High school and Innocents Betrayed

On probably the second day of class this year Xenia told me she needed ten minutes of video to take into her English class that would “get people talking.”  She asked me for suggestions.  It’s 58 minutes, not 10, but we came up with Innocents Betrayed.  She said she could just select 10 minutes of the video to show.  We watched it together and timed various segments.  She decided just the first ten minutes would work.  I wanted her to skip one of the genocides and show the part about the kids in California who were killed by a guy with a pitchfork in their home.  All the kids knew how to shoot but couldn’t get access to any of the guns because California state law requires “safe storage” to keep guns away from unsupervised kids.  But it was Xenia’s decision and she figured showing a few more million dead because of gun control would be sufficient to start people talking without getting into little kids with hundreds of stab wounds.

Her class should be over by now and I haven’t got any calls from the school to pick her up so my guess is things couldn’t have gone too badly for her.  I’ll update this posting later today when I get a full report from her.

Next on our list of projects is to take my picture from the fair and the KING 5 Boomershoot video to her chemistry teacher and suggest a field trip on “exothermic reactions”.  In an “isn’t it a small world” twist her chemistry teacher’s husband supplies the portable toilets each year for Boomershoot.  Also, Barb and I graduated from Orofino High School with him.

Update 1: Xenia called a few minutes ago on another topic and I asked how the English class went.  She said when she turned off the video it was silent for 30 seconds.  They didn’t know what to say.  She didn’t have much time and I’ll get a further update after school.  She seem pretty happy with the results though.

Update 2: Xenia reported most people didn’t talk.  The instructor didn’t commit himself either way.  Many of the kids didn’t get the connection between lack of guns and genocide, “The government would have just done it anyway.”  One suggested that taking of the guns was as much a symbolic thing as much as anything, “Maybe because they didn’t have guns they were more likely to feel helpless.”  Even if they weren’t totally convinced at least they had some doubt put in their minds about the wisdom of gun control.  Video can be a much more powerful media than the written word and JPFO did a great job on this video, although I do agree that the “gun-control enables genocide” could have been expressed better than just giving examples of when that happened.  They should also of said that genocide has never happened without there being gun control in place.  And more examples of where a relatively small number of private citizens with guns saved themselves (or at least significantly delayed their demise) from government sponsored murder would be welcomed.

Microsofties to the rescue

I remember attending a party once where most people did not know who I was and where I worked at the time (a contractor for Microsoft).  I was just sort of hanging out and listening (that’s really active for me, often I just find a place to take a nap if I have to go to a party).  This woman started talking about how selfish rich people are and how they should be made to be more generous.  “So”, I asked, “What is your source of data for the claim that rich people are selfish?”  I know, that was a below the belt punch on a defenseless communist as per the following:

No one has the right to destroy another person’s belief by demanding empirical evidence.

Ann Landers, nationally syndicated advice columnist and Director of Handgun Control, Inc.

But being the scientist/engineer and generally socially clueless type I asked anyway.  The response was, “Do you have any evidence they are not?”  That was actually a fairly decent response–had I not been working at Microsoft for several years and knew many multi-millionaires.  Other people could have mentioned numerous famous foundations and philanthropists but I chose to give examples I had witnessed.  I told of going to Denny’s in Bellevue, a short distance from Microsoft, with other people form Microsoft for coffee and desert.  We hung around for an hour or two talking, sipping our drinks, and nibbling on our pies and cakes.  As we left we tossed money on the table to cover our bill and a tip.  There was probably six or seven people but the excess money for the tip was over $60.  No one cared if they got change for the $20 they tossed on the table.  That was common whenever I went out for meals with “rich people” from Microsoft–a $20 bill WAS change to them.  I further told the clueless commie that the head of my favorite charity (I didn’t tell her SAF was my favorite at the time) came in to talk to a club I belonged to at Microsoft (the Microsoft Gun Club) and told us that every year the largest single donation they received was from Microsoft Corporation.  Microsoft matches employee donations dollar for dollar to qualified 501(C)(3) organizations if you do the proper paperwork.  Those “rich selfish Microsoft employees” and their greedy corporation donations made a huge difference to that charitable organization.  In my several years of being around “rich people” I didn’t know a single person I would have considered selfish.  I even knew one manager who offered to pay for one of his employee’s sex change operation out of his own pocket (in return he wanted the testicles in a jar to put on his desk–but that’s another story I didn’t tell her).  In short, I had a very limited sample of probably 50 to 100 people in one geographical location at one company, but every bit of data I had contradicted her claim.  She didn’t have anything to offer and we changed subject–I wasn’t so clueless that I pushed the issue with her.

