If you cannot see the irony in having a gun ban enforced by men with guns, then you fail to understand why the Second Amendment was written in the first place.
George Rebane
The NYT publishes another exhibit of yellow journalism with an article (here) that leaves the naïve reader convinced that ‘assault rifles’, like the Parkland massacre kind, fire special bullets that cause “ghastly” wounds not experienced with normal hunting rifles. They show X-rays of 223 bullets smashing bones and quote surgeons unfamiliar with war wounds being astounded by what a high velocity bullet does to meat and bone. The truth of the matter is that regular civilian hunting rifles at calibers above 223 (5.56mm) firing higher velocity, more massive, soft-nosed bullets (banned in warfare) do much more damage than the AR-15 civilian versions firing the standard full metal jacketed bullets. All this is lost in the NYT article, the main purpose of which is to promote the removal of AR-15 style rifles from civilian hands. The reader unfamiliar with firearms is totally bamboozled by this latest dose of bullcrap from the now totally propagandized Gray Lady.
Respected ecologist Robert May (The Perfect Bet, 2018) showed that tightly connected, large complex systems are not stable. (That’s why they don’t exist in nature.) His corollary was that the larger the ecoosyctem, the less stable it is. Question – can anyone connect the dots for what this says about a centrally planned, comprehensively administered, large socio-economic system? While always welcome, progressives may be excused from participating in this little exercise.
Over the years RR commenters have divided themselves into two more or less distinct groups with how they support their debate arguments. There are those who cite sources that present data which can be factually checked, and those who present sources that contain nothing more than restatements of their own fact-free allegations, thereby claiming that two sources of identical allegations are all that’s needed to confirm the verity alleged. For the former, I draw your attention to commenters who cite colleges that now include leftwing propaganda subjects in their STEM curricula in support of the thesis that our institutions of higher education have been compromised along many dimensions of pedagogy. These citations appeared in the recent Sandbox and repeated here and here.
Trump’s tariffs are an economic policy screw-up. I know I’ve said this before, but it really irks me that he is now materially denting his presidency beyond whatever sins he has committed in his Twitter account. Team Trump should know better than most, that you get less of whatever you tax more. Higher taxes have never increased the supply of anything, and here Trump is attempting to increase America’s supply of jobs. No one in his administration can explain why seeking to guarantee (not increase) the existence of 140,000 metals sector jobs will not jeopardize and reduce some of the 6.5M collateral jobs that depend on the current low prices of metals available to American manufacturers. The bottom line here is that Trump’s tariffs will not bring more jobs to the steel and aluminum industries which are going balls out to automate and make better quality, cheaper metals at higher volumes. An example of all this is seen in how a small steel mill in Austria (that global steel producing powerhouse) is able to stay competitive. Hasn’t anyone in the WH studied comparative advantage, after all, they’re supposed to be Republican capitalists? (more here)
Our George Boardman writes in the 5mar18 Union on gun control (here), and properly argues that existing gun laws should be enforced before we go willy-nilly into making another batch that ratchet us toward gun confiscation. But then he can’t let well enough alone, and goes off the rails with a proposal to jail the victims of theft when their guns are stolen and subsequently used in crimes (which he correctly points out is the prime source of criminals’ guns). Imagine if we took the Boardman Principle and applied it to automobiles, prescription medicines, household chemicals, plastic bags, sharp cutlery and tools, and who knows what else that could be stolen and criminally used. In America storing something in one’s house (the owner’s vaunted ‘castle’ according to English common law) should be sacrosanct on its face, no matter how it is therein secured. Your house is already supposed to be a secure facility against thievery and robbery; we establish and support local constabularies to make it so, and their failure to accomplish this should not be cause to also criminalize the victim. Government’s reach into the home to dictate further how things in there should be disposed has already put us on a slippery slope on the return road to serfdom. Mr Boardman seeks to don the mantle of reason with his helpful nostrums to surreptitiously decrease our rights to property ownership. The Left has never accepted that you own something only to the degree that you can dispose of it as you will.
[8mar18 update] NPR correspondent Tom Gjelten reports on another big government screw-up that is kicking our private parts from over 50 years ago. In his 'The Curious History of Chain Migration' he takes us on a short trip on memory lane to illustrate "a classic case of unintended consequences".
rebanesruminations.com 
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