The View From North Central Idaho

Linoge put a lot of work into showing the data with a pretty picture. I would like to think our opposition is able to read and understand raw numbers but time has shown even though I think they are mentally ill bigots with crap for brains I have far too high of an opinion of their skill set. So if your opposition needs to see a picture to understand what you are saying Linoge has it.

Data is always a good thing. Presenting it so it is understandable on such an intellectual level, that even the most stupid of those towards whom it is directed will understand it is even better.

[I]f you're in favor of welfare programs, for example (allowing some people to live at the expense of others, by threat of force, i.e. to acquire value without having earned it) then what moral or intellectual tenet is going to stop you from saying those same people should never be arrested? If they can receive goods and services they didn't earn by work or productivity, why then, exactly, shouldn't they have freedom they didn't earn through respecting other people's rights? If you favor forced redistribution, you've thrown out the concept of rights at that point, so what basis do you have for punishing property crimes that would be intellectually or morally consistent with forced redistribution? Is there some huge difference between the government robbing you to support a layabout, and said layabout robbing you directly? Seems to me the latter would accomplish the same thing far more efficiently, leaving out the middle man as it does.

Lyle @ UltiMAK
July 31, 2009
Comment to Fearsome firearms or crap for brains?
[But the "man in the middle" is the main beneficiary and may, in fact, be the entire point of the theft.--Joe]

I don't really know where to begin on this mess. They messed their pants so badly even hip waders couldn't hold it all. This is not reporting. This isn't even editorializing. They don't check their facts and I have doubts if they even know how to recognize a fact. It's the rantings of people with severe mental problems. It starts with the title "Brazen weapon fire chills police". It doesn't let up for an instant:

The gang shoot-out that rained gunfire and smoke on a quiet Dorchester street this week disturbed police on many levels: the seemingly new height in disregard for neighborhood safety, the fact that a 12-year-old girl watching TV inside a nearby house was shot through the leg.

Since when do gangs have any regard for "neighborhood safety"? Do they expect them to meet at a gun range to have their shoot-out? Gangs, in the common usage of the word, are criminals. Do they think criminals care about memorizing and following the gun safety rules that the rest of us do?

But even more alarming: At least one of the weapons used in the gunfire was an AK-47 assault rifle, the fourth time in three weeks that one had been found or used in Boston and the seventh time since last July, when a 32-year-old man was shot dead with one.

Police say they are noticing more of the fearsome firearms on Boston streets than last year and, in particular, are concerned that there have been so many in the past three weeks. Tomorrow afternoon, Mayor Thomas M. Menino will meet with ministers in Roxbury to discuss crime in the city and the sudden proliferation of the rifles.

But more alarming than there are criminals among us is that there are "fearsome firearms on Boston streets". Well then, why doesn't someone go out there and pick them up and take them home? Oh, that's right. That's not what they meant. They meant criminals are using the firearms on the streets. And, I say this having not lost a single bet in the last 35 years, I'm willing to bet than none of those rifles were actually assault rifles. They are intentionally using words to inflame emotions.

“This [weapon] can lay down a lot of fire in an urban area where there is basically no cover from it,’’ Commissioner Edward F. Davis said yesterday. “You can conceal yourself from these weapons, but they’ll rip through a car. They’ll rip through a telephone pole. They can rip through just about anything in an urban environment.’’

What he doesn't say is that common hunting rifles such as a 30.06 have far greater penetration than these rifles.

“Everybody understands when they read the morning paper that you have to push as much as you can to get these guns off the street,’’ he said.

Only those that believe the morning paper. And this article is a very illustrative example of why more and more people don't believe the "morning paper".

Nine assault rifles have been confiscated so far this year, compared with four seized in 2008. Eighteen assault rifles were found in 2007.

Want to bet?

But police worry about the attractiveness of assault rifles to gangs. AK-47s are much more powerful than handguns, capable of firing at least 100 yards, and can be easily converted into automatic weapons.

The range of the AK-47 on human sized targets is much greater than 100 yards. With common ammo it's about a 4 MOA gun. This makes it capable of first round hits, with a skilled marksman, at about 300 yards. So what? Common hunting rifles chambered .308 Winchester, 30.06, or .300 Win Mag, in skilled hands, can reach out and touch someone at 600 yards and beyond. They can't be "easily converted into automatic weapons" for two reasons; 1) Assault rifles ARE automatic weapons and these, almost for certain, are not assault rifles; and 2) Firearms that are "easily converted" into automatic weapons are not allowed on the market and haven't been for decades.

The guns have surfaced as Boston police have pushed to provide more of their own officers with M16s, high powered semiautomatic rifles.

In May, the Globe reported that police had ordered about 200 M16s free of charge from the US military and made plans to train dozens of officers and arm them with the rifles.

M-16s obtained from the military are NOT semi-automatic. They are fully automatic. Facts? What do facts matter to these mentally deranged writers? That's right, they don't. (Update: As pointed out in the comments the M16s were converted to semi-auto by the Boston Police Department. The article was written by the same writer. She was careless with the facts in this article even though she knew them.)

Community leaders and gun control advocates yesterday said many of the illegal guns in Massachusetts likely come from states like Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont, where private gun owners can sell their weapons to anyone without requiring background checks.

Bruce Wall, the pastor of the Global Ministries Christian Church in Codman Square, said he is planning to hold a prayer summit on the steps of the New Hampshire State Capitol in Concord, N.H., to get the attention of public officials and call on them to tighten their laws.

“We’re going to pray for the trafficking of guns to stop,’’ he said. “Those gun shows in those states are making a lot of money off people in Massachusetts. Now the criminals are using weapons that can outpower what the police have.’’

Let's see... violent crime rates (FBI stats for 2007 that I just happened to have on my computer):

• Massachusetts: 431.5/100K
• Maine: 118.0/100K
• New Hampshire: 137.3/100K
• Vermont: 124.3/100K

Blaming the laws in states with low crime rates for the high crime rates in their state proves that logical thinking doesn't even rate a place holder in their brains. If it was private sales of guns increased crime then why is the crime rate lower, by at least a factor of PI, in those states than in Massachusetts? Massachusetts should look to the laws and policies of states with low crime rates, see what is different, and emulate those other states. NOT insist that those other states adopt their failed polices.

What do you think? Are the authors correct that it's all about "fearsome firearms"? Or is it that the authors have crap for brains?

Author Maria Cramer can be reached at mcramer@globe.com let her know what you think. I sent her a link to this post and a link to Just One Question.

Update: I received a response from her:

From: MCramer@globe.com
Sent: Friday, July 31, 2009 7:59 AM
To: Joe Huffman
Subject: Re: Brazen weapon fire chills police

 

Thanks for your note.

 

 

Maria Cramer

Reporter

Boston Globe

w: (617) 929-3169

c:  (617) 291-6008

This country has come to feel the same when Congress is in session as when the baby gets hold of a hammer.

Will Rogers
[Well, I certainly feel that way. But apparently it's not a universal feeling because we still have a Congress that has sessions.--Joe]

Via email from Ed:

Jul 28, 2009 6:06pm
Eastside Harley and Wades Guns in Bellevue will be starting a promo via the internet. When a customer purchases a new 2009 big twin Harley from now through the end of July (could go into August), they will get a $500 voucher towards a purchase of a firearm or merchandise at Wades Guns. This offer is internet-only promotion, share and pass this audio file along. We are also posting a video to www.eastsideharley.com.

Bellevue Washington, near Seattle.

I'm tired of gun-bigots. PayPal needs to hear from US - the law-abiding gun owners of this country - that we're no longer willing to just roll over when we're abused by the companies we "trust" just because we believe in and practice the rights guaranteed to us under the Second Amendment.

Kevin Baker
July 29, 2009
No Good Deed Goes Unpunished
[Read it and follow his suggestions. If anyone has a good suggestion for an alternative I'd love to hear it. I reluctantly use PayPal for Boomershoot and Modern Ballistics and would love to have a viable alternative.--Joe] 

I tried this before, but the camera/recorder I used then was equipped with AGC circuitry, and the extremely wide dynamic range of gunfire made for an unsatisfactory result.  This time I used a dedicated, stereo sound recorder with no compression.

Because the sound of live fire, even from the 400 yard distance in this example, has such a wide dynamic range, you need to crank up your speaker volume very high.  You'll need a high quality sound system, or some good headphones with good frequency response, from low bass to the upper highs.  You should be able to clearly hear the sound of the rushing creek in the distance between shots, and the high-frequency bullet crack should almost hurt your ears.  Warning;  Make absolutely sure your computer or other device isn't going to make any other sounds (chimes, alarms, etc.) or it will blow your head off.  Be sure to turn the volume down when you're done.  When I play these files on the Altec speaker system with sub woofer, it sounds like it did when I was standing there making the recording.

We fired an AR-15 (.223) from 400 yards at plastic water jugs.  You can hear the sound of impact, but it's not as loud as the bullet's sonic "crack" or the low frequency muzzle blast that follows.  I was holding the recorder at a position behind a hill from the shooter, about 20 yards off to the side of the bullet path, and about 20 yards up-range from the targets.  This is the same recording in both WMA and MP3 formats;

01 223FireWMA.wma (1.4 MB)

223FireMp3.mp3 (584.91 KB)

Note that you've probably never heard this sound in movies or television, with the possible exception of Quigley Down Under, but in that case Quigley's bullets were sub sonic well before impact at long range and we can forgive the "whoosh-boom" as being probably accurate enough.

Dateline: July 27, 2009.

[There is a man at the register who just swiped his ATM card through the reader. He is wearing a ParaUSA hat and a t-shirt that says, "There are very few personal problems that can't be solved with a suitable application of high explosives." Not seen is the STI Eagle 5.1 in a Kramer IWB holster behind his right hip loaded with 19 rounds of high performance .40 S&W hollow point ammunition. Also not seen is on the other hip is a spare loaded 18-round magazine and a Surefire 6P flashlight. There is an Asian woman behind the register who just put a 50 pound sack of Boomerite mystery ingredient #4 into a cart.]

Woman: What are you going to do with 50 pounds of <mystery ingredient>? Are you a baker?

[Man waits a few seconds for the transaction to go through and the receipt to start printing out.]

Man: No. I'm going to make explosives with it.

[Man grabs the receipt and takes control of the cart with the 50 pound sack in it.]

Woman: How do you do that?

Man: You mix it with Ammonium Nitrate, Potassium Chlorate, and Ethylene Glycol.

Woman: Why do you do that?

Man: For recreational purposes. I make about 2000 pounds of explosives each year.

Woman: What do you do with it?

Man: I put them in targets, place them from 375 to 700 yards away and people from all over the whole world come to shoot at them.

Woman: That sounds really interesting! There must be a website for this, right?

[Man breaks out into a smile.]

Man: Yup. Boomershoot.org.

[Man, pushing cart, leaves the building. No guns were brandished, no cops arrived on the scene, and no shots were fired.]

Update: I forgot about the two Spyderco knives the man was carrying.

Ry points out:

The April 2009 edition of the NFA Handbook has removed pin & weld from the methods that are allowed to extend barrels to the minimum (16″ rifle, 18″ shotgun) length to avoid paying an SBR/SBS tax.

And asks:

What happens to the millions of barrels out there that were pinned and welded?

It's possible that 100s of thousands of criminals were just created by a simple regulation change without even a whisper of notice in Congress. Is it tin-foil hat time? Or are they really out to get me?

Ayn Rand indeed.

We shouldn't worry about the Thune Amendment failing last week. Soon there will be something better than Thune's Amendment and more likely to get passed.

Tell your Brady Campaign friends (do they have friends?) it's their turn to stock up. Gun owners have been emptying the shelves of guns and ammo and now it's their turn to empty the shelves--of Depends.

All gun control seeks to obfuscate your authority over violence against you or another. All gun control seeks to obfuscate the legal authority of a whole community. All gun control challenges our supreme authority over our servants.

John Longenecker
July 1, 2009
BOOK REVIEW: Lethal Logic by Henigan, Part II.
[What kind of person allows their servants to tell them only servants are allowed to own guns? Such servants need to be dismissed.--Joe]

A few days ago I reported I might have a chance to ask Mike Lux a a question or two. I got my chance last week and reported via Twitter here, here, here, here, here, and here.

