The gun control side of America has fallen apart.
Phillip Van Cleave
From the Virginia Citizens Defense League
December 12, 2010
Death of eight-year-old becomes a symbol of lost struggle by US gun control lobby
[The struggle over gun ownership was a legal conflict between individual responsibility and group punishment. The individual is taking the lead for a while. Let us hope it continues and spreads to other areas as well.—Joe]
For a little over a year from February 2008 until April 2009 we were treated to great sarcasm and lots of speculation about who could be the author for the VPC Blog. At the NRA Convention last May it came up again—no one would admit to doing it or knew who wrote it.
It may be the author moved to the U.K. because we now have some great posts at Gun Control Network with this slogan setting the tone:
Most intensely bad gun laws are enacted in places like New York or California or Illinois, and we’ve only had the ability to sue them for a few months [since McDonald]. The idea that it’s time to throw up our hands and declare it’s over because the ink is barely dry [on McDonald] and nothing has happened except for crazy people in criminal cases [losing Second Amendment claims] is a little premature.
Alan Gura
December 9, 2010
You Must Get Gun Range Training. But You Can’t Get Gun Range Training. Shaping the future of the Second Amendment in post-McDonald Chicago by Brian Doherty
[I like to think of this as a message to Brady Campaign supporters as, “Just because you aren’t in jail yet doesn’t mean we aren’t coming for you or that we won’t get you.”
Also note that Brian Doherty wrote Gun Control on Trial and interviewed me for it. See also these excerpts from it.—Joe]
John Lennon’s son, Sean, says he really enjoys shooting guns. He also says he doesn’t people should be armed. But that might change—his girlfriend is from Georgia and “Lennon was invited down to the shooting range so that the family could see if their daughter’s new squeeze was ‘a straight shooter’.”
The more familiar he becomes with guns the more likely he is to realize his feelings toward them really are because of the misuse of the gun by a mentally disturbed individual rather than the possession of firearms by ordinary people.
Taking a new shooter to the range is an important part of winning. This example is just another small step to driving the anti-gun activists into political extinction.
We find no evidence that gun shows lead to substantial increases in either gun homicides or suicides. In addition, tighter regulation of gun shows does not appear to reduce the number of firearms-related deaths.
…
If anything, we find evidence of a modest decline in the number of homicides following the average gun show.
Mark Duggan, Randi Hjalmarsson, and Brian A. Jacob
October 2008
The Effect of Gun Shows on Gun-Related Deaths: Evidence from California and Texas
[Via email from Mark M. who sent me a link to this NYT article which referenced the paper I quote above.
Again, we have to ask Just One Question of the anti-gun people. One of the few remaining domains they believe they can gain traction on is the “gun show loophole”. Yet the evidence is that such regulation has, at best, zero benefit. If they were to base their legislative agenda on facts and reason they would be force to look at some other domain of firearm law. But from the Brady Campaign’s own website their stated goals are restricting gun shows, banning “assault weapons”, “giving law enforcement new legal authority to crack down on corrupt gun dealers” (I don’t know what this means and I’m not sure they do either), and “one gun a month” laws. Yet where and when they have been implemented none of their legislative goals has ever demonstrated an increase in public safety. Hence we can only conclude one of two things: 1) Public safety is not their true goal; or 2) Data and reason are irrelevant to them—they are bigots.
I find it interesting that although they don’t list restrictions on the carriage of firearms in public as part of their goals they do frequently whine about it and push back against it when it does come up before the legislatures. It could be that they realize that is a losing issue. They fought that battle for 25 years with the result being they slowly lost essentially the entire country:
The force of darkness has been pushed back. We must now drive it into political extinction no matter how much they whine.—Joe]
I wonder if the dinosaurs sounded this whiny when they went extinct?
Say Uncle
December 8, 2010
Classy
Referring to Josh Horwitz’s (Executive Director of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence) post about the plaintiff in a gun rights lawsuit in Texas.
