Category Archives: Gun Rights

Quote of the day—Michael Z Williamson

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One of my favorite gags is to point out to these very serious people posting these claims that their “reasoning” is based on magic. After all, the underlying premise is that the mere presence of a gun causes someone to kill or commit suicide. It’s as if they think people see a gun and are suddenly compelled to shoot themselves or someone else. The shaping of metal and plastic into a gun imbues it with magical powers that seizes the minds of normal men, causing them to go violently crazy.

Michael Z Williamson
November 1, 2015
Impractical Magic
[Via email from Jay Dee.

I also like Williamson’s “magical dirt” found in the same blog post.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Donald L. Cline

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The Brady Act background checks have never prevented a crime nor criminal access to a firearm in the history of the Act and was never intended to: The Brady Act was and is intended to sucker citizens into waiving their RIGHT to keep and bear arms in exchange for a revocable government permission government has no lawful authority to issue or deny.

Donald L. Cline
March 22, 2021
THE BRADY ACT IS UNCONSTITUTIONAL
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]

How to make your own primers

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I received a link to Homemade Primer Course via email from Rolf. I put a copy on my server as well.

This is the description of the document and author:

This document describes how to make homemade ammunition primers. Approaches to make corrosive and noncorrosive primers are covered.

W. Marshall Thompson PhD

Revision Date: June 28, 2019

I found it fascinating reading. It starts with how primers work and the history of primers, then tells how to make primers that are extremely simple and safe to make but are somewhat less reliable and powerful than commercial grade primers, and concludes with how to make commercial grade primers and even “green” (lead free) state of the art primers. It’s amazing!

Thank you Rolf.

Quote of the day—Xtine Siouxie @XtineSiouxie

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We should implement these guys’ worst nightmare and confiscate all their assault rifles and machine guns. There’s only one reason to have these types of weapons and it sure isn’t protection.

Xtine Siouxie @XtineSiouxie
Tweeted on March 17, 2021
[Who’s this “we” you are talking about?—Joe]

Quote of the day—Amanda Marcotte

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So there’s a great deal of talk now about what can be done to stem the rising tide of pro-terrorism sentiment in the country, from individuals trying to “deprogram” QAnon family members to the Department of Justice, under newly confirmed Attorney General Merrick Garland, prioritizing anti-terrorism initiatives. But this Atlanta shooting, which so far has all the hallmarks of a self-radicalized “lone wolf” attack, is a reminder that the single best way to combat domestic terrorism is with a policy that’s both mundane and yet politically loaded: gun control.

Amanda Marcotte
March 17, 2021
The best tool for fighting terrorism
[Uhh…. wow! It is almost difficult to comprehend the level of her cluelessness. Has she any sense of history? Or reality for that matter.

If she begins to show signs of being connected to reality I would like to suggest she start her study of history with gun control in Lexington and Concord in April of 1775.—Joe]

Fantasy

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From Take All The Guns @GunzTake:

Gun violence is an epidemic rivaled only by COVID-19 in our time. As we are taking progressive steps to eliminate COVID, so we should also work to eliminate guns in America. I have a plan that could result in a gun free America within a generation.

1. Congress must add several Supreme Court justices to undo the harmful and immoral work done by the Trump administration
2. Pass a bill to add all existing firearms to the NFA Registry and give a refundable tax credit to offset registration fees. Close the registry after the initial 90 day registration period.
3. Pass a bill revoking Federal Firearms Licenses in interstate commerce. Authorize the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms and Explosives to build a database of all gun purchases in the past 20 years using the 4473s held by the closed FFLs.
4. Order the BATFE to begin a review of the existing NFA Registry and cross-reference the known records. Use the resources of the BATFE and FBI to track down any inaccurate records.
5. Work with the major banks and credit card companies to purchase records pertaining to the private purchases of firearms to correlate with the 4473s as in step 4.
6. Once a suitable period has passed to allow inconsistent records to be reconciled, use a combination of civil and criminal sanctions to encourage those who are illegally holding unregistered guns to turn them in. This can include: using bank KYC rules to restrict their financial transactions, use the no-fly list to prevent interstate and international travel, use e-verify to prevent employment and use the social security database to contact existing employers.

Thus the vast majority of firearms in private hands will be known and restricted within several months, the stragglers will be dealt with within several years, and within a generation guns will be out of private hands without repealing the Second Amendment or causing a large scale violent conflict.

