Quote of the day—TS

Democracy allows for criminal code to be passed this way? Not to mention the very abhorrent idea that 51% of the people can lock up the other 49% if they want via ballot initiative.

TS
November 6, 2014
Comment to More on the I-594 Loss
[Direct democracy also allows 50+% to impose oppressive taxes on the 50-% as well. This is why we have the concepts of enumerated powers and inalienable rights written into our constitutions.

The I-594 people do not recognize these concepts.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Hank B Reardon

Just wait for the next initiative and you all will be shooting those nerf guns.

Hank B Reardon
November 5, 2014
Comment to Editorial: Voters stand ground on gun control in passing I-594 over I-591
[The irony of his handle aside, our opponents know what their objective is and occasionally let it slip.

Don’t ever let anyone get away with telling you no one wants to take your guns.—Joe]

I-594 election night at CCRKBA

Barb and I visited the election watch party at CCRKBA last night. Here are some pictures:

SeattleTimesI-591_2024953219_thumb
Anette Wachter, CCRKBA staff (?), Boyd, Barron, and Janelle via the Seattle Times.

WP_20141104_002Adjusted_thumb[1]
My version of nearly the same thing as above. We are not happy with what we see.

SeattleTimesI-591_142791_YesGuns_1328__thumb
Mr. Completely, Anette, Alan Gottlieb, Janelle, Barron, via the Seattle Times.

More than anything I was struck by the event was in the offices of CCKBA which could only hold a few dozen people. At a similar event for I-676 in 1997 they rented a event hall and hundreds of people showed up. This time we probably had almost as many media people as we did supporters. This time I knew nearly all the non-media people attending.

In many ways I-594 was identical to I-676. They both required paperwork and state involvement for simple, innocent, ordinary transfers of firearms. Both had deceptive and innocent sounding titles (“Mandatory background checks” versus “Mandatory safety training”). In both cases law enforcement were opposed. Yet we didn’t get the traction to come even close to defeating it.

I had lunch with Ry today and discussed why this might have happened. Our conclusions were twofold:

  1. In 1997 we were outraged with the 1994 “assault weapon” ban and the follow-on attempts in congress to push us into extinction as well as similar efforts in the states. Today we have a lot more confidence the courts will protect us. We didn’t have our backs to the wall and in a win or die fight.
  2. This time most people, at some level, recognized it was a loosing battle and it wasn’t worth the effort. I know this was a significant component of my mindset. I had a lot of other things going on in my mind that took a higher priority. I was finishing up my divorce (and follow-on skirmishes), I had time sensitive Boomershoot 2015 details to attend to, and I had a relatively new relationship with Barb that was a lot more pleasant to focus on than something I knew was almost a certain loss.

But how, beyond a simple gut feel, did I know it was certain loss?

A year or two after I-676 went down in defeat I had lunch with Alan Gottlieb. He told me our opponents were planning a new initiative. This was an initiative mandating universal background checks. CCRKBA had done their homework and tried many different concepts in presenting our opposition to such a thing. They did focus group studies with various sound bites and slogans. Nothing worked. It appeared inevitable we would lose such a battle. He didn’t signal this to anyone but close insiders. Publically he pointed out how we had bloodied their noses in the I-676 battle and how the people were on our side and claimed we could do it again if we needed to. But behind the scenes we were scared. Very scared. We had no hope of winning the battle if they attacked again.

I don’t know for certain why our opponents didn’t come back at us then but I’m glad they didn’t. As terrible as the passage of I-594 was yesterday it would have been much worse 10 or 15 years ago, before D.C. v. Heller. Today we have a decent hope of court protection. Then it would have been “a good first step” toward the massive restrictions they are so eager to inflict upon our specific enumerated rights that we could have today been in a situation like California or even Chicago is now.

I can imagine an alternate universe where a different history exists. In this alternate history our opponents were not quite so demoralized and/or timid and attacked us again a few years before the 2008 Heller decision and changed the course of gun rights in this country with a win in Washington state. With a model playbook for our opponents to impose their tyranny in most states, chill the exercise of our rights, we then lost mindshare, and we lost Heller. And then we lost it all.

