Monthly Archives: April 2012

Pampered Cowards

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Here’s a quote I got today from a customer.  We were going back and fourth regarding the configuration of his rifle and which of the vastly superior UltiMAK optic mounts would fit it.  I paraphrase for clarity;

“…mine is a sporterized one… No scary features– to keep our state politicians’ diapers dry.” (he’s in the PRC)

I’ve eschewed potty jokes of late, as they’re usually not productive.  This one brings up a key point though.  My first thought after reading it was; Who cares, or should ever care, about politicians who would soil themselves at the thought of a well and properly armed citizenry, i.e. who cares what a coward thinks?

This is an open message to all politicians and law enforcement.  If you’re afraid of a citizenry that has its rights fully respected, exercised and protected, you’re either a coward, a criminal or a fool, and in any of those cases you don’t belong in your position.  Your position is for those who respect and love liberty, and have both the courage and the personal wherewithal to protect it.

(Disclaimer; my wife is a public school teacher, so although I preach liberty, and the responsibility of self reliance that comes with it, some of my household income derives from a coercive redistribution racket)

Quote of the day—Don B. Kates Jr.

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The argument that an armed citizenry cannot hope to overthrow a modern military machine flies directly in the face of the history of partisan guerilla and civil wars in the twentieth century. To make this argument (which is invariably supported, if at all, by reference only to the American military experience in non-revolutionary struggles like the two World Wars), one must indulge in the assumption that a handgun-armed citizenry will eschew guerrilla tactics in favor of throwing themselves headlong under the tracks of advancing tanks. Far from proving invincible, in the vast majority of cases in this century in which they have confronted popular insurgencies, modern armies have been unable to suppress the insurgents. This is why the British no longer rule in Israel and Ireland, the French in Indo-China, Algeria and Madagascar, the Portugese in Angola, the whites in Rhodesia, or General Somoza, General Battista, or the Shah in Nicaragua, Cuba and Iran respectively–not to mention the examples of the United States in Vietnam and the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. It is, of course, quite irrelevant for present purposes whether each of the struggles just mentioned is or was justified or whether the people benefitted therefrom. However one may appraise those victories, the fact remains that they were achieved against regimes equipped with all the military technology which, it is asserted, inevitably dooms popular revolt.

Perhaps more important, in a free country like our own, the issue is not really overthrowing a tyranny but deterring its institution in the first place. To persuade his officers and men to support a coup, a potential military despot must convince them that his rule will succeed where our current civilian leadership and policies are failing. In a country whose widely divergent citizenry possesses upwards of 160 million firearms, however, the most likely outcome of usurpation (no matter how initially successful) is not benevolent dictatorship, but prolonged, internecine civil war.

Don B. Kates Jr.
Handgun Prohibition and the Original Meaning of the Second Amendment
Michigan Law Review 82 (1983): 204-273.
[Via Proclaiming Liberty: What Patriots and Heroes Really Said About the Right to Keep and Bear Arms by Philip Mulivor.

This is along the same lines as what Lyle described as the Plausible Threat.

It’s worth noting that the estimate of 160 million firearms in the U.S. was in 1983. The estimate is nearly double that now.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Lyle

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That of course was its only purpose from the outset, so we’ll have to call the program a complete success.

What?– You believed the stuff about “protecting public safety”? No, see, that’s the just the selling point. That’s that charming, handsome man with his arm in a cast, Ted Bundy, asking you get in his van. Forget the assertions. The actual goal is something else entirely. That’s how communists (and serial killers) roll. It’s always a ruse.

Lyle
April 6, 2012
Comment to Gun card chaos: FOID foibles in IL
In response to “The only success of FOID cards is the successful persecution of gun owners.”
[Many, perhaps even most, of the people advocating for restrictions on firearms believe it will improve public safety. But at the top they know better. I’ve been listening to them and even meeting them face to face for many, many, years. Listen to and read carefully the words of gun control politicians Chuck Schumer, Diane Feinstein, and Bill Clinton. Listen and read carefully the words of the top leaders of the anti-gun activists. The smart articulate ones. Not the rambling incoherent ones. They know the truth. They know it’s not about public safety. It’s about buying votes, gaining power, and control of the general population.

