Gun cartoon of the day

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When has someone said having a permit is a guarantee of perfect behavior? Having a “permit for a gun” is no more a guarantee of perfect behavior than a drivers license is a predictor of perfect driving.

But if you were to read the VPC or Brady Campaign publications with their lists of people with permits that committed crimes you would think concealed carry permit holders were billed as perfect angels and they are disappointed to find out we are mere mortals–with a lower rate of crime than the general population and police officers.

Layers of Oversight

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Heard on a local AM radio newscast this morning;



A Deary (Idaho) man charged with aggravated assault and unlawful discharge of a firearm into an inhabited dwelling.


The firearm was described as;



“…a three oh eight caliber shotgun.”


At first I thought maybe it was a combination gun and they just did a clumsy job of describing it, but no.  They just got it wrong.  I wonder how many people had to approve the copy before it aired, and how many other mistakes they’re making regularly that I wouldn’t notice so easily.


It’s like the talk show host I’d never heard of, but ran into briefly the other night.  He sounded pretty good, like he knew what he was saying about relationships and politics, until he started talking about getting electricity from any point in space, from gravity.  HE had the answer, which the oil companies had kept secret for generations!  At that point you have to not only question everything he says, but seriously doubt it.  It might not even be fair to cast doubt on all his human behavioral analysis based on his lack of understanding of physics.  One can be well versed in one subject and ignorant of another, but it’s very hard to take someone seriously again after hearing such an ignorant bit.  We all make mistakes, but wow.  In the case of a news service, with reporters, editors and anchors, it’s a different story.  Those proverbial Layers Of Oversight are supposed to catch these things.

It’s a start

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A
Democrat Walks Into a Gun Range…

I object to her instructor starting her out with a “baby-Glock” in .40 S&W. A .22 pistol would have been better. But she does fine:

Shooting is fun, y’all. I am not even going to lie. It’s a visceral rush each
time you pull the trigger. But, really, it is terrifying. It’s an extreme
responsibility, and one that I wish people didn’t take so lightly.

I think more trips to the range are needed:

I’m still terrified, I still support gun control, strongly. I’ve never witnessed
one of these Baltimore murders, and I hope to God I never will, nor be a victim.

But now I’ve asked the questions for myself and taken the time to do my
research. I hope others are able to do so. Don’t ever say you haven’t tried to
walk in everyone’s shoes.

And she shouldn’t worry so much about people finding out she is a Democrat.

Quote of the day–Sarah Brady

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The defeat of Washington State ballot Initiative 676 is a disappointing loss for the state’s citizens, but the reasons behind it are clear.

…

Unfortunately, the NRA outspent the home-grown Safety First Campaign by more
than five-to-one and successfully scared many Washingtonians out of voting for
this life-saving measure. Safety First, which led the fight to pass I 676,
should be commended for standing up for what is right in the face of opposition
from the one of this nation’s most ruthless and devious special interest groups.

The NRA’s guerrilla tactics are the highest form of flattery. Since when
does the gun lobby have to work so hard to defeat a measure in so-called ‘friendly’ territory? Clearly, the tides are turning in the gun control debate.
More and more Americans, gun owners and non-gun-owners alike, are demanding
stronger measures to prevent gun deaths and injuries. I 676 may be dead, but the
gun control movement in Washington State and around the country is becoming
increasingly mobilized and potent. This is certainly not the last we will hear
from our friends at the Safety First Campaign or their counterparts in other
states around the nation.

Sarah Brady
Nov 4, 1997
STATEMENT OF SARAH BRADY RE: NRA’S BIG GUNS HOLD WASHINGTON STATE HOSTAGE TO
WEAK GUN LAWS
[See here and here (even though the NYT got a lot of things wrong) for more information on I-676.

Nearly everything in this statement is false. I participated in this campaign and spend many nights at “ground zero” (CCRKBA campaign headquarters in Bellevue) at a personal cost of $1/minute in take home pay (I could have been earning overtime at my high paying contract job).

