Rodent Ragnarok

Every so often, our government does something helpful. Today there are two pieces of good news.

First, it is now, once again, effectively, legal to put braces on pistols. Nationwide.

A brace can be pretty much the same thing as a buttstock. Some can be used to hold a pistol up to the shoulder to be fired like a rifle. There are also pistol braces that allow handicapped people to strap pistols to their arms so they can hold them more effectively.

The truth is that braces are popular because they allowed people to have short-barreled rifles without informing the feds. A brace can be used to turn an AR-15 or AK-47 into what is, all but legally, a rifle.

Joe Biden decided to forget about the Second Amendment and the Administrative Procedure Act and order the ATF to come up with a rule banning pistol braces without expensive permits that take a year to get. To get a permit, you also give up your privacy. The feds keep a record so they can come get your guns later when the country devolves into utter chaos.

All sorts of legal tussling has taken place, and limited injunctions have been issued against the ATF. They helped some people, but not all. Yesterday, however, a Texas judge enjoined enforcement of the rule everywhere in the US.

What does this mean? It means the rule is gone for good. Probably. The injunction only applies while the case is being resolved, but the judge has made it clear he’s going to block the rule permanently. He has all but sworn it. After that, it goes to the 2A-friendly 5th Circuit. That will take a long time, and the 5th Circuit will very likely affirm. After that, the ATF will shoot for a Supreme Court review. They may not get it, and if they do, we have at least 5 justices who are usually pretty good about defending our civil rights. Some of our civil rights.

I suppose the ATF will file some kind of interlocutory appeal right away, but it probably won’t go anywhere, because the 5th Circuit will be the appellate court.

I’d say there is a 95% chance the rule will be dead for a couple of years. It should take that long for it to make it to the Supreme Court, which may or may not review the case. I’m afraid to guess how likely it is the Supreme Court will review the case or affirm. If they refuse to look at the case, it’s over. If they look at it, the odds of affirmation are definitely above 50%.

If the rule is dead for two years, it should be the end of it, because we are overwhelmingly likely to have a Republican president by then, and he will tell the ATF to let it go.

How important is this case? Probably not too important. To me, it means I can have a shouldered AK-47 6″ shorter in my vehicle. That’s great, but to be truthful, I doubt a 10″ barrel is much more likely to save lives than a 16″ barrel.

Still, the almost-certain end of the rule is a nice change. It means I can have the 10″ barrel, and I can also keep a short .22 rifle (oops–shouldered pistol) in my utility cart when I’m out and about on the farm.

And I won’t have to worry about going to prison over a gun part that has zero upward impact on crime rates.

Is it true to say using a brace is legal? I guess not, since the rule is still on the books. But if they can’t enforce it, who cares? In the unlikely event the rule survives, the ATF won’t be able to do anything to people who bought braces under the injunction. Before dusting off the jackboots, they’ll have to give everyone a chance to comply.

Now people have to ask themselves whether they should buy braces today or wait to see if there is an interlocutory appeal. You don’t want to spend $200 today and then have to discard the brace in two months.

Here is the second great thing the government is doing: they may drop the seasonal part of the squirrel hunting regulations on private land. Which is where I live.

Squirrels are horrible, and they are horrible all year round. They eat vehicle wiring. They eat patio furniture. They eat fruit and nuts. They give me dirty looks. I should be allowed to kill every squirrel I see, all the time, with anything short of an atom bomb. They are no better than rats. I should be allowed to kill a hundred a day and leave the bodies for the crows.

It is not unusual for me to look out the window and see 6 squirrels at once. This area is crawling with them. It’s infested with oaks, so it’s squirrel heaven. It’s too much. They need to go.

I haven’t been shooting them for a while. I’m a Christian. We’re supposed to be people of love. I don’t know if it’s good for me to sit in a tent and pop squirrels with a scoped rifle all day, given that I do it partly in anger. I really should start shooting them again, though. My truck won’t start, and I’m pretty sure they did it. I have a productive peach tree, and I’m lucky if they let me have three peaches a year.

