The View From North Central Idaho

I reported on this once before and I thought you might like to know another brick is being placed in the wall of their prison.

It probably makes no sense to you and certainly not to me and the punishment is equivalent to what some people in this country sometimes get for killing someone. But the law is the law. So...

But the pair, who as part of their bail conditions are unable to leave Dubai, have been charged with three offences which could mean a maximum sentence of six years in prison if found guilty.

The triple charges are indecent behaviour, having unmarried sex and having consumed alcohol.

Probably 99% of the people in this country would shake their heads and wonder how in the world could such a thing happen. How backward these people are to so severely punish something that in most parts of the world, if punished at all, would only merit a small fine. But things aren't really so different here.

Here I can buy hollow point bullets by the thousands for a few pennies each and have them delivered to my door and no one will blink and eye or care. I can make hollow point ammunition in my garage by the thousands without a problem. But in New Jersey dealers are required to keep detailed records on the sale of them and if you have just one at the wrong time and wrong place, even without a gun to shoot it in, and you could go to jail.

Sure the law is the law and legislatures have the legal power to make stupid laws. That doesn't mean it isn't oppressive and shouldn't be repealed. It's just that many people don't realize it and/or don't care to do anything about it. The "beach sex" case in Dubai gives us an opportunity to make parallels to the oppressive nature of many laws in our country as well.

It's as if everything is just backward in this guys world:

H.R. 1399 would pre-empt the Supreme Court’s recent decision in District of Columbia v. Heller and prevent the city from complying with the ruling by instituting a new registration system for handguns. Souder’s bill would allow individuals to possess unregistered firearms, repeal the District’s ban on assault weapons, and prohibit the city from taking any future action “to enact laws or regulations that discourage or eliminate the private ownership or use of firearms.” Federal lawmakers are essentially being asked to impose on the city of Washington something they would never tolerate for their own home districts.

I know these people have mental problems. And I know they lie and distort. But in this case the facts are so easy to check. Does this guy think no one will notice? Or does he think that only people with similarly warped world views will read his material?

But as I have said before, I guess we don't need to understand them. We just need to defeat them. And with them being nearly psychotic they make it much easier.

John Longenecker, has usual, has some good advice on what to do about gun control. He is calling for the same thing I have for quite a while:

The FBI is charged with investigating such abuses under color of law, and in the United States Code, a Pattern and Practice of violating rights is an element of the offense, which interests me a great deal. There are rules against abuse of process, abuses under color of authority, but this is something different I see. It comes to address abuses of civil rights specifically under color of existing law, which is to follow a predatory selective enforcement (abuses in themselves) which might ordinarily be simply a conflict in laws, and therefore a matter of legal opinion. In the past, almost throughout the entire history of the nation, it was the Citizen on the defensive, the citizen charged with violating some of the more than 20,000 gun laws, oftentimes facing some real hard time, not to mention legal bankruptcy. Every single defendant citizen had his hands full as the Plaintiff or some enforcement agency had unlimited staff and unlimited funding. They also had the support of unlimited citizens who believed the Agency would not attack a citizen for nothing.
 
But, under this legal tool, for the intentional acts of a defendant who is now more likely to be not a citizen but a college campus, an employer’s workplace or a major city, there is no conflict of laws to hide behind, but more of a naked violation of civil rights to answer.

I would like to think we hare entered a completely new era in our fight against oppression of gun owners. The good guys are now on the offensives and the criminals are taking cover and hiding. I join Longenecker in saying:

In the Heller case, I point out that one can win their rights if they have the Time, the Team and the Wherewithal, and I point out often that D.C. v. Heller will mean new challenges to gun bans nationwide. To them, and to citizens prosecuting their claims, I said Good Hunting.

I say it again: Good Hunting.

If a man neglects to enforce his rights, he cannot complain if, after a while, the law follows his example.

Oliver Wendell Holmes
Found at the beginning of Chapter 3 of Freehold by Michael Z. Williamson.
[I'm reading the dead tree version. I found it on my desk at work one morning. Reader Tony had delivered it. I changed my habits to make time for reading a chapter or more each night before I go to sleep. I'm just starting chapter five now. It's good stuff so far.--Joe]

Sebastian says, "For all intents and purposes, 4473 is registration."
With all due respect to Sebastian I don't think he has thought this through because there are huge differences. Even in the confiscation scenario which is one of the main objections to registration.
Here are some of the differences:

• In most states a 4473 is not required for private transfers. Registration would be meaningless if the paper trail disappeared after the first retail sale like it does with 4473s.
• With registration you can be challenged for your papers and a gun inspection every time you buy ammo, buy an gun accessory, are at the range, and every time registration is renewed (Yearly? Monthly?). If you try to buy ammo for a 30-06 and you can't show papers that demonstrate you own a 30-06 then you aren't going to be practicing with that gun for the day when cattle cars start hauling the Jews/Christians/homosexuals/blacks/whites/whoever to the camps and you finally decide shooting the bastards is justified.
• Registration fees can be made exorbitant. Initially they would be small enough that few can legitimately complain about the price. But once the guns are on "the books" they can make the fee anything--even 100 X the price of the gun every year and still not have "banned guns" and violated the letter of the Heller decision. The power to tax and/or license is the power to destroy.
• Even if guns aren't banned they can mandate "safe storage" with alarms, event bank vault like gun safes and 24 x 7 guards. They can't demand to inspect your gun safe if they don't know you have a gun.
• It may not be obvious, but registration violates my Jews in the Attic Test while the 4473s do not.

As it currently stands should the government demand all 4473s be turned in there will be a lot of guns sold over 20 years ago that will be completely untraceable. And, I suspect, there will be many cases where large numbers of 4473s disappeared in a surprising number of "unfortunate fires". And even if they come knocking on your door because your name was on a 4473 from a couple years ago you can lie or have them ask your lawyer where the gun is without much fear they can actually lay there hands on the hardware.

I say if in the previous paragraph because one cop told me they can't get a warrant for drugs that someone saw even 10 days ago. There must be credible belief the item(s) to be searched for are still present when the search is to be executed. Is it credible to believe a gun that you purchased two months ago still present? Maybe. Two years ago? In the absence of registration that is a big stretch.

If that isn't clear enough compare the results of registrations required by NFA34 to the results of 4473s.

Thanks to Mr. Gura's efforts, the NRA is no longer gun-shy about going to court.

James Taranto
July 19, 2008
Alan Gura--How a Young Lawyer Saved the Second Amendment
[And this resulted in, as Sebastian says, More Heller Dominoes. Bans that have been in place for nearly 30 years went away simply by the NRA filing a lawsuit. All this is thanks to Mr. Gura's (and hundreds of others) efforts.--Joe]

Ry reports on bigots at Travelers Insurance canceling policies because someone possesses a EBR.

Both dissents are not merely mistaken, but (if I may be blunt) shoddy. Prior decisions and statutes seem to have been skimmed rather than researched. Historical theories that were clearly disproven are invoked as fact. The logical conclusion is that the dissenters cared not so much about constitutional law as about policy, and what they find good policy simply had to be constitutional.

David T. Hardy
July 15, 2008
D.C. v. Heller: The Court's Liberal Wing Shoots Itself In The Foot
[One has to wonder what can be done about this. I find it very, very disturbing but don't have the slightest idea what the solution is.--Joe]

With his usual thoroughness John Lott said:

Possibly one of the more remarkable changes has been his position on guns.
But despite Obama's recent concession on "The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer" that there has been a "shift in emphasis" on various issues, on guns he held firm: "You mentioned the gun position. I've been talking about the Second Amendment being an individual right for the last year and a half. So there wasn't a shift there."
...
No matter Obama's current position, no major party presidential nominee has probably ever had as strong and consistent an anti-gun record. Here is a politician who supported a ban on handguns in 1996, backed a ban on the sale of all semiautomatic guns in 1998 (a ban that would encompass the vast majority of guns sold in the U.S.), advocated in 2004 banning gun sales within five miles of a school or park (essentially a ban on virtually all gun stores), as well as served on the board of the Joyce Foundation, probably the largest private funder of anti-gun and pro-ban research in the country.

In a post Heller world Obama is the equivalent of someone who owned slaves two years ago now claiming he always believed slavery was wrong. If he really believed what he claims then he should have acted on his beliefs instead of what was most advantageous to him at the moment.

Jeff Knox gives us some perspective and advice:

As I have said before; sometimes it takes a Pearl Harbor or an Alamo to wake the giant and win the war.  Sometimes it takes a Jimmy Carter to wake voters up and give a Ronald Reagan a chance to lead.  And sometimes it takes an Assault Weapons ban to get our guys off their butts and into the voting booth.

I'd rather by-pass the devastation of a lost battle and skip right to the victory, but we can't always get what we want.  The important thing is that we don't concede, and compromise, and settle for a little more restriction for fear of a lot more restriction.  That is the great danger.  When they come and take something from us, we have a righteous, moral imperative to rise up and take it back.  When we compromise and give something away, we surrender that righteous moral imperative and have only whining as our rallying cry.  That is why there is no such thing as a "reasonable" gun control law.  No such thing as "reasonable" restrictions on our fundamental right to arms.  No such thing as "reasonable" compromise to avoid "something worse shoved down our throats."  If they want to shove something down our throats, we must stand firm and not give an inch.  If we succeed in beating them back, we are battle hardened and better prepared for the next fight.  If we lose, we are energized and reinforced by our brothers, finally awakened from their complacent slumber.

Here are six reasons I'm wary of gun buybacks, such as the one scheduled for Saturday in Chicago in which those who turn in firearms at any of 25 locations get a $100 prepaid credit card per gun, no questions asked:

1. I can't imagine criminals disarming themselves for a lousy $100.
2. I don't see the economic sense of offering law-abiding people a flat fee for their guns.
3. I worry about buyback programs subsidizing crime and weapons traffic.
4. I can't find much evidence that buybacks are effective.
5. I'm not convinced that buybacks get "problem" guns off the streets.
6. I hear in Mayor Richard Daley's arm-flapping jibber-jabber on this point an admission that the buyback is simply a feel-good program to make citizens believe the city is actually doing something to reduce gun violence.

Eric Zorn
July 23, 2008
Hard to find good reason to buy back guns
[There is much more in the original article, including support for each of his reasons and this Webliography of gun buy-back programs. He left out one of my favorites though. The bigots have to twist the language in order for this to even begin to make sense. This isn't a "buyback". The government is not buying back guns it previously sold. It is offering token compensation for the surrender of a specific constitutionally enumerated right that only a sucker would accept.--Joe]

This was originally posted as a comment to Sebastain's post The Myth of the Clean Revolution several minutes ago but the comment didn't show up--at least not immediately. It probably tripped some spam filter and needs to pass moderation. And besides it stands fairly well as it's own post. Plus I have corrected a few minor typos, grammer errors and my sloppiness of formating and writing in the original.

Sebastian, This is not intended to dispute your main point. Just to point out that perhaps not all of your justification for it is valid. You said:

Remember that your revolution will not change the people of the United States, who elected the government that you so despise.

There may be solutions to the problem of continuous government growth and power without restricting the voting rights of the people that don't know better.

