Category Archives: Freedom

Pure plutonium

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That’s a John Ross term, for something that “nukes” the enemies of freedom. Tonight’s episode of the Glenn Beck program is pure plutonium. The fastest hour you’ll spend this week is the March 13 episode of the Glenn Beck program.

Call in sick, take a vacation, whatever it takes; watch this episode. Hang on every word. Even the commercials, most of them anyway, will have you up, out of your seat. It’s on theBlazeTV.

THIS IS THE (new) MAIN STREAM MEDIA, or medium. If you are not a subscriber, you are missing out. I don’t care who you are, you are missing out. They have a free trial membership, so you have no excuse. Support them.

Tonight’s guests include one Starr Parker. I’ve read two of her books. The other guests are very good also, and it is clear that they love each other. You will get hope from this.

If there was any doubt before tonight, there is no longer any doubt– Glenn Beck is slated for death. Keep an eye out. I think he knows this and he can take care of himself, but keep an eye on it.

This is what can happen when you own your own network, and it’s beautiful. What you may not know are the things Glenn could NOT say when he was on someone else’s network. That’s a story unto itself, but I digress. Go watch, and for that matter spend your sick day, or your vacation day, watching this whole week’s worth of shows.

It’s is an addendum to Joe’s latest post.

To you Progressives out there, and you know who you are, weep. You cannot escape the truth forever. We are WATCHING YOU.

Unintended consequences

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Or; Action, Reaction, Synthesis
Or; Thesis, Antitheses, Synthesis
Or; “I’m not sure that it means what you think it means.”

Refusing to sell to government entities that attack the second amendment is fairly popular, it certainly has made good press, and I agree wholeheartedly with the sentiment, but I’m not sure people are thinking things through.

Oskar Schindler was a card-carrying member of the Nazi Party, and he had extensive business dealings with the Nazis. Just keep that in mind.

Let’s say we all refuse to sell to any government entity that even infringes (literally; “touches around the fringes”) on second amendment rights. That would be all of them. Just keep that in mind; we are talking ONLY about degrees of violation when we say that New York or Chicago is bad and OUR jurisdiction is…what…a bit less egregious? Or does your state and local .gov commit zero infringements? So we all refuse to sell to any government entities. What will be their obvious reaction, for 100% sure and for certain? Taxpayer funded, government owned munitions factories of course, with union workers, full benefits and a retirement plan, and now they are, one way or another, competing with the private industry. Good luck with that. OR, you know all it takes is for one individual company to sell to your worst violators, they will become the next General Electric, i.e. a pet company for the tyrants, funneling their profits via multiple channels into the Democrat Party. They’ll arrange it that way just for that purpose. It’s what Progressives do.

Quote of the day—Clayton E. Cramer

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Trying to argue abstract concepts like right and wrong or constitutionality with most Americans is a waste of time. Few believe in right or wrong, and fewer still have any conception of the Constitution as a contract between the generations.

Clayton E. Cramer
January 18, 2013
Comment to Does ‘Gun Show Loophole’ Actually Result in Gun Crime?–Statistics do not point to criminals using this tactic.
[I can’t say that I disagree. But to agree with him sucks me into depression and despair. If right and wrong are beyond most Americans then are not also facts and fallacies, truth and falsity beyond them as well? Unfortunately I have substantial data to back up that claim.

See also Philosophy: Who Needs It (The Ayn Rand Library Vol. 1). A case can be made, as Rand does, that what Cramer states as fact can be explained by the lack of sound philosophy being taught to our children for the last 50 or more years.—Joe]

Conspiracy to infringe

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At the “urging” of ubu52 I finally decided to elaborate a bit on an edgy meme I’ve been pushing for quite some time. I’ve been saying something to the effect that people advocating for or enforcing anti-gun laws should be tried, convicted, and punished under 18 USC 241 and/or 18 USC 242. These are, essentially, laws that prohibit conspiracy to infringe the rights of others which are secured by the Constitution.

I’ve long known that those laws are not going to be enforced against anyone anytime soon. I’m pretty sure there are even some laws that give immunity to government officials under many circumstances.

I don’t care.

I’m taking a long term view of things. There have been many instances throughout history where activities that were perfectly legal or at least accepted by all “right thinking folks” became politically out of favor. Then, as long as the statute of limitations had not expired, prosecutors found pre-existing laws to enforce and punish those who engaged in the activity. The most famous example of this is probably the Nuremberg Trials.

