Today is the day (happy birthday to Kim du Toit) to buy some ammo and I just heard it on the radio news because the Seattle PI mentioned it:

Seattle resident Chris Pierce had left Butch's Gun Shop on Sunday and was heading for the countryside in North Bend to fire rounds when he heard about National Ammo Day.

"I think it's a great idea. It sends the message that firearms aren't going away," he said. "You can't take out one part of the Constitution without ruining all of it."

The thought of Monday as National Ammo Day, a period dedicated to buying bullets to support the Second Amendment, might send shivers down the backs of some Seattle residents.

But they are careful to get other opinions on the topic:

While many gun owners are preparing to part with their cash, a Washington CeaseFire spokeswoman said the day should have a different emphasis.

"As we approach Thanksgiving, we would better benefit from responsible firearms owners reminding the public of the importance of safe firearm storage," group executive director Kristen Comer said.

"The safest place for firearms ... is locked and out of reach of children and others who might otherwise place themselves in danger."

She said she believes responsible gun owners are not in jeopardy of losing access to firearms and bullets.

A spokesman for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in Seattle said his agency has no position on National Ammo Day.

And you just know what question was asked and the mindset behind it that prompted this response:

To mark it, Taff plans to buy 100 rounds and fire them at a Bellevue range.

While Monday marks the sixth annual National Ammo Day, Taff heard about it only recently.

He was not concerned that criminals would use the day to clear ammunition shelves and then commit robberies.

Someone in Iran is looking for information on liquid explosives:

Domain Name		(Unknown)
IP Address		80.191.3.# (Tarbiat Modares University)
ISP		Telecommunication Company of Iran (TCI)
Location		Continent  :  Asia Country  :  Iran, Islamic Republic of  (Facts) State/Region  :  Tehran City  :  Tehran Lat/Long  :  35.6719, 51.4244 (Map) Distance  :  6,695 miles
Language		English (United States) en-us
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We were probably a little more honest with our kids about Santa than most parents. We had to explicitly tell them to "keep the secret" from some of their cousins. Thus we avoided little unplanned revelations like this (thanks to Rob for forwarding it to me).

But our girls did somehow manage to find the contents of the top shelf in the work room with both volumes of The Kinsey Report and other books that had more photos that words. Which reminds me. I think there is still room on that shelf for this book.

We had the first snow of fall in Moscow, Idaho yesterday. I left about 13:20 to try getting over the pass to my hardened, underground bunker near Seattle before dark. It snowed or rained on me the whole way. The road had a little slush on the pass but I never had any problems although I saw a couple accidents where people made unplanned excursions from I-90.

Xenia took some pictures near our Moscow home but only posted one so I stole this one from her computer because I like it better:

You know, you blow up one sun and suddenly everyone expects you to walk on water.

Samantha Carter
A character in Stargate SG-1
Played by Amanda Tapping
[James and I just finished watching this series on DVD. It was good. Very good. We're sorry it's over. The ending could have been a little bit better. James was probably a little more disappointed than I. I thought it left things such that you could imagine how all the unresolved things would probably be figured out and that was okay. But James was a bit annoyed saying that it wasn't that much different than the ending of any other episode. I figure it gives them possibilities for the movies.--Joe]

In August of 2006 Barb and I spent a week in Missouri and Kansas. I'd spent a little time in that area of the country on business 20 years ago but Barb hadn't been there before. In addition to taking in the local claims to fame we expected to do some of the usual things we do in the northwest--hike in the wood. We were disappointed in that regard.

The part of Kansas we were in, essentially, didn't have any woods and we didn't even look for a place to hike. Missouri was a little better but from our perspective it was very odd. There just weren't any trails to speak of. And the ones we found were just "blah". We did do a little bit of hiking and thought we understood part of the reason people didn't do much hiking.

1. The humidity made it uncomfortable.
2. It just wasn't that interesting compared to what we were used to.
3. It's flat. The highest altitude in Missiouri is 1772 ft and the lowest is 230 ft for a difference of only 1542 ft over the entire state.

On October 28^th of this year we, after spending most of the day in bed, went for a hike toward Wallace Falls near Gold Bar Washington. We got off much too late and had to turn around before we reached the falls so we could get back to the car before dark. We were pleased with what we saw and decided to try it again and get an earlier start. On November 11^th we started our hike a little after 10:00 AM and made it all the way to the upper falls.

We were leaning against the rail taking in the beauty of the upper falls and I said, "You know we aren't in Missouri don't you?" Barb laughed and knew exactly what I was talking about even though it had been over a year since we had been in Missouri.

A few days later I told our son James about it, including the background about our time in Kansas and Missouri. He responded with something his friend Tucker had said numerous times, "Kansas is flatter than a pancake--they've done tests."

Here are a few pictures to show you what I'm talking about. It's definitely not Missouri.

The NRA is extreme. Their positions on gun policy are, as the police chief of Los Angeles William Bratton has said, "Sheer lunacy." It is only a matter of time before the NRA either adjusts to the real world or loses its power. A modern democratic society has the right to self-defense and that's exactly why the battle for sensible gun laws will ultimately be won by the reasonable voices in our society. We have the right to defend ourselves against madmen with assault weapons. We have the right to defend ourselves against unrestricted gun sales to criminals or terrorists. And we're eventually going to win those rights.

Michael D. Barnes
June 23, 2004
President, Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence
AN ASSAULT ON OUR SAFETY: GUN POLICY IN AMERICA
 
[Interesting twist of the definition of 'rights'. "And we're going to obtain the 'power'" would be the more appropriate words to use in this context. But that would bring about the defeat of his argument. And of course never once does he hint he has an appropriate answer to Just One Question.--Joe]

Where else?

Boston police are launching a program that will call upon parents in high-crime neighborhoods to allow detectives into their homes, without a warrant, to search for guns in their children's bedrooms.

First they get people used to the police searching around in their homes without a warrant. Then when they refuse it will be probable cause for a search warrant.

[Via an email from Jason.]

How many of us have paused during conversation in the past four-and-a-half years, suddenly aware that we might be eavesdropped on? Probably it was a phone conversation, although maybe it was an e-mail or instant-message exchange or a conversation in a public place. Maybe the topic was terrorism, or politics, or Islam. We stop suddenly, momentarily afraid that our words might be taken out of context, then we laugh at our paranoia and go on. But our demeanor has changed, and our words are subtly altered.

This is the loss of freedom we face when our privacy is taken from us. This is life in former East Germany, or life in Saddam Hussein's Iraq. And it's our future as we allow an ever-intrusive eye into our personal, private lives.

Too many wrongly characterize the debate as "security versus privacy." The real choice is liberty versus control. Tyranny, whether it arises under threat of foreign physical attack or under constant domestic authoritative scrutiny, is still tyranny. Liberty requires security without intrusion, security plus privacy. Widespread police surveillance is the very definition of a police state. And that's why we should champion privacy even when we have nothing to hide.

Bruce Schneier
May 19, 2006
The Value of Privacy
[I don't think very many people really get this. They make the trade of essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety and don't realize they will end up with neither (yes, I'm corrupting Franklin's quote a bit).--Joe]

Breasts are getting larger in the U.K. Stores are introducing J-cup bras for the first time.

Not that I need a bra or anything.

And I prefer women to not wear bras, or even clothes for that matter. But I thought someone might find it interesting. Some guys are into the big breast thing. Even if I were I don't think it is worth going to a repressive state like the U.K. for those sort of thrills.

We've known about the gun-show loophole for a long time now. It still hasn't been closed. Maybe someone can make some progress on the restaurant loophole:

America has a problem with unlicensed restaurant operators. Week after week, millions of these scofflaws cook elaborate meals without any official authorization, or even an inspection by a government health agency. The problem grows particularly acute at Thanksgiving, when some unlicensed chefs prepare meals for a dozen or more people. The result? Every year countless Americans are sickened by salmonella, campylobacter, and other food-borne bacteria. You might know the cooks as Mom and Dad, or Grandma and Grandpa, or Uncle Mike and Aunt Karen. But don't let their down-home manner fool you. It's time to close the regulatory loophole that lets these scofflaws dodge the rules of restaurant safety.

Sounds ridiculous, doesn't it? But that's precisely the approach being taken by gun-control advocates who want to close what they call the "gun-show loophole." Opponents of gun rights use that expression to describe the occasional sales of firearms between private citizens -- whom they call "unlicensed dealers" and "unlicensed vendors." (Eeek!)

As the author points out, it's really all about closing the Second Amendment loophole.

