Category Archives: Freedom

No warm and fuzzys for me

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Via Tam I read more about the wanna be truck driver I mentioned yesterday. Barb and I talked about it some tonight. This guy is really stupid:

Mohammed Yusef Mullawala wanted a license to transport hazardous materials and to learn how to drive commercial tractor trailers. There was nothing unusual about that, until he told his teacher that he only wanted to learn how to drive forward, and he wanted to learn fast.

…

Crawford said Mullawala came to the school with a Rhode Island driver’s license inquiring how to obtain a commercial driver’s license within a month. It normally takes around eight weeks for a student to go through all of the required courses before he or she obtains a permit, she said.

“We’ve been doing this for quite a long time and a lot of things just didn’t add up,” Crawford said.

Crawford started documenting suspicious activity: Mullawala lived in New York City but traveled to Rhode Island for the driving classes; he missed his first day of classes; and he was very insistent on getting his hazardous material transport license.

But the fact that he only seemed interested in driving forward was the most concerning.

“We tell them from Day One, ‘you will be backing up,’ ‘you’ll be backing up every single day,'” Crawford said, adding that it normally takes two to three weeks of practice backing up before drivers get road permits and learn how to drive forward, among other things.

…

After Mullawala took two classes, Crawford contacted Highway Watch, which had conducted an anti-terrorism and safety program at her school.

Two classes. That’s all it took for him to totally blow his cover.

So why don’t I get a warm and fuzzy feeling that this guy is pegged and probably getting a one-way ticket to the far side of the world? Because it seems all the potential terrorists we catch are incredibly stupid. I’m not so arrogant to believe that the average law enforcement people we have working on these sort of cases has 50 I.Q. points over the best and brightest of our enemy. I can only think of two reasons for what I see in the news.

  1. Only the dumbest get caught. The smart ones are working on something big, keeping a low profile and haven’t been noticed by our law enforcement.
  2. We are nabbing brighter guys but we aren’t publicizing it. The law enforcement types don’t want the brighter guys to know how we are catching them so they only report the most stupid of the bad guys. The others quietly disappear in the middle of the night and get free plane trips to Club Gitmo, Turkey, or Pakistan for further questioning by professionals.

I’m hoping it is either number 2. or there is a third reason I haven’t thought of or didn’t consider viable.

Evacuation distances for bombs

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I swear, I’ve never built a bomb and can’t be considered a bomb making expert as some would like to claim. But that doesn’t mean I don’t know a little something about them. I’m going to share some of that now. The motivation at this time is this post by Michelle Malkin:

…suspected al Qaeda agent and illegal alien Nabil al-Marabh obtained a license permitting him to drive semi-trucks containing hazardous materials, including explosives and caustic materials.

Knowledge is power and giving you this knowledge gives you a little more power to save lives. Perhaps even your own life.

According to the little laminated card from the ATF I have on my cork board here at work the following minimum evacuation distances should be observed:

  • Compact sedan (500 pounds of explosives): 1500 feet or 0.28 miles
  • Full sized sedan (1,000 pounds of explosives): 1750 feet or 0.33 miles
  • Passenger van or cargo van (4,000 pounds of explosives): 2750 feet or 0.52 miles
  • Small box van (10,000 pounds of explosives): 3750 feet or 0.71 miles
  • Box van or water/fuel truck (30,000 pounds) of explosives: 6500 feet or 1.23 miles
  • Semi-trailer (60,000 pounds of explosives): 7000 feet or 1.33 miles

Keep this in mind–we are at war even if we don’t want to be at war. We would be at war even we had no troops outside our borders. The enemy brought the war to us and wants to bring it to us again. Using our own equipment and our own materials is one of the ways they can do that.

Rights cannot be denied only infringed

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Whenever someone says something to the effect that the Bill of Rights grants something or another or the Constitution gives the average person something I have a strong urge to swat them alongside the head. The Constitution only gives the government certain enumerated powers. I correct people that make such mistakes and will not converse further with them on the topic of politics until they acknowledge the truth of that. Once they verify the correctness of my remembrance of the wording of the BOR and the Constitution we can then have a meaningful discussion even if we disagree on a few particulars.

