Some people so treasure the truth that they use it with great economy.
H. Ray Golenor
[I got this from someone else I traded quote databases with and I don’t know if this guy even exists. There are numerous references to this same quote by the same guy, but nothing else that I could see in a quick web search. One has to wonder if politicians made him “disappear” or something.–Joe]
This is for J H. He and Joe were discussing statistics related to gun restriction in comments here.
This line of argument, taken by itself, is to say nothing of human rights, the right to live being most fundamental and the right to self defense going hand in hand with the right to live.
If we are to leave out any discussion of rights, and focus purely on how people get injured or how they die in accidents and crimes as a means of determining and justifying laws, then we’d start by banning the wheel. Swimming pools, access to rivers and lakes, etc., and stairs would be ahead of guns in private hands as a focus of legislative restriction. Somewhere in between would be legal restrictions on unprotected sex and leaving the home while ill. But that would be government thinking of the people in the same way that a farmer thinks of his cattle.
It is when we look at guns in the hands of governments that we find mass death, numbering in the tens of millions, and there you find the primary purpose of our second amendment– defense or deterrence against tyranny, or more to the point it should be seen as defense of human rights by those who hold those rights (we the people). Who then should look at whom as property? Keeping our servants in government (our cattle) properly de-horned is, historically, the more important concern if we are to have any sort of owner/property relationships with one another.
Once we’ve accepted the Nanny State as the ideal form of government, all bets are off anyway, and arguing figures and statistics alone is to fight the battle on your enemy’s chosen ground. Even being wrong in their figures, your enemy has won by deciding the terms of battle. People are in fact injured and killed through the use of or involvement with guns in private hands. That is a fact. Hence the Nanny State will find an excuse to restrict them if that’s what they want and if they feel safe in doing it.
The true winning argument is that the state has no legitimate jurisdiction over any behavior or possession that in itself does not violate the rights of other people. If I have a gun in my pocket I haven’t violated any other person’s rights by that fact alone. If I haul off and smack someone at random in the head with a baseball bat, it is not the fault of the state for allowing free, un-restricted access to baseball bats. It is I who would have committed a crime by violating the rights of another person, for which I would rightly be held accountable. In attempting to restrict generally the access to baseball bats as a result of my crime, the state would be perpetrating tyranny by way of making victims out of innocent persons. We call that sort of behavior “prior restraint”– restraining someone in some way prior to them having threatened or done anything wrong to anyone.
It is well and good to point out the stupidity of arms restrictions, and how their effects are virtually always counter to the stated goal of making people safer, but those issues are a distant secondary to the issues of human rights. Otherwise we’d be confiscating automobiles, banning certain sports, et al. Without human rights as the fundamental principle guiding our policies, the totalitarian state is an inevitability.
…that a movie was made, paralleling “Reefer Madness” exactly, scene for scene, gesture for gesture, line for line including the dramatic introduction, merely substituting “marihuana” for guns? Yes, I believe it is. An NRA agent arrives in town, starts promoting guns, and all hell breaks loose. “Gun Madness”.
If you haven’t seen the 1930s movie “Reefer Madness”, by all means do watch. It’s not only illustrative of what the totalitarians have been up to for generations, it’s a real hoot, especially considering that those who made it were trying very hard to appear serious. I can picture Di Fi standing before the concerned parents at the school meeting, eyes glaring, finger pointing at the camera…
Hmm..you don’t suppose the VPC or other anti-gun groups could be talked into providing some of the funding?
Sometime in the mid ’90s Alan Gottlieb spoke to the Microsoft Gun Club (now called the Gun Club @ Microsoft) and I asked him, “From the evasive words they use it’s clear the anti-gun politicians know gun control doesn’t make people safer. So what is the real reason they advocate more gun control?” He answered, “It depends on the politician. Some want to change the culture to one of dependence on government. Others just hate guns. And we have sometimes joked that because of the high number of criminals in his district Chuck Schumer was just voting to protect his constituents.”
