Category: Books

Review: ‘Gun Control Myths’ by John R. Lott, Jr, PhD

Doctor of Economics John Lott, Jr. is the expert on gun research because he’s done most of it. His Crime Prevention Research Center is the central repository of answers to all questions about the wrongness of gun control and how in truth guns save lives.  More Guns, Less Crime (his classic introduction) and his previous book The War on Guns are the perfect foundations for Gun Control Myths—together these form a compendium that addresses most of the fraudulent claims that have been made about how guns surely (but don’t) cause “gun violence”.

I know Dr. Lott, and believe me, he’s no Dan Quayle. He’s the real thing—an ultra-conscientious researcher who makes all his data public, willingly considers criticism, and addresses newly published research by others as well as conducting his own projects to add to our knowledge base. This behavior is exactly opposite to that of nearly all other gun-related researchers, who often for not-so-good reason obscure their data, use skewed analyses, and achieve their preferred results.

In Gun Control Myths he doesn’t attempt to cover every misleading idea about guns, but has chosen to address the biggest issues of today. He begins by correcting the errors of several of the seemingly comprehensive summaries in circulation about the dangers of gun ownership. He moves on to thorough discussions about mass shootings, which are so preoccupying although very rare and more often than the media reports, ended by good guys with guns.

There has been too much manipulative politicization for far too long about guns used badly by criminals and psychopaths. In addition to correcting media misreporting, Lott points out the FBI’s “political biases [and] corruption” beginning with the Obama administration that have not been fully rooted out. This reflects worry about many levels of government picking winners and users in how they interpret laws that blatantly infringe on citizens’ “right to keep and bear arms”.

Lott is admirable in accepting no organizational funding, which leaves the non-profit CRPC running on a shoestring compared to Bloomberg and blue state millions pouring into generating anti-gun studies every year. Thankfully, the excellence of CRPC’s work continues to win on quality if not quantity.

Do you value graphs and tables? There are scores and scores, from both sides of the “debate” as he shows there’s really none. How about footnotes? There are hundreds. Appendices? Six, over 17 pages and online. John Lott leaves no room for misunderstanding at any level of inquiry.

It would be nice to refer to an index, which is absent. However, that’s a minimal issue because the chapters are clearly focused on particular topics, which makes it easy to find a specific item or reference again.

There’s no question that, as Lott concludes, “the reality is that an armed citizenry is as necessary as it’s ever been.” And given the threats lined up against our staying rightfully armed, we must arm ourselves with the facts to oppose the false “truthiness” of the anti-gun movement.

John Lott again gives us the ammunition we need.

Robert B Young, MD

— DRGO Editor Robert B. Young, MD is a psychiatrist practicing in Pittsford, NY, an associate clinical professor at the University of Rochester School of Medicine, and a Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association.

Firearms Law and the Second Amendment: Regulation, Rights, and Policy

This casebook is the first and only traditional law school casebook to cover the subject. It provides a comprehensive treatment of cases and materials before and after the U.S. Supreme Court s landmark cases in District of Columbia v. Heller (2008) and McDonald v. Chicago (2010), which affirmed the constitutional right to private firearm possession and use, and made the right enforceable against the states. From days of Anglo-Saxon King Alfred s militia in the eighth century through the latest cases on electric stun guns and 3-D printed firearms, this casebook covers all aspects of firearms law, policy, and regulation. Rather than looking at arms laws in isolation, the book pays careful attention to changing contexts in race, class, religion, technology, and politics. It is ideally suited to law school courses on firearms law, the Second Amendment, criminal law, jurisprudence and legal history.

Key Benefits:

  • Comprehensive coverage of all aspects of firearms law, from early English origins to present-day debates.
  • Ideally suited for a dedicated law school course in firearms law and the Second Amendment.
  • Supplemental materials on the website will provide a continuing research resource, tracking the most current developments in firearms law, regulation, and policy.
  • Five online chapters on firearms and status, the philosophy of citizen arms bearing, international law, comparative law, and an in-depth explanation of firearm and ammunition functionality.

