As I mentioned on Saturday coming out of the closet has it's price.  But that price could probably have been lowered with a little bit of planning.

Fish Or Man should have found an attorney prior to coming out of the closet.  Getting funding ahead of time would have been a good idea too.  The attorney could have researched the case law related to the laws in question.  Sometimes the case law will essentially turn what the legislature wrote into something very different than what the average person would think it to mean.  Once Fish Or Man decided to actually proceed he would have had a much more accurate view of what the cops could charge him with and how to respond.  He could have had a note from his lawyer to hand to the cop saying, in great detail, this is the law and my client is not violating it.

So, Fish Or Man wasn't as prepared as he should have been.  This doesn't mean that he is totally screwed yet or that we should abandon him.  I have the 23rd off from work and if the roads are decent and I can talk my wife into a trip to Spokane (about a 2 hour drive for us) I will be there to watch what happens on his first court date.  It may be that Fish Or Man is an embarrassment to the gun community and he should be “left hung out to dry“, or it could be that he is guilty only of lack of planning and we need to support him.  We'll see and I'll report back later this week.

If not a form letter then it's probably a minor modification of one.  I doubt that they really know what to say when confronted with their own bigotry.  I can't imagine their policies “ensure the effectiveness of Google ads“.  I think it is more likely the “Google Ethics Committee“ believed they were being ethical when they banned firearms.  And once a decision is made and they defend it against critics it is hard for people to admit they were wrong.  It takes very strong character to be able to do that.  Google, as a company, is probably not much above average in character.  It's just a battle we have to keep fighting one day at a time while showing all the character we can.

Subject: Re: [#17065471] Google AdSense Account Status   
From: "Google AdSense"   
Date: Mon, December 20, 2004 22:21  (GMT)
To: Joe Huffman 

Hello Joe,

Thank you for your email. I understand that you are disappointed with our
current policies. We apologize for the inconvenience. However, we have
certain policies in place that we believe will help ensure the
effectiveness of Google ads for our publishers as well as our advertisers.

We review all publishers according to our Terms and Conditions and program
policies, and we reserve the right to decline certain websites. As we
grow, we may find that we are able to expand our program to more web
publishers with a wider variety of web content.

Thank you for your feedback, and please know that we are working hard to
make the AdSense program available to as many web publishers as we can.

Please feel free to reply to this email if you have additional questions
or concerns.

Sincerely,

Emily
The Google AdSense Team

----------------
AdSense publishers now have the option to display image ads, in addition
to text ads, through AdSense. Go to
https://www.google.com/adsense/faq#imageads to learn more.

Indeed, I am now of the opinion that a compelling case for "stricter gun control" cannot be made, at least not on empirical grounds. I have nothing but respect for the various pro-gun control advocates with whom I have come in contact over the past years. They are, for the most part, sensitive, humane and intelligent people, and their ultimate aim, to reduce death and violence in our society, is one that every civilized person must share. I have, however, come to be convinced that they are barking up the wrong tree.

James Wright
Academic researcher who collaborated with Peter Rossi on the book Armed and Considered Dangerous: A Survey of Felons and their Firearms

With all the funerals and stuff going on here I was behind on things.  I think I'm caught up now. 

Technically this is somewhat old news but it doesn't appear to be widely distributed.  I got the first pointer to this info from Jihad Watch.  ABC News in Australia reports the following:

...researcher Saiful Mujani of Jakarta's Freedom Institute now believes Indonesia's Muslims are less moderate than governments and academics suggest.

"The rhetoric claiming that there is no problem in the society…to me that's too simplistic, that's wishful thinking," he said.

The Freedom Institute's survey of 1400 people across Indonesia, found that less than 60 per cent of Muslims disagreed with Imam Samudra and Dr Azahari's bombing campaigns.

Sixteen per cent, representing tens of millions of Indonesians, agreed with the bombers and another 25 per cent refused to disagree.

"There is a significant number of Indonesians, at least half, [who] do not have a negative reaction to that and they agree with silence at least, or protect this kind of activity," Mr Mujani said.

