Friday, August 08, 2008

A Mayor Against Guns


Shortly after Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick wakes up in jail this morning -- still reeling from becoming the first sitting mayor in Detroit's 307-year history to spend a night behind bars -- Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox is expected to charge him with felony assault.

I know it's not kind or mature, but permit me my Nelson Muntz moment.

GUNS Magazine: August 1958


Chicago, Ill. Dr. Blaine Ramsay, 72, opened the door to his consulting room late at night to three visitors, two men and a woman. One of the three said, 'This is a stick-up," and pushed Dr. Ramsay back into a chair. They demanded money, ordered Dr. Ramsay to take his hands out of his pockets and get busy. Dr. Ramsay did. He hauled a .38 caliber revolver out of his pocket and started shooting. One of the men, an ex-convict, fell, badly wounded; the other man and the woman fled. This is not Dr. Ramsay's first experience in Such matters. In 1955, he killed another ex-convict who tried to hold him up in his office. Hold-up men should leave Dr. Ramsay alone, go to New York where there's less chance of encountering an armed victim.

Or they could just wait a few decades for Chicago to catch up.

The August 1958 issue of GUNS Magazine is now online. I'd like to think of it as a special PETA double feature issue: Not only does Roy Rogers execute a bear, but Elmer Keith goes all the way to Africa just to murder a rhinoceros!

Say "Cheesy"

To make good on his offer to help Chicago combat violence, Gov. Blagojevich envisions putting speed cameras on interstates across Illinois -- and using the revenue to form an "elite tactical team" that would operate in Chicago and other cities...

According to Trent, new State Police teams will stop motorists for traffic violations on Chicago expressways near high-crime areas. The troopers will also look for gun and drug violations. They can communicate with Chicago Police officers on radios and come to their aid when needed.
Ah, the "hog butcher for the world" has figured out a new way to fill the trough. And the fascists admit their speed traps have nothing to do with roadway safety and everything to do with highway robbery.

[Via Mack H and Brian F]

"PARANOIA"

Brady Bunch's Knickers in a Twist Over, uh, Me?

by Mike Vanderboegh


A Rich Man

If a man is known by his enemies as much as his friends, then I am richer today than I was last week. The anti-liberty, anti-firearm Brady Bunch, it seems, has noticed my little letter to the Capitol Times of Madison, Wisconsin -- where even the trees lean hard to the left. It is, they say, an example of "bunker paranoia," describing it as a "crackpot's rant," "morally degenerate," "hyperbole from a possibly unstable individual," and my favorite, "immoral or . . . street-corner gibberish uttered by one who wears a tinfoil hat." See: http://www.bradycampaign.org/blog/2008/08/06/the-nra-spy-gate-and-bunker-paranoia/


I wondered briefly if they had been talking to my ex-wife, the equally liberal public employee and Democrat Wicked Witch of the North, who resides in Columbus, Ohio, and who is every now and then reportedly spotted on her broom flying in the airspace over the beer plant on I-270 north of town, skywriting in black, "Surrender Your Guns" in the bright blue Buckeye sky. Well, maybe those reports ARE exaggerated.

What isn't exaggerated is the Brady Bunch's apparent alarm over my letter and it can't be a case of being misquoted, for The "Brady Blog" reprinted the entire letter as Prosecution Exhibit #1. By their own account, here is what scared them: "In the wake of the Vanderboegh letter . . . armed revolt has been treated as a legitimate policy answer to gun control measures by one blogger after another in the gun community." Huh? Like it never was? That would have come as shock to the Founders. What did the Brady Bunch think those bumper stickers, which first appeared in the 1970s, meant? "You can have my gun when you pry it from my cold dead fingers."

Of course, the Brady Bunch is not truly upset by that prospect in itself, since they propose that other people's sons and daughters in federal service take the risks and do the killing for them of those recalcitrant "morally degenerate" gunowners who refuse to see the wondrous future of their good intentions. They certainly do not envision themselves enforcing the tyrannical laws they propose. And that is the beauty of collectivism. It is power without personal consequences to the ruling elite. But the obverse of the "cold dead hands" coin is this: a man willing to die for his principles and his country is almost always willing to kill in defense of them too.

My sin was in reminding the Brady Bunch that such tyranny might indeed have personal, unintended consequences and THAT they CANNOT abide. The fact that this "inconvenient truth" (to quote one of their icons), is indeed true means nothing. Truth is spit in the wind to such people. This is because all tyranny requires illusion to succeed.

The Three Illusions of Tyranny

There is first the illusion that your selected enemies are somehow defective, not worthy as human beings, whose opinions, even lives, do not matter. As, in, for example the use of language like "gun nut," "religious fanatic," "crackpot," "morally degenerate," "unstable," "immoral," or in other countries and other times, "dirty kaffir," "degenerate Jew," "Bosnian cockroaches," "capitalist vermin," etc.

The next necessary illusion is the one that they and they alone are the Keepers of Truth. Ergo, anyone who doesn't believe as they do is one of the "untermenschen" categories above. This illusion excuses them from any responsibility for whatever human crockery is broken in their campaign to perfect humanity. This is why only they are principled, only they are reasonable, only they are, indeed, sane. For to them, opposition to their liberty-stealing plans only occurs to "madmen" who refuse to see the eminent peace and sanity of their schemes. This illusion works not only for themselves, but for the uncommitted audience watching, for they quickly absorb the point that if you don't want to be labeled as one of these "crackpots" you will fall in line with the rest of the "reasonable" people, which is to say, with them.

The last and most important illusion they are selling is that they and their friends represent THE majority, and thus the rights of the minority can be discounted once they have been out-voted. This is the democracy of three wolves and a sheep sitting down at the table to vote on what, or who, to have for dinner.

The Founders were distrustful of democracy unrestrained by constitutional republicanism. Thus, the Constitution as written provides a thin menu for would-be wolfish American tyrants, which is why they have been so assiduous in diluting and destroying it over the past seven decades, adding items a la carte so that they may be fed off the liberty and substance of the people.

But it is in this last illusion, that they represent the majority, that they are often left like the Emperor without his clothes, vulnerable to the first clear-thinking kid with 20-20 vision to point out the royal dinkie dangling in the wind. Denunciations like this one by the Brady Bunch are merely the latest iterations of the pompous, silly and ineffectual Wizard of Oz, shouting "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!" I must say, I am honored.

You know, they really aren't very smart, these Bradyistas. By reprinting my letter in toto (no, not the dog), they have ensured it will be read by a much wider audience than the few hot-house liberal Madisonians (no relation to James) who choked on their morning lattes when they read it in the paper. By conflating it in the same breath with the NRA spy case and trying to tie my constitutional absolutism to those compromising losers discredits the theory in an instant to anyone with half a brain. I resigned the NRA many years ago over their political compromises with the likes of the Brady Bunch.

Indeed, the Bunch is only upset about the use of paid spies because it is their side which is now being spied upon. Where were their voices when the ADL and the Southern Poverty Law Center got caught doing the same thing to the "right wing"? I assure you, that when the Risen Lightworker Obama becomes the great and powerful Oz, these mokes won't mind a bit if his administration, restrained by inconvenient law, contracts with some mercenary outfit such as Blackwater to spy on his perceived "domestic enemies" -- you know, like American gunowners. For my part, I have no sympathy for the NRA nor the paid spy nor the collectivist gun control "lobby". A pox on all their houses.

"Tin-foil hats"

One final point which bears on the third of those collectivist illusions. Count them as you will, the Brady Bunch and their ilk are not a "majority" of the American people. But that's OK, neither are we. Here's the difference. It is they who are seeking to take our liberty and not the other way around. We want nothing from them. We do not seek to tax them out of their hobbies. Nor do we seek to ban their latte-sipping, nor their limousines, their gated communities, their armed security guards -- not even their right NOT to bear common sense. On the other hand, they want much from us, including something that the Founders considered key to the whole liberty thing: firearms in the hands of the people which enable them to resist a predatory government. Yes indeedy, Sarah, were talking about "armed revolt . . . as a legitimate policy answer to gun control measures." If that's "tinfoil hat" so was Lexington and Concord and if Thomas Jefferson were still here, he'd make tinfoil hats look stylish.

The Brady Bunch will get their will by conjuring their illusions and jawboning us into submission if they can, but they do not hesitate to propose the military might of government to seize it if we don't.

"I'm not crazy, Sarah . . ."

It is then, neither "bunker paranoia," "a crackpot's rant," "morally degenerate," "hyperbole from a possibly unstable individual," nor, "immoral . . . street-corner gibberish uttered by one who wears a tinfoil hat," to state plainly and publicly that the Law of Unintended Consequences still rules the world. Nor indeed is it nutty to say that people who wish for other people to be robbed of their God-given liberty and hard-earned property might want to consider for a moment just whose head that boomerang might hit. I'm not crazy, Sarah, I'm merely being polite. And who knows? Tin-foil hats may yet become stylish, if worn with semi-automatic rifle and bandoleer. It's an ensemble thing, I think. Wouldn't look good on you though, I'd guess.

Mike Vanderboegh
PO Box 926
Pinson AL 35126
GeorgeMason1776@aol.com

The Mercenary Vanishes

However, one particular photograph from the Times story has drawn more attention than anything else. That picture, which has now been widely reproduced at blogs, shows a long-haired man, wearing a Blackwater tshirt and with a pistol at his belt, passing a box marked “DEA Evidence” to other agents participating in the raid.
And the picture has been removed? Where have we seen that before?

Maybe there's something to the concerns... but gosh--they're so friendly to gun bloggers...

[Via ranamacar]

It's Always Death

The State’s worshipers and pawns fall all over themselves to praise the brave uniformed thugs and denounce Bob as having “had it coming.”
Huh. Reminds me of the comments of some about David Olofson.

But he's been taken care of. Now we need a new target.

How about this guy? He's actually willful and defiant.

We can't have that.

[Via Luke O]

We're the Only Ones Compromised Enough

Couple appeared to be innocent victims of pot smuggling scheme...

Prince George's County Police Chief Melvin High said Wednesday that Calvo and his family were "most likely ... innocent victims," but he would not rule out their involvement, and he defended the way the raid was conducted. He and other officials did not apologize for killing the dogs, saying the officers felt threatened...

[O]fficials insisted they acted within the law, saying the operation was compromised when Calvo's mother-in-law saw officers approaching the house and screamed.
We talked about this earlier. Anyway, I know exactly what they mean. Who doesn't kill dogs when they hear a woman scream? Why should "Only Ones" be any different?

[Via half a dozen of you]

There's This Great Joke E-Mail Going Around


That's pretty darn funny there.

It is a joke, right?

See, this is why extreme talk hurts our cause, when political solutions exist to give us lip service.

Cheeseburger in Paradise

A double cheeseburger can change someone's life, said Celeste Noe, a juvenile probation officer for Cuyahoga County.

The yellow-and-red fast-food gift cards that Noe doles out have been the incentive for some to stop ditching out on their court-ordered curfew.
Burgers? That's all it takes for us to live forever more in Kumbaya harmony? Actually, getting juvenile predators fat and out of shape might not be such a bad idea...

Thing is, somebody ought to tell 'em in LA their fast food ban is going about it wrong. Then again, if not for banning things and then exploiting the predictably bad results, what would petty tyrants do?

This Day in History: August 8

This Colony the last Fall, not confiding entirely in the precarious Supply of Powder that might be expected from the Merchants, imported a considerable Quantity, though not so large as was ordered. The supplying the Inhabitants, who were in a Manner utterly destitute, the Army near Boston, and our armed Vessels have so exhausted this Stock that the Powder now left which is all in this Place is greatly insufficient to resist even a short Attack upon it. Our Situation is the same with Respect to Lead. So that at present none of either Article can be spared from the Colony.