The left can’t pass any common-sense gun legislation because they aren’t proposing any.
Alan Korwin
March 21, 2016
KORWIN: Moderate Judges, Armed Teachers And Guns Are Germs – Three Myths We Just Busted
[Korwin has a way with words that dramatically clarifies the issue.—Joe]
While I understand that losing your wife and two young daughters can really mess up your mind, that doesn’t mean the media should be putting pushing his ideas without any balance:
I find that pretty revolting to think … that younger children can walk onto a firing range,” Mikac said.
He warned against allowing children to see guns as something fun.
“I just think it’s crazy.”
This makes it crystal clear the media has taken sides.
Washington State just passed a law regarding suicide by gun. As I started read the first article on the topic I was highly skeptical:
My husband died by suicide. Here’s what happened during my awkward call with the NRA.
It wasn’t the hardest phone call I’ve ever made, but it was certainly awkward. I was cold-calling the National Rifle Association. Because the NRA is well-known for offering gun safety training, I wanted to know whether the organization had ideas on how to reduce the number of firearm suicides.
…
But I learned a couple of surprising things from that call and the many follow-up meetings with a local NRA lobbyist and the executive director of the Second Amendment Foundation.
First, they were not just willing to talk but also willing to listen.
The details of the law are here. The voting is telling:
Passed by the House March 8, 2016 Yeas 94 Nays 2
Passed by the Senate March 1, 2016 Yeas 47 Nays 0
Basically the law requires a task force, in part, to:
(a) Develop and prepare to disseminate online trainings on suicide awareness and prevention for firearms dealers and their employees and firearm range owners and their employees;
(b) In consultation with the department of fish and wildlife, review the firearm safety pamphlet produced by the department of fish and wildlife under RCW 9.41.310 and, by January 1, 2017, recommend changes to the pamphlet to incorporate information on suicide awareness and prevention;
(c) Develop suicide awareness and prevention messages for posters and brochures that are tailored to be effective for firearms owners for distribution to firearms dealers and firearm ranges;
(d) Develop suicide awareness and prevention messages for posters and brochures for distribution to pharmacies;
(e) In consultation with the department of fish and wildlife, develop strategies for creating and disseminating suicide awareness and prevention information for hunting safety classes, including messages to parents that can be shared during online registration, in either follow up electronic mail communications, or in writing, or both;
Yes. It addresses pharmacies as well as firearms owners, dealers, and ranges. It looks like it has the potential to be a good program that truly tries to address the problem of suicide in a fair handed manner and not just something to demonize gun ownership. Others think so as well:
A couple of years ago, Stuber began reaching out to firearms retailers and asking them if they worried about the possibility of selling a gun to someone who might be suicidal. Virtually every employee she spoke with, she said, answered yes. With some trepidation, Stuber called the National Rifle Association and Gottlieb’s group to enlist their help in reducing firearm suicides. To her surprise, they were willing to talk, and also listen.
“There’s real hurt,” she said. “Everybody showed up at the table willing to share their pain. This is an issue that impacts all of us.”
Forefront, the NRA and the Second Amendment Foundation met with groups including the Seattle Police Department and the Department of Fish and Wildlife over about six months to draft the language for the initiative. Rep. Tina Orwall, D-Des Moines, the bill’s main sponsor, was instrumental in getting the legislation passed, Stuber said.
About 20 other states have taken steps to bring together suicide prevention advocates and gun owners, Stuber said, but none of those efforts are as broad as the Washington bill. Gottlieb thinks the initiative could become a successful model that can be replicated in other states.
“Lots of us in the firearms rights community have been concerned that a significant percentage of suicides involve lethal force,” he said. “If there’s a way to lower those numbers, it’s in gun owners’ interest to do that. To me, this is a no-brainer, but it took someone like Jenn to put it together.”
Today and tomorrow Barb is attending Insights General Defensive Handgun class. I’ve been teaching her how to shoot and she does well with basic shooting. She just got her holster on Thursday so I have not taught her much about the draw and only the basics of defensive shooting. But I think she is more than adequately prepared for the class:
Prerequisites:
CONCEALED WEAPONS PERMIT or documentation of good character AND BRING THOSE DOCUMENTS WITH YOU TO CLASS. You must be totally familiar and comfortable with your handgun. If you have never shot before or wonder how your gun works we recommend our Handgun Safety and Marksmanship class or our Basic Handgun Safety and Responsibility class.
Required Equipment:
Reliable, functional semi-automatic handgun; Belt holster (rigid) with sturdy belt; pants with belt loops; 600 rounds of brass-cased, FMJ ammunition (minimum); minimum of 2 magazines and a magazine pouch; Concealment clothing; Hearing and eye protection.
I think she may be a little bit nervous. She didn’t sleep particularly well last night and said she was thinking about the class a lot. But the clincher was that as she was just going out the door she noticed she was wearing her holster upside down.
We will ban military-style assault weapons and large capacity ammunition clips.
Sean Barney
Delaware candidate for U.S. Congress (D)
April 7, 2016
Barney hopes to make gun control an issue
See his complete position on ADDRESSING GUN VIOLENCE.
[He also wants to eliminate the default proceed if the FBI doesn’t complete the NICS check within three days. This would enable people in Washington D.C. to halt all gun sales in the entire country by simply sending NICS employees home. Imagine a government shutdown for a few days or weeks. Imagine budget cutting. Imagine “technical problems” in doing the background checks.
And don’t ever let anyone get away with telling you no one wants to take your guns.—Joe]
Interesting infographic here on what it’s like to be a porn star.
See also my blog post of my interview of a porn star.
Someone ought to present both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton with the joint “Salesmen Award of the Decade.”
They have collectively achieved what advertisers could only dream about. Their ill-informed, uninformed and intentionally misinformed, anti-gun rhetoric is a caustic shot directly across our bow. If it’s political jihad that they want to wage on this, the most quintessential of all American domestic issues, then it’s political jihad they shall receive.
Richard Feldman
March 23, 2016
Richard Feldman: Obama’s Gun Issue Misfires on Hillary
[In related news:
Political jihad over guns in November? Only if Hillary isn’t in shackles by then.—Joe]
It’s not a scientific study by any means, but this article from the New York Times could be used to generate a good hypothesis worthy of being tested:
“Our cities are facing a huge problem, maybe the largest since World War II,” Mr. Goldstein said. “How is it that people who were born here in Brussels, in Paris, can call heroes the people who commit violence and terror? That is the real question we’re facing.”
Friends who teach the equivalent of high school seniors in the predominantly Muslim districts of Molenbeek and Schaerbeek told him that “90 percent of their students, 17, 18 years old, called them heroes,” he said.
Mr. Goldstein, 38, grew up in Schaerbeek, the child of Jewish refugees from Nazism. Now a councilman from Schaerbeek, he is also chief of staff for the minister-president of the Brussels Capital Region.
I could see the hypothesis worthy of test being something like:
I could also see the politically correct crowd insisting that it is racist and Islamophobic to even test such a hypothesis while simultaneously insisting the quote above is proof Jews are racists.
My take on things is that there is a huge problem in Europe that to a greater or lesser degree extends over the entire globe and there are no good solutions. There are only painful remedies and pragmatic tradeoffs which will challenge our principles to their core.
That he would place gun manufacturers’ rights and immunity from liability against the parents of the children killed at Sandy Hook is just unimaginable to me.
Hillary Clinton
April 6, 2016
Clinton Hits Sanders on Gun Control, Sharpens Attacks
[Why not the car manufacturer that the killer drove to the school? Or the clothing manufacturer? And I’m shocked she didn’t mention the ammunition manufacturer.
It’s unimaginable to me how someone could believe that the manufacturer of a product should be liable for its deliberate, criminal, misuse. But then I suspect real issue is that Clinton “thinks” in terms of politics rather than factual or logical terms. She knows that her claim will gain her favor with certain voters and that is all that matters to her.
It’s easy for us to think she is talking crazy talk and has crap for brains. But she is a practiced, deceptive, predator who has lived a lifetime benefiting from saying things that are unsupported by facts or logic. She will continue her path of deception and destruction until she is stopped. I prefer she ends up in shackles before she is nominated but I’ll settle for an defeat at the polls in November.—Joe]
I think this is politicians, in some ways, using these terrible acts to advance their agendas. If the White House thinks that Twitter can solve their ISIS problem, they’ve got (a lot of problems).
Jan Koum
April 4, 2016
Forget Apple vs. the FBI: WhatsApp Just Switched on Encryption for a Billion People
[Yes. And the same is true of gun control, a lot of banking laws, tax law, and probably 1000 or more other things. WhatsApp is just exploiting a small chink in the armor.
