From the looks of this video there were as many people open carrying as there were with candles at the anti-gun event in Seattle yesterday:
Our USPSA match yesterday in North Central Idaho probably had as many participants (only a fraction of them were in our video) as the Brady Campaign supporters were able to muster in Seattle.
I am afraid that it is another appendages’ petite nature that animates these “little guys”….brains are secondary at best!
heehee..santorum
December 27, 2011
Comment to 2011: A Year In The NRA’s “Insane Paranoid” Conspiracy Theories
[It’s another Markley’s Law Monday!—Joe]
The Brady Campaign, formerly known as Handgun Control, Inc., has created too many victims. We are now pushing them into the dustbin of history.
Today Barron and I with the help of daughter Kim and some members of the Lewiston Pistol Club made the following video as our response to the Brady Campaign’s pathetic attempt at relevance:
Update: An explanation of the stage design is important. The brown target in the distance represents a “bad guy”. The white targets represent innocent people. When scored only hits on the bad guy counted and hits on the innocent were heavily penalized. When the scores have been reported I’ll make anther post. I think I might have won this stage. I had a good time with five A-zone hits, one C-zone hit and no hits on the no-shoot targets.
The instructions to the shooter were:
Start position: Facing up-range holding a candle with both hands. Gun is in a concealed carry state.
Course of fire: Upon signal drop candle, turn, draw, and engage T1 with six rounds. Comstock scoring.
This stage design was to simulate the January 8th 2011 shooting in Tucson. It was this event which the Brady Campaign wanted to bring attention to. This was to stimulate political interest in more gun laws.
Credit for the stage design goes to Bob N. (shown in the video preview above).
The Brady Campaign asked that we light a candle today in memory of the victims. But candles don’t stop violence. Guns in the hands of intended victims do.
I note with a great deal of pleasure that Rep. Gabrielle Giffords attended a candlelight vigil today and apparently did it without mentioning gun control and even the media did not mention the Brady Campaign. That must have really stung them!
My contribution to today will be in a different post when Barron gets the video (coming soon he says) up on YouTube.
Here are some of the candles that were lit in opposition to the Brady Campaign:
From Ryan.
From Maura.
From Wendy.
From North.
From Dan.
Barron and Janelle have a bunch of pictures as well.
Say Uncle is a bit cynical but participates.
Robb uses a gun that was used defensively.
Linoge has quite the collection of links as well as his own pictures and his thoughts on the topic.
Roberta says, “The good guys don’t start fights – but they can end them“.
Brigid does more than a picture. She gives us history and tells a story.Thirdpower lights a candle for #toomanyvictims.
Candles don’t stop violence.
Don Wood
January 8, 2012
A response to the Brady Campaign on their candle lightings today.
[We incorporated a candle into the concealed carry side match at the USPSA match today.
I had suggested something like, “My name is
Don was the first shooter and he said, “I’m just going to say, ‘Candles don’t stop violence.'”
That was a great simplification Don. Thanks.
The final video should be up on YouTube soon. Barron was editing it as I drove back to the Seattle area this evening.—Joe]
We expect to have a full — a fully — or a comprehensive approach to dealing with these issues of border security that will involve supporting Calderón and his efforts in a partnership; also making sure that we are dealing with the flow of drug money and the guns south, because it’s really a two-way situation there. The drugs are coming north; we’re sending funds and guns south — and as a consequence, these cartels have gained extraordinary power.
President Barack Obama
March 11, 2010
The President and the Drug War: Part I
[I find it fascinating how his words, “we’re sending funds and guns south”, can be interpreted completely differently in present day than most people would have interpreted them at the time he said them.—Joe]
We often complain about the Brady Campaign and other anti-gun people wanting more laws for the criminals to ignore. This sometimes takes the form of them expressing a need for another law to prevent criminals from breaking an existing law. When properly presented this subterfuge can be quite effective on those unfamiliar with the deception.
