Category: Gun Rights

Gun Across America in St. Paul

As I mentioned last week there was a gun rights rally planned for Saturday at the Capitol in St. Paul. I attended, although I arrived approximately 15 minutes later, and there was a good turnout, especially when you consider it was 34 degrees (Fahrenheit) and the wind was really blowing. The Minnesota Gun Owners Civil Rights Alliance Facebook page has some photographs of the event. I didn’t see any gun control advocates protesting the event, which was unfortunate because it would have been great to see all four of them standing there being entirely ignored.

Overall it was a typical political rally. Speeches were given, signs were held, flags were waved, and everybody returned home when the festivities concluded.

Divide and Conquer is One of the State’s Most Effective Strategies

Throughout much of the recent gun control debate I’ve noticed that the state’s old strategy of divide and conquer has been working exceptionally well. Once again many people involved in the fight for gun rights have allowed themselves to be sucked into the black hole of partisan politics. These people have found their target for blame and that target is the Democratic Party. If I had a dime for every time I’ve heard a gun owner recently lay the blame for our current predicament on Democrats I’d have enough money to move to a nice tropical island. It’s sad to see so many gun owners resort to the gun control advocates’ strategy of collective punishment. Gun control advocates have been moving to collectively punish all gun owners for the actions of a very small minority and now many individuals involved in the gun rights debate are collectively punishing all Democrats in a similar way. Seeing this irritates me because I’m friends with many self-proclaimed Democrats who are also advocates of gun rights. Unfortunately they don’t involved themselves in gun rights advocacy because they are continuously ridiculed by, what appears to be, a majority of gun rights activists.

To put it bluntly this shit needs to stop. If those of us advocating for guns rights are going to win this fight we need everybody. That means we need self-proclaimed Democrats, socialists, communists, anarchists, gays, transgendered individuals, punks, hackers, and everybody else willing to stand against the state’s attempt to disarm the general populace. Perhaps I see this entire issue differently now that I’ve moved away from political advocacy in exchange for civil disobedience but it does no good to cut our ranks by insulting people simply because they hold a certain political belief. Remember that public opinion is the important thing in this fight because any political action will merely be a manifestation of it.

The state has been so effective at grabbing power, in part, because of its ability to sucker most individuals into take either the Republican or Democrat side. Most issues that come up seem to be divided between the two parties. People seem to believe that one party is pro-gun and the other party is anti-gun, that one party is pro-war and the other party is anti-war, that one party hates the poor and the other party wants to help the poor, etc. When it comes to politics people seem to forget that those two parties are made up of individuals and individuals can have differing beliefs. Some Democrats are pro-gun and some Republicans are anti-war.

Focus on the individuals who are implementing gun control. Name the advocates of it, senators who vote for it, the governors who sign it, and the law enforcement officers who enforce it. It doesn’t matter what party somebody chooses to affiliate if they’re willing to stand next to you. What matters is whether the person willing to stand next to you is working to maintain your power or transfer power to the state.

New Yorks Newest Gun Control Legislation Apples to Police

Talke about an unintended consequence:

Assemblyman Al Graf (R,C,I-Holbrook) recently expressed his opposition to the poor government process that yielded a hurried vote on incomplete legislation. Graf indicated that the legislation contained numerous flaws, including one that hits extremely close to home.

“My daughter is a New York City police officer, and under this legislation, we’ll be taking bullets out of her gun while the bad guys have no such limitations,” said Graf. “This is what happens when you circumvent the legal, responsible legislative process: you end up with a well-intentioned bill that completely misses its mark and ends up putting the safety of our children and families at risk.”

Heh, since it applies to everybody I guess it isn’t that bad.