Government back doors to communications violates The Jews in the Attic Test. WhatsApp intent is to keep communication private. This is no small task. I’m certain it is private from your local police force, snoopy neighbors, and most employers. But if a billion people use it that is a very juicy target for nation states. Such a high value target will justify an enormous expenditure of resources to break it. I expect it is only a matter of time before it is broken. But that doesn’t mean that it will stay broken or that gaining access to each conversation isn’t very expensive and cost prohibitive except in extremely important situations.
That said, I have WhatsApp installed on my phone.—Joe]
What we pay as gun owners in Mass. is twice as high as any state in the region. With all the talk about Massachusetts leading the nation, they collect millions of dollars from us and don’t spend a single penny on firearms education. The system is designed to register and watch the good guys, but not designed to watch the bad guys.
Jim Wallace
March 18, 2016
Executive director of the Gun Owners Action League in Massachusetts
Gun Owners Weigh In: The debate over gun control
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]
I loaded 1462 rounds in March. All of them were .40 S&W.
Here are the numbers:
223.log: 2027 rounds.
3006.log: 467 rounds.
300WIN.log: 1351 rounds.
40SW.log: 45712 rounds.
9MM.log: 21695 rounds.
Total: 71252 rounds.
The total for the year is 5196. For all of 2015 I reloaded 9531. I’m on track to reload about four times as many in 2016 as I did in 2015. I expect, at a minimum, I will exceed 80,000 rounds for my lifetime total.
Barb sent me a text message today telling me she needed some help. She figured out where to store an item but it was too heavy and awkward for her to put it in the dead body storage area.
Yes. She discovered one of my pieces of furniture has a spot where you could easily store a dead body and didn’t miss a beat in recognizing it for what it was good for then found an alternative use for it since we don’t currently have any dead bodies without a storage location.
Isn’t that awesome?!
I suggested, and utilized, an alternate location to store the item so the dead body spot will be readily available for future use.
I spent all day Saturday and Sunday morning at the Boomershoot site. The ground was a little wet in places but with just a couple days of sun it will be in fine shape. The daffodils Barb and transplanted almost three years ago look better than they did last year. Maybe I will transplant a few more sometime this summer. I would love to have the entire front of the shooting line berm covered in daffodils for Boomershoot each year.
I tested three different Wi-Fi antennas (you can see one of them which appears to be poking up out of my car in the picture above). I wasn’t happy with the one I had last year and I have replaced it. It gives coverage over a much greater area and gives faster download/upload rates as well. The only part of the shooting line without coverage with my cell phone are a few positions on the west end of the shooting line. If those people really want coverage I can put something up pretty quickly on the day of the event.
I put the target boxes on the shelves, cleaned off the target assembly tables, swept the floor, filled up the generator with gasoline, started it up (it started on the first pull!), filled up the spare gas cans, filled up the water barrel, and did a final inventory of all the target materials. I started to make some sample targets and found the ethylene glycol dispenser had a serious leak. Better now than we are trying to start full production! Barb picked up a replacement today.
I took the new rubber bands for holding the targets on the stakes to the Boomershoot Taj Mahal and cleaned up the scraps of foam insulation left over from when it was applied last summer.
Before.
After.
On Sunday I made a ghetto ice chest out of a cardboard box and some 1.5” thick foam boards I had laying around:
That is for transportation and temporary storage of the dry ice we use to keep the targets cool between manufacture and use. They degrade and become inactive after a few days at normal temperatures. This process is slowed down at lower temperatures.
I think everything is ready for Boomershoot until the day before the event when we start pounding target stakes.
There is still time to sign up.
Via a tweet from Proud Hunter@Duck_Hunter7 (which also resulted in a Markley’s Law Monday post scheduled for January 16, 2017) we have this tweet from Pupper, Esq. @alltehmunnies:
I hope you’re killed in an armed stand off with law enforcement.
And this tweet from not nev @existentialslut in the same thread:
my dream gun control legislation is all gun owners shoot themselves
Why are progressives so violent?
Oh yeah! Now I remember.
Oh, you’re in a “club” that you have to pay to be a member of. Sounds awesome. Silly, nra cowards. #bokbok #tinycockclub #gunsense
Bacon @Baconmints
Tweeted on December 23, 2014
[It’s another Markley’s Law Monday!
