Category Archives: Gun Rights

Quote of the day–Mahatma Gandhi

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As I proceeded further and further with my inquiry into the atrocities that had been committed on the people, I came across tales of Government’s tyranny and the arbitrary despotism of it’s officers such as I was hardly prepared for, and they filled me with deep pain. What surprised me then, and what still continues to fill me with surprise, was the fact that a province that had furnished the largest number of soldiers to the British Government during the war, should have taken all these brutal excesses lying down.

 

Mathatma Gandhi
An autobiography. The story of my experiments with Truth. There are many versions but I have this one.
[H/T to Ry who has the background on another, more famous quote, from Gandhi. Gandhi is no stranger to my QOTD posts either:

–Joe]

Quote of the day–Boyertown Berk Montgomery News

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People get so caught up in their right to have a gun that they lose sight of what is important: Public safety.


I know there are some legitimate hunters who think they are allowed to have semi-automatic guns too. It is ridiculous to call yourself a sportsman if you need to use a semi-automatic gun. Each shot should be carefully calculated, not just haphazardly shot repeatedly in seconds in the approximate direction of an animal.


These guns, the ones that should never hit the streets, are getting into the hands of criminals and innocent people are dying. Why? Because guns get stolen.


In my opinion, there is no legitamate use for civilians to use a semi-automatic weapon.


Boyertown Berk Montgomery News
November 27, 2008
Gun restrictions are inevitable in today’s violent climate
[Reading the article I kept thinking, “This could have been written by a sixth grader.” I’m not surprised they didn’t put their name on it. It was pathetic in organization, illogical, and obviously had no basis in fact. I guess he or she is just another bigot proselyting.–Joe]

Quote of the day–Tonya Payne

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Who really cares about it being unconstitutional? This is what’s right to do, and if this means that we have to go out and have a court battle, then that’s fine … We have plenty of dead bodies coming up in our streets every single day, and that is unacceptable.


Tonya Payne
Pittsburgh City Councilwoman
November 24, 2008
Litigation likely on weapons measure City wants missing guns reported to police in 24 hours
[H/T to Sebastian.


Forget about her crap for brains for thinking the proposed law would reduce crime in any way, this statement should be sufficient grounds for the Feds to immediately arrest her along with her co-conspirators and to get a conviction for an 18 USC 242 violation.–Joe]

McMillan makes good stocks

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I won’t be buying HS Precision any time soon. I have a HS Precision stock on my Spud Gun and really like it. But not if they are going to be associating with people like Horiuchi. Horiuchi was a sniper and had kills at Ruby Ridge and (allegedly) Waco.


I would like to suggest McMillan stocks as a great alternative.


Update: See also what Tamara, Say Uncle, Caleb, and David Codrea have to say about it.


People are checking it out and remembering:




























































































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Update2: See also my Idaho neighbor Laurel’s post.

Quote of the day–Bruce Schneier

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Ephemeral conversation is dying.


Cardinal Richelieu famously said, “If one would give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I would find something in them to have him hanged.” When all our ephemeral conversations can be saved for later examination, different rules have to apply. Conversation is not the same thing as correspondence. Words uttered in haste over morning coffee, whether spoken in a coffee shop or thumbed on a Blackberry, are not official pronouncements. Discussions in a meeting, whether held in a boardroom or a chat room, are not the same as answers at a press conference. And privacy isn’t just about having something to hide; it has enormous value to democracy, liberty, and our basic humanity.


We can’t turn back technology; electronic communications are here to stay and even our voice conversations are threatened. But as technology makes our conversations less ephemeral, we need laws to step in and safeguard ephemeral conversation. We need a comprehensive data privacy law, protecting our data and communications regardless of where it is stored or how it is processed. We need laws forcing companies to keep it private and delete it as soon as it is no longer needed. Laws requiring ISPs to store e-mails and other personal communications are exactly what we don’t need.


Rules pertaining to government need to be different, because of the power differential. Subjecting the president’s communications to eventual public review increases liberty because it reduces the government’s power with respect to the people. Subjecting our communications to government review decreases liberty because it reduces our power with respect to the government. The president, as well as other members of government, need some ability to converse ephemerally — just as they’re allowed to have unrecorded meetings and phone calls — but more of their actions need to be subject to public scrutiny. But laws can only go so far. Law or no law, when something is made public it’s too late. And many of us like having complete records of all our e-mail at our fingertips; it’s like our offline brains.


In the end, this is cultural.


