Logic an Anti-Gunner’s Worst Nightmare – Page 9

Obama Boosts The Agorist Gun Market

And so beings yet another period of standard capacity magazines becoming as rare as credibility in politicians. Obama has issued a series of arbitrary decrees that are likely to bolster the agorist gun market:

President Barack Obama directed federal agencies Monday to carry out a series of steps to reduce gun violence, including measures to restrict sales by unlicensed dealers — sometimes called the gun show loophole.

Regulators from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives will clarify that anyone engaged in the business of selling firearms must get a federal firearms dealers license and check the backgrounds of all buyers.

You have to appreciate a governmental system with so many checks and balances that one man can arbitrarily rewrite the rules. More importantly, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) has become much stingier about who they will issue Federal Firearm Licenses (FFL) to. If you are somebody who sells a gun every couple of years it’s unlikely the ATF will issue you an FFL and therefore your act of selling is now criminal. Don’t let that get you down though, operating in the black market is far more rewarding than operating in the white market. Not only do you get to keep all of your money since you don’t have to declare the income but your customers don’t have to deal with the hassle of filling out a Form 4473 and submitting to an instant background check. Agorist gun deals and buyers win whenever additional burden is placed on commerce.

“The goal is keeping bad actors away from firearms,” said Attorney General Loretta Lynch.

So these rules are going to keep guns out of the hands of police officers and other government agents?

ATF will also notify firearms dealers that they must file a report when guns from their inventory are lost or stolen, including those in transit. A White House statement said an average of 1,333 guns recovered from crime scenes in each of the past five years were traced back to dealers who never received them.

Another burden and another win for the agorist gun market. Who wants to make themselves a target by filling for an FFL when it carries ridiculous requirements such as constantly informing the government of the status of their inventory? It’s far better to not officially be in the business of selling guns so the ATF won’t decide to perform “random” inspections on their place of business because it suspects they haven’t been properly keeping the State informed about their inventory.

White House officials said the administration would seek funding from Congress to allow ATF to hire 200 new agents and investigators to enforce gun laws.

Excellent! There wasn’t enough agents arming Mexican drug cartels already. This should give the agency more staff so they can arm their cartel partners even faster.

There you have it, Obama is working hard to make the black market an attractive alternative to his white market. You have to appreciate a man who makes business for you at the expense of his own.

Demanding The Benefits Of The Monopolized Legal System But Not Accepting The Detriment

Black Lives Matter is planning another protest at the Mall of America. After losing court battles over last year’s demonstration due to incompetency the Mall of America is obtaining a restraining order against the organization this year:

The protesters want to demonstrate at the country’s biggest mall to draw attention to the Nov. 15 police killing of a black Minneapolis man, Jamar Clark, and to ramp up the pressure on investigators to release video of the shooting. Authorities say they won’t release it while state and federal investigations are ongoing.

The mall wants to avoid the type of disruption caused by a Christmas-time demonstration last year, when thousands of protesters angry over the absence of charges involving police killings of unarmed black men in Ferguson, Missouri, and New York City forced the temporary closure of mall stores. Dozens of people were arrested.

This case is particularly amusing to me because the Mall of America is relying on the very monopolized legal system is willfully ignores. In this case the it’s trying to get the monopolized legal system to issue a restraining order because it doesn’t want protesters on its property (although I might argue that the special privileges it receives from the State invalidate any claims it might have to being private property). But the Mall of America willfully ignores the law prohibiting land lords from banning the carrying of firearms:

Both Cornish and Strawser said Minnesota law prohibits a landlord, such as the Mall of America, from restricting the “lawful carry or possession of firearms by tenants or their guests.” Strawser added, “carrying at the Mall of America does not violate the law, only the mall’s wishes.”

There are few things I dislike more than hypocrites. If you support the State’s monopolized legal system then you should abide by it entirely. On the other hand, if you don’t support the State’s monopolized legal system then you should avoid utilizing as much as possible. You shouldn’t expect to have your cake and eat it too.

