Cobb

What is the Role of Reason in Society?

Reason is a discipline of mind that allows people to generate knowledge. Knowledge is the stuff through which one may navigate cleverly to gain an advantage in life. The beasts don't have much knowledge. In our IDW discussion this past weekend, that got a little out of hand, our band of prickly interlocutors tried to get going on this subject. I don't think much was resolved, as a great deal of the talk got tangential to Jordan Peterson and to matters of faith. But what emerged to my surprise was a bit of bonding in the afterparty which came after the Fall.

Just after 7pm as a subgroup of the main decided on where to eat dinner the five of us headed down to the parking structure. Now at this point, to be fair, I suppose I need to start using pseuds, because basically none of these are public figures. I found them, they're my associates. Find your own. The first guy I'm going to mention is Brother. It's probably not fair that I call him Brother, but I do find myself in agreement with his empiricals and his description of the hard knock life. What many of you know about me is that I am the oldest of 4 boys and grew up in a roughneck neighborhood. I was somewhere along a third axis between Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn and as a young boy very much likely to get into the same kind of mischief and shenanigans, some of which involved cursing, smoking, fighting and wandering far from home. Brother understands a hierarchy of force escalation that I appreciate, as well as a respect for the eternal reasons to cool your own jets, without which one may become very quickly an agent of chaos. Brother and I agreed to carpool to the restaurant.

On our way down the single functioning escalator to the parking structure, our way was blocked by two way traffic and an 89 year old woman who faceplanted on the cold hard steel stairs. We observed momentarily a sea of frozen faces. If they hadn't been in close proximity to the poor old lady in age, I'm sure a dozen smartphones would have been in evidence. As two or three of us snapped to attention and pulled her to her feet and then to a 2/3s chair carry, the stairs were cleared. We sat her down on the large landing one level down. Her face was a bloody mess, but her hips and legs were intact and she was conscious. I immediately ran down the next flight to get my first aid kit from the truck. I had several triangle bandages, and no sterile wipes. I guess I never thought about injuries to the face so it made my ample saline wash useless. There were three lacerations on her forehead that were clearly from the familiar steel pattern of escalator stairs and blood saturated her auburn bangs. There was also blood in her ears, but I quickly assessed that it must have dripped down there. After we got her wiped up a bit and bandaged she was holding the left front of her mouth. She may have lost or chipped a tooth as well. The paramedics arrived about 20 minutes into our impromptu rescue, and we finally scurried off. We got beaming faces and kind words. My heart rate was up to 137, but my hands were steady.

Brother explained as we were washing our hands clear of blood, him much more than me, that we understand something about seeing people hurt. I have since gone through a short inventory of my own bloody scrapes, but from the point of view of whether or not I was fighting for myself or fighting for somebody else. It occurred to me that I have never lost a fight. I certainly lost what, if it were scored like a boxing match, was an ugly fight. But it wasn't a TKO. I guess that means I can take a beating and not quit. Sounds like stupid me. Funny as I write this I think of three other fights I got into, one of which I declined. That was John from Fedco whom I let ride my motorcycle which he promptly laid down within 20 minutes of begging me to let him ride. He said he'd understand if I wanted to punch him in the face (just once) but.. It was an effective enough apology. But I can't remember his last name. Brother reminded me of chivalry. I know he'd have my back in a fight.

At dinner, neither of us said much more about the Fall, but we both said that there is something we owe to bullies. I reiterated the gist of this 'On the Necessity of Knuckleheads'. (Wow, 2004 was a different era of my writing). And that trip down memory lane was abstracted a bit. While I was mostly interested in listening to my new associates, in the back of my head was something I recently said about the logic of violence, something I could not articulate well at all before my martial education but knew implicitly. I think the first time I talked about it was in the mid 80s during the gang wars of Southern California. I remember the movie 'Colors', and I remember saying "There is no such thing as senseless violence." People always have good reasons to squabble, because only psychopaths squabble spontaneously.

As many subjects as we covered through the course of the afternoon and evening, it is the matter of the rationality of conflict that touches closer to my current self. I think it is directly related to the reason each of us who did were comfortable dealing with the bloodied matron. We understand the logic and the rationality of violence. Brother paraphrased a meme which we probably both saw over the past week. "Those who are not capable of violence are not peaceful. Only those who are capable of violence can be peaceful, the others are harmless." And that's my paraphrasing. One must fight for a better peace. That too is rational. It is that rationality that tends to make me believe that Steven Pinker is rather smarmy in his predictions. Like many men who have not learned the hard way, long hair is an easily exploitable weakness. In male company (sometimes) I refer to man buns as a 'bitch handle'.

I struggle to come up with the appropriate handle for our fearless leader, but I am confident that he understands something about the rationality of the warrior spirit. Yet I wonder aloud whether or not such a spirit should be outsourced from society as it is today in our volunteer armies and our combat sports. When I'm in Texas I don't have such concerns, then again I haven't been outside of Las Colinas or Plano for some time now. We Americans are hung up and confused about gender, and many of us men are as well. It's a shame. We don't have very good arts to communicate the virtues of reason, courage, honor and toughness. We pretend to know what we need from our pop culture. Yet when we are faced with sudden violence, even the violence of gravity, most of us freeze. Some of us run towards the trouble. Learning how to survive trouble the hard way is not necessarily a blessing in disguise. Many a hard man has been laid low in our society by perfidious answers to "Or else what?". Beware the vengeance of politics and the force of lawsuits. It's getting easier to punk people via keyboard these days. But what kind of real man doxxes?

There is reason in violence because there are reasons for violence, most of which we don't bother to study or understand. And such ignorance is incapable of navigating cleverly through that knowledge. So it's no surprise that a great deal of mouthing off posing as intelligence is nothing more than propaganda which can often only be unlearned the hard way. Too many Americans are incapable of being peaceful. The have got a lot to learn. Especially those who claim to be innocent of aggression, but call for Leviathan forces in their attempts to turn the tides of history, remake the meaning of culture and manipulate the climate of the entire planet.

At length I am drawn to consider our common sense understanding of violence vis a vis liberty. It goes a little something like this: "Your freedom to swing your fist ends at the tip of my nose." Yet one of the reasons I have a category in this blog called 'A punch in the nose' is because I would much rather suffer a bloody nose than get hounded out of a job by cancel culture fanatics. What offends me a great deal is how a large contingent of wrong-thinkers, by Jonathan Haidt's definitions, are willing to stand 'in solidarity' with certain victims and support their violent acts.

Hardly any students say that they themselves would use violence to shut down a speech, but two surveys conducted in late 2017 found that substantial minorities of students (20% in one survey and 30% in the other) said it was sometimes “acceptable” for other students to use violence to prevent a speaker from speaking on campus.

Is that the effective courage of one's convictions, or is that more like being a football fan? I think it's cheerleading for bullies, but only because most college campus speakers woudn't dare to ask a protester to take it outside. There's a time and a place for roughhousing. If you ask me, there is a very good reason 2019 is nothing like 1967 when there were over 150 violent race riots in America. Racial oppression is nowhere near so violently oppressive. I don't think there was anything so intellectually profound about those riots or of any at all. People who lose their livelihoods fight back. People who are roughed up on the streets of their own neighborhoods toughen up. Human beings are naturally territorial and always will be. There are foolish and wise ways to deal with this territoriality. But a hastag mob defies all territoriality and deals vindictive virtual vigilantism. Who wouldn't face such accusers if they could? The principle of Habeas Corpus demands the face to face conflict. There is reason in this.

I say that reason is no different in the court than outside, and our liberty is fundamentally tied to and inextricable from that reason. A government of the people is granted a proxy of violence not a monopoly. The judicial system holds that proxy and the judge pronounces the coercive violence of law enforcement with a bang. The system is not a substitute for our natural rights, it is an extension made regular. Due process insures the right about of violence is administered on a consistent basis. But our systematic liberty and rights are inalienable from ourselves. So when we are faced with sudden violence we should respond justly according to our reason. The judge is not ever present. The paramedic is not ever present. If we are to be a nation of individuals, then it is our responsibility to know. It is our responsibility to use reason, generate knowledge and navigate cleverly through that knowledge - not be mere unthinking harmless beasts in the ship of state, but free men possessed of reason, toughness, courage and honor.

From Liberal To Conservative To Neither

Many people with whom I engage online have come to know me because of the work that I did as a black conservative. It is often difficult for them to see me in any other context. A question I answered on Quora may help those with genunie curiosity. 

Q. What turned you from liberal to conservative?

A. Seeds were planted all through my life. I noticed contradictions and lapses in Left politics. Having grown up with both my parents as cultural Marxists and social workers, I was right in the middle of the vanguard.

The first blow to that thinking came in the form of the work by Thomas Sowell whom I read in college. This was about the same time as the second Reagan presidency lead the country out of inflation. So by the mid 80s I was definitely pro-business and while not a supply-sider, definitely mindful of all economic aspects of political thinking. Having worked in a bank in the early 80s, I understood that people could not game the market and had no misgivings that capitalism was rigged against the people.

The second thing that happened was I came to understand the limits of Affirmative Action, having written the algorithms of the Balanced Workforce Model of Xerox Corporation that won awards from the Business Roundtable as the most progessive organization. From that I started to understand the actual supply and demand as well as the impact of political thought on meritocracy. Basically Affirmative Action is little more than a planned economy. In that way, it can never work and never not be controversial.

Thirdly, I came to recognize the ego-driven mendacity of the ‘activist’ world. I did so by participating in that smushy landscape of performance poetry and bohemian self-righteousness. It was fun, but it was not productive. Around that same time I began to sense that which was best described by David Graeber (the man who coined ‘we are the 99%’) as the ‘bullshit economy’. I ran from it and started taking money more seriously. Well because I got married and had kids, quickly. I moved to the South from NYC.

Then in quick succession several things happened to me that pushed me over the edge. Of course there was 9/11. Then I finally read some real history about the Soviet Union and learned (in my 40s!) how evil Stalin was. Enron collapsed and cost thousands of people their jobs, but Stalin murdered that many people every week. I had a fairly large payday and started to personally experience how it felt to be envied and hated for being rich. I found myself shopping at Walmart and immediately recognized the actual diversity of people that low prices and competitive capitalism serves. I completely lost all contempt for the working class. I found out that only about 3,000 people were ever lynched in the entire history of the post-civil war era.

So ultimately I saw where I came from as childish and self-serving and I was determined to grow up. I decided to understand the Right as well as I understood the Left. It was very surprising how much intellectual depth I found. It was right in front of me all the time but I never paid much attention or took it seriously. It took several years for all of this to gel, and ultimately I abandoned political conservatism but I came to respect a way of thinking that I had never participated in. I walked the miles in conservative shoes.

After I tired of political conservatism (it took about 8 years), I began engaging in what I call my ‘martial education’. At the same time as I recognized the divergence between Progressivism and standard Liberalism, I recognized how Identity Politics as well as a fanatic ideological puritanism struck Conservatism in the mainstream. So I see a wide variety of threads in these ideologies, few of which have clarity to their participants and partisans. I gradually adopted Stoicism which ultimately was fairly simple. These days I am fascinated (still) by history, and newly by psychology which as a computer science guy is fairly rare. Also behavioral economics and Taleb’s Incerto is fascinating to me and I really hope to square the circle by understanding the philosophy of religion. I expect big things from Aquinas, Nuemann, Jung, Spinoza and a few others.

I think the biggest matter of political philosophy that faces Western Civilization is that of relativism and shallow atheism. There is an essential lack of discipline of thought that only a certain element of ruin will adjust. Our ruling classes are currently not threatened by the nihilism they tolerate and are easily able to retain power in a lazy way. It seems to me that on certain conservatives perceive this threat, while the rest appear content to Let It Be. It’s not worth it to me to pledge any fidelity to any cadre of political philosophers. My way is to be Stoic and let things fall apart, but with a stubborn streak of public engagement of this sort in Quora. Now I really have to get back to work…

Aikido Dancing

I was just thinking about Aikido in my long journey to my martial education. I always loved it, but it was always too soft to be practical.

I started studying Aikido when LA got its first important dojo in what is now the LA Arts District. As I was fairly broke I would only come to talk to the master there. I was entranced by the idea of using your opponent’s force against them. Prior to that I had done a stupid little bit of judo as a kid, but quite a bit of street fighting. I have never in my adult life (maybe foolishly) felt the need to defend myself with martial arts. So it was always entirely the aesthetic that appealed to me.

Somewhere around 1993 I joined the dojo in Cambridge MA. I attended a few classes and got bored to death. Although there were wooden swords on the wall, the instructor made it clear nobody touches these for at least two years. Honest to god it felt like a dance class. So I decided to take capoeira instead. That instructor was all about showing off but at least it was honest dance. But he flaked showing up to his own class. In the end I bought a Body by Jake, got ripped and played basketball. Nevertheless there was a soft spot in my heart for Aikido.

Fast forward 17 years, 25 pounds, a wife and three kids later. I’m back in LA and ask myself what I have never learned all these years. I never had a true martial education. Why don’t I know what paramedics, cops and soldiers know? So I go to night classes and learn a bunch. One of the things I also study is firearms. I learn to shoot and all of this new knowledge changes my life. In addition I’m getting back into shape. I lose the 25 pounds doing circuit training and diet. During this time, I look for and find a couple Aikido studios, and I audit. Once again, I am less than impressed. But what could it hurt since I just want to learn the art? Well, I cannot forget the lesson I’ve learned in pistol training. You fight like you train and you train like you fight . I could clearly see these instructors would be wasting my time. It’s not fighting, it’s dancing.

One day as I’m attending a class for a ham radio license I see this dude warming up in the park. He’s doing moves like I’ve never seen. Instantly I know he’s a warrior. I speak to him and he says its Hapkido. But he doesn’t teach adults because most are fools. OK. Fair enough. So I start looking for schools that teach Hapkido. Very few. But do find one that is primarily TKD with some Hapkido thrown in.

Since I’ve lost most of the weight I wanted to and my circuit training is ridiculously expensive, I switch to TKD at the new studio. I love the instructors. But I had spent a lot of time thinking about BJJ and Krav Maga. I really wanted Hapkido. Long story short, TKD to me was more dancing. I could not remember the choreography, but whenever we grappled with the Hapkido moves, I was all over it. My natural fighting instincts go back to my judo as a kid, wrestling and street fighting.