This means, as it was stated in United States v. Cruikshank, 92 U.S. 542, 551 (1876), “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;…”

I’m reminded of this because people in the UK are exercising their rights to keep and bear arms even though it has been severely infringed. Thanks to The War on Guns for pointing this out:

A widow who lives alone in a Wiltshire farmhouse has taken to sleeping with a Smith & Wesson Saturday Night Special under her pillow. It belonged to her husband and is more than capable of stopping an intruder, of which she has had three in the last two years.

When she goes shopping in Swindon, she slips a can of Mace into her handbag in case of assault. “Bought it at the ironmongers in Bergerac,” she says. “Much more effective than an Asbo.”

A senior civil servant, now retired and living in a remote house near Losthwithiel in Cornwall, believes in the efficacy of a small-calibre .22 pistol. It was easy to buy without a licence or proof of identity in rural France, where they are used to kill vermin.

…

…increasingly they are brought back from Europe by car.

HM Revenue and Customs figures confirm this, showing an increase in weaponry seized at ports. For instance, 842 stun guns were intercepted by searches in 2005, an eight-fold increase year on year.

Most weapons seized are from respectable people worried about their security. Mace, pepper spray and metal-spring batons, illegal here, are easily and lawfully acquired in Europe, while high-calibre pistols can be bought in the Czech Republic.

Quote of the day–Albert Einstein

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I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.

Albert Einstein
[We now know what WW III is being fought with. I wonder if Einstein will be correct about WW IV.–Joe]

Quote of the day–Robert F. Williams

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The stranglehold of oppression cannot be loosened by a plea to the oppressor’s conscience. Social change in something as fundamental as racist oppression involves violence. You cannot have progress here without violence and upheaval because it is a struggle for survival for one and a struggle for liberation for the other. Always the powers in command are ruthless and unmerciful in defending their position and their privileges. This is not an abstract rule to be mediated upon by Americans. This a truth that was revealed at the birth of America and has continued to be revealed many times in our history. The principle of self-defense is an American tradition that began at Lexington and Concord.

Robert F. Williams
Negros With Guns
Chapter 7–Self-Defense: An American Tradition
Copyright 1962

Perhaps I should have been paying more attention

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I received an email asking my opinion about this article. The important part is the following:

The death of Alexander Litvinenko by radiological poisoning points to the possibility that the former Soviet spy may have been involved with Islamic terrorists in the preparation of tactical nuclear weapons for use in the jihad against the United States and its NATO allies.

Litvenenko, a former KGB agent, died in London on November 23 after ingesting a microscopic amount of polonium-210.

…

Litvinenko, who was born an orthodox Christian, was a convert to Islam with close ties to the Chechen rebels. His last words consisted of his desire to be buried “according to Muslim tradition.”

…

The neutron source or “triggers” of the suitcase nukes are composed of beryllium-9 and polonium-210. When these two elements are combined, the alpha particle is absorbed by the nucleus of the beryllium causing it to decay by emitting a neutron. Such “triggers” were a feature of early nuclear weapons in the U.S. and Soviet stockpiles.

Polonium-210 has a half-life of 138 days, necessitating the replacement of the triggers every six months. For this reason, the suitcase nukes are far from maintenance-free. In addition, the nuclear core of these devices emit a temperature in excess of one hundred degrees Fahrenheit – – further exposing the weapons to oxidation and rust. Small wonder that al Qaeda operatives including Adnan el-Shukrijumah, who are spearheading “the American Hiroshima” have received extensive training in nuclear technology.

I’m a little annoyed at the article. The physics are non-sensical. Things don’t “emit a temperature”. They can emit radiation of various types which could include infra-red energy which could be called “heat”. They might generate enough heat to maintain a temperature of 100 degrees F while stored at room temperature. And a temperature of 100F does not necessitate “further exposure to oxidation and rust”. That makes me a little bit more skeptical than I normally would be.

I haven’t read much more than the headlines in the spy poisoning case so I really can address the question and comment accompanying the link:

Sounds a little far fetched. Have you heard anything similar? If it is actually true, it would mean there are mushroom clouds planned for sometime in the next six months. The biggest Christian holiday is Christmas……..

Something to keep in mind this holiday season.

I’m going to make sure I know where my Geiger counter is and that it’s working. Lots of other safety gear to check up on as well. There’s not much else I can do. We can all “thank” the bigoted felons at PNNL for taking me out of this fight.

