And this is funny on what planet?
I like sick humor. But this doesn’t qualify.
Monthly Archives: August 2010
Quote of the day–Neal Knox
When the ‘reasonable’ Brady Bill was pending, we told the world that radical unreasonable gun laws were waiting in the wings.
We were called paranoid, at best, and liars, at worst–by HCI, Congress, the news media and even some of our fellow gun owners.
Yesterday, Sen. Howard Metzenbaum (D-Ohio), Rep. Charles Schumer and Handgun Control, Inc. proved us right by introducing their ‘comprehensive gun control’ package, H.R. 3932/S. 1886. It is European-style total people control.
It has every provision on the anti-gunners’ wish list short of a total handgun ban. They’re satisfied, for now, with a ban on merely some handguns–for it creates the total registration and licensing system necessary to make an eventual confiscation law work.
The same day Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen announced that they were using the ‘Destructive Devices’ section of the 1968 Gun Control Act to put the ‘non-sporting’ Streetsweeper, Striker and USAS-12 shotguns under the same registration and $200 transfer tax applicable to machine guns under the National Firearms Act.
Neal Knox
March 3, 1994
HCI ‘Kitchen Sink’ Filed
From The Gun Rights War, page 203.
[When someone, like Half-Truth Henigan, from the Brady Campaign (formerly HCI) says there is no “slippery slope” (see chapter three in Henigan book Lethal Logic) remind them of 1994 and what they helped introduce back then.
When some politician tells you the law they are proposing won’t be pushed to the limits and beyond remind them the Treasury Secretary declared some 12-gauge shotguns ‘Destructive Devices’ putting them in the same category as RPGs, Claymore mines, and Bazookas.
And, as I have said before about this book, you shouldn’t read it just before trying to go to sleep. There will be way too much adrenaline in your system for the next few hours.–Joe]
Not for law enforcement use
Notice anything interesting about the box of ammo on the top?
The ammo is showing up in Wal-Mart at prices equal to what I can reload it for (buying all new brass and my time is worth nothing).
At first I thought it was something along the lines of STI, Barrett, and Modern Ballistics regarding certain government entities. But that wouldn’t explain the restriction on ported barrels.
I’ve sent a query to Federal. If they get back to me I’ll post the response.
Update: I received the following response from Federal this morning:
From: Prodserv
Sent: Thursday, August 19, 2010 8:10 AM
To: Joe Huffman
Subject: RE: Federal Premium – Ask the Expert FormThe bullets are “low cost” and thin-plated, the rifling can and will cut
the jacket material from the lead core of the bullet, those pieces of
jacket can escape from the ports in the barrel. When launched from the
barrel it is unknown where the jacket material will go and at the
shooter is one possible place.The Warning is the same (close) to that on the centerfire pistol caliber
shot shells as the pellets will act much like the copper fragments.Thank you
—–Original Message—–
From: Joe Huffman
Sent: Wednesday, August 18, 2010 10:45 PM
To: Prodserv
Subject: Federal Premium – Ask the Expert FormJoe Huffman
P.O. Box 3745
Moscow ID 83843Can you explain why there is the notice on some boxes of ammunition:
“DO NOT USE IN FIREARMS WITH PORTED BARRELS OR PORTED RECOIL
COMPENSAORS.Not for Law Enforcement Use”
An example is here:
http://bit.ly/dmuwj2
Thanks.
NRA 2010 Washington State endorsements
I received this nearly a week ago but ended up being very very busy with a lot of travel and attending a wedding and procrastinated far too much.
I did use them for our own family voting in the primary. It should also be of use in the general election.
Before too long I expect there will be more specific things gun rights activists will be tasked with to make sure the legislatures receive the proper message this fall. I’ll be more responsive next time.
Gun cartoon of the day
Yes. There have been some school shootings. And seeing a scene such as the one depicted would be adequate justification for concern. The guns should be properly cased for transport.
What is lost on most people is the school shooting incident data before and after schools were made “gun free zones”.
Quote of the day–Mark N.
I’ve been here ten years and they have never had us dance in the parking lot before.
Mark N.
August 18, 2010
Explaining to an intern that should he get a job offer from Microsoft (he almost for certain will) it wouldn’t be fair to evaluate the future job requirements on this one afternoon’s activities.
[Mark is my boss.
It turns out we didn’t dance in the parking lot. We danced on the sidewalk.
