Category Archives: Gun Rights

Quote of the day—Jeffrey C. Dege

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Yes, there are people who are terrified of guns, but that is their problem, not ours.

I’m not suggesting that we be argumentative, but I am suggesting that we shouldn’t hide. Every time we act as if gun ownership is something to be embarrassed about, we help convince the people in the middle that the anti-gunners are right.

Jeffrey C. Dege
Epiphanies and gun rights
[I have some “conversation starters” on my desk at work:

WP_20170710_12_58_42_Pro

When someone asks me what I did over the weekend or a holiday I tell them about the match I participated, the ammo I reloaded, or the preparation work for Boomershoot I did. When friends come to the house to visit I show them my reloading bench. And I take new shooters from work, friends, and family to the range.

Be out, proud, safe, and sane.—Joe]

If you carry don’t provoke

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In several of the self-defense classes I have taken the instructors have told the class that if you carry a gun you will be held to a higher standard of behavior than those who do not carry. And specifically, do not pick a physical fight you are nearly certain you are going to win.*

We now have a real life example playing out of why this can cause you (and the gun rights movement in general) serious problems.

Remember the University of Washington incident involving a speech by former Breitbart editor Milo Yiannopoulos (see also my blog post here) on January 20th of this year? The couple who were involved in the shooting are now in trouble because there is evidence they went to the event with, shall we say, “a poor attitude”:

Assault charges filed Monday against a Ravenna couple in connection with the shooting of a protester outside a speech by former Breitbart editor Milo Yiannopoulos on Jan. 20 allege they went to the University of Washington campus that night looking for trouble.

Marc and Elizabeth Hokoana had armed themselves — him with pepper-spray and her with a Glock semi-automatic handgun in a holster under her coat — and went to the protest intending to goad demonstrators they knew would be there, King County prosecutors allege. Some witnesses said Marc Hokoana appeared to be intoxicated.

According to the charges, the day before Yiannopoulos was scheduled to talk at Kane Hall, Marc Hokoana had messaged a friend on Facebook, stating, “I can’t wait for tomorrow. I’m going to the milo event and if the snowflakes get out off hand I’m going to wade through their ranks and start cracking skulls.”

His friend asked him if he was “going to carry.”

Hokoana responded, “Nah, I’m going full melee,” but then wrote “Lily … is,” referring to his wife, Elizabeth.

I’m sure Elizabeth Hokoana didn’t help her case when she was interviewed by the police.

H/T to Julie S. for bringing this new information to my attention. She is also a personal friend of Josh Dukes who was shot by Ms. Hokoana.

* I would generalize this to don’t pick physical fights, but there may be some people who have an issue with that and that discussion is beyond the scope of this post.

Quote of the day—Baltimore Evening Sun

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It may take years, but make no mistake, the time will come when the United States will adopt laws similar to those in European nations—laws which virtually ban handguns altogether and which place the most stringent restrictions on ownership of any kind of firearm. There is no other answer.

Baltimore Evening Sun
January 4, 1991
Page A8
[Reading the history of the Evening Sun results in enough schadenfreude to cause me to sleep with a smile on my face tonight:

In 1959, the afternoon edition’s circulation was 220,174, compared to 196,675 for the A.M. edition.[18] However, by the 1980s, cultural, technological and economic shifts in America were eating away at afternoon newspapers’ market share, with readers flocking to morning papers or switching to nightly television news broadcasts.[19] In 1992, the afternoon paper’s circulation was 133,800.[20] By mid-1995, The Evening Sun’s readership — 86,360 — had been eclipsed by The Sun — 264,583.[21] The Evening Sun ceased publication on September 15, 1995.

Also:

In the 1990s and 2000s, The Sun began cutting back its foreign coverage. In 1995 and 1996, closed its Tokyo, Mexico City and Berlin bureaus. Two more — Beijing and London — fell victim to cost-cutting in 2005.[7] The final three bureaus — Moscow, Jerusalem, and Johannesburg, South Africa — fell a couple years later.[8] All were closed by 2008, as the Tribune Co. streamlined and downsized the newspaper chain’s foreign reporting. Some material from The Sun’s foreign correspondents is archived at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.[9]

So, it turns out the prediction made by The Evening Sun of the disappearance of gun ownership in the United States more accurately reflects the disappearance of The Evening Sun and it’s sibling paper The Sun.

But the biggest take away from this is that you should never let anyone get away with telling you that no one wants to take your guns.—Joe]

Quote of the day—NRA-ILA

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Pew’s recent survey on firearm-related attitudes and experiences of U.S. adults found – based on the percentage saying “yes” to the question about whether they are NRA members – that more than 14 million Americans consider themselves NRA members.  The real NRA membership of about 5 million falls well short of this measure, even accounting for any statistical error the survey produced.