For a long time I have wanted to get a meme started, “What is the real reason?” But apparently we are not quite ready to ask that question. And for the population at large, and gun control advocates in particular, gun ownership laws are not something that is subject to reason.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Brady Campaign

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Although the exact number of Americans killed by gun violence in the 20th century will never be known, it is now all but certain that it will, by any measure, vastly exceed the number of Americans shot and killed on battlefields since 1900.

Brady Campaign
December 30, 1999
MORE AMERICANS KILLED BY GUNS THAN BY WAR IN THE 20TH CENTURY–1.4 Million Known American Firearms Casualties Since 1933
[What the Brady Campaign either is ignorant of or willfully ignoring is that during that same time frame countries without the right to keep and bear arms murdered about 170 million innocent non-military lives in the 20th Century.

There are no solutions. There are only trade-offs.

The trade-off is not between guns being readily available to individual criminals and guns being banned and hence as difficult to obtain as other banned items like recreational drugs. The trade-off is between freedom and tyranny. It’s between losing a million innocent people in century due to criminal acts of individuals and losing 100 million people due to criminal acts of governments.

The founders of the this country understood and placed the security of a free state above the risk from individual misuse of arms:

A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

Firearms in the hands of the people are a plausible threat to would-be tyrants and hence a “safety net” for freedom.

Gun control in this country was implemented to make it easier to suppress slaves, former slaves, and the descendants of slaves. That is a shameful heritage for the advocates of gun control.

The Brady Campaign is a small and small-minded organization that does not represent the people of this nation or it’s values. It’s time they faded away into the dustbin of history like their small-minded ancestral cousins, the KKK.—Joe]

More on the Plausible Threat

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This is in response to Joe’s QOTD here by JFK

JFK’s concept is what I’ve dubbed the “Plausible Threat” influence in human interaction.  Reagan referred to it as “Peace Through Strength”.  My Plausible Threat concept is of the same nature, but is much more broad.

Why does someone do some something he doesn’t want to do, when he is told to do it?  Why does someone avoid doing something he wants do to, when told not to do it?  Often it’s because he sees a plausible threat of some kind looming over him, which will harm him in some way if he doesn’t tow the line.  It applies in all sorts of interactions and life decisions.  In some cases there is a moral factor, wherein a person’s conscience is more prominent in the decision making process.  In other cases it is the plausible threat that tips the scale.  In yet other cases the plausible threat is not enough, and a person or group will act in spite of it, i.e. it’s a gamble wherein the perceived benefits are deemed greater than the perceived threat.  The threat could be anything from minor social tension to global nuclear annihilation.

Our second amendment is, in part, to guarantee a natural right, but also it is to ensure a plausible threat as insurance against growing tyranny. 

We’ve seen on TV shows like Survivor what most people will do for a million dollars.  What would some people or groups of people be willing to do for several trillion dollars, their own army, and the power to substantially control millions of people?  It would take a very plausible threat indeed to dissuade the sort of motivations we’re seeing in that arena, and we have a long way to go before the whole of the people are armed well enough, organized well enough, and act in such a way as to dissuade the sorts of tyranny already in place, and the sorts that we have yet to see.

NBC producer fired over Zimmerman call

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As you probably have heard the call of Zimmerman with the police that NBC aired on the Today Show was edited such that Zimmerman appears to say, “This guy looks like he’s up to no good. He looks black.” This was not how it happened and a producer was fired over this. Good. The damage this deliberate slanting of the news could have been been millions of dollars in property damage and even people ending up dead from riots. As it is the tremendous amount of time and energy expended by people basing their actions on falsified information is incalculable.