As it violates much of the Bill of Rights and various other parts of the U.S. Constitution that would have be quite the court packing to pass muster. And that would be the easy part. Persuading law enforcement, even the ATF and FBI, banking, and airlines, to go along with it would be “interesting” as well.

And if I where him, I would not concern myself with “large scale violent conflict”. Someone at Twitter with sufficiently high access privileges would be “persuaded” to reveal sufficient information to track him down in less than a month and expose him to “small scale violent conflict”.

I suspect the guy is just a troll. But it almost for certain is an entertaining fantasy for some people.

Quote of the day—Colion Noir

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You know, I find it ironic that in one breath you say no one needs an “assault weapon” as if that’s the most powerful gun in the world. But then in another breath you say people need more than an “assault weapon” to fight against a tyrannical government. Hell! Sounds like we need more than an assault weapon. Considering the whole point of the Second Amendment was to put the people in the best position to check their government.

Colion Noir
August 7, 2019
Joe Biden Admits He Wants to Confiscate Guns “BINGO”
[It’s interesting listening to Biden. He contradicts himself from sentence to sentence.

One could claim he is senile and does not recognize what he is saying is nonsensical. I suspect it’s something far less benign.

I suspect it is that he lies so frequently, and gets away with it so often, that his brain does not bother to check for consistency. Truth telling is all about being consistent with oneself and reality. Biden appears to be incapable of either.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Wally Kennedy @Wallykennedy41

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Don’t even try the argument that an AR-15 is for sportsmen. Any animal smaller than a great white shark would be ripped to shreds by this civilian version of the M-16.

Wally Kennedy @Wallykennedy41
Tweeted on March 13, 2021
[I’m not going to argue with you Wally. Here’s my statement:

People don’t have to justify their exercise of the natural right to keep and bear arms. You, and others like you, just have to respect it. Now, go get some help for your nearly terminal case of ignorance.

It would be funny if there weren’t so many people who believed such crazy talk.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Robb Allen (@ItsRobbAllen)

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As an enlisted Marine, I worked with officers like this for 8 years.

Stuffed shirts with no constitutional authority to limit your arms have no place on our streets. We must take bold action to point at them, laugh in their faces, and tell them where they can shove it.

Robb Allen (@ItsRobbAllen)
Tweeted on March 2, 2021
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]

Quote of the day—MTHead

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The real problem I see is. Were in the middle of the, Might is Right phase. But our side hasn’t figured that out yet.

Law is a crap pile the communist rooster climbed upon to crow. Law is for civilization. And those that understand it’s purpose in upholding civilization.

And communist don’t get it. Their never going to understand it. It matters not why.
Talking law to a communist is like explaining quantum physics to a cerebral monster. We should stop, lest we prove own insanity.

Whatever happens is going to be lawful. Why? Because the WINNER is going to write the story. Period.

MTHead
March 11, 2021
Comment to Bypassing all Federal gun laws
[There is more than a little truth in this.

I’m reminded of:

  • The unification of the Hawaiian Islands where the aggressors of one island massacred the rulers and troops of the other island. Today, the natives celebrate the day of the massacre.
  • The U.S. Civil war where many of the people of the southern states thought of it, and many still think of it, as the war of northern aggression. The people of the northern states think of it as the preservation of the Union and the freeing of the slaves.
  • Today WWII in Europe is almost always described as the liberation of nations from German domination. At the time many of the German people thought of it as the unification of Europe to bring peace and, to a much lessor extent, “The Final Solution to the Jewish problem”.
  • The USSR promised a classless society and equality for all. For nearly 70 years they insisted that the utopia was only a few years away. The clearly desirable goal was to everyone according to their need and from everyone according to their ability. The west sees the USSR as dictatorship which murdered 10s of millions of their own citizens and oppressor of the neighboring nations.

A generation from now what will the narrative in the U.S. be? The nation was cleansed of the racist, sexist, gun worshiping, bigoted Republicans? Or, the U.S. Constitution, liberty, and the rule of law was restored?—Joe]

Quote of the day—Mike Thompson

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This bill is a critical step toward preventing gun violence and saving lives.

Mike Thompson
U.S. Representative (D-California)
March 11, 2021
House Approves Measures to Expand Firearm Background Checks
[I’m tempted to say this is an outright lie and the Thompson knows better. Surely he knows the history of his own state and background checks which were found to have no effect on death by gunshot.

