Tag: Gun Rights

Executive Orders are the New Hotness

What happens when you’re the president and Congress isn’t looking to play ball? You issue executive orders of course! In fact Biden’s committee on gun confiscation is rumored to recommend 19 executive actions to Obama:

The White House has identified 19 executive actions for President Barack Obama to move unilaterally on gun control, Vice President Joe Biden told a group of House Democrats on Monday, the administration’s first definitive statements about its response to last month’s mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

Pretending that a system of checks and balances existed was getting kind of old anyways.

What is an “Assault Weapon”

I don’t know who created this concise guide to “assault weapons” but they made a great contribution to the fight for gun rights. The site is a slideshow that describes the origin on the term “assault weapon” and discusses that the term is nothing more than a legal fiction defined not by lethality or capability but by cosmetic features. It’s a pretty good link to send those who aren’t sure what an “assault weapon” is.

Burglary Tied to The Journal News’s Map of Gun Owners

The Journal News created a map of gun permit holders in the state of New York. While the news organization claimed that they did this because people have a right to know who the gun owners in their neighborhood are I believe the purpose behind publishing the maps was more nefarious. Most of us in the gun rights community warned that maps like this put gun owners at risk because it informed thieves where they could be reasonably assured guns could be stolen. Needless to say a burglar used the map to steal firearms:

Brewster, N.Y. – 1/13/2013 – Today Senator Greg Ball (Patterson – R, C, I) announced that a burglary has been reported on Davis Ave. in White Plains, New York that evidently ties into The Journal News gun maps. It is reported that the burglar used The Journal News’ interactive gun map to target a home included on the map. Luckily the gun was locked up and no one was hurt.

It was bound to happen and I think that was why the Journal News published the maps.

Gun Control Advocates Like to Contradict Themselves

I maintain a relatively positive outlook most of the time by finding the funny side of things. Because of this I can find the Star Tribune somewhat entertaining at times. If I were a more negative person the Star Tribune would be a constant source of anger. Both the articles written by the paper’s staff and the letter received from their readers are often headache inducing if you try to find any logic. Take the following letter sent to the Star Tribune:

In response to the Jan. 10 letter on gun violence that ended with “Never forget, the Constitution was created to protect us citizens from our government”: This libertarian myth is contrary to the full breadth of the document. According to constitutional scholar Garrett Epps (writing in the Nation, Feb. 7, 2011): “[The] document as a whole is much more concerned about what the government can do — not with what it can’t. From the beginning, it was empowered to levy taxes, to raise armies, to make war, to set the rules of commerce and to bind the nation through treaties and international agreements. … [It] was not written to weaken an overreaching Congress but to strengthen an enfeebled one.”

I actually agree with this paragraph. The Constitution was actually a federal power grab. Before it the federal government was ruled by the Articles of Confederation, which kept most power in the hands of the individual states. In fact the federal government was unable to collect taxes, instead relying on voluntary payments from the individual states, and didn’t have a Supreme Court, leaving it unable to make court rulings affecting people living in the individual states. This is why I’m not a fan of the Constitution, it centralized power and left the door open so the federal government could perpetually grab more power. Had the writer stopped there she may have been able to claim a point but she continued:

The Constitution continues to be a living, breathing document — the 27 Amendments are proof of this — and should not be considered a means to restrict our present laws based on an 18th-century, musket-toting populace.

LUANNE SPEETER, EDINA

She claims that the Constitution is a living document as attested by the 27 amendments that have been made to it. Notice that she specifically indicated the the document is living because of the amendment process, she didn’t claim that the Constitution was a living document because the interpretation of the statements found within can be change over time. She contradicted herself by saying the amendment process is how you make changes to the Constitution then claimed that the Constitution shouldn’t “be considered a means to restrict our present laws based on an 18th-century, musket-toting populace.” The second of those 27 mentioned amendments specifically protects the rights of gun owners from disarmament. On top of that the Supreme Court, which was granted the ultimate authority to interpret the Constitution, ruled in Heller v. District of Columbia and McDonald v. Chicago that the Second Amendment protected the right of individuals to keep and bear arms. You can’t claim that the amendment process is how you change the Constitution and then turn around and ignore one of those amendments.

