The simple solution is to just not walk around with a gun like a goddamn lunatic and if you get into a fight, maybe just take the chance that you might get your ass beat.
Harry Cheadle
June 8, 2012
Don’t Take Your Guns to Town, Morons
[Extending his advice to the obvious conclusion, if you are being raped you should just lay back and enjoy it.
But I prefer John Fogh’s advice to say, “Please don’t rape me.” Using, of course, the universal language of multiple jacketed hollowpoints.—Joe]
In order to keep his rifle, the owner of the M-1 took it to a gunsmith who milled off the bayonet lug and then sent a letter, along with a copy of his FFL, to the License Division, Rifle & Shotgun Section, stating that the work had been done. Amputating the bayonet lug has, of course, destroyed any value the rifle had as a collector’s piece, and the owner will not, of course, be compensated.
And if you listened very carefully, you could hear “reasonable” and “sense” shrieking as they thrashed in their death struggles.
David E. Petzal
June 8, 2012
NY Gun Control: The Mad Hatter Would Understand
[I have nothing to add but my tears of anger and frustration.—Joe]
Saturday Barron, Ry and I did some testing for Boomershoot 2013.
While there is no particular need to hide the details I’m busy with getting the Boomershoot entry software ready to accept entries and will let Barron and Ry explain what we were trying to accomplish.
But for those of you who want to try and guess here is some of the video we took (edited by Barron):
Here are the critical still images of the tests I was most interested in:
Before.
After.
Before.
After.
Before.
After.
After.
The Left’s ideas are un-falsifiable. Their ignorance is invincible. This is why the notion is rapidly catching on that there is no compromising with them. They must be defeated and kept away from the levers of power. Whole swathes of society, which were abandoned to their depredations — education, journalism, the arts — must be reclaimed from them or given up altogether. Some may be converted through repeated teaching and their own experience, but — sadly — not many. It will not be a quick process. There will be many setbacks. But it must be done or the whole of civilization will be taken down by their idiocy.
Mark Alger
June 8, 2012
Comment to Seriously scary stuff.
[I really need to finish reading The Handbook of 5GW. As Ry told me, “This is where we need to be.”
Warfare, at the most fundamental level, does not mean destruction of life or property although that is a means to the ultimate goal of warfare. Warfare is about getting people to change their behavior. Sometimes that is about getting people to give up their natural resources or it might be about getting people to change their religious beliefs. Even if the purpose of the war was to extinguish an entire race or society the goal, ultimately, was about changing behavior (stop them from breathing).
Seen through this light we liberate ourselves because we release we are at war and that it is acceptable for us to go to war. The traditional tools of war including slings, arrows, chemicals, and bullets do not necessarily have to be used directly. The mere presence of our training and firearms will probably be sufficient prevent the war we are in from “going hot”, We have other weapons at our disposal which must be deployed. We must get those in power and those that demand power over us to stop their behavior. We have votes, the courts, propaganda, education, and probably a thousand other things at our disposal. But we must win this war. Our country, no, all human society, is being laid to waste by those that believe they know better than the individual how the individual should spend the fruits of their labor. And this behavior must be stopped.—Joe]
That’s actually pretty devious. I like that.
Ry Jones
June 9, 2012
[Barron, Ry, and I were at the Boomershoot site doing some tests. Most of the tests were failures but one for a potential new target type was successful. It was the new target which prompted Ry’s comment.
For now, I’ll just say that the new target is 48” inches long, holds more Boomerite than any target we have deployed in recent years, and leave it at that.—Joe]
I remember the time I was in Iraq, and the family I was staying with insisted that I carry some form of weapon as “defence” and protection. Even their grandmother carried a small hand gun in her purse whenever she went out.
I vehemently refused. I hate the feel and the smell, indeed everything, about objects that kill and cause harm.
Rym Ghazal
June 7, 2012
No gun control plus idle youth equals recipe for trouble
[I wonder if she has the same hatred for guns used by the police. And does the same hatred extend to knives, clubs, rocks, feet, fists, hands, teeth, cars, scissors, rope, electricity, tobacco, alcohol, water, dogs, fire, snakes, spiders, bacteria, and viruses?