Nice. The TSA is a joke. Kip Hawley is the head of the TSA. He says airport security is good. Investigators do what I have been saying could be done. Hawley tries to put a spin on it in front of congress and gets slapped down:

Investigators used public information to make a liquid bomb consisting of a detonator and a liquid explosive. They made a firebomb using two common products.

To absolute silence in the hearing room, the investigators screened video footage showing tests of their homemade bombs. One clip showed the device exploding inside a car -- metal flying, glass shattering, car doors buckling open and a voice, off camera, saying, "Oh!"

The investigators then designed ways to sneak the components past screeners.

The airports tested were kept classified.

The GAO recommended improvements in personnel, processes and technology; more aggressive pat-downs; and possible restrictions on carry-on luggage.

"Current policies allowing substantial carry-on luggage and related items through TSA checkpoints" increase the risk of a terrorist bringing an improvised explosive device or improvised incendiary device onto a plane, the report said.

Hawley downplayed the tests, arguing first that the components did not get on the plane. "It did get on the plane," countered Gregory Kutz of the GAO.

Hawley then contended that the components the GAO smuggled were not the ones used in the video footage. The GAO's Cooney corrected him.

Hawley also noted that GAO investigators did not smuggle a complete bomb past the checkpoint. Cooney, seated beside him, said: "We could simply have gone into the lavatory and constructed it there."

They don't arrive at the proper conclusion but they are getting the proper data--which is a start.

I always have a quotation for everything -- it saves original thinking.

Dorothy L. Sayers

I and nearly everyone else with more than two brain cells to rub together should have learned our lesson. But we fall for it again and again.

Remember when I another blogger or two raised a big stink about the Priciple Deputy Director of the National Intellence said we need to refine privacy? Well... the reporter apparently thought he could read the guys mind or something. Here is the actual speech.

Bruce Schneier took it the same we did at first but followed up with a link the next day to the actual speech--which is how I got straightened out.

The reporter got it wrong. And we believed it because it was what we wanted to hear. We want to hear how dangerous the government is. We latched on to that sloppy (I'm giving her, Pamela Hess, the benefit of the doubt) reporting and ran with it. Shame on us.

The critical passage is here:

Too often, privacy has been equated with anonymity; and it’s an idea that is deeply rooted in American culture. The Long Ranger wore a mask but Tonto didn’t seem to need one even though he did the dirty work for free. You’d think he would probably need one even more. But in our interconnected and wireless world, anonymity – or the appearance of anonymity – is quickly becoming a thing of the past.

Anonymity results from a lack of identifying features. Nowadays, when so much correlated data is collected and available – and I’m just talking about profiles on MySpace, Facebook, YouTube here – the set of identifiable features has grown beyond where most of us can comprehend. We need to move beyond the construct that equates anonymity with privacy and focus more on how we can protect essential privacy in this interconnected environment. Protecting anonymity isn’t a fight that can be won. Anyone that’s typed in their name on Google understands that. Instead, privacy, I would offer, is a system of laws, rules, and customs with an infrastructure of Inspectors General, oversight committees, and privacy boards on which our intelligence community commitment is based and measured. And it is that framework that we need to grow and nourish and adjust as our cultures change.

I think people here, at least people close to my age, recognize that those two generations younger than we are have a very different idea of what is essential privacy, what they would wish to protect about their lives and affairs. And so, it’s not for us to inflict one size fits all. It’s a need to have it be adjustable to the needs of local societies as they evolve in our country. Eventually, we can only hope that people’s perceptions – in Hollywood and elsewhere – will catch up.

I'm not saying everything he said is 100% okay with me. But I will say that I no longer think Mr. Kerr deserves the one-way ticket I had suggested before.

If you thought your secrets were safe with Hushmail you were wrong:

Hushmail, a longtime provider of encrypted web-based email, markets itself by saying that "not even a Hushmail employee with access to our servers can read your encrypted e-mail, since each message is uniquely encoded before it leaves your computer."

But it turns out that statement seems not to apply to individuals targeted by government agencies that are able to convince a Canadian court to serve a court order on the company.

There are methods to communicate securely (guaranteed at the theoretical level) provided your attacker never gets physical access to your computer or someone doesn't hand over the encryption keys. It's just that it's very, very inconvenient to do so. There are some intermediate difficulty of use methods which are secure as long as your attacker doesn't have millions to spend on cracking your messages. I have been wanting to implement that for a long time but always seem to find something more important to do.

