Lots of calls for more gun control this week. I find it all bitterly hilarious given what’s behind it all.

The root of the argument against armed citizens is the cynical view that the balance of people are bad, untrustworthy with liberty, and that the good, trustworthy people are working for the government.

What is the magical force that turns a man unerringly good when he seeks to attain authority over his fellow citizens? Obviously no one has ever abused their power to steal from the public  or kill out of anger  or betray the Bill of Rights and use an  illegal spying apparatus for personal gratification.

Are these people outliers? I want to think so. But so are criminals. And I refuse to believe that everyone in my country is just a murderer waiting for a means and motive. That’s the argument against an armed citizenry, and it is, frankly, bullshit.

So if that’s not the case, if people aren’t just ticking time bombs teetering on the edge of homicide, then there’s no justification for this never-ending campaign that seeks to incrementally de-quill all the porcupines because they can’t tell the difference between them and wolves.

The difference between peasants and free men is that peasants are only allowed to bear arms in the service of their betters.

The bulk of feudal peasants led lives that, for the time, were safe and comfortable; as long as they served the nobility well and knew their places. But we abandoned Feudalism for a reason, and our ancestors faced all sorts of horrors and brutality at the hands of princes to do so for their children’s children: us.

Fear may be the most effective force for motivating large groups of people, but it tends to motivate people in one of two ways: to prepare for a fight, or to huddle together in the hope someone stronger will protect them.
Which group you fall into says a lot about your character.

It is incredibly difficult to sit down and compose a coherent post on little more than half a cup of coffee and sheer willpower. And the latter seems to be much more effective than the former.

“Social justice” is a phrase that I’ve seen popping up a lot in the past few days, usually related to left/liberalism and especially within the context of health care. Come to think of it, the guy in my last blog post used the phrase as a part of his denunciation of liberal politics.

So whenever I see a trend like that, whether it’s a genuine emerging phenomenon or just a random fractal blip on the cultural canvas, I do what I can to get my head around it. I mean, it’s not like as grownups we get a vocabulary hand-out to study every week for the test on Friday.

The problem with the term “Social Justice” is that the concept of “Justice” is mostly subjective. And given that the term originates from Liberalism (which is generally anything but, these days), anything with the word “Social” appended to it in that context tends to mean “Government-run and supported by heavy taxation” in my experience.

So if I were to draw a picture of “Social Justice” as espoused by those most likely to use the term, it would probably involve Robin Hood in a cheap suit sodomizing an entrepreneur through his back pocket in a public square in front of a crowd of hippies, celebrities, and slackers. He’d have a briefcase in one hand, and his other would be a fist triumphantly raised in the air.

But being as it’s still early in the morning I’m not even going to pretend I’d attempt to construct an actual image for this. Anyway, feel free to let me know if my picture of “Social Justice” is incorrect.

Oozies This comes from Chicago Gun Rights Examiner, Don Gwinn, via a blog entitled The Breda Fallacy.

BUFFALO, N.Y. (WIVB) – The crime curbing effort has collected over 1,600 guns over the past 2 years and city leaders said this is another successful year.

Mayor Byron Brown said, “We will get anything from long guns rifles, AK-47’s, oozies, so we have gotten those assault weapons.”

And all those weapons are good for a pre-paid credit card, with assault weapons collecting 100 bucks.

I’m not even going to deal with the ridiculous notion of how law-abiding citizens turning in legally owned firearms somehow curbs crime, or the idiocy of the term “buyback” given how the guns never belonged to the government in the first place. But really? Are you that goddamn ignorant that you think “Oozie” is perhaps a slang term for a type of firearm, or worse, the actual spelling of one?

It took me three seconds to do a Google search on the word “Oozie”, and two of those were spent sipping luke-warm coffee. The first 4 results included an Urban Dictionary definition of a Burmese elephant rider and a jazz club or something. Right below those, Google helpfully asks “Did you mean UZI?“.

There’s no excuse for this level of ignorance and lack of fact-checking if you consider yourself a journalist, or even an intern hoping to become a journalist. But it’s symptomatic of the same ignorance when it comes to firearms reporting, and why there’s such a decidedly hostile slant against the amendment that bumps up right next to the one that allows journalism to exist in the first place.

From now on I’m going to refer to journalists who incorrectly report on firearms issues as “Oozies”.

This was taken from a forum post of mine.

As a die-hard skeptic up until the point of borderline militancy (tempered by common sense and the benefit of life experience), I’ve progressively grown more concerned with a phenomenon within the skeptics “community” with regards to how Government is perceived.

Now, you’d figure that skepticism, critical thinking, and reasonable doubt would be the predominate stances involving all aspects of one’s life; especially when it comes to the intentions of an organization which has a direct effect on your life and the lives of everyone around you.

But instead, I’ve seen what seems to be an almost religious-level of faith in the goodness of Government. It’s almost as if many skeptics have replaced their belief in one “G-word” with another.

Maybe it’s just that many skeptics are averse to parties which espouse limited government because recently (the past 28 years) they’ve put themselves in bed with the religious right. Or maybe it’s because the “big government” parties always spend more money funding science and other pursuits which appeal to skeptics.

Regardless, the idea of giving progressively more power and responsibility over your life to the Government should be fundamentally abhorrent to someone who considers themselves skeptical and/or free-thinking.