The lies and distortions are as follows:

  • The vote was 71%-29% against the initiative.  Even the liberal Seattle Times and Seattle Post Intelligencer editorial boards came out against it. 71% of the voters were not disappointed. When only a minority of citizens were “disappointed” it is inaccurate to say the “state’s citizens” were disappointed.
  • It had nothing to do with safety. It would have required gun owner licensing, training, firearm registration and, probably due to poor wording rather than intent, paperwork to transfer the gun back and forth if you let the guy in the shooting booth next to you fire a couple rounds. It was about putting barriers up to exercise a specific enumerated right recognized by both the Washington State Constitution and the U.S. Constitution.
  • The NRA came to the game late. It was the CCRKBA that lead the fight and put up most of the early money. Private polls showed we were ahead in September before the NRA dumped their money into the campaign.
  • Washington State was considered friendly territory to the anti-gun forces. Initial polling gave I-676 an easy win, something like 60-40 IIRC.
  • When voters stomped the anti-gun people into the mud 71 to 29 that is hardly a difficult win. We put more money and effort into the campaign than we knew was required to maximize the margin. We didn’t want to repeat the fight the next year or in another state. We wanted them completely demoralized and a stake driven through the heart of those concepts. It worked. They didn’t try that again anywhere–contrary to Brady’s prediction.

But I do agree with Sarah Brady on one item. The tide did turn in the gun control debate.–Joe]

They say ‘Big Brother’–I say ‘Party Time’

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Other bloggers say:

I say it’s Party Time.

There are many, many other options. Here is just a very small sample:

If I could get some custom made they would say “TSA = A Security Theater”.

Big Brother wants to spends millions on technology that can be defeated by $20 worth of plastic you can by online.

I have had mine for several years. Do you have yours?

Congressional hearing on gun control

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I usually am pretty well informed on these sort of things. But I didn’t hear about this:

National lawmakers were in Chicago
holding a Congressional hearing on proposed gun control legislation
today.

The Closing the Gun Show Loophole Act would require
private sellers at gun shows to perform background checks before selling
firearms. Illinois passed a similar law in 2005.

Jody Weis is
superintendent of Chicago Police. He says the law should be implemented in all
states.

WEIS: It’s just common sense legislation. I don’t see how anyone
could say this is restrictive when we’re simply asking for a background check if
you’re going to buy a weapon. This is pretty simple to understand.

“Common sense” legislation that raises the price, demands you get government permission, and enables backdoor registration, for a specific, enumerated, constitutionally protected, right.

What do you want to bet the people at the “hearings” only heard what they wanted to hear? Who attended? I can only find the one reference to this hearing which is very short on who we need to vote against in the next election.

And since when do they hold congressional hearings in Chicago? If they are going to hold hearings someplace other than D.C. it’s not surprising they chose Chicago for their gun control get together. If they had held it in Idaho, Arizona, or even Washington state they would have had protesters.

Gun cartoon of the day

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And this is funny on what planet?

I like sick humor. But this doesn’t qualify.

Quote of the day–Neal Knox

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When the ‘reasonable’ Brady Bill was pending, we told the world that radical unreasonable gun laws were waiting in the wings.

We were called paranoid, at best, and liars, at worst–by HCI, Congress, the news media and even some of our fellow gun owners.

Yesterday, Sen. Howard Metzenbaum (D-Ohio), Rep. Charles Schumer and Handgun Control, Inc. proved us right by introducing their ‘comprehensive gun control’ package, H.R. 3932/S. 1886. It is European-style total people control.

It has every provision on the anti-gunners’ wish list short of a total handgun ban. They’re satisfied, for now, with a ban on merely some handguns–for it creates the total registration and licensing system necessary to make an eventual confiscation law work.

The same day Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen announced that they were using the ‘Destructive Devices’ section of the 1968 Gun Control Act to put the ‘non-sporting’ Streetsweeper, Striker and USAS-12 shotguns under the same registration and $200 transfer tax applicable to machine guns under the National Firearms Act.

Neal Knox
March 3, 1994
HCI ‘Kitchen Sink’ Filed
From The Gun Rights War, page 203.
[When someone, like Half-Truth Henigan, from the Brady Campaign (formerly HCI) says there is no “slippery slope” (see chapter three in Henigan book Lethal Logic) remind them of 1994 and what they helped introduce back then.

When some politician tells you the law they are proposing won’t be pushed to the limits and beyond remind them the Treasury Secretary declared some 12-gauge shotguns ‘Destructive Devices’ putting them in the same category as RPGs, Claymore mines, and Bazookas.

