I've referred to Jim Jones and the "People's Temple" several times.  They represent my ideal of the ultimate fate of a socialist organization.  I visited San Francisco twice in the mid to late '70s.  My older siblings had spent time in West Coast quasi-religious, socialist communes (all very, very "hip" you understand) and I'd visited them, spending several nights at one of them in Oregon.  I was even "touched by the spirit" at one of their rallies, and I'm here to tell you; that s#^t is real and it is powerful (something about human evolution having selected in us a tendency to bond tightly with our group, with extremely powerful emotions, in times of stress, but I'll leave that to the sociologists, anthropologists and biologists).  I learned all I wanted to know about these groups.  Specifically, that I never wanted anything to do with them ever again.

These groups had sprung up in a lot of places back then, accepting the assertion that "All You Need is Love" or other similar nonsense.  They were very socialist, as any description with the word "free" in it was super cool: Free love, free food, free store, free drugs, etc..  Everything belonged to everyone and all was love, love, love...  Only trouble was, as you would expect, the takers always seemed to outnumber the givers, and so the givers (most anyone with options in life) would become disgusted at some stage and leave the group.  You had to use extreme measures to coerce members into staying on, much as the Russians had to build the Berlin Wall and Jim Jones had to imprison his followers in a remote jungle.

I'd seen the History Channel's documentary on Jim Jones, but there is a ton of stuff in Dan Flynn's account that was never mentioned.  I mean, Wow!  Take some time to read the article (hat tip to Micheal Savage).

By virtue of producing rent-free rent-a-rallies for liberal politicians and causes, Jim Jones engendered enormous amounts of good will from Democratic politicians and activists. They allowed their political ambitions to derail their governing responsibilities. Frisco pols like Harvey Milk never seemed to care how Jones could, at the snap of his fingers, direct hundreds of people to stack a public meeting or volunteer for a campaign. City Councilman Milk just knew that he benefitted from that control, and therefore never bothered to do anything to inhibit the dangerous cult operating in his city. Instead, he actively aided and abetted a homicidal maniac. It wasn't just local hacks Jones commanded respect from. He held court with future First Lady Rosalyn Carter, vice presidential candidate Walter Mondale, and California Governor Jerry Brown.

I won't apologize for concluding that anyone who supports the free and unfettered possession of deadly weapons is sick in their head. Why in God's name should the Democratic party, or any organization dedicated to improving the lives and future of Americans, give up on the idea of gun control? Has mental illness spread so far in our country that the concept of curbing violent death by gun is no longer viable?

Here's my take: all gun owners should immediately submit themselves for psychiatric examination, to determine the extent of their illness and begin treatment before they do harm to someone.

Rifled, single-shot hunting weapons aside, this country should immediately consider laws making the possession of any handgun or assault weapon evidence of serious and dangerous mental illness, and anyone having such a weapon on their possession should be subject to immediate immobilization, hospitalization and confinement for treatment. The sale of -- or display with intent to sell -- any handgun or assault weapon to a private citizen should result in that person's inventory being seized and immediately destroyed, and the seller hospitalized immediately for treatment. Any factory producing handguns or assault weapons caught selling their product to private citizens should be closed, their corporate officers hospitalized, and the inventory destroyed.

Sick in the U. P.
Oct 27, 2008 06:07 PM
In a comment to this article: Why we all need the Democrats to abandon gun control
[Sounds like some people are in full support of sending us for an extended stay in the reeducation camps. I wonder if he realizes what it would entail to get 80 million (or even a significant fraction) armed people to the camps. I would like to suggest it is they that need to seek psychiatric help.--Joe]

When I was five, my first-grade teacher taught us to repeat a random string of syllables she called "the Pleh-juh, Vuh-Lee-junss".  We were to recite it every day at the beginning of class for the next several years, while holding our right hand to the left side of the chest (reportedly, this is where our hearts were to be found inside the chest cavity).

Getting ready for that first day of school (I never attended kindergarten) my mother told me, "Now, do what the teacher tells you".  No "goodbye" no "be sure to learn something new and interesting so you can come back and tell me about it."  Just "Do what you're told."  I was frightened.
And so we learned to repeat these random syllables, every day, for years.

It was only much later in life that I began to wonder whether these syllables could be broken out into actual words, and even later before I wondered what the actual words meant.  No one ever attempted to teach us.  I suppose the teachers were doing this exercise for the same reason we kids were doing it-- because we were told to do it.  If you'd asked me, at age six, what language the Pleh-juh, Vuh-Lee-junss was in, I'd have been at a loss for an answer.  Surely it's a trick question.  Are you trying to make fun of me?  I want my mother...