Most recently I have done some training in ‘Kali Tudo’ under one of the instructors of the Dog Brothers . This is the most realistic martial thinking I have ever studied. It makes sense in the context of the street fighting I know, the pistol training I know, the combative tactics of police, and my desire, ultimately to train for an unfair fight as a man approaching 60 years old.

I never felt any need to be a badass, but then neither would I want to fight half-ass. I understand, because I felt for half of my life, the appeal of Aikido, but I’ve never met an instructor or practitioner who, like a cop, needs to submit violent people with prejudice and talked about his skills in those terms.

Quite honestly, I hope that the Supreme Court overrules the crap law in California so I can CCW. All this martial arts dancing is good for your ego and your posture, but I want more literal bang for my buck. In the meantime I can run fast and far enough to get clear of 99% of trouble, but if you follow me to my car…

Bottom line, let Aikido be Aikido. It’s appeal is not to badassery or unhinged fighting. It doesn’t need to be re-invented. It is what it is.

Why Do I Run?

Why do I work out? I work out to preserve the joy of the freedom of movement, so I can run in my waking hours the way I run in my dreams, as long as I can. I work to keep my body strong and healthy. To fight.  To fight illness and suffering. To fight death. And to preserve the will to fight all of my days. To protect my mind and my spirit as long and as far as I can.

Martial Education Update - Summer 2017

Several years ago I figured out that there was a class of knowledge that I was overly dependent on Hollywood and TV for my instruction. Today, not so much. You can check the channel for details under Martial Ed. Here's an update.

I have begun to take lessons in street combat. There's not a more pleasant way to name it. I could call it martial arts, but I have come to a finer grained set of distinctions in the ways of fighting. For some time this area of expertise could basically be called 'krava maga', which I first encountered in NYC two decades ago. The magic of Krav Maga is that it's 'martial arts' plus guns, which is to say beyond 'this is the stuff they teach the IDF' it is not so much a sport, and not so much 'self-defense' as it is a method of being dangerous to those who would harm you in a no-holds-barred situation. I have entertained some brief fancies around sword canes and small knives hung around my neck. At one time I thought about enrolling in an edged weapons class at the [expensive] Emerson Training Center. In the end, I pick TaeKwanDo for a number of decent reasons. That lasted a good three months then my schedule changed. I couldn't remember the dance steps, but when I got a chance to do the Hapkido parts, I think I was pretty good. In fact, I'm sure that I was.

I missed the aspects of grappling and using the kinds of strengths that served me as a skinny kid. I've always had an excellent sense of balance and I did well in Judo the few times I did that when I went to day camp as a kid. I wore glasses, so I was never good at boxing, so I rushed my opponents and wangled them to the ground. I always felt comfortable with ground fighting. But I was lucky and never really had to fight that much once I turned 17. Only once have I been hit in the face since then - with some guy who thought he could jack me. Long story short, he hit me with a sucker punch and ran away. I know I can take a punch, but it has been a long time. 

My life ideals lead me directly to Aikido and for a long time I have regretted not finding the right instructor. But all of the people I found around here in Southern Cal were more like ballet instructors than soldiers. I didn't and still don't want to hear about Eastern philosophies of harmony and balance. I simply want to become expert in understanding how to move my body and move other people's bodies under duress. 

Somewhere in Palos Verdes is a warrior in Hapkido. I need to see if he still works at that park. That's the guy I want to be. Well, I want to know some of what he knows. In the meantime, I have found a warrior who lives a few blocks from me, and I am taking private instruction. In addition, I have rejoined my gym and have lost about 10 pounds from this year's peak. I have 20 more pounds to go to reach what I think ought to me optimum - around 190 pounds. Then maybe I can really improve my aerobic endurance. 

Very much like the first time I started my circuit training, getting into what I'm learning now is painful. It's good to get hit. It reminds you of what's likely to happen. I'm pretty sure that I can keep my cool, and I hope that I start learning the paths. What I am learning is something specific to my arc which is multifold. Call it modified street Kali. It's CQ with sticks and edged weapons with some specialization for people who move slow, ie older guys like myself. I'm not so slow now, but in five years I may be. So I've got to learn something that will serve me into my 60s, not just give me the satisfaction that I can kick ass now. So I am learning to flow like water, but with the understanding that if I do not, then it's a fight.

"Then it's a fight" is something my instructor says when we find an opening in our techniques. So we started last week trying to adapt disarming techniques that we learned from a 1940s era video of the Canadian Army. As we watched, it looked goofy. As we put it to the test, the foot placements actually made sense. When you're trying to wrestle a bayonetted rifle from an opponent, you have to do it right the first time, or then it's a fight, meaning all logic flies out the window and you're situational mastery goes to zero. What's important that I'm learning is that you actually have to work against force, which is what 'martial arts' ballet does not do. You cannot perfect a combat technique without learning painfully what can go wrong. So there's definitely a fear factor in play here. 

I would note that I'm finding a couple sources to be very instructive. One is Doug Marcaida. The other is MindSmash. 

Counting the Dead

  For many many years, I have had an abiding interest in the brutality and lethality of law enforcement. I have a number of experiences...

Today the subject is 'unarmed black men'. There is nothing more that needs to be done because it's not a significant pattern, there is no significant risk. You say 'unarmed black men' as if 'unarmed black men' were a special group at risk, but 20 million unarmed black men are not at risk. If I said 400 unarmed black men were killed by lightning strikes last year, would you consider it necessary to setup a national awareness campaign and change policy? Of course not. Because the number is so small, you cannot extrapolate a pattern.

This is precisely exactly demonstrably the problem with racialist thinking. You take something that happens to an insignificant number of people in reality, and then you apply it to a race of millions. Then you do everything possible to make everybody conscious of your little racial theory. You add racial consciousness by establishing a false causal relationship and substitute prejudicial associations instead of real logic. You turn 'who happen to be' into 'because they are'. Wrong.

Police shootings need vigilance and they get vigilance. Cops don't walk away from fatal shootings without administrative review, and those administrative reviews are under local control. That local control is all that is necessary - anything else takes power away from the people, and subjects local matters to millions of prejudiced eyeballs (through the lens of national media). But your town is not like my town. Every incident requires a case by case examination, in the context of exactly what happened, not according to some racial theory.

There are practical considerations. Consider the fact that there are 12,000 police departments in the US. Our best guess right now is that there are 800 - 1200 bungled arrests that end up fatal. That means in a bad year, the average precinct uses the new system once every 10 years. But we know the distribution is more likely to be the 80/20 rule, IE 20% of the departments are 80% of the problem.

So I know this because

A) my profession is business intelligence. I'm the guy who builds these kinds of databases for a living.

B) my brother is LAPD and I know the kind of paperwork he had to fill out under a similar consent decree.

When you mandate this kind of system it gets real expensive real fast for officers and departments who are not part of the problem. If you've decided that you can't trust the departments, the prosecuting attorneys and the whole system, having an accurate number won't help.

I'm curious to see who is going to pay to hire new FBI agents for this job and how much cooperation they expect to get. They have about 55 field offices, so that means (on average) > 200 departments per field office. Plus the cost of the new system. Heh. That's a contract I'd like to get.

But seriously, for what? If in 2 years we say exactly 1223 deaths, after we've spent a couple million for the new system, and taken the hit off the federal payroll to either dilute the FBI's manpower or increase it with new hires, what is going to restore the public trust when 99.9% is not good enough? Nothing.

What's needed here is a fabulously produced high-tech lynching with wall to wall media coverage in HD and some cops name that becomes as unforgettable as 'OJ Simpson'. So that everybody who doesn't trust the 99.9% can repeat that name for the next 20 years, and justify all their theories.

Why? Because when the Guardian UK put up their site, the facts became too boring to talk about.
(The Counted: people killed by police in the United States in 2015 – interactive) And nobody is talking about Oklahoma and New Mexico, where these statistics are telling us the most shootings per capita are taking place.

People who have volunteered there emotions into this circus will not be satisfied until somebody in uniform is burned at the stake and then beheaded. I expect to see lynching return in my lifetime, but I will have the comfort of knowing that the silent majority will be larger than it ever was. Will that be too small a comfort?  Hard to say. 

 

 

European Murder vs European Gun Ownership

Dear America, Here's Your Fascist Solution

First, the original screed, applied to guns, from the newly viral Sara Benincasa

Dear America: Here’s Your Gun Solution

Here’s some common sense for you. I want gun ownership to be as boring and annoying as car ownership. I want you to go to some Department of Weapons and sit for hours. I want folks who own guns to prove their skill, their mental and physical health, and to be licensed and reviewed over the years just as happens with our driver’s licenses. You earn the right to own and drive a vehicle; earn the right to own and use a gun.

Quibble with me over semantics if you want to; what is a “right” vs. what is a “privilege.” I’ll be busy with my friends and colleagues trying to prevent more unnecessary deaths.

Gun ownership isn’t some inalienable right granted by God. Remember, the Constitution was written by men coming out of a long and bloody war near the end of the 18th century. It was written for their time.

It also included the “right” to own a human being.

Things change.

Folks evolve.

I want a voluntary federal buyback program for firearms, with hunting weapons and vintage/historic weapons exempt. I want the sale of weapons to be even more tightly controlled than the sale of Xanax and other controlled substances. I want advertising for firearms to be as regulated as DTC (direct to consumer) advertising for pharmaceuticals (“May cause shortness of breath, long-lasting boners, etc.”) We can do all of this. It’ll create jobs, believe it or not: regulators, educators, enforcers.

It will not end murder. It won’t end rape or robbery either. It WILL make it harder to commit those crimes. There will be a black market for guns as there is for any coveted item in a capitalist society. (And I’m not anti-capitalism, btw. I’m a big fan! Sorry, hippies. I do love you guys, by the way, you’re very nice people with good instincts.)

Continuing education credits for gun owners should be required, just as they are with medical professionals. When you have a greater ability to take a human life you have a greater responsibility to prove your fitness to wield the tools that may create that end.

And that’s how the fuck you well-regulate a goddamn American militia.

 

Now let's change it slightly:
Dear America: Here’s Your Religion Solution

Here’s some common sense for you. I want religious faith to be as boring and annoying as car ownership. I want you to go to some Department of Religion and sit for hours. I want folks who pray to God to prove their skill, their mental and physical health, and to be licensed and reviewed over the years just as happens with our driver’s licenses. You earn the right to own and drive a vehicle; earn the right to possess and use your faith.

Quibble with me over semantics if you want to; what is a “right” vs. what is a “privilege.” I’ll be busy with my friends and colleagues trying to prevent more unnecessary influence.

Faith isn’t some inalienable right granted by 'God'. Remember, the Constitution was written by men coming out of a long and bloody war near the end of the 18th century. It was written for their time.

It also included the “right” to own a human being.

Things change.

Folks evolve.

I want a voluntary federal buyback program for religious property, with large churches and vintage/historical landmarks exempt. I want the sale of religious paraphernalia to be even more tightly controlled than the sale of Xanax and other controlled substances. I want advertising of religions to be as regulated as DTC (direct to consumer) advertising for pharmaceuticals (“May cause shortness of breath, long-lasting boners, etc.”) We can do all of this. It’ll create jobs, believe it or not: regulators, educators, enforcers.

It will not end murder. It won’t end rape or robbery either. It WILL make it harder to commit those crimes for religious reasons. There will be a black market for prayer rugs, crosses & Stars of David as there is for any coveted item in a capitalist society. (And I’m not anti-capitalism, btw. I’m a big fan! Sorry, hippies. I do love you guys, by the way, you’re very nice people with good instincts.)

Continuing education credits for the religious should be required, just as they are with medical professionals. When you have a greater ability to influence a human life you have a greater responsibility to prove your fitness to wield the tools that may create that end.

And that’s how the fuck you well-regulate a goddamn American's religion.

--

Dear America: Here’s Your Gay Solution

Here’s some common sense for you. I want gay marriage to be as boring and annoying as car ownership. I want you to go to some Department of Sex and sit for hours. I want folks who own penises to prove their skill, their mental and physical health, and to be licensed and reviewed over the years just as happens with our driver’s licenses. You earn the right to own and drive a vehicle; earn the right to own and safely use a penis.

Quibble with me over semantics if you want to; what is a “right” vs. what is a “privilege.” I’ll be busy with my friends and colleagues trying to prevent more unnecessary deaths.

Anal sex isn’t some inalienable right granted by God. Remember, the Constitution was written by men coming out of a long and bloody war near the end of the 18th century. It was written for their time.

It also included the “right” to own a human being.

Things change.

Folks evolve.

I want a federal tax break for gay to straight conversions, with interior decorators, playwrites & historical stereotypes exempt. I want the sale of gay marriage licenses to be even more tightly controlled than the sale of Xanax and other controlled substances. I want media coverage for gays to be as regulated as DTC (direct to consumer) advertising for pharmaceuticals (“May cause shortness of breath, long-lasting boners, etc.”) We can do all of this. It’ll create jobs, believe it or not: regulators, educators, enforcers.

It will not end AIDS. It won’t end rape or child molestation either. It WILL make it harder to commit those crimes. There will be a black market for gay sex as there is for any coveted item in a capitalist society. (And I’m not anti-capitalism, btw. I’m a big fan! Sorry, hippies. I do love you guys, by the way, you’re very nice people with good instincts.)

Continuing education credits for gay penis owners should be required, just as they are with medical professionals. When you have a greater ability to prevent a human conception you have a greater responsibility to prove your fitness to wield the tools that may create that end.

And that’s how the fuck you well-regulate a goddamn American homosexual.

 

Dear America: Here’s Your Final Solution

Here’s some common sense for you. I want life, liberty and pursuit of happiness to be as boring and annoying as car ownership. I want you to go to some Department of Liberty and sit for hours. I want folks who claim citizenship to prove their skill, their mental and physical health, and to be licensed and reviewed over the years just as happens with our driver’s licenses. You earn the right to own and drive a vehicle; earn the right to possess and use your citizenship.

Quibble with me over semantics if you want to; what is a “right” vs. what is a “privilege.” I’ll be busy with my friends and colleagues trying to prevent more unnecessary deaths.

Due process isn’t some inalienable right granted by God. Remember, the Constitution was written by men coming out of a long and bloody war near the end of the 18th century. It was written for their time.

It also included the “right” to own a human being.

