Tag: Your Government Doesn’t Love You

Security Theater at the Theater

Yo Dawg, I heard you liked security theater so we put security theater in your theater so you can watch while you watch.

It seems Broadway theaters think they’re pretty important targets of opportunity:

Additional steps are needed to prepare Broadway theaters in New York City for a potential WMD attack or other crisis, a New York state legislature subcommittee said yesterday (see GSN, Sept. 23, 2010).

I’m sure the terrorists are going to spend a lot of time and effort to smuggle a nuclear or biological weapon into a Broadway theater in an attempt to kill thousands of people. That makes so much sense considering all the weapons of mass destruction we’ve been finding terrorists with as of late… wait, that hasn’t happened.

I Must Agree

Several people in the gun community have been bringing up the Hughes Amendment, the law that bans any machine gun manufactured after 1986 from being transferred to peasants civilians. Basically people are saying the amendment wasn’t legally passed and therefore should be invalidated. I’m agree with Snowflakes in Hell that this is a wasted effort.

My reasoning is slightly different though. The reason I believe this effort to be futile is because we’re trying to use legal policy to repeal something that was illegally passed. This sounds good on paper but there is one hitch, it was illegally passed by the exact system that makes legal policies. We’d be asking those who make the law to admit they were wrong and then get them to repeal said law. That doesn’t usually work because our government has a habit of never admitting failure and on the rare occasion they do the status quo remains because they say, “Well it’s been law this long so we might as well just leave it alone.”

The only way we could possibly get the Hughes Amendment repealed, in my opinion, is by getting a bill through. I don’t see that happening anytime soon since people seems to think machine guns are some kind of magical weapon that can destroy all of society should they become legal for lawful citizens to own (remember according to anti-gunners lawful citizens becomes blood thirsty psychopaths the second they get a gun).

Lautenberg is a Busy Boy

While most senators only find the time to create one bill to fuck the American people periodically Senator Frank Lautenberg found the time to introduce three, all related to gun control.

The first bill, S.32, bans the transfer for standard capacity magazines between two subjects citizens. The second, S.34, allows the government to bar any firearm transfer to people they don’t like “terrorists.” The find bill, S.35, will bar private individuals from selling their own property because they can’t legally perform mandatory background checks.

None of the bills are available at this time for reading so we don’t know what other horrors most likely await.

Data Retention Moving in Subcommitee

With all the problems facing this country including unwinable resource consuming wars, a fiat currency that’s quickly devaluing, and an economy in shambles it’s good to know our government isn’t too busy to find a little time to stomp all over our rights. The House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security held a hearing on creating legislation that would require ISPs to retain information on websites that customers have visited.

The usual bullshit was used as excused by our “representatives” to mandate ISPs retain all customer data dealing with interactions with anything online. Of course the people arguing that we need such violations of privacy don’t understand that retention of so much data will cost ISPs a small fortune in equipment to gather and store said information. But hey destroying businesses is what government does best… which is probably why they can’t figure out how to fix the unemployment rate.

I did find it rather cute that during the hearing Jason Weinstein called on the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) specifically for a guide they wrote back in 2008 titled Best Practices for Online Service Providers.

This will be an issue to watch in the upcoming months.

It’s Almost as if Banning Something Doesn’t Work

Ah the United Kingdom (UK), often referred to as Brady Paradise around these parts. There is all but a complete ban on firearms in portions of the UK which is claimed to be for your protection. What the UK government doesn’t seem to realize is simply making something illegal doesn’t actually prevent people from obtaining it. Case in point it seems officers are investigating firearms smuggled into their fine country:

Weapons smuggled into the UK from the US in hold luggage are being hunted by police, it has been revealed.

American Steven Greenoe, 37, is being held in the US accused of smuggling 60 guns into the UK, including Glock and Ruger 9mm pistols.

Police fear many were sold on to criminal gangs in north-west England.

It’s almost as if there is no magical force preventing the smuggling of firearms. My God it seems as though the only thing banning guns does is prevent law abiding citizens from defending themselves against criminals who obtain guns regardless of laws and regulations. The case does bring two other realizations to light though (that everybody reading this site already knew):

Writing in The Times, he said: “This makes a mockery of the stringent checks we all endure at US airports, such as removing our shoes and belts, having our toothpaste confiscated and all the other irritants.

“Steven Greenoe’s guns could just have easily been bombs.”

Holy shit it seems airport security is really just secure theater. NO WAY!

Raging Judge is Raging

Remember Taurus’s 28 gauge revolver? I’m sure you do it was only unveiled a week ago. Are you excited to get one? Too bad because the agency of fun killing, the Bureau of Alcohol Tabacco Firearms and Explosives (ATF) have apparently ruled the hand cannon is a short barreled shotgun. I guess that basically ends the world’s most retarded revolver competition between Smith and Wesson and Taurus.

Authoritarian Falsifies Information to Gain More Authority

Here’s something that will be a shocker to nobody, an authoritarian made up information in order to gain additional funding so he could increase his authority over his subjects. It seems the previous Ramsey County sheriff, Bob Fletcher, made up information about terrorist organizations that threatened Ramsey Country:

Just weeks into the new Ramsey County Sheriff administration, we finally know why former sheriff Bob Fletcher ignored Minnesota Data Practices requests for the 78 Terrorism Information Briefs he boasted about preparing and disseminating since 2005.

“They never existed,” Randy Gustafson, the new public information officer for Sheriff Matt Bostrom, said in a telephone interview on January 19. “It is a very big lie.”

Oops. But hey that’s not even all of it:

While Gustafson was looking for answers to the Daily Planet’s October 20 Data Practices Act request, he discovered that some of Fletcher’s most shocking figures, such as his claims that Ramsey County citizens were threatened by 22 domestic and 11 international terrorist groups in 2009, had been made up, too.

I think this is yet another great example of the fact your government doesn’t love you. Many people in positions of power are lying in order to gain more power and increase their salaries.

I Am TJIC

I’m sure everybody reading this already knows who TJIC is. If not he’s a blogger who has the unfortunate combination of living in Massachusetts and being against the government. Because of this unfortunate combination he lost is second amendment right because he exercised his first amendment right:

A blog threatening members of Congress in the wake of the Tucson, Arizona shooting has prompted Arlington police to temporarily suspend the firearms license of an Arlington man.

It was the headline “1 down and 534 to go” that caught the attention. “One” refers to Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, who was shot in the head in the rampage, while 534 refers to the other members of the U.S. House and Senate.

Was the post distasteful? Yes. Was the post inflammatory? Yes. Was the post overall in poor taste? Yes again. Was the post protected speech under the first amendment? Yes. That last yes makes every other yes irrelevant.

Likewise TJIC didn’t threaten anybody. No specific names are mentioned just a general clause that states he doesn’t like politicians. This would be akin to tossing the writers of Mars Attacks! in prison because their movie depicted both congress and the President being killed by the martians. Now I badmouth politicians all the time and have made many remarks about horrible things we should do to them but it’s talk, speech, and satire (mostly).

But this event demonstrates the fact that we are not free people in this country. Sure some of us are more free than others depending on where you live but ultimately we’re all peasants at the mercy of our rulers in government. They seem willing to leave us mostly alone so long as we don’t criticize them while they make our lives even more restricted each day and steal more and more of our money. The second we cross them though, the second we criticize an illegal war, the second we speak against them we’re given labels such as terrorist, communist, and of course unpatriotic. Our rulers in government has passed laws that allow them to use their monopoly on the use of force to arrest, torture, and even murder people with these arbitrary labels.

So yes I will join this meme going around the gun blogs and say I to am TJIC. I am a man who disagrees with the government and has openly stated as such. If our government would respect the very laws put into place to keep them in line this entire post would be unnecessary. But this post is necessary because we are not free people and our government doesn’t respect the restrictions that were put into place during the founding of this country.

Potential Addition to Banned Shotguns in the Works

Via Snowflakes in Hell I learned that everybody’s favorite agency of overreached government authority is up to its old tricks against. The Bureau of Everything Fun Alcohol Tobacco Firearms and Explosives (ATF) is going to issue new rules regarding shotguns:

Today, the ATF announced at the 2011 SHOT Show that a new ruling would be issued on Monday, January 24, 2011, regarding the importability of certain shotguns. ATF informed the audience at the ATF Townhall meeting that they wanted to ensure that they were properly and justly enforcing the requirements of a shotgun being for a “sporting purpose.”

What does this mean? Most likely that future importation of popular sporting shotguns such as the Saiga AK-based shotgun will become verboten. Although it’s a very popular three gun shotgun the ATF will completely ignore that fact I’m sure. Basically the Saiga has the bad fortune of being an awesome shotgun that accepts magazines that hold more shot shells than is politically accepted.

ATF ruling on shotguns is also the reason the SPAS-12 became illegal to import because it served no “sporting purpose” (even though I’ve used mine to shoot clays several times now). The worst part about this whole situation is the people don’t get a say, the ATF has the authority to do pretty much whatever the fuck they please and we slaves can just shut up and like it. Well we can shut up and like it or work to abolish the ATF. Personally I’m down with the second option.

Another Demonstration of Why You Can’t Rely on the Police

Jay over at MArooned posted yet another example of why you can’t rely on the police to protect your life. A woman had to resort to defending herself with a vacuum while she waited 35 minutes for the police to arrive:

A Williamson County woman fought off an intruder with a vacuum cleaner. She was desperate for help, waiting for almost 35 minutes for law enforcement to arrive.

The single mom described that 35 minutes like the scene of a horror movie as she watched a man walk from windows to doors doing anything to break in to her home.

Yes it took 35 minutes for the police to finally arrive at her home. This is why you should always have a plan for defending yourself. Obviously I recommend using the best tool for the job which is a firearm but that’s not the only means of defense at your disposal.

Your life is far more valuable than the life of some scumbag who is willing to bring harm against your person. People out there clamoring for laws restricting firearms are only trying to make it more difficult for you to obtain the best tool to defend the most important thing you have, your life. When these same people claim you should just call the police remember that the police are not legally obligated to protect you and can’t instantly teleport to your location. There will always be travel time required for the police to get to your location and an officer must be available to send to your aid. You need to have a plan to fend for yourself until the police arrive (if they arrive).