Quote of the day—Braden Lynch

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I appreciate “studies” about firearms, but discount them in regards to policy decisions. The absolute right to be armed was decided in 1791.

Braden Lynch
November 30, 2018
Comment to Quote of the day—Jacob Paulson
[Furthermore, this right includes military weapons. Thinking about it from the point of the founders and the text of the 2nd Amendment this makes sense. But following up on this it was clearly pointed out in the Miller Decision. Even further it implies that unless it was a weapon useful to the militia it is not protected. In other words, it could be claimed that according to SCOTUS the 2nd Amendment only protects military weapons:

In the absence of any evidence tending to show that possession or use of a ‘shotgun having a barrel of less than eighteen inches in length’ at this time has some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia, we cannot say that the Second Amendment guarantees the right to keep and bear such an instrument.

I would also point out that the right preexists 1791. It is a right which has been claimed by all species for all time. Even mushrooms claim this right.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Karl Popper

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The so-called paradox of freedom is the argument that freedom in the sense of absence of any constraining control must lead to very great restraint, since it makes the bully free to enslave the meek. The idea is, in a slightly different form, and with very different tendency, clearly expressed in Plato.

Less well known is the paradox of tolerance: Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. — In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law, and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal.

Karl Popper
1945
The Open Society and Its Enemies: New One-Volume Edition, Notes to the Chapters: Ch. 7, Note 4
[Via email from Bob T.

Interesting observation. I had a similar discussion with a co-worker many years ago. We didn’t arrive at a solution. And it is quite clear our government and society has gotten us into the end game of this paradox without implementing the apparent solution offered by Popper over 70 years ago.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Wheel of Death

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Most people don’t realize an easy high explosive is nothing but nitromethane and ammonium nitrate. Beats TNT in some aspects. Add 800 mesh Al powder, and you can make EFP’s with a decently formed plate.

An RPG is a step up in complexity. And fusing a fuel air bomb is as well. All doable with patience.

Wheel of Death
November 29, 2018
Comment to Mark Walters: What a Democrat House Means to Our Gun Rights
[People talk the talk over there but I haven’t seen anyone walking the walk. Until then we need to invest in lobbying, voting, and lawsuits.—Joe]

Rounds in the last month

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This month I reloaded 919 rounds of 40 S&W, 1997 rounds of .223, and 50 rounds of 300 Savage.

The .40 S&W was all 180 grain Montana Gold JHP for practice at indoor ranges.

The .223 was 62 grain AP bullets to given the anti-gun crowd a bit of heartburn.

“Why 300 Savage? Isn’t that out of character?”, you might ask. Yes, that is out of character. It’s a somewhat long and sad story.

My nephew Brad Huffman was given an old 300 Savage, rotary magazine, lever action rifle by his maternal grandfather before his grandfather died. Brad harvested a few deer over the years with it. It is a good rifle, considering it’s getting close to 100 years old. Brother Doug bought reloading dies and some new brass to replenish the ammo since it is getting a little hard to find the ammunition for it locally. Brad wasn’t much interested in reloading and he had a box or so of ammo left which would have lasted several years at the rate he was harvesting deer. No big hurry for either of them to load the ammo. Then Brad died. Neither of his sisters are hunters and Doug decided the rifle should stay on the maternal side of the family. His wife has a couple of nephews who are hunters and he decided to give it to them. But before he did that he wanted to load up the brass because the nephews aren’t currently into reloading. Even though Brad died over five years ago Doug still hadn’t gotten around to loading the ammunition so he could give the rifle away properly equipped. I figure it would only take me a couple hours to do it and it would be fun as well. So when I was visiting for Thanksgiving I picked up everything Doug had and brought them home with me. I picked some bullets and an plastic ammo box in Moscow and a missing powder funnel at a gun shop in Cle Elum on the way home.

It took me over a day to reload those fifty rounds. Doug also had seven rounds of used brass that I tried to run through the dies as well as 50 rounds of new brass. I think the chamber of the rifle is oversized in the neck area because four of the seven rounds of used brass got stuck in the die no matter how carefully I lubricated them and tried to get them through the sizing die. Instead of just reloading the new brass I got sort of obsessed with trying to solve the problem. After removing the first stuck case I didn’t get the die adjusted correctly and destroyed a piece of new brass. The end result was 49 rounds of ammunition using the new brass and one round using the old brass.

