Monthly Archives: June 2014

Hunting and the Second Amendment

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Via Bitter:

A federal judge on Wednesday dismissed a lawsuit by a hunters’ group that had challenged Pennsylvania’s long-standing ban on Sunday hunting, saying she saw no proof the hunters’ constitutionally protected rights were being harmed.

While I think it should be beyond the power of the government to ban hunting (at this time I’m not going to argue about regulation of hunting) I really have to squint to see the Second Amendment protecting hunting. I think it probably is the correct decision.

I think this is something we really can and should use to our advantage. We frequently hear that the anti-gun people don’t want to take our hunting guns away. Now, if they say that, we have a very powerful argument against them taking non-hunting guns.

Since the Second Amendment doesn’t protect hunting, and it is an individual right, then the Second Amendment must be to protect non-hunting firearm ownership. If not then the Second Amendment has been defined into meaninglessness.

With the evidence we have for the Second Amendment protecting firearms having a military purpose we now can insist the Second Amendment protects AK-47’s, AR-15’s, M-16’s, 50 BMG’s, and any other militia small arms.

Quote of the day—Tiffany Miller

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Most gun owners in this country are rural bumpkins who don’t have any education at all.

Tiffany Miller
June 17, 2014
Comment to Hillary Clinton On Gun Control: We Can’t Let ‘A Minority Of People’ Terrorize The Majority
[This is what they think of you.

Via her Facebook page we have some more insight from our intellectual superior:

Bigotry, prejudice, and ignorance. It looks like someone has a problem with diversity.—Joe]

Scrambled brains

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From SPD Blotter:

When officers contacted the man—who had apparently torn out patches of his own hair—he refused to provide officers with his identity, giving them a fake name. Then he took off running.

Officers chased the man, who stopped mid-flight, picked up a large rock and turned back toward officers. Police told the man to drop the rock, which he did, before he again fled down the street, stripping off his remaining clothing as he ran.

Officers eventually found the now-completely naked suspect lying on his back in a planting strip in the 2000 block of Minor Ave E—about a half-mile from the scene of the original incident—and took him into custody.

The man told officers he had taken cocaine, methamphetamines, LSD and other unidentified drugs earlier in the evening.

After officers arrested the man, he began scratching all over his body, asked officers for his clothes, and then complained he was too hot.

…

Police weren’t immediately able to identify the man, who was unable to provide police with his real name or home address.

If the guy had tried to throw the rock at someone there is a fair chance it would have been sufficient grounds to shoot him. Don’t get your brain so scrambled with drugs that someone else is justified in scrambling it with lead. The high you get from the drugs isn’t worth the downer from the lead.

Abramski case

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You haven’t seen a lot of outrage over the Abramski case in the gun blogosphere. It’s been mostly just a statement of the facts (see here, here, here, and here). There are some dissents (here and here) but while I agree Abramski didn’t do anything wrong in regards to the intent of congress he clearly did violate an ATF regulation. We were hoping to get the adults to put the ATF bully in their place for writing regulations unsupported by law. That didn’t happen.

That regulation should not exist because it doesn’t reflect the intent of the law in all cases. The law was intended to prevent guns from being sold to people forbidden by law from owning a gun. The question 11.a on form 4473 asks (bold in original):

Are you the actual transferee/buyer of the firearm(s) listed on this form? Warning: You are not the actual buyer if you are acquiring the firearm(s) on behalf of another person. If you are not the actual buyer, the dealer cannot transfer the firearm(s) to you. (See instructions for Question 11.a.) Exception: If you are picking up a repaired firearm(s) for another person, you are not required to answer 11.a. and may proceed to question 11.b.

The instructions do not include an exception for the situation Abramski found himself in. Hence it is clear that Abramski violated the letter of the regulation when he said that he was the actual buyer.

