With the growing popularity of concealed carry licenses has also come a ballooning number of establishments that prohibit firearms upon their premises.

Employee and customer alike must obey these dictates. And–often angrily–they wonder why their ‘right to bear arms’ doesn’t extend to these places of business. The answer of course is that this is the essence of the right to own property. What good is owning something if you have no control over it? Much like the 1st amendment, you can criticize their position, but not their right to hold said position.

And just as entertainers and celebrities often pay a price for opening their mouths a bit too wide, these proprietors may pay a price for the positions they take. A guy on Kim du Toit’s forum shared a letter to the editor in American Handgunner with us that illustrate’s this point perfectly:

Thought this may be of interest to Handgunner readers. Today I received the following letter:

”Dear Mr. *****, Today, while in the bank, you were noticed wearing at your side a pistol. Unless you have some specific duty or reason to enter the bank with your pistol, we appreciate your leaving all firearms in your vehicle.
Thank you for your understanding and cooperation in this matter.

Sincerely John Parker
Vice President & Branch Manager
Troy Bank & Trust Company
Troy, AL 36081”

After receiving this letter, I immediately called the bank president and asked if he knew of the letter and agreed with it’s content. He assured me he did, saying there is not much crime in Troy and we don’t thin you need to be carrying a pistol. After a few words advising him of my position on the issue, and the fact Alabama has open carry, I proceeded to seek out local banks who would recognize my right to self protection and the exercising of my second amendment rights. Wachovia advised they would not permit any armed individuals in their bank. Colonial Bank never got back to me.
Regions Bank advised they would be happy to recognize my carry rights, my status as a retired LEO and would welcome my money. By close of business that day, I had closed several accounts at Troy Bank & Trust, with several more to go, and deposited over $480,000 in the Regions Bank. You just got to do what you feel is right. Oh, by the way, I’m also getting much better interest at the new bank.
Thought this would be of interest in so far as gun owners need to know where the gun friendly banks are.

Name withheld by request
Via email

This is pretty much a classic example of how things that are neither bought nor sold still have value. This man chose to make a statement about how important it is to him to be able to carry. And perhaps what he thought of a place of business whose idea of ’safety’ was to disarm the people who follow the rules, yet do little to make sure rule-breakers weren’t armed. Works for me, and maybe got the bank to think for a second or two. Certainly if a substantial portion of the 2nd amendment supporters in Troy followed suit anyway.

Not all second amendment supporters are classical liberals, but I certainly am. And the essence of our philosophy is that we should be free to act as we wish so long as we do not interfere with the freedom of others. Demanding that we have a ‘right’ to carry our firearms on someone else’s property is imposing our will upon them. But we can always make our displeasure known, as this gentleman did.

My first contribution at the Liberty Papers in months

The essence of the post has been seen on this blog a hundred times before. Intellectimpure will soon be complaining that I’m not saying anything new. Which is true.

But liberty papers now gets more readers than I do. So I thought I’d say it anyway lol.

anyway, quick snippet

In today’s political climate, Kennedy’s famous quote has been reversed. It is now not about what you can do for your country, but what your country can do for you. In this climate, freedom has been redefined as comfort. Into this environment you invite millions of people who through no fault of their own better qualify as ‘have-nots’ than ‘haves’. And as the ‘have nots’–together with the cultural elite–have shown themselves all to willing to do, they will vote from others’ pocketbooks. And they will vote for other egregious restrictions and legalized discrimination.

Like leftists, many libertarians seem to suffer from what I can only call perfectworlditis. The major difference being that while libertarians’ idea of what the perfect world is, probably is the platonic form of our own world. Whereas what leftists think the perfect world is doesn’t make sense at any level.

I have no illusions of how perfect the world is and more importantly I understand something called the Tragedy of the Commons. Which is one of the reasons I’m a hardcore conservationist (although I don’t think global warming has been proven, deforestation and other environmental destruction due to man certainly have). And why I support some kind of government regulation/funding in education. Unlike many of my fellow classical liberals and libertarians. But much like plenty of them.

