The Rosenberg Police Department is a progressive department serving a rapidly growing city. The Department prides itself on hiring and training the most elite Officers and personnel. The Officers of the Rosenberg Police Department are dedicated to the highest levels of integrity, professionalism, excellence and pledge to continue to strive to enhance the quality of life for the citizens they serve.
So the Rosenberg Police Department’s “elite officers and personnel” view you, the cat, no threat to these ~20 dogs, as a treat. They’re eyeing you and just itching for an excuse to snap you up. They then pat themselves on the back for having the “discipline” to wait until you, dangerous Mr. Kitty slip up.
But consider that this doesn’t say, “Just waiting for you to break the law” (thus making a morally justified arrest) No, it says, “Just waiting for probable cause”. The distinction is fine, but substantial in its implications. Probable cause gives them the ability to mess with you, guilty of a crime or not. With probable cause, an officer can make an arrest. With probable cause, an officer can secure a search warrant.
This takes me back to the well-known sheep, wolf, sheepdog analogy made popular by LTC Dave Grossman, author of On Killing. In the event you don’t wish to take the time to read it I’ll summarize: Sheep are the pure and innocent good guys, heads in the clouds. Us. Wolves are your bad guys who love to snap up a sheep for dinner. But ah, then there are the heroic sheepdogs. These are your cops/military/etc. They keep the wolf at bay, all the while being unappreciated and misunderstood by the sheep, for he looks like a wolf and is not afraid to use violence.
I like Grossman. I think On Killing was an excellent book. I don’t agree with many of his conclusions, but he’s a great thinker nonetheless and I respect him. But I don’t think he took the analogy far enough. What do we do with sheep? We herd them. We group them together into an unthinking mob ready to move to the whim of their betters. A wolf occasionally sneaks in and eats one. But we herd them to the same purpose. But instead of one, we intend to eat them all. But just as important to the analogy, what does a sheepdog do when a sheep decides to leave the herd? They nip at their heels. They bark. They put you back in that herd.
As a side note, remember who it was sitting behind the president calling for gun control. Cops. Sheepdogs. Who suggested a limit on assault rifles? Moscow Police Chief David Duke. Deprived of arms, you NEED your sheepdog. And the sheepdogs know this.
I don’t know about you, but I’d rather the ability to occasionally leave the herd, sufficiently armed in a world that if a wolf bares his fangs, I’m able to protect myself. The alternative is to be that kitty in the meme, with both wolves and sheepdogs looking at you like a snack, all the while stuck in the herd.
Enjoy this fantastic video of the president. He mocks those that stand against his gun control measures saying that some people are afraid they need their guns to fight against the government and that the government might take our guns away.
He does this…
…
…
…while standing behind him are the people whom the 2nd Amendment exists to fight against, and will be those tasked to take your guns.
One of the most popular arguments against assault rifle ownership being a part of the Second Amendment is that the founders “never would have imagined such weapons”. I disagree:
The Girandoni Air Rifle. You probably didn’t watch the video, so allow me to summarize. The rifle was carried by Lewis and Clark and manufactured in 1779, as in, before the American Revolution was over. It fired over 30 rounds in a tube magazine and while not a pure semi-automatic, it was a repeating rifle that could put those 30 rounds downrange at about 1 per second. Consider that a Marine rifle qualifying in the rapid fire portion is expected to fire 10 times in one minute as a matter or perspective.
One of the popular retorts of the pro-gun crowd is that if the second amendment protects only muskets, then the first would only protect the printing press. I’d like to expand on that. I would submit that the leap of imagination required to go from a single shot musket (and definitely a Girandoni Air Rifle to the AR-15 is a MONUMENTALLY smaller step than going from the printing press to the internet!
(again, I’m not attempting to incite violence, nor intend to engage in any myself.)
Alright gun community, it’s your turn.
I’ve gotten a crash course in lying this last year. One of the most insidious things about lying is that when you do it enough you believe it yourself. Another trick is to get another person to tell your lie for you; it makes your lies more palatable and fell less like, well, lies.
In the gun community, one of the favorite lies to tell is the, “these are just cosmetic features” lie.
