If I had a TV

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If I had a TV and cable I might actually watch an episode or two of this:

LOCK ‘N LOAD is a six-part reality series offering viewers a fly on the wall experience at “The Shootist” gun store in Englewood, Colorado. Salesman Josh T. Ryan is always in full-on pitch mode and for every gun sold by this expert gunslinger at this family-owned store, there’s a fascinating story and a fascinating buyer.

LOCK ‘N LOAD doesn’t take sides or argue a political perspective. Instead, viewers on both sides of the issue will be able to watch Ryan, a born salesman, wield his patented quick-draw humor and inherent likeability in each exchange, making jokes and big-ticket deals over the blasts echoing from the firing range down below. And all is done before hidden cameras which will only be revealed after the transaction is completed in order to insure a particularly candid and compelling point of view. America is and will probably always be fascinated with the gun culture in our country and this show will help to explain why.

Maybe I can watch them on-line. The promos are intriguing.

Quote of the day–Kevin Baker

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You, Mr. Rubin, are fertilizing that weed with the manure you published in your “irrefutable” column.

Kevin Baker
July 20, 2009
Refuting the “Irrefutable”
[Kevin also uses the word “bigot” three times in his post which made me smile a great deal because Kevin listened to my little speech about that a few years ago.

Closely related is that for todays QOTD I was quite tempted by Robb Allen who said, “The other side has emotional appeals, a complete lack of facts to back up their assertions, and an appalling lack of apostrophes. We have Kevin Baker.”–Joe]

The rest of the story

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As we in the gun-rights community have often noted the anti-gun people have to cheat to win. Here is another attempt to cheat:

In Walt Whitman’s political tract, “The Eighteenth Presidency,” an attack on the dreadful state of American governance in 1856, he trained his sights on the “nominating dictators” of American political life. “Who are they?” he asked. The answer:

“Office-holders, office-seekers, robbers, pimps, exclusives, malignants, conspirators, murderers, fancy-men, post-masters, custom-house clerks, contractors, kept-editors, spaniels well-trained to carry and fetch, jobbers, infidels, disunionists, terrorists, mail-riflers, slave-catchers, pushers of slavery, creatures of the President, creatures of would-be Presidents, spies, blowers, electioneerers, body-snatchers, bawlers, bribers, compromisers, runaways, lobbyers, sponges, ruined sports, expelled gamblers, policy backers, monte-dealers, duelists, carriers of concealed weapons, blind men, deaf men, pimpled men, scarred inside with the vile disorder, gaudy outside with gold chains made from the people’s money and harlot’s money twisted together; crawling, serpentine men, the lousy combings and born freedom sellers of the earth.”

Emphasis in the original.

What the bigot didn’t mention is that the open carry of weapons was perfectly normal and acceptable at that time.

Update: After reading a comment to this post I realized I was easily misunderstood. When I said “Here is another attempt to cheat” I was referring to Mike Beard who wrote the post I linked to. Not Walt Whitman. Beard is saying people that want to carry concealed weapons have long been regarded as low-life. Beard failed to tell the rest of the story which does not match his agenda. I don’t have a problem with Whitman saying what he did because the culture was such that open carry and weapon possession in general was just fine. It was the concealment that was considered a problem. Beard wants to create a culture, and has largely succeeded, where weapons possession in general is a mark of a low-life and attempts to obtain support from history for his position.

Too sarcastic?

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As I noted this morning James Higham in the U.K. is challenging the utility of gun bans. I chimed in with a somewhat sarcastic comment on his blog:

CherryPie said, I don’t agree with arms in our own homes that is the thin end of the wedge and would lead to complete lawlessness.

That is an interesting hypothesis. Can you demonstrate where this has actually happened?

My experience has been that when a gun has been put in the hands of an individual they are no more or less law abiding than they were before the gun was in their hands. I’ve even put a gun in the hands of a guy from England to test the hypothesis that Brits can’t be trusted with guns. I didn’t really believe that hypothesis but I thought I should test it because apparently the British government believes it to be true.

He took a few shots then then told me, “It’s just a piece of metal! I thought I would be nearly overcome by a sense of power. But it’s just a piece of metal.”

Yup. Just a piece of metal. And he was no more inclined to shoot someone than he would have been inclined to hit someone if the piece of metal had been the shape of a hammer or to cut someone if the metal was in the shape of a knife. A similar experiment with another Brit yielded similarly benign results.