Examples exist in our country too.

Lynching blacks 75 years ago was technically illegal but the risk of prosecution and conviction was pretty low. Decades later some of those people were convicted of murder.

The perpetrators of the internment of Japanese were never brought to justice but, decades later, payments were made to those people who were put into the camps.

Ubu52’s point in regard to people advocating for gun control is:

But they should have the freedom to do that, right? This is the USA, isn’t it? Joe is saying that they shouldn’t have the freedom to do whatever they want. I think he’s wrong.

At first glance, in this context, I’m pretty certain nearly everyone would agree with her. But, in todays context, what would be the legal response to advocating riots, lynching blacks, and assassinating politicians? Anyone doing that would be running a serious risk of prosecution if they or people they influenced began conspiring to implement some of those ideas.

The bottom line is that there are, and rightly so, limits to free speech. Those limits in general are, in our country and our time*, set at the point where someone else’s rights are in imminent danger of being violated. The classic “your right to swing your fist ends at my nose” says it more succinctly and less abstractly.

Think about that. The limits of free speech are the point at which someone else’s rights are in imminent danger of being violated.

You see where I’m going now, right?

This is a very clear logical path to prosecuting anti-gun people. Those that object to this logic either don’t regard being able to keep and bear arms as a “real right” or they are being logically inconsistent with those limits to free speech in existing law.

I’m not a lawyer but I’ve read enough court rulings to know that judges will almost always give at least lip service to logic. They may have to fabricate a logic scaffolding that only Rube Goldberg could admire but they will rule in a “logical” manner.

A logically consistent case can, and should, be made that advocating for the restriction of the right to keep and bear arms is no different than advocating for riots and lynching. People can and do die because they were denied their specific enumerated right to keep and bear arms. It is directly foreseeable that people will be injured because of people abusing their right to free speech.

The logic in my example is far, far less torturous that hundreds of court rulings. It could happen.

What I am trying to do with my “That will come up at your trial,”** quip is to change the culture such that it becomes possible to regard the deliberate infringement of other rights as a punishable offense. Yes, it’s sort of twisted in that I am advocating the restriction of one right to protect another right. It is not “twisted” in the sense that restricting the right to some sorts of speech it does not put people in danger of life or serious bodily harm such as restrictions on the right to keep and bear arms does.

Of course no judge today, or probably even ten years from now, will rule in such a manner. But I want the seeds planted. I want people to ask, “Why aren’t these people violating the law?” “Why aren’t these people being prosecuted?” I want the anti-gun people to pause and think about it.

I want to see the day, perhaps 20 years from now, when people are brought to trial for the crimes they are committing today. By the advocating the infringement of the specific enumerated right to keep and bear arms they caused the foreseeable, needless, injuries and deaths of tens of thousands and they should be brought to justice for that.

Update: L. Neil Smith points out we could, literally, have our own Nuremberg Trials in the U.S.

*Kevin links to a fascinating post which ties into this topic. It makes you think about other times and places if you are interested in a much bigger picture. For example, imagine a cultural shift where the advocating of the right to keep and bear arms is a punishable offense.
**Thanks to Sean for that line even if it was in a completely different context.

More on phonetics

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As often happens, I was talking to a customer over a poor cellular connection today. We have to exchange a lot of data to complete an order. He’s spelling the name of his street.

“Wait; that’s A, T, T as in alpha tango tango?” I say to confirm.
“No, it’s hotel echo papa”
“Wow!” I said “I really got that wrong” and I’m thinking to myself, “Bam! We’re home free– this guy knows standard phonetics.” Without it, we’d have had a hell of a frustrating time.

So, Young Grasshopper; learn your Standard Phonetics.

I’m still amazed and disgusted that most cop shops have their own systems, which makes it more difficult because for one, they don’t always use words that all sound completely different from one another, and too, if you know Standard Phonetics, their retarded cop phonetics don’t sound familiar and it therefore takes longer to comunicate. Moron phonetics.

Learning the standard system is easy. There are only twenty six of them, and as it happens, each one starts with a different letter of the alphabet (fancy that) so it’s really easy. It’s an international system, and most pilots, military and ham operators already know it hands down. Whaterya waitin’ for?