Banning What is Already Banned

It appears that a politicians from New York has discovered the fact magazines can be printed and is moving to make the manufacture of standard capacity magazines on a 3D printer illegal:

On Wednesday New York Representative Steve Israel issued a statement on his website promising to include a ban on 3D-printed high-capacity magazines–ammunition-feedings devices that attach to firearms and carry more than ten rounds–in his proposed renewal of the Undetectable Firearms Act. Israel’s statement comes just days after Texas-based Defense Distributed posted a YouTube video showing its demonstration of a 30-round magazine it 3D-printed and tested over the weekend, using it to fire 86 rounds through a semi-automatic rifle.

“Background checks and gun regulations will do little good if criminals can print high-capacity magazines at home,” Israel said in his statement. “3-D printing is a new technology that shows great promise, but also requires new guidelines. Law enforcement officials should have the power to stop high-capacity magazines from proliferating with a Google search.”

Did I say he wanted to make 3D printed magazines illegal? I mean to say illegaler since standard capacity magazines are already illegal in New York. How much more pointless can grandstanding be?

Feds Staking Out SHOT Show

No Lawyers – Only Guns and Money reported that work has spread throughout SHOT Show that undercover agents have been stalking about:

the industry poises for the Obama administration, word spread through SHOT Show that undercover agents supposedly from a variety of different agencies, from ATF to OSI, were wandering around the show floor, passing out business cards that bore an official-looking seal and the words “Suspicious Activity Reporting: 702-690-9142”

Curious, one industry insider called the number. After several rings, a recorded message thanked him for reporting the suspicious activity, and asked for a callback number. Instead, he hung up. Only a few minutes later, their cellphone rang and a caller identified himself as an FBI agent following up on the “suspicious activity report”.

Perhaps SHOT Show needs its own version of Defcon’s Spot the Fed competition:

Basically the contest goes like this: If you see some shady MIB (Men in Black) earphone penny loafer sunglass wearing Clint Eastwood to live and die in LA type lurking about, point him out. Just get my attention and claim out loud you think you have spotted a fed. The people around at the time will then (I bet) start to discuss the possibility of whether or not a real fed has been spotted. Once enough people have decided that a fed has been spotted, and the Identified Fed (I.F.) has had a say, and informal vote takes place, and if enough people think it’s a true fed, or fed wanna-be, or other nefarious style character, you win a “I spotted the fed!” shirt, and the I.F. gets an “I am the fed!” shirt.

On the other hand the people leaving the cards at SHOT Show could be members of the Legion of Dynamic Discord having fun screwing with with attendees. It would be trivial to setup a phone number (say a Google Voice number), walk around SHOT Show, drop cards, and use the caller identification information to call back anybody who calls your number.

Obama Announced Gun Control Plan

I won’t spend a great deal of time on this since you’ve likely already heard about Obama’s annoucement:

Mr Obama called for a ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines and wider background checks on gun buyers.

The Democratic president also signed 23 executive-order measures, which do not require congressional approval.

Mr Obama said gun-control reforms could not wait any longer, after last month’s school massacre in Connecticut.

“While there is no law or set of laws that can prevent every senseless act of violence completely, no piece of legislation that will prevent every tragedy, every act of evil,” he said, “if there’s even one thing we can do to reduce this violence, if there’s even one life that can be saved, then we’ve got an obligation to try.”

It was a pretty standard affair. You can read about the 23 executive orders here but most of them appear to be variations of enforcing laws that are already on the books. Some of them were somewhat humorous considering the Fast and Furious fiasco:

4. Direct the Attorney General to review categories of individuals prohibited from having a gun to make sure dangerous people are not slipping through the cracks.

I’m guessing the executive order only means dangerous people who are not employed by a Mexican drug cartel.

9. Issue a Presidential Memorandum to require federal law enforcement to trace guns recovered in criminal investigations.

This one surprised me. Weren’t traces of guns recovered in criminal investigations what lead to the Fast and Furious scandal coming to light? You would think the state would be smart enough to avoid advocating policies that have backfired in the past.