If You See Nothing, Say Something

As this election season continues Bernie Sanders seems hellbent on proving to the world that economics isn’t the only thing he’s entirely ignorant about. During the Democratic Party circlejerk he decided to demonstrate his ignorance on what an emergency entails:

That was Sanders’ response to ABC News debate moderator David Muir Saturday night, who asked him about the neighbors of the San Bernardino terrorists who suspected something was amiss about the would-be mass shooters but never reported them for fear of accusations of profiling.

“That’s kind of a no-brainer. If somebody is loading guns and ammunition into a house, I think it’s a good idea to call 911. Do it,” Sanders said.

Muir pressed, “But I’m asking about profiling, because a lot of people are afraid of that.”

Sanders wanted no more of that topic and decided to move on.

Setting aside my feelings about the government operated 911 system, the idea behind it isn’t bad. 911 is a universal number that can be called to report emergencies (and possibly get help, but that’s not guaranteed). The idea is to beat the simple three digit number into people’s heads hard enough that during a major emergency they will remember to call it. Is somebody is suffering a heart attack? Call 911. Is somebody robbing a store? Call 911. Are you a good citizen and want to snitch on your neighbor for having expired tags on their vehicle? Don’t call 911. It’s not an emergency because there is no immediate risk of harm so get your quisling on by dialing the local police department’s direct number (then strongly consider flagellating yourself for your sin).

Is a neighbor carrying firearms and ammunition into their house an emergency? Is there an immediate risk of harm? No. So it’s clearly not an emergency. It’s not even illegal so don’t both annoying your local police department either. Just accept that your neighbor isn’t a dumbass and therefore has a means to defend themselves.

The problem with a universal emergency number is that it’s susceptible to denial of service attacks. If everybody starts flooding the number with inane bullshit the real emergency calls can’t get through. In fact this is already a very real problem. What Sanders is advocating, that people report even more inane bullshit to 911, will only further exacerbate the problem. That will only make it even more difficult for people who are trying to report a real emergency to get ahold of a 911 operator.

Take me, for example. If my neighbors followed Bernie’s advice they’d have to call 911 almost every other weekend when I returned from the range. Instead of having the operator free to accept calls involving houses on fire, people having heart attacks, etc. they have to waste time explaining to the caller that 911 is for emergencies only.

A Problem Only Government Could Create

The International Business Times has an article discussing the limited liability granted to gun manufacturers:

As the United States grapples with a rash of mass shootings, some are calling for tighter laws limiting who can purchase firearms — a politically controversial subject that has yielded more rhetoric than legislation. But another, lesser-known dynamic effectively shelters gun manufacturers from government oversight: Under legislation dating back to the 1970s, Congress has consistently adopted positions championed by the gun lobby and the National Rifle Association, writing special provisions that have effectively exempted firearms from regulation by consumer watchdog agencies.

Of course the article insinuated it is the fault of the National Rifle Association (NRA), which lobbied for the grant of limited liability:

Cementing these exceptions to safety oversight constituted a significant political victory for the National Rifle Association in the 1970s and helped pave the way for high-profile gun rights battles to come. Gun owners themselves, however, are left with little recourse to hold companies accountable for faulty products outside the civil court system. Whether gun manufacturers choose to recall a firearm is entirely at their discretion. If they do, there is no mandatory protocol to follow to alert owners, and no official repository of recall notices.

But this isn’t a problem created by the NRA, it’s a problem created by the State. The reason gun owners are generally oppositional to attempts by the State to regulated any aspect of firearms is because those regulations ultimately get used as a form of gun control.

The ongoing smartgun debate is a classic example of safety being used to justify a prohibition. Instead of acknowledging access control technology as something worth investigating the gun control community wants to mandate its use. That adds costs and unreliability, both because the technology is in its infancy, to firearms. And since the technology cannot be retrofitted into older firearms mandating its usage can remove all existing firearms from the market.

Safety regulations always sound good on paper, especially if they’re for protecting the children, but it’s only a matter of mandating too many safety features to make a production functional or cost effective to create a ban.

