, then campaign for gun control.  They make millions portraying gun violence then wash themselves off with their morally superior attitudes, which amounts to some more acting. An example would be Angelina Jolie who portrays gun-toting action heroine Lara Croft, and then murdered journalist Daniel Pearl's wife -- she plays both victim and perpetrator. There is no coherence here in a mind which seeks to make understanding; it is schizophrenic, at best.

All the while we wallow in violent representations our proxies -- called soldiers and contractors -- are waging actual violence around the planet while we celebrate their handiwork, the bloody and broken bodies plastered on the front of our erstwhile dignified national news magazines.We celebrate the non-judicial murders executed at the behest of our President, while crying crocodile tears when the same President abhors violence, performing as a penitent at the site of the recent school murders.

This is hypocrisy in the highest. The United States has been shooting civilian children and innocent adults since September 2001. We are no strangers to extrajudicial, indiscriminate death.

We are comfortable, or at least impassive, about the deaths committed overseas in our name, yet we get incensed when this violence settles on our doorstep. Are the lives of Connecticut kids more valuable than those of kids in Afghanistan of Iraq, or any country that carries assault rifles given to them by U.S. foreign military aid programs?  When our Defense policy is based upon the concept of overwhelming and non-proportional violence, how can we say that gun violence is a discrete and perplexing phenomenon?

We love cage fighting, and boxing and every blood-lusty thing we can sink our teeth into, yet have the temerity to act shocked when our more vulnerable members of society act out their revenge fantasies.  Maybe we should be listening and talking to each other as opposed to getting lost down the rabbit hole of self-indulgent video pursuits.  We can claim to have thousands of Facebook and Twitter friends who consume our ersatz self, but who knows our soul?  Who can feel anothers fear and react accordingly?

We are victims of our gluttony, gullibility and fear, and guns merely facilitate the problem.

Million Man Permits

 Breakin' rocks in the hot sun
I fought the law and the law won
I needed money 'cause I had none
I fought the law and the law won 
--I Fought the Law, 
The Clash

Pancho was a bandit boy,
his horse was fast as polished steel
He wore his gun outside his pants 
For all the honest world to feel 
--Pancho and Lefty, 
Townes Van Zandt

 The right of the people to keep and bear...
arms shall not be infringed 
--James Madison
 _______________

Florida just issued its millionth Carry Concealed Weapon (CCW) permit, which means it has charged 1,000,000 people $135 each to exercise their constitutional right to carry a weapon.  

For that, they get a laminated card saying they may legitimately tote their guns (independent of the cost for the required class and fingerprints, which are also required.)

Is it even a right if you have to pay for it?  What is next -- Freedom of Speech permits?  CCW's create two classes of citizens -- those who can afford to exercise their constitutional rights, and those who cannot.  Members of one group may pack heat legally, while those in the other are in criminal violation of the law for doing the exact same thing.

If our vaunted Rights are accorded to all citizens, regardless of race, creed or economic level, then why are some rights abridged on any of those criteria?  How is this democratic?

Live or Let Die

--Last of the Leaves, Squirrell

Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die
--The Charge of the Light Brigade,
Alfred Lord Tennnyson

Son, you are a walking violation
of the laws of nature,
but we don't enforce them laws
any which way
--Any Which Way You Can (1980)

I just wanna say I think killin' is wrong,
no matter who does it,
whether it's me or y'all or your government
--Dead Men Walking (1995)

But Justice held up in a shotgun shack
And she wouldn't let nobdoy in
So a Nation cried
--Justice and Independence '85,
John Cougar Mellencamp
_____________________

This is prompted by the killing of former Libyan leader Moammer Qadhafi and the general reaction of glee to that event. (An interesting side note to the glee is the removal of all but one Qadhafi political cartoon from the popular site "Cagle's Cartoons", which had featured a menagerie of renderings of the slain leader the day of the news of his death.)

Such a lot of fun for a minute, and then, so quickly after Secretary of State Clinton all smiley and warrior-like declared, We came, we say, he died, the furore seems to have past. Did it hit us that we were celebrating something grotesque, and that the participant celebrants were a variant of human which we would do well not to fraternize with? Are our attention spans merely so shortened that we are now fishing about for the next best thing? Or are we simply enervated by all of the recent murdering?

It's nigh on embarrassing to discuss the sanctity of life, especially in a God-fearing country like America. Yet we kill our fellows with such rapidity that our guns seldom have time to cool.

Kill 'em all and let God sort 'em out is Cistercian monk Amalric's 11th century Crusader wisdom, which is alive and well in many's attitude toward those we are fighting in the Middle East. The Lord knows them what's his. It is a great motto for those in the killing business, but hardly the motto for a democratic Christian nation.

The basis of all democratic thought is the sanctity of life and the value of each individual, to include that of murderers, rapists and other bad people, including terrorists, who fall under the rubric criminals. All life is equally valuable. From this tenet flows the rule of law, which we equate to the concept of justice. "Liberty and justice for all" includes terrorists, or more specifically, accused terrorists. (Even women terrorists are equal, if we can take the 19th Amendment enfranchisement of woman as recognition of their inherent equality.)

In the U.S. one is not guilty until the government can prove beyond a reasonable doubt that one committed the crime. (Ranger has an astounding grasp of the obvious.) Moreover, this precept applies to all crimes; there are no exempted categories in the Constitution or Federal Code which derives from that foundational document.

Today's legal ambivalence stems from our growing lackadaisical attitude toward our core beliefs and values. We make so many exceptions to our freedoms that we begin loosening our conception of the sanctity of and rights accorded to life.

As well, the immense slaughter that wartime killings in the 20th century alone have wrought has rendered the crossing of the line between sacred and profane more porous. The recent WTC bombings elicited such shock -- whether due to insulation or hubris -- that many presumed some people were to be denied the conception of equality under law.

Now, the Bill of Rights can be macerated and abridged any way we choose; laws are made to be broken. But how do we reckon that with the moral and religious imperative, "Thou Shalt Not Kill"? What if the alleged perpetrator of a crime has killed? Are his human rights revoked? Repellant as the proposed scenario is, it is a common enough situation that a society must determine the answer.

While states in our Union may vary in their sentencing, all adhere to the presumption of innocence and habeas corpus; that agreement allows us consistency and coherence, necessities in order for a system of jurisprudence to function. The sanctity of life is not Ranger's personal construct but has always been official U.S. policy in both civilian and military environments, whether it be in hostage negotiations or war.

The sanctity of life used to be the tenet of all law enforcement, and was taught in Department of Defense classrooms, as well. Even in warfare this holds, for why else would we not kill Prisoners of War? The U.S. is neither Nazi nor Communist, nor are their fighters Imperial Japanese troopers.

If we apply the Enlightenment principle of the sanctity of life, one must then accept an elevation of our threat level. But it is a choice; either we believe it, or not.

What is It?

Lay down the law
Shout out for more
Breakout and shout day in day out
--Breakout, Swing Out Sister

Don't take your guns to town son
Leave your guns at home Bill
Don't take your guns to town
--Don't Take Your Guns to Town,
Johnny Cash
___________________

When at estate or yard sales Ranger always asks, "Do you have any guns, guitars or military items?" The question results in some unusual responses.

Last weekend he received, to wit: "Nope, the family got all the good stuff!" Ranger replied, "I'm sorry for your loss." There are not too many Zorba's who remain by their Madame Hortense, but there are many vultures out to swoop up the goods. This interaction was a pretty good summation of American life today -- "We got the good stuff." At least, some do.

We don't so much talk about the right stuff, however. Of the three stuffs that hold Ranger's interest, guns are the one most threatened today. The Supreme Court recently affirmed (McDonald v. Chicago) that gun ownership per the Second Amendment is an individual right; legally-owned firearms are a citizen's right.

However, since this ruling, several citizens have received prison sentences for having loaded firearms in their cars or on their person; in one case, the firearm was in a backpack. So how is it the right to own firearms not being infringed upon when citizens are still going to prison for bearing arms?

The 2nd Amendment does not restrict our rights to the border of our households. Why doesn't the SC resolve this issue in a court decision? Why are we allowing citizens exercising their constitutional rights to be turned into a new class of public enemy? Americans have always carried guns; whether that is a public or private good is an issue aside from the fact.

It just seems a little screwy: The U.S. is involved in a kinetic Phony War on Terror / Overseas Contingency Operations (PWOT / POCO ©) and we in The Homeland (™) are told the threat level is elevated, and we are to be "alert, but not afraid". But . . . what good is being alert if I can't be armed if my alertness spots a threat scenario? What good is it, Mr. President?

Ranger has a squirrel dog, Buddy, who barks incessantly until his master goes outside to recognize the ruckus. Sometimes there is actually a squirrel; sometimes, not. To reify Buddy's rantings, Ranger will ask, "What is it?" If it is a false alarm, Buddy will run tree to tree helter skelter, as if to scare up a threat.

That is what living in the U.S. 2011 has become: We are being trained Pavlovianly to look up when the talking heads bark, but what does all the sound and fury amount to? Without a shotgun, you have a man and a dog staring up at a tree at the caperings of a possible menace to the wires in his attic.

The question does not oppose RAW's opposition to the militarization of our lives and of the police. Individual arms have never stopped a terrorist incident since 9-11-01. While terror can't be stopped by guns, everyday crime could be. The late, great American city of Detroit suffers about one murder each day, but lawful citizens are denied the right to carry firearms to protect themselves from a real criminal threat. Meantime, police are armed to the teeth to fight a questionable terrorist threat.

This makes no sense.

Good safety posture come from correctly identifying the threat and arraying responsible deterrents and protection. For the average citizen, criminal recklessness perpetrated by another individual or group of individuals is his biggest threat. Within the context of current America, awash in a sea of guns, the question is: Do we want citizens to be able to protect themselves, or not?

Either we have gun rights or we don't.

