Tag: Gun Rights

This Is What Happens When You Don’t Own Your Infrastructure

First YouTube purged gun videos and now Reddit is following suit:

Reddit’s bid to clean up its communities now includes what those communities trade. The social site has updated its policies to ban the trade of firearms, explosives, drugs (including alcohol and tobacco), services with “physical sexual contact,” stolen goods, personal info and counterfeits. Accordingly, Reddit has shut down numerous subreddits that either directly traded in these goods or were clearly meant to enable those exchanges, including r/gunsforsale, r/stealing (yes, it existed) and r/darknetmarkets.

One of the victims of this policy change was the great /r/gundeals subreddit. /r/gundeals was one of the best aggregators of firearm related deals on the Internet and while its content didn’t technically run afoul with the letter of Reddit’s new policies, it did run afoul with the spirit of Reddit’s new policies, which was to further tighten the noose around the site’s gun owners’ necks.

Once again gun owners are being taught a lesson about the risks of moving firearm related content to websites owned and operated by individuals who are opposed to gun rights. Hopefully the lesson will be learned and content will return to websites that are owned and operated by advocates for gun rights.

A Long Time Ago in a Galaxy Not Far, Far Away

Remember the halcyon days of Internet gundom? Gunnies operated their own blogs, forums, and news sites. You might have had an account on several of the larger gun forums as well as several local gun forums, checked a bunch of separate gun blogs for new content every day, and jumped onto one of several Internet Relay Chat channels to talk about guns in real time. Those days began to wither away as much of Internet gundom began to transition to a handful of centralized services like YouTube and Facebook. As this transition was occurring a few gunnies, myself included, asked if it was wise to move our content to services owned and operated by individuals who are hostile to gun rights. The gunnies making the transition told us that it wouldn’t be a problem.

Fast forward to today:

YouTube is cracking down on gun videos. The video sharing platform recently updated its policies on content featuring firearms. According to the updated restrictions, the site no longer allows content that, “Intends to sell firearms or certain firearms accessories through direct sales…or links to sites that sell these items.”

The list of forbidden accessories includes, but is not limited to, anything that enables a firearm to simulate automatic fire or converts a firearm to do so, and high capacity magazine kits. YouTube’s new policy also now states it will ban videos that show people how to manufacture firearms, ammunition, high capacity magazines, or even shows users how to install these accessories or modifications.

This was inevitable. Whenever you hand over control of your content to your enemy it will be censored. Maybe your enemy will pretend to be benevolent for a while but eventually they will decide to exercise their power to shut your message down.

I continue to operate this blog because I want to have a channel that I completely control. I own the hardware and the software that this blog runs on and am therefore beholden only to myself (and to my Internet Service Provider (ISP), which is why I’ve been harping on the need for a mesh network to remove control from ISPs). I also continue to encourage others to do the same. Everybody should have a channel that they completely control.

While this news was met with a great deal of screeching, gunnies have no control over YouTube. YouTube can decide to do whatever it wants with its property. If it doesn’t want to host videos explaining how to manufacture suppressors on its servers, it is under no obligation to do so. The only option is for gunnies to return to the old decentralized model where content was hosted on a number of individually owned and operated sites or to come together to create their own centralized video hosting site. I prefer the former since it’s the most difficult model to censor. But I can see the appeal of a centralized service like YouTube that is owned and operated by individuals who are friendly to gun rights. Either way, screeching isn’t going to solve anything.

We Must Listen to Children… If They Agree with Me

Children make the best political pawns. If you want to boost the chances of your political agenda succeeding, find a way to make it “for the children.” If you really want to boost the chances of your political agenda succeeding, find a way to put some children supporting your agenda in front of a television camera.

Gun control advocates opted for the latter and helped organize an official school walkout day to support gun control. As part of this plan, gun control advocates said that it was time for America to listen to its children. And this plan largely played out the same way that walking children in front of television cameras always does. Children were made to believe that adults actually care about their thoughts. Unfortunately, they will likely learn that their opinions only matter when they agree with what adults are pushing them to support:

The idea that children, in their innocence, have special moral insight goes back a long way in Western culture — perhaps to the biblical injunction that, “Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.” It has, of course, always warred with some variant of the belief that “children should be seen and not heard” — that children are not yet ready to hold up their end in adult conversations.

So when does the special moral insight of children manifest itself? When they are telling us that algebra is a stupid waste of time and the drinking age should be 14? No, funnily enough, children are only gifted with these special powers when they agree with the adults around them. Our long-standing cultural dichotomy lets adults use them strategically in political arguments, to push them forward as precious angels speaking words of prophecy to make a point, and then say, “hush, they’re just kids” when the children mar that point by acting like, well, children.

Do the opinions of children matter when they’re advocating for lowering the legal age to buy cigarettes? No. Do the opinions of children matter when they’re advocating for an end to homework? No. Do the opinions of children matter when they’re supporting gun rights? No. Their opinions only matter when they’re the correct opinions.

This is why I have an especially low opinion of individuals who use children to push their political agenda. I’m sure some adults do genuinely care about the opinions of children but they are certainly the minority. Most adults only want to march out the children to push their agenda then return them to their boxes so they cannot be heard until the next time they’re needed to push an agenda. This is the kind of nonsense that I have to believe teaches children that they’re nothing more than disposable tools.

I Guess Nobody in Denver Owned a Bump Fire Stock

The government of Denver issued a decree that prohibited the private ownership of bump fire stocks. It turns out that the law was unnecessary because every bump fire stock in the city was apparently lost in a boating accident:

Denver Police police last month invited city residents to turn in any bump stocks in their possession but Denverite reports that none have been handed over.

The ban on bump stocks approved by the city council in January was considered largely symbolic. Denver had previously banned the types of semi-automatic rifles that can be modified with bump stocks.

I’m sure other governmental bodies will enact similar legislation and see similar results. It turns out that gun owners are shitty boat drivers and more often than not they end up losing their controversial firearms in bizarre boating accidents.

Guns are Inanimate Objects

Advocates for gun control like to scream, “Guns kill,” and gun rights advocates like to respond by screaming, “Guns salve lives!”

I tend to give gun control advocates a bit more leeway in this case because I understand that their entire platform is built upon make-believe. If you believe in unicorns, it’s not inconsistent to argue for unicorn rights. But many gun rights advocates seem to want to have their cake and eat it too. On the one hand, gun rights advocates rightly point out that guns are inanimate objects and are therefore incapable of killing. However, an inanimate object is also incapable of saving lives.

To my fellow gun rights advocates, I urge you to be consistent in your arguments. If you rightly point out that guns are inanimate objects incapable of taking a life, don’t follow up by saying that guns save lives. Don’t restrict yourself to arguing inside of the gun control advocates’ fantasy land where guns are animate objects capable of acting.

Arm the Homeless

One of the rarest things in politics is a politician who advocates for actual solutions to actual problems. Brian Ellison is one of those rare politicians:

Brian Ellison, who is running against Democratic incumbent Debbie Stabenow, says homeless people are “constantly victims of violent crime” and providing them with firearms would provide a deterrent.

Ellison, a Libertarian who is expected to be the party’s candidate in the November midterm election, said he had settled on pump-action shotguns for practicality purposes.

“Frankly I think the ideal weapon would be a pistol,” he told the Guardian, “but due to the licensing requirements in the state we’re going to have a hard enough time getting homeless people shotguns as it is.

“Getting them pistols is probably next to impossible. The pistols need to be registered, people have to have addresses.”

Carrying a concealed pistol is illegal without a permit, Ellison said, “whereas open-carrying a long gun is completely legal”.

It’s too bad that he’s running as a Libertarian Party candidate and therefore has pretty no chance whatsoever of actually being elected. But I’m glad to see he’s at least throwing a good idea out there. The war being waged by most municipal governments against their homeless population is currently one-sided.

I also like how this policy points out the discriminatory nature of Michigan’s pistol laws. If you don’t have an address, you don’t have a right to defend yourself. Although I’d call this a flaw, I’m fairly certain that the politicians who wrote the law consider it a feature.

Dealing with Uppity Slaves

A lot of parents feed their children into the government’s indoctrination camps. While you might think that propagandizing children starting at a very young age would be 100 percent effective, every now and then one child slips through the cracks. One student in New Prague, Minnesota failed to mindlessly parrot the gun control propaganda he was expected to parrot. Fortunately, a brave principal stepped in and put that uppity slave in his place:

On Wednesday, a student at a high school in Minnesota joined his classmates who were participating in the National School Walkout and was singled out and removed by his principal for holding a sign that said, “Guns Don’t Kill People, People Kill People.”

