Freedom

2A in 2013 – the Federal legal structure

/ hsoi

David B. Kopel, of the CATO Institute, takes a look at the Second Amendment in the scope of today’s political and legal environment.

While some will dismiss this out of hand because it’s Kopel and CATO, it presents a great deal of factual information about the federal legal structure that we presently operate within. It looks at the National Firearms Act of 1934. It looks at Executive Orders. It looks at magazine capacity restrictions. It talks about recent SCOTUS decisions. Given our current legal environment, what can be done? what can’t be done? What stands up to Constitutional scrutiny? This is a fair discussion, and I’m sure some of the things Kopel says will make pro-gun people cringe as much as other things he says will make anti-gun people cringe.

Kopel also makes a sound point about solutions that work now, that have immediate impact. Sure, maybe we can have greater solutions that may bring about greater change in time, but a solution that fixes things 5 years, 2 years, 2 months from now… is that too much time to let pass? too large a window of opportunity for the next madman spree? You may not agree with Kopel, but if you know anything about dealing with active shooter situations and how law-enforcement has changed their own procedures for dealing with active shooter situations then well… it’s tough to refute the present law enforcement tactics and the reasoning behind them. Thus, if you wish to offer up other solutions, that’s fine. If your solution is successful, how long will it take before it is? What do we do between now and then? Can you offer a solution that brings about immediate results, especially given the context law enforcement works within and why? It’s a fair point to consider when discussing solutions to this problem – the timeframe in which a solution will have the positive, desired impact.

Facepalm – Vice President Joe Biden

/ hsoi / 8 Comments

Vice President Joe Biden explains what one should do for self-defense: get a shotgun.

Biden, doing a Google+ “hangout” to promote President Barack Obama’s proposals for battling gun violence, had been asked whether a new assault weapons ban might infringe on the Second Amendment rights of those who want one “as a last line of defense” to fend off looters after “some terrible natural disaster.”

“Guess what? A shotgun will keep you a lot safer, a double-barreled shotgun, than the assault weapon in somebody’s hands [who] doesn’t know how to use it, even one who does know how to use it,” the outspoken vice president, a shotgun owner himself, replied. “It’s harder to use an assault weapon to hit something than it is a shotgun. You want to keep people away in an earthquake? Buy some shotgun shells.”

This is one of those things that is so stunningly misinformed and full of terrible advice that you just don’t know how to respond. I’ll try tho.

First, credentials.

I am an NRA Certified Instructor (Home Safety, Pistol, Rifle, Personal Protection Inside the Home, Personal Protection Outside the Home). I am an NRA Certified Range Safety Officer. I am certified by the Texas Department of Public Safety as a Concealed Handgun License Instructor. I have been an assistant Instructor with KR Training for four years. I’ve received hundreds of hours of instruction in firearms and self-defense, with a large stack of certifications. There’s more, but this is enough to make my point. And no, I’m not as awesome as Tom Givens or my mentor, Karl Rehn, but I’ve learned a thing or two.

Joe Biden’s credentials: owns a shotgun.

Maybe Mr. Biden has more credentials that would permit him to speak as an authority on this topic. I haven’t seen them, and even if he showed me a list, after hearing the above I couldn’t believe him.

Let’s see here…

First I will agree that a shotgun is a formidable weapon. It can do devastating things. I do keep shotguns as part of my personal defense plan. I find them to be a solid small armament. They can be the right tool for the job.

I’m curious how Mr. Biden’s statement holds up.

A double-barreled shotgun. So that’s 2 rounds. What if you miss? What if there’s a need to fire more than 2 shots? If the statistical average of a gunfight is “3 shots, within 3 yards, within 3 seconds” then 2 rounds leaves you below-average and behind the curve. Is it legally and morally sound to put good people at a disadvantage from bad people?

A shotgun is harder to hit something with than a shotgun? Um… I’m not sure about that. Well, perhaps. The point of a shotgun is to hit small flying objects, like birds (ducks, doves, pheasants, etc.) or clay discs (skeet, trap). It does this by using lots of little tiny pellets and has them spread out in a cloud. And yes, compared to trying to hit a small flying thing with a single bullet (rifle, pistol) well sure, a shotgun will improve your chances of success.

But we’re not talking about hitting small flying objects. We’re talking about personal defense — even Mr. Biden is speaking in the context of personal defense. In such a case, not only is the target much bigger and moves much more slowly, it needs a far different payload. It’s one thing to take down a 2 pound bird, it’s another to take down a 200# violent criminal actor. You still have to aim. A shotgun is not some “cloud of death”. The spread is not as vast as you think. In fact, you actually do NOT want your pellets to spread out because 1. less pellets on target means less ability to stop the attack, 2. less pellets on target means more pellets where you didn’t intend them to go, which could be bad.

