Barb: She told me about her “Vertical Vixens” group of female friends. It’s a group of women, all over six feet tall, that go out together occasionally.
Joe: Would this be opposed to the “Horizontal Vixens”?
Barb: Only a guy would have that as his first thought.
Actually, that wasn’t my first thought. It was just the first thought I allowed myself to express. But correcting her on that point would not have been in my best interest.
I have “a thing” for tall women.
Although there are still lots of votes to count no one I know has any realistic hope the outcome is going to change on I-591 or I-594 in Washington state. Washington State gun owners got stomped on pretty hard last night.
What our opponents don’t seem to realize is that both the Second Amendment and the Washington State Constitution protect the very right they are intent upon infringing. If it were a law infringing upon the right to free speech or freedom of religion nearly everyone would get it. Requiring a background check before someone can loan you their religious book and another when you give it back is ridiculous and would clearly be unconstitutional. It would create an incredible chilling effect upon the legitimate exercise of a natural and legal right by the threat of a legal sanction.
Somehow our opponents don’t or can’t understand this. I’ve had people tell me, “It’s not the same.” “Books don’t kill people!”, they say.
Wrong.
Ideas are far more dangerous than tools. The Communist Manifesto, Chairman Mao’s Little Red Book, and many religious books enabled the murders of over 100 million in the 20th century and millions more in the previous centuries. And I’m betting many millions more in this century will be murdered because the exercise of these rights propagates and enables very dangerous ideas. Yet we still recognize that freedom of speech and freedom of religion are more important that the dark side of infringing upon these natural rights.
Books, speech, and firearms are all the tools of ideas. Those ideas can be evil or they can be good. The tool is amoral and can be used for good or evil. Restrictions on a tool used for good enables evil. It doesn’t matter which of these tools you restrict. You enable evil because you disable the expression of the good more than the expression of evil.
This concept is very clear in the context of the First Amendment. But somehow the general population has a delusion that the right to keep and bear arms is different. The correction of their delusion can’t be accomplished in a sentence or two on a ballot initiative so now we have to attempt correcting it in the courts. The courts aren’t as influenced by sound bites as the general public but delusions can be deadly in their persistence even in courts of law.
Update: As I was reminded of in the comments by Windy Wilson there is a somewhat famous U.S. Supreme Court case that says:
If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence.
Which, as Windy points out:
This is tremendously close to the concept articulated by the head of the NRA, that the only thing that will stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.
The connections between the First and Second Amendment are easy to make and very strong.
This is Election Day.
…
Excuse me while I go barf, and vote tactically for the candidate who I figure will steal the least of my shit, and beat me with the softest hose.
Geek WithA.45
November 4, 2014
Comment to Weaponizing Government
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]
In the city that was originally built to house a government derived from the consent of the governed comes a plan to distribute a constitutionally guaranteed right unto only those people whom the government deems “suitable.” Which is, in the mayor’s opinion, no one. Fancy that.
Midwest Carry Academy
October 29, 2014
Via email from Nick
[With all that power concentrated in one place what do you expect? Abuse of power is inevitable. Which is why the government was created with only enumerated powers. It’s long past time to trim its powers back to the proper legal limits.
The election today is projected to slow down the rush to tyranny but no one has realistic hopes of one election or even ten stopping it. Dreams of reversing it are better characterized as bloody nightmares.—Joe]
I received a call from the FBI today. We had a nice chat about Boomershoot and everything is cool.
Someone tried to get me in trouble but I’m pretty sure it was more trouble for them than me. For the record I don’t even let people use the “B-word” in the context of Boomershoot. So telling law enforcement I am teaching people to make such things is laughable, which is what happened when the nice Special Agent hesitantly brought it up.
The end of the conversation was, paraphrasing:
We have to check these things out and write up a report. As long as the information you gave me is correct, as I expect it will be, this will be the end of it.
I gave him information on the most likely suspect who sent them “the tip”. Ry thinks it probably was someone else but it just doesn’t matter. It’s just a funny story for me to blog about and tell my kids and grandkids.
Don’t ever let anyone get away with telling you no one wants to ban your guns.
We have Episcopal Church in Michigan passes gun resolution as evidence to the contrary. The resolution says:
RESOLVED: that the 180th Convention of the Diocese of Michigan, in response to the impact on Michigan communities of deaths from gun violence, join with other faith communities calling for the following steps to be taken by Federal and State lawmakers:
1. Requiring and enforcing universal background checks on all gun sales;
2. A clear ban on all future sales of military-style semi-automatic weapons, high-capacity ammunition magazines and high-impact ammunition (i.e. ammunition more deadly than ordinarily used in hunting);
3. Making gun trafficking a Federal crime;…
The Episcopal Church supports the U.S. Constitution’s protections of the rights of law-abiding citizens to keep and bear arms; but, we also stand for public policies to ban gun violence and assault weapons.