But it’s also possible to parse his words carefully and claim he is only being deceptive rather than a bald-face liar.

He could be aware and planning to take advantage of the only “accomplishment” of universal background checks for the transfer of firearms, gun registration, followed by confiscation. Then with far fewer guns in the general population there will probably be fewer people suffering gunshot wounds.

This wouldn’t mean the general population would be safer. It just means the mechanism by which they are injured by common criminals would change. Instead of bullet wounds it would be knives, blunt instruments, fists, and feet which dominate the injuries.

The total number of dead would likely would increase as well, but the lives saved would be those of the criminal class. And this criminal class would include the genocidal politicians as well as the common street thugs.

So, Representative Thompson, which is it? Are you a bald-faced liar, or you on the side of the criminals?

My vote is for both and I hope he has the opportunity to enjoy his trial.—Joe]

Bypassing all Federal gun laws

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Last Friday I spent a few hours on the phone with lawyer friend Mike B.

Among our usual discussions for the sorry political state we are in he told me of an idea of his. “People think I’m crazy, but I think it would work.”, he said.

The idea is for the states to declare every state resident who can pass a background check to be a member of the state reserve militia and may keep and bear arms, as per U.S. v. Miller (1939) which:

…has some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia…

Zing!

Full auto, AP/incendiary/explosive/etc. ammo, suppressors, grenades, artillery, tanks, everything. Done!

That would appear to work. Assuming we could get it passed, do you see any problems with this approach? Other than, “Yeah, right. Do you think the feds care about little things like the constitution and SCOTUS decisions?”

Quote of the day—Petr Svab

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Censorship in America is peculiar in its form as it’s largely not the doing of the government. It’s not even necessarily the result of government pressure, though that now seems to be underway as well. Rather, it’s based on actors both in and out of government across the American society aligning with an ideology that’s totalitarian at its root.

It’s unlikely that Americans can rely on somebody pushing against the ideology from the top. In fact, the ideology appears to now be endorsed by a majority of the government.

Yet it may be that government measures wouldn’t offer a solution as long as a significant share of the population still subscribes to the ideology or is willing to go along with it.

As Judge Learned Hand said in his 1944 speech “The Spirit of Liberty”:

“Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it.”

It appears Americans’ stand is now to rekindle that spark of liberty in the hearts of their peers.

Petr Svab
March 9, 2021
Communist Tactics to Force Self-Censorship Sweeping America
[I know it’s tough for a lot of people to do, but it’s important. Speak up for freedom of thought, religion, assemble, association, and speech. Let people know you are proud to keep and bear arms. Stand up for liberty.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Thomas Sowell

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The fatal fallacy of gun control laws in general is the assumption that such laws actually control guns. Criminals who disobey other laws are not likely to be stopped by gun-control laws. What such laws actually do is increase the number of disarmed and defenseless victims.

Thomas Sowell
Senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University
December 23, 2016
Sowell: Gun-control laws do not make us safer
[Via a Tweet by #2A Wisdom@2AWisdom.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Frank Miniter

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Even Biden likely doesn’t know what he meant by saying he got “the number of clips in a gun banned.” And he likely also doesn’t know what he meant by saying only a person’s “biometric measure” should “pull that trigger.” We can, however, safely guess what he meant by calling gun manufacturers the “enemy,”

Frank Miniter
February 25, 2021
Editor in Chief, America’s 1st Freedom, NRA
All the President’s Anti-Gun Officials
[Agreed.

Imagine if a sitting president were to call the press “the enemy” or something similar.

Oh, we don’t need to imagine that. When President Trump took on fake news for lying they called it, “A threat to democracy.”

I think we should start calling attacks on the right to keep and bear arms, “A threat to democracy.” After all if you are unable to defend yourself should you be attacked for your beliefs, such as you believing your store shouldn’t be looted or burned and you advocate for politicians who would protect your life and property from such thugs, isn’t the right to keep and bear arms supporting democracy?—Joe]

Quote of the day—1776 United

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With HR127 being brought forward in early February of 2021, somebody tipped me off to a very small page where the phrase of the Second Amendment was being censored.  So we tried to replicate what we saw with an experiment. On Monday the 15th of February, First I posted a screenshot of the censored post, and it was fact-checked and censored behind the fact-check wall. Then I took a screenshot of the actual Second Amendment on Google and the same thing happened.

