Category Archives: Freedom

Interesting times

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Via a comment from Chet:

You have wonder if this is what it was like in the middle 1930’s for minorities in Nazi Germany. There was a double standard enforced by both society and government when laws and social norms were violated. And people just kept accepting the increasing levels of injustice. They must have thought, “This is crazy! It has to get better soon, right?”

No. It doesn’t have to get better from here. Mass hysteria can go to lengths that are unimaginable to people that haven’t lived through it.

Currently pointing out reality can get you censored, fired from your job, and banished from social media and by your friends. This bad, but not as bad as it can get. At many times and places insistence on reality has resulted in a death sentence.

Celebrate diversity

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I’m all about diversity. Let me share a little bit of it with you.

I found this on Gab via Jan Conboy @javelina:

BulletDiversity

My bullet collection is far more diverse than this but I don’t have a good picture of it.

I have this to keep some of the mud out of the hitch on my SUV:

I received this shirt on Friday from Maj Toure @MAJTOURE:

20190707_170935

And from 13 years ago:

Quote of the day—Aesop

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Freedom isn’t free.

We can pointlessly argue “Should be” all we want. If people aren’t willing to kick up a fuss over these kinds of jackassical laws, they’ll lose the rights they don’t defend.

Aesop
July 3, 2019
You Get The Rights You’ll Defend. And No More.
[Truth.

There are some suggestions for dealing with the stupid ammo restrictions that recently went into effect in California. We should be engaged in some creative thinking for dealing with the idiotic laws in other states too.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Candace Owens @RealCandaceO

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The Democrats don’t want black Americans to improve in the same way that drug dealers do not want their addicts to get clean.

Victimhood has been administered into the veins of black Americans by Left-wing politicians, hellbent on creating government junkies.

Candace Owens @RealCandaceO
Tweeted on June 29, 2019
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]

Quote of the day—L. Neil Smith

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We are at war now, a slow-motion, sneaky Civil War. If you deal with socialists. no matter what they call themselves, as anything but your mortal enemies, who want to kill you, and cook you, and eat you (to quote Bruce Willis)—if you fall for the blandishments of their foul, demented, idiot accomplices in the Republican Party—you are inviting extermination of everything you value and hold dear.

L. Neil Smith
December 2018
Why They Hate Donald Trump
[H/T to Tam.

It’s called a 4th generation war:

One of the key components is winning the culture component. Come out of the closet as a gun owner. Take a new shooter to the range. It’s a gateway “drug” to freedom.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Harvey

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If Trump were to have a socialized medicine plan, it would cover treatment for whatever disease it is that causes liberals to consider socialism a good idea.

Harvey
June 26, 2019
Trump Truths: TrumpCare
[I find it humorous but the last I checked there wasn’t a cure for stupid.

Well, I suppose that isn’t entirely fair. A fair number of smart people believe socialism is a good idea because they believe they would be one of the special ones in power.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Frederica Wilson

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Those people who are online making fun of members of Congress are a disgrace, and there is no need for anyone think that is unacceptable [sic]. We’re gonna shut them down and work with whoever it is to shut them down, and they should be prosecuted. You cannot intimidate members of Congress, threaten members of Congress. It is against the law and it’s a shame in this United States of America.

Frederica Wilson
U.S. Representative to Congress (D)
July 2, 2019
[Via a tweet from Ali Alexander.

She goes on to blame President Trump for the general disrespect of Congress and the media.

I would like to suggest that if Rep Wilson didn’t have such crap for brains as to not realize people have the right, guaranteed by the First Amendment, to make fun of members of congress then she might enjoy a little more respect. But since you can’t fix stupid it looks like she is going to have to suffer being mocked and disrespected as long as she continues to open her mouth in public.—Joe]

Update: Others have expressed similar opinions but Michael Z. Williamson wins the Internet so far. This is just part of one of the first paragraphs of Challenge Accepted, Congresswhore

Per the First Amendment, Common Law, and in fact, Common Sense, I have the right to mock you however I wish. If I think you have the manners of a Denebian Slime Devil, then that’s what I’ll say. If I think you’re a textbook Demorrhoid–ignorant, retarded, bigoted, stupid and humorless–I’ll say so.

That’s the warm up.

Quote of the day—Paul Sperry

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Fast and Furious was a Justice Department program that allowed assault weapons — including .50-caliber rifles powerful enough to take down a helicopter — to be sold to Mexican drug cartels allegedly as a way to track them. But internal documents later revealed the real goal was to gin up a crisis requiring a crackdown on guns in America. Fast and Furious was merely a pretext for imposing stricter gun laws.

…

Team Obama conspired to derail investigations into who was responsible by first withholding documents under subpoena — for which Holder earned a contempt-of-Congress citation — and later claiming executive privilege to keep evidence sealed.

But thanks to the court order, Justice has to cough up the “sensitive” documents. So far it’s produced 20,500 lightly redacted pages, though congressional investigators say they hardly cover all the internal department communications under subpoena. They maintain the administration continues to “withhold thousands of documents.”

Paul Sperry
May 21, 2016
The scandal in Washington no one is talking about
[Via Say Uncle, Miguel.GFZ, and Andrew Branca.

Will the criminals finally be brought to justice?

Check out the date on the quote. That was over three years ago. So the answer is, almost for certain, no.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Thomas Sowell

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The only reward for putting up with craziness is more craziness.

Thomas Sowell
March 6, 1999
THOMAS SOWELL: Back again – random thoughts
[Barb and I have decades of experience with this on a personal level. And we all are seeing the clear and irrefutable truth of this in the political arena. We see it in economics, immigration policy, and especially with our specific enumerated right to keep and bear arms.

The only way to deal with crazy is to not tolerate it. In many cases it is quite surprising how quickly they can put on a semi-rational face when you just say “No!” and have the means and will to enforce it..—Joe]

Voting out of big government

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Just a few days after being sworn into office President Trump signed an executive order which required federal agencies to cut two existing regulations for every new regulation they implement. A year later he made a big deal out of repealing 22 regulations for each new rule issued.

Since I don’t spend that much time in Idaho and I live in Washington state, which it is a bigger threat to me, I don’t pay much attention to Idaho politics. But Joel M. was paying attention and sent me an email with nothing but a link to how the Idaho state legislature opted to—in essence—repeal the entire state regulatory code. Wow!

Following a link I learned that even though the Governor is an advocate of reducing regulations he wasn’t a significant force being this regulation reset:

All of those rules expire on July 1 — except the ones Little chooses to keep on a temporary basis until the Legislature can consider them early next year.

“This is an unusual situation,” said Jaclyn Kettler, a Boise State University political scientist. “It does open up a pretty big opportunity for Gov. Little.”

The situation in Idaho contrasts with other states, like Wisconsin, where the GOP-controlled Legislature sought to limit the powers of the Democratic governor.

Little said residents can trust him to be fair.

“I’m not looking at this as an opportunity to do mischief,” Little said during a public appearance Tuesday. “I do not want to exacerbate this thing. This was not our deal. We did not do this.”

Little has made clear his desire to cut regulations in Idaho, issuing an executive order in January requiring state agencies cut two rules for every new one.

A lot of people have said things that amounted to “we can’t vote our way out of big government.” But there is now some evidence that assertion may be in error.

We live in interesting times.

.

Eating their own

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It’s long been observed that the political left frequently eats its own when it gets enough power. Just look at what happened in the USSR. Tens of millions murdered by their own government or put in the gulags. Read The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation (Volume One) for a taste of what went on there. Large numbers of those people believed they were loyal supporters of the communist government.

The problem that once you have purity tests and people to maintain political purity the requirements get more and more strict. Just think of the “micro aggression”, “dog whistle”, and “code word” criteria being enforced in many instances in this country. It becomes a positive feedback loop with escalating standards of purity.

I review this as background for what is happening at Google (via an email from Chet who describes it as “Google’s civil war”):

San Francisco Pride organizers say they won’t ban Google from the annual Pride Parade on Sunday, despite receiving a letter signed by almost 100 Google employees concerned about how their company handles hate speech.

The employees asked for Google to be banned from the pride parade on June 30th. The company came under fire this month for refusing to remove homophobic videos targeting a journalist. Instead, YouTube banned hate speech and demonetized the channel. However, the company still offered a platform for the pundit, Steven Crowder, to direct his viewers to a site to purchase merchandise.

Google management will have some “interesting” choices to make if the DOJ and/or congress tells them they need to cut the crap on attempting to swing elections at the same time 10s of thousands of employees are demanding they adhere to more higher and higher levels of leftist politically purity.

Quote of the day—The Annoyed Man

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I think we are ultimately headed for some kind of violent showdown between the left and everyone else. They no longer know when to back off, and they lack the moral filters necessary to coexistence. We’re going to end up in an existential fight for our most fundamental rights, and literal self-preservation.

