Category Archives: Politics

Gun cartoon of the day

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The anti-gun people frequently claim this but that is grossly inaccurate and is actually nothing but projection.

Look at the responses to Just One Question, “What color is orange? True or false?” What kind of a response is that? It is totally nonsensical and people claim it is some sort of brilliant insight.

Or MikeB302000 who recently proposed the VPC report on the low “gun
deaths” in Hawaii, while ignoring violent crime and murder in general,
was an adequate response to my question. I responded in his comments by
pointing out the question is concerned with safety, not the total
number of deaths (including justifiable and praiseworthy homicide)
inflicted with the use of a firearm. This sort of thing has been
pointed out to him so many times and his ass handed to him so many times
that this morning when he came back with another post claiming my
response made him wonder if my response was “an elaborate con job” it
reminded me of a joke:

A man goes hunting with his buddies, although he’d never been hunting and barely knew how to hold a rifle.

On the first day out of camp he’s walking through the woods and he comes upon a big ass bear. “Great!” he thinks to himself. But he’s so excited and nervous that when he raises his gun and fires he misses the bear by 10 feet. The bear looks at him and stands up, and shockingly speaks. “Excuse me, but you just shot at me and missed. I’m afraid I’m going to have to rip your throat out.” says the bear as he takes out his claws and ambles towards our hero.

“You’re a talking bear! Wow! I’m really sorry for shooting at you, please don’t kill me.” The bear looks at him and says, “You know I should kill you, but I’ll tell you what, if you perform oral sex on me I’ll let you live.”

Now our hero was torn between life and death, so he chose the only option he could. That night, as he sat in camp, he heard the bear walking around jawing about how he got a human to give him a mouth hug.

So the next morning he woke up knowing that he had to kill the talking bear. He walked through the woods, and suddenly came upon the bear. This time he was very tense, the adrenalin coursing through his veins. He shot, and once again missed.

The bear looked up, stood up and walked over to him. “This is the second day you’ve tried to kill me. I’m afraid I’m going to have to tear your throat out.” said the bear in a kindly fashion.

“Please Mr. Bear, I didn’t mean to do it, please don’t kill me.” our hero whimpered. “Tell you what, you bend over and let me get Gentle Ben on your buttocks and I’ll let you live.” said the bear.

Having no choice our hero did as instructed. Later on that night as he drank himself silly in camp he heard the bear walking around chanting, “Now this human took it bear style. Once you go black bear you never go back bear.”

Thus the next morning our man woke up and knew only one thing; he had to kill the talking bear. So once again he trod out to the woods. Low and behold he came upon the bear sitting on a log. He was terrified this time, more so than before. He raised his gun and BANG!!! He missed.

The bear stood up and walked slowly over to him. And when he spoke he seemed to have gotten a French accent. “Ah, it is you again.” At this point he took out a cigarette and began smoking. “But alas, do not fear me. For I think we both realize that you are not here for the hunting.”

And so it is with MikeB302000. He is so incompetent with his apparent goal of being an advocate for gun restrictions there are only three possibilities that I can think of to explain his actions:

  1. He really is that stupid.
  2. He is on our side and wants to make anti-gun people look stupid.
  3. He is a troll that enjoys sucking up our time.

But although sticking it to him a few times is entertaining there comes a point when getting your rocks off at his expense just isn’t that much fun and is a waste of time. (Again) I have reached that point in time.

Quote of the day–Charlton Heston

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A war put off is not a war avoided.

Charlton Heston
[I don’t know the context of when this was said but it probably wasn’t meant to be the one I am thinking of.

For decades there have been gun owners who were willing to “give them what they wanted” so they could keep their hunting rifles or shotguns or some other firearm not currently under attack by the bigots. Every concession with the enemies of freedom emboldened them. Every inch of territory they owned gave them more legitimacy. Just look at California, Chicago, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York City, and Washington D.C.

How many lives have been lost or ruined with the rampant crime enabled by disarming those victims? And the enablers make no effort to hide the fact they are nothing but petty tyrants ready to shoot those that question their decisions. They should have been slapped down 70+ years ago and countless lives, billions of dollars, and millions of man hours could have been saved.

