Category Archives: Crap For Brains

People and especially governments do some incredibly stupid stuff. This is about those stupid actions.

This is what they think of self defense

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Via email from Brennan at work we get this story from “an award-winning writer”. As Brennan pointed out, “Like all good gun-grabbers the writer knows that there is no such thing as a justified shooting, only ‘extreme self-defense tactics’, ‘settling scores’, ‘vigilantes’ etc.”

Here is a sample:

What didn’t grab the headlines, though, was that more citizens are settling their own scores with criminals.

…

The unabated crime spree even has more residents resorting to extreme self-defense tactics. In 2011, Detroit reported 34 justifiable homicides, according to Fox2 News Reporter Charlie LeDuff – a whopping 80 percent increase over the previous year.

…

This rush to arm and self-administer justice would not be encouraged or condoned under normal circumstances. But in the current lawless environment, it is easy to believe these options have broad public support.

Many residents are apt to nod their heads in approval, glorifying potential victims who get off the first deadly shot against a predator. More than a dangerous precedent for society…

…

The chief’s optimistic crime report does little to restore public confidence in his less than vigilant crime-fighting commitment. So don’t be surprised that frightened, increasingly vigilante-minded residents continue to send the message to City Hall that safe neighborhoods will be restored by any means necessary.

In the comments Sean Sorrentino does an awesome job concluding with, “The writer may be an award winner, but he is clearly incapable of the most basic distinctions between lawful self defense and murder. No one who is that confused should be taken seriously.”

But what really drew my attention in articles was this:

Protection of human life and safety and making neighborhoods safe is the first duty of government.

As pointed out by Frank Clarke in the comments, “Not according to scores (if not hundreds) of cases from every circuit as well as SCOTUS. The police have NO duty to protect any individual before the fact of crime. Their duty is to draw a chalk line around your supine form.”

Furthermore this “award-winning writer” (I keep thinking of Ellsworth Toohey in The Fountainhead when I read this line) should be encouraged to look up the dates of when cities first hired full time police officers and compare those dates to when we first had governments. A study of Federal and State constitutions for “the first duty” of governments might prove enlightening to him as well.

But with all the evidence presented in just this one article I’m nearly forced to conclude he has crap for brains and is incapable of being enlightened.

Blind faith

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I’ve met and talked to a lot of anti-gun activists. With perhaps one exception I always got the impression they were generally nice people. Misguided, sometimes ignorant, and frequently not very bright but they were nice and I wouldn’t have minded having one of them as a neighbor or socializing with them if the topic of guns didn’t come up.

That said we sometimes ascribe evil intent to the anti-gun people. In the case of certain politicians such as Chuck Schumer, the Clintons, and President Obama (none of which I have ever met or talked to) this may be true. But generally there is something else going on. The people just aren’t the “evil type”.

But of course just because someone is a “nice” person doesn’t mean that they wouldn’t inadvertently advocate for and enable something terribly evil all the while believing they were doing good. Like I said, a lot of these people aren’t that bright.

Lorne Gunter said something on this topic that struck me as highly likely (emphasis added):

There are around 340,000 violent crimes reported to police in Canada each year. Just over 2% of those (around 8,000) involve firearms. (There’s another reason to question the initial wisdom of the gun registry: Why was Ottawa expending so much time, effort and taxpayer money on such a tiny percentage of violent crimes, while doing comparatively little to prevent the 98% of murders, robberies, kidnappings, rapes and beatings not committed with a gun?)

Typically, gun crime is committed by street criminals using stolen or contraband weapons. The gun registry never had any effect on this class of thug. Some of the 8,000 violent gun crimes no doubt were committed by licensed owners using registered guns — people who might be tracked or even deterred using a registry system. But since no one in Ottawa ever had any idea how many people are in this latter group, they had no way of determining the usefulness of the registry.

A cynic might say that not knowing was the point all along. Backers of the registry knew it would produce very little impact, so they deliberately didn’t bother collecting data that would confirm the database’s uselessness.

I think the truth is less conspiratorial (and far more arrogant): Backers were so sure the registry would produce tangible benefits, they never thought they might need to show proof. After all, they were experts and they had thought it up, so how could it not work?

…

It was purely on blind faith that supporters of the registry — police chiefs, victims’ rights groups, women’s shelter operators and grandstanding politicians — assumed that making Canadians register their guns would magically cut down on violent crime.