You have to marvel at the naiveté and/or stupid exhibited here.
You can’t support the Second Amendment then make the demands for background checks anymore than you could require background checks for sales of First Amendment materials. One would guess they support the First Amendment and would claim protection if gun owners were to demand they be punished for hate speech because of their vocal support of restrictions to gun ownership.
Background checks on all gun sales? As the supporters of I-594 in Washington State found out there are lots of devils in the details. Will gifts and loans require background checks? If not then they have a big loophole. If yes will we then end up with me being able to loan my gun to my son but not my daughter in law? If I loan it to him can he then loan it her? Or maybe I can gift it to him and then he can loan it to her and then after a week he can gift it back to me. Or if all “transfers” require background checks will it make gun rentals impractical? Or how about letting your buddy (or a new shooter or student) take a few shots with your gun? Or loaning a gun to someone for the evening or a weekend with a suddenly active stalker and no FFL available to do the background check? Truly “universal background checks” will result in a chilling effect on the exercise of specific enumerated right. If there are enough exceptions to avoid clear infringement of the right then any claim of society benefit is delusional.
A “clear” ban on “military-style” weapons? I’m speculating the word “clear” was an acknowledgement of the difficulties with the Federal 1994 (and various states) “assault weapon” bans. But the issues aren’t resolved by demanding the ban be “clear”. Bayonet lugs, pistol grips, barrel shrouds, and detachable magazines restrictions were all minor stumbling blocks to people wishing to exercise their rights. We were still able to create, sell, and use firearms that gave anti-gun people the evil black rifle hysterics. And now we have the Heller decision which said firearms in common use are protected. Evil black rifles are now the most popular type of rifle in the entry country. So, good luck with your demands to violate that specific enumerated right.
“High capacity” magazines? The Heller decision said firearms in common use were protected so good luck with that as well.
I have no idea what they mean by “gun trafficking”. Firearm wholesalers? Retailers? Private sales? The Second Amendment would rendered meaningless if you couldn’t buy and sell the protected items.
But the item that pegged my naiveté and stupid detection meters was their call for a ban on “high-impact ammunition (i.e. ammunition more deadly than ordinarily used in hunting)”. The very purpose of hunting is to kill as quickly and humanly as possible. To that end hunting ammunition has been evolving for the last several centuries to make it the most deadly it can possibly be with the exception of delivering chemical, nuclear, or biological agents which kill more slowly than a lead projectile which expands upon impact. There is no commercially available ammunition more deadly than that ordinarily used in hunting.
So just what were they thinking here? I’m pretty sure thinking is outside of their domain of expertise so such a question should be rejected on the basis that it presumes facts not in evidence.
You need to add to your list of titles:
Loser
Idiot
In desperate need of a life
life long member of the tiny dick club
Just plain stupid
Now that better describes you.
Rick Baker, owner
I’m usually there everyday so you should drop by and see me little man.
Rick Baker
Jun 30, 2014
Email to Ed Levine
[It’s another Markley’s Law Monday! Via a message on Facebook from Nick G.—Joe]
This is interesting but I want more confirmation before I buy into it:
Scientists say they can predict “with 95 percent accuracy where you’ll fall on the liberal-conservative spectrum by showing you just one picture” and then studying how your brain responds to the image. Furthermore, studies show that political orientation may be as inheritance-based as height.
I know many people who have changed their politically orientation and I’m pretty sure they didn’t change their genetics.
H/T to Les F. on Facebook.
For the remaining weapons such as guns or blades, women will hold exclusive right of use over them in order to defend ourselves from men, from the risk of them taking power over us again.
witchwind
October 7, 2014
UTOPIA: what would a women’s society look like?
[Via Sean Sorrentino via Michael Z. Williamson on Facebook.
Also in her utopia:
All of men’s (alive and euthanised) belongings, property, resources and land will be confiscated from men and handed back to female care and supervision – property rights over land will be abolished. You can’t own land!
And if that isn’t sufficient to confirm she been off of her anti-psychotic meds too long here is a clincher (pretty much every paragraph would do, but I particularly like this sentence):
Our lives have no more or no less value than those of a rabbit, fly, tree, plant, fish, seashell or stone.