Practice. For example, if I look to my left on my desk, I can read off in my mind, “Hotel Papa…Delta echo sierra kilo julliette echo tango.” Stuff like that. Road signs, what have you. This should be taught in school, except for the fact that kids should know it before they get to school.

On a similar note; use text on your phone when the signal is too poor to use the more bandwidth-hogging voice communication. If you have only one bar on the s-meter it still works like a charm whereas vioce communication is two steps below impossible. I explained that to my daughter a while back, and was surprized that she hadn’t thought of it. I’d though it would have been obvious even to a teen-aged school girl– a few dew drops of bits verses a tsunami/torrent of bits, you know.

Quote of the day—Ned Crabb

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As one who came to America from a socialist country at the age of 18, I find it terrifying that elected officials would challenge the legitimacy of rights granted by our Constitution.

When I moved here those many years ago, I was promised my freedom by a Bill of Rights unlike any document ever written previously. It was a liberating experience.

Yet today, I once again feel threatened and intimidated by my government. I implore our elected officials to put emotion aside and ponder the consequences of restricting people’s right to own guns. If there is no regard for those rights, they will be lost forever.

To me as an immigrant, this issue isn’t about guns. It’s about freedom. We can argue all day over statistics and theories, but the real issue is our liberty. Using untruths about something to get it banned or restricted is disingenuous and ignores the rights of all Americans.

Ned Crabb
March 5, 2013
An immigrant’s perspective on the gun control debate
[That should be “rights guaranteed by our Constitution.” But other than that I like what he has to say and his perspective from which to say it.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Alan Gottlieb

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They should take a day off and visit the monuments at Lexington and Concord, and reflect on what prompted those colonists to stand their ground. It was the first time in American history that the government moved to seize arms and ammunition from its citizens, and it went rather badly for the British.

Beneath the surface many Americans are convinced that we may be approaching a point when the true purpose of the Second Amendment is realized.

Alan Gottlieb
February 5, 2013
Firearms ban also attacks the First Amendment
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]

Letter to my representative

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“Regarding the gun issue (and all issues really); We who advocate liberty are getting tired of reacting to the Left’s latest outrages. Shouldn’t they be forced to react to our “outrages”? In that spirit, I call for a bill removing all firearm restrictions on the state level, and for ordering all state and local law enforcement to prevent any federal gun law enforcement in the state. In other words, uphold and protect the constitution you’re all sworn to uphold and protect.

How’s THAT for an “outrage”? Let’s see the leftists go nuts trying to pick that one apart, and get them to feel lucky if WE only get half of OUR way this time through.

See how this works?.

Sincerely,
[Me]”

Not that it’ll have a whelk’s chance in a supernova of doing any good. We’re dealing with Republicans after all. But it has to be said, if for no other reason than to be able to say we told them so, to give them a chance to do the right thing while they still have a chance.

What’s wrong with this picture…

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…is what’s wrong with society. You all have gotten some version this spam e-mail, usually from a .ru domain;

“You know, they are so many people in the world, but some of them are alone, because they didn’t find their halfs yet, as it is so hard.
If you are alone and want to find your love, you can write me and we’ll start communicating. I’m alone and looking for a good man, who will give me his love and care. Who knows, maybe we can fill up our lonely hearts with love.”

If you’re looking for someone else to make you whole, you’re looking in the wrong place. If you want to be wanted, if you desire to be desired, if you need to be needed, you are part of the problem.

I cringed when one my many nephews said, right after he’d been divorced within a year or two of being married, that he’d found this other woman, and how great she was, and how they were meant for each other and he knew it because of some mundane coincidence or other. The ink on the divorce papers was still drying. I didn’t know what to say at the time, but he was running from one hell-of-his-own-devising and straight into another.

No, Young Grasshopper; if you’re not whole, or complete already, no one else can make you whole. If you’re searching for someone else to make you whole, you’re looking for love in all the wrong places. You’ll be let down, because getting what you want, the way you want it, is impossible. You’ll feel betrayed, because what you thought you had was something you can never have. This is the stuff of murder, of self destruction and suicide. It’s what’s wrong with our whole society.

