Borepatch has a good post up about the controversy over something that TJIC put up on his blog.  TJIC made a joke in poor taste, the local police read it, over-reacted, and took away his license to own a gun.  Glossing over the fact that he needed such a license in the first place, let’s examine the free speech angle here:

A citizen of the United States, exercising his constitutionally guaranteed right to say things that other people find objectionable, is penalized by his local government for saying them, and is deprived of his right to keep and bear arms.  Yes, the joke was disrespectful, but the Bill of Rights was put in place to protect our rights, especially when we exercise them in a way that is objected to.

If you make a joke about speeding on I-64 in Louisville, LMPD doesn’t come along and impound your car.  If you joke about voting for Mickey Mouse because the slate of candidates you are presented with sucks, they don’t take away your right to vote.

But because TJIC said something the locals didn’t cotton to, he got his guns taken away.

I’m passing this on because the more hell we raise, the more sunshine we shine on these cockroaches, the better off we all are.

If one of us is attacked, we are all attacked.  If one of us loses our rights, we all lose our rights.

I am TJIC.

Presented without comment:

As you can see from the blog roll on the left, I read a lot of stuff.  Through the magic of Google Reader, my goofing off is very efficient.  I try to add everyone who comments here to my blog roll.  Hey, if you’re willing to come here, read my meanderings, and add your own thoughts, you deserve a little free advertising.

If you’re reading the blog, follow it, or blog roll me and you’re not on the blogroll, drop me a note here and we’ll get that corrected.

Today we commemorate the birth of Reverand Doctor Martin Luther King, Jr. 

Since our birthdays are so close together and I’m a history buff, I’ve always been interested in the life and ideas of MLK and have admired him as a man and leader.  He was no saint. He was not a messiah.  He was a man, broken and flawed, but in a lot of ways a better man than I have become.  I may not agree with everything he said nor every stand he took, but he at least had the courage to stand up for what he believed and take the beating that those beliefs might bring.

I believe that due at least in part to his life’s work, even though we still have a long way to go, the racial problem of our country is closer to a solution than it was when he began his work in the early 1950’s.  He kept enough of a lid on the parts of the civil rights movement that wanted to break out in armed revolution, and was able to hold enough feet to the fire that major strides were made in our nation’s search for equality. 

I listened to several of his speeches today.  Here are two of his more famous speeches, but I urge you to seek out his others, especially the ones you will disagree with, and give them a listen. They are a window on a time where “civil discourse” could still be found with the progressive left and a man who could make an argument without it becoming an attack. He could discuss why he opposed the Vietnam War without making it into an attack on the soldiers fighting it.  He could speak out for the poor without calling for the destruction of the rich.

Don Surber hits one out of the park, out of the parking lot, and out of the county.

Sometimes you read things that sound so right you just can’t imagine why you didn’t think to write them yourself.

The deer bow-hunting season here in Kentucky ends tomorrow.  It runs pretty much non-stop from late September until mid-January.  During the season, when I was able to get out to the woods, I saw precisely three deer, only one of which I could have gotten a legal shot at.  Of course, that doe ran off before I could bring my gun to bear.

Occasionally, I would see small groups of deer here and there as I drove around. Luckily none of them tried to play chicken with my car again.

This morning, the day before bow season closes, and knowing full well that I will not be able to get out to the woods before hunting light ends this afternoon, I saw two groups of no less than 20 does apiece in fields near my home.  While driving the interstate to the office, I saw between 5 and 10 other deer in pairs or singly, including one buck that had a big enough rack to make a grown man stare.

My question is this:  Who gave the deer a bloody calendar so they’d know when it’s safe to come out?

For my 10th birthday, I got a Flexible Flyer sled.

For my 20th birthday, I got Operation Desert Shield and 100 extra pushups.  (Thanks Uncle George!)

For my 30th birthday, one of my buddies in the 101st Airborne arranged for me to fly as cargo in the co-pilot’s seat of an Apache gunship.

I wonder what’s going to happen today?

Senator Charles Schumer, Democrat of New York and noted Toole, has decided to try and get the Army to act as a stooge for the ATF.

“After Jared Loughner was interviewed by the military, he was rejected from the Army because of excessive drug use. Now, by law, by law that’s on the books, he should not have been allowed to buy a gun,” Schumer told NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

“But the law doesn’t require the military to notify the FBI about that, and in this case they didn’t. So I –this morning — I’m writing the administration and urging that that be done, that the military notify the FBI when someone is rejected from the military for excessive drug use and that be added to the FBI database,” Schumer said.

So basically, Chuckie wants military recruiters to inform on prospective recruits if they admit to drug use so that they can be deprived of their constitutional right to keep and bear arms.  This is to be used to feed the list of people who can’t have a gun.  In this instance they would be put on it without a trial, adjudication, or whatever.  If a recruiter made the subjective decision to reject someone due to an unacceptable amount of drug use in the past, they would lose a constitutionally protected right.


You see, when someone who wants to join our military talks to a recruiter and they get to the point they’re filling out paperwork, a series of questions is asked. When I went in, among a lot of others, were such things as:


Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?
Are you now or have you ever been a homosexual?
Do you now or have you ever used an illegal drug?


The Army uses these questions to weed out recruits who, in the eyes of military leadership, shouldn’t be in uniform.  The Communist question went away a few years after the Berlin Wall went away.  I imagine that if the homosexual question is still asked its days are numbered.


If Congress and the ATF pressure DOD to inform on their own recruits, then I say they stop asking the drug question.  Anyone who has been using in the months prior to recruitment will be caught out when they take a drug test anyway.  


Chuckles, I’m going to explain this to you, and I’ll try to use small words, but I’ll provide links to any advanced concepts:


Two words:  Posse Comitatis.  The United States Military is not now, nor has it been for a century and a half, a police force charged with enforcing the laws of the land on the civilian population.  If Congress and the courts want to exclude drug users from buying a gun from a licensed gun dealer, so be it. But soldiers are not policemen.  The job of a military recruiter is to find young people who have the potential to make good service members and convince them to join up.  They are not there to watch out for people who use drugs and inform a law enforcement agency.  If they start doing this, I expect that even kids who are squeaky clean will stop walking down to the recruiter office.


Senator Schumer, I suggest that before you start using the blood of American citizens to further your agenda, you figure out if what you want to do is legal, and whether it actually makes sense.  Is it worth making every recruiter who comes to a high school into a narcotics officer in order to keep people from buying a gun?

To the nice, deeply Christian family that sat next to us at the McDonald’s playland today, I am so deeply sorry for scaring the wits out of you during your post-church McNuggets.

You see, my son, the young, brash, and loving BooBoo, had crawled behind the video game system that McDonalds had put in the play area and was fiddling with the electrical outlet.  He has been repeatedly warned to not mess with these things, but for some reason is still fascinated with the domesticated lightning receptacles.

I do not like to use my command voice to address him, but since he was outside of my immediate reach and doing something dangerous, I was forced to.  As a semi-experienced father, I felt it was necessary to project my displeasure with his behavior in a way that not only stopped him from either electrocuting himself or destroying the video game, but also did so instantaneously. Please note that as I was vocalizing, I was rising from my seat and was headed over to physically interact with him.

I appreciate that you accepted my immediate apology once I returned to our table, but I want to point out that I did not actually shout.  What I did was to contract the bottom of my diaphragm in order to provide a short, focused burst of air through my windpipe, manipulate the muscles in my throat to bring my voice down about an octave and a half, and engaged the language center of my brain to select the proper monosyllabic commands that a two-year-old would understand to mean “Stop trying to kill yourself and destroy property”.  The result of all of these preparations was a short, sharp, well-aimed command that my son responded to very quickly.  A shout is a general exclamation, usually emotional, that I have found to be ineffective.

Again, please accept my apologies.  If either of you should ever want to learn how to project your voice without it being a whining keen, please feel free to contact me.  I give the first few lessons in command voice and “The Look” for free.

If you’re looking for something to fill up your reading list this weekend, might I suggest “Tanya:  Princess of the Elves” by Larry Correia?  It’s a tale of growing up, pushing boundaries, and shooting things.

Here’s a sample:

There was a knock on the back door of the van. There were many humans present not worthy to witness urkperfection, so Edward reached for his mask and goggles. He didn’t get to them in time before the door was flung open.

It was a girl. She saw his face and screamed. He saw her pointy ears and bellowed in surprise.

The elf regained her composure first. “Orc! Your Hunter masters need you. I summon you to battle!” Confused, Edward lifted his ax and pointed at himself, then at her. “No!” the elf shrieked. “Not me! The monster. Go battle the monster!”

His first inclination was to just lop off her peroxide-colored head. The clan ancestors had always taught that the only good elf was a dead elf (and also, coincidently, that dead elves made great holiday decorations), but Edward hesitated, because he did not want to upset the Harb Anger. Edward had never actually seen an elf before. He didn’t know if any of his clan had. This one was kind of scrawny. Not very impressive at all, really.

“Come on, what are you waiting for?” She moved her hands about like she was trying to shoo him out of the van. “You guys are supposed to go berserk with blood lust. You call that berserk? You’re just sitting there. Are you going to go into a killing frenzy or not?”

That was the idea before you showed up. He put on his mask and reluctantly got out of the van.

Enjoy!