Perhaps it wasn’t really that much of a joke. Apparently the intent of the Sullivan Act was to protect the criminals:
New York state Sen. Timothy Sullivan, a corrupt Tammany Hall politician, represented New York’s Red Hook district. Commercial travelers passing through the district would be relieved of their valuables by armed robbers. In order to protect themselves and their property, travelers armed themselves. This raised the risk of, and reduced the profit from, robbery. Sullivan’s outlaw constituents demanded that Sullivan introduce a law that would prohibit concealed carry of pistols, blackjacks and daggers, thus reducing the risk to robbers from armed victims.
The criminals, of course, were already breaking the law and had no intention of being deterred by the Sullivan Act from their business activity of armed robbery. Thus, the effect of the Sullivan Act was precisely what the criminals intended. It made their life of crime easier.
As the first successful gun-control advocates were criminals, I have often wondered what agenda lies behind the well-organized and propagandistic gun-control organizations and their donors and sponsors in the United States today. The propaganda issued by these organizations consists of transparent lies.
By advocating more gun control Chuck Schumer and Carolyn McCarthy are just continuing the fine tradition of New York politics.
So distant is America today from it’s founding principles that it is difficult to precisely describe the nature of American government. It is not strictly a constitutional republic, because the Constitution has been and continues to be easily altered by a judicial oligarchy that mostly enforces, if not expands, the Statist’s agenda. It is not strictly a representative republic, because so many edits are produced by a maze of administrative departments that are unknown to the public and detached from its sentiment. It is not strictly a Federal republic, because the states that gave the central government life now live at its behest. What, then, is it? It is a society steadily transitioning toward statism.
Mark R. Levin
Page 192, Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto
[H/T to Kevin who inspired me with this quote to get the book.–Joe]
I was talking with a pro-gun lobbyist recently and he suggested a possible solution to a weakness the bigots are trying to exploit:
Under the proposed legislation, to carry concealed weapons people need only meet the minimum requirements of federal law to possess a gun, be permitted in their home state to carry a concealed weapon, and abide by a state’s concealed carry location restrictions. For example, Alaska allows adult residents to carry a concealed weapon without a license, background check, or training as long as they are allowed to possess a gun under weak Alaska gun laws – even if they have committed repeated violent misdemeanors or have committed misdemeanor sex offenses against minors. This legislation would force the other 47 states that allow concealed carrying to allow many Alaskan violent misdemeanants to carry concealed guns in their state, even if a state completely bans gun possession by such persons.
This same sort of thing is why Nevada stopped recognizing Utah carry permits.
His proposed solution would be for states to create a two tier concealed carry license system. Tier 1 would be whatever the State thought was appropriate for their need. If that was a lifetime permit, no training requirement, and you had a detectable pulse, then fine. Tier 2 would have a set of requirements which was the union of the most stringent requirements of all the other states. Hence if Nevada required four hours of training, and Texas required eight hours (pulling numbers out of the air) then the training requirement for a tier 2 CWP from State X would be eight hours. Similar things for other requirements on license duration, age restrictions, etc.
This could be a win for both people that want to carry and the state that issues the tier 2 permit. You would have to get just one permit to carry in all the states that recognize out of state permits. And the state would be in a position to have a decent revenue stream because they were “selling a valuable product”.
Is there a downside to this scheme? Sure, the 2nd Amendment should be my carry permit. But we aren’t there yet. But this would be one step closer to being able to carry nationwide with far less effort. When you can and do carry in all states we can then more easily demonstrate the bigots are just blowing smoke and we can work on reducing the most onerous restrictions in the unfriendly states and making “tier 1” in the friendly states be “Vermont Carry”.
Is there some unintended consequence that might come out of this and come back to bite us?
Yesterday I came across a letter from a supposed Idaho gun owner that really has me wondering. Is this some sort of Brady revenge for Mary McFate? Are they having people send out fake letters? Or is just some old guy with the early signs of Alzheimer’s?
