Category Archives: Politics

Dear FBI, We urge you to disobey the law

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A bunch of U.S. Senate Democrats wrote a letter to the FBI and ATF :

We write to urge you to take appropriate steps to promote public safety and responsible firearm ownership in the wake of surging gun sales across the country.1 According to recent news reports, gun shops and ammunition dealers have experienced a massive uptick in purchases, particularly from first-time buyers experiencing coronavirus-related anxiety. We are concerned that this surge is overwhelming the National Instant Criminal Background System (NICS), and that federal firearms licensees (FFLs) need new guidance to effectively handle it.

…

We fear that a drastic increase in gun sales in response to the coronavirus pandemic could overwhelm NICS and allow prohibited individuals to obtain firearms through “default proceeds.”

…

Under current regulations, all incomplete background check records must be deleted from NICS within 90 days. Because the pandemic and recovery may last longer than 90 days, the FBI should issue an emergency directive to maintain all background-check information related to transactions with an “open” status for 90 days beyond the current state of emergency as the president proclaimed under the National Emergencies Act.

They are urging a government agency to ignore the law.

It’s nice of them to make it clear they believe the law does not apply to them. This should make a conviction easier.

I suppose this could work

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Interesting:

Could Wallowa County join Idaho?

Give the Gem State a seacoast and a border with California?

That could be the outcome if efforts succeed by a group called Move Oregon’s Border in some of the 20 counties where the group has filed requests to collect signatures on petitions.

The deadline to gather signatures in the targeted Oregon counties is early August for them to go before voters in November. Wallowa County Clerk Sandy Lathrop received the petition in April and, after conferring with the county’s legal counsel Lathrop notified MOB President Mike McCarter on Tuesday, May 5, that the group may begin collecting signatures in the county.

Only 242 signatures are needed to get it on the November ballot.

If successful this would amuse me to no end. I could see it catching on and all but the dense urban areas joining an adjoining state with a much greater affinity for freedom. The economic and political implications would be quite interesting.

Quote of the day—Mike

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I swear to God, if you’ve never felt the government’s jackboots on your neck, it’s because you’ve never stood up for yourself.

Never give an inch, Joe. Never.

Mike
May 20, 2020
[Via email. Mike also informed me:

Looks like things are heating up in Canada with a gun prohibition that covers every ar-15 model they could think of. This will also include 12 gauge shotguns. Why, you ask? Because barrel lengths are important to determine if a firearm is to be considered Non-restricted, Restricted, or Prohibited, according to the law. This new set of regulations prohibits any firearm with a bore diameter of over 20mm, which is 0.787″. As a 12 gauge bore can range from 18.5mm (0.728″) to 20.3mm (0.799″), that can cover a lot of shotguns. Worse, is that if your shotguns have screw-in chokes, those chokes cannot be considered part of the barrel when measuring firearm barrels for importation purposes; and since you must cut the bore to a larger internal diameter to have the threads with which to screw in the threads in the first place, you would be unable to import it; and if you already own such a shotgun, you will then be possession of  a prohibited weapon. Imagine if your 28″ barrelled over/under has now been deemed a machinegun, by government decree.

Writing a law which defines something not a machine into something that now is a machine gun sounds familiar from somewhere…

Why aren’t these politicians being tarred and feathered?—Joe]

Quote of the day—Tim Pool @Timcast

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Trump just said there are very “fine people” in media.

I am shocked and outraged.

Tim Pool @Timcast
Tweeted on May 8, 2020
[In case you don’t get the joke, it is in reference to the fake news a few months back which claimed Trump said white supremacist were fine people.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Walter K. Olson

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I am a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, with which I have been associated since 1985, and am the author of three books on the American civil justice system. My most recent book, The Rule of Lawyers (St. Martin’s, 2003), published in January, includes a chapter exploring the origins and objectives of the movement seeking to make makers and distributors of guns pay for criminals’ misuse of their wares. I conclude that the gun suits are at best an assault on sound tenets of individual responsibility, and at worst a serious abuse of legal process. Even more ominously, the suits demonstrate how a pressure group can employ litigation to attempt an end run around democracy, in search of victories in court that it has been unable to obtain at the ballot box. Finally, I argue that strong Congressional action to restrict litigation of this type is not only consistent with a due regard for federalism and state autonomy, but is in fact required by it.