Listen, these aren’t mere cosmetic features. Yes, an AR15 (the civilian equivalent of the M16) and a mini-14 shoot the same round and use the same magazine. Yet for some reason the military has chosen the M16 instead of the mini-14 to take into combat. Why? Well, because those “cosmetic features” have certain applicability to the weapon’s lethality. Let us count the ways:
Pistol grip — provides greater control of the weapon, especially for follow up shots (in my experience) / allows the user easier access to the fire control group / provides a superior grip angle for prone shooting (in my experience)
Front broomstick — same thing
Collapsable stock — allows fitting the weapon to a smaller shooter, or to body armor to a lesser extent
Handguard / Barrel Shroud — allows putting many more rounds through the weapon without burning yourself
Hi-cap magazines — allows putting more rounds downrange in less time, lessening mag changes when a less well trained shooter might lose sight of targets
Now let us leave this lie and go into the general deception and disinformation of the gun community. I’m well aware of the difference between an “assault rifle” and “assault weapon”. But you need to stop pretending that the difference is of any practical value. I would have much rather taken my AR15 into Iraq than my M16. The principal difference is that the M16 can fire in a 3-round burst or semi-automatic mode. The AR15 fires only in semi-automatic.
During my 5 years in the Corps I’ve found 2 circumstances when you would place the weapon on burst. 1) During what we called a dump-ex, and 2) on ACCIDENT when you flipped the selector too hard.
A dump-ex is what we call a situation where you have had too much ammo brought out into the field and the powers that be don’t want to fill out the paperwork to turn it back in, nor want to have to answer why they are asking for X number of rounds for training when they only seem to use Y number of rounds. The end result is that you make an assembly line of Marines filling magazines and passing them to others firing those rounds into a berm without aiming.
I’m no Richard Marcinko and I haven’t seen the thickest of combat, but there is almost NO legitimate use for 3-round burst. You can fire exceptionally fast in semi-auto and have much more control of the weapon. This is why Marines are taught to fire a “hammer pair” instead of burst fire.
So stop referring to your assault weapon as anything but. It is not a modern sporting rifle.
Does this mean we give in and let the gun banners take our weapons? No! Quite the opposite. The Second Amendment does not exist to protect your hunting rifles (but yes your sniper rifles). The Second Amendment doesn’t protect hunting. It doesn’t even protect your ability to protect your family from criminals. It protects your weapons that serve a military purpose. Recall in United States v. Miller, it was a short-barelled shotgun in contention. The court held that the gun was unlawful without the stamp because it was not a weapon in common use with the military. The flaw in that argument is that when one looks at the makeup of the militia, it was men bringing what arms they had. Truth be told there is a valid military purpose to every weapon, properly employed. The court did not grok that.
So the gun community needs to stop trying to skirt the facts about their weapons. They cry Molon Labe’and wave their Gadsden Flags, but shrink from the government and gun controllers by asserting that their weapons are Modern Sporting Rifles. Sunshine Patriots is what I see.
These are weapons designed as tyranny defense weapons to be used for a military purpose. Charlton Heston popularized the “cold dead hands” battle cry. I have no interest in dying, and neither should you. That’s why you should own an assault weapon. And instead of begging like a slave to be allowed your arms or attempting to place the blame on a scapegoat, each gun owner should defiantly say, “If you come for my guns, I will fucking kill you. And when I’ve killed you, I’m going to kill the motherfucker that sent you.”
Here’s a little Stone Sour for you. I’ve been waking up this for weeks. Damn it rocks socks.
(once again, I am neither attempting to incite, nor intend to engage in violence)
I’m done with you Walter Steed.
Walter Steed is the president of the Moscow City Council. Walter Steed is also a Republican.
Several years ago during a Latah County GOP meeting I gave Mr. Steed a small public tongue lashing over his statements about being pro-small business while at the same time advancing a smoking ban in Moscow. Now he has signed on with Mayor Nancy Chaney asking for an assault weapons ban among other things. PDF here: Moscow_gun_control_23JAN2013.
Look, this is something I’d expect from the mayor; a democrat in by far the most blue county in the state. But Steed. I’m done with you sir. You’re a petty thug and pathetic little wannabe tyrant. But for the fact that you have David Duke and the rest of Moscow PD in your corner you’d likely be getting swirlies at the hands of high school girls because the boys wouldn’t find you worth their time and effort.
If you want to know who Mr. Steed is, watch this video and you’ll get the spirit of the man (it isn’t actually him).
Make note, the mayor in the video mentions that the man that moved to have weapons removed from the meeting is the same guy that tried banning the wearing of hats, not far removed from Mr. Steed voting to ban smoking. Again, as with yesterday’s post, the Second Amendment exists to turn those weapons on an invading foreign soldiery, quell insurrections, and as a doomsday provision to protect us from our own government once it turns tyrannical.
