Category Archives: Quote of the Day

Quote of the day–Tamara K.

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There is anecdotal evidence that the banning of traditional ammunition would have an adverse impact on government bureaucrat populations.

Tamara K.
August 26, 2010
No.
[If properly expended I’m pretty sure Tamara and friends have enough “traditional ammunition” on hand to make a noticeable impact on said populations.

I would also like to make mention of the fact that I’ve seen her shoot a rifle offhand at targets 200 yards away:

You don’t want her to “saddle up and bust caps” unless you have a surplus of body bags and bureaucrats with a desire to have them matched up.–Joe]

Quote of the day–wfgodbold

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How do you know he’s not a robot sent back in time by Skynet to disarm the resistance before it starts?

wfgodbold
August 24, 2010
Referring to Robb Allen’s idea for a screenplay of a Terminator sequel where Paul Helmke goes into the future to try to explain to the resistance why they shouldn’t be using guns.
[I had not thought of that! That makes as much sense as any other reason I can come up with for why Helmke does what he does. We all know that the real reason for gun control cannot be crime control.–Joe]

Quote of the day–Paul H. Blackman

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There is certainly a tendency for nation with restrictive gun laws to authorize additional powers to the police to violate the ordinary rights of privacy … .

Paul H. Blackman
From the book From My Cold Dead Fingers–Why America Needs Guns, Third Edition (“Final Chapter”), page 130 by Sheriff Richard I. Mack.
[I would like to believe that as we push back the infringements on our specific enumerated right to keep and bear arms that we can also make progress on our infringed rights to be free from unreasonable search, seizure, and our right to privacy. Can the people at large be educated to understand the general principle of limited government is applicable to both the keeping of arms and the right to privacy? Generalization appears to be a difficult thing for most people. They don’t seem to understand political principles. They get involved in “issues” without understanding the principles. The “War on Drugs” is no different in principle than a “War on Guns”, or a “War on Poverty”. Yet you rarely see people espouse positions that are philosophically consistent.

Oh well. One issue at a time is all I can handle. And taking on the issue of philosophical inconsistency is just too big and too nebulous.

The TSA is next on my list after we essentially win the battle over guns. It might be a decade or so but I think we will get there.–Joe]

Quote of the day–Kristen Comer

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As long as we allow an individual right to trump public safety, families are going to lose their loved ones.

Kristen Comer
Executive Director Washington Ceasefire
January, 2010
Press sounding ‘Taps’ over Kline legislation, hearing turnout could cinch bill’s demise
[Comer
is referring to the Second Amendment and the Washington State
Constitution protections of the right to keep and bear arms. But think
about that quote in terms of other specific enumerated rights–Include
the First, Third, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, Eighth, Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Twenty-sixth Amendments. If someone is
willing to disregard and advocate the destruction of one guaranteed right why not another or all of them in the name of “public safety”? That mindset,
that opposition to freedom, is what I want exposed and politically
exterminated. I want membership in those type of organizations to be as
socially unacceptable as the KKK is today.

The famous Benjamin Franklin quote comes to mind.

I find it interesting that Comer’s blog
has not had an entry in over a year. Even when she was “active” it was
only about one post per month. A search of their web site for her name
reveals only one hit not a blog post–from 2008. And neither she nor her
title are list on their “About” page with other staff members. Has she
been muzzled? Are they demoralized? If it was “just” funding surely they
could maintain a blog. I manage to make at least one blog post per day
without any funding (the advertising here earns something like
$1/day).–Joe]

Quote of the day–Michelle Obama

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Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual.

Michelle Obama
February 18, 2008
YouTube video: Michelle Obama: “Barack Will Require You to Work.”
[There is more than a little truth to that statement. It won’t be by him “allowing” it. It will because he and his freedom hating associates were removed from power.

Recent polls indicate we are making decent progress toward the desired goals.–Joe]

Quote of the day–Jeff Knox

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On July 29th, the new constitutional carry law in Arizona went into effect, removing all requirements that a lawful gun owner obtain permission of the state before carrying a firearm concealed.

Just as the folks from the Brady Center Against Guns and the Violence Policy Center had predicted, virtually everyone in the state has either been killed or seriously injured by gunfire in the ensuing two weeks, and drug and outlaw biker gangs are running rampant, since the police can no longer ticket them for unlicensed carry of concealed weapons.