The story is an AP story and is spreading rapidly. It certain deserves exceedingly wide coverage. Perhaps tensions can be reduced and people will look more closely at all the facts related to this event. And long term I hope more people verify stories reported by the media before taking extreme action.

Some of the news outlets reporting this story:

Quote of the day—President John F. Kennedy

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We dare not tempt them with weakness. For only when our arms are sufficient beyond doubt can we be certain beyond doubt that they will never be employed.

President John F. Kennedy
January 20, 1961
Inaugural Address
[The “we” and “them” Kennedy was referring to were the United States and the communists of the world. But the sentiment has broader application.

It also applies to the people of a nation and a government delegated certain powers by those people. And if you think of “arms” as lawyers and financial resources it also has application to those with whom you enter into contracts with.

And if “arms” were a metaphor for “votes” the first sentence, but not the second, could have immediate application to the NRA, SAF, and other gun rights organizations and politicians versus the anti-gun organizations and politicians.

I had hinted at something similar with a very narrow application over 16 years ago but Kennedy says it more clearly and with broader application.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Amanda Wilcox

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It wasn’t a failure of laws. I just don’t see how our gun laws could have stopped something like that.

Amanda Wilcox,
Lobbyist for the California chapter of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence
April 6, 2012
California’s tough gun laws could not prevent Oakland tragedy
[It’s nice to see the Brady Campaign admitting gun laws cannot stop mass shootings but she still has some pretty significant symptoms of Peterson Syndrome.

Did you noticed she said “It wasn’t a failure of laws” but then in the next sentence she says she doesn’t see how gun laws could have stopped the shooting. One or the other of those statements has to be false.

The corrected statement should be:

Our gun laws have failed. Our gun laws cannot stop something like that. The best known way to stop an active criminal shooter is for another person to shoot back. As long as our gun laws make it difficult or impossible for potential victims to defend themselves these tragedies will continue to happen.

But the Brady Campaign has a vested interest in the blood of innocent people running in the streets. If they were more rare their funding would dry up and they would cease to exist. Hence they give out sound bites that at first glance support their warped view but upon closer examination cannot even maintain coherence from sentence to sentence.

See also Say Uncle and the comments to his post.—Joe]

Sometimes it’s no fun being right

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In comments here, regarding Hollywood’s lack of ideas and their focus on remakes, I predicted a new series of the Three Stooges.  Turns out I was right on time.  They have the movie coming out this month.  I’ll guess that the new series is already in the works.  The Marx Brothers and then Silent flicks to follow, I suppose.

These are the people who accuse us of being “backward” or “simple-minded”.

Liberty is Not on Trial

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Don’t forget it.  This is (partially) in response to the QOTD below.

The argument for liberty is primarily a moral one.  Many people focus on cause and effect.  We could dig into detail after detail, analyzing this and that cause and this and that effect.  In that pursuit, yes, we will find much evidence in favor of liberty.

But liberty is not on trial.  Oh no, Young Grasshopper.  This may be news to most people, but it is the socialist/communist/Fascist (statist) bloc that is on trail.  I hereby accuse it of willfully conspiring to perpetrate envy, hopelessness, fraud, grand larceny, stagnation, decline, anger, hate, conflict, assault, battery, chaos, and mass murder.

It is not up to us to defend liberty as such.  We who support and uphold it are the plaintiffs, see?  Liberty needs no defense in that sense, because it has done nothing wrong.  It needs to be taught, yes, but if any fingers of blame are to be pointed, they should be pointed at the statists, and if any defense need to be mounted, let the accused try to defend their crimes.  Let them point back and leer at us— but always understand that they are the accused and we are (liberty is) the injured party.

Ultimately it comes down to the fact that Man, by nature, yearns to be free.  Sure; with our liberty intact, we do vastly better than we ever do without it, but the argument is primarily a moral one.  Right and wrong.  Freedom verses force.  Choice verses coercion.  Good verses evil.  America was founded on that principle.  Isn’t it time we strive to understand, and then to fulfill America’s Promise of Liberty?  For once?

