Via a Tweet by Chris Knox who says, “I do so love a happy ending”:
A comment by celticwarrior916:
That locked door you opened… was for your protection. Not mine.
Some days are better than others
I have to think about it. This is Wednesday, so it had to be Monday night. I had a normal day at work, but when I got home I started to feel a bit uncomfortable, in a vague sort of way. Then it got more uncomfortable.
Son and I were watching a movie (Loopers – not bad either) and after getting up to get a drink of water, it got very uncomfortable. I told Son; “I don’t think I’ll be watching the rest of the movie.”
Then it was Armageddon. It came on so exponentially fast I didn’t realize that all I really had to do was puke. I remember saying something like “I think I’m dying” between moans, and then things went the way of the classic, closing down tunnel vision people talk about as a result of being under high Gs. The world went dark, and as I went under, in the sort of agony that brings thoughts of death being a sweet gift of relief, I don’t know if I said it but I remember thinking it, very deliberately, and it was sort of printed in bright letters over my endarkened vision;
I DON’T WANT TO GO OUT LIKE THIS
In upper case letters just like that. Now I think I know exactly what it’s like to die a very quick and agonizing death, ’cause essentially that’s what I did, only I woke up later, in a dream. My wife was slapping my face, trying to get my attention like you see in the movies (what else could she do?) but I was still dreaming. When I noticed wetness on the side of my face that was against the floor, and that my sinuses were packed full of liquid, I said dreamily, and to no one in particular “I think I vomited”.
Waking up in a pool of your own vomit, and with your sinuses full of vomit, is something we’ve all heard tell about, but I’d never done it before. Never even came close before. It wasn’t nearly as bad though, not by a long shot, as the going down part. But it wasn’t over.
Oh no. I’ll just say “both ends” and leave it at that (PV/PD). So my wife and kids sort of freaked out I suppose, and so did I. Phone calls were made and crews showed up, and well, right now I’m just fine and dandy. They say that a “single episode” like this is not uncommon, and not necessarily indicative of anything but some immediate GI distress. I got hauled in, poked, bled and prodded, EKG’d, x-rayed and whatnot, and everything is fine. They seemed surprised in fact, that my BP and heart rate, glucose level and everything was all so good. I guess a fart of my oldness is suppose to be more deteriorated.
When I told a nurse I was cold, she said my skin was warm (still in the process of getting over the bout). I told her that it made sense – that if your skin is hot, you’re losing more heat, and so you’ll feel cold. Your heat sense registers direction-of-flow (gain or loss) more than it registers temperature. I would have expected her to understand that, but it seemed a new concept to her. How many times have you hugged your spouse, and she says you feel cold, while you say she feels warm, or visa versa? That’s what’s going on there, and if you think about it from a survival point of view it makes sense.
And here’s a thing about negotiations. They (both my wife and the doctors)wanted very much to keep me at hospital overnight. They all said so several times, but I wanted to go home. I knew that I could have said simply, “No way. I’m going home and that’s that” and I was prepared to do it if needed, but but instead all I said was stuff like, “I’d rather not stay” and “I think I made a big compromise even coming here” and “all I really need is water and some sleep”. They took my wife out of the room to talk about it for a bit and then THEY decided I could go home, see.
Twenty four hours mostly sleeping and I’m a new man. I’d tap dance right now if I’d ever learned how. So remember, if you’re having problems and things seem to be going from bad to worse, well; cheer up– You’ll soon be dead.
The answer is no
Sebastian wonders about the executive order “Publish a letter from ATF to federally licensed gun dealers providing guidance on how to run background checks for private sellers.”:
Does this mean that we can just get the check without the 4473?
I was informed by the ATF of the letter (here is my private copy) at 12:03 this afternoon.
The answer is no.
Quote of the day—Adrian Bogdan
I cannot begin to tell you how many memories, flash-back and déjà vu moments I’ve had…
Youth brigades with full indoctrination programs and training to rat on all non-conformists, including their own families, mandatory service of up to 2 years in some sort of “service corps” for “mandatory national service” (which ultimately will turn out to be work brigades needed for cheap slave labor), nationwide police force with full military capabilities and numbers surpassing it and all the “patriotic” work they will be doing like income verification (making sure you’re not living above your means), suppression of free speech and all other basic rights, midnight roundups and arrests, impromptu inspections of homes/businesses/vehicles with no need of any kind of search warrant, unlimited detention at the slightest suspicion of illegal activities (guess how many things will still be legal by then) and so on, so forth.
