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]
The American Left was not caused by socialism or radical ideology. The causal relationship was the other way around. The hive-like behavior was a constant, a part of the American biology. When the socialist paradise collapsed, the Left switched to sexual and racial utopianism. That means when the current rage heads burn what’s left of society, only to not arrive at the promised land, they will find some new fantasy to embrace. The Hive is eternal.
thezman
March 7, 2018
The Eternal Hive
[Via email from Peter G.
One of my hypothesizes has been that the political left always needs something to hate. From before the U.S. Civil War until the 1960s the target was primarily their slaves, then the freed slaves, then capitalism and blacks in general. In the 1960s blacks were replaced by gun owners. As the collapse of the USSR and other socialist and communist political systems fell from grace whites and men were added and capitalism was deemphasized.
Z Man’s claim also appears to match my observations.
If Z Man is correct, one extrapolation indicates that the end is near and it won’t be pretty.—Joe]
So your argument is, “We’ve already violated this amendment to the point where all you have are very basic infantry weapons, and now we’re claiming those aren’t effective without the stuff we’ve already banned, so it’s reasonable to ban that, too.”
And I’m saying, we need to fix the entire problem, which we both recognize, and eliminate those laws so veterans (and determined civilians who for whatever reason were unable to serve), can have the weapons they need so we CAN fight tanks and planes in such an emergency.
The only people who could possibly object are the kind who want to send tanks and planes against civilians.
Michael Z. Williamson
March 2, 2018
Destroying Gun Control Myths, Part 1: “You Can’t Fight Tanks And Planes With Rifles!”
[I love the insight and clarity Williamson gives the issue.—Joe]
I’m a Fascist… the only time people of real character show up is when the
government crushes the population with it’s heel.
Josh Baker
June 2, 1996
[He may have a point. We may also soon be able to test his claim.—Joe]
This post was inspired by a cartoon sent to me by Will S.
It was only in the last few thousand years that facts and logic began to have a toehold on our understanding of world around us. Even then rational thought would lose its footing and slide back down into the dark ages for a few hundred years at a time.
My hypothesis is that there is a reason for this. Reliance on facts and rational thought created an evolutionary advantage which allowed for the survival of a greater number of less fit people. These less fit, emotionally driven, people drag society down again.
The repeated rise and fall of reliance on rational thought is like a cleaning process. Each time the gene pool was cleaned it became a more biased toward rationality and human society became more advanced.
I had hoped that we need not go through another dark age but there are times when I fear we are nearing another downward slide. How else can you explain the continued infatuation with socialism? What other political system has experienced so many attempts and resulted in so many catastrophic failures? How else can you explain the masses of people who blame private ownership of firearms for the massacres of school children when government disarmed the adults, failed to prosecute the villain prior to his attack, and failed to come to the rescue even though they were close by? The government which failed at ever step of the way is now supposed to be tasked with the job of attacking those who held no responsibility for the creating the circumstance, or failing to stop the attack. This is not the result of a rational thought process. This is crazy talk and to me is a strong indicator that the slippery slope into another dark age is only a small misstep away.
The need for firearms is like the need for free speech. You need them the most when someone is trying to take them from you.*
* See also something similar I wrote in 1995 near the bottom of this post.
Today, I posted a Random thought of the day:
If bakers of wedding cakes can be forced to bake custom wedding cakes for homosexuals because gay marriage is legal, doesn’t that mean stores which sell firearms can be forced to custom order an AR-15 for you because you are legally allowed to own one?
My blog software automatically makes a Facebook post with a link back to my blog. It did that today with the previous post but it doesn’t show up on Facebook. I have seen this before but just thought maybe there was error of some sort and the Facebook post failed. This time, I know that’s not the case.
From Statcounter:
IP: 69.171.240.16
Date: 3/1/2018 15:10
Link: http://m.facebook.com
Title: Random thought of the day | The View From North Central Idaho
Url: https://blog.joehuffman.org/2018/03/01/random-thought-of-the-day-104/
This was two minutes after my blog post went live. I knew it took a minute or two before a blog post showed up on Facebook. I thought it was probably just some sort of normal processing delay. Now I suspect my blog posts are reviewed by a human before being allowed to go live on Facebook. It could be an automated process but that shouldn’t take two minutes.
We have known for a while that Google blocks shopping searches for AR15s (compare with AR10s).
So, what can we do about this sort of crap? Any ideas that are better than boycotting them?
Update March1, 2018 19:22 PST: Another visit to my blog post via Facebook came in 14 minutes after the first one:
IP: 71.92.94.104
Date: 3/1/2018 15:24
Link: https://www.facebook.com/
Title: Random thought of the day | The View From North Central Idaho
Url: https://blog.joehuffman.org/2018/03/01/random-thought-of-the-day-104/
It could not have been because of the original version of this post or inspired because of it because this post was not made until 16:10. Although it could have been that someone saw my blog post and referenced it themselves on Facebook. This is somewhat supported by the fact that another visit occurred at 18:48:
IP: 70.178.238.137
Date: 3/1/2018 18:48
Link: https://www.facebook.com/
Title: Random thought of the day | The View From North Central Idaho
Url: https://blog.joehuffman.org/2018/03/01/random-thought-of-the-day-104/
In response to my post Why are liberals so violent? I received a comment from John Schussler who said:
I’m fascinated by your characterization of liberals as inherently violent. In the link you point to you say:
“The Animal Liberation Front, and Earth Liberation Front are two of the top domestic terrorist organizations in the U.S. and are, obviously, liberal. Add in the Weather Underground, Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, Symbionese Liberation Army, and lots of other leftist terrorists going back to at least the 1960s and you realize that while they don’t have a monopoly on illegal violence they dominate to such an extent they might as well have a monopoly.
Why are liberals so violent?”
You pick the most extreme far left commie anarchist examples you could find and then generalize that liberals are violent? In the statistical distribution, you’ve picked some examples that are several standard deviations off the norm and decided to redefine that as the norm. That’s not a rational idea. Sorta like liberals pointing to the KKK and Stormfront and calling them the conservative norm. Why are you doing that?
In the comments I elaborated some but Schussler, with a fair amount of justification, said:
You’re not answering the central question: why are you picking statistical anomalies and generalizing them to the norm? The ELF, ALF, etc. are a tiny fraction of the “left.” Calling them the norm is absurd.
I didn’t actually say they were the norm. But I can see how that might be the interpretation. I decided to elaborate and try to more clearly explain why I see the modern liberal as inherently violent.
In the context of politics “liberal” has dramatically changed in the last 150 years. I did not intend to say classical liberalism was inherently violent. With broad civil liberties and emphasis on economic freedoms it is in fact inherently non-violent.
Modern liberalism is characterized by support for “social justice” and a mixed economy.
The modern liberal appears to have no hesitation to use government to take wealth from one group of people and give wealth to another group of people. This shows up in a extremely wide range of government policies from art, education, food, health care, housing, roads, Internet access, social services, and even cell phones.
The modern liberal sometimes claims support for “civil liberties” but are very selectively in the liberties they defend. They have no hesitation, and in fact appear extremely eager, to ban as many guns as quickly as they can. They appear to be eager to ban speech they declare “hate speech”. They demand people be limited in the both monetary and non-monetary support they give political candidates. This is a limit on free speech. They demand people of certain religions support activities those religions have strict doctrine against (Catholics with regard to birth control, and abortion). They demand government force Christian fundamentalist bakers make wedding cakes for homosexuals. They demand people not be allowed to purchase carbonated drinks larger than some particular size. They have made failure to recycle a crime. They have made it a crime for two people to agree on a fair wage if the wage is below a certain minimum and they have attempted to create an upper limit as well and in many respects have succeeded. They demand business licenses for nearly every activity that involves the exchange of money. They even shutdown children selling lemonade on the sidewalk in front of their homes because they did not have a business license. I don’t think I have ever heard a modern liberal politician demand there be less regulation, lower subsidies, or fewer restrictions on free speech or guns. More government intervention is always the solution.
The list of prohibited actions and mandatory behaviors is so extensive that the joke from the USSR, “that which is not prohibited is mandatory”, is easily seen as being applicable to us in the utopian view of the modern liberal. The modern liberal contributes to this environment far more than the modern conservative or, especially, libertarian (classical liberal).
Each law, each regulation, and each tax requires enforcement. One must either be profoundly ignorant of what enforcement means or accepting of it when they advocate for these restrictions on liberty. The person who demands the government punish people for failing to recycle or punish a child for selling lemonade is one who is willing to use the government to physically take money from them or drag them off to jail.
