And this is why we should still talk about killing Communists. Because human lives are more important than Communist lives.
Michael Z. Williamson
September 20, 2018
Why We Should Still Be Talking About Killing Communists
[Some people might argue this is overstated and oversimplified.
A more persuasive argument for me is there is a place for dramatic effect.—Joe]
These processes are so bureaucratic that if you have no resources at all, it really is impossible to get the help you need.
Joshua Browder
September 20, 2018
Meet the Robot Lawyer Fighting Fines, Fees, and Red Tape
DoNotPay is launching a “denial of service attack on the legal system to make it better.”
[I could see this being useful in places like New York City where gun ownership is, technically, legal but is out of the reach of anyone except those who have the money for a lawyer.
Of course I could also see government entities getting their own “robot lawyers” and you end up in a proxy war with the outcome out of human hands.
Interesting times…—Joe]
The bullets, they do the killing, they kill. It’s up to us to figure out a way to wrap laws around the purchasing of ammunition.
Reggie Reg Davis
Wayne County Commissioner (Detroit)
September 16, 2018
Wayne County leader wants to make it harder to buy bullets
[No.
Just as “wrapping laws” around the purchase of alcohol and other recreational drugs didn’t improve society the restriction of a specific enumerated right not only won’t improve society it will be an infringement upon the natural right to defend ourselves.
People can make ammunition from scrap metal a few relatively simple tools. Just as with recreational drugs, it won’t be of the highest quality but it will be good enough to get the job done. And it this case the job will be restoring our rights.
Reggie Reg Davis, Molṑn labé.—Joe]
Companies like Facebook are the largest surveillance organizations on the planet, and they need to be recognized as such.
Bruce Schneier
October 24, 2017
An interview with Bruce Schneier on the Internet of Things, global surveillance, and cybersecurity
[I could tell you a lot more. There is stuff that will make your skin crawl. Ask me in person sometime.—Joe]
What’s been hardest is the way our legal system is structured to favor private property. I think people all over this city, of every background, would like to have the city government be able to determine which building goes where, how high it will be, who gets to live in it, what the rent will be. I think there’s a socialistic impulse, which I hear every day, in every kind of community, that they would like things to be planned in accordance to their needs. And I would, too. Unfortunately, what stands in the way of that is hundreds of years of history that have elevated property rights and wealth to the point that that’s the reality that calls the tune on a lot of development.
Bill de Blasio
New York City Mayor
August 2017
[That explains a lot. He has more in common with Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, and Joseph Stalin than John Locke, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison.
Expect similar differences in outcomes as well.—Joe]
There’s no such thing as a responsible gun owner. A responsible person wouldn’t own a gun unless they were a police officer. These are little boys with tiny little members who just can’t get over the fact that they’ll never measure up.
Douglas Fullpint
2017
Facebook comment
[It’s another Markley’s Law Monday!
Via email from Steve O.
In order to make this claim Fullpint must have access to the mental evaluations and physical measurements of all gun owners in the world. That’s quite a data collection he must have. Or not.
Keep it up Fullpint. You almost had me convinced until I looked in the mirror.—Joe]
My niece, Amy, helped with several early Boomershoots and I gave her t-shirts as part of her compensation. Recently she decided she didn’t want them and gave them to her parents, brother Doug and SIL Julie. The didn’t want them so I picked them up and brought them home this weekend. The shirts are still in good shape and I took pictures of the image on them before putting them away:
Sign up for Boomershoot 2019 (May 3rd-5th) here.
Via a private post on Facebook (with permission to post here):
RKBA friends: no on 1639 Bellevue Phone Bank.
This Wednesday (9/19) a bunch of us are getting together at Liberty Park for an NRA phone bank at 6pm. If you support the cause please pass this notice to others and -join- -us-!
PM me for address and more details.
I presume what we will be doing is calling gun owners and others likely to be opposed to I-1639 to encourage them to vote and perhaps ask them to distribute yard signs and flyers.
Contact me if you want the exact address and/or details.
The NRA should be blown off the face of the earth. Without that radical group firearms control could be a real possibility.
Pat McKenzie @PatMcKe44660885
Tweeted on September 13, 2018
[This is what they think of the nations’ oldest civil rights organization.
McKenzie’s Twitter profile blows the irony meter off the face of the earth:
Volunteer, artist, aspiring writer, activist and ACLU Guardian of Liberty
Don’t ever forget–these people want millions of civil rights advocates dead.—Joe]
Most of the advantages of social life, especially in it’s more advanced forms which we call “civilization”, rest on the fact that the individual benefits from more knowledge than he is aware of. It might be said that civilization begins when the individual in pursuit of his ends can make use of more knowledge than he himself has acquired and when he can transcend the boundaries of his ignorance by profiting from knowledge he does not himself possess.
