Crazy thought of the day

With all the crazy stuff Joan Peterson says I wonder how large her team of psychologists is. And the authorities locked up Sarah Conner for months, who appears to be far more sane, and took her guns away.

Winning

This is how we win:

The Brady Campaign has no response to this sort of thing.

The 30 Cal Gal will be at Boomershoot 2012 in position 38.

Random thought of the day

It’s one thing to issue an executive order during peacetime saying private property “required” by the government can be taken if there is a national emergency. It’s quite another thing to enforce it during a national emergency.

μολὼν λαβέ!

One question on the Martin/Zimmerman case

There is only one question I want answered at this point. There might be more questions once I get the answer but I suspect I’ll know all I need to know with that one answer. I would like to think that answer would enough for everyone else as well but for the people chanting for Zimmerman’s arrest and those putting up “dead or alive” rewards for Zimmerman little things like facts probably won’t make much of a difference.

I strongly suspect Zimmerman is innocent of a crime. I need one more fact to convince me it was a lawful use of deadly force or that we cannot know the answer.

It is possible that Zimmerman instigated the confrontation in such a way that Martin attacked him. Taunting or “picking a fight” with Martin would have Zimmerman sharing a significant amount of responsibility in the death of Martin. But I have heard zero reports of a beginning to the confrontation in this manner. Hence I am of the opinion it did not happen this way or that as long as Zimmerman does not change his story we will never know about it.

I realize the police can’t always be trusted that concern is usually associated with the facts in regard to police conduct, the conduct of those with significant political power, or the conduct of groups being discriminated against. In the case of Zimmerman I don’t think there is any particular reason to believe the police are “fact challenged”. I realize witnesses can be mistaken and/or have a bias. If possible I would like to be able to reach a conclusion based entirely upon physical evidence that is difficult to convincingly fake in a timely manner without getting caught. Hence the particular facts that I think are most relevant are:

  • The grass stain on the back of Zimmerman’s shirt
  • Zimmerman was bleeding from the nose, had a swollen lip and had bloody cuts to the back of his head—presumably with matching blood on the sidewalk
  • There have been no reports (correct me if I am wrong on this) that Martin had physical injuries beyond a single gunshot wound to the chest

The one question I have that will probably settle the issue for me is when the authorities said, “Zimmerman then shot Martin once in the chest at very close range”; What was that range? I’ve probably spent more time and money than most on learning about such things and if the investigators know what they are doing, and I have no reason to believe they don’t, then they should be able to determine that range quite accurately. If the range was under 12 inches they can probably determine the range to within a fraction of an inch. And of course the angle can be determine quite closely as well.

If the range is determined to be within six inches and the bullet path matches Zimmerman’s story then I have to conclude the two were in a fight at contact distance and Zimmerman was losing badly. If I were on a jury I would insist that Zimmerman was in reasonable fear of imminent permanent physical injury or death and was justified in using deadly force to protect himself.

End of story for me.

Quote of the day—Tom Diaz

Lethality is the nicotine of the gun industry. Even more than the tobacco companies, firearm manufacturers have been shielded from public scrutiny and exempt from health and safety laws that govern other products.

Tom Diaz
January 20, 1999
[“Shielded from public scrutiny and exempt from health and safety laws? Do the rights protected by the First Amendment have a Federal Agency devoted to the regulation of them? Do you need to pass a background check before you can purchase a book on religion?

Are you required take a class and get a license before you are allowed to vote? But what is more dangerous? A few million people carrying handguns in public or a Joseph Stalin implementing his progressive political views? Diaz is not only has his facts wrong he doesn’t even have a clue about the dangers facing humanity.—Joe]

Quote of the day—John Yemma

It is a shame that we are still a species that feels comfortable, even celebrates, an instrument built solely to maim or kill. We are, after all, the same species that believes in persuasion and reason and has seen the efficacy of nonviolent movements. Yet ending tyranny and oppression and defending life and liberty still seem to require firearms.

