Quote of the day–Sebastian

We’ve been through the Republican Revolution once already, and I don’t know if liberty could afford another.

Sebastian
June 30, 2009
Taming the Beast
[This is not to say the Democrats are any better at defending liberty. Just that the Republican party is not who you want to “take point” in the fight to restore it.–Joe]

Women and Guns (and some other stuff)

I’m just wondering aloud here.  When will we decide that women are regular citizens, instead of treating female shooters as though they are a separate class of citizen?  I understand that there is a perception that women need their own, separate training classes and all that, so they feel comfortable.  Is that condescending to women or am I missing something?  At what point, or under what circumstances, will we be treating female shooters the same as we treat male shooters (within the sport I mean)?

Maybe it’s a dumb question.  Maybe men can’t help but see a woman as something special and maybe that attitude is bound to find its way into our chosen sport.  Maybe some women are so accustomed to being treated differently that they expect it without a lot of thought.

Maybe the question is simply premature.  Any female shooters want to comment on that?  Do you believe you need separate training or separate categories in a competition, and if so, why?  Should there be guns made for girls, and others for the boys and if so, why”  Marketing strategies are beyond the scope of the question.  Hell, maybe it’s all about marketing, in which case, never mind.

I could understand if shooting involved some heavy lifting, but even then we’ve all seen some women who can out-lift some men.  So you want different weight classes, like in wrestling?

Here’s another.  How long is it going to be before the various races of humans are treated the same in general, in the media, and in the courts?  I understand personal preferences, but that’s quite different.  I’m talking socially, politically and legally.  When will I be able to tell a black guy he’s being a fool without being accused of racism, or tell a Mexican woman she’s wrong without her getting in my face on some racial or sex-related tangent?  When will we be able to disagree without changing the subject as a form of crutch?  I really am getting sick and damned tired of this, so I am herein putting my foot down.  Knock off the race and sex defenses.  Some people are using it as a tool and I’m not buying it.  Not at all, and I’m getting right back in your face if you try it with me so don’t even start.

When, or under what exact specified circumstances, will the gun-restriction advocates declare their work done, pack up their tents, and get jobs?  Any time you hear one of them guffaw over the assertion that they won’t quit until all guns are banned, your immediate response must be, “OK, then tell me precisely when or under what circumstances you will stop, declare victory, and find something else to do, ’cause what I see is that any time you get a win, you’re right on to calling for another restriction.  This has been happening for over 70 years, so, you know, we have a pretty undeniable track record here.  Go ahead.  Lay out the circumstances.  I have all day.”

Staying on the title subject;
A problem with saying, “this far and no farther” is you’ve already established that a) you’re willing to give ground, and/or that b) you’ve accepted or granted your opponent’s basic premise(s).  Some things are properly subject to compromise (such as where to go for lunch, assuming you want the company) and others are not (such as basic rights).  When it comes to basic rights, the response it not, “this far and no farther”.  Properly, the response is zero tolerance, same as it would be for a robber or a rapist.  If someone violates your basic rights, they are criminal and it is not incumbent upon you to prove your magnanimity by compromising with them.  You fight to win, then you fight for compensation and restitution, then you fight for justice, assuming your opponent is still breathing.  Few if any in Congress, for example, seem to have a clue how that might happen with regard to their violations of our basic rights.

Quote of the day–Gary Kleck

It was ineffective. That is, homicide didn’t go down as was promised following the law’s implementation.

Good guys have good effects with guns, bad guys have bad effects with guns.

Gary Kleck
June 29, 2009
Florida State University Criminology Professor
Some wonder if tighter gun control helps
[And I have yet to see a law passed, or even proposed, that didn’t create more of a impediment to gun ownership on the good guys than it did the bad guys. Hence, my Just One Question.–Joe]

Quote of the day–Dave Workman

On this one-year anniversary of the landmark Heller ruling, it is sadly clear that gun prohibitionists are as determined as ever to re-write history and live in denial. Of course, what they really want is to deny gun owners their civil rights.

