Barack Obama in 2008 made this promise to his supporters. "I believe in the Second Amendment. I will not take your shotgun away. I will not take your rifle away. I won't take your handgun away… But I am not going to take your guns away.
Saturday, December 29, 2012
Obama 2008: “I Am Not Going To Take Your Guns Away, That Just Ain’t True” (Video)
More Sandy Hook Inconsistencies
I saw a video a week or so ago that showed what looked like long guns gringo removed from the vehicle of the shooter, potential evidence that a rifle may not have been used in the shooting if it was left in the vehicle.
Well, it seems that what the authorities have said about the gun used to kill the children in Sandy Hook was a lie.
We have to ask, how could one person in a few minutes time be able to shoot multiple times and kill 26 people. They had said that only handguns were used in the beginning. They then changed that. The news reported that it was "only" handguns taken inside the school.
The court in Connecticut has sealed all the information from the shooting for at least 90 days. I guess this is so they can straighten the story up more and due to so many on the internet proving what they said has not been the full truth.
What could be the motive for preventing public access to information regarding the tragedy?
Here is the absolute confirmation from authorities as reported on NBC News:
The more I learn, the less seems to be clear.
Friday, December 28, 2012
Gun Control Failure of the Year - Chicago hits 500 Homicides for 2012
Still think there's no correlation between gun control and violence?
Here's your gun control failure of the year. Mayor Rahm Emanuel and the Bradys were unavailable for comment:
Chicago has hit a dismal milestone. A late night shooting has marked the city's 500th homicide for the year.
40-year-old Nathaniel Jackson was shot on the city's West Side around 9 p.m Thursday. He was pronounced dead shortly after midnight. The victim's family has confirmed his identity.
Chicago Police say Jackson was shot in the head while standing outside a convenience store at Augusta Boulevard and Lavergne Avenue in the Austin Neighborhood.
…2008 was the last time Chicago reached 500 homicides. (Source:WGN-Chicago)
Harvard Study: Gun Control Is Counterproductive
I've just learned that Washington, D.C.'s petition for a rehearing of the Parker case in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit was denied today. This is good news. Readers will recall in this case that the D.C. Circuit overturned the decades-long ban on gun ownership in the nation's capitol on Second Amendment grounds.
However, as my colleague Peter Ferrara explained in his National Review Online article following the initial decision in March, it looks very likely that the United States Supreme Court will take the case on appeal. When it does so - beyond seriously considering the clear original intent of the Second Amendment to protect an individual's right to armed self-defense - the justices of the U.S. Supreme Court would be wise to take into account the findings of a recent study out of Harvard.
The study, which just appeared in Volume 30, Number 2 of the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy (pp. 649-694), set out to answer the question in its title: "Would Banning Firearms Reduce Murder and Suicide? A Review of International and Some Domestic Evidence." Contrary to conventional wisdom, and the sniffs of our more sophisticated and generally anti-gun counterparts across the pond, the answer is "no." And not just no, as in there is no correlation between gun ownership and violent crime, but an emphatic no, showing a negative correlation: as gun ownership increases, murder and suicide decreases.
The findings of two criminologists - Prof. Don Kates and Prof. Gary Mauser - in their exhaustive study of American and European gun laws and violence rates, are telling:
Nations with stringent anti-gun laws generally have substantially higher murder rates than those that do not. The study found that the nine European nations with the lowest rates of gun ownership (5,000 or fewer guns per 100,000 population) have a combined murder rate three times higher than that of the nine nations with the highest rates of gun ownership (at least 15,000 guns per 100,000 population).
It's hard to argue with that correlation without first abandoning a position of reason, and relying on one of opinion and emotion.
UK Gun Crime Soars by 35% After Gun Ban
Despite overwhelming evidence to support the correlation between rises in violence and gun control efforts, there is still a vocal and willfully ignorant minority which believes this is not the case.
The Government's latest crime figures were condemned as "truly terrible" by the Tories today as it emerged that gun crime in England and Wales soared by 35% last year.
Criminals used handguns in 46% more offences, Home Office statistics revealed.
Firearms were used in 9,974 recorded crimes in the 12 months to last April, up from 7,362.
It was the fourth consecutive year to see a rise and there were more than 2,200 more gun crimes last year than the previous peak in 1993.
Figures showed the number of crimes involving handguns had more than doubled since the post-Dunblane massacre ban on the weapons, from 2,636 in 1997-1998 to 5,871.
Unadjusted figures showed overall recorded crime in the 12 months to last September rose 9.3%, but the Home Office stressed that new procedures had skewed the figures.