It is telling that those same men that seem to think it’s okay to control and micromanage our lives, in effect, people who think they OWN you are the same people WHO WANT TO TAKE THE VERY FIREARMS YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO DEFEND YOURSELF FROM THEM WITH. Of course your oppressor wants to keep you unarmed.
Show some dignity and honor Mr. Steed and leave office. Now. You will not be re-elected.
(again, as with yesterday, I don’t necessarily think Walter Steed is a bad person, but in the end we are a product of our actions)
(allow me to begin by noting I am not intending to engage in, or incite violence)
Now, you people need to stop lying. All of you are engaging in dishonesty.
The University of Idaho’s student paper published an article regarding gun control and applied their usual lean to it. My expectations of the Argonaut (which has more editors than pages) have been pretty low since one of their editors referred to the events of Lexington and Concord on April 19th, 1775 as “terrorist acts”. But this isn’t about the Argonaut, but rather two esteemed gentlemen quoted.
First, let us go to the Chief of Police in Moscow, David Duke. Mr. Duke is quoted in the Argonaut thusly:
The letter was based on a memo issued by Moscow Police Chief David Duke that laid out actions the police department believes would limit gun violence. The letter included the following recommendations: defining and limiting assault weapons, stricter requirements for background checks, limiting access to high capacity magazines, increasing documentation of gun sales, controlling and recording the sale of ammunition, support of national standards for concealed carry permits, mandating of a database including a fingerprint for every gun sold and steps to ensure law enforcement can mandate and encourage safe gun ownership.
The Second Amendment exists for a military purpose…that the body of the people be capable of bearing arms in defense of enemies foreign and domestic. Our founders were rarely in lockstep in agreement on anything, but there was nearly no notion more universally agreed upon than that of standing armies being anathema to liberty. Today’s standing army is not the military, but rather the modern police force. They do the policing that was done by standing armies in times past.
Moscow Police Chief David Duke advocates limiting assault weapons. He should. His position is completely understandable, because the purpose of assault weapons are to shoot government agents. Men like police officers. Mind you, the Second Amendment exists as a doomsday provision. I am not advocating violence against government agents. We must do our best to use peaceful means before resorting to arms. As a lawyer, I clearly believe the legal path to be ideal.
A week ago I sat in a courtroom and witnessed a Latah County Sheriff’s Deputy admit to making bigoted statements against a homosexual defendant. I witnessed this very same deputy, who just so happens to be the son of Moscow Police Chief David Duke WHO WANTS TO LIMIT ACCESS TO ASSAULT WEAPONS(in case you’ve already forgotten), admit in open court that the law enforcement profession as a whole is homophobic. During this same hearing I watched as the court uncovered that potentially exculpatory evidence against the defendant was withheld from not just defense counsel, but also the prosecutor’s office.
Take a moment and let this all sink in as context the next time a law enforcement officer makes his opinion about your ability to own an assault weapon known.
As an aside, I’d like to add that I think that neither of these men are necessarily bad people, but that’s a discussion for another day.
I just finished watching Wayne LaPierre’s response to the current gun debate. He’s wrong. Dead wrong. Armed guards at school? Schools are meant to be educational centers, not prisons. The introduction of police officers into schools has been detrimental to the dignity of students, fourth amendment rights, and have made schools less safe. Now we want to place even less capable rent-a-cops in our schools?
There’s nothing wrong with introducing guns in schools. If you want to let teachers arm themselves, that’s not a cure-all, but it will make the situation better and increase survivability. However, introducing rent-a-cops who use of violence to resolve problems will cause serious problems around a bunch of smartass teenagers. You are effectively taking the TSA and forcing our kids to deal with them daily. If you subject your child to that, well…
And Wayne, grow a pair. Don’t blame this on violence on TV and video games. That’s the dumbest argument I can think of. My guess is that you aren’t that stupid, simply morally corrupt enough to toss someone else under the bus to save your own ass.
Have you ever seen Japan? You know what’s more common in Japan than guns in America? I’ve got 3 words for you buddy:
Tentacle rape porn. (You’re scared to click aren’t you? Don’t worry, it’s a wiki site)
That stuff is practically mainstream. It’s some of the most vile, offensive, disgusting trash on earth. Yet, at least according to this site, Japan ranks #45 in the world for rape. They play the same violent video games we do. They don’t have our problems with violence.
But there’s another takeaway from the NRA press conference. Why do we need our “assault weapons”? 2012 has left us with a markedly less free country than in 1994 during the initial Assault Weapons Ban. Both sides of the spectrum are to blame for this, but big government has backed us into a corner with no cultural or idealogical shift toward liberty on the horizon. Now, with our backs against the wall you seek to take our teeth.
FUCK. THAT. SHIT.
The second amendment exists expressly to protect us not from school shooters, but from IMPERIAL PRESIDENTS. When now even the NRA is advocating reviewing freedom of expression and increasing government influence in our lives, there is something desperately wrong with things. But again, back to the press conference. Big government liberal, you are aggressing upon me every single day. I have never come after you. NOT ONCE. I have never tried to take something that you do away. I let you say what you want, eat / drink what you want, marry who you want. But you come for my money. You come for my guns. You don’t let me smoke in the bar. You won’t let me ride in the back of a pickup. And you interrupt this press conference multiple times, while your cronies in the press interrupt and demand a response to your rude protests. You come for my speech. What, but with a chain around my neck will you allow me? I wouldn’t care about my guns if you weren’t coming for everything else. I have never come for you. I have nowhere else to go, or else I would. Please, I implore you, stop backing me into a corner. You won’t like me when I’m angry.
This post is going to be long and you will be offended.
I’ve found myself being hypercombative after the Newtown shooting. My heart hurts. I’ve had a pit in my stomach since I first heard about this. Initially it was because people couldn’t wait one single day before opining on the how’s and why’s of the shooting. Before the sun had set, people were using the blood of these kids to advance their own personal agendas. And listen Mr. President, stop telling me about your “thoughts and prayers”. What a terrible thing to say. You are PC’ing this. You are saying that you’re praying (to show that you care) and that you have your thoughts (in the event prayer is offensive). But overall my anger at this found a place due to the fact that everyone is wrong. “Thoughts and prayers” are a canned phrase. It means you have done neither.
You want to know why this happened? It happened because we live in a free country. Occasional chaos is the price is liberty. In a free country people are allowed to own weapons to protect themselves. In a free country we do not eschew due process and involuntarily commit the mentally ill on mere suspicion or the affidavit of a doctor. Freedom isn’t free. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: stop thanking the vets so much. We are volunteers. The price of freedom isn’t just our blood. In this case the price of freedom was the blood of children who never got the chance to raise their hand for anything but to ask for a bathroom break. Honor them, thank them, and recognize their sacrifice. I would absolutely hate to be the person to tell this to one of the parents, but on a societal / utilitarian level, their sacrifice is a fair trade.
Everyone is looking for a solution and it nearly always comes down to a singular solution. Arm teachers some say, ban guns say others. There are calls for funding toward mental health issues and increasing metal detectors and police at our schools. Wrong, wrong, wrong. No single thing could resolve this. However, there is a solution: do it all. Let’s ban guns. Let’s put metal detectors in schools. Let’s put cameras everywhere and a policeman in every classroom. Let’s put people in mental institutions for mental issues all the way down to ADHD. Let’s mandate knives have their points blunted. Honestly, this won’t solve school violence completely, but everything is a game of odds, and each thing we do can increase the odds that our children will be safe. You don’t want to live in a police state? Well, then you must accept that sometimes bad things happen.
You want to stop school shootings? Banning guns isn’t going to do it. Guns are everywhere. They are antiquated technology and as we speak they are becoming more and more available to every man. The exciting world of 3d printers will be arming us cheaply within 10 years. Secondly, as the gunnies say, criminals don’t follow the law. Many times these guns are stolen.
But gunnies are every bit as emotionally uncritical in their thoughts when it comes to gun issues. I often hear that prohibition doesn’t work. Well, prohibition DOES work. It just isn’t a silver bullet. It’s part of a solution. Why did this shooter get a gun? Because his mother legally had access to one. Oftentimes gunnies point to the fact that these shootings happen in states with strict gun laws to show that prohibition doesn’t work. But we live in the United States where you can drive across an invisible, unchecked border, oftentimes very close to you, and purchase a gun, then turn right back around and use that gun in a “gun free” state.
But prohibition works to limit quantities and ease of access. A few months ago I watched Ted. My takeaway: I really want to try coke.
I haven’t. Do you now why? Because I don’t have a coke guy. I don’t have a coke guy because if someone put up a craigslist ad for some blow he would go to jail. Drug prohibition hasn’t made drugs go away, but it has limited the quantity and ease of access of drugs. So too would it be with guns. Limiting guns would not deter a dedicated attacker. McVeigh used fertilizer. But you have to remember that most of these people are losers. By definition a loser cannot succeed but for an easy opportunity. Guns provide that easy opportunity.
