Category Archives: Crap For Brains

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

It must have been an AK-47

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Whenever they smell blood they start dancing to the tunes of AK-47s:

Tragic as it was, the cold-blooded drive-by shooting of Officer Timothy Brenton over the weekend handed supporters of a proposed state assault weapons ban with a compelling case to take to Olympia. Even though police say they have not yet determined what weapon was used, Ralph Fascitelli, president of Washington CeaseFire, says he plans to cite Brenton’s murder when lobbying for the bill in the next legislative session.

“Maybe this particular [police victim] wasn’t killed with an assault weapon, but the next one maybe will be,” Fascitelli says, adding that police safety was a key reason that automatic weapons were banned decades ago and that the International Association of Police Chiefs supports a ban on military-style semiautomatic weapons today.

It doesn’t matter if the band playing doesn’t even have an AK. Heck, I don’t think it would matter if there were even a band.

They apparently live in some sort of alternate reality where their fears of imagined boogie men are sufficient grounds to demand the government infringe upon a specific enumerated right when even their leaders admit they have insufficient evidence to justify their actions. And they call that “a compelling case”.

I call it crap for brains.

CCRKBA has something to say too.

Quote of the day–Tamara K.

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…We circle back around to one of the big problems in our society, which is the idea that line-memorizing clothes horses have anything more valid to say about politics, science, or current events than the hippie on the street corner with a guitar case. The Romans had the right position in society for actors: Above cesspit cleaners, but not as well-respected as a decent whore.

Tamara K.
November 3, 2009
Shame!
[This reminds me of a Robert Heinlein quote:

A whore should be judged by the same criteria as other professionals offering services for pay–such as dentists, lawyers, hairdressers, physicians, plumbers, etc. Is she professionally competent? Does she give good measure? Is she honest with her clients?

It is possible that the percentage of honest and competent whores is higher than that of plumbers and much higher than that of lawyers. And enormously higher than that of professors.

Lazarus Long
A character in several books by Robert Heinlein.

Getting back to Tamara’s quote…

The problem is that people are still largely driven by some evolutionary advantageous urge to listen to and obey those whose faces are familiar rather than actually think for themselves. But of course that presumes said person is capable of and willing to think for themselves. I’m not convinced the majority of people are up to the task yet we protect them from their own stupidity almost as if they were children who would grow up someday. I sometimes see a future where the system collapses and Darwin collects on a massive debt we have been accumulating for the last 100 years. It would have been far, far better in so many ways to pay off Darwin in regular installments than to have the Grim Reaper swing his scythe in such a broad swath as I sometimes see as plausible.–Joe]

Horrified and fearful

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As our neighbors to the north attempt to regain a little bit of their freedom the anti-freedom people are “horrified and fearful”:

Gun-control advocates say they are horrified and fearful that Canada’s long-gun firearms registry is on the verge this week of being scrapped because the Conservatives may have enough support from the opposition to kill it.

Wendy Cukier, president of the Coalition for Gun Control, says her organization has been monitoring the progress of a Conservative private member’s bill to abolish the registry and is now bracing for it to clear an important vote in the Commons on Wednesday.

“It is astonishing, just a few months after the opposition parties voted for a Bloc Québécois motion that reiterated support for the firearms registry and against efforts to repeal it, that many of the same MPs will support this Conservative bill,” Cukier said Sunday.

“It not only eliminates the need to register rifles and shotguns but requires that the information contained on seven million registered guns be destroyed.”

I find it very telling they don’t tell us how many crimes the two billion dollar gun registry helped solved. The last time I heard a number it was one. Yes, one crime was solved that would not have been solved without it. Two billion dollars to solve one crime and these people are “horrified and fearful”?

The only conclusion that I can come up with is that it’s not about crime. It’s about control. They are “horrified and fearful” they will have less control.

Quote of the day–Dave Stancliff

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The column achieved what it was supposed to do. It got people thinking about the problems associated with assault weapons.

Whether you believe there’s a problem or not, the reality trumps your rhetoric and your use of conservative/NRA babble trying to pass for the truth.

I don’t have the answers, but if enough people work on it they will come.

