#OpenCarry starts on Thursday. This is the equivalent of Rednecks getting to walk around with their dong out! #NotStoked #RedStateBullShit
Rox Allen Kerby
October 29, 2012
A Tweet on Twitter.
[It’s another Markley’s Law Monday!
Via email from @linoge_wotc.—Joe]
I took a bunch of psychology classes in college. They were easy and fun for me. In one class I got extra credit for participating in grad student psych experiments. One such experiment required I take some sort of standard psychological test. I tested as pretty normal except for two characteristics. One was something like “logical versus emotional”. I was way out of the normal range in the direction of “logical”. The other characteristic was “psychological mindedness” or some such thing. On that “axis” I again scored way out of the normal range in direction of being very “psychologically minded”. The grad student that went over my test results with me said the logical was consistent with being an engineering major. But the level of psychological mindedness was usually only found in psych grad students or professional psychologists. I guess that explained why I enjoyed the classes and did well.
With that in mind I find some parts of political campaigns extremely interesting and at the same time disturbing.
The disturbing part has nothing to do with the actual policies of the candidates or that they are exploiting, probably intentionally, certain psychological characteristics that have nothing to do with sound policy. And in fact have been exploited by leaders throughout history to lead their people to disaster and massive genocide against innocent people. Of course those same psychological tools have been used for good as well as evil.
In the following two videos one of the more interesting irrational characteristics is being exploited:
That characteristics is that people tend to go along with the crowd. If large numbers of other people are doing something then there is a strong tendency for others to follow along. People attend political events, sporting events, rock concerts, and many religious events and talk about “the energy” of the crowd. Most people crave this mass excitement and want to be a part of it. In politics the words and the intonation of the speeches are specifically designed (intentionally or not) to stimulate this excitement, to encourage you to participate, and for you to “belong”.
If you remember the 2008 election the media made a big deal about the large number of Obama supporters at the Obama political events. I haven’t noticed that this year. And because I donated some money to the Romney campaign this year I get frequent emails from them. Many of them include pictures of large crowds in support of his campaign. The videos above were just a sample.
I find political events boring. I can sense the “energy” people talk about but the “bandwidth” of the communication is so low that I’m bored. I’d much rather read the politicians policy statements than hear vague words expressed with great excitement interrupted by yelling and applause every few seconds. The “energy” is a source of irritation to me. I get excited by seeing things that work rather than things that excite other people.
That doesn’t mean that I don’t “exploit” this psychological characteristic as well. Besides my personal love of explosives and long range shooting Boomershoot is a means of generating excitement to encourage gun ownership and long range rifle skills. When in front of the camera for Boomershoot I try to emote the enthusiasm that will encourage more participants. I’m not interested in the Boomershoot dinner with a crowd of people but I make it happen, attend, talk to people, and usually say a few things to the crowd because that socialization is extremely important to some people.
This psychological characteristic is just one more reason why we need strict limits on governmental powers. It is not the politician with the best policies that necessarily get chosen. There is some component of policy into the final vote tally but to a large extent it is the politician with the best team of psychologists (whether they realize they are psychologists or not) that can exploit weakness in the human mind for votes, money, and volunteers that will win. And there is a high correlation between those with natural ability in this area and the people who should be kept the greatest distance from political power. Limited government is a means of minimizing the damage done by these people. Both because it reduces the ability of them to do damage and because limited power is less attractive to them in the first place.
If you own stock in a gun manufacturer you might want thank President Obama:
From Chart Of The Day: Sturm, Ruger’s Revenues.
Some people just don’t understand unintended consequences (from October 13, 2008):
Sarah and Jim Brady and the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence with its network of Million Mom March Chapters endorsed Senator Barack Obama for President and Senator Joseph Biden for Vice President today, and urged Americans to vote for them.
From looking at the chart and the date of the Brady Campaign endorsement announcement it’s clear the Brady Campaign causes gun sales.* Lots of gun sales.
*I’m just mocking them. Of course I know correlation does not necessarily mean causation.
NRA has now recovered fees in excess of 1.3 million dollars. So for losing the cases, Chicago and the other cities involved paid a total of over 1.7 million dollars to firearms civil rights groups.
In September 2012, the NRA filed another Motion for Supplemental Attorneys’ Fees. By that motion, the NRA is now seeking attorneys’ fees and expenses incurred in litigating its original motion for attorneys’ fees. Because these fees and expenses were not included in the amount of the August fee award, Chicago and Oak Park will most likely be writing more checks to the NRA!
The wages of the sins of Chicago and other cities are to pay those that represent their victims. I would prefer the individuals that made the stupid decisions to use the power of government to infringe upon specific enumerated rights had to compensate the victims directly and then spend time in prison as per 18 USC 242. But it is a huge improvement over the situation of 15 years ago.
There are at least two ways to interpret Americans Aged 18-29 Have A More Favorable Response To Socialism Than To Capitalism. One is that the young are inclined toward socialism and as they age they will become more capitalist. The other is that capitalism is on it’s way out and as the current capitalist age out socialism is inevitable.
I’m inclined to believe the first hypothesis is more likely to be true than the latter. One of the reasons is that young socialists have been predicting the imminent collapse of capitalism for decades if not longer. Here is one example:
In the last week of May 1968, a rallying call to the working class to take political power into their hands would have tolled the death knell of capitalism on a world scale.
In rural Idaho at the time, and a bit too young, I was too far removed from ground zero of the socialist movements of the 1960s. But I know people who were near the center of those times and places. They too believed within a few decades capitalism would be dead and buried.
I won’t deny that capitalism is weaker and is more likely to be crushed now than at any other time in the last 50 years, but it is far stronger than its detractors of the 1960s thought it would be at this time. Many of those sympathetic to socialism at that time became more capitalist as they grew older.
Perhaps socialism will temporarily bury capitalism in the next few years or perhaps decades. But I believe the young will continue to mature and become more capitalist as they age. Socialism will succeed only because we grant them power based on their stated intention rather than based on the fruit they bring. And results versus stated intentions are becoming more and more clear with each victory the socialists make.
It is those stated intentions that are so seductive we can almost taste the sweetness of the candy. The candy that is laced, by it’s very socialist nature, with carcinogens. What the socialists don’t really understand, and why I say any burial of capitalism is temporary, is that as the cancer takes hold and destroys a society it destroys the great mass of the socialist advocates at a faster rate than it does the capitalists. The capitalists will move to protect their “capital” whether it is their tangible wealth or the intellectual and physical skills that made them more productive than the socialists to begin with. As the socialists rot from the cancer of their own making the capitalists will be the ones to recover and rise from the ashes of the civilization the socialists destroyed.
I don’t know the time scale. There are just too many variables. The elections next week, as important as they are, are probably a minor player in the big picture. The economic collapse of Western Europe and perhaps Japan and China will play a major role. Add in the price and availability of oil and the possibility of glass pockmarks replacing the cities of Iran and/or Israel and you have such huge variables that making such predictions is impossible.
But I believe that even if it has to be resurrected from the ashes capitalism, particularly the right to property and all that derives from that, will rise because it is a natural law recognized and defended by nearly all animals and even our very young. I’ve talked to avowed Marxists and others who looked me directly in the eyes and said, “What’s wrong with socialism?” Their logic is non-existent, their data is cherry-picked, and their arguments are both fragile and brittle.
They can only succeed through deception and force. And at some level they know that too. This is why they have such violent tendencies. This is why they are genocidal. They can only succeed if they can kill off their intellectual competition. But as they run out of places to loot there is a “little problem” waiting for them. Their final, intended, victims are armed.
It is only as we humans go through the process of maturing in the teenage years that our brains turn to mush and advocate for socialism. Most recover but some do not. It is my belief that socialism is now making it’s final push to kill capitalism and although those with mush for brains might actually succeed in the end mush for brains will always lose to superior firepower.
Mayor Emanuel, like his former boss in the White House, doesn’t have a plan that works. Since he seems unwilling to follow the court’s wishes, and appears unable to lead his city out of despair, perhaps he should just get out of the way and give his citizens a level playing field against violent criminals.