In other news: Dewey defeats Truman, Elvis Presley is alive and Martian spacecraft have attacked New York.

Jeff Knox
August 19, 2010
‘Arizona reverts to Wild West! Blood runs in streets!’
[Yes, there is some exaggeration of the anti-gun position on constitutional carry in this commentary. But what isn’t an exaggeration is Jeff’s article is that any changes in the crime or accidental injury rate are not visible at a glance. And, almost for certain, even after a year or more any crime increase attributable to the changes in the law will be non-existent.

It boils down to people intent on committing violent crimes largely ignore laws restricting the carrying of weapons. The firearms restrictions were only obeyed by people who were no threat to society.

So, you have to ask, “What is the real reason for gun control laws?”–Joe]

Quote of the day–Sarah Brady

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The defeat of Washington State ballot Initiative 676 is a disappointing loss for the state’s citizens, but the reasons behind it are clear.

…

Unfortunately, the NRA outspent the home-grown Safety First Campaign by more
than five-to-one and successfully scared many Washingtonians out of voting for
this life-saving measure. Safety First, which led the fight to pass I 676,
should be commended for standing up for what is right in the face of opposition
from the one of this nation’s most ruthless and devious special interest groups.

The NRA’s guerrilla tactics are the highest form of flattery. Since when
does the gun lobby have to work so hard to defeat a measure in so-called ‘friendly’ territory? Clearly, the tides are turning in the gun control debate.
More and more Americans, gun owners and non-gun-owners alike, are demanding
stronger measures to prevent gun deaths and injuries. I 676 may be dead, but the
gun control movement in Washington State and around the country is becoming
increasingly mobilized and potent. This is certainly not the last we will hear
from our friends at the Safety First Campaign or their counterparts in other
states around the nation.

Sarah Brady
Nov 4, 1997
STATEMENT OF SARAH BRADY RE: NRA’S BIG GUNS HOLD WASHINGTON STATE HOSTAGE TO
WEAK GUN LAWS
[See here and here (even though the NYT got a lot of things wrong) for more information on I-676.

Nearly everything in this statement is false. I participated in this campaign and spend many nights at “ground zero” (CCRKBA campaign headquarters in Bellevue) at a personal cost of $1/minute in take home pay (I could have been earning overtime at my high paying contract job).

The lies and distortions are as follows:

  • The vote was 71%-29% against the initiative.  Even the liberal Seattle Times and Seattle Post Intelligencer editorial boards came out against it. 71% of the voters were not disappointed. When only a minority of citizens were “disappointed” it is inaccurate to say the “state’s citizens” were disappointed.
  • It had nothing to do with safety. It would have required gun owner licensing, training, firearm registration and, probably due to poor wording rather than intent, paperwork to transfer the gun back and forth if you let the guy in the shooting booth next to you fire a couple rounds. It was about putting barriers up to exercise a specific enumerated right recognized by both the Washington State Constitution and the U.S. Constitution.
  • The NRA came to the game late. It was the CCRKBA that lead the fight and put up most of the early money. Private polls showed we were ahead in September before the NRA dumped their money into the campaign.
  • Washington State was considered friendly territory to the anti-gun forces. Initial polling gave I-676 an easy win, something like 60-40 IIRC.
  • When voters stomped the anti-gun people into the mud 71 to 29 that is hardly a difficult win. We put more money and effort into the campaign than we knew was required to maximize the margin. We didn’t want to repeat the fight the next year or in another state. We wanted them completely demoralized and a stake driven through the heart of those concepts. It worked. They didn’t try that again anywhere–contrary to Brady’s prediction.

But I do agree with Sarah Brady on one item. The tide did turn in the gun control debate.–Joe]

Quote of the day–Neal Knox

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When the ‘reasonable’ Brady Bill was pending, we told the world that radical unreasonable gun laws were waiting in the wings.

We were called paranoid, at best, and liars, at worst–by HCI, Congress, the news media and even some of our fellow gun owners.

Yesterday, Sen. Howard Metzenbaum (D-Ohio), Rep. Charles Schumer and Handgun Control, Inc. proved us right by introducing their ‘comprehensive gun control’ package, H.R. 3932/S. 1886. It is European-style total people control.

