Jews tend to think if terrible things happened to their ancestors in 15th century Spain and 19th century Russia and 20th century Nazi Germany, it can and will happen here. It’s a form of paranoia. But it’s a very strange form. For as we all know, this is a nation of 300 million. So, wouldn’t you think a minority numbering a mere five million, and in constant fear of pogroms, would spend as much time as possible on the firing range?
Burt Prelutsky
May 4, 2007
What is it with Jews and guns?
Popularity isn’t the basis for war. The struggle for human freedom is. War is ugly by design, and instigated by tyrants, oppressors, fascists, religious fanatics bent on world domination, and other enemies of freedom.
Alan Korwin
April 2, 2007
Genocidal Peace Supporters
The “nothing to hide” argument speaks to some problems, but not to others. It represents a singular and narrow way of conceiving of privacy, and it wins by excluding consideration of the other problems often raised in government surveillance and data mining programs. When engaged with directly, the “nothing to hide” argument can ensnare, for it forces the debate to focus on its narrow understanding of privacy. But when confronted with the plurality of privacy problems implicated by government data collection and use beyond surveillance and disclosure, the “nothing to hide” argument, in the end, has nothing to say.
Daniel J. Solove
“I’VE GOT NOTHING TO HIDE” AND OTHER MISUNDERSTANDINGS OF PRIVACY
George Washington University Law School
[A rather “dry” intellectual essay. Some of the better points are that government survelance changes the power balance between the individual and the politically powerful and data can be used for purposes beyond what it was orginally intended for. For example (my example, not the authors) 4473’s are intended to enable finding the user of a gun associated with a crime but can also be used to confisicate firearms from everyone. But if you want a snappy answer for someone who claims they don’t have anything to hide tell them to drop all their clothes, you want a picture. Then you want to know all their sex partners and from this point forward you want a live video feed of all their sexual encounters.–Joe]
The 1928 Law on Firearms and Ammunition accelerated the Nazis’ achievement of an iron grip on Germany:
Moreover, as the Nazis’ political clout grew – and as their violence grew – some of those who might have wanted to get a firearm may not have been able to do so. Those who felt threatened by the Nazis were the ones least likely to be deemed “reliable” by a police chief sensitive to the Nazis’ growing power.
Lethal Laws: Gun Control Is the Key to Genocide
Page 153
By: Jay Simkin, Aaron Zelman, and Alan M. Rice
PSR believes that the only way to reduce the number of women killed by guns, is to educate people on the true relationship between females and firearms. Physicians must work to educate people that guns do not offer protection, but actually put them at greater risk of injury or death.
Physicians for Social Responsibility
From: http://www.psr.org/women.htm (as of 02/19/99)
[PSR seems to have backed down some from this anti-gun position. At least they aren’t quite as up front about it as they were. We are making progress.–Joe]
Washington, DC’s ban on handguns in the home has long protected DC’s residents as measured by the District of Columbia’s firearm suicide and overall suicide rate. The District’s handgun ban provides compelling evidence of how strict gun laws save lives by keeping handguns out of homes. The District of Columbia ranks 51st (last) in the country for firearms suicide for 2004, the most recent year for which statistics are available. The District also ranks last for overall suicide. Maintaining the ban will ensure the health and safety of DC residents.
Violence Policy Center
July 16, 2007
Threat of Handgun Ban Repeal Puts Lives of DC Residents in Supreme Court Balance
[Apparently, according to the VPC, guns cause suicide. It’s telling they don’t compare the District violent crime, including murder, rate to states that honor our inalienable right to defend ourselves. See also this QOTD.–Joe]
In the fight between you and the world, back the world.
Franz Kafk
We must prepare for a long hard battle. So much of what we have worked for in the past and everything we’re currently working on could be destroyed by the heinous decision of right-wing activist judges who chose to ignore more than 60 years of precedent in order to help the gun lobby accomplish in the courts what it has been unable to accomplish in Congress.
Sarah Brady
Email, July 20, 2007
Chair
Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence
[That is such music to my ears.–Joe]
“[T]his radical ruling will inevitably mean more people killed and wounded as keeping guns out of the city becomes harder,” the Post continued, sagely foreseeing a day in the near future when the district might not be the safe gunfree enclave of sanity that it now is. One wonders if D.C. might someday even become the murder capital of the United States without its protective cloak of gun control disarming its law-abiding citizens.
Mac Johnson
Court Rediscovers 2nd Amendment, Liberals Fear Other ‘Rights’ May Soon be Found
March 15, 2007
So the quote about never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by stupidity is appropriate here.
