Visions

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Brady Campaign acting President Dennis Henigan says (YouTube video with only 311 views and the comments disabled) the Brady Campaign has a vision of American safe and secure with firearms prohibited from most public places.

It’s nice to have dreams Dennis but it’s just a dream. You long for something that never was and can never be. You might also have visions of American with unicorns, pixie dust, and manna falling from the sky but rational people do not share your delusions.

When self defense is prohibited safety and security are beyond reach.

Group sex with your wives

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I’ve long been opposed to the Muslim religion but perhaps I should give it further consideration. As reported here it has some interesting points I had not thought of:

The 115-page pocket-sized guide to Islamic sex was released a week ago by the OWC, which was launched in June.

In its foreword, the book says studies showed women only gave their husbands “10 per cent” of what men desired of their wives’ bodies.

It contains explicit sex details, devotes a chapter to “how sex becomes worship” and even reportedly urges Muslim men in polygamous marriages to have group sex with their wives.

I wonder if the women have to be Muslim too. I suspect getting number one wife Barbara to convert would be “challenging”.

Random thought of the day

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The Coalition to Stop Gun Violence is concerned about states’ rights:

“National concealed carry reciprocity legislation is a terrible idea for public safety and a huge affront to states’ rights,” said CSGV Executive Director Josh Horwitz.

I guess that means we can count on their support for The Firearms Freedom Act, states that wish to ban abortion, and even the reinstituting of slavery should some state desire it.

What these people don’t understand (or more likely just don’t want to acknowledge) is that states’ rights/powers only extend as far as the people rights. There are certain individual rights that are guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution that no state, county, or city may infringe upon. The right to keep and bear arms is one of those rights.

Quote of the day—Chief Justice Warren E. Burger

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A sense of confidence in the courts is essential to maintain the fabric of ordered liberty for a free people and three things could destroy that confidence and do incalculable damage to society: that people come to believe that inefficiency and delay will drain even a just judgment of its value; that people who have long been exploited in the smaller transactions of daily life come to believe that courts cannot vindicate their legal rights from fraud and over-reaching; that people come to believe the law – in the larger sense – cannot fulfill its primary function to protect them and their families in their homes, at their work, and on the public streets.

Chief Justice Warren E. Burger
Courts: The Chief Justice Speaks Out
U.S. News & World Report (vol. 69, No. 8, Aug. 24, 1970) 68, 71
Address to ABA meeting, Aug. 10, 1970.
[I am of the opinion that the first two conditions have already been met.—Joe]

I just don’t get it

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There are some things that are just completely incomprehensible to me. Maybe someone else can put it this into words I can understand:

The National Jewish Democratic Council (NJDC) unequivocally opposes and condemns all invocations of the Holocaust in political discourse.

Does this sort of prohibition also apply to invocations of the Soviet, Chinese, and Cambodian genocides as well? Or is there something special about the Nazi regime that means it is special? If so, then why? And how does one determine this “specialness” in advance rather than just memorizing some rules someone made up?

Further along that same line I have had numerous people tell me my “Jews in the Attic Test” is “brilliant”, “genius”, “one of the best things you have ever written” and it got me a “Thinking Blogger Award”. But one Jew I pointed it out to told me, “I agree with everything you say here but you must change the name. You don’t realize how offensive that is to Jews.”

What?

I. Just. Don’t. Get. It.

Quote of the day—Linoge

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This is the Twenty-First Century, where you can track your gorramed pizza from dough to delivery, and you are telling me that the Great and Almighty Federal Government cannot dig its head out of its own ass long enough to develop something similar for a “product” that costs at least ten times as much as your average pizza order?

Linoge
November 1, 2011
good to know my tax dollars are being wasted
[Linoge is correct as far as he goes. A lot more could be said as well. Linoge hints at it but doesn’t quite come out and say what really should be said. Here are some of the things that come to mind:

—Joe]

‘Universes’ Isn’t a Word

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I don’t know.  I like watching The Universe series on The History Channel (once I get past the stupid graphics and the talking-down-to they give us) but this guy, a frequent contributor to The Universe, seems a little too full of himself for someone who apparently doesn’t understand the words he’s using.

