There is no possible necessity for a private citizen the need a reloadable semi-automatic weapon.
aallison
October 11, 2013
Comment to Brown misfires on gun control legislation.
[Such ignorance is absolutely staggering.—Joe]
Terminal ballistics and truck skinning
Got some pictures, some are kind of graphic – if you don’t like images of meat processing or bullet holes, don’t click. Continue reading
Quote of the day—Roby Egan
He must have an incredibly small penis #GunControl rawstory.com/rs/2013/01/18/…
Roby Egan (@roby44)
Tweeted on January 20, 2013
[It’s another Markley’s Law Monday! Via still another Tweet from Linoge.—Joe]
It must be that eclectic thing
The other day Barb was helping me unpack my stuff at the new clock tower. She was out of sight for a while then came back, walked up to me and said, “You have 242 shirts.”
“And your point is?”, I asked. No verbal reply. There was some body language but it was indecipherable to me. Okay. Whatever. Her Match.com profile did say she was eclectic* so maybe this was an example of this. I thought maybe she just liked to keep count of things like that. She has a great head for numbers. So I asked, “Did you include the ones in the dirty clothes? And I think there are some I left at your place.”
She had not included those and a couple of days later she reported, “You have over 250 shirts.” Again I asked, “And your point is?” Again I got silence and that indecipherable body language.
I thought about it a while and thought maybe she was trying to say I had too many shirts. So I went into my closet and looked. Nope. I still have room for more:
Today she told me she was going to count my gloves.
It must be that eclectic thing again.
Update: Okay. To cut down on the comments and private email telling me to “watch it!” or “run away!” keep in mind that 90% of this post was intended to be a joke. Barb laughed at it as much as I did. I deliberately withheld a lot of context and dialog to make it funny. There are no “lies” in it but there is a great deal of deception in it for dramatic and humor effect.
Thanks for all the concern but I really think people should “chill” just a little.
* Originally it had said, “eccentric” but her daughter suggested “eclectic” instead and so it was changed before I saw it.
When does a .30-06 do a thirty-thirty?
When it has a spectacularly successful bullet failure. Continue reading
Quote of the day—Carl Stevenson
We should have a very long memory of whom in power abuses us and who followed the order to do the abuse.
Perhaps if tyrants’ heads (and also their enablers) were still routinely mounted on sticks alongside the highway, for both a punishment and a reminder of their misdeeds, we wouldn’t have to endure such foolish people as them and the evil they set upon us.
Carl Stevenson
October 11, 2013
Comment to Park Service Milgram Failure.
[It would take a rather long and difficult research project to verify but my hypothesis is that the tyrants have mounted more heads along the roads “for both a punishment and a reminder” than the oppressed have mounted of the tyrants, their underlings, and their enablers.
Regardless of the truth or falsity of my hypothesis I don’t know if this is a good thing or a bad thing. If the tyrants mounted most of the heads then that would remind people of the hazards of letting tyrants gain power. If the victims mounted the most heads then that remind tyrants the hazards of their occupation.
I have been thinking about this sort of thing recently. The outrage of the victims that comes from extended oppression can lead to excessive killing and even genocide. Oppressors everywhere should be aware of this before they chose such a career path.
Think of the French Revolution or the genocide in Rwanda. To a certain extent “they had it coming” but I think society is better served when killing, even of evil tyrants, is done parsimoniously in a deliberate and carefully reasoned manner rather than en masse.—Joe]
Quote of the day—Frederick Douglas
The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims have been born of earnest struggle. The conflict has been exciting, agitating, all absorbing, and for the time being putting all other tumults to silence. It must do this or it does nothing. If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightening. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters.
This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress. In the light of these ideas, Negroes will be hunted at the North, and held and flogged at the South so long as they submit to those devilish outrages, and make no resistance, either moral or physical. Men may not get all they pay for in this world; but they must certainly pay for all they get. If we ever get free from the oppressions and wrongs heaped upon us, we must pay for their removal. We must do this by labor, by suffering, by sacrifice, and if needs be, by our lives and the lives of others.
Frederick Douglas
From here.
[In Great Thoughts by George Seldes a portion of this quote was attributed to a March 30, 1849 letter to Gerrit Smith. But I found that letter in the papers of Douglass and it says nothing even related. I have been unable to find the original date and context of this quote even though portions of it are widely quoted.
