Do the arithmetic

There are those that advocate complete registration of firearms with annual verification by the police. Those people have not done the arithmetic. It’s not even math, it’s simple arithmetic.

The exact numbers are unknown but the estimates are that there are about 200,000,000 firearms in private hands in this country. Again, exact numbers are unknown, but it is estimated there are about 80,000,000 gun owners.

The identity of each gun owner would have to be verified otherwise just like in Chicago where the cemeteries are full of registered voters a similar thing would happen with gun registration. Assuming this takes five minutes per gun owner this would consume a total of about 400,000,000 minutes or about 6,700,000 police man-hours per year.

The gun owner addresses would need to be verified every year as well. Otherwise the straw purchaser would simply give false addresses while living in a different state or live out of their motor home. Assuming some sort of efficient “address verification visits” are done to a specific area of town each day and the rural areas don’t dominate, and the gun owners are home when the police visit this is going to take something on the order of about 30 minutes per verification. This will consume about 2,400,000,000 minutes or about 40,000,000 police man-hours per year.

And if, on the average, each of those gun owners moves once every five years then the addresses would need to be updated in the system. Assuming it takes five minutes per address change this would mean it would require about 80,000,000 minutes or about 1,300,000 police man-hours per year.

Assuming it takes five minutes for each gun to be removed from its case, the serial number read, and put back in it’s case that would mean it would consume about 1,000,000,000 minutes or about 17,000,000 police man-hours per year.

This brings the total to about 65 (6.7 + 40 + 1.3 + 17) million police man-hours per year for this registration scheme to work—assuming all the gun owners were reasonably cooperative. Or about assuming 2000 man-hours per man-year this is, without any addition support or management personal, about 32,500 people involved full time. With salary, benefits, office space, and equipment this probably will come to about $100,000 per year per person. This means it would cost at least $3,250,000,000 per year.

There are about 10,000 murders committed with firearms per year so each of those murders could have 3.25 full time additional investigators and  prosecutors instead of the registration scheme.

The above is a very low estimate of the costs and ignores the following issues which increase the costs and decrease any benefits dramatically:

  • Known felons cannot be required to register their firearms (see Haynes v. U.S., 390 U.S. 85)
  • The potential for police corruption will be very high
  • The Canadian experience with firearms registration showed that millions of gun owners will not register their firearms
  • If registration would work then why didn’t the government try registration with recreational drugs or alcohol during prohibition?
  • Registration to exercise a specific enumerated right is likely to be struck down as unconstitutional
  • There will be thousands of gun owners who insist the bullets be registered before the guns and deliver those to government buildings, equipment, and employees before bringing in their guns

Update: Linoge, via email, pointed out an error in my arithmetic. I had minutes in a case where it should have been hours. This bumped the total up dramatically.

Update2: Because of additional input from the comments I fixed some typos and added words to point out this is very conservative because it assumes no additional supervisors or support staff.

Quote of the day—Sarah Brady

The 1998 elections are further proof that support for gun control is mainstream and mainstreet America. Furthermore, in race after race, the NRA and its deep pockets proved to be a political liability, not an asset. After yesterday’s election, I think we will see more and more candidates and Members of Congress back away from NRA money and anti-gun-control positions if they want to win the support of the American people.

Sarah Brady
November 4, 1998
Chair Handgun Control, Inc. (Now called The Brady Campaign).
1998 Elections are Grandslam for Gun Control
[How’s that mainstream gun control working out for you Sarah?—Joe]

The Liberty Pole—June, 1999

I was cleaning out the garage (I’m a terrible packrat, just ask son James) and ran across some stuff that I thought might be of interest to other gun rights advocates. This is the first of what I hope to be many items.


What inspired this was as was making the “save” or “throw” decision was an article titled “What I Have Learned From the Twentieth Century”. I have referenced this in blog posts before (here, here, and here). What I didn’t realize was that this set of lessons was written by Mike Vanderboegh and first published in the June 1999 issue of The Liberty Pole. The Liberty Pole was the official publication of the The Lawyer’s Second Amendment Society, Inc. www.thelsas.org. The organization no longer exists but you can find their archived website via the WaybackMachine. The archive has a few of the articles but not all of them.


I was just going to scan pages 1 and 4 which have the Vanderboegh article but there are other articles of interest as well so I scanned the entire issue.