Just as there are many solar systems in our galaxy, and many other galaxies in the universe, there may be, we find, other somethings (he uses “soap bubbles”) in the universe.  “Universe” has it right there in the word– Uni.  There can be only one.  What all it may include is a subject for further study and discovery, but there is only one.  Please.

Maybe this bugs me more than it should, but I don’t think so.  When it comes to cross-culture or cross-generational communication it is critically important.  Simple things like the meaning of “the People” and of “…shall not be infringed” have been under assault for example.  If we’re not constantly on our guard we lose our history.  When we lose our history we lose our culture and our freedom.

For the Sesame Street audience, “soap bubble” works OK, but surely there’s a better choice.  I’ll take it over “multiple universes” any day though, as the latter is a direct contradiction of terms, hanging right out there in your face.

Encarta offers this definition of the universe; “the totality of all matter and energy that exists in the vastness of space, whether known to human beings or not.”  Well there you have it, see?  You might want to alert the theoretical physicists and the astronomers you know.  That last clause is even better than I’d hoped.  I’d figured on something more like “everything that exists everywhere, period. No, really– everything. Seriously. Dude” but that definition has a bit of a problem built into it.  Ten points if you can describe it.

Quote of the day—Sean D Sorrentino

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I felt a great disturbance in the Anti-Gun force, as if 10, maybe 15 voices suddenly cried out in terror and were basically ignored.

Suddenly I have a desire to visit cheesehead central.

Sean D Sorrentino
November 1, 2011
What a difference a day makes
[H/T to Robb.

I was tempted to say that now Wisconsin recognizes the “bear” part of “keep and bear arms” the streets will be run full with tears instead of blood but Sean is correct. 10 or maybe 15 people just don’t provide that many tears and don’t matter.—Joe]

Dusting it up with the TSA

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For the near brain-dead supporters of the TSA that still exist out there I would like them to think about how the TSA could possibly stop a dust explosion such as this one on an airplane in flight. Compare the size and shape of the grain elevator in that picture to an airplane fuselage. Compare the strength of the materials (reinforced concrete versus a thin aluminum skin with window) used in the construction.

A few pounds of powdered sugar, flour, or powdered milk can make enough dust to take out a grain elevator and it is more than enough to take an airplane out of the sky. And just how is the TSA going to scan for that when everyone that has eaten a powdered sugared doughnut since they last changed their clothes is going to test positive?

The TSA is nothing but A Security Theater and only the most ignorant and stupid don’t know and understand that.

You contribute nothing

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Just so you know what they think of civil rights advocates:

Decisions about campus safety should be made by administrators, faculty, and students, not by extremists . . . who contribute nothing to the academic community in the commonwealth,” Andrew Goddard, president of the Virginia Center for Public Safety

I’ll bet there were people who claimed similar things about the presence of blacks on campuses a few decades ago.

There is a rally tomorrow (Tuesday, November 1) at the Old Dominion University’s campus:

A gun rights group that plans a rally this week on Old Dominion University’s campus will have some unwanted company when it gathers Tuesday on Kaufman Mall to push for less restrictive weapons policies.

The group will be confronted by gun control advocates who today said they’ve organized a counterdemonstration at ODU to oppose those who believe concealed permit holders should be allowed to bring firearms into campus buildings.

Both groups will descend on campus Tuesday afternoon to respectively lobby for and against a campus gun policy update proposed by ODU that would ban permit holders from bringing guns into school facilities.

It would play well for our side if, as is usual, the pro-gun side outnumbers the anti-gun side by 10 or 1000 to 1. Just who the “extremists” are should be more apparent by this time tomorrow.

Quote of the day—Henry C. Wright

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The moment a man claims a right to control the will of a fellow being by physical force, he is at heart a slaveholder.

Henry C. Wright
April 7, 1837
The Liberator
[Irony alert.

I found this on The Virginia Center for Public Safety (an anti-gun group) web site. Apparently they don’t research or think through the content of their web site any more than they do their policies.

When they advocate for restrictions on firearms ownership they themselves are advocating to “control the will of a fellow being by physical force” via the government.

Furthermore Henry C. Write claimed:

That it is the right and duty of the slaves to resist their masters, and the right and duty of the people of the North to incite them to resistance, and to aid them in it.