John Yemma
March 12, 2012
Guns and freedom: the American paradox
[For the Christian Science Monitor it’s actually a pretty favorable opinion. My impression is that Yemma in transition from an anti-gun position to something neutral or even positive. He sees the tragedy of firearms misuse but recognizes that at least in worst case situations they are necessary.

We need to keep coming out of the closet and showing the benefits of gun ownership. It’s fun, it decreases crime, and it is a deterrent to tyranny.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Jeff Jacoby

To be sure, correlation doesn’t prove causation. But the experience of Colorado State and DC should come as no surprise. By now there’s so much evidence that higher rates of gun ownership lead to lower rates of crime that it isn’t hard to fathom why fewer and fewer Americans want to ban handguns.

Jeff Jacoby
March 21, 2012
A safer society with guns
[Via David Hardy.

As David said, “It’s staggering that the Boston Globe ran this.”

We need to continue the mop up operations in many places but at this time it is just pockets of resistance that need to be cleaned up. They will scream, yell that the blood will run in the streets, and fight us as best they can but their current strategy and tactics is a losing game plan. Their only hope is to change their approach and I don’t see anything that has a reasonable chance of working. Only terrorist operations have any chance at all against us and I can’t see that working without other, extreme, complicating factors coincidently aligning in such a way as to be enable them.

On the other hand it is easy to imagine we eventually will have constitutional carry everywhere in this country.—Joe]

New gun blog

BrainBang.info is a blog about guns and psychology. It is brand new and already has some interesting and clever stuff. Here are some tidbits:

If the content keeps coming this will be good.

Quote of the day—New York Daily News

New Yorkers surrender their weapons for the good of all or face jail time.

Jerome and Graves pleaded guilty to misdemeanors and were sent back to states where the right to own a gun can trump the right to live.

New York Daily News
March 31, 2012
District Attorney Cy Vance deserves praise for pursuing gun cases–New York City is the wrong place for unlicensed weapons
[If surrendering weapons was for the good of all then why don’t the police do it?

You don’t have a right to live. That would imply someone could be forced to provide you food, shelter, and medical care. As always when someone says something is a right the first thing you should ask is, “At whose expense?”

What the New York Daily News ignores or is oblivious of is that you do have a right to defend yourself and that all members of the U.S. Supreme Court agreed there is a right to keep and bear arms. I expect their ignorance will be forcibly ended by the courts within a few years. Whoever wrote that opinion piece will then be dragged, screaming and kicking, into the 21st Century just as the KKK supporters had to be forced into respecting the rights of black in the 20th Century.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Robert Verbruggen

[W]hen a government has the ability to forbid gun ownership, it has the ability to render groups it dislikes helpless to defend themselves. Regardless of whether modern gun control accomplishes its purpose of reducing crime — and for the record, there is no evidence it does — a free society should fear a government with such power.

Robert Verbruggen
July 7, 2010
Gun Rights Are Civil Rights
[Via Proclaiming Liberty: What Patriots and Heroes Really Said About the Right to Keep and Bear Arms by Philip Mulivor.

For those so ignorant, stupid, or evil to claim “that can’t happen here” remind them it has happened here. Verbruggen explicitly points out that the end of slavery but the continuing repression of blacks in the deep south continued for many years was enabled by gun control. And don’t forget about all the people of Japanese descent who were sent to concentration camps in this country.

It can happen anywhere and therefore most restrictions on firearms must be eliminated. Gun control fails my Jews in the Attic Test.—Joe]

Anti-gun brainwash

Via Sebastian and Glen Beck this morning:

“Every day, every school, every level… Every day of the week and really brainwash people.”

This is who we have as the Attorney General of the United States. He apparently interprets “The rule of law” as “When I am the law I rule regardless of the Bill of Rights”.

Is it any surprise he is running guns to Mexico so he blame it on gun dealers?

Crime control theater

Solomon Friedman explains to House of Commons (Canada) how gun control, registration in particular, is “crime control theater”:

I’ve not heard the phrase “crime control theater” before but I really like it.

Multiple guess quiz on the 2nd Amendment

I took a quiz on the 2nd Amendment and got 11 out of 12 answers correct. I missed one history related question that I guessed on. It shouldn’t be too surprising that I missed a history question. I much prefer shaping and even creating the future rather than documenting the past.

The quiz was very well done. They even got the wording on things like “The 2nd Amendment protects the right…” rather than “grants the right”.

I especially liked one option for the question, “What did the Supreme Court decide in the 2008 case?”:

Bank robbers, drug dealers, and mob enforcers must be given an opportunity to register their firearms with local authorities and then become eligible for a professional discount on licensing fees.

Quote of the day—Wesley Pruden

The Taliban position on peace is clear and unchanging; it would behead Americans wherever it found them.

Wesley Pruden
March 16, 2012
PRUDEN: A curious experiment in gun control in Afghanistan
[Yeah. That pretty much sums up my appraisal of the situation too.

With a little further inspection I realized this position isn’t all that much different than what anti-gun people have in mind for gun owners:

If a kid in a red state finds his daddy’s handgun and blows his head off, we’ll feel terrible (we’re like that), but we’ll try to look on the bright side: At least he won’t grow up to vote like his dad.

—Joe]

Quote of the day—Marianne DeAlessi

Losing innocent children to gun fatalities can be eliminated with gun control.

Marianne DeAlessi
March 15, 2012
Argument for gun control
[What kind of fantasy world is she living in? Even ignoring the hundreds of thousands of children murdered by their own government using firearms many who might have been saved had there not been gun control the only “gun control” that could possibly achieve such a result would be the complete destruction of all firearms. And of course as the availability of firearms tends toward zero other types of violence tend to go up such that there is no net gain in safety.

It may be that she is suffering from Peterson Syndrome but if not then she should attempt to answer Just One Question before advocating for more gun control.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Philip Mulivor

Today, responding to the anti-rights twaddle of daily newspapers is more and more like arguing with—for lack of a polite comparison—terminally ill mental patients. Having departed from the world of fact and reason long ago, and sliding ever faster toward their inelegant demise, newspapers simply have become distractions and decoys for gun-rights activists. It’s only from the force of habit that gun writers today bother to rebut the tired fallacies rehashed in the dead-tree media.

Philip Mulivor
March 14, 2012
Gun rights and the death of newspapers
[“Terminally ill mental patients.” I like that.—Joe]

Winning

Via email from Stan E. is this video news report about a woman’s shooting league.

We offer the enabling of self reliance and determination.

What do the anti-gun people have to offer in response? Just dependency and victimhood.

Is it any wonder they are losing?

CBS segment on Glock

Via email from author Paul Barrett:

This Sunday, the newsmagazine “CBS Sunday Morning” will air an extended segment on Glock — the pistol, the company, and the man behind them — based in part on my new book, GLOCK: The Rise of America’s Gun (www.glockthebook.com). Anthony Mason, CBS’s Senior Correspondent for Business and Economics, reported the piece. He attended SHOT Show, did some shooting with a Glock, and interviewed me. How do you think the network will handle the issue?

We shall see Sunday morning!

All best,
Paul Barrett

My guess is the anti-gun people (all 10 of them) will be more unhappy than the pro-gun people.

Guest post: Are You Defenseless Without A Firearm?

This is from guest writer Rick Saxby.


I think it would be safe to say that pretty much all civilians who have a carry permit carry folding knives as backups to their pistols. If I were to bet, I would put money on the probability that the majority of them never train with their knives. In this article, I go over some points and make the argument that you should train with your folding knife so you can make it your primary weapon if need be. In my opinion, that is the best self defense. There’s a statement that I regularly read on forums which I believe is a poor answer to an important question. People say that carrying a pistol is a lifestyle and they avoid places that forbid them to carry a pistol on their person. This is not a solution nor is it possible if you are a member of this society. Here are a few of the places were civilians are forbidden to carry their firearms. 1. Post office, courtrooms (Jury duty), DMV and other government establishments 2. Colleges (Including Sports events) 3. Commercial airline travel 4. High schools (Including sports events) 5. Work: Most companies do not permit their employees to carry firearms to work Unfortunately for the public at large, shooting rampages commonly take place in places such as these. Most people who carry a firearm on a daily basis pretend that they can just make a habit of avoiding these places. But the thing is, for the majority of the people in our society, this is impossible. And if all you have is firearms training then when you are forced to leave your pistol behind you are completely letting your guard down for just a moment in places we typically associate with mass shootings. There are studies showing that someone armed with a contact weapon like a knife can travel approximately 7 yards in 2 seconds. 1.5 seconds is the average time it takes someone who has their pistol holstered to take out their firearm and get off a shot or two. So unless someone is very aware of their situation and also looking for attack cues, they are going to get stabbed. I would never tell anyone to bring a knife to a gun fight but my point is that I try to never underestimate what someone with intent is capable of doing to someone if they have a knife. Especially if that person has the right kind of training. I also have some facts that women and fathers who have daughters will be interested in; girls who are ages 16-19 have the highest rates of being victims of violent crimes in America, followed closely by women 20-24. In cases of rape, the ages of the average victims are younger than that, with half of the victims being under 18. One third of all the rapes in this country happen to girls 12-17. So it’s kind of funny to me when a grown man can get a permit to carry a gun but the population segment in this country who has the highest potential to be a victim of violent crime is strictly forbidden by law to carry firearms on them. And don’t forget about all the politicians out there who are dedicated to total and complete gun control.

  • Senator- Dianne Feinsteine Democrat-California: Interview with 60 minutes (1995) “If I could have gotten 51 votes in the senate of the United States for an outright ban picking up everyone of them (Firearms), Mr. and Mrs. America turn them all in, I would have done it”.
  • Rep. William L. Clay (D-St. Louis, Mo.), said the Brady Bill is “The minimum step” that Congress should take to control handguns. “We need much stricter gun control, and eventually we should bar the ownership of handguns except in a few cases”

The tragedy of it all is that every time there is another shooting rampage that takes place in this nation’s schools or workplaces, these politicians use these tragedies as fuel for their fire. And there is nothing anyone can do to stop these shootings from happening. They are just byproducts of a society that is spiraling out of control. To top this off, according to the IMF’s latest forecasts, China’s economy will soon surpass America’s in real terms by the year 2016. And the sad thing is we are also in debt to this massive communist superpower who does not allow any of its population except the police and military to own firearms. China is also beginning to strongly influence our financial policies as well. Maybe they have already started to influence some other policies here. I know that’s pretty far-fetched but look what happened in Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina. There was a massive gun confiscation in the aftermath of the hurricane. Here are some of the victims of the gun confiscation and how they described that day:

  • Buell Teel- “Automatic rifles pointed at you, you don’t have any choice… They didn’t care what your rights were, they were going to deny them. It’s not America as we’ve known it before; it’s changing”
  • Richard Styron- “They took ’em, and they didn’t have a right to take ’em, they didn’t even have a reason to take ’em.”
  • Robert Zas- “Heed the warning of what this was, it’s like Australia. All the sudden, boom, they’ve got our rights.”
  • Wayne Schum- “We are living proof that all they have to do is say, ‘look- this is the law’.”

What if you and your family found yourselves surrounded by men with M16’s pointed straight at you with one in the chamber and the safety off? Make no doubt about about it, when the cops come for your guns the tough talk stops and you give them up. God forbid this happens to anyone but people in this country shouldn’t believe this type of situation will never happen to them. So what I’m saying is people should incorporate knife and club training into their firearms training. This makes for the most practical self defense training. This is not the “one true answer” that will save you and your loved ones from all harm but it is far better than just gun training by itself. Make no doubt about it; an awesome folding knife, some combat boots, a bulletproof vest and a billy club can go a long way when you keep a low profile.

Quote of the day—Windy Wilson

What comes out of the mouths of Leftists that is purportedly the law is as related to the law as Cargo Cult is related to science.

Whenever some made-up statistic like this one is put forth by Leftists the blogosphere should accompany it with images of James Gregory and the Heinz Ketchup bottle from “The Manchurian Candidate.”

Windy Wilson
March 13, 2012
Comment to Quote of the day—Gun Victims Action.
[I’m not sure the reference is understood by enough people to get the message across but the gist of it is certainly correct.—Joe]