Keep in mind that these were dark, dark time for gun rights advocates. Predictions of the future were correspondingly dark and ominous. My QOTD for tomorrow will give you a hint.


The images below are just barely readable but if you click on them you will get full sized version that are easily read.


Enjoy.


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Random thought of the day

Our skin doesn’t sense temperature directly. It only senses the difference between the temperature of the skin and the object being touched. I wonder if this means the sensors are actually measure heat/energy flow.

Technologically heat flow sensors are more difficult to build than temperature sensors. I wonder why evolution ended up with heat flow sensors rather than temperature. Was there an evolutionary advantage to this or is it more biologically difficult?

Quote of the day—The Onion

The U.S. Supreme Court announced Monday that it would have to review two weeks’ worth of procedure after determining it had mistakenly based its last three rulings on a copy of the Belgian constitution left in the justices’ chambers.

The Onion
January 20, 2011
Supreme Court Mistakenly Used Belgium’s Constitution For Last 3 Rulings
[As David Hardy said, “This would explain a lot.”—Joe]

Quote of the day—Special Agent Urey W. Patrick

Kinetic energy does not wound. Temporary cavity does not wound. The much discussed “shock” of bullet impact is a fable and “knock down” power is a myth. The critical element is penetration. The bullet must pass through the large, blood bearing organs and be of sufficient diameter to promote rapid bleeding. Penetration less than 12 inches is too little, and, in the words of two of the participants in the 1987 Wound Ballistics Workshop, “too little penetration will get you killed.”

Given desirable and reliable penetration, the only way to increase bullet effectiveness is to increase the severity of the wound by increasing the size of hole made by the bullet. Any bullet which will not penetrate through vital organs from less than optimal angles is not acceptable. Of those that will penetrate, the edge is always with the bigger bullet.

Special Agent Urey W. Patrick
July 14, 1989
U.S. Department of Justice
Handgun Wounding Factors and Effectiveness
Firearms Training Unit
FBI Academy
Quantico, Virginia
[I really need to write my post on “Energy is irrelevant” someday soon. The most recent incentive was this. Like Sebastian, I’m not convinced. The ammo doesn’t make any claims in regards to energy but I can’t imagine any of the claimed benefits outweigh the penetration and accuracy issues that are not talked about.—Joe]

Hit them hard

I have been thinking about what would be the best approach to the proposed ban on standard capacity magazines. The MSM is practically foaming at the mouth about this and it hasn’t died down after nearly two weeks.

On one hand I was tempted to just ignore it. There isn’t really enough political support for the ban and it probably is going to fail with all the other things occupying the attention of our lawmakers. I though perhaps we should be focused on things we should be on the offense about. Things like getting rid of the ATF sign-off and tax on suppressors, removing the “sporting use” restrictions, getting rid of some of the stupid import bans, and more constitutional carry. The best defense is a good offense, right?

But if we ignore them might they get enough momentum to get something passed? Should we be commenting on all the newspaper websites and blogs and putting effort into stopping this attack of theirs?

After consulting with some friends and thinking about it more I have decided we can and should play both defense and offense at the same time. It may be possible what the anti-freedom people think of as an opportunity for them can actually be turned into a win for us. I’m not just talking about stopping their attack. I’m talking about inflicting serious damage to their movement.

This Tucson shooting was an incredible morale booster for them. We can and should shame and demoralize them. They have given us an opportunity to expose their deceptions, stupidity, and bigotry. The proper attitude is required but I believe we can use their own actions to push them closer to political extinction.

What I propose is that we write Congress members and Senators and express with as concise and powerful a message as we can. Hit those that want to strip us of our rights hard enough they will stay down this time. If you have the time send a message to ALL Representatives and Senators. If not, at least send it to YOUR Representatives and Senators. We should use this same message on the web via comments wherever we find even half-hearted support for the proposed ban. This message should be sent as “letters to the editor” and used in opinion pieces via normal media outlets.

The following is my proposed message. Modify and use it as you see fit.


If Representative Gifford and 19 others had been run over by a drunk driver there wouldn’t be talk of banning alcohol or automobiles. This country once banned most alcoholic beverages. We suffered the consequences, learned from our mistake, and repealed the laws.

