Category Archives: Gun Rights

Orwell must have written their playbook

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I just stumbled (with the help of Joel Rosenberg) onto something very interesting.  The bigoted “Gun Guys” (and their Orwellian named Freedom State Alliance umbrella organization) I mention far too frequently are supported by a $650,000 grant (over 18 months) from the Joyce Foundation.  This grant money is to Mark Karlin & Associates:

To support the continued efforts of its Freedom States Alliance, a
project to promote financial self-sufficiency and effective media,
public, and policy-maker education efforts among gun violence
prevention groups, especially those in Illinois and Wisconsin.

I have often wondered how, with such small memberships,
these anti-gun groups can afford to do what they do. Now we
know. I wish I could get $400K/year to run some pro-gun websites
and blog about gun rights.

To further emphasis their Orwellian nature read the Freedom States Alliance news release:

“But the energy we’re seeing from communities that are
rising up against the gun lobby is amazing.  Yes it will take time
to take back our country held hostage by gun violence, but if it’s one
thing Americans are good at, it’s fighting for our freedom. We’re here
to declare our freedom from gun violence and our Internet strategy is
going to carry that message like never before.”

“Fighting for freedom” by attempting to ban guns.  You can’t get much more Orwellian than that.

Mineta leaves

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Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta just resigned. Now if they would just get rid of the rest of the Mineta minions.  These anti-gun bigots made it extremely difficult for airline pilots to carry firearms and in general have no clue about airplane or even security in general.  As Michelle Malkin says, “Finally.”

Quote of the day–Patrick Henry

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The great object is that every man be armed.  Everyone who is able may have a gun.

Patrick Henry
In the Virginia Convention on the ratification of the Constitution

Brady Campaign and sour grapes

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Brady Campaign Dismisses Influence of College Gun Clubs.  It sounds like a sour grapes story to me.

The Canadian Cukier

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I was going to comment on this but Jeff did a better job that I would have.  I’ve commented on her so many times before I would just be repeating myself.

Protecting civilians from armed violence

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It’s already against the law to commit violent acts against innocent civilians.  More laws and/or treaties won’t help.  Allowing civilians to defend themselves is the only effective way for civilians to be protected.  Just the opposite of what the U.N. bigots are trying to accomplish:

Amnesty International, Oxfam International and the International Action Network on Small Arms (IANSA) are pushing for a treaty to “protect civilians from armed violence.”

Those three groups — which have formed a coalition called the Control Arms Campaign — say their goal is to reduce arms proliferation and misuse — “and to convince governments to introduce global principles to regulate the transfers of weapons.” They are urging the United Nations to impose a “binding arms trade treaty.”

These guys want guns to remain in the hands of the governments.  And governments were the biggest perpetrators of violence against innocents in the last century and I expect they will be in this century too.  The right to keep and bear arms is an inalienable right.  It can only be infringed, not granted or denied.

Alan Gottlieb, of course, gets in right (in the same article):

Had it not been for America, all of Europe might be speaking German. Were America not the ‘great arsenal of democracy’ that President Franklin D. Roosevelt described in 1940, the world would be a far different place, and the sanctimonious bureaucrats at the U.N. might instead be working in labor camps.

…

We have done much for the U.N., and in return, the organization has hosted despots, tyrants and dictators whose record of human rights abuses, aggression and genocide speaks for itself.

Quote of the day–Robert Whelan

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The right to private property is the Englishman’s right to his castle. This looks to me like the point where Labour has overstepped the mark into behaving more like a dictatorship than a democratic government.

I think anybody whose property is seized under this law should go straight to court to see if a judge thinks it should stand.

Robert Whelan
Representative of Civitas
From Homes of the dead to be seized by the state
June 17, 2006, Daily Mail
[Perhaps Mr. Whelan is using English understatement because in my viewpoint the English politicians started behaving like a dictatorship when they started putting restrictions on firearms.  And when they seize the property of the dead, remove the contents, and rent it out for their own gain it’s way past the point of “seeing a judge things it should stand”.  It’s time to exercise your right to keep and bear arms.  But the people are just now realizing they waited too long to do that.  HT to Ry for pointing this out.–Joe]

Quote of the day–The Gun Guys

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…there’s no reason to have a gun around in the first place. A gun isn’t used to protect anything. It’s used to kill.

Your Gun Guys Daily Update
June 21, 2006
Email from The Gun Guys
[This nutcase must think all policemen carrying guns are government assassins.  This is a reminder that most anti-gun people have mental problems.-Joe]

Quote of the day–Tony Warr

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The gun registry registers legal guns. Gangsters don’t register their guns.

Tony Warr
June 18, 2006
Toronto’s deputy police chief
Gun Control System Targeted in Canada

An important admission

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Ms. Cuiker made a slip of the tongue (or pen) and said the following in an LA Times article about the Canadian gun registry:

Although it doesn’t directly address the problem of illegal handguns, the registry helps create a culture in which guns are seen as dangerous…

As gun rights activists have been saying for years, they want to demonize us.  It’s not about saving lives or facts, these laws they want passed are about demonizing gun owners.  It’s about creating the appearance of danger in spite of the facts.

Quote of the day–Andrew Bacchus

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If you want a gun, you can get one in a day, a couple of hours maybe.  The gun registry hasn’t made any difference on that.

Andrew Bacchus
Founder of Toronto’s Vice Lords gang who is now working with Breaking the Cycle, a gang-exiting program
June 18, 2006
Gun Control System Targeted in Canada

Bloomberg needs to work on knife control

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It’s the knife culture that is out of control!  Not the gun culture!  And it’s in the anti-gun bigot Bloomberg’s city too:

NEW YORK — Police suspect a knife-wielding homeless man went on a rampage, stabbing four people in a bloody 12-hour span, including two Canadian tourists, before police finally nabbed him early Wednesday.

Kenny Alexis, 21, was taken into custody about 4:15 a.m. outside a fast-food restaurant in midtown Manhattan shortly after the two Canadian women were stabbed, police Commissioner Ray Kelly said.

The women were identified as Melanie Carrier, 22, and Audrey Perrier, 25, both of Montreal.

Carrier remained in hospital Wednesday afternoon, awaiting surgery on her lower back, police said. Perrier was treated and released.

The other two victims, a man from Texas and another man not identified, were in hospital. All of the victims are expected to survive.

Police say Alexis had in his possession the knife used in the attack on the two women and investigators were attempting to link it to two separate subway ambushes that took place earlier.

They complain about “silencers” and “high capacity guns” but they don’t seem to realize a knife is a lot like a suppressed (very short ranged) gun you don’t have to stop and reload.

Recoiling in pleasure

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Ry has put up a video documenting some people with their first experience. They seem to like it. I know I do. It’s safe for work in all but the most bigoted of work environments.

Quote of the day–Alan Gottlieb

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The right of citizens to be safe in their homes and communities can never be subject to a popular vote.

It is astonishing that in a city where the leaders preach how open they are to diversity, they encouraged voters to blindly march to the polls last November to practice a blatant, egregious and despicable form of social bigotry against their neighbors and fellow citizens.

Working to deprive others of their property and their right to self-defense just because you don’t like firearms is morally repugnant, and with today’s ruling, the people who pushed Proposition H last fall should feel ashamed of themselves.

Alan Gottlieb
Second Amendment Foundation
June 13, 2006
Judge Rejects San Francisco’s Handgun Ban
[I’m pleased SAF/CCRKBA is continuing to push the bigotry meme.  Also of interest is the city bigots announced today they are going to appeal the decision.–Joe]

Raging against self defense

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Sarah Thompson, M.D. gives us an expanded version of the mental issues of the anti-gun bigots I posted about a year ago.

Quote of the day–Martin Luther

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Reason must be deluded, blinded, and destroyed. Faith must trample underfoot all reason, sense, and understanding, and whatever it sees must be put out of sight and … know nothing but the word of God.

Martin Luther
[I admire Luther for his honesty even though I dispise his contempt for reason and truth. Most present day haters of reason, nearly all advocates of gun control, are not nearly so open about it.–Joe]

Culture under attack

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In the U.S. we have a gun culture—NRA, SAF, CCRKBA, GOA, KABA, JPFO, USPSA, bloggers, and even Boomershoot and I are a small part of it. And even though all the these organizations and people only advocate legal activities we still get blamed for the illegal use of guns. Our culture is under attack by bigots with mental problems who can’t answer Just One Question.

But have you wondered what the bigots would say if our gun culture was abolished? Would they then be happy and stop their whining about freedom? In England nearly all guns are banned yet they still have violent crime. So what do the like-minded bigots say there? No big surprise–it’s the knife culture:

…he was appalled at Britain’s knife culture.

Kamondo Mulumbu said: “Knives are out of control. Most young people are walking around with them.”

These bigots are people that cannot tolerate freedom. They demand their freedoms be taken from them and others. They yearn for a utopia that cannot exist and paradoxically the perceived path to an Elysium Field is the path to a hell on earth. You can chose to fight them now on the gun issue or you can attempt to fight them later when even knives have been abolished. Adapt Churchill’s quote to the situation as necessary. It’s not just gun or knife culture that is under attack, it’s the culture of freedom.

Quote of the day–Martin Luther

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Reason is the greatest enemy that faith has; it never comes to the aid of spiritual things, but — more frequently than not — struggles against the divine Word, treating with contempt all that emanates from God.

Martin Luther
[The benefits of socialism, communism, and gun control are faiths as well.  Factual data and reason are hated by most, no matter how well intentioned, promoters of those belief systems.–Joe]

Understanding Bush derangement syndrome

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Putting on my engineer/scientist hat…

Problem:
Why do so many of the people on the political left make such outlandish claims that no rational person could believe them?

Given:
Bush derangement syndrome describes some of the symptoms in general terms. It does not explain why it occurs and hence is of little use in prevention and cure.  Other, more specific, examples of irrational beliefs include:

Solution:
The best explanation to date is, in the simplest possible words, When Prophecy Fails.  This isn’t a perfect fit but the underlying mechanism appears to explain the symptoms.  Let me explain.   When people commit to a political viewpoint they frequently don’t just adhere to a set of beliefs they claim are “good” they also frequently claim their opponents are “evil”.  This is, in almost all cases, not true.  Because I am so familiar with the issue of gun control I’ll use examples from that particular public debate to illustrate. Without any data to support one side or the other there are two hypothesis that, at face value, appear to be worth exploring:

  1. Easily available weapons is good public policy because they enable innocent people to defend themselves against violent criminals.
  2. Easily available weapons is poor public policy because they enable violent criminals to commit violent acts against innocent people.

Some people promoting hypothesis 1 go beyond claiming they are trying to save lives by enabling self-defense.  These people may claim their opponents have the intent to enable evil acts (socialism, communism, genocide, etc.)  Some people promoting hypothesis 2 go beyond claiming they are trying to save innocent lives by removing weapons from potential criminals.  These people may claim their opponents do not care about the loss of innocent lives and are motivated by money from gun and ammunition sales or the mere enjoyment of their hobby.

In the process of promoting their beliefs both sides will make predictions (prophecies) about the consequences of agreeing and/or not agreeing with them.  When those predictions fail to come about they are in the situation of a failed prophecy as described by the book.  Those people, given certain conditions, will not admit they were wrong and change their beliefs but will instead increase their promotion (proselyting) of their belief system and make new, typically even grander, predications of the adverse results if people fail to adhere to their belief system.

Hence, people opposed to the Bush administration end up claiming President Bush is the equivalent of Adolf Hitler and the gun controller types ban certain types of clothes when gun bans fail to reduce crime.

Reading, arithmetic or both?

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We already know The Gun Guys have mental problems, but beyond the known problems there is even more.  Which do you think it is?  Do they have reading comprehension problems? Arithmetic problems? Or maybe both? Here’s the evidence, you decide, from an email I received today:

But the most important of these is definitely the “one handgun every three months” law.  Currently, anyone legally able to buy one gun can legally buy any number of them– illegal gun dealers know this, and therefore use it to buy weapons in bulk, which they then sell to criminals.  This law cuts that right out, and doesn’t come close to bothering “law-abiding gun owners,”  Who legitimately needs to buy 36 new guns every year?  A similar law is being worked on in Pennsylvania right now, which would actually limit the purchase of handguns to one every month.  And if you really need to buy more than 12 handguns per year, you should get another hobby.

If he didn’t understand one “handgun every three months” meant something different than “three handguns every month” it was a reading comprehension problem.  If he mixed up multiplication and division then it is a serious arithmetic deficiency.  I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt and assuming he knows better than to believe there are 58 months in a year but with all the mental problems he has the possibility exists he could be living in some sort of imaginary alternate universe.

If you are ever asked why limiting your purchase rate is a bad idea here are some answers:

  • Registration:  In order to enforce laws such as these registration of all (hand)gun sales with automated retrieval of the data is required.  If you don’t understand what is wrong with that then you have more reading to do (also here and Molon Labe).
  • Legitimacy:  The constitution (Federal and most states) protect the right to keep and bear arms.  Where did they acquire the authority to ignore the constitution?  And if they claim “reasonable regulation” such as “shouting fire in a crowded theater” comparing it to the First Amendment you answer that if they are allowed the power to restrict you to one gun a month then they also have the power to restrict it to one per year, one per lifetime, or ownership of only one gun at a time.  A better comparison would being only allowed one letter to your congress critter each year, or one blog posting per week.
  • Effectiveness: It’s already illegal for convicted felons to own firearms.  A law prohibiting you and I from buying more than one gun every N units of time will not matter to them.  Such a law would not be any more effective than the current laws against the manufacture, sale, purchase, and use of some recreational drugs.

And the best answer is, “It’s a bad idea because no one has yet answered Just One Question.”