Category Archives: Quote of the Day

Quote of the day—wheresjack

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There are only two reasons to own a hand gun, one is to shoot at a target and the other is to shoot at a person. The Liberal Party is committed to banning hand guns in Canada and I will make sure they stick to that commitment. For the target shooters that are serious about owning a hand gun, I will ask for legislation that permits ownership under strict guidelines and keeps the guns under lock and key at the accredited range of their choice. Transporting the gun would require a security service to take it from one approved location to another.

wheresjack
September 14, 2010
Where’s Jack on Gun Control?
[Wrong! Those aren’t the only reasons. And even if it were true what’s the problem? Sometimes some people need to be shot. That is the reason the police carry their guns. I carry a gun with me because I can’t carry a policeman.

The right to keep and bear arms is a basic human right. Any person, any political party, or any government opposed to such a basic human right cannot be trusted in a position of power and should be forever banned from positions of public trust if not jailed. We need to put pressure on these admitted violators of human rights in other countries.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Beverly Ackerman

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So that’s my response to the Dawson killings: No more guns. It’s as simple as that. Because no one can accurately predict who among us will become unhinged enough to explode in bloody slaughter, I believe that guns should be unavailable to the public.

Beverly Ackerman
September 13, 2010
The solution is simple: Canada needs MORE gun controls
[Using the same logic we can also demand guns be unavailable to the government. And of course pointy sticks and rocks should be unavailable to all as well. After all, no matter how much ammo you can carry you still run out of ammo eventually. But your pointy stick and rock never need to be reloaded. Think of them as infinite capacity assault weapons and you’ll understand just how dangerous they really are.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Neal Knox

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Handgun Control Inc. has long said that the NRA leadership was out of step with the NRA membership. And HCI was right—but in exactly the opposite way from what HCI wanted to believe. For the second straight year the NRA membership has overwhelmingly elected Directors sponsored and promoted by Second Amendment Action, of which I am chairman. Last year, the members elected 11 of our 16 candidates.

This time,  in the results reported to NRA Directors today, Second Amendment Action swept every one of its 17 nominees into the 26 vacant seats on the NRA Board.

The house-cleaning assures that NRA will be taking a tougher stance in the legislative arenas.

Read the NRA election results and weep, Handgun Control, Inc. You’ve got a fight on your hands.

Neal Knox
April 13, 1992
Hardliners Sweep NRA Elections, from The Gun Rights War, pages 351 and 352.
[I love this book.

Nearly 20 years ago HCI had “long said the NRA leadership was out of step” with members. HCI was renamed “The Brady Campaign” in 2001 but they haven’t changed their rhetoric. They still claim the NRA is an extremist organization that does not represent its members. But if you read the blogs and the forums you will find far, far, more people critical of the NRA for not being aggressive enough than you will find those that say the NRA is too aggressive.

HCI or Brady Campaign–it doesn’t matter. They are out of touch with reality and have been for well over 20 years.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Handgun Control Inc.

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Commonsense, and the growing number of intentional and unintentional shootings involving licensees, dictate that more guns on the street put everyone at risk. But the gun lobby consistently advocates for CCW systems that do not require safety training and do not allow for local law enforcement to evaluate CCW license applicants. Time and time again we hear about a tense situation that becomes deadly with the introduction of a gun. If citizens are to be allowed to carry concealed firearms, every community deserves the best laws to protect public safety. Anything less is potentially a deadly mistake.

Handgun Control Inc.
December 18, 1997
Year-End Report on U.S. Concealed Weapons Laws
[And yet, as they lost more and more battles over concealed carry laws the crime rate didn’t go up in those states. I guess their “commonsense” must have been broken. Because the commonsense of the gun owners, the NRA, the SAF, and all the other pro-gun rights organizations said crime rates wouldn’t go up. And they were right.

HCI renamed itself to be “The Brady Campaign” in 2001. Was that to hide from their legacy of errors?

Odd how that worked out–increasing freedom did no harm. Let’s make it trend in all areas of our lives.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Steve Ballmer

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I kiss the ground you walk on.