I’ve written at length about rifle vs. shotgun, so just go read.

Let’s continue with Mr. Biden’s statements:

 “This town listens when people rise up and speak,” Biden said

I’m not sure what town he’s talking about. Lots of people are speaking in other ways, and then it’s not like y’all listen when it comes to other topics. It really sounds like you’re pushing a personal agenda.

Biden noted that “it’s not about keeping bad guns out of the hands of good people, it’s about keeping all guns out of the hands of bad people. There should be rational limits.”

Then I guess it’s just “collateral damage” that this also will keep the guns out of the hands of good people?

Or are we considered bad people too?

Mr. Biden, I am not sure upon what credentials you speak, but your words don’t make much sense.

I’ll just say this. If a double-barreled shotgun is all someone needs, then start by equipping your Secret Service detail with nothing but double-barreled shotguns. Your actions will speak far louder than your words.

 

Hypocrite

/ hsoi / 7 Comments

And these are our kids. This is what they’re thinking about.

And so what we should be thinking about is our responsibility to care for them and shield them from harm and give them the tools they need to grow up and do everything that they’re capable of doing, not just to pursue their own dreams but to help build this country. This is our first task as a society, keeping our children safe.

This is how we will be judged. And their voices should compel us to change.

– President Barack Obama

So…. how about the 3000+ children killed by abortions (census.gov) each day in the US? According to that census.gov data, that’s 1.2 million abortions per year. Compare that to the 543 people that have been killed in mass shootings over the past 20 years. So about 27 people killed in mass shootings per year versus 1.2 million abortions per year. This isn’t minimizing, it’s perspective on the killing of innocent lives (children or otherwise) and what is truly a culprit.

Where is your outrage?

Where is your responsibility to care for them, to shield them from harm, to give them not just the tools to grow up but even the chance to be born to they can pursue dreams to help build this country.

Why is this not your first task?

And yes… this IS how you will be judged.

If you want to talk about how “if it saves just one life then it’s worth it”, then I reckon banning abortion ought to be pretty damn worth it, eh?

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. — and his guns

/ hsoi / 3 Comments

Some people keep asking “why would anyone need one of those?”

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. needed “one of those”. From the HuffPo:

Most people think King would be the last person to own a gun. Yet in the mid-1950s, as the civil rights movement heated up, King kept firearms for self-protection. In fact, he even applied for a permit to carry a concealed weapon.

A recipient of constant death threats, King had armed supporters take turns guarding his home and family. He had good reason to fear that the Klan in Alabama was targeting him for assassination.

Granted King and his supporters didn’t use AR-15’s; they used the current technology of the time, as the AR-15 hadn’t been invented yet. But if it was today, they certainly would have because it’s the current technology of the time. Just like we use the Internet and iPhone’s, instead of black-and-white TV’s and hand-written letters.

In fact, you can see some of the racist roots of gun control because of Dr. King:

As I found researching my new book, Gunfight, in 1956, after King’s house was bombed, King applied for a concealed carry permit in Alabama. The local police had discretion to determine who was a suitable person to carry firearms. King, a clergyman whose life was threatened daily, surely met the requirements of the law, but he was rejected nevertheless. At the time, the police used any wiggle room in the law to discriminate against African Americans.

Lordy no! We can’t be letting them filthy niggers have guns! that might allow them to stand on equal footing with us! That might enable them to stand up to our tyranny! Hooray for gun control and its racist roots. *sigh*

Dr. King wasn’t the only civil rights activist that kept a gun:

T.R.M. Howard, the Mississippi doctor and mutual aid leader who founded the pioneering Regional Council of Negro Leadership, slept with a Thompson submachine gun at the foot of his bed. During the murder trial that followed the horrific lynching of 14-year-old Emmett Till, Howard escorted Till’s grieving mother and various others to and from the courthouse in a heavily-armed caravan.

Similarly, John R. Salter, one of the organizers of the famous 1963 sit-ins against segregated lunch counters in Jackson, Mississippi, said he always “traveled armed” while working as a civil rights organizer in the South. “I’m alive today because of the Second Amendment and the natural right to keep and bear arms,” Salter said.

The original HuffPo article ends with:

Whether a broader acceptance of the King’s later pacifism would have made us safer than choosing guns, we will never know.

Nothing said Dr. King was aggressive about his use of guns. He used them to stay alive in the face of obvious danger to his life. Granted his life was cut short, but how much sooner could he have been taken from us? Might we never have heard his “I Have A Dream” speech? No, we will never know.

