All posts by Carl Bussjaeger

Firearms Policy & Law Analyst at The Zelman Partisans Personal Blog: https://www.bussjaeger.us/blog/
gun control, Media

Fakes Quotes, courtesy of victim disarmers and the lying media

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Liars lie. More große Lüge.

List of reasons people got shot last month makes grim reading
Parents Against Gun Violence summarised news reports as if they had been written in the first person voice, to underline how pointless these reasons are for death or serious injury.

“Quote:” A guest at my son’s New Year’s Eve party got drunk and wouldn’t leave, so I shot him dead.

Reality: There was a fight. The aggressor refused to leave, and was shot in self-defense. The defender was not charged.

“Quote:” Some guy dinged my door in a parking lot and we started arguing about it. We both had guns, so I shot him first.

Reality: “Victim” dinged a guy’s car, and they did get into an argument. “Victim” tried to draw a gun, so defender drew his and fired. Judge threw out the case, and the defender was released.

“Quote:” I accidentally ran over a dog with my car. The guy who owned the dog was really mad about it and was yelling at me, so I shot him dead.

Reality: Self defense; no charges filed.

“Parents Against Violence” — or “Parents Against Gun Violence”?* This brilliant example of große Lüge urinalism gives both versions of the group name — is pulling the standard trick of intermingling criminal use of firearms with justified self defense. They want you to equate defense with murder. All the better to manipulate the ill-informed into supporting “sensible gun laws.”

We have facts. They have disingenuous fake “quotes.”

But look which Metro published.

Edited to add footnote.
* While there is a “Parents Against Violence,” that is an Alabama-based group that doesn’t seem to be related to this. This list of “quotes” appears to have been lifted from the Facebook page of “Parents Against Gun Violence.”

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Uncategorized

große Lüge

The Big Lie. Gen Xers and later may not know the term, but some of us grew up knowing a little history.

“A big lie (German: große Lüge) is a propaganda technique. The expression was coined by Adolf Hitler, when he dictated his 1925 book Mein Kampf, about the use of a lie so “colossal” that no one would believe that someone “could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously.” Hitler falsely claimed the technique was used by Jews to blame Germany’s loss in World War I on German general Erich Ludendorff, who was a prominent nationalist and antisemitic political leader in the Weimar Republic.”

So. Make a lie so big that the gullible will assume no one could make that up, and repeat it so often that it works its way into thought processes and becomes the “truth.” While Hitler accused Jews of using the technique, his accusation was itself the epitome of the big lie.

I’ve found, though, that the große Lüge has another effect that… works even on those who question everything: Sheer frickin’ exhaustion and frustration.

I am the editor of the weekly TZP alert newsletter. The bulk of the news letter is a collation of RKBA-related news (and other items that I think will interest our readers). I scour media sources of various slants for news good and bad. I try to find stuff that never makes it onto your television screen.

I make a special effort to include material about what victim disarmers are up to. “Know your enemy” stuff.

große Lüge stuff, it turns out.

  • 90% of Americans want this gun control
  • Assault rifles are the favored weapon of criminals
  • Assault rifles are the same thing as assault weapons
  • 5.56 NATO is an incredibly high-powered “bullet”
  • Background checks would have stopped the Sandy Hook massacre
  • Guns are designed to be loud so you know to run
  • Guns aren’t loud enough to damage hearing
  • The TEC-9 is a submachine gun
  • Guns kill more people than car accidents
  • And the recent favorite lie that Congress eliminated background checks (the Social Security rule)

…and on and on and on, over and over and over…

The problem is, those long since debunked lies keep going like the zombie apocalypse. They annoy me. At one time, I hoped that by writing to “authorized journalists” I could potentially educate the merely ignorant, and put the ones deliberately distorting facts on notice that we know what they’re up to. But I can’t keep up. The lies spread like whack-a-mole with hydras instead of obnoxious little mammals.

So I rarely bother with that angle any longer. More usually, I’ll respond by penning a sarcastic post that blares the offender’s stupidity to the world. Or as much as might be paying attention to little ol’ me.

That’s mildly satisfying. For about thirty seconds. Until I see the next repeat of the same bloody große Lüge. So it has gotten to the point that I’ll be halfway through another piece…

…and give it up. Because the große Lüge will just pop up in another media hole anyway.

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gun grabbers, mindset, So Much Stupid!, You can't fix stupid

Intent

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LSU art student Jordan Marcell speaks of the “intent” in the creation of firearms. A lot.

Opinion: Guns dangerous by nature, effects not containable
“Even when not performing their purpose, the ever present danger with firearms, is that— somehow— they will.”

Too much, and yet still misses two points.

Let’s start with that intent. Marcell claims to believe that firearms are simply built to be deadly destroyers of biological life, and that this is a continuing and progressive trend towards ever more deadly weapons. If that were true, there would be no handguns produced, as long guns can project bigger, faster, more damaging rounds than could — effectively — any handgun. If simple killing were the goal, I’d stick to a AR-15 pattern rifle and a vest full of 30 round magazines, and junk the compact polymer pistol in wimpy 9mm which I do carry everyday.

I don’t carry that handgun to kill. I carry it to defend myself (and others, should the circumstances warrant). My handgun was not designed by Ruger to be the penultimate killing machine. It’s designed to be carried routinely and comfortably and to provide basic protection.

Or take this little number.

Does anyone seriously believe that was designed for anything other than punching holes in paper? One could use it to kill, but so could such a determined person bash in his victim’s skull with Marcell’s coffee mug.

Next, consider Marcell’s fear that all firearms will perform the deadly purpose mistakenly attributed to the inanimate gadgets.

According the CDC, in 2015, 36,252 people died by firearm; that includes homicide and legal intervention (such as self-defense) and accidents. We’ll pretend each death was accomplished with a separate firearm: 36,252 guns.

Conservative estimates of firearms in civilian hands in America range from the wildly implausible 265 million to a more likely 500 million, to a possibly over the top 750 million.

If you studied math, rather than Marcell’s “Studio Art” you probably see where I’m going with this.

36,252 firearms were seemingly used in accordance with the “intent” Marcell believes imbued their design. Out of 265-750 million firearms. If Marcell were correct then — conservatively — 99.98632% of firearms suffered gross design failures: 264,963,748 guns failed to kill anyone (as they are allegedly designed to do).

You’d think that if 60-130 million gun owners (estimates vary as wildly as estimates of firearms) thought their guns had malfunctioned, there would be a monumental class action lawsuit wending its way through the courts. As some anonymous Internet wag noted, “If guns kill people, where are mine hiding the bodies?”

Or, just maybe, those inevitable deadly effects are “containable,” because of the intent of the owners.

There is no “intent” conferred upon firearms. As always, intent resides in the person operating it. Yes, even in negligent or accidental discharges, some had the intent to do something — likely stupid — with the gun.

So Marcell missed two points. Did you notice a third point which he implied?

“A firearm, as a tool, is an instrument that was created with the purpose of eliminating biological life— or killing, if you prefer that term.”

“Killing.” He fails to distinguish between murder and self defense. Or to differentiate between murder and hunting for food. Or murder and putting down a terminally suffering animal. Even in “killing” intent varies. Unless one is a liberal arts student incapable of more than simplistic over-generalizations bearing no resemblance to reality.

If Marcell equates all killing to murder, I wonder what our young student eats. Surely not meat, yet…

And you who feed on nothing but plants
Don’t hold your pride so high
For plants are living, and just might feel
And they take so long to die.
– Fisher’s Chant, Leslie Fish

Does Marcell heartlessly murder suffering plants for sustenance?

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genocide, gun grabbers

Wounded Knee

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The massacre of Lakota men, women, and children occurred on December 29, 1890.

320px-woundedknee1891

From Wikipedia:

On the morning of December 29, the troops went into the camp to disarm the Lakota. One version of events claims that during the process of disarming the Lakota, a deaf tribesman named Black Coyote was reluctant to give up his rifle, claiming he had paid a lot for it. A scuffle over the rifle ensued and by the time it was over, more than 150 men, women, and children of the Lakota had been killed and 51 were wounded (4 men and 47 women and children, some of whom died later); some estimates placed the number of dead at 300.

Victim disarmament. Where have we seen that before?

But only police and military should have guns. Right?

 

 

Right?

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gun control, gun grabbers, hoplophobia, mindset, So Much Stupid!

Sandy Hook: My Failure?

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I don’t think so.

When will it end?
The killings on December 14, 2012 at Sandy Hook Elementary School will be forever remembered as a monumental failure of otherwise law-abiding gun owners to take responsibility for their freedoms.

I don’t know when it will end. But it seems highly unlikely that it will completely end until overly-emotive nonthinkers like Mr. Nehring base their victim disarmament decisions on reality rather than fantasy.

Let’s talk about the “failures” of law-abiding gun owner Mrs. Lanza.

  • Her son had mental problems. She spent years trying to address them.
  • She bought firearms through licensed dealers, going through background checks.
  • She reportedly kept most of her firearms locked up, some reports indicating specifically to keep them out of her son’s hands.

So what was her failure; what allowed her deranged son to get those guns and murder those people?

She fell asleep.

Yes, for those with no long-term memory, like Nehring, Mrs. Lanza’s son murdered her in her sleep so that he could steal the guns he would take to the school.

Many vocal gun owners refuse to acknowledge that with their freedoms come responsibility. Instead they try to sweep this tragic result under the rug.

I suppose in Nehring’s deranged world, he has a point. The right to sleep without being murdered is not specifically enumerated in the Bill of Rights.

Ban sleep and high capacity king-sized beds.

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mindset

A good guy with a

…sprinkler system.

24 bodies recovered in Oakland warehouse fire; 80% of building still much be searched
The death toll from the fire that raced through an Oakland warehouse during a music concert rose to 24 as searchers continued sift through the ruin of one of the deadliest fires in modern California history.

Those with a vested interest in a disarmed, helpless populace would have us believe that a good guy with a gun stopping something bad is a myth. They carefully maintain that false narrative by ignoring numerous cases of exactly that. Or, worse, pretending the bad guy had a gun and no one else did. Every case of some asshole managing to do bad things — no matter how transiently — is viewed as proof that us “should-be” serfs must be unarmed for the common “good” (presumably the “good” of violent criminals who have a right to a safe workplace).

But how things change. In last week’s Oakland warehouse fire, in which…

  • the structure was being used as a multi-dwelling residence
  • the building lacked required fire alarms
  • the building lacked required fire sprinklers
  • unapproved wooden structures had been erected within
  • “rooms” were created by hanging flammable curtains
  • welding of “art works” was apparently being done
  • and an unlicensed rave was reportedly being held

…I haven’t seen a single call for banning the private possession of fire extinguishers. No one has screamed that zoning laws and building codes didn’t work (and apparently were actively ignored by authorities) and should be repealed.

In fact, crappy fire inspections seem to be a known problem in Oakland.

Let’s compare. Some asshole attacks a dozen people with car and blade, and if a private citizen doesn’t stop him with a gun, that’s a failure of our lax gun laws, and clearly proves that Evil Black Rifles should be banned.

But dozens die when the city fails to enforce its own rules, leaving the mess to firefighters on the ground, and…

-crickets-

I sense a double standard here.

Ed. note: This commentary appeared first in TZP’s weekly email alert. If you would like to be among the first to see new commentary (as well as to get notice of new polls and recaps of recent posts), please sign up for our alert list. (See sidebar or, if you’re on a mobile device, scroll down). Be sure to respond when you receive your activation email!

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Elsewhere, gun control, Media, Uncategorized

Google Strikes Back

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I do the majority of the news aggregation for the TZP weekly email alert. Despite my dislike of Google, I have been making use of its news search function to find articles for a preset collection of phrases (“gun control,” “victim disarmament,” “common sense gun laws,” “gun free zone,” “firearms legislation.” Google sucks in many ways, but its news search function used to work better than most search engines.

Until this morning. Today, I discovered that my Google news bookmarks no longer work. For one, they no longer lead to just the news feed; it’s all web results. Not terribly useful for what I’m doing.

For another, Google now resets all my other search terms to “gun control.” “Victim disarmament?” Never heard of it. Ditto the rest. So cleared cache and cookies, and…

Search results are bizarre, as well. When I finally get to news for “victim disarmament” (I must now first hit the “news” tab for another term, then manually type “victim disarmament” and enter; repeat for every search phrase), I get…

Land mines. Military atrocities in the Ivory Coast. Columbia and FARC.

“OSU attack” gives me “Muslim Community Fears Backlash After Ohio State Attack” as the top result. You have to scroll down a bit to discover that a good guy with a gun stopped a car/blade attack.

I’m reminded of how Google disappeared Climategate search results a few years ago.

Here’s an interesting comparison. First up, we have the initial results page generated by Startpage (a privacy-enhancing frontend to Google, which strips out personal identifying data from queries to Google). The search phrase is “does google favor gun control?a”.

google-gun-control

Nothing to see here. Now to Bing (being Microsoft, not normally a preferred search tool).

bing-gun-control

How ’bout that first result? “Google Exercises Gun Control – Freedom Outpost”.

If anyone else cares to test Google’s bias, feel free to post results in comments. Myself, Google is gone from my search tools (mostly; I’ll keep on bookmark for future comparison testing).

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authoritarian swine, gun control, Politics

Trump’s Appointee Choices

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In the days leading up to the recent Presidential popularity contest, I tried to make my posts nonpartisan, attempting not to single out any one party’s candidate(s). But now that Donald Trump is the President Apparent (not “Elect” just yet, despite most news services referring to him as such), his plans and policies are fair game: what he does will affect Americans.

The Zelman Partisans have noted (repeatedly) that his historical take on RKBA (as opposed to his recent words) is…

Let us say, “Troubling.”

