A Geek With Guns

Through Uncle I learned that Mayor Bloomberg is putting up some major money and buying an advertisement during the Super Bowl to promote his gun bigotry:

He also announced that he and his Boston counterpart, Mayor Thomas Menino, would appear in an anti-illegal gun commercial during the championship game, joining the race for Super Bowl ad space.

The spot shows the two leaders of Mayors Against Illegal guns in an animated discussion and clad in their team jerseys on a couch in front of a television.

Bowls of chips and popcorn along with a football lie on a glass table before them.

The 30-second spot will run regionally because of restrictions against issue-oriented ads on the national broadcast. The Mayor’s Against Illegal guns, which counts Bloomberg among its private donors, funded the clip.

The biggest problem with anti-gunners is that they only know how to do one thing: throw money at something until it goes away. Members of the Brady Campaign, Violence Policy Center, and Mayors Against Illegal Guns have no facts to backup their cause so they simply hope they can spend enough money to make guns go away. Luckily for use throwing money at something never actually makes it go away.

What do you do when the state ruling over your area refuses to protect you and even goes so far as to make it illegal to protect yourself? You give them the middle finger, which is what many Mexican citizens are doing to protect themselves against the drug cartels:

In Mexico, where criminals are armed to the teeth with high-powered weapons smuggled from the United States, it may come as a surprise that the country has some of the most restrictive gun laws in the world.

Smuggled in by our government as part of Operation Fast and Furious.

But on July 7, 2009, close to 20 men showed up at Benjamin LeBaron’s house, according to his older brother, Julian LeBaron.

“They wanted to terrorize everyone into never opposing them,” Julian LeBaron says. “They dragged Benjamin out of his house, and [his brother-in-law Luis Widmar] came to help him.”

Then, he says, the criminals took the two men a couple of miles down the road and shot them.

The cold-blooded murders of Benjamin LeBaron and Luis Widmar galvanized the community, Julian LeBaron says. It prompted them to take a stance that is familiar to Second Amendment advocates in the U.S., but one that is taboo in Mexico.

“I think there would be less violence if there were more guns, in the sense that I could barge in here and do whatever I want, knowing that this guy doesn’t have a gun,” says Jose Widmar, the brother of slain Luis.

Today, if the gangsters return, the LeBaron colony is locked and loaded.

The average person in the United States and most European nations are fortunate that they can live a life relatively free of violence. Unfortunately relatively safe lives lead people to forget the necessity of self-defense and thus lose pasion for their right to keep and bear arms.

These lessons are quickly being learned in Mexico though, where armed drug cartels all but run the country and view human life as being without value. The Mexican government has been unable to protect the people yet demand the people be unarmed. Now people living in Mexico are going to the really free market (often incorrectly called the black market) to obtain the means of personal defense. I commend these people and demand those advocating for the disarmament of the citizenry explain what alternative these people have.

In response to an anti-gunner protest of Starbucks scheduled for February 14^th the gun community is declaring that day Starbucks Appreciation Day.

Starbucks has publicly declared that they will not ban guns on their premisses, instead relying on state laws. The threw the anti-gunners into a tizzy because they were trying to get Starbucks to ban the carry of firearms at their establishments.

We should be supporting companies who are willing to stand up for our rights. On February 14^th stop by your local Starbucks, pick up some coffee, and make sure you let the employees working there know that you’re happy about Starbucks’s policy of supporting your right to bear arms. While the 10 or so anti-gunners boycott Starbucks we gun owners, who measure in the millions, can create a surge in profits.

While the police state is expanding throughout the United States it’s expanding at a faster pace in some places. States like New York, Massachusetts, and California are expanding at an incredibly rapid pace as are the cities of Chicago and New York. Not only has New York all but disarmed the law-abiding citizenry they’re working on ensuring those individuals remain disarmed. Because of the recent cases involving law-abiding citizens being dumb enough to attempt compliance with posted “No Guns Allowed” signs the police force in New York is looking for new technology to detect those who are carrying concealed weapons:

The NYPD is stepping up their war against illegal guns, with a new tool that could detect weapons on someone as they walk down the street.

But is it violating your right to privacy?

Police, along with the U.S. Department of Defense, are researching new technology in a scanner placed on police vehicles that can detect concealed weapons.

“You could use it at a specific event. You could use it at a shooting-prone location,” NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly told CBS 2′s Hazel Sanchez on Tuesday.

It’s called Terahertz Imaging Detection. It measures the energy radiating from a body up to 16 feet away, and can detect anything blocking it, like a gun.