But this is why some people need guns. It may be that woman with a crazy ex, because a piece of paper called a restraining order will not keep him away from her. It may be the elderly couple that just cannot stand up to a strong young thug. It may be the black man in fear of his life because as far as we’ve come, we’ve still a long ways to go.

Most gun owners I know are not violent people (conversely it seems lots of anti-gun people are rather violent). They do not wish violence, they do not want violence. They are peaceful people and try to undertake actions and options of peace and avoidance. They would prefer to just go through their lives peacefully and being left alone, and leaving you alone to live your life. The difference is we accept ugly things may happen to us, and we wish to be prepared to contend with them if they do — just like Dr. King was.

Liberty means Responsibility

/ hsoi / 2 Comments

We are not punished for our sins, but by them. Liberty means responsibility. – Michael Cloud (tweeted here)

Liberty means responsibility.

Let that sink in for a moment.

I hate to say it, but as much as I love the libertarian notion, I don’t think it will ever happen in this country because it requires people to be responsible.

The growth of our Nanny State has demonstrated people can’t and won’t take responsibility — for themselves, for those they are supposed to care for (e.g. their children), their finances, their situation in life, whatever. Or is it the other way around? Because people don’t want to be responsible, because they’d rather leech off someone else, because they’d rather be lazy yet still receive their check, because you do nothing yet still receive reward, if you don’t give a shit about X then someone else will pick it up… then we’ve started to create a Nanny State to pick up after them because they won’t pick up after themselves. Chicken or egg, they feed each other and keep the cycle going.

And so… our liberties slowly wither.

We’d rather give up liberty than encourage — nay, demand — responsibility. How infantile! How sad.

You want to see liberty return? Be responsible, take responsibility, teach others how to be responsible, encourage responsibility.

 

3 ounces isn’t very much, is it?

/ hsoi / 2 Comments

TSA limits us to 3 ounces of liquid in our carry-on luggage.

I think we’ve all agreed this isn’t much, and doesn’t really provide us with enough to get the job done. Doesn’t matter what the liquid is, be it water for drinking or shampoo for your hair — it’s not enough to get the job done.

Well to be fair, maybe it gets you through; maybe some people get by alright. I know most men have short hair and 3 ounces of shampoo is perhaps enough for them. I’ve got long hair and 3 ounces doesn’t cut it; maybe one shampoo, but if I need to wash my hair a second time? Forget it.

These reduced capacity containers just don’t work for all situations. Yes perhaps it works for the statistical average, but statistics are of little comfort when you’re the anomaly (and no, I’m not going to cut my hair).

We supposedly free citizens are restricted in our liquid carrying capacity for our own safety. We acknowledge it may not get the job done, it may leave us in a lurch… but at least it’s just shampoo, nothing that’s difficult to obtain no matter where you go, and your life generally doesn’t depend upon it.

I think about other contexts where capacity is limited, and the same principles apply. That restricting the amount of ammunition law-abiding supposedly free citizens can carry or possess may not be enough to get the job done. Oh sure, statistical averages say you’ll be attacked by a single person, but that doesn’t mean your enjoyment of your Starbucks won’t be interrupted by a violent mob of 25 pipe-wielding people.

Think about applying this sort of capacity restriction across the board in your life. If all liquids could only come in 3 ounce containers. Your milk, your coffee, your soda (wait… this might give Bloomberg some more ideas), your housecleaning supplies, gasoline… we wouldn’t stand for it because we know it’s a silly restriction and causes more problems than it solves. Yes… causes more problems than it solves.

Let’s be consistent

/ hsoi

From Unc I read how a man was fired from his job for “liking” a Facebook post.

Daniel Ray Carter Jr. logged on to Facebook and did what millions do each day: He “liked” a page by clicking the site’s thumbs up icon. The problem was that the page was for a candidate who was challenging his boss, the sheriff of Hampton, Va.

That simple mouse click, Carter says, caused the sheriff to fire him from his job as a deputy and put him at the center of an emerging First Amendment debate over the ubiquitous digital seal of approval: Is liking something on Facebook protected free speech?

I think most people would agree that yes it is free speech, it should be protected. You are expressing your opinion. To “click Like” is merely a shortcut/shorthand for saying “I like this” or “I agree with this” or some other statement of agreement and affirmation. It’s just a more efficient (lazy?) way to do it. Are we saying that if someone typed a comment under the posting “I like this” that that wouldn’t be protected? or if I wrote it on a piece of paper, or spoke it aloud in a public venue for others to hear? So why wouldn’t clicking “like” be offered the same protection under 1A?

