Lies–there you have the religion of slaves and taskmasters. Truth is the god of the free man.
Maxim Gorky
Russian novelist, playwright.
The Lower Depths (1902)
[From Wikipedia (link above), “The theme of harsh truth versus the comforting lie pervades the play from start to finish, as most of the characters choose to deceive themselves from the bleak reality of their condition.”
A passing thought of Half-Truth Henigan and company reminded me of this quote.–Joe]
The more perfect civilization is, the less occasion has it for government, because the more does it regulate its own affairs, and govern itself… All the great laws of society are laws of nature.
Thomas Paine
The Rights of Man
[I find it very interesting that there is a strong trend in those that support the Democrat party toward preserving nature and discouraging human intervention. Yet in human affairs there is a very strong tendency toward intervention in the activities of people and a general insistent on not letting nature take its course. It’s as if they have no coherent principles.
Yes, I’ve blogged about this before. And Kevin has a more recent post that is, in a slightly obscure way, on topic as well.–Joe]
The design of the abolitionists is this,– to remove and destroy the institution of slavery. To accomplish this well, two things are needed, ideas and actions. Of the ideas first, and then a word of the actions. What is the idea of the abolitionists? Only this: that all men are created free, endowed with unalienable rights; and in respect of those rights, that all men are equal. This is the idea of Christianity, of human nature. Of course, then, no man has a right to take away another’s rights; of course no man may use me for his good, and not my own good also; of course there can be no ownership of man by man; of course no slavery in any form. Such is the idea, and some of the most obvious doctrines that follow from it.
Now, the abolitionists aim to put this idea into the minds of the people, knowing that if it be there, actions will follow fast enough.
…
No “respectable” paper is opposed to slavery; no Whig paper, no Democratic paper. You would as soon expect a Catholic newspaper to oppose the Pope and his church, for the slave power is the pope of America, though not exactly a pious pope.
Theodore Parker
1810-1860
The Slave Power
[It seems to me that in addition to the parallels gun rights activists can draw from the civil rights movement of the 1960s and the gay rights movement of the late 1970s we might be able to get inspiration from the abolitionists of the 1800s as well.
Exceptions might be made for the emulation of John Brown.
It would appear abolitionists had similar problems with the mainstream media and Democrats as we do now.–Joe]
I actually did the outline for this post in January of 2009 but it wasn’t until I read something Sebastian posted that I decided to procrastinate on something other than this post.
There are many reasons why gun owners are angry. Let me enumerate a few of them (I actually removed about a third of the items from my outline in the interests of time and space):
I’ve blogged about this before. The anti-gun people want to outlaw guns that are “small and easily hidden”. They want to outlaw guns that are large and powerful. They want to outlaw guns that are “deadly accurate”. They want to outlaw guns that can be used for “spray shooting from the hip”.
You would think that perhaps a gun that fires an intermediate cartridge and is of medium weight and is not easily hidden would be acceptable to them. Nope. Such a gun was called an “assault rifle” by the Germans during WWII. The anti-gun people, utilizing their talent for twisting words and preying on the ability of the public to be easily confused, banned “assault weapons”.
This is why we sometimes talk about Goldilocks Gun Control (more here). It’s like the story Goldilocks and the Three Bears with a twist. There are guns the anti-gun people think are too big and too small, but there aren’t any guns that are “just right”.
What if the government treated religions like that? Are some sects of Catholicism or Judaism too orthodox? Or maybe the Baptists are too fundamentalist. Are their religions too modern or “new age”?
These are specific enumerated rights and our public servants have not been given constitutional power to take guns or religion, in common use, away from the people.
Attempting to take away something that has been guaranteed by the U.S. Government has a tendency to make the victim angry. If they don’t want us to be angry they should stop doing things like this.
I’ve blogged about this before. In the article I quoted in that link every statement of fact was wrong yet the press published it as if it were completely true. The anti-gun people tell lie after lie after lie, after lie, after lie. Even when they tell the truth it is only half-truths (see also here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here). One might reasonable think they are merely ignorant but if that were true you would not find that in each and every case the half-truth benefits their case. And still the press believes them!
Constantly lying about the law, firearms, and gun owners has a tendency to make gun owners angry. If they don’t want us to be angry they should stop lying.
To anti-gun people and the press even a hundred rounds of ammunition found in the trunk of a car or in someone’s home is cause for concern. If the police decide to search someone’s car or home the finding of a few hundred rounds of ammunition it nearly takes the breath away from the talking heads in the media. If it was within a few blocks of a school they make sure the implication is that each one of those rounds could, and should, be translated into the intent of the gun owner was to kill at least that many children.
This fascination with the number of rounds of ammo reached the point that in 1994 the U.S. Congress was contemplating requiring an Arsenal License for people that had more than 1000 rounds of ammunition.
