I've feel like I've mellowed

The blog used to have more rants.  Paragraphs explaining how 'commies are bad for childrens and other living things.'  And 'all gun control is an infringement and how about them loathsome Fudds?' 

I've said all that, for one thing.  And to go over it again is just repetitive.  Trying to keep things fresh from posts I did 10 years ago, as much as possible.

I can't just rehash the 4 Rules of Gun Safety posts every month.  Unless I can get some novelty out of it.  I can't rail agin' Metrocons because they all morphed into boring old Never Trumpers.  Ho hum.  

The assumption now is "Well of course commies are bad and gun laws are infringements, I don't need to tell ya."

Plus, the illness has taken some wind out of my sails. Slowed me RIGHT down. 

Funny memes get shared and spread on other platforms.  

No one wants to hear about how good 1911s are.  

Makes blogging a bit tougher, but my mellowness has me just going with the flow.  Good ol' inertia!

 

The Draft

"Drafting Women is Foolish"

Says the Metrocon Fortnightly.

Maybe, maybe.  But if you act anything like you have recently, you will be perfectly fine with it in 8 or 10 years.  Even a proponent.  All your lines in the sand have an expiration date, National Review, then you roll over and show your belly.  Which is a business model, I guess.  

Since the founding of this country, there has been, what, 40 total years of male military conscription?  A few years for the Civil War, a few for WWI, then 1940 thru 1970ish.  Call it 30 total.  Just draft women from now til 2052 and call it even-Steven. Men volunteer, but women hafta.    Gonna need to re-open some bases, set up fresh barracks.  It'll do the ladies good.   A few years being told what to do and when to do it.  Working hard.  Subject to the UCMJ.  Fresh air, and exercise.  Maybe learn a trade.  

Frum

I remember when Frum was conservative.  He was as conservative as Jonah Goldberg was back in 2010.  Both metrocons, back in the day.  Well, they let Frum near a keyboard again.

"Altogether, about 500 Americans a year die from unintended shootings. That’s four times the rate of deaths from unintended shootings in peer nations. "  

Translation:  'Peer nations' means nations with the gun control Frum wants here.

"The gun buyers of 2020–21 are different from those of years past: They are more likely to be people of color and more likely to be women. They are not buying guns to join a race war, or to overthrow the government, or to wait for Armageddon in a bunker stocked with canned beans. They just want to deter a burglar or an assailant, should one come. 

Those dangers are real, and it’s understandable that people would fear them and seek to avert them. But like the people who refuse lifesaving vaccines for fear of minutely rare side effects, American gun buyers are falling victim to bad risk analysis."

Translation:  "You black people and women that bought guns recently aren't responsible enough to realize what an awful thing you've done getting a firearm.  Now let me explain your mistake to you further." 

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Oh, and my term 'metrocon'?  It seems to be overcome by events.  There are no metrocons left.  If they were a metrocon they are just liberal democrats now, caucusing with Pelosi.  

Founders, and AR's

 Yes they did David Harsanyi, formerly of the Federalist.

You know, National Review doesn't have the cache it used to.  But I am sure the Federalist will take you back if/when the publication fails. 

Obviously, I prefer the Federalist these days.  NR needs a come-to-Jesus moment, to correct their trajectory.  But so does Paul Ryan's Fox News.

Anyway, the article.  It's the same hash we've seen many times before.  Ho hum.  Hell, I bet I've written similar.  And I've read the same thing with different words many times.  And heard JayG rant about ti many times.  "Just because the founders never saw an AR doesn't mean the 2nd doesn't cover ARs.  It does.  Just like the 1st covers radio signals and internet HTML."  And besides, Heller settled this.  Individual right, yes.  Yes, modern implements.  Go somewhere else to push against the not-absolute-right envelope.  

Hmmm, what right IS absolute?  Or the closest to absolute.  A man on death row is about to lose his right to life, but instead of a last meal he could pen a letter to the editor of his local paper.  He can't incriminate himself for other crimes even if they can do no worse to him at this point. Copping to a car theft while being strapped to the Chair is fine, but you can't coerce him to.  He can still call for his lawyer.  He has no gun rights whatsoever, though.   

Well, that's good news at least

From a writer of The Federalist.

"The Riots and Protests Will Make Gun Ownership More Popular"

Sorta commonsensical.

First we said Bill Clinton was the world's best gun salesman.  Then Obama.  Then Hillary before she lost the election.  But I think George Soros and his inexorable push for more international socialism drives this whole thing.  Sounds like ancient anti-Semitic tropes, or a puppet master pulling the strings behind the scenes, and that would be icky.  But Soros is a former Nazi type, and not so much a puppet master as a stubborn but focused donation machine that has the wrong idea about what is best for the world.

But there is no real face of gun sales now.  Antifa?  BLM?  Biden?  The Rona?  Naw.  No face.  Just events.  And schizo democrats.

If...

If 20% of black voters sympathized with legal self defense, instead of the current 10%...

If 20% of Jewish voters sympathized with legal self-defense, instead of the current 10%...

The whole nation would be Constitutional Vermont-style carry.  And all of Bloomberg's and Soros' astroturfs would gain little traction in the Democrat party.  They'd have to change their tactics.  Go for the Metrocons, maybe? 

I don't know if it is currently a 10% sympathy.  It might be 5?  It's not zero.  And Trump is doing a decent job attracting these new non-traditional potential GOP voters.  I wonder if the conservatives that run after Trump will be savvy enough to hold to that message?  It's hard, what with the nigh entirety of the Democrat controlled media has managed to convince the world that the Republicans are the party of the Klan, somehow. 

Good article in the Federalist

In case you haven't seen it. 

Reminding Democrats and Metrocons that at the base of gun control is real racism.  Not this fake racism that's been making the rounds. 

So...

So-called conservative commentator is pro-abortion and anti-Second.  Figures.

Outlawing abortion, changing the meaning of the second amendment to mean Home Bazookas are two that come to mind, but you're being slippery here: You want the courts, not the legislature or the public, to be the vessel of ideas. The same thing cons once hated about liberals.

— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) December 2, 2019

His interests are apparently being CENTER-right, and pro national security and maybe small gummint.  But the important bits is being pro-abortion and anti-Second, and he no longer feels the need to even make noise that he isn't.  Okay. This is what we call a metrocon. Except not so much con. Just awful.

Metrocon

Was David Brooks, token 'conservative' columnist on the NYTimes, ever really a conservative?  Particularly on guns?

"Crack the wall of inaction" on gun control.  After that, the rest can pour through that crack.

Metrocons

There are three folks on/were-on National Review that were not Metrocons.  Jim Geraghty, Charlie Cooke, and Kevin Williamson.

I met Charlie and Jim at a NRA convention.  And, truthfully, I dunno if either still works at the Fortnightly.  I haven't been reading them much.  I lost interest when a lotta staff went Democrat in 2017.

Jim seems to be a metro type, just lucked out and didn't get the 'guns are icky!' reflex.  He isn't too experienced shooting.  I remember some First Time Shooter posts he put up.  His heart is in the right place.

Charlie is a British expat, fresh faced brand new US citizen.  So he comes from a different place.

Now Kevin.  He's from Texas.  He's actually commented on my blog back when blogs were still a thing.  He's had some odd flights, but not on guns.


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(Oops. forgot Robert Verbruggen.)

Cool!

Someone else is taking up my Metrocon term!

Well, I say 'my', but I am almost sure I heard it elsewhere, I just don't remember where.  But it was years ago when I adopted it.

Of course, my personal definition was a little different.  I referred to conservatives that grew up in an urban or urbanish-suburbs.  As such were unfamiliar guns, and only cops or robbers or TV shows had firearms, in their world.  So these folks were less sympathetic to the 2nd Amendment.  Oh sure, they would often mouth encouragement and support, but their heart wasn't in it.  SOP was to ignore the issue.  Even if they had married into a family of Alaskans. 

This guy Walther expands that to #Nevertrump think tank grifters, that were faking conservativism this whole time.  Like:  Globalist, Davos attenders, that tend to be interventionist and a bit fiscally conservative, but secretly hostile to cultural conservative tenets.  Freedom of speech?  Pfff.  Abortion?  They don't even like to think about it.  Right to bear arms?  Guns are icky and no one needs them, let's be like Britain, but never say that out loud.  Military service?  All for it!  For OTHER people, of course. 

My definition was not nearly as negative as all that.  But, you know, if the ascot fits and the silverware is set in the proper order and the clariet vintage is cheeky but with mellow finich, go with it.

Awww

Now I am sad.

My former governor isn't going to try for the presidency again in 2020. 

Adieau, Marty O'Malley.  The star that shines brightest shines briefest.  You won't be able to tax the rain on the entire country like you did on the people of Maryland.

Marty back Bobby O'Rourke (D  - Austin) for 2020 at this point.

Latest Metrocon take

... on the Second Amendment.

They are agin' repeal at National Review, but they aren't married to the idea, and if a repeal happened they seem to act like they'd get used to it pretty quick.

No word on whether they think the right to bear arms might exist outside and above the laws of the Constitution.  That it might be a greater thing.  A Natural Right.

That's one of the things I hate about Cruikshank.  Which said that the 2nd exists above and beyond the boundaries of the Constitution, but the Constitution isn't binding like this on the states, really, so we are gonna rule that the states can pee all over the right if it wants to, especially since this is freed slaves we are a-violatin'. 

Sorta like going, "The right to bear arms is sacrosanct, but we're gonna ignore that because we don't like black people, and it will take 90 years before the court thinks the the 14th really applies, and 40 years after that before it starts to get serious about the last of Jim Crow: gun control."

But the metrocons are at least not hostile.  If a bit squishy.

Metro III

Metrocons.  A term I coined years ago.  It's a conservative who academically is for the 2nd Amendment... perhaps... But heck he or she grew up in a big city or close-in suburb on the coast, and still lives there.  A BIG liberal enclave.  They've been marinating in a leftist fog for decades.  Some of it taints their makeup.  Plus, like many city dwellers, their feet rarely touch soil.  The only gun someone like Ben Stein or David Brooks sees in person are with cops or with robbers.  Nothing in between.  And since a Metrocon is neither a cop nor a robber...  Guns have no place in their personal lives.

Wait, there is one more place a 'metro' sees firearms.  In popular entertainment.  But, here again, you mainly see cops and robbers.  Throw movie soldiers in that mix. 

What we need are decades of ordinary folks carrying a pistol.  And not doing anything extraordinary (an ordinary-folk-with-a-gun movie is coming out soon, but this character does extraordinary things with it.   A Death Wish remake.  I'm not talking like that.)  Just a person in a movie that straps on his everyday carry piece, like others get their pocket watch or hat, and then go about their day, and do nothing or very little with it inside the storyline.  An anti-Chekhov's gun.  Normalize ordinary armed folks and maybe the next generation of metrocons will stop trying to go along with a gun ban, huh?

As if we could get liberal Hollywood to cooperate with us on this.   Maybe someone, somewhere.  Just a character in the Roseanne reboot putting his Elsie-Pea already in a pocket holster into his or her pocket.  That's something she might do.  I'd say in an upcoming season of Jessica Jones, some tertiary character with no specific threat or reason to go strapped... but that show is set in New York city.  You get my drift, though.

"I'm a 2nd Amendment Guy"

No.  You are a metrocon and want to ban guns, Mr. Stein.

He's all for fighting off home invaders with a pistol or summat, but wants it to be a fair fight with the maggots that want to rob him and murder his family.   I guess the scare AR is unsporting?  To each their own, I guess.  Unless you infringe on mine. 

Metro

Weighs in.

Jonah Goldberg is one of my favorite metrocons.  He is a New Yorker, but his wife and her family is from Alaska.

And here he has his take on the latest gun policy brouhaha that always comes up after a tragedy.

More nuanced than I thought it would go.  He is no execrable David Frum.

I liked Jonah more when he was younger and funnier.  He is about my age and both of us have become silly as we age, but he is FAR less silly than I. (Than me?  He's a better writer, too, and would know I or me there.)  I am saying I miss the more jocular Jonah.  And he is extra depressed lately as he is a bit of a NeverTrump.  The attitude lends a pall over latest writing.

He zeroes in on foundational attitudes in this piece.  Which is good.  Grasping for the Founders intent is what conservatives do, and I am glad he does it.

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Most times, with metrocons and the 2nd Amendment, they are on your side, intellectually.  Until the least bit of pressure is applied to them, then they collapse like the Tacoma Narrows bridge.  See Bill Kristol and Ross Douthat.  Rubin.  Jonah hasn't done this, and I don't thing he will.

Prager

You'd think Prager would be more about the metro, but perhaps not.

Hmmmm

#NeverTrumpers and Metrocons seem to live in an almost perfectly overlapping Venn diagram.

David Brooks

Metrocon.  Hopeless metrocon.  If he is even a con anymore.

With ZERO self-awareness.

Nordlinger

Jay Nordlinger is old school, like Bill Kristol or George Will or David Brooks before they went around the bend.  Very urban-centric and whatnot.  Almost a perfect example of a metrocon.

So it is nice to see him with a positive take on firearms in his Impromptu column.