They should have chocolate covered frozen bananas. That’s totally a Disney food group.
Barb L.
February 19, 2014
[This was while on a Disney Island in the Bahamas.–Joe
Author Archives: Joe
Quote of the day—Pam Bergren
Today’s Courant says that there could be as many as 330,000 people with assault weapons who refused to register them according to the law. Then now is the time to increase the penalty and start rounding them up.
Pam Bergren
East Hartford
February 12, 2014
Prosecute Illegal Gun Owners
[Just so you know what they want done to you for exercising your specific enumerated right to keep and bear arms.
Ms. Bergren should be careful what she says. It may be used as evidence against her at her trial.—Joe]
Quote of the day—David Carr
Mr. Morgan’s approach to gun regulation was more akin to King George III, peering down his nose at the unruly colonies and wondering how to bring the savages to heel. He might have wanted to recall that part of the reason the right to bear arms is codified in the Constitution is that Britain was trying to disarm the citizenry at the time.
David Carr
February 23, 2014
Piers Morgan and CNN Plan End to His Prime-Time Show
[Carr seems to get it even if he (reading the rest of his article) doesn’t agree with it. Morgan’s attitude and simply calling Alan Gottlieb and others “stupid” rather than having plausible argument made his position much, much worse.—Joe]
Quote of the day—Perspecticus
Sure, you could be a “protector”. Or you could be a tiny-dicked meathead who likes to show everybody what a tough guy he is.
Perspecticus
February 10, 2014
Comment made at 2/10/2014 8:35 AM PST to Second Amendment applies to carrying guns in cars
[It’s another Markley’s Law Monday!—Joe]
Quote of the day—Warren Stupidity
Make possession of high capacity magazines a federal felony with a minimum sentence of five years.
Warren Stupidity
December 16, 2012
Comment to Obama is not going to take your guns away. We are.
[But no one wants to take your guns.—Joe]
Quote of the day—Mark Wahlberg
Well, I would love it if they could take all the guns away. Unfortunately, you can’t do that so you hope that good people in the world have them to protect the people who can’t protect themselves.
Certainly, I haven’t used a gun anywhere other than on a movie set and I’d like to see if we could take them all away. It would be a beautiful thing.
Mark Wahlberg
April 26, 2007
Straight shooter
[This is a much more interesting quote that I originally expected.
I originally ran across this quote with the preceding paragraph that I quoted:
I’d like to see if we could take them (guns) all away. It would be a beautiful thing.
Which is attributed to Wahlberg in several places:
- Hollywood Hypocrisy on Guns
- Lone Survivor star Mark Wahlberg: Prohibited from touching guns
- 8 Surprising Anti-Gun Celebrities
It is rarely (only once that I discovered) is it pointed out that the actual quote (that I used above) is more ambiguous than the more common one. In fact I could see the second paragraph of my selection being taken out of context in such a way that it completely changed the meaning. The “I haven’t used a gun anywhere other than a movie set” could mean something like “used a gun against people or animals”.
I don’t trust Hollywood actors to have solid political sense or philosophy but I trust the accuracy of reporters even less.—Joe]
Quote of the day—jrharvil
If one man, or woman, in 3000 can zero in on and ventilate just one of the loyalists who are supporting the unconstitutional government, the war will be over rather quickly.
The power of a single bullet cannot be understated.
jrharvil
January 12, 2014
Comment to Tyrants beware. 4th Generation Warfare: How the next civil war will be fought.
[Interesting reading.—Joe]
Quote of the day—Katie Pavlich
People are more dissatisfied with current gun laws than they’ve ever been before. The most recent spike in dissatisfaction comes from people who want more Second Amendment freedoms, not more strict gun control laws.
Katie Pavlich
January 31, 2014
Poll: More Americans Dissatisfied With Gun Control Laws Being Too Strict
[As I have been saying for years; the anti-gun bigots are the KKK of the 21st Century. And as this century progresses they will be swept into the dustbin of history just like the KKK was in the 20th Century. The courts and, more importantly, the people agree with us.
Once we stopped them in 1994 progress was slow until the Heller decision. But I expect things will accelerate as popular opinion gains critical mass.—Joe]
Quote of the day—Daniel Vitalis
If you choose not to own firearms, I ask you to consider your willingness to call people with firearms to come to your rescue if you find your life or limb in jeopardy (“hello 911, please send help, there’s an intruder in my home!”). This is – to me – a classic case of personal disempowerment, where we refuse to participate in our own defense but request or even demand that others protect us. If you find the idea of armament repugnant, I ask you to consider how much of your peaceful, affluent, and creative lifestyle is afforded by the willingness of others to take up arms on your behalf. Consider what your life here at home might be like if we suddenly left ourselves and our nation defenseless.
Daniel Vitalis
January 31, 2013
On Gun Control
[There is a lot more good stuff where this came from.—Joe]
Quote of the day—Emily Miller
Americans realized that infringing upon their Second Amendment rights must have a proven public safety purpose.
Since no gun-control law has ever reduced crime, they now realize they have to strengthen the laws affirming their constitutional rights before they are further chipped away.
Emily Miller
January 28, 2014
MILLER: South Carolina kicks back ban on gun concealed carry in restaurants
[A stronger form of Just One Question. Nice.—Joe]
Quote of the day—Juanita Jean
There’s very little talk among political junkies in Texas this morning about anything else except Wendy Davis’ stunning and unexpected announcement that she favors open carry in Texas. That means strapping a gun on your hip and parading around town like something out of a damn John Wayne movie. Oh yeah, Texas needs more guys with tiny winkies strapping on holsters.
Juanita Jean
February 8, 2014
Juanita Jean Is Mad As Hell At Wendy Davis
[It’s another Markley’s Law Monday!
H/T to Weer’d Beard for the email.—Joe]
Quote of the day—The Hartford Courant
Owning an unregistered assault weapon is a Class D felony. Felonies cannot go unenforced.
…
If you want to disobey the law, you should be prepared to face the consequences.
The Hartford Courant
February 14, 2014
State Can’t Let Gun Scofflaws Off Hook
[H/T to Jay F. for the email.
I agree with The Hartford Courant that felonies cannot go unenforced and that those who deliberately violate the law should be prepared to face the consequences.
I look forward to their trials and their editorials being used as evidence against them.—Joe]
Quote of the day—Larry P. Card
I sense a great disturbance in the Force…as if a million liberals screamed out in terror, and were suddenly told by the court to grow up already…
Larry P. Card
Comment on Facebook in regard to a comment of mine to the post May-Issue CCW struck down in California.
[But will they grow up now?
No. They will not grow up now. There will have to be many, many, more lessons taught before they will be fit to participate in a free society with the rest of us. And many will never be fit for more than prison.—Joe]
Quote of the day—jy151310
The constitution is supposed to protect the government from the people. I can’t see how this will help.
jy151310
February 13, 2014
Comment to Ninth Circuit holds Second Amendment secures a right to carry a gun
[Sarcasm?
Maybe. But I know people that are mentally messed up enough to believe that and yet they are professionally functional.
I believe that people like this actually exist and this is part of why we have the IRS, NSA, and TSA routinely abusing their power.—Joe]
Update: It’s sarcasm.
May-Issue CCW struck down in California
It is time to hide the sleeping pills and Tequila from the anti-gunners.
California’s “may-issue” CCW has been ruled unconstitutional. This ruling is really big. Both California and Illinois have had their infringement of the specific enumerated right to keep and bear arms struck down by Federal Courts.
It is becoming increasingly difficult for other states and D.C. to hold on to their oppressive CCW laws.
Here are some quotes from the decision:
The Second Amendment, Heller tells us, secures “the right to ‘protect[] [oneself] against both public and private violence,’ thus extending the right in some form to wherever a person could become exposed to public or private violence.”
…
Writing over thirty years later in what Heller calls the “most important” American edition of Blackstone’s Commentaries, id. at 594, St. George Tucker, a law professor and former Antifederalist, affirmed Blackstone’s comments on the British right and commented further on its American dimensions. The right to armed self-defense, Tucker insisted, is the “first law of nature,” and any law “prohibiting any person from bearing arms” crossed the constitutional line.
…
We are well aware that, in the judgment of many governments, the
safest sort of firearm-carrying regime is one which restricts the privilege to law enforcement with only narrow exceptions. Nonetheless, “the enshrinement of constitutional rights necessarily takes certain policy choices off the table. . . . Undoubtedly some think that the Second Amendment is outmoded in a society where our standing army is the pride of our Nation, where well-trained police forces provide personal security, and where gun violence is a serious problem. That is perhaps debatable, but what is not debatable is that it is not the role of this Court [or ours] to pronounce the Second Amendment extinct.” Id. at 636. Nor may we relegate the bearing of arms to a “second-class right, subject to an entirely different body of rules than the other Bill of Rights guarantees that we have held to be incorporated into the Due Process Clause.” McDonald, 130 S. Ct. at 3044.
Repeating this exceedingly important part:
Nor may we relegate the bearing of arms to a “second-class right, subject to an entirely different body of rules than the other Bill of Rights guarantees that we have held to be incorporated into the Due Process Clause.”
The Second Amendment must be respected just as much as the First, or any other article in the Bill of Rights.
This is winning. This is evidence to use at their trials.
Quote of the day—Paul Koning
Prof. Randy Barnett, in his excellent book “Restoring the Lost Constitution” talks at length about this point. Briefly, he argues that you have to think of this (as Weer’d mentions) like the rule for reading a contract. A contract means what the words meant to reasonable people at the time it was signed. If the words change meaning later, that has no effect. Never mind if the words still mean what they did but it’s merely the wishes of one of the parties that have changed.
So it is here. After all, the Constitution is the document that most deserves to be called “Contract with America”. So you have to read each article using the interpretation that normal persons reading it at the time of that article’s adoption would have used.
By the way, that means “original intent” is the wrong term. What matters is not the intent of those who wrote the text — often that’s only a guess and some of the people involved did not have honorable intent anyway. What matters is the common understanding of those who APPROVED the text — the voters who ratified it. And that is easy enough to find out, just read the newspaper discussions and meeting minutes of the time.
If you do this, it’s easy to see that those who oppose the individual rights interpretation of the 2nd Amendment are dishonest and use fraudulent argument to justify their anti-American goals.
Paul Koning
February 12, 2014
Comment to Quote of the day—ebola05
[Shorter version: The U.S. Constitution is the original “Contract with America”.
What isn’t said but I think should have been in the contract is a penalties clause. Something like those who passed and/or enforced laws which were later found to be unconstitutional would be held liable for all legal fees and treble damages.—Joe]
The science is settled
Via @ItsRobbAllen we have an article about a paper demonstrating that mass shootings do not usher in a new age of gun control. In fact it is just the opposite.
Correlation is not causation but from looking at the numbers it seems pretty clear that horrific mass shootings are followed, a year or so later, by less support for gun control than just before the mass shooting.
The authors of the paper are clearly in favor of gun control. They ask, and answer, the question of how to go about “Breaking the Cycle”. The cycle being the “regression to the mean” and a continued drop in support after an initial surge in support for gun control following a particularly horrific mass shooting.
Their answer, in part, is:
To change the shooting cycle, gun control advocates must change the gun culture. But to change the gun culture, gun control advocates must explain, or at least distance themselves from the position that causes the fiercest opposition—that the Brady Campaign sees as its ultimate goal the criminalization of possessing guns. Nelson “Pete” Shields III, a founder of Handgun Control, Inc.—the aptly named progenitor of the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence—openly advocated for the elimination of all handguns: “‘We’re going to have to take this one step at a time. . . . Our ultimate goal—total control of all guns—is going to take time.’ The ‘final problem,’ he insisted, ‘is to make the possession of all handguns and all handgun ammunition’ for ordinary civilians ‘totally illegal.’”197 John Hechinger, a sponsor of the D.C. handgun ban and a board member of Handgun Control, Inc., put it simply: “We have to do away with the guns.”198
The anti-gun people have difficult hurdles to overcome. They must attract supporters that are willing to donate money and time to, at best, only make small incremental, paper-work type, changes to gun laws. They cannot speak or even whisper of banning guns. Without banning, and perhaps even with draconian bans, people with any smarts about them will realize “universal background checks”, “gun free zones”, and restrictive carry laws are just crazy talk. How many people are willing to spend time and money on something that only benefits their cause in some abstract way of encumbering “the gun culture”.
If they could speak of grand plans to ban guns and create a “gun free America” if only given enough money and time then they probably could get more support. But doing so increases their opposition more than their support.
So how to “change” (eliminate) the gun culture? That is another huge hurdle. There are no “anti-gun ranges” or “anti-gun shows” to take people to for fun, learning, and familiarity. A process/cycle has been identified for which the chances of the anti-gun forces breaking is very low. To disrupt the cycle requires a raising the bar to gun ownership such that the propagation of “the gun culture” is inhibited. But raising such a bar is virtually impossible at this time because of the courts and the resistance with which disruption is met with.
It’s a similar problem to that faced by those who advocate for reducing greenhouse gases which contribute to “Global Warming”/”Climate Change”. People like the benefits of those activities which produce the greenhouse gases as a side effect. Any effort to break “the cycle” of greenhouse gas production encounters very stiff resistance on the specifics of the proposed legislative action even though some polling data indicates a sizable portion of the (mostly ignorant) population agree with the vague, overall goals.
One could say that this paper settles the science on the politics of gun control. The gun control people are losing and as long as we continue expanding our culture they will continue to lose.
Random thought of the day
To a certain extent guns are like sex. Once someone becomes sexually active they seldom voluntarily become asexual let alone anti-sexual. And so it is with people who learn to use guns in a safe and supportive environment.
Many anti-gun people are proud they have never fired a gun and vow to never shoot one. “Guns only have one purpose!”, they insist. They wear their ignorance with pride and yet demand they should legislate the rules of ownership. And so it is in some social circles in regards to sexual activities.
But most people would laugh and, at their most charitable, say, “How cute!” if monks who had taken vows of celibacy were demanding laws which regulated sexual behavior between consenting adults. “No one needs sex more than once a month!”, they might demand.
And once such people gained control government registration of each sexual union would be “just common sense” to reduce the transmission of sexual diseases. Sympathetic courts would rule that government had an interest in protecting the safety of the citizens and the registration law, no matter how unlikely to be complied with, it has a rational basis and hence overrides the non-enumerated constitutional right to privacy.
And of course many gun control advocates really are nothing but Puritans afraid someone somewhere is having fun.
Quote of the day—ebola05
Anyone who utters the words “the Constitution is a living document” or “the Constitution must be interpreted in the context of the times we live in” believes in a society with no governing rules.
These folks are not “Americans”, but true believers in the Marxist cause.
Ignore them or ridicule them.
ebola05
February 9, 2014
Comment to Second Amendment applies to carrying guns in cars
[I’m not so certain you can safely conclude “the Marxist cause” but I’m confident the rest is correct.—Joe]
Confiscation dampens enthusiasm
Via Rusty Weiss who says:
In the clip seen below, Democrat Assemblyman Joseph Lentol can be heard pleading with McLaughlin that he not share the list “because it has the capacity to dampen the enthusiasm of compromise.” To which McLaughlin replies, “It sure does, when we talk about the confiscation of assault weapons.”
Yes. Yes it does.
Don’t let anyone tell you, “No one wants to take your guns.”