More: dailymail
I guess reality isn't what it used to be...
Racist Roots of Gun Control
When debating gun control and related issues with folks on the Left, I am often met with opinion-based arguments in the face of facts. While I consider myself neither Liberal nor Conservative, I do hold civil liberties in high regard. Government does no create or grant rights, but sometimes sets up a system through which natural rights are protected against encroachment by the government. This is the case in the United States with its constitution, guaranteeing certain inalienable rights to all men. Though, quite unfortunately, also fails to prevent the state from being corrupted by individuals seeking to stem the rights of other, be they civil or economic.
In the case of gun rights, I often offer the following as evidence that gun control is by nature discriminatory, being focused at minorities and those in poor income brackets, whether in distant history or in modern society, in a quite similar manner as minimum wages laws negatively affect minorities and the young.
Can't let the slaves defend themselves against an inherently violent state, now can we?The historical record provides compelling evidence that racism underlies gun control laws — and not in any subtle way. Throughout much of American history, governments openly stated that gun control laws were useful for keeping blacks and Hispanics "in their place" and for quieting the racial fears of whites.
Racist arms laws predate the establishment of the United States. This is not surprising. Blacks in the New World were often slaves, and revolts against slave owners often degenerated into less selective forms of racial warfare. The perception that free blacks were sympathetic to the plight of their enslaved brothers and the "dangerous" example that blacks could actually handle freedom often led New World governments to disarm all blacks, both slave and free.
Starting in 1751, the French Black Code required Louisiana colonists to stop any blacks and, "if necessary," beat "any black carrying any potential weapon, such as a cane."(1) If a black refused to stop on demand and was on horseback, the colonist was authorized to "shoot to kill."(2) In Louisiana, the fear of Indian attack and the importance of hunting to the colonial economy necessitated that slaves sometimes possess firearms. The colonists had to balance their fear of the Indians against their fear of their slaves. As a result, French Louisiana passed laws that allowed slaves and free blacks to possess firearms only under very controlled conditions.(3)Similarly, in the sixteenth century the colony of New Spain, terrified of black slave revolts, prohibited all blacks, free and slave, from carrying arms.(4)
Thursday, December 27, 2012
…Because Government Troops Have High Capacity Magazines
When I am asked why I need a magazine for my "assault rifle" larger than 10 rounds, the answer is "because soldiers carry magazines larger than 10 rounds." The 2nd Amendment was written to protect the people from more than just criminals. It was also understood that each sovereign state in the union would need to depend on its citizen militias to project power as needed. That meant well-armed men . . .
Our founding fathers also understood the danger of too much power in the hands of a government. They took great pains to hobble it through a system of checks and balances. The 2nd Amendment gave us the means of rebellion should the government go too far in encroaching on our freedom.
That said, too much government is lethal. Untold millions suffer under the malignant brutality of all-powerful governments. Western European fascism, eastern European communism, communism in the Far East and Southeast Asia, totalitarian socialist nations from Cuba and throughout Central America. Over and over again, these governments resort to oppression and murder to maintain power over a helpless populace.
While I would hope that law enforcement officials and military units wouldn't obey orders to quell an otherwise peaceful rebellion violently, our history says that's not necessarily a safe bet. To what degree would millions of well-armed citizens in the Republic of Texas deter the arrest of the governor and state legislators?
Socialists like Senator Feinstein and President Obama have access to the same data you and I do. They know that confiscating baseball bats would save more murder victims than confiscating AR-15s would. They know that the Clinton assault rifle ban did nothing meaningful to reduce crime. Why then are they hell bent on making a move that's already proven worthless for the ostensible reason it's been proposed?
More: thetruthaboutguns
Outraged Gun Owner Retaliates After Publisher Posts Map With Permit Owners’ Addresses
The response was for a gun owner to publish the private contact information of the publisher and her staff. It's not so nice when the shoe is on the other foot, is it?As the fractious debate over the rights of gun owners versus the protections of American citizens escalates, those engaged in the battle seem to be raising (lowering?) the bar in ever-inventive – if incendiary – ways. The latest round takes us from Wayne LaPierre's controversial "plan" to put gun-toting guards in every school, Ron Paul's response to that plan's "Orwellian" nature; GOP strategist Frank Luntz's poll revealing that the majority of gun owners (including NRA members) favor better gun laws, right down to David Sirota's suggestion that it's time to startprofiling white males (who make up the majority of mass shooters).
