Quote of the day—Andrew Rosenthal

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I want to be clear: the New York Times editorial board does not oppose gun ownership. We believe the Second Amendment confers a communal right on Americans to own guns – not an individual one. But that’s actually a smaller point than you might think. All we really want are sensible restrictions based on public safety and common sense. I wrote about our position in April, 2009 on our website. You can read it there, but I’ll summarize it here.

Go ahead, buy a gun. Use it to hunt, for target practice, in a collection, or in case you need to defend your home. Just register it and submit to a background check. If you live in a city, then your political leaders have the right to restrict ownership of handguns. In cities, they tend to be used to kill people.

Andrew Rosenthal
November 8, 2011
The Gun Lobby and Military Suicides
[This is so full fail that I could write thousands of words about it. But I don’t have the time and the people in the comments did a pretty fair job and raking him over the coals.

I’ll just give an overview.

Since all nine U.S. Supreme Court Justices disagree with the individual right issue what Rosenthal and the NYT editorial board thinks only has political implications and very few legal implications.

The very words he uses demonstrates he is essentially living in a different universe. We don’t have “political leaders”. We have public servants. Our servants do not have “rights” to regulate anything. They have delegated powers given to them by the people via the U.S., and state constitutions. When our servants start demanding we give up firearms and beg permission from them to own what is a specific enumerated right it is quite clear to me they have either forgotten they are servants or that they intend to change the relationship.

Yes. Handguns are sometimes used to kill people. Sometimes deadly force needs to be legally exercised and sometimes people get killed. Get over it.—Joe]

In Honor of Veterans

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Today I’m reminded of this quote from David Crockett;

Mr. Speaker–I have as much respect for the memory of the deceased, and as much sympathy for the sufferings of the living, if suffering there be, as any man in this House, but we must not permit our respect for the dead or our sympathy for a part of the living to lead us into an act of injustice to the balance of the living. I will not go into an argument to prove that Congress has not the power to appropriate this money as an act of charity. Every member upon this floor knows it. We have the right, as individuals, to give away as much of our own money as we please in charity; but as members of Congress we have no right so to appropriate a dollar of the public money. Some eloquent appeals have been made to us upon the ground that it is a debt due the deceased. Mr. Speaker, the deceased lived long after the close of the war; he was in office to the day of his death, and I have never heard that the government was in arrears to him. Every man in this House knows it is not a debt. We cannot, without the grossest corruption, appropriate this money as the payment of a debt. We have not the semblance of authority to appropriate it as charity. Mr. Speaker, I have said we have the right to give as much money of our own as we please. I am the poorest man on this floor. I cannot vote for this bill, but I will give one week’s pay to the object, and if every member of Congress will do the same, it will amount to more than the bill asks.

Representative David Crockett (TN)

Those are the words of a real man.  I don’t know specifically who it was he was referencing.  That’s not the point.  If you want to help a veteran, by all means help a veteran.  That’s your job.  Personally.  Don’t try to make a federal case out of it.  Our military exists, ostensibly, to defend liberty, see.  If we set up system of coercive redistribution to “honor” veterans, we’ve just insulted the hell out of them by contradicting everything they supposedly fought for.  Hmm?  So what side are we really on?

Quote of the day—Richard Feldman

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This book is dedicated to Harlon B. Carter, the man responsible for saving the Second Amendment freedoms for generations of Americans during a time in our country when gun ownership was on the road to extermination as a cherished and fundamental right. Equally important are the tens of thousands of local activists who make the “gun lobby” the true grassroots dynamo that it is. Money doesn’t vote, people vote, or as we said in the sixties, “Power to the people” and, I should add, “away from the elites, wherever they dwell.” I think Thomas Jefferson would have approved.

Richard Feldman
2008
Dedication to Ricochet: Confessions of a Gun Lobbyist
[This is a very nice start to the book.

Think about the “Power to the people” phrase. And remember what Chairman Mao said, “Every Communist must grasp the truth: Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.” Private ownership of firearms is the ultimate power in the hands of the people. Yet nearly all communists and socialists who advocate “power to the people” in the U.S. today are opposed to private gun ownership. Why is that?

Could it be they don’t really want power in the hands of “the people”? I think what they really want is power in the hands of their people and want to remove power from those that oppose them.

