Tag Archives: Firearms

Institutional Capture

I’ve mentioned before that the left has, in the long-term, won almost every political battle of the last century. The one big area where the US (and just the US) has not been moving overly left is gun freedom. The main reason for this is the NRA, but the NRA wasn’t always as powerful or hardline as it is now.

In the second half of the 1970s, the NRA faced a crossroads. Would it remain an Establishment institution, partnering with such mainstream entities as the Ford Foundation and focusing on shooting competitions? Or would it roll up its sleeves and fight hammer and tongs against the gun-control advocates? Or flee to the Mountain West? The latter was appealing, and the NRA leadership decided to move the headquarters to Colorado and also spend $30 million to build a recreational facility in New Mexico called the National Outdoor Center.

The moderates felt rejected by both the NRA hard-liners and the Washington elite.

“Because of the political direction the NRA was taking, they weren’t being invited to parties and their wives were not happy,” says Jeff Knox, Neal’s son and director of the Firearms Coalition, which fights for the Second Amendment and against laws restricting guns or ammunition. “Dad was on the phone constantly with various people around the country. He had his copy of the NRA bylaws and Robert’s Rules, highlighted and marked. My father and a lot of local club leaders and state association guys organized their troops.”

Theirs was a grass-roots movement within the NRA. The solution was to use the membership to make changes. The bylaws of the NRA gave members power on the convention floor to vote for changes in the NRA governing structure.

“We were fighting the federal government on one hand and internal NRA on the other hand,” Aquilino says.

In Cincinnati, Knox read the group’s demands, 15 of them, including one that would give the members of the NRA the right to pick the executive vice president, rather than letting the NRA’s board decide. The coup took hours to accomplish. Joe Tartaro, a rebel, remembers the evening as “electric.” The hall’s vending machine ran out of sodas.

By 3:30 in the morning the NRA had a whole new look. Gone were the Old Guard officers, including Maxwell Rich, the ousted executive vice president. The members replaced him with an ideological soul mate of Knox’s named Harlon Carter.

Carter, a longtime NRA board member, had arrived in Washington in 1975 as founding director of a new NRA lobbying unit, the Institute for Legislative Action (ILA). His pugnacious approach, which rankled the Old Guard, was captured in a letter he wrote to the entire NRA membership to discuss the fight in Congress over gun control: “We can win it on a simple concept —No compromise. No gun legislation.”

The right is holding its own in this particular battle because hardliners captured the NRA (and then later recaptured it after a moderate pushback). This is how the left has always won, by capturing institutions: the academy, NGO’s, the media, the bureaucracy, etc.

If the right wants to win, it needs to figure out a way to take over pre-existing institutions. Making institutions is also good, but it takes a lot more effort. Conquering pre-existing institutions and their resource base is better.

End Gun Violence

We need to end gun violence.

Almost two-thirds of gun deaths are suicides. 80% of firearms suicides are white males. This means that about half of gun deaths are suicides by white males. If we’re serious about ending gun violence, we need to focus on preventing white males from wanting to kill themselves.

White male suicide rates peak in middle age, a group that used to have relatively lower risk of suicide.

What drives white male suicide?

Two of the biggest risk factors are not being married and being unemployed.

So, if we want to stop gun violence, we need to make it so that white men can get married and have a job.

If you’re serious about ending gun violence, you need to oppose the war on the family and the hook-up culture. You also need to oppose immigration, bureaucracy, regulation, high taxes, and out-sourcing which are destroying which destroy American jobs.

Stopping the denigration of white males and ending the false idea of white male privilege also wouldn’t hurt.

It’s the only way forward to a reduce gun violence.

H/T: CM from VP for the idea.

Gun Deaths

David Auerbacher has a piece where he argues that stats are on the side of freedom haters. He is right if you think having many studies of rigged studies by lying ideologues using false measures and ignoring confounding variables (ie. race) are ‘the stats’. But rather than addressing the usual idiocy that has been addressed to death elsewhere, I would like to comment on one specific phrase used by him and other freedom haters.

“Gun deaths”.

The use of the phrase ‘gun deaths’ is a sure sign that the person making the argument is arguing in bad faith (if not outright lying with statistics) and has absolutely nothing worthwhile to say on the topic of guns and violence.

What this phrase ignores, and what gun control advocates scramble to hide is that guns have substitute goods.

The large majority of gun deaths are suicides, another thing liberals try to hide with the phrase ‘gun deaths’ by trying to lump suicides in with murders and mass shootings. Substitute goods for guns in relation to suicide include: drugs, poison, rope, plastic bags, carbon monoxide, water, electricity, high places, and knives, to name some of the more common suicide goods. Guns have the advantage of being quick, relatively painless, and mostly effective, but the other suicide goods are all adequate substitutes.

Side note: Isn’t it odd that liberals, who support euthanasia and the right-to-die, suddenly hate the right-to-die if it bolsters the emotional case for gun control.

There are also many substitute goods for guns in relation to murder, including: knives, fists, feet, bats, hammers, carbon monoxide, matches, drugs, water, and explosives, to name of the most common.

By only measuring ‘gun deaths’ the deceptive liberal is ignoring that someone without a gun can easily obtain other methods of killing themselves or other people if they should choose. To say gun deaths rise or fall in relation to gun availability or gun control measures is to say nothing of any value at all. If the gun is not available, the gun death will likely become a knife death or an OD or a drowning, etc.

“Nearly 75% of the cases involving firearms are actually gang related.” Does anyone honestly think that gangs will stop murdering each other if law-abiding citizens are restricted from owning firearms? Leaving aside that what makes criminals criminals is that don’t follow laws, such as gun control laws, is there anyone that could possibly believe a gangbanger would say to himself, “I really wanna ice that bitch nigga, but I ain’t got no gat. It therefore behooves me to refrain from committing violence upon his person, however much  distress his continued existence upon this mortal plane causes me.”

No, if a gangbanger wants to ice a bitch nigga, and he ain’t got a gat, he gonna get himself a knife and stab that bitch nigga.

Guns deaths is used specifically to hide the substitution effect for murder (and to conflate murder and suicide) so that deceitful freedom-haters can paint gun freedoms in a negative light.

There is nothing special about a gun death that separates it from a knife death, a hanging, a drowning, or an OD. A person is no less dead if they are killed with a knife than with a gun. There is no reason to make this distinction other than rhetorical or statistical manipulation.

If anybody uses the phrase ‘gun deaths’ you can ignore their arguments because they are, at best, full of shit and not worth listening to.

