The Bare Necessities of Firearm Safety

There are probably a million articles out there covering the topic of firearm safety, but a blog about Liberty wouldn't be complete if it weren't mentioned here.  If you are going to take up the means to defend yourself against any aggressor, you must be versed in using those means.  Which means, you must practice.

But before you ever pick up a gun, there are a few things you must sear into your mind.  Failure to follow proper safety procedures is the overwhelming cause of accidents involving firearms.  Much like a band saw, you must know how to handle the tool to ensure you don't lose a finger, or worse.

The basics of gun safety are extremely simple.  In order of importance (to this author), they are as follows:

1) Trigger Discipline.  Never put your finger inside the trigger guard when you are simply holding your firearm.  The only time your finger should ever touch that trigger is in the moments before you pull it.  For me, it is most natural to rest my trigger finger along the side of the gun, just above or across the guard.  See the photo at the beginning of this article for an example.

2) The Gun Is Always Loaded.  Even if it's not.  Always treat your guns as if they are prepared to fire on the next squeeze of the trigger, even if you just removed the magazine and cleared the chamber.  Which leads into the next item...

3) Never Aim at Something You Don't Intend to Destroy.  Always be sure you are pointing the end of your firearm in a safe direction.  Don't muzzle sweep your best friend's legs - it makes them nervous, and could end in tragedy.

4) Always be Sure of Your Target.  And what's behind it.  Most gun ranges have a huge berm of earth piled up behind the target area to soak up discharged bullets.  You never want to set up a target a quarter mile from your neighbor's house with nothing to halt your plinkers between you and them.

That's it - now you know the bare necessities of gun safety.  Obviously, there is a whole lot more to learn about the various firearms out there, but no matter what you have, these rules will always apply.  Next, it's up to you to get out there and make damn sure you know how to use your weapon, should the need arise.  Remember to exhale as you squeeze (rather than "jerk") the trigger!

Building the Future

Most people I know would agree that children are the future of our species and planet.  Most of them would also say that it all starts with a proper education.  It's true - we have to teach them to be good stewards of the planet and to continue to advance the Human species, but there is something much more important than teaching them math and science.

We have to stop producing fucked up kids.

Too often, there is a cycle of violence in families.  Your parents spanked (hit) you to gain your obedience as a child, and your grandparents did the same.  And so, you hit your children to illicit the same compliance.  It's easy to understand why - this is all you've ever known.  And clearly, it worked out okay for you.  But did it really?  If you are using physical force to make your kids behave, maybe your thought patterns need some adjustment.

Think about what it teaches a child when you operate under this paradigm.  They internalize the idea that violence is an acceptable means to resolve basic disputes.  They also learn that there are two classes of people: Those who are "allowed" to use violence against others, and those who are forbidden to defend themselves against this compliance-seeking force.

Given this, is it any wonder that most people don't think twice about such problems as police brutality?  Or the demonstrable fact that the political class does not operate under the same set of rules as the little people?  The whole of American society is currently based around using physical force against those who will not comply with what a few corrupt people in suits have scribbled on paper.  This force is applied even when the "criminal" has caused no actual harm to a victim.  To a healthy and rational Human being, this is a morally repugnant way to organize societies.

You might say that children will be forced into this paradigm anyway when they grow up, and for now, you would be right.  But people do not internalize ideas in nearly as permanent a way when they are adults.  What children experience during their most formative years becomes the bedrock of their worldview.  And while it can be unlearned (this author being an example), it takes a great deal more work and pain to shift how you see the world once you are an adult.  Too many people are not even capable of questioning the core beliefs they have always held.  And when they have learned the rule-by-force paradigm, the wheel continues to turn without so much as a second look.

The time to build a better future and break the cycle of violence starts right here, right now, with you.  If you want to learn more about Peaceful Parenting, here's a good place to start: http://www.peacefulparent.com/the-peaceful-parenting-philosophy/

"Children must be taught how to think, not what to think." -Margaret Mead

"Children are not things to be molded, but people to be unfolded." -Jess Lair

"It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men." -Frederick Douglass

"Children are the living messages we send to a time we will not see." -John F. Kennedy

Has your moral compass lost True North?

This message is for all the proud "law abiding citizens" out there.  The ones who think that, no matter what any law says, it ought to be followed to the letter.  The people who would happily vote "Guilty" on a case of illegally collecting rain water.  Or growing a garden in your front yard.  Or inhaling a leaf.  "Guilty," just because someone in a costume told you it was wrong for them to do those things.  "Guilty," despite that person never having harmed an actual victim.  "Guilty," ripping a family apart and throwing a peaceful person in a cage, effectively destroying the rest of their lives.  "Guilty," despite the knowledge that you are not compelled by any law to vote this way, no matter the evidence.  "Guilty," and damn it, you think they got exactly what they had coming to them.

