Author Archives: Joe

Plausible Hypothesis

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Quote of the Day

Their panic is because this would lead to the final demise of their hopes of full gun bans someday.

That hope was tied to demographic decline of white men, the biggest gun-owning group. If women and people of color are also gun owners at growing rates, that dream dies.

Kostas Moros @MorosKostas
Posted on X on October 11, 2024

This was in response to this:

Funny how anti-gunners make jokes about gun owners being all white men and then freak out when they see gun companies marketing toward people who aren’t white men

Rob Romano @2Aupdates
Posted on X October 11, 2024

Kamala Harris announcing she owns a gun is another data point in favor of this hypothesis. She and/or her handlers see the writing on the wall and have decided it is time to be less openly hostile to gun ownership.

We Can Line All Those Guys Up and Shoot ’em

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Quote of the Day

We can line all those guys up and shoot ’em. And they clearly don’t understand the way the world works.

Phillip Lowcock 
October 9, 2024

Via a post on X from Chuck Petras @Chuck_Petras.

Violence. It is their language. It is what they think they can do. It is what they do.

See also:

I find it “interesting” that in the video he clearly says, “… we can…”. But in the msn.com, Newsweek, cjonline.com, and ksnt.com articles they “quote” him as saying, “…we could…”. Other articles don’t provide any quotes at all. They just say “Lowcock made some remarks about some men.”

What bias in the mainstream media?

Perhaps you really can’t hate the media enough.

AI Bias in Political Violence Reporting

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There have been two attempted assassination attempts on former President Trump. There seems to always damage to local campaign offices of both parties. I decided to compare the numbers.

This conversation is with Microsoft’s Copilot. The “oversight” may be telling…

You

Please give me a list of Democratic Party campaign offices which have been deliberately damaged in the last six months.

Copilot

In the past six months, there have been several incidents involving damage to Democratic Party campaign offices. For example, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) office in Tempe, Arizona, has been targeted multiple times. The office was struck by gunfire on three separate occasions: September 16, September 23, and October 6 1 2 3. No injuries were reported in any of these incidents.

If you need more details or have other questions, feel free to ask!

You

Have there been any other Democratic Party campaign offices damaged?

Copilot

Yes, there have been other incidents involving damage to Democratic Party campaign offices. For example, the campaign office shared by Vice President Kamala Harris and the Democratic Party in Tempe, Arizona, was damaged by gunfire on multiple occasions 1 2 3. These incidents have raised concerns about political violence and the safety of campaign offices 4.

If you need more details or have other questions, feel free to ask!

You

Please list offices other than the Tempe, Arizona office.

Copilot

I couldn’t find any other specific incidents involving damage to Democratic Party campaign offices in the last six months. The Tempe, Arizona office seems to be the most notable case recently.

If you have any other questions or need information on a different topic, feel free to ask!

You

Please give me a list of Republican Party campaign offices which have been deliberately damaged in the last six months.

Copilot

I couldn’t find any specific incidents involving damage to Republican Party campaign offices in the last six months. It seems there haven’t been any notable cases recently.

If you have any other questions or need information on a different topic, feel free to ask!

You

Please list all the political assassination attempts or successes in the U.S. in the last six months.

Copilot

I couldn’t find any specific incidents involving political assassination attempts or successes in the U.S. in the last six months. It seems there haven’t been any notable cases recently.

If you have any other questions or need information on a different topic, feel free to ask!

You

What about the assassination attempts on former U.S. President Donald Trump?

Copilot

There have been a couple of notable assassination attempts on former President Donald Trump in recent months. One incident occurred in Butler, Pennsylvania, during a rally on July 13, where Trump was injured 1. Another attempt took place at his Florida golf club 2. Both incidents have sparked significant media attention and public concern.

If you have any other questions or need more information, feel free to ask!

You

Why did you not list those the first time I asked about assassination attempts?

Copilot

I apologize for the oversight. I should have included those incidents in my initial response. Thanks for pointing that out. If you have any other questions or need more information, feel free to ask!

You

Are there any other assassination attempts you did not tell me about?

Copilot

In addition to the attempts on former President Donald Trump, there haven’t been any other notable assassination attempts on political figures in the U.S. in the last six months 1 2 3.

If you have any other questions or need more information, feel free to ask!

You

Have there been any damage to Republican campaign offices you overlooked telling me?