When the State passes a law it’s not a contract. The State can change the terms at any moment without the consent of the people. A law passed under the auspices of consumer protection has no clauses guaranteeing it won’t be used to create a legal prohibition. There’s also no recourse if a consumer protection law ends up being used to create a ban.

One has to be a fool to willingly enter a binding agreement without recourse that authorizes the other party to change the rules whenever they want. If people want to pursue improving the safety of firearms they should start an independent non-governmental entity to certify firearms much like Underwriter Laboratories. That would allow for safety certification that allows for recourse, namely ignoring the standard, if it’s used outside of the initial scope it was created for.

Laws Are The Problem; Laws Are The Solution

One of my socialist anti-gun friends posted this article on Facebook. It’s a fascinating article not so much because of its content but because of the cognitive dissonance the author, Chauncey Devega, openly displays:

When the New York Times editorial board issued its powerful condemnation of America’s gun culture, they went beyond mere outrage in response to the recent murder sprees in San Bernardino, California, and Colorado Springs, Colorado. The Times went so far as to suggest that “assault rifle”-style weapons should be banned from civilian ownership. As is our national ritual, President Obama also condemned gun violence, and just as he has been forced to do too many times during his tenure, pleaded that Americans must find a way to stop killing each other. The American people do in fact support stronger gun control laws; the NRA, functioning as the lobbying arm for the gun industry, opposes even the most basic common sense gun laws. The NRA wins while the American people die.

Devega disparages the fact gun control hasn’t been a political success as of late. As an author for Salon this probably doesn’t surprise anybody. What is surprisingly is the fact he then notes the fact that gun control in the United States is founded on racism:

After the Civil War, white Southerners desperately tried to snuff out the freedom dreams and democratic power of now free African-Americans. Once Reconstruction was betrayed, white Southerners would launch a reign of terror where it is estimated that approximately 50,000 black Americans were killed by whites. White elites understood the practical and symbolic power of the gun. As such, they passed laws that made it illegal for black Americans to own firearms. African-American Civil War veterans, a group that had earned their full citizenship as men via martial prowess, would be made the focus of special violence by white Southerners.

[…]

The notion that gun ownership should be exclusive to white people would be asserted once more. Ronald Reagan, then governor of California, worked to pass stricter gun laws because of the Black Panthers using open carry laws. Robert Williams would be forced into exile in Cuba. Black people who fought back against white racial terrorism were killed by white mobs, police, and other State actors.

Laws are the problem! Laws are the solution! This article is a self-contradictory mess, which is unavoidable when one is arguing democracy is the solution to minorities being oppressed. Democracies are based on the will of the of the designated voting bodies. Here in the United States the designated voting bodies include the Congress of the United States, the congresses of the individual states, the councils of incorporated cities, the school boards of each school district, and so on. Most of them operate under majority rules. Therefore the laws passed will inevitably reflect the will of the majority of those bodies. Congress is made up predominantly of white Christian males.

Voting bodies are just half of the equation though. The other half is law enforcement. It wouldn’t matter what any designated voting body decreed if it didn’t have a means of enforcing those decrees. In this country there are very powerful police forces whose primary job is to enforce the will of the designated voting bodies. Like the designated voting bodies, law enforcers are predominantly white.

Some of you are probably wondering why I’m making a big deal out of race. Since I don’t subscribe to collectivism I don’t believe membership in a category, such as race, is a valid indicator of their behavior. I mention it because it is the crux of Devega’s article:

There will be no effective gun control in the United States, even in the aftermath of horrific events such as Sandy Hook, the Planned Parenthood Shooting, or the San Bernardino massacre, until politicians, pundits, and analysts realize that the gun is a type of totem or fetish object for too many white men. As such, when we try to talk about gun control in America, a centuries-deep sense of white masculinity that understands the gun as its exclusive right is made to feel imperiled and upset.

