The headline reads (from Canada so don’t get excited about this being in the U.S.), “Conservatives still looking at lifetime gun licence Despite college shooting”. You never read a headline or even something in the text along the order of “Socialists and facists still pushing gun control despite it’s failure to reduce crime every time it has been tried.” Just One Question you bigots. Just answer my one question and then tell me again why you want to take our guns.
Category Archives: Gun Rights
Quote of the day–William O. Douglas
Free speech is not to be regulated like diseased cattle and impure butter. The audience that hissed yesterday may applaud today, even for the same performance.
William O. Douglas
[A similar thing can be said of guns. The type of gun that was used for a terrible crime yesterday may be used to save many lives the next. The government that protects you one day may next year send you to the gulags–unless you and your kind own and know how to use guns.–Joe]
Quote of the day–Thomas Jefferson
Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions. Ideas must be distinct before reason can act upon them…
Thomas Jefferson
1816
Letter to Van der Kemp
[Although Jefferson wasn’t referring to gun control it certainly applies. Keep that in mind when people in high crime rate areas with oppressive gun laws insist others in low crime rate areas enact more gun control with the claim such gun control will reduce the crime rates in the area of the first person. I’m thinking of a certain set of mayors here that should be laughed all the way back to some tiny closet in their respective offices ashamed to show their faces until they have been booted from office, dragged out to the street, and given a swift boot to send them on their way to the dustbin of history.–Joe]
This is what happens with victimless crimes
Via Say Uncle we get this bit of ATF humor. Here is a teaser:
It has come to our attention that an opposable thumb commonly located on a person’s hand can be used in conjunction with a semi-automatic firearm, when placed in a belt loop, can cause said semi-automatic firearm to fire at a higher rate of fire than we originally intended for it to be allowed to fire at.
What happened here was that once machine guns were heavily restricted the ATF had to define what a machine gun was. Human creative being what it is the freedom loving “gun nuts” kept coming up with inventions that bypassed the definitions the ATF came up with. Just recently the ATF went almost absurd in their definition and some smart-ass took it to the logical conclusion. I actually have some sympathy for the ATF in this case. They didn’t write the law they are just trying to make sense of it and give us definitions they can enforce to. It’s the bigoted politicians that are at fault. Even if all the existing ATF people people did the right thing (most of them should find legitimate jobs) there would be others more than willing to take their place. We need to destroy them at their root–the politicians that encourage them by giving them laws, money, and guns.
It’s fairly easy to define a crime when there is a victim. It can be done in terms of the actual injury. Was there more than $1000 of property stolen? Was the victim permanently injured? But try and define an “assault weapon” or a machine gun, prostitution, or recreational drugs (enumeration is possible but creative chemists come up with things not on the list) and they run into problems.
Laughter and humiliation may be the best weapon we have against these anti-gun bigoted politicians and their hired thugs. Let ’em have it with both barrels.
Windmill jousting
I’m attempting to just make just one pass before moving on. We’ll see. In any case I wanted the three erroneous assumptions in a place I could find them easily in the future.
Someone in the U.K. commented to a post by Kevin and Kevin engaged him in an email debate. I responded with my own email:
From: Joe Huffman
Sent: Thursday, January 25, 2007 7:39 AM
To: nhpud AT[NOSPAM] hotmail.com
Cc: gunrights AT[NOSPAM] comcast.net (Kevin Baker @ The Smallest Minority)
Subject: You comment at The Smallest Minority.You wrote:
It is unbelievable that there are people like you lot who can defend guns as ‘harmless fun’ or seriously state that ‘guns make you safer’. If you weren’t so dangerous the absurdity of it all would be hilarious.
I love how the topic quickly moves from your gun fantasies to your racial genocide fantasies in one swift paragraph.
I particularly like the idiocy of these comments.
“if you’re not a young black male living in an inner city, your likelihood of dying by homicide (regardless of weapon) is about equal to that of someone living in Europe.”
“if you remove the crimes committed by blacks and latinos, the U.S. violent crime rate is almost identical to that of Canada.”
Like duh!! What a surprise eh? So if I remove the most deprived higher crime areas and people from the US figures and then compare it with the average in Europe (that includes all their deprived higher crime areas and population) it is ‘roughly similar. Is there no amount of distortion of statistics you lot will go to to justify your idiocy? Let alone your thinly disguised prejudice against black people. Deny black people opportunities so the majority end up in poverty stricken neighbourhoods with little or no prospects and then when they act all dysfunctional, use this to justify your superiority and racial fantasies. I despair for humanity when there are dumb f***s like you walking the planet.
Boy am I glad I don’t live next door to you guys.
PS Gun deaths have dropped from 368 a year to 163 since we banned handguns in the UK. You might want to follow our example and save 15,000 US lives a year by halving your gun deaths as well.
I have 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?
Basically your error is due to three unstated assumption:
I look forward to your answer to my question.
-joe-
Interesting tidbit on PNNL case
In the process of organizing my log files and complying with the Interrogatories I came across what appears to be the home IP address of one of the PNNL investigators or someone they reported the results of the investigation from the previous day (see also the first day of investigation).
Tracing it through various websites reveals more evidence the whole thing was about guns. Among the evidence is they had a lot of interest in a picture of me with a holstered gun on my hip and interest in Boomershoot.
Quote of the day–Kevin Imel
I object to the term “born” for any of those slimeballs. “Hatched” is probably closer although most are turds so would more appropriately have been “shat”.
Kevin Imel
Tuesday, January 23, 2007 2:47 PM
In an email to: LewistonPistol@googlegroups.com
[In response to an urban legend kind of email that mistakenly claimed the birth month and year for the following politicians were all the same:
Albert Arnold Gore
Jr., Hillary Rodham
John F. Kerry
William Jefferson Clinton
Howard Dean
Nancy Pelosi
Dianne Feinstein
Charles E. Schumer
Barbara Boxer
–Joe]
Quote of the day–Thomas Jefferson
The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.
Thomas Jefferson
[A concept that has served us well for over 200 years but the Muslims still have not learned. It appears they are slow learners. But then if you look at our recreational drug laws and gun laws we still have a lot to learn as well.–Joe]
Excellent price on high end body armor
At $750 this is less than half of list price. Quantity 3 in XL for:
Threat Level IIIA Front & rear soft panels
Front Plate – The 10×12-inch Model TK, K-47CL+ front plate is designed to stop 7.62×51 150 gr., 5.56 SS-109 62 gr., 7.62×39 all, inc API.
Interrogatories
My former supervisor, the felon Bryan McMillan, at PNNL has a lawyer who requested a “huge number” (my lawyer’s phrase) of items in their response to my lawsuit. The conclusion we may be able to draw from this is they don’t plan to challenge the point of law about it being a wrongful termination to firing someone because they are a gun owner. The have chosen to go the route to try and make it cost me as much money as possible. Pursuant to that tactic they have requested a lot of financial data from me. With this data they can better judge what my ability is to sustain the legal battle. What they will find out is that our house mortgage payment is lower than most people’s rent, we have no other debt, and Barb and I have very high paying jobs. In essence we can, with minor life style changes, sustain the battle until we retire ten or fifteen years from now. And that doesn’t include all the donations I have received (click on the Make a Donation button here).
Assuming I win I’m paying everyone back with interest but we can’t count on that so you should assume it’s a donation. With a big thanks to some people from the Gun Club at Microsoft donations have covered about half of the legal expenses so far with promises of more as the bills come in. So for other side to try and make it too expensive for me to fight is going to be a losing tactic. All they can do is maybe slow down the inevitable and it actually improves the possibility for me to reach the desired end goal. I don’t have the time right now to explain why that is but the basics are that as long as I win this particular legal battle the more money it costs both sides during the process the better chance I have of seeing the felons actually getting convicted.
Anyway… To prove the point that their game plan is to just drive up the costs, which ironically help me achieve my final goal, here is the list of requests (complete with typos) from the other side:
INTERROGATORY 1: State your age, birth date, birth place, height, weight, sex, and Social Security Number.
INTERROGATORY 2: Have you gone under any other name or different spelling of said name? If so, what name or different spelling?
INTERROGATORY 3: List the addresses, with the dates, where you have resided during the past ten (10) years.
INTERROGATORY 4: State the month and year you last attended any school, the highest grade or year completed, and the name and location of said school.
INTERROGATORY 5: If you are married, please state your spouse’s name and the date and place of your marriage. If have been married more than once, state the names and addresses of previous spouse or spouses, if living, and the date and place of their death or your divorce.
INTERROGATORY 6: State the names, addresses, and ages of your children, if any.
INTERROGATORY 7: Set forth the amount of your earnings during each of the past five (5) years and your earnings to date during the current year.
INTERROGATORY 8: Are you claiming damages for lost earning capacity, lost wages or benefits? If so, please state, with specificity:
a. The total amount of claimed damages;
b. How you calculated your damages;
c. All employers relevant to your claim and their addresses and phone numbers; and
d. All dates on which you were unemployed.INTERROGATORY 9: If you have ever been self-employed, state each period of self-employment and the net monthly earnings of said periods.
INTERROGATORY 10: Have you ever filed for bankruptcy? If so, please state:
a. The dates and places at which any bankruptcies were filed; and
b. Whether the bankruptcy proceedings are still pending or whether they have been resolved. If they have been resolved, please state the date of the dismissal, or discharge, if any.INTERROGATORY 11: State where you filed your last income tax return, and the year.
INTERROGATORY 12: Have you ever been previously involved in a lawsuit? If so, please state when, where, the nature of the action, the disposition of the case, and the name of the attorney who represented you.
INTERROGATORY 13: Please advise if you have in your possession or if you have access to statements made by any party or witness to this action. (For purposes of this interrogatory, a statement is a written statement signed or otherwise adopted or approved by the person making it or a stenographic, mechanical, electrical, or other recording or transcription thereof which is a substantially verbatim recital of an oral statement by the person making it and reasonably contemporaneously recorded.) If you do, please identify the name of the person making it, the time and place of its taking, the names and addresses of all persons then present and the name and address of the present custodian therefor.
INTERROGATORY 14: Have you ever been admitted to a facility or hospital for the treatment of a psychiatric or psychological problem or condition? If so, state:
a. The name and location of said hospital or facility;
b. Whether said treatment was in-patient or out-patient;
c. The dates of said treatment inclusive;
d. The names and addresses of both treating and admitting physicians, psychologists or care givers; and
e. The type and nature of the treatment received.INTERROGATORY 15: Give the names, addresses and telephone numbers of any persons known to you or your attorneys having knowledge of facts pertaining to this lawsuit. This interrogatory is intended to include all witnesses known to you or your attorney or agents.
INTERROGATORY 16: Have you ever pled guilty to or been convicted of a crime? If so, state the nature of the crime, the date, and the ultimate disposition of the matter.
INTERROGATORY 17: Have you and/or your spouse/former spouse ever sought marriage counseling? If yes, please state:
a. The name and location of where counseling was provided or sought;
b. The dates of said counseling inclusive;
c. The names and addresses of persons who provided counseling; and
d. The type of nature of the counseling received.INTERROGATORY 18: Please state the date you were Adischarged@ from Pacific Northwest National Laboratory/Batelle?
INTERROGATORY 19: Please describe in detail the reasons given to you for your discharge, who gave them, and when these reasons were explained to you.
INTERROGATORY 20: Please state the name, address, and phone number of all places at which you have applied for employment since the date of the subject discharge.
INTERROGATORY 21: Please provide details of your current employment including job title, length employed, specifics regarding compensation, duties and if you have a written contract.
INTERROGATORY 22: Since the date of the subject discharge, please state approximately how many days or months you were unemployed.
INTERROGATORY 23: If the answer to the previous Interrogatory was in the affirmative, please state whether you have received any unemployment compensation. If yes, please state the dates you received such compensation and the amount of each payment.
INTERROGATORY 24: During your employment at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory/Batelle, were you ever disciplined or educated as a result of what your supervisor determined to be improper conduct or deviation from the company=s policies or procedures? If yes, please state the dates of such disciplines or educations, persons involved, and the nature and reason for the disciplines or education, persons involved, and the nature and reason for the discipline or education.
INTERROGATORY 25: For all employment held since your discharge from Pacific Northwest National Laboratory/Batelle, please state:
a. The names and addresses of each employer;
b. The name of your position and a brief job description for each position held;
c. The dates of employment with each employer;
d. Your salary or hourly wage for each position held.INTERROGATORY 26: In addition the preceding Interrogatory, please list all income, of any type, which you have received since the date of your discharge from Pacific Northwest National Laboratory/Batelle. State the source of the income, and the total income received from each source, including but not limited to, worker=s compensation benefits, unemployment benefits, Social Security benefits, income from jobs, and all income from any other source whatsoever. If you received unemployment or worker=s compensation benefits which are the responsibility of more than one employer, state which employer is responsible for each amount of the benefit.
INTERROGATORY 27: Please identify by name and address each person consulted by you as an expert and whom you expect to call as an expert witness at the time of trial. Additionally, as to such individuals so identified, state the subject matter on which the expert is expected to testify and state the substance of the facts and opinions to which the expert is expected to testify, giving a summary of the grounds for each opinion.
INTERROGATORY 28: State whether or not you have received any reports of any kind concerning any aspect of your case. If your answer is in the affirmative, state:
(a) What is the general subject of the report?
(b) The name, title or specialty, address and phone number of the person or expert or experts who made said report or reports.
(c) Who has custody of such report or reports?INTERROGATORY 29: Please describe and list each website maintained by you during the time of your employment at PNNL/Batelle and thereafter, including but not limited to the name of each website, its general subject matter, its URL, and the dates when such website was established.
INTERROGATORY 30: Other than the websites described in your answer to Interrogatory 30, please describe and list each website where you have posted content of any kind or nature that could be viewed by other users of such website during your employment at PNNL/Batelle and thereafter, including the dates that such posts were made and the names and URLs of websites where such posts were made.
INTERROGATORY 31: Of the websites listed in your answer to Interrogatory 31, please list specifically which websites you posted content referencing your employment at or information about PNNL/Batelle, including the dates of such posts and the name and URL of such websites.
INTERROGATORY 32: For each post described in your answer to Interrogatory 32, please describe in detail the content of such post.
INTERROGATORY 33: While employed at PNNL/Batelle did you ever access the internet at work for a non-work related purpose? If yes, please state the approximate dates of such access, the website you visited, its URL, and the purpose of accessing this website.
INTERROGATORY 34: Please provide all facts to support the allegation in your Complaint that you were Acertified as a firearms instructor,@ including but not limited to the date of your certification and what agency or group granted you certification.
INTERROGATORY 35: Please provide all facts to support that PNNL/Batelle knew that you were Acertified as a firearms instructor@ during your employment and/or that this influenced the decision to terminate you.
INTERROGATORY 36: Please list the names of all the people present in May 17, 2005 meeting alleged in your Complaint, and describe what each person told you at this meeting, including the name and URL of the website(s) where it was asserted that you Areleased business and customer-sensitive information.@
INTERROGATORY 37: Please list the dates and times that APNNL Investigators@ visited your Agun-related websites@ as alleged in your Complaint.
INTERROGATORY 38: Please state the name of the AHuman Resources Specialist@ referenced in paragraph 3.9 of your Complaint, as well as the names of any others present at this meeting.
INTERROGATORY 39: Did you ever allow others to access the internet through PNNL/ Batelle owned computers? If yes, please list the dates and times that you allowed others to access PNNL/Batelle owned computers and the name of such persons.
INTERROGATORY 40: Please state the name of the manager referenced in paragraph 3.10 of your Complaint.
INTERROGATORY 41: Please provide all facts to support your allegation that Afollowing [your] suspension, neither Plaintiff nor any of his co-workers, project managers, or program managers were asked any questions.@
INTERROGATORY 42: Please describe in detail what was told to you regarding how you inappropriately and without authorization used PNNL computing resources, failed to comply with company standards, disclosed or used proprietary or confidential information without authorization, and were dishonest as stated in your Complaint at paragraph 3.14.
INTERROGATORY 43: State the names of any others who were present at your meeting with Bryan McMillan described in paragraph 3.14 of your Complaint.
INTERROGATORY 44: Please provide all factual support for your allegation that Athe proffered reasons for Plaintiff=s discharge are false and pretextual,@ as alleged in your complaint.
REQUEST FOR PRODUCTION 1: Please provide legible copies of your income tax returns for the last five (5) years.
REQUEST FOR PRODUCTION 2: Please provide legible copies of all transcripts or statements of any party or witness to this action.
REQUEST FOR PRODUCTION 3: Please provide legible copies of all diaries, notes, memoranda, photographs, records, letters, or documents of any kind pertaining to the liability or damage claims of plaintiff. This request for production is not meant to include materials prepared in anticipation of litigation, attorney work product, or confidential attorney-client communications.
REQUEST FOR PRODUCTION 4: Please provide true and accurate copies of all job applications you have filled out and submitted since the time of the subject discharge.
REQUEST FOR PRODUCTION 5: Please provide legible copies of all resume or curriculum vitae which you have sent to an employer since the time of the subject discharge.
REQUEST FOR PRODUCTION 6: Please provide legible copies of every record or document in your possession which is connected to, relates to, or is otherwise associated with your employment with defendant. This request for production includes, but is not limited to, correspondence from or to defendant, written reprimands, performance evaluations, and any other documents received by you which relate to your employment with defendant.
REQUEST FOR PRODUCTION 7: Please provide legible copies of all reports, of any kind, including but not limited to reports of your experts, concerning any aspect of your case.
REQUEST FOR PRODUCTION NO. 8: For the websites listed in your answer to Interrogatory 30, please provide a hard copy of the log history of each website, from the date you began employment at PNNL/Batelle to date, showing who logged onto each website, at what time, and for how long. Please indicate on the log history, if it is not readily apparent, which entries you believe represent APNNL investigators@ and which represent you.
REQUEST FOR PRODUCTION NO. 9: For the websites listed in your answers to Interrogatory 30-32, please provide a hard copy of each posting made by you, from the date you began employment at PNNL/Batelle to date. This request is intended to include posts in their original form as initially posted as well as any modifications, deletions, or additions made thereafter. The hard copy may be from the website, from a back-up copy of the posting made by whomever maintains the server, or from any other means available to you.
Quote of the day–Robert F. Williams
What has happened and continues to happen in Monroe, N.C., illustrates an old truth: that words used in common by all men do not always have a meaning common to all men. Men have engaged in life-or-death struggles because of differences of meaning in a commonly-used word. The white racist believes in “freedom,” he believes in “fair trial,” he believes in “justice.” He sincerely believes in those words and can use them with great emotion because to the white racist they mean his freedom to deprive Negroes of their basic human rights and his courts where a “fair trial” is that procedure and “justice” that decision which upholds the racist’s mad ideal of white supremacy. On many desperate occasions when our constitutional rights were denied and our lives were in danger, we called on the Justice Department and the FBI to investigate the Monroe situation, to protect our lives and to restore our constitutional rights–in other words, to administer justice. And they always refused our request.
Robert F. Williams
Page 54; Negroes With Guns
[I’m really enjoying this book. Compare the above with the case where Second Amendment arguments in a gun manufacturing and possession case were not allowed. The Second Amendment does not mean the same to most of you and me that it does to the anti-gun bigots.–Joe]
Quote of the day–Alan Gottlieb
Mayor Nagin, Chief Riley and the city’s attorney have repeatedly failed to communicate with our legal counsel, even for the most trivial of matters related to this lawsuit.
…
There comes a time when patience runs out and people need to be held accountable for what amounts to an arrogant disregard for the seriousness of this lawsuit and the rights of New Orleans gun owners.
…
The city’s behavior in this matter, and particularly that of Mayor Nagin and Chief Riley, has been deplorable, and it is time for them to behave like adults. Since the day the city began seizing firearms, Nagin and Riley have acted as though they are above the law. It is time they learned otherwise.
Alan Gottlieb
January 17, 2007
SAF FILES MOTION TO HOLD NAGIN, RILEY IN CONTEMPT
Quote of the day–V. I. Lenin
It would be the greatest mistake, certainly, to think that concessions mean peace. Nothing of the kind. Concessions are nothing but a new form of war.
V. I. Lenin
[Originally this reminded me of of Israel and giving up land for peace but it also applies to the Muslim extremists everywhere and conceding things to anti-gun bigot and all the socialists and communists in our government.–Joe]
Quote of the day–Robert F. Williams
The struggles of the Freedom Riders and the Sit-In Movements have concentrated on a single goal: the right to eat at a lunch counter, the right to sit anywhere on a bus. These are important rights because their denial is a direct personal assault on a Negro’s dignity. It is important for the racists to to maintain these peripheral forms of segregation. They establish an atmosphere that supports a system. By debasing and demoralizing the black man in small personal matters, the system eats away the sense of dignity and pride which are necessary to challenge a racist system.
Robert F. Williams
Page 38; Negroes With Guns
[Compare this to the rights of gun owners and the indignities of having to be fingerprinted and licensed to exercise a fundamental, Constitutionally guaranteed right. Or the restrictions on us within 1000 feet of a school. Or the abuse we have to deal with if caught with a gun while driving through New Jersey, Washington D.C. or Chicago, even though we are theoretically protected by the Gun Owners Protection Act of 1986. Even that we if are allowed to exercise our right we must keep it concealed if we are to do it in public. What we are fighting for shares some remarkable parallels with the civil rights battles others have fought. I think there is a lot to be learned from them.–Joe]
Just one question gets more attention
I got an email earlier today asking for permission to post a copy of Just One Question on a website along with a link back to my original post. I said “go for it” and it has appeared here as well as on the front page of their website (which I suspect is temporary).
Nice.
Quote of the day–Alan Gottlieb
Expect perennial gun haters like Paul Helmke to ramp up the rhetoric against sensible concealed carry laws that are proving their effectiveness in some 40 states. With violent crime on the upswing, and experts predicting it will keep rising, this is no time to advocate victim disarmament laws. May as well put wolves in the sheep pasture and bid them “bon appetit!”
Alan Gottlieb
January 12, 2007
Another view: Violent crime rise proves need for personal protection capability
Gottlieb is founder of the Second Amendment Foundation and chairman of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms in Bellevue, Wash.
Paul Helmke is president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Ownership Violence.
Quote of the day–Richard Henry Lee
To preserve liberty it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them.
Richard Henry Lee
[Read that sentence carefully and try to resolve that with the claim by the anti-gun bigots that the 2nd Amendment is about the States being able to maintain a militia/national-guard. And note that Lee wasn’t just some rabble rouser. He was the sixth President of the United States in Congress assembled under the Articles of Confederation.–Joe]
Being underestimated by the enemy
My previous post resulted in some serious topic drift in my mind so I decided to make a separate post of it.
You may have noticed that I have a subtitle on this blog of “Ramblings of a red-necked, knuckle-dragging, Neanderthal”. There are two reasons for that.
One reason is if you call yourself something worse than what your enemies can come up with you take a lot of their power away. This was pointed out to me by firearms/self-defense instructor Greg Hamilton who I am quite fond of quoting. He said when someone calls him some derogatory name in a potentially hazardous situation (as in someone trying to pick a fight) he corrects them by saying, “Nope, I’m a goat f****er.” What are they going to do after that? It’s tough to say anything worse than that about you and they don’t have real means of escalating the situation without getting physical with you. And how can they justify that in their minds? It’s pretty much “game over” unless they planned on going the physical route to begin with anyway–in which case you aren’t any worse off than you were to begin with.
The second reason I do that is because it encourages my enemies to underestimate me. When they then apply their stereotypes to me and engage with their already half-empty brains in a haphazard way they are in for a rude awakening. I think this is part of what happened with PNNL. I suspect they believed I would never know the real reason they went looking for a pretense to fire me or that I would find out for certain they didn’t actually have sufficient grounds to do so. On some level they believed I was stupid. Never mind that my official title there was “Senior Research Scientist II” or that I have a masters degree in Electrical Engineering. I was just a uppity gun nut who needed to be put in his place. Never mind that they put a pile of papers in front of me, told me they were printouts from from my websites, that I needed to “fix things”, but then refused, multiple times, to let me see them. What did they think I was going to do? I wanted, nay needed, to see what it was they were talking about. I was a researcher in “Cyber Security”. Did they think I wouldn’t figure it out or wouldn’t at least give it a try? They seriously underestimated me.
Of course allowing and even encouraging your enemies to underestimate you has it hazards. Had the bigots at PNNL not underestimated me they might left me alone rather than commit a felony against me. Or they could have just been smarter about things and made in nearly impossible for me to gather up the facts. One never knows how things might have been different but two thing are certain:
-
They were found out and in a big way. Not only the initial hard evidence I found in the website log files but confirmation from the inside that is overwhelming. The points of fact in this lawsuit will never be in question. This was about guns (and a little bit of explosives) and me being an advocate for gun rights.
-
Because in the general case it is so hard to prove discrimination when you do have the proof you must make the punishment much more extreme than if it were trivial to detect this sort of discrimination. It all boils down to, depending on which method of modeling is more comfortable for you, economics or risk analysis. Because of this I have an obligation to punish these bigots to the maximum extent I can. What I really want is to see them be financially ruined and go to prison. But despite talking to several lawyers none of them believe I can obtain that sort of relief from the courts. I’m not so sure, I still think it is possible, but I won’t be revealing those plans, until some future date when our enemies have less opportunity to evade my goals.
I’d like to explain this second point because it’s may not be obvious to everyone. Suppose, as a child, you really liked cookies and your parents rationed them out at the rate of one per day. Further suppose you could conduct one raid per day on the cookie jar, score one cookie, and get away with it nine times out of ten. If you were caught the punishment was you had to do without your cookie ration for two days. You, knowing your math well enough to compute your total cookie consumption over a ten day period with and without the raids would conclude you should continue raiding the cookie jar.
Supposing it was impractical to make it more difficult for you to conduct a successful raid your parents would have two choices to get you to obey the rules. They could either increase the probability of detecting a cookie jar raid or they could increase the cost when they did detect a raid. If you were to get away with a raid only one out of ten times the cost of conducting the raids would exceed the benefits and you would likely stop the raids. Alternatively they could raise the punishment to be ten days without your cookie ration and you again would conclude you would be better off without conducting the raids.
The same sort of thing applies to big time criminal activity. Except for certain cases like “crimes of passion” and insanity there is a weighing (perhaps at an unconscious level) of the risks and rewards. In most cases of employment discrimination against gun owners the bigots will probably go undetected. When they do get caught the chances of punishment are very near to zero. In fact, to the best of our knowledge there has never been a legal case of anti-gun owner bigotry resulting in the punishment of the bigots. That will likely be my toughest problem to solve in my battle. Because it is so rare to be detected and even when detected it is unheard of to be legally punished I really don’t have a choice if I want to make a difference for anyone but me. I must go for the largest punishment I can possibly achieve. This is because in the future I cannot allow them, or others, to weigh the risks and conclude committing the crime is worth the risk.
There are certain thresholds that must not be crossed without punishment being severe and perhaps out of proportion to the crime. And yes, I agree that life, perhaps death, in prison is too harsh a punishment for the crime of anti-gun owner employment discrimination–provided the crime could be detected and punished with some regularity when it happens. That’s currently not the case so we have to “make an example of them”. And the example I want to make of them is, literally, to have them spend the rest of their lives in prison. This is my Biggest, Hairiest, most Audacious, Goal (BHAG) in this case. I know it’s possible, just unlikely. But I want them to be aware that is what they are facing. I want them to know that is possible. And even if I can’t achieve it in this case I may be able to enable others to get closer in the next case. And the closer we get to achieving that sort of BHAG the less likely the bigots are to take that kind of risk in the future. Given their conclusions about “benefits” of gun control I have serious doubts about many of these bigots being able do enough math to solve even the cookie problem above. But if we make the price of their overt bigotry a significant chance at being rented out by the quarter hour to the person with the most cigarettes they won’t have to know much math to conclude they don’t want to go there.
Hence by giving myself the title of “a red-necked, knuckle-dragging, Neanderthal” I lured the bigots into attacking me. I didn’t intentionally do that but now that they have and I’ve had an opportunity to regroup I realize I’m in a much better position than anyone I know, or have even heard of, to do what needs to be done. Not that I consider myself on par with him but this reminds me of a Winston Churchill quote, “I was not the lion, but it fell to me to give the lion’s roar.” Just as Hitler underestimated his enemies so have the anti-gun bigots in this case. And just as the only acceptable conclusion of Hitler’s war was his unconditional surrender I see no reason to accept anything different in my war with the bigots at PNNL.
Update: Minor changes were made upon the advice of an attorney.
I’d need blood pressure meds
Kevin pointed out a story. I probably read about half of it before I became so concerned about popping a blood vessel in my brain that I just stopped reading. I’d need blood pressure meds or a Valium to complete the reading. But in truth I read all I needed in the first two paragraphs. He didn’t even try to hide it. Here’s a sample of the blatant bigotry:
Welcome to the South! Put On a Kevlar Vest and Sit a Spell!
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Speaking of backwoods detritus, it appeared several hollers had vomited their inhabitants into the room I occupied. Men who had never heard the term “mullet” used derisively milled about comparing guns. They wore camouflage jackets to better avoid detection by animals and bright, obscenely orange caps to hopefully avoid being accidentally shot by one of their drunken cohorts. They wore Levi’s with tapered legs that ended over work, cowboy or hiking boots. Dirty, bushy beards abounded. Full sets of teeth were scarce.
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And yet, here I was, in close proximity to 25 of America’s more than 200 million firearms, not to mention the 25 people who didn’t look a bit distressed at the notion that they were the killers and not their guns. I kept shifting around to check out the strange characters that shared this trashy little space with me.
I may call myself a red-necked, knuckle-dragging, Neanderthal but that’s so bigots, like the one who wrote this article, will underestimate me. This bigot apparently thought gun owners are so stupid and back-woodsy they wouldn’t notice his posting of bigotry on the web. He was wrong and gets taken to task in a very big way in the comments.
Assault revolvers
As pointed out by Say Uncle we have the media and a prosecutor demonizing an ordinary revolver as an “assault handgun”:
Maryland Assistant Attorney General Clarence E. Goetz had recommended Vaisman serve five years in the Maryland Division of Correction.
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Seized from Vaisman’s residence were a broad range of weapons including assault handguns. Among the weapons were at least one Colt Cobra and at least one Colt Diamondback.
Don’t think for a single nanosecond that the bigots will stop with “Saturday Night Specials”, “Assault Weapons”, or “50 caliber Sniper rifles”. They didn’t stop with short barreled shotguns or machine guns. The didn’t stop when convicted felons were prohibited from firearms possession. They didn’t stop when they prohibited mail order of firearms. They didn’t stop with the Brady Act or the assault weapon ban.
They won’t stop until WE stop them. They must be politically exterminated. The way we do that is to have the proper state of mind when we advocate for gun owner rights. We have to make membership in organizations like the VPC, the Brady Bunch, and The Gun Guys look like membership in the KKK–because it is.