Just a recommendation: start showing these proposals to the people you know from the old communist block and then take notes. Most of them can tell you from memory what the road map will look like.
Adrian Bogdan
January 15, 2013
From the gun email list at work.
[While the context was the anticipated attack this morning on gun rights by the President Adrian was actually referring to a different article. Still, the road map could be similar.
Other people don’t exactly have a “warm and fuzzy” feeling over the current activities of our public servants either.
It’s interesting to hypothesize parallels to the Palmer Raids which could be used in our current situation:
The Justice Department launched a series of raids on January 2, 1920 with follow up operations over the next few days. Smaller raids extended over the next 6 weeks. At least 3000 were arrested, and many others were held for various lengths of time. The entire enterprise replicated the November action on a larger scale, including arrests and seizures without search warrants, as well as detention in overcrowded and unsanitary holding facilities. Hoover later admitted “clear cases of brutality.” The raids covered more than 30 cities and towns in 23 states, but those west of the Mississippi and south of the Ohio were “publicity gestures” designed to make the effort appear nationwide in scope. Because the raids targeted entire organizations, agents arrested everyone found in organization meeting halls, not only arresting non-radical organization members but also visitors who did not belong to a target organization, and sometimes American citizens not eligible for arrest and deportation.
The Department of Justice at one point claimed to have taken possession of several bombs, but after a few iron balls were displayed to the press they were never mentioned again.
About 10,000 were eventually arrested.
Also the Japanese (and lesser known Italian and German) internment camps are also examples worthy of using for potential parallels.
And, of course, it was a liberal/progressive administration in charge at the time of both the Palmer Raids and the internment camps.
The way it could come about is as follows. There will be widespread noncompliance and heated talk about the “common sense” legislation when the next tragedy occur. Then, particularly if it involves a government entity, those most vocal will be targeted even when they had nothing to do with the violence.
Our Federal government hasn’t passed a budget in, what, three years now? There is significant political tension over the debt and debt ceiling
In times of discontent the government needs scapegoats. Gun owners are now the designated scapegoats. It’s could turn into an extremely rapid escalation of events. The more we complain and the more we resist the more valid the claims that “we can’t be trusted with weapons of war” may appear. They then “have to” confiscate them to preserve our “democracy” (I know it’s a republic but they won’t admit that).
I can see the sound bites now:
Sure, virtually no one is talking about stuffing people in cattle cars right now. But five weeks ago we didn’t, and most probably couldn’t, imagine we would be seeing seven round magazine limits being law, or a full-court press for a more restrictive “assault weapon” ban at the Federal level.
Things sometimes happen extremely quick. The Rwandan genocide went from moderate tension to mass murder in 30 minutes. Many other events of historical significance went from moderate tension to massive human rights violations over the course of a just a few weeks or months. And, of course, it will be for the children.—Joe]
Gun cartoon of the day
What if the president were to publically announce they were going to sign an executive order to “research” the detrimental effects of free speech or Christianity? Or how about the prohibiting the reading of material from international sources that had no “sporting or scientific purpose”?
Why can’t people see how disturbing it is that a single person has the power to place restrictions on a specific enumerated right? It’s a really bad precedent to allow.
Do you trust your government?
Yesterday I had lunch with Barb L. and as I was giving her an overview of our current political situation something crystalized and I thought I would share, in more detail, that insight.
I have been a gun rights activist since 1995 and have seen the fight from the perspective of someone “in the trenches”. In this post I want to give the 10,000 foot view of the battle.
Gun ownership is under more pressure with draconian laws affecting more people than I have ever seen. And I remember watching the TV news as the gun control act of 1968 was being debated. A month ago gun rights activists were on the offense and making steady progress. We would have minor losses and advances would be slowed or temporarily stopped but we would use what we learned from the failure and reapply the next legislative or court session. The anti-freedom people were on the defensive and operating with severally restricted finances. That changed on December 14, 2012.
