Quote of the day—Mike

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I swear to God, if you’ve never felt the government’s jackboots on your neck, it’s because you’ve never stood up for yourself.

Never give an inch, Joe. Never.

Mike
May 20, 2020
[Via email. Mike also informed me:

Looks like things are heating up in Canada with a gun prohibition that covers every ar-15 model they could think of. This will also include 12 gauge shotguns. Why, you ask? Because barrel lengths are important to determine if a firearm is to be considered Non-restricted, Restricted, or Prohibited, according to the law. This new set of regulations prohibits any firearm with a bore diameter of over 20mm, which is 0.787″. As a 12 gauge bore can range from 18.5mm (0.728″) to 20.3mm (0.799″), that can cover a lot of shotguns. Worse, is that if your shotguns have screw-in chokes, those chokes cannot be considered part of the barrel when measuring firearm barrels for importation purposes; and since you must cut the bore to a larger internal diameter to have the threads with which to screw in the threads in the first place, you would be unable to import it; and if you already own such a shotgun, you will then be possession of  a prohibited weapon. Imagine if your 28″ barrelled over/under has now been deemed a machinegun, by government decree.

Writing a law which defines something not a machine into something that now is a machine gun sounds familiar from somewhere…

Why aren’t these politicians being tarred and feathered?—Joe]

Email from a firearms instructor in Canada

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I intended to post this several weeks ago but I forgot about until I got another email today:

I’d like to say that I feel your work in regards to firearms rights and the Boomer shoot in particular is right on the money. As an instructor for the firearms courses, I love introducing people to firearms, and watching them overcoming the unknown, and for some, scary thing that firearms have been demonized to be. But I cannot stress enough how hard you must fight to keep your rights, because you have a dragon by the tail. Any slip of your grip on the beast is another inch towards destruction.

If I could borrow some of your time, I’d like to tell you of another experience of mine that will underline how things will go for America if truly well-meaning, but historically and factually ignorant people, are suckered into voting against their own interests.

In 2017, there was a hold and secure at my son’s school… https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/leslieville-hold-and-secure-1.4312966

It was not supposed to be discussed, but the rumour making the rounds, supposedly from an officer who spoke before being told to shut up, was that someone wrote a letter to the school saying that they were going to come and shoot the place up. The school took it seriously, which is at least something to their credit, but that’s about all the credit I’m willing to extend to them.

Of course, everyone had to scramble to find alternate care for the kiddies and so on, and 2 weeks later there was a meeting called for the parents to come in and get an update on the case and an explanation of what was done by the school and police, and when.

The meeting was presented by the principal, a couple of staff who have some kind of paper-shuffling jobs with the word “safety” in the title, the detective assigned to the case and 3 officers, one of whom teaches the teachers and staff what to do in an emergency, as resources for the parents to direct their questions to.

Joe, I swear to God, in a nearly 2 hour meeting with at least 150 ‘adults’ concerned for their kid’s safety, not a single adult question was asked. Most of the questions by the ‘adults’ centred along the lines of being not being tweeted IMMEDIATELY after any action of the police was completed. Seriously! They wanted to be tweeted after each classroom/broom closet/office was searched for gun-toting nut-bars. This was the important thing to them, not their teacher’s ability to keep their kids safe.

Towards the end of the meeting, I managed to get the microphone and I said that I understand that the detective couldn’t reveal what was actually in the letter, but since the rumour was a potential school shooting, I said that I wanted a meeting with the officer responsible for teaching what the teachers/staff should do in such a situation, so that I could judge if it was an actual solution, or just security theatre, like at the airport.

The officer said that uh, yeah, sure, he would be glad to set up a meeting to explain what is taught, so we had a better understanding of things. At that point, as the mic was passed to others for their ‘questions’, the officer caught my eye and signalled to me that we should talk in the hall after the meeting.

At the end, I went up and introduced myself to the officer, and he asked me to chat with him in the hallway with the other two officers, so I knew what was coming. So the conversation went like this:

Officer: Sir, I’ve asked you out into the hall here to…

Me, holding up hand: You want to avoid having me scare the sheep, is that it?

Officer (relieved): Yeah.

Me: Look, all I want to know is if you have some kind of training that the teachers can use to save our kids if there actually is a shooting. Do you tell them to barricade the door, throw stuff, how to make a fist and punch, weapons training, anything?

