Author Archives: Joe

Who is Brady’s donor?

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After reading Rob Reed’s article I followed the link to Open Secrets and the Brady fund raising info. As Robb noted the other day (but I failed to follow up on) the Brady Campaign has had just one donor this year who gave them $2500.

If they turn off all the lights, turn the heat down really low during the winter, and only use enough air-conditioning to keep the computers from overheating that might be enough to pay the electric bill. I don’t what kind of guns you own, that’s funny.

You know what is even funnier? That one donor…I know who it is. Open Secrets lists them as Michael Wolkowitz.

That name… where have I seen that name before? Could it be some crime family boss wanting to keep their victims unarmed? Or maybe a foreign nation diplomat, the Taliban, or some other subversive? Naw! Too easy. It has to be someone else.

Oh yeah! Now I remember! It is the Brady Campaign Board Chair.

I don’t care who you are. That’s funny right there!

Suicide watch

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This is a little different than most suicide watches. In this one they are in the process and we are just watching it happen.


After it completes we should all go to the wake. I’ll sign up to bring my famous cookies and maybe my chemistry set.

Gun cartoon of the day

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Had it been “U.S. Constitution” and “Bill of Rights” instead of “gun” and “Smith and thy Wesson” there would be some truth in the cartoon and it would apply to a large percentage of gun owners and NRA members. As it is it only reflects the bigoted, imaginary world of the artist.

Quote of the day–John R. Lott Jr.

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When I have been interviewed by foreign journalists, even German ones, they usually start off by asking why multiple-victim public shootings are such an American problem. And of course, they are astonished when I remind them of the attacks in their own countries and point out that this is not an American problem, it is a universal problem, but with a common factor: The attacks occur in public places where civilians are banned from carrying guns.

John R. Lott Jr.
June 11, 2010
Gun Control and Mass Murder
[H/T to Dave Hardy.

I would have said “private citizens” instead of “civilians” but he still gets the point across.–Joe]

Gun cartoon of the day

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I’ve been collecting gun cartoons and it’s time to start sharing. Most come from the dark ages of the mid and late 1990s.

Perhaps this will help bring people up to speed on why I think anti-gun people are bigots. Would this cartoon get published in your paper if the target were black, Jewish, or homosexual?

Anti-gun people lying with statistics

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One of the books on my shelf is How to Lie with Statistics. I found it very useful to help me identify the errors in the reports from anti-gun people. They apparently subscribe to the claim by the author, “A well-wrapped statistic is better than Hitler’s “big Lie”; it misleads,
yet it cannot be pinned on you.”

For example NYC Mayor Bloomberg reported the other day:

The report shows that total crime decreased by 5.1 percent in New York City
during 2009, outpacing national trends. Murders fell by 9.9 percent, compared to
7.2 percent nationwide. According to NYPD Compstat data, crime is down an
additional 1.5 percent citywide for the first five months of the year when
compared to 2009 levels

What is not said is that (as pointed out by Linoge) NYC uses a biased sample for the statistics. They deliberately do not report all the crime.

Of course that is such a brute force approach it doesn’t take any great skill or reading of a book to accomplish.

The Brady Campaign and Violence Policy Center are generally a little more subtle in their statistical lies.

As I wrote in my last paragraph in my post Alan Gura v. Paul Helmke Helmke and company talk about “gun violence” and concentrate on the “one component of violence”. The unmentioned assumption is that violent crime committed with guns is independent of all violent crime. If this were true then you would expect that one could, conceivably, eliminate all the guns in society and have a decrease in violent crime. This isn’t what happens in real life. It tends to be true that the rate of crimes committed with firearms goes down when there are exceedingly strict restriction in place. But other violent crime has a strong tendency to increase when those restrictions occur. The presumed reasons for this are: 1) If criminals cannot get access to a firearm they substitute a different weapons and; 2) Potential victims are disarmed which encourages predators because of the reduced risk of getting hurt and/or caught.

The VPC feeds the press information on “gun death rates” and they eat it up. But the VPC appears to include suicides and justifiable homicide by police and private citizens! According to their numbers it is just as bad for a wheelchair bound elderly woman to kill the man who broke into her home to rape her as it for the home invader to kill an entire family including the toddlers. And they ignore violent crime in general.