"Eye Pleh-juh Vuh-Lee-junss, tootheuh flag, of the united states uvuhmerika, and toothuhrepublik for whitchit stands...Won nation, induhvizuhble (invisible?) with libertee and just us four all."  I knew there were actual words in there (I could recognize several) but it never occurred to me even to wonder about them.  All the other kids apparently did the same thing, for the same reason, and never spoke about it.  It was simply the thing to do because we were told, like so many of the other things we did in school for no readily apparent reasons and no explanation.  The school principal would occasionally step in, see that we were at attention, right hands on the left sides of our chest cavities, facing the flag and reciting all the correct syllables in the correct order, and it all appeared to be fine and dandy (the principal was vastly more powerful than God.  He could physically grab you by the arm, shake you, and demand; "Why were you doing that?  Huh?  Why? To which you invariably gave the standard reply; "I don't know...")  Wonderful how the kids are learning respect for the flag of their country, and the critically important principles it represents!  He left satisfied.  The God was satiated.  All was well.

But they never taught us a damned thing about it.  Nothing.  Ever.  Likewise, we were taught "America the Beautiful" and "God Bless America" and we'd occasionally sing "Alaska & Hawaii" (this was in 1963 when those were brand new states. We knew nothing about such things, but dutifully repeated the syllables) and no one ever discussed the lyrics.  At all.  It wasn’t until I was out of high school that I began to actually learn some of this stuff, such as the difference between a republic and a straight democracy, or what a pledge is, or an allegiance.  That was after the effects of having my curiosity crushed to death in school had started to wear off.

 

Richard P. Feynman wrote about this in his autobiography.  As a professor of theoretical physics, he often visited other universities.  When on a visit to a South American university (in Brazil, IIRC) he was introduced to a class of very high-level students (which is to say they got extremely good grades).  It took him some time speaking with them to figure out that they knew next to nothing.  They could recite, practically word for word, from the text books but when it came to understanding and applying the concepts they were at a total loss.

 

This is the Soviet model, come here to roost in our public education system.  Hope you like crap.

From admittedly "not the wisest person in the world":

One way to probably lower gun use would be to make the price of the bullet higher. I think one bullet should cost almost as much as a gun and I think bullets should be sold individually.

I feel that if people had to pay a lot more for bullets, they wouldn't buy them as freely.

I'm not the wisest person in the world, but I know if people had to pay $100 just for one bullet, people would think twice about how important it really is to kill themselves or other people with that bullet.

The black market starts appearing when the tax on something goes above 15%. $100 for a single round is on the order of 20,000%. Her suggestion would work about as well as the prohibition against recreational drugs and probably would use much of the same supply chain.

Jeff has other comments.

Prolific writer, economist and historian, Thomas Sowell, gives us some frank talk about our self-appointed intellectuals.  I post it here for some who have felt it necessary to tell us that they are smart, or that those from whom they get their ideas are smart.  Seriously, if I haven't noticed it already, your telling me won't help either of us, one way or the other.  Here's a small sample of Sowell's piece on the subject;

What is more telling, form [rather than substance] was enough to impress the intellectuals, not only then but even now, years after the facts have been revealed...

That is one of many reasons why intellectuals are not taken as seriously by others as they take themselves.

How right you are, Mr. Sowell (I mean, yeee haaww, Baby!)  He continues;

The intellectual levels of politicians are just one of the many things that intellectuals have grossly misjudged for years on end.

During the 1930s, some of the leading intellectuals in America condemned our economic system and pointed to the centrally planned Soviet economy as a model— all this at a time when literally millions of people were starving to death in the Soviet Union, from a famine in a country with some of the richest farmland in Europe and historically a large exporter of food.

New York Times Moscow correspondent Walter Duranty won a Pulitzer Prize for telling the intelligentsia what they wanted to hear— that claims of starvation in the Ukraine were false.

Things never seem to change, do they?

As an aside, when I use the word "socialist" to describe people who express anti-capitalist ideas, I mean it.  I know what the word means and I know where the ideas came from even if socialists don't.  I'll use it when it fits, even if the socialists protest, scream, hold their breath, or try to brow-beat me into silence.  If you disagree, get a bloody dictionary, or better yet, a history book.  A very old one.  If you consider yourself a progressive intellectual, never mind.  It won't help (see above quotes).

But that's not the main subject of Sowell's piece.  I'll summarize it with a simple thought; logically, if you had some horrific defect in your ability to perceive reality, surely you'd be the last to know.  Wouldn't you?  Keeping that in mind, go ahead and read the whole piece.  It won't make you comfortable but it will certainly interest you, personally, one way or the other.

I have absolutely no use for protecting those trafficking in illegal guns. Even those who would do so on principle. Street guns, slithering from state to state, do too much harm.

Fred Lebrun
November 12, 2008
Lock, load and try taking aim at the illegal handguns
[This is from a guy that claims to support gun ownership. This was the first instance I had heard of guns slithering. I would have thought they sort of hopped when the slide release was disengaged. But maybe this "street gun" he talks about is some new type that I'm not familiar with.

Regardless of their mode of locomotion Lebrun has a very naive viewpoint of the world. He thinks the following would somehow be a good idea and wouldn't be a problem for gun owners:

...a national identification system for handguns. A computerized system that would be accessible to all law enforcement agencies, and that would standardize the requirements for handgun ownership coast to coast.

