The only relevant test of the validity of a hypothesis is comparison of prediction with experience.
Milton Friedman
[Friedman probably was talking about economics but, as I’m sure he knew, the statement is much more broadly applicable than that. Those that would ban or even restrict gun ownership appear to be in denial of or are oblivious to the truth of the statement.–Joe]
The economic stimulus plan has created or saved 150,000 jobs since its inception in February, a senior White House Budget Office official said Wednesday.
Rob Nabors, the deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget, told a congressional panel that the jobs figure is based on an economic model used by the Obama administration.
I wonder if that was using the same economic model that generated this graph (from Kevin):
At Microsoft when our tools yield results that even a little bit erratic we investigate and fix them. I would suggest the Obama administration examine their tools but I am suspicious the tools involved are producing the results desired by the administration and they see no need to even investigate–let alone fix them.
Shortly after I began my career as a lawyer and advocate for the nation’s leading gun control group, I started to notice a peculiar repetitiveness in my opponents’ arguments. Whether it was on radio or TV talk shows or panel discussions or speeches with audience Q&A, there was a striking similarity in the substance of the arguments, and even the language, used by my opponents. Over and over again, I would hear that “Guns don’t kill people. People kill people.” I would hear “When guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns.” I would hear “An armed society is a polite society.” I had seen these sayings on bumpers stickers for years, but I discovered that my opponents actually argued in these terms. Even when these exact phrases weren’t used, the thoughts they express were conveyed in other words. In more scholarly settings, critics of gun regulation would dress up their arguments in the arcane language of academia and in mounds of statistics, but their basic claims could, to a remarkable degree, be boiled down to the same themes I had heard on countless talk shows.
Dennis A. Henigan
Pages 5-6, Lethal Logic — Exploding the Myths That Paralyze American Gun Policy
[I’ve addressed some of his points in this book from a press release here. I now have the book in hand having borrowed it from Carnaby last night. We’ll see if there is anything particularly interesting in it. So far, part way through the prologue, he is just complaining that the gun control movement has trouble getting any traction and all the pro-gun people have is bumper stickers.
It seems to me that if your opposition is able to hold you down with a few bumper stickers then perhaps your vehicle is lacking substance under the hood.–Joe]
As I have pointed out before it’s not really possible to keep explosives off of airplanes. Of course it’s not going to be any easier to keep them out of buildings on the ground. This obvious truth has just been demonstrated:
Government investigators smuggled bomb-making materials into federal buildings past the police agency charged with protecting those buildings and found numerous other gaps in security, according to a congressional report.
The Government Accountability Office said investigators carried bomb-making materials past security at 10 federal buildings. Security at these buildings and a total of about 9,000 federal buildings around the country is provided by the Federal Protective Service, a target of the probe.
Once GAO investigators got the materials in the buildings, the report said, they constructed explosive devices and carried them around inside. For security reasons, the GAO report did not give the location of the buildings.
It’s Security Theater. I hope you enjoy the show because you are paying enough for it.
Some people call them vultures. I call them capitalists providing a much needed service. It’s no surprise the people calling them vultures are in San Francisco:
The California IOU has become the prey of so-called vulture investors who hope to profit by buying them on the cheap and redeeming them later.
The idea is that “distressed asset investors” (their nicer name) will pay less than face value to mom-and-pop businesses that receive IOUs but need cash immediately to meet payroll or other expenses. Once the IOUs mature on Oct. 2, the investors will cash them in for their full value plus the 3.75 percent interest the state is offering.
They call the IOU “the prey”? What does that make the state of California? Bambi’s mother? The parents of baby seals? In reality the state is the predator. The state contracted for services and/or goods (or taken excess money in taxes then failed to return the excess as promised) and is now failing to live up to the contract. Had they given IOUs to those that had not provided goods and/or services, such as welfare recipients, I would be less harsh in condemning the state. But to receive something of value and then fail to compensate them as agreed is really unacceptable.
But these people see the state fail to live up to its obligations creating countless victims, the capitalists provide relief to the victims, and then they condemn those providing the relief–that is some sort of insanity. Sometimes I have to conclude that Michael Savage is right on at least one point–Liberalism is a Mental Disorder.
The sad part is that the IOUs are, in essence, a new form of currency. I’m certain the state will soon realize this and start offering to pay in IOUs instead of money. The people, knowing they can sell them for 85% (whatever) of face value will ask for IOUs with face value of $118 for every $100 (85% of 118 is ~100) of goods and/or services. The state will, in a sick, perverted, rationalized sort of way, figure their money mostly problems are solved and not cut back on spending. This will drive the state faster and harder into the financial abyss.
Expect that result to be blamed on “vultures” as well.
