Month: May 2013

I Do Hate Backstabbers

Since their support of the Manchin-Toomey Amendment I’ve been questioning whether or not the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) is still supporting gun rights or has finally succumbed to The One Ring’s corrupting power. A post by Sebastian at Shall Not Be Questioned leads me to believe the latter:

We noticed SAF/CCRBKA’s booth on the NRA floor, but decided not to stop. But Think Progress did, and noticed they were handing out literature taking NRA to task over Manchin-Toomey:

But despite the bill’s (perhaps temporary) defeat in the Senate, CCRKBA doesn’t appear to be backing down — The Gun Mag, a Second Amendment Foundation publication, published an “NRA Meeting Special Issue” whose lead article takes apart the NRA’s line on Manchin-Toomey.

Many of the comments question the claim as it was posted on Think Progress. On the other hand neither the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (CCRKBA) or SAF have refuted the claim.

It’s not wise for gun owners to support an organization that is trying to support gun control legislation and it’s even more unwise to support an organization that is trying to resurrect gun control legislation that has been put to rest. Because the charges against the CCRKBA and SAF are so severe and their previous behavior of supporting the Manchin-Toomey Amendment put their position into question I must hereby withdraw my support. If a representative of either organization is willing to come forth and refute the claim made by Think Progress I will reconsider but I will not give support to an organization that is trying to sell people down the river.

Kokesh’s Armed March in Washington DC

A couple of people have asked me about my thoughts on Adam Kokesh’s planned march in Washington DC. What makes the march worthy of conversation is that it will involve individuals marching with loaded rifles in spite of Washington DC’s prohibition against such activities.

If it was anybody but Kokesh was organizing the march I would expect an convenient excuse to cancel the event to be made shortly before it was scheduled to begin. While I’m not the biggest Adam Kokesh fan due to his abrasive nature he has proven himself willing to spit in the face of the law, which makes this event a real possibility in my mind. With that said, it sounds like the event does have a cop out, Kokesh mentions that there needs to be 1,000 participants for the event to occur. This makes sense since acts of civil disobedience require a mass of people large enough to discourage the police from moving in on the crowd.

If the event actually occurs and there are enough participants to discourage the police from interfering I think this march will go down without incident. History demonstrates that mass acts of civil disobedience, if uninterrupted by agents of the state, usually go down peacefully. However I question whether or not the event will be allowed to occur. Who’s to say that Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) won’t arrest the primary organizers of this event a few days before it’s scheduled to begin? The FBI has a history of pulling such stunts. If the FBI doesn’t pull such shenanigans and the event does occur I wouldn’t be surprised if one or more agent provocateurs were inserted into the group specifically to cause trouble. Again such tactics aren’t unprecedented. It will be important for the organizers of this event to warn participants to immediately disassociate themselves with anybody in the crowd trying to instigate violence and to actively intervene in attempted acts of violence. There are many ways for this event to be prevented from happening or twisted into something ugly if it does happen but that’s a potential risk of any acts of mass civil disobedience.

Many gun rights activists have expressed concern about the image that this kind of event could create but that’s not really a concern of mine. No matter what we do as gun owners the advocates of gun control will hate us. In the eyes of the most zealous and outspoken gun control advocates we’re vicious monsters who want nothing more than to murder every wholesome person in the world. If a bunch of gun owners perform an armed march on Washington DC the gun control advocates will scream bloody murder. If gun owners don’t perform an armed march on Washington DC the gun control advocates will still scream bloody murder. We can’t win with them so we shouldn’t worry ourselves with what they think.

I’ve also heard several gun rights activists express the fact that it will only takes one person to do something stupid for this event to turn into a bloodbath. To that I can only ask, do we really believe what we preach about gun rights? Do we not believe that an armed society is a polite society? Do we not believe that an increased presence of armed individuals increases the cost of performing violent and therefore discourages such behavior? I do believe those things and therefore am not very concerned about one of our own doing something stupid, at least not stupid enough to start a firefight. The agent provocateur risk springs to mind when fellow gun rights activists mention the risk of one of our own doing something stupid but that risk can also be mitigated as I explained above.