One of my main reasons for not working on the problem is that I can't guarantee "no physical access" to my computer. So it's just doesn't have much point. That is probably always going to be the weak link. I don't have any secrets on my computer or in my communication that need to be kept that secure but its sort of like owning firearms that certain people in government don't want you to have and reading banned books. "You don't want me to have it? Then that means I must have it."

You just have to wonder what they want a Saiga 12 gauge for. Is it Aliens? Or maybe a Predator? My bet is it's for replicators. A shotgun worked quite well on those bugs.

Domain Name		nasa.gov ? (United States Government)
IP Address		128.158.228.# (National Aeronautics and Space Association)
ISP		National Aeronautics and Space Association
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Time Zone		UTC-6:00
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Visit Number		210,920

KING 5 has their video of Boomershoot up on the web now. It's a slightly different edit than the one I have up.

Kevin points us at a slide-show on the "wisdom" of government having a monopoly of force. It's good. Very good.

I'm not sure it will have the impact on "the other side" that we would want it to. They will just say, "We just need to have good people in government." But I think it is useful for us to have a comeback to when someone says something like, "The government must have a monopoly on force". You can't just let that stand. I'm sure that to many people once stated it's "a no brainer" at first glance. "Of course they should. It just makes sense!" You need to be able to shove something in their face:

From of a poster I purchased from JPFO.

Then you say, "NO! This is the reason why governments should never have a monopoly on force." It's easy to come up with a body count of 60 million people in the last century that were killed by they own government. And this is the reason our government was not given a monopoly on force in the constitution.

They may not buy your argument but at least they won't be able to accuse you of, "loving guns more than life", or some such stupid thing.

Before gun control, about 800 Canadians were killed annually by firearms. After gun control, about 800 are killed annually by firearms. Simply put, gun control does not save lives. At the same time, about 2,500 die annually due to falls. Yes, the simple ladder kills more Canadians than firearms, but you don't see politicians clamouring to register ladders.

This information was obtained from the Dominion Bureau of Statistics. Ironically, this office in Ottawa is across the hall from the gun control bureau. If Ottawa's actions were based on a sincere desire to save human life, then the $2 billion could have been better spent on safety training and health care -- but unfortunately safety training and health care isn't as glamorous as gun control.

Based on this, I must therefore conclude that politicians' support for gun control is not based on a desire to save human life, but instead a cynical platform to obtain votes to stay in office.

Jay Dumas
Prince George
Thursday, 15 November 2007, 01:00 PST
Gun control shot down
[Another person answers Just One Question and comes up with the expected answer.--Joe]

Via Uncle.

Maybe this is proof I'm a gun nut but when I read this:

Under the DMV's plan, motorists will only be able to object to a ticket by email or letter where city employees can ignore or reject letters in bulk without affected motorists having any realistic recourse.

The first thought that went through my mind was, "168 grain Match Kings can reject city employees without any realistic recourse."

The second thought was, "It's no wonder Washington D.C. insists on retaining it's ban on firearms."

[The title of this post is shameless stolen from Sebastian. It's far better than anything I would have come up with. A significant part of the rest of this post is from a comment I left on his blog.]

We all have different backgrounds and hence different viewpoints on the past and the probable future. At least one person disagrees with me. Good. I'd like to be wrong on this. Maybe Chris and Melody will show up at Boomershoot 2008 (hint, hint) and convince me I am wrong.

Some weren't really aware because they were too young or because they simply didn't have the interest in some of the things that had a profound impact on me. When the standoff at Ruby Ridge occurred I lived only about twenty miles away. Being that close you learned of things and felt emotions others more distant wouldn't have a clue about. Although I grew up with guns around I didn't do much shooting and when the Ruby Ridge incident occurred in August of 1992 I didn't even own a gun.

A lot of things went through my mind during those 10 days. Probably the most profound thought was my complete inability to help the Weavers even if I had the courage and the determination. I didn't own a gun and I didn't have the training required to accomplish anything more than get myself arrested or killed.

The dark days of the Clinton administration began shortly thereafter and everyone knew what would happen to gun ownership under Clinton. I bought my first gun and became a gun-rights activist. Then in February of 1993 the events in Waco Texas began to unfold.

In September of 1994 the "assault weapon ban" went into effect. And even before it was enacted there was "Brady II" waiting in the wings. The anti-gun bigots were absolutely crowing about their victories and those they expected to follow. Those were very, very dark days. Barb will tell you how depressed and angry I was. I wasn't very pleasant to be around and it wasn't her fault.

