It’s About Making Babies!

The soldier in fiction.

A couple of stories today brought to mind a conundrum (a puzzle) that Leo Frankowski lays out well in his Conrad Stargard novels, beginning with Cross Time Engineer. A soldier in an army faces death in battle. So his best chance for survival – is to run away.

Except.

In battle, most of the crippling injuries and death occur when one side loses, and is over-run or breaks away without maintaining discipline.

So, one soldier’s best odds are to run away. But if anyone else does, he risks being among those suffering the greatest number of casualties. So, on average, more soldiers survive when they face the odds, face the battle – and join together and win.

Not an easy lesson to swallow. You risk death by facing battle, yet face a greater risk if you run away – and someone else does, too.

To vaccinate your kid, that is the question.

Total Survivalist Libertarian Bitch Fest discusses her choice to vaccinate her son. For everything.

This is a similar argument. Like antibiotics, vaccinations (generally) improve one’s odds of escaping diseases that could cripple or kill. Yet some people have died from allergic reaction, some vaccinations have actually given the disease to a very few. And eradicating the disease from the community means that no one has antibodies for it. Leaving some communities more susceptible to a similar disease.

Antibiotics have raised controversy, recently, because they aren’t always completely effective in destroying the targeted organism. Which leaves a small population of germs that survive that antibiotic. A population of germs that is not resistant to that, and many other antibiotics. Several strains of antibiotic-resistant strains of diseases are now known.

We know that kids in preschool get more illnesses, as do their families, than kids that stay at home and relatively isolated until beginning public school. But those same early-ill children experience a *lot* fewer diseases in later grades, than their isolated-childhood classmates. Some believe this is true also for vaccinated children. While vaccination ward off illnesses in infants, unvaccinated children grow to relatively healthier adulthood.

Providing killing grounds to would-be mass murderers.

MSNBC relates a story about Bingham, NY. Gunman kills 13, commits suicide in N.Y. state

BINGHAMTON, N.Y. – A gunman barricaded the back door of a community center with his car and then opened fire on a room full of immigrants taking a citizenship class, killing 13 people before apparently committing suicide, officials said.

Back in December 2007, Fox News reported “Media Coverage of Mall Shooting Fails to Reveal Mall’s Gun-Free-Zone Status”

But despite the massive news coverage, none of the media coverage, at least by 10 a.m. Thursday, mentioned this central fact: Yet another attack occurred in a gun-free zone.

I lost the reference. One blogger impressed me, pointing out that with the Santa shooting, as well as many others, people died because only one person had a gun.

Or, When seconds count, the police are just minutes away. And here. And here, again. Or Phillip Van Cleave, on a Zazzle t-shirt, “When seconds count between living and dying, police are only minutes away.”

Gun-free zones – an invitation for mayhem.

Criminals won’t obey the law. Duh! Or we wouldn’t label them as crime-committing people. When we ban guns in a location, a state, a community, the law controls the law-abiding people. Duh, again! Law abiding pretty much means people that, uh, abide by the law. Leaving those that disarm themselves at the mercy of the law (if it becomes corrupt or tyrannical) as well as the non-law-abiding – the criminals.

Whether in the hands of police or civilian gun owners, it is often the use of another firearm that ends a shooting spree in a so-called gun-free zone.

And back to the conundrum.

We feel safer in a gun-free zone. We don’t have to worry about how well gun owners practice safe habits. We don’t worry about gun handling accidents. No guns – no problems!

Except.

We no longer have the means to protect ourselves, our families, and our community in case of tragic need.

So instead of one or two or four people dying when a gunmen opens fire, we lose eight and twelve and more of our brothers, our sisters, our fellow citizens.

Once again, the “warm and fuzzy” argument that we want to be right – leads to greater risk of death and injury.

I grew up with joke about The Three Biggest Lies. One was “The check is in the mail”. The second varied, but was usually rude, crude, or both. The third was “We are from the government, we’re here to help.”

Last month, President “stimulate” Obama signed a Presidential order. It seems now that only Union construction workers will be allowed to work on government projects. With the grand Stimulous spending going on, it might get iffy trying to prove your project *isn’t* a government project. After all, you either pay taxes or file for tax-exempt status, so that makes your construction a “government” construction project, right? The government is going “union only” at a time they claim be stimulating hiring.

After all, the unions, like always, spent a lot of money to put their bought-and-paid-for guy in the White House. Sounds like a really spiffy payoff from Obama to the unions. Old-time Chicago boss Mayor Daley would be proud.

Frank W. James is pretty level-headed. His farming and gun-review blog covers impromptu blinds for “tall road rat” season (upended loading pallets for deer season), costs to repair a heavy farm tractor and describes one farmer’s joys and worries over ground prep, planting, growing season, and harvesting.

