Via Sebastian and Laurel (also from North Idaho).
Required viewing for those that think the police can protect you. Many minutes into the 911 call the police still haven’t arrived. This is why I’m a NRA Personal Protection instructor.
Be sure and read the newspaper story too.
It is also significant that the Second Amendment refers, not to “a right of the people,” but to “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms.” The Framers’ use of the definite article indicates that the Amendment was intended to secure a pre-existing right rather than to create a new one.
[…]
The Court should affirm that the Second Amendment, no less than other provisions of the Bill of Rights, secures an individual right, and should clarify that the right is subject to the more flexible standard of review described above. If the Court takes those foundational steps, the better course would be to remand.
Stephen R. Rubenstein
January 2008
Chief Counsel Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives Department of Justice
Washington, D.C. 20226-0001
Brief for the United States as Amicus Curiae
[This is from a brief filed in favor of D.C. in the Heller case. If I read it correctly they are concerned that the ATF could be put out of a job because they might no longer be able to regulated the manufacture and sale of firearms and maintain their registry of machineguns. Hence, they want to be left with some power to regulate firearms. I’m not a friend of the ATF (individuals at the ATF is something different) but D.C. surely cannot consider them much of a friend either.–Joe
I’ve read so many books and articles on the Holocaust that I’d have difficulty enumerating them. The thing that always amazed me was that the Jews didn’t fight back. Sure, the German Jews had registered their guns years before the Weapons Control Act of 1938 and would have had difficulty holding on to many of them when the thugs had a list of the guns in that home. But theft and ambushes on the police or isolated soldiers with the goal of capturing firearms and ammunition could have helped put weapons back in the hands of the victims. But except for the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and a relatively small band in Russia there was virtually no resistance. With hindsight is seems so obvious that retention of firearms could have saved a lot of innocents lives. Israeli Jews seem to have the seen the light in regards to firearms in the hands of civilians so why don’t most (yes, I know of JPFO) American Jews get it?
From the American Jewish Committee:
January 11, 2008 – New York – The American Jewish Committee filed an amicus brief with the United States Supreme Court today, asserting that the District of Columbia’s strict gun control laws do not offend the Constitution. The case, D.C. v. Heller, will be the first gun control case before the Supreme Court in sixty eight years.
“Gun control laws safeguard liberty, rather then restrict it,” said AJC General Counsel Jeffrey Sinensky. “Democracy can only flourish when the government is permitted to protect its citizens from harm.”
The amicus brief argues that the Second Amendment does not protect the right to possess firearms for personal use, but rather “was designed to enhance state and local authority to protect life and liberty through the maintenance of militias composed of the local populace.”
AJC filed the brief with a coalition that includes the Anti-Defamation League, American Jewish Congress, National Council of Jewish Women, Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.
AJC has a long history of supporting gun control laws, including the federal Gun Control Act of 1968, the federal Assault Weapon Control Act of 1989, and the Brady Handgun Prevention Act of 1993.
Just a little refresher from a previous post about how governments “protect their citizens from harm”:
§ 1
Jews are prohibited from acquiring, possessing, and carrying firearms and ammunition, as well as truncheons or stabbing weapons. Those now possessing weapons and ammunition are at once to turn them over to the local police authority.
§ 2
Firearms and ammunition found in a Jew’s possession will be forfeited to the government without compensation.
§ 3
The Minister of the Interior may make exceptions to the Prohibition in § 1 for Jews who are foreign nationals. He can entrust other authorities with this power.
§ 4
Whoever willfully or negligently violates the provisions of § 1 will be punished with imprisonment and a fine. In especially severe cases of deliberate violations, the punishment is imprisonment in a penitentiary for up to five years.
§ 5
For the implementation of this regulation, the Minister of the Interior waives the necessary legal and administrative provisions.
§ 6
This regulation is valid in the state of Austria and in the Sudeten-German districts.
Berlin, 11 November 1938
Minister of the Interior
Frick
One of the Burning Man organizers wrote me last week saying he wanted to participate in Boomershoot 2007. We got to chatting and he sent me at link to this video of the fireworks show they put on for Burning Man 2007. He also gave some technical details:
The fireball was about 600 feet high and probably 500 in diameter or more as it expanded. I think it had somewhere around 1200 gallons of fuel shot into the air from the four tanks. Then several thousand gallons of liquid propane were shot up the middle of the 99 foot tall derrick.
Boomershoot’s biggest fireballs have used four gallons of gasoline. Of course most of our viewers were within 20 yards, but still…
It was quite a while back that I invited Lyle to blog here. Via many long conversations and numerous lengthy emails it was clear he had penetrating, even brutal, insight that others would benefit from. He told me (IIRC) for me to offer him this forum was like the P.J. O’Rourke line about giving power and money to the government. But that he would think about it. Within a day or two the temptation overcame him and he made his first post.
Lyle hasn’t posted that often and I always thought he was holding back some. But then he would get links to his posts from certain bloggers I had never gotten links from and that made me a little bit envious. Still, the razor sharp penetration, straight to the bone, wasn’t on display as much as I expected.
His most recent post–now that’s what I’m talking about.
Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.
P. J. O’Rourke
U.S. journalist. Parliament of Whores
Preface, “Why God is a Republican and Santa Claus Is a Democrat” (1991).
Sebastian tells us about a Random Conversation About Fingerprinting. A woman (who happens to be very anti-gun) doesn’t want to get her fingerprints taken just so she can be a crossing guard near a school. Sebastian compares it to gun owners exercising constitutionally guaranteed rights having to submit fingerprints first. Which leads to his observation:
What goes around, comes around. You can’t expect to empower the state to take away liberty from people you find undesirable, and then expect the state to respect your liberty when you end up in the cross hairs. When you find yourself in that situation, the people who’s liberties have already been trampled on may not be sympathetic enough to help you.
Of course this reminded me of the famous Niemoller quote and I mentioned it in the comments and figured that will be the end of it. But then commenter ParatrooperJJ says the FBI just checks the fingerprints and discards them after they come back clean. That set off my alarms because just a few days ago this came out:
FBI effort will build biggest biometric database
The FBI is embarking on a $1 billion effort to build the world’s largest computer database of peoples’ physical characteristics, a project that would give the government unprecedented abilities to identify individuals in the United States and abroad.
Digital images of faces, fingerprints and palm patterns are flowing into FBI systems in a climate-controlled, secure basement here.
Next month, the FBI intends to award a 10-year contract that would significantly expand the amount and kinds of biometric information it receives.
And in the coming years, law enforcement authorities around the world will be able to rely on iris patterns, face-shape data, scars and perhaps even the unique ways people walk and talk to solve crimes and identify criminals and terrorists.
The FBI will also retain, upon request by employers, the fingerprints of employees who have undergone criminal background checks so the employers can be notified if employees have brushes with the law.
If the technology exists it will be used, data obtained will be kept, used, and abused. The features will creep into areas that were promised would never happen. Remember that NICS records were supposed to be destroyed and then Janet Reno kept them for “audit purposes”. Then they used those “audit records” to see if suspected terrorists had purchased firearms. My SS card says “FOR SOCIAL SECURITY AND TAX PURPOSES–NOT FOR IDENTIFICATION”. None of my childrens SS cards have any such markings. It used to be something like a $10K fine if anyone tried to use your SSN for anything other than tax purposes. No so anymore.
We are creating all the mechanisms necessary for an effective police state. Remember what Milton Friedman said.
This is in regard to the old blow up the dead whale on the beach video.
Phil asks some questions. My answer:
Pound for pound Boomerite is not much different from what they used. So about 1000 pounds (which is less than what we typically use at
Like this:
I have an alibi and I have much better places to play with my chemistry set than next to a freeway and bicycle trail:
Authorities are searching for the person or people responsible for setting off an improvised explosive device (IED) on a bicycle path that runs parallel to I-205 last night.
The Clackamas County Sheriff’s Office said the device was ignited on a bike path that runs along the highway near Strawberry Lane on the west side of the highway. A sheriff’s deputy was driving southbound on the highway around 9:30 p.m. when he witness a flash and a plume of light that stretched across the highway.
It’s crap like this that will get Tannerite and Target Master banned.
One would think that eventually they would figure it out when something isn’t working they would stop doing it. Nope. This is the U.K. and guns. All rational thought must be resisted.
