Category Archives: Freedom

Quote of the day–Tamara K.

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There is anecdotal evidence that the banning of traditional ammunition would have an adverse impact on government bureaucrat populations.

Tamara K.
August 26, 2010
No.
[If properly expended I’m pretty sure Tamara and friends have enough “traditional ammunition” on hand to make a noticeable impact on said populations.

I would also like to make mention of the fact that I’ve seen her shoot a rifle offhand at targets 200 yards away:

You don’t want her to “saddle up and bust caps” unless you have a surplus of body bags and bureaucrats with a desire to have them matched up.–Joe]

All the easier to strip search you

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So. You thought you could avoid those intrusive airport technological strip searches by not flying on a commercial plane? You thought they were just were doing that to “other people”? You thought it was okay to look the other way as your Fourth Amendment rights were violated when you flew on an airplane. It was all in the name of “safety”, right?

Via Andy Greenberg (via an email from Chet), coming to your neighborhood soon:

Gee, I wonder why they didn’t show any people in that video? Oh! Andy has some pictures of that too:

That is through vehicles. I would expect the walls of your home will be just as revealing. Imagine what you look like when you are just walking down the sidewalk.

Expect lots of “security sweeps” for the womens basketball and volleyball tournaments. We can’t be too careful with our precious women at risk.

The phrase “concealed means concealed” now means nothing. And since we let them get away with it at airports what’s so special about a public street now? Some terrorist could kill just as many people at the convention center as they could on an airplane. So why shouldn’t the convention center have the same security theater as the our airplanes?

I’ve pointed this out before but what Pastor Martin Niemöller said about the Nazi’s and what Sebastian observed, “What goes around comes around.” is very true.

You play a very risky game when you make exceptions to fundamental principles.

Quote of the day–Paul H. Blackman

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There is certainly a tendency for nation with restrictive gun laws to authorize additional powers to the police to violate the ordinary rights of privacy … .

Paul H. Blackman
From the book From My Cold Dead Fingers–Why America Needs Guns, Third Edition (“Final Chapter”), page 130 by Sheriff Richard I. Mack.
[I would like to believe that as we push back the infringements on our specific enumerated right to keep and bear arms that we can also make progress on our infringed rights to be free from unreasonable search, seizure, and our right to privacy. Can the people at large be educated to understand the general principle of limited government is applicable to both the keeping of arms and the right to privacy? Generalization appears to be a difficult thing for most people. They don’t seem to understand political principles. They get involved in “issues” without understanding the principles. The “War on Drugs” is no different in principle than a “War on Guns”, or a “War on Poverty”. Yet you rarely see people espouse positions that are philosophically consistent.

Oh well. One issue at a time is all I can handle. And taking on the issue of philosophical inconsistency is just too big and too nebulous.

The TSA is next on my list after we essentially win the battle over guns. It might be a decade or so but I think we will get there.–Joe]

Crap for brains

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Someone has their tin-foil hat on too tight and is asking if the NRA funds the Brady Campaign.


The answer is no.


I would like to point out that the NRA people have lots of things to do besides get involved in politics. They have instructors to train, classes to create and teach, they have events to put on, they have ranges to help design and build. If gun control activists and politicians were to go extinct the NRA would have lots of things to do that probably would be a lot more fun that wading through the mud with the politicians.


On the other hand–if the Brady Campaign were to get a universal ban on firearms in this country they would have to move on to knives and sharp sticks. So if they had millions of members and were in fear of their money drying up they would be more likely to fund the NRA (or some other pro-freedom group) as their boogieman.


While I’m pointing out people with crap for brains–Here are a couple more examples:


dissentus:



The more important matter here, however, is the fact that these people have the guns. The mistake that we on the Left make is our advocacy for gun control. Make no mistake about it, when the working class rises up to take their rightful place as the ruling class, there will be people on the Right with guns, and they will not hesitate to shoot. Wisdom would therefore dictate that the Left not be left with only rakes and hoes to defend themselves.


Most of the people I know with guns or are activists for gun owner rights just want to be left alone. They want the government to back off to it’s constitutionally authorized limits. The constitution does not create or grant that there should be a “ruling class”. There are public servants and not much more.


7514328:



Congressmen, Senators, HMO’s and health insurance companies have profited for far too long. They are the causation of the current health care crisis. Get rid of the health insurance companies and the millions of illegal aliens and problam fixed. Free health care for all US citizens. Its a moral right. Not to be profited by anyone. Its genocide by the health insurance companies. They need to pay for their racketeering scheme for turning ours healths into national profits.


