This is the last of the Charlton Heston cartoons I have. I meant to post it yesterday but was in a hurry and grabbed the first one on my list.
I mostly give the artist a pass on this one too. It’s not exactly classy to criticize someone on their death but compared to some of the other crap that was thrown at him this is pretty mild.
Universal Unloading Place
Translation: Bathroom.
From the Greg Hamilton to English Dictionary by Meredith Robinson.
[If you travel and carry a gun a lot you will find yourself needed to load and unload as you cross political jurisdictions and entering/leaving an airport. Bathroom stalls are your friend. Although I have successfully done it at baggage pick up, while at the curb waiting for a shuttle and other nearly open places.
We really need to fix these stupid laws that force this sort of behavior. The more gun handling the greater the chance of an accident. The gun should be put on when you get up from bed and taken off when you go to bed.–Joe]
This sort of thing is not helpful to the cause of gun rights (found on a towel dispenser in a bathroom). If this particular politician was signing orders to put people in cattle cars to send them to the “camps” then sure that would be appropriate. But we aren’t anywhere close to that.
When Alan Gura spent time with a bunch of gun bloggers at the NRA Convention last May I asked him what bloggers could do to help the civil rights war. He said (paraphrased), “Make guns fun. Don’t bring up or associate with Threepers. It scares people.”
I’ve elaborated on this sort of thing before and don’t see a need to elaborate further at this time.
Even if you ignore the U.S. Revolutionary War (it was prior to the 2nd Amendment but it was enabled by the inalienable right to keep and bear arms) the scorecard is far from complete. It doesn’t show the (probably incalculable) number of tyrants prevented in places all over the world. It doesn’t show the number people murdered by tyrants who successfully infringed the right to keep and bear arms. And it doesn’t show the number of innocent lives saved by people who exercised their specific enumerated right to to keep and bear arms on a much smaller personal scale.
But it’s anti-gun artist. Of course they are going to leave information out and distort things. It’s what bigots do.
The economy is worse than a divorce.
I lost half my money and I’m still married.
T-Shirt
August 7, 2010
Seen on a t-shirt in a restaurant in Camdenton, Missouri this evening.
[I wouldn’t mind the temporary economic situation so much if it meant we were getting a divorced from an oppressive big government. But like the t-shirt says (after twisting the meaning a little bit), we are stuck with both.–Joe]
So… do you think the artist thinks that when they go for a walk in Seattle, Indianapolis, Las Vegas, Dallas, Tampa, Phoenix, or any of the state parks in (probably) 40 different states? Of course not.
Then why the big deal about National Parks? It’s those damn uppity gun owners–they let them go anywhere rather than staying in their place where they belong.
Some people live an entire lifetime and wonder if they have ever made a difference in the world, but the Marines don’t have that problem.
Ronald Reagan
[I have had this in my collection for quite a while but never had the appropriate occasion to use it. Today I saw it printed on a tile at the restaurant at Middle of Nowhere. The owner is a former Marine.
While I was at Middle of Nowhere I put 1000 rounds of .40 S&W and 500 rounds of .22 into steel plates. I have a couple sore fingers and I’m tired of standing but I also trimmed about 0.1 seconds per plate off my time and I can shoot weak handed a lot better.–Joe]
I almost have to give the artist a pass on this one.
The idea of wilderness needs no defense, it only needs defenders.
Edward Abbey
(1927 – 1989)
[The same thing could be said of freedom. I wish we could get to that place in politics and public discourse.–Joe]
I’m in a small town in central Missouri. I’ve been accessing the Internet via Internet Sharing with my cell phone and that worked well for a while. Then the data transfer rate gradually went to zero. Rebooting the phone and computer didn’t help. I started “borrowing” wireless bandwidth from someone with a SSID of “Linksys” (it is my understanding they are the largest free Internet provider in the country). That went away about two hours ago and I’m back on the cell phone which gives me a few bits every once in a while before drying up.
It’s like I am pumping water from a well and I pulled the water table down below all the intake pipes in the town. I’m mostly sucking air now with just an occasional few spurts of water.
Another indication of the low bit table is that my new phone with the weak cell signal (known issue, we are working on it) runs its battery dead, even while plugged into USB power, trying to sync my email from work.
Until I leave town blogging and email responses will be marginal at best.
The same things Lyle said yesterday apply to this cartoon.
Also note that even Heston’s death does not stop the anti-gun people from attacking him.
Politicians who advocate liberty are the tools and puppets of “special interests” and are therefore stupid, weak and/or corrupt, whereas politicians who advocate statism do so out of compassion and concern for their fellow human beings and are therefore smart, strong and/or heroes.
Lyle @ UltiMAK
August 3, 2010
Comment to Gun cartoon of the day.
[Nominated for QOTD by Hank Archer. I agree.–Joe]
I wasn’t going to actually use this one. But Bitter’s comment changed my mind.
As Lyle pointed out in the same comment thread advocation of liberty is not something that should be ridiculed or condemned no matter what the source. Yet that appears to be the intent here.
More interestingly, many Americans no longer even understand the concepts of loyalty and treason—again, not surprising, since for a few generations now they have been ruled by traitors, whose routine acts of betrayal are designed to benefit just about anyone—from Israeli arms smugglers to Afghani heroin dealers—except the people who supposedly elect them to office.