Via a Tweet from BFD @BigFatDave.—Joe]
An attack on abortion rights, for example, produces a far greater outcry and resistance than the successful attack on habeas corpus and due process. President Obama was able to declare his power to execute citizens by executive branch decision alone without due process and conviction in court, and it produced barely audible protest.
Historically, a government that can, without due process, throw a citizen into a dungeon or summarily execute him is considered to be a tyranny, not a democracy. By any historical definition, the United States today is a tyranny.
Paul Craig Roberts
Does The United States Still Exist?
An address delivered to the Libertarian Party of Florida on March 23, 2016 in Destin, Florida
[Interesting points.
Remember: Why Boomershoot? Insurance against tyranny.—Joe]
Across the US, states are on the verge of reversing decades-old laws about homosexual relationships and marijuana use. If the old laws could have been perfectly enforced through surveillance, society would never have reached the point where the majority of citizens thought those things were okay. There has to be a period where they are still illegal yet increasingly tolerated, so that people can look around and say, “You know, that wasn’t so bad.” Yes, the process takes decades, but it’s a process that can’t happen without lawbreaking. Frank Zappa said something similar in 1971: “Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible.”
The perfect enforcement that comes with ubiquitous government surveillance chills this process. We need imperfect security — systems that free people to try new things, much the way off-the-record brainstorming sessions loosen inhibitions and foster creativity. If we don’t have that, we can’t slowly move from a thing’s being illegal and not okay, to illegal and not sure, to illegal and probably okay, and finally to legal.
This is an important point. Freedoms we now take for granted were often at one time viewed as threatening or even criminal by the past power structure. Those changes might never have happened if the authorities had been able to achieve social control through surveillance.
Bruce Schneier
2015
Pages 97 and 98, Data and Goliath
Via Mass Surveillance Silences Minority Opinions
[This line of thought can be extended to many other victimless crimes still on the books from gun “crimes” to gambling, social nudity, sex toys, and various activities involving consenting adults.
The counter point is that with near perfect surveillance political corruption, murder, terrorism, and other horrible crimes could be significantly reduced. So the question becomes, “How do you balance the tradeoffs?”
It appears to me the greatest threats to society come government (look at the number of murders committed in the 20th Century by governments against their own citizens as opposed to murders committed by citizens on each other). Hence as a “common-sense good first step” I am of the opinion that greatly enhanced surveillance for government employees is a good thing. Implement the most extreme surveillance practical for politicians and others in positions of power. Encrypt it and store it securely. But if they are accused of wrongdoing their data comes out of storage and is reviewed for evidence of criminal activity. The rational could be, “With great power comes great responsibility. With great responsibility comes great oversight.”—Joe]
If a politician advocates for the “Australian Model of gun control” be sure to inform everyone of the “Australian Compliance Model of gun control”:
In Australia, part of the supply of banned firearms comes from defiance of the original prohibition. The Sporting Shooters’ Association of Australia estimates compliance with the “buyback” at 19 percent.
Other researchers agree. In a white paper on the results of gun control efforts around the world, Franz Csaszar, a professor of criminology at the University of Vienna, Austria, gives examples of large-scale non-compliance with the ban. He points out, “In Australia it is estimated that only about 20% of all banned self-loading rifles have been given up to the authorities.”
You might also speculate that would be an upper bound for the U.S. and that U.S. gun owners might not be nearly as “polite” about it as the Aussies.
Dan Gross of the Brady Campaign spins his false narrative again:
Make no mistake, this is a disgusting, morally depraved marketing campaign,” Dan Gross, the organization’s president, said in a statement. “The NRA continues to stoop to new lows in the hopes of shoving guns into America’s youngest hands. If nothing else, this approach demonstrates just how desperate the organization has become to sell more guns — it must now advertise deadly weapons to kids by perverting childhood classics with no regard whatsoever for the real life carnage happening every day.
To be frank, it’s pathetic.
No, Mr. Gross, your deliberate lies are pathetic. This isn’t NRA marketing. The NRA doesn’t sell guns. The NRA is a civil rights organization representing private citizens. It does not directly represent manufacturers or sellers of firearms.
But Gross is smart enough to recognize the truth will be ineffective in advancing his agenda. So, he does what he has to do. He lies.