I’ve got news for these clueless bigots. When I shoot in a pistol match I carry about 80 rounds in magazines on my belt. When I go to the local pistol match the minimum number, assuming zero misses, of rounds needed is 150. Typically I would take at least 300 for each gun that I was going to shoot. If I am going to the range for practice it is about 400 rounds per handgun and 100 for a rifle. If I were to go to a regional match I would take at least 1000 per gun. If I were to attend a weekend class the minimum round count is typically about 1500.
The anti-gun proponents might claim that I am somewhat out of the ordinary in my ammunition consumption. They might point out someone that has been hunting every year for a decade and has always brought home their deer and is still working on their first box of twenty rounds. If someone needs 100 rounds to go hunting they shouldn’t be hunting they might say.
It’s not about hunting. It’s about being the best you can be at shooting fast and accurately. And I’m not particularly special in my ammo needs. When the other gun bloggers and I went to Blackwater Todd Jarrett told us he had 250 or 300 thousand rounds of loaded ammo and another 650,000 rounds of components. Nearly a 1,000,000 rounds in the hands of one consumer is unusual. But 1000 rounds is not.
1000 rounds and they want to require a special license? I can put 1000 rounds of .22 LR in my coat pockets. Do I need to license my coat?
If they don’t want us to be angry they should stop the talk of requiring expensive and hassle intensive requirements for common everyday activities.
What if the government demanded that all homosexuals be registered with the state? How about all Muslims, Catholics, or Jews? Or how about mixed race couples?
Here’s how it might work: If you wanted to have a sexual relationship with someone of the same sex the state required you to obtain a SSIC (Same Sex Identification Card), get eight hours of training, and pay $50 every three years to renew your license.
Do you think that might make a few people angry? Do you think people might claim that was unconstitutional? If you answered yes to both those questions then congratulations! You have an I.Q. above room temperature!
That is what gun owners have to put up in many states in order exercise the specific enumerated right to keep and bear arms.
It gets worse. Continuing the same analogy you wouldn’t be allowed to have a relationship with someone that was too fat or too skinny. And if they were of above average “capacity” they would be banned from having a relationship with anyone but a government employee.
And of course just because you have the license doesn’t mean you could actually have any contact with your loved one outside of your home. Assuming the local government where you lived “allowed” you to have the relationship you would have worry about the ever changing laws in the next city and the neighboring states. Your SSIC is valid only in a few states and even then it could change at any time. And it is your responsibility to make sure all your paperwork (if it is even possible to get the proper paperwork) is in order.
And to top it off many simple, victimless activities that of no consequence in one jurisdiction are a felony in another.
Then assuming you have successfully navigated all the government restrictions you still have to worry about which businesses are willing to do take your money when you just want to have a bite to eat or a cup of coffee. And all the people that want people of your kind all killed has to weigh on your mind as well.
If they don’t want us to be angry they should give the specific enumerated right to keep and bear arms the same respect they give the specific enumerated right to freedom of association.
I don’t think I have ever seen a fictional cop show on television where firearms were not registered. They just assume that is the way it is and that is the way it should be. Fortunately that is not the case except for a handful of states. But the media creates an expectation that it is perfectly normal for all guns to be registered and the owners licensed.
Of what benefit is it for guns to be registered? I’ve blogged about this many, times before. It is exceedingly costly and contrary to what you see on T.V. and at the movies it has near zero impact on solving crimes. So why do the anti-gun people still insist on gun registration? It turns out it is good for something–Confiscation.
If they don’t want us to be angry they should stop trying to register firearms when we all know the only “benefit” of firearm registration is the eventual confiscation of those firearms.
Who needs to buy more than one Bible a month? Why do Bible owners get all upset about the minor inconvenience of restricting people to just one Bible a month? It would cut down on trafficking of Bibles from states with lax Bible laws to those with strict Bible laws.
Never mind that the only way to make sure someone only buys one Bible a month is if all Bible transactions are recorded and each Bible is registered.
If they don’t want us to be angry they should treat firearms ownership like Bible ownership. It’s an essential part of exercising a specific enumerated right and the government has no constitutional authority or business in restricting sales any more than they do for the Koran, the Bible, the Torah, or the Communist Manifesto.
If there were a very clear correlation between highly restrictive gun laws and lower violent crime, suicide, and/or accidental injury or death by gunshot then we could have a meaningful discussion about the merits of firearm regulation. But despite over a 100 years of gun regulation in this country there still isn’t any conclusive data any of the gun laws have improved public safety in any of the instances where they have been implemented.
If they don’t want us to be angry they should be able to demonstrate a benefit or tell us the real reason for infringing on this specific enumerated right.
There is no right more universal than the right of self-defense. Every creature for all time has claimed the right of self-defense. It is the most basic and most important of all rights.
