Category Archives: Quote of the Day

Quote of the day—Evan Nappen

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This is believed to be the first pro-gun rights decision ever issued unanimously by the New Jersey Supreme Court.

Evan Nappen
April 17, 2020
New Jersey Permit to Carry Handgun Granted after Supreme Court Remand
[I wouldn’t have been all that surprised if it had been the first pro-gun rights decision ever issued by any New Jersey court. That state is well beyond toxic to the rights of gun owners.

Regardless, YAYYYYYYYY!!!!

Progress, one lawsuit at a time.

Via The Zelman Partisans @TheZelmanPartisans.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Wayne A. Bush

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What bothers me the most about finger-lickers isn’t the fact that they’re possibly spreading an untold plethora of illnesses or disease to the rest of us. I think what bothers me the most is the absolute display of rudeness and inconsideration for others. It’s just one more sign that our society is becoming increasingly ill-mannered.

Finger-lickers actually present a real threat. According to the Centers for Disease Control, from 2008-2011, flu deaths in the U.S. averaged 53,435 per year. In contrast, during those same years, an average of 30,736 people died by firearms (19,029 of which were suicides and 245 “other”).

Since, over a period of four years, 22,699 more people died of the flu rather than guns, maybe it’s time that the federal government act to criminalize finger-licking? After all, if it saves just one life, don’t we have an obligation to try?

Wayne A. Bush
February 21, 2013
Finger Licking … Bad
[He’s got a point. This is particularly true with the higher death rate for COVID-19 infections.

But he is buying into the assumption that gun control is about reducing criminal and accidental deaths and injuries. A review of firearm law and results show such laws don’t make the general population safer.

Also, people get really weird in their thinking about contagious diseases. For example, there have been studies on how people would react to learning they unintentionally infected another person with an easily treated sexually transmitted disease versus unintentionally infecting someone with a flu and the other person died as a result. People are far more concerned/embarrassed/ashamed/whatever about the easily treated sexually transmitted disease than killing someone with the flu.

Criminalizing finger licking versus criminalizing gun ownership? I know what the choice of 90% of the population would be if they were required to chose one or the other.*—Joe]

* My choice would be to spit in the face of the person demanding I must chose one or the other. Then, I would shoot them.

Quote of the day—Lee Enfield

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The FGC-9 enables everyday people all around the world to build a 9mm semi-automatic firearm, from start to finish, using a 3D printer and commonly available, unregulated materials. It’s specifically designed to be accessible to folks with minimal gun building experience, and avoids using parts commonly or easily restricted by law in the US and Europe. Anyone can build it, and no one can stop it.

In case there was any doubt about the political ideology here, you should know that the ‘FGC’ in the ‘FGC-9’ stands for “fuck gun control”.

Lee Enfield
March 31, 2020
The FGC-9 Fulfills the Promise of 3D Printed Guns
[Things have come a long way:

It’s not going to make the anti-gun people give up the fight and become normal humans. They will, as is always the case, continue to lie and double down on their failing objectives.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Kris Brown

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At a time when we need our federal government to put the interests and safety of its people first, the Trump Administration has once again put profits over people. The Administration has used broad interpretations of the federal Gun Control Act to suggest that FFLs conduct business at a drive-by or walk-up window, as if they were a McDonalds, or at a temporary table or booth, as if they were a lemonade stand, removing the protective influence that responsible gun dealers can have on stopping the proliferation of crime guns and on educating gun owners about the risks of guns and how to mitigate them.

Kris Brown
President of Brady United
April 10, 2020
Brady Condemns New ATF Guidance for Gun Stores, “Unsafe and Indulgent”
[Interesting. The things you learn every day.

I didn’t know McDonalds requires government forms to be filled out, IDs to be checked, and background checks completed before you can drive away with your Big Mac. It does make sense though. More people die from obesity and heart disease than from being murdered by someone with a gun. Are there one burger a month limits too? That would really help. It’s just common sense.

And on the lemonade stand thing, I didn’t know that there was some sort of “protective influence” that evaporated in the open air. Does that only come in a spray bottle? Can’t that be obtained in 50 gallon drums and distributed in a continuous mist?

But the part that I find most revealing is that Brown tells us the reason the Trump Administration released the guidelines was because of “profits”. It would appear that in Brown’s world “profits” is a bad word and if “profits” are involved the activity clearly should be shut down. That aside, the concept of gun ownership saving innocent lives as well as being a specific enumerated right isn’t a part of Brown’s knowledge base.

It’s that and/or lies and deception. Very telling.

I hope Brown enjoys her trial.—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—Lisa Vaas

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We would be remiss were we to not point out what has been demonstrated time and time again: that Big Data can be dissected, compared and contrasted to look for patterns from which to draw inferences about individuals. In other words, it’s not hard to re-identify people from anonymized records, be they records pertaining to location tracking, faceprints or, one imagines, anuses.

Lisa Vaas
April 8, 2020
As if the world couldn’t get any weirder, this AI toilet scans your anus to identify you
[It’s a lot like most encryption*. Data is only “anonymized” in the minds of those doing the anonymizing. The right people, with a big enough dataset, and enough CPU cycles can deanonymize/decrypt it.

So, other than the obvious embarrassment of having pictures of your anus being featured in the next big data security breach, what is the worst way this technology be abused?

It turns out that just like fingerprints and irises you can be uniquely identified by your anus. If all toilets were equipped with cameras and the data obtained by a totalitarian government it would becoming far more difficult to keep your location private. It would violate my Jews in the Attic Test.—Joe]

* There are exceptions. One-time-pads come to mind.

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]

Quote of the day—David Kopel

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Maximizing harassment of law-abiding gun owners is a feature, not a bug, of gun control.

David Kopel
April 8, 2020
Our right to arms faces a death by a thousand cuts
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Hannah Furfaro

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People will remain at risk until most are immune to the virus either through vaccination or extensive community spread, said Yonatan Grad, assistant professor of immunology and infectious diseases at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

Without a vaccine, the end of the pandemic here could go like this: aggressive social distancing will help flatten the number of infected at any given time, but to prevent a serious reemergence, widespread testing is needed to detect those who have the virus, and those who are immune. Government officials will need to get serious about tracing who has come into contact with someone who has been diagnosed with the disease, Grad said. Once the virus is under control, he added, officials should attempt to keep infected people elsewhere from bringing the coronavirus back to Washington.

Hannah Furfaro
April 8, 2020
Coronavirus has closed Washington’s schools, at least through summer. When will it be safe to return?
[There are predictions the peak in resource use and daily deaths will in less than a week. But that assumes “full social distancing through May 2020”.

I don’t see May being a time we can return to normal. “Normal” will not return until there is a vaccine or herd immunity. Even then, because of our prolonged work from home and social distancing we will have made drastic changes in our society. I expect many companies will shed major portions of their office space. I expect schools will have made significant migration to online teaching.

I see some of this as a very good thing. For many jobs the office space and commuting in a era of high speed digital communications is a waste of resources. Imagine the time, fuel, construction materials, heating, ventilation, air conditioning, water, sewer, trash, and transportation bandwidth saved without there being “the office” to go to.

There will be a component of individual responsibility take place that I see as good as well. The need to be “in the city” will dramatically decrease. This will change the demographics and the politics of the nation and the world.

I see the loss of a major portion of the restaurants and small shops in our future. Large retailers will survive only because of their online sales. If something can be sold online and delivered in a small vehicles by one person who drops a package at your door there will be very few local shops which carry it. Items which need special handling such as perishable foods will be the partial exceptions.

We live in interesting times.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Mike Roberts @ecopoesis

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I had no idea one of the symptoms of COVID-19 was penile shrinkage.

Mike Roberts @ecopoesis
Tweeted on April 1, 2020
[It’s another Markley’s Law Monday!

This was his response to the record number of NICS checks in March.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Joe Biden

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This idea that we don’t have elimination of assault-type weapons, magazines that can have — hold multiple bullets in them, is absolutely mindless. It is no violation of the Second Amendment, it’s just a bow to the special interests, the gun manufacturers and the NRA. It’s gotta stop.

Joe Biden
September 2, 2019
Joe Biden calls for elimination of gun magazines that can ‘hold multiple bullets in them’
[“Big lie” comes to mind. And that would probably be sufficient in most cases. But this is a special case.

“Mindless.” In context, this is more Interesting.

Rule 2 of SJW’s Always Lie is once again validated.—Joe]

This was supposed to be scheduled for posting on April 6 but I got the date wrong and it went live on the 5th on the same day as a different post. I’m leaving it on the 5th because there are live links to it and if the date changes the links will be broken.

Quote of the day—bitterb @bitterb

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It seems that “Holy Shit March” is a phrase we can just use for everything in life at this point.

bitterb @bitterb
Tweeted on April 2, 2020
[This was in response to this tweet by Tamara K. @TamSlick which I was seriously considering for a QOTD in it’s own right until bitter topped it:

Almost four million NICS checks in March. That’s a lotta guns.

It’s interesting to see the normalcy bias in action. Six months ago I, in my rational mind, knew something like this was possible but it didn’t feel possible in any reality I might experience. Today, working from home, seldom going to stores, wearing a mask when you do, and wiping down everything that has had recent contact with another human before it comes in the house feels ordinary.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Brantley Starr

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The federal government forgot the Tenth Amendment and the structure of the Constitution itself.  It is concerning that the federal government believes it swallowed the states whole.  Assuming the federal government didn’t abolish the states to take their police power, the Court DENIES the motion to dismiss WITHOUT PREJUDICE.  The Court will allow the federal government to try again and explain which enumerated power justifies the federal regulation and whether it allows a taking without compensation.  The Court requests that the federal government also address any limits on that federal power and the Court’s proper role in examining the validity of the underlying rule when determining if there was a compensable taking.

