Growing up we had music in the house. One of the groups that was played over and over again was “Peter, Paul, and Mary”.

The stories they told with their songs would transport me.

Sometimes when reading a good Heinlein story I’d hear the trio playing the sound track to his story.

I had the privilege of seeing them in person. They had just gotten back together and were giving concerts in small venues. In this case it was a small hall in Lansing, MI. They put on a great performance and afterwards my friends and I were just hanging out talking about how good it was.

And the three of them came out to just talk with the dozen or so people that were still in the hall. I’m not one to be at a loss for words but here were three of my “heroes” within easy speaking distance, just talking. I went mute. I had no idea what to say or do. I just stared.

Paul turned to me and said something like “Are you ok? Is there anything you need?” and I stumbled out something about how I had grown up listening to them and how much of an honor it was to hear them in person.

Well about a year later there was a big event on campus. Know that there were about 65,000 students at MSU that year. The headliners for the event was Peter, Paul, and Mary.

It was a cold rainy day and we started to gather hours before they were set to perform. I’d guess there were about 5,000 to 10,000 people standing in the rain in a big field facing the stage waiting for the concert to begin.

The anointed hour arrived and Paul steps out on stage with Peter and announces. “We are so sorry, Mary has laryngitis and can’t perform.” They were very apologetic but there wasn’t going to be any concert.

And then the chant started “Mary. Mary. Mary.” growing louder and louder. The two of them left the stage and the chant continued. They came back out and there was silence and they announced again that there was going to be no concert.

The chant started up again. They were looking very concerned. Suddenly the blond hair of Mary is seen coming on to stage.

Not a single person had left at that point.

When we saw Mary a huge cheer rose up over the field. Applause echoed from the buildings 100s of yards away. Mary waved to the crowd and the clapping when on and on.

The three of them raised their hands together and took a bow, and then another. The cheering and applause never dimmed.

Then they turned and walked of the stage and those students, many of whom were not yet born when they played their first gig, turned and left the field.

This is a song from PP&M which is a theme song for me and my lady.

The Bruen decision gutted the NY City and state permitting sham for the infringement it was. It was almost impossible for a normal person to get a permit to carry a firearm. It was even difficult to get a premise permit (government permission to own a gun in your own home.)

It was also rife with corruption. Over the years multiple people involved with the permitting process have gone to jail for taking bribes. It really was who you knew and how much you were willing to pay that got you a permit.

The permitting denial process centered around “good cause”. You had to show that you had a unique and directed reason in order to be granted your second amendment guaranteed rights.

In one case a man was kidnapped off the street, he was threatened and almost lost his life. The criminals realized that they had kidnapped the wrong person and set him free. He applied for a permit as he feared that the same mistaken identity would happen again. He was denied a permit “because the threat wasn’t against him in particular, it was against the actual target.”

Of course he was kidnapped again. And his second application was denied for the same reason.

With Bruen in place the good cause requirement is gone. Instead NYS put into place a series of requirements that are almost impossible to meet. Starting September 1st, 2022 those requirements take effect. One of those requirements is a training requirement. The state has until early 2023 to have the requirements for the training ready for presentation. The state then has still more time until they have to actually approve the training.

It is likely that it will take even more time for instructors to be certified to provide the training.

What this means on a practical matter is that as of September 1st, 2022 there will be NO permits issued for at least 6 months and much more likely 12 to 18 months.

Fortunately for some people, Bruen took effect on June 23rd, 2022. There is a back log of permits under the old laws that must be processed under the old laws. Including permits that were denied because of lack of good cause and permits that were downgraded.

NYC Police Department has issued a “NOTICE OF ADOPTION OF EMERGENCY RULES FOR RECEIVING A CONCEALED CARRY HANDGUN LICENSE AND RESUBMITTING CERTAIN RECENTLY DENIED APPLICATIONS”

It is unclear from the order what training is required, regardless, people that were denied under the old scheme now have an opportunity to get their permits under the old laws minus the “good cause” requirement.

