Category Archives: Freedom

It’s the whole point

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There seems to be some surprise and indignation at the idea that the IRS would be used as a weapon against political opponents. I don’t understand.

First; what did you expect from a communist administration? Really. Can you say, “DUUUH!”? Second; the entire tax code is a weapon of political power. Always has been. It is designed to nudge you into behaviors you’d not be engaged in if you were left to your own devices, and to nudge you out of other behaviors. The very concept of a progressive tax is a political weapon, designed to substantially reduce wealth creation and accumulation. Raising revenue is far down the list, or it is only an ancillary function of the tax code and the IRS. I could on and on, but you should have gotten the point by the time you received your very first paycheck.

The specific targeting of individuals and groups is nothing new at all either. The Clintons were famous for it. Rush Limbaugh has been getting audited every year for many years. The list is longer than this whole blog since its beginning.

A “Gosh, we’re sorry” will change nothing. The only solution, assuming anyone wants one, is to abolish the tax code, abolish the IRS and go to a single digit flat tax. Otherwise quit your bitching– this is exactly what you’ve been asking for. Begging for, actually. Don’t bother pretending to be surprised– it makes you look even more stupid.

Quote of the day—Mike Adams

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3D printing is a technology of liberty, and its rise is now unstoppable. The control freaks in Washington will, of course, try to ban certain types of data or criminalize certain types of CAD plans (i.e. criminalizing data), but their efforts will be useless. They are obsolete. 3D printing turns information into physical reality, and information is ridiculously easy to smuggle anywhere at the speed of light.

Mike Adams
May 10, 2013
Fabrication power to the People! Why no government can stop the 3D printing revolution
[Adams and many others exaggerate the liberty aspect.

Yes. Information is extremely easy to smuggle. But there are a lot of limitations to what can be built. I also believe there are ways governments could essentially put an end to the untraceability of printed guns.

I expect that within a year or two governments will attempt forbidding the sale of printers that do not have a means to trace parts back to the printer. With 4473 type “registration” the government could then trace a printed item back to the purchaser of the printer.

There could even be attempts at full blown registration of 3-D printers. The current excitement on both sides of the gun control issue will then be considerably dampened.

From talking to people that have connections into the industry it appears the industry is aware of such potential and as a group tend to have high end tailor-made Wookie suits. This could make things more challenging for the government.

We live in interesting times.—Joe]

Quote of the day—My Lawyer

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After looking at the letters you pointed to I would recommend that you take down any files you have posted and let the commodity jurisdiction request process take its course.

My Lawyer (who wishes to remain anonymous)
May 9, 2013
In regards to the files linked to in this post.
[It’s an interesting state of affairs when lawyers don’t want it to be known they are involved.—Joe]

Faceless bureaucrats, not blue helmeted elk

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I spent some time investigating ITAR in regards to the files for 3-D printing of weapons. It’s interesting stuff. The implications are huge.

I am not a lawyer although one or more of my sources for this post are. But none claim expertise in this area because it is such a specialized field. One source did claim “I know something about this”. The following may be a too broad interpretation of the law and the legal experts in the field will have to give us a more factual read.

The U.S. Department of State Directorate of Defense Trade Controls is the agency we have concerns about. Their mission is stated as:

The U.S. Government views the sale, export, and re-transfer of defense articles and defense services as an integral part of safeguarding U.S. national security and furthering U.S. foreign policy objectives. The Directorate of Defense Trade Controls (DDTC), in accordance with 22 U.S.C. 2778-2780 of the Arms Export Control Act (AECA) and the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) (22 CFR Parts 120-130), is charged with controlling the export and temporary import of defense articles and defense services covered by the United States Munitions List (USML).