5 Reasons Gun Owners Should Join the NRA

Luke McKinney at Cracked has an(other) idiotic article lacking that substitutes snark and insult for anything resembling logic or reason over at Cracked on why we should hate the NRA (Spoiler alert: Because they think you should be free to own a gun). So, I’m going to reply to his distortions:

#5. They’re Paid By Gun Manufacturers

In 2013, Business Insider reported that less than half of the NRA’s revenue came from membership dues and fees …

Which means almost half of its funds come from member dues and fees (it has 5 million members according to wiki). Compared to other lobbying groups, that’s pretty high. For example, the AMA (the second largest lobbying group next the the Chamber of Commerce) supposedly represents physicians. It gets only 16% of its fees from dues.

In this section, Luke throws out a bunch of random unrelated trivia, but never gives any reason why they matter. Why is it bad that the NRA is half-funded by the industry? Luke never explains, he just says it is. In fact, I’m happy that the gun companies support their customers and their freedoms.

Also, notice how Luke links an article saying the NRA engages in illegal activities, when the article’s big findings (after the updates are taken into account) were that a website page was accidentally improperly routed, that taxes were properly paid but incompletely documented, and that a single box was left unchecked on tax papers (not effecting taxes paid).

So, Luke McKinney believes that if your webmaster screws up a link and you screw up your tax forms, nobody should ever associate with you again. I’ve done both, you all must never read my blog again.

#4. They’re Allowed To Casually Talk About Shooting People

Ted Nugent made a joke about shooting senators, therefore the NRA is evil. (That is literally his argument).

Cracked made multiple jokes about beating retarded children, therefore Cracked is evil. If Luke McKinney has any decency at all he will quit writing for Cracked. Or does Luke support beating developmentally disabled children?

#3. NRA Board Members Are All Kinds Of Scary

According to McKinney, because one NRA member argues for school paddlings you should leave the NRA. Maybe you don’t agree with school paddlings, but it is a normal practice and is hardly that frightening to support. 26% of the US supports school corporal punishment: so Luke literally thinks a quarter of the US is so evil you should not interact with them.

Fellow board member Don Young, a congressman from Alaska, described the BP Gulf oil spill as a “natural phenomena,”

What he actually said, right where Luke links is:

Young said: “This is not an environmental disaster, and I will say that again and again because it is a national phenomena. Oil has seeped into this ocean for centuries, will continue to do it. During World War II there was over 10 million barrels of oil spilt from ships, and no natural catastrophe. … We will lose some birds, we will lose some fixed sealife, but overall it will recover.”

If you are not retarded (sorry Luke) you can easily read, even in that conveniently clipped quote, that it is referring to oil spilling into the sea is a natural phenomena, not that the BP spill itself was.

Then Luke just flat out lies:

and thinks wolves would be a great solution to the homelessness problem.

Actually, if you read the article Luke linked, you can see that he wasn’t talking about solving the homeless problem at all. He was talking about how wolves are dangerous and how urbanites who never had to deal with the danger of wolves are making laws to prevent rural folk from protecting themselves. Of course, Luke, being an ignorant urbanite, has no idea about the danger of wolves in rural areas where their aren’t a lot of police and where animal control is far away. It almost seems like he supports wolves killing people.

So, if you are one of the quarter of the US who support paddling in schools and believe that rural people don’t deserve to get eaten by wolves, you are so scary that everyone should disassociate from you.

#2. They’re Pretty Racist

The NRA’s 2015 annual meeting featured a presentation on how whole swathes of American cities had been turned into Muslim “no-go zones,”

It seems Luke McKinney thinks Muslims are a race. I think that makes him a racist, not to mention just plain ignorant of biology, sociology, and religion.

“Demographically symbolic” is a masterpiece. Nine syllables that would be less obvious if he’d just screamed, “Racism sexism racism!” It’s a code word, but not a disguised code word;

He links to this:

Eight failed years of one demographically symbolic president is enough. Eight years of the Obama-Clinton regime has sent our nation into a tailspin of moral decay, deceit and destruction.

I guess Luke McKinney thinks the Huffington Post’s Sam Stein is racist for thinking of the emotional symbolism of Obama’s victory, or Habib Aruna for thinking of the sybolism of an African American winning resoundingly twice, or NBC news, or CTV news, etc. The symbolism of the first African American winning the presidency was a huge topic in 2008. I guess Luke’s ignorant of recent political history as well.

He went on to blame the president for all problems, to describe how guns solve all problems, and to explain, “For that right, NRA will always fight and, believe me, the fight is coming.” Of course, there’s no possible problem with the leader of an armed group blaming a single named individual for all the problems in the world in public and insisting “the fight is coming.” Not even in a country where a Cracked writer can be placed on the No-Fly list for writing a satirical article. Right now the only difference between NRA talks and Al-Qaeda videos is production value.

Do I honestly need to explain how retarded this is?

Maybe I do. Luke believes that using a fighting metaphor to describe a political battle (oh no, a war metaphor, I must be Hitler) is exactly equivalent to to literally talking about blowing thousands of other people, and yourselves, up. (But only when the evil NRA does it).

I am sure Luke has never used a war metaphor before.

#1. They Blame Victims (And Everything Else)

The NRA makes the very accurate point that if you vote against people’s ability to defend themselves they won’t have the ability to defend themselves. This makes them evil (somehow, he doesn’t exactly explain how).

After Sandy Hook, Wayne LaPierre blamed music videos, movies, video games — they’re on course to blame every object in existence for shootings except for objects that actually shoot. Blaming everything except the gun is their only job, and the angrier it makes people, the better it works.

Luke McKinney believes guns are magical objects that have their own agency and willfully kill people. People who don’t share this belief are implied to be evil (for some unexplained reason).

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Finally, though, through all the distortions Luke finally gets to his real point:

Their sole function is to prevent rational debate…They’ve buried the country under so much bullshit that even intelligent Americans start talking about individual rights and waiting periods, as if there was any sane sequence of words that ends with a peacetime civilian holding an AR-15

He wants to limit any discussion of guns to “rational debate” and by “rational debate” he means people who agree with him that guns he doesn’t like should be banned being able to talk and everybody else should shut up. He wants to control the discussion and he wants to limit your ability for self-defence. And he is willing to distort the truth and slander others to do so.

The whole point of his rambling, illogical, unconnected anti-NRA rant was that he hates the fact that civilians can own a semi-automatic weapon. He wants to take them away from you.

Join the NRA so he can’t.

Join the NRA: where business and citizens work together to protect freedom, where celebrities make jokes, where people don’t believe rural dwellers deserve to be eaten by wolves, where people make and understand common metaphors and use basic communication skills, and where people don’t believe inanimate object have agency.

If you value sanity, join the NRA!

Basic Gun Ownership

RoK recently ran an article, All Men should Own a Gun. I agree. Strength and the ability to enact violence is a defining trait of manliness and, in modern times, strength and violence are measured by firearms. Anybody failing to train with firearms is failing as a man.

