It’s time to push back

Kevin and Say Uncle pointed out this Fifty Caliber Institute alert. Some people are pointing out the Unintended Consequences aspects and are euphemistically talking about law enforcement becoming more risky but there is a better way.

Federal prosecutors need to start enforcing 18 USC 242 (and 241). There are some legal and political obstacles before that becomes a viable option but I may have a way to remove some of the legal obstacles. Mr. Completely has agreed to give me a few minutes to speak at the Gun Blogger Rendezvous in a few days and I plan to elaborate on how I hope to make that happen. You are going to be there, right?

Another friend headed to the Mideast

At the steel match yesterday one of the better handgun shooters I know told me he has been hired by Blackwater USA and will be going to the Mideast soon as the team leader of an emergency response team. Compared to what he currently earns the pay is nearly irresistable. It’s a one-year contract with a two week vacation after six months. The first thing Barb asked when I told her about it was, “What about his wife and kids?” Well… his wife isn’t too keen on it but the pay makes it very attractive. Barb is glad I’m only as far away as Seattle and only fighting software bugs rather than halfway around the world being shot at and trying to avoid IEDs.

A year ago I was seriously considering how I could get such a contract but with my current pay the delta isn’t enough to make it that attractive and they still aren’t scrapping the bottom of the barrel hard enough to take me without prior military or law enforcement experience. I wished my friend luck and asked him to return in one piece. I hope it turns out well for him.

Quote of the day–Clayton Cramer

Professor Cornell is visiting us from a parallel universe, where Whig political thought never developed, and no one in the Revolutionary and early Republic periods ever feared governmental oppression.

Clayton Cramer
Saul Cornell Is Suddenly No Longer a Partisan on Gun Control
September 22, 2006
[Clayton fisks this editorial about Cornell’s new book.–Joe]

Mandating gun ownership

Two different people (Dave and Stephanie) have sent me this link so I really should post about it. The gist of the article is the following:

All Americans have the right to bear arms.  Some towns have even gone as far as to require each household to have a gun.   Now a small Idaho town is contemplating a similar idea– it’s called the Civil Emergencies Ordinance. And although gun ownership is just one piece of this ordinance, it’s the part that’s getting the most attention.

“We’ve blessed to be a fairly rural area of the state, so we don’t have a lot of crime and I think we’d like to keep it that way,” said Lee Belt, Greenleaf city clerk.

Drive about 10 minutes west of Caldwell and you’ll run into Greenleaf, Idaho, population 860.  If city council member Steve Jett has his way, each head of household that can legally own a gun, will.  Along with that they’re encouraged to have ammunition and appropriate training.

Aside from hunting I sort of think of guns as flush toilets. They aren’t something that is particularly appealing on their own merits but they do a good job of disposing of human waste. I think every home should have at least one. It should be keep clean and functional. Everyone in the house should know how to use it or if they are too small to use it they should be keep away from it so they don’t get hurt.

For the city to mandate, with certain exceptions, gun ownership is sort of like mandating flush toilets. Are people so stupid that they don’t recognize the benefits of flush toilets? No. And people aren’t so stupid they don’t recognize the benefits of gun ownership either. The problem is the anti-gun bigots of the world make it socially uncomfortable in some circles to own guns. What needs to be done is to make those bigots social outcasts. It may be that this proposed ordinance will help make those bigots more obvious and hence it could be that it is a “good thing”. But in general it makes me just a little bit uncomfortable that government is getting involved in something like this.

I first saw this article at Saysuncle and Alphecca.

Guns on college campuses

More bad news for the anti-gun bigots. It turns out Utah isn’t the first place to allow guns on campus. Here is a report of where fully automatic assault rifles as well as pistols are carried either openly or concealed with no problems:

I studied for six years at Tel Aviv University, Israel, and although gun control is tighter in Israel than it is in the United States, I was accustomed to seeing students and staff carrying firearms to classes on an almost everyday basis.

One may see students in their 20s carrying fully automatic assault rifles while on furlough from army duty and others who carry pistols, either openly or concealed, with the blessing of the university’s security staff and administration.

We are winning. Keep up the pressure on these bigots and felons. We need to make it just as un-PC to talk about restrictions on guns as it is to talk about segregated drinking fountains, bathrooms, and seating areas on buses. We can drop back into “maintenance mode” when the only law on the Federal books that directly refers to firearms is the 2nd Amendment and 18 USC 241 and 242 are vigorously enforced against all who violate a person’s inalienable rights.

Firefox modification arrives too late to help PNNL felons

Jeff reports on new modification to Firefox but it comes out too late to help the felons at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. They got caught because of their sloppy browsing habits.

Long before they committed their crimes I tried to tell them they had a security leak in their browsing. But in a supreme irony they didn’t listen and when they committed their crime they left behind more than enough information for me to catch them.

I’ll have more news on this front soon.

Quote of the day–Lyle Keeney

The UltiMAK school of charm. Its a one-day course. Students downrange. Attitude adjustment comes really fast.

Lyle Keeney
September 21, 2006
3:44:00 PM
[In a comment regarding Islamic extremists needing to attend a charm school before being ready to introduce to polite society.–Joe]

Sticking it to Wendy Cukier

A guy after my own heart:

Wendy Cukier, head of the anti-gun lobby in Canada, opines that the Dawson College shootings are “evidence that we can do better”. Wrong.

These latest shootings – make that every shooting since the passage of the Firearms Act – are evidence of the complete and utter failure and futility of all such so-called gun control laws.

If Kimveer Gill obtained his firearms legally, it is evidence that such laws don’t work. If he obtained them illegally, it is evidence that such laws don’t work.

Now if he would ask Just One Question.

Quote of the day–Pat Kelley

Gun confiscation won’t happen in my lifetime.

Pat Kelley
IPSC Grandmaster
Wily Coyote Three Gun Shoot
Whitebird, Idaho
August 1998
[No further explanation was offered. Nor was it needed.–Joe]

Quote of the day–John Ross

One of the biggest mistakes that freedom advocates make is we often fail to take the moral high ground on freedom issues, and we let our enemies define the terms. This is a huge mistake. Never forget: We are in the right on this issue. We are on the side of the Founding Fathers. They are on the side of Hitler, Stalin, Mao Tse-Tung, Pol Pot, Saddam Hussein, and every other leader of an oppressive, totalitarian regime.

John Ross
Mistakes We Make in the Gun Culture or How to Be a More Effective Advocate for Freedom
From Ross in Range September 14, 2005
[I’m working on a “high moral ground” piece. Here Ross is more succinct than me. The major point to be made is that we need to put them on the defensive. If we are defending we are losing. If you are defending any compromise is a loss. They need to be defending their alignment with tyrants.–Joe]

Plagiarist name removed from my blog

Background:

  • Why not think for yourself?
  • A question for my readers
  • My decisionI had agreed to remove her name from my blog by next March and if I was sufficiently impressed I would remove it sooner. I wasn’t sufficiently impressed to remove it immediately but I decided that six months early was appropriate.

    As far as I am concerned the story is over now.

Quote of the day–Ambrose Bierce

There are four kinds of homicide: felonious, excusable, justifiable, and praiseworthy …

Ambrose Bierce
The Devil’s Dictionary
[Something to keep in mind when people whine about all the people “killed by guns”. Not all deaths are tragedies.–Joe]

Burning books and crushing guns

Via Jeff I saw this this picture in the NY Times:

It couldn’t cause a more empty, terrible feeling in my stomach if it were books being thrown on a bonfire. And in case you forgot this quote describes what I think about burning books. It’s guns that prevent them from burning books.

The stories of two losers

Ian Robinson writes about two losers:

Here he is again, the loser with a grudge and a gun slithering up from the basement of a middle-class home where he fermented his immaturity, anger and resentments to full and deadly potency “interacting” with like creatures on the Internet.

His mom says he was “a good son.”

The neighbours’ comments — the banality of this would be screamingly funny were it not for the horror of the event — amount to this: He was quiet and kept to himself.

Aren’t they always.

His resentment and anger are perfectly understandable.

He’s a loser and losers spend their lives being angry and resentful.

And more importantly:

Wendy Cukier, the mastermind behind Canada’s obscenely expensive and ineffective gun registry — she’s president of the Coalition for Gun Control — along with her Liberal Party lapdogs promised us more gun control would make us safer.

Way to go, Wendy.

See, this loser jumped through all the hoops, complied with the gun legislation and guess what?

He passed. His firearms were legally owned.

When questioned in the aftermath of this event, Cukier told CBC that: “The argument for gun control has never been based on individual cases. (It) has always been based on the general principle that if you have adequate control on all guns, you reduce the chances that dangerous people will gain access to them. You don’t eliminate them.”

Her statement is disingenuous to say the least.

“Disingenuous” is a fancy word for “lie.”

Yup. Ms. Cukier helped convince Canadians to spend over $1 billion (some reports say as high as $2 billion) on a gun registry after an eerily similar shooting in 1989. Ms. Cukier created losers of all Canadians. They got nothing in return from all that money spent. All the while gun owners were telling them it wouldn’t do any good. Yet the press gave her high praise and flashed her flattering photo.

Losers. All led by the Queen of Losers–Wendy Cukier.

This is what happens in places without guns–Case XVIII

Lucy Braham was stabbed to death in her own home. Disarmed by her own government and unable to defend herself against an attacker armed with only a knife she died at the age of 25. The attacker had virtually nothing to fear entering her home. If someone enters almost any home in the U.S. and they will be hyper-alert for the sound of a 12-gage shotgun being racked and prepared for firing. Not in this home, not in this country.

How many more tragic deaths do the people in these countries need before they start asking Just One Question then demand their government stop infringing on their inalienable rights?

Quote of the day–Stephen Harper

We can’t just jump into the dark and make conclusions without facts. That’s how we got the gun registry in the first place. That’s how we spent a billion dollars on a policy that didn’t prevent the tragedy.

Stephen Harper
Prime Minister of Canada
September 16, 2006
$1-billion didn’t prevent tragedy
[I have Just One Question for Canadians.–Joe]

Clayton’s Armed America is almost out

Clayton Cramer lives near Boise after having escaped California and it’s repressive gun laws and taxes. He played a major part in bringing down Michael Bellesiles with his fradulent book Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture which was widely praised by gun grabbers all over the U.S. Now Clayton’s book, Armed America: The Remarkable Story of How and Why Guns Became as American as Apple Pie is almost ready to ship.

Another book to be added to my library.

This is what happens in places without guns–Case XVII

Twenty people wounded or killed. Hundreds of people were present but none of them were allowed to legally possess a firearm there. The person willing to break the law prohibited murder obviously wasn’t that concerned about the law against possessing a firearm. The victims were disarmed by their own government and that government bears a large portion of the responsibility for those injuries and deaths. And notice how the attacker was stopped? By people with guns. Don’t give me any crap about “bringing a gun into the situation just increases the violence”. It put a stop to the violence. If the victims hadn’t been disarmed they could have stopped the violence much sooner.

A 25-year-old man who mounted a deadly shooting rampage at a downtown Montreal college had posted pictures of himself on the Internet with a rifle and said he was feeling “crazy” and “postal” and was drinking whiskey hours before the attack.

The man, identified by police as Kimveer Gill, also said on a blog that he liked to play a role-playing Internet game about the Columbine High School shootings in Colorado and wanted to die “in a hail of gunfire.”

In the end, Gill dressed in a black trench coat like the Columbine shooters put his own gun to his head and pulled the trigger during a shootout with officers at Dawson College on Wednesday, police said.

Gill, wielding a rapid-fire rifle and two other weapons, had already wounded 20 other people by the time he took his own life. One of his victims, an 18-year-old woman, later died. Four others remained in critical condition Thursday, including three in extremely critical condition and one in a deep coma.

Police initially said Gill shot himself but later Wednesday they said they thought officers killed Gill during an exchange of fire. On Thursday, however, Francois Dore of the Quebec provincial police said “preliminary results of the autopsy showed that he died of self-inflicted wounds.” Dore said police shot Gill in the arm before he turned his gun on himself.

“Remember September 13th” should be the slogan of the people of Canada as they march in the streets by the tens of thousands and demand their government stop infringing their inalienable rights.

Yeah, right, that will work

This wouldn’t work with me and I can’t imagine it working any better with Columbian gang members:

BOGOTA, Colombia, Sept 12 (Reuters) – They are calling it the “crossed legs” strike.

Fretting over crime and violence, girlfriends and wives of gang members in the Colombian city of Pereira have called a ban on sex to persuade their menfolk to give up the gun.

Suggestions for hunting regulations additions

I have some suggestions for Jeff Soyer in regards to his last sentence in this post where he advocates some changes in the hunting regulations:

  • There are no bag limits.
  • The season is year around as with other varmints.
  • There are no restrictions on hunting with various lures, calls, traps, poisons, calibers, spot lights, magazine capacity, rate of fire, or use of sound suppression accessories as long as a reasonable person would conclude that the hunting methodology would normally be expected to result in a humane kill.
  • The markings and other means of identification for the various species should be published in the hunting regulations and be regarded as definitive.
  • Hunters are required to notify authorities of wounded animals who have escaped as soon as is practical so others can be engaged to track and put down the animal in a humane manner.
  • All carcass disposal is the responsibility of the local government body. The government body may do this in any manner it so decides as long as it does not endanger the public health. This may include, as decided by the local government body and local public health officials, the sale of the carcass in whole or in part for any lawful use.
  • Hunters are required, if they can do so without endangering themselves or other innocent life, to guard the carcass until the police have arrived to properly strip the carcass of valuables, identify the species, verify it was a legitimate kill, and search for evidence as might be needed in civil or criminal cases.
  • Sales of valuables found on carcasses shall be used for the purposes of carcass disposal by the local government body. Except:
    • Valuables identifiable as stolen property shall be returned to their rightful owners or their heirs.
    • Valuables needed as evidence in criminal or civil cases shall be retained as necessary.