Those in government (and gangs) know just enough about this to take advantage of it. We look to them for “salvation” of one kind or another when all they have to offer is entrapment. They want to own you in the same way you want to own someone else, or be owned by someone else. They want you dependent on them in the same way you want to depend on someone else, or you want someone dependent on you. They want you to need them in the same way you need other people, or you want other people to need you. This is the stuff of mass destruction, war and mass death.

That word we throw around so much in America, Independence, I am only just realizing, has a far deeper meaning than I’d previously suspected, and I think it is extremely important.

None of this stuff is new, and so these words aren’t mine. It’s as old as the hills, and yet we fall for this trap over and over.

Quote of the day—Rivrdog

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Do NOT be deluded into thinking that this push for gun control is about CRIME control. It isn’t, it’s about removing the guns from ALL of the society so as to make way for an uncontested dictatorship.

The only thing we can’t know yet is how benevolent the dictatorship might or might not be. In other words, will our enslavement be easy or harsh.

Also, do not be deluded that we aren’t already in the fight. The line between us being considered as dissidents exercising our rights and the putative dictatorship considering us insurgents is but a line in the sand, and the blowing wind will soon cover that line.

Rivrdog
February 17, 2013
Comment to Quote of the day—Nicholas James Johnson
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]

Collective identity

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One shouldn’t be surprised, shocked, or indignant that leftists claim “We are all Chris Dorner.”

Taken out of context his claims of injustice sound credible and if the claims were correct I can understand his rage and could even let pass a statement of “We are all Chris Dorner”. But he murdered innocent people who had nothing to do with his complaints against the Los Angeles police department. He, an individual, did this. He did this to innocent individuals.

People on the left have a mindset bordering on and many times crossing well into a personality disorder such that they cannot readily distinguish between themselves and others who share some or most of their beliefs. “Individual” is a term that, in their mind, translates into “not one of mine”. This is why they are confused by and ignore the concepts put forth in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

This is why they speak of a “right to health care”, a “right to a job”, and even “freedom from want“. Individuals, for all intents and purposes, do not or should not exist outside of the collective. Leftists cannot easily distinguish between their “one true collective” and themselves. And the collective should care for itself just as we believe an individual should care for itself and their immediate family. Those outside the collective or belonging to a different collective are to be shunned if they are no consequence. If they impede its objectives they should be reeducated, put in mental institutions, or disposed of.

Dorner did not view “the collective” that supposedly wronged him as individuals. The families of supposedly racist police officers and of his lawyer were just as deserving of punishment as the primary actors who perpetrated the injustices upon him. In his mind all members of a collectives, either his or of another, are equivalent.

The leftist collective identifies Dorner as one of theirs and hence “We are all Chris Dorner” makes perfect sense in their mentally disturbed universe. There are tens of millions of examples in the 20th century where leftists used violence to dispose of “not one of mine.” That leftists identify with him and cheered him on should only be a surprise to those that do not understand the mind of the leftist and/or are ignorant of history.

Quote of the day—Bernardine Dohrn

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There’s no way to be committed to non-violence in one of the most violent societies that history has ever created. I’m not committed to non-violence in any way.

Bernardine Dohrn
In the 2002 documentary film The Weather Underground. Get the movie from Amazon here.
[From the Wikipedia entry:

Dohrn with ten other SDS members associated with the RYM issued, on June 18, 1969, a sixteen-thousand-word manifesto entitled, “You Don’t Need a Weatherman to Know Which Way the Wind Blows” in New Left Notes.

…

The manifesto stated that “the goal [of revolution] is the destruction of US imperialism and the achievement of a classless world: world communism.”

Leftists know their agenda can only be implemented with violence. Government is violence and the threat of violence. They wish to use government to create their utopia. To advocate non-violence and have a leftist philosophy is a contradiction. To allow people not of the government to have the means to resist government is to allow their idyllic future to be denied.

The murdering, anti-gun, pro-leftist, ex-cop, from Los Angeles who was killed this week is just one in a long line of his type.—Joe]

Random thought of the day

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The First Amendment guarantees freedom of association. This is an obstacle in enabling “common sense gang laws”. If New York treated the First Amendment like they do the Second Amendment then anti-gang legislation would include the following:

No new social organizations having more than seven members would be legal. Existing organizations of eight to ten members would be still be legal but no more than seven members could be in the same room at any one time. Existing organizations of greater than ten member would have the option of moving out of state or turning themselves into the police for Soylent Green feedstock.

