I do not believe that a lasting peace is achieved by armed force but I pay tribute to their courage and thank those who played a part in my rescue.
Norman Kember
British hostage held in Iraq for almost four months.
March 25, 2006
After being rescued by British, Canadian, and U.S. military forces.
[Mr. Kember apparently thinks we are still at war with Germany, Italy, and Japan.–Joe]
Most people would die sooner than think; in fact, they do so.
Bertrand Russell
[I’m specifically thinking of people in favor of gun control but it applies to freedom haters of all types.–Joe]
I have a minor glitch with the ATF regarding the locks I’m using on the Taj Mahal (my explosives storage magazine for Boomershoot). I was pretty annoyed with things but I tried not to let it show in my email to Crystal–my contact at the Spokane office. It wasn’t her fault and from my vantage point it appeared she was doing everything right. My email was polite but she was smart enough to read between the lines and gave me a call about two minutes after I pressed send. We had a nice chat and I think we are on the path to getting things all straightened out. She gave me suggestion on a “last resort” means to make do with what I have if I can’t get through all the bureaucracy in time. It was something I had pretty much planned on doing anyway with a minor twist. And I didn’t know that it would be officially sanctioned as a means to get around my problems.
If you have differences to work out with the “jack-booted thugs” it’s best to get things straightened out over the phone rather than having their SWAT team explain things to you at 3:00 AM. Crystal has done a good job of keeping me from getting a visit from her friends on the other side of the hallway and I’m grateful for that.
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is just another east coast barking moonbat saying something stupid about guns:
…he has offered up a diatribe questioning the sincerity on Capitol Hill, warned against the erosion of First Amendment rights and renewed his push for tighter federal gun control.
What happened here? Did he stop reading after reading the First Amendment? Did he drop out of school before he got to the Second Amendment?
From the same article, when asked whether he wants to run for president:
Which letter of the word ‘No’ do you not understand?
On that same line of thought… Mr. Bloomberg, which word of “shall not be infringed” do you not understand?
Although I mention it on my blog occasionally (such as here) if you spend much time around me in person you will find this is really a hot button for me. CBS spells it out in greater detail and to a much wider audience. Keeping bomb making materials off of planes is not practical:
Between October and January teams of undercover federal investigators walked through various airport checkpoints carrying common household items in their bags. By themselves the materials were not bombs. But they were ingredients which could have been mixed together in an airplane restroom to make an IED, an improvised explosive device.
Because the GAO report is classified, officials will not identify the airports involved or the “household items” that were part of the test. But, security sources confirm, screeners using wands, x-ray machines and explosive trace detectors all failed to find the potential bomb-making materials.
The Department of Homeland Security questions the validity of the test, saying in a statement that the threat revealed is only “hypothetical.”
“While random items commonly found under a kitchen sink could conceivably be concocted into an IED… we find it highly implausible,” the statement reads.
I seem to recall there were people, prior to September 11th 2001, that said the hijacking of airplanes and flying them into building was only hypothetical too. But all parties in the article miss the correct conclusion. The correct conclusion is that airplane security as we presently know it is a waste of time and money. There are better ways to expend our security resources.
A family member recently returned from Bolivia points out that they do not seem to have a gun problem in that country. They have what may be the ideal gun control laws – there are none. Additionally, cocaine in various forms is available on the open market, and they do not have any trouble with drug lords.
Jeff Cooper
From Jeff Cooper’s Commentaries
Vol. 4, No. 16
December 1996
Since the Second World War many more people have been killed as victims of domestic massacres and partial or total genocides than by international war. State-perpetrated massacres are a greater danger to the world community than war itself.
Professor Robert F. Melson
University of Chicago
Revolution and Genocide
What does it take for Americans to do great things; to go to the moon, to win wars, to dig canals linking oceans, to build railroads across a continent? In independent thought about this question, Neil Armstrong and I concluded that it takes a coincidence of four conditions, or in Neil’s view, the simultaneous peaking of four of the many cycles of American life. First, a base of technology must exist from which to do the thing to be done. Second, a period of national uneasiness about America’s place in the scheme of human activities must exist. Third, some catalytic event must occur that focuses the national attention upon the direction to proceed. Finally, an articulate and wise leader must sense these first three conditions and put forth with words and action the great thing to be accomplished. The motivation of young Americans to do what needs to be done flows from such a coincidence of conditions…. The Thomas Jeffersons, The Teddy Roosevelts, The John Kennedys appear. We must begin to create the tools of leadership which they, and their young frontiersmen, will require to lead us onward and upward.
Dr. Harrison H. Schmidt
Sen., New Mexico
[If we succeed in bringing democracy, capitalism, and peace to the Mideast then in the years to come this will be considered such a “great thing”.–Joe]
…this is something we’ve got over the Europeans: the ability to organize a friendly outing of shooting rifles at targets packed with home-made explosives out in rural Idaho is our birthright.
On the other hand, in Cambodia, for the right fee, you can shoot an RPG at a live cow. So there’s that to consider.
Outlandish Josh
March 13, 2006
In his blog posting AMERICA!
