There is nothing quite so surreal as listening to law students shouting “F*** THE LAW!” in the middle of law school as they attempt to prevent a law professor from giving a talk about free speech.
Jeff B. @EsotericCD
Tweeted on April 12, 2018
[These are the crazy years.—Joe]
Boomershoot. There is still time (entry closes at midnight Wednesday April 18th). Sign up here: https://entry.boomershoot.org/
Brian Keith provides motivation:
Universal laws:
1. After a genocide, everyone says “Never again!”
2. Governments keep on committing genocide.
3. Armed populations NEVER suffer genocide.
4. Governments always disarm populations before genocide.Talk is cheap.
Thankfully so is ammunition and gas.
Talk less about how bad genocide is and invite your friends and family to Boomershoot instead.
You can’t stop genocide. But you can stop it happening to you.
Via email from Rolf.
If you define “liberal” as someone on the socialist->communist spectrum:
I was reminded of this by the recent comments here.
Via email from Brian Keith:
The set of potential mates which I might have an interest in is fairly small and, assuming they are all consensual, is no one’s business but mine and theirs. No politician has any moral high ground in deciding who I want to spend my life with.
And whether I want to carry a two shot derringer, a 9mm with a 21 round magazine (STI DVC Limited with 140mm magazines), or a five shot revolver is my choice. I know my situation and capability better than any politician. No politician has the moral authority to say I can or cannot carry a firearm to defend myself or other innocent people.
No politician has the moral authority to say I can or cannot marry or carry. If they insist they do then whatever “crime” occurs is on them. They created the crime. I did not commit a crime.
Leftism is, at its core, based upon the abject and unapologetic denial of observable reality.
They’re not just insane, they’re proudly insane. Point out their hypocrisy until Gabriel blows his horn, and it won’t affect them a bit. We’re dealing with people who have knowingly and willingly turned their backs on any form of logic and reason. The only reason they’re winning is that sane people haven’t stepped up and put them in the rubber room where they obviously belong.
Wraith
April 11, 2018
Comment to Quote of the day—Alan Korwin
[I don’t think a “rubber room” is appropriate for all of them. Some belong in prison.
And there are alternatives which I believe will work with most of them. But it’s a time consuming process and requires some isolation.—Joe]
Via email from Brian Keith:
Nearly all politicians are people who want to rule over other people. It should be no surprise that when they achieve power they want to exercise it. It is what gives meaning to their life even if it is none of their business what they want to control.
Don’t ever forget this telling insight into their minds:
If you put out a reg, it matters. I think that’s really where the thrill comes from. And it is a thrill; it’s a high… I love it; I absolutely love it. I was born to regulate. I don’t know why, but that’s very true. So as long as I’m regulating, I’m happy.
Marthe Kent
This is why we have a constitution which enumerated the limited powers of the government. It was supposed to protect against this sort of crap. It hasn’t. There is no branch of government specifically tasked with arresting and prosecuting those who violate their oath of office. Hence, we ended up with a huge mess and in the middle of a (5th generation) civil war.
Every death on the streets of London is an utter tragedy, and I am deeply concerned about the rise in knife crime over recent years. It is time for a new approach. We must send a strong message that carrying a knife is completely unacceptable, and is more likely to ruin your life than to save it. I hope that today’s summit will help us to harness the knowledge and insights of all those who have experience of knife crime, so we can help rid our communities of this terrible violence.
Sadiq Khan
Mayor of London
October 24, 2016
Knife Crime Summit 2016
[The cure to “knife crime” is to enable the potential victims to own and defend themselves with guns. But apparently the mayor has led a very sheltered life and never hear the admonition to “Never bring a knife to a gun fight.”
But of course this is the path the anti-gun crowd in our country is leading us down.—Joe]
Via email from Brian Keith:
It makes sense. Just ignore what Mao Tse-Tung said:
Every Communist must grasp the truth, “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.”
When the tyrant starts loading you into the cattle cars you should just come up with a catchy chant and march away from the trains. That should work just fine.
Oh, maybe the anti-gun people, nearly all of them with a communist streak, do understand the truth of Mao and that is the reason they want to take our guns. Their plans are that it is we who are loaded into the cattle cars. Gee, I never thought of that before!
Via email from Brian Keith:
I’m reminded of:
Foolish liberals who are trying to read the Second Amendment out of the Constitution by claiming it’s not an individual right or that it’s too much of safety hazard don’t see the danger of the big picture. They’re courting disaster by encouraging others to use the same means to eliminate portions of the Constitution they don’t like.
Alan Dershowitz
Quoted in Dan Gifford
The Conceptual Foundations of Anglo-American Jurisprudence in Religion and Reason
62 TENN. L. REV. 759 (1995)
It is easy to make the case that many people believe the Bill of Rights is actually more like buffet table than a legal contract.
Eventually, law-abiding people will be forced into making hard choices to escape the oppression, including non-compliance, or leaving and taking their tax dollars and businesses with them. Sadly, the California government really does hate civil rights and its own people.
