Author Archives: Joe

Quote of the day—Shalom Auslander

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If we can’t federally mandate new gun laws, I say we pass a federal law that all American males over 18, without prejudice or exception, be required to shave the base of their cocks. Shaving the base of one’s cock is a time-honored, porno-tested method of making one’s penis appear larger than it really is. Will this rid the country of guns? No. And it shouldn’t. But I am convinced it will rid gun-owners of the need for ever bigger, more powerful “weapons,” and their insistence on shoving those compensatory bigger guns down our gagging, metaphoric throats.

Shalom Auslander
August 14, 2012
Guns, God and Other Pricks: Is Pubic Shaving the Solution to the Firearms Epidemic? — An immodest proposal for solving handgun proliferation
[It’s another Markley’s Law Monday!

H/T to David W. and Barron for the first emails. Numerous others also noticed.

Wow! Read the whole thing. This guy really has “a thing” for male genital. No argument for safety. No argument for local control in defiance of the McDonald decision. No argument that people will faint and spill their Starbucks coffee on their lap at the sight of a gun in plain view.

He is “convinced” that a perception of larger penises will “rid gun-owners of the need for ever bigger, more powerful ‘weapons’. I almost wish I had the time and interest to ask him how he determines truth from falsity and how he convinces himself of things in general. But I am nearly certain he doesn’t know himself.—Joe]

Remarkably unremarkable

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Yesterday morning I spent three hours talking with someone who retired after 26 years with the U.S. Navy as a diver and Explosives Ordnance Disposal expert.


We talked about guns and what guns we were carrying (I was carrying my STI Eagle and they had a Ruger LPC in .380) and Boomershoot a little bit. But mostly I listened to story after story of diving, finding, and disposing of unexploded bombs, shells, water heaters, and mines. Detonating 50,000 pounds of explosives in 80 feet of water apparently makes for a nice water column and lots of dead fish for the local natives to harvest. Another story involved a simulated (with conventional explosives) nuclear blast which left a good sized crater as well as making a decent sized wave in the ocean.


After we said good-bye and I was driving away I had this nagging feeling of something that was a little odd. I described the meeting to a friend as “remarkably unremarkable”.


After a half hour or so of thinking about it… Ahhhh ha! I knew what it was.


The stories were told in such a extremely calm, cool voice. There were some smiles, and some facial expressions which indicated they knew the story was interesting but there was barely any change in the pitch or the tempo of the voice. This person was not easily excited and was not particularly emotional.


That is probably a good personality trait to have in your friendly neighborhood EOD specialist.

Don’t bring a sword to a gun fight

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Why would you need a gun at Dairy Queen?

A masked man wielding a sword tried to rob a central valley Dairy Queen on Sunday afternoon but was shot and killed by an employee, Las Vegas police said.

Oh. That’s why.

Overheard

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This is an actual conversation. It has been slightly modified to enhance comedic effect. Names have been withheld to protect the guilty.


Gal: So what was she wearing?
Guy: Uhh… Clothes?
Gal: Wrong answer!
Guy: I’m pretty sure I would have noticed if she wasn’t wearing clothes. That is one of the things I check for. So I don’t think I got that answer wrong.
Gal: You can do better. Women put a lot of effort into choosing just the right clothes. But I suppose it’s good to know that guys don’t pay any attention.
Guy: I probably shouldn’t say this but I’ve read that women dress to impress and show dominance over other women rather than to get the attention of men. If they were interested in getting the attention of men they wouldn’t bother with clothes.
Gal: You’re right. You shouldn’t have said that.


Update: I have a report on what she was wearing. From top to bottom:



  • Light green scarf with images of Bugs Bunny on it.
  • Sunglasses.
  • Gold earrings.
  • Gold necklace that said “Go for it”.
  • White knit sweater.
  • White blouse.
  • Gold bracelet.
  • Blue jeans.
  • White sport shoes with pink laces.

I suppose someone somewhere is happier now.

Quote of the day—Jacob S.

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Drive safe, be safe, carry a gun.

Jacob S.
To my daughter, Kim, every morning before she leaves for work.
[Nice. I want my daughter safe and I know most of the time she has to look out for her own safety. That Jacob is encouraging her to carry tools that enhance her safety is comforting to me.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Alan Gura

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To decide this case, it is enough to acknowledge what has long been established in our legal system: access to fundamental rights does not turn on some official’s whim. No “good and substantial reason” is required to exercise fundamental rights.

…

History, not social science or debatable notions of public policy, determines whether the Second Amendment protects the right to carry a handgun. And because history determines that it does, the state lacks any legitimate interest in suppressing the right as an end unto itself. The exercise of constitutional rights simply cannot be against the public interest, and the state cannot satisfy any legitimate interest, however compelling, by voiding a fundamental right and forcing individuals to prove a special need to exercise it.

Alan Gura
July 30, 2012
From the appellees’ brief Raymond Woollard and Second Amendment Foundation, Inc. v. Denis Gallagher, Seymour Goldstein, Charles M. Thomas, Jr., Marcus L. Brown, Terrence Sheridan.
[In other words the question of “need” need not be answered in the case of a specific enumerated right.

I would go further and suggest that raising the question of need implies the asker should be put a watch list for potential past or future violations of 18 USC 241 and/or 242.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Justice Antonin Scalia

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A constitutional guarantee subject to future judges’ assessments of its usefulness is no constitutional guarantee at all . . . Like the First, [the Second Amendment] is the very product of an interest-balancing by the people…

Justice Antonin Scalia
June 26, 2008
District of Columbia, et al., petitioners v. Dick Anthony Heller
[Got that? After balancing the risks and benefits the highest law of the land which may only be overturned by a constitutional amendment (if then because this is in the Bill of Rights) says, “The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”

Keep that in mind when someone demands “reasonable” or “common sense” regulation of firearms.”

H/T Alan Gura in his brief.—Joe]

Gun control void?

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This constitutes “news”?

Some States Try to Fill National Gun Control Void

OVERVIEW: The July 20 shooting at a suburban Denver movie theater that killed 12 people has prompted Democratic leaders in at least three large states to push for tighter restrictions on assault weapons and the purchase of large amounts of ammunition. While California, New York and Illinois push proposals, gun control hasn’t gained traction in Congress and on the presidential campaign trail.

Let’s rewrite that overview as it would have been written by a “reporter” just as biased in the other direction:

Administration still ignoring wide scale civil rights violations

OVERVIEW: The July 20 shooting at a suburban Denver movie theater that killed 12 people has prompted bigoted, prejudiced Democratic leaders in at least three large states to push for tighter restrictions on so called “assault weapons” and the purchase of ammunition in such minor quantities as to be insufficient for a weekend class or match. Clearer heads with at least a modicum of respect for the Bill of Rights and/or fearful of voter outrage resisted the extremist proposals. Even as California, New York and Illinois push proposals, gun rights hasn’t gained traction in Congress and on the presidential campaign trail. This is despite repeated calls for the U.S. Attorney General to file charges against politicians and law enforcement officials for violation of civil rights under the color of law. Some gun owner rights activists are demanding U.S. Marshalls and/or the National Guard step in and restore the right to keep and bear arms to those deprived of their rights. “A right delayed is a right denied”, they claim. They point out that further delays could mean those in a position to correct the the rights violations but failing to do so should be charged as co-conspirators.

I responded with a more succinct and less radical comment:

I view a biased and prejudiced article like this the same way I would an article with a title of “Some States Try to Fill Speech and Religion Control Void”. The right to keep and bear arms is a specific enumerated right. That some states are infringing upon that right should result in all the wrath that it would if some states were infringing up on the rights of blacks as they did in the deep south not too many years ago.

I’m seriously of the opinion that if necessary the Feds should put the entire slate of politicians and law enforcement thugs who enforce laws violating civil rights in Federal prisons and let the people start over. Of course there would need to be some Feds who respected our rights to begin with to avoid infinite recursion.

Four out of five people open carry

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A couple weeks ago when some of the Boomershoot staff put on a small private party it turned out, without prior planning or even a word spoken about carrying in any form, that four out of five people present were open carrying:

IMG_0866Corrected
Me, Maggie (the weirdo not carrying), Barron, Jacob, and Kim.

Jacob was also open carrying a moderately large fixed blade knife.

Quote of the day—Brennan Bailey

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They’re accomplishing the impossible: of all the anti-gun stronghold states in the U.S., California is the Grand Imperial Palace of gun hatery … and Calguns is besieging and tearing it back down brick by painstaking brick. There is no superlative adequate to describe my regard for these guys.

Brennan Bailey
August 15, 2012
Via the guns email list at work.
[Yeah. I have a pretty high regard for Calguns too.—Joe]

Truth

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crazy_straws

The gun culture is a prime example. Think of hunters, competitors, open carry, concealed carry, collectors, etc.

Other human cultures I have observed (such as software developers, boating, and sex) exhibit the same characteristic.

Truth in advertising

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Kevin points out that a proposed name change for the ATF to “Violent Crime Bureau” would be “truth in advertising”.

Been there. Done that. Let’s move on.

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Even on the Huffington Post anti-gun posts get swamped by comments from the pro-gun side. It wasn’t very long ago that there was an almost fair battle in the comments. It doesn’t seem to be that way anymore.

The latest one I looked at was We Need a Serious Gun Control Conversation by Greg Palmer. He begins with:

Can we have a conversation about guns now?

I contributed Just One Question but really my response should have been something along the lines of the following.

Huh? I have been having “serious gun control conversations” for just under 20 years now. And in many ways I am a newcomer to the “conversation”. Read Neal Knox – The Gun Rights War for history that goes back over 40 years.

Let me give Palmer a recap of the last 40 years.

We had the “conversation”. Your side lied, cheated, and took unfair advantage at every opportunity. But still your side lost. Big time.

You side lost the safety argument and your side lost the legal argument (see the U.S. Supreme Court decisions D.C. v. Heller and McDonald v. Chicago). You have no arguments left. The conversation was over years ago and all you are doing now is whining about the outcome. Go tell your problems to a therapist because the adults in this conversation aren’t interested in your delusions of relevancy.

Quote of the day—H. L. Mencken

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Whenever ‘A’ attempts by law to impose his moral standards upon ‘B’, ‘A’ is most likely a scoundrel.

H. L. Mencken
[I believe this to be true with both social and economic “moral standards”. Hence I hold nearly all strong Democrats and Republicans in low regard.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Blake Zeff

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No one in power is scared of the gun control movement.

Blake Zeff
August 14, 2012
What the gun control movement can learn from gay rights
[Good! That is the way it should be.

If you were to read the article you would find Zeff got it just backward. So I left the following comment for him:

The similarities between gun rights and gay rights are much greater than those between gun control and gay rights.

Gun owners just want to be left alone. 80 to 100 million gun owners and millions of gays are good neighbors, parents, co-workers, friends, and didn’t commit any crimes last year. The extremely small fraction that did commit crimes should be punished. Collective punishment and discrimination against people who have harmed no one is wrong and a very strong motivator. This injustice is the reason the NRA can motivate gun owners to vote against politicians. Politicians don’t fear the NRA. They fear gun owners who vote.

That there even exist gun control organizations is a stain in our political environment. Just as gay, black, Jew, and women control organizations would be and have been.

It appears comments are moderated so it may never show up (Reasoned Discourse) but at least I have it here.—Joe]

BugASalt

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This is pretty cool:

I wouldn’t shoot it at any metal I wasn’t able to clean up almost immediately because of the risk of corrosion. But maybe granulated sugar would work almost as well.

Theater Security Theater*

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Elaboration on the following Tweet from Saturday night:

Ticket taker for Dark Knight checked my companion’s bag for a gun. She didn’t notice the STI Eagle on my right hip or the mag on the left.

The ticket taker asked to check my companion’s bag and said, “We are doing this since the shooting in Colorado.” The ticket taker glanced inside the bag and said, “Okay” as my companion and I glanced at each other in shock. We took a few steps down the hall toward the theater and burst out laughing. Through my shirt my companion patted my right then left hip and laughed even louder.

It was an STI Eagle 5.1 chambered in .40 S&W. I was carrying a total of two 18 round magazines plus one in the chamber for a total of 37 rounds. I could have been carrying a dozen magazines in my pockets and socks and the ticket taker wouldn’t have noticed. It was nothing but security theater.

I was tempted to tell the poor young woman that if she asked to inspect the bag of someone intent on an Aurora type shooting that she was going to be first to get shot. But I didn’t see the point in making her more unhappy with her job than she already was. After all, who could like a job where people laugh at you behind your back?

The Tweet above was sent while waiting for the movie to start and was retweeted by nine people and made a favorite by two others. This makes it the most popular, by far, tweet of mine.

*Title as per the suggestion from Bitter. I considered “Security Theater in the Theater” but the shorter version creates some addition stress from the ambiguity which I kind of like.

Awesome pictures of my baby

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Daughter Xenia created some awesome pictures of herself. Here is a sample:

XeniaFungus

Quote of the day—Alexandra Rodda

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Guns are such phallic symbols giving the shooters feelings of potency and such a feeling of relief when they are discharged! I’m sure that is one of the chief reasons why Americans hang on to their guns so strongly. They should know that they are not so poorly endowed that they need guns to make them adequate.

Alexandra Rodda
July 30, 2012
Comment to Michael Moore Praises, Criticizes Obama’s Stance on Gun Control
[It’s another Markley’s Law Monday!

Someone should ask Ms. Rodda the process by which she determines truth from falsity. I suspect she also has some difficulties in distinguishing reality from delusion.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Ry Jones

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I get crème brulee because it is the only thing you can order in a polite restaurant that is assembled with a blowtorch.

Ry Jones
August 10, 2012
[This QOTD was first posted as a Tweet.

Yesterday after work we had dinner at 13 Coins and Ry told me this as he was about to order dessert.

That Ry owns a flame thrower and makes the fireballs for Boomershoot should provide additional context.—Joe]