Go read The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress and their search for a new form of government. Possibilities discussed included all laws requiring a 2/3 majority in one house of government to be put into effect. And second house of legislation has as it's sole purpose the repealing of laws. And it could do so by getting only 1/3 of the votes. Other interesting options were considered. I think we have learned a lot about the failures of our current system of government to protect freedom and perhaps we could better if we started with a clean slate.

Often the biggest barrier to a solution is properly defining the problem. My son James and just finished the book Future of Freedom. We both were highly annoyed about the author being able to describe the process by which freedom was/is destroyed in democracies but never pointed out the, what to us seemed, obvious solutions. But perhaps we were too harsh. Successfully defining the problem is a major accomplishment in its own right.

Anyone considering "shooting the bastards" needs to realize that even if taking that step is fully justified (justification basis deliberately omitted as being beyond the scope of this post but this could be a starting point) one needs to look at the long term direct and unintended consequences of such an act. They need to have a reasonably good idea what the position of society will be a day, a week, a year, and a decade after they "pulled the trigger". And after evaluation they conclude the world will be a better place by most measures. They need to be a grand master chess player with only a small fraction of the pieces visible on the board and see ten moves ahead against opponents who are known and unknown. Or they need to know, with near certainty, things can't get any worse if they do take the shot.

I contend no such grand master "chess player" exists. Hence before "taking the shot" the existing or reasonably projected conditions need to be so bad as to replicate something like a Nazi concentration camp or Soviet Gulag. We aren't there yet.

Okay, the example is for "rational management" but I figure that is an attempt to dodge the bullet (figuratively) coming his way with the name "reasonable restrictions" on it:

The high-muckety-media histrionics have been comical. One howler was a clueless-as-usual Washington Post editorial harrumphing that Washington DC may still “devis[e] regulations that can provide for rational management of gun ownership.”

“Rational management?” Snrk …

For the sake of argument, isn’t “rational management” of printing-press ownership a terrific idea, limiting it to those who scrupulously adhere to known facts? Oh, the high dudgeon! Why, people would rise up in ARMS, for heaven's sake!
Imagine this: Two talking heads, brows furrowed, power ties immaculately knotted, pompously declaiming how to “rationally” destroy (excuse me, MANAGE) the right they disfavor:

Second: “Guns can be dangerous.”

First: “Editorials can be dangerous.”

Second: “Gun owners need a government permit.”

First: “Journalists need government permits.”

Second: “People should be made to wait ten days before buying a gun.”

First: “Reporters and editors should cool off ten days before writing.”

Second: “We must ban guns that fire more than one shot in rapid succession.”

First: “We must ban printing presses that print more than one page in rapid succession. And those Web servers! Millions of hits per hour? Dangerous!”

Second: “Oh, but that’s different! Guns can bring down a government!”

First: “And free speech can’t?”

The question here is, how should Americans respond to those seeking “rational management” of any of our civil liberties?

I would also like to suggest that perhaps even better success could be had by discussing the "rational management" or "reasonable restrictions" of blacks freed by the 13^th Amendment.

I vow to keep attacking the stupidity of unfettered gun ownership until I have vanquished the gun sellers' lobby and broken the back of the NRA.

...

So enjoy yourselves, gun-persons. Your end is coming. And when the black helicopters land on your lawn and AFT [sic] agents shoot you for resisting arrest, I'll be proud to show up and pry your weapon from your cold, dead hand.

Donald Kaul
July 24, 2008
Attacking the stupidity of unfettered gun ownership
[Okay, so it was mostly a poor attempt at humor. But still there are people see nothing wrong with using violence to achieve their goal of depriving us of our right to keep and bear arms. And this was the guy that said he had given up just nine days ago.--Joe]

My wife asked me to make an appointment to get her car in for an oil change.  I replied;

You have an appointment for your car first thing Monday morning.  I can bring it in, or you can, as you wish.

Hmm—now there’s a "Change" for which we can "Hope".  Call the Obama campaign headquarters.  Better yet, call Jiffy Lube headquarters and tell them you have a great new ad slogan:

We "Hope" we can "Change"…your oil.

- or -

Do you "Hope" for a "Change"?  Well, get over to Jiffy Lube today!!  We can do "An Oil Change You Can Believe In".

I think they should do it and try to get sued by the Obama campaign.  It would make them extremely famous and get them another million customers overnight.

I should have added;

"Don't just "Hope" your car is OK--  "Change" your oil at (pick a company) today."

What media bias?

The Uninvited Ombudsman points out the media gave front page coverage to a handful of people participating in a tournament of the nation's number three sport. This was on the same weekend that 300 people participating in the nations number two sport competed for national titles.

In my mind there is no one who is as dangerous as one who truly believes that they know what's best for other people.

Sometimes I can hardly believe the stupidity of the people that get elected to national office. This guy is a prime example:

"It is my belief that federal law prohibits individuals from carrying firearms in all areas of an airport and that TSA has the authority to enforce these restrictions," Thompson wrote. "To do otherwise would hamper TSA's ability to keep our airports secure."

...

TSA's inability to protect the general public from individuals carrying concealed weapons into an airport would pose a serious and unnecessary security threat," Thompson wrote. "If TSA management believes that no current law exists to clearly designate areas of an airport within the control and authority of federal transportation officials, the committee may seek legislative action to correct this omission."

What does his "belief" have to do with reality? He can just look up the law and read it--unless he is unable to read. There are "secure" areas and there is everywhere else. Regardless of the reality of whether these "secure" area are really secure or not how can a firearm ban for the entire airport be enforced unless they moved the metal detectors and x-ray machines outward to include the ticket counters and baggage claim areas?

Did this bigot get his thinking skills from a dumpster behind the Violence Policy Center? How does he think all the hunters, people attending shooting matches, and training get their firearms to a remote location? They are transported as per the TSA rules on firearms.

This is a follow up story from the one I reported on this morning. As Lyle pointed out in the comments it used to be there were rifle teams at our schools and bringing a gun to school wasn't a big deal. Now they bring out dogs, helicopters (from two different jurisdictions), and police from nine jurisdictions based on a rumor of a one gun that might have been taken to school.

PINOLE: POLICE CLARIFY THAT GUN WAS SEEN ON SCHOOL CAMPUS BUT NOT FOUND

Two boys were arrested on suspicion of bringing an assault rifle onto the Pinole High School campus Friday, but, contrary to earlier reports, officers did not recover the alleged weapon, Pinole police Cmdr. Peter Janke said today.

However, police believe there was in fact a gun at the school Friday, Janke said.

"Our investigation shows that there was a gun brought on campus," Janke said.

Somebody reportedly saw an AK-47 assault rifle on school grounds, he said. He declined to say who had spotted the gun.

Police did not find the weapon, even after an extensive search of the school, the school grounds and the roughly 800 students on campus.

Police say the two boys, both summer school students, were arrested for possession of an illegal assault weapon, bringing a firearm onto school grounds, being a minor in possession of live ammunition, being a minor with a concealed weapon, transportation of marijuana, being a minor in possession of a firearm with certain prior convictions and a probation violation.

The incident began just before 8 a.m. Friday when a passenger on an Alameda-Contra Costa Transit District bus heading to the school reported seeing another passenger, possibly a student, with a gun. The witness told police that the person with the gun might have brought it onto school grounds, police said Friday.

Pinole police received help from the Hercules Police Department, the Contra Costa County Sheriff's Office, the California Highway Patrol, the El Cerrito Police Department, the Richmond Police Department, the West Contra Costa County Unified School District, the Western Contra Costa Transit Authority, and the city's public works department.

Gun-sniffing dogs from San Francisco and the Bay Area Rapid Transit District were also brought in while the U.S. Coast Guard and the East Bay Regional Park District provided air support, Janke said.

It's all part of the demonization of gun ownership. If they spend $200K and thousands of man hours on just a rumor of one gun it makes it all the more easy to justify laws against gun ownership. After all that huge expense could have been prevented if there hadn't been a gun for the kid to have access to.

But what I want to know is where were the tanks, artillery, and flame throwers? Or did they decide flame throwers were out after what happened at Waco?

We have a target in our sights. Go pull the trigger.

Update: Never mind. Stand down.

I highly recommend Ayn Rand's collection of essays, Philosophy: Who Needs It?

I was reminded of her work by this discussion in the Washington Post:

I think both party's leaders would be wise to do away with platforms altogether.

It's the logical conclusion of a society that lacks an understanding of the need for philosophy. Political candidates of the same party can be on opposite sides of the same issue and they see nothing odd about it. There are no principles to guide them. They believe whatever they want to believe regardless of it's validity. People support and even celebrate "diversity of opinion" for views that are obviously false.

Do you think I exaggerate? Remember this quote?

No one has the right to destroy another person's belief by demanding empirical evidence.

Ann Landers

Something needs to change in order for there to be hope for our future. And Obama is not the solution. It's him and those like him that are the problem.

In the Peoples Republic of California they have been ignoring the 2^nd Amendment so long it just seems normal that they would ignore the 4^th Amendment as well:

"In our investigation, we believe an AK-47 was brought on school grounds," Janke said. "We're still investigating what happened to the weapon."

...

All of the approximately 800 students were searched.

There is not even a hint of outrage in the article.

Update: I can't find the original article and the link I used is broken. I can only find a significantly stripped down version here.

I do have a copy of the original and have put it here.

Amazing:

According to Peters--the head of the organization which the U.N. says represents "civil society" on gun issues, all handguns should be banned, as should all rifles capable of firing 100 meters, as should the defensive ownership of any gun.

The only "rifles" which aren't capable of firing 100 meters are those that fire plastic suction cups or Nerf "bullets".

SAF and S&W announce a commemorative revolver.

Second Amendment Foundation and Smith & Wesson Partner on Commemorative Revolver

Engraved Model 442 Will Recognize District of Columbia vs. Heller Decision

SPRINGFIELD, Mass. (July, 21, 2008) – The Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) and Smith & Wesson have partnered to create a commemorative revolver designed to recognize the historical significance of the District of Columbia vs. Heller decision and to acknowledge the six original plaintiffs that united to challenge the gun ban in Washington, D.C.

As part of the project, an engraved Smith & Wesson Model 442 revolver will be presented to each of the six plaintiffs – Shelly Parker, Tom Palmer, Gillian St. Lawrence, Tracey Ambeau, George Lyon and Dick Heller – for their key roles in working to protect the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms. Smith & Wesson will make the commemorative revolver available for consumer purchase in Fall 2008 and will direct a portion of the proceeds to the Second Amendment Foundation to acknowledge the organization’s pivotal role in the Heller case and its ongoing efforts to preserve the Second Amendment rights of U.S. citizens.

“We are proud to work with Smith & Wesson on this project,” said Alan Gottlieb, founder of the Second Amendment Foundation. “June 26 saw a landmark victory for the Second Amendment, and for all Americans. This is a fitting way to commemorate a significant moment in history, and support future efforts that will continue to strengthen our constitutional rights.”