Gun Control Myths: How politicians, the media, and botched “studies” have twisted the facts on gun control

Lott blows away one false myth about gun ownership after another.
As Andrew Pollack’s Foreward notes; “Learn the actual facts that debunk them.” From myths about mass public shootings to suicides to gun ownership rates and crime to gun free zones, Lott addresses the claims you frequently hear in the media and explains what is wrong with those claims.
“John Lott has been giving us the facts about guns for decades. Finally clear to all that one party in America has an anti-Second Amendment platform and wants to disarm you. Now you need to arm yourself with the Truth.

“Jim Rasenberger’s biography of Samuel Colt, ‘Revolver,’ has lots of interesting details about the colorful inventor of the six-shooter but unfairly faults Colt for sins against present-day leftist orthodoxy.  But Rasenberger’s greatest weakness is to downplay the great consequence of Colt’s invention. It made men equal. Rasenberger becomes authorially apoplectic at times that revolvers were used against American Indians and Mexicans, for example—as if only Americans of European descent ever pulled a trigger.” –Tony Daniel

Revolver : Sam Colt and the Six-Shooter That Changed America

Revolver|Jim Rasenberger

A sweeping, definitive biography of Samuel Colt–the inventor of the legendary Colt revolver–which changed the US forever, triggering the industrial revolution and the settlement of the American West.
Patented in 1836, the Colt pistol with its revolving cylinder was the first practical firearm that could shoot more than one bullet without reloading. For many reasons, Colt’s gun had a profound effect on American history. Its most immediate impact was on the expansionism of the American west, where white emigrants and US soldiers came to depend on it, and where Native Americans came to dread it. The six-shooter became the iconic weapon of gun-slingers, outlaws, and cowboys–some willing to pay $500 out west for a gun that sold for $25 back east.

In making the revolver, Colt also changed American manufacturing–his factory revolutionized industry in the United States. Ultimately, Colt and his gun-making brought together the two most significant forces of change before the Civil War–the industrial revolution in the east, Manifest Destiny in the west.

 

Steven Fjestad passed away last year, so this is the first edition not published by him since 1981.

Forty-First Edition Blue Book Of Gun Values 

With nearly 2 million copies in circulation worldwide, the Blue Book of Gun Values one of the most relied-upon resources in the firearms industry;has announced the release of its 41st Edition, dedicated in memoriam to the late publisher Steven Peter “S.P.” Fjestad. Spanning over 2,500 pages, the 41st Edition contains upwards of 1,700 trademarks with brief histories, approximately 23,000 descriptions of firearm models from across the globe including the new makes and models for 2020 and 500,000-plus up-to-date values for modern firearms and major trademark antiques. Additionally, the latest edition’s expanded serialization charts allow more years of manufacture to be determined on individual firearm makes and models. A feature of the book that collectors in particular will find helpful is its 80-page Photo Percentage Grading System (PPGS) to assist in determining the condition of a firearm, with guidelines available for pistols, revolvers, rifles and shotguns.

From the book:
“As the bird shuddered down, the wall of faces lining the perimeter were hidden behind SLRs, lighting, and shoulder-mounted video cameras – journalists here to generate the sugar high of fear that was now as much a part of the American diet as hot dogs, apple pie, and gluten-free muffins.”

To generate the sugar high of fear.
That’s what we see today, isn’t it? Whether they’re pontificating about the bug or about guns?

Under Pressure: A Lucas Page Novel

A series of deadly explosions rock the city of New York and with too many victims and no known motive, the F.B.I. turns once again to Dr. Lucas Page in Robert Pobi’s Under Pressure.

On a beautiful October evening, New York City’s iconic Guggenheim Museum is closed for a tech company’s private gala. Until an explosion rocks the night, instantly killing 702 people, including every single attendee—yet the damage to the building itself was minimal.