The Twitter posts are below, indented, and in italics:

At the meeting room to hear Mike Lux speak. He should show up in a few minutes. Wearing my Rearden Steel t-shirt. World War Z on my Zune.

Rearden Steel is a little obscure. But it has a very significant meaning. I chose that shirt very deliberately. I'm pretty sure it was lost on everyone at the meeting but it made me smile.

World War Z just happened to be what was next in my queue for listening material but I thought it appropriate listening when about to subject myself to such a "progressive".

Lux says, "I believe the economy is fundamentally broken." "We are on the verge of a great change if we embrace it."

He talked of great moments in history such as the 1930s with the "New Deal" and the 1960s with the "Great Society" and civil rights legislation. He was disappointed with the Clinton administration that they didn't seem to have an real direction or make any progress. Now we have a chance to make some progress if we can just get our act together.

I still get a chill going through me when I think about this. Could it be our financial crisis was very deliberately brought on to make it more likely that socialism will be accepted by U.S. citizens? I had sort of half thought that this might be the last straw and people would have their complete fill of socialism and embrace the free market and our constitution as a result of our current situation. Can't people see that the Obama administration is only making things worse? Or will they be convinced that only he and socialism can save them?

Brrrrr... the chills that gives me.

He talked for quite a while about all the Bill of Rights violations by the Bush administration and expressed some concern President Obama wasn't moving fast enough to correct them.

I asked him to address his concerns over BOR violations by conservatives versus progressives ignoring the 2A and 10th.

I was the last person called upon. There were to be no more questions after mine.

His response was, "We just have a different interpretation of the BOR."

He also said the the government has the "right" to "invest" in the economy and "reform" health care via regulating of interstate commerce.

I corrected him on rights versus powers and he said he didn't know the difference.

Wow, just wow. He thinks mandated health care falls under the regulation of interstate commerce? I think that justification was lost on nearly everyone in the room. After this and my little email exchange with Senator Patty Murray how can a "progressive" claim to have any concern for the BOR or the constitution? How can they claim to have any principles?

...“Brady PAC Illinois” has just released its first semi-annual report of contributions and expenditures.

Their first fund-raiser was held in Chicago, which makes sense; Chicago is one of only a few pockets of serious anti-gun sentiment in Illinois. 91 out of 102 Illinois counties have now passed a “Pro 2A Resolution” that clearly states their opposition to all future gun control efforts in the state. Obviously Cook County is one of the 11 lagging behind on gun rights; the same fund-raisers held anywhere else in Illinois would likely have lost money. The question is, how well did they do in Chicago?

It can be hard to tell from the minimum information available in such reports, but here are the highlights of the Brady report:

• Brady PAC Illinois reported that it raised $27,150 in its first six months.
• Brady PAC Illinois further reported that it paid out $26,517.14 in expenses during the same period.
• This leaves Brady PAC Illinois with $632.86 to show for its first six months.

Don Gwinn

Last night when Barb came home from work she told me that Mrs. Petersen was in the hospital. She was Barb's patient and she had talked and talked about how much her late husband had loved guns and how much being able to host the Lewiston Pistol Club on a small patch of their land meant to him. He loved to shoot and he knew it was important to have a safe place to shoot. The Lewiston Pistol Club, and before that the Palouse Practical Shooters, have been using his land at no charge for over 10 years now.

Barb suggested I bring some flowers and a card to the hospital and stop and chat for a while. Since there was a steel match out at the range today I bought a card before I headed out.

Just as I turned off the engine at the range Barb called and asked, "Have you left yet?" "Uhh... yes", I answered. "Do you have your camera with you?" Again I answered "Yes." "Mrs. Petersen would like a picture of the range sign that mentions her husbands name." I was relieved. Nothing tough or involving a trip back into town causing me to be late for the match.

I took my gear, camera, and the card to the group of people prepping for the match and told them the story. Most of them knew her husband and everyone knew how much having access to that land means to the shooting community. They signed the card and some agreed to pose for the picture after the match.

I took pictures of people shooting (and without me knowing it someone used my own camera to take a picture of me when I was shooting! Thanks to whoever you are!) and the sign.

When I got back into town I had four 8"x10" prints made and delivered them and the card to Mrs. Petersen. It was the first time I had met her. As Adam (Club President for several years) had said many times, and Barb told me just today, she is a very sweet woman. She was appreciative of the card and picture and told me about her daughter who loves to shoot and her grandson who now has one of her late husbands rifles and needs someone to teach him to shoot since he lost his father and both grandfathers. I'll be forwarding the contact info on to the instructors in the club.

Here are the pictures I made prints of:

Adam and Jackie (new shooter at her first match!)

Don B., K.W.H., and Mike B.

The range in use.

Don B., K.W.H., Mike B., Adam M., Don W., Josh A.

I didn't make a print of this picture but since I don't get that many pictures of myself shooting I include it here.

K.W.H. and Joe Huffman

The US forest service has done extensive study on bear behavior, OC for bears, and guns against bears. I have been involved in all aspects of that from the beginning.

Almost everything you hear or read is personal opinion based on either no or very limited data points.

Looking at all the data for 100 years presents a very different story.

For bear defense it cannot be shown that the type or caliber matters, people that shoot back with anything win, people that don't shoot back many times lose. All calibers and action types have been used. Handguns are almost always used at mauling distance. Longarms at 25 yards to dead at your feet.

There is no evidence to support 44 over 357, revolvers are more reliable at contact distance but people have won with semi-autos (but the data pool is very small, as it grows we would at some point start to see malfunctions).

A good revolver in 357 or 44 with powerful solids made to go deep and not deflect is probably the best answer for carry. The pump shotgun still has more kills of grizzly than anything in defense, believe it or not with OO buck, though common wisdom nowadays is use brenneke slugs. Pre WWII 90%+ of the kills were OO.

Greg Hamilton
June 04, 2009 5:15 PM
Handguns for Bear?
Email to the Insights Training List.
[Very interesting! Data is always better than speculation. But I have to wonder how many "lost" data points there are. Cases where someone shot the bear and still ended up as snack food might not be represented in the data set.--Joe]

I have two reasons for making this post.

1) He's wrong. Robb is a smart guy and almost always comes up with the correct answer after a few milliseconds of deep thought. I've seen him in action and was impressed. But this time he is wrong. And we all know that if someone on the Internet is wrong you have to do something about it.

Sure, I am pretty proud of my letter and post to Senator Murray, but it was simple and easy for me. My brain takes everything literally. It takes effort for me to translate what people say into what they mean. For example; If someone were to say "It's a piece of cake", "Drier than a popcorn fart", or "Finer than frog hair" I have do a little mental translation. I have to think about the image given and try to fit it into the context, find out it fails, then search for alternate meanings before I know what they meant. When Senator Murray wrote, "Legislation to regulate the use of firearms is and should remain primarily a state issue." I took that literally and applied it to her known position on gun control and it was like she had written she had walked home from Mars last night or a T-Rex had eaten her brain shortly after she was born. It just didn't make any sense and it was blindingly obvious she didn't mean what she wrote.

She had just came up with a justification for doing what she wanted to do. She apparently gives no thought to principals, philosophy, or the Constitution. She just votes the way she feels. Pointing that out to her was fun but it took nearly no effort on my part. I do that sort of thing all the time.

You should see what I do when I'm given a specification to review at work. My co-workers laugh at me when I point things out to them but they also thank me and keep sending me specifications to review. Barb says they shouldn't encourage me because she has to live with me. Apparently having someone point out all their errors and contradictions starts to get tiresome after a few decades. I can't imagine why. I figure it is just the price she has to pay to approach perfection. But somehow she doesn't see it that way.

Robb said it was, "Snark that even Tam should find inspiring". I'm sorry, but I can't even come within ranging distance to Tamara. She puts together disparate ideas together in incredibly novel ways. She connects things that I couldn't imagine connecting and makes the joining totally seamless and completely appropriate. I couldn't do the stuff she does if my life depended on it. What sort of brain can do that? I can imagine writing a computer program to do what I do. But what sort of algorithm would do things like the following?

When I design my dream home, it's not going to be visitable by a SEAL team with air support, much less a lone individual in a wheelchair; I'm thinking barbed wire and tiger pits, not ramps and braille on the doorbell. It's not that I have a problem with visitors gimpier than myself; it's visitors in general that make me want to release the hounds.

"Avon lady in the wire! Blow your claymores!"

Visita-what?

Or:

In his article, Westen proudly displays his passport from Bizarroland, a place superficially similar to planet Earth, but where drooling idiots with hearts full of hate run amok absent guidance from their spiritual and intellectual betters in politics and academe.

 ...

I was waiting for the lizardoids to show up around paragraph seven or so and symbolically rape Gaia while carrying off Al Gore to be a slave on their homeworld, Karlrovia.

*sniff* It's a thing of beauty.

That just can't be the result of a mere mortal.

I am not worthy to be in the same plane of existence as Tam let alone be an inspiration for her.

2) I'll bet you forgot there were two reasons. I didn't. My brain wouldn't let me.

There aren't many things I fear, but being a snark target for Tam is one of those. I rank it worse than a 0300 SWAT team visit but not as bad as being burned alive or The Wrath of Barb.

I just want Tam to know that she doesn't need to take me down a notch or two just because Sharp as a Marble Robb made a mistake.

Asking the Brady campaign for facts about legal gun ownership is like asking the Communist Party about the merits of owning stock, and both their agendas are un-American.

Jon Deitch
July 24, 2009
Gun rights & local law
[Or asking the Imperial Wizard of the KKK about the merits of mixed race marriages.

The Brady campaign defended the unconstitutional D.C. gun laws in D.C. v. Heller and now defend similar laws in Chicago. What further proof do you need?--Joe]

It's not about safety. They want our culture eradicated. They even say so:

Mr Ahern says the legislation is designed to halt the emergence of a gun culture in Ireland.

I have every right to defend my life and the lives of the members of my family. I have the right to use the most effective tools for the job. And I have the right to do so anywhere regardless of some imaginary boundary drawn out by bigots.

Robb Allen
July 20, 2009
Seeing the light
[I love it when people point out the bigotry of gun control. It's the proper state of mind for dealing with gun control advocates.--Joe]

At least I had fun. I wonder if she and her staff will enjoy reading my response as much as I did writing it:

From: Senator Murray
Sent: Wednesday, July 22, 2009 9:30 AM
To: Joe Huffman
Subject: Response from Senator Murray

Dear Mr. Huffman:
 
Thank you for writing to me regarding S. Amdt. 1618, Senator Thune (R-SD)'s amendment to provide for uniform reciprocity for concealed weapon possession across the country.  It is good to hear from you.
 
Senator Thune's amendment would allow gun owner with a right to carry concealed weapon in one state the right to carry a concealed weapon across the United States.  Like you, I am concerned about the level of violence in this country, and its effect on our families and communities.  Legislation to regulate the use of firearms is and should remain primarily a state issue.  I believe that our national crime-fighting strategy should include reasonable measures to control firearms that strike a balance between reducing street crime and maintaining individuals' rights. 
 
As a U.S. Senator, I have supported common-sense measures to reduce or restrict gun violence while posing the least possible inconvenience to law-abiding gun owners.  Please know that as the Senate considers this and other firearms legislation, I will keep your concerns regarding this important issue in mind.  If you would like to know more about my work in the Senate, please feel free to sign up for my updates at http://murray.senate.gov/updates.  Thank you again for writing, and please keep in touch.
 
I hope all is well in Kirkland.

 

From: Joe Huffman
Sent: Thursday, July 23, 2009 9:58 PM
To: Senator Murray
Subject: RE: Response from Senator Murray

Thank you for taking the time to respond to this important issue.

Since you are of the opinion that legislation to regulate the use of firearms is, and should remain, primarily a state issue I presume I can count on your support of efforts to remove firearm regulations at the Federal level. I would like to suggest you introduce legislation to undo the continuing infringement of our rights inflicted by the following Federal firearms laws:

• National Firearms Act of 1934
• Gun Control Act of 1968
• The Hughes Amendment
• The Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act

Once those are infringements have been successfully resolved I will be glad to provide you with a list of other Federal firearms laws that need to be eliminated as well.

