Category Archives: Gun Rights

Quote of the day—Henry Mencken

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The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one’s time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.

Henry Mencken
[I’m unable to find the date or the context but the ‘net seems unanimous in attributing it to Mencken.

Mencken makes a very important point whether it is a First, Second, Fourth, Fifth Amendment or natural rights issue. The oppressors make it difficult because they get to choose the “poster children” who will have standing to challenge the oppressive law. This is the main reason I am far more tolerant of the ACLU than many of those that I keep company with.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Dennis Henigan

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It’s a shameful law. The gun lobby is determined to force guns into every corner of our society. That does not make us safer.

Dennis Henigan
Interim president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence
August 6, 2011
South Florida cities, counties forced to scrap gun laws — NRA-backed state law forbids local regulation of firearms
[The law is not shameful. It’s shameful that Henigan’s organization even exists.

Henigan has it exactly backward. The “gun lobby” is slowly reducing the force that was determined to remove guns from every corner of our society. The only thing the “gun lobby” is forcing is for governments to stop using force against people who exercise constitutionally protected rights. It’s no different than repealing laws prohibited blacks from voting and it’s time for Henigan to face the music and shut down his organization. We need to move past this shameful chapter in our history and closing down the Brady Campaign would be a major step in the right direction.—Joe]

We’re winning in Illinois

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There are now law enforcement openly supporting concealed carry in Illinois:

The Illinois Legislature may still be divided on allowing residents to carry concealed weapons, but Fox Valley police chiefs and sheriffs are much less split.

Of the dozen area law enforcement leaders contacted by The Courier-News, none said they opposed concealed carry.

…

The Illinois Sheriffs’ Association long has been in favor of concealed carry. Last year, the Illinois Association of Chiefs of Police went from “against” concealed carry to “neutral” — a significant change after years of opposition.

It will be a race between SAF/Gura and the Illinois legislature to see who brings home the prize. One thing is certain, the anti-gun people will soon be contemplating the whiskey and sleeping pills or maybe Tequila. Others will probably want to maintain a suicide watch but I think it will be best if we just keep advancing as fast as we can.

In a few months we can be advocating for the abolishment of NFA weapons as a cost saving measure. By then the ATF will be hurting so bad that they will agree to almost anything as long as they aren’t completely abolished.

Quote of the day—Dave Workman

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Fascitelli would have the world – or at least the Pacific Northwest corner – believe that just one more gun law, and a lot fewer guns in the hands of law-abiding citizens, would be a panacea to the kinds of irrational violence witnessed recently at the Kent car show and a casino near Auburn.

He would gladly sacrifice our civil right to advance his political agenda. That may be okay in New York, but he’s on the wrong side of the Mississippi River to be pushing involuntary public disarmament.

Dave Workman
August 5, 2011
Question to CeaseFire president: Who is the real extremist?
[The Washington CeaseFire board president claimed the Second Amendment Foundation was an extremist organization. This is particularly amusing, as Workman points out, because SAF was on the winning side of  the Heller and McDonald decisions while the position advocated by Fascitelli was struck down. When the Supreme court disagrees with you might want to revaluate who you are calling an extremist.

Does anyone else keep seeing “Fascist” when they glance at the name “Fascitelli”? As a name for anti-gun advocate that has to rank right up there with Professor Bogus.—Joe]

Privacy issues

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Numerous times I’ve posted half-baked concerns about our increasing loss of privacy and the dangers and even extreme dangers.

Some people have brought up good points and/or asked good questions and I will respond to those people then share further thoughts I’ve had on the topic.

Acksiom asks (after I said having a twin could be useful to raise reasonable doubt about who did what):

Joe, what kind of situations do you have in mind where that would be appropriate?  I can’t imagine any where I would want to raise reasonable doubt by blaming another innocent person, so I’m curious.

What if your employer is extremely conservative/liberal and a picture shows up of you at a gay-bar or sex shop/gun range or Tea Party rally? There are lots and lots of things of this nature. In the mild case they are things like pictures of a drunk, topless, woman at spring break 10 years ago who now wants to run for public office or be a Sunday School teacher. In the worst case we are talking matters of life and death, Jews in the Attic, type of things.

