The Smallest Minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities. – Ayn Rand
Need Magazines? AR-15 Magazines?.
A magazine manufacturer is offering two free magazines (5- or 10-round) to bloggers who link to their site. I’m not familiar with MWG Co., but they make a 90-round mag for our more-thrust-per-squeeze hip-fired bullet hoses, so they’re OK with me. They also make magazines for Mini-14’s and 10/22’s. Check ’em out.
(Or: “First Register, Then Confiscate.”)
Ravenwood has been on top of this from the beginning. February 4 of last year he found a story about how one jurisdiction in Australia had decided to perform “surprise weapon safety audits” of registered gun owners. Two days later the government had apparently backed off of the “surprise” part, or so they said.
Then just a year later, No Quarters found a story of how the police of New South Wales Australia had confiscated some 43,000 weapons after “safety inspections”, most of which were firearms and they all
were destroyed because police were not satisfied that the firearms were being kept securely, or that “possession of that firearm was necessarily further warranted”.
And today Ravenwood found that they’re still at it, buoyed, no doubt by their “success” in New South Wales.
Gun check proposal cops a blast
A POLICE plan for door-to-door checks of every gun owner in the state has drawn flak from firearms groups.
But that would never occur here we’re told!
Not if we never register so they know which doors to knock on.
The plan is being considered by the Chief Commissioner’s office but gun groups believe police numbers are insufficient to cover the estimated 200,000 registered owners in Victoria.
Police said yesterday the focus would be on firearms storage.
You remember that wonderful “common sense” law, “safe storage,” don’t you? Otherwise known as the ever-shifting, every more restricitive set of bureacratic rules that allows the police to confiscate your property because “police were not satisfied that the firearms were being kept securely”?
“This is a national approach. New South Wales is already in the process of doing an audit and we’re proposing to do it as well,” spokesman Kevin Loomes said, adding that the details were yet to be finalised.
Of course you are! New South Wales netted over 40,000 weapons! Can’t let them get ahead now, can we?
The proposal has been dismissed by some gun groups who say police don’t have the numbers to check on every owner.
Dismiss all you want, but watch ’em try! Your heads have been buried in the sand for far too long.
The Combined Firearms Council of Victoria said the survey would tie up police resources.
So? What better expenditure of resources is there than to use police manpower to take firearms away from registered law-abiding gun owners? It’s common SENSE!
“The cost of the program will come out of the police budget and therefore general policing resources,” the council said.
“The rationale for the audit is unclear given that the firearms registration database has been going though a clean-up over the past few years with the full co-operation of licensed shooters.
The rationale is the same one expounded by the gun confiscation proponents here: TO REDUCE THE NUMBER OF GUNS IN CIRCULATION. There need be no other rationale. That’s the whole purpose behind “gun control” laws, though you will not get a member of the Brady Campaign to admit this publicly.
“There are about 200,000 licensed shooters in Victoria. If this results in the police spending, say, two hours on each audit, that is 400,000 police hours on clerical duties that are no longer spent on general community policing.
Yes, but after the first pass that 200,000 number will be significantly reduced, don’t you see?
“That’s more than 50,000 police days.”
So what if the police are distracted from the job of preventing crime and apprehending criminals. DON’T YOU UNDERSTAND HOW IMPORTANT IT IS TO DISARM THE LAW-ABIDING??
Under the Firearms Act it is an offence not to properly store weapons.
“Common sense!”
Owners who breach the Act risk not only losing their firearms licence, but also having their weapons seized.
As gun owners in New South Wales found out to their dismay. With essentially zero recourse, too, I’m sure.
Cases of inappropriate storage to have come before the Firearms Appeals Committee include owners who left their guns on the back seats of cars.
Two involved security guards. One left his handgun on a toilet, and the other left his weapon on a car roof.