With the recent introduction of body scanners at airports I’m sure you’ve heard of terahertz imagine. Most airport body scanners use millimeter waves as terahertz imagine is still a relatively new technology with a rather disturbing side-effect:

Alexandrov and co have created a model to investigate how THz fields interact with double-stranded DNA and what they’ve found is remarkable. They say that although the forces generated are tiny, resonant effects allow THz waves to unzip double-stranded DNA, creating bubbles in the double strand that could significantly interfere with processes such as gene expression and DNA replication. That’s a jaw dropping conclusion.

So the New York Police Department (NYPD) is using a technology that can damage DNA to detect concealed firearms. First of all it’s none of NYPD’s business who is and isn’t carrying a firearm because, regardless of what city officials believe, the right to keep and bear arms is still codified in the Constitution (and even if it wasn’t the right to self-defense is a natural one that can’t be rightfully overridden by some assholes in a government building).

If this technology gets off of the ground the denizens of New York City may find themselves exposed to dangerous terahertz waves just so some piece of shit working in NYPD can get his jollies off disarming a peaceful individual (or outright shooting the poor schmuck because “he had a gun”). I’m still waiting for New York City to setup checkpoints at every point of entry where people and their vehicles are thoroughly searched before being granted entrance into the prison city.

Anti-Gunners continue to claim average citizens such as you and me shouldn’t be allowed to carry guns yet somehow police officers have some kind of magical training that makes them able to do so. I still don’t understand this because most of the shooters I know practice far more with a firearm than the average police officer. It also appears as through police officers are far more likely to beat their wives than the average citizen:

Law enforcement officers beat their wives or girlfriends at nearly double the rate of the rest of the population, and trying to control that is not only difficult for the victims but potentially deadly, experts say.

Explain to me again why police officers are somehow more qualified to carry a gun than the average citizen? Police officers aren’t magical beings gifted with skills above that of another average person. That badge does not make them more capable of handling stressful situations or making the correct call on whether or not lethal force is warranted at a particular time. Yet those who are against the right of average citizens to carry guns usually believe it’s OK for a police officer to carry one.

It’s an idiotic belief that has no grounds… come to think of it it’s no different than other anti-gunner beliefs. Oh, the following line was just comedy gold (or depressing, depending on how you look at it):

One of the hallmarks of a good cop is to radiate authority and control, and in the wrong hands, those characteristics can be misused, domestic violence counselors say.

One of the hallmarks of a good cop is to radiate authority and control? Really? I always thought the hallmark of a good cop was the ability to resolve non-violence situations without initiating violence. Needless to say very few officers appears to have the virtue.

Canada’s gun laws are certainly more tyrannical than those in the United States. At least in the United States when a gun is added to the verboten list current owners are generally grandfathered in. In Canada if a gun is approved for purchase by the peasantry and the government later changes its mind you don’t get the privilege of being grandfathered in, instead you become a criminal in possession of an illegal firearm:

Two small-calibre rifles have been suddenly reclassified by the RCMP-run Canadian Firearms Program. The rifles in question, the Armi Jager AP-80 and the Walther G22, are both unremarkable .22-caliber long guns. While any firearm is dangerous, .22-caliber firearms are among the weakest around — indeed, they’re typically used to train rookie shooters basic firearm safety and operation.

Canadian law divides firearms into three categories, using complex technical criterion and a bevy of politically-motivated “exemptions”, and citizens can only legally own firearms in the categories their licence covers. No further licences are issued for the third and highest category, prohibited. By declaring a new exemption and moving these rifles from the non-restricted list — the category subject to the least controls — to the prohibited list, the RCMP has essentially banned them for all but a constantly shrinking group of Canadians who owned prohibited-class firearms before the current gun control legislation was passed under Jean Chrétien.

That’s bad. This is worse: Any citizen who already owns an AP-80 or G22, and does not already possess a rare prohibited-class licence, has been ordered to turn in their rifles within 30 days. Failure to do so will mean they are unlawfully in possession of a prohibited firearm, and subject to as much as 10 years behind bars. It doesn’t matter if they purchased it legally, paid all the sales taxes, and have stored it safely ever since. The RCMP has declared that it was a mistake to allow citizens to purchase these firearms, and wants them turned in, pronto. Or else.

Emphasis mine. Even though the Canadian government made the “mistake” (how allowing people to own any time of firearm is a mistake is beyond my understanding) the people who legally purchased the now verboten firearms will be the ones punished. What’s worse is it doesn’t sound like those who purchased these now blacklisted firearms will even be compensated:

No apology for the error. No mention of monetary compensation. No exemptions made for people who already owned them. Just an order to hand them over or become a criminal.

In other words you purchased it legally according to Canadian law and now you have to surrender it because you were dumb enough to follow the law. What makes this even worse is the fact Canada has a long-gun registry so the government goons know who owns what type of firearm and therefore know what doors to kick down in their eventual search for these horrible .22 carbines. At least in the United States were something like this to happen the government can’t be 100% sure who owns what. Registration leads to confiscation every time.