“A moral right”? If they had said “A Human Right” or a “Natural Right”I would have known what they were talking about and been able to tell them they didn’t know what they are talking about. But a moral right is meaningless to me so I guess have to address them at that level.


There is no such thing as a free lunch. You no more deserve free health care than you do free food. And that’s not just because I derive profits from a farm and a wife who works in the health care field. Do you demand the grocery stores to give you food for free? Isn’t food a more basic need than health care? Until you demand free food you are nothing more than a hypocrite. And the instant you demand free food you expose yourself as a communist. If you believe communism is the appropriate political philosophy then go join or create a commune. There is nothing in the laws of this country that will stop you and your friends from doing the same test (and achieving the same result) as millions of other people have done over the last 150 years. And if you are smart enough you will avoid killing yourself and a few tens of millions of people in the process.

Quote of the day–Kristen Comer

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As long as we allow an individual right to trump public safety, families are going to lose their loved ones.

Kristen Comer
Executive Director Washington Ceasefire
January, 2010
Press sounding ‘Taps’ over Kline legislation, hearing turnout could cinch bill’s demise
[Comer
is referring to the Second Amendment and the Washington State
Constitution protections of the right to keep and bear arms. But think
about that quote in terms of other specific enumerated rights–Include
the First, Third, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, Eighth, Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Twenty-sixth Amendments. If someone is
willing to disregard and advocate the destruction of one guaranteed right why not another or all of them in the name of “public safety”? That mindset,
that opposition to freedom, is what I want exposed and politically
exterminated. I want membership in those type of organizations to be as
socially unacceptable as the KKK is today.

The famous Benjamin Franklin quote comes to mind.

I find it interesting that Comer’s blog
has not had an entry in over a year. Even when she was “active” it was
only about one post per month. A search of their web site for her name
reveals only one hit not a blog post–from 2008. And neither she nor her
title are list on their “About” page with other staff members. Has she
been muzzled? Are they demoralized? If it was “just” funding surely they
could maintain a blog. I manage to make at least one blog post per day
without any funding (the advertising here earns something like
$1/day).–Joe]

Quote of the day–Michelle Obama

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Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual.

Michelle Obama
February 18, 2008
YouTube video: Michelle Obama: “Barack Will Require You to Work.”
[There is more than a little truth to that statement. It won’t be by him “allowing” it. It will because he and his freedom hating associates were removed from power.

Recent polls indicate we are making decent progress toward the desired goals.–Joe]

Communists like Obama but hate guns

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People’s World is a communistic propaganda organization:



The People’s World / Mundo Popular is a national, grassroots newspaper and the direct descendant of the Daily Worker. Published by Long View Publishing Co., the PW reports on and analyzes the pressing issues and struggles of the day: for workers’ rights, peace, equality, social and economic justice, democracy, civil liberties, women’s rights, protection of the environment, and more.


The PW is known for its partisan coverage. We take sides – for truth and justice. We are partisan to the working class, racially and nationally oppressed peoples, women, youth, seniors, international solidarity, Marxism and socialism. We enjoy a special relationship with the Communist Party USA, founded in 1919, and publish its news and views.


Since the first issue of the Daily Worker came off the press in 1924, our press has been in the battles of the U.S. working class and people’s movements. From the battles of the unemployed and the campaigns to organize the CIO, through the civil rights and peace movements of the 1960s and ’70s to the struggles that have given us the “new” labor movement, to the people’s upsurge that elected our first African American president, and now the growing movement for a progressive, people’s agenda – we’ve been there.


They seem to really like President Obama and think he is “brilliant“.


They claim opposition to gun control is the covert platform of the Republicans and are opposed to it:



Derail gun control. Pander to the National Rifle Association, white supremacist, and the “cowboy” element of society. Ignore the terror that illegal guns have wreaked in our inner cities.


Private property and capitalism are, of course, also a covert platform plank:



Religiocize Capitalism. Write it into the Constitution. Make private property, profit and exploitation a commandment from God.


When the people advocating a political philosophy responsible for over 100 million dead in the 20th century praises President Obama and is opposed to gun ownership and private property it sort of makes you think, doesn’t it?

They say ‘Big Brother’–I say ‘Party Time’

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Other bloggers say:

I say it’s Party Time.

There are many, many other options. Here is just a very small sample:

If I could get some custom made they would say “TSA = A Security Theater”.

Big Brother wants to spends millions on technology that can be defeated by $20 worth of plastic you can by online.

I have had mine for several years. Do you have yours?

Go to your corners!

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This reminds me so much of when my brothers and I were very young and our mother would tell us to go stand with our noses in the corner after we got in a fight:

The Justice Department has settled a turf war between two federal law
enforcement agencies.