This brings my lifetime reloaded ammunition totals to:

223: 6,810 rounds.
30.06: 756 rounds.
300 WIN: 1,591 rounds.
300 Savage: 50 rounds.
40 S&W: 95,381 rounds.
45 ACP: 2,007 rounds.
9 mm: 21,641 rounds.
Total: 128,236 rounds

Quote of the day—Jacob Paulson

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Of all the active shooter events there were 33 at which an armed citizen was present. Of those, Armed Citizens were successful at stopping the Active shooter 75.8% of the time (25 incidents) and were successful in reducing the loss of life in an additional 18.2% (6) of incidents. In only 2 of the 33 incidents (6.1%) was the Armed Citizen(s) not helpful in any way in stopping the active shooter or reducing the loss of life.

Thus the headline of our report that Armed Citizens Are Successful 94% Of The Time At Active Shooter Events.

…

At the 33 incidents at which Armed Citizens were present, there were zero situations at which the Armed Citizen injured or killed an innocent person. It never happened.

Active-Shooter-FBI-Data-Infographic

Jacob Paulson
September 18, 2018
Armed Citizens Are Successful 94% Of The Time At Active Shooter Events [FBI]
[33 is a pretty small sample so it’s not a fair comparison but do remember it has happened that when the police showed up they injured or killed an innocent person.

I have never been able to find the study referenced but according to Jeffrey R. Snyder in A Nation of Cowards:

A nationwide study by Kates, the constitutional lawyer and criminologist, found that only 2 percent of civilian shootings involved an innocent person mistakenly identified as a criminal. The “error rate” for the police, however, was 11 percent, over five times as high.

This is not to say that the police are necessarily stupid, poorly trained, or trigger happy.  The more likely reason is that they were not there as the situation developed and don’t know the participants as well as the armed citizen who is caught up in a deadly force situation.

Via an email from Rolf.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Michael Crichton

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I have been asked to talk about what I consider the most important challenge facing mankind, and I have a fundamental answer. The greatest challenge facing mankind is the challenge of distinguishing reality from fantasy, truth from propaganda. Perceiving the truth has always been a challenge to mankind, but in the information age (or as I think of it, the disinformation age) it takes on a special urgency and importance.

Michael Crichton
September 15, 2003
Crichton: Environmentalism is a religion
[Or as I sometimes say, truth and falsity.

It’s critical, and extremely difficult, in all things. I see it most often in the fight to preserve our right to keep and bear arms.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Harvey Milk

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It takes no compromising to give people their rights. It takes no money to respect the individual. It takes no survey to remove repressions.

Harvey Milk
Sometime prior to November 27, 1978
[The previous talk of compromise made me think this was an appropriate time to bring this up.

Milk was thinking of rights other than the right to keep and bear arms but it applies to all true rights. His words resonate well with some people who think of us as the enemy. Use them to your advantage.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Alan Gottlieb

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If a citizen is law-abiding in his home state, he or she is going to be law-abiding in a different state where they might find a firearm they want to buy, but the interstate sales ban prevents that. Citizens can purchase all sorts of other goods across state lines, but why not the one tool that is specifically mentioned and protected by the Constitution’s Second Amendment? That simply defies logic and common sense.

Alan Gottlieb
CCRKBA Chairman
November 26, 2018
CCRKBA SEEKS SCOTUS REVIEW OF MANCE INTERSTATE HANDGUN SALES CASE
[While it’s true that many anti-gun people steadfastly oppose logic and common sense (see examples in this post), it is probable that in this case, at some level, there is a logic to this situation. Such a law makes perfect sense and is entirely logical to anyone that who is of the mindset to deny people their specific enumerated right to keep and bear arms. Such people are the enemy of our country and the U.S. Constitution.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Charles R. Kesler

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Under present circumstances, the American constitutional future seems to be approaching some kind of crisis—a crisis of the two Constitutions. Let us pray that we and our countrymen will find a way to reason together and to compromise, allowing us to avoid the worst of these dire scenarios—that we will find, that is, the better angels of our nature.

Charles R. Kesler
October 2018
America’s Cold Civil War
[A pleasant call for peace. Unfortunately for our future no further compromise is tolerable for those whose vision of the constitution is the original intent. If we compromise further, and probably even if we fail to turn back the existing compromises, we will sink into a socialist hellhole.—Joe]

If cars were treated like guns in Washington State

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From Rehv Arms:

Funny stuff. It would be more funny if I didn’t have to live it instead of just laugh at the poor suckers who have to endure it and hope the courts turn things around. I donated several hundred dollars to SAF and the NRA this weekend. This stuff is real. It must be turned around.

Quote of the day—People for US Disarmament (@USDisarm)

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People for US Disarmament is a movement of Americans working to ban all guns and imprison or execute all gun owners i.e. potential mass shooters.

People for US Disarmament (@USDisarm)
Twitter profile as of November 21, 2018. It is now suspended.
[It was a satire account but it was close enough to reality you had do dig a little bit to convince yourself of that (Poe’s Law) and many people were taking it seriously.

It’s a sad state of affairs when you realize that such views can be taken seriously now. Beware the normalcy bias and don’t let reality catch us by surprise.—Joe]

Quote of the day—KrisAnne Hall

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The entire argument for gun control is built upon a false premise. The second amendment is not about self-defense from criminals.

As unpleasant as it may be for this modern society to say out loud, historically and constitutionally speaking, the right of the people to keep and bear arms has always been a right to protect yourself from those in power who want to enslave you. If America wants to engage in a real factual debate on the right to keep and bear arms, then it must be approached from the proper perspective.

A proper debate on one’s right to keep and bear arms is NOT one that is framed in the terms of whether you can feel safe from wicked and depraved people, full of hate and malice, who want to hurt you. You will NEVER feel safe from those people and those people will not cease to exist just because YOU are not allowed to legally own a gun. Why? Because those people do not care about laws and they will always find a way to hurt and destroy, with or without gun laws.

If society is honest and historically accurate, the only question that has any relevance to the gun control debate is,

“Do you trust those in government, now and forever in the future, to not take your life, liberty, or property through the force of government?”

If the answer to that question is “no,” the gun control debate is over.

KrisAnne Hall
Facebook post, October 2, 2017
DoYouTrustGovernment
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]

Quote of the day—enemy of the state‏ @NormaltonJim

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Of course it’s going to be a long uphill battle to disarm you dumb fucks. Start with shutting down gun stores, then use a buyback program, then anyone caught with a gun after the buyback expires goes to jail.

enemy of the state‏ @NormaltonJim
Tweeted on November 22, 2018
[Interesting.

No apparent concern for the Constitution. No apparent concern for the development of a black market. No apparent concern for the the ethics of the forced confiscation of property from people who have harmed no one. No apparent concern about the potential for the backlash to affect him directly.

And he thinks we are dumb.—Joe]

Statement on #I1639

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From a gun store, Precise Shooter, just north of Seattle:

As a local firearms dealer, we are committed to delivering the best firearms to local shooters at the best price while fully compliant with the existing laws.

The advantage of AR platform is that it is effectively a “lego set”: different components of the rifle snap together easily even when they come from different manufacturers.

In particular, AR-15 consists of two main components that simply snap together, and upper receiver…

AR15upper

…and a lower receiver…

AR15lower

The upper receiver is an unserialized part and can be sold without a background check. The lower receiver is not a rifle and thus is not subject to the requirements of the initiative.

Therefore, if the initiative in fact passes the court scrutiny, you would still be able to buy America’s most popular rifle just as you did before, it will just be coming in two separate pieces. And of course we will be carrying a full assortment!

Two important exceptions.

Lower receiver cannot be sold to a person under 21 per federal regulations. So if you are a young shooter, you have until January 2019 to buy your rifles.

Also, we cannot legally break existing rifles into uppers and lowers if they were designated as a rifle by the manufacturer. But almost every AR-15 vendor makes these two components available separately.

We will be working with Ruger and other manufacturers of 10/22 components to make the same deal available for 10/22 as well. We will also research and make available an economic 22lr solution based on AR platform.

Best regards,

Your friends at Precise Shooter

I hope they sell thousands of guns.

Quote of the day—Larry Correia

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To pull off confiscation now you’d have to be willing to kill millions of people. The congressman’s suggestion was incredibly stupid, but it was nice to see one of you guys being honest about it for once.  In order to maybe, hypothetically save thousands, you’d be willing to slaughter millions. Either you really suck at math, or the ugly truth is that you just hate the other side so much that you think killing millions of people is worth it to make them fall in line. And if that’s the case, you’re a sick bastard, and a great example of why the rest of us aren’t ever going to give up our guns.

Larry Correia
November 19, 2018
The 2nd Amendment is Obsolete, Says Congressman Who Wants To Nuke Omaha
[The quote above is the conclusion to his post. The post is basically a confirmation of my Boots on the Ground analysis.

The political left doesn’t understand numbers and they don’t understand the psychology of gun owners. Correia gives them some insight:

A friend of mine who is a political activist said something interesting the other day, and that was for most people on the left political violence is a knob, and they can turn the heat up and down, with things like protests, and riots, all the way up to destruction of property, and sometimes murder… But for the vast majority of folks on the right, it’s an off and on switch. And the settings are Vote or Shoot Fucking Everybody.  And believe me, you really don’t want that switch to get flipped, because Civil War 2.0 would make Bosnia look like a trip to Disneyworld.

Don’t expect the political left to let facts get in the way of their beliefs.

We live in interesting times.—Joe]

Quote of the day—City Council of the City of Republic, Washington State

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A. The Republic City Council declares that all federal and state acts, laws, orders, rules and regulations past, present or future, in violation of the U.S. and/or State Constitutions are not authorized by the said Constitutions and violate the true meaning and intent as given by the Founders and Ratifiers and are hereby declared to be invalid in the City of Republic, shall not be recognized by the City of Republic, are specifically rejected by the City of Republic and shall be considered null and void and of no effect in the City of Republic.
B. No agent, employee, or official of the City of Republic, or any corporation providing services to the City of Republic shall provide material support or participate in any way with the implementation of federal or state acts, orders, rules, laws or regulations in violation of the 2nd Amendment to the United States Constitution and Article 1 Section 24 of the Washington State Constitution.

City Council of the City of Republic, Washington State
From Facebook on November 9, 2018
[This is very much like the contemporary Firearms Freedom Act at the state level and the Personal liberty laws just prior to the Civil War:

Because most of the abolitionists and supporters of the Personal Liberty Laws resided in the northern states, the controversy added to the already growing rift between the two halves of the country.[1] The northern states refused to repeal the laws and the southern states were not willing to give up slavery. The end result was the bloodiest war of American history; the Civil War.

See also what the Spokesman Review has to say about the proposed ordinance.

I wonder how this will work out if an 18-year old were to travel there to purchase a “semiautomatic assault rifle” after I-1639 goes into effect. Would the gun shop owner sell to them knowing it was against state law but the local police had orders not to enforce the law?

We live in interesting times.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Vote Blue November 6‏ @AlvardoMitchell

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Unless you ban civilian firearms and make illegal possession a capital crime, you will never stop the paranoid cowardly delusional gun trash. Stop pretending gun owners are in any way decent and human.

Vote Blue November 6‏ @AlvardoMitchell
Tweeted September 30, 2018.
[This is what they think of you. Take appropriate action.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Trumphater (@here4now804)

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Just so all of you who are praising this stupid fuck, you are a bunch of tiny dick fucking morons. Carl, you ain’t fucking smart, just an ass.

Trumphater (@here4now804)
Tweeted on November 16, 2018
[It’s another Markley’s Law Monday!—Joe]

Random thought on #I1639

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There are lots of grounds to challenge Washington state I-1639. None are a sure thing and since there are so many components to it seems likely the courts will throw out some aspects of it and leave others intact. I have been wondering if the training requirement might be something we have power over and can eliminate even if the courts don’t find it a sufficient burden on the specific enumerated right to keep and bear arms.

What if there were no classes that met the requirements of I-1639? Or, at least, the classes were so few, far between, and/or expensive that the vast majority of the population could not take the class. What if all trainers refused to include material which met the requirements? Wouldn’t the courts be, essentially, forced to say I-1639 is blocking the exercise of specific enumerated right?

I realize gun manufactures are not meeting the microstamping requirement of California law. And that has resulted in no new guns being added to the list of “safe guns. But that is going through the courts now and may result in a path to a victory on one element of I-1639.

Quote of the day—Jeff Knox

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We’re all in favor of Pelosi pushing for votes on gun control. As we’ve often said, guns win, and we like having record votes. There is some valid concern that this president has demonstrated a willingness to “work with” the Democrats on a variety of issues, and his commitment to the Second Amendment has wobbled upon occasion. There are also a number of Republicans in both the House and Senate, who have proven to be unreliable on rights issues, and who are likely to break ranks with their party, providing cover for Democrats from conservative states who want to avoid going on record with an anti-rights vote.

Jeff Knox
November 17, 2018
Lame Ducks: WWDD – What Would Democrats Do?
[If we don’t know who they are we can’t vote them out of office.

Find them. Fix them. Finish them.—Joe]