Category Archives: Quote of the Day

Quote of the day—Ronald Reagan

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The starting point must be the Constitution, because, above all, we are a nation of laws and the foundation for our laws, or lack of same, is the Constitution. It is amazing to me how so many people pay lip service to the Constitution, yet set out to twist and distort it when it stands in the way of things they think ought to be done or laws they believe ought to be passed. It is also amazing to me how often our courts do the same thing.

Ronald Reagan
September 1975
Editorial, Guns & Ammo
[From Proclaiming Liberty: What Patriots and Heroes Really Said About the Right to Keep and Bear Arms by Philip Mulivor.

I was struck by how closely what Ted Cruz said a couple years ago matches what Reagan said decades earlier:

For a long time, a whole bunch of Democrats and unfortunately even some Republicans have been passing laws in this body without even asking where the basis is in the Constitution, and I think the Constitution should be the starting point for everything Congress does.

I agree with the sentiment but the cancer has spread so deep into the fabric of our society that rapidly ripping out the tumors would result in massive hemorrhaging. A slow removal almost certainly result in the tumor metastasizing and changing form to embed itself even deeper and perhaps more threating to the “patient”.

I’m nearly certain there is “too fast” and “too slow”. But what is “just right”?—Joe]

Quote of the day—Glenn Reynolds

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You know, I felt better about the 19th Amendment before I knew that women, given a choice, would let Hitler live.

Glenn Reynolds
April 9, 2015
THAT’S BECAUSE WE’RE GIVERS
[This arose out of a hypothetical situation where you could go back in time and kill Hitler, if you wanted to. Men were more likely than women to choose that option as opposed to letting him live.

This is very interesting to me. One could claim that men are more rational and see the benefit of killing one tyrant so that, perhaps, millions may survive. And furthermore claim women tend to see the murder of Hitler as morally wrong and are unable to see there are exceptions to the morality code against killing.

But there are lots of other ways to look at the results of the study:

  • Perhaps women tend to respect rules more than men.
  • Perhaps the social norms in this country are such that women are taught it is better to be a victim than an aggressor even against a villain.
  • Perhaps women have a greater tendency to weigh the many different possibilities and come to the conclusion that maybe it might have turned out worse had someone else come to power instead of Hitler.
  • Perhaps women have developed a tendency toward pacifism not developed by men. This would give them an evolutionary advantage by being less likely to kill their own children because the biological cost of them creating another child is much higher compared to the biological cost for a man to create another child.

This study would seem to have implications for self-defense as well.

Other thoughts?—Joe]

Quote of the day—John Lott

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3-D printers mean an end to any gun control. The government is not going to be able to ban magazines for guns, or ban guns themselves, and the notions of background checks would be even more impossible to do. Anyone with access to a 3-D printer can make guns functionally and indistinguishable from a gun that can be bought in a store. I don’t know how the government will stop people from obtaining a printer.

Just look at the illegal download of television shows and movies. Millions of copies have been downloaded and the government has been unable to stop it. Why would the government be successful in stopping other information like these files from being downloaded?

John Lott
May 7, 2015
Why Gun Control is Ultimately Doomed to Fail
[Well… the government can ban magazines and guns but they can’t effectively enforce the ban. It will be incredibly obvious it is like banning alcohol in the 1920s. Or even banning sex outside of marriage. It will be trivial to supply the black market and people will mock those who attempt to support it.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Cloudbuster

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There has been adequate documentation that the religious doctrines of the terrorists are accurately reflective of accepted Muslim doctrine. The accurate term for the “moderate Muslims” everyone talks about is “apostates.” Or perhaps “heretics.”

Cloudbuster
May 4, 2015
Comment to Big Edit at the New York Times
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Kim Huffman-Scott

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They are getting too fast and I couldn’t count.

Kim Huffman-Scott
Boomershoot Target Production Manager
May 2, 2015
[I put Kim in charge of target production this year. This is one of the best decisions I have ever made. It dramatically reduced my work load and stress level. But most of all she did an awesome job.

The production line is usually running for about 13 or 14 hours to produce the targets for Boomershoot. This time it was less than eight hours. Part of this was the enthusiastic “army of people” (as Barb describes it) there to help. But Kim figured out how to put them all to work and they listened to her.

Kim quickly identified bottlenecks and fixed them. This is a dynamic problem because it depends on which size targets are being produced and who is doing which job at the time. She  also would anticipate when to change the line to a new target type. This is tough because the production line may have 10 to 20 targets in various stages of completion but you only have a good count of the number of actually completed crates. The following video gives you a clue of what it was like. It doesn’t show the people outside folding the boxes.