Isn’t it better for the people to posses arms and never be slaves than to become slaves and require arms from others to free yourself?

There is a reason no one ever accuses anti-gun people of being too consistent or too smart for their own good.—Joe]

Something to think about

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Today, you are one of 7 billion people on Earth.

Round count

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I was scanning through the May 2011 issue of the American Rifleman before I threw it away and read the following (Page 56 in the article Military Marksmanship):

According to the Army standards and training manual, PAM 350-38 (2009 version), a Regular Army light infantryman should fire about 1,200 rounds a year, assuming he participates in everything: basic marksmanship, day-night qualification, unit live-fire exercises, shooting in NBC gear, thermal and infrared (IR) sights, etc. His Guard and Reserve colleague should expend 660 rounds. But interviews show that almost nobody comes remotely close to that figure. Furthermore, for “plain vanilla” soldiers with access to shooting simulators, and who do not use thermal or IR sights, the specified annual expenditure is 490 rounds for active and 294 for Guard and Reserve.

1,200 rounds per year? If I shoot in just one USPA or Steel Challenge match per month I will go through that many rounds in a year. And that doesn’t count the rounds I expend in practice. I have gone though that many rounds in a single day in practice. And “nobody comes remotely close to that figure”? Wow! And I feel I don’t get enough range time in. And we are sending our troops off to war with this level of training?

Those anti-gun people who claim it is a fantasy to believe the gun owners could hold our own against the Federal Government are totally clueless and whistling past the graveyard. We outnumber them, we can outshoot them, and that doesn’t even take into account that most of them would be on our side anyway.

Quote of the day—Mike Vanderboegh

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First and foremost you must quit looking at and treating the law-abiding armed citizenry of the United States as the enemy. For if you don’t, we certainly will be.

Convince us by your actions that you are no better than the gangs who commit crimes without uniforms and we will treat you similarly. And there ain’t nearly enough of you to shove us around in a real national emergency.

Mike Vanderboegh
February 17, 2010
“Choose this day whom you will serve.”: An Open Letter to American Law Enforcement.
[Note that this was written before the details of Fast and Furious had become public.

It may be becoming time for law enforcement to chose which side they are on. The failure of the Occupy Wall Street “movement” to achieve anything close to critical mass should be a sufficient hint that the socialists are not the clear winners if we have an economic collapse.

The left has seriously overplayed their hand; Polls show them in extreme distress, “under the radar” gun control is failing and the Tea Party has demonstrated itself far more numerous and smart than the OWS/Flea-Party. So what happens next? They have two choices. They can retreat and regroup or they can “go for broke”. I think OWS was the left to testing the waters of the go for broke option.

The question now is; Will the socialists in power swallow their pride and do the wise thing or will they let their narcissism go into full bloom? I know far too many people invested in copper, lead, and brass who would like a return on that investment for the “full boom” option to end well but I’m not sure the narcissists really understand reality and it will be American law enforcement that has to make some very tough decisions.—Joe]

Doing it wrong

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I was updating the Boomershoot links page (about half the links were dead) and I found the stats on the last Gateway Colorado Dynamite Shoot:

WHAT A BLAST!!

With 198 shooters, 172 charges exploded!!

[sarcasm]I must be doing it wrong. We go through about 1500 targets and only get about 120 shooters.[/sarcasm]

Don’t enable that tool

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Sebastian says this is Help We Don’t Need. Say Uncle says this is How not to win. I’ve upload the 67 second MP3 here. It has received nearly 80,000 views on YouTube.

This is not about whether the firearms instructor has the right to say what he did or refuse his services to anyone. I fully agree he was within his rights to do what he did. I just don’t think it is a good idea.

Yes, there are some Muslims in this country who are actively trying to murder as many Americans as they can. Yes, there are Obama supporters who are actively working to destroy our freedoms.

But one of the basics of our country is that an individuals actions and character not their religion or who they voted for (we have secret ballots for a reason) should determine their status. There are certain specific enumerated rights which are guaranteed to everyone but those that have proven themselves completely untrustworthy.

The right to keep and bear arms is a specific enumerated right. It is a fundamental natural right. What does this look like to people who are undecided on the issue of gun owner rights?