Alan Gottlieb
October 30, 2012
CHICAGO MAYOR SHOULD SHARE BLAME FOR MAYHEM, SAYS CCRKBA
[I take a minor exception to the word “give.” I think it should have been “let.”
And if I were to have my way I would go further than Gottlieb and demand Mayor Emanuel be prosecuted under 18 USC 242. But I’m an extremist who believes those who violate rights protected by the Bill of Rights should be punished.—Joe]
Barron continues our video series and posts mocking Brady Campaign Board member Joan Peterson with Pumpkins for Joan:
Think about this… The Brady Campaign wants to, and has tried for decades, to get various types of guns banned. Handguns were their first target back in the 1970’s. They were originally the National Council to Control Handguns (NCCH), then the Center to Prevent Handgun Violence (CPHV), then Handgun Control, Inc. (HCI) in 1980 and finally The Brady Campaign in 2001. And as recently as the brief they filed for the DC v. Heller case in 2008 they claimed the Second Amendment did not protect an individual right and even if it did it did not extend to handguns. Not only have they failed in their decades long mission the U.S. Supreme Court has explicitly said handguns are protected. And using the phrase “in common use” the court strongly implied that the secondary target of the Brady’s, “assault weapons”, are also protected. They have some extremely high hurdles to overcome to even get back to the position they were in as late as 2008, let along where they were when they were founded in 1974. And today on our side we use not only “assault weapons” but explosives to mock them.
When guns and bullets just aren’t enough aren’t you glad we have Boomershoot?
There are reports of looting in the aftermath of hurricane Sandy. The National Guard has been mobilized to help stop the looting but what I don’t see or mentioned are people defending their homes and stores like what we saw after hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. Most people in New Jersey and New York probably do not have a firearm which would give them a decent chance against the supposedly planned “flash mob robberies”.
I wonder if this will change any opinions on the right to keep and bear arms. Will more people purchase a firearm and get some training so that next time they will be better prepared? Or will government workers with guns do such a wonderful job that people will see no need for private citizens to own guns?
A search of Google news for hurricane sandy gun turns up nothing of interest. I wonder why that is.
We have guns, and we have violent crime – just as we have deer and we have trout. They both live hereabouts, but one doesn’t breed the other.
Denny Bonavita
October 25, 2012
Hey, gun control boosters: Gun sales soar, but murders don’t. Why?
[I like the way he expressed that.—Joe]
The Second Amendment clearly states that citizens of the United States have the right to “keep and bear arms” for “traditionally lawful purposes.”
Stanley G. Buford
October 29, 2012
Why Gun Control Has Nothing to Do With the 2nd Amendment.
[It would appear Buford has a reading comprehension problem. There has been some debate over the existence of commas in the Second Amendment but Buford had to be closing his eyes and imagining things or spending time in an alternate reality to come up with what he claims it says. The Second Amendment in my universe as passed by the Congress:
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
As ratified by the States and authenticated by Thomas Jefferson, Secretary of State:
A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
But one should not be surprised. The anti-gun people are used to lying. In order to have any hope of winning they have to.—Joe]
@linoge_wotc I can see from your stockpile of guns and photos of guns that you have a VERY SMALL PENIS!
GiGI (@gigimorgan10)
Tweeted October 18, 2012
[It’s another Markley’s Law Monday!
H/T Linoge via Twitter.
Her statement presumes facts not in evidence. I think a citation is needed. Or, more likely, she has crap for brains.—Joe]
All the terrible instruments of war are the Natural Birth Right of the American citizen.
Attributed to Thomas Jefferson
[Awesome quote!
I received this in email recently and it looked just a little too good to be true. I went searching for it and was only able to find one instance of it. This instance does not appear to be supported by any reference to any of Jefferson’s writings or speeches. I did extensive searches on http://www.monticello.org which I have found to be a good source for Jefferson quotes in the past.
I must conclude this is not correctly attributed to Jefferson.
While searching I did discover two other quotes I had attributed to Jefferson are probably bogus as well. I have update my posts here and here.—Joe]
As per request from my previous post on this topic we now have video of the pumpkins we blew up for Joan Peterson, board member of the Brady Campaign:
Joan Peterson, and the entire Brady Campaign organization, should just get used to the idea that they cannot win this fight. We outnumber them by hundreds to one. We make people happy. They wallow in the pain, misery, and suffering of victims. We will spend hundreds of dollars, and countless hours mocking her and her kind.
You are on the wrong side of history Joan, give it up.
Barron made another video for Brady Campaign board member Joan Peterson. Read his blog post for the complete story with this as the dessert. It’s dessert because it is sweet (even if Barb L. says it can’t be dessert because there is no chocolate):
I’m working on a video of my own from last weekend. It will have a different focus but it still should give Peterson heartburn. Some people don’t like just desserts.
When I came into this police force I wanted to help people, but the civilian population, they’re being hunted. Instead of being protected by us they’re being hunted and we’re being hated.
NYPD Officer
On the Department’s Feudal “Stop and Frisk” Policy.
From 11:28 in the following video:
[H/T Tyler Durden and Michael Krieger.
Also of interest is, from 2:11, “I had this captain who walked into the precinct and gave a speech about harassing the public. His words were, ‘We’re going to go out there and were going to violate some rights’.”
The police should realize this will not be tolerated for long. If legal recourse fails to get them in compliance then they should expect ‘game on.’ With no rules.—Joe]
Another data point to indicate we are winning the gun owner rights battle is that in the 2000 election George Bush was saying, apparently reluctantly, he would sign a permanent ban on “assault weapons” if it was put on his desk and his opponent, Al Gore, wanted the AWB as well as restrictions and licensing of ordinary handguns.
In this election President Obama, apparently reluctantly, said he would like to see an AWB passed and his opponent, Mitt Romney says he doesn’t want any more restrictions on firearms.
Hence today we have the more repressive candidate for President of the United States taking the position of the least repressive candidate of 12 years ago.
Yes, I can see an analogy being made to dungeon prisoners celebrating their ration of gruel being increased by 10%. But it is a measurable improvement and the trend for the foreseeable future continues to be favorable.
Sebastian reported a new gun blog and I poked around some. The author, Nicholas J. Johnson, is a Professor of Law specializing in firearm regulation. I found this post of his fascinating.
The following, in particular, caught my attention:
Both the majority and the dissent acknowledge that the AR-15 is a gun in common use. How they proceed from there is illuminating. The dissent treats common use as a solid liberty-protecting standard. Guns in common use cannot be banned.
For the majority, acknowledging the AR-15 as a gun in common use is just a rhetorical lead-in to the burgeoning two stage standard of review. The court found that the D.C. law did in fact burden a core Second Amendment concern. But at stage two it determined that the ban does not “substantially burden” the right to self-defense (people could still have handguns and many other long guns).
This reasoning is not derived from Heller and it is interesting to speculate what else would pass muster under this approach. Pushed hard, it would seem to allow very broad gun bans as long as some core self-defense guns remained legal.
In Heller it was said that guns “in common use” are protected from prohibition by the 2nd Amendment. But some judges are ignoring that. This is essentially a repeat of what happened in Miller where it was said that to be protected by the 2nd Amendment a gun had to “has some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia.” Yet many courts ignored that statement and instead substituted a twisted version of the actual wording of the Miller decision and said the individual wanting to own or bear a firearm had to be in a militia.
Mike B., a lawyer friend of mine, once told me engineers make poor lawyers because they believe the law means what the law says and it doesn’t. The law actually means whatever the judges want it to mean. This is another data point supporting that claim. And this is another reason why getting people who follow the law as written as our judges is vital to the preservation of our rights.
Or perhaps expressed better is the comment to the post by Brett Bellmore (Oct 06, 2012 @ 09:13:19):
In the end, there’s no substitute for staffing the judiciary with people who aren’t hostile to this liberty. They have too many ways to destroy liberties they don’t like, to afford enemies there.
