@Rivers513 handguns kill more than the assault murder guns. I’m going after them all #GunSense
Unarmed Barista (@GunzAreBad)
Tweeted on December 16, 2013
[Yeah. Tell me again that, “No one wants to take your guns.”
This may be a troll account so this may not be as good as example as I thought it was.—Joe]
A human right is a bit like the sun. The sun is essential to life. You can bask in it, or hide from it. You may be able to change people’s attitudes toward it, or even start a religion around it. You may hate it or love it, or be largely indifferent to it, or think anything you want to think about it. If you fail to deal with it properly it can burn or even kill you, but without it you are dead. You could get a group of sun haters together in the street and carry picket signs denouncing the sun, and you might even be able to lobby enough idiots and criminals in Congress to get laws passed denouncing the sun.
But two things will remain true no matter what you think or do. A) your life depends on the sun, and B) neither you, nor any group of people, any committee or government body, no force on Earth, has the power to alter it in any way. You did not create it and you cannot alter or destroy it.
Similarly, human rights can be respected and honored, or they might be despised and violated, but they cannot be created, granted, altered, revoked or destroyed by any force on Earth no matter how popular or powerful that force may be. That’s where we get the term “unalienable” as applied to human rights in the Declaration of Independence.
This in partially in response to McThags post here;
http://mcthag.blogspot.com/2013/12/better.html
“He’s head and shoulders above A&E who may be in violation of the 1964 Civil Rights Act for suspending him. Oh yeah, everyone who’s been saying that A&E had every right to fire him over his remarks forgot the religion clause of that law, didn’t they?”
But it apples to all such discussions. I’d comment over there, but commenting seems to require a google account and I’m not starting a google account.
The “Civil Rights Act” does not create, enhance, or modify any right, any more than a law can create, enhance or otherwise modify a star in some other galaxy or a physical law of the universe, though it certainly may be used as a tool or an excuse to violate some rights. Mostly it’s just some words written by people who don’t understand the meaning of rights, or hope that the rest of us don’t understand.
Nothing more disgusting than a female gun nut.
“Guest”
June 2013
Comment to Children and Guns: The Fear and the Reality
[You disgust them and they want to take your means of self defense away. It sounds to me like someone is channeling the KKK.—Joe]
I hope that CNN and Fox News and ABC and all of the news outlets broadcast live feeds from the destruction of the guns once they are criminalized. We’ll have trash compactors reducing the guns to pieces of unrecognizable metal. The death-worshipping guns nuts will be watching TV, tears streaming down their cheeks, shrieking “OUR GUNS! OUR GUNS!” Their children will ask them what time supper is, and they will backhand them across the face and shout “DON’T TALK BACK TO ME! THEY’RE DESTROYING OUR GUNS!”
Anonymous Reader
July 26, 2001
Comment to The Terrible Truth About Gun Owners
[This is what they think about people who exercise the specific enumerated right to keep and bear arms.
Merry Christmas.—Joe]
From Reason comes a report of a study about An examination of the effects of concealed weapons laws and assault weapons bans on state-level murder rates. Their conclusion, unexpectedly of course, is that assault weapon bans don’t do squat, and limiting the legal ownership and carry of guns for self defense (or, presumably, other purposes) increases crime rates. I’m sure we are all shocked that enforcing and encouraging defensive passivity and defenselessness encourages criminals, but there you have it.
Interestingly, and not surprisingly coming from The Left, he is advocating capital punishment for possessing a philosophy rather than committing an act. Looking at history, that appears to be a constant.
That said philosophy is supported by, and adheres to, centuries of documented, established rights, which in turn is supported by the natural laws of this particular planet, is irrelevant to him; it is the philosophy he considers so dangerous.
This is certainly a real stretch – for the moment, anyway – but at what level does such a threat constitute basis for justifiable defensive action? For now it’s just talk; I suspect as political power waxes and wanes it may not always be.
Predator
December 19, 2013
Referring to This is what they think of you
[To answer the question, it depends upon what your definition of “justifiable defensive action” is.
I consider defensive training, stocking up on ammo, and keeping my home location difficult to find “defensive action” and more than justified by the current enumerable threats to my philosophy, person, and family. If you are talking about using deadly force as the “justifiable defensive action” then the answer is when the threat is eminent and of a nature that it would result in death or permanent injury to an innocent person.
Other than that I have nothing to add.—Joe]
From Yahoo News I hear that Mikhail Kalashnikov, inventor of the AK 47, has died at age 94.