I admit it’s a very small sample size but at this time I’m disinclined to believe the presence of firearms in British homes represents a greater risk of lawlessness than does the presence of knives and/or hammers.

Perhaps you have access to some data which I do not and can share it with me.

Was I too sarcastic? Not enough? Or was it just about right?

Nationalized health care

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Nationalizing our health care system doesn’t just fail my Jews in the Attic Test, it’s bad for your health as well.

See also:

Barb works in the medical profession and I would tell you what she thinks of government involvement in health care but I try to keep the language here acceptable for polite society.

And I thought I was rebellious

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I pay cash for nearly everything I can. Rent and utilities for the underground bunker in the Seattle area, and most of my gasoline, ammo, guns, and range fees are all paid for with cash.

I don’t hesitate to call people advocating gun control bigots or say they have mental problems.

I encouraged Barb to keep her own name when we got married (which she did). And that was nearly 33 years ago when it was far less common than it is now.

I advocate pushing the limits of what is acceptable and pushing buttons in people. I challenge people to make them think and to slow down the encroachment upon our freedoms.

I’ve started open carrying in certain places.

But a fellow Idaho resident makes me look a bit pathetic in my timid attempts at rebellion. See how she handled the marriage license and the SSN. I’m proud she lives in the same town as I (sometimes) do.

Quote of the day–James Higham

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There was a time when it was not necessary to defend oneself in this country of ours. There was a time when an Englishman’s home was his castle. There was a time when a Briton wouldn’t dream of being armed.

That time has passed.

James Higham
July 20, 2009
[defending ourselves] the time has come
[James lives in the U.K. and is saying the gun and self-defense bans aren’t working and it’s time to change things. It is a little more timid than I would (and do) approach the subject but perhaps that is more appropriate when dealing with these people.

James uses several of the references I provided via email (and blog post). He also quotes Just One Question and my Jews in the Attic Test. Thanks for the links James.

So far the comments are essentially neutral. Perhaps people are thinking about it rather than just lashing out. If so, then perhaps there is hope for them yet.–Joe]

Quote of the day–George Rengert & John Wasilchick

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Only 13% of U.S. residential burglaries are attempted against occupied homes. U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, Household Burglary, BJS BULL. at 4 (1985). Criminologists attribute the prevalence of daytime burglary to burglars’ fear of confronting an armed occupant; burglars report that they avoid late-night home invasions because, “That’s the way you get yourself shot.”

George Rengert & John Wasilchick
Suburban Burglary: A Tale of Two Suburbs page 33.
(2nd ed. 2000)(study of Delaware County, Penn., and Greenwich, Conn.)
[This disincentive goes away if the victims have been disarmed. In fact it then becomes beneficial to “visit” when the victims are present so they can obtain wallets with cash, credit cards, and the combination to the safe.–Joe]

Questions for Mike Lux?

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I’ll be soon be attending an meeting where Mike Lux will be speaking. I probably will get a chance to ask a question or maybe two. Do you have any questions for him?

His bio:

Mike Lux is the co-founder and CEO of Progressive Strategies. Since starting the company, Mike has launched a number of important projects, including American Family Voices, an issue advocacy group working on pocketbook issues for American families; and the Progressive Donor Network, which works to coordinate a network of individual donors, issue advocacy groups, and top flight political consultants and strategists.

Mike’s recent projects have garnered a considerable amount of media coverage in The Washington Post, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Business Week, National Journal, The New Republic and Miami Herald, and have provoked numerous attacks by Rush Limbaugh and other right wing media figures, as well as an “expose” by William Buckley’s National Review Magazine.

In addition to those projects, Mike serves on the boards of several important organizations, including the Arca Foundation. In addition to serving on the board, Mike was also a co-founder of Americans United for Change, Center for Progressive Leadership, Grassroots Democrats, Progressive Majority, Ballot Initiative Strategy Center, and Women’s Voices/Women Vote. He also played a role in helping launch the Center for American Progress and Air America.

In the late 1990’s, Mike was Senior Vice President for Political Action at People For the American Way (PFAW), and the PFAW Foundation. He oversaw lobbying and legal advocacy, field operations, state and regional offices, voter registration and get-out-the-vote efforts. He helped launch the PFAW PAC and the PFAW Voters Alliance in 1997. He was also responsible for coalition building with other organizations and interest groups.

