If you are Catholic John Snyder, founder of the St. Gabriel Possenti Society, has a request:
This year the society plans to mark St. Gabriel Possenti’s feast day, Feb. 27, by urging Catholic firearms owners to put one of their website coupons (www.gunsaint.com) in the collection basket. The coupon states: “Millions for charity but not one cent for gun-grabbing church bureaucrats.”
If you don’t remember Robyn Ringler, here the outline of the refresher course:
She is back spreading her hate on the web again. This time she says she supports efforts to limit accessibility to what the U.S. Supreme Court says is a specific enumerated right:
As a member of The League of Women Voters (LWV), I encourage you to show strong support for these efforts. The LWV believes that the proliferation of handguns and semi-automatic assault weapons is a major health and safety threat. The LWV supports strong federal measures to limit the accessibility and regulate the ownership of these weapons by private citizens.
If she were advocating the limiting of accessibility to religion, books, or trial by jury do you think a newspaper like The Saratogian would publish her opinion? Why is it they let her spout her hate when it’s a different part of the Bill of Rights she is attempting to destroy?
She should create her own blog again and be left to whine by herself in some obscure corner of the Internet.
Update: From Barron in the comments:
As a member of
The League of Women Voters (LWV)National Rifle Association (NRA), I encourage you to show strong support for these efforts. TheLWVNRA believes that the proliferation ofhandguns and semi-automatic assault weaponsWomen’s Suffrage is a majorhealth and safety threatthreat to freedom and morals. TheLWVNRA supports strong federal measures to limit the accessibility and regulate theownership of these weapons by privateability of female citizens to vote.
And, like Barron, I do not support the restriction of women voting but the word substitution is very useful to illustrate the bigotry.
I can see why his name is “Nutter”:
Bad people will do bad things, but we can and must take steps to deny these criminals the weapons of mass destruction that have ripped apart families across the country.
…
President Obama has called for “common sense” regulation. Regulating magazine size is surely common sense. Large-capacity magazines can turn a semiautomatic pistol into a weapon of mass destruction, with some spitting out six shots per second.
Actually, as I demonstrated last week, even on an off day a middle-aged computer geek can do close to six rounds a second with only ten rounds in the magazine. The size of the magazine has nothing to do with rate of fire and no matter how many rounds are in the magazine it doesn’t turn the gun into a WMD.
Or is Nutter saying we really did find WMDs in Iraq?
In the state of Arizona any felon or mental case can purchase an assault weapon without any restrictions.
Jack Klenk
February 14, 2011
NRA and ‘gutless’ politicians
[Like stupidity, ignorance has no limits.—Joe]
It’s not the way I think it should be done but in essence politics is a popularity contest. A politician wins by being popular. They become popular in a number of ways. They can “buy” votes via advertising, and/or having friends in the media. They can belong to a rich and/or famous family like the Kennedy’s. Or they can align their political plans (as near as I can tell no politician has a significant chance of election with a consistent political philosophy) that resonates with a significantly large segment of the voters. This last method frequently consists of buying votes with taxpayer money but that is a different story.
I find it very interesting that in this Internet age a single individual can measure the popularity of public figures and ideas without paying for a survey. It may not be as accurate as an actual survey but it can give some clues.
The anti-gun blogs are either so out of touch or so low on the totem pole they don’t even show up on the tools I use for measuring relevance but there are other measures of the opposition.
My most recent measure of the popularity of our opposition is to look at the views of the Brady Campaign videos on YouTube.
There are four videos of the Brady Campaign President on YouTube since the Tucson shooting. The titles, dates, and number of views as of the evening of February 13, 2011 are:
That is a total of 1233 views.
In the same timeframe and on essentially the same topic I have posted two YouTube videos:
That is a total of 2968 views. And the second of those videos has only been up for less than 70 hours and is still getting a fairly high rate of hits.
I expect that by the middle of this week I should have about three times (it is currently 2.4 X) the number of views for my message as Paul Helmke has for his. And my videos were crudely done with video glasses and edited on my laptop while I was in bed instead of professionally scripted, produced, and edited.
If Helmke were to get paid by his popularity he should be getting about 1/3 of what I am receiving for my videos. This makes Helmke worth about one third of zero. I know the anti-gun people have a problem with arithmetic but it still should be pretty obvious Brady Campaign donors are not getting their money’s worth.
I’m surprised the Brady Campaign has any money to hire someone but it appears they do:
Associate Director, Communications
The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence
The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence and its sister organization, the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, are the nation’s largest, non-partisan, grassroots organizations leading the fight to prevent gun violence. For additional information and a full job description, please visit www.bradycenter.org. We are searching for a talented Associate Director, Communications!
The Communications Department develops and implements the public education and message strategy for all organizations (Campaign/MMM,Center, VEF) through print, video, audio and television outlets. The Department plans press conferences, writes press releases, op-eds, articles and editorial reports and supervises content and design of the organization’s website ensuring that legislative, outreach, fundraising and message delivery are as effective as possible.
Reporting to the Director of Communications, the Associate Director is responsible for developing strategy and materials for use with the press and the public to advance goals of the organization. The Associate Director will represent the organization in national and local media and public forums. The Associate Director assists in message and media training for staff and activists, identifies and recruits new constituencies to the organization as experts and/or local spokespeople. The incumbent keeps abreast of all new developments, trends in the gun control movement, and develops countermeasures. The Associate Director assists in managing content and design of the organization’s Web site.
The Associate Director should maintain daily contacts with national and local editors, reporters, columnists, producers, correspondents and communications directors of health and education organizations. This position works closely with staff, board members, and membership. The Associate Director handles last minute/after hours press deadlines and is available to the press after hours and on weekends/holidays when the Director is not available. The Associate Director must be able to fill in for the Director of Communications at any time.
Qualifications for this role include:
· Bachelors degree or equivalent in communications or public relations background desired. 5-7 years of progressively responsible experience in a similar position performing communications responsibilities. Non profit experience strongly preferred.
· Excellent communication (both verbal and written) skills.
· Must have experience in planning and implementing media campaigns.
· Must have news-style professional photography, broadcasting, and videography skills, which include taking and editing photographs, taping, editing, and storytelling with video and audio, and writing scripts. Must have experience in the use of video and audio for the Internet, and social media marketing and promotion. Strong graphic design skills required.
· Ability to juggle competing projects and shift priorities quickly.
· Demonstrated ability to facilitate and maintain relationships with influential media outlets and players.
Please submit your resume and letter of interest to Expand HR Consulting, the organization’s Human Resources Consulting Firm, at jobs@expandhr.com. The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence is proud to be an equal opportunity employer.
NOTES:
Local Residents Preferred (No Relo)Requirements
· Bachelors degree or equivalent in communications or public relations background desired. 5-7 years of progressively responsible experience in a similar position performing communications responsibilities. Non profit experience strongly preferred.
· Excellent communication (both verbal and written) skills.
· Must have experience in planning and implementing media campaigns.
· Must have news-style professional photography, broadcasting, and videography skills, which include taking and editing photographs, taping, editing, and storytelling with video and audio, and writing scripts. Must have experience in the use of video and audio for the Internet, and social media marketing and promotion. Strong graphic design skills required.
· Ability to juggle competing projects and shift priorities quickly.
· Demonstrated ability to facilitate and maintain relationships with influential media outlets and players
Once their new person comes on board and begins to “facilitate and maintain relationships with influential media outlets and players” I think one of the first set of people they need to meet is the gun blogger community. I plan to invited him or her to Boomershoot 2011 (there should be at least 10 bloggers there this year) and I’m pretty sure I could get them an invitation the Gun Blogger Rendezvous in Reno too.
As Winston Churchill said, “When you have to kill a man it costs nothing to be polite.” I have no intention of causing anyone physical injury but I don’t see any harm in being polite as we declare “war”. And after meeting us they might just surrender on the spot and join the winning team.
Update: After an email discussion with Sebastian I went looking for the previous person in this position—Doug Pennington. I found him at the Constitutional Accountability Center. I find it interesting that the CAC filed a brief in the McDonald case supporting incorporation of the Second Amendment under the Privileges or Immunities clause. It’s almost as if Pennington came over to our side of the issue. I would like to think that I helped convince him of the righteous of our cause but that is probably just wistful thinking.
It’s a big win for Microsoft today. Windows Phone 7 is no one’s priority. But now Microsoft has a leading vendor committed to use the platform.
Pete Cunningham
An analyst with Canalys, a research firm in Reading, England.
February 11, 2011
Together, Nokia and Microsoft Renew a Push in Smartphones
[It’s a big bet. But when we had an all-hands meeting about it on Friday morning everyone seemed pretty pleased about it. There will be lots of work in involved but the rewards should be large too.—Joe]
Robb is requesting your help. Getting involved is how we make a political difference.
Who is John Galt?
Ayn Rand
From the book Atlas Shrugged and tagline for the movie.
[The trailer for the movie is here, via David.—Joe]
This is my response to the Brady Campaign saying, “In Tucson, the shooter fired 32 bullets in only 16 seconds.” I shoot 35 rounds in less than 16 seconds and clear a malfunction with 10 rounds magazines:
What they propose is at best a minor hindrance to criminals. But it is potentially lethal to people attempting to use a gun for legitimate self-defense.
False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil.
Plato
[The Brady Campaign and other anti-gun ownership advocates would do well to keep this in mind. What they think of lies of necessity destroy their integrity, believability, and ultimately harm innocent life.—Joe]
Yesterday’s announcement that Seattle-based Starbucks’ fourth-quarter 2010 earnings were up again – as reported in this morning’s Seattle Times – is evidently driving gun prohibitionists nuts.
Why else would Chicago-based anti-gunner Elliot N. Fineman make the absolutely crazy public demand that Starbucks donate $10 million annually to the gun prohibition lobby and change its policy of catering to legally-armed private citizens? Fineman, like the Brady Campaign and Washington CeaseFire before him, is promoting a boycott of Starbucks until the coffee giant hands over the money.
This sounds an awful lot like blackmail. Some might suggest it borders on racketeering.
…the bottom line to this argument is Starbucks’ bottom line. That has looked much better in a down economy ever since the anti-gun-rights lobby tried to intimidate the company with its campaign of political thuggery.
Dave Workman
January 27, 2011
Time for a hard January lesson in economics, public sentiment, common sense
[I guess that “buycott” by gun owners is working out okay for Starbucks.—Joe]
The new (anti-) gun blogger (Baldr Odinson at New Trajectory) on the block is running a poll to “gauge the philosophy of visitors to New Trajectory”.
When I last looked at the poll results the voting was 70 to 3 (95% to 5%) “very much against stricter gun legislation” versus “very much for stricter gun legislation”.
This is consistent with the impressions of nearly everyone I have talked to and read on the blogs. About the only people listening to the anti-gun message are gun rights activists. If it weren’t for the traffic we give them they wouldn’t have any traffic worth talking about. Any one of the top 10 or 20 gun bloggers has more traffic than all the anti-gun bloggers combined.
Online life for them must feel a lot like showing up alone at a NAACP convention dressed in their whitest sheets and pillow cases—as it well should.
In Tucson, the shooter fired 32 bullets in only 16 seconds.
Brady Campaign
Web site as of February 9, 2011. Screen capture of the image is here.
[I find it interesting that the Brady Campaign thinks this is a source of concern that needs legislative action. What are they going to do when I demonstrate I can fire that many rounds or more in that same time while switching magazines after every 10 rounds?
I think tomorrow after work will be a good time to visit the range with my video glasses again.
Are they going to legislate against my trigger finger? Yeah, that’s it, I have an “assault finger” they need to ban the possession of.
If they want a finger I’ll give them a finger. They won’t even have to get the legislation passed before I give it to them.—Joe]
Deception and twisting the facts are all they have left so they continue to use what they have:
The legal argument being used to try to force EPA to ban lead ammunition and fishing tackle is based on a nonsensical interpretation of the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), which includes a specific exclusion for ammunition. TSCA, section 3(2)(B)(v)) precludes the EPA from regulating ammunition. But, CBD wants a court to hold that the TSCA ammunition exclusion does not apply to bullets and shot, because neither bullets nor shot are actually “ammunition” (i.e., a shell, primer, and projectile, etc., in one cartridge or unit). CBD’s argument is founded on an inapplicable interpretation of a tax ruling issued by the IRS in 1954 that distinguished the sale of “separate parts of ammunition” and complete ammunition for taxation purposes only.
It was this sort of behavior from Handgun Control, now the Brady Campaign, that first convinced me the gun grabbers needed to be opposed and I started down the path to being a gun owner rights activist. Ruby Ridge, Waco, and, as I have explained before, Diane Feinstein helped bring the world Boomershoot.
It odd how the unintended consequences of a few relatively small lies can change the world isn’t it? Some people become activists because of a malicious act by someone with mental problems (the Brady’s for example) and others become activists against them because they lied. Others report similar stories.
I’ve heard people say, “Karma is a bitch” and this could be an example of that. Each year about 125 people acquire equipment and skills then attend Boomershoot to exercise those skills to hit pie-plate sized targets at 700 yards. This is more people than the Brady Campaign can get to attend their annual meeting.
I realize I’m far better informed on the state of gun laws than the average gun owner but it appears this guy has had his head locked in the bank vault for the last couple of years:
“Ownership should be earned. It’s a privilege,” said Dickson, vice president and branch manager at Stamford First Bank. “Anybody can easily buy an automatic assault weapon. There should be required training and extensive background checks before people are allowed to own a gun.”
The specific enumerated right to keep and bear arms is a privilege? How could any gun owner of not heard of the Heller decision? Anybody can easily buy an automatic assault weapon? That’s not been true since 1934 and since 1986 it has become significantly more difficult.
Someone needs to find the keys to safe deposit box where Dickson keeps his brain.
Why is Mayor Bloomberg concerned about law enforcement in my county? Maybe I should send undercover deputies to New York.
Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio
January 31, 2011
[I think I might like that. Go Joe!—Joe]
Another one from my archives. The following reprint of an article from the May 1993 issue of Gun & Ammo came in a packet from JPFO with a postmark date of April 22, 1996. I don’t know when I purchased the book, ”Gun Control” Gateway to Tyranny, but it was probably about the same time. A scan of the cover of my copy follows the article reprint.
I was quite thrilled with JPFO. They could say things as a Jewish organization that I couldn’t. I was disappointed that the JPFO work which documented the derivation of the U.S. Gun Control Act of 1968 from the German Weapons Control Act of 1938 never gained significant traction. Had a law been derived from Nazi law and aimed at U.S. Jews and/or blacks instead of U.S. gun owners I think it would have. But even though we are singled out for special protection in the Bill of Rights for some reason to most people that just doesn’t matter. It’s okay to discriminate against and restrict the rights of gun owners. That the Nazis did it too and it enabled the Holocaust just didn’t seem to matter.
This gains additional importance now because the “sporting purpose” clause of GCA68 came directly Nazi Germany and is the basis for some of our current pain. It’s time we did away with all “sporting purpose” requirements. See also an interview with John Frazer, Director of NRA-ILA’s Research and Information Division for more history on the “sporting purpose” clause.
It was sometime in early 1999 that I talked to JPFO founder Aaron Zelman for several minutes about the gun politics in Washington state. I had some concerns about a startup gun rights organization that appeared to have some anti-Semitic leaning and his organization had some roundabout connections to it and I suggested he investigate before getting more closely involved. He listened and asked a lot of question about other organizations and I think we both learned a lot. I was quite saddened to learn he died last December.
Click on the pictures below to enlarge them to more readable size.
Since I’m on “The Location Team” for Windows Phone 7 I sometimes get feedback on location usage and applications that use location information. The story below came in today and it brought tears to my eyes. I asked Afshan if I could post her story and she graciously allowed me to do so:
From: Afshan A
Sent: Monday, February 07, 2011 2:49 PM
To: Windows Phone ALL – Users & Enthusiasts
Subject: Epic WP7 feature winWP7 Team,
Here is a story of my WP7. It all started 45 miles away from Bellevue in Snoqualmie Pass where I enjoyed the best day of skiing with a bunch of friends in fresh powder. We left the resort in high spirits, talking about the highlights of the day when I decided to reach for my phone. I searched my empty jacket but no luck. I thought, not a problem at all, it is probably in the bag pack but still no luck. Umm, over here? Empty. We were almost half way back to Bellevue. I called my friend who was in a separate car. We were on the slopes together and she borrowed the phone from me; probably she forgot to give it back, but still no luck.
Slowly the realization grew into an empty black hole devouring all happiness – I just lost my new phone. (Ok not that long, but along those lines!). The worst part was I didn’t have a clue where I dropped it. The question was is it alive or dead? I started cursing myself that things could have been different if I would have not been so over confident about being a responsible person and purchased the phone insurance. But well some things in life happen for a reason. We seem to gain wisdom readily through all failures than through our successes.
While I was blaming myself in the car, one of my friends suggested that I should try using ‘Find My Phone’ feature to detect the phone location. At last! a sign of hope. The other iPhone user friend in the car goes ‘You can’t use that feature unless you have subscription. At least that’s how it works for iPhones’. After hearing this conversation back and forth I didn’t lose hope. After all I’ve had the phone for a short time and I wasn’t ready to give up. This was simply not acceptable.
As soon as I reached the friend’s house who was driving, I immediately logged in to my live account and desperately looked up the option for ‘Find my Phone’. Within a few seconds I found this life saving feature and clicked on the button to detect my Samsung Focus location co-ordinates on Bing maps. Keeping my fingers crossed for the longest 30 seconds of my life, hoping I don’t require subscription and boom, I see the results. The phone was resting at Snoqualmie Pass 250 yards from interstate 909 road. This was such a relief. Even if I don’t recover the phone, at least I know what happened to it.
When my friend saw my crying and helpless face, he offered a ride back to the resort. He was also an owner of WP7. Almost after 1 hour of driving, we got there. Now all we had to track the lost phone was through a memorized picture of Bing maps in our brains… around 9pm on a Sunday night in a closed ski resort, leaving us in the frigid cold and pitch dark slopes. You could see the clouds surrounding the moonlight and even random flurries. We had no option but to search by stumbling around the ice and snow within the area of what Bing map was showing with the help of our flash light. Immediately an idea popped up that why don’t we just detect the friend’s WP7 location co-ordinates and then compare the two pictures of the map and track it from there. My friend called another friend who had access to a PC and asked her to log in to his windows live account to detect his phone’s location co-ordinates. You can think of this friend at home as a control tower. Once the CT had the two pictures in front of her she was able to guide how far we were from the lost phone. How much further we need to move and most importantly in which direction. 50 yards north. 24 feet east. 20 more steps uphill. Every time pausing and hearing nothing but the dark silence. Finally we reached a point where the two pictures looked identical with a minimal difference to CT and we just started to ring the lost phone. Carefully listening to the sound of darkness, looking at 360 degrees and then , wait, is that… THERE, LIGHT!!! I rushed towards it, and yes it was, MY PHONE!!! IT WORKED!!!
As I rescued my dear phone from the bitter ice, it greeted me in character –the pink home screen boxes nonchalantly indicating I missed only 19 calls and 123 messages, I realized there were multiple factors that made this possible such as having a bunch of geeky friends full of ideas (who work for Microsoft), the lost phone not running out of battery or not getting crushed by other skiers on the slope and mother nature didn’t let it rain during the full 3 hours phone was resting on the snow ground. And that it landed right side up!
I think this is a proud and successful story of Windows Phone 7 which has helped me rediscover my vision of technology and how it can make a difference in your day to day life. So Thank You WP7 !!
Afshan A.
Microsoft OEM Finance | Business Excellence
When there are no armed citizens to stop mass murderers, the killers are able to shoot unabated, even pausing to reload their weapons, until they get bored and stop. Some stop only when their trigger fingers develop carpal tunnel syndrome.
Ann Coulter
February 2, 2011
What Liberals Don’t Know About Guns, Chapter 217
[Via Linoge.
Another way to think about it is to ask the anti-gun person, “In an active shooter situation would you require the police go in without a gun? If not then why do you require the potential victims to be disarmed?”—Joe]
