If you are a Washington State resident and NRA member please consider attending one of these events and helping win the battle for freedom (via email):
This November will be ground zero for the enemies of freedom trying to turn the tide against our gun rights in the Evergreen State, serving as a launching pad for their national gun ban crusade. Our opponents will be pulling out all the stops as the mid-term election nears, so it is more important than ever that we block their campaign against the Second Amendment.
To ensure we are prepared to meet the challenges and opportunities we will face this election season, NRA-ILA is hosting a free volunteer kick-off meeting on September 9, 2010 in Tacoma and a second event September 10th in Olympia!
Event 1:
Thursday, September 9th 7:00 p.m. Pacific Lutheran University University Center 12180 Park Avenue S. Tacoma, WA 98447-0001 (317) 445-9332 FREE PARKING!!!
Event 2:
Friday, September 10th 7:00 p.m. Evergreen Sportsmen’s Club 12736 Marksman Road SW Olympia, WA 98512-9200 (360) 357-9080
Each of these events is an opportunity to get involved, and is open to any NRA Member! Please invite your friends and family that belong to NRA so they can attend these great events and help us win the fight in November! I’ve attached copies of the invites to this email so you can forward them on to your friends!
Yours in Liberty,
Caleb N Giddings Campaign Field Representative National Rifle Association 317-445-9332
Unless something urgent comes up at work I plan to attend the event tonight. If you want to attend register by sending an email to caleb@gunnutsmedia.com. Here are the invites for the Tacoma and Olympia events.
Rossi lost the 2004 election for Washington State Governor after King County (Seattle and surrounding areas) waited until all the other counties had reported their results during the second hand recount then kept finding “lost ballots” and, according to a friend of mine, ended up reporting more total votes than there were registered voters in the county.
Rossi is A-rated by the NRA.
His opponent, Patty Murray, is F-rated by all gun groups.
Even though she has never seen a gun rights infringement she didn’t like she doesn’t mention it on her website. I wonder if she is ashamed of her involvement with those unconstitutional infringements. Or is like some other Democrats who would rather not let it be known of their involvement in the KKK but still support the agenda?
Institute for Legislative Action Executive Director Bob Kukla, in an extremely courageous act, confirmed that the independence of ILA, and its effectiveness in fighting repressive gun legislation had been threatened by the Management Committee, composed of the three top officers. As proof, Kukla played an openly recorded tape of the February 26 Management Committee meeting in which he was criticized for ILA’s opposition to Smith & Wesson’s proposal for national handgun licensing, and ILA’s opposition to the National Education Association’s anti-handgun position. Kukla’s evidence convinced the neutral members of the seriousness of the problems within NRA; although relatively few members in the meeting had known of the Federation’s reform program, they supported it overwhelmingly.
Neal Knox
July 1977
From The Gun Rights War, page 311.
[I have often heard of “The Cincinnati Revolution” within the NRA but had never gotten any details. The Gun Rights War has several articles by Neal Knox about the revolt. Wow! No wonder there was a revolt.
Smith & Wesson proposed national handgun licensing? Was there a boycott then? Or was the first boycott in early 2000 when they tried to force all dealers and distributors to abide by a “code of conduct”? The “code of conduct” would have required all sales at gun shows to go through a background check, prohibited dealers and distributors from selling “assault weapons” or standard capacity magazines, and numerous other backdoor Second Amendment infringements. Gun owners decided then and there that Smith & Wesson must die and we almost did it too. Why wasn’t it well publicized that the Smith & Wesson betrayal was nothing new and had sided with the anti-gun people 23 years earlier?
If there was a boycott in 1977 Smith & Wesson apparently had forgotten about it. Let’s hope all gun manufactures learned their lesson in 2000 and we don’t have to repeat it. We need to be fighting the enemies of freedom rather than our own.—Joe]
On Saturday morning Barb and I had breakfast with our kids and their SOs. James doesn’t like his picture being taken but we managed to get a few without his his outstretched middle finger being too obvious.
Clockwise from the left, Joe, Barb, Xenia, John, Caleb, Kim, Kelsey, James.
And yes, we finished up the bacon before leaving.
The kids all went to PAX but Barb and I continued on to our slasher flick cabin and then we went for a hike in the woods. In the pictures below the bridge and large tree (a Douglas Fir) were here.
Barb wore her Boomershoot shirt and I wore a Blackwater shirt and hat. No comments or stares from anyone we saw.