I understand that sometimes you have to retreat and give them a
little ground so that you don’t lose the entire war but we must do our best to prepare the
ground so that reclaiming it will be easier when we return with
greater forces. With the “assault weapon” ban of 1994 we did just that.
Our side insisted the legislation include funding on studies of the effectiveness of the ban and an expiration date. Both of those helped reclaim the territory in later years.

The battle over NFA34 was lost without much resistance put up by gun owners and gun organizations. We were completely unprepared–condition white.

With the political climate of 1968 the battle was tough, our preparedness was pathetic, and we lost. We must remember these losses and never let ourselves be unprepared. We now have the initiative and we should not drop it. The battle in the courts will last decades just as the battle in the legislatures has lasted decades.

But always remember putting off the battle does not mean that it is avoided. It may require a strategic and temporary retreat but just as there is no compromise between someone intent on raping or killing you there is no compromising with the enemies of liberty.–Joe]

It Bears Repeating

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A kind, compassionate, thoughtful, responsible, caring member of Congress, looking out for the rights of “the little guy” interacts with his beloved constituents;





Is it an isolated incident, or part of a culture that has metastasized throughout the halls of American government?  Little do we know that often we are actors in a grand play, the script being many thousands of years old.


All the guy had to do was answer the question; “Well, he is our president, but I can’t imagine I would “totally” support any administration.  That’s a bit of a stretch, son.  Now if you’ll excuse me…”


“Course then, the kid might have asked; “You don’t totally support Obama?  So you hate black people then, right?  You just can’t stand the thought of a black man in the Whitehouse?”  That’s probably what our good Congressweasel feared.


At a little over 400 thousand views on Youtube, last I checked, I figure it’s not near enough.


HT to Say Uncle and Snarkybites

Quote of the day–Sheriff Richard I. Mack

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Any right or freedom not worth fighting for is but a temporary privilege.

Sheriff Richard I. Mack
From My Cold Dead Fingers–Why America Needs Guns, Third Edition (“Final Chapter”), page 212.
[Not only must it be worth fighting for but people must actually go out and do the fighting and voting.–Joe]

Quote of the day–Ronald Reagan

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Of the four wars in my lifetime none came about because the U.S. was too strong.


Ronald Reagan
[This afternoon on my way back to my hidden underground bunker in the Seattle area I listened to A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles by Thomas Sowell.  Kevin gives a more complete review than I would ever consider but one thing in the book jumped out at me that reminded me of this Reagan quote. In the unconstrained vision nations enter into war because of misunderstandings many of which are because one side or both became convinced that their neighbor was preparing to go to war against them. Hence, in the eyes of those who adhere to the unconstrained vision, one of the ways to prevent war is to disarm.


As Kevin points out those of the unconstrained persuasion are as much or more interested in intent than in hard data. Does that remind you of any politicians you know?


In the unconstrained vision the definitions of the most basic words have different meanings from those of a constrained vision viewpoint. Some definitions are not merely different–they are the complete opposite (for example see the video I linked to here). This is why, for them, “freedom” and/or “economic justice” can entail forced redistribution of wealth without a hint of irony.


For them, criminals can be understood and reformed. It was the fault of society/poverty/”economic-injustice” which creates criminals and by fixing those problems and taking away the tools of their trade there will be less (or zero) crime. As an example just last month Paul Helmke said gun violence is one component of the total violence. This, of course, presumes that violent crime committed with firearms is totally independent of other types of violent crime. It assumes there will be no substitution of other weapons if firearms are less available (and with the victims disarmed firearms are less likely to be needed by large predators). In their minds people like Ted Bundy, Jeffery Dahmer, and Richard Kuklinski (now there was one scary SOB–Ted Bundy was a pussy cat compared to him) apparently would not come into being.