Despite the right of self-defense being so universal the anti-gun people want to remove the most effective tools of self-defense from the people that need them the most. Removing the tools of self-defense from the general population completely changes the relationship between government and the individual. It is like the farmer that dehorns his cattle. He does that to prevent them for hurting each other in fights. But then he takes responsibility for their defense from predators. He provides their health care, their food, and manages their reproduction. He also neuters nearly all the males and slaughters them as he sees fit. That is not a functional model for a free society.
If they don’t want us to be angry they must stop treating us like cattle.
Who could possibly have a problem with an organization with a name like The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence?
An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Right?
They don’t want to take your guns away, they just want to prevent gun violence.
What if their name were “The Brady Campaign to Prevent Slander” and they demanded free expression and speech be restricted to your own home, registration of anyone that wanted to exercise free speech–in their own homes, and you must submit to frequent police inspections of your home?
Oh, but they say, free speech does have restrictions on it. You can’t legally falsely shout, “Fire!” in a crowded theater. True. But you aren’t prevented from doing so by having a state approved gag installed prior to entry of the theater. If you cause injury through the irresponsible exercise of your freedom you are punished for the irresponsible actions. The same should be true for firearms.
If they don’t want us to be angry they should stop trying to prevent us from exercising our specific enumerated right to keep and bear arms.
The anti-gun people completely ignore or dismiss the benefits of firearm ownership. They constantly remind us of the harm but that only tells part of the story. It’s another half-truth they tell to further their cause.
Comparing to other causes of death: There is one child killed with a gun for every one million+ guns in this country and there is one drowning of a child for every 11,000 residential swimming pools. Similar comparison can be made for car ownership.
Pro-gun people recognize that firearms are sometimes used for evil purposes and that accidents happen as well as the many benefits. The anti-gun people only see solutions while we see trade-offs.
If they don’t want us to be angry they need to acknowledge gun ownership brings benefits to society not just hazards.
Many anti-gun people claim that men who own firearms have small penises and are trying to compensate with a firearm. The examples are almost endless. One could make a strong case that many anti-gun people appear to be developmentally retarded at about age of nine or 10 where children make jokes and insults about bathroom activities, bodily wastes, and penises. There are numerous examples here, here, here, here, and here.
What if women who wanted the right to vote or for equal opportunities in the workplace were laughed at and told they were just experiencing some penis envy? Do you think that would result in some anger?
If they don’t want us to get angry they should grow up and discuss the topic seriously.
If other specific enumerated rights were treated like firearms ownership there would likely be riots in the streets. But gun owners haven’t rioted. They haven’t called for the murders of those that insulted them. Yet similar infringement on rights has or would likely cause a major social disruption. And despite remarkably good behavior under some extremely adverse circumstances the instances of gun owners striking out in anger at these abuses is extremely rare. And what do we get for this good behavior despite substantial reasons for being angry? They use that anger as further justification to infringe upon our rights.
I think of those people who claim our anger as reason for more infringement the say way as I would a child who murders his parents and then asks the judge for leniency in sentencing because he is an orphan. After their conviction under 18 USC 241 or 242 I think their sentences should be doubled because they brought the problem on themselves.
“Honesty” is not a word that comes to mind when one thinks of Michael Bloomberg, nor when one thinks of Frank Lautenberg. “Hypocrisy,” on the other hand, is a perfect fit. Lautenberg once spoke disapprovingly of the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II, the blacklisting of people on the basis of mere allegations during the “McCarthyism” period of the 1950s and “an utterly ruthless enemy . . . who has absolutely no sense of propriety or decency while it wages war against innocent people.” But that was in 2003. If Lautenberg’s reverence for civil liberties were more than pretense, he would never have introduced S. 1317.
Chris Cox
NRA-ILA Executive Director
January 23, 2010
Gun Owners Under Watchful Eyes
[The summary of S. 1317 is “A bill to increase public safety by permitting the Attorney General to deny the transfer of firearms or the issuance of firearms and explosives licenses to known or suspected dangerous terrorists.”
The Bloomberg gang, Brady Campaign (and others) call it a “Terror Gap” that people suspected of supporting terrorism be denied the specific enumerated right to keep and bear arms without due process. The due process of being able to confront their accusers and defend against the accusations in public court is an extremely important protection. You don’t want to live in a society where you can be denied your right to practice your religion, a jury trial, or the right to not incriminate yourself because your neighbor anonymously calls in a tip. It could be that the neighbor is just pissed you are in a mixed race marriage, you are gay, or you didn’t mow your lawn last week.
In a sense Bloomberg and The Brady Campaign are correct in their naming of this. Our government is less able to terrorize it’s citizens without the secret lists so in that sense the government has a “terror gap” compared to some other countries. I must conclude Bloomberg and The Brady Campaign wish to enhance the terror capabilities of the U.S. government to get it on par with other well known governments with secret lists such as the former USSR, East Germany, and Nazi Germany.
Before anyone is denied their freedom they must given a chance to defend themselves in court or else we don’t have freedom.–Joe]
In response to the QOTD here;
“How do you measure fairness/justice?”