A couple years ago I did a  fair amount of research on gun ownership, so I’m gonna share the basics of what I found while researching and in my first couple years of gun ownership here with y’all. This should serve as in-depth beginners guide here.

Note: Throughout this piece, I will be ignoring obsolete, black powder, and special use firearms. The use of these can be fun and challenging, but do not belong in a beginners guide.

Another Note: Different jurisdictions have different laws. Make sure to check the legality of any firearms purchases or uses where you live.

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Basics

There are 2 basic types of personal firearms:

Handguns: This is a gun designed for use with a single-hand, although, bracing with your second hand is usually recommended. Handguns are more concealable and easier to use in cramped quarters, but are less accurate with less range.

Long guns: Long guns are designed to be fired using both hands, often bracing with the body. Long guns are more accurate with longer range, but are less concealable, less portable, and hard to use in enclosed spaces.

These are the parts of a firearm you should know about:

  • Muzzle: This is the end of the barrel where the bullet comes out of.
  • Barrel: This is the tube the bullet passes through on its way to the muzzle.
  • Magazine: The magazine stores ammo and feeds it into the action. It can be internal to the firearm or detachable. A magazine is not a clip; calling it a clip is wrong. A clip stores ammunition but has no feeding magazine. Almost anytime most people say clip, they mean magazine.
  • Action: This consists fo the moving parts of the firearm. It’s what loads bullets and makes them fire.
  • Trigger: The part of the action you pull to fire a firearm.
  • Chamber: The part of the barrel which holds a single bullet or shell in a position ready to fire.
  • Safety: When on, it prevents the trigger from being pulled accidentally.
  • Stock: This is the end of the long gun which holds the action and barrel together. The butt of the stock is usually braced against the shoulder.
  • Grip: This is the part of the handgun which you hold.
  • Sights: Most firearms have a rear sight on the barrel near the action and a front sight near the muzzle. You line the two sites up to aim.
  • Scope: An attachable telescope which allows for increased accuracy.

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Long Guns

There are three basic types of long gun:

Rifle: A rifle is loaded with cartridges and shoots bullets. The long, rifled barrel allows for high accuracy and high muzzle velocity and energy (ie: he bullets shoot fast and hard). Rifles are for when you want accuracy and long-range.

Shotgun: A shotgun is loaded with shells and shoots shot and slugs. Shotguns are usually not rifled. They are not as accurate as rifles and have limited range, but within its, shot, a bunch of pellets, will spread after being fired and will hit an area rather than a point, which is useful for hitting smaller and faster moving targets (ie: birds) or delivering shock (ie: home defence). Slugs (a solid chunk of metal) can deliver a massive amount of force within a limited range.

Carbines: This usually refers to shorter rifles, but the definition has traditionally been rather vague. Nowadays it is often used to refer to long guns which fire pistol ammunition. These are generally lighter with shorter barrels making them easier to use in close combat, but less powerful and less accurate.

There are four basic types of long gun actions: single-shot, repeaters, semi-automatic, and automatic.

Single-Shot: It can fire a single-shot before it need to be reloading. The typical single-shots in use today are the break-action, where the barrel is hinged to the stock and can break open to load, and .22 bolt actions for youths. Single-shots have minimal parts and are therefore very reliable, very easy to maintain, and are generally inexpensive, but, obviously, they are slow-firing. These are almost always outclassed by repeaters for most purposes, but a break-action shotgun can make a dependable, easy to maintain home defence weapon.

Repeaters: Repeaters can shoot multiple times between reloads, but the action has to be manually worked between each shot. These are slower to fire than automatics, but are cheaper, easier to maintain, and more reliable as they have less moving parts. They can also generally more accurate as they can be built to lower tolerances due to fewer moving parts. Repeaters are well-suited for hunting or sniping where initial accuracy is more important than follow-up shot speed, but are less well-suited for “tactical” situations.

Semi-automatics: A semi-automatic delivers one shot per a trigger pull. A trigger pull both fires the weapons and makes the action automatically load the next bullet into the chamber. Semi-auto weapons are more expensive, require more maintenance, and are less accurate, but have a higher rate of fire than repeaters. The magazine size on semi-automatics is usually higher than those on repeaters.

Automatic: An automatic fires continuously as the trigger is held down. Burst fire is a variation of automatic fire where multiple shots are fired each trigger pull. Automatic weapons are generally illegal everywhere, so it’s unlikely you’ll ever own one. Automatic fire is very inaccurate due to recoil and it’s uses are essentially limited to fun, suppression, or hosing down a small enclosed space or a tightly packed group. Burst fire, while still illegal, is more useful. It generally has the same uses as semi-automatic fire, but increases the chance of death or incapacitation at the cost of increased ammunition usage.

Side rant: An assault rifle is a rifle with a selective fire option (ie: it can shoot on both semi-auto and auto). Automatic and selective fire weapons are not purchasable by civilians. (There are a precious few Americans with a license for grandfathered automatic weapons, but they are very rare). You can tell someone is ignorant of firearms if they call an AR-15, or any other civilian rifle, an assault rifle.

There are 3 basic types of repeating actions:

Bolt: A bolt actions is located at the stock end of the barrel. It removes spent ammunition from the chamber by pulling back a handle on a bolt; then loads new ammo into the chamber by pushing the bolt forward. Of the repeating actions, bolt actions are the most reliable, most accurate, and most durable, but they are a bit slower to work than pump- or lever-actions. A bolt action rifle is your standard hunting tool.

Pump: A pump action is located at the bottom of a barrel. It slides forward to eject spent ammunition and slides backwards to load new ammunition into the chamber. It is less accurate and less reliable than the bolt, but cycles faster, pump-action can sometimes match semi-auto cycling speeds. Pump actions are generally found on shotguns and rarely found on rifles.

Lever: A lever action feeds ammunition into and out of a chamber through the use of a lever found at the bottom of the stock behind the trigger. It cycles faster and has a shorter length than a bolt. It can also be used by either hand. It can not be shot from a prone position and lever actions generally use a tubular magazine which can limit ammunition types (pointed ammunition can misfire in a tubular magazine).

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Handguns

There are two basic types of handguns (there are others, but these are generally obsolete, special purpose, or hobbyist):

Pistols: Pistols are your standard handgun; they have a chamber built into the barrel. They have detachable magazines.

Revolvers: Revolvers have a cylinder which is detachable from the barrel and acts as chamber. The ammunition is loaded directly into the cylinder, which turns to cycle ammunition. Revolvers are generally more reliable than pistols, but are usually limited to six shots between reloading.

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Ammunition

There are two types of basic ammunition: cartridges and shells. Shotguns use shells, other personal firearms use cartridges.

The major parts of a cartridge:

  • Case (brass): This hold the other parts of the bullet.
  • Bullet: This is the piece of metal that is ejected from the firearm to kill the target.
  • Gunpowder: This propels the bullet.
  • Primer: When struck this produces heat which ignites the gunpowder.