You don’t hurt ’em if you don’t hit ’em.
Lieutenant General Lewis B. Puller
USMC
1962
From Marine Corps Quotes
[Making a case for accurate rifles and ammo?–Joe]
I make a fortune from criticizing the policy of the government, and then hand it over to the government in taxes to keep it going.
George Bernard Shaw
1992 Daily Curmudgeon Calendar
[Sometimes life is a bummer.–Joe]
That’s kind of like the ACLU giving people who believe in freedom of speech a D in the First Amendment.
Linn Armstrong
A National Rifle Association handgun instructor
Grand Valley Colorado
March 10, 2006
After the Brady Bunch gave Colorado a ‘D’ grade on “gun safety”.
Be wary of strong drink. It can make you shoot at tax collectors–and miss.
Lazarus Long
A character in Robert Henlien’s book Time Enough for Love
They are pulling the plug on the gun and gun owner registry in Canada and the nationwide long gun registry (handguns have all been confiscated–except those owned by the criminals) in the UK can’t get off the ground after ten years. Details are here:
Dunblane gun crackdown ‘a failure’
ALMOST a decade after the Dunblane massacre, ministers have been accused of an “abject failure” to crack down on the number of firearms in circulation. Tories have joined Labour MPs, gun-control campaigners and peers in condemning the government over the National Firearms Register, which was promised after Dunblane but will not be delivered for at least another year.
The need to establish a searchable, nationwide computer system to track those who hold firearms licences was established after Thomas Hamilton’s murderous attack on Dunblane Primary School on March 13, 1996.
Several investigations, including the inquiry led by Lord Cullen, found disparities in the records of legally held firearms maintained by police forces across the country. Hamilton had legal certificates allowing him to own the guns.
Legislation paving the way for the register of certificates was rushed through Parliament during Tony Blair’s first days in office in 1997, but the project has since become bogged down by a succession of technical problems.
The Home Office and police chiefs have since reversed the plan for a standalone firearms register, opting instead to link it to the Police National Computer. That will not happen until March 2007 at the earliest.
More details are here:
Pilots highlighted “data quality issues” which have yet to be ironed out, much to the anger of campaigners such as Dr Mick North, father of five-year-old victim Sophie.
Chief Constable Bernard Hogan-Howe told the Jonathan Dimbleby programme that there had been “great progress” in gun control but admitted that 10 years was “too long” for the register.
He said: “I understand that they’ve had two pilots and we’re told that there are IT problems to actually resolving it, but I’m with Dr North in the sense that 10 years on, this is too long.
“We want it, there’s certainly no resistance from the police service to have it and clearly what we do need is a register of all the people with a licence and we certainly need a register of those people who have applied for a licence and had it refused because the danger is they apply to one force, fail, and then re-apply to another.”
The establishment of a searchable database of everyone who holds a firearms certificate, or who has ever applied for one, was one of the central demands of the campaign for greater gun control that followed the Dunblane massacre in 1996.
It was promised by Prime Minister Tony Blair to members of the Snowdrop Campaign, set up by victims’ families to call for tighter gun controls.
About £5.5 million has so far been spent on setting up the register, which will be piloted once again in May.
“Great progress” in gun control? They make that claim when the number of crimes committed with guns has skyrocketed? Oh yeah, I forgot that’s not how they measure progress. They measure progress by how few people can legally own firearms, not how often guns are used criminally. These people have mental problems.
This delay is yet another example of Home Office inability to operate computer systems, and if they cannot get a relatively simple system for a firearms register like this to work so many years after such an awful disaster, what hope is there for the vast system needed to make identity cards work?
Alistair Carmichael
Orkney and Shetland MP
March 5, 2006
Dunblane gun crackdown ‘a failure’
News.Scotsman.com
[There is no hope of a system of national identity cards working. If you have doubts read this.–Joe]
I’m all for religious tolerance as long as they are also tolerant of others. I’m intolerant of intolerance. The Supreme Court of Canada just made an important ruling with an 8-0 victory for freedom and tolerance. I think it’s time for some Canadian gun owners to start a new religion to “push the envelope” just a little bit more for the cause of freedom. Here are the details on the ruling:
For nearly five years, Gurbaj Singh has argued that he has a legal right under religious freedom to wear a ceremonial dagger to school.
The Supreme Court of Canada now agrees with him.
In a unanimous 8-0 decision yesterday, the top court sided with Singh, now 17, that a Montreal school board went too far in banning his wearing of a Sikh kirpan, stating that it is an infringement on religious freedom that “cannot be justified” under the Charter of Rights.
A free press can of course be good or bad, but, most certainly, without freedom it will never be anything but bad…. Freedom is nothing else but a chance to be better, whereas enslavement is a certainty of the worse.
Albert Camus
The power of Liberty is often called depravity by those who do not possess it.
Lyle Keeney
Comment on The View From North Central Idaho
February 27, 2006
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
The power of accurate observation is often called cynicism by those who do not possess it.
George Bernard Shaw
[I’m thinking of the crisis the world has with Islamic extremists.–Joe]