Gunnies claim that we should arm teachers. Some say that we should mandate arming teachers. I would surely support arming teachers who demonstrated skill and passed certain tests. I would not advocate mandating arming teachers. Teachers need to be teachers. I do not choose cops to educate my children, and I would not choose a teacher to protect my child. Many teachers are boobs, indoctrination machines for the state. I know more than a few people in the gun circles I run in that I do not trust being around with firearms. I don’t trust most teachers with my daughter’s education. I surely don’t trust those same people with her safety.
Many gunnies have a fascination with firearms. I liken this to the dwarves I saw in the Hobbit last night. As they are balancing on a mountain ledge that becomes a giant mountain man who is fighting another mountain you see them with both hands on their little axes when, if they had any sense they’d have long sheathed that thing and grabbed the sides of the mountain. We have a saying the Corps, “One Mind, Any Weapon.” A substantial portion of gunnies, fat, lazy, out of shape, seem to think that that pistol will protect them. That if only there was an armed person there it would stop the problem right there. It’s possible. But it’s unlikely. As I often say, it’s a game of odds. What if the armed teacher is in the bathroom? What if the armed teacher is like one of the cops in New York earlier this year that shot up a bunch of bystanders instead of the bad guy?
But on the flip side my liberal friends, let us assume that we have a mass shooter. He is confronted by (let’s go with a really absurd scenario) 10 armed citizens and they all start blazing away, each hitting and killing 2 innocent people. 20 dead. Well, if we’re talking Newtown, Virginia Tech, etc, I’d say that was a fair trade to stop a mass killer.
God. Perhaps the most absurd argument I’ve heard, and it’s a big one, is that these shooting happen because we have removed God and prayer from school. Mind you, I believe in God, but I actually had a post removed from an Idaho gun facebook group for challenging this position. Is there any answer sillier than assuming that a jealous bearded sky man is the explanation? Let me ask, where was God in 1966 at the University of Texas then? We had prayer in school then. That’s right, he was getting his ass kicked by a mentally ill Marine and his rifle. By blaming this on removing prayer from school, you are effectively saying that you think we should do nothing. Such a position makes you a fool.
Liberals say we should put cops and metal detectors in schools. These same liberals sat next to me and said that I should not be allowed to be armed on campus because they would not feel safe and in a healthy educational environment if they don’t know if I’m carrying. Well dumbass, how well do you think my child is going to learn when his school looks like a prison? How well do you drive when there’s a cop behind you? That’s how well my kid is going to learn when she runs into a half dozen cops on her way to the restroom. And don’t think for a minute that cops in schools wouldn’t translate over to incursions on our children’s health and rights in the expanding drug war. It’d be no different than how the Patriot Act is used not to prevent terrorism, but to expand the drug war.
But instead of looking at the gun itself, let’s consider a non-gun solution that might be more effective. Consider a panic alarm. It sits right next to the fire alarm. Pull the alarm and every door in the school locks, openable only from the inside. This seems more effective at buying time for first responders than hoping that maybe there’s a person carrying a pistol.
Then there’s the impending fears of a gun ban. I just had to sell my AR15 a month ago and now am really regretting it. I don’t think it’s possible to pass an assault weapons ban, but this event has a very 9/11 feel to it. It wouldn’t surprise me if one did get passed. If I had the money I’d buy a few rifles just to ensure that my children will be armed. Now, I’m not saying that this event is part of a gun ban conspiracy, but I would like to point out that gun bans worldwide generally come after a similar event. Surely those that wanted the ban have been waiting for this event in order to take advantage. But also, is it really that difficult to assume that our government would plan or allow such a thing in the interests of passing such a ban?
I would urge this government to take caution. You have half of this country that feels deeply disenfranchised. They feel as if their president is a Marxist. They fear. They fear his social policies will unravel the country. They believe in God and however misplaced their personal religious feeling are, they ARE clinging to their guns and their bibles. They are doing so proudly. Many people see that rifle hanging over the fireplace as the last security blanket. They feel like they can abide the socialism and that all is not lost, because if it gets out of hand, they have that rifle to fix things. I’m not saying whether they are right or wrong. I am only saying that these people will feel backed into a corner and if you come after their guns, there is potential for trouble.
All this said, I come down on the “cold dead hands” position when it comes to guns. Gunnies are often dumbasses. But the Second Amendment exists to protect us from the government. This is a utilitarian position. Occasional chaos is the price of freedom, and that’s a fair price, albeit often quite painful. A few thousand gun deaths each year is an acceptable price to keep the people sufficiently armed to prevent the murder of millions by the state.
And if you think that banning guns will end school shootings, or that the state will never step out of line to fire on their citizens, remember Kent State.
