Via email from Kris:
The power to do good is also the power to do harm.
Milton Friedman
[There is also a variation of this attributed to Barry Goldwater (probably false), Thomas Jefferson (probably false), and Gerald Ford (probably correct), “A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have.”
Regardless of who should get the credit the idea is correct and people advocating for health care involvement by the government need to realize the terrible risk they are advocating we all take by giving the government control of our health. They can “give” but they can, and will, take it away as well.
Similar cases can be made for government involvement in weapons ownership, the banking industry, and just about anything the government was not given specific enumerated powers in the constitution.–Joe]
An atomic blaster is a good weapon, but it can point both ways.
Salvor Hardin
[This is as true today as it was in the future. Something both tyrants and “Threepers” should keep in mind.–Joe]
It appears the FBI and the ATF can’t seem to play well together:
Agents of the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives are feuding over bomb investigations — racing each other to crime scenes, failing to share information and refusing to train together, according to a draft report obtained by The Associated Press.
The report says Justice Department bosses have repeatedly failed to fix the problem.
The Justice Department’s Inspector General, Glenn Fine, has drafted a preliminary report on the two agencies’ repeated squabbles to claim jurisdiction in investigations of explosives incidents across the country — from Times Square in New York City to Arizona and the West Coast.
The most recent documented spat came last December when the FBI protested a local prosecutor’s request to use the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives to investigate a blast that killed a local bomb technician in Woodburn, Ore.
FBI and ATF supervisors “tend to deploy their employees to the larger, more sensational explosives incidents, sometimes racing each other to be the first federal agency on the scene and disputing upon arrival which agency should lead the investigation,” according to a draft version of the report.
It seems to me the Justice Department bosses are overlooking the obvious simple solution to the problem. If they would just look in the Constitution they would find they don’t have the authority for either the FBI or the ATF. If they would just disband both organizations and let the state law enforcement organizations handle the issues there wouldn’t be these squabbles between the two illegitimate siblings.
But the Justice Department is just like any other welfare mother and the more children it can bring into the world the more money it can justify taking from the tax payers. It’s time to kick the bums out and demand they make an honest living.
This post inspired by Say Uncle’s post about bedtime stories.
Dr. Seuss was clearly a socialist, and the Sneetches story is but a minor example of it. The Lorax is worse. Maybe I’ll do a post about that later.
I’ve always wondered why the plain-bellied sneetches didn’t just host their own beach parties instead of being all butt hurt and envious over being excluded from the star bellies’ parties. Ayn Rand would tell us that the star bellies were attempting a monopoly, which in a free market (that is to say, a market without some means of enforcing the monopoly through legislation or outright brute force) is merely enticing capital into start-up competition. If the plain bellies’ started throwing really good parties of their own, some of the star bellies would eventually want to attend. If the plain bellies let them attend, the plain belly organized parties would begin to dominate, or take over altogether unless the star bellies changed their discriminative ways.
A free market is self correcting in so many ways, and correcting against arbitrary discrimination is but one example. We see this in real life just looking at music or sports pre civil rights era, where excluding black players meant missing out on some of the best. By the time I was in middle school (late 1960s) Motown was well-represented, if not dominating, the top 40 on AM radio.
That’s what I tell my kids. If their public school teachers can’t handle it, well, it’s their own problem that they choose to make fools of themselves.
Dennis Henigan apparently thinks of President Obama as the Neville Chamberlain of the gun issue:
Appeasement.” What word better describes the current attitude of the Obama administration, and many in the Democratic Party, toward the gun lobby?
The word recently was invoked by syndicated columnist Marie Cocco referring to the approach of the White House to the gun issue. “Obama and the Democrats haven’t stared down the gun lobby,” she wrote. “They’ve enabled it.”
Is it a stretch to envision President Obama as the Neville Chamberlain of the gun issue?
There is a major problem with this mindset–It’s total projection.