F. A. Hayek
The Constitution Of Liberty, Chp. 2, pg 73
[Via email from nvguyusa who goes on to say:
So basically, civilization rests on the sum of the experiences and knowledge of all persons. Some of that knowledge can be articulated (he goes on to make a point of scientific knowledge in particular), but some of it, such as the sum of customs, traditions, beliefs, various faiths, “community standards”, if you will, cannot be known by all – the knowledge is too fragmented and diffused among the population at large, The problem with “central planning”, “big government”, whatever you want to call it is that it relies on the assumption that everything can be know in and accounted for in advance. The stunning failure of usurious tax rates (and the behavioral changes undertaken to avoid same) puts the lie to this. The planners cannot even get basic revenue projections right because they cannot account for altered behavior in the face a of a (relatively) minor change; how the [string of vulgar Anglo-Saxonisms involving one’s maternal lineage] do they expect to plan the perfect society at large?
Only the naïve and willfully ignorance believe they can plan the perfect society at large. The rest are in it for the power and money.—Joe]
I feel safer already. https://t.co/xg8hRb8STW
— Cam Edwards (@CamEdwards) September 13, 2018
[As we all should.—Joe]
Democrats are caught on the horns of their own dilemma. They can either propose useless laws that would have virtually no impact on potential mass shooters; or gun confiscation which has very little support among the electorate and would be a massive turnout magnet for Republican voters.
Michael Graham
May 21, 2018
Commentary: The problem with “common-sense” gun laws
[And many Democrats know this. Yet the Democrat platform for the election this year is heavy with gun control.
There is a reason for this. It’s not their intent to reduce violent crime. Most of them know better than that. Increases in violent crime serve their purposes better. When society around people has a high percentage of violent predators a common instinct is to demand more government intervention of private life. This gives more power and money to those in government. It’s a rare and principled person who would advocate against their own personal interest even when it is to the benefit of society as a whole. Those sort of people are seldom drawn to political life.—Joe]
Quote of the Day: 12 September 2018
See also this tweet.
The idea is certainly not mine. And similar expression of it is not unique. It may be a little bit more succinct than most. So, “Standing on the shoulders of giants…” is applicable here. I wish I could find the quote from Tam who said something along the lines of, “I don’t care if every gun owner on the planet killed someone yesterday. I didn’t. So you don’t get to take my guns from me.”
Update: NJDave found the Tam quote I was thinking of:
Where the hell do you get off thinking you can tell me I can’t own a gun? I don’t care if every other gun owner on the planet went out and murdered somebody last night. I didn’t. So piss off.
A state cannot legislate political correctness at the expense of a fundamental, constitutionally-delineated civil right.
Alan Gottlieb
Second Amendment Foundation founder and Executive Vice President
September 11, 2018
FED. COURT ENJOINS PART OF CALIFORNIA PENAL CODE IN SAF-SUPPORTED CASE
[Additional context:
A federal district court has ruled that a section of the California Penal Code is unconstitutional and has issued an injunction against enforcement of a prohibition on the display of handguns or handgun placards that may be seen from the outside of a store in a case supported by the Second Amendment Foundation and two California gun rights groups.
The state of California is expected to appeal the decision. They don’t want us to be able to exercise our First Amendment rights either. The state of California mindset appears to be the same as that of Stalin.—Joe]
The Gun Feed linked to my post about the double charge with the link text of “Reloading Kaboom: All costs savings is lost when your gun blows up…”
At first thought you might agree. But it depends on how many rounds you reloaded before you lose a gun and the cost of replacement or repair of the gun. Assuming my gun is a total loss, I doubt this is true but lets go for worst case, I will have to have saved about $3200 to break even.
My worst case reloading cost (buying once fired brass) of .40 S&W is practice ammo. This is $0.24 per round. The ammo I use for matches is $0.19 per rounds. If I reuse my own fired brass then the cost drops to $0.19 and $0.14 per rounds. Let’s go with worst case reloading costs…
Getting the cheapest brand I recognize from Midway USA in one case (1000 rounds) lots results in $0.329 per round after shipping.
Hence by reloading I’m saving, at least, $0.089 per round. In order to pay for a new gun I would have to reload $3200/$0.089 rounds. This works out to about 36,000 rounds.
I have actually reloaded and fired about 84,000 rounds in .40 S&W. So by reloading, even if I have to buy a new gun, I still have saved nearly $4,500.
