Category Archives: Gun Rights

Quote of the day—Luke Chitwood

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Whether or not Barack Obama actually has plans to personally invade the homes of America’s 100 million gun owners and forcibly remove their firearms is irrelevant. The NRA has achieved great success in making this event seem possible to the Americans who fear it the most. The NRA has perfected the use of slippery-slope arguments and doomsday predictions to activate a passionate, idealistic, and focused base.

Luke Chitwood
October 8, 2013
Here’s How the NRA is So Freakishly Effective in the Gun Control Debate
[Chitwood has a problem with the truth. This is just one of many examples in the article. Obama would never personally do this and the NRA would never suggest he might. And as usual, if someone starts out with false data and assumptions whatever follows is almost certain to be in error.

What Chitwood apparently doesn’t understand is that NRA members drive the NRA rather than the NRA driving it’s members. People join the NRA to, among other things, encourage them to protect gun owner rights. I know a few people that have quit or refused to join the NRA but all of them did this because the NRA compromised or were to soft of supporters of gun owner rights. Not that they were too “extreme”.

The NRA is a grassroots organization. Our opponents cannot seem to understand that. Their model appears to be that the NRA recruits members and turns them into some sort of mindless minion that does the bidding of the evil NRA overlord. As is usual, anytime an anti-gun person says something you can be fairly certain it’s crazy talk.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Dan Gross

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Common sense is not an intense emotion.

Dan Gross
President, Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence
October 4, 2013
Almost a year after Newtown, does anyone care about gun control anymore?
[Gross’s problem goes much deeper than this.

Directly addressing, but still a surface issue in the big picture, is that “common sense” is frequently totally wrong. It’s just common sense that the earth is flat, mixing a cup of alcohol with a cup of water will give you two cups of the mixture, and the government fixing the rental price of apartments will result in affordable housing. Each of those are provably wrong along with the “common sense” claim that increased gun restrictions result with decreased violent crime.

The much deeper problem Gross has is that his organization has a systemic problem with lying. The most recent I have seen was just this morning. They claim they have “nearly one million members and supporters”. In 2010 they had a mailing list of about 50,000. And even those 50,000 are inflated because they include people who sent them email to tell them they have errors on their webpage. Deception is an integral part of their organization. “Common sense” is a house of cards in a windstorm when your view of common sense is nothing but deception and lies.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Daniel Murphy

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I propose the federal government put several plastic surgeons on the payroll and offer free unlimited penis enlargement in exchange for giving up these rediculous (sic) weapons.

Daniel Murphy
April 3, 2013
Comment to Debunking the Conservative Myth on “Assault Rifles”.
[It’s another Markley’s Law Monday!

H/T to Phil who sent me an email with the link.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Gerry Spence

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The police, as in every police state, would simply level their charges and lead the defendant to his blind-folded stance before the firing squad. During Randy Weaver’s trial, an agony for him that he endured for nearly three months, I found the minions of the law—the special agents of the FBI—to be men who proved themselves not only fully capable, but also utterly willing to manufacture evidence, to conceal crucial evidence and even change the rules that governed life and death if, in the prosecution of the accused, it seemed expedient to do so.

Gerry Spence
From Freedom To Slavery: The Rebirth of Tyranny in America
First St Martin’s Griffin Edition: May 1996
[The 1990’s were exceedingly dark days for gun owners. The shooting of Randy Weaver’s son and wife by Federal agents and then the trial of Weaver and Harris could be considered the turning point. The egregious behavior and arrogance of the Feds enraged gun owners and inspired thousands, if not millions, of people who had never owned guns to purchase them. The Weaver shooting took place less than 20 miles from where I lived at the time and I was among those that became a gun owner shortly thereafter.

This blog, Boomershoot, and a great number of significant events in my life were the result of what happened at Ruby Ridge.

That was over 20 years ago and many of the freedom activists I know don’t remember the events or that it even occurred. And many that do probably don’t understand the significance of that event in today’s fight for freedom. The Federal government learned some important lessons as a result of that incident and the response of the American people. The “militia movement” was part of that response and it was a real wake up call to the Feds.

But I’m not sure it was the lesson we wanted the Feds to learn. My impression is they learned it was too risky to begin using naked force to subjugate the people. They did not reverse course.

They grudgingly accepted we have at least some narrowly defined right to keep and bear arms but attacked our economic base, our privacy, and regulate the minutia of nearly every activity. The “assault weapon” bans, TSA and Obamacare are just the most obvious infringements of our freedom.