The people of this country had a “treaty” with the government. On the issue of guns that “treaty” says:
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
It was people like Henigan in the early part of the last century that began violating that treaty in a manner similar to the way Hitler did the Treaty of Versailles. It was the pro-gun people that did the appeasing and playing the role of Chamberlain for the last 70 years. Obama? He’s neither Chamberlain or Churchill. Even though he is politically aligned with Hitler on this issue he isn’t even playing in the game. Perhaps he wishes to avoid Hitler’s fate or that he is more astute than Hitler and realizes the risk of fighting a multi-front war.
Henigan realizes his hoped for “Final Solution” isn’t visible in the political future and is concerned. He goes on to say:
The real problem, of course, is that there is no end to the gun lobby’s demands. The more you feed the beast, the more it will want.
Henigan is also wrong on this point. All we want is for the “treaty” to be honored. “Shall not be infringed” should be clear enough and probably is even to Henigan. But, of course, the plain wording of the “treaty” is unacceptable to Henigan and his ilk just as it was to Hitler.
Let’s just hope President Obama continues to avoid getting draw into war against gun owners. If war breaks out it could get very ugly and we gun owners, as did the Allies in WW II, might not settle for a negoiated peace and demand an unconditional surrender. And if we have to drop a couple “nukes” to win the war the fallout will be unheathy for everyone.
Sebastian and David Hardy have a few thoughts on Henigan’s whine as well.
Microsoft matches charity donations dollar for dollar for full-time (a “blue-badge” in the local vocabulary) employees. The Second Amendment Foundation has been receiving my automatic payroll deductions since I started full time with MS.
Kevin reports my donations, matched by Microsoft, have been put to good use:
I’ll post about this again, but last night SayUncle asked a question about donating toward the legal fight for our rights, mentioning that he’d received emails from people saying they’d tried to donate during the Parker/Heller litigation and had been refused. Alan said that there had been a deliberate decision to take that case all the way without outside aid of any kind, which is why offers of assistance had been politely but firmly declined. However, all the current litigation, such as the Chicago incorporation suit and many others, are being paid for by the Second Amendment Foundation and CalGuns. If you want to help now, that’s where your money needs to go. I’ve been receiving solicitations from SAF for a while, but I did not know that they were the financiers of these efforts. They’ll be receiving donations from me in the future, and I hope from you as well.
The payroll deductions are open for change starting October 1st and I’ll be increasing the amount they get.
Making the Brady Campaign people cry just a little bit longer tonight niece Lisa picked up her concealed carry permit yesterday.
Via email from Kris:
Combining two of the things that make young men happiest in one place.
If women in bras and swimsuits are safe for work then so is this site. Refresh the page for another set.
No. I didn’t have anything to do with the site or any of the content. If I had both types of pictures would have been more extreme.
The final topic we got into was what he thought the biggest threats to the Second Amendment were, and what we, as bloggers, could do about it. His response was that he did not feel that the biggest threat to the Second Amendment came from groups like the Brady Campaign, VPC, or the now defunct Second Amendment Research Center run by Saul Cornell. He believes the biggest threat to the Second Amendment comes from our own extremists and lunatics, and that the biggest way we could contribute as bloggers is in confronting that cancer within our community.
Sebastian
September 15, 2009
Mr. Gura Goes to Reno
[I think it is extremely telling that the Brady Campaign and VPC are not considered a significant threat. They are headed for the dustbins of history.–Joe]
I like listening to Michael Medved’s radio program whenever I get the chance. For one thing, he’s good at getting leftists to call in, and then toying with them like a cat playing with a captured mouse. Once in a while though, I have a major beef. Discussing Obama’s address to Congress last week, Medved commended Obama for saying all the right things (the speech could have been delivered by Ronald Reagan). Medved was being critical of conservatives who were in turn being critical of Obama’s speech.
Sure; Obama said all the right things, in much the same way that Ted Bundy said the right things as he was coaxing his victims into his van. I’m not going to commend him for it though.