The documents of particular interest in figuring out the implications appear to be these two:

  1. SUBCHAPTER M—INTERNATIONAL TRAFFIC IN ARMS REGULATIONS: PART 120—PURPOSE AND DEFINITIONS
  2. Title 22: Foreign Relations: PART 121—THE UNITED STATES MUNITIONS LIST

One of my sources ran up against ITAR due to being an NRA Firearms instructor. The NRA recently sent out a notice to instructors telling them not to provide training to foreign students. This is because, according to the first document above:

§ 120.9 Defense service.
(a) Defense service means:
(1) The furnishing of assistance (including
training) to foreign persons,
whether in the United States or abroad
in the design, development, engineering,
manufacture, production, assembly,
testing, repair, maintenance,
modification, operation, demilitarization,
destruction, processing or use of
defense articles;
(2) The furnishing to foreign persons
of any technical data controlled under
this subchapter (see § 120.10), whether
in the United States or abroad; or
(3) Military training of foreign units
and forces, regular and irregular, including
formal or informal instruction
of foreign persons in the United States
or abroad or by correspondence
courses, technical, educational, or information
publications and media of
all kinds, training aid, orientation,
training exercise, and military advice.
(See also § 124.1.)

In the last few months the Department of State is taking a much broader interpretation of this and other sections of U.S. code and applying it to gun owners, manufacturers, and instructors. There are two hypotheses for the change. One is that John Kerry is driving the change. The other is that is part of what Obama was talking about when he said he was working on gun control “under the radar”. The failure to get any gun control through Congress could have inflamed him enough that he sent out the word to find ways to punish us for our success in blocking him.

The law was intended to apply to people selling and providing real militarily useful products and training to our Cold War enemies. Things like night vision equipment and training on tank warfare or repairing high performance jet engines were valid things to be concerned about. And even though rifles that were particularly well suited for winning NRA High Power competition and training for doing better at USPSA matches could have military application the people at the Department of State ignored that. They were concerned with the nation states of the world that declared us their enemies rather than the “right-wing NRA domestic terrorists” who taught Home Firearm Safety classes a few times a year.

The law was written before the Internet and personal computers existed and some of the concepts that made sense then are absurd now. In the mid ‘90s we had the battle over encryption technology being declared an export restricted munitions. This was ultimately decided in favor of freedom under the First Amendment (the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in the Bernstein case and the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in the Junger case). I don’t see why the present issue wouldn’t fall under the same protection and it might. But being right and being able to fight it to the end in court are two different things.

My sources seem to think the biggest concern is that all firearms instructors, “Mom and Pop” FFLs, and of course libertarian college students with a mischievous streak (borrowing and mangling a phrase from Paul Barrett) will be required to pay the $2000+/year license fees to register with the Department of State. This would be even though there was no technology, products, or training being exported. Just that you’re “in the business” could make you subject to the restrictions and require that you register with the Department of State and pay the annual fee. The government wouldn’t have to directly “stop the signal” in it’s entirety. There a million different signals and they only have to make examples of a few people and most others would want to avoid the hassle and “would lead more compliant lifestyles”. There is very little profit to be made in being a martyr for the cause. The 3-D printer issue could just be noise and a distraction to a much bigger concern.

Ultimately the courts and Congress can probably get most of this straightened out on the side of freedom. If they don’t freedom will be lost to faceless bureaucrats not “blue helmeted elk” that you can shoot at as they go door-to-door confiscating your guns.

In the mean time an enraged narcissist who didn’t get his way with the legislature could conceivably apply the regulations to people posting YouTube videos on how to grip your pistol.

Can you say…

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… “Streisand Effect”?

I knew you could.

Details of the topic are here, here, and get it while it lasts here.

Update: Over 45% of my entry page views in the last hour have been for the 3-D printer files.

CantStopTheSignal

Can’t stop the signal with crypto hashes

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Following the lead of Robb and Barron I’m hosting the files to produce firearms on a 3-D printer.

One of the risks to “the signal that cannot be stopped” is that the signal could be subtly corrupted without the possessor knowing. Therefore I am computing and including the hashes of the files so that you can verify it has not been corrupted. Of course someone could corrupt the hashes posted on this blog post to match the corrupted files but I have saved copies of the hashes in a secure location for later comparison. Contact me if there is a concern the hashes have been tampered.