It’s something I’ve seen time and time again with people looking for philosophical and logical consistency while failing to anchor themselves against real world concerns:

“I’m more internally consistent than you!”
“Not going to deny it. But as the surgeon said to the patient with gangrene, ‘would you rather die with two legs or live with one?’”
“Yeah, well, you’re right. But I’m still more internally consistent.”
“And I’m still breathing. Later”

Post on perfectworlditis tommorrow.

Amazingly enough within a couple of hours of writing yesterday’s post and heading to school, I was assaulted by yet another piece on the horrors of debt. This one in the OU student newspaper.

Apparently ’some students don’t realize future implications of frequent credit card use.’ Not going to deny that. But yet again I’m amazed by the tone of the article. If I were to write the article, it’d very much have a tone of “Quit screwing up you idiots!” Sovereign individuals over the age of majority are making bad choices. They need to stop making them.

Instead of course the article is fairly typical in its pleas for sympathy and understanding.

Moyer, a National Merit Scholarship finalist and letters major, applied for his first credit card at 18 with a credit card company set up on campus at UTD.

He did not understand the problems he was going to face.

OU gives full rides to national merit finalists. I think UTD does too. So unlike a good chunk of this country, this kid’s tuition and general living expenses were heavily subsidized. If a National Merit Finalist isn’t smart enough to understand how debt works, who is? And even more problematic, if people of above-average intellect can’t even be expected to manage their own finances who can?

“He didn’t know how he got into all of this debt and didn’t know how to get out,” she said. “He felt like a failure.”

He didn’t know how he got into all of this debt? He did it by ignoring the consequences of his actions.

Since Moyer’s death, his mother has become an advocate for groups working to change the way people get credit cards.

She has joined the advocacy group, Americans for Fairness in Lending (AFFIL). The group is pushing Congress for change.

“We are asking for credit cards to be based on how much you make and how much you owe,” she said. “I don’t understand how all of these companies can give credit cards to someone making $5.15 an hour.”

Mother loses son. Mother wants to blame someone for son’s death. Mother then seeks to change the law and restrict freedom to somehow honor her son’s death or find purpose in it. Nope, never seen that happen.

Here’s an excellent quote from a kid with a good head on his shoulders in the same article though:

Although he is stuck repaying every dollar of his loans, he said he doesn’t regret what he is doing with the money.

“It is definitely worth it,” McCroan said. “People take out 30 or 40 thousand dollar loans to buy a car. I’m getting an education with the money. In our society, education is expensive, but it is worth it.”

Course, McCroan does whine a bit about the cost of education, but then again so does everyone. I definitely bitch and moan about the 60,000 i’ve amassed for just two years of med school. But like McCroan I grin and bear it.

I know I’m beating a dead horse here but I really don’t like ‘consumer protection laws’. And I really don’t like the intimation that we’re too stupid to make decisions for ourselves. But more importantly if we are too stupid to be masters of our own lives, what business do we have telling others how to live? Democrat, Republican, and yes even Libertarian. All of us support the right to vote and some degree of social coercion through government and law. But along with the right to vote comes the responsibility to choose wisely. To pick the right leaders who will take us down the right path. And if we can’t be responsible for ourselves how can we possibly be responsible for a whole nation?

Headline News had a little spiel about how more people are cutting back on holiday spending and are worried about credit card debt than this time last year. They blame the usual culprit: cost of living. What they didn’t ask was what level people are living at.

What I’d like to see would be a longitudinal study of income vs. ownership rates of 20k+ cars, 1k+ TVs, size/expense of movie collections, number of times people eat out at sit-down restaurants, stuff like that. Because anecdotal evidence tells me that the actual cost of living hasn’t really increased: I pay the same for Old Navy jeans as I did back in high school, bean burritos are the same price, and the only grocery I’ve seen increase are those damnably addictive Clementine Oranges. And I know for a fact that medical residents live much more luxuriously these days than they did in the mid 1980s. Same for college students.