The latest salvo, however, involves the "spit fight" going on between a newspaper publisher who posted a map of gun permit owners and a gun owner who retaliated by posting the addresses of that publisher and her entire staff, a potentially dangerous move considering the incendiary nature of this debate and some of the people having it.
The story starts with a map. In a report by CNN U.S. today, it seems the publisher of The Journal News, the local paper for Westchester County in New York, noted the intensity of the gun debate in the week following the massacre in Newtown, Connecticut, and decided to up the ante with a controversial move: publisher Janet Hasson posted an article on the paper's website called, "The gun owner next door: What you don't know about the weapons in your neighborhood," and included in the piece an interactive map with the names and addresses of gun permit owners in select New York cities in the Journal's reporting area.
More: addictinginfo
Friday, December 21, 2012
Piers Morgan "Debates" Gun Control
Steve Dulan receives a quite impolite and preposterous afront to his position in an attempt to debate Piers Morgan. Morgan gets his rear served to him on a platter, yet refuses to allow Dulan and other guests on his show the courtesy to lay out a position to a topic before habitually interrupting and childishly insulting anyone strong-willed enough to speak out against Morgan's ignorance.
In the aftermath of the Newtown, CT school shooting, Piers Morgan debates gun control with his guests. Check out more videos from CNN: http://www.youtube.com/cnn. Or visit our site at http://www.cnn.com/video/
In a strange way, I see Morgan quite similar to the Lewis Prothero character from V for Vendetta. He's not much more sophisticated...
OK, the NRA...
...didn't fold.
And they're reportedly gaining about 8,000 members a day.
Yeah, there's a real "culture shift" going on...
Wednesday, December 19, 2012
The Dick Act of 1902
This is interesting, but worth further reading;
DICK ACT of 1902... CAN'T BE REPEALED (GUN CONTROL FORBIDDEN) - Protection Against Tyrannical Government. The Dick Act of 1902 also known as the Efficiency of Militia Bill H.R. 11654, of June 28, 1902 invalidates all so-called gun-control laws. It also divides the militia into three distinct and separate entities. The three classes H.R. 11654 provides for are the organized militia, henceforth known as the National Guard of the State, Territory and District of Columbia, the unorganized militia and the regular army. The militia encompasses every able-bodied male between the ages of 18 and 45. All members of the unorganized militia have the absolute personal right and 2nd Amendment right to keep and bear arms of any type, and as many as they can afford to buy. The Dick Act of 1902 cannot be repealed; to do so would violate bills of attainder and ex post facto laws which would be yet another gross violation of the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights. The President of the United States has zero authority without violating the Constitution to call the National Guard to serve outside of their State borders. The National Guard Militia can only be required by the National Government for limited purposes specified in the Constitution (to uphold the laws of the Union; to suppress insurrection and repel invasion). These are the only purposes for which the General Government can call upon the National Guard. Attorney General Wickersham advised President Taft, "the Organized Militia (the National Guard) can not be employed for offensive warfare outside the limits of the United States." The Honorable William Gordon, in a speech to the House on Thursday, October 4, 1917, proved that the action of President Wilson in ordering the Organized Militia (the National Guard) to fight a war in Europe was so blatantly unconstitutional that he felt Wilson ought to have been impeached. During the war with England an attempt was made by Congress to pass a bill authorizing the president to draft 100,000 men between the ages of 18 and 45 to invade enemy territory, Canada. The bill was defeated in the House by Daniel Webster on the precise point that Congress had no such power over the militia as to authorize it to empower the President to draft them into the regular army and send them out of the country. The fact is that the President has no constitutional right, under any circumstances, to draft men from the militia to fight outside the borders of the USA, and not even beyond the borders of their respective states. Today, we have a constitutional LAW which still stands in waiting for the legislators to obey the Constitution which they swore an oath to uphold. Charles Hughes of the American Bar Association (ABA) made a speech which is contained in the Appendix to Congressional Record, House, September 10, 1917, pages 6836-6840 which states: "The militia, within the meaning of these provisions of the Constitution is distinct from the Army of the United States." In these pages we also find a statement made by Daniel Webster, "that the great principle of the Constitution on that subject is that the militia is the militia of the States and of the General Government; and thus being the militia of the States, there is no part of the Constitution worded with greater care and with more scrupulous jealousy than that which grants and limits the power of Congress over it." "This limitation upon the power to raise and support armies clearly establishes the intent and purpose of the framers of the Constitution to limit the power to raise and maintain a standing army to voluntary enlistment, because if the unlimited power to draft and conscript was intended to be conferred, it would have been a useless and puerile thing to limit the use of money for that purpose. Conscripted armies can be paid, but they are not required to be, and if it had been intended to confer the extraordinary power to draft the bodies of citizens and send them out of the country in direct conflict with the limitation upon the use of the militia imposed by the same section and article, certainly some restriction or limitation would have been imposed to restrain the unlimited use of such power." The Honorable William Gordon Congressional Record, House, Page 640 - 1917
Tuesday, December 18, 2012
Gun Control and Human Nature
The current administration supports a return to the Assault Weapons Ban, despite the ineffectiveness which led to it being allowed to expire. President Obama supports a return to policies that had little if any statistical effect in reducing gun violence, while there was also a slight decrease in overall crime after the ban's expiration. If gun bans had any effective way to actually stem social violence, does anyone seriously believe there would be such widespread and sound opposition? If the original ban had been so effective, why let it expire.
As comedian Lee Camp pointed out in a recent show, most reasonable people support some level of gun control. As an anarchist, I oppose the idea that a government with a monopoly on the use of force is the best course in an attempt to stem violence in society, just as it discards the idea that those in the state are as inherently flawed as society overall. But I do believe that tools capable of destruction carry with them a need to use them in a safe manner, and firearms are no exception.
If we can open a dialog to address these issues in an objective way, we might actually begin to address human nature and not just the results of human action, nor does gun control address the variety of ways that individuals harm others, whether with or without the use of firearms. It helps to put things into perspective.
‘Fast and Furious’ Gun Found At Site Where Mexican Beauty Queen Killed
A gun found at the scene of a shootout between a Mexican drug cartel and soldiers where a beauty queen died was part of the botched "Fast and Furious" operation,CBS News reports.
Authorities had said that Maria Susana Flores Gamez was likely used as a human shield and that an automatic rifle had been found near her body after the Nov. 23 shootout.
Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, tells CBS News that the Justice Department did not notify Congress that a Fast and Furious firearm was found at the scene in Sinaloa.
CBS News learned the Romanian AK-47-type WASR-10 rifle found near her body was purchased by Uriel Patino at an Arizona gun shop in 2010. Patino is a suspect who allegedly purchased 700 guns while under the ATF's watch.
NRA Facebook page goes dark after Newtown school shooting
The nation's largest gun-rights organization — typically outspoken about its positions even after shooting deaths — has gone all but silent since last week's rampage at a Newtown, Conn., elementary school that left 26 people dead, including 20 children.
Its Facebook page has disappeared. It has posted no tweets. It makes no mention of the shooting on its website. None of its leaders hit the media circuit Sunday to promote its support of the Second Amendment right to bear arms as the nation mourns the latest shooting victims and opens a new debate over gun restrictions. On Monday, the NRA offered no rebuttal as 300 anti-gun protesters marched to its Capitol Hill office.
After previous mass shootings — such as in Oregon and Wisconsin — the group was quick to both send its condolences and defend gun owners' constitutional rights, popular among millions of Americans. There's no indication that the National Rifle Association's silence this time is a signal that a change in its ardent opposition to gun restrictions is imminent. Nor has there been any explanation for its absence from the debate thus far.
The NRA, which claims 4.3 million members and is based in Northern Virginia, did not return telephone messages Monday seeking comment.
Its deep-pocketed efforts to oppose gun control laws have proven resilient. Firearms are in a third or more of U.S. households and suspicion runs deep of an overbearing government whenever it proposes expanding federal authority. The argument of gun-rights advocates that firearm ownership is a bedrock freedom as well as a necessary option for self-defense has proved persuasive enough to dampen political enthusiasm for substantial change.
Seldom has the NRA gone so long after a fatal shooting without a public presence. It resumed tweeting just one day after a gunman killed two people and then himself at an Oregon shopping mall last Tuesday, and one day after six people were fatally shot at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin in August.
The Connecticut shootings occurred three days after the incident in Oregon.
"The NRA's probably doing a good thing by laying low," said Hogan Gidley, a Republican strategist and gun owner who was a top aide to Rick Santorum's presidential bid. "Often after these tragedies, so many look to lay blame on someone, and the NRA is an easy whipping boy for this."
Indeed, since the Connecticut shootings, the NRA has been taunted and criticized at length, vitriol that may have prompted the shuttering of its Facebook page just a day after the association boasted about reaching 1.7 million supporters on the social media network.
Twitter users have been relentless, protesting the organization with hashtags like NoWayNRA.
