Monthly Archives: May 2012

Quote of the day—Ann Coulter

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… Republicans eventually had to fight a Civil War to get the Democrats to give up slavery.

Alas, they were Democrats, so they cheated.

After the war, Democratic legislatures enacted “Black Codes,” denying black Americans the right of citizenship — such as the rather crucial one of bearing arms — while other Democrats (sometimes the same Democrats) founded the Ku Klux Klan.

For more than a hundred years, Republicans have aggressively supported arming blacks, so they could defend themselves against Democrats.

Ann Coulter
April 23, 2012
Coulter: Gun control and self-defense
[Great article. As is usual for Coulter there is lots of snark.-Joe]

Winning

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Via a SAF Tweet.

Liberal Whoopi Goldberg Admits She’s a Member of the NRA:

GOLDBERG: But it is also, is it also, John, because those folks are saying, okay, here’s what I have in my house. I’m letting–the government says — I want you–I’m an NRA member, as you probably know or don’t know.

…

STOSSEL: You packing now?
HASSELBECK: Maybe?
GOLDBERG: You don’t want to find out.

I despise emulation of celebrities but I recognize it probably is hard-wired into the human brain. Therefore this is great news. Not only has she “come out of the closet” as a gun owner and NRA member but she is a black female who comes across as reasonably smart, rational, and likable. This makes it more difficult for the anti-gun people to make their usual claims about gun owners being stupid/ignorant/insurrectionist racist white males.

Quote of the day—Dave Mustaine

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When people in Washington say they’re going to take away my guns, they better bring theirs if they’re going to take mine.

Dave Mustaine
May 8, 2012
MEGADETH’s DAVE MUSTAINE On Gun Control, Lineup Changes And Winning Awards
[The people in Washington have no problem sending people with gun to take our guns. Just ask Vicky Weaver and David Koresh… oh, yeah, you can’t ask them because they were murdered by the people Washington sent.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Emily Miller

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The District needs to realize that it cannot choose to exempt itself from a fundamental provision of the Bill of Rights.

Emily Miller
March 6, 2012
MILLER: Gun owners win a round: Second Amendment rights advance in District and Maryland
[Unfortunately such a realization seems to require a (figuratively) 2×4 between the eyes. Fortunately we have such a 2×4 with SAF and Alan Gura. It’s tragic it took over 30 years to connect for the first time and so many people had, and still have, their rights infringed upon and no public official has ever gone to jail over it.—Joe]

Never mind that just direct me to Gault’s Gulch

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Atlas Shrugged Part 2 is being filmed and you could be an extra if you help out with their social media efforts:

So, what do you need to do to get on set? You need to get busy…

  1. Follow us on Twitter and retweet any of our tweets.
  2. Like us on facebook and share any of our posts.

The more you tweet and share, the more chance you have to be cast so, tweet and share early and often.

We’ll be selecting an extra this Friday afternoon and flying the selectee and a guest to LA this coming Monday, May 14th – all expenses paid. Or, most expenses anyway – flight and hotel for two nights.

I’m going to be busy with other things on Monday and I don’t really pay much attention to Facebook anyway. I just want to know where I can find Gault’s Gulch.

Quote of the day—Philip Van Cleave

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It wasn’t some industrious Virginian smuggling guns to New York City, it’s people coming from New York to Virginia to get guns by some illegal means. It’s really their problem. They need to keep their criminals and drugs in New York. I’m not giving up my rights because New York can’t control its criminals.

Philip Van Cleave
May 7, 2012
Critics say Va.’s gun laws could encourage trafficking
[This, of course, reminds me of something Tam once said:

Where the hell do you get off thinking you can tell me I can’t own a gun? I don’t care if every other gun owner on the planet went out and murdered somebody last night. I didn’t. So piss off.

Van Cleave puts a more politically correct spin on it but still gets the message across.—Joe]

“Impressive” gun collection?

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The Willamette Week is easily impressed (emphasis in the original):

In addition to the relatively small quantity of weed, the feds found an impressive gun collection in Barnes’ house.

…

Within the defendant’s bedroom agents found a loaded 9mm handgun on the floor, a loaded .410 Taurus revolver on the floor, a loaded double-barrel coach shotgun behind the bedroom door, and loaded .357 caliber pistol in his dresser. In total, agents found 14 various firearms within the residence and garage.

I know a guy who occasionally attends Boomershoot has 59 guns in just one safe.

Wars on Nouns

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(My computer stinks  This was posted days ago but never showed up.  I try again)

As a practical matter, I don’t see how you can wage war on anything but nouns.  Just sayin’.  Americans fought a war or two against “Britain” which is a noun, thoughbeit a proper noun.  Japanese “imperialism” is a noun, etc.  “Socialism” is a noun too, as is “jihad”.