Faith, in this context, means believing in something without, or even in spite of, evidence. It was, and is, blind faith motivating these people to continue advocating for gun control. As I have pointed out before and some of them have even agreed, they do not know, or care, how to determine truth from falsity.

As an engineer this is abhorrent to me. When I design a filter using an op-amp, a couple capacitors, and resisters I can predict the frequency response within a fraction of a decibel. But I still test it because it’s possible I made a mistake someplace or a part doesn’t meet the vendor’s specification that I used for the design.

When I design an algorithm for estimating the location of a phone based on the presence of visible Wi-Fi access points and cell towers I know pretty darned close what the accuracy is and how long it will take to do the calculations. But I still test it and there is a test team doing their best to shoot my design and implementation down.

I recognize that human behavior is far more complex and less predictable than electronics and software algorithms. But that just screams that tests have to be done on social experiments. Yet, these people are so stupid (or, granted, in some cases malicious) they not only don’t even bother trying to predict the results or think to do tests but cannot imagine why tests would be needed.

These people deserve all the “respect” of a cargo cult or Heaven’s Gate followers.

Unfortunately this faith is not confined to just gun control. It is my hypothesis that this same blind faith template would match most U.S. government program of the last 100 years.

Quote of the day—Vic Frasier

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It’s like having a .60 caliber penis in your pants. Only you can kill a person with it.

Vic Frasier
June 21, 2009
Five Guns That Are Clearly Compensating for a Tiny Penis
[It’s another Markley’s Law Monday!

And if he thinks .60 caliber is a large for a human penis then he needs some anatomy lessons as well as psychological help.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Miguel

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Dear Lord: Please keep them that stupid until they disappear.

Amen.

Miguel
January 20, 2012
Comment to What That Flushing Sound Is…
[While carefully controlled experiments have failed to demonstrate the efficacy of pray I remain confident the stupidity of the Brady Campaign will continue for quite some time. Whether it will be sufficiently severe in depth and duration to cause them to disappear will require the experiment be run to completion.—Joe]

Some People Just Cannot be Helped

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Getting ready to make the left turn into our industrial park this morning, I find that the snow berm in the middle of the road is much too large to try to hop overt, even with a large 4 x 4, so I have to continue on, find a place to turn around and come back from the opposite direction.  In so doing I come across a guy in a sedan with a handicapped tag in his window, and he’s hopelessly stuck in the cold, loose snow, with ice under it, at the edge of the road.

It turned out he’s driving for the handicapped person, and he’s a young, healthy guy.  First problem; get a shovel and learn how to use it, Dude. Second Problem; he’s running street tires– great in the South on a hot, dry day, but worthless here in the winter.

I ask him; “Do you have a tow hook on this thing?  I have a tow strap and I can pull you right out.”

Third problem; “I don’t know” he says, so I crawl down in the snow to look for one.  Fourth Problem; his rig has a stupid f-ing air dam.  It acts as a plow blade, working against his forward progress in the snow.  Fifth problem; no tow hook– everything under the front end is plastic. So I tell him to back up some distance, get a run at it, and try to get up enough momentum to crash through the deep stuff and onto the road.

Sixth problem; I have to alert him to the fact that there’s a car coming on the road, and so wait a second, Skippy.  We make a couple of tries at it, and it becomes obvious that he’s never done this before.  “Stay in your old tracks each time and you’ll be able to get up more speed” I tell him.

“I can’t see my tracks.”  Oh boy.  He’s for sure never done this before.  Ever heard of hanging your noggin out the window so you CAN see, if that’s what it takes?  He keeps closing his window so I can’t communicate with him.

“Do you have tire chains?”

“Yeah, but they’re on so-and-so’s car over there…”  Oh boy…

Then; “Thaaaanks!” comes the voice from the passenger seat.  I’m in the middle of trying to explain how easy it would be, still and all, to get them out and on their way, and again; “Thaaanks!”

OK then.  You’re welcome.  Bye.

Not to brag, since it isn’t bragging if it’s true, but I’ve been in a freaking sedan in the freaking mountains on a freaking logging trail, with more snow than this.  We used to do that sort of thing just for fun, because that was the sort of thing kids did– you go out and see just how far you can push it, then you go a little more, get stuck, and figure out how to get un-stuck and back 15 miles down the trail to a plowed road.  In the dark.  It made for some great adventures.  So yeah; I know how to get this guy out, for a fact, even though he’s made no effort, and no pre-planning on his part.