Dave Stancliff
September 13, 2009 4:13 PM
Comment to Let’s face it, no one will take the high road to gun control
In response to demonstration that his “facts” in an anti-gun editorial were all wrong.
[“If enough people work on it” they will be able to refute verifiable facts? I suppose if the Ministry of Truth (or is it the Truth Czar these days?) puts enough people on the problem it’s possible.–Joe] 

Insults and distortion

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The numbers and the law don’t support their position so they result to insults, distortion, and copyright violation:

There is an America still stuck in the fifties, isolated from our cities and from each other by virtue and circumstance and the placement of highways and byways.

Where no gangs roam and real gun play is only on TV and children are not killed by stray bullets but by accident and by suicide in flaccid homes, all for the idle dreams of idle men made more flaccid by their flaccid imaginations.

They are white, nice and stuck, flaccid fools clinging to a romantic fantasy that disguises their impotent existence if not their impotence.

Armchair Constitutional scholars between clocking out and passing out.  This is flaccid tea party America.  Heels in the mud, Palin on the tube and loaded gun in good working condition, exceeded only by that of the remote.

For flaccid America, killing is an idea, a fantasy pastime, a friend of boredom, that seems to bear the right not to be.

Here is the original picture:

Quote of the day–Anonymous

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Why can’t people just do what they’re told? When we do our taxes do we ask why line 35 is subtracted from line 22? Do we argue with the judge when he makes a decision or a cop tells us not to stand in a certain place? No.

We are subjects of the government that is supposed to care of us. Whether the rules are stupid or illogical, do what you’re told by authorities. The rules are for your own good.

Life will be a lot simpler if you do what you’re told.

Anonymous
October 24, 2009 7:01 PM
Response to “Bag Check” Cartoon
[I’m just not quite sure if this person was serious or sarcastic. I’m about 80% sure it was serious. And that is extremely scary to me.

And the TSA has a blog? What a hoot! I wish I had the time to go play with them more. I left a comment at the above link but due to moderation it hasn’t shown up yet. I essentially just left a link to What TSA really stands for. So it may be that won’t make it past moderation.–Joe]

Update: The comment made it through moderation and I’m getting hits from it. There is also a automatically generated link to this post as well that is getting a few hits.

Never let facts get in the way of a good soundbite

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The article says:

Officers found 50 rounds of 44-caliber, 240 grain-jacketed Remington hollow point bullets, illegal in some states, including New Jersey, because they can pierce cops’ bullet-resistant armor, said Paul Loriquet, spokesman for the Essex County prosecutor’s office.

The problem is hollow point bullets are less able to penetrate body armor than the more common Full Metal Jacket (FMJ) bullets.

The fact that they probably were for .44 Magnum handgun is more telling. Almost any soft body armor comfortable enough for everyday wear is going to be penetrated by any full power load in that caliber.

But this is law enforcement in New Jersey where facts about guns are irrelevant to their jobs and when dealing with guns, the citizen acts at his peril.

Half-truth Henigan

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Dennis Henigan has a new post about two gun dealers up on the Brady Campaign blog. I find it interesting that much of what he says is only half-true. For example he says:

The Seattle Times reported that Brian Borgelt, the former owner of Bull’s Eye Shooter Supply, the notorious Tacoma, Washington gun shop that supplied the gun used in the 2002 D.C.-area sniper shootings, had lost his lawsuit seeking to have his firearms dealer license restored.

This is true as far as it goes but what he doesn’t tell you is the Bull’s Eye Shooter Supply is still open selling guns. The store was purchased by a friend of Borgelt and is doing just fine. Those Seattle Times articles are dated the day before the article linked to by Henigan. My hypothesis is that victories for Henigan are so rare these days that he has to exaggerate something of no consequence into something to celebrate.

Also note that he claims the gun shop “supplied the gun”. That’s interesting wording since Malvo says he shoplifted the gun from the store. That’s like saying you supplied the car used in a bank robbery after it was stolen from your driveway.

Next Henigan says:

Borgelt hit the headlines after the DC snipers, John Muhammad and Lee Malvo, were arrested after killing ten and wounding four others during three weeks of horror in October, 2002. Authorities traced their Bushmaster assault rifle to Borgelt’s gun shop, but Borgelt claimed he didn’t even know the gun was missing. Borgelt could produce no record that the gun had been sold, nor that it had been reported missing or stolen (as required by federal law). It turns out that the snipers’ Bushmaster was only one of 238 Bull’s Eye guns mysteriously missing and unaccounted for in the previous three years. Either Bull’s Eye was actively corrupt, or grievously negligent.