To compute and verify the hashes I used File Checksum Tools (free and quite functional).

The Defense Distributed file pack is here. Hashes:

  • MD5: F4784E3C4C6B6D851C3F2CFD8579B2A6
  • SHA-1: 3B733B62D8D3B08DE9BFFB94CDD308C18BF09BB0
  • SHA-256: 8B3247FE5145E87ABA5B91A6DFCA26193E5472C60AF279223CE5A92611A24D31

The Liberator is here (removed upon the advice of My Lawyer). Hashes:

  • MD5: 26DE1E830AC58C078650B69C4D34602E
  • SHA-1: AA33BC73264B80B87D21FF8D56DE02EAECDA3574
  • SHA-256: 763927D34CE89B550A118E3522181FC434632D6D6188CB82E1612096A613C4AA

Only 12% of those surveyed had a clue…

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…that gun homicides are down. Way down. Via theBlaze.

The majority of Americans apparently believe that “gun violence” is on the rise. This is because there are people in high places who want us to believe things that aren’t true.

But as Tam put it, and I paraphrase;
“Even if every other gun owner on the planet tried to murder someone last night, I didn’t. So leave me alone.”

The right to keep and bear arms is not conditional. It is based on sound, moral principles, which do not change with the weather or with any other circumstances as some would have us think.

Either way (that is to say; using their own false logic or using moral principle) the anti-rights forces lose the argument when people pay attention. The other takeaway here is that lies, even big, transparent lies, do seem to work somewhat, at least for a while.

My alternate quote of the day – Me

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In comments here;

“The bottom line is; we have authoritarians and anti-authoritarians living in the same society. Each is attempting to foster its separate, incompatible doctrine. Neither can afford to tolerate the other.”

It’s more like we’re living as separate societies in the same country, and that we have incompatible world views rather than “doctrines”. Neither world view can tolerate the other, because one example is often capable of poisoning, or infecting, a whole lot of people.

The authoritarian’s fantasy of a glorious regime can be highly threatened by one “upstart” who simply will not be intimidated or fall in line. The ideal of liberty in the minds of anti-authoritarians can be poisoned by the emergence of gangs as they infiltrate the political and media infrastructures.

So far in this post I’ve treated authoritarians and anti-authoritarians as separate but equal, but there is of course a major difference– The anti-authoritarian (libertarian) can best further his goals by being straight forward and honest, while the authoritarian must use deception, fear, anger and doubt.

One is honest and motivated by love while the other is a lying sack of shit motivated by hate trying to appear good and reasonable only as a means of getting its greedy way. One is honest with himself to the greatest extent possible while the other must avoid reality or be exposed and discredited. One builds and provides while the other is a deadly parasite, and yet one can be seen as mocking the other for its selfish goals.

Which are you? Most people are confused on the matter, believing themselves to be one when they are the other. Further; you can at times actually be doing the right things for the wrong reasons. Feints within feints within feints. What a tangled web we weave.

You can dress the conflict up in millions of words, appealing to various motivations and emotions, but it is still that simple, age-old conflict between love and hate, or liberty and tyranny.

Each sees itself as a liberator, too, and again it is because the mere existence of the other is a threat to its own existence. One is poison to the other and so it longs to be free of that poison.

How many ways can we say the same things? Millions and millions and millions. We fool ourselves into playing the same deadly game over and over.

Still more on communications

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I got an e-mail today off our web site, complaining that we’re too hard to contact. He went on and on about it. He wants to spend money. He was asking several questions that are answered on the web site. His message did not include his phone number or address, just the e-mail.

My e-mail reply was bounced back to me by his mail server.

This reminds me of the woman who always hooks up with scum-of-the-Earth men, who abuse her, and she then ends up hating men, the Progressive who advocates massive restrictions on commerce and then complains about businesses colluding with politicians, and the gun control advocate who points to Chicago’s crime rate as a reason why we need more gun restrictions.

Methinks thy complaints be self fulfilling.

Who will they punish now?