It was an hour of attempting to teach 500 geeks about 20 seconds of dance steps and 15 minutes of filming. It went as well as could be expected. I suspect the only reason many of the guys tolerated it and stuck around is because the entire time it appeared the dance instructor was in imminent danger of a “wardrobe malfunction“.
If the video happens to make it to the Internet I was the guy in the back with the grimace moving out of sync to everyone else while wearing a Blackwater baseball cap and a t-shirt that said “There are very few personal problems that can’t be solved with a suitable application of high explosives.“–Joe]
What lesson was learned here?
While I am pleased with the outcome:
He was walking toward the stairs when a teenage boy approached and pulled out
a knife.“He wants my money, so I just gave him my wallet and told him, ‘Here you
go,'” Diaz says.As the teen began to walk away, Diaz told him, “Hey, wait a minute. You
forgot something. If you’re going to be robbing people for the rest of the
night, you might as well take my coat to keep you warm.”The would-be robber looked at his would-be victim, “like what’s going on
here?” Diaz says. “He asked me, ‘Why are you doing this?'”Diaz replied: “If you’re willing to risk your freedom for a few dollars, then
I guess you must really need the money. I mean, all I wanted to do was get
dinner and if you really want to join me … hey, you’re more than welcome.…
When the bill arrived, Diaz told the teen, “Look, I guess you’re going to
have to pay for this bill ’cause you have my money and I can’t pay for this. So
if you give me my wallet back, I’ll gladly treat you.”The teen “didn’t even think about it” and returned the wallet, Diaz says. “I
gave him $20 … I figure maybe it’ll help him. I don’t know.”Diaz says he asked for something in return — the teen’s knife — “and he gave
it to me.”
I have to wonder how often such a response to robbery will turn out so benign and how many potential thugs will be enabled by this story. I fear that such a response on a broad scale would encourage crime more than shame criminals into rethinking their career path.
Do criminologists have currently enough data to give us good answers to the obvious questions brought up by this story? If not, what sort of experiments could be run to get the answers with minimal risk to the experimenters?
Is there some sort of reliable character assessment can be done in the second and a half it takes to draw and fire your gun in the face of a deadly threat such that you are out an hour of your life and $20 rather than days or weeks of your time and many thousands of dollars defending against a civil suit or criminal charges for shooting a “choir boy”?
Go to your corners!
This reminds me so much of when my brothers and I were very young and our mother would tell us to go stand with our noses in the corner after we got in a fight:
The Justice Department has settled a turf war between two federal law
enforcement agencies.A recent audit by the Justice Department’s Office of Inspector General found
nationwide conflicts between the FBI and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms
and Explosives over which agency is in charge for federal explosives
investigations.Acting Deputy Attorney General Gary G. Grindler wrote a memo to FBI Director
Robert Mueller and Ken Melson, currently the top-ranking official at the Bureau
of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, laying out the new framework.Grindler’s eight-page memo calls for the FBI to be the lead agency for
domestic terrorism explosives investigations as well as explosives probes with a
link to international terrorism or weapons of mass destruction. ATF will be the
lead agency for everything else in the explosives realm.Grindler also ordered the two agencies to do a better job of coordinating
their work on explosives investigations.The new document says that the two agencies will develop a plan by Nov. 1 to
consolidate explosives training, with the goal of starting joint training by
early next February.
While I am of the opinion the ATF should not exist at all and the FBI should be not be involved in 90% of the stuff they are involved in I suppose this is a generally a good thing. It is less likely criminals will benefit from the turf war.
But still I think of it as sort of like Germany attacking Russia in 1941. Germany shouldn’t have been attacking anyone but if they are going to do it anyway you want them to do it to the most evil of your neighbors.
Gun cartoon of the day
This, in essence, came up in the comments a few days ago. The artist twists facts to achieve their desired goal. A six year-old does not have the right to keep and bear arms, enter into legally binding contracts, marry, or associate with whoever they want. Even fundamental human rights about which there is essentially no controversy such as access to sexually explicit material is prohibited to children.
Misrepresentation of facts can be a sign of immaturity, laziness, stupidity, evil intent, or bigotry. I wonder which it is in this case (in the case of the comments to my previous post I attribute it to an attempt at humor which I dismiss as extremely unlikely in this case).