This war-on-nouns stuff started, I figure, with the “War On An Emotion”.  That of course being “terror”.  I agree that it is pretty silly to initiate a military war against an emotion like terror, among other things, because war itself can be pretty terrifying.  Now if you wanted to wage war against happiness I suppose that would be a little easier.  You may be able to bomb people out of their happiness.

So it comes down to the particular nouns that might be legitimate enemies against which we might legitimately wage war.  More importantly, it comes down to those things that are worth protecting, even with deadly force when necessary.  Those too are nouns.  Life is a noun.  Liberty is a noun.  Property is a noun.  It is far easier to be against something (Critical Theory) than to be for something.  When we consider fighting wars, we need to keep that in mind.  For what are we fighting?

For those who will say “Who is Dennis Prager?” I say that he is the one who said, “I prefer clarity to agreement”.

So let’s be clear.  Only once that is accomplished can we decide on whether or not we agree.

I’ve heard that we can’t legitimately declare war against jihad (or rather, for liberty – the opposite of jihad)) because jihad isn’t a country.  That makes waging war against it a logical impossibility, I guess is what we’re being told.  OK.  So they’re saying we can only wage war for or against real estate?  An enemy can only take the form of real estate?  See; I can play stupid word games too, and my stupid word games don’t help either.

Hint; liberty isn’t a country any more than jihad is a country.  It’s a concept, and hopefully liberty is a movement.  Jihad is a concept and certainly it is a movement, for caliphate (another concept).  We fight and die for concepts.  Life too, but the concept of liberty is an extension of the protection of life.

Security theater on the Internet

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Via Say Uncle we get this annoying news:

The FBI is asking Internet companies not to oppose a controversial proposal that would require firms, including Microsoft, Facebook, Yahoo, and Google, to build in backdoors for government surveillance.
 
In meetings with industry representatives, the White House, and U.S. senators, senior FBI officials argue the dramatic shift in communication from the telephone system to the Internet has made it far more difficult for agents to wiretap Americans suspected of illegal activities, CNET has learned.
 
The FBI general counsel’s office has drafted a proposed law that the bureau claims is the best solution: requiring that social-networking Web sites and providers of VoIP, instant messaging, and Web e-mail alter their code to ensure their products are wiretap-friendly.
 
“If you create a service, product, or app that allows a user to communicate, you get the privilege of adding that extra coding,” an industry representative who has reviewed the FBI’s draft legislation told CNET. The requirements apply only if a threshold of a certain number of users is exceeded, according to a second industry representative briefed on it.

This is so crap for brains stupid I am surprised the author of the article and the industry representatives didn’t fall over laughing at the FBI. Since the “requirements apply only if a threshold of a certain number of users is exceeded” as long as the number is greater than two they can’t enforce such a requirement against small groups of people. And that assumes the criminals were to use service providers in the U.S. that are easy to track down. With overseas and even open Wi-Fi access points so easy to access even finding a group of a criminals who utilized an illegal communication system would be tough.

This is nothing but A Security Theater that invades the privacy of those that pose no threat to the general population and can be used as a tool by unscrupulous politicians and government thugs to embarrass or blackmail their opponents.

Benefits of the economic downturn

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Several years ago when the news of the exploding debt and crashing financial markets was making the headlines son James ask what this would mean. I told him I didn’t really know because I had never seen anything like it before and to a large extent we don’t have any real history of this sort of thing before. In the depression of the 1930’s the government debt wasn’t huge to start out with and there was a completely different situation with the banks and lack of insured deposits. This is different.

The one thing I suggested might eventually happen is that governments would have to start laying off people and that many laws and regulations would essentially be ignored because there would not be enough people to enforce them. His response was something along the lines of, “So this is a good thing then.” Of course it isn’t and wasn’t that simple. There can be a lot of bad to go with the good. For example there may not be enough people to enforce the morass of all the millions of regulations but there probably will always be enough thugs to enforce the confiscatory tax rates, nationalization of health care, communications, food, and energy production and distribution.

The worst of the possibilities have not happened yet but a glimmer of the good has started to shine through:

In April the household survey showed that that there were 442,000 fewer people working in government than in March. The household survey has a much smaller sample size than the establishment survey, and so is prone to volatility, but the magnitude of the drop is striking: It marks the largest decline on both an absolute and a percentage basis on record going back to 1948. Moreover, the household survey has consistently showed bigger drops in government employment than the establishment survey has.

