Category Archives: Gun Rights

Quote of the day—BitterB

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I find it interesting that not a *single* member of the opposition to HR822 named the @bradybuzz position as a reason to oppose the bill.

Bloomberg was mentioned by many, but @bradybuzz seems to have become politically irrelevant.

BitterB
November 16, 2011 in two Tweets: here and here.
In regards to the debate over HR822, the National Right-to-Carry Reciprocity Act.
[And The Brady Campaign should be politically irrelevant. The KKK and similar anti-civil rights organizations are no longer relevant are they?

Their “membership” is non-existent, their donations are in the tank, and now important people don’t listen to them. They should just give it up, change their names, and rejoin civilized society.—Joe]

I thought they wanted national licensing

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John Lott makes a great point:

For decades, treating licenses for guns like those for cars was something that gun control advocates wanted.

And now that congress is debating making states honor other states concealed carry licenses, just like drivers and marriage licenses, gun control advocates are about to have aneurisms.

I say let them have their aneurisms. As crazy, irrational, and inconsistent as they already are the extra brain damage probably wouldn’t be noticed anyway.

Quote of the day—Aesop

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Any excuse will serve a tyrant.

Aesop
[It is also true that any excuse will serve those that enable tyrants. Here are some of the many I have come across:

  • It’s for the children.
  • No one needs one of those.
  • It’s an ASSAULT weapon!
  • It’s a collective, not an individual, right.
  • The Brady Act works. It has blocked XX million gun sales. (Never mind that no measurable increase in safety has occurred. The mere fact that sales have been blocked is proof of success.)
  • Road rage will become gun fights.
  • Assault clips can hold 30, 50, or even 100 rounds!
  • 32 rounds in just 16 seconds!
  • States and cities should be allowed to make their own laws.
  • The Federal government must do it because many states have lax laws.

It’s interesting how there are truths which appear to be universal yet people never learn.—Joe]

Protestors—but just barely

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The headlines say, “Local gun show brings out protesters” and “Protesters fired up about Yakima gun show”. Technically they are correct–but just barely. As near as I could determine there were only three protestors who showed up. They were probably outnumbered 50:1 by the tables at the gun show.

Anti-gun people are members of a dying cult.

Quote of the day—Dr. Tim Ball

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There are several misconceptions about CO2, most created because proponents tried to prove the hypothesis rather than the normal scientific practice of disproof.

Dr. Tim Ball
November 9, 2011
Whether It Is Warming or Climate Change, It Cannot be the CO2.
[There is lots of other interesting data in this post. As Ry summarized when telling me about this, “North America and Europe are net absorbers of CO2. South America and Africa are net producers. And it’s all due to natural causes. Human CO2 production is in the noise of measurement error of the natural sources.”

Beyond the point the CO2/global-warming/climate-change fraud I wanted to point out that the “normal scientific practice of disproof” is what has been tripping up the anti-gun people. Their hypothesis that gun control will decrease crime is so easy to disprove that they expose themselves as a religious faith. Their deeply held beliefs persist in the absence of and in despite of evidence. I have no problem with them exercising their First Amendment rights to exercise the the religion of their choice but they do not have the right, nor should they have the power, to force others to worship the same god(s) they do.

If you only need a couple of talking point so to put them in their place point out that since the gun ban in Washington D.C. was thrown out the number of murders (the murder rate would be lower still) has dropped to the lowest in 46 years. Since the gun ban in Chicago was overthrown the number of murders is the lowest in at least 20 years. The gun bans reduce crime hypothesis cannot survive exposure to the normal scientific practice of disproof. This has been well known since at least the mid-1980s when Rossi and Wright published their book.

The Brady Campaign, The Violence Policy Center, and the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence are nothing more than fading religious cults whose beliefs have killed tens of thousands of people and put millions of lives at risk. They are no more credible and should be given no more political voice than a cult advocating castration to reach an alien spacecraft.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Jeff Knox

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The emperor truly has no clothes in the gun control debate and the more that is pointed out, the more people will see the truth.

