Monthly Archives: July 2008

The law is the law but its still stupid

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


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



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


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


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


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


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 That doesn’t mean it isn’t oppressive and shouldn’t be repealed.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

A parallel universe

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

Good hunting

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



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


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



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


I say it again: Good Hunting.

Quote of the day–Oliver Wendell Holmes

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


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


 

A 4473 is NOT registration

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

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

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

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

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

Quote of the day–James Taranto

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


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

Quote of the day–David T. Hardy

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


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


The most anti-gun ever

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With his usual thoroughness John Lott said:



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


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

Words of wisdom

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Jeff Knox gives us some perspective and advice:



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


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

Quote of the day–Eric Zorn

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



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

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


 

Thoughts on a revolution

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





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



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


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


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


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


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


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

How to handle calls for “reasonable restrictions”

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



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

“Rational management?” Snrk …

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

Second: “Guns can be dangerous.”

First: “Editorials can be dangerous.”

Second: “Gun owners need a government permit.”

First: “Journalists need government permits.”

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

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

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

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

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

First: “And free speech can’t?”

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


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

Quote of the day–Donald Kaul

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

…


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


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

An Oil Change You Can Believe In

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



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


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


We “Hope” we can “Change”…your oil.


– or –


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


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


I should have added;


“Don’t just “Hope” your car is OK–  “Change” your oil at (pick a company) today.”

What a jerk

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



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


…


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


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


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

Air support but no armor or artillery?

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



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



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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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