Last night was the night when we, as Americans, set aside our political differences and came together to watch Sharknado. But time hurries on! Time for another Friday LinkSwarm:
50+ years of Democratic rule turn Detroit into a failed city.
Thomas Sowell: The Left refuse to grapple with the issue of Evil. “Disarmament means making decent, law-abiding people more vulnerable to evil people.”
ObamaCare mandate delayed. “It has become a trope among defenders of the law that its flaws are the fault of Republicans because they don’t want to fix them. They must have seen their own peculiar version of Schoolhouse Rock!: The first step in making a law is jamming a massive bill down the opposition’s throat. The second is whining that the opposition won’t fix problems inherent in the bill jammed down their throats.”
Over 1,100 patients were starved to death at NHS hospitals in the UK. Funny, I don’t remember that being mentioned in the Olympic tribute to how awesome NHS is…
Blue collar Americans having trouble finding jobs. I’m sure that has nothing to do with our ruling political elite’s decision to allow unlimited illegal immigration of unskilled workers…
Obama camapign workers convicted of voter fraud in Indiana. This was for the 2008 Democratic primary, so it will likely be many years before see starting seeing convictions for the Obama campaign’s various 2012 voting fraud efforts…
And speaking of Benghazi, Libya just let one of the suspected attackers walk. Thank God we have Obama’s smart, sophisticated diplomacy in the Middle East…
Q: What do Democrats call illegal aliens who have beaten women and children? A: Evidently future Democratic voters, since they refuse to amend the Gang of 8 illegal alien amnesty bill to exclude them.
Democratic Rep. John Larson (D–Con) whines that it’s so very, very unfair that ObamaCare applies to congress. Hold on, Rep. Larson. When I can get some time on a scanning-tunneling microscope, I’ll see if I can find an appropriately sized violin.
Maureen Dowd slams Obama some more: “When the man who polled where to take his summer vacation and whether to tell the truth about his affair with Monica Lewinsky tells you you’re a captive of polls, you’d better listen up.” Bonus: Description of the NSA program as “No Call Left Behind.”
A new crime control initiative in Houston: arm the law-abiding. More on the Armed Citizen Project here.
Animal Rights activists get Obama Administration to end testing on chimps. So much for liberals being part of the “science-based community.”
SooperMexican makes brutal fun of the SNAP Challenge. (If you’ve never heard of the SNAP challenge, it’s another variant on the “Any time conservatives cut a dime of government funding, 10 million children starve!” argument.)
Scientists invent a robotic cat. Evidently it has the “massive indifference to your presence” and “not coming when you call it” parts of a cat’s personality down pat…
I know I’m a bit late to this party, since it was on Slashdot months ago, but people are evidently still freaking out over the Precision Guided Firearms Tracking Point rifle. That’s the rifle with the integrated fire control computer that automatically adjusts/delays the shot until it’s dead on target, radically reducing human error.
A writer friend fretted over someone using this to take a out a kindergarten.
This gun would be the exact opposite of a spree-killing gun, because it slows down the rate at which you fire to make a perfect on-target shot, the opposite of the spree killer’s MO. It’s also a distance weapon that’s too heavy and bulky to easily carry around. It’s a weapon for rich big game hunters and wealthy gadget freaks.
Spree killers aren’t into cool technogadgets, they’re mentally unstable losers looking to erase the shame of their own failures in a spectacular act of bloody criminal catharsis. (Plus a few completely insane, like the Tucson and Aurora shooters, whose motives are unfathomable.)
In that hypothetical kindergarten killing spree with the Tracking Point, our nutjob is only going to get 2 or 3 shots before his victims run screaming out of his scope range. He’d rack up a much higher body count by walking in with an AK or Mac-10.
Might this type of rifle be used for other types of crimes? Maybe high-end, long-distance hits and assassinations: One shot, one kill from a mile away. But the downside is that this is way too bulky and conspicuous to carry around for that purpose, and all the Tracking point guns seem to be chambered in exotic big game calibers, so legal owners of such a monster will probably come up on a list of possible perps pretty quickly.
About the last thing people need to worry about is potential spree killers with $17,000 burning a hole in their pocket. You’re more likely to be killed by a cow.
In doing my roundup of gun bills in the Texas legislature, I missed Rep. Jason Villalba (R-Dallas)’s HB 1009 to allow schools to designated one “Marshal” for every 400 students eligible to receive firearm and emergency response training. Existing CHL holders on-staff would be eligible for the training. The measure passed the House and Senate and goes to Governor Perry’s desk for signing.