But apparently not:

The interest was sparked by a lower court’s ruling that “liking” a page does not warrant protection because it does not involve “actual statements.” If the ruling is upheld, the ACLU and others worry, a host of Web-based, mouse-click actions, such as re-tweeting (hitting a button to post someone else’s tweet on your Twitter account), won’t be protected as free speech.

Methinks someone in the lower court doesn’t quite understand technology advancements.

“We think it’s important as new technologies emerge . . . that the First Amendment is interpreted to protect those new ways of communicating,” said Rebecca K. Glenberg, legal director of the ACLU of Virginia. “Pressing a ‘like’ button is analogous to other forms of speech, such as putting a button on your shirt with a candidate’s name on it.”

So isn’t that interesting? Our Founding Fathers never could have imagined this thing called the Internet. They could never have imagined Facebook or Twitter or iPhone’s. They could never have imagined the act of pressing with your finger could act as a proxy for expressing your liking something. But just like they understood technology advancements like clay tablets, papyrus paper, quill pens, moveable type, printing presses, pony express, and so on… they probably understood that technology would continue to advance. I’m sure they wanted speech to be protected regardless of the technology used to convey it. Certainly that’s what it seems the WaPo, the ACLU, and others put forth. I know many people will be outraged if these advances in technology would not be upheld as protected under that 200-year old document written by men that (some day) had no clue.

So why isn’t this same standard held to the Second Amendment?

Quotes for today

/ hsoi / 3 Comments

From this article:

“I’m not saying you should outlaw guns, but I don’t see the point of hundred-round magazine clips and automatic weapons if you just want to target shoot,” said John Tyson, 66, of Winchester, Va.

I’ll respond with a quote from Mike Muir:

Just ’cause you don’t understand what’s going on don’t mean it don’t make no sense, and just ’cause you don’t like it don’t mean it ain’t no good.

Mr. Tyson continues:

“People say it’s their right to bear arms, but when the Constitution was written there was no such thing as an automatic weapon.”

People say it’s their right to free speech, but when the Constitution was written there was no such thing as the Internet.

Why we’re losing

/ hsoi / 10 Comments

I can go check out the economic experiments in Chile or Hong Kong or Puerto Rico, stick a piece of plastic in the wall, and cash will come out. I can give that same piece of plastic to a stranger who doesn’t even speak my language, and he’ll rent me a car for a week. When I get home, Visa or MasterCard will send me the accounting— correct to the penny. That’s capitalism! I just take it for granted.

Government, by contrast, can’t even count votes accurately. Yet whenever there are problems, people turn to government. Despite the central planners’ long record of failure, politicians promise that this time they will “fix” health care, education, the uncertainty of old age, etc., and people believe. Few of us like to think the government that sits atop us, taking credit for everything and taking our money under threat of imprisonment, could really be all that rotten. And look at all the good things around us! What, besides our unique government, could have brought us such plenty?

But it’s not from the $3.8 trillion a year in spending, the 80,000 new pages of regulations a year, or even from democracy that we get such wonderful options as flexible contact lenses, Google, cellphones, increasing life spans, and so much food that even poor people are fat. We get those things from free markets. Government gets credit for good things even when it does little to bring them about.

– John Stossel, “Why We’re Losing” in Reason magazine’s June 2012 issue.

How does the saying go?

Fool me once, shame on you.

Fool me twice, and I’ll continue re-electing the jackass?

As I read Stossell’s article, I couldn’t help but wonder why people keep turning to government for solutions? It doesn’t matter if you’re Democrat or Republican, conservative or liberal, both of those groups do this very thing. They complain about how horrible government is when it comes to X, but then when they want Y they turn to government as if they think it will give it to them. Then Y gets all screwed up, and along comes time for Z and they keep going back for more.

I mean, most people seem to realize if a restaurant sucks and you get crappy service, you don’t go back. I don’t know people who would say “the food sucks, the wait staff was rude, the drinks way overpriced, but I’m making that my regular weekend hangout!”.  But that’s precisely what happens when people keep turning to government to solve their problems.

I just don’t understand that behavior.

But maybe it’s that “definition of insanity” thing… where you keep doing the same thing and expecting different results?

On the flip side, we are surrounded by the successes of free market, of privatization, and yes I think Stossel’s above example of accounting is a perfect demonstration. Not to mention the computer or smartphone you’re reading this on. But I guess he’s right… we just take it for granted and so we don’t really realize what we’ve got.

And so… we’re losing.

Give Stossel’s article a read.