Author Archives: Joe

Quote of the day—Legal Community Against Violence

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As outlined in Petitioners’ brief, the Second Amendment is a limit on the national government alone and does not constrain the District of Columbia’s legislative authority. See Br. of Petitioners at 35-40. For analogous reasons, the Second Amendment does not serve as a limit on the States and their political subdivisions. Although the Court need not address this issue in this case—which does not involve a challenge to a law passed by a State or one of its political subdivisions—it is well established that the Second Amendment does not apply to the States.

Legal Community Against Violence
January 11, 2008
DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA AND MAYOR ADRIAN M. FENTY,
Petitioners,
v.
DICK ANTHONY HELLER,
Respondent.
BRIEF OF AMICI CURIAE MAJOR AMERICAN CITIES, THE UNITED STATES CONFERENCE OF MAYORS, AND LEGAL COMMUNITY AGAINST VIOLENCE IN SUPPORT OF PETITIONERS
[Sometimes you have to just shake your head in disbelief. D.C. is under the control of the Federal Government! Congress can override any law or act of the D.C. politicians. How did these guys get through high school let alone law school without discovering that the District of Columbia is not a state or one of its political subdivisions? Maybe they are living in the alternate reality where D.C. of those 57 states that Obama said he has visited.

What is for certain is that anti-gun people have very little concern for facts. As near as I can determine they are lying, live in an alternate reality and/or are suffering from Peterson Syndrome.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Dennis Henigan

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For the NRA, it was not supposed to be this way. After the Supreme Court ruled in District of Columbia v. Heller that the Second Amendment granted a limited right to have a gun in the home, the NRA bragged that it was just the “opening salvo” in a legal war to use the courts to dismantle the nation’s gun laws.

Yet three years, 400 legal challenges, and “millions of dollars in [NRA] legal bills” later, all the gun lobby has had to show for its efforts is a growing body of case law affirming the right of the people to have strong gun laws short of a total handgun ban. Just last week, the same Texas judge who was previously overruled for ruling that domestic abusers have a right to own guns threw out the NRA’s lawsuit claiming that teens have a right to buy semi-automatic handguns. Never before have so many courts so cogently affirmed the constitutionality of so many strong gun laws in such a short span of time.

Dennis Henigan
October 6, 2011
How Many Second Amendment Cases Will the NRA Lose?
[The NRA is mostly a strawman in this context. SAF is who the Brady Campaign should be (and probably is) worried about.

The total number of victories is a poor metric of how the battle is going. More important is how many Supreme Court victories each side has to their credit. In the last three years, how’s that been going for you Dennis?

Gloat while you can Dennis. I’ll be saving these words for your eating pleasure a few years from now.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Independent Democratic Conference

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PROPONENTS OF A MORE REFINED FIRST AMENDMENT ARGUE THAT THIS FREEDOM SHOULD BE TREATED NOT AS A RIGHT BUT AS A PRIVILEGE – A SPECIAL ENTITLEMENT GRANTED BY THE STATE ON A CONDITIONAL BASIS THAT CAN BE REVOKED IF IT IS EVER ABUSED OR MALTREATED.

Independent Democratic Conference
September 2011
Page 34 in CYBERBULLYING—A Report on Bullying in a Digital Age
[I love the word “refined”. It makes the proposed degradation of a specific enumerated right so much more palatable. It’s a lot like “progress” and “liberal”. All very nice words. Surely reasonable people can agree we would all be better off if the government were to punish those that were divisive.

Via Thirdpower and Eugene Volokh.—Joe]

When looters run out of places to loot

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Socialism is reaping the usual results in Greece:

Airliners will be grounded, trains halted and tax offices shut when Greek state workers strike against austerity measures on Wednesday, defying a plea by the government to rally behind its effort to fend off national bankruptcy.

Most probably don’t really understand what is happening. They think they can just demand the government hire people and people will have jobs. What their simple model doesn’t take into account is that they are no different than looters with the government doing the actual theft. The one level of indirection and the facade of respectability allows them to believe they are not engaged in immoral behavior.

The truth is that while economic laws are less well understood and probably more subtle than the laws of physics they are no less certain. There’s no such thing as a free lunch. They have been looting the people who produce for so long the producers have either left the country, given up, or have simply run out of wealth to loot.