Inflation has occurred, I’m not denying it. When I was a 1st grader taco bell burritos were 59 cents. Now they’re 79! And 20oz sodas were .75 out of the vending machine back in junior high. But then again so have paychecks. I’ve only worked entry level jobs. And I’ve never been paid minimum wage. Still during these sporadic periods of employment I’ve seen a significant rise in pay uncorrelated with the degree of skill or effort the jobs involved. But have increases in wages kept pace with inflation? Apparently, yes.

There are certain costs that are outpacing inflation. But for the vast majority of people worried about credit card debt and cutting back on their spending I wouldn’t be surprised if the reason for this fiscal bind could be traced back to the fact that these people are choosing to spend more on frivolous expenses, or simply spending more than they have to on necessary purchases.

The undertone of the pseudo-factual hit pieces we’re bombarded by about ‘making ends meet’ is that it shouldn’t be this way, that people shouldn’t be in this position. It amuses me then that the people of the self-proclaimed ‘Party of Science’ consistently fail to even remark upon what is in all likelihood a prominent factor in the rising debt of our nation’s people.

For just about any other kind of health problem, we talk about how lifestyle (diet, exercise, etc.) plays a huge role in the etiology of disease. Lifestyle changes can prevent disease, they can slow its progression, and in some cases even reverse it, depending on what we’re talking about.

Diabetes, cancer, heart disease…all are illnesses that affect a substantial portion of the population. And in each of these cases, a significant amount of time, effort, and money is allocated toward learning how to reduce the risks of developing such debilitating conditions. Furthermore, as a quick perusal of the ADA and AHA websites show, lifestyle modification is a crucial part of the strategy for managing these health problems. Indeed, as time goes on, doctors are emphasizing the fact that all the drugs in the world cannot make patients healthy if they make unhealthy decisions.

They claim that 47% of adults will suffer from a diagnosable mental illness during their lifetime. I take issue with the label ‘illness’ as that implies a degree of severity and irreversibility that simply isn’t the case. They also claim that 23% of us will suffer from clinical depression. By contrast, only 10% of the population aged 20 or older has diabetes.

Psychiatric problems (illness or not) can be just as deadly and debilitating as any other medical issue. Why then is there little or nothing in the way of preventive education? Why then do primary care physicians prescribe antidepressants and psychostimulants often without so much as a referral to a therapist?

We are surrounded by messages telling us how we know if we ‘have depression’ or ‘have ADHD’, and what drugs to ask our doctor for. But have we ever been told how to prevent ourselves from becoming clinically depressed? Have we ever been shown how to deal with depression, ameliorate our anxiety, or learn how to focus better?

I find it hard to believe that unlike diabetes, unlike heart disease, unlike cancer there is nothing we can do to prevent ourselves from suffering from mental health problems. Indeed, the fact that some people appear far more resistant to depression and anxiety than others in similar circumstances, combined with the relatively weak heredity of such psychiatric problems, would seem to indicate that mindset and worldview play a substantial role in resistance to mental health problems. And, even more convincingly, depression is on the rise in this country. Which would point to something we are doing rather than something inside of us being the culprit.

Relapse rates for those treated with antidepressants alone are considerably higher than for those who received combination therapy or only psychotherapy; in fact, only about 1/3 of those who take anti-depressants alone see a full resolution of their symptoms while 1/3 don’t respond at all. Da Vinci, Michaelangelo, Edison, and countless other accomplished people fit the textbook definition of ADHD, yet never took a pill for their ‘condition’.

Simple logic dictates that if systemic disease can be prevented or at the very least mitigated by behavioral modification, then certainly mental health problems would too. Scientific evidence backs this idea up quite firmly. And yet it would seem that they’re far more interested in telling us we have a psychiatric illness, then telling us what we can do to prevent being so labeled or how to fix it.

Rosie O’Donnell made a comment today about how we shouldn’t fear the terrorists:

Faith or fear, that’s your choice. You can walk through life believing in the goodness of the world, or walk through life afraid of anyone who thinks different than you and trying to convert them to your way of thinking.

