Well, ain’t that just shiny. Seems the ATF decided on it’s own, without any supporting law, that straw purchases were illegal, and added that question to the 4473 back in ’95. There is now a case before the supremes about it, Bruce J. Abramski v. United States. The potential for an epic spanking of the BAFTE is in the offing. If we needed any more evidence of their lawlessness, we’d have it here.
Category Archives: Crap For Brains
Making the enemy’s argument
Now I feel dirty. Last week I was playing devil’s advocate with Joe, making the left’s arguments the best I could, seeing what he’d come up with in response. I think it’s important to have the ability to argue the points of the other side at least as well as those True Believers (useful idiots) that the power brokers rely on to maintain the rank and file. It is my thesis that once you can do a good job making the left’s case, you’ll have a better understanding of the fundamental differences in world views, and can then focus on those differences and bring them to light efficiently.
I wrote this last week, but hesitated to post it. Well here it is anyway;
Joe; Secondary or even tertiary point: Everyone can express an opinion. But until you express it in numbers which actually represent
the benefits and costs you haven’t proved anything beyond that you can string words together and form sentences.
Me; You want to limit the manner in which I may speak. People are not numbers, nor are they statistics. The starving people of the
world, the hopeless and the desperate, do not need statistics to know that they are hungry, and neither numbers nor your fake intellectual arguments for “freedom” will feed them.
Joe; Primary point: Government is force. At the most basic level it is the power to kill people that oppose it. Who granted and where
and when did government get this power to compel the whole of society to work for the “common good” instead of protecting the individual ability to make their own decisions and chart their own course in life?
Me; Yes; government is force, and you are as willing as anyone else to see that force used, so long as it is used to further your
ideals at the expense of other’s ideals.
Who granted, and where did you get the power to decide that people should NOT work for the common good, that they should instead be concerned only with themselves at the expense of everyone else, at the expense of the entire planet, and at the expense of everyone in the future? You are ignoring the grave and destructive consequences of that which you advocate.
Joe; It is immoral to force another to do their bidding for the good of another when their previous actions harmed no one. Your
“greater good” argument is nothing but a weak justification for slavery by another name. Advocates of such a society deserve all the scorn, revulsion, ostracizing, and political as well as physical resistance due any other slaver.
Me: You free-marketers use some form of this argument frequently, but is a false and blatantly hypocritical argument. First; who gave you and your cronies the exclusive power to define for everyone else what is and is not “moral”? It seems you are manipulating that definition to suit your own selfishness and convenience. You often use your “morality” as a weapon against people you wish to suppress, causing them harm.
You are perfectly willing to use force to protect your property and your comfortable way of life, even to the point of owning guns yourself and training to kill people, and yet you complain when government uses force, in a democratic republic which you claim to advocate and which is merely doing the will of the People? Could there BE a higher, more virulent form of hypocrisy? No, Sir; don’t tell me you’re against using force while you simultaneously brag about walking around with a loaded gun. “Disgraceful” doesn’t even begin to describe it.
An don’t speak to me about capitalism having “harmed no one”. The “free market system” (a disgusting term) of greed and opulence for the few is in fact, to put it in your own words, “forcing some to do the bidding of others” as people trapped in poverty are forced to work as wage-slaves for the people with the money and property. Further, when a more powerful corporation puts a smaller one out of business (because they never understand when enough is enough and they always want more more more) they have harmed that smaller business and everyone who depended on it for their sustenance. They’ve been put out onto the streets, and you claim “no harm”? The extent of your denial is fascinating, and very telling. Explain that to the family that’s in bankruptcy court because the parents lost their jobs due to “free market competition” from a Big Box store chain. Capitalism is constantly harming other people, and in many, many ways, and yet you blindly hold it up and cling to it as though it were the greatest thing ever.
Yet I can forgive you– You’ve been conditioned all your life to believe this gunk, and it’s extremely difficult to overcome one’s life-long programming without some kind of shock to initiate the process of waking up from one’s materialist fever. Well I have news for you. I’ll have the courage to say it if no one else will; you had better start waking up because your time is running out– You represent the past whereas We the Citizens of the World represent the future.
===========================================
I think that pretty well represents the mind of the useful idiot. I could go on and on of course, and adding more layers of complexity, more erroneous assertions and accusations, and appeals to envy, anger, victim mentality and other emotion is all part of the game, but that’s a good sample. Those at the top of the political power food chain benefit greatly from this kind of thinking and its proliferation, but they don’t believe any of it for a second. It’s a tool. A big part of the game lies in putting the freedom advocate off his game with endless accusations and insults, never allowing any issue to come to resolution. The crazier the assertions, sometimes, the better– Whatever it takes to hijack someone’s emotions thus throwing them off balance, while taking advantage of any self doubt or insecurity, with the oft used grand finale of putting the capitalist into a pathetic minority, opposed to a glorious and energetic majority. It works extremely well on young people of course, and so they have been a perennial target. We usually fall for it too. Republicans (the ones who may not actually be Progressives) fall for it practically 100% of the time.
Where we often fail is in forgetting that the ideal of freedom appeals to people’s strengths and potential, whereas the leftist tactics appeal to our weaknesses, our emotions of envy, insecurity, fear, anger and so on.
Therefore it’s an entirely different argument with an entirely different set of appeals, with virtually no overlap. What works for the Dark Side cannot, will not, work for human freedom.
Only a gun
Does Lorraine Devon Wilke live on planet Nerf where the bats can break Nerf desks and Nerf windows but not a head?
The student in Roswell might have picked up a bat and smashed a few desks, knocked over some chairs or even broken a few bones. He might have trashed a locker, broken a window or spewed graffiti across a wall. But leaving a child critically wounded with a shot to the face? Only a gun can inflict that result.
Only a gun? Wow!
Wilke goes on to say:
It appears we care more about owning guns than saving ourselves from them. We care more about being able to carry them, defend them, shoot them, and justify the damage caused by them. We care so much about all that, wrapped in arguments of outdated constitutional amendments, that we’ve basically agreed, tacitly or otherwise, that we will live in a society where an irate moviegoer can kill someone for texting, an angry child can destroy a classmate out of anger, and a distraught father can end his life out of despair.
I do not want to live in that kind of society. Do you?
“Outdated constitutional amendments”? She has to have the 2nd Amendment as one of those. I wonder what other specific enumerated rights she thinks is outdated? The rights that would inhibit the confiscation of all firearms in the hands of private citizens?
Ms Wilke, if you don’t want to live in a society that respects our preexisting, specific, enumerated, rights then I suggest you to move to a different society. You won’t be taking my guns and my rights from me during my lifetime in this society.
I have to conclude these type of people have crap for brains.
Quote of the day—New Yorkers Against Gun Violence
The NY SAFE Act included crucial and widely popular provisions like background checks on all gun purchasers, a prohibition on sales of assault rifles with certain characteristics, a ban on high-capacity ammunition magazines, and other measures.
New Yorkers Against Gun Violence
January 15, 2014
Groups push for more gun control in NY
[“Widely popular” must have a different meaning in the alternate universe in which these people spend most of their time. In the real world a large number of Law Enforcement is Against NY Safe Act. If even law enforcement is vocal about opposing the law then the law is essentially pointless. Who is going to enforce it?
These people have mental problems.—Joe]
Quote of the day—Barbara Walters
He made so many promises we thought that he was going to be … the next Messiah.
Barbara Walters
December 18, 2013
Barbara Walters: We Thought Obama Was Going To Be The Next Messiah
[Well there’s your problem!
If anyone thinks it’s possible to liberate people by increasing government power it’s time to get them checked into the psych ward. Many liberals have mental problems. This is just one more example.—Joe]
Quote of the day—Charles Santagati
What if every public venue had a remote transmitter on its premises which sent a signal to the safety lock locking the trigger making any gun within its protected zone unable to be fired? What if any attempt to tamper with the lock or interrupt a signal from a transmitter resulted in automatically locking the trigger, which then could only be unlocked by a bonded gunsmith?
…
[W]e already have this technology. All that remains is a serious commitment and collaboration among government leaders, gun manufacturers. the NRA and concerned citizens.
Charles Santagati
January 2, 2014
Letter: Remote locks could provide gun control
[I don’t know how Santagati crosses back and forth between his reality and the one I am familiar with but I suspect it involves not taking his medications in a timely manner. He has no idea what he is talking about.
The stupid and ignorance is so rampant in his blatherings that I’ll only hit the high points of the ones that might not be obvious to casual observers.
- To “interrupt a signal from a transmitter” would involve little more than piece of aluminum foil.
- No mechanism could distinguish the addition of a piece of aluminum foil from nearby pop can and/or simply being outside the zone of influence of the transmitter. Hence there would be no way for the gun to disable the trigger due to such an effort to block the transmitter.
- There is no way to build a mechanism that “could only be unlocked by a bonded gunsmith”.
- There is no way to retrofit the hundreds of millions of existing guns with such technology even if it existed and even if the owners were to cooperate which they wouldn’t.
- If such a gun could be built and retrofitted to all existing guns the transmitters to disable them would widely available to the bad guys via either normal channels or the black market. Your ability to protect yourself in your own home could be neutralized by any thug with more than a half dozen functioning brain cells.
- The Second Amendment does not protect the right to keep and bear functional arms when authorities decide it is in the “public good” to “turn off the transmitter”. That right exists at all times. To require guns be disabled at the command of others would be a violation of civil right and punishable by law.
This is part of why we win. The other side thinks they are so smart and so clever when in fact many of them really are this stupid, ignorant and/or delusional.—Joe]
Unarmed man goes on shooting rampage
I suppose the reasoning would go as follows;
Since cops are the Only Ones trained and competent enough, and with good enough judgment, to carry guns, anything they do that causes harm to innocents must therefore be someone else’s fault. QED. Move along. Nothing to see here. Relax and enjoy your shoes.
I’m all for wiping the personnel roster completely clean, right down to the janitor, in some departments, and starting over. It’s the only way to clean out a bad culture. Otherwise the culture perpetuates itself even as the personnel come and go.
In New York City even that may not be near enough, since the whole town is corrupt and its corruption radiates out for miles and miles like a volcano’s ash cloud.
Quote of the day—Chris Stirewalt
The worse apples now being pushed by Obama don’t provide much money to offset the risks, and that’s even if insurers are able to keep pace with the ever-changing Obama position on what is good and what is bad for American insurance consumers. The possibility of systemic collapse in the New Year looks increasingly real.
Chris Stirewalt
December 20, 2013
How about them apples: ObamaCare rewritten again
[Yesterday my friendly neighborhood health insurance expert read part of King Obama new Obamacare decree to me. There was “a tone of voice” in the reading that made me think carefully about my response. I thought about it for a couple seconds and said, “What does that even mean?”
The response was sharp, “Exactly! I don’t even know. How can this possibly work?” I told them insurance companies should just forget about people actually enrolling and paying premiums. What they need to do is just have healthcare providers send the bills to them and they should just pay them. That will cut down on all the confusion, excess paperwork, and reduce costs just like Obamacare was originally intended.
I’m fortunate their sarcasm detector was fully operational and the exasperation was vented in a direction other than toward me.—Joe]
This one is simple
I usually stay away from stupid pop culture stuff, but this one has a lesson to it and maybe some on the left can learn from it (yeah I know; don’t say it).
GQ Magazine has every right to bait the Duck Dynasty dude in an interview.
Duck Dynasty dude had every right to fall into the trap, providing GQ with some juicy stuff about homosexuals to peddle their stupid magazine to stupid people.
A&E had every right to lay off Duck Dynasty dude or fire him outright, or do nothing, or whatever they wanted, so long as it’s within their contractual prerogative.
The Duck Dynasty stars have every right to stay or to leave A&E, so long as it’s within their contractual prerogative.
A&E watchers have every right to quit watching, or keep watching, that stupid network as they choose and/or as they can afford it.
Any other network has every right to take on the Duck Dynasty people in a new show, and everyone has the right to watch that one, or not, as they choose and/or can afford it.
See? That’s how freedom works. No one goes to jail or gets robbed or beaten up, no one has to sign a contract at gunpoint, everyone has free choice so long as it doesn’t violate anyone’s rights, and no one has the right to be free from the inevitable consequences of their own stupid mistakes.
No politician on the face of this Earth properly has anything to say, in any official capacity, about any of it. That’s not their job, and they should be smart enough to say so when questioned about it, though unfortunately they’re not that smart. Not by a mile.
Fake moral controversy resolved. Now mind your business.
Second Amendment Foundation kicks additional butt
In the grand scheme of things it’s a small win, but we’ll take what we can get;
CITY OF SEATTLE SETTLES SAF PUBLIC RECORDS LAWSUIT FOR $38,000
BELLEVUE, WA The Second Amendment Foundation has accepted a $38,000 settlement from the City of Seattle for the city’s failure to release public records about the city’s gun buyback in January.
As part of the agreement, the city has acknowledged that it did not promptly or properly provide all of the documents sought by SAF under the Public Records Act. SAF was represented by Bellevue attorney Miko Tempski.
“It is a shame that this had to drag out so long,” said SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb, “but the important thing is that the city, and outgoing Mayor Mike McGinn’s office has been held accountable for sloppy handling of our request. One would have thought the city had learned something earlier this year when the police department had to pay the Seattle Times $20,000, for also not providing requested documents.
“Maybe the citizens of Seattle can consider this a Christmas gift from the departing mayor,” he remarked. “This would not have been necessary had McGinn’s office done its job.”
SAF had pursued e-mails and other documents related to the January buyback, which was conducted in a parking lot underneath I-5 in downtown Seattle. The operation was something of an embarrassment that even Washington Ceasefire President Ralph Fascitelli had advised against, the recovered e-mails revealed.
Earlier the city had supplied some of the requested documents, but a story in the Seattle P-I.com revealed there were other materials that had not been provided to SAF by Mayor McGinn’s office.
“It seems hard to conceive,” Tempski said, “how you could accidentally overlook hundreds of documents and how that could be unintentional.”
“The settlement,” said Gottlieb, “will help SAF continue its legal work. Hopefully, we will see better performance from a new city administration in January.”
Bureaucrats care very little when they’re playing with other people’s money, but eventually they get booted out of office for their douchebaggery.
What the Seattle government critters were trying to hide through their obfuscation of course is that gun “buy-backs” (as if they were ever their guns in the first place) are nothing but a cheap, stupid sham. They knew they’d be called on it, so they were willing to take their very slim chances in court at the citizens’ expense.
At a minimum, the settlement should come of out their salaries. That is after they’re arrested for using their position in an attempt to chill the exercise of a constitutional right.
How about a printer and ink “buy-back” as a means of “fighting” counterfeiting? Yeah; shockingly stupid. Insane, actually, if anyone were to think it could ever help anything.
If you trust people who do this sort of thing to hold positions of power there is something wrong with you.
Hey; let’s have a Koran “buy-back”, after which we’ll show videos on the evening news of those Korans being shredded for recycling. “Getting these Korans off the streets is another way to help save lives” the announcer would say, as a flock of doves is released. Surely that’ll put a big dent in the jihadist threat, right? Same reasoning. Same anti constitutional behavior. Same insanity.
They have it back asswards of course; crime (both the freelance and the official kind) is the reason we must at all times protect the right to keep and bear ams.
I gave quite a bit (for me) to the SAF this year. How about you?
Quote of the day–Sen. Ed Markey
We need a ban on assault weapons. We need to stop the flow of high magazine clips, like the ones used in Aurora and Newtown.
Sen. Ed Markey
December 16, 2013
Markey calls for assault weapons ban
[H/T to NRA News for the Tweet.
If it weren’t so common I would say it is ironic that someone so ignorant of firearms that they say something like “stop the flow of high magazine clips” thinks he knows enough about them to make firearm law. But I suspect ignorance of the subject matter and the desire to use force to impose your will on those that are not ignorant are highly correlated. Think of school bullies versus the nerds, the KKK versus people of color, and Anti-Semitists versus Jews.
Philosophically, Senator Markey has a lot of close and dangerous company throughout all known history. And this is why we need to protect our specific enumerated right to keep and bear arms. It is a last ditch safeguard to protect innocent people from ignorant bigots with power like Senator Markey.—Joe]
California crazy talk
Maybe it’s in the air they breath or something but California has more than its share of crazies. This is someone legally representing the state:
California argued that even under intermediate scrutiny, the State could give everyone a handgun and mandate it is the only gun you could use for self-defense in the home….and that would be enough. The Court seemed troubled by the logical extension of California’s argument that only one handgun was enough to allow the full and unencumbered exercise of Second Amendment rights. Peña counsel made it clear that the Constitutional analysis the State wanted to implement would logically allow them to restrict all handguns by caliber to only .22lr, or even to ban all handguns and only allow Tasers — an argument the District of Columbia made and lost on in Heller.
Can you imagine someone arguing that the 1st Amendment would not be infringed if the state gave everyone their one and only religious book and mandated it never leave your home or be replaced by some other book? Or that it doesn’t violate your freedom of association if the state were to assign you your job, social circle, and spouse? Or that it doesn’t violate your right to be represented in court by supplying your one and only defense lawyer? That would be crazy talk.
Okay, maybe the lawyer for California isn’t actually crazy. Maybe they were just doing the best they could while attempting to defend, as is their job, an indefensible law. I can buy that.
Politician crazy talk
These people have mental problems:
Senator Kevin de Leόn (D-Los Angeles) today announced he would introduce legislation to ban the sale, manufacture, purchase and trafficking of “ghost guns” unless they are pre-registered with the Department of Justice through a serial number and gun owner background check. In order to receive a serial number, self-made or assembled firearm must include permanent metal components that cannot be detached and that are detectable as required by existing law.
…
“Gun parts can be obtained online or now with 3D printers made at home, leaving no way for law enforcement to ensure that prohibited individuals are not making ghost guns on their own,” said Senator De Leόn. “No one knows they exist and there is no way to know if criminals or other dangerous individuals are circumventing firearm laws by making these guns.”
If the concern is, as it appears to be in the press release, that a gun can be easily made with a 3-D printer by someone prohibited from possessing a firearm then how is a law prohibiting such guns being made going to be more effective than the law prohibiting the possession once the gun is finished?
“Permanent metal components that cannot be detached”? I don’t care if it is riveted, glued, or completely encased in plastic, it can, almost trivially, be removed. Drill or grind out any rivets, drill a hole in the metal to insert a screw, heat the metal until it slightly melts the plastic and then pull it the metal out via the inserted screw. Then, if needed, refill the void with plastic/wood/fiberglass/whatever.
And that is if the guy pushing the “Print” button isn’t smart enough to delete the extra instructions for the 3-D printer to make the void for the metal part in the first place.
And in any case does this guy think such a law will be any more effective than laws banning recreational drugs? This is crazy talk.
I would expect to find more rational people in long term care at a psych ward. Maybe he hasn’t been taking his meds recently.
Delusions are not “incredibly successful”
Brian Malte, of Handgun Control Inc. (aka The Brady Campaign), says:
The laws that Colorado passed are still on the books, and even the senators that were recalled said they would do it all over again for public safety. And when you have nine out of 10 Americans feeling strongly that background checks are the right thing to do, we will prevail. We’ll do everything we can to protect those gun laws, and we don’t think they’ll be repealed. We think they’re popular enough.
But law enforcement in Colorado says:
Some sheriffs, like Sheriff Cooke, are refusing to enforce the laws, saying that they are too vague and violate Second Amendment rights. Many more say that enforcement will be “a very low priority,” as several sheriffs put it. All but seven of the 62 elected sheriffs in Colorado signed on in May to a federal lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the statutes.
The resistance of sheriffs in Colorado is playing out in other states, raising questions about whether tougher rules passed since Newtown will have a muted effect in parts of the American heartland, where gun ownership is common and grass-roots opposition to tighter restrictions is high.
Beyond that are the court challenges to the new laws and the successful recall elections of three (two plus one resignation because of the recall in process) of the politicians who voted for the laws.
Malte says, “I think 2013 was incredibly successful.”
They passed laws which law enforcement is refusing to enforce, politicians are getting recalled over, are being seriously challenged in the courts and he thinks that is “incredibly successful”?
I think his group over reached, is headed for major defeats, and he is delusional.
These people have mental problems.
More on mental disorders
American Mercenary elaborates on some stuff I have been saying.
He pulled many of the symptoms of Emotional Regulation Disorder (aka Borderline Personality Disorder) from here and puts them in the context of our debates with anti-gun people. It’s scary accurate.
I’m certain these people have a mental disorder.
Barb and I both have personal experience with people that have these behaviors. I read many of the symptoms aloud to her as I was reading his post. It’s really spooky to read about someone you know from a list of mental disorder symptoms.
