Tag: Your Government Doesn’t Love You

Jeff Johnson is a Dick

I’ve been doing my best to avoid wasting your time with the current off season election. While politics really isn’t my thing these days I do feel the need to chime in from time to time. This post is dedicated to Jeff Johnson, the Republican nominee for the Minnesota governor’s race. As this is a gun blog I will point out that Johnson has been enjoying decent support for local gun owners because he pays lip service to the Second Amendment and he’s not Mark Dayton (probably more the latter than the former).

Here’s the problem with Jeff Johnson, he’s a dick. As evidence to support my accusation I present the following:

Johnson, who first proposed reinstating capital punishment for some violent crimes during his unsuccessful bid for attorney general in 2006, said he still supports it.

Admittedly I don’t have much support to give but the second a politician says he supports having the overt power of life and death over his subjects he loses all of my support. Consider the position Johnson is running for. A governor traditionally has the power to exempt people from the death penalty after being sentenced to it. Additionally the death penalty gives the courts an option to outright execute people. This is a major problem when you consider the number of death row inmates who were later acquitted or had the charges otherwise dismissed.

While locking people in a cage is pretty nasty, death is final. Improvement in forensic technology is responsible for many acquittals. As the technology continues to improve it’s likely more people will be found wrongfully convicted. If those people are in a cage they can at least be let out and allowed to live some kind of life. On the other hand if those people are executed there’s not a damn thing that can be done if they’re later found innocent.

Guilty verdicts don’t necessarily mean the convicted is guilty. Knowing this the fact that Johnson supports reinstating the death penalty in Minnesota makes him wholly unworthy of being in a position where he can potentially make it happen. It’s none of my business what master you pick but I discourage you from picking one that wants the organization he is trying to lead, the State of Minnesota, to have the power to overtly murder its subjects.

Behold the Ghost Gunner

Many gun rights advocates complain that anarchist don’t do anything to advance gun rights. While they’re pander to politicians, attend meetings, and advocating for or against legislation they see us not doing so and assume we’re just sitting around with our thumbs up our asses. But we work smarter, not harder. With the realization that any political gain can be reversed down the road we look for ways to bypass the political machinery altogether.

One of the anarchists on the forefront of the gun rights battle is Cody Wilson. He brought us the first notable 3D printed handgun. Now he’s bringing us a milling machine designed specifically to produce AR lowers:

When Cody Wilson revealed the world’s first fully 3-D printed gun last year, he showed that the “maker” movement has enabled anyone to create a working, lethal firearm with a click in the privacy of his or her garage. Now he’s moved on to a new form of digital DIY gunsmithing. And this time the results aren’t made of plastic.

Wilson’s latest radically libertarian project is a PC-connected milling machine he calls the Ghost Gunner. Like any computer-numerically-controlled (or CNC) mill, the one-foot-cubed black box uses a drill bit mounted on a head that moves in three dimensions to automatically carve digitally-modeled shapes into polymer, wood or aluminum. But this CNC mill, sold by Wilson’s organization known as Defense Distributed for $1,200, is designed to create one object in particular: the component of an AR-15 rifle known as its lower receiver.

Gun control is irrelevant in a world where anybody can manufacture a firearm. And that’s the goal, make politics irrelevant by utilizing technology:

Wilson’s goal of enabling anyone to privately fabricate an untraceable gun is part of a larger anarchist mission: To show how technology can render the entire notion of government obsolete. He’s spent the last two years developing firearms designed to be printed as easily as ink on a page, neutering attempts at gun control. “This is a way to jab at the bleeding hearts of these total statists,” Wilson says. “It’s about humiliating the power that wants to humiliate you,” he says.

Why beg masters for scraps from the liberty table when you can build your own liberty table and eat as much as you want? A popular agorist saying is “Agora! Anarchy! Action!” In it’s even on a poster

agora-anarchy-action

The keyword is action. Anarchists, I would argue, have a tendency to directly take action over the statists’s tendency to ask others, specifically politicians, to take action. We prefer to get our hands dirty, which is necessary when you’re working for radical change. I do wish politically active gun rights activists well but if the political atmosphere starts looking bad again us anarchists will ensure that any guns banned by the state are readily available to as many people as possible.

Gun Control Remain Racist After All of These Years

Gun control in the United States has its beginnings rooted in racism. From the start it was about disarming African Americans and still manages to accomplish that today:

If you live in 60624, the ZIP code where the shooting took place, you don’t expect your streets to be safe. In the last 30 days, that neighborhood has recorded more homicides, robberies, assaults, thefts and narcotics charges combined than any other ZIP code in Cook County when measured on a per capita basis. Its population is 98 percent black and averages a median income just above the poverty line.

