08:26 – Happy New Year.
As I expected, the Demopublicans and Republicrats have kickcanned the fiscliff for another month or two. Morons. And Obama has announced that new gun control laws will be his top priority. Geez. This from a man who is constantly surrounded by a Schutzstaffel of heavily-armed SS agents. I’d have at least a bit of respect for the bastard if he’d dismiss his bodyguards and walk around unprotected like the rest of us. Hypocrite.
Meanwhile, our business has started 2013 catastrophically. We haven’t sold a single science kit since last year.
10:42 – After struggling with forum spammers for a long time, I finally decided to close down our phpBB support forums on our own server and start new forums on Google Groups.
Condolences, Bob. Sad. Try to do better.
Previous presidents used to walk around D.C. alone with no security but I wouldn’t recommend that now. Most of the pols who screech about gun control either have CCL’s themselves and carry, or they have bodyguards/security. Like the bastards who rammed busing down our throats forty years ago who sent their own kids to private schools.
Gorgeous sunny day up here but we are expecting temps to drop below zero over the next few days; already have a couple local dolts out on the Lake ice-fishing, not smart.
Our low temperature last night was below zero. Celsius.
Happy New Year! This Drudge headline sums up the Republican Party:
FISCAL CLIFF DEAL: $1 IN SPENDING CUTS FOR EVERY $41 IN TAX INCREASES
Shouldn’t it be the other way around?
Boehner would have to be drunk to agree to this. 2014 will be interesting. I guess there is only one party, the Republicrats.
We’ve had only one major party since Goldwater went down in 1964.
Boehner would have to be drunk to agree to this.
Since the latest compromise has only been voted on by the Senate technically the Bush-era tax cuts have expired and if/when the House votes on the bill it will in effect be a tax cut – or so they can claim to their constituents.
“We’ve had only one major party since Goldwater went down in 1964.”
And only one major national security empire since Truman/Dulles in 1947.
Interesting story here, and how our government treated this war hero kid speaks volumes:
http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/history/2012/12/the-boy-who-became-a-world-war-ii-veteran-at-13-years-old/
Happy New Year! I wish everyone here a prosperous new year on the behalf of Mr. Obama and all the Republicrats so that you can pay higher taxes so that they can give it away even faster and faster.
And yes, I agree that any tax rates changes passed now will be tax decreases so that the Norquist suckups will be able to meet with their constituents and declare themselves not to have raised taxes.
And yes, I have no guns or ammo in the gun safe. They were all lost when I was canoeing down the river late last year. And the prospects for getting more are slim as the young man at our house last night told me all the semi-automatics are gone at his Academy store. And all the future arrivals are spoken for with no discounts. I held his one month old daughter for a while and reflected how neat the world is that she is growing up in. Widespread electrification, refrigeration, good roads, incredible amounts of food and energy are our legacy. I pray that our children can keep it as our new leaders seem to throw disdain on all this.
And I am moving all this stuff in a month. Woe is me!
2013 starting off very well for me. I knew that I was retired, but not that I was wealthy. Check this description and the new definition of my locale:
“Then there is California’s “geriatric coast.” It’s continuous from Los Angeles to the Silicon Valley. It skips the Bay and begins again at the north end of the Golden Gate Bridge, extending through Mendocino County. This area is where wealthy and, usually, older, people come to enjoy life. It is a consumption economy with little investment or growth. The jobs, outside of its still-impressive agricultural sector, are mostly related to tourism, retail, restaurants, government and businesses that support a wealthy and aging leisure class.
There is one growth industry here: medical care. It will continue to be an increasingly important component of the geriatric coast’s economy. Think of it as a big, wealthy, Retirement Village by the Sea. It will get older and richer as the middle class continues to shrink.”
Note the last sentence, and my house is but 1 1/2 crow miles from the water. Oh yeah, and we are using the medical industry far more than two score years ago.
From here:
http://www.ocregister.com/opinion/california-381419-tech-economy.html
Aren’t there cranky old geezers down in San Diego too? So the geriatric coast is longer than you think.
“Getting Old Is Hell.” ™
Lynn, are gun safes a legal requirement there? Be thankful you don’t live in New South Wales, where the husband of a member of parliament was recently busted by the cops for having a loaded gun in his gun safe. He was supposed to have an unloaded gun in one gun safe and his ammo in a second gun safe.
I’m not sure how useful an unloaded gun is but geez, he’s an old codger on a farm outside a small country town.
So I guess the Authorities down in Oz, NSW specifically, must think that for self-defense, if that is even on their horizon to think about, an unloaded gun in one safe and the ammo for it in another safe is supposed to be useful? That is either total lunacy or they just write off immediately the notion that a citizen has a need for, and a right to, his own defense.
I can tell you right now that that concept just ain’t gonna fly here in Yankee Land. To us it is stunning, we are thoroughly gobstruck, that any citizens would actually sit still for this.
We already had fairly tough restrictions but after Port Arthur they just went nuts collecting and destroying guns, including genuine antiques. Of course, the cops sold some on the black market too.
And before you get too smug over there in Yankland, I read a week ago that people in LA (hi Slim) are giving up their guns, including ones with illegal silencers and other neat stuff in exchange for food vouchers, no questions asked. They remind me of Esau.
BTW, I haven’t handled a gun in over 40 years. That would have been a friend’s air rifle when I was a tween. Never handled anything more capable, although my father brought a .303 and .22 bullet back from his time in WWII which I’ve handled. Not sure where they went.
This is because I didn’t grow up on a farm. Most people here wouldn’t know which end of a gun is the business end, unless you’re in a motorcycle gang.
LA isn’t really “Yankland” and the cretins turning in their junk guns don’t mean squat here. If the State takes over all food growing ops and distribution and then rations it out only to its subservient and obedient subjects, they may get a few more firearms turned in for vouchers. They’ll also get armed and violent resistance.
@ Miles:-)
Could be worse, 532 murders in Chicago in 2012, but I left in ’62. Looks like toughest gun control in the US isn’t good enough.
They sure hate the NRA, La Pierre, solution, but they don’t suggest the SS agents watching Obama girls at school disarm.
If one looks at the U.S. states and cities with the strictest gun control laws, one also observes that those are where the highest violent crime numbers and rates thereof are located. In the states and cities where there is little or no gun control (like Vermont) violent crime is at its lowest. One also notes, if one is observant, that those places where the crime is highest and gun laws are the strictest, are also politically controlled by the Dem, i.e., evil half of the War/Money Party, usually hardcore leftist types.
And I’ve seen leftist media organs online bleating and howling about gun control since this most recent incident, and you can see the job somebody did on the usual suspect libtard celebs at YouTube via Drudge today, and that is what they’re still focused on; inanimate objects/tools. Or attacking the messengers, like LaPierre & Co.
We shall see how things develop here this new year as the administration continues to jack up our taxes, punish the producing half of the country, and try to restrict our lawful ownership and use of firearms. They may finally be biting off more than they can chew.
It goes further than that. One might argue that areas with high crime rates have strict gun control laws because of those high crime rates, and vice versa. But watch what happens when laws change, for better or worse. When stricter gun control laws are passed, the violent crime rate increases; when restrictions on guns are relaxed, violent crime rates drop, often precipitously. Obviously, anyone with any sense understands that criminals prefer their victims to be defenseless. This is simply another example of Le Chatlier’s Principle. Externally enforced changes cause a new equilibrium to be reached.
Zackly. They’ve done interviews with inmates over the years, and to a man (and woe-man) they tell us they don’t wanna mess with a house or a robbery if they even suspect the people there are armed. They’re mostly cowards and go for the low-hanging fruit/easy targets. This may not hold true, however, for those violent criminals who are hopped up on booze and/or drugs or are actually psychotic mofos.
But our lords temporal, persist, as always, in attempting to solve any particular problem or issue by doing the exact opposite of what they should be doing, and if it fails, they’re evidently predisposed somehow into continuing to do it, regardless of the obvious consequences.
Except Canada has both restrictive gun laws and low crime rate, at least compared to the US. And there is no booze or drug that would cause me to lose control and kill someone, and I’ve sampled quite a few in my day. Booze and drugs reveal psychopaths, not create them. In vino veritas.
I think despair and poverty are key ingredients. People who despair, do desperate things.
Although both starting with an upper case C, the lower case ds, demographics, are totally different.
Which reminds me of the statistician who drowned in a body of water that averaged only 6 inches deep.
Canada lacks the inner city crime rates of the US. If you factor out inner-city crime in both countries, I’d bet you’d find that the US actually has a lower crime rate. Same thing for the UK.
To be sure, the areas with the highest “gun” crime rates are the few inner city areas we have. Again, more due to despair and poverty than access to guns, or the lack thereof. After all, crime existed long before firearms were even invented.
I’ve long claimed the reason Canadians don’t kill so many other Canadians is that there isn’t all that many “other” Canadians. There are simply less of us to annoy each other. We have the population of California spread out over a larger geographic area than the US. If we had the population density of the US (8.3 vs 87.4/sq mi), we would have a greater amount of crime then we currently do.
Yes, I have a gun safe in my home. It is not required but they are starting to charge people as participatory when kids come into your home and manage to get hold of a gun and hurt someone (usually a playmate). My parents gave me the safe 20+ years ago when my kids were smaller after my 7? 8? 9? year old son brought a rifle out to me one day and asked me who it belonged to. The gun safe is 2’x2’x5′, weighs 600 lbs and my wife hates it passionately.
Of course, I lost all my guns and ammo last year when I was canoeing down the Brazos river. I just keep the safe for sentimental reasons.
Am I the only one who thinks that we are going back to the tax rate spread of the Jimmy Carter years?
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-01-01/senate-passed-deal-means-higher-tax-on-77-of-households.html
I remember the Jimmy Carter years, they sucked. Been there, done that, don’t want to repeat them. But like a dog returns to it’s vomit, here we go.
Canoeing down the Brazos…ah yes, the whitewater rapids, etc, etc., capsizing, etc., etc.
It’s gonna be worse than the Carter years, which I also remember and how bad they sucked. I came home to 15% unemployment in Maffachufetts from working for Uncle and that was the official gummint figure; more like twice that. Got a job working at a department store rolling up Oriental rugs and carting them out to rich peoples’ cars in the vast parking lots. $2.50 an hour. It’s quite a shock to one’s system and mental equilibrium: one day you’re blasting commie sons of bitches from the air and trying not to fall or get sucked out or shot yourself, and the next day some middle-aged and mummified JAP is barking at you to be careful with that carpet in the snow.
Ah, talking about Canukistan…
I watched Bowling For Columbine last week, for the first time. Moore seemed to be making the point that easy gun availability is a Bad Thing, then said that Canukistan, with a similar number of guns per head as Yankland, has practically no gun related deaths. Is that true? If so, how come? Are the people south of the 49th natural born killers?
“I remember the Jimmy Carter years, they sucked. Been there, done that, don’t want to repeat them. But like a dog returns to it’s vomit, here we go.”
I remember him too. History has been kind to him. There hasn’t been a good president since Truman.
Okay, I’m going to do some mass copy-and-paste here, but it’s all stuff of mine I put up elsewhere.
First, a copy of stuff I posted on Dave Markowitz’s blog. He’s one of the original Daynoter’s, works in IT and networking, qualified and has practiced as a lawyer. He’s Jewish, and VERY pro-2A. In fact, everyone in the USA should go to his blog, and bookmark the URL for his list of lawyers who will actively defend firearm cases.
However, he did say a couple of things which were more from emotion or US-filtered news than from fact, and I picked on him about them.
The first post is more-or-less self explanatory. It also supports bgrigg, and addresses one of RBT’s statements, which may have been true in a strictly-USA local sense, but was definitely not universal.
Don Armstrong said…
DM said “No gun control measure has been been proven to reduce crime or make society safer.”
Actually, that turns out not to be the case. As you know, Australia implented some quite Draconian “gun” control legislation and regulations after a similarly horrific mass murder. Very similar, as it happens – the criminal was mentally ill, there were laws in place which prevented him from owning or using firearms, and guess what? The criminal ignored the laws.
Most of the new laws had no effect except, of course, to victimise law-abiding shooters. Firearm crime had been trending upward because of increased population, increased immigration, cancellation of a prior policy to integrate immigrants into the community, and criminal activity by some of those immigrants. The laws had absolutely no effect – the trend line stayed EXACTLY the same. Upward, but no difference to the trend – still increasing at the same rate.
However, there was ONE part of the Australian laws which did have a positive effect. Firearms were rquired to be stored in an approved, locked firearm cabinet or safe, with ammunition stored under separate lock (normally a separate lockable compartment to the cabinet).
ACCIDENTAL DEATH OF CHILDREN DUE TO FIREARMS IMMEDIATELY DECREASED BY 80%, and has held there since.
That’s the only good effect I’ve heard of firearm control laws having, but it is worth knowing about.
Don Armstrong.
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The second was to address a post of Dave’s where he pictured a stock(literally)-standard Ruger 10/22, then showed it a quarter-hour later, when he’d used a screwdriver to fit a Butler Creek folding stock with pistol grip from Amazon, and turned it into a murderous evil black assault rifle.
Don Armstrong said…
DB said “The point of this post is that “assault weapons” as defined by gun banners are not functionally different from “sporting” rifles as manufactured and sold in the millions for about a century.”
Again, I’m afraid that what you said turns out not to be the case. Oh, sure, in a strictly accurate strictly mechanical way it is. However, there is a major difference between the more-or-less harmless carbine you picture first, and the evil black rifle with the pistol grip that you follow it with. The functional difference occurs in the perception of the viewer, between their ears. Obviously (to them), the first is more-or-less normal and harmless, while the second is ready to jump up and start murdering innocents, independently, irrespective of any user who might be miles away.
Of course, your point that there is nothing wrong with the evil black rifle is logical and true. So is my point that firearms which don’t evoke the irrational fears of the ignorant, have some value.
Honestly, it’s probably worth something to have a firearm which looks more-or-less harmless, more-or-less like grandpa’s deer-rifle rather than like an evil murdering black rifle that will kill millions at the blink of an eye. Have an SKS or a lever-action rather than an AK; have a CMP M1 or an M14 or M1A rather than an FN SLR (which I’ve used, been issued, and which is a damned fine battle rifle). Not that there is any logical difference, but the opponents aren’t logical but are powerful. Soothing their illogical fears may well be worth while, just to avoid the inconvenience they could otherwise cause.
Come to that, I’ve handled the Austeyr 5.56, although I haven’t fired it. Same applies to the US firearms of the same calibre. If it came to it, I’d prefer the Austeyr for use, but I’d prefer the Ruger Mini-14 Ranch Rifle (now that they’ve sorted out the accuracy issues) for day-to-day possession, simply because it functions about the same, but it looks so dashed NORMAL.
So, that’s the other side of the coin you present. There’s nothing wrong with your pistol-gripped, folding-stocked, nasty evil Mattel rifle, from a logical viewpoint. However, it UPSETS people when they look at it. Probably better to assuage their poor offended sensibilities, since they all have votes just as valuable as yours, and let them continue to pretend that some firearms are harmless. After all, they know they need people who can use firearms, even if they aren’t willing to voice the fact out loud.
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I’ll add that the voters I was talking about weren’t the gun-grabbers, who are certainly evil but are also cunning. The voters I’d want to keep on-side are the great mass whom the grabbers could swing to march behind them for a month or two when it comes time to vote, or swing to keep their butts on the sofa while your rights are being infringed.
My next paste is from something I posted under another persona earlier today. OFD has probably seen me as such. There are a few others here who frequent self-preparedness sites and may have done so, but the DayNoters are about the only ones who see my real name. That’s because I go way back to Jerry Pournelle’s first blog, supported him then, and identity theft and spam just weren’t considerations back in the good old days.
This post was in response to someone, possibly a troll, possibly an agent provocateur, asking “what if they institute a ban on semi-automatic firearms, and go house-to-house to confiscate them?” Obviously, it elicited the standard “what branch of the government do you work for?” and “one bullet at a time” responses, but I have really seen it, so I took my tool in my hand and waded in swinging.
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Would anyone like to listen to some actual real-world experience?
I’ve lived through this situation – sorta. I’m from Australia, and our society IS different to the USA, so it doesn’t all apply directly, but it may shed some light on a few aspects.
First, we had our own version of your recent firearm massacre, where a nutter whose mental illness legally prevented him from possessing or using firearms, went and killed heaps of people, using evil semi-automatic firearms – an SKS. If you want the details, do a search on “Port Arthur massacre”.
Like many mentally deranged people, he must have been able to concentrate when he wanted. He must have practiced – he fired way more rounds than an SKS holds, he did it fast, and unfortunately he was quite accurate.
A criminal who ignored the laws – imagine that!
Anyway, at that stage we had a little man from a big city who was our “national leader” – our Prime Minister. A classic case of small man syndrome. He soiled his britches, and then turned round and decided he’d stop all misuse of firearms by penalising law-abiding firearm owners. If you can’t quite see the logic in that attitude, well, you’re right. However, little Johnny Howard, the rotten little coward, misused Federal financial muscle to pull the States into line, and they outlawed “semi-automatic” firearms, and instituted Shooter’s Licences, and Firearm Registration.
Because we had never had big predators like the USA, our natives had been generally wiped out a lot easier than your Native Americans, and we never had to fight for our freedom – in fact, Australia was established when the USA had their little set-to with George III and you stopped accepting the convicts that Britain had to ship somewhere – we had never had the absolute need for firearms than you had. So, our society is different, and firearms – particularly handguns – were never endemic and widespread in the way they are in the USA.
However, that didn’t mean we didn’t have a lot of shooters. We’d had a lot of soldiers in the World Wars, in Korea and Vietnam, and in many other nasty little wars, Iraq and Afghanistan included. Many returned servicemen had settled into the shooting sports. We’d also had a lot of farmers and graziers (ranchers), and of course firearms are an essential power tool there. However, our basic culture tended to long-arms rather than handguns.
Okay, I’m getting there. In many ways, little john’s action, quite by accident, was the greatest thing for Australian shooters there had ever been. It was a HUGE government-funded re-armament. They called it a buy-back. What it meant was that firearm-owners turned in their old clapped-out firearms, got premium money for them, and promptly bought new high-quality replacements.
At the same time, I’m sure (although I’ve only heard it fourth- or fifth-hand, of course, so I couldn’t really testify if I was pressed, ‘onestly offisher) that many people didn’t turn in self-loading firearms that were in good condition, although they did buy legal firearms that used the same ammunition. Also buying lever-guns in pistol calibres, or since pistols over .38 were disapproved (except cowboy-action .45’s), they’d fit .38 Super parts on their 1911 pistols, stock up on brass, lead, and casting equipment, and sell off the .45 parts to American tourists (‘onestly, offisher). They just made sure that the illegal firearms could never be found near the legal ones, or at all. Of course, the fact that they had turned in newly-illegal firearms made it seem unlikely that they would have retained anything illegal.
So, basically, what I’m saying is, if it happens and you can’t get round it, look for opportunities. Opportunities to make money, or opportunities to upgrade your arsenal. There would even be, if someone were that way inclined, opportunities to hide newly-illegal firearms but arrange to be able to buy ammunition for them. Like brainless church- or local-government-run buy-back schemes, if you’ve got firearms you don’t need, maybe in poor condition and needing expensive repair, or even if you can find those sort of things out in the marketplace, and they’re offering more than market value for them, then it may well be worth cashing them in. It may also be worth having the bits of paper that show you’ve been a good little peon and turned in nasty evil firearms when they said you should. Look, you’ve only kept a .22 bolt-action, a double-barrel 12-gauge, your granpa’s old 30-30 deer rifle, a Ruger bolt-action varmint rifle in .223, another Ruger in .308, your other grandfather’s old Winchester in 30-06, and a CZ in 7.62x39mm. Or even a switch-barrel Thompson Contender for a lot of these calibres.
Gun control vs. crime rates: I have always had the impression that the main correlation is with urban/rural. Big cities have higher crime rates, and the politicians often react with gun control. Whether violent crime really increases with gun control, or whether this is just a continuation of the trend that cause the knee-jerk gun control in the first place? Hard to say…
Apropos of nothing, I nearly got attacked a couple of days ago. Nothing to do with guns, but a nitwit flipped his cigarette butt away, in the entryway of our local bank. I picked it up, said “I think you dropped this, there’s an ashtray”. He was totally pissed, and was “this far” from taking a swing. Great guy…
I find myself in agreement with Samuel L. Jackson who said, “I don’t think movies or video games have anything to do with it. I don’t think [stopping gun violence] is about more gun control. I grew up in the South with guns everywhere, and we never shot anyone. This [shooting] is about people who aren’t taught the value of life.” I couldn’t agree more.
@brad; My advice is do not even go there. Walk away. I understand the impulse and would be annoyed myself but there are too many aggressive and hostile people out there, not even counting the nuts and junkies and drunks. It ain’t worth rolling around on the pavement and bleeding. YMMV, of course, as will SteveF’s.
Good advice from “Don” above!
And this is the five- to ten-year scenario right here:
http://teapartyeconomist.com/2013/01/02/yes-we-have-no-solutions-we-have-no-solutions-today/
Yep. I used to teach self-defense courses to college women. I always started out the first class something like this:
“I’m 6’4″ tall and weigh 240 pounds. I have a black belt in Shotokan karate. I carry a .45 ACP Colt Combat Commander, I’ve been to gunfighting school with folks from the FBI HRT and GSG-9, and I shoot regularly in combat pistol competitions. Do you know what I do if I see trouble coming? I run like hell.”
Yep, you’re right, of course. Normally I wouldn’t, but this was just so egregious that I couldn’t help myself. Needless to say, I backed off and let the guy go on his way…
This kind of thing reminds me of the New York experience with crime: the way to reduce serious crime was to reintroduce civility, in the sense of stepping on small crimes. No unwanted windshield-washers, no littering, no peeing on the corner of Main Street. In the absence of basic civility, it’s an easy step to worse things.
Yep, and one way to make civility the norm is to allow concealed carry without any formalities whatsoever. There’s an old saying, “An armed society is a polite society”, and I know from personal experience that that’s generally true.
Another way would be to legalize dueling again.
And yet another way would be to reintroduce that plea that was common in the South until fairly recently: “Your honor, he needed killing.”
Agreed with Robert on all counts; per usual. Although I also agree that if we had a lower tolerance for the “broken window syndrome” stuff things would be more civil, too, but that has long gone by the boards here; boorish and rotten behavior are the norm now.