It’s not terribly complicated. First, you determine whether someone’s rights have been violated. If so, you hold the perpetrator accountable, with restitution as a priority.
The statist will attempt to argue over what is and is not a right, and who possess the right (the individual or the collective, or some sub set of the collective). Ayn Rand has a couple of quotes that nail it;
“The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities.” – Ayn Rand (copied from Kevin’s site)
I’ll paraphrase this next one from memory, because I don’t have the book handy;
“Any proposed ‘right’ that demands the violation of another’s rights is not and cannot be considered a right.” – Ayn Rand.
Next the statist will declare these truths to be too simple, that you’re being too simple-minded seeing the world in such black and white terms, and that only in navigating through complexity can we come to some semblance of economic and social justice, etc., etc.
Eventually it degrades into a contest of push verses shove, as the snarling, hate-filled statist is more than willing to start the pushing (or more likely to have someone else start the pushing for him, the typical statist being a coward as a rule).
There is no reconciling the two visions of society (statism, verses the property rights model on which this country was founded) and any attempt to do so will only delay the inevitable reckoning, prolonging and deepening the pain and destruction along the way (the traditional role of the Republican Party). Our only sensible plan of action is to defeat the statists at every opportunity, relegating them to the woodwork of society where they belong (along with the cockroaches and spiders).
Our biggest problem is that the statist’s goal is much simpler than ours. They want destruction and decline of civilization. The free man wants to create and build over time. He might spend a lifetime carving out his niche, and building a life for himself and his family, while the statist can wipe the whole thing out in a moment. Building is difficult and time consuming, and it takes planning and creativity, while destruction is simple and quick, and most any idiot/loser can do it.
With that in mind, a more specific and urgent course of action is presented. The leftist/statist power infrastructure needs to be dismantled, and the individual statist power brokers (perpetrators) have to be held personally liable. They have to pay a price or they will not stop. There’s your “Social Justice”. Anything less will prolong the problem and deepen the pain. Investing our hopes and resources in the traditional Republican Party model of going along and trying to run the statist system more responsibly, is nothing but a recipe for disaster.
We’ve too often accepted the leftist premises or their claims to compassion and justice, when their goals are just the opposite. We’ve reached a radical situation by sitting back for generations, allowing the leftist radicals to have their way. Closing a few dozen federal departments, including education, and shutting down hundreds of programs might seem radical or extreme to the inattentive. So what? The level of government intervention we’ve reached is in itself extreme or radical, compared to the vision of the founders. The status quo is what’s extreme. Getting back on track is not, even if means passing out a million pink slips to federal and state employees.
The people that do the equalizing will never equalize themselves.
Caller on the Glen Beck radio show
March 11, 2010 7:50 AM PST
She was born in Yugoslavia.
[No matter how true and how obvious from history this is many people still want “economic justice” or “fairness” imposed by the government.
I’ve been trying to come up with a good response to this. The best I have been able to do is, “How do you measure fairness/justice?” Followed up with something like, “If you can’t express it in numbers then it’s just opinion.” in the most condescending tone I can muster (Barb says I do this tone very well).
But perhaps this caller who has a more intimate knowledge of how these work is a better response.–Joe]
In response to the QOTD;
Ah, but Mr. Coolidge, and the Republican Party leadership, apparently never understood the game. The assertion that building up the weak is the Left’s goal is one thing. Taking that assertion at face value is another. It’s the Big Mistake of the 20th century, and has resulted in perpetual confusion (to say nothing of the stagnation, decay and destruction around the world). The preponderance of the evidence regarding the Left’s goals points elsewhere. Their objective is statism for its own sake, and the tactic, stated openly in some circles time after time, is to bring down “The System” so it can be remade– “Redistributive Change” in Obama’s own words, and it’s been said in other ways throughout the generations.
Republicans, as they occupy themselves trying to understand and argue the details, the costs and so on, of the “healthcare” bills, are demonstrating their utter cluelessness (or is it their complicity?). “Why, this could end up funding abortions with taxpayer dollars, and that would be bad, and I’m not so sure we can afford this other bit over here…”
That’s not the point, Skippy. The point is, the whole thing is a massive power grab. What more do you need to know, for crying out loud?
Weigh down the economy with debt, entitlements and restrictions, then blame what remains of the private sector. Take advantage of the chaos and the public demands for an altogether new approach that they hope will ensue. They’re telling us every day; “Never let a crisis go to waste” is only part of it. The other part is their understanding that they can manufacture the crises. Chip, chip, chip, chip, and sooner or later even the hardest stone will crumble, after which (they believe) they can swoop in and take it all.
So far as I can tell, the Republicans have been playing along for decades. “Oh, but you’re crazy, Lyle. Look at the differences between Republicans and Democrats! Are you willfully blind, or what? Surely you must be mad! Look! Just look! LOOOOOOOOOK, MAN!”
