Thanks to Dale for an email that pointed this out:
Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms should be a convenience store, not a government agency.
Category Archives: Gun Rights
In response to Steve Lacey
This started out to be a comment to Steve’s post and his question, “What on earth is going on back home?” It grew in size and scope to the point it needed to be its own post which I now offer to you. It’s not the first time (here is a collection) I have touched on the subject and for certain it will not the last.
The number of days I have spent in the U.K. can be counted on one hand so I recognize my limitations on being an authority on the politics and mindset there. However, it is my opinion that the rush toward a police state in the U.K. is because of a mindset that developed slowly over the last 70 to 80 years. Read F.A. Hayek’s Road to Serfdom for my best guess at to what is going on. Hayek published the book in 1944 and he was specifically warning the U.K. about the dangers of where they were headed. The basic problem as outlined by Hayek is that the people decided it was the job of government to take care of them. From socialized medicine to giving up their right to self defense it’s always the government who is responsible. Once that mindset is cemented into place and the government fails on any given task the “answer” is always more power to the government.
The really scary part is what comes next. As Hayek points out extreme power, however benign the original people to whom it is given, attracts “the wrong sort of people” and is repulsive to those who would be most responsible with it. Hence the more power the government is given the more you will find people in government that should not be given that power. The examples abound–Soviet Union, Communist China, and Nazi Germany. In the 20th century there were at least 60 million people killed by their own governments because of this sort of error in political philosophy. I hope the U.K. will not be a prime example of the 21 century.
One would think that after 60 million dead the lesson would have been learned but the evidence from the U.K. is that some people may still have to learn it for themselves.
Orwell’s was only off by a few years
1984 versus 2014, what’s 30 years when you are writing about society nearly 40 years in the future?
From Bruce Schneier we get this news:
Britain is to become the first country in the world where the movements of all vehicles on the roads are recorded. A new national surveillance system will hold the records for at least two years.
Using a network of cameras that can automatically read every passing number plate, the plan is to build a huge database of vehicle movements so that the police and security services can analyse any journey a driver has made over several years.
The network will incorporate thousands of existing CCTV cameras which are being converted to read number plates automatically night and day to provide 24/7 coverage of all motorways and main roads, as well as towns, cities, ports and petrol-station forecourts.
By next March a central database installed alongside the Police National Computer in Hendon, north London, will store the details of 35 million number-plate “reads” per day. These will include time, date and precise location, with camera sites monitored by global positioning satellites.
Already there are plans to extend the database by increasing the storage period to five years and by linking thousands of additional cameras so that details of up to 100 million number plates can be fed each day into the central databank.
And that’s just the beginning. Here’s the future:
The new national surveillance network for tracking car journeys, which has taken more than 25 years to develop, is only the beginning of plans to monitor the movements of all British citizens. The Home Office Scientific Development Branch in Hertfordshire is already working on ways of automatically recognising human faces by computer, which many people would see as truly introducing the prospect of Orwellian street surveillance, where our every move is recorded and stored by machines.
It’s a slippery slope. The government takes the guns away “to reduce crime” and when that doesn’t work, they conclude more government power over the people is needed and when that doesn’t work, they need still more power. They never give consideration that giving power back to the people could be a good idea. As Lyle points out, only when government involved do people conclude that their failures mean we should give them more money. It’s a classic When Prophecy Fails case. It’s also an extreme failure of the Jews in the Attic Test.
This is extremely scary stuff. I gives me shivers and just drains the energy from me.
This is what happens in places without guns–Case III
Massachusetts has some of the strictest gun control in the nation. The Brady Bunch should be proud that the scumbag didn’t have a gun when he did this:
PLYMOUTH (AP) — A Framingham man is being held without bail on charges he kidnapped a woman and her two-year-old son and raped the mother repeatedly over a two-day period.
Police arrested Evandro Doirado Monday night after the woman silently mouthed “help me” to a liquor store clerk.
Plymouth County District Attorney Tim Cruz says the victim was carjacked at knifepoint Saturday night in the parking lot of a Wal-Mart in Framingham. Cruz says the woman was raped twice in the car before being taken to the Plymouth Sands motel, where she was attacked again as the toddler cowered by the bed.
It was when Doirado took the victim to a liquor store on Monday night that she was able to mouth the words “help me” and the name of the motel to the clerk.
Cruz says Doirado did not know the woman and the attack appears to be random.
Yeah. Real proud. If the woman had been carrying a gun she probably wouldn’t have gotten carjacked to begin with. The Brady Bunch and the politicians that listen to them should be on trial with the scumbag.
Quote of the day–Sean Flynn
Mr. Hamilton has an amazing way with words. They can be like the Zen master smacking you upside the head, knocking you free of your ‘self’ for a moment of clarity.