“The bombers” refers to the bombing of night clubs and hotels that have been killing Australians.  So at least 16% agree with the bombings and the actual number is probably closer to 40%.  If there are a billion Muslims in the world and the fraction remains constant worldwide (yes, I know, BIG assumption here) then that means worldwide we have close to 400 million people willing to kill us because of we don't adhere to their religious beliefs.  This is very, very scary stuff.  That has exceedingly powerful implications for our future and how we must respond to it.  So why isn't this a big topic for MSM in the US?  I thought maybe I just had missed it.  So I did a search on Google News.  My search terms were “Freedom Institute Indonesia”.  The only articles that referenced the study were these:

• ABC News Australia (same article as reported by Jihad Watch)
• ABC News Australia report on religious leaders meeting to discuss terrorism.
• The Australian
• Sydney Morning Herald

Nothing from anywhere outside of Australia.  Why is this?  Could this be the key (from the first article)?

 Details of the negative attitudes to America and Australia revealed in the survey have been held back by the US Embassy in Jakarta, which funded the poll.

The US Embassy in Jakarta held back the numbers?  The US doesn't want this information known?  Am I missing something here?  Was the study obviously poorly done?  Was this viewed as too encouraging news for the extremists?

We are in the middle of World War III and I think it's important to know the size of our enemy's supportors.

Update @ 21:45: I did a search on google.com, instead of news.google.com, for  ["Freedom Institute" Indonesia] and found these:

• Indonesia Media Online
• International NGO Forum on Indonesian Development
• Free Republic
• Taiwan News

Still no U.S. MSM reports.

Things just keep getting more fun to watch in King county.  Especially when you have things like “ballot 81“:

...a ballot written in for "Christine Rossi", hereafter known as "Ballot 81," was sent to the canvassing board earlier this week. This is astonishing in itself, since there is no such candidate and this is obviously a joke. But what is more shocking is that the canvassing board didn't throw it out, they cast this ballot for Christine Gregoire.

I'd like to think the democrat party is just digging it's grave deeper with this kind of behavior.  I still expect Gregoire to win.  The Republicans just don't lack enough ethics to stand a chance in a fight like this.

Thanks to Mindless Bit Spew for pointing this out to me.

I just sent Google essentially the same letter I sent to the ACLU:

-----Original Message-----
From: Joe Huffman
Sent: Sunday, December 19, 2004 11:06 AM
To: 'Google AdSense'
Subject: RE: Google AdSense Account Status

Because of the U.S. Justice Departments recently released memo clarifying that 2nd Amendment, despite some misunderstanding by certain parties, is in fact an individual right other than a "collective right" I would like to suggest Google reevaluate it's policy on firearms related ads.  Please see http://www.usdoj.gov/olc/secondamendment2.htm for more details.

See also the position of Alan Dershowitz:

Foolish liberals who are trying to read the Second Amendment out of the Constitution by claiming it's not an individual right or that it's too much of safety hazard don't see the danger of the big picture.  They're courting disaster by encouraging others to use the same means to eliminate portions of the Constitution they don't like.

 Alan Dershowitz
 Quoted in Dan Gifford
 The Conceptual Foundations of Anglo-American Jurisprudence in
 Religion and Reason
 62 TENN. L. REV. 759 (1995)

And that of Lawrence Tribe in "American Constitutional Law", Vol. 1, pp. 901-902

If you persist in maintaining a policy of no ads for firearms or related products then you are subject to the same claims of bigotry that you would if you had a policy against ads for Christian, Islamic, or Jewish books.  The right to keep and bear arms is an individual right guaranteed by the Bill of Rights no different than the right to religious expression.

Regards,

Joe Huffman
----
http://blog.joehuffman.org
http://www.boomershoot.org

It is just a form letter.  Nothing that wasn't on their website.  I responded, see below.

-----Original Message-----
From: ACLU Correspond 
Sent: Sunday, December 19, 2004 7:13 AM
To: Joe Huffman
Subject: Your Feedback (Message #120150)

Dear Mr. Huffman,

Thank you for the question about the ACLU's position on the Second Amendment. The national ACLU is neutral on the issue of gun control.

We believe that the Constitution contains no barriers to reasonable regulations of gun ownership. If we can license and register cars, we can license and register guns. The question therefore is not whether to restrict arms ownership, but how much to restrict it. If that is a question left open by the Constitution, then it is a question for Congress to decide.

You can find more about the ACLU's positions at http://www.aclu.org

If you are not already an ACLU member, we encourage you to help support our aggressive work on the issues you care about. To join please visit http://www.aclu.org/contribute/contribute.cfm or call 1-888-567-ACLU.

Sincerely,

D. Barber
Correspondence Manager, American Civil Liberties Union

-----Original Message-----
From: Joe Huffman
Sent: Sunday, December 19, 2004 9:13 AM
To: ACLU Correspond 
Subject: RE: Your Feedback (Message #120150)

I had already read your web page on the topic.  My suggestion was that due to new information from constitutional scholars, which I provided references to in my email, it was time for you to reevaluate your position.

Cars are not constitutionally protected as are 'arms'.

I will not be supporting the ACLU on any issue until the ACLU also defends the right to keep and bear arms issue--by far the most important issue in the Bill of Rights because it is only through the 2nd Amendment that the other rights can ultimately be guaranteed.

-joe-
----
http://blog.joehuffman.org

Foolish liberals who are trying to read the Second Amendment out of the Constitution by claiming it's not an individual right or that it's too much of safety hazard don't see the danger of the big picture.  They're courting disaster by encouraging others to use the same means to eliminate portions of the Constitution they don't like.

 Alan Dershowitz
 Quoted in Dan Gifford
 The Conceptual Foundations of Anglo-American Jurisprudence in
 Religion and Reason
 62 TENN. L. REV. 759 (1995)

Other than Google, I'm think the ACLU might also be 'interested' in the Justice Department report about the 2nd Amendment being an individual right.

Many years ago I used to be a member until I found out they didn't support cases having to do with the 2nd Amendment.  So for years when they send me their junk mail asking me to renew my membership and give them donations I write on the form that I will give them $200 as soon as they support the 2nd Amendment, I would put it in their postage paid envelope and mail it back to them.  I've been doing this for years and years and I have yet to get a response.  I think it's time to give them some feedback about the news.

Following is the information you entered on the
American Civil Liberties Union site.

Home Phone: XXX-XXX-XXXX
Fax Number: 425-491-6239
Message:
Because of the U.S. Justice Departments recently released memo clarifying that 2nd Amendment, despite some misunderstanding by certain parties including the ACLU, is in fact an individual right other than a "collective right" I would like to suggest the ACLU reevaluate it's neutral position on the 2nd Amendment.  I have been a member of the ACLU in the past but let my membership lapse when I discovered the 2nd Amendent was somehow exempt from ACLU support.  If the ACLU does decide to actively support the 2nd Amendment as an individual right by providing support to someone whose 2nd Amendment rights are being being infringed upon I will send you all the years of back dues that I have not paid which I think will be about $300.  Please see http://www.usdoj.gov/olc/secondamendment2.htm for more details.

See also the position of Alan Dershowitz:

Foolish liberals who are trying to read the Second Amendment out of the Constitution by claiming it's not an individual right or that it's too much of safety hazard don't see the danger of the big picture.  They're courting disaster by encouraging others to use the same means to eliminate portions of the Constitution they don't like.

 Alan Dershowitz
 Quoted in Dan Gifford
 The Conceptual Foundations of Anglo-American Jurisprudence in
 Religion and Reason
 62 TENN. L. REV. 759 (1995)

And that of Lawrence Tribe in "American Constitutional Law", Vol. 1, pp. 901-902

Regards,

Joe Huffman

Just a few days ago I briefly mentioned that FishOrMan was coming out of the closet and doing things that I didn't have the courage to do. Such as this.  It didn't take long from my post about it for something to happen again.  His hearing date is Dec. 23^rd at 9 am Courtroom A, 2^nd floor of the Courthouse Annex in Spokane (I presume).

I don't really know FishOrMan and I only know the side of the story that he is telling.  But I know it's true there is no law against open carry in Washington State and the state Constitution says,  Article 1, Section 24:

The right of the individual citizen to bear arms in defense of himself, or the state, shall not be impaired, but nothing in this section shall be construed as authorizing individuals or corporations to organize, maintain or employ an armed body of men.

I would like to think that FishOrMan is a modern day Rosa Parks who was punished for daring to not sit at the back of the bus, or the gays that were beat up simply for the sport of it.  For far too many years gun owners have been treated like crap and it's time we came out of the closet and demanded our rights.

Inalienable rights are not asked or pleaded for.  They are demanded and taken, by force if necessary.  The police and politicians must stop this unjustified attack on our unalienable rights.

Three goblins gain entry to house and ask maid, at pistol point, where child is. Maid says that she doesn't know. Mother walks into room. Goblins ask mother. Mother tells them same. Second maid sees goblins and screams. Crowd gathers to see what's happening. Goblins fire to scare crowd away. Big mistake - most neighbors are military or security types. Goblins retreat into house and attempt escape across roof and out into street. First goblin is shot in leg and promptly beaten to death. Second goblin is shot in leg, beaten, and left for dead. (Made it alive to hospital; unknown if he lived.) Third goblin manages to make it to police where he falls on knees and begs officers to arrest him. Neighbors unhappy about arrest since it ruined their scores on goblin catching.

Big difference in reactions between Americans and Guatemalans."

Thomas K. Graziano,
April 18, 1994,
Guatemala City, Guatemala

From Jeff Cooper's Commentaries
Vol. 2, No. 7
3 June 1994

As you can see there are now Google ads on my blog.  I decided I made a poor gamble and lost my 'bet' so now I need to “pay up”.  I can terminate them at anytime so if I get too annoyed with them I will do that.  With the latest news on the Second Amendment being considered an individual right by the Justice Department and there not being any evidence that gun control prevents crime I think I will try pushing for a removal of there no firearms or ammunition policy again.

The Justice Department just released a report that could give us a bunch of momentum in our fight to restore our lost civil rights:

...we conclude that the Second Amendment secures a personal right of individuals, not a collective right that may only be invoked by a State or a quasi-collective right restricted to those persons who serve in organized militia units. Our conclusion is based on the Amendment's text, as commonly understood at the time of its adoption and interpreted in light of other provisions of the Constitution and the Amendment's historical antecedents. Our analysis is limited to determining whether the Amendment secures an individual, collective, or quasi-collective right.

Wonderful news.  Now the not quite so good news:

We do not consider the substance of that right, including its contours or the nature or type of governmental interests that would justify restrictions on its exercise, and nothing in this memorandum is intended to address or call into question the constitutionality, under the Second Amendment, of any particular limitations on owning, carrying, or using firearms.

I haven't read the whole thing yet.  It's long, lots of history, and lots of detail. 

Now if we can use this to drive the anti-gun people into total oblivion.  I want them struggling to keep NBC (Nukes, Biological, and Chemical) restrictions.

I said Gregoire would “win“ the governors race.  It seems they just can't stop finding more ballots in King County:

With Washington state in the middle of a recount of its amazingly close governor's race, election officials in Seattle's King County entered a warehouse Friday and found a plastic tray containing 150 misplaced ballots.

The discovery brings the number of belatedly discovered ballots to 723 in the heavily Democratic county potentially enough to swing the election to Democrat Christine Gregoire.

I really, really, want to be wrong on this.  Gregoire is very anti-gun.

I'd like to believe that the anti's [anti-gun proponents] are emotional, but I'm cynical enough to think that their ultimate leadership is driven by a cold desire for power and a grandiose need to alter the architecture of society. ... The emotionalism is their rhetorical voice, which they have selected as the best way to move the public to their attitudes and beliefs.
   
Sean Flynn
5/14/98

I decided that since Google had gone public maybe they would be less openly bigoted against gun owners.  I wasn't interested in advertising with them but I thought perhaps I would feel comfortable with them paying me money to advertise on one or more of my web sites.  Boomershoot.org gets, by far, the most traffic so I applied with that site.  I got the following rejection.  Boomershoot.org apparently violates one or more of their policies (see the links below).  When I first got the rejection below I looked at the policy and it included pyrotechnics and explosives.  It no longer does.  Now the only infringement I might be violating is this one:

Sales or promotion of certain weapons, such as firearms, ammunition, balisongs, butterfly knives, and brass knuckles

Which, technically, boomershoot.org is not doing.  It promotes the use of firearms and ammunition.  But I'm not sure they see things my way.  I thought about my rejection for quite a while and considered organizing a boycott against Google (sort of like boycotting Microsoft, very tough to do).  I have helped with that sort of thing before and we were successful.  I did a quick search and found lots of other people already with the same idea for various reasons and decided it wasn't very feasible.

So I decided I would expose them for being bigots against free speech as well as firearms.  When I got around to posting a bunch of progun blog entries on my blog I sent them a message asking about putting AdSense on my blog.  To my surprise they agreed.

So now what do I do?  I had fully expected they would turn me down and I could publicly complain about them not even wanting people to talk about guns in a favorable manner.  I can't do that but I'm not entirely sure I want to help them get advertising dollars either.  I could turn them down and complain to them about their policy, but that is kind of silly because I certainly knew about their policy when I requested they consider my blog.

Comments and suggests are welcome.

-----Original Message-----
From: Google AdSense [mailto:adsense-support@google.com]
Sent: Thursday, November 18, 2004 2:05 PM
To: joeh@boomershoot.org
Cc: Google AdSense
Subject: Google AdSense Account Status

Hello Joe,

Thank you for your interest in Google AdSense. After reviewing your
application, our program specialists have found that it does not comply
with our policies. Therefore, we're unable to accept you into Google
AdSense at this time.

We did not approve your application for the reasons listed below. If
you are able to resolve these issues, please feel free to reply to this
email for reconsideration when you have made the changes.

Issues:

  - Unacceptable site content

---------------------

Further detail:

Unacceptable site content: Your website contains content that we do not
allow at this time. Please review our policies
(https://www.google.com/adsense/policies) for a complete list of site
content not allowed on web pages.

---------------------

For a complete list of AdSense criteria, please visit:
https://www.google.com/adsense/policies?hl=en_US
https://www.google.com/adsense/localized-terms?hl=en_US

If you would like to submit another website for consideration, simply
reply to this email and provide us with the URL. If this new website
complies with our program policies, we will help you start delivering
Google ads in minutes.

Please contact us at adsense-support@google.com if you have any
questions.

Regards,

The Google Team

The National Academies just today announced Data on Firearms and Violence Too Weak to Settle Policy Debates.

The group that produced this work was composed of: The National Institute of Justice, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Joyce Foundation, Annie E. Casey Foundation, and the David and Lucile Packard Foundation.

Except for the National Institute of Justice and the Annie E. Casey Foundation the other organizations have a long distinguished history of being very anti-gun. I had never heard of the the Annie E. Casey Foundation so I did a little research and found these pages on their web site indicating they are at least midly anti-gun:

http://www.aecf.org/tarc/resource/show.php?object=example&id=241&topic_id=20
http://www.aecf.org/kidscount/indicator_briefs/teen_death.pdf

Yet when these organizations looked closely they had to conclude:

current research and data on firearms and violent crime are too weak to support strong conclusions about the effects of various measures to prevent and control gun violence

Of course this doesn't say “More Guns, Less Crime“.  It merely says, “We don't know what the effect of gun availability is on crime.“ 

If anyone, unless they are a top notch research scientist with unpublished work on this subject, continues to advocate gun control as a solution to reducing violent crime prior to new research coming out they are not only bigots, they are arrogant bigots. 

And the bigot posting comments under the name of MAD here and here has clearly established his or her position near the top of the list of arrogant bigots.

Read all the details here. 

San Francisco supervisors want voters to approve a sweeping handgun ban that would prohibit almost everyone except law enforcement officers, security guards and military members from possessing firearms in the city.

The measure, which will appear on the municipal ballot next year, would bar residents from keeping guns in their homes or businesses, Bill Barnes, an aide to Supervisor Chris Daly, said Wednesday. It would also prohibit the sale, manufacturing and distribution of handguns and ammunition in San Francisco, as well as the transfer of gun licenses.

...

Under the language of the measure, the ban would not apply police officers, security guards, members of the military, and anyone else "actually employed and engaged in protecting and preserving property or life within the scope of his or her employment."

If approved by a majority of the city's voters, the law would take effect in January 2006. Residents would have 90 days after that to relinquish their handguns.

One of the more interesting aspects of this is that the ban would be illegal because of state prememption on firearms laws so it couldn't really be enforced.  Another potentially illegal aspect--it's possible there is some sort of compensation scheme in mind which isn't mentioned in the news articles but if there isn't I also suspect there is a problem with taking of property without renumeration.  And of course there is that pesky 2nd Amendment issue.  But California hasn't been bothered by it for as long as anyone can remember.  And politicians, and liberals in particular, generally don't really care if what they want to do is illegal so I doubt that any of those things will slow them down any in their lemming like rush for the ocean (an urban legend by the way).  As pointed out in the article:

Washington, D.C., is the only major American city that currently bans handgun possession by private citizens. Andrew Arulanandam, director of public affairs for the National Rifle Association, said San Francisco would be remiss to use that city as a model.

"If gun control worked, Washington, D.C., would be the beacon. However, it's the murder capital of the United States," he said.

Technically D.C. is the only major American city that bans handguns, but IIRC Chicago only allows handguns if they have been registered and “grandfathered” since 1976.  So in essence handguns are banned in Chicago as well.  The end result is that D.C. and Chicago tend to alternate in terms of which city is “the murder capital of the United States”.  One must presume that San Francisco wants to join in the competition.

Update 19:30 12/16/2004: The Second Amendment Foundation came out with this press release.

No true survivalist would leave his wine cellar undefended in times of trouble. OTOH, the issues of TEOTWAWKI etiquette are worth considering. For example, while serving incendiaries to visiting marauders, I prefer a crisp, refreshing sauvignon blanc with just a hint of charred oak. The more robust reds go well with scatter gun affairs, and one shouldn't be afraid to serve an impudent, but amusing merlot for long distance encounters...

 Ward Dorrity
 Microsoft Public folder:
 SOC Emergency Gear and Disaster Survival
 March 17, 1999

I'm listening to Michelle Malkin on the radio and reading her blog on the difficulties the Federal Air Marshals are having with their boss Thomas Quinn. I agree the Marshals should be under cover. But that doesn't really go far enough. There aren't enough of them and we don't have enough money to protect a high proportion of our flights. As I have noted before there are better solutions, some with near zero cost, to in-flight security. And on the ground is this option if you want to spend money and effectively screen the passengers.

It probably won't be much if any cheaper than what they are currently doing but I do like what Bruce Schneier has to say about the security aspects of it.

In both Secrets and Lies and Beyond Fear, I discuss a key difference between attackers and defenders: the ability to concentrate resources. The defender must defend against all possible attacks, while the attacker can concentrate his forces on one particular avenue of attack. This precept is fundamental to a lot of security, and can be seen very clearly in counterterrorism. A country is in the position of the interior; it must defend itself against all possible terrorist attacks: airplane terrorism, chemical bombs, threats at the ports, threats through the mails, lone lunatics with automatic weapons, assassinations, etc, etc, etc. The terrorist just needs to find one weak spot in the defenses, and exploit that. This concentration versus diffusion of resources is one reason why the defender's job is so much harder than the attackers.

He then goes on to explain that security screener can also be an attacker against a terrorist defender.  By doing this the screener gains a big advantage and only has to find “one weak spot”.  It's great stuff and also has connections to this post I made.

Samizdata has a debate going on the potential benefits of a National ID card in the UK.  Although I didn't read every word of every comment it appears to me they all missed what I think are the fatal flaws of an ID card.  Some hinted at some of the minor flaws alright.

I really should reword my National ID Card Flaws essay to be similar to my “Just one question” post and be done with that debate as well.

Nothing says, "Please don't rape me." like multiple jacketed hollowpoints.

John Fogh
Insights Self Defense Instructor
February 23, 1999
Microsoft Gun Club Email Folder

I don't know how many times I've gotten into gun control debates but it's probably in the hundreds. Sometimes it will degenerate into a question of 'proof'. As long as the anti-freedom bigot can imagine some sort of reason, no matter how implausible, why the data could possibly be faulty or the conclusions erroneous they will claim that the pro-freedom position is wrong. Other times it will boil down to "I just don't want people carrying guns around". Some people just say, "I'm entitled to my opinion." Other times it will be "I don't believe your facts" (the RCOB moment this last one generates will be discussed some other time).

I've become very weary of these debates. Recently, unless it is a public or semi-public debate I rapidly loose interest and let it drop. Failing to convince (essentially no one will admit they were wrong no matter how badly they get "beaten up") just one person isn't worth the effort to me. A few years ago I came up with my "one question" response to bring the debate to a quick close but I tend to let myself get drawn into refuting their points rather than bring them to my playing field where they don't stand a chance of survival. I now want to present this "one question" in as much detail yet as succinctly as I can. Then I can just refer people to this post and be done with them.

There is only one real question (this is NOT the "one question") to ask, "Does gun control make the average person more or less safe?" Yes, we could debate what the 2nd Amendment really means. And we could debate how even if all guns were banned you would still have to reanimate your cold dead fingers before you could take it from me. But that is a distraction from the real question (again, NOT the "one question"), "Should firearms be restricted?"

There are essentially just two ways to look at the data--each has their weaknesses. You can look in one political or geographical area over two or more time periods where the gun laws are different. Or you can look at one time period in two or more political or geographical areas where the gun laws are different. There have been so many gun and weapon control laws passed over the years that there is no need to do any more experiments. The data is all out there. Researchers have written hundreds of papers and books on the subject.

My "one question" is this:

Can you demonstrate one time or place, throughout all history, where the average person was made safer by restricting access to handheld weapons?

There are three possible answers to this question.

1. "I don't know." In which case my response is, "Come back to the debate when you can answer 'Yes' or 'No'."
2. "No." In which case my response is, "Then you should be advocating the repeal of ALL gun control laws and I don't want to hear a single anti-freedom word from you on this topic again."
3. "Yes and here is my demonstration."

