Without bigots, eccentrics, cranks, and heretics, the world would not progress.
Frank Gelett Burgess
[I’m elaborating still more on what some people claim is the basis for “progress”. Soon I’ll tell you about the origins of people who call themselves “progressives”.—Joe]
Alan doesn’t spell it quite as clearly as I would like but he does explain what President Obama and the ATF want to do “is strictly forbidden under federal law”.
What should have been said is that in order to know if “multiple rifle sales are made to the same buyer within a five-day period” there needs to be central records kept of firearms sales. If such a central record store does not exist then it is trivial to defeat the reporting requirement. The multiple firearm buyer merely goes down the street and purchases a single firearm from every dealer. As far as each of the dealers is concerned it was a single firearm sale. The only way to block this “loophole” is a firearm owner registry maintained by a single entity. It is illegal for any Federal agency to create such a registry.
Even if the individual states were to do this long guns may be purchased in states other than your home state so the loophole would exist even if implemented by the states. Instead of going down the street the buyers would have to cross the state lines but in many locations that wouldn’t be that big of a issue.
In addition to such a registry being illegal a firearms owners registry in this country would be a huge failure with massive disobedience on a scale much larger than that experienced by Canada’s boondoggle.
Commonsense says that if it is illegal and it wouldn’t work even if it were legal any effort expended on the plan is wasted. Surely we can all agree that government waste is something to avoid.
Via Peter N. Biddle I discovered a former co-worker of mine, Steve Lacy, was killed in a car accident on Sunday:
A volatile mix of speed, alcohol and road rage claimed the life of an innocent victim Sunday who happened to be driving in the wrong place at the wrong time.
The Washington State Patrol says the incident began at about 2 p.m. when a man driving a black Hyundai SUV was involved in a road rage incident on Interstate 405.
Witnesses told troopers the Hyundai driver began following a driver who he believed had cut him off as he headed south down the freeway.
As the Hyundai driver took the Northeast 85th Street off-ramp, he was speeding and lost control, flying across the eastbound lanes of Northeast 85th into the westbound traffic.
At that point, the Hyundai slammed into a gray BMW that was heading west on 85th Street and had not been involved in the earlier road rage incident.
The impact killed the driver of the BMW. He was identified as Steve Lacey, a software engineer at Google and father of two young children.
I have driven on both that freeway and that street countless time. I’ve even walked up and down that street more times than I can count. Sometimes there just isn’t anything you can do about it when death comes calling.
It was this Steve that I blogged about a few years ago.
Steve came to the U.S. from the U.K. when Microsoft purchased the company he worked for. This company had a 3-D graphics rendering package. Steve wrote a lot of the code that is now known as Direct-X 3D. Every time you play a video game on a Windows machine that does 3-D rendering you are executing code that Steve wrote. The world is a poorer place now not only because of the contributions he would have continued to make but because he was also a really nice guy.
All progress is based on the universal innate desire on the part of every organism to live beyond its income.
Samuel Butler
[While this is widely attributed to Samuel Butler it is not found in a search this particular Samuel Butler’s work. It could be it is a different Samuel Butler or the collection is incomplete. But regardless of who should be given credit I think it is worthwhile to note that while this statement has a great deal of truth to it catastrophic failure is also associated with living beyond one’s income. If you question the validity of this latter claim you should run for public office. If you “know” it is false and can convince enough people of your delusion you too could become president.—Joe]
But the greatest Electrical Pioneer of them all was Thomas Edison, who was a brilliant inventor despite the fact that he had little formal education and lived in New Jersey. Edison’s first major invention in 1877, was the phonograph, which could soon be found in thousands of American homes, where it basically sat until 1923, when the record was invented. But Edison’s greatest achievement came in 1879, when he invented the electric company. Edison’s design was a brilliant adaptation of the simple electrical circuit: The electric company sends electricity through a wire to a customer, then immediately gets the electricity back through another wire, then (this is the brilliant part) sends it right back to the customer again.