Plus, having learned the lesson of how a can get a double charge with this load I can either change loads to completely avoid this or modify my quality control procedures to reduce the chances.
This was using the worst case cost for reloaded ammo. It also doesn’t take into account that my reloads are lower recoil than factory loads and result in less wear on the gun. My actual savings is quite a bit greater than the calculations above indicate. Hence, in this case, the headline writer for The Gun Feed is wrong.
If Brett Kavanaugh joins the Supreme Court, the gun industry will have new ammunition in their war to overturn common sense gun safety laws aimed at protecting our children, keeping our streets safe, and stopping deadly firearms from falling into the wrong hands.
Bob Menendez
U.S. Senator from New Jersey
September 3, 2018
Senator Bob Menendez Speaks in Paterson Against Appointment of Supreme Court Nominee Based on ‘Dangerous Views on the Second Amendment’
[All freedoms are “dangerous”. And that is why some of the most important ones are specific enumerated rights.
And you notice, as frequently is the case, this anti-gun person speaks in terms of “the gun industry” being the driving force rather than there being a market for common sense defensive tools. They pretend to believe that only evil capitalists and criminals could possible want or need to own guns. The truth is that only political tyrants and criminals could possibly want or need to restrict gun ownership.
I would like to suggest Senator Menendez and his ilk get on the winning side soon or risk prosecution in the future.—Joe]
Could all you gun rights fools either get penis enlargement surgery or just fucking shoot yourselves so the rest of us can live in peace?
USAGoneBlue!
August 20, 2018
Comment to This Hawaiian Veteran’s Win For Gun Rights Would Be A Perfect Movie
[It’s another Markley’s Law Monday!
Via email from Steve O.
Typical. This guy has insults and death wishes. We have Supreme Court decisions.—Joe]
Yesterday I invited people to guess what this was:
chiefjabboby, using some rather flowerily language, got it right. Drew Rinella was more straight forward with a more complete, and correct, answer.
Below, on the left, is a normal primer which has been fired. The primer above is in the middle below. Most of what is left of the case is on the right. The rest of the case is stuck in the chamber of my STI DVC Limited (chambered in .40 S&W).
I strongly suspect I got a double charge in one of my reloads. I didn’t think it was possible. It’s true, as I told myself when I started using this load, that a double charge would not allow the bullet to be fully seated. But I didn’t actually try it.The bullet compresses the double charge and the powder pushes the bullet part way out. But it’s only about 0.040 over the usual overall length (OAL). So, it’s quite possible I overlooked this during my final inspection.
The magazine was blown out of the gun and forcibly disassembled. This was essentially all I could find of the pieces. Note the spring is all crooked. What doesn’t show up is that the feed lips are quite a bit wider than a normal magazine.
There was some damage to the gun. I had to hammer it to get the slide open and the ripped apart shell casing out. I suspect the slide is beyond repair. The ejector pins were sheared off but it’s possible they were broken before the incident. The extractor was loose in the slide and the metal below the head of the extractor was pushed down and slightly torn:
I was not hurt but there were strange smoke patterns on my hands where gases came out of all the gaps between the slide, frame, and grip:
My face got peppered with tiny bits of something and stun for a few minutes but it did not break the skin. I had a slightly shadow on my face around my safety glasses giving me a bit of a raccoon appearance.
I disassembled the gun to examine everything carefully. Here is what a mostly disassembled STI DVI Limited looks like:
I plan to reassemble it and ship it off to STI to see if they can repair it. And before I use any more of that ammo I’m going measure the OAL on every cartridge (I think I can use a case gauge). I have a backup gun which I used at a USPSA match today. And I expect I will be using is for a quite a while. STI is notoriously slow in turn around time and I may have to buy a brand new gun. And the last time I checked the wait times were quite long for new guns.
I put about 45,000 rounds through it. This is more than the approximately 40,000 rounds I got out of my STI Eagle 5.1 before it had a serious failure and became my backup gun.
It’s probably time for me to buy another gun regardless of whether the DVC Limited can be repaired or not. Heavy sigh…
The obvious elephant in the room is the guns, weapons of war, the magazines.
The real discussion should be about the Second Amendment.
Is it useful?
Gregg Popovich
San Antonio Spurs head coach
March 27, 2018
San Antonio Spurs head coach Gregg Popovich sounds off on Second Amendment after loss
[Via a tweet from Firearms Policy Conference:
Yes.
Next question?—Joe]
I won’t have time for a full blog post on this topic until late tomorrow sometime.
In the mean time, guess what this is: