Mr. Sugarmann has a post about how terrible the NRA and their lapdogs in the U.S. House are. There is something you need to know about Sugarmann.

In this post he keeps talking about "guns traced to crime". Don't think that slightly odd wording wasn't given very careful thought by Sugarmann.  It implies "guns used in the commission of a crime" but that isn't what is being discussed. The data the ATF has on gun traces includes guns that are stolen property. It's inseparable from the guns used to commit crimes. Sugarmann knows this and deliberately misleads the ignorant.

This type of behavior isn't anything new from Sugarmann. He distorted the truth to pursue his agenda on "assault weapons" and admitted it in the planning of that assault on our liberties.  From the VPC web site:

Assault weapons—just like armor-piercing bullets, machine guns, and plastic firearms—are a new topic. The weapons' menacing looks, coupled with the public's confusion over fully automatic machine guns versus semi-automatic assault weapons—anything that looks like a machine gun is assumed to be a machine gun—can only increase the chance of public support for restrictions on these weapons.

See also his distortions connecting guns to murder-suicides.

So you think the New York Times are opposed to our war against terrorists? Do you think they are giving aid and comfort to the enemy?

And your point is?

It's what they do:

Even after the failed coup attempt of July 20, 1944, the New York Times commented reproachfully that the conspirators had plotted for an entire year "to kidnap or kill the head of the German state and commander in chief of the Army," something one would not "normally expect within an officers' corps and a civilized government.

From Plotting Hitler's Death: The Story of the German Resistance by Joachim Fest page 165.

Update: Answering questions about the context--the point of that section of the book was that the German resistance against Hitler was unable to even get lip service support. This wasn't limited to just the NYT. It was sort of like they viewed an uprising by the people of Germany to be "unsporting conduct" or something. Here is the additional context from the book ("these Germans" refers to the people plotting to kill and/or overthrow Hitler):

Most of the politicians and military leaders who they unsuccessfully courted in London, The Hague, and Washington still believed, however, that these Germans were committing "treason" and therefore regarded them with contempt. There was no appreciation of the fact that the opponents of the Nazi regime felt guided by new principles and laws whose legitimacy did not end at national borders. Even after the failed coup...

There is nothing more in the book to shed light on what the intent of the NYT was. Was it they wanted really wanted Germany to win? Were they opposed "on principle" to war and believed there would be less fighting/killing if Hitler were left in power even if he was "less than perfect"?  Or was it some sort of "honor" thing the German resistance had violated? A trip into the archives for the original NYT is probably the only way to clarify it further.

Off topic: Welcome to all the visitors brought here by the post on The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler.  I received more visits in one day for this one post than I normally receive for everything in a week. You might also be interested Boomershoot (fun with guns and explosives).

Thanks to Ry for pointing this out.

Some things don't change even in over a 100 years. It's a bit long but it contains background and support for this gem:

And this incapacity for independent action, this moral stupidity, this infirmity of the will, this unwillingness to cheerfully catch hold and lift, are the things that put pure Socialism so far into the future. If men will not act for themselves, what will they do when the benefit of their effort is for all? A first-mate with knotted club seems necessary; and the dread of getting "the bounce" Saturday night, holds many a worker to his place.

Socialism and communism are doomed to failure because of this fatal flaw in human nature. All successful organizations must address reality and human nature is part of reality. Whether it's socialists, communists, or bigoted anti-gun nuts, they all live in a dream world where human nature is what they wish it to be rather than what it is.

Late in our senior year of college when my wife and I first drove into Seattle for my interview with Boeing Mt. Rainer looked like this.  We were enchanted.

Thanks for the memory Shyam.

I'm only about a year late on this. I'm not big on anniversaries and generally only pay attention if it's socially required behavior.

Alex St. John wrote an article on the 10 year anniversary of Direct-X. I had a minor role in the development of Direct-X 1 and a few of the later versions. What our son James didn't know was that his precious XBoxes were originally intended to be the game console known as "DirectXBox". I told him last night as we were watching another few episodes of Star Gate SG-1 using his XBox 360 as a DVD player. He thought it was quite a let down to know it was named over something as mundane as that.

I should take his autographed (by Eric Engstrom) copy of Renegades of the Empire away from him.

Suppose you could mount a red-dot scope securely on the top of an AK rifle. What would that do for you in terms of target acquistion speed and accuracy? 

The answer is AK clays (~60 MByte .MOV file) are a reality.

Brought to you, in more ways than one, by UltiMAK.

One of these days we are going to make Boomer Clays work.  If nothing else I'm going to fill a milk jug with Boomerite and lob it into the air with giant slingshot for Lyle to shoot.

We recognize the rights of the oppressed to defend themselves against tyrannical and genocidal regimes and oppose a blanket ban on non-state actors.

Robert Joseph
U.S. Undersecretary of State for Arms Control
June 27, 2006
Speaking at the U.N. conference on "illegal small arms".
[Expressed only slightly more forcefully, "The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."--Joe]

Last night while helping James put together some of his new furniture for his apartment he asked me, "Are there any sane women out there?" I had to laugh. That's a great question. I laughed even harder when I saw this post by Heather this morning (check out the pictures at the bottom of the post).

I told James I sometimes wonder about that myself. I remember after Barb went through nearly 24 hours of labor, a C-section, having her abdomen opened up with her uterus flopped out on her stomach in a cold room while it was being flushed with saline solution, put back together, numb from the nipples down (the spinal), and was shaking from the cold so bad (and she HATES being cold) that she could barely hold James, her first born.  I was pretty wiped out from just watching it all happen and Barb could tell it was hard on me.  Through her chattering teeth she reassured me, "It will be easier next time."

NEXT TIME?

It could be the hormones or something but women are not sane. If they were it would mean the end of our species. James, you can either isolate yourself or you can try to enjoy the ride. It can be wild at times and it can be great at times but never expect sanity.

The idea is just plain stupid:

Safety catches do not always prevent firearm accidents and even newfangled biometric guns, which check the identity of a user by their fingerprint, cannot stop thieves from using stolen ammunition in other weapons.

The way to make firearms really safe, says Hebert Meyerle of Germany, is to password-protect the ammunition itself.

Meyerle is patenting a design for a modified cartridge that would be fired by a burst of high-frequency radio energy. But the energy would only ignite the charge if a solid-state switch within the cartridge had been activated. This would only happen if a password entered into the gun using a tiny keypad matched one stored in the cartridge.

The people in the comments get it right. The commenters missed (as of my last reading) another concern of mine that the communication between the gun and the ammo might also be electronically jammed.

An idea doesn't have to have a market to patentable and a patent was granted on this bad idea.

I have to wonder why Russia is somewhat supportive of Iran. Iran backed terrorists just killed four Russian diplomats claiming it was because of the Russian involvement in Chechnya. Diplomats! Not just some low life engineers (like me) or soldiers, but diplomats--the official representatives of the Russian government. And with Iran helping with the conventional bomb building in Iraq what do you think will happen if Iran can produce nukes? And if nukes for Iraq isn't worrisome enough for them what makes Russia think that Iranian nukes won't be showing up in Chechnya and Russia?

Now Iran is saying the offer by Russia, the U.S., China, France, and Germany will be responded to in late August. The deadline given to Iran to accept or reject the offer was June 29. That's two months to closer to having a nuclear bomb.

They are stalling for time. Time is something they must not be allowed to have. Perhaps Russia is getting a clue about that.

From the Seattle Times:

The Supreme Court agreed Monday to hear arguments on whether the federal government must regulate carbon dioxide as a pollutant, a case that could have broad implications for utilities, auto manufacturers and other industries nationwide.

The high court agreed Monday to consider whether the Bush administration must regulate carbon dioxide in order to combat global warming.

CO2?????  If it weren't for it being a violation of the various rights (sometimes I wonder why I should respect the rights of those that don't respect my rights to keep and bear arms) the way I would reduce CO2 emissions would be to encourage the environmental wackos to stop breathing.  This attack from the wackos is not about "global warming" or "climate change".  The man-made effects on the global climate are so small it's almost impossible to measure.  Therefore the motivation for these attacks can only be attributed to something else.  Possible candidates for the real reason include anti-capitalism, a scam to make money by the proponents of these claims, and mental disorders.  I'm partial the mental disorder hypothesis myself--When Prophecy Fails successfully explains many of these nut cases.

Did you know that water vapor is a bigger contributor to the green house effect than CO2?  See also Jeff's post on this subject.  And that when gasoline or diesel is burned it produces more water vapor (by volume, not mass) than it does CO2?  Of course we could always limit water vapor emissions from the wackos as well.

The UN claims to serve human freedom and dignity, but gun control often serves as a gateway to tyranny. Tyrants from Hitler to Mao to Stalin have sought to disarm their own citizens, for the simple reason that unarmed people are easier to control. Our Founders, having just expelled the British army, knew that the right to bear arms serves as the guardian of every other right. This is the principle so often ignored by both sides in the gun control debate. Only armed citizens can resist tyrannical government.

Rep. Ron Paul, Texas
June 26, 2006
The Worldwide Gun Control Movment in Texas Straight Talk
Also: June 27, 2006
The Worldwide Gun Control Movement in The Sierra Times

I just finished listening to a book on tape, Hannibal: One Man Against Rome, and I can't help but wonder if some of the methods the Romans used wouldn't be effective in dealing with the "religion of peace" that does things like this:

• 4 Russian hostages executed in Iraq (three beheadings and one shooting, video available if you want it)
• 'Driller killers' spread a new horror in Iraq (toture and killing by "The Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq")
• Horror show Iraq's descent (more torture including using electric drills on the eyes and skulls of children)

After all the "religion of peace" appears to be stuck hundreds of years in the past.  Perhaps some ancient methods for dealing with insurrections would be effective.

The passage of the Brady foolishness was a foregone conclusion in Washington - despite its blatant unconstitutionality - as soon as we lost the election of `92, thus it comes as no surprise. What is really awful is the unblushing profession that while the bill itself will do nothing at all, it is still necessary to "make a statement," as if the legislators meant that they were going to do something. You and I will not be inconvenienced by any five day waiting period, since we already have our guns, as all proper members of the United States Militia must have. The idea that our lawmakers can profit from doing something silly, and admitting that it is silly, makes one more than ever doubtful about the merit of the democratic process. Alcibiades pointed out that it would never work, and that was some four-hundred years before Christ. Perhaps he was right after all. 

Jeff Cooper
Jeff Cooper's Commentaries
Vol. 1, No. 11
10 December 1993
[I don't think it can seriously be claimed that the democratic process "will never work".  It doesn't work as well as we would like but it does work better than anything else that has ever been tried.  Unfortunately human nature is such that those that crave the power of government seldom have the strength of character to abide by the restrictions placed upon them by the same laws that give them their power.--Joe]

There once was a young man named Gene
who invented a screwing machine.
Concave and convex,
it served either sex,
and it played with itself in between.

Ho-hum.  This guy is worried about a "code of ethics" for robots:

THE race is on to keep humans one step ahead of robots: an international team of scientists and academics is to publish a “code of ethics” for machines as they become more and more sophisticated.

Although the nightmare vision of a Terminator world controlled by machines may seem fanciful, scientists believe the boundaries for human-robot interaction must be set now — before super-intelligent robots develop beyond our control.

“There are two levels of priority,” said Gianmarco Verruggio, a roboticist at the Institute of Intelligent Systems for Automation in Genoa, northern Italy, and chief architect of the guide, to be published next month. “We have to manage the ethics of the scientists making the robots and the artificial ethics inside the robots.”

...

“Security, safety and sex are the big concerns,” said Henrik Christensen, a member of the Euron ethics group. How far should robots be allowed to influence people’s lives? How can accidents be avoided? Can deliberate harm be prevented? And what happens if robots turn out to be sexy?

...

Other dilemmas may arrive sooner than we think, says Christensen. “People are going to be having sex with robots within five years,” he said. So should limits be set on the appearance, for example, of such robotic sex toys?

People have been having sex with machines for decades.  I've commented on this before:

• Neal Boortz on the history of the vibrator
• Pushing the technological envelope with teledildonics
• A better mouse trap

Ethics for robots?  That's a nice thought but futile.  If a market exists it will be met.  If whether it's to wage war, perform assassinations, or brothels filled with mechanical sex machines there will be some to supply the programming to accomplish the task if there is enough money on the table for the task.  Asimov's three laws will be simply commented out in the code.

The last few weeks have been very busy for me.  Barb came to Seattle to visit, then I helped James move over and get an apartment, then Barb and Xenia came over.  Xenia has a few pictures up (check out the new car James bought).  I'll have some more pictures up before too long.

James starts work (orientation actually) tomorrow morning.  His first job just out of college.  Barb, who handles all the medical questions in the family, said James asked her about his appetite.  He said he had a funny feeling in his stomach and didn't feel like eating.  Yeah, there's a name for that condition.  It's called "butterflies".

Interesting about the new car.  It's a Toyota, which is the same manufacturer as the first car Barb and I bought and he got it at the same dealer we did.  We bought ours new (only one other car we have bought was new when we got it) and James bought his new.  We bought ours in 1976, James got his 30 years (minus a couple months) later.  His cost about nine times as much and his starting salary is 5.25 times as much as mine was the next fall.

At least human activities aren't a significant contributor.  Take the quiz and then read the answers.  Thanks for posting that Jeff.

You know what they teach you in the military about what you use a handgun for?  You use it to fight your way to a rifle.

Greg Hamilton
Self Defense Instructor
Nov. 19, 1995
[Greg may have picked this meme up from Clint Smith, but I first heard it from Greg.-Joe]

Gun bans don't work.  Not on an island such as the U.K.  And not in the workplace such as in this case.  The prison guard wasn't supposed to bring a gun to work with him but as he probably wasn't exactly an upstanding member of society (he was accused of having sex with the female inmates) he didn't obey the rules.  As gun rights advocates have been saying for decades, if you ban guns only the criminals will have guns.  This criminal, unafraid of laws against sex with prisoners, and shooting at Federal law enforcement officers, certainly wasn't going to be concerned about a law banning him from bring a gun to work.

It's too bad the Fed had to die but at least this slimeball's raping career is over.

Power, whether vested in the many or a few, is ever grasping, and, like the grave, cries, "Give, give!"

Abigail Adams
Revolutionary War patriot and wife of John Adams
[This is why we have the enumerated powers of the Constitution.  This is supposed to limit the powers of both the many and the few.  Sadly, these days the Constitution is almost entirely ignored and the powers claimed by government have far exceeded the limits imposed by that tattered document.--Joe]

I just stumbled (with the help of Joel Rosenberg) onto something very interesting.  The bigoted "Gun Guys" (and their Orwellian named Freedom State Alliance umbrella organization) I mention far too frequently are supported by a $650,000 grant (over 18 months) from the Joyce Foundation.  This grant money is to Mark Karlin & Associates:

To support the continued efforts of its Freedom States Alliance, a project to promote financial self-sufficiency and effective media, public, and policy-maker education efforts among gun violence prevention groups, especially those in Illinois and Wisconsin.

I have often wondered how, with such small memberships, these anti-gun groups can afford to do what they do. Now we know. I wish I could get $400K/year to run some pro-gun websites and blog about gun rights.

To further emphasis their Orwellian nature read the Freedom States Alliance news release:

“But the energy we're seeing from communities that are rising up against the gun lobby is amazing.  Yes it will take time to take back our country held hostage by gun violence, but if it's one thing Americans are good at, it's fighting for our freedom. We're here to declare our freedom from gun violence and our Internet strategy is going to carry that message like never before.”

"Fighting for freedom" by attempting to ban guns.  You can't get much more Orwellian than that.

Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta just resigned. Now if they would just get rid of the rest of the Mineta minions.  These anti-gun bigots made it extremely difficult for airline pilots to carry firearms and in general have no clue about airplane or even security in general.  As Michelle Malkin says, "Finally."

The great object is that every man be armed.  Everyone who is able may have a gun.

Patrick Henry
In the Virginia Convention on the ratification of the Constitution

Brady Campaign Dismisses Influence of College Gun Clubs.  It sounds like a sour grapes story to me.

This picture was sent to me by Red.

It's not that I have any great love for the repressive, socialist pit of Chicago but I am glad they arrested these threats to humanity before they blew up the Sears tower:

MIAMI — Seven people were arrested Thursday in connection with the early stages of a plot to attack Chicago's Sears Tower and other buildings in the U.S., including the FBI office here, a federal law enforcement official said.

As part of the raids related to the arrests, FBI agents swarmed a warehouse in Miami's Liberty City area, using a blowtorch to take off a metal door. One neighbor said the suspects had been sleeping in the warehouse while running what seemed to be a "military boot camp."

