April 28, 2013
“Attack Countermeasures” Video Shows How Not to Be a Victim

May 1, 2013
Think You Have Health Insurance? Think Again, Explains Beth Haynes

May 2, 2013
Pope Absurdly Blames Unemployment on Profit

May 5, 2013
Penny Nance’s Strange Bedfellows
(No, the Enlightenment did not cause the Holocaust.)

May 6, 2013
Good News Abounds: Space Tourism, Medical Marvels, and More

Nancy Lofholm reports for today’s Denver Post:

In a first-of-its-kind move in Colorado, a rural school board has given two of its top administrators new job titles—security officer. The new titles make it possible to bypass state gun laws and carry guns in schools. . . . Their security officer contracts were approved by the board at a February meeting. Each will be paid $1 a year for their officer duties to make the deal legitimate.

I wrote about this possibility late last year:

Colorado law already allows schools to invite those with lawfully permitted concealed handguns into their halls—if schools do it the right way. . . .

Colorado law allows “public” schools to bring in “security officers” “retained by contract” by the district. The law is non-specific as to how much a security officer must be paid. So my plan is simply for a school to hire 40 (or so) concealed-carry permit holders—parents, retired police officers, military veterans, etc.—at a dollar each per year, to take shifts patrolling the school. . . .

[O]bviously willing and trained teachers and administrators could be declared “security officers” as well.

Hopefully other school districts will follow the same sensible policy—and hopefully those officials carrying guns will get top-notch training in using a firearm in emergency situations.

April 14, 2013
3D Metal Printing Revolution Makes Possible the “Impossible”

April 21, 2013
Harris-Perry Doubles Down, Promoting “Collective Responsibility”

April 24, 2013
“There Are no Values” through Islam

March 31, 2013
Rand Paul Inches Toward a Rights-Respecting Immigration Policy but Lacks the Means to Get There

April 1, 2013
Bionic Eye—Not a Miracle

April 4, 2013
Stockton Ain’t All that’s Bankrupt

April 7, 2013
Melissa Harris-Perry Says Your Kids “Belong to Whole Communities”

April 9, 2013
Margaret Thatcher: Warrior for Liberty

April 11, 2013
States Pass Rights-Violating Abortion Restrictions

The first in an interview: “Robert G. Natelson on State-Driven Amendments to Restrain Federal Spending.” (Elsewhere I published a series of videos of Natelson speaking on the same subject.)

Natelson summarizes the issue at hand:

Essentially, though, there are two ways to propose amendments for ratification or rejection by the states. One is for Congress to propose; the other is for two-thirds of the state legislatures to require Congress, through resolutions called “applications,” to call a “convention for proposing amendments.” A convention for proposing amendments is essentially a meeting of delegations sent by the state legislatures themselves, organized on a one-state, one-vote basis. In lieu of Congress, the convention decides whether to propose one or more amendments for ratification or rejection.

My second piece is a book review of Beyond Politics. Overall, I thought it was a pretty good book about “public choice” economics, but it has some serious problems. I conclude:

Despite its serious theoretical problems—problems shared by most economic texts today—Beyond Politics offers a powerful critique of many types of government economic controls. Those who read it carefully will better understand the common rationale for government intervention in the economy—and the “public choice” criticisms of such intervention. Although Simmons does not offer anything like a complete case for capitalism that integrates morality and economics, he offers some important economic tools useful in building or fortifying such a case.

You can read the complete articles—and all the other great content in the Spring issue—over at The Objective Standard.

The sources for Roerig’s slides may be found on the YouTube page.

Of course, your chances of ever finding yourself in the middle of a situation like that at the Aurora theater or the school in Newtown are extremely low. A tiny fraction of homicides are mass murders, and a tiny fraction of mass murders are the random and large-scale events that generate international headlines for months on end. You’re far more likely to die in a car crash than to die at the hands of a mass murderer.

Still, there is some chance, however slight, that you will find yourself confronted by a mass murderer, so it is worth some time thinking and planning how to respond. Perhaps surprisingly, even the New York Times picked up on this theme in an April 6 story written by Erica Goode. Following are some of the highlights from that article:

The speed and deadliness of recent high-profile shootings have prompted police departments to recommend fleeing, hiding or fighting in the event of a mass attack, instead of remaining passive and waiting for help. . . .

Research on mass shootings over the last decade has bolstered the idea that people at the scene of an attack have a better chance of survival if they take an active stance rather than waiting to be rescued by the police, who in many cases cannot get there fast enough to prevent the loss of life. . . .

In the absence of a police presence, how victims responded often made the difference between life and death, Dr. Blair said.

In 16 of the attacks studied by the researchers [at Texas State University], civilians were able to stop the perpetrator, subduing him in 13 cases and shooting him in 3 cases. In other attacks, civilians have obstructed or delayed the gunman until the police arrived. . . .

“The take-home message is that you’re not helpless and the actions you take matter,” Dr. [J. Pete] Blair [of the university] said. “You can help yourself and certainly buy time for the police to get there.”

Here is the video from the Houston’s Office of Public Safety mentioned in the article:

I’ve produced two videos and an interview on the matter.

The interview (with my father), available at TOS Blog, is “Linn Armstrong on Self-Defense and Guns.”

I also conducted another interview on video with my dad:

And I conducted an interview with Alon Stivi (with whom my father has worked), who developed a program for Attack Countermeasures Training.

So don’t be paranoid, but do be prepared.

Image: ACTCert.com

March 3, 2013
The Fruits of Capitalism Are All Around Us

March 7, 2013
Minimum Wage Laws: Economically Harmful Because Immoral

March 8, 2013
More Evidence of the Failure of Government Schools (and the Solution)

March 11, 2013
Judge Properly Tosses New York City Soda Ban

March 12, 2013
Guns: Legislation Should be Based on Individual Rights, not Group Averages

March 16, 2013
Thomas Friedman Embraces Keystone Extortion

March 20, 2013
Cyprus Rejects One Form of Theft, Leaves Others Intact

March 22, 2013
The Real Purpose of Central Banks

March 22, 2013
With Abortion Ban Proposal, Rand Paul Assaults Rights and Aids Democrats

March 23, 2013
With Budget Plan, Senate Would Increase Rights Violations, Economic Destruction

March 25, 2013
Contra Michael Tanner, Government’s Size is Not the Proper Focus for Advocates of Liberty

March 28, 2013
What’s Wrong with Stomping on “Jesus”?

March 30, 2013
As Some Filipinos Try to Die, One Tries to Live

Constitutional scholar Robert Natelson spoke at a Pro Second Amendment Committee banquet in Grand Junction March 23. I’ll release his entire speech soon. In this segment, Natelson compares the right to have sex with the right to keep and bear arms—and he points out that the majority of Colorado’s Democrats hypocritically protect the former while infringing the latter.

Natelson said:

Ask yourself, what would be the reaction of the Colorado legislature’s majority to a proposal requiring a background check before anyone could exercise the Constitutional right of nonmarital sex?

What would be the reaction to a bill saying that the eager couple even had to pay the fee for the background check?

What would be the reaction of Speaker Ferrandino or Senate President Morse to a bill stating that the eager couple was limited to “fifteen rounds,” so to speak?

Absurd, our legislative leaders might say? Indeed not. Natelson points out that the annual number of deaths due to sexually transmitted diseases is comparable to the number of violent deaths involving firearms.

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