Tuesday, October 14, 2008

BREAKING: Dan Moore to be Prosecuted?

Mack H. has left a new comment on your post "We're the Only Ones Camera-Shy Enough":

The city's Commonwealth's Attorney has told the President of VCDL today that he will in fact prosecute Dan Moore.

I've done a cursory search and can't find outside confirmation yet. I generally would need more to post, but Mack H is a consistently reliable source, so if he tells me something I trust it. Please feel free to enlighten and/or revise as warranted in comments.

A Knob Creek Diary


WarOnGuns regulars know I took the weekend off. I was at Knob Creek. It was great.

I got a chance to finally meet Len Savage and Mike Vanderboegh in person.

Mike brought his in-development manuscript for "Absolved" and shared how the story will continue to unfold and where we'll find ourselves when it "ends." I'll presume to believe you'll really like it. We also talked about strategies for promoting the book and getting it into the hands of the public.

Len was extremely generous and let my son and Mike's daughter shoot several guns. You can tell a lot about a man by watching him exhibit pure joy, and while both kids had a blast, pun intended, it's hard to say who was having more fun.

We knew when we saw it that it would just be a matter of hours before a video about the accident hit the Internet. For those speculating in forum comments, the car explosion and guy on fire were part of a stunt act. What wasn't planned were chunks of metal blasting into the spectators on the front line--they were damned lucky more pieces didn't go flying.

The stunt itself was impressive. Whether it belongs at a shoot I'll leave to others, but based on results it should not have been that close to the crowd. I heard two people were injured and saw one of them--an Ohio gun designer/exhibitor/shooter, wheeled out by the EMTs with his arm temporarily wrapped and blood spatter on his shirt--but all things considered, he was in good spirits and actually joked about it to the people in the bleachers as they rolled him away. I heard the second injured man had broken bones in his hand or wrist, but did not see him. I did see a security guy carry away a hunk of metal that looked to weigh a couple pounds, so the potential for a real negligent tragedy was there.

That said, the incident shouldn't mar enthusiasm to attend future events--I'm sure there's been a lesson learned, and I know I'm looking forward to more shoots now that I've had my first taste.

And here's the thing that struck me more than anything else--here we were surrounded by thousands of hard core gun owners, here we were in the presence of Americans firing machine guns and flame throwers and what-have-you, here we were walking through hundreds of tables filled with militia-suitable hardware most of us can only dream about ever owning, and the major visible "police" presence for most of my time there was guys walking around wearing orange t-shirts, yet I could not imagine a safer place to be. Imagine that--no overt coercion and everybody was behaving themselves.

The "liberal" anti-gun enuretics are so demonstrably full of it--every damn one of them. America's armed-to-the-teeth "extremist" gun owners are the most peaceable people on the planet. Everyone I met and talked to was salt-of-the-earth, nice, interesting, friendly, informed...yeah, I'm sure there must have been some jerks around, but I didn't meet them--and I even made a conscious effort to play "Where's Wintemute?"

I saw nothing but exemplary behavior bolstered with awesome knowledge, safe gun handling...

With all the flash and bang and smoke, it's funny. You'd think that would be what left me with the most visceral reaction, but it's not. What I left there with, more powerfully than my words can convey, is confidence and, to reclaim a word, hope.

We are better than our enemies. Here's to conducting ourselves like we know it.

A Major Benefit

Among the supporters of the proposed ordinance is David Blankenhorn, Pottsville, who said one of his pistols was stolen from him about 20 years ago and police discovered it seven years later.

“It turned up in a drug raid in Auburn. Because I reported it in 24 hours, because I cooperated with the law, I was given that gun back. This ordinance can have a major benefit. If you simply follow the law, it works with you,” Blankenhorn said.
I thought PA had state preemption. And we've been through the self-incrimination exemption for prohibited persons. There would also seem to be a 5th Amendment consideration if your firearm is stolen from your vehicle and you did not have it secured in accordance with state law.

Meanwhile, geniuses like Fudd Blankenhorn here appear too dense to grasp that most of us are going to report stolen property in the hopes of recovery anyway--but criminalizing us--threatening fines, incarceration, and ultimately use of force to coerce compliance--is hardly a "major benefit."