What he apparently doesn't understand is there is already a Federal standard requirement for handgun ownership coast to coast. It's called the Second Amendment. And even with that there are people who been chipping away at that with waiting periods (the original Brady Act), restrictions on who can purchase (age, prior felony convictions, prior domestic violence convictions and accusations), storage requirements, and types of handguns ("junk guns", "Saturday Night Specials", "armor piercing", too powerful, too concealable, too many rounds). This incremental approach is what the people of the UK bought into which ultimately resulted in their complete loss of handguns.

It appears he is suggesting universal registration of handguns. He is hopelessly naive if he believes this will fly. He need look no further than Canada to see their gun registration failure. Then he should try to answer Just One Question.--Joe]

Update: Jeff and Sebastian both have posts up about the same article.

It's amazing to me. I've been reading more of the comments on mainstream news articles about Obama and guns. People say things like "Obama has clearly stated he supports the Second Amendment".

Well, yes, he has said that. But he also says on his website:

Address Gun Violence in Cities: As president, Barack Obama would repeal the Tiahrt Amendment, which restricts the ability of local law enforcement to access important gun trace information, and give police officers across the nation the tools they need to solve gun crimes and fight the illegal arms trade. Obama and Biden also favor commonsense measures that respect the Second Amendment rights of gun owners, while keeping guns away from children and from criminals who shouldn't have them. They support closing the gun show loophole and making guns in this country childproof. They also support making the expired federal Assault Weapons Ban permanent, as such weapons belong on foreign battlefields and not on our streets.

He clearly states he supports a gun ban. That is his way of supporting the Second Amendment?

One commenter wrote:

Also, Obama doesn't want to take your gun away. He has stated that he does not see why citizens need semi and fully automatic weapons. That's it.

My response was:

"That's it."?? That would eliminate about half the the firearms currently being sold and nearly all of my guns. Let's translate that into 13th Amendment infringement language instead of Second Amendment infringement language: "Our candidate just wants to enslave Jews, Blacks, Asians, Mexicans, Muslims, Catholics, and homosexuals. That's it."

It just doesn't get any more clearly stated than that yet they can't seem to get why we are upset with Obama's position on guns.

Here is a video with Chris Cox of the NRA on Fox News and Fox only quotes the part of Obama's website where he says he supports the Second Amendment. Not the part I quoted above where he says he wants to ban guns.

What media bias?

Update: And via Sebastian I find we now have audio of him saying he supports a Federal ban on concealed carry laws. That is how he "supports" the Second Amendment.

From the Crap for Brains file:

The court records say Cowart and Schlesselman also bought nylon rope and ski masks to use in a robbery or home invasion to fund their spree, during which they allegedly planned to go from state to state and kill people.

For the Obama plot, the legal documents show, Cowart and Schlesselman “planned to drive their vehicle as fast as they could toward Obama shooting at him from the windows.”

“Both individuals stated they would dress in all white tuxedos and wear top hats during the assassination attempt,” the court complaint states. “Both individuals further stated they knew they would and were willing to die during this attempt.”

It sounds to me like they weren't getting enough oxygenated blood into their drug circulation system.

Wendy Cukier is at it again:

It's one of the many measures that can help," Ryerson professor and gun control advocate Wendy Cukier said yesterday. "When guns are removed from homes, it reduces the chance they are misused or stolen ... That can have an impact on public safety."

The amnesty program, Pixels for Pistols, is a joint endeavour with the 26-store Henry's camera chain, based on Church St. in Toronto. For four weeks, Toronto residents who hand over a gun, legal or not, will receive a digital camera, either a Nikon Coolpix S52 or a Coolpix P60, listed at $230 and $190 on the Henry's website. The offer includes photography lessons.

I find odd she doesn't recommend turning over your car and money to the government too. Those might be misused as well. Oh, wait, the Democrats in this country are saying that. 

Jeff has other comments on the plan.

Via Dave Hardy (from last week--I'm still getting caught up from being on vacation) I discovered someone has a serious comprehension problem:

Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels says he's hoping for "further clarity" on his authority to ban guns on city property.

He said Wednesday the city has a "moral responsibility" to pursue what he calls common sense gun laws.

Attorney General Rob McKenna issued a nonbinding opinion Monday that says cities lack the authority to ban guns because local laws would conflict with state regulations.

One would think the mayor would have hear of D.C. v. Heller. And if that wasn't enough, in case you forgot, the AG said, using the plain and simple words, "The answer to your question is no."

Perhaps Nickels needs a "clue by four" to assist him in comprehending simple sentences. If so, The Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms says they are ready to supply the necessary clarification in the form of a lawsuit.

This seems so odd to me. How can they possibly make such a claim?

Judge Richard A. Posner, in an article in The New Republic in August, wrote that Heller’s failure to allow the political process to work out varying approaches to gun control that were suited to local conditions “was the mistake that the Supreme Court made when it nationalized abortion rights in Roe v. Wade.”

Would he say the same about the right to a trial by jury, freedom of religion, or freedom of speech? The RKBA, is a specific, enumerated right. Yet Posner thinks it should be subject to "the political process"? If that were the case then what does he think a right really is?