Small goals from small minds
I received the following email from CSGV which gives us insight into just how small their support base is. $3000 after a week of fundraising? And a goal of $10000? Wow!
If the contributions were the suggested $20 then that means they have about 150 people who were willing to support them with actual money as opposed to just pressing the “Like” button on Facebook. Boomershoot attracts that many people who travel hundreds or thousands of miles and spend hundreds or even thousands of dollars to participate.
Even though I am far from an expert on the subject I know they are totally clueless about writing a fundraising letter. But what do you expect from people who are totally clueless about the people and culture they want to destroy?
Small goals from small minds.
The setup, the pitch, and… WHACK!
“The nationalized preschool promoters, led by feckless bureaucrats who piled mounds of debt onto our children with endless Keynesian pipe dreams, claim that new multibillion-dollar “investments” in public education will “benefit the economy.” But ultimately, it’s not about the money or improved academic outcomes for Fed Ed. The increasing federal encroachment into our children’s lives at younger and younger ages is about control. These clunkers don’t need more time and authority over our families. They need a permanent recess.”
I was just telling my daughter on the way in this morning that you need to look past the authoritarians’ rationalizations, dismiss them out of hand, and look instead at their behavior and results over time. Then you see the disease for what it is. Malkin is exactly right; they need a permanent recess.
Quote of the day—Keri L (@ikeriover)
@JoeHuffman @linoge_wotc that’s a backwards argument. I own guns to kill people with guns. *facepalm*
Keri L (@ikeriover)
December 11, 2013
In response to “Defense of innocent life is why I own guns.”
[Then why do the police have guns?
The lack of rational thought process in these type of people has me convinced they have a mental disorder. Further evidence is that this tweet of mine:
If you believe no one is trying to take away our rights then you aren’t paying attention: https://blog.joehuffman.org/category/gun-rights/no-one-wants-to-take-your-guns/.
Resulted in a response from her of:
if you believe that it’s OK to gun down little children… you both need your head checked.
I’m very familiar with this sort of thought “process”. Apparently they imagine, and truly believe, you said or wrote something other than what you did. There was a case where I went through an email line-by-line with a certain person and ultimately they agreed I didn’t say what they claimed I said. Then mere seconds later they again made the same false claim. Pointing out they just agreed I didn’t say that resulted in a claim that they didn’t mean it when they said it. I went through this process three times with the same result each time before I finally gave up in extreme frustration.
Mental problems. I’m completely convinced of it.—Joe]
Ordered thought of the day
You know; ordered as opposed to random, just because I feel like being a smart ass.
The most ignorant, uninspired person in the room is the one who’s most interested in running things.
The person who’s doing nothing, seeing the person who’s doing something, will become irritated and try to tell the person who’s doing something that he’s doing it wrong or that he shouldn’t be doing it, and/or that the doer is victimizing the non doer with all his inconsiderate and irresponsible doing. Failure in that strategy requires falling back on plan B; taking credit for the works of the doer that could not be redirected or discouraged.
The non doer views the mastery of this simple strategy as incontrovertible proof of superior intelligence and worth.
This is the basis of all politics, in the same sense that space, time, matter and energy are the bases of life– It is a fundamental law of nature.
Explain to me how this works
There are more and more people calling for constitutional amendments, or a convention of states.
Let me see if have this right– Those in office aren’t obeying the constitution, so we’re going to change the constitution that they aren’t obeying.
Isn’t that a bit like a “gun free zone” sign, in that those who would obey it aren’t the problem we’re addressing? “We must pass new laws because criminals aren’t obeying the laws” is what we scoff at when it comes from Progressive communists. Now we’re doing it too?
The best I can see coming from a new or revised constitution is that it would represent an official mandate– It might serve as a psychological incentive for the three percent, somewhat like the Emancipation Proclamation which on its surface had no teeth being that there was already a state of active rebellion.
Just don’t think for a second that the dirtbags in power are going to see your shiny new, libertarian constitution and say to themselves; “Golly! Now THERE’S a constitution I can obey to the letter, the spirit, the whole deal! Heck yeah! No problem! No more redistributionist/interventionist/kleptocratic thinking for me! No, Sir! This is GREAT now…all of a sudden…like!”
Really?