NYPD issues emergency rules for receiving a concealed carry handgun license

The left is very good at lawfare. They know how to get judges that will rule in their favor and who will grant injunctions that act nationwide.

We saw this during the Trump years. The president would sign an executive order and some federal judge in some leftist hell hole would decided that he knew better than the president and put a nationwide injunction in place blocking the executive order.

Even when the right gets an injunction from a judge it is often limited in scope as much as possible. In one case during the Trump years the judge issued his injunction and then put a hold on the injunction because he knew it was being appealed.

Florida has been on the forefront in the fighting woke indoctoration in the schools and in businesses. In the first blows struck DeSantis worked for and then signed the Parental Rights bill making it illegal for school personnel of any sort to teach sexual issues (trans, gay, or straight) to K through 3rd and all such instruction had to be age appropriate there after.

It use to be that you didn’t know a teachers sexual leanings. That was something for their home life. You might guess that some male teacher was gay because of certain behaviors, but it didn’t really matter and it was not an issue for students. It fell into the “don’t ask, don’t tell” situation. Private matters were private.

Today teachers advocate for all sorts of causes. “Gay Pride!” If you can advocate for gay pride in the classroom can my kid get equal time for “straight pride?” Nope, that’s homophobic. If you can advocate for BLM can my kid get equal time for All Lives Matter, much less White Lives Matter? Nope, that’s racist.

Teachers had free rein to advocate what they wanted. So Florida did something about it. They did it as a representative Democracy. Of course the left melted down and demanded that the law be stopped.

In April, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis into law a bill that would limit CRT in schools and businesses.

Many businesses are forcing employees to attend struggle sessions where people that are not part of the privileged group are forced to denounce themselves and others like them.

The problem is that these DEI training sessions are becoming mandatory. Just like the sexual harassment training that many businesses require. For the Sexual Harassment training it always is the obvious things they talk about and tell you not to do. “Don’t grab her breasts.” “Don’t require sex for promotions.” “Don’t make sexual advances on your coworkers.”

How about they answer “When is it ok to date a coworker and how do you ask a coworker out on a date without it being sexual harassment?”

People were getting fired for not saying they had “white privilege.”

This week U.S. District Judge Mark Walker said that the “Stop Woke” act violates the First Amendment.

So it is against the First Amendment to stop struggle sessions but not against the First Amendment to not attend and to not parrot the required sayings. Something is wrong here.

We need to keep fighting and we will keep winning. Don’t get discouraged. Just stay the course.
Judge blocks Florida ‘woke’ law pushed by Gov. DeSantis

Sometimes you just have to go with the feel good news of the day.

It is being reported in multiple sources that CNN has canceled “Reliable Sources” and that Brian Stelter is leaving or was let go.

Without Trump to drive ratings up during the hourly two minute hate, CCN’s overall ratings have gone down and down and down.

Brian Stelter made it his business to breathlessly report every misstep, misspeak or to blunt thing that President Trump did or said.

Without Trump driving the two minute hate CCN is looking for other things to report. Mostly that consists of blaming everybody right of Mao as “Right Wing Extremists” and lamenting how they can’t shutup other people’s opinion.

So we close our week with a small bit of good news.

CNN cancels ‘Reliable Sources,’ host Stelter leaving network

In the Bruen case the dissenting justices appealed to emotions to justify why they didn’t want to follow the law.

Justice Thomas put it just right: The two step process is one step to far.

Previous to the Bruen decision the courts in gun rights unfriendly areas would start with “We’ll stipulate that the law violates the 2nd amendment BUT…” at which point the second amendment goes away. These courts always found that the state had compelling reasons to abridge and infringe on our rights.

In order for those emotional appeals to actually work, there have to be enough horrible stories to touch people. You need stories that allow the people to connect with the evil and heartbreak. “One death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic”.

Where to get those number? Those stories? Those scary numbers?

“There have been more mass shootings than days in 2022!!!!”

Only when you use the “right” definitions and the right sources.