Since you are opposed to Federal regulation of firearms I cannot help but conclude you are also opposed to any new Federal firearm regulations. I was concerned that you might be considered a supporter of a new ban on “assault weapons” or think there was some utility in restricting both the First and Second Amendments by some law that claims to “close the gun show loophole”. As I’m sure you know there is no such thing as a “gun show loophole”. All Federal laws that are applicable at a gun shop are also applicable at gun shows.

Thank you for your support. I will be sharing your email and my response on my blog and with my friends at NRA-ILA. This will allow other Washington State gun owners know what a good friend they have in you and for the NRA-ILA people to start a dialog with you to begin getting some relief from the stifling and bewildering array of Federal gun laws.

If you meet any resistance in your efforts to roll back the infringements on the Second Amendment I would like to suggest you ask them Just One Question:

Can you demonstrate one time or place, throughout all history, where the average person was made safer by restricting access to handheld weapons?

I’ve been asking that question of gun-control supports for several years now without once getting a defendable answer.

Regards,

Joe Huffman
-----
http://blog.joehuffman.org/
http://www.boomershoot.org/
http://www.modernballistics.com/

For those of you that don't know the Honorable Senator Patty Murray, I don't think there has ever been a piece of gun control legislation that she didn't support.

And just as an FYI, I Bcc'd my contact at NRA-ILA.

I saw another piece of email she sent someone else on the same topic that is even more hilarious. I'm working to get permission to blog about it as well.

Paul Helmke says he is hopeful:

I am hopeful that our Congress will now start addressing proactive measures to reduce gun violence in this country by doing things like requiring background checks for all gun sales, particularly at gun shows.  We make it too easy for dangerous people to get dangerous weapons in America.

Emphasis in the original.

Rabbi David Saperstein, Director of the Religious Action Center, has similar thoughts:

Today’s legislative victory reinvigorates us in the fight for stricter gun control laws. The next target of the gun control community will be passage of national legislation to close the so-called “gun show loophole” by requiring stringent Brady background checks on all gun purchases. Hopefully this victory will give momentum to efforts of the administration, Congress and the gun control advocacy community to enact strong and safe gun control measures, like this one, that will protect the sanctity and value of human life.

Why do "dangerous people" have access to the general population? Shouldn't they be locked up in prison? Do we also make it too easy for "dangerous people" to get gasoline and matches? How about clubs, knives, and pointy sticks?

They were only able to get 39 votes in the Senate to stop legislation that I wouldn't have dreamed would even come up for consideration a year ago. Their "gun show loophole" mantra has been going on for at least ten years and they are "hopeful" now is the time for it? They have mental problems. But we already knew that.

We believe any individual who does not agree that the Second Amendment guarantees a fundamental right and who does not respect our God-given right of selfdefense should not serve on any court, much less the highest court in the land. Given the importance of this issue, the vote on Judge Sotomayor's confirmation will be considered in NRA's future candidate evaluations.

Wayne LaPierre
Chris Cox
July 23, 2009
Letter to the Senate on the Sotomayor confirmation vote.
[It's no different than a judge who does not agree the 13^th amendment guarantees a fundamental right. It's repugnant and a sign of a great sickness in our society that we even have to debate this.--Joe]

Most of the central banks have a lot of PHDs, with no real world experience. They have read books, but have not been in the trench to "feel" what it is truly like. This is why government employees rarely have anything worthwhile that will ever contribute to society. There is not a single economic statistic that is even valid, no less any plausible guide as to what is going on. There are manipulated so much to try and influence the "public confidence" that it becomes a joke.

Martin Armstrong
July 10, 2009
The Goldman Sachs Conspiracy. The Real Dark Pool. Page 4.
[Sent to me by Chet with the comment, "Tinfoil Hat needed?"

I told him my hat was double lined already.--Joe]

I'm a little surprised by the stiff resistence put up by the bigots on the Thune Amendment. Here and here are just two of many, many examples of PSH.

I'm also a little surprised our side hasn't been defending a little stronger or that the bigots don't realize what they are setting themselves up for.

How is this any different than states having different criteria for marriage and divorce. Some states allow people to marry as young as 14. Others don't. Some states require blood tests or waiting periods. Others don't. Yet each state must recognized the marriage licenses of all the other states.

How is this any different than states having different criteria for drivers license?

And don't both sides realize that nearly the same arguements can be used by the other side if the discussion was about homosexual marriage?

If the anti-gun Democrats were smart they would agree to vote for it if homosexual marriage licenses were recognized nationwide as well. Sort of a poison pill for the more conservative types.

I think that would make the fights far more interesting. Popcorn anyone? I think Roberta has some.

Bitter and Sebastian has been pointing out just how bad nominee Sotomayor is on the right to keep and bear arms. This is probably the most damning.

She does not want to admit that people have a right to self-defense. She is smart enough to know it is a slippery slope to the acknowledgment of the right to keep and bear arms if she were to admit that. The British have learned that lesson sliding down the slope in the other direction--if there is no right to keep and bear arms then there is no right to self-defense.

Alan Korwin gives Sotomayor some pointers on what the U.S. Supreme Court has said about self-defense. It's not a question mark at all. The conclusion:

The Supreme Court has recognized, addressed and answered all the most fundamental questions about self defense. The idea that they have never addressed this core American issue is completely false, as the numerous cases clearly demonstrate.

After reading the press release from the U.S. Attorney's Office one might be inclined to agree the guy was a risk to society. The prosecuting attorney was able to convince a jury the guy had been previously convinced of one or more felonies and was found in possession of one or more firearms. I don't necessarily agree with that law (for example: certain consensual sexual acts have been, and may still be, considered felonies) but it is the law. What really bugs me about the press release is what they say the guns were:

According to testimony at trial and records in the case, on August 23, 2007, the Skagit County Sheriff's Office High Risk Team executed a search warrant at THOMPSON’s house in rural Skagit County. They seized eight firearms, including one that was in a holster in THOMPSON’s wheelchair. The eight guns were two SKS assault type rifles, a Winchester .243 caliber semiautomatic rifle, a Colt Woodsman .22 caliber semiautomatic pistol, a Davis Industries .380 caliber semiautomatic pistol, a Ruger Blackhawk .357 caliber revolver, a Browning .32 caliber semiautomatic pistol and a Reck .22 caliber revolver.

The emphasis is mine.

Only in a few states has the SKS been considered an "assault weapon" and never, to the best of my knowledge, has the law ever declared an SKS to be an "assault rifle". And since this was a Federal prosecution Federal law should control the definition. The SKS wasn't even considered an "assault weapon" let alone an "assault rifle" under the now obsolete "assault weapon ban" of 1994.

The U.S. Attorney's office appears to be attempting to demonize an ordinary semi-automatic, constitutionally protected, firearm.

I sent them the following email:

From: Joe Huffman
Sent: Tuesday, July 21, 2009 9:22 AM
To: 'Emily.Langlie@USDOJ.Gov'
Subject: Skagit county felon sentenced to prison for illegal gun possession.

 

I am a blogger focusing on guns and gun rights. My blog can be found at http://blog.joehuffman.org/.

 

I just read the press release I found here. I was rather annoyed at something I saw in the press release. The SKS rifles found in Thompson’s possession are described as “SKS assault type rifles”. The Attorney’s office almost certainly knows the 1994 Federal law defining “assault weapons” and banning certain firearms never included SKS rifles and even if it had that law is no longer in effect. Furthermore “assault rifle”, as opposed to “assault weapon”, has a very specific meaning to the U.S. military and the SKS rifle does not qualify as an “assault rifle”.

 

I can only think of three possible explanations for the U.S. Attorney’s office to use incorrect terminology. This terminology is always used in a derogatory fashion.

 

1)      The U.S. Attorney’s office has an agenda above and beyond the enforcement of Federal law—demonization of a constitutionally protected activity.

2)      The U.S. Attorney’s office is ignorant of U.S. firearms law.

3)      The U.S. Attorney’s office is careless with the facts.

 

All of these potential explanations are very discomforting to me as a gun owner. Could you please provide a correction and/or explain why an SKS rifle was described as an “assault type rifle”?

 

Thank you.

 

Joe Huffman

Update: I received a response from the public affairs person:

From: Langlie, Emily (USAWAW) [mailto:Emily.Langlie@usdoj.gov]
Sent: Tuesday, July 21, 2009 9:38 AM
To: Joe Huffman
Subject: RE: Skagit county felon sentenced to prison for illegal gun possession.

 

Mr. Huffman –

I have attached the trial brief that I used to draft the press release.  You will note on page 2 a list of weapons found at the home.  The first two read as follows:

A. One SKS assault type rifle with wood stock;

B. One SKS assault type rifle with synthetic stop and a pistol grip;

 

I am not a lawyer, nor am I a gun expert.  I summarize the court proceedings for the general public who do not, in general, have the narrow focus that you have reading our press releases.  The defendant was prohibited from possessing ANY of the firearms because he is a convicted felon.    I simply described them as they are described in court papers. 

 

None of your three explanations are correct.  I will forward your email to the attorney who tried the case and wrote the trial brief so that he is aware of the distinction that you are drawing regarding these firearms.

 

 

Emily Langlie

Public Affairs Officer

United States Attorney's Office

Western District of Washington

(206) 553-4110

My response (trial brief is here):

From: Joe Huffman 
Sent: Tuesday, July 21, 2009 10:32 AM
To: 'Langlie, Emily (USAWAW)'
Subject: RE: Skagit county felon sentenced to prison for illegal gun possession.

 

Thank you for responding and forwarding it to the attorney who wrote the brief.

 

Reading the trial brief actually makes the situation worse. I thought perhaps there was some carelessness in the translation from the court papers to the news release. But that is clearly not the case. It also provides further evidence that the attorney and/or his experts are either ignorant of firearms or careless.

 

Item B.  One SKS assault type rifle with synthetic stop and a pistol grip.

 

The correct word is “stock”, not “stop”.

 

From reading the brief it sounds as if the attorney may have merely replicated data from the Sheriff’s office. In which case the primary error would have been made by them and only propagated by the U.S. attorney.

 

I understand that any firearm possessed by Thompson would constitute a criminal act and I’m not saying the type of firearm or how it is described would, or should have, changed the outcome of the trial in any way. I am concerned by the language the attorney is using. Using the term “assault” in regards to an ordinary firearm in common usage is similar to calling someone a “nigger” when the color of their skin is irrelevant to alleged crime. It shows a disrespect or ignorance for existing law or a prejudiced mindset.

 

Thanks again for taking the time to respond to my concerns.

 

Regards,

 

 

Joe Huffman

If I had a TV and cable I might actually watch an episode or two of this:

LOCK 'N LOAD is a six-part reality series offering viewers a fly on the wall experience at "The Shootist" gun store in Englewood, Colorado. Salesman Josh T. Ryan is always in full-on pitch mode and for every gun sold by this expert gunslinger at this family-owned store, there's a fascinating story and a fascinating buyer.

LOCK 'N LOAD doesn't take sides or argue a political perspective. Instead, viewers on both sides of the issue will be able to watch Ryan, a born salesman, wield his patented quick-draw humor and inherent likeability in each exchange, making jokes and big-ticket deals over the blasts echoing from the firing range down below. And all is done before hidden cameras which will only be revealed after the transaction is completed in order to insure a particularly candid and compelling point of view. America is and will probably always be fascinated with the gun culture in our country and this show will help to explain why.

Maybe I can watch them on-line. The promos are intriguing.

You, Mr. Rubin, are fertilizing that weed with the manure you published in your "irrefutable" column.

Kevin Baker
July 20, 2009
Refuting the "Irrefutable"
[Kevin also uses the word "bigot" three times in his post which made me smile a great deal because Kevin listened to my little speech about that a few years ago.

