Clearing Tabs and Making Takes
In case you need some NYD reading.
- Via the AP: Alabama to allow concealed guns without permit in 2023. This does not, contrary to the claims of the “constitutional carry” crowd, make me feel safer. I suppose that since it wasn’t that hard to get a permit in the first place, and since I expect many people ignored the rule anyway, this doesn’t materially change things all that much. I still think it is the wrong direction: it should be harder to carry around a weapon, not easier, and we should be cultivating a culture of training not the misguided notion that everyone is an action hero in their own person movies.
- Even the NY Post find George Santos to be problematic: Shameless George! Santos plans ‘questionable’ fundraiser off swearing-in.
- Business genius at work? Via Axios: Fidelity slashes Twitter value by 56%
- Speaking of politicians who want power more than anything else (via the NYT): The Invention of Elise Stefanik. It is a well-written and researched piece. Power corrupts, and all that.
over dozens of interviews, former aides, advisers and friends going back to Ms. Stefanik’s Harvard days struggled to identify any of her deeply held political beliefs at all. Most recalled, instead, her generic loyalty to the Republican Party, her intense competitiveness and her unerring ability to absorb what she thought people around her wanted and to reflect it back at them. Eager to advance, skilled at impressing more powerful figures with her intelligence and work ethic, she has spent years embedding herself wherever the action seems to be at the time. “She knows exactly what she’s signed up for,” said Kate Yearwood Young, a former friend from Harvard. “There was no radicalization.”
[…]
Her revisionism still shocks those who have known her the longest and who remember the disdain she expressed for Mr. Trump back then. “I suspect there are a lot of Republican members of Congress who take positions on Trump that they don’t hold privately, for their own political security or gain,” said Mr. Tucker, the Arkansas lawmaker. “Elise is the only one I know for certain who has.”
I feel less safe if a cop walks into a restaurant or store with a gun, much less some rando Floribama man. Don’t know how the statistics work out, but seems like a simple robbery, or even an argument, might turn into a shootout. The quintessential FL man story remains Florida Man Shot in Ass Protecting Turtle Nests From Drunk Guy The headline omits he was shot with his own gun. The money quote is,
Didn’t work out that way. Hoocoodanode.
@gVOR08:
Showing the gun apparently did diffuse the situation. It did not defuse it. 🙂
@Kathy: Quite right. I missed that. Too late to edit a “sic” into my comment.
For the record, the Elise Stafanik article is available from the Yahoo front page. (Or at least should be, it was the lead item on mine.)
The idea that “showing a gun” will defuse a situation is a dangerous notion born of watching too much TV.
There is a reason why you can’t carry a gun casually (off duty) on just about any military base that is not in a combat zone. Even in a combat zone, there are clearing barrels located in front of any place where people gather.
@Rick DeMent: Probably the same people who comment in videos and news articles that a person defending themselves should of fired off a warning shot or shot the intruder in the leg…. You know as if there isn’t an important artery in the leg or that there aren’t legal ramifications to warning shots or not shooting to kill…
Lots of morons out there and Alabama’s actions don’t combine well with that. I’d much rather states move towards MORE required training…