When the CDC was advocating for gun control they did studies and the numbers were cooked. Even so they couldn’t hide the fact that the number of DGU was way higher than the number of people killed with firearms. So when they were no longer able to advocate for gun control, they stopped studying violence involving guns.

The gun grabbing media and politicians had to turn to other sources. They turned to people like the Giffard’s and Everytown and Moms Demand and Brady. The problem was that nobody trusted these sources. If you can’t use the numbers from the NRA you can’t use the numbers from people with this much conflict of interest. It didn’t stop them, but it slowed them down.

Thus enters the Gun Violence Archive. This is a group of people, it started with just one person, that started looking in media reports for any and all incidents involving guns. They then made a record of that incident and reported it.

Suddenly there were hundreds of incidents. The only problem was that it didn’t match the FBI’s Uniform Crime Statistics.

What it was good for is scare numbers”

“Since the start of this year (2022), there have been 277 reported mass shootings — an average of more than one per day. See Gun Violence Archive,” Justice Stephen Breyer wrote in June in the opening paragraph.

In other words, the GVA is not at all scientific, its data is hand picked and questionable. Anybody that actually looks at their individual incidents soon finds multiple errors. And they use their own definitions and play loose with those definitions.

All to get those “Scary numbers”

The media and the politicians eat it up because it matches their confirmation bias. So much so that Supreme Court Justices feel comfortable quoting GVA numbers. It is sick.

Just remember, when Obama told the CDC to study violence involving guns after a couple of years the CDC came back with numbers that were so bad for the gun grabbers that they quietly buried the report.

How a tiny nonprofit with no full-time employees became the foremost tracker of gun violence in America

Gender dysphoria has been a known mental illness for a while now. The earliest treatments were done at Johns Hopkins. The procedure took many years, required extensive therapy and living as the opposite gender for a significant time before anything irreversible was done.

I know of multiple people that firmly believed they were the wrong gender. They went to Johns Hopkins and when everything was said and done, they were not even allowed in to the early stages of the process. The therapy part was enough to show that the individual wasn’t suffering from gender dysphoria but had other issues.

Over time the doctor that started created the original gender reassignment procedures came to believe that it was wrong. He stopped performing reassignment surgeries.

Confirmation bias is when we expect to find something and because we expect to find it we do find it. This is the gambler that finds a pattern at the craps table or roulette table. He expects there to be a pattern so he finds it. Those processes are random so there isn’t a pattern.

Scientist are not immune to confirmation bias. A good scientist designs their experiments such that it should eliminate confirmation bias. Good scientists will have others examine their research to look for confirmation bias and to help them remove that bias from their research.

One example of confirmation bias is in temperature samples. Some climate scientist expected to see certain patterns in global temperature measurements. When they didn’t see what they expected they decided that the data was bad. Not their findings, but the data. They then applied “corrections” to the data in order to get the results they wanted to see.

We see it with all of the climate alarmist. It is hot that means climate change is real. It’s cold, climate change is real. There is too much rain, there isn’t enough rain, there is too much snow, there isn’t enough snow… No matter what the weather event it always means “climate change!” to those with that level of confirmation bias.

Social contagions are syndroms that seem to be contagious when there should not be any contagine. In the 80’s there was the “Satanic Panic”. The word spread that there were satanic rituals taking place involving children. People were on the lookout for these satan worshipers doing evil to children.

And they found it. They found it and suddenly they had children telling adults about horrendous events. One group of children from a daycare facility described eating a baby.

It was all imagination. The children quickly learned that the more outrageous their stories the more praise they received from the investigating adults. The adults were feeding answers to the children, often without even realizing it.

The current social contagion is “transgender” or “non-binary”. Here’s the thing, it clumps. Once one child comes out and is praised for being “brave and beautiful” others follow. Those that do this are often willing to believe that a social contagion exists but it doesn’t apply to them. It is those others. They are the real deal.

Today trans people are treated with kid gloves and our entire society is being bent to accommodate these people. Why does my technical support person have their pronouns in their signature block? Why does my bank teller have their pronouns pinned to their shirt? Because they are afraid of offending somebody. Worse, they want you to be afraid of offending them.