Quote of the day–Stephen P. Halbrook

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While there is room for optimism, one presents a Second Amendment case before the Supreme Court with great risk. New rights are discovered with extra-legal phraseology like “liberty of the person both in its spatial and more transcendent dimensions,” and explicit rights – to include core political speech – are swept away. The first case the Supreme Court takes on the merits of the individual-collective rights issue will be critical. This area of the law is no exception to the precept that the Court’s door should be knocked only with the utmost seriousness and preparation.

Stephen P. Halbrook
The Second Amendment in the Supreme Court: Where It’s Been and Where It’s Going
29 Hamline Law Review, No. 3, 449-59 (Summer 2006)

I’m a bomb-making expert

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As one would expect with dealing with the media this didn’t turn out quite the way I intended but it’s not so distorted that I’m particularly annoyed.

I received a call yesterday from someone that identified himself as a reporter for the Pittsburgh Tribune Review. A young man was caught making pipe bombs in his dorm room. The reporter, Justin Vellucci, did a search about pipe bombs and found me via Boomershoot. He wanted to know how difficult it was to make a pipe bomb. He also wanted to know what laws had been broken. I told him I couldn’t speak to Pennsylvania law but I did know a little bit about Idaho, Washington, and Federal law.

I discussed how different laws were from state to state and that if he broke Federal law it was probably because he built a “destructive device”, not that he was making explosives. And from the sound of it he wasn’t really making explosives. Even though he was very polite and showed interest he probably was rolling his eyes when I explained the difference between high explosives and low explosives and the difference between a detonation and rapid burning as in the cartridge of a gun.

I explained it was trivial to make a pipe bomb. The toughest part was not getting blown up in the process. That’s also easy but not obvious you need to be concerned about the mechanism until it’s too late. We talked about the effects of such a bomb, how much damage it would do. I gave him a link to my web page on explosive effects. I explained that getting the materials was very easy and they couldn’t really be successfully restricted. The toughest was gun powder and even if it wasn’t available for purchase it could be made from potassium nitrate, sulfur, and carbon with the recipe being known for several hundred years. The toughest of those ingredients is the potassium nitrate and that can be made from manure.

After the conversation I followed up with this email:

From: Joe Huffman
Sent: Wednesday, December 06, 2006 1:39 PM
To: Justin Vellucci
Subject: Ease of making an explosive.

If you had read between the lines of our conversation you might have realized I regard it as futile to restrict access to materials in an attempt to improve public safety. Even easier than making your own gun powder is using match heads for the chemical portion of a pipe bomb.

Going beyond that I believe it is possible for me to be stripped naked, enter into your or almost any functioning office, emerge an hour later and have the room explode a few seconds after I exit. I haven’t tested this but I’ve seen enough demonstrations of the critical aspects to believe it is possible. See for example http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flour_bomb. Instead of flour I would use paper in your office to make the dust. I would then disperse it in the air and have it ignited by an electric spark.

The question then becomes, “What do we do to prevent these sort of things?” My response is that things can’t be restricted. The actions of people can be punished which serves as a deterrent in many cases. Beyond that we can sometimes infer intent and stop potential criminals. This was how, in the specific case we talked about, the hardware store people came to call law enforcement. The specific set of materials purchased raised suspicion. This sort of involvement and concern about public safety is the way things should work in a free society.

It would create a tremendous hardship on society to attempt restricting and/or regulating all the materials that could be used to harm people or property (anyone for registration and licensing of sharp sticks?). Instead, where there is high potential for materials to be misused the people that sell and work with those materials should assume a greater sense of responsibly and be aware of things that “aren’t quite right”. In the case of purchasing the gun powder it could be kept in a locked cabinet and the clerk could ask what appear to be a few casual questions like, “What caliber are you reloading?” “What sort of muzzle velocity are you getting out of that?” A legitimate customer will know the answers and volunteer them without skipping a beat. The potential criminal will not and will put the clerk on alert.

Yes, some criminals will be able to sneak through such a system. But the total cost to society will be lower even though we will have to suffer some criminal acts going through to completion.

This blog posting of mine from last week might be of interest to you as well:

https://blog.joehuffman.org/2006/11/29/bomb-building-help-request-from-new-zealand-girls-high-school/

Joe Huffman
Boomershoot Event Director

After all that here is what ended up in the newspaper:

One bomb-making expert said much of what Blattner needed could be found at home-improvement stores, and even gunpowder would not be tough to find.