Things change.

Folks evolve.

I want a voluntary federal buyback program for private property, with special exemptions permissible. I want the sale of printed material to be even more tightly controlled than the sale of Xanax and other controlled substances. I want advertising of apolitical opinion to be as regulated as DTC (direct to consumer) advertising for pharmaceuticals (“May cause shortness of breath, long-lasting boners, etc.”) We can do all of this. It’ll create jobs, believe it or not: regulators, educators, enforcers.

It will not end murder. It won’t end rape or robbery either. It WILL make it harder to commit those crimes for all citizens. There will be a black market for prohibited materials as there is for any coveted item in a capitalist society. (And I’m not anti-capitalism, btw. I’m a big fan! Sorry, hippies. I do love you guys, by the way, you’re very nice people with good instincts.)

Continuing education credits for all citizens should be required, just as they are with medical professionals. When you have a greater ability to be exercise your citizenship you have a greater responsibility to prove your fitness to wield the tools that may create that end.

And that’s how the fuck you well-regulate a goddamn American.

--

 

So always remember. Things change. Folks evolve.  Semantic quibbles about rights can be ignored, we have serious work to be done.  Are you part of the solution or are you part of the problem?

My Stoic Journey: The Sound of No Hands Clapping

Well this Christmas I celebrate the success of the project I had several years ago to get the hell out of the Enterprise software business and get into Open Source, DevOps and the Cloud. It's done. I'm there. I work at home and run several suites of stacks for several customers and that's all good. The Last Kid is a senior in highschool and we're in the middle of planning how to ditch the four bedroom house for cheaper, cozier digs. 

Along the way, some unexpected things happened, most significant of these were a dramatic increase in my credit rating and consequent quality of luxury furnishings. But seriously, it was the discovery of Stoicism and my martial education. These two things, which I didn't plan, came sideways out of the discovery, I suppose at long last, that I really don't like people in actuality as I do in theory. In theory I am an absolute modernist liberal. In practice, I feel most people don't deserve the benefit of the doubt. People meaning the people who practice democracy in America as a form of cultural identity and social complaint. I've concluded that things fall apart and at this rate my best efforts should be in divesting myself of the of the emotion so many have put into public debate. 

I was introduced to Stoicism, although I didn't know it at the time, by the following quote by John Boyd. 

“The most important thing in life is to be free to do things. There are only two ways to insure that freedom — you can be rich or you can you reduce your needs to zero.” 

My mind always drifts back to a series of afternoons in Southern California back in 2008 when I was working in Orange County. I was on the precipice of accepting the job before my current gig. At the moment I was making out quite well as an independent consultant. Although I was communting 100 miles a day and gas was approaching $4, I was happy and confident. A bit too much, I thought, in my BMW 750il. I considered my neighbor and friend who had recently purchased a large deisel Ford pickup truck. It was an anti-vanity. The issue of the day was immigration and I spoke for a moment about Jameil's Law on the local radio show with Warren Olney.  But my mind during lunches and commutes were focused on the larger role of long term thinking as I engaged the podcasts of the Long Now Foundation, of which I am now a member. In the long haul, I thought, I want to turn away from the politics of the sort that placate a loud public capble of rationalizing away the very meaning of 'illegal alien' and toward science. Scientific discipline has taken a back seat in our discourse and I don't want to be the guy in this society driving a luxury sedan. I'm about hard and excellent work at the top of my profession, or so I thought. And so in those days when nobody quite knew how bad the economy might get, I began a long march towards new sensibilities, anticipating no democratic solutions. 

So I was preparing myself for things to get worse. In fact, I wanted to purchase a Hummer, making a kind of outsized apocalyptic gesture. In the end, I wanted something that said smart survival. I wound up with a Toyota FJ Cruiser, and it has become my favorite vehicle ever. But deeper than this outward sign of an inward commitment, I was seeking a way to leave the chatter behind. I made a name for myself as a black Republican and founder of the Conservative Brotherhood, a move that was optimistic for values against a practical backdrop that was stunningly mechanical. For anyone who bothers to look closely, the GOP struggles mightily with reconciling the needs of electoral power, dedication to virtues and the resposibilities of governance. Pick one and a half. It was a boulder I'd rather not push. 

Fortunately I had dedicated my blog, the center of all my public thinking, to Socratic dialog, and people were still engaging me well enough to spark my own thoughts on every significant public matter. After some time however, once I got my final new job, working at home made me rather stir crazy. So I used Meetup groups to get from behind the keyboard and into real dialog. It turned out to be better in my own lab and library than in the agoras of Southern Cal. I met a few interesting people, but I would hesitate to call them friends. They too were single-minded or abstracted beyond much friendly use. Still, the philosophy meetup groups, the cloud computing meetup groups got me going. Raising my expectations and reducing my needs began to start coming more naturally. I decided not to be disappointed by disappointments in the field, and stick even tighter to long term thinking. 

Playing a major part in my transition was the entire zombie vibe that has infected our society. So I really began to think about what if democracy really did fail in America, not just in parts but the whole thing? I knew instinctively that we would revert to hierarchies and tribalisms, as many of us are doing in our solopsist idiot ghettos behind the barbwire interdictions of political correctness. But what if it weren't just Antioch University? So I began to develop my Peasant Theory, already making a very strong statement in my own sights that Obama's electorate was no place for my sort of long term thinking. 

Oddly enough, if these lessons in disappointment weren't quite enough, a couple video games helped push me the extra mile. Of course I read Seneca and Epictetus, but it was literally a boss battle in a game called Amalur that brought me to write:

As I approached the highest levels in Amalur, resolving the ultimate faction quest of the sages, I battled the Archsage's mental demons one of which was Ambition and the other Indifference. Having won, I got to choose and I chose Indifference as a power. Indifference is the power of equanimity. I know it contradicts Ayn Rand, but perhaps now is the time to consider disinterest. For years since my 40s I have been waiting for all the kids to eat first and being a river to my people with the pride of earning and giving away. But now it all starts to feel more and more like Indifference because it surely is not Ambition. Ambition is a tool to make one's river wide and deep. Indifference serves wisdom best. It makes one confident in judgment. The Judge is critical, but does not belong. 

I was becoming very judgmental. And it was finally Harold Bloom and Charles Dickens that helped me understand myself. People were behaving, according to me, at very low standards, and yet the chatting classes kept expecting to outsource a new generation of experts by public acclaimation and internet aggregation. We were and still are in the midst of a crap-populist revolution in America, both political parties harvesting shit tons of power by the buttload from the manufactured consent of a nation of asshats. And I knew that Wall Street was going to feed its own and the Exxon would still be Exxon. While the masses were tweeting out selfies, there was real long term thinking done by industry. Sure much of it was infantilizing the once formidable American middle-class, but once they decided to spend money through Verizon and AT&T texting adolescent spellings rather than essaying in paragraphs, well.. certain dislocations were inevitable. My job was not to outrun the bear, my job was to be in my castle not searching for mystical communications with nature in the first place. And so Bleak House has been my guide to what civilization can be without democracy. 

In the back of my mind is the Gangstarr soundtrack. 

Check it stupid 
While you're out there, on the main streets frontin 
Your game's week, so I'm huntin you down clown 
Cause you need to learn somethin 
All that bluffin, won't get you nothin but killed 
No mission fulfilled, because there's others who will 
get jealous, hell if they can take clout from you, they'll do it 
So that's what I'm about to do, I'll step to it 
and strip you of your pride (your pride) 
And then I'll stick and I'll rip you up from all sides 
or possibly I'll let you slide, slime 
Cause you'll set your own death in just a matter of time 
Yeah, and I'll be somewhere on the sidelines, y'know 

I won't disclaim all of that gangbanging harshness. What made us think we could be mellow in the first place? You cannot be mellow on credit. You're owned. Don't get me wrong. This is not pessimism. It's not even particularly skeptical or cynical. It's the mere acknowledgment that in the long term, to paraphrase Taleb, whatever can be, will be. In the long term, a black American president is inevitable. So is a limited nuclear exchange. The point is not to be shocked, but to be prepared. There are always backstreets. There are always sucker MCs, there are always men whose games are too tight to come apart at the seams. The trick, as Kipling would say, is to walk with kings nor lose the common touch. To observe judgmentally at the appropriate distance, and to have a home to return to at the end of what may or may not be an eventful day. The Chinese curse is not to live in interesting times, but that you would be become overly shitfaced by the whipsaw of the crap-populism of interesting times. I walked down the crapulous backstreets of Dickensian London. I get it. Buy better boots. 

One of the most intriguing ideas I have entertained in the past decade was an understanding of the best reasons for war, which have nothing do do with self-defense in the immediate sense, but the defense of reason itself.  The purpose of war is to destroy myths. The purpose of war is to restore human faith in cause and effect. The purpose of war is remind humankind of its limits. I didn't expect to be thinking such thoughts, but there it is all put together. It's only that thinking about my developing Stoicism that concerns me. Do I need war? Am I indifferent to that path to war? Do I accept it like the tank captain in Fury? "Ideals are peaceful, history is violent." 

The other day I read this excellent review of Mein Kampf by Orwell.

[Hitler] has grasped the falsity of the hedonistic attitude to life. Nearly all western thought since the last war, certainly all "progressive" thought, has assumed tacitly that human beings desire nothing beyond ease, security, and avoidance of pain. In such a view of life there is no room, for instance, for patriotism and the military virtues. The Socialist who finds his children playing with soldiers is usually upset, but he is never able to think of a substitute for the tin soldiers; tin pacifists somehow won’t do. Hitler, because in his own joyless mind he feels it with exceptional strength, knows that human beings don’t only want comfort, safety, short working-hours, hygiene, birth-control and, in general, common sense; they also, at least intermittently, want struggle and self-sacrifice, not to mention drums, flag and loyalty-parades…. Whereas Socialism, and even capitalism in a grudging way, have said to people "I offer you a good time," Hitler has said to them "I offer you struggle, danger and death," and as a result a whole nation flings itself at his feet. -- George Orwell, 1940

I cannot be indifferent to that probability happening here in America, in the long term. If I were to mind the currents to a greater degree, I might be alarmed by those signs I could see. But I have decided to limit my field of vision to my own domestic tranquility, to my own probity, to my own property. I no longer am concerned about how I appear so much in the public sphere so long as I have a Western gentleman's comforts and privileges, because I aim in no uncertain terms for Western civilization to be sustained. Sinatra may be dead and Sammy may no longer dance the old soft shoe, but their pictures are still on the wall in my favorite restaurant where the bartender has read Kingsley Amis. I can survive another Blitz when Duke Ellington is triply redundant in the Amazon Cloud and I can still get packet radio. More importantly, I have friends with whom I can trust my life. I have tapped into some military tradition, and I will some more.  

Here is where things get a bit nebulous, because here is where I am. I don't have all of my answers, but I know where to look and whom to ask. I know that vodka makes good mouthwash, and I know I can drink vodka straight. I am a new organic all over again, and my loyalty remains to the city states of Los Angeles and New York, just in case things mostly don't work out. I can lose weight and run. I can shoot and cook and mend wounds. My martial education is advancing and I will have covered all bases by the time I reach 60. 

But. Hitler.

You see I understand and forgive the world its callow activities. I must. I have children I love, and I see the extent to which I have entrusted their education to the decrepit mediocrities of the American public. We don't know what class is any longer, because so little of what we have was forged by the harsh realities of war. We can lose the New Republic in a heartbeat because today's billion dollar fortune bears no resemblance to that of Carnegie's. Old money is dead, and hackers are trying Bitcoin. There's no gold standard, so you really have to get your own gold. We could lose the whole Republic in a heartbeat if the whole thing goes off standard. Which standards matter? (He said rhetorically as if to placate those post-modernists who actually wonder). I suppose Plato spoke about golden souls, did he not? I am ultimately in the business of aiding the survival of the Western, modern liberal ideal, in theory. But in practice, I leave my house in an urban assault vehicle. I don't survive on hope. I'm too heavy for that. I fall through hope's thin rafters so I'm all about concrete foundations, Fred Flintstone in Bedrock. Fred does not go to war. He is good natured, but very practical, and very defensive of his women.

Will that be what it takes? Will it be war that brings us out of the confusion that allows our politics to suffer in such reputable treachery?  If so, then let me be a war profiteer. Let me gain strength from the suffering of mankind, like a surgeon. Let me not profit from mankind's foolishness, like a rock star politian. I don't know. Will I be indifferent? I will work to be wise in my judgment, knowing judgment must come for each of us. We are men after all, and we do good and evil and must meet with our due rewards.

For the time being, I am an engineer among people who read tea leaves. I mock them. Yet I resist the impulse to slap the teapot over into their laps and rudely interrupt their mindless meditations. I sit in silent judgment, good natured and affably indifferent. I enjoy the tea. But I also don't complain about the price because I am part of the system that delivers it to the store where the common man shops. I am invested in keeping the ships afloat and the planes in the air. There remains infrastructure to be put to good use in the modern world, despite how many asshats vote for those who would deconstruct it mercilessly in search of an idiot-proofed utopia. Still, I'm not sure how much not to care the common man's ever more common mistakes when the health of the nation seems impaired by it. How many of us are just passengers on this ship?

The German comic Henning Wehn says something very deep about clapping along and enjoying yourself. I am Stoic. I am doing my work, and calculating, observing and judging with a studied indifference for the purposes of wisdom. I am reducing my needs to zero while focusing on my long term thinking, prepared for what can go wrong in my house made of bricks. I'm not just clapping along and enjoying myself in the public sphere. 

The Gunfighter

I use a pistol and I train for gunfighting. I am very new to this training. I came to it without having anything untoward suddenly motivate me, I simply started asking questions about guns and my rights as an individual. I did so for about a year before I purchased my first gun. So there has been a revolution in my thinking.

The most important thing about having a gun you would expect to carry in society (as opposed to hunting or target practice) is what power you do and do not have, and the wide variety of situations which now require thought. This is situational awareness and force escalation. It could all be called 'street smarts', and its something you must develop over time by studying what the professionals know. I've always had street smarts, I was raised in a rough neighborhood on the periphery of gang territory and I was the oldest of four boys. So I learned to size up other boys and navigate various levels of hostility and aggression. I can tell when an evil stare will lead to harsh words, will lead to face offs, will lead to pushing and beyond. People talk a lot about fight or flight and adrenalin, that's halfway true. There's a lot of grey analog between war and peace. 

When I train with my gun I do so on an outdoor range with targets and objects that resemble urban situations. Our motto is train how your fight, fight how you train. It is to overcome irrational behavior and generate good habits. My instructors are men who have gone to Gunsite, which is one of the top training facilities available to civilians. There is an escalating path of classes there that are expensive and demanding. I expect to take several of them. The point is that I am the sort of person who feels capable of learning what police, swat and special forces operators learn. And we live in a country where such knowledge is available, so I take advantage of my rights and I learn my responsibilities. I get the knowledge of practitioners and I completely eliminate wishful thinking. 

Eliminating wishful thinking is the point. That is the difference that allows police and fire professionals to run *towards* the danger instead of away. Self-defense is just part of the equation. 

I want to say that one of the first things I noticed as I began my journey was the attitude and demeanor of armed security guards. They are everywhere and 99% of us never really pay attention to them, or speak to them or observe what they are observing. Having armed guards around us is not unusual or controversial. Think about how you would apply your love and concern for your fellow man if you were the armed guard outside your local 7-11 at night. That's how you should start to think about it.

Gun Control, Democratic Hammers & The Marginal Police State

Somebody asked:

In conversations about gun control, some gun control opponents claim that gun control policies will lead America to become a police state. This is generally phrased as a slippery slope to fascism, instead of a plausible explanation for how such a transformation would come about out of our current political environment. I am interested in hearing in concrete terms how gun control regulations would lead to a police state.

This is a difficult one, but one that can be understood in the marginal case. This is not a proof, but an illustration. 

First look to the questions by people here in Quora about various angles on gun control you will find 'Why not' questions about law that is already settled. For example, people are asking, why not make bullets illegal instead of guns (or restrict bullets). People have asked, why not make it illegal to be drunk when using a firearm. Already settled. A big question on many minds are means testing for mental illness.

Let's take that last item. But first recall that what we see are the basic energies of political activism. People ask not only because they want answers but they believe, and reasonably so, all things that aren't settled in their minds might become part of a change in policy and in law. In other words, there is a general assumption that more public debate resulting in more regulation can make more sense or people more safe. It is a fundamental assumption of gun control - that there is something you can do with the law through the power and force of the state - that you can change other people's behavior for the better. Notice how this takes the almost singular form of democratic political activism and law, not intellectual persuasion, not social motivation, not religious doctrine, not transcendental discipline.

In other words, those people who want a safer world see democratic political activism and the force of law through the aegis of government as their hammer. And let's not kid ourselves, they don't intend to deregulate, but to add regulations and beef up enforcement of new laws. It's obviously not the best way to deal with your fellow humans, but that's their choice. 

Now read those two paragraphs once again and substitute the concept of drugs instead of guns. Let's be honest. This is about prohibition. And people who use 'gun free' countries as their models are in fact the zero-tolerance contingent. 

It should be trivially easy to look at something like a War on Guns as just another proxying off of our human abilities to change onto Washington power brokers. But people still need it spelled out. If YOU personally are not going to do the gun control, then you are giving consent to the STATE to do the gun control. 

Let's look specifically at the rights of the minority of Americans who are shooters. The first thing lots of people are agitating about now is whether citizens should prove themselves to be mentally competent to own firearms. I suppose that would be like mandatory drug testing, huh? Exactly who is going to do this mental health screening? Gun shop owners? By what standard is this competency going to be assessed? Sounds like a new government sponsored research grants are going to have to go out, and then a new civil service bureaucracy will have to be created -  The Ministry of Mental Health. Then when I get my government stamp, I can present it to an authorized dealer who now knows my official, government certified mental classification. 

That's not a police state. But it's marginally closer to one than what we have now. What we have now is the social bond and trust by society that the gun owning minority aren't psychopaths. But obviously to the zero-tolerance crew that social bond must be politicized, means-tested, crafted into new law, and administered by the government to be applied to YOU, you gun-loving freak. 

..and if it saves just one comrade, it will all be worth it..

My First AR (Bic Version)

So I decided to shoot an AR-15. Better sooner than later. I watched a video of a convincing argument by Colion Noir about why he should have an assault rifle or a semi-automatic rifle, and I've been trying to figure out the difference between .223 and 5.56. A combination of circumstances that found me at my local range renting an AR. 

I brought my own pistol and rented the AR. The dude gave me basic instructions but there were a couple of weird things. He said only put in 8 rounds (although the magazine holds 10) so it won't jam, and if it does then somebody will come out to the firing line and help me. But the really weird thing was that he used the cap of a Bic pen to stick in a little hole which had previously been some machined part, in order to release the magazine. 

I went to the firing line and took my time, loading up my pistol mags. Then I broke open the box of 20 5.56 rounds that I purchased from the counter and pushed 8 of them into the rifle magazine. I had that same feeling, literally of 'cheap skates' that you get when you rent ice skates at the rink. These ain't the sharpest tools in the shed. I shot the two mags from my pistol, felt good about it and then picked up the rifle.

Slammed the mag in, pulled back the bolt and looked down the iron sights 10 yards to my zombie target, slowly squeeze and boom. Hmm. A bit more kick than I expected, but completely reasonable. The plastic stock wasn't very comfortable but not awkward. I was low and left, but left a neat hole. I shot four more booms and then click. What? So I executed from my training, tap, rack, squeeze. Another click. I tried to put the gun on safety and it wouldn't go. Then I pulled out the magazine, completely forgetting the Bic pen cap. It came right out. There was no cartridge in the chamber. Failure to feed. 

So I slammed it in again, racked the bolt. Click. WTF. I haven't even gotten through one magazine and this piece of crap is already malfunctioning. I removed the magazine (again without the pen cap) and walked over to W. A new friend that I met just that day, W was geared out in a chav suit with a XXL jersey with Run DMC -style fonts. His cap was turned backwards and he wore a single black shooting glove. W had a whole arsenal of pistols in his stall, one of which looked very much like a Desert Eagle, only blacked out. There must have been 8 guns. I didn't watch him shoot, but every thing about him smelled very Wu Tang Clan. W's not somebody to fuck with. I asked him to come over and take a look at my AR. He went through a couple well-practiced motions and remarked that the gun was dry as a bone. No lube. Hmm. Then he handed it back to me. I aimed and got a boom. And then another click. I handed him the pen cap and he nodded thoughtfully, rolled his eyes and uttered two words.

"California shit".

He used the pen cap, replaced the magazine and handed me the gun. I got the last two booms out of it and then realized what he was on about. My rented gun was in the twilight zone between manufacture and legal compliance. In other words it had been crippled in order to make do. Obviously, the normal magazine locking and release mechanism had been altered, so that's why the pen cap was used. My guess was that this was a non-standard magazine, shortened to handle only 10 cartridges at a time, which is the California limit. I hadn't realized that the magazine wasn't locking properly into place - the fit was less than perfect, and less than perfect on a machine such as an AR-15 is sufficiently dangerous to piss me off. A lot. 

In normal life, especially when talking about human effort, perfect is the enemy of good. In engineering, good is the enemy of perfect. When it comes to engineering firearms, perfect is the only thing that's acceptable. I've been overthinking firearms for over a year now, and have had the good fortune to have serious, smart men and women as my shooting buddies. Even now as I improve my shooting skills and expand my knowledge, I am coming to understanding the logic behind the sentiments of the shooting public. Only experts have, or should have, the patience for guns that fail for various reasons. When our gang goes shooting and a gun misbehaves, there's immediately a set of troubleshooting procedures and discussions that go into effect, most of it over my head, but all of it comprehensible if you are a mechanical engineer. 

I have put about 1000 rounds through my new Sig pistol, and oiled it for the first time over the weekend. It has never failed. This AR-15 failed within 5 shots. That's unacceptable. 

Last month or so, I entered the debate surrounding microstamping. I understood quite clearly why shooters would be opposed to some mechanism that changes the trigger system in order to stamp a code onto the brass so that 'criminals could be identified'. You have only to shoot a semi-auto once to recognize that hot brass pops out onto the ground when you shoot. Any 7 year old knows you should pick up your trash and recycle it, but somehow we are to believe that crooks are too stupid to pick up their brass, right? The trigger mechanism, especially in handguns, is one of the most sensitive and determining aspects of their quality. More than anything else, the difference between a good gun and a bad one is the trigger. Microstamping tech is a monkey wrench, which means, to the delight of legislators with a view to suppress the sales of guns in this state, that guns would have to be redesigned. Those that don't, if such a requirement were to pass into law, would be prohibited. There's no gun grabbing going on in California, all the would-be gun grabbers are attacking the supply side. 

Despite Peruta, such protectionists have ample precedent to be hopeful in the auto industry. California standards are different and more stringent for auto emissions than those in other states. We all can remember when catalytic converters in exhaust systems were new (and troublesome), and we can all remember how poorly engineered were the cars of the 80s. Today, cars are over-engineered and have few if any user servicable parts inside. Few people change plugs or use timing lights. Some of that engineering is perfect. But guns aren't cars, and over-engineering bullets and their firing mechanisms is not a good idea. Keeping it simple is the best, and the most elegant design when it comes to firearms are the simplest. Reliability is the most important engineering goal, if I may state the obvious, when it comes to dealing with explosives.

So now I have the real experience of dealing with a faulty firearm. And I tell you I was still angry about it after I left the range. I have always been drawn to the precision of working these machines. That's my gearhead sensibility. I just can't stand the idea of explosives designed by political committees. I don't think any reasonable person would. 

BTW. It should come to you as no surprise that I think there are few things a foolish as firearms manufactured by 3D printers. This ain't Star Trek. 

 

Update: Aha moment. The Bullet Button.

Related articles

Gun Culture Club

My Experience With Guns & Position on Gun Control

California's Microstamping Law Alienates Gun Makers

Dred Scott's Gun

It is interesting that the 9th Circuit, in its finding for Peruta v San Diego, has ruled that the pro-gun control side did not adequately research history. In that history of law with regard to the defense of Constitutional rights, one must of necessity pay attention to how certain matters were regarded wrongly, as with the Dred Scott Decision. Consider the following excerpt from Dred Scott with my emphasis in bold italics.

The legislation of the States therefore shows, in a manner not to be mistaken, the inferior and subject condition of that race at the time the Constitution was adopted, and long afterwards, throughout the thirteen States by which that instrument was framed; and it is hardly consistent with the respect due to these States, to suppose that they regarded at that time, as fellow-citizens and members of the sovereignty, a class of beings whom they had thus stigmatized; whom, as we are bound, out of respect to the State sovereignties, to assume they had deemed it just and necessary thus to stigmatize, and upon whom they had impressed such deep and enduring marks of inferiority and degradation; or, that when they met in convention to form the Constitution, they looked upon them as a portion of their constituents, or designed to include them in the provisions so carefully inserted for the security and protection of the liberties and rights of their citizens. It cannot be supposed that they intended to secure to them rights, and privileges, and rank, in the new political body throughout the Union, which every one of them denied within the limits of its own dominion. More especially, it cannot be believed that the large slaveholding States regarded them as included in the word citizens, or would have consented to a Constitution which might compel them to receive them in that character from another State. For if they were so received, and entitled to the privileges and immunities of citizens, it would exempt them from the operation of the special laws and from the police [60 U.S. 393, 417]   regulations which they considered to be necessary for their own safety. It would give to persons of the negro race, who were recognised as citizens in any one State of the Union, the right to enter every other State whenever they pleased, singly or in companies, without pass or passport, and without obstruction, to sojourn there as long as they pleased, to go where they pleased at every hour of the day or night without molestation, unless they committed some violation of law for which a white man would be punished; and it would give them the full liberty of speech in public and in private upon all subjects upon which its own citizens might speak; to hold public meetings upon political affairs, and to keep and carry arms wherever they went. And all of this would be done in the face of the subject race of the same color, both free and slaves, and inevitably producing discontent and insubordination among them, and endangering the peace and safety of the State. 

Here the text of Dred Scott shows in very clear detail what was expected of citizens and illustrates those rights, privileges and rank throughout the Union, and what the slaveholding states determined to deny the negro race among which is the right to keep and carry arms wherever they went. 

It is therefore an interesting twist to recognize that the restrictions, heretofore applied in the State of California are explicitly those which would have been used against the negro race just prior to the Civil War. And while I've heard lots of stories about how California originally began its gun control law in reaction to the Black Panthers, I've never given much thought or credilibity to the meme of The Racist Roots of Gun Control'. In fact, I'm actually curious as to what I might have said specifically to this matter in the past. One thing I've always said is that all human beings have the right to make life or death decisions, including the decision to punt that responsibility to the state. But that was more on the harangues associated with abortion and capital punishment. But it is particularly interesting to read the following, discovered today from Adam Winkler:

After the war, Southern states adopted discriminatory laws like the Black Codes, which among other things barred the freedmen from having guns. Racist whites began to form posses that would go out at night to terrorize blacks—and take away those newly obtained firearms. The groups took different names: the “Men of Justice” in Alabama; the “Knights of the White Camellia” in Louisiana; the “Knights of the Rising Sun” in Texas. The group formed in Pulaski, Tenn., became the most well-known: the Ku Klux Klan. Whites believed that they had to confiscate black people’s guns in order to reestablish white supremacy and prevent blacks from fighting back. Blacks who refused to turn over their only means of self-defense were lynched.

Overly aggressive gun control often sparks a backlash, and that’s exactly what happened after the Civil War. Determined to protect the freedmen’s rights, Congress passed legislation like the Freedmen’s Bureau Act and the nation’s first Civil Rights Act. As the former law stated, blacks were entitled to “the full and equal benefit of all laws... concerning personal security... including the constitutional right to bear arms.” When these laws proved ineffective, the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution was added, guaranteeing all Americans the “privileges or immunities of citizenship”—by which the drafters meant the protections afforded in the Bill of Rights, including the Second Amendment.

 So this is interesting. Let's look at the text of the Freedman's Bureau Act.