The conditions are dangerous right here and now, but it’s still what I call Karmann-Ghia weather.  A friend once had one of those rigs, and he’d drive that thing no matter what, because it was all he had.  He made it work.  If you can get around in a Karmann-Ghia with some modicum of planning and experience and some willingness to work a little when it’s required, I figure the roads are fine, they don’t need plowed, and there’s just no excuse.

But as it often happens, the most knowledgeable and capable person present is the very one you endeavor to ignore or actively try to get rid of.

Quote of the day—CanadianGuy

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It sounds like the shape of the weapon works like Viagra for gun owners.

CanadianGuy
January 6, 2012
Comment to RCMP to seize more ‘scary-looking’ guns before registry dies.
[It’s another Markley’s Law Monday!—Joe]

Insanity defense

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As I understand it a person charged with a crime can plead legal insanity if at the time of the crime they lacked the mental capacity to determine that what they were doing was illegal.

I keep wondering if the Joyce Foundation allows a plea of that type with the people who spend their money. Some of the things the anti-gun people have been saying and doing lately is just nuts.

Of course if the parallel to our legal system were to remain true they would still be required to spend time in a mental hospital and that isn’t going to happen. A more likely result is that once the Foundation money runs out they will get jobs in the ATF as gun experts.

Quote of the day—Dennis Henigan

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The fatal shooting of Park Ranger Anderson was a bitter reminder of the human cost of appeasing the gun lobby – the Coburn Amendment passed two years ago legalizing loaded guns in national parks.

Dennis Henigan
January 11, 2012
Thousands Lit Candles Against The Darkness of Gun Violence
[Thirdpower already covered the lie about the numbers so I will ignore the lie in Henigan post title.

Let me get this straight… it was because it was legal to have loaded guns in national parks that Anderson was murdered? If that were true then doesn’t it follow that because it was illegal to have loaded guns at Columbine High School and Virginia Tech that those murders could not have occurred?

As was pointed out to me years ago by Rolf; If crime goes down after some gun law goes into effect the anti-gun people will claim it as proof we need even more strict laws. If the crime rate goes up after the law goes into effect then that is proof, to them, that stricter laws are needed.

As near as I can tell there are no facts that can be presented to anti-gun people like Henigan which will convince them any gun restriction should be repealed.

I must therefore conclude Henigan and his kind have crap for brains.

This is actually a good test to discover whether someone is worth your time to discuss the subject. Ask, “What would it take to change your mind? No matter how improbable, what data would convince you that some law restricting firearms should be repealed?” You will be surprised at how many people say there is nothing that will change their mind.

As you walk away suggest to such people that they look up the definition of “bigot” in the dictionary.—Joe]

Quote of the day—ColeenMonroe

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Guns are good for one things and one thing only: Murdering.

ColeenMonroe
Tweet on January 9, 2012
[I guess that is why the police, military, body guards, armored car drivers, and my daughter carry guns. That means she either is profoundly ignorant or hasn’t thought things through.

She also says she is a pacifist. That makes her a freeloader.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Jami Regs

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Nothing like a bunch of beer guzzling, uneducated hillbillies playing with deadly weapons to prove just how ridiculous the 2nd amendment is.

Jami Regs
January 9, 2012
Comment to a post by Coalition to Stop Gun Violence about our video.
[I can’t speak for everyone in the video but I know that daughter Kim has nearly completed her accounting degree, Barron has his BSEE, I have a BSEE and a MSEE, one of our shooting buddies is the chairman of the University Chemistry department, and I don’t even like beer.

There is nothing like an anti-gun person talking about something they know nothing about.—Joe]

Peterson Syndrome example

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We often complain about the Brady Campaign and other anti-gun people wanting more laws for the criminals to ignore. This sometimes takes the form of them expressing a need for another law to prevent criminals from breaking an existing law. When properly presented this subterfuge can be quite effective on those unfamiliar with the deception.

To pull this off, or perhaps even make it believable to the presenter, the plea for making the illegal “illegaller” some “time and space” is usually put between the existing illegal act and the new behavior they would like to make illegal.

It turns out this isn’t always the case.