Uh huh, and there’s a world of difference between that “good cop” and that “bad cop” too. The bad cop is a real, dangerously scary, out-of-control sonofabitch, but that good cop– why, he’s a sweetheart! Look at him! Just look! He brings you coffee and food and he talks nice. He doesn’t like that bad ol’, meany mean bad cop at all, either. No Sir, not at all. Such a nice fellow, and he really cares. He listens. He understands. He’s my advocate in this time of uncertainty. I want to work with him, by golly gosh oh gee. Yessiree. No doubt about it. Without him, that bad cop would have beat the living shit out of me by now, for sure. Man, am I lucky to have Good Cop! Wow! Thank God! This must be an angel sent from Heaven to deliver me from despair!
Right. Both cops are working to take you to the same place after they’re finished with your sorry, dumb ass.
OK; got that out of the system. Now I’m all ears.
Brady Campaign Lawyer Dennis Henigan claims:
Of course, it is true that the exercise of free expression, for example, also can create a risk of violence or physical injury. If that risk becomes sufficiently great, the courts will deny the protection of the First Amendment altogether. But the core exercise of freedom of expression is unlikely to pose serious risks of physical harm, particularly lethal harm. The same cannot be said about the Second Amendment right.
…
It is unclear whether the high court will declare the Second Amendment right as “fundamental” as the other rights that have been applied to the states. But even if it does, it should confront the hard reality that this “fundamental” right is also the most dangerous right of all.
I agree that guns can be dangerous. But it is far from the most dangerous right. I would like Mr. Henigan to do the arithmetic on how many people have been murdered based on the following books:
And that is just off the top of my head with a couple seconds of thought. And when have U.S. courts denied protection of the First Amendment to these books? If “guns kill” then surely these books can be blamed for the deaths of approximately 100 million people just in the 20th Century.
If books “responsible” for the deaths of many millions can be afforded protection under the First Amendment the Second Amendment can surely afford protection for firearms in common use.
As is usual Henigan only tells half the story. The half he tells is true. But he wants you to overlook the ugly truth of how dangerous ideas and the free expression of them is. And it is an outright lie that the specific enumerated right to keep and bear arms is the most dangerous. In fact, had the murder victims of the governments built upon those last two books been armed the body count of the 20th Century would most likely have been much lower.
The “hard reality” is that the right to keep and bear arms protects us from those that exercise their First Amendment rights.
Guns in bars. No background checks at gun shows. No permits to carry required. No restrictions on how many guns a person may buy (in some cases now it’s one per month).
What Americans don’t seem to understand is how crazy they look to most of the rest of the world. The reason they don’t understand is because of their one-thought tyranny.
Americans are tyrannized by 1776, The Second Amendment, The Bill of Rights, The Constitution and other colonial-era artifacts. They have been brainwashed into believing that those are the only thoughts there are. This is not freedom. Freedom means having a choice. If they could accept that there are other ways of thinking then they would have a choice! That’s what freedom is about and what many, if not most, Americans don’t understand.
Daniel Johnson
February 24, 2010
The Tyranny of the American Mind
[Tyrannized by The Bill of Rights? At first glance I thought it had to be satire. But no. I don’t think it is. I think it more closely represents something from Nineteen Eighty-Four:
WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY, and IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.
It appears “Reasoned Discourse” has broken out in the comments.
(graphic stolen from Robb Allen)
Numerous comments have been deleted. Ah, yes. Canadian “freedom” where they have official and unofficial censors.
Oh, and if you are interested in that sort of thing there is a picture of a tricked out SKS being held by a women in a bikini in Johnson’s article.
H/T to jonjayray.–Joe]
You don’t have to think about this very long before you get a chill up your spine:
Three Google executives were convicted of violating Italian privacy laws on Wednesday, the first case to hold the company’s executives criminally responsible for the content posted on its system.
The content was a YouTube video posted by some random person. Google took the video down within two hours of being notified that it was in violation of Italian law. Still, some Google executives are now convicted criminals in Italy.
I keep waiting for the day that someone gets convicted in some restrictive country for daring to post a picture of a woman with her face and/or ankles exposed on their website. Or perhaps for providing firearms training videos on the Internet in China.
And don’t forget similar things have happened in this country even before the Internet.
Somewhere there is one or more governments which would send you to prison for something you do as a normal everyday activity–freedom is a never ending battle.
As a software developer deeply involved in providing location information to applications running on cell phones I have some advice if this concerns you:
Amid all the furor over the Bush administration’s warrantless wiretapping program a few years ago, a mini-revolt was brewing over another type of federal snooping that was getting no public attention at all. Federal prosecutors were seeking what seemed to be unusually sensitive records: internal data from telecommunications companies that showed the locations of their customers’ cell phones—sometimes in real time, sometimes after the fact.