If six people outside a gay bar had been killed and 14 others wounded by a group of 30 homophobes there wouldn’t be talk of banning groups of people greater than 10. That would be a clear violation of the right to association guaranteed by the First Amendment.

Even if a dozen religious fanatics murdered thousands of people in coordinated attacks on our country no serious consideration would be given to banning their religion.

Tens of millions of innocent people have been murdered by students of Karl Marx but no one is advocating a ban on the possession of his books to prevent murderous tyrants.

If most violent crime were committed by people with black skin there wouldn’t be talk of “reasonable restriction” encroaching upon the 13th Amendment which prohibited slavery.

When the cops acquire evidence or a confession illegally, or when they fail to Mirandize somebody they arrest, we let the accused walk, even if he’s certainly guilty. If the guy who walked promptly kills somebody, that doesn’t lead us to reconsider the Fourth and Fifth Amendments. We blame the cops who screwed up the case. Innocent Americans have died because we maintain the rights of the accused.

In this country we have principles which we hold to even if the cost is sometimes great. We value freedom even when some people abuse that freedom. We hold individuals responsible for their actions not the group to which they belong or the freedom itself.

The proposed ban on magazines of greater than 10 rounds is a proven failure. The DOJ studies on the effects of the 1994 to 2004 ban on these magazines showed this. Even after nearly ten years the DOJ sponsored study concluded, “Should it be renewed, the ban’s effects on gun violence are likely to be small at best and perhaps too small for reliable measurement.” We don’t need to relearn the lessons of prohibition, the war on drugs, and the 1994 “Assault Weapon” ban. We are better students of history than that.

The proposed ban would affect tens of millions of gun owners and ban 100s of millions of magazines. Nearly all police officers in this country carry magazines of greater than 10 rounds. These magazines are used in firearms used for self-defense, hunting, and numerous sports. Ask your local police officers if they carry magazines with capacities of 10 rounds or more. If they find them useful then so do the millions of others who use them for legitimate self-defense. These are not “high capacity magazines” that are being targeted. These are normal capacity magazines.

The proposed ban would apply not only apply to millions of handguns sold every year, the most popular rifles, but even some shotguns. These magazines more than satisfy the “common use” requirement for protection as outlined in the famous 2008 DC v. Heller Supreme Court case. To ban them would not only be pointless from a public safety perspective, it would be overturned by the courts, and subject this country to a long and divisive conflict when we need to focus on other issues of great importance.

Those advocating for the ban are either ignorant of the uselessness of it and how common by these devices are or know and don’t care. Actions advocated by ignorant people cannot be considered anything but foolish. Actions advocated by people who know they are pointless must have an ulterior motive.

People who claim the price of freedom is too high should try suggesting that to their friends and neighbors with dark colored skin or different religious beliefs before suggesting that to the 80 million gun owners in this country. The price we paid and continue to pay for freedom from slavery, religious tolerance, and the right to keep and bear arms was and is great but it is far less than the cost of not having those freedoms.

We have a name for ignorant people with an irrational hatred of people who they neither understand nor want to understand and persist in advocating those beliefs. It’s time we started using that name to describe them.

Just because we tolerate bigots doesn’t mean we approve of them or allow them to legislate their agenda. Don’t let the bigots who hate gun owners infect the rest of the country.


Update: Some minor changes were made upon the recommendations of several readers and advisors. Keep the suggestions coming! Thank you.

Update2: Taking the advice (which I think is sound in this case) of ubu52 I am doing some more editing. See below.


Cases where determined bad guys continued to fight after being shot more than ten times are very common. People who proposed private citizens self-defense is served with ammunition capacity limited to ten rounds need to read the literature and talk to self-defense trainers rather than believe what they see in the movies.

In the famous 1986 FBI Miami shootout eight trained FBI agents fired nearly 100 rounds to stop two bank robbers. One of the robbers continued to fight until hit 12 times. A 10 round restriction on magazine capacity will result in many needless deaths and injuries to innocent people confronted by attackers and unable to adequately defend themselves.

Even if we ignore the obvious need for full capacity magazines it is called a Bill of Rights. Not a Bill of Needs.

If most violent crime were committed by people with black skin there wouldn’t be talk of “reasonable restriction” encroaching upon the 13th Amendment which prohibited slavery.