Jeff Knox
July-August 2011, Volume 8, Issue 4 The Hard Corps Knox Report
[I think this was a critical item in turning the tide in the mid and late 1990’s. The Internet made getting the point out about the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of the anti-gun movement easier and overcame the MSM bias. It’s like that famous Hunter S. Thompson quote, “With the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark – that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.”—Joe]

Quote of the day—Andrew Rosenthal

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I want to be clear: the New York Times editorial board does not oppose gun ownership. We believe the Second Amendment confers a communal right on Americans to own guns – not an individual one. But that’s actually a smaller point than you might think. All we really want are sensible restrictions based on public safety and common sense. I wrote about our position in April, 2009 on our website. You can read it there, but I’ll summarize it here.

Go ahead, buy a gun. Use it to hunt, for target practice, in a collection, or in case you need to defend your home. Just register it and submit to a background check. If you live in a city, then your political leaders have the right to restrict ownership of handguns. In cities, they tend to be used to kill people.

Andrew Rosenthal
November 8, 2011
The Gun Lobby and Military Suicides
[This is so full fail that I could write thousands of words about it. But I don’t have the time and the people in the comments did a pretty fair job and raking him over the coals.

I’ll just give an overview.

Since all nine U.S. Supreme Court Justices disagree with the individual right issue what Rosenthal and the NYT editorial board thinks only has political implications and very few legal implications.

The very words he uses demonstrates he is essentially living in a different universe. We don’t have “political leaders”. We have public servants. Our servants do not have “rights” to regulate anything. They have delegated powers given to them by the people via the U.S., and state constitutions. When our servants start demanding we give up firearms and beg permission from them to own what is a specific enumerated right it is quite clear to me they have either forgotten they are servants or that they intend to change the relationship.

Yes. Handguns are sometimes used to kill people. Sometimes deadly force needs to be legally exercised and sometimes people get killed. Get over it.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Richard Feldman

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This book is dedicated to Harlon B. Carter, the man responsible for saving the Second Amendment freedoms for generations of Americans during a time in our country when gun ownership was on the road to extermination as a cherished and fundamental right. Equally important are the tens of thousands of local activists who make the “gun lobby” the true grassroots dynamo that it is. Money doesn’t vote, people vote, or as we said in the sixties, “Power to the people” and, I should add, “away from the elites, wherever they dwell.” I think Thomas Jefferson would have approved.

Richard Feldman
2008
Dedication to Ricochet: Confessions of a Gun Lobbyist
[This is a very nice start to the book.

Think about the “Power to the people” phrase. And remember what Chairman Mao said, “Every Communist must grasp the truth: Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.” Private ownership of firearms is the ultimate power in the hands of the people. Yet nearly all communists and socialists who advocate “power to the people” in the U.S. today are opposed to private gun ownership. Why is that?

Could it be they don’t really want power in the hands of “the people”? I think what they really want is power in the hands of their people and want to remove power from those that oppose them.

Communism and socialism is not about “power to the people”. Those political systems are about government having a huge power advantage over the individual. “Power to the people”? No. Not at all. That isn’t what they really want. But no one has ever accused the political left of being consistent.

Thank you Richard for sending me an autographed copy. More later when I finish it. Not all of my review is going to be positive though. I’ve already got notes that are “not happy thoughts”.—Joe]

They ‘Looked the Other Way’

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That’s the reporting in the Old Media of the Fast & Furious (or Gun Walker) program against the second amendment, even now.  FBI and F-Troop “Looked the other way” as guns were being sold to gangs…

Wow.  They “Looked the other way” in the same sense that Al Capone “looked the other way” while prostitution, gambling, rum-running and violence were taking place in Chicago, and as Ted Bundy “looked the other way” while serial murder was taking place.

It’s a sort of out-of-body experience I guess, as one’s conscience “looks the other way” while one is engaged in criminal activity.  Maybe they’re posturing for an insanity defense.

Now I’ve been thinking; if the intent was to “track” criminals, why didn’t they give them GPS-equipped cell phones, or rigged car stereos or LoJack rigged cars, etc., etc., instead of guns?  Hmm?  They didn’t because that wasn’t the intent.

For that matter, if the intent were peace and prosperity, there wouldn’t be this war on drugs that created the narco-gangs in the first place.  The Al Capone reference above was not chosen randomly– he was “made” by Prohibition, first and foremost.  Before that he was a petty nobody.

Quote of the day—Phil Tagami

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They took a few steps forward and I racked the shotgun and they left. It’s sort of the universal ‘Don’t come any farther’ sign.