Their statistics tells us nothing about whether places with strict gun laws make the average person safer. They do tell us where we can live if you would rather die by being beaten to death than a gunshot wound and where violent predators can find disarmed prey. One should conclude that VPC is more appropriately named the Violent Predator Compendium.

Quote of the day–Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence

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Sorry! Page Not Found

As you can see we have moved things around. We hope the new structure will make things easier to find on the site. All of the pages on the site are listed below.

Sorry, the page you requested is not in our database. You may have followed a bad external link, or mis-typed a URL.

For now, you may want to load our homepage (www.bradycenter.org) or type your request in the search box above.

Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence
June 9, 2010
http://www.bradycenter.org/donate/events/dc
[The link used to go to this content. Searching for Helen Thomas on their site still yields the link above but the page has been removed. I wonder why?

Since they seem to have lost the web page I’m pleased to offer it back to them and even host it on my site at no charge.

The Brady Campaign–The 21st Century social equivalent of the KKK.

Update: Their web page about honoring Helen Thomas works again. Sebastian speculates.

If I were in management of an organization that were embarrassed by someone we honored by giving them an award I think I would do just the opposite of what they did. I think I would leave the web page (the Internet is forever once it hits the tubes–you can’t take it back so why try?) but update it with a statement that you were unaware (assuming that is true) of the persons embarrassing beliefs and have revoked the award.

They appear to have tried to just hide the evidence which is the wrong thing to do. Will they do the right thing now? They haven’t in the past. Let’s hope they continue to fumble along and further confirm my claim they are ordinary bigots who are not ashamed of their beliefs and the people they associate with.–Joe]

Episode one of Top Shot

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I watched the first episode of Top Shot last night. Barb watched about 10 minutes and then got bored and went off to do something else.

I liked it far better than I expected to. I don’t care for reality shows. When I first heard about Survivor back in late 1999 I was about to become unemployed as my contract with Microsoft expired. I thought it might be something I could do well at and I got an application and looked into the show concept further. It was completely different than I expected and I was repulsed. I expected something about working together and making conditions better for everyone on the island. I envisioned the winner being the person who did the most to improve the small “society”. I contemplated the skills and innovation I could bring to the situation. What would I bring with me and what sort of things could be accomplished with the materials on hand. It wasn’t going to be anything like that. It was going to be about getting rid of other people not working together with people. What sort of life lesson is this? It’s total crap.

That said it did cross my mind that Top Shot might be something I could participate in–for about 500 mS. I’m not a “Top Shot”. I do okay in the local matches but I’m just a “B” class shooter. I shoot at a level of about 65% (my current USPSA classification is 65.94% with a high of 68.53%) of the worlds best shooters. I could not imagine that would be good enough and didn’t pursue it.

Then I found out Caleb was accepted. What? I’m on par with Caleb! Oh well, it was at a bad time with our current project (Windows Phone Seven) at Microsoft and I had an obligation to complete that work anyway.

I really should have listened to what Caleb said last night on Gun Nuts Radio about it before making the following comments but I have other commitments for tonight and don’t have the time.

After seeing the first episode I again thought I could have had a chance. Mike Seeklander and his spotter’s performance was pathetic. Yes, as Tam pointed out the 100 yard shot Seeklander failed on is not as straightforward as one might think. But assuming the problem was not with the shooter being incompetent then either the spotter and shooter could have solved the problem had they been thinking. Here is how.

One of the shots was on paper. Use the same point of aim and try it again. If it lands on paper in close to the same place then you know offset in both X and Y from point of aim. Use that offset to put the bullet on target. If it doesn’t then the one on paper was random and you need to find the offset. The spotter should have found a nearby spot of bare ground where the bullet strike could be easily seen and directed the shooter there to find the offsets. If no such bare ground was available then systematically try offset in increments of 1/2 the paper width/height. Get a bullet on paper and confirm the offsets! They may have tried that and it was edited before airing but I was extremely annoyed that I didn’t see it happening. I felt the other team members should have put both the spotter and shooter on the chopping block. They both failed.

This episode also confirmed my hypothesis that if someone brags about how good a shooter they are it is near certain proof they are crap. All the great shooters I have personally met are extremely modest or at least silent about how great they think they are.

