Is Open Carry a Threat or a Deterrent? My Column at Guns.com

My column is up at Guns.com, a new site that I’m writing for now.  I look at the new movement for open carry.

opencarry4Is carrying a gun openly a threat to those around you? Is it a provocation? Should it make people around you uncomfortable? Does Fobus make paddle holsters in colors other than black, because if nothing else, open carry is a threat to my fashion sense?

Read my full column here at Guns.com.

(I’ll be honest, I give this one a low B. I’m out of practice on writing opinion columns so it will take a few to get back in the groove.)

Anonymous Political Speech Has Honored History

Unless you’re some kind of illiterate hack who hasn’t heard of Publius, Brutus and the other authors of the Federalist and Anti-Federalist Papers.

In Print and Online: My Column on the UT Shooting

My column on the University of Texas incident is online now.6a00d83451b26169e201156f401601970c-300wi

You can read it here.

A good friend posted this to me, and she’s absolutely right.

Funny that most of the national coverage hearkened back to Va. Tech. Those of us whose blood runs burnt orange immediately flashed back to the history we were taught (or lived) about Whitman. It’s a big freshman lore experience to search fo r Whitman’s bullet holes, which are still pretty easy to find if you are told where to look.

When I was in school, the Tower observation deck was still closed. And at the time of Whitman’s rampage, there were no campus police, and no arms on campus. Civilians helped take Whitman out. They shot up at him (along with police), making him take cover and hampering his aim, which probably saved lives. An armed civilian was also part of the four-man team that eventually took him out at the top of the Tower.

I wanted to include these facts about the original campus killer, Charles Whitman, but I couldn’t fit it all in with a 600 word limit. Thanks Lesley.

And thank you to Sharon Grigsby and Mike Hashimoto for helping me bring this across the finish line yesterday.

UT Shooter Shows Effectivness of Gun-Free Zone

Yesterday’s incident with a gunman on the University of Texas campus proves unequivocally that rules declaring certain places “gun-free zones” do not work.

GUN+FREE+ZONEAll those restrictions do is disarm law-abiding people. Gun-free zones are shooting galleries for homicidal maniacs who are assured that their victims won’t be shooting back.

Exactly how is it that the Bill of Rights is prohibited on college campuses?

Here’s the best part of the story:

John Woods, a UT graduate student who organized an anti-gun rally last year, disagreed. He said that having more guns on campus wouldn’t improve security.

“If there were multiple students running around with guns, it would’ve made the police’s job a lot harder this morning,” Woods said Tuesday. He was a student at Virginia Tech University in 2007 when a gunman killed 32 people, including Woods’ girlfriend.

So Woods has been on two campuses where guns are prohibited and yet a nut with a gun showed up armed for bear. And he’s not seeing a pattern.

A Pledge I Would Prefer to Hear

This is the Pledge to America I want to hear, and to see kept.

I have little interest in streamlining government or in making it more efficient, for I mean to reduce its size. I do not undertake to promote welfare, for I propose to extend freedom.

My aim is not to pass laws, but to repeal them. It is not to inaugurate new programs, but to cancel old ones that do violence to the Constitution … or have failed their purpose … or that impose on the people an unwarranted financial burden.

I will not attempt to discover whether legislation is ‘needed’ before I have first determined whether it is constitutionally permissible.

And if I should be attacked for neglecting my constituents’ ‘interests,’ I shall reply that I was informed that their main interest is liberty, and in that cause I am doing the very best I can.

Source.

Repeat After Me: None of Your Business. Am I Free To Go?

My love of the TSA and the mouth-breathing pickpockets and gropers is widely known.images

So it should come to you as no surprise this guy — also a Reason contributor –  is my new man crush for how he handled overbearing Customs and Border Protection agents.

“Why were you in China?” asked the passport control officer, a woman with the appearance and disposition of a prison matron.

“None of your business,” I said.

Her eyes widened in disbelief.

“Excuse me?” she asked.

“I’m not going to be interrogated as a pre-condition of re-entering my own country,” I said.

This did not go over well. She asked a series of questions, such as how long I had been in China, whether I was there on personal business or commercial business, etc. I stood silently.

Read his whole encounter here.

John Jay Myers Takes on Michael Moore

Also, is it just me, or does Michael Moore increasingly look like a middle-aged lesbian? IJS.

Good for the Goose

Every once in a while, a glimmer of sunlight peeks out and someone notices the “civil servants” are acting a little too much like civil masters.

viaTaxProfBlog

Congressmen John Carter (R-TX) and Lynn Westmoreland (R-GA) yesterday introduced the Geithner Penalty Waiver Act, requiring that the IRS assess the same penalty against U.S. taxpayers that came forward in the UBS tax fraud investigation as paid by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner for failing to pay taxes on his IMF income — zero.  From Congressman Carter’s press release:

Carter says the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution mandates equal penalties for similar offenses, and that the failure of the IRS to assess any penalties against Geithner demands similar penalties for all taxpayers with substantially equivalent cases. “This bill seeks to codify what is now established by the law of precedent,” says Carter. “The Geithner case has established a legal precedent for the determination of penalties by the IRS, and that precedent can be cited in all federal tax courts. The penalty is now set at zero.” “Taxpayers who willfully attempt to evade paying their fair taxes should pay a penalty, or our tax code becomes unenforceable,” says Carter. “This bill is not to reward tax evaders, but to defend the Rule of Law itself. If we as a nation choose not to enforce the law against the politically privileged, then we cannot enforce the law against others without undermining respect for the law itself.”

Lawyers, Guns & Money: Challenge to Chicago Law Could Restore Economic Liberty

Still on deadline, so not much from me this week. But here’s fellow Dallasite and Reasonoid Jacob Sullum on how the challenge to Chicago’s oppressive anti-gun laws could be a boon for economic liberty.

The right to weapons was one of the liberties frequently cited by the 14th Amendment’s backers, since disarmed blacks were defenseless against attacks by Klansmen and local officials. As reflected in post–Civil War legislation that the amendment was intended to reinforce, its supporters also were concerned about economic liberty: the right to own and exchange property, make and enforce contracts, and work in the occupation of one’s choice—all freedoms the Southern states tried to deny former slaves.

Sept. 11 — Try Not to Touch Yourself

Orwell’s name is more worn out than airline jokes, but there’s a reason.

Today’s Moment of Clarity

Today is the anniversary of the day used to justify warrantless searches, citizen scrutiny, expanded wiretaps, and legalized torture.

We call it Freedom Day.