Ry, over at Mindless Bit Spew, is currently working at Microsoft and today reports on the activities of just one Microsoft private pilot who got time off from work to help with Katrina relief efforts.  Here is the first paragraph of his story published in a newsgroup internal to Microsoft:

Watching the destruction of Hurricane Katrina & the effect it was having on people’s lives, I wanted to help somehow. Our neighborhood organized a lunch, and we raised $3000 in just a few hours via donations by selling sandwiches to people simply driving buy. The company that I work at building a game called Flight Simulator, Microsoft Corporation, matched the donation. Wow, I was very impressed how people rallied and came together to support individuals thousands of miles away. Although I thought this effort on my neighborhoods part was awesome, I wanted to contribute more directly to the relief effort. I searched online for a way to contribute my airplane to fly people & supplies to the disaster stricken area.

People that bash capitalism need some exposure to reality.  Personally I know of no better place than what you see at Microsoft.  They’ve done some things wrong but the scales are so heavily weighted on the positive side you have to be actively avoiding reality to claim socialism/communism/fascism or whatever government scheme you might imagine is a “better way”.

Quote of the day–Jeff Cooper

We heard the Feds recently insisting that those are not black helicopters, they are dark green. Sorry about that.

Jeff Cooper
From Jeff Cooper’s Commentaries
Vol. 5, No. 2
February 1997

Kim duToit and hiding in the closet

I’ve had a couple people ask me if I had any clues what was going on with Kim duToit’s site, why it was down, etc.  I also saw a lot of people visit my site via search engines with query strings about Kim.  About all I could determine without given him a call (which I was hesitant to do because I don’t really know him that well) was that a connection could be made to the machine but it was refusing requests–someone had turned the site off.

AnarchAngel has the story, the essence of which is:

I have communicated briefly with Connie Du Toit, and there is a business issue requiring Kim and Connie to take the site down right now, and without any notice. They can’t provide details yet but expect some information in a few days.

The last few months have had a very sobering effect on me.  Think about this:

Q: How many gun bloggers openly use their real names? 
A: Not many.

Q: What percentage of those have had “problems” of some sort because of that?
A: A lot.

Q: How many anti-freedom bloggers do you know of that have “had problems?”
A: None that I know of.  But I don’t “travel in those circles.”  Anyone that you know of?

If you have to “stay in the closet” to be safe then how safe are you?  Did the Jews in Nazi Germany increase their safety by “keeping their heads down”?  It’s a predator/prey type situation.  If you go into hiding then you are saying, “I am the prey.”  You embolden the enemies of freedom. They become the full time predators.  They are at the top of the food-chain.  If we don’t bring a few of those predators down, feed on them, and scatter their sun-bleached bones on the range among our empty brass shell casing we have nothing but fear and hiding in our future.

Careful now.  Think about this.  Who are our true predators?  They aren’t just someone that advocates for their own imagined safety at our expense.  The predators are those that attempt to harm us personally (socially, financially, etc. as well as physically–which is unlikely) because they do not want our voices heard in open debate.  If you were to target someone for the loss of their job just because they advocated some new restriction on firearms then you are no better than those that targeted me or Kim for our activism.  In essence you cannot initiate “force”–you can only respond when they have initiated the use of “force” against you or another innocent party.  Don’t think this means you have to “play nice”.  Don’t just whine about things for a while.  If they initiate “force” they have given you the signal for you to transform into a ferocious predator.  You aren’t done until you are napping in the sun with a full belly and the vultures are feeding on the remnants of the carcass.