Closely related is that for todays QOTD I was quite tempted by Robb Allen who said, "The other side has emotional appeals, a complete lack of facts to back up their assertions, and an appalling lack of apostrophes. We have Kevin Baker."--Joe]

As we in the gun-rights community have often noted the anti-gun people have to cheat to win. Here is another attempt to cheat:

In Walt Whitman's political tract, "The Eighteenth Presidency," an attack on the dreadful state of American governance in 1856, he trained his sights on the "nominating dictators" of American political life. “Who are they?” he asked. The answer:

"Office-holders, office-seekers, robbers, pimps, exclusives, malignants, conspirators, murderers, fancy-men, post-masters, custom-house clerks, contractors, kept-editors, spaniels well-trained to carry and fetch, jobbers, infidels, disunionists, terrorists, mail-riflers, slave-catchers, pushers of slavery, creatures of the President, creatures of would-be Presidents, spies, blowers, electioneerers, body-snatchers, bawlers, bribers, compromisers, runaways, lobbyers, sponges, ruined sports, expelled gamblers, policy backers, monte-dealers, duelists, carriers of concealed weapons, blind men, deaf men, pimpled men, scarred inside with the vile disorder, gaudy outside with gold chains made from the people's money and harlot's money twisted together; crawling, serpentine men, the lousy combings and born freedom sellers of the earth."

Emphasis in the original.

What the bigot didn't mention is that the open carry of weapons was perfectly normal and acceptable at that time.

Update: After reading a comment to this post I realized I was easily misunderstood. When I said "Here is another attempt to cheat" I was referring to Mike Beard who wrote the post I linked to. Not Walt Whitman. Beard is saying people that want to carry concealed weapons have long been regarded as low-life. Beard failed to tell the rest of the story which does not match his agenda. I don't have a problem with Whitman saying what he did because the culture was such that open carry and weapon possession in general was just fine. It was the concealment that was considered a problem. Beard wants to create a culture, and has largely succeeded, where weapons possession in general is a mark of a low-life and attempts to obtain support from history for his position.

As I noted this morning James Higham in the U.K. is challenging the utility of gun bans. I chimed in with a somewhat sarcastic comment on his blog:

CherryPie said, I don't agree with arms in our own homes that is the thin end of the wedge and would lead to complete lawlessness.

That is an interesting hypothesis. Can you demonstrate where this has actually happened?

My experience has been that when a gun has been put in the hands of an individual they are no more or less law abiding than they were before the gun was in their hands. I've even put a gun in the hands of a guy from England to test the hypothesis that Brits can't be trusted with guns. I didn't really believe that hypothesis but I thought I should test it because apparently the British government believes it to be true.

He took a few shots then then told me, "It's just a piece of metal! I thought I would be nearly overcome by a sense of power. But it's just a piece of metal."

Yup. Just a piece of metal. And he was no more inclined to shoot someone than he would have been inclined to hit someone if the piece of metal had been the shape of a hammer or to cut someone if the metal was in the shape of a knife. A similar experiment with another Brit yielded similarly benign results.

I admit it's a very small sample size but at this time I'm disinclined to believe the presence of firearms in British homes represents a greater risk of lawlessness than does the presence of knives and/or hammers.

Perhaps you have access to some data which I do not and can share it with me.

Was I too sarcastic? Not enough? Or was it just about right?

Nationalizing our health care system doesn't just fail my Jews in the Attic Test, it's bad for your health as well.

See also:

• Half-Assed Utilitarian Morris (via a link from Tamara)
• It's Not An Option (via another link from Tamara)
• Whatever happened to "my body, my choice"?

Barb works in the medical profession and I would tell you what she thinks of government involvement in health care but I try to keep the language here acceptable for polite society.

I pay cash for nearly everything I can. Rent and utilities for the underground bunker in the Seattle area, and most of my gasoline, ammo, guns, and range fees are all paid for with cash.

I don't hesitate to call people advocating gun control bigots or say they have mental problems.

I encouraged Barb to keep her own name when we got married (which she did). And that was nearly 33 years ago when it was far less common than it is now.

I advocate pushing the limits of what is acceptable and pushing buttons in people. I challenge people to make them think and to slow down the encroachment upon our freedoms.

I've started open carrying in certain places.

But a fellow Idaho resident makes me look a bit pathetic in my timid attempts at rebellion. See how she handled the marriage license and the SSN. I'm proud she lives in the same town as I (sometimes) do.

There was a time when it was not necessary to defend oneself in this country of ours. There was a time when an Englishman's home was his castle. There was a time when a Briton wouldn't dream of being armed.

That time has passed.

James Higham
July 20, 2009
[defending ourselves] the time has come
[James lives in the U.K. and is saying the gun and self-defense bans aren't working and it's time to change things. It is a little more timid than I would (and do) approach the subject but perhaps that is more appropriate when dealing with these people.

James uses several of the references I provided via email (and blog post). He also quotes Just One Question and my Jews in the Attic Test. Thanks for the links James.

So far the comments are essentially neutral. Perhaps people are thinking about it rather than just lashing out. If so, then perhaps there is hope for them yet.--Joe]

Only 13% of U.S. residential burglaries are attempted against occupied homes. U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, Household Burglary, BJS BULL. at 4 (1985). Criminologists attribute the prevalence of daytime burglary to burglars’ fear of confronting an armed occupant; burglars report that they avoid late-night home invasions because, "That’s the way you get yourself shot."

George Rengert & John Wasilchick
Suburban Burglary: A Tale of Two Suburbs page 33.
(2^nd ed. 2000)(study of Delaware County, Penn., and Greenwich, Conn.)
[This disincentive goes away if the victims have been disarmed. In fact it then becomes beneficial to "visit" when the victims are present so they can obtain wallets with cash, credit cards, and the combination to the safe.--Joe]

I'll be soon be attending an meeting where Mike Lux will be speaking. I probably will get a chance to ask a question or maybe two. Do you have any questions for him?

His bio:

Mike Lux is the co-founder and CEO of Progressive Strategies. Since starting the company, Mike has launched a number of important projects, including American Family Voices, an issue advocacy group working on pocketbook issues for American families; and the Progressive Donor Network, which works to coordinate a network of individual donors, issue advocacy groups, and top flight political consultants and strategists.

Mike's recent projects have garnered a considerable amount of media coverage in The Washington Post, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Business Week, National Journal, The New Republic and Miami Herald, and have provoked numerous attacks by Rush Limbaugh and other right wing media figures, as well as an "expose" by William Buckley's National Review Magazine.

In addition to those projects, Mike serves on the boards of several important organizations, including the Arca Foundation. In addition to serving on the board, Mike was also a co-founder of Americans United for Change, Center for Progressive Leadership, Grassroots Democrats, Progressive Majority, Ballot Initiative Strategy Center, and Women's Voices/Women Vote. He also played a role in helping launch the Center for American Progress and Air America.

In the late 1990's, Mike was Senior Vice President for Political Action at People For the American Way (PFAW), and the PFAW Foundation. He oversaw lobbying and legal advocacy, field operations, state and regional offices, voter registration and get-out-the-vote efforts. He helped launch the PFAW PAC and the PFAW Voters Alliance in 1997. He was also responsible for coalition building with other organizations and interest groups.

Before joining People For the American Way, from January 1993 to mid-1995, Mike served as Special Assistant to President Clinton for Public Liaison in the White House, where his role on health care and budget issues involved working closely with a wide range of constituency groups including labor, seniors, churches, disability groups, businesses, health care providers, trial lawyers, consumer groups and farm groups. He organized the first clergy breakfast, the first state opinion leader's days, and the first bill signing ceremony of the Clinton presidency. Lux served in the 1992 campaign war room, the 1993 budget war room and the 1994 health care war room (being one of only two people to serve in all three); and was the person who organized the coalition to fight the school lunch cuts the Republicans were pushing in 1995, the first issue they were soundly defeated on after taking control of Congress.

Prior to his service at the White House, Mike served as Constituency Director on both the 1992 Clinton-Gore campaign and the presidential transition team. In the 1988 cycle, Mike was a member of the senior staff for the Biden and Simon presidential campaigns. In the 1984 cycle, he played a major volunteer role in the Iowa Mondale campaign.

With a diverse breadth of experience, Mike has an extensive background in the consulting, labor and consumer advocacy worlds. He was a partner and cofounder of the Chicago-based political consulting firm, The Strategy Group; served as Executive Vice President, PAC director and chief lobbyist for the Iowa AFL-CIO in the early 1990s; and worked as Executive Director of the Iowa Citizen Action Network.

In July of 2007, Mike Lux launched OpenLeft.com with prominent bloggers Matt Stoller and Chris Bowers. OpenLeft.com is a news, analysis and action website dedicated toward building a progressive governing majority in America. OpenLeft.com connects establishment progressive groups with outsider activists in conversations and a variety of projects to build a progressive governing majority and furthering progressive policy.

In November of 2008, Mike was named to the Obama-Biden Transition Team. In that role, he served as an advisor to the Public Liaison on dealings with the progressive community and has helped shape the office of Public Liaison based on his past experience working on the Clinton-Gore Transition, as well as in the White House.

On January 14, 2009, Lux released his first book, The Progressive Revolution: How the Best in America Came to Be. Lux's book was published by Wiley Publishing.

Food. Shelter. Transportation. Security. Security is very important. Maintaining order and public safety requires discipline, and maintaining discipline, for a lot of people, requires the threat of force. This means that people must be ready to come to each other’s defense, take responsibility for each other, and do what’s right. Right now, security is provided by a number of bloated, bureaucratic, ineffectual institutions, which inspire more anger and despondency than discipline, and dispense not so much violence as ill treatment. That is why we have the world’s highest prison population. They are supposedly there to protect people from each other, but in reality their mission is not even to provide security; it is to safeguard property, and those who own it. Once these institutions run out of resources, there will be a period of upheaval, but in the end people will be forced to learn to deal with each other face to face, and Justice will once again become a personal virtue rather than a federal department.

Dmitry Orlov
February 13, 2009
Social Collapse Best Practices

I received a request for help from James in the UK. Here was my response (actually sent in two pieces, but combined here):

I would like to suggest you follow the links in the post Just One Question. The Center for Disease Control (CDC) reviewed a number of studies and was unable to conclude gun control made people safer. That review, and the studies they looked at, are probably the most reliable data points.

The following links are not to statistics. The CDC study would be the best reference I have for that.

I don't have it but I think this book would be very useful:

http://www.joyceleemalcolm.com/books/guns_and_violence

I've read a few excerpts and it seemed quite good.

This might also be worthwhile:

http://www.joyceleemalcolm.com/books/keep_and_bear_arms

For more background and potential ways to approach the problem take a look at these:

http://blog.joehuffman.org/SearchView.aspx?q=%22James%20Kelly%22
http://blog.joehuffman.org/CategoryView,category,PlacesWithoutGuns.aspx
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/britain-is-capital-of-crime-says-us-tv-channel-715251.html
http://www.reason.com/news/show/28582.html

Good luck!

Update:

Gun control also violates my Jews in the Attic Test.

Don’t like Jews or Catholics? Hitler disarmed them and then murdered millions in concentration camps, along with Gypsies, homosexuals, etc.

Hate Christians? After Uganda banned guns, 300,000 were rounded up and murdered.

Don’t like “smart” people? After banning guns, Cambodia rounded up and murdered over one million of them.

Hate people who disagree with you? After the Soviet Union established gun control, over 20 million dissidents were rounded up and killed.

By comparison, the Second Amendment has actually saved millions of lives. It also protects your right to religious freedom, your pursuit of happiness, and your opportunity for upward mobility. It raises the cost for thugs who want you rounded up and murdered.

It also shows that anybody who is against the civil right of self-defense is a person who hates your life, liberty, and happiness.

Why would you want to be disarmed before such a person?

Howard Nemerov
July 16, 2009
Does civilian gun ownership cause bloodshed?
[Just a friendly reminder of the costs of weapon restrictions. And can you tell me again--just what are the benefits?

