Everybody Has an Asshole

There was a recent incident at a Rand Paul rally where somebody stomped the head/shoulder (depends on who you ask) of a MoveOn individual. Of course bleeding-heart liberals are using this as an example of how violent the liberty minded side is. Snowflakes in Hell has a good write up on the situation.

Personally I’m not going to say both side were equally at fault here. Yes the MoveOn employee was being annoying but that isn’t illegal nor dangerous. People claiming themselves to be liberty minded (at least I assume that’s what the face stomper would claim judging by the pin he was waring) should know that everybody has the freedom of speech, even if you don’t like that speech. The MoveOn employee was being annoying but nothing else that deserved violence brought against her.

This brings me to a universal fact, everybody has an asshole. It doesn’t matter what your group stands for or what they’re trying to accomplish, somebody in that group will inevitably be an asshole at some point. In the libertarian movement we have the assholes who scream at anybody who doesn’t perfectly subscribe to their view of “correct libertarianism.” They’re annoying but certainly shouldn’t be used as examples of how the majority of the movement acts.

Of course we also have the people claiming the stomper is likely a MoveOn plant meant to stir up trouble. Personally I refuse to subscribe to such accusations without a lot of supporting evidence. I’ve not seen any such evidence and hence I believe the guy is just our asshole.

A Failure of Understanding

Quite a while ago a socialist news site did an article entitled Top 10 Jobs in Libertarian Paradise. It was the usual socialist stream of bullshit that proclaimed doom and gloom should big government ever go away. I mostly ignored it as it was over-the-top stupid but then I saw the very well done counter-article on The UK Libertarian (I’m pleasantly surprised they still have libertarians in the UK).

The main problem with people who’ve grown up with large government is they are completely unable to imagine a world that works without said government. Anybody with some knowledge of history knows that countries can survive and prosper without a large government. If you’re in the first group I highly advise you to read the linked UK Libertarian article and learn how those of us on the other side of politics think.

Trying to be Relevant

How cute the Brady Campaign is trying to be relevant again. This time Paul Helmke is saying the way to get women votes is to support gun control. Strangely enough I don’t know many women who support stronger gun control and I know more who are bleeding-heart liberals than not. Of course the Brady Campaign have no bias on the matter because they get their data from polls:

Similarly, a poll done of voters nationwide for the Brady Campaign by Penn, Schoen & Berland Associates, Inc. in the November 2008 election found that 83 percent of female voters supported “the passage of laws placing reasonable restrictions on guns” (something that 68 percent of male voters supported). Eighty six percent of women supported criminal background checks on all gun sales (79 percent of men supported this).

Women voters’ desires for tighter restrictions don’t stop there. Seventy three percent of women (and 63 percent of men) supported registration and licensing of gun owners. Seventy percent of women (60 percent of men) supported restrictions on military-style assault weapons). Sixty seven percent of women (63 percent of men) supported a waiting period of five days for handgun sales. And, 60 percent of women (46 percent of men) supported limiting the number of guns that can be bought at one time.

Yes I removed the link from the quote because it goes to the Brady Bunch’s website and I’m not giving them any traffic. If you want to think you can copy and paste it:

http://www.bradycampaign.org/media/press/view/1085

Let me see if I can find their bias here. Oh there it is, “Similarly, a poll done of voters nationwide for the Brady Campaign…” If you pay a polling company to do a poll they will get you the results you want. That’s just good business. They also play the fear card:

With more than 100,000 getting shot or killed by guns each year in this country, voters — particularly women voters — are looking for candidates who will work to reduce gun violence. Since the U.S. Supreme Court has made it clear that near-total gun bans are off the table, now is the time for candidates to propose and support common sense restrictions that make it harder for dangerous people to guns. This would be good policy — and good politics — particularly for those seeking to widen the “gender gap.”

Once again the link was removed because of my strict rule of not giving those fuckwits referrals. Here’s the link you can copy and past into your browser:

http://www.bradycampaign.org/facts/gunviolence

You’ll notice it’s under the subcategory /facts which is an oxymoron coming from gun control advocates as anybody who’s read this site for any length of time knows. Notice how the quote says, “With more than 100,000 getting shot or killed by guns each year…” That’s important because they are including accidents and suicides in their statistics.

I think politicians will find the quickest way to get voted out is by supporting gun control. I’m sure most of the politicians still remember what happened the last time they supported the Brady Campaign’s agenda.

Practice Your Draw

I found this one via my friend Alexi:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBfASVV1eCU]

Ha! Remember to practice you draw and be aware of your surrounding.

EDIT 2010-10-26 20:01: When I first viewed this video I didn’t realize the officer was shot in the head. I was thought he just fell to the ground and rendered himself unconscious.

Realizing now what I didn’t when I posted this I’m scratching the “Ha” out as this isn’t a laughing matter. I’m not actually that big of an ass as to laugh at a person being murdered, I just didn’t realize that’s what happened.

The Great Meme Machine

Wow, I can’t even begin to count the number of anti-gun memes in this article. Let’s count them shall we?

First we have the title which brings up the “big scary evil gun lobby that kicks puppies:”

ATF’s oversight limited in face of gun lobby

See that? The ATF’s oversight is limited because of the puppy kicking “gun lobby.” Those irresponsible lobbyists! How dare they work to defend a right confirmed in the Constitution this country was founded on! Meme two is the fact that there is no central database of gun purchases:

The government is prohibited from putting gun ownership records into an easily accessible format, such as a searchable computer database.

Most anti-gunners will claim such a database wouldn’t count as registration but it most certainly does. Any system that has a list of firearms sold and who purchased them is a registration system by default. Meme three is the claim that the ATF hasn’t the resources to complete this mission:

The agency still has about the same number of agents it had nearly four decades ago: 2,500. The firearms bureau inspects only a fraction of the nation’s 60,000 retail gun dealers, taking as much as eight years between visits to stores. By law, the ATF cannot require dealers to conduct a physical inventory to determine whether any guns have been lost or stolen.

Oh no! Not only can the ATF not handle the workload they already have but many guns are purchased from private entities (bonus points to the story writer who didn’t directly say “gun show loophole:”

Depending on how well a dealer keeps records, a firearms trace can take hours or weeks. But one-third of all gun traces come from the records of out-of-business gun dealers. In those cases, there is no one to call.

I’m going to just pull over for a side note and bring up this quote:

“Katrina was a mess,” Houser said.

Damn right it was! Katrina was a classic example of gun confiscation. The National Guard actually went in to New Orleans and stole peoples’ means of self-defense. Shit like this is a classic example of why gun owners are afraid of any registration system, then the government knows where to go to confiscate firearms. Of course this article wasn’t talking about that fact when they quote somebody saying Katrina was a mess. Oh no:

Gun dealers all over the Gulf Coast region were driven out of business by the hurricane, and they sent their wet and mildewing records to Martinsburg. For months, paper files sat in the center’s parking lot, drying in the sun.

The Mexico meme made a guest appearance in this article as well:

The difficulties at the tracing center have slowed efforts to trace guns seized from crime scenes all over the country – as well as in Mexico, where most of the seized weapons come from U.S. gun dealers, according to congressional reports.

Traces are most useful within the first few days, but it took the ATF an average of about two weeks to complete traces of firearms recovered in Mexico between 2004 and 2008, according to a congressional report last year on the ATF’s efforts to combat arms trafficking to that country. In addition, the Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General said the ATF doesn’t have enough Spanish-speaking personnel and has been slow in developing a tracing system in Spanish.

I wonder if the author was getting paid by the meme for this article. And yet again the author brings up the meddling gun lobby:

Meanwhile, the change requiring Senate confirmation for an ATF chief allowed the gun lobby to have a say on Capitol Hill about the agency’s leadership.

Yet another meme is the ATF doesn’t have the legal authority to fulfill its mission:

The ATF’s hands are often tied when it comes to regulating dealers, according to interviews with current and former agency officials, as well as thousands of pages of internal files obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests.

Yes those bastards have to follow the letter of the law! How horrible!