If I only focus on the narrow issues affecting of this case I see two things to complain about. 1) The prosecutor should never have pursued this case. Abramski didn’t deliver the gun into the hands of someone forbidden to own it. Didn’t he have a cases where there were victims to spend his time on? That the government was lied to over something this minor just doesn’t seem to be worth prosecuting over. 2) Herschel Smith explains the second issue in much better words than I can:

Regulations take on the force of law after comments responding to entries in the Federal Register are summarily ignored by the agency doing the regulating.  It makes little sense to respond with comments when the regulator’s mind is made up.  These regulations frequently far surpass the law in breadth, scope, depth and magnitude.

…

this kind of regulation seems onerous compared to what Congress wrote, but it is latitude given (and taken) by the federal regulators.  If there is a problem with legislating from the bench, there is even a worse problem with regulating by the executive branch from inside the beltway.  The problem will continue (and grow) as long as the public abides the abuse.

I haven’t read the briefs leading up to this decision but I don’t think the supporters of this case should have taken it to the Supreme Court. The only way they could have had a good chance of winning is if they had a lot of case law that supported attacking the lower court ruling on the basis of the overreaching regulation contrary to the law.

In order to get the case law to support slapping down zealous regulators we need to attack them on something less contentious like regulations forbidding the aging of cheese on wood shelves. But in those cases the regulators are going to cave like a school yard bully confronted by an adult without giving us the case law we need to confront the bullies in the ATF.

Quote of the day—Hillary Clinton

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I believe that we need a more thoughtful conversation, we cannot let a minority of people — and that’s what it is, it is a minority of people — hold a viewpoint that terrorizes the majority of people.

Hillary Clinton
June 17, 2014
Hillary Clinton On Gun Control: We Can’t Let ‘A Minority Of People’ Terrorize The Majority
[There you have it. She is coming out against the First Amendment, and freedom in general, as well as the Second Amendment. She doesn’t want you to even “hold a viewpoint” that she doesn’t like.

“Thoughtful conversation”? Somehow I don’t think she is planning on including gun owners in that “conversation”.

I suspect she is in close alignment with her husband Bill in that “we can’t be so fixated on our desire to preserve the rights of ordinary Americans…”.

She should have moved to the USSR in the 1960’s. Her ideology would have fit right in and the world would have been a better place.—Joe]

Quote of the day—j2cub612

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Signing some imaginary contract to “ask” does nothing but make parents more paranoid.

By the way, if you “ask” me my answer is yes I’m an American. I have guns in my home. I signed a board called “reject paranoia” and I don’t allow children of irrational parents in my home.

j2cub612
June 17, 2014
Comment to Gun-control, open-carry supporters stage dueling demonstrations one week after Reynolds shooting
[I completely agree with everything except the last sentence. I’m sort of mixed on that one. I think I’m more inclined to have them in my home and let them see families with guns in a positive light.—Joe]

Anti gun-rights Microsoft?

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From the firearm blog.

This would help explain the trend toward cloud storage and toward not really owning, but renting your software. It appears that Adobe, for another example, now only provides the latest version of Photoshop as a monthly subscription service, so you’re not the owner, but the tenant, and they the property manager.

If you don’t have exclusive control of your software, user files, or your contact lists, etc., it could all be pulled out from under you, or used for other purposes via remote control by other people, at a whim. Same as your bank account now, by the way. The Endarkenment proceeds apace.

Quote of the day—saintonge235

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Twice in my life I got beaten up because I was in a fight and really didn’t want to hurt the person I was fighting. Recovering from the second beating, it occurred to me that “they don’t matter”, “they” being anyone who attacked me. From then on, I never lost a fight, because when I saw that violence was going to occur, I hit first without warning and didn’t stop till they were helpless. Acquiring that mindset is the most important self-defense lesson I know.

saintonge235
June 14, 2014
Comment to The Naive Idiocy of Teaching Rapists Not To Rape
[One might be wise to apply that mindset to a great many other things as well. Politics and war come to mind.—Joe]

All guns are always loaded

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That’s gun safety rule one. Cooper said that it’s not a guide to behavior but rather a statement of condition. (For those unfamiliar, “condition” in this sense refers to the status of the gun, whether it’s loaded, or cocked, whether the safety catch is on, etc.)

