One man alone can be pretty dumb sometimes, but for real bona fide stupidity, there ain’t nothin’ can beat teamwork.
Edward Abbey
[I would present some specific examples but I think the generics of “government” and “central committee” should be sufficient inspiration for you to generate your own lists.–Joe]
The long-standing Sci-Fi prophecy of intelligent machines rising up to enslave and destroy the human race has disappeared from modern culture.
As far as I can tell, this coincided with the release of MS-DOS.
Dom De Vitto
January 28, 2008 12:42 PM
Comment to Ethics of Autonomous Military Robots
[I was reminded of this after reading Phelps comment to this post of mine.–Joe]
Languages are strongly typed in an effort to find programming errors at compile time, not, as some would believe, to cause compile errors at programming time.
From CodingConventions.doc for the Windows Mobile code base
January 2008
[I ran across this today at work and had to share. I know probably only a handful of my readers will get it but I thought it was so funny. Yeah, I’m a geek.–Joe]
While Barack Obama has been urging citizens not to stock up on weapons because they mistrust him, other anti-gunners are a tad more candid, seeing in the new administration an opportunity to disarm Americans. The Brady Campaign, the day after the election, was demanding the adoption of what it duplicitously calls “common sense gun laws.” Similarly, John Rosenthal, co-founder of Stop Handgun Violence, gleefully wrote in the Boston Globe: “With the historic election of Barack Obama, the nation finally has an opportunity to enact sensible national gun control policy.”
Not so. We already have such a “policy.” It is called the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
William P. Hoar
January 7, 2008
Skepticism About Second Amendment Support
[There have been lots of people that have used various versions of that last paragraph but that doesn’t diminish the correctness or the effectiveness of it.–Joe]
Politicians, and government in general, are world economic meddlers and obstacles. They interfere with business, slow its progress, regulate its advances, tax its earnings and generally make it harder for business to thrive, saddling it with red tape, trade barriers, obstacles to entry, and eating out its substance.
Alan Korwin
December 2, 2008
Politicians Aren’t Businessmen
[Very few people will understand this once Obama has been crowned. Unless his $775 Billion stimulus plan is about cutting taxes by billions rather than spending billions he is going to fail to improve the economy. Most people believe more rather than less government is the solution to their problems. If Obama says it even if it is all lies and jest people hear what they want to hear and disregard the rest.–Joe]
Americans are purchasing firearms and ammunition in record numbers, not because they believe 2009 will offer unusually good duck hunting, but because they fear the fallout from the coming economic storm and the state’s reaction to that fallout.
Michael Gaddy
Buy, Buy, Buy
January 5, 2008
[H/T to Say Uncle for the pointer. There will be more QOTDs from this piece over the next few weeks and months.–Joe]
What are the facts? Again and again and again what are the facts? Shun wishful thinking, ignore divine revelation, forget what “the stars foretell,” avoid opinion, care not what the neighbors think, never mind the “unguessable verdict of history” — what are the facts, and to how many decimal places? You pilot always into an unknown future, facts are your single clue. Get the facts!
Lazarus Long
The Notebooks of Lazarus Long by Robert A. Heinlein pages 16 and 17.
[According to some the Brady Campaign may have a reality awareness moment when pursuing their lawsuit against the changed rule on carry of firearms in National Parks. I would like to think so but I have enough experience in court to know that facts and the truth only play a minor role in the proceedings. Still, the facts are what drive things like my Just One Question and I think it is the proper philosophical principle to demand our opposition adhere to. It is our ace in the hole. Even if they don’t play by the rules and cheat at every opportunity it is still our one of our greatest weapons against the forces of darkness and evil.–Joe]
The most important single central fact about a free market is that no exchange takes place unless both parties benefit.
Milton Friedman
[As opposed to a government run market where exchanges take place at the point of a gun.–Joe]
I know people who don’t understand why anyone would have a gun. They don’t have guns, they didn’t grow up with them, and they assume people who did must be some sort of primitive barbarians.
Tom Palmer
Page 30, Gun Control On Trial by Brian Doherty
[Just like gays in the 80’s Silence = Death. We need to come out of the closet if we want to survive as a free people.–Joe]
Look at their literature. About all they say is ‘guns are bad, they kill children and other living things.’ Look at their website. It clearly posits gun ownership as a social evil. He can say what he wants; I like Dennis, and I’ve never had a negative interaction with anybody with his group, but sorry, that’s a bunch of crap. His dream is dead; the idea of prohibition is dead. They need to tell their constituents to find something else to do with their lives, go be productive members of society, stop attacking our individual rights.
Alan Gura
From Gun Control On Trial, page 114.
[First off I would like to +1 Gura’s experience with the gun grabbers. All of the paid and even volunteer staff of the gun-grabber organizations that I have talked to have been nice people. I believe they were sincere and truly had no wish for anything other than the well-being of innocent people. They may not have been very smart or very well informed but their intentions, however misguided, always seemed to be congruent with mine–the protection of innocent life. They just had a problem with data collection and processing.
But on to my main reason for the quote.
I love the last sentence of Gura’s. Gura was referring to the Brady Campaign (and Dennis Henigan) but it could just as well apply to 98% of our politicians. Especially this year–the year of the coronation of the Light Bringer. It’s going to be rough times ahead for freedom and individual rights. We don’t have enough Alan Gura’s and friendly courts to protect us. If only we could enforce a declaration such as Gura’s.–Joe]
If you wants to get elected president, you’se got to think up some memoraboble homily so’s school kids can be pestered into memorizin’ it, even if they don’t know what it means.
Walt Kelly
The Pogo Party
[Apparently, with todays public education, the memorization task has been simplified to remembering just two words; “hope” and “change”.–Joe]
I may not be God. But I tell you what, I’m the closest damn thing to it.
Ellie Nesler
Ellie Nesler, famed for killing accused molester, is dead
[She, essentially, got away with it. I’m not so sure I would have given her the pass she got. Even the most generous of those judging her would have to admit she did at least a couple things wrong. She should have waited for the verdict and she shouldn’t have gotten caught. Gun people will tell you she probably should have used a larger caliber gun. The .25 ACP has a lot of kills but it just isn’t very reliable on man sized predators.–Joe]
It is salutary to train oneself to be no more affected by censure than by praise.
W. Somerset Maugham
[While I agree it appears to me that most people don’t have the philosophical background and/or brain power to make decisions on their own. Sometimes I wish we could just let Darwin settle the issues.–Joe]
If there is anything in the theory of survival of the fittest, a lot of the people we know must have been overlooked.
Col. William C. Hunter
[I’m a little bit annoyed they canceled the steel match scheduled for today. People should be practicing under adverse conditions as well as when the environment is accommodating. Otherwise they are just enabling themselves to be culled when failure to perform under some hardship means non-survival.
I’d call them a bunch of wimps (actually I already did, but I didn’t mean it) except there wouldn’t be any place to park vehicles. With all the snow on the ground people couldn’t have driven up the road to the parking area.–Joe]
A handgun is a gun that police use, that the military use but ordinary people do not use unless they’re out to kill somebody. There’s no reason to have a handgun.
…
The police should be able to, they see this guy standing in the street and they you know, looking at whatever, they should be able to frisk them and if they have a gun, that gun should be removed and they should go to jail.
Susan Martin
December 26, 2008
A conversation on gun control with Susan Martin, Mario Elia, Karen Ellis-Elia and Sean Daly
[Ignorant of the millions of incidents each year in the U.S. where handguns were used to protect innocent life Ms. Martin imagines a police state as being a better place to live. She lives in Canada where they already have censorship and a (never mind it has failed) gun registry. With those already in place she may get her wish sooner than she thinks. I think she should be careful what she wishes for.–Joe]
Update: They let my comment go through (comments were moderated):
I have a great deal of sympathy for those who have suffered such losses but there is Just One Question (https://blog.joehuffman.org/2004/12/14/just-one-question/) that needs to be asked before advocating more restrictions on firearms. That question is: “Can you demonstrate one time or place, throughout all history, where the average person was made safer by restricting access to handheld weapons?”
Until that question can be answered in the affirmative those that advocate for more restrictions on firearms are actually advocating for an unjustified taking of freedom.
Update2: I left another comment (12/30/2008):
I find it very telling that those advocating for more gun control claim it will reduce “gun violence”. This claim is doubtful (the counter example of the U.K. experience is just one reason to doubt it) but furthermore they do not claim it will reduce violent crime. But by carefully choosing their words they lump praiseworthy violence in defense of innocent live in the same category as criminal acts. Those same carefully chosen words also overlook that the total violent crime rate can (and frequently does) increase when people are prevented from using firearms for self defense.
And also telling is the same advocates for gun control repeatedly refuse to answer Just One Question, “Can you demonstrate one time or place, throughout all history, where the average person was made safer by restricting access to handheld weapons?”
Because they cannot answer this one question it shows that safety is not the objective of their advocating for increased restrictions on firearms. They have some other agenda which they are not sharing.
I have come to the conclusion that politics is too serious a matter to be left to the politicians.
Charles De Gaulle
[Okay… but what is the alternative? Anarchy? I just don’t see a better alternative.–Joe]
Merry Christmas to you all. Let’s all enjoy it. The Grinch is coming to town on January 20th, and we don’t yet know which presents he’s going to try to take away.
Sebastian of Snowflakes in Hell
December 25, 2008
Merry Christmas
[I was tempted to use something I got in email which was more in line with my true feelings, but little overdone, about Christmas:
Having returned from my customary drive around the neighborhood shouting “Bah, Humbug” at everyone, with a reindeer dummy strapped to the car, Merry Christmas to all!
But I didn’t want to go through the bother of sending an email to get permission to use their name and Sebastain captures my mood a little bit better.–Joe]
This reading of the Bill of Rights is potentially a very dangerous thing.
The government is not likely to take kindly to direct threats to its powers — which the Bill of Rights specifically represents — especially as it is held in hand by an angered people. The very idea that the people would take it upon themselves to examine government’s abuses, usurpations of powers, abuses of authority, and contraventions of the very Bill that is meant to constrain government actions, is inflammatory.
At what point do the people, oppressed and incensed by the abuses of government, act directly to limit and yes punish those responsible? When are “public servants,” feigning to guard us against infringements, brought to justice?
Alan Korwin
December 23, 2008
Bill of Rights Day
[Read the whole thing. Especially the part about heads on pikes.–Joe]
Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under Communism, it’s just the opposite.
John Kenneth Galbraith
[While true this overlooks the net result of the people living under the two different systems. Under capitalism there exists a wider disparity between the richest and the poorest. But the poorest of the poor is no worse off than if they were living under a communist regime. And the average person is far, far better off living in a capitalist system. But many people don’t make it this far in the logic chain. Their is a strong tendency to stop after reaching the point about there being a wide disparity between the richest and poorest. As near as I can determine their is a belief that this is “not fair”. Pointing out to them that “life is not fair” does not remedy the situation. Apparently there is some deep seated belief that things can be made to be “fair”. I think the problem must be attacked at a lower level–that is the definition of “fair”. It is not “fair” that the government should take (at the point of a gun) the property and/or services of one and give it to another. That “unfairness” can only be reduced by reducing the size of government and the taxes paid.
I’m reminded of this quote by Phil who posted about Arianna Huffington saying Capitalism should be as dead as Communism. I’m tempted to say something comparing the status the brains of both Huffington and Marx but most people should be able to draw the obvious conclusion without me leading them there.–Joe]
For all ages, the fatal gun accident rate is at an all-time low, even as the per capita gun supply is at an all-time high. The annual risk level for a fatal gun accident is 0.22 per 100,000 population–about the risk level for taking two airplane trips a year, or for a whooping cough vaccination.