Category Archives: Politics

Pushing them down the slippery slope

Posted on by

My favorite Idaho gun lobbyist, AlphaMike, and I have been discussing pushing this bill for a year or more now. The bill creates a two tier concealed carry structure in Idaho.

The existing concealed carry license is pretty easy. It’s shall issue but the local sheriff can require proof of training. To the best of my knowledge all sheriffs in the state require the training. The training standard isn’t hard to meet and doesn’t even require any live fire. It also, at the sheriff’s option, may be issued to someone between the ages of 18 and 21.

The new license has enhanced training requirements, may only be issued to people 21 and over, and has a mental health check requirement.

I had not been a big fan of it. Constitutional Carry has more my inclination but AlphaMike had me about 80% to 90% convinced to go his route. His reasoning was that it would benefit more people to have the enhanced requirement license in addition to the existing license. Getting Constitutional Carry would be tougher and wouldn’t help that many people because the existing license was relatively easy to get. With the enhanced license people would get better reciprocity than what we have now. The “lax” training, potential for people under 21 to have the license, and no mental health check were blocking agreements with other states.

It passed the house 68-0-2.

What is probably most interesting about the bill is reported here:

Backers also hope these new permits convince Idaho school officials to allow their holders to be armed on school grounds.

We have a slippery slope and we plan to use it.

I’m now 100% convinced AlphaMike was correct.

Quote of the day—Alan Gottlieb

Posted on by

They should take a day off and visit the monuments at Lexington and Concord, and reflect on what prompted those colonists to stand their ground. It was the first time in American history that the government moved to seize arms and ammunition from its citizens, and it went rather badly for the British.

Beneath the surface many Americans are convinced that we may be approaching a point when the true purpose of the Second Amendment is realized.

Alan Gottlieb
February 5, 2013
Firearms ban also attacks the First Amendment
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Andrew Cuomo

Posted on by

When people understand what the law is really about, and it’s not about taking their gun or a government intrusion on the Second Amendment, they’ll feel better about it.

Andrew Cuomo
New York State Governor
February 27, 2013
N.Y. gun law mandates magazines that don’t exist
[Do rape victims “feel better about it” when they find out their attacker won’t be prosecuted?

Governor Cuomo, this can and will be used as evidence against you at your trial.—Joe]

Graphics Campaign

Posted on by

A reader sent these to me in regards to the anti-gun owner laws being proposed in Colorado.

candlesCo_dems_bloomberg
exum_hatefields_jail2
hickenlooper_magban5joe-salazar
john_morse-warulibarri_pen

I like the first one best.

This particular reader did not want even a hint of credit being given to them for fear they could lose their job. It sounds to me like someone has a boss that has a problem with diversity.

What they really want

Posted on by

Every once in a while they admit what they really want:

Nowhere is the defeatist liberal approach to American politics more evident than in the post-Newtown campaign for gun control. Liberals are rushing to repeat, like a devout incantation, hand on one’s heart, that “we believe in the Second Amendment” — in an “individual’s right to own a gun.” Half of the legal and moral battle is lost right there and then.

…

the right to own guns is a communitarian right, not an individualized one.

…

A true liberal position, the place to start, is to call for domestic disarmament. That is the banning of the sale of all guns to private parties coupled with a buyback of those on the street (Mexico just moved to so control guns). Collectors can keep their guns as long as they remove the firing pin or fill the barrel with cement. Gun sports can be allowed — in closed shooting ranges. And hunters can be allowed to have long guns (if they pass background checks) with no scopes, which are not sporting. But, these exceptions aside, liberals should call for a gun-free nation

That individual/collective argument was settled before it was proposed and the Heller decision just confirmed it. This guy, a “true liberal” in his not so humble opinion, has no regard for the constitution or court rulings.

A true liberal is one who wants everyone disarmed? Got it. That can and will be used at their trials.

Quote of the day—John Yowan

Posted on by

What’s wrong with this picture…

Posted on by

…is what’s wrong with society. You all have gotten some version this spam e-mail, usually from a .ru domain;

“You know, they are so many people in the world, but some of them are alone, because they didn’t find their halfs yet, as it is so hard.
If you are alone and want to find your love, you can write me and we’ll start communicating. I’m alone and looking for a good man, who will give me his love and care. Who knows, maybe we can fill up our lonely hearts with love.”

If you’re looking for someone else to make you whole, you’re looking in the wrong place. If you want to be wanted, if you desire to be desired, if you need to be needed, you are part of the problem.

I cringed when one my many nephews said, right after he’d been divorced within a year or two of being married, that he’d found this other woman, and how great she was, and how they were meant for each other and he knew it because of some mundane coincidence or other. The ink on the divorce papers was still drying. I didn’t know what to say at the time, but he was running from one hell-of-his-own-devising and straight into another.

No, Young Grasshopper; if you’re not whole, or complete already, no one else can make you whole. If you’re searching for someone else to make you whole, you’re looking for love in all the wrong places. You’ll be let down, because getting what you want, the way you want it, is impossible. You’ll feel betrayed, because what you thought you had was something you can never have. This is the stuff of murder, of self destruction and suicide. It’s what’s wrong with our whole society.

Those in government (and gangs) know just enough about this to take advantage of it. We look to them for “salvation” of one kind or another when all they have to offer is entrapment. They want to own you in the same way you want to own someone else, or be owned by someone else. They want you dependent on them in the same way you want to depend on someone else, or you want someone dependent on you. They want you to need them in the same way you need other people, or you want other people to need you. This is the stuff of mass destruction, war and mass death.

That word we throw around so much in America, Independence, I am only just realizing, has a far deeper meaning than I’d previously suspected, and I think it is extremely important.

None of this stuff is new, and so these words aren’t mine. It’s as old as the hills, and yet we fall for this trap over and over.

Biden may be onto something

Posted on by

Biden may actually be giving good advice to his audience. Double barrel shotguns are simpler than an AR-15. So simple that given enough time and an instruction video even anti-gun Democrats could probably fire off a shot or two.

His advice is entirely consistent with Security Theater advocated by most government types. He is suggesting people “Do Something” and they will feel better even if it accomplishes nothing that helps your situation.

Or instead of being onto something he could just be on something. Was he in Colorado testing out the local herbs when he shared his stupid thoughts with us?

Quote of the day—Rivrdog

Posted on by

Do NOT be deluded into thinking that this push for gun control is about CRIME control. It isn’t, it’s about removing the guns from ALL of the society so as to make way for an uncontested dictatorship.

The only thing we can’t know yet is how benevolent the dictatorship might or might not be. In other words, will our enslavement be easy or harsh.

Also, do not be deluded that we aren’t already in the fight. The line between us being considered as dissidents exercising our rights and the putative dictatorship considering us insurgents is but a line in the sand, and the blowing wind will soon cover that line.

Rivrdog
February 17, 2013
Comment to Quote of the day—Nicholas James Johnson
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Nicholas James Johnson

Posted on by

Without a commitment to or capacity for eliminating the existing inventory of private guns, the supply-side ideal and regulations based on it cannot be taken seriously. It is best to acknowledge the blocking power of the remainder and adjust our gun control regulations and goals to that reality. Policymakers who continue to press legislation grounded on the supply-side ideal while disclaiming the goal of prohibition are deluded or pandering.

Nicholas James Johnson
Fordham University School of Law
December 1, 2008
Imagining Gun Control in America: Understanding the Remainder Problem
[H/T to eriko in the comment to this post.

Just reading the abstract is scary eye-opening. Here are just a couple sentences:

the temptation is to view Heller as the central obstacle to effective gun control. This is a mistake born of our failure to confront the incoherence of pre-Heller supply-side controls. This article elaborates the supply-side ideal as the foundation of our most ambitious gun control proposals, explains the remainder problem and the defiance impulse as both cultural and physical phenomena that block supply-side rules, and evaluates a series of familiar gun-control proposals in the context of these structural barriers in order to identify which can work and which cannot.

Some of our opponents are far more intelligent than we give them credit for. Not all of them are the almost useful idiots like MikeB302000 and Japete.—Joe]

Collective identity

Posted on by

One shouldn’t be surprised, shocked, or indignant that leftists claim “We are all Chris Dorner.”

Taken out of context his claims of injustice sound credible and if the claims were correct I can understand his rage and could even let pass a statement of “We are all Chris Dorner”. But he murdered innocent people who had nothing to do with his complaints against the Los Angeles police department. He, an individual, did this. He did this to innocent individuals.

People on the left have a mindset bordering on and many times crossing well into a personality disorder such that they cannot readily distinguish between themselves and others who share some or most of their beliefs. “Individual” is a term that, in their mind, translates into “not one of mine”. This is why they are confused by and ignore the concepts put forth in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

This is why they speak of a “right to health care”, a “right to a job”, and even “freedom from want“. Individuals, for all intents and purposes, do not or should not exist outside of the collective. Leftists cannot easily distinguish between their “one true collective” and themselves. And the collective should care for itself just as we believe an individual should care for itself and their immediate family. Those outside the collective or belonging to a different collective are to be shunned if they are no consequence. If they impede its objectives they should be reeducated, put in mental institutions, or disposed of.

Dorner did not view “the collective” that supposedly wronged him as individuals. The families of supposedly racist police officers and of his lawyer were just as deserving of punishment as the primary actors who perpetrated the injustices upon him. In his mind all members of a collectives, either his or of another, are equivalent.

The leftist collective identifies Dorner as one of theirs and hence “We are all Chris Dorner” makes perfect sense in their mentally disturbed universe. There are tens of millions of examples in the 20th century where leftists used violence to dispose of “not one of mine.” That leftists identify with him and cheered him on should only be a surprise to those that do not understand the mind of the leftist and/or are ignorant of history.

Why are there so few?

Posted on by

Via email from Mike B. (AlphaMike in Idaho, not the other one) I received a link to this episode of Freakonomics: How to think about guns.

It starts out with a different question about mass murders than the media and most politicians, “Why are there so few?” With 300+ million people in the U.S. and a similar number of guns (not to mention many other ways of being able to commit mayhem and murder) why is it so “far out on the tail” that these incidents occur? Think about that. Typically it is about two mass murders (4+ people killed) a year with guns. Out of 300 million people? Only one out of 150 million people per year go nuts enough to kill a bunch of people? That’s pretty amazing if you think about it.

Notable quotes:

  • “Gun buybacks are one of the most ineffectual public policies that have ever been invented in the history of mankind.”
  • “I think people are confused with respect to how dangerous a particular gun is. If I’ve done my calculations right, any particular handgun in the United States will kill a person about once every 10,000 years.”
  • “In order to prevent one homicide in a year, you would need to get 10,000 guns brought back in a gun buyback. Okay, but the thing is you don’t get 10,000 guns, and they’re not the guns that are used to kill people. So the typical gun buyback program I would guess saves approximately maybe 0.0001 lives.”
  • “But why is it in the context of guns we don’t think of guns as deterrents, we think about guns as, being this, causing the violence. And the idea here comes out of Canada’s book, Fist, Stick, Knife, Gun, which honestly I’ll say is one of the best books I’ve read in my life, and if it’s still in print I would just encourage people to go find it. It’s fantastically insightful.”
  • “Anyone with any sense looks at the current political climate, thinks about the kinds of proposals that are being made and accepts the fact that none of these proposals are going to have any real impact at all.”

The recommended book is available via Amazon:

It is next in my queue after I finish The Android’s Dream (son James thinks it is awesome and I’m liking it a lot).

Quote of the day—Bernardine Dohrn

Posted on by

There’s no way to be committed to non-violence in one of the most violent societies that history has ever created. I’m not committed to non-violence in any way.

Bernardine Dohrn
In the 2002 documentary film The Weather Underground. Get the movie from Amazon here.
[From the Wikipedia entry:

Dohrn with ten other SDS members associated with the RYM issued, on June 18, 1969, a sixteen-thousand-word manifesto entitled, “You Don’t Need a Weatherman to Know Which Way the Wind Blows” in New Left Notes.

…

The manifesto stated that “the goal [of revolution] is the destruction of US imperialism and the achievement of a classless world: world communism.”

Leftists know their agenda can only be implemented with violence. Government is violence and the threat of violence. They wish to use government to create their utopia. To advocate non-violence and have a leftist philosophy is a contradiction. To allow people not of the government to have the means to resist government is to allow their idyllic future to be denied.

The murdering, anti-gun, pro-leftist, ex-cop, from Los Angeles who was killed this week is just one in a long line of his type.—Joe]

Freedom shall be infringed

Posted on by

Via a tweet from Barron.

As Lyle has pointed out many times before the left has their “shall not be infringed” issue with abortion. Michael Z. Williamson has an elaborated version of that which I cannot find fault with.

Read the whole thing but the “punch line” is this:

First they came for the blacks, and I spoke up because it was wrong, even though I’m not black.

Then they came for the gays, and I spoke up, even though I’m not gay.

Then they came for the Muslims, and I spoke up, because it was wrong, even though I’m an atheist.

When they came for illegal aliens, I spoke up, even though I’m a legal immigrant.

Then they came for the pornographers, rebels and dissenters and their speech and flag burning, and I spoke up, because rights are not only for the establishment.

Then they came for the gun owners, and you liberal shitbags threw me under the bus, even though I’d done nothing wrong.  So when they come to put you on the train, you can fucking choke and die.

~~~

Or you can commit seppuku with a chainsaw. I really don’t care anymore. This is the end of my support for any liberal cause, because liberals have become anything but.

Quote of the day—Brian Schuetz

Posted on by

Olympic Arms will no longer be doing business with the State of New York or any governmental entity or employee of such governmental entity within the State of New York – henceforth and until such legislation is repealed, and an apology made to the good people of the State of New York and the American people.

Brian Schuetz
President
Olympic Arms, Inc.
February 12, 2013
This was in response to oppressive and clearly unconstitutional legislation by the state of New York.
[This is the same as the boycotting of countries that fail to recognize basic human rights. The right to keep and bear arms is a basic human right and governments that infringe upon the right need to be sent a strong message. This is one part of that message.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Neal Knox

Posted on by

I was delighted to learn that the Constitution prohibited laws like Belgium’s. There was no battle to fight, I thought. We were covered. I have since learned that the words about a militia and the right of the people to keep and bear, while important, mean as much to a determined enemy as the Maginot line did to Hitler.

Rather than depend on the Second Amendment to protect our gun rights, I’ve learned that we must protect the Second Amendment and the precious rights it recognizes.

Neal Knox
From The Belgian Corporal
[I too once believed we were covered and there was no battle to fight. That fantasy of mine was destroyed in 1993. I’ve been fighting for nearly 20 years now and I don’t see an end in sight.—Joe]

Gun control hearings in Washington State

Posted on by

Via a GOAL email from Joe Waldron on Friday:

Two public hearings are scheduled for next week.  On Wednesday, 13 February at 8:00 a.m., the House Judiciary will take public testimony on HBs 1147, 1588, 1612 and 1676.  On Friday, 15 February also at 8:00 a.m., the Senate Law & Justice Committee will conduct a public hearing on SB 5479.

If at all possible, PLEASE try to attend the House Judiciary hearing on Wednesday.  It’s important that we get as large a pro-gun turn-out as possible to demonstrate our opposition to HBs 1588 and 1676.  HB 1588, especially, as it creates a de facto gun registration system in Washington.  There are ways to conduct background checks that DO NOT retain data on the transfer.  If they want background checks, run a pure background check bill.  If they want registration, call it that and let’s debate it.

If you can’t attend the hearing, please write to your Representatives AND to the members of the Judiciary Committee and go on record with your opposition to these two bills.  Links to legislator contact information:

http://www.leg.wa.gov/Senate/Senators/
http://www.leg.wa.gov/House/Representatives/

House Judiciary Committee:

Rep, Jaime Pedersen (D-43) jaime.pedersen@leg.wa.gov
Rep. Drew Hansen (D-23) drew.hansen@leg.wa.gov
Rep. Jay Rodne (R-5) jay.rodne@leg.wa.gov
Rep. Steve O’Ban (R-28) steve.oban@leg.wa.gov
Rep. Roger Goodman (D-45) roger.goodman@leg.wa.gov
Rep. Mike Hope (R-44) mike.hope@leg.wa.gov
Rep. Laurie Jinkins (D-27) laurie.jinkins@leg.wa.gov
Rep. Steve Kirby (D-29) steve.kirby@leg.wa.gov
Rep. Brad Klippert (R-8) brad.klippert@leg.wa.gov
Rep. Terry Nealey (R-16) terry.nealey@leg.wa.gov
Rep. Tina Orwall (D-33) tina.orwall@leg.wa.gov
Rep. Mary Helen Roberts (D-21) maryhelen.roberts@leg.wa.gov
Rep. Matt Shea (R-4) matt.shea@leg.wa.gov

If you want to subscribe to the GOAL Post by e-mail, send a message to jwaldron@halcyon.com.

If you want a sound bite for opposing background checks try this. If you want a detailed, multi-front argument read this.

Quote of the day—Mike Hope

Posted on by

That’s exactly what we want to go after. We don’t know who’s buying the gun.

Mike Hope
Washington state representative of Lake Stevens.
February 9, 2013
Washington state nears deal on gun background checks
[Hope is also a Seattle police officer and said the above in regards to:

Hope, a Seattle police officer, said the private transactions are occurring all the time and are attractive for criminals who can avoid a background check. He noted that when his employer recently held a gun buyback program, some people were on the streets buying weapons from people who were waiting in line.

I was at that gun “buyback”. I was attempting to buy some of those guns. And he is saying I was “exactly what we want to go after”. That is good to know Mr. Hope. That may be used as evidence at your trial.

See also my post on background checks and on background checks that would be acceptable to us but not to them. That’s odd you say? Why why wouldn’t they want a universal background check they could get easily passed into law? It’s because don’t really want background checks. They want registration and confiscation.

H/T to:

—Joe]

They don’t want background checks

Posted on by

Via email from Joe Waldron of Gun Owners Action League of WA, February 1, 2013:

Let there be no doubt in your mind, HB 1588, and similar bills to be offered at the federal level, are after one thing only: gun registration.  If they want to debate registration, by all means do so.  But call it what it is.  Don’t try to sell it under a false flag, and one that is likely to gain widespread support even among gun owners.  There ARE ways to conduct background checks WITHOUT the record-keeping.  We showed them that in Olympia twice in the past decade.  They rejected it, and admitted that what they wanted was the “audit trail” — the paperwork.

“Audit trail”. Yeah. Got it.

That is what they said about the NICS checks records when they were supposed to be destroyed after a person had successfully passed. They didn’t destroy the records as required by law. They kept them “for audit purposes”.

Attorney General Janet Reno even once said the system was unable to delete the records. Then they, with much howling, consented to 90 day retention of the records. In 2001, under a new administration, the DOJ changed the retention to “less than one day”. In reviewing the impact this would have the GAO reported (pages 1 and 2):

According to the NICS regulations, information on allowed firearms sales is used only for purposes related to ensuring the proper operation of the system or conducting audits of the use of the system.

Then on page 4:

NICS officials told us, however, that the FBI would not lose any routine audit capabilities under the proposed policy for next-day destruction of records.

On the other hand, a next-day destruction policy would adversely affect
certain nonroutine audits of the system. Specifically, under current DOJ
policy, if a law enforcement agency has information that indicates that an individual is prohibited from purchasing firearms under federal law, the agency may request that the FBI check whether the name appears in NICS records of allowed transfers. If the FBI finds a record showing an allowed transfer to a “prohibited person” (e.g., a transfer to an alien who is illegally or unlawfully in the United States), that record indicates a potential violation of law, and the FBI may disclose the record to the appropriate law enforcement entity. These audits of the accuracy of responses given by NICS, and the additional (secondary) benefit of assisting law enforcement investigations, generally would not be possible under a next-day destruction policy.

In the GAO’s own document the FBI was admitting they were using the records in ways that were not authorized by law. Yet no one went to jail.

Eventually, they claim, regulations were implemented that required the records be destroyed within 24 hours. But why should we trust them? They were using the records illegally before and no one was punished. What is the incentive to keep them from violating the law again? They cannot be trusted.

In California and New York where guns were registered gun owners were told, with great sincerity, “No one is trying to take your guns.” In New York, several years ago, they did confiscate registered guns. In California they are attempting to pass laws that will confiscate registered guns.

The government in general, and anti-gun people in particular, cannot be trusted. Do not ever give them a means, no matter how indirect, to register your guns, your books, your religion, or your sexual preferences. It’s none of their business. And all have been used in other times and other places to imprison and/or murder people by the 10s of thousands and even millions.

If you allow it there is an unacceptably high chance it will not end well.

Quote of the day—sporks

Posted on by

gun owners have no place in the democratic party. they’re good people, yes, but they must get rid of their guns.

sporks
December 21, 2012
Comment to How to Ban Guns: A step by step, long term process
[Sounds like a plan sporks. Let me know how your project turns out with the Democrats in Alabama, Idaho, Kentucky, Montana, Nevada, Oklahoma, Texas, and Wyoming.—Joe]