Walter K. Olson
April 2, 2003
PROTECTION OF LAWFUL COMMERCE IN ARMS ACT HEARING
BEFORE THE SUBCOMMITTEE ON COMMERCIAL AND ADMINISTRATIVE LAW OF THE COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
[Reading the transcript was interesting. At that time, prior to the Heller Decision in 2008, SCOTUS had not definitively stated the right to keep and bear arms was an individual right. This was an issue in the hearings:

Mr. SCOTT. Thank you. In the finding, Mr. Keane, on the finding number one, citizens have a right protected by the second amendment to the United States Constitution to keep and bear arms, I notice it says ”citizens” and not ”a citizen.” there is no individual right in the Constitution to bear arms, is there?

Those were dark days.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Peter J. Boyer

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Henigan believes that it is imperative to steer the argument about guns away from the problematic area of criminal use, with its inconvenient focus on criminals, and toward the matter of guns in the home—incidents of suicide, accidental shootings, and domestic violence. This is an important shift, because it allows the gun debate to be recast as a health issue. Henigan told the Castano lawyers about the many studies that have considered guns in an epidemiological context; in other words, guns should be thought of as pathogens, and gun ownership, perhaps, as a disease.

Peter J. Boyer
May 17, 1999
BIG GUNS
The New Yorker
[I was rearranging some things in my bookcase and found the May 1999 issue of The New Yorker. The quote above is from one of the articles. Viewing the article online requires payment. The picture below is the entire second page of the article.

image

See also:

I find the wording of Henigan’s response to congressman Feeney interesting. Henigan is a lawyer and I’m sure he chose those words carefully. He doesn’t say he believes the characterizing is invalid. He only says he doesn’t endorse it. There is a reason I call him “Half-Truth Henigan”.

The mid and late 1990 were very dark days for the rights of gun owners.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Hamilton Spectator

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The assault weapon ban is fine, as far as it goes. But since a real handgun ban is unlikely, to what extent can Canadians feel safer?

Hamilton Spectator
May 5, 2020
Assault-style weapon ban is like Swiss cheese–The majority gun crimes involve handguns. This legislation doesn’t address that at all.
[I find the phrase “feel safer” very telling.

The author could have said, “… to what extent will Canadians actually be safer?” Or “… a real handgun ban is required to improve safety.” That they said, “feel safer” strongly implies they know gun bans won’t make the average person safer. They apparently have some motive other than public safety when they advocate for gun bans.

Since this is Canada it’s more difficult to get traction with a principled statement of rights. But that doesn’t mean the victimized gun owners don’t have verbal tools to fight back with.

People need to demand gun control advocates openly state their motive for restrictions on self-defense tools. If they claim public safety, then demand they supply the data that restrictions achieve that goal.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Robert Higgs and Donald J. Boudreaux

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Nothing is so permanent in government as a temporary agency or an emergency bill. Crises bring into operation new government activities and new scales of spending, taxing, and regulating; they were not intended to be permanent, yet became so by virtue of entrenched special interests and bureaucrats, often backed by congressional sponsors. Act in haste, repent at leisure.

Robert Higgs and Donald J. Boudreaux
May 5, 2020
Past Crises Have Ratcheted Up Leviathan–The COVID-19 Pandemic Will Too
[Politicians never let a crisis go to waste.—Joe]

Quote of the day—The Globe and Mail

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If a ban on military-style semi-automatics is an effective way to reduce the number of weapons in circulation and available for mass shootings, then surely a similar ban on handguns – which also have no legitimate civilian purpose, and which kill and wound more Canadians every year than any other firearm – would have a similar effect.

Friday’s announcement accomplished two things. It banned a style of weapon that has no place outside of the military, but it also reminded people who care about gun control that the Liberals have been inconsistent and at times illogical in their approach to the issue.

The Globe and Mail
May 1, 2020
Trudeau’s hurried assault-rifle ban is a weak half-measure
[Says the voice of reason.

Well actually… ignorance, stupidity, and/or evil.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Group of Democrats

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While the surge in firearm sales from federally licensed dealers has received nationwide attention, at least 16 companies that sell ghost gun kits have reported order backlogs and shipping delays due to overwhelming demand. The uptick in sales of ghost gun kits and parts have received substantially less notice, even though the increase in sales of ghost guns poses a direct threat to public safety and law enforcement… Because the proliferation of ghost guns is a serious problem, we write to request…information and documentation to probe how the ATF is monitoring, overseeing, and regulating the sale of ghost gun kits and unfinished frames and receivers, amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Group of Democrats
April 2020
Congressional Democrats seek answers from ATF on efforts to track “ghost guns”
[<snort!>

The last time I checked the ATF didn’t have the authority to do any such thing. Furthermore people engaging in legal behavior should not be monitored, overseen, and regulated. They should, and currently are, for the most part, left alone. As they should be. That a “Group of Democrats” expects a government agency to engage in such behaviors tells you all you need to know about that group. They should be forever barred from public office, government jobs, and any government pension.