We still have a lot territory to recover but with the Heller and other decisions behind us we are in a much stronger position to win it back. Let’s work toward making sure we still win the long battle even with this setback today. We must choose the fights and not let our opponents choose them for us. When we attack at their weak spots they must expend resources they could better use attacking our weak spots. For us I-594 was a defensive battle against our weakest point. We lost. We need to keep attacking their weak spots even if every attempt does not result in a win.

In Washington State we had been winning the defensive battle against background checks in the legislature and occasionally making successful offensive plays for many years. That sort of avoiding defeat, one year at at time, is incrementally less costly than winning an initiative measure but it is far less influential. Winning the initiative would have been more permanent. It probably would have silenced that issue for a dozen years in Washington State and perhaps have discouraged the billionaires from spending money in other states. But it also is an opportunity for us.

But some our most dramatic and long lasting wins have been in the courts. Shutting down the “collective rights” argument in the Heller decision resonates today and probably will continue for decades. If we can win this issue in the courts it will be more permanent and have greater benefit to people in other states being attacked. And because of the 10 to 15 year delay in taking this issue to court we have a lot stronger hand to play than we did then.

Support SAF and their “goal of winning firearms freedom, one lawsuit at a time.” If not them then some other pro-rights group with a history of accomplishment.

Loopholes in I-594

I-594 makes it a crime to transfer a gun to another person without doing a background check except for some particular exceptions. Using just one example will demonstrate a particular egregious chilling effect upon our right to keep and bear arms. Suppose your spouse child/sibling/parent/etc. wishes to use your gun for a week or two while their gun is being repaired. You would think there shouldn’t be a problem with an innocent act like this. You would expect there would be an exception in the law for this. The closest thing to an exception for this case is:

This section does not apply to:
(a) A transfer between immediate family members, which for this subsection shall be limited to spouses, domestic partners, parents, children, siblings, grandparents, grandchildren, nieces, nephews, first cousins, aunts, and uncles, that is a bona fide gift;

Update: It has been pointed out to me there is another spouse/domestic partner exception which I overlooked:

(f) The temporary transfer of a firearm (i) between spouses or domestic partners;

So change my example to be ‘child/sibling/parent/etc.’ for the temporary transfer concern.

End Update

So, unless the transfer is a “bona fide gift” or you go through the paperwork and expense of doing a background check you are committing a crime. You have to again do the paperwork and incur the expense when you transfer the gun back. If you don’t do the paperwork the first time it’s a misdemeanor and the second time it’s a felony.

One could claim you gifted the gun back and forth but that’s not going to fly with someone being a stickler for the letter of the law. You don’t give gifts back and forth in the course of week or two. And if the transfers were for purpose of cleaning the guns or minor maintenance or even carrying the gun into the house from the car it becomes absurd to claim the transfers were gifts.

However, there does appear to be a loophole for at least some of the above situations. The restrictions apply as described thusly:

All firearm sales or transfers, in whole or part in this state including without limitation a sale or transfer where either the purchaser or seller or transferee or transferor is in Washington, shall be subject to background checks unless specifically exempted by state or federal law.

Do you see it?

If neither of you are in Washington state at the time of the transfer it’s not a crime.

Update: This appears to be true for Washington State law. But under Federal law even though the two of you could transfer it legally while inside the borders of your state you may not transfer it between the two of you while outside your state then bring it back across the state line into Washington. The crime in not acquiring the gun from an out of state resident or dealer. The Feds don’t want you to acquire a gun from anyone, even a resident of your own state while out of your home state then bring it home. Read 18 U.S. 922 for the details.

H/T Sebastian.

But as far as the ATF/Feds are concerned, if you have a home in two states you are considered a resident of the state you are currently in for gun purposes and can transfer guns as if you were a full time resident in that other state. Hence if both parties were dual residents you could legally do the transfer while in that state and avoid the issues with I-594. Hence since I have a home in Idaho as well as in Washington I could transfer guns to/from my brothers who live in Idaho while in Idaho, but not while in Washington state because they do not have a home in Washington.