The Smith & Wesson Model 442 will be laser engraved with an insignia to commemorate the ruling by the Supreme Court. On the right side plate of the revolver, the scale of justice is depicted with the wording “D.C. vs. Heller” across the scale. The balance is in favor of the “Heller” name with the court date of “June 26, 2008” positioned across the top. Underneath the scale, the side plate reads “Second Amendment” and “The right to keep and bear arms” in white lettering.

“We at Smith & Wesson are pleased to honor the six original plaintiffs in the case while at the same time offer to consumers a firearm that will help in the preservation and protection of the Second Amendment,” said Tom Taylor, Vice President of Marketing for Smith & Wesson. “The Second Amendment Foundation has worked diligently on the Heller case along with several other cases in the last two decades by promoting legal scholarship. Their contributions have helped to dramatically change the legal landscape and we are honored to partner with them on this project.”

Jeff has more including this link to the Boston Herald where gun bigot John Rosenthal is quoted in an article. So I left the following comment with the article:

Would the Boston Herald quote the KKK if there were some similar celebratory event occurring because of a civil rights Supreme Court victory for blacks? If not, then why quote John Rosenthal in this article?

The only conclusion I can come up with is that the Boston Herald has sympathy for the position of those that would deny people a specific enumerated civil right.

It is a sad commentary on the U.S. Justice Department that they allowed this flagrantly racist and elitist law to stand for so long.  But, when one understands the history of gun control laws it isn’t surprising that this racist, elitist law was ignored.

John Bender
July 21, 2008
Civil rights organization fights elitists and racists
[H/T to David Hardy. It's really good article. It is well documented and openly calls people that created and continue to support the denying of a specific enumerated right to the poor and minorities racist and elitist.--Joe]

Post Heller there has been some people floating ideas about potential ways to get (or simply giving up on) machine guns back into general circulation. Yesterday I received an email which, in essence, is an idea for achieving this. Basically it shows the "in common use" argument leads to an absurdity:

From: Tom Locker
Sent: Sunday, July 20, 2008 6:21 PM
Subject: A thought

Let’s see if I can make this point in a sensible, understandable manner – in many people’s minds the SC seems to give a tacit OK to the machine gun ban as they are not “in common use,” Scalia also used the term "unusual and dangerous."

But, as many have noted, in the US, machine guns were pretty effectively banned (by using tax powers) fairly early in their developmental history. I think the Thompson was one of the first truly portable machine guns when it came out in 1921. The ban was instituted in 1934.

This gives the government a trump card over all future improvements in self-defense technology. As soon as a new, more effective method of self-defense is developed, it can be banned, as it is not “in common use.”

As a thought experiment, imagine that Heller was decided around 1500, just as firearms were coming into military use in Europe. In this scenario the decision would give citizens the right to use swords, knives and archery equipment for self defense, but not the “uncommon, unusual and dangerous” firearms.

Where would self-defense be then? And where are we now? Should the government have exclusive access to all future improvements in self-defense technology?

Sebastian has suggested that we might be able to demonstrate that anything the police uses is "in common use" and hence is protected by the 2^nd Amendment. One might hope to stretch this line of reasoning to anything the military uses (Hey! It's common in the military!) but that is a big stretch goal.

My line of thought is that "uncommon, unusual and dangerous" shouldn't be a difficult hurdle to get full autos over. After all there are tens of thousand of machine guns in circulation and they aren't inherently more dangerous than any other gun of similar caliber in the hands of the same person. The "uncommon, unusual and dangerous" is more appropriately applied to biological, chemical, nuclear, and perhaps explosives based weapons. Perhaps the justices had machine guns in mind when they agreed to that criteria but that doesn't really matter because that wasn't the question before the court. If it had then briefs would have been submitted showing machine guns are not uncommon, unusual and dangerous. It could just be my optimistic nature but I would like to believe what I read in Scalia's opinion is very careful wording that let the anti-gun people hear what they want to hear and gathered the required votes for a victory but are actually open gates for us to drive trucks through.

Other possibilities surely exist. What are your ideas?

From Lyle @ Ultimak. Left-Speak-- A Glossary of Terms

Some examples:

Arsenal: Plural of "Firearm". An arsenal is found in a Compound

Compound: The home of a firearm owner.

Fairness: Socialism.

Fifty Caliber Rifle: The most powerful and terrifying weapon ever devised by the sick mind of man, possessing magical powers of self-will, with wanton mass destruction as its goal, able to take down a jumbo jet, for example, from several miles away with a single shot. No human other than a sadistic murder ever used, wanted, or was even slightly interested in, a "Fifty Caliber Rifle". Due to tragic and inexcusable inaction on the part of legislators, and due to inordinate influence of the merchants of death (the NRA and their henchmen in the gun industry) billions of hardened criminals now legally buy, sell, trade and stockpile "Fifty Caliber Rifles" and are at this very moment poised, looking through the sights of their "Fifty Caliber Rifles", ready to annihilate with a single trigger squeeze, anything that annoys them, or anyone who disagrees with them who is unfortunate enough to hazard to within a ten mile radius of one of these monster killers. Trillions of people, mostly children in kindergartens, are killed every day by "Fifty Caliber Rifles" sold to criminals by illegal gun dealers at gun shows. The NRA celebrates each of these deaths by passing out cigars, brandy, 100-dollar bills and cheap handguns to pre-schoolers.

Bitter and Sebastian have posts up about some anti-gun billboards that just went up. Oh, and the anti-gun group gets the space for free.

I offered my (failed) billboard project as a starting point for an alternative billboard but if anyone else has ideas send them to Bitter.

Tonight I'll probably spend some time composing a letter to try and shame the bigots at the billboard company into reconsidering their support of this anti-rights group. Sebastian has the contact information if you want to do the same.

If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege.

Arkansas Supreme Court
1878
[Somewhere along the way people believed the state had the authority to prevent crime. This should be a hot button for freedom loving people. Even the classic restriction on the 1^st Amendment, "You can't falsely shout fire in a crowded theater" is a punishment for doing something wrong. The Washington D.C. gun law mindset equivalent would be to have your jaw wired shut with duct over your mouth when you go into a theater.--Joe]

More random stuff from my "quote" collection. This time for our daughter Xenia:

I have not yet begun to procrastinate.

It was a week ago yesterday that we picked up Xenia's laptop from Cactus Computer after spending some time in the shop for just this problem (well, almost):

Do not meddle in the affairs of cats, for they are subtle and will Whiz on your computer.

At dinner with Phil and his wife last night we talked about religion some and for a short while Baptists in specific. Hence this isn't entirely random:

A man was seated next to a stiff-looking Baptist minister on a flight to Wichita. After the plane was airborne, the flight attendant came around for drink orders.  The man asked for a whiskey and soda, which he got.

The attendant then asked the minister if he would also like a drink. The minister replied in disgust, "I'd rather be savagely raped by a brazen whore than let liquor touch these lips."

The man then handed his drink back to the attendant and said, "I didn't know there was a choice."

This is for their dog Elsie:

Q: What has four legs and an arm?
A: A happy Rottweiler.

The other day Lyle posted "We Can't Drill Ourself Out of This Problem".

Today I was poking around in my quote collection and ran across this:

Drill for oil? You mean drill into the ground to try and find oil?  You're crazy.

Drillers who Edwin L. Drake tried to enlist to his project to drill for oil in 1859.

Apparently the "progressives" still haven't caught up with the capitalists of 150 years ago.

Last week Michael Bane put up a post on competition versus real world shooting. This is pretty much "old territory". It's sort of like the classic debate between Glock owners and 1911 advocates. Or what is the best cartridge or bullet? I'm pulling some of my previously published data on this rather than contributing much in the way of new material.

In my collection of quotes I have one from Greg Hamilton which is essentially +1 on what Bane says:

As for the "I don't shoot that kind of game because I don't want to learn bad tactics" crowd, I think that is an over used excuse by people that can't win. Shooting IPSC or IDPA won't make you a bad tactician. Being a bad tactician will make you one! Most of the people that complain about tactics wouldn't know a tactic if it hit them in the ass.

Tactics are making the most out of the situation with the resources at hand. Every time you "game" a stage you are engaging in tactical thinking. They just might not be the right tactics for a gunfight.

Greg Hamilton
11/11/2001
Insights Training Email List

The following is only partially on target for the topic at hand but it is still worthy of bringing up:

From: Joseph K. Huffman
Sent: Wednesday, March 11, 1998 11:21 PM
To: ipsc mailing list
Subject: RE: New target...

[...stuff deleted...]

'Classic Target' makes me think of George Orwell's '1984' and 'Animal Farm' books. To me IPSC is about shooting 'bad guys'. It is about using a gun to defend self, family, and country. If someone were to ask me if IPSC was training people to shoot other people I would reply with an enthusiastic "YES!". There are some people that need to be shot. And if the time comes that they need to be shot and I'm the one that must do the shooting my speed, accuracy, and power will be some of the critical items in deciding who walks away from the encounter and who leaves on a stretcher. For some government, or some naive group of people with political clout, to claim a moral high ground and demand that I stop practicing shooting at people is ludicrous. Self defense is a right all species on this planet have claimed for all time. For someone to deny me the opportunity to practice it is as alien to me as anything I can imagine. It causes an internal reaction of outrage in me that I find difficult to express accurately. If the world IPSC organization wants to add another target to achieve political advantage in some country or to gain entrance to the Olympics, fine. If necessary, as a first step, shoot with single shot air guns. Do what you have to in those areas where shooting real guns at (somewhat) realistic targets is not viable. But don't take away the fundamental principles of this 'game' from everyone -- shooting 'bad guys', fast, accurately, and with 'stopping power'.

-joe-

The point I like to make is, "How many class B and above IPSC shooters have lost a real world gun fight?" As far as I know the answer is zero. IMHO any time you get someone to the range and they put in some "trigger time" shooting fast and accurately they are improving their "real world" gun skills. Show me the data that suggests otherwise and then we can talk more but until then we just have opinions.

I believe, and the N.R.A. believes, that in all human society there is a right for good people to defend themselves from bad people, and a firearm is an essential tool of self-defense.

Wayne LaPierre
July 19, 2008
U.S. Position Complicates Global Effort to Curb Illicit Arms
[Ultimately we need to start pushing on the rampant human rights violations in other countries. I'm just not sure where and how to start. I'm thinking Canada because the gun culture is still alive and trying to fight back. But how? Smuggling guns into the country probably isn't going to get guns into the proper hands and is subject to demonization if even one gun in a 1000 is used in a crime. An "underground railroad" for escaped political prisoners and then refuse to extradite them? Trade restrictions if they don't ease up on the repressive laws? Boycotting of Canadian firms like the boycotts of South Africa because of apartheid?--Joe]

Reader Rob sent me this link: FOXSexpert: Reach for the Pinnacle With Transcendent Sex.

I'm skeptical. Here is what this self proclaimed expert has to say on the topic:

Some people actually supersede the state of climax and reach a state of transcendent sex. Such lovemaking is said to involve a divine force, and is regarded as a path to a higher consciousness. It has been known to change one’s views on sex and spirituality. Yet this mystical, spiritual sexual experience is one of the best kept sex secrets around.

...