What this means in terms of polling, and one thing that Pew and others simply do not make clear to the public when reporting on the survey results, is that Pew did not actually survey NRA members.  Any views, beliefs, or opinions they ascribe to “NRA members” is a simple guess on their part.  Pew does not know what percentage of NRA members support one law or another, how many guns they own, or anything else for that matter.  At best, they can claim to have the responses of Americans who SAY they are NRA members, but they certainly cannot say much beyond that.

…

Unfortunately, this simple truth hasn’t stopped Pew from attempting to present to the public, along with an eager media, multiple claims or measures about our members’ opinions. Nor has it stopped the similar and blatant attempts by ideologically-driven gun control advocates to claim they know, from polling data alone, how NRA members view particular topics.

NRA-ILA
July 7, 2017
Remarkable Finding from Pew Survey
[In addition to he conclusion outlined above this has rather far reaching implications and one or more of the following:

  1. Many people are lying about belonging to the NRA and want to skew the poll results
  2. Many people align themselves with the NRA but haven’t maintained their membership
  3. Pew sampling is faulty
  4. Pew is lying
  5. NRA is lying about their numbers by understating them by a factor of 2.8

It’s difficult to see how it would be to the NRA’s net advantage to lie in this manner so I am mostly discounting this option. It also seems unlikely that Pew would lie in this manner. Could Pew sampling be this far off? I suppose it’s possible but I doubt it.

That leaves options 1 and 2 as the most likely resolution to the discrepancy. I can only come up with weak cases for either option and end up being dissatisfied with the result. What am I missing?—Joe]

Gun cartoon of the day

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This is what they think of you:

guncontrolfreaks

Via Kimberly Morin. As Morin says, “Gun control addicts never have been the brightest bulbs on the tree.”

Quote of the day—Mac Slavo

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There’s no evidence to suggest that magazine capacity laws are in any way constitutional, nor is there any proof that they would actually reduce gun violence. In fact, anyone with any firearm expertise can prove that magazine capacity limits are no barrier for a criminal or mass shooter.

But that doesn’t matter to liberals like Xavier Becerra. He has his agenda, and he thinks the “will of California voters” trumps the fundamental rights of every resident in his state. Thank god we don’t live in a pure democracy, or we would have lost all of our rights long ago.

Mac Slavo
July 5, 2017
Federal Judge Blocks California Magazine Confiscation Law: “The Constitution Is A Shield From The Tyranny Of The Majority”
[See also Sherriff’s demo of how magazine size makes very little difference:

Go to 9:35 of the video to see the myth of shooter being tacked during a magazine change be busted.

It’s not about safety. It’s about control.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Jeff Snyder

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It is impossible to address the problem of rampant crime without talking about the moral responsibility of the intended victim. Crime is rampant because the law-abiding, each of us, condone it, excuse it, permit it, submit to it. We permit and encourage it because we do not fight back, immediately, then and there, where it happens. Crime is not rampant because we do not have enough prisons, because judges and prosecutors are too soft, because the police are hamstrung with absurd technicalities. The defect is there, in our character. We are a nation of cowards and shirkers.

Jeff Snyder
2001
Nation of Cowards page 17
[This essay was originally published in 1993 by The Public Interest.—Joe]

Mocking gun controllers

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I stumbled upon a collection of images which, among other things, does a lot of mocking of gun control people. This was one of my favorites:

ecbfc7bd302b896d9edf650619a484db--men-s-health-health-care

Quote of the day—John Feinblatt

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The gun lobby loves to talk about freedom, but then they shamefully traffic in fear and violence in order to advance their dangerous ‘more guns for anyone, anywhere’ political agenda.

John Feinblatt
President of Everytown
July 3, 2017
A gun-control group’s cheery response to the NRA’s ‘dystopian’ recruitment ad
[We traffic in violence? No. Feinblatt is just demonstrating rules #1 and #3 in SJWs Always Lie. They lie and they project. It’s what they do. It’s in their culture.

There are well over 300 million firearms in the hands of private citizens in this country. And we consume well over 12 billion rounds of ammunition each year. If we actually were violent, Feinblatt would have plenty of evidence for it rather than just false accusations.—Joe]

Google giving millions to gun control groups

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I think Google is a great company in a lot of way. But their politics sure isn’t one of them. This is the latest insult to gun owners (emphasis and links added):

At the first national organizing summit for a new campaign to empower local gun violence prevention innovators across the country, the PICO LIVE FREE campaign announced that Google.org is providing them with a new $2 million grant to support local efforts to reduce homicides by firearms, decrease mass incarceration, and center communities of color in the fight to reduce gun violence in America.

…

The Peacemaker Partnership is made up of national, leading gun violence prevention and anti-racism organizations including:

PICO LIVE FREE Campaign
Community Justice Reform Coalition
Kellogg Foundation
Advance Peace
Alliance for Gun Responsibility
Americans for Responsible Solutions
Amnesty International
Athletes for Impact
The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence
Campaign for Black Male Achievement
Chorus
Cities United
Civic Engagement Fund
The Daniel Initiative
End Rape on Campus
Everytown for Gun Safety
Guns Down
Jobs R 4 U
The Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence
Live Free Chicago
Meridian Solutions
Million Hoodies for Justice
Moms Rising
National Coalition Against Domestic Violence
National Domestic Violence Hotline
National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform
Operation LIPSTICK
Organizing for Action
PICO California
Revolve Impact
States United to Prevent Gun Violence
Voto Latino

It’s back to using Microsoft Edge as my browser and Bing as my search engine.

Quote of the day—Sir Launcelot

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In your country, people who criticize the government can be arrested and sent to “re-education” camps. But over here, if government agents started trying to do stuff like that, they’d likely get blown full of holes by pissed off Americans with guns.

So our guns protect our freedom of speech.

I can criticize my government if I want to. I can say “Donald Trump is a corrupt pompous ass and his cabinet is full of lickspittles and toadies.”

Or I can criticize the Chinese government if I want to. I can say, “Xi Jinping heads an evil government that oppresses the rights of Chinese citizens while the Party lackeys grow rich from corruption.”

Now you try. Go on, post something critical about the Chinese government.

Sir Launcelot
July 1, 2017
Tomb Raider forum post in the The mass shootings and gun control debate thread
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Fred Schwaderer

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I have a plan.

1.) Institute a ban & buy back for “play army” weapons.
2.) Automatic 5 year prison sentence for any “responsible gun owner” whose weapon is stolen because they failed to secure it.
3.) Mandatory reporting of any stolen, lost or destroyed weapon to police.
4.) Mandatory gun accident insurance on each and every weapon any person owns.
5.) Background check and 10 day waiting period for EVERY change in gun ownership.
6.) Enforce all gun laws currently on the books.
7.) Have the Supreme Court codify the meaning of “a well regulated militia”.

That’s my plan.

Fred Schwaderer
July 1, 2017
Comment to Democrats should rethink their support for gun control
[Don’t ever let anyone get away with telling you that no one wants to take your guns.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Colion Noir

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Gun control is what you talk about when you don’t want to talk about the truth.

Colion Noir
June 16, 2017
NRATV
[This video also has Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe (D) saying “We lose 93 million Americans a day to gun violence.” which I blogged about a couple weeks ago.

After explaining the 93 people per day includes self-defense shootings and suicides Colion concludes, “This should tell you everything you need to know about their integrity. Yes. Yes it does.—Joe]

Who will they blame?

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A step in the right direction:

The Czech parliament is working to liberalize the country’s gun laws, allowing people to better defend themselves. The reason for this new policy is safety, as well as practicality; in light of recent attacks in neighboring countries, the Czech government recognizes that disarming people puts them in danger, and that broad European gun control policies are ineffective. The Interior Minister said it best when he asked parliament to “show [him] a single terrorist attack in Europe perpetrated using a legally-owned weapon”.

In response to terrorist attacks the EU is making it more difficult to get guns and the Czech Republic is making it easier. My hypothesis is that the Czech Republic will have few terrorist attacks and those places with increased restrictions on guns will have more attacks. I also expect those places with more restrictions will blame the increase in attacks using firearms on the Czech Republic just as Chicago blames their problems on places nearby with less repressive gun laws even though those places have less criminal violence than Chicago.

Projection. It’s rule #3 in SJWs Always Lie.

Training bears to be nice to people

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Interesting research and hypothesis:

The patterns of attacks reported here may also reflect an increasing number of bold individuals in large carnivore populations, as this trait is often correlated with aggressiveness13,14, and this might lead to more aggressive responses when large carnivores encounter humans. We hypothesise that intense and prolonged human-caused mortality imposes selection pressures on target populations (selective removal of certain phenotypes) and might lead to rapid evolutionary changes15. Natural selection maintains a mix of behavioural phenotypes in populations16, the shy-bold behavioural continuum17; bold individuals thrive on risk and novelty, whereas shy individuals shrink from the same situations18. Persecution, however, is expected to result in the disproportionate removal of bold individuals, as they are less cautious19, and thus more likely to be killed. As a consequence, shy individuals might have been overrepresented in remnant large carnivore populations in the past17,18,20,21,22. Additionally, individuals may become more vigilant and actively avoid contact with humans during times of intense persecution23. Although the history of large carnivore persecution and conservation differ across regions9, the contemporary conservation paradigm emerged during the 1960s–1970s24, when most bounty systems were banned25 and large carnivores were reclassified from vermins or bountied predators to game or protected species. Since then, although large carnivores have continued to be hunted or managed (Extended Data Fig. 3), most populations have generally increased during the past four decades9,11,12. Increasing population trends in conjunction with relaxed artificial selection may potentially engender higher variation in behavioural temperaments26, which is likely to alter individual responses to human encounters22. This significant increase of large carnivore populations in both North America and Europe, and their consequent range expansion, also may contribute to explain the observed increase in the attacks on humans.