Sec. 7.And be it further enacted, That whenever in any State or district in which the ordinary course of judicial proceedings has been interrupted by the rebellion, and wherein, in consequence of any State or local law, ordinance, police or other regulation, custom, or prejudice, any of the civil rights or immunities belonging to white persons, including the right to make and enforce contracts, to sue, be parties, and give evidence, to inherit, purchase, lease, sell, hold and convey real and personal property, and to have full and equal benefit of all laws and proceedings for the security of person and estate, including the constitutional right of bearing arms, are refused or denied to negroes, mulattoes, freedmen, refugees, or any other persons, on account of race, color, or any previous condition of slavery or involuntary servitude, or wherein they or any of them are subjected to any other or different punishment, pains, or penalties, for the commission of any act or offence, than are prescribed for white persons committing like acts or offences, it shall be the duty of the President of the United States, through the Commissioner, to extend military protection and jurisdiction over all cases affecting such persons so discriminated against.

This is all news to me, to the extent by which the struggle for equality under the law for the negro race has been closely associated with this particular exercise. I am not likely to discuss the matter further without this particular aspect of the right. 

As an aside, the picture that comes with this essay is not that of Dred Scott, but of Harriet Tubman. Harriet is a well-used name in my family, by the way. But listening to Doc the other day, he reminded me of another little known fact about Harriet Tubman. It was that she happened to be fairly ill on the fateful day of John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry, and although she was personally invited, she couldn't make the trip. I add that to my knowledge of her that she did always carry firearms and vowed to shoot anyone who did not stick to the rules of the Underground Railroad. Obviously, everyone involved in the enterprise of freeing slaves put their lives at risk, and Tubman had no qualms about putting down any potential spy. 

Gun Culture Club

It has been about a year since I began my romance with firearms. Like most things in my life, it relates to my desire for a more comprehensive understanding of everything and my general fearlessness when it comes to trying something I finally find compelling. It helps to have spare money and spare time, but I make those available in proportion to my interest. I have to tell you, the gun world is weird, but not in the way you might think. It's big and unexpected.

For a long time, I was involved in Scouting and went on several shoots with my son. So my first real experience with weapons came as a rather boring shock at a popular local range called Firestone. This was back in 07, just a couple miles off the freeway that separates some counties on the border of LA county. Not exactly the boonies but relatively so. I was really surprised at how serious the range master was and how casual the kids could be around rifles, but it left a fairly indelible mark on my first encounter with the NRA. They were the good guys who made sure dumb city kids didn't stay so dumb. 

But not all city kids are dumb. I can recall the first time I went to Boston around 1990. I hung out in the Copley Square Marriott and found myself at a newstand where some teenaged boys in bomber jackets were salivating over Guns & Ammo magazine as if it were Car & Driver. I was repulsed and fascinated by their familiarity with the terms. Like most people, I was clever about TV and film representations of guns, but ignorant about using them and understanding them from personal experience. And like most people, I accepted stereotypes about people with guns about the same way we accept stereotypes about people depending on what kind of automobile the drive. Like most people who think they're both smart and moral, I tended to be suspicious about people who actually knew more about gun tech and gun law than I did. Well, they must be nuts, because I am a reasonable man!

It turns out that I really didn't care enough for my reason or unreason to matter and so I carried that low quality deficit of understanding all the way up to the age of 46. But then I started getting a bit more serious in 07 and now I'm a gun owner in the State of California, which carries its own unique dramas.  I spent about a year overthinking firearms before I bought one and that meant a whole lot of television, a good bit of talk with shooters and an obscene amount of YouTube.

Now since I'm a gearhead, I rather expected gearhead gun TV to be a lot like gearhead car TV. Nope. Gun TV has that ghetto feel of hard sell advertisers of about 7 or 8 brands which dominate for every show. They're hardware vendors of OEM and aftermarket products, pieces and parts, each with their own stable of arcane celebrities and terms of art. And it's because of this, the whole things feels, to an outsider, claustrophobic, incestuous and weird. It's only when you start disaggregating what essentially comes from one or two channels on TV that the whole begins to make sense. Until you do, everybody with a gun seems to be from an incoherent and dangerous posse.

There are, from my way of reckoning at least six subcultures of shooters. From what I can see, the largest and most established group are the Hunters. This explains, if you're the kind of person that needs explaining to, why there's a southern, redneck vibe in the gun world. That's where the wildlife is and that's where I figure that people grow up shooting, as in getting a rifle for your 10th birthday and dad teaching you how to shoot. Now hunters have all their own subcultures depending upon what's your game of choice. You've got your bird hunters and each bird requires a different set of hunting skills, especially turkeys. You've got your game hunters, obviously deer and elk. But those split off into two major camps. There are bow hunters, who need to get right up close, and there are gun hunters. Then there are big game & wild game hunters. My favorite gun TV show right now is called Meat Eater. Think Bear Grylls who eats wild goats instead of spiders. 

The next recognizeable gang of shooters are the Tacticals. You can tell that more people want to look and feel like a Tactical than actually are a Tactical. The key word here is 'Special Forces', or the dead giveaway 'Navy SEALs'. But actually, I would bunch them together as your basic military and law enforcement professionals and wannabees, including Sheepdogs like me as well as mall cops. What distinguishes the Tacticals is the target. They train to shoot bad guys. Whereas the Hunters are all garbed up in wooland camo, spraying themselves with deer spunk and getting all excited in their whispers approaching that buck, the Tacticals concern themselves with other things, in deadpan tones. They're all about armed intervention which is, as you might imagine, deadly serious. These are the guys who are always firing into ballistics gel to see how far a bullet will penetrate a human body and how much damage that will do. Moreover, they are all about the reliability of their hardware and the art and science of shooting under all conditions. At night, indoors, from cover, while moving.

Right up there with the Tacticals are the Defenders. You might think of them in the same breath because the Defenders are training to shoot the bad guys too. But mostly the one bad guy who is trying to break into your house, or rape you on the street. The Defenders are all about small pistols and big shotguns. They're also serious about pepper spray and stun guns, but we're talking about shooters here. Obviously women figure large into this culture, and the focus is on tech that's simple to use and effective at countering the threat. I've noticed that the manufacturers who sell laser and light attachment hardware cater largely to this audience. Like the Tacticals, they want to know about the stopping power of bullets and pay attention to the ballistics gel tests but do so as consumers. These are the bang for the buck guys.

The Marksmen are the ridiculous gearheads of the bunch. You will never know much tech goes into these machines until you start talking to they guys who actually make their own custom loads, calculate corialis forces, reseat their barrels, polish the components and adjust the trigger pull all to get 'a good group' of bulletholes right on top of each other. Naturally, there are all different sorts of competitions. There are Cowboy shoots, where Old West technology is used. There is Three Gun, in which a competitor uses pistols, shotguns and rifles in combined test. My favorite is Precision Rifle, which is basically sniping. I've spent a lot of time studying this geeky angle of shooting. Most importantly however, being a Marksman is all about technique and manual skills. Beyond the requirements for safety, where is the best place to hold your hand when shooting off-handed? What methods of drawing a pistol are most accurate and/or speedy? 

Collectors are the gun nuts. These are the guys who can tell you the provenance of which company manufactured what in which country and how the import-export rules work. They will purchase a weapon in every caliber and talk your ear off about guns and ammo. These are the guys who are most likely, in my opinion, to get into a debate about gun control laws. Why? Because they want to buy whatever they want to buy, now.  When you first get the fever about owning a high quality firearm, you can feel the collector in you bubbling to the surface, espcially when the price gets over $1000, which is just the outskirts of collectorville. It gets very Ford vs Chevy around this. Most of the guys on YouTube I would call collectors. They will tell you all about their personal experience with this gun or that gun. A guy named Hickok45 is very popular and he seems to have shot everything in creation. He makes it look easy. But he's not the kind of collector that you find in stereotype. That would be more like the guy with a Ferrari and a Porsche. Exactly, he wants to buy what he wants to buy. Fanboys of the gun world.

Finally are the Professionals. These are the people in the industry. Like any other aspect of American life, there are squadrons of critics, pundits, gadflies and blowhards. But there are also people who make a living manufacturing, selling and repairing guns. If you stick the lobbyists into that equation you get the controversial group, but you'll never get the whole story until you speak to they guy who owns a gun store - the guy whose cash register has to talk to the FBI, and who fills out about as much paperwork as the guy who's selling you a car, definitely more than they guy who is leasing your apartment. I've only encountered these folks in the past year, but they always have an earful to say about rules and regs. 

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I would say that everybody who shoots is some fraction of all of these. When you enter a discussion about guns, it might devolve into a debate about gun control depending upon whom you engage. On the whole debaters mostly want to debate and shooters mostly want to shoot. Navigating what comes across on TV, YouTube and endless debates online takes a lot of time. In some ways, becoming a shooter was like becoming a Republican. All you hear for a long time are stereotypes and it takes a while to situate yourself among people like yourself who are in it for similar reasons. 

Here in California, I am learning that people who shoot stay pretty DL about it. The idiot proofers are running things and applying regulations that are annoying at best. I actually have the words "Read instructions before using" stamped in steel on my pistol. Consequently, there are lots of interesting conversations going on inside gun stores, conversations you are not likely to hear anywhere else, including TV. This is all very interesting. Stay Tuned.

The Dying Truth, Lone Survivor and the Sophomore Dog

2014 is my sophomore dog year. Sheepdog that is. I took all the survey courses last year and got my puppy feet wet. I'm never going to be anything more than I was when I was a kid, which is a big brother among the three big brothers in the neighborhood that kept us gang free. Codename Kool Moe Dee: Wild Wild West. I'm not ever going to pretend that I'm a warfighter or that I actually have some kind of metaphorical war to fight. But I do have the mentality and last year I connected some intelligence with my guts and made sense of all the fighting I've done in my life. I know with clarity that am a sheepdog in my bones. Can't help it. Just going to try and be smart about it.

I knew I wanted to see Lone Survivor. I didn't read the book, but I've known about Luttrell for a while. I'm sure I've heard him on one or two SOFREP podcasts. I think last year was when I read two or three of the sniper biographies that pulled me into that particular orbit. I didn't realize it was his story in particular but I knew it would be interesting to me in the same way some people are drawn to the story about the dude who cut off his arm to go rock climbing, or put on 50 pounds to prove something about McDonalds. It would be a kind of standout story that crosses over into the public consciousness. Except I know something about people who do for real. At the end of the day, they tell the dying truth.

Indulge me for a moment's consideration of the concept. We have a bit of society that is entirely skeptical of the dying truth. The dying truth is what you tell when you are absolutely convinced that what you know is real, right and that you cannot see it any other way. The dying truth is what you'll tell until your dying day, but most of the time it doesn't get told at all because you really don't care if people know, or believe you or not. You just know what you know. When I first became a writer, I always thought about this kind of knowledge - the sort you imagine a war correspondant tells in the salon of society matrons, or the adventurer tells in the offices of the philosophical society. It is that thing that defies the conventional wisdom because you cannot follow convention to find out such knowledge. It perplexes because it must be experienced. So you have to wonder how much of the dying truth anyone in society actually gets. When Merriwether Lewis returned to become the toast of Saint Louis, half of his diaries were lost. He didn't show the scar where he got shot in the ass by one of his own men. Some audiences demand only glorious narrative. Some storytellers indulge them. There will be a thousand reviews of this movie and how many of those will be written by people for whom the spirit connects beyond the infotainment factor? Such connections don't always matter, but in stories about life and death, in tales about the truth you will tell until the day you die, it does. 

We are fortunate to live in a nation of millions, and with a million millionaires there are often enough parlors that are built on dying truths themselves. I know Wahlberg was a good choice to wear the bloody makeup and navigate a good fraction of that truth through the corridors of Hollywood power. Yeah the movie was still a movie, but it connected with the fighter in me. And it reminded me of the term, a term we probably don't use enough in this nation of millions: warfighter. I just so happened to watch a National Geographic special about the C-5M Super Galaxy airlifter. The colonel in charge knows it to be a weapon that serves the warfighter. Every time I hear the term, I identify with fighting spirit and the will to win. But I'm not going to get fluffy with my vocab to illustrate the feeling, rather I will just call it ineffable. When you know it, you know it. If you had to grow up streetsmart as I did, you know it deeply.

So at this point in my life, when I am beginning to peak out as 'Daddy' and focus again on my own growth and what I know to be true, I am coming to reconcile my fights and my will to fight, and my capacity to fight. It goes without saying that my reasons must be proper. What resonates from the film is all over the place, but I will talk about the bullet to Axe's head. It made me mad. It made me madder than I can ever remember any scene in any movie made me mad. I thought about it with Maestro yesterday - those movies when people walk out silently, overcome with emotion. Glory. Apocalypse Now. Schindler's List. Blackhawk Down. Saving Private Ryan. It belongs in that group of films, but unlike those, this movie isn't a big arc war film. It doesn't give you a whole lot of dramatic introduction. It gives you a close-up of a platoon of warfighters. Trained to be deadly. Trained to think on their feet. Trained to survive. Trained to win. It's the kind of head that it's difficult to crawl into, especially for a generation raised on the narrative of meaninglessness, romance and deceptions of All's Quiet on the Western Front.

I have begun to learn something I will never learn fully. That is how to fight with firearms. In doing so, I have to reject a lifetime of dramatic representations that make no logical or ballistic sense. I learned something about first aid last year. It was so simple, but it took 40 hours of experience competing with a lifetime of television fakery. Everyone of us who lives in the Idiot Proof City must at some point recognize how closely we are held hostage by the ignorance of interdependence. Some of us see it as we take control of our diets and realize the ultimate liberation of growing our own food, some of us see it as we exercise rigorously for the first time and realize how far we can run. Good literature can shake us up and make us realize we have been accepting conventional wisdom instead of dying truth. I have been consuming this kind of good literature for about six years now, starting with Churchill's account of WW2, and moving on to understanding the Eastern Front, and then back through time to Rome's Punic Wars and all sorts of history since then. But only recently have I begun to see how it applies to me personally, transforming from mere understanding to training and responsibility. 

What that means is, for better or worse, at that moment in the film, I felt that I needed to be a part of the solution. I recognized in myself the determination to be a force to be reckoned with as trite as that may sound. They say of the responsible man that he wishes he could have been at the moment of truth to make the difference because of what he knows he could have done. Yes, I'm a yapping little puppy, but I'm growing up. I understand the fight in the dog. That's what that movie was about and it most connected with me in that simple moment of dying truth. 

On Guns: Every Adjective Except 'My'

I read something today about the collective protected state. 