Even with all the relaxed gun laws and the big gun buying spree that began in late 2008 it didn’t translate into increased crime rates. In fact it was just the opposite:
Murder and manslaughter dropped almost 4 percent last year, as reported crime overall fell around the country, according to new data released Monday by the FBI.
The 3.9 percent decline in killings reported to police was part of a nationwide drop in violent crime of 1.9 percent from 2007 to 2008. Rapes declined 1.6 percent, to the lowest national number in 20 years — about 89,000.
The statistics are based on crimes reported to police, who then forward the information to the FBI. There were 14,180 murder victims in the United States last year.
“What has been impressive has been how flat all the violent crime rates have been since 2000. To a large degree that’s still the case, but the striking change this year has been murder,” said Alfred Blumstein, a professor of criminal justice at Carnegie-Mellon University.
The figures show that crime has come way down since its peak in the early 1990’s.
This was in the presence of a huge economic downturn which usually is an indicator for increased crime rates. So either gun ownership isn’t positively correlated with crime (and in fact is negative associated with crime rates) or there is some other driving factor which observers don’t know about or want to talk about.
I think my line in the sand got washed away by the incoming tide.
But I will know where it is when nobody else remembers.
Michael Gale
September 14, 2009
Comment to Jeepers Threepers
[Yeah, it often feels that way.–Joe]
Last Saturday (the 5th) I borrowed Dad’s bulldozer and went playing in the dirt at the Boomershoot range. The main objectives were to make the berm the shooters use a little bit wider and deeper.
We have 22 shooting positions on the berm and prior to 2009 I only allocated six feet per position. This was a little too crowded and since everyone else had at least eight feet I wanted to expand it enough to accommodate eight feet for everyone. I tried to do that last fall for Boomershoot 2009 but didn’t quite add enough space. There was only room for 7′ 6″ for everyone. I really should have taken my laser range finder with me. So this year I brought the laser range finder and added enough that I could give everyone an honest eight feet.
I extended the east end of the berm by about 20 feet:
I think I squared up the end a little bit after taking this picture so it didn’t slope quite so much at the very end.
The other problem was that some areas of the berm were not deep enough and people had problems sliding down off the back side of the berm. Here is a before picture:
Here is during my modifications:
For reference purposes the width of the tracks is about 6′ 8″.
The following is after I smoothed off the top of the berm. I smoothed out the area in front of the berm a little later.
Everyone should have about eight feet of depth as well as width on the top of the berm.
The secondary objectives were to fill in the hole I had made near the Taj Mahal checking for a leak in the water barrel. Here is what it looked like after I got done with it on Saturday:
I extended the parking area into the trees some to give some more shaded area.
I dug out and pushed some big rocks out of the grain field about 1/2 mile to the west on my way back to the house.
I got very dirty. The hat, eye and ear protection left some almost clean spots.
My Gun Blog 45 also got very dirty. No. I didn’t test it in this condition.
I didn’t think of it at the time but I really should have made a level spot for tents instead of the parking area near the Taj Mahal. If I have time I might go back and do that this fall some time.
Yesterday Barb and I went on a hike on Mount Hood. Some of the details are on my Twitter feed here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. A few of the pictures:
Impressive mountain but not as pretty as Mount Rainer where we spent our anniversary a few years ago.
Yes, I was open carrying the entire way. No one said anything but Barb said some people were looking.
We got as high as 7000 feet. I could have gone further but Barb had some tight muscles and was tired.
Some people were carrying skis and snow boards. We didn’t actually see anyone come down the mountain on them though.
Mount Jefferson in the background is almost 50 miles away.
Even without Barb in the picture it was a nice view.
Lots of interesting plant life at the higher altitudes.
It appeared there had been larger trees here at one time.
I do ask for laws that would restrict sales of M-16s, AK 47s, or Uzi’s. I don’t care what anyone says, hunting with machine guns makes no sense. The only use for them, the use for which they were intended, is to kill people. Lots of people, real fast.
