It’s not his fault he made a bad drawing; he’s only used to seeing them head-on at eye level.
BobG
February 15, 2012
Comment at Say Uncle on why the drawing of a penis on my bumper sticker was nearly unrecognizable.
[Ellen’s comment was pretty funny too.—Joe]
As today was Starbucks Appreciation Day (see also posts by Robb Allen, Say Uncle, Sebastian, Tamara, and Thirdpower <-MUST READ) as well as Valentine's Day Barb took the bus into Seattle to have lunch with me. The first thing we did was visit Starbucks where I bought a "Red Velvet Whoopie pie" on the recommendation of Sebastian plus a $50 Starbucks card for Barb and a $40 card for daughter Kim:
Barb took a picture of me in front of the store with my NRA Life Member patch and the receipts:
We went on to have lunch at a nice restaurant and I made a Tweet about our purchases at Starbucks. After lunch I purchased another $40 Starbucks card online for daughter Xenia who lives in Alaska. I Tweeted the total amount spent and it was Retweeted by three others.
That was a total of $131.64 we spent at Starbucks today. By all accounts the attempted boycott of Starbucks was a huge failure and I’m proud to have contributed to that.
Thank you Starbucks for respecting our specific enumerated right to keep and bear arms and state laws.
Update: I posted the following message to Starbucks Corporate:
My wife and I visited one of your stores today in support of your refusal to bow to pressure from anti-gun rights activists who attempted a boycott of your store today. I am the blogger who started the “buycott” of your stores two years ago and happily contributed again this year. I purchased a total of $131.64 today (mostly in gift cards) and blogged about it here: https://blog.joehuffman.org/2012/02/14/starbucks-appreciation-day-report/
Thank you again for not getting involved. Keep doing what you do best–supplying a product that is enjoyed by millions.
Update 2: February 15th.
I was interviewed by the Los Angeles Times this morning about this blog post and the “buycott” of Starbucks. The main thrust was “Why did you do this?” I think it went well.
However there was some discussion of open carry and desensitization of people to the presence of guns in public and I may have messed up on this topic. In general I think there is little to be gained by this from a political perspective. There are cases where it does make sense but those cases somewhat rare. The decision to carry opening in public places needs to be carefully considered and evaluated on a case by case basis. I wrote a rather long blog post about open carry as a political statement and should be referenced before latching on to what may appear as a blanket statement by me against open carry.
Update 3: February 15th, 3:25 PM.
The Los Angeles Times article is online now. My fears were not realized. The reporter accurately reported what was said and did not take liberties.
Update 4: February 16th.
The Global Post also quotes me (via the LA Times).
During this time in American history, possession of a firearms was illegal for a person of color. This racism is the base of gun control today.
Kenn Blanchard
February 14, 2012
Maryland vs Moses – The Antebellum Madea
[It’s one of the dirty little secrets of gun control. Nearly all gun control laws in this country had their origins in the insistence that “those people” should not be allowed to posses guns. Most of “those people” had black skin, but sometimes they were from Ireland, and sometime they were from Italy or some other place. But the bottom line is people in power decided some minority with a different skin color or ethic background were not worthy to exercise the specific enumerated right to keep and bear arms.
I hear it even today with code words to hide their prejudice. I’ve had people tell me things like, “I don’t see a problem with people like you having guns but the people in the inner cities just can’t be allowed to have them.”—Joe]
I don’t know exactly when or where it happened but someone defaced the bumper sticker on my vehicle:
It’s another Markley’s Law Monday!
http://oag.ca.gov/firearms/fsdcertlist
This is the URL where many of my dreams go to die.
Steve H.
February 7, 2012
[The URL is to the list of the gun California allows you to own.
What if the URL were to the list of religious or political philosophy books the government allowed you to own and/or read? How long would that survive constitutional challenges?
Via the gun discussion email list at work.—Joe]
Every time an advocate of gun control promises not to impair the recreational activities of hunters, he demonstrates his contempt for the values underlying the Second Amendment, implying that the issues at stake are trivial.