…
Prosecutors “were using the cell phone as a surreptitious tracking device,” said Stephen W. Smith, a federal magistrate in Houston. “And I started asking the U.S. Attorney’s Office, ‘What is the legal authority for this? What is the legal standard for getting this information?’ “
Those questions are now at the core of a constitutional clash between President Obama’s Justice Department and civil libertarians alarmed by what they see as the government’s relentless intrusion into the private lives of citizens. There are numerous other fronts in the privacy wars—about the content of e-mails, for instance, and access to bank records and credit-card transactions. The Feds now can quietly get all that information. But cell-phone tracking is among the more unsettling forms of government surveillance, conjuring up Orwellian images of Big Brother secretly following your movements through the small device in your pocket.
…
The tracking is possible because either the phones have tiny GPS units inside or each phone call is routed through towers that can be used to pinpoint a phone’s location to areas as small as a city block. This capability to trace ever more precise cell-phone locations has been spurred by a Federal Communications Commission rule designed to help police and other emergency officers during 911 calls. But the FBI and other law-enforcement outfits have been obtaining more and more records of cell-phone locations—without notifying the targets or getting judicial warrants establishing “probable cause,” according to law-enforcement officials, court records, and telecommunication executives. (The Justice Department draws a distinction between cell-tower data and GPS information, according to a spokeswoman, and will often get warrants for the latter.)
…
Al Gidari, a telecommunications lawyer who represents several wireless providers, tells NEWSWEEK that the companies are now getting “thousands of these requests per month,” and the amount has grown “exponentially” over the past few years.
Of course this is a two edged sword. If they can use your cell phone as evidence you were at a given location then you can use it to show you were not at some location. Leave your phone at work/home or in a friends car if you need to take supplies to your Jewish friends in the attic.
My advice is that no matter how careful you are with the applications you install or “disabling” the GPS or location services that isn’t good enough. The cell phone company will still know where your phone is within a few hundred yards anytime it is turned on. And with some phones it’s possible for you to think it is turned off when it actually is still functional at a level sufficient for your cell phone service provider to get location information.
As a friend of mine in the cell phone manufacturing business once told me, “I don’t know exactly what’s in the phone software. But I do know the phone only has one battery.”
The Second Amendment right to bear arms applies to the states through the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Justice Richard B. Sanders
Supreme Court of the State of Washington
State of Washington v. Christopher William Sieyes
February 18, 2010
[This probably should be the quote of the year. But I’ll I expect similar words will be used in the Chicago gun case.
Still nothing from the Brady Campaign. They must be off in a corner someplace sobbing, drinking Tequila or contemplating that bottle of whiskey and sleeping pills. I’ll give them another slap by adding another chapter to my review of Lethal Logic tomorrow.–Joe]
I saw it written once that the definition of insanity is repeating the same process over and over and expecting the outcome to suddenly be different. I am finally ready to stop this insanity. Well, Mr. Big Brother IRS man, let’s try something different; take my pound of flesh and sleep well.
Joseph Stack
February 18, 2010
Man Angry at IRS Crashes Plane into Office
[I also consider it a bit insane to deliberately kill yourself in the process of getting a different outcome. I can empathize with the desire to take out an IRS building (or 10) but I don’t think this was that great a plan.–Joe]
What in the world is the reasoning behind this?
Authorities lifted curfew and alcohol restrictions in King on Sunday, but said a state of emergency declaration remained in effect until Monday.
Authorities said the state of emergency declaration would continue until Monday 9 a.m., barring any unforeseen circumstances or severe changes.
Effective Sunday afternoon, alcohol restrictions and a curfew were lifted. All other remaining restrictions would continue until Monday, said Paula May, King police chief.
Other restrictions included a ban on the sale or purchase of any type of firearm, ammunition, explosive or any possession of such items off a person’s own premises.
…
The state of emergency was declared Friday due to severe weather.
Emphasis is mine.
Via email from Rob.
For as long as I have been involved in the gun rights movement (over 15 years now) I have wondered “Why do people support gun control?” I figured there were most likely two things working in combination for most people. 1) A disregard for the Bill of Rights and 2) A belief that gun control would decrease violent crime.
That was understandable to me. One can make the case for lack of due process and torture of suspects if you believe they have knowledge of a nuclear bomb about to detonate in a major population center. Bill of Rights be damned! Do whatever is necessary to save millions of lives!
It may not work and some people might even say it’s not the right thing to do but I see a strong argument being possible. The Constitution is not a suicide pact argument is obviously defensible but it depends on the premise that the adherence to the constitution is tantamount to suicide in the given situation. I concluded that the anti-gun people either had data or believed data existed which demonstrated gun control made for a safer society and hence they were willing to ignore the constitutional issues. Gun control in the U.K. was frequently brought up as an example of the success of those policy decisions. As data from other countries was brought in and then crime in the U.K. increased faster as guns were even more tightly restricted it became blindingly clear no reasonable person could believe gun control made society safer.
