Tag: You’re Doing it Wrong

The State Protects Its Own Again

Remember the Ohio police officer who threatened to murder a person who was legally carry a concealed weapon? Obviously after such an egregious incident the officer was criminally charged right? Nope! As wizardpc shows us the officer in question is getting the usual punishment:

In a letter to Harless, Police Chief Dean McKimm said after reviewing the report, he finds there is evidence that the officer violated the three rules cited by internal affairs. Harless faces punishment ranging from 30 days off work to being fired, McKimm said.

Bill Adams, president of the Canton Police Patrolmen’s Association, said he would decline comment on the case until the disciplinary hearing takes place.

Harless was put on paid administrative leave in June and more recently went on sick leave. Harless is using his allotted and accumulated sick days, which is paid time off work, McKimm said.

He may lose his job… perhaps. But until the hearing is held (where he’ll be allowed to keep his job I’m sure) he’s on paid administrative leave. That’s right, he threatened to murder a person he’s supposedly charged with protecting and the taxpayers have to pay for this vacation. Isn’t that nice? The state always watches out for its own at the expense of those it rules over.

What the Hell is Wrong With Britain

Uncle is asking what is wrong with Britain and I want to know the same thing:

London schoolchildren are eligible for 125,000 Olympic tickets but these will not include any featuring guns, as Games organisers and City Hall fear a backlash from the anti-gun lobby.

What the fuck? The Olympics are fucking televised more heavily than almost any sporting event on the planet, the kids can watch these shooting sports at home but won’t be allowed to go to the actual event? Where the Hell is the sense in that? What the Hell is wrong with Britain? This makes no sense whatsoever… wait, I see what’s going on here:

Georgina Geikie, 26, a Commonwealth Games bronze medallist and Olympic pistol hopeful, said she was “horrified”, adding: “This is a chance for children to look at guns in a different way. They are taking away the opportunity for the sport to blossom. How do we educate people that it is a sport if they cannot watch it?”

The Olympics portray firearms in a positive light which would be a direct conflict to the state’s stance that guns are evil spawns of Satan. Seeing such an event may make children realize that guns aren’t actually evil devices forged in the fires of Hell but simple tools which can be used for good things. This type of thinking could then lead to the kids, after growing up, eventually lobbying to restore firearms rights in Great Britain which would lead to the serfs arming themselves and thus not being as easy for the state to control.

This is disgusting statism at its highest.

I’d Hire a New Defense Attorney

Sometimes you can look at the legal strategy that is being used by a defense lawyer and realize he should probably be in another field of employment. Thomas Fairbanks is being accused of murdering a sheriff’s deputy from Mahnomen County. The deputy was shot twice, once in the head and once in the abdomen, which is an important point to note when you look at the defense strategy being attempted by Mr. Fairbank’s lawyer:

Thomas Fairbanks is accused of first-degree murder in the death of Deputy Chris Dewey. Dewey was shot in the head and abdomen in February 2009 and died 18 months later.

The defense is aiming to show that the handgun’s trigger could be so easily pulled that Fairbanks accidentally fired the handgun at times that day.

Let me get this straight, Fairbank’s lawyer is trying to demonstrate that the trigger of the murder weapon could be easily fired by accident… twice? You may be able to get away with the negligent discharge due to light trigger pull weight defense if the victim is only shot once but shooting a firearm twice requires a completely conscious effort. In order to discharge the second round the shooter would have to release the trigger and pull it again. It would be akin to somebody running over another person with a car, backing up over the victim again, and then driving off.

From Now On I Demand Citations

Dennis Henigan, the President of the Brady Campaign, has another article up on the Huffington Post, and as usual it’s full of fear mongering and blatant lies. It’s almost comical to read through his pieces because they make a lot of claims but never have citations to back those claims. In the scientific community making claims that aren’t backed by evidence gets you laughed at and usually ostracized by your fellows until evidence is brought forth. I think it’s time that we started treating the gun debate like a scientific inquiry where all claims must be backed by evidence. Those of us on the side of gun ownership have been doing this for years so we can kick back for a while and relax, but those crazies in the anti-gun community need to pony up.

For some fun I’m going to go through some of the article’s claims because it entertains me:

Remember two summers ago when most Americans were appalled by the sight of guns openly carried by protesters at presidential speaking events and town hall forums on the health care issue?

Remember two summers ago when the anti-gun media tried to make the entire situation look like racial tension, even going so far as to fabricate evidence? If your side was willing to make shit up in order to push their agenda then you can bet your sweet ass that I’m going to demand evidence that demonstrates “most Americans” were appalled by the sight of guns being openly carried at those events.

When it comes to carrying concealed weapons, Perry certainly walks the walk. He has a concealed carry permit and proudly says that he carries a gun when he is out jogging.