July 8, 2009
The Honorable Patrick J. Leahy The honorable Jeff Sessions
Chairman Ranking Member
U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary
224 Dirksen Senate Office Building 152 Dirksen Senate Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20510 Washington, D.C. 20510Dear Chairman Leahy and Ranking Member Sessions:
I am writing to express strong disagreement with the National Rifle Associations’ (NRA) views on Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s nomination to the Supreme Court of the United States. NRA concerns were sent to you in a letter from Executive Director Chris Cox dated July 7, 2009.
I am a veteran, a manufacturing firm executive and a gun owner. I own three pistols, two riles and a shotgun. I enjoy hunting, target shooting, and the feeling of safety that guns provide.
I have lost respect and trust in NRA to deal with gun matters in America and encourage you to ignore their advice about Judge Sotomayor’s confirmation.
NRA characterizes the firearms issue through the narrow toilet-paper tubes of fear that ‘liberals’ with an anti-gun agenda will take away our guns. The reality is that illegal and improper use, storage, or transfer of guns is a significant problem in America. I strongly support gun ownership but come down on the side of organizational and personal responsibility and competence with respect to guns. Guns are dangerous.
When I was a youth and through my 30s I was an NRA member, looked forward to my American Rifleman magazine, and counted on NRA to help keep ‘gun control’ a private, not government matter. NRA provided hunter and sportsman skills, safety, property rights, and firearm maintenance training for many years; however, NRA’s emphasis has become political, not around firearm competence and responsibility. When I was a Boy Scout assistant scoutmaster, NRA was not there for my sons and other boys in the troop so I was forced to arrange gun safety and skills training through off-duty police. Here in Idaho where I live there are no NRA basic firearm training programs even though this is a great outdoor sports state.
I have high respect for Judge Sotomayor. If I were able to question at her confirmation hearing, here are some I would like to ask:
- Do you believe that gun ownership in America carries responsibility by the owner to be competent in the storage, handling, maintenance, and use of the owned firearms?
- Do you think that the ‘well regulated militia’ language in the second amendment implies that private gun owners should be trained and certified perhaps as automobile drivers are tested for knowledge, skill, and abilities?
- Should gun ownership carry insurance requirements for liability and health damages caused by the gun owner?
Thank you for considering my views.
[Signed]
Laurence P. Gebhardt
1200 Aspen Drive
Pocatello, ID 83204
From reading what I can about this guy (samples are here [in the comments], here, here, here, and here) he has significant liberal tendencies. So this may just be an issue of supporting whatever the Democrats support. I assure you, what he says about the NRA and gun ownership does not represent any of the gun owners I know in Idaho. I know a fair number of gun owners that are unhappy with the NRA but what their problem with the NRA is that they feel the NRA should compromise less and take a stronger stand against unconstitutional and ineffective laws. Just the opposite of this guy. And he has basic facts wrong. Example:
He then goes on to suggest Judge Sotomayor should be asked questions that are totally inappropriate for a judge. They are appropriate for a legislator or someone in the executive branch, but a judge? And the content of the questions are of a type I would expect to be asked by some intern at the Brady Campaign.
This isn’t like any Idaho gun owner I know.
The economic stimulus plan has created or saved 150,000 jobs since its inception in February, a senior White House Budget Office official said Wednesday.
Rob Nabors, the deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget, told a congressional panel that the jobs figure is based on an economic model used by the Obama administration.
I wonder if that was using the same economic model that generated this graph (from Kevin):
At Microsoft when our tools yield results that even a little bit erratic we investigate and fix them. I would suggest the Obama administration examine their tools but I am suspicious the tools involved are producing the results desired by the administration and they see no need to even investigate–let alone fix them.
Some people call them vultures. I call them capitalists providing a much needed service. It’s no surprise the people calling them vultures are in San Francisco:
The California IOU has become the prey of so-called vulture investors who hope to profit by buying them on the cheap and redeeming them later.
The idea is that “distressed asset investors” (their nicer name) will pay less than face value to mom-and-pop businesses that receive IOUs but need cash immediately to meet payroll or other expenses. Once the IOUs mature on Oct. 2, the investors will cash them in for their full value plus the 3.75 percent interest the state is offering.
They call the IOU “the prey”? What does that make the state of California? Bambi’s mother? The parents of baby seals? In reality the state is the predator. The state contracted for services and/or goods (or taken excess money in taxes then failed to return the excess as promised) and is now failing to live up to the contract. Had they given IOUs to those that had not provided goods and/or services, such as welfare recipients, I would be less harsh in condemning the state. But to receive something of value and then fail to compensate them as agreed is really unacceptable.
But these people see the state fail to live up to its obligations creating countless victims, the capitalists provide relief to the victims, and then they condemn those providing the relief–that is some sort of insanity. Sometimes I have to conclude that Michael Savage is right on at least one point–Liberalism is a Mental Disorder.
The sad part is that the IOUs are, in essence, a new form of currency. I’m certain the state will soon realize this and start offering to pay in IOUs instead of money. The people, knowing they can sell them for 85% (whatever) of face value will ask for IOUs with face value of $118 for every $100 (85% of 118 is ~100) of goods and/or services. The state will, in a sick, perverted, rationalized sort of way, figure their money mostly problems are solved and not cut back on spending. This will drive the state faster and harder into the financial abyss.
Expect that result to be blamed on “vultures” as well.
You can pick a socialist out of large crowd in about 3.5 to 3.85 seconds. He’s the one angrily protesting the use of the word “socialist” while simultaneously advocating socialism, while simultaneously trying to sound educated. That’s quite a trick. You have to give socialists that much; they can be fairly good at multi tasking and they have been known to work hard. Loudly advocating stagnation and decay, while strenuously denying it at the same time, all while taking and disposing of other people’s property and money, while compiling massive lists of massive lists of massive sub lists of dos and don’ts for all of us to follow, all under various threats, isn’t easy. Fighting the revolution and getting the constitution written and ratified was a minor task by comparison.
In comments here, Endif, running full speed and damn the torpedoes into my nets, referred to the federal takeover of banks and automakers (and presumably everything else the government has taken over in whole or in part, from education to agriculture to energy and transportation industries, to drugs, alcohol and gambling, etc., etc., etc., etc.) as “Investment”.
Socialists get all agitated and defensive at the mention of the “S” word. What is to be done about it? What term designating state sponsored coercion would they accept as properly defining their belief system? We know they quit liking the term “Liberal” and they never understood that “Fascist” applied to them. You call one of them a Fascist and they’ll take offense, thinking you’re calling them a conservative. It’s great fun but it doesn’t lead to even a rudimentaqry level of understanding when two people are using the same words but speaking entirely different languages. They seem to be using “Progressive” less and less too, now that more people know where and when that political term originated.
What’s happening in the U.S. is more akin to Fascism. It’s all the same to me, or to put it another way; the subtle distinctions between different versions of state sponsored coercion don’t interest me, nor do the distinctions between the Crips and the Bloods. Nor do I much care what the advocates and practitioners of socialism prefer to be called– I just know what they don’t like being called, and that in itself is interesting.
Tell us which you prefer, Socialists, the word “socialism” or the word “Fascism”. If you dislike being called a socialist, surely you have some specific preference. We know you don’t like “Nazi” mainly because you think it too means conservative. “Moderate” works for me, since moderates are people who have accepted the premises of socialism but aren’t willing to admit it. “Socialist in denial” is pretty descriptive too, if redundant. Ooh; how about “Investment Coordinator”? Hey, I like that. We can henceforth refer to socialists as Investment Coordinators. They’ll like that, I bet. But wait; what would we call real investment coordinators?
