Category Archives: Freedom

Quote of the day—Ray Starman

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I believe it is no longer hyperbole to say the United States may very well be on the road to a Second Civil War. This time it won’t be North vs. South, but Left vs. Right, Marxism vs. American Nationalism, Lunacy vs. Sanity, Tyranny vs. Liberty.

…

Sadly, there will be more violence, more vandalism and more bloodshed on both sides. There will be more confrontations for one reason and one reason only, the left wants it.

The left wants a Civil War. They very well may get it.

Ray Starman
August 15, 2017
The Left is Marching the Nation Towards Civil War
[While I’m about 90% certain they want a civil war I’m not convinced they will get it.

The pattern I see follows that of Germany in the 1930’s. The Nazi party gained political power legally until it almost had control. Then as its grasp on power started to fade it dramatically stepped up the violence and seized power. Had the government been better about stopping the street thugs the Nazi’s would not have been able to up the violence and seize power.

There have been many recent cases, including Portland, Berkley, and Charlottesville where the police did essentially nothing. This only encourages the political left. If the police in this country do there jobs and the thugs end up in jail, seriously injured, or dead the violence will decrease and we will avoid a civil war.

The police have been militarizing for decades now. It’s time for them to use some of that equipment and training and prevent another civil war. It is far better to risk injuring and/or killing a few hundred thugs now than to go through a civil war in the following years.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Terry L.

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Volunteers are person that are handling, using the explosives in helping you but you do not pay them. It is still your responsibility to make sure you are not using someone who is a prohibitive person. so to answer your question, if you do not pay them, they are not to be listed as possessors.

Terry L.
Legal Instruments Examiner
BATF&E – FELC
Via email, August 21, 2017
[What this means is that my unpaid staff at Boomershoot does not need to go through the hassle of filling out ATF paperwork.

I’m not sure who this change in understanding helps the most.

I saw some part of the paperwork, yes, literally paper, on their side each time I added a person to help with the Boomershoot reactive targets and that person and/or I doesn’t keep up their paperwork in a timely manner.

This changes some things beyond the obvious.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Wil Radford

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The left is agitating for a fight. They don’t care how bad it gets. Keep poking the bear long enough and you will get a fight. They want the fight to serve as the catalyst for the destruction of all civil rights expressed in the Constitution, and granted by God under Natural Law. Sickening how ignorant they are, mere “useful idiots”. They will be the ones screaming the loudest about their “rights”when they are being walked out to the execution wall.

Wil Radford
August 17, 2017
Comment to NJ Dems Have 20 Gun Control Bills Lined Up If Murphy Becomes Governor
[The USSR, Italy, Germany, China, and Cambodia all come to mind. When the “intellectuals” who pushed for the political change realized things weren’t turning out as they planned and started complaining the tyrants in power sent them to the gulags, firing squads, camps, and killing fields. This was because these people had some level of influence and hence were a threat to the tyrant’s power.

Those that advocate for the elimination of individual rights believe the conditions they bring about will only be hostile to their political foes and are often surprised when those very conditions they imagined are imposed upon them.

The proper role of government is to protect human rights. The further it strays from that domain the higher the risk of enabling extreme evil.

Be careful what you wish for. You may get it.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Kim Rhode

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The second amendment was put in there not just so we can go shoot skeet or go shoot trap. It was put in so we could defend our first amendment, the freedom of speech, and also to defend ourselves against our own government.

Kim Rhode
August 10, 2017
Gold Medal Shooter Takes Aim at Gun Control Supporters
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]

Epiphanies

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Epiphany (not the Cristian feast / celebration): a moment when you suddenly feel that you understand, or suddenly become conscious of, something that is very important to you.

They can be useful. When the world seems to be going utterly insane, and you wonder why it’s not all making sense, and you get an insight, a realization, that makes all the pieces fall into place. You gain clarity. Sometimes its an almost religious experience. It might be nothing more than the realization that… you are not alone in seeing what you see. The moment the little boys shouts out “But the emperor is naked!” and nobody in the emperor’s retinue is close enough to beat the kid into silence and word spreads.

Everyone has that point where the “obvious” is no longer “crazy” and becomes “true.”

A FOX news headlines shout “Charlottesville white supremacist rally blamed for 3 deaths, 35 injuries.” Oh no, that’s horrible! many exclaim.

Then you come to find out that two of them are from a crashing police helicopter. The third was from a guy driving through a crowd that was armed and violent, after the police not only failed to protect the marchers, but were actively helping the Antifa, and the government had done their best to deny their free speech rights. More here and elsewhere.