Banning real guns didn’t solve their problem so now they are banning deactivated guns. What is a deactivated gun? From the BBC News:
Typically, a deactivated gun has its barrel sawn down the middle and a metal rod is then welded inside to make it incapable of discharging a bullet.
The breech block – which contains the mechanism to actually fire the bullet – is ground down so there is no firing pin.
Hmm… so these must be used in crime a lot in order to justify banning them. Wrong:
However, the most recent Home Office firearms figures from 2005/6 show that reactivated or deactivated firearms were used in just eight offences, out of a total of 11,084.
Reactivated handguns were used twice; deactivated firearms were used four times; and other reactivated firearms were used twice.
So what is going on here? As near as I can tell it’s mass insanity. Other links:
And of course the anti-gun bigots are pleased:
Gill Marshall-Andrews of the Gun Control Network said: “We are delighted. This has been on our agenda for a long time. It is a big loophole in our firearms legislation.”
When you hear the bigots in this country call the lack of a repressive gun law a “loophole” keep in mind there will always be a “loophole” for these people.
There are many men of principle in both parties in America, but there is no party of principle.
Alexis de Tocqueville
[Tocqueville died in 1859. Some things never change.–Joe]
And a party it should be!
The anti-gun bigots in San Francisco got their asses handed to them with Proposition H. Sebastian and Uncle have already posted on it. The NRA has their news release here and SAF has their’s here.
The Brady Bunch, the VPC, and the “Gun Guys” are all strangely quiet. Maybe someone forgot to invite them to the celebration.
What I wonder is who it is that thinks they are the innocent party here:
WARSAW, Poland – A Polish man got the shock of his life when he visited a brothel and spotted his wife among the establishment’s employees.
Polish tabloid Super Express said the woman had been making some extra money on the side while telling her husband she worked at a store in a nearby town.
“I was dumbfounded. I thought I was dreaming,” the husband told the newspaper on Wednesday.
The couple, married for 14 years, are now divorcing, the newspaper reported.
[Mostly this is a rant because I’m pissed. I don’t particularly blame the NRA-ILA or any other pro-gun group. Political reality is significantly different from gut response. The following is 95% emotion and its to just get it out of my system.]
The instant Bush signed the NICS Improvement Bill into law we get this crap:
President George W. Bush signed the nation’s first new gun-control legislation in 14 years Tuesday to help keep guns out of the hands of the dangerously mentally ill, and Rep. Carolyn McCarthy immediately announced she would take her crusade to the next step.
This time, she and others want to close the so-called “gun show loophole” that allows some dealers to sell firearms without background checks.
[…]
Schumer agreed that the next item on the gun-control agenda would be to require background checks in every gun sale, but predicted that would be harder to get passed because of opposition by the National Rifle Association. The law signed Tuesday, in contrast, had NRA support.
Many of us in the gun violence prevention movement are excited about the year ahead.
America is turning a corner on the gun issue, because the people are finally being heard.
Today, President Bush signed into law the NICS Improvement Amendments Act of 2007 – what some have called “the first major new gun control bill in more than a decade.”
[…]
Brady background checks have stopped an estimated 1.4 million people from legally buying guns since 1994, but background checks are only as good as the records in the system.
[…]
Law-abiding Americans have nothing to fear from common-sense gun laws that will reduce the toll of 30,000 gun deaths every year in this country.
- Law-abiding Americans have nothing to fear from preventing suspected terrorists from walking out of a gun store or a gun show fully armed.
- Law-abiding Americans have nothing to fear from getting a background check for every single gun purchase they make, including at gun shows (this is closing the gun show loophole).
- Law-abiding Americans have nothing to fear from strengthening Brady background checks to make sure that “prohibited purchasers” like felons, the dangerously mentally ill, and domestic abusers are denied guns at the point of sale.
- Law-abiding Americans have nothing to fear from reporting lost or stolen guns to the police in a timely manner.
- Law-abiding Americans (who aren’t in the legal gun business) have nothing to fear from being prevented from buying guns in bulk purchases.
- Law-abiding Americans have nothing to fear from keeping military-style assault weapons out of most civilian hands, reserving them for military and law enforcement use only.
If you “compromise” with the Devil don’t be surprised if you get burned.