What those dark days did for me was give me a lot of motivation to think about things. Both Ruby Ridge and Waco events were about guns. The ATF ("one of the best and most respected federal law enforcement agencies") manufactured the circumstances to entrap innocent people and resulted in the deaths of dozens of innocent men, women, and children. No government employee even lost their job over it. They lied to numerous judges and the worst that happened was U.S. taxpayers had to pay fines and settle a lawsuit.

If people were going to "come to the rescue" of innocents under attack by the government it would have happened at either Ruby Ridge or Waco. The innocents held out for more than enough time for people from anywhere in the country to travel and at least increase the casualties of the perpetrators. In Northern Idaho it was late August in sparsely populated woods and mountains. Spending a few nights in the woods approaching your targets and getting away would have been a relative simple challenge. No significant adverse weather conditions and lots of cover and concealment. In Waco the open terrain would have made an approach and departure significantly more difficult but the siege went on for 51 days. Someone could have gotten a bomb in there or a mortar within range and remotely fired upon the perpetrators during that time had they really wanted to. Yet no one did. There were some idiots who tried to drive in the back way to Ruby Ridge that got arrested. But they approached the problem in such a stupid manner that they had no real chance of accomplishing anything. There was zero serious resistance offered from the outside.

In both those cases the only casualties the forces of evil suffered were during the initial attack. And when it was all over the dead and wounded of the innocents outnumber those of the aggressors by at least a factor of four to one.

So, here was two very clear opportunities for gun owners to "show their stuff" over abuses by the Feds over "the gun issue". Both Idaho and Texas are very strong pro-gun states. And what was on the report card at the end of the lesson? All 80 million gun owners in the United States got a zero. Not a single shot fired by anyone other than the direct participants.

I don't know what I would have done in August of '92 if I had the equipment and training I have now. But with what I know now about how other gun owners "responded" it would have been a significant inhibitor on any actions I might have considered. Alone there is no point in going up against several hundred armed and trained men with helicopters, armored personal carriers, and excellent communication gear. If there were a half dozen or so of you then maybe you could pick off a few from the perimeter and get away with it.

Lots of people claim they will start fighting when they come to take their guns. "When they start going door-to-door that's when some really bad shit is going to hit the fan!" Oh yeah? Maybe you missed out on what happened after Katrina left town.

So where does that leave us? Interesting question. The conditions that will cause even a small fraction of gun owners to come to the aid of other gun owners under direct physical attack have not been determined. But we do know that lying to judges to get search warrants, entrapment, giving the victims wrong court dates, then charging them for failure to show up for the real court dates, shooting dogs, children, and mothers with a baby in their arms aren't sufficient. We also know what happened (or rather what didn't happen) in Australia and the U.K. when guns were confiscated. And do you have any idea what the kill ratio was between the Jews and the German Police Battalions that sweep through eastern Europe? For the one battalion that was well documented which I read about it was 16,000 to one. And that one casualty inflicted on the Germans wasn't by one of the Jews about to be led off to a trench to be shot in the back of the neck. If anyone has sufficient motivation you would think it would be them. But instead that causality was inflicted by a couple of Polish partisan snipers.

What that means is the conditions for actually using our firearms in active resistance against "our own people" must be exceptional extreme.

What I think happens is that it is very easy to postpone the outwardly visible actions of resistance. People will resist in their minds and in their fantasies and convince themselves they have accomplished something. I believe this is a nearly universal trait. It may sound like I'm picking on Sebastian here but only because he made himself an easy target and I'm pretty sure he knows I don't have any ill will toward him.

What Sebastian said was:

I’ll be honest with you all, I’d probably not turn in the ammunition first, as I have no desire to fight for a lost cause against a law that’s not really enforceable.   Show me real opposition, and I might join, but aside from that, I plaster an off the books AR up in my wall with a “Break Wall In Event of a Emergency” note in my head, and keep a few thousand rounds of ammunition.

I responded in the comments to his post was the following (with a few minor edits):

As long as we have private sales, and to a certain extent even if we don’t, a year or two after you filled out your 4473 a firearm may be considered “off the books”. “Oh, that one? I didn’t care for it and sold it via an note I put up on the bulletin board at the gun shop.” Or, “I loved that gun but I lost it in a boating accident last summer.” But mere possession of a firearm isn’t the critical item.

