The View From North Central Idaho

Ramblings on explosives, guns, politics, and sex by a redneck Idaho farm boy who became a software engineer living near Seattle.

The View From North Central Idaho

Quote of the day—Emily Miller

Lawmakers in Prince George’s County, Md. hate guns so much they want to brand anyone convicted of violating one of the state’s convoluted firearm statutes. Stab someone with a knife, and the county won’t care or take notice of you after you serve your time. Sell a handgun that’s not on the state’s list of approved firearms, and the Washington suburb will mark you as a criminal and hold you up to public ridicule.

Emily Miller
July 18, 2012
MILLER: A scarlet letter for guns: Prince George’s public registry shows county’s priorities are misdirected
[A scarlet letter is a mild way to describe a number of gun laws. The original “scarlet letter” was for adultery  which is generally looked down upon and even considered a criminal act in some places. Unless of course you are the President and have a ‘D’ after your name. But gun ownership in our country is a specific enumerated right.

The Second Amendment, as ruled by the courts, should be treated like the First Amendment. Is there a state approved list of religious books? Does the state require a background check for each book purchased? Does the state require records on the purchaser be kept for 20 years for each book sold? Such laws have a chilling effect on gun ownership and they need to be treated as such by the courts and gun rights activists.

We are winning but we still have a long way to go. Maryland is as unenlightened in regards to gun ownership as societies that stone adulterers.—Joe]

Your tax dollars at work

2 Seattle men stopped at border for illegal candy:

The agency warned on its website around Easter that the treats can’t be imported legally.

The agency says it seized more than 60,000 Kinder Eggs from travelers’ baggage and international mail shipments in fiscal 2011.

60,000 pieces of “illegal” candy were seized by U.S. Customs and Border Protection workers last year? That must mean they have stopped all the people entering our country illegally and now have nothing better to do but sit around all day and eat stolen candy.

I need a new frontier.

Quote of the day—Simon Black

Today, it’s nice to know that human beings are a lot more enlightened. We know that the dimensions of someone’s skull or nose don’t matter much in the way of intelligence or integrity.

And we can wonder with absolute incredulity how anyone could have passed off such nonsense as science.

Here’s the irony, though. In the future, they’ll wonder the same thing about us. The difference is that our faux-science is economics.

In the future, they’ll wonder with utter incredulity how these ridiculous assertions about conjuring money out of thin air and borrowing your way out of debt could possibly pass as science.

They’ll be mystified at how political leaders listen to these modern day soothsayers, directing national policy and robbing wealth from hundreds of millions of people based on this faux-science.

And they’ll be completely floored when they see that we actually award our most esteemed prizes to these men who tell us that we can spend our way out of recession and tax our way into prosperity.

To give you an example, I’ve just finished Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz’s new book The Price of Inequality in which he writes something that may be the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard from an economist:

“[T]he success of [Apple and Google], and indeed the viability of our entire economy, depends heavily on a well-performing public sector. There are creative entrepreneurs all over the world. What makes a difference. . . is the government.”

Simon Black
July 17, 2012
Guest Post: Quite Possibly The Dumbest Thing I’ve Heard An Economist Say
[I’ll grant that government makes a difference. A government that enforces contracts, protects the rights of individuals to own property, and to exchange in free trade is what makes for a thriving economy. Government involvement to a greater or lesser amount may reap short term benefits for some people but the long term result is a less successful economy and society.

Or as Presidential candidate Mitt Romney said, it’s both startling and revealing (H/T to son James) that the President of the United States also adheres to that philosophy:

President Obama either demonstrated profound ignorance and/or ill-intent and deserves all the ridicule he gets. He does not deserve to be president of anything in our country.—Joe]

A challenge

Here’s a challenge for you. Explain inherent, inalienable, rights and extend the concept to the right to keep in bear arms.

Oh, and do it via a few Tweets to someone opposed to gun ownership.

Here is my attempt:

Quote of the day—Ted Nugent

The United Nations is flea-infested, hygiene challenged hellhole of soulless despots, tyrants, anti-freedom, human-rights violating global gangbangers who wish to shore up their power by having the United Nations put forth a treaty that would restrict the access to guns by their people, thereby ensuring the tyrants can continue to kill, control, rape and plunder innocents with impunity.

Let’s get one thing straight: more access to guns leads to more freedom. Limiting access to guns leads to more innocent death, destruction and tyranny.