I was reading the Brady Campaign report Exporting Gun Violence and ran into a sentence that really grabbed me. This sentence is, for all intents and purposes, self-contradictory:

ATF can only stop illegal conduct, and as long as it remains legal to sell unlimited quantities of military-style weapons or sell guns without background checks, the illegal flow of guns will continue.

I can’t read that sentence without an immediate jarring sensation. It’s like being slapped on the head or something. It does not compute and I immediately have to reread it to try and figure it out—and it can’t be figured out. I would almost give them a pass if this had been something said in a verbal debate where your brain isn’t working at full capacity and words sometimes don’t come out quite right. But this was in a lengthy report that was written by “Jonathan Lowy, Daniel Vice, Robyn Steinlauf, Amanda Koulousias, Sarah McLemore and Jordan Zlotoff, with assistance from Mary Boyle.”

If they were engaged in deliberate deception they would have put time and space between the contradictory elements of that sentence. I can only conclude it was not deliberate deception. Their brains have to be wired in some manner that is completely alien to me. They must have some strange mental problem in order to put something like that in a written report.

The Quintessential Republican

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Sure; they know what you want to hear, at least for the most part, though they’re playing the Bible-thumper card a bit too heavy.  They know pretty well how to push your buttons, getting the applause at the rallies and so on.  As they see it, they know how to win over us stupid bumpkin Elmer Fudds in fly-over country (just throw ’em some red meat and watch them bark like dogs).

Here’s an example of what they really think, gleaned from a rare moment of partial honesty.  Newt calls himself a “Realpolitik Wilsonian.”  Yeah; that Wilson.  Be sure to watch both videos on the page.  I don’t care what you think of Glen Beck.  Screw that.  Listen to the words.  The “Four Freedoms”.

That’s the Republican Party today.  You can’t mix the liberty talk with the Four Freedoms.  That’s a lie, and yet it represents everything the Party stands for.

Make no mistake.  We’re being offered what amounts to a plea deal.  Either we take the deal (vote Republican) or we’re sentenced to another four years with a Democrat in office.  Bleed slowly or bleed quickly.  It’s a threat you see– take a Progressive dirt bag (Republican) or else.  That’s how this works, and I’m not playing that game.  I’ll get interested in an election when liberty is on the ballot, but don’t expect that to happen any time soon.

Quote of the day—Josh Sugarmann

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The same industry that has given us armor-piercing `cop-killer’ bullets, plastic handguns, and assault weapons has now added caseless `phantom’ ammo to its litany of assaults on public safety. This is just the latest example of the failure of a system that allows a virtually unregulated industry to develop and market hazardous products without the pre-market scrutiny afforded almost all other products in America.

Josh Sugarmann
Violence Policy Center Executive Director
July 6, 1993
New Technology–Caseless “PHANTOM” Ammo–Could Devastate Police Investigations
[In what universe did almost all products receive “pre-market scrutiny” before being “allowed” to go on sale? Even as far back as 1993 Sugarmann lived in a different America than the rest of us.

The ‘cop-killer’ bullets did not and still don’t exist, the “plastic handguns” could and can be detected by airport metal detectors just fine, and “assault weapons” were and are used less frequently to kill people than fists or feet.

What I find somewhat surprising is that even after decades of being disconnected from reality Sugarmann and his organization still receive enough money to maintain their delusions.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Amos

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It’s about feelings and self-identity for Progressives. They’re like monkeys. They’ve got enough primate brain to form tribes, but they just don’t use the higher faculties. So it’s no surprise that flinging crap is their modus operadi.

Amos
January 4, 2012
Comment to Well, your legislature asked for it
[The tribes thing stuck with me. They do have thing about about groups don’t they? The individual and individualism is denigrated. They say things such as “The good of society is more important than the individual.” And “It takes a village.” They put a lot of effort into masses of people into the streets without any clear rational message.

Yet it was individualism that created the tremendous advances in Western Civilization which other societies were forced to adopt (or attempt to destroy) lest they be left far, far behind.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Jscottfur

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Don’t waste a second thinking I give a crap whether you show up at my house this holiday. If you would rather stay home stroking your phallic toy than enjoying the company of family, then knock yourself out. Show the world that you are just a self-centered, paranoid freak who goes through life either expecting or hoping for an opportunity to kill somebody. Get a life Ramboid.

Jscottfur
November 24, 2011
Comment to Dear Amy, Should I Let My Holiday Guests Pack Heat?
[It’s another Markley’s Law Monday!

It not just an astute observation, it’s Markley’s Law that the ignorant describe a specific enumerated right beyond their understanding in terms more familiar to their primitive social development.—Joe]

Quote of the day—HarpoSnarx

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Poor dickless Gooper needs his power enhancer whereever he goes. I guess an essential of the Gooper lifestyle is hearing eggshells crunching as they strut around in their little master of the universe persona.

To such “timid, oppressed” souls, it’s a safeguard against being razzed about destroying America from a family librul. They pimp the 2nd Amendment to make us as dickless as they are.

HarpoSnarx
November 24, 2011
Comment to Dear Amy, Should I Let My Holiday Guests Pack Heat?
[It’s another Markley’s Law Monday!

Beyond this being a another example of Markley’s Law I can’t even make sense of this.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Jane Fonda

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I would think that if you understood what communism was, you would hope, you would pray on your knees that we would someday become communist.

Jane Fonda
August 2002
[In the 20th Century about 100 million people were killed, mostly by their own governments, trying to implement communism. So, tell me Ms. Fonda, are you volunteering your body to be thrown on the pile in the 21 Century?—Joe]

Quote of the day—James Carville

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I don’t think there is a Second Amendment right to own a gun.

James Carville
October 2002
[If there had been a period after the third word in that sentence I would have totally agreed with him.—Joe]

Silly Me

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Condition White.  I’d started a batch of pumpkin ale just after All Hallows Eve with the intent of shipping it to family and friends across the Fruited Plain that is this Land of The Free and Home of The Brave.  It took six weeks of doting over this ale– a recipe with a lot more than the usual four ingredients (water, barley, hops and yeast) that I’ve used before and it didn’t behave the same, so it took more fooling around.  It was well worth it because I ended up with what I regard to be a fine and unique product, perfect for a little Christmas indulgence and cheer with family and friends.

I didn’t know you were supposed to lie, so when the guy at UPS asked me if there was alcohol in the packages I went ahead told him the truth.

It turns out you can’t ship alcoholic beverages unless you’re an “authorized shipper”.  Apparently someone is afraid that someone else, somewhere, might enjoy themselves.  For years I thought (correctly) that people were shipping booze right and left all over the place, but now I know they have to lie to do it.  It’s a free country, sure, so all you have to do is lie here, or break the law there, and you can do anything a reasonable person would want to do.  So Prohibition is still very much with us, which I knew.  I knew for example that you couldn’t make a legal business out selling alcohol without The Mob getting its piece of the action.  I just didn’t know it was still quite so much in effect until tonight.  I probably broke the law just by trying to ship this wonderful home brew to loved ones to enrich their Christmas experience, so come and get me.  “Attempting to ship alcohol in violation of federal law such and such, sub section such and such, sub, sub section such and such, apendices B through W49z”.  Add to that “Attempting to ship alcohoil while armed”.  I’ll have the evidence all consumed before you get here, and besides; you’ll never take me alive, coppers!

So to those of you I’d promised pumpkin ale; You’re more than welcome, but you’d better get over here quick if you want some.

Prohibition is actually in full force (more than full if you compare now to the 1920s) when it comes to certain other drugs, and naturally there is a lot of money and power to be had as a result if you happen to be in organized crime (either free-lance or official).

On a similar note; I spent several hours talking with my teenaged daughter yesterday and the subject of Mary Jane (pot – that’s what the cool kids called it in the ’60s) came up.  I had to kick myself because I got side-tracked talking about the relative dangers of this or that chemical indulgence, but it turned out even better that way–  “But none of this is on point” I tolder her.  “The point is that in a free society the government has no authority to tell an emancipated adult what to put in his body and what not to put in his body.  I’ve I allowed myself to be side-tracked here by the ‘relative dangers’ arguments.  Those are entirely bedside the point.”  She understood perfectly and she appreciated the rare and wonderful experience of finally being exposed to clarity on what was previously a matter of cloudiness confusion.

Quote of the day—jumkey

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What, only 3 dead children?

Gun owners had better step up their war on elementary school-age children and babies. They’ll never get them all only shooting three at a time.

jumkey
December 17, 2011
Comment to Sheriff: 5 dead in Ill. murder-suicide
[I don’t think any comment beyond the post category of “Crap for brains” is necessary.—Joe]