The Constitution only gives people the right to pursue happiness. You have to catch it yourself.
Benjamin Franklin
[I wish everyone could keep this thought close for the entirety of this year and all that follow. Especially when they vote this November.–Joe]
The bill really does not guarantee anything for the security of the citizens of the United States.
Bill Albright
December 2007
Ammonium nitrate regulated — sort of
A Defense Department consultant who spent his career at the ATF.
[Albright is correct in what he says but my impression is that he believes there should be more regulation. More on this stupid law in my next post.–Joe]
The truth is, regardless of how many pointy tools and shampoo bottles we confiscate, there shall remain an unlimited number of ways to smuggle dangerous items onto a plane. The precise shape, form and substance of those items is irrelevant. We are not fighting materials, we are fighting the imagination and cleverness of the would-be saboteur.
Thus, what most people fail to grasp is that the nuts and bolts of keeping terrorists away from planes is not really the job of airport security at all. Rather, it’s the job of government agencies and law enforcement. It’s not very glamorous, but the grunt work of hunting down terrorists takes place far off stage, relying on the diligent work of cops, spies and intelligence officers. Air crimes need to be stopped at the planning stages. By the time a terrorist gets to the airport, chances are it’s too late.
Patrick Smith
December 28, 2007
The Airport Security Follies
[As near as I can tell the only people that argue for the continued existence or claim effectiveness of the TSA are the people of the TSA. It’s not that the people of the TSA are necessarily stupid or incompetent, its that it is an unsolvable problem. It’s time we considered alternatives.–Joe]
I have this friend whose little brother is a vegetarian except for hamburgers and tacos. I’m that way except with Pandas.
Xenia Huffman-Scott
December 22, 2007
[If I explained it then it wouldn’t be nearly as funny.–Joe]
Concentrated power is not rendered harmless by the good intentions of those who create it.
Milton Friedman
[Liberals/”progressives” take note. I want to scream this in their faces, I want to pound it into their heads with a clue by four, but I know it wouldn’t matter. They just don’t seem to get it.–Joe]
I believe today that I am acting in the sense of the Almighty Creator. By warding off the Jews I am fighting for the Lord’s work.
Adolf Hitler
Speech before the Reichstag, 1936.
[Tam’s post from yesterday reminded me of this. Uncle made part of her post his QOTD. Read both posts and the comments.–Joe]
The fact that it is legal does not make it moral. Jim Crow was legal, but it was not moral. Denying women the right to vote was legal, but it was not moral. Denying workers the right to organize was legal, but not moral.
Rev. Jesse Jackson
President of Rainbow/PUSH Coalition
July 12, 2007
Anti-gun activists building momentum
[This is from the same article as the QOTD from yesterday where Father Michael Pfleger used this same theme to push for more restrictions on gun owners. Another thing that strikes me about this line of thinking is that they are comparing the lack of restrictions on firearms to excessive restrictions on people in years past. They are whining about excessive freedom yet invoking memories of repression. Do they even have a glimpse of the irony? I sometimes think they are incredibly stupid to use such crude attempts at emotional trickery. But I keep hearing the voice of Sean Flynn telling me otherwise.–Joe]
Our playgrounds have become battlegrounds. Our streets have become cemeteries. Our schools have become places to mourn the ones we’ve lost. I’m sick and tired of seeing our young people gunned down.
Think about that. At a time when we’re spending $275 million a day on a war overseas, we’re neglecting the war that’s being fought in our own streets.
We also have to recognize that part of the reason that guns are so deadly in our society and in our communities in particular is because we’ve got young men standing on the streets without anything else better to do than gangbang. We need to express our collective anger through collective action.
Barack Obama
Aug 5, 2007
Obama delivers message tough on guns
[I “like” the part about collective action. I think it’s very telling.–Joe]
I consider one additional magazine as minimum standard gear.
As to the likelihood of needed it….
I haven’t needed to use a spare tire on any of my automobiles in quite a few years but I still keep one in each vehicle.
John Holschen
December 12, 2007
Insights Training Center List
John is an instructor at Insights.
An armed society is an at-risk society.
The Brady Campaign
CONCEALED WEAPONS, CONCEALED RISK
[And the numbers to back up this claim are where? And please include the number of people killed by their own government in the last 100 years because they were unarmed. My speculation is they came up with this sound bite to counter the famous Heinlein quote about an armed society.–Joe]
There are only two forces that unite men – fear and interest.
Napoleon Bonaparte
[I was reminded of this when reading Kevin’s excellent post Why We Fight.
Bonaparte’s insight can also be applied to both sides of the gun issue. The anti-gun people use fear a little more than we do but our leaders use it too. We have a much stronger basis in the “interest” part of the equation which is why I think we are winning now. It gives us more staying power. The fear angle fades after a while when the blood doesn’t run in the streets like the anti-gun bigots predicted.–Joe]
Indeed, a major source of objection to a free economy is precisely that it does this task so well. It gives people what they want instead of what a particular group thinks they ought to want. Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself.
Milton Friedman
1962
[People that think the government should subsidize ethanol production and mandate what types of cars to build or light bulbs to manufacture should read more of Friedman’s work.–Joe]
One tenet of the National Rifle Association’s faith has always been that handgun controls do little to stop criminals from obtaining handguns. For once, the NRA is right and America’s leading handgun control organization is wrong. Criminals don’t buy guns in gun stores. That’s why they’re criminals. But it isn’t criminals who are killing most of the 20,000 to 22,000 people who die from handguns each year. We are.