I figure most people are going to key in on the ‘we shouldn’t fear the terrorists’ line. Whatever. It’s expected from her. What I personally find noteworthy is how in one short sentence she has exposed both the hypocrisy and the innate instability of the leftist worldview.

“You can walk through life believing in the goodness of the world…” is the choice she wishes us to believe she has made. ‘Faith’ in her fellow man. I consider myself a freethinker. And a tireless seeker of the truth. Are people fundamentally good? Every day in the news they shows us otherwise; rather, greed, anger, and pettiness seem to be innate characteristics. Are people fundamentally evil? Thousands of acts of kindness both large and small–many going largely unrecognized and unrewarded–would seem to belie this assertion. I submit instead that people are neutral. Neither good nor bad until we make that choice.

To have faith in the goodness of the world is to invite yourself to become a victim. Should girls at college parties get drop dead drunk assuming that all men are perfect gentlemen? Should the elderly couple entrust their life savings to a shyster? Should a person walk down the streets of Camden Town at 2 am assuming that no one will assault them?

To do so is not only the height of stupidity, but if Ms. O’Donnell truly behaved in such a fashion and truly lived in the real world, she would quickly be disabused of such lofty and inane notions.

…or walk through life afraid of anyone who thinks different than you and trying to convert them to your way of thinking. Here Ms. O’Donnell seems to be talking about the Right, religious and otherwise. But what about herself and her own politics? She rails against firearms, yet if people were truly good, she would have nothing to fear would she? She bangs her meaty fist upon her desk screaming at the camera about the need for social welfare. Yet if people were truly good, would we have need for such things? Ms. O’Donnell compares Christians to the Taliban and tells us that Christianity is if not evil, at least a danger to be carefully guarded against.

She openly derides those who seek limited government, and seeks to impose her leftist will upon us through government. She campaigns for the erosion of freedoms that could be used to cause harm and demands that government force us to be charitable.

Rosie and her ilk have no faith in the goodness of people or they wouldn’t campaign so hard to limit our freedoms and coerce us into making the social choices they want us to make. They have no respect for opposing viewpoints or they wouldn’t work so hard to silence voices like mine. Or, at best, compel us to act as they would wish through the use of government fiat, making us unwilling cogs in their machine.

What is it they fear? The evil that lies in the hearts of men. The pettiness. The greed. Just as everyone else does. This is why they fight tirelessly to control how we behave. They fear that a morally neutral tool would inevitably be used against them. They see the freedom of others as innately threatening. They fear that left alone, we would let others starve as we pad our own pockets. They fear that we have no capacity for goodwill toward others. If they do not fear such things, why do they work so hard to legislate them?

What is it they have faith in? It’s clearly not the people, or they wouldn’t try so hard to direct our every move. Yet, feeling as they do about our capacity for evil, they willingly give power to government to control us. They find little to be apprehensive about in this granting of enormous power because it will be ‘used for good’.

And yet when non-leftists are in control they briefly don the anti-establishment cloak that never leaves the shoulders of liberty-minded individuals, wearing for a time the mask of someone who sees the implicit danger of concentrated power. Faith in big government by fellow leftists, but not in big government by those other than themselves. What is this but fear of others that believe differently from you. We are left to the inescapable conclusion that what the leftist elite have faith in is in their own ability to justly preside over others.

I choose neither faith nor fear, but simple rationality. People are neither good nor bad, but will act in either fashion as their own self-interest dictates. Unlike the leftists, I do not fear others to the point I wish to control them. But neither do I have faith in them to always act in a goodly manner. More importantly, whereas the leftist has faith in ‘the right people’ and their ability to rule over us, I have faith in no one to do so. I am not an elitist, believing I operate on a level of righteousness unparalleled by ‘the common people’. I have within me the same capacity for evil as they do. And so I wouldn’t trust myself with such power, nor anyone else of a like mind. I do not hold myself above others, as the leftist elite seems to.