Basically, they are saying if people shoot the individual predators in a species that are on the aggressive end of the behavior spectrum the species population as a whole will be better behaved toward humans. We have had relatively good behavior toward humans from these predators for many years because we selected for good behavior decades ago and then the selection process was banned. Because we stopped shooting them this may be responsible for the recent increase in predator attacks on people.

Basically, we can train bears to be nice by shooting the not so nice ones. I’m pretty sure this same strategy also works with two legged predators.

See also Bear spray, yes or no? for further examination of the issue.

Quote of the day—Paul Koning

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Constitutionally, speech is speech, and inquiring into the motives of the speaker is a legal absurdity. And speech is protected, period.

The root cause of course is that progressives hate free speech in all its forms, and invented the fake category of “hate speech” for the same reason they invented the fake category of “assault weapon”.

Paul Koning
June 28, 2017
Comment to Violence Alert: Communist Mr. Kit O’Connell’s Ready To Bash Back To Survive
[That is a very interesting observation.—Joe]

Are you tired of winning yet?

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Another win for the Second Amendment:

Firearms Policy Coalition (FPC) today applauded the unanimous repeal of Tacoma Washington’s ban on the sale, use, and possession of electronic arms.

Attorneys for FPC sent a letter to the Tacoma City Council on April 10, which warned that the group was ready and willing to sue based on solid case law if the city refused to repeal the ban.

Said FPC attorney Stephen Stambouleih, “As the Supreme Court noted in Caetano v. Massachusetts it “has held that ‘the Second Amendment extends, prima facie, to all instruments that constitute bearable arms, even those that were not in existence at the time of the founding.’”

There is a LOT more to do but having easy wins is a moral booster for us, demoralizes the freedom haters, and builds momentum.

Quote of the day—Calimero

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Contrast between freedom-hating decrepit Western Europe and Eastern Europe is glaring. Eastern Europe still has vivid memories from what’s down the statist road.

This should be a warning to US gun owners. You’ve scored major victories through hard work, but freedom haters will always come back. Defend the culture (take non gun owners to the range, esp. in restrictive states) so that gun ownership becomes and stays mainstream.

Calimero
December 28, 2016
Comment to Courage
[Calimero lives in France.

There is another comment along the same lines from March 14, 2017:

There’s a strong divide, shown in today’s vote at the EU Parliament, between Western Europe and Eastern Europe.

Eastern Europe still has vivid memories from Soviet rule, while Western Europe is oblivious to (or downright embraces) the shift to leftism/statism. One may argue Western Europe never was all that much into individual rights.

Eastern Euros still have that yearning for freedom. And the West essentially fucked them over today.

I hope the Czech will be able to mitigate the effects of the updated EU firearms directive. Poland, Hungary aren’t really all that hot for gun control either.

France, UK, Germany, Holland all screwed the pooch.

Take a new shooter to the range. It’s a good first step down a slippery slope to a desire for individual freedom in general.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Redcap ReaverBait‏ @ReaverBait

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Yes, because nothing is more important than your manly phallic symbol and getting to murder someone. No way that could possibly go wrong…

Redcap ReaverBait‏ @ReaverBait
Tweeted on June 16, 2017
[It’s another Markley’s Law Monday!

This is what they think of people who exercise their specific enumerated right to keep and bear arms.

Via a tweet from BFD‏ @BigFatDave.—Joe]

Update: ReaverBait replied on twitter to this blog post. Absolutely amazing! It is a classic response as predicted by SJWs Always Lie: Taking Down the Thought Police in less than 140 characters:

Replying to @JoeHuffman

Yes, you reeaally needed to @ me with your bullshit “waaah I need a gun to feel manly” nonsense. Grow the fuck up.

The three rules of SJWs are:

  1. SJWs always lie.
  2. SJWs always double down.
  3. SJWs always project.

The initial tweet quoted above was a lie. Then in the response she doubled down on the lie and projected her immaturity onto people exercising their specific enumerated rights.

Quote of the day—Chelsey Gentry-Tipton

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Watching the congressman crying on live tv abt the trauma they experienced. Y is this so funny tho?

…

The very people that push pro NRA legislation in efforts to pad their pockets with complete disregard for human life. Yeah, having a hard time feeling bad for them.

Chelsey Gentry-Tipton
Nebraska Democratic Party Black Caucus Chair
June, 2017
Via Omaha World-Herald
[This is what they think of you.—Joe]