ricketyclick

Gun fearing socialist pussies everywhere, relax: my favorite African-American, Kim du Toit, is closing The Other Side of Kim, having gotten tired of shouting the ugly truth into the faces of people who have an ideological commitment to not hearing it.

When he started, he was one of the few strong advocates for the crazy idea that ordinary American citizens, men and women regardless of creed or color, were competent to run their own affairs, even in matters of life and death. He started the idea of National Buy a Gun Day, as a part of his Nation of Riflemen campaign, aimed at re-arming the militia of which the Second Amendment speaks, the unorganized one.

He has also been a tireless critic of communism, socialism, nannyism,and big government generally.

He was one of my very first daily-read bookmarks when I myself realized that the Second Amendment imposed much the same duty as the first: to actively participate in the nation’s political process in ways far beyond mere voting. (What, you thought the First Amendment was all about Freedom From Religion, and your right to buy, sell, and make child pornography?)

He put his money where his mouth is, nearly suffering financial ruin when his employer discovered he, uh, Spoke Real Truth to Real Power, and fired him. So great was his distress that he actually sold off some of his substantial collection of firearms to make ends meet. (And you may judge the size and value of that arsenal by the fact that selling off only a part of it actually made a difference in the finances of a family, including teenagers, who had recently purchased a new home in Dallas.)

He has also taken dozens of people, men, women, and children, Off to the Range, and taught them how to shoot. Fittingly, one of his last posts today was about one such excursion.

All Americans can be proud that when he escaped from the hell hole of South Africa he chose to come here; all Texans can be proud that when he abandoned Mayor Daley’s fiefdom to its own rot, he came here. He came not for a free handout, but to do his part in holding the line in the world’s Last, Best Hope for Liberty.

He, a foreigner, has been a better American than I, a native; indeed, a far better American than almost all of us, including especially many of those who now hold elective office. He took an oath to become one of us, he meant it, and he’s done his level best to keep it.

Thank you, sir. Thank you very much. Please enjoy having a private life again; you have already done more than your share.

Dead on. I even seem to remember, back in the early days when high-end crypto was banned for international trade, that advocates were in fact invoking the Second Amendment in public, although I don’t recall that it was ever invoked in court. Pity, that.

The Right to Keep and Bear isn’t just about firearms. It’s about being able to resist the government with whatever tools come to hand.

Houston Defense Attorney Mark Bennett posts two great articles on real-world law: one aimed at his clients, and one aimed at prosecutors.

For the defendant:

…If, based on something you heard at a seminar put on by Winston Shrout or his ilk you create a fictitious commercial instrument and deposit it in a bank, you’re likely to wind up getting arrested by real (not straw) agents with real badges, hauled before a real court with real power to send you to real prison (maybe you can share a cell with Roger Elvick, the white supremacist who dreamt up all of this Redemption nonsense) where real guards can kill the real you if you try to escape.

And for the prosecution:

The government doesn’t get to decide whether the witness has a good faith reason to refuse to talk; if it did, there’d be no point in having a Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.

But aside from that, there is no such test, in the real world (which is where I practice) for taking the Fifth. As I have said here before, this is the way it works:

• Witness is sworn in.
• Witness is asked a question.
• Witness refuses to answer on grounds that the answer might tend to incriminate him.
• Witness is asked another question.
• Witness again refuses to answer.
• Prosecutor gets tired of this game.

At this point, the prosecutor appearing before the grand jury is not allowed to strap the witness down and waterboard him until he answers the question. He has two options. First, he can let it go and let the witness go on about his business.

Second, he can go to a judge and ask the judge to order the witness to answer the questions. If the judge orders the witness to answer the questions, the witness has to either answer or be held in contempt.

But guess what: the judge’s order for the witness to answer the questions is a grant of use immunity.

Grand Juries are at once extremely powerful, and are, for the most part, wholly owned and operated by the Prosecution. (It was not always thus; GJ’s used to be fairly independent, and my understanding is that they still can, if they wish, start and pursue their own investigations, or refuse to pursue an investigation requested by the prosecution.)

The check to this is for witnesses (suspects) to understand their rights and Grand Jury procedure. Mr. Bennett has done all of us a great service.

My last attempt to comment on Bryan Miller’s dancing in the blood of an eight year old boy while making fun of his small penis did not make it through moderation.

Here’s another try:

Freedom is not safe.

That said, accidents like this are extremely rare. Fewer than a hundred children a year die from accidents involving guns. (And, yes, this was an “accident”, although negligence was certainly a huge factor.)