Phil Tagami
November 3, 2011
Oakland developer Phil Tagami keeps protesters at bay — with a shotgun
Background:

About eight men and women dressed in black, faces covered in bandannas and armed with hammers, sticks and poles had just barged down the doors of Oakland’s landmark Rotunda Building — with another dozen behind them — when they were turned back by a tenant with a shotgun and an attitude.

…

Tagami said he phoned the mayor’s office and began communicating with senior staff around 10:45 p.m. voicing his concerns. Yet police were nowhere in sight, he said.

At around 11 p.m., a group of protesters began forcing the glass front doors back and forth before they opened partially. Before they could move much further, Tagami lifted his shotgun. He insists he did not point the gun at anyone, just positioned it in front of him and cocked it.

After the group cleared out, Tagami continued checking in with the mayor’s office and at 12:14 a.m., the assistant city manager phoned to tell him the police were moving in.

[Via email from Rob.

Also worthy of note is that they did 100’s of thousands of dollars in damage to the exterior of the building.

Also applicable are the following observations:

I do have to give the police some benefit of the doubt. A single patrol car and officer could have easily been taken out by a mob of that size and nature. It probably calls for a large group of police or else sniper fire from a few blocks away. Approval for sniper fire isn’t going to be given by that mayor at this time and assembling and deploying the riot police is going to take some time. 90 minutes may not have been out of line.—Joe]

Forbidden fruit

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Sebastian has the info on the most recent incident where banning something made it more popular that ever.

I’ve posted about this type of thing before.

The people that enact rules and laws like this apparently don’t have children or weren’t paying attention when they were growing up. When I was helping the kids buy Christmas presents for their mom (~20 years ago) I would put the packages in the car and never mention the contents again. They never told their mom what she was getting for Christmas. On the other hand Barb will repeatedly remind them all the way home and again as they entered the house, “Don’t tell Daddy what he is getting for Christmas!” They would burst through the door and run the length of the house and tell me what I was getting before Barb could get the packages into the house.

Sebastian speculates, ‘Americans, I believe, also possess the same “character that reacts against the hectoring and bossiness of officialdom,” as their British cousins.’ While correct, that characteristic well extends beyond Brits and Americans.

I thought nearly everyone had heard of Eve, the Garden of Eden, and forbidden fruit.

Quote of the day—Pam Neely

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I am a very strong supporter of the second amendment, but there must be some common sense applied here. I can think of nothing worse than people attending an athletic event, living in a dorm, or sitting beside someone in a science class with a firearm strapped to their side or worse, concealed on their person.

Pam Neely
Prosecuting Attorney Berkeley County
County Prosecutor Wants Gun Law
October 25, 2011
[Really? Ms. Neely is smart enough to get through law school and get a job as a Prosecuting Attorney yet she “can think of nothing worse” that someone exercising a specific enumerated right to keep and bear arms? Has she never heard of the Virginia Tech massacre? That is something far worse that happens when people are forbidden from defending themselves.

And simultaneously she claims she is “a very strong supporter of the second amendment”?

Either Neely has crap for brains or she thinks we do.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Douglas Howard Ginsburg

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The basic requirement to register a handgun is longstanding in American law, accepted for a century in diverse states and cities and now applicable to more than one fourth of the Nation by population. Therefore, we presume the District’s basic registration requirement, D.C. Code § 7-2502.01(a), including the submission of certain information, § 7-2502.03(b), does not impinge upon the right protected by the Second Amendment.

Douglas Howard Ginsburg
United States Court of Appeals
Dick Anthouny Heller, Et. Al. v. District of Columbia, Et. Al. October 4, 2011
[Slavery, segregated restaurants, laws against interracial marriage, and the death penalty for homosexuals was accepted for more than a century in this country. That didn’t make them constitutional. Rights do not become privileges subject to denial because they are repressed in some portion of the nation for some set period of time.

Three fourths of the nation by population do not have their firearms registered and those areas had as low or lower crime rates than the areas that did have their firearms registered. Therefore one must conclude that firearm registration serves little or no benefit to the people. No question would be given to legitimacy of registration for First Amendment rights hence registration to exercise Second Amendment rights must be constitutionally suspect.  Thus registration of firearms fails to pass any level of scrutiny.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Sebastian

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I’m getting bored with gun control advocates these days.

Sebastian
November 2, 2011
The Straw Men Builders
[I understand and empathize some. But this isn’t a game to get tired of and move on to something else more interesting when you get bored. This is a fight for the preservation of a specific enumerated right. We get bored with them because we keep refuting the same tired positions they put forward. That doesn’t mean we should stop.

