We must repeal the Second Amendment, demand the peaceable surrender of all handguns, and hunt down and destroy all those who do not comply.
Philip Wilson
November 27, 2012
Comment to Gun Control, RIP.
[This is so you know the attitude of those who oppose freedom and the Bill of Rights.
And Wilson, you should take point on that hunt.—Joe]
From Guns Aren’t the Problem, The NRA is the Problem
A fight against the right of Americans to own guns is one that almost certainly can never be won. But a concerted effort to make gun ownership safer by enacting and strengthening common sense efforts to protect public safety through, for example, closing the gun show loophole and banning bullet clips that hold 100 shells, can and must be won if we want to reduce gun violence in the US. And the way to win that fight is to paint the NRA, which takes advantage of its own members in order to promote a reactionary and dangerous agenda of turning the US into a version of the old Wild West, as the out-of-control villain that it is.
Emphasis added.
It might be all from the same source but I have seen several instances where the anti-gun people are advocating restrictions on 100 round magazines with no mention of a 10 round limit as is the usual threshold for demonic possession.
While that is certain to ease the political resistance to capacity restrictions on firearms the statistics where such magazines played a definitive role in the execution of a crime are going to be exceedingly poor. I would be willing to bet that you will find a much higher correlation to crimes committed by people wearing gray hoodies greater than size XL simultaneously with size 12 or greater Nike shoes than you would to 100 round magazines being correlated to crime.
But don’t expect the facts and logic to be important to these people. It’s about the implicitly admitted long term fight “against the right of Americans to own guns.” The 100 round threshold is the camel’s nose.
In Boston, we had a name for the city’s laws about self-defence weapons, from pepper spray on up: “Call 911 and Die.”
danceronice
September 2, 2012
Comment in a forum with the topic of Gun control: you for or against?
[Yup. There is also a book by that name.—Joe]
This battle for ‘common-sense’ gun control laws pits emotion and passion against logic and reason. All too often in such a contest, logic loses. So, expect more meaningless, if not harmful, ‘gun control‘ legislation. Good news – if you’re a crook.
Larry Elder
From Thinkexist.com.
[I have been unable to determine when he said this. While true 15 years ago expecting more gun control legislation is less and less a good bet. I’m skeptical it is because logic and reason suddenly are winning contests against emotion and passion. I expect it is because we are accumulating more emotion and passion on our side.—Joe]
Since nanny Bloomberg has chosen to limit his citizens self defense option his failure to call in the Guard is failure to live up to his obligations as their nanny.
tdiinva
November 19, 2012
Comment to Bloomberg F-Bombs Request for National Guard Aid.
[Via a link from Sebastian.
It’s a fundamental problem of being a nanny with a scope larger than a few children. Just because a nanny is an appropriate solution in some situations does not mean is is possible to scale it up and make it work at a much larger scale. If it did work we would see both biological and manmade systems organized much differently than we do. Both evolution and the free marketplace would have created systems with central control to dominate over those systems that pushed the decision making to the lower levels rather than pushing it up. Your brain doesn’t control the details of cell metabolism and your web browser doesn’t control how the mouse determines if it has been moved.
I’m channeling Thomas Sowell as best I can with the following.
The problem is one of information. You, a fully functional adult, know more than anyone else about your situation and what is best for you. You know a lot more about your family than people not in your family. You know more about how to do your job than people that don’t do your job. You know more about your community than people outside your community. And you know a lot more about your situation than does the mayor of your city, the governor of your state, and the president of the country. Central planning fails because the people with the most information about the situation are not making the decisions.
Even if it were possible for all the information needed for making optimal decisions were to be communicated to the central planners they cannot process the information nor come up with innovative alternatives that the individuals and small groups closer to the problem can.
One might be tempted to say that central planning failed in the past because of this fundamental problem but we have much better communication and processing power than we did even a decade or two ago. Central planning can work now that we have computers. Those people are wrong.
Even ignoring the obvious SkyNet dystopian scenarios look at the way engineers solve control problems in complex systems now. Heinlein was a visionary in many ways but “Mike” the computer in The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress will never be implemented as Heinlein envisioned it—handling payroll, air flow, mass launchers, communications, and a thousand other things.