Most of those 238 guns were eventually accounted for (I think, I can’t seem to find verification of that right now). I think the final number was something like 80 that were apparently stolen or perhaps sold illegally. To the best of my knowledge there was no evidence any were sold to someone that was not allowed to own a firearm. But that doesn’t fit Henigan’s agenda:

During the period 1997-2001, Bull’s Eye ranked in the top 1% of dealers in guns sold and traced to crime; its guns had been traced to homicides, kidnappings and assaults.

Note the careful wording “traced to crime”? He did not say, “Used in a crime.” That is because the ATF gun traces include guns that were stolen and the police were trying to find the true owner. Hence by choosing his words very carefully Henigan gives a very different impression that what is the complete truth. And that’s just a tiny part of the lie in that sentence.

If you follow his own link you will find the following:

Long before last fall’s sniper slayings, Bull’s Eye was among a minuscule group of problem gun dealers that, willingly or not, “supply the suppliers” who funnel guns to the nation’s criminals, the ATF says. Studies show about 1 percent of gun stores sell the weapons traced to 57 percent of gun crimes.

That does NOT say Bull’s Eye was in the 1%. The Seattle Times is being a little misleading too but Henigan goes into a full blown lie with it.

Here are the raw numbers from the same Seattle Times article:

An analysis of records obtained by The Seattle Times through a freedom-of-information lawsuit against the ATF shows that between 1997 and 2001, guns sold by Bull’s Eye were involved in 52 crimes, including homicides, kidnappings and assaults — a rate the ATF considers alarming.

…

[T]he number of crime guns traced back to Bull’s Eye had been growing from three in 1997 to 10 in 1998, 18 in 1999, and 11 in 2000.

According to the FBI in 2001 there were 1,425,486 violent crimes in the U.S. of which 26.2% were committed with a firearm. That gives us a total of 373,477 violent crimes committed with a firearm. About 10 of those guns came from Bull’s Eye. This is 0.0027%. It’s not possible for Bull’s Eye to have been in the top 1% of the gun shops that supplied 57 percent of gun crimes.

Anytime you see something with Henigan’s name on remember this–at best it is half true.

Quote of the day–Linoge

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Remember – these are the people who would strip us of our rights. These are the people who would turn us into criminals (like them) for daring to exercise those rights. These are the people who aid and abet criminals on a daily basis. These are the people who have no respect or regard for the sanctity of human life or the self-defense measures necessary to preserve it. …People who cannot even tell fact from fiction.

Scary, nyet?

Linoge
October 18, 2009
truth and falsity
[Good stuff, even if I do say so myself.–Joe]

Gun control is patriotic

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Sometimes you have to just shake your head and call for the guys in the white uniforms and the butterfly nets:

The more people own guns, the more likely guns are to be used. If Cody wants to do something genuinely patriotic and helpful to her country, she should support gun control legislation.

I suppose it depends on how you define “patriotic”. If “genuinely patriotic and helpful to your country” means enabling genocide then she is absolutely correct:

Update: Daughter Kim reminded me:

patriot, n. and adj.
 
1. a. A person who loves his or her country, esp. one who is ready to support its freedoms and rights and to defend it against enemies or detractors.
In early use, as in French and Dutch, chiefly with ‘good’, ‘true’, ‘worthy’, or other commendatory adjective: cf. ‘good citizen’. ‘Patriot’ for ‘good patriot’ is rare before 1680. At that time often applied to a person who supported the rights of the country against the King and court.

truth and falsity

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This post originally appeared here but will go away as of June 1, 2015. I am therefore, with permission, making a copy here on my blog.

by Linoge, formerly of ‘walls of the city’ – Sunday, October 18, 2009

Given that Kevin will be forced to upgrade/change his commenting system in the near future, I figured this needed to be preserved for posterity’s sake: MikeB,

I may be getting a glimmer of what it going on here too.

Could you please explain how it is that you determine the difference between truth and falsity?

What is the process you use?

I don’t think you know how to do it. This is a common problem and leads to all sorts of conflicts. Both internal and external. Many of which are exhibiting themselves in your writing.

