Australia is a shining example of what can be done and how well gun control can work.
Ron Lowe
November 10, 2015
Reader input: Australia points the way on guns
[Don’t ever let anyone get away with telling you that no one wants to take your guns.—Joe]
In the end, liberal identification with criminals leads to the police knowing that the politicians don’t have their backs and to a reduction in effective crime control. It’s not an accident that liberals disagree with Giuliani’s “Broken Window” policing philosophy, since liberals don’t seem to care about the victims of “petty” crimes.
We need to tell the American people, our friends and neighbors, the truth that liberals aren’t like honest folk instead liberals identify with criminals and therefore support laws that favor criminals over victims and society.
Tom Trinko
October 31, 2015
Why Liberals Identify with Criminals
[H/T to Ed Driscoll.
There is far more to this than Trinko elaborated on in his post. In The Gulag Archipelago, Volume 2: An Experiment in Literary Investigation, 1918-1956 by Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn there is extensive reporting of how the criminal class was the natural ally of the communists because the criminals would steal from and murder those with property. I.E. those who bettered themselves above the “common person”. Also political heresy, ideas contrary to communist thought, was considered more dangerous than thieves and murders to the communists and were treated as such.—Joe]
An Australian acquaintance was recently visiting the United States. This was a man who had served in the Royal Australian Regiment in Vietnam, and had never committed a crime in his life. And he recounted, one by one, his guns that were taken from him—which included some that had been in his family for generations—and he told me in no uncertain terms, “Don’t let them register your guns, Mate. Because once they do, they can come for them anytime they want.”
Mark Keefe
October 12, 2015
Keefe Report: “Don’t Let Them Register Your Guns, Mate”
[I have nothing more to say publically on this matter at this time.—Joe]
For at least ten years gun owners, the police, and many others have been saying “ballistic fingerprinting” will not and cannot work (many of the links are dead but in January 2005 they were active, I include them anyway to give a hint at the number of people who were in agreement the system was doomed to failure):
Millions of dollars and over a decade later the Maryland legislators finally admitted what we have been saying all along:
Millions of dollars later, Maryland has officially decided that its 15-year effort to store and catalog the “fingerprints” of thousands of handguns was a failure.
Since 2000, the state required that gun manufacturers fire every handgun to be sold here and send the spent bullet casing to authorities. The idea was to build a database of “ballistic fingerprints” to help solve future crimes.
But the system — plagued by technological problems — never solved a single case. Now the hundreds of thousands of accumulated casings could be sold for scrap.
…
But the computerized system designed to sort and match the images never worked as envisioned. In 2007, the state stopped bothering to take the photographs, though hundreds of thousands more casings kept piling up in the fallout shelter.
And now we all get to say, “I told you so”:
@_Tom_Bishop #cocksnotglocks
Texano713 @ Texano713
Tweeted on October 12, 2015
[It’s another Markley’s Law Monday!
Via a tweet from Linoge.—Joe]
Via email a few weeks ago from “longtime reader” Mike H. we have Taking executive action on guns, McAuliffe bans firearms in most state offices:
After facing resistance to new gun-control measures in the General Assembly, Gov. Terry McAuliffe used his executive authority Thursday to bolster prosecutions of illegal gun sales and ban firearms in most state offices.
In an executive order signed during a morning news conference in Richmond, McAuliffe established a task force that will direct state resources toward gun prosecutions, ordered the Virginia State Police to create a tip line to let people collect rewards for reporting gun violations and enacted an immediate ban on openly carried guns in executive branch offices.
“Gun crimes are not acts of God,” McAuliffe said. “But for too long, certain politicians and lobbyists have told us that gun violence in America is some sort of natural phenomenon, something we cannot do anything about. Today, we are gathered to recognize that we are not helpless to gun violence, that we can prevent it.”
Really? McAuliffe is “recognizing” he can prevent gun violence? Citation needed.
Is he also going to “recognize” he can prevent religious violence by restricting religions?
I’m in agreement with Matt Irwin.
Any politician who wants gun control should not only never make office, but should be banned from politics for life.
Matt Irwin
November 6, 2015
Comment to McAuliffe Attempts To Claim Virginia Loss Wasn’t Because Of Gun Control
[Of course. It’s no different than they wanted to implement speech, religion, or book control.—Joe]
On September 13, 1994 the Democrats passed the most restrictive federal gun control law in US history. On November 8, 1994, the Democrats suffered their second biggest defeat ever. As a result of a 54-seat swing in membership from Democrats to Republicans, the Republican Party gained a majority of seats in the United States House of Representatives for the first time since 1952 and a majority of votes for the first time since 1946. It was also the largest seat gain for the Republican Party since 1946.
In January 2014, Obama and the Democrats led the charge in further restricting our Civil Rights as numerated in the Bill of Rights by trying to pass an even more oppressive gun-control law than in 1994. On November 4, 2014, the elections resulted in the largest Republican majority in the entire country in nearly a century, with 54 seats in the Senate, 247 (56.78%) in the House, 31 governorships (62%), and 68 state legislative chambers. Moreover, Republicans gained their largest majority in the House since 1928, the largest majority in Congress overall since 1928, and the largest majority of state legislatures since 1928.
I pray the Democrats are so stupid to try it again!!!!!!!! Then you will only be able to see the Party named Democrats in the history books.
M-1
November 6, 2015
Comment to Democratic pollsters: Don’t blame gun control for Virginia loss
[There is more than a little exaggeration in the conclusion but I suspect a fair amount of truth too.—Joe]
From Why Hillary Clinton Thinks Gun Control Can Win in 2016:
Seven years ago, when Hillary Clinton was fighting a grueling Democratic primary battle against then-Sen. Barack Obama, she boasted of duck hunting and championed the Second Amendment. Clinton’s campaign in Indiana sent around negative mailers pasted with rifles, accusing Obama of being weak on gun rights. She talked of learning to shoot a gun as a child.
“You know, my dad took me out behind the cottage that my grandfather built on a little lake called Lake Winola outside of Scranton and taught me how to shoot when I was a little girl,” Clinton said in April 2008. “It’s part of culture. It’s part of a way of life. People enjoy hunting and shooting because it’s an important part of who they are.”
Now she says:
Today, Clinton’s calculus has changed. She has come out this campaign in favor of gun control measures with a vigor that surprised even some Democrats, targeting minorities and urban voters.
…
Clinton is helping shape the national debate about firearms, calling for a “national movement” to “stand up to the NRA” and lambasting Republicans for voting against gun control legislation.
I guess this must be “evolution” in action. I can’t imagine it is because she sees the potential for campaign money in taking a different position.
Whatever you do when talking to gun owners use simple sentences and talk slow avoiding big words.
Italian Rose
October 12, 2015
How to argue about gun control
[This is what they think of you.
I say, “Just let them just keep thinking that.”—Joe]
The fact is, the widespread availability of guns is a significant, but often overlooked, cause of persistent inequality in the United States. Focusing on the relationship between guns and inequality will allow gun control advocates to argue that restricting firearm access is an essential step towards achieving social justice and economic empowerment.
The first way that guns drive inequality is by making life more violent and less stable for people living in economically disadvantaged communities.
Jacob Schuman
November 4, 2015
The Equality Argument For Gun Control
[He has it exactly backwards. Guns enable a civil society.—Joe]
Let me reiterate that I am ok with mass gun seizing. And a national handgun ban.
Conor P. Williams @ConorPWilliams
Tweeted on November 2, 2015
[Via a tweet from Robb Allen.
Mr. Williams, May you live in interesting times. Molon Labe.
Don’t ever let anyone get away with telling you that no one wants to take your guns.—Joe]
I’ve proposed a similar Godwin corollary to Godwin’s Law which I have none-too-modestly dubbed “Knox’s Law.”
As an online discussion of gun owners’ rights grows longer, the probability of an ad absurdum argument involving nuclear weapons approaches 1.
Ecclesiastes 1:9King James Version (KJV)
The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.
Chris Knox
November 2, 2015
Comment to Quote of the day—Darcy @brooklinegirl
[And so it shall be. We now have a Knox’s Law category.—Joe]
The ATF tweeted about their Open Data website the other day and I started poking around this evening. There is some interesting stuff there. It includes developer APIs for accessing their data, number of people in various positions, budgets, the number of explosives manufactures in each state, the heat produced by burning a Christmas tree, and tons of other stuff.
@tinaissa One time, I said to a gun nut, Gun Avi=Teenie Weenie Dick. Boy, did he get upset. Babies.
Darcy @brooklinegirl
Tweeted on January 25, 2015
[It’s another Markley’s Law Monday! Via a tweet from Linoge.—Joe]
My reversal on guns came about because I realized that gun’s are a predicate requirement for individual freedom and security. I’ve created five principles that justify this conclusion. These principles are: (1) Armed citizens are the best defense against the world’s most dangerous killer: government; (2) I am a Jew; (3) I am not a racist; (4) a self-defended society is a safe society; and (5) the only way gun-control activists can support their position is to lie.
Bookworm
October 1, 2015
Five reasons that the benefits that flow from guns far outweigh the risks inherent in guns
[There are a lot of different reasons people can reverse their position on a subject. If you want to have the power to change minds it is important to have as many different tools in your toolbox as you can. You may need to try a great number of them before you find the tool that works in any given situation.—Joe]
After visiting Mesa Verde we spent the night in Cortez. The next morning we drove back to Arches and spent the day there. We probably hiked a total seven miles and saw stunning scenery almost everywhere we went.
I’ll let the pictures tell the story.
There is a compound assertion that (a) guns are uniquely available in the United States compared with other modern developed nations, which is why (b) the United States has by far the highest murder rate. Though these assertions have been endlessly repeated, statement (b) is, in fact, false and statement (a) is substantially so.
Don B. Kates and Dr. Gary Mauser
Would Banning Firearms Reduce Murder and Suicide? A Review of International and Some Domestic Evidence
Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, Volume 30, Number 2, Spring 2007.
[See also the more recent commetary on it: Harvard University Study Reveals Astonishing Link Between Firearms, Crime and Gun Control (via email from Steve at work.
The paper is over eight years old but it is still relevant.—Joe]
At work today there was a contest and Picard won!
Nick Vivion asks, “Could this new Wi-Fi technology revolutionize airport security?”
Some of the most promising new technology has emerged from a multi-year project from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab: a Wi-Fi network that can identify who you are — even through a wall. Yep, you read that right. These geniuses have built a way to implement Wi-Fi as a means to identify the unique characteristics of individual humans.
The RF Capture technology is able to analyze how Wi-Fi signals bounce off a human being to create an outline similar to what you might see from a millimeter wave scanner. The secret sauce is a reconstruction algorithm that stitches the many refracted waves into an image and then analyses the results. The system was able to identify 15 different people with a 90% accuracy.
The last sentence is meaningless. There are two types of errors. False positives and false negatives. Which type is this 90% numbers? Furthermore there are two types meanings of “identify” in biometrics. There is, “Who is this person?” (identification). And there is, “Is this person who they say they are? (verification)”. If they are identifying one person out of a population of 15 90% of the time then the success with of a population of 100s, 1000s, or millions is going to be insignificant. If they talking about verification then it means that one out of ten times an imposter is falsely verified. This is way too poor.
If that isn’t enough they don’t address the fundamental difficulty with security. That is that you have an active adversary. The adversary is going to do whatever they can to fool you. Wi-Fi signals bounce off of humans, as shown in the video below, but they bounce of metal even better. A little bit of aluminum foil underneath your shirt and you will appear as a completely different image to their technology. Some outdoor clothing has aluminum built into it for heat retention. This would play havoc with their tech.
Vivion should have asked a security expert his question. The answer would have been “No. Next question.”