An explosion of that precision was no accident and, in response, the FBI mobilizes its entire team — but the sheer number of victims strains their resources. Were all 702 victims in the wrong place at the wrong time, or was there only one target and 701 unlucky bystanders? That many victim files is a staggering amount of data to sort through and Brett Kehoe, Special Agent in Charge of Manhattan, decides that he can’t do this without more computational power.

Dr. Lucas Page, astrophysicist, university professor, and former FBI agent, is uniquely gifted for the task at hand—he can visualize a crime scene as if he was a bystander and can break down any set of data at a glance. Even though Page wants nothing to do with the FBI, with his city under attack and his family at risk, he steps in to find a killer in a haystack before they strike again.

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
–Santanyana
And from the current state of education, it’s a wonder our children & young adults might even be able to appreciate history.

The Socialist Temptation

IT’S BACK!

Just thirty years ago, socialism seemed utterly discredited.

An economic, moral, and political failure, socialism had rightly been thrown on the ash heap of history after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Unfortunately, bad ideas never truly go away—and socialism has come back with a vengeance.

A generation of young people who don’t remember the misery that socialism inflicted on Russia and Eastern Europe is embracing it all over again. Oblivious to the unexampled prosperity capitalism has showered upon them, they are demanding utopia.

In his provocative new book, The Socialist Temptation, Iain Murray of the Competitive Enterprise Institute explains:

  • Why the socialist temptation is suddenly so powerful among young people
  • That even when socialism doesn’t usher in a bloody tyranny (as, for example, in the Soviet Union, China, and Venezuela), it still makes everyone poor and miserable
  • Why under the relatively benign democractic socialism of Murray’s youth in pre-Thatcher Britain, he had to do his homework by candlelight
  • That the Scandinavian economies are not really socialist at all
  • The inconsistencies in socialist thought that prevent it from ever working in practice
  • How we can show young people the sorry truth about socialism and turn the tide of history against this destructive pipe dream

Sprightly, convincing, and original, The Socialist Temptation is a powerful warning that the resurgence of socialism could rob us of our freedom and prosperity.

Halbrook’s Book On 2A Origins Updated, Reissued

Do Americans have a constitutional right to bear arms? Or is this power vested solely in government? Recent years have seen a sea change in scholarship on the Second Amendment. Beginning in the 1960s, a view emerged that individuals had a “right” to bear arms only in militia service—a limited, “collective” right. But in the late 1980s Dr. Stephen Halbrook and a handful of other scholars began producing an altogether persuasive analysis that changed thinking on the matter, so that today, even in canonical textbooks, bearing arms is acknowledged as an individual right.

Stephen Halbrook’s The Founders’ Second Amendment is the first book-length account of the origins of the Second Amendment, based on the Founders’ own statements as found in newspapers, correspondence, debates, and resolutions. Dr. Halbrook investigates the period from 1768 to 1826, from the last years of British rule and the American Revolution through to the adoption of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, and the passing of the Founders’ generation. His book offers the most comprehensive analysis of the arguments behind the drafting and adoption of the Second Amendment, and the intentions of the men who created it.

With the recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling in District of Columbia vs. Heller upholding the Second Amendment as protecting an individual right to bear arms, The Founders’ Second Amendment could scarcely be more timely as the authoritative book on the subject.

Treat Your Own Spinal Stenosis

Simply put, spinal stenosis is arthritis of the back, and Treat Your Own Spinal Stenosis will show you how to get rid of lower back and leg pain that are caused by the various aging changes that take place in everyone’s low back over time. Anyone with a herniated disc, bone spurs, degenerative discs, scoliosis, or unstable vertebrae can greatly benefit from the targeted exercises in this book, as these spinal problems are often involved in the process of spinal stenosis.

Gun Control Myths: How politicians, the media, and botched “studies” have twisted the facts on gun control

Lott blows away one false myth about gun ownership after another. As Andrew Pollack’s Foreward notes; “Learn the actual facts that debunk them.” From myths about mass public shootings to suicides to gun ownership rates and crime to gun free zones, Lott addresses the claims you frequently hear in the media and explains what is wrong with those claims.