Gun control advocates can’t help but get caught up in contradictions. Their entire philosophy is contradictory. They claim to oppose violence but demand the state use violence to disarm gun owners and they claim to oppose gun possession but demand that the state be allowed to keep guns.

White House Considering Stealing the NRA’s Proposal

It appears that a little irony is playing out in Joe Biden’s task force. The Obama Administration has announced that they will consider spending $50 million to put police officers in public schools:

WASHINGTON – The Obama administration is considering a $50 million plan to fund hundreds of police officers in public schools, a Democratic senator said, part of a broad gun violence agenda that is likely to include a ban on high-capacity ammunition clips and universal background checks.

The school safety initiative would make federal dollars available to schools that want to hire police officers and install surveillance equipment, although it is not nearly as far-ranging as the National Rifle Association’s proposal for armed guards in every U.S. school.

I’m sure the National Rifle Association (NRA) will receive no credit for the idea, which is rather ironic consider the NRA’s actions towards the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF). But this decision by Biden’s task force doesn’t surprise me, in fact I would have been surprised if they hadn’t announced something like this. When the NRA announced its School Shield program and voiced my concerns over expanding the police state already rampant in public schools:

This concerns me as well. Securing schools as much as sports stadiums requires making schools even more like prisons than they already are. Many major stadiums have metal detectors, cameras everywhere, and guards performing pat downs on those entering the venue. Since stadiums are private institutions I don’t care how they run their operations. In his apparently desperate attempt to the Connecticut shooting on something LaPierre hasn’t considered the consequences of making schools more like prison. If he believes violent media causes violence in society then submitting children to prison style security is likely to make them more subservient to the state. As the state has a vested interest in disarm the populace it would seem counterproductive to the goal of protecting gun rights to instill even more obedience into today’s youth. Maintaining gun rights requires a populace that will stand up to the police state, not submit to it. Having children go through metal detectors, submit to searches of their persons and belongings, and being under the constant eye of Big Brother can only instill authoritarianism, which directly opposes the stated goals of the NRA.

Putting armed officers in schools makes sense from the state’s perspective as doing so will help instill more obedience at an impressionable age. We already have schools teaching children that the police are their friends and that one should always truth police officers, which isn’t true:

In reality the police are the state’s expropriators:

The true purpose of police officers is to act as direct state expropriators. Notice that a majority of offenses one can be punished for involve no victims. Speeding tickets, parking tickets, fines for possessing verboten drugs, etc. are victimless crimes that involve the payment of money from offenders to the state. Even the prison system is nothing more than a special form of subsidy in the form of slave labor. Federal prisoners are generally “employed” by Federal Prison Industries, more commonly known as UNICOR. UNICOR is a government owned corporation that produces goods and services for the federal government. All federal agencies, with the exception of the Department of Defense, are legally required to source all needed goods and services through UNICOR unless UNICOR is unable to provide it or gives permission to the federal agencie to seek an alternate provider. Private prisons are another form of subsidy. Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the largest private prison industry in the country, uses prisoners to provide goods and services to at extremely cheap prices. The police, through enforcing jailable offenses, provide both UNICOR and private companies like CCA with a source of extremely cheap labor. Both corporations enjoy a benefit over other domestic providers of goods and services since neither is obligated to follow labor laws such as paying workers a minimum wage. Effectively wealth, in the form of labor, is being transfered from prisoners to entities like UNICOR and CCA. The state’s courts have also ruled that the police are not obligate to provide protection, further invalidating any claim that their primary purpose is the defense of individuals from domestic threats.

It’s pretty easy to see why Biden’s task force has decided the NRA’s plan was a swell idea. Of course Obama’s administration needs to sell the idea, which will take a little finesse. Gun control advocates have been decrying the NRA’s idea because it would put more guns into schools. If Obama and his gang want to sell the idea they’re going to have to change the message, which they’re trying to do by claiming their plan won’t be as extensive as the NRA’s. This claim is an attempt to make the NRA look like overzealous extremists. Making the NRA appear to be overzealous extremists is necessary to forward the agenda of gun control because admitting the organization had a valid idea would give some the organization some credit and that may cause people to consider more of their ideas.

If Obama pursues the federally funded armed guards route you can rest assured he will say the federal funds will only go to arms school that are “at risk.” That is to say the federal government would start putting armed officers in a few schools initially and expand from there. At some point every public school would likely have posted armed guards but by then everybody will have forgotten about the NRA’s initial proposal and the gun control community’s reaction to it.

One question remains, why would gun control advocates go along with such an idea? They’ve been railing on the NRA’s proposal since it was made. How could they support the same proposal by the federal government? Easy. Gun control advocates don’t oppose guns, they oppose non-state agents having guns. Remember that gun control advocates are authoritarians and desire to grant the state totalitarian control so it can “advance” society in the “right” direction.

This will end up being an interesting month as far as gun rights are concerned. I wonder what other ideas will be announced by Biden’s task force next week.

Who Watches the Watchmen

Gun control advocates claim that the general populace must be disarmed because they are too irresponsible to own firearms. Meanwhile those very same advocates want to let people like this maintain access to firearms:

A semi-automatic pistol found near the scene of a gun battle in Mexico where five people died, including a Mexican beauty queen, has been traced to a former federal gun agent in Minnesota who was part of the government’s controversial Fast and Furious border gun-tracking operation.

The Justice Department’s inspector general has confirmed that it is investigating allegations that an FN Herstal Five-seven handgun tracked from the area of a Nov. 23 shootout in Sinaloa was linked to George Gillett Jr., who oversaw Operation Fast and Furious from October 2009 to April 2010.

Gillett played a central role in a similar Twin Cities gun sting a decade ago that was shut down after several government-tracked guns were connected to violent gang crimes.

For the record I want it known that my firearms have never harmed anybody nor have I given or sold firearms to violent individuals. Meanwhile the United States government, the same government gun control advocates want to leave armed, has been traffic firearms to violent Mexican drug cartels for ages now. Gillett, the person who provided one of the firearms recovered from the above mentioned shootout, had previously helped arm gangs here in the Twin Cities.

Any claim of opposing violence made by gun control advocates should be summarily dismissed. Such claims are obviously lies since the people making them want to disarm nonviolent individuals while allowing violent individuals to remain armed.

An Interesting Idea

Thanks goes to commenter Matt for letting me know about a new bill introduced in Wyoming [PDF]:

AN ACT relating to firearms; providing that any federal law which attempts to ban a semi-automatic firearm or to limit the size of a magazine of a firearm or other limitation on firearms in this state shall be unenforceable in Wyoming; providing a penalty; and providing for an effective date.

I would like to see this bill pass just to know that there is one state in the Union that still has a spine. Since the Civil War the individuals states have been reluctant to stand up to the federal state. They have good cause since the last time they stood up they were invaded and hundreds of thousands of people ended up dead. Still, it would be nice to see a few monkey wrenches tossed into the federal state’s machinery.

Gun for Me, Not for You

Gun control advocates can be a fickle bunch. On the one hand they claim to want peace but then they turn around and advocate murder. This brings use to another characteristic of gun control advocates that I find disturbing, their claimed opposition to violence disappears whenever violence will promote their agenda. The vast majority of gun control advocates are statists. Their agenda isn’t so much eliminating gun violence as granting the state absolute power. Through an absolute state statists desire to create the perfect society. Unfortunately their idea of a perfect society doesn’t involve individual freedom, it involves obedience to masters. If there were no armed individuals the state would be free to redistribute all wealth, force individuals to pay for universal healthcare systems, regulate away any product that may be in the slightest bit dangerous, eliminate pollution, and kill anybody who stood in the way of such “progress.”

Expectedly statists are myopic, they can’t see the logical conclusion to what they advocate. Statists usually see themselves as part of the state, the ruling class. What they don’t seem to understand is that they will be relegated to subservience with the rest of us “uneducated” scum. For you see the average statist isn’t currently part of the ruling class and the ruling class isn’t apt to let new members join their ranks. To quote George Carlin, “It’s a big club and you ain’t in it.” Instead the average statist is, to borrow a once popular phrase, a useful idiot. They are the suckers who invest their time, money, and labor transferring power from the people to the state. Once the state has complete authority, once these low level statists are no longer useful, they will be discarded. It’s true, some of them may be allowed to hold low level positions within the state but they will still be subjected to the same terror as everybody else not in the upper echelons.

We’ve seen the logical conclusion of absolute statism many times in the last century alone. From Hitler’s Germany to Stalin’s Russia to Mao’s China to Pol Pot’s Cambodia history shows that absolute statism isn’t kind to anybody outside of the ruling class. Millions have paid the ultimate price when the desires of statists were fulfilled. In ever case people believe such atrocity would never happen in their country. People had faith that their rulers only wanted what was best for them. They learned very quickly that such atrocities could happen in their country and that their rulers didn’t care about what was best for the people. Those who did the footwork, the low level soldiers of statism, also learned that they were not giving positions of power but were treated the same as those “idiots” that stood in the way of “progress.”

Gun control advocates are frightening because they are statists, they want to strip power from the people, and they believe the ends justify the means. Violence is only deplorable when it’s not used to forward the cause of statism. Although it saddens me to see so many suckered into promoting the statist ideal I take solace in knowing that when I’m rounded up and sent to die in some prison camp they’ll be on the train right behind me.

Obama Looking to Use Executive Orders to Enact Gun Control Laws

What happens when you give a power hungry psychopath the authority to enacts laws willy nilly? The power hungry psychopath enacts laws willy nilly. Via Uncle I came across Biden admitting that Obama is looking to bypass Congress in order to implement gun control:

President Barack Obama is exploring executive orders to help prevent mass shootings in America, Vice President Joe Biden said Wednesday.

“The president is going to act. Executive orders, executive action, can be taken,” Biden told reporters before meetings with groups representing survivors of mass shootings. “We haven’t decided what this is yet, but we’re compiling it all with the help of the attorney general and all the rest of the Cabinet members.”

Why haven’t we issued the President a crown and scepter yet? If we’re going to be ruled by royalty then our rules need to look the part. The country is already broke so we might as well spend more money we don’t have. Think about all the jobs we’ll create by building a gigantic castle for His Majesty to rule from! Goldsmiths throughout the country could be employed to sculpt a truly spectacular crown, scepter, and throne! Why it would be a veritable stimulus package!

Gun Control Advocates Sure are a Violent Bunch

It never ceases to amaze me how gun control advocates can claim to advocate peace while constantly threatening to murder anybody who disagrees with them. Take a look at the following video where a CNN panelist actually advocates Piers Morgan shoot Alex Jones (there is an introduction piece, the important part of the video starts at roughly the 0:37 mark):

For those who don’t want to or can’t watch the video Buzz Bissinger, after a short rant about semi-automatic weapons, says “Piers, challenge Alex Jones to a boxing match, show up with a semi-automatic you got legally, and pop him.” An unknown female panelist then replies by saying “I’d love to see that.”

I guess when they say they oppose gun violence they really mean they oppose gun violence against anybody who agrees with their point of view but advocate the use of gun violence against anybody who disagrees with them.