But of course it’s but a drop in the bucket. According to the article there are about 20.3 million people in the U.S. engaged in government work. I would be happier if there were 19 million fewer than that with most of those being in the military.

eBay and gun parts

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I don’t recall this being mentioned on the gun blogs and I did a little bit of searching and didn’t find it. It’s possible this is very old news but I think I would have noticed.

Recently I was in an antique shop and noticed an article in a newspaper from last February:

WP_000532WP_000533

Apparently eBay reversed their policy on gun parts, “Actual firearms can’t be listed on eBay. However, many parts and accessories for firearms are OK to sell, but only under certain conditions.” The actual eBay policy page currently says the following are allowed but restricted to U.S. sales:

  • Accessories and parts for guns such as butt plates, cases, cleaning supplies, dies, grips, holsters, molds, racks, pistol grips, scopes, slings, stocks, storage cases, or trigger guards. The listing must include a description of the type of firearm the accessory or part is for and what it’s used for. If it doesn’t, the listing may be removed.
  • Muzzle loader or black powder gun parts or accessories, as long as each item is offered in one listing at a time. (However, having separate listings for items that can be used to build a gun is prohibited.)
  • The following gun parts and accessories are allowed on the eBay US site only. The seller must be in the US and offer domestic shipping only:
    • En bloc clips
    • Barrels
    • Bolts
    • Choke tubes
    • Cylinders
    • Firing pins
    • Hammers
    • Magazines with a capacity to accept 10 rounds or less (high-capacity magazines that can accept more than 10 rounds are not allowed)
    • Slides
    • Trigger assemblies

We still don’t see “a blister pack of six Glock’s at Costco” but it’s a step in the right direction.

My next book

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I just discovered the next book I’m going to read: Fast and Furious: Barack Obama’s Bloodiest Scandal and the Shameless Cover-Up.

I’m downloading it from Audible.com as I type…

Some people are speculating that Fast and Furious could be the next “Watergate”. But I’m not really convinced it will become that. Sure, it’s almost certain what happened was worse than Watergate because of the people who died and that an attack on a fundamental right was involved. But Watergate only became such a big issue because the media cared about it. The media cared about it because it was a Republican president involved in the scandal. In this case it’s a Democrat and it was about infringing upon the 2nd Amendment which the media thinks is a good idea.

Quote of the day—Fusil Banniere

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As a violence policy advocate, the steps needed to end gun violence are clear.

The First step is to make people aware of the problem. The easiest way to do this is to take advantage of high profile incidents that involve guns and to use them to get media time for our cause. This bigger the incident, the better so be sure to highlight the carnage and the emotional aftermath. People will readily make decisions when their emotions are elevated that they would not have considered at other times. It’s important to ignore comparisons to incidents that involve other implements such as explosives or planes since these will distract from the ultimate goal. Treat all defensive uses of guns as suspect and doubt their credibility and viability. It might be helpful in these circumstances to confuse the lawful use of guns for protection with criminal use since the moral difference isn’t easily distinguishable to some people. When using statistics, remember to include all gun deaths including those that could be self-defense or suicide. As an example 15,000 people commit suicide with a gun each year. By labeling these deaths “gun violence”, readers will assume they passed because of a criminal act. Since this doubles the number of true gun violence victims from 15, 000 to 30,000 then the number is twice as high and therefore seems twice as tragic and should produce twice the emotional response.

Fusil Banniere
May 2, 2012
Comment to A Little Girl Named Annie, and a Man With a Gun
[I’m nearly certain this is satire because I don’t think I have ever seen an anti-gun person this rational and open about their methods. In any case it is nice to see it articulated so well.—Joe]

Quote of the day—NRA-ILA

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The Brady Campaign’s willingness to argue seriously that a would-be assassin would buy or rent an apartment overlooking his intended target’s travel route, then register his intended murder weapon, speaks volumes for the group’s view of the world.

NRA-ILA
In D.C., Baby Steps Toward Gun Law Sanity
March 2, 2012
[That is, their connection to reality is exceedingly tenuous.—Joe]

Swimming pools versus guns

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Sarah takes Brady Campaign President to task about his irrational fear of guns:

Dan Gross, President of the nation’s largest gun control group, is afraid of guns. Will he ever overcome his irrational fears?

I’m optimistic. If Dan can conquer his fear of water, then he can conquer his fear of guns.

Then invites him to the gun range:

Dan Gross, Brady Campaign President: Consider this an open invitation to join me at the gun range. Afterwards, maybe we can hit the pool for a few laps.

I think I see a Boomershoot invite in Mr. Gross’s future.