10. Release a DOJ report analyzing information on lost and stolen guns and make it widely available to law enforcement.

Does this mean the Department of Justice will notify domestic law enforcement agents when guns are “lost” in areas of Mexico known to be heavily populated with drug cartel members?

The last order I found rather funny was:

18. Provide incentives for schools to hire school resource officers.

I thought the National Rifle Association’s (NRA) proposal was considered bat shit crazy by everybody proposing gun control. I wonder what they have to say now that Mr. Obama has signed an order implementing the plan.

If a ban on semi-automatic rifles, standard capacity magazines, or both makes it into law I’ll take comfort in knowing it will ring in a new era of agorist business. Instead of relying on centralized firearm and firearm accessory manufacturers we will have independent individuals building and selling those goods. The sale of those items will not contribute to the state through the taxation policies that currently lead “legitimate” firearm and firearm accessory manufacturers to line the state’s coffers.

Statist Ignorance Hurts

The amount of ignorance that can be displayed by the average statist is mind boggling. Consider the recent article in Salon trying to refute the claim that disarmed populaces are worse off under a tyrannical regime than armed populaces. The author, Alex Seitz-Wald, claims that gun owners who say the Holocaust was made easier due to the disarmed nature of Jewish individuals in German controlled areas is pure ignorance. Ironically the article itself is a demonstration of pure ignorance. First Alex tries to refute the claim that the Nazis implemented gun control:

The 1938 law signed by Hitler that LaPierre mentions in his book basically does the opposite of what he says it did. “The 1938 revisions completely deregulated the acquisition and transfer of rifles and shotguns, as well as ammunition,” Harcourt wrote. Meanwhile, many more categories of people, including Nazi party members, were exempted from gun ownership regulations altogether, while the legal age of purchase was lowered from 20 to 18, and permit lengths were extended from one year to three years.

Gun control advocates continue to claim that Hitler actually liberalized (using the classical definition of the word) gun laws in Germany and therefore claims by gun rights activists that state otherwise are baseless. It’s only in the second paragraph that the author notes the reality of the situation:

The law did prohibit Jews and other persecuted classes from owning guns, but this should not be an indictment of gun control in general.

Therein lies the problem. It seems that Alex either misunderstand or is purposely misrepresenting the argument made by those of us in the gun rights movement. When we discuss Nazi gun control policy we aren’t saying “Hitler disarmed all the Germans and that caused the Holocaust!” we’re saying “Hitler disarmed the Jews and other persecuted peoples which made the job of killing them easier.” This isn’t a minor detail, this is the crux of the argument. The argument we’re trying to make is that disarmed populations are easier to murder because they have less capability to resist state aggression. When it comes to gun control the most dangerous legislation targets specific demographics that the state is planning to persecute in some manner. That is why gun control in the United States initially targeted newly freed slaves. The state had no plans to grant newly freed slaves the ability to resist aggression. Meanwhile the initiators of aggression against the newly free slaves, that is to say the state and various groups such as the Ku Klux Klan, were allowed to keep their arms, which gave them an advantage.

The people who have the most to lose from gun control are those who are persecuted. In the United States that would be minorities, homosexuals, transgendered persons, etc. They are the people facing the most aggression and therefore they are the people most in need of arms for defense. Alex then tries to claim that people who oppose gun control must also oppose every other government program:

Does the fact that Nazis forced Jews into horrendous ghettos indict urban planning? Should we eliminate all police officers because the Nazis used police officers to oppress and kill the Jews? What about public works — Hitler loved public works projects? Of course not. These are merely implements that can be used for good or ill, much as gun advocates like to argue about guns themselves. If guns don’t kill people, then neither does gun control cause genocide (genocidal regimes cause genocide).

As an anarchist I do believe we should prevent the state from partaking in urban planning, eliminate all state police forces, cease so-called public works projects, and eliminiate the state in its entirety. That’s another topic for another post though, I will remain focused on gun control here. What is noteworthy in that excerpt is the final sentence where Alex tries to twist the statement that guns don’t kill people by claiming anybody saying as such must also accept that gun control doesn’t cause genocides. Once again Alex is either ignorant of arguments against gun control or purposely misrepresenting them.