Officer: Well, what you’re talking about is called ‘Force on Force’, and is part of my powerpoint presentation for York school board (the school board outside of the Toronto District School Board, which controls my son’s school), but I can’t teach that portion in the T.D.S.B.

Me:!…

Me: Uh, ok, and how do we get THAT ball rolling?!

Officer (looking me straight in the eye): Well sir, there would need to be a Sandy Hook level event for that conversation to start.

Me, processing my disbelief: So, you’re telling me that not only must children die, but they must die in high enough numbers to force a discussion on whether the school board can think about training teachers to save our kids’ lives?!

Officer: Yup.

That, Joe, is where hatred, fear, and ignorance of firearms leads people. People so captured by anti-gun ideology that they would rather let our kids die than act as adults and face the hard truth that violence must sometimes be used to save the innocent from the criminal.

When will this hippy-dippy, hug-a-thug nightmare end? Perhaps this virus situation will shake things up, because I’ve had an incredible upswing in people interested in courses, suddenly. Which I am not allowed to teach. :p

If you’ve read this far, my sincere thanks for your time. I just needed to get this off my chest, and send a warning to our brothers and sisters south of the border, not to give an inch, because there’s always another control freak ready to screw you over (for your own good, of course!)…

Walking across the crater

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For our first year anniversary (wedding pictures here) last February we went to Kailua-Kona Hawaii. It was the first time in Hawaii for me. I wanted to wait until their stupid gun laws allowed me to carry but Barb did such an awesome job bargain shopping that travel, lodging (in a nice condo), and meals for the week came in at under $1000 (IIRC) that I decided it was worth sacrificing my principles.

It wasn’t quite what I expected. I expected numerous huge beaches. I expected jungle like forests. I expected flowing lava and blobs of red hot rocks flying through the air. I was wrong.

That doesn’t mean we didn’t see and do some really neat things. We did. The high point for me was walking across a volcanic crater. This crater:

BingEyeView

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Don’t let this happen here

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Another one from the archives. This was in a mailing from the NRA:

TearsBorisJohnson1997_0915

Yes. It’s the same Boris Johnson.

Gun cartoon of the day

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I’m still cleaning and rearranging my bookcase. This is via “Gun News Clips”, published by CCRKBA in November 1996. Edited by James Kielland:

StopGunViolence

Antibody tests

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Last week Barb, her daughter Maddy, and I all had blood drawn for testing of antibodies to SARS-CoV-2.

All results came back negative. We were pretty certain Barb and I would be negative. But Maddy was working in Brooklyn, New York until late March and told us horror stories of how tight people were packed on the subways. So, when she came home she was in quarantine for a while. But we thought maybe she picked it up without symptoms. Nope.

Quote of the day—Tim Pool @Timcast

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Trump just said there are very “fine people” in media.

I am shocked and outraged.

Tim Pool @Timcast
Tweeted on May 8, 2020
[In case you don’t get the joke, it is in reference to the fake news a few months back which claimed Trump said white supremacist were fine people.—Joe]

It always rains in Seattle

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Since the COVID-19 restrictions went into place Barb and I have been taking a lot of walks around the neighborhood. The Seattle area rain, fog, and moss is a bit of a downer but it’s better than being in the house all the time.

20200423_103749

20200423_104404

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What type of bird is this?

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One of my web cams captured this image a couple weeks ago:

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This was on the farm near Orofino Idaho where I grew up. And I don’t ever recall seeing a bird with these markings before. Any idea what type of bird it is?

This is a little odd

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I was in Idaho last weekend to do some Boomershoot stuff. No Boomershoot this year but there were various maintenance items to be taken care of.

I spent some time in Orofino and as I was driving into town I noticed a long line of stationary railroad tanker cars. I did my business in town and then stopped to look at the cars on my way out.

20200502_103105

With the huge drop in demand for oil products, I suspected they were full of oil because the oil producers were running out of storage space. I’m nearly certain that hypothesis was incorrect. As near as I could tell the tanks were empty. The cars had been stationary for a while too. Notice the rust on the wheel:

20200502_103226

According to the odometer on my vehicle the line of cars was about 1.1 miles long. And part of that line was double wide.