But the I more argued with anti-gun people and in particular listened to and read the writings of their leaders I realized most of them knew gun control didn’t make society safer. This perplexed me a great deal and I asked Alan Gottlieb (founder of the Second Amendment Foundation) “What is the real reason they advocate more gun control?” Aside from the jokes it did seem to come down to a cultural issue as Gottlieb suggested. Although this raised other questions such as “Why don’t these people respect the cultural of other people and just leave us alone?” it was the best answer I could find.
As I had more and more interaction with the anti-gun people over the years it became more and more clear people stuck with their anti-gun beliefs no matter how much data they had. Some even flat out told me it just boiled down to them not wanting to be around people with guns so they supported using the force of government to rid them of their discomfort. Mike Arst has more insight into this having been on the anti-gun side of the political aisle for many years before seeing the error of his ways.
Yet we have people like Dennis A. Henigan from the Brady Center saying it’s not a culture issue (also here). For a while I wondered why it was important to them. I think I understand now. As Mike Arst so eloquently explained in a different set of emails liberals are the enlightened, tolerant and know best what is for society. Cultural differences, in liberal circles, are to celebrated and embraced. Hence, if it is about a cultural difference then, as a liberal, they feel bound to respect different cultures. Since they are opposed to gun rights it cannot be a culture difference. But yet they do little more than try to prove their case via vigorous assertion. They don’t answer Just One Question and in fact publicly acknowledge that any causation between gun availability and crime is difficult to prove. And in their recent brief in McDonald v. City of Chicago they have stopped insisting the 2nd Amendment does not apply to individuals. They acknowledge the individual right to keep and bear arms yet they insist on restricting this right without giving justification beyond, “It has everything to do with public safety, public health and common sense.” Ignoring the contradictions between their claims of public safety and health with Henigan own admission that any public safety benefits are so small that they are difficult to prove we are left with “common sense” as their reason for insisting on restrictions on firearms and their owners. “Common sense?” To me “common sense” means having a reason for spending vast amounts of time and money fighting for the elimination of a specific, enumerated, constitutionally protected right.
It was with this background that I was thrilled to see a paper in the Journal of Criminal Justice with the title “Why do people support gun control?: Alternative explanations of support for handgun bans”. Wow! This is something I have to read.
Guess what they said? After all the review of previous studies, proposed hypothesizes, study methodology, and the multivariate statistics they arrive at this conclusion (page 503):
Support for gun control derives partly from a belief that gun control is an effective method for reducing violence, but this explanation has only limited power to account for positions on the issue. Many people favor control measures even though they think they will not reduce crime, while others oppose controls despite their beliefs that they will reduce crime. Further, support for gun control does not generally derive from personal experience with crime—robbery and burglary victims are no more likely than non-victims to favor banning handguns, and the experience of being an assault victim reduces support for this policy. The generally null results for victimization variables comport with past research that indicates that fear of crime and exposure to higher crime rates do not, on net, motivate support for gun control (Kleck, 1996). Thus, there is no sound foundation for expecting increased support for bans if gun crime goes up, nor for expecting declines in support if crime goes down. Consistent with this view, levels of support for gun control have remained generally stable in recent decades despite huge fluctuations in gun crime rates (Kleck, 1997, pp. 334-336; Smith, 2000).
Long-term stability in the phenomenon to be explained favors explanations that stress relatively stable causes. While crime rates fluctuate sharply over short periods of time, culture changes only gradually. Cultural cleavages among Americans remain fairly stable over periods of a decade or two; however, much the perceived need for crime-reducing strategies may change. Consequently, positions on gun control continue to be driven by the same cultural conflicts and antipathies that have divided the nation for decades. Those who have faith that police can protect them from criminals support gun control; conversely, those who believe that they cannot rely on the police put their faith in the gun, and oppose the stronger forms of gun control that might disarm them. Further, those who despise the “gun culture” as violent, racist, and backward support handgun bans, while those who reject such stereotypes oppose them. The stability of gun control views may also be due to the fact that most Americans already support moderate controls, so shifting opinion in a pro-control direction requires changing the views of a relatively small group.
These findings have a number of possible implications for the political struggle over gun control policy. First, they suggest that it is difficult to alter levels of support for gun control because support or opposition is partly grounded in relatively inflexible cultural traits. Changes in the level of popular support are more likely to result from relatively glacial, perhaps even intergenerational, cultural shifts. Second, even if solid evidence of the violence-reducing effectiveness of gun control were to be developed, and (perhaps less plausibly) large numbers of Americans were persuaded by the evidence, it is likely to have at best only modest effects on the level of support for these policies. Third, increases in crime are not likely to boost support for strict gun control, because the main effect of such increases is that they raise the number of crime victims who believe they must rely on their own resources for protection against criminals, a view that encourages gun ownership, and thereby reduces support for stricter forms of gun control.
