Category Archives: Politics

Suicide and guns

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Washington State just passed a law regarding suicide by gun. As I started read the first article on the topic I was highly skeptical:

My husband died by suicide. Here’s what happened during my awkward call with the NRA.

It wasn’t the hardest phone call I’ve ever made, but it was certainly awkward. I was cold-calling the National Rifle Association. Because the NRA is well-known for offering gun safety training, I wanted to know whether the organization had ideas on how to reduce the number of firearm suicides.

…

But I learned a couple of surprising things from that call and the many follow-up meetings with a local NRA lobbyist and the executive director of the Second Amendment Foundation.

First, they were not just willing to talk but also willing to listen.

The details of the law are here. The voting is telling:

Passed by the House March 8, 2016  Yeas 94  Nays 2

Passed by the Senate March 1, 2016  Yeas 47  Nays 0

Basically the law requires a task force, in part, to:

(a) Develop and prepare to disseminate online trainings on suicide awareness and prevention for firearms dealers and their employees and firearm range owners and their employees;
(b) In consultation with the department of fish and wildlife, review the firearm safety pamphlet produced by the department of fish and wildlife under RCW 9.41.310 and, by January 1, 2017, recommend changes to the pamphlet to incorporate information on suicide awareness and prevention;
(c) Develop suicide awareness and prevention messages for posters and brochures that are tailored to be effective for firearms owners for distribution to firearms dealers and firearm ranges;
(d) Develop suicide awareness and prevention messages for posters and brochures for distribution to pharmacies;
(e) In consultation with the department of fish and wildlife, develop strategies for creating and disseminating suicide awareness and prevention information for hunting safety classes, including messages to parents that can be shared during online registration, in either follow up electronic mail communications, or in writing, or both;

Yes. It addresses pharmacies as well as firearms owners, dealers, and ranges. It looks like it has the potential to be a good program that truly tries to address the problem of suicide in a fair handed manner and not just something to demonize gun ownership. Others think so as well:

A couple of years ago, Stuber began reaching out to firearms retailers and asking them if they worried about the possibility of selling a gun to someone who might be suicidal. Virtually every employee she spoke with, she said, answered yes. With some trepidation, Stuber called the National Rifle Association and Gottlieb’s group to enlist their help in reducing firearm suicides. To her surprise, they were willing to talk, and also listen.

“There’s real hurt,” she said. “Everybody showed up at the table willing to share their pain. This is an issue that impacts all of us.”

Forefront, the NRA and the Second Amendment Foundation met with groups including the Seattle Police Department and the Department of Fish and Wildlife over about six months to draft the language for the initiative. Rep. Tina Orwall, D-Des Moines, the bill’s main sponsor, was instrumental in getting the legislation passed, Stuber said.

About 20 other states have taken steps to bring together suicide prevention advocates and gun owners, Stuber said, but none of those efforts are as broad as the Washington bill. Gottlieb thinks the initiative could become a successful model that can be replicated in other states.

“Lots of us in the firearms rights community have been concerned that a significant percentage of suicides involve lethal force,” he said. “If there’s a way to lower those numbers, it’s in gun owners’ interest to do that. To me, this is a no-brainer, but it took someone like Jenn to put it together.”

Quote of the day—Sean Barney

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We will ban military-style assault weapons and large capacity ammunition clips.

Sean Barney
Delaware candidate for U.S. Congress (D)
April 7, 2016
Barney hopes to make gun control an issue
See his complete position on ADDRESSING GUN VIOLENCE.
[He also wants to eliminate the default proceed if the FBI doesn’t complete the NICS check within three days. This would enable people in Washington D.C. to halt all gun sales in the entire country by simply sending NICS employees home. Imagine a government shutdown for a few days or weeks. Imagine budget cutting. Imagine “technical problems” in doing the background checks.

And don’t ever let anyone get away with telling you no one wants to take your guns.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Richard Feldman

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Someone ought to present both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton with the joint “Salesmen Award of the Decade.”