According to the Centers for Disease Control, in 2004 seventy-two children between the ages of 1 and 15 died in “Unintentional Firearm” incidents, ranked at number 14.

What really kills kids? Top three causes in 2004 were: 2479 deaths due to “Unintentional MV traffic”; 739 due to “Unintentional drowning”; and 502 due to “Unintentional Fire/burn”. Next comes 350 “Homicide Firearm”. Note that those last three together are not even two thirds of the total due to cars.

The right of the people to keep and bear arms has already been very substantially infringed by some 20,000 federal, state, and local laws and regulations. Your state, New Jersey, and the state in which this shooting occurred, Massachusetts, heavily regulate gun ownership, yet are not known for their low crime rates.

If, Mr. Miller, you want to further infringe that right, I believe we can reasonably insist that you make a strong case that your infringements will a) substantially reduce gun deaths among children even further, and b) not increase child death (or even adult death) through increased violent crime or increased tyranny.

[I reused part of my last reply, which I will not reproduce here. CDC stats copied from this earlier post.]

Over at New Jersey Voices, Bryan Miller writes on a tragic accident where an 8-year-old boy, Christopher Bizilj, was killed while firing a full-auto Uzi machine pistol. Of course, being a propaganda officer for the People’s Republic of New Jersey, he spreads the belief that new laws are required, that those laws should target semi-auto as well as full-auto arms, and that guns, even in the hands of 8 year old boys, “are a stand-in for erections”.

I responded thusly:

This accident is receiving widespread coverage on gun blogs; it is not remotely being covered up. Everyone agrees this was tragic, and that giving full-auto machine pistols to children is horribly irresponsible — they can be tricky for even an experienced adult to manage, because the repeated recoil causes the muzzle to kick back and up. Most children simply lack the strength to maintain control.

However, there is no similar problem with either semi-autos, which fire one round for each trigger pull, or with tripod-mounted heavy machine guns, because they cannot repeatedly and cumulatively kick back.

Most folk I’ve read who advocate training children with guns at an early age, strongly recommend giving them a bolt-action .22 rifle: It’s low powered, it’s long enough to be hard to point at yourself, and you must work the action manually between each shot, making rapid fire impossible. Plus, long guns are much easier than handguns to aim accurately.

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Mr. Miller, your conflation of full-auto and semi-auto is strong evidence that you are either an ignoramus or an ideologue, or both. You have demonstrated clearly that your opinions on this matter simply cannot be trusted.

I’m not saying that you should be forbidden to express your opinions, even in a public forum like this, even though most of your very dangerous opinions are based on gross errors and outright lies.

However, when real grown-ups are talking about serious issues, such as the right of The People to keep and bear arms, you would do well to sit down, hush up, and listen. You just might learn something.

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Even though I militantly disagree with your opinions, sir, and even as I trust you with a keyboard and a web server, I trust you — yes you, Mr. Miller, and all my fellow citizens, sight unseen — with guns, even machine guns, far, far more than I trust my government with so much as a paperclip, or worse, a filing cabinet, if you and I are disarmed.

If you go crazy, you’ll be able to kill maybe a dozen people before the rest of us take you down like a rabid dog.

But when governments go crazy, as they tend to do immediately after disarming their citizens, they kill hundreds of thousands, even millions of people, while wrecking whole cultures and doing their best to erase history.

No, sir, it certainly is, as you say, most certainly not about hunting. It’s about my selfish desire for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness — even for the likes of you.

My comment is awaiting moderation.

[update]
When I posted this, there was one comment showing.

Apparently, that was right before the editor released the moderation queue. Now there are 177 comments. Mine is still awaiting approval. It’s NJ, so of course most of the comments are pro-disarmament, but there is a strong showing of pro-liberty voices, most of them pointing out the blatant ignorance and lies on display.

[update 2]
Ack! No, the 177 comments are on the original article at the Boston Globe, not on Miller’s ignorant commentary. Still, there are now several comments on Miller, all from freedom-lovers.

[update 3]
Other comments have gone up since I posted mine, but mine has not appeared. Most of the comments posted so far are very critical.

Chuck Norris, a.k.a. Walker, Texas Ranger, explains that while he, “a black-belt patriot”, could take out a robber with a roundhouse kick, he’d prefer to use a gun:

[Youtube link]

I am not a Chuck Norris fan, because all too often, his stories involve being a Hero who comes in to help those who won’t, or can’t help themselves.

Here, though, he’s not offering to bring either his gun or his feet to protect you. He’s asking you, you personally, to stand up for your right to protect yourself, by checking the actual voting records of politicians who claim to support the right to keep and bear arms.

Bravo, Chuck! This, not your kick, makes you my hero for the day!

Swiped from Tamara K’s Porch.

“In what kind of nation, do the media investigate critics more than candidates?”

Rick at Classical Values investigates the media’s investigation of, yes, Joe the Plumber. Plenty of links, all the best quotes.

Rick asks a lot of great questions, including:

…Why is [the] private life of an aspiring small business owner of more interest than Barack Obama’s drug dealer?

Or for that matter, B. Hussein Obama’s political mentors, teachers, and associates?

Rick comments:

The way they have done a complete, invasive background check on this citizen is shocking. While few of us would withstand close scrutiny, what annoys me the most is that the dirt-digging has been done by the news media, and they have now essentially sicced the bureaucrats on this guy.

Rick ends with another question:

Well then, suppose I were to ask a question about my inability to ask a question? Something like this:

Senator Obama, if I were to ask you a tough question, why would my personal lifestyle be considered more worthy of investigation than yours?

Nah, I’d better not ask.

Wouldn’t want to be subject to an investigation.

Read the whole damning thing. Follow Rick’s links.

And ask yourself the question, “Why should I want this guy and his friends to be in control of my life? Why should I want to give this guy and his friends my banking and health care records? Why should I have to hesitate for even a second as to whether or not it’s safe to ask B. Hussein Obama what he plans to do with my life, once I hand him the keys?”

Ken Lammers:

I don’t like the result, but really can’t argue with the reasoning.

Well, OK, but so what? Why does that get QotD status? Doesn’t sound all that earth-shaking, it’s not particularly witty, comes off pretty flat, in fact.

That is his response to Jaynes v. Commonwealth (No. 062388) [scroll down], a case challenging what the Virginia State Supreme Court says was an overbroad anti-spam statute. Presumably, Lammers doesn’t like it because now spammers are free to spam, and with that, I agree.

He gets QotD, however, because of the broader principles involved. Here’s the decision summary:

Held:

(1) Jurisdiction is valid because all of AOL’s servers are in Virginia and this is common knowledge.

(2) The Virginia Supreme Court quotes the Commonwealth’s own stipulations during a prior argument before the federal supreme court and finds that Virginia cannot limit access to constitutional protections to fewer people than the federal government allows.

(3) While trespass may be a valid theory in a civil suit, it does not apply in a case involving the government because governments must answer to the 1st Amendment.

(4) The mere fact that someone sends an anonymous email cannot be illegal because anonymous political speech is protected political discourse. Unlike other States, Virginia has not limited this statute to commercial speech. Therefore, the statute is not sufficiently narrowly drawn.

(5) While mere overbreadth is not enough, this statute is substantially overbroad. It “would prohibit all bulk e-mail containing anonymous political, religious, or other expressive speech. For just being published today example, were the Federalist Papers via e-mail, that transmission by Publius would violate the statute.”

(6) The Supreme Court refuses the Commonwealth’s invitation to narrow the application of the statute so that it only applies if the internet service provider objects or the emails contain criminal activity, defamation, or obscenity. Rewriting a statute is the province of the General Assembly and mere construction of this statute cannot reach as far as the Commonwealth urges.

Reversed.

[My bold.]

Lammers calls the decision a “tour de force”, saying it’s “28 pages and not an inch of fluff.”

The crux of the whole thing is point (6): “Rewriting a statute is the province of the General Assembly and mere construction of this statute cannot reach as far as the Commonwealth urges.”

See how that works? As much as I hate spam, as much as I want to see spammers staked out on fireant mounds with their eyelids snipped off and their bellies slit open, the VA Lege screwed up by writing an unconstitutionally broad law — and it is not the job of the Court to fix that, even though the Lege invited the Court to do so.

That’s how it’s done, folks. That’s how separation of powers works. That’s how the Rule of Law works. You don’t tolerate tyranny even if, in the short run, it achieves a goal you want. The Virginia Supreme Court understands that (at least in this case) and Lammers understands that — his quote is the essence of Point (6).

Together, they share Quote of the Day.

Obama, Second Amendment Changer:

Via Caleb at Call Me Ahab.

[Welcome Smallest Majority readers! And thanks, Kevin, for Quote of the Day status. I'm honored.]

I know I have readers who I am about to make very uncomfortable. Please, as you call me friend, bear with me. Read all the way to the end. Talk to me in comments, in email, on the phone, across the dinner table. But please, read the whole thing.

I’ve linked before to Eric S. Raymond’s outstanding essay on how and why exercising the right to keep and bear arms (particularly firearms) helps maintain a free society: “Ethics From the Barrel of a Gun“.

ESR recently started blogging again, after a two year hiatus, and has just posted another crucial essay: “A Brief History of Firearms Policy Fraud“.

The Heller vs. D.C. ruling affirming that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to bear arms was a major civil-rights victory building on 15 years of constitutional scholarship….

But there was another trend at work; the beginning of public recognition, after the year 2000, that anti-firearms activism has been founded on systematic errors and widespread fraud in the academic literature on gun policy….

Now that the Heller ruling has come down and administered another salutary shock to a lot of people who thought they could dismiss the Second Amendment and its defenders, I think it’s time that civil rights advocates follow up by exposing the history of junk science and dishonesty in anti-firearms studies.

ESR then lists several of the most well-known studies allegedly supporting strong gun control, briefly explains what’s wrong with them, and cites detailed refutations. These are the studies from which almost all of the current gun-control rhetoric flowed, and it’s all grossly mistaken at best, often downright fraudulent:

I described this pattern as “fraud” … because the magnitude of these errors would be too great and their direction too consistent for honest error, even if we did not in several prominent cases have direct evidence that the fraud must have been intended. A further and very disturbing pattern is that conventional academic peer review has largely failed to point out errors that were later readily apparent to uncredentialed amateurs.

Yes, of course, read the whole damning thing.

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Occasionally, in discussions about the right to keep and bear arms, I’ll challenge my debate partner on some point of law or fact. The usual response has two parts:

First, a kind of verbal shrug that says, in effect, only a gun nut wannabe killer would know or care about that, coupled with the accusation that I spend too much time studying the issue. This charge is usually leveled by folks who did a bit of reading twenty years ago, made up their minds, and never looked back. This is the only issue I’ve ever run across where knowing too much, having the actual facts on my side, is perceived as a liability in argument. (Oh, and this I love: after a year or so of study, I left the false safety of the gun control fold just before September of 2001. I looked in to the facts, thought long and hard, and changed my mind. And yet, because I will no longer politely suffer gun control arguments to go unchallenged, I’m the biased, close-minded, one.)

Second, I’m reminded that in this fight, both sides have distorted, misconstrued, covered up, and flat out lied. And again, this charge is often leveled by those who did their research and made up their minds twenty years ago.

Twenty years, people. There’s been a lot of water over the damn dam since then. That old dog won’t hunt, and isn’t learning any new tricks. The horse you’re trying to beat has long since died and gone to dust, and you look like an idiot beating the dirt where once it stood.

Since the eighties, there’s been a huge pile of research on the framing, history, and legal impact of the Second Amendment, and on the sociology and epidemiology of gun control, all culminating in the recent Heller decision. The Court unanimously, unanimously, people, found that the Second Amendment protects the right of individuals to keep and bear arms, including firearms, outside of any military or organized militia affiliation. The only disagreement is over how much regulation we must tolerate before it begins to “infringe” that right.

It turns out that Second Amendment advocates have gotten their story straight and their act together, while the gun control zealots have fumbled, fudged, and outright lied.

I’ll point to Heller for examples: Among the many briefs submitted on both sides of the question, one brief on Heller’s side became known as the “Errors Brief”, which did nothing but point out a few of the most important errors of fact in D.C.’s Plaintiff’s brief and associated amicus briefs.

After the decision was released, Justice Steven’s dissent (arguing that D.C.’s outright ban on functional firearms in the home did not constitute “infringement”) was found to have several factual errors, errors so severe that many observers think the opinion should be rescinded, rewritten, and re-released, even if correcting the errors does not change the opinion (although important parts of the dissent in fact rest on those errors). As it stands, it’s a profound embarrassment to the Court. [Note: the given link merely lists the errors; other commentators called for revision.]

The Second Amendment means what it says, in the simplest, most straightforward way: the Founders wanted The People, individual citizens, to be armed, particularly with firearms, independently of any military service, and they didn’t want the government to interfere with that in any way. Whatever damage an armed individual might do, the damage that an unchecked government might do is far, far worse (see the entire twentieth century for numerous horrific examples). The Founders did not limit the idea of “balance of power” to the traditional three branches of government, but meant it to work between individual citizens and their government as well.

Most of the Constitution defines the structure of the government, and enumerates its powers. Articles three through ten of the Bill of Rights further limit those powers. Amendments one and two, however, do something truly extraordinary: they declare that The People, acting out their lives solely in accordance with the dictates of their consciences, even in matters of life and death, are as crucial to the structure and stability of this nation of free states as any legislator, executive, or judge. The Second Amendment is not a mistake, not an oversight, not a misinterpretation, not a historical curiosity: it, along with the First Amendment, is the core of the whole enterprise. When you argue for gun control, you are declaring that free men are not fit to rule themselves, that the “balance of power” does not apply to the most crucial branch of government, The People; that We must be utterly subject to the other three branches. (Oh, except we’re allowed to whine. That’s OK, as long as we don’t actually, you know, do anything that might hurt somebody. Or somebody’s feelings.) And that, my friends, is the biggest, foulest, most toxic load of crap to have ever been dumped on our fruited plains, and it is poisoning our nation from the ground up.

From here on out, anyone who reads this blog, and wishes to discuss gun control with me, needs to show that they have read both Ethics and Fraud, and understood them. Let me say frankly, in all good will and friendship, if you haven’t, and if you aren’t willing to sit and listen to me make these points, and if you cannot refute them — not, mind, just wave your hand and tell me I shouldn’t worry my gunsmoke-rotted, troglodyte brain over such obvious offenses to the Way Things Oughta Be, but actually refute them — you are too ignorant and close-minded to be worth arguing with.

You are wrong. History says your are wrong. Sociology says you are wrong. Epidemiology says you are wrong. The U.S. Supreme Court says you are wrong.

It is no longer enough for you to say, Guns are bad, Dave. Good people, nice people, do not have or want guns. All well educated, right thinking, decent folk know this, and even if they sometimes err or exaggerate, well, gun folk do too, so that proves the nice decent people are right because they should be right, so there!

No. Sorry. That won’t cut it anymore.

I have a right, arguably a responsibility, to be armed. So do you. I am no longer required to prove this. I am no longer required to show that I need to have this gun, or meet that standard, or took this training, or got that license, or any such thing. (Not that I’m going to stop trying.)

If you wish to argue otherwise, the burden is entirely on you to show that The People’s unfettered access to arms causes unacceptable harm, and that your proposed remedy will a) significantly limit that harm while b) not significantly infringing the right. I’m sorry you don’t like guns, sorry that you’re afraid of them, sorry you once saw someone get shot, sorry that your friend got depressed and ate his pistol, sorry that someone’s child got into Daddy’s dresser drawer and played with the toy he found there, sorry sorry sorry, but you know what? Too damn bad.

We’ve tried your way. It doesn’t work. You’ve done your level best to make this a peaceable nation without guns, and all you’ve done is to create a flock of cowering defenseless sheep, while letting the wolves run free on parole, and all you can say is, we didn’t do it your way hard enough.

No. We’ve done it plenty. See Washington D.C., Chicago, California, New Jersey, even England. See gun-free schools, gun-free malls, gun-free churches. They’re not “gun-free zones”–they’re free-fire zones, where, just like the slogan says, only the outlaws have guns, and nobody can shoot back. Don’t agree? Fine. Prove me wrong. The burden is on you.

Your way does not work. You want to convince me I’m wrong, prove it. Find some facts, solid, current facts, not lies from the dusty, tattered, transparently fraudulent propaganda ESR exposes. No more you-thinks, and you’ve-heards, and you-wants. None, please, of your god-damned feelings. No, not even if you’re sure. Just cold, refreshing, free-flowing facts, please, and not from ESR’s poisoned wells.

Yeah, sure. Gun advocates make mistakes and stretch the facts a bit at times. We too have our wants and wishes, our blind spots and shortcomings.

But your whole position is nothing but a pack of cowardly lies.

From here on out, the burden is all on you.

In the meantime, please read ESR. Please overcome your irrational fear. Please find a range, and learn to shoot. Please try to buy a gun, if your jurisdiction allows, and find out how hard you’ve made it to exercise a fundamental human right, how hard you’ve made it to defend yourself against goblins who have never given two lumpy farts for your laws, your principles, or your feelings.

Please, please, please, learn that it’s OK to be free.

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Here are links to other blogs linking to this post. Thanks, folks. (I should have done this long ago; I’ll do better next time. I’m also trying to figure out why trackbacks don’t seem to be appearing automatically.)

Crayton at 13 Crows
Hecate at Hecate’s Crossroad

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New Jovian Thunderbolt links here, with fine comments of his own. Thank-ee!