It’s no secret that automatic weapons are so easy to buy that American gun dealers supply the Mexican cartels with 90 percent of the weapons they use to terrorize people on both sides of the border.
Dave Stancliff
September 13, 2009
Let’s face it, no one will take the high road to gun control
[Actually, I think it is a secret–since only the anti-gun people believe it. The pro-gun people know they have to spend 10s of thousands of dollars on an automatic weapons of any type if they can find one for sale.
He also implies hunting is the reason people want to own machine guns. None of people that I know who own machine guns claim that is the reason for ownership of them.
Also in the article is the suspicious claim that “About two billion bullets were made in America last year, bringing in about $7.5 billion”. This implies an average cost of about $3.25 per round. This is more than a little bit high.
This is all more evidence that the MSM (this guy is a “former newspaper editor and publisher”) does not care or is too lazy to know the facts.
Comments can be sent to richstan1@suddenlink.net or www.davesblogcentral.com–Joe.]
I keep hearing what I think are their voices:
Before they make that mistake, politicians who have spent years ignoring their consciences and taking the N.R.A.’s orders should listen closely to Tennessee’s citizens. As one demanded at a local hearing this summer: “Are you going to hear the voices of the unarmed?”
They sound like sheep to me. Sheep that don’t realize there are wolves among them.
The instant formal government is abolished, society begins to act. A general association takes place, and common interest produces common security.
Thomas Paine
The Rights of Man
[I recently finished “reading” (listening to it) this book. I was familiar with most of the material in it but what struck me was the debate between him and Edward Burke. Burke was defending a monarchical type of government and Paine argued people had “natural rights” that no government had authority to infringe. It was then that I realized just how revolutionary Paine’s ideas were and how important to Western society many of them are.
As the product description on Amazon says:
The Rights of Man written by legendary author Thomas Paine is widely considered to be one of the top 100 greatest books of all time. This great classic will surely attract a whole new generation of readers. For many, The Rights of Man is required reading for various courses and curriculums. And for others who simply enjoy reading timeless pieces of classic literature, this gem by Thomas Paine is highly recommended. Published by Classic House Books and beautifully produced, The Rights of Man would make an ideal gift and it should be a part of everyone’s personal library.
It’s not a particularly long book but it is a very important book.–Joe]
Hanging with Alan Gura. I’ll tell him you said ‘hi’.
Say Uncle
September 11, 2009
Cool
[If I were there (the Gun Blogger Rendezvous) I would say “Thank you!” After that I’d probably be tongue tied. What meaningful thing can you say to someone like that?–Joe]
From our friend in Israel;
Friends:
I’m depressed. Neither METV, ESPN nor FOX Sports had a single NFL game on during the past, extended weekend. This does not bode well.
At least I should be able to OD on NFL during November. I’ll be home for the month lecturing to the Greater Washington Council of Governments on the 10th, to M-STEP (Minnesota Symposium on Terrorism and Emergency Preparedness) on the 17th, the Polk County Iowa Sheriff’s Office on the 19th and at ITOA (nearby Chicago) from the 22nd thru the 24th. Will be in Connecticut visiting Mom and generally staying at my son and his family in northern Virginia between November 4th and December 1st.
Anyone Exhibiting at any of these conferences let me know. Anyone want to attend my lecture(s) on terrorism, but not a member of Hosting organization, let me know and I’ll try to get you in.
For the several of you who asked for specific contact information:
If you are contacted by any Israeli proposing to provide terrorism education and/or weapons or other training, an individual who when you request does not immediately provide you with a copy of her/his official Israeli Ministry of Defense permit to Conduct Negotiation with entities in the USA, you should contact:
Gidon Mertez, Representative of the MOD’s Defense Exports Trade Control Division, at the Israeli Embassy in Washington, DC. Telephone Number (202)-364-5608.
These folks want to hear from you!
Got to run the dogs out.
Howard