For example, the advent of the internet has facilitated a massive, unregulated gun marketplace in which just one website in 2018 had more than one million ads for guns for which no background check was required.
Shannon Watts February 11, 2019 The Gun Reform Movement Is Stronger Than Ever. And Now We’re Winning | Opinion [If laws are being broken on such a massive scale it should be trivial for law enforcement to set up sting operations and haul the criminals off by the bus load. But of course this isn’t happening. It’s just that she would like to see gun owners hauled off by the bus load and she is willing to lie and/or deceive to make that happen.—Joe]
Of the 10 states in the country with the lowest murder rates, half of them have some of the loosest gun laws in the country, and of those, the lowest consistently have murder rates comparable to Europe. I’m not going to tell you what to make of that, but in my mind, those states have essentially, intentionally or not, solved their violence issues, and they did it without gun control. Perhaps you may have a differing opinion, and that’s fine, but to me, knowing there is a solution to violence out there that doesn’t involve restricting rights, means that’s the only path we should pursue.
Good Snek December 29, 2018 Gun Control: How the Media Manipulates You to Give Up Your Rights [A stronger statement can be made and defended, such as, “Rights are not negotiable and not in any way conditional upon crime rates.” But you could get more political support for Snek’s weaker version.—Joe]
Liberals collect scalps, conservatives collect moral victories. This isn’t a battle for local dog catcher, it’s a fight for the future of the country; it’s time for the right to fight back the way they’re being attacked. Mutually assured destruction is the only way to stop these fascists in their tracks.
I can picture that woman walking around a gulag with a notebook taking complaints from prisoners, and then reminding them that they are there because they are considered problematic by the communist party, with a smile on her face. She is that scary.
[Rupp’s comment may be a little overstated but it’s not wrong.
This was an fantastic podcast. Daughter Jaime strongly recommended it to me. She was super impressed with Tim Pool. I’m really glad I listened to it.
Jack Dorsey is, of course, the co-founder and CEO of Twitter. Vijaya Gadde serves as the global lead for legal, policy, and trust and safety at Twitter.
If you are following the suppression of speech in social media issue you must listen to this. After faltering a bit in the beginning Tim Pool articulates the case for free speech extraordinarily well. There were times when he would say something so clearly and compelling I could not think of anything other than, “Wow!”. More than once, in response, Gadde would respond with, “I don’t know what that means.” They apparently live on a different planet.
I did form the opinion that they are probably not being deliberately malicious. Everyone agreed that the political left wants to ban anyone opposing them from social media. Twitter’s own internal data shows that the political left has a strong tendency to only follow those of a similar political view while the political right are much more likely to follow a political mix. Even if Twitter employees were politically neutral, which they are not, there would be difficult challenges in creating a social media platform that was “comfortable” for all participants. Because the political left exercises their Outrage Culture with the tiniest or even fabricated justification and the political right tends to shrug it off, the “squeaky wheel gets greased.” This comment by Vokzmedizen is a good summary of this aspect of the discussion:
The left wants to suppress free speech, and is cowardly in its willingness to rat people out to accomplish this, and hypocritically willing to deliberately exaggerate and distort context to claim offense they do not actually feel (In fact, they are overjoyed to discover something ‘actionable’ in what the other person said, even when they know full well something else was meant!) They right is loathe to suppress free speech, and does not wish to show gutlessness by reporting people, and would rather contend with the offender directly.
So it is obvious that a policy that relies on reporting frequency and simply accepts statements of harm in the report, and seeks for context in the ‘tweets’ that supports the report rather than exonerates the speaker, is going to manifest serious skewing to the left. This is simply because the left is going to report anything opportunistically, while the right will only report on the truly egregious.
A fair policy would take THIS ‘context’ into account, and tend to give LESS credence to reports that are essentially harassment themselves (left), and MORE credence to reports that come from the right. The REALITY is most likely that Twitter CREATED the policy in order to FACILITATE the left methodology. There are many other facilitations that source a DELIBERATE skew. For example, accusers are anonymous. The accused is allowed to face his accuser in our culture, anything else is generally considered Stalinist. Again, as mentioned, the policy against misgendering is politically left. Again, they consider dog piling bannable, but yet a coordinated mass reporting is considered legitimate.
My impression is that Tim Pool completely outclassed Dorsey and Gadde. They were overwhelmed.
I suspect Tim is right in that Twitter will continued down the path of good intentions not realizing that this path cannot turn out well. Twitter management doesn’t really want to facilitate the avalanche even if they do have strong signals it is coming. Because they view themselves as just another snowflake (Pool’s analogy) they will not realize they were a contributor when the avalanche (civil war was discussed) happens.—Joe]
When anti-gun people bring shoes to their rallies send them this:
Gun control advocates are advocates for the enabling of genocide. For some it may be unwitting. But they are still attempting to enable genocide and must not succeed.