Also on this topic:

The closet
CCRKBA blasts bigotry 
Fred of Fred’s M14 Stocks on being on a list
Thoughts on coming out of the closet
Coming out of the closet has it’s price
Coming out of the closet

SAF needs New Orleans info

From a KABA alert I just received:

SAF INVESTIGATING NEW ORLEANS GUN SEIZURES; NEEDS TO HEAR FROM YOU

The Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) is calling on members and supporters living in the New Orleans metropolitan area who have had firearms confiscated by police, federal officers or National Guard units to contact SAF headquarters at once.

Over the past three weeks, since the New Orleans and surrounding area was devastated by Hurricane Katrina, there have been disturbing reports about warrantless searches and seizures of privately-owned firearms.

“SAF, in cooperation with the National Rifle Association, has investigators on the ground and has retained legal counsel in preparation for possible action,” said SAF founder Alan M. Gottlieb.

SAF wants to speak directly with individuals who have actually had their firearms confiscated. If you, or someone you know, has had a firearm seized by authorities in the New Orleans area in the days following the hurricane, SAF needs to hear from you.

Contact SAF via e-mail at safalert@liberty.seanet.com. Please provide us with your full name, address, current working telephone number and the date and time of the firearm(s) seizure. Please also let us know the best time of day for us to reach you at that number.

Sincerely yours,

Alan M. Gottlieb
President, KeepAndBearArms.com

Quote of the day–Sidney Hook

Those who say that life is worth living at any cost have already written for themselves an epitaph of infamy, for there is no cause and no person that they will not betray to stay alive.

Sidney Hook
American Philosopher

Awesome letter to Kevin

Kevin, over at The Smallest Minority, received a letter from one of his readers today.  I read it a little while ago.  A contributing factor is that I’m really tired right now but I started crying when I got to this part:

My dad, however, was a survivor of Auschwitz. My grandparents were murdered there. And it is now a cliche, but it’s true, the ‘average’ Jew could not defend themselves. So that got me to thinkin…and then seeing how it starts to look like America could end up like many S. American countries, with gated communities and barbed wire or broken glass up on the walls of the compounds…and I used to think this was the siren song of the Cassandras, but New Orleans showed that ain’t necessarily true…well, all this speaks of the need to have some protection.

This is the part that has to make Kevin really puff up in justifiable pride:

You’ve helped me understand a great deal of things I otherwise might not have. I had a lifetime bias against guns…still won’t say I like ’em, but that’s that cultural bias I mentioned, and having one for self-defense is not the same as enjoying killing.

Although it scares some people he should now understand my post Why Boomershoot?  And although many people think I’m paranoid for my Jews in the Attic Test I doubt he is one of them.

He’s looking for someone in the St. Louis area to take him shooting for the first time.  I would go and supply an assortment of firearms and the ammunition if someone wants to cover my travel expenses.  I’m a certified NRA instructor, I’m a high class B IPSC shooter, I do pretty good with a long range rifle, and further credentials are here.

Thanks for sharing Kevin.  That was really great.

Update: I have a pledge to cover the air travel with excess frequent flyer miles.  If I could get a little bit more to cover a couple nights in a cheap motel I’ll cover my meals.

Update2: I now have pledges to cover all my expenses.  Now it just depends on if Kevin’s reader wants to accept or not.

You would think they would know better

Via a pointer from Mindless Bit Spew. The Dutch are planning to open a “cradle to grave” electronic file on every child.

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands – The Dutch government plans to open an electronic file on every child at birth as a tool to spot and protect the troubled kids of the future.

Beginning Jan. 1, 2007, all citizens will be tracked from cradle to grave in a single database — including health, education, family and police records — the health ministry said Tuesday.

As a privacy safeguard, no single person or agency will be able to access all contents of a file. But organizations can raise “red flags” in the dossier to caution other agencies about problems, ministry spokesman Jan Brouwer said.

