Via Weer’d Beard we have this from Baldr Odinson:
It’s not exactly Markley’s Law but it’s close.
When they have all but given up on concealed carry and resort to insults like this about open carry you know they are getting really desperate to get even temporary attention and have completely lost relevancy.
Wow, Mark, that was nearly wrong in every particular! It bordered on fractally wrong, in that every little piece, taken by itself, was as wrong as the whole.
Tam
December 7, 2014
Sigh
[I read Mark Morford’s troll piece and briefly considered blogging about it. But I prefer to blog about things that either no one has noticed yet or that I have a quasi-unique viewpoint on. And this piece has been well covered by many others. This is just a small sample:
I had completely dismissed it as blog material. Morford is just too easy of a target and I have dealt with him at length before. Then I read the last sentence I quoted above of Tam’s. Wow!
I have seen this sort of thing many times before but didn’t have a name for it. Fractally wrong. I like it. I like it a lot.—Joe]
A few days ago I posted this image and asked “What does this look like?”
I have updated the image to this:
In addition to tracing over the top of an image of an actual supersonic bullet in flight I simplified things some. I have a strong tendency to dive deep into details when it isn’t necessary and even when it is counter productive. This represents a lot of restraint on my part.
As some people guessed this was for an update for my ballistics program, Field Ballistics, for Windows Phone. There are some other changes as well. The most important of the changes:
If you have it installed on your Windows 8.x phone it may have already updated automatically. If not then go to this link to update.
What about my right to not live in fear of my fellow citizens? Is that moot because you have a boner for guns?
Travis Dodge @MWTravesty
Tweeted on October 16, 2014
[It’s (sort of) another Markley’s Law Monday! Via a tweet from Linoge.
Dodge obviously doesn’t understand rights when he says he has a “right to not live in fear”. There are people afraid of gays, blacks, and Jews as well as gun owners. But that fear doesn’t allow them to infringe upon our rights.—Joe]
The cheap and easy availability of guns in any home in America makes it very easy for criminals to get their hands on as many weapons as they choose. All they have to do is break in and steal them and create their free market of stolen guns on the street –quite the active and ongoing enterprise. Shhhhhh…this is a truthful point that upsets Conservatives if you even dare to bring it up and burst their bubble. They like to pretend that there is no cause and effect that results from that.
AllynF
December 6, 2014
Comment on Gun Control, Real Time with Bill Maher.
[Got that? Criminals “get their hands on as many weapons as the choose” because private citizens possess guns in their homes. The specific enumerated right to keep and bear arms is the root of all problems with guns.
If banning the private possession of something would solve the problems associated with it then banning alcohol, cigarettes, and recreational drugs would solve problems too. AllynF has no respect for the Bill of Rights, no concept of guns being useful for the protection of innocent life, and at best a tenuous connection with reality.
Don’t let anyone ever get away with telling you that no one wants to take your guns.—Joe]
Here are some of the headlines from the lamestreet media (phrase stolen from Alan Korwin):
Never trust the media to get things right. Especially in relation to firearms. Here is what Remington says, via a Tweet from greenmeanie:
HOUSTON, Dec. 6, 2014 /PRNewswire/ — On Dec. 5, 2014, papers were filed seeking approval of a proposed settlement of two economic class-action lawsuits of certain Remington bolt-action centerfire firearms that contain either a Walker trigger mechanism, or a trigger mechanism which utilizes a “trigger connector.”
The filings triggered multiple news reports that mistakenly conveyed the proposed agreement in significant fashions that require immediate clarification.
These settlements are not recalls. These settlements are not any admission that the products are defective or unsafe. These settlements are an opportunity for any concerned consumers who have the Remington Model 700, Seven, Sportsman 78, 673, 710, 715, 770, 600, 660, XP-100, 721, 722 and 725 rifles with either a Walker trigger mechanism, or a trigger mechanism which utilizes a “trigger connector” to have Remington install a new trigger. The benefits under the settlement, including the trigger replacement program, will not be in place until after court approval of the settlement and full notice will go out at that time. This culminates from extensive mediator-supervised negotiations between lawyers for those concerned about the triggers and Remington, who while denying there is any cause for concern, always desires to ensure that its customers are satisfied with Remington products.
A joint press release will be issued to better explain details of the proposed settlement.
For further information, contact: Mark Lanier at wml@LanierLawFirm.com; 800-723-3216
SOURCE Lanier Law Firm
To suggest a criminal will submit to a background check has to be the worst argument for gun-control ever, it requires a disconnect from reality.
williamdiamon
December 5, 2014
Comment to Gun Control Leader Unfazed By Gun Transfer Event
[See also Background checks.—Joe]
This is a slight refinement from something son James and I discussed a few days ago.
When debating which is a better political system we can point to many instances where anti-freedom systems (communists/socialists/progressives/fascists/theocracies/kingdoms/dictatorships/etc.) have been implemented and review the outcomes of those experiments. A significant proportion of those experiments have resulted in a tragedies of epic proportions. A short list from the last 100 years includes USSR, China, North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela, Iran, Nazi Germany, and Romania.
So what are the worst examples of a freedom based political system and how do those compare to the worst of the anti-freedom? I don’t know what my political opponents would give for examples. Would it be the United States? If so, then that little debate would be settled in two minutes or less. Why risk those tragedies when the worst you can do with a freedom based system is so much better?
Taking that tactic a little further we can also ask the question, “What are the best outcomes of a particular type of political system?” For a freedom advocate the United States surely would be near the top of the list with the probable additions of Canada, and many of the countries of Western Europe. I suspect the anti-freedom advocate will include many of the socialist leaning, but generally free countries, of Western Europe.
Rate each of the various countries on some scale from good to bad. This can be used to create a chart with upper and lower bounds of the outcomes. It might look something like this:
So, which system is the better choice? The answer is obvious.
This technique can be use to compare just about anything. In general compare the upper and lower bounds of the two (or more) proposals being debated.
Comparing gun control utopias to gun owner utopias will be left as an exercise for the reader.
the attempted commercial introduction of the Armatix has floundered so badly that it remains the sole example that Brady can cite as even approximating a “smart gun.” Thus, were it to trigger the New Jersey law, the result would surely collide with the Supreme Court’s decision in District of Columbia v. Heller. There, the Court ruled that the Second Amendment protects the individual right to possess arms “in common use at the time” for lawful purposes. Even the Brady Campaign cannot seriously argue that all handguns other than the iP1, an $1800, 10- shot pistol chambered in .22LR, are not commonly used for lawful purposes.
NRA-ILA
December 4, 2014
N.J. Attorney General Rejects Brady Campaign Bid to Trigger Handgun Ban
[Elaborating even further, it seems likely the entire NJ law will declared unconstitutional simply because it makes illegal those guns which are in common use.—Joe]
That is one of the communists’ protest lines. But of course they don’t mean it, and Glenn Beck proves it.
They did a great job this morning.
By their lack of response to, or even discussion of, the high crime and violence rates in some of our Democrat-controlled cities, Obama and Company, Van Jones and other mayors, and the left in general, reveal their true intentions. They don’t give a DAMN about black lives. In fact, they continue to push harder for more of the same garbage that helped to create the problem, and they will not stop. They can not stop, for to stop making things worse would require the abandonment of their entire narrative AND trillions of dollars in confiscation and re-distribution schemes.
They’re trapped, in a sense. Everything they’ve striven for in the last 100+ years is going to come crashing in on them. Some of them actually want that. Not one of them understands the implications.
Via Chris Knox who says, “A merrily upraised middle finger to #gunsense” and David Codrea (Activists defy new Washington gun law to demonstrate its unenforceability):
What it shows though is the power of setting the narrative, and that’s done in print on paper, even in these days of the Internet.
And The New York Times and their cronies control it and do it. Despite reality, despite the ludicrous absurdity of their claims about so-called assault weapons that can’t even be defined, they were able to twist the national civil-rights debate about guns into a knot for ten years, and then only fess up ten years later. Two decades lost to mythology — by “the paper of record.”
Alan Korwin
December 3, 2014
“The Assault-Weapon Myth” (NY Times Headline)
[It’s only by perpetuating the culture of deceit that they win.
It’s time to prosecute the perpetrators.—Joe]
Totally coincidental and entirely appropriate, considering the email I received last night, this morning Oleg sent me this (the picture is of Barron):
He also posted about I-594 on his blog.