The official told The Associated Press the alleged plotters were mainly Americans with no apparent ties to al-Qaida or other foreign terrorist organizations. He spoke on condition of anonymity so as not to pre-empt news conferences planned for Friday in Washington and Miami.

Miami U.S. Attorney R. Alexander Acosta said in a statement that the investigation was an ongoing operation and that more details would be released Friday.

...

The men slept in the warehouse, said Tashawn Rose, 29. "They would come out late at night and exercise. It seemed like a military boot camp that they were working on there. They would come out and stand guard."

She talked to one of the men about a month ago: "They seemed brainwashed. They said they had given their lives to Allah."

Just last Friday I talking to someone that grew up in Lebanan and he used the same phrase in regards to the Muslim extremists, "brainwashed".

I was going to comment on this but Jeff did a better job that I would have.  I've commented on her so many times before I would just be repeating myself.

These are not the usual sort of Darwin stories of people too stupid to live.  This is entirely different.  They people are too mentally whacked to have sex.

First this nut case from England:

Hunt, who made his fortune with his eponymous television fishing series, last month tearfully confessed to cheating on his wife in a tabloid newspaper interview and later on his radio station. Hunt said he paid up to $1000 a week for sex...

...

"But there were no regular payments. There was a sum paid, when I handed over the notes and tape - a taped conversation, little love notes, Christmas wishes, notes to help me buy a car - I was asked to hand them over, which I did," Ms Hood said.

"I was offered a sum (to end the relationship) but it wasn't $50,000."

She said she had been questioned by police and the prostitutes collective after the story broke and that the revelations had shattered her life.

However, she was happy to reveal intimate details of their mostly public encounters in which she remained clothed but he would strip naked.

"He would arrange to meet me - usually in a laneway - always somewhere public ... I believe he got off on the fact that we might get caught," she said. "I was to look him straight in the eyes and to breathe on him.

"I would tell him he was wonderful, then he would work himself into a state of excitement, shouting: 'Oh my God, you are going to kill me; you're going to give me a heart attack'. "He was affectionate, very touchy-feely leading up to this. Then he'd either, in the car or out of it, depending on how cold it was, fling off all his clothes. The more public, the greater the danger and the more exciting Rex apparently found it," Ms Hood said.

So he paid large sums of money for sex but never got around to actually having sex--he just took his clothes off.

Next we have the entire nation of Japan that is dying off because having a relationship is "tiresome":

MORE sex. That's what one expert says is needed to solve Japan's baby shortage.

"Japanese people simply aren't having sex," Dr Kunio Kitamura, director of the Japan Family Planning Association, was quoted as saying by the Japan Times, an English language daily.

An association survey of 936 people between the ages of 16 and 49 showed 31 per cent had not had sex for more than a month "for no particular reason" – a condition known as "sexless".

"As much as subsidies and welfare programs are important, sexlessness is also a critical issue in this problem."

Japan's fertility rate – the average number of children a woman bears in her lifetime – fell to an all-time low of 1.25 last year. Demographers say a rate of 2.1 is needed to keep a population from declining.

...

44 per cent of the people who said they were not having much sex felt that having a relationship with the opposite sex was "very tiresome" or "tiresome".

Their is a technical term used to describe the end point these sort of behaviors lead to--extinction.

It's already against the law to commit violent acts against innocent civilians.  More laws and/or treaties won't help.  Allowing civilians to defend themselves is the only effective way for civilians to be protected.  Just the opposite of what the U.N. bigots are trying to accomplish:

Amnesty International, Oxfam International and the International Action Network on Small Arms (IANSA) are pushing for a treaty to "protect civilians from armed violence."

Those three groups -- which have formed a coalition called the Control Arms Campaign -- say their goal is to reduce arms proliferation and misuse -- "and to convince governments to introduce global principles to regulate the transfers of weapons." They are urging the United Nations to impose a "binding arms trade treaty."

These guys want guns to remain in the hands of the governments.  And governments were the biggest perpetrators of violence against innocents in the last century and I expect they will be in this century too.  The right to keep and bear arms is an inalienable right.  It can only be infringed, not granted or denied.