Current reports have it that former NYC mayor Rudy Giuliani is on The Donald’s short list for Secretary of State, and possibly Attorney General.

Freedom lovers in general, and RKBA supporters specifically, should be extremely concerned. As even Bloomberg’s anti-gun The Trace has it…

Rudy Giuliani Has the Kind of Gun Control Record That Gets Presidential Appointees Savaged By the NRA
Would the NRA and Senate GOP apply to Giuliani the same unrelenting pro-gun litmus test they’ve applied to President Barack Obama’s nominees for the better part of a decade? Or would they retreat from their principled, uncompromising gun-rights stance in deference to a new Republican administration’s nominee?

A shame it took the antis to point this out. Yes, Giuliani backed waiting periods, background checks, “assault weapons” bans, licensing, registration, and seizures, all on both the state and national levels.

Giuliani also constructed NYC’s “stop & frisk” program. The one that was found to be unconstitutional. These days, “unconstitutional” is a pretty high bar, with virtually anything allowed. “Stop & frisk” was tossed not merely because it violated the highest law of the land, but because it didn’t work: the vast majority of stops resulted in no prosecution whatsoever; weapons (the main justification for the program) were found in only a tiny fraction of one percent of stops. Minorities were overwhelmingly selected for searches. “Stop & frisk” couldn’t even meet the incredibly lenient “unconstitutional but necessary for public safety” test applied by moronic courts.

Consider: Weapons bans and restrictions, quasi-legal searches, racial/ethnic targeting, confiscations, preferential licensing…

Where have we heard that before?

President Apparent Donald Trump’s choices of high level appointees almost seem designed to validate the worst pre-election fears of those who noted the man’s past disregard for human/civil rights.

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gun control, Inspiration, mindset, self defense

Larry Correia: A Handy Guide For Liberals Who Are Suddenly Interested In Gun Ownership

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When I saw this, I automatically grabbed the link for next Monday’s Alert Newsletter. But… whew. This shouldn’t wait for another week (for those of you not yet familiar with Larry Correia, and his great books).

A Handy Guide For Liberals Who Are Suddenly Interested In Gun Ownership
That title isn’t joking. This post is aimed at my liberal readers. I’m a libertarian leaning Republican and gun expert, who thinks you are wrong about a lot of stuff, but I’m not writing this to gloat about your loss. For the record, I disliked all the presidential candidates.

Judging by your social media over the last few days many liberals have been utterly terrified that your government might turn tyrannical or that evil people will now be emboldened to hurt you. I’m going to let you in on a little thing the other half of the country is familiar with to keep those unlikely, yet catastrophic, events from happening.

[…]

Many of you have been sharing every second hand account, rumor, and urban legend about some random doofus in Somnambulant, Wisconsin or Bumfight, Louisiana, shouting an ethnic slur or spray painting a swastika on a wall. Newsflash, in a country with a third of a billion people, some percentage of them are going to be assholes. I hate to break it to you, but the assholes were there before, and they will be there forever. Just right now the news has a self-serving incentive to report about these assholes in particular.

[…]

Calling the cops is awesome. If they get there in time they will be happy to save your ass, but that’s assuming they get there in time. Violent encounters usually happen very quickly. Good police response time is measured in minutes. You can be dead in seconds. Plus, your side is the one that doesn’t trust the cops anyway. It isn’t Republicans out there protesting the police. So why is it you expect agents of the state to risk their lives to save you? Gratitude?

[…]

So no, you can’t just shoot somebody walking down the street in a Trump hat. That would be Murder. Or considering most liberals don’t understand basic marksmanship, more likely Attempted Murder. However, if somebody dressed entirely in Confederate flags walks up, screams DIE GAY ABORTION VEGAN and tries to stab you with his commemorative Heinrich Himmler SS dagger, it’s game on (don’t blame me, I’m basing this hypothetical scenario on what most of your facebook feeds sound like).

[…]

Contrary to what Barack Obama told you, Glocks are not easier to get than books. Hell, I’ll trade an autographed copy of each of my published novels for a Glock if you’ve got any spares lying around.

[…]

That’s the real meaning of the 2nd Amendment. So don’t screw around with it. If you do you’re no better than the fat wannabes running around the woods in their surplus camo and airsoft plate carriers… You don’t get that, but all my gun culture readers know exactly who I’m talking about. They are the morons CNN trots out whenever they need to paint all gun owners as irresponsible inbred redneck violent dupes for your benefit.

[…]

READ THE WHOLE THING

Seriously; read the whole thing. Forget TL;DR. He’s right, and entertaining. Forward his piece to all your lib friends huddling with crayons and play dough in their safety-pinned safe spaces.

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