The plaintiff doesn’t walk into the courtroom with a defense attorney at his side.  He may need a good prosecutor, but he doesn’t need a defense.  Republicans of course have never understood it.  A plaintiff or a procesuter who is constantly defending himself, with the perpetrator sitting in judgement, is a blithering fool.

Quote of the day—Windy Wilson

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Their words and the things they choose to defend prove again that the Brady Center is not merely rooting for the criminal element, they are offering to hold their coats and act as lookout during the murder, rape or robbery of the law abiding citizens.

Windy Wilson
April 5, 2012
Comment to Quote of the day—Gura & Prossessky.
[While I do not believe people of the Brady Center intend this to be the result I am certain this is the unintended consequence of their actions.

Many of these people have no rational belief system and some don’t even have a grasp of what rational thought is but some do. My model for those who have a quasi rational belief system is that they are only vaguely aware of these unintended consequences.

Those of us on the side of individual rights are willing to accept the unintended consequences of freedom. Those unintended consequences include crimes and accidents involving firearms.

As Thomas Sowell made very clear in one of his essays from the 1980s (read Compassion Versus Guilt, and other Essays) and in a great many of his other writings and lectures, “There are no solutions. There are only trade-offs.”

The proper question then becomes, “Which set of tradeoffs is better?” And digging still deeper, “How do you measure ‘better'”? But as near as I can tell our opponents are unwilling, or perhaps unable, to even acknowledge there are no solutions. Yet the real debate should be at least three levels deeper.–Joe]

Boomershoot 2013

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I’m doing some thinking about Boomershoot 2013. I need to schedule around wet/snowy weather, Fire Season, the NRA Annual Meetings, Mother’s Day, and my wife’s work schedule.

I have tentatively chosen Sunday May 5th as the date.

Can anyone come up with a good reason why that date should be avoided? I realize this is the probably going to be the weekend before finals at the University of Idaho but I’m not seeing a better tradeoff at this time.

Discuss as needed…

Ignorant yahoo

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Paul Krugman writes:

Florida’s now-infamous Stand Your Ground law, which lets you shoot someone you consider threatening without facing arrest, let alone prosecution, sounds crazy – and it is. And it’s tempting to dismiss this law as the work of ignorant yahoos.

The Stand Your Ground law does not enable someone to avoid arrest for shooting someone “you consider threatening”. It merely codifies what has been common law since at least Biblical times. If you are reasonably in fear of seriously body harm or death then you are protected from prosecution and civil action if you use deadly force to protect innocent life rather than having an obligation to attempt escape.

As people have known for quite sometime you shouldn’t live in a glass house if you are going to throw stones. If Krugman is looking for someone to call an ignorant yahoo he only need look as far as the nearest mirror.

Quote of the day—Gura & Possessky

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Hey, @MotherJones @sidhubaba, how is this story http://is.gd/tXiZEU turning out so far? kthxbye

Gura & Possessky
Tweeted on March 31, 2012
[In the story link to above, (former) Brady Center President Paul Helmke says in reference to a brief they filed in a federal court in North Carolina seeking the dismissal of a lawsuit brought by Gura, “Police and emergency responders seeking to quell a riot,” he said, “should not be forced to contend with legally-authorized armed individuals and groups roaming alleys and public streets.”  The author @sidhubaba, said, “You don’t say!”

In the decision released last week striking down the bad law the Brady’s were defending Judge Malcolm J. Howard said, “It cannot be overlooked that the statutes strip peaceable, law abiding citizens of the right to arm themselves in defense of hearth and home, striking at the very core of the Second Amendment.”—Joe]

Confirmation

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I ordered a bunch of stuff from Amazon for Boomershoot last night. This included things like foam ear plugs, safety glasses, nitrile gloves, electronic hearing protection, a new flour sifter, and a shooting mat for the media types who show up and take us up on shoot for free offer. The interesting thing was the total price of the order after tax and shipping:

Thanks for your order, Joe Huffman!
Want to manage your order online?
If you need to check the status of your order or make changes, please visit our home page at Amazon.com and click on Your Account at the top of any page.
Purchasing Information:
E-mail Address:  ???@joehuffman.org

Billing Address:
Joe Huffman
8512 122nd Ave NE #6
Kirkland, WA 98033
United States

Order Grand Total: $666.66

For the crazy anti-gun people who believe guns are in hell this probably confirms their belief.

