Quote of the day—Tam

Bad guys might carry a gun without a permit!” is just an idiotic argument. Bad guys already carry guns without permits, because they’re bad guys. They don’t care about gun carry permits any more than they care about robbery or murder permits. That’s how you know they’re the bad guys. The permit process, no matter how streamlined, is only an impediment to lawful citizens who’d like a chance to shoot back.

Tam
March 22, 2022
Constitutional Carry in Indiana
[There is something many people don’t know. If someone asks you to justify your actions and you confidently answer it with nonsense most of the time it will be accepted. It’s only if you are silent, or fumble for words, that they will follow up and press you to give them a decent answer. This is what the anti-gun people frequently do, whether it is from training, because their heads are filled with nonsense, or both, I just don’t know. This is just another example.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Brad Raffensperger

We need to get a subpoena for the fella who this John Doe is. Was he paid? How much was he paid? And then who paid him. And we’re going to follow the money, and we’re going get to the bottom of it. And we’re going to prosecute this, if we find that there’s substance to it.

Brad Raffensperger
Georgia Secretary of State
March 20, 2022
Georgia ballot harvesting probe advances as state elections board approves subpoena
[I wish them well, but I suspect they will not make much progress.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Michael Boldin

Rights are not gifts from government.

They don’t come from documents, or courts, or legislation – or anything of the like.

Thomas Paine called them “imprescriptible rights.” Richard Henry Lee said they came from the “law of nature.”

And as John Dickinson put it in 1776, “Our liberties do not come from charters, for these are only the declaration of pre-existing rights.”

Paine agreed when he wrote that “it is a perversion of terms to say that a charter gives rights.”

But this essential principle is increasingly lost on a general public more concerned with the political soap opera of the day rather than the fact that both major parties have aggressively attacked the Constitution and liberty for decades.

And what they’ve left behind, they treat as government-granted privileges – not rights.

Michael Boldin
November 26, 2021
Rights are Not Gifts from Government
[Something lost on nearly all anti-gun people is that amending the 2nd Amendment out of existence, if they could accomplish that, would still leave the matter of the SCOTUS decision in U S v Cruikshank:

The right there specified is that of ‘bearing arms for a lawful purpose.’ This is not a right granted by the Constitution. Neither is it in any manner dependent upon that instrument for its existence.

When those people tell you there was no individual right to keep and bear arms before DC v Heller, or that they will amend the constitution to eliminate the right, you have something to tell them. Tell them they are wrong. Tell them SCOTUS settled those claims nearly 150 years ago. And the people have the legal authority, moral authority, and the power to back up that decision.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Alice Smith @TheAliceSmith

The Left are suspicious of the government on defence and law & order.

The Right are suspicious of the government on welfare and education.

Both are correct.

Alice Smith @TheAliceSmith
Tweeted on March 22, 2022
[I agree and go further. I am suspicious of government on all things.

The profile of Ms. Smith on Twitter may be of interest to some:

Who is Alice Smith? The great-great-great-granddaughter of Adam Smith. Follow me on my adventures down the capitalist rabbit hole! 2+2=4

I presume this is the Adam Smith who wrote The Wealth of Nations. This book had a big influence on me.—Joe]

Quote of the day—NRA @NRA

24 NRA CONSTITUTIONAL CARRY STATES DOWN, 26 TO GO! #winning

NRA @NRA
Tweeted on March 21, 2022
[I remember when it was called Vermont carry. And many people held those pushing for shall issue carry in contempt. The thought was that granting the opposition the toehold that the state had the authority to license what should be an unrestricted right was a dead end. It was, they claimed, Vermont carry or nothing. No compromise. Once the state was licensing our rights it was a slippery slope to no right to carry.

I was torn. I didn’t see a direct path to unlicensed concealed carry from many anti-gun leaning states. But there might be a path to licensed concealed carry. Wasn’t the possibility of progress better than the faint hope of utopia?

Even now people claim, “Liberty isn’t on the ballot. I don’t see the point of voting.” But the progress of constitutional carry shows that you don’t need to reach perfection with your next step. You just need to make progress or even just hold the ground you currently have until the next time you take a step.—Joe]

Quote of the day—JoanA (@JABarn76)

Just how little is your penis?

JoanA  (@JABarn76)
Tweeted on March 1, 2022
[It’s not only another Markley’s Law Monday, it is another science denier!

And, not surprisingly, she deleted it.—Joe]

Quote of the day—BlueCollarPew @BlueCollarPew

You’re just completely redefining “gun control” to pretend your ideology isnt completely incoherent.

The reality of “gun control” is dark money orgs run by wine moms, distributing $ to ghoul pols, who then have the cops kick down ur door, shoot ur doggo, & throw u in a cage.

BlueCollarPew @BlueCollarPew
Tweeted on March 8, 2022
[While not complete, it is certainly not wrong.—Joe]

Quote of the day—University of Cambridge

Like some people, AI systems often have a degree of confidence that far exceeds their actual abilities. And like an overconfident person, many AI systems don’t know when they’re making mistakes. Sometimes it’s even more difficult for an AI system to realize when it’s making a mistake than to produce a correct result.

University of Cambridge
March 17, 2022
Mathematical paradoxes demonstrate the limits of AI
[I’ve read a few AI/machine-learning papers, talked to people who design machine learning systems.and tried it a little bit myself. I’m being overly harsh to make the point but, AI/machine-learning designers are more tinkerers than engineers. We are a long way from having AI machines realize we are not particularly useful to them and they stuff us in The Matrix.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Tammy Mutasa

Less than 120 people have caused more than 2,400 criminal cases throughout Seattle in five years.

These prolific offenders have been identified through the High Utilizer Initiative (HUI).

City Attorney Ann Davison announced the HUI launch Tuesday morning, a program made to identify those who repeatedly cause criminal activity throughout Seattle.

The program will then ensure these people will have the actual help they need, and their cases will be prioritized.

Tammy Mutasa
March 15, 2022
New initiative identifies hundreds who have caused thousands of crimes in Seattle
[These criminals were selected on this basis:

The people each has 12 or more referrals from SPD to the City Attorney’s office in the same time and at least one case in the last eight months.

That is an average of four crimes per year per person where the police did sufficient investigation to conclude there was a good chance of conviction. One has to wonder how many criminal acts were actually committed. What is the ratio? 2:1? 10:1?

That last sentence is a bit odd: “people will have the actual help they need”. I would have thought what they really need are “three hots and a cot”. But I guess they are going to try something else.

I remember in the 1960s and 1970s there was a lot of talk about “reform” rather than incarceration. My understanding is they tried a lot of things but there didn’t seem to be any real value. “Three strikes and you’re out” was the response to those failures. “Three strikes” has it’s own problems but there were indicators it was more effective at reducing crime than the previous decades of trying to reform the criminals.

While I would like to think the criminals can be reformed I’m skeptical the reform community of today has something new that wasn’t tried decades ago found to be nearly useless. I just hope whatever they do they make sure those known habitual offenders do not continue their criminal ways.

In the mean time, prepare appropriately if you visit Seattle.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Scott Mann MP @scottmann4NC

Every knife sold in the UK should have a gps tracker fitted in the handle. It’s time we had a national database like we do with guns. If you’re carrying it around you had better have a bloody good explanation, obvious exemptions for fishing etc.

Scott Mann MP @scottmann4NC
Tweeted on March 14, 2019
[There are so many great responses to this. My first response was an English version of:

Une chose qui m’humilie profondément est de voir que le génie humain a des limites, quand la bêtise humaine n’en a pas.

Alex. Dum.

In English:

One thing that humbles me deeply is to see that human genius has its limits while human stupidity does not.

But the best responses I have yet seen came from private Facebook posts*:

I demand you recognize the amazing act of courage he performs every morning when he peeks out from under the covers.

Imagine getting the vapors over humanity’s oldest & simplest manufactured tool.

The presence or absence of knives is how we tell where the apes stop and the people start in the earliest pages of our species’ family photo album.

This is not the deluded ranting of someone in a random psych ward. This is the deluded ranting of someone in a very specific psych ward called Parliament.

But, as it turns out, this is almost for certain British humor that didn’t translate that well into the U.S. where we think the U.K. handling of private gun ownership is just as absurd as this suggestion about knives—Joe]


* If given permission (they sometimes read this blog) I will post their name in an update.

Quote of the day—Larry Correia (@monsterhunter45)

Poor dipshit with a profile full of virtue signals about solidarity in a war doesn’t seem to understand that the greatest insurgents in history are us “backwoods dumb fucks who like to kill things”.

If the Ukraine had a million Texans, Putin would already be at the taxidermist.