To paraphrase Barack Obama, these gun prohibitionists have become bitter, clinging to their gun control agenda as if it were a religion.

Dave Workman
June 25, 2009
The Heller ruling one year later; antis still in denial
[Just as many whites clung to their bigoted beliefs about blacks for 100 year after the 13th Amendment was passed it’s going to take a long, long time before the anti-gun bigots are driven into the fringe politics along with the KKK. It should not be a surprise that the bigots of today overwhelmingly are Democrats, just as they were in the heydays of the KKK. Apparently they just can’t help it and have to hate someone.–Joe]

Quote of the day–Tim Naumetz

The number of firearm owners who fail to renew their gun licences has steadily increased since the Harper government tabled legislation to scrap the federal long-gun registry.

Opposition critics and the Coalition for Gun Control in Canada say the problem has increased risk for frontline police officers and undermines public safety.

Despite an amnesty the Conservatives introduced to coax gun owners into licence renewals, the latest RCMP figures show the opposite occurred.

The rate of non-renewals climbed to 25.3 per cent of expired licences in the first three months of this year, compared with 14.1 per cent in 2005.

A little-noticed RCMP report for 2007 on the Canada Firearms Centre contains positive information about the registry and its use by police that could surprise even diehard opponents.

The report includes a groundbreaking RCMP survey that found general duty police officers use the online version of the registry at a high rate to check for potential weapons while responding to trouble calls.

On average, 73 per cent of the officers said they log on to check for the presence of firearms en route.

The rate was even higher for officers trained to use the online registry – 81 per cent of that group use it on calls.

Tim Naumetz
June 27, 2009
Declining gun-licence renewals a risk to police: observers
[Would the same concern on the lack of renewals be expressed if instead of gun owners it were Jews, blacks, and gays being registered?–Joe]

Capitalist solution to pirates

I think the Russians are catching on to this capitalism thing:

Pirate Hunting Cruises Being Offered in Russia

Pirate hunting cruises along the African coast are being offered by private yachts in Russia. For £3,500 per day customers can sail along the coast of Somalia at low speed to entice a pirate into attacking.

Former special forces troops are on board to make sure no harm comes to the wealthy punters. If a pirate does take the bait, they are met with machine gun, rocket, and grenade fire. For an extra fee, customers can hire an AK-47 and join in.

[Via an email from son-in-law Caleb.]

Quote of the day–Sean Flynn

After the long nightmare of Microsoft health insurance, to finally be delivered into the arms of the kind and loving bureaucrats who give their all to ensure America’s veterans never want for care…

Sean Flynn
2:59 PM PDT, June 25, 2008
Microsoft employee commenting on the Obama administration’s efforts to “reform” (nationalize) health care.

Quote of the day–ErnestThing

When a bullet passes through air, it creates a high pressure area in front of, and around it, and creates a slight increase in temperature as the bullet impacts the molecules in the air. The pressure and temperature difference creates enough of a disturbance to bend light slightly. The result is a what appears to be a wavy donut that enters the bottom of your field of view, arcs upward above the target, and drops down into the target. (I call it a “wavy donut,” JD calls it the “undulating donut of death.” I like his better.)

Seeing this phenomenon with my own eye was really amazing. I knew how rifles worked, I knew the physics involved, I knew the trajectory was parabolic, and I’ve seen many charts of bullet flight path; but it’s still hard for your brain to wrap around the idea of a tiny thing flying through the air at 2800 feet per second. Actually seeing it happen seemed to dispel the magic the non-logical part of my brain was convinced was involved. Squeezing a trigger here, didn’t just make something happen there; it began a very simple set of physical principals that ended in a predictable manner that I could view with my eye.

Plus, it was wicked cool.

ErnestThing
May 11, 2009
Boomershoot 2009
[Yup. It’s wicked cool alright.