If it is granted that the basis for any argument in favour of unrestricted possession of firearms has to depend on a discussion of the nature of the state, then it is problematical to hold that the right of individual citizens to possess firearms for the protection of the state in a state already duly protected is consistent. 

So who is protected and who is not?

I find it difficult to believe that any of your commenters so far have lived in a neighborhood in which gang members possess guns for periods of years. I often chuckle at the politics over Intifada crimes knowing there are fewer than 4000 deaths over a period of decades whereas here in Los Angeles County, there were about 16,000 murders between Crips and Bloods and Latino gangs during the 80s and early 90s. I can't tell you what it's like in the Third World, but I know people who were murdered by gang members and I know of murdering gang members, as does everyone in my neighborhood, 90016.

I live about 10 miles away now in a community that has had 2 murders in 17 years. Something very different goes on here with regard to the collective protected state. Let's just call that difference RaceWealth. There are those with it and those without it. Those without it can go unprotected for years, which is why some of my friends who happen to work for the law firm of the late Johnnie Cochran were very serious in their attempts to sue the government under equal protection clauses. It cannot be very difficult to see that there are communities in which personal defense is required because of a failure of equal protection by the state. You can deconstruct the Constitution all you like, as is your post-modern prerogative, but people who have had family and friends killed appeal to a different sort of logic - of the sort from which simple declarations stand the test of time, or sometimes rap songs that just happen to become national hits.

There is a simple principle, simple when it comes from a member of a denied community, that I would invoke. If there is a proper way for an individual to operate a gun, in defense of his own life, or the lives of his family in a forsaken community, why should that propriety be denied an individual of a forsaken community? Ultimately one's fortune and sacred honor is judged by third parties at some point in the future and the value of some lives is weighed against the value of others. In the gap between some mercenary or police service is the individual faced with the question of the value of his own life and that accorded to him by the collective authority. But it seems to me that if RaceWealth or some other cause can be such an ongoing disruption to a reasonable expectation of equal protection under the law, the individual is obligated to protect himself by any means necessary.

If there is a 'secular' argument, then it must transcend the context of the cult opposing the right of the individual to use deadly force. Let it be a universal argument so as not to confuse it with evangelical atheism. Ultimately we are talking about a martial education, something bourgeois Americans have foregone and thus lost any sense of. It is why those formally ordained in the ministries of the martial arts, ie Military personnel and Law Enforcement officers speak a different language than bloggers who use every adjective about guns except 'my'. And so it comes as no surprise that their third party proclamations come lacking that which would be common sense, ie the experience of living amongst and dealing with predatory humans.

Education about protecting one's own life is more important than education about the context of laws passed and theories about collective states and militias. I have no spiffy analogy to offer illustrating the foolishness - but look to your own martial education and re-evaluate your position.

Sign me, the dude in the bar whom you want on your side if and when a fight breaks out, long before you're out there explaining to the cops.

Games of Vigilance

In the metaphor of vigilance, there are three kinds of people in the world, sheep, wolves and sheepdogs. I am a sheepdog. I'm not a very good one, but I am a natural one. You see I was the oldest of five kids growing up in a roughneck neigbhorhood. We played vigilance games.

I've written about ghetto games before, and BB Britches, Open Chest and Rubber Donkey are the vigilance games.

BB Britches is a classic exercise in vigilance. It works simply like this. On any day at any time, somebody declares that BB Britches is On. Any word that starts with 'B', you have to say 'BB Britches' or else get fired on. The game would go on until whoever started it could get with a bunch of players and all mutually decided to quit. You can imagine what kind of confusion it causes when people didn't know the game was on, but generally it was only the stupid kids that didn't catch on.

Open Chest was simply more stupid and brutal. You walk around with your arms crossed across your chest. If you left your arms down, you get fired on. Simple, stupid, deadly.

Needless to say 'getting fired on' had it's own rules and regulations. But you would have to live in the hood to know that. Essentially, except during slapboxing (which we'll cover momentarily), 'getting fired on' meant specifically a punch to the chest. It had to be hard enough to make you go 'oof' but not hard enough to make you cry. Since none of us was older than 11 for these kinds of games, that was a broad enough range and we all understood our limits which were almost never breached. You don't hit someone in the stomach or in the ribs. You don't ever hit someone in the face. Hitting on the arm is for the b-players. When you get fired on well, it will make a deep resounding sound and 'cave in' your chest. You bend over, say 'Damn' or some such and rejoin playfully admitting your opponent's clean shot since all of these kids are your friends anyway.

Rubber Donkey was the game like BB Britches except that the letter 'D' was taboo. Now my best friend was a treacherous no-goodnik named Grant. Grant was a predator and was my best friend only *after* school. During school, I was not cool enough for Grant to acknowledge. Typical 10 year old stuff. So it was usually Grant who called the day to be a BB Britches day, and when he was feeling particularly feisty, he would combine Open Chest, BB Britches AND Rubber Donkey. Triple vigilance in your words and in your person. 

But that wasn't enough. Grant was not as good a reader as I, but he was as good in math. So we would also play Buzz. And we would also play Buzz Fizz. For you non-ghetto born / non-math geeks out there, Buzz is a counting game in which all multiples of 5 are replaced by the word Buzz. Similarly if you play Buzz Fizz, all multiples of five and seven are replaced by Fizz. 1 2 3 4 Buzz 6 Fizz 8 9 Buzz...

So we would, Grant and I, engage ourselves in all five vigilance games, and yes you did have to say 'Buzz BB Britches'. I could live in such meta for quite some time, even while enduring the blows waiting for my chances to strike back. But mostly I was vigilant.

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To be a sheepdog in today's society requires an odd kind of vigilance, but I'm convinced it will be a useful discipline. Not because I am a grasshopper all about discipline as contrasted to a summer ant, but because I have known predators like Grant, who taught me how to play Poker, complete with the weekday rules. As in it's Wednesday and I have two pair, and two pair beats your full house on a Wednesday, bitch. 

Vigilance is difficult in today's society because we are so many millions and our social spheres are so varied. The zombie apocalypse is already here, it's just unevenly distributed. So my level of vigilance looks crazy -  I like knives and guns not only because they're beautiful tools, but because they are weapons. But the rules of society, somewhat distinct from the law of the land, but ever-shifting often dictates that sheepdoggery is perverse. I'll let those who came up with the term speak to that, but we dogs are cousins to the wolf and nip at the heels of sheep to get them in line. It can't be pleasant for those who don't know or care about the difference, knowing only what they feel in their absense of vigilance. 

I think the most important thing about sheepdoggery is the human quality I must bring to it. So many of us live in Idiot-Proof Cities that we tend to trust anonymous institutions rather than anonymous persons. People talk about the good of the common man and what's best for humanity yet don't see the contradiction in empowerment of institutions.

Captain Lewis, Captain Clark

I'm reading the old classic by Ambrose, Undaunted Courage. There are several striking aspects to the story.

One of the first things I did to day was play Time Machine with Capt. Merriweather Lewis. He materialized in the passenger seat of my Toyota as I was northbound on Inglewood Avenue headed to the 405 and so I had to explain to him what had taken place in the past 200 years. He kept pointing out things that I hadn't noticed, and had me trying to explain grafitti. Instead I told him about aircraft. He was impressed.

It's difficult for me to read Ambrose without hearing his revisionist critics take him to task for not talking enough about York, the African and Sacagewea and her baby, the Shoshones. But they don't represent. In fact, that's a good excuse for everything that Progressives hurl. They don't represent just because you say they do. Tangentially, I have in-laws in Monroe LA who actually did pick cotton. So nobody in media represents on that Duck Dynasty thing. 

Nevertheless, I am impressed with the extent to which national identity and the want for feeling of national identity is interposed into the relationships beween the Captains and the various tribes they encounter north and west of the Mandan Villages. The ability for Lewis to say that he speaks for the President without actually being responsible of actually speaking for the President and of the intentions of the US is rather remarkable. In one way, L&C understand very well, as did the ruler of France, that millions would come to America in search of cheap land and that there was no way to stop them. With that foreknowledge, what indeed could be promised with any certainty. It's very much like the promise of the Internet when people were still talking about the Information Superhighway and the Digital Divide a short 15 years ago. It's a whole new world and none of the specific promises matter, or can be remembered. What force do the pioneers have, ultimately? Not much.

The second thing that I find rather astonishing is how my understanding of economics makes it so easy to reconcile the trades made by the expidition and various tribes. $6 worth of manufactured goods like steel knives and pants and coats could hardly be called a fair trade for a good horse. But how else could you get manufactured goods way up the Missouri? 

So far the most astonishing thing is how poorly they understood disease and the human body, yet how far they pushed themselves in their journey. The thought of rowing every day all day for weeks and months on end in mindbending considering what diseases they had and what primitive treatments were doled out. Everybody had syphillus and took mercury for it! Amazing. 

The Missouri Breaks and other such remote areas still remain empty territory; territory that I find increasingly interesting. And yet these men went there when there were no roads, negotiating with what amounted to gangs along the way. While nothing done by L&C compares with the incredible trek of Shackleton, there is something quite clearly monumental about the effort the expidition made.

 

Overthinking Firearms Again

I've pretty much decided that I'd rather shoot than ride. As much as I love my birthday gift of the Honda 919, and I have to say it's probably my best birthday gift ever, I'm going to put it on ice for the time being. That is unless there's a windfall in the next 6-9 months, I probably won't restore it and instead concentrate on firearms instead.

Reason Number One: Risk Management. 
It probably doesn't make perfect sense to everyone, but Taleb has given up motorcycles, because his understanding of risk is that you shouldn't put yourself in the track of an oncoming train, no matter how fast your legs are. I already know somebody who died in a motorcycle wreck and I've wreck several times myself. Why bother?

Reason Number Two: Friends.
The fact of the matter is that I have 2 + 3 friends who ride. Two in the intimate circle and three in the close circle. But as for people who shoot, I have more. So as an activity to do with friends, I'll have more shooters than riders. 

Reason Number Three: Self
The bike is all about me and my fun. Outside of that, there is no practical use for the moto. The guns, on the other hand, are more practical. If you have to ask how or why, don't worry your sheepy little head about it. OK, there's the self-righteousness of my 2A exercise. But quite frankly, I already have a modicum of motorcycle skill and I have very little shooting skill. How am I going to live with myself if I don't expand?

And so with that, I am closing the chapter on the 919, which was spontaneous to begin with. 

Now that I've gotten a taste for mastering the fundamentals of pistolry, I have to make a choice of instruments. The more I shoot, the more informed I become about how and what I want to shoot. I find 22 to be brain-dead simple, and I'm actually very pleased with the 1911 conversion that I played with. But in all practicality, what I'm going to end up using in the clutch is what I want to be most experienced with on the range. Yeah I know ammo is expensive. So are golf balls. 

Everybody says that a Glock 21 is the most battle hardened bullet pusher for the 45 Auto. I'm going to take them at their word. Generally speaking, I like the idea of taking an odd angle, of not wallowing in with the crowd. But when it comes to reliability and capability with shooting, I'm going to think mainstream. That said, I have only slightly above zero felt *need* for home defense and that sort of reliability, and a lot of perceived need for a high quality machine I feel like I'll never need to replace. In this regard, I intend to be a prosumer from the gate. If the learning curve is steeper, then I'm just going to have to climb. That said, I have several other options that are appealing.

I really like the aesthetics of the HK USP, and I love the idea of the ruggedness of the HK Mark 23. So right now those two are at the top of my list. The Sig 1911 is the gun I've shot the most so far, and I like it, but Sig is no longer selling firearms in California due to legal restraints they don't like. It's a beautiful piece of machinery and I like the fat safety and the feel of the whole thing. 

I don't like the feel of the Glock. It's lightweight and yes that's probably a huge advantage for EDC, but I'm not going to carry every day until I move from California. Still, my prejudices aside, you cannot disregard the experience of so many Glock users. If I end up getting a compact, perhaps that will be the way to go. Then again, I think I'd much rather try a compact 9mm than a compact 45. 

Sticks and Stones

Theory is the same as practice, in theory.

I can't remember where I found an excerpt about the salty language of soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines. I'm thinking that it was Bill Whittle, but I couldn't find it there. The point of the passage was that in combat or conflict, deeds matter and words are merely the sauce on the meat. Even as a writer, I find that to be true.

Yesterday I wanted to post onto my little Facebook box, "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me." It is because some words had hurt me, which they can when you decide to be serious and sensitive and take people at their words. Interesting phrase that, take people at their words. It means that in lieu of any experience with that person, without having the benefit of witnessing their deeds, we allow their words alone to carry the full burden of understanding them.  We inherently know this to be an act of faith, because we only know people, in the French context of the verb 'connaitre', when we associate with them, when we watch them walk and hear them talk and touch them and share deeds with them. But we know words, in the French context of the verb 'savoir' as we know facts. We consume them whole and digest them instantaneously and completely. So taking someone at their word can be a frighteningly risky exercise. We accept the complex weight of their humanity, something we know cannot be immediately determined, based upon words that do indeed have immediate and total weight. 

This is why insults hurt so much, especially when we have not decided fully what our own complex human weight is. If we thing we might be an idiot, and somebody calls us that, or tells us that someone is an idiot. Hoo brother, the full set of implications of being an idiot, especially true idiots we have known, comes down in full force in that one word directed at you, at your weak spot. 

There are other interesting implications of having people taken at their words. What if your own private words about yourself become public without your knowledge. Now, people you do not know posesses this ammo against you, in your own words - of the millions you might craft to build up the person you want to be, these bricks of your mental construction hurled back at you. If your psyche has bones, they may well be broken.

Fortunately, we humans have a very fine ability to distinguish our dreams from our reality, fairy tales from experience. While it's true that our minds recreate memories from words and images and sounds and recreate the past whole cloth, rather than fetch a reel of experiential film from vast archives in our heads, we still know what we've actually experienced from what we've heard tell. That is especially true of our experiences with people.

It is the actual deeds with actual people that matter, no matter what our words say. In fact, we need to be able to shock and adjust our systems with bricks of words in order to prepare us for actual experience. The more we savoir, the better we can connaitre. The more we can absorb the immediate impact of the symbols of communications, the better we are prepared to deal with the complexities of the real world. Words prepare us for sticks and stones. That is, in the end, their ultimate value. Words without deeds are fictions without the leaven of actions. They are deceptions whose veracity is unchallenged. They are narrative and counter-narrative, things best left in computers, libraries, archives and other deserts of humanity. 