On second thought, I’ll keep calling socialists socialists. We all know what it means, even if socialists try to act like they don’t.
It is a mark of modern ignorance to think that we have become progressively smarter…. Who is to say whether the task of tackling a problem without the benefit of a well-developed body of methods and information may not have required far greater intellectual vigor and originality than is needed [today] for proceeding from problem to problem within the safely established disciplines? Prehistoric, early historic, as well as medieval science have faced such a task.
Thomas Goldstein
The historian of science, not the other one.
[I would extend Goldstein’s observation to politics. Compare the results of the U.S. Constitution to those advocated by Marx a few decades later and implemented a century or two later.
Modern ignorance. Yes, that describes what I see in politics today.–Joe]
A guy on our team speaks with a very noticeable German accent. I never thought much of it. Another guy is from South Vietnam, another from China, the new person on our team (just today) and my officemate are both from India. If there is anything unusual about the foreigners around the office is that they work harder than the U.S. born people. This guy is no exception. I see emails sent by him from late at night and all weekend.
But he stopped by to talk about stuff last Thursday and we ended up talking about where he grew up. He was born in East Germany. I hadn’t realized that. For some reason I always thought of West Germany whenever I might have considered his origins. He hates the communists. “Communism makes people lazy. Yah!”
I said it always amazes me that experiment has been run so many times and resulted in 10s of millions dead and still people keep wanting to try it again. I told him of someone I know who told me they didn’t think people should own their own houses. The government should own them and allocated them on the basis of need. This person told me, “You and Barb don’t need such a big house. Some other family with a larger family needs it more than you do.”
His eyes narrowed and his jaw clenched. “You tell them I lived that. You tell them to go visit this town. Yah!”, and he showed me a town on a map of Germany. “Not one bomb was dropped on that town during the entire war”, he said. “There was no fighting in that town. But if you go there that town looks like it was all bombed out. When people don’t own their property they don’t care. The roofs, they are all falling down. Yah! You tell him to go there and look for himself.”
After he got married they applied to the housing allocation board for a place to live. There was “nothing available”. But other people who applied after him got really nice places. But they were the children of the people on the board, and the people who had connections to people on the board. After two years the housing board told him that his parents had permission to make some changes to their place (I understood this to be partitions, plumbing, etc.) and then he and his wife could live there.
He told me he graduated, “The best in my class.” But he couldn’t get into college because his family weren’t “good communists”. He got a job in a picture tube factory (television sets I presume) and he did so well the company used its pull to get him a position in school. He got a B.S. and M.S. in electrical engineering. Then he got a PhD in Computer Science.
After the Germany’s were reunited his father obtained his secret police file. Every letter to or from West Germany, where some of their family lived, was read and a summary was put in his file. He found out who had spied on him and who said things about him that put his loyalty to the communist party in doubt and stopped his career.
“Joe”, he said, “People complain about how unequal things are with the rich executives in a capitalist society. But it’s just the same under communism–it’s the politically connected that have the money and the people that aren’t connected don’t have anything. I know. I lived it. Communism, it’s very bad.”
I need to ask what he thinks of the plans for health care and the take over of the banking industry, etc. in this country. That should be interesting.
I’ve wondered for some time what that New Hampshire slogan really meant. On the surface it seemed to have the wrong people dying. “Leave me alone or die”, I thought, would make more sense, or “live free or kill”, but the meaning of the slogan is something different, as Walter Williams reports. He goes through some development before getting to the New Hampshire bit;
[Mark] Steyn points how it might seem bizarre to find the progressive left making common cause with radical Islam. One half of that alliance is pro-gay, pro-feminist secularists and the other half is homophobic, misogynist theocrats. Steyn argues what they have in common overrides their differences, namely, “Both the secular Big Government progressives and the political Islam recoil from the concept of the citizen, of the free individual entrusted to operate within his own societal space, assume his responsibilities, and exploit his potential.”