They were trying to tie it back to some misquoting of George Washington. They were saying the Second Amendment was fact-checked as not true.

1776 United
February 18, 2021
1776 United: Censoring the Second Amendment
[Emphasis added.

Perhaps, in their reality, it doesn’t actually exist. I’m okay with that. But their friends and relatives really should see that they get the help they need rather than letting them let them cause others harm when they are experiencing such delusions.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Western States Sheriffs’ Association

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  • The 2nd amendment to our nation’s constitution guarantees the individual right to keep and bear arms.
  • WSSA members have taken a firm stance on protecting this right and ensuring that no person, legally entitled to possess a firearm, realizes any pressure from laws inconsistent with the Constitution.
  • We continue to monitor this issue, both regionally and nationally and join to defeat any legislation that seeks to impair our 2nd amendment right including Amicus Briefs in support of second amendment rights in lawsuits in California, Maryland, and Colorado.

Western States Sheriffs’ Association
2018
Western States Sheriffs’ Association web site page About
[I’ve heard details via private channels which are even more reassuring.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Selmer Bringsjord et al.

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We propose to build directly upon our longstanding, prior r&d in AI/machine ethics in order to attempt to make real the bluesky idea of AI that can thwart mass shootings, by bringing to bear its ethical reasoning. The r&d in question is overtly and avowedly logicist in form, and since we are hardly the only ones who have established a firm foundation in the attempt to imbue AI’s with their own ethical sensibility, the pursuit of our proposal by those in different methodological camps should, we believe, be considered as well. We seek herein to make our vision at least somewhat concrete by anchoring our exposition to two simulations, one in which the AI saves the lives of innocents by locking out a malevolent human’s gun, and a second in which this malevolent agent is allowed by the AI to be neutralized by law enforcement. Along the way, some objections are anticipated, and rebutted.

Selmer Bringsjord
Naveen Sundar Govindarajulu
Michael Giancola
February 5, 2021
AI Can Stop Mass Shootings, and More
[See also this glowing review of the paper.

“…some objections are anticipated, and rebutted.” Uhhh… No.

Here are the objections they anticipated, paraphrasing:

  1. Why not legally correct AIs instead of ethically correct?
  2. What about “outlaw’ manufactures that make firearms without the AI?
  3. What about hackers bypassing the AI?

Their responses, paraphrasing in some cases:

  1. “There is no hard-and-fast breakage between legal obligations/prohibitions and moral ones; the underlying logic is seamless across the two spheres. Hence, any and all of our formalisms and technology can be used directly in a ‘law-only’ manner.”
  2. Even if the perpetrator(s) had “illegal firearms” in transit other AIs in a sensor rich environment “would have any number of actions available to it by which a violent future can be avoided in favor of life.”
  3. “This is an objection that we have long anticipated in our work devoted to installing ethical controls in such things as robots, and we see no reason why our approach there, which is to bring machine ethics down to an immutable hardware level cannot be pursued for weapons as well.”

The first objection and rebuttal doesn’t really require any response. It just doesn’t matter to me. Sure, whatever.

They dismiss the second objection with a presumption of unknowable knowledge. People smuggle massive quantities of drugs in vehicles even though the vehicles are searched by any number of sensors, dogs, and dedicated humans. What makes them think a single firearm can be possibly be detected by semi-passive or even active sensors?

More fundamentally they are avoiding the objection and providing their critics with the response of “If there are any other number of actions available” without an AI controlling access to the firearm then you don’t need the AI in the gun to begin with.

The third objection puts on full display their ignorance of firearms and perhaps mechanical devices in general. To demonstrate the absurdity of their claim imagine someone saying they were going to put an ethical AI, at an “immutable hardware level”, on a knife so it could not be used to harm innocent life.

Such people should, and would be, laughed off the stage into obscurity. It should also happen to those who seriously suggest it is possible to do this for firearms.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Lauren Boebert @laurenboebert

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Biden wants gun manufacturers held liable for shootings.

Watch out Oneida, they’re coming after you and your kitchen knives next.

Lauren Boebert @laurenboebert
Tweeted on February 14, 2021
[If you think this is ridiculous, or even exaggerated then you haven’t been paying attention to the U.K.

—Joe]