That’s the problem with weapon “safety” isn’t it? If you keep a gun for self defense, and you treat all guns as though they’re always loaded, and it turns put that the one you need to defend your life is unloaded, you’re not at all safe. A gun is supposed to be dangerous! but only to your chosen target.

As a matter of personal taste I prefer the NRA rule “Always keep the gun unloaded until ready to use”. The guns I keep for defense are “in use” all the time and so they are loaded, whether on my hip or leaning in the corner.

I showed a couple how to load a percussion revolver the other day, by “loading” it with powder and bullets, but since we never applied caps to the cones, it still isn’t “loaded” because I won’t fire without caps. I’ll twirl it if I want to, and you can’t stop me, but I generally won’t twirl a loaded gun even it is single action with the hammer down and nothing you do to the trigger alone can ever make it fire.

We’ve come to a point where we’re making too big a deal out of “safety” and admit it– That’s because of lawyers and politicians (two of the more dangerous kinds of people on Earth if we take them too seriously).

Ultimately, “safety”, to the extent that it exists at all, is between your ears. You’re certainly going to die no matter what though, so cheer up! When people, perfectly well-intended, tell me to “stay safe” as an alternative to “goodbye” or “see you later” it sort of disappoints me. “Have fun” or even “be cool” would be better advice. None of the really fun and memorable, or productive, things I’ve done in life were particularly safe, but they always came off better in a state of coolness.

Here’s another important “safety” rule;
“All lawyers and all politicians are always loaded”

I do like that one. As Cooper said; “It is not a guide of behavior, but rather a statement of condition”, and furthermore it would explain a lot.

Abramski

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Well, the Supreme Court handed down the Abramski decision. He lost.

On the one hand, it’s not unexpected, and for most of us nothing really changes: straw-man purchases are illegal. But on the other hand, the dissent basically argued that isn’t what the statute passed by congress and signed by the prez actually SAID, and thus that isn’t illegal according to the letter of the law, and trying to interpret legislative intent is a bad way to go about making decisions. The decision could have been worse, but I still wish that it had gone the other way, even if that means congress would likely pass a law in record time to “correct” the situation.

http://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/abramski-v-united-states/

http://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/12-1493

 

Boomershoot High Intensity by Oleg Volk

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Oleg has another post up about Boomershoot. This time it is about the High Intensity events.

The Close-Range, Rapid-Fire Stage of Boomershoot: Feel the Shockwaves!

Random thought of the day

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I have had the gist of the following in my mind for years but I put it into words and more succulently after reading a comment by Windy Wilson.

A pattern I notice with progressives/totalitarians/communists is they express things in terms of what sort of activities/possessions people should be “allowed”.

Most people think in terms of what sort of activities/possessions should be made illegal.

A liberty orientated person thinks, and our government constitutions is, in terms of what sort of things the government should be allowed to do.

I think we are done here

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I made a Facebook friend request to someone I have known for over 30 years. I hadn’t had any contact with her for probably four years but it sounds like a mutual friend from our past lost their son and I wondered if she knew something about it.

In response to my friend request I got this:

Hi Joe, I am chair of the Veterans For Peace Environmental Cost of War and Militarism Working Group. Because you have chosen to become a militant enemy of your local environment by exploding bombs on it, I do not want to be your Facebook friend.

Killing everything in that spot of Mother Earth that you choose to desecrate for fun and leaving behind the heavy metals to poison the water of future generations is appalling to me.

I’m not just picking on you personally. I’m against bombs, bombing ranges, chemical and depleted uranium weapons, mining where the people of the land are forced off of their property, and many other things involved with the military-industrial-1% complex.

If you could put some of your intelligence into figuring out how to bring down global capitalism and war profiteering, encourage farming and local food buying, conversion from fossil fuels and endless consumption to conservation and cleaner energy, stopping fracking, nuclear power, and the war against the indigenous, I’d love to hear your ideas.