The Internet is the greatest generation gap since rock and roll. We’re now witnessing one aspect of that generation gap: the younger generation chats digitally, and the older generation treats those chats as written correspondence. Until our CEOs blog, our Congressmen Twitter, and our world leaders send each other LOLcats – until we have a Presidential election where both candidates have a complete history on social networking sites from before they were teenagers– we aren’t fully an information age society.


When everyone leaves a public digital trail of their personal thoughts since birth, no one will think twice about it being there. Obama might be on the younger side of the generation gap, but the rules he’s operating under were written by the older side. It will take another generation before society’s tolerance for digital ephemera changes.


Bruce Schneier
November 24, 2008
The Future of Ephemeral Conversation
[What I fear will happen is that people, and politicians in particular, will fail to realize is that the society needs to compensate for the power differential and open up government while securing the individual and private organizations. They will think government “needs” to be private and that in order for the government to “protect” us they need to monitor our every word and move.


You can see this mindset in that so many people fear “large corporations” more than governments. They want the government to protect them from the corporations. They want more power for the government so it can further regulate businesses and individuals. They apparently are totally oblivious to the fact that an abusive corporation can be taken down in a few months by a massive boycott. Corporations don’t have the means to force you to buy their goods. On the other hand a government uses guns to take your money, your property, your freedom, and/or your life. Giving governments a monopoly on force and privacy is extremely poor social hygiene.–Joe]

Quote of the day–William Clayton

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The dumber people think you are, the more surprised they’re going to be when you kill them.

William Clayton
[There are more than one William Clayton I found on the net and none are particularly good candidates for this quote. But he is the only one I found this quote attributed to.–Joe]

Quote of the day–Alan Gottlieb

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The mayor is beating his chest trying to make a statement that he’s anti-gun. The mayor and violent criminals in this case have something in common this time — neither of them have any respect for the law.

Alan Gottlieb
November 21, 2008
Nickels expects December start to city gun ban
[Seattle Mayor Nickels says he is going to defy state law and prohibit guns by executive order on city property. The Washington State Attorney General says state law prohibits him from doing that. A public hearing is scheduled for 6:30 PM, December 15, at City Hall.

You can read the proposed rules and comment on them here. See also the Citizen’s Committee to Keep and Bear Arms news release. Be polite, run your comments through spelling and grammar checkers, and ask someone else to read them before submission. You might also consider get yourself into the proper State of Mind, and/or thinking about Just One Question before writing your comments.–Joe]

Quote of the day–Milton Friedman

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History suggests that capitalism is a necessary condition for political freedom. Clearly it is not a sufficient condition.


Milton Friedman
[It’s really sad that people are:



  1. Unaware of this
  2. Unwilling to accept this
  3. Or, most likely and saddest of all, don’t want political freedom

For those interested in political freedom I would like to suggest the First, Second, Fourth, Fifth, and 13th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution would be good additions to capitalism toward achieving political freedom. Although if the Second is uninfringed then the 13th pretty much should be taken care. Isn’t it ironic that our first president with a skin color strongly correlated with slavery in our country wants to continue the infringements that kept those people in slavery? And furthermore the first infringements upon that right in this country were enacted to keep people of that skin color from obtaining and using firearms? Condi Rice gets it. Barack Obama doesn’t. What makes the difference?–Joe]

Israel continues to commit suicide

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Death by a thousand, self-inflicted cuts.  This from our friend Howard;



Friends:

 

Today we really have a poporie of news. 

 

I’m on duty patrolling downtown this evening.  20:30 I get the patrol officers briefing.  21:00 we get our volunteers briefing.  Hope the rain holds-off.  Then again if it starts raining for real I guess we just go home.

 

Soon we may be all the protection the public gets.

 

The public transportation unit is gone.  More cops are leaving than replacements can be found.  The Ministry of Interior is disarming the public who have licensed guns…after passing [a] process determining need for a gun and background, physical and mental record checks.

Who ever said registration and licensing were the path to confiscation?  Once again we see Jews being disarmed, only this time Jews are doing it to each other.



Now the Finance Ministry is not going to fund the minimum wage school guards receive.  So the schools will be totally unprotected.

This is what is known as the “Peace” process– The lack of meaningful opposition to socialist, Marxist, Fascist, communist or jihadist military expansionism.

Quote of the day–Daniel G. Jarcho

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The handgun ban is a reasonable restriction, because handguns constitute a unique class of firearm that have an unmatched ability to cause violence and kill human beings.


Daniel G. Jarcho
Brief of Violence Policy Center and the police chiefs for the cities of Los Angeles, Minneapolis, and Seattle as amici curiae in support of petitioners in D.C. v. Heller.
[Handguns cause violence? Unmatched in their ability to kill human beings?


And all this time I would have thought it was atomic bombs (super novas probably outperform A-Bombs but they haven’t actually been demonstrated on human inhabited planets that I know of) that were unmatched in their ability to implement violence and kill human beings. And that is why I was accepting of “reasonable restrictions” on atomic weapons. But now that the Supreme Court says handguns are protected by the Second Amendment and, according to Mr. Jarcho, atomic bombs are less dangerous than handguns I guess that means atomic bombs should be protected as well.


I’m glad Mr. Jarcho was able to clear that little misunderstanding up for me. I’ll be consulting his work more frequently from now on to make sure I don’t make some future similar mistake in my classification of weapon systems. Now, where is a nearby public range where I can rent an atomic capability artillery piece and buy some ammo for it? I want to evaluate some possibilities for the next Boomershoot.–Joe]

Quote of the day–Cedric T

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Guns got to go! Too many redneck, bible toting racist with them. There honestly is no need for anyone to have a gun, for any reason. Hunting included. Obama said he would get rid of guns and he will. Last season for hunters. Enjoy while you can.


Cedric T
THE AGENDA: GUN CONTROL
November 19, 2008 10:05 AM
Chicago, IL
[Μολὼν λάβε Cedric. Μολὼν λάβε!–Joe]

Quote of the day–Sick in the U. P.

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I won’t apologize for concluding that anyone who supports the free and unfettered possession of deadly weapons is sick in their head. Why in God’s name should the Democratic party, or any organization dedicated to improving the lives and future of Americans, give up on the idea of gun control? Has mental illness spread so far in our country that the concept of curbing violent death by gun is no longer viable?


Here’s my take: all gun owners should immediately submit themselves for psychiatric examination, to determine the extent of their illness and begin treatment before they do harm to someone.


Rifled, single-shot hunting weapons aside, this country should immediately consider laws making the possession of any handgun or assault weapon evidence of serious and dangerous mental illness, and anyone having such a weapon on their possession should be subject to immediate immobilization, hospitalization and confinement for treatment. The sale of — or display with intent to sell — any handgun or assault weapon to a private citizen should result in that person’s inventory being seized and immediately destroyed, and the seller hospitalized immediately for treatment. Any factory producing handguns or assault weapons caught selling their product to private citizens should be closed, their corporate officers hospitalized, and the inventory destroyed.


Sick in the U. P.
Oct 27, 2008 06:07 PM
In a comment to this article: Why we all need the Democrats to abandon gun control
[Sounds like some people are in full support of sending us for an extended stay in the reeducation camps. I wonder if he realizes what it would entail to get 80 million (or even a significant fraction) armed people to the camps. I would like to suggest it is they that need to seek psychiatric help.–Joe]

Can you say “black market”?

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From admittedly “not the wisest person in the world“:



One way to probably lower gun use would be to make the price of the bullet higher. I think one bullet should cost almost as much as a gun and I think bullets should be sold individually.


I feel that if people had to pay a lot more for bullets, they wouldn’t buy them as freely.


I’m not the wisest person in the world, but I know if people had to pay $100 just for one bullet, people would think twice about how important it really is to kill themselves or other people with that bullet.


The black market starts appearing when the tax on something goes above 15%. $100 for a single round is on the order of 20,000%. Her suggestion would work about as well as the prohibition against recreational drugs and probably would use much of the same supply chain.


Jeff has other comments.

Quote of the day–Alan Korwin

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He says “these” firearms (Clinton included normal magazines like police use for protection), belong on “foreign battlefields.” God help us if they’re needed on domestic battlefields against a government confiscating rights. Mr. Obama — I know these people. Disarm criminals, mobilize robust support, disarm the public, mobilize robust resistance. Please choose wisely.


Alan Korwin
November 13, 2008
Hope for Obama’s Gun Bill
[“Battlefields” appear to be a theme recently. I wonder why.–Joe]

Quote of the day–Fred LeBrun

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I have absolutely no use for protecting those trafficking in illegal guns. Even those who would do so on principle. Street guns, slithering from state to state, do too much harm.

 

Fred Lebrun
November 12, 2008
Lock, load and try taking aim at the illegal handguns
[This is from a guy that claims to support gun ownership. This was the first instance I had heard of guns slithering. I would have thought they sort of hopped when the slide release was disengaged. But maybe this “street gun” he talks about is some new type that I’m not familiar with.

 

Regardless of their mode of locomotion Lebrun has a very naive viewpoint of the world. He thinks the following would somehow be a good idea and wouldn’t be a problem for gun owners:

 

…a national identification system for handguns. A computerized system that would be accessible to all law enforcement agencies, and that would standardize the requirements for handgun ownership coast to coast.

 

What he apparently doesn’t understand is there is already a Federal standard requirement for handgun ownership coast to coast. It’s called the Second Amendment. And even with that there are people who been chipping away at that with waiting periods (the original Brady Act), restrictions on who can purchase (age, prior felony convictions, prior domestic violence convictions and accusations), storage requirements, and types of handguns (“junk guns”, “Saturday Night Specials”, “armor piercing”, too powerful, too concealable, too many rounds). This incremental approach is what the people of the UK bought into which ultimately resulted in their complete loss of handguns.

 

It appears he is suggesting universal registration of handguns. He is hopelessly naive if he believes this will fly. He need look no further than Canada to see their gun registration failure. Then he should try to answer Just One Question.–Joe]

 

Update: Jeff and Sebastian both have posts up about the same article.

Ominous

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Remember that when Obama announced his Vice-President candidate Joe Biden he bragged that Biden was instrumental in getting the “assault weapon” ban of ’94:



Fifteen years ago, too many American communities were plagued by violence and insecurity. So Joe Biden brought Democrats and Republicans together to pass the 1994 Crime Bill, putting 100,000 cops on the streets, and starting an eight year drop in crime across the country.


CCRKBA reports:



CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb said gun owners are legitimately alarmed that president-elect Barack Obama has selected virulent anti-gun-rights Democrat Rahm Emanuel as his White House chief of staff. Emanuel was “point man” on gun ban efforts for the Clinton Administration.

“Scores of Democrats, including Senator Obama and his running mate, Joe Biden, assured voters over the past several months that they ‘support’ the Second Amendment,” Gottlieb stated. “Well, America’s gun owners do not merely ‘support’ the Second Amendment, we live by it every day. We value the right to keep and bear arms, and will zealously protect and defend that right, as much as we value the rest of our fundamental individual civil rights, and that is something Democrats need to understand. To think otherwise is a monumental mistake.

“Mr. Obama, whose history on gun rights is abysmal, appears to be considering his party’s most extremist gun control advocates for key positions in his administration,” Gottlieb continued. “That is not a sign of goodwill toward gun owners or their rights. It’s a red flare warning of high winds and rough weather looming on the political horizon.


David Hardy reports:



Supporting it is an insider DC tip that his people are seriously considering a federal ban or restriction on “right to carry” laws.


Countertop reports (see also this post):



Looks like the fix is in and Henry Waxman and Nancy Pelosi are going to toss John Dingell aside…


This was an easy decision for Pelosi who has long clashed with Dingell and ran Lynn Rivers against him in a primary attempt to defeat him.


The Lynne Rivers campaign was all about gun control.


President-Elect Barrack Obama is exceedingly anti-gun. His VP is exceedingly anti-gun. His Chief of Staff is exceedingly anti-gun. The pro-gun John Dingell, Chairman of the Committee on Energy and Commerce, who blocked anti-gun legislation from reaching the floor of the House is being booted and replaced with the anti-gun Henry Waxman.


It seems to me that things are shaping up to be “a Perfect Storm”.


I’ll announce my latest software project by sometime next weekend. It may come in useful if things get really ugly.

Quote of the day–Hal Herring

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For two decades, many liberals have thrived on despising the NRA and its members. Those who believe in gun control often hold enormous prejudice against those who don’t. But there are already reams of laws pertaining to the use, abuse, purchase and sale of firearms. What new regulations would the gun-controllers create, and how would they work to address the problem of gun violence? Do they want to prohibit private ownership of firearms altogether? Many would like to ban handguns, without considering just what this would entail, what inequities of power would result, and what new, potentially dangerous, powers would have to be awarded to government to accomplish it. Like activists who want to ban pit bulls, the gun-control advocates remain relentlessly unspecific about what they hope to achieve. It has become clear, too, that these advocates hold a double standard regarding the U.S. Constitution: The First Amendment is vital to the health of a free nation, as is the Fourth, but the Second is respected only by the un-evolved and the violent. Only the parts of the Constitution that their side respects are valid, in this view.


Hal Herring
October 27, 2008
Why we all need the Democrats to abandon gun control
[H/T to Jeff who has a still better quote from the comments to this same article.–Joe]

Ten Percent Increase in Gun Sales?

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Maybe.  But that 10% figure alone doesn’t account for the buying shift away from bolt actions and revolvers and into semi automatics and EBRs*.  Anyone selling semi automatic pistols and EBRs is seeing more like a 100% or greater increase in sales of those items.  Mere accessories for EBRs, I can tell you first-hand, are up 100% in sales from two months ago.  Ammo sales are up substantially too, in this “get it while you still can” market environment.


Manufacturers; If you’re making ARs, AKs, auto pistols, other self-loading carbines, or magazines that hold more than 10 rounds, you would do well to put on another shift if you haven’t done it already.


Citizens; This is a great time to learn just how much fun it can be to learn some shooting skills and to get your first gun.


One wonders if the anti second amendment rights movers and shakers understand how great they’ve been as gun salesmen, or how great they’ve been at recruiting new shooters.  Gun and gun related sales haven’t been this good since the Bubba years.  Gun ranges in populated areas are running at full capacity.  Maybe we’ll have to start renting booths at gun shows again.


*EBR = “Evil Black Rifle”.  In case you were recently revived from a years-long coma; the term applies to anything that might be included in the next “Assault Weapons” ban under ObamACORN (I just added “ObamACORN” to my MS Word spell checker dictionary.  Odd that it wasn’t there already, but I suppose this is an older version of Word. If you work for Microsoft, you might put in a memo reminding those in charge of spell checkers to make sure it’s there) and the Pelosi/Reed Congress, even if (or maybe especially if) they’re tan in color, or green, a nice pink with rainbows, dolphins, unicorns and shiny red hearts on them, etc..  We also speak of “Evil Features” like pistol grips on rifles (oh…”shudder”) or bayonet lugs, or standard capacity magazines (as opposed to the puny five or ten round capacity mags).

A job for the Queen of Snark

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Via Bruce Schneier:



New Contest: Can You Out-Lame the TSA?


Last week, in response to my article about the idiocy of airport security, the head of the Transportation Security Administration, Kip Hawley, essentially conceded the main argument of my article, which was that America’s aviation security system is not designed to catch smart terrorists, but stupid terrorists. Here’s what Hawley wrote last week:


“Clever terrorists can use innovative ways to exploit vulnerabilities. But don’t forget that most bombers are not, in fact, clever. Living bomb-makers are usually clever, but the person agreeing to carry it may not be super smart. Even if “all” we do is stop dumb terrorists, we are reducing risk.”

Not quite believable. And yet he really said it.

And so, a contest: How would the Hawley Principle of Federally-Endorsed Mediocrity apply to other government endeavors?


…


So, go to it. E-mail your entries to Goldberg.Atlantic@gmail.com.  The Goldblog reader who comes up with the funniest application of the Hawley Principle wins a subscription to the Atlantic.


Here are my entries. They are probably too close to the truth to be funny but still I figure it’s worthwhile to mock politicians in public anytime you get the chance:




  1. Gun “buy-backs”, restrictions on the type of guns, and carrying of guns don’t slow down a violent criminal any. But getting guns out of the hands of small stature women, the elderly, and the infirm will at least prevent those people from being able to go out and commit violent crimes.


  2. Hundreds of millions of meals are prepared each day in the U.S. by unlicensed food preparation people. These people prepare food for small children, the elderly, trusting family members, and unsuspecting friends. Food borne illness and accidental poisoning are exceedingly rare given the vast numbers of meals prepared without inspection by the health officials. Licensing and inspecting the professionals who prepare only a small portion of the total meals won’t stop anyone but a minority of incompetent capitalists but at least it raising the cost of doing business will encourage more people to obtain their meals from those who are unlicensed and less tainted by capitalistic inclinations.

If Tamara enters I will concede–sight unseen.

Quote of the day–Mike Baker

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This gun control effort is part of an overall government takeover by the radical left who now control the White House, the Senate and the House of Representatives. The next part of the Obama-ACORN plan is a new military force separate from the US Armed Forces.


Obama has called for a ‘civilian national security force’ (http://www.newswithviews.com/NWV-News/www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tt2yGzHfy7s) as powerful as the US military, comments that were ignored by the vast majority of the corporate media but compared by conservatives to the Nazi Hitler Youth.


Mike Baker
November 8, 2008
OBAMA AND ACORN OFFICIALS SET SIGHTS ON GUNOWNERS
[It’s interesting to me that the left compared Bush to Hitler so often when it seems to me that there are much closer ties to Hitler from several directions such as:



  • A philosophical basis (socialism)

  • Ignoring the constitution and human rights (hostility to private gun ownership)

  • Adoration of a charismatic leader

  • Organization of a “civilian” security force

  • Mandatory “volunteer” service to the state

We’ll just have to wait and see. It doesn’t appear that Bush is going to start loading people into the cattle cars anytime soon and Obama hasn’t announced plans for any “work camps” yet. So comparisons for either of them to Hitler seem to be a bit weak still.–Joe]