[And political extinction must be our goal.
It is tempting to back off of the gun rights issue and do something more fun for a change because we aren’t facing any immediate threats. But the thing is that we aren’t facing any political threats right now but there is still a significant social component of people who hate guns and gun owners. The political threat goes to near zero as soon as the social component goes a little below 50%. But slight above 50% and the threat is just as strong as ever. It is a lot like a switch. It is either On or Off. Think of the Supreme Court with the 5-4 decisions in Heller and McDonald. Had the decisions been 4-5 our world would be a completely different place today.
We breath somewhat easy today and talk of gun rights blogging being more difficult (BTW, I completely disagree) but things could rapidly change with only a few percentage points difference in our society. We need to politically and socially exterminate this menace to human rights. We do that by mocking them, comparing them to the KKK, and showing the vast majority of people the fun and benefits of gun ownership and use until their numbers are in the low single digits.—Joe]
They say that they are law abiding citizens but there’s no way of knowing that. There’s no accountability for this group.
Karen Arntzen
Of the California Brady Campaign.
November 27, 2010
Restaurant Is Stage For Debate Over Open Carry Law
[Via The Madman Raves.
I really don’t get her point.
Accountability? The open carry people she is talking about is just as accountable as she is. And just like with her when someone meets her on the street there is no way of knowing if she is law abiding.
Does she think that if the people open carrying were wearing a uniform and a badge that would make them more law abiding or accountable?
It’s as if I understand all the words she is using but I can’t make sense of her sentence.
The Madman Raves interprets it as “I believe she just called all open carry practitioners ‘criminals’.” —Joe]
The Jew Alfred Flatow was found to be in possession of one revolver with twenty-two rounds of ammunition, two pocket pistols, one dagger, and thirty one knuckledusters. Arms in the hands of Jews are a danger to public safety.
Police First Sergeant Colisle
Via an arrest report from Berlin, October 4, 1938.
He was arrested based on the above while attempting to comply with an order to turn in all firearms to the government. His firearm was legally owned and registered. It wasn’t until November 11, 1938 that the Weapons Control Act of 1938 went into effect making it illegal for Jews to own firearms. Hence, he was arrested while complying with the law at the time.
After his arrest he was turned over to the Gestapo and transported to Terezin in October of 1942. He died of starvation in the Theresienstadt concentration camp in December 1942.
Journal on Firearms & Public Policy Volume 21, Fall 2009, “Arms in the Hands of Jews Are a Danger to Public Safety”: Nazism, Firearm Registration, and the Night of the Broken Glass, pages 28 & 29.
[I am reminded of this suggestion:
The lessons of the 20th Century:
Lesson No. 1:
If a bureaucrat, or a soldier sent by a bureaucrat, comes to knock down your door and take you someplace you don’t want to go because of who you are or what you think– kill him. If you can, kill the politician who sent them. You will likely die anyway, and you will be saving someone else the same fate. For it is a universal truth that the intended victims always far outnumber the tyrant’s executioners. Any nation which practices this lesson will quickly run out of executioners and tyrants, or they will run out of it.
Lesson No. 2:
If a bureaucrat, or a soldier sent by a bureaucrat, comes to knock down your door and confiscate your firearms– kill him. The disarmament of law-abiding citizens is the required precursor to genocide.
Lesson No. 3:
If a bureaucrat tells you that he must know if you have a firearm so he can put your name on a list for the common good, or wants to issue you an identity card so that you may be more easily identified– tell him to go to hell. Registration of people and firearms is the required precursor to the tyranny which permits genocide. Bureaucrats cannot send soldiers to doors that aren’t on their list.
Lesson No. 4
Believe actions, not words. Tyrants are consummate liars. Just because a tyrant is “democratically elected” doesn’t mean that he believes in democracy. Reference Adolf Hitler, 1932. And just because a would-be tyrant mouths words of reverence to law and justice, or takes a solemn oath to uphold a constitution, doesn’t mean he believes such concepts apply to him. Reference Bill Clinton, among others. The language of the lie is just another tool of killers. A sign saying “Arbeit Macht Frei” (Work Makes You Free) posted above an execution camp gate doesn’t mean that anybody gets out of there alive, and a room labeled “Showers” doesn’t necessarily make you clean. Bill Clinton notwithstanding, the meaning of “is” is plain when such perverted language gets you killed. While all tyrants are liars, it is true that not all political liars are would-be tyrants– but they bear close watching. And keep your rifle handy.
–Joe]
I thought to myself: “Brady Bunch lady, are you serious? You’re trying to cover his sign? What, are you five years old?”
The Madman
November 29, 2010
Anti-Gunners Are Childish
[Hmmm… mental maturity of five? That sounds about right for a Brady Campaign supporter.—Joe]
So the gun control advocates, 2/3rds evil, 1/3 stupid. I would say full evil except that there are some gun control advocates who are able to learn, so not all of the ignorance is willful. Still, evil must be opposed.
American Mercenary
December 1, 2010
Evil or Stupid?
[I’m not sure I agree with this. If you read the analysis you will find that, according to him it boils it down to willful ignorance being evil.
I think before resolving this question one has to define evil. If it is defined as intentionally doing harm we will arrive at a different conclusion than if we were to agree that evil means the results are harmful and/or injurious regardless of intent.
But the end result is the same. Even if they have the best of intentions gun control advocates are harmful and must be opposed.
How we oppose the gun control advocate must be tailored to the advocate. Someone who obviously lies and misrepresents facts can be safely exposed as evil. But labeling the willful ignorance of someone with the best of intentions and perhaps the loss of an innocent loved one in their background as evil is probably going to do more damage than good.—Joe]
The mayor said the new laws break nearly two decades of what he termed “legal silence” and “legislative silence” on gun control laws to help reduce homicides and assaults in the city.
Adams noted that 4 out of 10 homicides in the city are committed with guns.
He says “legal and legislative silence” as if it were a bad thing. What if he were talking about blacks/Jews/homosexuals instead of gun ownership? The mayor should be politically skewered for this infringement just as severely as if he had pushed through laws aimed specifically at people with different colored skin who happened to commit some high percentage of the homicides.
Good intentions are not sufficient reason to infringe upon a specific enumerated right.
I’m not sure if this is a disconnect from reality or just yet another example of a process failure:
What I think we should do is regulate the price of bullets. I can see some CEO of a munitions company calculating his performance bonus right now. Let’s try $75 dollars per bullet for a .22 caliber bullet. $15 dollars more for each caliber higher. You want a .38? No problem! Only $315 dollar each. Want a .357 magnum? Only $5100 dollars each. Want six? Cool! A mere $30,600 will get you six. Want a 50 round clip of 9mm bullets. All you have to do is pony up a cool $15,700. This, of course, does not include the cost of the clip. How about a recyclable clip for $250 plus a $50 recycling deposit? At last, an eco-friendly way to kill each other. I can see Michael F. Golden (Smith and Wesson’s CEO) having multiple orgasms dreaming of his bonus based on the potential profits his company could make.
How disconnected is this? Let me count a few of the ways:
Even though I have decades worth of examples of stupid stuff the anti-gunners say I am sometimes still amazed at the depths of stupid they are capable of reaching.
Number one on the list of the 10 shortest books ever written is Gun Control for The New Millennium: NRA Handbook.
There are a set of people that believe the NRA is the countries most effective lobby group for firearms restrictions. They have some good points. Provided that we can politically exterminate the Brady Campaign and the Violence Policy Center I would be okay with that. One or two problems at a time… The NRA warts can be better addressed once the BC and VPC cancer has been in complete remission (submission/whatever) for a few years.
I guess when your cause has no roots in reality it makes it easier to change your mind ever thirty seconds.