But if John Doe were a resident of both Washington and Idaho we could met in Idaho, do the transfer, then return to Washington without breaking any law (that I know of, I am not a lawyer). Or if John Doe were only a resident of Washington I could receive a gun from him in Idaho and then return with it to Washington. But he could not receive a gun from me in Idaho and return to Washington.

Get legitimate legal advice if you plan to push the envelope!

End update.

For people living on the border with Idaho this makes it almost trivial to avoid committing a crime. If you and your spouse child/sibling/parent/etc. or buddy attend a match in Idaho and then come back to Washington at the end of the day who, other than the two of you, is to know who has “possession” of guns in the trunk?

I’m not sure about the law in Oregon. I think they have a mandatory background check as well. You might also be able to take your boat into international waters or just inside the Canadian waters and get away with it as well.

Probably the biggest concern I have is what about “constructive possession”. If you and your spouse were to store your guns in the same safe or without a safe can you be charged with crime of transfer because the other person has uncontrolled access to the guns?

And how about joint ownership? Is that even possible? The existing paperwork doesn’t allow for joint ownership. I can legally give a gun to my adult child but not my child’s spouse. So is this another loophole or is it a legal landmine if I were to give the gun to my child and their spouse as joint ownership then did the paperwork for their spouse?

So this line of thought leads to what looks like a less awkward loophole. If you put your guns in a trust that would let you handle the joint ownership issues. The trust owns the guns and each member of the trust could use any of the guns at any time. And furthermore it is my understanding you can add and remove members to the trust at will without notarized signatures or filing paperwork. I could add some random acquaintance to the trust for the evening to allow them to handle a gun or take them shooting for the first time then remove them from the trust after they hand the gun back.

Trusts may also be the way to save junior programs and instruction programs where the instructors loan guns to the students for the duration of the class.

And of course you could also add some stranger to the trust, “rent” the gun to them for 99 years and not be in violation of the law as long as they didn’t sell the gun to someone else or put it in another trust.

Tools and ideas

Although there are still lots of votes to count no one I know has any realistic hope the outcome is going to change on I-591 or I-594 in Washington state. Washington State gun owners got stomped on pretty hard last night.

What our opponents don’t seem to realize is that both the Second Amendment and the Washington State Constitution protect the very right they are intent upon infringing. If it were a law infringing upon the right to free speech or freedom of religion nearly everyone would get it. Requiring a background check before someone can loan you their religious book and another when you give it back is ridiculous and would clearly be unconstitutional. It would create an incredible chilling effect upon the legitimate exercise of a natural and legal right by the threat of a legal sanction.

Somehow our opponents don’t or can’t understand this. I’ve had people tell me, “It’s not the same.” “Books don’t kill people!”, they say.

Wrong.

Ideas are far more dangerous than tools. The Communist Manifesto, Chairman Mao’s Little Red Book, and many religious books enabled the murders of over 100 million in the 20th century and millions more in the previous centuries. And I’m betting many millions more in this century will be murdered because the exercise of these rights propagates and enables very dangerous ideas. Yet we still recognize that freedom of speech and freedom of religion are more important that the dark side of infringing upon these natural rights.

Books, speech, and firearms are all the tools of ideas. Those ideas can be evil or they can be good. The tool is amoral and can be used for good or evil. Restrictions on a tool used for good enables evil. It doesn’t matter which of these tools you restrict. You enable evil because you disable the expression of the good more than the expression of evil.

This concept is very clear in the context of the First Amendment. But somehow the general population has a delusion that the right to keep and bear arms is different. The correction of their delusion can’t be accomplished in a sentence or two on a ballot initiative so now we have to attempt correcting it in the courts. The courts aren’t as influenced by sound bites as the general public but delusions can be deadly in their persistence even in courts of law.