I know you’re trying to make a case against Perry (which is really fucking easy by the way, I can’t believe you’ve fucked it up) but you have to realize that pro-gun people who are politically active far outnumber anti-gun people who are politically active. Thus this statement is going to cause more harm to your movement than good as it will improve the status of Perry in the eyes of the politically active pro-gun people. Usually if something works against your movement you simply ignore it and never bring it up.

He didn’t respond by saying the question is ridiculous. He didn’t say that in the close quarters of a rope line, with a multitude of people pulling and tugging at him, a gun could easily drop to the ground or be taken from him.

That’s why police standing in front of protest lines have their guns taken from them all the time… wait never mind, that doesn’t happen. Henigan this claim is idiotic, provide some proof of this happening or shut the Hell up.

He didn’t say that an armed candidate would be a nightmare for the Secret Service.

It must be quite the nightmare being the Secret Service actually taught Obama how to shoot.

Rick Perry apparently doesn’t think the question is ridiculous. In fact, his sarcasm suggests he has no objection to political candidates carrying guns to campaign events; he seems to imply that he may do so himself. One thing is clear. The governor has been so thoroughly marinated in pro-gun ideology that he is unashamed about taking it to its logical extreme.

There you ago again, making Perry sound favorable in the eyes of the politically active pro-gun population. I guess you’ve has been swimming in cognitive dissonance so long that you believe politically active anti-gunners outnumber politically active pro-gunners.

I wonder if this thought ever occurred to Rick Perry: If a would-be presidential assailant is undeterred by Secret Service agents with Uzis, why would he be deterred by a presidential candidate packing heat?

Objection, relevance? A potential assailant isn’t going to deterred by knowing that Perry isn’t carrying a gun so this entire statement is completely meaningless.

Yes, it is a good thing that senators can’t carry guns onto the Senate floor because the presence of guns, even carried by well-meaning, law-abiding citizens, increases the risk that arguments and conflicts will escalate to lethal violence.

Let it be known that I’m declaring bullshit, either provide evidence of this happening or shut the Hell up. I’m not aware of a single case of an argument between one or more people legally carrying a firearm that escalated into a shoot out. You keep making this claim Henigan but so far have yet to provide any evidence.

It is the same reason that our national parks are less safe because (due to legislation sponsored by Senator Coburn himself) concealed carry of weapons is now permitted within their borders.

Once again evidence is needed, or as Wikipedia would say, “[citation needed].”

It is the reason that our streets, restaurants and coffee houses are less safe in states that have made concealed carry easier.

Again, you need to provide some evidence. This blog, as well as many other gun blogs, contain tons of evidence that demonstrates that violent crime has been dropping even though carry laws have continued to be liberalized (using the classical definition of the word).

It is the reason that college campuses remain far safer than the gun-saturated communities that surround them, because the gun lobby has been foiled in its efforts to force colleges and universities to allow concealed carry

You can’t compare apples to oranges. A proper statement would be, “It is the reason that college campuses that continue to ban students and faculty from legally carrying on site have a lower rate of gun-related crime than campuses that allow students and faculty to legally carry on site.” Of course that statement would also be false but at least it would be a comparison of like things.

They may well be the way things are in an American nightmare where, in political discourse, the guns speak louder than the rhetoric.

That’s why so many political debates between people carrying firearms turn into shoot outs… never mind, once again that’s not the case which makes Henigan’s statements irrelevant.

Salt Lake City Mayor Looks to Ban Idling Engines

The stupidity… it hurts. It seems the mayor of Salt Lake City, Ralph Becker, is pushing an ordinance that would make it a offense (punishable by a fine of course) to idle your engine for more than two minutes:

And it has persuaded Salt Lake City Mayor Ralph Becker to fight back. He wants to outlaw vehicle idling (beyond two minutes) as a means to cleanse the air. His proposed “idle-free” ordinance, which carves out exemptions for defrosting, extreme temperatures, emergency vehicles and work trucks — while carrying a fine of up to $160 for a second offense — gets its first airing Tuesday before the City Council.

While the environmentalists are jacking off to how awesome this legislation is I’ll just laugh at the fact that this law can be easily bypassed by tapping my gas petal every one minute and fifty-nine seconds.

That’s Called a Job

People seem to have forgotten about a concept often referred to as a “job.” This concept revolves around the voluntary exchange of labor for another good, usually money. As this concept seems to be lost on many people I’m going to explain it in detail.

As a person you have a right to self-ownership which necessarily includes the ownership of your labor. Life is easier when people utilize division of labor, having some people do certain tasks while others do different tasks. Division of labor works on the basis of exchange where one person gives their labor in exchange for the labor of another. Oftentimes instead of directly giving labor a person will exchange the product of their labor from a previous exchange. Generally people except money as the exchange for their labor and use that money to make further changes. Thus a “job” is nothing more than an exchange of labor between two individuals.