The closest I’ve ever come to such a spontaneous, divine experience involved my life-force energy shooting up from the base of my spine during an orgasm. It happened when I was with my ex-lover and I found myself blissfully lost in a purplish-turned-white light that went beyond my body.

...

People who have been swept into transcendent ecstasy, according to developmental psychologist Dr. Jenny Wade, have reported:

— Seeing visions;
— Feeling heat, light and energy waves throughout the body;
— Reliving past lives;
— Seeing the face of God;
— Paranormal powers;
— Being visited by gods;
— Feeling possessed by spirits;
— Working with natural forces;
— Nothingness, whiteness, pure bliss;
— One with everything – there is no “me” or time;
— A lack of sensory channels;
— Time travel;
— Enlightenment.

It sounds more like someone blew a few circuit breakers in the electrical system of their brain rather than they found violations of several physical laws.

Reynolds and Denning sum something up that has been difficult for me to communicate to others:

Subsequent courts went further, stating that Miller held that the Second Amendment did not guarantee an individual right.  Reading those opinions closely, however, it is clear that many simply relied on what other courts had said about Miller, and some judicial characterizations of Miller’s facts are so inaccurate that it is difficult to believe that the judge writing the opinion could have actually read the Miller decision itself. Lower court discussions of Miller resembled a game of judicial Telephone, with the actual holding of Miller becoming less and less recognizable as the years progressed.

I always tried to say the courts have misread Miller which holds near zero weight because I'm not a lawyer. But also I probably was being too generous the courts. As pointed out by above paragraph they most likely didn't even read Miller. And even that may be too generous. It could be they actually read it then deliberately twisted it to arrive at the conclusion they wanted.

That said, this is all history now. We should concentrate on the future. I think the plan for the future is best summed up by Lyle with history being looked at for guidance on how we should treat our "prisoners of war".

The following chart is from Common Folk regarding Brady Campaign grading of state gun laws versus crime rates. The claim is, "It would seem that while the Brady Bunch consider a state safe if it has severe gun restrictions, crime is actually more rampant in those same states with severe gun restrictions making them, in reality, less safe."

From this data one could conclude there is an inverse relationship between the Brady score and safety.

Be careful! This data is a subset of the entire population of states. I did a similar analysis for the 2004 Brady Report Card using all state data and the correlation was near zero. In the comments to the Common Folk link other people arrive at similar conclusions to mine.

Of course you won't find the anti-gun people doing peer reviews such as this and pointing out the errors. Nope. They cherry pick their data and report just what they want people to hear.

Barb and I have a very social weekend ahead of us.

First off is lunch with son James.

Tonight Barb and I are having dinner with Phil (from SoftGreenGlow.com) and his wife. Despite the references to the canned salmon mouse I'm sure we will have a pleasant evening.

Tomorrow is the company picnic with probably 5 or 10 thousand other people.

The fight over original meaning has to come an end when the opinions analyze "the" right to keep and bear arms. The D.C. Circuit opinion pointed out that the phrasing indisputably shows that the right was a pre-existing one. That is, the right to keep and bear arms already existed before the Second Amendment was written. The Second Amendment merely imposed a legal requirement that the right not be infringed by the federal government. The 1875 Supreme Court decision in Cruikshank said the same thing, as both the majority and dissent agree.

David Kopel
July 18, 2008
The Right to Bear Arms and “Sensible” Gun Laws
[This is going to be a big stumbling block for the anti-rights crowd. Even if they try to repeal the 2^nd Amendment Cruikshank says, "This is not a right granted by the Constitution. Neither is it in any manner dependent upon that instrument for its existence." But we should not let them get so far as to publicly suggest repealing the 2^nd Amendment. They should get all the derision, outrage, and humiliation that would arise should they suggest the equally unacceptable repeal of the rights to free speech, to a trial by jury, and protection from cruel and unusual punishment.--Joe]

In response to Joe's recent post, Racking up the Victories, I offer this a little pep talk to the troops in the gun rights organizations.

We've taken the beach, as Joe put it, and established a tenuous foothold.  This is just the beginning of the fight.  Give no quarter and take no prisoners.

The anti gun movement has inconvenienced us, insulted us, and harassed us at every opportunity.  They've accused us of being responsible for other people's crimes, they've accused us of being dangerous, "bloodthirsty" and of being "vigilantes" just because we stood up for a guaranteed  human right.  They've ruined people's homes and property in bogus raids, justified with bogus "sting" operations.  They've charged innocent people with "crimes" because a piece of wood or a piece of steel was an eighth inch too short or a magazine held "too many" cartridges for their tastes.  They've put people out of business and bankrupted them for minor clerical errors.  They currently have innocent people in jail, they've left untold numbers of people defenseless against criminal and terrorist attacks, they've pitted American against America, and they've outright killed people who did no wrong to anyone.  All this and much more they have done under the color of law.

I could go on for another thousand words, but you get the point.  The anti gun movement has been disrespectful, mean, cruel, ruthless, dishonest, completely without morals or principles, in full, open, blatant contempt for the Founding Principles of this country.

In short, some of the very people charged with protecting our Liberty have been in the front lines fighting against it.  It's like a security guard turned burglar, a bodyguard turned rapist, or a policeman turned murderer.

They still have prisoners.  And they preach to us, telling us they have a "right to their beliefs" and that we're supposed to be the picture of "tolerance", restraint, and even politeness in return!

If this fight is going to have any success at all-- any meaning for future generations, there has to be a price paid by those who have fought so hard to destroy an important part of the U.S. Constitution, undermine the security of our neighborhoods, and spit on our American culture.  The price must be very high, so future generations can look back and see the consequences of attacking the American people's very lives and Liberty from within, under the color of law.

With the Heller decision we successfully landed on the beach and are now advancing.

The Apex of the Triangle of Death reports on the latest victory in Morton Grove Illinois where they surrendered without firing a shot.

Uncle points out that gun bloggers can change the perception of the world. By providing more links to the viewpoint we want presented we move the ranking of web pages up the chart on Google and other search engines.

Our next target is Carry Permit Holders.

The top ten gun bloggers (it was a rigged election--I know it must be because I won) are going to Blackwater USA next month for some training with Todd Jarrett all sponsored by Para.

We aren't being trained as mercs but I figure it's a good story to tell people and I love the shock value.

Para is supplying the guns and has asked each of us what caliber we want. I asked for .40 because that is the pistol caliber I most frequently reload. Sorry, that wasn't an option. My options were 9mm and .45. I have all the components and equipment for 9mm so I initially asked for that. Then a minute or so later I asked what the capacity on that gun was. It is 9 + 1. Arghh! 9mm and it's not even a reasonably high capacity? I carry 18 + 1 in my .40! Okay, so if I'm going to be stuck with a low capacity gun I might as well go with the larger caliber. So it's the .45. It's a 1911 style gun and I can use it in the Single Stack division (I currently shoot Limited) for USPSA competition.

Now I find out that this isn't exactly a 1911 style as I think of it. It's a "Light Double Action" trigger instead of a single action trigger! The 9mm they offered has a single action trigger. Hmmmm... It's looking like we're talking the lesser of two evils here.

Okay. I'll give them chance. I'll still go with the .45 but this might be putting me at a disadvantage with the bet I have with Caleb. He's going with the 9mm and he is spending a lot of time practicing.

Uncle is doing a survey to resolve his similar quandary.

Rob is going with the .45.

I knew the call was coming, he called right on time and we talked for nearly 50 minutes.

Brian Doherty is writing a book that is primarily on the Heller case. It's title is Gun Control on Trial: Inside the Supreme Court Battle Over the Second Amendment. I'm not sure how it came about but Stephanie, who has done a lot of PR work for Boomershoot, referred him to me. Mostly as a side note Doherty wanted information on the gun culture and how this great clash of ideas culminated in the Heller case.

After Doherty and I exchanged email and agreed on a time for the interview Stephanie called me and said I should send him a link to a blog post of mine from several years ago. She doesn't like to talk about certain things on the phone and did a lot of hinting without coming out and saying things. It went something like, "That blog post about Boomershoot, the one that might get you fired, the one that is sort of extreme, but is what guns are all about." I knew which one she meant--Why Boomershoot. I sent it and, as Stephanie suggested, it was a good conversation starter.

The interview went well. Where did I grow up and did I grow up with weapons as part of my daily life? Was the political viewpoint espoused in the post part of my growing up? Have things changed in the last decade or so? The sub-title to your blog is "Ramblings of a red-necked, knuckle-dragging, Neanderthal." Do you think people, including those around where you live, actually think of you as that? How did you arrive at your political viewpoint on guns? How many people attend Boomershoot? Did you have a lot of regulatory hurdles to overcome for Boomershoot? Do the people that attend share your political views as expressed in the blog post? Do you talk about that sort of stuff a lot at Boomershoot? When the media shows up do you give them that side of event? "No", I told him, "That would scare the white people."

Once I answered all his questions I had a few questions for him.

Had he read Unintended Consequences by John Ross? Nope he hadn't. I gave him my two minute overview of it with a slant toward what I figured Doherty's interest would be in it--the gun culture and the revolution. I told him that I had talked to Ross, he was approachable, and that he probably would be a good person to interview as well.

What did he think of Boomershoot? He said he was planning to attend this year and something came up. He really wants to attend next year. I offered to put on a private party for him if he wanted to show up sometime before next April.

During the conversation I sent him several links that gave more thoughtful answers and background to our conversation:

• How gun control lost
• The explosives magazine
• Bigotry
• More bigotry
• History of Boomershoot

Published by Cato Institute he expects the book to be released in late October but Amazon says, "November 25, 2008".

I'll be buying a copy.

For many of us, the *only* position we agree with Barack Hussein Obama on even somewhat is LGBT civil rights, and even then, many of us have reservations about issues such as hate crimes legislation. For example, I truly don't care *why* someone is having the crud kicked out of them by a band of thugs, I merely desire that it stop immediately and that very bad and consistent things happen to the thugs regardless of the reason for the beating, excepting self-defense (and I have great difficulty imagining 5:1 as self-defense).

For us, it is the *act* that offends far more than the reason - at least partially because telepathy is not required to ascertain most criminal acts, where divining the reason for misbehavior is much more treacherous.

Blessed with lawful carry, we are in a position to choose defend ourselves and our loved ones against the bullies, bigots, and generally bad persons that would harass, assault, maim, or kill us.

Gay Cynic
June 15, 2008
The Endless Contest
[On why the Lesbian Gay Bisexual Trans-sexual (LGBT) crowd should hold their noses and vote for McCain this fall.--Joe]

The other day I provided a link to a blog post Sebastian had found. The post and particularily the comments were filled with some of the most vile bigotry toward gun owners, particularily women, I have ever seen. Tonight I stumbled across more bigotry examples. These were about some of the pictures in the book Armed America:

Krapulator
March 14th, 2008 - 11:40 am

HAHAHA What a bunch of nut jobs! No wonder there are so many shootings in America

Hillbillies
March 14th, 2008 - 12:48 pm

Freaks!!!!!!!! What a bunch of nut jobs!!!!!
Redneck Hillbillies!!!!!!!!!
Thats “the bible belt” in pictures!!!!

amigo
March 14th, 2008 - 1:30 pm

WOW … now i see true face of democracy. long live moronity!