The Annoyed Man
June 22, 2019
Comment to MN: Self defense shooting trial built on gun control bumper sticker
[Certainly a case can be made for that. But it seems to me that they back off when they get some serious push back. I think at least some of them are more in touch with reality than we sometimes give them credit for. They may be crazy but they may not be stupid. They can “sober up” for short periods of time if they really need to.

Think about it. For a while there were marches with vandalism and sometimes riots nearly every week all over the country. And now how often do you see that?—Joe]

Quote of the day—Stephen P. Halbrook

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In 1931, Weimar authorities discovered plans for a Nazi takeover in which Jews would be denied food and persons refusing to surrender their guns within 24 hours would be executed. They were written by Werner Best, a future Gestapo official. In reaction to such threats, the government authorized the registration of all firearms and the confiscation thereof, if required for “public safety.” The interior minister warned that the records must not fall into the hands of any extremist group.

In 1933, the ultimate extremist group, led by Adolf Hitler, seized power and used the records to identify, disarm, and attack political opponents and Jews. Constitutional rights were suspended, and mass searches for and seizures of guns and dissident publications ensued. Police revoked gun licenses of Social Democrats and others who were not “politically reliable.”

During the five years of repression that followed, society was “cleansed” by the National Socialist regime. Undesirables were placed in camps where labor made them “free,” and normal rights of citizenship were taken from Jews. The Gestapo banned independent gun clubs and arrested their leaders. Gestapo counsel Werner Best issued a directive to the police forbidding issuance of firearm permits to Jews.

Stephen P. Halbrook
December 2, 2013
How the Nazis Used Gun Control
[See also the Belgian Corporal.

Avoid gun registration as best you can. And never register your guns in such a way that you can’t plausibly deny still owning them a month or two later. “Tragic boating accident” is the classic out. But there are lots of other ways.

Trading guns with close relatives in another state is sometime a legal and viable option. Or a chain of legal trades/purchases across families linked by marriage might work too.

If you don’t need for the trail to go cold in the short term quietly buy a gun from an elderly relative. In a dozen years or so the trail dies with the relative.

Move to another state, even if for a month, and purchase or trade there.

Never put yourself in a position to have your guns confiscated.—Joe]

Meet Washington state legislators

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Via email from Boomershooter, and Venezuela refugee, Luis:

I’ll have as speakers Senator Phil Fortunato, representatives Matt Shea and representative Robert Sutherland.

They are strong legislators that have stand and defend the 2nd Amendment.

They will be speaking in my district about what happen in Olympia in the last legislative session.

clip_image001

I sometimes see Fortunato at pistol matches at Renton Fish & Game. I like to hang out near him and hear stories about legislative stupidity. It confirms my belief that government power should be limited as much as is practical.

Luis spoke for a few minutes this year at Boomershoot. He is very concerned about the path Washington State is going down. It reminds him of what happened in Venezuela and he is working hard to prevent that from happening here.

Gun cartoon of the day

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ClassBeQuiet

This is a based on what has to be a deliberate lie. Lyle said it best yesterday:

There’s that insidious “Arm Teachers” lie again. “Arm” is a verb. It’s something you’d be doing TO teachers; arming them. As though they don’t get a say in the matter. That’s the big lie in all of this. It evokes images of poor old Mrs. Jones being dragged, kicking and screaming, out of her Kindergarten class and hauled, by grim men in sunglasses, to a shooting range where she’d be forced, crying and shaking, and against everything she believes in, to learn to shoot a 44 Magnum.

In fact all anyone ever wanted was get the fuck out of the way of those teachers who already have training and carry permits, who are already carrying guns responsibly everywhere BUT the schools they work at, and allow them to also carry at school where they could then have a chance of defending innocents should the need arise.

…

allowing armed teachers to also be armed at school is not a government program. It is the elimination of existing government interference. It isn’t something government would DO. It is something government would STOP DOING.

I think part of the problem is that anti-freedom people find it difficult, or even impossible, to imagine a solution to a problem to involve less government.

Closely related, they are unlikely to ever admit that government caused a problem which is now in need of a solution. The “gun free zone” concept was sold as a government solution to a relatively rare problem. The unintended (I’m being generous with giving them the benefit of the doubt) consequences of this was mass shootings in these “gun free zones”. The last number I heard was something over 90% of all mass shootings occur in these victim disarmament areas. Mass shootings are a government created problem. The politicians who implemented these murder zones should be prosecuted.

The whole concept of “free markets and free minds” is alien to them. Alien, scary, and to be fought against with all power at their disposal. And when that power isn’t enough they must diminish the power of those who oppose them. Hence, disarming those who value liberty becomes a high priority.

Gun cartoon of the day

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NraImage

First off, there is no “epidemic of firearm mass murder”. Murder rates are at something like a 50 year low. The mass murder rate in the U.S. is in the same general range as the rest of the world. Unless you want to compare the U.S. with Europe in the 20th century. In that case the rate is far, far, lower. And you know why? Because the so much blood was spilled by governments murdering their own citizens. Closest the U.S. has had that might be compared is some of the Indian wars. And guess what, the North American natives were banned from owning firearms.

Genocide and firearm restrictions are closely related:

Which leads is the main point to be made about this cartoon. The cartoonist leaves no doubt what they think of the NRA, gun owners, and those who insist the specific enumerated right to keep and bear arms means what it says, “shall not be infringed”.

With such an attitude they are the same path to the murderous behavior of European governments in the 20th Century. If you give up your guns, or even register your guns, we are at a much higher than acceptable risk of a similar result here.

Quote of the day—Chris Murphy and Dianne Feinstein

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Guns like the AR-15 aren’t used for hunting and they’re not viable for home protection. They have only one purpose, and that’s to fire as many rounds as possible, as quickly as possible.

Outlawing these weapons, an action supported by 60 percent of Americans, will bring down the number of mass shootings and reduce the number of casualties, just as it did when the ban first passed in 1994.

Chris Murphy and Dianne Feinstein
June 14, 2019
Our Republican Colleagues in the Senate Must Act to Break the Cycle of Gun Deaths
[I’m not certain about the 60% number. It’s going to depend on which poll you believe. The rest of the asserted data is composed entirely of lies.

This is to be expected. Anti-gun people lie habitually and have been doing that for decades. Just don’t let friends and family buy into those lies. And if someone is someone is lying to you about something as important as the Bill of Rights you have to know they are evil people and when in political power, such as Murphy and Feinstein, almost for certain have evil intent for the general population.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Rescued Goddaughter‏ @XianCorleone

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Americans, I’m watching the #GunControl protests from Italy. Take a European’s advice:

Last century our governments disarmed us. Now, in Germany & the UK they arrest you for Twitter & FB posts.

Lesson?

If the gov’t takes your 2nd Amendment, one day it’ll take your 1st.

Rescued Goddaughter‏ @XianCorleone
Tweeted on March 26, 2018
[My understanding is that term “Politically Correct” speech fully bloomed into usage during the Stalinist era in the USSR. You could be arrested and set to the gulag and/or executed if you were too careless in what you said. Read The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation (Volume One) for a taste of what went on there. They murdered millions of people because of “politically correctness” ran amok.

People are being arrested and prosecuted in Europe but we are not far behind. There are lots of people who have lost their jobs for not adhering to the politically correct rules of the day.

My model for what happens is that the power to punish people attracts a certain type of person. The type of person who should never be allowed to have such power. When groups of those people get together they convince themselves they are doing good and find more people to punish. They get themselves worked up into a feeding frenzy and justify their escalation of punishment and the decrease in the seriousness of the offense which satisfies their criteria for punishment. Left unchecked they will execute the majority of a town and a sizable percentage of an entire country.

Read The Gulag Archipelago to see how it happened in the USSR. Look in the news to see the beginnings of it happening all around us now.

Own firearms, get trained, and practice with them to nip genocide in the bud when it escalates to the lethal level.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Cliff Maloney

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Therein lies the lesson for U.S. policymakers. The consequences of gun control run far deeper than either side of America’s gun debate cares to admit. We all need to learn from Venezuela’s example and shape our public policy accordingly.

Gun control legislation might seem like an easy answer when tragedies force us to passionately look to politicians to do something, but history repeats itself time and time again.

Venezuela’s disarmament reminds us of a key American principle: An armed citizenry is the greatest defense against a tyrannical government.

Cliff Maloney
May 22, 2019
Cliff Maloney: Venezuela is a poster child for gun control gone wrong
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]

Quote of the day— High Horse Strong @RWITGuy

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Repeal the 1986 Hughes amendment!

Make America Fully Automatic Again!!!!   #MAFAA

MAFFA

High Horse Strong @RWITGuy
Posted on Gab May 26, 2019
[It’s not going to happen in the next couple of years but there are plausible paths to get there eventually.—Joe]