What the hell is the matter with you?

Are you really not able to separate the morality of an action from the words written on a piece of paper by some faceless politician you'll never meet?  Do you not realize that the "law of the land" is nothing more than the law of men?  That these men, especially those who have sought and held positions of power, are nothing more than corrupted tyrants who couldn't care less about your well-being?  These people care for only one thing: Their own power.  And the worst part is that you know this!  Nobody thinks politicians are the most virtuous among us.  Everybody knows exactly how crooked they are.  How corrupt.  How untrustworthy.

Yet somehow, you think it's a great thing when someone is thrown in a cage on the say-so of these monsters.

If a person takes an action that does not cause harm to a victim, it is morally reprehensible to lock that person in a cage.  And if you participate in this imprisonment, or even think it is a righteous thing to do, you are the criminal.  And on some level, that's okay.  Just own it.  Stop trying to justify your actions as moral and righteous based on the words of corrupt men.

Of course, I do wish you would reconsider your thought patterns.

In any case, if you find yourself on trial for a victimless "crime" and I find myself sitting on your jury, I will not let your life be destroyed that day.  Maybe someday, you can offer me the same courtesy.

"Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within the limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others.  I do not add 'within the limits of the law' because law is often the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual."  -Thomas Jefferson

"If the machine of government is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law." -Henry David Thoreau

Breath in your lungs, a Beat in your heart, and a Light in your eyes

Have you ever stopped to contemplate the sheer impossibility of your own existence?

Think about it.  The Universe, as far as we can see it, is at least 92 BILLION light years in diameter. And light is the fastest thing we know of: It takes it only 8 minutes and 20 seconds to traverse the 92.6 MILLION miles from the Sun to the Earth.  In a year, a beam of light travels 5,879,000,000,000 - almost 6 TRILLION - miles.  And that's just one year - our Universe is 92 billion of these years across.

There's a whole hell of a lot of space out there.  Much more than our brains can even begin to comprehend.  And it looks like our Universe gets bigger all the time.

In that space, as far as we can see, there are about 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (that's 1 billion trillion) stars.  We see more all the time as their light reaches us.  Each of those stars can easily have as many planets surrounding it as our own star.  Many of them probably have a lot more planets than our solar system.

That's a whole hell of a lot of planets.  Once again, far more than our brains can possibly understand.  There is truly little doubt that thousands or millions or even billions of those innumerable planets have conditions similar to our own Earth, and could support life exactly as we know it.

Given all this, is it even possible to calculate the odds that you, the person reading this, are alive and conscious in this time and in this place?  On the scale of the Universe, it isn't even a stretch to say that your existence is impossible.

Yet, here you are.

What's more, the atoms that make up your body are the very same atoms found in the stars.  You are literally made of Stardust!  And every single cell in that body is replaced once every 7 years.  No part of your physical makeup that was present when you were a child is present now.  Every cell has been replaced, multiple times if you're a more seasoned traveler.

So the next time you can't seem to get out of your head; can't quite shake that dark mood, just remember: You are a ghost driving a self-regenerating organic vehicle made up of the stars.  Your very existence in this time and place is a miracle of unimaginable magnitude.

And smile.  As with all situations and objects that have ever existed, this, too, shall pass.

What, exactly, did you expect would happen?

It's starting to happen all over the United States.  Stories are starting to spring up on a daily basis.  In the last few days alone:

"Dallas sniper attack: 5 officers killed"

"Not just Dallas: Attacks in three states target cops"

"Police say officers have been targeted in Missouri, Georgia, and Tennessee"

"Chaos in St. Paul - Police Injured"

"Gunfire hits San Antonio police headquarters"

"Report: Cop, Bailiffs Shot at Courthouse"

"Sunday Slaughter Baton Rouge: 3 Cops Dead; Nation Tense"

If we are being realistic, we should expect these headlines to continue to crop up in the coming months.

Before I continue, I want to make it clear that I do not, in ANY way, condone the use of deadly force against people who have not wrongfully harmed others.  This will always hold true, whether the wrongfully harmed is a police officer or just another civilian.  This is, and will continue to be, a life-shattering tragedy for the families being destroyed.

But if we actually take an objective look at the history - especially more recent history - of policing in America, can any of us truly say we are surprised it has come to this?  After all, you can only kick a dog so many times before he snaps and rips your throat out.

What we are seeing today is a involuntary, almost compulsive reaction by people who have been pushed beyond their limits.  People who look at the way things are and feel sick to their stomach. People who shake their heads and say "This is wrong, and it can't be allowed to continue."  Their methods might be wrong, but they feel like they have to do something, and nothing they have tried within official channels has changed a damn thing.