Alan states:

Privacy is a recent illusion caused by growing population and increased mobility.  Technology is allowing the return to the historical lack of privacy that has been the normal human condition for thousands of years.

You can’t fight it any more than the RIAA or MPAA can fight file sharing.  Better to start thinking how we’re going to adapt to everyone knowing everything.

In regards to his first point, it’s more like millions of years but that doesn’t distract from the validity of his observation. What is different now is that we don’t have a small homogenous tribe. We have an exceedingly diverse population with a powerful government.

In regards to his second point I’m not entirely convinced it is possible create an environment where “everyone knows everything”. And as long as an imbalance of knowledge exists there are “issues”. I am convinced that he is right about the analogy with the RIAA and MPAA. The “privacy gene” is not only “out of the bottle” the bottle has evaporated.

Sebastian posted (three+ years ago):

But in an information based society government will be able to know a lot about its citizens.  Our government probably knows more about its citizens than any other government in history.  There won’t be much means to avoid that.  Conversely though, information technology also makes it possible to know more about our government than any other people in history.  I would encourage and recommend anyone who’s interested in this topic to read David Brin’s The Transparent Society.

Tam stated (several months ago):

I think David Brin had it mostly right in The Transparent Society: This genie is well and truly out of the bottle, and the only non-Orwellian outcome will be if everybody has access to it.

Sebastian echoes (last night),

One of the sources I look to in this issue is David Brin’s “The Transparent Society”. I don’t think Brin is right about everything, but the fundamental idea that the loss of privacy isn’t such a big deal provided it’s applied equally in society, I think is a reasonable concept.

I responded (three+ years ago) by saying the politicians and government employees should go first and we will see how well that works out. The only thing I think I need to add to that post is that they should add real time location information to the collection of public servant information available to the general public.

We are entering uncharted territory. Never before has their been societies this diverse able to know this much about everyone else. Sure, if you go back far enough (it would not be necessary but just to make the point stick go back to where the family tree branching off of the apes) people didn’t have privacy when they had sex or were defecating let alone where they were or what sort of god(s) they did or did not worship. But in those days, with a much more homogenous society, it may not of mattered.

I say “may” because I wonder if such an open society was almost forced to be homogenous at a communistic lowest common denominator level. Perhaps a capitalistic/competitive society requires certain levels of privacy to function. My hypothesis is that trade secrets, secret contracts, and secret finances are necessary for a competitive society. Stated in the strongest (but perhaps indefensible) terms, if you don’t have privacy you cannot “get ahead”. A corollary that follows (perhaps also indefensible) is that if there is no privacy then society is economically doomed to some sort of tribal communistic system. Did the rise of commerce, technology and industry only come about because various tribes had privacy from one another?

Now there may be at least partial solutions to the economic hazards of a completely open society. Patents, for example, are intended to protect information that cannot be protected by trade secrets. Written agreements can be kept private unless a court order demands otherwise. But there are still many vulnerabilities when facial images or location data of people entering corporate headquarters reveals a connection between two or more companies that didn’t used to be there. Or your employer tracking after hours employee location data discovers a handful of engineers getting together at a bank and checking out empty office buildings together.

Imagine what can happen in political campaigns. Knowing who is talking to who gives someone tremendous information about what sort of issue are going to be important and how much money is going to be involved. Sure that information all comes out eventually but when you have the info weeks in advance it will make a huge difference.

Imagine the implications for stalkers. Anytime they wish to go on the hunt they leave their cell phones 50 miles away and know exactly where their prey settled down for the night.

Imagine the implications for an abused spouse trying to hide from their ex.

On a governmental scale the events are less likely but the consequences are catastrophic. Here is a scenario I heard outlined this morning. Monitoring of your water, electricity, and data (Internet) consumption shows a step increase. Examination of your communication traffic might well show that one or more people had a decrease in traffic therefore they are likely
the new residents in your home. Examination of transportation expenditures could confirm it. This fails my Jews in the Attic Test.