We in the gun rights community don’t claim that gun control causes genocide, we claim that gun control laws make the act of genocide easier. The state, in part through it’s active disarming of the general population, reduces the cost of performing violence. Not only do such state actions reduce the cost of performing violence for non-state criminals but those same actions also reduce the cost of performing violence for the state. Killing people is easier when they have little ability to resist and gun control reduces the ability of individuals to resist. Rounding up six million Jews would have been more difficult if those Jews had arms in which to fight back. Alex tries, and fails, to argue against this point though:

Besides, Omer Bartov, a historian at Brown University who studies the Third Reich, notes that the Jews probably wouldn’t have had much success fighting back. “Just imagine the Jews of Germany exercising the right to bear arms and fighting the SA, SS and the Wehrmacht. The [Russian] Red Army lost 7 million men fighting the Wehrmacht, despite its tanks and planes and artillery. The Jews with pistols and shotguns would have done better?” he told Salon.

Proponents of the theory sometimes point to the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising as evidence that, as Fox News’ Judge Andrew Napolitano put it, “those able to hold onto their arms and their basic right to self-defense were much more successful in resisting the Nazi genocide.” But as the Tablet’s Michael Moynihan points out, Napolitano’s history (curiously based on a citation of work by French Holocaust denier Robert Faurisson) is a bit off. In reality, only about 20 Germans were killed, while some 13,000 Jews were massacred. The remaining 50,000 who survived were promptly sent off to concentration camps.

Apparently Alex doesn’t understand the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. The Uprising wasn’t an example of a well armed population fighting an army, it was an example of a poorly armed and poorly supplied population, already suffering the affects of inhuman conditions and starvation, resisting a heavily armed military force for almost a month. Alex should invest some time in reading The Bravest Battle, which tells the story of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. We must first analyze the numbers of Jews killed. This article appears to imply that every Jew in the Warsaw Ghetto was actively fighting the Nazis, but that wasn’t the case. There was a major divide between the denizens of the Ghetto over what to do. Many of the people damned to that Hell believed the best chance of survival was to comply, hoping the Nazis would go easy on them. Only a couple hundred men actively fought against the invading Nazi army. Part of the reason the number was so law was the mentioned divide, the other reason was the overall lack of arms. The Jews living in the Warsaw Ghetto were mostly unarmed save for a collection of pistols, a few rifles, a single submachinegun, some grenades, and very little ammunition. Outside support was almost nonexistent. With almost nothing a couple hundred Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto faced a well-armed force that had submachineguns, rifles, ammunition, and armored vehicles. David’s fight against Goliath had nothing on the Warsaw Ghetto Jews fight against the Nazis.

Likewise the number of Nazis killed that was cited by Alex is erroneous. I’m going to link to Wikipedia here but the important thing to search are the cited sources, which include the book The Jews of Warsaw. The casualty list cited by the Germans was 16 killed and 85 injured. This number doesn’t include Jewish collaborators and is of questionable accuracy. Seeing the Jews as subhuman lead the Nazis to downplay any deaths caused by Jewish individuals and some estimate the total number of Nazis killed in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising are close to 300. When you consider the conditions under which the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto fought the fact that they killed any Nazis is rather awe inspiring, the fact that they killed enough to halt their takeover of the Ghetto for a month is nothing short of amazing. It really is a testament to what a handful of fighting individuals can accomplish. The article continues:

Robert Spitzer, a political scientist who studies gun politics and chairs the political science department at SUNY Cortland, told Mother Jones’ Gavin Aronsen that the prohibition on Jewish gun ownership was merely a symptom, not the problem itself. “[It] wasn’t the defining moment that marked the beginning of the end for Jewish people in Germany. It was because they were persecuted, were deprived of all of their rights, and they were a minority group,” he explained.