I have to conclude the people advocating weapons restrictions are either ignorant or consider the costs listed above are actually benefits. Since information is so readily available the ignorance is willful hence no matter how you look at it such people are contemptable no matter how they arrive at their position of restricting the private ownership of weapons.--Joe]

Sometimes "The Gun Guy" is so far out that it's like a caricature. But he's further out than I could portray even if I tried. Case in point:

If the gun lobby gets its way in Congress, the following scenarios might become all too real:

• You're visiting an elderly family member at the hospital when you see a gruff man in the parking lot adjusting his loaded and deadly handgun in his belt. You inform the nurse that there is a dangerous and armed man outside and the nurse informs you that it is "legal" for the gun owner to carry a concealed weapon only steps away from the hospital entrance.
• You're walking through the park with your kids on a sunny day eating ice cream when you see two men pull up in a dark SUV. As you walk by, you see them take two handguns out of the glove box and stick them in their jackets. You immediately call 9-1-1 to inform the police that there are armed men in a park with families and children, but the police tell you that unless their is cause, the armed men are perfectly legal carrying deadly weapons in family-friendly locations.
• You're at a coffee shop sipping your latte when you see a woman with a handgun casually tucked inside her purse chatting away on her cell phone and says she's from out of state. You're terrified at the sight of the weapon knowing that children are present. You ask an employee why loaded handguns are allowed at a coffee shop and the barista says that the owner still hasn't posted a sign explicitly prohibiting carrying concealed weapons and therefore it's permitted.

A gruff man with a handgun is known to be dangerous? "A gruff man with a handgun" describes a fair number of police officers.

He puts quotes around the word legal? It's currently legal in nearly all states. So what is his point? The proposed law wouldn't make the described scenarios any more or less legal.

Armed men in the park? I've done this more times than I could count and I know lots of people that do it. It's currently legal in nearly all states. So what is his point?

Women at a coffee shop with a gun in her purse--and his point is? Oh, yeah. He's terrified.

If he were talking about blacks or homosexuals that way it would be virtually impossible for him to get or keep a job. But since it is gun owners he is talking about he gets paid by the Joyce Foundation to spew hate at such a ridiculous level it's difficult to not believe it is a deliberate farce.

Either Scott Vogel is conning the Joyce Foundation or he is really wacko. I'm really not sure which.

Some people so treasure the truth that they use it with great economy.

H. Ray Golenor
[I got this from someone else I traded quote databases with and I don't know if this guy even exists. There are numerous references to this same quote by the same guy, but nothing else that I could see in a quick web search. One has to wonder if politicians made him "disappear" or something.--Joe]

This is for J H.  He and Joe were discussing statistics related to gun restriction in comments here.

This line of argument, taken by itself, is to say nothing of human rights, the right to live being most fundamental and the right to self defense going hand in hand with the right to live.

If we are to leave out any discussion of rights, and focus purely on how people get injured or how they die in accidents and crimes as a means of determining and justifying laws, then we'd start by banning the wheel.  Swimming pools, access to rivers and lakes, etc., and stairs would be ahead of guns in private hands as a focus of legislative restriction.  Somewhere in between would be legal restrictions on unprotected sex and leaving the home while ill.  But that would be government thinking of the people in the same way that a farmer thinks of his cattle.

It is when we look at guns in the hands of governments that we find mass death, numbering in the tens of millions, and there you find the primary purpose of our second amendment-- defense or deterrence against tyranny, or more to the point it should be seen as defense of human rights by those who hold those rights (we the people).  Who then should look at whom as property?  Keeping our servants in government (our cattle) properly de-horned is, historically, the more important concern if we are to have any sort of owner/property relationships with one another.

Once we've accepted the Nanny State as the ideal form of government, all bets are off anyway, and arguing figures and statistics alone is to fight the battle on your enemy's chosen ground.  Even being wrong in their figures, your enemy has won by deciding the terms of battle.  People are in fact injured and killed through the use of or involvement with guns in private hands.  That is a fact.  Hence the Nanny State will find an excuse to restrict them if that's what they want and if they feel safe in doing it.

The true winning argument is that the state has no legitimate jurisdiction over any behavior or possession that in itself does not violate the rights of other people.  If I have a gun in my pocket I haven't violated any other person's rights by that fact alone.  If I haul off and smack someone at random in the head with a baseball bat, it is not the fault of the state for allowing free, un-restricted access to baseball bats.  It is I who would have committed a crime by violating the rights of another person, for which I would rightly be held accountable.  In attempting to restrict generally the access to baseball bats as a result of my crime, the state would be perpetrating tyranny by way of making victims out of innocent persons.  We call that sort of behavior "prior restraint"-- restraining someone in some way prior to them having threatened or done anything wrong to anyone.

It is well and good to point out the stupidity of arms restrictions, and how their effects are virtually always counter to the stated goal of making people safer, but those issues are a distant secondary to the issues of human rights.  Otherwise we’d be confiscating automobiles, banning certain sports, et al.  Without human rights as the fundamental principle guiding our policies, the totalitarian state is an inevitability.

Oh, sure, they say they’re doing it for folks with paralysis, but you know and I know that just as soon as they are able, GE is going to build a primate powered MechWarrior.

I wonder if SCOTUS will see the logic in rocket launchers as self-defense weaponry then?

Phil
July 15, 2009
Forget Zombies
[Don't forget destructive devices. I'm thinking about 2000 pounds of Boomerite would be about the minimum acceptable charge.--Joe]

Kevin asks, How Can People Still Believe This?

It's easy, just because something is irrational doesn't mean you don't have to believe in it. Or so says one high school teacher.

Ayn Rand says it's because philosophy isn't taught. Or at least the philosophy that is taught, mostly indirectly, has been total crap. Philosophy, she said, is vital to humans. When we have crap for philosophy we make crappy decisions and this person is just one example of many with crap for brains.

The nice thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from. Furthermore, if you do not like any of them, you can just wait for next year's model.

Andrew S. Tanenbaum
Computer Networks, second edition, page 254
[While at the gym this morning I watched Sotomayor's confirmation hearing for a few minutes. When she started talking about court precedents in regard to the 2nd Amendment I was reminded of Tanenbaum's quote.--Joe]

Yesterday daughter Kim and I went out to the Boomershoot site to do some prep work for Boomershoot 2010. She folded a bunch of target boxes:

I killed yellow-jackets, threw out dead mice, put out more rat/mice and ant poison, and replaced the bait in the yellow-jacket trap.

I also did an inventory of boxes, chemicals and target stakes. I want all of those on site before the rains start this fall. I don't want to worry about being able to get a supply vehicle through the snow and/or mud to the Taj Mahal next spring like I did this spring.

We now have 675 boxes all folded and put in crates ready for Boomershoot 2010. I need to buy a few hundred more, get them folded, put in crates, and maybe even load some of them with lime before next spring. Lots of other things need to be done too. I want to improve the shooters berms. It needs to be deeper in places. Our "well" isn't working and I have suspicions that the solar panels the recharge the batteries are not working either.

The Second Law of Thermodynamics rules all. But that is sort of what Boomershoot is about, right? It's about moving things from a high energy state to a lower energy state. I just sometimes wish there wasn't so much effort involved in achieving the high energy state.

Via an email from Kevin comes this (see also this and this):

The advice appears in leaflets circulated to parents, teachers and youth workers and is meant to update sex education by telling students about the benefits of enjoyable sex.

...

Entitled Pleasure, the leaflet has been drawn up by NHS Sheffield, but it also being circulated outside the city.

The leaflet carries the slogan "an orgasm a day keeps the doctor away". It also says: "Health promotion experts advocate five portions of fruit and veg a day and 30 minutes' physical activity three times a week. What about sex or masturbation twice a week?"

Ho, hum. That has been Dr. Joe's cure for everything for over 30 years. Just ask Barb.

...that a movie was made, paralleling "Reefer Madness" exactly, scene for scene, gesture for gesture, line for line including the dramatic introduction, merely substituting "marihuana" for guns?  Yes, I believe it is.  An NRA agent arrives in town, starts promoting guns, and all hell breaks loose.  "Gun Madness".

If you haven't seen the 1930s movie "Reefer Madness", by all means do watch.  It's not only illustrative of what the totalitarians have been up to for generations, it's a real hoot, especially considering that those who made it were trying very hard to appear serious.  I can picture Di Fi standing before the concerned parents at the school meeting, eyes glaring, finger pointing at the camera...

Hmm..you don't suppose the VPC or other anti-gun groups could be talked into providing some of the funding?

It is distressing to see that the National Rifle Association's Eddie Eagle Program will be part of the Highlands County Library's Youth Summer Program. This was mentioned in Highlands Today on July 2.

The NRA is a lobbying organization dedicated to putting more guns in the hands of criminals. As a lobby group, the NRA twists the facts when it uses them at all. The NRA often sues cities and states to advance its radical program. How did the NRA get to be considered a harmless organization that should have access to our libraries and our children?

Dale L. Gillis
July 13, 2009
Gun safety among children
["Dedicated to putting more guns in the hands of criminals?" I guess that is why they have they have the support of four million members, right? And that is why two thirds of the states Attorney Generals support the NRA lawsuit against Chicago.

"Twists the facts when it uses them at all?" See projection.

Gillis is just another bigot.--Joe]

Sometime in the mid '90s Alan Gottlieb spoke to the Microsoft Gun Club (now called the Gun Club @ Microsoft) and I asked him, "From the evasive words they use it's clear the anti-gun politicians know gun control doesn't make people safer. So what is the real reason they advocate more gun control?" He answered, "It depends on the politician. Some want to change the culture to one of dependence on government. Others just hate guns. And we have sometimes joked that because of the high number of criminals in his district Chuck Schumer was just voting to protect his constituents."

Perhaps it wasn't really that much of a joke. Apparently the intent of the Sullivan Act was to protect the criminals:

New York state Sen. Timothy Sullivan, a corrupt Tammany Hall politician, represented New York's Red Hook district. Commercial travelers passing through the district would be relieved of their valuables by armed robbers. In order to protect themselves and their property, travelers armed themselves. This raised the risk of, and reduced the profit from, robbery. Sullivan's outlaw constituents demanded that Sullivan introduce a law that would prohibit concealed carry of pistols, blackjacks and daggers, thus reducing the risk to robbers from armed victims.

The criminals, of course, were already breaking the law and had no intention of being deterred by the Sullivan Act from their business activity of armed robbery. Thus, the effect of the Sullivan Act was precisely what the criminals intended. It made their life of crime easier.
As the first successful gun-control advocates were criminals, I have often wondered what agenda lies behind the well-organized and propagandistic gun-control organizations and their donors and sponsors in the United States today. The propaganda issued by these organizations consists of transparent lies.

By advocating more gun control Chuck Schumer and Carolyn McCarthy are just continuing the fine tradition of New York politics.

Apparently this is an actual image from a poster planned to be used in the case of a quarantine (page 420):

Via email from Chet.

If people can't be trusted to not sell guns to the drug dealers in Mexico then the government should take all the guns away from those type of people. A case in point:

An F.B.I. agent in El Paso has been arrested and charged with dealing guns, some of which ended up being used in gunfights between the authorities and drug dealers in Mexico, law enforcement officials said. The agent, John T. Shipley, was indicted Wednesday on charges he dealt firearms without a license for more than two years, buying the weapons from dealers on the Internet and then reselling them to unidentified buyers. Mr. Shipley sold more than 50 weapons, the indictment said. Some were recovered after shootouts between the Mexican Army and drug dealers in Chihuahua on March 8 last year that left seven dead, officials said. Mr. Shipley, who was released on bond this week, has been suspended without pay since March 2009, the Federal Bureau of Investigation said.

So distant is America today from it's founding principles that it is difficult to precisely describe the nature of American government. It is not strictly a constitutional republic, because the Constitution has been and continues to be easily altered by a judicial oligarchy that mostly enforces, if not expands, the Statist's agenda. It is not strictly a representative republic, because so many edits are produced by a maze of administrative departments that are unknown to the public and detached from its sentiment. It is not strictly a Federal republic, because the states that gave the central government life no live at its behest. What, then, is it? It is a society steadily transitioning toward statism.

Mark R. Levin
Page 192, Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto
[H/T to Kevin who inspired me with this quote to get the book.--Joe]

Sebastian has a post up about Tall Tales of High-Power Shooting which I started to comment on but got a little carried away and decided to make a post out of it.

I remember showing a 100 yard target to some co-workers. I put four groups on it. Each group was a little under one inch in size with most of the holes touching. The groups were arranged in a square about 10 inches on a side. One guy held it up to his chest, smiled, and said, "Pretty good. If we were on opposite ends of a football field I would be in trouble if you were shooting at me." I raised an eyebrow and another co-worker laughed at him and explained, "At 100 yards he can put every shot into your eyeball." The first guy went white and was skeptical and it took a minute or so of convincing that it was even possible.

