Author Archives: Joe

Japete IS lying about this

Posted on by

If you recall a few days ago I defended Joan Peterson (aka japete) against a charge of lying. I still believe I was correct; the best explanation for the available data on that topic was that it was a mental defect rather than a willful lie.

Today I present evidence that she is willingly and knowingly lying about something else.

If you read her blog you will find many instances where she claims or implies she and her organizations don’t wish to ban firearms. Here are  some examples:

Also note that Ms. Peterson acknowledges she is on the Brady Campaign board of directors.

I have often given the Brady Campaign a pass in regards to errors and old material on their website. I know I have lots of out of date material on my websites and I have changed my mind about things but not bother to take down the old position. With all the material from the Brady Campaign saying “total bans are off the table” you might take that to mean they are interested in banning firearms anymore. This is not true.

You need to watch their wording very carefully to notice that since the Heller decision they say they are not advocating a “total ban on handguns”. One must presume that a partial ban would be quite agreeable with them. And one can be certain they are still in favor of an “assault weapon” ban:

Boxer supports California’s ban on assault weapons and the revival of a similar law at the federal level. Fiorina has criticized the federal law’s definition of assault weapons as “extremely arbitrary” and emphasizes other ways of combating gun crimes, none of which is a substitute for a ban. She also believes that travelers on the federal government’s no-fly list should be allowed to own firearms.

We couldn’t agree more with the Times on this one.

Learn more about assault weapons and terror gap, and visit our elections page.

And from their position web page on “assault weapons” linked to in the previous quote:

POSITION: The Brady Campaign supports banning military-style semi-automatic assault weapons along with high-capacity ammunition magazines. These dangerous weapons have no sporting or civilian use. Their combat features are appropriate to military, not civilian, contexts.

PROBLEM: The federal Assault Weapons Ban expired in the fall of 2004.

THE THREAT: Allowing easy access to highly lethal, military-style weapons by dangerous people, like terrorists and felons, threatens the safety of our police officers, families and communities.

URGENCY: Since the ban expired, police chiefs across the country report increases in assault weapons used in crime and used against them.

SOLUTION: Congress must pass strong, effective legislation to ban all military-style semi-automatic assault weapons along with high capacity ammunition magazines. In the short-term, more states must pass their own laws to ban assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines.

As a board member Ms. Peterson had to know of the Brady Campaign position on “assault weapons”. I therefore have to apologize for being critical of all the bloggers and commenters who said Joan Peterson was lying.

Quote of the day—George Mason

Posted on by

That all power is vested in, and consequently derived from, the People, that magistrates are their trustees and servants, and at all times amenable to them.


George Mason
June 12, 1776
Virginia Declaration of Rights
[The U.S. Constitution was heavily influenced by the Virginia Constitution. Remember, James Madison, the main architect of the U.S. Constitution was from Virginia. And Mason had his share of input to the Constitution as well.


The entire political philosophy of our country is based on government deriving it’s powers from the consent of the people. Hence I always find it a little irritating when someone refers to a politician as a ‘leader’ when they are actually servants.


It is more than a little irritating when the servants tell the People they are the only ones allowed to own and carry certain types of personal weapons.


And when the servants use the People’s credit to run up a massive debt giving money to people and organizations which they had no constitutional authority to give it it too it’s time to fire them and perhaps prosecute them.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Justice Antonin Scalia

Posted on by

hope I have made it clear that my belief that the use of foreign law in our constitutional decisions is the wave of the future does not at all suggest that I think it’s a good idea. I do not. The men who founded our republic did not aspire to emulating Europeans, much less the rest of the world.

I wrote an opinion for the Court a few terms back [Crawford v. Washington, 541 US 36 (2004)], overruling an earlier case [Maryland v. Craig, 497 U.S. 836 (1990)], which had held that the confrontation clause is satisfied so long as the unconfronted testimony – that is to say, hearsay testimony – has “particularized guarantees of trustworthiness.” The opinion pointed out that that the confrontation clause was designed precisely to prevent a procedure considered trustworthy by continental European nations, and others that followed the civil law tradition. “Examinations of witnesses upon interrogatories,” wrote John Adams, “are only by the civil law; interrogatories are unknown at common law, and Englishment and common lawyers have an aversion to them, if not an abhorrence of them.” As recently as 1993, for example, France was still defending its use of ex parte testimony before the European Court of Human Rights, arguing that the defendant’s accuser in a drug trafficking case had a “legitimate interest in remaining anonymous,” and that the defendant’s rights were adequately protected so long as “the judge held hearings which enabled him to satisfy himself” that the witnesses stood by their statements. Should we have loosened up our confrontation clause, in deference to foreign opinion on this subject?

France permits suits against the executive branch only in an executive branch court called the conseil d’etat, whose members are appointed and promoted by the executive, and who regularly alternate between performing executive functions and adjudicating the lawfulness of other people’s performance of executive functions. Other European countries have somewhat similar systems, although the extent of their participating in executive functions may be more limited. This is a practice that Tocqueville contrasted unfavorably with our own, as long ago as 1835. Should we change our mind?

In No. 46 of The Federalist, James Madison speaks contemptuously of the governments of Europe who are “afraid to trust their people with arms.” Should we revise the Second Amendment because of what these other countries think?

In November of 2002, the Council of Europe approved what was called “an additional protocol to the convention on cybercrime,” which would make it illegal to distribute anything online which “advocates, promotes or incites hatred.” A spokesman for the United States Department of Justice said – quite correctly – that this country could not be a party to such a treaty because of the First Amendment. If all of Europe thinks that such a provision does not unduly limit speech, should we reconsider? And I could go on.

If there was any thought absolutely foreign to the founders of our country, surely it was the notion that we Americans should be governed the way that Europeans are – and nothing has changed. I dare say that few of us here would like our life or liberty subject to the disposition of French or Italian criminal justice, not because those systems are unjust, but because we think ours is better. What reason is there to believe that other dispositions of a foreign country are so obviously suitable to the morals and beliefs of our people that they can be judicially imposed through constitutional adjudication? And is it really an appropriate function of judges to say which are and which aren’t? I think not.

Justice Antonin Scalia
February 21, 2006
Remarks at the American Enterprise Institute.
Emphasis added.
[If the founders of our country wanted the supreme law of our land to emulate Europe they could have done so. If people today want our laws to emulate Europe they can push through the constitutional amendments to make those changes. And if in the process they infringe on fundamental human rights they can deal with the consequences.—Joe]

Squirrel targets discounted

Posted on by

MGM has an Internet Special on their squirrel targets:

MGM_2010_october_special

I wish they would tolerate .30 caliber. If they would then I would buy some for Boomershoot. MGM does have rifle targets but it’s more than I really want to spend right now.

All your Motorola Androids are belong to us

Posted on by

Yesterday Microsoft announced they have filed a lawsuit against Motorola alleging infringement on nine patents regarding Android smart phones:

REDMOND, Wash. – Oct. 1, 2010 – Microsoft Corp. today filed a patent infringement action against Motorola, Inc. and issued the following statement from Horacio Gutierrez, corporate vice president and deputy general counsel of Intellectual Property and Licensing:

“Microsoft filed an action today in the International Trade Commission and in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington against Motorola, Inc. for infringement of nine Microsoft patents by Motorola’s Android-based smartphones. The patents at issue relate to a range of functionality embodied in Motorola’s Android smartphone devices that are essential to the smartphone user experience, including synchronizing email, calendars and contacts, scheduling meetings, and notifying applications of changes in signal strength and battery power.

We have a responsibility to our customers, partners, and shareholders to safeguard the billions of dollars we invest each year in bringing innovative software products and services to market. Motorola needs to stop its infringement of our patented inventions in its Android smartphones.”