One tragedy, implemented by a mentally ill man, put us on the defensive again. That tragedy is used by both the politicians and the anti-freedom activists as the reason for the latest push for gun control. It was the spark that ignited the Gabby Giffords anti-gun Political Action Committee two years after she was shot by another mentally ill person. It is the justification for the committee on “gun violence” headed by V.P. Biden.
I completely understand the grief and the urge to prevent such terrible tragedies but there is something that truly scares me about the political reaction to these tragedies.
Let’s take a look at some of the proposed anti-freedom legislation.
- Ban any magazine that can hold over seven rounds.
- Existing magazines holding more than 10 rounds must leave the state or be destroyed.
- Existing eight to 10 round magazines may be kept but must not be loaded with more than seven rounds.
- “High volume” (undefined) purchases of ammunition will alert the police.
- Universal background checks will prohibit sales between private parties without a background check.
The Federal government wish list formulated by V.P. Biden isn’t public yet but it is expected to include essentially the same things along with numerous executive actions such as increased gun control “research” and enforcement of existing laws.
What is particularly striking and scary to me is that none of the firearms restrictions would have prevented the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting or even reduced the death toll. The facts are that the shooter had 15 to 20 minutes without serious resistance by someone with a gun. Even if he fired three rounds for every one of the 26 people murdered that would have only required 10 magazine changes with a limitation of seven rounds per magazine instead of the three with 30 round magazines. Suppose a magazine change on an AR-15 style rifle requires five seconds (with practice it requires far less). Had he been limited to seven rounds per magazine it would have taken him, at most, an extra 35 seconds to execute his foul deeds.
Even if all semi-automatic firearms were banned, and unavailable, the reloading of a six round revolver is also easily (with some practice) accomplished in less than five seconds. Suppose it was 12 reloads instead of the three. This requires, at most, 45 more seconds.
A total of something on the order of 100 rounds were used. A typical practice session of mine is on the order of 300 rounds. A typical weekend class is on the order of 1000 rounds. A one day pistol match is on the order of 150 rounds. Any “alerts” the police receive will be totally without meaning.
The shooter did not obtain his guns through a private sale. He murdered his mother with her own guns and took them.
Weerd Beard has more examples with a broader historical scope but arrives at the same conclusion, in many instances the firearms restrictions proposed and passed into law would not have prevented the tragedies that inspired the law.
If the Sandy Hook shooting is the motivation and none of the solutions being so vigorously being pushed would have in any way prevented the tragedy then what is the real reason? I can only come up with two different hypotheses to explain the politicians demands for more firearms restrictions:
- They have ulterior motives they are not sharing with us.
- They are unwilling or unable to act rationally.
If it is the first then what could those ulterior motives be? From U.S. history we know the motivation for restricting firearm access to the native Indians, the slaves, and blacks in general was to the extreme detriment of those populations. Internationally the same was true in Russia in 1918, the German Weapons Control Act of 1938, in China throughout the 20th Century, and in many other instances. The people in control of the government had sinister plans for the disarmed populations.
If it is the second then there is no predicting what these people might do next. And there is every reason to believe they will act in ways that will be to the extreme detriment of the whole of society.
This realization should shake the U.S. population to its very core. This should be like the moment you see in the movies when someone realizes that the person standing in front of them is either very evil or very crazy. It should make the hair on the back of your neck stand up and a chill run down your spine.
This is not, and cannot be, about preventing the shooting of elementary school children. This is about sinister and/or irrational people in control of our government who are trying to take your means to defend yourself and your family away from you.
Do you trust a government like that? And what do you do about it?
Quote of the day—Robert J. Avrech
The automobile represents freedom.
You climb into a car and go, go, go, whenever and wherever you want. The car is modern man’s path to liberty.
Contrast cars with trains.
Railroads are an expression of the collective. Individual identity is erased. You are at the mercy of a state-controlled system that turns citizens into passive cogs, manipulated and at the mercy of government bureaucrats.
That’s why democrats/progressives/liberals/ (what are they calling themselves this week?) are obsessed with high-speed rail. The freedom of the road is repellent to big government fanatics. The ruling elite seek to regulate and control tobacco, food, calories, soda, education, light bulbs, toilets, health care, reproduction — your every cell. In short: liberty is constricted by any and all means.