For the last 45 years, "law enforcement" has used the horrendously immoral War on Drugs as an excuse to commit endless unspeakable acts of aggression against people who would never have harmed anyone.  No-Knock drug raids are frequently employed, and too often on the wrong house.  Innocent homeowners who try to defend themselves against these aggressive and unannounced  invasions are gunned down in cold blood.  Flash bang grenades have been lobbed into the cribs of sleeping toddlers.  Countless millions of non-violent people are routinely brutalized, caged, and killed in the name of a war which was started by a power-drunk politician as nothing more than a means to suppress political dissent.

Another invention of the unconscionable War on Drugs is Civil Asset Forfeiture.  This allows police to "legally" seize peoples' property on the mere suspicion that the property (usually money, but often vehicles, homes, and more) was intended to be used to buy, sell, or produce drugs.  "Innocent until proven guilty" is then flipped on its head: You can't get your property back unless you prove in court that it was not going to be used for the reasons suspected.  Using this method of legalized robbery, police now steal more property from individuals than all private sector criminals combined.

It seems like almost every other day we see yet another story in the news about police activity that results in the death of (often) non-violent or otherwise innocent people.  In 2015, police were involved in the deaths of at least 1,200 people.  Granted, not all of these were unjustified, but far too many of them were.  Just last week, police executed a man who they had pinned to the ground.  And this week, an officer shot a man 4 times during a tail light stop, apparently because the man was licensed to carry a firearm and informed the officer of this before he reached for his Driver's License (as requested).  The man's girlfriend and her 4-year old daughter were in the car as he bled out.

At face value, it should be natural to assume that it is wrong to do these things to people.  But rather than being held accountable for apparently wrongful actions, police are almost universally internally investigated and determined to have operated "By the book."

People who defend the institution of policing claim that it's "just a few bad apples."  However, it is difficult to swallow this line when you consider what happens to the few GOOD apples.  Case in point: An officer who refused to make an illegal arrest was promptly relieved of his employment and black listed.  Crossing that "thin blue line" is one of the very few things that will get a cop fired.

People need to stop holding uniformed personnel to different standards than everyone else.  Any "officer-involved shooting" that was not done out of self-defense should not be called an "officer-involved shooting."  It should be called by its real name: Murder.  Taking peoples' property on the suspicion it was related to drugs should not be called "civil asset forfeiture," it should be called armed robbery.  Ticketing a driver who had caused no actual harm to anyone should not be called "traffic enforcement," it should be called extortion.  The list goes on, and encompasses any agent of the State on any level you want to imagine.

How can we be expected to teach our children to trust someone in uniform when you look at the situation objectively?  How are we supposed to differentiate between the "good apple" who will just let us know we have a tail light out and go on his way versus the one who just might murder you (and your dog) in front of your family at the drop of a hat?  How are any of us supposed to feel secure in a system that clearly holds its agents in infinitely higher regard than its subjects?  This is a system that objectively identifies law breaking by its own top agents, and then promptly dismisses the very idea of bringing charges against them.  Police now fill the role of the mafia goon in an objectively and abjectly corrupted system.  They have to.  Their very livelihood depends upon their willingness to "just follow orders," and "not make the law, just enforce it," no matter how disgustingly destructive that law might be to the clear-eyed witness.

It should be pretty obvious by now: People have lost respect and gained mistrust for law enforcement, and increasingly, this entire system of government.  If you can't see why by now, it is only because you don't want to see.  At this point, I don't know what can be done to regain that respect and trust.

At the very least, the following would need to happen:

• The war on drugs must be ended IMMEDIATELY.  This would be the single biggest good-faith measure that law enforcement personnel could make to show they want to bring an end to hostilities.  The roughly half of all prisoners now behind bars on non-violent drug charges should likewise have their families made whole.

• The "vast majority" of good police need to start aggressively weeding out the bad ones, and in the most public manner possible.

• Politicians who flippantly break laws need to be publicly and permanently removed from office.

• Government employees need to be treated like they're actual human beings and not some God-like entity with their own special set of rules (or lack thereof).

• All law enforcement activities whose only purpose is revenue generation must be stopped.  Any time an officer interfaces with the public the only purpose of this interaction should be the protection of non-violent people.

• Police should start functioning like the fire department - we don't need them proactively patrolling the streets.  Realistically, you cannot "prevent crime."  All cops can do is show up in time to chalk the body and write a report.  We can still have them do this without them aggressively seeking reasons to take more money from people, either through tickets or civil asset forfeiture.  STOP STEALING OUR STUFF.

Even if these and other actions were taken, I don't know that it would be enough.  Personally, I will never trust someone who wants to be in a position to "legally" use violence against me in the name of conformity.

