This won’t end well

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Sometimes a few pictures are worth more than thousands of words.

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20130905_nixon2

debtchartfw2

Quote of the day—Medicine4theDead

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The only crazy people here are the paranoid gun nuts who are nothing but a bunch of thugs trying to intimidate everyone with threats of violence because they are cowards.

Medicine4theDead
Comment to Bullets to the head: Why James Brady’s shooting led to gun control, but Gabby Giffords’s did not
[All the “gun nuts” I know just want to be left alone. The thugs are those that want to take guns from peaceable people.

As for cowards, I don’t see Medicine4theDead using his real name or offering to take point to take the guns from all those paranoid gun nuts. I wonder why that is.—Joe]

Summer Trip

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I grew up in Alaska, and still have most of my family there. Summer is a great time to go places with the kids, and visiting home is always an item high on the list. But, because Alaska Airlines normally has a defacto monopoly on flying into Juneau, it’s usually around $500 a ticket from Seattle. When Delta decided to give them some competition this summer, priced promptly got cut in half. The daughter has been there once before, when she was two, and the son only in utero. So, we went. Continue reading →

Quote of the day—American Academy of Pediatrics

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The AAP supports firearm regulation, including a ban on assault weapons and high capacity magazine sales.

American Academy of Pediatrics
April 2014
State Advocacy FOCUS
[H/T to Miguel.

Don’t ever let anyone get away telling you that no one wants to take your guns.—Joe]

Keeping records of your exercise of rights

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Imagine you were in the printing business and the government required you to put serial numbers on every book you printed. Imagine the Bureau of Books (BoB) seized a book at a private residence and tried to trace how it got into the hands of someone who was forbidden by Federal law to own a book. They then found out book was recorded as being scrapped instead of lost or stolen.

This is what then happens:

Deirdre M. Daly, United States Attorney for the District of Connecticut, announced that ROBERT BRINKERHOFF, 54, of Old Lyme, was sentenced today by U.S. District Judge Stefan R. Underhill in Bridgeport to one year of probation for violating federal firearms laws.  BRINKERHOFF worked as the general manager of Tri-Town Plastics, a federally-licensed firearms manufacturer located in Deep River.

According to court documents and statements made in court, Tri-Town Plastics (“Tri-Town”), which has since been bought by Smith and Wesson, had a contract with Smith and Wesson to manufacturer firearm frames at its Deep River facility.  In February 2012, after the Plainfield Police Department seized a Smith and Wesson 9 millimeter handgun from a residence, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) learned that Smith and Wesson had no record of the handgun ever having been manufactured.  According to Tri-Town’s records, the handgun had been scrapped back in March 2011.  At that time, ATF was preparing to conduct a routine inspection of Tri-Town to determine whether to renew their federal license to manufacture firearms.  Tri-Town had also been inspected in 2009 and been directed by ATF to address some record-keeping issues discovered during that inspection.  When two Tri-Town employees discovered that there were approximately 23 firearms missing from their inventory, rather than report them as missing, the employees falsely listed them as “scrapped” in Tri-Town’s acquisition and disposition records, so that ATF would not learn that they were missing and would renew Tri-Town’s license.

Soon after ATF contacted Tri-Town in February 2012 to ask about the Smith and Wesson handgun seized in Plainfield, one of the Tri-Town employees responsible for the fraudulent scrapping advised BRINKERHOFF of what had been done in March 2011.  At that point, BRINKERHOFF, who had not known about the March 2011 conduct, failed to report these missing firearms as lost or stolen.  In June 2012, BRINKERHOFF caused a theft/loss report to be filed with ATF that listed all of these firearms, but the report failed to advise ATF that all of the firearms had been falsely listed as scrapped back in March 2011.

On March 10, 2014, BRINKERHOFF pleaded guilty to one count of failing to file a theft/loss report and one count of making false statements in a theft/loss report, which are both misdemeanor offenses.

As part of his sentence, Judge Underhill prohibited BRINKERHOFF from engaging in a firearms-related business for a period of 90 days.

This ongoing investigation is being conducted by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.  The case is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Robert M. Spector and Vanessa Richards.

The Second Amendment is just as important as the First Amendment. That this happened to a someone in the gun industry doesn’t make it any less repugnant.

Alan Korwin on James Brady

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The post on James Brady that I wish I had the knowledge and skill to write:

Attacks on the Civil Right to Arms to Continue Unabated

Criminal acts still cleverly used as leverage to disarm the innocent

Sarah, not Jim, the real force behind the anti-rights movement

by Alan Korwin

“There’s no way to tell if you’re on the Brady rights-denied list, (the “NICS Index”) and attempting to buy a firearm if you’re on the government list is a felony. Attempting to find out if you’re on the list is a crime.”

