John Wick, er, Keanu, Does Three-Gun

Due to @BrittPettibone on gab (gab.ai) posting about the forthcoming John Wick movie previously mentioned which the Didact has also gushed about, @SmartGrunt posted a link to a video of Keanu doing a three-gun tactical course. While the video he posted also included the gunfight inside John Wick's house from the first movie, I've instead posted the original from Taran Tactical below.

Impressive.

Chip Bergh, President and CEO of Levi Strauss & Co, had the following to post after an idiot customer discharged his firearm in the store "by accident" and injured someone (who is not clear from the letter):

An Open Letter to Customers: Our Weapons Policy

President and CEO, Levi Strauss & Co
Dear Customers,

The debate in the U.S. over gun safety and gun rights is as complex as it is divisive. As a former army officer, a father and business leader, I’ve heard the arguments from all sides. And, as CEO of a 163-year-old company whose products and presence rest at the intersection of culture and community in more than 110 countries around the world, I feel a tremendous responsibility to share our position on the issue, now, at a time when clarity is paramount.

Providing a safe environment to work and shop is a top priority for us at Levi Strauss & Co. That imperative is quickly challenged, however, when a weapon is carried into one of our stores. Recently, we had an incident in one of our stores where a gun inadvertently went off, injuring the customer who was carrying it.

So, while we understand the heartfelt and strongly-held opinions on both sides of the gun debate, it is with the safety and security of our employees and customers in mind that we respectfully ask people not to bring firearms into our stores, offices or facilities, even in states where it’s permitted by law. Of course, authorized members of law enforcement are an exception.

With stores in Paris, Nice and Orlando, and the company’s European headquarters in Brussels, I’ve thought more about safety in the past year than in the previous three decades of my career because of how ‘close to home’ so many incidents with guns have come to impacting people working for this company.

We operate in hundreds of stores across every state in the U.S., and laws are different in each one. We know that the presence of firearms in our stores creates an unsettling environment for many of our employees and customers. We also know that trying to enforce a ban could potentially undermine the purpose of the ban itself: safety. With that in mind we’ve made this decision as a business – a request not a mandate – and we sincerely hope responsible gun owners will respect our position.

It boils down to this: you shouldn’t have to be concerned about your safety while shopping for clothes or trying on a pair of jeans. Simply put, firearms don't belong in either of those settings. In the end, I believe we have an obligation to our employees and customers to ensure a safe environment and keeping firearms out of our stores and offices will get us one step closer to achieving that reality.

Sincerely,

Chip Bergh

President and Chief Executive Officer, Levi Strauss & Co.

The usual disclaimers apply. He has the right to say what he wants, and I fully endorse his right to choose who he wishes to do business with.

That out of the way....

Oh how the mighty have fallen.

Levis was a brand synonymous with pioneering and the wilderness, but now it's about fashion, and with that fashion come fashionable ideas about the world.

I won't even ask if they'd tell citizens of any particular demographic with an outsized crime rate that, given various rampages over the last years, are almost guaranteed to have assaulted someone in a Levi's store or in the vicinity of one. That would be to acknowledge hatefacts, and we can't post a copy of Colin Flaherty's "White Girl Bleed a Lot" or "Don't Make The Black Kids Angry".

No - it's using this incident not as an excuse to ban or restrain an idiot customer, but to pre-emptively ban an entire class of law-abiding citizens. And like all those Taleb labels "Intellectual yet Idiot" he gets "the first order logic right, but not second-order (or higher) effects".

This blindness is why the argument Bastiat makes, of the seen vs the unseen, completely bypasses them. It likely is related to why they literally cannot consider any negative effects from gay marriage, nevermind ones big enough in the confluence of that, pushing careers for women vice homemaking, etc. to undo civilization (hint: the future belongs to those who show up).

Yes, by not having guns in stores, fewer people may get shot in stores, though I'm sure a few thugs and predators will be happy to know they have carte blanche. It's not clear the stores will actually be safer though. Certainly, they make an exception for law enforcement, as if police cannot also be thugs, and out of total ignorance that private concealed carriers likely shoot and use their firearms more than most cops.

It's almost surreal that he actually claims to have thought about Nice, Paris, and Orlando, for it's not like those firearms, or those in San Bernandino, were lawfully employed, and Nice involved a truck.

One can certainly detect the scent of "no one needs to carry a gun" - and the comments - which also include a few pro-gun idiots - bear that out in spades, with phallic compensation and a desire to punch out anyone carrying simply for doing so starring prominently.

So - Levi as a company has nicely requested that customers not bring their icky firearms because they're not appropriate, they believe, for buying clothes.

And I'm figuring that Wrangler, among other brands, works well enough.

UPDATE: It's also interesting to look at Chicago - 700 homicides this year and counting despite intensive gun control, and wonder if Levi's wants their stores "safer" in the same way.

A Constitution is Only as Good as the People Living Under It - Systems and Principles

OK - so due to the interview between Scott Adams and Stefan Molyneux, I've been doing a lot of thinking, about habits, patterns of thought, free will, and tools to reprogram ourselves. So now - government.

The constitution, the original document as written, is a system. A tool. Like all tools, it is morally neutral, and it is actually the Bill of Rights that provides moral boundaries, or guiding principles to it, while the earlier Declaration in a way provides aspirational inspiration. Even in it's time the framers of the Constitution believed that their system of government would not last the ages, and was only suitable for a christian, moral people.

So when some on the alt-right mock the conservative fixation on "muh constitution" - it bothers me, I value it - but I get it.

It's just a system, a set of habits, methods, algorithms. There are other ones. Some are "better", some are worse, and in a number of ways that valuation depends on what kind of people the system is helping  -for lack of a better word - govern, and their temperament. Just like developing new habits, we can put new systems in place. The choices made will increase or reduce administrative and bureaucratic friction, encourage or discourage entrepreneurs, and make treaty decisions and foreign relationships more stable or not. In the end, it's a methodology - just like solving a word problem. There may be an easy way and a hard way, ways that are better matches for your priorities, but as long as you reach the truth, or the correct answer, they are morally irrelevant.

But what if the government decides the answer is to round up every left-handed redhead and execute every tenth one? Well.... that's why we have the Bill of Rights.

To me, the first ten amendments in the Bill of Rights are far more important than the actual system of government administration and legislation. They are also mostly agnostic to the system they are attached to. Those rights are either recognized, or they are not. In being recognized they will limit the form of government - for example by preventing the government from rounding up and executing redheads "just because" - but as we are seeing in the US these days, the system is mostly still in place, while the rights the government is supposed to leave alone are eroded year by year.

The safeguards in place, the system matters, but not if the goal is not to limit the power of government. Without those limits, the system will rapidly devolve, expand per Pournelle's iron law of bureaucracy, to further its own existence without limit.

In this, I include corporations. No, you're not going to see an "occupy" rant about evil corporations, but, concentration of power is concentration of power. A company town is still a state - just a corporate one.

Of course, you can't simply regulate the power of corporations. Power is one of the most addictive drugs out there, and so those with money and clout will bend their will to realign political power to their own advantage.

So this brings us back to the people. If the people don't care about freedom of speech instead of limiting "hate" speech. If they don't care about freedom to practice one's faith, to be armed to effectively defend oneself, then they will undermine the systems until those rights are effectively null and void. A society that wishes to preserve those things must value those things, and must demonstrate that value by teaching the following generations what they have, and how to preserve it. More importantly, they must have and raise those following generations.

In this case, importing those generations via mass immigration is not only a cheat, but guarantees - whether you think it's simply cultural inertia or statistical trends in genetically driven personality traits of populations - that those values die out.

If you value those freedoms, have kids, raise them, teach them, don't take shortcuts. Don't import another culture.

The future belongs to those who show up.

More Lunacy from the Very Best

Since the Didact decided to post a few glorious videos about guns, booze, and boobs, I decided to return to the very same well for a few more videos:

First, a video we both love on how to be an idiot crossfitter.

Growing up in the Marines, courtesy of my dad's surplus gear, I know a Woobie is far more than just a blanket. Or a girlfriend.

In case the point wasn't clear enough:

And of course, relationships:

Last but not least, I think these guys convinced me to try out a new brand of coffee. Not sure if I want the Silencer Smooth, the Murdered Out, or the Caffeinated as Fuck blend.