I have no issue with the idea of the event itself. I’m a proponent of civil disobedience because it’s the only tactic that has proven to be effective at enacting meaningful political change in this country. If the march happens it will send a powerful and simple message to anybody watching: we the people are not afraid of the state. The point of civil disobedience is to demonstrate to observers that the state’s laws are meaningless unless people are willing to obey them. An armed march on Washington DC may be the act necessary to demonstrate the state’s inability to regulate firearms or it may not. Either way it’ll be interesting to see what comes of this event. I wish the participants the best of luck and encourage them to follow examples set by previous mass civil disobedience events by remaining entirely nonviolent.

Gun Sales Up, Homicide Rate Down, Few Paying Attention Surprised

Once again reality has proven harsh to the advocates of gun control that have been warning us that blood will run through the streets whenever firearm laws are repealed or liberalized. As it turns out gun homicides are down 49% since their peek in 1993:

National rates of gun homicide and other violent gun crimes are strikingly lower now than during their peak in the mid-1990s, paralleling a general decline in violent crime, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of government data. Beneath the long-term trend, though, are big differences by decade: Violence plunged through the 1990s, but has declined less dramatically since 2000.

Compared with 1993, the peak of U.S. gun homicides, the firearm homicide rate was 49% lower in 2010, and there were fewer deaths, even though the nation’s population grew. The victimization rate for other violent crimes with a firearm—assaults, robberies and sex crimes—was 75% lower in 2011 than in 1993. Violent non-fatal crime victimization overall (with or without a firearm) also is down markedly (72%) over two decades.

As Robert Heinlein wrote in Beyond This Horizon, “An armed society is a polite society. Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life.” Advocates of gun control believe that the only way to reduce violence in society is to give the state a monopoly on gun ownership. Somebody holding a less authoritarian view on society would point out that centralizing power has, historically, be ineffective at reducing violence. Decentralizing power, on the other hand, has been far more effective at reducing violence. Even the year with the highest homicide rate in the United States can’t compare to the millions upon millions killed in countries where power is or was centralized.

Nobody should be surprised by this news. Deductive logic would lead one to understand that having more armed people in a society increases the overall cost of initiating violence. Much like predatory animals that prey on the weak and sickly, violent people prefer to prey on the unarmed.

Please Rob My House Signs

According to Minneapolis police thieves looking for guns are specifically targeting homes that have signs such as “This home protected by Smith and Wesson”:

Law enforcement officials say members of a north Minneapolis street gang are looking to burglarize homes that appear to contain guns. According to a search warrant request filed recently in Hennepin County District Court by investigators with the FBI Safe Streets Violent Gang Task Force, members of the Loud Pack gang, “target homes with American flags in the front yard because they believe these are homes or [sic] veterans and will have firearms inside them. Other items they take from these burglaries are sold on the street to various people to support the activates [sic] of the gang.”

The document doesn’t say how often gang members’ strategy for finding guns was successful. However, some say there’s a much easier way for burglars to find out which homes contain guns — the “This home protected by (insert your gun maker here)” sticker. Minneapolis police officials have told me those stickers can actually attract intruders, rather than repel them.

I’m not sure if the Minneapolis Police Department are basing this warning on a rash or recent burglaries or if they’re just trying to get people to pull down such signs because they’re making non-gun owning neighbors nervous but it’s good advice to not have such signs posted in my opinion. Those signs do give burglars notice that there is a high likelihood of firearms being inside and they merely need to stake out the home and wait until it’s empty to get their grubby mitts on them. It’s generally a bad idea to volunteer information to somebody looking to cause you harm.

Why Gun Rights Activists are Unwilling to Capitulate

Via Borepatch I came across an excellent article regarding gun rights by Eric S. Raymond. In the article he summed up the reason gun rights activists are unwilling to cooperate with gun control schemes:

Now comes the news that the head of the Department of Homeland Security officially thanked the Governor of Missuri for violating state law by illegally passing to the DHS Missouri’s list of concealed-carry permit holders. The Governor then lied about his actions.

The Feds, meanwhile, continue to illegally retain transfer records from federally licensed firearms dealers past the statutory time limit, among several other continuing violations of a 1986 law forbidding the establishment of a national gun registry.