Helen

I knew she was of significantly different political persuasion than me even when we were close. But wow! Bring down “global capitalism”?

I think we are done here.

Quote of the day—Justaperson

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My pipe dream is a nation without guns. Its the same pipe dream the abolitionists had in 1800, when slaves were owned by millions of Americans, just as guns are today. Through peaceful, but determined campaigns, those brave men and women drove slavery out of America. Here’s how we do it:

If our neighbor owns a gun, we first try to talk to them, explaining the statistical probability of being killed or killing with that same gun. If he refuses to give up his genetalia compensator, call the police.

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Spare no neighbor, gun store, NRA member, or even friend, if that’s the case, the honor of being reported to the authorities.

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By calling, you make clear your belief that gun ownership is a crime, a bane on society which must be dealt with the same as robbery or drunk driving. The average American citizen doesn’t think that gun ownership is wrong, but we do, and we are right, and will fight until society knows that gun ownership is a crime, in the same way it figured out that slavery was a crime.

…

We need to remain strong and persistent in the face of rising gun violence and an increasing number of gun nuts, and not be afraid of those who would rather let six innocent college students get shot than give up their dick extenders.

Justaperson
June 3, 2014
Civil Disobedience to Counter Open Carry Texas
[Via email from Barron.

Wow! Powerful stuff here. Two invocations of Markley’s Law and extremely clear message that they want to take your guns.

I find it odd these people want to identify with the abolition and other civil rights movements while attempting to extinguish a civil right. They have really messed up mental processes.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Mayor Barbara Fass

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I think you have to do it a step at a time and I think that is what the NRA is most concerned about, is that it will happen one very small step at a time, so that by the time people have “woken up”—quote—to what’s happened, it’s gone farther than what they feel the consensus of American citizens would be. But it does have to go one step at a time and the beginning of the banning of semi-assault military weapons, that are military weapons, not “household” weapons, is the first step.

Mayor Barbara Fass
Stockton, California
April 11, 1991
ABC News Special, Peter Jennings Reporting: Guns, April 11, 1991
See also The Mechanisms of the Slippery Slope
[Don’t ever let someone get away with saying no one wants to take your guns.—Joe]

Quote of the day—President Barack Obama

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Our levels of gun violence are off the charts.

President Barack Obama
June 12, 2014
Recent Deadly Shootings Reigniting Gun Control Debate
[Would that be the following charts from the U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Statistics?

Figure1

Figure2

They have to lie to even hope of winning.

The president also called himself a Second Amendment supporter.—Joe]

Misattributed quotes

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As pointed out in a comment by Greg “Blotto” Garrett on Larry Correia’s blog the famous quote supposedly by George Orwell:

People sleep peacefully in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.

It isn’t quite true.

The closest people have been able to find in his writings is:

Those who “abjure” violence can only do so because others are committing violence on their behalf.

And:

Orwell also wrote of Kipling: “He sees clearly that men can only be highly civilized while other men, inevitably less civilized, are there to guard and feed them.”

I am guilty of using the inaccurate quote.

Also pointed out by Garrett is that the most famous quote of Edmund Burke isn’t really true either:

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.

I am sort of guilty of using that one.

Don’t repeat my mistakes.

Credibility

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I was loving every sentence of this article until I came to this one:

Though the hole’s depth is impressive, it’s a small fraction of the distance to the center of the Earth, which is estimated to be nearly 4,000 miles deep.

They lost all credibility with that one sentence.

Quote of the day—thewriterinblack

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I’m not saying we should kill all the stupid people. I’m just saying we should remove all the warning labels and let things sort themselves out.

thewriterinblack
June 10, 2014
Comment to The Naive Idiocy of Teaching Rapists Not To Rape
[I can see how a case could be made for this.—Joe]

Volunteers and donations needed in Washington state

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We have a gun rights initiative battle going on in Washington state this year. Read about it here. We can use volunteers and money. Sign up as a volunteer here. Donate here.