Politicians might be beyond hope at this point, but things don't have to be the way they are between the police and public.  We are being artificially pitted against one another by an authoritarian system that only cares about its own power.  To people like Hillary Clinton, we are all just disposable pawns.

Obviously, it would be reasonable for anyone to defend themselves from an attack.  The people who are currently targeting police should fully expect return fire.  I want to urge both sides to stop killing one another.  To the enforcement arm: The power-elite at the top will not give you the "go ahead" to take the necessary actions to end this fighting.  It will be up to you as an individual to choose to end this.  Stop looking to your superiors for the "wink and nod."  You have to look into your own conscience to decide what is right or wrong here.

Unless and until there are some serious overhauls to the way things are done now, violence between cops and the public will be inevitable.  He might have held it together admirably well for a long time, but the repeatedly kicked dog seems to have reached his breaking point.  Calling his lashing out "unprovoked" and saying there is "no possible justification" for it is more than a little bit disingenuous.  It may be true that the recently fallen officers did not personally harm innocent people, but they wore the mantle of those who do so on an alarmingly regular basis.

When is it acceptable to shoot a cop?  No sooner or later than the moment it would be acceptable to shoot anybody else.  If you think it is never okay to defend yourself against an officer, I want you to take a long hard look at the line of reasoning behind that thought.

"You always have to follow the lawful orders of police!" - German Gestapo circa 1939

Violence vs. Voluntaryism: There's Always a Better Way

Have you ever examined the basic mechanisms of the society in which you live?  From my perspective, there are two basic ways to organize society: Voluntary cooperation, or violence and coercion.

Most of us experience some mix of the two.

In our interpersonal lives - usually up to the neighborhood level - societies are largely based on voluntary cooperation, or at least the Non-Aggression Principle.  In other words, on this level, people know it is unacceptable to initiate violence against one another to force desired behaviors.  People know that if they do start a fight, the person they are starting it with is completely justified in using aggressive defensive force.

In America today, this is where civility and voluntary cooperation end.  There is still a thin veneer of civility; some illusion of the absence of violence underpinning the functions of society.  But that's all it is - an illusion.  From the town level on up to the Federal, the rest of American society has its basis completely in coercion and threats of violence, up to and ultimately including deadly force.

Don't believe me?  Try not paying property taxes.  Or refusing to comply with local government workers who order you to stop doing construction on your own house without their holy permission.  Or refusing to pay income taxes to the IRS.  Or consuming a plant deemed "dangerous" by the FDA.  The initial contact by government workers on all levels might start out civilly enough, but if you don't comply with their demands, it won't be long before they show up with an armed person to forcibly extract your wealth or put you in a cage.

And if you don't want to have your property stolen or to be kidnapped?  The person with a gun will shoot you dead.  This is the ultimate conclusion of every "law" now on the books.  This is the reality of how American society is now organized.  There is no element of voluntary cooperation - either you will do what your rulers say, or they will put you down.  In my view, this is an absolutely unacceptable way to behave towards other human beings.

Any human interaction that is not voluntary is inherently wrong.  If your ideas are good enough to be followed, you will not need to employ people with guns to force your neighbors into compliance.  And if you do need to employ such people, your ideas really sucked to begin with.  This is true whether you are homeless and on the streets or the President of the United States.

Bottom line: There is ALWAYS a better way to get things done than by using force.  The only time violent force is legitimate is when it is used in self defense or the defense of another.  Anything else is just plain wrong.

"The problem isn't the person who is sitting on the throne.  The problem is that the throne exists at all." - Larken Rose

Can We Agree?

I have a proposition for you.  Something I hope we can agree on.

It goes like this: I won't use violence against you if you won't use violence against me.  In fact, I won't even use some face in a suit who sits at his perch in the District of Criminals as an agent or excuse to use violence against you.  At least, that is, if you agree not to do the same.

Heck, I won't even use violence against your neighbor, even if they are a little bit inconsiderate sometimes.  They don't deserve to be harmed just because they're a bit of a prick.

Can we agree on this?  Because if we can, there's really nowhere we can't go.  And quite honestly, if we can agree to this, it really won't matter what the sociopaths who fancy themselves our "rulers" do.  They can make all the ludicrous demands they want - if you and I agree not to harm one another on their behalf, the fact that they want power and war and death and control won't matter.

If we can't: Why not?  Under what circumstances - other than self defense or defense of other - do you think it is okay to use force on one another?  I'm seriously open to suggestions.  These ideas would probably be interesting to contemplate.

“I'm not scared of the Maos and the Stalins and the Hitlers.
I'm scared of the thousands of millions of people that hallucinate them to be 'authority,' and so do their bidding, and pay for their empires, and carry out their orders.
I don't care if there's one looney with a stupid moustache. He's not a threat if the people do not believe in 'authority'.”  -Larken Rose