As the production crew cranked up the production rate it became more and more difficult to get a snapshot of completed crates and targets in production. This resulted in today’s QOTD. She told me this a few minutes after I took the video above.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Jintana Nanana‏@jintana

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Penises in hand “@minasmith64: Not sure what Shannon’s idea of motherhood might be but our family is raising men… pic.twitter.com/d0VZM562y4”

B54VK7RIIAAKwJz

Jintana Nanana‏@jintana
Tweeted on December 27, 2014
[It’s another Markley’s Law Monday!

Via a tweet from Linoge @wallsofthecity.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Chuck Michel

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Police and prosecutors driven by politics or policy to seize and keep non-contraband property can always postulate about a theoretical risk that a prohibited individual might exert future control over transferred firearms. But absent evidence, theoretical speculation shouldn’t justify the forfeiture of someone’s valuable property, no matter what kind of property it is. At least when it comes to firearms, however, it seems like some lawyers or judges who perhaps don’t like guns generally feel that forfeiting them to the government is a desirable political end, justifying the use of unfounded theoretical future risk constructs as the means to expand the doctrine of constructive possession and thereby effectuate the politics of gun control.

Chuck Michel
March 12, 2015
Gun Seizure and Government Corruption
[There are many cases where the government has taken peoples guns and then refused to give them back or even let the owner sell them to someone else. This is now being challenged with moderate success in the courts but don’t ever let anyone get away with telling you that no one wants to take your guns.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Hillary Clinton

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I will also work to reinstate the assault weapons ban. We had it during the 1990s.

Hillary Clinton
April 16, 2008
Democratic Debate in Philadelphia
[See also some of the other stuff she has said about your rights.

Don’t ever let anyone get away with telling you that no one wants to take your guns away.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Brad R. Torgersen

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Sarah Hoyt — born in Portugal, naturalized to the U.S. — has seen this kind of thing before. It’s the old Stalinist-Marxist mentality which Sarah got to see up close and personal. It’s the mentality my former boss (who was a refugee from Soviet-era Poland) knew all too well, too. Frankly, any time I talk about the 21st century American fascination with political correctness, refugees from the Marxist countries recognize it instantly: the collective effort to control and dictate what is and is not permissible to say, or to think, or to feel, including who you can and cannot associate with; lest you be hauled before the commissars to be tried for guilt-by-association.

Fear is their weapon.

Brad R. Torgersen
April 12, 2015
Flaming rage nozzles of tolerance
[Solzhenitsyn has written about this too.

This mindset must not be allowed to dominate politics. The body count racked up by this mindset during the 20th century was in the hundreds of millions. We must prevent a repeat performance in the 21st century.

This is why I do Boomershoot.—Joe]

Quote of the day—John Hinderaker

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How can you tell which minorities it is proper to satirize? By whether they are likely to shoot you, apparently. Trudeau spent his career unfairly attacking Republicans, so he never had to worry.

John Hinderaker
April 12, 2015
Punching Down and Shooting Back
[As Glenn Reynolds said, “I keep warning people about this incentive system, and they keep not listening.”—Joe]

Quote of the day—Frank Easterbrook

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If a ban on semi‐automatic guns and large‐capacity magazines reduces the perceived risk from a mass shooting, and makes the public feel safer as a result, that’s a substantial benefit.

Frank Easterbrook
Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals Judge
April 27, 2015
BREAKING: Bans on “Assault Weapons,” Firearm Magazines Can Be Based on Feelings, Rules Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals
[So does that mean if people feel safer if all blacks are kept as slaves would it make slavery constitutional?

Of course not. But by Easterbrook’s “logic” it would seem so.

I would feel safer if Easterbrook were to lose his job as a judge and spend the rest of his life scrubbing toilets.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Bruce Schneier

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It’s an attitude I’ve seen before: “Something must be done. This is something. Therefore, we must do it.” Never mind if the something makes any sense or not.

In reality, this is CYA security, and it’s pervasive in post-9/11 America. It no longer matters if a security measure makes sense, if it’s cost-effective or if it mitigates any actual threats. All that matters is that you took the threat seriously, so if something happens you won’t be blamed for inaction. It’s security, all right — security for the careers of those in charge.

Bruce Schneier
April 15, 2015
Metal Detectors at Sports Stadiums
[Gun control outside of a stadium is of the same mindset but multiplied by some very large factor. It’s stupidity at a governmental scale.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Bacon @Baconmints

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The paid nra trolls, better known as the #tinycockclub can’t get enough of me. Remember kids, guns are for cowards. #bokbok #gunsense #yup

Bacon @Baconmints
Tweeted on December 23, 2014
[It’s another Markley’s Law Monday!

Via a Tweet from BFD‏ @BigFatDave.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Roberta X

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Don’t kid yourself that you’re in the clear because of your ancestors; it wasn’t just Jews, and the others weren’t all gay or gypsies, either: the politically unpopular got one-way trips, too.  Once a nation starts down that path, each step into evil is easier than the one before.

You don’t have to like politics, but you’ve gotta keep an eye on it.  No matter who you are.

Roberta X
April 15, 2015
Holocaust Remembrance Day
[The German people of the late 1930’s and early 1940’s are best known for their evil behavior but the Russians while Stalin was in power easily eclipsed the German body count. The Chinese killed millions at various times during the 20th Century. The Rwanda genocide wasn’t on the same scale in absolute numbers but may have account for as much as 20% of the population. The examples are incredibly and depressingly numerous.

There is one thing governments, of any type of people, do very well and that is killing people. We have lots of government in this country and it going to require lots of attention until we can get it back down to the originally designed limits. The stakes are incredibly high if it goes totally malignant.

This is Why Boomershoot. It’s next weekend. Be there if you can. You can be part of the solution if things go really bad.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Barb L.

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Rifles are fun!

Barb L.
April 24, 2015
WP_20150423_18_03_12_Pro
[This was the first time she had shot a .22 rifle. It was also the first time she shot a scoped, suppressed rifle. And the first time she had shot a rifle from a “bench”. It made it much easier than kneeling and standing like her first rifle experience.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Tim Svenson

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SB 941 will not provide any additional protection of Oregon citizens against violence.

…

SB 941 will create new layers of legal barriers to already law abiding citizen.

…

My fear with SB 941 is that these citizens will now be at risk of being charged and prosecuted for acts they have done several times before with no negative effect on our community.

As with many of these laws, it becomes very difficult for law enforcement to enforce, and there’s no consideration of the financial impact on the already stressed court system and background check process already in place.

Tim Svenson
Sheriff, Oregon’s Yamhill County
April 22, 2015

[I have nothing to add.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Michael Z. Williamson

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Take your statements about “ultraconservative,” “right wing,” “Read less white males” and “privilege,” and shove them up your ass.

Then write the story where that was a pleasurable and positive learning experience for you.

Michael Z. Williamson
April 21, 2015
Challenge Delivered
[Williamson’s post is worth reading for the facts presented but the last sentence, above, is what gives it the punch of humor.

I’ve read a couple of his books and enjoyed them immensely. The points he makes are indicative of something I’ve written about before. Although these type of people will seldom directly admit it, it is very clear they believe they know what you are thinking without regard to your words or actions. In this case they believe they know the contents of his book without reading them.

What more evidence do you need to conclude these people have mental problems?

No matter. There will be a lot more evidence provided. I directly experienced it for decades and no matter how much I coached them they could not change. The problem, as they saw it, was always me.—Joe]

Quote of the day—SquareForceOne

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I’m not in favor of banning handguns or hunting rifles, but I am in favor of banning or seriously restricting access to weapons that have no purpose other than to kill a large number of people in a short time.

SquareForceOne
July 23, 2012
Comment to The NRA claims 4.3 million members. The Brady Campaign might have under 29,000.
[Don’t ever let someone get away with telling you that no one wants to take your guns.—Joe]

Quote of the day—William Kirkland

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Liberals today are wrong to see contemporary issues like gun control and climate change as surfing on an inevitable wave of progress. Rather, these issues are boats piloted by committed activists who steer them forward through a sea of indifference. The Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, with all its triumphs and tragedies, rested on the shoulders of thousands of activists who fought oppression in the streets, in courtrooms and on public buses. It emerged not from the progress of Reconstruction but from the backwardness of Jim Crow.

William Kirkland
April 20, 2015
Kirkland: The progressive lessons of history
[I find it absolutely fascinating that people can advocate gun control and then two sentences later praise the advancement of civil rights. And in this case a civil rights movement which was dramatically assisted by private citizens with guns. And this is by a person who prides himself on his knowledge of history!

How does someone do that? It has to be something like Peterson Syndrome.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Eileen Bresnahan @EileenBresnahan

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@MDBishop82 Does your tiny penis feel larger? @LilMissPrepper @MrMilitantNegro @lisaelyeasmith @A_M_Perez

Eileen Bresnahan @EileenBresnahan
Tweeted on December 26 2014
[It’s another Markley’s Law Monday!

Via a tweet from Linoge @wallsofthecity.—Joe]