Month: November 2012

Not Everybody is Celebrating Obama’s Victory

If you turned on the news after Obama’s reelection you probably got the impression that everybody in the world was celebrating Obama’s victory. Obviously this wasn’t the case for much of the gun rights community or the Republican Party. Another group of people who didn’t celebrate Obama’s reelection were the families of his victims:

The roars celebrating the re-election of U.S. President Barack Obama on television give Mohammad Rehman Khan a searing headache, as years of grief and anger come rushing back.

The 28-year-old Pakistani accuses the president of robbing him of his father, three brothers and a nephew, all killed in a U.S. drone aircraft attack a month after Obama first took office.

“The same person who attacked my home has gotten re-elected,” he told Reuters in the capital, Islamabad, where he fled after the attack on his village in South Waziristan, one of several ethnic Pashtun tribal areas on the Afghan border.

“Since yesterday, the pressure on my brain has increased. I remember all of the pain again.”

Many people have lost family members to Obama’s murderous rampage through the Middle East. Every drone strike her orders seems to end in multiple casualties, each of which have family and friends. Imagine how barbaric the United States must seem to those who have lost family members to its wars.

Advocate of Gun Rights Who Aren’t Helping Gun Rights

When I discussed the curmudgeons in the gun rights movement who were entirely unwilling to accept people with differing ideologies this was the kind of crap I was thinking of:

Effective immediately, if you voted for Obama, your money is no good here. You have proven beyond a doubt that you are not responsible enough to own a firearm. We have just put a sign up on the front door to save you the trouble of walking all the way in here….

I took this ad out in our local paper. It will come out in the White Mountain Independent tomorrow, 9 November

Sincerely,
Cope Reynolds

Southwest Shooting Authority of Arizona

Congratulations Southwest Shooting Authority of Arizona, you’ve just effectively dissuaded a majority of voters from the gun community. I know that many people in the gun rights movement are butt hurt over the election results but lashing out at the people who voted for Obama isn’t going to help the cause of gun rights. Instead of alienating Obama’s supporters we need to reach out to them. Gun rights shouldn’t be a Republican or Democrat issue, it’s should be an all inclusive issue that accepts people from all manners of political ideologies. Statements like the one made by Southwest Shooting Authority of Arizona reinforces the stereotype that all gun owners are hardcore Republicans and therefore delegates the issue of gun rights to an “us” versus “them” debate.

Regarding the Supreme Court

I know one of the biggest concerns the gun rights community has now that Obama will be in office for four more years are Supreme Court nominees. Several of the current robe-adoren ones are getting up there in age and will likely be retiring relatively soon. The main concern gun rights activists have is Obama appointing anti-gun justices who will reverse the decisions in District of Columbia v. Heller and McDonald v. Chicago. While the Supreme Court is potentially worrisome it’s also one of the branches that the gun rights community can, for the most part, control.

The Supreme Court only rules on cases that have been appealed to their level and they are willing to hear. Because of these two requirements, and the nature of the gun control movement, the gun rights community can mostly control whether or not gun rights cases get to the Supreme Court. Needless to say so long as the gun rights community doesn’t appeal cases to the Supreme Court level the Supreme Court doesn’t get to make a decision. Unfortunately this may mean holding off on lawsuits, which have proven to be a most effective tool as of late, if anti-gun justices are seated but it also means that the threat of seeing either previous victory reversed is mostly avoidable. This means that gun rights would not move forward through the judicial system but it also means it won’t move backwards either.

I also mentioned that the nature of the gun control movement plays are part in this equation. When it comes to court cases regarding gun rights the only two sides that are apt to file lawsuits are advocates of gun rights and advocates of gun control. Advocates of gun rights have good reason to file lawsuits against municipalities that violate gun rights but gun control advocates don’t because they want municipalities to violate gun rights. Without some kind of violation there aren’t grounds of lawsuits so it’s far more difficult for gun control advocates to initiate one. Furthermore the gun control movement has more limited resources available to it. The only gun control game in town that still has money is Mayors Against Illegal Guns, which is funded by the personal fortunes of Mayor Bloomberg and his cronies. On the other hand the gun rights movement has the National Rifle Association (NRA), Second Amendment Foundation (SAF), Gun Owners of America (GOA), Jews for the Preservation of Firearm Ownership (JFPO), and numerous state gun rights organizations. Combining forces these gun rights organizations have a funding base of millions of members. Considering the expense of hiring a lawyer that has the required credentials to argue in the Supreme Court it’s unlikely that gun control advocates are going to pursue such lawsuits.