“It really is very, very easy to do something like that,” said Joe Huffman, who organizes an event in Idaho where individuals use long-range precision rifles to shoot explosive targets. “The stupid thing is to do this in your dorm room.”

Other than the title of “bomb-making expert” it’s completely accurate. I can’t complain.

Quote of the day–Dimitri Vassilaros

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The slaughter, rape and torment of the citizens of Darfur would end if humanitarian aid included guns.

…

Darfur is one more reminder that gun control is genocide’s best friend.

Dimitri Vassilaros
April 1, 2005
Gun Controls Best Friend
Pittsburgh Tribune Review
[Via Jeff. How very odd that I would run across a link to this paper today via one of my usual blog reads. I’m quoted in todays edition of that same paper. My next post will be about that.–Joe]

Quote of the day–Denise was Here

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So here’s my idea of compromise with the gun grabbers. I’ll support training and a gun license on two conditions:
1) There will be no registration of any gun including Form 4473s that could be used as registrations;
2) That everyone in the country with no exceptions must receive training and a license that cannot be voluntarily surrendered to the authorities for any reason. Anyone with a license could buy a gun.

Denise was Here
Universal Licensing–A Modest Proposal
[As a compromise I do find it appealing. But I have been listening to so much of Ayn Rand’s writings recently that I must decline from supporting it. As Ms. Rand points out there can be no compromise between a rapist and his victim. The Second Amendment and many state constitutions already guarantee we may buy as many guns as we want whenever we want without a license or training. This compromise would give up that right. It would be no different than a compromise with the rapist who is allowed to sexually fondle his victims at any time. However, I think Denise’s compromise would be useful in political debates to flush out the true intentions of the anti-freedom bigots.–Joe]

Quote of the day–Ayn Rand

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I can see no ethical standard by which to measure the whole unethical concept of a State, except in the amount of time, of money, of effort and obedience, which a society extorts from its every member.  Its value and its civilization, then, are in inverse proportion to that extortion.

Ayn Rand
From The Fountainhead

Big brother at the USDOJ is watching

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I found this very interesting tidbit from my sitemeter:

Domain Name   usdoj.gov ? (United States Government)
IP Address   149.101.1.# (US Dept of Justice)
ISP   US Dept of Justice
Location  
Continent  :  North America
Country  :  United States  (Facts)
State  :  Maryland
City  :  Potomac
Lat/Long  :  39.023, -77.1993 (Map)
Distance  :  2,059 miles
Language   English (United States)
en-us
Operating System   Microsoft WinXP
Browser   Internet Explorer 6.0
Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1; DOJ3jx7bf; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; InfoPath.1)
Javascript   version 1.3
Monitor  

Resolution  :  1024 x 768
Color Depth  :  32 bits

Time of Visit   Dec 1 2006 5:11:13 am
Last Page View   Dec 1 2006 5:11:13 am
Visit Length   0 seconds
Page Views   1
Referring URL http://www.topix.net/us/atf
Visit Entry Page   https://blog.joehuffman.org/2006/11/30/don-t-drop-your-guard/
Visit Exit Page   https://blog.joehuffman.org/2006/11/30/don-t-drop-your-guard/
Out Click    
Time Zone   UTC-5:00
Visitor’s Time   Dec 1 2006 8:11:13 am
Visit Number   116,927

http://www.topix.net/forum/us/atf gathers news and blog mentions of ATF and people at the US Department of Justice (hi!) visit those websites. I wonder what they thought of me saying “The ATF has no constitutional authorization to even exist let alone enforce illegal laws.”

Of particular interest to me is that the “User Agent” string of the browser included the unusual item “DOJ3jx7bf”. This item looks like it might be a unique identifier for a particular Department of Justice computer. If so then one can find out what that particular computer/user has been viewing on all websites that you have access to the logs file for.

Hence, with the proper tools and a bit of smarts, one can watch the watchers. To that effect here is a sample which includes the search terms “harvey milk gay activist”, “guns & jenny price”, “john+pepper+ipsc”, “dirty+gun+barrel+picture”, “tannerite”, and the always popular “how to make a bomb”. We can also see some of the other sites our “friend” has been visiting. Examples include http://nfttu.blogspot.com/, http://www.thehighroad.org/showthread.php?t=229822, and http://www.alphecca.com/mt_alphecca_archives/001891.html.