Notice that I’m packing in the park? No hippies ran away in terror and no trail rage incidents broke out into gunfire.
I don’t want to see guns. No one should have guns. It is bad enough that people have knives.
Zsuzsanna Legradi September 5, 2010 A 42-year-old gardener. New York Times article: Altered Movie Poster Puts the Spotlight on a San Francisco Agency’s Gun Ban [I wonder if the New York Times would have printed that if it had been “I don’t want to see queers holding hands…” or “I don’t want to see ni**ers touching a white woman…”
And what would have been the response if someone had actually said made such a bigoted comment about homosexuals in San Francisco? Would they still have a job (or a home!) the following day?
Another thought that occurred to me is that SAF should be selling those posters. I don’t see them in their merchandise list. I’ll send Alan an email about it.
Update: I got an answer from Alan:
There will be posters for sale at GRPC with the proceeds going to the Calguns Foundation.
There are some anti-gun people out there that apparently think they are writing a brief that will win the Heller decision. As near as I can tell they don’t realize that decision came down over 26 months ago.
There are some anti-gun people out there that apparently think they can pull the same scam they pulled back in 1994 about “assault weapons” again. As near as I can tell they don’t realize so many millions of those “Evil Black Rifles” have been sold in the past few years that even if Congress didn’t know the topic was only a few milligrams short of being full-scale chain reaction that they would qualify as guns in “common use” and protected by the Heller decision.
There are some anti-gun people out there that apparently think they can claim blood will run in the streets if people are “allowed” to exercise their specific enumerated right to keep and bear arms. As near as I can tell they don’t realize there are so many states with millions of concealed licenses and so many states that have allowed open carry for, like, forever, with the greatest blood flow in the “gun free” zones that we crush that argument almost before their electrons reach the far end of the Internet.
There are some anti-gun people out there that apparently think claiming children are dying by the dozen each day they can gain sympathy for their cause. As near as I can tell they don’t realize we long ago caught on to their definition of “children” which includes “young people” up to the age of 25—most of whom are shot while involved in criminal activities and many are even legal, justified, shootings by the police and private citizens.
There are some anti-gun people out there that are apparently so stupid they don’t know how to distinguish truth from falsity and are apparently unable to accept that zero, or even negative, correlation conclusively demonstrates their premise is false. As near as I can tell they don’t realize most people recognize them as fools and charlatans within minutes.
Let them beat their dead horses by themselves. They are irrelevant to both the present and the future. Spend your time on the real front rather than on conquered and fully occupied territory.
If you will notice the Brady Campaign has fully abandoned the “collective right” view of the Second Amendment. While they still toss out small trial balloons of “blood in the street” and occasionally throw in an “assault weapon” reference they are spending most of their time and energy on things they have some hope of winning or at least stalling. They are spending their time on things like the “gun show loophole” or stopping legislation that would reduce ATF abuses.
While framed in the classic manner the “gun show” issue is probably a loser too. But Mayor Bloomberg and his “illegal guns” sound bite is good enough to be plausible to the causal observer and might gain some traction.
If you enjoy doing the politics thing then call, write, and visit your elected officials and/or help the NRA-PVC every election season.
If you enjoy teaching people to shoot then get your NRA certification and issue certificates to your students who successfully complete your classes. If you enjoy competition get out there and make a good showing. Then let your friends, neighbors, and the local newspapers know about the monthly match results.
If you have construction skills and time then help a local non-profit range improve their shooting facilities.
If you enjoy arguing and pointing out the fallacies of the anti-gun bigots then take on the biggest baddest dogs the other side has to offer—The Brady Campaign and Mayors Against Illegal Guns. Sure, as dogs go, the Brady’s are the equivalent of a whimpering, freshly neutered, toy poodle. But they are the best the other side has. Read their media releases and follow their Twitter feed to keep up on where they think they can gain some traction and take them on in whatever arena they present themselves.
Whatever you do, remember there are a couple names for those that continue attempting the ride the dead horse they are beating. They are called “losers” and “crazy”. The same names may also apply to those that spend more than a few minutes trying to engage them.
A Supreme Court decision could alter what riders here see in ads on city buses and trains and in transit shelters.
Pro-gun images, which are banned under an ad policy of the San Francisco Metropolitan Transportation Agency, showed up recently on posters for a conference for the Second Amendment Foundation, a gun rights group based in Washington.
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When Alan Gottlieb, founder of the Second Amendment Foundation, read that Wahlberg and Ferrell had been stripped of their weapons, he had 16 posters printed to promote the group’s gun rights policy conference, scheduled to be held here. To his surprise, the posters were installed last week in what a news release called “something of a coup.”
Paul Rose, a spokesman for the city transportation agency, said that after the gun group’s posters went up, the city decided to take another look at its policy.
“At this point, we’re not taking any action to remove the ads. We are currently reviewing our advertising policy in light of the recent Supreme Court decision, which may have altered the legal landscape regarding firearm advertising.”
That would be the June 28 decision in McDonald v. Chicago, in which the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that the right to bear arms guaranteed under the Second Amendment applies to state and local gun control laws.
The team of Alan Gura (the lead lawyer in McDonald) and Alan Gottlieb are a force to be taken seriously and are taking point on a lot of skirmishes these days.
Barb and I went “out into the wilderness” this weekend. We stayed in a cabin along Highway 20 and then made excursions into the mountains. On Sunday we went here. After driving 10 miles or so off the paved road we were surprised to see so many cars at the trailhead:
Of course this meant we saw far more people than we expected on the trail too.
And after a mile or so in there were wooden stairs on the trail:
Stairs? Out in the woods? They must have been put there for the people with the California license plates we saw in the parking lot.
Side note: Boomershoot coat, Blackwater hat, Blackhawk gloves, STI patch on the shoulder, STI Eagle in .40 S&W behind the right hip, spare magazine of 18 rounds and a SureFire 6P on the left hip. None of it seemed to scare the hippies.
It was sprinkling a little bit but not enough that we needed rain gear. And despite having more people than we care to see when we are out in the woods we had a nice hike and ate a few huckleberries:
The current batch of Democrats is not a particularly liberal bunch.
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[L]et’s examine what America would look like under the current Republican Party ideology:
Health care reform will be undone. At least 45 million Americans will lack health insurance. According to a Harvard School of Medicine study, the absence of health insurance leads to the deaths of 45,000 Americans a year.
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Republicans will eliminate all gun control. We now suffer about 30,000 gun deaths per year.
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The current batch of Republican candidates ignores the overall benefit to society of redistributing wealth from the haves to the have-nots through taxes. For Republican politicians, deaths from abortion are unacceptable, but deaths from pollution, gun violence and poverty are just background noise.
Few Republican voters would actually choose to live in the Republican ideological world. Most of them want good schools for all children, safe streets, a clean environment, fair treatment of the disadvantaged and Social Security benefits — all of which require taxes and regulation.
Steven Lachman September 7, 2010 A GOP-run nation would be barren [From the first to the last sentence of his opinion I was agape. I found it hard to believe he was serious. He had to be mocking the political left or something, right? Then I read his job title. He is a professor.
James Huffman-Scott
September 4, 2010
[This was after verifying we were going to a secluded cabin in the woods for the weekend. After I acknowledged it could be expressed that way Kelsey chimed in with “I know what you did last summer.”
We heard a few gunshots on our first night which probably was the end of the slasher’s reign of terror. I brought 237 rounds of .40 S&W but didn’t get a chance to use any of it.—Joe]
Under current Federal law the ATF is authorized to inspect Federal Firearm License holders (FFLs), unannounced, up to once per year and to do audits of their records. Every single gun must be accounted for by manufacture, model, and serial number. The FFL will face consequences if some buy wrote “N” and “Y” instead of “Yes” and “No”, they failed to include the county of residence in addition to the city, state and Zip Code, or they used the abbreviation “MINN” instead of spelling out “Minneapolis” in the small box for the city name. The FFL must record the NICS Transaction Number (NTN) on line 21b of the ATF Form 4473 and retain the form for auditing purposes. Form 4473 must be retained for 20 years.
Imagine if we had a Federal Book License holders (FBLs) and similar record keeping requirements. Would the book banners be able to claim such regulations were “common sense” and justified?
Imagine if the IRS were authorized one unannounced inspection and audit, without cause, of every taxpayer per year. Would people tolerate that?
Why is it that the specific enumerated right to keep and bear arms can be so heavily regulated when the Second Amendment explicitly says “…the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed”? Is there anyone surprised gun owners are pushing back and winning?
None can love freedom but good men; the rest love not freedom but license, which never hath more scope than under tyrants.
John Milton The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates (1649) [From the Wikipedia link above: “The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates is a book by John Milton, in which he defends the right of people to execute a guilty sovereign”.
I found the quote in The Great Thoughts (link is to the 2nd Edition, mine is the 1st Edition–1985) compiled by George Seldes.—Joe]
Frequently the anti-gun bigots claim that since “strict gun laws are the norm in most countries” we should have similar restrictions in our country. If that were, in fact, a valid basis for implementing laws then when this country was founded we would have had a state religion and a king.
And suppose slavery was the norm in most of the world. Would that be justification to implement slavery in this country?
I haven’t read the entire thing yet but I found this interesting (page 4):
Ironically, the surge in gun purchases coincided with an ammunition shortage in the U.S. in 2009. Industry experts estimate that close to 12 billion rounds of ammunition were sold that year, up from average annual sales figures that lie somewhere between 7 billion and 10 billion.
First off, I don’t see anything ironic about ammo sales increasing dramatically at the same time as gun sales go up.
But more importantly–think about those numbers. 12 billion rounds of ammunition is almost enough for two rounds for every person on the planet!
A San Francisco transit agency spokesman says the city is investigating whether pro-gun ads, which an advocacy group recently purchased, should have been posted in transit stations this week.
The city’s policy on such ads is strict but clear: It says that “no advertisement” shall “promote the use of firearms.”
Have these people forgotten they live in the United States instead of someplace like Cuba or North Korea? I can’t imagine the courts siding with the want-to-be tyrants in San Francisco on this issue. Establishing more precedent for freedom is a very good thing.
Do not forget this is their goal:
Even toy guns must be destroyed. There is no common ground with these people.
It’s nice to know the money I have been donating (matched dollar for dollar by Microsoft) is being put to good use. SAF and friends haven’t been winning all their court battles but they sure have been making good progress with their objective to “win back our firearms freedoms one lawsuit at a time”.—Joe]
Over the last few months on my twice monthly visits to Idaho there has been a bunch of wind turbines being erected near the Rye Grass rest area on I-90. When Barb came west on Tuesday of this week to visit me in my bunker she told me she stopped and took pictures of the turbines. “They look like something out of a science fiction movie”, she said.
Wow! It just so happens that on my return trip last Sunday I also took some pictures:
In his 99-page article, Professor Bogus reviews wide-ranging evidence including an analysis of Madison’s original language and an understanding of how he and other founders drew on England’s Declaration of Rights. Madison’s concern, Professor Bogus concludes, was not hunting, self-defense, national defense, or resistance to governmental tyranny but slave control.
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During the panel discussion, all three experts said that “The Hidden History” has dramatic implications for the contemporary debate over gun control. Rather than applying to individual gun ownership, the three agreed, the Second Amendment is rooted in the political battle over control of militia forces and ratification of the Constitution. This history, which has been endorsed by the U.S. Supreme Court, is often ignored by modern day pro-gun lobbyists.
I am quite sure there is common ground somewhere. Can we get there? Can we talk? Can we agree on just a few things?
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Can we get together and do what’s right? Can we agree that too many people are shot to death in our country? Can we agree that some common sense laws make sense and won’t affect those who are law abiding and want to own their guns and carry their guns? Can we agree that there are actually a few places where we don’t actually need guns? Can we agree that gun violence is a public safety and public health problem? Can we agree that stopping the injuries and deaths caused by guns is a social justice issue?
What they do not seem to understand (or just a likely do not want to admit) is that any of the laws they advocate which would “prevent gun violence” are prior restraint on a specific enumerated right and have a chilling effect on the exercise of that right. We can no more find common ground on this topic than we can find common ground with someone who would demand we get government approval before buying a book, dating someone of the same sex, or marrying someone of a different race. And in fact a better legal case could be made for the last two examples because they are not specifically enumerated rights.
The guy yesterday that held people hostage at Discovery Channel making demands that they “save the planet” by having a programing agenda that advocated for the voluntary extinction of humans (thanks to Ry for sending me the link to his webpage) will be dismissed as a nut case. This is probably valid but perhaps further consideration should be given to the topic. Don’t forget that not only did this nut case base his philosophy on the work of Al Gore but so did Ted Kaczynski.