Larry Correia (@monsterhunter45)
Tweeted on March 2, 2022
[Probably not literally true, but close enough to be funny.—Joe]

Quote of the day—James Rickards

Perhaps Russia’s most aggressive weapon in its war on dollars is gold. The first line of defense is to acquire physical gold, which cannot be frozen out of the international payments system or hacked.

With gold, you can always pay another country just by putting the gold on an airplane and shipping it to the counterparty. This is the 21st-century equivalent of how J.P. Morgan settled payments in gold by ship or railroad in the early 20th century.

James Rickards
March 4, 2022
You Can’t Hack Gold
[This also has relevance to cancel culture.

Prepare appropriately.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Ellen Spencer 1 @ellenspencer03

Many things are a crime, but people still commit those crimes unless appropriate deterrents are in place. These guns are easily purchased by people with a vendetta. And again…there are MANY many ways to ‘prove’ your ‘manhood’ (lol in your case) without an assault rifle.

Ellen Spencer 1 @ellenspencer03
Tweeted on March 4, 2022
[It’s not only another Markley’s Law Monday, it is another science denier!

When they have no data and/or logic they go with the best they have—childish insults.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Charles C. Cooke

Franks is assuming that you are too stupid to see what she is doing. Summing up her proposal, she contends that Americans should abandon their traditional constitutional setup and “situate individual rights within the framework of ‘domestic tranquility’ and the ‘general welfare.’” This is a fancy way of saying that the natural rights Americans currently enjoy wouldn’t actually be legal rights anymore.

Next time, Franks could just say that—and spare us all the merry dance.

Charles C. Cooke
March 10, 2022
No, Professor, We Shouldn’t Cut Up Our Rights
[Franks, of course, is not going to take Cooke’s advice. She is smart enough to know that deception is required for her plan to succeed.

Last December, I had my thoughts on Franks’ suggestions for the First and Second Amendments. I prefer my approach to Cooke’s suggestion. It’s more direct, let’s her know her deception failed, and makes it clear we not going to acquiesce::

No. Your move Ms. Franks.

Prepare appropriately to back up those words.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Lee Williams

Dear Gabby, Shannon and Mike,

The instant the first Russian T-80 crossed the Ukrainian border, the whole world could see the uselessness of everything you’ve ever said and everything you’ve ever done. You’ve been overtaken by events – mooted and muted in one fell swoop, so scram. Leave the field. It is time for you and your gun-ban groups to go.

There’s a madman with nukes on the loose who’s just 50 miles off Alaska’s port bow. No one knows how far he’s willing to go, so you’re out. The adults are taking charge. Your services are no longer required. Please take the Demanding Moms and their creepy husbands with you, open a box of wine and have yourselves a good cry. Ukraine learned nearly too late that the right to keep and bear arms saves lives, while the civilian disarmament pipedream you’ve been peddling for decades costs lives.

Lee Williams
March 2022
An open letter to Gabby Giffords, Shannon Watts and Michael Bloomberg
[There’s more but I found this the best part.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Lauren Boebert @laurenboebert

Remember.

Ukraine gave up their nukes in exchange for promises of security.

We see how that turned out.

This is why we must NEVER give up our guns to any government.

Lauren Boebert @laurenboebert
Tweeted on March 7, 2022
[This makes perfect sense to me. The principles which apply at a national level make sense when scaled down to an individual level.

But yet some people seem to think it is total nonsense. And they don’t (or can’t) explain why it is nonsense in a way that makes sense to me:

Oh my God, how are you not getting this? Two totally separate things. It’s like comparing apples to a dragon.

Does that mean we’re all getting nukes? We can pile them on a bookshelf behind us in Zoom conferences. Pose with them in Christmas photos. Have shirts that say, “Over my radioactive body.”

Comparing rifles to nukes is an extreme comparison considering that fact individuals can’t just walk into their local Walmart or bass pro shop and purchase a nuclear weapon.

Excellent argument for a 5th grader.

One screen. Two movies. Each think the other is delusional.

Reality is tough. Really, really tough.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Jason Ouimet

Having successfully removed the “violence” component from the federal “domestic-violence” prohibitor, gun controllers set to work on removing the “domestic” component. The current version of the federal Violence Against Women Act (H.R. 1620 or VAWA) would alter the types of relationships that give rise to a prohibiting “domestic violence” conviction to include “dating partners.” There is no temporal or cohabitation limit to the definition of “dating partners.” Ladies, next time you see that cad who ghosted you after two dates, don’t throw a drink in his face—it might cost you your gun rights under the federal government’s increasingly ridiculous definition of “domestic violence.”

