From here:
As the chart below shows – which is disturbing without any further context – the 40 million ounces of gold open interest and the record low 74 thousand ounces of registered gold imply that as of Monday’s close there was a whopping 542 ounces in potential paper claims to every ounces of physical gold. Call it a 0.2% dilution factor.
In 1994 [when President Clinton introduced a ban on assault weapons] I remember being asked ‘Why do you need these guns?’ My response was ‘Well, I never needed them before, but if the government thinks I shouldn’t be able to own them, I guess I want them now’, and I did go out and buy about 15 of them before the ban.
Richard Feldman
January 26, 2016
How has the US gun lobby been so successful?
[Just like I buy and read banned books I also buy and use banned guns.—Joe]
There had been only three US Supreme Court cases that dealt with the second amendment. They all held that the second amendment was related to militia service [and] granted a collective right, not an individual right. This was considered pretty settled until the 1960s.
…
They won the war in 2008 in a case called ‘The District of Columbia versus Heller’, when the Supreme Court held for the first time that the second amendment grants an individual right.
The nine justices of the US Supreme Court divided five to four along perfectly ideological lines. The conservatives said it grants an individual right, and the liberals all said, no, it grants a collective right.
Carl Bogus
Professor of Law at Roger Williams University in Rhode Island
January 26, 2016
How has the US gun lobby been so successful?
[Bogus is correct. As a name for this liar that is.
Anti-gun people lie. It’s in their culture. It’s what they have to do to have any hope of making progress in their battle to eliminate our specific enumerated right to keep and bear arms.—Joe]
I no longer call it registration, it is a gun confiscation data base.
Greg
January 23, 2016
Comment to Ballot Fight in Maine
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]
Whenever someone tells me to “check my privilege”, I like to respond with “root access confirmed”.
Brian Garrett
January 21, 2016
Comment to Indistinguishable from Reality
[To understand this, and find it absolutely hilarious, it helps to be a computer geek.—Joe]
Last Saturday, January 23rd, I went to Whidbey Island for the steel match. It was a rainy, dreary, day as I road the ferry to the island but I had rain gear and was dressed warm enough to be comfortable.
The weather wasn’t any better at the range and we put up a canopy to keep things a little drier for our little group of die-hard shooters:
I shot my Ruger 22/45 for the iron sighted rimfire division and did okay with it.
With my STI DVC Limited gun I had changed out the sear spring and adjusted it for about 4.75 pounds of trigger pull rather than the 3.5 pounds it came from the factory with which I have never really gotten used to. It worked fine in practice and I was looking forward to using it. It worked fine some times then on other shots it had a much harder trigger pull. The pull was probably something on the order of 10 or 15 pounds. It was sometimes hard enough that my hands shook from pulling the trigger so hard to get it to fire. My times for centerfire pistol sucked.
| Name | Division | Time |
| Steve Mooney | RF-RI-O | 47.66 |
| Steve Mooney | RF-O | 57.63 |
| Joe Huffman | RF-I | 67.12 |
| Bruce Barchenger | CF-I | 91.92 |
| Rev Barchenger | RF-O | 92.36 |
| Joe Huffman | CF-I | 111.91 |
| Jim Dunlap | RF-O | 112.08 |
| Scott Bertino | CF-I | 123.44 |
67.12 seconds for five stages works out to an average of 3.356 seconds per five shot string. I’m okay with that.
Here are four of the five stages we shot. They started tearing down the fifth stage before I got around to taking a picture:
On January 10th I shot a steel challenge match. I took video and have been meaning to edit it and post it on YouTube but I just haven’t got to it. Virtually no one watches (40 to ~100 views each) them anyway. So I’m just going to link to the results and tell you want happened.
The overall, all divisions, results are here. There were 34 participants and I came in 11th in iron sighted rimfire pistol and 13th in iron sighted centerfire pistol. My times for the four stages were 67.80 in rimfire and 76.58 in centerfire.