As the article notes, the video doesn’t show what happened before the uppity slave was removed. But now we know for certain why the student was removed thanks to the tireless efforts of Snopes:

Yesterday approximately 100 of our high school students participated in a walkout, as did many of their peers across the country. The walkout was conducted peacefully and without conflict. Since then, attention has been focused on a sign that was present during the walkout.

The District has a policy that such items must be submitted to and reviewed by school administration at least 24-hours in advance. In compliance with the District’s policy “… to protect the exercise of students’ and employees’ free speech rights, [while] taking into consideration the educational objectives and responsibilities of the School District,” the sign was moved to non-school grounds. The District has an obligation to enforce this policy without regard to political viewpoint.

No student was disciplined and law enforcement was not involved with any of the students present during the walkout.

I’m a suspicious man by nature but I have my doubts that the gun control protesters submitted their signage for approval. But I also know that written rules exist to be enforced selectively. If somebody is doing something you don’t like that violates a written rule, you enforce it. If somebody is doing something you do like that violates a written rule, you don’t enforce it. If anybody calls you out on selectively enforcing a written rule, you claim that you didn’t see the violation but if you had you would have enforced the rule. It’s a fantastic way to cover your own ass when shutting down the opposition.

Government indoctrination camps are a place where opposition isn’t tolerated. The administrators have written rules to cover their asses under almost any circumstance. The only real solution to this problem is to pull your kids out of the government’s indoctrination camps.

Solve the World’s Problems, Befriend the Weird Kid

Yesterday was the National School Walkout, where students were given an excuse to leave school and took it. Gun control advocates, of course, claimed that every student who walked out was doing so for the express purpose of demanding gun control. In response a lot of gun rights advocates urged students to instead walk up to the quiet kid who sits by himself at lunch and attempt to befriend him.

While that seems like a nice gesture, I feel the need to point something out. Sometimes the quiet student who is sitting alone isn’t sitting alone because they’re being shunned for being weird. Sometimes they’re sitting alone because they think their fellow classmates are a bunch of dumb fuckers and they don’t want to associate with them. They don’t want to be friends with their classmates, they want to graduate so they can get the hell away from their classmates and never look back.

When You Virtue Signal So Hard You Commit a Felony

A few proponents of gun control have chosen to demonstrate their piety to the cause by destroying AR-15s. However, because they are ignorant of current gun control laws, they have been starting by cutting the barrel off, which legally makes their AR-15s into short barreled rifles and those are regulated by the National Firearms Act.

One woman who is running for office in Virginia decided to show her piety to the cause by filming herself doing exactly and somebody noticed:

VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. (WVEC) — The Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) is investigating congressional candidate Karen Mallard after she posted a video on Facebook that shows her cutting apart an AR-15 rifle.

[…]

Several others said Mallard broke federal law by taking a legal firearm and altering it, making it into an illegal one. Many of them referred to details contained within the Sawed-Off Shotgun and Sawed-Off Rifle Act which, in part, prohibits people (except for those permitted by the act) from having a rifle that has been “modified to an overall length of less than 26 inches.”

I doubt she’ll be charged since she’s on the side of gun control and therefore on the side of the ATF. However, I do hope that the announcement of this investigation raises awareness of this law to gun control advocates. I’d rather see these idiots destroy their property in a way that won’t potentially land them in a cage for 10 years (even though I strongly disagree with them, I’d rather not see people who haven’t hurt anybody put in a cage).

Sincerity

President Trump is taking the issue of violence so seriously that he’s meeting with executives in the video game industry instead of winding down the country’s overseas wars:

A variety of potential actions have been discussed to limit school violence in the wake of the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, FL last month, from the uninspired option of raising the minimum age of potential gun-buyers to President Trump’s controversial suggestion of arming teachers. But a familiar target for blame appears to be on the mind of the president, as well. In today’s White House press briefing, press secretary Sarah Sanders said that Trump would soon meet with “members of the video game industry” to see what could be discussed around “protect[ing] schools around the country.”

A lot of people are rightly poking fun at Trump for his announcement. Of course many of the same people are also angry because Trump is blaming one inanimate object, video games, instead of another inanimate object, guns. It always amazes me how people can learn only the part of a lesson that jives with their worldview.