They have collectively achieved what advertisers could only dream about. Their ill-informed, uninformed and intentionally misinformed, anti-gun rhetoric is a caustic shot directly across our bow. If it’s political jihad that they want to wage on this, the most quintessential of all American domestic issues, then it’s political jihad they shall receive.

Richard Feldman
March 23, 2016
Richard Feldman: Obama’s Gun Issue Misfires on Hillary
[In related news:

Political jihad over guns in November? Only if Hillary isn’t in shackles by then.—Joe]

Hypotheses to test

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It’s not a scientific study by any means, but this article from the New York Times could be used to generate a good hypothesis worthy of being tested:

“Our cities are facing a huge problem, maybe the largest since World War II,” Mr. Goldstein said. “How is it that people who were born here in Brussels, in Paris, can call heroes the people who commit violence and terror? That is the real question we’re facing.”

Friends who teach the equivalent of high school seniors in the predominantly Muslim districts of Molenbeek and Schaerbeek told him that “90 percent of their students, 17, 18 years old, called them heroes,” he said.

Mr. Goldstein, 38, grew up in Schaerbeek, the child of Jewish refugees from Nazism. Now a councilman from Schaerbeek, he is also chief of staff for the minister-president of the Brussels Capital Region.

I could see the hypothesis worthy of test being something like:

  • Most Muslims in Europe are peaceful and tolerant
  • Those who commit terrorism and violence do not represent Islam in Europe

I could also see the politically correct crowd insisting that it is racist and Islamophobic to even test such a hypothesis while simultaneously insisting the quote above is proof Jews are racists.

My take on things is that there is a huge problem in Europe that to a greater or lesser degree extends over the entire globe and there are no good solutions. There are only painful remedies and pragmatic tradeoffs which will challenge our principles to their core.

Quote of the day—Hillary Clinton

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That he would place gun manufacturers’ rights and immunity from liability against the parents of the children killed at Sandy Hook is just unimaginable to me.

Hillary Clinton
April 6, 2016
Clinton Hits Sanders on Gun Control, Sharpens Attacks
[Why not the car manufacturer that the killer drove to the school? Or the clothing manufacturer? And I’m shocked she didn’t mention the ammunition manufacturer.

It’s unimaginable to me how someone could believe that the manufacturer of a product should be liable for its deliberate, criminal, misuse. But then I suspect real issue is that Clinton “thinks” in terms of politics rather than factual or logical terms. She knows that her claim will gain her favor with certain voters and that is all that matters to her.

It’s easy for us to think she is talking crazy talk and has crap for brains. But she is a practiced, deceptive, predator who has lived a lifetime benefiting from saying things that are unsupported by facts or logic. She will continue her path of deception and destruction until she is stopped. I prefer she ends up in shackles before she is nominated but I’ll settle for an defeat at the polls in November.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Bruce Schneier

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Across the US, states are on the verge of reversing decades-old laws about homosexual relationships and marijuana use. If the old laws could have been perfectly enforced through surveillance, society would never have reached the point where the majority of citizens thought those things were okay. There has to be a period where they are still illegal yet increasingly tolerated, so that people can look around and say, “You know, that wasn’t so bad.” Yes, the process takes decades, but it’s a process that can’t happen without lawbreaking. Frank Zappa said something similar in 1971: “Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible.”

The perfect enforcement that comes with ubiquitous government surveillance chills this process. We need imperfect security­ — systems that free people to try new things, much the way off-the-record brainstorming sessions loosen inhibitions and foster creativity. If we don’t have that, we can’t slowly move from a thing’s being illegal and not okay, to illegal and not sure, to illegal and probably okay, and finally to legal.

This is an important point. Freedoms we now take for granted were often at one time viewed as threatening or even criminal by the past power structure. Those changes might never have happened if the authorities had been able to achieve social control through surveillance.

Bruce Schneier
2015
Pages 97 and 98, Data and Goliath
Via Mass Surveillance Silences Minority Opinions
[This line of thought can be extended to many other victimless crimes still on the books from gun “crimes” to gambling, social nudity, sex toys, and various activities involving consenting adults.

The counter point is that with near perfect surveillance political corruption, murder, terrorism, and other horrible crimes could be significantly reduced. So the question becomes, “How do you balance the tradeoffs?”

It appears to me the greatest threats to society come government (look at the number of murders committed in the 20th Century by governments against their own citizens as opposed to murders committed by citizens on each other). Hence as a “common-sense good first step” I am of the opinion that greatly enhanced surveillance for government employees is a good thing. Implement the most extreme surveillance practical for politicians and others in positions of power. Encrypt it and store it securely. But if they are accused of wrongdoing their data comes out of storage and is reviewed for evidence of criminal activity. The rational could be, “With great power comes great responsibility. With great responsibility comes great oversight.”—Joe]

Quote of the day—Glenn Reynolds

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I think he’s a “moderate” in the sense that he approves of government invasions that come from the left and the right.

Glenn Reynolds
March 16, 2016
LIBERTARIANS not so happy with Merrick Garland’s record on civil liberties.
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]

I can relate

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Nick Cannon says:

Voting for office is like picking out which gun you wanna get shot with.

I can related to that this year in particular because of our most likely presidential candidates. There have been some bad options in the past but this year is really messed up.

Quote of the day—Michael Faraday

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Contrary to opinion, leftism isn’t just about hate. Leftists are more complex than that. From my time as a red diaper leftist, I can tell you that a whole range of emotions are involved. Hate, anger, fear, bitterness, jealousy, envy, rage, greed, pride, smugness and paranoia (not technically an emotion, but it is widespread among leftists).

With such a parade of negative emotions, it is no surprise that so many leftists suffer from chronic depression, often from a young age. Even if they lose the anger, they still retain the attitude: that the government must fix everyone’s problems, regardless of cost and that there is an enormous right-wing conspiracy that is just around the corner.

The victim narrative of the Left is very infectious. You are always the victim and you are always owed something. The wealthy are always evil, while you are always good and wholesome.

Michael Faraday
March 16, 2016
The Mind of the Left From an Insider
[Amazing stuff in this article. Or at least it matches my confirmation bias extremely well.

The part about hate and being a victim really resonates with me. Emotions are how they communicate and expressions of hate are the means of signaling their virtue to other leftists. If they identify as a victim it justifies their hate. They identify with other victims. Those who do not identify as a victim of some sort must be the oppressors. And of course they always require a powerful government to right the wrongs they see inflicted upon them by powerful oppressors. The concept that powerful governments have been, can be, and always will be, oppressive is incomprehensible to them.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Justin Stakes

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Gun control is not about saving lives. It never has been and never will be. It is about control, even to the point that it causes innocent persons to lose their lives to violent crime. To the antis such deaths are an acceptable, maybe even a necessary, means to an end.

Justin Stakes
March 9, 2016
Are We Protecting Victims or Are We Playing Gun-Control Games With Their Lives?
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Jason R. Baron

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The setting up of and maintaining a private email network as the sole means to conduct official business by email, coupled with the failure to timely return email records into government custody, amounts to actions plainly inconsistent with the federal recordkeeping laws.

Jason R. Baron
Former director of litigation at the National Archives and Records Administration
Told to the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2015
147 FBI agents are reportedly involved in the Hillary Clinton email investigation — here’s how the scandal took root
[Also, there were 22 emails which, according to Rep. Chris Stewart (R-Utah), a member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence,:

…are on their face sensitive and obviously classified, This information should have been maintained in the most secure, classified, top-secret servers.

As Bill Whittle said, “Here Be Dragons”:

If she is not indicted will others guilty of similar crimes get out of jail or escape prosecution due to lack of “equal protection under the law”?

If she is indicted will she drop out of the race? Can she take office if she is in prison on inauguration day? Can Hillary pardon herself?

Where is my popcorn? This is going to be, by far, the most interesting election I have ever seen.—Joe]

This could come up at her trial

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Hillary Clinton says:

If the NRA thinks you’re doing a good job, that’s a pretty good indication that something’s very wrong.

The portion of the NRA which she is referring to is NRA-ILA. This is a civil rights organization. What presidential hopeful Clinton is saying is that she wants to infringe upon a specific enumerate right. She is publically admitting her intent to violate 18 USC 241 and/or 18 USC 242.

I can understand her lack of concern for being so open about this. She has gotten away with so many crimes that I suspect she gives such acts less thought than if you or I would when contemplating tearing off a “Do not remove under the penalty of law” tag off our pillow.

This could come up at her trial. Assuming, of course, she isn’t already serving a life sentence for some of her other crimes by then.

Quote of the day—U.S. General Billy Mitchell

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I believe that in the future, whoever holds Alaska will hold the world. I think it is the most important strategic place in the world.

U.S. General Billy Mitchell
To U.S. Congress in 1935
[Even ignoring the Aleutian Islands Alaska is surprisingly close to both Europe and Asia. It is less than 2800 miles to Sweden and Beijing, less than 2500 miles to Japan, and less than 800 miles to Russia. Alaska to Los Angles is over 1500 miles and Alaska to Miami is over 3200 miles.

But I don’t think it holds as much strategic value as Mitchell thought it would. Early warning of Russian attack on North America? Absolutely. Missile launch site for attacking eastern Russia? Sure. But it’s not significant in regards to the entire world. That is particularly true with the Mideast currently being the most important hot spot. Still, I found it an interesting thought.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Pawpaw

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If Islam is unwilling or unable to rein in its radical adherents, they must not complain when we do so.  There will be collateral damage, as regrettable as it may be.  With the recent attacks in Europe and the United States, we may not long consider the Islamic problem to be simply one of law enforcement.  There may be a backlash, and the peace-loving Muslims may want to consider how that backlash may affect them, should they choose to ignore the problem within their religion.

They might not want to play Cowboys and Muslims.  Once the backlash begins, they may not have a chance to influence the outcome.

Pawpaw
March 23, 2016
The Problem With Islam
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]

Overheard on Twitter

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Today on Twitter:

Just five people.

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John Robb claims that conditions are such that in November civil war engulfs this country via the actions of just five people:

One candidate declares victory.  The other cries foul.  Protests go national.  Violence, looting and active engagement with police.  

Calls for calm ignored.  Martial law is declared in different areas.  Internet is turned off in different areas.  

Violence grows.  The global economy collapses due to uncertainty over US economy (ill conceived financial derivatives ensure that virulent US contagion spreads to every nook and cranny of the global financial and economic system).

The US, suddenly impoverished, extremely angry, and mortally betrayed stumbles into civil war.

Read his blog post for the details of how it might be done.

Alternate quote of the day – Samuel Adams

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“A general Dissolution of Principles & Manners will more surely overthrow the Liberties of America than the whole Force of the Common Enemy. While the People are virtuous they cannot be subdued; but when once they lose their Virtue they will be ready to surrender their Liberties to the first external or internal Invader. How necessary then is it for those who are determind to transmit the Blessings of Liberty as a fair Inheritance to Posterity, to associate on publick Principles in Support of publick virtue.” —
Samuel Adams, Letter to James Warren (February 12, 1779)

Those old dead white guys seemed to talking about us (here in 2016) all the way back in 1779. Gosh; how did they know?

But they made a horrific error. They understood the importance of the non establishment clause, religious freedom clause, freedom of speech, of assembly and redress of grievances, AND the importance of education, but somehow they failed to make the connection between religion and education when it came to the importance of non establishment. He continues;

“I do verily believe, and I may say it inter Nos, that the Principles & Manners of N Engd, producd that Spirit which finally has establishd the Independence of America; and Nothing but opposite Principles and Manners can overthrow it. If you are of my Mind, and I think you are, the Necessity of supporting the Education of our Country must be strongly impressd on your Mind. It gives me the greatest Concern to hear that some of our Gentlemen in the Country begin to think the Maintenance of Schools too great a Burden.”

He’s right of course, but this argument has led to the making of law to establish education, rather than the free exercise thereof. It’s one or the other, which is why the first amendment included both the non establishment and the free exercise clauses with regard to religion.

That they (and we) seem to have failed utterly to understand the similarities between religion and education is surprising– Both are highly influential to a culture and it’s fundamental beliefs. That is precisely WHY they kept federal government out of religion and, tragically, why we got government into education.

The founders didn’t seem to contemplate the enemies of the American Founding Principles being in charge of a government education system, hostile to knowledge and truth, desiring a pliable, ignorant society ripe for the picking.

Therefore I once again put forth a recommendation for an addition to the first amendment to the U.S. constitution;

“…nor make any law respecting the establishment of education, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,…”

It belongs there for exactly the same reasons that religion belongs there, and it always did. I see the failure to include it (to allow such a thing as public education at all) as being one of the greatest failings of the Republic, possibly THE fatal mistake.

Just keep thinking that

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Anti-gun activist pastor Michael (how does he keep his tax exempt status?) Pfleger says:

Until America is so wounded by gun violence in the white and wealthy communities, till that happens and people start voting out politicians who are owned and bought by the NRA, it’s not going to change.

As is common with these type of people they believe it is all about the money. They do not, and perhaps cannot, comprehend there are many people who are guided by things other than money. Those other things include facts, logic, and principles.

As long as these people don’t understand the motivation for people to exercise and protected their specific enumerated right to keep and bear arms they have little hope of gaining political traction.

Even if we were to grant his statement as true the facts are that violence in general is reducing as gun ownership increases. So, by his own logic, gun control is projected to be less likely in the future.

So if Pfleger keeps thinking that he’ll live the rest of his life bitter, hateful, and deluded. He’ll likely end up being one of those people that I feel sorry for as they wander around town shouting at clouds, mumbling at lamp posts, and spending their nights at homeless shelters.

Of course there is another way to interpret his words. He could be calling for people to begin shooting up “the white and wealthy communities”. If so, and he continues in that direction, then his life could have a much different, but no more pleasant, path.

Either way Pfleger and those who believe like him are on the losing side of history.

Quote of the day—Glenn Reynolds

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When you have a society that can’t do things that need to be done because every change threatens somebody’s rice bowl or offers insufficient opportunities for graft, you’ve got a society that is due for a reset, not for incremental change.

The thing is, resets are often kind of ugly.

Glenn Reynolds
March 11, 2016
UNEXPECTEDLY: Walmart’s customers are too broke to shop. Fundamentally transformed!

Quote of the day—Alan Gottlieb

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This is a big win. Not just for gun rights but for the freedom movement in the battle against billionaire elitist gun prohibitionists like Michael Bloomberg. West Virginia just told him he can’t buy away our Second Amendment rights.

Alan Gottlieb
March 7, 2016
Gun control group ‘livid’ about permitless carry override veto
[While there is a certain amount of truth to this, 10s of millions, or more, of dollars can buy more repression of our rights than we care to tolerate.

Probably the best we can do is make the cost, in time, money, and public opinion, as high as practical such that the return on Bloomberg’s investment is as low as possible. In the case of West Virginia, gun rights supporters caused him to do the equivalent of setting a very large pile of $100 bills on fire. Bloomberg has an distressingly large number of $100 bills he is willing to throw on the fire but getting nothing except reports of his failures in return for spending large amounts of money will be discouraging to both him and the people he is funding. It also demonstrates that the claim that “the greedy gun manufactures with lots of money” and the NRA get legislative votes by outbidding the virtuous anti-gun activists is false. With this key assumption falsified it demoralizes them and makes it more difficult for them to recruit additional people and raise money in general.—Joe]