And all in the name of an amorphous, preadolescent concept: Fairness.
And you better believe that the chattering elite are the ones who get to define what’s fair and what’s unfair. Funny how that always works out in their favor.
Nazis just adored trains. And hey, the Italian fascists boasted that Mussolini made the trains run on time. Though Italian trains were about as effective and efficient as the Italian army. Which is to say: Not.
At a certain point, one must acknowledge the convergent philosophies of post-modern liberals and iron-fist fascists. Both ideologies assert the power of the state as the final arbiter of human affairs. Hence, the government replaces G-d and family as the center of man’s universe. It’s no surprise that the formal title of the Nazi party was “The National Socialist German Workers’ Party.”
Robert J. Avrech
January 3, 2013
Hollywood: I Drive Therefore I am Free
[And what point will we “acknowledge the convergent philosophies of post-modern liberals and iron-fist fascists”? As a nation we clearly have not yet acknowledged it or else many who acknowledge it also welcome it. And I fear even if we were to acknowledge today it would already be too late.
We have some very rough times ahead of us.—Joe]
Quote of the day—Drake Womack
I won’t be buying. I’m ok with my penis size.
Drake Womack
December 20, 2012
Comment on Facebook about the buying spree on guns.
[It’s another Markley’s Law Monday! This was via email from Say Uncle.
The best response was from Lissa K Hailey:
Drake Womack: So, your plan if someone busts into your house is to show them your penis and while they’re rolling on the floor laughing, you’ll make your escape?
You think that attempt at a joke would get old. But these people apparently have some sort of irrepressible fixation on male genitalia.—Joe]
Quote of the day—Charlton Heston
When freedom shivers in the cold shadow of true peril it’s always the patriots who first hear the call. When loss of liberty is looming as it is now the siren sounds first in the hearts of freedoms vanguard. The smoke in the air of our Concord bridges and Pearl Harbors is always smelled first by the farmers who come from their simple homes to find the fire and fight. Because they know that sacred stuff resides in that wooden stock and blued steel. Something that gives the most common man the most uncommon of freedoms. When ordinary hands can possess such an extraordinary instrument that symbolizes the full measure of human dignity and liberty. That’s why those five words issue an irresistible call to us all.
…
From my cold dead hands!
Charlton Heston
2000 NRA Annual Meeting
[H/T to Mike B. who sent me the link via email.
I have nothing to add.—Joe]
Possible blog outages
I’m in the final stages of testing the import of old blog posts into the current blogging software. It’s looking really good but you never know what might happen.
Last night I accidently restored a backup copy of the database for my real blog when I intended to do that for my test blog. I lost a blog post and few comments. I recreated them but there is a little weirdness with the restored comments.
If all goes well the blog posts will be fully restored by tonight. Please be patient if you experience some outages or a comment gets lost or something. Let me know if you think a comment was lost and I’ll see if I can find it and restore it.
Update (1524 PST): All the old blog posts have been imported. There are a few broken links to fix but things are looking good at this time.
Update (1728 PST): I found a serious bug. 1828 comments were lost in the translation. Probably all of them were my comments. I think I am going to restore to a saved database and start over in the morning. Please don’t leave any comments. I probably will just end up deleting them.
Quote of the day—Chris Cox
Yesterday was nothing more than a dog and pony show. They checked the box, yep, we met with the NRA. They had no interest in hearing what we had to say.
Chris Cox
NRA Chief Lobbyist
January 11, 2013
NRA Chief Lobbyist Chris Cox on Meeting With Joe Biden’s Task Force: ‘It Was Nothing More Than a Dog and Pony Show’
[I’m reminded of this:
In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.
—Joe]
Supremacy clause
An email exchange with lawyer/lobbyist Mike B. (with minor corrections and additions):
Joe: How about putting this on the agenda?
Mike: Won’t work: See supremacy clause.
Joe: Isn’t that the equivalent of saying, “The Fed can’t do that: See 2nd Amendment.”?
Mike: The 2nd Amendment doesn’t have its own tanks. See: Grant v. Lee (1865).
Joe: Vyacheslav Molotov mixes my cocktails: See Finland v. Soviet Union (1939).