@UnitedLiberals It’s what Ben Franklin would of wanted. #NRAdicklesswonders
rich roberts @boris3324
Tweeted on May 16, 2013
[It’s another Markley’s Law Monday via a Tweet from Linoge!—Joe]
I’ve been hanging out with my great-nephew Jared (nicknamed Jar Head) who has recently mastered the word, “No!”.
I am tempted to believe that if the word meaning “no” were three symbols long the parenting of children would be dramatically different.
Watching Aborn’s attempt to define fear of gun bans as paranoid while arguing in favor of gun bans makes me disinclined to give the benefit of the doubt to the leaders.
Clayton Cramer
December 17, 2013
Not Trying to Ban Guns – Except When We Are
[H/T to Say Uncle.
The problem is they have mental problems. They literally cannot see they contributed to the situation.
I have a lot of experience dealing with this sort of “thinking”. Stacy, my counselor for dealing with this sort of thing, explained this was one of the symptoms of personality disorders. The essence of the explanation applicable in this context is as follows:
If you tell a normal person their actions contributed to a particular situation or result and suggest changing their behavior might result in a better outcome they will respond with something like, “I think I understand, I will try your suggestion next time.” The person with a personality disorder cannot see they contributed to the situation in any way. They never did anything wrong and will refuse to change their behavior.
There is no point in trying to have a logical discussion with these type of people. Your only productive recourse is to “set boundaries”, tell them you will not tolerate their irrational behavior, and then enforce those boundaries. As difficult as this is in interpersonal relationships it’s even more difficult when these people have political power, the power of government force, over you. This is why we have the 2nd Amendment. It is the last ditch resort to enforcing boundaries.
Further complicating the issue is that when you enforce those boundaries “the crazy” may get far, far worse. They can and will do extremely destructive things. In interpersonal relationships this is one the paths by which people get murdered by their abusive spouse.
Gun owners have a lot in common with abused spouses and should be aware things can very rapidly get much much worse.—Joe]
The worse apples now being pushed by Obama don’t provide much money to offset the risks, and that’s even if insurers are able to keep pace with the ever-changing Obama position on what is good and what is bad for American insurance consumers. The possibility of systemic collapse in the New Year looks increasingly real.
Chris Stirewalt
December 20, 2013
How about them apples: ObamaCare rewritten again
[Yesterday my friendly neighborhood health insurance expert read part of King Obama new Obamacare decree to me. There was “a tone of voice” in the reading that made me think carefully about my response. I thought about it for a couple seconds and said, “What does that even mean?”
The response was sharp, “Exactly! I don’t even know. How can this possibly work?” I told them insurance companies should just forget about people actually enrolling and paying premiums. What they need to do is just have healthcare providers send the bills to them and they should just pay them. That will cut down on all the confusion, excess paperwork, and reduce costs just like Obamacare was originally intended.
I’m fortunate their sarcasm detector was fully operational and the exasperation was vented in a direction other than toward me.—Joe]
I usually stay away from stupid pop culture stuff, but this one has a lesson to it and maybe some on the left can learn from it (yeah I know; don’t say it).
GQ Magazine has every right to bait the Duck Dynasty dude in an interview.
Duck Dynasty dude had every right to fall into the trap, providing GQ with some juicy stuff about homosexuals to peddle their stupid magazine to stupid people.
A&E had every right to lay off Duck Dynasty dude or fire him outright, or do nothing, or whatever they wanted, so long as it’s within their contractual prerogative.
The Duck Dynasty stars have every right to stay or to leave A&E, so long as it’s within their contractual prerogative.
A&E watchers have every right to quit watching, or keep watching, that stupid network as they choose and/or as they can afford it.
Any other network has every right to take on the Duck Dynasty people in a new show, and everyone has the right to watch that one, or not, as they choose and/or can afford it.
See? That’s how freedom works. No one goes to jail or gets robbed or beaten up, no one has to sign a contract at gunpoint, everyone has free choice so long as it doesn’t violate anyone’s rights, and no one has the right to be free from the inevitable consequences of their own stupid mistakes.
No politician on the face of this Earth properly has anything to say, in any official capacity, about any of it. That’s not their job, and they should be smart enough to say so when questioned about it, though unfortunately they’re not that smart. Not by a mile.
Fake moral controversy resolved. Now mind your business.
I’m at about that point where I need a couple of decent proofreaders. Details over at The Stars Came Back.
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.
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.
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?
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]
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?