And if you read his article in The New Republic you will find he misstates facts and overlooks things like the state constitutions at nearly the same time as the U.S. Constitution that specifically spelled out the RKBA as an individual right.

How can someone like this be considered fit to be a judge?

Or what about this?

“In both Roe and Heller,” Judge Wilkinson wrote, “the court claimed to find in the Constitution the authority to overrule the wishes of the people’s representatives. In both cases, the constitutional text did not clearly mandate the result, and the court had discretion to decide the case either way.”

What about the wishes of the people's representatives in Alabama, Mississippi, and the other deep south states of 50 years ago. Should have have been respected?

It seems to me that these judges are unable or unwilling to embrace the concept of inalienable rights.

If I were able to change the structure of our government one of the changes I would make is there would be specific provisions for a small minority to overthrow any law which plausibly granted to the government powers beyond those enumerated in the constitution. It seems too many people are unable to think of there being a problem that would not benefit from a government solution. And what I think of when government tries to solve problems is best described by the picture here.

<heavy sigh>

What follows is what the believers of unity think of gun owners. Sometimes I just have to shake my head at the extraordinary displays of bigotry and ignorance of those that think they are enlightened. From the comments:

bengaliman Oct 20 08, 11:03am

Ignorant fools who deserve every bit of bad news they get. Lets hope they use it on themseleves at soem point. Lets face it they are racists who wont come out with what they really think.

Ahh... yes. Someone who thinks they can read the minds of other people and is ignorant of the racist origins of gun control. I'll ignore his spelling errors...

Struggling Oct 20 08, 11:32am

Hear the store guys' closing words: He's a hard nut to crack.

Their effort to convince Marc must have been all the bullshit they were spouting about Obama.

Just shows the extremity of some people's distance from reality. Their viewing must be entirely Fox or some cable effort of even more extreme outlook. I don't know what their reading might be (Mein Kampf would be a funny suggestion but an unfair one may be??).

These are people perhaps Obama is not going to be able to convince? Perhaps his drive for votes might not need to expend so much on them?

Crazy guys.

Obama has me convinced. His record is clear.

MrPoisson Oct 20 08, 12:18pm

These are people perhaps Obama is not going to be able to convince?

Well that's a given - there's a vast population of gun totin', chequered shirted, and outspokenly racist redneck types across the states. I went (out of bemused curiosity) to a pawn shop/gun range in south Florida which was entirely staffed and frequented by a section of society you wouldn't want to have access to a pen knife let alone an enormous 7.62mm assault rifle. They all seem to possess that stubborn, unwavering, and willfully ignorant patriotism which really has no place in todays world.

I just hope the latest polls accurately reflect these idiots.

7.62mm is "enormus" and he thinks we are idiots? And how was it he determined the people at the gun range should have access to a pen knife? Was it because of their checkered shirts or was it because they were patriotic? The important part is he doesn't think people with the viewpoints opposed to his have a place in "todays world". I'm reminded of someone else who had similar thoughts.

Roosterbooster198 Oct 20 08, 12:47pm

Secession for the East and West coasts looks more attractive by the day. Secede, and leave these imbeciles to rot in Third World squalor.

This guy displays mind-boggling ignorance of reality. And he really, really, doesn't want to go there. If the heartland put an blockade on the food and water flowing into the East and West coasts within two weeks there will only be rats and cannibals crawling through the rubble of the burned out cities. The farmers, ranchers, miners, factory, and construction workers may not be able to get much content on their TV sets and their medical resources would be diminshed but they would have plenty of food, water, and ammunition as they manned the big dirt berms pushed up around the cities and put out the run away fires, and shot the arrogant elistists who believe themselves smarter and superior as they attempted to crawl out of the hell they created for themselves.

jigen Oct 20 08, 4:31pm

The National Rifle Association — which is the lobby for gun manufacturers and sellers, but poses as an organization fighting for the rights of the little guy — has been putting out literature saying 'Obama will take your guns'. The literature even looks like an Obama flier, which must be confusing for these hillbillies when they see a stack of them at the local gun-show.

http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/nra_targets_obama.html

In a way, I feel sorry for these people. They are under-educated — products of a school system the Republican Party wants to keep in place because it favors them — and fearful, because they are told to be afraid. If it comes to the crunch, these people aren't going to be the ones who survive. What will they do, make their own bullets? The stockpile won't last for long, and survival will need intelligence, strength and good health much more than cowardice, brute force and a lack of fashion sense.

The NRA is a lobby for gun manufactures and sellers? This is an extraordinarily common belief among anti-gun socialists. My hypothesis is their hatred of capitalism blinds them to reality--they are incapable of seeing the world other than in terms of the "evils of capitalism" and those that oppose socialism are either dupes of, or in collusion with, the capitalists. In the case of the NRA it is very, very clear they are completely, totally, wrong.