She must spend most of her time hating. Perhaps she should see a counselor about that. Such extreme hoplophobia can’t be good for one’s long term mental or physical health.—Joe]
While Bloomberg’s retarded proposal to limit the size of soft drink containers is getting a lot of attention I don’t think most people really understand how serious the problem is. I’ve had conversations with a few people who were admitted Marxist and many others who merely claimed they were Liberals or Progressives. One of the things they all had in common was their extremely simple view of the world while simultaneously proclaimed they were smarter than others and that gave them the authority to force others to live as they demanded. Any mention of individual freedom was immediately shot down because “People don’t do what is best for themselves or society.”
One of the admitted Marxists proclaimed, “I’m a firm believer in the good of society over the good of the individual.” In his world view the individual just doesn’t matter. Government must do what is best for the good of society and if the individual sometimes doesn’t get what they want or gets hurt that is just too bad. Pointing out I could find nothing different in that justification versus that used by those who murdered innocent civilians in 10s of millions in the last century yielded comments to the effect of “They made some horrible mistakes. We just need the right people in charge.” Of course he believed he was one of the right people.
Just as Bloomberg apparently cannot think one step ahead to how easily his proposed restriction on “high capacity” soft drink containers would be defeated these people cannot envision what follows next from their every proposed attempt at restricting individual liberty and the free market. In one of the recent books of Thomas Sowell that I listened to he related the story of when he was a economics student and was enamored with some idea that would “force people to do the right thing”. He proudly presented it to his instructor who asked, “And then what happens?” Sowell initially was perplexed. Why of course, the desired outcome would happen. There was a law or regulation that required people to do the right thing. The instructor pushed him to think it through from an economics point of view. And Sewell thought it through and gave the answer that only slightly diminished his enthusiasm for the idea. The instructor again pushed, “And then what happens?” Again Sowell answered and his enthusiasm damped just a bit more. As the instructor pushed him again and again Sowell walked through the rippling effects of the simple one law and it was not long before he realized that not only was the effect of the law far less simple than what he thought but it would not result in his desired outcome. Everyone touched by the “one simple law” would pay a price with no one, except perhaps the bureaucrats and the politicians, receiving a net benefit.
The typical gun controller cannot conceive of why registration of firearms would not make society safer. Unintended consequences escape their grasp all the while they proclaim themselves to be morally and intellectually superior to us. It’s all just “common sense” to them. They vehemently insist there are, literally, easy answers to some difficult problems that involve the constitution, criminology, psychology, and practicality of implementation. I sometimes believe those that insist that if someone had not had a concealed carry permit they wouldn’t have committed multiple murders must be suffering from some kind of insanity. If one is willing to break the law against murder why would they obey the law against carrying a concealed firearm or even ownership of a firearm? Why is it so incredibly difficult for them to think even one step ahead?
I struggle with how to get what I think are extremely simple concepts across to these people. Even everyday things Liberals/Progressives claim to be experts on they are profoundly ignorant and/or stupid on. One Liberal I know went on about how because something was “natural” it was “so much better for you”. I asked what the definition of “natural” was. Was this opposed to “super-natural”? This is about the only thing that even comes close in my mind. She said, “No. Natural is something that is not man-made.” “So”, I queried, “Does that mean the lemonade you are drinking is not natural? At the bare minimum a man or woman had to squeeze the juice from the lemon and mix it with water.” The response was, “If you ask that then you are just stupid.”
This liberal can’t even present a defendable definition of a word that she uses in probably 25% of her conversations with me and she calls me stupid? How do you get through to someone like that?
Sowell’s instructor had an advantage we don’t. He or she had a very bright student with a grasp of economic theory and the student was in a subordinate position. Liberals/Progressives will not tolerate being in a subordinate position. They believe they are superior to non-liberals and any challenge to that world view is met with an attack. And if the verbal attack isn’t sufficient to “win” their argument they are more than willing, as Bloomberg is demonstrating, to use force to get our compliance.
People with the intellectually power and problem domain knowledge of a 2nd grader are demanding they be put in charge of essentially everything with guns to back up their decisions. This is some seriously scary stuff.
Big Brother is now here – and look, he is retarded!