One must not get too paranoid about being watched. This applies to both webmasters as well as our “friend” at the DOJ. As I was reminded by a fellow blogger at the Gun Bloggers Rendezvous a couple months ago, there are known friendlies in the government. I don’t have any particular hostility toward any of the government workers I have met (certain politicians are different story–I would like to invited Schumer, Clinton, Feinstein, and some others to permanently leave the country with nothing more than the clothes on their backs). But no matter how friendly they are most Federal workers are doing jobs that have no constitutional authority.

Note to my guests from the USDOJ and/or the ATF: You are quite welcome to leave a comment, send me an email, or get a legitimate job.

Modern magicians

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I was listening to the audio book version of Surely Your Joking, Mr. Feynman! the other day and Feynman told of trying to teach his artist friend about science in return for the artist to teach him about art. It turned out that Feynman was a much better artist than the artist was a scientist. In fact the artist couldn’t get anywhere with science. And Feynman observed that it wasn’t just artists. It was pervasive in our society and perhaps in the human species. I’ve run into it myself some even with people that appear at first glance to be above average in intelligence. The concept that Feynman expressed was that people think engineers and scientists can do anything. You just have to tell them what you want and they could build it if they wanted to. People think of us as magicians.

One of the examples Feynman mentioned was that he was asked to be an adviser to the military and after some reluctance agreed to attend a meeting or two to see if he could contribute. One of the problems the military wanted help solving was the refueling of tanks. As they advanced on the battlefield they would run out of fuel and needed to be refueled. Why didn’t the scientists just create an engine that used sand for fuel? Then the tank could just have a little scoop on the bottom and refuel itself as it moved along.

We are not magicians. There are physical laws that we not only don’t know how to break but can’t be broken. We may find a loophole someday but that is a very risky bet. Politicians make laws that everyone knows how to break but I’m not sure people in general understand the difference.

To make things worse our politicians write laws as if we actually are magicians. The universal biometric identification card, fingerprints, airplane security searches, and “ballistic fingerprints” are just a few of the examples that are applicable to my domain of blogging. And what happens when science doesn’t come through like the advocates want us to? They bury their head in the sand and insist it’s working even when it’s not and cannot possibly work. People will want to believe something so bad that they will believe it despite evidence to the contrary.

In the cases above there is a fundamental problem that many people don’t realize exists. It’s a MUCH different problem that many other hard problems scientists and engineers have been able to solve. You used to hear things like, “If we can put a man on the moon why can’t we [fill in the blank]?” At one level I understand the feeling. Putting a man on the moon is so outside of our everyday experience that it would seem to be impossible. So why not solve something that would seem to be simple like identifying people? The fundamental difference is in one case you are “fighting” a nearly static “enemy”, “Mother Nature”, and in the other cases you are “fighting” an active thinking opponent.

I’m reminded of a quote that relates to this topic:

Campaigns to bearproof all garbage containers in wild areas have been difficult because, as one biologist put it, “There is a considerable overlap between the intelligence levels of the smartest bears and the dumbest tourists.”

Richard Wabrek

The opponent you are defending against in the case of the identification, airplane security and garbage container problems is constantly getting smarter. The earth, it’s atmosphere, the moon, gravity, and the dumbest tourists are not getting smarter.

Because of this fundamental difference in the nature of the problems any solution you find against an active opponent is likely to be short lived. In the case of a bear or a virus it may be possible to find a permanent solution. In the case of human opponents I think that in all cases it will be an unwinnable arms race. Solutions will come and with time and some smarts the opponents will defeat them with perhaps as little as one billionth as much money and effort as the solution builders put into it. The only question will be is, “Did we spend our money wisely on that solution?” Did we buy enough time before the solution was defeated to make the expenditure worthwhile? Or could we have spent that money on something else that would have been a better return on the dollar?

This concept can be extended even further. Think of the war on certain drugs and firearm bans. There is an active human opponent the solution provider is fighting. Those are battles that cannot be won.