Tens of millions of innocent people have been murdered by students of Karl Marx but no one is advocating a ban on the possession of his books to prevent murderous tyrants.

Even when 19 religious fanatics murdered thousands of people in coordinated attacks on our country no serious consideration was given to banning their religion.

In this country we have principles which we hold to even if the cost is sometimes great. We value freedom even when some people abuse that freedom. We hold individuals responsible for their actions not the group to which they belong or the freedom itself.

The proposed ban on magazines of greater than 10 rounds is a proven failure. The DOJ studies on the effects of the 1994 to 2004 ban on these magazines showed this. Even after nearly ten years the DOJ sponsored study concluded, “Should it be renewed, the ban’s effects on gun violence are likely to be small at best and perhaps too small for reliable measurement.” We don’t need to relearn the lessons of prohibition, the war on drugs, and the 1994 “Assault Weapon” ban. We are better students of history than that.

The proposed ban would affect tens of millions of gun owners and ban 100s of millions of magazines. Nearly all police officers in this country carry magazines of greater than 10 rounds. These magazines are used in firearms used for self-defense, hunting, and numerous sports. Ask your local police officers if they carry magazines with capacities of 10 rounds or more. If they find them useful then so do the millions of others who use them for legitimate self-defense. These are not “high capacity magazines” that are being targeted. These are normal capacity magazines.

The proposed ban would apply not only apply to millions of handguns sold every year, the most popular rifles, but even some shotguns. These magazines more than satisfy the “common use” requirement for protection as outlined in the famous 2008 DC v. Heller Supreme Court case. To ban them would not only be pointless from a public safety perspective, it would be overturned by the courts, and subject this country to a long and divisive conflict when we need to focus on other issues of great importance.

Those advocating for the ban are either ignorant of the uselessness of it and how common by these devices are or they know and don’t care. Actions advocated by ignorant people cannot be considered anything but foolish. Actions advocated by people who know they are pointless must have an ulterior motive.

People who claim the price of freedom is too high should try suggesting that to their friends and neighbors with dark colored skin or different religious beliefs before suggesting that to the 80 million gun owners in this country. The price we paid and continue to pay for freedom from slavery, religious tolerance, and the right to keep and bear arms was and is great but it is far less than the cost of not having those freedoms.

We have a name for ignorant people with an irrational hatred of people who they neither understand nor want to understand and persist in advocating those beliefs. It’s time we started using that name to describe them.

Just because we tolerate bigots doesn’t mean we approve of them or allow them to legislate their agenda. Don’t let the bigots who hate gun owners infect the rest of the country.


Update3: I left the message at www.WhiteHouse.gov. The site limits messages to 2500 characters. The version below comes in at 2492 characters.


Cases where determined bad guys continued to fight after being hit more than ten times are very common. People who proposed private citizens self-defense is served with ammunition capacity limited to ten rounds need to read the literature and talk to self-defense trainers rather than believe what they see in the movies.

In the famous 1986 FBI Miami shootout eight trained FBI agents fired nearly 100 rounds to stop two bank robbers. One of the robbers continued to fight until hit 12 times. A 10 round magazine capacity will result in many needless deaths and injuries to innocent people confronted by attackers and unable to adequately defend themselves.

Even if we ignore the obvious need for full capacity magazines it is called a Bill of Rights. Not a Bill of Needs.

If most violent crime were committed by people with black skin there wouldn’t be talk of “reasonable restriction” encroaching upon the 13th Amendment which prohibited slavery.

Even when 19 religious fanatics murdered thousands of people in coordinated attacks on our country no serious consideration was given to banning their religion.

In this country we have principles which we hold to even if the cost is sometimes great. We value freedom even when some people abuse that freedom. We hold individuals responsible for their actions not the group to which they belong or the freedom itself.

The proposed ban on magazines of greater than 10 rounds is a proven failure. The DOJ studies on the effects of the 1994 to 2004 ban on these magazines showed this. Even after nearly ten years the DOJ sponsored study concluded, “Should it be renewed, the ban’s effects on gun violence are likely to be small at best and perhaps too small for reliable measurement.” We don’t need to relearn the lessons of prohibition, the war on drugs, and the 1994 “Assault Weapon” ban. We are better students of history than that.