On the longer shots you can see the bullet arc up above the target and the wind push it off to the side. Then, if you called the range and wind doping right you are rewarded with seeing that wavy donut drop into a little white box on the hillside and transform it into a red flash and a cloud of water vapor 20 feet tall. You and your partners are in the middle of whoops of joy when the boom hits you. The boom is a deep earth shaking sound that video cameras and sound equipment somehow cannot adequately capture with enough fidelity to duplicate the thump to your chest you feel when you are there live.

There are still two positions available at Boomershoot 2010. They are positions #2 and #4. Even though they are in the “.50 Caliber Ghetto” smaller caliber shooters may use them with the restriction that the tree line targets are not available. Sign up here.–Joe]

VPC says gun laws are not about safety

No wonder they can’t answer Just One Question! The laws weren’t intended to “regulate for health and safety”. Kurt explains.

If the regulations were to “regulate for health and safety” Sebastian explains what that would be like.

I would like to point that it seems to me that the VPC is over stating things just a bit with this claim:

President Obama’s signing of a bill granting the federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulatory authority over the tobacco industry now leaves the gun industry as the last American industry not regulated for health and safety.

Let me repeat. Guns are now the only consumer product manufactured in America not regulated by a federal agency for health and safety.

Could someone explain to me what federal agency regulates the following consumer products for health and safety:

  • Software
  • Buckets
  • Jewelry
  • Swimming pools
  • Websites
  • Books
  • Music
  • Entertainment
  • Prostitution (legal in parts of Nevada and the Feds once owned a brothel confisicated for failure to pay taxes but the Feds couldn’t even make money running a whorehouse and they went out of business)
  • Locks and keys
  • Hand tools
  • Cardboard boxes

Also note that the number of accident deaths due to gunshot wounds are at, or near, an all time low in the neighborhood of less than 700 per year (642 in 2006–See table 18).

Finally I would also like to point out that there is a private model for health and safety approval that appears to work quite well for electrical applicances. It’s call the Underwriters Laboratory.

Hence, Federal regulations are not needed because; 1) there isn’t a problem that needs to be fixed, and 2) There are private solutions that would work better if there were a problem.

Myth busting the myth buster

A new book written by anti-gun bigot Dennis Henigan has just been announced. He calls it Lethal Logic: Exploding the Myths that Paralyze American Gun Policy. If I could borrow a copy rather than have my money go toward his furthering of discrimination against gun owners I’d take the time to read it. I’d love to take it apart in public for him. But since I don’t have a copy in hand right now I’ll just do what I can with what I presume are his best shots as given in the press release:

In Lethal Logic: Exploding the Myths that Paralyze American Gun Policy, published by Potomac Books, Henigan takes on the highly memorable, but completely unsupportable slogans that for decades have been the staple of the National Rifle Association and other relentless opponents of sensible gun laws, and dismantles them one by one. Lethal Logic also is the first book to assess the impact on the gun control debate of last year’s Heller decision by the Supreme Court and the book’s conclusions about Heller will surprise many on both sides of the issue.

Some of Henigan’s observations on the gun lobby’s “bumper sticker” slogans:

  • “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people.” Henigan counters with Ozzy Osbourne’s take on that: “If that’s the case, why do we give people guns when they go to war? Why not just send the people?”
  • “But what you really want [is to ban all guns.]” Henigan explains that for the gun lobby, “the gun debate needs to be a debate about banning all guns. The slippery slope argument is the NRA’s primary means of achieving this goal.”
  • “An armed society is a polite society.” The more guns, the safer we all are, the gun extremists say – and they cite Switzerland as Utopia. But Henigan points out that Switzerland has high gun ownership because of mandatory militia service, and that citizens in mandatory militia service face government inspection of the guns in their homes and must account for all their bullets. “Can you imagine the fury of the NRA’s opposition to any suggestion that guns in the homes of U.S. citizens be subject to government inspection?”

As to “If that’s the case, why do we give people guns when they go to war? Why not just send the people?” Try sending the guns without the people and see how well the war goes. It’s the people that make the difference.