Under-educated? I have a BSEE and MSEE, my wife has two college degrees, our only son has a BS in computer science, and both daughters are in college. I have to wonder what sort of education jigen has such that he thinks I and/or my family are under-educated. Yes, people can and do make their own bullets. And I love it when he mentions fashion sense as related to "survival".

Ths happened in the state of South Idaho, not North Idaho where I am:

IDAHO FALLS, Idaho — An eastern Idaho woman whose boyfriend impregnated her 9-year-old daughter has been sentenced to 10 years in prison.

Isabel Chasarez, 27, must serve at least one year in prison before she is eligible for parole, 7th District Judge Brent Moss ordered Tuesday at the sentencing hearing.

Chasarez pleaded guilty in August to failing to provide proper prenatal care for her daughter.

Her 38-year-old boyfriend, Guadalupe Gutierrez-Juarez, pleaded guilty to rape in September. He is scheduled to be sentenced Oct. 28 and faces life in prison.

The girl became pregnant at age 9, sometime between Aug. 1 and Sept. 30 2007, authorities say, and gave birth in April.

It looks as if the authorities are handling the case appropriately but I'm still shocked that the egg donor was unable or unwilling to protect her offspring.

From a random link I clicked on:

One moment struck me as particularly unfortunate for McCain: When Tom Brokaw asked whether health care was a privilege, a responsibility or a right. McCain said it was a responsibility, but left unclear whose responsibility it might be. Obama said he believed it should be a right...

Did Obama really say health care should be a right?

Wow! And I thought he was supposed to be a constitutional scholar. Anyone that passed their high school government class should give Obama a failing grade for even being on the city council or the local school board for getting that one item so wrong. As a U.S. Senator he should be tried for attempted treason.

As I reported in my previous post Joshua Horwitz, executive director of the Education Fund to Stop Gun Violence, is now working from home to save money but that didn't stop him from talking about stuff he didn't know anything about to the D.C. City Council yesterday:

A gun-control advocate told the D.C. Council's public safety committee Wednesday that officials should consider adopting a complex method of ballistics tracking to help identify guns used in the city.

"In crime scenes, what we find are cartridges and no guns," said Joshua Horwitz, executive director of the Educational Fund to Stop Gun Violence. "Microstamping can provide the link between the gun and cartridge."

Mr. Horwitz's comments came during a hearing before the council's Committee on Public Safety and the Judiciary regarding gun laws in the District.

Apparently he didn't realize one or more of the following facts:

• There are no microstamped guns in production.
• Requiring guns to be microstamped would indirectly be a ban on guns in D.C.
• The Supreme Court said complete gun bans are unconstitutional.
• There are over 200 million guns in the U.S. that are not microstamped and no criminal with room temperature I.Q. would use a microstamped gun. Those with sub room temperature I.Q. will get caught without having a microstamped gun.
• Microstamping is easily defeated:
• Good choice of background music
• Microstamping research
• My opinion on microstamping

But we already knew these guys are clueless about guns and microstamping.

---

P.S. Some gun bloggers erroneously compared the suggested microstamping to Maryland and New York's "ballistic fingerprint" programs. These are very different things and cannot be directly compared. See my Microstamping research post for details on the differences.

An email from Molly H. over a month ago got lost in my in box and I just now found it while procrastinating about something else.

Remember those reinforced doors they put on the airplanes to help prevent hijackers from getting control of the plane? It turns out there aren't any restrictions on taking lock picks on board. And even if there were restrictions it is trivial to get them past security.

As Molly said, "More proof that TSA is just a security theater..." or as I like to point out the acronym TSA really should be AST for A Security Theater.

The shorter and even simpler version is, "You can't fool the free market forever even if the politicians think they can. The laws of economics can no more be changed than the laws of physics. Obama and other Democrats were the biggest contributors. Vote for McCain." Set to music:

H/T to George for the email with the link.

Update: The video was pulled and via Kevin I found the replacement.

Barack What First Amendment Obama has sent threatening letters to new agencies in Pennsylvania and Ohio demanding they not run NRA advertisements. This act should be immediate disqualification of him as a candidate on at least two different levels. One is the obvious disrespect he has for the First Amendment (as well as the Second). The other is the crass stupidity. In addition to this being the Internet age where everyone can upload or download almost any video they want in a manner that is virtually impossible to block outside of a hard core police state this makes a news story out of the NRA ads. Which means TV stations are likely to start showing the ads for free!

As Dave Hardy said people will want to see what they are forbidden to see. A psychology prof lecturing about advertising once did a quick survey in his class about signs that were effective in getting the students to spend their money on a product. He was somewhat surprised to find one of the most compelling signs was "Under 17 not admitted without parent or guardian." Has Obama never learned that people buy and read banned books (get your button here) because they are banned? The same thing applies with guns, ammo, and accessories.

Just think of the headlines (the following are copyright exempt) this act of stupidity will enable:

• Obama Campaign Running Scared (NRA web page headline)
• What Obama doesn't want you to know
• See the video Obama wants censored!
• Obama attempts to ban free speech!
• Obama jumps the gun and goes for the First first
• Obama imposing "reasonable restrictions" on human rights
• What's next? Restrictions on the right to trial by jury?

Someone this out of touch with human nature and the Bill of Rights has no place in American politics.

Update: Barack Enlightened Leader Obama also has local law enforcement pledged to come down on certain anti-Obama ads. This reminds me a lot of the early days of Adolf Hitler. Only here we have these rights specifically enumerated and Obama is, in essence, saying, "Bill of Rights? We don't need no stinking Bill of Rights!"

Update2: It's not just Obama! The Democratic Party is trying to suppress free speech. But that is to be expected I guess. It was one of the most liberal Republications and a liberal that brought us McCain-Feingold. Repression of economic and political freedom--it's what liberals do.

From "The Gun Guys":

Gun Pusher: noun. 1. Someone who pushes guns on others whether they need, want or should have them. 2. A person who cares more about profit generated from the sale of firearms and their own power than they do about their fellow-citizens. 3. A person who can pretend that 30,000 deaths from guns in the United States is simply the price we pay for "freedom".

Like a drug dealer, a gun pusher will seduce you into believing that you want and need a gun. After all they say, "guns will keep you safe." What they fail to tell you are about the terrible side effects of guns in America.

...

The NRA is little more than a two-bit gun pusher. Like a drug-dealer they peddle their wares regardless of consequence or conscience.

Beware of the gun pusher, they will leave no stone unturned in their relentless pursuit of profit and power. Schools, churches, malls, playgrounds, national parks and airports are all fair game to them. And, believe us when we say, the last thing they are concerned about is the safety of you, your family or your loved ones.

Apparently he is unaware that of those 30,000 deaths by gunfire half were suicides that nearly all would have occurred even if there were no guns on the planet.

Apparently he is unaware that of the remaining 15,000 deaths thousands of them were from legitimate self-defense by both the police and private citizens.

Apparently he is unaware that at least 74 Million people lost their lives in the last century because of gun control. Do the math on that when you estimate your price for freedom.

He apparently is unaware the NRA teaches thousand of people in personal protection and safety with and without guns each year.

Apparently he believes firearms in the hands of the police are not about the security and safety of innocent lives.

And finally, does this guy really think he is psychic and knows what we are and are not concerned with? He is actually closer to a psychotic disconnect from reality. But then we already knew he has mental problems. This isn't really news.

This NRA-backed bill repealing DC's gun laws serves only the political interests of the gun lobby and the profit motives of the gun industry. Make no mistake, such a radical reversal of DC's gun policy will cost lives.

Kristen Rand
VPC Legislative Director
September 17, 2008
House of Representatives Votes to Repeal District of Columbia's Gun Laws
[I think there are a few things Ms. Rand erred in when she make this statement:

1. Repealing DC's gun laws was done by the U.S. Supreme Court last June, not the House of Representatives or "the gun lobby".
2. She says "profit" like it were a bad thing. It is not. Profits indicate willing customers finding willing suppliers of goods and services. But her apparent dislike of this is to be expected--there is a very high correlation between socialists/communists and those that wish to remove guns from individuals. For her to do that puts her at odds with the entire basis of our country and in alignment with the most brutal, murderous tyrants in history. This alone should be reason enough to be suspicious of anything she advocates.
3. The "profit" from sales into DC will be such a tiny blip on the balance sheet of "gun industry" they won't even notice and cannot be considered a motive.
4. The lives it will cost will be almost exclusively those of violent criminals. And even then one should expect the overall death rate to decrease to levels approaching that of nearby Virginia with firearm laws much closer to being in alignment with the specific enumerated right guaranteed by the Bill of Rights. Hence, either she regards all lives as equally important or she is unaware the repressive gun laws in DC did not enhance safety.

In those two simple two sentences there were four errors. Let's enumerate the things she got correct:

1. The bill is backed by the NRA.
2. It is a radical reversal of the DC's gun policy.

Final score 2-4. With the two valid points being irrelevant to what is really should be an answer to Just One Question. If I were grading her essay as if it were a test I would give it 0.5 out of 10. The spelling and grammar were adequate.--Joe]

I think Kevin Baker has his problems with the TSA mostly fixed now. I'm pretty sure he is now able to avoid getting special treatment when he flies. But had the normal channels not worked he could have just changed his name. Apparently it works quite well.

My contempt for the TSA Security Theater is at an all time high. But there is a certain amount of truth to the claim that a great deal of security is about feeling secure rather than actually being secure. However this doesn't lower my contempt of the TSA, it just raises my contempt for sheeple and all government (redendency alert) idiots.

...than Thomas Sowell did in his recent piece, "Idols of Crowds";

[Iran] is a country whose president has already threatened to wipe a neighboring country off the map. Does anyone need to draw pictures?

When terrorists get nuclear weapons, there will be no way to deter suicide bombers. We and our children will be permanently at the mercy of the merciless.

Reading Sowell's post, I can't help seeing the faces of those women on the verge of fainting with ecstasy at that big rally in Germany in the 1930s.  Those were the enraptured, delighted, happy, adoring faces of mass death.