A recent audit by the Justice Department’s Office of Inspector General found
nationwide conflicts between the FBI and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms
and Explosives over which agency is in charge for federal explosives
investigations.

Acting Deputy Attorney General Gary G. Grindler wrote a memo to FBI Director
Robert Mueller and Ken Melson, currently the top-ranking official at the Bureau
of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, laying out the new framework.

Grindler’s eight-page memo calls for the FBI to be the lead agency for
domestic terrorism explosives investigations as well as explosives probes with a
link to international terrorism or weapons of mass destruction. ATF will be the
lead agency for everything else in the explosives realm.

Grindler also ordered the two agencies to do a better job of coordinating
their work on explosives investigations.

The new document says that the two agencies will develop a plan by Nov. 1 to
consolidate explosives training, with the goal of starting joint training by
early next February.

While I am of the opinion the ATF should not exist at all and the FBI should be not be involved in 90% of the stuff they are involved in I suppose this is a generally a good thing. It is less likely criminals will benefit from the turf war.

But still I think of it as sort of like Germany attacking Russia in 1941. Germany shouldn’t have been attacking anyone but if they are going to do it anyway you want them to do it to the most evil of your neighbors.

Gun cartoon of the day

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It seems to the people on the left believe everything boils down to money/greed. There apparently is no such thing as principles. There are no such thing as inalienable rights. There apparently are no solutions that do not involve more government control. It is apparently inconceivable that less government control could be the solution to the problems they claim to be concerned about.

Either they are either incredibly narrowed minded, incredibly stupid, or incredibly evil. Most are not all that stupid. Other than a few politicians I don’t think they they have that high a percentage of evil in their midst. That leaves narrowed minded.

With such narrow minded and evil people in positions of power our current economic situation should not be a surprise to anyone. The only thing that will surprise me is if the future does not hold a lot of government caused deaths.

The school massacres have been caused by excessive government and the economic collapse, political unrest, and starvation ahead of us will result in many, many more deaths. Will this be the final lesson that will ever need be taught that attempting a socialist/communist utopia is a really, really bad idea? Or is it true…

Quote of the day–Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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To rule is easy, to govern difficult.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
[I wonder if this contributes to why we have such a terrible situation with our government. Politicians, and to a large extent the populous, want to be rulers when the Constitution and the more Libertarian citizens expect them to direct the affairs and policies of the country within very limited constraints. Those who would be rules see it is easy to be what they want to be and those who would govern within the given limits while managing to take the heat from the press and people who want “money for nothing and chicks for free” realize the job is going to be tough with few thanks.–Joe]

Quote of the day–Dennis Henigan

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According to the “just enforce current laws” argument, we should, for instance, tolerate the “gun show loophole” in federal law that allows criminals to buy guns from private sellers at gun shows without background checks, because we can always hire more federal agents to track down the criminals after they get the guns. Doesn’t it make more sense to require background checks to block gun sales to criminals in the first place?


Dennis Henigan
August 5, 2010
Obama Gun Policy: Fear and Fallacy
[Mr. Henigan,


Perhaps you missed that day in law school when they talked about “prior restraint”.


To answer your question, Dennis, only if you are of the opinion it also makes sense to block book sales to political and religious extremists, and cosmetics and revealing clothes sales to women with a known history of prostitution. Would you support a sister organization that advocates for the registration and licensing of lipstick? Should we give book and cosmetics sales enforcement to the ATF as well?


We could work on completing the entire alphabet for them. Alcohol, Books, Cosmetics, Drugs, Explosives, and Firearms (ABCDEF) is a pretty good start, don’t you think?


The entire premise of your organization, to prevent “gun violence”, is incompatible with a free society. It’s time for your organization to be shut down and for you, your co-workers, and your supporters to admit your crimes, and apologize for the decades of bigotry that have cost the lives of thousands of people.–Joe]

Government Schools

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That’s what I thought of when I saw this video, linked from THR.


It gets pretty sappy for my tastes (OK, extremely sappy) but you need only watch it through about 1:33.

If things had gone just a little differently

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If we had lost the Heller case there would have been no McDonald case. And things could have gone downhill like they did in the U.K.

Then with a serial stabber in the news we could be getting media releases from the VPC and the Brady Campaign to Prevent Knife Violence demanding stronger knife control.

Once Again, Ladies and Gentlemen…

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…Bill Whittle, or rather, not Bill Whittle but an essay written by Bill Whittle.  He’s an excellent writer to be sure, but his work is backed by research which makes it downright valuable.