To pull this off, or perhaps even make it believable to the presenter, the plea for making the illegal “illegaller” some “time and space” is usually put between the existing illegal act and the new behavior they would like to make illegal.
It turns out this isn’t always the case.
I was reading the Brady Campaign report Exporting Gun Violence and ran into a sentence that really grabbed me. This sentence is, for all intents and purposes, self-contradictory:
ATF can only stop illegal conduct, and as long as it remains legal to sell unlimited quantities of military-style weapons or sell guns without background checks, the illegal flow of guns will continue.
I can’t read that sentence without an immediate jarring sensation. It’s like being slapped on the head or something. It does not compute and I immediately have to reread it to try and figure it out—and it can’t be figured out. I would almost give them a pass if this had been something said in a verbal debate where your brain isn’t working at full capacity and words sometimes don’t come out quite right. But this was in a lengthy report that was written by “Jonathan Lowy, Daniel Vice, Robyn Steinlauf, Amanda Koulousias, Sarah McLemore and Jordan Zlotoff, with assistance from Mary Boyle.”
If they were engaged in deliberate deception they would have put time and space between the contradictory elements of that sentence. I can only conclude it was not deliberate deception. Their brains have to be wired in some manner that is completely alien to me. They must have some strange mental problem in order to put something like that in a written report.
The response of the gun world is to light a candle and show how you can prevent violence. Take a picture and post it on the net. If you don’t have a good net outlet for it send the picture to me (candle@joehuffman.org) or any one of many other gun rights activists offering to do the same.
I keep thinking I should create an image involving Boomerite, gasoline, a rifle, and a highly exothermic reaction instead of an ordinary candle. But I probably won’t have time for that and will have to settle for something much more mundane. Sunday I probably will be attending a USPSA match and I’ll try to get them to incorporate a candle into one of the stages.
And for people that will be in the Seattle area on Sunday it would be nice to have someone take a few pictures of the Washington Ceasefire turnout. Here are the details:
10:30 AM – 11:30 AM – Westlake Plaza, 501 Pine Street
(Downtown) Seattle, Washington 98101
Host: Washington Ceasefire
Note: Take the Union Street exit off I-5 in downtown Seattle and go straight for three blocks and north for one block to Fifth Avenue and Pine Street.
This turns out to be just across the street from where I work. I could view the event from a window in my office if I were in town. Since I won’t be in town I would really like to have information about their turnout from someone who will be here.
The same industry that has given us armor-piercing `cop-killer’ bullets, plastic handguns, and assault weapons has now added caseless `phantom’ ammo to its litany of assaults on public safety. This is just the latest example of the failure of a system that allows a virtually unregulated industry to develop and market hazardous products without the pre-market scrutiny afforded almost all other products in America.
Josh Sugarmann
Violence Policy Center Executive Director
July 6, 1993
New Technology–Caseless “PHANTOM” Ammo–Could Devastate Police Investigations
[In what universe did almost all products receive “pre-market scrutiny” before being “allowed” to go on sale? Even as far back as 1993 Sugarmann lived in a different America than the rest of us.
The ‘cop-killer’ bullets did not and still don’t exist, the “plastic handguns” could and can be detected by airport metal detectors just fine, and “assault weapons” were and are used less frequently to kill people than fists or feet.
What I find somewhat surprising is that even after decades of being disconnected from reality Sugarmann and his organization still receive enough money to maintain their delusions.—Joe]
Periodically I trade emails with some people within the ATF. I recently noticed they have a rather strongly worded restriction on the use of the email attached to each message. This restriction is identical regardless of the person I received it from within the ATF. I admit my sample size is small but it does include people in significantly different geographical area.
The restriction is (bold in the original):
******* NOTICE: This e-mail message and any attached files are intended solely for the use of the addressee(s) named above in connection with official business. This communication may contain Sensitive But Unclassified information that may be statutorily or otherwise prohibited from being released without appropriate approval. Any review, use, or dissemination of this e-mail message and any attached file(s) in any form outside of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives or the Department of Justice without express authorization is strictly prohibited.
I didn’t remember it always being that strongly worded so I went looking at previous emails to see if it had changed. It had.
The notice above first appeared on March 29, 2011. A previous email from the same person on March 23, 2010 (the previous year) had this restriction (bold in the original):
******* NOTICE: This electronic transmission is confidential and intended only for the person(s) to whom it is addressed. If you have received this transmission in error, please notify the sender by return e-mail and destroy this message in its entirety (including all attachments).
So sometime in that year (and six days) between March 2010 and March 2011 the notice changed. My hypothesis is that the leaking of various emails associated with operation Fast and Furious caused a review of the restriction and a rewording which was much more strict.
The question I have (calling all lawyers!) is; Does the restriction have any legal weight in use against me or is it merely a legal bluff? For example, am I at risk for merely revealing the restriction even though I did not reveal the other contents of the emails? What if I were to reveal to the public the gist of one or more email discussions that clearly was not “sensitive information” but might be somewhat embarrassing to the ATF?
Author Paul M. Barrett (Glock: The Rise of America’s Gun and American Islam: The Struggle for the Soul of a Religion) has another article on gun control in Business Week (a Bloomberg publication). The gist is that the gun rights movement is winning big time. Here are some excerpts from Gun Control: A Movement Without Followers:
The inaction, especially President Barack Obama’s passivity on the topic, demonstrates that gun control has expired as a national political issue. If Democrats can’t sell stiffer restrictions after a midday attack on a congresswoman, when can they?
…
Closing gaps in the background-check system would likely have only a modest effect on crime rates. But for gun control advocates struggling to stay relevant, the push for such changes represents a noteworthy shift—and a concession to reality. Having decisively lost the decades-old political and cultural argument over whether Americans should have the right to pack heat, they need to adapt to meet the demands of a public that wants to reduce the number of crimes—not the number of guns.
Overall the article is pretty good—especially coming out of New York City from a Bloomberg publication. But I vehemently disagree with the first sentence of the last paragraph. The CDC was unable to find compelling evidence that any gun law reduced crime rates at all. An extremely minor change such as proposed cannot possibly have a measurable positive impact.
Another point of contention I have is this sentence:
Some might argue that the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms would not be threatened by an absence of 33-round magazines. The National Rifle Assn. nevertheless opposes the legislation on the debatable theory that it would lead to a slippery slope ending in mass gun confiscation.
Perhaps Barrett has a source for the NRA “slippery slope claim” that I was not able to find (I have his email address and will ask him) but I have never heard of it before. But I did find this opposition from the NRA:
The ban interferes with the ability of people to protect themselves against criminals. Police officers don’t use reduced-capacity ammunition magazines, because it would limit their ability to protect themselves against criminals. Why should private citizens be forced to use them?
I fully agree with this and would also like to add that magazines of greater than 10 rounds are clearly protected by the Second Amendment because they are “in common use”. The phrase “in common use” is straight from the Heller decision and provides a constitutional block to efforts restricting normal capacity magazines.
Update: I received a response from Barrett. The response applicable here is:
Here’s the source:”With H.R. 308, Rep. McCarthy is pursuing the agenda of banning guns and magazines that she brought to Washington 14 years ago.” — NRA ILA
Full cite: http://www.nraila.org/Legislation/Federal/Read.aspx?id=6139
My response was:
Thank you for the cite.
I have read both the page you refer to and the detailed fact sheet it links to. The closest information I can find to support your claim of the “slippery slope” is this paragraph:
With H.R. 308, Rep. McCarthy is pursuing the agenda of banning guns and magazines that she brought to Washington 14 years ago. In 2003, 2005 and 2007, Rep. McCarthy introduced bills that, like H.R. 308, would have banned magazines that hold more than 10 rounds. Those bills would also have banned all firearms that were subject to the federal “assault weapon” ban of 1994-2004 and all firearms made specifically to comply with the 1994 ban. They would also have banned all semi-automatic shotguns, commonly owned semi-automatic rifles that don’t use detachable magazines of any size, and other commonly owned firearms.
This is hardly the basis of their objection to H.R. 308. While it could be characterized as a slippery slope argument I would have said it was to show the character (or lack thereof) of Rep. McCarthy.
The main basis of the NRA objection was clearly spelled out as being a violation of the “in common use” constitutional barrier, it would make self-defense more difficult against multiple and/or determined attackers, and it would not affect those with criminal intent.
Update2: Barrett responded with:
The NRA asserts that a law that would restrict magazine capacity is part of a campaign to ban guns. Classic slippery slope logic. I think “debatable” is a very polite way of expressing my skepticism that restricting mag capacity to 10 leads to a gun ban. In any event, as the piece indicates, the debate about magazine capacity, at this juncture, is a waste of everyone’s time. It’s not happening. There are millions of large cap mags out there, and no one is going to ban them. We should focuse energy on getting criminals off the street. While we’re at it, we could also focus on making sure convicted felons and the mentally ill don’t get guns in the first place. On that, I think, a large majority of us agree.
Sporting events involving automatic firearms are similar to those events such as silhouette shooting and other target-related endeavors and deserve the same respect and support.
NRA-ILA
NRA to Fight Machine Gun Ban
Monitor, Vol. 13, No. 13, (August 15, 1986), p. 3.
The Monitor was a publication of the National Rifle Association’s Institute for Legislative Action.
[We still have a way to go before the NRA and other gun rights organizations can start working on support for fully automatic weapons. But people should not think the NRA kicked them to the curb without a second thought.
For more background on the situation behind the scenes at the NRA at the time see Neal Knox – The Gun Rights War
We aren’t there yet but we are getting closer. Last night at Costco I saw blister packs of three “Tactical Flashlights”:
The following is in the comments from Ken. I thought it deserved a lot more visibility.
The reason that anti-gun fanatics always associate guns with sex is this: for them, gun control is a sexual strategy. In a gun-controlled state (whether a “state” like Red China or a “state” like New York State), alpha males–consisting solely of violent thugs, policemen, and men who are rich enough to afford private security–are completely dominant, and typically have two or three women each. Since these alpha males consist of perhaps 10% of the population, 90% of the males are competing on roughly even terms for 75% of the women. For the typical beta male, that is, the average working stiff who is not a coward but has neither the time to become a good fighter nor the money to hire others to fight for him, this is a very bad deal.
However, for the perhaps 20% of males who are omega males–natural cowards–this is actually a good strategy. When no man can stand up to the thugs, the distinction between beta males and omega males is eliminated. For someone like “Jscottfur,” this means that his chance of being with a woman rises to 75 out of 90, whereas in an armed society, he’d have as much chance of getting laid as Joan Peterson has of being elected NRA president.
Basically, the sexual aspect of a gun that scares Jscottfur isn’t that it’s a substitute penis. Rather, it’s a substitute fist. It reduces the difference between alpha and beta males, while exposing omega males like him as the cowards they are.
This is consistent with an observation I have made a couple times before. Men who support gun control look and act like sheep.
Even “Acting President” (the “alpha” of the entire Brady Campaign organization) Dennis Henigan has the look of an “omega male”.
Every Communist must grasp the truth, “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.” Our principle is that the Party commands the gun, and the gun must never be allowed to command the Party. Yet, having guns, we can create Party organizations, as witness the powerful Party organizations which the Eighth Route Army has created in northern China. We can also create cadres, create schools, create culture, create mass movements. Everything in Yenan has been created by having guns. All things grow out of the barrel of a gun. According to the Marxist theory of the state, the army is the chief component of state power. Whoever wants to seize and retain state power must have a strong army. Some people ridicule us as advocates of the “omnipotence of war”. Yes, we are advocates of the omnipotence of revolutionary war; that is good, not bad, it is Marxist. The guns of the Russian Communist Party created socialism. We shall create a democratic republic. Experience in the class struggle in the era of imperialism teaches us that it is only by the power of the gun that the working class and the labouring masses can defeat the armed bourgeoisie and landlords; in this sense we may say that only with guns can the whole world be transformed.