“John Lott has been giving us the facts about guns for decades. Finally clear to all that one party in America has an anti-Second Amendment platform and wants to disarm you. Now you need to arm yourself with the Truth. Buy and read Gun Control Myths today. Before it’s too late.”

Sebastian Gorka Ph.D.,host of AMERICAN First, former Strategist to President Trump

 

“John Lott shows that the media and many politicians are biased against guns. For example, many stories are written in the media about shooters, but very few about defensive uses of guns. Similarly, he shows that some gun control policies are actually counterproductive.

Shooters seek out gun-free zones. If we banned “assault” weapons, shooters might shift to larger hunting guns. The book is copiously footnoted. It is full of statistical and graphical analysis, so that his points are easily grasped and persuasive. Anyone who advocates gun control and does not seriously consider John’s work is negligent.

Any journalist who does not at least consider John’s work is committing journalistic malpractice.”

Paul H. Rubin, Dobbs Professor of Economics Emeritus, Emory University

 

“We have John Lott to thank for once again providing factual and empirical based research to counter the anti gun movement’s well funded and organized campaign based on nothing more than slogans, myths and propaganda designed to demonize supporters of our cherished Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms.”

David Clarke Sheriff(RET) Milwaukee County

 

“John Lott is the go-to expert when it comes to protecting the second amendment. Without the second amendment Americans could be stripped of our right to arm ourselves against aggressors. Arm yourselves with knowledge by reading “Gun Control Myths” and join me in protecting the Second Amendment.”

Eric Bolling Host “AMERICA This Week” Sinclair Broadcast

So today SCOTUS expanded homosexual rights, while rejecting a whole series of Second Amendment appeals.
This is consistent with the analysis in The Judiciary’s Class War.

The terms “Front-Row Kids” and “Back-Row Kids,” coined by the photographer Chris Arnade, describe the divide between the educated upper middle class, who are staying ahead in today’s economy, and the less educated working class, who are doing poorly. The differences in education―and the values associated with elite schooling―have produced a divide in America that is on a par with that of race.

The judiciary, requiring a postgraduate degree, is the one branch of government that is reserved for the Front-Row Kids. Correspondingly, since the Warren era, the Supreme Court has basically served as an engine for vindicating Front-Row preferences, from allowing birth control and abortion, to marginalizing religion in the public space, to legislative apportionment and libel law, and beyond. Professor Glenn Reynolds describes this problem in detail and offers some suggestions for making things better.

I imagine the angst in their minds must be coming intolerable to them

Atheists are warning that Christianity may be necessary for the survival of Western civilization

Historian Tom Holland is known primarily as a storyteller of the ancient world. Thus, his newest book Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World, came as something of a surprise for several reasons. First, Tom Holland is not a Christian. Second, Holland’s book is one of the most ambitious historical defenses of Christianity in a very long time.

While studying the ancient world, Holland writes, he realized something. Simply, the ancients were cruel, and their values utterly foreign to him. The Spartans routinely murdered “imperfect” children. The bodies of slaves were treated like outlets for the physical pleasure of those with power. Infanticide was common. The poor and the weak had no rights.

From There to Here …

How did we get from there to here? It was Christianity, Holland writes. Christianity revolutionized sex and marriage, demanding that men control themselves and prohibiting all forms of rape. Christianity confined sexuality within monogamy. (It is ironic, Holland notes, that these are now the very standards for which Christianity is derided.) Christianity elevated women. In short, Christianity utterly transformed the world.

In fact, Holland points out that without Christianity, the Western world would not exist. Even the claims of the social justice warriors who despise the faith of their ancestors rest on a foundation of Judeo-Christian values. Those who make arguments based on love, tolerance, and compassion are borrowing fundamentally Christian arguments. If the West had not become Christian, Holland writes, “no one would have gotten woke.”

Attracting Criticism

Holland’s book-length defense of the belief system the elites love to despise has unsurprisingly attracted some criticism. He faced off with militant atheist and prominent philosopher A.C. Grayling on the question “Did Christianity give us our human values?” Grayling struggled to rebut Holland, sounding more petty than philosophical. Holland, on the other hand, became positively passionate in his defense of Christianity. If Western civilization is the fishbowl, he stated, then the water is Christianity.