I expect there will be more fingerprint issues

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The lawyer in Oregon that was arrested by the FBI because they “identified” his fingerprints on materials related to the bombing of the train station in Spain is going to be getting $2M from the U.S. taxpayers:

Two years ago the FBI branded Oregon attorney Brandon Mayfield a terror suspect, secretly searched his house and eavesdropped on his conversations with his family and co-workers.

On Wednesday, Justice Department officials agreed to pay Mayfield $2 million to settle one part of his lawsuit for his wrongful arrest in connection with the 2004 Madrid train bombings that killed 191 people.

Mayfield, a former Army officer, also got a formal apology. And the settlement allows him to continue his legal challenge to the USA Patriot Act, which Mayfield charges violates the Fourth Amendment by permitting government searches without demonstrating probable cause that a crime has been committed.

“The United States acknowledges that the investigation and arrest were deeply upsetting to Mr. Mayfield, to Mrs. Mayfield and to their three young children,” said Tasia Scolinos, a Justice Department spokeswoman, in a prepared statement. “And the United States regrets that it mistakenly linked Mr. Mayfield to this terrorist attack.”

Mayfield believed he was singled out because of his Muslim faith. FBI agents, however, insisted that his arrest was based on a faulty fingerprint identification that linked him to the attack.

Either way, Mayfield’s arrest is one of the FBI’s most embarrassing episodes in its five-year campaign to detect terrorist cells inside the United States.

The case also cast doubt on the accuracy of the FBI’s troubled fingerprint-identification program and raised questions about sweeping anti-terror measures passed by Congress in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Mayfield, 40, was detained for two weeks after agents matched the print of his left index finger with one found on a bag of detonators connected to the Madrid attack.

What most people don’t know is that fingerprint identification is often as much an art as a science. Sure if you have excellent quality prints from the nice man carefully rolling your inked finger back and forth on the fingerprint card even a computer can match that to another fingerprint card carefully made some other time. But if they have a smeared fingerprint left from you gripping a textured hand railing, or just the tips of your fingers from typing on the keyboard, or if you soaked your fingers in bleach the night before it’s not clear whether you can get a match at all. And if you are elderly and do a lot of hand labor then the nice man may not even have usable fingerprints from your carefully inked and rolled fingers on the card.

But the U.S. legal system has a tremendous amount of case law built up that says a fingerprint match is positive identification. The problem is there aren’t good standards for what constitutes a “match”. How many little arches and swirls much be in agreement before it’s considered good enough that no one else could have left those fingerprints at the crime scene? Or how may discrepancies can exist before the defense can argue that it definitely wasn’t the suspect that left them? The courts have left it up to “experts” to decide. And the experts don’t agree. The “science” of fingerprints isn’t science. You can get two “experts” to look at identical data and reach opposite conclusions. And what of the ability to spoof fingerprints? It’s not that difficult. And you leave some pretty high quality fingerprints on those soda cans you recycle, the water glass at the restaurant, and restroom door at work.

Until the case above the FBI experts had a much lower threshold for an “identical match” than did the forensic experts in other countries. And I don’t think this issue has been settled yet. I expect there will be other cases where the “experts” want to “help” or have pressure put on them to claim matches when there shouldn’t be. Innocent people will be arrested, imprisoned, and perhaps sometimes even executed because of shaky fingerprint evidence.

A good part of the problem is that many people think of science as some sort of magic that can give black and white solutions to almost anything. In some cases it can but in others it’s simply not possible. But that’s beyond the scope of this post. So I’ll save that for later.

Don’t drop your guard

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Paul Helmke is President of the Brady Campaign/Center to Prevent Gun Violence (better known in civil rights circles as “The Brady Bunch”). Here are some things to watch out for–straight from the horse’s ass mouth:

The new Congress could send the public a positive message of its concern for safer communities by taking common sense steps like eliminating current restrictions on publicizing data about the source of guns used in crimes, strengthening the enforcement powers of law enforcement agencies including the ATF, making it harder for criminals and terrorists to buy guns by requiring background checks for all gun sales, and restricting sales of military style weapons and the ammunition that’s used in those weapons. Steps like this help make us safer and will score political points for those who support them.

Emphasis is mine. Even casual users of guns should go immediately on alert about the ammunition even if they don’t about the “military style weapons”. The most popular American guns use ammunition that was first used by the military. .45 ACP, 30.06, .308, .223, 9mm, 12 gauge shotgun. That doesn’t even include the less popular but still “interesting” calibers like .50 BMG.