Update: As I was reminded of in the comments by Windy Wilson there is a somewhat famous U.S. Supreme Court case that says:

If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence.

Which, as Windy points out:

This is tremendously close to the concept articulated by the head of the NRA, that the only thing that will stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.

The connections between the First and Second Amendment are easy to make and very strong.

Quote of the day—Midwest Carry Academy

In the city that was originally built to house a government derived from the consent of the governed comes a plan to distribute a constitutionally guaranteed right unto only those people whom the government deems “suitable.”  Which is, in the mayor’s opinion, no one.  Fancy that.

Midwest Carry Academy
October 29, 2014
Via email from Nick
[With all that power concentrated in one place what do you expect? Abuse of power is inevitable. Which is why the government was created with only enumerated powers. It’s long past time to trim its powers back to the proper legal limits.

The election today is projected to slow down the rush to tyranny but no one has realistic hopes of one election or even ten stopping it. Dreams of reversing it are better characterized as bloody nightmares.—Joe]

Michigan Episcopal Church wants to ban guns

Don’t ever let anyone get away with telling you no one wants to ban your guns.

We have Episcopal Church in Michigan passes gun resolution as evidence to the contrary. The resolution says:

RESOLVED: that the 180th Convention of the Diocese of Michigan, in response to the impact on Michigan communities of deaths from gun violence, join with other faith communities calling for the following steps to be taken by Federal and State lawmakers:

1. Requiring and enforcing universal background checks on all gun sales;
2. A clear ban on all future sales of military-style semi-automatic weapons, high-capacity ammunition magazines and high-impact ammunition (i.e. ammunition more deadly than ordinarily used in hunting);
3. Making gun trafficking a Federal crime;

The Episcopal Church supports the U.S. Constitution’s protections of the rights of law-abiding citizens to keep and bear arms; but, we also stand for public policies to ban gun violence and assault weapons.

You have to marvel at the naiveté and/or stupid exhibited here.

You can’t support the Second Amendment then make the demands for background checks anymore than you could require background checks for sales of First Amendment materials. One would guess they support the First Amendment and would claim protection if gun owners were to demand they be punished for hate speech because of their vocal support of restrictions to gun ownership.

Background checks on all gun sales? As the supporters of I-594 in Washington State found out there are lots of devils in the details. Will gifts and loans require background checks? If not then they have a big loophole. If yes will we then end up with me being able to loan my gun to my son but not my daughter in law? If I loan it to him can he then loan it her? Or maybe I can gift it to him and then he can loan it to her and then after a week he can gift it back to me. Or if all “transfers” require background checks will it make gun rentals impractical? Or how about letting your buddy (or a new shooter or student) take a few shots with your gun? Or loaning a gun to someone for the evening or a weekend with a suddenly active stalker and no FFL available to do the background check? Truly “universal background checks” will result in a chilling effect on the exercise of specific enumerated right. If there are enough exceptions to avoid clear infringement of the right then any claim of society benefit is delusional.

A “clear” ban on “military-style” weapons? I’m speculating the word “clear” was an acknowledgement of the difficulties with the Federal 1994 (and various states) “assault weapon” bans. But the issues aren’t resolved by demanding the ban be “clear”. Bayonet lugs, pistol grips, barrel shrouds, and detachable magazines restrictions were all minor stumbling blocks to people wishing to exercise their rights. We were still able to create, sell, and use firearms that gave anti-gun people the evil black rifle hysterics. And now we have the Heller decision which said firearms in common use are protected. Evil black rifles are now the most popular type of rifle in the entry country. So, good luck with your demands to violate that specific enumerated right.

“High capacity” magazines? The Heller decision said firearms in common use were protected so good luck with that as well.

I have no idea what they mean by “gun trafficking”. Firearm wholesalers? Retailers? Private sales? The Second Amendment would rendered meaningless if you couldn’t buy and sell the protected items.

But the item that pegged my naiveté and stupid detection meters was their call for a ban on “high-impact ammunition (i.e. ammunition more deadly than ordinarily used in hunting)”. The very purpose of hunting is to kill as quickly and humanly as possible. To that end hunting ammunition has been evolving for the last several centuries to make it the most deadly it can possibly be with the exception of delivering chemical, nuclear, or biological agents which kill more slowly than a lead projectile which expands upon impact. There is no commercially available ammunition more deadly than that ordinarily used in hunting.

So just what were they thinking here? I’m pretty sure thinking is outside of their domain of expertise so such a question should be rejected on the basis that it presumes facts not in evidence.

Quote of the day—Rick Baker

You need to add to your list of titles:
Loser
Idiot
In desperate need of a life
life long member of the tiny dick club
Just plain stupid

Now that better describes you.

Rick Baker, owner
I’m usually there everyday so you should drop by and see me little man.

Rick Baker
Jun 30, 2014
Email to Ed Levine
[It’s another Markley’s Law Monday! Via a message on Facebook from Nick G.—Joe]

Quote of the day—witchwind

For the remaining weapons such as guns or blades, women will hold exclusive right of use over them in order to defend ourselves from men, from the risk of them taking power over us again.

witchwind
October 7, 2014
UTOPIA: what would a women’s society look like?
[Via Sean Sorrentino via Michael Z. Williamson on Facebook.

Also in her utopia:

All of men’s (alive and euthanised) belongings, property, resources and land will be confiscated from men and handed back to female care and supervision – property rights over land will be abolished. You can’t own land!

And if that isn’t sufficient to confirm she been off of her anti-psychotic meds too long here is a clincher (pretty much every paragraph would do, but I particularly like this sentence):

Our lives have no more or no less value than those of a rabbit, fly, tree, plant, fish, seashell or stone.

Regardless, don’t ever let someone get away with telling you that no one wants to take your guns.—Joe]

Principles

Frequently we will see anti-gun people claim the NRA looks after the “corporate interests” of the gun manufactures. This is despite the fact the manufactures aren’t members of the NRA and have their own lobbying organization that represents them. This is despite the fact that the NRA has about five million individual members. They don’t just don’t seem to understand that there are principles we hold dear and give time and money to the NRA to advocate for those principles.

This belief extends to the politicians that support the Second Amendment. The anti-gun people believe it must be money that motivates politicians. This Brady Campaign video makes that belief more clear than I could ever do with words:

While I don’t have a lot of respect for politicians in general I do believe many of the supporters of Second Amendment understand the principles involved and are comfortable taking a principled stand.

The Brady Campaign and their supporters? If you speak of principles to them they will get a confused look on their face and think you are speaking in some sort of code words. Code words that surely must mean “money.”

Quote of the day—Anonymous Conservative

That desire to get two people fighting and then hide is a very deeply imbued urge. It is borne of an attempt to make something which stimulates the leftist’s amygdala stimulate their enemy’s amygdala, combined with sheer cowardice making direct confrontation not an option. As with every other leftist tactic, the goal is an outcome which would terrify the leftist, were positions reversed, namely manly men coming to kill them.

From simple social out-grouping, to calling cops to a store in such a way that they might shoot a conservative, to out-right swatting, to deploying various other government agencies to harass and intimidate conservatives, leftists have a burning, innate desire to get K-strategists fighting each other, especially as things get crazy. It is not a coincidence and it is not an accident – it is a long-evolved strategy, and we should all expect to see a lot more of it in the next two decades. The obvious solution is to not fall for it, and instead focus on the leftist themselves as the source of the problem. Very quickly leftists would abandon that strategy.

Anonymous Conservative
October 14, 2014
Amygdalae in the News
[If you want to understand the psychology of our political opponents and strategies for defeating them and just as important how they attempt to defeat us, you must read Anonymous Conservative’s work. He has a book, The Evolutionary Psychology Behind Politics: How Conservatism and Liberalism Evolved Within Humans, which is sometimes available free on Kindle.