If Obama appoints anti-gun justices to the Supreme Court the gun rights community stands to lose one of its most valuable tools, but it mostly control whether or not ground will be lost. The worst case scenario is that gun rights activists will need to pursue another strategy. One of my biggest criticisms of the NRA is their laser-like focus on a single strategy even when it’s ineffective. When one strategy fails or is no longer viable then another must be developed. Innovate or die is the name of the game. Just because the gun rights movement becomes cut off from the Supreme Court doesn’t mean the game is over, it means a different game must be played.

Of course the real problem is the fact that nine robe-adoren individuals can decide what is and isn’t allowed for an entire country but I touched on that argument already so I’ll not repeat it here.

Expanding the Ranks of Gun Rights Advocates

The sky is falling! Fire and brimstone is raining from the sky! We’ve lost the election and will have are guns taken from us! The end is nigh my friends, the end is nigh!

That’s seems to be the general attitude many gun owners are having after Tuesday’s election. Why are gun owners screaming about the end of gun rights? Because a Republican isn’t in the Oval Office and to many gun owners Republicans equal gun owners while Democrats equal gun grabbers. This attitude is pervasive throughout the gun community and, as Shelley Rae at Gun Nuts Media points out, it shouldn’t be this way:

This should not be a liberal versus conservative conversation. But it continues to be and that, I believe, is partially our failure as a community. We continue to attack and alienate target demographics that could benefit us, especially in regards to more liberal politicians who are interested in reducing our Second Amendment rights. Politicians play to their constituents, and if a liberal politicians were to realize that all the 20-something hipsters would be upset if their 9mm Makarovs were taken away it would be a major asset to our community.

What am I really getting at here? Generation Y. My people. The ones who are participating in Occupy Wallstreet marches and getting married to people of the same sex and have a bunch of tattoos along with their PhD. I’m not suggesting you have to like everything they do or all their political ideals, in fact I’m well-known among my peers for making stuck-up comments about individual responsibility, but this isn’t about that – this is about gun ownership and the Second Amendment.

One of the shortcomings of the gun community, in my opinion, is the relatively authoritarian nature of some the most vocal members. Many of these individuals spend a great deal of time talking about individual liberty only to turn around and demand compliance with their beliefs. Anybody who has been an active participant in the gun community and isn’t a clean-cut male Christian Republican has likely found themselves embroiled in arguments with some of the vocal members of the gun culture.

To quote George Carlin:

I don’t like ass kissers, flag wavers or team players. I like people who buck the system. Individualists. I often warn people: “Somewhere along the way, someone is going to tell you, ‘There is no “I” in team.’ What you should tell them is, ‘Maybe not. But there is an “I” in independence, individuality and integrity.'” Avoid teams at all cost. Keep your circle small. Never join a group that has a name. If they say, “We’re the So-and-Sos,” take a walk. And if, somehow, you must join, if it’s unavoidable, such as a union or a trade association, go ahead and join. But don’t participate; it will be your death. And if they tell you you’re not a team player, congratulate them on being observant.

As a general rule I prefer to be around, what most people would consider, weird people. Most of these people do not comply with the beliefs of the above mentioned. They usually don’t fit into binary categories such as Democrats and Republicans or Catholics and Protestants. These people blur the lines, buck trends, and sometimes set out to be as weird as possible. When I bring these people to the range or to a gun show it’s almost inevitable that one of the above mentioned will stroll up and start some kind of argument.

For the guys reading this post let me just say that you haven’t gotten the full curmudgeon gun owner experience until you’ve brought a girl with pink hair to the range or a girl with tattoos covering one of her arms. If there’s an above mentioned anywhere on that range you can guarantee that he’ll come up and start any kind of argument possible. Do you want some more fun? Bring a girl to a gun show, start a stopwatch when you enter the door, and stop it when the first guy mentions buying her a pink gun. If you want even more entertainment take her to a table, act entirely disinterest in the wares, have her look at the firearms, then see if the attendant addresses you or her. In my experience the attendant will address you nine times out of ten.

Fortunately there many people in the gun community who aren’t the above mentioned. I’m one of them and I’m guessing you’re one of them as well (since I’m pretty sure I’ve run off the above mentioned long ago when I started posting more about anarchism). We need to become more vocal and let it be known that the above mentioned are not the only people in the community. Expanding our ranks is critical if we want to keep the community going after all of the above mentioned have died off. This means attracting everybody including Christians, Muslims, pagans, atheists, men, women, transgender, conservatives, liberals, libertarians, communists, anarchists, people with brown hair, people with pink hair, people covered in tattoos, and people haven’t modified their body. One of the most effective things the “left” has done is be very inclusive of people with different backgrounds. It’s a strategy the gun community should adopt post haste.

