Category Archives: Gun Rights

Quote of the day—Justice Antonin Scalia

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A constitutional guarantee subject to future judges’ assessments of its usefulness is no constitutional guarantee at all . . . Like the First, [the Second Amendment] is the very product of an interest-balancing by the people…

Justice Antonin Scalia
June 26, 2008
District of Columbia, et al., petitioners v. Dick Anthony Heller
[Got that? After balancing the risks and benefits the highest law of the land which may only be overturned by a constitutional amendment (if then because this is in the Bill of Rights) says, “The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”

Keep that in mind when someone demands “reasonable” or “common sense” regulation of firearms.”

H/T Alan Gura in his brief.—Joe]

Gun control void?

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This constitutes “news”?

Some States Try to Fill National Gun Control Void

OVERVIEW: The July 20 shooting at a suburban Denver movie theater that killed 12 people has prompted Democratic leaders in at least three large states to push for tighter restrictions on assault weapons and the purchase of large amounts of ammunition. While California, New York and Illinois push proposals, gun control hasn’t gained traction in Congress and on the presidential campaign trail.

Let’s rewrite that overview as it would have been written by a “reporter” just as biased in the other direction:

Administration still ignoring wide scale civil rights violations

OVERVIEW: The July 20 shooting at a suburban Denver movie theater that killed 12 people has prompted bigoted, prejudiced Democratic leaders in at least three large states to push for tighter restrictions on so called “assault weapons” and the purchase of ammunition in such minor quantities as to be insufficient for a weekend class or match. Clearer heads with at least a modicum of respect for the Bill of Rights and/or fearful of voter outrage resisted the extremist proposals. Even as California, New York and Illinois push proposals, gun rights hasn’t gained traction in Congress and on the presidential campaign trail. This is despite repeated calls for the U.S. Attorney General to file charges against politicians and law enforcement officials for violation of civil rights under the color of law. Some gun owner rights activists are demanding U.S. Marshalls and/or the National Guard step in and restore the right to keep and bear arms to those deprived of their rights. “A right delayed is a right denied”, they claim. They point out that further delays could mean those in a position to correct the the rights violations but failing to do so should be charged as co-conspirators.

I responded with a more succinct and less radical comment:

I view a biased and prejudiced article like this the same way I would an article with a title of “Some States Try to Fill Speech and Religion Control Void”. The right to keep and bear arms is a specific enumerated right. That some states are infringing upon that right should result in all the wrath that it would if some states were infringing up on the rights of blacks as they did in the deep south not too many years ago.

I’m seriously of the opinion that if necessary the Feds should put the entire slate of politicians and law enforcement thugs who enforce laws violating civil rights in Federal prisons and let the people start over. Of course there would need to be some Feds who respected our rights to begin with to avoid infinite recursion.

Four out of five people open carry

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A couple weeks ago when some of the Boomershoot staff put on a small private party it turned out, without prior planning or even a word spoken about carrying in any form, that four out of five people present were open carrying:

IMG_0866Corrected
Me, Maggie (the weirdo not carrying), Barron, Jacob, and Kim.

Jacob was also open carrying a moderately large fixed blade knife.

Quote of the day—Brennan Bailey

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They’re accomplishing the impossible: of all the anti-gun stronghold states in the U.S., California is the Grand Imperial Palace of gun hatery … and Calguns is besieging and tearing it back down brick by painstaking brick. There is no superlative adequate to describe my regard for these guys.

Brennan Bailey
August 15, 2012
Via the guns email list at work.
[Yeah. I have a pretty high regard for Calguns too.—Joe]

Truth

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crazy_straws

The gun culture is a prime example. Think of hunters, competitors, open carry, concealed carry, collectors, etc.

Other human cultures I have observed (such as software developers, boating, and sex) exhibit the same characteristic.

Truth in advertising

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Kevin points out that a proposed name change for the ATF to “Violent Crime Bureau” would be “truth in advertising”.

Been there. Done that. Let’s move on.

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Even on the Huffington Post anti-gun posts get swamped by comments from the pro-gun side. It wasn’t very long ago that there was an almost fair battle in the comments. It doesn’t seem to be that way anymore.

The latest one I looked at was We Need a Serious Gun Control Conversation by Greg Palmer. He begins with:

Can we have a conversation about guns now?

I contributed Just One Question but really my response should have been something along the lines of the following.

Huh? I have been having “serious gun control conversations” for just under 20 years now. And in many ways I am a newcomer to the “conversation”. Read Neal Knox – The Gun Rights War for history that goes back over 40 years.

Let me give Palmer a recap of the last 40 years.

We had the “conversation”. Your side lied, cheated, and took unfair advantage at every opportunity. But still your side lost. Big time.

You side lost the safety argument and your side lost the legal argument (see the U.S. Supreme Court decisions D.C. v. Heller and McDonald v. Chicago). You have no arguments left. The conversation was over years ago and all you are doing now is whining about the outcome. Go tell your problems to a therapist because the adults in this conversation aren’t interested in your delusions of relevancy.

Quote of the day—Blake Zeff

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No one in power is scared of the gun control movement.

Blake Zeff
August 14, 2012
What the gun control movement can learn from gay rights
[Good! That is the way it should be.

If you were to read the article you would find Zeff got it just backward. So I left the following comment for him:

The similarities between gun rights and gay rights are much greater than those between gun control and gay rights.

Gun owners just want to be left alone. 80 to 100 million gun owners and millions of gays are good neighbors, parents, co-workers, friends, and didn’t commit any crimes last year. The extremely small fraction that did commit crimes should be punished. Collective punishment and discrimination against people who have harmed no one is wrong and a very strong motivator. This injustice is the reason the NRA can motivate gun owners to vote against politicians. Politicians don’t fear the NRA. They fear gun owners who vote.

That there even exist gun control organizations is a stain in our political environment. Just as gay, black, Jew, and women control organizations would be and have been.

It appears comments are moderated so it may never show up (Reasoned Discourse) but at least I have it here.—Joe]

Theater Security Theater*

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Elaboration on the following Tweet from Saturday night:

Ticket taker for Dark Knight checked my companion’s bag for a gun. She didn’t notice the STI Eagle on my right hip or the mag on the left.

The ticket taker asked to check my companion’s bag and said, “We are doing this since the shooting in Colorado.” The ticket taker glanced inside the bag and said, “Okay” as my companion and I glanced at each other in shock. We took a few steps down the hall toward the theater and burst out laughing. Through my shirt my companion patted my right then left hip and laughed even louder.

It was an STI Eagle 5.1 chambered in .40 S&W. I was carrying a total of two 18 round magazines plus one in the chamber for a total of 37 rounds. I could have been carrying a dozen magazines in my pockets and socks and the ticket taker wouldn’t have noticed. It was nothing but security theater.

I was tempted to tell the poor young woman that if she asked to inspect the bag of someone intent on an Aurora type shooting that she was going to be first to get shot. But I didn’t see the point in making her more unhappy with her job than she already was. After all, who could like a job where people laugh at you behind your back?

The Tweet above was sent while waiting for the movie to start and was retweeted by nine people and made a favorite by two others. This makes it the most popular, by far, tweet of mine.

*Title as per the suggestion from Bitter. I considered “Security Theater in the Theater” but the shorter version creates some addition stress from the ambiguity which I kind of like.

Quote of the day—Alexandra Rodda

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Guns are such phallic symbols giving the shooters feelings of potency and such a feeling of relief when they are discharged! I’m sure that is one of the chief reasons why Americans hang on to their guns so strongly. They should know that they are not so poorly endowed that they need guns to make them adequate.

Alexandra Rodda
July 30, 2012
Comment to Michael Moore Praises, Criticizes Obama’s Stance on Gun Control
[It’s another Markley’s Law Monday!

Someone should ask Ms. Rodda the process by which she determines truth from falsity. I suspect she also has some difficulties in distinguishing reality from delusion.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Kiki

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Just shoot yourself. The modern man doesn’t need to hunt, he has all he wants and can obtain anything without hunting or any other stupid sick barbaric medieval method. What the fuck do you know about nature? You’re just talking shit to give a “logical” explanation why you hunt, it’s all bullshit ! Cut the crap with the nice, civilized outspoken person, ’cause you’re not ! You deserve to be considered trash, you an hypocrite, people like you don’t need respect, you deserve all the swears in the world because you understand just one law, the fist in the jaw law ! Any anti-hunting or animal right argument isn’t ever good for you, you just know that one thing, that you’re the center of the world and for that you’re nothing,you’re just a waste of oxygen !

Kiki
August 10, 20112
Comment to More Attacks on Sport Shooters & Hunters
[Remember it’s in their nature for liberals to be violent.

I also have to wonder if Kiki thinks butchering animals at the slaughterhouse is somehow less barbaric than in the field. And that they want hunters dead but animals in the wild to be left unmanaged would seem to be further evidence they regard hunters as not only subhuman but even below animals in regard to respect for their lives and rights.

That’s some pretty sick stuff right there. And it’s a very good reminder of why the right to keep an bear arms is so important. People like that have no inhibitions about committing genocide.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Jennifer Rubin

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Liberals would like us to believe we don’t have stricter gun control laws because politicians are putty in the hands of the National Rifle Association. In fact, most pols are exquisitely attuned to popular opinion. The reason neither Democrats or Republicans aren’t pushing for gun control is that voters don’t want it. Democracy can be a stubborn thing.

Jennifer Rubin
August 8, 2012
Thumbs down on gun control
[Rubin is correct but doesn’t go far enough. Many Liberals do not understand that facts and even reality can be a stubborn thing.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Drew Magary

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You can’t make gun owners the target if you want to change the conversation. You can’t even make guns the target. The desired end result of any gun control advocate is less gun violence. In other words, less crime. That’s what you’re really fighting against. Saying you’re against guns actually distracts people from that message, and in fact invites many people to resist.

Drew Magary
August 7, 2012
Why Gun Control Isn’t Working
[What he is saying is mostly correct. What he apparently doesn’t understand is that “less gun violence” is not synonymous with “less crime”. Smart anti-gun people know that and very carefully avoid talking about less crime. The carefully chosen words they use betrays their knowledge that they are not anti-crime but rather are anti-gun and/or anti-gun owner, or just plain want to control other people.

If gun control resulted in less crime then answering Just One Question would be easy. But it has never been done in a way that would bring a smile to the gun control activist (see here for details). Magary needs to spend sometime investigating the facts before expressing his opinions. He isn’t as smart as he thinks he is.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Sebastian

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My position is absolute. I want less, not more gun control. I’m not going to compromise or work with them on any issue unless the other side gets me in a position where the only choices are bad and worse.

Sebastian
August 7, 2012
A Defense of Absolutism
[I think there might be some exceptions to this position but generally he gets it right.

Our opponents do not have our best interest or even the interests of society at heart. Some of them openly admit that they will push for more gun control as long as there are still even one accident or crime committed which involved a gun. There is no trade-offs in their world view. They view the private possession of guns as evil. There is no negotiating with people that “think” like that. If they cannot even discuss the costs of gun control there is no point in even talking with them. They must be politically destroyed.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Lila Newark

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“Freedom is on the march” – in our movie theaters now – not Ay-rak. It’s the “American exceptionalism”! If compared with the rest of the FIRST & SECOND WORLDS, where selling ammunition on the internet – like “only” 6000 rounds + assault weapons to the general population is considered INSANITY. Here is it “intended for hunting – shooting a duck”? haha. Sitting ducks? ….like sitting ducks in movie theaters? 36 acts of mass violence in 30 yrs will not deter bloodthirsty NRA money addicts who preach freedom on the outside and profit on the inside as they sell WMD to men with small brains and penises who need to be compensated by owning their big guns to make them feel like real men – and at which cost? How many more deaths does this “freedom”/insanity cost?

Lila Newark
August 1, 2012
Comment to NRA Enabled Bullets-by-Mail Used by Colorado Shooting Suspect.
[It’s another Markley’s Law Monday!

If I could make sense of it I might have considered discussed threat modeling, attack surfaces, and other security analysis methods. But it is clear Newark cannot focus their own thoughts for more than a few seconds let alone grasp the thoughts expressed by someone else.

As I tried to make sense of this rambling rant I kept thinking, “Are there some meds they should be taking?”—Joe]

Quote of the day—Harveydad

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For our country to meet the requirements of the Constitution, the people do not need to be armed with neither automatic weapons nor handguns. Shoulder-fired guns will meet all Constitutional requirements, and make the people safer than they have been in years.

Harveydad
July 27, 2012
Comment to Candidates Cower on Gun Control
[Harveydad has a long way to go before becoming a scholar on the gun issue. He currently couldn’t even qualify as a student in good standing.

Whether automatic weapons are protected by the 2nd Amendment is not entirely clear at this point. But the handgun issue is exceedingly clear. Just read the Heller vs. D.C. decision.

Neither handgun nor automatic weapon bans has ever, anytime, anyplace, made people safer.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Lyle @ UltiMAK

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Take your feelings and go bang your head against a wall– we’re having a serious conversation here.

Lyle @ UltiMAK
August 3, 2012
Comment to Quote of the day—Charles Garcia in response to a comment from mikeb302000.
[Runner up QOTD is from Linoge in the same thread in response to the same troll.

I would like to add that if mikeb302000 were bang his head against the wall he probably would notice it feels good to stop. That would not mean it was a good thing to do in the first place.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Charles Garcia

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No politician, including the most powerful man in the free world, wants to pull the trigger on solving the complex issue of gun control. The odds of political survival after such a move are worse than those in a game of Russian roulette.

Charles Garcia
August 2, 2012
Politicians hammered by the NRA
[And no politician, including the most powerful man in the free world, wants to pull the trigger on solving the complex issues of speech, freedom of association, or religion control either. So what’s his point?

Is he saying he isn’t capable of understanding the right to keep and bear arms is a specific enumerated right? In 2008 the U.S. Supreme court ruled guns in common use are protected. Earlier rulings said firearms used by the military are protected. Garcia needs to either 1) Advocate for the repeal of the 2nd Amendment and get swept into the dustbin of history; or 2) Find a cure for his ignorance problem.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Dan Gross

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We have a national crisis on our hands. Chicago has a crisis on its hands. We have to do everything we can do to prevent tragedy from happening.

Dan Gross
Head of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence
August 1, 2012
Quinn wants to ban assault rifles
[Chicago has a crisis on its hands because they prohibit people from using the best available tools to defend themselves and the government there is incredibly corrupt.

We have to do everything we can do to prevent tragedy? Then:

  • No vehicle of any type, land, air or sea, that can travel faster than 5 MPH may be allowed to exist
  • No building may be higher than 10 feet tall
  • No body of water may be more than 12″ deep
  • No mountain may have a slope of more than 30 degrees

Dan Gross is some combination of delusional, evil, ignorant, and/or incredibly stupid. That a news publication would quote him and not mock him is evidence of that organization’s complicity in evil.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Liana Brooks

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If you think you need a gun at the place you are planning to eat, you either need v!agra for your obvious issues, or a new place to eat.

…

Basically, what I’m saying is I assume anyone running around with a gun in this day and age is compensating for a tiny dick.

…

I understand some men worry about this, but I think they should consult a doctor, not run around with a penis extender.

…

Dragging a gun to a play date, mall, or restaurant makes you instantly suspect. … Maybe we should bring a ruler and demand an inspection?

Liana Brooks
July 19, 2012
On Twitter here, here, here, and here.
[It’s another Markley’s Law Monday!

H/T to Linoge.—Joe]