The shell is much the same the same, but it case is usually plastic not metal. It has slugs or shot instead of a bullet. It also has an added component, the wad, which prevents the shot from mixing with the powder.

There are two basic types of cartridge:

Centrefire: Centrefire ammo has the primer located in the center of cartridge base. It can withstand higher pressures allowing greater bullet velocity and energy than rimfire. Most modern ammo is centrefire.

Rimfire: Rimfire ammo has the primer located on the rim of the cartridge base. It is cheaper to manufacture than centrefire but can no withstand as much pressure. Low calibers like .17 and .22 are generally the only cartridges that are still rimfire.

There are far more types of ammunition out there than I could possibly list, but I’ll outline some of the major ones. The numbers indicate caliber, which indicates the diameter of the the bullet. Generally higher calibers are more powerful and more expensive, but that does not mean they are necessarily better; they are also more difficult to learn to shoot accurately and can be uncomfortable to use.

Rimfire:

.22LR: This is your major rimfire cartridge. It is cheap (~4-5¢/bullet) and common, but not very powerful. This is good for target practice and shooting small critters. It is used in both pistols and rifles.

Handgun:

.257/.357/.44 Magnum: These magnum rounds are for your revolver and hold more powder than normal rounds of the same caliber resulting in higher muzzle energy and velocity. These are the most popular type of revolver ammunition.

.38 Special: A cheaper, but less powerful revolver round that can be fired from a .357 Magnum (Note: The reverse is not true; you can not fire .357 ammo from a .38 revolver; trying to do so is dangerous).

9mm: This is your basic pistol ammunition. It is popular and widely used, but is criticized for a lack stopping power.

.40 S&W: A relatively new pistol round with more stopping power than 9mm. It has gained great popularity among police for being a good balance between the stopping power of 10mm and the ease of use of the 9mm.

.45 ACP: Another of the basic pistol rounds. Which of 9mm, .40, .45, and 10mm is superior is a never-ending discussion among gun folks which I’m not going to get into.

10mm: Another popular handgun load. It’s more powerful than .40 or .45.

Rifle:

5.56×45 NATO/.223 Rem: These are common western military rounds and are what AR’s and similar weapons will generally fire. They take some criticism for a lack of stopping power as compared to the .308. The .223 can be fired from 5.56 guns, but doing the reverse may not always be safe. These are not for hunting big game.

.270 Win: A popular hunting cartridge. Some cartridges are not powerful enough for larger game such as elk or moose.

.30-.30: Another popular hunting cartridge. It is debatable on whether it is suitable for larger big game such as moose and elk.

.308/.30-06: The two main big game hunting cartridges that are suitable for larger game. (Note: .308 and 7.62×51 are somewhat interchangeable). Which is better is an eternal debate among gun folks. The .30-06 is slightly more powerful, but .308 is more available and has lighter recoil.

7.62×39: A very popular Soviet military cartridge used in AK’s and SKS’. It’s relatively cheap and plentiful as there’s lots of military surplus floating round. It’s not powerful enough to be used for big game.

7.62x54R: A popular high-powered Soviet military cartridge. It’s relatively cheap and plentiful as there’s lots of military surplus floating around. Powerful enough for big game hunting.

Shotgun:

Shotgun ammunition is measured differently. Every shotgun has a bore diameter measured in gauge; the lower the gauge the wider the shell used and, generally, the more powerful the gun gun and ammunition is. Traditional shotguns sizes range from 10 gauge to .410 (.410 is weird because it is actually measured as a caliber).

Out of all of them, there are two gauges that really matter to a beginner: 12 gauge and 20 gauge. 12 gauge is by far the most popular shotgun size. 20 gauge is commonly used by people who can not control the power and kick of a 12 gauge (women and children). It is also commonly used for skeet and fowl.

Each shotgun chamber and shell also has a length; these will be 2 3/4″, 3″, and 3.5″. 3″ is the most common and is what you should get unless you have some specific need for 3.5″. Longer chambers can shoot shorter shell lengths; so the 3″ can shoot 2 3/4″ (the reverse is not true).

Beyond this there are three types of shotgun ammunition:

Slugs: Slugs are essentially large chunks of metal. They are very powerful within 100 yards or so.

Birdshot: These are shells filled with many small pellets. Pellets sizes range from 9-FF, with higher numbers being smaller, lower numbers being larger, and letters being larger still. The smaller the pellets, the more in a shell. What size birdshot you get depends on the bird you’re trying to hunt.

Buckshot: These are shells filled with larger metal balls used to hunt larger game. They come in varying sizes: 00 (pronounced double-ought) is common. Be aware, despite being called buckshot, it may not be legal to hunt deer or other big game with buckshot depending on where you live.

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Buying Guide

Now that you are generally acquainted with basic firearms information we can get to your buying guide. You purposes for buying firearms are different so everything said here may not apply to you. Also, you don’t have to buy everything at once; most people don’t have the thousands of dollars a full collection requires, so build up over time.

That said, a basic firearm collection consists of:

.22LR rifle
.22LR pistol
A high-powered handgun
A shotgun
A hunting rifle
A tactical rifle

I’ll go over the purchase of each of these below.

.22LR Rifle & Pistol:

The .22LR rifle and pistol are your basic target shooting weapons. They’re relatively inexpensive and .22 ammo is cheap and plentiful, so you can blow through a few hundred rounds without breaking the bank. They can also be used for hunting rodents for amusement.

The Ruger Mark III is an excellent .22 pistol at a reasonable price ($350-650*).

As for the .22 rifle; you have to first decide if you want single-shot or semi-auto. I would recommend as semi-auto, as reloading singleshots constantly can get annoying, but you could save a bit of money. Also note, that single-shot .22’s are usually geared towards children, so they may not always feel right.

The Ruger 10/22 is a popular semi-auto .22LR rifle at a reasonable price ($200-400). You can get the Tapco Ruger 10/22 ($100) if you really need to save money, but it will be lower quality.

If you really want to get a single shot, I’ve heard the Cricket ($130) is pretty good.

High-Powered Handgun

The high-powered handgun is for personal defence. If concealed carry is allowed where you live, carry it with you; if not, learn to use it in case a situation ever arises where you need it. It can be used for home defence, but generally a shotgun is better.

You have to choose first if you want a revolver or a pistol (or both). A revolver is more reliable, but has less ammo capacity.

If you want a revolver, get it in .357 Magnum. Pretending to be Dirty Harry may be tempting, but the .44 is too powerful for a starter revolver. .357 is a solid round capable of downing a man. As well, .38 special can be used in a .357 revolver for practice at a cheaper price. I own the Smith & Wesson .357 ($800-1100) and its a good revolver, I’d recommend it. It’s a bit pricy, so the Pietta 1873 ($450) could be a cheaper alternative; it’s reviewed fairly well.