Even Ron Paul Says It’s Game Over

People keep talking about the encroaching fiscal cliff and what we must do to avoid it. I’ve given up on avoiding it and believe that the best option is to put a brick on the accelerator, jump out of the car, and let it go over the edge. There are too many statists in this country who want the government to do and provide everything for them. Ron Paul explained our problems succinctly:

“People do not want anything cut,” he said. “They want all the bailouts to come. They want the Fed to keep printing the money. And they don’t believe that we’ve gone off the cliff or are close to going off the cliff. They think we can patch it over, that we can somehow come up with some magic solution. But you can’t have a budgetary solution if you don’t change what the role of government should be. As long as you think we have to police the world and run this welfare state, all we are going to argue about is who will get the loot.”

People don’t want to stop the looting, they just want a piece of the loot. To once again quote George Carlin:

If you have selfish, ignorant citizens, you’re going to get selfish, ignorant leaders. Term limits ain’t going to do any good; you’re just going to end up with a brand new bunch of selfish, ignorant Americans. So, maybe, maybe, maybe, it’s not the politicians who suck. Maybe something else sucks around here… like, the public. Yeah, the public sucks. There’s a nice campaign slogan for somebody: ‘The Public Sucks. Fuck Hope.’

A majority of people who participate in the political process are selfish and ignorant. Since the state has the capacity for violence necessary to take from the people en masse it’s not surprising that a majority of people who are attracted to it are those wanting to take from others. In fact that’s the root of the problem. The state lowers the cost faced by somebody wanting to rob another. Without the state an individual wanting to steal from another would have to face the entire cost of doing so, including the possibility of bodily harm or death, directly. With the state they can shove off a majority of the cost, especially the possibility of bodily harm or death, to everybody else. It’s a system designed for looters by looters, which is why reforming it will not work. Nobody wants to reform it because reforming it would cut off the gravy train.

Consider every person on welfare, every teacher working in a public school, ever police officer, every clerk at a government building, every soldier, etc. are dependent on the state. Now consider that the state is dependent on expropriation. Do you think we can turn this ship around? So many are dependent on the state and its expropriation that there’s no practical way to reform anything. The empire will collapse and there’s nothing anybody can do to stop it.

Cheer Up Republicans

I know there’s a lot of butt hurt going around the Republican Party after their nominee was handed his ass in Tuesday’s election but there’s good news, they actually won:

Yes, Obama began his presidency with bailouts, stimulus, and borrowing. You know who started the bailouts? George W. Bush.

[…]

Yes, Obama imposed an individual mandate to buy health insurance. You know who else did that? Romney. You know where the idea came from? The Heritage Foundation.

[…]

Remember how Democrats ridiculed George W. Bush’s troop surge in Iraq? Obama copied it in Afghanistan.

To any Republicans reading this I just want to tell you to cheer up. Even though your guy isn’t in the Oval Office there is a guy sitting there that has delivered everything you’ve been asking for. It’s time to stop crying and shout for joy because you just won the election.

Romney’s Failure

Republican Party apologists are working hard to find anybody to blame for Tuesday’s results besides the Republican Party. As usual the first target of Republican anger are the people who voted for third-party candidates. This accusation is absurd since Romney lost by more than the total of third-party votes:

Could he have picked up more Electoral College votes in other battleground states had there been no third-party candidates? In Ohio, New York, Pennsylvania, Michigan, New Jersey, Virginia and Illinois, third-party candidates were active — campaigning on a variety of issues, including the legalization of marijuana, which was approved by Colorado and Washington State voters.

However, third-party candidates drew only small percentages of the vote in those states.

In Virginia, it had been feared that former U.S. Senator Virgil Goode’s Constitutional Party candidacy would leach off enough conservative votes to give the state’s Electoral College votes to Obama. However, Obama won the state’s 13 Electoral College ballots by 54,924 votes. Only 51,802 Virginians voted for all of the third-party candidates combined — close, but not enough to matter.

What about the other states that went for Obama? Had there been no third-party candidates, would there have been 35 more Electoral College votes to put Romney over the top?

In California, the President won by 59.2 percent with 5,554,499 votes. Romney garnered only 3,613,339 votes. If he’d had every one of the Third Party candidates’ 219,425 votes, it would have made no difference. The same is true in all of the “battleground” states as well as smaller states which went for Obama: Oregon, Iowa, Nevada, New Mexico, New Hampshire, Vermont, Maryland, Delaware and Minnesota.

Had every third-party voter voted for Romney instead Obama would still be president. What’s even more absurd is that Romney apologists somehow expect independent minded individuals to support a candidate that wasn’t liked by his own party. Romney received less votes than John McCain, who was also disliked by much of the Republican Party base:

As the national vote total began to solidify last night, one question on the minds of Republicans was: Where are the missing voters? Last night it looked like Mitt Romney had received something like 10 to 15 percent fewer votes than John McCain had in 2008, even though his percentage of the overall vote was at least two points higher.

I think this fact is the most telling piece of information regarding Romney’s loss. Even though Obama’s approval rating during his term as president is below 50% Romney wasn’t able to get enough votes to win. While a majority of the American public doesn’t approve of Obama they approve of Romney even less. Neither Republican voters or the American public liked Romney enough to vote for him.

Third-party voters didn’t sink the Republican Party, the Republican Party sank the Republican Party. They selected a candidate that wasn’t liked by their own base and expected to win the election. Here’s a pro tip for the Republican Party in the future: if your own voter base doesn’t like a candidate nobody else will either.

Ending Statism by Giving Statists What They Want

While many gun blogs were telling people to vote one way or another I simply said that you should vote for whoever you wanted, or not. I did throw in a caveat though, I said I hoped everybody got everything their preferred candidates promised. It was actually a rather underhanded wish.

There are two solutions to an ever expanding state. First you can attempt to reduce the state’s expansion. Reducing the state’s expansion is difficult because the state, being an exploitative entity, needs to continue expanding its influence in order to gain more people from whom to rob wealth. Solution two is to allow the state to continue expanding until it inevitably collapses. History shows us that all empires eventually fall. Genghis Khan’s empire fell, Alexander the Great’s empire fell, and Rome fell. The more a state expands the more likely it is to collapse.

Statism is expensive. In order to continue expropriating wealth a state must maintain the support of public opinion. Often maintaining public opinion requires giving the public “free” stuff. The United States keeps giving people more and more stuff. Everything from welfare to Social Security to unemployment benefits to Obamacare are attempts by the state to buy the public’s favor. This is a vicious cycle though because as the public gets more and more from the state they begin to expect more and more. In this regard the public is like a child. If a child wants a toy, is denied the toy by his or her parents, screams and cries, and is gifted with the toy it reinforces the idea that screaming and crying is an effective way of getting desired things. When the state gives the public something it reinforces the idea that the political means is the way to get desired things.

Buying the public’s favor isn’t free, the state needs to obtain the wealth required to provide the stuff that buys the public’s favor from somewhere. This is where the state runs into a problem. In order to obtain more wealth the state must expropriate it but in order to expropriate wealth the state must invest more wealth into the police and military. State expropriation comes in the form of fines, taxes, and conquest. None of those are possible without a coercive force to convince people to pay fines, taxes, and tributes demanded of conquest. The more the state wants to expropriate the larger the threat of violence it must hold. This is the catch-22 of statism. A cycle occurs where the state builds a larger coercive force to expropriate more wealth so it can buy the public’s favor. Eventually the state expropriates so much that its victims will refuse to pay. When somebody is starving to death the threat of violence suddenly becomes far less intimidating. Faced with guaranteed death by starvation or possible death by the state’s gun most people will take their chances and disobey the state. This is the point where public opinion turns against the state and its power begins to wane.

Ending the state can be accomplished by giving statists exactly what they want. If statists want more welfare give them more welfare. If they want more unemployment benefits give them more unemployment benefits. If they want “free” healthcare give them “free” healthcare. The more statists receive the faster the state expands and the sooner its imminent collapse will come. When I hope that statists get everything their candidates promise I mean it because that will serve my goals as well.

How Obama Celebrated His Reelection

How did Obama celebrate his reelection? By killing people of course:

On Wednesday morning, as many Americans sifted through the voter data and exit poll numbers of President Barack Obama’s reelection the night before, the Twitter feeds of close watchers of Yemen lit up with reports of another sort of presidential event: an apparent U.S. drone strike had killed several individuals in that country.

What a classy guy. Being the Huffington Post the article goes on to discuss the difficult task Obama faces regarding foreign policy. What the article didn’t discuss was how the mentioned foreign policy issues facing Obama aren’t difficult at all, Obama already has the answers and those answers involve murdering people. Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria, Yemen, Iran, and the rest of the Middle East pose little challenge in Obama’s mind because he believes that death solves all problems.