I'm waiting for some sharp and scummy trial lawyer to sue a gun owner reporting a missing gun for negligence, in that they failed to properly secure it from theft--and knew or should have known of the likelihood that it would be used for criminal purposes. The mandated police report ought to give them all the evidence they need.

Meanwhile, Over in Sarah Brady Paradise...

China's weapons laws are among the world's toughest. Its blanket ban on private ownership of rifles, pistols and even gun replicas is a core tenet of social policy...

Yet, these days, reports about gun crimes turn up as often as several times a week even in the tightly controlled state-run media.
Damned American gun shows.

The Philadelphia Klan Terror

Councilman W. Wilson Goode Jr. was unapologetic in City Council yesterday as he addressed a television investigation questioning the work habits of a top employee.

Goode indirectly defended his aide, Latrice Bryant, who last week flashed handwritten signs in Council Chambers comparing a Fox29 news reporter to the Ku Klux Klan. Goode and Bryant are African American; Fox29 reporter Jeff Cole is white.
And we all know that every time a white person displeases a black one, it must be racism at work.

Could someone please tell us what this creature does to make her worth paying basically three times the last census-recorded median household income of Philadelphians in general, and almost 7 times what the average black citizen there receives?

Oh.

$90K/year and vacations to Jamaica? And she's the one being discriminated against?

Y'know, if I'd been caught red-handed falsifying time cards for any of my past employers, they'd have been justified in canning me on the spot and putting my boxed belongings on the curb. I like the way this pampered parasite just throws back entitled attitude and cheapens the experience of every human casualty who was ever actually targeted by the Klan.

Get over yourself, lady. The reporter simply caught you demonstrating your unique brand of ethics, your level of impulse control, and your intelligence. Your offended posturing is an obscene insult to every victim of racist terror and your blame-shifting charges are offensive to every decent human being.

And oh, look--here's her boss's goon strong-arming an "Authorized Journalist."

Yeah, I'll be letting urban thugs dictate the extent of my rights...

Three-Way Action


Just in case you're looking to get screwed by multiple partners and would like to make it a foursome...

If this and this don't put the lie to AHSA being a "pro-gun group," nothing will.

Your Free Speech is What We Say it is

Lawyers for the city of San Francisco told a federal judge Thursday that the city's ban on cigarette sales by pharmacies has nothing to do with free speech.
Perhaps not, but it has everything to do with free conduct.

You'll note in lefty forums a recurring talking points charge that RKBA activists are only interested in the 2nd Amendment and don't care for the rest of the Bill of Rights. We know that's a damned lie and a transparent projection to boot.

Control nazis are just that. They're compelled to control everything.

It's like a disease, and the danger it poses to society in terms of human misery and death should be treated like the epidemic it is. Maybe we should require health warnings on political ads...

A Good Republican

For more than two years, U.S. Attorney Michael Sullivan has been consumed by the latest entry on his resume: acting chief of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

The Republican has been balancing both jobs while dealing with opposition to his ATF confirmation from members of his own party in the Senate. Now, with the presidential election a month away and Congress adjourned, Sullivan, 54, could soon end up unemployed.
What--there's no demand for breaking up rocks or making license plates, you know, kind of a Big Tent to Big House transition...?

And here's a scary thought:
At various times, he's been talked about in state Republican circles as a possible candidate for governor, state attorney general and the U.S. Senate.
Yeah, maybe a John Kerry/Ted Kennedy/Brady Campaign endorsement will clinch it for him.

Good thing the Republicans can also count on gun owners.

[Via "Mr. X"]

Pilot Error

The classic and well-worn illustration is that it is irresponsible - not to mention illegal - to shout "Fire!" in a crowded theater, though the right to free speech is one of America's most cherished. The reason for the prohibition is that people might be hurt in a stampede to escape.
The Virginia-Pilot said it, I believe it, that settles it.

Stuff it, you despicable police state-demanding cowards. You can yell "Fire!" in a crowded theater--there is no prior restraint.