Jacob Sullum
Reason December 1995: 50-55
Via Proclaiming Liberty: What Patriots and Heroes Really Said About the Right to Keep and Bear Arms page 60.
[Or as Weer’d Beard said, “George Washington didn’t cross the Delaware River to get to his duck blind.”—Joe]
Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
[And we see that today in the way Washington D.C. and Chicago cling to their oppressive gun laws.—Joe]
A gun is psychologically a penis-substitute and a symbol of power: the age-range of toy-shop clientele begins at about six or seven, rises sharply just before puberty and declines soon after the discovery of the phallus and its promise of power. From then on, guns are for kids and for the effete freaks and misfits who must seek psycho-orgasmic relief by shooting pheasants.
Adam Hall
The Quiller Memorandum
[It’s another Markley’s Law Monday!—Joe]
There is not a shadow of doubt, none whatsoever, that the 2nd amendment as written and as intended by the Founders has nothing to do with an individual right to own a gun. That is absolute and not open to the slightest interpretation.
Marc Rubin
August 2, 2010
Supreme Court Ruling on 2nd Amendment Proves Conservative Hypocrisy and Dishonesty
[I wonder if Rubin thinks Alan Dershowitz are Laurence Tribe are conservatives and lesser constitutional scholars than he?
My hypothesis is that Rubin has crap for brains.—Joe]
Can’t we Americans here at home do something to lift the gun terror from our schools, playgrounds, parking lots, malls, post offices, housing projects, highways and the grim reaches of our cities where the police must risk their lives to uphold the law?
Of course we can. What we have to do now is to free ourselves from one of the great hoaxes of the 20th century.
This mighty country stands paralyzed in the face of an ever-spreading plague of guns. This national calamity we owe to the leaders of the National Rifle Association in Washington. With a tenacity and ferocity worthy of a better cause, they have fought every proposal, however moderate, to bring the menace under control.
In this endeavor, their principal weapon has been the Second Amendment to the Constitution — or, rather, their version of the Second Amendment.
That amendment, they have insisted, gives everyone an absolute constitutional right to have every kind of firearm. Brandishing that “right,” spending millions in lobbying and legal maneuvers and threatening doom to politicians who would oppose them, they have killed or stalled gun control initiatives in Congress, state legislatures and city governments.
At last, however, the nation is on the move.
…
Now the great Second Amendment hoax can be nailed once and for all if the rank-and-file of the NRA and other responsible citizens will master one simple truth: The Second Amendment means what the courts say it means. It does not mean what the NRA leaders have been telling the nation all these years.
Wallace Carroll
July 4, 1993
To End the Gun Terror, End the Second Amendment Hoax
[Those were the dark days of gun rights activism. That was the attitude nearly everywhere in the media and many of the politicians. Guns were a terror, a plague, a menace, and a national calamity. The standard view of the Second Amendment was a hoax, a lie, and a fraud.
I agree with one thing he said. The Second Amendment means what the courts say it means.
The problem for Mr. Carroll is that he was, probably deliberately, misreading the Miller decision and ignoring the Cruikshank decision. The Heller decision made things much more difficult for people like Carroll to distort. The question is now that the courts have agreed with the NRA on the meaning of the Second Amendment does Carroll still insist that the meaning of the Second Amendment is what the courts say it is? Or does he now insist that the Supreme Court has perpetuated a fraud on the American people as well?
Or does Carroll now admit it was he that was the hoaxer or at least the one that fell for a fraud?—Joe]
Numerous individuals, known as straw buyers, were recruited to buy AK-47 like semi-automatic firearms. These firearms were then sent to Mexico for use by a drug cartel.
One of the firearms in the hands of the cartel was used in a shooting which resulted in the death of a U.S. law enforcement official.
Sound familiar?
Okay. Well this is probably something you haven’t heard. The perpetrator, Manuel Gomez Barba, of Baytown, Texas, has been sentenced to 100 months for the exportation of the 44 firearms.
The ATF illegally exported something on the order of 2000 firearms to Mexican drug cartels. Does that mean those criminals will receive 2000/44 x 100 months (~380 years) in prison for their crimes?
I don’t think so. Tar and feathers might also be considered appropriate but also have a near zero chance of coming to pass.
I claim retirement at full pay with bonuses will be the most likely outcome.
The administration that took military action in Libya without any authorization from force from Congress, that appointed czars with policymaking authority without Congressional confirmation, and that made ‘recess’ appointments while Congress was not in recess is invoking executive privilege to cover how the Department of Justice reacted when Congress began asking about a gun-trafficking operation that got U.S. law enforcement officers murdered by Mexican drug cartels.
All from a president who railed against a runaway imperial presidency when George W. Bush sat in the office he currently occupies.
Jim Geraghty
February 2, 2012
Eric Holder Should Become a Campaign Issue Today
[H/T to Say Uncle.
I’ve had admitted Marxist’s tell me, “We just need to have the right people in charge.” The problem is that power always attracts the people that can least be trusted with that power.
The only option is to not give anyone that much power. I don’t understand why this lesson has to be taught again and again. People have understood this since at least 1776.—Joe]
Didn’t they fall to the ground?
Robert Mahler
Assistant Crown attorney in Ontario, Canada
January 31, 2012
Court adjourns homeowner’s self-defence trial to clarify confusing gun control law
This was referring to the shell casing from a .38 caliber revolver. Mahler was prosecuting a man for firing three shots to scare off masked men who were throwing “firebombs” (Molotov Cocktails) at his house.
[Not only is the prosecutor so ignorant of firearms that he believed revolvers automatically eject spent shell casings but the government initially attempted to prosecute him for defending himself and his home. The video of the three guys calmly walking around throwing the “firebombs” apparently was going to hinder the case of the prosecution so they dropped that charge. They then charged the victim with “careless storage of a firearm”.
I am of the opinion the prosecutor should be charged with crimes against humanity. Everyone knows you have a right to defend yourself against a violent attack. For the prosecutor to use the force of government to intimidate people who exercise such an obvious natural right warrants an extremely harsh response. And for the prosecutor to base a significant portion of his case on the belief that a revolver automatically ejects it’s shell casings qualifies him for a “Crap for Brains” mention.—Joe]
David Hardy has the story on virulently anti-gun lawyer, Dennis Burke, who has been working on anti-gun projects since at least 1989. He was a driving force behind the “assault weapon” ban of 1994. Operation Fast and Furious was secretly launched just one month after his appointment as U.S. attorney was confirmed by the U.S. Senate.
Burke predicted, “It’s going to bring a lot of attention to straw purchasers of assault weapons. Some of these weapons bought by these clowns in Arizona have been directly traced to murders of elected officials in Mexico by the cartels, so Katie-bar-the-door when we unveil this baby.”
I say we should try him for treason and every single illegal gun purchase. When we are done with him extradite him to Mexico and let them try him for all the violations of Mexico laws he is implicated in.
I too dream of that utopian future when we all get along, I really and truly do.
Until then, I’ll be stocking my gun cabinet.
Scott Z.
January 30, 2012
[From the guns discussion list at work.
The thing is there are some people that advocate unilateral disarmament. That too is a utopian fantasy. Unless there is some semblance of power equality very few relationships are stable. That is true at nearly every level from individual to international.
A good example of this at the international level is Switzerland. The Swiss have not been in a state of war internationally since 1815 yet they are well armed and have used those arms upon occasion to keep their neutrality and freedom.
At the individual level you only have to look how the smallest kid in grade school gets picked on unless he receives protection from the adults.
The Gun is Civilization and has been called a Peacemaker for a very long time with good reason.—Joe]
Wearing them in public is like a 10 year old walking around wearing his cowboy hat and six-shooter. It invites trouble as you are daring anyone to pick a fight with you which a lot of people do. If you want/need to carry a weapon/gun on you get a CWP and then you don’t have the need to show that yours are bigger than anyone else’s and you still have your “protection”.
1justguy
Comment to Starbucks’ “Pro-Gun” Policy Prompts Gun Victims’ Advocate Group to Launch Nationwide Boycott on Valentine’s Day 2012
[It’s another Markley’s Law Monday!
John Hardin unintentionally lead me to this guy.
Also worthy of note is that technically 1justguy’s claim of people picking a fight with people who are open carrying is factually unsupported. But my hypothesis is that he is not only incorrect but he has the wrong sign on the correlation coefficient.—Joe]
For our mayors, the tired debate about gun control is over and beside the point. Now that we know the answer, we can sort of put aside the tired debate at the extremes and focus on how you respect the Second Amendment and the rights of law-abiding owners and keep the guns out of hands of people who shouldn’t have it.
The sweet spot is letting law-abiding citizens buy the guns they want. While tightening the background check system to make sure the next Jared Loughner, the next Virginia Tech massacre doesn’t happen.
Mark Glaze
January 22, 2012
TN gun laws, or lack thereof, under attack
[As Glenn Reynolds said about the first sentence above, “What he means by that is, they lost.”
Yes, they lost but that doesn’t mean they aren’t still trying. Background checks are teetering on the edge of firearm and/or owner registration which is totally unacceptable. The ability with which a background check system could be turned into a registration system is scary easy. And since there is no evidence background check improve public safety I am of the opinion the system should be scrapped.
But what I find most interesting about this quote is that Glaze is willing to concede “letting law-abiding citizens buy the guns they want.”
Other anti-gun people and groups need to have that pounded into them in public debate. No “assault weapon” bans and stop the whining about “.50 caliber sniper rifles”.
Removing restrictions on suppressors are next and full-auto firearms are just over the horizon.—Joe]
In some states if two (or more) criminals engage in a felony and someone dies as a result then the surviving criminal(s) can be charged with murder. This can result in strange cases where the intended victim successfully defends themselves with deadly force and a criminal is charged with the death of another criminal. This happens even though the criminal not only didn’t inflict the deadly injury they had no injurious intent against their criminal comrade. They could have been 100 feet away driving the getaway car and yet they are charged with the murder of the masked guy with the gun in the bank.
But how are those numbers tallied in the stats? Will that justified homicide show up as a murder? Will it show up as both a justified self-defense killing and as an illegal murder? Or will it count as a justified homicide?
Does anyone know? Does anyone know how to find out?
This could make a (probably small) difference in some of the statistics we use when defending the specific enumerated right to keep and bear arms.
The peasants who told the fairy tales were superstitious people who were not critical thinkers, and it shows in the stories. Joan Peterson is like that: you expect at least a pseudo logical argument, but instead you get the weird ramblings of a woman with the critical thinking abilities of an 18th century peasant.
Ken
Comment to That is what I am afraid of.
[If the lack of critical thinking skills was something that common it makes me wonder how we ever made it out of the dark ages. And much more important is the answer to this question, “Is the prevalence of Peterson Syndrome evidence we are headed into dark age?” Freedom and enlightenment may have been just a short twinkle in the big picture of human history.—Joe]
Joan Peterson writes, “Rights of gun owners will be placed right along side of the rights of Americans to be safe from senseless shootings.”
You have zero rights “to be safe from senseless shootings” or be safe from someone beating you with a baseball bat, or be safe from someone cutting your liver out with a sharpened credit card.
What you can reasonably expect is such criminals will be punished by our legal system.
Peterson thinking is so scrambled that I don’t think she even understands the concept of a right but this time I think she said something refreshingly honest and almost profoundly revealing. She wants people to have same right to own a firearm as “to be safe from senseless shootings”. That is saying she wants you to have no right to own a firearm.
Thank you Brady Campaign Board Member Joan Peterson for finally saying what we have long claimed and you and your organization have long denied.
Update: Mostly off topic but I left the following comment on her post. I post it here out of fear she will not allow it to be seen on her blog.
Last September at the Gun Blogger Rendezvous I spent many hours talking to Paul Barrett and have continued discussions with him via email since. And he will be attending a shooting event I am hosting in April. He readily admits he is a novice in the field of firearms and still has a lot to learn.
He has also agreed with me with there is no data to indicate a legal limit on the capacity of firearm magazines would result in a net increase in safety of the public. And even in his book he states that efforts to pass such a law would fail and would hence be a waste of time and effort.