You have a right to your own opinions, but you don't have a right to your own facts.

Anonymous
[I have found attributions to Churchill, read an instance where Bloomberg said that, and heard one radio personality attribute Daniel Moynihan. If someone has better results in finding the originator please let me know.

What I like about this quote is that it applies so well to many of the anti-gun bigots. Their sloppy thinking confuses opinions and facts in so many ways. A post demonstrating this is forthcoming.--Joe]

I wondered why I was getting so many hits from people using a search engine with the search terms "atf job description".

I investigated just a little bit and discovered if you use those search terms with Google, Live Search, or Ask my blog post is the number one listing. I don't think I know how to express how much that amuses me.

I just hope I can repress the urge to share my amusement with the next ATF inspector that visits me at the Taj Mahal.

Earlier today, Uncle demanded:

I’m here to ask you all to knock that shit off.

I'm here to defy his demands:

Domain Name		usdoj.gov ? (U.S. Government)
IP Address		149.101.1.# (US Dept of Justice)
ISP		US Dept of Justice
Location		Continent  :  North America Country  :  United States  (Facts) State  :  Virginia City  :  Arlington Lat/Long  :  38.8782, -77.1054 (Map) Distance  :  2,068 miles
Language		English (U.S.) en-us
Operating System		Microsoft WinXP
Browser		Internet Explorer 6.0 Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1; DOJ3jx7bf; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; InfoPath.1; .NET CLR 2.0.50727)
Javascript		version 1.3
Monitor		Resolution  :  1024 x 768 Color Depth  :  32 bits
Time of Visit		Apr 3 2008 12:14:52 pm
Last Page View		Apr 3 2008 12:15:08 pm
Visit Length		16 seconds
Page Views		2
Referring URL		http://www.google.co...e&btnG=Google Search
Search Engine		google.com
Search Words		always think forfeiture
Visit Entry Page		http://blog.joehuffman.org/2008/03/20/AlwaysThinkForfeiture.aspx
Visit Exit Page		http://blog.joehuffman.org/2008/03/20/AlwaysThinkForfeiture.aspx
Out Click
Time Zone		UTC-4:00
Visitor's Time		Apr 3 2008 4:14:52 pm
Visit Number		279,359

Okay, so I'm not going to get bent out of shape and claim the ATF black helicopters are about to touch down. I'm not really in defiance of the Great and Wonderful Uncle.

What I do want to do is point out that we got the ATF's attention when we pointed out their faux pas regarding Always Think Forfeiture. Whether they give the creator of that incentive tool a promotion and/or publicly flog someone is still up in the air. But you should note that we do have an effect on them. And every minute they spend deciding what to do about getting caught in the sheep pen with their pants around their ankles is less time they have to spend infringing the rights of the innocent. It will also be a very useful thing for our friends in congress to bring up during budget hearings with the ATF. Jed did good. Real good.

Thanks to Tony for the email.

I'm glad this survey was done with private money rather than taxpayer money. The results are just as one would expect:

The only nit I have to pick with this poll is that it is "Sarah Brady" not "Sara Brady". But I'm not in any position to criticize someone for their typos or spelling errors.

Update: Tony, being the consciences researcher that he is updated the image. If only the Brady Campaign and others of their ilk were so quick to correct their errors we wouldn't have to do it for them.

I thought everyone knew that self-defense was illegal in the U.K.

They should know they would get complaints if they came out with a product like this:

Gun control groups have condemned a new bullet-proof “hoody” which claims to protect against all bullets except those fired by high-velocity rifles.

Bladerunner, the London company which sells the £300 Defender hoodie, says it is responding to demand from undercover police officers and concerned parents.

Raymond Stevenson, a spokesman for Don’t Trigger, an international antigun campaign based in Brixton, London, said: “It’s not helping kids to provide them with bullet-proof armoury. and will encourage more aggressive behaviour.”

A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.

William James
[Look around. You will see it nearly everywhere.--Joe]

Ignore all the errors, the deceptive use of numbers, and the emotional appeals. There is one sentence that explains why they just don't get it:

America is a nation that pays a heavy price for permitting its citizens to be armed.

Our constitution does not permit its citizens to be armed.

Yup. You read that right. And that is not an late April fools joke either.

Until they understand and adhere to this fundamental point they will never understand or leave us alone. The reality is that the people had the right to be armed before the Constitution existed and the people retained, explicitly through the 2nd and 10th Amendments those rights afterward. The U.S. Constitution permitted, through Article I, Section 8, Clauses 15 and 16, the government to be armed.

I already posted the pictures from yesterday morning at the Boomershoot site. In the afternoon things were a little better. And if you compare to what things looked like two weeks ago they are significantly better:

The shooters berm. The deepest snow I could find was only ten inches deep.

The target area from the shooters berm.

The target construction area has significantly less snow than before.

This is the "Tree-Line" target area and where I get worried.