And yeah, right. As we've seen time and again, only the "Only Ones" can be trusted to bear arms without making us regurgitate our cuds. Leave it to effete Orwellian wimps to redefine responsibility as irresponsibility. That way, those who insist on everyone being a potential victim are the responsible ones.

I guess if they repeat that lie enough, they can look in the mirror and deem themselves, if not self-determining men, at least house slaves, and thus superior to the rougher ones in the field.

[Via Mack H]

A Crisis in Worcester

But in the past 18 months, in this city of 176,000, bullets and bare knuckles have given way to 4- or 5- or 6-inch blades. The use of knives in crimes is up 9.5 percent to 231 instances, through Aug. 31, compared with the same period in 2007, while the use of guns in crimes fell 16.8 percent to 94 instances in the same period, according to Worcester police.
So now knives are the "weapons of choice"? It's tough keeping up--the choice keeps changing so much.

No matter. Disregarding for a moment all that Massachusetts knife control, and factoring in the inescapable conclusion that attacking people with knives is illegal, you have to ask yourself why, for all intents and purposes, possession of personal defense tools of choice is forbidden to We the People. Especially when the authorities disclose such detailed knowledge of predator armament and capabilities, and not a one of them takes responsibility for anyone's safety.

[Via John G]

A Culpeper Encounter

The link is to the latest VCDL Alert. Read the whole thing, but I'm calling specific attention to item 6:

Good for the officer. But who's the pseudo "Only One"? Damned incompetent rent-a-cop helmet nazi has no business--not to mention authority--to be accosting citizens for having the means of defense.

Expose the boob for the Acton's Law illustration he is, and do it by name. Put a personal cost on wrongful detaining and harassment.

We can pity the mentally challenged, but we damn sure have no obligation to let them abridge our liberties.

[Via Jeffersonian]

We're the Only Ones Camera-Shy Enough

Turn the camera off.
By what authority?

And understand when an "Only One" gives an order, he's prepared to escalate force to whatever extent he sees fit to execute it.

Who is this thug?

[Via Jeffersonian and Mack H]

Vanderboegh: An Open Letter to Mary Mitchell (And Other Antigun Politicians and Journalists of Her Ilk).

Mary Mitchell
Columnist, Chicago Sun Times

re: "What Keeps Obama Safe Could Protect the Rest of Us," CST, 12 October 2008

My dear Ms. Mitchell,

If I may, I would like to introduce you to the Law of Unintended Consequences and to Tomoslav Mitrovic. First, let me recap what I understand from your modest proposal to turn Chicago into a police state. I will assume that the limits of your tyrannical appetite are found at the geographical borders of "Shortshanks" Daley's dysfunctional Democratic paradise, but if they do not then what I have to say is even more true.

You recount approvingly the overwhelming police presence now guarding the sacred manse of Barack H. Obama -- the roadblocks, the personnel barricades, the invasive searches of pedestrians walking on public streets, the forced showing of identity cards. "Ausweiss, bitte. Ja?"

Most importantly, you believe that because the only firearms in this utopia are those belonging to the approved minions of the state, you are therefore safe AND you wish this "safety zone" to be extended as far as possible.

You pass over the right of citizens in Obama's gun-free Eden to possess firearms in their own homes, or their right to take such property to and from their dwellings. You are silent on whether the Fourth Amendment still applies to homeowners with firearms within the Golden Circle of the Lightworker's Enfolding Arms of Officially Sanctioned Violence. You are equally silent on how many cops and troops it would take to expand Obama's little cone of safety to the entire city of Chicago. What would the ratio of cops to citizens they are oppressing, uh, excuse me, "protecting," be? One in ten? One in twenty? For all three shifts, twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, fifty two weeks a year? How exactly can the rest of us afford to pay for the costs of our own oppression, er, "safety"?

No matter.

Your sneering reference to Alaska suggests that you understand that there are other areas of the country where your proposal would not find favor. Indeed, I think even you understand that there are places where men and women consider themselves free individual citizens and not government-cared-for sheep and who would resist your proposal violently. The fact that for such a tyrannical proposal as yours to be "legal" (not to say constitutional), federal laws would have to be passed to ensure it -- and thus extended to the rest of us unwillingly -- indicates to me that for all your metropolitan sophistication you have not heard of the Law of Unintended Consequences, a law which can neither be repealed nor amended. Nor it seems have you heard of Tomoslav Mitrovic.

At the time of his death in 1999, Tomi Mitrovic was sixty years old. He lived in Belgrade with his wife Lila and he had two daughters, Ivana and Jelena, a grandson, Kosta and an informally adopted son, Dejan, the grown child of his best friend, who had died years before. He was known as an easygoing man, a salt-of-the-earth type who loved America. Said his son later, ''He built himself an American house, and everyone joked about it, but they admired it. He built a ranch house, with three bedrooms and three bathrooms. He saw it somewhere and he liked it, so he built one.'' Tomi even cut his yard short in the American style. He also kept a couple of cats and a stray dog that appeared one day and never left.

Tomoslav Mitrovic was a program director for Radio Television Serbia, the state-run broadcaster that gave the news as Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic wanted it given. Said his son, ''He was just one of the people working there. He had no influence on the programs or on Milosevic. He just switched the cameras and the programs from channel to channel. He was a professional. He worked for his salary. If the political opposition ran the station, he'd work for them, too.''

Tomi worked the night shift on the 22-23 April 1999. Everybody knew that the station might be hit by NATO airstrikes so Mitrovic sent the rest of his own crew home and did the job by himself. He was there when one of several American-made air-to-ground precision guided missiles came in the window and blew him to pieces. He was one year from retirement. The missiles had been sent by Bill Clinton to silence what his Pentagon spokesman Kenneth Bacon called "as much a part of Milosevic's murder machine as his military." Also killed along with Tomi were some twenty-odd video mixers, broadcast technicians, security guards and make-up artists. War criminals all, no doubt.

The attack was seen at the time for what it was: the deliberate widening of the rules of war to include the media and journalists who supported the war effort of an opposing regime. Tony Blair insisted that the bombing was justified since the station was part of the "apparatus of dictatorship." One of his cabinet ministers, Clare Short, said, "This is a war, this is a serious conflict, untold horrors are being done. The propaganda machine is prolonging the war and it's a legitimate target."

Journalists of every stripe condemned the attack. As Robert Leavitt associate director of the New York University's Center for War, Peace and the News Media said, "It really creates a dangerous precedent with regard to freedom of the press. Once we start defining journalists as legitimate targets, it becomes very hard for us to criticize any other attacks on media, including those of Milosevic himself on his own independent media. . . This is really crossing a dangerous line."

For his part, speaking of the Serbian atrocities against the Kosovars, Bill Clinton said this in a speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars after the strike on the television station: "Political leaders do this kind of thing. (Do you) think the Germans would have perpetrated the Holocaust on their own without Hitler? Was there something in the history of the German race that made them do this? No. We got to -- we got to get straight about this. This is something political leaders do. And if people make decisions to do these kinds of things, other people can make decisions to stop them. And if the resources are properly arrayed, it can be done. And that is exactly what we intend to do."

So, before we go on to how this impacts you, let's be clear about what Bill Clinton did. He expanded the American military's rules of engagement to include the politicians whose decisions start and prolong the wars, and the journalists who support them. And, having expanded the rules, he tried his best to kill as many Serbian journalists and politicians as possible in order to achieve what he felt was the common good for the former Yugoslavia, whether they liked it or not. Those expanded rules still apply today.

So here we are with a new President about to take office who, given the anti-firearms record that he is loudly denying at the moment, will see eye-to-eye with you on gun control, street control, talk-radio control, Internet control, people control and God-knows-what-else control in the New Perfect Paradise Nanny State led by the Lightworker Saint Barack. Yet even you must admit that there are people like me who would resist any more encroachments upon our God-given constitutional liberties. How do you think we would react to such an oppressive scheme as your own? Remember, we're the ones with the firearms.