In the rimfire, iron sighted, pistol category I was 5th out of 11. I was the only shooter in the Limited division but if I had been in the iron sighted pistol division I would have been first. They didn’t get my Senior category into the record, but I would have come in with either gun only behind Jeffery with his open division rifle.
Go Fast
Go Hawks
Beast Mode
Focus
I shot my new rimfire gun that I have had all the problems with. It worked fine in practice and on the first stage our squad shot (Go Hawks). Then on the second stage we shot (Focus) it started jamming again. I went back to the Ruger 22/45 for the remainder of the match.
@wallsofthecity @Jan202017 great! I don’t care about your need to shore up your masculinity with a prosthetic penis.
Frenchpug14 @frenchpug14
Tweeted on October 18, 2015
[It’s another Markley’s Law Monday!—Joe]
We could use a President who was, like, “OK. Everybody turn in all your guns tomorrow by 5 p.m. After that, if I catch you with a gun then I’m sending SEAL Team Six to your house with a recent Facebook picture of you and those tanks that shoot fire that we haven’t used since Waco — Ummm — I mean since World War II.”
…
And let me be clear about something else, gun owners. I want President Obama to want to take your guns away. I don’t trust you with your guns. I don’t trust you to fire them safely. I don’t trust you to store them safely. I don’t trust your kids not to find them. I don’t trust you not to get them stolen.
W. Kamau Bell
January 12, 2016
I want Obama to take away your guns
[H/T to The Writer in Black.
Don’t ever let anyone get away with telling you that no one wants to take your guns.—Joe]
The 20th C Left had to shoot people en masse to get them to obey.
The 21st C Left plans on using dick jokes.
Azathoth @ArkhamRealty
Tweeted on January 13, 2016
[This is only true because it’s the best the Left has available at this time. If they had the power to murder people en masse they would.—Joe]
If physicians are unable to, by law, ascertain the mental stability of someone to own a gun in Florida, then the Federal Government should deny everyone in Florida the ability to purchase a gun.
Mr. Fusion
January 10, 2016
Comment to The Absurd Logic Behind Floridas Docs vs. Glocks Law
[What is it with anti-gun people and their obsession with assessing the mental health of gun owners? It is they who demonstrate mental health problems (see also here).—Joe]
The right to keep and bear arms is not up for popular debate. It’s a constitutionally enumerated civil right.
Craig DeLuz
Firearms Policy Coalition spokesman
January 12, 2016
Gun debate: Californians support more gun control, poll finds
[Technically he is correct. But from a practical standpoint he is wrong. If a large majority wish to hurt us any way they can, as one person in the article said regarding buying ammunition, “Anything that slows the process down, I’m all for,” the local courts will ultimately find some weasel words to allow it. We have to change the culture or we need some very strong rulings from higher courts.
With dwindling percentages of gun owners in the most oppressed states and significant obstacles for bringing new people into our camp changing the culture is probably nearly a lost cause in these areas.
Therefore getting a pro-freedom president in the Whitehouse next January is our do or die battle for states like California, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, etc. Otherwise the Supreme Court will, for all intents and purposes, eviscerate the Heller and McDonald decisions.—Joe]
As implied by my last post about the overloading of the NICS system I have been noticing how crowded the indoor ranges are around here. A couple weeks ago, about 2:00 PM, on a Saturday, I was stopped at the local range to practice before a match. The parking lot was full. And it’s not a small parking lot:
Every place you see parking lines, or cars, and on the street in front of the building had parked cars. I drove by the front door and looking into the lobby to see it was packed. I just drove on home.
Recently I’ve been visiting the range at lunch time and while I don’t have a problem finding a parking spot the range has been crowded. The only time it hasn’t been crowded recently was when I went to a different range (because I was in the area anyway) and it was during a Seahawks game. I was far from the only shooter in the place but it wasn’t packed.
