Presumptuous paternalists argue that Americans should be deprived of guns because gun owners are their own worst enemies. A lot of Americans would reply: We can’t trust ourselves, but we can trust you?
Steve Chapman
July 13, 2008
Is buying a gun a suicidal act?
[Nice! The other day Sebastian said we need to be ready to counter the suicide angle. I think this is excellent response.–Joe]
Don Kaul has written dozens of columns supporting gun restrictions. He now says he has given up:
I’ve given up on gun control. That battle is over. We’ve lost. I no longer think it’s an achievable goal and if I were a politician I wouldn’t lose an election over it.
It sounds as if he is still a bigot. He just isn’t going to advocate for legislation to support his bigotry. That’s good enough for now. Someone in his neighborhood should offer to take him to the range and offer him a chance to join the winning team.
Speaking of the Brady Bunch… I found this entertaining. There is much more but this should be enough of a teaser:
The Race Car Ban of 2006 bans all compact cars with two or more of the following racing features:
Four valves per cylinder
Aerodynamic spoiler or wing that protrudes conspicuously above the trunk lid or rear deck
Air dam
Hood scoop
Chrome exhaust tip
Levitation lights
Afterburner
The Race Car Ban would also ban the following race cars by name:
Honda Civic (all models)
Subaru Impreza WRX
Mitsubushi Lancer (all models)
Honda S2000
Volvo S40
Mazda 3 and Protoge
Toyota Corolla
Scion (all models)
Saturn Ion
Bentley Speed 8
NHRA Top Fuel dragster
Caterpillar D9
Boeing 737
Airbus A380
In order to reassure car owners, the bill’s sponsors included a long list of non-race cars that are not affected by the legislation:
BMW 3-series
Cadillac CTS-V
Cadillac Escalade
Chevrolet Suburban and Tahoe
Ford Edsel
Ford Model T
Ford Mustang (without wing and spoiler)
Ford F-150
Hummer (all models)
Jeep Cherokee
John Deere Tractor
Kenworth T2000
Sopwith Camel
The bill also makes it a felony to own a car manufactured after Sept. 14th, 1994, that has a fuel capacity of more than ten U.S. gallons of fuel.
Anthrax is not the only terrorist weapon sent through the mail. Congress must close the loophole that allows gun makers to evade federal regulation and sell untraceable assault weapon kits that terrorists and other criminals can purchase by mail and assemble at home. An assault weapon without a serial number is a terrorist’s dream.
Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence
Guns and Terror
Copyright 2001
[They are either ignorant or lying. The receiver of the gun (the part with the serial number) cannot be mail ordered and delivered to your doorstep. It must always be transferred to the retail customer though a face-to-face transaction with a FFL who does a background check. Even if it were possible what difference would that make to the terrorists we face? How would a gun without a serial number benefit them? And what sort of law do they think will prevent a terrorist from removing the serial number from guns that do have serial numbers? As near as I can tell these people either have crap for brains or they think everyone they talk to does. They dance in blood wherever they can find it and urge others to splash themselves with blood and participate in their delusions and perverse obsession with the destruction of liberty. They use whatever means will get traction no matter how misleading, deceptive, or useless to their implied goal of building a safer society.–Joe]
Despicable.
The ACLU joins the NRA as the advocates of cowards, sneak thieves and psycopaths. I challenge Mr. Peck to identify where in the 2nd Amendment or any Federalist Paper is found the right to bear arms for “self protection.”
You will soon be receiving the bloody shoes of the victims from across the nation.
The illegal guns that flood Cleveland and Detroit and Chicago come from your redneck gun shows and gun shops. I understand now why Nevadans need 8 or 10 guns: people this offensively stupid must have thousands of enemies. Add to that throng the families of the kids that get killed every day just because you need those pistols to feel like men. You’re pathetic weaklings.