Imagine a scenario where a government is deadly hostile to gays (gun owners, Jews, blacks, Tea Party “terrorists”, Christian Fundamentalists, whoever). Public records (while I support gay marriage I sometimes wonder if it is a greater risk than people realize), blogs, and social networks, are scoured to identify the individuals. The communication traffic is examined and the leaders are easily identified even without knowing the content of the communication. Location information is then used in synchronized snatches at 3:00 AM. The plans for the snatch in any realistic “transparent society” would still be opaque because it would be protected out of concern for “nation security”.

Do you think it couldn’t happen in this country?

If so you have forgotten about the black lists in the 1950s. And the Japanese, German, and Italian internments which held over 100,000, of which about 60% were US citizens, during WWII. And you aren’t familiar with the Palmer Raids. Okay, the Palmer Raids were at 9:00 PM, not 3:00 AM. You have me there.

Those events are just the tip of the iceberg and  without computers. Imagine what a government could do with computers and far, far, more detailed information about our location, habits, and social networks.

Someone in law enforcement once told me that the government has a list of everyone in this country who has training as a sniper and “keeps close track of them” in what sounded like nearly daily updates on their locations and somewhat less frequent updates on their attitudes toward high level government officials. How many high-power rifle shooters also have their names on some list?

In a “transparent society” what does it matter if there are lists like that, right? You can have your lists too! But some lists are scarier than others and will always be secret for “reasons of national security”.

Although some have advocated deliberately adding noise to your digital footprint unless this is automatically done by your own computer at near zero cost per transaction you are soon going to get tired of the game. And if FinCEN can’t pierce the noise they will just make it illegal. And, as a person with a Masters degree in communication theory where we learned to pull signals out of noise, I don’t think it would be that hard to detect the noise, pull out the true signal, and then give greater attention to those people.

A few years ago I mentioned to someone in the banking industry that I did almost all my financial transaction in cash. Checks, credit and debit cards where used far less than most people. I was told that, for certain, put me on a list.

Perhaps my view is biased by reading too many books like Hitler’s Willing Executioners, Plotting Hitler’s Death, and Bloodlands—Europe Between Hitler and Stalin, but I contend a “Transparent Society” is very risky. I still don’t have any good answers short of “dropping off the grid” which just doesn’t scale. I have some possible answers which I would be glad to discuss in private but I just don’t have the time to implement them let alone deploy them on a scale where it could make a material difference even if they were effective and could avoid being declared illegal when detected.

The one method of last resort, a doomsday plan, which appears to be the least distasteful if things get really bad are the Second Amendment remedies. But even without formal gun and/or gun owner registration our society is already transparent enough that a “first strike” on the top 10,000 or so gun owners/activists with follow ups on a few hundred thousand more (remember the numbers from the WWII internment camps?) might be sufficiently effective to neutralize even it.

I’m told I’ll never have to worry about that. I suspect most of the people that tell me that are absolutely correct but for the wrong reason. I’ll be in the “first pass”.

Quote of the day—Democratic aide

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I just remember the question. I sort of think it sort of speaks to a larger issue of guns in society. I guess the question is, if legislation affects people who don’t follow the law. I think, ultimately, more guns on the street isn’t the answer.

I guess the simple answer is, there is no place for them in society. What purpose do they serve?

Democratic aide
March 22, 2011
In response to the question, “How would more legal restrictions on legal gun-owners affect criminals and their illegal possession of firearms.”
Everything you need to know about the most recent gun-control debate (but didn’t have anyone to ask), Part II
[The word “simple” applies—as in “simpleton”.

Their entire world view was balanced on a house of cards and a gentle puff caused their universe to collapse into a black hole. And their response was, “We want to ban them all.”

That is behavior consistent with bullies everywhere. If you show them to be fools they will beat you up and take your property.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Donna Davis

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There are too many guns around already; we don’t need more, and in a public place like that, I’d like to feel safe if I’m going to the park. If there’s a gun there, I don’t want to be there.

Donna Davis
August 4, 2011
Local Governments Have Until Oct. to Remove Gun Control Laws
[And just how many is too many? I suspect all she knows is that there is more than zero and that is too many for her. If that is the case then Ms. Davis needs to move to a different country because in this country what she wants is clearly unconstitutional.