Christopher Burg
November 30, 2010
Guns on Trains
[He is referring to Brady Campaign spokesmen changing their story to fit whatever they hope might get some traction with the public. The problem for them is none of their predictions of the streets running red with blood have come true. Virtually anything they say will be either immediately demonstrated to be false or suspect. How many members do they have? They said they had “about half a million”. The true numbers are about 50,000 if you count everyone who has ever donated to them. They say gun control laws increase public safety yet they also say, “I am not arguing here that higher rates of gun ownership cause higher rates of crime, violent crime, or homicide. Such causation is difficult to show because so many other factors bear on the incidence of crime.”
If they were to say the sky was blue people know it probably is completely overcast or when pressed on the issue the Brady Campaign will claim they meant that it was blue someplace else.—Joe]
I got another begging letter from the BC, and in this one Paul Helmke says they have a $250,000 deficit:
Dear (friendly_iconoclast),
I am writing to you today as one of the Brady Campaign’s most loyal friends because we really need your help…
…But the truth is, because we’ve been fighting so hard on so many fronts, we’re facing a serious financial shortfall.
I need to make up a $250,000 budget shortfall before the end of the year….
Maybe they should ask the NRA for a loan. After all, the Brady Campaign has done wonders for their fundraising…
If they were a publically traded company I would consider attempting a hostile takeover (I could get a NRA range grant to build a Brady Campaign Memorial Boomershoot East, couldn’t I?). I would hire Tamara to write all their media releases for month or two as we liquidated every asset and did Boomerite experiments in the ashes.
Before I visit New Jersey again (it’s been over 30 years since my last visit) they have to fix the gun laws or start issuing tags (varmint licenses would work too) for politicians and police officers.
Why? Because a New Jersey is man serving 7 years for guns he owned legally.
Wisconsin will soon become the 49th state to endanger unarmed citizens with a gun crazy concealed carry law. While normal Wisconsinites prefer having no guns around as a way of ensuring a safe secure society, immature thugs and their guns will soon get their way via the party of bullying, the GOP.
…
While these paranoid wing nuts insist there’s nothing safer than a load [sic] gun in the hands of an angry anti-government whiner, the public has no choice but to fight back. Raise your voice, contact the police or business owner and tell them you feel threatened for you and your family.
John Peterson
November 28, 2010
Concealed Carry Killers. And these are only the ones we know about.
[Interesting. With those “great” Wisconsin gun laws how did this happen? It seems that a law against concealing firearms in a backpack and a law against firearms in a school didn’t stop a student from doing just that.
Don’t let the anti-gun people tell you that things would be worse if it weren’t for the restrictions on firearms. Remind them that in the years 1776 through 1990 there were seven school shooting incidents. But after the creation of “Gun-Free” zones in our schools in 1990 there were 78 incidents from 1990 through 2007. References here.
And where are all those people “endangered” by the concealed carry laws in the other 48 states? What is the violence crime rate in those states compared to the violent crime rate in the states that allow people to protect themselves with the best tools available?
Peterson is just another bigot on the wrong side of history.—Joe]
Via Laurel we have this story from just a few miles south of my bunker in Moscow:
A northern Idaho sheriff says he is not advocating the illegal shooting of federally protected wolves by offering a hunting rifle and a shovel as the prize in a raffle called “.308 SSS Wolf Pack Raffle” in a region where SSS commonly stands for “shoot, shovel and shut up.”
Idaho County Sheriff Doug Giddings tells the Lewiston Tribune that the SSS in the raffle stands for “safety, security and survival.”
The newspaper reports that the SSS in the wolf-shooting context often appears in the area on bumper stickers.
Raffle tickets went on sale Friday for $1 each or 11 for $10. The prize is a Winchester .308-caliber Model 70 Featherweight rifle and a shovel. The drawing is planned for March 8.
Laurel called them and she has details on how you can purchase raffle tickets.
Most of the scary wolf stories I have heard have been from Idaho county. That the sheriff is participating in this is no surprise to me.
The story from South Africa:
