ricketyclick

No, it’s not a grocery store stock boy saying this as you walk past a spilled cart.

It’s Ambulance Driver at a drunk driving scene.

Context is everything.

My last attempt to comment on Bryan Miller’s dancing in the blood of an eight year old boy while making fun of his small penis did not make it through moderation.

Here’s another try:

Freedom is not safe.

That said, accidents like this are extremely rare. Fewer than a hundred children a year die from accidents involving guns. (And, yes, this was an “accident”, although negligence was certainly a huge factor.)

According to the Centers for Disease Control, in 2004 seventy-two children between the ages of 1 and 15 died in “Unintentional Firearm” incidents, ranked at number 14.

What really kills kids? Top three causes in 2004 were: 2479 deaths due to “Unintentional MV traffic”; 739 due to “Unintentional drowning”; and 502 due to “Unintentional Fire/burn”. Next comes 350 “Homicide Firearm”. Note that those last three together are not even two thirds of the total due to cars.

The right of the people to keep and bear arms has already been very substantially infringed by some 20,000 federal, state, and local laws and regulations. Your state, New Jersey, and the state in which this shooting occurred, Massachusetts, heavily regulate gun ownership, yet are not known for their low crime rates.

If, Mr. Miller, you want to further infringe that right, I believe we can reasonably insist that you make a strong case that your infringements will a) substantially reduce gun deaths among children even further, and b) not increase child death (or even adult death) through increased violent crime or increased tyranny.

[I reused part of my last reply, which I will not reproduce here. CDC stats copied from this earlier post.]

Chuck Norris, a.k.a. Walker, Texas Ranger, explains that while he, “a black-belt patriot”, could take out a robber with a roundhouse kick, he’d prefer to use a gun:

[Youtube link]

I am not a Chuck Norris fan, because all too often, his stories involve being a Hero who comes in to help those who won’t, or can’t help themselves.

Here, though, he’s not offering to bring either his gun or his feet to protect you. He’s asking you, you personally, to stand up for your right to protect yourself, by checking the actual voting records of politicians who claim to support the right to keep and bear arms.

Bravo, Chuck! This, not your kick, makes you my hero for the day!

Swiped from Tamara K’s Porch.

On a midnight post-office run (I don’t like to leave Netflix returns in my mailbox; sometimes they get lost) I impulsively stopped for Jack-in-the-Box cheesecake.

Exiting the drive through, I was approached by a panhandler. I shouldn’t have stopped, much less rolled down my window, but I did. He was middle-aged, middle-class, well-kept, well-spoken, and didn’t reek of alcohol or have that gap-toothed meth-head manner to him. (I hate being an easy touch. Dogs, cats, and children pick up on it too.)

“I know you! I’m one of your neighbors, from over there!” — and he points in pretty much the right direction. I hesitate for a moment, thinking, “Well, most of my neighbors are Hispanic, not black…” but I’m more or less sympathetic.

Unfortunately, he runs on:

“Listen, my kid just died, and….”

What? What the fuck? You bring that out, you lay that on me, you damn well better be playing straight.

“What’s the name of the street?” I ask.

His mouth gapes for a moment, then he frowns, and his voice takes on an impatient edge. His middle-class act starts to fray as his script derails.

“I don’t know the name of your street, man! Look, I’m not trying to come across as funny or nothing.” Well, pardon the hell out of me.

“What’s the name of your street, then?”

Long, fumbling pause, then he says a name.

“Never heard of it.” I pull away, and start rolling up the window.

“Hey, man, I got the wrong guy, I’m not trying to come across as funny or nothing…”

On the way back from the post office, there he is, across the street at a filling station, talking to an SUV…

… and pointing in the opposite direction.

You asshole, I think.

You pimp your dead kid to get a fix?

You worthless piece of shit.

Your dead child?

[update: Thanks to David Hardy of Arms and the Law for the link.]

Keep in mind, as you read what follows, that I am not a lawyer, just a citizen trying his best to understand the rules I’m expected to live under.

Mark Bennett, a criminal defense lawyer here in Houston, on his blog Defending People, forwards “notes from the portion of DEA training dealing with the use of deadly force. [My source] tells me that the students would be given certain fact patterns and told to stand up in class and respond with the exact phrases described in the notes to justify a shooting.”

This is life-and-death crucial, but very long, so I’m reproducing the whole thing, with my comments, below the fold: (more…)

Billy Beck demonstrates how it’s supposed to work:

That kid was frightened when I yelled “Hello!” up the road at him.

For years now, people have been hiking and biking up and down Daisy Hollow. It’s really funny: they roll out here from Ithaca or wherever in all their gear. Hikers walking with ski-poles in the summer. You name it, etc. People who live out here think they’re cute. When I go walking, I go up on the hill with a rifle.

The very first time I laid eyes on him, he looked like he was walking out the end of a neighbor’s driveway. He’d made about seventy-five yards up the road by the time I had my boots on and was out the door.

Walking up to him, I could see that he was apprehensive. I said from about fifteen yards away, “I hope you will understand why this is necessary.” I had all his attention, now. I’d say he was in his early twenties.

“You know,” I told him, “We’ve been watching people hike up & down this valley for a long time, but that is the very first time I ever saw what looked like someone coming out of that driveway.”

Read the rest to see how it comes out.

That’s all an armed citizenry is about, folks: people looking out for each other.

[Edit: In comments, Beck clarifies he was not armed for this encounter. I believe the overall point stands.]

As always, Robert Peel’s Policing Principle Seven holds: “…the police are the public and the public are the police; the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full-time attention to duties which are incumbent upon every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence.”

Beck takes a lot of heat for things like not paying taxes, not enlisting, not shouldering his share of the social responsibility.

That right there is Beck doing his share, directly, not subcontracting it to someone in a uniform. He exposed himself to risk, he accepted the potential responsibility of putting someone to death on the spot.

I can’t point to the last time I did that. Can you?

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Moreover, he accepts that burden without setting himself as an Only One who can act with Officially-backed impunity. Like, oh,  Grady County Oklahoma Deputy Sean Knight [Link via Beck, here.]

Oh, man, please don’t tell me I’m gonna have to start watching Boston Legal:

Crap. I’m gonna hafta start watching BL.

I asked ya not to tell me that.

Crap.
[Via Curmudgeonly and Skeptical.]

The most important thing I’ve posted for the women and girls in my audience ever:

The National Firearms Association, the Canadian equivalent of the NRA, puts out this amazing pamphlet [PDF] on some very simple self-defense moves allowing you to disable and escape from a would-be rapist.

No gun needed.

The Lioness correctly notes that the most important element of self-defense is not any particular weapon or skill, but simply the spring-loaded decision to meet violence with violence:

When a rape begins, there is no one there but you and the rapist. When it ends, there is still no one there but you and the rapist. When it ends, you will be dead, or alive but physically and emotionally shattered, probably permanently. You may also be pregnant, or under sentence of death from the AIDS infection he just gave you. Rapists don’t use condoms.

The police don’t come during a rape; they come afterward. It is vanishingly rare to find an instance where a rape has been interrupted or prevented by anyone but the intended victim.

When that realization hits you, you have ten seconds. Within ten seconds, your attacker should be incapacitated, unconscious, or running for his life; or you’ve probably lost. A good fight is short, sharp, and decisive, not a movie-style brawl. Would you like to learn how to end your rapist’s career?

If you believe that you cannot injure another human being, this training is not for you.

If you believe that it is proper to stop a violent criminal to save yourself and others, it is.

None of what you have just learned will do you any good whatever, if you wait until the realization hits you to decide what to do. You’ll take too much time to make the decision.

The Lioness may be printed and distributed freely, as long as it unchanged from the original. There are high-quality PDFs of each page suitable for sending to your local printer.

Along the same lines, read Lawdog’s “Appropriate Countermeasures to the Front Chokehold”, which cannot be safely excerpted, and by that I don’t mean “Not Safe For Work”, I mean “might result in accidental injury or death”. You must read the whole thing.

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For a very long time, official sources have promulgated the myth that if you are being raped, the best thing to do is to cooperate. Fighting back, it’s been alleged, just makes the guy mad, and results in greater injuries. Purse snatching, mugging, rape, home invasion, doesn’t matter: just give the guy what he wants.

That turns out not to be the case.

Fighting a potential rapist might anger him, but likely he’s acting out of rage anyway, says the psychologist.

Fighting an intended attacker might provoke him, but he’s already trying to force his body into yours, says the criminologist.

Fighting off a man who’s trying to have sex with you against your will might hurt you, but nothing matches the pain of a completed sexual assault, says the rape advocate. ["Rape advocate"? Was the editor on this article on coffee break? -- djm]

Fighting a man hand-to-hand transfers his hair or skin cells onto you, helping police track him down, says the self-defense coach.

And fighting back increases your odds of escaping unraped because most rapists are looking for an easy target, said a prominent criminal justice professor who studies how women avoid rape.

“The odds of getting away are increased when you fight back,” said Sarah E. Ullman, who teaches at the University of Illinois at Chicago, who tracks how women manage to escape sexual assault.

“(Rapists) don’t expect a forceful response. If they get that, they may be quickly deterred and that may be all it takes to stop the assault.”

…
Once a woman has decided to put up a fight, the strategy is clear: Be active, confident and forceful. Attack the rapist’s vulnerabilities: his groin, his eyes. [And ankles and knees and Adam's Apple -- djm] Playing victim won’t work, Ullman said. Neither will begging, pleading, crying or negotiating. Talking to stall when confronted in a public place or business may allow passersby or customers to interrupt the attack, but assertive commands can also buy time and give the woman a chance to run away. And a woman wielding a weapon to a stranger is less likely to have the rape completed.

…
“Women are socialized to not make a scene, to take care of other people’s feelings, to not assume the worst,” Ullman said. “Trust your instincts. If something doesn’t feel right, it isn’t right.

“Don’t worry about making a scene.”

So, I’m at my sister’s house, gorging on media after gorging on spaghetti with her, the kids, and the folks. I finally work through the bookmarks, and get ready to go home.

Hm, that curfew expired, like, Friday, right?

Well, no, in fact.

…Power outages across much of the city prompted Houston police to extend the citywide curfew until further notice.

Curfew hours are from midnight until 6 a.m.

“The purpose of the curfew is to protect the lives and property of all residents as law enforcement and other officials respond to emergencies and engage in recovery activities related to this disaster,” the news release states.

“Therefore, if you are commuting to and from work, operating a business, or eating at a restaurant, for example, you should not have a problem,” it says.

Residents should expect to be stopped and questioned by police.

[bold mine]

Excuse me, you assholes, but I count being stopped and questioned by the police when I am doing nothing more than driving home as a problem.

A curfew for a brief, limited period of time in the wake of the storm is one thing, but “until further notice” is something else entirely.

The lights may be out, but most neighborhoods I’ve seen are more or less back to normal, if a bit messy. People are no longer shocked. They want to get on with their lives.

I want to go home, dammit, whether I have power or not.

I want to go home, dammit, without being stopped by the police for no reason.

I want to go home, dammit, feed my cats, and sleep in my own bed, sweaty sheets and all, and I can’t, because the old nannies who think the city of Houston is their nursery are once again keeping me safe from myself.

Hm, more careful reporting: The Chron says the curfew is “indefinite”. However, I found this press release on the HPD website, and it says, “until Sunday, September 2″. Which is it, guys? Can I drive home or not?

Ambulance Driver lives and practices in Louisiana. He evacuated for Gustav, and files this report:

Hurricane Gustav: That’s right, you little minx. Gustav’s your daddy, and I’m gonna punish you like the bad little Gulf Coast you’ve been. Just look at these rain bands! You want this storm surge, baby? You know you do! Just look at my big, throbbing…eye wall.

Louisiana Gulf Coast (whimpering): Do it to us, Gustav. We’ve been prepared for so long… come ashore, baby…

HG: Oh yeah baby, here I come….

Weather porn; how I love it. Read the whole thing. I’ve left out the good parts.