There are probably 10s of thousands of regulations which by themselves would be laughable and easily dismissed if it weren’t for the fact they are each tiny links in huge and heavy chains that enslave us through the daily sapping of our time and money to avoid committing numerous crimes each day. Ultimately these laws can, and probably will, be used to create the police state Spence warns us of. And it will all occur with firing only the occasional, and almost entirely ignored, shots.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Kathy Jackson

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The reason so many self-defense people believe it’s okay to shoot an attacker, after you add up the cold equations and come to the inevitable conclusion that someone is about to die, isn’t because we have flexible moral compasses. Nor do we study criminal violence because we secretly feel fascinated by evil. Not at all! The reason we accept using deadly force to defend the innocent is because we believe it’s actively good to save innocent lives, including your own. The reason we study past criminal events and try to understand how they happened is because we want to know how to save the lives of innocent people during future criminal events. The reason we learn the physical skills of self-defense is because we want to protect the lives of people we love. The key for each of these things is in the goal: saving innocent life.

…

Making the decision to save an innocent life is not a sin. It’s not a crime. It’s not an evil. It’s an active bit of good you can do in the world, saving an innocent life. And if the job of saving an innocent life is a good thing that may need to be done, it’s not wrong to learn how to do that. It’s not evil to prepare to save an innocent life as well and as safely as you can. It’s not bad to study how to save lives efficiently and competently. It’s not a sin to save a life whole-heartedly, with everything you’ve got. Those are actually all good things.

Kathy Jackson
October 4, 2013
It’s a Good Thing
[Thinking this through is important. The anti-gun people are either incapable or unwilling to do the intellectual effort required. That they attempt to force us to join them in their willful ignorance and/or mental incapacity should be, and is, a crime.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Conor Higgins

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The only way to go is complete, national disarmament. That way there is no chance that criminals could raid government storehouses, or that military weapons could make it to the hands of violent gangs. There would be no chance of corrupt government officials selling firearms to cartels or other organized crime groups. If we do not push complete disarmament by removing guns entirely from the situation and not just from the hands of civilians, then we are simply promoting the disarmament of the American people who would be left without means to defend themselves, while doing nothing about the very people that the 2nd Amendment afford them the right from which to protect themselves.

The only way to ensure that no guns fall into the hands of criminals, and to ensure the safety of Americas civilians, is to make sure that all guns are removed from the equation.

Because if disarmament does not take place on a national, state, and civilian level, and no one has guns, it is not “gun-control” it is “civilian control.” 

Conor Higgins
October 3, 2013
A modest proposal: On gun control
[I read the entire article thinking there was a good chance this guy was serious. Only the last sentence gave me hope he was sane.

In this article he advocates complete disarmament. This includes the police and the military with naïve, half-baked, plans to collect all the guns and rationale for why neither the military nor law enforcement require firearms. I actually had to go looking for other stuff he has written to convince myself this was satire.

There are people out there that naïve and half-baked but Higgins isn’t one of them.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Daniel Greenfield

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The Democratic Party is no longer the party of Thomas Jefferson. It’s the party of King George III. And it doesn’t like the idea of armed peasants, not because an occasional peasants goes on a shooting spree, but because like a certain dead mad king who liked to talk to trees, it believes that government power comes before individual liberty. Like that dead king, it believes that it means this for the benefit of the peasants who will be better off being told what to do.

Daniel Greenfield
September 22, 2013
The Central Planning Solution to Evil
[H/T to Caleb.

I have nothing to add.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Matthew May

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I will not submit to a cabal who read George Orwell’s 1984 not as a terrifying warning, but as an instruction manual. Nor will I submit to the dictates of those who attempt to trample the right of free speech of others in the halls of government who are warning us about the looming tyranny. I refer to those sons of liberty who, as Camus wrote, “are not all legitimate or to be admired. Those who applaud it only when it justifies their privileges and shout nothing but censorship when it threatens them are not on our side.”

Matthew May
September 30, 2013
I Will Not Comply
[H/T Tyler Durden.

With the NSA listening to and recording every phone conversation, reading and storing every email message, the post office taking pictures of every envelope, and the government mandating the details of relationships (with insurance companies), police officers told to not wear their uniform and gun onto school campuses (H/T Ry), and people seriously advocating absolutely crazy stuff, how can we not think we are in a Orwellian dystopian universe? The Jews in 1939 Germany couldn’t really believe it was happening. It was crazy to believe people would do the things they were doing. It just couldn’t be real. But it was real. And it’s real now. Believe it.—Joe]

Quote of the day—U.S. Representative Major Owens

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My bill prohibits the importation, exportation, manufacture, sale, purchase, transfer, receipt, possession, or transportation of handguns and handgun ammunition. It establishes a 6-month grace period for the turning in of handguns. It provides many exceptions for gun clubs, hunting clubs, gun collectors, and other people of that kind. It sets a penalty of $5,000 or 5 years in prison for people who violate it.

Mr. Speaker, the American people are way ahead of the Brady bill at this point. I understand this has to be a very carefully crafted rule in order to move forward. It is important to take the first step with the Brady bill. But the American people realize this is already too little, too late. They demand more.

Mr. Speaker, there are many bills that have been introduced by my colleagues which do go further. This bill, H.R. 3232, the Public Health and Safety Act, will solve the problem in the future of the proliferation of handguns. We must go forward and stop the carnage on our streets, and the Brady bill is a very important first step.

U.S. Representative Major Owens, Democrat
November 10, 1993
Congressional Record
[This was during the debate about the Brady Bill. They regarded it as a “first step”. There were plans then, and now, to go much further than merely background checks. The background checks is nothing but a ruse. Background checks to reduce criminal access to guns is crazy talk. It’s real goal is an attempt at backdoor registration. Confiscation is the ultimate goal.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Paul Barrett

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The Times did not help matters by illustrating its article with a large photo of a grieving mother accompanied by a prominently displayed quote: “There are no accidents. There are simply irresponsible, stubborn, cowardly adults unwilling to stand up against the gun lobby and those who support it.” In my view, this woman’s pain gives her a pass to say pretty much whatever she wants. Making her anger a central message of such a sizable journalistic undertaking, though, raises questions about whether gun-control backers are just as prone to invective and conspiracy talk as their least responsible foes. Dispassionate analysis would serve everyone better.

Paul Barrett
September 30, 2013
Guns, Children and Accidents: Four Blunt Points
[Yes. Dispassionate analysis would serve everyone better. But that would have near zero chance of resulting in more gun control. And the people at the New York Times almost certainly realize this. Therefore, it’s not going to happen anytime soon. They are so committed to more gun control it is an extremely difficult psychological burden to reverse course. They would rather tens of thousands would die and the rights of millions of people be infringed than risk having to admit they were wrong.

Draw your own conclusions about their moral character and capability for rational thought.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Dan Centofanti

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My opinion on #GunControl.. Nothing says you’ve got a little ding-a-ling quite like needing to shoot a big gun and getting pleasure from it.

Dan Centofanti
Tweeted on January 7, 2012
[It’s another Markley’s Law Monday! Via still another Tweet from Linoge.—Joe]

Quote of the day—John Silber

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I don’t believe anybody has a right to own any kind of a firearm. I believe in order to obtain a permit to own a firearm, that person should undergo an exhaustive criminal background check. In addition, an applicant should give up his right to privacy and submit his medical records for review to see if the person has ever had a problem with alcohol, drugs or mental illness… The Constitution doesn’t count!

John Silber
August 16, 1990
Former chancellor of Boston University and candidate for Governor of Massachusetts.
Speech before the Quequechan Club of Fall River, MA.
[This was in the dark days of the 1990’s. Back then a lot of people believed that in 20 years anonymous private gun ownership would be illegal. And private gun ownership would be extinguished in another 20.

It didn’t turn out that way but it’s good to know what rules the enemy is playing by so we can all use the same rule book.

The Constitution doesn’t count? It would appear the 13th Amendment is off the table when dealing his type then.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Charles Krauthammer

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Sarah Brady is doing God’s work. Yes, in the end America must follow the way of other democracies and disarm.

Charles Krauthammer
April 8, 1996
Both Sides Blowing Smoke In Gun Debate
[This was nearly 20 years ago and some people still believe this. What they don’t seem to grasp is that totalitarian societies are much more likely to be disarmed than democracies. Either that or they yearn for a totalitarian society and wish to enable it.—Joe]

Quote of the day—John M. Snyder

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The atmosphere in congress right now, and Washington D.C. generally, is more favorable than it has been since 1966.

John M. Snyder
CCRKBA Public Affairs Director
September 27, 2003
Gun Rights Policy Conference, Morning Session 1
[The quote isn’t in the web page at the link, I pulled it from the recording I picked up at GRPC 2012.

While the quote is from 10 years ago today there is a good chance what he said is still true. Snyder has been part of the gun rights movement since the 1960’s. His perspective is very valuable.

For over 40 years many of the same people fought against the anti-gun forces. Many of the pro-gun organizations have been around for nearly that long and at least one, the NRA, has been around much, much longer. How many anti-gun people and organizations have been around for 40 or more years? I can’t think of any.

Perhaps that tells us something. Perhaps pro-rights people become more passionate and more dedicated the more they learn about the ideas and consequences of adopting policies advocated by our opposition. Or maybe it means our opposition become disillusioned as reality sinks in. Gun control creates victims. It does not prevent predators.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Daniel Greenfield

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Helpless people must find something to think about while waiting for their kings and princes to do something about the killing. Instead of doing something about it themselves, they blame the freedom that left the killer free to kill, instead of the lack of freedom that prevented them from being able to stop him.

Daniel Greenfield
September 22, 2013
The Central Planning Solution to Evil
[H/T to Caleb.

Another way to think about it is that the political jurisdictions in this country that heavily restrict firearms and have high crime rates are in an awkward position between freedom and a centrally planned police state. You may be able to achieve low crime rates in a benevolent police state but run a high risk of poverty, political corruptions, gulags, reeducation camps, and genocide. Or, you can have the appearance of chaos, the uncertainties, and the insecurities of a free society.

The question is, “Which way will those states, and this country, teetering on the edge of a police state, trend toward in the next few years?—Joe]

Quote of the day—Michael C. Dorf

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We can test the hypothesis that Heller and McDonald played a substantial role in sapping the strength of the gun control movement by taking serious gun control off the table by looking to see whether the gun control movement had greater intensity before Heller and McDonald.

Mike Dorf
September 25, 2013
The Non-Paradoxical Role of the Supreme Court With Respect to Gun Control
[Dorf is law professor at Cornell. Even though he appears to have an anti-gun bias he has done a thoughtful and fair analysis of the political dynamics of gun control as well as the post the above quote was taken from.

I believe it was Sebastian who hypothesized after the Heller decision that people would stop supporting the anti-gun organizations because banning guns was off the table. Basically, if the end game wasn’t confiscation then what was the point? Dorf addresses that and arrives at essentially a softer version of the same conclusion.

What Dorf doesn’t address and perhaps doesn’t understand is that with the Heller decision gun rights supporters now see most existing gun control laws as infringing the rights guaranteed by the Second Amendment. Viewed through the lens of the First Amendment, any law that has a chilling effect (in the legal sense) on the exercise of the right to keep and bear arms should be struck down as unconstitutional. The outrage at having our rights violated motivates us and increases the intensity of gun rights people. Most hard core anti-gun people surely recognize at least some portion of this and are demoralized by it.—Joe]

Quote of the day—David W. Guth

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Need to ramp up mental health programs? Damn straight – starting with the afflicted folks that comprise the “from my cold, dead hands” lobby.

David W. Guth
January 25, 2013
Vol. 7 No. 7 — Mental Health and Guns
[H/T to Hognose.

This is the same Guth who expressed a desire that sons and daughters of NRA members be killed in mass shootings.

Interesting view of the world. He is wishing for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent children and he thinks people exercising a specific enumerated right and defending those rights need mental health care.

I’ve got news for Mr. Guth. The purpose of the Second Amendment was so the people could defend themselves against those that wished death upon the innocent. In other words the Second Amendment was about people protecting themselves from the likes of Guth.

And what is it with those on the left and mental institutions? It must be the projection of them at some level knowing they need help with their mental problems that they advocate that we get treated for mental health problems. If you listen to them for very long you will almost start to believe it yourself. It’s only will you start looking at the data and listening to them advocate for the deaths of thousands of innocents that you realize these people are nuts!—Joe]

Source of pro gun material

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I received an email from a Ms. Leanne W. yesterday suggesting this web page as a good source of pro Second Amendment material. Yup. Lots of good links there.

Quote of the day—Rabid Soledad Badger

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@linoge_wotc @bostonraider13 I really don’t give a fuck what you call your boy toys. I call them all little dick replacements.

Rabid Soledad Badger (@rabidbadger)
Tweeted on February 28, 2013
[It’s another Markley’s Law Monday! Via another tweet from Linoge.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Barack Obama

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As long as there are those who fight to make it as easy as possible for dangerous people to get their hands on guns, then we’ve got to work as hard as possible for the sake of our children … to do more work to make it harder.

Barack Obama
President of the United States
September 21, 2013
Citing shootings, Obama says must ‘go back at’ gun-control push
[One of the criminals that supposedly prompted this renewed push to make the exercise of a specific enumerated right more difficult via enhanced background checked had a military security clearance. How much more thorough of a background check does this guy think one should have before they can exercise their rights?

The only conclusions I can come up with are that he, and others like him who advocate for more rigorous background checks in response to the Washington Navy Yard shooting, are either totally irrational and/or evil. Regardless of the conclusion there is no point in “conversation”, “compromise”, or “debate” with people who are insane and/or evil. There is nothing to be gained from talking with crazy and/or evil people. I’ve been there and done that. It will only drive you crazy. Your only option is to get them out of your lives.—Joe]