The intention is to protect troubled children, Brouwer said. Until now, schools and police have been unable to communicate with each other about truancy records and criminality, which are often linked.

“Child protection services will say, ‘Hey, there’s a warning flag from the police. There’s another one from school. There’s another one from the doctor,” Brouwer said. “Something must be going on and it’s time to call the parents in for a meeting.”

Every child will get a Citizens Service Number, making it easier to keep track of children with problems even when their families move, said Secretary of Health Clemence Ross.

“Safety, guidance, education and supervision are incredibly important for the development of children,” Ross said.

All Dutch births are currently registered with local authorities.

Doesn’t it always seem to be “for the children”?  It has often been said the road to hell is paved with good intentions.  I claim it is paved with the skulls of the tens of millions of people, including children, who died at the hands of their own governments intent on doing good at any cost.

It must be the Dutch forgot about the little incident back in the late ’30s and ’40s when those type of records were found to be quite useful–when tracking down all the people with “Jewish blood”.  And how is that “privacy safeguard” enforced?  Is there anything that can’t be changed by a simple act of the lawmakers?  As I said in the context of a U.S. Universal Biometric Identification the safeguards that I would require to be put in place in order to believe the contents of the database would not abused would cause the most enthusiastic Auschwitz guard to cringe at my creativity in punishment methods, violate numerous protections of the Bill of Rights, and probably inspire several additions to it.  And, I now add, enforceable by any person anywhere on the planet that has a reasonable suspicion there was abuse of that database.

Another gun rights activist resource

I’ve seen this done before but never quite as well done as this site: Myths About Gun Control.  But of course I’m a geek and like lots of notes and references.

Quote of the day–Jeff Cooper

More than two thousand years ago Aristotle opined that most of the human race has essentially the soul of a slave. A recent Associated Press poll recorded that fifty-four percent of those questioned seemed willing to trade liberty for security. The sad fact is that one cannot trade the one for the other. You can surrender your liberty, but what you get in turn is never a significant increase in your security. There are those in Israel who feel that they would like to trade “land for peace.” That will not work either.

Jeff Cooper
From Jeff Cooper’s Commentaries
Vol. 3, No. 7
16 May 1995

Quote of the day–James Bovard

Gun bans don’t ban guns; rather, they only ban citizens from legally defending themselves with guns.

James Bovard
Lost Rights
ISBN 0-312-12333-7
Copyright 1994, 1995

Does this give you a clue?

Israeli turned over the land they captured in ’67.  The dust hadn’t even settled from their exit when:

Palestinians surged triumphantly into demolished Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip early today, torching empty synagogues and firing shots into the air, as the last Israeli soldiers withdrew after 38 years of occupation.

I can see some really hostility expressed by making the synagogues into barns, or a manure storage storage facility but even that would be considerably over the top in my “book”–and I’m an atheist.  Burning them to the ground is stupid, completely irrational, or an expression of blinding hatred.  As Clayton Cramer said in his post:

Can you imagine the upset if Israelis had torched mosques in the Occupied Terroritories? There is something unnerving about this–rather like Krystallnacht translated into Arabic.

I’m guessing it’s blind hatred.

In another article — regarding the spread of AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases:

Al-Sayyid: Most certainly. The entire world, from the US to the most distant country, acknowledges that if they had stoned the fornicators, and prevented abomination, things would have been much better.

No wonder they call it “The Religion of Peace.”  Anyone that disagrees with their view of morality is killed and things are peaceful again.

They give us no acceptable options but to destroy their extremist culture.

Quote of the day–Adolf Hitler

The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to allow the subject races to possess arms. History shows that all conquerors who have allowed their subject races to carry arms have prepared their own downfall by doing so.

Adolph Hitler

More dooced stories in the news

You have to register to read them but excerpts follow the links.