After I had shot a little bit of pistol I heard about IPSC.

Within a year I was shooting better than what I would have thought was humanly possible when I first started. Really, now. Who could possibly be facing away from three humanoid targets ten yards away, hands in surrender position, then turn, draw, fire two rounds of each target, reload, then fire two more rounds on each target--all in under nine seconds? A turn, a draw, 12 shots, and a reload all in under nine seconds? It's got to take at least one second for each shot making the total much more than that, right? Wrong. The stage is called El Presidente. The last time I did it in competition it took me 6.94 seconds (with one miss).

What is even more interesting to me is that I was shooting better than the best shooters in the world of 30 years prior. Equipment has improved some but mostly it's the technique that has improved.

Even though I know, probably much better than most, all the math, physics, etc. involved and I've done it multiple times under different conditions I'm still amazed at putting the first round on target from 1000 yards away. When I point out objects that are 800 or 1000 yards away to people to aid explaining this they get this look on their face like I was talking about being abducted by aliens.

I am of the opinion all politicians should observe a 1000 yard match prior to taking office with a short refresher course on the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and a reminder that they are servants of the people. I'm mostly joking when I suggest that prior to running for a second term they have to have an apple shot off of their head by a random pick of volunteer constituents from 100 yards away. Third term it's a plum. Fourth term it's a grape. Fifth term, well... we just shoot the politician. I think it would remind them to not let their power go to their heads lest someone else let something go to their head.

I was talking with a pro-gun lobbyist recently and he suggested a possible solution to a weakness the bigots are trying to exploit:

Under the proposed legislation, to carry concealed weapons people need only meet the minimum requirements of federal law to possess a gun, be permitted in their home state to carry a concealed weapon, and abide by a state’s concealed carry location restrictions. For example, Alaska allows adult residents to carry a concealed weapon without a license, background check, or training as long as they are allowed to possess a gun under weak Alaska gun laws - even if they have committed repeated violent misdemeanors or have committed misdemeanor sex offenses against minors.  This legislation would force the other 47 states that allow concealed carrying to allow many Alaskan violent misdemeanants to carry concealed guns in their state, even if a state completely bans gun possession by such persons.

This same sort of thing is why Nevada stopped recognizing Utah carry permits.

His proposed solution would be for states to create a two tier concealed carry license system. Tier 1 would be whatever the State thought was appropriate for their need. If that was a lifetime permit, no training requirement, and you had a detectable pulse, then fine. Tier 2 would have a set of requirements which was the union of the most stringent requirements of all the other states. Hence if Nevada required four hours of training, and Texas required eight hours (pulling numbers out of the air) then the training requirement for a tier 2 CWP from State X would be eight hours. Similar things for other requirements on license duration, age restrictions, etc.

This could be a win for both people that want to carry and the state that issues the tier 2 permit. You would have to get just one permit to carry in all the states that recognize out of state permits. And the state would be in a position to have a decent revenue stream because they were "selling a valuable product".

Is there a downside to this scheme? Sure, the 2^nd Amendment should be my carry permit. But we aren't there yet. But this would be one step closer to being able to carry nationwide with far less effort. When you can and do carry in all states we can then more easily demonstrate the bigots are just blowing smoke and we can work on reducing the most onerous restrictions in the unfriendly states and making "tier 1" in the friendly states be "Vermont Carry".

Is there some unintended consequence that might come out of this and come back to bite us?

I'll bet some Microsoft geeks had fun with this.

You should hear about some of the parties we have had. Read Renegades of the Empire for some hints.

[Via an email from Rob.]

The NRA perfectly epitomizes the paranoid and hate-filled mind-set of the Republican voting base.

The registration and tracking of firearms, which is so necessary for effective law enforcement and actually protects legitimate gun owners, is equated by the ultra-loons at the NRA with an utterly paranoid and wholly unsupported claim that "they are coming to take my guns away."

Joe Golonka
Paranoid NRA thinking
July 11, 2009
[It sounds to me like Mr. Golonka has a little bit of hate going on there himself.

"Unsupported claim"?

• Does he remember Hurricane Katrina and New Orleans? I do.
• Does he remember what happened in California? I do.
• Does he know what happened in New Zealand, Canada, U.K. and Australia? I do.
• Does he know what the Weapons Control Act of 1938 enabled? I do.

"Necessary for effective law enforcement"?

• Does he know how many crimes have been solved in Canada because of gun registration? I do (as of 2000 it was one).
• Does he know how many crimes have been solved in Hawaii because of gun registration? I do (as of 2000 police did not know of any).
• Does he know how effective the Nazi Police Battalions were in law enforcement because of gun registration? I do. Between July 1942 and November 1943 just one Battalion murdered an estimated 38,000 Jews. They lost only two of their own (read Hitlers Willing Executioners for the details).

Ignorance and bigotry is a terrible thing. Poor Mr. Golonka exhibits all the symptoms.--Joe]

Away with the whims of governmental administrators, their socialized projects, their centralization, their tariffs, their government schools, their state religions, their free credit, their bank monopolies, their regulations, their restrictions, their equalization by taxation, and their pious moralizations!

Frederic Bastiat
[This isn't the first time I've quoted Bastiat see here, here, and here. I really should get a book or two on or by him.

Additional info about Bastiat from Wikipedia:

Bastiat asserted that the only purpose of government is to defend the right of an individual to life, liberty, and property. From this definition, Bastiat concluded that the law cannot defend life, liberty and property if it promotes socialist policies inherently opposed to these very things. In this way, he says, the law is perverted and turned against the thing it is supposed to defend.

Which is entirely consistent with our consititutions and entirely at odds with our governments.

Via Marc Gallagher.--Joe]

Via an email from Chet:

The source is here.

I'm sure glad the stimulus plan saved 150,000 jobs since February. Just for scale, assuming the claim was true, those alleged 150,000 jobs account for about two widths of the horizontal lines in the above graph--since the beginning of the recession in the middle of 2008 about 6.2 MILLION jobs have been lost. Hence those 150,000 make a difference of about 2.4%.

So the government authorized spending nearly $800 Billion of money they didn't have and now is considering spending more in a second attempt.

I think I see a trend here--these people just don't learn, do they?

Via an email from Mike B.

The city of Seattle can't ban firearms from being carried openly because of state preemption--so they do what they can:

Q: Is it illegal to bring an unconcealed airsoft handgun into a public place?

A: Seattle police say it is, and reference Seattle Municipal Code section 12A.14.083, regarding weapons in public places.

That states: "It is unlawful to knowingly carry or shoot any spring gun, air gun, sling or slingshot, in, upon, or onto any public place."

"An airsoft gun specifically fits into that weapons code," police spokesman Jeff Kappel said.

But police note the above code does not reference or regulate the carrying of firearms which are different from airsoft guns.

So I could legally walk down the sidewalk with my fully loaded (18 + 1 of .40 S&W) STI and a spare magazine openly displayed in a holster on my belt and someone else with an unloaded Airsoft gun in their backpack could be end up paying a fine of up to $500 and/or spend two months in jail for a first offense (up to 12 months for a third conviction).

Bigots, they try to get away with whatever they can no matter how ridiculous it is.

Yesterday I came across a letter from a supposed Idaho gun owner that really has me wondering. Is this some sort of Brady revenge for Mary McFate? Are they having people send out fake letters? Or is just some old guy with the early signs of Alzheimer's?

July 8, 2009

The Honorable Patrick J. Leahy                  The honorable Jeff Sessions
Chairman                                                        Ranking Member
U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary   U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary
224 Dirksen Senate Office Building           152 Dirksen Senate Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20510                              Washington, D.C. 20510

Dear Chairman Leahy and Ranking Member Sessions:

I am writing to express strong disagreement with the National Rifle Associations' (NRA) views on Judge Sonia Sotomayor's nomination to the Supreme Court of the United States. NRA concerns were sent to you in a letter from Executive Director Chris Cox dated July 7, 2009.

I am a veteran, a manufacturing firm executive and a gun owner. I own three pistols, two riles and a shotgun. I enjoy hunting, target shooting, and the feeling of safety that guns provide.

I have lost respect and trust in NRA to deal with gun matters in America and encourage you to ignore their advice about Judge Sotomayor's confirmation.

NRA characterizes the firearms issue through the narrow toilet-paper tubes of fear that 'liberals' with an anti-gun agenda will take away our guns. The reality is that illegal and improper use, storage, or transfer of guns is a significant problem in America. I strongly support gun ownership but come down on the side of organizational and personal responsibility and competence with respect to guns. Guns are dangerous.

When I was a youth and through my 30s I was an NRA member, looked forward to my American Rifleman magazine, and counted on NRA to help keep 'gun control' a private, not government matter. NRA provided hunter and sportsman skills, safety, property rights, and firearm maintenance training for many years; however, NRA's emphasis has become political, not around firearm competence and responsibility. When I was a Boy Scout assistant scoutmaster, NRA was not there for my sons and other boys in the troop so I was forced to arrange gun safety and skills training through off-duty police. Here in Idaho where I live there are no NRA basic firearm training programs even though this is a great outdoor sports state.

I have high respect for Judge Sotomayor. If I were able to question at her confirmation hearing, here are some I would like to ask:

• Do you believe that gun ownership in America carries responsibility by the owner to be competent in the storage, handling, maintenance, and use of the owned firearms?
• Do you think that the 'well regulated militia' language in the second amendment implies that private gun owners should be trained and certified perhaps as automobile drivers are tested for knowledge, skill, and abilities?
• Should gun ownership carry insurance requirements for liability and health damages caused by the gun owner?

Thank you for considering my views.

[Signed]

Laurence P. Gebhardt
1200 Aspen Drive
Pocatello, ID 83204

From reading what I can about this guy (samples are here [in the comments], here, here, here, and here) he has significant liberal tendencies. So this may just be an issue of supporting whatever the Democrats support. I assure you, what he says about the NRA and gun ownership does not represent any of the gun owners I know in Idaho. I know a fair number of gun owners that are unhappy with the NRA but what their problem with the NRA is that they feel the NRA should compromise less and take a stronger stand against unconstitutional and ineffective laws. Just the opposite of this guy. And he has basic facts wrong. Example:

• He claims "the NRA's emphasis has become political, not around firearm competence and responsibility". I'm sure that comes as quite a surprise to:
  • The many thousands of NRA certified instructors
  • The thousands of people that shoot in NRA matches each year
  • The recipients of NRA range grants
  • Thousand and thousands of other people who have personally benefited from the many NRA programs
• He claims "Here in Idaho where I live there are no NRA basic firearm training programs." But probably 10% to 20% of the shooters I know in Idaho are NRA certified firearms instructors and regularly put on classes. It's possible that isn't true in Pocatello, but I have a tough time believing he even looked for someone that teaches NRA classes in Idaho.

He then goes on to suggest Judge Sotomayor should be asked questions that are totally inappropriate for a judge. They are appropriate for a legislator or someone in the executive branch, but a judge? And the content of the questions are of a type I would expect to be asked by some intern at the Brady Campaign.

This isn't like any Idaho gun owner I know.

The only relevant test of the validity of a hypothesis is comparison of prediction with experience.

Milton Friedman
[Friedman probably was talking about economics but, as I'm sure he knew, the statement is much more broadly applicable than that. Those that would ban or even restrict gun ownership appear to be in denial of or are oblivious to the truth of the statement.--Joe]

...(or how many times you've seen it already) that's funny right there.  With credit given to Larry The Cable Guy (you do also have an alter to him in your bedroom closet, complete with votive candles, don't you?  Or am I weird?)

This goes out to Dennis A. Henigan, who clearly needs some cheering up these days as he's being beaten by a bunch of redneck dolts, and to the people of the TSSAA, who need a little bit of reality therapy to help them in their decision making during these trying times.

Dennis; the dialog in the video is a little more than one of us dumb, inbred, backwoods Idaho rednecks can fit on a bumper sticker.  Maybe we could reduce it to a simple, easily repeatable and easy to spell phrase like, "Gun Free Zones Are Dumb".  I don't know; with your superior intellect, maybe you could do a little better.  If you do a good job I promise to put it on the back window of my "rig" as we say in Idaho.  Just be sure to make it small enough that it doesn't obscure the AR-15 in the gun rack of my beat-up 4 x 4 pickup.

From the Wall Street Journal:

The economic stimulus plan has created or saved 150,000 jobs since its inception in February, a senior White House Budget Office official said Wednesday.

Rob Nabors, the deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget, told a congressional panel that the jobs figure is based on an economic model used by the Obama administration.

I wonder if that was using the same economic model that generated this graph (from Kevin):

At Microsoft when our tools yield results that even a little bit erratic we investigate and fix them. I would suggest the Obama administration examine their tools but I am suspicious the tools involved are producing the results desired by the administration and they see no need to even investigate--let alone fix them.

Shortly after I began my career as a lawyer and advocate for the nation's leading gun control group, I started to notice a peculiar repetitiveness in my opponents' arguments. Whether it was on radio or TV talk shows or panel discussions or speeches with audience Q&A, there was a striking similarity in the substance of the arguments, and even the language, used by my opponents. Over and over again, I would hear that "Guns don't kill people. People kill people." I would hear "When guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns." I would hear "An armed society is a polite society." I had seen these sayings on bumpers stickers for years, but I discovered that my opponents actually argued in these terms. Even when these exact phrases weren't used, the thoughts they express were conveyed in other words. In more scholarly settings, critics of gun regulation would dress up their arguments in the arcane language of academia and in mounds of statistics, but their basic claims could, to a remarkable degree, be boiled down to the same themes I had heard on countless talk shows.

Dennis A. Henigan
Pages 5-6, Lethal Logic -- Exploding the Myths That Paralyze American Gun Policy
[I've addressed some of his points in this book from a press release here. I now have the book in hand having borrowed it from Carnaby last night. We'll see if there is anything particularly interesting in it. So far, part way through the prologue, he is just complaining that the gun control movement has trouble getting any traction and all the pro-gun people have is bumper stickers.

It seems to me that if your opposition is able to hold you down with a few bumper stickers then perhaps your vehicle is lacking substance under the hood.--Joe]

Via Ry.

As I have pointed out before it's not really possible to keep explosives off of airplanes. Of course it's not going to be any easier to keep them out of buildings on the ground. This obvious truth has just been demonstrated:

Government investigators smuggled bomb-making materials into federal buildings past the police agency charged with protecting those buildings and found numerous other gaps in security, according to a congressional report.

The Government Accountability Office said investigators carried bomb-making materials past security at 10 federal buildings. Security at these buildings and a total of about 9,000 federal buildings around the country is provided by the Federal Protective Service, a target of the probe.

Once GAO investigators got the materials in the buildings, the report said, they constructed explosive devices and carried them around inside. For security reasons, the GAO report did not give the location of the buildings.

It's Security Theater. I hope you enjoy the show because you are paying enough for it.

Some people call them vultures. I call them capitalists providing a much needed service. It's no surprise the people calling them vultures are in San Francisco:

The California IOU has become the prey of so-called vulture investors who hope to profit by buying them on the cheap and redeeming them later.

The idea is that "distressed asset investors" (their nicer name) will pay less than face value to mom-and-pop businesses that receive IOUs but need cash immediately to meet payroll or other expenses. Once the IOUs mature on Oct. 2, the investors will cash them in for their full value plus the 3.75 percent interest the state is offering.

They call the IOU "the prey"? What does that make the state of California? Bambi's mother? The parents of baby seals? In reality the state is the predator. The state contracted for services and/or goods (or taken excess money in taxes then failed to return the excess as promised) and is now failing to live up to the contract. Had they given IOUs to those that had not provided goods and/or services, such as welfare recipients, I would be less harsh in condemning the state. But to receive something of value and then fail to compensate them as agreed is really unacceptable.

But these people see the state fail to live up to its obligations creating countless victims, the capitalists provide relief to the victims, and then they condemn those providing the relief--that is some sort of insanity. Sometimes I have to conclude that Michael Savage is right on at least one point--Liberalism is a Mental Disorder.

The sad part is that the IOUs are, in essence, a new form of currency. I'm certain the state will soon realize this and start offering to pay in IOUs instead of money. The people, knowing they can sell them for 85% (whatever) of face value will ask for IOUs with face value of $118 for every $100 (85% of 118 is ~100) of goods and/or services. The state will, in a sick, perverted, rationalized sort of way, figure their money mostly problems are solved and not cut back on spending. This will drive the state faster and harder into the financial abyss.

Expect that result to be blamed on "vultures" as well.

You can pick a socialist out of large crowd in about 3.5 to 3.85 seconds.  He's the one angrily protesting the use of the word "socialist" while simultaneously advocating socialism, while simultaneously trying to sound educated.  That's quite a trick.  You have to give socialists that much; they can be fairly good at multi tasking and they have been known to work hard.  Loudly advocating stagnation and decay, while strenuously denying it at the same time, all while taking and disposing of other people's property and money, while compiling massive lists of massive lists of massive sub lists of dos and don'ts for all of us to follow, all under various threats, isn't easy.  Fighting the revolution and getting the constitution written and ratified was a minor task by comparison.

In comments here, Endif, running full speed and damn the torpedoes into my nets, referred to the federal takeover of banks and automakers (and presumably everything else the government has taken over in whole or in part, from education to agriculture to energy and transportation industries, to drugs, alcohol and gambling, etc., etc., etc., etc.) as "Investment".

Socialists get all agitated and defensive at the mention of the "S" word.  What is to be done about it?  What term designating state sponsored coercion would they accept as properly defining their belief system?  We know they quit liking the term "Liberal" and they never understood that "Fascist"  applied to them.  You call one of them a Fascist and they'll take offense, thinking you're calling them a conservative.  It's great fun but it doesn't lead to even a rudimentaqry level of understanding when two people are using the same words but speaking entirely different languages.  They seem to be using "Progressive" less and less too, now that more people know where and when that political term originated.

What's happening in the U.S. is more akin to Fascism.  It's all the same to me, or to put it another way; the subtle distinctions between different versions of state sponsored coercion don't interest me, nor do the distinctions between the Crips and the Bloods.  Nor do I much care what the advocates and practitioners of socialism prefer to be called-- I just know what they don't like being called, and that in itself is interesting.

Tell us which you prefer, Socialists, the word "socialism" or the word "Fascism".  If you dislike being called a socialist, surely you have some specific preference.  We know you don't like "Nazi" mainly because you think it too means conservative.  "Moderate" works for me, since moderates are people who have accepted the premises of socialism but aren't willing to admit it.  "Socialist in denial" is pretty descriptive too, if redundant.  Ooh; how about "Investment Coordinator"?  Hey, I like that.  We can henceforth refer to socialists as Investment Coordinators.  They'll like that, I bet.  But wait; what would we call real investment coordinators?

On second thought, I'll keep calling socialists socialists.  We all know what it means, even if socialists try to act like they don't.

Even though gun businesses are vilified by the anti-gun bigots there is a lot of cooperation with the ATF when they play half-way decent toward reasonable goals. The NSSF is gearing up for another "Don't lie for the other guy" campaign. My experiences with the ATF have all been positive even if there have been a few government bureaucracy moments.

I am of the opinion the ATF is unconstitutional and should be completely disbanded but that doesn't mean they don't do some good as well as the obvious harm. Ruby Ridge and Waco are just two of the worst instances, dozens, if not hundreds of incidents of abuse occur each year. But I don't really see the harm advocating gun dealers not sell to violent criminals or them asking for a sample of my explosives for forensic comparison (they haven't actually done this, but they said they might and I agreed to do so).

When the anti-gun bigots whine about people exercising their specific enumerated right to keep and bear arms I think they should be asked, "Who has done more to catch criminals using guns and explosives for evil, anti-freedom advocates, or the "Merchants of Death"?

Via the apex of the Triangle of Death I just found out two-thirds of the nation’s attorneys general have filed an amicus brief asking the U.S. Supreme Court to grant certiorari in the case of NRA v. Chicago and hold that the Second Amendment applies to state and local governments through the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

No doubt it was due to being encouraged by wheelbarrows full of cash. I know that was my motivation for posting the news.

In any case, having the states say, "Yes, the 2nd Amendment should be a restriction on the states as well as the Federal government" bodes well.

I wonder how the Brady Campaign, VPC, et al. are going to spin this. They probably will claim it had something to do with the wheelbarrows full of cash. If so, then it seems to me that the NRA should give those guys a few wheelbarrows and see if they can be encouraged to change their tune. After all it appears the Joyce Foundation is cutting back on funding and with all the new members the NRA should have more money available.

It's been up for less than a year and there aren't many guns there yet. But it's free to both sellers and buyers. GunListings.org.

It is a mark of modern ignorance to think that we have become progressively smarter.... Who is to say whether the task of tackling a problem without the benefit of a well-developed body of methods and information may not have required far greater intellectual vigor and originality than is needed [today] for proceeding from problem to problem within the safely established disciplines? Prehistoric, early historic, as well as medieval science have faced such a task.

Thomas Goldstein
The historian of science, not the other one.
[I would extend Goldstein's observation to politics. Compare the results of the U.S. Constitution to those advocated by Marx a few decades later and implemented a century or two later.

Modern ignorance. Yes, that describes what I see in politics today.--Joe]

A guy on our team speaks with a very noticeable German accent. I never thought much of it. Another guy is from South Vietnam, another from China, the new person on our team (just today) and my officemate are both from India. If there is anything unusual about the foreigners around the office is that they work harder than the U.S. born people. This guy is no exception. I see emails sent by him from late at night and all weekend.

But he stopped by to talk about stuff last Thursday and we ended up talking about where he grew up. He was born in East Germany. I hadn't realized that. For some reason I always thought of West Germany whenever I might have considered his origins. He hates the communists. "Communism makes people lazy. Yah!"

I said it always amazes me that experiment has been run so many times and resulted in 10s of millions dead and still people keep wanting to try it again. I told him of someone I know who told me they didn't think people should own their own houses. The government should own them and allocated them on the basis of need. This person told me, "You and Barb don't need such a big house. Some other family with a larger family needs it more than you do."

His eyes narrowed and his jaw clenched. "You tell them I lived that. You tell them to go visit this town. Yah!", and he showed me a town on a map of Germany. "Not one bomb was dropped on that town during the entire war", he said. "There was no fighting in that town. But if you go there that town looks like it was all bombed out. When people don't own their property they don't care. The roofs, they are all falling down. Yah! You tell him to go there and look for himself."

After he got married they applied to the housing allocation board for a place to live. There was "nothing available". But other people who applied after him got really nice places. But they were the children of the people on the board, and the people who had connections to people on the board. After two years the housing board told him that his parents had permission to make some changes to their place (I understood this to be partitions, plumbing, etc.) and then he and his wife could live there.

He told me he graduated, "The best in my class." But he couldn't get into college because his family weren't "good communists". He got a job in a picture tube factory (television sets I presume) and he did so well the company used its pull to get him a position in school. He got a B.S. and M.S. in electrical engineering. Then he got a PhD in Computer Science.

After the Germany's were reunited his father obtained his secret police file. Every letter to or from West Germany, where some of their family lived, was read and a summary was put in his file. He found out who had spied on him and who said things about him that put his loyalty to the communist party in doubt and stopped his career.

"Joe", he said, "People complain about how unequal things are with the rich executives in a capitalist society. But it's just the same under communism--it's the politically connected that have the money and the people that aren't connected don't have anything. I know. I lived it. Communism, it's very bad."

I need to ask what he thinks of the plans for health care and the take over of the banking industry, etc. in this country. That should be interesting.

Via Ben and his Dad, who do insurance for a living, liability insurance for people that concealed carry:

Comprehensive Firearms Liability Coverage For Holders of Concealed Carry Licenses

(currently available in AZ, CO & NM, TEXAS COMING SOON)

Nice:

An Iowa group once active in lobbying for gun control has disbanded after losing a major grant. The November 1st coalition began after the November 1, 1991 shootings on the University of Iowa campus and was later renamed Iowans for the Prevention of Gun Violence.

...

Honey says most recently the group has relied on volunteers to lobby the legislature. "There was a grant with the Joyce foundation for a period of close to a decade from the mid 90s well into this decade, and that funding did end," Honey said.