I'm about fed up with this blatant PDS (public display of stupidity).  The leftists keep telling us that we, the mean old meanies in other states, are "forcing our will" on the poor, besieged Washington DC residents, telling them they can't make their very own gun laws.  Oh, the humanity-- a local government isn't being allowed to violate the constitution!  Woe be to us all-- the very concept of democracy is being tortured to death by those eeevil and dastardly NRA-puppet, gun-clinging, pig Neocons!  Boo Hoo Hoo Hoooooo!  And, oh yeah-- Boo Hoo Hoooooo!

Just for fun (and because it will raise the ire of just about everyone) lets look at the fake indignation over "states' rights" and the phony demand for "local democratic control" among the left when it comes to abortion.  States' rights on abortion laws anyone?  Nope.  No way.  None exist.  No local control rights exist for abortion because abortion is a constitutional right, damn it.  Five justices said so, and you can't mess with a constitutional right!  Not even a little bit, because if we allow a little bit, who knows how far things would go toward limiting the right to an abortion?  Why, some people even want to ban abortion, don't you know!

We can now see that even the most anti-American, gun-hating, bigoted Marxist, anti-constitution leftists, including those in the Supreme Court, do in fact understand how rights are supposed to work.  They've told us.  There should be no option, for any state or locale, for voting away that which is a right, or for encroaching on it in any way whatsoever.  To do so would violate the right of the individual to an abortion, and that would be wrong no matter how many people want to do it, no matter where they are, and no matter how good their intentions.  Some have even gone so far as to insist that, as a right, abortion should be paid for by the taxpayers, on demand, to minors, with no parental notification, and in so demanding, they have been taken very, very seriously by the left.

I as a parent can't send my kid to school with a couple of asprin because drugs are "bad" and many schools have zero tolerance for drugs, but when it comes to abortion-- a "right" that isn't addressed in the constitution, wasn't written into the constitution by the prescribed amendment process but was instead created out of thin air by five people in black robes, it's a right which is so absolute that my under-age kid should get an abortion on demand, anywhere in the fifty states and the district of Columbia, without parental notification, and have it paid for by the state.  Got it.

Leftists assert some new-found rights and behave one way, while they disagree with other, well-established and clearly enumerated rights and behave in the opposite manner.  Imagine if we were to take the hard-core "abortion rights" advocates' position regarding our second amendment rights:

Anyone who wants a gun gets the gun of their choice, on demand, with plenty of ammunition, at any time, anywhere in the Union, with no parental notification, paid for with taxpayer money, and no state or locale should be allowed to make any laws regarding guns or other weapons because it's a constitutional right and you can't mess with a constitutional right, ever, ever, no matter what, period.  (hey, they're going to do it anyway, right?  may as well give them quality guns and show them how to use them properly in a controlled environment)

Which way do you want it, lefties?  Tell you what; I'm confident enough as a parent that I believe I can convince my daughter to do the right thing when it comes to controlling her sex life.  You can have your way with abortion if we can have our way regarding the real Bill of Rights, including the second amendment (except we'll throw out the tax-payer funding bit, because that's just stupid as hell).  Deal?  And I don't want to ever hear, "If it saves the life of just one child..."  We're on to you lefties.  Knock it off.

How about we take the assertion, "my body, my choice" and apply it to the second amendment? "My body, my choice, including the means of protecting it."

What's the problem here?

A small fire broke out inside a building in the 3400 block of River Hills Drive in Newtown Friday night.

When firefighters opened the building they found hundreds of thousands of rounds of ammunition. Some had been fired, others had not.

"We have some concerns in the fact that we have some rather large quantities of explosive materials," said Chief Tom Driggers, of the Little Miami Joint Fire and Rescue District.

Edwin Wolfer III owns the property and the ammunition. Wolfer is licensed to own it and is a dealer.

Chief Driggers, however, said his fire department should have been made aware that it was there.

"Because of the uncertainty as to why it's in here, the quantities of it's being here – the fact that there was no permit process – we've notified the ATF," said Chief Driggers.

The Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms along with the Hamilton County bomb squad responded to the scene.

A couple weeks ago Todd Jarrett told a bunch of gun bloggers he has about 250K (or was it 350K?) rounds of loaded ammo and the components for another 650K at his place. And the guy above is a dealer not just a consumer. Chief Driggers needs to realize that there are a lot of people that have 10s of thousands of rounds of ammo in their homes. It's easy to go through a 1000 rounds per month and someone that has buys a years supply when the price is expected to go up isn't out of the ordinary and isn't a threat of some kind. U.S. consumers go through something like nine  Billion rounds per year. The dealers aren't going to be buying and storing in quantities of a few hundred.

There is science, logic, reason; there is thought verified by experience. And then there is California.

Edward Abbey
[Ain't that the truth.--Joe]

The Harrold Texas school district went through a careful deliberate examination of the situation and came up with the obvious conclusion:

The biggest champion of the school district's policy, superintendent David Thweatt, said his goal is to arm the good guys in order to deter the bad who might want to turn tiny Harrold, with its 100 students, into the next Columbine, the Denver-area high school that was the site of the infamous 1999 shooting that left 15 dead, including the two student gunmen.