One of the more important insights I have gotten from reading him is that, in general, the police are our natural friends. They enforce the rule of law and only enforce the whims of some ruler because the ruler had the authority to make law. Our state and federal constitutions, being higher law than those that would be our unconstrained rulers, gives them authority and license to oppose those rules. See, for example, the opposition to many of the gun laws such as in New York, Colorado, and in Washington State (I-594). At some level our political opponents recognize this and attempt to get us to fight each other, to the death.

Recognizing this we can adopt a much better strategy of encouraging and supporting the police to respect our guaranteed rights and deal with those that would infringe upon our rights in an appropriate manner.—Joe]

What’s about to happen in Washington State?

Barron was the guest on the 2AToday podcast that came out yesterday. The title is “What’s about to happen in Washington State?” – with Barron Barnett of The Minuteman blog. Barron’s blog post on the topic is here. Barron did well but the OCD engineer in me was annoyed when he said the 18 page I-594 was 17 pages. Then my teeth clenched when he later said it was 16 pages. But that isn’t really important.

What’s important is that a great number of innocent, everyday transfers of guns for educational, training, and recreational use will become crimes if I-594 passes. And the latest poll indicates it has a big lead. But polls can be wrong. As someone pointed out the latest poll was of registered voters, not likely voters.

When we fought against I-676 back in 1997 it had an even greater lead in the pre-election surveys and yet it went down in flames 71 to 29 (Barron also got the numbers wrong for that one too, he said 70 to 20, my OCD issues are probably the reason I don’t have many friends).

If you are one of the good guys in Washington State who votes for freedom please get your ballot in the mail on time. If we can win this even though Bloomberg, Gates, Ballmer, Allen, and a few millionaires are bankrolling the forces of evil it will strongly discourage them from trying again. After defeating I-676 back in ‘97 we have had almost nothing but improvement in our gun laws since then. Defeat this issue here and maybe we will have another 15 or 20 years of successes.

Quote of the day—Dalai Lama

Gun control must take place here. [Tapping his chest to indicate the heart.]

Then real gun control come.

Dalai Lama
October 26, 2014
Gun control: What the Dalai Lama said may surprise you
[I saw hints that he had spoken about gun control a few days ago but wasn’t able to find an actual quote. Now I know why.

He is referring to changes in the hearts of people rather than restrictions on pieces of metal. This not all that different from the NRA and other gun rights groups saying we need to focus on the criminal rather than on the guns.

Here is the other reference to his speech I had seen earlier:

Dalai Lama: U.S. needs to address gun control

The Dalai Lama also talked about the importance of inner beauty and wasn’t afraid to touch on controversial topics like gun control.

I wonder why the one article completely changed the tone of what was actually said. And I wonder if he said even more that was suppressed.

He has mentioned self-defense using guns before so we have a decent idea of his thoughts on the topic. They just aren’t politically correct thoughts.—Joe]

The ATF on “ghost guns”

The ATF doesn’t call them “ghost guns” like some prejudiced bigots in the California legislature but they did put out a news release on 80% receivers a few days ago. The worst they said was:

6. Can functioning firearms made from receiver blanks be traced?
ATF successfully traces crime guns to the first retail purchaser in most instances. ATF starts with the manufacturer and goes through the entire chain of distribution to find who first bought the firearm from a licensed dealer.  Because receiver blanks do not have markings or serial numbers, when firearms made from such receiver blanks are found at a crime scene, it is usually not possible to trace the firearm or determine its history, which hinders crime gun investigations jeopardizing public safety.

7. Have firearms made from unmarked receiver blanks been recovered after being used in a crime?
Yes, firearms that began as receiver blanks have been recovered after shooting incidents, from gang members and from prohibited people after they have been used to commit crimes.

They chose their words very carefully. I think it is very telling they don’t give any numbers on how often traces failed and that actually hindered the arrest and conviction of criminals who committed violent crimes. I would not be at all surprised if the number of people arrested for victimless crimes associated with making guns that didn’t quite meet ATF’s regulations drastically exceeds the number of criminals who evaded arrest because of 80% receivers.

