A classic from the way-back machine. Recorded more than 80 years ago. A simple tune from a simpler time.
Jimmie Rodgers was a classic country-western singer, sometimes called the grandfather of the “modern” genre, born in 1897, died 1933.
Quote of the day—Italian Rose
Like ever other civilized first world nation civilian ownership of guns needs to be banned in this country so we can enjoy the freedom from gun violence as they do.
Italian Rose
December 11, 2013
Comment to How gun control is losing, badly (in charts)
[You don’t have to squint very hard to imagine this is sarcasm. But given the context (the Washington Post) I don’t think it is.
And I would imagine our Rose also advocates banning recreational drugs, including alcohol, so we an be free from drug abuse. That worked out so well the last few times it was last tried.*—Joe]
*That last line is sarcasm.
Second Amendment Foundation kicks additional butt
In the grand scheme of things it’s a small win, but we’ll take what we can get;
CITY OF SEATTLE SETTLES SAF PUBLIC RECORDS LAWSUIT FOR $38,000
BELLEVUE, WA The Second Amendment Foundation has accepted a $38,000 settlement from the City of Seattle for the city’s failure to release public records about the city’s gun buyback in January.
As part of the agreement, the city has acknowledged that it did not promptly or properly provide all of the documents sought by SAF under the Public Records Act. SAF was represented by Bellevue attorney Miko Tempski.
“It is a shame that this had to drag out so long,” said SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb, “but the important thing is that the city, and outgoing Mayor Mike McGinn’s office has been held accountable for sloppy handling of our request. One would have thought the city had learned something earlier this year when the police department had to pay the Seattle Times $20,000, for also not providing requested documents.
“Maybe the citizens of Seattle can consider this a Christmas gift from the departing mayor,” he remarked. “This would not have been necessary had McGinn’s office done its job.”
SAF had pursued e-mails and other documents related to the January buyback, which was conducted in a parking lot underneath I-5 in downtown Seattle. The operation was something of an embarrassment that even Washington Ceasefire President Ralph Fascitelli had advised against, the recovered e-mails revealed.
Earlier the city had supplied some of the requested documents, but a story in the Seattle P-I.com revealed there were other materials that had not been provided to SAF by Mayor McGinn’s office.
“It seems hard to conceive,” Tempski said, “how you could accidentally overlook hundreds of documents and how that could be unintentional.”
“The settlement,” said Gottlieb, “will help SAF continue its legal work. Hopefully, we will see better performance from a new city administration in January.”
Bureaucrats care very little when they’re playing with other people’s money, but eventually they get booted out of office for their douchebaggery.
What the Seattle government critters were trying to hide through their obfuscation of course is that gun “buy-backs” (as if they were ever their guns in the first place) are nothing but a cheap, stupid sham. They knew they’d be called on it, so they were willing to take their very slim chances in court at the citizens’ expense.
At a minimum, the settlement should come of out their salaries. That is after they’re arrested for using their position in an attempt to chill the exercise of a constitutional right.
How about a printer and ink “buy-back” as a means of “fighting” counterfeiting? Yeah; shockingly stupid. Insane, actually, if anyone were to think it could ever help anything.
If you trust people who do this sort of thing to hold positions of power there is something wrong with you.
Hey; let’s have a Koran “buy-back”, after which we’ll show videos on the evening news of those Korans being shredded for recycling. “Getting these Korans off the streets is another way to help save lives” the announcer would say, as a flock of doves is released. Surely that’ll put a big dent in the jihadist threat, right? Same reasoning. Same anti constitutional behavior. Same insanity.
They have it back asswards of course; crime (both the freelance and the official kind) is the reason we must at all times protect the right to keep and bear ams.
I gave quite a bit (for me) to the SAF this year. How about you?
Quote of the day—Stephen Halbrook
Yet no good cop would assume that criminals register guns. Now we know that D.C. police don’t check the gun registry when on the way to a crime scene, and the reason for registration collapses.
Stephen Halbrook
December 11, 2013
Attorney for Dick Heller in “Heller II”.
MILLER: Dick Heller challenges D.C.’s gun registration scheme, files for quick ruling in Heller II
[H/T to Sebastian.
It’s abundantly clear the only reason for registration is to cast a chilling effect on the exercise of specific enumerated right and to aid in later confiscation. These people don’t just need to have their laws slapped down in the courts.These people should be prosecuted.—Joe]
Wrong hands, right hands… uh, say again?
Novelty shotgun shell
This is what they think of you
Via email from Col. Milquetoast who says, “Phillip Adams is an old Australian lefty with a newspaper column and a radio show. And apparently a bit of a totalitarian streak”.
Adams’ Twitter profile says, “Broadcaster, columnist, presenter of Late Night Live on ABC RN.”
Adams wrote this column on September 10, 2011:
It was widely accepted that her attempted assassination was triggered, no pun intended, by the verbal violence of US politics – such as the “lock ’n’ load” rhetoric of gun-totin’ Sarah Palin, whose campaign literature literally targeted political opponents, depicting them in the crosshairs of telescopic sights.
While sticks and stones break bones, words can never hurt? Manifestly untrue.
…
The massacre in Arizona that almost killed Giffords killed six others – and the appalled reaction almost killed off Palin’s campaign. Let this and Norway remind us to turn down our political volume and venom. It’s not enough for Abbott to tell us he “doesn’t entirely agree” with vile placards being waved at right-wing rallies. He must denounce them. And when an Alan Jones suggests that Gillard should be drowned in a hessian sack? With memories of his role in the Cronulla riots, he should he sacked.
…
Today, words. Tomorrow, sticks and stones. And the day after that?
It might have been “widely accepted” by those who do not require evidence to form their beliefs but it wasn’t accepted by most people. But that is mostly beside the point.
The main point is that he then demonstrated his total lack of an irony co-processor, or perhaps an overactive hypocritical gland, by tweeting the following:
Tweeted December 14, 2013 3:53 PM:
Biggest US death toll?Not Iraq or A’stan but the war waged within the US by the Invincible NRMA.Seems to gain strength with every massacre
Tweeted December 14, 2013, 3:58 PM:
The target of the US war on terror should be those NRMA nutters-who outgun and outmaneuver every challenger from POTUS down.And always have
Tweeted December 14, 2013, 3:59 PM:
The charnel house of Charlton Heston
Tweeted December 14, 2013, 4:05 PM:
Oops. NRA. Brain dulled by medication
Tweeted December 14, 2013, 4:07 PM:
National Ratbags. National Racists
This is a broadcaster with ABC who thinks “The target of the US war on terror should be those NRA nutters”. You, as a NRA member and gun owner, are to be give special treatment. This is not the special treatment afforded to others exercising a specific enumerated right but the special treatment of military assaults, detention without trial, and drone strikes.
How would ABC handle it if he were to say something similar about blacks, Jews, feminists, or gays?
Quote of the day–Sen. Ed Markey
We need a ban on assault weapons. We need to stop the flow of high magazine clips, like the ones used in Aurora and Newtown.
Sen. Ed Markey
December 16, 2013
Markey calls for assault weapons ban
[H/T to NRA News for the Tweet.
If it weren’t so common I would say it is ironic that someone so ignorant of firearms that they say something like “stop the flow of high magazine clips” thinks he knows enough about them to make firearm law. But I suspect ignorance of the subject matter and the desire to use force to impose your will on those that are not ignorant are highly correlated. Think of school bullies versus the nerds, the KKK versus people of color, and Anti-Semitists versus Jews.
Philosophically, Senator Markey has a lot of close and dangerous company throughout all known history. And this is why we need to protect our specific enumerated right to keep and bear arms. It is a last ditch safeguard to protect innocent people from ignorant bigots with power like Senator Markey.—Joe]
A good first step
In Bloomberg’s Business Week, of all places, Paul Barrett suggests:
As for the BATFE, drastic reform seems warranted. Why not take the agency’s better agents and fold them into the Federal Bureau of Investigation, under new leadership, and then just get rid of the bumblers who continue to make a mockery of federal law enforcement?
From a purest standpoint I would prefer that all the functions currently “performed” by the ATF be handled at the state level, if at all, and the ATF (pseudo) functionality be completely eliminated at the national level but I understand the political reality of smaller steps.
Politically the situation may be even more nuanced. At one point, many years ago, certain Second Amendment lobbyists actively worked to save the ATF because they could be more easily controlled because of their “F-Troop” reputation. As repulsive as it may be that may still be the case.
That a mainstream media outlet is advocating for the elimination of the ATF is significant. That alone is a good first step.
This is what they think of you
From a comment to Steadily stay on course to end gun deaths:
It is YOU and your NRA thug friends who continue to make America an uncivilized place to live. A place where any idiot can pick up an assault weapon at Walmart, hee-haw.
Congrats on all that. Remember, guns don’t kill people, the NRA kills people.
And what do you suppose this person thinks should be done with people and their “NRA thug friends” who kill people?
Admitted subterfuge
Seattle Times opinion writer Jerry Large is no friend of gun owners but he did do us a bit of a favor by revealing to us that our opponents explicitly admit to deliberate subterfuge:
The panelists leaned toward discussing treatment of gun violence as a public-health issue, partly to avoid the blowback attached to the idea of gun control.
This tactic isn’t anything new. They have been doing it since at least the late 1990s. But this is the first time I have seen it explicitly admitted they were trying to call it something other than what it is. Gun control. The infringement of a specific enumerated right.
California crazy talk
Maybe it’s in the air they breath or something but California has more than its share of crazies. This is someone legally representing the state:
California argued that even under intermediate scrutiny, the State could give everyone a handgun and mandate it is the only gun you could use for self-defense in the home….and that would be enough. The Court seemed troubled by the logical extension of California’s argument that only one handgun was enough to allow the full and unencumbered exercise of Second Amendment rights. Peña counsel made it clear that the Constitutional analysis the State wanted to implement would logically allow them to restrict all handguns by caliber to only .22lr, or even to ban all handguns and only allow Tasers — an argument the District of Columbia made and lost on in Heller.
Can you imagine someone arguing that the 1st Amendment would not be infringed if the state gave everyone their one and only religious book and mandated it never leave your home or be replaced by some other book? Or that it doesn’t violate your freedom of association if the state were to assign you your job, social circle, and spouse? Or that it doesn’t violate your right to be represented in court by supplying your one and only defense lawyer? That would be crazy talk.
Okay, maybe the lawyer for California isn’t actually crazy. Maybe they were just doing the best they could while attempting to defend, as is their job, an indefensible law. I can buy that.
Politician crazy talk
These people have mental problems:
Senator Kevin de Leόn (D-Los Angeles) today announced he would introduce legislation to ban the sale, manufacture, purchase and trafficking of “ghost guns” unless they are pre-registered with the Department of Justice through a serial number and gun owner background check. In order to receive a serial number, self-made or assembled firearm must include permanent metal components that cannot be detached and that are detectable as required by existing law.
…
“Gun parts can be obtained online or now with 3D printers made at home, leaving no way for law enforcement to ensure that prohibited individuals are not making ghost guns on their own,” said Senator De Leόn. “No one knows they exist and there is no way to know if criminals or other dangerous individuals are circumventing firearm laws by making these guns.”
If the concern is, as it appears to be in the press release, that a gun can be easily made with a 3-D printer by someone prohibited from possessing a firearm then how is a law prohibiting such guns being made going to be more effective than the law prohibiting the possession once the gun is finished?
“Permanent metal components that cannot be detached”? I don’t care if it is riveted, glued, or completely encased in plastic, it can, almost trivially, be removed. Drill or grind out any rivets, drill a hole in the metal to insert a screw, heat the metal until it slightly melts the plastic and then pull it the metal out via the inserted screw. Then, if needed, refill the void with plastic/wood/fiberglass/whatever.
And that is if the guy pushing the “Print” button isn’t smart enough to delete the extra instructions for the 3-D printer to make the void for the metal part in the first place.
And in any case does this guy think such a law will be any more effective than laws banning recreational drugs? This is crazy talk.
I would expect to find more rational people in long term care at a psych ward. Maybe he hasn’t been taking his meds recently.
Quote of the day—John Spero
Yet another cowardly mass shooting committed by a left-wing neo-marxist shooter. The idea that we allow liberals access to firearms in this nation is truly frightening to me. Is having the IRS intimidating political enemies not enough for the left?
John Spero
December 14, 2013
Comment to Police in Colorado probe motives of dead high school gunman
[While a case could be made that keeping guns out of the hands of progressives/liberals/socialists/communists/but-I-repeat-myself would make society safer I think the reality would be different. Such a law would be no more effective than the laws prohibiting recreational drugs, including alcohol and tobacco, from people. And that doesn’t even consider the principles involved such as equal rights, due process, and First Amendment issues.
The best that we can do is be armed and prepared to defend innocent life from these violent people.—Joe]
Enders Game
On Saturday night Barb and watched the movie Enders Game. We had both read the book and enjoyed it but had a minor conflict about watching the movie.
I kind of wanted to watch it. I had skimmed through a lot of the physical description of the zero-G games and was never really able to visualize the setting very well. If nothing else I wanted to see what that was like.
Barb was concerned the movie would spoil the book.
I agreed that movies are seldom as good as the book but they can be good even if they aren’t as good as the book. We agreed to see it anyway.
I enjoyed it. Barb was disappointed because a lot of the team building was left out but she thought they did a great job on the special effects.
Update: After reading this post last night Barb mildly protested that we didn’t really have a conflict about going to the movie. It was a very short polite discussion about whether we wanted to see this movie or something else. And we came to the same conclusion without any flaring of emotions. I agree with this but I didn’t, and don’t, have a single word or short phrase to describe that conversation. “Minor conflict” is prone to misinterpretation of the reality of discussion but with a strong emphasis on “minor” it does describe it.
Delusions are not “incredibly successful”
Brian Malte, of Handgun Control Inc. (aka The Brady Campaign), says:
The laws that Colorado passed are still on the books, and even the senators that were recalled said they would do it all over again for public safety. And when you have nine out of 10 Americans feeling strongly that background checks are the right thing to do, we will prevail. We’ll do everything we can to protect those gun laws, and we don’t think they’ll be repealed. We think they’re popular enough.
But law enforcement in Colorado says:
Some sheriffs, like Sheriff Cooke, are refusing to enforce the laws, saying that they are too vague and violate Second Amendment rights. Many more say that enforcement will be “a very low priority,” as several sheriffs put it. All but seven of the 62 elected sheriffs in Colorado signed on in May to a federal lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the statutes.
The resistance of sheriffs in Colorado is playing out in other states, raising questions about whether tougher rules passed since Newtown will have a muted effect in parts of the American heartland, where gun ownership is common and grass-roots opposition to tighter restrictions is high.
Beyond that are the court challenges to the new laws and the successful recall elections of three (two plus one resignation because of the recall in process) of the politicians who voted for the laws.
Malte says, “I think 2013 was incredibly successful.”
They passed laws which law enforcement is refusing to enforce, politicians are getting recalled over, are being seriously challenged in the courts and he thinks that is “incredibly successful”?
I think his group over reached, is headed for major defeats, and he is delusional.
These people have mental problems.
Quote of the day—rich roberts @boris3324
@linoge_wotc @RSheibal @scaruso5555 @Keith1911 On the plus side a gun in the home will most likely kill an occupant. #NRAdicklesswonders
rich roberts @boris3324
Tweeted on May 16, 2013
[It’s another Markley’s Law Monday via a Tweet from Linoge! Plus a bonus celebration of violence against gun owners.
This was in response to:
Ahh, the ignorance of #guncontrol #extremists. So very child-like. @boris3324 @RSheibal @scaruso5555 @Keith1911.
—Joe]
Quote of the day—Barrett
In the course of world history there have been officials that strip inalienable rights from the people that were given to all by our Creator. Most of these officials inevitably come to trial, some do not.
Intentionally violating constitutional rights by officials that have sworn to uphold them should have severe prison sentences.
With the clear vision of horrible events in history repeating itself, all manufacturers of firearms or related equipment remaining in partnership with such violators should have a respectable fear of being found with the guilty on their day of trial.
Barrett
February 20, 2013
Barrett’s Position Regarding the Assault on Liberty
[H/T to Paul Koning for his comment.
This is the firearms company Barrett.
I look forward to the day, perhaps in Nuremberg (PA), when said officials and their collaborators are brought to justice.—Joe]
More on mental disorders
American Mercenary elaborates on some stuff I have been saying.
He pulled many of the symptoms of Emotional Regulation Disorder (aka Borderline Personality Disorder) from here and puts them in the context of our debates with anti-gun people. It’s scary accurate.
I’m certain these people have a mental disorder.
Barb and I both have personal experience with people that have these behaviors. I read many of the symptoms aloud to her as I was reading his post. It’s really spooky to read about someone you know from a list of mental disorder symptoms.
Signed copy of Emily Gets Her Gun
Today I received a signed copy of Emily Gets Her Gun: …But Obama Wants to Take Yours from her publisher.
Thank you Emily. The book is great. And you didn’t really have to do that. I purchased the Audible version and listened to it weeks ago.
Here are earlier posts about her book:
- Are you a proud gun owner?
- Consensus with Biden on gun laws
- That’s not what I would call it
- When will they issue tags?
- Quote of the day—Emily Miller (Posted November 3, 2013)
- Quote of the day—Emily Miller (Posted November 24, 2013)