I have researched this fairly extensively and I can't find the data to support a “Yes“ answer. I have asked a lot of people this question and I haven't yet heard a "Yes" answer demonstrated. In October of 2003 the CDC released a study on this topic and couldn't come up with a "Yes" answer either. I'm not the slightest bit worried someone will be able to come up with a defensible "Yes".

If you are someone that has a "Yes" answer and believe you can conclusively demonstrate that then write it up and email it to me. Plan to have your work posted on a website of my choosing along with my comments. I will give you credit for your work or keep it anonymous--whichever you prefer. I will put links to those responses in the comments to this post.

Hint to potential takers--the U.K. versus the U.S. fails in a big way.  Look at before and after gun control was introduced in the U.K.

If you can't come up with a defensible "Yes" answer and still persist in supporting gun control then you are either a bigot or an ignorant bigot.  Prepare to be called that to your face if you persist.

Any comments to this post presuming to support a "Yes" answer will be deleted.

Done. I'll be referring people to this post in the future and severely reducing the time I spend debating.

Friday night I picked up Xenia's boyfriend John in Colfax and brought him to Moscow to see her concert.  On the way he, nice guy that he is, starting talking to me.  He brought up the governors race and expressed his pleasure that Rossi was winning and had picked up a few votes in the second recount.  I told him that I expected the Gregoire would win.  Four years ago during The Florida Election I read about how the Democrats had a special team, sort of an election SWAT team that was dispactched to close elections and had a near 100% success rate in converting a narrow loss into victory.  I told John I expected that since the national Democrat party was involved with the big money to recount the vote that Rossi was screwed.  Their “SWAT“ team is almost for certain engaged and racking up a “body count“.

Michelle Malkin is now telling us that my fear is coming true.

In Massachusetts, a man was sentenced to a year in prison for shooting a coworker who was busy knifing him--for the second time--even though the Massachusetts Supreme Court admitted that "it is possible that the defendant is alive today only because he carried the gun that day for protection."

    From the book "Lost Rights", page 221.
    by James Bovard
    MA SC quote from Commonwealth v. Lindsay,
    396 Mas. 840, 489 N.E. 2d 666, 669 (1986)

FishOrMan has recently been recently pushing the bleeding edge on coming out of the closet.  I've long advocated it in a round about way but I never had the courage to push it as far he has.  Thank you Jason.  Keep us posted.

I just stumbled across a web log for criminal justice in the U.K.  It has so much interesting information in it that I might find myself obsessed.  Sort of like watching the emergency crews at a accident scene.  It's a tradegy and there's nothing you can really do but see the mess the victim is in.  This site is filled with stuff like this:

• Independent: Don't worry about armed burglars, says Met chief
• Observer: Victims do have rights, but so do criminals
• icNetwork: Top lawyer backs burglar protection
• Mirror: Burglars have got rights too
• Telegraph: Burglars have rights too
• Scotsman: Government 'Sending Out Mixed Message over Tackling Burglars'
• Guardian: Goldsmith on burglars' rights

And:

• Telegraph: Under-18s face knife ban
• Washington Times: Knife-buying age to rise in Britain
• Evening Standard: Move to ban under-18s buying knives
• Guardian: 'No knives before 18' proposal
• icNetwork: Bereaved families in knife campaign
• icNetwork: Blunkett's knife plan condemned
• Scotsman: 'Make Knives Equal Guns' Say Stabbing Families
• Independent: 'Make knives equal guns' say stabbing families
• BBC: Victims' families knife law call

I've just barely begun to read the material and I'm all the more of the opinion that the U.K. is headed for disaster and the better option for crime control is to give enable the potential victims to give the universal hand signal for “GO AWAY!”.  Of course Kim du Toit has a reasonable approach as well:

...shoot the fucking goblin in the heart, at least twice, with a .45 pistol.

That is what Greg Hamilton calls, “the universal hand signal for LIE DOWN!”.

As I noted the other day www.boomershoot.org gets lots of hits from people looking for bomb building help.  For the most part I just ignore the hits although I do look at most of them.  This morning however I saw one that was very interesting to me.  I'll be keeping the details non-public to avoid tipping off future bomb builders but ask me in person sometime and I'll tell you the details.  The bottom line is that even though I have seen thousands of these hits I have never bothered to contact law enforcement about them--until today.  I went to https://tips.fbi.gov and gave them all the information.

Tonight when I have access to my log files again I'll be doing a graph of the number of hits per day I have been getting over the past year.  That might be interesting to the FBI as well.  There might be some sort of other 'interesting' information I can mine out of the log files also.  I'll need to think about it some more.  There are some pretty nifty tools here at work I have access to as well that might help in visualizing the data.

