analysis

“Gee (child’s name), do your friend’s parents own a car?”

Dr. John Lott may be familiar to some of you.  He’s an economist and political commentator, most famous for debunking gun control as effective crime control, through the use of statistics.  He recently posted some stats on his blog, after the NYT did another hit piece regarding a woman’s concerns about her child visiting a home of gun owners.

The statistics speak for themselves:

What is the risk of a six year old dying from an accidental gun shot?

Lisa Maxbauer recently wrote a piece in the New York Times worrying about her six-year old visiting homes of gun owners.  Here are some numbers from the CDC for both six year olds and those under age 10.

For other ways of accidental deaths, the numbers are as follows:

♫ Sunshine Go Away Today…♫

♫…I don’t feel much like dancin’…♫

Kent McManigal shares with us an essay regarding the essence of personal liberty, freedom and individual rights in this Constitutional Republic.

I find it sad that whenever someone wants to do something, the first question most people ask is whether government allows it, requires a license, or forbids it.

There is so much that isn’t (or shouldn’t be) the business of government.  Most personal conflicts are attached to an understood contract between individuals in the free marketplace – If you don’t like guns, don’t buy one; if that head of lettuce is bad too soon, don’t buy them there, anymore; don’t like illegal drugs, don’t use them.

There are remedies before getting the government involved.  That shouldn’t be our go-to choice.  It should be the last resort.

This isn’t a pointless philosophical debate. On May 5, President Obama warned Ohio State University graduates to reject the warnings people like me are passing along, and to simply trust government.

My motivation is that I trust you to run your own life, and I want you to understand liberty and experience it in all its glory.

What might his motivation be?

If you can be fooled into asking the wrong questions, the answers don’t matter.

This should be our (libertarian’s) anthem. – Guffaw

h/t Kent’s “Hooligan Libertarian” Blog

WHO Has Your Back?

Too much privacy advocacy is done by a self-appointed expert class who, believing their own preferences to be universal, beseech legislators and regulators to mold or even remake the information economy. I have nothing against self-appointed experts—I am one, and some of you have been falling for my schtick for a decade. But the hubris of claiming to know how things should come out? That’s too much.

So the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s “Who Has Your Back?” report is real stand-out. Using a clear, six-star grid, they assess how well major Internet companies and ISPs do when it comes to key dimensions of privacy protection.  (Jim Harper/Cato@Liberty)

It’s worth going to the link above and determining who (or if) your ISP has your back.  Remember a couple years back when *blog name redacted*  had his Internet service terminated, and his home raided w/o benefit of a warrant because of potentially inflamatory statements he made in his blog?  It was Massachusetts, so, the State revoked his gun permit and confiscated his firearms, too!  With no due process involved and the full cooperation of his ISP with the authorities.

So much for protecting the customer…

Go check out the grid, and be enlightened.

A Stalinist Version of The Onion!

(my apologies to The Onion)

As my regular readers know (as well as those suffering digestive distress) I surf the Internet looking for news, opinion, rights violations, and fellow libertarian travelers (to steal borrow from), especially when the guffaw well is dry.

Today is one of those posts.

I especially like finding stuff that mocks the control freaks – the Feinstein/Bloombergs of the World.  And, thankfully, we STILL have the right to do so! (as of this writing)

It occurred to me that I’d not shared a particular find with you – The People’s Cube!

They lampoon all that is Left with the World, and do it well.  Apparently, the main writer is a former commie who saw the liberty, free-market light.

But, there is a serious side, as well.  Go and peruse.  And also be amused.

NYPD Food Felonies Unit to Help Make Better Food Choices

Inspired by the dramatic improvements in New Yorkers’ health and well-being after he banned smoking and junk food, as well as large sodas, salt, trans fats, Styrofoam food containers, and loud earbuds, Mayor Michael Bloomberg has announced that the NYPD is organizing a Food Felonies Unit (FFU) to further combat the proliferation of food crimes.Nicknamed “Double-F-U,” the newly-formed unit is expected to be involved largely with restaurant menu supervision in its crime-prevention function…MORE >>

Dear Americans, these are some questions I have collected in 16 years of living in your country. Please see if you can answer them for me:

• If all cultures are equal, why doesn’t UNESCO organize International Cannibalism Week festivals?

• Why do those demanding “equal pay for equal work” never protest against “equal pay for little or no work”?

• Why has no politician ever run on men’s issues or promised to improve the lives of males?

• If all beliefs are equally valid, how come my belief in the absurdity of this maxim gets rejected by its proponents?

• Ever noticed that for the past thirty years, we’ve been hearing we have less than ten years to save the planet?

Much of it is reductio ad absurdum, but funny, and pointed, regardless…

Doing Wrong To Prevent Wrong – NSFW

(What follows has some language that is Not-Safe-For-Work.  I thought it best not to edit or censor it, to give it it’s full impact - Guffaw)

This is the crux of the libertarian, Constitutional argument.  Why are we so against all these ubiquitous encroachments on our civil liberties?  And why we should continue to be.

Every time I see something like this, be it use of a no-knock warrant (or no warrant at all), surveillance cameras everywhere, GPS on modern cell phones that we cannot disconnect, institutionalized warrantless searches at airports (and elsewhere) or beating a confession out of a suspect, I recognize we have lost something beyond price.  And, I know we probably won’t get these liberties back without a fight.

Kent’s “Hooligan Libertarian” Blog touches on the most recent of these issues.  The lock-down and methodical search of an entire city to locate a terrorism suspect.  He says, in part:

The same goes for imposing a police state and illegally/unethically/immorally locking down a city and invading homes to catch a suspect.  Every cop who entered any property without the explicit permission of the owner/renter deserved to be shot dead.  Immediately.  Good thing for those stormtroopers that the “people” there gave up their responsibility and guns long ago, and are cheering fans of Big Brother.  Makes me furious to even think about.

Follow this up with Lurking Rhythmically’s screed regarding some folks disdain for an individual’s natural rights.  She says, in part:

From a comment on my previous post:

You know, I like most of what you post, and followed you even though I disagreed with you on your position on so-called “gun rights”.

Oooh. Isn’t that just delicious contempt ? It’s so thick and creamy you could drizzle it on a pancake. I especially like the one-two punch of  so-called and the scare quotes. They aren’t rights, they’re “rights”.  That’s quality passive-aggression right there.

Here’s the lovely thing about rights:  They aren’t up for a vote. That’s why they’re rights.

Let’s put it another way:

• your so-called “suffrage”
• your so-called “emancipation”
• your so-called “integration”
• your so-called “religious freedom”
• your so-called “freedom of speech”
• your so-called “right to due process”

Are you offended yet? You should be. You should be screamingly furious that anyone would diminish these rights with the phrase “so-called”.

And yet my inalienable right to defend myself with the most effective means possible is threatened because one, ONE asshole out of 10 million law-abiding gun owners decided to commit a raft of crimes that another law would not have stopped.

You say, “Compromise.”  I say, ”Fuck you, you mewling cowards. I will not embrace victimhood. I will not willingly disarm. If you demand I give up my life just to make you feel better, you are selfish on a level that is beyond comprehension.”

I believe this is how most of us feel, even if we can’t quite put our feelings into words.  Individual rights are individual rights.  Whether ‘natural’ or ‘derived from our Creator’, it doesn’t matter.  They are not up for debate or vote.  Period.

And to allow them to be voted on is yet another encroachment.

Go and read the entire Declaration of Independence, and then the two links above.  Then look at the news, and read what we accept as a normal course of government business every day.

Then, perhaps become angry about the state of our Nation.  And cry a little.

There’s a point here…

So…

Initial investigation has determined that there were two individuals proximately responsible for the Boston Marathon bombings.  They later shot and killed a police officer.  One of the suspects was DRT*.  (Reportedly run over by the other suspect during his escape!)

The two suspects are of Chechen origin, and have lived in the United States for 10 years.  They are reportedly Muslim (as are many Chechens) and brothers.  I’ll not grant them any more fame by posting their names or photos here.

It’s been reported by family members that the two brothers never assimilated into American Culture, and had no American friends.  After 10 years (!)

“…never assimilated into American Culture” 

The point of the information reported is not that the suspects are Chechen, or Muslim, or brothers.  It’s that they lived here TEN YEARS and did not assimilate.  Period.

I’ve no problem with folks legally migrating to the United Stated and retaining connections with their home country and culture.  Hell, I’m part German and part Irish stock – have celebrated St. Patrick’s Day and Octoberfest.  But, I’m an American.

It used to be if folks came to America, it was to find the freedom here – to become American.  I used to know an Italian family who owned a pizza place.  Tiny Italian and American flags all over the restaurant, coupled with a picture of the President and the Pope on the back wall.  And they had many friends and customers of all ethnicities and nationalities.

I don’t know if these guys were home-grown terrorists, turned by a radical Muslim/Chechen faction, or part of a sleeper cell.  Perhaps we’ll never know.

But, I do know if they’d assimilated, there’d have been less of a chance of violence used against us.

I wonder if the families of the Mexican kids who tore down the American Flag at their high school and ran up a Mexican flag understand this?

Come here to be part of American culture – or stay home.

*dead right there – thanks to John Farnham

For A Good Time, Call The KGB…

…the GRU, NKVD, MVD, Stasi, MSS – or the FSB (the current incarnation of Russian intelligence apparat)

It seems Borepatch has determined the FSB is using their own version of Google, and is quite happy with their algorithms.  Welcome to YANDEX.   He says:

1. Russia has a bunch of excellent computer scientists, and Yandex seems to have picked up a bunch of them.  The Russians always excelled at algorithms (I’d go so far as to say that their mathematics training beats ours handily), and search is a game of algorithms.  I’m told that the Russian language is more difficult for computers to deal with than English (it is an inflected language, unlike ours), and so the Yandex algorithms originally developed for Russian really shine when aimed at English sites.

2. It gives me very good results – for most things I’ve been looking for, better than Google.  Google’s blogsearch has become a joke, which is perhaps a testament to Google’s internal lack of focus.  I find that bloggy related searches are much more productive on Yandex.~

~And now we come to what brought me to Yandex in the first place: Google is evil.  We all know it.  Furthermore, Google seems to be playing footsie with the US Government Intelligence Agencies:

One privacy advantage Yandex has which Google never will: Yandex does not do business with American intelligence agencies.  I do not like the fact that Google has become an arm of US intelligence agencies. It is to their credit that Google discloses their relationship with the US government (most of Silicon Valley is in bed with the spooks, but they don’t talk about  it). It is the surveillance  state that I abhor. Yandex may very well be doing the same thing with the Russian government, but the FSB is a much smaller threat to American civil rights than our own spooks. While I see no imminent dangers from the all-seeing eye, and I am far from paranoid, the US is going through a weird time right now, and history is a dark and bloody subject. Do I really want the future government  to know what websearches I was doing in 2010? No, thanks,  tovarich.

Paranoia?  I don’t think so.  And, just for S & Gs, I ran Guffaw in AZ on Yandex.

20 returns on the first page – only one in Russian.  Only one about guffawing, and not the blog.  Seems focused, as Borepatch intones.

I’m thinking of using this occasionally (instead of BING), just to annoy the three-letter folks in bed with Google. Otherwise, what good is a “uncensored” Internet?

Hell, I’m already on ‘the list.’

There are “No Good Cops”! Or any other public official…(?)

“No Good Cops”

That’s what Kent’s Hooligan Libertarian Blog says…

He suggests that any cop doing his job (i.e. enforcing current non-libertarian laws) is simply a tool of the State, not unlike the folks who ‘did as they were told’.  The Nuremberg Defense.  To wit:

But then consider:  Has this person ever enforced a single counterfeit “law”?  Any anti-drug ”law”, anti-gun ”law”, “tax law”, speed limit, seat belt enforcement, property “code”, asset forfeiture, etc.?  If so, the person isn’t a “good cop”- certainly not a good person while acting as a cop.

Some cops may be less evil than others; I certainly hope so.  But “less evil” falls very short of “good”.

I come from a family of cops, with a cop (and Marine) history.  I know they enforced the laws as written, including  those laws with which they may have personally disagreed.  They took an oath.

Of course, much of the legislation with which Kent disagrees hadn’t been passed, yet, when they were ‘on the job’.  And I know some ‘street justice’ also occurred.  Contempt of cop and all that.

But, I do believe they were good and honorable men.  Here Kevin and I disagree.

This got me to thinking.  Do we hold those persons who took an oath to the letter of said oath?  

Police Officers?

Senators and Representatives?

The President?

United States Constitution under Article IV it states:
“The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution…“
(U. S. Constitution 1787)

The American Dictionary of the English Language, define an oath as:
“A solemn affirmation or declaration, made with an appeal to God for truth of what is affirmed. The appeal to God in an oath, implies that the person imprecates his vengeance and renounces his favor if the declaration is false,or if the declaration is a promise, the person invokes the vengeance of God if he should fail to fulfill it. A false oath is called perjury.“
(Webster Dictionary 1828)

The presidential oath of office is required by Article 2, Section 1 of the Constitution, which deals with the executive branch and outlines how the president is elected. In part, it reads:

Before he enter on the Execution of his Office, he shall take the following Oath or Affirmation:–”I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.

Stuff I Didn’t Know…

…could fill uncounted libraries stacked to the rafters with (blank) telephone directories…

This was one of those things:

Human Events.  Yes, Human Events (!) brought me this information.  Quelle surprise, eh?

I’ve owned a few rifles.  Most were acquired due to the previous so-called Assault Weapons Ban.  Because I greatly dislike the government telling me what rights I have and don’t have!

But, while I’m an ‘okay’ rifle shot, I’m no rifleman.  I’m a much better pistol and revolver shot than I am with a rifle, comparatively   And with the exception of a .22, the AK variant, and the M-1 Garand, all the others were AR-15 style rifles.

And I didn’t know this.

Is firing a 5.56 NATO cartridge in your .223 Remington chambered AR15 dangerous?  Or do Internet forum-ninjas and ammunition companies selling you commercial ammo instead of surplus overstate the dangers?  Believe it or not, a real danger exists, and some gun owners who think they are doing the right thing may not be safe.~

~The significant difference between the .223 Rem and 5.56 NATO lies in the rifles, rather than the cartridges themselves.  Both the .223 and 5.56 rounds will chamber in rifles designed for either cartridge, but the critical component, leade, will be different in each rifle.

The leade is the area of the barrel in front of the chamber prior to where the rifling begins.  This is where the loaded bullet is located when a cartridge is chambered.  The leade is frequently called the “throat.”

On a .223 Remington spec rifle, the leade will be 0.085”.  This is the standard described by the Sporting Arms and Ammunition Manufacturers’ Institute, Inc. (SAAMI).  The leade in a 5.56 NATO spec rifle is 0.162”, or almost double the leade of the .223 rifle.~

~Many of the AR-15’s currently sold on the market are made for the 5.56 NATO cartridge.  If you own one of these, you should be fine with any .223 or 5.56 ammunition.

However, ATK dropped this bomb in the bulletin on the .223/5.56:

“It is our understanding that commercially available AR15’s and M16’s – although some are stamped 5.56 Rem on the receiver – are manufactured with .223 chambers.”

So, even if your AR is stamped 5.56, is it really?  Check your owner’s manual or call the company directly and make sure you get an answer you feel comfortable with.~

You should go and read the whole article.  Then check your rifles’ manuals and markings.

Just to be and stay safe.

Now we both know.

Call Me RACIST…

…and Bob Owens, as well.  For not buying what they are selling.

WaPost op-ed blames whites for mass shootings; fact remains minorities are over-represented for ALL murder types, including mass murder.

an excerpt:

A pair of sister-researchers that make their living off the government teat have decided to blame white men for mass shootings:

Whites are under-represented by race in mass shootings, as are Hispanics, when you look at percentage of total population. Don’t take my word for it, either; look at the stats kept by über-left-wing Mother Jones.

Over-represented are Asians, like Virginia Tech shooter Seung-Hui Cho, One L. Goh, Jeong Soo Paek, Jiverly Wong, Byran Koji Uyesugi and Gang Lu who are all East Asian, and West Asian/Arabs, such as Nidal Hassan, and Abdelkrim Belachheb, whom the sisters dishonestly label “white.”

Also over-represented are black mass murders like Omar S. Thornton, Maurice Clemmons, Charles Lee Thornton, William D. Baker, Arthur Wise, Clifton McCree, Nathan Dunlap, Colin Ferguson, and we’re not even including the DC Snipers, John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo, because they are arguably serial killers instead.

While white mass murderers are given considerable airtime, black mass murderers are ignored by the mass media as quickly as they possibly can… including the racist Washington Post.

Are these overtly liberal sisters really sure they want to start playing race games? As it invariably leads back to the failure of progressive social engineering, I don’t think they do.

As for calling us racist, I’m certain someone will.  It’s their modus operandi.