The ATF tried to make the agent who infiltrated the Branch Davidians into a scapegoat. He sued and was awarded near $2.3 million in damages. This was a surprise to me.
It appears the ATF is ethically challenged even when dealing with it’s own people and not just gun owners.
I guess that makes sense. It’s a simple extension of the adage of there being no honor among thieves.
Suppose the gun references were replaced with Jewish symbols and organizations. What would be the future of this artist then? The right to keep and bear arms is a specific enumerated right. Politicians who advocate the infringement of that right violate their oath of office and do not deserve to hold public office. They should be prosecuted under 18 USC 242. Being kicked out of office is being far too kind and sets a poor example.
And, yes, the ejection port is on the wrong side of the pistol.
It’s logical. Greater opportunity to obtain a firearm increases risk for women. Additionally, not every abuser has a misdemeanor conviction that will prevent them from acquiring a firearm.
Jennifer White
July 15, 2010
Why Gun Control Laws Are a Feminist Issue — The recent Supreme Court decision that expanded Second Amendment rights has
left feminist groups silent, even though women are more likely to die of gun
violence at the hands of domestic abusers.
[Somehow she completely overlooks the benefits of enabling women to defend themselves with firearms. As usual, people in the comments are explaining things to the writer.
Update: Jeff has some comments too.–Joe]
If you do a search on either Google or Bing for “no coloreds allowed” my blog post is number one on the list. It’s number eight on Yahoo!
I have been thinking about the Brady Campaign story that the Heller and McDonald decisions are really a good thing for their side. They claim it has, “Taken the extremes in the gun debate off the table, and given us the opportunity to decide what kind of gun restrictions make sense in our communities”.
This is based on the premise, as proposed in Chapter 3 of Half-Truth Henigan book Lethal Logic (I really need to finish up that review) that freedom activists use the slippery slope threat of a complete gun ban as justification for opposing all restrictions on firearms.
Okay… lets turn this around and see if it still makes sense with the tables turned.
Let us suppose that in some alternate reality there is an evil NRA and the the good guys are the Brady Campaign. The opposite of a complete gun ban is not what the Brady Campaign claims as “any gun, anyplace, anytime”. It is mandatory gun ownership, training, and subsidies. Suppose Washington D.C. and Chicago had the evil NRA’s dream of a mandatory hour a day instruction and/or practice in firearm use from age 5 on up. All guns, ammo, and ranges for the mandatory practice are supplied at taxpayer expense. Furthermore all people were required to purchase at least one each of a shotgun, bolt gun, semi-auto rifle, semi-auto pistol, revolver, sub-machine gun, heavy machine gun, and (with subsidies for those who needed help) a mini-gun. Other political jurisdictions varied in oppression with California only requiring one hour a week of practice and citizens over the age of 21 only have to purchase one handgun and one semi-auto rifle while Vermont implemented the good Brady Campaign ideals saying, “Do what you want, just don’t hurt anyone else or their property.”
Now suppose Alan Gura, still working for the Cato Institute, takes D.C. and Chicago to court and gets the mandatory purchase requirements for eight different firearms thrown out as violating the Constitution. The justices also say “This narrow ruling should not be interpreted as saying all mandated training or purchases of firearms is unconstitutional”.
Would the evil NRA be justified in saying this furthers their goals? Would it be reasonable to claim, “This has taken the extremes off the table and has given us the opportunity to decide what kind of mandatory gun ownership and training laws make sense in our communities”?
The answer is no. The U.S. Constitution is about limiting government. It gives enumerated powers to government and guarantees specific enumerated inalienable rights. In pushing the D.C. and Chicago government as far as they did the evil NRA was able to violate the rights of the people in those jurisdictions. Those governments had clearly gone beyond their constitutionally granted powers and was oppressing the people. What the ruling does is throw into question all requirements of firearm ownership and training because those requirements were a violation of constitutionally guaranteed freedom.
And, back in our reality, the Brady Campaign supported complete ban on firearms in D.C. was a violation of a guaranteed freedom. When that was overthrown it put into question all similar restrictions on freedom. It does not enable everything short of a complete ban.
The Brady Campaign tends to act like a rather dumb terrier and grabs on to whatever scrap they can and not let go until they get their way, regardless of how stupid and pointless it is.
Fred
March 27, 2010
Comment to Guns ‘N Coffee
[After failing with Starbucks it appears the latest scrap they are grabbing on to (again) is the “gun show loophole”.–Joe]
A right delayed is a right denied. Chicago does delaying. This makes their alignment with other bigots extremely clear.
H/T to Say Uncle.
It’s as if the NY Times had a conclusion, tried to find evidence to support it, failed, but published it anyway:
Beyond Guns: N.R.A. Expands Agenda
The N.R.A., long a powerful lobby on gun rights issues, has in recent months
also weighed in on such varied issues as health care, campaign finance, credit
card regulations and Supreme
Court nomineesIn the health care debate this year, for instance, the N.R.A.’s lobbyists
worked with the Senate majority leader, Harry
Reid, to include a little-noticed provision banning insurance companies from
charging higher premiums for people with guns in their homes.The N.R.A. worked out a deal last month exempting itself from a proposal
requiring groups active in political spending to disclose their financial
donors. Its push this spring for greater gun rights in the District of Columbia
served to effectively kill a measure — once seemingly assured of passage — to
give the district a voting seat in Congress.With a push from the N.R.A., a popular bill last year restricting credit card
lenders came with an odd add-on: It also allowed people to carry loaded guns in
national parks. And the gun lobby put potential supporters of the Supreme Court
nominee Elena
Kagan on notice this month that a vote for her would be remembered at the
ballot boxes in November.The N.R.A.’s expanding portfolio is an outgrowth of its success in the
courts, Congressional officials and political analysts said. With the Supreme
Court ruling last month for the second time since 2008 that the Second Amendment
guarantees an individual the right to have a gun, the N.R.A. now finds that its
defining battle is a matter of settled law, and it has the resources to expand
into other areas.
The NRA had success in the courts? What national level gun rights cases has the NRA won recently? Neither Heller nor McDonald were NRA cases. I suggest you ask the lead attorney for both those cases, Alan Gura, what he thinks of the NRA getting credit for those wins–I would advise that you be prepared to treat your ears for blisters afterward. The NRA certainly supported the decisions (as far as they went). But the organizations that deserve the credit in those cases are the Cato Institute and the Second Amendment Foundation.
The NRA’s defining battle is settled law? The right to keep a handgun in your home for self-defense was the defining battle for the NRA? Not even the GOA sell the NRA that short.
Would it be considered “expanding their agenda” if the NAACP or the ADL pushed through laws that prohibited their members from being discriminated by insurance companies, enabled them to visit National Parks, opposed Supreme Court nominees hostile to them, and fought laws that inhibited their lobbying?
The reporter claims the NRA is expanding their agenda but only supplies facts that support the conclusion they are pursuing their agenda–protecting the specific enumerated right to keep and bear arms. As we all know, being a bigot means the facts don’t matter when they conflict with your agenda. And here the NY Times clear shows they have an agenda and they are bigots.
Update: Sebastian has similar thoughts.
The following is from Chicago so in some respects it’s understandable:
What is missing in the court’s decision and all the glee among its supporters is
recognition that this ruling accentuates and legitimizes and further establishes
our violent character as a nation. Its premise is that violence is best met with
and countered by violence, that the best way to fend off a violent attack is to
practice violence in turn, including lethal violence. It clearly supposes that
the way to reduce violence is to increase the capacity and means to inflict it.
Moreover, it authorizes the privatization of state-sanctioned violence; each can
now be given the requisite permission to own and carry—and in certain
circumstances, use—a firearm to injure or take the life of another.
Are there any facts from anywhere, anytime, on this planet that counter the claim “violence is best met with
and countered by violence, that the best way to fend off a violent attack is to
practice violence in turn, including lethal violence”?
As far as I can determine this has been an immutable law of nature for about a billion years. For this guy to assume, without any supporting data whatsoever, something different and to expect everyone else to just nod their heads in agreement is arrogance or ignorance on a scale that is seldom seen outside of government.
It’s going to be bang, bang, shoot ‘em up on the streets of Flint. In the end, mothers will not be able to do a thing except bury their children.
Barbara Griffith-Wilson
July 12, 2010
Flint City Council postpones gun control ordinance change
[Ahhh yes… The blood in the streets argument. Another person, A.C. Dumas (appropriate name) has this to say, “It’s going to get bad in the city of Flint as you’ve never seen it before. We’re going to open a can of worms that’s never been opened before.”
I’m reminded of something on a t-shirt, “The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits.”
They are fully aware the rest of their state allows open carry yet they apparently believe the facts from outside their city limits do not apply to the people that live inside their city limits. This is mind boggling stupid.–Joe]
For some reason I find this funny even though I find it an offensive statement about gun ownership.
I suppose it might be because it appeals to my appreciation for understated and sick jokes (my collection is here).
The same thing is happening today — and that is our true enemy. The poison of the radical Islamic fantasy ideology is being spread all over the Muslim world through schools and through the media, through mosques and through the demagoguery of the Arab street. In fact, there is no better way to grasp the full horror of the poison than to listen as a Palestinian mother offers her four-year-old son up to be yet another victim of this ghastly fantasy.
Once we understand this, many of our current perplexities will find themselves resolved. Pseudo-issues such as debates over the legitimacy of “racial profiling” would disappear: Does anyone in his right mind object to screening someone entering his country for signs of plague? Or quarantining those who have contracted it? Or closely monitoring precisely those populations within his country that are most at risk?
Let there be no doubt about it. The fantasy ideologies of the twentieth century were plagues, killing millions and millions of innocent men, women, and children. The only difference was that the victims and targets of such fantasy ideologies so frequently refused to see them for what they were, interpreting them as something quite different — as normal politics, as reasonable aspirations, as merely variations on the well-known theme of realpolitik, behaving — tragically enough — no differently from Montezuma when he attempted to decipher the inexplicable enigma posed by the appearance of the Spanish conquistadors. Nor did the fact that his response was entirely human make his fate any less terrible.
Lee Harris
Al Qaeda’s Fantasy Ideology
[It is a bit long (Kevin Baker excepted) if you think of it as a blog post but as Tamara said it is fascinating.
It can be applied to so many things–gun control, government run health care (probably government run almost anything!), “global warming”, recycling, and probably a thousand other things.–Joe]
Update: The broken link has been fixed.
Imagine the outrage if the U.S. State Department announced moral and monetary support for the United Nations burning books or supporting apartheid. That’s what I feel toward International Small Arms Destruction Day.
That’s our tax money being used to deny others an inalienable right to keep and bear arms.
Chicago Mayor Daley is compared to former Alabama Governor George Wallace:
Then, as now, a seasoned politician felt his opinion superseded the rights of
citizens and was willing to use the power of their office to deny those rights
to citizens they deemed ‘unworthy.‘
Nice!
Apparently the artist hasn’t spent any time at, or even looked at the crime rates, at gun ranges and stores. Facts are irrelevant to bigots.
A comparison with the First Amendment is useful: If Chicago were to put any tax on a newspaper, even a penny, courts would throw it out as an abridgment of freedom of speech. Why should the Second Amendment be treated any differently?
Apparently, the city of Chicago sees no constitutional problem in imposing a $100 Chicago Firearms Permit fee plus another $15 per firearm (even on the non-operational ones) every three years. A valid Illinois Firearm Owner’s Identification (FOID) card is also required, at a cost of $10, although it seems redundant as the Chicago permit and the Illinois FOID card do the same things. On an annual basis, Chicago’s fees are about 2.5 times the cost for the average concealed handgun permit.
…
Let’s face it, Mayor Richard Daley wants to ban guns, all guns. And he thinks that a complete ban is a “reasonable” regulation. The Supreme Court has ruled that he is not allowed to ban guns, but this is not going to change his mind about guns in the slightest. Daley now wants to place as restrictive rules as he thinks that the courts will let him get away with. Pretending that these rules are anything more than an attempt to limit gun ownership as much as possible is simply dishonest.
John Lott
July 9, 2010
Let’s Face It, Chicago’s Mayor Richard Daley Wants to Ban Guns, All Guns
[And if he wanted to license or tax religions that too would be throw out. This is all well settled law. This is no different than the poll taxes and literacy tests imposed on blacks to prevent them from exercising their right to vote. Again and again Mayor Daley and his city council are nothing but a bunch of bigots.
Some politicians wanted the National Guard in Chicago and maybe they should be–to enforce the Second Amendment just like the Army was called out to protect students from racists following desegregation of the schools.–Joe]
This exemplifies the poor stereotype they have of gun owners. I suspect the only reason the artist used a waiter with a tie and a wine bottle instead of some bucked-teeth inbred stereotype opening a bottle of bear was to increase the contrast between the two frames.
I recommend that this be called “Markley’s Law.”
That has to be some kind of variant of Godwin’s Law: As an online discussion of gun owners’ rights grows longer, the probability of an ad hominem attack involving penis size approaches 1.
AlanR and Hank Archer
July 9, 2010
Comments to Quote of the day–Stephen Markley by AlanR and Hank Archer.
[Therefore, let it be know throughout the entire Internet that henceforth when an anti-gun bigot attributes the exercise of the specific enumerated right to keep and bear arms to the inadequate size or envy of male genital that it be referred to as Markley’s Law, as first articulated by AlanR and named by Hank Archer.
See also further discussion on this topic here.
I started to add it to the Urban Dictionary but they say, “We’ll reject inside jokes and definitions naming non-celebrities”. Someone else want to take a crack at getting it in Wikipedia?–Joe]
And people wonder why we don’t want law enforcement to have discretion when we apply for a discreet carry license:
Paul [Dorr] was denied a permit precisely because Sheriff Weber believed that his free speech rights offended the majority of voters in Osceola County….
In denying Paul a concealed weapons permit, Sheriff Weber single handedly hijacked the First Amendment and nullified its freedoms and protections. Ironically, Sheriff Weber, sworn to uphold the Constitution, in fact retaliated against a citizen of his county who used this important freedom of speech and association precisely in the manner envisioned by the founding members of our Nation who ratified the Bill of Rights on December 15, 1791.
Imagine how some deep south pot-bellied sheriff would used “discretion” in issuing licenses to the people with dark colored skin in his jurisdiction. There might be a conflict of interest with his duties as the leader of the local chapter of the KKK.
Abuse of discretion is still going on in places like California. This needs to be corrected.
H/T to Ted for the email (and some bloggers for the) pointer.