In the post-modern world many of us live in, it is quite possible to live in such a desert bubble - to have never actually been punched in the nose, to have no broken bones or scars. I grew up in a time and place when such experience was to be expected, I will speak more about that under Vigilance Games. Mike Tyson says that everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face. That's for real. But absent a left to the kidney or a right to the jaw, it's awfully easy to get caught up in verbiage and mistake the map of literature for the territory of human life. I have a visceral hatred for the overlawyered aspect of our contemporary life and wish more disputes were settled via fisticuffs. Suing somebody out of their livelihood does not require courage, merely conviction. We are awash in words and words of conviction. They may be cheap, but that doesn't change their immediate impact on our minds.

That is why it is critical for the free man, for the whole human, to keep in close touch with sticks and stones and broken bones. We must be immersed in the physical to compensate for our overlong dalliances in the verbal and symbolic realms. I see that too many of us have been too easily convinced and wordsmithed into foolish inversions of normal human behavior. We change our diets - what we put into our body - not because of what our body is telling us, but because of what we read in a book or saw on television. 

As part of my martial education it is important for me to feel the lessons of what we know in human history that the body can experience, not simply to hear them. I have the habit of overthinking and weighing words very precisely. This can be foolish when not counterbalanced by hands-on experience.

Words will only break your bones if you take them too seriously. If somebody tells you to take a long walk off a short pier, or to go fuck yourself, you would be a fool to comply. I think the schoolyard kids have the right response, "why don't you try and make me?".  

Submitted for Cobb's Rules: Gordian knots are plentiful, always have a sword ready.

Round & Round

There are several men I know with whom I identify on multiple levels. I have taken time to call them my Exixtential Partners, meaning that would it not be for the random opportunities and chances, I could see myself living their lives and they mine. Some of those men have come by here at Cobb periodically, and sometimes they only appear in my stories. I feel that in my life I have been drastically short of such people and I imagine that many other men have lots of close friends, or at least it seems that way in beer commercials.  My friends are dispersed around the country. They are online in gamechat rooms and blog commentaries and Facebook timelines. They are a busy signal away on toddler lockdown or squirreled away doing important anonymous work for the nation. They are at a remove. 

Now that I am on the doorstep of being an old coot, it seems increasingly important to me that I get in touch and stay in touch with that diminishing group of people who might understand my jokes and not be offended. This is especially true since I work at home without the benefit of shallow but comforting professional lunch dates on the daily. 

Over the weekend, I think that I may have bumped up my Partner list by two. That's pretty extraordinary. It is due to the work of the man I now call Maestro. He knows a lot of people worth knowing. So the bottom line is that Maestro introduced me to Felix and NightCrawler, both extraordinary dudes and we'uns went a-shootin' in the boondocks. 

There were several significant things I noticed about myself and of society in association with the outing. At two days distance, I find the most amazing thing about this particular shooting outing, which will have been about my fifth or sixth in life, is the level of subtlety, or undercoverness, with which it proceded. After a casual breakfast on Saturday, I calmly went over to the local outdoor shop and picked up 200 rounds of 45 230gr FMJ ammo. I'm completely comfortable with those technical terms, and have no problem spending the $120 bucks required. But then I know that I have crossed a line that make most people I have known to cross their eyes and ward me away with crosses. I was very conscious of the weight of the ammo case in my hand as I walked back to my truck and closed the door on it. As soon as I got home, I found a lock for it and locked it up. I never bought ammo before, and kept guessing that there must be some protocol. But the whole thing was quiet and uneventful. This kind of thing happens every day. 

There was a monstrous dinosaur that munched its prey and spit it out covered with slime all before the sun came up in the morning. It's the Crackodon. I battled the beast at 0630 hours on Sunday at the supermarket rally point on our way to the ranges. As usual, I beat the monster down with a couple of Red Bulls and got the goo off me. By 0800 at the Starbucks in Valencia, I was in high spirits, as were my compadres: four extraordinary men, telling jokes and stories, in one pickup truck heading north with a big locked box in the back. 

Felix and Maestro go way back to high school where they made friends in physics class. Both of them are about 7 or 8 years older than I. Felix has an old black & white picture of himself  in college where he looked like a brainy Danny Bonaduce. Now he looks like Steve Jobs' older brother. He stuck with the physics and has, most certainly, an enviable workshop. NightCrawler has the gnarliest scar I think I have ever seen. Like me he was born in a naval hospital and makes code run. He may be a few years younger, that or he covers his grey very well. He helped me in a very precisely geeky way, although I forget the name of the bone, I know exactly what part of my index finger should rest on the trigger.

--

We got to the spot, deep in the rugged shallow canyons near the illusive Santa Clara River. Paved road, cows, dirt road, deer, road runner, paved road, red tailed hawks, dirt road and then we were there. I've heard of this place, but it's a lot more intimate than I imagined. We signed in, paid, and drove further. We unlocked the members-only gate further up the road and found our pristine range. This is rather what I expected golf to be like. I guess I never quite made the right connection. Golf courses I know are not quite as beautiful as I expected, nice though, but completely over-crowded and overpriced. This gun range was nicer than I expected, quite inexpensive and completely private. Unless you count the booms echoing off the hills from shooters down the trail. I liked it. I felt at home. 

Maestro got me started with the .22 conversion on his .45 Kimber. I relearned everything I knew from scratch, but the safety rules were the same. I began a great number of drills with a four-step draw and in no time I was making big puffs of dirt behind the targets I kept missing. Four steps is an understatement. There are about 200 things to remember when you're handling the firearm, lessons learned from generations of shooters that can only come with practice. 

The quality of instruction I got from these vets was superb. I've head some of it before, but I shut up and listened. I learned that I've been doing a lot of small things wrong in my mind, and practically did the one thing I thought I wouldn't do, which was leave my finger on the trigger too much. I wasn't fumbly but handling a pistol properly is like playing the bass line of your favorite song on the piano. Even though the notes are simple and you know them, it's still all about touch, and you cannot master the touch and the bassline always sounds clunky until you play and play and play. 

I got out about 200 rounds of 22LR and a couple dozen of the 45. This was more than pretty much all my previous experience combined, and yet a drop in the professional's bucket. The big bada boom clumsiness I felt the first time I shot a Glock was not there at all. I learned how to use my left hand this time out, and figured out the squeeze. I still over-muscled my right arm, but taking the 'dynamic tension' concept out of my head helped me do that. Now I have no fearful anticipation of recoil, yet I'm far from relaxed. But it's joyful work. I very much love the idea of being certifyably technically proficient with firearms. Beats the hell out of golf. Yet golf has the same kind of learning curve. You think about your grip all the time. You think about your aim all the time. You think about what's in front of you, how far, what the wind is doing, where you shot the last time, how and when to adjust. Shooting is marvelously complex and sophisticated, and deadly serious. And like golf, when you're hitting your targets, it's pure pleasure.

By the end of the session, I managed to pop 4 out of 6 plates in one sweep at about 7 meters. I learned that it's more important to bring spray paint, masking tape and index cards than it is to bring a knife and paracord. I'm having a hell of a time with good men, the sort I have to trust my life with. 

And then we cleaned up, continued the incredibly geeky conversation about barrels and sight picture and dominant eyes and what you can actually hit with a deer slug at 100 yards with no scope, and the difference between combat shotguns and precision rifles and machining tool steel and carbonizing furnaces and the economics of high quality optics. My kinda folks. 

We slipped back into civilization, minding at all times who was taking what of our hardware and where to park with respect to our cargo and its relative accessibility. I got home around 3pm, exhausted and giddy. I can't wait until next time.  

My Experience With Guns & Position on Gun Control

Today I asked this question:

Have you ever shot a gun, what kind, under what conditions and for what purposes? What effect does your personal experience with guns have on your opinion of gun control?

Answering my own question: I have shot a couple pistols, a 12 gauge shotgun and some really beat up 22 rimfire bolt actions owned by the Boy Scouts.  The pistol shooting was very dramatic and I didn't like it. The rifle shooting was tedious, frustrating and boring. The shotgun shooting reminded me of my first time sex, to wit that it was exactly what I thought it would be, I was surprised by how simple it was, and although the movement was surprising the first time, I almost instinctively understood what I was supposed to do. Outside of that first experience I don't particularly like shotgun shooting either.

This year, I aimed to purchase a precision rifle and/or a cowboy lever action but I was short on funds, plus the prices have gone up. I have never considered any need to buy a handgun or shotgun for self-defense. As I have seen and overheard conversations in gun stores, I feel rather about new gun owners what I feel about nouveau riche. They annoy me and I don't trust them. As I want to have a gun, I want it one of two ways. My angle is that of a 'sheepdog' and as a gearhead.

As a gearhead I think about owning guns and understanding all the associated technology, the math of ballistics, the mechanics of trigger mechanisms, the beauty and power of the machines. I appreciate them as stunning mechanical inventions as I do with computers, cars, aircraft, spacecraft. In that regard I'm like a driver, a shooter, a pilot, an astronaut. I want to operate them with skill because of the advantage it gives me. I as I become proficient in that way, I would become a hacker and maybe even a maker. I would like to customize my firearms. I would like to load my own ammo, I have some of the tools already. 

As a sheepdog (& Boy Scout), I think about owning a gun as being an amateur cop, in the exact same way anybody who learns CPR thinks about being an amateur doctor or fireman. It's all about taking an awesome civic responsibility but with a great deal of respect for what the professionals do. I happen to be taking emergency response training now, as well as pursuing my ham radio license.  

As a citizen, I am in conflict with my sheepdog self. Because I want to have all the personal power a cop has without the responsibility of being a sworn officer.  How shall I say it? Prosumer? There's a political part of me that likes the moral cover of the sheepdog, but I'd rather be libertarian about it and just have whatever-damned-gun-I-please-this-is-America-dammit. I say that in the same way that advocates for Gay Marriage argued that what homosexuals do is their own business. What I do with my gun is my own business. My reasons for having one is my own business. You have no right to restrict me in any way associated with criminality. Innocent until proven guilty, you're not going to round me up in your database.

Practically speaking however I believe very strongly that I'm going to do the upper middle class thing, which is to use my education and privilege and brains to do whatever I can do to have as much as possible. And that means I'll join the NRA and be ahead on policy discussions (I have) I will go up a government ladder of certifications, I'll make friends with politicians and first responders, kind of like I do as a computer hacker. While every common man is debating Andriod vs IOS, I'll be hacking. When the NSA is eyeballing, I'll know where and how hackers stay safer than the average Joe. As we speak I'm doing that community emergency response training eight week course. I understand, as the fire captains are telling us, that our first responsibility is to ourselves and our families, then we can help our neighbors without worry. 

This conflicts with my ethics and genuine concern for the common man. I want to live in a country where you don't have to use connections (like I will) in order to exercise the right to know, own and use guns.  And I will complain like a hypocrite when people finally realize, like they did during the LA riots or Katrina storm that protection is not on the way and the ordinary guy got screwed. And I'm going to be saying I told you so from a safe distance.  

So where I come out on gun control based on my gun experience is that, I think I've shot guns like the driver who has learned to drive with a stick. I understand and appreciate the old school fundamentals, and yeah I want more and better custom gear for myself, and I want to get really good. I think everybody should be able to do the same with minimal bureaucracy within reason. But that doesn't make me respect the average gunner any more than I respect the average driver. In fact I think most of them will be privileged fools, because I intend to train and get as good as I can. (In the same way I've been a motorcyclist with the attending superior understanding of the road than ordinary drivers). 

I'd much rather see a 'solution' aimed towards a lightweight liability insurance that people like me can afford and doesn't hurt my access any. I'll make loud noises about abrogation of rights and will not back down on 2A principles. But I will survive, stoically in the very same way that cops and security guards do. I do not have a lot of trust or respect for the laws that will ensue from this debate, in the exact same way I am not pleased with the way this country and government decided on Gay Marriage. I will continue to invest a great deal more trust and respect with people who see things my way as a sheepdog, not because of the credentials they have with the government with their badges, but with their skills and knowledge. If certifications and badges and credentials are what it takes to have possession of a suitible fraction of those skills and knowledge with firearms, then that's what I'm going to do because I think when it comes to gun rights, we are creating second-class citizens and chilling the options for the common man.

In short, if I have to be a gun-nut and a government certified gun-nut, then that's what it takes. I'll hate it, but I'll have my freedom.  

Related by Cobb:

• Reviewing the Moment of Death
• Another Good Group
• A Good Group

 

I should add the following about 'Reviewing the Moment of Death' because beside the fact that I clearly state above that I don't want to be a sworn officer, I am a lot closer to their way of thinking and their attitude of responsibility for the common man than I ever was in my life. And I am actually in the process of preparing myself for that actual responsibility so I don't get caught out. I *am* a sheepdog and actually always have been, but I know I can get myself in trouble out of ignorance in acting out that role. Like I said, in NYC I stopped a robbery on a subway and almost got into a fight between two Nigerian street peddlers before I checked myself. 

That encounter I had in Brooklyn about 20 years ago defined my attitude about guns the majority of my life. I presume that to be similar to many Americans.

1. It's easy to kill with one,
2. I don't want to be a killer. Therefore keep them away from me.

There's something additional about item 2 which is I think most Americans have had a moment of rage or disgust where they felt like somebody deserved to be shot, and could not really justify that emotion. So they want to keep guns away from themselves because they believe that firearms easily translate that emotion into death. (And this is how they feel about TV violence and video game violence, and most depictions of violence - that it's easy.)

It wasn't until I actually started studying and using guns that I realized how wrong the that assumption was. Guns are not magical Krell machines that instantly instantiate monsters from the Id. They are non-trivial technologies that require constant practice for competence. But they are also empowering and they force you to think as if they were magical death machines. This is something I have found extraordinarily well expressed by Eric Raymond. 

Nothing most of us will ever do combines the moral weight of life-or-death choice with the concrete immediacy of the moment as thoroughly as the conscious handling of instruments deliberately designed to kill. As such, there are lessons both merciless and priceless to be learned from bearing arms — lessons which are not merely instructive to the intellect but transformative of one's whole emotional, reflexive, and moral character.

I have been caught in the crossfire of a robbery in which my toddler daughter was present, and I have seen a teenager roll up and point a pistol in a man's face. I now know very well, since I have studied guns and shooting a great deal more of how to think in those situations. I understand the tactics and capabilities of shooters so that I am not purely emotional about the encounter. I think more clearly about what is and is not likely to happen. The emotions of fear and rage don't predominate, and it is my knowledge about guns and ballistics that control those emotions. They don't dispel those emotions, they contain them in a logical framework. I would assert that gun training is the only reasonable way to contain those emotions. That certainly cannot be accomplished by having no experience whatsoever, or by having an objection to experience. 

Consequently, I think that you honestly can divide the American gun culture into camps of shooting ignorance and experience. Note that I am saying there is a gun culture of American consumers of violent entertainment who have never seen an actual shot human or animal corpse or been personally involved in any kind of shooting. And then there is the gun culture of actual shooters, sportsmen, hunters, target shooters (either recreational or competitive), law enforcement, industry folks and military.

About that former group, and I say this as a member of that former group and a big fan of Bruce Willis movies. I find that they are utterly convinced by the portrayals they see of violent death in film, TV and video games and do not have any counter-intelligence that real shooters know about what and how firearm projectiles affect the human body. And it is the hype surrounding mass shootings that is nothing more or less than the awakening of that fictional portrayal in their imaginations. Every action movie is a mass shooting. Every violent video game hero kills 20 before he can be killed. A real shooter knows these things to be preposterous, but the first gun culture of America does not, not specifically.

I don't find this to be anything special. It is merely ignorance vs experience. But also innocence vs experience. It is completely understandable and natural for one to wish to keep one's innocence. I don't want to be a sworn officer, and I like most normal people, am queasy about seeing blood and much more about having blood on my hands. The gun culture I am a part of maintains this quality of human decency, and we also know as sheepdogs that we are part of the barrier against those who do not, whether or not we want to be. We require courage to take responsibility commensurate with our knowledge. That's where I am today. 

A Martial Education

"I don't believe in guns"
"What do you mean? They're not fucking leprechuans!"
-- Seven Psychopaths 

I have determined that my liberal arts education is complete. It took too long, and I wasted too much time on it. But at least I have gotten to the part at which the appeals to to those pop and middlebrow entertainments that are the vast legacy of mass communications fail to inspire me. I am resolved, for the most part, to the high arts and they give me genuine pleasure. It took a surprisingly long time. 

I'm not even sure that I was aware that I was in that pursuit. I was scooting along via inertia and aversion. The 'Noble Arena' I began seeking back at State, was more of an escape from Midnight Star in hopes that hiphop would get better, than anything more than a isolated fondness for Liszt and Debussy. It took me years to find the kind of industrial hiphop I truly loved as I suffered through Finitribe, Bad Brains, Barmy Army, and Skinny Puppy. It took me a decade to get past the Granta school of literature. It took me a very long time to settle on the sort of fashion I wish to use to convey my civilization in unspoken ways. All of this continues to evolve, but without the sense of urgency that kept telling me that I still didn't get it. I get it now. My Liberal Arts eduction is settled. I understand what to do with my frustrations when what is commonly out there insults my intelligence.  Also importantly, I know what and what not to expect from a deep dive into Epictetus or Sophocles. I can appreciate trees as well as forest. 

So now what I am missing is a Martial Education.

In parallel, all of my life I have thought at length about the fact that I did not have to go to Vietnam. And in my first full-time job I spent a lot of time with Vietnam vets. I remember how counter-intuitive it seemed to me that they were so level headed, honest and mellow as compared to that nacscent gangsta culture that marked the knuckleheads in my old neighborhood engaging the drug trade. But who was more deadly was never in question. 

There were times I flirted with the idea of ROTC, but never quite seriously. I very much would have liked to have gone to the Coast Guart Academy, but I was a lousy long distance swimmer and I didn't want to cut my hair. The idea of overcoming such obstacles was not something I placed a lot of stock in. There have been three or four times in my life I was determined to take my body image into my own hands and each was only a partial success. I've always routed around the failure. I'm tough and scrappy. I never really wanted to be.. well it's more honest to say that I long, long ago gave up on being tall, heroic and commanding. I've never even slam dunked on a 9 foot hoop, nor bench pressed more than 180. I spent all of high school shorter than 5' 7" and under 150 pounds. I've always had an indomitable spirit, admittedly to the point of what was always interpreted as arrogance. But it was the sort of arrogance one does not assume of bigger, taller men. In them it's called 'natural leadership'. In my last days before fatherhood, embarked on my penultimate physical fitness project. It was called the 'huge project' in which my aim was to make myself look an order of magnitude more pugnacious and swaggery. I suppose exactly like LL Cool J without the tatoos.

I started eating like a pig, and I really haven't stopped since 1993, roughly 50 pounds ago. I had a short hiatus in '03 with a literal poverty diet and dropped down to 185 via cardio-kickboxing and unemployment. But all the flab is back, on top of my sturdy frame. And quite frankly it's all belly. From a rear view, I still look athletic, but the side view is an abomination. I need to crank off four inches of waist. The odd thing is that until about a year ago, I had a certain amount of confidence that one crash program, maybe six weeks of unemployment, was all I needed to get right back to where I was in '93. Now I realize what foolishness that is. I still had a decent beach volleyball game, but that was all skill and not athleticism. 

I'm joining the geriatric gym this week. But that's only part of the story - what I'm really after is the martial mindset. What I'm coming to realize like a boot to the head that what I've been thinking about the martial world is all just theory, fiction and video games. OK that's a kind of triple redundant statement - but it has not been about getting in and kicking any physical ass. And so having purchased in my fever, some EDC and tactical folding blades, and taking shooting quite seriously, it has become quite plain to me that I need to just get out there and do. I have tools, but having the tools is meaningless. It's worse than meaningless, it's foolishness. 

I don't expect that mastery will come soon or simply, but I know that competence will. And that amounts to putting in something every day. And so I've begun to stretch - without the preconceived notion that I'm going to get over some magic bubble and suddenly become what I once was, only smarter. This is to a new body. A new beginning. Because it's necessary. I am no longer satisfied with the comeraderie of first responders. It has got to be me.

 

Another Good Group

 I got outdoors for the first time in a while. I forget, like I suppose most non-rich natives of Los Angeles do forget, that there are beautifully wild areas in close to the city. So I went, for the first time in my life, to Rustic Canyon, on an outing with the local Boy Scout troop.

Los Angeles is a city of canyons. There's Runyon Canyon just above Hollywood were trendy folks jog themselves and their dogs. I've never been there. There are Topanga, Rivas, Temescal and a dozen other canyons of better and lessor repute as far as beauty and fire danger. Rustic is just nice and remote. Well, remote for me because I live down near the water - and well most everybody lives downscale of this part of West Los Angeles. 

I've been cranking out 12 hour days in deepest darkest winter Cleveland where the temperature doesn't vary from day to night by more than 8 or 9 degrees. Out this way, the wind matters more than the sun. That's a very strange feeling. I'm accustomed to a high of 68 and a low of 46 around this time of year in LA which is about what we got this weekend. It makes us take an extra set of clothes or something and should explain much of the fashion consciousness of us Angelenos. We wear more variety of clothes because the weather demands it. So now you folks from the East can understand why San Francisco seems so cold to you. It's not cold, it's just night and it's supposed to get 20 degrees colder at night.  

At Rustic Canyon, I wore shorts and sat by a babbling brook, and watched the equestrians go by. I raked leaves, big sycamore leaves, and I watched the sky through the oaks.  I minded a passel of Scouts as they threw knives and tomahawks. I observed a parrot swerving to avoid the attention of a red tailed hawk. I munched on dried apricots and I shot a couple dozen rounds at 15 paces. 

The highlight of the afternoon was twofold. I always enjoy speaking with my friend Bob about movies and politics and this and that. I learned, from another of the dads, what it is that cats like to eat, from the perspective of catfood engineers. So there was fun, non-work oriented conversation. But the singular defining event of the day was the lost knife.

On his turn, one of the younger Scouts wound up and made his final toss of a nine inch steel knife towards the mounted stump four paces away. We all had a good chuckle as he missed the entire target and tumbled forward on the strenght of his right hand's momentum. But that moment of laughter turned out to be a misdirection worthy of Houdini, for nobody saw where the knife went.

 For the next 90 minutes, we pulled a mountain of leaves, rocks, sticks, grass and dirt from an area the size of a suburban bedroom. 17 boys and 4 men against a plot of land so small the most environmentally sensitive whackjob from Santa Monica wouldn't give it the time of day, except perhaps to park their Prius there. We raked, we shoveled, we poked and prodded. We found lizards, PVC pipe, golf balls, deer slugs, horse poop, caterpillars, sour flowers and everything but the knife. I honestly thought about how I might McGuyver my iPhone into a metal detector. It was useless; we were overcome.

I raked like a madman, working up the first sweat I can recall in months. I noticed something about everyone's work ethic including my own. I am the man who wants to be King, who turns to the man who should be and awaits the order. Hearing none, I bark out my own, heeding my own frustration and wishing everyone would work as hard as I. Sensing failure, I turn to a chuckling despair. I guess nobody wants to win so much, which is why I'm not in charge. And I retire silently to write my memoir, offering up a tasty morsel to those exacting critics like me - except I was there and you were not. It's not a flattering portrait, but there it is. Take the abstracted lesson for what it's worth - not a whole lot because what's written is only the narrative. Remind me to tell you about the dangerous falsity of narrative. I'm only recognizing it now myself, and so I have to undo 18 years. 

I sat on the edge of the firing range's platform as the target stumps were moved to new ground and enthusiasm ginned up again to continue the sport. The group split into thirds, one throwing, one hiking, one napping. I scientifically observed the pattern of missed knives as they tumbled in the area beyond the targets. I had no idea how something thrown so straight could bounce so crooked. Another metaphorical lesson learned in the wake of defeat. And yet the boys kept throwing, and improving, and thoughts of the lost knife faded.  

I left to take snapshots of the area. My target. The trees. The range. The leaves. The place itself. Rustic Canyon. As the sun stretched the shadows across the eastern hill, I observed the sunny top and the road back to Los Angeles. I had one day before I had to fly back to where I am now, 22 floors above Ontario Street. 

While we ate the sandwiches prepared for us all by the patrol leaders, we spoke briefly about Haiti and our own fate. How long would it take us to be in the clutches of nature and unable to cope? I remember my rule of threes. Three minutes without oxygen, or three days without water, or three weeks without food. That's how far off we are from the abyss. And of course we forget. I recalled for them the additional rule of risk homeostasis, thanks to Malcolm Gladwell. When we find safety in one thing, we make up for it by being more risky in something else. And this explains why people from dangerous neighborhoods don't go in for bungie jumping, and as well why pursuit of the Dosh makes one humble and attainment of the Dosh makes one rude. 

I know what kind of men I want around if and when it all goes to ruin. Today many are Boy Scouts. None of us have conquered the wild. None of us can. None of us ever will. We'll lose our tools, we'll always be humbled. But we know how to look out for each other, how to cook, how to shoot, how to keep God in our lives. We're a good group. 

A Funny Thing About Guns

The funny thing about guns is that you could never know that there's anything funny about guns if you only listen to the people who want to outlaw them.

You would never know there's anything fun, or responsible or intelligent about guns unless there was a fun, responsible and intelligent gun culture. That gun culture would disappear or go underground leaving laymen even more clueless, if guns were banned in America. This is the consequence of the old cliche that if you outlaw guns, the only people who will own them are outlaws. This kind of disappearance of knowledge happens. It's a case of 'the old man died with the recipe' and it can happen in any sort of law-abiding culture when the law prohibits.

Of course the people most vulnerable to the destruction of knowledge are those who have no experience in the subject matter. I don't think it takes a PhD to recognize that most people who oppose the ownership of guns for private citizens are private citizens who have never owned or fired one.

I support the ownership of guns as a logical consequence of my principly held belief that human beings have the right to make life of death decisions. I also believe that only the proper training with guns will make people responsible with them.  But we know that a large plurality is not properly trained. The implication is  that there are indeed gun nuts, and nuts with guns. But so there are too with automobiles. Training hasn't stopped drunk drivers.

We may have drunk drivers, because drinking is legal and driving is legal. So there is a presumption out there that some people are responsible enough to buy, own and use alcohol. The same presumption holds for automobiles. And our legal system properly defends our liberty and encourages responsibility by regulating cars and alcohol as well as specifying punishments for their abuse. The same is true with guns, as it should be.

Oh. OK so here's the real funny thing. Imagine that through gun control, we lost the fun, responsible and intelligent gun culture, rather in the same way we lost sharecropping and migrant farming culture. Wouldn't it be fascinating to require immigrants to "do the jobs Americans won't do"?

A Good Group

As you can see, this target is full of holes. I have painted an upside down smile in the midsection of a virtual man. It's an interesting feeling.

Today is the first time that I fired a real gun. Doc and I have been promising to go shooting for over a year, today we finally went. This is what it's like.

The joint is in Torrance in one of those generic 90s looking business parks. There's a simple steel barred door with at least two dozen stickers on the glass one behind it: Glock, H&K, S&W and various ammo and gun supply manufacturers. Most notable is the big frayed paper sign saying that it's illegal to carry a loaded weapon into the facility. It's grey and rainy today, we step out of Doc's 4WD and head into the joint.

Doc had his backup .38 revolver, but for some unexplained reason, he had no ID on him at all. So he left it in the car and decided this would be all me. The buzz cut kid in the military green puffy jacket pointed us to the glass case of rentals - mostly Glocks. There were .45s, 9mms pistols and some revolvers on the lower shelves. Even though there were a number of interesting looking revolvers and one monstrerous one straight out of Dirty Harry, I was pretty sure I wanted a nice .45. I picked out a Glock 21, a full sized .45 caliber automatic pistol.

They guy took my California drivers licence, charged me 32 bucks and handed me a box of 50 rounds, several targets, some safety goggles and headphones. I signed in on a log, as did Doc and we headed to the range.

The range was behind a wall with large windows. The door was over on the right. There was already a man in one of the 14 lanes. We headed down to stall nubmer 7. I've done this a dozen times in video games and seen it who knows how many times on TV cop dramas. The motor on our target clothesline wasn't working so there wasn't a whole lot of automatic clickety precision in that. We just reached up and pulled the oily cables by hand.