I’ve often wondered what it looks like when those who know no life outside of looting run out of places to loot. We sort of saw what happened in the USSR in the ‘80s but that was before the Internet and they were a much more closed society than Greece.

Popcorn anyone?

Quote of the day—Richard Samuel Najjar

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…[P]olitically motivated entities like the Brady Campaign to Prevent Handgun (formally Handgun Control, Inc.), the oddly named Violence Policy Center, and Michael Bloomberg’s Mayors Against Illegal Handguns rely on discredited studies that were rejected elsewhere, or by pulling numbers out of thin air to craft an argument while they attempt to smugly and piously stand in the way of continuing reforms. Gun control was a failure. Gun control is dead. It’s time to bury it once and for all.

Richard Samuel Najjar
October 1, 2011
Comment to Cause and effect or coincidence? Gun control scrapped …crime plummets
[The only nit I have to pick with this is I wouldn’t say gun control is dead. As long as there exists an anti-gun organization with fulltime staff or an electable politician that supports gun control we have work to do.—Joe]

Gun cartoon of the day

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CondoBoardMeeting

The artist is sharing their nightmare not reality. Reality is readily available should they have chosen to get the facts.

See the story that goes with this cartoon here. It contains things like:

Lost in the impassioned arguments about the Second Amendment and the right to defend oneself from government and each other is the question of what “open carry” might do to the already fragile fabric of society.

Lost on the writer is that most states have no laws prohibiting open carry and probably 100 million of us get along just fine living in those open carry states with millions carrying either openly or concealed.

Another example of the deficiencies of writers understanding and analysis:

Instead, let’s talk about what makes us civilized, and what makes America free. Guns don’t make us free.

Actually, I think a pretty good case can be made that the gun is civilization. And while guns in and of themselves do not make us free the restriction of firearm ownership and use is a sure sign that a civilization is not free.

I would claim the writer is just another ignorant bigot but the last paragraph makes me wonder if there isn’t something more than ignorance going on here:

Deep in its corporate-sponsored heart, you have to wonder if this is what the NRA really believes those learned gentlemen had in mind when they ratified the words, “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free State…”

“Corporate-sponsored heart”? I hear whispers of animosity toward capitalism in that paragraph. Is this just another socialist who knows they must destroy the means to resist their master plan to rid society of free markets and free minds?

Quote of the day—Kelsey Leal

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I come from a family of liberals. We believe that people that don’t work should live better lives than those that do.

Kelsey Leal
October 3, 2011
[Kelsey is my soon to be daughter-in-law.

This was in response to me giving her a bit of a hard time about not even recognizing the name of the Cato Institute. When I explained it was a Libertarian think tank part of her response was the quote above. It achieve the desired results. I was speechless.

She says she was joking—mostly.—Joe]

Banning the ATF not guns

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There are rumors the ATF is about to be thrown under the bus. Although there are people calling this rumor “a bombshell” (via Say Uncle and son-in-law John) it isn’t really all that new (from almost three months ago):

The unfolding scandal over a gunrunning investigation allegedly botched by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives could do what years of criticism of the long-beleaguered agency never quite accomplished — result in its demise.

People on both sides of the issue commented on it:

“I think something like that is likely to happen,” said Paul Helmke, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.

…

Christopher Cox, legislative director for the NRA, the agency’s longtime nemesis, also said arguments for shuttering or breaking up ATF are building.
 
“Their criminal investigation tactics are going a long way to proving that point,” Cox said. “If they cease to be an effective law enforcement organization, they will cease to be legitimate, and the calls for restructuring or abolishing of ATF are going to become more and more valid.”

Sebastian says, Careful What You Wish For and he has some good points. The concern that the FBI has credibility and respect the ATF doesn’t and we would rather have a money starved easily demonized bunch of screw ups instead of the FBI, the Secret Service, or the U.S. Marshalls enforcing the regulations has been the whisper from behind the scenes since as least the Regan years when the first serious thoughts of disbanding them came up.

Things have changed with the FBI since the 1980’s. Remember Ruby Ridge and Waco? The ATF created the messes but it was during the FBI “cleanup” that the FBI shot the woman holding the baby and burned down the church with the women and children in it. The FBI has it’s own public relations issues to be concerned about.

I’ll leave making a recommendation on this specific topic at this specific time to others more politically savvy but if we are to make progress trimming down the size and scope of government agencies need to start disappearing. Why is now not as good a time as any to get rid of the ATF? The ATF is heavily involved in a major scandal, the Heller and McDonald decisions imply that many of their duties are constitutionally suspect if not right illegal. Because they are so weak this might be the time to get rid of them simply because it is politically possible.

If now is the time then to “avoid overloading the FBI” with either new tasks and/or the training of large numbers of new personal Congress should simultaneously cut back on a lot of the obsolete laws. Here is my list of gun laws that could be put on the chopping block along with the ATF:

  • The ban on interstate gun sales. We have NICS, run by the FBI already, which covers the concerns put forth for the original proponents of the law.
  • The registration and tax on suppressors. Make a NICS check on them a requirement with 4473 like paperwork shouldn’t be that much of a political sell because all the functionality of the existing system would still exist except for the tax revenue which almost for certain doesn’t pay for itself as well as being constitutionally suspect.
  • The laws against on short barreled rifles and shotguns. This only made sense when there were plans to ban handguns (originally part of NFA 34). That didn’t happen and isn’t going to happen (see Heller).
  • Postal restrictions against mailing of firearms. We can ship them via UPS, FedEx, etc. Why not USPS?
  • The classification of some 12-gauge shotguns as “destructive devices”.
  • The “sporting purpose” tests for firearms. The Heller decision makes it very clear that the Second Amendment isn’t about duck hunting. This particularly affects imports. Unless it as part of some trade war it makes no sense that guns and ammo which are perfectly legal to manufacture and own inside the U.S. cannot be imported. Either ban them as part of a coherent (as if trade wars can make sense but that is another topic so please don’t get into it at this time) trade policy or get rid of the bans.
  • The ban of sales of firearms to citizens who have no U.S. residence. Just because someone has been living and working in another country for a few months or even years does not mean they should be prohibited from exercising their specific enumerated right to keep and bear arms when they return for a visit.

I’m sure there are lots of other nonsensical laws and regulations that could be cut at the same time which our opponents would be hard pressed to defend. And with all the grief the ATF has had because of their “mistakes” perhaps the agencies that take on the remaining functions will “play nice” compared to the ATF.

If we could ban the ATF and “ease the burden” on the FBI at the same time would it be worth taking the risks associated with having the remaining ATF functions divided up among other agencies? I’m thinking it might be.

Game name

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As part of Ry’s quest to hold a world record we need a name for a game. The rules for the game haven’t been finalized but it will probably be something like Steel Challenge only using one time use reactive targets (Boomerite). You are timed as you shoot the five to ten targets (not sure yet) and the fastest time wins.

We have tentative plans to use this game as a fundraiser for pro-gun (duh!) political lobbying groups at “Legislative Shoots”. The first official event is tentatively planned for January or February of 2012 but I expect we will be doing some dry runs prior to that to work out the bugs and give Ry his chance at a world record. This will also give us a chance to make videos and put together promotional material.

I expect the range will be something on the order of 15 to 20 yards and there will be very few different courses of fire. Perhaps even just one course of fire. There will be no direct “power factor” requirements. If the boomers don’t go off then you didn’t bring enough gun. This typically means participants will use a centerfire rifle but with the right ammo and caliber some centerfire pistols and rimfire rifles may work.

I expect we will have the following classes of firearms:

  • Open (Anything that is safe)
  • Full Auto (Same as limited except full auto and burst are allowed)
  • Limited (No glass or other special optics and no full auto or burst)
  • Lever Action (Must be a lever action rifle)
  • Bolt action (Must be a bolt action rifle)
  • Shotgun (Maybe. Some magnum buckshot and/or slug loads might have sufficient velocity to detonate the targets)

Here are the candidates so far:

  • Bowling for Boomers (Barron)
  • Steel Yourself! (Barb)
  • Boomer Challenge (me)
  • Zoom Boom (me)
  • Speed Boomers (me)

What are your suggestions for a name? The prize will be the fame and fortune (one free entry into the next Zoom Boom event you participate in). The winner will be chosen by the political lobbyist who schedules the first event.

As a side note I have to wonder at the participation level of an event like this versus the events the Brady Campaign put on where they try to find people to lay on the ground and pretend to be dead for a few minutes.

This is why Boomershoot

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Roseanne Barr advocates people who earn too much money and don’t “pay it back” to be sent “to the reeducation camps and if that doesn’t help, then being beheaded”. This was while being interviewed on Russia Today so I suppose she had a more receptive audience than in the U.S. I would like to suggest she move to Russia and run for President there because that isn’t the way things are supposed to work in this country.

I have another message for Barr and her supporters—the “reeducation camps” and the executions far too frequently advocated by my political opponents are why I put on Boomershoot and delete the records of who participated.

H/T to Tamara.

Quote of the day—Kaveman

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I am willing to perform the duties of CEO for your organization for minimum wage and a few photos of Sarah Brady in a thong and an unlimited supply of Kleenex.

Kaveman
October 1, 2011
I will be the next CEO at Brady
[I considered applying also but (plagiarizing from Joel) I have minimal experience as a male bovine excrement engineer and zero experience as a equine excrement engineer.

Even if I had the requisite experience and even if she promised to never model her thongs in my presence I would need far more than minimum wage to hang out with Sarah Brady.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Handgun Control, Inc.

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Both Handgun Control, Inc. and the Center to Prevent Handgun Violence, the sister organizations sponsoring the symposium, predict a long but ultimately successful battle to reform one of the most dangerous industries in the United States.

Handgun Control, Inc.
October 8, 1997
GUN INDUSTRY EXPERTS PREDICT FAR-REACHING REFORMS; POINT TO TOBACCO AND OTHER INDUSTRIES AS PRECEDENT
[How are those reforms working out for you? It’s been 14 years now. Has it been long enough yet?

Oh, that’s right. It was Handgun Control, Inc. that did the reforming.—Joe]

As easy as access to drugs

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As we have said for years and years laws restricting access to firearms can be no more effective than the laws that restrict access to recreational drugs. We now have a report that literally says that about California which, according to the Brady Campaign ranks as the top state in the nation with the “strongest gun laws that help combat the illegal gun market, prevent the sale of guns without background checks and reduce risks to children” (plagiarized from here):

Respondents pointed out that getting a gun is “as easy as access to drugs.” This climate of ready gun availability led a service provider to observe that “it seems harder for adults to get legal access to guns than for kids to get illegal access.” This surprising information regarding the ease of youth access to guns is supported by data from the 2007 California Healthy Kids Survey, in which 4.8 percent of San Mateo County 7th, 9th, and 11th graders reported having brought a gun to school, a rate similar to that for the Bay Area overall (5 percent).

Got that? It is harder for adults to legally exercise a specific enumerated right than it is for children to get illegal access.

What if it were more difficult to lawfully purchase a Bible than it was for kids to get a copy of Hustler magazine? Do you think the laws would change?

It’s time most firearm laws were repealed and politicians who defend them sent to prison.

Sunnyvale gets it right

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Bigoted members of the public in Sunnyvale California wanted “special attention” given to “Stand-alone Firearm Sales Businesses”. Sporting goods stores that happen to sell guns were okay but if a store was primarily a gun shop they had a problem with it. Something about children walking by it caused them to think for themselves and put the harmony of the collective at risk or something. I have to wonder if they had the same sort of problem with kids walking by a bookstore.

In any case after some “encouragement” from Michel & Associates on Tuesday the city council stood up to the bigots on the issue.

Quote of the day—dogbreath

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I think you are giving them far too much credit – their generally not well endowed with either a brain or a p…Glock. But there is an assload of money involved. Absolutely.

dogbreath
September 27, 2011
Comment to NRA’s “Single Issue” Is Obama, Not Guns
[Nice! Dogbreath invokes Markley’s Law, says we have small brains while saying “their” instead of “they’re”, and attributes the motivation to protect a specific enumerated right to making money all in just two sentences. That is impressive.—Joe]

Pack a sidearm

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Via email from Jonathan H.

One of my Idaho Outfitter friends hunted a group of out-of-state elk archery hunters from the Great Lakes region  last week and they called in a pack of 17 wolves by cow calling. None of the hunters had a sidearm or wolf tag and it was a very traumatic experience as the wolves surrounded the hunters!   All hunters went home early very disturbed claiming these wolves are very different from the Great Lakes wolves as they claimed these Idaho wolves actually “Hunt” you and were not afraid!

Note she is wearing gloves!  We saw almost no gloves 2 years ago!

Archers please pack a sidearm where legal!

—–

This wolf came running toward Rene last night to attack her. She had to drop her bow & pull her pistol.  She shot it in the head about 10 feet from her.  She had to shoot it a couple more times to actually kill it.  CRAZY!  This – not even a week after Shane’s dogs were killed by wolves.

WolfTakenByArcherWithPistol

It’s not just archers that should carry a sidearm. Wife Barbara saw one while taking pictures near the Selway river last year.

Quote of the day—Ubu52

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Isn’t the smallest form of government a dictatorship? Is that really what Libertarians crave?

Ubu52
September 29, 2011
Comment to The Mind of the Left.
[I suppose it could be very ignorant question. After all, even if you were to grant that a libertarian dictatorship is technically possible the smallest form government would be no government at all or anarchy.

But I think I smell a troll.—Joe]

Radical Democratic Vision

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That’s Left-Speak for “a People’s [communist] Revolution”.  Cornel West wrote an article for the NYT to describe it.  “Martin Luther King Jr. Would Want a Revolution…”

Often has the left attached itself to good causes, co-opting them and bending them into radicalized socialist movements.

Have you heard much about the protests on Wall Street?  Me neither.  Here is Cornel West leading a group of drones in one of those protests.  Listen carefully.  He wants an “American Fall” to coincide with the recent Arab Spring.  The Belt-way left is in a pickle.  The base was fired up and ready to go, but they didn’t get their revolution.  They feel it’s time to pounce.  They’ve taken off the masks, taken to the streets, and now they’re feeling let down.  Wait ’till they’ve simmered and seethed for another year and then see their hopes and dreams, their radical democratic vision, slip away.  That could get ugly.

This is why we aren’t supposed to feed the bears in the national parks.  You give them a little bit of socialism here and there, and before you know it they’re ripping the doors off your car trying to eat your children.  Then you’re forced to shoot them.  It’s inhumane.  DON’T FEED THE SOCIALISTS!  The Republicans have been happily feeding socialists for generations, trying to prove their own good intentions, the fools;
“Look!  Aren’t they cute?  And that one has some little cubs!  Awww!  I’ll be nice and give them my cold french fries, so they don’t go away unhappy…” 
I think we should convince some park rangers to have words with the GOP leadership.

Quote of the day—John Dewey

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You can’t make Socialists out of individualists — children who know how to think for themselves spoil the harmony of the collective society which is coming, where everyone is interdependent.

John Dewey
From Accuracy In Media
[Ahhhh… yes. The collective society. The good of the collective is more important than the good of the individual. The individual must not think for themselves. Except of course the dear, enlightened, leaders who decide what is best for the collective and just happen to live lives of luxury.

What the “intellectuals” need to understand, if history has any lessons to be learned on this topic, is that the “intellectuals” are the first to get the bullet in the back of the neck and occupy the mass graves in the woods. Look at what Stalin, Pol Pot, and communist China did.

It may be that it “won’t happen here”. It may be the government of the collective will put the “intellectuals” in positions of power and that when the shooting starts it will be individualists who first occupy the mass graves. But when the shooting stops it will be because the individualists ran out of collectivist “intellectuals” as targets. Not because we ran out of ammo or individuals.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Brian Malte

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Not only are you stripping the right of the local municipalities to protect safety but you’re also asking them to adhere to gun laws at the state level that don’t even exist.

Brian Malte
Director of mobilization for the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.
September 27, 2011
Lawyer keeps local gun laws in his sights—Lawsuits against Evansville and Hammond demand communities comply with state measure
[“Protect safety”? “Adhere to gun laws that don’t exit”? What in the world does that even mean?

I suppose it’s possible the reporter had the crap for brains and messed up the quote but I doubt it because the quotes from the other people in the article weren’t just word salads. It could have been deliberate maliciousness by the reporter but usually the bias is against gun owners.

It’s true that we are sometimes our worst enemy but it may be more so for our opponents. We don’t always act as a team and give conflicting messages to the public and the politicians. We have people that sometimes say things that which, while true, can be exploited by our opponents. They have crap for brains and it shows.—Joe]