Quote of the day–M. Carol Bambery

This case provides the Court an opportunity to advance the ability of women to free themselves from being subject to another’s ill will and to counter the commonly-held prejudice that women are “easier targets” simply because of their gender characteristics. Violence against women in the United States is endemic, often deadly, and most frequently committed by men superior in physical strength to their female victims.


M. Carol Bambery
Brief of amicae curiae 126 women state legislators and academics in support of respondent.
[“God made man but Samuel Colt made them equal” comes to mind as more succinct but that probably wouldn’t be as appropriate for a Supreme Court brief.–Joe]

Quote of the day–United Nations Development Programme

Many governments recognise a connection between armed violence and the uncontrolled, or loosely controlled, trade in and possession of arms. There is also growing awareness that most of the problems posed by the availability of SALW and misuse are ‘civilian’ – meaning most firearms (both legal and illicit) are owned by civilians, and most perpetrators and victims of armed violence are civilians.


United Nations Development Programme
Chapter 3, page 21.
How to Guide
Small Arms and Light Weapons Legislation
[Yes, I’m sure that “many governments” do recognize most perpetrators of armed violence are civilians. Such governments as those in Darfur, Rwanda, Cambodia, Soviet Union, and Nazi Germany come to mind. And people who are capable of simple arithmetic will realize “many governments” are wrong. I can only conclude that simple arithmetic is beyond the capability of the people who wrote the “How to Guide”. H/T to /sennin/ in the comments here for pointed this document out to me.–Joe]

Pelosi and Holder want gun registration

Via SAF:

Democrat House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on April 7 acknowledged that gun registration is on her agenda, days after Attorney General Eric Holder told reporters in Mexico that the Second Amendment would not “stand in the way” of administration plans to crack down on alleged gun trafficking to Mexico.

 

“These are alarming remarks from Speaker Pelosi and Attorney General Holder,” said Second Amendment Foundation founder Alan Gottlieb. “It appears that the Obama administration and Capitol Hill anti-gunners have dropped all pretense about their plans for gun owners’ rights, and it looks like the gloves are coming off.”

 

Pelosi’s revelation came during an interview on ABC’s Good Morning, America. While insisting that Congress “never denied” the gun rights of American Citizens, Pelosi told Roberts, “We want them registered. We don’t want them crossing state lines” Gottlieb noted that citizens’ rights do not stop at state lines.

 

“But that doesn’t really matter,” he observed. “History has shown that around the world, registration has always led to confiscation.”
In Mexico, according to the Wall Street Journal, Holder was asked if the administration might encounter constitutional issues as it tries to crack down on alleged gun trafficking. His response: “I don’t think our Second Amendment will stand in the way of efforts we have begun and will expand upon.”

 

“These comments belie administration promises and Democrat rhetoric that party leaders respect the rights of law-abiding Americans to own the firearm of their choice,” Gottlieb said. “They imposed registration of semi-autos in Pelosi’s California and it led to a ban, but it certainly didn’t disarm criminals, like the convicted felon who killed four Oakland police officers last month. We know from Holder that the Obama administration wants to renew the nationwide ban on such firearms, but that won’t prevent crime, either.

 

“The administration and Congressional anti-gunners have declared war on gun rights,” Gottlieb said. “The press seems deliberately blind to the statements from Pelosi and Holder, who blame our gun rights for their incompetence in dealing with crime. More than 90 million gun owners haven’t hurt anybody, and they are tired of being treated like criminals.”

I’ll register my guns after the courts rule it’s legal to require registration of blacks, Jews, and homosexuals. Oh, and I’m out of ammo.

Contrast in mindsets

A different mindset in regards to a pedestrian that had an altercation with a car and then was nearly beaten to death by the car passengers:



Perecorp:


Lesson: Watch out for cars. Keep your mouth shut and keep walking.


masa:


Isn’t it great that Washington is a shall-issue state where any law abiding citizen can, in 30 days, get a permit to carry a concealed firearm?

And we have places to practice close by- Wade’s in Bellevue, Champion Arms in Tukwila- where you can rent guns to figure out what handgun is right for you.

It is your responsibility to protect yourself- the police are always a few minutes away, while the bad guys are right here, right now.

If you are outnumbered, or your attacker is stronger than you, a handgun is the only reasonable choice for self defense.

What if the man who was attacked had a woman with him? Would he try to hold off the 4 attackers while she ran away?

The cost of training and carrying a handgun is small compared to falling prey, or letting your friends and family fall prey, to the predators that roam our city.


Which mindset serves as a deterrent to thugs and which encourages them?


But watch out. If you were carrying and you antagonized the people in the car, encouraged them to fight you, then pulled the gun when they took up your offer you could likely (and rightly so) be charged with a crime. If you are involved in a shooting make sure you are the innocent victim.


Via a direct email from masa who also said:



Perhaps you could encourage your readers to leave comments more often, even on places like the Seattle Times that we may not normally read.

Quote of the day–Sendarius

I know this will be decried by some as “an isolated incident, not worthy of attention” but believe me when I say that “a shiny silver CANNON” accompanied by the COMMAND “BACK OFF NOW!” makes a better deterrent than a chrome towel rail and BEGGING “Please don’t hurt me”.

Sendarius
April 7, 2009
Comment to Operators suggested they call a non-emergency number.
[This is closely related to John Fogh’s advise about asking not to be raped.–Joe]

Quote of the day–Markos Moulitsas

When we were out of power, we organized to win the next election. Conservatives, apparently, prefer to talk “revolution” and kill cops.


Markos Moulitsas
April 4, 2009
Twitter Badness: DailyKos Frontpager, Kos Joke About Pittsburgh Cop Shooting
[Typical leftest “thinking”. He is cherry picking the data to arrive at the desired conclusion. He “forgets” about last month when it was someone on the left praising the shooting of cops.–Joe]

Quote of the day–Mark Wilson

As to guns in private hands detering invasions. The Japanese disagreed with you. During WWII, the Japanese were considering a raid on the Northwest US, in order to force the US to divert resources to defend this area. They decided against it precisely because they knew how well armed and trained the citizens were. This is not theory or conjecture, the minutes of the meetings were captured when Japan surrendered. During WWII, civilian patrols were quite influential in protecting British shores against sabuetors.


Mark Wilson
3/31/98
From http://www.intellectualcapital.com/issues/98/0326/iccon.asp
[This link now appears to be dead but if you do a search for some of the phrases you can still find the text on the web.–Joe]

Quote of the day–John Longenecker

Gun control is more about control than anything else, accepting gun control is about abandoning our self-rule more than anything else. The armed citizen is not only a matter of personal self-defense or even ego, the armed citizen is a aggregate national defense as the safeguard of our supreme authority over our officials and their boondoggles. An armed citizenry means that so many programs simply are not needed. The problem with electing not to carry this personal burden is that it doesn’t end at your choosing to carry a gun or not–for, someone else is more than eager to replace our entire self-rule and rule over all of us, not just you.


John Longenecker
February 15, 2009
Gun Control: the very first pig with lipstick on it.
[The bearing of arms is a very individualist thing. There are many, many people in the world when asked, “Who is the ultimate authority?” would answer their god(s), or some ruler is. The true individual knows they are governed only by the consent of the whole people and should those public servants ever decide to change the relationship between servant and master the whole of the people must have a means of revoking their consent and enforcing it. And that is why the right to keep and bear arms is required for all free people. Those that wish to infringe upon that right either do not wish to be free or wish to be rulers.–Joe]

Only slightly less spin in real life

It’s an Onion video but those that remember the hatchet job done by the media and anti-gun bigots against Winchester “Black Talons” about 10 years ago will find this only slightly more outrageous:






Manufacturer Recalls Hollow Point Bullets That Fail To Explode Inside Targets


Thanks to hunter006 for the email tip.

Another good guy at the ATF?

Far too often when I write about the ATF it is because they said something stupid or did something illegal. But here is an article that mentions an ATF spokesman saying something that I agree with. I had to read the entire article twice to make sure all the law enforcement types were saying all the right things. And apparently there are people in the media willing to not spin it to fit their agenda. Reading between the lines a little bit it appears the writer and/or editor might have had the usual agenda but law enforcement didn’t play along:



“Guns never start out illegal,” said Earl Woodham, a spokesman with the ATF. “A human being makes it illegal. A gun has never killed anybody without assistance.”


Woodham said “wannabe tough guys” illegally acquire guns in a variety of ways, ranging from burglary, to pilfering at a friend or family member’s house, to black market purchases. “Most times they will get them from someone they know,” he added.


“For a juvenile, if your goal is to get a gun, they are probably pleased with any gun they can get,” Woodham said. “A gun is a desirable gun if it will fit in your hand.”


I’m still of the opinion that ATF (and E) should be a convenience store but if we ever get to the point where we are prosecuting those working as regulators of a specific enumerated right a fair prosecutor should take evidence such as the above when deciding whether to press charges or not.

Quote of the day–BlackPR

We don’t need to bend the truth, make up facts, and just paint things with rhetoric. There are facts, figures and numbers we can rely on (without twisting them) and make reasonable, rational decisions. As a gun toting liberal, I pride myself on using my mind to understand issues. The anti-gun crowd simply refuse to look at all the information available, which is purely and utterly overwhelming in favor of conceal carry laws. That is not progressive thought, and it’s not liberal. It’s shamefully anti-science.

BlackPR
March 25, 11:02 PM
In the comments to A bulletproof bottom line
[Or, to distill it even further and put the onus on them, you can ask Just One Question.–Joe]

Maybe he practices being ignorant

From a letter to the editor in the Washington Post:



Mr. Cox took the usual NRA rhetoric to a new level with his suggestion that the “right” to own a gun is more important than the right to vote. Our founding fathers and all of those who worked so hard over the years to ensure the promise of freedom and equality for all citizens would find Mr. Cox’s claim to be contrary to everything this country stands for.


Uh… The writer, LASLO BOYD, is totally clueless about our voting history.

It’s not working so let’s do it again

Insanity:



Ammunition magazines with a capacity of 10 rounds or more — the kind that Oakland parolee Lovelle Mixon used to kill two of four police officers — would fall under a stricter tracking system under legislation proposed Wednesday by two East Bay lawmakers.


Law enforcement officials currently have few tools to keep the dangerous ammunition devices out of the hands of criminals, said Sen. Loni Hancock, D-Berkeley, the author of the bill.


“This horrible tragedy will pinpoint for us some of the holes in our gun laws,” said Hancock, a member of the Senate Public Safety Committee. “There are a number of lessons from this, and I’m prepared to learn them all. We may need to have a hearing on the status of gun control. I’m very committed to looking at this.”



At a time like this, it’s important to find out what’s not working,” said Assemblyman Sandre Swanson, D-Oakland, a co-author of the legislation. “This could be the beginning of a new era of urban conflict. It’s an important warning sign to prepare ourselves for future conflicts that could expose officers and our community to extreme dangers. It’s very sobering. We have a clear responsibility to start taking action.”


It didn’t work. They realize it’s not working. So they want to do it again.


That’s insanity. The following, from the same article, is a blatant lie:



U.S. Sen. Diane Feinstein, D-Calif., has also said that Congress needs to reopen the debate on the assault weapon ban, which President George W. Bush allowed to lapse.


President George W. Bush said he would sign an extension of the AWB but it was never put on his desk for a signature.

The law doesn’t apply to us, we’re the police

Typical. One set of laws for us and no laws for them.


Not only do police officers (and a district attorney) buy machine guns for person use from the police department but the police department is fighting the Freedom of Information Act requests:



The court case is the result of a Freedom of Information Law request filed by the Times Union more than three years ago. The city denied the newspaper’s request. Last year a state judge ordered the documents released yet allowed the city to redact the names of officers from the records. The newspaper appealed.


In its initial denial, the city said the release of the records could endanger the lives of officers because the guns were used to fight crime.

However, more than a year later in August 2007 the Times Union reported the guns were purchased illegally by officers for personal use, at tax-exempt prices, and that they had never been used for official duties.

The city subsequently changed its court argument to say the documents should not be released because they were ”personnel” files and therefore exempt from disclosure under a state law that shields police officers employee files from public disclosure. The Albany Police Officers Union joined the case at that point and has cited the fact officers may have engaged in illegal behavior to buttress their argument that the documents are therefore personnel records.

Still, no officer has been fired, disciplined or passed over for a promotion as a result of being implicated in the scandal, according to several departmental sources. Also, the city, in its legal papers, said officers cannot be held accountable for misconduct that is more than a year old.


“Cannot be held accountable for misconduct that is more than a year old?” So they just have to make sure the bodies of all the women with babies in their arms they shoot with the machine guns aren’t found for at least a year?

Very telling

The ironically named “Freedom State Alliance” has this to say:



With over 30,000 gun deaths in the U.S. each year — including the 4 police officers shot and killed in Oakland, California on March 21st — an appropriate response to this carnage should be bold and comprehensive policies to prevent further homicides, suicides and unintentional injuries.



Meanwhile, little is being done to address the elephant in the room: the 280 million guns already in circulation and how to reduce this staggering number. Although there are some good gun laws in place, thanks in large part to the tireless efforts of gun violence prevention advocates and survivors, there has been little success in addressing the sheer volume of guns.



Japan is a good case in point as to why fewer guns make a difference. With a population of 128 million people, it is estimated that Japan has fewer than 400,000 legally owned guns resulting in a total of 22 gun murders in 2007 according to Japan’s National Police Agency.

The United States on the other hand has a population of 306 million, 280 million guns and over 12,000 gun homicides each year. Even if, for arguments sake, we were to more than double Japan’s population to match the U.S. population, that would leave Japan with just over 50 gun homicides compared to America’s over 12,000 gun murders. It’s shameful.


America needs to decide what kind of country it wants to be. Do we want to be a nation willing to be bullied by an extremist lobby and misguided in our way of thinking about our nation’s gun problem?


I find it very telling the one-man show at the “Freedom State Alliance” (FSA) refers to “the extremist lobby” which is composed of several million members of the NRA, hundreds of thousands with SAF and CCRKBA. And 10 of millions of people that are members at local gun clubs and ranges. I probably have more people attend Boomershoot each year than the “Freedom State Alliance” can count as members.


I find it very telling that the FSA looks at only the GUN related homicides in Japan and not the total homicide and suicide rates which paint a very different picture when compared to the U.S.


I find it very telling that FSA uses the number 30,000 dead. Because that includes legally justified defensive shootings by police officers and private citizens! In order to get the numbers up FSA uses praiseworthy uses of firearms–then they spin it to be something negative.


I find it very telling the FSA laments the number of people exercising a specific enumerated right. What would the the response of the general public if the KKK were whining about the number of blacks running around free and unregulated instead of being slaves?


What this tells me is the FSA is a bigoted organization that must spin and deceive in their attempts to get traction on the destruction of a critical portion of our Bill of Rights.

Enemies of the community

Interesting perspective on the shooting of the police officers in Oakland:



This time, instead of the Gaza Strip in the Middle East, we’re talking about the MacArthur Strip in East Oakland. Instead of the occupation force of the Israelis in Palestine or the Americans in Iraq or Afghanistan, the low income Black communities in America are dealing with the police, FBI, ATF and DEA, to name a few. Instead of a suicide bomber or a sniper holed up in a building, Lovelle turned out to be a suicide sniper who used a gun instead of a bomb to take out enemies of the community.


I wonder how tolerant of that sort of attitude the MSM would be if it were some “gun-nut” or religious group who holed up and shot it out with the police.


I take that back. I don’t need to wonder. I remember the MSM treatment of Ruby Ridge and Waco. And in the case of Ruby Ridge the DOJ agreed with the “gun-nuts”–the FBI was way out of line.

Australia–police state in training

We all know about the mass destruction of guns in Australia but the oppression didn’t stop there and it doesn’t generally make the news here. My Australian friend emailed these tidbits to me:



http://www.thewest.com.au/default.aspx?MenuID=77&ContentID=131675


Tracks where you go, measuring your speed between two points.


Emphasis on the tracks where you go part.


And:



http://www.news.com.au/technology/story/0,28348,25229239-5014239,00.html


AUSTRALIA’S third largest internet service provider (ISP) has pulled out of the Government’s web filtering trials, saying the plan is “no longer just about stopping child porn”.


The Government’s plan involves a nation-wide filter that stops “unwanted material” from appearing on Australian user’s computer screens.


iiNet says the ambiguity of “unwanted material” is what caused it to pull out of the trials.


Ambiguity of “unwanted material”? Like Tiananmen square? Between the speed cameras and this, I’m not so sure I would be happy living there anymore…


Update: Comment spam is coming in at the rate of about one every two minutes. I’m turning off comments to this post. If you want to post a comment send it via email to me (blog AT JoeHuffman DOT org) with the name you want associated with it and I’ll post it for you.

Reasoned discourse?

I just posted a comment to this article. My comment was:

I have just one question (https://blog.joehuffman.org/2004/12/14/just-one-question/) for you:

 

Can you demonstrate one time or place, throughout all history, where the average person was made safer by restricting access to handheld weapons?

The website response was:

This discussion is moderated. Your post will be displayed when a moderator has reviewed it.

I wonder if it will really will be displayed.

Quote of the day–Phil Mendelson

The Supreme Court in Heller struck a balance between the right of individuals to protect themselves and the right of individuals to be protected. If we so limit gun control as to favor individuals to protect themselves, but then disadvantage the right of individuals to be protected by the police, what will we have gained for the public good?


Phil Mendelson
An at-large member of the D.C. Council and chairman of the council’s Committee on Public Safety & the Judiciary.
D.C. Vote: This Is About Safety, Not the 2nd Amendment
March 22, 2009
[People don’t have a right to be protected by the police. Nowhere in the constitution, the law, or in court rules can you find such a “right”. Just the opposite in fact. The courts have ruled the police have no duty to protect individuals. This is just the worst of the lies in this article. Read the rest and be sure to take your blood pressure meds first–Joe]

Good stuff

There wasn’t any new material for me in this essay but it was a great collection and presentation of the problem: Dismantling the Killer Elite.