Freedom shall be infringed

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Via a tweet from Barron.

As Lyle has pointed out many times before the left has their “shall not be infringed” issue with abortion. Michael Z. Williamson has an elaborated version of that which I cannot find fault with.

Read the whole thing but the “punch line” is this:

First they came for the blacks, and I spoke up because it was wrong, even though I’m not black.

Then they came for the gays, and I spoke up, even though I’m not gay.

Then they came for the Muslims, and I spoke up, because it was wrong, even though I’m an atheist.

When they came for illegal aliens, I spoke up, even though I’m a legal immigrant.

Then they came for the pornographers, rebels and dissenters and their speech and flag burning, and I spoke up, because rights are not only for the establishment.

Then they came for the gun owners, and you liberal shitbags threw me under the bus, even though I’d done nothing wrong.  So when they come to put you on the train, you can fucking choke and die.

~~~

Or you can commit seppuku with a chainsaw. I really don’t care anymore. This is the end of my support for any liberal cause, because liberals have become anything but.

That old, outdated document…

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…written by old, dead, white, misogynist slave owners who aren’t the boss of us.

We are told that the founders wrote the second amendment with muskets in mind, and that they couldn’t possibly have foreseen the deadly effectiveness of our modern weaponry. The Bill of Rights, the enemy says, should be interpreted with that understanding, which means we should be allowed to have all the flintlock long rifles and muskets we want. Banning effective modern weapons is therefore not only permissible but is the necessary, “right thing to do”.

We’re all very familiar with this argument, but like everything else coming from the Progressives it misses the point entirely.

The purpose of the American Revolution, and of the Constitution, was to secure liberty. The purpose of the second amendment was to ensure that the people at large would keep any army the government could muster “in awe”. Their words.
That concept makes perfect sense for a people who, not only had just defeated the most powerful military in the world, in part using personally owned weapons, but who saw the purpose of government as being “…to secure these rights…”

The new concept of that time (and it is still very new today – so new that even now very few people understand it) was that government functions at the pleasure of the People – that ultimately the people hold the power, and individuals’ rights having been “…endowed by their creator…” cannot be altered or abridged by anyone for any reason.

The second amendment is a natural expression of these concepts. It defines the force relationship between government and the people. WE hold the power. Rights belong to US and cannot be altered by any mere mortal. Rights can be violated by criminals, certainly, but not altered.

Therefore; if we are going to “update” anything with regard to personal weaponry for the purposes of the second amendment, so as to maintain the force relationship required to secure liberty, we must have weaponry that will truly and efficiently keep the most powerful, modern military in the world “in awe”.

In support of that simple point; I don’t want to see any of you making that silly “Semi-autos are OK because they aren’t assault rifles” argument any more, or its twin brother; “Those media types are trying to confuse people over the difference…” That’s the argument of the loser– he’s already ceded the main point, and is now arguing (pleading) over the details of the violations of his rights and those of his neighbors.

The point is, Young Grasshopper, that semi-autos are OK, and assault rifles and machineguns are even MORE OK. And now you need to ask yourself; just what would the private citizenry want to have, so as to keep a modern army “in awe”? And right there, after thinking about that for a few weeks, you begin to see the meaning of the second amendment.

If liberty is worth defending, then surely it is worth defending effectively and efficiently.

Of course the weaponry is only a part of the equation. The understanding of the principles, and the resolve that comes from that understanding, is the prerequisite. Without that, this conversation is pointless.

They don’t want background checks

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Via email from Joe Waldron of Gun Owners Action League of WA, February 1, 2013:

Let there be no doubt in your mind, HB 1588, and similar bills to be offered at the federal level, are after one thing only: gun registration.  If they want to debate registration, by all means do so.  But call it what it is.  Don’t try to sell it under a false flag, and one that is likely to gain widespread support even among gun owners.  There ARE ways to conduct background checks WITHOUT the record-keeping.  We showed them that in Olympia twice in the past decade.  They rejected it, and admitted that what they wanted was the “audit trail” — the paperwork.

“Audit trail”. Yeah. Got it.

That is what they said about the NICS checks records when they were supposed to be destroyed after a person had successfully passed. They didn’t destroy the records as required by law. They kept them “for audit purposes”.

Attorney General Janet Reno even once said the system was unable to delete the records. Then they, with much howling, consented to 90 day retention of the records. In 2001, under a new administration, the DOJ changed the retention to “less than one day”. In reviewing the impact this would have the GAO reported (pages 1 and 2):