If you take nothing more from this post remember this. You can do a quick and dirty zero of your gun with one shot. Aim at something and shoot. Then stabilize the gun while aiming at the same place. With the gun still pointed at the same exact spot adjust the sights until the sights point at the place where the bullet hit.

Quote of the day–Theodore Haas

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Their ignorance is pitiful — their lives have been too easy. Had they
experienced Dachau, they would have a better idea of how precious freedom is.
These leftist should leave America. These Sarah Brady types must be educated to
understand that because we have an armed citizenry, that a dictatorship has not
yet happened in America. These anti-gun fools are more dangerous to Liberty than
street criminals or foreign spies.

Theodore Haas
Full Interview with Holocaust Survivor, Theodore Haas

[I was reminded of this quote by The Brady Campaign connection with anti-Semite Helen Thomas.–Joe]

Only 300?

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I have conflicting data.

On one hand I have data points like this blog post and military officers who have privately told me that 20 well trained and disciplined men could completely change the political make up of this country. They make plausible arguments and I have only one data point to counter that claim.

If it only takes 300 (or 20) then why hasn’t Osama bin Laden (or the Weathermen, or whoever) deployed the 300 and done so? Is it that hard to find that many well trained and disciplined men? Or is it that those groups lack the motivation? Or is it that those claims are wrong. Just what is it?

The two data points are at odds with each other.

.50 caliber myth

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AmericanMercenary, a U.S. army solider, gives us data on the effectiveness of .50 caliber rifle fire on aircraft.

That should put the myth propagated by the VPC and Brady Campaign to rest. At least for rational people.

Quote of the day–John Bingham

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Privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States … are chiefly defined in the first eight amendments to the Constitution of the United States… . These eight articles … never were limitations upon the power of the states until made so by the Fourteenth Amendment.

John Bingham
1871
Bingham was a primary architect of the 14th Amendment.
[This is something to keep in mind as later this month, after being more than 140 years overdue, the Second Amendment is finally acknowledged as a barrier to state and local governments infringement on a specific enumerated right. Bigots ignore the spirit and the intent of the law. We have a legal system. Not a justice system.

Although I haven’t read all of Alan Gura’s briefs so maybe he did use this but if he didn’t it would seem to me he overlooked powerful support for his approach to incorporation of the Second Amendment.

I found this while reading The Gun Rights War, page 75.–Joe]

How appropriate

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It was so obvious I didn’t bother to immediately point it out. It was just a week ago that I posted links to the bigots hanging out together (here, here, here, here, here, here, and here are direct links). Their website still has this page up with pictures from  their annual event (which, BTW, wouldn’t be big enough for the Boomershoot dinner we have every year).

So many anti-gun people try to paint gun owners as white supremacists, anti-Semitic bigots and now the “the nation’s largest, non-partisan, grassroots organization leading the fight to prevent gun violence” is embarrassed by having the person they just honored show her true colors by saying the Jews in Israel should “get the hell out of Palestine” and go back to Germany and Poland.

Had this been the NRA who just honored such a person at their annual meeting the connection would have been on the front page of nearly every leftist web site. It would be on television and reporters would be camped out at Wayne LaPierre’s house trying to make the connection all the more damaging.

What do we see now that it was one of the left’s own that is the anti-Semitic bigot and was honored as “legendary” by one of the left’s favorite causes? All I’m picking up on is a few on our side (Sebastian and Kurt).

I would like to remind those that support the Brady Campaign that their silence implies agreement with the Brady’s alliance with Thomas and her bigoted view. But I already knew you guys were bigots. This just makes it more obvious to the rest of the world.

Quote of the day–Caitlin Rosser

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One of the most interesting projects I worked on altered my perceptions of the civil rights movement and tested my convictions about nonviolence as an effective form of direct action. The Coalition sought to rebut claims by gun rights activists that gun control is historically racist; and violent, armed action is the method by which African Americans obtained important rights.