A couple days later I drove through Lenore. There I found another line of tanker cars.

This gave me visions of Atlas Shrugged as I thought of the economy grinding to a halt.

A little light on the ammo

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In Columbia South Carolina:

Federal authorities found more than 23,000 rounds of ammunition, 90 guns and tactical gear inside the home of a Midlands Technical College student who researched mass shootings, according to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

That figures out to only about 255 rounds per gun. That’s a little light on the ammo side.

When I read the various headlines I wondered why the Feds were hassling him. It turns out he was defrauding a bunch of different people and/or businesses:

According to an affidavit, the ATF’s investigation began in October 2018 after getting a tip about Kimpton’s PayPal transactions.

According to the document, Kimpton used false names to buy the items from sellers and retailers from PayPal accounts—and then contested the sale, saying he never got the items. The affidavit said that left Kimpton with the items and the sellers without payment.

Agents believed this scheme started in June 2018. They executed a search warrant for Kimpton’s home on April 20, 2020.

Okay. He deserved the wire fraud and mail fraud charges. The machine gun charge for the bump stocks? Not so much. But, it’s not totally bogus.

Quote of the day—Walter K. Olson

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I am a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, with which I have been associated since 1985, and am the author of three books on the American civil justice system. My most recent book, The Rule of Lawyers (St. Martin’s, 2003), published in January, includes a chapter exploring the origins and objectives of the movement seeking to make makers and distributors of guns pay for criminals’ misuse of their wares. I conclude that the gun suits are at best an assault on sound tenets of individual responsibility, and at worst a serious abuse of legal process. Even more ominously, the suits demonstrate how a pressure group can employ litigation to attempt an end run around democracy, in search of victories in court that it has been unable to obtain at the ballot box. Finally, I argue that strong Congressional action to restrict litigation of this type is not only consistent with a due regard for federalism and state autonomy, but is in fact required by it.

Walter K. Olson
April 2, 2003
PROTECTION OF LAWFUL COMMERCE IN ARMS ACT HEARING
BEFORE THE SUBCOMMITTEE ON COMMERCIAL AND ADMINISTRATIVE LAW OF THE COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
[Reading the transcript was interesting. At that time, prior to the Heller Decision in 2008, SCOTUS had not definitively stated the right to keep and bear arms was an individual right. This was an issue in the hearings:

Mr. SCOTT. Thank you. In the finding, Mr. Keane, on the finding number one, citizens have a right protected by the second amendment to the United States Constitution to keep and bear arms, I notice it says ”citizens” and not ”a citizen.” there is no individual right in the Constitution to bear arms, is there?

Those were dark days.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Peter J. Boyer

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Henigan believes that it is imperative to steer the argument about guns away from the problematic area of criminal use, with its inconvenient focus on criminals, and toward the matter of guns in the home—incidents of suicide, accidental shootings, and domestic violence. This is an important shift, because it allows the gun debate to be recast as a health issue. Henigan told the Castano lawyers about the many studies that have considered guns in an epidemiological context; in other words, guns should be thought of as pathogens, and gun ownership, perhaps, as a disease.

Peter J. Boyer
May 17, 1999
BIG GUNS
The New Yorker
[I was rearranging some things in my bookcase and found the May 1999 issue of The New Yorker. The quote above is from one of the articles. Viewing the article online requires payment. The picture below is the entire second page of the article.

image

See also:

I find the wording of Henigan’s response to congressman Feeney interesting. Henigan is a lawyer and I’m sure he chose those words carefully. He doesn’t say he believes the characterizing is invalid. He only says he doesn’t endorse it. There is a reason I call him “Half-Truth Henigan”.

The mid and late 1990 were very dark days for the rights of gun owners.—Joe]

Quote of the day— Persuasion (@SonOfAlgos)

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The only way the country is going to get back on its feet is to haul all Trumpers into Quarantine Camps, so they can’t run around infecting everyone else.

And just leave them there..permanently.

Image

Persuasion (@SonOfAlgos)
Tweeted on May 5, 2020
[This is what they think of you.

This is why we have the Second Amendment.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Hamilton Spectator

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The assault weapon ban is fine, as far as it goes. But since a real handgun ban is unlikely, to what extent can Canadians feel safer?