According to the NICS regulations, information on allowed firearms sales is used only for purposes related to ensuring the proper operation of the system or conducting audits of the use of the system.

Then on page 4:

NICS officials told us, however, that the FBI would not lose any routine audit capabilities under the proposed policy for next-day destruction of records.

On the other hand, a next-day destruction policy would adversely affect
certain nonroutine audits of the system. Specifically, under current DOJ
policy, if a law enforcement agency has information that indicates that an individual is prohibited from purchasing firearms under federal law, the agency may request that the FBI check whether the name appears in NICS records of allowed transfers. If the FBI finds a record showing an allowed transfer to a “prohibited person” (e.g., a transfer to an alien who is illegally or unlawfully in the United States), that record indicates a potential violation of law, and the FBI may disclose the record to the appropriate law enforcement entity. These audits of the accuracy of responses given by NICS, and the additional (secondary) benefit of assisting law enforcement investigations, generally would not be possible under a next-day destruction policy.

In the GAO’s own document the FBI was admitting they were using the records in ways that were not authorized by law. Yet no one went to jail.

Eventually, they claim, regulations were implemented that required the records be destroyed within 24 hours. But why should we trust them? They were using the records illegally before and no one was punished. What is the incentive to keep them from violating the law again? They cannot be trusted.

In California and New York where guns were registered gun owners were told, with great sincerity, “No one is trying to take your guns.” In New York, several years ago, they did confiscate registered guns. In California they are attempting to pass laws that will confiscate registered guns.

The government in general, and anti-gun people in particular, cannot be trusted. Do not ever give them a means, no matter how indirect, to register your guns, your books, your religion, or your sexual preferences. It’s none of their business. And all have been used in other times and other places to imprison and/or murder people by the 10s of thousands and even millions.

If you allow it there is an unacceptably high chance it will not end well.

Experiment goals

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As nearly everyone already knows there is an experiment in progress in southern California. I would like to share the design of the experiment and the questions I hope to answer.*

Why a new experiment was required:

After Columbine law enforcement had to reevaluate how they responded to this new situation. Their training was for a “hostage situation” and they handled it as such. Of course this was completely the wrong response. They didn’t even have a name for the type of event. It is now called “an active shooter” and the tactics and training have been modified to respond in a much better fashion. The D.C. snipers comes close but those two were of below average intelligence and had only a moderate amount of military training between the two of them, no law enforcement training, no knowledge of how law enforcement would respond, attacked random private citizens, and attempted to extort money which resulted in important clues being left behind.

This too will be something almost completely new to the police. No known data can be confidently extrapolated to this new situation.

Subject selection:

I wanted the subject to be a black lesbian with a strong affinity for leftist politicians. This would deflect the knee jerk “angry right-wing white male” response from the gun hostile media and politicians. But finding one in possession of a variety of firearms, the skills to use them, plus a law enforcement and military background proved too difficult on the tight schedule. The substitution of a black male was considered adequate.

Experiment location:

The location of the experiment was chosen as California because of the large geographical area with repressive guns laws. A multi-jurisdictional response is expected to yield a more confused and less effective response by law enforcement. A minimal set of variables were desired in the initial experiment.

New York and New Jersey were also considered but were rejected for the following reasons:

  1. Smaller geographical area for the subject to take advantage of.
  2. The higher population density makes detection and reporting of movement by the public more likely.
  3. Higher population density increases the risk to innocent private citizens.
  4. If the experiment could have been run as original scheduled in May, when I have time after Boomershoot but before the hot summer months, NY and NJ still might have still have been given serious consideration but the frenzy of anti-gun legislation in December and January pushed the schedule ahead. The winter climate of NY and NJ this time of year would have put the subject at an disadvantage.

The Los Angles police department also is one of the largest, outside of New York City, in a repressive gun law environment. This gives us important data on the effectiveness of extensive hardware and well developed command and control.

The existence of the repressive gun laws was important to demonstrate that the laws are useless or at least any effect they have still leaves the subject with sufficient opportunities.

Plus my parents honeymooned in the Big Bear Lake area and I have always wanted to visit.

Questions to be answered:

  1. Just how much damage is likely by a relatively smart and sane, well-trained, well-armed individual?
  2. How do the police handle being the hunted instead of the hunters?
  3. Do the police have any training for this situation?
  4. Does law enforcement even have even have a name for this type of situation?
  5. What changes in training will result?
  6. With the police spending significant resources on one subject what are the effects in other areas in their jurisdiction?
  7. Does the general crime rate increase during the time the subject is active?
  8. Do the targeted law enforcement departments quit their jobs or otherwise decrease the effectiveness of the police force when subject to increased stress?
  9. Do the politicians and/or media advocate for new laws to prevent events from happening again?
  10. If new laws are advocated what are those laws?

Although further experiments will be required for confirmation, the data will be used to extrapolate the expected outcomes from a small team targeting a police force. Multiple team information is desired but it is not expected to accurately extrapolate from this one experiment.

Applicability to other situations:

I would caution other experimenters to not attempt drawing conclusions from this experiment as to the expected results if it were politicians, the media, a corporation, or other group instead of law enforcement being targeted. The dynamics, mindset, strategy, and tactics of being the target versus protecting a target are different and probably cannot be accurately accounted for without actually running the experiment.

*Yeah, right. If I had the mind control technology to do something like this from 1000 miles away with no contact with the subject I would a be a multi-gazillionaire. Furthermore the entire world would have a free-market economy with free-minds and the political discussions would be over who had the purest principles and which politicians best exemplified the principles expressed by Ayn Rand, Thomas Sowell, Milton Friedman, and Robert Higgs.

Quote of the day—JB Williams

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It will be ALL Americans, including their military, against the Marxist anti-Americans destroying America, which means politicians, their lawyers and their leftist minions in the press. I wouldn’t want to be them when they finally succeed in pushing the nation to internal war.

Politicians, their lawyers and their minions in the press are NOT the kind of people that go to war. They are only the kind of people that order other people to war. When “other folks” refuse orders to go to war on their own citizens, their families, their friends, the people issuing those orders will be standing bare naked on the front lines and nobody will be able to save their sorry asses from the wrath of the American people.

JB Williams
February 2013
Is Obama Pushing for a Civil War?
[I have nothing to add that I haven’t already said.—Joe]

Boots on the ground

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As illustrated by the gun cartoon I posted the other day the anti-gun people don’t understand the issue. That is just a sample of one but without much effort you could find hundreds of instances where our opponents insist we value our hobbies/profits over the lives of children or we own guns to compensate for inadequate “sexual equipment”.

They certainly do not understand why we own guns. And they don’t even come close to knowing how we think.

About 10 years ago I was talking to someone from the CIA who managed a group of psychologists. He was explaining how difficult it was for people in the U.S., even in the intelligence community, to understand how our Muslim adversaries thought. He told me, “They think differently than we do. It’s even possible they think differently than we can think.”

It may be that we have the same sort of problem with the anti-gun people and they with us. After all, many of the things they say sounds like crazy talk to us. And they insist what we say is “crazy talk” as well.

They believe that a bunch of uneducated, beer bellied, red necked, slack-jawed, hillbillies wouldn’t stand a chance against the U.S. military if it came down to a confrontation between a tyrannical government and us. But is that claim true?

They are certainly wrong in their assumptions about the demographics of gun ownership and I believe they are wrong about the outcome. And would all, or even most of the military follow orders to fire upon their fellow countrymen? Or would they switch sides and bring their equipment with them? As others have pointed out, “That guy with a S&W .38 leading a popular revolt might actually have air support.”

Furthermore there are approximately 80 million gun owners in the U.S. About 4.25 million of them are members of that “extremist” group known as the NRA. What our opponents don’t, and perhaps can’t, understand is that the reason a good number of the gun owners that don’t belong to the NRA actively reject joining is because 1) The NRA isn’t “extreme” enough for them; and/or 2) They don’t want to be on “that list” if the government ever demanded the NRA membership list.

Any idea how many members of Al Qaeda the U.S. military are fighting in Afghanistan and Pakistan? According to intelligence estimates reported by the New York Times in 2010 the answer is “fewer than 500” in Afghanistan and “more than 300” in Pakistan. A 2011 article in the Wall Street Journal put the number in the range of 200 to 1000 with “affiliated fighters or funders” making up thousands or tens of thousands.

How’s that war turning out for the U.S. military? Are they going to wrap that up and come home in the next couple of weeks?

Any idea on the resources Al Qaeda can bring to bear compared the resources several million U.S. gun owners can bring to the fight? I’ll give you just a few clues.

Private citizens typically consumed 10 to 12 billion rounds of ammunition per year. But current domestic production (including that used by the military and law enforcement) is about 1 billion rounds per week and it is being purchased so rapidly it is difficult to find any on the shelves. I know individuals that have nearly 1 million rounds of loaded ammunition and/or components in their possession.

Gun manufactures are running at near maximum capacity and have a backlog of months or even a year or more. During the 1990’s Bill Clinton and Sarah Brady were considered “gun salesmen” of the decade. But, using NICS data as a rough estimate, during 1999 and 2000 private gun sales were roughly 9 million per year. In 2012 it was over 19 million. At least 19 million guns were sold to U.S. private citizens in 2012. For the duration of the time NICS has been keeping background check records from November 30th, 1998 to December 31, 2012 there have been over 160 million checks/gun sales.

Numerous other differences between a fight with Al Qaeda and a fight with U.S. gun owners should be obvious and will be left as an exercise for the reader.

Our adversaries insist we do not stand a chance against a tyrannical government. Aircraft, tanks, and artillery would, they say, make any such fight short and pointless on our part. But it has been a truism of all wars except for the Japan mainland, where U.S. troops were being prepared for an invasion, “boots on the ground” were required to win. And I have talked to enough current and former military people to believe that “heavy equipment” won’t be particularly useful or last long without a lot of ground support and a safe haven from which to maintain and deploy the equipment.

They believe we would and should just turn over our guns without a fight should the government pass a law to do so. I would say their spreadsheets have some errors but I’m nearly certain they don’t think that way. Numbers, and facts in general, are not their area of expertise.

Another thing they believe is only a few people would take up arms against our government. But Bob Owens has a different view:

Every weapon of military utility designed within the past 100+ years was gone. This isn’t society stocking up on certain guns because they fear they may be banned. This is a society preparing for war.

It is my contention that gun sales above the mean of that during the Bush years represent committed gun owners who didn’t buy the gun just to have it registered and/or taken away a few months or years later. The mean number of NICS checks during the Bush years is a little less than 9 million per year. Hence one may reasonably conclude there have been a minimum of 10 million gun sales made “in preparation for war” during 2012 alone.

That’s a lot of boots, guns, and ammo on the ground on our side. And I didn’t even get into the training our side has. Compare that to the resources the anti-gun people can bring to bear. Yet it appears President Obama may be deliberately trying to start a civil war.

So tell me. Which side is crazy to believe they will come out on top of a violent conflict?

See also The Mathematics of Countering Tyranny.

The Stars Came Back -001- Intro

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Today I’m starting to publish a story here. It will be a (hopefully daily) series of posts that are a screenplay of sorts, though in the interest of screen-space it will not be in proper screenplay format. This is a sort-of movie script. It is somewhere between a proper movie and a movie-of-the-week or a series, or maybe a novel. Read it like you are seeing it on the big screen. It’s a space-western, in the Firefly genre. The story proper takes place circa 2655. FTL travel was discovered in the late 21st C, but not FLT communication, so star systems are still connected similarly to the 18th century days of sail, with message-drones and ships carrying data and people between stars, often taking days, weeks, or even months for flights.Explorers might be out of touch for months. Many star systems and planets have been explored, and some have been partially terraformed. A “local” supernova disrupted subspace so much, though, that FTL was shut down for several centuries, and each terraformed planet (and planets that were still very much “in process”) and colony had to survive (or not) on its own. This was known as “the long dark” or “the big blackout”, as well as by several other names. This takes place after things have quieted down a bit, and “the stars are coming back,” meaning FTL travel is once again possible in some places. But, FTL sub-space is like a stormy ocean, and “swirls” in it can make FTL flights faster, or slower, than normal, or even shut them down altogether.

Cultural note: the dominate cultures out among the stars are the descendants from former British Colonies, but there are scattered colonies from various other places as well.

If anyone in the movie industry sees its potential and wants to turn it into something “real”, I’d be more than happy to talk to them. Feedback from readers welcome, be it positive or negative.

OK, here we go:

The Stars Came Back, Part 001, Intro

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