I propose that we can slack off when at least half of the top 10 search engine results for their names are web pages mocking or explaining how these people are ignorant, evil, or liars we are not done with them. They need to be, figuratively speaking, pounded into the ground.

Here are some stats on our current situation on my proposed goal:

We are getting close on Sugarmann but have a lot of work to do on the others.—Joe]

Web traffic

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If Alexa can be believed The Brady Campaign web site has a traffic rank of about 1.1 million. This compares to Say Uncle with a traffic rank of about 283,000.

The Coalition to Stop Gun Violence comes in almost dead even with the Violence Policy Center web site with ranks of almost 2.9 million.

Even my obscure blog nearly has the traffic of the Brady Campaign with a traffic rank of 1.24 million.

When I, blogging a few hours a week while working a full time job, can generate almost as much traffic as a the Brady Campaign with a full time staff and millions of dollars of income you have to know the general public just isn’t interested in their messages.

Give it up guys. You lost, we won. It’s time to change your names and rejoin civilized society.

Visions

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Brady Campaign acting President Dennis Henigan says (YouTube video with only 311 views and the comments disabled) the Brady Campaign has a vision of American safe and secure with firearms prohibited from most public places.

It’s nice to have dreams Dennis but it’s just a dream. You long for something that never was and can never be. You might also have visions of American with unicorns, pixie dust, and manna falling from the sky but rational people do not share your delusions.

When self defense is prohibited safety and security are beyond reach.

Random thought of the day

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The Coalition to Stop Gun Violence is concerned about states’ rights:

“National concealed carry reciprocity legislation is a terrible idea for public safety and a huge affront to states’ rights,” said CSGV Executive Director Josh Horwitz.

I guess that means we can count on their support for The Firearms Freedom Act, states that wish to ban abortion, and even the reinstituting of slavery should some state desire it.

What these people don’t understand (or more likely just don’t want to acknowledge) is that states’ rights/powers only extend as far as the people rights. There are certain individual rights that are guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution that no state, county, or city may infringe upon. The right to keep and bear arms is one of those rights.

Quote of the day—Linoge

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This is the Twenty-First Century, where you can track your gorramed pizza from dough to delivery, and you are telling me that the Great and Almighty Federal Government cannot dig its head out of its own ass long enough to develop something similar for a “product” that costs at least ten times as much as your average pizza order?

Linoge
November 1, 2011
good to know my tax dollars are being wasted
[Linoge is correct as far as he goes. A lot more could be said as well. Linoge hints at it but doesn’t quite come out and say what really should be said. Here are some of the things that come to mind:

—Joe]

Quote of the day—Sean D Sorrentino

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I felt a great disturbance in the Anti-Gun force, as if 10, maybe 15 voices suddenly cried out in terror and were basically ignored.

Suddenly I have a desire to visit cheesehead central.

Sean D Sorrentino
November 1, 2011
What a difference a day makes
[H/T to Robb.

I was tempted to say that now Wisconsin recognizes the “bear” part of “keep and bear arms” the streets will be run full with tears instead of blood but Sean is correct. 10 or maybe 15 people just don’t provide that many tears and don’t matter.—Joe]

You contribute nothing

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Just so you know what they think of civil rights advocates:

Decisions about campus safety should be made by administrators, faculty, and students, not by extremists . . . who contribute nothing to the academic community in the commonwealth,” Andrew Goddard, president of the Virginia Center for Public Safety

I’ll bet there were people who claimed similar things about the presence of blacks on campuses a few decades ago.

There is a rally tomorrow (Tuesday, November 1) at the Old Dominion University’s campus:

A gun rights group that plans a rally this week on Old Dominion University’s campus will have some unwanted company when it gathers Tuesday on Kaufman Mall to push for less restrictive weapons policies.

The group will be confronted by gun control advocates who today said they’ve organized a counterdemonstration at ODU to oppose those who believe concealed permit holders should be allowed to bring firearms into campus buildings.

Both groups will descend on campus Tuesday afternoon to respectively lobby for and against a campus gun policy update proposed by ODU that would ban permit holders from bringing guns into school facilities.

It would play well for our side if, as is usual, the pro-gun side outnumbers the anti-gun side by 10 or 1000 to 1. Just who the “extremists” are should be more apparent by this time tomorrow.