The weather forecast doesn't look terrible. But it is a long way from great as well. In the next 15 days only three days are forecast to have precipitation. And three days are forecast to reach a high of 70F (this is an Orofino forecast so subtract a couple degrees for the Boomershoot site). If the forecast is correct and then we get bright sun for the last week of the month it could be beautiful Boomershoot conditions.

But don't count on it.

In other news I completed what little bit had to be done on the water supply. As if we needed that this year! We might be able to wash our equipment in the nearest snow drift.

I brought a new inverter but the old one was behaving this time so I just left the new one wrapped up and left it there as a spare. We could swap it out in less than a minute so it's not a big deal if it dies while we are in the middle of building targets.

I spent most of my time trying to get the WiFi working. There were numerous things wrong with the access point at the shed and once I got all those fixed everything started working just fine. I made one final tweak, changing the router configuration to follow Daylight Savings Time and when the router rebooted there was no wireless signal. I walked back to the neighbors to get physical access to the router and the hardwired connection was just fine. It was just the wireless that was dead. I poked around in the configuration a little bit, and without ever changing anything the wireless started working again. I rebooted the router again and the wireless went away and I was unable to get to come back up again.

I was out of time and I concluded that it must be the external power amplifier being flaky. I would suspect the router but that is the third router I have put there with similar symptoms from all three. The power amp is the only thing left that can be causing the problem.

In other news I was surprised with a dog came into the shed while I was working on the WiFi. I poked my head out the door and found I had company:

Rhonda and my brother Doug came out while training their search dogs.
They were looking for a dead body (actually a training aid) Doug had buried last November.

These are their dogs.

We talked for 15 or 20 minutes and then we all went back to work.

Oh, one last thing. When I came home Friday night I found Caleb had left this Boomershoot 2008 accessory in the driveway:

Guess what (and who) this is for.

Robert Novak tells us of the tap dance Obama is doing with gun rights. I learned a couple things. I didn't know that he taught constitutional law for 10 years. And I didn't know this:

Obama's dance on gun rights is part of his evolution from a radical young state legislator a few years ago. He was recorded in a 1996 questionnaire as advocating a ban on the manufacture, sale and possession of handguns (a position since disavowed). He was on the board of the Chicago-based Joyce Foundation, which takes an aggressive gun control position, and in 2000 considered becoming its full-time president. In 2006, he voted with an 84 to 16 majority (and against Clinton) to prohibit confiscation of firearms during an emergency, but that is his only pro-gun vote in Springfield or Washington.

He was on the board of the Joyce Foundation and considered becoming its full-time president? And now he wants to be the President of the United States?

That's far worse than the fox guarding the hen house, giving an alcoholic the keys to the liquor store, or giving teenagers whiskey and the keys to a sports car. It is every bit as bad as giving a Democrat politician taxpayer money and power.

Now he has published a list:

In May of 2007, Rev. Michael Pfleger, Pastor of Chicago's St. Sabina's Catholic Church, shocked the nation when he called for the "snuffing" of legislators who vote against gun control bills.

Late last week, Pfleger raised the bar on this issue by publishing a list of members of the Illinois General Assembly who oppose his extremist position on gun control.  In light of his May 2007 diatribe, it must be presumed that the list identifies those legislators that Pfleger wants his followers to "snuff."

[...]

"It'll be interesting to see how brave Pfleger is when he has to come face to face with the lawmakers he's marked for murder," said Pearson.

Indeed.

It is less than three weeks until the big event. I visited the site yesterday to do some prep. I'll post more tonight but here are a couple pictures indicating the existing conditions and weather:

The road just to the north of the site.

The actual site. The hillside in the distance is the main target area. That is not fog in the air. It is snow.

As Illinois is one of the last two states to prohibit the carrying of concealed guns, it should be the first to proudly enact the law prohibiting the ownership and carrying of concealed knives.

Knife owners who are allowed to own them, must be required to carry KOID (Knife Owner Identification) licenses. To ensure knives are being sold to responsible owners, there should be a five-day waiting period for background checks.

Knife owners must attend mandatory knife training classes to ensure the proper use of knives and understand the potential harm caused by the unknowledgeable knife owner.

When transporting knives, owners must secure them in a secure case in the vehicle's trunk.

John K. Nolan
April 5, 2008
A cutting satire on gun control
[It's pretty good satire. It's not up to the VPC Blog level. But it's not bad. Of course the above fairly accurately describes the current situation in the U.K. so the satire aspect will probably be missed by some.--Joe]

It is evil, and we must defeat it.

Charlton Heston
1997
This quote was used in the "No on I-676" campaign. Initiative 676 was a gun registration and mandated training scheme.
[Heston died yesterday.

Yes, he was an actor but I don't pay much attention to actors. What I remember him for was his contribution to the rights of gun owners.