It’s impressive that the author was able to fit all that bullshit into one article. The only thing missing was a blurb about children.

Responsibility

The “unbiased” Washington Post has a survey posted on their website with the question being “Are gun stores responsible for crime?” Not only is this the question but some people actually are voting yes on it.

I’m completely flabbergasted as the idea that gun stores should be responsible for the actions of their customers. Although is cliche I’m going to use the classic car analogy. Should a car dealership be held responsible if one of their customers kills a kid while driving intoxicated? Almost nobody I know would answer yes to this but somehow some people feel the rules should be different for gun stores. What logic or sense is there in the idea of holding gun stores responsible?

In order for a gun store to sell a gun they must be a federally licensed dealer. Having a federal firearms license (FFL) is the de facto definition of being a gun store. When you hold an FFL there are certain restrictions and regulations put into place. First you must have every customer fill out an ATF Form 4473 which records the firearms sold, the firearm’s serial numbers, and the person information of the purchaser.

After this form is completed the FFL holder must call the FBI’s National Criminal Instant Background Check System (NICS) hot line and provide the information on the 4473 to the person on the other side of the line. With this information in hand the NICS is used to run a background check on the purchaser. There are three results possible from this; go, no-go, or delay. This means the FBI ultimately grants permission on all sales performed in gun shops.

Shouldn’t this be considered enough on behalf of the FFL holder? If you want to blame somebody else for the actions of a criminals why not blame the FBI? They ultimately approved the sale.

What I would like to hear is justification from somebody who thinks gun stores should be held accountable for the actions of their customers. This justification must also include reasoning why gun stores are special and should be treated differently than other stores (unless of course you believe all stores should be held accountable for what their customers do with items that have been purchased at the establishment).

Guns are the only things I’m aware of where people say sellers should be held accountable for the actions of purchasers. Every other thing on the planet is assumed to be an item of no conscious and the user is ultimately held responsible for any misuse. Hypocrisy pisses me off almost more than anything else.

Android Voice Commands

I think I’ve found a killer feature in the Android operating system, voice commands. First let me clarify that Android is the first operating system I’ve ever used that has voice recognition that actually works. I’d say the voice recognition software on Android is accurate with what I say roughly 90% of the time. Yes I realize 10% rate of failure is pretty big but honestly for voice recognition it’s pretty friggin’ phenomenal.

Voice commands are activated on the Evo 4G by holding down the search button. When held down a little dialog box will appear asking you to speak your command and the phone will act from there. My two favorite commands are “direction to” and “send text.” If you say, “direction to 1234 South North Street Podunk Minnesota” the phone will open Google Maps and plot directions from your current location to 1234 South North Street Podunk, MN.

The “send text” command works in the same fashion. When you say, “send text to Fictional Person I’ll be there in five minutes period” the phone will display a text message to Fiction Person that says, “I’ll be there in five minutes.” All you have to do after that is tap the send button and away it goes.

That’s one thing you have to realize, punctuation must be spoken. The speech recognition can’t predict when you want to add a period or question mark so you have to speak them. It’s kind of a pain in you want the work period written out but it works correctly nine times out of ten.

I’m simply blown away by the voice command feature and how well it works.

So Much for Palm OS Emulation

Before getting my Evo 4G I had a Palm Treo 755p, before that a 700p, before that a Palm T|X, before that… well you get the idea. I was (and still am) a huge fan of the original Palm OS. That’s one of the reasons I was so excited for the Palm Pre, it had a high quality Palm OS emulator included with it.

Alas it seems Palm has removed the Palm OS ROM from the next version of their OS which renders MotionApps emulator worthless (since Palm OS was never open sourced we’re at the mercy of Palm to deliver a ROM for emulation). What excitement I had for WebOS 2 (what is a lot although the hardware that has been revealed is pretty piss poor) is quickly drying up. Since WebOS has the fewest available applications (compared to iOS and Android) the Palm OS emulator was used to fill in the gaps (for instance if you needed a VPN client you had to install it in Classic). Now it seems that option has been put to bed.