And, as I have said before about this book, you shouldn’t read it just before trying to go to sleep. There will be way too much adrenaline in your system for the next few hours.–Joe]

Not for law enforcement use

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Notice anything interesting about the box of ammo on the top?

The ammo is showing up in Wal-Mart at prices equal to what I can reload it for (buying all new brass and my time is worth nothing).

At first I thought it was something along the lines of STI, Barrett, and Modern Ballistics regarding certain government entities. But that wouldn’t explain the restriction on ported barrels.

I’ve sent a query to Federal. If they get back to me I’ll post the response.

Update: I received the following response from Federal this morning:

From: Prodserv
Sent: Thursday, August 19, 2010 8:10 AM
To: Joe Huffman
Subject: RE: Federal Premium – Ask the Expert Form

The bullets are “low cost” and thin-plated, the rifling can and will cut
the jacket material from the lead core of the bullet, those pieces of
jacket can escape from the ports in the barrel.  When launched from the
barrel it is unknown where the jacket material will go and at the
shooter is one possible place. 

The Warning is the same (close) to that on the centerfire pistol caliber
shot shells as the pellets will act much like the copper fragments.

Thank you

—–Original Message—–
From: Joe Huffman
Sent: Wednesday, August 18, 2010 10:45 PM
To: Prodserv
Subject: Federal Premium – Ask the Expert Form

Joe Huffman
P.O. Box 3745
Moscow ID 83843

Can you explain why there is the notice on some boxes of ammunition:

“DO NOT USE IN FIREARMS WITH PORTED BARRELS OR PORTED RECOIL
COMPENSAORS.

Not for Law Enforcement Use”

An example is here:

http://bit.ly/dmuwj2

Thanks.

NRA 2010 Washington State endorsements

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I received this nearly a week ago but ended up being very very busy with a lot of travel and attending a wedding and procrastinated far too much.

I did use them for our own family voting in the primary. It should also be of use in the general election.

Before too long I expect there will be more specific things gun rights activists will be tasked with to make sure the legislatures receive the proper message this fall. I’ll be more responsive next time.

Gun cartoon of the day

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Yes. There have been some school shootings. And seeing a scene such as the one depicted would be adequate justification for concern. The guns should be properly cased for transport.

What is lost on most people is the school shooting incident data before and after schools were made “gun free zones”.

Quote of the day–Mark N.

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I’ve been here ten years and they have never had us dance in the parking lot before.

Mark N.
August 18, 2010
Explaining to an intern that should he get a job offer from Microsoft (he almost for certain will) it wouldn’t be fair to evaluate the future job requirements on this one afternoon’s activities.
[Mark is my boss.

It turns out we didn’t dance in the parking lot. We danced on the sidewalk.

It was an hour of attempting to teach 500 geeks about 20 seconds of dance steps and 15 minutes of filming. It went as well as could be expected. I suspect the only reason many of the guys tolerated it and stuck around is because the entire time it appeared the dance instructor was in imminent danger of a “wardrobe malfunction“.

If the video happens to make it to the Internet I was the guy in the back with the grimace moving out of sync to everyone else while wearing a Blackwater baseball cap and a t-shirt that said “There are very few personal problems that can’t be solved with a suitable application of high explosives.“–Joe]

What lesson was learned here?

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While I am pleased with the outcome:

He was walking toward the stairs when a teenage boy approached and pulled out
a knife.

“He wants my money, so I just gave him my wallet and told him, ‘Here you
go,'” Diaz says.

As the teen began to walk away, Diaz told him, “Hey, wait a minute. You
forgot something. If you’re going to be robbing people for the rest of the
night, you might as well take my coat to keep you warm.”

The would-be robber looked at his would-be victim, “like what’s going on
here?” Diaz says. “He asked me, ‘Why are you doing this?'”

Diaz replied: “If you’re willing to risk your freedom for a few dollars, then
I guess you must really need the money. I mean, all I wanted to do was get
dinner and if you really want to join me … hey, you’re more than welcome.

…

When the bill arrived, Diaz told the teen, “Look, I guess you’re going to
have to pay for this bill ’cause you have my money and I can’t pay for this. So
if you give me my wallet back, I’ll gladly treat you.”

The teen “didn’t even think about it” and returned the wallet, Diaz says. “I
gave him $20 … I figure maybe it’ll help him. I don’t know.”

Diaz says he asked for something in return — the teen’s knife — “and he gave
it to me.”

I have to wonder how often such a response to robbery will turn out so benign and how many potential thugs will be enabled by this story. I fear that such a response on a broad scale would encourage crime more than shame criminals into rethinking their career path.

Do criminologists have currently enough data to give us good answers to the obvious questions brought up by this story? If not, what sort of experiments could be run to get the answers with minimal risk to the experimenters?

Is there some sort of reliable character assessment can be done in the second and a half it takes to draw and fire your gun in the face of a deadly threat such that you are out an hour of your life and $20 rather than days or weeks of your time and many thousands of dollars defending against a civil suit or criminal charges for shooting a “choir boy”?

Go to your corners!

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This reminds me so much of when my brothers and I were very young and our mother would tell us to go stand with our noses in the corner after we got in a fight:

The Justice Department has settled a turf war between two federal law
enforcement agencies.

A recent audit by the Justice Department’s Office of Inspector General found
nationwide conflicts between the FBI and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms
and Explosives over which agency is in charge for federal explosives
investigations.

Acting Deputy Attorney General Gary G. Grindler wrote a memo to FBI Director
Robert Mueller and Ken Melson, currently the top-ranking official at the Bureau
of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, laying out the new framework.

Grindler’s eight-page memo calls for the FBI to be the lead agency for
domestic terrorism explosives investigations as well as explosives probes with a
link to international terrorism or weapons of mass destruction. ATF will be the
lead agency for everything else in the explosives realm.

Grindler also ordered the two agencies to do a better job of coordinating
their work on explosives investigations.

The new document says that the two agencies will develop a plan by Nov. 1 to
consolidate explosives training, with the goal of starting joint training by
early next February.

While I am of the opinion the ATF should not exist at all and the FBI should be not be involved in 90% of the stuff they are involved in I suppose this is a generally a good thing. It is less likely criminals will benefit from the turf war.

But still I think of it as sort of like Germany attacking Russia in 1941. Germany shouldn’t have been attacking anyone but if they are going to do it anyway you want them to do it to the most evil of your neighbors.

Gun cartoon of the day

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This, in essence, came up in the comments a few days ago. The artist twists facts to achieve their desired goal. A six year-old does not have the right to keep and bear arms, enter into legally binding contracts, marry, or associate with whoever they want. Even fundamental human rights about which there is essentially no controversy such as access to sexually explicit material is prohibited to children.

Misrepresentation of facts can be a sign of immaturity, laziness, stupidity, evil intent, or bigotry. I wonder which it is in this case (in the case of the comments to my previous post I attribute it to an attempt at humor which I dismiss as extremely unlikely in this case).

Quote of the day–japete

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Notice that the victim had a gun in his lap, obviously also ready to fire if necessary. The safety was on so he didn’t get the chance. I suppose one could say that is self defense on the part of the shooter. It’s getting a little murky here, though. What if the victim didn’t have a gun in his lap? Would it still be self defense? Under Florida law, people are allowed to shoot someone if they feel threatened and say it is self defense. It relies on what the shooter says. And, according to someone opposed to this law which passed unanimously (with an NRA representative standing next to Governor Bush as he signed the law) juries used to decide who was guilty or innocent. Now the shooter him or herself gets to decide.

What makes this even worse is that a year ago, the shooter was charged with aggravated battery and shooting a gun in a public place. Charges were dropped last October. There must be more to this case than we are seeing in the article. Why did this man still have a concealed weapons permit? The charges last year should have been enough to revoke his license. So, before knowing all of the particulars, I am wondering if this is actually a case for “enforcing the laws already on the books.” In this case, it goes both ways. One law says that the shooter goes free with no consequences for murdering another human being in cold blood. The other says that the shooter had some gun charges against him and was still able to legally carry. Hmmm.

japete
August 16, 2010
Shoot First everybody!
[I’ve been following japete’s blog, Common Gunsense, (as is usual for me all links to anti-rights websites have the “nofollow” attribute set) for several months. Her writing is a blend of a personal diary morning the loss of her sister and an almost solo gun control activist.

