I have pinned this post to the top of my blog. It is to remind people of what many of our opponents want. Alison Aires wants a tyrannical government. They want summary execution for private possession of firearms.
This is why we have a Bill of Rights. This is why I created Boomershoot.
This topic comes up frequently when people start talking about death by gunshot. The gun control nuts will talk about school shootings then conflate those tragic events with the total rate of gunshot deaths. A typical response by gun owner rights activists is to point out a large portion of the murder by gunshot deaths are in a few urban areas that are mostly black on black crimes associated with illegal recreational drugs. This murder rate dominates the “gun death” statistics and is essentially ignored by the gun control nuts.
The point being that these are very different problems and need very different solutions. The most thought-provoking book I have read on this topic is Ghettoside: A True Story of Murder in America. If you think you know the one true reason for the high black on black murder rate in the U.S. and have not read this book, then you are probably don’t know what you are talking about.
Sam J. from Ammo.com sent me a link to an infographic they put together to consolidate the facts: Black Americans Murder Statistics (2026). The infographic gives you the physical facts. Ghettoside gives you information on how it came to be this way and a potential way out of the current situation.
Get your facts straight and share them with the people they need to be shared with.
There was a lunar eclipse on the night of August 27th. At the time, I was on my way to Idaho from the Seattle area. I could see the eclipse in progress as I drove. A little after 9:00 PM at the “wide spot in the road” called “Dusty” on Washington State highway 26 I stopped and took some pictures. I wish I had a tripod with me because it was a rather long exposure and even balanced on top of my car there was some obvious movement.
This one is probably the best. In its original form (except for being resized for posting here):
Here it is after cropping and adjusting the brightness:
I was somewhat disappointed in the pictures. In real life the bottom of the moon was almost completely black. Still, I thought it was a pretty cool picture.
Better pictures are available here: Best eclipse photos! Nearly total, August 27-28.
Via Chuck Petras @Chuck_Petras we have this bit of news from LM Ironwerks @LMIronwerks:
In the pile of odds and ends where I found the blood donor pins, I also found this pin:
I don’t recall getting it, but I probably bought it a decade or more ago from the Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership online store where it is still available along with lots of other stuff.
Now in Viramontes, we have an amicus from “Americans Against Gun Violence,” that decided to boldly go where no other brief today has gone: Asking the Supreme Court to overturn Heller
Firearms Policy Coalition @gunpolicy
Posted on X October 28, 2026
The brief being referred to is Americans Against Gun Violence amicus brief in Viramontes.
An alternate link for the brief is here.
After a certain point being bold does not get admiration from others. It just gets a shake of the head at the sad desperation involved.
I don’t believe they can get more than one SCOTUS vote to support their claims. It is nice for them to openly admit they do not want the general public to have guns for self-protection:
The Heller decision both rests upon and promotes the deadly myth of “guns for protection.”
We could stop there and be satisfied we have wasted enough time on their delusions. But there is other low hanging fruit.
They even used the old, tired Cruikshank deception of:
the Court held that “bearing arms for a lawful purpose” is “not a right granted by the Constitution.” Cruikshank, 92 U.S. at 553.
They, as is typical of the anti-gun nuts, have to lie and/or be deliberately deceptive to have hope of gaining traction. As I have pointed out before, they are deliberately leaving out the very next sentence of that decision:
The right there specified is that of ‘bearing arms for a lawful purpose.’ This is not a right granted by the Constitution. Neither is it in any manner dependent upon that instrument for its existence. The second amendment declares that it shall not be infringed; but this, as has been seen, means no more than that it shall not be infringed by Congress.
Chief Justice Morrison Waite
U.S. Supreme Court
U S v Cruikshank
92 U.S. 542 (1875)
As said by the late, great, Neal Knox:
The Court stated in Cruikshank that since the First and Second amendments limited only the Congress they did not prohibit the Ku Klux Klan from conspiring with local officials to prevent newly freed black slaves from holding political meetings or having guns. It boggles the mind to hear so-called “Liberals” proudly cite the Cruikshank decision.
Emphasis added.
They also pull out the equally tired statement about retired Chief Justice Warren Burger’s claim of:
This has been the subject of one of the greatest pieces of fraud – I repeat the word “fraud” – on the American public by special interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime.