Think of it how it would look if a teacher refused to teach someone to read on the basis of religion/voting-record/skin-color. Or a lawyer that refused to represent someone on that basis. Or someone that refused to sell books or newspapers to someone on that basis. Or a police officer that refused to arrest the attacker of someone who was “the wrong type of person”.

I once had an Arab Muslim student for my NRA Personal Protection class. I didn’t think it was that big of a deal. He was married to an American woman and studying architecture at a nearby university. He wanted to be able to get an Idaho concealed weapons license and that required proof of training.

A few years later after I stumbled across some more information about him I initiated a long conversation with the FBI about him. The FBI agent I talked said they knew of him but, naturally, wouldn’t tell me much more. I don’t know that he was really anything to be concerned about and I don’t know that the FBI or any other government agency ever did anything beyond keep a file on him and watch him a little closer than they would most people.

I still think this was the proper course of action. Sort of an innocent until proven “guilty” policy.

Based on the information I had at the time it was entirely appropriate to teach him to defend himself with a firearm. Later information led me to question that conclusion. But I knew that I did not have as much information as needed to draw the correct conclusions. The people responsible for drawing the correct conclusion and had access to far more information than I did probably would be interested in this student seeking out firearms instruction. My usual policy is to not keep records of my students and even to destroy the list of previous Boomershoot participants after I send out an email to them announcing the next event. But this guy was memorable and I violated that policy only after spending a lot of time thinking about it and urging from wife Barbara.

When I was getting my instructor credentials I was told, and I followed this advice, to ask every student why they were taking the class. Any hints that they were intending to break the law would have been sufficient to refuse my services to them. I still think that refusing to teach someone on the basis of their religion alone, even Islam, is not a good idea. There are far, far more Muslims in our country who are friendly to our culture and form of government than are hostile.

I believe that in most cases there are going to be indicators other than religion (or voting record) that can be used to appropriately deny firearm instruction services to someone. In the case of the Muslim student I had he was married to a U.S. citizen and all appearances were that he was friendly to our country.

Also, there are (or at least was) terrorist training camps available. If the guy merely getting training to acquire the license rather than because he had near zero training that would probably show up during the class. The FBI guy repeatedly asked me about this. As near as I could tell he was truthful in telling me he had no previous training. Looking for those sorts of signs could be useful should you decide he needs the attention of the authorities.

If this is someone who is really serious about causing us harm then far better training is probably easily available to him.

Think of this issue another way, as a percentage of the population people with dark colored skin are overrepresented in prison. One could reasonably conclude that people with dark colored skin are less likely to be trustworthy with a firearm because they apparently are more likely to commit crimes. But this denies a basic human right to an entire class of people most of which have done nothing wrong.

Treat people as individuals not as part of some “class”. Isn’t that one of the basic tenets of our form of government and our society? Isn’t the promotion of “class warfare” a major tool of the people who desire the destruction of our form of government? Don’t enable that tool for them.

Quote of the day—Cliff Schecter

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If you are looking for the literal embodiment of dysfunction in US political culture and the institutions that serve it, look no further than the National Rifle Association (NRA), and the deadly and divisive role it plays in shaping the political agenda. Specifically, the radically and reliably dishonest, dangerous and deranged legislation they foist upon the American people day in and day out through their purchase of most Republican and many Blue-Dog Democratic officeholders.

…

We’re talking here about people who shouldn’t be allowed to make their own beds, much less public policy.

Cliff Schecter
October 29, 2011
They have the right to remain silent
[I find it appropriate that someone who says this sort of thing about a civil rights group protecting a specific enumerated right used Al Jazeera as his vehicle for hate. And that he is a weekly columnist for them is no surprise.—Joe]

Cajun intelligence

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Via email from my sister-in-law (the one who isn’t a democrat):

Subject: Direct Quote from “Larry, the Cable Guy”

“Even after the Super Bowl victory of the New Orleans Saints, I have noticed a large number of people, implying with bad jokes, that Cajuns aren’t smart. I would like to state for the record that I disagree with that assessment. Anybody who would build a city 5 feet below sea level in a hurricane zone and fill it with Democrats who can’t swim is a damn genius”.

You should not depend on comedians for accuracy. They sometimes stretch or gloss over the the truth a little to make things funnier. In this case Larry, the Cable Guy is wrong. My sister-in-law should know better than to send me something like this. I’ve been to New Orleans and she knew this.

The elevation of New Orleans is not a constant -5’. It varies depending on the location from -6.5’ to +20’ relative to sea level.

Quote of the day—Glen McGregor

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I find the destruction of any kind of government data utterly abhorent (sic) and contrary to the concept of open government.

In response, I’m posting publicly a copy of the gun registry database I received via the Access to Information Act in 2007.

Glen McGregor
October 26, 2011
You can have my gun registry data when you pry it from my cold, dead hands
This is regarding the Canadian long gun registry.
[“Any kind of government data”, really? What if it was a registry of one of the following:

  • Undercover police officers.
  • Confidential informants.
  • People who are racially “impure” (the “heroes” of The Turner Diaries would have found this useful).
  • People who are HIV positive.
  • Homosexuals and all their known lovers.
  • Women who had used an abused women shelters.
  • People who are Jewish/black/Christian/Islamic.
  • People who had voted Conservative/Liberal/Whatever.
  • People who subscribed to GayCalgary and Edmonton Magazine.
  • People who have written letters to the editor opposing/supporting Health Canada.

What McGregor apparently doesn’t understand is that this registry is something that should have never been allowed to exist in the first place. There are some datasets which only use is abuse or the risk of such abuse is much greater than any benefits that might be gained. When a list is a set of people who are in the minority and who historically have been victims of oppression then extreme scrutiny must be given to the existence of such a list let alone the publication of such a list.

I will give McGregor a little bit of slack that some of his commenters don’t in that he claims his copy of the list does not have any names or addresses in it beyond the first two characters of the postal code. This helps some. But an oppressor (think of the Belgium Corporal story) could use this data to confiscate all the firearm in a particular postal code area by going door to door demanding to know who owns, for example, the Remington 700 chambered in 30.06 with serial number XXXX.

The right to keep and bear arms is a fundamental natural right and for any government to keep records on the exercise of such a right is to put the right in jeopardy of infringement.

Your “cold, dead hands” McGregor? I don’t think it will go that far. I believe the threat of a prison sentence will be more than sufficient to get the data destroyed. But if not then I don’t have a problem with him dying in prison over it.—Joe]

How We Lose

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…when we do lose, and we’ve been losing, on balance, for over 100 years so this matters.

Kevin posted this as an example of truth, which of course it is…as far as it goes.  Excellent as his points are, Epstein doesn’t wrap up the argument.  He gets the ball to the goal line and then punts.  Excellent drive, but we never score.  The enemy gets the ball at the 20 yard line.  As I told Kevin, Epstein ignores the elephant in the living room;

Watch Does U.S. Economic Inequality Have a Good Side? on PBS. See more from PBS NewsHour.

Did you notice the omission?  That is a fairly classic example of an argument between what I call “tweakers” (I know– the term is already taken, but it fits here).  It’s like two dairy farmers arguing over how to get the most milk from their cows.  “Tweak the cows (people) this way, and you get x result, tweak the cows that way and you get y result, etc.”

The discussion went as far as it could without actually mentioning the fact that we aren’t cattle, what we achieve or own is none of the government’s business, and that the United States was created as a place where rights protection was the government’s main job– not tweaking people.  Id est, there is no moral or principled argument unless you count material result or statistical result as a principle, which it isn’t.

As Ayn Rand so eloquently stated some 50 or so years ago– the self appointed champions of conservatism are often the worst enemies of liberty.  By failing to make the moral argument, while the enemy has plenty of (false) moral arguments, we often appear hollow and even hypocritical to the less attentive.

They’re the ones motivated by compassion.  We only have only the cold steel nuts and bolts– economic theories that help the rich while ignoring the plight of the poor and desperate.

Epstein’s cross examiner knew he was scoring points with his audience when he repeatedly used the term “inequality” to falsely describe what Epstein was advocating.

Here’s the elephant in the room– human rights protection.  That one thing that’s so lacking everywhere else in the world.  The banishment of coercion.  The American founding principles.  The shining torch of Liberty that has brought so many people here from all over the world.  The unleashing of the human spirit.

Wrap it up.  Cross the goal line, or we’re doomed.