What will become difficult is to practice and receive formal training. You should be putting several hundred rounds down-range each month just for maintenance. If it becomes illegal to own then range availability as well as (black market) ammo prices will make practice nearly impossible.

Without the practice then you really won’t know if that 75 yard shot at the guard beside “the cattle car filled with Jews” will mean the release of the victims or your death. A 400 yard shot? Forget it. With practice you know what you are capable of (at GBR-2007 do you think I would have started off-hand shooting at the 400 yard plate had I not thought I would be able to make at least a few hits?). With this knowledge you can have the confidence to make plans and execute them.

It is my understanding that the “gardens of eastern Europe were well oiled” because of all the guns buried there. Even as tyrants of eastern Europe rose to power, people were dragged off in the middle of the night, and while the gulags killed their 10s of thousands those guns stayed buried in their well oiled graves.

To me, burying your guns is little different than turning them over. It’s only a victory in your mind. You must use them or you have lost them.

A further thing to think about is that it is exceedingly rare when the defender wins a war. As long as one side can choose the terms of all the engagements they are nearly certain to win in the long run. If you think holding on to your gun for another generation is a win then fine, you stand a fair chance of “winning” as long as you don’t tell any one about your guns and the high tech scanners in the patrol cars and helicopters overlook them as they go by. But really it just means your loss will go unnoticed and unremarkable.

If we loose at the SC it was for “all the marbles”.

One can argue that even if we completely lose the case realistically we aren't any worse off than we were before the ruling. After all, what protection did the Second Amendment give us in the last 70 years? How many laws were overturned because of it? We have been in the midst of a running battle for decades thinking we had the Second Amendment to back us up "if things got really bad". But really, how many battles has it won for us? How many times has it stepped up to the plate and even got a hit? Until Hellar it has struck out every single time it came to bat. In a rational world to have the Second Amendment end up not being worth the piece of paper it is written on wouldn't make much difference to us.

But this isn't a rational world we live in. The Second Amendment is something we believe in. We want to believe it and we do believe it and it makes a difference in how we fight. It makes a difference in how our opponents fight too. It's another hurdle they have to get over or around. They risk exposing themselves as liars and shuckers every time they try to explain "collective rights".

Without the Second Amendment as an individual right we have two realistic choices:

1. Sometime soon we start shooting.
2. We fight a political delaying action that lasts for a decade or two.

I don't have any hope the first one will occur or that it would be successful if it did happen. And ultimately we will lose via the second option.

I stand by my original agreement with Kevin's claim, This One's for All the Marbles. Anything else is only a victory of the mind.

While we truly feel badly for the law abiding citizens of California, we feel it is necessary to take a stand against irresponsible legislation designed solely to inhibit the American citizen’s right to keep arms. We are fierce proponents of the Second Amendment, and it is our hope that other manufacturers will follow our lead. It is time for the gun industry as a whole to take a stand against the insanity of the antigunners. We simply believe that some things are more important than profit.

STI International
Cessation of California Firearm Sales
[Via Uncle, Bitter, Sebastian, and Ninth Stage. It makes me proud that I own an STI gun. It's on my hip, as is normal when I'm allowed to carry, as I write this. It is my carry gun and it is my competition gun. Thank you STI.--Joe]

Just a gentle reminder that everything you say on the Internet is read by big brother. Case in point: my post comparing ATF agents to Special Olympics participants got the attention of the DOJ:

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Uncle points us to this article:

Privacy no longer can mean anonymity, says Donald Kerr, the principal deputy director of national intelligence. Instead, it should mean that government and businesses properly safeguard people's private communications and financial information.

[...]

Mark Klein, a retired AT&T technician, helped connect a device in 2003 that he says diverted and copied onto a government supercomputer every call, e-mail, and Internet site access on AT&T lines.

Side note: I heard of such a device from a friend in 2000.

I've gotten into debates with people that insisted we just needed "appropriate regulations with regards to the collection and use of personal information". I expect Kerr, at best, would claim regulation should be in place and would protect us from the harm that might come from government abuse. That people can believe such outrageous fantasies is so mind boggling to me that I have difficulty articulating my case through my anger.

