Paul M. Jones

With a single exception, every multiple-victim public shooting in the U.S. in which more than three people have been killed since at least 1950 has taken place where citizens are not allowed to carry their own firearms.

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If one of the hundreds of people at the theater had a concealed handgun, possibly the attack would have ended like the shooting at the mega New Life Church in Colorado Springs in December 2007.

In that assault, the church’s minister had given Jeanne Assam permission to carry her concealed handgun. The gunman killed two people in the parking lot -- but when he entered the church, Assam fired 10 shots, severely wounding him. At that point, the gunman committed suicide.

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The ban against nonpolice carrying guns usually rests on the false notion that almost anyone can suddenly go crazy and start misusing their weapon or that any crossfire with a killer would be worse than the crime itself. But in state after state, permit holders are extremely law-abiding. They can lose their permits for any type of firearms-related violation.

Nor have I found a single example on record of a multiple-victim public shooting in which a permit holder accidentally shot a bystander.

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In the wake of this crime, gun control advocates have wasted no time offering up more gun control regulations as the way to prevent future tragedies. But aggressive gun control hasn’t prevented multiple-victim public shootings in Europe.

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The guns used for the attacks in Germany and Norway were obtained illegally. When individuals plan these attacks months or even years in advance, it is virtually impossible to stop them from getting whatever weapons they need.

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To reduce future carnage, the key is to get someone with a gun quickly at the scene. Quick responses not only limit the number of casualties, but reduce the attention these killers garner from committing their crimes. We can’t get rid of gun-free zones soon enough.

via Concealed weapons save lives - NY Daily News.

When you ask men about what makes a real man, a lot of them will get up on their high horses and start talking about what it means to be a good man.

“A real man would never hit a woman.”

“A man who doesn’t spend time with his family can never be a real man.”

“A real man takes responsibility for his actions.”

“A real man pays his debts.”

“Real men love Jesus.”

However, if you ask the same men to list their favorite “guy movies,” many of them will include films like The Godfather, Scarface, Goodfellas, and Fight Club.

The point is not "hypocrisy" but "what men have been told should be appealing, vs. what they actually find appealing."
via On Being a Good Man -- The Good Men Project.

Men and women are radically different along many important psychological and physical dimensions.

Not all men are created equal.

Some men really are worth more than others.

Some cultures really are better than others.

Some people can handle the task of building and maintaining prosperous civilization better than other people.

Trust is a perishable quantity vital to an orderly, wealth-generating society. It does not grow with persuasion, coercion, sloganeering, or after-school specials. It is organically emergent and intimately tied to relatedness: cultural, moral and, yes, biological.

There is no such thing as a proposition nation, only propositions that can be affirmed or refuted.

High-minded ideals must fall when they are proven unworkable, or millions will die, soul or body, in service to their continued justification.

The gradual feminization of the culture, the workplace, academia, government, media outlets and even family life has not been an unalloyed good. Quite the opposite; the observed evidence better fits the theory that elevating the female disposition and particular talents to sainthood in all facets of life has taken us down a dystopian road, as we can see in the rise of single momhood, sky-high safety net deficit spending, limp-wristed SWPLs, male cocooning and dropping out, and stagnating technological innovation.

Privilege is a good thing. Men build nations so that they may codify their privilege and enjoy it, and pass it on to their posterity. Those who rail against this privilege should be shunned and invited to leave and build their own nations more suited to their tastes.

God may be dead, but his copybook headings hold illimitable dominion over all.

The ego is the greatest enemy man has ever faced.

via The Middle Class Quiet Riot « Chateau Heartiste.

Mayor Bloomberg opened a new front in the war over firearms when he went on TV to call on cops nationwide to walk off the job until politicians tighten gun-control laws.

“I don’t understand why the police officers across this country don’t stand up collectively and say, ‘We’re going to go on strike. We’re not going to protect you. Unless you, the public, through your legislature, do what’s required to keep us safe,’” Bloomberg said on CNN Monday night.

There are so many things wrong with this, I hardly know where to begin. And, is that fomenting civil insurrection? Via Mayor Bloomberg's comment that police should strike to get Congress' attention on gun control took the debate to the next level, and drew mixed reactions - NY Daily News.

More than twice as many people have been murdered this month in the president’s hometown of Chicago than were killed in the Aurora shooting.  They are just statistics for whom there will be no presidential visits or flags flown at half staff.

Don't they have gun control in Chicago? Via » Remembering Chicago’s victims - Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion.

If the government didn't invent the Internet, who did? Vinton Cerf developed the TCP/IP protocol, the Internet's backbone, and Tim Berners-Lee gets credit for hyperlinks.

But full credit goes to the company where Mr. Taylor worked after leaving ARPA: Xerox. It was at the Xerox PARC labs in Silicon Valley in the 1970s that the Ethernet was developed to link different computer networks. Researchers there also developed the first personal computer (the Xerox Alto) and the graphical user interface that still drives computer usage today.

According to a book about Xerox PARC, "Dealers of Lightning" (by Michael Hiltzik), its top researchers realized they couldn't wait for the government to connect different networks, so would have to do it themselves. "We have a more immediate problem than they do," Robert Metcalfe told his colleague John Shoch in 1973. "We have more networks than they do." Mr. Shoch later recalled that ARPA staffers "were working under government funding and university contracts. They had contract administrators . . . and all that slow, lugubrious behavior to contend with."

via Crovitz: Who Really Invented the Internet? - WSJ.com.

UPDATE:

Maybe not a great article after all; cf. http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/07/wsj-mangles-history-to-argue-government-didnt-launch-the-internet/ (per Ed Finkler). Even so, Mr Obama's statement "Government research created the Internet so that all companies could make money off the Internet." is still incorrect for the second half. The initial impulse was not for companies to make money; that was at best a secondary and unexpected consequence.

UPDATE 2:

See this link via Alejandro Garcia Fernandez: http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57479781-93/no-credit-for-uncle-sam-in-creating-net-vint-cerf-disagrees.

In the Dark Knight, when Batman chooses not to run over the Joker when he can, we are supposedly offered a number of valuable messages--the caped hero has not quite descended into the jungle of the vigilante; the rule of law and due process are upheld; saving the Joker ensures Batman is not the Joker; and even perhaps the misunderstood crime fighter senses a sick affinity with the similarly outcast crime perpetrator. But lost among the director’s messages is the simple fact that had Batman splattered the psychopathic mass murderer, dozens still alive in the remaining minutes of the film would not have been slaughtered. Or was that the director’s message--that Batman’s inflated sense of justice, his inability to terminate evil, ensures that evil will terminate others good but weaker than he?

via Works and Days » The Demons of the Modern Rampage Killer.

“He didn’t invent iron ore and blast furnaces, did he?”

“Who?”

“Rearden. He didn’t invent smelting and chemistry and air compression. He couldn’t have invented his Metal but for thousands and thousands of other people. His Metal! Why does he think it’s his? Why does he think it’s his invention? Everybody uses the work of everybody else. Nobody ever invents anything.”

She said, puzzled, “But the iron ore and all those other things were there all the time. Why didn’t anybody else make that Metal, but Mr. Rearden did?”

From "Atlas Shrugged." Via Kind of Timely. Atlas Shrugged. Fiction Meets Reality. | Points and Figures.

Barack Obama said that “someone” built the roads and bridges and Internet and he’s right. Someone surely did, and that someone, thanks to our progressive income tax system, was a rich person. The latest data from the CBO show that the wealthiest one percent pays more than 22 percent of all income taxes -- the money that builds all the infrastructure that “helped” them get rich. In fact, they pay a larger share in taxes than they earn of the total wealth. In other words, even if the government acted the way Barack Obama says it does, “millionaires and billionaires” pay more into our government than they get out of it. That number holds true for the richest 20 percent, which includes incomes as low as $273,000 a year -- the area where you will find nearly every small business owner. They paid almost 70 percent of all income taxes despite earning only 50 percent of all income.

via The Truth Behind President Obama’s Attack on Success : The Sundries Shack.

Authorities in central Florida say two men were trying to rob an Internet cafe when a 71-year-old patron began shooting his own gun, wounding the suspects.

Surveillance video shows two masked men entering the Palms Internet Cafe around 10 p.m. Friday. The Ocala Star-Banner (http://bit.ly/NvmmEg) reports one pointed a gun at customers while the other swung a baseball bat.

The video shows patron Samuel Williams pulling a handgun and shooting. He continues firing while the suspects fall over each other as they run out the door.

Nineteen-year-olds Duwayne Henderson and Davis Dawkins were later arrested and face attempted armed robbery with a firearm and criminal mischief charges. Both posted bail and were released.

Williams has a concealed weapons permit. Bill Gladson of the Marion County State Attorney’s Office says the shooting appears justified.

If guns were illegal, only the robbers would have had one. Good thing our civil right to keep and bear arms is recognized. Via Video shows 71-year-old man shooting 2 would-be robbers at Internet cafe in central Florida - The Washington Post.