School massacres of the past have shown they can happen anywhere, Thweatt said,

Two geographic factors make Harrold's school vulnerable, he said. It is only about 1,000 feet from the four-lane U.S. 287, yet it's 18 miles away from the local Sheriff's Office.

"I don't want to call a parent and say, 'Some bad guy came in, and your kid's dead, and we didn't have a good plan to prevent it,' " Thweatt said last week from his office.

...

Lee said that Thweatt isn't unreasonable either when he talks about the school's remote location. The 999-square-mile county is patrolled by no more than three deputies at any given time. Should his men be on the wrong side of the county during an emergency at Harrold's school, it might take 25 minutes for them to arrive, Lee said.

But the Brady Center has their heads in the sand as well as talking out of both sides of their mouth:

According to the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, a gun-control advocacy group, fewer than 1 percent of school-age homicide victims are killed on school grounds or on their way to or from school.

"Schools are amongst the safest places in America," said Brian Siebel, senior attorney at the Brady Center. "Homicides at schools are the extraordinary, exceptional situation. Our no-gun policies are very effective."

I suppose it depends on how you determine "effective". If they means in terms of disarming victims, then yes, they have been very effective. And disarmed victims means more deaths of innocent children in our schools. But when confronted I'm certain they won't admit to that interpretation. They prefer to believe letting the good guys be armed is a bad thing.

If the Brady Center claims bans in guns in schools are a good thing then they must rejoice when a nut-case shoots up a school unopposed by an armed innocent. Oh, that's right, they do dance in the blood of the innocents.

Agree with me or not, the Second Amendment hinges on the necessity of a militia (National Guard or Reserve) for the protection of our country; not as an excuse for anybody with a few extra dollars, a chip on the shoulder, or a grudge, to become an armed vigilante.

Elliott Greenblott
August 30, 2008
Letter to the editor of Brattleboro Reformer
[Ironically he goes on to compare the Heller decision to the Dred Scott decision. In the Heller decision the right of the people to bear arms and throw off tyrants who would make us slaves was confirmed. But the Dred Scott decision said certain people were slaves and could not sue for their freedom. And his basic underlying assumption that the "armed vigilante" was the conclusion of the Heller decision is totally without foundation. I can only conclude he has mental problems.--Joe]

This normally wouldn't be a story-- police departments need guns.  Can you say, "Duuuhhh"?  But it is a story over on WCBSTV (brought to our attention by Uncle).

Apparently, our police departments haven't gotten the loon's memo; "Violence never solves anything."
Or the other loon memo; "Having a gun is more likely to endanger you than to stop an attacker."
Or; "Arming yourselves will do nothing but 'provoke' the bad guys (sorry-- victims of American imperialism) and escalate the violence."

Then there's;
"It increases our range and our accuracy," Sgt. Brian Lyman said.

Uh...9 mm parabellum in a submachinegun = "range" and "accuracy"?  OK I'll play; compared to what?  I hope he's referring to an M-4 rather than the UMP mentioned in the article as an "assault rifle" (for those of you in Rio Linda; a submachinegun [or machine pistol] is not an assault rifle [the former was created decades before the latter] but given their level of education on controversial, hot-button political issues, we don't expect a single journalist in the U.S. to know the difference [UMP stands for Universal Machine Pistol, IIRC]).

"I think if they think they need [submachineguns], then it is good that they have them," one woman said.

OK, granted, so we can throw out all the silly arguments that say you must have criminal intent, or be paranoid and/or racist and/or a redneck drunken testosterone-poisoned yahoo, before you'd ever want a gun.  Glad we got that cleared up.

"When you have to wait, five, 10, 15 minutes... during that interim people could be dying..."

That one is the best.  I guess when a cop says it it's clear and sensible, but when we're talking about an armed citizen in the absence of any police, it's a totally different paradigm.  Five, 10, 15 minutes, or any amount of time for that matter, to wait for police to arrive after calling 911, is a perfectly acceptable amount of time for people to be dying.  Just ask any anti gun-rights organization.

"Many departments in Bergen County are using Homeland Security grants to purchase these weapons."

You mean more submachineguns are needed in the civilian population to secure the Homeland (police are in fact civilians, no)?  That makes no sense in light of the fact that, as we've been told, 9/11 was an inside job and there is no terrorist threat (I heard Mike Moore say the latter himself, so we know it has to be true-- he got an Academy Award didn't he) guns are more dangerous to their owners, violence never solves anything, and having weapons provokes your enemies.  Obviously then, the Homeland Security assertion is just cover for the "real reason" police are acquiring automatic weapons.

But I'm forgetting something-- the Left hate police almost as much as they hate liberty (remember; in the 1960s police were referred to collectively as "pigs") so I expect they'd go along with the above criminal-intent/paranoid/racist/yahoo theory to explain why police want guns, and let it go at that.