Let me put this as simply and calmly as I can. If the government has access to information that can be abused, no matter what "regulations" are in place, it will be abused. Just two quick examples; 1) Census data, supposedly "sealed" for 72 years was used by the FBI to track down "enemy aliens and foreign nationals who might be dangerous". People of Japanese, Italian, and German descent were put in internment camps based on "sealed" information. 2) Brady records were required to be destroyed if the gun buyer passed the NCIS check. They weren't. They were kept for at least a year "for audit purposes". I told one gun rights leader that I thought the gun rights community should make it an issue to make sure these records were destroyed. He told me that it wasn't that important because even if they existed they couldn't be used in a court of law because they were "legally destroyed" even if they weren't physically destroyed. After 9-11 those records were used to find "terrorist suspects" that might own guns. People who bought guns were found and their homes searched because those records existed. Gun owners screamed bloody-murder and the gun grabbers insisted it was entirely appropriate that the law be ignored.

A few days ago I finished listening to the book IBM and the Holocaust. Read that book and you'll give strong consideration to being on a back-packing trip deep in the woods when the next census is done. Information is power, tremendous power. When the German "Police Battalions" moved in behind the army to "maintain order" they had lists of every Jew in the area. You couldn't say you didn't have any children because they knew from the census a few months or years before that you did have them. They had birth and death records, they knew who lived in which house in which town. And they were able to murder "vermin" by the millions because they had those lists.

For Kerr to say we should "redefine privacy" is an even more inflammatory statement to me than some gun grabbing politician saying they want all the guns turned in. Even if I don't have my guns I have a chance of hiding my "Jews in the Attic". But if I can't buy them food or obtain medical care for them anonymously they are toast (sick pun intended).

I have yet to hear someone give me, despite my insistence they "put something on the table" to discuss, concrete examples of regulations they think would protect people from government abuse of such data. No one has ever done so. It's always been, "those are details that need to be worked out". I suspect Mr. Kerr is no different. In practical terms there are no regulations that will ever exist that would be adequate.

From a purely hypothetical view point I would be willing to compromise on a set of regulations that probably would be adequate but would violate several articles of the Bill of Rights and probably inspire new rights to be articulated in further amendments to our constitution. I'd explain here but you really don't want to know how creative I am in defending this essential piece of liberty.

Hence, since there will be no practical regulations that will protect such data collections we must not allow such data to be gathered in the first place. And the data that is gathered must be of suspect quality. You and I, as liberty and freedom loving people, have a duty to withhold and corrupt as much of this data as we can. And Mr. Kerr should get a one-way ticket on a fence rail, naked, tarred, and feathered, to North Korea, Cuba, or some other police state. [See my follow up post.]

Update: I forgot to mention another important (because I was there and heard it with my own ears) example. While working for the government laboratory PNNL I had fellow "scientist" (he had a degree in computer science and was working in "cyber security" but was unable to write a computer program) Newton Brown tell another co-worker and I, "See this badge?  This means the law doesn't apply to us." That is the mindset of some of those in government. And for all practical purposes Newton is correct.

Judges know very well how to read the Constitution broadly when they are sympathetic to the right being asserted. We have held, without much ado, that “speech, or . . . the press” also means the Internet...and that “persons, houses, papers, and effects” also means public telephone booths....When a particular right comports especially well with our notions of good social policy, we build magnificent legal edifices on elliptical constitutional phrases - or even the white spaces between lines of constitutional text. But, as the panel amply demonstrates, when we're none too keen on a particular constitutional guarantee, we can be equally ingenious in burying language that is incontrovertibly there.

It is wrong to use some constitutional provisions as springboards for major social change while treating others like senile relatives to be cooped up in a nursing home until they quit annoying us. As guardians of the Constitution, we must be consistent in interpreting its provisions. If we adopt a jurisprudence sympathetic to individual rights, we must give broad compass to all constitutional provisions that protect individuals from tyranny. If we take a more statist approach, we must give all such provisions narrow scope. Expanding some to gargantuan proportions while discarding others like a crumpled gum wrapper is not faithfully applying the Constitution; its using our power as federal judges to constitutionalize our personal preferences.

The able judges of the panel majority are usually very sympathetic to individual rights, but they have succumbed to the temptation to pick and choose. Had they brought the same generous approach to the Second Amendment that they routinely bring to the First, Fourth and selected portions of the Fifth, they would have had no trouble finding an individual right to bear arms.