Communism and socialism is not about “power to the people”. Those political systems are about government having a huge power advantage over the individual. “Power to the people”? No. Not at all. That isn’t what they really want. But no one has ever accused the political left of being consistent.

Thank you Richard for sending me an autographed copy. More later when I finish it. Not all of my review is going to be positive though. I’ve already got notes that are “not happy thoughts”.—Joe]

Because That Would Make Him a ‘Gay’ Basher

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That’s the answer to Billy Beck’s question.

I’ve criticized your religion, certainly your politics, and the inconsistency behind the idea of women’s equality.  Why not criticize your thoughts on homosexuality?

We’re not supposed to talk about it, right?  It’s a taboo subject.  For one thing we’re supposed to shut up out of fear– fear of being ostracized as a ‘gay’ basher or a homophobe.  So when a man sees another man raping a boy, he clams up.  If he’d beat the shit out the rapist as he should have done, he’d be the one charged with a crime and no one would say anything in his defense for fear of being labeled a ‘gay’ basher.  Same as when a black, homosexual, Democrat man in Congress (probably the most protected class of humans, unless you’re talking of a black, lesbian Muslim extremist) running a homosexual prostitution ring in his basement.  What?  I suppose you’re a racist homophobe with a political agenda.  Shut up.  You Suck if you criticize this hard-working American who cares about kids, the poor, race relations, union workers and the environment, you racist homophobe.  Neanderthal!

Sure; the witness should have done the right thing and kicked the rapist’s ass, even if he knew full well that he’d be the one prosecuted.  But our cultural insanity makes doing the right thing just that much more difficult.  And that, I submit, was the whole purpose of what I will call the insanity movement the first place– what’s good is bad and what’s bad is good.  What’s wrong is right and what’s right is wrong.

How else do you get 300 to 400 million people to tolerate being treated like sheep?

I put the word “gay” in scare quotes because it doesn’t mean what most people today think it means.  I try to use the language properly, so using “gay” to mean homosexual requires the quotation marks.  He’s a bit “queer” is of course a euphemism.  Lots of things are queer, but we’ve lost track of the word’s meaning.  “Gay” is the same sort of euphemism, as is “fag”, as applied to a homosexual.  If we’re going to use the terms in their true meanings, or understand them when we encounter them in classic literature, we have to be aware of this, and talk about it.  So there you have it.  Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to suck on one of the nice faggots I usually keep with me right now.  And by the way; I suppose I could sue you if you criticize me for smoking.  If it’s an addiction, or a disease, you’d be harassing or “bashing” a person with a disability.  Shut up.  You have no right to talk about it unless you give me lots of money.  Oh, and stop taxing me because of my disease.  Would you propose a tax on “gays” who get AIDS?  Shut up.  Now I’m thinking of closing comments because no one is supposed to talk about any of this stuff.  Shut up.

Women’s ‘Equality’ and the Offendedness Movement

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We’re not even supposed to talk about this, I guess, because it proves we’re sexist.  Too bad.

When the Flappers painted the town red in the 1920s, we were told women had achieved equality.  When women hit the factories during World War Two, we were told women had achieved equality (see the trend yet?).  When women burned their bras in the 1960s, we were told women had achieved equality.  When the pill came out, we were told that women had finally achieved equality.  Women’s suffrage happened somewhere back there too.

A hundred years of non-stop achievement of equality later, we’re being told how sexual harassment is a problem in the workplace, and it’s 99.999% men doing the harassing and women, still, are the victims.  Because they haven’t achieved equality I guess.  What’s the message to men with ambitions?  If you’re going to be running for high office ten or twenty years later, you better keep women out of your workplace so they can’t come back when the time is right and destroy your campaign.  Don’t hire women.  Don’t work with women, because all it takes for a women to destroy you is for her to point a finger at you.

If men and women were equal, there’d be roughly the same number of men complaining about harassment by women as the other way ’round, or at least it wouldn’t be so overwhelmingly one-sided.  A high school aged male I knew was getting rather steamy text message from a far older, married woman employer.  It was fairly apparent that sex was happening between them.  An experienced  lawyer said that maybe he should count himself the luckiest kid in school.