It has every provision on the anti-gunners’ wish list short of a total handgun ban. They’re satisfied, for now, with a ban on merely some handguns–for it creates the total registration and licensing system necessary to make an eventual confiscation law work.

The same day Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen announced that they were using the ‘Destructive Devices’ section of the 1968 Gun Control Act to put the ‘non-sporting’ Streetsweeper, Striker and USAS-12 shotguns under the same registration and $200 transfer tax applicable to machine guns under the National Firearms Act.

Neal Knox
March 3, 1994
HCI ‘Kitchen Sink’ Filed
From The Gun Rights War, page 203.
[When someone, like Half-Truth Henigan, from the Brady Campaign (formerly HCI) says there is no “slippery slope” (see chapter three in Henigan book Lethal Logic) remind them of 1994 and what they helped introduce back then.

When some politician tells you the law they are proposing won’t be pushed to the limits and beyond remind them the Treasury Secretary declared some 12-gauge shotguns ‘Destructive Devices’ putting them in the same category as RPGs, Claymore mines, and Bazookas.

And, as I have said before about this book, you shouldn’t read it just before trying to go to sleep. There will be way too much adrenaline in your system for the next few hours.–Joe]

Quote of the day–Mark N.

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I’ve been here ten years and they have never had us dance in the parking lot before.

Mark N.
August 18, 2010
Explaining to an intern that should he get a job offer from Microsoft (he almost for certain will) it wouldn’t be fair to evaluate the future job requirements on this one afternoon’s activities.
[Mark is my boss.

It turns out we didn’t dance in the parking lot. We danced on the sidewalk.

It was an hour of attempting to teach 500 geeks about 20 seconds of dance steps and 15 minutes of filming. It went as well as could be expected. I suspect the only reason many of the guys tolerated it and stuck around is because the entire time it appeared the dance instructor was in imminent danger of a “wardrobe malfunction“.

If the video happens to make it to the Internet I was the guy in the back with the grimace moving out of sync to everyone else while wearing a Blackwater baseball cap and a t-shirt that said “There are very few personal problems that can’t be solved with a suitable application of high explosives.“–Joe]

Quote of the day–japete

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Notice that the victim had a gun in his lap, obviously also ready to fire if necessary. The safety was on so he didn’t get the chance. I suppose one could say that is self defense on the part of the shooter. It’s getting a little murky here, though. What if the victim didn’t have a gun in his lap? Would it still be self defense? Under Florida law, people are allowed to shoot someone if they feel threatened and say it is self defense. It relies on what the shooter says. And, according to someone opposed to this law which passed unanimously (with an NRA representative standing next to Governor Bush as he signed the law) juries used to decide who was guilty or innocent. Now the shooter him or herself gets to decide.

What makes this even worse is that a year ago, the shooter was charged with aggravated battery and shooting a gun in a public place. Charges were dropped last October. There must be more to this case than we are seeing in the article. Why did this man still have a concealed weapons permit? The charges last year should have been enough to revoke his license. So, before knowing all of the particulars, I am wondering if this is actually a case for “enforcing the laws already on the books.” In this case, it goes both ways. One law says that the shooter goes free with no consequences for murdering another human being in cold blood. The other says that the shooter had some gun charges against him and was still able to legally carry. Hmmm.

japete
August 16, 2010
Shoot First everybody!
[I’ve been following japete’s blog, Common Gunsense, (as is usual for me all links to anti-rights websites have the “nofollow” attribute set) for several months. Her writing is a blend of a personal diary morning the loss of her sister and an almost solo gun control activist.

I find it interesting to observe how her mind works. There are the simplifications she makes:

There is a lot of support out there. Those of us in the “silent majority” must be making more noise about preventing senseless gun violence. We know we are right. Our language must be simple. It is, actually, a black and white issue but we tend to make it too nuanced. This morning, as I was getting dressed to spend another day at the convention, I looked at the clothes I chose. I am wearing black pants and a black and white tee shirt that says on both front and back, “Minnesotans Against Being Shot”. My shoes are black and white sneakers. So I thought of the nature of our arguments. Either you want to prevent gun injuries and deaths or you don’t. It is simple. Let’s keep it that way.

There is her dismissal as “nonsense” of arguments of others without any apparent examination of the issue:

United States Senator Charles Grassley ( R-Iowa) appeared to be wanting Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan to admit that the rights “guaranteed” in the Second Amendment was written before the Constitution. How is this possible? What Senator Grassley seemed to believe, and wanted Kagan and the rest of us to believe, was that the right to bear arms was actually created by God. No kidding. Here is a video of the Kagan hearings yesterday featuring Grassley’s questioning. Nonsense.

In the QOTD we still another item of interest. She states things as facts which are not true. For example, she apparently believes the only thing required for someone to not be charged in a shooting death is for the shooter to recite the magic phrases “I felt threatened” and “It was self defense” and the prosecutor walks away from the case. Physical evidence and witnesses supporting the validity of the self-defense claim have been dropped from her reality.

These sort of things apparently enable her to remain internally, and to a certain extent externally, consistent and maintain her belief system.

From this alternated reality base she goes on to reach the conclusions that 1) Accusations (charges) which were never proven (charges were dropped) should be sufficient to punish someone (revoke a concealed carry license); and 2) Legal self defense is cold blooded murder.

I can only conclude that grief can be powerful enough to severely warp the thinking process.

If you leave comments on her blog please be gentle. I almost feel as if I am intruding simply by reading her posts. If she wasn’t an activist for infringing upon the rights of others I would never point her out to others. But as it is I think there is a lot to be learned from her about the mechanism used to warp reality into something which matches the desired conclusions.–Joe]

Quote of the day–Ricketyclick

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The key tactic in any argument with a gun control advocate is to demand the citing of any instance where relaxing gun control laws has increased crime. And, I suspect, you can also do well by demanding the citing of any instance where imposing gun control on the general population has decreased crime.

Ricketyclick
More Flintlocks, Less Crime
August 13, 2010
[This is similar to Just One Question. And in fact takes it a short step further. This is fine with me.–Joe]

Quote of the day–Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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To rule is easy, to govern difficult.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
[I wonder if this contributes to why we have such a terrible situation with our government. Politicians, and to a large extent the populous, want to be rulers when the Constitution and the more Libertarian citizens expect them to direct the affairs and policies of the country within very limited constraints. Those who would be rules see it is easy to be what they want to be and those who would govern within the given limits while managing to take the heat from the press and people who want “money for nothing and chicks for free” realize the job is going to be tough with few thanks.–Joe]

Quote of the day–Violence Policy Center

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In 1981 Morton Grove became the first American community to ban the sale and private possession of handguns. The law led to court challenges by the NRA on both the federal and state level, where it was found to be constitutional. The Morton Grove ordinance and subsequent court cases have stood as concrete proof that American communities have the right to ban handguns and that such laws are constitutional.

 

Violence Policy Center
March 22, 1995
Historic Morton Grove, Illinois Handgun Ban May Be Overturned as Result of National Rifle Association-Backed Gun Law Preemption Campaign
[That “concrete” was made of wistful thinking and lies. It’s time for the VPC to admit defeat and close up shop.–Joe]

Quote of the day–Dennis Henigan

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According to the “just enforce current laws” argument, we should, for instance, tolerate the “gun show loophole” in federal law that allows criminals to buy guns from private sellers at gun shows without background checks, because we can always hire more federal agents to track down the criminals after they get the guns. Doesn’t it make more sense to require background checks to block gun sales to criminals in the first place?


Dennis Henigan
August 5, 2010
Obama Gun Policy: Fear and Fallacy
[Mr. Henigan,


Perhaps you missed that day in law school when they talked about “prior restraint”.


To answer your question, Dennis, only if you are of the opinion it also makes sense to block book sales to political and religious extremists, and cosmetics and revealing clothes sales to women with a known history of prostitution. Would you support a sister organization that advocates for the registration and licensing of lipstick? Should we give book and cosmetics sales enforcement to the ATF as well?


We could work on completing the entire alphabet for them. Alcohol, Books, Cosmetics, Drugs, Explosives, and Firearms (ABCDEF) is a pretty good start, don’t you think?


The entire premise of your organization, to prevent “gun violence”, is incompatible with a free society. It’s time for your organization to be shut down and for you, your co-workers, and your supporters to admit your crimes, and apologize for the decades of bigotry that have cost the lives of thousands of people.–Joe]

Quote of the day–Neal Knox

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As I pointed out during the October 1985 testimony before Hughes and Rodino, the proposed ban couldn’t possibly reduce crime with licensed machine guns, since there was none. Further, their bill was an admission that the 50-year-old National Firearms Act had demonstrably failed to reduce crime with machine guns. Those facts made no difference, for the anti-gunners’ objective is not to reduce crime, but to get rid of guns.

That’s not alarmist rhetoric. It’s both a logical conclusion and an historical fact. No matter how restrictive a gun law exists, the anti-gunners always come back for more.

Neal Knox
September 26, 1987
Keep The Second Out Of Court–For Now
The Gun Rights War, page 177.
[Emphasis in the original.

That was almost 25 years ago. The big deception of the anti-gun people is still alive today.

We need to kill it. We need to drive a stake in it’s heart. We need to bury it. We need to build a monument on it’s grave to all the tens of millions of people whose murder was enabled with gun control.

About 10 years ago I told Alan Gottlieb the gun rights movement should start a national campaign with the slogan, “What is the real reason?” Sell or give away T-shirts, put up billboards, advertise in newspapers, magazines, radio, and television. Ask the anti-gun people, “What is the real reason you want to restrict firearms?” We have hard proof that it is not about reducing crime. There has to be another reason and they aren’t telling the public what that reason is. Force them, through public pressure, to disclose that reason.

Alan was of the opinion that it was too difficult to get the message across. “What is the real reason?” makes sense to us, but to the vast majority of people it would pass right over the top without even ruffling their hair.

I wonder if times have changed enough. The Internet makes it easier/cheaper/faster to get the message out. Perhaps now is the time to start asking that question.–Joe]

Quote of the day–Kathleen Strand

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No one needs a semiautomatic weapon on the streets of Chicago, and no convicted felons or domestic abusers need a weapon anywhere in Illinois. These are not questions of constitutional rights — they are questions of public safety and common sense.

Kathleen Strand
August 9, 2010
Spokeswoman for Democratic Senate candidate Alexi Giannoulia.
Mark Kirk supports court’s overturning of gun ban–Alexi Giannoulias opposes ruling used to gut Chicago law
[It’s called The Bill of Rights. Not The List of Sometimes Allowed Needs. And we have nine U.S. Supreme Court Justices that disagree with her.

I think she needs to take a remedial course in U.S. government before she involves herself in any further discussion of politics.–Joe]

Quote of the day–Bill Clinton

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I also support a ban on semi-automatic assault weapons, which have no legitimate hunting purpose. This will limit access to multiple-round
clips like the one used in the tragic killings in Killeen, Texas.

Bill Clinton
August 10, 1993
[This is the 17 year anniversary for that statement Bill. How did that work out for you? Any advice for present day politicians facing the mid-term elections?–Joe]

Quote of the day–Barbara Scott

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Can we drive anyplace we want to go after this?


We can drive to the Bahamas, right?


Barbara Scott
August 9, 2010
After going through TSA at the St. Louis International Airport.
[Her experience was rather ordinary compared to mine. But I have mine on video for mocking later when I’m a little more removed from the situation.


In other news we have treated all the chigger bites, removed all the ticks, and are waiting for our plane to board and take us back to the Seattle area. Once we get home we will remove our sweat soaked clothes and take a shower.


It will be good to be back home in our underground bunker.–Joe]

Quote of the day–Greg Hamilton

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Universal Unloading Place

Translation: Bathroom.

From the Greg Hamilton to English Dictionary by Meredith Robinson.
[If you travel and carry a gun a lot you will find yourself needed to load and unload as you cross political jurisdictions and entering/leaving an airport. Bathroom stalls are your friend. Although I have successfully done it at baggage pick up, while at the curb waiting for a shuttle and other nearly open places.

We really need to fix these stupid laws that force this sort of behavior. The more gun handling the greater the chance of an accident. The gun should be put on when you get up from bed and taken off when you go to bed.–Joe]

Quote of the day–T-Shirt

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The economy is worse than a divorce.


I lost half my money and I’m still married.


T-Shirt
August 7, 2010
Seen on a t-shirt in a restaurant in Camdenton, Missouri this evening.
[I wouldn’t mind the temporary economic situation so much if it meant we were getting a divorced from an oppressive big government. But like the t-shirt says (after twisting the meaning a little bit), we are stuck with both.–Joe]