According to Mr. Spitzer the disarming of the Jews was merely a symptom. I think the above example of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising is a testament to how different things could have been if the Jews were well-armed. When a couple hundred malnourished untrained poorly armed individuals can keep a military fighting force at bay for a month imagine how different things would have been had the general Jewish population been well armed. Six millions Jews were killed by the Nazis. Imagine how much harder that genocide would have been if if even 500,000 of them were armed. Once again we return to the fact that a disarmed populace is easier to murder and the disarmament of the Jews was almost certainly a contributor that allowed the Nazi’s persecution. Had the Jews been well armed they may not have been completely deprived of all their rights. Alex continues:

Meanwhile, much of the Hitler myth is based on an infamous quote falsely attributed to the Fuhrer, which extols the virtue of gun control:

This year will go down in history! For the first time, a civilized nation has full gun registration! Our streets will be safer, our police more efficient, and the world will follow our lead into the future!

The quote has been widely reproduced in blog posts and opinion columns about gun control, but it’s “probably a fraud and was likely never uttered,” according to Harcourt. “This quotation, often seen without any date or citation at all, suffers from several credibility problems, the most significant of which is that the date often given [1935] has no correlation with any legislative effort by the Nazis for gun registration, nor would there have been any need for the Nazis to pass such a law, since gun registration laws passed by the Weimar government were already in effect,” researchers at the useful website GunCite note.

I’ve never used that quote, nor have I seen it cited (which seems odd to me considering how many gun blogs I read and gun rights activists I talk to). Although I would rather not jump to conclusions I’m curious why Alex didn’t give an example of that quote being used on gun blogs or opinion columns. It would seem that the people who post that quote aren’t the only ones who have trouble citing their sources. Either way Alex finally moves away from Hitler:

“As for Stalin,” Bartov continued, “the very idea of either gun control or the freedom to bear arms would have been absurd to him. His regime used violence on a vast scale, provided arms to thugs of all descriptions, and stripped not guns but any human image from those it declared to be its enemies. And then, when it needed them, as in WWII, it took millions of men out of the Gulags, trained and armed them and sent them to fight Hitler, only to send back the few survivors into the camps if they uttered any criticism of the regime.”

Wait, both gun control and gun rights would have been absurd to Stalin? You would think he would have been in favor of one or the other unless he held no opinion either way. According to Jews for the Preservation of Firearm Ownership (JPFO) the Soviet Union established gun control laws in 1929, which would have been during Stalin’s reign. Of course I do not know how to read Russian so I can’t verify the source for myself but the fact that JPFO gives a citation and Alex doesn’t provided any citation gives credibility to Stalin holding a preference for gun control. The article finishes up with the following:

Bartov added that this misreading of history is not only intellectually dishonest, but also dangerous. “I happen to have been a combat soldier and officer in the Israeli Defense Forces and I know what these assault rifles can do,” he said in an email.

He continued: “Their assertion that they need these guns to protect themselves from the government — as supposedly the Jews would have done against the Hitler regime — means not only that they are innocent of any knowledge and understanding of the past, but also that they are consciously or not imbued with the type of fascist or Bolshevik thinking that they can turn against a democratically elected government, indeed turn their guns on it, just because they don’t like its policies, its ideology, or the color, race and origin of its leaders.”

Huh. So, if I read Bartov’s statement correctly, a society cannot turn on a democratically elected government unless the people have been imbued with fascist or Bolshevik ideas? Interesting. Obedience to the state seems like a very fascist idea in of itself but I’m an anarchist so what do I know. Someday I would like Bartov to explain to me how a state gains legitimacy just because a majority of voters checked the box next to the names of the current leaders. One must remember that most people in the United States don’t vote (and good on them) and therefore cannot be made a party to the state itself. Furthermore many individuals, such as felons, are unable to vote in many states meaning they are entirely at the mercy of decisions made by others. If a majority of voters in a state that disallowed felons to vote favored deporting all felons to prison camps would it be illegitimate for the felons to resist? As you consider this remember that many felony crimes are nonviolent.