It also is one of the ZIP codes that registers the fewest active concealed carry firearms permits per capita in the county, according to concealed carry numbers obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by The Washington Times.

Ditto for the crime-ridden neighborhoods of Englewood and West Englewood. Combined with West Garfield Park, out of their 114,933 total residents, only 193 concealed carry licenses have been issued — less than 0.17 percent of the population.

It’s a completely different story in affluent Palos Park, located in southwestern Cook County. The 60464 ZIP code boasts a negligible crime rate: Only one homicide has been committed in 10 years, according to the most recent state police data. Ninety-six percent of its residents are white, earning an average income of $121,000.

It also has the most concealed carry licenses in Cook County this year, with 1.24 percent of its residents authorized to carry a gun.

[…]

Illinois residents say the disproportionate statistics all boil down to cost. Of right-to-carry states, Illinois has the highest registration and training fee, costing an applicant about $650 on average for fingerprinting, taxes and logistics — excluding the price of the gun.

On average people who advocate for gun control are the same people who argue that African Americans are discriminated against and because of that suffer under poverty far more than Caucasians. Doesn’t that make them hypocrites for demanding more expensive hoops to jump through in order to obtain a permit to carry? This also makes them hypocrites for calling gun rights advocates racists when, in fact, we are advocating that African Americans enjoy the same ability to defend themselves as everybody else.

How Six Years Changes a Political Party

I’ve been riding Republicans pretty hard on this blog. That’s not because I hold any love for the Democrats but because my RSS reader consists primarily of gun blogs and gun blogs generally report more on Republicans and therefore I’m more exposed to that parties stupidity. But it’s time for me to give the Democrats some much needed criticism.

Let’s rewind to September 12th, 2001. The dust hadn’t fully settled from the previous day’s attacks but rumors were already circulating that American was going to bomb somebody in retaliation. Eventually that somebody became the countries of Afghanistan and Iraq. Shortly after the wars began the anti-war left in name only (LINO) began protesting. The protests were loud and the anti-war movement was relentless. Then 2008 rolled around. George W. Bush was swapped out with Barack Obama. Obama, and many of his fellow Democrats, ran on an anti-war platform. His campaign even netted him a Nobel Peace Prize. The anti-war LINO settled down and awaited their savior’s demonstration of his love of peace. That demonstration never came. In fact Obama declared new wars. But the anti-war LINO never reappeared in force.

Now it’s 2014 and the Democrats are no longer running on an anti-war platform. Instead they are beating the war drum just as hard as the neocons:

A host of Democratic Senate hopefuls who rode anti-war sentiment into office in the past decade are running for reelection now as hawks, staking out hard-line positions on the latest upheaval in the Middle East. The candidates are quick to note the differences between then and now — a years-long military mission with boots on the ground versus the airstrikes President Barack Obama has launched in Iraq and Syria in the past month.

In six short years many politicians in the Democratic Party have gone from protesting the war to cheering it. I guess their opposition wasn’t to the fact that bombs were being dropped but only to who was dropping the bombs. At least the Republican Party is consistent. It has a gigantic hard-on for war and never lets you forget it. Democrats, on the other hand, only become erect from war when they’re running it and complain loudly about their erectile dysfunction when they’re not running it.

Self-Proclaimed Progressives are So Anti-War They Want to Help the State Buy More Bombs

Remember the old days when George W. Bush was in office and the anti-war “left” was demonstrating against his war mongering ass? Remember how concerned they were about ending the wars during the 2008 presidential elections? What the fuck happened? After Obama assumed office and proved his war mongering credentials the anti-war “left” didn’t say a peep. In fact many of the people who were demonstrating against Bush’s wars are now supporting Obama’s wars. Salon has turned into one of the biggest war apologist rags out there. For example, it has an article discussion how the neocons have it all wrong about the war against the Islamic State (IS) and that a different approach to murdering Middle Easterners is needed. And, of course, it has an article talking about who profits from the new war. You would think the anti-war “left” would be looking for ways to starve those who profit from the war of resources. But instead of advocating tax protests against the war it annoyed electrons to complain about companies not paying taxes.

These self-proclaimed progressives are a bunch of fucking hypocrites. When the neocons are in power they’re anti-war through and through. But once thier guy is ordering the bombings they become a bunch of apologists. And then when their ideology gets caught between two of their pet issues, opposing war and demanding everybody pay taxes, they always side with whatever will benefit the state even if it means more people dying.

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again, the anti-war “left” and self-proclaimed progressives aren’t leftists. In the traditional left-right political paradigm the people on the left opposed the king while the people on the right supported him. Well if you’re demanding people pay taxes knowing damn well that that money will be used to fund a major surveillance apparatus, a police state, and war efforts then you’re supporting the king and can’t very well call yourself a leftist. If a future election results in a Republican president I don’t want to hear any of these hypocritical fuckwits suddenly protesting the country’s wars. They had their chance when Bush was in office and blew it when they started supporting the wars under Obama. Now we know their true faces, which are dyed in the wool supporters of the king.

I Wonder if Obama Wears is Nobel Peace Prize Whenever He Orders Bombings

If there’s one thing to say about Obama it’s that his legacy will go down in the history books. Specifically it will go down in the Guinness Book of World Records as the most countries bombed by a Nobel Peace Prize recipient:

The U.S. today began bombing targets inside Syria, in concert with its lovely and inspiring group of five allied regimes: Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and Jordan.

I think it’s going to be a while before another person is able to beat this world record. Speaking of Obama’s pre-presidential anti-war legacy, he has also been urging people to support war:

On the eve of Sept. 11, President Barack Obama on Wednesday made a prime-time plea for Americans to support an open-ended war on the brutal fighters of the Islamic State — an escalating Middle East campaign with ill-defined conditions for victory and a timetable that will likely take it into his successor’s term.

This is what happens when you hand a Nobel Peace Prize to somebody who didn’t actually do anything to further peace. If you remember Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize for not being Bush. How ironic that Obama has turned out to be George W. Bush II.

The Internet Thanks Police Officers

Apparently police apologists forgot about the fiasco that was #MyNYPD. Despite the backlash received for that attempted publicity stunt the 17th annual “Thanks a Police Office Day” went on. And not surprisingly the Internet responded:

Public ire spilled over once again yesterday, with the 17th annual “Thank a Police Officer Day” going about as well as the #MyNYPD hashtag campaign did back in April. The observance, conceived and promoted under the banner of lawyer Andrew M. Hale’s Whole Truth Project, is meant to further that group’s aim of combating negative assumptions about cops.

Instead, social media users took the opportunity to reinforce those unflattering stereotypes.

The article provides a lot of Twitter comments from people who are unhappy about the police state we live in. It’s no surprise that the backlash was pretty severe this year after the fiasco in Ferguson, Missouri. As modern policing becomes more and more adversarial it’s likely that publicity stunts like “Thanks a Police Officer Day” will garner more and more angry responses.

Amazon to Start Extorting Tax Money from Minnesotans

Bad new fellow Minnesotans. Starting on October 1st Amazon is going to begin extorting tax money from us:

Minnesotans don’t have much longer to get orders from Amazon.com tax-free.

Starting Oct. 1, the online retailer says it will start collecting sales taxes from Minnesota residents. Online-only retailers don’t have to collect state sales taxes if they do not have a physical location in a state.

I’m a big fan of Amazon. Hell, I’m a Prime subscriber. The free shipping I received from Prime from the amount of merchandise I purchase from Amazon more than covers the subscription cost. Part of the reason I prefer Amazon is because it doesn’t collect taxes that are used to fund militarized police, drug prohibitions, and stadiums for whiny rich bitch sports teams. Now that that’s changing I’m going to start doing less business with Amazon and more business with retailers that don’t extort money from me to fund my oppression.

Thankfully there are a massive number of online retailers who haven’t caved to the pressure of state governments. I recently ordered an item from Newegg and didn’t pay a dime of taxes on it. Many online firearm parts and accessories retailers only collect taxes from people living in the state they have a physical presence in. This announcement from Amazon is good news for them because it means they will get more of my money and since I do most of my shopping online that’s not an insignificant chunk of change.

Let the Purges Begin

Ukraine is looking to be the start of Cold War II. Not surprisingly, just as was common during the Cold War, the United States is looking to back some really nice guys. On the anti-Russia side, which means our side, we have Prime Minister Arseniy Yatseniuk who looks like a pissant tyrant in the making.

prime-minister-arseniy-yatseniuk

Mr. Yatseniuk has announced that his regime is going to begin purges loyalty screenings in a McCarthyistic attempt to remove all wrongthinkers:

Ukraine will screen about one million civil servants to root out corrupt practices from the past, Prime Minister Arseniy Yatseniuk has said.

The parliament passed a law on Tuesday, allowing the removal of government officials from their posts.

All those who worked under ousted President Viktor Yanukovych and also former senior Communist and KGB members will be affected.

Like all tyrants Mr. Yatseniuk is selling his loyalty screenings as a narrowly focused effort to remove potentially destabilizing Russian sympathizers. But history has shown that loyalty screenings have a way of going from narrowly focused to so broadly focused that only personal friends of the ruling party members keep from being sent to the camps. Even if these screenings go to that extent we will sweep it under the rug because his regime isn’t supported by Russia and as we learned with America’s support of Pol Pot anybody who is against Russia, no matter how heinous, will receive America’s backing.