I wonder if the Joyce Foundation is cutting back on all their anti-gun funding or just some of them. Could it be they weren't getting their moneys worth from the Iowa group? I wonder if they are happy with the results of their grants to the Violence Policy Center, The Gun Guys, and The Brady Campaign. The Heller decision must be quite the "bone in their throat".

Markadelphia questioning my logical reasoning ability is like Helen Keller questioning my taste in music.

Robb Allen
July 4, 2009
In a comment to It's the End of the World as We Know It
[Markadelphia, for those that don't know, is a liberal who frequently makes comments at Kevin's place.

I am of the opinion that with the quote above Robb actually somewhat understates the situation.--Joe]

The fact that militias were among the primary culprits the Framers identified as violating the right to bear arms renders any continued suggestion of a purely collective right belonging to state governments impossible to square with the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Steven M. Simpson
D.C. versus Heller
Brief for the Institute for Justice as Amicus Curiae in support of respondent.
[Of course, as pointed out by Workman, many of the anti-gun bigots make no effort to square reality with their beliefs.--Joe]

Don't be silly, Ninety-Nine.  We have to shoot, kill, and destroy.

We represent everything that's wholesome and good in the world.

Maxwell Smart
Get Smart TV show
[I was going to save this for another Ruby Ridge, Waco, or other similar incident but I'll used it now anyway. Just imagine another "wrong house" raid occurred or something, okay?--Joe]

I've wondered for some time what that New Hampshire slogan really meant.  On the surface it seemed to have the wrong people dying.  "Leave me alone or die", I thought, would make more sense, or "live free or kill", but the meaning of the slogan is something different, as Walter Williams reports.  He goes through some development before getting to the New Hampshire bit;

[Mark] Steyn points how it might seem bizarre to find the progressive left making common cause with radical Islam. One half of that alliance is pro-gay, pro-feminist secularists and the other half is homophobic, misogynist theocrats. Steyn argues what they have in common overrides their differences, namely, "Both the secular Big Government progressives and the political Islam recoil from the concept of the citizen, of the free individual entrusted to operate within his own societal space, assume his responsibilities, and exploit his potential."

I never thought it bizarre at all.  I've referred to Progressives and radical Islam as somewhat kindred spirits for years.  They both hate capitalism, both hate liberty in general, both want to control the individual, both hate the very fact that the U.S. and Israel exist, and both thrive on chaos and hate prosperity.  I could go on for quite a while, but you get the point.

"Live Free or Die," which graces New Hampshire's license plate, are the words of John Stark, New Hampshire's Revolutionary War hero. He uttered those words decades after the War when he was 81 years old, the complete sentence being: "Live free or die: Death is not the worst of evils." Steyn says these words should not be interpreted "as a battle cry: We'll win this thing or die trying, die an honorable death. But in fact it's something far less dramatic: It's a bald statement of the reality of our lives in the prosperous West. You can live as free men, but, if you choose not to, your society will die."

This weekend as we celebrate the Declaration of Independence and the successful revolution that resulted, lets keep that in mind.  To pledge one's life, fortune, and sacred honor to the overthrow of an over-reaching government that possesses the most powerful military in the world is as serious as it gets, and many of those who did so faired rather badly during the war.  We owe them a lot of respect, and only way to do that is to keep from throwing away that which they have given us.

How many Americans could even describe this country's founding principles without getting sarcastic, to say nothing of being able to defend them?  Try asking some of the people you meet this weekend and report back.  I'm curious.  Something like this; "Can you define this country's founding principles?" and then, "What would you say to defend them if someone told you that those were outdated, inflexible, and dreamed up by some radical, violent, old, paternal, dead, white slave owners?" (use your own words)

There's certainly nothing wrong with properly trained adults engaging in these activities.

Daniel Vice
June 28, 2009
Senior attorney for the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence
Referring to a Southern Ohio Machine Gun Shoot.
[Something to remember the next time the Brady people start talking about an "assault weapon" ban.

H/T to Buckeye Firearms Association.--Joe]

The rest of the family is packing up to go camping and they will soon discover I'm trying to make a blog post instead of helping them.

A QOTD should show up later today but I'm not sure if I will get others in the queue before I am dragged away, deep into the wilderness of North Central Idaho.

The View From North Central Idaho currently comes in at number seven. But there are a lot of gun blogs not listed.

It's no surprise that Say Uncle comes in at #1.

H/T to Say Uncle and Traction Control.

Via an email from Mike:

Shooters:

The following pro-gun bills which were drafted by IdahoSSA go into effect today (July 1st):

• House bill 65 which clarified that Idaho residents can buy long guns from dealers in non-contiguous states and vice versa. 
• House bill 137 which grants State parks the power to regulate discharge of firearms in campgrounds etc. but makes it  clear that they have no authority to ban lawful carry. IdahoSSA is working closely with Parks and Recreation to make sure that their final rule specifically recognizes the right to carry in State Parks. 
• House bill 194 which grants immunity from liability to shooting ranges, firearms instructors, and match officials.  
• House bill 287 which grants immunity to employers who allow their employees to store personal firearms in their cars on company property.  Employers in Idaho now have NO LEGITIMATE REASON to ban the storage of firearms in their parking lots. If you or someone you know is affected by this kind of  anti-gun policy at work please send me a copy of the pertinent policy. IdahoSSA will be working to educate employers on this law.

If anyone has any questions about the effect of these bills please feel free to contact me.

 

IdahoSSA is your pro-gun voice. Our mission is to:

RESEARCH the current law and DRAFT proposed improvements.

LOBBY  the legislature and state officials on behalf of gun rights and the shooting sports.  

EDUCATE the public about the responsible use of firearms and RESPOND to media attacks on gun rights.

PROMOTE the shooting sports and ENCOURAGE the development of shooting ranges.

LITIGATE if neccessary on behalf of firearm rights.

 

As always: Thanks for your support!

 

 

Michael C. "Mike" Brown

Executive Director/General Counsel

Idaho Sport Shooters Alliance

208 835-3737

208 835-3744 Fax

www.idahossa.org

Gun control does not seek safer streets, it seeks greater dependency on officials by removing the better tools of weapon and wisdom.

John Longenecker
July 1, 2009
BOOK REVIEW: Lethal Logic by Henigan, Part II.
[Hence the results you see in the U.K. and why they haven't reversed course on their gun control agenda.

Via posts from Say Uncle and Kevin.--Joe]

Via an email from Barron (don't think that I had missed this I saw it before Barron sent the email but he does deserve some credit) we find that Joe's Cure for Everything also improves the genetics of your offspring:

Daily sex can improve the genetic quality of a man’s sperm and could raise his chances of fathering a child, research has suggested.

Couples who are trying for a baby are often advised to have sex every other day, so that the man’s sperm count has time to recover, but scientists in Australia have discovered that this may lower some men’s fertility.

While abstaining from sex for a few days raises the sperm count, quality can be damaged if a man ejaculates too infrequently. A study at Sydney IVF, a centre for infertility treatment, has found that daily sex for a seven-day period substantially improves the genetic quality of sperm, without lowering sperm counts enough to impair fertility.

Barb and I sometimes wonder how we got such (nearly) perfect children. In addition to the superior genes from their parents and the awesome job we did rearing them it appears that our active sex life prior to their conception may have contributed as well.

You are welcome James, Kimberly, and Xenia. It was our pleasure to have you.

I'm finally settled into my new hidden, underground, hardened, bunker well enough to make a few blog posts. That doesn't mean I'm all caught up reading everyone else's blogs and commenting on all the things I would have liked to comment on.

It was more work than I expected. It's amazing how much stuff a pack-rat can accumulate in 3.5 years in one place. I did throw a bunch of stuff away--which helps some in the new place.

It turns out it's a 15 minute walk to work instead of a 10 minute walk but that isn't bad. It makes it easier for Barb to have lunch with me when she is over here too.

Barb did a lot of the work and has her nest in the corner mostly configured the way she wants it. We still have to buy a few things that we shared in the common kitchen in the old bunker.

One thing that is surprising is how much moisture is in the air of the new bunker. I never needed to use the dehumidifier in the old one. This one started smelling wet after just a couple days. I turned on the dehumidifier and it's pulling out about two gallons of water from the air each day. The humidity dropped from 60% to, as of this minute, 48%. This is probably acceptable.

After learning that the Bellevue police have been fully informed on open carry I decided to do that a bit on an experimental basis during the move and then extended it into my normal activies in the parking lot of not only the bunker but of banks and the mall. There have been no problems so far. I think a couple of teenage girls in the parking lot noticed as they and (I presume) their mother were moving in nearby. The mother gave me a smile and said, "Hi" as she got into her pickup the next time I made a trip with my arms full of boxes from the Jeep in the parking lot down the stairs to the bunker. But other than that there have not been any reactions that I have noticed.

Tonight another women was moving in and she might have seen the gun as well. She smiled and said hi before she had an opportunity to see it. I didn't look back after I walked by so I don't know she did see it or had a reaction. The license plate on her car is from California so she might not think it was so cool to see someone packing in public! If I see her running for cover and/or concealment when I come to the surface I'll know she has an adverse opinion of gun owners.

According to some new research those unsure of own ideas more resistant to views of others:

We swim in a sea of information, but filter out most of what we see and hear. A new analysis of data from dozens of studies sheds new light on how we choose what we do and do not hear. The study found that while people tend to avoid information that contradicts what they already think or believe, certain factors can cause them to seek out, or at least consider, other points of view.

Yes, of course. No surprises there.

The analysis, reported this month in Psychological Bulletin, published by the American Psychological Association, was led by researchers at the University of Illinois and the University of Florida, and included data from 91 studies involving nearly 8,000 participants. It puts to rest a longstanding debate over whether people actively avoid information that contradicts what they believe, or whether they are simply exposed more often to ideas that conform to their own because they tend to be surrounded by like-minded people.

Very cool! Excellent hypotheses to explore.

Perhaps more surprisingly, people who have little confidence in their own beliefs are less likely to expose themselves to contrary views than people who are very confident in their own ideas, Albarracín said.

Now that explains a lot of anti-gun bigotry (actually all forms of bigotry).

Certain factors can also induce people to seek out opposing points of view, she said. Those who may have to publicly defend their ideas, such as politicians, for example, are more motivated to learn about the views of those who oppose them. In the process, she said, they sometimes find that their own ideas evolve.

I suspect this is part of why there is more support in the general population for gun control than in politicians. As they get ready to act on their original beliefs they become educated on the topic and change their ideas. That applies to those who believed gun control would increase public safety. Those politicians that push for gun control because they view guns in private hands a threat to their personal ambitions are likely to become even more set in their beliefs.

An interesting development:

The TASER® XREP™ is a self-contained, wireless electronic control device (ECD), that deploys from a 12-gauge pump-action shotgun. It delivers a similar Neuro Muscular Incapacitation (NMI) bio-effect as our handheld TASER® X26™ ECD, but can be delivered to a maximum effective range of 100 feet (30.48 meters), combining blunt impact force. The battery supply is fully integrated into the chassis and provides the power to drive the XREP projectile engine.

Links to pictures here. Video here.

I wonder if I can get a couple of boxes of those from Wal-Mart. I could see having few rounds available if I ever got an invitation to go bird hunting with Dick Cheney and he got a little out of control again.

Via email from Kris.

One interesting observation is that once collapse occurs it becomes possible to rent a policeman, either for a special occasion, or generally just to follow someone around. It is even possible to hire a soldier or two, armed with AK-47s, to help you run various errands. Not only is it possible to do such things, it’s often a very good idea, especially if you happen to have something valuable that you don’t want to part with. If you can’t afford their services, then you should try to be friends with them, and to be helpful to them in various ways. Although their demands might seem exorbitant at times, it is still a good idea to do all you can to keep them on your side. For instance, they might at some point insist that you and your family move out to the garage so that they can live in your house. This may be upsetting at first, but then is it really such a good idea for you to live in a big house all by yourselves, with so many armed men running around. It may make sense to station some of them right in your house, so that they have a base of operations from which to maintain a watch and patrol the neighborhood.

Dmitry Orlov
February 13, 2009
Social Collapse Best Practices
[I'd feel a whole lot better about those last two sentences if they had been written by P.J. O'Rourke instead of someone purporting to give serious advise.--Joe]