The very purpose of a Bill of Rights was to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy, to place them beyond the reach of majorities and officials, and to establish them as legal principles to be applied by the courts. . . . [F]undamental rights may not be submitted to vote; they depend on the outcome of no elections.
Justice Robert Jackson West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette (1943). Via George Will’s Constitution. [It didn’t quite work out that way. Can we get a do-over? I think we need to have a mechanism whereby there are serious repercussions to the people who vote for a law that is found to be unconstitutional.—Joe]
A new poll by the University of Chicago finds that Millennials have a strong preference for gun control, even supporting a proposed ban on semi-automatic weapons.
The survey—which was conducted by GenForward, part of the University of Chicago’s Black Youth Project, in conjunction with the NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, a nonpartisan social science research organization—polled 1,940 young Americans ages 18 to 30 and revealed that that 57 percent of Millennials approve of banning people from purchasing semi-automatic weapons.
This is the part that is really scary to me:
…over half of those surveyed said they believe that Second Amendment rights can be compromised in order to support greater gun control.
Perhaps the the Nineteenth Amendment should be compromised to support greater voter control. Compromising the Second Amendment is no less repugnant.
It’s estimated that nearly 70% of the guns in circulation (and even a higher percentage of those sold) are semi-automatic. 57 percent of Millennials support banning 70% of the currently owned guns and the vast majority of those currently legally sold?
But most importantly, don’t ever let anyone get away with telling you that no one wants to take your guns.
The present study has offered three empirical predictions. (1) The number of fame-seeking rampage shooters will continue to grow. (2) Fame-seeking rampage shooters will attempt to kill more victims than past offenders killed. (3) Fame-seeking rampage shooters will “innovate” new ways to get attention.Whether these predictions will be borne out by future data remains to be seen. However, one social change that could potentially disrupt the growth of this threat would be a major reversal in the way the media covers these attackers. Recently, there has been some support for movements such as “No Notoriety” and “Don’t Name Them,” which encourage media organizations to avoid giving rampage shooters the attention and fame they often seek.
This is all consistent with other research that I have seen. The only quibble I have with this conclusion is that it limits the fame seeking to shooters. I also expect fire, knives, swords, vehicles, poison, chemical weapons, explosives, blunt objects, and many other tools will also be used by fame seekers.—Joe].
If they do happen to show up here, as usual, please keep things relatively civil. No unsubstantiated or irrelevant name called. For example, telling them they are illogical, ignorant, etc. is acceptable if there is data to back that up and relevant to the previous comments they have made. Questioning their sexual orientation, parentage, brain size, etc. without relevance or supporting evidence may have unpleasant repercussion.
People have a strong tendency to believe what they want to believe. Sometimes it is a deliberate lie on the order of “Work makes you free”. Other times it could be more ignorance and with possible innocence intent such as “only bad people own guns”. Even when confronted with irrefutable evidence they are wrong many people will say crazy things like, “Fake, but accurate”.
If something is too good to be true, it probably is and you should check the sources.
I received a chain email today from someone recommending this video:
It would seem to be extremely damning evidence against Obama. I don’t think it’s true.
Leaders and dignitaries of the European Union, representatives of our NATO alliance, distinguished guests, we meet here at a moment of testing for Europe and the United States and for the international order that we have worked for generations to build. Throughout human history, societies have grappled with fundamental questions of how to organize themselves, the proper relationship between the individual and the state, the best means to resolve the inevitable conflicts between states.
And it was here in Europe, through centuries of struggle, through war and enlightenment, repression and revolution, that a particular set of ideals began to emerge, the belief that through conscience and free will, each of us has the right to live as we choose, the belief that power is derived from the consent of the governed and that laws and institutions should be established to protect that understanding.
And those ideas eventually inspired a band of colonialists across an ocean, and they wrote them into the founding documents that still guide America today, including the simple truth that all men, and women, are created equal.
But those ideals have also been tested, here in Europe and around the world. Those ideals have often been threatened by an older, more traditional view of power. This alternative vision argues that ordinary men and women are too small-minded to govern their own affairs, that order and progress can only come when individuals surrender their rights to an all-powerful sovereign. Often this alternative vision roots itself in the notion that by virtue of race or faith or ethnicity, some are inherently superior to others and that individual identity must be defined by us versus them, or that national greatness must flow not by what people stand for, but what they are against.
I have probably been wrong, or at least not entirely correct, in the past when I have was extremely skeptical of something that was “too bad to be true” and it is possible I’m wrong this time. But please, don’t accept this video and spread it around until you are absolutely certain of its correctness. Fake, but accurate, just doesn’t cut it and discredits you in future debates.
11:16 AM PDT: @JoeHuffman 31k US citizens killed ea yr-00s of schoolkids-on altar of #2A if that’s “liberty & justice for all” you can stick it, smartguy
3:19 PM PDT: Perhaps we should ask @JoeHuffman if the 200 school shootings since Sandy Hook is just the price of his “liberty & justice”? #uscowardsrus
3:25 PM PDT:
http://twitter.com/JoeHuffman/status/762634496789270533 … This coward says #2A gun ownership provides “liberty & justice for all”Oh cept victims in over 200 school shootings
3:42 PM PDT I replied:
@bamboozled3 Your ignorance is like a black hole. I can’t imagine anyone or anything enlightening you so there is no point in trying.