Harl
March 14th, 2008 - 1:54 pm

A lot of small cocks. no?

I have a brain...
March 14th, 2008 - 2:08 pm

Poor America ! Why do you need all these toys ? Is it that difficult to defend yourself with words ? Is violence the only language you understand ?

I like the pictures of the kids holding the guns… Bowling for Columbine… remember ??? Are you, americans (lowercase) shocked when a riffle occurs ? Well… you now know how it is so easily possible !

Dear americans, don’t be sad when you’re shot… America provides you with the guns !!!

NRA can be proud, they have made a good brainwashing ! And they make a good money on your back…

A European with a brain !

AMAZING
March 14th, 2008 - 2:33 pm

Conservative Muslim Redneck hillbilly gun owner.
Different Regions. Different Cultures. Different Background.
!!!!But they look just the same!!!!!!!! It’s amazing!!!!!

Happy not being American
March 14th, 2008 - 3:01 pm

yet more American ego macho wank. No wonder you kill yourselves so frequently… fucking retards.

Nice pictures.

Spitz R. S. Wallows
March 14th, 2008 - 3:28 pm

Anyone that would pose their child with a gun needs their testicles cut out.

Is there any doubt why most of the world considers Americans freaks?

Some of the most disturbing pictures I have ever seen.

America is phucked.

They aren't all bad. But my friend Ry (14^th pic) is singled out in one of the nicer comments:

Ken
March 14th, 2008 - 3:33 pm

Most of the people in the photos are just collectors. You have to admit it beats the hell out of beanie babies. The guy in the 14th pic is a little scary though.

Americans were given the right to own guns as a way to keep the government from screwing them. (A fat lot of good it did!)

It makes me feel like I was back in grade school when I would explain something to the teacher or to the class and I got called names and was picked on by some of the other kids. The truth does not matter. All that matters is that the attackers find a way to feel superior to their victims. I had no way, no language, no words, no physical acts to rectify the situation. These people do not want to face reality and therefore they cannot be forced to face reality. Perhaps that is a major component to most bigotry.

We've all heard it.  That's the current mantra of the Left, and if there's anything we have for certain all heard a thousand times, it's a Leftist mantra.

There are two camps on this issue.  In one camp, the people suck it right up, fully accept it, and repeat it any time the discussion comes up.

The other camp is incredulous.  "How could anyone be so stupid.." they might ask, "..to believe we can't drill for more oil, increase the future supply, send a message to the market that lots more oil is on the way, and thereby bring down the price?"

That's a perfectly sensible question.  To say that we can't drill our way out of an impending oil shortage is of course exactly like saying you can't eat your way out of hunger, you can't warm your way out of hypothermia, and you can't drink your way out of thirst.

It's just plain incomprehensible that anyone would make such a claim, so why do the Leftists keep saying it?  They seem all to understand it, and they all seem to embrace it, so what's going on?

The problem, as always, is in the use of the language.  We are assuming that by "this problem" the Left means, "the combination of high demand and restricted supply that results in a high price".  We've been wrong about this the whole time, however.  What the Left means by "this problem" is actually, "human success" particularly "American success".  Translated properly into Left-Speak then, the phrase, "We can't drill our way out of this problem" make perfect sense.  It would read something like, "We can't drill our way out of American success" which is of course perfectly true and obvious.  We could drill and pump and drill and pump, and still we'd be a vibrant, successful, creative and productive nation.  For the Left, that outcome would of course be insufferable.

Now you understand.

Carry on.

The court says, for instance, that the Heller decision does not mean to cast doubt on longstanding bans on felons having possession of firearms, or bans on the mentally incompetent having possession of weapons, bans on weapons in sensitive places and restrictions on the sale and purchase of weapons. But to say you're not casting into doubt those things is not the same thing as to say that those laws are all constitutionally permissible. And indeed, if the court was saying those are all constitutionally permissible laws, there's certainly no argument in the opinion or justification for why those laws are constitutional and the D.C. handgun ban is not constitutional.

Adam Winkler
July 17, 2008
Heller's Fallout The Court's Decision Raises More Legal Questions Than It Answers
[Excellent point! I had been annoyed that the Brady Bunch and other have been saying all these various restrictions were constitutional and I couldn't find it in the Heller decision. All I could find was that the Heller decision didn't apply to those restriction. I presumed that was because those weren't at issue in the Heller case. I'm glad someone with more legal expertise agrees with my reading of this. Hence my reading of Heller is that the court is inviting challenges to those restrictions.--Joe]

Sebastian points us to this piece of extreme bigotry.

I think the good guys have a better response to the demand for one gun a month restrictions. The background details are here but the one line response we need to hit these guys with is:

How do you propose to enforce one gun a month?

Which do I have to check at the door, my Fourth Amendment rights, my First Amendment rights or my Second Amendment rights?

Mike Brown
Troy Idaho Attorney
July 16, 2008
Borne arms
[This was on the topic of guns being carried to city council meetings, inside the state capital, and other public meeting places. Mike is the founder of Idaho Sport Shooters Alliance. He is also a top notch handgun shooter.--Joe]

Don Gwinn of The Armed School Teacher has just announced he got the 11^th position at the Gun Blogger Summer Camp. Congratulations Don!

I'll see you in a few weeks.

H/T to Tam (who will also be attending) for the link to Gwinn's announcement post.

I had said before that even with the Heller win the gun bigots will scream and yell, and refuse to obey the law as long as they can. They are doing just that:

The proposal, which maintains some of the city's strict gun ownership rules and adds more regulations, was immediately criticized by gun rights advocates threatening more legal action.

Handguns will still be banned, except for self-defense in the home, city officials said at a noon news conference. Sawed-off shotguns, machine guns and short-barreled rifles are still prohibited.

Keep in mind that their definition of a "machine gun" is any gun that holds 12 or more rounds.

And the difference between what was declared unconstitutional and what they are proposing is minimal. Imagine if some Jim Crow law was declared unconstitutional and the bigot revised their laws in a similar manner:

Police will register one handgun per person for the first 90 days after the legislation becomes law, city officials said. A six-month amnesty period will be set up during which residents can register guns already in their possession.

...

"We have crafted what I believe to be a model for the nation in terms of complying with the Supreme Court's Second Amendment decision and at the same time protecting our citizens," interim Attorney General Peter Nickles said.

...

The new legislation also modifies existing law to clarify that firearms must be stored unloaded and either disassembled or secured with a trigger lock, gun safe or similar device, officials said. There would be an exception for guns in the home that are being used against the "reasonably perceived threat of immediate harm."

...

D.C. residents who want to register handguns must complete an application from MPD's firearms registration section, pass a written firearms test and provide photos, proof of residency and proof of good vision. They also will be fingerprinted

A model for the nation?

I think the Supreme Court should issue varmint licenses and put a bounty on these bigots heads. That should be the model for the nation.

I have had a tendency in my young life to occasionally run my mouth with abandon (my wife is shaking her head at that); however I have been fortunate in the majority of this situations to be able to back up my mouth with skill or plain old dumb luck.

The more I read Joe’s archives, the more I realize I’m going to need a lot of the latter to win our friendly wager.

Caleb of Call Me Ahab
July 15, 2008
Pride goeth...
[Caleb will be at Gun Blogger Summer Camp with me next month. In a long email thread among some of the bloggers with the subject "My dad can beat up your dad" Caleb ended up challenging me to a bet on our shooting abilities. I can only recall accepting two bets in the last 35 years (I won both). I just don't bet unless I'm pretty close to certain that I'm going to win. This was the most risky bet I have accepted in the last 35 years. Based on the cards face up on the table I've got a better hand but but one never knows until all the cards are turned over. That will occur on August 24^th.--Joe]

New Jersey is so repressive toward gun owners that the only way I would willingly go into that hell hole is if I could buy tags, or preferably a license for varmints, to harvest politicians:

The 20-year-old sales clerk at a shop at Menlo Park Mall and former Middlesex County College student had a pellet handgun in the car, according to an indictment filed last week in Superior Court, New Brunswick.

...

Under a new state law, Narciso's possession of the weapon qualifies as a Graves Act offense. Narciso could face what prosecutors and criminal defense attorneys call a "hard three," meaning three years with no prospect of parole.

This wasn't some cheesy Internet quiz of some sort. This was something that my company paid big dollars for and followed up with a nearly full day of "training" to explain the results to us. Everyone in our organization had to participate. Mandatory training they said. Okay, whatever.

I was surprised. They really nailed a bunch of things for me. View the results for yourself here.

During the training they gave us these four little soft plastic blocks that looked very much like Lego's. They were a training tool and as the training started people were sort of playing with them as the instructor talked. Then someone had the blocks fly apart and scatter across one of the tables. "A block explosion!", the instructor announced. Her assistant went to the white board and recorded the explosion. Someone asked, "What does it mean?" The instructor said they didn't know for certain but they keep track of them to see if we can figure something out. There were no more block explosions all day.

The one person to have a block explosion was also the only person in the room with a ATF license to manufacture high explosives. You should have heard the people in my group laugh when instructor called it a block explosion. No one else in the room understood the significance like they did.

England took a wrong turn. The evidence is so glaring obvious that I'm sure most of them, at some level, realize it as well:

In May this year, the Met launched Operation Blunt 2, another high-profile initiative to tackle knife crime – again using special stop and search powers in high-risk areas and airport-style metal detectors. The home secretary, Jacqui Smith, announced a £5m package to tackle violent crime. Since then, 27,000 people have been searched, 1,200 arrested and 500 knives seized. Of those arrested, 95% have since been charged with weapons offences, the Met said.

Uncle has more evidence.

The problem is, even with the overwhelming evidence, they have too much invested in the decision. It's too psychologically uncomfortable to admit they were wrong. It takes a great deal of character strength to admit you were wrong when you have invested 100's of millions (billions?) of pounds and who knows how many lives lost in a scheme that was counter productive to your stated goal. They don't have the strength of character to do that. Very few people would. It's particularly difficult when you have social support for your conviction. There will be more and more proselyting for this failed belief system until they hit a very firm and undeniable dead end. That will likely be a exceedingly repressive police state. Getting themselves out of that will not be easy or pretty.

I'm so glad we managed to avoid that path into the abyss.

Presumptuous paternalists argue that Americans should be deprived of guns because gun owners are their own worst enemies. A lot of Americans would reply: We can't trust ourselves, but we can trust you?

Steve Chapman
July 13, 2008
Is buying a gun a suicidal act?
[Nice! The other day Sebastian said we need to be ready to counter the suicide angle. I think this is excellent response.--Joe]

Don Kaul has written dozens of columns supporting gun restrictions. He now says he has given up:

I've given up on gun control. That battle is over. We've lost. I no longer think it's an achievable goal and if I were a politician I wouldn't lose an election over it.

It sounds as if he is still a bigot. He just isn't going to advocate for legislation to support his bigotry. That's good enough for now. Someone in his neighborhood should offer to take him to the range and offer him a chance to join the winning team.

