Posted @ Althouse

EJ Dionne's creepy call for gun control knocked me off my resolution to decently wait before wading in to the tragedy in Colorado. I read about it at Althouse. Here's my comment:

Article 17, section 1 of the Colorado state constitution declares that "The militia of the state shall consist of all able-bodied male residents of the state". The army wasn't there. We didn't expect them to be. The national guard wasn't there. We didn't expect them to be. The state guard that Colorado authorizes in Title 28 wasn't there. We didn't expect them to be. And the police weren't there. We didn't expect them to be. If you put any of those people at every movie showing we would be rightly concerned about a police state. But the militia, now the militia was supposed to be there. It was there. And it failed. It's legitimate to conduct a failure analysis and to possibly change the laws to enhance its effectiveness. Why did it fail? What could we have done differently so that it would have been more effective? That's a conversation that would satisfy Dionne's fuzzy request for "opening up" a discussion but one that would predictably horrify him. The existing laws provide for one group of people that you expect to be around in case of emergency consistent with avoiding a police state, the state militia as identified in the Colorado state constitution. Why did they fail? Go start your analysis there, if you have to do instant analysis before the funerals are done, if that's what you need to do to process the tragedy.

Job Interview

I had the strangest job interview of my life yesterday.

It was the first time I've ever pulled out an XKCD comic as a reference during a job interview. But it went well and they're calling me back for another round.

Life is odd.