It’s sad that when it comes to guns, what happens in Vegas bleeds throughout the rest of the country.
esquared
7:34 AM July 11, 2008
A comment to the article: Only in Nevada: ACLU opposes gun control–State affiliate bucks national stance, supporting the right to bear arms
[I think the article needs some comments to counterbalance those of this bigot. The ACLU blog post on the 2nd Amendment is up to nearly 1000 comments now with no significant sign of sympathy for their position.–Joe]
Steve Chapman appears to have all his facts correct but overlooks what I think are the most important points. Yes, all the gun control laws failed to make people safer. Yes, shall issue concealed carry laws did no harm. Yes, legal scholars concluded the NRA was right all along. But that isn’t what made the difference. Facts and reason have never been the most significant factors in politics.
What made the difference was the gun grabbers getting their asses handed to them in elections. It started with the 1994 national election a month and a half after the so called “assault weapon ban” was passed and was sealed when Al Gore lost his home state in the 2000 election. From there it was still a fierce battle but astute observers on both sides could see, baring some major upset, who was going to win. September 11, 2001 came and both sides tried to take advantage of the event. Gun owners came out on top. The next major event, hurricane Katrina, proved such a disaster for the gun grabbers that there was no doubt which side had the momentum.
Another significant factor was the militia movement in the mid 1990s. It faded away in the late 90s when the ballot box appeared to be having the desired results. The politicians realized gun owners were preparing for war and dialed down their hate filled rhetoric. If the soap box and ballot box didn’t work the cartridge box was being readied for use. They heard the whispers from the gun ranges, gun shows and any other place where gun owners gathered. The shout of defiance had changed even though Heston still used the old one. And the new one was not said from the podium with the television cameras running. It was a deep growl which could only be heard if you were standing close enough. But the politicians got the gist of it anyway, “You can have my gun when you reanimate Your Cold. Dead. Hands.”
Amicae therefore contend that depriving women of the right to possess a handgun in the privacy of their own homes reflects at best an insensitivity to women’s unique needs created by their inherent gender characteristics. A handgun simply is the best means of self-defense for those who generally lack the upper body strength to successfully wield a shotgun or other long gun. To therefore deny half the population a handgun, as the District and the Office of the Solicitor General urge, evinces the “blindness or indifference” to women that only perpetuates women’s vulnerability to physical subordination.
M. Carol Bambery
Brief of amicae curiae 126 women state legislators and academics in support of respondent.
[About 70% of my firearms students are women wanting to get their concealed carry permits. As I have said before getting women out to the range is one of the things we must do to win the battle against the anti-gun bigots.–Joe]
When I was little, got upset about something and was presenting my case with “the volume set to 11” my great Uncle Walt used to tell me, “Speak softer, I can’t hear your” and I would have to repeat myself without all the “enthusiasm” of my first explanation. His advice was good. But some members of congress are turning that sage wisdom against us. 10s of thousands of us had comments in favor of being able to defend ourselves with the best available tools in the National Parks and rather than listening to what was said they want to “get more input”.
The real story is the anti-gun bigots in congress are trying to delay the allowing of firearms in National Parks until their is a new administration in the White House. The Apex of the Triangle of Death has the details and what to do about it.
Daughter Kim called me a few minutes ago to tell me she has been officially accepted at the University of Idaho.
Yaaaaahhhh Kim!
She plans to study accounting. She is smart and is good with math so this should be a good match for her.
Now I just need to get her connected up with Students for Concealed Carry on Campus. There is a conference in D.C. on August 1st that would be interesting for her to attend–if I could get her to leave her husband for a few days. Fat chance of that happening… Maybe she will participate in the empty holster days. That would be nice. But, more important than my political goals is for her to get the education she needs so she can get a good job.
Here is a picture of her just so you know who I’m talking about:
That the colonists cared little about the prospect of having their guns seized is not the only ahistorical concept underlying Petitioners’ repudiation of the Second Amendment. Redcoats and Patriots alike would have puzzled at Petitioners’ notion that the Revolution produced an exclusive governmental right to operate an organized militia. The “well regulated militia” of the American Revolution operated not merely beyond the control of, but in direct challenge to, the King’s governors.
Alan Gura
Robert A. Levy
Clark M. Neily III
February 24, 2008
Brief on Writ Of Certiorari To The United States Court Of Appeals For The District Of Columbia Circuit.
[Sometime I should make a list of all the absurdities in the belief system of the anti-gun bigots that contributed to the Heller case. It would make for very amusing reading.–Joe]
Have pity for the moderators here. I haven’t seen such a sh!tstorm descend on any one target since Jim Zumbo dined on his foot. Wow.
Nomen Nescio
Comment 285 at the ACLU blob post “Heller Decision and the Second Amendment”.
[Yup. The comments are moderated, probably to keep the spam out, and there are now 668 comments. I suspect there are a couple hundred more waiting for moderation. My count is two supported the ACLU, one was neutral, and 665 were negative. Plus there is a gathering storm in the comments to this post as well.–Joe]
Via Dave Hardy I came across this:
It also sent shockwaves across France where the loss of two of the country’s finest young minds was seen as proof of Britain’s spiral into knife-obsessed lawlessness.
…
Mr Bonomo was stabbed 196 times, with up to 100 wounds inflicted on his back after death.
Mr Ferez, who lived several miles away in Thornton Heath, suffered 47 separate injuries.
So… how’s that gun control and hostility toward self-defense working out for you guys on the other side of the pond? Confiscation of knives followed by rocks and pointed sticks seems like what is needed next.
As Jed points out (and I had noticed a few minutes earlier via a Google News Alert) World Net Daily quoted me when reporting about the ACLU getting ripped apart by comments on their own blog regarding their stand in regards to the Heller decision.
Cool! I was proud of that rant but I didn’t expect any big names to pick it up. I should have put a link in the comment I guess. No traffic from WND is being directed here.
As Third Power, Say Uncle, Progun Progressive, and Dave Hardy have been pointing out our current FBI Director Robert Mueller “is not happy with the Supreme Court’s recent handgun ruling.”
But this isn’t the first time the Director of the FBI has acted as if he knew better than the courts. In 1995 there were hearings on the incident at Ruby Ridge. This was after Randy Weaver were acquitted of all charges except failure to show up in court (only Weaver, not Harris). Harris’s killing of Federal Marshal Degan was found to be justifiable homicide. Despite that jury finding FBI Director Louis Freeh repeatedly referred to Degan’s death as a murder. I recall, but can’t find the written transcript, him being called on this and responding something to the effect that he “fully respects the court system and abides by it. But Degan was still murdered.” If I could have jumped through the T.V. and grabbed him by the throat when he said that I would have. He cannot simultaneously respect the courts decision and claim Degan was murdered.
Mueller apparently thinks he is no less superior to the courts than Freeh thought he was. He needs to be reminded that he is a public servant and not a public master.
Update: Sebastian and the NRA-ILA have something to say as well. I overlooked them when I first made the post.
The Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms laughs and points at Bloomberg caught with his pants down:
WHILE BLOOMBERG FRETS ABOUT OUR GUNS, NYPD CAN’T KEEP TRACK OF THEIRS
BELLEVUE, WA – Anti-gun New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg should “mind his own store before telling others how to operate theirs,” said the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, after an audit found that the New York Police Department lost track of dozens of guns in its own storage lockers.
“While this guy has been bullying gun dealers around the country about so-called ‘slip-shod’ operations,” chuckled CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb, “his own police department seems to be slipping quite a bit on its own. Bloomberg needs to back off, shut up and get his own house in order before telling others how to operate.”
According to the New York Times, “nearly one out of three handguns and rifles that had been turned in to the police could not be immediately accounted for in a Manhattan property clerk’s office.”
“We’re waiting for Bloomberg to send a team of undercover vigilante investigators down there to find out what’s wrong,” Gottlieb said. “Can one of his infamous lawsuits be far behind?”
Bloomberg dispatched non-police “investigators” to run stings on gun shops in several states more than two years ago, ostensibly to show how easy it is to illegally obtain guns in other states. He then sued gun dealers in five states. This rogue operation landed the mayor’s office in hot water with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives for jeopardizing on-going legitimate investigations. Ultimately the Justice Department warned the mayor not to pull that stunt again.
“If Mayor Bloomberg wants to find mismanagement of a firearms inventory,” Gottlieb stated, “he doesn’t need to send goon squads to Georgia, the Carolinas, and Virginia or anywhere outside of his jurisdiction. All he really needs is to do is visit the police property room in Manhattan and turn his lawyers loose.
“It’s a pity that Bloomberg can’t lose his arrogant attitude as easily as his cops can lose track of their gun inventory,” he concluded.
In some ways, the Supreme Court term that just ended seems muddled: disturbing, highly conservative rulings on subjects like voting rights and gun control, along with important defenses of basic liberties in other areas, including the rights of detainees at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. The key to understanding the term lies in the fragility of the court’s center. Some of the most important decisions came on 5-to-4 votes — a stark reminder that the court is just one justice away from solidifying a far-right majority that would do great damage to the Constitution and the rights of ordinary Americans.
…
In other cases, like the gun-control decision, the rulings might have been more sweeping and more damaging if the conservative bloc had not needed the moderate-conservative Justice Kennedy’s vote to form a majority. One more conservative appointment would shift the balance to the far-right bloc.
If that happens, the court can be expected to push even further in a dangerous direction. It would most likely begin stripping away civil liberties…
New York Times
Editorial
July 3, 2008
A Supreme Court on the Brink
[Conservative justices threw out the D.C. handgun ban so that people were allowed to exercise a “new” right. And if we have more conservatives on the bench they would do “great damage” to the rights of ordinary Americans and “begin stripping away civil liberties”. What sort of mental problems do these people have? It’s worse than the Nazis who claimed Jews were vermin and literally spread disease like rats and fleas yet they were also in control of the banks and many governments. How can they not see they fail to keep their story straight even for an entire paragraph? It’s like something I would expect to hear from someone in a mental hospital.
I guess we don’t really have to understand them. We just have to defeat them.–Joe]
My father in law sends me all sorts of chain mail. My response follows at the bottom, but for the intro, here’s the chain letter:
Subject: A Billion?
How many zeros in a billion?
The next time you hear a politician use the word ‘billion’ in a casual manner, think about whether you want the ‘politicians’ spending YOUR tax money.
A billion is a difficult number to comprehend, but one advertising agency did a good job of putting that figure into some perspective in one of it’s releases.
A. A billion seconds ago it was 1959.
(Actually, that’s 1.5 billion, but that’s not the point)
B. A billion minutes ago Jesus was alive.
C. A billion hours ago our ancestors were living in the Stone Age.
D. A billion days ago no-one walked on the earth on two feet.
E. A billion dollars ago was only 8 hours and 20 minutes at the rate our government is spending it.
While this thought is still fresh in our brain, let’s take a look at New Orleans …
It’s amazing what you can learn with some simple division.
Louisiana Senator, Mary Landrieu (D) is presently asking Congress for 250 BILLION DOLLARS to rebuild New Orleans. Interesting number…What does it mean?
A. Well… if you are one of the 484,674 residents of New Orleans (every man, woman, and child) you each get $516,528.
B. Or, if you have one of the 188,251 homes in New Orleans, your home gets $1,329,787.
C. Or, if you are a family of four, your family gets $2,066,012.
Washington, D. C
HELLO!
Are all your calculators broken??
Accounts Receivable Tax
Building Permit Tax
CDL License Tax
Cigarette Tax
Corporate Income Tax
Dog License Tax
Federal Income Tax
Federal Unemployment Tax (FUTA)
Fishing License Tax
Food License Tax
Fuel Permit Tax
Gasoline Tax
Hunting License Tax
Inheritance Tax
Inventory Tax
IRS Interest Charges (tax on top of tax)
IRS Penalties (tax on top of tax)
Liquor Tax
Luxury Tax
Marriage License Tax
Medicare Tax
Property Tax
Real Estate Tax
Service charge taxes
Social Security Tax
Road Usage Tax (Truckers)
Sales Taxes
Recreational Vehicle Tax
School Tax
State Income Tax
State Unemployment Tax (SUTA)
Telephone Federal Excise Tax
Telephone Federal Universal Service Fee Tax
Telephone Federal, State and Local Surcharge Tax
Telephone Minimum Usage Surcharge Tax
Telephone Recurring and Non-recurring Charges Tax
Telephone State and Local Tax
Telephone Usage Charge Tax
Utility Tax
Vehicle License Registration Tax
Vehicle Sales Tax
Watercraft Registration Tax
Well Permit Tax
Workers Compensation Tax
STILL THINK THIS IS FUNNY?
Not one of these taxes existed 100 years ago, and our nation was the most prosperous in the world.
We had absolutely no national debt, we had the largest middle class in the world, and Mom stayed home to raise the kids.
What happened? Can you spell ‘politicians’?
And I still have to press ‘1’ for English.
I hope this goes around the USA at least 100 times
What the heck happened?
For my money it is called greed.
———————————————-
My response:
They left out special, punitive state and federal taxes on guns and ammunition, which account for a large portion of the cost of the product.
The list of taxes does not address the many and various requirements and restrictions on businesses. One small example out of thousands is; a window was broken in our Clarkston, WA store during a robbery. Had it been in Moscow, we could have called one of several glass shops and had it replaced the same day. Because this happened in Washington, there is a tempered safety glass requirement for storefronts that increased the cost of the window by several hundred dollars (wanna bet some legislator’s cousin owns a safety glass business?). But that wasn’t the main expense created by the law. Far and away the biggest expense was that we had to wait several weeks for the window, meaning we had no storefront for that amount of time– just boards.
That cost, and thousands like it, never figure into the costs with which we are saddled by local, state and fed restrictions.
Add things like minimum wage laws, which outlaw many entry-level jobs outright. Add laws requiring handicapped access, which can amount to 100s of thousands of dollars for a small business, even if they have no handicapped customers. The list of such requirements and restrictions would take more than your e-mail in-box could hold, and these all amount to increased cost of doing business. Often, the reporting and compliance requirements necessitate the hiring of extra employees– people doing jobs for the government, paid by the business owner, producing nothing. Ever see a WA state sales tax report? Every city and county can have its own tax rate. Since our music store does business in two states, and in many cities throughout WA state, we have a huge tax report for WA State (Idaho’s is about the size of a post card). As a very small business, the WA reporting requirement costs us and our customers at least as much as the actual tax money paid.
And did I mention that property taxes and utilities prices are higher for businesses than for a residence? How many people know that unless they’re in business?
Now add to the list of costs; the number of businesses that couldn’t bear these burdens, and just gave up and quit. Then add the number of businesses that started up in other states because they had more freedom there (this is known as “brain drain” and it happens in all socialist societies– the creative and the productive want the hell out of there).
But that’s just the beginning. Add the untold thousands of creative people who never went into business because the hurdles were just a little bit too much to bother with (business being a stressful and risky proposition in the best of situations) and/or they knew the “safety net” would take care of them anyway, or they could get a government job with full benefits.
And so the monster grows– fewer people paying taxes to support an ever-growing government sector. Three trillion dollars annually and growing fast (it’s gone up almost 50% during this current “conservative” administration). Divide 3 trillion by the total U.S. population, boys and girls, if your calculator can handle that many digits.
Many of these costs are impossible to measure. They don’t show up on the spreadsheets or in the statistics, but I submit that they account for the greatest percentage of the total cost of socialist/statist systems. But then, some would (and often do) applaud anything that shackles the creative, productive human mind and forces it to either serve their purposes, or just give up. Everyone knows the score– business (peaceable, voluntary exchange) is greedy and deserves to be punished, whereas “public servants” are altogether selfless and benevolent, right?
The ACLU blog post on the Heller decision has racked up 150 comments so far. Only one gives mild support of the ACLU position. Most are just as toxic as my comment (see also my blog post).
I wonder if they will get the message. I doubted it at first but now I’m beginning to wonder. Even incredibly bigoted newspaper editorials against gun owners get a small percentage of people supporting them.
Interesting stuff. The VPC blog author is really something special.
He/she must have borrowed Ronnie Barrett’s time machine to dig this one up.
We look forward to showing him ‘bitter’. Our members understand how bad Barack Obama is on the Second Amendment. Apparently, he thinks gun owners are either fools or have short memories. I can assure him he’s wrong on both.
Chris Cox
NRA chief lobbyist.
July 1, 2008
NRA Plans $40M Campaign Blitz
[Even us a red-necked knuckle-dragging Neanderthals, can see Obama is the enemy of gun owners. Cox and company are just getting the facts out.–Joe]