A Century of Progress

My heart burns with feeling, but,
My mind, it's cold and reeling
--Love or Confusion, Jimi Hendrix

I maintain that
Chaos is the future
And beyond it is freedom
Confusion is next and next
after that is the truth
You gotta cultivate what you need
to need
--Confusion is Next, Sonic Youth
______________________

Ranger recently purchased a 1911 A1 pistol and a 1909 Argentine Mauser in an absolute auction. While playing with his new toys, the little label on the case, "Not Legal in California" hit him like a hole in the head.

[As an aside, several of the largest gun shops in the Panhandle of Florida are going belly up, a telling trend. When gun shops die in Bible Belt, Redneck Heaven, U.S.A., you know things are bad.]

The pistol is a century old design, in continual production and in use in every dust up the U.S. Army enters. The 1911 A1 is iconic as the Colt Peacemaker and just as popular with today's shooters. It has a 7-round magazine with one up the snout, so why is it illegal in California? ?

In fact, if it had a 50-round mag, why would it be illegal? Before calling me a dumb-ass, I conceded the arguments against hi-cap magazines are valid, but we are not talking reason. We are talking 2nd Amendment, and we either believe gun ownership is an inalienable right, or we do not. There are no restrictions to sporting use or restrictions on capacity or auto mode in the Constitution.

It is illogical to concede that we have gun rights that can't be infringed, then say that a century-old pistol design is illegal in any state of the Union. Ditto the waiting period strictures.

Ranger currently owns several 1911 A1's (to include two WW II wartime production Colts.) In order to get my hands on the latest acquisition he had to fill out an ATF form indicating that he is everything a good, gun-loving American should be. Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms & Florida require a 5-day waiting period called a "cooling period", which is odd since I have a loaded Smith & Wesson .357 magnum in my car right outside the gun shop door -- how much cooler can I get? That's downright frosty.

[Since the gun was purchased Saturday, the waiting period starts Monday when the paperwork was filed, so it becomes a 7-day waiting period, depending upon circumstance.]

The gun shop would not allow Ranger to take possession of the 100-yr-old Mauser rifle because he had a handgun in the cooling off phase, even though there is no waiting period for long arms. Where is the consistency? Is it not reasonable to contend that the transaction took place when the gavel fell? So why didn't the waiting period start at that time?
Answer-because we all fear ATF and their arbitrary rulings.

The Supreme Court recently slapped down Arizona for its immigration laws using the logic that no state can have a law which is harsher than Federal law. If true for U.S. Code, then should it not be exponentially true for a Bill of Rights freedom? Why can California have such a draconian gun law? Would I, as a Floridian, be arrested if the California Highway Patrol found the weapon/1911A1 in my vehicle? Why is the same gun both legal and illegal, depending upon geography? Are we not one country?

Gun laws amount to harassment, and fail to address the real issues facing society.

Cowboys and Aliens

--Bigger is Badder

What the hell?
--Cowboys and Aliens (2011)

And anger of the Lord will blaze against you,
and he will close the heavens and there will not be rain,
and the earth will not give you its fullness
--fr. Shema, Jewish Prayer

Sometimes I feel like a motherless child
Long way from my home
Sometimes I wish I could fly
Like a bird up in the sky
--Motherless Child, Van Morrison
______________________

This is a moment in a day in the life this week of Ranger, out on the range in the hinterlands of Northwest Florida, Solar System. It is hard to tell if he is the Cowboy or the Alien. He is inclined towards "alien" as he was the only one not "strapped" in this little episode.

The scene: A local mechanic's shop, right wing radio blaring its inanity, National Rifle Association mag on the table. The men talked of guns, one vociferously bad-mouthing a gun control advocate called "Shuma". This caused Ranger some consternation as 2nd Amendment issues are near and dear to him, and he had not heard of this Shuma. The wildly vilified Black Bart turned out to be Rep. Charles Schumer (D-NY).

At the point of recognition, Ranger said, "Let's be real here [first wrong assumption] -- the first assault weapons ban occurred by Executive Order from the pen of George H.W. Walker." Came the invective: "I don't talk to liberals!", he said disgustedly, after he pulled his shirt aside to display the 9 mm pistol stashed in his belt line.

Now Ranger has always been against gun control, and this exchange should have made his little Red, White and Blue heart flutter, except . . . it did not. It's 2011 and we will not even talk to one another, and some of us are so threatened here in The Homeland ™ that they spend their days with pistols in their belts. Where do we meet?

This is not the sign of a healthy society.

Last week we sighted a police officer in a black outfit and a shirt imprinted, "Drug Task Force". He was carrying a high-cap Glock in a gunfighter, low-slung holster with enough gear to fight Tet '68. What's that all about?

Have we gone insane? Ranger likes guns and oppose gun control, but does not carry because it is not wise. When you carry, you are less likely to leave a confrontation -- the weapon heightens the chance of a dangerous or lethal interaction.

Was the gunslinger flashing his hide-out gun threatening me? Could I kill him before he pulls his weapon? Was it a thumbing of the nose? A show of solidarity with the shop's owner (who also sports a gun in his belt), or something else?

Ranger's advice: Don't let someone within striking distance even if you've got a handgun rubbing your dick, 'cause that could be the last thing it ever touches.