The Brady Campaign supports the total ban on handguns and required disassembly or trigger locks on long guns in D.C. They insist they just want reasonable restrictions on firearms. They are a moderate group.

I suppose you could make that case. Especially since others want to ban the manufacture of toy guns:

She plans to go to Sacramento and lobby the Legislature for new gun control laws, including a ban on the manufacture of toy guns.

There is no such thing as a slippery slope. Move along, nothing to see here...

Tomorrow ATF inspector Sue will show up at my house and we will go for a little ride into the country. My ATF type 20 license to manufacture high explosives is up for renewal and they need to inspect my storage facility before they renew it.

As I was going through my closet this morning I wondered what I should wear tomorrow. I considered my Boomershoot t-shirt with this image:

But that's a little tame. I wanted something a little more edgy for the occasion.

For about a half second I considered this one from JPFO (they no longer sell it so I'm saving mine for special occasions):

Elian's story can be found here and occurred during those dark days while Janet Reno (The Butcher of Waco) was still in power.

I decided that shirt was a little too over the top even for me when meeting with someone from the ATF--in particular a meeting with Sue. Sue is very nice, I had lunch with her a few years ago and then we had a nice talk as we drove out to the Boomershoot site. She was helpful with getting my explosives storage facility into compliance with the government regulations. A couple years later I saw something posted on a website that could have been a threat toward her. I sent an email to her with the link and although Sue never responded alternate sources indicated I was the first one to tell her about it and everyone took it serious enough to put extra effort into her safety.

I decided it would be very rude and completely uncalled for me to wear the above shirt.

So... what shirt to wear tomorrow. I finally decided on Celebrate Diversity:

I'll let you know how it goes after I drive back to my bunker in the Seattle area tomorrow night.

Sebastian's and Kevin's posts reminded me of an alternate history. A sample:

How would today's America be different if politician's feared citizens,rather than citizen's fearing their government?

Imagine, if you will, the Land of the Free, Home of the Brave. Where individual rights meant something, and every citizen believed they had the right, nay, the duty, to stand up to any and all aggressors, foreign and domestic. You know, just like the Constitution says.

...

Government only does a few things. Doesn't take much. Most folks just pay the bill once a year. Never amounts to more than a few hundred dollars. Just as it should be. Hell, most folks get resentful at that much. Makes sense, I guess, given we founded the damn country over a tax on tea.

Since then, government on this side of the pond hasn't seen much sense in pissing off the people. Sure, some try now and then. There's always some petty jerk who thinks he can tell someone else what to do. But they never last. Sure, folks put up with them for a while, just like you do with a rash or a runny nose.

But after a little while folks get tired of the whining and crying the petty jerks make when people won't do what he figures they ought to. The petty ones get a little too uppity, and someone smacks him down. Sometimes, it takes only a little slap across the face to bring the petty jerks to their senses.

Sometimes, someone like old Carl grabs the rifle off the wall, slaps a full mag in, and says, "Time to teach these bastards a lesson."

Damn, if that doesn't work every time.

I like alternate histories. It's fun stuff. I especially like some of the stories from Harry Turtledove. But that's all fantasy stuff for recreation. When you get serious then I like what Henry Ford had to say:

I don't know much about history, and I wouldn't give a nickel for all the history in the world.  History is more or less bunk.  It is tradition.  We want to live in the present, and the only history that is worth a tinkers damn is the history we make today.

        Henry Ford

You can connect the dots for yourself.

Citing Miller for a proposition for which Miller does not stand, Petitioners make Miller falsely appear to establish a rule that it in fact does not, rendering the Second Amendment peculiar by defining "the people" to mean governmental entities. It is therefore critical that Second Amendment precedent be analyzed in a reasoned and rightful manner, and applied accordingly without any preconceptions.

Renee L. Giachino
February 11, 2008
Brief of amicus curiae Center for Individual Freedom in support of respondent in D.C. versus Heller.
[Sometime this month the Supreme Court is expected to announce it's decision in this historic case. Until that announcement the QOTD will be from various briefs in the case.--Joe]

The First Amendment is about how we govern ourselves -- not about how we titillate ourselves sexually.

Robert Bork
An interview on ABC's This Week, June 25, 1989
[I was reminded of this by Sebastian's post Talk About a Dodged Bullet.--Joe]

The other day Jed said, "I’d like to raid Joe’s quotations database."

I just got around to extracting the politics related stuff. There is lots of personal stuff in the master collection that some people would rather I didn't make public. The politics related things are here. It includes things that aren't really quotes such as political jokes. And because I have traded collections with other people some of the stuff does not necessarily represent my political leanings.

It's very simple. The authorities have no way of controlling criminals. So they control the law abiding 'cause we are an easy target.

You Tube
England Gun Ban Update @ 2:14 into the video.
[Via Uncle. There is lots of other good stuff in that video. Show this video to anyone that claims the U.K. gun ban is some sort of ideal the U.S. should strive for.--Joe]

Under Civil Rights groups they support they list Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence. I'm almost surprised the don't list the KKK too. I'm certain one could make a better case that the KKK supports civil rights (of whites) more than the Brady Bunch supports civil rights for anyone. The Brady Bunch is like the KKK in a lot of ways.

Gun control? We need bullet control! I think every bullet should cost 5,000 dollars. Because if a bullet cost five thousand dollar, we wouldn't have any innocent bystander.

Chris Rock
[I love sick humor.--Joe]

Last December I made two posts about how busy I was at work:

• Running on empty
• Running on empty makes the news

About 10 days ago while I was in Louisville our Corporate VP held a meeting for all the people under him. I missed out on the big meeting but I've watched part of the video of it since then. One of the topics at the meeting was awards for various people. My officemate, Sapna, mentioned in one the previous posts, our PM, our test/system integration guy and I got one of the awards. Here is a screen capture from that video:

I told Barb about this and she thought it was pretty cool... until I told her what we had done. We designed/wrote/tested some of the website code that puts ads on mobile phones (like what you see here depending on what country you are in) for our mobile websites.

Barb's response was basically "ads are evil". But ads are the reason so much of the Internet is "free" just like most television programs and radio. For example Hotmail requires dozens of servers with massive amounts of storage and bandwidth. Ads pay for those resources. There haven't been many ads on a lot of mobile phones for various reasons but that is changing and my little team (above) helped change that.

I find the diversity of our team interesting. Sapna is from India and on Monday participated in a folk-life event at the Seattle Center attended by some large number of people. She and about a dozen others put on several dances from India. I showed up and took a bunch of pictures. At 5' 3" and 110 pounds she doesn't look like a software geek: 

Taqi is from Pakistan (don't India and Pakistan lob expolsives and high speed pieces of metal at each other on a regular basis? Odd--they get alone so well here.) and when he visits "home" I sometimes ask him about what "training camps" he spent time in. He takes it quite well and tells me stories from his time, years ago, in the military--which he makes of point of telling me was the secular military. He is about to finish his master's degree from the U of W in physics.

Zane is of Asian descent and a Canadian citizen who loves to play basketball. Snowboarding is also up there on his list of things to do.

All of them are great people and I'm proud to work with them. However, I'm sometimes intimidated here at Microsoft. If you open your mouth about something you should know what you are talking about because I suspect the average I.Q. in our section of the building is probably about 150. Damn, these guys are smart.

The first and only thing that comes to mind is mental problems when I read something like The Racist Origins Of the Second Amendment. Pure projection. The truth is gun control has racist origins. Here is just a small sample of the evidence:

• The Racist Roots of Gun Control
• The Racist Origins of US Gun Control
• (JPFO Booklets) Gun Control is Racist!

Washington [D.C.] is a city of Southern efficiency and Northern charm.

John F. Kennedy
[And the brilliance of a black hole*, the integrity of a sociopath, and the morals of an alley cat.--Joe]

We cannot have freedom, we cannot have safety as long as these types of weapons are on our streets.

Michael Nutter
Philadelphia Mayor
May 27, 2008
Mayor Nutter takes gun control fight to Harrisburg
[Nutter is refering to "assault weapons". What Nutter doesn't understand or, just as likely fully understands but thinks we won't, is that if the government is allowed to restrict these firearms the people will have neither freedom nor safety. Just ask some of the worlds other beneficiaries of gun control. Gun control has never delivered the promises made to the common person, only to the tyrants.--Joe]

Thomas Sowell hits another one out of the park.  I'd heard about his recent article from R. Limbaugh. Here's a snippet:

Senator McCain is the only one in the race that has a pro-gun record of any kind. I think the mouthing of a pro-Second Amendment stance by Senators Clinton and Obama and pandering to gun owners is an embarrassment and I don't believe it will work.

