Month: May 2011

Why I Carry Part 10,174

Criminals who prey upon other individuals are scums and almost every one of them are cowards to boot. They try to find the weakest possible targets in the hopes of accomplishing their goals of either obtaining material goods or fulfilling their need for violence. The area of Minneapolis traditionally known as Uptown has been suffering a rash of violent attacks:

A group of violent robbers struck six Uptown pedestrians three nights in a row within a six-block area, beating people into concussions with fists, kicks and, in at least one case, a set of brass knuckles, while taking phones and wallets, Minneapolis police said.

The three attacks occurred between 11:30 p.m. and 1 a.m., one attack each night starting in the early hours of Sunday morning, in an area bound by Hennepin and Lyndale Avenues, W. 32nd Street to W. 25th Street.

One of the punks also appeared to enjoy making inane threats against his victims:

“You want me to shoot you, bro?” he asked Houser, before running off. The three men drove away in a late model white minivan that was parked nearby.

Unfortunately for these thugs karma is a cold-hearted bitch:

The Uptown robbers struck again Tuesday night, only this time their victim was armed, police say.

Edward Curtis, 61, who described himself to police as an ex-Marine, fired several shots at a group of men who attacked him as he got out of his car near his apartment, according to police records. Curtis thinks he may have struck one of the men, said Minneapolis Police Lt. Mike Fossum.

“He had just parked his car in the parking lot,” said Fossum. “These guys blitzed him. They just started kicking his ass. He managed to get off three rounds.”

These brazen cowards weren’t so smart when faced with an individuals with the ability to defend himself. When facing multiple attackers a gun brings the odds of your survivability up greatly. After three similar successful attacks the criminals were sent running from their fourth attempt because Mr. Curtis was able to fight back.

Stories like these are why I’m such an advocate of the right to carry. Ultimately you are the one responsible for the defense of your life. The police won’t magically teleport to your location when needed and most people who witness an attack will keep out of it so you’re down to you and the tools you have available.

EDIT 2011-06-12 12:20: It was brought to my attention that I mixed the name Curtis and Fossum around. That’s been corrected. Thanks Nicole.

SAF Challenging Interstate Handgun Sale Ban

Here’s another story about the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) being awesome again. In the United States it’s currently not legal for a resident of one state to buy a handgun in another state. This is a rather stupid and arbitrary rule because as a resident of Minnesota I can purchase a long gun in Wisconsin (I’ve done this a couple of times) yet handguns are somehow so super scary that they are subject to entirely different rules. It seems SAF has had enough of this shit:

The Second Amendment Foundation today filed suit in U.S. District Court in Virginia challenging the constitutionality of federal and Virginia provisions barring handgun sales to non-residents.

SAF is joined in the lawsuit by Michelle Lane, a District of Columbia resident who cannot legally purchase handguns because there are no retail firearms dealers inside the District. The Supreme Court’s 2008 Heller ruling struck down the District’s handgun ban, confirming that individuals have a constitutional right to possess handguns.

I like this strategy. SAF has some smart people working on their legal team as evident by their victories in Heller vs. District of Columbia and McDonald vs. Chicago so I feel their chances of destroying this ban are pretty decent. Every gun owner should toss a few bucks their way so they can keep being awesome.

Government in Your Phone

Happy days are afoot now. In 2006 the federal government approved the creation of the Commercial Mobile Alert System and it’s ready for action. On the surface it’s claimed to be a mechanism of alerting people in an area of a disaster. I’m sure anybody reading this blog long enough know that I’m very skeptical of anything the government does. First I find the following interesting:

A special chip is required to allow a phone to receive the messages, and soon all new phones will have the technology. Some smartphones already have the chip, and software updates will be available when the network goes online later this year, Genachowski said.

Why does this interest me? It interests me for several reasons. First is the design of this chip open for anybody to develop or is production of these chips controlled by one company that was granted a government monopoly? If the design of this chip isn’t open we have no clue what it can actually do. When the government controls something I can’t verify the abilities of I worry.

Another thing I find interesting are the levels of alerts this system can implement:

Presidential Alerts – Alerts for all Americans related to national emergencies, such as terrorist attacks, that will preempt any other pending alerts;

Imminent Threat Alerts – Alerts with information on emergencies, such as hurricanes or tornadoes, where life or property is at risk, the event is likely to occur, and some responsive action should be taken; and

Child Abduction Emergency/AMBER Alerts – Alerts related to missing or endangered children due to an abduction or runaway situation.

Combine this with the following:

People will be able to opt out of receiving all but the presidential alerts.

So what the Hell is this system supposed to accomplish? Obviously not warning people in an area of natural disasters because those messages can be opted out of. But if there is a terrorist attack in New York again I’m unable to opt-out of that message. I’m sorry but a terrorist attack in another state isn’t something I need to be warned about immediately while a tornado touching down over my house would be of some interest to me. The opt-out mechanism is backwards to say the last and that is also cause for suspicion.

Basically the government has legislated a new chip be required in all new cell phones yet have no released any documents that I can find that give the exact specifications of this chip or its capabilities. I’m guessing we’re going to find something additional functionality further down the road but I could just be cynical due to the history of government implemented projects.

What’s interesting is currently only AT&T and Verizon are signed up for this. Sprint and T-Mobile (who will soon be AT&T) haven’t which really makes me want to utilize my Sprint phone more.

The Reason for a Commodity Based Monetary Standard

One of the reasons I know Ron Paul is a pretty stand up guys is because he’s up front and honest:

I’ve described the rationale behind the idea of taxation being theft but taxation isn’t the only type of theft the government partakes in. Another type of theft they perform is inflation. As the Federal Reserve prints money each monetary unit (dollar) becomes worth less.

If you have $10,000 in a bank account at the government prints off $100,000 inflation ensures the value of each dollar goes down meaning that the purchasing power in your bank account becomes less. Inflation takes some time to kick in and thus those who first receive the money are unaffected while those of us at the bottom of the receiving pole get the feel the full force of it.

During this whole bailout fiasco the government has been printing trillions of dollars and handing those bills out to companies that are “too big to fail” and foreign banks. This is a nice little double dip of theft as the government first stole money from the citizens in the form of taxes and then they stole purchasing power from us in the form of inflation.

This is where the advocacy of hard money comes into play. People often hear libertarians speak about a “gold standard” and scoff. When you understand the reasoning behind the gold standard is makes a bit more sense though. First saying gold standard is a bit of a misnomer as any commodity can be used in place of gold (gold has traditionally been used because it was the commodity chosen by the market).

What a commodity standard does is prevent government theft in the form of inflation. One of the benefits of gold is that mining it is a fairly intensive process and much of the mined gold is used for industrial uses. This means the amount of monetary gold remains mostly fixed and thus the purchasing power of each ounce o gold remains mostly constant. As gold can’t just be printed up the amount can’t be increased on a whim so the government is restricted from “printing money.”

The reason libertarians say we need to return to the gold standard is because there is no better way to protect each person’s purchasing power from government initiated inflation.

By That Standard

You’re never going to believe this but I went to the Red Star website and found more cannon fodder. Let’s take a look at a letter to the editor submitted by Gary Thompson of St. Paul:

The following label should be printed on all concealed-carry handgun purchases.

“WARNING: According to government statistics, the possession and carrying of this hand-held firearm will greatly multiply your chances of being shot by a spouse, other family member, acquaintance, neighbor, intruder, or even yourself. According to the Surgeon General, the consumption of even small amounts of alcohol or drugs by any of these persons, as in operating any machinery, will further multiply these chances.”

If a label can be put on cigarettes, one should be put on handguns.

By that standard the following warning label should be applied to automobiles:

“WARNING: According to government statistics, the possession and use of this automobile will greatly multiply your chances of getting into an automobile accident.”

The following warning should be applied to electrified households:

“WARNING: According to government statistics, the possession and use of this electrified house will greatly multiple your chances of getting electrocuted.”

How about households with running water:

“WARNING: According to government statistics, the possession and use of this household will greatly multiply your chances of drowning.”

I could go on and one with this but I think my point has been made; the absence of something will decrease any affect that thing can have on you. With that said your chances of getting assaulted, murdered, or raped by some thug is multiplied by the absence of a means of self-defense.

The Hypocrisy of Anti-Gunners

As I’ve said before on this blog there is one thing I hate more than almost anything else; hypocrisy. Nothing pisses me off quite as much as saying one thing and doing another. This ultimately is the biggest problem I have with anti-gunners; their entire argument is hypocritical. They want to ban firearms from civilian ownership and restrict them to government officials in the hopes of reducing violent crime rates. What they’re really advocating is violence by proxy. No better demonstration of this hypocrisy can be found than by former Chicago Mayor Daley:

After the Supreme Court smacked down Chicago’s gun ban last year, the gun grabbers scrambled to evade their responsibilities under the Constitution. Outgoing Mayor Richard M. Daley revised the Windy City’s gun laws to place so many obstacles on the path to gun ownership that few law-abiding citizens would succeed. Now we learn that Mr. Daley wants taxpayers to foot the bill for a team of armed bodyguards to protect him once he leaves office on May 17.