Dmitry Orlov
July 10, 2010
US Swaps Russian Spies for … Russian Spies
[Reading Kevin’s post, But What if Your Loyalty is to the Constitution? – Part III reminded me of the above quote in my collection.–Joe]
Were there ever any cartoons expressing the view that President Clinton was the puppet of The Brady Campaign? That view certainly would have had more truth to it than President Bush was the puppet of the NRA or Charlton Heston.
But then truth is irrelevant to bigots.
If it is lawful to possess a book in one’s home, does that mean it is lawful to read a book while sitting on one’s porch? How about in one’s backyard? These questions sound absurd, but they are precisely the questions New Jersey gun owners face every day because New Jersey gun law treats gun owners as criminals unless they can show that they are not.
New Jersey courts have made it clear that gun laws are to be interpreted and applied as unfavorably as possible against the gun owner. In a 1973 case, State v. Valentine, the court declared: “The overriding philosophy of our Legislature is to limit the use of guns as much as possible.”
Similarly, in a 1996 case, State v. Pelleteri, the court declared: “When dealing with guns, the citizen acts at his peril.”
The New Jersey Legislature must face the reality that the gun owner and the book owner alike must be treated with equal constitutional dignity. After McDonald, we now see that the emperor has no clothes.
New Jersey gun law is upside down, and if the New Jersey Legislature does not fundamentally reform its scheme of regulating guns, the courts will likely do it for them.
Daniel Schmutter
July 30, 2010
Op-Ed: Throwing the book at gun laws
Schmutter is a litigation attorney at the firm of Farer Fersko in Westfield, focusing on
environmental, commercial real estate and business law. He represented Jews for
the Preservation of Firearms Ownership as amicus curiae before the U.S. Supreme
Court in both the Heller and McDonald cases and currently represents the
Association of New Jersey Rifle and Pistol Clubs in its challenge to New
Jersey’s one-gun-a-month law.
[And the reform cannot come any too soon. People are dying and being put in prison out there.
H/T to John Richardson.–Joe]
This is very interesting to me:
More than a million BlackBerry users may have key services in Saudi Arabia and
the UAE cut off after authorities stepped up demands on smartphone maker
Research In Motion for access to encrypted messages sent over the device.BlackBerry’s Messenger application has spread rapidly in the Gulf Arab region
but because the data is encrypted and sent to offshore servers, it cannot be
tracked locally.“Certain BlackBerry services allow users to act without any legal
accountability, causing judicial, social and national security concerns,” the
United Arab Emirates’ Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA) said in a
statement.…
India raised similar security concerns last week, and Bahrain in April warned
against using BlackBerry Messenger to distribute local news. As far back as
2007, France cautioned officials about using the services.Indian security officials were concerned that BlackBerry’s encrypted data
could be used to coordinate acts against the state. They have clamped down on
mobile phone operators in the wake of 2008 attacks that killed 166 people in
Mumbai.
Sure, secure communications can “be used to coordinate acts against the state”. But secure communications can be used to secure the Jews in your attic too.
There is a lot of secure communications that goes on with Windows Phone 7 too. I wonder if any of it will run afoul of repressive government laws.
I may have to write an app for defeating such laws if things progress to far in that direction. It consumes more bandwidth but it’s possible to create communication channels that are essentially invisible while in plain sight and encrypt them as well. I’ve done this before with another app but sort of lost interest when we started winning the gun rights war in this country. I might have to fire up that project again.
You have to wonder at the intensity and extent of the hatred expressed toward Charlton Heston by those opposed to this human right. Was it his support for the civil rights of black Americans a few decades that pissed them off and this was the last straw? In his view, and mine, it was entirely consistent–he supports human rights.
Or maybe it was because they assumed everyone in Hollywood was with them and they viewed him as a traitor. How else can one explain it? And it seems so odd that for all the indignation by the left for the blacklisting of actors in the 1950’s that they would fail to see the irony of their actions.
I’ve posted a few Heston cartoons earlier which portrayed him in a negative light. This one is the beginning of a series.
The anti-gun people did not even stop their attacks even when it was announced he had Alzheimer. In fact I remember the anti-gun people suggesting Alzheimer’s was the reason he aligned himself with the NRA. And as you will see in a few days the anti-gun people didn’t stop their attacks even when he died.
The Second Amendment Foundation is delighted to have worked with Alan Gura, who brought together the individual plaintiffs and organized this landmark case for us and our colleagues at ISRA. Today, it feels great to be the most effective community organizer Chicago has ever had.
Alan Gottlieb
June 28, 2010
COURT VICTORY OVER CHICAGO IS ‘CALL TO ACTION,’ SAYS SAF
[Mayor Daley and President Obama may not think it is funny but I sure do.–Joe]
I would ask gun control advocates one question: name a single place in the entire world where murder rates fell after gun control laws were passed.
It’s essentially the same as what I have been asking since 2004.
Also from this review of his new book:
Another reason that a third edition is essential is that critics have had twelve years to critique Lott’s proposition. As Lott states, however, “not a single refereed study finds the opposite result, that right-to-carry laws have a bad effect on crime.” Lott’s latest edition also addresses the impact of “Castle Doctrine” laws, which refer to the adage that “a man’s home is his castle” and make it unnecessary for potential crime victims to retreat as far as possible before using a firearm in self-defense.
Also addressed by the new third edition is the federal “assault weapons” legislation, which took effect in 1994 but terminated in 2004. Gun control advocates predicted an explosion in murder and violent crime when the ban expired, but rates actually declined substantively. As Lott notes, “rarely do we get a chance to look at the impact of gun laws when they are first passed and then when they are eliminated.”