…
I don’t think Greg is really being flippant. Talking with him outside of class impressed me with not only how much he thinks about what he teaches, but that he thinks a lot about communication, about how he teaches. He’s very deliberate.
I’m not privy to his internal reasoning, but I can make some observations. “Make the most of it” carries the same vital information of a more somber “scan and assess”. Its tone matches the adrenaline-charged situation that it is describing. It suggests an active, optimistic defensive mind-set. The first time you hear it, it’s so provocative that you think about it more. It’s also sufficiently cool that you want to remember it. Remembering it takes you to other things you learned in that class. It’s a rhetorical and cognitive hook in addition to its primary payload.
That said, like you, I try to watch what I say. A line I spring on friends with irritating frequency is, “That will come up at your trial.”
Sean Flynn
December 20, 2005
[On the general issue of this quote by Greg Hamilton.–Joe]
Case dismissed against guy arrested for free speech
I did a little follow up and found the end of the story I had reported on before (here and here):
I’m glad to announce that my attorney,
Walter Maksym, was able to convince the State’s Attorney to dismiss my
case on December 8th. So, it looks like it’s all over for now! It truly
is a wonderful relief to be done with the criminal charges.
He shouldn’t have been arrested for wearing a coat to begin with but having the case dismissed is the next best thing.
Quote of the day–Greg Hamilton
From the Greg Hamilton to English Dictionary by Meredith Robinson:
Steely eyed dealers of death.
Translation: Microsoft Gun Club Members.
[For my friends at Microsoft. They know who they are and why I chose this one for today.–Joe]
Quote of the day–Bruce Schneier
But screening will never be perfect. We can’t keep weapons out of prisons, a much more restrictive and controlled environment. How can we have a hope of keeping them off airplanes? The way to prevent airplane terrorism is not to spend additional resources keeping objects that could fall into the wrong hands off airplanes. The way to improve airplane security is to spend those resources keeping the wrong hands from boarding airplanes in the first place, and to make those hands ineffective if they do.
Exactly two things have made airline travel safer since 9/11: reinforcing the cockpit door, and passengers who now know that they may have to fight back. Everything else — all that extra screening, those massive passenger profiling systems — is security theatre.
Bruce Schneier
The Sydney Morning Herald
November 30, 2005
[See also my essay on the research we should be doing. Airport screening accomplishes only one thing. It makes some people feel better.–Joe]
‘Expert’ on police arms at the Violence Policy Center
I guess it’s not surprising that Tom Diaz at the VPC would say something like this:
”Because the bad guys have assault rifles, law enforcement officers
should?” asks Tom Diaz, senior policy analyst for the Violence Policy
Center, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit organization that advocates
gun control.“I don’t see the rationale behind that type of thinking. What’s
next? Cops in armored cars and tanks? This is moving toward the
militarization of law enforcement.”
The problem for Diaz is that if he concedes police have a
need for rifles to defend themselves and other innocent life then he is
put in the uncomfortable position of private citizens making a claim
for the need of similar defensive tools. But what annoys me is
that the Miami Herald would preface the Diaz statement with:
But some experts say arming officers with rifles is a knee-jerk reaction.
Diaz is an expert on gun control and victim disarmament in
general–not on the equipment needs of police officers. If he is
the expert then let him take point on the arrest of the next criminal
armed with rifle to show everyone how it is done. In that same
article is a prime example of the type of person I would like Diaz to
demonstrate on:
Deputies point to Ralston Davis as an example of the potential danger police can face when they aren’t adequately armed.
Davis, accused of killing three people, sent officers a chilling
message when he was arrested Dec. 2 with a knock-off version of the
high-powered AR-15 rifle:”Hand me my [rifle] and a bullet, and I will kill you all,” Davis
told BSO deputies. “Stand in front of me, and I’ll put a bullet
in your face.”
Here are your handcuffs and pepper spray–you’re The Man Tom. Show us how it’s done.
Security and freedom blogging
I recently received an email telling me they liked my little detours into security. I haven’t touch security recently for a number of reasons. Primarily my research in that area has be temporarily thwarted by PNNL defying the Freedom of Information Act. A FOIA request I made back in June which only required they make a duplicate of some of the files on a DVD and send it to me. I told them who had possession of the DVD, the project name, and the markings on the DVD. Very simple. None of the material I requested was classified and although it was originally considered Official Use Only that restriction had been lifted before I left and the material used on a proposal for a a completely open project which we won a contract for. They are in defiance of the law and my FOIA attorney is working on the problem but my involvement in security issues gets sidetracked by my anger over PNNL illegal activities. Unfortunately FOIA is a law that doesn’t have any enforcement teeth. It’s against the law from them to do what they are doing (or rather not doing) but there is no penalties for their illegal activity. Sort of like making it against the law for you to steal but if you get caught nothing happens–you don’t have to give back what you stole and you don’t get punished for your crime.
Anyway… sidetracked by my anger again…
Alphecca posted this about Bush authorizing eavesdropping on American citizens and wondered why a lot of the people on the libertarian/conservative side of the Blogosphere quiet or indifferent about it. I haven’t read any news reports that indicated anything of real news. From my readings (try The Puzzle Palace) and a few hints from other sources the NSA has been doing this for years if not decades. You shouldn’t act as if your electronic traffic is anymore private than if you were to have a conversation on a crowded elevator. Encrypting your traffic might make it as private as a conversation on a city street. I try to encrypt a fair portion of my email and encourage others to do the same. Most of my web browsing travels, at least part way, via encrypted channels. This is not because anything in the email or my browsing would be a problem for me if it were decrypted but because it raises the cost for the people doing the surveillance. The more people that do that the more likely they are to concentrate their limited resources on the people that are high probability threats to our national security. I talked about this at the Gun Rights Policy Conference in 2000 (do a search for “Huffman” on that page). If I had the time I would work on some other projects that would further consume resources and release them to the public. Basically, as others have pointed out, you can’t legislate restrictions on the government and expect them to obey the law. Government entities rarely obey the law (see here, here, here, here, and the first paragraph of this post for example) if it’s inconvenient for them to do so. Remember the famous Henry Kissinger quote? Of course this is the real reason for the 2nd Amendment–a last ditch resort for prevention of tyranny. But there are other things we can do to help that are much lower cost to us and exact at least a moderate cost from the agents of tyranny. Encrypting your electronic traffic is one of those things. It costs them far, far more computing resources to decrypt it that it does for you to encrypt it.
I spent some time catching up on my security reading and came across this on Bruce Schneier’s blog:
According to the three-page document, to preserve the openness that characterizes today’s Internet, “consumers are entitled to run applications and use services of their choice, subject to the needs of law enforcement.” Read the last seven words again.
What the FCC is now saying is that people cannot use encryption technology unless law enforcement has the back-door keys to it. Of course they have to know encryption is being used before they can stop you from using it or demand you give them the keys to the back-door. I covered that in my GRPC talk and I already distributed a tool to circumvent them to hundreds of people. What I haven’t done is tell all those hundreds of people about the hidden feature set in the tool–just the ones that paid money for the product.
I should work on some of my other tools. The price of liberty is eternal vigilance and I need to pay my share of that price. When the next tool is up and running I’ll talk about it more. In the mean time check out PGP and Thawte. The cost to you is low and the cost to “them” is high.
Quote of the day–Toyotomi Hideyoshit
The people of the various provinces are forbidden to have in their possession any swords, bows, spears, firearms, or other types of arms. The possession of these elements makes difficult the collection of taxes and dues, and tends to permit uprising. Therefore, the heads of provinces, official agents and deputies are ordered to collect all the weapons mentioned above and turn them over to the government.
Toyotomi Hideyoshit
Shogun
August 29, 1558
Japan
[I admire his honest and forthrightness. If only present day politicians would be so when they demand we turn over our personal protection tools.–Joe]
Ellensburg decision posted
Fish Or Man has it posted on his blog now. It’s a worthwhile read. I’m pretty pleased with it. Thank you so much Jason. I know this was a great burden to bear. We all owe you a big thanks.
This is what happens in places without guns–Case II
In the U.K. where they are ‘more civilized’ than we are in the States no one really needs a gun, right? Wrong:
Four teenagers were “worse than a pack of wild dogs” when they beat a man to death outside his Chinese takeaway, a court was told yesterday.
Michael Chen, 41, was kicked, punched and stamped upon during the attack in a shopping precinct in Wigan.
His assailants struck him on the head so hard with a stake it sounded like a cricket bat striking a ball.
The gang left him dying in the arms of his girlfriend. His life support system was turned off the next day.
Yesterday the teenagers were jailed for up to 10 years at Manchester Crown Court. None showed any reaction as they were taken from the dock.
…
Passing sentence, Mr Justice Royce told them: “You acted far worse than a pack of wild dogs. The sheer savagery and brutality of the attack… aggravates the offence. It is the sort of street violence that should not be tolerated in any civilised society.”
…
Frightened by the youths gathering in the precinct, Mr Chen, his girlfriend, Eileen, and the restaurant’s chef armed themselves with a spade, a wooden stake and sticks.
But they were quickly outnumbered and cornered by about a dozen youths, including the four who would eventually conclude the attack.
They needed to arm themselves with rifles and/or shotguns not sticks. Firearms, of course, are severely restricted in the U.K. The U.K. politicians who committed the crime against humanity by taking guns away from the victims should have also been on trial and sentenced here.
The next step
Now that Canada is planning a near complete ban on handguns (the police and maybe some target shooters will be allowed to keep them) what’s next? We didn’t have wait long before finding out. From the Hamilton Spectator (Ontario):
Think we’ve got too many gun-control laws in this country? I don’t think we have enough.
Not with the news that the man accused of shooting Laval police Constable Valerie Gignac on Wednesday morning may have had legal access to a hunting gun capable of taking down an elephant.
…
Wendy Cukier, a Ryerson University professor of information technology, and co-founder of the Coalition for Gun Control, agrees. “It reinforces our continued theme about the implementation of the law, and belies the notion that plain old hunting rifles are not a problem.
“Many don’t know they can pierce body armour and shoot bullets 2 km — after all, the Tories say, they are just tools!”
In fact, misinformation about gun crime is rife. Think police are shot by city gangs with handguns from the U.S.? The last police officer shot in Toronto was shot by a disturbed man with his legally owned shotgun, while four RCMP constables were shot dead in Mayerthorpe, Alta., last March by a man on a farm who reportedly had a military-style assault rifle, a hunting rifle and a pistol when he was found dead — despite a 10-year firearm prohibition against him.
Cukier should be a familiar name to readers here. Do a search for “Cukier” on this blog for more info on her.
They are “priming the pump” for the obvious next step–banning firearms used for hunting.
Quote of the day–Brian Schweitzer
I guess I kind of believe in gun control: You control your gun, and I’ll control mine.
Brian Schweitzer
Governor of Montana
An avid hunter who has “more guns than I need but not as many as I want.”
The Boston Globe December 17, 2005
[For a Boston paper this is an excellent article on guns. My only criticism is they seem to think guns are only about hunting.–Joe]
Amazing! Fish Or Man WON!!!
Details are here but the short version is that without the help of a lawyer or any gun rights organization Fish Or Man won his appeal against Ellensburg for carrying a pistol openly in public (in a Fred Meyer store). I’m not a lawyer and I’m not about to test it tomorrow, but I think this means we can openly carry a handgun, without a CPL, in Washington state.
Way to go!!!!!
Quote of the day–Senator Orrin Hatch
What the subcommittee on the Constitution uncovered was clear — and long lost — proof that the Second Amendment to our Constitution was intended as an individual right of the American citizen to keep and carry arms in a peaceful manner, for protection of himself, his family, and his freedoms.
Senator Orrin Hatch
Chairman, Subcommittee on the Constitution,
Preface, The Right to Keep and Bear Arms.
Any idea what this is about?
From the clueless Gun Guys:
It’s not like we ever took anything CCRKBA said seriously (after all, it is run by Alan “Tina” Gottlieb)…
“Tina”? A play on “tiny” because Alan is rather short?
Probably it’s because they can’t think of anything factual or rational to say about the CCRKBA. They have to resort to name calling to make themselves feel better.
Deceitful news reporting
The Seattle PI reports:
In an effort to drum up support for a proposal requiring background checks on those who buy firearms at gun shows, a gun control advocacy group reported a survey strongly supporting the idea.
Washington Ceasefire conducted the survey, asking 403 registered voters whether they would be more or less likely to support candidates who wanted to close a loophole in state law that allows gun sales without background checks at gun shows.
…
Current state law allows people to buy firearms at gun shows without a background check, although federal law requires such checks when the firearm is sold at a store.
There is a problem with this article. This last sentence is false. And I’m willing to bet (an extremely rare thing for me to do) the survey takers worded their question(s) in such a way that they mislead the people being surveyed in a similar manner.
The truth is Federal law does not even define a gun show let along make some sort of exception for them. The laws that apply at a gun store apply at a gun show, the parking lot at the mall, and your backyard. There is a reason these people lie–the truth is painful to them. They cannot hope to get their way if they stick to the truth.
Gay marriage lawsuit in Iowa
I’m surprised this is occurring in Iowa. California, Massachusetts, and even Washington state. But Iowa? Apparently the Iowa constitution looks friendly to the pursuit of gay marriage via the courts.
DES MOINES — A gay rights group filed a lawsuit on behalf of six gay and lesbian couples Tuesday in Polk County District Court, asking for the right to marry for same-sex couples.
Lambda Legal, which has spearheaded the same-sex marriage drive across the country, said it wants full recognition of the civil rights of same-sex couples.
I’m all for gay marriage but I’m not comfortable with it being implemented via the courts. I would prefer that it happen legislatively or via a popular vote of the people. Particularly when it is indisputable that the original intent of the constitution or law being utilized was that marriage only be for men and women. The original intent may have been wrong but there is a procedure for changing it that should be utilized. Changing the meaning via the courts is just wrong. Freedom of the press could just as easily come to mean the government printing office has the freedom to print the news but private or corporate “press” is not. You think it couldn’t happen? Look at what has happened with the Second Amendment.