I know I have said, “I guess we don’t need to understand them. We just need to defeat them.” but knowing the above does make a difference. People do support gun control because of cultural issues. They do support gun control even though they don’t believe it will reduce crime. There are people who despise the gun culture and view them as violent racist, and backward. And Henigan is wrong. This study proves it.
What this means to me is that coming out of the closet, taking non-shooting friends to the range, and showing that gun culture is for normal people and not their stereotype of red-necked, knuckle dragging Neanderthals is essential for the long term survival of the right to keep and bear arms. And in the short term we must make it legal for people to come out of the closet and take their rightful place in society. The terrible oppression of gun owners in places like Chicago and New Jersey has to stop and that is where the courts will have to play a role. Just like the forced desegregation of public facilities in the south we must invest the time, money, and effort to give these people the opportunity to take part in the freedom and respect as normal human beings. It is taken for granted by many gun owners but that respect is denied to millions in this country by the cultural elites who, in the words of Mike Arst who once belonged in their ranks, “… tended to think of ‘gun nuts’ as drooling, knuckle-dragging morons. Cavemen. Uneducated. Beer-drinking slobs who could barely read and who probably beat up their wives a lot. Maybe they were even all closet Nazis, eh?”
The very fact that there are anti gun rights weasels in Congress is in itself a crime. When will the time come that it isn’t considered “balance” to include the bigoted comments of the anti gun rights activists in public discourse, and it is seen for what it is– a lying, bigoted, anti American movement? The Enemy Within. Would we tolerate the KKK being invited to speak in public forums? Would we tolerate an anti women’s suffrage coalition of Mayors?
One thing we should always keep in mind is what victory would look like. One feature of victory would be that any politician who, even under his breath, even caught in a private conversation, suggests an infringement on a constitutional right risks swift impeachment. What could be worse, after all, than someone charged with protecting our rights actually fighting against them? Would you tolerate your nanny abusing your kids? Would you tolerate your security guard stealing from you or attacking you? Would you tolerate your grounds-keeper tearing up your lawn and garden, demanding that you have no right to a nice lawn? Would you tolerate your accountant embezzling from you? Why in the hell should we as a society tolerate any politician who hates the very fact that we have rights? If the term, “enemy of the state” has or ever had any meaning, surely an anti-rights politician is a prime example.
Lyle @ UltiMAK
February 1, 2010
In the comments.
[Wow! I think we should start including the essence of that in our emails to our congress critters.–Joe]
Occasionally I have spent time on understanding those opposed to freedom. Other times I just said it doesn’t matter why — we just have to defeat them.
Kevin put a lot more effort and research into the understanding that I ever would have expended. It’s basically a extended book report on A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles by Thomas Sowell with lots of supporting material from Adam Smith and Friedrich von Hayek to Markadelphia. I’ve put it in my “wish list” of books to buy from Audible.com and will probably start it within a week or so.
It took me an hour to read (it is a classic Kevin Baker post) but I found the enlightenment worth my time.
The main point is there is a fundamental first principle that differentiates advocates for freedom from those that oppose us. Sowell and Baker, in this post, refer to two different “social visions”: the Constrained and the Unconstrained.
The Constrained Vision people advocate, among other things, setting up processes to limit the damage done by the extremes of individual human behaviors such as violent crime and group crimes such as enslavement and genocide. This limits political power for both good and evil. The Constrained Vision advocates view the limit of political power as a trade-off. Sure, it might be that you can create something closer to a utopia if more power is given to the government but the risks are not worth it.
The Unconstrained Vision people minimize or dismiss the possibility enhanced governmental powers becoming a hazard and focus on the possible benefits. When the enhanced governmental powers fail to deliver the anticipated benefits they advocate even more governmental powers and the silence and/or death of those that oppose them. Facts become irrelevant (as seen in my post made a few minutes before I started looking at Kevin’s post).
Ultimately the two differences in first principle lead to conclusions that are diametrically opposed on fundamental issues. In this video where a liberal scumbag running for U.S. president gets rights and privileges absolutely backward you have to conclude that even though he is a lawyer that he cannot have read the U.S. Constitution or the Bill of Rights.
I keep reading Kevin’s post, hoping to find something that could be used as a tool to recover our freedom in this country. What can you say or do that lead us out of what to some appears to be a death spiral?
I didn’t find the conclusion I was looking for. Instead it was in the first few paragraphs. As Sowell says (via Kevin):
Peter Robinson: If you had a sentence or two to say to the Cabinet assembled around President Obama, and this cabinet holds glittering degrees from one impressive institution after another, if you could beseech them to conduct themselves in one particular way between now and the time they leave office, what would you say?
Thomas Sowell: Actually, I would say only one word: Goodbye. Because I know there’s no point talking to them.
Hence, understanding is not all that important. Only defeating them is important. I’ll still be trying to understand but the more I understand the more I agree with son James here and here.