That’s the double standard and it’s everywhere.  At the same time we’re being told that women are strong, that they can not only take care of themselves they’re capable of doing anything a man can do at least as well as he can do it, we are simultaneously asked to believe that the slightest gesture can turn a strong, capable, professional woman into a quivering blob of dysfunctional, sobbing, frightened, victimized jelly that only huge sums of money, or certain political outcomes, or both, can cure.

When I was interviewing a college-age woman for a bookkeeping position at my small business, she asked if there was enough work there to actually keep her busy full time.  Fair question.  In addition to telling her that although the business was small, it was complex, and that furthermore, being small, there were a lot of other things she could do besides keep books.  What I meant, and I expected it to be as obvious as the rather prominent nose on my face (she was a business major after all) was that total specialization is something a small business cannot afford, therefore we all have to pitch in with cleaning, stocking shelves, receiving shipments, answering phones, and hundreds of other tasks that are involved in keeping a business running properly that don’t warrant separate employees.  Her response caught me off guard.  I was accustomed to working in the real world, unaware of just how bat-shit insane the world of leftist political academia had become.  Condition white;

“WELL…just what’s THAT supposed to mean…?!!”  Gawd.  She’d apparently been to one of those “How-to-know-when-you’re-being-sexually-harassed” classes they offer to women on college campi these days as part of the “Women’s Studies” curriculum.  Interview over.  Don’t call us, we’ll (not) call you.  We have enough problems without having to deal with stupid shit like this.

Which is it, then, ladies?  Are you capable of standing up for yourselves, strong, and proud to play a vital and dynamic role in all the action, or are you perpetual victims, bent on being perpetual victims for social, financial and political gain?  Do you want to be taken seriously or do you want to be a poor little victim, ’cause it sure as hell can’t be both.  This bi-polar premise is running rather thin and I for one quit falling for it sometime back in the 1970s.

Quote of the day—Barbara Scott

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I want to go back to bed and pull the covers over my head. Entropy sucks.

Barbara Scott
November 9, 2011
[This was after she asked me, “Why do things always have to happen?” This was in regards to some potential changes in her job that were going to require extra work on her part to at least adapt and has the potential to put pressure on us to sell our house in Idaho.

I explained that one of the laws of physics is that things always go to a more lower energy, more random, state and that energy input is required to maintain things in a high energy ordered state. This law of physics applies to life in general and not just physics.

She did not dispute my answer but she wasn’t pleased with it either.—Joe]

This is Sort of Cool

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I guess.  It’s an electric milti-copter.  It has one thing going for it that a number of flying machines don’t have– it’s actually gotten off the ground with a human aboard.  I don’t know what it has to offer that a regular helicopter or auto-gyro doesn’t.  Maybe it’s the power transmission system being electrical wires instead of drive shafts and belts.  I immediately though of a hybrid (gas/electric) system, and they talk about that on their web site.  Great as batteries have become, they’re still no match for gasoline.

Still, the main obstacle to wide-spread (affordable) personal aircraft is the FAA and similar, tax-payer-funded authoritarian gangs.  Note that one of the benefits to the multi-copter sited is the fact that it can be flown as an ultra-light– it gets past a lot of the aviation regs.  In a free market we’d all have viable, affordable options for our own aircraft right now.  Poor college kids would have them, as easily as they now have old beat-up cars.

I suppose that would scare the pee out of the authoritarian cowards, so maybe it could be said that we have our current, restrictive system as a means of avoiding the embarrassment for certain people who would soil themselves in public, falling into the fetal position and sucking their thumbs, or simply getting angry and losing control that way.  Frankly, I’d kind of like to see that.  Not in that it would be pleasant, mind you, but it would indicate that we’re on the right track.  In a society where cowards are given any notice other than to receive our contempt, or where cowards actually run things, there will be much impediment to real progress.

HT to the Blaze

They ‘Looked the Other Way’

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That’s the reporting in the Old Media of the Fast & Furious (or Gun Walker) program against the second amendment, even now.  FBI and F-Troop “Looked the other way” as guns were being sold to gangs…

Wow.  They “Looked the other way” in the same sense that Al Capone “looked the other way” while prostitution, gambling, rum-running and violence were taking place in Chicago, and as Ted Bundy “looked the other way” while serial murder was taking place.