You should know that Molotov cocktails have a difficult time with modern tanks. The proper application of Boomerite, thermite, and steel bars into the treads may also be required.
Conversations with special forces trained in improvised anti-tank methods are also useful. I kept my notes from the late 1990s.
Quote of the day—Louis Michael Seidman
As the nation teeters at the edge of fiscal chaos, observers are reaching the conclusion that the American system of government is broken. But almost no one blames the culprit: our insistence on obedience to the Constitution, with all its archaic, idiosyncratic and downright evil provisions.
Louis Michael Seidman
December 30, 2012
Let’s Give Up on the Constitution
[H/T to Roberta.
It’s good to have clarity.—Joe]
Quote of the day—JBR
This will start a war in the US. Urban liberals simply do not realize that much of this country loves its guns as much as the liberals hate them.
JBR
January 9, 2013
Comment to New York Is Moving Quickly to Enact Tough Curbs on Guns
[Not if just a few states do what NY claims to be doing. If the Feds do it, yeah, I could see things heating up to extremely uncomfortable levels.—Joe]
If the pro liberty side had courage
And if we understood how the process of winning works, we wouldn’t be protesting the latest outrages committed by the authoritarians, we wouldn’t be panicked, hoping that the next set of violations will be endurable. We’d be proposing our own “outrages” for the communists to get upset over. They’d be protesting us, you see, because we were so blatant, relaxed, and matter of fact about it.
In that spirit I propose a short, simple bill that would repeal the NFA of 1934, the GCA of 1968, and eliminate (not restructure, re-task or rebrand, but eliminate) the BATFE.
If we feel we have to use statistics to justify it, we have more than enough of those, plus we have personal human interest anecdotes galore, but better yet we have the principles of liberty and the constitution on our side. We have the future of our children on our side.
And to summarize; if the pro liberty side had courage, and resolve, and really understood the principles and how this is played, we’d never have gotten to this stage. But resolve does exist and it is growing I think, watered by the increasingly outrageous and transparent enemy. Isn’t this interesting?
Extenuating circumstances
When politicians cite crime rates, accidents, or current news events as reasons to infringe on the rights of their fellow citizens, they are in effect claiming extenuating circumstances to explain or justify their violation of the Oath of Office.
The question then becomes whether extenuating circumstances are a legal justification for willfully violating the Bill of Rights, or whether said politicians are guilty of a serious legal offense and punishable (see 18 USC 242 for example). It has to be one or the other.
Status of old posts
As some of you know, because you requested them, I manually imported a few important posts for reference purposes. But there are still thousands more that need to be imported from my previous blog software.
I’m still working on the conversion program to import the content. I’ve probably got 50 hours into it now but it is getting very close. It successfully preserves all the backward links to both posts and comments within the blog and saves all the comments and categories. There will be about 25 links I will have to manually fix up after the 8000+ posts and 20000 comments are imported.
I might actually get it done this weekend. It is hard to predict because you never know how many more bugs you are going to find or how long it will take you to fix them.
Quote of the day—Patrick J. Buchanan
Many gun controllers not only do not understand what motivates those who disagree with them, they do not like them, reflexively calling them gun nuts, a reaction as foolish as it is arrogant and bigoted.
Patrick J. Buchanan
January 08, 2013
America’s Coming Gun War
[H/T to an anonymous email.
I’m pleased to see the anti-gun people as bigots meme continues to spread.—Joe]
If there are too many
If someone were to say there were too many of something then wouldn’t that mean they would advocate reducing the number?
Maybe guns are a guy thing essentially, and there are too many of you.
— Joyce Carol Oates (@JoyceCarolOates) January 8, 2013
Apparently I’m a number to be reduced. Nice to know where I stand in the minds of the anti-gun people.
If statistics were really that important…
…we’d have gotten something like this;
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the statistical averages which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Statistical Ranges, that among these are Crime Rates, Unemployment Rates and the pursuit of Smaller Relative Income Disparities.–That to secure these statistics, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these statistics, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their desired statistics…
The first ten amendments to the constitution would have been called the Bill of Statistics, and it would lay out the target statistical ranges for various things like crime, accidents, economics, and so on.