Another psychology example

Yesterday I posted about how our political opponents use insults because they know insults are effective on themselves even when the insults are totally baseless. The Obama administration calling Israel Prime Minister Netanyahu “chickenshit” is an example that is making world news. Anonymous Conservative does the analysis:

So why launch such an attack? If you are intimately familiar with the psychology, you’ll immediately see that this was an amygdala hijack directed at Netanyahu. Like many such attempts by narcissists, it was predicated on an understanding of human psychology that arose from the narcissist’s self examination of themselves, and thus it assumes the narcissist’s malady is ever-present in everyone.

It make me think about how things must be unraveling inside the White House now that Dear Leader and his entire entourage are being criticized by leftists afraid of seeing the Obama administration’s failures reflect back badly upon the movement. Groups of narcissists can become amygdala echo chambers. One get’s hijacked and tries to relieve the strain by hijacking two others himself. Like nuclear fission, it can create a very unpleasant environment.

Similar conclusions are probably valid when our anti-freedom opponents spew crude insults at us.

Quote of the day—Gary Mauser

No methodologically sound study has found any important effect on homicide, suicide or violent crime rates from Canadian gun laws.

Gary Mauser
Professor emeritus at the Institute for Canadian Urban Research Studies Beedie School of Business at Simon Fraser University.
October 29, 2014
Did Parliament Shooting Change Canada’s Gun Control Debate?
[The same is true in the U.S.

So why do some people still advocate for more gun control? I can only think of the following possible reasons:

  1. Evil intent
  2. Power (this could be considered a special case of evil intent)
  3. Money
  4. Attention and/or fame
  5. Peer acceptance
  6. Ignorance
  7. Stupidity
  8. Bigotry
  9. Mental issues

Or some combination of the above.—Joe]

Hands dripping in blood

Those anti-gun people sure like their blood.

These are “public service announcements” from CSGV.

What you see in the videos is not a dance but you can be sure they believe putting the blood of innocents victims in a video helps their bottom line. All the hundreds of thousands (at least, it could be in the millions) of people each year who defend themselves with a gun are completely ignored. And if the number of victims is greater with increased gun restrictions as was in Washington D.C. and Chicago, well, that just the price some people have to pay for getting rid of those icky guns.

Weerd Beard has more to say on the “PSAs”.

Crude insults are the best they have

I recently tweeted this:

@CamEdwards @robdelaney @NRA @YouLikeAaron In a debate you lead with the best you have. They have crude insults. We have SCOTUS rulings.

It was in response to this tweet from rob delaney (@robdelaney):

This is how @NRA guys have sex. RT @YouLikeAaron:

The associated drawing is so crude I’m putting it “below the fold.”

This is entirely consistent with The Evolutionary Psychology Behind Politics: How Conservatism and Liberalism Evolved Within Humans. They are not data and logic driven. Anti-gun people are driven by emotions. They know that insulting and degrading people is what is effective on them. They therefore attempt to use this same tactic on us as their best weapon in a debate.

In a lot of ways you really can model them as not having matured beyond grade school.

Continue reading

Quote of the day—Alice Gutenkauf

I agree that assault guns and large ammunition holders are totally unnecessary and should be banned.

Alice Gutenkauf
January 20, 2013
Comment to Please Take Away My Right to a Gun
[Don’t ever let anyone get away with telling you that no one wants to take your guns.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Angela Davis

I am totally in favor of gun control, of removing guns not only from civilians but also from police.

I talked about the fact that my father had guns when I was growing up; our families needed to protect themselves from the Ku Klux Klan.

Angela Davis
May 6, 2014
Angela Y. Davis on what’s radical in the 21st century
[Don’t ever let anyone get away with telling you that no one wants to take away your guns.

After reading the article I breathed a heavy sigh. Barb asked what was wrong. I answered, “I just don’t know what to do with this. How do you respond to this?”

At some level Davis understands why gun ownership is important but she also wants to take guns from all private hands.

I guess it comes with the territory of being so crazy that you advocate for communism.—Joe]