Sean’s words need to be repeated here:
What typically gets lost, and lost deliberately, is the meaning of the word ‘compromise’. In a compromise, both sides gain or lose bargaining points in a mutually acceptable, if not optimal fashion. In the gun control debate, the meaning of compromise is twisted to, “Okay, we’ll only take half your guns, this time.” The pro-RKBA folks are never even offered anything in return. This is a variation of the slippery slope that I call “Zeno’s Paradox of Lost Rights”. As with the paradox of motion, the remaining scope of the Second Amendment is progressively halved, and halved again. The illusion is that we never lose the right, because there is always the remaining half. The Theory of Limits suggests otherwise.
Sean Flynn
6/15/98
If McCarthy, Schumer, and their ilk were asking me to compromise my initial position would be that they get the death penalty under 18 USC 242. The only people that aren’t allowed to own weapons are those that are locked up or are unable feed themselves. If they are safe enough to be allowed on the streets with a 2000 pound car, a full tank of gasoline and a book of matches then they are safe enough to be allowed a M60, a M60 Patton, or, with suitable storage facilities, TNWs. And finally the 2nd Amendment guarantees the RKBA and since a right someone can’t afford to exercise, just like a right to an attorney, isn’t really worth anything the Federal Government should subsidize arms for those that want them but cannot afford them.
We start our negotiations there.
And now that I’m got that out of the way let’s talk about those words from Helmke:
So, 1.4 million people were stopped from legally purchasing firearms. Since there are about 200 million adults in the country and only about 40% own firearms that must mean that about one out of every 60 people that tried to by a firearm were legally prohibited. And that’s not good enough for him. When will it be good enough? One out of 20? One out of 10? No. We know what the real number he is looking for, one out one.
Those “30,000 gun deaths” include justified, even praiseworthy, shootings by police and private citizens. Either Helmke is deliberately misleading or he thinks the life of a thug who put an innocent life in immediate jeopardy of death or permanent injury is just as valuable as the innocent life. In either case he is not to be trusted.
If suspected terrorists are to be prevented from owning guns, the list of suspected terrorists is created without due process as currently is the case, then President Hillary could declare all NRA members, or all even private citizens, suspected terrorists and we all are screwed. Helmke is an enemy of the U.S. Constitution if he supports the disemboweling of both the 2nd and the 4th Amendments.
As for the other bullet items, except for the last item, those can only be implemented if you have a gun registration in place. And we all know that registration always leads to confiscation within at most a few decades.
As for the last bullet item, Helmke has demonstrated he can’t be trusted, so Μολὼν λαβέ.
And because this is what I was listening to while writing this and I think it fits Schumer, McCarthy, and Helmke well; Runnin’ With the Devil by Van Halen:
I live my life like there’s no tomorrow
And all I’ve got I had to steal
Least I don’t need to beg or borrow
Yes I’m living at a pace that kills
Runnin’ with the devil
Runnin’ with the devil
I found the simple life ain’t so simple
When I jumped out on that road
I got no love, no love you’d call real
Ain’t got nobody waiting at home
Runnin’ with the devil
Runnin’ with the devil
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
Benjamin Franklin
[Yeah, I know. Everyone has heard this one before. That is most of the reason I have never used it directly before. Today is special however. Check out my next post, Runnin’ With the Devil, people compromised with the Devil to gain temporary “safety” and the ink hasn’t dried before they are pushing for the “next step”.–Joe]
Of course you knew PayPal won’t handle transactions for “certain firearms, firearm parts or accessories, ammunition, weapons or knives“, right?
You probably knew Google has issues with guns too.
Here is a story I don’t think I have told here before:
Years ago, when I first created Modern Ballistics, I tried to get a merchant account for processing credit cards. I had one a few years earlier when was selling software to software developers instead of gun owners and I figured it wouldn’t be a problem. I sent in my application and to my surprise they turned me down. At first they wouldn’t tell me why. But after much calling and pestering them they finally told me it was because of my product. I carefully read through all their fine print and couldn’t find where there was anything wrong with my product according to their published rules. I told them I didn’t understand, what is wrong with my product? The most I could get out of them was that I could submit my application again if I wanted but it probably wouldn’t make any difference.
