Daniel Greenfield debunks well.

Gun control isn’t policy, it’s culture. And while the media often goes on about “gun culture”, there’s little thought given to “gun control culture” for the same reason that fish rarely film documentaries on what it’s like to have gills and swim underwater.

Gun control culture means paying men with guns between $50,000 to $85,000 a year in the hopes that they’ll show up in under 10 minutes and do something useful when you call 911.

That strategy didn’t work very well in Uvalde. It doesn’t work all that well most of the time.

Before Uvalde, in the recent Buffalo mass shooting, a 911 operator hung up on a store employee calling for help. The cops arrived in 5 minutes: in time to talk the shooter out of killing himself in front of the store so that taxpayers can pay for his trial and a 50-year prison term.

And that’s what a fantastic response time looks like. But by then, 10 people were dead. Read the rest of this entry »

Number 14:

Your favorite song is probably part of a private equity portfolio https://t.co/d1stbBEacO

— Mother Jones (@MotherJones) May 18, 2022

All those nasty, rebellious songs that defy authorities are now owned by hedge funds.

The Honest Broker (Ted Gioia) offers: 14 Warning Signs That You Are Living in a Society Without a Counterculture.

Hunter Biden asleep with crack pipe.

Tristan Justice points out

President Joe Biden is on a full-blown crusade to regulate or repeal the Second Amendment out of existence. While Democrats are often not honest about their intentions, this has always been their true agenda. Biden’s son, Hunter, who appeared to purchase a gun illegally in 2018, could be among those hardest hit.

On Thursday night, the president went on a nearly 20-minute tirade on the need to ban “assault weapons,” whatever that means. …

President Biden doesn’t have room to speak on gun control until his son faces, at minimum, a substantive criminal investigation into his answers on a background check when purchasing a firearm in 2018.

When asked by the Firearms Transaction Record (Form 4473) whether he is an “unlawful user of, or addicted to, marijuana or any depressant, stimulant, narcotic drug, or any other controlled substance,” Hunter Biden answered, “no.”

While it’s unclear whether Hunter was an active user at the time, it’s far from inconceivable following repeated rehab visits in 2003, 2010, and 2014 for treatment with highly addictive substances. In 2014, Hunter was discharged from the Navy for cocaine use, and according to the New Yorker, went on another cocaine binge in 2016.

RTWT

HT: Glenn Reynolds.

attributed to Marie-Denise Villers, Portrait of Marie Joséphine Charlotte du Val d’Ognes, 1801.

First attributed to Jacques-Louis David and then Constance Marie Charpentier, this portrait is now believed to be the work of Marie-Denise Villers (1774–1821), who may have exhibited the painting at the Parisian Salon of 1801.

HT: Public Domain Review via Vanderleun.

We have learned a lesson from the horrific tragedy in Uvalde:

Government will mandate that your children be vulnerable, hold you back at gunpoint while they are murdered, and then try to lie about it.

And then they'll tell you that it all happened because you own a rifle.

— Spike Cohen (@RealSpikeCohen) June 1, 2022

Law & Crime:

[A] three-judge panel of a state appellate court found that certain invertebrate animal species, including bees, are legally contained under the same umbrella definition as “fish” under the terms of the Golden State’s homegrown Endangered Species Act.

Four different bumblebee species are facing dire odds in the country’s most populous state. That danger mostly comes from the activities of huge agricultural interests. In 2019, the California Fish and Game Commission moved to protect those bees, the Crotch, Franklin’s, Western, and Suckley’s cuckoo, by designating them as endangered, threatened, and candidate species under three sections of the CESA.

Almond growers, citrus farmers, cotton ginners, and other agricultural groups sued. They argued that the CESA does not allow the Commission to designate any insects as endangered, threatened, or candidate species because insects are not included in the statute’s enumerated categories of wildlife entitled to such legal protections.