(short background: they applied for a rally permit, got shot down because of the content of their speech, went to court, got it reinstated. Come the time for the rally, they were not protected from the Antifa counter-protest, but actively herded through it, then the police vanished. The cops were, to all appearances, in collusion with the armed and violence Anti thugs trying to shut down a permitted and lawful free speech rally. I.i., they are obeying orders of their left-wing paymasters. Now questions are rising about the actual identity of the driver (false flag? in any case, the pieces presented as “known” are very inconsistent). All the violence was initiated, as usual, by the left. All the news headlines are misleading.

People are starting to notice, and suddenly go “waiiiittt a minute… maybe they are NOT being honest in their coverage!” and they start not believing anything the media says. And the more hysterical the media gets, the more they double down, the more obvious it becomes, the more people look at their friends at work and quietly go “do you believe any of this crap? No? Me neither.” The nod their heads at the HR meetings, and quietly think to themselves that it might be time to vote differently. And they hope, they pray, that it’s still not to late for votes to matter, because the next steps are really, really unpleasant for all concerned.

Quote of the day—Sarah Hoyt

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We women who grew up reading Heinlein are different.  We know that we are different, but know we are as capable as men of creating a future worth living in, and more important than men because only we can give birth to the future.

The women of feminist-offense can doubtlessly find something to complain about in everything Robert A. Heinlein – a man who loved women – wrote and said.  And I hope they enjoy it.  But only we Heinlein women are capable of giving birth to children who will take over the stars.

Sarah Hoyt
July 31, 2017
Robert A. Heinlein: The Man Who Loved Women
[Aside from some difficult to quantify genetic contribution, Robert Heinlein was probably a greater influence on my personal philosophy than anyone else in my life.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Sebastian

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Gun control has always been a weapon of the elite ruling classes to keep the masses in a state of subjugation. When all you have is the vote, you don’t really have much. Elites can manipulate the masses into voting the way elites want them to vote, or can outright manipulate the system (see Venezuela). An armed population will always have an actual say in how things are run.

Sebastian
August 8, 2017
You Don’t Say: Gun Control Disarms Poor
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Doug Casey

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I’ll speculate it was largely due to an intellectual factor, the invention of the printing press; and a physical factor, the widespread use of gunpowder. The printing press destroyed the monopoly the elites had on knowledge; the average man could now see that they were no smarter or “better” than he was. If he was going to fight them (conflict is, after all, what politics is all about), it didn’t have to be just because he was told to, but because he was motivated by an idea. And now, with gunpowder, he was on an equal footing with the ruler’s knights and professional soldiers.

Right now I believe we’re at the cusp of another change, at least as important as the ones that took place around 12,000 years ago and several hundred years ago. Even though things are starting to look truly grim for the individual, with collapsing economic structures and increasingly virulent governments, I suspect help is on the way from historical evolution. Just as the agricultural revolution put an end to tribalism and the industrial revolution killed the kingdom, I think we’re heading for another multipronged revolution that’s going to make the nation-state an anachronism. It won’t happen next month, or next year. But I’ll bet the pattern will start becoming clear within the lifetime of many now reading this.

Doug Casey
August 4, 2017
Doug Casey on the End of the Nation-State
[For more background on his thoughts regarding this topic see Doug Casey on Phyles.

I’ve been wondering, for about 30 years now, how the rapid changes in communication might affect government. What new forms of government might come about now that worldwide communication is essentially free and messages travel at the speed of light. It never really occurred to me that perhaps the nation state would evaporate. Casey points out another factor that affects the continuing viability of the nation state, cheap transportation.

Sure, I’ve read science fiction books where a planet would be owned by a corporation and was, in essence, an evil government. But Casey is talking about something different here. He talks about Neal Stephenson’s The Diamond Age and Snow Crash as possible examples.

I’ll have to think about it more.—Joe]

Quote of the day—David Hines @hradzka

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The problem with socialism isn’t that you run out of other people’s money. The problem with socialism is that *you run out of fucking food.*

David Hines @hradzka
Tweeted on August 4, 2017
[H/T email from Ry.

Examples of this are left as an exercise for the reader.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Robert Margulies

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Government is not civil: it is naked force. I have practiced medicine for 48 years. Government has not helped.