For the rest of the world who are more sane but still a bit superstitious they will probably just take this as a sign that Boomershoot 2012 is going to be a hell of a good time.

What’s Going On With Gun Sales?

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Via an e-mail from the NRA (Yes; I am part of the “triangle of death” and as a card-carrying member, I get the sooper secret decoder ring and classified e-mails)

What’s up with gun sales?  Americans are rediscovering the fun and utility of gun ownership, that’s what.  People are starting to shrug off the effects of political and social bullying, saying “to heck with all that nonsense – guns are good, I want one and I’m buying one (or three)”.

Quote of the day—John Lott

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A lot of people (both conservatives and liberals) are going to end up being embarrassed by their instant, snap judgments about this case.

The focus on a single case to evaluate laws that have been in effect for years in over 40 states is troubling enough. But right now it looks as if the rush to reform is based on nothing more than bad reporting.

John Lott
April 3, 2012
Trayvon Martin, George Zimmerman and the media’s misleading rhetoric on guns
[The problem is that many (most?) people do not base their opinions on facts or rational analysis. Yes, this can be hard at times. Stirring up emotions or allowing your emotions to rule your actions “gets things done” but at what cost? The cost is wasted resources, bad law, and injustice.—Joe]

Fallacy of “Gun-Free” Schools

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Via email:

From: David Burnett [mailto:media@concealedcampus.org]
Sent: Tuesday, April 03, 2012 8:23 AM
Subject: Shooting Highlights Fallacy of “Gun-Free” Schools

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Shooting Highlights Fallacy of “Gun-Free” Schools

April 3, 2012 — Seven students were gunned down yesterday morning in California on the same day that a national protest began to raise awareness about students being left helpless against such murderers.

The national Empty Holster Protest, organized by Students for Concealed Carry, involves students strapping on empty holsters to illustrate their defenselessness at the hands of college gun bans. The event runs through April 6 and involves hundreds of college campuses across the US.

“This is a poignant and ironic example of the very thing we’re protesting,” said David Burnett, the group’s spokesman.
“Colleges invite these shootings by guaranteeing criminals their victims will be disarmed. It takes more than signs to fend off killers.”

Although the details of the massacre are still unclear, it remains apparent that prohibitions against firearms were completely ineffective. Over 20 such college shootings have occurred on so-called “gun-free” campuses since 2001. At the same time, more than 200 campuses in six states allow students to carry handguns to class without experiencing any such rampages.

“Gun-free zones are defense-free zones,” said Burnett. “Since our colleges can’t guarantee our safety, it’s time for them to allow us a fighting chance and decriminalize self-defense.”

A PDF version of this press release is available at:
http://scc.gs/HEXF5S

Media resources available at: http://concealedcampus.org/media

CONTACT:

David Burnett, Director of Public Relations

Students for Concealed Carry

david.burnett@concealedcampus.org

859-576-7522

ABOUT:

Students for Concealed Carry is a national, non-partisan, grassroots organization comprised of over 40,000 supporters which advocates for legal concealed carry on college campuses.

I don’t have anything to add other than I think the college administrators and state legislators that created these victim disarmament zones should be prosecuted for conspiracy to deny civil rights under the color of law with particular attention paid to the following:

…if death results from the acts committed in violation of this section … shall be fined under this title, or imprisoned for any term of years or for life, or both, or may be sentenced to death.

Perhaps if a few of these people are in jail awaiting trial with the possibility of a death sentence others will be a little less eager to infringe upon the specific enumerated rights guaranteed by our Bill of Rights.