It’s no different than her saying, “There are too many mixed race couples and blacks around already; we don’t need more, and in a public place like that, I’d like to feel safe if I’m going to the park. If there’s a black person there, I don’t want to be there.”

Ms. Davis, since you don’t even know how many guns are “around” yet you spout off like that anyway you must have crap for brains. And since you want to infringe upon a specific enumerated right you should move to some country which doesn’t recognize the natural right to keep and bear arms. You don’t belong here so rather than whine about it just move. We all will be happier for it.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Violence Policy Center

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In the 1980s, a very significant shift in gun design and marketing occurred: high-capacity semiautomatic (firing one round per trigger pull) pistols became the dominant product line. Looking at the United States, the most lucrative civilian handgun market in the world, prior to the 1980s the most popular handgun design was the revolver, most often containing six shots. In 1980, semiautomatic pistols accounted for only 32 percent of the 2.3 million handguns produced in America. The majority were revolvers. By 1991 this number had reversed itself with semiautomatic pistols accounting for 74 percent of the 1.8 million handguns produced that year.

Violence Policy Center
July 25, 2011
The Glock Pistol: A Favorite of Mass Shooters
[I love it when our opponents make our points for us. What this means is that Glock pistols are protected by the Second Amendment because they are “in common use” (see D.C. v. Heller).

If the VPC and the Brady Campaign people want to ban guns and actually have some chance of success what they should to is go after the guns that might not be protected by the Second Amendment. The guns that might not be protected are the flintlocks, matchlocks, and cap and ball firearms of a century or more ago. That would actually make a certain amount of sense because both the organizations and those type of firearms are only of interest from a historical perspective.—Joe]

Illegal guns explained by Tom Diaz

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VPC’s Senior Policy Analyst Tom Diaz explains “illegal guns”. He gets off to a great start with:

The phrase illegal guns really has no value in the way we approach looking at the problem of death and injury in the United States which is from the public health perspective. It’s really sort of a political term that is often used to avoid confronting the bigger problems…

He goes on to explain various ways firearm end up in the hands of those prohibited from owning firearm. He does a pretty good job of it. I really couldn’t find much fault with what he said until the very end when he said the states with lax gun laws needed to have strict gun laws.

What he willfully ignores and fails to mention is that those states with strict gun laws have a strong tendency to have higher rates of violent crime. By myopically only looking at “how did the criminal get a gun” rather than “what firearms policies result in increased public safety” he completely fails at the presumed goal of his organization, The Violence Policy Center. It should be abundantly clear that Tom Diaz is not interested in policies that reduce criminal violence. He is interested in restricting access to firearms. His organization wants to ban firearms and infringe upon the specific enumerated rights of innocent people. It’s shameful the interviewer, “Eight Forty-Eight” only presented the position of an organization which advocates for illegal government acts.

Quote of the day—Carolyn McCarthy

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I don’t understand why people can’t have common sense. Large magazines do not need to be part of it. The large manufacturers, they should even take a moral point of view in not selling them to ordinary citizens through the gun stores. The police and military can still use them. But I just morally think they should not look to sell them to the average citizen.

Carolyn McCarthy
July 28, 2011
Norway shooter: Ammo clips were from U.S.
[Yes, it’s “the shoulder thing that goes up” Carolyn McCarthy demonstrating her ignorance and bigotry again.

“Common sense” is a big issue with these folks isn’t it? It must be because arithmetic is beyond them and/or they know the numbers don’t support their conclusions.

And how does one “morally think”? I’m pretty sure that is one of the same argument used by those opposed to mixed race and homosexual marriages. That’s sure some good company you keep there McCarthy. I’ll bet you and Fred Phelps would get along just fine as long as you both consistently and appropriately swapped the words “gays” and “guns” during the conversation.

The entire article could be a case study in “layers of editorial oversight”. There are things like, “The Norwegian press has written extensively about how Breivik legally acquired his weapons and ammunition, but the mail-order purchase of his ammo from the United States has received little attention in the English-language press.” Apparently the author, Reid J. Epstein, doesn’t know the difference between ammo and “clips”. Although I was surprised that there were two instance where he appropriately used “magazine”.