The Commission countered, saying that the definition of fish can and should encapsulate bees and other similarly situated invertebrates because, in part, it already does in practice. At least one species of shrimp, snail and crayfish are listed under the CESA. The listing of the Trinity bristle snail is particularly instructive, the Commission argued.

That’s because the snail, the commissioners note, does not even live in the water and was categorized as “threatened” in 1980. The way the snail got on the list was by being classified as a “fish.” Since the bristle snail is a terrestrial species, the Commission argues, “fish” cannot be limited to animals that inhabit a marine environment.

RTWT

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Read it and weep:

Almond Alliance of California et. al. v. fish and Game Commission et. al.

We conclude a liberal interpretation of the Act, supported by the legislative history and the express language in section 2067 that a terrestrial mollusk and invertebrate is a threatened species (express language we cannot ignore), is that fish defined in section 45, as a term of art, is not limited solely to aquatic species. Accordingly, a terrestrial invertebrate, like each of the four bumble bee species, may be listed as an endangered or threatened species under the Act. . . .

If we were to apply the noscitur a sociis canon to the term invertebrate in section 45 to limit and restrict the term to aquatic species, as petitioners suggest, we would have to apply that limitation to all items in the list. In other words, we would have to conclude the Commission may list only aquatic mollusks, crustaceans, and amphibians as well. Such a conclusion is directly at odds with the Legislature’s approval of the Commission’s listing of a terrestrial mollusk and invertebrate as a threatened species. Furthermore, limiting the term to aquatic would require a restrictive rather than liberal interpretation of the Act, which is also directly at odds with our duty to liberally construe the remedial statutes contained therein. We thus decline to apply the statutory interpretation canon here.

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Ilya Somin, writing at (T)Reason magazine, says: “The ruling is not as ridiculous as it sounds.”

Which explains, of course, just how driveway puddles get to be “Navigable Waterways,” and growing wheat to feed animals on your own farm (Wickard v. Filburn) can be “Interstate Commerce.”

Clearly you don’t really have to be a full-fledged liberal statist to become this intellectually addled. This kind of extreme casuistical thinking can apparently be transmitted to soi disant Libertarian professors by mere contagion resulting from their hanging around the sort of intellectual pestholes known as law schools.

My father (on the left, wearing jacket & tie, holding the large envelope), aged 26, was the oldest in this group of Marine Corps volunteers from Mahanoy City, Pennsylvania, September 1942, so he was put in charge.

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William G. Zincavage, Fall 1942, after graduating Marine Corps Boot Camp

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Military Police, North Carolina, Fall 1942
He was only 5′ 6″, but he was so tough that they made him an MP.

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Third Marine Division

I Marine Amphibious Corps

First Amphibious Corps, Third Marine Division, Special Troops:
Solomon Islands Consolidation (Guadalcanal), Winter-Spring 1943
New Georgia Group Operation (Vella LaVella, Rendova), Summer 1943
“The Special Troops drew the first blood.” — Third Divisional History.

“We never saw them but they were running away.” — William G. Zincavage

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III Marine Amphibious Corps

Third Amphibious Corps, Third Marine Division, Special Troops:
Marianas Operation (Guam), Summer 1944

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V Marine Amphibious Corps

Fifth Amphibious Corps, Third Marine Division, Special Troops:
Iwo Jima Operation, February-March 1945

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Navy Unit Commendation (Iwo Jima)
Good Conduct Medal
North American Campaign Medal
Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal with Four Bronze Stars

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While recovering from malaria after the Battle of Iwo Jima, he looked 70 years old.

But he was back to normal in December of 1945, when this photo was taken shortly before he received his discharge.

All of my grandparents’ sons and one daughter, now all departed, served.

Joseph Zincavage (1907-1998) Navy
(No wartime photograph available, but he’s sitting on a Henderson Motorcycle in this one.)

William Zincavage (1914-1997) Marine Corps

Edward Zincavage (1917-2002) Marine Corps

Eleanor Zincavage Cichetti (1922-2003) Marine Corps.