Quote of the day–japete
Notice that the victim had a gun in his lap, obviously also ready to fire if necessary. The safety was on so he didn’t get the chance. I suppose one could say that is self defense on the part of the shooter. It’s getting a little murky here, though. What if the victim didn’t have a gun in his lap? Would it still be self defense? Under Florida law, people are allowed to shoot someone if they feel threatened and say it is self defense. It relies on what the shooter says. And, according to someone opposed to this law which passed unanimously (with an NRA representative standing next to Governor Bush as he signed the law) juries used to decide who was guilty or innocent. Now the shooter him or herself gets to decide.
What makes this even worse is that a year ago, the shooter was charged with aggravated battery and shooting a gun in a public place. Charges were dropped last October. There must be more to this case than we are seeing in the article. Why did this man still have a concealed weapons permit? The charges last year should have been enough to revoke his license. So, before knowing all of the particulars, I am wondering if this is actually a case for “enforcing the laws already on the books.” In this case, it goes both ways. One law says that the shooter goes free with no consequences for murdering another human being in cold blood. The other says that the shooter had some gun charges against him and was still able to legally carry. Hmmm.
japete
August 16, 2010
Shoot First everybody!
[I’ve been following japete’s blog, Common Gunsense, (as is usual for me all links to anti-rights websites have the “nofollow” attribute set) for several months. Her writing is a blend of a personal diary morning the loss of her sister and an almost solo gun control activist.
I find it interesting to observe how her mind works. There are the simplifications she makes:
There is a lot of support out there. Those of us in the “silent majority” must be making more noise about preventing senseless gun violence. We know we are right. Our language must be simple. It is, actually, a black and white issue but we tend to make it too nuanced. This morning, as I was getting dressed to spend another day at the convention, I looked at the clothes I chose. I am wearing black pants and a black and white tee shirt that says on both front and back, “Minnesotans Against Being Shot”. My shoes are black and white sneakers. So I thought of the nature of our arguments. Either you want to prevent gun injuries and deaths or you don’t. It is simple. Let’s keep it that way.
There is her dismissal as “nonsense” of arguments of others without any apparent examination of the issue:
United States Senator Charles Grassley ( R-Iowa) appeared to be wanting Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan to admit that the rights “guaranteed” in the Second Amendment was written before the Constitution. How is this possible? What Senator Grassley seemed to believe, and wanted Kagan and the rest of us to believe, was that the right to bear arms was actually created by God. No kidding. Here is a video of the Kagan hearings yesterday featuring Grassley’s questioning. Nonsense.
In the QOTD we still another item of interest. She states things as facts which are not true. For example, she apparently believes the only thing required for someone to not be charged in a shooting death is for the shooter to recite the magic phrases “I felt threatened” and “It was self defense” and the prosecutor walks away from the case. Physical evidence and witnesses supporting the validity of the self-defense claim have been dropped from her reality.
These sort of things apparently enable her to remain internally, and to a certain extent externally, consistent and maintain her belief system.
From this alternated reality base she goes on to reach the conclusions that 1) Accusations (charges) which were never proven (charges were dropped) should be sufficient to punish someone (revoke a concealed carry license); and 2) Legal self defense is cold blooded murder.
I can only conclude that grief can be powerful enough to severely warp the thinking process.
If you leave comments on her blog please be gentle. I almost feel as if I am intruding simply by reading her posts. If she wasn’t an activist for infringing upon the rights of others I would never point her out to others. But as it is I think there is a lot to be learned from her about the mechanism used to warp reality into something which matches the desired conclusions.–Joe]
Gun cartoon of the day
It seems to the people on the left believe everything boils down to money/greed. There apparently is no such thing as principles. There are no such thing as inalienable rights. There apparently are no solutions that do not involve more government control. It is apparently inconceivable that less government control could be the solution to the problems they claim to be concerned about.
Either they are either incredibly narrowed minded, incredibly stupid, or incredibly evil. Most are not all that stupid. Other than a few politicians I don’t think they they have that high a percentage of evil in their midst. That leaves narrowed minded.
With such narrow minded and evil people in positions of power our current economic situation should not be a surprise to anyone. The only thing that will surprise me is if the future does not hold a lot of government caused deaths.