We’ve had FBI agents leave fully-auto weapons in vehicles, and Secret Service agents leave handguns in public bathrooms. The Federal Government has lost 824 firearms (that they admit to). Are we going to disarm those agencies? Do they get all their guns taken away? Or what about Australian Robert George Wilton, who had $3,000 worth of rifles confiscated and destroyed, was fined $300 and charged $190 in court costs BECAUSE HE LEFT THE KEY TO HIS SAFE ON A KEY RACK?? That’s the kind of “safe storage” violation they’re looking for. Anything at all, and your collection is GONE.
I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: I WILL NOT license. I WILL NOT register. Ever.
Edited to add:
Canada has discovered that the $1 billion-plus they’ve spent on their long-gun licensing and registration system has been useless at its purported aim – taking guns away from criminals. A known violent felon, who was also known to be armed – known by the police to be armed – has shot and killed four Mounties there. Sarah at Carnaby Fudge has the whole story.
Now, normally the way this works is registration & licensing is sold as a crime prevention measure. Then after everyone is licensed and registered, something horrible happens, and this is used as an excuse to take some guns away from the people who didn’t do it, because it makes everyone else feel better. Lather, rinse, and repeat until pretty much no one owns anything – legally.
Hopefully the Canadians have more sense than that, but somehow I doubt it.
If You’re Going to Go Full-Auto, Go MINI-GUN!.
Here’s my entry for this week’s Carnival of Cordite! Can’t afford to feed a real full-auto habit? Don’t want to go through the hassles of Class III licensing?
How about an Airsoft™ Mini-gun? (With videos!)
I love America.
More on the Literal Existence (or Not) of Rights .
Reader Anthony sent me links to two QandO Blog posts on the question of the reality of “natural rights.” The first one is The Right in My Garage, and the second is Natural Rights? Anthony thought they were an interesting adjunct to my own post on the topic, What is a “Right?” from near the inception of this blog, and I have to agree with him. I also have a post, An Interesting Email Exchange, where Swen Swenson of (the now apparently defunct) blog Coyote at the Dog Show discussed the “reality” of rights.
So if this topic interests you, there’s some extensive reading to keep you occupied. Be sure and read the comments at QandO Blog too. Thanks for the heads-up, Anthony. Those were interesting reads.
(Sorry for the lack of posting, but I’ve been busy, and I’m doing a lot of reading and thinking lately. Not so much inspiration for posting as of yet.)
UPDATE: D’OH! I forgot to link to the post that started this latest round, Dean Esmay’s The Genesis of Rights. Good post, and good comments.
Updated again, 3/11: I just remembered this post from July of last year, It’s Not All Faith, on this same topic. Before Sarah started blogging over at Carnaby Fudge, she sent me an email on her take on the origin of rights, and I replied to it.
Well, This Explains that “Avoiding the Northeast” Thing.
I just took this Yankee or Dixie? test and scored 64% Southern. Yup, that’s about right.
The “No Nuance” President, Exhibit “B”.
Another example of what speaking clearly and carrying a big stick means in the political world is brought to us by way of The Belgravia Dispatch (hat tip to American Digest for the pointer).
In Bush we do not have an intellectual who sets dinner companions atwitter on the Left Bank and Islington; but, and putting it plainly, we have someone who is not a bullshiter (like his predecessor, who was an unusually good one). He walks the walk. And people know it (I have a friend who was recently deep in the Amazon. An Indian, in a primitive and remote hamlet, said he was scared of Bush’s electoral victory. Why? Because he really means what he says came the response, ie more wars could be in the offing the Latin American, lefist-infused thinking went). Chuckle at my feverish cheerleading in trotting out such vignettes. But the fact is that when a typical President might have said something like “I call on the great and proud nation of Egypt to bla bla” the typical reaction in Cairene ministries would have been to ignore the prattle deeming it was meant mostly for domestic consumption. Not this time; as Mubarak felt compelled to start pushing forward real reforms. Again, Bush is judged to really mean it. The Saudis ostensibly get this too–despite all the Mooerian distortions of the House of Saud’s relationship with the Bushies. And, of course, there was the specter of millions of Iraqis risking very life and limb to vote in convincing number. This too is Bush’s legacy–the bad WMD intel aside. It took boots on the ground to have those elections come off (even if we didn’t have enough at critical junctures allowing the insurgency to fester). Look, anyone who thinks Bush’s forward-leaning posture on the entire democratization issue has had no impact on the Lebanese filling the streets of downtown Beirut are in denial of reality; or rabidly partisan fools, or both.
