No RSS feed?

Some of you may be wondering why this site doesn't have an RSS feed. (It used to.) Well, it's a FreeServers.com thing. I guess that they distrust .xml files and don't want to let them download. I found someone else's blog where they report that FreeServers' management thinks that .xml files constitute a security risk. (It may have more to do with keeping the free sites from dishing up content without the ad banners showing. We pay for this site, but I guess they didn't want to do the work necessary to remove this restriction from us paying customers.) Sorry about that. The next best thing would be to just bookmark this page.

An Update: Got the FreeServers.com end of things figured out. (You have to allow remote file access, for those of you beating your brains out searching for an answer. However, if you have lots of image files, for example, that you don't want stolen by cross-posters, then perhaps RSS isn't for you.) Now I have to get the Blogger.com end worked out. It claims to be publishing the RSS feed, but nothing happens.

The 2nd Amendment: The right protecting all the others

Sandra Froman writes on WorldNetDaily.com that the Right to Keep and Bear Arms is "The right protecting all the others".

"[T]he Second Amendment protects all of your rights. Whether freedom of religion, free speech, free press, free association, the right to protest the government, or our other rights, the Second Amendment allows you to protect those freedoms for yourselves and your loved ones."

Ultimately, the Constitution is but a piece of paper. (Parchment, if you want to get technical about it!) Nothing about that piece of paper magically brings its provisions to life. It's the will of the People, expressed though their government, that gives the Constitution life and power. But the will of the People can be overwhelmed by tyrants if they lack the ability to put steel behind their words. Guns in the hands of all the People do just that. They give us the ability to force our will upon an unwilling tyrant. (Which is precisely why we've never had a tyrant rise up among us!)

Rand Study On Ammo Sales Confirms Ammo Sales Records Useless

Rand Study On Ammo Sales Confirms Ammo Sales Records Useless: "The Rand Report concluded that while ammunition sales records can provide information for generating leads on illegal firearm possession, the information was not being used. The study shows that because of the tremendous manpower involved in monitoring the records and doing background checks, the Los Angeles Police Department is largely not doing so."

-From NRAMembersCouncils.com

The City of Pasadena was one of the first in this area to record ammo sales. They ended the program after they realized that they had a file cabinet stuffed with useless information. I know that the LAPD's gun detail does collect the sales info from local gun shops. (The one I frequent is Turner's in Reseda. The guys there say that West Valley division collects the info.) But from there, the information is useless. Other cities have tried similar schemes to track ammunition; however, to the best of my knowledge, none of these programs has produced results. Not one can claim to have solved a crime or produced evidence that convicted a criminal.

The "Gun Free" fantasy

Glenn Reynolds, the InstaPundit, writes that students are safer when some among their number are armed. Reynolds writes...

Police can't be everywhere, and as incidents from Columbine to Virginia Tech demonstrate, by the time they show up at a mass shooting, it's usually too late. On the other hand, one group of people is, by definition, always on the scene: the victims. And if they're armed, they might wind up not being victims at all.

"Gun-free zones" are premised on a fantasy - that murderers will follow rules, and that people like my student, or Bradford Wiles, are a greater danger to those around them than crazed killers like Cho Seung-hui. That's an insult. Sometimes, it's a deadly one.

Nearly all gun laws suffer from such delusions. They imagine that those who are inclined to commit rape, robbery, or murder will blanch at the prospect of violating a gun law.

Reality bites?

Mark Steyn writes about the Left's aversion to reality. One paragraph in particular grabbed my attention...

[T]he [Virginia Tech] administration has created a "Gun-Free School Zone." Or, to be more accurate, they've created a sign that says "Gun-Free School Zone." And, like a loopy medieval sultan, they thought that simply declaring it to be so would make it so. The "gun-free zone" turned out to be a fraud -- not just because there were at least two guns on the campus last Monday, but in the more important sense that the college was promoting to its students a profoundly deluded view of the world.

It struck me that gun control proponents have always treated their failed laws like magic spells that didn't quite work; and that all they need is one more chance to get the incantations just right. They act as though saying something, pronouncing the words just so, will make the desired results spring into reality. Of course, reality doesn't work that way.

In the magical world, proclamations of a campus' "gun free" status hold the world's rampaging nuts at bay. In reality, they stop madmen about as well as tissue paper stops bullets. In the magical world, everyone is nice; it's the guns that drive some to evil. In reality, evil doers will work evil with whatever tools are at hand. The tool itself has no morality about it. A hammer can build a homeless shelter or bash in a skull; it's the hand that wields it that determines its usage. Unlike its counterparts in the magical world, it is neither alive nor conscious. Guns, in the real world, are similarly inanimate. They work no magic upon their owners. A gun, like a hammer, can be used for good or ill.

So, what do we see if we step back into reality? On the day that 32 people were murdered in Blacksburg, over 5000 Americans used firearms to halt violent crimes. That very day, 5000 Americans weren't disarmed by the magicians of gun control and weren't made into victims. That day, 5000 Americans decided that they would see the world as it really is, warts and all, and they acted accordingly. They didn't try to wish away evil, as the Virginia Tech administration did. They took the steps necessary to provide for their safety against the awful realities that sometimes creep into our lives. They used guns rather than magic that day.

YATP (Yet another test post)

What's with all the test posts?!?

The "big deal" with blogging is that it's supposed to be relatively easy to stick a new page on your web site or to add to one. I've been using (or trying to use) several blogging tools. The problem I'm running into is that my old favs aren't playing nice with Blogger.com's "new" configurations.

Whahappen?!?

Hey! Where's the old blog stuff? Something went screwy in the Googlese Empire in the province of Blogger.com. The old blog (which is still here) was unreachable. This page will take its place. More details and a few tweaks later...

Almost there...

The foul-up with the old blog is almost fixed.

test post

Just ignore this!