I never thought it bizarre at all. I’ve referred to Progressives and radical Islam as somewhat kindred spirits for years. They both hate capitalism, both hate liberty in general, both want to control the individual, both hate the very fact that the U.S. and Israel exist, and both thrive on chaos and hate prosperity. I could go on for quite a while, but you get the point.
“Live Free or Die,” which graces New Hampshire’s license plate, are the words of John Stark, New Hampshire’s Revolutionary War hero. He uttered those words decades after the War when he was 81 years old, the complete sentence being: “Live free or die: Death is not the worst of evils.” Steyn says these words should not be interpreted “as a battle cry: We’ll win this thing or die trying, die an honorable death. But in fact it’s something far less dramatic: It’s a bald statement of the reality of our lives in the prosperous West. You can live as free men, but, if you choose not to, your society will die.”
This weekend as we celebrate the Declaration of Independence and the successful revolution that resulted, lets keep that in mind. To pledge one’s life, fortune, and sacred honor to the overthrow of an over-reaching government that possesses the most powerful military in the world is as serious as it gets, and many of those who did so faired rather badly during the war. We owe them a lot of respect, and only way to do that is to keep from throwing away that which they have given us.
How many Americans could even describe this country’s founding principles without getting sarcastic, to say nothing of being able to defend them? Try asking some of the people you meet this weekend and report back. I’m curious. Something like this; “Can you define this country’s founding principles?” and then, “What would you say to defend them if someone told you that those were outdated, inflexible, and dreamed up by some radical, violent, old, paternal, dead, white slave owners?” (use your own words)
Via an email from Mike:
Shooters:
The following pro-gun bills which were drafted by IdahoSSA go into effect today (July 1st):
- House bill 65 which clarified that Idaho residents can buy long guns from dealers in non-contiguous states and vice versa.
- House bill 137 which grants State parks the power to regulate discharge of firearms in campgrounds etc. but makes it clear that they have no authority to ban lawful carry. IdahoSSA is working closely with Parks and Recreation to make sure that their final rule specifically recognizes the right to carry in State Parks.
- House bill 194 which grants immunity from liability to shooting ranges, firearms instructors, and match officials.
- House bill 287 which grants immunity to employers who allow their employees to store personal firearms in their cars on company property. Employers in Idaho now have NO LEGITIMATE REASON to ban the storage of firearms in their parking lots. If you or someone you know is affected by this kind of anti-gun policy at work please send me a copy of the pertinent policy. IdahoSSA will be working to educate employers on this law.
If anyone has any questions about the effect of these bills please feel free to contact me.
IdahoSSA is your pro-gun voice. Our mission is to:
RESEARCH the current law and DRAFT proposed improvements.
LOBBY the legislature and state officials on behalf of gun rights and the shooting sports.
EDUCATE the public about the responsible use of firearms and RESPOND to media attacks on gun rights.
PROMOTE the shooting sports and ENCOURAGE the development of shooting ranges.
LITIGATE if neccessary on behalf of firearm rights.
As always: Thanks for your support!
Michael C. “Mike” Brown
Executive Director/General Counsel
Idaho Sport Shooters Alliance
208 835-3737
208 835-3744 Fax
According to some new research those unsure of own ideas more resistant to views of others:
We swim in a sea of information, but filter out most of what we see and hear. A new analysis of data from dozens of studies sheds new light on how we choose what we do and do not hear. The study found that while people tend to avoid information that contradicts what they already think or believe, certain factors can cause them to seek out, or at least consider, other points of view.
Yes, of course. No surprises there.
The analysis, reported this month in Psychological Bulletin, published by the American Psychological Association, was led by researchers at the University of Illinois and the University of Florida, and included data from 91 studies involving nearly 8,000 participants. It puts to rest a longstanding debate over whether people actively avoid information that contradicts what they believe, or whether they are simply exposed more often to ideas that conform to their own because they tend to be surrounded by like-minded people.
Very cool! Excellent hypotheses to explore.
Perhaps more surprisingly, people who have little confidence in their own beliefs are less likely to expose themselves to contrary views than people who are very confident in their own ideas, Albarracín said.
Now that explains a lot of anti-gun bigotry (actually all forms of bigotry).
Certain factors can also induce people to seek out opposing points of view, she said. Those who may have to publicly defend their ideas, such as politicians, for example, are more motivated to learn about the views of those who oppose them. In the process, she said, they sometimes find that their own ideas evolve.
I suspect this is part of why there is more support in the general population for gun control than in politicians. As they get ready to act on their original beliefs they become educated on the topic and change their ideas. That applies to those who believed gun control would increase public safety. Those politicians that push for gun control because they view guns in private hands a threat to their personal ambitions are likely to become even more set in their beliefs.
I’m just wondering aloud here. When will we decide that women are regular citizens, instead of treating female shooters as though they are a separate class of citizen? I understand that there is a perception that women need their own, separate training classes and all that, so they feel comfortable. Is that condescending to women or am I missing something? At what point, or under what circumstances, will we be treating female shooters the same as we treat male shooters (within the sport I mean)?
Maybe it’s a dumb question. Maybe men can’t help but see a woman as something special and maybe that attitude is bound to find its way into our chosen sport. Maybe some women are so accustomed to being treated differently that they expect it without a lot of thought.
Maybe the question is simply premature. Any female shooters want to comment on that? Do you believe you need separate training or separate categories in a competition, and if so, why? Should there be guns made for girls, and others for the boys and if so, why” Marketing strategies are beyond the scope of the question. Hell, maybe it’s all about marketing, in which case, never mind.
I could understand if shooting involved some heavy lifting, but even then we’ve all seen some women who can out-lift some men. So you want different weight classes, like in wrestling?
Here’s another. How long is it going to be before the various races of humans are treated the same in general, in the media, and in the courts? I understand personal preferences, but that’s quite different. I’m talking socially, politically and legally. When will I be able to tell a black guy he’s being a fool without being accused of racism, or tell a Mexican woman she’s wrong without her getting in my face on some racial or sex-related tangent? When will we be able to disagree without changing the subject as a form of crutch? I really am getting sick and damned tired of this, so I am herein putting my foot down. Knock off the race and sex defenses. Some people are using it as a tool and I’m not buying it. Not at all, and I’m getting right back in your face if you try it with me so don’t even start.
When, or under what exact specified circumstances, will the gun-restriction advocates declare their work done, pack up their tents, and get jobs? Any time you hear one of them guffaw over the assertion that they won’t quit until all guns are banned, your immediate response must be, “OK, then tell me precisely when or under what circumstances you will stop, declare victory, and find something else to do, ’cause what I see is that any time you get a win, you’re right on to calling for another restriction. This has been happening for over 70 years, so, you know, we have a pretty undeniable track record here. Go ahead. Lay out the circumstances. I have all day.”
Staying on the title subject;
A problem with saying, “this far and no farther” is you’ve already established that a) you’re willing to give ground, and/or that b) you’ve accepted or granted your opponent’s basic premise(s). Some things are properly subject to compromise (such as where to go for lunch, assuming you want the company) and others are not (such as basic rights). When it comes to basic rights, the response it not, “this far and no farther”. Properly, the response is zero tolerance, same as it would be for a robber or a rapist. If someone violates your basic rights, they are criminal and it is not incumbent upon you to prove your magnanimity by compromising with them. You fight to win, then you fight for compensation and restitution, then you fight for justice, assuming your opponent is still breathing. Few if any in Congress, for example, seem to have a clue how that might happen with regard to their violations of our basic rights.
On this one-year anniversary of the landmark Heller ruling, it is sadly clear that gun prohibitionists are as determined as ever to re-write history and live in denial. Of course, what they really want is to deny gun owners their civil rights.