I also recommend law enforcement investigate to see if an 18 USC 242 case could be pursued. People like this need to be made into examples to discourage others from going down the same path.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Scott Adams @ScottAdamsSays

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Democrats are so worried about Trump’s decision-making that they want to replace him with an elderly dementia patient with credible #metoo allegations. How can Trump learn to make good decisions the way Democrats are doing by picking Biden? Is that a learnable skill?

Scott Adams @ScottAdamsSays
Tweeted on April 27, 2020
[Excellent question!

The answer depends upon what tribe you belong to.

If you belong to tribe R then no matter how many times people correct, shame, scold, punish, and ridicule you it will intuitively obvious to the most casual observer than you are beyond all hope of learning anything.

If you belong to tribe D then there is no need to learn it. It is an inherent trait that cannot be diminished in any way, certainly not by obvious dementia, and perhaps not even by death.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Mark Knapp

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Leopold & Loeb were trying to commit the perfect crime and never expected to become famous by their crime. At the same time, they prided themselves on their ability to throw off the shackles of morality and demonstrate to each other that they had achieved Friedrich Nietzsche’s ideal; i.e., the Superman, who arises above moral arguments that are designed by the weak to hold back those with the will to become strong. Despite the manner in which the present day Progressive elite camouflages its motives by appeals to social justice and egalitarianism, such Superman morality is at the core of much of our modern culture. It all boils down to survival of the fittest if there is no absolute groundwork for our moral beliefs!

Mark Knapp
January 8, 2014
Leopold, Loeb, Active Shooters, Modern Man & Superman
[I think this overstates it a little bit. Multiple, incongruent, moral philosophies can co-exist. For example, Jainism, Objectivism, and Christianity shouldn’t have a problem with the others and get into a survival of the fittest contest. Yet, they are very, very different.

Quibbling aside, his point about Progressives does seem fair. You can see it in their attitudes toward gun owners and conservatives in general. You see moral superiority at every turn.

In one specific case it was scary. An Obama supporting woman I knew several years ago proudly told me she and I were one of the “new humans” or some such thing. And it was people like us who would take over the world as lesser humans failed to keep up. She was sure we were more advanced and knew better than “ordinary people” on most topics.

She apparently didn’t realize I disagreed with her on almost every topic she had expressed an opinion about. I just didn’t see any reason to confront her on the multitude of absurdities she asserted.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Shannon Watts

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The leaders participating in our ‘Demanding Women’ series are doing everything in their power to fight the coronavirus pandemic and its intersections with systemic racism and inequities. From voter access issues to rising rates of city gun violence and domestic violence, these women are leading the conversation to demand a better, safer world for every American.

Shannon Watts
April 24, 2020
Everytown For Gun Safety With Moms Demand Action Launch New “Demanding Women” Virtual Conversation Series Featuring Stacey Abrams, Senators Elizabeth Warren, Amy Klobuchar, Kamala Harris to Discuss Gun Violence in the Time of a Pandemic
[It’s amazing how many lies, deceptions, and assumptions of facts not in evidence can be packed into just two sentences. That’s truly impressive!—Joe]

Quote of the day—Dave Workman

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On the heels of a mass shooting rampage in Canada, a nation with some of the strictest gun laws in the hemisphere—laws the gun prohibition lobby would like this country to emulate, were it not for the pesky Second Amendment—Biden’s gun control agenda is unlikely to win any converts in the firearms community, and it will give U.S. gun owners plenty to think about as November draws closer.

Dave Workman
April 21, 2020
Biden Website Reveals Alarming Gun Control Agenda
[Workman leaves it a little bit ambiguous on a minor point. There is a difference between “plenty” of evidence to think about and the amount of time given to thought about Biden as President of the U.S.

Biden’s mental faculties have been degrading at an alarming rate. I wouldn’t be surprised to see live appearances halted before November to avoid the instances of him talking to lamp posts, nibbling on tree branches, and inviting children to rub the hair on his legs.

His gun control agenda is extremely problematic but knowing, should he become the President elect, he is likely to be unable to repeat the oath of office* by the end of January is going be of greater concern.—Joe]

* As if the oath has been of any importance to any of the presidents in the last 200 years.

Quote of the day—Trevor Burrus

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After we come out of this pandemic, the stockpiling of food and water is likely to go up. There could be more anxiety about times when such essentials are unobtainable or difficult to get, and there will be an understanding that if that time occurs, there will be desperate people who might be dangerous. Protecting yourself and your loved ones might then be necessary. It could be better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it.