I find it interesting to observe how her mind works. There are the simplifications she makes:

There is a lot of support out there. Those of us in the “silent majority” must be making more noise about preventing senseless gun violence. We know we are right. Our language must be simple. It is, actually, a black and white issue but we tend to make it too nuanced. This morning, as I was getting dressed to spend another day at the convention, I looked at the clothes I chose. I am wearing black pants and a black and white tee shirt that says on both front and back, “Minnesotans Against Being Shot”. My shoes are black and white sneakers. So I thought of the nature of our arguments. Either you want to prevent gun injuries and deaths or you don’t. It is simple. Let’s keep it that way.

There is her dismissal as “nonsense” of arguments of others without any apparent examination of the issue:

United States Senator Charles Grassley ( R-Iowa) appeared to be wanting Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan to admit that the rights “guaranteed” in the Second Amendment was written before the Constitution. How is this possible? What Senator Grassley seemed to believe, and wanted Kagan and the rest of us to believe, was that the right to bear arms was actually created by God. No kidding. Here is a video of the Kagan hearings yesterday featuring Grassley’s questioning. Nonsense.

In the QOTD we still another item of interest. She states things as facts which are not true. For example, she apparently believes the only thing required for someone to not be charged in a shooting death is for the shooter to recite the magic phrases “I felt threatened” and “It was self defense” and the prosecutor walks away from the case. Physical evidence and witnesses supporting the validity of the self-defense claim have been dropped from her reality.

These sort of things apparently enable her to remain internally, and to a certain extent externally, consistent and maintain her belief system.

From this alternated reality base she goes on to reach the conclusions that 1) Accusations (charges) which were never proven (charges were dropped) should be sufficient to punish someone (revoke a concealed carry license); and 2) Legal self defense is cold blooded murder.

I can only conclude that grief can be powerful enough to severely warp the thinking process.

If you leave comments on her blog please be gentle. I almost feel as if I am intruding simply by reading her posts. If she wasn’t an activist for infringing upon the rights of others I would never point her out to others. But as it is I think there is a lot to be learned from her about the mechanism used to warp reality into something which matches the desired conclusions.–Joe]

Gun cartoon of the day

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It seems to the people on the left believe everything boils down to money/greed. There apparently is no such thing as principles. There are no such thing as inalienable rights. There apparently are no solutions that do not involve more government control. It is apparently inconceivable that less government control could be the solution to the problems they claim to be concerned about.

Either they are either incredibly narrowed minded, incredibly stupid, or incredibly evil. Most are not all that stupid. Other than a few politicians I don’t think they they have that high a percentage of evil in their midst. That leaves narrowed minded.

With such narrow minded and evil people in positions of power our current economic situation should not be a surprise to anyone. The only thing that will surprise me is if the future does not hold a lot of government caused deaths.

The school massacres have been caused by excessive government and the economic collapse, political unrest, and starvation ahead of us will result in many, many more deaths. Will this be the final lesson that will ever need be taught that attempting a socialist/communist utopia is a really, really bad idea? Or is it true…

Quote of the day–Ricketyclick

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The key tactic in any argument with a gun control advocate is to demand the citing of any instance where relaxing gun control laws has increased crime. And, I suspect, you can also do well by demanding the citing of any instance where imposing gun control on the general population has decreased crime.

Ricketyclick
More Flintlocks, Less Crime
August 13, 2010
[This is similar to Just One Question. And in fact takes it a short step further. This is fine with me.–Joe]

Gun cartoon of the day

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I’m not sure how to take this one.

It could be the kid is frowning because there are so many laws which are so complex that he has to start when very young in order to learn them all. Or it could be the artist intended to say the kid shouldn’t have to worry about the existence of guns and should be listening to fairy tales of a different type.

Quote of the day–Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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To rule is easy, to govern difficult.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
[I wonder if this contributes to why we have such a terrible situation with our government. Politicians, and to a large extent the populous, want to be rulers when the Constitution and the more Libertarian citizens expect them to direct the affairs and policies of the country within very limited constraints. Those who would be rules see it is easy to be what they want to be and those who would govern within the given limits while managing to take the heat from the press and people who want “money for nothing and chicks for free” realize the job is going to be tough with few thanks.–Joe]