Keep that in mind each and every time you vote.
The buses that I have taken to and from work are generally, but not always, drama free. But at some of the bus stops I walk by in the Seattle area make me uncomfortable even when I’m fully tooled up for defensive action. That I frequently see small groups of cops hanging out at some of the stops only adds to my concerns about the frequency of drama at these locations.
The Seattle Police department reports some drama at a transit center that occurred Monday evening:
The 31-year-old suspect’s bout of bad behavior all started around 7:45 pm when he began harassing a woman sitting at a bus stop.
When another man at the bus stop tried to get the suspect to leave the woman alone, the suspect turned on the man and started following him through the Transit Center. The suspect then grabbed the man from behind, shoved him, and demanded money. The man then handed his wallet over to the suspect.
A second man saw the suspect robbing the first man, and stepped in to confront the suspect. The suspect then turned on the second man, punching him in the face and kicking him in the leg.
Already on quite a roll, the suspect then began harassing two other women at the transit center, offering them a graphic and unsolicited description of his genitalia.
Apparently appeasement doesn’t work all that well. If you are going to confront someone about their anti-social behavior it would appear you need to be able to stand your ground should the behavior escalate instead of subside.
As somewhat of a side note I find it interesting that I frequently get “a nod” from one or more of the cops at the bus stops. Sort of like an acknowledgement of “I recognize you as one of my kind” or “I recognize you as a good guy, carry on”. At least that is the way I interpret it.
On Monday evening a cop even stopped to chat with me while I was waiting at a bus stop. He asked about my Unorganized Militia Propaganda patch and what my opinion on open carry was. I told him I had a gun blog and that in most cases I regarded open carry as a political statement (the context is Washington State where concealed carry license are very easy to get) and it needed to be handled carefully. In some locations it was very helpful. In others it could be detrimental. He said he was all for people carrying guns and being able to defend themselves.
It’s a rare thing but this time I (partially) agree with Joan Peterson on this issue (H/T to Sebastian). She says, “Don’t carve pumpkins with guns”.
I took two almost new shooters to Idaho this weekend to do a little pumpkin “carving” at the Boomershoot site.
First we prepared some chemicals:
Then we mixed them. Yes, she was a little apprehensive at first. This whole Kitchen Aid mixer making Boomerite is a little “different”. Six weeks ago had you told her she was going to be traveling to Idaho, making explosives to “carve” pumpkins, and shooting a rifle before Halloween she would have said, “No way!”
Here are some sample pictures of the pumpkins being “carved” (thanks to Barron for bringing them to the party):
The picture below was taken a fraction of a second after the picture above. Notice that the pumpkin pieces have slowed and are further from the origin. I wonder what the BC of a pumpkin seed is. 
The picture above almost duplicates a picture Ry took a few years ago. Here is a cropped version of the same picture: 
There are hazards to pumpkin “carving” with Boomerite. Max wasn’t really “entertainingly close” by some peoples standards but it was close enough that he sometimes turned away to avoid getting hit in the face with pieces of pumpkin. I was extremely pleased that his finger came off the trigger and he kept the gun pointed in a safe direction: 
I’m sure Ms. Peterson will be pleased to know we didn’t use guns as our primary tool for carving the pumpkins. It was just the remote detonator for the explosives. And these new shooters will share their experience and pictures with friends and family which will add to the set of people who recognize modern sporting rifles in common use are not “assault weapons” which should be banned. But instead many of them will desire their own and to share in the fun of the gun and Boomershoot culture. And what does Ms. Peterson and the Brady Campaign have to counter this?
Only people who are inadequate below the waist need guns to make them feel like real men.
Ronald Kirchem
October 16, 2012
Comment to A new assault weapons ban?
[It’s another Markley’s Law Monday!
H/T to Sean Y. for the email!
Apparently Krichem was unable to come up with an intellectually sound response to those that explained why the “assault weapon” ban was bad law so he resorted to a position he was much more comfortable with—the retort of a ten-year old.—Joe]