Wayne LaPierre
May 13, 2008
Q & A with the NRA's executive vice president--Gun-rights lobby to meet in Louisville this week
[The problem is that it doesn't have to work with all gun owners. It just has to work with enough gun owners to win the election.--Joe]

Most people in the U.S. would offer you a shiny aluminum foil hat if you were to claim our knife rights are in danger. I know even the most enthusiastic supporters of gun control I have talked to express extreme skepticism when I have brought up the regulations on knives in the U.K. "That's just silly", they say. Yup. It is silly. But it's also true. Today's QOTD was just one hint of what is going on in the U.K.

And even if you are up to speed on the sad state of affairs in the U.K. one may reasonably claim we don't need to worry about that in this country because the ninnies who would take away our knives must first take away our guns. That claim sounds reasonable but is it?

While at the NRA convention I stopped by a booth with an intriguing banner:

I barely spoke to them as I took a picture of their banner, picked up a business card, and hurried on. But I knew at the time it was going to be a blog post.

Visiting their website I discovered a link to this WSJ article: Deadly pocketknives become a $1 billion business. It's every bit as one sided and Chicken Little like as any Brady Campaign media release.

So what about someone who claims we don't need to worry about knives when we are at least holding our own in the trenches on the gun rights front? My response is, "They are flanking us." What is going to be your response when some hysterical activist or legislator says, "We already outlaw tactical knives why can't we get rid of the guns as well?"

So, beyond the obvious commercial airplanes and John McCain public appearances, where are our defensive knives currently restricted? You know that switchblade knives are outlawed in many jurisdictions and the public opinion on them is roughly equivalent to that of machine guns. That battle is essentially lost. I don't know for certain on the "assault weapon" analog--the locking blade, one handed opening knives, but the WSJ article linked to above reports that Atlanta prohibits people from carrying pocket knives in public with blades longer than two inches. Yet, according to the article this isn't restrictive enough. Knife Rights could do those of us who carry defensive knives and pro-freedom activists a big service by compiling a list of political jurisdictions that are hostile to people even defending themselves using even a knife.

Another thing Knife Rights could do is work for preemption at the state level to remove the patchwork of laws that might trip of a visitor to some city that has no idea Chicken Little clones have taken over the city council. It would also be nice to see some D.C. versus Heller like cases involving knives and citing either/both state and federal constitutional protections for the right to keep and bear arms.

Here is what the Knife Rights Foundation [501(c)(3)] and Knife Rights [501(c)(4)] organizations have as their mission statements:

Knife Rights Foundation is dedicated to:

1. Encouraging safe and responsible use of knives and edged tools through education and outreach;
2. Educating knife owners, public officials and the general public about the history of knives and edged tools;
3. Educating knife owners, public officials and the general public about knife and edged tool related laws and regulations

Knife Rights is dedicated to:

1. Providing knife and edged tool owners an effective voice to influence public policy and to oppose efforts to restrict the right to own, use and carry knives and edged tools;
2. Encouraging safe, responsible and lawful use of knives and edged tools through education and outreach, enhancing positive perceptions of knives and edged tools and their owners and users;
3. Encouraging the marketing of knives and edged tools in a responsible manner conducive to the organization's goals;
4. Cooperating with advocacy organizations having complimentary interests and goals;
5. Providing knife and edged tool owners with services that they will find valuable in order to build membership to enable success in our primary objectives.

I wish them success not just because its the right thing to do but because they are defending my flank on the gun rights issue.

...the only solution is to try to drive knives from society. Already, stop-and-search squads have been put on the streets of London in a version of the contentious old "sus" laws. This, at least, is something practical that can be attempted: there is no good reason to carry blades.

Mark Lawson
May 16 2008
Weapons we can't handle
[This is the path the anti-gun people want us to take. This is the future if the anti-gun bigots are allowed to succeed.--Joe]