Judge Alex Kozinski
Silveira v. Lockyer
United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
[Via Kevin.--Joe]

There is lots of chatter on the expected news tomorrow:

• This One's for All the Marbles (by Kevin, a very good article)
• What if? (Uncle)
• What If We Lose? (Sebastian)
• What If We Lose? (Armed Canadian)

I agree with those that say, in essence, the U.S. Supreme Court cannot be counted to rule in any rational fashion. They will rule however they want to rule without regard to original intent. Oh, they will find something someplace to hang their decision on but they will have no qualms about putting on the blinders and steadfastly ignore data that disagree with how they want to rule.

At the end of the day (figuratively speaking, literally it will be next spring), the question is what will people do if we are ruled against. Uncle says, "Then, giddy up." Armed Canadian says he would expect the NRA to engage in its biggest fund raising drive in history. Sebastian says it will motivate people in the short term and then the RKBA will gently fade away.

One alternative is a constitution convention as discussed in the comments to Kevin's post. Yeah, right. Our country completely and totally abandoned the enumerated powers model of the constitution during the Roosevelt administration. There wasn't enough outrage then to do a constitutional convention and the loss of just one amendment that is only exercised by something like 40% of the population won't meet the bar.

Going back to the revolutionary war we find that only about one third of the population were in favor of revolt against the tyrant King George. Another one third was opposed and one third were uncommitted. So, based on that model a case could be made that enough outraged gun owners might be able to pull off an illegal action of some sort.

I'd like to imagine there would be some sort Unintended Consequences revolt to the decision but from talking to many gun owners I know that won't happen. I know of three different FFL holders that were outspoken defenders of the RKBA and told of how if they ever gave up their FFL they would have a "mysterious fire" and all the 4473s would be tragically lost. When it came down to it, all of them turned them over to the ATF with only a mild whimper. Another person was exceedingly outspoken about how strongly they believed in their right to free speech and the RKBA. It wasn't even government action, merely pressure from potential investors and employers that convinced them to take their blog offline.

Several years ago one IPSC shooter I know was complaining about the stupid gun laws and how wrong they were. I asked, "So what will you do when your guns are declared illegal and you are told to turn them in? What will you do?" He gave me a confused look and said in a tone that indicated that he thought I was insane to even ask such a stupid question, "I'll turn them over. I'll complain, but I'll turn them over."

Who do you know that has actually followed through on some illegal activity in pursuit of securing liberty for future generations? Okay, if they are smart they won't tell anyone they broke law. So lets reword that a little bit; Who do you suspect may have broken the law in pursuit of securing liberty for future generations? I'll bet you can count them all on the fingers of one hand with several fingers left over.

When talking to one outspoken (in private) gun owner and former Special Forces guy about this he explained that the conditions for revolution is a well known science. IIRC he told me there are five stages to this. Until the people are in stage four there is no point even pushing people in that direction. Our country is, at most, in something like stage 1.5. I tried to push for more, what are the stages? How do you measure them? But he claimed it was too many years ago and he didn't remember.

In the darkest days of the Clinton administration gun rights leaders were privately saying they were merely fighting a delaying action. The war was lost and they were merely fighting on to postpone the inevitable. One evening after attending a public hearing in which the city council discussed destroying confiscated guns rather than "turned them loose on the streets to kill again" (sell them to local gun shops) I found myself alone in the parking lot with a gun rights leader. I asked what about a revolution? What will it take for people to say, "You have gone too far. This cannot be tolerated."? He told me it would never happen. If for no other reason than other countries would not allow us to have a revolution. The U.S. is just too important to the world economy for the other countries to tolerate a civil war. If nothing else they would starve us of critical materials that would shut us down. Embargoes would hurt us so badly that no one would be willing to take the hit in their lifestyles for the sake of their guns and liberty.

The bottom line is that I think Kevin and Sebastian are right. This is for all the marbles. If we lose, then that's it man, game over man, game over.

Update 11/13/2007: Today isn't the day after all. I'm reminded of the Emerson decision that took something like a year and a half to be decided when most cases were decided in a few months.

Last December I got a call from a newspaper wanting to talk about illegal bomb building. I posted about it here. In August Michael Blattner, the college student that got caught with the pipe bomb materials, plead guilty to knowingly and unlawfully possessing firearms at the dorm and at his parents' home. This Thursday Blattner will be sentenced.

From what I can determine about the facts in the case the most Blattner was guilty of was being stupid. Oh, he probably violated several laws here and there but they were all victimless crimes. The type that nearly all