Joe Huffman | 06.08.09 – 7:37 am | #

——————————————————————————–

Joe, I honestly don’t know what you’re talking about, truth or falsity. Unix-Jedi pulled my comments apart, exposed a bunch of contradictions and really ripped me a new one. Good for him. But really my points have been simple enough. Maybe I didn’t express them precisely enough.

I say some DGUs are bogus. That’s the whole point. The one’s we’ve highlighted in our blogs are examples of the millions if you believe Prof. Kleck. I don’t, I believe the ones who say they’re more like 100,000 per year. But, in these examples we can see the mechanism by which a shooter can do something wrong and then cover it up.

The truth or falsity of it would only be known to the shooter. For example, let’s say, hypothetically, because I realize none of us knows for sure, but let’s say the OK pharmacist saw that the kid was down and out, but was still so furious with so much adrenalin pumping that he said the hell with it, and shot the kid five more times.

Now comes the trial. His lawyer encourages him to say the kid was shot in the head but was still moving for his gun and was still a threat. The trial ends in acquittal, the DGU list gets one more entry, and only the pharmacist knows the truth.

Do you think that kind of thing doesn’t happen? Do you think it’s so rare as to be negligible? mikeb302000 | 06.09.09 – 3:09 am | #

——————————————————————————–

My question is much more general than just relating to guns. It’s about the basics of your understanding of the world around you, “How do you determine if a statement/hypothesis is true or false? What is the process by which you make this determination?”

If you cannot articulate this then, in the most literal sense, you don’t have a clue as to what is true or false, right or wrong, good or evil. This is a common problem with many, many people that I debate guns with. They literally do not know how to figure out if something is true or false. One person said, “It depends on how I feel.” Another said, “Some people figure it out based on logic and facts and others do it based on feelings. Both ways are equally valid–it’s been proven.” So tell us, step by step, how do you determine truth from falsity?

Joe Huffman | 06.09.09 – 7:55 am | #

——————————————————————————–

I’m a little bit offended by the question, Joe. It sounds incredibly condescending of you to speak as if you and your gun buddies are trained logisticians, philosophically speaking, and I and the antigun folks “cannot articulate this” simple idea.

I try to be objective and open minded. I try to inform myself of the necessary information. I take things with a grain of salt, but not excessively so. I use my best common sense and logic.

I guess there’s more, but that’s the idea.

How’d I do? mikeb302000 | 06.10.09 – 5:45 am | #

——————————————————————————-I’m sorry.

You failed.

No expression of the process. Not even the slightest clue.

You might try reading up on the Scientific Method (and here).

Joe Huffman | 06.10.09 – 6:48 am | #

MikeB302000 had some more things to say concerning the nature of truth and falsehood over at Tam’s weblog, but Joe Huffman has that preserved for the future, so I am not too worried about it.

Remember – these are the people who would strip us of our rights. These are the people who would turn us into criminals (like them) for daring to exercise those rights. These are the people who aid and abet criminals on a daily basis. These are the people who have no respect or regard for the sanctity of human life or the self-defense measures necessary to preserve it. …People who cannot even tell fact from fiction.

Scary, nyet?

Quote of the day–Bill Wilson

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The tepid response by Missouri to this episode is frankly appalling. If no record of who produced and approved this trash exists, then the entire leadership who was working at MIAC at the time of this report being drafted and issued should be fired and barred from future law enforcement service.

Bill Wilson
President Americans for Limited Government
October 15, 2009
ALG Blasts Missouri Information Analysis Center For Retaining No Records of Erroneous MIAC “Modern Militia Movement” Report
[H/T to Dave Hardy.

Remember the “Modern Militia Movement” document that came out last February? Well via a Freedom of Information act request they say the don’t know who wrote it or approved it. They don’t even have anything but a draft version of that document.