Update: I once did send an email to Israel police based only on the log files.  Below is my graph of the hits per month of people doing a search for bomb building help for the year of 2004 so far.  Note that December is only about half over and if it continues at this rate it will be about 800 hits.

Update 2: I had an error in my script for counting the number of hits.  Also I've updated the graph to include hits through December 17th.

I'm now convinced that the U.S. government know the searches done by TSA are forbidden by the 4th Amendment.  Check out this story.  John Barlow was removed from a plane after TSA found a small stash of recreational drugs in the bottom of his bottle of Ibuprofen which was 3/4 full of the original contents.  They arrested him and after receiving a $25K bond let him out.  The clincher for me is that rather than actually give him his day in court they are stalling and trying to make it too expensive for him to continue the battle.  For example:

Since I was arrested, I have had to go to California four times for hearings on the suppression of evidence in this matter, every one of which was "continued", either at the government's request, or because the government has refused or failed to produce the evidence we subpoenaed on grounds of "national security."

It's a lot like when the “assault weapons ban” was challenged in court.  Janet Reno claimed that the challengers didn't have standing in court because the Feds hadn't charge anyone and didn't plan to either.  Hence, the law stood simply because no one was allowed to challenge it.  In talking with people that dealt with the ATFE I was told that the policy in regards to Federal gun laws was that no one would be charged with a violation of a gun law unless there was a major felony involved as well as the simple gun law violation.  My take on that was that they didn't want a “poster child” for the gun rights people to take to the Supreme Court.  And so it is, I suspect, with this case. 

The TSA, a government agency, is searching a million or more people each day without search warrents.  It was bad enough when the FAA required airlines to do this, but at least it wasn't a government agency doing the searches.  Now it is a government agency.  Never mind that it's a total failure in terms of detecting “bad stuff“. And I believe it is just as much a violation of our 4th Amendment rights as it would be if the FBI were to put up road blocks around all cities and searching everyone on those roads to improve “national security“.  From the actions of the Feds in this case, I think they know it too.  It's time they face reality and consider other options.  Legal and effective options. Not just billion dollar options that make some people feel good and implement a police state.

From ABC News:

French training exercise leads to explosive mistake

It was supposed to have been a harmless exercise, but police at Paris' main airport managed to send a package of plastic explosive winging around the world and were still looking for it on Saturday.

Fortunately, "it is no more dangerous than a bar of chocolate," said a source at the military's information department.

Gendarmes at Paris' Charles de Gaulle airport placed the 150 gram block of explosive in a bag on a conveyor belt to find out whether their sniffer dogs were able to detect it.

During what was described as a "lapse of attention," a baggage handler put the suitcase with checked luggage being sent to an aircraft hold.

Police said the explosive could have been placed on any of about 80 flights.

Airlines were alerted but officials said the explosive represented no danger since it does not react to shock or fire and did not have a detonator.

The military source described it as "totally inoffensive".

Over at Jihad Watch, they put an Inspector Clouseau spin on it.  Very cute.

And I think I will quote their “totally inoffensive” line if I ever get caught carrying some plastic explosives onboard a plane.  And no, you don't get to use my guns, explosives making equipment or my wife while I'm in prison for 25 years either.

I don't know why everyone does not share my delight with explosives. If they don't, it has to be some abhorrent character defect.

Ragnar Benson
From: Ragnar's Guide to Home and Recreational Use of High Explosives
Page 110, Copyright 1988.

A long, long time ago when I was going to high school in Orofino I lived up on top of the hill to the Northwest of town.  Sometimes on the way to school it would be a bright sunny day up on top and we would be greated by a river of fog in the valley below.  A similar thing happened today when Barb, Nancy (Barb's sister) and I went to Clarkston to do some shopping.  I had to stop and get some pictures.  All those years ago I never got a picture of that wonderous sight.  In part because it was a fairly common occurance.  You don't take pictures of everyday things very often.  You'll see essentially the same thing soon so why bother?

It had been a while since I had seen that sort of image and I had a camera with me today.  Here are the results.  A sample to get you interested:

Eugene Econ, the instructor for the Boomershoot 2005 Precision Rifle Clinic, has given me the details and I have put them on boomershoot.org.  If he gets enough entries there will be a two day clinic this year.  You can sign up for Friday and/or Saturday.  The main Boomershoot 2005 event will be on Sunday May 1.  The precision rifle clinic always seems to fill up with a waiting list by early April.  Get your entries in early if you want to attend.