That line of thought brought me to gun control and back to Reagan’s quote. What Reagan said in regards to war also applies to gun ownership and criminals. No violent criminal or political tyrant committed his crimes because his victims were too strong.–Joe]

‘Get the Hell Out of Palestine’…

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…says Helen Thomas to the Jews in Israel.


Doug Powers posted it.  I’m amplifying it.  Watch the video.  Helen Thomas is one of the most revered journalists in all of Leftopia.  She’s been in the front row at Whitehouse press conferences since the Grant administration, and she’ll be there, just as revered, at the next one.


Let’s see; it’s been nearly 10 years since I began linking the motivations and goals of the jihadists with those of the American and European left.  In examining the various “peace talks” between Israel and Hamas, et al, brokered by American presidents, keep that in mind.

A potentiality is not an actuality

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Yesterday I posted a quote from someone opposed to open (and I would imagine any type of) carry. He was responding to someone else in the comments to a newspaper article:

“How many open carry citizens have committed crimes with their weapons?
Answer – none”.

You are incorrect. Open carry laws make it easy for psychos to tote
around LOADED weapons, which are responsible for a lot of the crime and gun
deaths each year. The law may be designed for the “law abiding” citizen, but if
you think only “law abiding” citizens utilize the law you are an idiot.

It is my belief that we are so frequently exposed to irrational and nonsensical thinking and behaviors that we frequently cannot see it for what it is. We accept it as normal and attempt to confront them on their own territory using their own “rules”. This is like mud wrestling with a pig. They are going to be an extremely slippery opponent, you are unlikely to win, and even if you do there is no hope of any dignity or great reward.

I didn’t notice that I had ignored this guy’s subterfuge until sometime after I had posted it and rather than update the post I decided to see if anyone else noticed and pointed it out in the comments. About a 1000 people have seen that quote here and no one has said anything about what the guy did. I doubt that he himself realized what he did. It is what these people do naturally. Their thinking process is so messed up that it just comes out.

The two points that need to be made are:

  1. The responder changed the question. The question was, “How many open carry citizens have committed crimes with their weapons?” The responder changes this to, the implied, “Does the ability to openly carry enable crime?”
  2. A potential to do harm is not the same as actually doing harm. In nearly every instance of a push for greater gun control (and, if you think about it some, nearly all government programs) those advocating more government control focus almost entirely on the potential harm if action is not taken and the potential good if the action is taken. Actual harm and actual benefits appear to be (and in many cases I’m sure it is deliberately) ignored.

This second point is very important. A potentiality is not an actuality.*

For the most part when we debate against gun control (or socialism for that matter) we use actual facts. We accuse them of using emotionalism but it goes deeper than that. They frequently argue about “what could happen”. When they do this there is almost no limit to what conclusions will be reached.

They end up arguing that .50 caliber “sniper rifles” can bring airplanes down out of the sky. To the best of my knowledge there has never been a case of a semi-auto or bolt action .50 caliber rifle taking down an airplane. Potentiality versus actuality.

They end up arguing criminals will buy guns at gun shows with “no questions asked”. Criminals obtain their firearms at gun shows less than 1% of the time. Potentiality versus actuality.

They end up arguing if you carry a gun it can be taken away from you and used against you. Defending ones-self with a gun results in less injury to the defender than any other course of action. Potentiality versus actuality.

They end up arguing that if there were strict, “common sense” gun laws in place crime would go down. At the very best the facts show heavy restrictions on private citizen access to firearms is not positively correlated with an increase in crime. Potentiality versus actuality.

Keep your eyes and ears open and your brain working. Don’t let them get away with arguing potentialities. Make them argue actualities. A potentiality is not an actuality.

*The title for for this blog post comes from Susan K. (Cherry Tree–Susan will know) who, about 25 years ago, used this phrase to emphasis a point in a debate I had with her. This post was inspired by the book I’m currently listening to, The Virtue of Selfishness by Ayn Rand. Susan was a huge fan of hers although I didn’t hear that exact phrase in the book (so far anyway) similar wordings and phrases caused me to remember the debate I had with Susan. It turns out, that if you do a web search for that phrase you will find that Ayn Rand did in fact use it–but in a totally different context.

Bringing back the dead

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The real reason for Obamacare:

Via son James.

Trade-offs and goals

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If you want to save yourself some time by not read my late night rambling just read three sentences from Say Uncle on this topic.


As an engineer I make a lot of trade-offs. Execution speed and size (assembly language) versus code clarity and development time (high level languages) used to be a big trade-off. Calculating results every time you need them or caching them in RAM is a trade-off (it didn’t use to be that way but today the answer is usually you want to calculate them every time). Do you load everything in RAM for quick access or leave it on disk until you need it? Do you bringing a new hire up to speed or do you do it yourself?


I can whip out some code that will test a hypothesis in a few minutes or an hour and not worry if there is a single comment in it or if it handles a single error condition. To implement that same functionality in a product that literally millions of people will use, sometimes millions of times a day (or even per minute) may take weeks of effort by a team of people. It will involve specifications, design documents, a test plan, manual testing, automated tests, unit tests, code reviews by multiple peers, and alpha/beta testing by thousands or even 10s of thousands of end users. It only takes me a fraction of a second to decide how to proceed when I know the final goal for the task at hand.


Man minutes versus man months of time involved. Two different extremes in the effort involved in implementing, essentially, the same functionality. The difference is in what I was attempting to accomplish.


I’ve been making engineering trade-offs for over 30 years and most of the time it comes pretty easy to me. When my officemate, a very smart person but a fairly new entry into actually producing deliverable code, asks for advice on a trade-off it takes more time for her to ask the question than for me to arrive at the correct answer.


Another example comes from this morning. My boss came into my office and asked, essentially, “Do we ever return an answer of less than ‘X’ for condition ‘B’?” I knew my code didn’t do that directly but there were times when my code got the answer from the server rather than computing it directly and I couldn’t say for certain without checking with the server people. I started to go down that path and explain how the server might come up with a different answer and I barely got started into the fine details when he stopped me. “Let me give you some more context”, he said. The context was he was writing an email with the target audience of upper management who would not care about the fine details. When he asked the question I thought there was some bug that had been reported and he wanted to know if it really was a bug and if so who it should be assigned to. Without knowing what he was trying to accomplish I had made the wrong trade-off. I was giving him more and more detail when he really needed validation of his high level overview.


As a gun lobbying organization the NRA-ILA makes trade-offs too. What they are trying to accomplish is to improve, and in certain worst case scenarios minimize harm to, our specific enumerated right to keep and bear arms. Nearly all other considerations must be given a lower priority.


At the NRA Annual Meetings last month I spent a couple hours talking to a NRA board member. He explained why they had done certain things in the D.C. lawsuit (for the most part I am not at liberty to discuss them) and had avoided the U.S. Supreme Court for decades. The next night (or was it the night after?) I spend time with Alan Gura who had a different view of the NRA contribution to the D.C. lawsuit. It was Gura’s contention that NRA-ILA really knows their stuff in regards to legislation but the same people attempting to handle court battles results in people working out of their area of expertise with less than optimal outcomes. My simple take on the topic was that the NRA was trying to avoid a disastrous loss and Gura was trying to get solid win. They both have our best interests at heart but in certain situations ended up “fighting over the ball” and risked fumbling it for a loss.


I think the people that are upset with the NRA support of Harry Reid don’t really understand the trade-offs involved and what the NRA is trying to accomplish. To best support the members, the gun owning people of this country, they have to play a “chess game” where they can never take back a move, the pieces are clouding in smoke, the playing field is shifting, the rules are only partially known and subject to violation by the individual pieces at any time. Try thinking three or four moves ahead under those conditions and see how well you can do. The NRA plays that game very well. They are experts at it. Sometimes when an expert is at work you will be baffled at the moves they make.