As for pistols, there’s two major camps: the Glock and the 1911. The Glock is more reliable and has more capacity, but some think the 1911 has a better trigger. The debate has been raging for a while and I’m not going to wade into it, so you’ll just have to do some research and choose. Then you need to choose your ammo type as described above.

As for me, I plan on getting a Glock Gen IV ($600-700) in .40S&W.

Shotgun

The shotgun is for home defence and for hunting. Not to mention, the shotgun is by far the most fun weapon to shoot. Unless your main purpose for the shotgun is skeet (or you’re a women or child), get a 12 gauge in 3″. I’d recommend a pump action, but you could get a semi-auto if you have money to burn.

The Mossberg 500 series ($300-350) is generally recommended as a starter shotgun. You can get a pump cheaper, but they won’t be as good quality. I own one and I love it.

Hunting Rifle

This is for hunting big game. You want a bolt action chambered in either .30-06 or .308, probably .308. I bought the .30-06 and wish I had got .308 instead; I’m finding the upwards kick of the .30-06 annoying.

The Savage Arms Axis ($430) was a highly recommended starting rifle. It’s not overly expensive and it’s good quality. The scope is subpar, but you can always replace it if you wish. I own one, it can occasionally jam if I slide the bolt too fast, but other than that works well.

I’ve found though, that I prefer the Mosin-Nagent. I find it easier and more enjoyable to shoot. You can get a milsurp nugget for a fairly good price and ammo is inexpensive. Be careful though, quality can vary. Also it doesn’t come with a scope unless you pay extra for the sniper variant, which will limit your accuracy and range.

Tactical Rifle

Your tactical rifle is the one you keep for potential tactical situations, for example, should law and order ever break down in a natural disaster. It will likely be the most expensive addition to your collection. They start in the $800-1000 range and go up from there depending on what you’re looking for. A really good new one with all the cool doodads could cost $3000-4000.

Two common types of tactical rifles are either a .308 battle rifle or a .223/5.56 AR-15 variant.

AR’s are popular and are the civilian version of the US Army’s M16. They also have the advantage of having untold modification options, so you can look tacticool (not necessarily a good thing; kitting yourself out beyond your skill level can get you mocked silently by others at the range).

Boston’s Gun Bible recommends against AR-15 variants as .223 does not have enough stopping power. He is a proponent of .308 battle rifles and recommends the M1A or the FN-FAL. They have longer range and more stopping power.

The choice is yours. Give it some research and thought.

Given the high cost of even a basic tactical rifle, you might as well skip buying an intro rifle and save up for the good one you really want, but if you’re really looking for a cheap battle rifle, the Soviet surplus SVT-40 can be had for a few hundred dollars. It won’t be as good, but it should be functional and uses the powerful 7.62x54R round.

I am still saving for a tactical rifle and looking for a good one that’s legal in Canada. I think it might be an M1A. For now I make do with an SKS and am planning on getting the SVT-40 this spring.

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Other Things You Need

Here are a few other things you should buy for your guns, make sure to include them in your gun budget:

  • Cleaning kit
  • Gun Oil & cloth
  • Windex
  • Something to shoot at (if not using a range)
  • Spare magazines (have 2-3 mags per gun)
  • Extra ammo
  • Trigger locks – May be required by law, I prefer the combination locks over the key locks.
  • Carrying cases
  • Gun safe – May be required by law, necessary if children are around, optional otherwise.
  • Holster – Needed if you plan to concealed carry, optional otherwise.
  • Range membership

When buying ammunition, buy in bulk to save money. If you don’t buy in bulk, then always buy a more than you use and save the extra, until you have 500-1000 rounds per ammo type, just in case you ever need it.

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Shooting Space

You need a place to practice with your firearms. If you live in the country, this should be easy, use your own land, some public land, or a friend’s land. If you live in the city it can be more difficult.

In the city you should be able to find an indoor range for handguns and your .22. Finding an indoor range for higher calibers and shotguns is a lot less likely. Depending on your city, you may be able to find an outdoor range. If you really can’t find anything, then make it a point to drive out to public land once a month for some shooting, but make sure you know the regs concerning the use of public land.

If you’re going to use a range choose one close to you and make sure to budget for the annual range fee. They will often be hundreds of dollars.

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Other considerations

Milsurp: Military surplus, especially that from former Soviet republics, can be a good way to get a few firearms for cheap. In Canada, SKS and Mosin-Nagant rifles can be bought for $200, an SVT-40 for under $400. I think the US is more expensive, though, due to import laws. Also, quality can vary so make sure to purchase from a reputable dealer.

Buying Used: Used guns can save you money, but there’s a risk they might not work well. Either buy used from a reputable dealer or, if a private purchase, make sure to test the guns first to make sure they shoot wel. One advantage of used firearms is that if kept in good condition they will rarely decrease in value, and may even increase in value.

Home defence: For home defence, the general recommendation a 12-gauge shotgun. You’ll want a shorter barrel; a long-barreled shotgun will be harder to maneuver with. Load it with 1 or 0 buckshot. If you can’t find them, 00 is more common and will also do. a high-powered pistol, rifle, or slug will penetrate your walls and could go who knows where creating collateral damage. Buckshot lowers the chances of collateral damage while still having the force to put someone down. The pump-shotgun also has the added bonus of a familiar sound, which may strike intimidate intruders. (Some people prefer birdshot to reduce penetration further). Store your shotgun safely near where you sleep; keep it loaded (if legal) but don’t chamber a round. Practice retrieving it and loading it. Make sure to know self-defence laws for where you live.

Cleaning: You’ll want to give your guns a quick wipe down after use and occasionally oil it. You should also dissemble it for a thorough cleaning and oiling on occasion. How often you do this depends on your gun; generally the more complex the gun, the more maintenance it needs. Your bolt action rifle won’t need much cleaning all that often. You’re expensive semi-auto will need it lot more. Your Soviet surplus rifle can be ignored for years fi you’re not using corrosive ammo.

Corrosive ammunition: Beware of corrosive ammunition, especially if you’re buying milsurp ammo. There’s nothing wrong with using corrosive ammunition, but if you do, make sure to clean your gun after every use. Windex works well for this. If you don’t it will ruin your gun.

Survivalism: If you are doing the survivalism route get guns in .22LR, 5.56×45, .308, and 12 gauge and stock up on ammo (buy .223 instead of 5.56×45). These will be the most common ammunition available and the most sought after. Also, it is relatively easy and inexpensive to create large stockpiles of surplus Soviet 7.62×39 and 7.62x54R ammunition.

There you have a starter guide to getting yourself some guns. Now get to shooting.

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* All prices are new unless it’s milsurp.