The BATF also criminally violated its authorizing laws by transferring over 2000 firearms to Mexican drug gangs through illegal straw purchases (google “ATF gunwalking scandal”). Over 150 Mexican citizens and United States Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry were killed with these guns.

Meanwhile, following scandals about “drop guns” at the sites of police shootings, some big-city police forces (notably in LA and NYC) are strongly suspected of routinely using planted guns to frame suspects they can’t otherwise nail on firearms-possession charges.

Any trust that “gun control” will be administered with even minimal respect for civil rights is long gone, destroyed by the behavior of the enforcers themselves.

Why won’t those of us in the gun rights movement submit to background checks? Why won’t we agree to using gimped magazines? Why won’t we surrender our semi-automatic rifles? Because of the solution gun control advocates have chosen.

As I’ve state numerous times the primary failure of gun control is its reliance on statism. Gun control advocates want the state to pass and us its capacity for violent to enforce laws controlling or completely prohibiting non-state agents’ access to firearms. The state has proven itself to be a beast that cannot be trusted with any amount of power, especially when that power allows them to control civil liberties.

If gun control advocates were willing to seek nonviolent solutions to the issue of violence those of us in the gun rights community would likely lend a hand. Instead they have chosen to use a violent solution administered by an organization that has proven itself to be untrustworthy. A gun owner submitting to state control over guns would be akin to women submitting to abusive misogynist control over women’s rights. Nobody in their right mind would submit to an untrustworthy entity.

Minneapolis CryptoParty

Just so everybody knows the newly established, and at this point entirely unofficial, Minnesota Pirate Party is hosting a CryptoParty on Monday, May 13th. The event will be held at 4200 Cedar Avenue in Minneapolis, MN and is planned to go from 18:00 to 21:00.

Although I’m not sure what specifically will be covered I’m going to make an effort to ensure e-mail encryption and, if time allows, Tor are discussed. Being a CryptoParty there will also be key signing and the usual such shenanigans.

The Result of America’s Prison-Industrial Complex

One of the things that sets me apart from many members of the gun rights community is my opposition to prisons. You won’t hear me demand violators of current gun laws be prosecuted more harshly or that we need to stop releasing prisoners early due to the high recidivism rate. Beyond the fact that prisons are a form of collective punishment (society gets to pay to house, feed, clothe, and guard prisoners) they are also sources of slave labor for the state and private corporations. The fact that prisons serve as a source of slave labor make stories like this unsurprising:

An American judge known for his harsh and autocratic courtroom manner was jailed for 28 years for conspiring with private prisons to hand young offenders maximum sentences in return for kickbacks amounting to millions of dollars.

Mark Ciavarella Jnr was ordered to pay $1.2m (£770,000) in restitution after he was found to be a “figurehead” in the conspiracy that saw thousands of children unjustly punished in the name of profit in the case that became known as “kids for cash”.

Private organizations such as Corrections Corporation of America and their public equivalents like UNICOR and MINNCOR [PDF] use prisoners as a source of extremely cheap slave labor. Because of their access to slave labor these companies are able to undercut other market producers who have to rely on free laborers. By issuing stricter sentences the judges are able to get a kickback from the prison-industrial complex and the prison-industrial complex is able to keep their manufacturing floors stocked with laborers. It’s a win-win situation… at least for everybody but the prisoners.

The idea of incarceration leads itself to this type of problem. Eventually tax victims tire of paying for the food, shelter, clothing, and guarding of prisoners and demand alternatives. The state and its cronies, knowing they can make a nice profit by using prison labor, happily provide an alternative. Tax victims happily agree to the idea because it relives them (at least they belief it relieves them) of footing the bill to maintain prisons and the new scheme is put into motion. Of course the population that is actually affected, the prisoners, are unable to voice their opinion but nobody seems to care about them.