Another item of interest is that I ordered a holster and magazine pouches from Kramer Leather yesterday. They quoted me a delivery time of seven to nine weeks.
My speculation is that it’s the threat of more gun control that has people hitting the range and the gun stores in mass again.
I wanted to post something about this last night but it was dinner and video night with my daughter so I decided to do it tonight. Then Sebastian made nearly all the points I wanted to make.
The one issue I want to elaborate on further is:
The surge of criminal background checks required of new gun purchasers has been so unrelenting in recent months that the FBI had been forced to temporarily halt the processing of thousands of appeals from prospective buyers whose firearm purchase attempts have been denied.
Since October, the bureau’s entire cadre of appeal examiners— about 70 analysts — was redeployed here to help keep pace with waves of incoming background investigations that continued through December when a record 3.3 million firearm sales were processed.
This shows us there is a loophole in the system an (redundancy alert) unscrupulous, anti-gun administration could deny the majority of the people in this country their right to purchase new firearms. If they can ignore the appeals of denials then it would seem that instead of actually doing a proper background check and giving a pass or fail response they could just say, “Fail” to everyone. Then they just ignore their appeals.
It would seem to me this loophole needs to be fixed. Best case is to just eliminate NICS and if states want background check for firearm purchases they can put “Firearm exclusions” on drivers licenses and state ID cards. And if it is impractical to eliminate NCIS the law should require the FBI/DOJ/whoever respond appropriately to the appeals within 10 days or else the denial is automatically overturned.
Being a software engineer for the last 30+ years means I have had opportunity to make a fair amount of money. I certainly didn’t do as well as I could have. I still regret declining the request for a job interview with Microsoft in 1985 but I’ve managed to do okay and with a little bit of income from Boomershoot I manage to adequately feed my gun, ammo, training, and explosives appetites. Currently I have a job I really like, I feel secure in (the last place I worked at just laid everyone off and is closing the Seattle office any day now), and am paid a comfortable amount. So for Christmas this year I decided I would share some of the wealth.
So it came to pass that it was with great pleasure I gave my three children, Barb, Barb’s two children, and Ry each fifty trillion dollars. Powerball winners have nothing to brag about when I get in a giving mood!
It was with great anticipation that I saw Barb select my present to her to open first:
But the first thing she said after looking at it was, “What am I going to do with this?”
Uh-oh! I didn’t have a good answer. I thought about, “Don’t spend it all in one place.” But decided that might not be wise in that context and told her there were other presents from me, maybe she would like one of them better.
Her children on the other hand thought they were awesome gifts and said they were going to take them to college and put them on their dorm room walls.
I was a little worried about my kids. What would they think? But they studied their gifts thoughtfully, considered their new status as multi-trillionaires and drew the appropriate conclusions about the hazards of hyperinflation, paper money, etc. Ry, of course, got it immediately and we drifted into a conversation about the worldwide economy, Europe, etc.
I don’t want you to think I gave away all my money last Christmas. I saved some for myself:
Yes. I kept 100 trillion back for myself and a “rainy day”.
As citizens, we must all take a stand. March, protest, Facebook, Tweet, write your congressman, senators and legislators urging them to ban guns.
Rana Florida
December 15, 2012
Shame on Us, America: Take a Stand and #BanGuns Now
[Don’t ever let anyone get away with telling you that no one wants to take your guns.—Joe]
There is a reason that the weak are drawn to snark while the strong simply say what they mean. Snark makes the speaker feel strength they know deep down they do not posses. It shields their insecurity and makes them feel like they are in control. Snark is the ideal intellectual position. It can criticize but it cannot be criticized.
Ryan Holiday
2013
Trust Me, I’m Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator
[This is a bit of an oversimplification. You can say what you mean, have a strong position, and still be snarky. But in many cases, as exhibited by the endless cases of Markley’s Law, Holiday is absolutely correct.—Joe]
I’ve moved so many times in the last 10 years that many of my boxes still are unpacked. But in the last few days I’ve been making some progress. Here are some of my Insights Training certificates of achievement which I put up on the wall:
I have several others but some are in boxes and the frame glass is broken in still others. Today Barb got prices on replacement glass so those will be going up soon.