Brantley Starr
United States District Judge
March 30, 2020
BRIAN P. LANE, Individually and on behalf of all others similarly situated, Plaintiff,  v. THE UNITED STATES
[Via Reason: Another Trump-Appointed Judge Benchslaps the Trump Administration for Rewriting Federal Gun Laws
[It’s a good start.

I know it’s too much to ask for, but I’d like to see those responsible for rewriting the definition of a machine gun without going through the proper legislative procedures being recommended for prosecution. If if they did go through the legislative process see the prosecution any legislators who voted for the illegal infringement of our rights as well as the criminals who advocated for such legislation.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Cam Edwards

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For years, Everytown for Gun Safety has presented itself as a moderate “gun safety” group that isn’t interested in stripping Americans of their rights, but is only in favor of “commonsense gun safety” regulations. Now they’re exposing that lie all by themselves. In a time of uncertainty, and during an emergency, Everytown is doing everything it can to prevent Americans from acquiring firearms and ammunition. There’s nothing common sense about that. Their position has nothing to do with gun safety and everything to do with keeping as many Americans as possible unarmed and defenseless when more Americans than ever before are choosing to exercise their Second Amendment rights.

Cam Edwards
April 1, 2020
Everytown Law: It’s Totally Constitutional To Close Gun Stores Right Now
[Has there has ever been a firearms restriction this organization has publicly opposed? I don’t think so and and I doubt there ever will be. Their objective is to incrementally eliminate firearms in the hands of ordinary people.

They need to be opposed and prosecuted.—Joe]

Quote of the day—STAY FKING HOME @flopperdog

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So we’ll lose 100k to Covid and another 100k to self-inflicted dumbass shootings.

STAY FKING HOME @flopperdog
Tweeted on April 1, 2020
[I realize arithmetic, or in many cases even numbers, are not within the domain of knowledge for these people. So, I’ll take care of that for this numbers illiterate.

From the CDC (2018 was the most recent data I found):

image

So, assuming a constant population, at that rate it will take over 218 years to achieve the 100k number asserted. Of course the population is almost certainly going to increase instead of remain constant. But, the rate of unintentional firearms deaths have been falling:

image

Assuming a linear* rate of fall that current 0.14 rate will drop to zero about half way through the year 2034 with a rate of 0.132 at the beginning of 2020. The area under that triangle from the beginning of 2020 until it drops to zero at year 2034.625 is 0.965 per 100K of the population. Assuming a rough population of about 280,000,000 that means about 2,700 people will die in the next 14 years due to unintentional firearm deaths before the rate drops to zero.

But, of course, the rate could increase some due to new ownership and potential lack of training. But with 100,000,000+ current owners the “worst” case is that the total number of gun owners increases to something like 200,000,000 adults.

Assuming the worst case, all unintentional firearms deaths are due to new owner gun sales inspired by COVID-19, and their rate of unintentional death by firearm is double the existing population for a few years before they are trained it is still far less than 100,000.

My rough estimate is that this dup (or evil) flopperdog is probably off by something like a factor of 25.

Not bad. I expected worse.—Joe]

* Poor assumption. It’s probably going to be closer to a decaying exponential but I don’t want to bother doing the curve fitting to find a better model. Besides, I doubt even one out of 1000 anti-gun people understand linear interpolation yet alone curve fitting and integration.

Quote of the day—Stephen P. Halbrook

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Americans should be mindful of the dangers of “emergency” decrees. History tells us that government diktats in response to man-made and natural disasters often lead to unprecedented restrictions on individual liberty that last long after the disasters are forgotten.

Stephen P. Halbrook
March 31. 2020
Will the Second Amendment Survive Coronavirus?
[I strongly agree.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Alan M. Gottlieb

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While we pursue litigation elsewhere we’re happy that the situation in New Jersey has changed. Regardless what some politicians might think, the Second Amendment is not subject to emergency orders, same as the First, Fourth, Fifth or other constitutional protections.

This is one more example of SAF’s ongoing mission to win back firearms freedom, one lawsuit at a time.

Alan M. Gottlieb
SAF founder and Executive Vice President
March 30, 2020
N.J. GOV. MURPHY BACKS DOWN, ALLOWS GUN SHOPS BACK OPEN IN SAF VICTORY
[I think legislative action is going to be increasingly difficult and even impossible in many states. The courts is where we have to fight and win. It appears to me that SAF is on the leading edge of this.—Joe]