Robert Margulies
August 4, 2017
Comment to Interesting law suit
[I’m reminded of a George Washington quote.—Joe]

Quote of the day—David B. Kopel

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The close surveillance of gun owners and householders comports with the police tradition of keeping close tabs on many private activities. For example, the nation’s official year-end police report includes statistics like ‘Background and Motives for Girls’ Sexual Misconduct’. The police recorded 9,402 such incidents in 1985, and determined that 37.4 per cent of the girls had been seduced, and the rest had sex ‘voluntarily’. The two leading reasons for having sex voluntarily were ‘out of curiosity’ for 19.6 per cent, and ‘liked particular boy’, for 18.1 per cent. The fact that police keep records on sex is simply a reflection of their keeping an eye on everything, including guns. Every person is the subject of a police dossier.

David B. Kopel
1993
Japanese Gun Control
[Japan has extremely low rates of crimes committed using a gun. And, as you can guess from the details about sexual conduct of girls, they also have a police state. They visit every home twice a year. The confession rate of criminal suspects is 95%. And the police routinely engage in torture or illegal treatment.

If someone suggests we should implement Japanese type gun control in the U.S. let them know they can’t have the same “success” as Japan without a police state to back it up. Implementing a police state here would be “challenging”.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Ayn Rand

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Observe the paradoxes built up about capitalism. It has been called a system of selfishness (which, in my sense of the term, it is) — yet it is the only system that drew men to unite on a large scale into great countries, and peacefully to cooperate across national boundaries, while all the collectivist, internationalist, One-World systems are splitting the world into Balkanized tribes.

Capitalism has been called a system of greed — yet it is the system that raised the standard of living of its poorest citizens to heights no collectivist system has ever begun to equal, and no tribal gang can conceive of.

Capitalism has been called nationalistic — yet it is the only system that banished ethnicity, and made it possible, in the United States, for men of various, formerly antagonistic nationalities to live together in peace.

Capitalism has been called cruel — yet it brought such hope, progress and general good will that the young people of today, who have not seen it, find it hard to believe.

As to pride, dignity, self-confidence, self-esteem — these are characteristics that mark a man for martyrdom in a tribal society and under any social system except capitalism.

Ayn Rand
The Voice of Reason
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]

ATF on binary explosives

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I recently received an email from the ATF saying one of their bulletins, Safety and Security Information for Federal Explosives Licensees and Permittees, has been updated. Of particular interest was what they say about binary explosives (such as Tannerite):

ATF would like to remind those who manufacture, distribute, import, use, or store binary explosives of the vital importance of security safeguards for these materials. After a binary explosive is mixed, it is, by definition, an explosive and must be transported, used, and stored as an explosive. Whether the explosive materials are in the process of manufacture, in storage, or in use, we urge everyone to take all necessary measures to safeguard explosive materials and prevent them from falling into the hands of those who may use them in criminal or terrorist acts. We encourage all persons involved with binary explosives to report any suspicious behavior or unusual activity surrounding these materials to ATF and to local law enforcement authorities. Suspicious behavior may include a customer attempting to purchase large quantities of binary explosive materials while knowing little about the product. Unlike regulated explosives materials, ATF does not require persons to report the theft of precursor or binary explosive components. However, we request that everyone voluntarily report any theft or loss of these chemical explosive precursors to the local law enforcement authority and to the USBDC.


Note: A Federal explosives license is required to manufacture (mix) binary explosives for sale, distribution, or your own business use. Also, users of binary explosives must comply with their state and local explosives regulations regarding binary explosives and their use.

Just common sense advice. We can help avoid attempts at oppressive regulation if we watch out for bad guys ourselves.

Quote of the day—Robert Farago

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Gun ownership is an inherently political act. In fact, it’s a transformative political act. The more Americans who own guns, the safer our Constitutional republic will be. Without a shot fired.

Robert Farago
July 20, 2017
The Trace: ‘The NRA’s Campaign of Cultural Warfare is Working’
[Take a new shooter to the range, give them a great experience and save the republic.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Alan M. Gottlieb

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It was silly for Seattle to withhold this information, but we’re pretty certain why the city did it. The council was told that this tax could generate between $300,000 and a half-million dollars, but now it appears the city has collected just over $100,000, which is an embarrassing shortfall.

As a result the city has essentially lost money on this scheme because now they have to pay our attorney fees, plus a small penalty. On top of that, the city has lost tax revenue because one major gun dealer has moved out of the city and another has reported considerable sales losses. That is tax money the city will never realize.

Alan M. Gottlieb
SAF Executive Vice President
JUDGE FINDS AGAINST SEATTLE IN PRA CASE FILED BY SAF, MAGAZINE EDITOR
[Almost for certain, even without paying SAF lawyer fees, the city of Seattle lost money by creating a tax on guns.