Time and time again history has shown that people who seek government power often do so for their own benefit. And that the more power you give your government, the more likely it is to be abused.

So why any skeptic would advocate forcing individuals to turn over to the state the only means they have to ensure their individual sovereignty, is simply beyond my comprehension. The police don’t care about your safety, they’re just there to enforce laws after they’ve already been broken. Politicians can’t be trusted to care about your concerns beyond how they’ll affect their chances at retaining power.

Thomas Jefferson and his protege’ James Madison both knew that ensuring the sovereignty of the individual was the foundation of a truly free society. And the means of ensuring that, was to have an armed, educated population. Otherwise, the devils of our worst natures will always slide our governments down the slope into tyranny.

Why didn’t the bad guys just shoot Robocop in the mouth?

For the record: I do not support violence against police officers, or robots. I did however, recently read (more like “listened to the audiobook while commuting”) “How to Survive a Robot Uprising“. But I’m pretty sure by the time the robots start coming for us, most of the information in there (such as using their limited sensory equipment against them to avoid getting robowned), won’t do much good.

We do seem to be slipping down that slope, on the inner tube of technology, pretty damn fast. That’s why I’m making this blog post now so when the robot hive-mind sifts through Archive.org in the year 2037, they’ll see me as a loyal supporter and spare me the coming holocaust while my neighbors get turned into fuel.

Never hurts to think about the future.

Posted by Bullshido Forums Bully “Chemistry” in this thread:

So we are now a weapons free campus…

I actually started writing this several weeks ago, and am only now wrapping it up; partially in order to ensure it doesn’t just sit here unfinished, partially because I haven’t posted anything in a while.

When making an argument for something that seems either novel or extreme, it always helps to use the words of people better than yourself. So I’m going to quote Robert Heinlein:

Those who cling to the untrue doctrine that violence never settles anything would be advised to conjure up the ghosts of Napoleon Bonaparte and of the Duke of Wellington and let them debate it. The ghost of Hitler could referee, and the jury might well be the Dodo, the Great Auk, and the Passenger Pigeon. Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. Nations and peoples who forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and freedoms.

That’s a great quote, and I’m using it because it’s on the top of my head, not that it’s specifically relevant to this post.

What I’d like to attack (yes, the word choice is intentional) here is the notion that the concept of violence is so completely abhorrent that it should be discussed in the same tones and with the same palpable unease as accompanies discussions of minority issues by well-meaning but guilt-ridden members of the majority ethnic group in this country.

The reason this notion is idiotic is simple: life itself is violent. Violence is not only a necessary part of life, but a fundamental part of it. The act of eating, including not only the sourcing of the foodstuffs that reach your plate, but the act itself, is predicated on violence. Just chewing your food is a violent act by the dictionary definition. The house you live in was created by violence. Trees were murdered and habitats destroyed so you could park your doughy ass in front of a TV without getting rained on. Virtually the only thing you can do to avoid participating in this chain of violence is to somehow will yourself into nonexistence. And even that act, were it possible, could be considered violent.

It’s not that violence should be considered good for its own sake. Frankly there is nothing that could be considered good for its own sake. Ideas, concepts, and philosophies, are good or bad because of the effects they produce, not on their own merits. In fact, without the effects caused by putting these ideas/concepts/philosophies into action, there is no merit in the first place; just the suggestion of merit, something equally ephemeral. (Tangentially, this is why Communism is not a “good thing”.) This kind of defective thinking forms the root for many problems I’ve noticed, but applies specifically to the concept of violence.

For example, when someone is shot with a firearm, there is always at least a flicker of the suggestion that firearms should be banned. Why? Because the firearm called seductively to the assailant to caress its trigger while the barrel was pointed at a potential victim? Obviously, no. People take actions that have effects. The causes of these actions are ideas (often half-baked, ill-reasoned, or downright maniacal), but ideas do not take the physical form of action without a person to carry them out. Neither should the actions, and the tools used to accomplish them, be put on the same chopping block of judgment. Tools, like ideas, exist without merit or judgment until human intention is applied to them.

It could and will be argued that simply by being available, certain tools designed to inflict violence (for good or ill) increase the likelihood of misuse. But this still doesn’t address the true problem which is the intent behind their misuse, and reflects a sense of moral laziness or lack of fortitude required to address the illness instead of its symptoms.

Violence is not always necessary. Ghandi’s march to the ocean for salt is an example of this. However, the weak-minded (or hearted) pacifist will take examples like this and use them to justify wholesale abdication of violence. And this is just as asinine as a mechanic who in a pinch, had to use a wrench in lieu of a hammer, deciding to forgo the use of hammers entirely.

This guy is an American hero:

As requested by the INTERNET, here’s the video of me putting the first few rounds through my Kel-Tec PF-9.

Yeah, it’s got some recoil for being so small. I managed to get a group about the size of a silver dollar at 10 yards.

And then the damn thing just up and died. Went from being a 7+1 automatic pistol, to a single shot pump action via manually resetting the slide after every round. Left the thing for the armorer to look at and went about my day.

In short, the damn trigger stopped functioning. I’m not exactly sure what happened, but it’s pretty bad for a brand new firearm to take about 8 rounds before crapping out. However, the day wasn’t a total loss as we put about 300 rounds through a Walther P-22. A pistol even an 8 year old can shoot: