Category Archives: Quote of the Day

Quote of the day–Lyle @ UltiMAK

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In reality, you either do or you do not advocate government control over the right to keep and bear arms, you either do or do not support the second amendment, and you either do or you do not advocate a nanny state– you either do or do not embrace the principles of the Left. Any attempt to place yourself “in the middle” puts you in agreement with the basic principles (rationalizations) of those who would violate your and your neighbors’ rights.

Why can’t we all just get along? Because some people want their liberty and others want to control everyone. Are you going to stand on the side of liberty or on the side of the aggressors? Pick one, or stay the hell out of the way.

Lyle @ UltiMAK
October 10, 2009
Comment on Quote of the day–John Hardin
[Actually I put myself “in the middle”. But that is because Lyle is using a different definition of “the middle” than the one I use. In actuality a strict and literal interpretation of the Second Amendment is “the middle ground“.–Joe]

Quote of the day–RWB

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Uh,huh. And no supporter of abortion should ever make a decision over abortion, or a supporter or illegal immigration should make a decision over amnesty for illegals, or a gay person should make a decision over gay issues, and on, and on…

Show us Mr. Henigan why the judge’s judgment has been impaired and then we can talk. Until then your opinion smells of bigotry.

RWB
October 10, 2009
In response to Dennis Henigan saying, “I don’t think gun dealers should be deciding the constitutionality of gun laws”. From the comment section of the article Justice who wrote gun decision is a gun dealer.
[This comment wouldn’t normally make the cut for my QOTD but the bigotry meme made me smile. It’s the proper state of mind for dealing with the anti-gun people.–Joe]

Quote of the day–Kevin Kerkam

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Take a tactics class, do some scenario-based training, but don’t buy yet another gizmo expecting that it will somehow solve a problem better dealt with by behavior-based training.

Kevin Kerkam
October 8, 2009
Comment to Concealed Carry Identifiers
[This reminds me of when I first started working for Microsoft and participated in pistol shooting leagues. Almost everyone at MS that were in one of the leagues would get involved in on-line discussions about what gun and/or ammo would be best for the league. They had more money than time and tried to throw money at a training problem. I was shooting my Ruger P89 (see the web page of my activities at the time here). I shot in two and sometimes three league matches a week, practiced before every match, and took numerous classes. After a couple years the other guys were debating if they should buy another $2K gun and I had 30K rounds through my pistol and was winning most of the matches. I finally did buy the $2K STI when I was certain the pistol was holding me back.–Joe]

Quote of the day–John Hardin

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First they came for the machine guns, and I didn’t speak up because I have a Remington 700, and who needs a machine gun to hunt with?

Then they came for the “assault weapons,” and I didn’t speak up because I have a Remington 700 and who needs an “assault weapon” to hunt with?

Then they came for the .50 caliber rifles, and I didn’t speak up because I have a Remington 700, and who wants to hunt with a .50 caliber rifle anyway (apart from those black powder nuts)?

Then they came for the semiautomatic handguns, and I didn’t speak up because I have a Remington 700, and who hunts with a pistol? (Though those big-bore hunting revolvers are kinda neat, in a sick way.)

Then they came for the rest of the semiautomatic rifles, and I didn’t speak up because I have a Remington 700, and anyone who needs more than one shot isn’t a real hunter.

Then they came for the high-power sniper rifles; and even though my Remington 700 has a scope, and fires a round that will go through a car door, and I can hit the eye of an elk at 500 yards with it (not that I’m bragging or anything), the Second Amendment _says_ we can have guns for hunting, and I only use it one week a year for _hunting_.

But there was no one left to speak up for me, and they took it away.

John Hardin
November 14, 2008
The lament of the AHSA supporter
[I was reminded of this today when I was listening to Breda and Top of the Chain on Gun Nuts: Road show talking about going to GRPC and the discussion there about normalizing the ownership of “Evil Black Rifles”.–Joe]

We are advancing

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In just six months we have gained still more public support for regaining our civil rights:

According to Rasmussen, only 39 percent of Americans believe the country needs stricter gun laws. That’s down from 43 percent only six months ago.
Democrats still emerge as the party of gun control, with 65 percent of respondents claiming Democrat affiliation supporting tighter gun laws while 69 percent of identified Republicans and 62 percent of independents do not support more gun laws.

“It’s ironic that the Chicago case just went to the Supreme Court,” Gottlieb noted, “while Rasmussen tells us that only 20 percent of adults believe city governments have a right to prevent citizens from owning handguns.”

Sixty-nine percent say city governments do not have that authority, and 11 percent were undecided, the poll disclosed.

“This suggests that those who support a handgun ban in Chicago are way out of the mainstream,” Gottlieb said. “Gun control is a losing proposition, for the public that wants to fight back against criminals, and especially for anti-gun politicians who cling to that failed philosophy as the nation leaves them behind.”

We cannot ease off. We must make these bigots as much outcasts as the KKK is today. Have the proper state of mind and keep up the fight.

This week I’ll be doing my share by taking two people to the range tonight then some people from work are going to Idaho with me this weekend for a private Boomershoot party.

Quote of the day–Lew Daly

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We’d like to retire that word [redistribute] from the political vocabulary because you can’t redistribute something that is already highly socialized, and wealth and income in the “era of knowledge-based growth” (whoever ends up “owning” it) is indeed highly socialized. Most importantly (and more to the point), individual productivity is increasingly dependent on what can only be described as a collective good, a common inheritance of knowledge. No one deserves to benefit from this common inheritance more than anyone else, by moral definition, because it’s not created by any individual. So, to the extent that inherited knowledge (“technical progress in the broadest sense,” as Solow termed it) is increasingly driving economic growth, the fruits of knowledge—the wealth being generated by knowledge—should be more equally shared. Wealth that is commonly created should be equally, or at least more equally, shared.

Lew Daly
Via AmericanMercenary in the post What the hell is “Social Justice”?
[This is very scary stuff. Strip away just a little bit of the fluff and it’s, From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!

Just reading the praise for the book you realize these people not only have zero respect for the right to own property but they don’t believe you even have a right to your own thoughts. This is what inspires thoughts of Atlas Shrugged. In this book the people of the mind went on strike. Those that contributed through the power of their creative minds declared those that demanded the product of their minds through the force of government had received their last handout. You can force someone to work but you can’t force them to think.

After reading of people like Daly I don’t just long for a John Galt but a Ragnar Danneskjöld as well.–Joe]

Quote of the Day–Ayn Rand

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Just so we’re all clear;

Such is the state of today’s most critical issues: political rights versus “economic rights”.  It’s either or.  One destroys the other.  But there are, in fact, no “economic rights,” no “collective rights,” no “public-interest rights”.  The term “individual rights” is a redundancy: there is no other kind of rights and no one else to possess them.

Those who advocate laissez-faire capitalism are the only advocates of man’s rights.

Ayn Rand – from the appendix “Man’s Rights” in her book “Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal”

If you don’t have a copy, get one.  The first copy I saw had every other sentence or paragraph highlighted by the owner.  It’s that kind of book.  It was written back in the 1960s, though it seems to be directly addressing our current crop of idiots, moonbats, loons, thugs, bounders, cads, hucksters and charlatans in Washington (to say nothing of the Democrats).

Quote of the day–Will Haun

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So no matter how the incorporation debate shakes out, an endorsement of originalism would be a victory for conservatives who prize intellectual honesty in constitutional interpretation.

Seemingly aware of these implications, the Left is trying to preserve the contrivances of “substantive due process” in an originalist guise. They want to define “privileges” and “immunities” as broadly as possible, to include what Doug Kendall of the Constitutional Accountability Center calls “very important progressive values,” such as abortion rights and same-sex marriage. The goal is to continue expanding “individual rights” while permitting restriction of property rights and economic freedoms.  So if the Supreme Court decides in McDonald’s favor, it could end the controversy over gun rights but begin a host of new battles in other areas.

Yet Robert Levy, chairman of the Cato Institute, is not afraid of opening a can of worms. He says that libertarians see McDonald as an opportunity “to resurrect economic liberties suspended by the Court under the post–New Deal version of substantive due process.” Conservatives should see this case as a rare opportunity to base any incorporation of the Bill of Rights on originalist grounds — an opportunity they should waste no time in seizing, for it may not come again.

Will Haun
June 08, 2009
[I find it very interesting that the phrase “conservatives who prize intellectual honesty” is used. What does this mean? Does it mean that most conservatives are not “intellectually honest” but liberals are? Or does it mean that no liberal can be considered “intellectually honest” but some conservatives are?

Regardless, there are those that have high hopes for the Chicago Gun Case to get us started on the path to liberty again. I admit to seeing a glimmer of that possibility but know that economic liberty is going to be a much tougher war than guns are and don’t have very high hopes. Even if the current system suffers a complete meltdown (and there are lots of indications that it will) there will still be strong resistance to liberty from those that will claim the collapse justifies even less freedom and a much great role for goverment to take in implementing a “planned economy” than it already has.

H/T to ubu52 for the link.–Joe]

Quote of the day–Mike Beard

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Last year, the Supreme Court overturned a handgun ban here in the federal enclave of Washington and ruled that the Second Amendment protects individual gun ownership (the justices did leave room for firearms regulation, saying government could prohibit guns in “sensitive places” and forbid ownership by certain dangerous people, such as felons). But the court did not say whether the Second Amendment also applies to the states.

…

The Supreme Court’s decision on whether to accept the Chicago case for consideration will be a key one and have a significant effect on gun-related litigation across the country.

Mike Beard
President
Coalition to Stop Gun Violence
September 28, 2009
Does it Apply?
[Contrary to what fellow bigot Paul Helmke thinks Beard agrees with most pro-gun people in that the Chicago Gun Case is a big deal. We have a lot of work ahead of us. To continue my previous analogy just after the Heller decision we have liberated Paris from Germany and still have fierce resistance to overcome before we can win the war.–Joe]

Quote of the day–Joe Waldron

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The Supreme Court prefers to work in “baby steps,” changing the law slowly. The Heller case was a very carefully and cautiously crafted to open the door to further Second Amendment jurisprudence. Had they attempted to overturn 20,000 gun laws all at once, all nine Justices would have run out of the courtroom with their robes pulled up over their heads, screaming. Step one was Heller, to get the SCOTUS to acknowledge that the Second Amendment was written to reaffirm and protect the right of the INDIVIDUAL citizen to keep (not necessarily bear) arms for personal defense, inside the federal enclave known as the District of Columbia, where there is no state constitution, just the US Constitution..

Step two (McDonald) is to extend that acknowledgment to the states. Why McDonald?” Because the Chicago handgun ban is a duplicate of the DC ban. If the DC ban is unconstitutional, so must the Chicago ban be. But Chicago is part of a state, not a federal enclave.

Once that occurs, we start knocking down the “house” of gun control laws, one brick at a time.

Heller is the alpha. not the omega. We’re decades away from that. But we’re working on it. We didn’t get to the point of 20,000 gun control laws all at once, and we’re not going to get free of them all at once. It ain’t a “once and for all” system, much as we might like to see it that way.

Joe Waldron
October 1, 2009
Re: Supreme Court to hear Second Amendment Foundation challenge to Chicago gun ban
wa-ccw: Washington State Concealed Weapons Discussion
[People who are pessimistic (see also here) about the status our gun laws have forgotten or weren’t of an age to be aware of how things were in the mid 1990s (see here, here, here, and here for some clues). Those were very, very dark days. The turning point may have been the 1994 congressional elections with the anger over the 1994 “assault weapon ban” playing a big role (I find it very interesting that the Wikipedia articles on this and Tom Foley don’t mention this) or perhaps here.–Joe]

Quote of the day–Eugene Volokh

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Police May Not Even Temporarily Detain a Person Simply Because He’s Openly Carrying a Handgun.

Eugene Volokh
October 1, 2009
[Wow! There’s going to be a lot more open carrying. We just won another major battle.

The Brady Campaign is going to be needing to hire extra janitors to mop up the river of tears as they sob themselves into a stupor today.–Joe]

Quote of the day–Alan Gura

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The freedoms we enjoy as Americans are secured to us against violation by all levels of government. State and local politicians should be on notice: the Second Amendment is a normal part of the Bill of Rights, and it is coming to your town.

Alan Gura
September 30, 2009
SUPREME COURT TO HEAR 2ND AMENDMENT CHALLENGE TO CHICAGO GUN BAN
[The arrival of the Second Amendment needs to be followed up with arrests and prosecutions under 18 USC 242. If not it will drag on for decades like it appears to be in D.C. and it actually did with the Jim Crow laws in the deep south despite the fact that the 13th and 14th Amendments “came to town”.–Joe]

Quote of the day–Steve Chapman

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Odds are it will lose. Last year’s ruling was limited to the District of Columbia, which is unique in being a federal enclave. The only question in this case is whether the 2nd Amendment applies to states and municipalities, as most other freedoms in the Bill of Rights now do.

It’s hard to think of a compelling reason that the court would say states don’t have to respect the right to keep and bear arms. Law professor Ronald Rotunda of Chapman University told me that he gives the Chicago law only a one in five chance of surviving.

Steve Chapman
September 30, 2009
The end of the Chicago handgun ban
[This was based on the news that the Supreme Court has agreed to hear the case that will decide whether the 2nd Amendment applies to states and other political jurisdictions or just the Federal government.

Amazing. Ten years ago I was talking to leaders in the gun rights movement who said that we would completely lose the right to keep and bear arms within ten years with Chicago-like discrimination against gun owners the norm. Now we are poised on the edge of slapping them aside into the dustbin of history along with segregated schools, restrooms, and water fountains.–Joe]

Quote of the day–Marko Kloos

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Once again we see that a “no” tends to be far more effective against rapists, thieves, and other freelance thugs when it is spoken over the sights of a firearm.

Marko Kloos
you go, girl.
September 29, 2009
[Which, of course, reminds me of one of my favorite quotes by John Fogh.

H/T to Say Uncle.–Joe]

Quote of the day–Danville Editorial Board

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While the president hasn’t proposed any specific gun control legislation, it’s also true that if every statement he’s ever made, every bill he’s ever supported and every position he’s ever taken during his entire political career were taken as a whole and proposed as legislation — which is not being done — then the gun owners would have something to fear.

But that’s not happening, for a couple of reasons. The Democrats have focused their attention on the economy. Also, Obama has moderated his views on these issues over the years. As a lawyer by training, he appears to understand the Second Amendment’s place in law, not as something to pay lip service to, but as one of the fundamental rights all Americans enjoy.

Danville Editorial Board
September 28, 2009
Worst kind of economic stimulus
[I agree President Obama has not been on the offense against gun owners since he took office. But before believing he has moderated his views on these issues I’m going to need some proof. Directing the DOJ to arrest and prosecute Federal, State, and local officials for violation of 18 USC 242 in regards to infringement of the 2nd Amendment would be a good start. Instead his cabinet is filled with people opposed to allowing citizens to exercise a specific enumerated right. I keep expecting him to “turn the dogs loose” on us.–Joe]

Quote of the day–Lyle @ UltiMAK

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Every part. Every last little bit of it, from its inception, from the thinking behind its inception, to all of its variants, to every attempt to implement it in any form, any time and anywhere it’s been foisted upon anyone. I consider socialism to be more offensive, more disgusting, more sickening, more dangerous, more deadly and more virulent than any disease– more destructive than any force known on Earth. Sold to the unwary as the warm-hearted answer to the suffering and problems we all face in life, it is the poison pill, cleverly slipped into all our forms of sustenance: our very food and drink, our homes, our schools and our institutions by the sick, the envious, the jealous and the hateful, who would be our masters and we their playthings.

Lyle @ UltiMAK
September 2, 2009
In response to the question, “What part of socialism do you disagree with?”
[One friend was a bit more succinct but only for those that understood the fundamentals, when he told me it was like a sugar pill that caused cancer twenty years later. “Here, try it! It’s sweet. Just a little bit…”–Joe]

Quote of the day–Thomas Jefferson

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A little patience, and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their spells dissolve, and the people, recovering their true sight, restore their government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are suffering deeply in spirit, and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public debt…If the game runs sometime against us at home, we must have patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at stake.

Thomas Jefferson
[President Obama and supporters, please meet my hero, Thomas Jefferson.–Joe]

Quote of the day–Wayne LaPierre

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The Second Amendment is a constitutional right, not a carnival ride. How could the right to keep and bear arms ever be exercised in Rachel Maddow’s world, a world in which “keeping” arms wouldn’t be allowed? Would Ms. Maddow also like to see a world in which the First Amendment could only be exercised under the bright lights of a television studio? I suppose since she has her own show, she might not object to that either.

Wayne LaPierre
NRA Executive Director
September 24, 2009
[This tends to be an all too common theme–the constitution only applies if it doesn’t get in the way what someone wants the government to do. That’s not the way it is supposed to work and in fact things get really screwed up when this is the mode of operation.–Joe]

Quote of the day–Greg Hamilton

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Handing your permit under you license is a purposeful and proven psychological manipulation that produces better outcomes. There is no doubt in my mind at all about that. Maybe 1 time in 30 interactions has it produced the opposite affect and even then all that happened was I got the ticket I deserved in the first place. The other one ticket I received was given to me with no hostile intent because of the gun or permit, they just didn’t factor in at all.

Telling an officer you have a permit or gun WILL produce anxiety because the officer now has to react quickly to new data and it throws their script. He can’t just ignore verbal interactions or choose to act on the data at his own pace. Officers crave control, telling him he must deal with anything new and not on his plan makes him feel he is losing control. He will respond aggressively/dominantly as a default reaction to lack of control. An officer finding out you are carrying after interacting with you for an extended period will cause him to feel you have been holding out and been one-up on him without his knowledge.

Greg Hamilton
Chief Instructor Insights Training
August 24, 2009
From the Insights Training Center email list on the proper interaction with the police when you are carrying a concealed weapon and have a concealed weapons permit.
[I have used this method for years with good results. I’m strongly inclined to believe Greg has the psychology correct.–Joe]

Quote of the day–Milton Friedman

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The greatest advances of civilization, whether in architecture or painting, in science and literature, in industry or agriculture, have never come from centralized government.

Milton Friedman
[So… Why is it that so many people demand more and more centralized government? Is it that facts are irrelevant to people? Is it that despite a hundred years of statist and socialist failure people still don’t see the pattern? Or is it that Labrat nailed it with Parasite memes and monkeyspheres?

And if you don’t have good answers to those questions I’ll still give you an A+ if you can tell me a simple and clean way to dramatically reduce the size of government.–Joe]