Steve Ballmer
September 10, 2010
Windows Phone 7 Ship Party
IMG_2845Web2010IMG_2848Web2010IMG_2852Web2010
[Click the pictures to see a higher resolution version.


He also said his trademark, “I love this company.” at the top of his lungs:


IMG_2833Web2010


He also talked about how important Window Phone 7 is to the company and how much he appreciated all the hard work and how much he really loves his Windows Phone 7 phone.


It is a really nice phone. I took three of them to the Boomershoot site this weekend and did some tests. With one of them I was able to pick up a Wi-Fi signal from an ordinary Linksys router from 1090 meters away. The other two were picking up signal from over 600 meters away. Try that with your iPhone.—Joe]

Quote of the day–Xenia

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I can’t count. I am an artist.

Daughter Xenia
September 5, 2010
[That explains a lot! Not just about Xenia, but about Hollywood, New York City, and the even the world in general.

Son James also reported, from the same time frame as the above quote, that, “Xenia is a funny drunk.”

The Xenia quote came to me via an text message from daughter Kim who definitely can count. Kim is getting nearly straight A’s while obtaining her accounting degree.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Neal Knox

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Institute for Legislative Action Executive Director Bob Kukla, in an extremely courageous act, confirmed that the independence of ILA, and its effectiveness in fighting repressive gun legislation had been threatened by the Management Committee, composed of the three top officers. As proof, Kukla played an openly recorded tape of the February 26 Management Committee meeting in which he was criticized for ILA’s opposition to Smith & Wesson’s proposal for national handgun licensing, and ILA’s opposition to the National Education Association’s anti-handgun position. Kukla’s evidence convinced the neutral members of the seriousness of the problems within NRA; although relatively few members in the meeting had known of the Federation’s reform program, they supported it overwhelmingly.

Neal Knox
July 1977
From The Gun Rights War, page 311.
[I have often heard of “The Cincinnati Revolution” within the NRA but had never gotten any details. The Gun Rights War has several articles by Neal Knox about the revolt. Wow! No wonder there was a revolt.

Smith & Wesson proposed national handgun licensing? Was there a boycott then? Or was the first boycott in early 2000 when they tried to force all dealers and distributors to abide by a “code of conduct”? The “code of conduct” would have required all sales at gun shows to go through a background check, prohibited dealers and distributors from selling “assault weapons” or standard capacity magazines, and numerous other backdoor Second Amendment infringements. Gun owners decided then and there that Smith & Wesson must die and we almost did it too. Why wasn’t it well publicized that the Smith & Wesson betrayal was nothing new and had sided with the anti-gun people 23 years earlier?

If there was a boycott in 1977 Smith & Wesson apparently had forgotten about it. Let’s hope all gun manufactures learned their lesson in 2000 and we don’t have to repeat it. We need to be fighting the enemies of freedom rather than our own.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Zsuzsanna Legradi

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I don’t want to see guns. No one should have guns. It is bad enough that people have knives.


Zsuzsanna Legradi
September 5, 2010
A 42-year-old gardener.
New York Times article: Altered Movie Poster Puts the Spotlight on a San Francisco Agency’s Gun Ban
[I wonder if the New York Times would have printed that if it had been “I don’t want to see queers holding hands…” or “I don’t want to see ni**ers touching a white woman…”


And what would have been the response if someone had actually said made such a bigoted comment about homosexuals in San Francisco? Would they still have a job (or a home!) the following day?


Another thought that occurred to me is that SAF should be selling those posters. I don’t see them in their merchandise list. I’ll send Alan an email about it.


Update: I got an answer from Alan:



There will be posters for sale at GRPC with the proceeds going to the Calguns Foundation.


Another reason to attend GRPC 2010.—Joe]

Quote of the day–Steven Lachman

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The current batch of Democrats is not a particularly liberal bunch.

…

[L]et’s examine what America would look like under the current Republican Party ideology:

Health care reform will be undone. At least 45 million Americans will lack health insurance. According to a Harvard School of Medicine study, the absence of health insurance leads to the deaths of 45,000 Americans a year.

…

Republicans will eliminate all gun control. We now suffer about 30,000 gun deaths per year.