Even though he wants to ban the ownership of firearms within the city of Chicago (and everywhere else) he also wants guns to protect him. The difference is that he’s willing to risk other peoples’ lives to protect his own while most of us who advocate the unrestricted rights of gun owners want to take responsibility for our own lives. Mayor Daley has some brass balls for stopping the citizens of Chicago from obtaining a means of self-defense and then turn around and demand that tax-payers foot the bill for his personal body guards who will have guns.

Let me be the millionth person to say, “Fuck you Daley.”

The Road to Serfdom Comic

If you’ve ever been curious how central economic planning could lead to tyranny then you need look no further than The Road to Serfdom by Friedrich A. Hayek (the book is available for free at the link). Of course most people seem to be unwilling to actually read a book these days so you can get the gist of what the book talks about in convenient comic book form.

What’s interesting is how well the United States is following the steps put forth in Hayek’s book. The United States implemented national economic planning during World War II and left much of it in place after the Japanese surrendered. Likewise the politicians utilize a lot of propaganda to gain acceptance for their plans (such as claiming government is needed to protect people from the free market even though the people are the free market). It’s actually rather sad to see but I doubt we’re going to derail the tyranny train anytime soon. Either way the comic is a great little piece that you can show your statist friends in the hopes some idea from it may sink into their heads.

Technological Advancements

The computer field interests me because it’s moving so damned fast. If every industry advanced as quickly as the computer market we’d probably have faster than light travel by now and could live for 500 years. I love seeing demonstrations of these advancements and the fact that an iPad 2 can beat a supercomputer from the 1990s makes for an excellent expression of such advancements.

Just think about that for a moment. In the span of roughly 20 years we’re now at the point where a handheld electronic device that costs hundreds of dollars surpasses the computing power of a massive supercomputer that listed for $17 million (the Cray-2 in this case). The human race is fucking awesome!

So Long Bill Ruger

It seems Ruger is slowly throwing off the chains place upon it back in the day when Bill Ruger ran the place. The Firearm Blog has the scoop on Ruger’s new and official 25 round 10/22 magazines. One of the Ruger spokesmen stated the following in regards to the magazines:

“These are genuine Ruger factory magazines. We designed them. We didn’t license and rebrand someone else’s magazines,” said Ruger CEO Michael Fifer.

That doesn’t fill me with a whole lot of confidence. My main hope is that these magazines aren’t complete shit like the standard 10 round affairs. I’ve not been able to find a single standard 10 round magazine for my 10/22 that doesn’t end up being a jam-o-matic. Frankly it’s embarrassing that the manufacturer of one of the (if not the) most prolific .22 rifles can’t even manage to make a magazine that works for that gun.

Regardless of how well the magazines work it’s nice to see Ruger is moving further and further away from Bill Ruger’s ideas. Good work guys.

Tear Down of an FBI Tracking Device

I can’t express in words my love for iFixit. Somehow the guys there manage to get a hold of every device manufacture and create excellent tear down guides allowing people such as myself to perform self-repairs on many electronic gadgets. It seems that working with Wired the guys over at iFixit were able to obtain one of those Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) tracking devices and went to work tearing it apart.

The thing I was most curious about was the power source. It seems these tracking devices are powered by lithium-thionyl chloride batteries which I’ve never heard of until today. These batteries specialize providing long term power (think 10 to 20 years) to devices which don’t require a ton of power. That’s some pretty sweet technology if I do say so myself.

I was also surprised at the ease at which getting into the tracking device was possible. If I were the FBI and wanted to make a device that allowed me to ignore those pesky laws against illegal search and seizure I’d have epoxied the living shit out of everything inside to make a tear down practically impossible. It’s not like they need to worry about repairing these things as they have access to the government’s printing press as long as they can drop the word terrorism into their request.

The guys at iFixit it also have the following disclaimer:

Disclaimer: We love the FBI. We’ve worked with them on several occasions to fight crime and locate criminals. We’ve helped them with instructions on gaining entry into certain devices. We have nothing against them, and we hope they don’t come after us for publishing this teardown.

I also have a disclaimer… We (by which I mean I) here at christopherburg.com hate the FBI. We feel that no organization should be able to go beyond the law and the FBI has done that numerous times without consequences. The only way we’ll help the FBI is if we are subpoenaed and forced to do so. We have a lot against them including the fact that they’re run by a bunch of authoritarian assholes.