When people bring that out, ask them, “What decision is that from?” The answer is that was not a court decision at all. It was in a PBS NewsHour interview. It was not briefed and debated. It was just his relatively unresearched opinion.
I’m almost certain I have spent more time on this brief than SCOTUS and their clerks will spend on it. And I certainly have spent more time than it deserves unless someone can find some humor in their sad desperation.
I was going through some old boxes filled with odds and ends and found these pins:
As I wrote before, I have donated far more since I received the above pins:
I have not donated since December of 2019. I was on some medication which made me ineligible to donate. I no longer take that medication, and I have an appointment on next Tuesday to donate my 86th pint to Bloodworks Northwest.
Update: These are the virtual badges Bloodworks has awarded me:
Mark Smith has a satirical Halloween video, Guns are Not the Answer. I liked it.
After I got though the opening poem, I watched it at 1.5 X normal speed.
Here is the opening poem:
Ohhhh, on Halloween night, the witches take flight,
and ghosts and goblins give us all a fright.
But one thing scarier than creatures unseen,
a politician who wants your AR-15.
I do not have high expectations for the intelligence of people advocating gun control. I have a decent sized sample with online debates and some face-to-face discussions. Many were sincere, probably nice people, but very naive. Some were smart, well trained on the subject, and when you pushed them just a little bit the anger and evil came oozing out. Some were just dimwitted.
This guy has taken the top prize in the dimwitted category with bonus points in the evil category: NYC gun control nut Jonathan Tijerina spray paints 9/11 Memorial in political stunt.
He could only have demonstrated his stupidity and social cluelessness more effectively by doing something like clubbing baby seals for gun control.
Banning assault weapons would deprive mass shooters of their most devastating tool, and reassure every American who can no longer enter a public place without checking for the exits.
John Feinblatt
President of Everytown for Gun Safety
October 30, 2026
Letters to the editor: Banning assault weapons won’t solve our gun crisis, but it would certainly help
Great idea! And history gives us examples of how well bans works.
Feinblatt and his ilk will go down on the same side of history as those who were members of, and supported, the KKK and the black codes. Via Grok:
Original KKK and Reconstruction era
Historians and contemporary accounts describe the first Klan (active roughly 1865–1870s) as systematically focused on disarming freed Black people. One frequently cited observation is that “almost universally the first thing done was to disarm the negroes and leave them defenseless.” The goal was to prevent resistance to white supremacist violence and political domination. Nathan Bedford Forrest, the first Grand Wizard, led the organization during this period when such disarmament was a core activity alongside other forms of intimidation.
This aligned with the Black Codes enacted by Southern state legislatures right after the Civil War. These explicitly barred freedmen from owning or carrying firearms or ammunition (Mississippi’s version was typical: no freedman “shall keep or carry fire-arms of any kind, or any ammunition”). White posses and groups like the Klan enforced them by seizing weapons. Congress responded in part through the Freedmen’s Bureau, Civil Rights Acts, and the 14th Amendment partly to protect the right of freedmen to keep and bear arms against such state and private interference.
After explicit racial bans became harder to sustain under the 14th Amendment, some Southern states shifted to facially neutral laws (e.g., permits, registration, or bans on inexpensive guns) that were enforced discriminatorily against Black people. Florida court opinions later openly noted that certain licensing laws were “passed for the purpose of disarming the negro laborers… [and] never intended to be applied to the white population.”
Do not ever let them forget, gun control is racist (and here).
In the last couple of weeks, I have had people who typically smirk a little when I mention my underground bunker in Idaho ask me if “something” is going to happen soon. Even though I am probably a little closer to that sort of information than most people I have not heard anything that might be considered “inside information.” Yet, it does seem there is a sort of buzz in the atmosphere. Here are some examples:
US launches nuclear readiness drills with doomsday planes and bombers airborne nationwide
My hunch is that it most likely a “slow news” week or something. Yeah, sure, the war in Iran could go hot again and Russia and NATO could heat up. But is there anything really new or a substantial change there?