But, it was never really about “revenue to provide broad-based benefits through research and prevention programs”. It was about raising the cost of exercising a specific enumerated right. They succeeded in driving sellers out of the city and encouraging legal buyers to travel out of the city.

They should be prosecuted.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Emily Miller‏ @EmilyMiller

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ALL AMERICANS can apply for DC gun carry permit, not just residents. Here’s link, but ignore the good reason part!

Emily Miller‏ @EmilyMiller
Tweeted on July 26, 2017
[Amazing. I started carrying a gun in the mid 1990s and DC not only prohibited carry, it also prohibited handgun possession unless the gun was registered with DC before 1976.

I still see the requirement to be registered and pay money to exercise what is acknowledged to be a specific enumerated right as an infringement of that right but it is a extreme improvement.

We have a lot of people to thank for this change, Alan Gura, CATO Institute, SAF, and the NRA are the most obvious but Emily Miller and her book were also significant contributors.

If you squint just a little you can see constitutional carry in DCs future.*—Joe]

* Yes. I know DC had constitutional carry for a few days three years ago (to the day of Emilly’s tweet) but it did not persist. This may not persist either but this time it is going to last more than a few days.

Quote of the day—Christopher Burg

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Some people might claim that the people being robbed aren’t innocent because they’ve been accused of a crime but civil asset forfeiture occurs before somebody has been found guilty of a crime, which is the problem. Under a justice system where one is supposedly innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt there is no justification for stealing an accused individual’s property. So, yes, Jeff Sessions announced that his department is going to be stealing from innocent people and that should have everybody up in arms.

Christopher Burg
July 19, 2017
Jeff Sessions Announces Justice Department Will Increase Theft
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]

Quote of the day—kam

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Without Central Banks this market wouldn’t exist. All the algorithms today are but spin off of linear regression. Boats rising with the tide.

Earnings can be replaced with Central Bank cash/credit, but not over the long run. And that day could be tomorrow, or in 10 years. Who could have thought that easy money would have created so many walking corpses.

kam
June 15, 2017
Comment to What Happens When the Machines Start Selling?
[H/T to Brett.

Who? I’m not sure about “walking corpses” being explicitly predicted but there were many people who thought it was a really bad idea.

The lessons learned in the next few years will be remembered for probably a generation or so before “the new kids on the block” believe they are smarter and/or times are different. The best fix would probably be when the lesson is visible world wide as burned out ruins of cities for governments to be prohibited from trying to “manage the economy”. But I put the odds at 50-50 that will happen on even one continent.—Joe]

Quote of the day—TexasTopCat

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The people pushing this law know that there will be no reduction in criminal violence, it will merely be one more group of people that will be denied civil rights and become unarmed victims of crime.

TexasTopCat
July 16, 2017
Comment to ‘Gun safety’ is not ‘gun control’: Letter to the editor
[The law being discussed is about “extreme risk protection” orders.

The questions I have are:

  1. If these people are so dangerous to themselves and/or others why are they still allowed to drive cars and/or possess a can of gasoline and a book of matches?
  2. Why are they not put in an institution, closely observed, and being treated?

Oh, that’s right. These are gun owners we are talking about. They are a special case. Any plausible, no matter how speculative, rationalization is sufficient justification to infringe upon their rights. And then, once they are no longer gun owners, there is nothing to fear about them.

As TexasTopCat articulates, nearly all the people pushing these laws know the law cannot possibly do what they say it will. It’s just an excuse to forcibly convert people who are more independent than they into a condition of more dependence.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Daniel Greenfield

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All the shocked media coverage of the latest acid attacks in London carefully tiptoe around the obvious issue. Acid attacks tend to involve immigrants or the children of immigrants. They’re a horrifying tactic that has been imported to the UK.

Acid attacks are one of those enriching benefits of diversity.

Instead of dealing with the obvious, the proposals push for “Drain cleaner control”. As if you can seriously prevent people from getting their hands on chemicals that don’t go well with the human face. After the triumphs of gun control and knife control, now it’s onward to drain cleaner control.

Acid attacks in London have climbed from 162 in 2012 to 454 last year.

We could talk about immigration. Or we can try to ban drain cleaner.

Daniel Greenfield
July 14, 2017
“Diversity” is Why London has Acid Attacks
[I expected that after gun and knife control they would started demanding either rock or stick control.

I was wrong, but it could still happen. Give them a few years. Intelligence has its limits but stupidity does not appear to have an upper bound.—Joe]