Whether it is a large software program, a cell phone network, or a sewage treatment plant the far cheaper, better performing, and feasible solution is to delegate “authority” to very small subsystems to solve the issues that are local. The video driver in your computer is given a command to set the background to a color and output text at certain coordinates on the display. The video driver “knows” how to control the chips of the graphics board to change the color of the display and what address in memory corresponds to the coordinates of the screen. The local cell tower “knows” signal strength of your phone, the number of other cell phones it is handling, and communicates with nearby cell towers to enable a clean handoff such that you don’t have a service interruption as you move from location to location. The components of the sewage system control air and water flow rates, agitation, and chemical balances without knowledge of the price of electricity or the growth rate of the town it serves.
At each subsystem level the information and the resources are available such that they can do the right thing to operate their area of responsibility in a manner that is a tradeoff of performance, time to implement, initial cost, and operating cost.
Bloomberg and other central planners do not and cannot have the information to even approximate optimal decisions and they deny resources to those that do have the information. The result is a dystopian world that has the potential to be just as catastrophic as one where “SkyNet” has all the information and resources to create Elysium but instead makes the decision to destroy humanity.—Joe]
Paul C. Duffy has the strangest thoughts. And then he shares them with a letter to the editor:
I was disheartened beyond words to read about a program that offers would-be victims of school shootings alternatives to the traditional lock-down reaction to such crimes.
…
Canton police Detective Chip Yeaton, who sounds like a caring citizen and father, spoke in support of the proposed school program, called ALICE, which stands for alert, lockdown, inform, counter, evacuate. Yeaton said that “school shootings continue to happen, and young people are dying. We need to change the philosophy.”
Yeaton is right, but his focus is wrong. Our philosophy does indeed need to change: We need to find the real and moral courage to stand down the gun lobbies — the National Rifle Association and other Second Amendment zealots — whose reckless defense of gun rights has led to a society where almost anyone can acquire a Glock 9mm and the ammunition needed to ruin lives and communities in seconds.
What Duffy totally ignores or does not comprehend is that people can acquire a 9mm Glock and the ammunition to defend lives. I realized I’m biased as I have a handgun on my hip as I type this but handguns are designed for and used millions of times each year to defend innocent life. Duffy’s brain is stuck in “prey” mode.
Read Columbine by Dave Cullen. When violent predators attack students at a school cowering under the desk this behavior gives the predator feelings of even greater power and control. They feel justified in killing those who cower beneath them. One of the prime motivators of the Columbine predators was that they believed people were so stupid they didn’t deserve to live. We don’t know what their thoughts were the last couple of hours but it would seem to me their opinions of human intelligence could not have improved as they saw people “hiding” underneath desks and tables and they strolled from person to person and shot them.
I kept wondering if the Boston Globe got the letter writers name wrong. Maybe it was actually “Fluffy” instead of “Duffy”. And the ‘C’ stands for Cottontail.
Duffy advocates being a coward in the face of a single criminal predator but “courage” while advocating people “stand down the gun lobbies”. He should think this through. Suppose he does “stand down the gun lobbies”. Then what? Is he going to start confiscating firearms from people? I would like to point out that Fluffy Duffy should be happy he has the gun lobby. They are what separate him from the 80 million gun owners in this country. Rabbits are no match for hunters.
Update: Sebastian also comments with Oh Noes! Freedom!
I guess since you can’t walk around with your dick hanging out #opencarry is the next best thing. #juvenile
DarthWeiner75
Tweeted on November 17, 2012.
[It’s another Markley’s Law Monday! Via a Tweet from Linoge.
It’s “interesting” that someone would consider the exercise of a constitutionally protected right “juvenile”. Would he consider exercise of your right to not incriminate yourself “being a sissy”? Or maybe “freedom of speech is for crybabies”.—Joe]
Guns owners are disrespectful of authority. A failure to rely on authorities is an invariable sign of improper and overly independent attitudes. The mere fact that they gather together to talk about guns at gun shops, gun shows, shooting ranges, and on the internet means that they have some plot going against us normal people. A gun owner has no right to associate with another gun owner.
Therefore, to help ensure our right to happiness and safety we must ban and seize all guns from private hands, and forbid NRA-based criticism towards people who are only trying to help. Searching the homes of all NRA members for any guns and pro-gun literature will go a long way towards reducing crime.
jack burton
November 14, 2012
Comment to Columnist: Gun control doesn’t control enough.
[I’m pretty sure this was sarcasm. But I don’t know for sure.
Regardless, ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ!—Joe]
For people like myself who are not satisfied with the justifications for carrying dangerous weapons, it sometimes seems that your viewpoint isn’t important when it’s a right guaranteed by the Constitution. Keep in mind, the Constitution has been changed before and can change again as long as you’re willing to put your efforts in the right place in Washington to get laws changed.
Rachel Elmalawany
November 14, 2012
Columnist: Gun control doesn’t control enough
[Keep in mind, Ms. Elmalawany, the constitution can’t be changed “in Washington”. It takes quite a bit more than that.
Keep in mind, Ms. Elmalawany, the entire Bill of Rights was a qualifier for agreeing to the constitution to begin with. If one of those items are nulled out the agreement to form a union is nulled.
Keep in mind, Ms. Elmalawany, that if you were to successful in repealing the 13th Amendment you would encounter, and rightly so, “stiff resistance” in the implementation. There are probably just as many people that would resist the implementation of a 2nd Amendment repeal as there are that would resist a 13th Amendment repeal implementation.
Keep in mind, Ms. Elmalawany, there are about 220 million people in the U.S. that don’t own guns. There are about 80 million people who do and who consume about 10 billion rounds of ammo each year. That’s what we do for practice. Please don’t attempt to verify our level of resolve or the quality of our practice.—Joe]
While there is a lot of public pressure to repeal the no duty to retreat and the self-defense immunity provisions, this task force should not bow to the uninformed opinions and allegations being made.
Instead, it should recommend that the Legislature take action to correct the deficiencies in the law and to make clear once and for all that law abiding Floridians and visitors to our state should never be forced to turn their back on a violent criminal attacker and should not have to fear that they will lose their livelihood, their freedom, or their financial future and become a victim twice.
Eric J. Friday
October 16, 2012
10/16/12 Task Force on Citizen Safety and Protection
[H/T Robb Allen.
Public pressure frequently has little to do with the facts. Public pressure is often a lot more like a mob. Rumors, inflammatory rhetoric, and high emotions substitute for data and logic.—Joe]
Sorry, my current handgun is black, but if I’m going to murder my wife, it just has to be stainless. She deserves nothing less!
Sebastian
November 13, 2012
Attitudes on Gun Rights
[Yes, of course it’s sarcasm.
One could also turn that around a bit and say something similar about substituting an evil black rifle for a wood-stocked Mini-14.
Mocking the enemies of freedom is good thing.—Joe]
Roberta, Sebastian, and Tam report on the nanny’s in Indiana getting their panties twist over Tannerite.
A few years ago almost exactly the same thing happened. A T.V. station (WSBTV) made a video whining about, as Roberta said, “Scary–Go-BOOM!” They got a politician to talk about how terrible it was and how he was “going to do something” about it.
I sent them an email and within 24 hours the video was taken down and we didn’t hear anything more about it. Not even from the politician.
This is a little different case in that they didn’t use any of my video for their whine piece but the same principles apply. Here is a starting point for your letter to the T.V. station. Modify it a bit and you have one for your legislator:
You recently produced a video about a legal product used by thousands of people every year and found people willing to say it scared them and you. For you to engage in a such a biased and even bigoted attack on a legal product used in a legal manner is exceedingly offensive to me and thousands of other people.
I can’t imagine what you were thinking. Would you show video of people using guns to legally hunt, shoot tin cans, or put holes in paper targets and then contact the opportunist politicians because you were worried someone might use their guns to commit a terrorist act? Or how about showing someone having a glass of wine with dinner or drinking a beer in their backyard? Would you demand the government do something about this because of your concerns about drunk driving?
When I was growing up my family was able to, and did, buy dynamite, blasting caps, at the local hardware store with no special license or transportation requirements. We paid for it, picked it up out back, put in it in the trunk of the car and drove home with it. That the average person can still acquire explosives easily, legally, and safely is a testament to what a great country we have. It shows that not only the government is subservient to its citizens but that its citizens are responsible and can be trusted.
If you had demonstrated these explosives were used in thousands of crimes each year I might think you had reason to be concerned. But you did not do this. You could have used that same product and those same video to show what a great country we have. You could have shown what unique freedoms we have and how those freedoms are not being abused. Seattle King 5 Evening Magazine did that with this video: http://www.boomershoot.org/2005/KING5.wmv. But you didn’t do that. You merely demonstrated you are a Puritan–afraid that someone, someplace, is having fun.