I’m sure this is what the anti-gunners mean by common sense gun laws, if a person acts within the letter of the law they can be punished at a later time for doing so. It would seem the only safe option in Canada is to not own any firearms, which is exactly what the state wants.

In the self-defense community Massad Ayoob is one of the advocates I respect most. He’s dedicated a great deal of his time to educated people on matters of self-defense. While Mr. Ayoob spends his time teaching people how to defend themselves instead of being victims the Brady Campaign spent its time telling people to light a candle in remembrance of those who have been killed by guns (because victims of other violent crimes don’t matter to them and they would rather a woman be raped than a rapist be shot). As usual Mr. Ayoob has some words of wisdom to share with us:

If some monster tries to rape or murder a woman I care about, I don’t want him to see the flickering light of a candle.

I want him to see a muzzle flash, from the front.

Damn right. While I’m entirely opposed to initiating violence I am entirely in support of the right of self-defense. If some piece of shit has decided your life is no longer of value you shouldn’t hold their life to be of value either.

There are many reasons why individuals fighting for gun rights win against those who fight to disarm the populace. Beyond the facts though another thing that really helps us is our community, which A Girl and Her Gun describes beautifully:

The gun community is a generous community. It is unlike any other I have been associated with.

I did, for a while, belong to the adoption community for a few years and though I am still crazy passionate about children and orphans.

Those are not my people.

I did, for a while, belong to the church going Christian community and though I am still crazy passionate about God.

Those are not my people.

Generally a group, any group, has an agenda. Stated or not. Conscious or not. No matter how well meaning, they almost always want something.

That something is usually steeped in power and control.

Politicians, religions, schools, the anti gun crowd, you name it. They want to bring you for what you can give them, which is often nothing more than a feeling of power and self worth for the leaders of the group.

They want to take something from you in order to gain something for themselves.

Not this group.

It’s a great letter and perfectly describes how great the gun community really is.

I don’t think I’ll ever be able to understand the sheer amount of hypocrisy behind the anti-gunner’s cause. Those demanding more gun control laws are advocating the initiation of violence against gun owners while claiming to be against the proliferation of violence. Case in point let’s take a hypothetical case and follow it to its logical conclusion. Let’s say the gun control crowd suddenly get a huge surge of followers and somehow manage to nullify the Second Amendment via an amendment that entirely bans firearms within the United States (yes I realize this is far fetched but I’m performing reductio ad absurdum).

After the amendment is passed you the legally owned firearms will need to be confiscated. It’s true that a great number of gun owners will be stupid enough to voluntarily surrender their arms to law enforcement but you’re going to have a lot of gun owners who tell the collection agency to fuck themselves. What do you think the state is going to do to these stubborn gun owners? As with any other law the state is going to enforce a prohibition against arms using violence; if the gun owners don’t surrender their firearm armed agents of the state will be sent in to take them and murder the gun owners if they attempt to resist.

Thus we have a contradiction, the anti-gunners are advocating the initiation of violence in order to, as they claim, prevent violence. Non-violent gun owners whose only crime was to be in possession of property not listed at verboten will be killed if they don’t roll over and take what the state is dishing out. Why do the anti-gunners want this violence? Do they believe the ends justify the means? If that is the case I’m sure they would love to read up on Joseph Stalin’s means to accomplish his desired ends.

Whenever a law to interfere with property ownership is passed it necessarily requires that property be confiscated from violators of the law. Confiscation always requires the threat and use of force otherwise few will willingly surrender what they have worked hard to obtain.

Anti-gunners are hypocrites who don’t even see that the laws they advocate will simply lead to a spike in violence. Perhaps they don’t care because according to many in the anti-gunner camp us gun owners are lowly knuckle dragging neanderthals best rounded up and executed so we don’t spread our backward ways of thinking.

Via gunnit I came across a picture that basically sums up every major firearm regulation in existence:

Most states won’t let you carry gun… unless you pay the state money. You can’t ship gun powder and primers… unless you pay the shipping companies more money. You can’t own a supressor, machine gun, short barreled rifle, or various other cool guns… unless you pay the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) money. Firearm regulations aren’t about keep guns from criminals, by definition that’s impossible, they’re about making money off of gun owners.

When you think about it every regulations is simply about money. Do you want to drive a car? That fine, you can so long as you periodically pay the state a fee to hold a driver’s license and pay another annual fee to have a license plate sticker that may protect you from being pulled over. Do you want to build a house on the land you purchased? That’s fine, they’ll let you so long as you purchase a building permit. Do you want to dump toxic waste into a water supply? That’s fine, just pay us money for an exemption and you’re good to go.