Category Archives: Quote of the Day

Quote of the day—UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

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As the Court explained in Turner II, the deferential principle outlined in Turner I applies mainly in “cases . . . involving congressional judgments concerning regulatory schemes of inherent complexity and assessments about the likely interaction of industries undergoing rapid economic and technological change. Though different in degree, the deference to Congress is in one respect akin to deference owed to administrative agencies because of their expertise.” Turner II, 520 U.S. at 196 (emphasis added). Not so here. While the issue of gun violence is important and emotionally charged, it does not involve highly technical or rapidly changing issues requiring such deference. The state cannot infringe on the people’s Second Amendment right, and then ask the courts to defer to its alleged “expertise” once its laws are challenged.

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT
VIRGINIA DUNCAN; RICHARD LEWIS; PATRICK LOVETTE; DAVID MARGUGLIO; CHRISTOPHER WADDELL; CALIFORNIA RIFLE & PISTOL ASSOCIATION, INC., a California corporation, Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. XAVIER BECERRA, in his official capacity as Attorney General of the State of California, Defendant-Appellant
August 14, 2020
[Another loophole closed by this decision!

California has been arguing that the legislature should be given deference when there is a conflict between what the courts say and what the legislature passes. This decision explains why that might sometimes be the case and why this is not the case in regards to the 2nd Amendment issues before the court.—Joe]

Quote of the day—William Taylor @BillT

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Don’t overlook the fact that those that are stealing stuff and making the excuse that it’s justified because of some perceived repression won’t hesitate to make the leap that it is alright to take your life for the very same reasons.

William Taylor @BillT
Tooted on August 17, 2020
[See also yesterday’s QOTD.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Christian Johann Heinrich Heine

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Dort wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man auch am Ende Menschen.

[Where they have burned books, they will end in burning human beings.]

Christian Johann Heinrich Heine
Almansor: A Tragedy (1823)
As translated in True Religion (2003) by Graham Ward, p. 142
[Note that he wrote this nearly 100 years before USSR was created and 110 years before Nazi Germany began burning books and shortly thereafter people.

There is a sound reason why the progression from burning books to burning people occurs. The reason for the book burning is to stop the spread of “dangerous” ideas. When the book burning fail the desired goal then the spread of those ideas “must” be stopped by the “burning” of the people who spread the ideas.

Black Lives Matter and Antifa have taken the first step. Respond appropriately.—Joe]

Quote of the day—UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

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A “substantial burden” on the Second Amendment is viewed not through a policy prism but through the lens of a fundamental and enumerated constitutional right. We would be looking through the wrong end of a sight-glass if we asked whether the government permits the people to retain some of the core fundamental and enumerated right. Instead, Heller counsels us to look at whether the government regulation restricts the core fundamental right from the outset. In other words, we look to what a restriction takes away rather than what it leaves behind. Here, California’s law takes away a substantial swath of the core constitutional right of self-defense because it bans possession of half of all magazines in America today, even though they are common in guns used for self-defense. In short, a law that takes away a substantial portion of arms commonly used by citizens for self-defense imposes a substantial burden on the Second Amendment.

…

The very purpose of a Bill of Rights was to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy, to place them beyond the reach of majorities and officials and to establish them as legal principles to be applied by the courts. One’s right to life, liberty, and property, to free speech, a free press . . . and other fundamental rights may not be submitted to vote; they depend on the outcome of no elections.

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT
VIRGINIA DUNCAN; RICHARD LEWIS; PATRICK LOVETTE; DAVID MARGUGLIO; CHRISTOPHER WADDELL; CALIFORNIA RIFLE & PISTOL ASSOCIATION, INC., a California corporation, Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. XAVIER BECERRA, in his official capacity as Attorney General of the State of California, Defendant-Appellant
August 14, 2020
[Excellent! I had not thought of this argument before.