A few days ago one of the women I met online in my nine dates with six women in nine days adventure sent me an email asking information about a local gun range and instructor for a female friend of hers.
Yesterday I had my semi-annual eye exam (yes, my eyesight is quite good). I wore an Insights Training sweatshirt. As I walked in the door a female patient looked at me and said, “Insights! Are you an instructor?” “No”, I told her, “I’m just a student of theirs.”
It turns out she had worked at Weapons Safety Inc. (a gun shop and range) when Insights did a lot of their classes there and hence was quite familiar with Insights. The female optometrist asked the other patient a little about what it was like to work there and then it was back to business.
As I was waiting the female receptionist was talking to still another female patient about LASIK and told her that her ex had bad eyes and wore very thick glasses. He then had LASIK and the next year was able to win a rifle competition he had no chance of winning with his previous eyes. The woman she was talking to didn’t seem the least bit fazed.
This was all in the Seattle area. Historically Seattle is very anti-gun.
We have essentially won the culture war on guns. We need to keep taking new people to the range (I had another one scheduled for 2:00 PM today but she became ill and we are rescheduling) but short of a major screw up the worst case in the next decade or so is that progress toward our end goal is halted.
But there is another culture war that looks every bit as bad as things did for gun rights advocates 15 years ago.
We have long known something was very wrong with our country. The gun issue was/is just one symptom. TSA is a big deal. The war on drugs is a big deal. The government involvement in health care is a big deal. The welfare state is a big deal. The government involvement in education is a big deal. The national debt is a huge deal.
Looking at the bigger picture there are just so many things wrong that it is easy to want to just run away, create Galt’s Gulch, or encourage secession. 15 years ago the gun rights situation looked hopeless too. As Tam said if you arrived as a time traveler at a gun store in 1995 and told them the future of gun ownership in 2012 they would have found the time travel part the most believable part of your story.
I’m not saying “everything is going to be okay”. In fact in at least one way we have essentially a mathematical proof that it’s game over and we are just watching the clock run out. But the question is, what do we do about it?
Some people are buying gold and silver. Lots of people are buying guns and ammo. But you can’t eat gold or silver. You can eat a bullet, but one is your lifetime limit and few people consider the Smith and Wesson retirement plan the best they can do. Stockpiling food and water in the city, at best, will only get you by as long as your supplies last. And even if you join up with a like minded tribe deep in the woods it’s going to be at best a couple of generations until the latest fashion debate is about how to arrange which type of bird feather on your fur coat and there is talk of an “assault weapon ban” on crossbows with the real agenda of getting rid of all bows and arrows and maybe spears too.
I think there may be a better way. I have the big vision but I haven’t yet been able to figure out how to implement it. It’s sort of like I know I need a bridge across this dangerous ravine. I know a fair amount about different types of bridges but none of them seem to be feasible. I suppose it’s possible the “ravine” is actually the “Grand Canyon” and we simply don’t have the “technology”, money, and/or time to build such a bridge in the time we have left. But if you consider 1995 the darkest days in the gun wars and a win being clearly visible by 2003 (most people predicted the AWB probably wasn’t going to be renewed) then that only took eight years.
One way to look at that is those eight years is that they were essentially a politically delaying action until we got our culture war game on. I claim a similar situation exists today. I’m sure freedom has not yet reached it’s nadir but there is a fair amount of political action that will slow the descent. If we can get our culture game going for freedom then we might be able pull out a win before the clock runs out.
The problem is I don’t see how to win the culture war. I don’t see that we have effective weapons in this culture war. I don’t even see how to fight the culture war. People are certainly trying but we are rapidly losing.
With guns we could take people to the range and the anti-gun people didn’t have anti-gun ranges to compete with us. The anti-freedom people have “free stuff” and “security” to offer. It’s all a lie in the long, or even intermediate, term but that doesn’t really matter. What matters is here and now. The media shows the sick getting treatment, the hungry being fed, and the TSA proclaiming the world is a safer place when they find eight ounces of toothpaste in grandmas carryon luggage. The hidden costs and the cancerous belief that more government is the solution to every problem are difficult to see and in the “distant” future of a few years from now.