As George Washington said in a speech of January 7, 1790:
Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force; like fire, a troublesome servant and a fearful master.
Modern liberals are willing to use force, violence, even if it is by proxy, to make others conform as precisely as possible to their view of proper behavior. This is an inherent part of their political philosophy. This use of (government) violence to achieve their goals must be an inherent part of their nature or they would have reservations about such extensive use of government.
I believe the reason we see violence in the activities of liberal supported groups such as Occupy Wall Street, the Ferguson unrest, and Black Lives Matter because it is part of a continuum. At the low end of spectrum we have fines and regulations which are ultimately enforced via government force to take the money, physically stop a prohibited activity, or threaten forcible imprisonment for failure to engage in a mandatory behavior. In the middle part of the spectrum we have groups of people engaging in vandalism, blocking of streets, and looting. At the high end we have actual terrorist organizations such as ALF, Eco-terrorists, and The Weathermen.
I do not see a similar continuum in those who identify as conservative or libertarian.
I’m tired…
I’m tired of typing in the same constitutional arguments on gun control every time there is a shooting anywhere in America.
Tired of citing the same statistics of declining gun crime in America—except in cities controlled by Democrats for decades, with the nation’s strictest gun laws—to liberal people who think the Constitution is an outdated document.
Be careful what you wish for.
I am done discussing this topic. It is like shouting into the wind. No minds will be changed.
If and when you manage to get together the votes to retake the Congress and the Presidency to affect radical change, and to propose and pass and sign and ratify a constitutional amendment abrogating the 2nd Amendment to the Constitution, we will reengage.
Because then there will be a genuine shooting revolution.
See you on the barricades…
[Kaag is a former Marine. I’m glad he is on my side.
My fear is that unless we keep talking and keep taking new shooters to the range and converting minds we will lose anyway. Our enemies will always play to their strengths and our weaknesses. They will do their best to never get in a shooting war. They know this is our point of greatest strength. Their greatest strength is the mainstream media.
We have other strengths we must enable and utilize. SCOTUS is not yet our friend but with one or two more Trump appointed justices it will be. The Federal district and appeals courts have long been unfriendly as well but this changing with hundreds of new appointment made and to be made during the next few years. In another three to seven years the courts have a good chance of swinging the direction of the tide. This will require we vote, encourage others to vote, and to persuade our Senators to approve the justices which adhere to the original meaning of the U.S. Constitution.
Sometime after we win the battle for the courts is when I expect we could, literally, be “on the barricades”. This will be when the political left enables us to use our greatest strength.
The political left has totally lost their cool in regards to the current political setting. You can see Trump Derangement Syndrome nearly everywhere. The gun issue had people rushing the stage chanting “Burn her!” to Dana Loesch when she engaged in a discussion about the Florida school shooting on CNN. Loesch didn’t do the shooting. She didn’t encourage the shooter to murder 17 people. She didn’t give the shooter the guns or ammo. She didn’t even know of the murdering scumbag loser until she heard it on the news. What do you think the mobs will do when told the Second Amendment doesn’t stop at the school property line? Or that able bodied people on welfare for years must finally get a job or go hungry? Or that in addition to paying for their own food they must pay for their own health care? Or that most of the government grant money is going away and those people are going to have get private grants or get a real job?
One of the strongest political currencies of the political left is street violence. Violence is part of their nature. When they are losing with little hope of recovery they will use it and they will not hold back.
The barricades will have to be strong, the ammunition plentiful, and the aim true. I expect the mobs will be epic.—Joe]
He mobilized the English language and sent it into battle.
Viscount Halifax
1940
Referring Winston Churchill’s speech in the movie The Darkest Hour.
[For Valentine’s Day Barb and went to this movie (she chose it). It is a very good movie.
Mobilize the English language and send it into battle. This what gun owners need to do. It is either that or face our own darkest hour and/or a bloody war.
I have often thought something like that is what I was doing. I try look at things, change the point of view, and articulate a vision which makes obvious we have the high moral high ground, we should always attack, and we must always make our enemies defend.
But I had never articulated it even one tenth as clearly and succinctly as Halifax did in the movie. The movie inspired me. Henceforth, I will make better use of words. If these words are properly crafted into powerful weapons of war we can win the battles needed to defeat the forces of evil in this country and avoid a war of bullets and blood.—Joe]