Dwight was kind enough to provide a quick rundown on a few pro-Second Amendment bills making their way through the Texas legislature. He also linked to the TSRAPAC site, which includes even more bill information. (I’ve also found Texas Firearms Freedom useful, and it includes a few more bills.) Since I’ve been meaning to do a rundown on these, and since I run a full-service blog, here’s an even more brief, high level summary of the state of various bills, with links to the text of the bills themselves:
CHL BAC (HB 153): Would set allowable blood alcohol content for a CHL holder carrying at .08 (same as for DWI), up from the current “0.0”: Passed House, appears to be dead in the Senate.
“Come and Take It” (HB 928): Preempts the federal government from using state officials in Texas to enforce unconstitutional firearms restrictions. Passed House, Democrats in Senate threatening to filibuster.
Campus Concealed Carry (HB 972): Passed House, passed out of Senate committee (SB 182), needs 21 votes to get Senate floor vote.
Ease in CHL fingerprinting requirements (HB 698): Let’s those living more than 25 miles away from a digital fingerprinting shop self-submit fingerprints. Passed House, on the Senate calendar for May 20. (According to TPPF‘s David Guenthner on Twitter, this has passed the Senate, so it’s awaiting Governor Perry’s signature as well.)
Combine revolver/automatic CHLs (HB 3142): Currently, if you pass the CHL practical test with an automatic, you could carry either an automatic or a revolver, but if you passed with a revolver, you could only carry a revolver. This bill eliminates that distinction. Passed House, scheduled for May 20.
For a shocking change of pace, the Friday LinkSwarm will be on Friday:
“How can we ‘gun people’ honestly be expected to come to the table with anti-gunners when anti-gunners are willfully stupid about guns, and openly hate, despise and ridicule those of us who own them?” Read the whole thing.
The lovely qualities of Jihadi Facebook pages: “The further I crawled down the extremist rabbit hole and the more caved-in skulls and headless corpses I saw.”
“The Euro cannot be destroyed by any craft that we here possess. It was made in the fires of Frankfurt. Only there can it be unmade.” What does it say when Sauron wants the ring, er, Euro destroyed as well? Though once again: Austerity hasn’t failed in Europe, it hasn’t been tried.
“It was one thing to do amnesty during the white hot Reagan economy of the mid to late 80s. It’s quite another to do it in the midst of the Obama depression.”
London mayor Boris Johnson thinks it would be a good thing for democracy if the UK were to just walk away from the EU.
Travis County Democratic District Attorney Rosemary Lehmberg is out of the clink after serving half a 45 day sentence for DWI. A jury will evidently determine “whether her drunken driving was habitual or whether the recent arrest was the result of a one-time event.” Because lots of people without alcohol problems suddenly decide “Hey, I’m going to go cruising around town with an open bottle of vodka and a blood alcohol level of .239! That sounds like a great idea!” I might believe that…if Lehmberg was 21.
Silly Joanne Chesimard. If she had just served her time, she’d have tenure by now.
Europe is “bleeding out”. Youth unemployment? “59.1% of those under 25 are unemployed in Greece, 55.9% in Spain, 38.4% in Italy, 38.3% in Portugal, 26.5% in France.” More: “Hope and Change economies are crony capitalist systems which pick winners and losers. They maintain the status quo at all costs — and reward those who have captured government over those who innovate.”
So which is funnier, violence against women, or intimidating crime witnesses? Mountain Dew puts both in the same ad! Hilarity ensues! (Oh, and some people think it’s racist. It is, but not any more than a random gangsta rap video.)
People don’t like being bossed around by the political class. But that’s the Democratic Party’s entire model!
“We found 15 Trial Court cases, and 12 Appellate Court cases, where Shariah was found to be applicable in these particular cases. The facts are the facts: some judges are making decisions deferring to Shariah law even when those decisions conflict with Constitutional protections.”
Former New Mexico Democratic Gov. Bill Richardson says that Ted Cruz isn’t allowed to be a Hispanic because he opposes illegal alien amnesty. Maybe they should just declare that you can’t be Hispanic unless you’re a Democrat and be done with it.
Speaking of Cruz, here’s a piece in The New Republic that, when stripped of standard TNR talking points, boils down to “Yes, Ted Cruz could be elected President.”
Another day, another another 20 dead in an Islamist attack on a Christian church.
I couldn’t go to the NRA annual meeting in Houston this weekend, as much as I would have liked to, because I went to a family even in Houston last week.
But fortunately, Ted Cruz is there.
“The Constitution matters. All of the Constitution matters. You don’t get to pick and choose.”
And while we’re on the subject, I suspect that the Comanche and Apache warriors of the 19th century would far rather have bad-ass war machines named after them than be depicted as the wimpy, politically correct proto-Greens Hollywood tries to make them out to be…