Before joining People For the American Way, from January 1993 to mid-1995, Mike served as Special Assistant to President Clinton for Public Liaison in the White House, where his role on health care and budget issues involved working closely with a wide range of constituency groups including labor, seniors, churches, disability groups, businesses, health care providers, trial lawyers, consumer groups and farm groups. He organized the first clergy breakfast, the first state opinion leader’s days, and the first bill signing ceremony of the Clinton presidency. Lux served in the 1992 campaign war room, the 1993 budget war room and the 1994 health care war room (being one of only two people to serve in all three); and was the person who organized the coalition to fight the school lunch cuts the Republicans were pushing in 1995, the first issue they were soundly defeated on after taking control of Congress.

Prior to his service at the White House, Mike served as Constituency Director on both the 1992 Clinton-Gore campaign and the presidential transition team. In the 1988 cycle, Mike was a member of the senior staff for the Biden and Simon presidential campaigns. In the 1984 cycle, he played a major volunteer role in the Iowa Mondale campaign.

With a diverse breadth of experience, Mike has an extensive background in the consulting, labor and consumer advocacy worlds. He was a partner and cofounder of the Chicago-based political consulting firm, The Strategy Group; served as Executive Vice President, PAC director and chief lobbyist for the Iowa AFL-CIO in the early 1990s; and worked as Executive Director of the Iowa Citizen Action Network.

In July of 2007, Mike Lux launched OpenLeft.com with prominent bloggers Matt Stoller and Chris Bowers. OpenLeft.com is a news, analysis and action website dedicated toward building a progressive governing majority in America. OpenLeft.com connects establishment progressive groups with outsider activists in conversations and a variety of projects to build a progressive governing majority and furthering progressive policy.

In November of 2008, Mike was named to the Obama-Biden Transition Team. In that role, he served as an advisor to the Public Liaison on dealings with the progressive community and has helped shape the office of Public Liaison based on his past experience working on the Clinton-Gore Transition, as well as in the White House.

On January 14, 2009, Lux released his first book, The Progressive Revolution: How the Best in America Came to Be. Lux’s book was published by Wiley Publishing.

Quote of the day–Dmitry Orlov

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Food. Shelter. Transportation. Security. Security is very important. Maintaining order and public safety requires discipline, and maintaining discipline, for a lot of people, requires the threat of force. This means that people must be ready to come to each other’s defense, take responsibility for each other, and do what’s right. Right now, security is provided by a number of bloated, bureaucratic, ineffectual institutions, which inspire more anger and despondency than discipline, and dispense not so much violence as ill treatment. That is why we have the world’s highest prison population. They are supposedly there to protect people from each other, but in reality their mission is not even to provide security; it is to safeguard property, and those who own it. Once these institutions run out of resources, there will be a period of upheaval, but in the end people will be forced to learn to deal with each other face to face, and Justice will once again become a personal virtue rather than a federal department.

Dmitry Orlov
February 13, 2009
Social Collapse Best Practices

For our fellow freedom fighters in the UK

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I received a request for help from James in the UK. Here was my response (actually sent in two pieces, but combined here):

I would like to suggest you follow the links in the post Just One Question. The Center for Disease Control (CDC) reviewed a number of studies and was unable to conclude gun control made people safer. That review, and the studies they looked at, are probably the most reliable data points.

The following links are not to statistics. The CDC study would be the best reference I have for that.

I don’t have it but I think this book would be very useful:

http://www.joyceleemalcolm.com/books/guns_and_violence

I’ve read a few excerpts and it seemed quite good.

This might also be worthwhile:

http://www.joyceleemalcolm.com/books/keep_and_bear_arms

For more background and potential ways to approach the problem take a look at these:

https://blog.joehuffman.org/?s=%22James%20Kelly%22&submit=Search
https://blog.joehuffman.org/category/places-without-guns/
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/britain-is-capital-of-crime-says-us-tv-channel-715251.html
http://www.reason.com/news/show/28582.html

Good luck!

Update:

Gun control also violates my Jews in the Attic Test.

Quote of the day–Howard Nemerov

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Don’t like Jews or Catholics? Hitler disarmed them and then murdered millions in concentration camps, along with Gypsies, homosexuals, etc.

Hate Christians? After Uganda banned guns, 300,000 were rounded up and murdered.

Don’t like “smart” people? After banning guns, Cambodia rounded up and murdered over one million of them.

Hate people who disagree with you? After the Soviet Union established gun control, over 20 million dissidents were rounded up and killed.

By comparison, the Second Amendment has actually saved millions of lives. It also protects your right to religious freedom, your pursuit of happiness, and your opportunity for upward mobility. It raises the cost for thugs who want you rounded up and murdered.

It also shows that anybody who is against the civil right of self-defense is a person who hates your life, liberty, and happiness.

Why would you want to be disarmed before such a person?

Howard Nemerov
July 16, 2009
Does civilian gun ownership cause bloodshed?
[Just a friendly reminder of the costs of weapon restrictions. And can you tell me again–just what are the benefits?

I have to conclude the people advocating weapons restrictions are either ignorant or consider the costs listed above are actually benefits. Since information is so readily available the ignorance is willful hence no matter how you look at it such people are contemptable no matter how they arrive at their position of restricting the private ownership of weapons.–Joe]

He’s really on our side, right?

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Sometimes “The Gun Guy” is so far out that it’s like a caricature. But he’s further out than I could portray even if I tried. Case in point:

If the gun lobby gets its way in Congress, the following scenarios might become all too real:

  • You’re visiting an elderly family member at the hospital when you see a gruff man in the parking lot adjusting his loaded and deadly handgun in his belt. You inform the nurse that there is a dangerous and armed man outside and the nurse informs you that it is “legal” for the gun owner to carry a concealed weapon only steps away from the hospital entrance.
  • You’re walking through the park with your kids on a sunny day eating ice cream when you see two men pull up in a dark SUV. As you walk by, you see them take two handguns out of the glove box and stick them in their jackets. You immediately call 9-1-1 to inform the police that there are armed men in a park with families and children, but the police tell you that unless their is cause, the armed men are perfectly legal carrying deadly weapons in family-friendly locations.
  • You’re at a coffee shop sipping your latte when you see a woman with a handgun casually tucked inside her purse chatting away on her cell phone and says she’s from out of state. You’re terrified at the sight of the weapon knowing that children are present. You ask an employee why loaded handguns are allowed at a coffee shop and the barista says that the owner still hasn’t posted a sign explicitly prohibiting carrying concealed weapons and therefore it’s permitted.

A gruff man with a handgun is known to be dangerous? “A gruff man with a handgun” describes a fair number of police officers.

He puts quotes around the word legal? It’s currently legal in nearly all states. So what is his point? The proposed law wouldn’t make the described scenarios any more or less legal.

Armed men in the park? I’ve done this more times than I could count and I know lots of people that do it. It’s currently legal in nearly all states. So what is his point?

Women at a coffee shop with a gun in her purse–and his point is? Oh, yeah. He’s terrified.

If he were talking about blacks or homosexuals that way it would be virtually impossible for him to get or keep a job. But since it is gun owners he is talking about he gets paid by the Joyce Foundation to spew hate at such a ridiculous level it’s difficult to not believe it is a deliberate farce.

Either Scott Vogel is conning the Joyce Foundation or he is really wacko. I’m really not sure which.

Quote of the day–H. Ray Golenor

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Some people so treasure the truth that they use it with great economy.

H. Ray Golenor
[I got this from someone else I traded quote databases with and I don’t know if this guy even exists. There are numerous references to this same quote by the same guy, but nothing else that I could see in a quick web search. One has to wonder if politicians made him “disappear” or something.–Joe]

Managing Us Verses Protecting Our Rights – mutually exclusive concepts

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This is for J H.  He and Joe were discussing statistics related to gun restriction in comments here.

This line of argument, taken by itself, is to say nothing of human rights, the right to live being most fundamental and the right to self defense going hand in hand with the right to live.

If we are to leave out any discussion of rights, and focus purely on how people get injured or how they die in accidents and crimes as a means of determining and justifying laws, then we’d start by banning the wheel.  Swimming pools, access to rivers and lakes, etc., and stairs would be ahead of guns in private hands as a focus of legislative restriction.  Somewhere in between would be legal restrictions on unprotected sex and leaving the home while ill.  But that would be government thinking of the people in the same way that a farmer thinks of his cattle.

It is when we look at guns in the hands of governments that we find mass death, numbering in the tens of millions, and there you find the primary purpose of our second amendment– defense or deterrence against tyranny, or more to the point it should be seen as defense of human rights by those who hold those rights (we the people).  Who then should look at whom as property?  Keeping our servants in government (our cattle) properly de-horned is, historically, the more important concern if we are to have any sort of owner/property relationships with one another.