James Huffman-Scott
July 18, 2007
[This was after I told him I had dropped the lawsuit against PNNL and why I had dropped it. I’ll write up a report on it this weekend. I’ve been running on four and five hours sleep for the last week preparing for the depositions that were to be today, tomorrow and the next. We did three of the four depositions scheduled and we had enough answers we could put the rest of the puzzle together on our own. I need to sleep tonight and the rest of the week I need to get a bunch of things done I felt guilty leaving undone at work. The basics are that what James said above overstates things just a little bit but its close enough. I got screwed but it wasn’t for any reason that is actionable. There are still unanswered questions but even if they were answered in the most favorable manner possible to me it just wouldn’t matter from a legal standpoint.–Joe]
I own a gun because a disarmed populace is required for genocide and should it come around again, I’m not going to be that guy. I’m not going to be standing on the side.
Ry Jones
Armed America page 186
[Yeah, two in a row from Ry, but the timing for both was important. See also his blog posting on this new book.–Joe]
Try it yourself–I’m sick of the bitching.
Ry Jones
Marble Falls AR15 magazine backwards refutation
[From Ry’s video on how a Police Officer can put a magazine in backwards an AR-15 long enough to get her picture in the paper. This refutes any claims it had to be a Photoshop job.–Joe]
War hath no fury like a non-combatant.
Charles Edward Montague
[Sounds like Cindy whats-her-name and most of the Democratic party doesn’t it?–Joe]
Never do your enemy a minor injury.
Machiavelli
[At least it is attributed by some to be Machiavelli. I haven’t been able to verify it. I like it regardless of who proper credit belongs to. Especially today since I am preparing for the depositions of my enemies, the felons, at PNNL. They did me a relatively minor injury over two years ago. My intentions for them are more than a minor injury. By this time next week they will be painfully aware of how much “injury” I am capable of delivering.–Joe]
The only foes that threaten America are the enemies at home; and these are ignorance, superstition, and incompetence.
Elbert Hubbard
June 19, 1856 – May 7, 1915
[Add in “malice” and that statement is as true now as it was then. One only need look at what political left is currently trying to do in regards to the war.–Joe]
Legislation like the Brady Bill ignores the fact that violence unfortunately has been a fact of life long before firearms were invented. Outlawing guns does not prevent violence, but it does prevent smaller, older, disabled or less powerful persons from effectively defending themselves against larger and stronger attackers.
[…]
Once the anti-gun left has a cause or celebrity to rally around, rational thought goes out the window as they push their proposed legislation.
[…]
Sarah Brady is still a leading figure in the anti-gun movement. Jim Brady is still an advertisement for gun control.
Sandy Froman
July 12, 2007
The history of gun control, part 3
Froman is immediate past president of the National Rifle Association of America and a longtime member of the NRA board of directors.
[There really should be three separate quotes but I couldn’t decide which of them I wanted to post first.–Joe]
What greater reassurance can the weak have than that they are like anyone else?
Eric Hoffer
(1902-83), U.S. philosopher.
The Passionate State of Mind, (1955).
[Perhaps reassurance isn’t what is in the best interest of weak, the strong, or those in between. But then those who reassure the weak are unlikely to have the best interests of anyone but themselves in mind anyway.–Joe]
I was watching “Fight Club” (again) last night and thinking how lucky we are that you were never fashion-seeking enough to have embraced nihilism.
Sean Flynn
17:34 July 9, 2007
[In an IM chat with me.–Joe]
The burden of proof rests on the proponents of the more guns equal more death and fewer guns equal less death mantra, especially since they argue public policy ought to be based on that mantra. To bear that burden would be at the very least require showing that a large number of nations with more guns have more death and that nations that have imposed stringent gun controls have achieved substantial reductions in criminal violence (or suicide). But those correlations are not observed when a large number of nations are compared across the world.
Don B. Kates and Gary Mauser
Would Banning Firearms Reduce Murder and Suicide? A Review of International and Some Domestic Evidence
Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, Volume 30, Number 2, Spring 2007.
[The answer to Just One Question is no.–Joe]
The AP’s apparent love, and frequent use of the word “czar,” is an affront to the entire American public.
A czar is a merciless dictator, not subject to the will of the people, operating ruthlessly in pre-Communist Russia.
The suggestion by the AP and their hopelessly anti-freedom unthinking lapdog followers in the lamestream media, that the U.S. has a drug “czar,” and education “czar,” a fiscal policy “czar,” and numerous other czars has gotten the public and officials to accept the word, without realizing just how brainwashed they have become.
Even if some twisted politician somewhere was the first to apply the word in some unknown circumstance, a proper reporter would say, in effect, “Although politician X called the new bureaucrat a ‘czar,’ the salaried government worker is actually only a mere employee, subject to reprimand, dismissal and the rule of law.”
Alan Korwin
May 18, 2007
Czars Overrunning America
[I recall a time when they were called “public servants“. It perplexes me that somehow they became Czar’s. Was there a servant rebellion that someone forgot to tell me about?–Joe]