Josh Sugarmann
June 1987
The NRA is Right: But We Still Need to Ban Handguns
The Washington Monthly
[This is one of those quotes that is almost too good to be true. I obtained it from Wikipedia for whatever that is worth.–Joe]
We have beautiful daughters. Amazingly beautiful.
But then I won’t argue if someone were to suggest the potential for bias exists. But that doesn’t mean I’m even the least bit in error about my claim.
My claims about their talents, intelligence, goodness, etc. also have potential for bias as well and would also be lacking in any error.
And yes, I’m well aware of the Heinlein quote from Time Enough For Love (page 241). I’ll save you the trouble of reminding me:
Delusions are often functional. A mother’s opinions about her children’s beauty, intelligence, goodness, et cetera ad nauseam, keep her from drowning them at birth.
Lazarus Long
1916-4272
Also of note from this same book and character is this quote:
Do not handicap your children by making their lives easy.
This quote is of particular interest because it was the first quote in my collection of quotes (and things) which now totals 8491 items. It was when James was a few months old I decided I liked that quote and did not want to forget it as we reared James and his future siblings. I added it to my autoexec.bat file so that I would see it every time I booted my IBM XT. A week or two later I had some other quotes I wanted to be reminded of. I then wrote a simple program that would select and display a quote at random and put a call to the program in autoexec.bat. I ended up rewriting the program in the early 90’s and recompiling it for Win32 after Windows 95 came out but the collection of quotes has just been growing and is one of the sources I used for the QOTD on this blog. I now have the program set up so that every time I open up a command prompt (frequently, and don’t give me any crap about this–yes, I work for Microsoft and use a command prompt for a LOT of things including building MS software) the programs runs and selects a quote at random for me.
Back to the girls. Wow. They sure are beautiful.
You also have to figure it’s probably frustrating as hell for them to not have a single legislative achievement at the federal level in 14 years. They try to push a bill, after the worst mass shooting in our nation’s history, that makes so many concessions to gun owners that the NRA doesn’t have any problem with it, and they still can’t get it through Congress because the Brady name and cause have become so politically poisonous that even a whiff of their involvement is enough to send Congress running.
Sebastian
December 17, 2007
Can You Smell the Desperation?
[Regarding Brady Campaign President Paul Helmke’s blog post.–Joe]
An editor should have a pimp for a brother, so he’d have someone to look up to.
Gene Fowler
1992 Daily Curmudgeon Calendar
[Uncle’s example from the New York Times where they rant about the lack of gun control reminded me of this.–Joe]
As a private citizen, as a prosecutor, as a Mayoral candidate and as Mayor, I have advocated for more regulated and more uniform gun licensing regulations, similar to those for a drivers license.
Rudy Giuliani
We do have tough gun laws in Massachusetts. I support them. I won’t chip away at them. I believe they protect us and provide for our safety.
Mitt Romney
A few years ago, Congress passed a law to make sure people undergo a simple background check before buying a gun… Problem is, there’s a dangerous loophole because right now the law doesn’t cover most of America’s gun shows.
John McCain
The real effect of these gun-control measures is to place onerous restrictions on law-abiding citizens who use firearms for such legal activities as self-defense, sport-shooting, hunting, and collecting.
Fred Thompson
The Founding Fathers weren’t worried about our being able to bag a duck or a deer, they were worried about our keeping our fundamental freedoms.
Mike Huckabee
I share our Founders’ belief that in a free society each citizen must have the right to keep and bear arms. They ratified the Second Amendment knowing that this right is the guardian of every other right, and they all would be horrified by the proliferation of unconstitutional legislation that prevents law-abiding Americans from exercising this right.
Ron Paul
Via Jeff Knox Candidates on Rights
[There is a fair amount of further information in Knox’s post.–Joe]
WHEREAS: The Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which provides that the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed, must be protected by every Member of Congress.
WHEREAS: Sarah Brady and the Gun Control Lobby are already bragging how they are going to work with their allies in Congress to put the right to keep and bear arms on the congressional chopping block.
WHEREAS: Sarah Brady and the rabid gun-grabbers are planning to ban private gun sales, exterminate gun stores, renew the Clinton Gun Ban, enact gun rationing, ban other self-defense guns, expand no-safety zones, make concealed carry permits useless and otherwise infringe on the Gun Rights of Americans.
THEREFORE: Let every U.S. Senator know I’m opposed to such efforts to undermine my right to keep and bear arms and I demand Congress pass “NO MORE GUN CONTROL.”
National Association for Gun Rights
No More Gun Control Petition
[I got a call a few minutes ago asking me to listen to a message from Congresswoman Marilyn Musgrave. I did listen and it asked me to sign the above petition and donate money. I signed the petition but haven’t donated any money. This week I put $1300 into car repairs and it’s not a good time of year for finding extra cash anyway.–Joe]
You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.
Winston Churchill
[Remember that when you consider “biting your tongue” rather than offend an anti-freedom bigot who deserves to be offended or worse. If you don’t speak up for the things you most strongly believe in then you should not be surprised when you lose the things you most cherish..–Joe]
You know, that is the most inane statement I have ever heard.
Mika Brzezinski
December 11, 2007
Video here: 2007-12-11MSNBCMJMika.wmv (2.17 MB)
In response to Joe Scarborough telling her, “One person with a gun in the right place can make a big difference.” in regards to Jeanne Assam stopping the murderer at the New Life Church in Colorado Springs.
Via Mark Finkelstein at NewsBusters and an email from Ashley Varner @ the NRA-ILA.
[No attempt at refuting the claim, just dismiss it. But of course what else could she do other than change her mind? The facts speak for themselves.–Joe]