During the "No on I-676" campaign Heston and others from the NRA showed up and gave speeches all around the state. The Citizen Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms invested a lot of time and money into as well. And of course I and thousands of other gun owners in Washington state spent a lot of time and money working on this. We ended up sending it down in flames (71%-29%) and Heston probably did as much or more than almost anyone else to make that happen. It was such an overwhelming defeat the anti-gun bigots in Washington state (Washington Ceasefire) has not tried an initiative since then and even the legislature has been somewhat timid on guns since then.

I didn't meet Heston. I did meet and talked to Tanya Metaksa for quite a while on election night. I was probably in Idaho the weekend when Heston did his thing in the Seattle area. But I did buy the t-shirt (see below).--Joe]

I'd never heard of Jim Pontillo.  I found him through a link on Jewish World Review.  Liberalism's Tragic Soul is a long post, but there are a lot of very quotable statements in it:

...you are victim to the liberal propaganda which suggests CEOs are big all controlling evil despots who can set policy and control the population at their whim. CEOs in a truly capitalist society are the biggest slaves of the planet. They are enslaved to the whims of the market—to you and me.

That one reminds me of a good friend, who opened a retail store in a small village that had a two-store monopoly.  The two stores had been price-fixing for years.  My friend saw this monopoly, correctly, as an opportunity.  He did his homework and found out he could provide goods at vastly lower prices and still make a good profit.  So long as his property rights were protected against coercion and other forms of force, he could do a nice business and in the process he'd be giving every resident of this little village a raise, in effect, by lowering the prices on all the goods they needed.  He did just that, and has done very well for many years.  That's the value of a free market right there, in microcosm.  There can be no lasting, anti-consumer monopoly in a free market, since anyone taking undue advantage of the consumer is merely creating an opportunity for their competitors.  That is, unless government steps in and screws it all up.

The next time you get into an argument about freedom with a liberal, the freedom they profess to defend, the freedom that conservatives venture to usurp with their fascist beliefs, ask them what freedom they are talking about.  Is it the freedom to possess firearms to protect ourselves if government fails to, or the freedom to keep most of the money we earn, or the freedom to speak candidly about religion, or the freedom to provide the best for our families; or is it the freedom to hand our lives over to some elected official where he will decide what is best for us...

We believe that this domestic violence prevention strategy "should" be implemented. However, we recognize that it would be difficult to implement all these measures due to the clout of the gun lobby and subsequent lack of political will and resources.

In lieu of this, GunGuys.com has considered launching a new "cultural change" campaign with a simple message to young women:

"I Don't Date Boys Who Own Guns."

Mike of Gun Guys
With So Many Men Owning Guns, Domestic Violence Is Difficult to Prevent for Justice System
April 4, 2008
[I wonder if he has also considered a campaign with these simple messages to young women "I Don't Date Black (Jewish/Italian/Chinese/whatever) Boys". It would be entirely consistent if he did. One form of bigotry is just as valid as any other.--Joe]

The idea that the only way we think we can make a safer, better society is for everyone to carry a gun is incredibly sad. It's also individualistic--the answer to racism, rape, and gay bashing is to carry a gun, not have any form of social organizing.

Gwen
January 10, 2008 10:48 PM
Comment in Equal Opportunity Gun Ownership
[This is very revealing of their mindset. Apparently "social organizing" makes individual responsibility obsolete and justifiably deprives all individuals of the right to defend their lives. The collective is to defend the members it deems worthy of defensive. And of course we know how that works out. The "leaders" get their armed guards and the ordinary individual gets a dysfunctional and corrupt police system. The issues is that in the U.S. the elected officials are supposed to be "public servants" not "leaders". When the government successfully claims a monopoly on the use of force they have dropped all pretense of being "public servants" or "leaders" and have declared themselves to be "rulers".

Although Gwen didn't make the blog post she was commenting on she is a co-editor of the blog.

As Kevin pointed out "everyone" is blogging about this post and the comments. It was the source of my own QOTD yesterday.--Joe]

This is more like what I expect from Xenia.

"This makes ten" refers to the tenth bone she has broken in her life. It's not entirely obvious from the post.

Gun control serves violence, oppression, genocide, and other evil purposes. Opposing it serves peace, freedom, human dignity, and the triumph of intellect over brute force. Choose your side. Do you want the side that was supported by the KKK, racists, Nazis, rapists, gay-bashers, and other scum, or do you want the side that is supported by fine folks like the brave Jews who fought back against the Nazis, and men of peace like Ghandi?

The choice is yours, and history will remember you by it...

maineshark
April 3, 2008 5:37 AM
Comment in Equal Opportunity Gun Ownership
[H/T to Tam and Uncle. I'll probably use another comment from that same post as my QOTD tomorrow.--Joe]

The best minds are not in government. If any were, business would steal them away.

Ronald Reagan
["Best" doesn't necessarily mean brightest. It can also mean ethical. Now think about how much time the current presidential candidates have spent in government versus private business.

Reagan was right.--Joe]

Boomershoot 2008 shirts, caps, mugs, etc. are now available.

Update: The link has been updated. I had a private link before.

Lame.

Xenia, I know you can do better than that. 2007 was better and so was 2006.