It’s a sort of out-of-body experience I guess, as one’s conscience “looks the other way” while one is engaged in criminal activity.  Maybe they’re posturing for an insanity defense.

Now I’ve been thinking; if the intent was to “track” criminals, why didn’t they give them GPS-equipped cell phones, or rigged car stereos or LoJack rigged cars, etc., etc., instead of guns?  Hmm?  They didn’t because that wasn’t the intent.

For that matter, if the intent were peace and prosperity, there wouldn’t be this war on drugs that created the narco-gangs in the first place.  The Al Capone reference above was not chosen randomly– he was “made” by Prohibition, first and foremost.  Before that he was a petty nobody.

Quote of the day—Phil Tagami

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They took a few steps forward and I racked the shotgun and they left. It’s sort of the universal ‘Don’t come any farther’ sign.

Phil Tagami
November 3, 2011
Oakland developer Phil Tagami keeps protesters at bay — with a shotgun
Background:

About eight men and women dressed in black, faces covered in bandannas and armed with hammers, sticks and poles had just barged down the doors of Oakland’s landmark Rotunda Building — with another dozen behind them — when they were turned back by a tenant with a shotgun and an attitude.

…

Tagami said he phoned the mayor’s office and began communicating with senior staff around 10:45 p.m. voicing his concerns. Yet police were nowhere in sight, he said.

At around 11 p.m., a group of protesters began forcing the glass front doors back and forth before they opened partially. Before they could move much further, Tagami lifted his shotgun. He insists he did not point the gun at anyone, just positioned it in front of him and cocked it.

After the group cleared out, Tagami continued checking in with the mayor’s office and at 12:14 a.m., the assistant city manager phoned to tell him the police were moving in.

[Via email from Rob.

Also worthy of note is that they did 100’s of thousands of dollars in damage to the exterior of the building.

Also applicable are the following observations:

I do have to give the police some benefit of the doubt. A single patrol car and officer could have easily been taken out by a mob of that size and nature. It probably calls for a large group of police or else sniper fire from a few blocks away. Approval for sniper fire isn’t going to be given by that mayor at this time and assembling and deploying the riot police is going to take some time. 90 minutes may not have been out of line.—Joe]

Forbidden fruit

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Sebastian has the info on the most recent incident where banning something made it more popular that ever.

I’ve posted about this type of thing before.

The people that enact rules and laws like this apparently don’t have children or weren’t paying attention when they were growing up. When I was helping the kids buy Christmas presents for their mom (~20 years ago) I would put the packages in the car and never mention the contents again. They never told their mom what she was getting for Christmas. On the other hand Barb will repeatedly remind them all the way home and again as they entered the house, “Don’t tell Daddy what he is getting for Christmas!” They would burst through the door and run the length of the house and tell me what I was getting before Barb could get the packages into the house.

Sebastian speculates, ‘Americans, I believe, also possess the same “character that reacts against the hectoring and bossiness of officialdom,” as their British cousins.’ While correct, that characteristic well extends beyond Brits and Americans.

I thought nearly everyone had heard of Eve, the Garden of Eden, and forbidden fruit.

Boomershoot 2012 Sunday lunch

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Ry reports on Boomershoot 2012 Sunday lunch.

Quote of the day—Pam Neely

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I am a very strong supporter of the second amendment, but there must be some common sense applied here. I can think of nothing worse than people attending an athletic event, living in a dorm, or sitting beside someone in a science class with a firearm strapped to their side or worse, concealed on their person.

Pam Neely
Prosecuting Attorney Berkeley County
County Prosecutor Wants Gun Law
October 25, 2011
[Really? Ms. Neely is smart enough to get through law school and get a job as a Prosecuting Attorney yet she “can think of nothing worse” that someone exercising a specific enumerated right to keep and bear arms? Has she never heard of the Virginia Tech massacre? That is something far worse that happens when people are forbidden from defending themselves.

And simultaneously she claims she is “a very strong supporter of the second amendment”?

Either Neely has crap for brains or she thinks we do.—Joe]

Son James got married yesterday

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As those who follow my Tweets already know our son James married Kelsey yesterday. Here is the collection of Tweets associated with the event:

Some highlights from others are also worth noting. I took hundreds of pictures and will get some of those up in a few days.

Barb and I are very pleased with James choice in a mate and with the wedding. It was unique and relatively low stress for us. Kim and Xenia’s weddings reflected their personalities and were very nice. James wedding revealed things about Kelsey and her family that were somewhat of a surprised to us.

During the garter flinging exercise as the bride did a bump and grind around the chair James was sitting on the D.J. commented this was the first time he had ever seen the groom sitting and the bride standing, “Where is that garter anyway?” And, “This is like a combination wedding and bachelor party.”

Sister-in-law Nancy commented, “Who would have ever guessed that James would have the wildest wedding of your three kids.” The answer to that is, “No one, ever, ever, EVER would have guessed that.”

As the reception dancing was going full blast I walked over to my brother Doug who was off by himself at the edge of the room and said, “It’s a lot different than any Huffman party, isn’t it?” He replied with, “I was just having similar thoughts myself.”

Boomershoot 2012 supplies

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I have ordered the cardboard boxes for Boomershoot 2012. I stress cardboard because for Boomershoot 2011 we mostly used plastic “deli” boxes. This was, essentially, a disaster. For reasons we are not entirely certain about (probably the additional confinement provided by the extra mass of the cardboard) the cardboard box targets detonated as expected and the plastic ones had a very high percentage of duds.

Next weekend I will deliver the 500 7”x7”, 800 4”x4”, and 900 3”x3” boxes to Mecca (and here) along with the new 130 W solar panel, new tables, and miscellaneous other stuff. I think I have enough reclosable (“Zip Lock”) bags for next year but I have an idea for a new method of sealing the targets which I will do some tests on someday soon. This new method will eliminate the slow process of putting the Boomerite in the plastic bags. The small bags for the 3”x3” and “4×4” targets are a real pain.

Son-in-law Caleb says he will be able (he broke his leg a few weeks ago and hasn’t completely healed yet) to go with me and help do the installation of the solar panel, wiring, and the Wi-Fi.

The last time I visited Mecca (October 15th) I had numerous problems and did not get done nearly as much as I had hoped. Weather and soil is getting to the point where it will be “interesting” to delivery anything that we can’t carry by hand. Fortunately Mecca is much closer to a drivable road during the winter than the Taj. It is only about 140 yards. So even carrying a wood tabletop is doable unless you are on snowshoes or wading through knee deep mud (both of which are possible at certain times of the year).

Quote of the day—Glen Utzman

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Your employer doesn’t know the answer. If he knew the answer he wouldn’t need you.

Glen Utzman
Professor at the University of Idaho Accounting Department
[This is an excellent observation for almost any professional job.

Utzman is daughter Kimberly’s professor this semester and she provided me with this quote.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Douglas Howard Ginsburg

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The basic requirement to register a handgun is longstanding in American law, accepted for a century in diverse states and cities and now applicable to more than one fourth of the Nation by population. Therefore, we presume the District’s basic registration requirement, D.C. Code § 7-2502.01(a), including the submission of certain information, § 7-2502.03(b), does not impinge upon the right protected by the Second Amendment.

Douglas Howard Ginsburg
United States Court of Appeals
Dick Anthouny Heller, Et. Al. v. District of Columbia, Et. Al. October 4, 2011
[Slavery, segregated restaurants, laws against interracial marriage, and the death penalty for homosexuals was accepted for more than a century in this country. That didn’t make them constitutional. Rights do not become privileges subject to denial because they are repressed in some portion of the nation for some set period of time.

Three fourths of the nation by population do not have their firearms registered and those areas had as low or lower crime rates than the areas that did have their firearms registered. Therefore one must conclude that firearm registration serves little or no benefit to the people. No question would be given to legitimacy of registration for First Amendment rights hence registration to exercise Second Amendment rights must be constitutionally suspect.  Thus registration of firearms fails to pass any level of scrutiny.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Sebastian

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I’m getting bored with gun control advocates these days.

Sebastian
November 2, 2011
The Straw Men Builders
[I understand and empathize some. But this isn’t a game to get tired of and move on to something else more interesting when you get bored. This is a fight for the preservation of a specific enumerated right. We get bored with them because we keep refuting the same tired positions they put forward. That doesn’t mean we should stop.