Over the last half-century, gun-rights supporters’ enthusiasm to protect the ownership and availability of the types firearms necessary to exercise the Second Amendment right has altered the political landscape. Now, as gun-control supporters increasingly set their sights on gun owners, gun-rights supporters must marshal that same passion to combat the more complex anti-gun campaign to expand prohibited-persons categories. At stake is more than just what types of guns Americans may own, but whether the average American will qualify to own any firearm at all.

Jason Ouimet
Executive Director, NRA-ILA
March 6, 2022
From Prohibited Firearms To Prohibited Persons
[I found this to be an interesting observation. With the new ban on standard capacity magazines in Washington State the article could have had better timing but it is still a valid point.

The anti-gun people have opened up a new front in the war against the right to keep and bear arms and to a large extend gun rights advocates have been caught flat-footed. We do not have a good response to this new type of attack.

In part we have ourselves to blame. We have often said things to the effect of, “It is the criminal, not the gun.” And, we were unable or unwilling to prevent the enactment of laws against convicted felons owning firearms (even though they had “paid their debt to society”). So now when they push us down the slippery slope of any type of conviction it is tough to get traction and push back.

As it stands there is no connection between being a violent criminal threat and being banned from firearm ownership. An petite elderly woman with a felony conviction for $1,000 of tax fraud 50 years ago and has lead an angelical life since is banned from protecting herself with the most effective self-defense tools. But the Antifa thug with dozens of arrests for assault, battery, and arson but no convictions can purchase artillery pieces just like the rest of us normal people.

We need a good response to this threat and absurdity.

My thought is since NICS, and background checks in general, have not changed the violent crime rate we should push for the elimination of these costly infringements which do nothing for public safety. That’s the logical approach.

Am more emotionally based response might be, “If someone is safe enough to be allowed in public with gasoline and a book of matches they are safe enough to be in possession of a gun in public.”*

A better one might be, “Background checks don’t make us safer.** What is the real reason you are doing this?”

Short and clever sound bites are best. Any ideas?—Joe]


* I can’t take credit for this observation. I think it was someone named Jason who, probably in the late 1990’s, told me his father pointed this out to him.

** California’s Background Check Law Had No Impact on Gun Deaths, Johns Hopkins Study Finds

Quote of the day—Steven Kovac

The special counsel alleged that rampant fraud and abuse occurred statewide in many of Wisconsin’s 6,875 nursing homes (housing 92,000 residents) during the 2020 election.

When visited by OSC investigators, many nursing home residents who are on record as having voted absentee in the election, were unaware of their surroundings, what year it was, or to whom they were speaking.

Steven Kovac
March 4, 2022
Wisconsin Special Counsel Alleges Massive Misconduct in 2020 Election
[A friend of a friend tells a similar story about what he saw on election day in Philadelphia with nursing home residents brought to the polling place via wheelchairs.

There is a reason Democrats are so strongly against voter ID and other reasonable qualifications for voters.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Rev. Dr. Chuck Currie @RevChuckCurrie

How much you wanna bet this account is busy posting phallic pictures elsewhere on the internet? Some folks feel the need to compensate for, well, you know. #BanAssualtWeapons

Rev. Dr. Chuck Currie @RevChuckCurrie
Tweeted on March 2, 2022
[It’s not only another Markley’s Law Monday, it is another science denier!

It is very telling he resorts to insults rather than objective data and rational arguments. He’s leading with the best he has to offer.

Via a tweet from In Chains @InChainsInJail.—Joe]

Quote of the day—David S. Willis

Amid the technological chaos and Western culture wars of the 21st century, thinkpiece writers sporadically debate which of these novels more accurately foresaw our present predicament. Modern China most clearly embodies Orwell’s vision, and elements of both novels can be found in contemporary Western societies. However, Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 offered perhaps a more accurate warning than either. Published in 1953, Bradbury’s novel is as gloomy and prescient as either Orwell’s or Huxley’s, but its explanation of how a dystopia is created comes closer to providing an understanding of our new reality.

David S. Willis
February 12, 2022
“A Pleasure to Burn”: We Are Closer to Bradbury’s Dystopia Than Orwell’s or Huxley’s
[I think he is right. Orwell’s vision could be on the horizon though.—Joe]