As I mentioned the other day I expected something in todays Idaho Statesman about anvil launching (like we do at Boomershoot). The story is here.

One of the more serious problems with our modern society is that the evolution of man has changed directions. The lesser intelligent people multiply much faster than the more intelligent people.

Doug Huffman
[This is something my brother told me over 20 years ago and I put in my collection of quotes. Today he sent his kids and me this link on a related topic.--Joe]

Speaking of the Brady Bunch... I found this entertaining. There is much more but this should be enough of a teaser:

The Race Car Ban of 2006 bans all compact cars with two or more of the following racing features:

Four valves per cylinder
Aerodynamic spoiler or wing that protrudes conspicuously above the trunk lid or rear deck
Air dam
Hood scoop
Chrome exhaust tip
Levitation lights
Afterburner


The Race Car Ban would also ban the following race cars by name:

Honda Civic (all models)
Subaru Impreza WRX
Mitsubushi Lancer (all models)
Honda S2000
Volvo S40
Mazda 3 and Protoge
Toyota Corolla
Scion (all models)
Saturn Ion
Bentley Speed 8
NHRA Top Fuel dragster
Caterpillar D9
Boeing 737
Airbus A380


In order to reassure car owners, the bill's sponsors included a long list of non-race cars that are not affected by the legislation:

BMW 3-series
Cadillac CTS-V
Cadillac Escalade
Chevrolet Suburban and Tahoe
Ford Edsel
Ford Model T
Ford Mustang (without wing and spoiler)
Ford F-150
Hummer (all models)
Jeep Cherokee
John Deere Tractor
Kenworth T2000
Sopwith Camel


The bill also makes it a felony to own a car manufactured after Sept. 14th, 1994, that has a fuel capacity of more than ten U.S. gallons of fuel.

Anthrax is not the only terrorist weapon sent through the mail. Congress must close the loophole that allows gun makers to evade federal regulation and sell untraceable assault weapon kits that terrorists and other criminals can purchase by mail and assemble at home. An assault weapon without a serial number is a terrorist’s dream.

Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence
Guns and Terror
Copyright 2001
[They are either ignorant or lying. The receiver of the gun (the part with the serial number) cannot be mail ordered and delivered to your doorstep. It must always be transferred to the retail customer though a face-to-face transaction with a FFL who does a background check. Even if it were possible what difference would that make to the terrorists we face? How would a gun without a serial number benefit them? And what sort of law do they think will prevent a terrorist from removing the serial number from guns that do have serial numbers? As near as I can tell these people either have crap for brains or they think everyone they talk to does. They dance in blood wherever they can find it and urge others to splash themselves with blood and participate in their delusions and perverse obsession with the destruction of liberty. They use whatever means will get traction no matter how misleading, deceptive, or useless to their implied goal of building a safer society.--Joe]

Yesterday I received a call from Tim Woodward at the Idaho Statesman in Boise.

He said his column in the paper is about answering questions from the readers and he received a question about anvil launching. Was it an "Idaho thing?" A web search yielded Boomershoot and our anvil launches. He wanted to know more of the history. I told him what I knew and forwarded his email address on to the guy that does our anvil.

His column with the results of his research will appear on Sunday.

Despicable.

The ACLU joins the NRA as the advocates of cowards, sneak thieves and psycopaths. I challenge Mr. Peck to identify where in the 2nd Amendment or any Federalist Paper is found the right to bear arms for "self protection."

You will soon be receiving the bloody shoes of the victims from across the nation.

The illegal guns that flood Cleveland and Detroit and Chicago come from your redneck gun shows and gun shops. I understand now why Nevadans need 8 or 10 guns: people this offensively stupid must have thousands of enemies. Add to that throng the families of the kids that get killed every day just because you need those pistols to feel like men. You're pathetic weaklings.

It's sad that when it comes to guns, what happens in Vegas bleeds throughout the rest of the country.

esquared
7:34 AM July 11, 2008
A comment to the article: Only in Nevada: ACLU opposes gun control--State affiliate bucks national stance, supporting the right to bear arms
[I think the article needs some comments to counterbalance those of this bigot. The ACLU blog post on the 2^nd Amendment is up to nearly 1000 comments now with no significant sign of sympathy for their position.--Joe]

Steve Chapman appears to have all his facts correct but overlooks what I think are the most important points. Yes, all the gun control laws failed to make people safer. Yes, shall issue concealed carry laws did no harm. Yes, legal scholars concluded the NRA was right all along. But that isn't what made the difference. Facts and reason have never been the most significant factors in politics.

What made the difference was the gun grabbers getting their asses handed to them in elections. It started with the 1994 national election a month and a half after the so called "assault weapon ban" was passed and was sealed with Al Gore lost his home state in the 2000 election. From there it was still a fierce battle but astute observers on both sides could see, baring some major upset, who was going to win. September 11, 2001 came and both sides tried to take advantage of the event. Gun owners came out on top. The next major event, hurricane Katrina, proved such a disaster for the gun grabbers that there was no doubt which side had the momentum.

Another significant factor was the militia movement in the mid 1990s. It faded away in the late 90s when the ballot box appeared to be having the desired results. The politicians realized gun owners were preparing for war and dialed down their hate filled rhetoric. If the soap box and ballot box didn't work the cartridge box was being readied for use. They heard the whispers from the gun ranges, gun shows and any other place where gun owners gathered. The shout of defiance had changed even though Heston still used the old one. And the new one was not said from the podium with the television cameras running. It was a deep growl which could only be heard if you were standing close enough. But the politicians got the gist of it anyway, "You can have my gun when you reanimate Your Cold. Dead. Hands."

Tam says she is going to drive to summer camp so the TSA goons won't grope her and steal stuff from her luggage. Goons seems to be an accurate description of TSA behavior I see here. The text of the story is here. It was all over a bottle of contact lens solution.

I'll bet they wouldn't bat an eye over five pounds of flour or powdered sugar which would, if properly applied, bring down any commercial passenger plane in existence.

What TSA Really Stands For.

Amicae therefore contend that depriving women of the right to possess a handgun in the privacy of their own homes reflects at best an insensitivity to women’s unique needs created by their inherent gender characteristics. A handgun simply is the best means of self-defense for those who generally lack the upper body strength to successfully wield a shotgun or other long gun. To therefore deny half the population a handgun, as the District and the Office of the Solicitor General urge, evinces the "blindness or indifference" to women that only perpetuates women’s vulnerability to physical subordination.

M. Carol Bambery
Brief of amicae curiae 126 women state legislators and academics in support of respondent.
[About 70% of my firearms students are women wanting to get their concealed carry permits. As I have said before getting women out to the range is one of the things we must do to win the battle against the anti-gun bigots.--Joe]

Some countries take their prohibitions against sexual freedom very seriously. In some places you could get up to six years in jail for having sex with someone not your spouse in a public place:

A British businesswoman is facing up to six years in a Dubai jail after she was allegedly caught having sex on a beach.

Michelle Palmer, 30, was arrested on 5 July, along with another Briton believed to be a male tourist.

The Foreign Office confirmed that two British nationals had been arrested and the case was under investigation.

The Sun newspaper said Ms Palmer had been charged with having sex outside marriage, indecent behaviour in public and being drunk in public.

If you want to partake in Dr. Joe's cure for everything I suggest checking the local laws first. Getting your daily dose in prison might not be as healthy or as pleasant as the stuff you get on the outside.

Son James sent an IM to me today with this link:

A senior government official with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has expressed great interest in a so-called safety bracelet that would serve as a stun device, similar to that of a police Taser®. According to this promotional video found at the Lamperd Less Lethal, Inc. website, the bracelet would be worn by all airline passengers (video also shown below).

This bracelet would:

• Take the place of an airline boarding pass
• Contain personal information about the traveler
• Be able to monitor the whereabouts of each passenger and his/her luggage
• Shock the wearer on command, completely immobilizing him/her for several minutes

The conversation with James then went something like this:

James:
  may be taken out of context or blown out of proportion depending on what sources you consider credible *shrug*
Joe:
  My bet is I could smuggle a knife through security and get out of the bracelet before I ever got on the plane.
James:
  oh yeah, there's all sorts of ways you could subvert the bracelet
  plus, the bad guys could figure out a way to set off the bracelets themselves, thus immobilizing any resistance!
Joe:
  And something that is going to immobilize a Sumo wrestler is probably going to kill an 80 year old little old lady with a heart problem.
James:
  yeah, basically the plan has FAIL written all over it
Joe:
  Another way to defeat the bracelet would be to wrap it in aluminum foil. You would disappear off of the location monitoring device and no radio or laser could trigger the shock.

While some of the gun bloggers are off sweating at a summer camp in the North Carolina heat you should not feel sorry for yourselves. You should go to your own summer camp on the opposite coast during some of those same days (August 23 - 31):

This course will encompass how to patrol, recon, ambush, and raid, and will involve individual and small unit tactics, leadership, planning, operations orders, warning orders, and rehearsals.

One of the ultimate expressions of this was done during the Vietnam War and was know as MACV-RECONDO school . This school was set up by Project Delta (yes, the guys who later founded Delta Force) and then turned over to 5th SFG. This was the basis for LRRP/Ranger type operations in Vietnam. This course will be modeled after that school but with a modern backdrop and modern planning procedures.

There will be instructors from the actual Vietnam Recondo school along with modern experienced Rangers and Special Forces personnel. Outside of the military nothing like this has ever been offered before. Others have done fantasy camps, no one has run the real deal. Most active duty infantrymen never get a chance for this level of training!

This course will be a 24/7 immersion conducted out of a "fire-base" with large military tents and cots, in a training area of more than 800 acres. Food will be provided. The missions will go from very small unit recons, to two-element ambushes, to multi-element raids, with QRF or "hatchet force" operations as well. Basically, 5-6 man to full-class operations. All students will be involved in leadership and planning. This class is not just about tactics-the leadership and planning portions are as important as tactics, as is working as a team. Stress will be induced through the rapid pace: this is a learning tool for leadership and teamwork that cannot be overemphasized.

Do it now before a new administration declares this sort of thing to be a domestic terrorist training camp or some such thing.

When I was little, got upset about something and was presenting my case with "the volume set to 11" my great Uncle Walt used to tell me, "Speak softer, I can't hear your" and I would have to repeat myself without all the "enthusiasm" of my first explanation. His advice was good. But some members of congress are turning that sage wisdom against us. 10s of thousands of us had comments in favor of being able to defend ourselves with the best available tools in the National Parks and rather than listening to what was said they want to "get more input".

The real story is the anti-gun bigots in congress are trying to delay the allowing of firearms in National Parks until their is a new administration in the White House. The Apex of the Triangle of Death has the details and what to do about it.

Daughter Kim called me a few minutes ago to tell me she has been officially accepted at the University of Idaho.

Yaaaaahhhh Kim!

She plans to study accounting. She is smart and is good with math so this should be a good match for her.

Now I just need to get her connected up with Students for Concealed Carry on Campus. There is a conference in D.C. on August 1^st that would be interesting for her to attend--if I could get her to leave her husband for a few days. Fat chance of that happening... Maybe she will participate in the empty holster days. That would be nice. But, more important than my political goals is for her to get the education she needs so she can get a good job.