I especially like the sentence “Men may not get all they pay for in this world; but they must certainly pay for all they get.” One could make the claim that the entire basis for the Second Amendment is to increase the cost for oppression. It may be that it cannot fully prevent it but it can dramatically increase the cost. And those that would oppress us, even if they may be able to succeed, must be forced to pay a cost. If they do not pay then there is no limit to the oppression they will inflict.
The Colorado Senators who lost their seats in the recall elections because of their oppressive gun control laws and arrogance is a lesson to those who believe oppression is cost free. If they win a battle then make them pay a heavy price.
H/T to Carl Stevenson for his comment which included part of this quote.—Joe]
Hunting with suppressors?
Perusing the WA hunting regs, I see nothing at all about using suppressors. In the part about Prohibited Hunting Methods it talks about caliber, crossbows, shooting across roads, etc. But nary a word can I see about suppressors. Is it legal? Anyone know for sure?
Gun Song – Don’t Shoot Shotgun by Def Leppard
This song is one of the songs that made the band famous, being released on their multi-platinum hit Hysteria album in 1987.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzwhDIRfrJ8
Def Leppard is a classic hard rock band forming in 1977, and is still active. They have sold more than one hundred million records.
Quote of the day—Matthew Willington
@JoeHuffman It is just our daily reminder that Orwells Animal Farm is still relevant today.
Matthew Willington (@MD_Willington)
Tweeted on October 10, 2013 in reference to this post about liberals getting special privileges from the D.C. police.
[Almost for certain Matthew was referring to this line in Animal Farm:
All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.
Animal farm is one of the few books I have read more than once. It is a really, really good book and a fairly quick read.
In the past few days I’ve been listening to the book Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto*, thinking about conversations I have had with Marxists, and our current government situation. It appears, and Mikee independently posted the same conclusion, the “liberals” (communists) in our government act as if and work toward the condition of there being no limits on the power of government. The Bill of Rights is considered “loopholes” that citizens “hide behind”. The listening in on our telephone calls, the storing of all our Internet traffic, the tracking of all our vehicles, the tracking of our cell phones, the abuse of the IRS, the search and seizure of property, the requirements of financial disclosure, and much, much more is strong evidence they want there to be nothing to “hide behind”. They are working toward a society where there are no limits to what the state knows about you and what it can do to achieve the ends of those in power.
What many people don’t consciously realize is that the greater the value of some the greater security it much have to protect it. If you leave a penny on the sidewalk there is a good chance that if it is in a puddle of water it will still be there if you come back for it the next day. If you put $1000 in plain view in your locked car near that same sidewalk it is likely to be gone by morning.
The 20 year old beater car needs less security than the new Mercedes. The piggy bank of a child needs less security than an ATM. The ATM needs less security than Fort Knox. The financial information at your accountants office requires less security than the computer system that contains the financial information of an entire nation. The personal information in the medical records of your doctors office needs less security than the computer system that contains the personal information of an entire nation.
Government power is something of great value to those that control it and extraordinary measures must be used to secure against abuse. The enumerated powers, the multiple branches of government, the reservation of powers for the states and the people, and the Bill of Rights, were all intended to secure government power from abuse.
It is extraordinarily clear government power is expanding without the bounds intended and is being abused with the abusers suffering no consequences. The IRS, Fast and Furious, and NSA, scandals are just the tip of the icebergs. We are in a positive feedback loop. The more power government gets the greater the attraction to those that abuse it. Those that abuse it want more power and less controls. The Marxists who want more government power and claim, “We just need the right people in control” either do not understand the issues involved and/or are the very people who should not be in control.
Scary times are here now and far more scary times are ahead. Read Animal Farm and 1984 as they were intended to be read. They are warning of the dangers of government power. They are not instructions manuals.—Joe]
* I’m annoyed by his claim there can be no morality without belief in god(s) but other than the religious parts it’s a good book so far.
Park Service Milgram Failure
The National Park Service is failing a giant national-scale Milgram obedience to authority experiment. They are doing things, blocking off people from open air parks like the WW II memorial, even while individual rangers are saying that it turns their stomachs. Yet they still do it, saying they were told to, and they had no choice. It’s so bad even the Legacy Media is being forced to cover it and acknowledge it’s happening. This is government by spite, pure and simple. And the uniforms carry out their orders, even while complaining about it. And people say “you will never need guns, it can’t happen here.” Sorry to say this, but… it IS happening here, right now.