And McCarthy must be reading the gun blogs because she wasn’t quoted as saying “clips” even once and she is quoted as saying “magazine” twice. Perhaps she is capable of learning. I wonder if someone were to introduce her to the “in common use” part of the Heller decision if she could grok that as well. But probably not. I pretty sure Dorothy Parker had people like her in mind when she explained about horticulture.—Joe]

Unintended consequences

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When possession of firearms is discouraged it is inevitable that familiarity with them decreases. And even firearm safety training is discouraged. Just look at the resistance to the Eddy Eagle program where no guns are even present!

The unintended consequence of this is accidents such as this:

A Banning woman accidentally shot her 12-year-old daughter after pulling the trigger of a miniature revolver she had mistaken for a novelty cigarette lighter, authorities said Thursday.

As soon as children go through puberty they will start experimenting with sex even if their parents keep them isolated and ignorant. There will always be recreational drugs around even if they are banned and there are police knocking down peoples doors in the middle of the night. And there will always be guns around. It is time to admit this and teach them gun safety as a standard part of growing up.

Via email from Donald W.

Quote of the day—jason

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Now on the topic of guns, we must ban them. Plain and simple.

…

Ban them all.

jason
July 26, 2011
Comment to Even Democrats Oppose Obama On Gun Control Treaty.
[No mention is made of that little speed bump known as The Bill of Rights. The rest of the comment is just as disconnected from reality. I thought it was an interesting mix with a rant about the 14th Amendment causing us to become subjects of an elected monarch with a demand that all guns be banned.

As is probably the case with most fervent believers in the utility of gun bans he hasn’t been taking his anti-psychotic mediations recently.—Joe]

Quote of the day—PT

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Joe Huffman, somebody to take on the “E” in “BATFE.”

PT
July 27, 2011
Comment to Time for a St. Louis Revolt?
[This is in regard to, somewhat tongue in check, nominations for the NRA board of directors. While I haven’t really brought it up before I think it should be fairly obvious that explosives should be covered in “the right to keep and bear arms”. It just not quite the right time politically to bring that up. Although if there were a serious move to abolish the ATF I have a story or two that would fuel that fire.—Joe]

Applying commonsense to gun laws

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Alan doesn’t spell it quite as clearly as I would like but he does explain what President Obama and the ATF want to do “is strictly forbidden under federal law”.

What should have been said is that in order to know if “multiple rifle sales are made to the same buyer within a five-day period” there needs to be central records kept of firearms sales. If such a central record store does not exist then it is trivial to defeat the reporting requirement. The multiple firearm buyer merely goes down the street and purchases a single firearm from every dealer. As far as each of the dealers is concerned it was a single firearm sale. The only way to block this “loophole” is a firearm owner registry maintained by a single entity. It is illegal for any Federal agency to create such a registry.

Even if the individual states were to do this long guns may be purchased in states other than your home state so the loophole would exist even if implemented by the states. Instead of going down the street the buyers would have to cross the state lines but in many locations that wouldn’t be that big of a issue.

In addition to such a registry being illegal a firearms owners registry in this country would be a huge failure with massive disobedience on a scale much larger than that experienced by Canada’s boondoggle.

Commonsense says that if it is illegal and it wouldn’t work even if it were legal any effort expended on the plan is wasted. Surely we can all agree that government waste is something to avoid.

Quote of the day—Fabio Periera

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This is a tragedy, both that 80 lives were lost & that right-wing gun nuts exist worldwide.

Fabio Periera
July 23, 2011
Saved from the memory hole by Linoge.
[One has to wonder how Periera would like to remedy the problem of that existence. Certainly others had and implemented effective government programs for that sort of problem. And it is because of the existence of people like Periera that I have Boomershoot.—Joe]

Quote of the day—William Van Alstyne

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The essential claim (certainly not every claim–but the essential claim) advanced by the NRA with respect to the Second Amendment is extremely strong. Indeed, one may fairly declare, it is at least as well anchored in the Constitution in its own way as were the essential claims with respect to the First Amendment’s protection of freedom of speech as first advanced on the Supreme Court by Holmes and Brandeis, seventy years ago. And until the Supreme Court manages to express the central premise of the Second Amendment more fully and far more appropriately than it has done thus far, the constructive role of the NRA today, like the role of the ACLU in the 1920s with respect to the First Amendment (as it then was), ought itself not lightly to be dismissed. Indeed, it is largely by the “unreasonable” persistence of just such organizations in this country that the Bill of Rights has endured.

William Van Alstyne
1994
THE SECOND AMENDMENT AND THE PERSONAL RIGHT TO ARMS
[I’m reminded of the adage that “all progress depends on the unreasonable man”. Keep that in mind when the anti-gun people demand “reasonable gun laws”. They are anti-progress.

But beyond that there can little doubt that the “unreasonableness” of the ACLU has shaped the legal contours of the First and Fifth Amendments. Many could claim the protections carved out by the courts under pressure from the ACLU extend well beyond “reasonable” limits. We certainly have those that claim the limits of the Second Amendment are too broad now with essentially just one win under our belt. Extending the elimination of gun bans to non-Federal jurisdictions expands the domain but not the shape of the protection. What I’m curious about is if perhaps the ACLU blazed a trail for SAF, NRA, et. al. such that Second Amendment protections will advance to boundaries comparable to the First Amendment at a much more rapid pace than it took for the ACLU to get us where we are today. Will there ever come a time somewhere along the way where the majority of people will concede that the limits on the Second should be similar to the limits on the First and the mass of repressive anti-gun laws all across the land will suddenly topple over like dominos. Will our fight take 70 years? Forever? Or will it only be 10?

I don’t know the answer. But I am certain that the more we push that meme the greater chance it has of becoming reality.—Joe]

Random thought of the day

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I won’t pretend to say I know what they really think, if they think at all, but what many of the anti-gun people express is they fear the things gun owners might do. We might commit a violent crime. We might accidently shoot someone. We might try to overthrow the government. And they want laws in place to prevent such things.

How is this different than those that expressed fear about what people with dark colored skin might do if they were given their freedom, or allowed to vote, or mingle with your white skinned daughters?

It is time they moved past their imaginary fears. People must be judged on what they actually do and not on what they might do. Prevention is prior restraint and that cannot be allowed for a specific enumerated right.

Certainly judgment can and should be passed on the results of what actually happens. And if mixed race marriages occur or even a government is overthrown occasionally the possibility of that being a good thing should be considered in the light of the actuality rather than in the potentiality.

Quote of the day—Paul Brinkley

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The point of citizen resistance isn’t to be able to kick your own government’s ass; it’s to make clear that it would spend more to oppress you than it would by leaving you free. (Granted, some governments take more convincing than others. But that’s an education problem.)

Paul Brinkley
July 18th, 2011 at 6:54 pm
Comment to the post Brin on Heinlein on guns is dead wrong.
[Via email from Rich R.

And what better way to educate a government on the costs of oppression than by shooting back and/or shooting the tax collectors?—Joe]

Enhanced Penalties

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Over the years, mostly in the 1990s IIRC, there has been a lot of talk about certain enhanced penalties for “gun crimes”.  Even some supposedly on the pro rights side have advocated them, presumably as a compromise to prevent some other, more egregious infringement.


I thought we had dispatched the whole concept years ago, but it came up again in comments here, so I figure it’s time to update some folks who might be new to this game of official, wholesale coercion and persecution of different groups, verses liberty.  Besides that, we all know by now that the leftist playbook is very short, and so they have to recycle the old ideas and find a way to make them new again every few years or so.


What you’re saying when you advocate special punishments for “gun crime” is that the same, or very similar, crime committed without a gun is somehow less criminal.  What you’re saying is that gun owners are to be treated the way black people were treated before civil rights.


Do you really want to go there?


My sister and her approximately three year old daughter were murdered in their own home by an invader.  The killer used a kitchen knife to brutally stab and slash my sister to death, in the presence of her daughter, and then the daughter was strangled to death with a shoestring as the murder weapon.


So you’re saying; “Oh, well thank goodness they were killed with a knife and shoestring, because being shot with a gun would be…just terrible!”  And you’re saying to the murderer; “Thank you, my good man, for using a knife and a shoestring instead of a gun.  That’s the way we like to see it. Now you’ll get off a little easier.”