Here is a picture of her just so you know who I'm talking about:

Microsoft is run by a very bright, very energetic, very healthy person who has very few outside interests -- and he has a killer instinct.  I admire the guy -- I think they ought to bronze him and break up his company.

Scott McNealy
[Bill has left the building. His last day at Microsoft was June 27.--Joe]

That the colonists cared little about the prospect of having their guns seized is not the only ahistorical concept underlying Petitioners’ repudiation of the Second Amendment. Redcoats and Patriots alike would have puzzled at Petitioners’ notion that the Revolution produced an exclusive governmental right to operate an organized militia. The "well regulated militia" of the American Revolution operated not merely beyond the control of, but in direct challenge to, the King’s governors.

Alan Gura
Robert A. Levy
Clark M. Neily III
February 24, 2008
Brief on Writ Of Certiorari To The United States Court Of Appeals For The District Of Columbia Circuit.
[Sometime I should make a list of all the absurdities in the belief system of the anti-gun bigots that contributed to the Heller case. It would make for very amusing reading.--Joe]

Caleb and Squeaky will be pod-casting tomorrow night on the summer camp some of us are attending:

Talking about the recently released results of ParaUSA's blogshoot contest, where 10 bloggers and one lucky reader will get to go to Blackwater's state of the art training facility in North Carolina for a weekend of shooting with Todd Jarret.

Assuming I'm not on the road (I'll be traveling back to the Seattle area tomorrow afternoon/evening) I'll be listening.

I'm not surprised but it's nice to have the numbers to back it up:

There's new advice for older men who want to preserve their sexual function: have sex, and have it often, researchers say.

In a study that followed nearly 1,000 older Finnish men for five years, researchers found that those who were regularly having sex at the start of the study were at lower risk of developing erectile dysfunction (ED) by the study's end.

In fact, the more often the men had sex, the lower their ED risk.

The implication, say the researchers, is that men should be encouraged to stay sexually active into their golden years.

Dr. Juha Koskimaki and colleagues at the University of Tampere in Finland report the findings in the American Journal of Medicine. The study included 989 men who were between the ages of 55 and 75 at the outset.

Overall, those who said they had sex less than once per week were twice as likely to develop ED over the next five years as men who had sex at least once a week. Furthermore, compared with men who had sex three or more times per week, their ED risk was increased nearly four-fold.

This reminds me. At the reunion our classmate Les Schillings asked me how Barb managed to stay so young looking. I told him, "lots of sex" and you should have seen Barb blush as she explained "Joe's cure for everything." A half hour later or so John Anderson asked Barb how she managed to stay so young and she asked me to tell him. John responded with, "That doesn't seem to be working for me. Maybe I need to be having sex with your wife." I said that could be true and got a fresh blush out of Barb. I should have asked if he thought I could rent her out.

I just got a call from Kerby Smith from Para USA, Inc. They congratulated me on being one of the top ten bloggers in their contest. Other winners include:

• A Keyboard and a .45
• Say Uncle
• Tamara K.
• Caleb
• armed_citizen from Gun Truth
• Rob Allen
• Kevin Baker (Updated)
• Dave Hardy (Updated--according to Kevin)
• The Maddened Fowl (Updated)

There should be three others as well. I expected Sebastian and Kevin but Sebastian says he hasn't been notified and Kevin hasn't posted anything about it the last time I looked.

Michael Bane (Update: with Bitter and Sebastian) will be attending as a video photographer, plus there will be some lucky voter that will attend as well.

In other news, Kerby said they just announced their new tactical rifle and they are opening up shop in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Dear Joe,

Congratulations, you were one of the top ten bloggers in the Para Gun Bloggers Contest.

Kerby Smith
Email sent Monday, July 07, 2008 12:24 PM
[Whooo hooo!!! I'm going to Virginia to train with Todd Jarrett! Thank you everyone! I really appreciate all the votes.--Joe]

Have pity for the moderators here. I haven’t seen such a sh!tstorm descend on any one target since Jim Zumbo dined on his foot. Wow.

Nomen Nescio
Comment 285 at the ACLU blob post "Heller Decision and the Second Amendment".
[Yup. The comments are moderated, probably to keep the spam out, and there are now 668 comments. I suspect there are a couple hundred more waiting for moderation. My count is two supported the ACLU, one was neutral, and 665 were negative. Plus there is a gathering storm in the comments to this post as well.--Joe]

Plan A
Translation: Shooting "scumbag" in the chest.

Plan B
Translation: Shooting "scumbag" in the head.

Plan C
Translation: Shooting "scumbag" in the pelvis.

From the Greg Hamilton to English Dictionary by Meredith Robinson

Barb and I went to our 35th High School reunion tonight. We are Orofino Maniacs. There is more going on tomorrow, this was just a warm up. As usual we had a good time. Here are some of the pictures I took:

Dale Nickels and Terry Thornton.
Terry supplies the portable toilets for the Boomershoot. His wife was a high school teacher for our children.

Phyllis (McIver) Parks. Phyllis is from the class of '74 but married Ray Parks who is in our class.
Phyllis is also a distant cousin of mine. I went to school with her since grade school.

b
Barb is showing off her tattoo to Lori Bruce and Sally Duty.

Lance Jones and his wife, Sandy, of 21 years. We hadn't seen Lance for over 35 years. I used to play chess with him and hung out quite a bit with him.
He retired from the navy after 24 years. He joined straight out of high school and married one of Barb's best friends just before he left for boot camp.

Terri Duff and Barb.

Debbie Estenson hit me after I showed her this picture. Barb says that now she is going to kill me.
Update: I told her about the picture and I'm still alive. She did try to bite me though. But I don't think she
is all that mad at me because she told me her husband lets her do whatever she wants and then later she
gave me her email address and phone number. She lives in the Seattle area now.

Here is a better picture of Debbie.

Via Dave Hardy I came across this:

It also sent shockwaves across France where the loss of two of the country's finest young minds was seen as proof of Britain's spiral into knife-obsessed lawlessness.

...

Mr Bonomo was stabbed 196 times, with up to 100 wounds inflicted on his back after death.

Mr Ferez, who lived several miles away in Thornton Heath, suffered 47 separate injuries.

So... how's that gun control and hostility toward self-defense working out for you guys on the other side of the pond? Confiscation of knives followed by rocks and pointed sticks seems like what is needed next.

As Jed points out (and I had noticed a few minutes earlier via a Google News Alert) World Net Daily quoted me when reporting about the ACLU getting ripped apart by comments on their own blog regarding their stand in regards to the Heller decision.

Cool! I was proud of that rant but I didn't expect any big names to pick it up. I should have put a link in the comment I guess. No traffic from WND is being directed here.

The government solution to a problem is usually as bad as the problem.

Milton Friedman
[Gun control, laws against recreational drugs, welfare, socialized medicine, and rent control are just the examples that come to mind in the first few seconds.--Joe]

As Third Power, Say Uncle, Progun Progressive, and Dave Hardy have been pointing out our current FBI Director Robert Mueller "is not happy with the Supreme Court's recent handgun ruling."

But this isn't the first time the Director of the FBI has acted as if he knew better than the courts. In 1995 there were hearings on the incident at Ruby Ridge. This was after Randy Weaver were acquitted of all charges except failure to show up in court (only Weaver, not Harris). Harris's killing of Federal Marshal Degan was found to be justifiable homicide. Despite that jury finding FBI Director Louis Freeh repeatedly referred to Degan's death as a murder. I recall, but can't find the written transcript, him being called on this and responding something to the effect that he "fully respects the court system and abides by it. But Degan was still murdered." If I could have jumped through the T.V. and grabbed him by the throat when he said that I would have. He cannot simultaneously respect the courts decision and claim Degan was murdered.

Mueller apparently thinks he is no less superior to the courts than Freeh thought he was. He needs to be reminded that he is a public servant and not a public master.

Update: Sebastian and the NRA-ILA have something to say as well. I overlooked them when I first made the post.

The Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms laughs and points at Bloomberg caught with his pants down:

WHILE BLOOMBERG FRETS ABOUT OUR GUNS, NYPD CAN’T KEEP TRACK OF THEIRS

BELLEVUE, WA – Anti-gun New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg should “mind his own store before telling others how to operate theirs,” said the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, after an audit found that the New York Police Department lost track of dozens of guns in its own storage lockers.

“While this guy has been bullying gun dealers around the country about so-called ‘slip-shod’ operations,” chuckled CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb, “his own police department seems to be slipping quite a bit on its own. Bloomberg needs to back off, shut up and get his own house in order before telling others how to operate.”

According to the New York Times, “nearly one out of three handguns and rifles that had been turned in to the police could not be immediately accounted for in a Manhattan property clerk’s office.”

“We’re waiting for Bloomberg to send a team of undercover vigilante investigators down there to find out what’s wrong,” Gottlieb said. “Can one of his infamous lawsuits be far behind?”

Bloomberg dispatched non-police “investigators” to run stings on gun shops in several states more than two years ago, ostensibly to show how easy it is to illegally obtain guns in other states. He then sued gun dealers in five states. This rogue operation landed the mayor’s office in hot water with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives for jeopardizing on-going legitimate investigations. Ultimately the Justice Department warned the mayor not to pull that stunt again.

“If Mayor Bloomberg wants to find mismanagement of a firearms inventory,” Gottlieb stated, “he doesn’t need to send goon squads to Georgia, the Carolinas, and Virginia or anywhere outside of his jurisdiction. All he really needs is to do is visit the police property room in Manhattan and turn his lawyers loose.

“It’s a pity that Bloomberg can’t lose his arrogant attitude as easily as his cops can lose track of their gun inventory,” he concluded.

In some ways, the Supreme Court term that just ended seems muddled: disturbing, highly conservative rulings on subjects like voting rights and gun control, along with important defenses of basic liberties in other areas, including the rights of detainees at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. The key to understanding the term lies in the fragility of the court’s center. Some of the most important decisions came on 5-to-4 votes — a stark reminder that the court is just one justice away from solidifying a far-right majority that would do great damage to the Constitution and the rights of ordinary Americans.

...

In other cases, like the gun-control decision, the rulings might have been more sweeping and more damaging if the conservative bloc had not needed the moderate-conservative Justice Kennedy’s vote to form a majority. One more conservative appointment would shift the balance to the far-right bloc.

If that happens, the court can be expected to push even further in a dangerous direction. It would most likely begin stripping away civil liberties...

New York Times
Editorial
July 3, 2008
A Supreme Court on the Brink
[Conservative justices threw out the D.C. handgun ban so that people were allowed to exercise a "new" right. And if we have more conservatives on the bench they would do "great damage" to the rights of ordinary Americans and "begin stripping away civil liberties". What sort of mental problems do these people have? It's worse than the Nazis who claimed Jews were vermin and literally spread disease like rats and fleas yet they were also in control of the banks and many governments. How can they not see they fail to keep their story straight even for an entire paragraph? It's like something I would expect to hear from someone in a mental hospital.