James Brady, the White House Press Secretary under President Ronald Reagan has died. He was 73. He is being credited with “stunning successes” in the “gun-control” efforts in America.

Brady had been shot in the head with a .22 caliber revolver during an assassination attempt on president Reagan in 1981, and was severely incapacitated by the injury. Confined to a wheel chair for the balance of his life, in constant pain and speaking only with extreme difficulty, his ambitious and attractive young wife Sarah was understandably horrified and reportedly turned bitter by the life-changing tragedy. Their world had turned upside down.

Continuing a long tradition of spinning gun-related news to fit a set of beliefs instead of conformance with the facts, the “news” media is portraying James Brady as the moving force behind what is now the Brady Center for the Prevention of Gun Violence, formerly the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, formerly the Brady Campaign to End Gun Violence Allied with The Million Moms March, formerly the Center to Prevent Handgun Violence, formerly Handgun Control, Inc., formerly the National Council to Ban Handguns.

…

Read the whole thing.

Quote of the day—James Binder

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Call or e-mail your Congress member and demand that he or she support a child’s right to a secure environment and vote for legislation that eliminates firearm possession.

James Binder
August 3, 2014
James Binder: Children, families safer in homes without guns
[H/T Thirdpower.

Don’t ever let anyone get away with telling you that no one wants to take your guns.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Dan Gross

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There are few Americans in history who are as directly responsible for saving as many lives as Jim.

Dan Gross
President of the Brady Campaign
From Gun control man’s legacy James Brady, former press secretary under Reagan, dies
[I am willing to concede there are almost certainly some lives saved by the Brady Act. But what Gross and others refuse to recognize is that those lives saved come at the cost of other lives lost.

The chilling effect of getting your name put on government list prevents some people in high risk situations from getting the self-defense tools they need. Why be afraid of being put on a government list? Most governments are hostile to gun owners and treat them with great suspicion and sometimes murder them without cause. If you were gay would you register as a gay with the government? Or would you willingly put you name on a list of Jews, Muslims, or couples in mixed race marriages? You might think it would be okay at a particular place and time but in the big picture things can change quite rapidly and lists which were “promised” to be held in strict confidence end up getting into the worst of hands.

There were people murdered during the waiting period, required during the first few years of the Brady Act, before they could possess the gun they so desperately needed. Did Gross include them in his calculations? Did Gross do any calculations at all? My guess is that his only metric was the number of sales blocked. This was regardless of how many of those sales blocked represented a death due to someone who was unable to get a gun to defend themselves with. He didn’t bother to research the question at all, let alone do the subtraction in the expression “Lives Saved” minus “Lives Lost”.

Even after a dozen years to collect and study data criminologist still can’t find conclusive evidence the Brady Act, on the whole, saved any lives.

No. Gross doesn’t really care about the truth. Gross is simply continuing the long history of a culture of deception within the Brady Campaign. They have to. It’s all they have.—Joe]

If it’s not true it should be

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Dan here at UltiMAK told me recently that the word “understand” comes from building, or dwelling construction, long ago. If you were going to add a floor atop an existing structure, you would need to “understand” the structure so as to prevent catastrophic failure (that is to say; support with additional stands underneath). If your building collapsed, you failed to “understand”.

That would make our current usage another of the many euphemisms that we no longer know to be euphemisms (at least I never knew – maybe you all heard it before, or maybe it’s not true). It would also add a layer of perception to the word. If you fail to “understand” you failed to acquire, or to take the time to construct, the requisite foundation and lower level structure to support what you just saw or heard, and so it collapses in on you.

Random thought of the day

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Peaceful gun owners should no more be punished for the acts of violent criminals than should present day progressives be punished for the acts of those that ran the gulags in the USSR. People who do not abuse theirs rights shall not have their rights infringed. That is the system of government we have.

Progressives advocate for collective rights and punishments. They should be careful what they ask for. Should they get their way they might not be happy paying the price for the tens of millions murdered in the pursuit of “progress” by their political brethren.

Quote of the day—Susan Danzig (@SusanDanzig219)

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I f’n hate guns. Unlike the Prez, I would take away everyone’s.

Susan Danzig (@SusanDanzig219)
Tweeted on August 4, 2014.
[H/T to @BigFatDave.

Don’t ever let anyone get away with saying that no one wants to take your guns.—Joe]

Gun cartoon of the day

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HuntAnything

This is so absurd that it doesn’t even qualify as a straw man.

But this is what they think of you and want others to think of you. I can only think of one reason for this. It’s propaganda to justify treating us as less than human.