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Remember when the control freaks announced they wanted background checks for the sale of explosive powders after the Boston Bombing? This, of course, was aimed at gun owners. Not real terrorists because real terrorist could easily find substitutes. Gun owners could not.

We now know the explosive powder the villains used:

BostonBombersPowderSource

Yup. That’s right. They disassembled fireworks and put that powder in the pressure cookers.

So now I wonder… Who will the control freaks seek to punish now? Will they want background checks on anyone that buys fireworks?

Never mind. Those were rhetorical questions. The Boston Bombers (WeaponsMan calls them “Speed Bump” and “Flashbang”—I like!) were just an excuse. Gun owners are the real targets and it will still be the gun owners they seek to control.

Quote of the day—Josh Horwitz

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They espouse an insurrectionist, anti-democratic philosophy, and they have a lot of people on their board that, to put it lightly, you wouldn’t want in polite company.

Josh Horwitz
Director of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence
May 3, 2013
NRA gathering proves a big draw amid gun-control debate
[I would like to suggest that Mr. Horwitz read the Declaration of Independence and U.S. Constitution. The Second Amendment is specifically for insurrection in the case of tyranny and we do not have a democratic government. We have a republic.

And as far as polite company is concerned I would not spend time with the likes of Horwitz. I’ve spent time with several different board members of the NRA and I found them very pleasant.

At every opportunity Horwitz attempts to infringe up on my specific enumerated right to keep and bear arms. I’ve spent nearly 20 years as a gun rights advocate and I am no more inclined to exchange pleasantries with him than I would if I were civil rights advocate in a mixed race marriage and he were the head of the KKK.—Joe]

Quote of the ages

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“‘Love thy enemy’ does not mean kiss him and invite him into your country. It means stand up and fight, with grace.”
— Roy Masters, “Advice Line” April 29, 2013

He was speaking of what he refers to as the Dalai Lama’s cowardice in dealing with the Chinese, but the quote rang out to me as with regard to radical Islam. Years ago in Idaho, we had a Neo Nazi group calling themselves the Church of Jesus Christ, Christian Aryan Nations. They were racist socialist revolutionaries who managed to use a bomb or two, causing some property damage. They were rooted out of Idaho for the most part, and good riddance. I didn’t like some of the methods used, but good riddance. They weren’t from around here, and they figured that since most people in Idaho were white, their white power, anti-Semite nonsense would be tolerated. They figured wrong. I bring them up only as a comparison to the even more virulent and dangerous radical Islamists, who’ve been allowed into this country, often welcomed with open arms. If we had the same recognition of bigotry, promotion of violence and power-lust regarding the Islamists that we had with the Aryan Nations we’d be raiding certain Mosques and other organizations in the U.S., but violent bigotry that hides behind Christianity is a vastly more convenient target than the exact same violent bigotry that hides behind Islam. The difference is of course a result of political subterfuge and we can’t fight it because we’re short on grace.

It’s like our societal immune system is degraded, leaving us open to all forms of infection.

Quote of the day—Harry Binswanger

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Statistics about how often gun-related crimes occur in the population is no evidence against you. That’s collectivist thinking. The choices made by others are irrelevant to the choices that you will make.

People understand the wrongness of collectivist thinking in other cases. They would indignantly reject the idea that a member of a given racial group is under suspicion because 10 percent of those with his skin color commit crimes. But the individualist approach also applies to gun ownership and concealed carrying of guns: group ratios offer no evidence about what a given individual will do.

Harry Binswanger
January 1, 2013
With Gun Control, Cost Benefit Analysis Is Amoral
[Or as Tam said:

Where the hell do you get off thinking you can tell me I can’t own a gun? I don’t care if every other gun owner on the planet went out and murdered somebody last night. I didn’t. So piss off.

A significant and unique component of western civilization is the concept of the individual apart from the tribe/village/collective. This gave us the greatest increase in our standard of living, wealth, and life expectancy in the shortest time the world has ever known. Yet many people want to revert back to a form of society more appropriate for stone age tribes that frequently, when applied to modern conditions, has resulted in brutal dictators, mass starvation, and death camps.