Alan Gottlieb, of course, gets in right (in the same article):

Had it not been for America, all of Europe might be speaking German. Were America not the 'great arsenal of democracy' that President Franklin D. Roosevelt described in 1940, the world would be a far different place, and the sanctimonious bureaucrats at the U.N. might instead be working in labor camps.

...

We have done much for the U.N., and in return, the organization has hosted despots, tyrants and dictators whose record of human rights abuses, aggression and genocide speaks for itself.

Refuse to be a victim.  That's something our TSA apparently doesn't understand.  China is teaching their flight attendants to do some serious ass kicking.  I think I'd add an on-board pig to start the clean up before the plane reached it's destination though.  Allowing the passengers to be armed is also high on my list.  What we have now is just a joke.

If this ever happens to me or anyone I care about I will utilize 20 pounds of HE to demonstrate my displeasure with their toys.  Anyone that tries to stop me will have their bullet riddled carcass used for charge confinement.  The video of THAT will then be posted on the Internet.

The right to private property is the Englishman’s right to his castle. This looks to me like the point where Labour has overstepped the mark into behaving more like a dictatorship than a democratic government.

I think anybody whose property is seized under this law should go straight to court to see if a judge thinks it should stand.

Robert Whelan
Representative of Civitas
From Homes of the dead to be seized by the state
June 17, 2006, Daily Mail
[Perhaps Mr. Whelan is using English understatement because in my viewpoint the English politicians started behaving like a dictatorship when they started putting restrictions on firearms.  And when they seize the property of the dead, remove the contents, and rent it out for their own gain it's way past the point of "seeing a judge things it should stand".  It's time to exercise your right to keep and bear arms.  But the people are just now realizing they waited too long to do that.  HT to Ry for pointing this out.--Joe]

Lyle (and I think Meredith) wanted a penis cake. Enjoy.

{Thank you Xenia for the link.}

...there's no reason to have a gun around in the first place. A gun isn't used to protect anything. It's used to kill.

Your Gun Guys Daily Update
June 21, 2006
Email from The Gun Guys
[This nutcase must think all policemen carrying guns are government assassins.  This is a reminder that most anti-gun people have mental problems.-Joe]

Barbarism:

BAGHDAD, Iraq, June 20 — The American military said today that it had found the remains of what appears to be the two American soldiers captured by insurgents last week in an ambush south of the capital, and a senior Iraqi military official said the two men had been "brutally tortured."

Major General William B. Caldwell IV, the American military spokesman, said "the remains" of what are believed to be the two Americans were found near a power plant in the vicinity of Yusefiya, about three miles from the site were they had been captured by insurgents.

General Caldwell declined to speak in detail about the physical condition of those who had been found, but he said that the cause of death could not be determined. He said the remains of the men would be sent to the United States for DNA testing to determine definitively their identities. That seemed to suggest that the two Americans had been wounded or mutilated beyond recognition.

Maj. Gen. Abdul Azziz Mohammed Jassim, the chief of operations of the Ministry of Defense, said that he had seen an official report and that he could confirm the two Americans had been "killed in a very brutal way and tortured."

"There were traces of torture on their bodies, very clear traces," General Jassim said. "It was a brutal torture. The torture was something unnatural."

If those are the rules they are playing by then we should play by the same rules.  Unless they surrender and/or cooperate with allied forces our treating of their dead, wounded, and captured "with respect" makes us appear weak to them. Our rules of war lower the "cost" for them to be at war with us.  The lower the cost for them the longer we will be at war and the more dead of our own we will have to endure.  We need to raise the cost.  Feed them to the hogs and prevent them from getting their 72 virgins.  We need to maximize their cost in every way we can.

This barbaric act will virtually ensure that no more U.S. soldiers will be taken alive or at least conscious.  They will fight to the last bullet and last ounce of strength.

We announce the good news to our Islamic nation that we executed God's will and slaughtered the two crusader animals we had in captivity. And God has given our Emir, Abu Hamza al-Muhajer, the good fortune of carrying out the legitimate court's command in person.

Mujahedeen Shura Council
A group linked to al Qaeda
CNN June 20, 2006
U.S.: Two missing soldiers found dead
[The Geneva and Hague Conventions do not apply to these Muslim extremists who do not abide by it themselves.  We need to start feeding them, dead or alive, to the hogs.--Joe]