I guess we don't really have to understand them. We just have to defeat them.--Joe]

My father in law sends me all sorts of chain mail.  My response follows at the bottom, but for the intro, here's the chain letter:

Subject: A Billion?

How many zeros in a billion?

The next time you hear a politician use the word 'billion' in a casual manner, think about whether you want the 'politicians' spending YOUR tax money.

A billion is a difficult number to comprehend, but one advertising agency did a good job of putting that figure into some perspective in one of it's releases.

A. A billion seconds ago it was 1959.

(Actually, that's 1.5 billion, but that's not the point)

B. A billion minutes ago Jesus was alive.

C. A billion hours ago our ancestors were living in the Stone Age.

D. A billion days ago no-one walked on the earth on two feet.

E. A billion dollars ago was only 8 hours and 20 minutes at the rate our government is spending it.
 
While this thought is still fresh in our brain, let's take a look at New Orleans ...
It's amazing what you can learn with some simple division.

Louisiana Senator, Mary Landrieu (D) is presently asking Congress for 250 BILLION DOLLARS to rebuild New Orleans.  Interesting number...What does it mean?

A. Well... if you are one of the 484,674 residents of New Orleans (every man, woman, and child) you each get $516,528.

B. Or, if you have one of the 188,251 homes in New Orleans, your home gets $1,329,787.

C. Or, if you are a family of four, your family gets $2,066,012.

Washington, D. C
 
 HELLO!
Are all your calculators broken??

Accounts Receivable Tax
Building Permit Tax
CDL License Tax
Cigarette Tax
Corporate Income Tax
Dog License Tax
Federal Income Tax
Federal Unemployment Tax (FUTA)
Fishing License Tax
Food License Tax
Fuel Permit Tax
Gasoline Tax
Hunting License Tax
Inheritance Tax
Inventory Tax
IRS Interest Charges (tax on top of tax)
IRS Penalties (tax on top of tax)
Liquor Tax
Luxury Tax
Marriage License Tax
Medicare Tax
Property Tax
Real Estate Tax
Service charge taxes
Social Security Tax
Road Usage Tax (Truckers)
Sales Taxes
Recreational Vehicle Tax
School Tax
State Income Tax
State Unemployment Tax (SUTA)
Telephone Federal Excise Tax
Telephone Federal Universal Service Fee Tax
Telephone Federal, State and Local Surcharge Tax
Telephone Minimum Usage Surcharge Tax
Telephone Recurring and Non-recurring Charges Tax
Telephone State and Local Tax
Telephone Usage Charge Tax
Utility Tax
Vehicle License Registration Tax
Vehicle Sales Tax
Watercraft Registration Tax
Well Permit Tax
Workers Compensation Tax

STILL THINK THIS IS FUNNY?

Not one of these taxes existed 100 years ago, and our nation was the most prosperous in the world.

We had absolutely no national debt, we had the largest middle class in the world, and Mom stayed home to raise the kids.

What happened?  Can you spell 'politicians'?

And I still have to press '1' for English.

I hope this goes around the USA at least 100 times

What the heck happened?
 
For my money it is called greed.

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

My response:

They left out special, punitive state and federal taxes on guns and ammunition, which account for a large portion of the cost of the product.

The list of taxes does not address the many and various requirements and restrictions on businesses.  One small example out of thousands is; a window was broken in our Clarkston, WA store during a robbery.  Had it been in Moscow, we could have called one of several glass shops and had it replaced the same day.  Because this happened in Washington, there is a tempered safety glass requirement for storefronts that increased the cost of the window by several hundred dollars (wanna bet some legislator’s cousin owns a safety glass business?).  But that wasn’t the main expense created by the law.  Far and away the biggest expense was that we had to wait several weeks for the window, meaning we had no storefront for that amount of time-- just boards.

That cost, and thousands like it, never figure into the costs with which we are saddled by local, state and fed restrictions. 

Add things like minimum wage laws, which outlaw many entry-level jobs outright.  Add laws requiring handicapped access, which can amount to 100s of thousands of dollars for a small business, even if they have no handicapped customers.  The list of such requirements and restrictions would take more than your e-mail in-box could hold, and these all amount to increased cost of doing business.  Often, the reporting and compliance requirements necessitate the hiring of extra employees-- people doing jobs for the government, paid by the business owner, producing nothing.  Ever see a WA state sales tax report?  Every city and county can have its own tax rate.  Since our music store does business in two states, and in many cities throughout WA state, we have a huge tax report for WA State (Idaho's is about the size of a post card).  As a very small business, the WA reporting requirement costs us and our customers at least as much as the actual tax money paid.

And did I mention that property taxes and utilities prices are higher for businesses than for a residence?  How many people know that unless they're in business?

Now add to the list of costs; the number of businesses that couldn’t bear these burdens, and just gave up and quit.  Then add the number of businesses that started up in other states because they had more freedom there (this is known as "brain drain" and it happens in all socialist societies-- the creative and the productive want the hell out of there).

But that’s just the beginning.  Add the untold thousands of creative people who never went into business because the hurdles were just a little bit too much to bother with (business being a stressful and risky proposition in the best of situations) and/or they knew the "safety net" would take care of them anyway, or they could get a government job with full benefits.

And so the monster grows-- fewer people paying taxes to support an ever-growing government sector.  Three trillion dollars annually and growing fast (it’s gone up almost 50% during this current "conservative" administration).  Divide 3 trillion by the total U.S. population, boys and girls, if your calculator can handle that many digits.

Many of these costs are impossible to measure.  They don’t show up on the spreadsheets or in the statistics, but I submit that they account for the greatest percentage of the total cost of socialist/statist systems.  But then, some would (and often do) applaud anything that shackles the creative, productive human mind and forces it to either serve their purposes, or just give up.  Everyone knows the score-- business (peaceable, voluntary exchange) is greedy and deserves to be punished, whereas "public servants" are altogether selfless and benevolent, right?

The ACLU blog post on the Heller decision has racked up 150 comments so far. Only one gives mild support of the ACLU position. Most are just as toxic as my comment (see also my blog post).

I wonder if they will get the message. I doubted it at first but now I'm beginning to wonder. Even incredibly bigoted newspaper editorials against gun owners get a small percentage of people supporting them.

Interesting stuff. The VPC blog author is really something special.

He/she must have borrowed Ronnie Barrett's time machine to dig this one up.

We look forward to showing him ‘bitter'. Our members understand how bad Barack Obama is on the Second Amendment. Apparently, he thinks gun owners are either fools or have short memories. I can assure him he’s wrong on both.

Chris Cox
NRA chief lobbyist.
July 1, 2008
NRA Plans $40M Campaign Blitz
[Even us a red-necked knuckle-dragging Neanderthals, can see Obama is the enemy of gun owners. Cox and company are just getting the facts out.--Joe]

At 21:14 PDT the last open position for Boomershoot 2009 filled up. From the moment registration was wide open (2008 participants got a 24 hour head start) until it was full took eight days, four hours, and thirty seven minutes.

There will be people that can't make it for health, work, family, and financial reasons so don't give up. Read what is says here about the "waiting list". There are also two positions that have been donated to the King County Friends of the NRA which will be auctioned off early next year sometime.

I also know some bloggers who have a "big tent" and might accept a few more people to share their shooting positions.

The ACLU has a blog posting explaining their position on the 2^nd Amendment in a post Heller world:

So, we’ve been getting a lot of comments about the ACLU’s stance on the Second Amendment. For those of you who didn’t catch our response in the blog comments, here it is again:

The ACLU interprets the Second Amendment as a collective right. Therefore, we disagree with the Supreme Court’s decision in D.C. v. Heller. While the decision is a significant and historic reinterpretation of the right to keep and bear arms, the decision leaves many important questions unanswered that will have to be resolved in future litigation, including what regulations are permissible, and which weapons are embraced by the Second Amendment right that the Court has now recognized.

As always, we welcome your comments.

My comment is awaiting moderation. I wonder just how welcome it will be. I give it to you here in case it doesn't see the light of day:

Fortunately it is the Supreme Court and not organizations such as the KKK or the ACLU that is the binding interpreter of the U.S. Constitution.

We now have the ACLU explicitly denying what the Supreme courts calls a specific enumerated right. This is even more egregious than the KKK demanding segregated bus seating, water fountains, and restrooms since the Constitution doesn't enumerate the right for integration of public and private accommodations.

I had supported the ACLU in their support of the KKK because I thought the issue was one of free speech. Perhaps I was wrong in my assumption. Perhaps the issue was the ACLU enjoys the company of similarly minded bigots.

Update: They posted my comment along with many others. The last time I looked all the comments were very critical of the postion the ACLU has taken.

Via Sebastian we find out the deprivation of civil rights under the color of law angle is being used in the San Fransisco lawsuit.

I would rather the Federal Marshals showed up and arrested a bunch of them but I’m still smiling. It’s a step in the right direction.

There is a certain amount of truth to this:

Partisans on both sides will argue about whether Mr. Obama’s equivocation represents a clarification or a reversal of his previous statements on the subject. But the truth is that it doesn’t matter. Far more important is that the gradual disintegration of the gun control movement that once drove Democratic politics is now pretty much complete. For decades, the true meaning of the Second Amendment has been the subject of wrenching public debate. But last Thursday, when the Court expressly and historically extended the right of gun ownership to private citizens, the Democratic Party’s nominee for president merely shrugged.

Compare what Obama has been saying about guns to what Chuck Schumer, Diane Feinstein, and many others were saying in the mid-90's. We are winning. We have landed on the beach and are advancing but we have not won.

The bigots still need to be put in their place. And that place must be political extinction. They must share the same small and narrow-minded corner of history as the KKK. It's up to us to make it happen. We do that by reminding the people in the middle that these bigots are trying to deny people "a specific enumerated right" (Scalia's words and you should adopt them) in the Bill of Rights. This is stronger than the right to vote. This is the equivalent of someone attempting to deny someone free speech, the guarantee against double jeopardy or the right to counsel (again the courts specific examples which the 2^nd Amendment is on par with). Just like the Democrats were the party of the KKK 80 years ago Democrats are now the party of gun control. Those bigots must be made to feel just as unwelcome in any major political party as the KKK is today.

The core issue of "judicial scrutiny" is now established -- better than we had dreamed -- in what will be known as Famous Footnote #27 (p56). Laws impinging on the Second Amendment can receive no lower level of review than any other "specific enumerated right" such as free speech, the guarantee against double jeopardy or the right to counsel (the Court's list of examples).

This is a tremendous win, and overlooked in all initial reviews I've seen. Attorney Mike Anthony was the first to spot it, way to go Mike. "Strict scrutiny," which many folks sought, is a term without formal definition that could prove problematic. I was hoping for a test of some sort and got more than I hoped for. By recognizing 2A as a "specific enumerated right" the majority ties 2A to the rigid standards and precedents of our most cherished rights. That's as strong as there is. Very clever indeed.

Alan Korwin
June 30, 2008
Heller Decision -- Deeper Analysis
[Korwin is a lawyer specializing in gun laws (www.gunlaws.com). Take what he has to say seriously.--Joe]