We have known for a long time that anti-gun activists have strong violence tendencies. And such things as John Cusack’s “I AM FOR A SATANIC DEATH CULT CENTER AT FOX NEWS HQ AND OUTSIDE THE OFFICES [OF DICK] ARMEY AND NEWT GINGRICH-and all the GOP WELFARE FREAKS” is not all that uncommon.
And of course all the great genocides of the last century were under leftist regimes.
My hypothesis is that at some level they know that is the only method by which they can achieve their goals. They, almost by definition, believe in the power of government to “do good” no matter what domain they enter into. They believe in central planning and “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” But as George Washington said, “Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force; like fire, a troublesome servant and a fearful master.” Government is force. It is violence. Every dictate of the government is backed up with people with guns who job it is to force compliance.
Those who want to expand government, by definition, want to expand the use of force to achieve their goals. It should therefore come as no surprise that liberal individuals and groups are inclined to use violence to further their goals even outside the domain of government.
This also might explain why most liberals are opposed to the specific enumerated right to keep and bear arms. It explains why they keep insisting, long after the courts have ruled otherwise, that the Second Amendment only protects the power of a state to arm itself independent of the Federal government. The explanation is that they see the willingness inside themselves and those they associate with to use violence and they fear it. They believe they, and everyone else, might use violence in an unethical manner if allowed the tools and the opportunity. They believe in the wisdom of “the central committee” to temper the violent impulses they believe the individuals to have.
This might also explain why liberals accuse the others of violence tendencies. They are projecting the worst fears about themselves onto their opponents.
These violent tendencies can be dealt with at the individual and small group level via the police and the legal system and amount to noise in the big picture of things. It’s at the governmental level that we have genocides with millions dead in the span of a few years. It is at the government level that we must enforce strong restrictions on their power to deliver violence against individuals. This is why we have a constitution that (by design, not in practice) limits governments to a small set of enumerated powers and the Second Amendment to stop a runaway government from becoming tyrannical. One might even be able to make the case that the Second Amendment isn’t only not about hunting–it’s about protecting us from liberals.
Today is the day that the Windows Phone team has been driving towards, and we’re very excited to say that we’ve reached the biggest milestone for our internal team – the release to manufacturing (RTM) of Windows Phone 7! While the final integration of Windows Phone 7 with our partners’ hardware, software, and networks is underway, the work of our internal engineering team is largely complete.
Windows Phone 7 is the most thoroughly tested mobile platform Microsoft has ever released. We had nearly ten thousand devices running automated tests daily, over a half million hours of active self-hosting use, over three and a half million hours of stress test passes, and eight and a half million hours of fully automated test passes. We’ve had thousands of independent software vendors and early adopters testing our software and giving us great feedback. We are ready.
I can’t vouch for the exact numbers but they sound about right. We have some amazing automation. And if you think the half-million hours of active self-hosting is implausible think again. I first used a Windows Phone 7 about a year ago and started carrying one as my primary phone early this year. When I went on vacation to Missouri last May I took three (the rest were loaned out to co-workers for testing) of them with me and used them for navigation (I’m on the “Location Team”), traffic, lots of email, web browsing, pictures, video, and of course phone calls. Everyone I know on the team has a minimum of two phones and some have five. That adds up to a lot of hours. I actually suspect the half million hours is an understatement.
I am more proud of this product than anything I have worked on since Direct X 1.0. In terms of my primary reason for wanting to work for Microsoft (to change the world) this is, by far, my largest contribution.
Technically it is great. It’s not perfect but it is much more than “good enough” to compete. Market acceptance is a question in our minds though.
Most of the people I associate with are engineers. We understand the technology but not people who are different from us. Will this phone be compelling for non-engineers? I’m sure I can configure one such that my wife (who always insists she just wants “a simple phone, nothing more”) can and would use it as a phone, camera, and for occasional navigation but I’m not so sure she would be interested in spending the money on one if I didn’t “twist her arm”. In many ways it is simpler to use than her current phone. Son James (also a software developer working at Microsoft) will get one. I’m not so sure about his girlfriend. I think my daughters and their spouses will give very serious consideration to one. But how does this translate into the market at large? I think it will be at least “good”. With a little bit of luck and a lot of awesome Microsoft marketing (I’ve seen some “concept ads” that look really good) it will do great.
We have some “ship parties” (not really my thing but it is nice to see others have a good time) in the next few days then we have to deliver on the next version. Yesterday I took care of four bugs on our next deliverable so don’t think we are sitting around to see how well this version does before deciding what to do next.—Joe]
