I have completed Archer Garrett’s The Western Front (I’m old school, and as with all books, I will simply not read an electronic version so I need the paperback).  I have only one criticism about the book, and this isn’t such a big deal.  There are a few typographical errors and sentence fragments, something I’m sure that Archer knows about and would correct with another printing.  But this is easily overlooked given the engrossing nature of the story.  The book begins at a rocking and rolling pace, but the context of the tale is given slightly later than the opening scenes.

First, Europe collapsed into the old hatreds and nationalist tendencies that had gripped it for centuries.  It was hardly noticeable at first, bu then it began to accelerate exponentially.  Next, Japan defaulted on several major obligations and spiraled into hyperinflation.

With the world quickly disintegrating around it, Turkey left NATO and reclaimed the entirelty of Cyprus as its own.  It then invaded Bulgaria, Armenia, Syria and half of Iran.  Iran’s remaining half had fallen into a bloody revolution that led to the slaughter of tens of thousands, and the rise of an even more ruthless regime than before.  Israel was surrounded by complete and total chaos.  They had nuclear weapons aimed in all directions, but particularly at Ankara.  Russia began to englulf Georgia and the other Eastern bloc states.  The world had fallen into complete chaos.

Then the inevitable happened, the tentacles that had been strangling the rest of the world finally spread across the Atlantic.  The troubled banking system in the states was already in total disarray, artificially subsisting on fiat created at will.  When the sovereign defaults of Europe began, it was all too much and too fast for the Federal Reserve to counter.  The bank failures were announced daily.  The FDIC’s insurance fund was emptied overnight.  People were unable to withdraw any amount of money.  Bank holidays were more common than days that they were actually open for business.

Then, in the third week of March, Black Thursday happened.  The markets lost over half of their value on Wednesday and Thursday of that week.  Some even believed it was part of a larger, coordinated, financial attack by a foreign government.  Malicious or not, massive amounts of wealth vanished in a matter of hours.  And so began the Greatest Depression’s American Spring.

Now, people were not even sure there would be an election.  They were afraid the current administration would declare a state of emergency and simply forego a vote.  If so, it was doubtful congress would intervene.

In the style of George R. R. Martin, switching from scene to scene and weaving a coordinated tale, we follow the lives of Barrett, Clayton, Jake, and others, including one very unsavory character, William.

It ends with quite a speech by the President, and then by the Governor of Texas, the two speeches at different locations and making very different claims.  Without becoming a spoiler, there is no mean degree of surprise at the ending, and the times are even more dangerous than they were at the beginning of the tale.

This is very good dystopian fiction, but since it is so believable and salient, it is only dystopian in that these exact events have not happened.  It sure seems that they could given the state of affairs today.

I highly recommend this book.  If you believe like I do that this cannot go on forever, then you will want to ponder the circumstances Archer Garrett creates for the reader.  How would you react?  Who will be your friends and allies?  How will you communicate?  Are you prepared?

Fox News:

Rising Democratic star and gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis has joined her top Republican rival in supporting a proposed “open carry” law. It would allow people with concealed handgun licenses to wear a pistol on their hip, in full view, while in public.

The thing to remember about her is that she isn’t pro-anything except herself.  Also remember that she married a man who paid her way through law school, and then she divorced him after the bills were paid.

She is a putz and a whore.  She whores herself out because that’s what whores do.

In Smith & Wesson Rejects Microstamping, we covered and commented on the fact that Smith & Wesson will be removing many of its semi-automatic model firearms from the market in California due to the recent gun law, specifically citing microstamping as one of the barriers to compliance.

I applauded their move, as Californians must live with the government they have helped to create.  Elections have consequences, and if Californians cannot change California, or at least persuade the state to leave their firearms alone, then it is time to move from California to a free state.

But it isn’t that simple, I said.  It never is.  Smith & Wesson stated that they were pulling many of their models from the market.  What they did not say is that they will not be distributing those specific firearms to law enforcement in California.  After all, for Smith & Wesson to sell firearms to law enforcement that the citizenry cannot have is obscene.

I have contacted the individual on the press release, Matt Rice (matt@blueheroncomm.com), multiple times concerning this question, and he has forwarded me to Ms. Elizabeth Sharp, VP of Investor Relations (Lsharp@smith-wesson.com).  Smith & Wesson has had adequate time to assess and provide a response to my question, or at least inform me that they need additional time (I did pose that question too).  Thus far, Smith & Wesson has summarily ignored my overtures.

David Codrea:

“Has the NSA Wiretapping Violated Attorney-Client Privilege? … has anyone considered that DOJ may be actively getting attorney client and defense strategy from these spying programs?