Once we’ve accepted the Nanny State as the ideal form of government, all bets are off anyway, and arguing figures and statistics alone is to fight the battle on your enemy’s chosen ground.  Even being wrong in their figures, your enemy has won by deciding the terms of battle.  People are in fact injured and killed through the use of or involvement with guns in private hands.  That is a fact.  Hence the Nanny State will find an excuse to restrict them if that’s what they want and if they feel safe in doing it.

The true winning argument is that the state has no legitimate jurisdiction over any behavior or possession that in itself does not violate the rights of other people.  If I have a gun in my pocket I haven’t violated any other person’s rights by that fact alone.  If I haul off and smack someone at random in the head with a baseball bat, it is not the fault of the state for allowing free, un-restricted access to baseball bats.  It is I who would have committed a crime by violating the rights of another person, for which I would rightly be held accountable.  In attempting to restrict generally the access to baseball bats as a result of my crime, the state would be perpetrating tyranny by way of making victims out of innocent persons.  We call that sort of behavior “prior restraint”– restraining someone in some way prior to them having threatened or done anything wrong to anyone.

It is well and good to point out the stupidity of arms restrictions, and how their effects are virtually always counter to the stated goal of making people safer, but those issues are a distant secondary to the issues of human rights.  Otherwise we’d be confiscating automobiles, banning certain sports, et al.  Without human rights as the fundamental principle guiding our policies, the totalitarian state is an inevitability.

Quote of the day–Phil

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Oh, sure, they say they’re doing it for folks with paralysis, but you know and I know that just as soon as they are able, GE is going to build a primate powered MechWarrior.

I wonder if SCOTUS will see the logic in rocket launchers as self-defense weaponry then?

Phil
July 15, 2009
Forget Zombies
[Don’t forget destructive devices. I’m thinking about 2000 pounds of Boomerite would be about the minimum acceptable charge.–Joe]

What do facts have to do with belief?

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Kevin asks, How Can People Still Believe This?

It’s easy, just because something is irrational doesn’t mean you don’t have to believe in it. Or so says one high school teacher.

Ayn Rand says it’s because philosophy isn’t taught. Or at least the philosophy that is taught, mostly indirectly, has been total crap. Philosophy, she said, is vital to humans. When we have crap for philosophy we make crappy decisions and this person is just one example of many with crap for brains.

Quote of the day–Andrew S. Tanenbaum

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The nice thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from. Furthermore, if you do not like any of them, you can just wait for next year’s model.

Andrew S. Tanenbaum
Computer Networks, second edition, page 254
[While at the gym this morning I watched Sotomayor’s confirmation hearing for a few minutes. When she started talking about court precedents in regard to the 2nd Amendment I was reminded of Tanenbaum’s quote.–Joe]

Preparing for shooty goodness

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Yesterday daughter Kim and I went out to the Boomershoot site to do some prep work for Boomershoot 2010. She folded a bunch of target boxes:

I killed yellow-jackets, threw out dead mice, put out more rat/mice and ant poison, and replaced the bait in the yellow-jacket trap.

I also did an inventory of boxes, chemicals and target stakes. I want all of those on site before the rains start this fall. I don’t want to worry about being able to get a supply vehicle through the snow and/or mud to the Taj Mahal next spring like I did this spring.

We now have 675 boxes all folded and put in crates ready for Boomershoot 2010. I need to buy a few hundred more, get them folded, put in crates, and maybe even load some of them with lime before next spring. Lots of other things need to be done too. I want to improve the shooters berms. It needs to be deeper in places. Our “well” isn’t working and I have suspicions that the solar panels the recharge the batteries are not working either.

The Second Law of Thermodynamics rules all. But that is sort of what Boomershoot is about, right? It’s about moving things from a high energy state to a lower energy state. I just sometimes wish there wasn’t so much effort involved in achieving the high energy state.

I could have told them that 30 years ago

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Via an email from Kevin comes this (see also this and this):

The advice appears in leaflets circulated to parents, teachers and youth workers and is meant to update sex education by telling students about the benefits of enjoyable sex.

…

Entitled Pleasure, the leaflet has been drawn up by NHS Sheffield, but it also being circulated outside the city.

The leaflet carries the slogan “an orgasm a day keeps the doctor away”. It also says: “Health promotion experts advocate five portions of fruit and veg a day and 30 minutes’ physical activity three times a week. What about sex or masturbation twice a week?”

Ho, hum. That has been Dr. Joe’s cure for everything for over 30 years. Just ask Barb.

Posted in Sex