I tell you, madame, we will fight. The Law of Unintended Consequences as applied to Bill Clinton's stupid advancement of the rules of war to include politicians and journalists will ensure that another American civil war will see the deaths of many innocents and many who are not so innocent. This will include, if I may be permitted to put a fine point on it, American politicians and journalists who attempted to push tyrannical schemes on their fellow citizens. And if you think that civil war cannot come to this country you are whistling past the graveyard of history. We are more divided as a people now than we ever were in 1860. In our opinion, this time it is the "liberals" such as yourselves who are pushing slavery. And we will not consent to be slaves of your nanny state, no matter how well-intentioned you believe your tyranny to be.

You may not think of yourself as a part of what Clare Short called "the propaganda machine" nor as a "legitimate target" of war, but surely even you would admit there are others who may have a different opinion, and who may react accordingly if your well-intentioned push comes to tyrannical shove.

When they buried Tomislav Mitrovic, a Serbian fan of all things American who was ironically killed by an American missile, in the Topcider cemetery of Belgrade in the spring of 1999, he was mourned by hundreds, yet he was just one out of thousands of dead in that conflict. As his son said, "He was guilty of nothing." In fact, he was guilty only of being an unintended victim of the Law of Unintended Consequences, as invoked by William Jefferson Clinton.

I beg of you, Mary Mitchell, be careful what you wish for. You and we, like Tomislav Mitrovic, may get it.

Mike Vanderboegh
PO Box 926
Pinson, AL 35126

PS And if your real intention is to stop street crime, you might try allowing the law-abiding to carry concealed weapons. The bad guys don't prey on victims unless they are reasonably sure they can't fight back.

[Related Post]

A Follow-Up Request

We spoke yesterday of helping Wayne Fincher materially. Paul W. Davis reminds me of one other thing that is just as important:
If you could, would you drop Wayne a note and encourage him. He is discouraged and feels very cut-off from everything. I spent Friday evening, part of Saturday, and again part of Sunday encouraging Miss Linda and Wayne to stay on course.Friday, Wayne was ready to give up and do it all pro se, which would be a disaster. He looked at the amount of money it is going to take...and was at the point of losing all hope.
Please send correspondence to:
Hollis Wayne Fincher
07863-010
P.O. Box 9000
Forrest City, Arkansas
72336

Guest Editorial: Force, Liberty and the Potential of the Third Party Vote

by Charles H. Sawders

The future of this nation will be settled by force. Make no mistake about that. Either the public will be victorious through the ability to muster the most force, or not enough will participate and state force will prevail. Or the public will only resist verbally and acquiesce to the threat of state force.

Either way, the issue will be settled by force. If McCain wins, the usurpation of citizen rights will be much slower and much more subtle, thus making the possibility of non-resistance in any effective manner less likely. For, by the time the public awakes, they will no longer have the wherewithal to resist actively and most probably not even the right to speak in opposition. Remember it was McCain who partnered with Russ Feingold to prohibit the exercise of free speech within sixty days of an election. This does not auger well for his future actions as our president, since he has already shown a willingness to deny the second most important right guaranteed under the Bill of Rights. He has also stated publicly and voted to place ever more infringement on the most important right guaranteed in that magnificent document, the right to keep and bear arms, the one which the second amendment states unequivocally "shall not be infringed". The end game under McCain will probably not be realized in his tenure, even if he were to serve two terms, but the pattern will be set and irrevocable. His pattern doesn't just suggest an antipathy to individual "unalienable rights" it proclaims such, loud and clear.

If Obama wins, I expect the exact same problems. The only difference will be the accelerated timetable for accomplishment of the total subjugation of the American citizen. This acceleration may just be noticeable enough to the average non-involved, non-interested citizen to make him notice and become involved. While he still has the tools to resist!

So, when one says a vote for a write-in candidate or third party candidate is a wasted vote, I say it is a moot point as to the general direction of this society. Such a movement, should it prove widespread could possibly, but not probably, result in at least a suspension of the plans of power mongers, if not a downright abandonment of them. Power mongers never abandon their quest to rule others. That is why "eternal vigilance is the price of liberty." But eternal vigilance does no good without the will to act, except as to note at what point one has surrendered his life's service to the whim of another.