The NRA has not responded to them. Its last tweets, sent Friday, offered a chance to win an auto flashlight.
Offline, some 300 protesters gathered outside the NRA's lobbying headquarters on Capitol Hill on Monday chanting, "Shame on the NRA" and waving signs declaring "Kill the 2nd Amendment, Not Children" and "Protect Children, Not Guns."
myfox8
Obama to support ban on assault weapon sales
US President Barack Obama supports a proposal from Senator Diane Feinstein (D-California) that would reinstate a ban on the sale of assault weapons in the United States.
The leftist anti-rights gun grabbers have been waiting for an excuse like this for years to roll back to the Brady bill, which was shown to have no effect on reducing gun violence (and its expiration actually saw further reductions in crime).
Monday, December 17, 2012
Gun ownership vs murder rate by country
In the discussions following the recent Newtown shooting, several people have told me that data regarding gun ownership and violence supports the case for more restrictive gun prohibition. I believe that the above plots, on their face, discredit this view.
If all countries are included in the plot, there is a negative correlation between gun ownership and rate of homicide. Only when the plot is limited to OECD countries (with the outliers of US and Mexico included), does a very small positive correlation appear.
More: Gun ownership vs murder rate by country
Where is reason in a time of tragedy?
How sad sad that a tragedy fails to encourage people to look to themselves for answers, but to faith, and then to the tools of violence rather than those acting out in violence.
I have waited for a few days before exhaling, hoping that through the pain and the agony would emerge something more compassionate and more sane.
For many of us who are parents, it's like this.
This tragedy has been visceral, a cry of the heart that aches even too much to make a sound, an agony that does not let up.
Then comes the redirection away from the core issue and to one of means rather than ends. As sad as pointless violence and loss of innocent life is, blaming an inanimate object for these acts misses the mark entirely;
We hear this pettiness in the callous words of the NRA and their supporters, who keep telling us in shooting after shooting that "guns don't kill people, people kill people." No, you heartless enablers of mass murder. The blood of these children is also on your hands.
Yes, guns don't kill people, mentally deranged people with semi-automatic weapons that have no purpose other than killing who walk into classrooms of innocent six-year old children kill people. With even one less gun, there would be more parents still hugging their loved one tonight. How dare you think that your "right" to own killing machines is worth more than the right of our precious children to live?
Unfortunately, it seems that this person of faith is laying out a subjective argument that dismisses the person behind the act and focuses on a tool instead. Had the suspect driven a car into a crowd of people, would they also be laying the blame on the auto industry, as there are more people killed in auto accidents annually than with firearms. This sort of tragedy is entirely unacceptable, but focusing on anything other than the cause (an individual act) is hardly productive or helpful to those grieving the loss of loved ones.
Please, stop politicizing tragedies and think about how to change society in ways that reduces violence. Laws and regulations are not something that works, so maybe it's time for something a but different.
Sunday, December 16, 2012
Knee-jerk Reactions to Tragedy
Human Events reports on the knee jerk reactions to violent tragedies within the conservator (and liberal) political sphere;
As the nation comes to grips with the Dec. 14 shooting rampage at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., the nation's capital braces for the rush to restrict gun rights.The Newtown shooting is the first mass school shooting since the April 20, 1999 shooting in the Littleton, Colo., at the Columbine High School, where 12 students and one teacher were killed by a pair a gunmen, who like the killer in Newtown, killed themselves in the midst the carnage.
Time will tell what will come in the wake of the Newtown shooting, but Columbine was a cultural earthquake and in the hysteria that followed sent Republican leaders in a panic. It was a panic that nearly led to the GOP restricting gun rights—not the Democrats.
This is the inside story of how I held back the Republicans from curtailing our gun rights until help arrived.Washington is full of brave people when times are good and cowards when things get tough.
There is perhaps no greater example than the Congress' reaction — in particular the Senate's reaction. In the course of a few hours, lifelong self-proclaimed advocates of the Second Amendment were looking to enact the most sweeping gun control legislation in a generation.
They almost succeeded.
We were in our offices in the Capitol building when news broke on CNN of a school shooting in Columbine. We watched in horror as students scurried out of their classrooms trying to avoid the rain of bullets.
The April 20, 1999 shooting massacre at Columbine High School, Littleton, Colo., was a national tragedy. In the aftermath of the shooting, Sen. C. Trent Lott Jr., (R.-Miss.), the majority leader, led his other GOP senators to pass a gun control bill before the Memorial Day recess.
Before the bodies had been buried there was a call for Congress to enact new gun control legislation. The Democrats and the press focused on that fact that Eric D. Harris and Dylan B. Klebold had procured their weapons through the use of a "straw man" purchaser, who bought a rifle and a shotgun from a gun show for the pair. The fact that purchasing a gun on behalf of another person was illegal, President William J. Clinton and his allies were demanding Congress shutdown gun shows.
Shutting down gun shows has been the dream of Democrats. The shocking aspect of the coming floor debate was not that Sen. Frank R. Lautenberg (D.-N.J.) and Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D.-N.Y) were pushing another gun control scheme.
The April 20, 1999 shooting massacre at Columbine High School, Littleton, Colo., was a national tragedy. In the aftermath of the shooting, Sen. C. Trent Lott Sr., (R.-Miss.), the majority leader, led his other GOP senators, such as Sen. Charles T. Hagel (R.-Neb.) to pass a gun control bill before the Memorial Day recess.It was that a number of formally stalwart supporters of the Second Amendment were piling on.
Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah), a longtime foe of gun control bills, had introduced his Juvenile Crime Bill in Jan. 20, 1999, but it lanquished until it became the vehicle to exploit the Columbine tragedy. [...]
Friday, December 14, 2012
Dancing in Blood
Poetry without justice:
Now the Dancing in the Blood..
Of the victims begins.
The little ones lost…
But instead of prayer and thoughts for and of them..
The use of their loss begins, by those whom have no sense of shame.
Whom think only of a 'tool' used for evil..
Not of the victims.
Not of the accused..
But an inanimate tool..
Those people sicken me.
Emotional Responses to School Shootings
Rather than address the inherent violent nature of the state or even humans themselves, we are bombarded with a popular view that inanimate objects are responsible, and their restriction or prohibition will somehow alleviate this social violence. If only that we're the case, but alas, we live in a complicated real world where feelings and facts are often at odds with each other. Tragedies bring out a variety of emotional responses;
As a result of this new school shooting, you will be able to see a massive sweep to outlaw semi-automatic rifles, ban handguns, do everything they can to crush our ability to stand up to a tyrannical government or defend our homes. This is the beginning of the end for American Liberty.
What the response should be, is that Every Responsible Adult be encouraged to pack a gun for defense and have access to a rifle. Evil is not stopped by giving in to it or running away from it… and what we have seen today is truly Evil. Evil that ran unchecked.
Tu ne cede malis...
Wouldn’t It Be Nice?
Yeah, it would:
As gun owners, if we could just experience the grief and sorrow along with the rest of the country, instead of having it intruded upon by that impending feeling of doom about what the media, the politicians, and the people in society who don't much care for civilian gun ownership are going to do to our lives, liberty and often times livelihood? If we could go through something like this without worrying how much we're going to be the scapegoats? I know that's the thought that's been crossing my mind as this entire horror story is playing out in the media. I don't want to think about or deal with politics right now, but that's precisely what I have to start getting ready for if I don't want to risk that America, and the politicians who claim to represent her, in their rashest and most impulsive worst instincts, pass a knee jerk law that will overnight turn many Americans into instant felons. There are times I believe we all deserve a break from politics. This is one of them, but we will never get it.
I believe we will not leave this horror unscathed, either mentally or politically. Our liberties and beliefs will be called into question, ridiculed, beaten, and we'll be told to get in line for the good of everyone. This could very well be the point as which the pendulum swings back. The narrative that's been driven home is that NRA is beaten up and bloodied, and is no longer relevant. Regardless of whether that's true or not, what matters is what the powers that be believe. We may not believe the time now is for politics, and it shouldn't be. But as a variation on an old saying goes: we may not be interested much in politics, but politics is very interested in us.
For Scumbags Who Kill Kids
I've been following the events if today's tragic school shooting and can't help but wonder why the violent aggression is directed at what are likely the least responsible for the situation of these people who break ways with reality. It seems I'm not the only one:
Maybe we just need more laws to make violence stop? Because its sure been working great this far.There doesn't seem to be any rhyme nor reason to why someone suddenly snaps and enters a school and starts shooting. All I know is that some coward has killed little kids in a Connecticut school – 26 dead as I sit here writing.
Is societal pressure so hard on these people they have no other recourse but to kill innocent babies that have no hope of fighting back?
What could possibly be going through your minds to actually plan and then implement a plan like this? These are innocent people – innocent children- going about their lives and because you're having a bad day, or a bad week, or a bad life, you show up and take theirs away?