Try this experiment (okay, do the thought experiment if you don’t think you can get the human subjects testing approval):

Suppose you were to drop Dennis Henigan and Sarah Brady in the woods with all the guns and ammo they can carry. And a half mile away you drop in an Army Ranger or Navy Seal completely naked, one hand tied behind their back and a patch over one eye. If you tell them only one side can leave the woods alive I’m betting that by the next morning, despited being outnumbered 2:1 and out armed, the warrior will be walking out of the woods fully clothed, armed, and wearing Sarah and Dennis’s ears as a necklace.

Gun are tools used by people. Without the people the guns don’t kill, with or without guns people can kill. Guns just make violence against people easier. Sometimes that violence is for good and sometimes it is for evil. Most of the time guns are used for good. Reducing the access of guns to good people enables evil.

As to “But what you really want [is to ban all guns.] … the gun debate needs to be a debate about banning all guns.” No, the debate doesn’t have to be about that. Why not answer Just One Question? Justify the existence of any legal restriction on guns with data that conclusively demonstrates the restriction improved public safety. Or if that is something Henigan wants to avoid then explain why a “reasonable restriction” against gun owners wouldn’t be just as constitutionally repugnant as a similar restriction against black slaves who had been freed by the 13th Amendment.

As to government inspection of guns and accounting for all the bullets in the homes of the Swiss Henigan has to heavily distort the truth to make his point.

Here is the part where what Henigan says is mostly true:

Each such individual is required to keep his army-issued personal weapon (the 5.56x45mm Sig 550 rifle for enlisted personnel or the SIG 510 rifle and/or the 9mm SIG-Sauer P220 semi-automatic pistol for officers, medical and postal personnel) at home with a specified personal retention quantity of government-issued personal ammunition (50 rounds 5.56 mm / 48 rounds 9mm), which is sealed and inspected regularly to ensure that no unauthorized use takes place.[2]

Here is what Henigan completely ignores in order to make his point:

The government subsidizes the production of military ammunition and then sells the ammunition at cost. Swiss military ammo must be registered if bought at a private store, but need not be registered if bought at a range. Registration consists of entering your name in a log at the time of sale. No serial numbers are present on the individual cartridges of ammunition. Technically, ammunition bought at the range must be used at the range, but according to David Kopel “the rule is barely known and almost never obeyed.”[2] Ammunition for long gun hunting is not subsidized by the government and is not subject to any sales control. Non-military non-hunting ammunition more powerful than .22 LR (such as custom handgun ammunition) is registered at the time of sale.[10]

The article goes on to say:

Purchases from dealers of hunting long guns and of small bore rifles are not even recorded by the dealer. In other words, the dealer would not record the sale of a .30-06 hunting rifle, but would record the sale of a .30-06 M1 Garand rifle.[2] According to chapter 2 article 10 of Swiss law, people over the age of 18 do not need a permit to purchase a rifle for use in hunting, off-duty shooting and sport-shooting events.[10]

So why is it that Henigan didn’t tell us the rest of the story? That’s right, the facts hurt his case. He can’t make his points without cherry picking the data.

If those are the best shots Dennis could come up with the rest must be so poor as to be the equivalent of not getting his shotgun to get on paper with an USPSA target at five feet. Which of course means he must be shooting blanks.

Obama’s stimulus package

Via a Bitter Twitter (or should that be Bitter Tweet?) I found this:

The federal government is spending $423,500 to find out why men don’t like to wear condoms, a project government watchdogs say is a nearly-half-a-million-dollar waste of taxpayer money.

But the $423,500 grant for the study is just a crumb in the NIH pie. The NIH spends $29 billion each year to help fund thousands of health studies at home and abroad.