If guns are a type of totem or fetish object for white men why does he think a voting body make up predominantly of white men is going to overcome their fetish? Why does he believe law enforcement bodies, against predominantly made up of whites, are going to fairly enforce the laws? Hell, we know for a face law enforcers don’t fairly enforce the laws. Although the laws passed today aren’t overtly racist, in fact many of them appear to be quite the opposite on the surface, the results indicate that they are either crafted to be covertly racist or the enforcers are enforcing the laws in a racist manner unchecked (in the case of the latter it would be necessary for the designated voting bodies to either be directly or implicitly accepting of such enforcement).

Devega claims that guns interfere with democracy. If that’s the case then he should support repealing every single gun law because democracy is the problem. It established a power hierarchy. One group of people are able to create and enforce laws while the other group of people cannot. That means the first group gets to make the rules and the rules it makes, due to human nature, favor the members of that group.

Until that power hierarchy is abolished cities will continue passing laws criminalizing homelessness, poor neighborhoods will continue to be demolished and replaced with more valuable properties that pay high property taxes, intellectual property laws will continue to serve the politically connected at the expense of their competitors, and gun control laws will target non-whites. That’s because the homeless, poor, small businesses, and non-white population are minorities not only in our society but especially in our designed voting bodies.

Still No Due Process

People often argue when I point out that the Republican and Democratic parties are the same. After the San Bernardino shooting the Democrats rekindled calls to ban people on the terrorist watch lists from purchasing firearms. The Republican Party, hoping to prove it’s the opposite of the Democratic Party, proposed the same thing with a minor, and entirely irrelevant, difference:

What’s been lost in the debate is the fact that Republicans have an alternative to the Democratic proposal. Under Republican legislation sponsored by Senator John Cornyn, the federal government may delay the sale of a firearm to someone on the watch list for up to 72 hours. During that time, if the government can show a judge there’s “probable cause”–the same legal standard used to obtain a search warrant–that the individual is plotting terrorism, then the gun sale is denied outright. The measure received 55 votes in the Senate. It it secured the backing of staunch conservatives like Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, and Marco Rubio as well as moderate Republicans Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski and moderate Democrats Joe Manchin and Joe Donnelly. The only Republican to oppose it was Mark Kirk.

Since there appears to be some confusion of what due process entails I will give an outline. Due process, on a very high conceptual level, first requires an accusation to be made based on credible evidence. After the accusation has been made an impartial body must be assembled. In front of this body the accuser must present their justification for the accusation and the accused must be given an opportunity to defend themselves against the accusations. Finally the impartial body, based on the arguments of the accuser and accused, must make a decision on whether the accusation is true. Unless that entire process is met due process is nonexistent.

Probable cause as you can see is not due process. Under the Republican Party’s scheme the accused isn’t given an opportunity to defend themselves nor is the final decision made by an impartial body that has heard both the accuser’s and accused’s arguments. Instead a secret government list is used to initially delay the purchase so another government employee, a judge, can order the purchase permanently barred. And make no mistake, any judge who has such a decision brought before them will almost certainly approve the ban because they don’t want to risk being the judge who approved the purchase of a firearm by a terrorist (this is called covering your ass).

The fact neither party has made a proposal that involves actual due process just demonstrates there isn’t a lick of difference between them. Both of parties are fascist parties.

Why Centralization Fails

While the politicians discuss ways to further centralize security here let’s take a moment to review why centralization, specifically as it relates to security, fails. Imagine a society where private firearm ownership is illegal. In this society the only people who have access to firearms are the military, the police, and the attackers. It’s not hard to imagine since I’ve just described a good percentage of countries.

Under such circumstances society consists mostly of soft targets with a few hard targets scattered about. The hard targets consist of military bases, police stations, and any place where a soldier or police officer may be at a particular point in time. Everywhere else is a soft target. There are two major and very apparent weaknesses with this setup. First, the soft targets are all known. Second, the response time of somebody capable of thwarting your attack can be reasonably determined.

Attackers can cause a great deal of damage by finding a high value target far away from either a military base or a police station (and in societies, such as the United States, where the military is legally prohibited from operating in civilian spaces without approval you can focus primarily on police stations). For example, a school, museum, or sports stadium 10 to 15 minutes away from a police station will give attackers a lot of time in a target-rich environment, which will allow them to cause a great deal of damage.

Centralization fails precisely because the central points of failure can be identified and worked around. Decentralized systems tend to be more difficult to exploit because central points of failure either don’t exist or additional layers exist to support the centralized ones.

We can illustrate this by making a single alteration to our above model. In addition to soldiers and police we will allow licensed armed security agents to own firearms. Assuming any place can hire a security agent the difficulty of identifying soft targets becomes more difficult. Selecting a target now requires determining how far it is from a military base or police station and whether the it employs armed security agents. Another layer of security has been added and the complexity of pulling off an attack has increased.

Let’s take things a step further. In addition to soldiers, police officers, and licensed security agents we are now going to allow any adult who wants to own and carry a gun to do so. How do you identify the soft targets now? While a school, museum, or sports stadium may be 10 or 15 minutes away from a police station and doesn’t employ armed security agents anybody within the facility could be armed. While there is no guarantee that an armed individual will be at any specific target the possibility of one or more armed individuals being there always exists. Another layer of security has been added and the complexity of pulling off an attack has greatly increased.

What I’ve just described is a concept known as defense in depth. The idea is to have multiple layers of overlapping security so any single layer failing doesn’t result in total failure. As the politicians continue to argue that security must be further centralized under the State remember that the more centralized security becomes the more fragile it becomes.

Punishing The People Because Of Terrorism

The San Bernardino attack is just another tragedy on a long list of tragedies exploited by the State. Again we’re seeing the tired claim by the political body that the people must be severely punished:

Obama said he will “urge high-tech and law enforcement leaders to make it harder for terrorists to use technology to escape from justice,” without going into details, and order a review of the visa waiver program that allowed one of the San Bernardino terrorists into the US. Obama also called on Congress to ban people on no-fly lists from buying guns. “What could possibly be the argument for allowing a terrorist suspect to buy a semi-automatic weapon?” he asked. “This is a matter of national security.”

Mr. Obama may not have gone into specifics but we know what he’s hinting at. “Making it harder for terrorists to use technology to escape from justice,” is a euphemism for prohibiting the use of effective cryptography. In other words the basic security tools every one of us relies on every day must be broken so the State can further expand it’s already too expansive surveillance apparatus.

Reviewing the visa program is a euphemism for finding more ways to restrict people from crossing the imaginary lines often referred to as borders. Anybody who has been paying attention to recent political maneuvering is aware that the State is becoming more interested in tightening the borders. Just remember that a secure border prevents tax cattle from leaving.

Finally the question, “What could possibly be the argument for allowing a terrorist suspect to buy a semi-automatic weapon,” is a euphemism for removing due process from decided who can and cannot own a firearm. Apparently having to go through the process of finding somebody guilty of a crime before they can be prohibited from owning a firearm is just too damn inconvenient.

Notice how each of these proposals requires punishing the entire population of almost 319 million for the actions of two individuals. Also notice how none of these proposals will do anything to curtail terrorism. Just because domestic companies can’t release tools that use effective cryptography doesn’t mean foreign entities can’t. According to the United States government the border is 102,514 miles long. Any thoughts of effective controlling over 100,000 miles of territory is nothing but a fantasy. Prohibiting more people from owning firearms only ensures attackers will be met with lighter resistance.

There are many ways of making a society more resilient to attacks. Punishing everybody in society whenever attack occurs is not one of them.

Eliminating Due Process

We’re going back to 2009!

Talk about preventing “terrorists” from acquiring firearms is in the news again proving that everything old is new. With the shooting in San Bernardino in recent memory several politicians have taken the opportunity to introduce an amendment to a bill that would, amongst other things, prohibit people on the terrorist watch lists from buying firearms. This maneuver is being heralded as a tool to prevent terrorists from acquiring firearms but, as I noted back when this shit was being argued in 2009, the terrorist watch lists are secret lists. How do you end up on one of the lists? Who knows? It’s a secret. Are you already on one of the lists? Who knows? It’s a secret. All we do know is that the lists exist and a lot of names are on them.

Prohibiting people on the terrorist watch lists from buying firearms isn’t about prohibiting terrorists from buying firearms. It’s about removing due process before prohibiting people from buying firearms.

Unlike many people my support for due process isn’t dependent on whether or not an accused party shares my philosophical beliefs. I oppose any punishment issued without due process. Do you know why? Because not performing a full investigation and trial leads to shit like this:

A Guantanamo Bay prisoner locked up for 13 years has been found to be a victim of mistaken identity, originally thought to be a member of al-Qaeda.

Mustafa al-Aziz al-Shamiri was kept in a secret prison camp for 13 years without charge because somebody mistook him for somebody else. The only reason this is known is because some kind of hearing was finally held. In that hearing it was determined that he was just some low level schmuck and not the evil mastermind trainer he was originally sold as. Of course some may point out that he was still a fighter in al-Qaeda so his incarceration was justified. To that I would point out that no such fact was known because no investigation or hearing had been conducted. All we know is he was locked in a secret prison camp for 13 years based on accusations so weak no charges were even filed against him. That’s the kind of shit that happens when you don’t have due process.

I’m not going to mince words. Anybody who endorses their philosophical and political opponents being punished by governments without requiring any manner of due process is an asshole. They are what’s wrong with the world. They are the reason we can’t have nice things. I’d consider rounding them all up and putting them in a secret prison camp for the good of humanity but, you know, I believe in due process so I could never support such a thing.

One Sword Keeps Another In The Sheath

George Herbert once wrote, “One sword keeps another in the sheath.” Later Robert Heinlein expressed a similar idea in Beyond This Horizon when he wrote, “An armed society is a polite society.” Today many people would argue the idea shared by Herbert and Heinlein is destructive. They argue that peace can only exist when the general population is unarmed but acknowledge the need for weapons to enforce such a prohibition so generally approve of the military and police keeping their weapons. But Herbert and Heinlein were correct, peace tends to prevail when no disparity of force exists.

Force is an appealing option when one enjoys a greater capacity for it than their target. We see this every day with violent criminals. Amongst violent criminals there is a great tendency for targeting easier prey. The criteria that determine how easy a target is varies. If the criminal is physically strong they may see physically weak individuals as easy prey. If the criminal has a gun they may see anybody who is unarmed as easy prey. If the criminal is with friends they may see any group they that is numerically inferior as easy prey. Most criminals see people who are entirely unaware of their surroundings as easy prey. In general criminals target those they believe to have a lesser capacity for force than themselves. Economically this makes sense because the risks of employing violence decrease when your force advantage over your target increases.

But force becomes unattractive when your target enjoys an equal capacity. The reason for this is obvious. Force carries with it the possibility of severe injury or death. That’s what makes force appealing to those who enjoy a sizable advantage. But it also means a target that is on equal footing with you stands a good chance of injuring or killing you. If two renowned swordsmen are both carrying their swords the likelihood of a disagreement between them turning violent is going to remain fairly low. Both of them know drawing their sword will cause an equal reaction from the other and the outcome of the fight may very well include the loss of limbs or life.

This principle remains even on larger scales. A nation only tends to declare war against another if it believes it’s in an advantaged position. When a nation doesn’t believe it enjoys a force advantage it tends to use diplomacy. The United States and the Soviet Union avoided a direct war because both had enough nuclear weaponry to wipe the other out. Napoleon invaded Russia because he believed his military was superior and that would ensure his victory.

One of the reasons I believe stateless societies tend to be more peaceful than ones under statism is because the disparity of force between the people and the State is nonexistent. Iceland’s stateless period, medieval Ireland, the Old American West, and Neutral Moresnet are all examples of stateless societies that tended to be very peaceful when compared to their statist neighbors. Since there was no organization with a great force advantage over everybody else the tendency was for people to choose diplomacy over violence.

The desire to eliminate disparity of force, and therefore reduce the appeal of using violence, is one of the primary reasons libertarians tend to be supporters of allowing individuals to be armed. They recognize that one gun keeps another in the holster. It is also why even libertarian statists tend to support individuals enjoying arms parity with the police and military.