The rangers, and the rest of the government employees, DO have a choice. A hard choice to be sure, but it’s a choice they MUST make. And they are choosing poorly.
Quick update: Other than massive civil disobedience, and semi-politely getting in their faces and telling them personally they are failing the Milgram test badly, that they have become a cancerous tentacle of political dysfunction that is TRYING to infect and damage the population for spite, and calling / writing your congress-critters, what’s the best response to these toxic leprechauns?
“If I were in charge!”
I get these emotional appeal type e-mail forwards every day. I usually delete them without reading them (just so all you forwarders know, and besides; I get the same information, if it’s even real, days to weeks, to sometimes years, before you apparently did). This one caught me eye as something that needs to be addressed though;
“PUT ME IN CHARGE . . .
Put me in charge of food stamps. I’d get rid of Lone Star cards; no cash for Ding Dongs or Ho Ho’s, just money for 50-pound bags of rice and beans, blocks of cheese and all the powdered milk you can haul away. If you want steak and frozen pizza, then get a job.
Put me in charge of Medicaid. The first thing I’d do is to get women Norplant birth control implants or tubal ligations. Then, we’ll test recipients for drugs, alcohol, and nicotine. If you want to reproduce or use drugs, alcohol, or smoke, then get a job.
Put me in charge of government housing. Ever live in a military barracks? You will maintain our property in a clean and good state of repair. Your home” will be subject to inspections anytime and possessions will be inventoried. If you want a plasma TV or Xbox 360, then get a job and your own place.
In addition, you will either present a check stub from a job each week or you will report to a “government” job. It may be cleaning the roadways of trash, painting and repairing public housing, whatever we find for you. We will sell your 22 inch rims and low profile tires and your blasting stereo and speakers and put that money toward the “common good..”
Before you write that I’ve violated someone’s rights, realize that all of the above is voluntary. If you want our money, accept our rules. Before you say that this would be “demeaning” and ruin their “self esteem,” consider that it wasn’t that long ago that taking someone else’s money for doing absolutely nothing was demeaning and lowered self esteem.
If we are expected to pay for other people’s mistakes we should at least attempt to make them learn from their bad choices. The current system rewards them for continuing to make bad choices.
AND While you are on Gov’t subsistence, you no longer can VOTE! Yes, that is correct. For you to vote would be a conflict of interest. You will voluntarily remove yourself from voting while you are receiving a Gov’t welfare check. If you want to vote, then get a job.”
Followed of course with the obligatory;
“Now, if you have the guts – PASS IT ON…”
Oy. I guess we’re supposed to respond with a hearty; “YEAH! You Tell ’em!” and then go back to our search for other emotional stimulants, such that by the end of each day we’ll need to get drunk or bury our faces in the television to calm down.
Uh, no. I responded to the forwarder thusly;
“This is all assuming that the government is rightly and should forever be in charge of “charity” by way of coercive redistribution, which of course is the problem from the start. It shouldn’t.
‘Put me in charge’ she says….
No, Young Grasshopper; PUT THE CONSTITUTION BACK IN CHARGE. PUT THE FOUNDING PRINCIPLES BACK IN CHARGE and then we won’t have those in government usurping the very concept of charity and turning it into something horrible.”
Oh, and just as a side note; If you can’t vote as long as you’re on government subsistence? Heh! No problem; we’ll just make sure everyone is forced onto government subsistence. The Progressives are working on that right now anyway, and so long as you’re dependent on them, vote or not, you’ll have to do what they tell you.
This is the difference between Democrats and Republicans on one side, and libertarians/objectivists and Christians on the other. The former see the problem as an issue of WHO is in charge, while the latter see the issue as being whether or not the guiding principles are in charge. Whoever wrote the forwarded e-mail is every bit as clueless as any card-carrying, ideological Marxist, and most likely is a die hard Republican; take all of the leftist assumptions, make them your own, and wish you were in charge of administering them so you really SHOW THEM, BY GOSH AND BY GOLLY, GEE WHIZ!!!. I’d tell such people to go to hell, but they’re almost certainly already there, so even if they were genuinely inclined to take my advice it would make zero difference.
I’ve tried to say this in several different ways already, but we’ll give it another try;
That which irritates you owns you. It has converted you over to its purpose. This e-mail forward is a PERFECT example of that, and think how many cultures have been trading one tyrant for another, for another, for yet another… Get it?
Quote of the day—Emily Miller
The police stonewalling and cover-up are so that the public doesn’t find out that Chief Lanier enforces laws differently in the District, depending on whether you are a powerful liberal who opposes Second Amendment rights, like Mr. Gregory and Mrs. Feinstein, or an average American.
Emily Miller
October 9, 2013
MILLER: Smoking gun exposed- D.C. police covers up giving Feinstein illegal ‘assault weapons’
[Why can’t this be considered a violation of the constitution via liberals being granted titles of nobility with special privileges?
The only other way I can see to look at this is that the liberals are saying the law does not apply in the “game” they are playing. I don’t think they really want to go there because a lot of people who normally play the rule also consider it fair play to play by the rules of their opponents. And if there are no rules, well, then there are no rules.—Joe]
Shakedown?
I got a request from a guy who works for one of the gigantic firearms magazine publishing companies. They put out several major gun magazines, all of which you know well. He wanted high resolution images showing off some specific products of ours. I was heading out of town at the time and could not change my plans, no way, no how, and so I went to GREAT lengths, using digital back-channels, running into road blocks, fiddling this and that, and finally I got him his images in short order. It was a pain, but when a major publisher indicates that they want to run an article that shows off your products, you jump, right? So I jumped. I know the guy. He’s a big name in a huge industry– Why shouldn’t I jump?
Days later, after hearing no reply, I get this;
“Thank you for the images.
I am also interested in getting one of those [product name redacted] for myself…
Let me know what I would owe you.”
No mention of any specific, up-coming article in any specific magazine, just an implied request for a special personal deal on some special hardware (nod nod, wink, wink).
So I went through all that dorking around just for this?
This ain’t my first rodeo, bitches– I have decades of experience dealing with people attempting to use their very real influence for personal gain, and with those who accommodate them at every opportunity. Many of them have been in public employ too. I’ve also seen more than few of them fall flat on their faces for doing it.
Most people in any business, and all industries have this sort of thing going in spades, take the position; “Aw, just go with it. Don’t be a fool– It’s how the game is played and there’s nothing you can ever do to change it.” I’ve had it said to my face.
Uh huh. Well consider this post my reply to that, and count your blessings that I haven’t mentioned your name and your employer. Yet. Now let the reprisals begin, if you’re dumb enough. I’m ready.
Pre conditioning
I get a lot of e-mail spam, and I work in the firearms accessory business, so when I saw a message from a car dealer I read it as “Full Auto Inventory Clearence”.
“Hmm. Someone must have a lot of machineguns…”
Actually it read; “Fall Auto Inventory Clearence” but my pre conditioning made me read it wrong.
That’s just a tiny example of pre conditioning determining someone’s perception. It happens all the time to most of us, in some way or another.
We played a trick on my brother years ago. We wired up a whistling sky rocket firework and clamped it under his work bench. When he came in, we told him we suspected something was wrong with his bench lamp. When he turned on his bench power and all hell broke lose, he was scrambling in a panic, amongst the fire, the smoke and noise, to turn off his bench lamp. We had pre conditioned him to respond in a completely useless (and funny – to us) manner.
Yeah, funny funny hah hah, but this sort of thing is done to us in politics and social engineering, and we do it to ourselves.
Quote of the day—Luke Chitwood
Whether or not Barack Obama actually has plans to personally invade the homes of America’s 100 million gun owners and forcibly remove their firearms is irrelevant. The NRA has achieved great success in making this event seem possible to the Americans who fear it the most. The NRA has perfected the use of slippery-slope arguments and doomsday predictions to activate a passionate, idealistic, and focused base.
Luke Chitwood
October 8, 2013
Here’s How the NRA is So Freakishly Effective in the Gun Control Debate
[Chitwood has a problem with the truth. This is just one of many examples in the article. Obama would never personally do this and the NRA would never suggest he might. And as usual, if someone starts out with false data and assumptions whatever follows is almost certain to be in error.
What Chitwood apparently doesn’t understand is that NRA members drive the NRA rather than the NRA driving it’s members. People join the NRA to, among other things, encourage them to protect gun owner rights. I know a few people that have quit or refused to join the NRA but all of them did this because the NRA compromised or were to soft of supporters of gun owner rights. Not that they were too “extreme”.
The NRA is a grassroots organization. Our opponents cannot seem to understand that. Their model appears to be that the NRA recruits members and turns them into some sort of mindless minion that does the bidding of the evil NRA overlord. As is usual, anytime an anti-gun person says something you can be fairly certain it’s crazy talk.—Joe]
Quote of the day—Dan Gross
Common sense is not an intense emotion.
Dan Gross
President, Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence
October 4, 2013
Almost a year after Newtown, does anyone care about gun control anymore?
[Gross’s problem goes much deeper than this.
Directly addressing, but still a surface issue in the big picture, is that “common sense” is frequently totally wrong. It’s just common sense that the earth is flat, mixing a cup of alcohol with a cup of water will give you two cups of the mixture, and the government fixing the rental price of apartments will result in affordable housing. Each of those are provably wrong along with the “common sense” claim that increased gun restrictions result with decreased violent crime.
The much deeper problem Gross has is that his organization has a systemic problem with lying. The most recent I have seen was just this morning. They claim they have “nearly one million members and supporters”. In 2010 they had a mailing list of about 50,000. And even those 50,000 are inflated because they include people who sent them email to tell them they have errors on their webpage. Deception is an integral part of their organization. “Common sense” is a house of cards in a windstorm when your view of common sense is nothing but deception and lies.—Joe]
I’ve been a wafer a while
Which is to say that I left town for a week, and at the same to say that attempts to find the original meaning of mere syllables can be utterly pointless. The lyrics to the song, Jock-a-mo being a good example. Or is it Chaque Amour? It’s bad enough if you’re sure of the language, but the many languages from several continents that were in use in the greater Mississippi delta region of the Gulf Coast, in addition to several native languages and trade language amalgams, it’s just stupid to think you can ever know.
Anyhow; the central Washington desert is a beautiful place, most notably for the vast, wide open spaces covered by sage brush, layers of ancient basalt formations, the more recent signs of the Missoula Flood, and gigantic public works projects. You can sit in one place and see millions of years of violent geologic history and our violent political future at the same time.
Quote of the day—Daniel Murphy
I propose the federal government put several plastic surgeons on the payroll and offer free unlimited penis enlargement in exchange for giving up these rediculous (sic) weapons.
Daniel Murphy
April 3, 2013
Comment to Debunking the Conservative Myth on “Assault Rifles”.
[It’s another Markley’s Law Monday!
H/T to Phil who sent me an email with the link.—Joe]
Quote of the day—Gerry Spence
The police, as in every police state, would simply level their charges and lead the defendant to his blind-folded stance before the firing squad. During Randy Weaver’s trial, an agony for him that he endured for nearly three months, I found the minions of the law—the special agents of the FBI—to be men who proved themselves not only fully capable, but also utterly willing to manufacture evidence, to conceal crucial evidence and even change the rules that governed life and death if, in the prosecution of the accused, it seemed expedient to do so.
Gerry Spence
From Freedom To Slavery: The Rebirth of Tyranny in America
First St Martin’s Griffin Edition: May 1996
[The 1990’s were exceedingly dark days for gun owners. The shooting of Randy Weaver’s son and wife by Federal agents and then the trial of Weaver and Harris could be considered the turning point. The egregious behavior and arrogance of the Feds enraged gun owners and inspired thousands, if not millions, of people who had never owned guns to purchase them. The Weaver shooting took place less than 20 miles from where I lived at the time and I was among those that became a gun owner shortly thereafter.
This blog, Boomershoot, and a great number of significant events in my life were the result of what happened at Ruby Ridge.
That was over 20 years ago and many of the freedom activists I know don’t remember the events or that it even occurred. And many that do probably don’t understand the significance of that event in today’s fight for freedom. The Federal government learned some important lessons as a result of that incident and the response of the American people. The “militia movement” was part of that response and it was a real wake up call to the Feds.
But I’m not sure it was the lesson we wanted the Feds to learn. My impression is they learned it was too risky to begin using naked force to subjugate the people. They did not reverse course.
They grudgingly accepted we have at least some narrowly defined right to keep and bear arms but attacked our economic base, our privacy, and regulate the minutia of nearly every activity. The “assault weapon” bans, TSA and Obamacare are just the most obvious infringements of our freedom.
There are probably 10s of thousands of regulations which by themselves would be laughable and easily dismissed if it weren’t for the fact they are each tiny links in huge and heavy chains that enslave us through the daily sapping of our time and money to avoid committing numerous crimes each day. Ultimately these laws can, and probably will, be used to create the police state Spence warns us of. And it will all occur with firing only the occasional, and almost entirely ignored, shots.—Joe]