Mao Tse-tung
November 6, 1938
PROBLEMS OF WAR AND STRATEGY
[I have used part of this quote before but never the full context. I think this adds a great deal. It’s about the requirement that Marxists control the guns to obtain and keep political power.
While it is true that not all gun-grabbers are Marxist every communist must grasp the truth… And it is for this reason that every gun-grabber must be suspected and carefully examined for communist intentions.—Joe]
David E. Young (Second Amendment Historian extraordinaire) posts about attempting to contact other historians who contributed Heller briefs supporting the bad guys. Young’s research shows the error of their ways in the most factual manner possible without trying to put them down. That is very nice but I suspect it is also very naïve. If my rather extensive experience with anti-gun people is any indication the facts are irrelevant to them. About the only thing they understand is political power.
Don’t waste a second thinking I give a crap whether you show up at my house this holiday. If you would rather stay home stroking your phallic toy than enjoying the company of family, then knock yourself out. Show the world that you are just a self-centered, paranoid freak who goes through life either expecting or hoping for an opportunity to kill somebody. Get a life Ramboid.
Jscottfur
November 24, 2011
Comment to Dear Amy, Should I Let My Holiday Guests Pack Heat?
[It’s another Markley’s Law Monday!
It not just an astute observation, it’s Markley’s Law that the ignorant describe a specific enumerated right beyond their understanding in terms more familiar to their primitive social development.—Joe]
For 2012, the most important criteria in determining a candidate’s legitimacy: how comfortable is the candidate with the concept of armed citizens?
Howard Nemerov
December 30, 2011
A Tough Year for Gun Control’s Brady Campaign: Gun rights advanced across the country, and Brady’s own statistics undermined their cause.
[As has been pointed out by many others the attitude a candidate has about the specific enumerated right to keep and bear arms is a strong indicator of how they regard other freedoms. If they are opposed to the people keeping an bearing arms then one must seriously suspect they want to change the relationship.
As a single political metric for freedom It’s far from perfect (numerous counter examples could be given) but if only one measure is used it probably is the best. And in a worst case scenario the RKBA can be utilized to recover the other freedoms. It is not so with any other single measure. This is why the NRA calls the RKBA America’s First Freedom.—Joe]
If the city doesn’t want to pay civil rights attorneys fee awards, it should stop violating the Constitution. So long as they view the vindication of our fundamental enumerated rights as “injuries,” they will continue to pay.
Alan Gura
September 7, 2008
Comment to Are Heller’s Attorney’s Asking for Too Much?
Via a comment by Jeff at Shall Not Be Questioned.
[As much pleasure as it gives me to see the villains pay attorneys fees I would rather the individuals responsible, instead of the city taxpayers, “pay the price” by spending time in prison. And an even greater pleasure would result if they completely stopped violating our rights.—Joe]
It is an insult to United States sovereignty that the U.N. would be entertaining such measures while enjoying this country’s hospitality at its headquarters in New York City. It is the greatest irony, and perhaps the pinnacle of hypocrisy, for the United Nations to be discussing any treaty that might threaten our Second Amendment, because it has been the United States, with its citizen soldiers and our constitutional right to keep and bear arms that has come to the world’s rescue not once, but twice in global conflicts.
Alan M. Gottlieb
CCRKBA Chairman
December 7, 2011
CCRKBA APPLAUDS WALSH LEGISLATION TO WITHHOLD UNITED NATIONS FUNDING
[A lot of people think concern over the U.N. Small Arms Treaty is paranoia and/or a fund raising ruse. I probably should do more research on the topic before taking a really firm stand but my initial take is that it would require registration of firearms in the U.S.. That is totally unacceptable and more than sufficient grounds to vigorously oppose it.—Joe]