The concept of a “job” is pretty simple but there are some additional complexities. Of all these complexities the most obvious is the fact that certain “jobs” require more knowledge than others which puts a limit on the number of people capable of performing the required labor. Being a limit exists on the number of people capable of performing the labor those who possess the required knowledge usually demand a higher rate of exchange for their labor. This is why a computer programmer can get paid $100 per hour of labor while a person who unloads trucks at a convenience store only gets paid $7.25 per hour of labor.

There were hundreds of foreign students who apparently never learned about this concept and thus decided they were working too hard at a Hershey’s plant and walked out:

Hundreds of foreign students, waving their fists and shouting defiantly in many languages, walked off their jobs on Wednesday at a plant here that packs Hershey’s chocolates, saying a summer program that was supposed to be a cultural exchange had instead turned them into underpaid labor.

The students, from countries including China, Nigeria, Romania and Ukraine, came to the United States through a long-established State Department summer visa program that allows them to work for two months and then travel. They said they were expecting to practice their English, make some money and learn what life is like in the United States.

In a way, they did. About 400 foreign students were put to work lifting heavy boxes and packing Reese’s candies, Kit-Kats and Almond Joys on a fast-moving production line, many of them on a night shift. After paycheck deductions for fees associated with the program and for their rent, students said at a rally in front of the huge packing plant that many of them were not earning nearly enough to recover what they had spent in their home countries to obtain their visas.

Emphasis mine. Note that the labor being performed requires very little knowledge which means most people are quite capable of performing it. Since so many people are capable of packing and moving boxes the amount of exchange that can be demanded for the labor is small. Usually this type of labor is called “unskilled.”

Still the students felt the exchange they were receiving for their labor wasn’t enough and decided instead to walk out and receive nothing. Still my favorite complain has to be the following:

“There is no cultural exchange, none, none,” said Zhao Huijiao, a 20-year-old undergraduate in international relations from Dalian, China. “It is just work, work faster, work.”

Welcome to America, our culture at one time was built upon work. Work is how this nation was able to enter the industrial revolution and create the concept of the assembly line. Work is what lead people to create household devices that people now take for granted such as computers, refrigerators, and microwaves. None of these would have been possible if people didn’t work and the American culture used to revolve around working hard to achieve what was often referred to as the American dream. So you are receiving a cultural exchange by working as it was part of the culture (I keep saying was because fewer and fewer people seem to be willing to work).

Another part of the American culture is the concept of not only bitching about a bad situation but doing something about it. If you don’t feel you’re receiving fair exchange for you labor you’re more than free to go elsewhere or, better yet, start your own business where you’ll have to work even harder in order to make money. This comment is also worth gold:

“You stand for the entire eight hours,” she said. “It is the worst thing for your fingers and hands and your back; you are standing at an angle.”

That’s called a “shift.” A “shift” is a span of time the person making an exchange for your labor wants to reserve your labor for. Generally these “shifts” are about eight hours although sometimes they can be shorter or longer. Finally these students received another cultural exchange:

The students said they decided to protest when they learned that neighbors in the apartments and houses where they were staying were paying significantly less rent.

“The tipping point was when we found out about the rent,” Mr. Efobi said.

Ms. Ozer and other students said they were paid $8.35 an hour. After fees are deducted from her paychecks as well as $400 a month for rent, she said, she often takes home less than $200 a week. “We are supposed to be here for cultural exchange and education, but we are just cheap laborers,” Ms. Ozer said.

That’s called getting fucked by the government and isn’t strictly a United States thing. The State Department made you pay for visa, brought you over, and deducted whatever money they desired from your paychecks (when they do it to citizens it’s called taxes). Welcome to America, I hope you enjoy your stay.

I Know the Mainstream Media Hates Ron Paul, Still This is a Bit Much

OK mainstream media I get it, you absolutely hate Ron Paul. You hate him so much that you’re willing to simply ignore his existence and pretend that he’s not in the presidential race. But even with your hatred taken into consideration giving Rick Perry credit for bringing the Federal Reserve into political conversation is a bit much:

Perry has proven himself to very quotable early into his entrance into the campaign. His most notable quote was a not-so-guised criticism of the Federal Reserve and Chairman Ben Bernanke. Actually, forget guised critique, the cowboy from Paint Creek, Texas took a double barreled shotgun to the Fed with the following statement at a campaign event in Iowa:

“If this guy prints more money between now and the election, I dunno what y’all would do to him in Iowa but we would treat him pretty ugly down in Texas. Printing more money to play politics at this particular time in history is almost treasonous in my opinion.”