Trevor Burrus
April 15, 2020
COVID-19 could change the gun control debate for a generation
[“Could”.

I suppose that true. And Justice Ginsberg could decide the 2nd Amendment means what it says. But that’s not the way to bet.

I see COVID-19 giving us a another 5% points in elections for maybe three to five years. That might be enough to get enough judges in the courts to make the difference between winning and losing. But it’s still a close call.

I’m still sending lots of money to SAF and FPC to keep those lawsuits going because the game is still a long, long way from being over.

H/T to Stranger for the pointer.—Joe]

Quote of the day—John Cooke

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While the pro-gun control group “Moms Demand Action” was able to review the bills with enough time to arrange a protest on the day they were introduced, Republicans such as myself were unaware of the bills’ contents. That’s the way the Democrats want it. These bills aren’t about saving lives; they aren’t about finding a balance. They’re about sending a subtle message to Coloradans: “Hell yes, we’re coming for your guns. It just might take a while.”

John Cooke
R-Greeley
Representing District 13 in the Colorado Senate.
April 8, 2020
‘Indeed, they are coming to take your guns’
[Lies and deception. That is how the anti-gun people operate. It is an essential part of their culture.

Respond appropriately.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Elizabeth Simas

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Gun control regulations are an interesting thing. Public opinion in support of them tends to spike any time there is a major incident or a mass shooting of some sort. And if schools aren’t in session, if people aren’t having large meetings in churches and in shopping malls and concerts and all these other places, then we’re not having mass shootings.

Elizabeth Simas
Political science professor at the University of Houston
April 13, 2020
Gun Safety Groups Face Uphill Battle In Face Of COVID-19
[Interesting observation!

This reminds me of something I said over seven years ago (The necessity of an accurate problem statement):

What’s an orthogonal solution? In the case of the school shootings a solution to “ban guns” versus “good guys with guns” an orthogonal solution would be to “ban schools”. For example if children were to be taught online supervised by their parents or in much small groups there wouldn’t be such large groups of tempting, nearly helpless, targets.

….

In the case of school shootings examine the following problem statements, somewhat exaggerated to make the point:

  • There are too many guns brought to schools.
  • Good guys are prohibited from protecting themselves and our children at schools.
  • An unacceptably high number of children at schools are being injured and killed by people with guns and other weapons.

Depending on the choice of problem statement the range of solutions are completely different. And there may be other problem statements beyond what I have enumerated above. Defining the problem correctly is frequently more difficult than finding solutions.

“Thanks” to the pandemic we may be approaching the orthogonal solution to school shootings I suggested years ago.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Justice Lloyd Karmeier

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The majority’s decision resolves this appeal based on an issue no one has raised, decides the issue through misapplication of principles we have no reason to discuss, and remands the case to the circuit court for entry of an order that is clearly meritless and serves no purpose. Neither the parties nor the interests of justice will be served by this unexpected and pointless exercise.

Justice Lloyd Karmeier
April 2, 2020
THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS, Appellant, v. VIVIAN CLAUDINE BROWN, Appellee.
[I’ve blog about this case before.

This case began almost three years ago when a rifle was found in Brown’s home and she did not possess, and had not applied for, a Firearm Owner’s Identification Card (FOID). The majority in this decision are extremely reluctant to declare the licensing of a specific enumerated right unconstitutional and have sent it back to the lower court.

Contrary to the minority decision quote above it does serve a purpose. It preserves an illegal requirement imposed by the state for several months perhaps even a year or more. It causes the wronged parties, gun rights organizations as well as the innocent victim Brown, to expend more resources getting this illegal law partially overturned. It blocks the further liberation of gun owners suffering under oppressive laws in Illinois should the FOID requirement fall. This, I believe, was the real purpose behind the decision by the majority.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Christopher Ryan @ThatChrisRyan

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Republicans are against voting, against women, against education, against health care, against a living wage … at what point do we conclude they are against human beings?

Christopher Ryan @ThatChrisRyan
Tweeted on April 9, 2020
[This is what they think of you.

Typical left wing politics. It looks like Ryan is prepping the battlespace for the railroad cars and the final solution.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Sheriff Steve Reams

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While I understand each person’s choice to disagree with me, my response to those individuals is this: I’m not comfortable giving up the fight for their constitutional rights in exchange for their vote/support.

Steve Reams
Sheriff Weld County Colorado
March 2020
Colorado Inmate Red Flags Sheriff
[And others are not only comfortable and willing but desirous and eager to strip the people of their constitutional rights.

Culture, philosophy, and elections are important.—Joe]