And of course this point ignores all the other great points that could be made about their anti-freedom wish list. Examples include:

  • All semi-automatic firearms are “military style”.
  • All bolt action rifles are “military style”.
  • All revolvers are “military style”.
  • All muzzle loader firearms are “military style”.
  • The “requiring of background checks for all gun sales” is a back-door gun registration scheme.
  • Publicizing ATF gun trace data endangers criminal investigations.
  • “Common sense” is the code phrase they use for things they don’t want you to think about. Also known as “dangerous Utopian ideas”.
  • The ATF has no constitutional authorization to even exist let alone enforce illegal laws (what part of “…shall not be infringed” don’t you understand?).
  • Scoring points with anti civil rights advocates is politically hazardous.
    • The civil rights organizations in support of gun owners is over four million strong.
    • The anti-rights organizations like the Brady Bunch aren’t even 1/10 that size.
    • Pissing off ten people for every one you make happy is not politically smart.

Via Arms and the Law.

Quote of the day–Lord Acton

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The one pervading evil of democracy is the tyranny of the party that succeeds, by force or fraud, in carrying elections.

Lord Acton

Building more civil societies

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Howard nails Rebecca Peters:

Ms. Peters’ career in gun control got its start in Australia, where she was an important contributor to that country’s current gun ban. By 2005, the rate of sexual assault in Australia increased 36% from its pre-ban 1995 rate, while the U.S. rate decreased 14.6%. Women are now raped over three times as often in Australia as they are in the United States.

The rate of sexual crimes against women in the UK increased 63.0% since pre-ban 1995. Women are raped and sexually assaulted nearly twice as often in the UK as the U.S. Meanwhile, British police ignore Oxford English Dictionary’s definition of “civil,” as in: “orderly; well-governed.” The detection rate for sexual offenses dropped from 39% in 2003-2004 to 34% in 2004-2005, indicating poor governance: a 13% lower efficiency by police in bringing perpetrators to justice. Yet according to Peters’ interpretation, Australia and Britain promote women’s rights better than the U.S.

Is a society that accepts a drastic increase in the violent victimization of females more civil, or less?

This is a relevant question, because it appears that Peters believes such societies are more civil, as her IANSA is a major player in the U.N. effort to ban civilian firearms.

That’s just a sample.

Peters is a very big player in the international anti-civil rights movement. Pointing out the terrible consequences of her successes should be high on the list of civil rights activists. To get more familar with Ms. Peters you might also want to get a DVD of her October 2004 debate with Wayne LaPierre (hint to people wishing to buy me a Christmas gift–it’s only $5.95).

Quote of the day–William O. Douglas

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The right to revolt has sources deep in our history.

William O. Douglas
US Supreme Court Justice

People that hate mankind

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Why am I not surprised? I’m betting these are people that want us to return to our “natural state”–to be “one with nature”. If they really succeeded, if they actually achieved what they are pushing for billions of people would die. We would return to the technology, and probably the sociology, of the dark ages:

Fringe environmental campaigners have contributed to the metal market boom by hindering and delaying new mine development, Mr Munk said.

…

Barrick’s chairman said that the leading NGOs had played a responsible role alerting the world to problems. The new breed are not accountable, he said. “They haven’t got an address. They incite people, mobilise volunteers and make outrageous statements.”

Barrick recently came under fire over plans to develop an Andean gold deposit on the Chile-Argentina border. NGOs accused the company of seeking to destroy glaciers.

Barrick said that the mine would not touch the icefields and it had received 50,000 job applications from locals supporting the project.

Nice idea but it will fail

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Nuclear fusion is a wonderful idea. Clean, no risk of people making bombs from it, and nearly limitless energy. And we have people working on it. The problem is it’s not just some government program–which would almost for certain doom it. There are numerous governments working on it. Think of a committee of bureaucrats that don’t speak the same language. Now give them billions of dollars and tell them they aren’t expected to deliver a working prototype for years or even decades. Oh, and they aren’t ever expected to turn a profit.

When General Electric, Chevron, or even Toyota tells me they are building a nuclear fusion plant I’ll willingly buy their stock. But the government is going to have to get my money for this boondoggle they way they always do–at the point of a gun.