While many — including Holland — cannot quite bring themselves to believe Christianity is true, they are starting to believe that Christianity might be necessary.

In fact, the very critiques of those who condemn Christianity for various perceived injustices are rooted in Christian precepts.

A Trend Identified — Defense of Christianity

Holland’s passionate defense of Christianity is fascinating because it appears to be part of a trend. As the West becomes definitively post-Christian, many secularists are suddenly realizing that Christianity may have been more valuable than they thought. While many — including Holland — cannot quite bring themselves to believe Christianity is true, they are starting to believe that Christianity might be necessary.

Douglas Murray, the conservative author and columnist, is also an atheist. In recent years, however, he has started to warn that the decline of Christianity is a dangerous thing. Society now faces three options. First, Murray says, is to reject the idea that all human life is precious. “Another is to work furiously to nail down an atheist version of the sanctity of the individual.” And if that doesn’t work? “Then there is only one other place to go. Which is back to faith, whether we like it or not.”

Murray now occasionally refers to himself as a “Christian atheist.” Speaking with Esther O’Reilly on the Unbelievable podcast, Murray lauded the “revolutionary moral insights” of Christianity. He told her that while visiting the Sea of Galilee, he couldn’t shake the feeling that “something happened here.” And he admitted that as atheists consider morality, “the more we may have to accept that … the sanctity of human life is a Judeo-Christian notion which might very easily not survive [the disappearance of] Judeo-Christian civilization.”

Speaking on The Darren Grimes Show last month, he was even blunter. “There seems to be little point to me in a life spent talking about Labour Party politics rather than God.”

King Agrippa Christians

The phenomenon of atheists praising Christianity appears to be growing. Gone are the days when Christopher Hitchens (a good friend of Murray’s) and his fellow secularists raged against the “poison” of religion. Even Richard Dawkins has now admitted that Christianity might be preferable to the alternatives. He once called for Christianity to be destroyed. Now he begrudgingly says it has good effects on society.

There is also Jordan Peterson. The famous psychologist refuses to say whether he believes in God. Or at least, he refuses to say what he means by God, or Christ or faith. Peterson is attempting to synthesize Scripture with Jung and Darwin, and the result is predictably tortured. But Peterson knows that without Christianity, unspeakable cruelty is inevitable. He speaks like a secular Calvinist. He believes in human depravity, but has not yet worked out redemption.

Charles Murray, the American social scientist and sociologist, is an agnostic. Yet, he told me in an interview that he believes the American republic will not survive without a resurgence of Christianity. “You cannot have a free society with a constitution” like the American one “unless you are trying to govern a religious people,” he observed.

The late Sir Roger Scruton, too, headed back to church. He struggled with many of Christianity’s truth claims. But still, he came to believe that Christianity was necessary. While nursing doubts, he played the organ in his local Anglican church during Sunday services. Perhaps practice, he once said, would help him along. He wasn’t sure he could believe it all. But he wanted to.

These men are King Agrippa Christians. As King Agrippa told the Apostle Paul: “Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian.” They almost believe it. They believe Christianity is good. Some believe it is necessary. As Murray put it, he “believes in belief.” But they cannot (yet) bring themselves to believe that it is literally true — that Jesus Christ actually rose from the dead.

Listen to the Warnings of the Atheists — Christianity is Necessary

These strange struggles also deliver a warning to the West. Without Christianity, we are heading into a thick and impenetrable darkness. Christianity gave us human rights. It gave us protection for the weak. Compassion rooted in commands to love. Forgiveness for enemies. It revolutionized the world. We are now in the process of undoing that revolution. In fact, we are replacing it with the Sexual Revolution.

We should look at what we are destroying before we carry on. We should ask why fences were built before tearing them down. We should listen to the atheists nervously telling us that Christianity is necessary. And we should fight to ensure that our post-Christian culture is again a pre-Christian one.