Regardless, don’t ever let someone get away with telling you that no one wants to take your guns.—Joe]
Frequently we will see anti-gun people claim the NRA looks after the “corporate interests” of the gun manufactures. This is despite the fact the manufactures aren’t members of the NRA and have their own lobbying organization that represents them. This is despite the fact that the NRA has about five million individual members. They don’t just don’t seem to understand that there are principles we hold dear and give time and money to the NRA to advocate for those principles.
This belief extends to the politicians that support the Second Amendment. The anti-gun people believe it must be money that motivates politicians. This Brady Campaign video makes that belief more clear than I could ever do with words:
While I don’t have a lot of respect for politicians in general I do believe many of the supporters of Second Amendment understand the principles involved and are comfortable taking a principled stand.
The Brady Campaign and their supporters? If you speak of principles to them they will get a confused look on their face and think you are speaking in some sort of code words. Code words that surely must mean “money.”
My post about elderberries got the attention of someone who claims to have the “Definitive Guide to the Elderberry”.
It makes for interesting reading. I never knew there were so many other plants that looked similar to elderberries that were poisonous. I’m pretty sure I have not seen any of them on the farm before.
That desire to get two people fighting and then hide is a very deeply imbued urge. It is borne of an attempt to make something which stimulates the leftist’s amygdala stimulate their enemy’s amygdala, combined with sheer cowardice making direct confrontation not an option. As with every other leftist tactic, the goal is an outcome which would terrify the leftist, were positions reversed, namely manly men coming to kill them.
From simple social out-grouping, to calling cops to a store in such a way that they might shoot a conservative, to out-right swatting, to deploying various other government agencies to harass and intimidate conservatives, leftists have a burning, innate desire to get K-strategists fighting each other, especially as things get crazy. It is not a coincidence and it is not an accident – it is a long-evolved strategy, and we should all expect to see a lot more of it in the next two decades. The obvious solution is to not fall for it, and instead focus on the leftist themselves as the source of the problem. Very quickly leftists would abandon that strategy.
Anonymous Conservative
October 14, 2014
Amygdalae in the News
[If you want to understand the psychology of our political opponents and strategies for defeating them and just as important how they attempt to defeat us, you must read Anonymous Conservative’s work. He has a book, The Evolutionary Psychology Behind Politics: How Conservatism and Liberalism Evolved Within Humans, which is sometimes available free on Kindle.
One of the more important insights I have gotten from reading him is that, in general, the police are our natural friends. They enforce the rule of law and only enforce the whims of some ruler because the ruler had the authority to make law. Our state and federal constitutions, being higher law than those that would be our unconstrained rulers, gives them authority and license to oppose those rules. See, for example, the opposition to many of the gun laws such as in New York, Colorado, and in Washington State (I-594). At some level our political opponents recognize this and attempt to get us to fight each other, to the death.
Recognizing this we can adopt a much better strategy of encouraging and supporting the police to respect our guaranteed rights and deal with those that would infringe upon our rights in an appropriate manner.—Joe]
Microsoft has trick or treat for the little kids at the office every year. Grandson Bryce was there to visit James at work and was soooo cute:
Barron was the guest on the 2AToday podcast that came out yesterday. The title is “What’s about to happen in Washington State?” – with Barron Barnett of The Minuteman blog. Barron’s blog post on the topic is here. Barron did well but the OCD engineer in me was annoyed when he said the 18 page I-594 was 17 pages. Then my teeth clenched when he later said it was 16 pages. But that isn’t really important.
What’s important is that a great number of innocent, everyday transfers of guns for educational, training, and recreational use will become crimes if I-594 passes. And the latest poll indicates it has a big lead. But polls can be wrong. As someone pointed out the latest poll was of registered voters, not likely voters.
When we fought against I-676 back in 1997 it had an even greater lead in the pre-election surveys and yet it went down in flames 71 to 29 (Barron also got the numbers wrong for that one too, he said 70 to 20, my OCD issues are probably the reason I don’t have many friends).
If you are one of the good guys in Washington State who votes for freedom please get your ballot in the mail on time. If we can win this even though Bloomberg, Gates, Ballmer, Allen, and a few millionaires are bankrolling the forces of evil it will strongly discourage them from trying again. After defeating I-676 back in ‘97 we have had almost nothing but improvement in our gun laws since then. Defeat this issue here and maybe we will have another 15 or 20 years of successes.
Gun control must take place here. [Tapping his chest to indicate the heart.]
Then real gun control come.
Dalai Lama
October 26, 2014
Gun control: What the Dalai Lama said may surprise you
[I saw hints that he had spoken about gun control a few days ago but wasn’t able to find an actual quote. Now I know why.
He is referring to changes in the hearts of people rather than restrictions on pieces of metal. This not all that different from the NRA and other gun rights groups saying we need to focus on the criminal rather than on the guns.
Here is the other reference to his speech I had seen earlier:
Dalai Lama: U.S. needs to address gun control
…
The Dalai Lama also talked about the importance of inner beauty and wasn’t afraid to touch on controversial topics like gun control.
I wonder why the one article completely changed the tone of what was actually said. And I wonder if he said even more that was suppressed.
He has mentioned self-defense using guns before so we have a decent idea of his thoughts on the topic. They just aren’t politically correct thoughts.—Joe]
The ATF doesn’t call them “ghost guns” like some prejudiced bigots in the California legislature but they did put out a news release on 80% receivers a few days ago. The worst they said was:
6. Can functioning firearms made from receiver blanks be traced?
ATF successfully traces crime guns to the first retail purchaser in most instances. ATF starts with the manufacturer and goes through the entire chain of distribution to find who first bought the firearm from a licensed dealer. Because receiver blanks do not have markings or serial numbers, when firearms made from such receiver blanks are found at a crime scene, it is usually not possible to trace the firearm or determine its history, which hinders crime gun investigations jeopardizing public safety.7. Have firearms made from unmarked receiver blanks been recovered after being used in a crime?
Yes, firearms that began as receiver blanks have been recovered after shooting incidents, from gang members and from prohibited people after they have been used to commit crimes.
They chose their words very carefully. I think it is very telling they don’t give any numbers on how often traces failed and that actually hindered the arrest and conviction of criminals who committed violent crimes. I would not be at all surprised if the number of people arrested for victimless crimes associated with making guns that didn’t quite meet ATF’s regulations drastically exceeds the number of criminals who evaded arrest because of 80% receivers.
Yesterday I posted about how our political opponents use insults because they know insults are effective on themselves even when the insults are totally baseless. The Obama administration calling Israel Prime Minister Netanyahu “chickenshit” is an example that is making world news. Anonymous Conservative does the analysis:
So why launch such an attack? If you are intimately familiar with the psychology, you’ll immediately see that this was an amygdala hijack directed at Netanyahu. Like many such attempts by narcissists, it was predicated on an understanding of human psychology that arose from the narcissist’s self examination of themselves, and thus it assumes the narcissist’s malady is ever-present in everyone.
…
It make me think about how things must be unraveling inside the White House now that Dear Leader and his entire entourage are being criticized by leftists afraid of seeing the Obama administration’s failures reflect back badly upon the movement. Groups of narcissists can become amygdala echo chambers. One get’s hijacked and tries to relieve the strain by hijacking two others himself. Like nuclear fission, it can create a very unpleasant environment.
Similar conclusions are probably valid when our anti-freedom opponents spew crude insults at us.
No methodologically sound study has found any important effect on homicide, suicide or violent crime rates from Canadian gun laws.
Gary Mauser
Professor emeritus at the Institute for Canadian Urban Research Studies Beedie School of Business at Simon Fraser University.
October 29, 2014
Did Parliament Shooting Change Canada’s Gun Control Debate?
[The same is true in the U.S.
So why do some people still advocate for more gun control? I can only think of the following possible reasons:
Or some combination of the above.—Joe]
Those anti-gun people sure like their blood.
These are “public service announcements” from CSGV.
What you see in the videos is not a dance but you can be sure they believe putting the blood of innocents victims in a video helps their bottom line. All the hundreds of thousands (at least, it could be in the millions) of people each year who defend themselves with a gun are completely ignored. And if the number of victims is greater with increased gun restrictions as was in Washington D.C. and Chicago, well, that just the price some people have to pay for getting rid of those icky guns.
I recently tweeted this:
@CamEdwards@robdelaney@NRA@YouLikeAaron In a debate you lead with the best you have. They have crude insults. We have SCOTUS rulings.
It was in response to this tweet from rob delaney (@robdelaney):
This is how
@NRA guys have sex. RT@YouLikeAaron:
The associated drawing is so crude I’m putting it “below the fold.”
This is entirely consistent with The Evolutionary Psychology Behind Politics: How Conservatism and Liberalism Evolved Within Humans. They are not data and logic driven. Anti-gun people are driven by emotions. They know that insulting and degrading people is what is effective on them. They therefore attempt to use this same tactic on us as their best weapon in a debate.
In a lot of ways you really can model them as not having matured beyond grade school.