Once again we have a gun control advocate attempting to refuse criticisms of gun control by ignoring or twisting facts. This is par for the course, which is why I cannot take gun control advocates seriously.

Messing with Both Sides

It appears that a third faction has entered the fray. Now we have gun control advocates going head to head with gun rights advocates and a third faction, potentially the Legion of Dynamic Discord, messing with both sides. The Blaze, Glenn Beck’s “libertarian” rag, wasn’t very happy about finding a game titled Bullet to the Head of the National Rifle Association (NRA):

I saw something today that upset and deeply disturbed me. I was walking past my son’s bedroom, where he spends all his time on his computer playing those damn games of his. I stopped when I heard the sound of Wayne LaPierre’s voice as he gave his speech about the Newtown massacre. I was surprised my son, who is just 14, was getting involved in anything political, but I was glad he was exposing himself to the right people. I opened the door, intending to tell him how proud I was, when the image on the screen stopped me cold. It was not, as I suspected, a video of Wayne LaPierre’s speech, but was in fact a virtual recreation of the event, a video game. And in the game was a virtual Wayne LaPierre, standing at his podium, giving his speech… with a crosshair over his head. Before I could even utter a word to scold my child, he clicked his mouse. And the virtual Wayne LaPierre’s face disappeared in a spray of blood.

If you go to the helpfully provided link you will discover that it is in fact a game that allows you to shoot Wayne LaPierre in the head. It is also worth noting that the game, according to a poster on the forum, is merely a minigame in the Sandy Hook Killing Simulator. Is it tasteless? Perhaps. More importantly though is that the game is meant to piss off both gun control and gun rights advocates:

Share this everywhere, especially gun-nut and anti-game websites. Also see if you can’t send it in to the NRA somehow, like through the feedback on their website or something.

I want to first note that this was the inevitable backlash created by the NRA’s blaming, at least in part, of violent video games for the tragedy as Sandy Hook. I’ll let the game’s creator speak to that:

But right now, I really want to shoot Wayne LaPiere in the head in a video game because I’m pissed about how he and others on his side have blamed violence on video games. This’ll ultimately be a bonus level in the final game, but I want to get it done and released ahead as quickly as possible, in part because I wanna see the man wet his pants on television and bitch about being victimized in a video game.

This is what backlash looks like ladies and gentlemen. With that said I think this game could useful for Operation Mindfuck. Think about it. How many gun control advocates would be interested in playing the minigame just to get a crack at virtual LaPierre? I’m sure many would jump at the opportunity, and therein lies the mindfuck. A gun control advocate so angry at the NRA that they play a game where they can use a gun to kill LaPierre. Personally I think we could gain some mileage by promoting this minigame to advocates of gun control.

I will also note that as a Discordian pope I applaud the apparent attempt to spread discord throughout both gun control and gun rights camps. When both sides take themselves so seriously it helps to introduce a third faction to lighten the mood.

Obama isn’t Above Using Human Shields

You have to hand it to Mr. Obama, he knows how to propagandize. When he unveils is plan to turn currently lawful gun owners into criminals with the stroke of a pen he will be surrounded by small children:

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney announced this afternoon that President Obama will unveil a “concrete package” of gun control proposals including assault weapons bans, high capacity ammunition magazine bans, and closing loopholes on background checks.

Carney said that the president will be joined by Vice President Joe Biden as well as children who wrote to the president after the Newtown shootings.

“They will be joined by children around the country expressing their concerns about gun violence and school safety, along with their parents,” Carney confirmed.

Talk about a manipulative man. This also raises a question, is the use of children as political human shields allows by the Geneva Convention? I would imagine now but I’m not an expert on the subject. Either way it’s a pretty disgusting thing to do.