This means that an electric company can sell a customer the same batch of electricity thousands of times a day and never get caught, since very few customers take the time to examine their electricity closely. In fact the last year any new electricity was generated in the United States was 1937; the electric companies have been merely re-selling it ever since, which is why they have so much free time to apply for rate increases.
Dave Barry
The History of Electricity
[I’m reminded of this by Barron’s Power Series. Normally I get really annoyed when someone gets some technological detail all wrong and I praise those that get everything correct. But In this case I’m going to reverse myself and give Barry the edge over Barron for pleasurable reading.—Joe]
I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.
James Madison
1794
For context and related quotes see here.
[It’s too bad we don’t have still have a constitution Madison would recognize. If we did we wouldn’t be in the middle of an economic and financial crisis.—Joe]
This is a tragedy, both that 80 lives were lost & that right-wing gun nuts exist worldwide.
Fabio Periera
July 23, 2011
Saved from the memory hole by Linoge.
[One has to wonder how Periera would like to remedy the problem of that existence. Certainly others had and implemented effective government programs for that sort of problem. And it is because of the existence of people like Periera that I have Boomershoot.—Joe]
The essential claim (certainly not every claim–but the essential claim) advanced by the NRA with respect to the Second Amendment is extremely strong. Indeed, one may fairly declare, it is at least as well anchored in the Constitution in its own way as were the essential claims with respect to the First Amendment’s protection of freedom of speech as first advanced on the Supreme Court by Holmes and Brandeis, seventy years ago. And until the Supreme Court manages to express the central premise of the Second Amendment more fully and far more appropriately than it has done thus far, the constructive role of the NRA today, like the role of the ACLU in the 1920s with respect to the First Amendment (as it then was), ought itself not lightly to be dismissed. Indeed, it is largely by the “unreasonable” persistence of just such organizations in this country that the Bill of Rights has endured.
William Van Alstyne
1994
THE SECOND AMENDMENT AND THE PERSONAL RIGHT TO ARMS
[I’m reminded of the adage that “all progress depends on the unreasonable man”. Keep that in mind when the anti-gun people demand “reasonable gun laws”. They are anti-progress.
But beyond that there can little doubt that the “unreasonableness” of the ACLU has shaped the legal contours of the First and Fifth Amendments. Many could claim the protections carved out by the courts under pressure from the ACLU extend well beyond “reasonable” limits. We certainly have those that claim the limits of the Second Amendment are too broad now with essentially just one win under our belt. Extending the elimination of gun bans to non-Federal jurisdictions expands the domain but not the shape of the protection. What I’m curious about is if perhaps the ACLU blazed a trail for SAF, NRA, et. al. such that Second Amendment protections will advance to boundaries comparable to the First Amendment at a much more rapid pace than it took for the ACLU to get us where we are today. Will there ever come a time somewhere along the way where the majority of people will concede that the limits on the Second should be similar to the limits on the First and the mass of repressive anti-gun laws all across the land will suddenly topple over like dominos. Will our fight take 70 years? Forever? Or will it only be 10?
I don’t know the answer. But I am certain that the more we push that meme the greater chance it has of becoming reality.—Joe]
I won’t pretend to say I know what they really think, if they think at all, but what many of the anti-gun people express is they fear the things gun owners might do. We might commit a violent crime. We might accidently shoot someone. We might try to overthrow the government. And they want laws in place to prevent such things.
How is this different than those that expressed fear about what people with dark colored skin might do if they were given their freedom, or allowed to vote, or mingle with your white skinned daughters?
It is time they moved past their imaginary fears. People must be judged on what they actually do and not on what they might do. Prevention is prior restraint and that cannot be allowed for a specific enumerated right.
Certainly judgment can and should be passed on the results of what actually happens. And if mixed race marriages occur or even a government is overthrown occasionally the possibility of that being a good thing should be considered in the light of the actuality rather than in the potentiality.
The point of citizen resistance isn’t to be able to kick your own government’s ass; it’s to make clear that it would spend more to oppress you than it would by leaving you free. (Granted, some governments take more convincing than others. But that’s an education problem.)
Paul Brinkley
July 18th, 2011 at 6:54 pm
Comment to the post Brin on Heinlein on guns is dead wrong.
[Via email from Rich R.
And what better way to educate a government on the costs of oppression than by shooting back and/or shooting the tax collectors?—Joe]
And that’s why I’m rooting for an asteroid.
Veeshir
July 19th, 2011 at 8:53 pm
Comment to Where America used to be
[Over the years I have given that same resolution a lot of thought. Probably far more thought than it deserves.—Joe]
Over the years, mostly in the 1990s IIRC, there has been a lot of talk about certain enhanced penalties for “gun crimes”. Even some supposedly on the pro rights side have advocated them, presumably as a compromise to prevent some other, more egregious infringement.
I thought we had dispatched the whole concept years ago, but it came up again in comments here, so I figure it’s time to update some folks who might be new to this game of official, wholesale coercion and persecution of different groups, verses liberty. Besides that, we all know by now that the leftist playbook is very short, and so they have to recycle the old ideas and find a way to make them new again every few years or so.
What you’re saying when you advocate special punishments for “gun crime” is that the same, or very similar, crime committed without a gun is somehow less criminal. What you’re saying is that gun owners are to be treated the way black people were treated before civil rights.
Do you really want to go there?
My sister and her approximately three year old daughter were murdered in their own home by an invader. The killer used a kitchen knife to brutally stab and slash my sister to death, in the presence of her daughter, and then the daughter was strangled to death with a shoestring as the murder weapon.
So you’re saying; “Oh, well thank goodness they were killed with a knife and shoestring, because being shot with a gun would be…just terrible!” And you’re saying to the murderer; “Thank you, my good man, for using a knife and a shoestring instead of a gun. That’s the way we like to see it. Now you’ll get off a little easier.”
WTF..Really?
One of our music store customers in his early teens was minding his own business one night when a carload of other kids stopped, got out, and clubbed him with a baseball bat. He dragged himself some blocks to the steps of a nearby business, and died from the massive head injuries.
“His parents should count their lucky stars their boy wasn’t shot, ’cause that would have been bad news!”
Really?
That’s just as stupid and bigoted as saying that, as an alternative to slavery, we should just have enhanced penalties for black people who commit crimes, and referring to that as “pro civil rights advocacy”. With friends like that I don’t need enemies. I know the enhanced-penalty-for-the-presence-of-guns concept has been bandied about by supposedly pro gun legisladiots, and that you might have been fooled for a moment, but don’t let it happen again. Now you know– such ideas come either from the anti rights movement or from people who can’t think straight and don’t understand what the words “rights” and “justice” mean. We can all do much better without them mucking up the waters.
ETA; Maybe the slavery reference wasn’t the best one. Maybe it should be, “…as stupid and bigoted as saying that, as an alternative to outright lynchings, we should have enhanced penalties for blacks who commit crimes…” Makes everybody happy, right? Everyone gets a little something.
In any case, when we stick to the basic truths, we win. When you compromise the basic principles, you’ve relegated the concept of rights to the back of the bus. You’ve just lost. Creating enhanced penalties for one group verses another is outright dumb, and evil, regardless of the political/tactical environment. If you can’t stand on the principle of basic rights, equality, liberty and justice, well thank you for applying but no– we just can’t use you at this time. Coward.
It is undeniable that we have to do more to reduce the devastating impact gun violence is having on our community. While the courts have consistently ruled against significant gun control legislation, there is still a way to decrease crime: substantially increase the cost of its’ commission.
Increasing the cost of guns won’t work because many criminals don’t purchase new guns and they can be borrowed or even rented in some areas. Therefore, as Mayor, Otis will move to impose a $1 per bullet tax (or about $50 per pack). That will increase substantially the financial cost of committing a crime and, unlike guns, bullets cannot be shared after their initial use. This will also dramatically cut back on the random firings that too often happen around holidays and celebrations.
Otis Rolley
Candidate for Mayor of Baltimore
July 19, 2011
THE ROLLEY PLAN TO MAKE EVERY NEIGHBORHOOD IN BALTIMORE SAFER
[It would appear that Rolley is arithmetically and logically impaired. There would be constitutional challenges to this which almost for certain he would lose because he openly admits, “This is not a revenue enhancement tool”.
But ignoring the constitutional issue with high taxes you would get smuggling with this proposal. Just think about it a bit. What is the tax on recreational drugs in this country or the tax on bullets and guns in the U.K.? Oh yeah! It’s a few years in prison and those items are still readily available. And with the tax on ammunition purchased inside the city limits all he will accomplish is to create a virtual ban on the legal sale of ammunition within the city. This will create a new black market. In other words a Mayor Rolley would increase crime instead of decrease it.
Now the arithmetic part. I don’t have the numbers for just Baltimore but I do have them for the U.S. as a whole. Each year private citizens purchase, and presumably consume, something on the order of 9 billions rounds of ammunition. There are approximately 70,000 injuries or deaths each year due to criminal use of firearms. Suppose that on the average, each of these injuries and deaths were the result of two shots fired. This would mean that his proposed tax would cost people exercising their specific enumerated right to keep and bear arms nearly $9,000,000,000 while costing the criminals only about $140,000. Or a ratio of about 64,000 to 1. This is not a “tax” on criminal use of firearms. It is a “tool” for infringing on people exercising a guaranteed right.
Furthermore looking at it from the standpoint of per criminal use his proposal would increase the cost of the crime, assuming the criminals actually purchased the ammo instead of stealing it or smuggling it in from outside the city, by about $2.00 per crime. When the “cost” of the crime is already many months or years in jail how can anyone think that increasing the cost another $2.00 is going to make a difference?
This guy has crap for brains. No wonder he is running for mayor. He isn’t qualified for a real job.—Joe]
Today I left a comment at Snowflakes in Hell on the post Land of the Used to be Free.
Sometimes I wonder if it was that I said something profound or if it was something so crazy that everyone just went silent after I said my thing. This is one of those times. I can’t see that it was all that crazy but then I don’t see anything all that profound in it either.
My brother and I had spent some time chatting on almost this same exact thing yesterday and so I had spent some time thinking about it during the long drive back to my bunker last night. And I incorporated some of those thoughts into my QOTD post yesterday. So I had my response ready from almost the instant I read the title:
The bigger problem, as Sebastian pointed out, is the erosion without consequences. In general the only way this problem can be fixed is for there to be consequences other than voter wrath. There needs to be fines and/or jail time for those that violate our rights and some body, such as the courts but perhaps not, that is specifically tasked with doing nothing but striking down laws that exceed the constitutional authority given to the legislature and/or executive branch.
But that’s not going to happen anytime soon or even perhaps ever unless we set up a new government on the sea floor, the Moon or perhaps Mars. Of course it could also happen if the mid-east gets turned into glass and the new inhabitants set up a different style government after it has had a few years to cool down to a soft green glow.
Another possible path to get out of the mess we are in is for the Federal government to go bankrupt and collapse sort of like the USSR did and we end up with only state governments. Many of those state governments would provide a much more free environment than that currently imposed by the Feds.
The most likely, but still with low probability, is that Feds get into such a poor financial situation that a new wave of politicians get elected with a mandate to scrape all the nanny state crap in an effort to cut expenses. With this entire departments and agencies (energy, education, housing, environment, agriculture, ATF, etc.) get disbanded and all their responsibilities go away too. Sort of a “scorched earth” policy where there is little or no discussion of “cutting back to the essentials”.
Forget a revolution. As my brother pointed out statistically the most likely form of government after a revolution is a dictatorship. I suspect there is a good reason for this. My hypothesis is that in general for a revolution to be successful there needs to be a charismatic leader. Charismatic leaders have a strong tendency to be narcissistic. Narcissists think they are entitled to all the attention and power the world can throw at them. Narcissists don’t give up their power easily. Revolutions and dictators go hand-in-hand.
The lesson to be learned is that revolution is a very, very risky business for those that value liberty. The founders of this country chose their revolutionary leader with extraordinary care. Read some books on George Washington. He had the charisma to lead but he had something else that is probably not only rare but is overlooked by those looking for a leader for their revolution. He was extremely principled. That is an extremely rare quality in our politicians today. The system virtually guarantees people of principle cannot be elected.
Hence we are in a situation where Douglas Adams nails it in The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, “Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.” The same probably can be said of revolutionary leaders.
The number of times the question, “What do women want?” has been asked surely is in the billions. Perhaps Dear Betty has the answer:
It’s as simple as a point-blank head shot inside an elevator. Women want high-caliber men, men with solid stocks, long, strong barrels and magazines that hold plenty of quality ammo. They want straight-shooters with a good reload rate and superior shot placement. They want men who can fire reliably under all conditions, capable of using semi-automatic action for accuracy, or going full auto for suppression purposes. They want men who bring excellent penetration to the battle field, who can be ready for extended action with only basic oiling and maintenance.
They sure as hell DON’T want men whose barrels melt after a few rounds, or who can’t line up properly on the target. They don’t want men with a sticky trigger pull, or whose chamber mechanism jams easily.
Work your slide frequently, keep yourself well-oiled and polished, and carry yourself like you’re packing rifle rounds in a pistol chassis.
And perhaps not. From the disclaimer, “Betty is a gun. This is her advice column, God help us all.”
Oh, and according to Betty, by 2061 you can get a Glock with pearl-handles.
Via email from Dave Devries, the comic artist responsible for Betty and Blue Shift.
When I became chairman of the Subcommittee on the Constitution, I hoped that I would be able to assist in the protection of the constitutional rights of American citizens, rights which have too often been eroded in the belief that government could be relied upon for quick solutions to difficult problems.
Both as an American citizen and as a United States Senator I repudiate this view. I likewise repudiate the approach of those who believe to solve American problems you simply become something other than American. To my mind, the uniqueness of our free institutions, the fact that an American citizen can boast freedoms unknown in any other land, is all the more reason to resist any erosion of our individual rights. When our ancestors forged a land “conceived in liberty”, they did so with musket and rifle. When they reacted to attempts to dissolve their free institutions, and established their identity as a free nation, they did so as a nation of armed freemen. When they sought to record forever a guarantee of their rights, they devoted one full amendment out of ten to nothing but the protection of their right to keep and bear arms against government interference. Under my chairmanship the Subcommittee on the Constitution will concern itself with a proper recognition of, and respect for, this right most valued by free men.
Orrin G. Hatch,
Chairman,
Subcommittee on the Constitution.
FEBRUARY 1982
THE RIGHT TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS, R E P O R T OF THE SUBCOMMITTEE ON THE CONSTITUTION OF THE COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY, UNITED STATES SENATE, NINETY-SEVENTH CONGRESS, SECOND SESSION
[And those that do not value this right have no desire to be free. May their chains set lightly upon them, and may posterity forget that they were our countrymen.—Joe]
Today I did some more prep for the new explosives manufacturing site. This new place needed a name so a few weeks ago I asked daughter Kim and son-in-law Caleb to try and come up with some names. Caleb almost immediately suggested “New Mecca”. I thought about it some and suggested dropping the “New”. When I told others of the suggestion it received a warm welcome (especially from Barron and Janelle) so “Mecca” it is.
What I did today was put up the Wi-Fi access point. I wasn’t able to test it because the Wi-Fi access point at the provider wasn’t working and no one was home for me to get access and fix it. I think I’m probably going to get my own connection to First Step Research which will be a lot faster and more reliable than the second hand satellite connect I am currently using.
Anyway, here is a picture of the new access point:
The fence post was rather difficult to get into the “ground”. The place it really needed to be was mostly big rocks covered with a few pine needles. I got it into the ground and I hope to be able to test the connection the next time I go back. It’s over a half-mile to the source with partial blocking by the trees and that is a little bit of a concern to me.
Here are the railroad ties donated by Matt and delivered by Barron and unloaded with the help of Kim and Caleb we will use for the new production facility Ry is supervising:
Thanks again guys. We are going to have a great new place to make targets next spring.
I finished up Monster Hunter International on Friday and started Monster Hunter Vendetta. There was so much mention made of Owen Z. Pitt’s specially modified Saiga shotgun which he calls “Abomination” that I had to get mine (stock configuration with none of Milow’s modifications) out and do a little shot gunning. Wal-Mart didn’t have any silver buckshot but they had Federal 00 in both 2.75 (9 pellets) and 3 inch magnum shells (15 pellets).
So today I shot up a couple USPSA targets:
Above is three shots of the 2.75” shells from 30’ away. One to the head, one to the center of the body, and one to the lower part of the body. The large holes are the wadding.
This is three shots of the 3” inch magnum shells and two shots of 2.75” #7 birdshot from 30’ away.
Unless there were a specific need for the extra payload I don’t see any need to use the harder recoiling 3” shells. My guess is that when firing multiple shots I can get just as much lead on target in the same amount of time with the 2.75” shells as I can with the 3” shells.
I also dumped a couple twelve round magazines of birdshot on some steel targets as fast as I could acquire a sight picture. That was fun and very invigorating. I need to do that more often.
Getting back to the books. These are really good books. I don’t even mind that Owen’s evil werewolf boss had the same name as my Grandfather. I do wish the troll was named MIkeB302000 instead of Melvin but I suppose that would be insulting to trolls and there might consequences.
And I can’t help but think that our gnome loving, daughter Xenia really should read the gnome fight scene.
Those who call for the repeal of the Second Amendment so that we can really begin controlling firearms betray a serious misunderstanding of the Bill of Rights. The Bill of Rights does not grant rights to the people, such that its repeal would legitimately confer upon government the powers otherwise proscribed. The Bill of Rights is the list of the fundamental, inalienable rights, endowed in man by his Creator, that define what it means to be a free and independent people, the rights which must exist to ensure that government governs only with the consent of the people.
At one time this was even understood by the Supreme Court. In United States v. Cruikshank (1876), the first case in which the Court had an opportunity to interpret the Second Amendment, it stated that the right confirmed by the Second Amendment “is not a right granted by the constitution. Neither is it in any manner dependent upon that instrument for its existence.” The repeal of the Second Amendment would no more render the outlawing of firearms legitimate than the repeal of the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment would authorize the government to imprison and kill people at will. A government that abrogates any of the Bill of Rights, with or without majoritarian approval, forever acts illegitimately, becomes tyrannical, and loses the moral right to govern.
This is the uncompromising understanding reflected in the warning that America’s gun owners will not go gently into that good, utopian night: “You can have my gun when you pry it from my cold, dead hands.” While liberals take this statement as evidence of the retrograde, violent nature of gun owners, we gun owners hope that liberals hold equally strong sentiments about their printing presses, word processors, and television cameras. The republic depends upon fervent devotion to all our fundamental rights.
Jeffrey R. Snyder
1993
A Nation of Cowards
[What of the “moral right to govern” when it commits crimes to justify imposing illegal restrictions on gun dealers? It should be no different than a fireman sets fires so they can put them out. It goes beyond losing “the moral right to govern”. They should go to jail or it means those that wish to be our masters, instead of our public servants, have nothing to lose when they attempt to change the relationship. If they get caught and told not to do that they just try something else. There must be a punishment for those that violate their oath of office because otherwise the erosion of our rights will only stop when there are no more rights to be eroded.—Joe]
Because I want to be able to carry while at Gun Blogger Rendezvous this September in Nevada I’m in the process of getting my Arizona carry permit. It’s tough to get a Nevada permit unless you are willing to spend some time down there but they recognize a few other permits. It used to be they recognized Utah which I used to have. No longer. But Arizona just made the list and Arizona is relatively easy to get a permit remotely. I got my fingerprints taken a few days ago but I couldn’t find any proof of training in my Seattle area bunker to send in with the application. I rummaged through the garage in Idaho this afternoon and found a few certificates. I scanned them and made copies to send to Arizona. Here are the ones I thought they would be the most interested in. Since they require 8 hours of training and I have proof of 53 hours (it’s actually far more than that, this is just what I could find) I presume this will get the job done.
I highly recommend all of these classes. I learned a lot from them.