The school massacres have been caused by excessive government and the economic collapse, political unrest, and starvation ahead of us will result in many, many more deaths. Will this be the final lesson that will ever need be taught that attempting a socialist/communist utopia is a really, really bad idea? Or is it true…
Quote of the day–Ricketyclick
The key tactic in any argument with a gun control advocate is to demand the citing of any instance where relaxing gun control laws has increased crime. And, I suspect, you can also do well by demanding the citing of any instance where imposing gun control on the general population has decreased crime.
Ricketyclick
More Flintlocks, Less Crime
August 13, 2010
[This is similar to Just One Question. And in fact takes it a short step further. This is fine with me.–Joe]
Gun cartoon of the day
I’m not sure how to take this one.
It could be the kid is frowning because there are so many laws which are so complex that he has to start when very young in order to learn them all. Or it could be the artist intended to say the kid shouldn’t have to worry about the existence of guns and should be listening to fairy tales of a different type.
Quote of the day–Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
To rule is easy, to govern difficult.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
[I wonder if this contributes to why we have such a terrible situation with our government. Politicians, and to a large extent the populous, want to be rulers when the Constitution and the more Libertarian citizens expect them to direct the affairs and policies of the country within very limited constraints. Those who would be rules see it is easy to be what they want to be and those who would govern within the given limits while managing to take the heat from the press and people who want “money for nothing and chicks for free” realize the job is going to be tough with few thanks.–Joe]
Live blogging from the Boomershoot site
The nearest houses are at least 500 yards away and I hear just the crackle of the high voltage power line, some birds and a distant combine. I have WiFi and my Windows Phone 7 to blog with. I like it here.
I dropped some stuff off and am straightening some things up. Then I have to drive back to my underground bunker near Seattle. I wish I could stay longer.
Gun cartoon of the day
Where are the people whose lives have been saved by people with guns?
Oh, that’s right! They make a very determined effort to ignored the benefits of gun ownership.
Quote of the day–Violence Policy Center
In 1981 Morton Grove became the first American community to ban the sale and private possession of handguns. The law led to court challenges by the NRA on both the federal and state level, where it was found to be constitutional. The Morton Grove ordinance and subsequent court cases have stood as concrete proof that American communities have the right to ban handguns and that such laws are constitutional.
Violence Policy Center
March 22, 1995
Historic Morton Grove, Illinois Handgun Ban May Be Overturned as Result of National Rifle Association-Backed Gun Law Preemption Campaign
[That “concrete” was made of wistful thinking and lies. It’s time for the VPC to admit defeat and close up shop.–Joe]
Gun cartoon of the day
What I said yesterday about that cartoon applies to this cartoon as well.
Quote of the day–Dennis Henigan
According to the “just enforce current laws” argument, we should, for instance, tolerate the “gun show loophole” in federal law that allows criminals to buy guns from private sellers at gun shows without background checks, because we can always hire more federal agents to track down the criminals after they get the guns. Doesn’t it make more sense to require background checks to block gun sales to criminals in the first place?
Dennis Henigan
August 5, 2010
Obama Gun Policy: Fear and Fallacy
[Mr. Henigan,
Perhaps you missed that day in law school when they talked about “prior restraint”.
To answer your question, Dennis, only if you are of the opinion it also makes sense to block book sales to political and religious extremists, and cosmetics and revealing clothes sales to women with a known history of prostitution. Would you support a sister organization that advocates for the registration and licensing of lipstick? Should we give book and cosmetics sales enforcement to the ATF as well?
We could work on completing the entire alphabet for them. Alcohol, Books, Cosmetics, Drugs, Explosives, and Firearms (ABCDEF) is a pretty good start, don’t you think?
The entire premise of your organization, to prevent “gun violence”, is incompatible with a free society. It’s time for your organization to be shut down and for you, your co-workers, and your supporters to admit your crimes, and apologize for the decades of bigotry that have cost the lives of thousands of people.–Joe]
Gun cartoon of the day
Lying in an attempt to win. What else can it be? Certainly the NRA has never said anything like that. My guess they could not even find a gun owner who has said anything like that else.
Oh, and do you want to know what a NRA spokesperson really looks like? Here is a picture of a couple of them from the NRA convention last May:
Sorry about the poor picture of the one on the right. She probably just heard the latest lie from some anti-gun bigot claiming the NRA was a bunch of baby killers or something.
Can you see any resemblance between the artist’s rendition and reality?
Lies, it’s all they have to work with.