A senior U.N. environmental official says entire nations could be wiped off the face of the Earth by rising sea levels if the global warming trend is not reversed by the year 2000.
As sheriff of Nye County, I agree with Sheriff Watts: I will not participate in the enforcement of this new law and certainly won’t stand silent, while my citizens are turned into criminals due to the unconstitutional actions of misguided politicians who, for the most part, are trying to do the right thing.
Sharon Wehrly March 7, 2019 Sheriff of Nye County, Nevada Letter to Governor Sisolak [I think she is being generous with the “misguided politicians”. But I can understand why saying, “You are a bunch of evil, communists, SOBs!” would not be helpful at this point in time so I give her a pass on that.
If the political left does not, or cannot, pull themselves out of this downward spiral into a confrontation we could see their first trials in a few years or perhaps even months. Give them fair warning. Tell them to enjoy their trials. Give them these links http://bit.ly/EnjoyYourTrial1 for private citizens and http://bit.ly/EnjoyYourTrial2 for government employees.—Joe]
Drive around Caracas, and you see long lines of cars waiting for hours at the few gas stations still operational.
Motorists park on highways, cell phones aloft, searching for a signal. The rich have taken refuge in luxury hotels. The poor stand in lines in the street.
As is required by all gun control advocates the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence has to lie to have any hope of making progress. Lying is part of the anti-gun culture.
At this point in the political climate, it is my belief that talk and debate is and has been useless about this issue and others with regards to the Left.
I’m not telling others what to believe about guns, but my mind is made up and I have severe doubts as to my being assuaged at this point.
Grog March 9, 2019 Comment to GUN CONTROL which had this as the entire post: [I can see his point. But, being a ridiculous optimist, I still have hope the courts will settle the problem in a satisfactory manner and the bullets will be used for punching holes in paper rather than in people.—Joe]
As a law enforcement agency, our job is to uphold the law, and we take an oath to uphold the Constitution. We are dedicated to ensuring a safe community and will be keeping a close eye on all proposed legislation.
Steve Hebbe Farmington Police Chief February 20, 2019
What is it, maybe 75% of Washington state is 2nd Amendment sanctuary territory? Parts of Oregon are as well. Then there are nine states which have passed the Firearms Freedom Act.
It’s trivial to create analogies to free/slave states and sanctuaries in the early 1860. The Democrats are pushing, and passing, bills that I couldn’t have imagined they would try even a couple years ago. Nearly all semi-automatic guns are to banned?
They have become berserkers. My guess is that it is some sort of late stage Trump Derangement Syndrome. What happens if the courts slap them down? What happens if the courts support them? I hope they recover their senses before the only cure is a repeat of the 1860s, but The Fourth Turning keeps coming to mind.—Joe]
I find it amusing people expect me to believe collecting taxes and administrating the redistribution of the remainder will somehow result in a more equitable situation. Either they are stupid or they think I can’t see that they are lying. In either case I see it as funny.
In all the talk about gun control …. I never hear them talk about taking guns away from criminals; just from law-abiding citizens.
5sdad Forum post on February 20, 2019
[There are several reasons for this:
Criminals are their natural allies. Violent crime makes people inclined to seek help from the government. This increases the power of politicians.
Taking guns from people who are strongly inclined to follow the law is far less risky than taking them from violent criminals who require firearms in their “profession”.
While true, there is more to it. Government in general cannot be trusted. And of course not all our fellow citizens can be trusted.
It is true that twice as many prison inmates identify as Democrats as all other political affiliations combined but it’s not close to 100%. And my impression is that ratio holds for convictions of politicians as well as common criminals. So while the meme above is substantially true it doesn’t tell the whole story.
Call Me Donald @LoserInChief Tweeted on March 3, 2019 in response to Man out for a morning walk shoots himself in the penis, Indiana police say
[It is somewhat refreshing when the anti-gun people slip and admit what we have long known. That is, they regard people as cattle and think it a good thing when those they view as inferior or a threat to their “enlightened governance” are maimed or killed.—Joe]
We reject oppressive speech codes, censorship, political correctness and every other attempt by the hard left to stop people from challenging ridiculous and dangerous ideas. These ideas are dangerous. Instead we believe in free speech, including online and including on campus.
Today I’m proud to announce that I will be very soon signing an executive order requiring colleges and universities to support free speech if they want federal research grants.
Donald Trump
U.S. President
March 2, 2019 Trump says he’ll sign executive order for free speech on college campuses
[While I applaud a push for free speech I wonder if this really should have been handled a different way. Could the next president sign an executive order requiring colleges and university to censor “hate speech” by anyone opposed to socialism?
I would think a better approach would be to prosecute university officials or individuals using existing laws. Wouldn’t 18 USC 241 and/or 242 be applicable? This would be particularly in the case on exhibit in the article (a kid was punched in the face). If something broader were needed then I think it should go through the legislative process.