But some questionable queries have come under close scrutiny, including a $400,000 study being conducted in bars in Buenos Aires to find out why gay men engage in risky sexual behavior while drunk; a $2.6 million study dedicated to teaching prostitutes in China to drink less while having sex on the job; and a $178,000 study to better understand why drug-abusing prostitutes in Thailand are at greater risk for HIV infection.

I presume this is part of Obama’s stimulus package. If you were to ask me I would say we should stop stimulating him.

Blogging may be light

I’m in the process of moving to another hidden underground hardened bunker. My old one was compromised due to multiple contacts with the police through no fault of my own.

Well…that’s not the only version of the story. It’s also true that the rents have been dropping in the area and I can get an underground bunker for only slightly more money than I’m currently paying and is walking distance from my work instead of a 20 minute (assuming no traffic–yeah, right!) drive.

Until the move is complete and I’m all settled in blogging will be a little lighter than normal. I expect to be done by next Monday.

Quote of the day–Robb Allen

Funny how regressives are all about due process and rights so long as it’s for the right people. The Klan is just as progressive, they just hate a different subset of the populace.

Robb Allen
June 22, 2009
Secret lists cannot stop firearm purchases
[Ahhh…. It’s so nice to have “my” meme being adapted, propagated, and utilized so smoothly. Thank you Robb.–Joe]

Buy your assault knife now

Partially because I’m concerned they will soon be difficult to get and partially because some of the women in my life have lost or misplaced the knife I gave them earlier after putting them through knife school I purchase several Spyderco Delicas a few minutes ago. I ordered them from The Blade Shop who seemed to have the best price ($45 when the MSRP is $90) in the quick search I did. Free shipping on orders over $125.

Crap for brains

As pointed out in a comment by fishyjay:

Herbert concludes his column with this:

” The first step should be to bring additional gun control back into the policy mix.”

So the NRA has been lying about the Obama administration wanting more gun control, and the Obama administration should respond by pushing for…more gun control?

You can’t make this stuff up.

Sometimes you just have to conclude the anti-gun people have mental problems and/or they have crap for brains.

Quote of the day–Neal Knox

The officer displayed a paper describing a Luger pistol, a relic of the Great War, and ordered the father to produce it. That old gun had been lost, stolen, or misplaced sometime after it had been registered, the father explained. He did not know where it was.

The officer told the father that he had exactly fifteen minutes to produce the weapon. The family turned their home upside down. No pistol. They returned to the SS officer empty-handed.

The officer gave an order and soldiers herded the family outside while other troops called the entire town out into the square. There on the town square the SS machine-gunned the entire family-father, mother, Charley’s two friends, their older brother and a baby sister.

I will never forget the moment. We were sitting on the bunk on a Saturday afternoon and Charley was crying, huge tears rolling down his cheeks, making silver dollar size splotches on the dusty barracks floor. That was my conversion from a casual gun owner to one who was determined to prevent such a thing from ever happening in America.

Neal Knox
The Belgium Corporal, prologue to Neal Knox – The Gun Rights War
[I’m proud to have met and talked to Neal Knox on two occasions. He did amazing things for the gun rights movement. He is one of my heros.

Give very careful consideration to a demand to register your guns.

My conversion to gun owner and civil rights activist was Ruby Ridge.–Joe]

A baby step against the TSA

The ACLU has filed suit against the TSA claiming they are:

…subjecting innocent Americans to unreasonable searches and detentions that violate the Constitution, according to a lawsuit filed today by the American Civil Liberties Union. The ACLU filed the complaint on behalf of a traveler who was illegally detained and harassed by TSA agents at the airport for carrying approximately $4,700 in cash.

The way I see it any search by the government without a warrant is unreasonable. When it was the FAA requiring the airlines to do the searches it was questionable at best. But as soon as it was a government entity doing the searches it was way over the line.

What the TSA is doing isn’t nearly enough but it’s far better to get a small win that a big loose in the courts and for their efforts in trying to make that happen I applaud them.

Unfortunately, I’m not King of the United States and able to send the TSA clowns to the dungeon for their costly Security Theater at tax payer expense.