(Recognize yourself there, Ed Kilgore?)
Previous related posts:
Sarah and LabRat, This One’s for You.
Via Rev. Sensing I found this really interesting essay on The Left and Evolution by Chicago Boyz contributor Shannon Love. Damned fine piece. Excerpt:
Creationists are exasperating because they never study evolutionary theory in any detail. Since they start with the unshakable presumption that the theory is wrong, they can never actually honestly analyze the theory and therefore can never understand it in any depth. They just skim over the theory looking for points that confuse them and then pronounce the misunderstood points as fatal flaws within the theory itself.
Frankly, most creationists’ knowledge of evolutionary theory boils down to, “them scientist fellas what says we alls comes from monkeys!”
Of course, this is a much different view of evolutionary theory than that held by the majority of secular leftists. Their superior educations and their generally more open-minded and inquisitive natures have given them a view of evolutionary theory that might be summed up as, “them scientist fellas what says we alls comes from monkeys!”
I’m not kidding.
There have been a couple of spirited arguments discussions on the topic of evolution/secular humanism here and at Carnaby Fudge. I thought it might be interesting to throw a bit more gasoline on the fire.
UPDATE, 3/8: If you’re not reading the comments, you ought to be. Sarah took exception to one of mine (which included a link to an earlier essay) and has penned a response over at Carnaby Fudge. I think she’s more than a little wrong, and told her so in the comments over there.
The saga continues!
Alabama / Alaska / Arizona / Arkansas / California / Colorado / Connecticut / Delaware / Florida / Georgia / Hawaii / Idaho / Illinois / Indiana / Iowa / Kansas / Kentucky / Louisiana / Maine / Maryland / Massachusetts / Michigan / Minnesota / Mississippi / Missouri / Montana / Nebraska / Nevada / New Hampshire / New Jersey / New Mexico / New York / North Carolina / North Dakota / Ohio / Oklahoma / Oregon / Pennsylvania / Rhode Island / South Carolina / South Dakota / Tennessee / Texas / Utah / Vermont / Virginia / Washington/ West Virginia / Wisconsin / Wyoming / Washington D.C. /
The state in red is where I live now. The ones in blue are where I have lived in the past. I included Massachussetts, but probably shouldn’t have. I had a layover in Boston once. I’ve travelled over the majority of the country, but not the Northeast, for some reason.
Damnyankees, probably.
This is Literally Laugh-Out-Loud Funny.
As long as The Lord of the Rings isn’t your religion. Via Dodd at Ipse Dixit, someone with far too much time on their hands was discovered by someone else with far too much time on their hands, and through the billions of dollars of high-tech infrastructure that is the internet, we have – accessible to billions throughout the world – alternate versions of LOTR, with Boromir as the putative hero.
The first two are my favorites.
Quote of the Week.
From a week ago, and why I didn’t do it then is beyond me. Critical Mastiff put up an outstanding post, The Gun Thing which was featured in last week’s Carnival of Cordite. I even left a comment to that effect. I know I planned to post on this quote, but forgot. I’m fixing that now. (Also adding him to the blogroll under Gun / Rights blogs.)
One of the recurring themes here at TSM is the fundamental difference in philosophies between those who recognize “violent and predatory” versus “violent but protective,” and those who see only violence versus non-violence. The concluding paragraph of Critical Mastiff‘s post expresses eloquently why this is such an important thing to me and to him and to people like us:
(W)e must not forget that when we fight for the right to bear arms, we are not only fighting for a physical tool. We are fighting to determine the very character of the American mind — whether we want our children to grow up fearing power, or using power to fight evil.
Precisely. And it’s a worthy fight.