To the simple minded observer if you put a “good conservative” in office you will automatically get support for gun rights, hence you should always give support to “good conservatives”. Even an amateur like me can see far enough ahead to see a problem with that in certain situations. There are trade-offs involved. With a ‘D’ beside his name and lots of seniority Reid has lots of power that someone with an ‘R’ and little (or no) seniority would not have. That is just one trade-off. Another is that in certain jurisdictions a “good conservative” is not electable. The demographics of that district are such that the NRA can curry favor with someone that will be in a position to help us or they can try to defeat them during the election then try to make up with them after the election. Another trade-off is that some people like everything, or most everything, the Democrats offer but support our right to keep and bear arms. To a certain extent I am baffled by both the Republican’s and the Democrats. I really don’t understand (and don’t think they do either) the philosophy behind their politics. My guiding political principles are pro freedom. Each party has something to offer and a lot they want to take away from me in this regard. There are trade-offs in who I vote for.


In the case of Harry Reid an NRA lobbyist said this about him in an email discussion:



I have candidates for office running against pro-gun Dems who expect that NRA is going to endorse them as the pro-gun Republican challenger over the pro-gun Democrat incumbent…and tout all of their other “conservative” positions as proof that they’re the better candidate. They get frustrated with me, but I have to remind them that NRA doesn’t use whether you are pro-Life and small taxes to determine your endorsement or grade — and a large number of our members appreciate that, because they don’t agree with conservatives or Republicans on anything but guns! 😉


Whether they like it or not, Harry Reid has voted with gun owners and NRA 100% and used his position in the Senate to advance gun ownership rights in recent years. The Obama Admin was forced to sign a bill with Guns in Parks because Harry Reid allowed the Amendment. The House is holding up DC voting rights because Harry Reid allowed the DC gun rights amendment to the bill.


If Harry Reid isn’t the Senate Majority Leader, we’d have Chuck Schumer or Dick Durbin — think we’re going to get any of those amendments on bills with THEM in charge? No — it’ll be more Lautenberg crap.


In the eyes of an expert political lobbyist the making of the decision about Reid took less time than it took to write the first sentence of the explanation and it’s clear that is the correct answer for gun owners. Those that try to change the NRA support of Reid risk fumbling the ball to the loss of all of us.

Opposing Gun Control

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I want to expand on a comment made here, since Joe often says I shouldn’t bury certain things in comments.  I’m never really sure what he means by that, so I can only give it a go;


The citizens have been declared incompetent.  Posing a danger to themselves and others, they cannot be entrusted with their basic rights.  That is, in a nutshell, the entire message of the left, and they call us hateful, racist and divisive.


 


It’s really simple; in their efforts to rob us of our treasure and trample our rights, they have to portray us as evil by way of justification and to rally others to their side.  That’s the whole gig, right there.


 


In opposing them, always keep that in mind.  When you cut right to the chase with the basics, there’s nothing for them to do but express outrage, kicking and screaming, pointing fingers and lying in the hope that we’ll be distracted off-subject, that we’ll embarrass ourselves with a reply in-kind or be intimidated into silence.  Maintain your course and composure, argue principles, and they lose every time.  This takes practice.


 


Remember that this is not about the person, or the people, making the argument.  If this or that person weren’t making the silly assertions, it would be someone else.  “It” will always find a willing accomplice.  You’re not fighting the person or the group of people on the attack.  You’re fighting the urge toward theft and coercive power.  That urge feeds on weakness, and can infect a lot of people.

They are getting impatient

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It appears the left is getting so close to their victory they are getting impatient. Sort of a “I’m so close I can taste it” type of thing. This is from Woody Allen:



“It would be good… if [President Obama] could be dictator for a few years because he could do a lot of good things quickly,” Allen is quoted as saying.


Allen is also to have said: “I am pleased with Obama. I think he is brilliant. The Republican Party should get out of his way and stop trying to hurt him.”


I read this last night and spent a lot of time thinking about it as I went to sleep and after I work up this morning.


My first thought in response was Allen would probably think it was a less desirable situation that he thinks because the health care system would probably be heavily strained by all the lead poisoning that would result from such a change in our form of government.


Then this morning I thought, “No. That wouldn’t happen. The military would be required to implement it and the leadership would quietly and firmly tell him that they took an oath to defend the constitution from all enemies–foreign and domestic. But then it occurred to me that the military course of action would probably be to replace Obama with the next in line to succeed the President. I’m not certain what Biden would do but I am of the opinion that Pelosi and the Marxists in Obama’s cabinet would all be inclined to take the role of dictator. What would happen if all the Commander-in-Chief replacements said their position was that a dictatorship (or the equivalent) was what was required?


Bear with me for a minor tangent…


Last week a friend (who I think I might have already known had a gun but he does not identify as a “gun-owner” like many of my friends) was on a rant about the debt, the bailouts, the health care farce, etc. and said he was about ready to get out his gun and start oiling it. He might have to start shooting pretty soon he said. I asked, “Who would you shoot?” After a long pause he said, “I would figure it out.”


This is would be the problem the military would be faced with. If there is just one or two (or 1000) people that are a threat to our form of government then the solution, even though “messy”, illegal, and perhaps immoral it would still be plausible to implement. But what if it is 20% of the population that is intent on enslaving the other 80%? Do you still think it could be done? Before you answer keep in mind that only about 1% to 2% of the German population was involved in the Holocaust and yet that small percentage was not stopped by the vast majority. Predators have a different mindset than gives them an advantage in many situations.


I don’t know the answer. But I do know the left is getting impatient and that recent gun sales show people who value their freedom are contemplating such solution to the looming threat.

Quote of the day–Napoleon Bonaparte

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Victory belongs to the most persevering.

Napoleon Bonaparte
[I read several more chapters in The Gun Rights War last night. The stuff from the 60s is amazingly similar to the stuff today. The anti-gun people carefully worded things to spin the facts in exactly the same way. Senator Thomas Dodd (father of the present day Senator Chris Dodd) held hearings and presented data that homicides via firearms were lower in states with repressive laws–conveniently leaving out that fact that the total homicide rate was the same or higher. Read the chapter The Dodd Bill Both Fact–And Fantasy.

That chapter was written nearly 44 years ago (July 1966). Both that Senator Dodd and Neal Knox are gone and both are replaced by their sons who still fight the same battle and use the same words. The other side has had many, many victories since then. But in the last 10 years we have started winning some of the battles.

Perseverance was key to those recent victories. Of course it also helps to have the U.S. Supreme Court, the facts, and 80 million fellow citizens in arms on your side too.–Joe]

The Bigger the Government…

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…the Smaller the Citizen.


I heard that saying from Dennis Prager the other day, and it stuck.  Turns out you can buy the bumper sticker here.  Go there and watch the video too.  It’s nicely done.


Speaking of freedom; I just had a nice conversation with a pro freedom (which makes him an enemy of the state, I guess) candidate for the Idaho state legislature.  We talked while he was standing outside a local business handing out pamphlets.  I mostly asked questions.  First was; “What’s your political philosophy?”  I’ve hit others with the same question, and it stumps them a bit every time (strange, don’t you think?).  This guy reacted a little better than most.  One thing sticks out like a sore thumb anytime I talk with one of these (for lack of a better word) “tea party” candidates.  They tell me the same thing– people are pissssed offfff at the status quo Republicans and the Left in general.  I mean torches and pitchforks pissed off.  Regular Americans, who would much rather just mind their own business, have had enough B.S.  But they’re waiting for a peaceful resolution.


November 2010 can’t come soon enough.  That’s when we get what will be one of our last chances to start to resolve this from within the system.  November 2012 is a very, very long way off given the pace at which things have been going to hell.  Still; talking with people like Ike gives me some hope.  We agreed that “the fix” if it’s possible, will come from the state level, and will involve no small level of defiance of the feds.


The feds are hopeless at this point, and will resist with all effort, I believe.  That would make state politics more important than ever.

Militia Joe From Idaho

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If my memory is correct the following was originally broadcast on August 5, 1995 on the Swine Before Pearls television show (also a band) in Seattle, Washington. About the only things I can now find on the web about the show are here and here. I still have the CD from the band that has my picture from that evening on the cover.


I was going to save the video for the 15 year anniversary but there was renewed talk of an “Assault Weapon Ban” today.


I can’t watch it. It is embarrassing to me but nearly everyone that has seen it thinks it is good. They may just be attempting to make me feel better. The mangled words, the error with “three items” rather than two, other minor errors, and the obvious signs of discomfort are magnified 100 fold in my mind when I attempt to watch it.


My intent was to progress from the most extreme stereotype to something very normal to show the error of the viewing people exercising their rights in the stereotypical fashion.


Regardless of the efficacy of my effort and my comfort level this was one of my first public attempts to make a difference in the war on our right to keep and bear arms.








Maybe this will serve to show I can post really terrible pictures of myself as well as Caleb.

Quote of the day–Neal Knox

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There is a silly notion, fervently adhered to by many gun owners, that if our side of the gun issue would just sit down and talk with the other side, we could work out a “reasonable” compromise that would satisfy “society’s need to keep guns out of the hands of criminals,” while imposing little inconvenience upon law-abiding gun owners.

…and the lion shall lie down with the lamb.

Neal Knox
July 29, 1988
The Insatiable Thirst To Ban Guns
The Gun Rights War, page 118.
[He goes on to explain that after every infringement concession the anti-gun people immediately propose a further infringement. No concession by the proponents of freedom has ever appeased the anti-freedom forces.

Chris Knox added a note to the article and pointed out:

The single exception to the history of NRA either supporting or acquiescing to every Federal gun law now on the book is the 1994 Clinton ‘assault weapon’ ban. Bill Clinton signed that bill half a decade after this piece was originally written. ILA, under the leadership of hardliners, fought the Clinton ban with everything it had–and lost. The tactical loss turned into a strategic victory. The long-term result was the Democrats losing its lock on the House majority and the first sitting Speaker to be turned out of office in a century.

Today we are still enjoying the benefits of this “strategic victory” that occurred 16 years ago. The AWB is no more, the anti-gun people have significantly scaled back their ambitions, and still congress gives them a cold shoulder.

I found this quote particularly applicable because of a story Dave Hardy told a small group of us at lunch yesterday. He told us that during the debate for the Gun Control Act of 1968 the NRA seriously considered conceding defensive handguns and rallying around hunting rifles and shotguns.–Joe]

Running scared

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Mayor Bloomberg sees the writing on the wall and is backing down on the repressive gun laws in New York City:



The Bloomberg administration announced on Friday that it was moving to simplify the process for New Yorkers to obtain gun permits, thus speeding up a set of byzantine licensing requirements that gun-rights advocates have long criticized as among the most restrictive in the country.


Administration officials said that the move was forged by a City Hall focused on efficiency and that it would allow for better investigation of applicants who might not qualify for a gun while more swiftly satisfying those fit to have them.


But the timing of the decision was curious to some, as it follows a 2008 Supreme Court ruling that struck down parts of the gun-control law in the District of Columbia and subsequent challenges to gun laws in other places.


“If I were working for the mayor in New York, in the legal department particularly, I’d be saying: ‘Are we sure we can defend these laws? Are there things to do, ahead of time, that will make it easier for us to defend them?’ ” said Paul Helmke, the president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. “I would be surprised if that were not the thinking.”


The announcement was an unexpected turn for Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who has made national headlines with his efforts to take guns out of criminals’ hands and stem their trafficking, like using private investigators to pose as gun buyers in sting operations and suing gun dealers in several states.


My guess is they know they are the top of the list and in the cross-hairs for the next lawsuit and didn’t want to be in that position.


My advice to Bloomberg is–if you run you will only die tired.


(H/T to Alan Gottlieb @ SAF who told me about it this morning)

Changing Colors

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Ah, Spring!  It’s a time when the land turns green, the trees are budding, the flowers are blooming, and the Republicans begin to change their spots, pretending to be conservative in preparation for the upcoming election season.  It’s the never-ending cycle of life.

Quote of the day–Roberta X

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Why, yes, that party’s office-holders do generally appear to be worse than their Republican counterparts, in just exactly the same way that being half-hanged, drawn and quartered is worse than a lethal injection; but the end result is the same.


I will support (or at least vote for) the occasional Republican, sometimes for entirely pragmatic reasons. Don’t confuse that with being a member of the party.


Roberta X
May 8, 2010
Primaries, Devisited
[Yeah. That is pretty much how I think and feel about the topic as well.–Joe]

Quote of the day–Steven F. Hayward

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According to the annual Freedom House survey of democracy and liberty around the globe, there was almost no increase in freedom during Carter’s presidency. Instead, both Iran and Nicaragua, principal targets of Carter’s human rights policy, became human rights disasters; the Soviets cracked down on human rights activists Anatoly Scharansky and Aleksandr Ginzburg; and Carter’s foreign policy weakness encouraged the Soviets to invade Afghanistan. The aftershocks of Carter’s foreign policy failures reverberated most powerfully in the Islamic fundamentalist terrorism we have today. It was the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan that created the mujahadeen, who revived the idea of jihad. More important, the fall of the shah in Iran gave Islamic fundamentalist radicalism an enormous state sponsor and inspiration and made being an American ally in the Middle East seem more dangerous than being an American foe. Carter’s idealism failed in confronting communism during his presidency and later in confronting communist North Korea. Carter idealism–if it can be called that–in the Middle East would have us side with the terrorist PLO rather than the democratic Israel, and would have us on a perpetual merry-go-round of talks aimed at appeasing Arab dictators rather than toppling them or challenging them to reform and cease sponsoring terrorism.


Steven F. Hayward
The Real Jimmy Carter, page 230.
[One can claim, with reasonable ability to defend the thesis, that Carter was a “nice guy” and had “good intentions”. But the results of his policy are just like the “nice guys” who have “good intentions” and want infringe our specific enumerated right to keep and bear arms. They fail. They fail because they are naive. “Bad guys” exist. Bad guys take advantage of the weak. It is, as George Orwell said, “People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.”


Guns in the hands of the common person allow them to sleep peaceably in your bed at night because they can do their own violence when it becomes necessary to defend themselves and other innocent life. It is hopelessly naive to believe removing the power to do violence from the innocent will ever make the world a better place. At every level from the individual through city, state, and national level the means and the will to defend the innocent will always be a requirement for a safe and just society.


H/T to Davidwhitewolf who donated the author signed copy of The Real Jimmy Carter to the Boomershoot raffle. The inscription reads “Dear Boomershooter, Thanks for supporting the 2nd Amendment, Boomershoot 2010, and Project Valor-IT, [signed] Steven F. Hayward. I put many raffle tickets in the bucker for this book but someone else got it. They brought it to me afterward and asked me to blow it up for them. “Huh? Didn’t you read the find print on the jacket cover? It says, ‘How our worst ex-president undermines American foreign policy, coddles dictators, and created the party of Clinton and Kerry’?” Nope. They hadn’t read the fine print. I said that I would be glad to take the book and even blow it up for them if they really wanted that. But I would rather read it and use it as a source of quotes. They agreed and gave it to me.–Joe]

Quote of the day–Alan Korwin

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Under the new carry provisions, the feds are forced to comply with state laws in the 493 individual parks and “federal islands” spread throughout the 50 states. Rather than states bowing to the feds in an unholy expansion of power, the feds must bow to the states and their local gun laws. State gun laws apply in those territorial islands, and changes to state law will apply there as well. The dog is finally wagging the tail.


We could use more laws like this. This is the 10th Amendment in action.


Alan Korwin
April 5, 2010
Reverse Tenth Amendment
[Unfortunately the feds didn’t have this imposed on them by the states, they imposed it upon themselves. It seems to me that in a more utopian world the state legislatures could have voted, with a simple majority, to overthrow any federal law. Sort of like an initiative process that occurs in many states when the citizens enact or repeal laws the state legislatures and/or governor refuse to do. The feds could only override the states on issues of rights that are infringed by the states.


My utopia is far from realized and I fear I will have to find my own planet to implement it.–Joe]