Philadelphia Daily News: Your blog could get you recruited – or fired

For businesses, blogs and other forms of personal Internet communication constitute a new frontier fraught with promise and peril. On the one hand, companies are scrambling to use them as a recruiting and marketing tool, and are encouraging some employees to blog. On the other, they are wondering how to deal with the damage that current and former employees and dissatisfied customers can do on the Web.

The result is a “mild level of social panic,” Rainie said.

“The lawyers and the marketers are, in many cases, at least in covert war with each other.”

Miami Herald: Delta employee fired for blogging sues airline

A former Delta Air Lines flight attendant who says she was fired weeks after she posted photos of herself in uniform on her Internet blog has filed a sexual discrimination lawsuit against the airline.

Ellen Simonetti, whose job was based in Atlanta but lives in Austin, Texas, filed the lawsuit on Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Atlanta, saying that male colleagues with potentially insensitive material on their blogs have gone unpunished.

The case could plow fresh legal ground on whether a company can take action against an employee for operating a blog. Simonetti was featured in a recent People magazine article that mentioned workers who were fired for blog content.

I really don’t have much interest in suing PNNL.  It wasn’t PNNL, per say, that did me wrong.  It was the individuals that used false information, such as claims I used government computers to host personal websites, that are to blame.  In fact, I’ve had two lawyers tell me there were probably felonies committed.  The problem is that it’s difficult to get a prosecutor to take the case and a private attorney typically can’t prosecute for a crime, just take civil action.  I still have lots of things to try and just thought of a new one yesterday.  It’s a rather nasty thing to do and it will hurt the wrong people, as well as Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and their customers, but if they don’t turn over the files on the investigation under the Privacy Act Information Request (their denial is being appealed) I’ll use it.

Money spent on security

As I’ve posted before I think most of the money the government spends on “security” is a stupid waste and it is a threat to our freedom (for example see Universal ID Card Fatal Flaws and Stop Intrusive Airport Screenings).  Schneier, my security expert hero, got another editorial published where he talks about the waste portion of things:

Funding security based on movie plots looks good on television, and gets people reelected. But there are millions of possible scenarios, and we’re going to guess wrong. The billions spent defending airlines are wasted if the terrorists bomb crowded shopping malls instead.

And he tells us where the money should be spent:

Our nation needs to spend its homeland security dollars on two things: intelligence-gathering and emergency response. These two things will help us regardless of what the terrorists are plotting, and the second helps both against terrorist attacks and national disasters.

Money spent on emergency response makes us safer, regardless of what the next disaster is, whether terrorist-made or natural.

This includes good communications on the ground, good coordination up the command chain, and resources — people and supplies — that can be quickly deployed wherever they’re needed.

Similarly, money spent on intelligence-gathering makes us safer, regardless of what the next disaster is. Against terrorism, that includes the NSA and the CIA. Against natural disasters, that includes the National Weather Service and the National Earthquake Information Center.

The problem is politicians are very short-sighted.  Far-sighted politicians have a near zero chance of getting elected.  Can you imagine someone running for Governor of Louisiana on a platform of shutting down New Orleans and letting the Mississippi reroute itself 100+ miles to the west?  It’s probably the right thing to do and would have saved thousands of lives.  If our Federal government had been limited to it’s proper duties as defined in the Constitution economics would have forced them to “do the right” thing anyway.  But the Feds ended up spending billions on the levees and flood control to fight a battle that we will cannot win.  The question is how many times will the people of New Orleans lose this battle before the U.S. taxpayers say, “It’s time to face reality.  Pack your things and leave.”

See also:

New Orleans may have to face reality 
Another shot at New Orleans
Now do you believe me?
New Orleans was most vulnerable major city to hurricanes
More levee info

Searching for survivors

From the New York Times article New Orleans Begins Confiscating Firearms as Water Recedes.  The caption is theirs not mine.


Police officers looking for survivors today in the Ninth Ward of New Orleans.

One has to wonder what they are going to do with the survivors when they find them.  See also this post of mine.

Quote of the day–Mohandas K. Gandhi

An unjust law is itself a species of violence. Arrest for its breach is more so.