…including some sympathetic to Turban’s political mission, wondered whether his research reflected scientific curiosity and discovery or confirmation bias and an axe to grind. Throughout his career, Turban has authored studies which conclude that there are great benefits and minimal risks to providing gender-confused minors with “gender-affirming care,” a medically cryptic way of saying hormonal therapy for puberty suppression, reconstructive surgery, and social and behavioral re-conditioning.

Dr. Jack Turban found his research niche in the treatment of pediatric gender-identity disorders nearly a decade ago and quickly rose through the ranks of the discipline. In a prestigious fellowship at Stanford Medical Center following a residency at Massachusetts General Hospital, he focused on child and adolescent psychiatry with an emphasis on transgender youth, or facilitating sex change through surgical, medical, and social interventions.

In February, Sweden’s National Board of Health and Welfare (NBHW) updated its service guidelines for children and youth with gender dysphoria, citing “uncertain science” and “no definite conclusions about the effect and safety of the treatments” as reasons to conclude that “the risks outweigh the benefits at present.” Multiple Republican state legislatures, recognizing the unknowns and moral and ethical uncertainties, have limited access to the treatments.

It is highly unlikely that this trend towards mutilating children will stop anytime soon. The amount of damage being done to our children is alarming, even if it is only at a mental level. Movies and shows are pushing and affirming transgenderism.

At some point our children’s children’s children will look back at this and label this time “The crazy years.”

Until that time this is a small step in the right direction.

‘Advocate Rather Than a Scientist’: The Compromised Research of Child Gender-Transition Doctor Jack Turban

The Guardian published Do you want free speech to thrive? Then it has to be regulated, now more than ever raising the question of just how important free speech actual is.

Free speech is a bedrock of a free society. Without it bad things are driven into the darkness and good things never see the light of day. Free speech means defending people saying things you disagree with.

A common saying years ago was “I disagree with you but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”

Today we have more and more people defining “hate speech”. Speech that must be regulated. “Hate speech isn’t Free Speech”.

Hate speech is exactly what Free Speech must protect. It isn’t the things that are easy to listen to that need to be protected. It is those things that you don’t want to hear.

So many of today’s leftist institutions strive to limit speech in some way. “Misinformation”, “disinformation”, “fake news”, “hate speech”, and whatever term they choose to use tomorrow. All of these are just ways of saying “Shut Up!”

Everyone of these rules or regulations or policies is premised on “safety”. Generally “For YOUR safety you shouldn’t hear these things.” or “For YOUR safety you shouldn’t say these things.”

There is a Ren Faire in New England that might not survive because of “hate speech”. Not that anything was actually spoken, but because people were afraid something might be said. There was an incident where some people were found near the site of the fair that might have been actual racist. So in order to punish those people many vendors and performers decided not to attend.

This will likely kill the fair. All because people were afraid of hearing something “racist.”

In many places speech is called violence. If you were to call a black person N…. they feel that violence has been done to them which allows them to respond with physical violence. Giving offence via speech is considered violence by more and more people.

In Kenosha the prosecutors implied that showing a symbol, an AR-15, was enough to justify people attacking a young man. He didn’t even have to say anything. Just being in that location with an AR-15 was causing people to feel unsafe justifying their attack on the young man.

This is the debate now thundering into view. The correct response to the Rushdie outrage is not just to plead for freedom of speech, but to ask what it really means and how it is to be sustained – and regulated. That is not done through silence.

We need people to stand up for free speech in all of its nasty and mean and evil forms. Otherwise we will be lost.

You can tune in a radio station today and listen to most types of music. When you listen you’ll hear “cutting edge lyrics”. Pushing the limits of what is acceptable. Wet Ass Pussy (WAP) won a People’s Choice Award and was nominated for MTV’s “Best Song of the Summer.”

From the 80’s there was “Dancing in the Sheets” (Did you hear that as “dancing in the streets? I did.)

Every wanna be and published rapper can use the “N-Word” as often as they want.

Shock radio is no longer shocking. Comedy where the comic drops F-bombs every other sentence are no longer shocking.

This generation didn’t invent risque or crude lyrics. There are traditional folk songs from centuries ago that are very explicit. If you listen.

Steeleye Span does it in a folk rock style. Maddy Priors voice is still wonderful.

Damh the Bard does an acoustic version.

The song was collected by Frank Warriner around 1930 but there are references going back to 1856.

This is an image of an original SAA hammer that has been reworked to have new sear surfaces. The geometry is exactly the same as on the original Colt SAA. This is the classic fixed firing pin. It is solid and does not move.

There are three notches that the trigger sear can rest in. The first is sometimes called “rebound”. It is the deepest of the three. You should not be able to pull the trigger in this position. When in this position, the firing pin is away from the primer. It can not go bang from a trigger pull nor from striking the back of the hammer. To cause the firearm to go bang you have to strike the hammer hard enough that it breaks parts of the trigger or sear surfaces.

This is the recommended hammer position if carrying with a round under the hammer.

If you pull the trigger and the hammer at the same time such as the hammer rotates back enough to clear the first notch but not enough to get to the second notch and let go of the hammer there should not be enough force to fire the gun. No bang.

The next notch is the half-cock notch. Again the trigger is locked in place. You can not pull the trigger without breaking something. Striking the hammer does not cause the gun to fire. Hitting the gun doesn’t cause the gun to fire as the first notch will catch the hammer before it strikes the primer.

The hammer in half-cock can not be made to fire the gun without breaking things. If the hammer is pulled back and the trigger is pulled and the hammer is released before it gets almost to the final sear the gun does not go bang. Again, you have to pull the trigger to allow the hammer to fall all the way and with enough force to ignite the primer.

The final notch is the actual sear. At this point the gun is fully cocked. Hitting the hammer or gun will not cause the gun to fire. The trigger spring (not shown) will push the trigger sear back against the hammer and the hammer will catch on the half-cock or rebound notches.

In order for the gun to fire you must pull the trigger.

The final possible position is with the hammer fully forward. In this situation striking the back of the hammer firmly enough will cause the gun to fire.

This is the type of hammer the gun Alec Baldwin used to kill the camera woman.

Here is a transfer bar system. This revolve has at least a full and half-cock notch. The big difference is that the front of the hammer is smooth. NO firing pin.

This is how many modern hammer fired firearms work. When the trigger is pulled a bar extends up to cover the back of the firing pin. The hammer is released as the sear is disengaged. The hammer falls and hits the transfer bar. The transfer bar strikes the back of the firing pin. The firing pin then impacts the primer igniting it.

When the trigger is released the transfer bar drops down. With the transfer bar down the hammer doesn’t touch the back of the firing pin. Hitting the back of the hammer just drives it into the frame. No bang.

This is a very safe arrangement. Even if the hammer was at full cock and the gun is dropped it will not fire as the transfer bar will be down.

It is “safe” to carry with a round under the hammer.

The issue with this style of SAA is it doesn’t look right to people in the know. That firing pin spur is very distinctive.

So which of these did Alec use? Neither.

He used a hybrid system. Instead of a fixed firing pin as shown in the top the firing pin is actually attached to a small spring and floats within the hammer.

When the hammer strikes with enough force the inertia against the firing pin causes it to continue forward to strike the primer hard enough to ignite.

This system has all the same safety features of the original SAA but with the added benefit that the firing pin does not touch the primer when the hammer is full down.

In addition this style requires the system to be more finely tuned. If the hammer spring is to weak compared to the spring holding the firing pin in place the gun doesn’t go bang. If the firing pin spring is to weak it is possible for the firing pin to touch a primer without the hammer falling from a full cock position.

It is also possible to fire this style with a strong enough strike to the back of the hammer in just the right angle.

What the FBI report said is that the gun was tested and the following was found.

The gun would not fire if the hammer was not all the way back.
The hammer would not drop unless the trigger was pulled.
The gun would not fire during normal drop testing. I.e. If the hammer was fully down, at half-cock or in the rebound notch it would not fire.

In order for this particular gun to go bang it would require that the hammer be fully cocked and the trigger pulled.

I have personally laid hands on all three of these types of SAA revolvers. With the revolvers I own I tested with a case with primer only in the chamber.

I believe that Alec killed that woman by pointing a loaded firearm at her, cocking the hammer, and pulling the trigger.

“Extreme Risk Protection Orders” ERPOs are designed to allow firearm rights to be removed from a person without the person having a chance to defend themselves in court. They can beg the courts to return their firearms and firearm rights after the fact, but a right delayed is a right denied.

The American Justice System is suppose to allow the accused to have competent representation, a chance to face their accusers, to know what they are accused of and to be judged by a jury of their peers. Red Flag laws turn that on its head.

For competent representation there must be an ability to have a lawyer. As the most recent gun legislation passed by the federal government says, you have the right to legal representation and the state can offer it to you, but the state doesn’t have to. You have to pay for that representation.

Due process is suppose to be protected by the a judge that signs off on the order. No judge is going to deny an request for an ERPO. If the judge gets it wrong and you are not a threat you are denied your rights for a time. Nothing bad happens to the judge. If the judge denies the ERPO and something happens to the person requesting the ERPO then the judge is going to be blamed. Humans are human and are going to act in their own self interests most of the time.

It costs the judge nothing to sign an ERPO thus they will.

If you want to hear a horror story, go visit Divemedic’s Blog regarding how he was falsely accused and had to deal with being a prohibited person for 3 weeks because of a lying ex. My story started with my estranged wife claiming she felt threatened because we were talking loudly and I took a couple of steps back away from her and put my hands in my pockets. Since she knew I carried a pocket knife she was afraid.

My case ended up in court and if I had taken the advise of council today I would be a prohibited person. I didn’t own firearms at that particular time.

Most ERPOs are granted ex-parte. The accuser is in the room telling their tail of horrors and you are just going about your business. You are not there, your lawyer isn’t there. There is nobody to stand up for your rights.

As they say, a good prosecutor can get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich. It is much easier to get a judge to sign off on an ERPO.

You find out when the cops show up on your doorstep to server you with the ERPO and take your guns. More than one such raid has happened at O dark thirty. Just what a person in distress needs, to be waken from a sound sleep with load banging noises as people try to break into their home.

Red Flag laws, ERPOs are all about future crime. The idea is that by looking for indicators the people in power can decide who is going to commit a crime. Once they know that a crime is going to be committed, they can stop that crime by removing firearms from a person before the crime is committed.

That way you get stories of a man that bludgeoned a woman to death and then drove a car into a crowd killing one more person and injuring 17. Man charged with 2 counts of homicide after driving car into fundraiser, allegedly killing mom He didn’t use a gun so I guess this isn’t that big of a deal.

We all know the line “The suspect was known to law enforcement.” In to many of these cases if law enforcement had done the right thing the animal would have been a prohibited person just by being committed or other criminal record. Unfortunately, to many of these animals are given a second and third and fiftieth chance before they commit their evil final act.

The people that do get caught up in ERPOs are often just run of the mill people who pissed somebody off. With the legal system more than willing to punish gun owners it is easy. If the person was suicidal the removal of firearms isn’t going to stop them. If they are intent on doing evil, they will find a way.

After some asshole killed a bunch of people in Buffalo New York, Governor Hochul signed an executive order requiring the state police to use ERPOs more aggressively, to expand their use of ERPOs.

Surprising nobody the number of ERPOs filed in the last three months exceeds the total filed for 2021.

Numbers I would like to see:

1. How many ERPO applications were turned down?
2. How many ERPOs were rescinded when the accused was seen by the judge?
3. How many people were negatively affected by an ERPO?

The left is never interested in the consequences of their actions, all that matters to them is that they had good intentions.
— NYS sees major increase in use of protection orders filed under state Red Flag Law