WTF..Really?


One of our music store customers in his early teens was minding his own business one night when a carload of other kids stopped, got out, and clubbed him with a baseball bat.  He dragged himself some blocks to the steps of a nearby business, and died from the massive head injuries.


“His parents should count their lucky stars their boy wasn’t shot, ’cause that would have been bad news!”


Really?


That’s just as stupid and bigoted as saying that, as an alternative to slavery, we should just have enhanced penalties for black people who commit crimes, and referring to that as “pro civil rights advocacy”.  With friends like that I don’t need enemies.  I know the enhanced-penalty-for-the-presence-of-guns concept has been bandied about by supposedly pro gun legisladiots, and that you might have been fooled for a moment, but don’t let it happen again.  Now you know– such ideas come either from the anti rights movement or from people who can’t think straight and don’t understand what the words “rights” and “justice” mean.  We can all do much better without them mucking up the waters.


ETA; Maybe the slavery reference wasn’t the best one.  Maybe it should be, “…as stupid and bigoted as saying that, as an alternative to outright lynchings, we should have enhanced penalties for blacks who commit crimes…”  Makes everybody happy, right?  Everyone gets a little something.


In any case, when we stick to the basic truths, we win.  When you compromise the basic principles, you’ve relegated the concept of rights to the back of the bus.  You’ve just lost.  Creating enhanced penalties for one group verses another is outright dumb, and evil, regardless of the political/tactical environment.  If you can’t stand on the principle of basic rights, equality, liberty and justice, well thank you for applying but no– we just can’t use you at this time.  Coward.

Quote of the day—Otis Rolley

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It is undeniable that we have to do more to reduce the devastating impact gun violence is having on our community. While the courts have consistently ruled against significant gun control legislation, there is still a way to decrease crime: substantially increase the cost of its’ commission.


Increasing the cost of guns won’t work because many criminals don’t purchase new guns and they can be borrowed or even rented in some areas. Therefore, as Mayor, Otis will move to impose a $1 per bullet tax (or about $50 per pack). That will increase substantially the financial cost of committing a crime and, unlike guns, bullets cannot be shared after their initial use. This will also dramatically cut back on the random firings that too often happen around holidays and celebrations.


Otis Rolley
Candidate for Mayor of Baltimore
July 19, 2011
THE ROLLEY PLAN TO MAKE EVERY NEIGHBORHOOD IN BALTIMORE SAFER
[It would appear that Rolley is arithmetically and logically impaired. There would be constitutional challenges to this which almost for certain he would lose because he openly admits, “This is not a revenue enhancement tool”.


But ignoring the constitutional issue with high taxes you would get smuggling with this proposal. Just think about it a bit. What is the tax on recreational drugs in this country or the tax on bullets and guns in the U.K.? Oh yeah! It’s a few years in prison and those items are still readily available. And with the tax on ammunition purchased inside the city limits all he will accomplish is to create a virtual ban on the legal sale of ammunition within the city. This will create a new black market. In other words a Mayor Rolley would increase crime instead of decrease it.


Now the arithmetic part. I don’t have the numbers for just Baltimore but I do have them for the U.S. as a whole. Each year private citizens purchase, and presumably consume, something on the order of 9 billions rounds of ammunition. There are approximately 70,000 injuries or deaths each year due to criminal use of firearms. Suppose that on the average, each of these injuries and deaths were the result of two shots fired. This would mean that his proposed tax would cost people exercising their specific enumerated right to keep and bear arms nearly $9,000,000,000 while costing the criminals only about $140,000. Or a ratio of about 64,000 to 1. This is not a “tax” on criminal use of firearms. It is a “tool” for infringing on people exercising a guaranteed right.


Furthermore looking at it from the standpoint of per criminal use his proposal would increase the cost of the crime, assuming the criminals actually purchased the ammo instead of stealing it or smuggling it in from outside the city, by about $2.00 per crime. When the “cost” of the crime is already many months or years in jail how can anyone think that increasing the cost another $2.00 is going to make a difference?


This guy has crap for brains. No wonder he is running for mayor. He isn’t qualified for a real job.—Joe]