Bob Budz
Via Jeff Cooper’s Commentaries, Vol. 2, No.1 January 1, 1994
[Although it was said over 18 years ago I have to think it is more true today than it was then. At that time Mayor Bloomberg had not yet taken it upon himself to try and restrict the size of soda cups. Perhaps he is too stupid to realize that if he wants more than ‘X’ number of ounces he can hold a cup in each hand each holding ‘X -1’ ounces but very few others are so handicapped.—Joe]
Imagine, in just a few years, solar shingles on your brand new custom house (all you high school graduates) that cost no more than regular shingles, that will power everything in your house, heating, AC the whole deal. Imagine crops that don’t need soil (OK, maybe hydroponics) and no water (oops) and no fertilizer. Magic crops. “Literally just around the corner.”
And of course none of that can happen if the eeevil Republicans are in power. Only more of ‘bama’s stash money can make the magic happen. The private markets? Meh. All that’s done is fail continuously for 200+ years, apparently. What’s been happening in the last few years– that’s the ticket, Baby.
Now if kids actually learned science, physics, biology or basic economics, they’d laugh that gibbering idiot off the podium. This is where our Soviet-style education system comes in. Of course now anyone can look up maximum and average available energy per unit area at their latitude at various times of the year, and the efficiency of the best PV panels, take into account the problem of tracking, or in the case of your magic roof shingles the lack of tracking, and so on. And naturally, to get the most out of your magic solar roof shingles you’ll have to cut down the trees that shade your house, increasing the AC load. Or maybe not, being as they’re magic and all.
He had a teleprompter, so I have to assume that he didn’t make that up as he went along. There had to have been some planning behind it.
The Moron in Chief, to make himself look better by comparison, had pick the stupidest fool he could find I guess, and then put him out there to show the contrast, such as it is.
I heard that formula from Dennis Prager. It’s the formula for determining happiness, or more specifically, unhappiness. It stands for; Unhappiness equals the difference between Image and Reality. To put it the other way around; the greater the correlation between your image (or expectations) of reality and reality itself, the more the happiness. He’s been studying happiness for some time, and has determined that situation seems to have little to do with a person’s stated happiness, i.e. some people in horrible situations will self describe as fairly happy, while others in what we would think are beautiful situations may self describe as unhappy.
You could substitute image with expectations, or maybe a few other things, but the concept remains the same. I think he’s on to something. It’s right along the lines of a saying, which if I’m not mistaken comes from way back in Asia; “Few desires; happy life”. They’re not identical, but similar.
That brings up the subject of drive (a form of desire, see) which can lead a person to do wonderful things, or horrible things, depending on one’s constitution. Drive and image are very different. You may be driven, or inspired, to do something, but if you have a realistic view of reality you have a better chance of accomplishing it and a better ability to deal with it if you don’t accomplish it. Maybe “few desires; happy life” is an invitation to resignation (get the hope beaten out of you and you’re happy) but it need not be interpreted so. I prefer U = I – R.
I’ve been on a bit of a departure from Joe’s blog subtitle, but all of this stuff applies very much to politics. I might bring it around thusly; The angry left is angry (unhappy and blaming others for it) because of a rather serious disconnect from reality. The next question is; why are the left’s images of reality so far off? Where do these off-kilter images originate, what put them there and what are the main vectors of propagation?
A slightly simpler formula might be; U = C (unhappiness equals the level of your confusion). Same thing. The other would be; H = Ur (your level of happiness equals the degree to which you understand reality).
Hmm; so I guess reason is the path to happiness. So then I guess we can fight over who has reason and who only thinks they do, and we can kill each other over the question of who is the happiest.
There was a lot more to this vid. It went on and on, but here’s the gist of it;
“Democracy is dead” every time the communists/parasites lose an election. This has been going on for years. Using their reasoning, which says for example that the people can’t be trusted with education and so the government must do it, the people can’t be trusted with guns and so the government must own them all, et., etc., they’ll eventually decide that the people can’t be trusted to vote and so the government must decide everything instead. Then democracy will be alive again. See how that works?
The sad thing is that I might have been (no; was) that pathetic fool when I was about that age (having just been freed from the public education gulag and still listening to Pacifica News on Public Radio). So in a way I do feel for the lad. Lucky for me there was no internet when I was that age. It wrenches my gut to think about that– what if there had been?
There is no such thing as an amoral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written.
Oscar Wilde
1891
Preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray
[One could just as well substitute “gun” for “book” and “made” for “written” and have just as a profound, timeless, and controversial statement. And in the truthfulness department I would give the edge to the version about guns rather than books.—Joe]
Good intentions are not good enough. In real life you need to look at the risks as well as the intended rewards of what you and your government do. Gun registration may sound like a good thing to some people but what if the registry became accessible to the bad guys?
Maybe this is what it looks like:
FIFTY firearms and thousands of rounds of ammunition have been stolen from registered NSW gun owners in the past 16 days, prompting fears the firearms registry has been compromised.
…
Gun dealers and victims said the registry would be a gold mine to criminals as it contained details of the types of weapons, where they were stored and addresses of owners.
Registration increases the value of unregistered guns and increases the chances of theft (“creation” of unregistered guns). The registration list itself becomes a target because of its value in finding guns to steal.
Registration of firearms is only good for one thing… confiscation. And that confiscation could be thieves looking to make a buck or thugs getting a government paycheck. It doesn’t really matter. Don’t let them register your firearms.
…that is not motivated by fear, anger or lust?
This is a companion to yesterday’s quote of the day.
It’s a tough question. It might upset some people. It has to asked though, somewhere along the journey.
What makes MAIG so dangerous is that they have chosen to remain rooted in reality as the rest of us know it, rather than trying to construct their own.
Sebastian
June 4, 2012
Richard Aborn’s Desperate Plea
[Sebastian has been concerned about MAIG (Mayors Against Illegal Guns) for a long time and I haven’t been seeing it. I’m not convinced yet but this is a best reason that I have seen so far.
The Brady Campaign and others have severe cognitive distortion problems. And it’s almost as if When Prophecy Fails was written about them. When one of their predictions about “blood will run in the streets” fails they become more frantic and proselytize even more. After a time most people realize they are a few Fruit Loops short of a full bowl and don’t pay much attention to them.
MAIG does appear to be fairly well grounded and for the most part stay on their one message. That message, if implemented, is harmful to us but is not easily dismissed as pointless. People want to believe there are simple solutions that will reduce violent crime. The MAIG message when viewed from a very narrow perspective would seem to have promise in doing this without significant harm to gun rights. This isn’t true but the complete refutation of that message doesn’t lend itself well to sound bites* and that makes the risk of causing problems greater.
*I like, “The war on ‘illegal guns’ will be no more effective than the war on illegal drugs.” But too many people view the war on illegal drugs as a necessary and beneficial thing. And it would seem to concede there is such a thing as an “illegal gun” when in fact they are referring to a prohibited person in possession of any firearm. Hence we quickly get out of sound bite territory.—Joe]
A man or boy has a psychological — perhaps even biological — need to prove his capability, durability, fearlessness, toughness. Recognizing this, it would be a worthwhile mission for families, schools, worship houses and other community institutions working toward violence reduction to formulate means that allow boys to fulfill that imperative constructively.
At the very least, teach them that a gun is not a penis. It’s a tragedy that Crittenton didn’t know that.
Leonard Pitts Jr.
September 2, 2011
Commentary: A gun does not equate manhood
[It’s another Markley’s Law Monday!—Joe]
Health care is considered a right and everyone is required to purchase insurance so they will have it when they need it.
Doesn’t that mean that everyone should be required to purchase a firearm, training, and carry it with them all the time so they will have that right available to them when they need it?
Its not really a cartoon, but it’s close enough.
Logic isn’t the strong suit of the Anti-gunners.
The NRA’s proud history of fighting the Klan has been airbrushed out of the record by those who were complicit with the KKK, Jim Crow and racial terror, to wit: the Democrats.
Ann Coulter
April 23, 2012
Coulter: Gun control and self-defense
[Great article. As is usual for Coulter there is lots of snark.-Joe]
I have this hypothesis that our universe is a black hole. Via Jeff I found out there are some serious cosmologists that a hypothesis similar to mine.
Of course I’m still very interested in knowing the answer to the question, “When do we get ripped apart by tidal forces and our subatomic components get sucked into the singularity?” It affects my deciding whether I should unpack my boxes of stuff from Idaho and do some reloading or spend quality time with my kids.