I shoot them out of season, because the wildlife people told me it’s legal if they are menacing my property. This only applies near the house, though. I should be allowed to shoot them anywhere. I should be given a bounty every time I run over one.

I wish God would send a plague and make the hair on their tails fall out. Then they would look like rats, and people wouldn’t think they were cute. Animals that aren’t cute get a lot less legal protection.

They resist trapping. I’ve set various types of traps, and I’ve only trapped one squirrel. The best trap, supposedly, is a PVC pipe over a bucket of water. You provide bait, the squirrels slide down the pipe, and they drown. I don’t want to drown anything. I don’t want to sit in my living room wondering if a small animal is struggling for life in a bucket of water.

I’ve used Conibear traps. These are like little versions of the bear traps in old Warner Brothers cartoons. They crush squirrel’s heads or necks, depending on the breaks, putting an end to them fast. But squirrels avoid these traps.

I hope they make this rule change, and I also hope they grow spines and legalize bear hunting. I don’t care what anyone says; we don’t actually “need” 500-pound predators in our backyards. There is a reason why we killed them off in the first place. Every once in a while, a Florida bear kills and/or partially eats someone, and we are reminded how it feels to be prey.

We always hear the same thing. “If we kill off the grizzlies/black bears/wolves/lions/cockroaches/whatever, our ecosystem will suffer a devastating blow from which it will never recover.” What a load. The chestnut trees that used to cover the country died. Things are still fine. We got rid of wolves in most places, and it made life better. The passenger pigeon is gone, but the world keeps turning. Things would be fine if every black bear in Florida disappeared.

The same leftists that killed bear hunting also feed bears and God knows what else, teaching bears that people are food. Amazing.

I like bears, but we need fewer of them, and I will quickly dispatch any bear that bothers me whether or not I think the government will approve. Better to pay a lawyer than several teams of surgeons or a funeral home.

I’d kill Lassie if I thought she was going to bite me. I’m not going to lose the use of a hand so a dog can have a second chance. I was created in the image of God, and dogs were not. One of my hands is worth a whole lot of collies.

Me first. Those are the rules. I guess it’s only one rule. Anyway, me first. I’m more important than an animal. If Commander Biden had attacked me in the White House, they would have found him in a heap with a fractured skull. I don’t have a Secret Service career to worry about.

There are certain animals in my area that should always be killed on sight. Squirrels, rattlers, water moccasins, big alligators, squirrels, coons, bears, possums, armadillos, squirrels, bobcats, hogs, mice, coyotes, all dogs whose owners paint their toenails, and squirrels. That’s just reality.

I quit eating squirrels because they’re tiny and hard to clean, but I may resume once my wife is here. She’ll eat anything. She’s an African. She eats giant maggots called mopane worms.

Let’s segue into a criticism of the leftist media.

Right now, a bunch of people are fighting anthrax in Zambia. A story says 335 people got it. How? They ate hippo meat. Apparently hippos get anthrax.

What did NPR say about this? They claimed it was about African poverty, most of which is caused by me, personally, because I’m white and can tell I’m not a woman. My colonialism and transphobia are at the root of the problem.

NPR started out its stupid story with the claim that Zambians were so poor, they had to eat hippo meat. Instead of tofurkey meatloaf and Starbucks lemon cake like everyone else.

Poverty caused by white Steve causes anthrax epidemic among POC! Get the pitchforks and carbon-neutral torches!

The big problem with this claim is that hippo meat is expensive. It’s better than beef. Zambians love it. Stores can charge a lot. The people who got anthrax got it from a luxury product they could apparently afford. It infected affluent Zambians.

Doesn’t matter. It was my fault. Put me on the scale and find out if I weigh the same as a duck.

I don’t know if I’ll resume shooting squirrels or not, but I hope other people take it up. Hateful things. Worse than anthrax.