Perry could have chosen his words more carefully, but the interesting takeaway is that he is currently the front runner in the Republican field, could realistically become President, and has in one of his earliest campaign appearances taken a direct shot at the Federal Reserve. Historically, a critique of the Federal Reserve has been left to the devices of more fringe candidates (enter Ron Paul), as the Fed has become an accepted institution in America. Not so anymore.

Whether the nature and organization of the Federal Reserve truly becomes a central campaign issue over the next 18+ months is yet to be seen, but if it does Americans should welcome it. With the proliferation of Keynesian economists in America over the last eighty years, the majority of Americans have largely accepted the role of the Federal Reserve in their economy despite the contra voices of economists such as Milton Friedman.

Apparently crazy uncle Ron doesn’t count because he’s a fringe candidate that nobody’s ever heard of. I bet that belief would go away if Paul did well in a major straw poll somewhere… man that would shut them all up.

Honestly I don’t know what else I can possibly say about this that the mere existence of this article hasn’t. The media is literally conspiring to completely ignore Ron Paul in every way, shape, and form. They’re even giving credit to other candidates for work that Ron Paul’s been doing for decades. The Federal Reserve has been Ron Paul’s major issue, that’s what he does. This article is like giving credit for the theory of relativity to Steven Hawkings simply because the author didn’t want to acknowledge the existence of Albert Einstein (this analogy does fail a bit since Steven Hawkings is fucking awesome and Rick Perry isn’t).

The UK Prime Minster is Spouting More Malarkey

The United Kingdom (UK) government had a meeting dealing with means of quelling the recent riots and instead of coming up with viable solutions they’ve simply come up with means of further tightening their grip of citizens. Not only have them discussed means of tightening their grip over the citizenry but they’re also making empty promises:

“To the law abiding people who play by the rules, and who are the overwhelming majority in our country, I say: the fightback has begun, we will protect you, if you’ve had your livelihood and property damaged, we will compensate you. We are on your side.

Emphasis mine. You guys have been doing a bang up job of protecting people so far. Why would the victims of the rioters believe their government is going to protect them now? Why didn’t the government start protecting the victims when the rioters came to loot and firebomb their homes? Give up? Because they can’t. There aren’t enough police in the entire UK to property defend the citizenry against all of the rioters. If the UK government was actually concerned with protecting the people living within their borders they would immediately life the ban on firearm ownership and allow people to have a means of self-defense.

Instead of allowing private individuals means of protection the UK government has come up with the following methods to curb the riots:

  • To look at whether it would be right to stop people communicating via social media when “we know they are plotting violence, disorder and criminality”
  • Plans to look at whether wider powers of curfew and dispersal orders were needed
  • New powers for police to order people to remove facemasks where criminality is suspected
  • Courts could be given tougher sentencing powers
  • Landlords could be given more power to evict criminals from social housing
  • Plans to extend the system of gang injunctions across the country and build on anti-gang programmes, similar to those in the US
  • He said the government would meet the cost of “legitimate” compensation claims and the time limit for applying would increase from 14 to 42 days
  • A £10m Recovery Scheme to provide additional support to councils in making areas “safe, clean and clear”
  • A new £20m high street support scheme to help affected businesses get back up and running quickly
  • Plans for the government to meet the immediate costs of emergency accommodation for families made homeless

So you’re going to try enforcing curfew (I’m sure the rioters will go home at night if you tell them it’s the law), possibly suspend free speech by closing access to social networking sites, go after anybody wearing a mask, and spend taxpayer money to compensate the victims of violence who’ve been left defenseless because of your laws? Well I guess they have this entire situation solves and everybody can return to their tea and biscuits. Mission accomplish boys!

You can see me shaking my head as I type this but I must say the entire UK government must be a bunch of fucking idiots… never mind I already knew that.

An Important Lesson in Gun Safety

If you’re going to carry a gun you need to do it right. What does doing right involve? Well as The Firearm Blog points out one of the first things you should do is get a holster, not doing so may lead to unintended side effects:

As Joshua Seto, 27, and his fiance, Cara Christopher, walked to a local grocery store last week for refreshments, he tried securing her pink handgun in the front waistband of his pants.

The gun fired, striking Seto’s penis and continuing through his left thigh. The bleeding started immediately and was heavy, according to police dispatch recordings released Sunday.

I’m not a fan of carrying a firearm in the front of my pants as there is very important equipment there. Should some freak scenario unfold the resulted in my firearm discharging I’d rather not have it discharge into my junk. But that’s a personal preferences, so long as the bang switch is properly covered the risk of a negligent discharge is negligible. Even one of those cheap Uncle Mike holsters should have likely saved this man a lot of pain and agony.

Remember, firearms are weapons meant to cause damage to anything covered by the muzzle. Like any weapon firearms must be handled safety and with the utmost respect.