While researching the Deacons for Defense and Justice (DDJ), a small movement of men that took up arms to protect their communities in southern states between 1964-1968, I learned what it must have been like to stand up to a violent mob. In this case, that mob was the Ku Klux Klan. During this time, advocates of violence were much more prevalent than I had been taught. Student groups like the Congress for Racial Equality (CORE) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) became much more militant during the 1960s, especially after seeing the terror of the Klan in the south.

Yet I also came to understand that while it may have been necessary for some African Americans to arm themselves to protect the lives of those they loved, it really was nonviolence that gained national attention and helped thrust the civil rights movement ahead.

Caitlin Rosser
June 7, 2010
Former intern for Coalition to Stop Gun Violence
Holding Fire, Finding Peace
[If I’m reading this right she learned the same lesson she would have had I been her mentor instead of someone at an anti-gun organization. Non-violence is the way of everyday life but the ability and willingness to deliver violence in the defense of innocent life under unusual circumstances is what makes it possible to live a life of relatively free of violence.

I have to wonder how successful she was in being able to achieve the coalition’s goal to “rebut the claims by gun rights activists.” I did a search on the CSGV website for her name without getting any hits. One might conclude that means she didn’t come up with the desired answer. She appears to be a smart girl so maybe she figured things out even while interning with a well meaning but extremely misguided organization.

After spending four months with the CSGV she has now been an intern at the U.S. Department of Justice for two months. I wonder if she is an advocate for non-violence there as well. I don’t expect that would go over too well with those that have to make contact with those that regularly prey on the innocent.

One might even imagine that if she continues to learn the lessons that life has to offer at the DOJ she might next get a job, virtually next door, at NRA headquarters. She would fit right in with nearly all the NRA PR people I have met, female, smart, and blond (I said “nearly” — Danielle probably isn’t considered a blond).–Joe]

Quote of the day–Ronald Reagan

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Of the four wars in my lifetime none came about because the U.S. was too strong.


Ronald Reagan
[This afternoon on my way back to my hidden underground bunker in the Seattle area I listened to A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles by Thomas Sowell.  Kevin gives a more complete review than I would ever consider but one thing in the book jumped out at me that reminded me of this Reagan quote. In the unconstrained vision nations enter into war because of misunderstandings many of which are because one side or both became convinced that their neighbor was preparing to go to war against them. Hence, in the eyes of those who adhere to the unconstrained vision, one of the ways to prevent war is to disarm.


As Kevin points out those of the unconstrained persuasion are as much or more interested in intent than in hard data. Does that remind you of any politicians you know?


In the unconstrained vision the definitions of the most basic words have different meanings from those of a constrained vision viewpoint. Some definitions are not merely different–they are the complete opposite (for example see the video I linked to here). This is why, for them, “freedom” and/or “economic justice” can entail forced redistribution of wealth without a hint of irony.


For them, criminals can be understood and reformed. It was the fault of society/poverty/”economic-injustice” which creates criminals and by fixing those problems and taking away the tools of their trade there will be less (or zero) crime. As an example just last month Paul Helmke said gun violence is one component of the total violence. This, of course, presumes that violent crime committed with firearms is totally independent of other types of violent crime. It assumes there will be no substitution of other weapons if firearms are less available (and with the victims disarmed firearms are less likely to be needed by large predators). In their minds people like Ted Bundy, Jeffery Dahmer, and Richard Kuklinski (now there was one scary SOB–Ted Bundy was a pussy cat compared to him) apparently would not come into being.


That line of thought brought me to gun control and back to Reagan’s quote. What Reagan said in regards to war also applies to gun ownership and criminals. No violent criminal or political tyrant committed his crimes because his victims were too strong.–Joe]

As it should be

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According to GunPolicy.org in the U.S. there are about 270 million guns in private hands, about 3 million under military control, and about 900 thousand owned by the police.


I find the ratio of 69:1 appropriate odds.


Public servants should keep this in mind if they entertain thoughts of changing the relationship.

Quote of the day–Thucydides

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The Nation that makes a great distinction between its scholars and its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting done by fools.


Thucydides
[When I was young I thought of people who entered the military as not smart enough to get a real job. This was based on a very limited sample of my classmates who joined the military. In the last couple of decades I revised my opinion as I met veterans who were incredibly smart and I read books about and by military people who were great thinkers as well as great warriors.


But I think there is a large segment of our society that does make a great distinction between scholars and warriors and thinks people who join the military are dullards.


I have yet to be convinced that the supposed scholars of our nation are not both cowards and fools.–Joe]

Quote of the day–Steve Chapman

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Gun control supporters fear that if the Supreme Court invalidates local handgun bans, the consequences will be nothing but bad. That would be easier to believe if the laws had ever done any good.

Steve Chapman
March 4, 2010
Chicago’s pointless handgun ban–City gun ordinances proved to be a failure
[Gun control supporters fear potentialities. Rational people evaluate actualities.

I’ve quoted Chapman here before too. It’s nice to see someone on a Chicago newspaper editorial board support our specific enumerated right to keep and bear arms.–Joe]

A potentiality is not an actuality

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Yesterday I posted a quote from someone opposed to open (and I would imagine any type of) carry. He was responding to someone else in the comments to a newspaper article:

“How many open carry citizens have committed crimes with their weapons?
Answer – none”.

You are incorrect. Open carry laws make it easy for psychos to tote
around LOADED weapons, which are responsible for a lot of the crime and gun
deaths each year. The law may be designed for the “law abiding” citizen, but if
you think only “law abiding” citizens utilize the law you are an idiot.

It is my belief that we are so frequently exposed to irrational and nonsensical thinking and behaviors that we frequently cannot see it for what it is. We accept it as normal and attempt to confront them on their own territory using their own “rules”. This is like mud wrestling with a pig. They are going to be an extremely slippery opponent, you are unlikely to win, and even if you do there is no hope of any dignity or great reward.

I didn’t notice that I had ignored this guy’s subterfuge until sometime after I had posted it and rather than update the post I decided to see if anyone else noticed and pointed it out in the comments. About a 1000 people have seen that quote here and no one has said anything about what the guy did. I doubt that he himself realized what he did. It is what these people do naturally. Their thinking process is so messed up that it just comes out.

The two points that need to be made are:

  1. The responder changed the question. The question was, “How many open carry citizens have committed crimes with their weapons?” The responder changes this to, the implied, “Does the ability to openly carry enable crime?”
  2. A potential to do harm is not the same as actually doing harm. In nearly every instance of a push for greater gun control (and, if you think about it some, nearly all government programs) those advocating more government control focus almost entirely on the potential harm if action is not taken and the potential good if the action is taken. Actual harm and actual benefits appear to be (and in many cases I’m sure it is deliberately) ignored.

This second point is very important. A potentiality is not an actuality.*

For the most part when we debate against gun control (or socialism for that matter) we use actual facts. We accuse them of using emotionalism but it goes deeper than that. They frequently argue about “what could happen”. When they do this there is almost no limit to what conclusions will be reached.

They end up arguing that .50 caliber “sniper rifles” can bring airplanes down out of the sky. To the best of my knowledge there has never been a case of a semi-auto or bolt action .50 caliber rifle taking down an airplane. Potentiality versus actuality.

They end up arguing criminals will buy guns at gun shows with “no questions asked”. Criminals obtain their firearms at gun shows less than 1% of the time. Potentiality versus actuality.

They end up arguing if you carry a gun it can be taken away from you and used against you. Defending ones-self with a gun results in less injury to the defender than any other course of action. Potentiality versus actuality.

They end up arguing that if there were strict, “common sense” gun laws in place crime would go down. At the very best the facts show heavy restrictions on private citizen access to firearms is not positively correlated with an increase in crime. Potentiality versus actuality.

Keep your eyes and ears open and your brain working. Don’t let them get away with arguing potentialities. Make them argue actualities. A potentiality is not an actuality.

*The title for for this blog post comes from Susan K. (Cherry Tree–Susan will know) who, about 25 years ago, used this phrase to emphasis a point in a debate I had with her. This post was inspired by the book I’m currently listening to, The Virtue of Selfishness by Ayn Rand. Susan was a huge fan of hers although I didn’t hear that exact phrase in the book (so far anyway) similar wordings and phrases caused me to remember the debate I had with Susan. It turns out, that if you do a web search for that phrase you will find that Ayn Rand did in fact use it–but in a totally different context.

Bringing back the dead

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The real reason for Obamacare:

Via son James.