More information can be found here. Even though I work for Microsoft on Windows Phone 7 I don’t have any further information on the topic and even if I did I wouldn’t be at liberty to discuss it.

Quote of the day—Colorado Springs Gazette-Telegraph

Posted on by

Magnificent…will terrify and appall jackbooted stormtroopers everywhere, and even more so the whimpering media geeks who squat to lick those boots.

Colorado Springs Gazette-Telegraph
1996
From the back cover of Unintended Consequences by John Ross.
[If you haven’t read Unintended Consequences then you don’t really understand the gun culture.—Joe]

MAIG mimics Brady Campaign errors

Posted on by

Mayors Against Illegal Guns did not make an innocent mistake when they released their recent report. They deliberated misused the data to arrive at a conclusion they wanted. It’s been explained to them many times before but the truth doesn’t matter to them. NRA-ILA explains once again:

MAIG’s conclusions, like Brady’s, are based entirely upon BATFE firearm tracing statistics, which BATFE and the Congressional Research Service have repeatedly said should not be used to reach broad conclusions about criminal activity with guns.

BATFE says, for example, “Not all firearms used in crimes are traced and not all firearms traced are used in crime. Firearms selected for tracing aren’t chosen for purposes of determining which types, makes or models of firearms are used for illicit purposes. The firearms selected don’t constitute a random sample and should not be considered representative of the larger universe of all firearms used by criminals, or any subset of that universe. . . .[S]ources reported for firearms traced do not necessarily represent the sources or methods by which firearms in general are acquired for use in crime.”

Of course, for many years on many issues — “assault weapons,” “Saturday Night Specials,” lawsuits against gun manufacturers and dealers, and the list goes on — anti-gun groups have resorted to tracing data because crime and other reliable data have not supported their arguments. In this instance, for example, MAIG contends that illegal acquisition of firearms is associated with 10 specific state-level gun laws. But, the 10 laws — some of which are already in effect at the federal level — don’t correlate to state total violent crime rates. And, the 10 states with the highest violent crime rates, and the 10 states with the lowest rates, both have an average of two of the 10 gun laws.

Update: James has more very interesting stuff to share on the topic.

Firearms Freedom Act news

Posted on by

The Brady Campaign has very little to feel good about these days so they are doing a lot of crowing about the Federal district court judge who dismissed the Montana Firearms Freedom Act case.

While most observers agree that we will not win this case that doesn’t mean it is a losing action. As I said in the comments over at Say Uncle’s place:

From the Missoulian

“We’ve believed all along that the federal District Court cannot grant the relief we request. We seek to overturn a half-century of bad precedent,” Gary Marbut, MSSA president, said in a statement. “Only the U.S. Supreme Court can do that. In that light, the pending dismissal by the District Court means little except that we are now free to move to the next step of the process.”

The Brady Campaign may ultimately be able to claim victory but not without more work. They are crowing now because it will be a while before they can crow for a real victory.

…

I don’t think “restrictions are defeated before they start” via lots of guns is a workable strategy. As an example look at machine guns. There were lots of them in private hands prior to 1934 and now there aren’t. Also consider legislative attacks such as trigger locks, “safe storage” laws, restrictions on carry that start with schools and public buildings then progresses to banks, parks, churches, vehicles, and “public spaces”.

While the Firearms Freedom Act has a low chance of ultimate success it is an integrated part of the SAF firearms civil rights judicial strategy.

I used to play a lot of chess which gives us a way to view this. Suppose you have a slight material advantage say 15 pieces to their 12 pieces. You increase your odds of winning by trading down an equal number/quality of their pieces for yours. When the odds are 3 to 1 in your favor you are far better off than when you were at 15 to 12.

Think of it this way–we have far more money than the anti-gun side. Suppose we have 10 x as much money and resources as they do. Suppose they need to spend half as much as we do on each front as we do in order to defeat us. The more fronts we attack on the less they have to spend on any one front. Even if we attack on a front they can easily win they must spend resources on it. This makes it easier to win on more fronts.

By forcing them to divide their resources we can create much better odds for success on each of the individual attacks because we have sufficient resources that our multiple attacks do not suffer from division.

There are other reasons as well but discussion of those in public would not be in our best interests.

Please add to that what Idaho Governor Butch Otter said about the ruling:

Governor Otter said that decision is consistent with Molloy’s wolf ruling, and together they highlight the lack of regard that the judge has for states’ rights under the 10th Amendment.
“We’re hopeful that we’ll find some relief from the appellate court,” he said. “But if not, we’ll keep fighting to protect our right to self-determination.”

Quote of the day—Lyle@UltiMAK

Posted on by

I’d rather pay most feds to do nothing (or snort coke, watch daytime TV, drink booze and buy whores) than pay them to do what they’re doing now (in addition to snorting coke, drinking booze and buying whores that is). That’d be a step in the right direction, say, for a while, before they’re indicted.

If I had my full ‘druthers I’d see them stripped of their citizenship, packed into crates, stuffed into transport planes, flown over Venezuela (or Cuba, North Korea, etc.) and dropped, along with their supporters in Congress. Parachutes optional, depending on donations from the private sector. I’d suggest using them on the front lines in battle, but I wouldn’t trust them in that capacity. They’d most likely throw up the white flags and then side with the enemy against our real troops. The whole tar and feathers thing seems unnecessarily messy and time consuming. We have work to do after all, and if we could simply get rid of them as quickly as possible, we could get on with living our lives in peace. If they’d go voluntarily and then mind their own business for the rest of their lives, that would be the ideal, though we all know that’s an impossibility – statists, who understand nothing on Earth but deception and brute force don’t ever quit until quitting is the only option left. Even then, we see what happened with Jim Jones and his dupes. If they know they’re going to take the big fall, they’ll take as many as possible along with them. That’s axiomatic and it goes for the whole statist society.

Lyle@UltiMAK
September 30, 2010
Comment to Random thought of the day.
[The only thing I would add is they should get a fair trial first. But I guess that was sort of implied in the “stripped of their citizenship” line. And please note that each individual need not have their own trial. They don’t seem to have any regard for the individual so why should the individual have any regard for them independently of their collective? It probably could done at the department/agency level. Department of Education, Department of Housing, etc.—Joe]

Random thought of the day

Posted on by

Remember how the Feds needed to find a new job for the “Revenuers” after the repeal of prohibition and they were given the regulation of firearms with NFA34?

We should do the same thing with the ATF by retasking them with the regulation legal sale of marijuana as we go through the process of reducing Federal regulation of firearms.

The DEA? Those that can’t get a real job can just go beg on the street corner with a sign around their neck that says “Former DEA Agent”.

Quote of the day—John Lott

Posted on by

Bill Landes and I have examined all the multiple-victim public shootings with two or more victims in the United States from 1977 to 1999. We found that when states passed right-to-carry laws, these attacks fell by an astounding 60 percent. Deaths and injuries from multiple-victim public shootings fell on average by 78 percent. And to the extent that these attacks still occur in states with right-to-carry laws, they overwhelming occur in those few places where concealed handguns are not allowed. Gun free zones served as magnets for these attacks.

The desire to ban guns is understandable, but it is dangerous, too.  If we won’t hang “Gun-Free Zone” signs around our homes, let’s not hang them around our schools or other places we care about either.

John Lott
September 29, 2010
Why Gun Bans Still Don’t Work
[“Gun free” zones are victim disarmament zones. Let’s get rid of as many of these death traps as we can.—Joe]

Barbara Ann Scott

Posted on by

[This post is primarily for my amusement and for my children who will be far less confused that my average reader. Please note portions of this post are very carefully worded.]


If you read my blog frequently enough you will figure out that I married Barbara Scott and that she kept her maiden name.