Typical. I have FOIA requests to Pacific Northwest National Labs that were supposed to be answered within 20 days and it’s been, what, 2+ years and they haven’t done anything but acknowledge receipt of the requests. Then there was the one request I involved my congressman, a lawyer, and the DOE on and documents that I originally wrote which were completely open suddenly became For Official Use Only. But in order to tell my lawyer that they revealed material that was classified as Secret — without telling him it was classified.–Joe]

Quote of the day–Lew Daly

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We’d like to retire that word [redistribute] from the political vocabulary because you can’t redistribute something that is already highly socialized, and wealth and income in the “era of knowledge-based growth” (whoever ends up “owning” it) is indeed highly socialized. Most importantly (and more to the point), individual productivity is increasingly dependent on what can only be described as a collective good, a common inheritance of knowledge. No one deserves to benefit from this common inheritance more than anyone else, by moral definition, because it’s not created by any individual. So, to the extent that inherited knowledge (“technical progress in the broadest sense,” as Solow termed it) is increasingly driving economic growth, the fruits of knowledge—the wealth being generated by knowledge—should be more equally shared. Wealth that is commonly created should be equally, or at least more equally, shared.

Lew Daly
Via AmericanMercenary in the post What the hell is “Social Justice”?
[This is very scary stuff. Strip away just a little bit of the fluff and it’s, From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!

Just reading the praise for the book you realize these people not only have zero respect for the right to own property but they don’t believe you even have a right to your own thoughts. This is what inspires thoughts of Atlas Shrugged. In this book the people of the mind went on strike. Those that contributed through the power of their creative minds declared those that demanded the product of their minds through the force of government had received their last handout. You can force someone to work but you can’t force them to think.

After reading of people like Daly I don’t just long for a John Galt but a Ragnar Danneskjöld as well.–Joe]

Facts? We don’t need no stinking facts!

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From Time magazine:

National Rifle Association v. Chicago / McDonald v. Chicago
At issue: Second Amendment rights to gun ownership.

A pair of cases challenge Chicago’s 27-year-old ban on handgun sales within the city limits. Originally designed to curb violence in the city, the ban has long irked Second Amendment advocates, who take an expansive view of the amendment’s wording that the “right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” But the Supreme Court had long held that the Second Amendment pertained only to federal laws, until a 2008 decision in District of Columbia v. Heller struck down a ban on handguns and automatic weapons in Washington, D.C. The ruling marked the first time the Supreme Court acknowledged an individual right to bear arms, and it opened the door for these challenges to the Chicago regulation.

Do you notice anything wrong with that?

Bad question. It would be easier to answer, “Do you notice anything right with that?” But I’ll answer the harder question:

  • It’s not just or even primarily about a ban on handgun sales within the city limits. It a ban on possession within the city limits.
  • D.C. v. Heller had nothing to do with automatic weapons — unless you want to abide by D.C. definition of automatic weapon which included semi-autos.
  • This was not the first time the SC acknowledged an individual right to bear arms. Check out U S v. Cruikshank which said “The right there specified is that of ‘bearing arms for a lawful purpose.’ This is not a right granted by the Constitution. Neither is it in any manner dependent upon that instrument for its existence. The second amendment declares that it shall not be infringed; but this, as has been seen, means no more than that it shall not be infringed by Congress.” Or even U S v. Miller which allowed Miller had standing. See also An individual right.

It is very, very rare that when I read an article in the MSM where I know a fair amount about the topic that I don’t see substantial errors in the presentation of the material. I can only conclude the articles where I don’t know all that much about the material are also filled with errors. Hence, I cannot trust the MSM to provide me facts. Facts are apparently irrelevant to them.

Kevin made a post about this in the last year or so with, IIRC, a fancy name. I only had about three hours of sleep last night and am much too tired and cranky to go looking for it. And I still have more work work to do tonight…

Lying is what they know

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We live in an information age now. A incredibly vast amount of information is available so quickly and cheaply that I am amazed they still think they can get away with this crap. But I suppose it’s just what they have always done and it’s how they have won in the past. It’s what they know how to do.

Even though she was not harmed, Colleen Dawson said she wishes she had a handgun when some men tried to break into her Northwest Side home last year.

Dawson, 51, said the court’s action should be a message to Mayor Daley and other gun-control advocates to “begin looking at a handgun as a tool given to us as a birthright by the constitution to defend ourselves.”

Growing up in Englewood, Dawson said her grandmother always kept a handgun in her apron pocket. She’d like the same right.

Chicago Police scoff at the notion that more handguns will lower the city’s crime rate.

“The logic they are using, that homeowners’ homes will not get burglarized, is ridiculous. You usually do not burglarize a home that is occupied,” said Mark Donohue, president of the Fraternal Order of Police.

Interesting. I know one woman living in Chicago who acquired a gun (illegally of course) after waking up to a burglar going through her bedroom. The bugler told her to not worry, she wouldn’t get hurt if she just stayed still. The burglar then went about his “business”. Yes, I know, a single data point does not make a study.

Look at the burglary rates of occupied homes in the U.K. versus the U.S. Read Guns and Violence: the English Experience. The data is overwhelming. Either Donohue is lying or his head is buried very deep in the sand or some other place where the sun doesn’t shine.

Next up is the Brady Campaign representative:

A 1988 Emory University study, Heimke said, showed “if you keep a gun in your home, it’s 21 times more likely to injure you or your family than a bad guy. It gets used by a depressed teen to commit suicide, or you think it’s a burglar but it turns out to be a neighbor or a brother-in-law.”

1988? A 21-year old study? At least it’s not the fully discredited Kellerman study from 1986 which concluded it was “43 times more likely…”. But I find it telling that Helmke overlooked the 1993 revised “study” by Kellerman in which he changed his number to 2.7. Even then he had to “bake” the numbers to get something that looked bad for gun ownership. And the only 1988 Emory study I can find reference to is also from Kellerman (see also here). And Emory is where Kellerman works so I have to conclude that Helmke is attempting to quote Kellerman and perhaps getting the number wrong. Was this carelessness or was it to avoid triggering a flag with the 43 number that we know is false?

Kellerman’s work was so shoddy that in 1995 congress pulled CDC funding for his work. At the hearings he didn’t even bother to show up to defend it.

And also of note is that this Chicago paper misspelled both Helmke’s and Colleen Lawson’s names. I’m glad we have “professional journalists” and their armies of fact checkers to “inform” the public.

I know it’s Lawson instead of Dawson because of the court filing and I because met and talked to her at the 2008 NRA convention:

Update: Some edits were made for legal reasons.

Mom logic isn’t

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Do they think we won’t catch them and rub their noses in their attempted deception? Or are they so stupid that they can’t read the actual numbers? And they have the tag line “Real Stories. Real Honest. Real Moms”.

The lady doth insist too much, methinks.

Here are the scare quotes:

More than 500 children die annually from accidental gunshots. Some shoot themselves, while others kill friends or siblings after discovering a gun.

Here are more scary stats: Americans own 200 million firearms, and 35 percent of homes contain at least one gun. Last year, a study conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found more than 1.7 million children live in homes with loaded and unlocked guns.

The problem is that according to the CDC we have this data (2006 is the most recent I found–see table 10):

Cause of death (based on ICD, 2004) All ages Under 1 year 1-4 years 5-14 years 15-24 years 25-34 years 35-44 years 45-54 years 55-64 years 65-74 years 75-84 years 85 years and over
Accidental discharge of firearms (W32-W34) 642 – 13 41 193 113 74 84 49 33 34 8

So in order to arrive at “more than 500 children die annually” you would have to include “children” as old as 54 years old. Sure a lot of people want the government to treat people as children even at this age but it’s lying to actually include them in your children totals.

The real number is 54 children per year instead of “more than 500”. They are only off by a factor of 10.

So, assuming their 1.7 million number is right then the odds of one of those children in homes with loaded and unlocked guns accidentally being killed with a firearm is 54/1,700,000 or 1 in 31,481 (0.0032%) per year.

Gee… I wonder if they have an agenda. If they don’t then why do they inflate the numbers by a factor of 10? Crap for brains and/or the truth is just too inconvenient for them? You decide.

The press has it wrong again

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Dave Workman explains:

That the local press has once again erroneously given the impression that the store has lost its FFL, when in actuality it is Borgelt’s license revocation that has been upheld, is one more reason for gun owners, and one frustrated firearms retailer, not to trust the news media.

This is one time the press has it coming.

The basic story is the previous owner of the Bull’s Eye Shooter Supply (the store from which Beltway Snipers stole the rifle they used) had his FFL revoked but the new owner is up and running just fine. The press is reporting the store lost it’s FFL and implies it has been shut down.

Half-truth, full-truth, who cares? Not the mainstream media with their “professional” journalists.

