In my Friday post about Maryland’s egregious treatment of the Filippidis family, I wondered how a Maryland Transportation Authority cop had access to a list of Florida concealed carry (CCW) permit holders. When I talked about this incident at a breakfast with friends on Saturday, Bill offered an explanation. It may or may not still be true — or lawful (see below) — but here’s Bill’s explanation as I understand it (strictly my own words; Bill can correct me if I’ve misunderstood):

In Colorado, the chief law enforcement officer (LEO) of each jurisdiction (generally, the county sheriff) has the option of sharing information about CCW holders in that jurisdiction with the state ( the Colorado Bureau of Investigation, or CBI, I presume). When you’re stopped by a cop in another jurisdiction (either inside or outside Colorado) and he or she checks your license and registration (to see if they’re valid, there’s a warrant out for you, the car is stolen, etc.), if you have a CCW permit, there’s a flag on the record indicating this to the cop.

Now, what such a flag should indicate to the cop is that you’re about a thousand times less likely to pose a risk than a person who doesn’t have a CCW permit (but nonetheless may have a gun). But a significant portion of the country’s LEOs have been brainwashed into believing the opposite.

I’ve done a little research, and it seems to me that Bill’s information, at least regarding Colorado, may be out of date. According to Colorado Revised Statute 18-12-206 as I read it, this flagging of driver’s license and/or registration records should no longer be the case (emphasis added):

(3) (a) Each sheriff shall maintain a list of the persons to whom he or she issues permits pursuant to this part 2. Upon request by another criminal justice agency for law enforcement purposes, the sheriff may, at his or her discretion, share information from the list of permittees with a law enforcement agency for the purpose of determining the validity of a permit. A database maintained pursuant to this subsection (3) and any database operated by a state agency that includes permittees shall be searchable only by name.
(b) (I) Notwithstanding the provisions of paragraph (a) of this subsection (3), on and after July 1, 2011, a sheriff shall not share information from the list of permittees with a law enforcement agency for the purpose of creating a statewide database of permittees, and any law enforcement agency that receives information concerning permittees from a sheriff shall not use the information to create or maintain a statewide database of permittees. Any information concerning a permittee that is included in a statewide database pursuant to paragraph (a) of this subsection (3) shall be removed from the database no later than July 1, 2011.

Nevertheless, such flagging of driver’s license or vehicle registration records apparently takes place in many other states, including Florida, and this is most likely how the Maryland Transportation Authority cop knew that John Filippidis had a CCW permit and thus owned a gun. In other words, CCW permit records amount to a de facto gun registration database. Which brings us to the point made forcefully by Karl Denninger (all emphases in original):

There is only one solution to this problem folks — it’s none of the government’s damned business if you’re carrying a weapon or not.  It’s none of the government’s damned business right up until you do something unlawful with it, at which point it becomes both reasonable and appropriate to search, arrest, charge, whatever — for the unlawful act.

But the bottom line here is that the fact that this individual registered his ownership and intent to carry for personal protection of himself and his family in the places where it is lawful to do so with the government meant that he was unlawfully stopped, detained and searched by a ****head who has faced no penalty for the violation of his Constitutional right to be left aloneabsent evidence of, or probable cause to suspect, actual unlawful activity.

The only solution to this is Constitutional Carry.  That is, you have the right under the 2nd Amendment to carry, either openly or concealed, a firearm without applying for any sort of permit or asking for permission from the government first.

It is only if and when you commit a crime with a weapon present and in some way related to the offense that the government gains the ability to intervene in your personal decision to not be a victim and protect both yourself and others near you, most-particularly your family.

There is no means to solve this problem any other way, as despite whatever sanctions Florida may apply to its peace officers for abusive acts of this sort the very act of registration exposes you to abuses by other political subdivisions in the United States.

Therefore, the only means of stopping this crap is in fact to get rid of any such requirement of registration — period.

What he said. In Colorado, State Representative Chris Holbert has introduced a Constitutional Carry bill, HB 14-1041, in the legislature. If you’re a Colorado resident, ask your state representative and senator to support it. Or go here to have Rocky Mountain Gun Owners deliver your petition in support of the bill to them for you.

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Happy Thanksgiving! It’s been a couple of years since I posted anything on Thanksgiving Day (last year, I was still in a deep funk after the election; I don’t recall why I posted nothing in 2011). The last time was in 2010, when I linked to my previous Thanksgiving posts and cited John Stossel’s and Fouad Ajami’s thoughts on the holiday. Please check it out. You might enjoy Ajami’s thoughts on our Thanksgiving cuisine and my rejoinder.

Way back in 2006, I posted “The real Thanksgiving story.” Back then, I was posting at Blog City, which seemed to have some kind of SEO magic. For a long time, my post came up at the top of Google searches for the title phrase, and it got a fair amount of traffic every Thanksgiving for the next several years. Ah, those were the days. This year, I’m going to reprise that post instead of just providing a link. Here it is, with subsequent updates at the top (I’ve also provided a new link to the Bradford book; the old one no longer worked). I hope you like it.

UPDATE (Thanksgiving, 2007): Welcome to all of you who found this post via Google, Ask.com, etc. I hope you appreciate the true story of Thanksgiving and the important lesson it teaches us. I’ve provided plenty of links if you want to follow up further. Please check out my new Thanksgiving post, which features Debi Ghates’ wonderful explanation of what you should be thankful for and who you should thank.

UPDATE (Thanksgiving, 2008): Welcome again, “real Thanksgiving story” searchers. After you read this post and last year’s, check out this year’s funny/sad Thanksgiving story! It’s about kindergarten kids celebrating Thanksgiving. And it features cops and accusations of genocide.

UPDATE (Thanksgiving, 2009): This year, with lots of help from Jim Woods, I again thanked the producers. And remembered the anniversary of the Jihadist attacks on Mumbai. Please check it out.   

Happy Thanksgiving! May you enjoy lots of food, lots of football, and lots of fun with family and friends on this day. But before you push away from the PC and belly up to the banquet table, please take a few minutes to read this story about the Pilgrims — it’s probably not the one you’ve heard.

Two competing Thanksgiving stories are commonly told these days. The first is the traditional one I was taught as a child: The Pilgrims suffered through a terrible first winter at Plymouth, but with hard work and the help of the friendly Massasoit Indians, they had a bountiful harvest in 1621 and held a thanksgiving celebration with their Indian friends. Happy celebrations of sharing and giving thanks for God’s bounty came to be repeated every year and throughout the colonies.

The second version, apparently widely taught for the past 30 years or so, differs a bit. In it, the wisdom, kindness, and generosity of the Indigenous Peoples is the only reason that any of the stupid white Europeans survived and had food with which to celebrate. The Pilgrims soon repaid their benefactors by slaughtering them. Barbarous treatment of gentle natives and gleeful celebrations of their genocide came to be repeated frequently and throughout the colonies.

Both versions are false, of course. The real story is available straight from the horse’s mouth. Colony Governor William Bradford’s Of Plimoth Plantation provides a complete history. You can download it in several ebook formats from Project Gutenberg. The Mises Institute’s Gary Galles used quotes from Bradford to put together a good summary. The first two Thanksgivings were rather grim, and for two and a half years, the colony endured not only hardship and hunger, but also conflict and strife:

The Pilgrims’ unhappiness was caused by their system of common property (not adopted, as often asserted, from their religious convictions, but required against their will by the colony’s sponsors). The fruits of each person’s efforts went to the community, and each received a share from the common wealth. This caused severe strains among the members, as Colony Governor William Bradford recorded:

” . . . the young men . . . did repine that they should spend their time and strength to work for other men’s wives and children without any recompense. The strong . . . had not more in division . . . than he that was weak and not able to do a quarter the other could; this was thought injustice. The aged and graver men to be ranked and equalized in labors and victuals, clothes, etc . . . thought it some indignity and disrespect unto them. And the men’s wives to be commanded to do service for other men, as dressing their meat, washing their clothes, etc., they deemed it a kind of slavery, neither could many husbands well brook it.”

Bradford summarized the effects of their common property system:

“For this community of property (so far as it went) was found to breed much confusion and discontentment and retard much employment that would have been to their benefit and comfort . . . all being to have alike, and all to do alike . . . if it did not cut off those relations that God hath set amongst men, yet it did at least much diminish and take off the mutual respects that should be preserved amongst them.”

How did the Pilgrims move from this dysfunctional system to the situation we try to emulate in our family gatherings? In the spring of 1623, they decided to let people produce for their own benefit:

“All their victuals were spent . . . no supply was heard of, neither knew they when they might expect any. So they began to think how they might raise as much corn as they could, and obtain a better crop than they had done, that they might not still thus languish in misery. At length . . . the Governor (with the advice of the chiefest among them) gave way that they should set corn every man for his own particular, and in that regard trust to themselves. . . . And so assigned to every family a parcel of land . . . “

The results were dramatic:

“This had very good success, for it made all hands very industrious, so as much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been by any means the Governor or any other could use, and saved him a great deal of trouble, and gave far better content. The women now went willingly into the field, and took their little ones with them to set corn, which before would allege weakness and inability, whom to have compelled would have been thought great tyranny and oppression.”

That was quite a change from their previous situation, where severe whippings had been resorted to as an inducement to more labor effort, with little success other than in creating discontent.

The Mises Institute also has a Richard Maybury version of the story that’s worth reading. Maybury quoted Bradford acknowledging another terrible consequence of the communal system — it encouraged dishonesty as well as indolence:

In his ‘History of Plymouth Plantation,’ the governor of the colony, William Bradford, reported that the colonists went hungry for years, because they refused to work in the fields. They preferred instead to steal food. He says the colony was riddled with “corruption,” and with “confusion and discontent.” The crops were small because “much was stolen both by night and day, before it became scarce eatable.”

The Hoover Institution has a much longer account (with more of an economic historian’s perspective) by Tom Bethell, with details of how “the communal experiment” came to be and how it worked (or didn’t). And the Independent Institute’s Ben Powell wrote a good short article that nicely summarized the lesson of Plymouth Plantation:

We are direct beneficiaries of the economics lesson the pilgrims learned in 1623. Today we have a much better developed and well-defined set of property rights. Our economic system offers incentives for us—in the form of prices and profits—to coordinate our individual behavior for the mutual benefit of all; even those we may not personally know.

It is customary in many families to “give thanks to the hands that prepared this feast” during the Thanksgiving dinner blessing. Perhaps we should also be thankful for the millions of other hands that helped get the dinner to the table: the grocer who sold us the turkey, the truck driver who delivered it to the store, and the farmer who raised it all contributed to our Thanksgiving dinner because our economic system rewards them. That’s the real lesson of Thanksgiving. The economic incentives provided by private competitive markets where people are left free to make their own choices make bountiful feasts possible.

And for that, I’m extremely thankful. Now, when’s that turkey going to be ready?

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On Veterans Day, as on Memorial Day, I remember my dad, Col. Samuel R. Combs. In the memorable words of Robert Denerstein, “He answered his country’s call even before the phone rang, volunteering for the Army after Pearl Harbor.” He went on to make the Army his career. My dad died in 2006 just weeks before his 90th birthday. Honestly, he wasn’t the best father in the world. But he was a fine soldier.

To those who have served, and to those who serve today:

Thank you.

It is the Soldier, not the minister
Who has given us freedom of religion.

It is the Soldier, not the reporter
Who has given us freedom of the press.

It is the Soldier, not the poet
Who has given us freedom of speech.

It is the Soldier, not the campus organizer
Who has given us freedom to protest.

It is the Soldier, not the lawyer
Who has given us the right to a fair trial.

It is the Soldier, not the politician
Who has given us the right to vote.

It is the Soldier who salutes the flag,
Who serves beneath the flag,
And whose coffin is draped by the flag,
Who allows the protester to burn the flag.

Charles Michael Province, U.S. Army

Copyright Charles M. Province, 1970, 2005

http://www.pattonhq.com/koreamemorial.html

Thanks, Papa, for your many years of service. I love you and miss you.

On this Veterans Day, please make a contribution to an organization (or two or three!) that supports veterans or active-duty military personnel.

The Signaleer has a nice history of Remembrance Day, which begat Armistice Day, which begat Veterans Day, and he includes the classic World War I poem, In Flanders Fields. Worth a visit.

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Yesterday, Coloradans in El Paso and Pueblo counties won two tremendous victories over those who denied them their fundamental human rights (see previous post), an event worth celebrating. But today is not a day for celebrating. Today is a day for remembering that there are those in the world much more dangerous, and crazy, and committed to denying us our rights and freedoms than the wannabe petty tyrants in Denver or Washington, D.C. So, with an update to the first word, I’m reposting this from last year. Never forget.

Twelve years ago this morning, we watched in horror as people jumped a thousand feet to their deaths because it was better than the alternative. Later that day, we learned that the heroic passengers of United Flight 93, knowing the fate that awaited them, had fought and died to prevent their plane from crashing into the White House or Capitol. In the ensuing days, we learned the details of that brave struggle, and “Let’s roll!” became a phrase that brought goosebumps to me whenever I heard it.

We must not  forget the events of September 11, 2001. We must keep the images fresh in our memories. It’s necessary, I believe, if we’re to retain the resolve we need to understand, oppose, and defeat the ongoing Islamofascist effort to destroy our way of life, of which the attacks of 9/11 were a part.

We must not forget that there is a large, powerful, well-financed international movement dedicated to destroying Western Civilization.

On September 11, 2001, barbarians with box cutters — primitive 7th-century savages who could never build a World Trade Center or a 747, but whose insane ideology is dedicated to making the building of such things impossible — murdered 2,996 innocent people and changed Lower Manhattan from this:

to this:

Some people have forgotten now
It was many years ago
And peaceful here at home since then
So just let the memory go
But I close my eyes and see it still
Like it was yesterday — Oh no!
People jumping from a hundred-story building!
I can still see those Americans
Jumping from a hundred-story building …

© 2009 Richard G. Combs. All rights reserved.

Never forget.

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