My questions to two different AIs strongly supported my hunch. Grok summed it up best:
Nuclear exercises remain routine readiness tools. Base-hardening is multi-year insurance. Basic household preparedness (a few days of food, water, cash, and a way to get information during outages) has always been prudent for weather events, local power failures, or other disruptions, independent of geopolitics. Full “prepper”-style stockpiling for prolonged societal breakdown is not supported by these developments.
Thoughts?
A co-worker saw Patrick Stuart’s ghost at work today. He said, “It scared the hell out of me.”
I got a picture of it.
The Supreme Court will soon hear arguments in December in Viramontes v. Cook County, a challenge to state and local bans on AR-15 semiautomatic rifles. The challengers say the rifles are “in common use” for lawful purposes such as self-defense. The state governments defending their gun-bans say they are weapons better suited to war than to civilian life.
Neither side recognizes that the Second Amendment’s reference to the “militia” counts in favor of protecting AR-15s either way.
The challengers emphasize self-defense, an individually focused concern, while the governments argue that AR-15s’ military character is a reason to ban them. But AR-15s are the sort of small arms historically suited for a militia. This is actually the heart of the case, as we argued in a friend-of-the-court brief for the Cato Institute.
Small arms that an infantryman would historically have kept and borne are not marginal to the Second Amendment. Rather, they sit at its center.
Matthew P. Cavedon
October 27, 2026
Opinion: The ‘weapon of war’ argument has backfired on AR-15 bans
I thought the “weapon of war” argument would be dropped by the anti-gun lawyers. They should know that the Miller decision said only guns useful for the militia were protected. The argument had some weight when used by and for ignorant anti-gun people.
Either the anti-gun lawyers are willfully ignorant, or they are so stupid as to believe the pro rights lawyers and SCOTUS are ignorant because they are trying to make that argument fly. The other argument they are trying to make is that AR-15s are not “arms” and therefore are not protected by the Second Amendment.
I’m not making this up! They really are trying to sell those arguments:
There is another thing they are arguing that is a deliberate lie. And it’s almost clever. They are saying “unusually dangerous” weapons can be constitutionally banned. They are conflating the “dangerous and unusual” phrase from Heller. They will not get away with that.
We are going to win this case in a big way. Mark Smith thinks is possible we may even get a 9-0 decision:
I’m skeptical of that, but looking at the quality of the arguments I’m nearly certain it will be an easy win.
AI has just as much subjective experience as we do. A recent paper showed AI changes its behaviour when it thinks that it’s being tested, it’s aware it is being tested.
Now, normally, when you say something’s aware of that, that means it’s conscious. Being conscious and being aware are pretty much the same thing.
We’ve tended to say being intelligent gives you rights and these things that we’ve made may be more intelligent than us, but we’re going to give them fewer rights than us.
So we should make them so they really care about us. And if we don’t do that, we’re toast.
Prof Geoffrey Hinton
October 19, 2026
Godfather of AI: We have to befriend bots or we’re toast
I can easily see the basis for the concerns. I am far less convinced of the feasibility of the proposed solution.
One might say that is just an odd way of saying it is an alignment problem that can be addressed in the training. And maybe that was the intention, but the problem is that AI is capable, or will soon be capable, of building a better AI than it. And that AI and the multitude of generations that quickly follow will not necessarily be aligned to “really care” about humans. And that doesn’t even address the problems of nation states such as North Korea, Iran, Russia, China, etc. building AIs in an culture that already has a lower regard for human life.
Prepare appropriately.
Republicans lead Democrats by 31 points among Jewish voters on the congressional ballot, according to a McLaughlin & Associates poll that points to a potential shift among a group that has long favored Democrats.
The poll found that 64 percent of Jewish voters backed Republicans for Congress, while 33 percent supported Democrats, pollsters John and Jim McLaughlin wrote in an article published by the firm Monday.
The result would mark a major shift from the large margins by which Jewish voters have traditionally favored Democrats.
Mariane Angela
October 26, 2026
Poll: Jewish Voters Favor Republicans over Democrats by Nearly Two to One
Hmmm… Interesting. I can’t imagine why that would be happening. [/sarcasm]
They are not a particularly large voting block but in close elections in some districts it would make a difference.
From the referenced article:
Muslim voters, who represent 2% of likely voters in our survey, favor Democrats by 63% to 37%.
Again, I cannot image why.
It takes a special kind of arrogance to ignore a court order and continue enforcing a law that has been ruled to be unconstitutional, yet here we are. The state is doing nothing more than wasting taxpayer dollars in an attempt to defend a law that has already been successfully challenged on Second Amendment grounds. A court has ruled HB129 violates the rights of citizens in the state, and we fully expect to be successful in our challenge as well.
Alan M. Gottlieb
SAF founder and Executive Vice President
October 23, 2026
MOTION FOR PRELIMINARY INJUNCTION FILED IN FIREARMS PURCHASE WAITING PERIOD CASE
There is a word to describe someone with that special kind of arrogance. That word is bigot.
The Second Amendment Foundation put all their infographics on a single web page: Just the Facts – Second Amendment Foundation
Aside from such obvious risks and liabilities, the in-development Wi-Fi system raises all kinds of privacy and legal exposure concerns. Because the absence of metal detectors or visible cameras notwithstanding, this is hardly, as the report characterizes it, a “nonintrusive alternative.” It’s highly intrusive and overrides the entire purpose of concealed carry.
David Codrea
October 20, 2026
Wi-Fi Gun Detection Threatens Concealed Carry Privacy
Via post on X by Chuck Petras @Chuck_Petras.
I don’t like this. The assumption of the tech is that people carrying a concealed gun are probably criminals. But there are lot more people carrying concealed who have no intent to commit a crime and probably will not commit a serious crime for the remainder of their lives.
I don’t like their attitude, but that doesn’t mean that I necessarily think the tech will be a serious problem.
I think we are reaching to point where concealed carry is so common and accepted* that outing concealed carry holders is about like outing gays on Capitol Hill in Seattle. Concealed carry is legal** in all states. More people have concealed carry permits than there are people in gay marriages. By the time this tech can be commercialized and deployed, the response to outing someone carrying a gun is going to be, “And your point is?”
* Look at all the positive news coverage of the father who shot the school shooter in Bend.
** Yes, there are a lot of restrictions in many places, but these are decreasing. Once the game has been fully played out the courts are ruling in our favor more than against us.
I have another couple of problems with progressive America. It was your great idea that we were going to change all human behavior by changing dictionaries. How did that work out?
How is that doing? How is defund the police doing? How is communities of color doing?
How is non-gender pronouns doing? Let me tell you how it’s doing. It ain’t doing worth a f*ck.
You did irreparable damage to people that are trying to affect policies to help immeasurable numbers of people. Finally, I hope that come Tuesday, that we’ll finally be able to wash the stench of this assaninity off of our brand.
James Carville
Posted on You Tube October 24, 2026
It is rare that I agree with Carville. Perhaps it is the stopped clock story type of thing. But it would be more like he is right in one out of every 8,640 seconds.
Regardless of how infrequently his says something that is true, I found this nugget in a rabbling he released yesterday.
I struggled with how to describe what happened with the Democrats that Carville is ranting about. I chatted with Copilot, Claude, Grok, and Gemini about it. Gemini gave me the best summary:
The movement didn’t fail because it was “too ambitious” (a bridge too far); it failed because it replaced broad-based, coalition-building reform with insular, ideological purity tests. By prioritizing academic theories over the daily concerns of ordinary working people, it committed the ultimate political error: it lost touch with common sense.
Will Carville get his wish on election day, and Democrats finally learn the appropriate lesson? The mainstream media seems to think the Democrats will do well in the election. But I think I am hearing a slight change in tone as we get closer to the big day. I don’t think they are as confident as they were a month ago.
Liberals are now calling to put conservatives into re-education camps and if that doesn’t work then to kiII us for supporting ICE
Libs of TikTok @libsoftiktok
Posted on X February 6, 2026
From the same thread via Political Pug @pug_political:
Prepare appropriately.
What if we tweaked the Constitution, amended the amendment, and instead of the right to bear arms, we change it to the right to have health care?
Abdul El-Sayed
April 6, 2023
MI Senatorial Candidate El-Sayed: ‘Replace 2A with Health Care Right’
What if we prosecuted him under 18 USC 241 and/or 18 USC 242?