The Militia: What Is It? (Part 1)

“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

2nd Amendment, US Constitution

We spend an inordinate amount of our precious time debating this brief statement, often without any understanding of what it actually means, whether in the context of history or of modern law. Fortunately, of all the ills that flesh is heir to, ignorance is among the easiest rectified. Unfortunately, most people afflicted by it are unaware of their misfortune, while even the best informed always have something left to learn. As such, I can only recommend that everyone, whether informed or not, read on — and, if you find something I missed, note it in the comments (include a reputable source, please).

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Free Speech Isn’t

The battle for tomorrow is here, and it’s nothing like the wars of the past. They had clear-cut lines of good and evil, us and them. All we have is a chaos of competing ideas and a populace that, by and large, made up their minds long before any thought got involved. In a sense, this fight is more hopeless than any beach; in another sense, there’s nobody shooting at me, so I can stand up and shout myself hoarse and nothing bad will happen. It’s just that my solutions fix no problems and my words reach no hearts, because even on the off chance someone reads this, nobody’s listening.

But I’ll try anyway.

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Gun Violence: Let’s Solve The Problems

In the preceding article, we discussed different kinds of gun violence, organized by cause. Most gun violence is suicide; only a very few mass shootings ever occur in classrooms. Ideally, none would; ideally, people also wouldn’t ever want to kill themselves, guns notwithstanding.

We don’t live in an ideal world.

That’s no reason not to strive for one.

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Gun Violence: First, Identify The Problem

There are some of you out there shouting, “The problem is gun violence! Just get rid of all the guns!” Some others respond, “You can have my guns when you pry them from my cold dead fingers!” (Evidently, they never watched the original “Red Dawn”.)

It’s possible you’re honestly deluded or optimistic beyond belief, in which case nothing I write can possibly get through to you. On the other hand, perhaps you came here expecting an argument in which the loudest voice wins, or a negotiation where everyone meets halfway from the opening positions. Either way, that’s not what this is. The purpose of this article is to break down known statistics for the benefit of the 80% of Americans who want change, so we can make intelligent decisions.

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Before We Begin: A Crash Course On Terms

In order to do this properly, we’ll need a discourse, so that all sides can find middle ground that they can agree on. And in order to communicate, we’ll each need to use the same words to mean the same things.

For example: It might surprise some people to learn that there is actually no such thing as an “Assault Weapon”. Sure, you’ll find it in the dictionary of your choice, but the definitions are nebulous and disagree. They named the 1994 law after it, but the descriptions involved such superficial specifics as a bayonet lug or pistol grip without enough generalities to retain long-term value. The law expired in 2004; by then, the industry had long since retooled such that they could largely avoid its strictures.

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Guns And Politics

Watching video of kids getting shot is traumatic. How could it not be? And who can watch that and not be furious — terrified — sickened?

So how can we possibly expect that our immediate reaction will fix a damned thing?

We don’t make good decisions when we’re upset; nobody does. Instead, we get angry; we kick and throw things; we cast blame everywhere. The universe hates us and everyone’s evil. And then, if we’re smart, we settle down and figure out what went wrong so we can stop it from happening again.

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I Don’t Know What To Do

There’s been yet another school rampage shooting, and I don’t know what to do except weep. Best I can tell, nobody else does either.

Oh, there’s a lot of noise and a ton of blame being thrown, and I’ve heard the phrase “common sense gun control” more times than I can count. It’s a meaningless string of words; if there were any effective way to stop rampage shooters with a simple, common sense approach, we’d have done it by now.

Whenever I say that, there are two responses:
– “Well, at least do something!”
and
– “Just ban guns! Ban them all!”

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The Not Fake News Update, 23 May 2022

Hello, good morning, and welcome to another edition of the Update!

There’s tremendous excitement this morning about several developments in the Ukraine that nobody has any clear picture of, and the 24-hour infotainment channels will tell you all about all the things they don’t know. They’ll bring in experts and have lively discussions and it’ll be a lot of fun for them, so we won’t spoil it by getting involved.

Instead, here are a few things that have happened recently that you might have missed:

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It’s Give Me Your Money Season

It’s campaign season again, and the candidates are out for your money — but you might have noticed that, despite the millions they got in 2020, nothing much has changed. This is because the difference between the Democrats and Republicans basically boils down to which color necktie the president wears. They’re all funded by Big Oil, Big Sugar, Big Pharma, Really Big Healthcare, and Enormous Insurance, so that’s not really a surprise; what’s shocking is that you still give them a dime. With all the corporate juice they’re getting, you need the money more.

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On Having COVID. Again.

EDITORIAL

We caught COVID — again.

There’s no way to tell if the horrible flu I picked up in March of 2020 was COVID. There was a particularly nasty H3N2 going around at the time, and the list of symptoms is nearly identical, including loss of taste. But we do know that my wife and I contracted COVID back in August of ’21, not long after getting our second-dose vaccinations, and it lasted weeks.

It’s noticeably worse this time around. Symptoms are more severe and they’re lasting longer. It’s like the most horrible cold ever, with occasional bouts of fever thrown in for variety.

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