Category: Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms
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The Fantasy of Addiction
As long as this blog has been online, 14 years now, I have railed against the misuse of the the word 'addiction.' Thanks to Dave Lull, I am pleased to see that Peter Hitchens takes a similar line in a First Things article. Excerpt: The chief difficulty with the word “addiction” is the idea that…
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The Second Amendment, First Principles, and the Right of Revolution
Trigger Warning! Likely to cause snowflake meltdown. Edward J. Erler offers one of the best explanations of the Second Amendment I have ever read. Clear, scholarly, and right-headed. The folly of Justice Stevens is exposed. An excerpt, with bolding added: Furthermore, the Declaration specifies that when government becomes destructive of the ends for which it…
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Addicted to Food?
This is a re-post (re-entry?) from 9 December 2009. Re-posts are the re-runs of the blogosphere. You don't watch a Twilight Zone or Seinfeld episode only once, do you? The message delivered below is very important and needs be repeated and repeated again. ……………… Can one be addicted to food? If yes, then I am addicted to…
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A Couple of Important Points About the Second Amendment
1) The first is that is that it is not reasonably interpreted as a group right, a right one possesses only as a member of a group such as a militia. This mistaken reading is suggested by the Amendment's unfortunate wording: A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the…
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Want to Repeal 2A?
Stop talking and do it.
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In Defense of ‘Gunsplaining’
He's a Never-Trumper, but David French does talk and write a good game. By the way, don't confuse a Never-Trumper with an Anti-Trumper. The former constitute a proper subset of the latter. A Never-Trumper is a self-professed conservative of some stripe or other whereas an Anti-Trumper may or may not be. Every Never-Trumper is an…
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A Modest Proposal: Revise the Second Amendment
John Paul Stevens today in the The New York Times called for the enactment of laws "prohibiting civilian ownership of semiautomatic weapons" and beyond that, as a "more effective and more lasting reform," the repeal of the Second Amendment. (I wonder if the good justice understands that semi-autos include most handguns owned and carried by…
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Ted Kennedy’s Car
In this Age of Feeling, fact-based cogent arguments have little effect on the febrile pates of liberals. So one needs to supplement calm reasoning with bumperstickers, invective, and contumely, not that 'contumely' is a word one could expect a liberal to understand. And so, for your viewing enjoyment, I present: Of course, cars don't kill…
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Is Gun Ownership a Constitutionally Protected Right?
It is important to distinguish between rights and constitutionally protected rights. The right to life, for example, is a natural right. Its existence does not depend on anything of a conventional nature such as a constitution. We have the right whether or not it is constitutionally protected. Our great constitution protects our rights; it does…
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Apple’s War on Cigars
Another example of misplaced moral enthusiasm. Apple has a problem with cigars but not with marijuana. You say that doesn’t make sense? If it’s from leftists it doesn’t have to make sense.
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Four Notes on the Gun Debate for the Reasonable
This post has a prerequisite: a modicum of rationality and a little bit of good will. The irrational and ill-willed should head for their 'safe spaces' now lest they be 'triggered.' 1) Is anybody against gun control? Not that I am aware of. Everybody wants there to be some laws regulating the manufacture, sale, importation, transportation,…
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John Locke on the Right to Self-Defense
Let's go through the drill one more time. You have a natural right to life. This right to life entails in others a moral obligation not to harm you. Should anyone attempt to do so, you yourself have a right, directly and not via the invocation of the help of a police agency, to defend…
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Double Indemnity, 1944
I took a welcome break from the cable shout shows and the gun 'conversation' the other night to watch the 1944 film noir Double Indemnity, starring Barbara Stanwyck, Fred MacMurray, and Edward G. Robinson. The Stanwyck character talks an insurance agent played by MacMurray into murdering her husband in order to collect on a double indemnity policy. …
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A Warning is Not an Incitement to Violence
Dana Loesch
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Another Argument for Gun Rights
Terror in Budapest And another. Leftist thugs threaten Jordan Peterson.