Even though gun businesses are vilified by the anti-gun bigots there is a lot of cooperation with the ATF when they play half-way decent toward reasonable goals. The NSSF is gearing up for another “Don’t lie for the other guy” campaign. My experiences with the ATF have all been positive even if there have been a few government bureaucracy moments.
I am of the opinion the ATF is unconstitutional and should be completely disbanded but that doesn’t mean they don’t do some good as well as the obvious harm. Ruby Ridge and Waco are just two of the worst instances, dozens, if not hundreds of incidents of abuse occur each year. But I don’t really see the harm advocating gun dealers not sell to violent criminals or them asking for a sample of my explosives for forensic comparison (they haven’t actually done this, but they said they might and I agreed to do so).
When the anti-gun bigots whine about people exercising their specific enumerated right to keep and bear arms I think they should be asked, “Who has done more to catch criminals using guns and explosives for evil, anti-freedom advocates, or the “Merchants of Death”?
Via the apex of the Triangle of Death I just found out two-thirds of the nation’s attorneys general have filed an amicus brief asking the U.S. Supreme Court to grant certiorari in the case of NRA v. Chicago and hold that the Second Amendment applies to state and local governments through the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
No doubt it was due to being encouraged by wheelbarrows full of cash. I know that was my motivation for posting the news.
In any case, having the states say, “Yes, the 2nd Amendment should be a restriction on the states as well as the Federal government” bodes well.
I wonder how the Brady Campaign, VPC, et al. are going to spin this. They probably will claim it had something to do with the wheelbarrows full of cash. If so, then it seems to me that the NRA should give those guys a few wheelbarrows and see if they can be encouraged to change their tune. After all it appears the Joyce Foundation is cutting back on funding and with all the new members the NRA should have more money available.
It’s been up for less than a year and there aren’t many guns there yet. But it’s free to both sellers and buyers. GunListings.org.
It is a mark of modern ignorance to think that we have become progressively smarter…. Who is to say whether the task of tackling a problem without the benefit of a well-developed body of methods and information may not have required far greater intellectual vigor and originality than is needed [today] for proceeding from problem to problem within the safely established disciplines? Prehistoric, early historic, as well as medieval science have faced such a task.
Thomas Goldstein
The historian of science, not the other one.
[I would extend Goldstein’s observation to politics. Compare the results of the U.S. Constitution to those advocated by Marx a few decades later and implemented a century or two later.
Modern ignorance. Yes, that describes what I see in politics today.–Joe]
A guy on our team speaks with a very noticeable German accent. I never thought much of it. Another guy is from South Vietnam, another from China, the new person on our team (just today) and my officemate are both from India. If there is anything unusual about the foreigners around the office is that they work harder than the U.S. born people. This guy is no exception. I see emails sent by him from late at night and all weekend.
But he stopped by to talk about stuff last Thursday and we ended up talking about where he grew up. He was born in East Germany. I hadn’t realized that. For some reason I always thought of West Germany whenever I might have considered his origins. He hates the communists. “Communism makes people lazy. Yah!”
I said it always amazes me that experiment has been run so many times and resulted in 10s of millions dead and still people keep wanting to try it again. I told him of someone I know who told me they didn’t think people should own their own houses. The government should own them and allocated them on the basis of need. This person told me, “You and Barb don’t need such a big house. Some other family with a larger family needs it more than you do.”
His eyes narrowed and his jaw clenched. “You tell them I lived that. You tell them to go visit this town. Yah!”, and he showed me a town on a map of Germany. “Not one bomb was dropped on that town during the entire war”, he said. “There was no fighting in that town. But if you go there that town looks like it was all bombed out. When people don’t own their property they don’t care. The roofs, they are all falling down. Yah! You tell him to go there and look for himself.”
After he got married they applied to the housing allocation board for a place to live. There was “nothing available”. But other people who applied after him got really nice places. But they were the children of the people on the board, and the people who had connections to people on the board. After two years the housing board told him that his parents had permission to make some changes to their place (I understood this to be partitions, plumbing, etc.) and then he and his wife could live there.
He told me he graduated, “The best in my class.” But he couldn’t get into college because his family weren’t “good communists”. He got a job in a picture tube factory (television sets I presume) and he did so well the company used its pull to get him a position in school. He got a B.S. and M.S. in electrical engineering. Then he got a PhD in Computer Science.
After the Germany’s were reunited his father obtained his secret police file. Every letter to or from West Germany, where some of their family lived, was read and a summary was put in his file. He found out who had spied on him and who said things about him that put his loyalty to the communist party in doubt and stopped his career.
“Joe”, he said, “People complain about how unequal things are with the rich executives in a capitalist society. But it’s just the same under communism–it’s the politically connected that have the money and the people that aren’t connected don’t have anything. I know. I lived it. Communism, it’s very bad.”
I need to ask what he thinks of the plans for health care and the take over of the banking industry, etc. in this country. That should be interesting.
Via Ben and his Dad, who do insurance for a living, liability insurance for people that concealed carry:
Comprehensive Firearms Liability Coverage For Holders of Concealed Carry Licenses
(currently available in AZ, CO & NM, TEXAS COMING SOON)
An Iowa group once active in lobbying for gun control has disbanded after losing a major grant. The November 1st coalition began after the November 1, 1991 shootings on the University of Iowa campus and was later renamed Iowans for the Prevention of Gun Violence.
…
Honey says most recently the group has relied on volunteers to lobby the legislature. “There was a grant with the Joyce foundation for a period of close to a decade from the mid 90s well into this decade, and that funding did end,” Honey said.
I wonder if the Joyce Foundation is cutting back on all their anti-gun funding or just some of them. Could it be they weren’t getting their moneys worth from the Iowa group? I wonder if they are happy with the results of their grants to the Violence Policy Center, The Gun Guys, and The Brady Campaign. The Heller decision must be quite the “bone in their throat”.
Markadelphia questioning my logical reasoning ability is like Helen Keller questioning my taste in music.
Robb Allen
July 4, 2009
In a comment to It’s the End of the World as We Know It
[Markadelphia, for those that don’t know, is a liberal who frequently makes comments at Kevin’s place.
I am of the opinion that with the quote above Robb actually somewhat understates the situation.–Joe]
The fact that militias were among the primary culprits the Framers identified as violating the right to bear arms renders any continued suggestion of a purely collective right belonging to state governments impossible to square with the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Steven M. Simpson
D.C. versus Heller
Brief for the Institute for Justice as Amicus Curiae in support of respondent.
[Of course, as pointed out by Workman, many of the anti-gun bigots make no effort to square reality with their beliefs.–Joe]
Don’t be silly, Ninety-Nine. We have to shoot, kill, and destroy.
We represent everything that’s wholesome and good in the world.
Maxwell Smart
Get Smart TV show
[I was going to save this for another Ruby Ridge, Waco, or other similar incident but I’ll used it now anyway. Just imagine another “wrong house” raid occurred or something, okay?–Joe]
There’s certainly nothing wrong with properly trained adults engaging in these activities.
Daniel Vice
June 28, 2009
Senior attorney for the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence
Referring to a Southern Ohio Machine Gun Shoot.
[Something to remember the next time the Brady people start talking about an “assault weapon” ban.
H/T to Buckeye Firearms Association.–Joe]
The rest of the family is packing up to go camping and they will soon discover I’m trying to make a blog post instead of helping them.
A QOTD should show up later today but I’m not sure if I will get others in the queue before I am dragged away, deep into the wilderness of North Central Idaho.
The View From North Central Idaho currently comes in at number seven. But there are a lot of gun blogs not listed.
It’s no surprise that Say Uncle comes in at #1.
H/T to Say Uncle and Traction Control.
Via an email from Mike:
Shooters:
The following pro-gun bills which were drafted by IdahoSSA go into effect today (July 1st):
- House bill 65 which clarified that Idaho residents can buy long guns from dealers in non-contiguous states and vice versa.
- House bill 137 which grants State parks the power to regulate discharge of firearms in campgrounds etc. but makes it clear that they have no authority to ban lawful carry. IdahoSSA is working closely with Parks and Recreation to make sure that their final rule specifically recognizes the right to carry in State Parks.
- House bill 194 which grants immunity from liability to shooting ranges, firearms instructors, and match officials.
- House bill 287 which grants immunity to employers who allow their employees to store personal firearms in their cars on company property. Employers in Idaho now have NO LEGITIMATE REASON to ban the storage of firearms in their parking lots. If you or someone you know is affected by this kind of anti-gun policy at work please send me a copy of the pertinent policy. IdahoSSA will be working to educate employers on this law.
If anyone has any questions about the effect of these bills please feel free to contact me.
IdahoSSA is your pro-gun voice. Our mission is to:
RESEARCH the current law and DRAFT proposed improvements.
LOBBY the legislature and state officials on behalf of gun rights and the shooting sports.
EDUCATE the public about the responsible use of firearms and RESPOND to media attacks on gun rights.
PROMOTE the shooting sports and ENCOURAGE the development of shooting ranges.
LITIGATE if neccessary on behalf of firearm rights.
As always: Thanks for your support!
Michael C. “Mike” Brown
Executive Director/General Counsel
Idaho Sport Shooters Alliance
208 835-3737
208 835-3744 Fax
Gun control does not seek safer streets, it seeks greater dependency on officials by removing the better tools of weapon and wisdom.
John Longenecker
July 1, 2009
BOOK REVIEW: Lethal Logic by Henigan, Part II.
[Hence the results you see in the U.K. and why they haven’t reversed course on their gun control agenda.