Craig DeLuz
Firearms Policy Coalition Legislative Advocate and Spokesperson
April 6, 2018
BREAKING: Amendments to Calif. “Ghost Gun” Bill Would Enact “Staggering” New Firearms Parts Regulations
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]
If a bureaucrat has the authority to state that AND ENFORCE IT, there is no Republic. Literally any cabinet head, or possibly lower, can declare outlawry, steal property, seize anything, without even the pretense that an existing law was broken. Law will be whatever they say it is, any day of the week. Any religion can be illegal or mandatory. Anything can be contraband or mandatory. The rule of law simply fails to exist. If this doesn’t terrify you, I guess you can go now. Good luck. There’s nothing I can do when they quite literally do come to put you in those camps you fear, which just became a solid reality.
Michael Z. Williamson
March 24, 2018
If You Hate Guns, I Need Your Help
In regard to the ATF making a rule to ban bump stocks.
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]
American students deserve better than to be placed in “gun free” killing zones. They deserve better than to live in an authoritarian regime in which only the military, the police and criminals possess firearms.
And they deserve to live in a society in which all provisions of the Bill of Rights are respected, where those who claim to be law enforcement actually do their jobs, and where they are protected in fact from those who would do harm.
Stephen P. Halbrook
March 2, 2018
Blame for Parkland Rests with Local School Officials and FBI Ineptitude
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]
The people, among the most highly regulated on earth, told themselves that they were free because they retained the means of revolt. Just in case things ever got really bad. No one, however, seemed to have too clear an idea what “really bad” really meant. The people accepted the fact that their government no longer even remotely resembled the plan set forth in their original constitution. And the people’s values no longer remotely resembled those of their Founding Forebears. The people, in their naiveté, really believed that the means of revolt were to be found in a piece of inanimate metal! Really it was laughable. And pathetic.
No, the rulers knew that the people could safely be trusted with arms. The government educated their children, provided for their retirement in old age, bequeathed assistance if they lost their jobs, mandated that they receive health care, and even doled out food and shelter if they were poor.
Jeff Snyder
October 18, 2004
Walter Mitty’s Second Amendment
[This relates to what Lyle said the other day.
I have Snyder’s Nation of Cowards which is a collection of his essays. Nearly every paragraph of every essays qualifies as QOTD material. And as Sean F. told me a few months ago, Snyder is just mind blowing with his views on the right to keep and bear arms. If I could get every anti-gun person to read just one simple book, this would be it. I’m tempted to buy a stack of them and hand them out to people. It is absolutely amazing stuff.—Joe]
If you believe only the police and military should have guns:
Perhaps you should be more careful what you wish for.
Via Rolf.
The entire reason we have 300+ million guns to defend against is because decades-long efforts to stop this proliferation (mostly by Democrats) have been defeated by public officials (mostly Republicans) insisting that these efforts conflict with the Second Amendment. In this way, the Second Amendment is being used to solve the very problem that it was instrumental in creating.
Ken Levy
March 22, 2018
The (Current) Gun-Control Debate Is Not Really About Gun Control
[Apparently Mr. Levy is unaware of a large number of facts that anyone with a firm grasp on reality knows, such as:
Hence, one has to conclude that Mr. Levy has crap for brains and/or is deliberately lying.—Joe]
A gun guarantees freedom in the same way that a hammer and a chisel guarantee an exquisite sculpture.
Lyle
March 22, 2018
Comment to Quote of the day—Linda Allderdice
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]
A well-regulated death squad being the best defense of a tyrannical government, the right of the government to selectively enforce disarmament laws shall not be infringed.
Norman Yarvin
May 3, 2000
Tag line to his post in rec.guns about Cooper’s Rule 1.
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]
Gunowners cannot afford to give up anything at all — to do otherwise would be to condemn themselves and their whole families to immediate and dire peril. Both sides know it, and government bullies dare not deal a small injury to their constituents…some hold out for the opportunity to strike big, others try to encroach by degrees.
Oleg Volk
March 15, 2018
The impossibility of surrender
[Or, as Rolf pointed out to me, “If these fancy politicians treat the people this poorly when you’re armed to the teeth, just imagine what they’ll be willing to do once they’ve taken away all your gun.”—Joe]
My boss at work just finished up some management training and shared the following video with our team.
If you tilt your head just a bit you can map the lessons of this video into the the form of our U.S. Constitutional government as it was originally intended.
It also helps you realize why an authoritarian system of government will always underperform a liberty based form. It’s about decisions being made where the information is. And furthermore, you only have to squint just a little bit to see why, individual gun ownership must remain an individual choice.
The Supreme Court ruled in D.C. v. Heller (2008) that the Second Amendment protects the arms that are typically possessed for lawful purposes by law-abiding citizens. That includes the AR-15. Yet because negligent government actors failed to prevent a massacre, the cry goes out to ban this rifle.
The expired 1994 Clinton ban on “assault weapons”—a propaganda term for modern sporting rifles—had zero effect on crime. A Department of Justice study verified that. Yet a similar ban is now advocated because government failed to act and prevent the murders.
Stephen P. Halbrook
March 2, 2018
Blame for Parkland Rests with Local School Officials and FBI Ineptitude
[There is no escaping the conclusion that the majority of people who want gun owners disarmed have reasons other than a reduction in violent crime.
Don’t trust anyone that wants you disarmed. If you have no intent to harm innocent people then only reason they could have to disarm you is because they wish to do something to you that you wouldn’t allow if you were armed.
This meme also has a good point.—Joe]