I would like to make a minor correction to his text. We didn’t lose any rights with I-594. We have specific enumerated rights, supposedly protected by the Second Amendment and the State of Washington Constitution, being infringed by I-594.
I want the perpetrators prosecuted.
I received an email from a reader with a attached document from the State of Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife dated December 2 and addressed to “Hunter Education Instructors” with the subject of “Analysis of Initiative 594.”
The part of most interest to me is the following:
Although we are still evaluating I-594, it does not initially appear that student-to-student transfers of firearms would fall within the general WDFW exemption for law enforcement agencies. For students under eighteen, however, temporary firearms transfers for educational purposes are exempt if the student is under the direct supervision and control of a responsible adult (such as a Hunter Education Instructor) who may lawfully possess firearms. Students eighteen and older are not entitled to this exemption. However, regardless of the age of the person, temporary transfers that occur at an established, authorized shooting range are also exempt, if the transfer occurs, and the firearm is kept at all times, at the range. If adult student-to-student transfers are not exempt, then adult students may, without triggering I-594’s background check/transfer requirements—
- Use inert firearms or air rifles (which do not meet the definition of a firearm); or
- Hand their functional firearms to an instructor who then hands it to the other student.
In summary, the transfer/background check exemption I- 594 applies to the following transfers of firearms to or from WDFW Hunter Education Instructors while in formal volunteer status for WDFW and acting within the scope of their authority for purposes of the Hunter Education Program:
- Between WDFW employees and Hunter Education Instructors
- From one Hunter Education Instructor to another Hunter Education Instructor
- Between Hunter Education Instructors and NGOs
- Between Hunter Education Instructors and students
WDFW is the “State of Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife”. The volunteer instructors to WDFW are considered “law enforcement” or else they would not receive the the exemption described above. And notice that students are not allowed to transfer the guns between themselves. They must transfer the gun to an instructor who then transfers it to another student.
Private instructors, such as myself, would not have an exemption unless we were at an “authorized range” (“authorized” is undefined). We cannot do classroom work that involves gun handling at any location other than an “authorized” range. Even then it is in doubt unless we are using the guns that are “kept at all times” at the range.
So, now you have it. All those proponents of I-594 said we were alarmist and crazy for saying things like this would require a background check. Now we have word from the State of Washington that says, in essence, “You gun nuts were right about I-594 and the anti-gun people lied to get it passed.” But that is to be expected. Anti-Second Amendment people have long had a culture of deception.
Update: The complete letter is posted here.
Update2: It is important that you also read The Cluemeter: Washington State violates the Letter of Initiative 594. It appears that WDFW may have misunderstood the definition of “law enforcement officer” as it applies to I-594.
While the NRA portrays itself as protecting the ‘freedom’ of individual gun owners, it’s actually working to protect the freedom of the gun industry to manufacture and sell virtually any weapon or accessory.
Josh Sugarmann
Executive director of the Violence Policy Center
December 1, 2014
Connecticut dodges answers on Sandy Hook school tragedy
[I find it very telling that ‘freedom’ is in quotes.
Sugarmann has no respect for, and perhaps does not even recognize the existence of, individual freedom. If he did then he would recognize that the freedom of individual gun owners is dependent upon there being a free market offering for sale the types of firearms the individual wants.
For example, would we have freedom of religion if the book publishing industry were only allowed to publish religious texts if they were consistent with Islam? Protecting the freedom of the gun industry to design, develop, and manufacture whatever gun or accessory there is a market for protects the specific enumerated right of the individual to keep and bear arms of his choosing. Sugarmann has clearly stated he does not want individuals owning handguns or “assault weapons.” This rhetoric is a means to that end.—Joe]
This is what happened as I see it now. The Party of the KKK, the Party of Progressivism and Margaret Sanger, saw what was happening in the 1960s, and saw that they could not stop it. So they got out in front of it. It’s a standard tactic of the left; if you can’t stop it, at least take some credit for it, join in, and steer it your direction or otherwise work it to your advantage. Co-opt it.
Now the Democrats have over 90% of Black Americans in their back pocket, keeping them angry, keeping them feeling sorry for themselves, keeping them hopeless, and thus keeping them voting Democrat. Meanwhile far more black babies are being aborted, as a percentage, than white babies, and the black family has been degraded such that Black mothers turn increasingly to the government as a surrogate father. Margaret Sanger, right there. She and Woodrow Wilson both loved the KKK.
In summary; the Democrats, with help from Uncle Toms like Al Sharpton, Jessie Jackson and promoter of violent revolution Lewis Farrakhan, are trying to turn black Americans into the objects of hate that they’ve always been for Progressives. And as a two-fer, they’re also trying to turn police into the “pigs” that the hippie/beatnik/communist/Progressives said they were back in the ’60s.
Same thing has been happening with the feminist movement, by the way. It’s standard playbook. Co-opt a budding pro-liberty movement and turn it into a tool of agitation, of anti-liberty, anti-rights, anti-capitalist anti-human activism. It’s happening all around you.
Meanwhile, the Republican Party is frozen stiff with fear, and anger at their own base. They didn’t get into politics to fight. They didn’t run for office to be harangued and maligned, yet that’s what they’re facing, and they’re making it worse the longer they sit on their hands and play their stupid games. They will never lead. Principled leadership has been bred out of the Party. Forget the parties. They’re done. Totaled. FUBAR. It’s up to the People.
Edited to add; Here are a few famous and very loved Progressives, spilling the beans;
Early 20th Century playwright and darling of the Progressives, George Bernard Shaw.
Democrat President Woodrow Wilson and his pro KKK movie “Birth of a Nation”.
Margaret Sanger, early 20th Century Progressive, revered to this day, on the “Negro Problem” and the purpose of advocating birth control. Sound familiar? It should. It was the inspiration for the German National Socialist’s Eugenics programs, and their Final Solution, which we now know as The Holocaust.
And we’ll wrap it up with another all-time darling of the Progressives all my life and even to this day, Helen Thomas on what they view as the Jewish Problem.
They must be laughing like hell at the fact that they actually managed to get the American black and Jewish votes wrapped up, and that no one called them out on it all this time.
This is about the area near where I work:
My heart is a little heavy because the city that I love, the city in which I grew up, the city where I’ve chosen to raise a family and make my livelihood, it’s just done. I’m finished with Seattle.
Two weeks ago, we were talking to Seattle police about the area around Westlake Center. It’s an area that has gotten completely out of control. There is rampant open weed smoking everywhere you look between Westlake and Pike Place. There’s open drug dealing going on down there. There is all kinds of crime.
…
There is no way I would bring a family into downtown Seattle right now. The criminals have won. The gangs have won. The protesters are out of control.
Seattle police, Seattle Mayor Ed Murray, Kshama Sawant, they’ve all lost. But they refuse to do anything about it because it’s the rabble-rousers that comprise their base. They don’t dare stand up to the criminals and protesters who have taken over downtown Seattle because that is the element that got our politicians elected.
Yup. I didn’t care for what I saw here over three years ago when I first started working here. There have been ups and downs since then but the culture I see and hear (literally, many floors up from the street I can hear them chatting nearly everyday) is that of looters (in the Ayn Rand sense). I don’t see it getting better any time soon.
Ignore the red color. In use that part of the image could be green, blue, yellow, brown, pink, whatever. The white part is supposed to be an icon representing something.
The thing it is supposed to look like and what I suspect it looks like to many people is “below the fold”.
Ammunition is not protected under any stretch of any amendment.
samsingh
December 1, 2014
Comment to L.A. City Council tentatively approves new gun control measures
[This constitutional scholar has further study to do.—Joe]
Via David Hardy we have:
telephone surveys result in numbers that are significantly too low, as by an eighth to a tenth, even when the ownership is completely legal.
These were old studies (1990 and 1995) but let’s assuming they are still valid.
This is where gun ownership is legal and doesn’t count situations such as Chicago or D.C. where gun ownership is highly problematic. So lets go with the “low by an eighth” number or:
0.875 x OwnershipRate = ReportedRate
OwnershipRate = ReportedRate/0.875
OwnershipRate = 1.14286 x ReportedRate
The reported rate for 2014 is 34% so the true ownership rate is approximately 39%.