Don't look at me. It's no use getting angry about it, and after all I did warn you. Where do you think you're living?
So some California gunowner-rights activists decided to make a point by openly carrying empty handguns in public. I suppose their hope was that in this way they'd open minds to the fact that guns in the hands of peaceable people aren't evil, or even misled. They attracted all the wrong but perfectly predictable attention. The sheep bleated in horror, the nannies tut-tutted, the cops preened and posed, and the lawmakers did exactly what you'd expect them to.
Guys, seriously. I have complete sympathy for your plight, I really do, but what did you think was going to happen? There's no hope for California. Suck it up and get yourselves out of there. Yes, I know it's inconvenient to move and the weather's really nice. But how much are you willing to put up with?
Dad Joke CCCXLVI
11 hours ago
4 comments:
Lived in the Republik for a short but memorable time myself. Just long enough to conclude that I could never make a go of it in the longer term.
Butler Shaffer's excellent online series Wizards of Ozymandias covers this concept several times over: the state discovers another clause of the freedom loophole, and does what it always does with things it does not understand or of which it does not approve--kill it, squash it, restrict it, fine it, marginalize it, dehumanize it.
Rarely does Shaffer even bring up guns specifically. Shit, he doesn't have to. It's all the same.
With luck, this can have some positive effect: glorious unintended consequences. Just as governments everywhere continue to be shocked, shocked that jacking taxes causes revenues to go down (how can this beee?), so they will not understand how playing whac-a-mole with declamations of independence will in fact cause ever more people to realize that prostrating themselves for Duly Authorized Permission is going, every time, to yield precisely the answer that you would expect from meek supplication to a power-hungry control freak.
Joel just put it more succinctly: what did you think was going to happen?
I would just remind those who either choose to or who must remain there:
They pretend to respect your rights. You can certainly pretend to obey them.
The application of this concept to the Law of Unintended Consequences is this: once the rule of law no longer protects us from the state, it no longer protects the state from us either. It works both ways, baby.
There is no dishonor in being a free, peaceable human being. None.
We can hope, Kevin.
One thing that doesn't often get reported about England, the land we all love to bash for its freedomphobic ways, is the utterly contemptuous attitude of a helluva lot of English people toward their own government or the casual manner in which they so routinely give it the ol' middle-finger salute. Maybe someday that will have a reversing effect. Don't see any signs of it happening now, though.
I've noted that same attitude with some pleasure every time I've been over there. (I like to think it's because I give off a friendly vibe, as I have never invited it myself. Some of 'em were even more taken aback with my response than I was with theirs... :-) I've been particularly impressed with the Highland Scots in that regard (which somehow seems right), but I found it even in deepest, darkest London too.
Dang, now I'm thinking about whiskies and porters...
Never been to Scotland, but I did get the occasional overnight layover in London during a previous life. I have pleasant memories of evenings in pubs there - it was never hard to get a couple of folks in conversation with the "Yank." Those folks are born monkeywrenchers. Have you ever seen an American traffic camera necklaced with a petrol-filled tyre?
And yeah - whiskey and porter. Oh, yeah.
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