This addresses the claim made by some (I exaggerated a bit to make the point) that as long as we have single shot 22 rifles available the Second Amendment is not infringed.—Joe]

Quote of the day—UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

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Commonality is determined largely by statistics. But a pure statistical inquiry may hide as much as it reveals. In the Second Amendment context, protected arms may not be numerically common by virtue of an unchallenged, unconstitutional regulation. Our colleagues in the Third and Seventh Circuits agree. See ANJRPC, 910 F.3d at 116 n.15 (common use alone “is not dispositive” because of an unconstitutional regulation restricting the quantity of protected arms in circulation); Friedman v. City of Highland Park, 784 F.3d 406, 409 (7th Cir. 2015) (“[I]t would be absurd to say that the reason why a particular weapon can be banned is that there is a statute banning it, so that it isn’t commonly owned. A law’s existence can’t be the source of its own constitutional validity.”). Thus, “[w]hile common use is an objective and largely statistical inquiry, typical possession requires us to look into both broad patterns of use and the subjective motives of gun owners.” New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v. Cuomo, 804 F.3d 242, 256 (2d Cir. 2015) (“NYSRPA”) (internal alterations and quotation marks omitted). As discussed earlier, nearly half of all magazines in the United States today hold more than ten rounds of ammunition. And the record shows that such magazines are overwhelmingly owned and used for lawful purposes. This is the antithesis of unusual. That LCMs are commonly used today for lawful purposes ends the inquiry into unusualness.

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT
VIRGINIA DUNCAN; RICHARD LEWIS; PATRICK LOVETTE; DAVID MARGUGLIO; CHRISTOPHER WADDELL; CALIFORNIA RIFLE & PISTOL ASSOCIATION, INC., a California corporation, Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. XAVIER BECERRA, in his official capacity as Attorney General of the State of California, Defendant-Appellant
August 14, 2020
[Emphasis added.

YES!

If upheld this eliminates the concern about machine guns being unprotected via Heller because they have been (essentially) banned since 1986 and hence can’t be considered “in common use”.—Joe]

Quote of the day—UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

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The state of California argues that the district court erred by granting summary judgment for the Owners. We disagree with the government’s position, and we affirm. California Penal Code section 32310 severely burdens the core of the constitutional right of law-abiding citizens to keep and bear arms. The statute is a poor means to accomplish the state’s interests and cannot survive strict scrutiny. But even if we applied intermediate scrutiny, the law would still fail.

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT
VIRGINIA DUNCAN; RICHARD LEWIS; PATRICK LOVETTE; DAVID MARGUGLIO; CHRISTOPHER WADDELL; CALIFORNIA RIFLE & PISTOL ASSOCIATION, INC., a California corporation, Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. XAVIER BECERRA, in his official capacity as Attorney General of the State of California, Defendant-Appellant
August 14, 2020
[Great news out of the ninth circuit. The case is about the constitutionally of bans on normal capacity magazines. This is the second time this case has been decided in our favor. See also these posts about the first time.

This lawsuit was supported by FPC and SAF who I (and my employer) have been donating thousands of dollars to each year. This is a partial return on my investment.

Almost for certain there will be a motion for en banc rehearing. “And as the Hawaii open carry case demonstrates, CTA is perfectly willing to sit on such requests for, quite literally, years.”—Joe]

Quote of the day—Christopher F. Rufo @realchrisrufo

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To the people who are in disbelief that the woke Seattle City Council would fire a black woman police chief:

It’s never been about diversity; it’s about power.

Race is the means; Marxism is the end.

Christopher F. Rufo @realchrisrufo
Tweeted on August 11, 2020
[This seems to fit all the given data.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias

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Continued odd happenings in the Pacific Northwest where a 70% white city has hounded its Black police chief out of office as an act of racial justice.

Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias
Tweeted on August 10, 2020
[Yeah, I suppose it’s a bit odd. But if you knew the nature of the politicians in Seattle it would seem far less odd. To the casual observer they are absolutely bonkers. If you think of them as the destroyers of a city with the constraint that they intend to have minimal risk of going to prison then they are doing a great job.

Tomorrow’s QOTD will feature the most accurate hypothesis I have yet seen to explain the given data.

I do have to give Seattle Police Chief Carmen Best credit for standing up for what is right and not participating in the mass-delusion/deliberate-lie that the Seattle PD is the problem.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Norwood Paladin

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One can be displeased by the fact that Americans enjoy a unique right to self-preservation, but to deny the Second Amendment and falsely claim the right to keep and bear arms as “so-called” is intellectually dishonest. Law-abiding gun owners have every right to arm themselves. Thankfully, the Founding Fathers added no provisions in the Bill of Rights protecting the timid from never encountering things that make them uncomfortable or that offend delicate sensibilities. 

Norwood Paladin
August 11, 2020
Gun rights aren’t ‘so-called’
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Lori Lightfoot

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Again, No, We DO NOT need federal troops in Chicago.  Period. Full stop.  I’m sure the president will have his way with this incident, but I’m calling upon him to do the things we do need.  We need common sense gun control.