…

The current batch of Republican candidates ignores the overall benefit to society of redistributing wealth from the haves to the have-nots through taxes. For Republican politicians, deaths from abortion are unacceptable, but deaths from pollution, gun violence and poverty are just background noise.

Few Republican voters would actually choose to live in the Republican ideological world. Most of them want good schools for all children, safe streets, a clean environment, fair treatment of the disadvantaged and Social Security benefits — all of which require taxes and regulation.

Steven Lachman
September 7, 2010
A GOP-run nation would be barren
[From the first to the last sentence of his opinion I was agape. I found it hard to believe he was serious. He had to be mocking the political left or something, right? Then I read his job title. He is a professor.

Okay then. That explains it.—Joe]

Quote of the day—James Huffman-Scott

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So you are going on vacation to a slasher flick.

James Huffman-Scott
September 4, 2010
[This was after verifying we were going to a secluded cabin in the woods for the weekend. After I acknowledged it could be expressed that way Kelsey chimed in with “I know what you did last summer.”

The place we went to was here.

Here is a picture of our cabin:IMG_2127Web2010

We heard a few gunshots on our first night which probably was the end of the slasher’s reign of terror. I brought 237 rounds of .40 S&W but didn’t get a chance to use any of it.—Joe]

Quote of the day—John Milton

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None can love freedom but good men; the rest love not freedom but license, which never hath more scope than under tyrants.


John Milton
The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates (1649)
[From the Wikipedia link above: “The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates is a book by John Milton, in which he defends the right of people to execute a guilty sovereign”.


I found the quote in The Great Thoughts (link is to the 2nd Edition, mine is the 1st Edition–1985) compiled by George Seldes.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Alan Gottlieb

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All I can do is pray that all the publicity will make them want to decide to take down the ads — so we can sue!

Alan Gottlieb
Founder, Second Amendment Foundation
September 3, 2010
San Francisco may start gun fight over pro-firearm ads
[It’s about this ad (here is a link to the photographer and larger pictures of the posters):

GRPC2010_SF-MTA_Ad-2_270x388

It is, as McCullagh writes, because:

A San Francisco transit agency spokesman says the city is investigating whether pro-gun ads, which an advocacy group recently purchased, should have been posted in transit stations this week.

The city’s policy on such ads is strict but clear: It says that “no advertisement” shall “promote the use of firearms.”

Have these people forgotten they live in the United States instead of someplace like Cuba or North Korea? I can’t imagine the courts siding with the want-to-be tyrants in San Francisco on this issue. Establishing more precedent for freedom is a very good thing.

Do not forget this is their goal:

Even toy guns must be destroyed. There is no common ground with these people.

It’s nice to know the money I have been donating (matched dollar for dollar by Microsoft) is being put to good use. SAF and friends haven’t been winning all their court battles but they sure have been making good progress with their objective to “win back our firearms freedoms one lawsuit at a time”.—Joe]

Quote of the day–Violence Policy Center

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In his 99-page article, Professor Bogus reviews wide-ranging evidence including an analysis of Madison’s original language and an understanding of how he and other founders drew on England’s Declaration of Rights. Madison’s concern, Professor Bogus concludes, was not hunting, self-defense, national defense, or resistance to governmental tyranny but slave control.

…

During the panel discussion, all three experts said that “The Hidden History” has dramatic implications for the contemporary debate over gun control. Rather than applying to individual gun ownership, the three agreed, the Second Amendment is rooted in the political battle over control of militia forces and ratification of the Constitution. This history, which has been endorsed by the U.S. Supreme Court, is often ignored by modern day pro-gun lobbyists.

Violence Policy Center
Second Amendment Rooted in Southern States’ Control of Slavery, Academic Experts Say
May 15, 1998
[Odd isn’t it? This “hidden history” didn’t get any traction 10 years later when all nine of the U.S. Supreme Court justices agreed the Second Amendment protected an individual right. Perhaps the evidence Professor Bogus presented was, well, bogus.—Joe]

Quote of the day–Terry Myerson

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Today is the day that the Windows Phone team has been driving towards, and we’re very excited to say that we’ve reached the biggest milestone for our internal team – the release to manufacturing (RTM) of Windows Phone 7!  While the final integration of Windows Phone 7 with our partners’ hardware, software, and networks is underway, the work of our internal engineering team is largely complete. 

Windows Phone 7 is the most thoroughly tested mobile platform Microsoft has ever released.  We had nearly ten thousand devices running automated tests daily, over a half million hours of active self-hosting use, over three and a half million hours of stress test passes, and eight and a half million hours of fully automated test passes.  We’ve had thousands of independent software vendors and early adopters testing our software and giving us great feedback. We are ready.

Terry Myerson
September 1, 2010
Windows Phone 7 – Released To Manufacturing
[If you climb high enough on my work food chain you will find Myerson.

I can’t vouch for the exact numbers but they sound about right. We have some amazing automation. And if you think the half-million hours of active self-hosting is implausible think again. I first used a Windows Phone 7 about a year ago and started carrying one as my primary phone early this year. When I went on vacation to Missouri last May I took three (the rest were loaned out to co-workers for testing) of them with me and used them for navigation (I’m on the “Location Team”), traffic, lots of email, web browsing, pictures, video, and of course phone calls. Everyone I know on the team has a minimum of two phones and some have five. That adds up to a lot of hours. I actually suspect the half million hours is an understatement.

I am more proud of this product than anything I have worked on since Direct X 1.0. In terms of my primary reason for wanting to work for Microsoft  (to change the world) this is, by far, my largest contribution.

Technically it is great. It’s not perfect but it is much more than “good enough” to compete. Market acceptance is a question in our minds though.

Most of the people I associate with are engineers. We understand the technology but not people who are different from us. Will this phone be compelling for non-engineers? I’m sure I can configure one such that my wife (who always insists she just wants “a simple phone, nothing more”) can and would use it as a phone, camera, and for occasional navigation but I’m not so sure she would be interested in spending the money on one if I didn’t “twist her arm”. In many ways it is simpler to use than her current phone. Son James (also a software developer working at Microsoft) will get one. I’m not so sure about his girlfriend. I think my daughters and their spouses will give very serious consideration to one. But how does this translate into the market at large? I think it will be at least “good”. With a little bit of luck and a lot of awesome Microsoft marketing (I’ve seen some “concept ads” that look really good) it will do great.

We have some “ship parties” (not really my thing but it is nice to see others have a good time) in the next few days then we have to deliver on the next version. Yesterday I took care of four bugs on our next deliverable so don’t think we are sitting around to see how well this version does before deciding what to do next.—Joe]

Quote of the day–Ben Franklin

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Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.


Ben Franklin
Also attributed to a motto found among Thomas Jefferson’s papers.
[You would think that with all the data supporting the concept of the right to keep and bear arms as a legitimate method of last resort to overthrow a tyrannical government the anti-gun people would give up trying to scare people into giving up that specific enumerated right. It didn’t work when the Democrats in the deep south tried to “scare the white folks” about all the terrible things that would happen if people with dark colored skin weren’t closely controlled after the civil war. So why would they think it would work when Democrats from the west coast and the Northeast try to scare people about the exercise of rights that have existed since before this country was created? —Joe]

Quote of the day—Neal Knox

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…the California Justice Department’s Criminalists Institute conducted a survey of all the crime labs in the state, trying to determine how many so-called “assault weapons” were seized, and how many were used in violent crimes, during 1990. Those forensic labs, which included 22 state-run units, have all the data concerning the guns used in crimes in the state.

According to the 1991 Helsley internal memo, those involved in pushing the “Roberti-Roos’ bill—including some of the state’s highest-ranking police administrators, the Senate President, one of the most-powerful members of the assembly, and the Attorney General, himself—had made the deliberate decision not to seek information from the crime labs.

Helsley wrote: “Information on assault weapons would not be sought from forensic laboratories as it was unlikely to support the theses on which the legislation would be based.”

The current Justice Department apparently wishes it hadn’t asked the laboratories for hard information either, for the data—with responses from the labs covering two-thirds of the state’s population—shows there is no significant problem. The DOJ has refused to provide their draft summary of the results, but has released the raw data, in compliance with the state’s freedom of information law.

According to reliable sources the survey showed that of all firearms confiscated, less than 5 percent were guns in the Roberti-Roos list. And of guns involved in violent crimes, only six-tenths of one percent were “assault weapons.”

Neal Knox
January 31, 1992
The “Assault Weapon” Hysteria
From The Gun Rights War, page 273.
[f they knew an assault weapon ban would not, could not possibly, reduce crime the what was the real reason for wanting an “assault weapon” ban?

That was over 18 years ago. Why do organizations like the Brady Campaign still advocate for such a ban? Just what could possibly be the real reason?

This book is a wealth of information for gun rights activists. But I have a love/hate relationship with it. The articles go back 40 years. 40 years of fighting against this kind of stuff! The deliberate deceptions and misrepresentations of the anti-gun people has been constant. I love to see the history but I hate it that we still are fighting the same battles against, apparently evil, and obviously lying, people. We currently have them on the run in the courts. We need to drive a stake in the heart of this beast this time. We need to do that both legally and culturally. Make them the 21st century cultural equivalent of the KKK. Because that is what they are.—Joe]

Quote of the day–Genesis

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We must throw the infantile model of “the people are under the cops as a
baby is under his or her parents” in the dustbin and instead transition to
a model of “you’re adults, you’re free to act as adults, and we both trust
you to be adults and assist us in our job of identifying crooks when necessary.
We also both believe in and support your right to stop the
thugs on your own in lawful self-defense should it become necessary, God forbid,
and we will not only cease and desist from interfering with that right we will
start encouraging you to exercise it.“

While there are few if any places in the United States where the victimless
crime view has been adopted, there are plenty where law enforcement both
respects the right of the people to self-defense and recognizes that
they need the common citizens more than the citizens need them,
especially if and when the government teat of “everyone can suckle all they
want” disappears.

Where I live is one such area in this country – if things get “really bad”
around here I’m quite certain the common man will be standing
shoulder-to-shoulder with local law enforcement agencies toward the same aligned
goal – stopping the Zombies from eating the citizens.

For Chicago to achieve that it’s law enforcement community is going to have
to quit treating the citizens like infants whom it can rob candy from any time
it feels like it.

Genesis
August 26, 2010
Janet’s Heart Is In The Right Place
[Via email from Chet.

There is a lot more of interest in the post. He explains why the cops are so hated in some areas of the country, why this is a bad thing, and how to fix it.–Joe]

Quote of the day–American Mercenary

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If government is the source of rights, then the government can take those “rights” away. Don’t believe me? Reference; China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Rwanda, Yugoslavia, USSR, and Burma.

Government can and will take your life. Where the hell are your “rights” then?

Here is a base truth; Government does not create, government meddles in the form of regulation and redistribution of human activity.


American Mercenary
August 28, 2010
ubu52
[As I have said before, governments cannot grant or create rights. They can only protect them or infringe them.–Joe]

Quote of the day–James Madison

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If men were angels, no government would be necessary.


James Madison
[But if there were no government who would give us our free medical care, free food, and subsidize our housing? I don’t think this Madison guy knows anything at all about the true business of government.–Joe]

Quote of the day–ubu52

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Food and water are basic human rights. I can’t believe anyone would argue that they aren’t.

ubu52
August 24, 2010
Comment to Crap for brains
[This came up in the context of a “right” to health care. She supported her claim with a link to the UN declaration of “Human Rights” which includes this statement:

  1. Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and
    well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and
    medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the
    event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of
    livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.
  2. Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All
    children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social
    protection.

Hence it is not about someone depriving someone else of food, water, or air. This is about some government (people with guns) taking goods and services from some set of people and giving it to others.

And she “can’t believe anyone would argue” against that viewpoint? An “interesting” and totally naive perspective. I would like to remind anyone that believes such a thing that 100+ million people died in the last century because of attempts to create just that type of utopia. If she and others would like to volunteer themselves for the next experiment doomed to failure I only request they take it to some place where my family and friends don’t have to contend with defending our lives and property and disposing of the rotting flesh.

–Joe]