 

Backyard Ballistics: Build Potato Cannons, Paper Match Rockets, Cincinnati Fire Kites, Tennis Ball Mortars, and More Dynamite Devices.

This bestselling DIY handbook now features new and expanded projects, enabling ordinary folks to construct 16 awesome ballistic devices in their garage or basement workshops using inexpensive household or hardware store materials and this step-by-step guide.

Clear instructions, diagrams, and photographs show how to build projects ranging from the simple match-powered rocket to the more complex tabletop catapult and the offbeat Cincinnati fire kite. The classic potato cannon has a new evil twin-the piezo-electric spud gun-and the electromagnetic pipe gun has joined the company of such favorites as the tennis ball mortar.

With a strong emphasis on safety, the book also gives tips on troubleshooting, explains the physics behind the projects, and profiles scientists and extraordinary experimenters such as Alfred Nobel, Robert Goddard, and Isaac Newton. This book will be indispensable for the legions of backyard toy-rocket launchers and fireworks fanatics who wish every day was the fourth of July.

 

OLD SCHOOL GUNOLOGY: Tales of Trigger Work From Past Days

These are a compilation of hunting and shooting stories that I wrote over the last 30 years or so. These are actual experiences that I or my friends had in various locations over the years. There is no fiction herein, though details may be a bit skewed due to lapses in memory. Some of the data is long out-dated and should not be relied upon, as this is only a re-telling of adventures long ago. All loading data should be gotten from modern reliable sources.

AN ICONOCLAST’S READER

We all read the Scriptures with our own particular doctrinal glasses on. We interpret what we read, consciously or sub-consciously, through those ideas we believe. Challenges to our beliefs are sometimes frightening, but are not bad, especially if they drive us to the Lord and help us see more clearly.

By the numbers: How coronavirus compares with the flu, opioid overdoses

Coronavirus comparison to the flu

Amid ever-changing models, it’s hard to put a finger on just how dangerous the coronavirus is.

We know at this point that COVID-19 — the disease caused by the coronavirus — has led to more than 85,356 illnesses and more than 1,246 deaths in U.S.

For comparison, the flu has caused an estimated 38 million illnesses, 30,000 hospitalizations and 23,000 deaths this season, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention…………

Coronavirus is still a moving target for researchers because it is new.  In comparison, scientists have studied seasonal flu for decades and opioid overdoses for years.

The CDC says certain people have a higher risk for severe illness from coronavirus. These people include those 65 and older, those who live in a care facility, patients with chronic lung disease, people with moderate to severe asthma, those with heart diseases or complications, immunocompromised people, and those with severe obesity (body mass index equal to or greater than 40).

Also at higher risk are patients with underlying medical conditions such as diabetes, renal failure, or liver disease, according to the CDC.

More comparisons will be available after the coronavirus pandemic ends, and can more accurately be analyzed.

Just in case you forgot:
This crap-for-brains anti-civil right/anti-self defense drivel is what is being taught at American Universities and touted to the citizenry by the propaganda organs of Michael Bloombutt AKA ‘The Trace’ et al’
The ending book review is point on.

Trust in Guns During Crises Is a Triumph of Marketing

Caroline Light is a Harvard professor whose field of study includes “America’s love affair with armed self-defense,” as she put it in the subtitle of her latest book. Reading the extensive reports this week of a surge in gun buying around the country, she was not surprised.

Stand Your Ground: A History of America’s Love Affair with Lethal Self-Defense

Caroline Light is director of undergraduate studies in the Program in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Harvard University. She is the author of That Pride of Race and Character: The Roots of Jewish Benevolence in the Jim Crow South.

After a young, white gunman killed twenty-six people at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, in December 2012, conservative legislators lamented that the tragedy could have been avoided if the schoolteachers had been armed and the classrooms equipped with guns. Similar claims were repeated in the aftermath of other recent shootings—after nine were killed in a church in Charleston, South Carolina, and in the aftermath of the massacre in the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida. Despite inevitable questions about gun control, there is a sharp increase in firearm sales in the wake of every mass shooting.

Yet, this kind of DIY-security activism predates the contemporary gun rights movement—and even the stand-your-ground self-defense laws adopted in thirty-three states, or the thirteen million civilians currently licensed to carry concealed firearms. As scholar Caroline Light proves, support for “good guys with guns” relies on the entrenched belief that certain “bad guys with guns” threaten us all.

To be fair, this is not strictly the usual anti-gun polemic. The eternal villains here are not guns, conservatives, or the NRA, but a much bigger target: The Patriarchy itself, an apparently toxic brew of white men, American history, and the very concept of self-defense.

Any reader who habitually checks under the bed to see that there are no men hiding there … or racists … or anything else nasty, like white people … or printed copies of the Bill of Rights … or legal concepts such as the right to self-defense, or the presumption of innocence … will feel right at home with this book. And anyone who peppers conversations with words like “normative” or “cis-“anything will just love it. But anyone else, not so much.

Consider a few samples. These are entirely typical; note that throughout 200-plus pages, the author puts a great deal of weight on imaginary crimes, crimes which are not even argued to be real, but are just assumed to be so.

“The Heller decision conveniently ignored the race and gender exclusions of the amendment’s original historical moment, where a ‘law-abiding citizen’ was a white, property-owning man, who openly carried a rifle not only to defend his ‘hearth and home,’ but also to assert his dominance over enslaved labor and his access to land seized from Native Americans.” (Page 7)

“In spite of widespread efforts by DIY-security proponents to recruit women, nonwhites, and LGBT people to the cause of armed citizenship, the adjudication of lethal self-defense continues to privilege white hetero/cis-masculinity.” (Page 15)

“That contemporary celebrations of armed citizenship can *appear* to be race- and gender-inclusive attests to the power of collective amnesia.” (Page 16)

Etc cetera, et cetera. One more, from a bit further along … more of the same;

“Now, more than ever, a man’s castle – the sanctuary of white, property-owning heteromasculinity – seems under siege by forces within as well as beyond the nation’s boundaries.” (Page 155)

The modern so-called “stand your ground” laws do indeed have a history, but if that legal history is anywhere in this book, my eyes must have glazed over before I reached it. But I don’t think I missed much of substance, because I have no great confidence that the author has any idea what the SYG laws are.

I base that statement on the author’s comments on the Zimmerman/Martin case; her apparent belief that the case had anything at all to do with Florida’s SYG law shows the grossest misunderstanding of both the trial and the relevant law.

SYG was not cited by either prosecution or defense at any point in the Zimmerman trial, although the press was obsessive in its pretense that SYG was somehow involved. (But one would expect a researcher to be able to distinguish between a hysterical Press and a slightly less hysterical Court.)

The author glosses over the actual evidence presented at trial with an airy “accounts are mixed as to what happened next”; but to anyone who followed the televised proceedings, the salient facts are not in dispute. And they have nothing at all to do with “Stand Your Ground”.

This book really isn’t about America or its current gun control laws. It seems to be more about feminist intersectional theory. And whether feminist intersectional readers would find anything of interest here, I’m not qualified to say.

The Art and Science of Stick Fighting: Complete Instructional Guide

‘Sticks and stones may break my bones……..’
And ‘Cane-Fu’ is pretty good too:

“Simplicity is the shortest distance between two points.” ― Bruce Lee, The Tao of Jeet Kune Do

The best of both Eastern and Western stick fighting techniques

The Art and Science of Stick Fighting is a unique, non-style specific, approach to fighting with the short stick. Its curriculum is streamlined and divided into nine logical stages of training that allow the reader to quickly and methodically learn and develop the skills needed for fighting with the stick. Whether you are just starting out, or have been practicing stick fighting for years, there is something for everyone in this book. Also included are systematic workouts and descriptions of how to make and use specific training equipment as you learn and master The Art and Science of Stick Fighting.

The Art and Science of Stick Fighting features
Nine levels of instruction, progressing from easy to expert
Over 700 photos with motion arrows
A “nondenominational” approach to the stick, utilizing the best of Eastern and Western arts
A comprehensive, methodical approach to building stick fighting skills
This book stands apart from other stick fighting training manuals because it emphasizes the dynamics of combat. Many other books focus on forms and twirling. The author draws on thirty years of martial experience, presenting the best of both Eastern and Western traditions.

The Art and Science of Stick Fighting begins with the basics, upon which everything else relies.

A stable stance
Basic footwork
An effective guard
From there you learn different types of strikes and how to practice them in helpful, easy-to-learn patterns. The aim is to grow so comfortable wielding a stick that it is as though the stick has become an extension of your body.
Once the basics are in place, you learn the strategies and tactics of fighting with the stick at long, middle, and close range. By controlling the distance, you control the fight!

Learn important guidelines for sparring, from light contact up to full-contact training.
Learn how to construct your own padded weapons.
Learn effective fighting tips that will rev up your game.
Also included are chapters on advanced techniques; combating short ranged weapons such as a knife to long range weapons like the staff. Even detailed techniques to use when your opponent is armed but you are not!

Whether you already study the stick or are just starting out, if you want to learn how to get an edge , The Art and Science of Stick Fighting is for you!

Both new from Jim.

The Joy Of Helplessness

Difficult situations come to everyone. We each handle them in different ways. In THE JOY OF HELPLESSNESS the author points out that many times these difficulties are a door to something better. Not everything that we experience has to end with us frustrated, angry or puzzled. Perhaps there is some joy hidden in what you are going through? It would not be a bad thing to discover it.

HOW DO I HANDLE THIS?

We all have difficulties that we deal with in life, some harder than others. Often we do not know what to do in the midst of these dark times. While this little book is not The Answer, hopefully it will point the way to help us come through those difficult places.

Give Me Liberty: A History of America’s Exceptional Idea

Nationalism is inevitable: It supplies feelings of belonging, identity, and recognition. It binds us to our neighbors and tells us who we are. But increasingly — from the United States to India, from Russia to Burma — nationalism is being invoked for unworthy ends: to disdain minorities or to support despots. As a result, nationalism has become to many a dirty word.
In Give Me Liberty, award-winning historian and biographer Richard Brookhiser offers up a truer and more inspiring story of American nationalism as it has evolved over four hundred years. He examines America’s history through thirteen documents that made the United States a new country in a new world: a free country. We are what we are because of them; we stay true to what we are by staying true to them.
Americans have always sought liberty, asked for it, fought for it; every victory has been the fulfillment of old hopes and promises. This is our nationalism, and we should be proud of it.

 

The Case for Nationalism: How It Made Us Powerful, United, and Free

It is one of our most honored clichés that America is an idea and not a nation. This is false. America is indisputably a nation, and one that desperately needs to protect its interests, its borders, and its identity.

The Brexit vote and the election of Donald Trump swept nationalism to the forefront of the political debate. This is a good thing. Nationalism is usually assumed to be a dirty word, but it is a foundation of democratic self-government and of international peace.

National Review editor Rich Lowry refutes critics on left and the right, reclaiming the term “nationalism” from those who equate it with racism, militarism and fascism. He explains how nationalism is an American tradition, a thread that runs through such diverse leaders as Alexander Hamilton, Teddy Roosevelt, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Ronald Reagan.

In The Case for Nationalism, Lowry explains how nationalism was central to the American Project. It fueled the American Revolution and the ratification of the Constitution. It preserved the country during the Civil War. It led to the expansion of the American nation’s territory and power, and eventually to our invaluable contribution to creating an international system of self-governing nations.

It’s time to recover a healthy American nationalism, and especially a cultural nationalism that insists on the assimilation of immigrants and that protects our history, civic rituals and traditions, which are under constant threat. At a time in which our nation is plagued by self-doubt and self-criticism, The Case for Nationalism offers a path for America to regain its national self-confidence and achieve continued greatness.