Those advocating for the ban are either ignorant of the uselessness of it and how common by these devices are or they know and don’t care. Actions advocated by ignorant people cannot be considered anything but foolish. Actions advocated by people who know they are pointless must have an ulterior motive.

We have a name for ignorant people with hatred of people who they neither understand nor want to understand and persist in advocating those beliefs. It’s time we started using that name to describe them.

Don’t let the bigots who hate gun owners infect the rest of the country.

Stupid this bad surely hurts

While I am seldom surprised at the level of stupidity I observe I do see depths being reached. Here is one from “darren.russell” who claims to be from the UK.

Being from the UK i cannot understand that Americans feel they have the need to own guns.
The only thing a gun is good for is to kill or maim.
I know that it is one of the amendments or something but wasn’t the original misquoted that people have the right to bear arms when it was really meant that the army had the right to bear arm to defend the country?

“The only thing a gun is good for is to kill or maim”? First off, even if that was true what is the problem with that? The police and the military use guns to “kill and maim” and very few people advocate removing guns from their collection of tools. And second, if the statement was true then that would mean that the roughly 100,000 rounds I have fired were almost all failures because only five of them succeeded in killing or maiming (I used two on a rattlesnake, one on a deer, and two more on a deer I hit with Barb’s Jeep).

And finally, the most stupid thought is that the Bill of Rights would need to include a section preserving the right of the army to bear arms to defend the country.

I have to wonder if the people in the UK would actually claim him as one of his own and if being this stupid hurts.

Quote of the day—Henry Louis Mencken

The typical lawmaker of today is a man devoid of principle—a mere counter in a grotesque and knavish game. If the right pressure could be applied to him he would be cheerfully in favor of polygamy, astrology, or cannibalism.

Henry Louis Mencken
http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/mencken.htm
[And this is why people of principle are routinely disappointed and disgusted by lawmakers.

It was just this reason that we have politicians proposing new restrictions on the specific enumerated right to keep and bear arms. The Tucson shooting was “the right pressure” to cause them to violate known and accepted principles in the Bill of Rights. What we must do is apply “the right pressure” in the other direction.

I’m working on a post that if applied correctly I believe will exert an equal and perhaps greater pressure in the other direction. It might not be ready until tomorrow so be patient.—Joe]

Wild-eyed Extremist Enters Public School with Four Shotguns!

No arrests were made.


And he was thanked for doing so.


Once again it’s trap shooting season at our kids’ high school (now I suppose I have to qualify; by “our kids” I do NOT mean kids in general as though they’re all “ours” and “We” are all responsible for raising them and feeding them, etc., but instead I refer to the actual offspring of my wife and me) and I was invited to teach the required gun safety class again this year.  The FFA shooting team consists of 9th through 12th graders, and we had around 13 show up for the class.


I had to get special permission just to bring the guns into the school (with no live ammo of course) and even then I could not have the students physically touch them.  I had to use the guns only as props, to explain some of the different action types.  A friend even loaned me a 16 gauge, bolt-action shotgun– a Mossberg 190– detachable box magazine, ported barrel and adjustable choke, and kids thought it was cool, which of course it is.  Smart kids.


The NRA safety courses have each student, in turn, demonstrate their ability to safely load and unload each action type, using inert ammunition, while also demonstrating proper muzzle and trigger discipline.  That of course gives the student the far better understanding that only comes from hands-on experience, but it was meant not to be.  The one condition placed on my being allowed to bring guns in was that only I could touch them.  A good and proper safety class would be too dangerous, I suppose, yet they allow bicycles (and even automobiles!) on campus.  Go figure.


Still and all; there was more appreciation showed this year, both from the students and their parents, and I saw more gleams in more eyes than before as parents made a point of coming over and thanking me before leaving.  In the past they’ve been more interested in simply getting home.  It may be my imagination, or wishful thinking, but I’m sensing a change in attitudes, as more people are talking amongst the community.

‘Our Progressive Health Care Bill is Better Than Theirs’

Maybe you thought the newly elected Republicans would move to get government’s meddling, grubby hands out of the health care industry.


Think again, suckers.


How many times must we be treated to silver hairspray dude trying to act as though he genuinely believes what he’s saying?  That guy didn’t make it two and a half minutes without an edit, and he was reading from a prompter.  This is our leadership?  It’s an insult.


The least they could do is get these phonies a few more acting lessons, so when they’re bullshitting us to death, at least they’d do a good job of it.  I really wonder who it is they think will find that video appealing.  I think that guy came right off the set of the Lawrence Welk Show.


If you’re figuring on politics to help reverse this encroaching socialism, you’d better be working more locally, because the national-level Republicans are up to the same old Progressive tricks.

The importance of Glocks in the World of Guns

The following was written entirely by Leon Harris for publication on this blog.

You may have heard the recent news story about Arizona Representative Gabrielle Giffords.  She was shot (along with several other bystanders) while making a public appearance in Tucson just a few short weeks ago.  The gun in question: a Glock.  While many are quick to say that such a powerful handgun should be blacklisted on the American market, they are probably not aware of just how prevalent this gun is in our culture.  In fact, the Glock 9mm is one of the most popular handguns in circulation today, owned not only by private citizens, but considered the preferred firearm of police officers across the country.  There’s no denying that this gun has mass appeal, and when you look at the particulars, it’s easy to see why.

The company that makes this gun is located in Austria, but even gun enthusiasts that support locally-made products will likely find this firearm attractive.  Not only is the weapon semi-automatic (making it legal to own and a lot of fun to fire), it is also lightweight and extremely reliable.  Made from composite plastic, Glocks are much lighter and easier to handle than their competitors (although other features are similar to any number of comparable firearms).  However, this one outstanding innovation has helped to catapult them to the top of the heap.

It is for this reason that they are extremely popular with law enforcement.  For a long time, it seemed that being on the right side of the blue line meant playing a constant game of catch-up as the criminal element always seemed to possess bigger and better weapons.  When the Glock hit the U.S. market in the ‘80s, it was like a godsend for police officers.  They seized upon the weapon as an equalizing force to confront gangs and other criminals that had been one step ahead before.  And it performed admirably, so much so that nearly two-thirds of any given police force carries them as a personal sidearm to this day.

Of course, the law wasn’t the only element to recognize the allure of the Glock.  Gun-toting law-breakers also claim this firearm as a weapon of choice (although most criminals won’t hesitate to supplement their arsenal with fully automatic guns and other illegal weapons).  And of course, the average man about town might also house such a weapon in his home for both protection and recreational purposes.  After being shot, Gabrielle Giffords herself admitted to owning a Glock, claiming to be “a pretty good shot”.

Although Glocks have garnered some media attention for their lethal force and rapid action, making them only one of many controversial firearms, they remain one of the most popular guns in the world today.  And the fact that they are endorsed by law enforcement officials bodes well for their continued circulation, despite the fact that a few criminals and nut-jobs are trying to ruin it for everyone.  As handguns go, you can’t get much better than the Glock.  They have, in many ways, revolutionized how we look at firearms, and to suggest that they be sent to legal detention because of a few heavily publicized incidents is not only unacceptable, but likely an impossible scenario.

Leon Harris writes for Silencer Co where you can find a variety of the highest quality suppressors tailored to your needs.

Quote of the day—Congresswoman Carolyn McCarthy

If the president doesn’t get involved then it’s not going to convince anybody in Congress or the Senate.

Congresswoman Carolyn McCarthy
January 19, 2011
Empty Barrel
[I would have thought it would depend more on Congresswoman Giffords who was shot. But who am I to know? Obama could give it some momentum too but my read of things is that he will stay out of it.—Joe]

California ammo law is invalidated!

Nice!

In a dramatic ruling giving gun owners a win in an National Rifle Association / California Rifle and Pistol (CRPA) Foundation lawsuit, this morning Fresno Superior Court Judge Jeffrey Hamilton ruled that AB 962, the hotly contested statute that would have banned mail order ammunition sales and required all purchases of so called “handgun ammunition” to be registered, was unconstitutionally vague on its face. The Court enjoined enforcement of the statute, so mail order ammunition sales to California can continue unabated, and ammunition sales need not be registered under the law.

Update: Of course what they will attempt to do is to require all ammunition sales to be registered. But that will be a tougher battle than the one they fought to get just handgun ammunition registration through the legislature. And if it passes it will be vigorously fought in the courts too.

Quote of the day—Thomas Paine

He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from opposition; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach himself.

Thomas Paine
[The individual that values his the rights guaranteed by the First Amendment must also protect the rights guaranteed by the Second Amendment or everyone will discover the liberty secured by the 13th Amendment has been lost as well.

See also the nearly identical concept expressed by Alan Dershowitz.—Joe]

Compromise with THIS

I keep falling into the same mindset as many other people and perhaps even more so than most. When someone asks a question I take it at face value and try to answer the question. Then, if necessary, I attempt to explain the answer to them. In many cases this is completely the wrong approach. In the case of a confrontation with an anti-gun person if you are answering their questions you are losing.

Today Say Uncle hinted pretty strongly at the proper approach to suggestions magazine capacity should be restricted but I think that thought should be amplified.

When someone suggests the specific enumerated right to keep and bear arms should be restricted the response should be a look of extreme incredulity and informing them that they should not act on that impulse. Such acts are illegal. People acting on them can and should be arrested and sent to prison. The same goes for politicians.

This is no different than someone proposing the right to freedom of association should be limited to those groups that pass a sporting purpose test and be restricted to ten people or less. After all you only need five people for a basketball team and ten people can make a baseball team. If you want to associate in groups larger than if can only mean you want to form an angry mob and riot. You don’t need to associate in larger groups than ten, right?

Now that the cards are on the table tell me we can find common ground and compromise on something “reasonable” for both sides.

Some of those same people are also advocating the repeal of the Second Amendment. I find this just as abhorrent as I would a suggestion of repealing the 13th Amendment. We fought a civil war over that issue and I would expect no less over the attempted repeal of the Second Amendment.

My position is that people advocating such actions apparently can’t handle freedom and should therefore seek the security of some place that allows them only that which they really need. Can’t we set up a charity to subsidize one-way tickets to North Korea for them? That is a compromise I could agree with.

Quote of the day—dustydog

The vast majority of lefties had no opinion on 30 round magazines until last week. If they had an opinion from a previous newscycle, it was long forgotten. It is now received wisdom that high capacity mags are evil. Whatever you say or write, you haven’t changed the underlying presumption that you are arguing for something evil. You aren’t allowed to challenge the conclusion that your gun is evil.

As a metaphor, I’m against eating live puppies. If someone were to argue about their right to eat live puppies, I wouldn’t begin to pay attention to their arguments; I’d only be interested in learning more as a means to stopping them. If I found out they had a powerful lobby devoted to enjoying the agony of the puppies as the are slowly eaten, I’d assume the worse motives and conspiracies. I can’t imagine any logic or arguments that would sway me from my presupposition. In the minds of the Left, wanting responsibility for oneself (including self-defense, which includes your gun and mag) is like torturing puppies.

dustydog
January 17, 2011
Comment to  Random thought of the day
[Other than the minor correction of changing “high capacity” to “normal” or “standard” I don’t have anything to add.—Joe]

Random thought of the day

I wonder why there is such a disconnect with people’s thought processes.


The shooter in Tucson had mental problems which may have been made worse by heavy marijuana use. Some people wanting to “do something” started talking about banning the magazines of greater than 10 rounds. How many of those same people never even thought that such a ban would be no more effective than the ban on marijuana that same guy was using? How could they possibly think that such a ban would be effective when the ban on marijuana is not effective?


People apparently don’t realize that “bans” don’t eliminate something. They only provide a legal means of punishment for those that get caught with the banned item. The banned object or substance does not cease to exist. As near as I can tell people imagine they will be transported into some sort of fantasy land where the banned item dematerializes or something.


Once you realize that bans only provide for punishment of those that get caught you can see that bans to “prevent” some greater society harm are unlikely to be successful. The “ban” of murder precludes the proposed ban of more than 10 round magazines of being of any significant use. The only consequence is that it makes murder “double ungood” or some such thing.


This leads me to conclude that in proposing 10 round magazine limits the Brady Campaign leaders must think possession of normal magazine capacities are on the same order of magnitude of evil as murder. If the possession is insignificant on the “evil scale” the additional law is of no benefit because the “ban” on murder has the issue covered. But they don’t think the ban on murder is sufficient, hence the evil inherent in possession normal magazines must be some significant proportion of the evil inherent in murder.


Either that or they just don’t have the thought processes to think clearly.