I propose that we can slack off when at least half of the top 10 search engine results for their names are web pages mocking or explaining how these people are ignorant, evil, or liars we are not done with them. They need to be, figuratively speaking, pounded into the ground.

Here are some stats on our current situation on my proposed goal:

We are getting close on Sugarmann but have a lot of work to do on the others.—Joe]

It Isn’t Complicated

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It’s pretty common to get a response similar to; “I didn’t want to spend that much on an optic setup, since I only paid X for the rifle.”

A customer today said he has a WASR AK he keeps for defense, but can’t justify the price of a good optic.  That’s a contradiction in terms, see– you’re going to count on this weapon, possibly, to save your life but anything more than 60 or 75 dollars for a sight that you can rely on is just too much?  “I have another rifle that can put five rounds into a half minute or arc, so…[I don’t need a good optic on this one]”  He said.  So your 3 or 4 MOA Kalash doesn’t warrant an optic that will withstand a few knocks and hold zero, and has a battery life better measured in years than in hours?  Why not?  What is your life worth?

I don’t know if many people are aware of the number of thousand plus dollar scopes that are currently sitting on five hundred dollar rifles.

It’s not about matching the price of the sight to the price of the rifle.  It’s about the setup you want, and you should want something on which you can rely.  Reliable rifles with decent accuracy aren’t expensive, but good optics are.  If your optic costs multiples of the price of the rifle, so be it.  You have a good setup that didn’t have to include a super expensive rifle.  Be happy.

I recently saw an article about some AR or other and the writer had one of the new Leupold Mk 8 variables on it.  It seemed like just the thing I’ve wanted on my (700 dollar) Colt HBAR, so I looked it up.  Four Thousand Dollars!  Will I have to spend an additional 3,000+ dollars on a rifle only so I can justify a good optic?  That sort of “reasoning” doesn’t make any sense to this shooter.  It’s only a matter of coughing up the cash if you can (I do very much like the Trijicons too, and they’re not near 4K, but they don’t do all the same tricks).  Choices choices, but the price I paid for my rifle won’t even be thought of during the process.  I’ll only be thinking of what I can do with it once I have this rig setup nicely.

Disclaimer; …No– On second thought I don’t have to disclaim squat to anyone.  I’m sick and damned tired of the notion that we have to qualify ourselves, or document any aspect of our lives or explain our behavior.  If you can’t take my words at face value, or reject them purely on merits, that’s your own problem.  Live with it.  I’m not demanding anything of you, so stay out of my face and leave me the hell alone.  Or else.  This is the last discussion I will ever have with anyone on the matter of disclosure.

Where Has This Newt Been All Our Lives?

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I’d commented just this morning that I’d seen more than enough of Newt.  Then this was sent to me by a relative of a relative;

Not too shabby for a Republican.  The problem for Newt though is that we know Newt.  He has a history.  I can only assume that this was a trial balloon for him– to see how this sort of thing sells in the marketplace (in the minds of people like him) in which the industry of political rhetoric sells its wares.  He’s a craftsman in the art.  I still think the world is better off with Newt as a history teacher.

“Isolate and crush the secular socialist left” he says.  The only reference to liberty he makes is to religious liberty.  OK, what about the religious socialist left?  Why bring in the “secular” bit when you could just say “crush the socialists”?  He still talks about “running” the country too.  That bugs me– Raise your hand if you want to be run by someone in Washington.  See?  Didn’t think so.

Web traffic

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If Alexa can be believed The Brady Campaign web site has a traffic rank of about 1.1 million. This compares to Say Uncle with a traffic rank of about 283,000.

The Coalition to Stop Gun Violence comes in almost dead even with the Violence Policy Center web site with ranks of almost 2.9 million.

Even my obscure blog nearly has the traffic of the Brady Campaign with a traffic rank of 1.24 million.

When I, blogging a few hours a week while working a full time job, can generate almost as much traffic as a the Brady Campaign with a full time staff and millions of dollars of income you have to know the general public just isn’t interested in their messages.

Give it up guys. You lost, we won. It’s time to change your names and rejoin civilized society.