3:45 PM PDT they replied and then blocked me:
@JoeHuffman Your cowardice is just a circle- there’s no end to it-time for you to get off my timeline, precious!
Had they wanted to debate the topic they could have left a comment here where we aren’t limited to 140 characters. But they weren’t interested in that.
I’m sure you will be just as shocked as I was to learn that the GAO reports the BATF has accidentally ignored the law and it’s policies and created a gun-owner database via the NICS.
Totally a surprise, amirite?
So what are the odds of a prosecution and destruction of those illegally-kept records, you think? I’m putting it at less than 1%. It Trump wants a few million more votes, promise to prosecute and destroy. (Preferably prosecute the records and destroy the ATF, but I’d settle for t’other way ’round).
Figure 2 provides a brief context to show the wider natural range of temperature over the last 10,000 years. It shows the temperature of the Northern Hemisphere derived from Greenland ice cores.
Figure 2.
The current temperature is on the right (red line). Some salient points that expose the lies and distortions; * The world was warmer than today for 97 percent of the last 10,000 years, a period known variously as the Climatic Optimum, or more recently the Holocene Optimum. We have known about this warmer period for at least 75 years.
* The world was 2°C warmer than today 1000 years ago during the Medieval warming. Remember, you are told that the world is going to warm by 2°C, and that is catastrophic.
* The world was 4°C warmer than today during the Minoan warming.
* We are told the amount and rate of temperature increase in the last 100 years (shown in red) is abnormal. Compare the slope with any of the previous increases.
* The green line indicates the larger trend and shows that the Earth has cooled for approximately the last 7000 years. The CO2 changes over this period, but those changes follow the temperature. The global warming proponents tell the public it is the opposite.
Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather.
We have no elected government, nor are we likely to have one, so I address you with no greater authority than that with which liberty itself always speaks. I declare the global social space we are building to be naturally independent of the tyrannies you seek to impose on us. You have no moral right to rule us nor do you possess any methods of enforcement we have true reason to fear.
Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. You have neither solicited nor received ours. We did not invite you. You do not know us, nor do you know our world. Cyberspace does not lie within your borders. Do not think that you can build it, as though it were a public construction project. You cannot. It is an act of nature and it grows itself through our collective actions.
The fact is, their feelings are irrelevant. They do not matter. Most rational people don’t care if SJWs are offended, or afraid or disgusted and indignant. Their problems are not our problems. Our right to free expression and freedom of association is far more important than their personal feelings or misgivings. We do not owe them a safe space. If they want a safe space, then they should hide in their hovels or crawl back to the rancid swamps from whence they slithered.
The anti’s are even out to ban simple graphic images of guns, in addition to real guns, including muzzleloaders. If it even looks like a gun, they want to ban it. They are, in fact, that extreme.
Chas August 3, 2016 Comment to Leave the SJWing to the professionals [This is what they think of the right to keep and bear arms. You shouldn’t be allowed to even see a picture of a gun.—Joe]
Hillary has basically promised to nominate justices who would gut the First and Second Amendments. She would create the most prolonged period of judicial lawlessness since the Warren era.
I’ve speculated with a few people and asking their opinion about the DNC email on Wikileaks. It would seem to me that the U.S. Intelligence community would have an extremely strong motive to damage Hillary. They have a far better motive than the Russians do. After all, one could make a good case that the Russians know they can buy off Hillary if they want.
Of course I’m not the only one to have thought of this possibility.
So if the FBI really wanted them they can go into that database and get them right now,” he said of Clinton’s emails as well as DNC emails.
Asked point blank if he believed the NSA has copies of “all” of Clinton’s emails, including the deleted correspondence, Binney confirmed.
“Yes,” he responded. “That would be my point. They have them all and the FBI can get them right there.”
Binney then went on to speculate about something even more shocking: that the hack of the DNC could have been coordinated by someone inside the U.S. intelligence community angry over Clinton’s compromise of national security data with her email use.
And the other point is that Hillary, according to an article published by the Observer in March of this year, has a problem with NSA because she compromised Gamma material. Now that is the most sensitive material at NSA. And so there were a number of NSA officials complaining to the press or to the people who wrote the article that she did that. She lifted the material that was in her emails directly out of Gamma reporting. That is a direct compromise of the most sensitive material at the NSA. So she’s got a real problem there. So there are many people who have problems with what she has done in the past. So I don’t necessarily look at the Russians as the only one(s) who got into those emails.
The pro-gun trolls are vicious and ignorant. I’m sure in real life they are pitiful little men who couldn’t get a date with a woman if their life depended on it. It’s easy to sound tough when you’re hiding in your basement.
I was out of town a lot this month so the reloading and match participation suffered. Over the July 4th weekend Barb and I were in Colorado visiting the Rocky Mountain National Park. The 22nd –> 24th we were in La Push for a family reunion. And the 30th and 31st I was in Idaho working on Boomershoot stuff.
Still, by the end of the year I expect to have a lifetime total of over 80,000 rounds.
I reloaded 1000 rounds of .40 S&W this month. 666 of those were Blue Bullets for steel matches. The other 334 rounds were Montana Gold JHPs for practice at indoor ranges.
you’re a bunch of idiots too obcessed with your penis size to take time to realize American
justme @beckychristens4 Tweeted on January 12, 2016 [It’s another Markley’s Law Monday!
And it’s not even a complete sentence. But it is no surprise that when the best they can come up with is childish insults they have a problem with simple communication.