Lori Lightfoot
Chicago Mayor
August 10, 2020
Lori Lightfoot Says Chicago Needs “Common Sense Gun Control” — NO Federal Troops
[Mass looting, with no guns involved, which the police are unable to stop and the Mayor says the solution is gun control.

The lies are now so nonsensical that they are losing their credibility with people.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Cliff Mass

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Take a walk around downtown Seattle.  You will be shocked by a shuttered, dystopian city and made angry by the inaction and ineptness of its political leadership.   It is simply beyond words.

…

I swung by the infamous McDonalds* on Third Ave– infamous for both drug dealing and violence, and I could not believe what I saw:  an obvious drug deal going down right in front of me.

…

What didn’t I see on my two-hour walk? Not a single police officer.  Not one police car.
A boarded up central core of a major U.S. city was being left to the homeless, drug dealers, and security guards.  Even the most notorious, crime-ridden corner of the city had no police.  The streets of the city had become a fearful abandoned place.

Cliff Mass
August 5, 2020
Seattle: A City in Fear Can Be Restored
[Mass concludes with some suggestions and hope that Seattle can recover. I’m not so certain.

This morning I spent most of an hour talking with daughter Jaime about the death spiral of Seattle and other major cities. We’re not so sure Seattle can be saved. A significant part of the success of cities the last 200 years has been because most of the best jobs were in cities. Part of the response to the pandemic, many workers being able to work from home, has proven that reason is no longer valid. And just the existence of the pandemic is a deterrent to city life. Another attraction of city life was the restaurants and nightlife opportunities. Those were among the first casualties of the pandemic. So, why should people stay in the cities?

Many have already left. The people staying are those who contribute the least, if not a net drain, to the tax base. In New York Governor  Andrew Cuomo has been begging rich people to return to New York City from their second-home retreats so they can pay taxes to help offset the state’s growing coronavirus-related revenue shortfall. The people the politicians want to come back are those most sensitive to the loss of police protection for their property. So what is their motivation to return?

Add violence and property destruction to the ability to be prosperous and safe outside the mega cities and we may have a death spiral for Seattle, New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, and other large cities. Those cities have been accepting and even encouraging the terrorists who have been making the cities less desirable. So what are the plausible outcomes?

Add mega cities to the list of causalities of 2020..—Joe]

* This is ground zero of Mugme Street.

Quote of the day—GOFORBROKE231 @goforbroke231

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Vasily Blokhin. Soviet executioner at Katyn. His count of 7,000 shot in 28 days remains the most organized and protracted mass murder by a single individual on record. Somewhere in Portland, his successor rises.

GOFORBROKE231 @goforbroke231
Tweeted on August 7, 2020
[The conclusion is plausible. It’s the communist way.

I wish Portland law enforcement (this includes the prosecutors and judges) would do their jobs.and put the terrorists away for a decade or so. The more they let the problem fester the more blood that will ultimately be shed. The weak government response is so eerily like the government response to the Nazi brown shirts in the 1930s.

As a side note, just think about those numbers. 7,000 people murdered in 28 days. Assuming eight hours per day that’s more than one person every two minutes.

Be prepared to respond appropriately.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Alan Gottlieb

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Fortunately, for the gun rights movement, the strength of the NRA is not only in its leadership but in its members. Its members will not abandon the fight to protect Second Amendment rights.

Alan Gottlieb
August 6, 2020
Is New York’s Attack on the NRA Meant To Punish the Gun Rights Cause for Executive Malfeasance?
[It’s even possible that if the New York AG succeeds what comes back in place of the NRA will be a stronger and more effective fighter for gun owner rights than the NRA.

As hostile as it sometimes is to gun owners I know long time gun rights advocates have told me there were times the ATF was vulnerable enough to be abolished. But the good guys preferred they be kept in a weakened and relatively ineffective state than have the existing laws enforced by a strong and well regarded agency like the FBI (this was nearly 20 years ago).

If the NRA is taken down our side will have recourses that would have gone to the NRA and the memory of a martyr killed by our enemies.

Perhaps the anti-gun people should be careful what they wish for.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Alan Dershowitz

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I’ve never heard of a case where an attorney general’s tried to dissolve a first amendment – and in this case First and Second Amendment protected political organization – that is a bridge too far constitutionally.

If she is selectively prosecuting and selectively investigating the NRA because she disagrees with its politics, that’s wrong,

…

I believe in the Second Amendment, but I also believe in reasonable gun control. But I would defend the NRA’s right advocate its position without being subject to selective investigation and prosecution if it turns out that the attorney general is looking into this organization because she disagrees with its politics.

Alan Dershowitz
August 5, 2020
Alan Dershowitz to Newsmax TV: NRA Move Political Prosecution
[I’ve known about the NRA’s wasteful use of money since 1997 and have put the vast majority of my 2nd Amendment dollars elsewhere. But I’m with Dershowitz. I strongly suspect New York Attorney General Letitia James is attacking the NRA for political reasons.She openly says this:

Strong gun laws in NY haven’t been enough to stop the gun violence that rips communities of color apart every day. Today, I’m announcing my plans as Attorney General to stop gun violence & take on the NRA, gun manufacturers, retailers & banks that fund these weapons of death

I would like to see NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre out but that can be done without destroying the NRA.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Terri Conley

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If you inch towards suggesting that people who do something other than monogamy might not be miserable or that they might have some advantages, they were just so hostile to that. I found that really fascinating.

Terri Conley
August 4, 2020
How One Psychologist Upended Everything We Know About Women, Sex, & Monogamy
[As well as being fascinating I think making people uncomfortable with clear factual data is great fun! I love doing it with the stupidity of gun laws as well as human psychology.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Daniel Greenfield

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It’s not the Confederacy, long defeated, they are out to kill, but the thing that all radicals hate the most, the moderate ideas on their own side that compete with them for the hearts and minds of their base.

…

The mobs aren’t just here to smash up old Confederate officers. They’re out to destroy Lincoln and Grant, to tear down the Columbus statues erected by Italian immigrant groups who wanted to plant a civic flag to show they belonged, and the statues of assorted Union officers put up by other patriotic immigrant groups to show that they too had a place in the nation.

And what the mobs are out to destroy, most of all, is that old liberal vision of America. And, by the time they’re done, if there are any liberals still left, they will throw them in the same rivers and fires in which they’re casting those old symbols of progress, the explorer who defied the skeptics, the men who envisioned a representative republic, the emancipation of the slaves, and a modern America.

The mobs are coming for our history and our future. They’re coming for America and for progress. Americans used to believe that things will get better. The mobs are here to destroy that hope.

Daniel Greenfield
June 26, 2020
When Marxist Mobs Come for the Liberals
[This is somewhat consistent with what happened in the Russian Revolution. Once power was consolidated the moderates were executed.

We live in interesting times.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Sam Jacobs

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Most Americans have never heard of these acts of terrorism from leftist groups that were so numerous throughout the 1970s. But this is a prime example of “those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” The urban unrest, which has rocked America in the early 2020s, is nothing new. The 1960s saw both race riots and left-wing terrorist groups looking to exploit animosity between racial groups in America.

The question is what are we going to do about it? The answer so far from our elected officials is “not much.” If leftist terrorist cells were willing to go this far when they had active opposition from government and corporate figures alike, what are they going to do when confronted with apathy or encouragement from elected officials and the business sector?

The answer remains to be seen, but will certainly be some variant of “nothing good.”

Sam Jacobs
July 2020
America’s “Days of Rage”: The Extensive Left-Wing Bombings & Domestic Terrorism of the 1970s
[See also:

It’s a great book with surprising parallels to the current leftist violence..—Joe]

Quote of the day—Elyssa Khalifé

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So here is what happened yesterday at the “protest.” We were waiting and watching live from the precinct as the rioters set 5 portable construction offices on fire. They then completely destroyed, looted, and lit the Starbucks on 12 ave and E Cherry St. on fire. As the group was walking they were breaking random car windows, car prowling, and spray painting everything…

They made their way to the East precinct with all of us inside. They spray painted the building, tried to break the fence, they threw a mortar that left an 8 inch hole in the wall… We could see a person pouring gasoline around the building that we were occupying, which is when all of us came out. We commanded people to “move back” as we advanced. People who assaulted us were arrested. We formed a line guarding the block. People threw paint, rocks, metal, frozen water bottles, glass and improvised EXPLOSIVES at us which is when we used our dispersal tools. In the process I was injured along with 20 other officers. Yes, I was injured even though I was wearing shin guards, and other protective gear.

The puzzling part is people were chanting “I don’t see no riot here, take off your riot gear.”

Why didn’t we deploy and stop them when the looting started? Our instructions were not to respond to property damage. The fire department was delayed in response because of the big hostile crowd but they made it and started putting out fires. We only responded when they were about to literally burn down our precinct with everyone in it and the connecting apartment complexes. This is insane. I don’t know what the message here is anymore. These people were 99% white and young. They were saying the most horrible things you can imagine to officers of color. They were also assaulting each other in the crowd. I saw signs and shirts that indicated Anarchy, Anti-Christ, abolishing religion, bringing down the government, defund/abolish SPD, defunding Seattle Parks and Rec (huh?), abolishing America?! I don’t think that the point to those riots is anything but inflicting as much damage and injury as possible.

About my injury: I sustained a torn medial meniscus and I most probably will require surgery to be able to live an active lifestyle again.

Elyssa Khalifé
City of Bothell Police Officer
Posted on Facebook July 26, 2020
[This is about what happened in Seattle.

It’s not so “puzzling” to me. The bigger the lie…

The stories of the “weak government” of pre-Nazi Germany keep coming to mind.

These “people” are closer to feral animals. The officials who give orders for the police to not protect property are showing their true colors. Both groups should be dealt with appropriately. They all should be arrested and prosecuted.—Joe]

Quote of the day—James Rickards

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But getting back to Biden’s solid lead in polling, should we just cede the election to him — and his VP candidate who’d probably be in power within a year?

Not so fast. For over 80 years, pollsters have asked two key questions in election polling. The first is, “Who are you voting for?”

That’s the intention question. The second question is, “Who do you expect to win?” That’s the expectation question.

The answer to the intention question gets all the headlines. Those are the polling results we describe above. The answer to the expectation question gets buried and is scarcely discussed.

But guess what? In cases where the intention and expectation questions have different answers, (in effect, “I’m voting for A, but I expect B to win”), the expectation answer had the correct result 78% of the time.

The intention question had the correct result only 22% of the time.

And, Trump is leading the expectation question right now 55% to 45% for Biden. So, Trump actually is ahead in the polls. You just have to be looking at the right polls. That’s key. So don’t write Trump off just yet.

James Rickards
July 27, 2020
How Secure Is Biden’s Lead?
[Interesting! Very, very interesting.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Jayant Bhandari

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Western culture, which developed organically over at least the two and half millennia, starting from Greco-Roman philosophers, is not easy to duplicate. This culture requires thrift, honesty, hard work, liberty, individuality, dispassionate reason, objective justice, loyalty, honor, stoicism, a desire to rise above oneself, and many other factors that perhaps cannot be seen or isolated but must be absorbed subliminally in all their complex interactions. These are reflected in social, religious, and political structures of the West — the three independent branches of government, the rule of law, compassion for others, charity, family system, etc.

The West and East Asia, including China, comprise a mere 2.5 billion people.

“The Rest,” the Third World, comprises 5 billion out of 7.5 billion people on the planet. The cultural factors underpinning the West sound like clichés until one who gives up political correctness for the truth starts to see that the Third World, despite its several centuries of interactions with the West, simply fails to understand them.

The Third World is blind to what makes the West a civilization. It is as if the Third World cannot rise above animal instincts — craving for food, power over others, sex, and for the material.

Jayant Bhandari
June 24, 2020
The Decline of the Third World
[Via email from Chet.

I have three children. Each of them exhibited personality traits in the first few hours after birth that they still exhibit 30+ years later. I’ve seen an insane, counter productive, behavior by a mother regarded as profoundly brilliant by her children. Then as years passed this behavior gradually blossomed as self-destructive behaviors (literally culminating in multiple suicide attempts) by one of those children despite repeated attempts, over many years, by her spouse to get her professional help. The help was not only refused as unnecessary, it was vigorously asserted it was the spouse who was in need of professional help and behavior modification.

I’m convinced there are aptitudes and personality traits hardwired in the brain which destines certain genetic lines to aspire for, and literally reach, the stars. And other genetic lines which lack the capacity to grasp rational thought or fully understand numbers, let alone arithmetic and math.

These people can’t be reasoned with. They can’t be taught. If those who aspire for the stars are serious about their goals, or even avoiding being dragged into and out of sight into the mud, they must make some uncomfortable decisions very soon.—Joe]