To paraphrase Barack Obama, these gun prohibitionists have become bitter, clinging to their gun control agenda as if it were a religion.
Dave Workman
June 25, 2009
The Heller ruling one year later; antis still in denial
[Just as many whites clung to their bigoted beliefs about blacks for 100 year after the 13th Amendment was passed it’s going to take a long, long time before the anti-gun bigots are driven into the fringe politics along with the KKK. It should not be a surprise that the bigots of today overwhelmingly are Democrats, just as they were in the heydays of the KKK. Apparently they just can’t help it and have to hate someone.–Joe]
After the long nightmare of Microsoft health insurance, to finally be delivered into the arms of the kind and loving bureaucrats who give their all to ensure America’s veterans never want for care…
Sean Flynn
2:59 PM PDT, June 25, 2008
Microsoft employee commenting on the Obama administration’s efforts to “reform” (nationalize) health care.
Via a Bitter Twitter (or should that be Bitter Tweet?) I found this:
The federal government is spending $423,500 to find out why men don’t like to wear condoms, a project government watchdogs say is a nearly-half-a-million-dollar waste of taxpayer money.
…
But the $423,500 grant for the study is just a crumb in the NIH pie. The NIH spends $29 billion each year to help fund thousands of health studies at home and abroad.
But some questionable queries have come under close scrutiny, including a $400,000 study being conducted in bars in Buenos Aires to find out why gay men engage in risky sexual behavior while drunk; a $2.6 million study dedicated to teaching prostitutes in China to drink less while having sex on the job; and a $178,000 study to better understand why drug-abusing prostitutes in Thailand are at greater risk for HIV infection.
I presume this is part of Obama’s stimulus package. If you were to ask me I would say we should stop stimulating him.
I can see that our politicians haven’t cornered the market on stupidity and insanity. I think after a liberal/progressive person gets to a certain age, they should have a net thrown over them and hauled away somewhere. The longer they are liberal, the crazier they get.
L. Hope
Baldwinsville, USA
June 15, 2009
In the comments to First ‘anti-stab’ knife to go on sale in Britain
Via Jeff.
[In a sense I think L. Hope is right. They are, in a sense, crazy. What I think is going on is that they do not or cannot understand the complexities of the real world. They believe central planning/control by “the right people” will result in a better result than letting people make their own decisions and being responsible for their own well-being When unintended consequences happen they think they need to exercise more control rather than understanding there are people just as smart, if not smarter, working to defeat their controls and even take advantage of those controls to their advantage. Hence criminals take advantage of disarmed people by nearly risk free home invasions. The disarming of the population made the home invasions possible with only a knife as a weapon. This sort of thing is repeated on a massive scale in the black market, taxes, prostitution, gambling, etc. Government controls, implemented with the best of intentions, almost always create more problems than they fix. The person that believes government can solve everything keeps thinking “just one more law” when a new problem shows up that was caused by the previous law. Eventually, such as in this case with the “anti-stab” knife, outsiders realize the proponent of government control is in some sense insane. But unless one or more of the five conditions are broken the people on the inside will not only fail to realize their insanity but will proselytize even more. This happens even when the proponents are facing near certain death. Read up on Joseph Stalin and his supporters sometime.
The only real solution that I know of is to remove the social support for their delusions. Point out their insanity. Rub their noses in it. People that have do not have the commitment to the “cause” need to be made aware and then join in on the public humiliation of the proponents of the insanity.
If we fail to stop the insanity early enough we run the risk the next Joseph Stalin will take over the reins of power of a system intended for use only by “the right people” with predictable and catastrophic results. And even after tens of millions have died there will still be people saying Stalin was a great leader. I believe there are some forms of insanity which are not completely curable and liberalism/communism/progressivism/socialism/statism may be one of those. The best we can do is to remove them from power and ignore them as they spout their mad ravings in public.–Joe]