The Bookshelf: Shoot Deer

Manosphere-affiliated blogger Tim, has created an introductory ebook on hunting deer, called, in blunt style, Shoot Deer. He gave me a copy to review.

I am a beginning hunter; I went out by myself this fall for the first time.  For my first hunt, I simply drove out to the nearest crown land, parked at the side of the highway and walked a few hundred meters into the bush til I found a small clearing. I then sat on the ground in small dip leaning back against a tree and waited, shotgun in hand. Probably not the most effective way of harvesting anything, but it was a learning example for next time (while hoping not to get lost in the woods), when I plan to prepare a bit better.

As could be expected, I didn’t catch anything, which was somewhat frustrating as I could hear scraping/crunching within shooting range, but couldn’t see anything through the trees. I would move a bit closer, wait 5-10 minutes, then move again, but it always was just out of sight. In retrospect, it was probably just another hunter and we were simply spending a few hours hunting each other.

Other than that attempt, I’ve never hunted and I don’t really know anybody who hunts, so the topic of this book really appealed to me. Learning a few tricks of the trade would be handy.

And that, this book provided. It had a lot of information on deer hunting. I can’t tell you if its correct or not, as I don’t have the proper experience, but what he writes makes sense and he seems to give due consideration to methods of which he disapproves.

There a lot of things in here I simply would never even have thought of. As one small example, he talks of finding special detergent to wash camo, as most detergents make clothes brighter, something you do not want for your camo.

The book cerainly delivered on its main purpose of providing solid information for beginners on deer hunting. I plan to re-read it again closer to the next deer season.

The major problem I had with the book is Tim focuses a lot of the book on maintaining private hunting property, especially in the first half of the book. He devotes 8 chapters to the topic and only two to alternatives.

For a beginner, its quite the expense to purchase a decent chunk of land for hunting. I live in an area that’s not overly expensive, but checking Kijiji, the cheapest hunting land is $12k for 40 acres. Although, that might be cheap for real estate, that’s quite a bit of upfront investment for a beginner. (I wish I had $80k to spare, there is a lot of beautiful land I could get on Kijiji).

I think the book would have been better for beginners if it had a bit more on hunting on public land (although, maybe public land isn’t as abundant in the US as it is in the western Canada). It would also have more flow if the property chapters were more towards the end of the book rather than right near the front.

That being said this book is excellent and I wish I had had it this summer. There’s a lot of information, and it all seems good. The book is written in a conversational, first-person tone which fits well enough. It also looks well edited for self-publishing; there were few typographical errors and none that interrupted the flow of the book.

At $8 for about 200 pages, the price is good for the amount of information presented.

Recommendation:

If you’re thinking of starting deer hunting, this will be a gecent book to helping you get started or to give you a some information on what’s involved in hunting. Pick up Shoot Deer, but skip the chapters on property ownership (unless of course, you plan to purchase property right off the hop).

If you’re not interested in deer hunting this is obviously not going to be all that useful.

If you’re interested in more information on deer hunting, check out Tim’s blog, Shoot Deer.

Also, Tim, I would suggest putting up an easy to see link to your book on Amazon on your blog; I didn’t see one.

Anti-Gun Neurotics

I came across this piece about a neurotic woman who buys a gun. (h/t: Tam) Just read these choice excerpts:

Walking into the kitchen to refresh our drinks, I noticed my purse with the 9mm Glock still inside it. I’d forgotten to lock it up! Panic set in as I realized my teen son was playing videogames just 10 feet away. What if he’d decided to get the socks I’d bought him from my purse while I was out on the deck? Thoughts raced through my mind and I pondered how I’d just straddled the fine line between being a responsible gun owner and an irresponsible idiot whose 15-year-old just accidentally shot himself or someone else with my gun.
…
Now all I think about are the sounds I hear at night. I lie awake thinking: “Is someone breaking in? How fast can I get to the gun? Will they hear me? How much time do I have before they get to my bedroom? What if they go to my son’s room first? Will I shoot them in the face or heart or stomach?” And then I think: “How in the world would I live with myself knowing I took a life?”

Sometimes the thoughts intensify and I can’t sleep at all. Mostly, the gun in my house causes me an anxiousness and fear that’s draining. And it leads to some questions that have no easy answers.
…
Another question: How accessible should the gun be when I’m home? A few nights ago, my son came home late, forgot his key, and knocked on the door. My first thought was, “Should I go get the gun?” I didn’t know who was on the other side of the door, and I was scared to find out as adrenaline surged through my body. I’m glad I didn’t get the gun because when I opened the door, I would have been a nervous, untrained mom pointing a gun at my son. The wrong split-second decision on my side would have been deadly.
…
Since having the gun I’ve had two repairmen, a carpet cleaner, and a salesmen in my home. If the gun’s for self-protection, it’s not going to do any good in the safe, but it’s not really practical to have the gun pointing at them as they work. How else would I eliminate the element of surprise if I were attacked? Suspiciousness and fear of people is new to me, and I don’t like it.
…
When I got to the second floor I became nervous, and the Oprah episode where a man attacks a woman alone in a situation just like this played in my head. I thought about the 9mm in my purse as I clumsily continued down the stairs in my skirt and heels. He followed me. I looked back at him so he knew I knew he was there (like Oprah’s expert suggested.) I thought: “Should I pull the gun out? Should I point it at him?” I realized the gun wouldn’t do me any good because he was behind me. My heart racing, we finally got to the lobby door where the man simply passed by me. I’d grown paranoid. He wasn’t the bad guy I perceived him to be, and the gun did not make me safe.
…
An untrained permit holder like me shouldn’t be allowed to carry a concealed gun in states that at least require training and safety classes. <b>I was actually relieved to have a break from the gun and the constant thought, attention, and worry it required of me.

This is absolutely insane. Her neurotic paranoia is astonishing to behold. She repeatedly blames it on the gun (in bold), ie. she believes a chunk of inert metal has power to control her emotional state, but its obvious to anyone with two working brain cells that her mental problems (assuming they aren’t just made up for the story) go a lot deeper than that.

What kind of extreme emotional instabilities does someone have to have to even briefly consider pointing their gun at a professional repairman they invited into their home on the almost non-existent chance he might start violence. This kind of paranoid insanity boggles the mind.

I thought the gun would make me feel more powerful, more confident, and less fearful. I was wrong. All I felt was fear. Physically taking the gun out of the safe and putting it in a holster on my hip literally reminded me that I was going out into a big bad scary unsafe world. There were days when I put the gun back in the safe and stayed home because it simply took too much energy to be scared. It was easier to be at home without the worry and responsibility of being “the good guy with the gun.” My awareness of looming tragedy was abundant. If I had to pull the trigger, my life, the person I shot, both of our families, and all who witnessed it would be changed forever.

This women lives in fear, but it has nothing to do with the gun. The gun only focused her fear on a single issue. Her fear is a base part of her mental make-up, it defines her, but she normally manages to disperse her fear into a generalized low-level paranoia by avoiding situations where she would have any ability to respond to it. The gun gave her the ability to be responsible and to respond, focusing her general pervavise fears onto a single object.

Which brings me to my point: maybe the anti-gun nuts are right, in a way.

Maybe the reason anti-freedom advocates hate firearms and hate freedom is because they are neurotic, paranoid, and incompetent and they know it. The freedom-haters know they would be grossly irresponsible if they owned a gun due to their mental insufficiencies.

Maybe many of the freedom-haters hate freedom because they know they would make horrible choices if they were free. They then project their own inabilities on the rest of the world and assume everybody is as thoroughly inadequate as them.

If I was as crazy as this woman, there is no way I would let myself near a gun. If I thought everybody else was as mind-meltingly unbalanced as her I would seriously reconsider my position on gun freedoms. Thank goodness most of us are more mentally stable than this.

I hypothesize that anti-freedom advocates are simply mentally unbalanced people who project their instabilities on others. In that kind of bizarro world of insane people, gun control would only make rational sense.

It seems like another case of leftists fearing themselves more than anything.

I think the last paragraph is the most telling part of the piece:

I felt a huge sense of relief the day I got rid of the gun. I no longer had to worry that my teenagers or their friends would use my gun when I wasn’t home. I didn’t have to worry that I would be in a situation where I would make a choice about taking another life. I didn’t have to worry that my gun would be stolen out of my car and then used to murder someone. And I didn’t have to worry that one day I would get a diagnosis or have a personal crisis and have a gun on hand to turn on myself.

This woman hates choice, she fears choice, she fears consequences.

This woman is a child afraid of the world who wants a father-figure (in this case the government) to make the big scary world and its cruel choices to go away. She is the very definition of a natural slave.

Read that again and think on it: “I didn’t have to worry that I would be in a situation where I would make a choice about taking another life.”

This women would rather suffer robbery, rape, or death than be forced to make a choice and live with the consequences of that choice. She would rather have death than responsibility.

Maybe I was wrong earlier on in this post. Maybe, the primary drive behind gun-hating is not a gun-hater’s self-awareness of incompetence, but rather fear of responsibility.

Maybe the freedom-haters fear responsibility so much, they would rather live and die as cowering slaves than have to make choices themselves.

Maybe natural slaves are just born natural slaves.

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Other thoughts tangential to the main point:

In a way, her post supports expanded gun freedoms. If someone as thoroughly neurotic as her can own a gun for a month with no one getting hurt, maybe guns aren’t all that dangerous.

I noticed my purse with the 9mm Glock still inside it. I’d forgotten to lock it up! Panic set in as I realized my teen son was playing videogames just 10 feet away. What if he’d decided to get the socks I’d bought him from my purse while I was out on the deck? Thoughts raced through my mind and I pondered how I’d just straddled the fine line between being a responsible gun owner and an irresponsible idiot whose 15-year-old just accidentally shot himself or someone else with my gun.

I know I already posted this quote above, but I would like to highlight that she thinks her 15-year-old is irresponsible enough to blow himself away should he happen to come across a firearm.

I don’t know how she raised this kid, but sweet mother of Hades, is she really such an incompetent parent that her 15-year-old doesn’t have the basic commonsense to not immediately shoot himself if he stumbles across a gun? Given this article, it might be a possibility, but wow.

Maybe, instead of being a paranoid nut, she should teach her kid (and herself) proper firearm care and use (not to mention basic responsibility and commonsense). It might be more effective.

I learned that some gun owners aren’t very nice when you write something they don’t like. After my first post appeared on the Ms. Magazine site, I was called an “idiot,” “stupid,” “immoral,” “clueless,” “a coward,” and “dangerous.” One woman suggested I put the gun in my mouth and pull the trigger—and several tried to reveal my home address on the moderated comments section.

An incompetent, paranoid woman runs a smear campaign against normal, law abiding people, painting them as violent, dangerous, and incompentent, then she’s surprised when the same people she’s smearing react negatively. The nerve of them.

She ends with this:

My experiment was 30 days of my personal experience. I’m just a mom who wanted to see what it felt like. Now I know.

She has no idea what a regular gun owner feels like, because most of us are not incompetent and paranoid. I know I have never thought about shooting the repair man for repairing my furnace.

As well, most gun owners actually try to learn how to use their weapon before carrying it.

Establishment Conservatives and their Wives

I was reading this piece on the NRA (h/t: Instapundit). It charts the evolution of the NRA from a sportsmen lobby to the tyrant-fighting machine it is today. Anyway, while reading I noticed this line describing the old guard establishment NRA before they were ousted by the grassroots (emphasis mine):

The moderates felt rejected by both the NRA hard-liners and the Washington elite.

“Because of the political direction the NRA was taking, they weren’t being invited to parties and their wives were not happy,” says Jeff Knox, Neal’s son and director of the Firearms Coalition, which fights for the Second Amendment and against laws restricting guns or ammunition. “Dad was on the phone constantly with various people around the country. He had his copy of the NRA bylaws and Robert’s Rules, highlighted and marked. My father and a lot of local club leaders and state association guys organized their troops.”

Everybody knows about the phenomenon of conservatives going the capital (or New York), rejecting their roots and become properly behaved house conservatives, representing some version of liberalism-lite as conservatism. The establishment conservatives are the bane of the conservative movement.How much of this trend is due to social pressue?

Once in the big city it must be difficult for conservatives to move in the social circles of the chattering classes filled with bigoted leftists, freedom-haters, and socialists.

How much of the spinelessness of establishment conservatives is because their wives don’t get invited to parties?

If you, your wife, and your family were being socially excluded and all that was necessary to get in the “in” crowd was to be more “reasonable”, how long would most remain “unreasonable”? How long could you put up with your wife’s complaints about your low social status and not being able to attend all the events “everybody is going to”?

I have no data, but it’s interesting to think about.

Could conservatives and conservative organizations create a conservative social circle in the political and cultural capitals that rivals the network of the chattering classes? If conservatives had their own events “everybody was going to” and wives regularly got invited to parties hosted by conservatives would we have less trouble with spineless establishment conservatives becoming one with the Cathedral?

Just a thought. Remember, it’s often the little things we don’t notice that matter lot.

Shame back

I’ve previously linked to the personal information on the Sentinel editors and reporters who published the names and addresses of gun owners in their areas. Here’s the link again.

Now, the wannabe tyrants and their lapdog enablers (lapsheep?) will use any methods possible to bully, abuse, and shame those who enjoy being free.

Thanks to the web, information is now more public than ever, so us regular free folk without newspapers and comfy editing jobs can now shame back. So, please distribute this information as wide as possible.

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Gawker has published the names of gun owners in New York. This is public information, so they see no problem with this.

So now, in the interests of journalism, here’s some more public information.

John Cook, 39, is a senior editor of Gawker and the writer of the article publishing gun owner’s information.

His work e-mail address is: john@gawker.com
His Twitter is: http://twitter.com/johnjcook

His work address is: 210 Elizabeth Street, Fourth Floor, New York, NY 10012

His home phone #: (718) 369-8243

His home address is: 528 16th St,Brooklyn, NY 11215-5912

Map

His wife is Allison Benedikt, 35, who is an editor for Slate. They got married in 2003 and have two lovely kids.

http://urbangrounds.com/wp-content/uploads/John_Cook_gawker.png

Here’s a lovely public account of John and his wife’s personal struggles.

“In the fall of 2018, all of our kids will finally be in public school, and we will have the $5,000 we pay in child care every month back in our bank account.”

Speaking of children, did you know that John was a bully back when he was in school? I guess some things never change.

Did you know New York Public School 154 is only a block from 528 16th St?

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Did you know Gawker got death threats? I definitely disapprove of threatening violence or enacting violence on private individuals. Do not commit random violence; it hurts the cause. Information is a better weapon.

Do not threaten violence: fight fire with fire. They invade our privacy, but the internet can invade theirs better.

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Fox has aired the Gawker’s founder’s phone number and e-mail. (H/T: Instapundit) Pass it on:

Nick Denton

Phone number: 646-470-4295
E-mail: nick@gawker.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/nicknotned
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/nicknotned

The Price of Freedom

Now that a respectful amount of time has passed, here is my obligatory post on the Sandy Hook massacres. May God take His children to rest in His grace.

As is usual for these types of events, most seem to want a convenient scapegoat for the massacre.

Guns are easy to blame, but tools have no volition of their own.

Some blame mental illness, but only the perpetrator’s psychologist can possibly speak to that. Mental illness might explain some of it (or it might not, I’m no psychologist) but most mentally ill people do not shoot up a school.

Some blame cultural entertainment products: violent video games, movies, etc. Although, I’ve seen less of it this time around than when Columbine occurred, it’s still as silly as it was then.

Some blame the media for giving fame to losers. While achieving infamy may be a contributing reason to public violence, this again strips the perpetrator of their own volition and begs the question: why did the perpetrator choose to pursue infamy over the lives of others and continued living?

Some blame the sidelining of males, while others blame the loss of male privilege. I’ve warned about this trend in the past, but it only shows a trend; most males do not engage in such nihilistic violence.

Essentially, it seems everybody uses these kind of events to simply confirm the validity of their pre-existing bugaboos. I am guilty of this as well.

In the end, I think the most likely societal explanation is simple probability. In any society of 300+ million people, there will be some people at the nihilistic violence end of the bell-curve. This is not a societal trend, it is simply probabilistic reality.

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Instead of looking for some great cause to blame, let’s put the blame where it belongs: the perpetrator.

Adam Lanza was a free individual, with his own will. and his own moral decisions to make.

He made them.

People have their own values, their own goals, their own choices to make.

They have agency, they are not simply the products of culture. People, even the mentally ill, are not empty cyphers of whatever societal trend we fear. They are human they make choices.

We should not dehumanize them.

We should not dehumanize Adam Lanza.

He made his choice.

Adam Lanza chose to shoot his mother, little Emilie Parker, baseball fan Jack Pinto, young Dylan Hockley, and 25 other individuals, may they rest in God’s peace.

Adam Lanza saw the mother who raised him and killed her. He saw the innocence of young ones and decided to snuff it out.

He chose to end dozens of young lives and destroy hundreds more.

Societal forces didn’t kill these people, Adam Lanza did.

****

If we look at all the great causes, no matter which it is, the “answer” is always the same: less freedom.

Guns are deadly: ban them and take them from law-abiding citizens.

The mentally ill are dangerous: lock them up against their will and drug them.

The entertainment and cultural industry is perverse and degenerate: institute content controls.

The media are vicious, amoral, parasitical vultures: regulate the press.

Males are losing their place in society: re-institute enforced patriarchy.

Males are angry at their loss of privilege: indoctrinate them further.

And on and on.

One person in 300+ million* commits a heinous act and everybody cries for the upending of society, for the expanded regulation of behaviour of other people. (Funny how it’s always other people that have to be regulated).

Because of these extreme, outside the normal events, everybody must be controlled. Somebody must do something to prevent these future black swans.

Something must be done, the government has to act. We have no idea what specific actions, but do something, anything. We have no proof any of these suggested actions will be helpful, but do them anyway. We have no rational basis for believing any of these actions will actually prevent the next nihilistic individual from committing extreme violence, but action must be taken.

Please do something, anything so that the placebo can give me back my piece of mind.

I can’t rest unless I know someone better than me is actively looking like they are doing something that vaguely resembles protecting me from extremely low-probability danger.

Fie on that.

Nothing should be done.

Shut the hell up and stop using dead children as political pawns for your anti-freedom crusades.

Shut the hell up and stop letting your mindless fear and inability to control your own peace of mind dictate society.

****

School massacres and other mass acts of nihilistic violence have been occurring since before there was a public school system and have occurred in many different countries and cultures. They have occurred with firearms and without. They have occurred whatever regulations may or may not have been in place. This is not a problem solely of our time and culture. It is not a problem of our regulations or lack thereof. It is not a problem of whatever other bullshit pre-existing ideological war you want to fight on the graves of dead kids.

It is a problem of individuals.

Some individuals choose to do evil things.

Adam Lanza did.

Adam Lanza was free to choose, and choose he did.

****

Here is the thing we must understand:

Sandy Hook was the price of freedom.

The freedom to make choices is the freedom to make bad choices, to make evil choices.

The only way to eliminate bad choices, is to eliminate freedom.

It is horrifying, but it is reality.

The only way to stop another Sandy Hook is to completely give up our freedom, to submit ourselves wholly and completely to another’s control.

The only way to stop bad choices, is to completely remove the ability to make choices.

However horrible 28 deaths is, on a societal level the loss of freedom is even worse.

Freedom is naturally a frightening thing, the comfort of giving up our right to choose, to let others choose for us, can be tempting. Do not give into the fear.

Individuals should be free to make choices, even if those choices may be frightening and may lead to suffering.

Individuals should only be punished or controlled for bad choices once they have actually made them.

Anything else is tyranny.

Sandy Hook is the price of freedom, but it is a price that must be paid; the alternative, a world without freedom and choice, is worse.

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* If we include others who’ve engaged in nihilistic acts of public mass violence, it’s probably “only” on the order of one in tens of millions. I’m not going to calculate exactly, but still one person out of a few dozen million is still a very low probablility occurance.