How Private Corporations and the State Team Up to Spy on You

Most people who travel in libertarian circles are quick to point out the dangers of government spying. Many of those same people are unconcerned with spying performed by private entities. After all private entities are good, right? If we lived in a black and white world where public and private entities were clearly divided that would be true but we live in a world where private corporations are married to the state in such a way that it’s almost impossible to tell the two apart. Do libertarians who oppose state spying but condone spying done by private corporations oppose or support private corporations that spy on users and sell that data to the state? It’s an important question to ask because we live in a world where that happens with increasing frequency:

It’s no secret that we’re monitored continuously on the Internet. Some of the company names you know, such as Google and Facebook. Others hide in the background as you move about the Internet. There are browser plugins that show you who is tracking you. One Atlantic editor found 105 companies tracking him during one 36-hour period. Add data from your cell phone (who you talk to, your location), your credit cards (what you buy, from whom you buy it), and the dozens of other times you interact with a computer daily, we live in a surveillance state beyond the dreams of Orwell.

It’s all corporate data, compiled and correlated, bought and sold. And increasingly, the government is doing the buying. Some of this is collected using National Security Letters (NSLs). These give the government the ability to demand an enormous amount of personal data about people for very speculative reasons, with neither probable cause nor judicial oversight. Data on these secretive orders is obviously scant, but we know that the FBI has issued hundreds of thousands of them in the past decade — for reasons that go far beyond terrorism.

NSLs aren’t the only way the government can get at corporate data. Sometimes they simply purchase it, just as any other company might. Sometimes they can get it for free, from corporations that want to stay on the government’s good side.

Scenarios such as this moved me away from my original libertarian roots that believed private entities had a right to do as they please so long as they didn’t harm anybody to viewing many of those private entities are mere extensions of the state. These scenarios also jump-started with interest in crypto-anarchy, specifically the need for anonymity and strong encryption of communications. In our world we must assume that everybody is spying on you and take appropriate measures.

The 3D Printed Handgun Works

Yesterday I mentioned that Defense Distributed had announced the first handgun developed almost exclusive (the one exception is the nail that is used as a firing pin) on a 3D printer. Many people questioned if it would work or if it would explode into a million tiny plastic pieces, especially since the barrel was made of plastic. As it turns out the handgun worked pretty well:

On May 1st, Wilson assembled the 3D-printed pieces of his Liberator for the first time, and agreed to let a Forbes photographer take pictures of the unproven device. A day later, that gun was tested on a remote private shooting range an hour’s drive from Austin, Texas, whose exact location Wilson asked me not to reveal.

The verdict: it worked. The Liberator fired a standard .380 handgun round without visible damage, though it also misfired on another occasion when the firing pin failed to hit the primer cap in the loaded cartridge due a misalignment in the hammer body, resulting in an anti-climactic thunk.

Here’s a video of the test firing:

It’s obvious by looking at the gun and hearing about the failure to fire that the firearm is a prototype but, considering how quickly Mr. Wilson has been advancing the art of manufacturing firearms on 3D printers, this design will likely evolve very quickly. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a reliable, albeit ugly, design capable of firing multiple rounds by the end of the year.

Let the Protectionism of Brick and Mortar Stores Begin

Brick and mortar stores have been begging the state to give them some kind of protection against online retailers for years now, and the Senate has seen fit to grant that protection:

WASHINGTON — The Senate sided with traditional retailers and financially strapped state and local governments Monday by passing a bill that would widely subject online shopping — for many a largely tax-free frontier — to state sales taxes.

The Senate passed the bill by a vote of 69 to 27, getting support from Republicans and Democrats alike. But opposition from some conservatives who view it as a tax increase will make it a tougher sell in the House. President Barack Obama has conveyed his support for the measure.

The brick and mortar stores played it safe and offered the state a method of protectionism that benefited themselves and the state, taxation. Online retailers have so far avoided requirements to collect sales taxes in states they lack a physical presence in. This bill would change that, which would require online retailers to know the sales tax laws of every individual state in order to collect the appropriate amount.

A far better solution, if evening the playing field was really what brick and mortar stores were after, would have been to lobby for the abolition of sales taxes. But leveling the playing field wasn’t what those stores were after, they wanted to make it difficult for online retailers to operate, hence they lobbied for a law that would require online retailers to know the tax laws of all 50 states. Imagine the strain such a requirement will put on very small online retailers. If you’re operating an online business by yourself are you going to be able to familiarize yourself with the tax codes of 50 separate states? This law really stands to put those small operators out of business, which is probably why Amazon supported the legislation. Sure, Amazon many have to pay money in taxes, but it will also crush small competitors in the process.

An online sales tax is nothing but a victory for protectionism.