A large enough loss of formerly reliable votes to other than the two main candidates may just return the political parties closer to the ideals and principles held by the majority of Americans and codified in our constitution. The outcome of the election will probably not be changed by such action, but neither party can be sure how many of the lost votes would have ordinarily been theirs. Of necessity each major political party would be forced to wonder about ever larger desertions in future elections. This can't help but be a better consideration than the American citizen is now receiving. It could possibly lead to a renewed effort to woo the American voter by each party in the hopes of staving off political suicide.

Potential force in the service of liberty is preferable to kinetic force. But the decision is not ours to make, it will be made by those who view us as livestock, disposable commodities to be utilized for maximum profit of the herdsmen. Therefore any indication of the weakening of resolve to remain free will be seen as a signal by those people to proceed.

Voting third party, or write-in should be considered a rejection of both our primary choices, by them if they be capable of rational analysis, and could possibly serve as a warning, thereby avoiding or postponing the application of kinetic force. Make no mistake that kinetic force will be used by the state under either of these candidates if they perceive a lack of will to respond in kind by the public. This application of kinetic force would most probably occur in response to civil disobedience and/or peaceful protest to finally remove them from the arsenal of the citizenry and gain a much more compliant populace.

Worse than the above statement is that there could be no more damning indictment of the American character than if the state need not apply kinetic force, but through threat and isolated example of kinetic force achieve their goals by only the application of potential force on the majority of the American public. That would mean the tables have been completely reversed, because it is the potential for the application of kinetic force by the public that restrained the state up to now. In this instant turnabout is not fair play, because the rightful object of any free state is to serve at the will of the people and not the other way around.

For more than 200 years, the issue has been settled by force. But thanks to the founders we only had to rely on potential force. The public ability to actively resist and their known willingness to do so, has served as a brake on the ambitions of our would-be masters. Should we surrender that, as it seems most Americans are now willing to do, mistakenly, in the name of "public safety", the likely machinations of either of these presidential candidates will most certainly require the public's ability to transition potential force into kinetic force.

We have already seen this dynamic in civilian law enforcement by civilian policing forces. One need only read a little news each day to see accounts of atrocities committed by our policing forces on innocents and misidentified persons and property with absolutely no consequences for the malefactors in blue uniform.

Just recently the Army has designated a brigade for use in civilian law enforcement, emergency response and "crowd control" while stationed on dwell time in the continental U.S. (CONUS), with an eye to continuing this with other brigades as duty rotations take place. The 3rd Infantry Division's 1st Brigade Combat Team, to be exact per the Army Times. If the over all command structure is pleased with the results of one brigade thusly employed, the practice is certain to expand, both in number of units employed and added tasks (mission creep).

We have an all volunteer military now. That means that many of the people in armed service of the nation are careerists. Careerists only advance by pleasing their superiors in the hierarchy of the organization, this applies to all organizations. Never in history has liberty survived in a society where the military became the civil police force. Not once, not in any nation, throughout history has liberty survived just such an arrangement. The reasons are simple.

A nation's military is under the over-all command of people farthest removed from the realities and principles of the majority of the people of their nation. Whether those people be a president, premier, junta, tribunal, politburo or something else, they are at the farthest remove from the populace. When they control a police force, it is also at a much farther remove than local policing agencies which are answerable more directly to the public either through political pressures put upon local politicians to manage that police force appropriately, or through court actions. This cannot happen when the military becomes the police force for a nation. And it never has. Our civil law enforcement agencies are almost beyond control now, how much worse would it be if instead of a city, county or state matter, recourse was not even possible at any level poised to respond to the people of a particular locality?

In summary voting one's conscience is never a wasted vote. In this particular election a vote means less than it ever has as to the assertion of the public will. Ergo, I cannot adhere to the philosophy that "He's a sonofabitch, but he might be our sonofabitch."

It is time to warn all sonsofbitches and rid ourselves of them. Peacefully, if possible, otherwise, if not.

This Day in History: October 14

In London, Secretary of State Lord Suffolk receives intelligence that the colony of Pennsylvania is preparing an armed fleet and floating batteries to prevent the passage of the King's ships through the Delaware River. He recommends that the Admiralty dispatch vessels to destroy the floating batteries.