It’s what to expect from statists:

propaganda2-68
“Tsar, priests and the rich on the shoulders of workers”

Spiegelman-Rotten
“Rats. Destroy Them,” a 1940s poster from occupied Denmark

Quote of the day—Candi​Rue

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But if gun owners carry their penis substitutes into Target where “open carry” is legal, Target can’t prevent it. “Respectfully requesting” doesn’t mean anything to these freaks.

Candi​Rue
July 2, 2014
Comment to Big Win For Gun Control Groups: Target Bans Guns In Its Stores
[It’s another Markley’s Law Monday!–Joe]

Quote of the day—Barb L.

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If anyone gives you any more t-shirts I’m going to put a stake through their heart.

Barb L.
July 27, 2014
[See here for background. Present context is deliberately withheld.

Send them to the address listed here. I’ll anonymize the source and take care of things from there.

Thanks.—Joe]

Turn ‘em all in

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Don’t ever let anyone get away with telling you that no one wants to take your guns.

Gun cartoon of the day

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ThumbingNose

This is what they think of the NRA and gun owners who stand up for their rights.

Perhaps they think it is about money.

Or they cannot comprehend that we have principles regarding the Bill of Rights.

Or they cannot comprehend that guns are also used to protect innocent life.

Or maybe they know better and just want us to not be able to protect ourselves.

In any case they must not succeed.

Quote of the day—Anthony S.

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Socialized healthcare is affordable – it’s called soylent green.

Anthony S.
July 31, 2014
From the gun email list at work.
[If this doesn’t make any sense to you then watch the movie.—Joe]

What limits?

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From Computerworld:

In a decision that could have broad privacy implications, a federal court in New York Thursday ordered Microsoft to comply with a U.S. government demand for a customer’s emails stored on a company server in Dublin, Ireland. The decision upholds an earlier magistrate court decision.

In an oral ruling, District Court Judge Loretta Preska rejected Microsoft’s argument that a U.S search warrant does not extend beyond the country’s borders.

“The production of that information is not an intrusion on the foreign sovereign,” Courthouse News reported Judge Preska as saying. “It is incidental at best,” Preska noted, adding that the magistrate court order was not an extra territorial application of U.S. law.

I liked this response in the comments:

So does this ruling mean that the Syrian government, for example, could force U.S. companies to turn over the email records of human rights activists in the United States, even if their messages are stored on servers located in the U.S.?

What about the Chinese government forcing Google to turn over the records of U.S. companies, even if these records are located on servers within the United States?

This ruling, if allowed to stand, opens a Pandora’s box of allowing foreign governments access to U.S. business’ and individual’s records, even if this data is stored in the U.S. After all, what is good for the goose is good for the gander.

Another thing I wonder about is what about the case of a company that doesn’t have a physical presence in the U.S. Suppose it was a U.K. company with a Hotmail type service and a U.S. customer. Would the U.S. government claim it had jurisdiction to force the U.K. company to turn over the email? The U.S. government has “twisted arms” such that Switzerland and other countries with strong banking privacy polices have submitted to U.S. demands for the banking records of U.S. citizens. I suspect the U.S. will or is doing similar things in the case of email.

Our government is way out of control.

I’m glad Microsoft is the one fighting this rather than some small business that can’t afford to spend millions on lawyers to fight it.

Wonderdonkey

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Here is a website devoted just to mocking anti-gun people modeled after the Onion. For example; in regard to D.C. suddenly becoming Constitional Carry they posted Washington, D.C. area-rapist “staying in tonight” totally unrelated to Washington, D.C. area-residents “carrying guns legally”:

When asked about his routine, area-rapist Dan stated that, “Normally, Friday nights are ideal for my pastime, but right now, gosh, my kitchen’s spice-rack is a jumbled disaster and I should probably straighten that situation out instead of doing rape-stuff.”

The fact that he could now be shot and killed by a woman defending herself apparently has nothing to do with his homebound plans for the night. “Nah, it’s absolutely TOTALLY not that…besides my cat also seems a little pensive lately. I really ought to stay home and soothe Señor Boom-Boom and not go out to rape people.”

Gun cartoon of the day

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Deranged

When has the NRA or even an NRA member caused harm to anyone in our schools? Sure there probably has been someone, somewhere, who abused his or her spouse or kids, but the correlation of the NRA with violence of any type anywhere is almost for certain to be near zero or even negative. Get me a citation and then we can talk about it. But violence in the schools? Only in their dreams. Such a correlation would be their favorite wet-dream come true.

What if they had drawn the 2nd Amendment or the Bill of Rights at the door trying to get in? That would have been more accurate portrayal of their true concerns but their ill intent would have been more obvious.

These people are the enemies of freedom and want to knock down all barriers to unlimited government power. Private ownership of firearms is one of those barriers.