What are the freedom games that would be the equivalent of USPSA, IDPA, Steel Challenge, and Boomershoot? Something that quickly engages people and gives almost immediate feedback would be ideal. It is a video game? But maybe the definition of “immediate” can be stretched a bit. Perhaps it is an experimental city with no taxes on income, capital gains, or sales. Or maybe it is teaching philosophy in our schools.
The way I see it we can win the culture war in the next few years or we can say George Orwell was off by two generations.
I found your email when you were sticking up for that republican bitch michelle malkin. If you know whats good you will keep your fucking mouth shut about Obama or you will come up missing on the news.
Joseph C.
jcXXXXX@yahoo.com
November 10, 2012 8:43 AM
Original email and header is here.
[I suspect he was referring to this web page. I haven’t checked my log files yet but I suspect he found it via this blog post.
Additional information about Joseph C.:
Additional information for Joseph C.:
Yet another example of violent liberals. We are better than this.
And, yes, I sent an email to Ms. Malkin about it.—Joe]
Update February 19, 2013: He called me.
Update February 26, 2013: He called again.
We need gun control. Obama, if you’re reading, which I know you are of course, it’s time to tackle gun control now that your second term is in the bag. Be a badass. Do it.
I got carded at Dominick’s the other day for buying natural cough medicine. Ingredients? Honey and eucalyptus – a real meth lab waiting to happen. We live in a world where cough medicine is regulated, where you need a license to fish and in most states, women have to endure mandatory waiting periods for a certain medical procedure. Our cars have to pass emission inspections. Restaurants have to adhere to health codes. But guns? Oh, you just buy those and toss ’em in your closet for your kids to find, sell them on the black market or twirl them around your thumbs like Yosemite Sam. Root ’em toot ’em! Guns are dangerous and yet remain highly unregulated.
Jenna Myers Karvunidis
November 7, 2012
Obama second term: Gun control
[
She recognizes being carded for honey and eucalyptus is silly but rather than call for an end to that she demands guns, a specific enumerated right, be more regulated than they already are.
From a legal standpoint governments have the power to, and do, regulate honey and eucalyptus. There is even a good chance they could ban both and no court would overturn it (the voters probably would be different story). A specific enumerated right such as your religion, speech, reading material, firearms, a speedy trial, right to legal counsel, and right to not incriminate yourself? Not so much.
But she is from Chicago, you shouldn’t expect her to understand freedom and rights.—Joe]
Josh Horwitz went on a rant about gun bloggers who might download and read a book on making explosives. He named a number of gun bloggers and there was no mention of me! And I probably have a dozen books on explosives on my shelf already.
What do I have to do to get some attention from him? I publish instructions, test results, and teach others how to make explosives on a fairly regular basis. I even describe how to take down an airplane with explosives made from common household materials. What more do I have to do to make the cut?
I think there is some sort of discrimination going on here and there should be a law against that. He shouldn’t be allowed to exercise his First Amendment privileges unless he can pass a competency test. If he is going to rant about gun bloggers and explosives then it is clear I should be number one on anyone’s list. He should forfeit his license to write or speak in public. It’s only common sense. We can do better than to allow people that incompetent to spout their lies of omission in public.
Update: As pointed out in the comment by fast richard, Horwitz has corrected his error. But he did not apologize for or acknowledge his lie of omission. I have not yet forgiven him. I still have a lot of crying to do before I’m going to feel better about this. And there ought to be a law to help prevent others from ever going through what I have gone through.
As civilization breaks down and looters roam through New York, New Jersey, and other places devastated by hurricane Sandy and made defenseless by unconstitutional laws it is a good time to remember The Gun is Civilization.
There are lots of things that are true enough in general that one is tempted to claim more extensive application is valid. In general this is harmless and the exceptions to the general rule will be handled appropriately. But in the case of enabling government power to enforce what sounds like a good idea you can end up enabling poor law and even evil. Our “war on drugs” is but one example.
Joe Waldron from the WA-CCW email list and long time lobbyist for for CCRKBA gives us the following example and how it was defeated early and decisively:
Several years ago, a City Attorney from a small town north of Seattle tried to interest legislators in a bill that would make possession of a firearm in a public place, while under the influence of alcohol, an offense in itself. He asked the gun lobby for support. We agreed that alcohol and guns do not mix. So we offered to support the bill… provided that the day it took effect, he would accompany us to every cop bar in town and arrest those in violation.
The bill never got introduced.