We were talking about The 300 on the med school discussion board. Of course, a couple of the meatheads mentioned that we would’ve loved to be born in such a time. Which incited me to mention that the Velamas today are a far cry from our warrior past, namely engineers, doctors, and mid-level managers. Someone said that stereotyping isn’t ok, even if you’re stereotyping your own people. Which, umm prompted a response. Here it is.

Stereotyping isn’t bad. The human brain (all higher mammal brains really) is designed for the express purpose of pattern recognition and categorization. All a stereotype is is a generalization concerning a given category. Many of these generalizations have considerable statistical validity. NOT acknowledging a statistically valid stereotype is irrational. Creation of stereotypes is essential to any kind of job or task that involves dealing with variability in your subjects. Without stereotypes we would be paralyzed by uncertainty. We couldn’t make assumptions. We couldn’t move forward. Because you can never be 100% sure of anything.

Stereotyping only becomes wrong when you make the mistake of assuming that everyone within a category fits the stereotype. For instance, BMI works well at the population level. As a population, people with a BMI higher than 25 tend to be fatter, have a higher risk of heart disease, diabetes, etc. At an individual level, BMI fails to accurately predict such things. Use of BMI is a stereotype. The BMI in and of itself doesn’t measure anything medically valid. It just happens to correlate well to something that is (namely body fat percentage and metabolic indicators).

A public health researcher can say “Oklahoma’s average BMI is on the rise. This is bad because this means that our incidence of heart disease, diabetes, etc will also see a corresponding rise.” Valid. Yet it’s a stereotype.

Misuse of a stereotype would be what would happen when I went to the doctor while I was still an athlete. I had a BMI of over 30. I also had a 31″ waist size. The doctor still told me I needed to lose weight because my high BMI was a health risk. BMI as I said is a population level phenomenon. And as long as it is used as such, no problem. But you can have fat people with a BMI under 25 (I’ve seen many) and people with BMI’s over 40 without an ounce of fat on them.

Or here’s another example. You’re walking from the BSEB to your car the night before a test at 3am and you see a 210lb dark guy in a black hoody walking directly at you at a fast pace. Do you make the stereotype of assuming this guy might mean you ill? If you’re smart, you do. Because at 3 am in a bad neighborhood, there’s a high likelihood that such a guy has a high possibility of being a criminal. If on the other hand you say “That guy right there is a violent criminal”, then you’ve taken it too far.

Can’t wait to see the fuss I cause this time. I’m honestly surprised the discussion board hasn’t gotten me into serious trouble yet…

Last week, I saw a totally thugged out guy with the whole huge jacket, saggy pants, and silver chains thing going on walking around my neighborhood. I thought to myself “that dude doesn’t belong here. He’s probably up to something.” I parked my car in the garage and left the family beater outside instead. And sure enough around midnight that guy and his buddies broke into several cars on our street. I live in an upper-middle class white neighborhood. And I do mean white. We are one of two minority families in the entire square mile.

I’m stereotyped the same way that guy is all the time. Back in London, after midnight people would cross the road to the other sidewalk when I was walking by. It doesn’t really bother me. Heck, I take advantage of it and am probably safer for it.

It really befuddles me that the self-proclaimed ‘Defenders of Science’ ™ are unable to understand basic logic and statistics. That they tell us we shouldn’t use the most basic element of animal intelligence when we deal with day to day life.

But what’s even weirder than that is that they go ahead and make racial stereotypes themselves with affirmative action.

It was a point I made to the new President of Cornell back in 2003. Lehman was notorious for the affirmative action supreme court case and I decided to bust his balls a bit when he had an open mic q&a situation on the quad. So I asked him why he’s such an ardent supporter of affirmative action when using income instead of race would be far more valid. I asked him how he could look at a black applicant and assume that their parents were low income and uneducated, then turn around and look at a white applicant and assume that they were privileged.

I have rarely been more popular with white people than I was that day.