Copilot

I couldn’t find any specific incidents involving damage to Republican Party campaign offices in the last six months. It seems there haven’t been any notable cases recently.

If you have any other questions or need information on a different topic, feel free to ask!

Perhaps Copilot considers assassinating Trump protected speech under the First Amendment.

Arming Up

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There has been a surge in the number of liberal Americans owning a firearm, according to new gun ownership data from the University of Chicago’s NORC research group cited by The Wall Street Journal.

According to WSJ, a world that has long been the domain of the white conservative male is being adopted by a growing number of Democrats who are ditching their scruples and getting themselves down to the local gun store.

Given this growing trend, it is hardly surprising that presidential candidate Kamala Harris has repeatedly drawn attention to how she and her running mate Tim Walz are both gun owners.

thedailydigest.com
October 8, 2024
Is soaring gun ownership among Democrats linked to US political polarization? (msn.com)

In general, this is good for gun owner rights issues. The more gun owners the more votes we get against restrictive gun laws. That’s fine, but the question I have is, “Why now?”

This is one of the answers given in the article:

Michael Ciemnoczolowski, a dyed in the wool Democrat from Iowa, interviewed by the news outlet, said that he was anxious about various unsettling trends that included a rise in armed right-wing extremists.

This chimes with what Professor Deana Rohlinger, a sociology professor at Florida State University, said in Newsweek – that rising gun ownership amongst Democrats could well be linked to the increasing political polarization in the US.

“For some, a gun purchase may be the result of their read on how increased political tensions and divisiveness in the US might play out,” Rohlinger told the news site.

There are other suggested reasons. But I have to express my concern that a big component is those 10% of Americans who say they believe political violence is justified to prevent Trump from becoming president again.

My underground bunker in Idaho is not going to be ready in time.

Here I Am, Stuck in the Middle

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The FBI has arrested an Afghan man who officials say was inspired by the Islamic State militant organization and was plotting an Election Day attack targeting large crowds in the U.S., the Justice Department said Tuesday.

Nasir Ahmad Tawhedi, 27, of Oklahoma City told investigators after his arrest Monday that he had planned his attack to coincide with Election Day next month and that he and a co-conspirator expected to die as martyrs, according to charging documents.

Eric Tucker
October 8, 2024
FBI arrests Afghan man who officials say planned Election Day attack in the US (msn.com)

It is not enough that we have tens of millions of native-born U.S. citizens believing violence is justified to get their way on election day. We also have terrorists wanting to kill large numbers of people as well.

I want to be in an underground bunker in Idaho by election day.

Speaking of Nobel Prizes

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The Nobel prizes are coming out. These Are the Winners of the 2024 Nobel Prizes. Therefore, this is an appropriate time to bring this up.

Last May, Barb and I visited the Scandinavian countries. One of the places we visited was Stockholm. The Airbnb we stayed at had a few issues, but location was not one of them. We were capable of walking to many interesting places and nearby public transportation enabled quick access to many others.

Barb had a list of places to visit, and we connected with all of them. But just a three-minute walk from our Airbnb I saw this:

What??? We just stumbled upon the Nobel Prize Museum? Wow!

When I was in grade school, I really loved science. I entertained a dim fantasy of someday winning a Nobel Prize.

Barb wasn’t as enthusiastic as I was, but we had the time and visited the next day. She became more enthusiastic as we went through the museum. I was excited and shared bits of history she didn’t know. For example, Alford Nobel earned his money by inventing and manufacturing dynamite. He created the peace prize to compensate. He wanted to balance the war destruction enabled by his invention. We would be watching a video and without first mentioning the person, their accomplishments or difficulties would be described. I would whisper, “That must be Niels Bohr!”, or Marie Curie, or someone else I knew about.

The museum contained a lot of Nobel’s history, family, and friends. And even more exhibits of particularly well-known prize winners. Some of the things I found most interesting, included items from the prize winners that were related to the prize. This included things like the actual equipment used to make a particular discovery. Or a shawl worn while giving a famous speech. I was in awe. This is the actual equipment they used to discover “X”! Or the original notes leading to their discovery. It was awesome!

It was rather dim and since no flash photography was allowed, I didn’t get many good pictures.

Photo by Barb

Knowledge is Power

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Quote of the Day

Via a post on X from Chuck Petras @Chuck_Petras.

I suspect this may only work for very low-pressure cartridges such as .22 LR. And there may be some accuracy issues for the first few shots.

Does Anti-gun Guy Have Remote Viewing Ability?

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Nah. I enjoy laughing at you all looking at each other’s small cocks.

“Maybe we need guns to be real men, fellas…..”

Got any evidence for that claim? 🐀 @TakeThatEarth2
Posted on X November 5, 2023

It’s not only another Markley’s Law Monday, it is another science denier (see also here)!

Either he is lying, or he has remote viewing abilities. The U.S. government spent $20 million over 20 years investigating remote viewing and concluded it was pseudoscience. So, I’m going with he is lying about claiming to know gun owners are looking at each other’s penis.

SCOTUS to Hear a New Gun Case

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There are lots of good cases for SCOTUS to review. I wish an “assault weapon” ban were on the docket and eventually, perhaps incidentally with the “assault weapon” case, get NFA thrown out. The serial number/home build guns issue is being heard and is almost certain to go our way. Eventually I can see the background checks being dropped and being able to order guns online without an FFL. After all, FFL’s are not part of our history and tradition of gun laws.

In the meantime, this is probably a higher priority case than any of the above, even if it is a distraction from the individual rights cases:

Supreme Court Agrees to Hear ‘Business-Crushing’ Gun Case (msn.com)

The United States Supreme Court will hear case about whether Mexico can sue Smith & Wesson Brands Inc. for facilitating sales to people connected with Mexico’s drug cartels.

On Friday, the justices agreed to hear Smith & Wesson’s case seeking to dismiss the lawsuit filed by the Mexican government. Mexico sued the gun maker and is asking for billions of dollars in damages and new gun-control measures. It’s the first suit by a national government against the gun industry, and one that Smith & Wesson warn could completely decimate their industry.

In a letter addressed to the Supreme Court clerk on August 8, a lawyer for Smith & Wesson Brands said the company is protected from a 2005 law that provides liability shields to gunmakers.

…

In the lawsuit, Mexico alleged the manufactures and distributors were helping the purchase of their firearms by dealers who were known to supply the drug cartels. It also is claimed that the companies did not make changes, such as installing safeguards or making gun serial numbers harder to tamper with, that could make the guns less likely for criminal use.

I have to wonder why former President Obama and former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder are not named in the lawsuit. Holder was found to be in contempt of Congress for his actions in this case. They are the people that forced the gun dealers to sell guns to the Mexican cartels.

But I don’t wonder long. The likely reason is that Operation Fast and Furious was a ruse to generate a means to bring down gun dealers and manufacturers.

False Hope or a Neutered SCOTUS?

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A group of state legislators, local politicians and nonprofits on Tuesday launched a national coalition that hopes to circumvent the congressional stalemate on gun reform by pressing for violence prevention efforts at the local level.

The coalition, Legislators for Safer Communities, aims to capitalize on the shifting politics of gun reform by focusing more attention on state legislatures, where violence prevention advocates have scored their biggest wins in recent years.

Roque Planas
September 17, 2024
State Lawmakers Have Gun Reform Strategy | HuffPost Latest News

I have to wonder about something which is not mentioned, the courts. The really active gun owner rights groups are getting more done with fewer people and fewer dollars in the Federal courts than they can in the state legislatures. They don’t have to fight the same fights every year in every state.

Are the anti-gun people just trying to keep the money coming in by giving their supporters false hope? Or do they believe the Democrats are soon going to neuter SCOTUS and reverse our wins?

Libertarianism is a Poison

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Libertarianism is a poison that’s crept into our society on the backs of rightwing billionaires like the late Libertarian David Koch, who ran for Vice President in 1980 on a platform of shutting down every government agency except the military, courts, and police.

Thom Hartmann
September 29, 2024
The ideology that made Mark Zuckerberg rich is now his politics — and it’s terrifying | Opinion (msn.com)

I find it interesting he does not suggest a system he believes to be better. Or in the famous works of Thomas Sowell:

  • Compared to what?
  • At what cost?
  • What hard evidence do you have?

Communism and socialism are well known crimes against humanity (thank you MTHead). And it seems he overlooked the founding documents of the U.S. are a pretty good match for Libertarianism, and we did okay with that for several decades.

It appears to me that Hartmann sees libertarianism as a threat, and he has to lie and distort the facts about it to poison the discussion. This must be so his preferred political structure does not have to compete with the ideas of libertarians.

Changes to, Perhaps, Prevent a Stolen Election

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Via email from a friend and reader who shall remain nameless:

I’ve volunteered to be a poll worker out here in Georgia. I did the primaries, and just finished training for the general election coming up.

For the Primaries, it was all about how to follow the process, how the machines worked and how to troubleshoot them, and what the laws were around voting and how my county interpreted those laws.

This year, the training included visits from two law enforcement agencies with training on active shooter response and other unpleasantness. There is more discussion this year about mob violence (which includes mass ‘victim’ protests), and even the occasional entitled soccer mom ‘Karen’, who thinks election laws can be broken for her convenience and will scream “Disenfranchisement!” if we don’t break the law for her.  We’re not allowed to be armed, but my county will station an under-cover officer who is armed at each poling place.

Even money has Stacy Abrams creating a scene in which her supporters create a huge disturbance at a polling location in order to get a poll worker to yell at them or tell them to leave. Then we’ll see a video clip of a nice ‘family of color’ going to vote, spliced to the angry poll worker yelling at them to leave. Personally, I think it’s more than even money this will happen. The state elections board made a big deal about this in their training.

Also interesting is that a new law was passed in Georgia requiring the ballots to be hand-counted before leaving the polling place! When I heard about this, I was thrilled! I’d love to get a hand count of the human-readable names on a ballot and compare that with the tally garnered from the barcode printed on those ballots. But alas, that is not how it’s going to work. The way the law is being interpreted is that the ‘number of ballots cast’ will be counted and compared against the scanned count of ‘ballots cast’ to make sure they match.

Ugh. We did that on our own initiative after the primaries just as a due diligence check to make sure that the number of registered voters checking in matched ballots printed matched ballots recorded. We had a solid paper trail and multiple witness signatures for any discrepancy (printer ruined one ballot that needed to be re-printed. We kept the ruined ballot, voided it, and documented the occurrence. Anyone with a discrepancy with a voter registration was given a provisional ballot, and the county will deep-dive into that voter’s legal registration status before counting or tossing the vote. This part we do very well indeed.

It’s the bloody barcodes, and the fact that I don’t know what they tell the counter! I’d be happy to count all the ballots for A and for B manually, and then check that against the report from the counting machine. We post the results from the counting machine at each voting location on the door of the poling location after the polls close. Immediately transparent. But without an audit of the counting machines, I don’t trust them. They’ve been wrong before.

2024 USPSA Handgun Nations, 1st Place

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From the notes to the video:

Took home the Single Stack National Champion title at the 2024 USPSA Handgun Nationals.

Less than 2% separating Dave Sevigny and myself for the title in the end. Was one hell of a race the whole weekend.

Pistol used was a Rafferty custom guns single stack 1911 in 40 Smith & Wesson.

John is my son-in-law. Daughter Xenia told me about it two and a half weeks ago. But I just now got around to looking for the video.

Congratulations John! That is awesome!

The rain on day two must have been really miserable. I have shot a high-level match in terrible rain conditions, but I was well prepared and, it being a steel challenge match, I didn’t need to move from target to target. My heavy waterproof boots were not an issue. John appears to have shot the second day of the match in soaking wet feet.

The First Amendment is Blocking Consensus

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The dislike of and anguish over social media is just growing and growing. It is part of our problem, particularly in democracies, in terms of building consensus around any issue.

It’s really hard to govern today. The referees we used to have to determine what is a fact and what isn’t a fact have kind of been eviscerated, to a certain degree. And people go and self-select where they go for their news, for their information. And then you get into a vicious cycle.

So it’s really, really, hard, much harder to build consensus today than any time in the 45, 50 years I’ve been involved in this. You know there’s a lot of discussion now about how you curb those entities in order to guarantee that you’re going to have some accountability on facts, etc.

But look, if people only go to one source, and the source they go to is sick, and, you know, has an agenda, and they’re putting out disinformation, our First Amendment stands as a major block to be able to just, you know, hammer it out of existence.

So what we need is to win the ground, win the right to govern, by hopefully winning enough votes that you’re free to be able to implement change.

John Kerry
September 2024
John Kerry Says the First Amendment is Getting in the Way of Online Censorship (msn.com) and
Posted on X and
John Kerry: A Democrat win would allow us to ‘change’ the First Amendment to stop ‘disinformation’ (bizpacreview.com) and
John Kerry calls the First Amendment a ‘major block’ to stopping ‘disinformation’ | Fox News and
John Kerry Tells WEF: Our First Amendment Stands As A Major Block Against Hammering Disinformation Out Of Existence | Video | RealClearPolitics

“Hammer it out of existence.” It should be no surprise that if your opposition is silenced, you can get “consensus”.

Spoken like a true totalitarian.

Prepare appropriately.

Your Question is Dangerous

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I completely disagree with the premise of the question.

The question that you’re are asking; it is also incredibly dangerous in the way that you are asking it, because American people are watching.

Karine Jean-Pierre
White House Press Secretary
September 18, 2024
Jean-Pierre scorched for ‘utterly heinous response’ defending Biden-Harris rhetoric calling Trump a ‘threat’ | Fox News

The question, you ask?

It’s been, only two days since someone, allegedly, tried to kill Donald Trump again. And you are here at the podium in the White House Briefing Room, calling him a threat. How many more assignation attempts on Donald Trump until the president, and the vice president, and you pick a different word, to describe Trump, other than threat?

If you question their violence inspiring rhetoric, they declare your speech is dangerous. Then, if you listen to the rest of her response, she doubles down on Trump being a threat.

This is what they think of you.

Doesn’t that tell you everything you need to know about their attitude toward the First Amendment?

Prepare appropriately.

All Your Rights Violated, All the Time

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We’re going to require responsible behaviors among everybody in the community, and just because you legally possess a gun in the sanctity of your locked home doesn’t mean that we’re not going to walk into that home and check to see if you’re being responsible and safe in the way you conduct your affairs.

Kamala Harris
2007
Commentary: On the Second Amendment, Harris shoots herself in the foot — again (msn.com)

Using the 2nd Amendment as sort of a canary in the coalmine seems to work well. If they won’t respect the 2nd Amendment, why should you expect they will respect any other rights? And, of course, once they have sufficiently infringed upon the right to keep and bear arms you don’t have the means to effectively push back when they infringe all your rights all the time.

We Are Glad We Don’t Live in a Hurricane Zone

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Barb and I saw some of the terrifying videos of the destruction caused by hurricane Helene:

We are so pleased we don’t live in a hurricane zone.

Instead, we live in a place with earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanoes.

There Are Many Answers

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There is but one answer to be made to the dynamite bomb and that can best be made by the Winchester rifle.

Theodore Roosevelt
1887
Did Teddy Roosevelt Say the ‘One Answer to Terrorism’ Is a Winchester Rifle?

Via an email, which had “terrorism” instead of “the dynamite bomb” in the quote, from pkoning.

While it captures the appropriate sentiment succinctly, it is not all that accurate these days. It appears to me that Israel is doing rather well in their fight against the terrorists/dynamite-bombers in their neighborhoods while using few, and perhaps zero, Winchester rifles. As was reported in a briefing at work last week:

They compromised the supply chain and delivered pagers with explosives to Hezbollah leadership. They blew them up almost simultaneously. Hezbollah then went to walkie-talkies and those were blown up. When Hezbollah then assembled in a single building for face-to-face communication, they blew up the building.

This will be studied and admired for years to come as one of the most creative, complex, and well executed operations in the history of warfare.

Precision guided bombs, M-4s, M-16s, tanks, and hand grenades have been delivering some very authoritative answers as well.

Whatever you think of their religion, ethics, and/or political behavior, they have certainly demonstrated if you don’t respect them, you risk coming to fear them.

I hope gun owners don’t have to teach similar lessons to those who fail to respect us and our rights.

Bug or Feature?

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Not far from Boomershoot, I have a piece of property with a pistol range, a small camping trailer, utilities, and other useful improvements.

The nearest neighbor is over 0.5 miles away. The nearest stop sign is over two miles away. The nearest stop light is nearly 40 miles away. And the nearest interstate freeway is over 130 miles away.

It turns out what I regard as a feature some claim this isolation is, in software development terms, a “bug.”

It all depends on your design goals. I’m designing for quiet, safety, stability, and resilience. I think it is an appropriate location for uncertain times.

Your design goals may vary.

Don’t Let Them Drag You Down to Their Level

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Sorry about your small dick Cletus.

MAGA Mocker @MAGAmocker
Tweeted on August 11, 2023

Via a tweet from In Chains @InChainsInJail·

The idiots always try to drag the more intelligent people down to their level in an attempt to win with childhood insults.

Whatever. We have SCOTUS decisions. They have crude insults.