Mohandas K. Gandhi
(1869-1948), Indian political and spiritual leader.
Non-Violence in Peace and War, vol. 2, ch. 150 (1949).

Quote of the day–Ayn Rand

The necessary consequence of man’s right to life is his right to self-defense.  In a civilized society, force may be used only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use.  All the reasons which make the initiation of force an evil, make the retaliatory use of force a moral imperative.

Ayn Rand
1962, from The Virtue of Selfishness

This is the way it will always happen

Background:

In the mid and late 90’s the anti-freedom activists were winning.  They were nearly dancing in the street.  Never mind they were dancing in the blood from each new school or mass public shooting.  Just when we would think they had been stopped another “event” would happen and they would get the extra little boost they needed to get that last vote to infringe on our freedom just a little bit (and sometimes a LOT) more.  At the range or in hushed voices late at night in someone’s den people would talk, “When you hear they took Frank’s guns you’ll know Frank is dead.”  “When they start going door-to-door that’s when they will realize they bit off more than they could chew.”  “They can have my guns–when they are empty.”

Even a brief look at history tells you that isn’t how it happens.  Look at Germany, Australia, England, and even Canada.  There is always an “event” that gives the anti-freedom people “justification” for infringing on inalienable rights.  They don’t just wake up some ordinary, bright sunny day and say, “This is the day we start shipping the Jews off to the camps.”  Or “This is the day we pass the law that makes firearms possession by private citizens illegal.”  By taking advantage of essentially random tragedies they can ratchet down on our freedoms at times when all but the most devoted freedom lovers have some doubt, some question about the wisdom of private people having freedom.  The majority, if for only a week or two, can be persuaded that maybe it really would be better to let government take care of them.  That it might be better for the the individual to give up an essential liberty for an imagined temporary safety.  Of course Ben Franklin has the proper response to that argument. But this pact with the devil is just too tempting for the majority when they are writhing in pain from the latest event.  And the pain from the event we know as Katrina and the aftermath in New Orleans make it seem acceptable to the majority–“Yes, they are taking everyone’s guns, but they had to for everyone’s safety.”

When it comes right down to it you will be far more alone than you think you will be when you are talking about it at the range with your shooting buddies.  Your fair weather friends will have “really important things” they have to do when the troops come down your street knocking on the doors and entering the houses one-by-one with the M-16’s at the ready (read about it and watch the video).  People, as much as they might say, “I don’t care what other people think” do care what other people think–at least some.  And when other people publicly approve of the confiscation and the majority have doubts about resisting it will be difficult to rally the numbers needed to make any conflict go decisively in your favor.  And how much have you practiced as a team?  Probably zero.  Nearly all shooting events are individual events or at best you have shooter/spotter relationship where there is just one gun between the two of you.  You’ll be going up against teams of shooters that have been practicing for at least months if not years as a team.  If you do that you better know exactly what your capabilities are and what you expect to accomplish.  Punching holes in a piece of stationary paper 30 feet away is a useful exercise but it doesn’t compare to shooting at a trained team of shooters.  Think things through. What is going to happen in the seconds after you fire your first shot?  If you make it that far.  You might get hit from 200 yards away by the sniper in the shadows from the second story window down the street as you bring your shotgun to your shoulder.  Have you even walked down your street thinking about the positions and angles for shooters to cover their teammates as they go door-to-door?  It’s going to be second nature for them to see what to you will take hours to figure out–if you are lucky.

If you think you are going to stand up to “them” going door-to-door then you need to know if you will have anyone helping.  If you haven’t practiced with them already then the answer is, almost for certain, “No.”  If you are going it alone then be darned sure you know the price you pay is worth what you are getting in return.  How many can you take out before your gun is forever silenced?

This is Why Boomershoot.

Quote of the day–Doug Huffman

We have a legal system, not a “justice” system.

Doug Huffman
September 8, 2005 9:27 PM
[Lots of other people have said this too.  I am unable to determine the originator of the phrase. — Joe]