Once again, the United Nations is on the wrong side of freedom. This isn’t surprising since the United Nations has a statue of a handgun with a barrel tied in a knot in front of their rat-infested New York building. We should melt that statue and turn it into bullets for free Americans.

Ted Nugent
July 17, 2012
More guns equal less goons
[I suspect Nugent may be exaggerating. I’m not convinced the UN is flea-infested.—Joe]

Quote of the day—James Q. Wilson

Government, in my humble opinion, should be formed to secure and to enlarge the exercise of the natural rights of its members; and every government, which as not this in view, as its principal object, is not a government of the legitimate kind.

James Q. Wilson
[It is clear that our present government and that of governments world-wide have either abandoned this viewpoint or never even considered such a viewpoint.

I need a new frontier.—Joe]

Random thought of the day

Is it really that funny?

Both of the new shooters this week asked me, “How many guns do you have?” They both laughed when I truthfully said, “I don’t know.”

I don’t know how many computers, shirts, or pencils I have either.

Quote of the day—Alan Gottlieb

How many times must Bloomberg be told to keep his own house in order before he runs around complaining about the rest of the country?

Alan Gottlieb
CCRKBA Chairman
July 13, 2012
BLOOMBERG NEEDS TO PLUG POLICE LOCKER ROOM LOOPHOLE, SAYS CCRKBA
[I understand Gottlieb was asking a rhetorical question but I’m going to treat it as if it were serious.

Alan, your question presumes facts not in evidence. There is no evidence that Bloomberg responds to being told anything. This is true no matter how many times he has been told.

The more appropriate questions are:

—Joe]

Random thought of the day

Has it ever struck you as odd that many companies will offer free samples as you are shopping at the grocery store or the mall but you don’t have banks handing out crisp $100 dollar bills for you to try?

This isn’t quite as odd as you might think in the first couple of seconds. In a truly free market this might actually happen. Banks could issue their own currency and would compete for market share.

Quote of the day—Wayne LaPierre

For six years, the NRA has closely monitored this effort for an Arms Trade Treaty.

We have watched with increasing concern and, one year ago, I delivered to the Preparatory Committee our objections to including civilian arms in the ATT. I said then … and I will repeat now … that the only way to address NRA’s objections is to simply and completely remove civilian firearms from the scope of the treaty.

That is the only solution. On that there will be no compromise. American gun owners will never surrender our Second Amendment freedom. Period.

Wayne LaPierre
July 11, 2012
Wayne LaPierre Fights for the Second Amendment Before the United Nations
[He apparently didn’t explicitly tell the UN this so I’ll say it for him. The UN can have my guns when they reanimate their cold dead hands.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Motor-T

I always thought it was odd to describe capitalism as a system. Nobody arranged capitalism, or put it into place. Capitalism is the name for what happens (economically) when people are left alone.

Motor-T
July 6, 2012
Comment to Quote of the day—John Aziz
[It gets even weirder when people start whining about the government “forcing freedom” and the CIA “forcing free trade” on people. I have to conclude there is some sort of cognitive distortion going on. Either that or these people have more than few pages in their dictionaries filled in by two-year olds with crayons.—Joe]

Web anonymity

It’s tough to be anonymous on the web but there are some things you can do to improve your situation. Here is a mini-review of Virtual Private Network (VPN) providers. An provider that doesn’t keep logs can help keep even the most determined stalker from getting a clue of which city you live in from your web presence.

Quote of the day—Thomas Sowell

Fallacies abound in economic policies affecting everything from housing to international trade. Where the unintended consequences of these policies take years to unfold, the effects may not be traced back to their causes by many people. Even when the bad consequences follow closely after a given policy, many people may not connect the dots, and advocates of policies that backfire often attribute these bad consequences to something else. Sometimes they claim that the bad situation would have been even worse if it had not been for the wonderful policies they advocated.


There are many reasons why fallacies have staying power, even in the face of hard evidence against them. Elected officials, for example, cannot readily admit that some policy or program that they advocated, perhaps with great fanfare, has turned out badly, without risking their whole careers. Similarly for leaders of various causes and movements. Even intellectuals or academics with tenure stand to lose prestige and suffer embarrassment when their notions turn out to be counterproductive. Others who think of themselves as supporters of things that will help the less fortunate would find it painful to confront evidence that they have in fact made the less fortunate worse off than before. In other words, evidence is too dangerous— politically, financially and psychologically— for some people to allow it to become a threat to their interests or to their own sense of themselves.


Thomas Sowell
Economic Facts and Fallacies: Second Edition Economic Facts and Fallacies: Second Edition page 2.
[See also When Prophecy Fails or my website by the same name for a quick overview.


I expect that most of those that read my blog will see the applicability of the above to our current political situation.—Joe]

Quote of the day—John Aziz

The chief problem that Marxists face is their misidentification of the present economic system as free market capitalism. How can we meaningfully call a system where the price of money is controlled by the state a free market? How can we meaningfully call a system where financial institutions are routinely bailed out a free market? How can we meaningfully call a system where upwards of 40% of GDP is spent by the state a free market? How can we call a system where the market trades the possibility of state intervention rather than underlying fundamentals a free market?

I’m not sure that Marxists have ever understood capitalism; Das Kapital is a mammoth work concentrating on many facets of 19th Century industrial and economic development, but it tends to focus in on obscure minutiae without ever really considering the coherent whole. If Marxists had ever come close to grasping the broader mechanisms of capitalism — and if they truly cared about democracy — they would have been far less likely to promulgate a system based on dictatorial central planning.

John Aziz
July 5, 2012
Guest Post: Is Marxism Coming Back?
[As I said after reading the Communist Manifesto, “The typical two year old child or even the family dog wouldn’t accept the conclusions unless they were forced into compliance.”

Marxists are either profoundly ignorant or profoundly evil. In either case I believe it is intentional. I suspect most fall into the ignorant category (also known as “useful idiots”) but the those in the latter category have a high probability of obtaining all the power.—Joe]

Quote of the day—The Unanimous Declaration of the Thirteen United States of America

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.

The Unanimous Declaration of the Thirteen United States of America
July 4, 1776
[That right to alter or abolish the existing government ultimately means the right to keep and bear arms.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Sebastian

You have to wonder how far the anti-gun movement could have gotten if they had been honest, instead tricking the American people into gun control through deception and subterfuge. What’s even more amazing to me, faced with the utter failure of their movement, like a one-trick pony, they keep doing the same thing.

Sebastian
June 29, 2012
Concealed Carry Killers
[As I have said before the anti-gun movement has a culture of deceit to the point deception has become institutionalized within their organizations. They sometimes don’t even bother to hide it.

But to address Sebastian’s wonderment, their bag of tricks only contained deceit so all they can do is keep performing the same trick again and again or else give up. And giving up you life’s work is not something that you can easily do. But with the information age their kind will, just like the KKK, gradually fade away into the dustbin of history as they fail to recruit enough replacements for those that leave the movement through retirement.—Joe]

That’s it then

If the constitution allows Congress to do practically anything it wants, so long as it can be called it a “tax” by some stretch of the imagination (remember the NFA?), then we’ll have to repeal the 16th amendment.


Has anyone else made this point?  I had Rush on for about an hour, he was talking about the SCOTUS decision on nationalization of the medical industry the whole time, and he never mentioned the 16th.  That’s where most of this social engineering crap comes from– “nudge” us this way and that using the tax code.

Quote of the day—Ry Jones

The pro-tyranny side just doesn’t get enough positive coverage.

Ry Jones
June 27, 2012
[This was while walking by Westlake Park in Seattle. The park attracts most of the demonstrators for such things as the Occupy Whatever crowd. As usual there were some people there with signs I didn’t bother to read.

For a while I thought the root premise in the statement, tyranny doesn’t get positive coverage, was correct. But I had a nagging doubt that something was wrong. If anti-tyranny gets all the positive coverage then how does tyranny succeed?

The SCOTUS ruling on Obama Care this morning crystallized the answer. A retweet from Ry put it in video:

The quote above is wrong. The tyrant and their policies receives nearly all the positive coverage and is welcomed with thunderous applause.—Joe]

One Step at a Time, Then

In the spirit of boldly following the truth where ever it leads; can I get any agreement on the following statement?



Prohibition is an absolute, 100% guarantee that there will be increased gang activity, increased gang power, increased gang violence, an escalating police presence, and increased corruption at the police level working its way up through government at higher levels, with a coresponding deterioration of respect for police, and the rule of law, among the general public.


Yes or no?  You have to take all points in the above sentence together.  If you disagree with any part of it, your answer is “No”.  Give a brief, simple explanation of why you disagree.  For our purposes here, we will limit the definition of Prohibition to; a federal ban on alcohol or any other popular intoxicant.  This has nothing to do with your opinions, or clinical expertise, on this or that drug, the general effects of intoxicants on society or any of that.  Keep all of that out of the discussion, please.  Focus like a laser beam.


Yes or no?

This is for Bill Whittle

And also for everyone else.  I don’t get paid to do this.  The time spent is all cost, so I don’t spend much time editing.  I wanted to take this piece, or rant, of mine and really polish it, using historical links and references, but too bad– here it is.  It’s verbatim off of a members only section on gunrightsmedia.org, from a thread on medical pot and guns.  I bring Bill Whittle’s name into this post because he has, as I’ve been describing on numerous blogs, fully embraced, with relish, the left’s “guns cause harm” meme.  All the best intentions will be for naught unless we think clearly, following the truth where ever it leads.  Well here it is;



There is a direct and inseparable link between Prohibition and gun restriction. Note Operation Fast and Furious.

The authoritarians learned a great lesson from alcohol prohibition. They learned that huge amounts of power and money were transferred to authoritarians, both inside of government and outside of government (tyrants and gangsters) as a direct result of prohibition.

The first time; Americans understood that it would require a constitutional amendment, because the government is not authorized by the constitution to tell us what we may or may not consume. When Prohibition was modified (it was never ended) with another amendment to the constitution, the feds that were employed to smash down doors and brutalize people over alcohol were given another job, the very next month. Prohibition was modified in December of 1933 and the NFA went into effect in January of 1934. The former Prohibition enforcers, who were accustomed to stealing alcohol for their own use and profit could now smash down doors and brutalize people to enforce the brand new National Firearms Act,. Stealing guns and using them for their own use and profit, and making deals with gangs as before.

Just as Prohibition created a newly vitalized and powerful organized crime culture, which of course availed itself of the best weapons, so too did it give FDR an excuse to circumvent the second amendment. He pushed for and got the NFA as a backdoor to gun restriction, making the case that all this gun violence is just too much—something must be done. “Why; it’s not a ban– it’s a tax!” The shiny new ATF was originally a part of Treasury. See?

Create a situation of violence and gangsterism (Prohibition) then swoop in and “fix” it with more even authoritarianism. Works like a charm, every time it’s tried.

The authoritarians have since come up with ways to fool us into accepting federal drug laws, this time without a constitutional amendment. So now we’re right back to the 1920s, but the constitution took a hit in the process. Drug money instead of alcohol money, drug gangs paying off law enforcement instead of Al Capone buying cops– drug enforcement excuses for more power and money instead of alcohol as an excuse for more money and power. The equation is exactly the same, only this time it’s far worse. They’ve beat down former constitutional limits, this time it’s far longer lived, it’s still growing, and it’s growing right along with outrageous actions of feds working directly with Mexican drug gangs (Fast & Furious). Meet your new masters– the big, happy family of gangsters, corrupt government officials, corrupt police, corrupt foreign governments controlled by gangs, some of the worst enemies of America, the BATFE which was recently made part of the Justice Department (not even any more pretense of being a tax authority) and whole new agencies with guns, lots of funding, and protection from the President when they get caught with their pants down, all circle-jerking together, and weakening America at every stage.

Meanwhile; the Republicans are still busy, frantically trying to decide on what they should pretend to believe during the next election. You Suckers!


Now was that so hard?  I don’t believe I blamed guns for anything, or said that guns were “responsible”, I acknowledged the existence of the constitution, acknowledged the fact that corruption exists at all levels (though it’s unpopular to even think that cops can be corrupt) I blamed gangsters for their gangster crime, I didn’t use the term “assault weapon” which was fabricated by the anti-gun media and the Clinton administration, I didn’t confuse an assault rifle with a semi auto carbine, and I laid out a brief history of drugs and guns, showing that they have been inseparable since the 1930s, when FDR linked them and made up the BATF as a faux “tax” authority.  This is all one, continuing story, see, on-going for generations– we’re just caught up in it.  It’s louder now, our government is every bit as corrupt as during the 1920s and ’30s if not more so, and it’s bigger and more powerful, but as of this morning we’re still not connecting all the dots.  Now I have to go pick up my kid.


ETA; Here’s the Whittle piece.  Listen to the actual words.