Even more interesting is that in the last 100 years the brutal dictators, mass starvation, and death camps only occurred in societies with gun control (see also Innocents Betrayed). So when the collectivists both insist we join their collective and that we give up our guns I think there are only two questions of, mostly incidental, interest in asking:

  1. Are they evil?
  2. Or are they “only” enablers of evil?

Regardless of whether you bother to ask the questions your response should be congruent with Tam’s.—Joe]

International Worker’s Day violence

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It must be in their nature to be violent:

 

Great. Just great. I work at what is essentially “ground zero” in Seattle. These communist and socialist scum don’t help their cause with me any by doing this.

Quote of the day—Lyle

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The answer is pretty simple. It can be found in the basic tenet (which is a lie) of communism; “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.”

You get more stuff by asserting your need. You assert your need by asserting your status as victim. Victims need perpetrators from which the goodies are coerced. And so it’s very simple; if you’re in the business of looting, you go where there is the most wealth to be looted. That’s the U.S.

Lyle
April 29, 2013
Comment to Quote of the day—Bill Maher
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Phil

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The hatred of folks who vote for civil rights will continue until “full progress” is reached. In other news, water is wet.

Phil
April 23, 2013
Here It Comes
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]

Another joke comes to life

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Today’s sarcastic jokes are often tomorrow’s real life. And here we are once again. No doubt, many gun owners said after the event at the Boston Marathon, or thought to themselves sarcastically; “I guess we’ll have to ban pressure cookers then. That’ll stop future bombings.” Well, it turns out that a company halted sales of pressure cookers after the Boston bombing.

Sure; it’s not an actual ban imposed by out-of-control law makers. They halted sales of pressure cookers voluntarily for a while “out of respect”. You may think; “What’s the big deal, Lyle? Jeeze.” and to that I say that this is quite insane, and that this sort of insanity is rampant. It is promoted.

It’s a cooking implement, for Pete’s sake! Put out some flowers if you want to show respect, or, you know, actually reach out and offer help to the victims and their families? Ever thought of that? Hmm?

What if someone used a pair of crutches to commit a crime? You going to halt the sale of crutches “out of respect”? Idiots. Hmm…you know it would be entirely possible to make a bomb using a fire extinguisher as the containment vessel. Let’s ban those then. Same goes for guns – we restrict the tools of self protection in response to crime. What a bunch of blithering idiots we’re becoming.

This is yet another in a very long line of cases of punishing the innocent for the actions of the guilty. They punished the whole city of Boston too, with that lock-down. I’m disgusted that there wasn’t a city-wide defiance of that order. Such cowards as we are, such zombies, maybe we deserve to be slaves.

Quote of the day—Dan

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Bad people in power WILL NOT STOP. They will continue to do bad things to us until we stop them…. and stopping them will require the use of force. All other discussion on the matter is window dressing.

Dan
April 21, 2013
Comment to Quote of the day—Senator Charles Schumer
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]

Ain’t it so

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This does sort of put it into perspective.

Quote of the day—Tim Wadsworth

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There’s an overall increase in sense of well-being that comes with engaging in sex more frequently, but there’s also this relative aspect to it. Having more sex makes us happy, but thinking we are having more sex than other people makes us even happier.

Tim Wadsworth
April 2013
Keeping up with the Joneses? Having more sex than your friends makes you happier, study finds
[Well duh!

I just hope no tax money was used to do his study. But it’s difficult to imagine any private investors sponsoring such a thing so it probably many taken at the point of a gun.

There is in interesting angle about this. People are made happy if they are better off than their neighbors. Or, put another way, people are less happy if their neighbors are better off than them. The progressives/communists prey upon this unhappiness and offer to bring the haves down to the level of the have-nots.

So when the communists get their way and everyone has equal material possessions and people are still not equally happy because of disparate quality or quantity of sex what will they advocate for then? Will people with super model appearances be required to “share” with the “less fortunate”?—Joe]