Now via Sebastian and NSSF I find out:
Citi Merchant Services and First Data Corp. are refusing to process any credit card transactions between federally licensed firearms retailers, distributors and manufacturers — a move which will severely limit available inventory of firearms and ammunition to military, law enforcement and law-abiding Americans.
The first company to be affected by this decision appears to be firearms distributor CDNN Sports Inc.
“We were contacted recently by First Data/Citi Merchant Services by a June Rivera-Mantilla stating that we were terminated and funds were being seized for selling firearms in a non-face-to-face transaction,” said Charlie Crawford, president of CDNN Sports Inc. “Although perfectly legal, we were also informed that no transactions would be processed in the future, even for non-firearms. I find this very frightening.”
To voice your concern to Citi Merchant Services and First Data Corp., please contact June Rivera-Mantilla at 631-683-7734 or her supervisor Robert Tenenbaum at 631-683-6570.
Read the letter, they claim a violation of the law but yet apparently don’t bother to turn them into law enforcement. Just like some experiences I have had (above and with PNNL) if they want to get rid of you they will just make stuff up that is at best half true. They don’t need or want to know the truth, they just want to get rid of you. It’s very tough to win against people like that. Just like literacy tests for voting, when tested none of the blacks could read the daily newspaper, hence they failed the state approved test. Never mind the newspaper given to them was printed in Chinese. Technically they can get away with it but it’s still not right.
If they were refusing to do business with people with a certain skin color, sexual orientation, or religion this would be on the front page of all the newspapers. But it isn’t. And its because we are just “gun-ni**ers” and it is socially acceptable to the elites to treat us like this.
Many people want the government to protect the consumer. A much more urgent problem is to protect the consumer from the government.
Milton Friedman
[The U.S. Constitution with its enumerated powers and the Bill of Rights was supposed to do the bulk of the protecting. But of course these days it’s rare that any of the three branches of government even look at the Constitution as a mild suggestion of limits to its reach.–Joe]
The DOJ (the ATF is under the DOJ so it could be them) apparently is interested in what their subjects think about new regulations on AN. My blog posting is number six on Google for their query.
I should have mentioned in my previous post that I have several thousand pounds of ammonium nitrate that I plan to make into explosives. The people at the DOJ need something to get their blood pumping on a Monday, right?
| Domain Name | usdoj.gov ? (U.S. Government) | |||||||||||||||||||
| IP Address | 149.101.1.# (US Dept of Justice) | |||||||||||||||||||
| ISP | US Dept of Justice | |||||||||||||||||||
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| Language | English (U.S.) en-us |
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| Browser | Internet Explorer 6.0 Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1; DOJ3jx7bf; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; InfoPath.1; .NET CLR 2.0.50727) |
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| Time of Visit | Jan 7 2008 10:46:36 am | |||||||||||||||||||
| Last Page View | Jan 7 2008 10:46:46 am | |||||||||||||||||||
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| Referring URL | http://www.google.co…ing ammonium nitrate | |||||||||||||||||||
| Search Engine | google.com | |||||||||||||||||||
| Search Words | bush signs law regulating ammonium nitrate | |||||||||||||||||||
| Visit Entry Page | https://blog.joehuffman.org/2007/12/31/new-ammonium-nitrate-regulations/ | |||||||||||||||||||
| Visit Exit Page | https://blog.joehuffman.org/2007/12/31/new-ammonium-nitrate-regulations/ | |||||||||||||||||||
| Out Click | here http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c110:H.R.1680: |
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| Visitor’s Time | Jan 7 2008 1:46:36 pm | |||||||||||||||||||
| Visit Number | 230,817 |
Every step we take towards making the State our Caretaker of our lives, by that much we move toward making the State our Master.
Dwight Eisenhower
[My guess is that this year there are only about two or maybe three presidential candidates, none of which are likely to win, that even have a glimmer of this fundamental truth.–Joe]
I just deleted another unpaid Boomershoot 2008 entry when they didn’t answer his email or voice mail. I then sent out an email to the Boomershoot announcement list that a position was open.
It lasted 12 minutes again. It must the minimum time it takes the Yahoo groups email list server to deliver the open position notification, someone to enter in their data, and push the button.