What you might not know is that her full name is Barbara Ann Scott and that Barbara Ann Scott used to be very famous. Here are some videos of her when she won the gold medal in ice skating:








And when she was on the TV show, “What’s My Line”:





Yes. Wife Barbara is a little bit older than I am but she doesn’t show it. Dr. Joe’s Cure for Everything does help you live longer you know. Here is a picture from earlier this month:


Quote of the day—Bryan Miller

Posted on by

Senator Van Drew, for whatever reason, is kowtowing to the pro-gun forces of darkness who want to turn this country into an armed society. It’s very simple: Do we want to be standing in line at a grocery store, at a movie theater, sitting next to someone in a church or anywhere else not knowing whether that person is legally carrying a handgun?

Bryan Miller
September 26, 2010
Executive director of Ceasefire NJ
N.J. senator pushes law allowing residents to carry handguns
[Also with comments on this topic (in no particular order):

“Forces of darkness”? At first I thought Miller was talking about people with dark colored skin then I figured out  he had just upgraded his bigotry to version 2010.—Joe]

Random thought of the day

Posted on by

What if it was required political donations were anonymous rather than transparent? If the donations were collected by blind trust (or some such thing) anyone could say “I gave you X dollars.” Who the politician owed their loyalty to would be unknown to the politician!


It may be the problems of such a system would be fewer and less severe than those of complete transparency.

Biometrics are inherently fallible

Posted on by

I used to work in biometrics. In the first few minutes of a biometrics class in about 2004 the instructor quoted numerous people, going back about 30 years, each saying biometrics would be reliable “in ten years”. When I actually looked at the data for various biometric systems I was rather shocked by the failure rates. And those were in cases where there was no deliberate attempt to defeat the system. I attended a conference on biometrics and I invented a new biometric system (no, I can’t talk about it—a certain government agency says that information is restricted). It became quite clear to me that every biometric system in existence could be defeated if you knew it was being used. And furthermore it was unlikely that any system could ever be undefeatable.

Hence, I am not surprised experts are coming to the same conclusion I did several years ago:

Biometric systems — designed to automatically recognize individuals based on biological and behavioral traits such as fingerprints, palm prints, or voice or face recognition — are “inherently fallible,” says a new report by the National Research Council, and no single trait has been identified that is stable and distinctive across all groups.

Quote of the day—Violence Policy Center

Posted on by

An objection continually raised to gun control is that the Second Amendment to the Constitution somehow forbids it. This is pure myth. No gun control law has ever been overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court on Second Amendment grounds. Federal bans on machine guns as well as city ordinances banning handgun possession have remained on the books for decades—despite vigorous court challenges.

…

If Congress or individual states want to ban handguns, they can do so constitutionally—all they need is the will.

Violence Policy Center
March 2000
Unsafe in Any Hands — Why America Needs to Ban Handguns
[Of course the Heller and McDonald decisions falsified these claims. But don’t ever forget these people want to ban guns and pay others to forcibly take them away from us. And given the correct Supreme Court they will try.—Joe]

Object embedding tool

Posted on by

I thought I had a picture of this up on the web someplace else but I can’t find it now. So here it is (possibly again):

ObjectEmbeddingTool

This is a close up of part of the lower receiver of an Olympic Arms PCR-01 (Politically Correct Rifle). It has a 24” heavy stainless steel barrel. With the right ammo it is very accurate. It was part of a Second Amendment Foundation and Microsoft Gun Club (now Gun Club at Microsoft) group gun buy in 1996.

I used this rifle to help win the 1998 Intermountain Tactical Rifle Team Championship.

Gun ‘tards

Posted on by

Juan was not the first to express his belief that gun owners are stupid. It has long been a belief among anti-gun bigots that gun owners are fatter and slower and dumber that “the enlightened ones”.

In response to Juan’s claim Eric Shelton sent me an email:

EricShelton

Juan, do you really want to go there? ‘Cause one of those cards says I’m a gun owner, and the other one says statistically I’m probably a fair bit brighter than you. Perhaps we’d waste less time if we had an IQ test before one were allowed to speak? You know, since we apparently have no problem infringing on the rights of others based on perceived intellect and all…

Don Kates pointed out as far back as 1994 the belief that gun owners are stupid uneducated yahoos failed reality tests when sociological studies demonstrated gun owners were actually better educated, had better jobs, and were only willing to use violence in defense of crime victims.

I cannot count the number of times I have been in conversations face to face or electronically with anti-gun people and had them “vapor lock” (as hazmat expressed it) after a question or two. In nearly all instance either they or someone else nearby declared “Reasoned Discourse!” and shut down the conversation to avoid excessive embarrassment to the anti-gun side of the discussion.

Last May when I had the chance to ask Paul Helmke a question I asked why he only talked about the rate of crimes where guns were involved. After all isn’t the total crime rate a better indicator of the effectiveness of restrictions on personal weapons? Because Alan Gura picked up the chase and took it in a slightly different direction I didn’t get a chance to respond to Helmke’s answer, “Our organization focuses on the one component of violence.” If I had been able to respond I would have pointed out, “The components of the crime vector are not orthogonal, hence you cannot consider them independently.” But he probably wouldn’t have understood anyway.

As Roberta X said, “Bring it on!”

A commitment to ‘Reasoned Discourse’

Posted on by

I’m sure no one will be surprised that Brady Campaign board member Joan Peterson is now firmly committing herself to “Reasoned Discourse”:

After careful thought and reflection about the direction my blog has taken since I asked questions and got answers from the “gun guys”, I have changed the purpose of my blog. As stated in my last post, I have found that most of the comments were just not getting the two sides of this volatile issue to a place where a thoughtful discussion could take place. Though the title of my blog indicates that I would like to have a discussion, I am not sure that is possible.

…

But after spending the last few weeks reading and responding to the many comments written on my blog, I realized that, rather than coming closer to an understanding, we have become further apart.

…

[M]y intention for my blog will not be a discussion but rather a way to keep the issue front and center and to urge those who can do something about gun injuries and deaths to put this issue more towards the top of the agenda.

She is right, it isn’t possible to have a discussion with a bigot who is incapable of distinguishing truth from falsity. And we should not dignify her bigotry regarding a specific enumerated human right by engaging her on her turf.

Major fail of the Jews in the Attic Test

Posted on by

Let’s just say, “There are ways to defeat this” but I’m not happy about having to do it. It would be MUCH better to defeat it at the legislative level rather than at the technological level:

Federal law enforcement and national security officials are preparing to seek sweeping new regulations for the Internet, arguing that their ability to wiretap criminal and terrorism suspects is “going dark” as people increasingly communicate online instead of by telephone.

Essentially, officials want Congress to require all services that enable communications — including encrypted e-mail transmitters like BlackBerry, social networking Web sites like Facebook and software that allows direct “peer to peer” messaging like Skype — to be technically capable of complying if served with a wiretap order. The mandate would include being able to intercept and unscramble encrypted messages.

…

James X. Dempsey, vice president of the Center for Democracy and Technology, an Internet policy group, said the proposal had “huge implications” and challenged “fundamental elements of the Internet revolution” — including its decentralized design.

“They are really asking for the authority to redesign services that take advantage of the unique, and now pervasive, architecture of the Internet,” he said. “They basically want to turn back the clock and make Internet services function the way that the telephone system used to function.”

But law enforcement officials contend that imposing such a mandate is reasonable and necessary to prevent the erosion of their investigative powers.

It is “Necessary to prevent the erosion of their investigative powers”?

What about the erosion of private communication? It used to be one could have a conversation in their home, while walking across the field or down the road and the conversation was technologically guaranteed to be just between those present. They are now demanding a technological guarantee to eavesdrop on any private conversation, anytime, anywhere.

You can have my crypto keys when you reanimate your cold dead hands.