Attending the UW $11,859.00 in base tuition a year, going shooting with friends and tossing the empty wiped down ammo boxes in a string of random open waste baskets inside the Comparative History of Ideas Padelford Hall, priceless. There are somethings money can’t buy, but for everything else there’s trolling Marxists in academia.
Anonymous UW Student
July 18, 2016
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]
It would be a good idea to stop using the term “unintended consequences”. I haven’t see a consequence in years that I could reasonably assume to be unintended. Thinking of them as unintended will only mislead you about the nature of the opposition.
Paul Koning
July 18, 2016
Comment to Govt proposed “Smart-gun” specs
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]
At least 84 people died Thursday night in Nice, France, when a terrorist plowed a truck into a crowd celebrating Bastille Day. Their deaths should free all of us, once and for all, from the toxic and seditious lie, spread by the likes of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, that guns–not madmen or radical Islamics–are a threat to civilized people in America, or in France, or anywhere else.
Dr. Keith Ablow
July 15, 2016
Bastille Day bloodbath in Nice proves that gun control advocates are liars
[Read the whole thing. It’s short and sweet.—Joe]
Remember how, during the Tea Party rallies, so much attention was paid to the fact that some participants were obese and using mobility scooters? That wasn’t an accident. It’s loathing substituting for analysis. For much the same reason, cartoons purporting to depict gun-rights supporters after Orlando almost invariably depicted obese, aging, white, and downscale (rumpled, ill-kempt) subjects. That is whom the Left believes to be the problem when it comes to violence in these United States — and most other problems, too. The relevant psychology here is that of intellectual development arrested in adolescence. If you’ve ever heard a 50-year-old lefty raging about Middle America and thought that it sounded a lot like a 14-year-old raging about his stick-in-the-mud father, you’re not the first to whom that has occurred.
Kevin D. Williamson
June 17, 2016
The Left’s Phony War on Guns
[Markley’s Law is another data point supporting Williamson’s hypothesis.—Joe]
Via Tyler Durden:
Nope. I think the Clintons and most of the people around them are so comfortable lying on a regular basis that it wouldn’t even cross their minds there is something ironic about taking an oath defending the constitution. In their minds, the restrictions on government by the constitution are no more real than that moral restrictions imposed up them by the divine dictates of the three eyed, flying, spaghetti monster.
In my writings, when I first came out of Wall Street, I focused on debt, I focused on economics and I focused on financial markets. I did all of that stuff, but I stopped doing that for one simple reason. It was obvious to me . . . that this thing had only one way to go, which is a complete collapse of everything. We’re going to need to start over. There’s too much debt. There’s too much corruption. There’s too much BS. There’s too much war. There’s too much everything that is bad in this world, and debt is one aspect of it. Are we going to have to wipe out the debts one way or the other? Of course, we will. I guess the reason I have stopped talking about that and writing about that is because it is so obvious. So, what I have been doing over the last three years is getting people aware and engaged on everything, not just the economics, but the political corruption. Every single industry in this world is basically hitting peak corruption, peak shadiness, peak violence and peak everything. So, it’s not just the debt or the economies that are going to collapse, it’s everything, the political establishment and the social fabric. All of these things we have been living under our entire lives will be replaced by something else. . . . The only question is, are we going to get something better or are we going to get something worse?
Michael Krieger
July 3, 2016
Disintegration & Overthrow of Global Elite Regime-Michael Krieger
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]
I don’t know what the solution is, but historically speaking: resets that occur when that which cannot continue, doesn’t are messy. Very messy. Voting for either of the bifactional pro-State ruling parties is not going to help, because neither of them are dedicated to the ideals or ideas set out in our founding documents, or espoused by our founding fathers. They do not even seem to understand them.
Interesting times are afoot, and those that are easily offended are going to see what “going all the way to 11” really means before too many more years have passed.
Rolf Nelson
July 4, 2016
Happy 4th
[I could see this being a prophecy which comes true.—Joe]
They’ve got hate, and a holy mandate to build Utopia – on our corpses, if history is any guide. We’ve got a populace that knows something is wrong, but has been robbed of the education necessary to grasp exactly what and then reason themselves out of the problem by the same forces that are intent on building that Utopia. Instead, a significant portion voted for Donald Trump, mostly out of sheer frustration. Another example of pressing the “Fuck It” button.
This does not bode well for us.
Kevin Baker
July 4, 2016
Pressing the “Fuck It” Button
[Kevin and I have had private conversations on this, more than once, into the wee hours of the morning. I tend to think he is a bit too pessimistic and he thinks I am too optimistic.
I suspect we are getting scary close to finding out who is more nearly correct. Fasten your seat belts, it’s going to be a bumpy ride.—Joe]
As I watched that first debate, and I heard Hillary Clinton answer the question about her enemies, my mouth dropped to the floor. I couldn’t believe what I had just heard from someone who wants to lead this country. She just called 5 million law-abiding Americans her enemy, and she was proud of it! Of all the atrocities going on in the world, we are what she sees as an enemy?
In this day and age, when we are constantly being lectured on “acceptance” and “tolerance” of people who don’t look or act like us, how is it acceptable for a presidential candidate to call out gun owners as enemies? This seems like textbook bullying tactics—maybe worse. Her comments segregate, demonize, blame, and suggest that we don’t have common sense if we disagree with what she and her anti-Second Amendment cronies define as “common-sense gun control.”
Dianna Muller
22-year Tulsa Police Department veteran and professional 3-gun world champion.
July 6, 2016
Hillary’s Enemies List: Dianna Muller
[Of course the NRA and gun owners are at the top of her enemies list. We are in a 5th or 6th Generation War. We must recognize this and respond accordingly or we will be defeated and probably handled just as leftist have treated their defeated enemies in the past.—Joe]
The truth is quite simple. IslamoNazi ideology is spreading like a cancer across the globe. The only way to defeat this scourge is on the battlefield, and through effective counter propaganda.
America accomplished these twin goals in World War II — by reducing Germany and Japan to ashes. Half-measures are doomed to failure. The only language radical Islam understands is the language of brute power.
And apparently, the only language the Democrats understand is Orwellian Newspeak.
Robert J. Avrech
June 21, 2016
Democrats Believe Orlando Massacre is America’s Fault
[While I agree with most of this there is a difference between WW II and now. We are now in a 4th generation style war which is primarily composed of violent non-state actors instead of nation states. Our response to the asymmetric war we are in must be different than that of WW II. My hypothesis is that the best response will involve an increase in the non-state actors on our side as well as our traditional military forces. My vision of our non-state actors are private citizens able and willing to deliver firepower to the enemy in the first few seconds of an attack.
Defenseless innocent people are an invitation to attack. Politicians who disarm people via “gun-free zones” should be considered guilty of treason in the time of war and treated as such.—Joe]
From John F. on Facebook:
Grandma Hillary has a new opportunity for a campaign slogan: “Incompetence bordering on criminal.“
Well, she might, using different words claim something like that. It actually was significantly over the border. She was well into illegal alien territory. I just wish we could “deport” her to Leavenworth.
Doing something blatantly illegal and getting away with it is a badge of honor among thieves. I am reminded of “Guilty as hell, free as a bird”.
If you thought she was going to be prosecuted for this, you haven’t been paying attention.
The FBI is not recommending charges be brought against Hillary. But it’s still pretty damning:
Although we did not find clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of classified information, there is evidence that they were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information.
For example, seven e-mail chains concern matters that were classified at the Top Secret/Special Access Program level when they were sent and received. These chains involved Secretary Clinton both sending e-mails about those matters and receiving e-mails from others about the same matters. There is evidence to support a conclusion that any reasonable person in Secretary Clinton’s position, or in the position of those government employees with whom she was corresponding about these matters, should have known that an unclassified system was no place for that conversation. In addition to this highly sensitive information, we also found information that was properly classified as Secret by the U.S. Intelligence Community at the time it was discussed on e-mail (that is, excluding the later “up-classified” e-mails).
None of these e-mails should have been on any kind of unclassified system, but their presence is especially concerning because all of these e-mails were housed on unclassified personal servers not even supported by full-time security staff, like those found at Departments and Agencies of the U.S. Government—or even with a commercial service like Gmail.
Separately, it is important to say something about the marking of classified information. Only a very small number of the e-mails containing classified information bore markings indicating the presence of classified information. But even if information is not marked “classified” in an e-mail, participants who know or should know that the subject matter is classified are still obligated to protect it.
…
To be clear, this is not to suggest that in similar circumstances, a person who engaged in this activity would face no consequences. To the contrary, those individuals are often subject to security or administrative sanctions. But that is not what we are deciding now.
Can someone who is that careless with the security of our country be trusted in any position of government? Well, I might give consideration to her taking a position of a toilet scrubber in a public park.
Sadly, as in the case of this robot, and the broader struggle for freedom, there will always be those who will feel an uncontrollable urge to destroy anyone and anything which seeks to plot its own course.
It would be funny if one day, in the battle for freedom, it was libertarians and artificial intelligences working together to destroy a government of leftist rabbits.
Anonymous Conservative
June 25, 2016
What Is Libertarianism? Perhaps A Rebellion Against Obstacles
[While it certainly seems to be true that there will always be those who cannot tolerate freedom I don’t see the humor in the circumstances he describes. And while some governments require destruction before they can be replaced with something which respected human rights I’m not entirely comfortable with “destroying a government” just because it’s leftist. Reforming it and limiting it such that it is compatible with freedom, sure, but probably doesn’t require destruction. Nation states without a functional government are not particularly hospitable to peaceable, productive, human activities.—Joe]
Words continue to mean things, even though 99% of journalists fail to use them correctly. This post is for journalists, or for those who take them seriously. For everyone else who already knows this stuff; thank you for your patience while we dabble in some remedial education for the less fortunate.
There’s now a trend among conservatives in talk radio to declare that there is no such thing as an “assault rifle”. They’ll say it proudly, as though they’re among an elite few who know the truth about something. This is the sort of thing you “know” because some guy you know knows a guy who’s cousin’s step-father’s uncle knows a thing or two because he once knew a guy who knew a cop, and the story trickled down through several get-togethers and backyard BBQs. In other words it’s not something you know at all. Apparently they mean well in this case, but they are attempting to make a point that, at best, they didn’t quite get the first few times it was explained to them. We’ll try again.
Yes, there are assault rifles. The Germans seem to have cemented the design concept back in the 1940s. In short, an assault rifle (Sturmgewehr) is a smallish rifle firing a cartridge of intermediate size and power (in-between a pistol and a rifle), feeding from a detachable, box magazine, capable of full-automatic fire. The original had a pistol grip stock, but the latter feature is not critical to its purpose or function. Assault rifles really, really do exist. They’re a sort of halfway rifle, between the submachine gun (which fires pistol ammo) and the automatic rifle (which uses full power rifle ammo) and practically all militaries of the world now use an assault rifle of some kind as standard issue to regular infantry. They’re also found occasionally among law enforcement and private collectors.
Assault rifles were essentially banned in the U.S. (before they were even invented) by the National Firearms Act of 1934, as modified by the Firearm Owners’ Protection Act of 1986.
The thing that does NOT exist is any firearm design known as an “assault weapon”. Notice the difference there; “rifle” verses “weapon”. Sure; a rifle can be used as a weapon, but a weapon is not necessarily a rifle. A “weapon” could be a rock, for example, or a stick, or a fist, et al.
When we’re talking about classifications within the firearm industry, words really, really do mean things. There is no such thing as the firearm classification, “assault weapon”, and therefore no one can define it. When you think about it just a little bit, it makes sense that no one can define it, being that it does not exist.
Just as a politician talking about banning “assault weapons” is only showing his ignorance and therefore disqualifying himself from the discussion, those of you who say there’s no such thing as an “assault rifle” are just as ignorant, or more so. The assault rifle is a significant part of 20th century military and political history, and you seem to have missed the entire story. Please stay out of the conservation until you’ve got it right.
To summarize then;
Assault rifles DO exist. See right here.
Assault weapons (as a firearm design) do NOT exist.
Thank you.
If it is difficult to get a concealed weapon permit, I’m glad to hear that.
I wouldn’t want them to have it. Law-abiding citizens just shouldn’t have to carry a gun.
[The reporter pointed out the armed U.S. Capitol Police inside the building, just a few feet away from the congressman, Rangel laughed and responded:]
Well that’s a little different. I think we deserve — I think we need to be protected down here.
Charlie Rangel
Congressman (D-N.Y.)
June 21, 2016
Congressman Says His Constituents ‘Shouldn’t Have to Carry a Gun’ — However, Congress ‘Deserves’ and ‘Needs’ to Be Protected by Them
[I’ve seen this referenced several places but I think it was Paul Koning who sent me the first email.
It’s just amazing to me the level of hypocrisy some people are capable of. The hypocritical people I know in real life are like toddlers compared to world class athletes in their prime like Congressman Rangel.—Joe]
Via Say Uncle: What Will Gun Controllers Do When Americans Ignore an ‘Assault Weapons’ Ban?
In the states that have such bans what the gun controllers did when 85%+ of citizens ignored them was declare victory and ignore them back. I suspect this will only last for a while. Eventually the laws will have to be repealed or things will get more and more tense.
Our job is to continue changing the culture by taking non-gun owners to the range and being open about gun ownership in hopes of decreasing the tension.
But via Alan Korwin we have something that has me baffled.
This is from HR2578 (“To authorize the Attorney General to deny the transfer of firearms to known or suspected terrorists.”):
No district court of the United States or court of appeals of the United States shall have jurisdiction to consider the lawfulness or constitutionality of this section…
The writers of this have to know they are attempting to create a law that will be thrown out as unconstitutional. Otherwise they wouldn’t care if it were reviewed by the courts for constitutionality. Right?
If they are knowingly working together to infringe upon rights, guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution, then tell me how a prosecutor can squint their eyes, twist the meaning of words, and claim what these people are doing is not a conspiracy to deny rights?
For your easy review 18 USC 241:
If two or more persons conspire to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any person in any State, Territory, Commonwealth, Possession, or District in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution or laws of the United States, or because of his having so exercised the same; or
If two or more persons go in disguise on the highway, or on the premises of another, with intent to prevent or hinder his free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege so secured—
They shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both; and if death results from the acts committed in violation of this section or if such acts include kidnapping or an attempt to kidnap, aggravated sexual abuse or an attempt to commit aggravated sexual abuse, or an attempt to kill, they shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for any term of years or for life, or both, or may be sentenced to death.
Whoever, under color of any law, statute, ordinance, regulation, or custom, willfully subjects any person in any State, Territory, Commonwealth, Possession, or District to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured or protected by the Constitution or laws of the United States, or to different punishments, pains, or penalties, on account of such person being an alien, or by reason of his color, or race, than are prescribed for the punishment of citizens, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both; and if bodily injury results from the acts committed in violation of this section or if such acts include the use, attempted use, or threatened use of a dangerous weapon, explosives, or fire, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both; and if death results from the acts committed in violation of this section or if such acts include kidnapping or an attempt to kidnap, aggravated sexual abuse, or an attempt to commit aggravated sexual abuse, or an attempt to kill, shall be fined under this title, or imprisoned for any term of years or for life, or both, or may be sentenced to death.
So, my Former Classmate I talked about the other day came back and posted a rant on Facebook:
Personally I don’t like guns and superbly do not agree that there is any NON military need for many types of guns available to just anyone.
But what I am absolutely sick to death of is the flaccid guns laws in place. And just as sick of the blockade the criminally financed fucking NRA puts up against any laws that would make harder to buy a gun.If you are TRULY a responsible gun owner what is your big bitch with doing what CAN be done to mitigate murder by gun?
Your …crappy example of what happened in Paris ( sad as it was) is poor at best when you look at ALL the stats. Gun ownership and gun murders by country.
The USA has the highest gun ownership AND the highest death by gun.
IF IF IF you are a responsible gun owner then keep your bloody masterbatory toys but you MUST know the ease with which you bought them was just wrong. And you know you have gun owning friends that pushed just a tad would roll a full bubble out of plumb.If if if you want to be a responsible gun owner then support laws that might make it a modicum harder for assholes like the Orlando murderer to get guns.
Oh……and my heartfelt condolences to the “responsible” gun shop owner that offered conceal and carry and gun handling classes. He was shot to death by one of his students because some “responsible” person loaded live vs rubber bullets into the students gun.
I found this very telling. The insults, the demands that gun owners “MUST know” things which she believes. She has an extremely low opinion of gun owners and demands control over them. The mask dropped. She wants to be a tyrant and she is dehumanizing gun owners to justify whatever “whatever it takes” to get her way.
I responded with:
Do you really want to have this conversation with me?
Her response:
No. I did not.
Mine:
You have some options to consider because I won’t be quiet while you insult the nation’s oldest and (probably largest) civil rights organization, the NRA and their 5+ million members. And “bloody masturbatory toys”? Really? You think 100+ million men and women have exercised their specific enumerated right to keep and bear arms for masturbation? I think it’s very telling you use insults instead of facts and logic.
As I see it you have the following options available to you.
1) You can unfriend me. This, of course, would mean that you know your stated beliefs cannot stand up to scrutiny.
2) You do not bring up the topic again. This probably means you don’t have confidence in your position.
3) You engage me in a civil discussion on the topic. As someone told me recently, “Rare on FB”.
4) You ignore me as I dissect your hateful rants.
5) You research the facts and admit you were wrong.Your choice. What’s it going to be?
I waited a couple days and then yesterday she made another post, addressed to no one in particular, apologizing for being so hateful.
I responded to that post, thanking her for saying that. I also responded to her rant:
I’m tired of the gun laws in place as well. What part of “…shall not be infringed” don’t people understand?
But beyond the snark let’s think about this some.
Terilyn wants to make it more difficult to buy guns so there would be less “murder by gun”. This motive is either deliberately deceptive or naïve. The method of murder is irrelevant. What matters is the total murder rate and, more broadly, the violent crime rate.
Private ownership of guns makes self-defense against a younger and stronger attacker feasible. Guns are an equalizer. If criminals have difficulty acquiring guns they will substitute other weapons or chose easier victims. And let’s imagine making guns the most difficult to acquire as possible. Let’s imagine banning them completely. Would that prevent criminals from getting them?
We know the answer to this. How difficult was it for people to get alcohol during prohibition? Or how difficult is it for the average high school drop out to get recreational drugs? That’s right, they can probably score whatever they want within an hour 24x7x365.
Banning guns will be no different. And the harder you make it to obtain guns the less likely innocent people will go though the effort to purchase them and become skilled in their use. And that means they will be less likely to have a gun to defend themselves when they really need one.
So how can anti-gun people claim gun restriction are a good thing? It’s by being deceptive or naïve and only talking about “gun murders” or “gun crime”.
When comparing violent crime of ALL TYPES in other countries to the US we get a much different picture:
The violent crime rate per 100,000 in a few other countries (from the late 2000s) is as follows:
UK: 2,034
Austria: 1,677
South Africa: 1,609
Sweden: 1,124
Belgium: 1,006
Canada: 935
Finland: 738
Netherlands: 676
Luxembourg: 565
France: 504So care to guess where the U.S. fits in there?
….
According to the article I linked to it’s 466. You can verify the US numbers with the FBI here: https://www2.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2009/data/table_01.html
We have still further means of verifying that private gun ownership in the U.S. is not a problem. Look at the rate of gun sales (millions per year) compared to homicide, violent crime, and accident gun deaths in the attached picture.
Correlation does not prove causation. But a negative correlation certainly proves that “easy access to guns” cannot be blamed for murder and violent crime.
We have still other means to test the claim that “flaccid gun laws” are a problem. I have been asking a question for over a decade now. And many others, including the CDC and the Department of Justice, have been asking it in slightly different forms without being able to find an answer that agrees with those who want more repressive gun laws. The background for the question can be found here: https://blog.joehuffman.org/2004/12/14/just-one-question/
The question is, “Can you demonstrate one time or place, throughout all history, where the average person was made safer by restricting access to handheld weapons?” The answer turns out to be, “No.”
That question is so popular among gun rights activists that I was asked to put it on a t-shirt (available here: http://www.cafepress.com/theviewfromnorthcentralidaho ).
So the final question one has to ask is, “Since we know private gun ownership does not make violent crime more likely, what is the real reason so many people want to restrict gun ownership?” I’ve been working on the problem for over 20 years now and it’s clear the answer is complicated and not very pretty. I’ll leave that for everyone else to think on and we can discuss it another time and place if desired.
I checked Facebook this morning to see if there was any response. There was. I’m glad I kept a copy of almost everything because I no longer have access to her posts on gun control.
Terilyn Reber, Orofino Idaho High School, class of 1973, chose option 1). Reasoned Discourse.
We do know that race and poverty are correlated. And we know that poverty and crime are correlated. And we know that race and political affiliation are correlated. Therefore, my team (Clinton) is more likely to use guns to shoot innocent people, whereas the other team (Trump) is more likely to use guns for sporting and defense.
…
So it seems to me that gun control can’t be solved because Democrats are using guns to kill each other – and want it to stop – whereas Republicans are using guns to defend against Democrats.
Scott Adams
June 22, 2016
Why Gun Control Can’t Be Solved in the USA
[I’ve seen various numbers but they range from 65% to 75% of prison inmates are Democrats. And, of course, my readers will know that nearly all mass murderers are Democrats/progressives/Socialist/Communists.
One might even be able to make the case that the Second Amendment isn’t only not about hunting–it’s about protecting us from liberals.
A modification to Adam’s claim is that Democrats want to control (and failing that, kill) those who oppose them. And removing the means of defense against that is their true motive.
Regardless of the motivation, molṑn labé.—Joe]