David is investigating whether the NSA spying programs are using surreptitious and underhanded interpretations of the Sixth Amendment to do an end run around the constitution.  It wouldn’t surprise me one bit, and as I’ve said before, the NSA is full of traitors.  I do not believe for even a single second that an al Qaeda attack or Tehrik-i-Taliban attack in the states has been prevented with these methods.  If so, prove it.  And even if so, you cannot convince me that it’s necessary to violate the rights of U.S. citizens in order to effect these ends.

Kurt Hofmann:

The Children’s Rights Amendment, or the CRA, would allow a more solid legal foundation to so-called [sic] counterbalance the interpretation of the Second and Fourteenth Amendments, as interpreted by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Kurt is doing some forensic work to track down the roots of some traitorous behavior.

Speaking of traitorous behavior, Mike Vanderboegh is absolutely wearing out traitor Mike Lawlor, the henchman in Connecticut who is threatening citizens with forcible disarmament and prison over the recent gun laws.  See Mike’s posts here and here.  Reading these articles made me chuckle a bit.  I’m glad I’m not on Mike’s bad side.

Speaking of chuckling a bit, take note of the proposed changes to Massachusetts gun laws to make them look even more like Connecticut gun laws – as if more needs to be done.

Finally, see Uncle’s dumb quote of the day.  And his response?  “You’re right! Tomorrow, you might be on the street corner giving knob jobs for a few bucks. So, we should preemptively ban use of your mouth since you might do something illegal with it. And because you use it to say dumb shit.”

In a rather odd set of events, David Codrea published on actor Phillip Seymour Hoffman concerning guns and drugs – before Hoffman died.  Hoffman had assisted Mayor Bloomberg in his gun control efforts, and Hoffman was called a friend of the gun control movement.  Codrea’s article ends with the following challenge.

If Hoffman and MAIG and its wholly-owned Demand Action subsidiary are serious, let’s see if they’re willing to address that issue head on, or if their whole shtick is merely fraudulent political theater intended to advance citizen, rather than violent criminal disarmament. Surely if MAIG is sincere, they will join me to “Demand Phillip Seymour Hoffman rat out his heroin provider,” and possibly lead authorities further up the supply chain in an effort to save lives from “gun violence”?

David is of course aware that publishing at this point in time will offend some people, and considered pulling the article in its entirety.  I’m glad that he didn’t, and this serves as a springboard for discussion.

More specifically, David weighs in a little more personally on this matter at War On Guns.

Let me make it clear, as I have in the past, that I do not support the so-called “War on Drugs,” which I parody with the very name of this blog. I see no Constitutional authority for the Feds to involve themselves, and I believe the negative impacts of prohibition at all levels, including the evils of asset forfeiture, domestic financial and other spying, police militarization, official corruption and imprisonment of non-violent “offenders” are poor tradeoffs for whatever it is all those intrusions on liberty are supposed to accomplish.  I don’t think treating moral, spiritual, psychological and medical problems as criminal problems has any chance of being effective, and only guarantees more badness all the way around.

Don’t let it affect the rest of us, and have at it. The second you do, it becomes our business.

The thing is, Hoffman let it affect the rest of us, because he gave money to some of the most violent criminals plaguing us. I won’t get into a circular logic argument here about what things would be like IF the state hadn’t interfered by making drugs “illegal,” because what we’re dealing with now is how things ARE, not how some might wish them to be. The fact is, if you give money to the gangs and cartels, you are enabling their ability to hurt and kill others, which they do with regularity. And finding the guy had something like 70 bags of junk in his apartment, and had most likely been using it at the same time he was doing “gun control” voice-overs for Bloomberg cartoons, indicates he was giving substantial aid and comfort to some very evil, dangerous and violent people. That makes it our business, particularly with his insistence that the state make the rest of us more vulnerable to his supplier’s gangland associates.

This is a very interesting observation, and it’s not at all dissimilar to one I have made myself.

… before we deal with immigration, let’s deal with broader doctrines like libertarianism and what I do and don’t believe.  Let’s deal with the issue of legalization of drugs and one example.  While as a Christian I should say that I care about my readers concerning their spiritual and physical health, from a legal standpoint I don’t care one whit what you put into your body.  That’s from a theoretical standpoint.

Now for the practical side of things.  If you want to legalize drugs of all kinds, then be my guest, right after you turn around socialized medicine and forswear forever my fiduciary responsibility for support for any drug addict or funding of their medical care.  While my hard earned money is confiscated by the power of a badge and gun to support people who will not support themselves, then those people (the recipients of my money) should expect me to be involved in their lives.  My involvement will be as obnoxious and overbearing as I can possibly make it – right up until you no longer want my involvement, and then at that point I will assume you no longer want my money either.  I’m good on both accounts.  Leave me alone and I will leave you alone to do what you want.

From a personal perspective on Phillip Seymour Hoffman, I have to say that I find addiction of any kind to be heartbreaking and very sad.  I do not wish ill on any addict, and I probably do not have the fortitude to get off of any of that stuff if I ever got on it.  I do not take delight in any addict’s demise.  I have sympathy for the plight of the addict, and I say that from the very bottom of my heart.

What I do not have sympathy for is someone meddling in my life and getting preachy with me when their own life if so problematic.  Furthermore, with David I insist that libertarians be consistent libertarians.  I find that most libertarians want the freedom that libertarian brings, while they still won’t use their considerable influence to stop the bloodletting of taxation from the middle class.

Thus we have the government stealing from the middle class by the power of a badge and gun to finance the drug addict’s medical care in emergency rooms, fund the horrible, terrible and unnecessary “war on drugs,” feed the addicts (and other non-workers) with food stamps, and so on the list goes.

If you are a libertarian, I am completely uninterested in your designs for freedom unless you couple it with my freedoms so tightly that it cannot be unwoven.  I won’t interfere with your life choices, and you leave me alone too – and that includes my money and (in a note to the fat ass Soldierboy-wannbe cops and the traitor judges who approve of their actions) my freedom to stay in my home without fearing violent, dangerous SWAT raids.

I know that the anti-gunners will charge me here with inconsistency since there is an alleged “societal cost to gun ownership.”  But see, there isn’t.  This cost, whether it is misuse of guns or lack of ability to protect oneself because of gun control laws, is entirely personal.  My gun ownership has never harmed anyone, and won’t.  You have my personal approval to punish criminals, but you need to recognize that it was an individual who decided to violate the law.  Thievery of my money happens by the collective.

I find that abortion is a special case where libertarians and Christians disagree because of the very definition of human life, which both find sacred enough to protect.  The libertarian finds his own life and choices sacred, and I find the life of the unborn sacred.  On this I will never relent or compromise.  Never.  Not one iota.

But as long as you observe and respect this stipulation, libertarians need to understand something about conservatives, Christians and Christian libertarians (of which category I consider myself).  We are not the target because we aren’t the enemy, no matter what you’ve been taught by the collectivists.

Charles C. W. Cooke writing at NRO’s Corner weighs in on the recent U.S. District Court ruling that found Connecticut’s obscene gun law constitutional.  He cites Kurt Hofmann this way.

Indeed, as Kurt Hoffman observed on Examiner.com:

Covello is evidently asking us to believe that a ban on firearms used in less than two percent of “gun crimes,” according to the Congressional Research Service will do what ten years of federal “assault weapons ” banning singularly failed to do.

But he misspelled Kurt’s last name, and then pasted the wrong URL into his software.  Here is Kurt’s article.  As usual, Kurt has a good and insightful analysis.  Go visit his article.  Charles should revise his article to give Kurt the proper URL.

Ctpost.com:

When Stag Arms of New Britain wanted to produce a scaled-down version of a popular AR-15 rifle that was banned last April by Connecticut — part of a broader crackdown that was upheld Thursday by a U.S. District Court judge in Hartford — it ran the specifications by law enforcement.

“Right off the bat, they were helpful,” said Mark Malkowski, the company’s president and owner. “They did look at prototypes. They did this about three times. After that, they said it really wasn’t their responsibility to determine what was legal or not.”

The reluctance of the State Police to put its seal of approval on the Stag 22, a semi-automatic rifle that accepts lower-caliber bullets and fewer rounds of ammunition than its predecessor, is emblematic of an ongoing tension between the firearms industry and law enforcement over weapons development.

State police spokesman Lt. J. Paul Vance said his agency would hate to sign off on a gun, only to have one of its components render it illegal on a technicality.

“Are we going to be responsible for that?” said Vance, who became a household name for his many news conferences following the Dec. 14, 2012, massacre. “It’s their responsibility to make sure it conforms to the letter of the law.”

[ … ]

A majority of gun manufacturers are said by industry observers to be far along in the process of converting their traditional AR-15 rifles into .22-caliber models for sale in Connecticut, including Colt’s Manufacturing, the granddaddy of the state’s firearms industry. Multiple requests for comment were left with Colt, which was founded in 1836 in Hartford and employs about 600 people in the state.

In most modification cases, what is known as a center-fire mechanism is swapped out for a rim-fire mechanism. This inhibits the rifle’s ability to accept higher-caliber bullets like those used at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

[ … ]

Shooting purists are not as keen about .22-caliber rifles and the rimfire mechanism …

First of all, what an absurd, stolid article, e.g., low-caliber bullets, high caliber bullets, and so on.  Second, I’ll bet “shooting purists are not keen about .22-caliber rifles” in the AR-15 platform (if by that they mean .22LR).

There is a time and place for a .22LR long gun, for teaching youngsters to shoot, plinking, killing small game, etc.  I learned to shoot as a youngster with a .22LR long gun.  Those were good days.

But with Stag Arms trying to construct a long gun with these specifications in the AR platform, and with the future about this weapon known to everyone who understands these things (it won’t sell and it’s a waste of time and money to develop it), the question necessarily arises “Why is Stag Arms still in Connecticut?”  And “Why is Colt still in Connecticut?”  And as for that matter, “Why are Connecticut shooters still citizens of Connecticut?”

Come South, men.  Come South.

NY Daily News:

“Do you know who my boss is?”

A bodyguard for Gov. Chris Christie is facing criminal charges in Pennsylvania for shoplifting gun supplies — despite trying to evade punishment by dropping the name of his scandal-plagued boss.

William Carvounis, a New Jersey state trooper assigned to Christie’s security detail, reportedly stole $268 in merchandise from a Hamburg, Pa., hunting gear store earlier this month, including handgun grips, a pistol magazine and a hat.

But when the 35-year-old Carvounis was arrested by police, he repeatedly mentioned that he worked for Christie and asked for a break on the charges, police sources said.

On Jan. 8, Carvounis was perusing the aisles of a Cabela’s, an outdoor equipment store that sells hunting and camping gear, when he began stashing away several items in his cargo pants pockets. He also reportedly placed a $29.99 binocular strap in a box for a product that only cost $19.99, according to a criminal complaint filed by the responding police officer.

Carvounis, of North Brunswick, N.J., then went to check out, where he only paid for the items in his cart but not for those he had hidden in his pockets, which totaled $267.38.

When police arrived, Carvounis reportedly began attempting to slip his way out of punishment by explaining that he worked for Christie’s security detail.

“It was, more or less, ‘Look, I’ve got a good job, I’m on the governor’s security detail, I don’t want to lose my job,’ along those lines,” Tilden, Pa., Township Police Chief William McEllroy said, adding that Carvounis’ plea resembled “one cop asking another cop for a break multiple times.”

So this is yet another cop who thinks he is above the law.  We’ve seen thousands of them.  Here is the question of the day?  Would Christie have in any way assisted him had he known about this arrest?

ABC News:

In 1996 the NRA successfully lobbied Congress to pull millions of dollars out of government-funded firearms research. This has resulted in essentially a 17 year moratorium on major studies about gun injuries, which claim the lives of more than 1,000 children a year in the United States.

This is a candidate for the dumbest paragraph I’ve ever seen written in the Main Stream Media.  Note it’s obviously progressive position.

The fact that the government isn’t funding silly studies with liberal university professors or the CDC isn’t simply the market deciding what it will sustain and what it won’t.  It isn’t simply letting people and their dollars and cents sort out what is worth something and what isn’t.

No, lobbying Congress to stop funding ridiculous studies amounts to a “moratorium” on major studies.  That’s right.  It’s now somehow prohibited, illegal, or banned.

I don’t know of any particular subject that is banned, and certainly not guns or gun statistics.  But to the progressive, pulling funding dollars from our tax money is justification enough to throw around a word that means something is banned, or in other words, it’s justification enough to lie.

Caitlin Dickson at The Daily Beast:

“Gun control has never been about guns. It’s about control,” declared Jan Morgan, gun rights activist and head of a group called Armed American Women. At a South Carolina Tea Party convention earlier this month, Morgan promoted the thoroughly debunked theory that gun control allowed Hitler’s rise to power. “In the twentieth century folks, 170 million people have been annihilated by their own governments after being disarmed,” she claimed. “So, don’t let anybody tell you that disarming America is going to make us a safer place.”

We’ve discussed this before, and no one to my knowledge has ever alleged that gun control generally had anything to do with Hitler’s rise to power or the Nazi machine within Germany.  It had to do with gun control specifically.  Or in other words, it wasn’t gun control that was the problem.  It was gun control as applied to so-called enemies of the state, while the Nazis had all the guns they wanted.

But read Caitlin again.  This idea hasn’t just been debunked.  It has been “thoroughly debunked.”  And her source?  Why, Salon, to be sure.  That’s what happens when ditzy girls who write for The New Republic and The Daily Beast become … ahem … researchers.  Fringe factor indeed.