Today Frank W. James joins “I Drive My Tractor In Pearls”‘ My Modern Country Home in reaction to our apparently uninformed, or plain deceitful, Attorney General. Wednesday, Attorney General Eric Holder said,

“As President Obama indicated during the campaign, there are just a few gun-related changes that we would like to make, and among them would be to reinstitute the ban on the sale of assault weapons,” Holder told reporters.

The ABC News article cites Wayne LaPierre, president of the National Rifle Association.

“I think there are a lot of Democrats on Capitol Hill cringing at Eric Holder’s comments right now.”
..
“A semi-automatic is a quintessential self-defense firearm owned by American citizens in this country,” LaPierre said. “I think it is clearly covered under Heller and it’s clearly, I think, protected by the Constitution.”

I am not a gun authority. My understanding is that an automatic weapon will fire one round after another, as long as the trigger is pulled or activated. A semi-automatic weapon fires a single round every time the trigger is pulled. The other generally related class of weapon is a bolt-action or other single-shot weapon. Automatic and semi-automatic weapons take modern cartridge type ammunition, as do bolt-action weapons.

Many muzzleloading guns, typically using black powder or black powder substitute, assemble the primer (if used), the propellent powder (gunpowder), and projectile ball or shaped bullet just before firing. I haven’t heard of an automatic or semi-auto muzzle loader.

From the ABC News article:

A State Department travel warning issued Feb. 20, 2009, reflected government concerns about the violence.

“Some recent Mexican army and police confrontations with drug cartels have resembled small-unit combat, with cartels employing automatic weapons and grenades,”

Where Holder deceives people, is implying that the assault weapon ban has anything to do with automatic weapons – which are fully covered and monitored by the BATFE. There are no legal, open-to-the-public sales of automatic weapons in the US, unless the dealer and purchaser are properly licensed. And hand grenades are likewise not a publicly available commodity. Using the Mexicans’ concern about automatic weapons and hand grenades is propaganda – lies just like the Bush claims about WMD in Iraq.

The current legislation loosely termed “Assault Weapons Ban” for political reasons – to obscure the real intent – includes a lot of scare procedures. What the Obama White House doesn’t want you to know is scary.

• They really want to remove guns from private citizens
• The Second Amendment is really about tyrants, about resisting an abusive government. About repeating, if the need arises, the American Revolution. Obama and the gun-phobes have plans to make themselves rich and powerful – and when they abandon legal processes, they don’t want you to have weapons that let you resist. This includes firearms. This is the specific reason that the nation’s founding fathers, in the aftermath of the American Revolution, demanded that their people retain the ability to resist. In their experience, no government remains serviceable forever.
• What Holder and others call “gun control”, they mean to be a step toward banning all firearms. They are lying about their intent.
• This so-called Assault Weapons Ban includes registration of every firearm in the nation, limiting who is allowed to register and own guns, banning private sales of weapons.
• Gun control nuts point at the recent California “Santa Claus Shooter” and cry about how this gunmen killed eight people. I like the pundit that pointed out he killed eight people because he was the only one with a gun. The Nebraska mall shooting, the college campus shootings – they all happen in gun-free zones for a reason. The shooter isn’t looking for opposition, the shooter wants a free field. I don’t want to make all of America a gun-free zone.
• Guns permit people to exert immense influence. We arm sheriffs and police for this reason. As long as we can count on authority figures to be honest, compassionate, and law-abiding we shouldn’t see any problem. But it takes a weapon to counter a law-breaker, a bandit – a tyrant. The Mexican warning is a point to ponder. Recent reports of Mexican drug cartel armed kidnapping, drug wars, and armed violence are now regular occurences in all major American cities. All of them. We lament the airplane crashes of 9/11. Think what might have happened instead, if a few responsible citizens had been carrying and ready to intervene.
• Some few cities and towns in the United States have passed ordinances requiring every head of household to own and qualify with a firearm. In every instance – violent and property crime rates declined. Gun-ban enthusiasts don’t tell anyone about that experience.
• When seconds count, the police are just minutes away. (This is a phrase that resounds around the Internet, used to sell Pepper spray and the thought that weapons plus training plus ethical use empower individuals and confront crime.) Also, an armed society is a polite society.

The United States Concealed Carry organization sent me an email.

..while reading an article titled “The Constitutional Right and Social Obligation to Carry a Gun.”
..
“A citizen who shirks his duty to contribute to the security of his community is little better than the criminal who threatens it.”

Barry Goldwater pointed out “You can’t legislate morality.” Gun control is about thought control – make everyone feel powerless to counter whatever the government feels like doing.

As “Pearls” puts it (My Modern Country Home) – Pray, praise, and prepare.