Coyote Blog

An interesting story about the background of the real "Sybil," and how much of her personality problems were the result of aggressive third parties trying to make their career -- totally unsusprising to anyone who has studies the great child abuse / day care hysteria and JaneyReno's Miami method.  A very brief excerpt:

Mason, like so many patients diagnosed with multiple personality disorder (now rechristened “dissociative identity disorder,” in part to shake the bad rep of MPD), improved markedly under certain conditions — namely, the absence of her therapist. For several years after her therapy concluded, she lived happily as an art teacher at a community college, even owning her own house. But the publication of “Sybil” destroyed that life; Schreiber, who had invented so much of her biography, had so thinly disguised other details that many acquaintances recognized her. Too self-conscious to endure this exposure, Mason fled back to Wilbur and lived out the rest of her life as a sort of beloved retainer, cooking her doctor breakfast and dinner every day and nursing her on her deathbed.

Wilbur, on the other hand, thrived, presiding over the explosion of MPD diagnoses as one of the foremost experts on the condition. She played a key role in promoting the belief that conspiracies of fiendish, sadistic adults were secretly perpetrating murder, child rape and mutilation, human sacrifice, and cannibalism across the country and that repressed memories of such atrocities lay at the root of most MPDs. Innocent people were convicted of these crimes on the basis of testimony elicited from highly suggestible small children and hypnotized adults. Families were sundered by therapists who convinced their patients that they’d suffered similar ordeals despite having no conscious memory of it. This opened the door to years of expensive and ineffective therapy.

Unlike many libertarians, I don't blog about gun rights much.  Some think this odd, but in my mind this is like saying it is odd that a female blogger doesn't blog much about abortion.  I have always thought it was pretty clear that the 2nd amendment protects an individual right to bear arms, but it's just not a subject for which I have much passion  *shrug*

However, I did find this hilarious.  Megan McArdle passes on the District of Columbia's petulant response to the Heller decision:

Here's what they're proposing:

* Allowing an exception for handgun ownership for self-defense use inside the home.
   
* If you want to keep a handgun in your home, the MPD will have to
perform ballistic testing on it before it can be legally registered.

* There will be a limit to one handgun per person for the first 90 days after the legislation becomes law.

* Firearms in the home must be stored unloaded and disassembled, and
secured with either a trigger lock, gun safe, or similar device. The
new law will allow an exception for a firearm while it is being used
against an intruder in the home.

* Residents who legally register handguns in the District will not
be required to have licenses to carry them inside their own homes.

OK, so I can have a handgun in the home solely for self-defense, but this self-defense weapon must be stored unloaded, disassembled, and locked.  The only time it can be unlocked and assembled and loaded is "while it is being used against an intruder".  Jeez.  In the time it would take to unlock, assemble, and load the gun, I could probably build some McGyver device out of dental floss, a TV remote, and a couple of Thin Mint Girls Scout Cookies to just blow them up.

Postscript: I have never been that confident in my ability with a handgun.  TV portrayals notwithstanding, I find them very difficult to handle accurately, and they require a lot of practice which most casual owners don't pursue.  In my case, I find this a more realistic home defense weapon.