In fact, in all of human history, there has been only one genuinely progressive, genuinely liberating idea: a lightning bolt across the pages of history – the why in 1776, the how in 1787 – the idea of limited government, god-given rights, personal liberty and rule by the vast collective wisdom and industry of the common man, and not by the bored, pampered and self-hating elites that have run everything before and since. This is a once-in-history idea. This is why we have to conserve it. We have to conserve this fundamentally liberal idea.


That’s our argument.  Ronald Reagan said it in different words, but that’s the come-back to any and all modern “liberals” or “Progressives”.


I was a little disappointed by the lack of mention of education.  Talking with each other, yes, but that bloated, hateful, destructive monster we’ve been accustomed to calling “Public Education” has to go.  Just as our first amendment protects religion from corruption by government, so too must we protect education from corruption by government.  It is every bit as important.  Hillsdale College perhaps shows us one way to do that, but feeding the monster at the same time one is trying to mind one’s own business makes it more difficult.


Whittle wraps it up thusly;



We can do it. And we’re gonna do it.  We are going to whip these communists out of their boots. And starting next time, we’ll start figuring out exactly how.


Ok.  Good.  By all means, read the whole thing.

Not helpful

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This sort of thing is not helpful to the cause of gun rights (found on a towel dispenser in a bathroom). If this particular politician was signing orders to put people in cattle cars to send them to the “camps” then sure that would be appropriate. But we aren’t anywhere close to that.


When Alan Gura spent time with a bunch of gun bloggers at the NRA Convention last May I asked him what bloggers could do to help the civil rights war. He said (paraphrased), “Make guns fun. Don’t bring up or associate with Threepers. It scares people.”


I’ve elaborated on this sort of thing before and don’t see a need to elaborate further at this time.

Quote of the day–T-Shirt

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The economy is worse than a divorce.


I lost half my money and I’m still married.


T-Shirt
August 7, 2010
Seen on a t-shirt in a restaurant in Camdenton, Missouri this evening.
[I wouldn’t mind the temporary economic situation so much if it meant we were getting a divorced from an oppressive big government. But like the t-shirt says (after twisting the meaning a little bit), we are stuck with both.–Joe]

Real Men…

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…and women should have available, and know how to use, either a micrometer or a good caliper that reads in thousandths of an inch and/or hundredths of a millimeter.  I don’t see how a person could get through life without one.  They’re cheap and they last a long time.  A set of hole gauges and snap gauges is good also, but the calipers are essential.


That’s in my book.


Jeff Cooper wrote about some other things;



Before the young man leaves home, there are certain things he should know and certain skills he should acquire, apart from any state-sponsored activity. Certainly the youngster should be taught to swim, strongly and safely, at distance. And young people of either sex should be taught to drive a motor vehicle, and if at all possible, how to fly a light airplane. I believe a youngster should be taught the rudiments of hand-to-hand combat, unarmed, together with basic survival skills. The list is long, but it is a parent’s duty to make sure that the child does not go forth into the world helpless in the face of its perils. Shooting, of course, is our business, and shooting should not be left up to the state.


Or something like that.  I recall he had learning to handle a motorcycle in there too.


My son took it upon himself to row a boat across Hood Canal a few weeks ago without telling anyone.  We saw him heading over, until he disappeared from sight.


I was miffed.  That is, until I remembered some of the crazy things I did at that age (16) like piloting a canoe (two canoes, four people) up one side of Priest Lake in Idaho, by moonlight, and then navigating up the channel to Upper Priest Lake by starlight (after moondown) then landing and setting up camp on a low cliff.  We figured flashlights were for sissies, back then.  Nowadays I carry one.  Must be getting soft.


But I digress.  Being able to measure the difference between .678″ and .710″ can be pretty important, and it’s not complicated.  This sort of thing comes up often while talking to customers.  Most of them have the tools and the skill, but a disappointing minority do not.

Quote of the day–Edward Abbey

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The idea of wilderness needs no defense, it only needs defenders.


Edward Abbey
(1927 – 1989)
[The same thing could be said of freedom. I wish we could get to that place in politics and public discourse.–Joe]

Quote of the day–Lyle @ UltiMAK

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Politicians who advocate liberty are the tools and puppets of “special interests” and are therefore stupid, weak and/or corrupt, whereas politicians who advocate statism do so out of compassion and concern for their fellow human beings and are therefore smart, strong and/or heroes.

Lyle @ UltiMAK
August 3, 2010
Comment to Gun cartoon of the day.
[Nominated for QOTD by Hank Archer. I agree.–Joe]