</sarcasm>
Tuesday, December 11, 2012
Illinois Carry Ban Ruled Unconstitutional
From Sipsey Street Irregulars:
Many thanks to reader Dan who forwarded this link. He also reports that: "The servers are going crazy at the moment. It took me many tries to get in and D/L the document. It runs 47 pages." From the opinion:
Twenty-first century Illinois has no hostile Indians. But a Chicagoan is a good deal more likely to be attacked on a sidewalk in a rough neighborhood than in his apartment on the 35th floor of the Park Tower. A woman who is being stalked or has obtained a protective order against a violent ex-husband is more vulnerable to being attacked while walking to or from her home than when inside. She has a stronger self-defense claim to be allowed to carry a gun in public than the resident of a fancy apartment building (complete with doorman) has a claim to sleep with a loaded gun under her mattress. But Illinois wants to deny the former claim, while compelled by McDonald to honor the latter.
Steve Israel wants to ban guns that don't even exist yet
Rep. Steve Israel is apparently pretty scared. You see, he's calling for a ban on 3-D printer made guns. Apparently, just days after a gun was fired using parts from such a printer, Israel is terrified that someone might build a gun using the technology:
Israel (D-Huntington) said a group of young men recently built and fired six shots from a "Wiki Weapon" — an AR-15 assault rifle partially assembled with parts from a 3-D printer, Israel said.
"It is just a matter of time before these three-dimensional printers will be able to replicate an entire gun," Israel said at a news conference at the security checkpoint at Long Island MacArthur Airport. "And that firearm will be able to be brought through this security line, through the metal detector, and because there will be no metal to be detected, firearms will be brought on planes without anyone's knowledge."
Of course, there is still the argument that if there were more guns on planes, terrorists would actually be less likely to try and hijack planes. Of course, silly things like "logic" don't have a place in legislation.
Another aspect of this "logic" that's getting missed? So far, there are no 100 percent 3-D printed guns so far as anyone knows. That's right. Israel is freaking out about a gun that doesn't exist. He's not the first though, since there have been laws against this off and on for over 20 years.
Author and Boing Boing partner Cory Doctorow had this to say about the reality involved in such a law:
However, what Rep Israel doesn't say is how he hopes to accomplish his goal. Firmware locks for 3D printers? A DMCA-like takedown regime for 3D shapefiles that can be used to generate plastic firearms (or parts of plastic firearms?). A mandate on 3D printer manufacturers to somehow magically make it impossible for their products to print out gun-parts?
Every one of those measures is a nonsense and worse: unworkable combinations of authoritarianism, censorship, and wishful thinking. Importantly, none of these would prevent people from manufacturing plastic guns. And all of these measures would grossly interfere with the lawful operation of 3D printers.
Doctorow is dead on right about the difficulties. Frankly, it would be kind of impossible, especially since more and more people are building technology similar to this in their own homes.
Yes, it may make it difficult to keep guns out of particular places, but let's take a look for a moment at those places. There have never been mass shootings in places where there are a lot of guns. Gun stores, gun shows, and gun ranges, for example, have never been the target for maniacs or terrorists.
By contrary, schools and malls that are "off limits" to guns seem to be the preferred targets for these people. Maybe Isreal should look at that and realize that since limiting the technology is virtually impossible, maybe the secret is to make it irrelevant? If laws preventing people from carrying weapons were gone, there would be no reason for someone to try and use 3D printers to make undetectable weapons…and good people are far more likely to be armed.
Of course, that wouldn't look like the good congressman was "doing something" about this scourge.
Mexico Shows That Tight Gun Control Laws Don't Guarantee Compliance
Reason is spot-on with their analysis of the gun control, anti-rights opposition movement within Mexico, that good people will ignore bad laws. If it can happen there, surely it can happen in the States as well.
Wearer-of-bad-rugs Bob Costas may have temporarily put gun control back in the headlines, but his advocacy hasn't made firearms restrictions any less intrusive — or any more enforceable. Like fans of all sorts of restrictions, drugs especially, gun controllers tend to jump from fantasies about a world devoid of the objects of their wrath to demands that new laws be passed to make their fantasies come true. Rarely do they put much thought into whether anybody will actually obey such laws, and the consequences of littering the landscape with impotent legislation. I've written before that gun laws tend to be widely flouted, and a peek at our neighbor to the south offers more evidence of such widespread defiance.
Mexico is actually sometimes held up as an example of exemplary gun laws. Despite a sort-of constitutional guarantee of the right to bear arms, Mexico has only one gun store, which is run by the army, and severe legal restrictions on gun ownership. From the New York Times:
The 1917 Constitution written after Mexico's bloody revolution, for example, says that the right to carry arms excludes those weapons forbidden by law or reserved for use by the military, and it also states that "they may not carry arms within inhabited places without complying with police regulations."
The government added more specific limits after the uprisings in the 1960s, when students looted gun stores in Mexico City. So under current law, typical customers like Rafael Vargas, 43, a businessman from Morelos who said he was buying a pistol "to make sure I sleep better," must wait months for approval and keep his gun at home at all times.
His purchase options are also limited: the largest weapons in Mexico's single gun store — including semiautomatic rifles like the one used in the Aurora attack — can be bought only by members of the police or the military. Handgun permits for home protection allow only for the purchase of calibers no greater than .38, so the most exotic option in the pistol case here consisted of a Smith & Wesson revolver selling for $803.05.
So, the country is largely disarmed, right? Not so much. Put aside the well-armed drug cartels; average Mexicans don't let the country's laws get too much in their way. From Austin, Texas's KVUE:
Mexico has some of the toughest gun control laws in the world. But while drug cartels have well-stocked arsenals, law-abiding citizens struggle to get a permit to own a gun.
Even so, in the seemingly tranquil region of northern Mexico, at the foot of the Sierra Madre Mountains, it's an open secret that many people have guns for protection.
"Most Mexican families do have guns in their homes, and they're illegal," said Alex LeBaron, a Chihuahua state representative and native of the town of LeBaron.
The Geneva-based Small Arms Survey estimated (PDF) in 2007 that Mexicans owned about 15.5 million guns, of which 4.5 million were registered in compliance with the law. As NPR noted in a story on this same issue, Mexico has no real gun-rights movement largely because people don't perceive a need for one:
The director of a pro-gun website called Mexico Armado said there is no popular movement at the moment to liberalize the nation's gun laws. Perhaps, he added, that's because anybody who wants a weapon in Mexico — be they a good guy or a bad guy — has no problem getting one.
The assumption is that most black-market guns come from the United States (and not all of it from the BATF). Though, with the drug cartels arming themselves with military-grade weapons that are distinctly not available north of the border, that's obviously not the only possible source,
By the way, Alex LeBaron, the lawmaker quoted above, comes from a family descended from Mormon polygamists who fled to Mexico in the 19th century to escape American restrictions on their religion (the Romney family was included in that circle, for a while). Not only have LeBarons become Mexico's most visible gun-rights advocates, they're practitioners, too. Again, from NPR:
One night, in October 2009, a gunfight erupted between the LeBaron brothers and a squad from the Mexican army. The LeBarons claim the soldiers came to the front gate and did not identify themselves. Fearing they were kidnappers, Alex says, the family opened fire.
"In the middle of [the] dark, sometimes, it's better to shoot and ask questions later," he says.
One soldier was killed. One LeBaron brother and another farmer were charged with murder, but the judge ultimately dropped the charges because the evidence had been tampered with.
That firefight came after a family member and a friend were killed by criminals for organizing opposition to kidnappers. Not surprisingly, the community in which the LeBaron family lives, and which carries their name, has apparently since gained a reputation as a place to be avoided by criminals.
In a country where violent crime thrives amidst Costas-style gun restrictions, people have taken to openly ignoring the law to defend themselves. There's no reason to think matters would be much different north of the border.
Tuesday, December 4, 2012
FoxSports hack blames 2nd Amendment, not KC Chiefs killer
FoxSports, the network that won’t accept firearms-related advertisements for UFC events, once again has appeared on our radar for small-minded public commentary from one of its bigoted personalities.
Jason Whitlock who once tweeted “Some lucky lady in NYC is gonna feel a couple inches of pain tonight” in reference to NBA star Jeremy Lin scoring a career-high 38 points for the New York Knicks, has offered similarly brilliant analysis to the recent murder-suicide involving the Kansas City Chiefs football player (sorry, we’re not contributing to his infamy by mentioning his name here) who murdered his girlfriend before whacking himself at the team’s training area.
Whitlock doesn’t blame the murderer.This is where he just gets seriously fucking retarded...
No, Whitlock blames the Second Amendment instead.More: FoxSports hack blames 2nd Amendment, not KC Chiefs killer | GunsSaveLife.com
…We’d prefer to avoid seriously reflecting upon the absurdity of the prevailing notion that the second amendment somehow enhances our liberty rather than threatens it.
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