Hamilton Spectator
May 5, 2020
Assault-style weapon ban is like Swiss cheese–The majority gun crimes involve handguns. This legislation doesn’t address that at all.
[I find the phrase “feel safer” very telling.

The author could have said, “… to what extent will Canadians actually be safer?” Or “… a real handgun ban is required to improve safety.” That they said, “feel safer” strongly implies they know gun bans won’t make the average person safer. They apparently have some motive other than public safety when they advocate for gun bans.

Since this is Canada it’s more difficult to get traction with a principled statement of rights. But that doesn’t mean the victimized gun owners don’t have verbal tools to fight back with.

People need to demand gun control advocates openly state their motive for restrictions on self-defense tools. If they claim public safety, then demand they supply the data that restrictions achieve that goal.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Robert Higgs and Donald J. Boudreaux

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Nothing is so permanent in government as a temporary agency or an emergency bill. Crises bring into operation new government activities and new scales of spending, taxing, and regulating; they were not intended to be permanent, yet became so by virtue of entrenched special interests and bureaucrats, often backed by congressional sponsors. Act in haste, repent at leisure.

Robert Higgs and Donald J. Boudreaux
May 5, 2020
Past Crises Have Ratcheted Up Leviathan–The COVID-19 Pandemic Will Too
[Politicians never let a crisis go to waste.—Joe]

Quote of the day—The Globe and Mail

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If a ban on military-style semi-automatics is an effective way to reduce the number of weapons in circulation and available for mass shootings, then surely a similar ban on handguns – which also have no legitimate civilian purpose, and which kill and wound more Canadians every year than any other firearm – would have a similar effect.

Friday’s announcement accomplished two things. It banned a style of weapon that has no place outside of the military, but it also reminded people who care about gun control that the Liberals have been inconsistent and at times illogical in their approach to the issue.

The Globe and Mail
May 1, 2020
Trudeau’s hurried assault-rifle ban is a weak half-measure
[Says the voice of reason.

Well actually… ignorance, stupidity, and/or evil.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Greg Scharf

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The United Kingdom has ridiculously restrictive gun laws, and right now is having a tsunami of knife crime. And what we’re not hearing is that bad guys have a steady stream of illegal weapons coming from Eastern Europe via the Chunnel.

Greg Scharf
May 1, 2020
Gun control is unable to contain the problem of evil
[It’s obviously not about crime. It’s about control and creating dependency.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Josh Horwitz

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As the world faces the COVID-19 public health emergency, America is still grappling with another public health crisis: gun violence.

Gun violence and the COVID-19 pandemic are inextricably linked. As Americans are asked to stay home, many might be in closer proximity to guns for longer periods of time. This is a concern because even under normal circumstances, guns do not make us safer. Guns do not make us more secure. Guns do not improve the health of the general public.

Josh Horwitz
May 1, 2020
Via email. See also here.
[And proximity to cars and ladders make us more likely to be injured while using one. But this ignores the utility of these objects. Horwitz not only ignores their utility, he denies their ability of firearms to be used to increase personal and public safety.

Horwitz is liar and a threat to the rights and safety of everyone and should be treated as such.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Group of Democrats

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While the surge in firearm sales from federally licensed dealers has received nationwide attention, at least 16 companies that sell ghost gun kits have reported order backlogs and shipping delays due to overwhelming demand. The uptick in sales of ghost gun kits and parts have received substantially less notice, even though the increase in sales of ghost guns poses a direct threat to public safety and law enforcement… Because the proliferation of ghost guns is a serious problem, we write to request…information and documentation to probe how the ATF is monitoring, overseeing, and regulating the sale of ghost gun kits and unfinished frames and receivers, amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Group of Democrats
April 2020
Congressional Democrats seek answers from ATF on efforts to track “ghost guns”
[<snort!>

The last time I checked the ATF didn’t have the authority to do any such thing. Furthermore people engaging in legal behavior should not be monitored, overseen, and regulated. They should, and currently are, for the most part, left alone. As they should be. That a “Group of Democrats” expects a government agency to engage in such behaviors tells you all you need to know about that group. They should be forever barred from public office, government jobs, and any government pension.

I also recommend law enforcement investigate to see if an 18 USC 242 case could be pursued. People like this need to be made into examples to discourage others from going down the same path.—Joe]