Quote of the day–Michael Beard

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On the evening of September 9, President Barack Obama was at the U.S. Capitol preparing to address a joint session of Congress on the subject of health care reform. At approximately 8:00 p.m., Joshua Bowman, 28, of Falls Church, Virginia, attempted to drive his Honda Civic into a secure area near the Capitol. U.S. Capitol Police stopped him and, searching his car, found a rifle, a shotgun and 500 rounds of ammunition. Bowman was arrested on the spot and charged with two counts of possession of an unregistered firearm and one count of unlawful possession of ammunition. An Associated Press article noted that “Bowman’s intentions were unclear.”

A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Washington has stated that they have decided against prosecuting Bowman on more serious charges. It is difficult to imagine, however, what legitimate reason there might have been for bringing that kind of firepower to the Capitol when so many important elected officials were gathered in one place.

…

How many other individuals carrying guns at political events (either openly or concealed) have disturbing criminal histories? And why is the media already losing interest in what should be headline news?

Michael Beard
September 12, 2009
Gunning for the President
[First of all there wasn’t anyone “gunning for the President”. The guy accidentally drove across a political boundary which made his firearm possession a crime. Law enforcement investigated and decided not to prosecute. It’s no different than if a black person had stepped into a “whites only” restaurant in the deep south 60 years ago and quickly apologized and tried to leave. Prosecutors gave him a pass because he was trying to play by the rules and got tripped up by a law that shouldn’t have existed to begin with and through no intentional fault of his own.

“Disturbing criminal histories”? If the legislature had wanted to make drunk driving, disorderly conduct, or urination in public grounds to loose your right to keep and bear arms they should have gotten the votes to pass such a law and defend it in court. Until they do Mr. Beard can be as “disturbed” as he wants to be and I don’t care. We are a supposedly a nation of laws not beholding to how “disturbed” he is.

I suspect the thing that disturbs Mr. Beard the most is the media is losing interest in making headlines of someone obeying the law. That’s not “news”. And I have to say, it’s about fricking time.–Joe]

I wonder if this is my fault

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I appears there is an interesting new show coming soon to a security theater near you:

First it was shoes, then water bottles and snow globes.

Now dried baby formula, makeup, talcum and other powders have joined the long list of seemingly innocuous household items drawing closer scrutiny from airport screeners as potential security threats.

Federal authorities haven’t banned powders toted by passengers or set limits on the size or amount they are allowed to carry on planes in their hand luggage.

But the Transportation Security Administration is now paying closer attention to common powders and has outfitted O’Hare, Midway and other airports around the country with new kits to test them for explosives. Passengers should be aware that after belongings are X-rayed, TSA officers may test a small sample of any powder in their possession.

I wonder if my post contributed to that. I know it got some attention by “government employees”.

If it was my fault I’m not going to say I am sorry. One of the ways you get people to rethink their security systems is to overload them with false positives. If I could only demonstrate that it were relatively easy to bring down a plane by grinding up you hair into a fine powder and making an improvised explosive device out of it using a couple coins as tools…

Only one move ahead

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Sometimes it boggles my mind just how stupid some people can be and still be able to write complete sentences and breathe–and apparently at the same time. Case in point:

Free marketers don’t care much for bank bailouts so long as they’ve gotten their money out the bank before it fails.

But when it’s health care? I think you will find that teabaggers everywhere will have a very different perspective when they find themselves out there alone with no way to pay for their family’s medical costs.

Who will need the save the day when this happens? The government will – and that means a single-payer system.

Whether the result fits your ideology or not, the numbers would seem to make clear that it is only a matter of time before private health insurance prices itself out of the market, leaving only the government with the capability to insure the nation’s health.

“Leaving only the government with the capability”? And just where does he think the government will get the money that private health insurance companies and individuals couldn’t?

When I used to play chess a lot (high school and college) it was very rare that someone couldn’t see pretty clearly two and usually three moves in advance. And the better players would have a pretty fair view out six or seven moves on some critical branches. But this guy apparently can’t see even one move in advance. What would you call someone like this? In my chess playing days we would call those people losers.

Update: He makes an “interesting” comment in response to another commenter to his article:

I rarely watch CNBC and, anyone who reads this post knows I wouldn’t be caught dead watching Fox.

He admits he studiously ignores data considered to be fair and accurate by millions of people? This isn’t someone concerned with knowing the truth. This is someone who has a deep and profound commitment to some sort of cult.