The certificate in the upper left is for Intensive Handgun Skills. The certificate is dated nearly 20 years ago, October 25-27, 1996. I signed up to repeat it on February 20-22, 2016. I figured I need a tune up after so many years.
Dave Hardy went to the Clinton Archives to look for gun control records. Last month he reported some staggering information:
A fax from Jody Powell, President Jimmy Carter’s press secretary, to George Stephanopoulos, Bill Clinton’s new press secretary, warning Clinton to back off from gun control because … it just doesn’t work.
…
We have yet to propose anything that people think will make any difference. The people who are generally for gun control don’t make it a voting issue because it has no real impact on their lives. On the other hand, the inconvenience and hassle of wading through another round with indifferent and incompetent bureaucrats and the fear that this is only the first step toward more radical measures are quite real to people who own guns.”
Then came the real bombshell:
“Much as I hate to say it, the NRA is effective primarily because it is largely right when it claims that most gun control measures inconvenience and threaten the law-abiding while having little or no impact on violent crime and criminals.”
This month he reports on the Brady Campaign wish list:
The Brady Campaign has long claimed that its agenda is limited. Just some “reasonable, common-sense” gun restrictions—no need for anyone to worry about confiscation or onerous regulations.
…
The White House files were filled with Brady Campaign/Handgun Control Inc.’s legislative plans. A memo stamped “confidential—do not circulate” (with the label set out by images of skulls and crossbones) outlined Brady’s real agenda.
It began with a list of what Brady wanted from the Clinton administration. The list was long, but mostly quite predictable: licensing requirements and registration for handgun ownership, a ban on “assault rifles,” “one-gun-a-month,” a seven-day waiting period, and stiff increases in fees (to $1,000 per year) for FFLs.
Even that would not be enough to please the Brady Campaign, though. Its memo added some proposals that (until now) have never seen the light of day.
Brady also asked for a federal requirement of a special “arsenal license” for any gun owner who possessed 20 guns or 1,000 rounds of ammunition. (The White House copy has a handwritten note: “all guns.”) The memo described the arsenal license’s requirements as “similar to the requirements for a machine gun license,” including the requirement for police approval, since “anyone who has an arsenal is a danger to society.” In this scenario, two bricks of .22s would be enough for a gun owner to be treated as a public menace.
Brady also asked that each component of a handgun, including the “barrel, stock, receiver, any part of the action, or ammunition magazines” be treated as if they were the receiver. “Buyers would need a license, sellers would need an FFL, and interstate sales would be illegal,” Brady explained. Replacing the grips or a firing pin spring, or purchasing an extra magazine, would actually require a 4473. Apparently they consider handguns to be that dangerous!
Incredibly, Brady also wanted a ban on manufacturing magazines that held more than six rounds, and a requirement that transfers of used seven-round and larger magazines have law enforcement approval. Essentially, nearly every magazine in the United States, apart from those for some pocket guns and deer rifles, would be banned if new, or tightly restricted if already in existence.
It’s all just common sense… if your goal is to eliminate the specific enumerated right to keep and bear arms.
Here is a November 29, 2015 picture of Brady Center president Dan Gross (left) and New York Governor (and New York SAFE Act author) Andrew Cuomo (right) as they present Hillary Clinton with the Mario M. Cuomo Visionary Award for her leadership on gun control:
If Hillary wins the November election the supreme court candidates she picks will neuter the Second Amendment.
The paid nra trolls are freaking out about being founding members of the #tinycockclub. It’s too funny. #bokbok #fuckthenra #gunsense
Bacon @Baconmints
Tweeted on December 23, 2014
[It’s another Markley’s Law Monday!
Via a Tweet from BFD @BigFatDave.—Joe]
