Danger of gun control – my explanation

Many gun grabbers challenge us by asking why we don’t want more gun control laws. After all, why wouldn’t we want to make the nation safer?

Many of them just don’t understand the unintended (or intended) consequences.

Background checks. Fingerprint technology. Onerous licensing requirements. These things all require money – whether it’s funding for a bigger bureaucracy, databases, research, resources for investigators. It is resources the government has to spend on new databases for background checks. It is resources it has to spend on funding new research and technologies. It is resources gun shops (many of which are small businesses) have to expend on paperwork, legal bills, etc.

These are cost increases they invariably pass on to their customers.

Guns are already fairly expensive – several hundred dollars for a basic pistol.  It’s a fairly sizeable investment – especially for people who are struggling in this economy. If faced with the choice of armed self defense, or food on the table, I’m betting most would choose food.

Making guns even more expensive through regulation makes them cost prohibitive for many poor folks, who may live in neighborhoods that don’t have the gates and the armed guards that people like Bloomberg and Shannon Watts can afford.

By making self defense tools cost prohibitive to poor people, we are depriving them of their ability to defend themselves with the most effective tools on the market today.

Meanwhile, the background checks, the technology, the bureaucracy, and research do nothing to deter criminals from getting their hands on guns.  Most get guns illegally, or from a family member or friend, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

In 2004, among state prison inmates who possessed a gun
at the time of offense, fewer than 2% bought their firearm
at a flea market or gun show, about 10% purchased it from
a retail store or pawnshop, 37% obtained it from family or
friends, and another 40% obtained it from an illegal source

So while gun controllers make tools of defense more inaccessible to people who truly need them, criminals continue to purchase them with impunity, and there’s not a single law that will prevent a criminal from violating it.

As a good buddy of mine, who just happens to be a sheriff and 30-year law enforcement veteran says, “Laws are for the law-abiding.”

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Look closely at those who seek to lead us

Greetings!

My name is Y.B. ben Avraham. I am honored to have been asked by the inestimable Claire Wolfe to join this new venture; the Zelman Partisans.

~~~

Nearly twenty-six hundred years ago the once-great land of Israel was a shambles. After generations of internal strife, the mighty army of Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II had utterly defeated Judah, sacked Jerusalem, and destroyed the focal point of the Jewish People; the Holy Temple. Their last King, Zedekiah, was blinded and led into exile. The wealthy, industrious, and educated were marched towards Babylonia, stopping briefly at an encampment at Riblah, wherein the majority of these exiles were simply slaughtered. Most of what remained was a scattering of dispirited farmers & shepherds.

Hoping to rebuild his new colony, the Babylonian king appointed one Gedaliah ben Ahikam as territorial Governor. Gedaliah’s father had saved the life of the prophet Jeremiah. When given the option of staying, or accompanying the remaining exiles to Babylonia, Jeremiah stayed and helped Gedaliah govern from Mizpah. Their intent was to rebuild from scratch, and in following Torah, fulfill the Covenant with G-d.

So successful was this effort that many Jews, having fled the war to neighboring lands, began to return and rebuild. One Ishmael ben Netanya was among the refugees. A descendant of Zedekiah’s household, he was also a close ally of the King of Ammon. Intensely jealous of Gedaliah’s successes, ben Netanya plotted to kill Gedaliah and with the help of Ammon, gain power over the colony.

The plot was discovered and reported to Gedaliah, but such was his nature, that he refused urgings that the plot be ended by the capture and killing of Ishmael ben Netanya and his men. Instead, Gedaliah accepted Ismael’s request to attend the Rosh Hashanah feast at Mizpah. Gedaliah arrived with ten men, and when opportune, Ishmael and his men killed the garrison, murdered Gedaliah, and taking hostages, fled towards Ammon.

Terrified that Nebuchadnezzar, in revenge at the murder of his appointed governor, Gedaliah, would order the wholesale slaughter the rest of the Jews, the people fled, in a stunning reversal of the events which forged their Covenant some nine hundred years before, towards Egypt.

At the urging of the prophet Jeremiah they stopped at Beit Lechem for his advice. Jeremiah prayed to G-d for ten days and obtained a divine message. G-d told the people that if they remained in the land he would rebuild them and that Babylonia would not destroy them, but that if they fled to Egypt their misfortunes would follow and they would suffer the very fate they feared.

The people abjectly refused. Furthermore, they accused Jeremiah of plotting to turn them over to Nebbuchadnezzar’s Chaldean Guard himself, and forced Jeremiah to accompany them. At the border, he tried again, and they refused again. The people settled in Egypt, abandoning faith in G-d and descending once again to the practices of the Egyptians.

A few years later the Egyptian Pharaoh Hophra was assassinated and Nebuchadnezzar seized to opportunity. He invaded and destroyed the land, and most of the Jewish exiles died in the invasion and war. Jeremiah’s prophesy had been tragically fulfilled.

~~~

Several lessons might be learned from this tragedy. First and foremost (for those so disposed) is that faith in G-d and obeying his will is the only truly successful path. Second, is that civil war carries horrific, long-term consequences, often worse than war in general, and should be strenuously avoided.

Also, strangely, is the lesson that sometimes collaborators can be good and nationalist rebels can be bad. Gedaliah was unquestionably a collaborator; an appointee of a savage invader, protected by their garrison. Ishmael ben Netanya was from the royal family. He sought an alliance with Ammon to kill a puppet governor, defeat the garrison, and drive out the Babylonian invaders from his ancestral lands.

And yet, what was Gedaliah’s true goal? It was to slowly, yet inexorably, restore the people, the land, and the Covenant. So firm was his conviction and his love, that he risked his own death in seeking the noble goal. On the other hand, Ishmael’s true heart was revealed as he fled to the protection of Ammon and faded into history. His goal was merely glory and power over others.

As this nation slides again towards probable civil war, we should look very closely at those who seek to lead us, influence us, or speak for us.  While standing on principle is crucial, it is very easy to be both manipulated by others and to fall victim to passion, fear, and rash judgement.

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DC – Nothing much has changed

Those celebrating the demise of the DC gun ban may want to hang on a bit. If you think your freedoms have been restored in the nation’s capital, that is just not true.

To be sure, it was yet another kick in the groin of statist gun grabbery when a US District judge ruled  in July that Washington DC’s ban on carrying guns outside the home was unconstitutional.

In the ruling, Judge Frederick Scullin ordered the DC government to stop enforcing DC’s odious ban on carrying firearms.  Two days later – two days of unbridled joy and freedom – the District was granted a motion to stay the ruling until it could either appeal or adjust.

That adjustment came in the form of new licensing laws that make it odiously difficult to get a license to carry.

As of October 22, a DC resident may apply for a license. Good luck getting one, however. DC officials claim that merely fearing for your safety in a city where you can get shot just for stepping foot in a particular neighborhood is not reason enough to be granted a license to carry.

Want to carry while sightseeing? Nope. Monuments are federal property, and Park Police won’t let you carry on the National Mall.

If you can prove you have a stalker, you may be granted your right to carry a firearm.

The mere idea that some government bureaucrat has the authority to “grant” you a right negates the very idea and principle of a right.

And the mere idea that you cannot exercise your right as a free person whenever you see fit without begging permission from a faceless, statist desk-jockey in the capital city of the only nation in the world whose Constitution expressly protects the people’s right to keep and bear arms is repugnant.

So don’t celebrate quite yet. While Palmer was a terrific blow to the gun grabbers’ cause, there’s a long way to go until we achieve freedom.

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Respect for Life

I’ve written numerous times about the gun grabbers’ lack of respect for human life. My contention is that they don’t consider life precious enough to protect. They don’t want the responsibility. They want to rely on the almighty state to protect them, and they want no one else to have that option.

Nowhere is that fact more obvious than on the Mothers Demand Gunsense in America Twitter feed. The #gunsense feed is rife with Mad Mommies and their henpecked husbands dutifully reposting every bit of spew that flies from the ever-so poisonous mind of Shannon Watts – the Bloombergian Stepford Monster who heads the hysterical mommy group.

I won’t post photos of every abusive post, but I would like to point out that their jokes about murder, their sarcastic glee every time a crime is committed with a gun that results in the death of another human being, and their snide and very public hopes for the death of those who oppose them are indicative of a general attitude – an attitude of hatred.

life 1 life 2

People have a tendency to dehumanize their enemies – to paint them as something soulless and fundamentally different from themselves in order to trick their mind into accepting that the death wishes they heap on the opposition aren’t really being directed at other human beings.

Every story of murder they post, gleefully pointing to death by gun, not considering that the innocent victim in whose blood they dance to advance their political goals is an actual human being…

Every ill wish they heap toward their political opponents, snidely pontificating how great it would be if open carry advocates died by gunfire…

Every threat to call police and report an active shooter or another type of threat when they see a peaceable citizen doing nothing more than exercising the right guaranteed by the Second Amendment to the Constitution…

 

life 3

…is proof that these people couldn’t care less about actual lives.

What they care about is their political agenda, and they will stop at nothing – not even criminal acts – to get what they want.

IMG_1456

 

I carry. I carry concealed. I believe open carry – especially of long guns – is tacky and unnecessary.  Firearms are tools of defense – whether from street thugs or from government ones – not props for your attempts to shove your ability to carry down the throats of others. I also believe it’s tactically dumb. It gives those who are intent on committing crimes time to plan out their possible attack against you and robs you of the element of surprise.

That said, I won’t begrudge others their rights. I will not advocate disarmament of those whose tactics I find distasteful. I will not wish death on my opposition.

But then again, I have respect for life – both mine and others.

You obviously can’t say the same for the gun-grabbing crew of Bloomberg’s astroturf kingdom.

 

 

 

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Sukkot, Ushpizin and the duty to protect

We are now in the midst of Sukkot, the ancient Jewish harvest festival.

In English, it would be called the Festival of Booths or Festival of Tabernacles after the huts (Sukkah) observant Jews build for this time. Participants are supposed to dwell in the Sukkah in memory of ancestors who spent 40 years in the desert and in thanks for G-d’s blessings. In modern reality, that means serving meals and observing rituals in the Sukkah though you don’t have to sleep there. This is a happy time when people feast and share hospitality.

One part of Sukkot involves the Ushpizin or holy guests. The holy guests are traditionally the biblical characters of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Aaron, Joseph and David. The biblical Ushpizin are honored in various ways during Sukkot to get people thinking about their positive attributes and the lessons they can teach, but as portrayed in the wonderful 2004 Israeli movie “Ushpizin,” even some unlikeable living human beings can serve as Ushpizin. Sukkot is definitely a time of guests and socializing.

In Judiasm, hospitality has always been taken very seriously. This is true in all three Abrahamic religions, although some take it more seriously than others. Hosts owe very important duties to their guests, which teachers have often said are more important than any actual religious observances or proscriptions. One of those duties is a duty to protect. It’s not just one duty. Preserving life is the most important duty a Jew can perform.

In the case of hosts and guests, hosts must protect their guests from any danger or threat, even if the guests are complete strangers. Scriptures contain some harsh examples of this, like Lot offering his virgin daughters to a lustful mob rather than turning over to the mob a pair of strangers he was hosting. Ugly as some biblical examples are, they serve to show how important the duty to protect was and still is.

Today there are better ways than offering to throw girls to a mob. Effective arms are available to all who care enough to learn to use them and care enough about the duty to protect life to be prepared to use them. I ask Jewish antigunners, “How can you consider yourself prepared to protect anybody’s life if you are unprepared and unwilling to use best self defense tools available to you?”

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Gottlieb: The man who owns JPFO

From the great Herschel Smith:

As for Gottlieb, I always knew that the “stupid” act he played after support of Manchin-Toomey was a ruse. He has a deep character flaw that enables him to support totalitarian measures. We all have our flaws, but this one runs deep and dangerous. In fact, read again his excuse for supporting universal background checks. Basically it boils down to this: if you don’t voluntarily agree to it, they will do it anyway. Or by way of analogy, if you don’t give a pick pocket you money, he’s just going to take it anyway.

Someone please try to convince me that isn’t what he is saying, because it looks to me like it is. And that’s puerile and childish reasoning, and in this case I think he advances it not because he really believes that it is logically compelling, but because he is frightened, or a publicity hound, or something dark. As I said, I don’t know exactly what, but the character flaw runs deep in Alan.

Gottlieb appears to want universal background checks, despite his Washington state initiative that, on the surface, opposes them. The very short text (pdf) of his I-591 manages to include language completely unnecessary for the stated purpose of the measure — and it’s language that virtually invites the federal government to try again to impose the very UBCs he supported last year.

Gottlieb just wants background checks and the inevitable firearms registration on on terms that he considers favorable — even as everybody else in the gun-rights movement (even the normally limp and compromising NRA) draws their line in the sand in front of UBCs. And “favorable” means favorable to Gottlieb in some way.

What Gottlieb is up to, nobody really knows. The only thing anyone can be sure of is that whatever he’s up to will benefit Gottlieb. That’s been his way of business for a very long time.

One Jewish gun-rights activist I know calls Gottlieb a Kapo. The Kapos were prisoners, sometimes Jews, that the Nazis used to help them rule others in the concentration camps. The Nazis couldn’t do it alone, so they enlisted sellouts — men interested in saving their own skin and working to their own advantage — to help them rule and destroy their fellows.

Per Wikipedia:

The system was also designed to turn victim against victim, as the prisoner functionaries were pitted against their fellow prisoners in order to maintain the favor of their SS guards. If they were derelict, they would be returned to the status of ordinary prisoners and be subject to other kapos. Many prisoner functionaries were recruited from the ranks of violent criminal gangs rather than from the more numerous political, religious and racial prisoners; those were known for their brutality toward other prisoners. This brutality was tolerated by the SS and was an integral part of the camp system.

Prisoner functionaries were spared physical abuse and hard labor, provided they performed their duties to the satisfaction of the SS guards. They also had access to certain privileges, such as civilian clothes and a private room.

Yep, that shoe fits. When Gottlieb supported (and even claimed to have helped write) last year’s Manchin-Toomey-SCHUMER bill, he repeatedly cited petty privileges that the bill supposedly granted, ignoring the principles and rights it would have slaughtered and the millions of gun owners it would have put at risk.

And this is the man to whom JPFO’s weak, tired, willful, and (in one case) quite possibly senile board members sold Aaron Zelman’s legacy. That they sold it “on the cheap” and without even considering better options makes matters worse. But a Gottlieb-owned JPFO, cheap or dear, is a travesty and an abomination.

Poor Aaron. He must be so weary from rolling and rolling in his grave.

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A war of ideas, a religious war

Everyone should read this today. It is about ghosts, about gods, about G-d, about truths blowing away in harsh winds, about the islamist and statist chaos engulfing the world, and about we who are trying to uphold the truth that individuals and the rights of individuals matter.

And the disconnect between their collectivist ideologies /slash/ godless-religion and the deeply held beliefs of those of us who still revere the Founders, seek liberty, and worship the God of Abraham, Moses, David and the Christ could not be any more stark than that between us and the beheading savages of the Islamic State.

As I have observed before, we are a nation divided along the answer to the existential question, “Does the government serve the people or do the people serve the government?” This is a political question, yes. It is an intellectual question. It is a question of competing and mutually exclusive world views. It is thus also a moral question. It is a religious question. It is a question of blood and belief, to use Peters’ words.

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Hello from Vladka

Hello from newest blogger Vladka. My handle is a pseudonym in honor of Feigele “Vladka” Peltel Meed, a name more people should know.

Why a nym? Because today, as too often in history, there are things it’s not safe or at least not wise to say under a real identity.

I’m just introducing myself today and have nothing controversial to add yet to this wonderful new blog. While I’m here, though, I might as well add value. My namesake Vladka was one of the many women of the ghettos who had to make choices every day about who she would be and what she would do, even under circumstances where many people would say that there were no choices, or none but bad ones.

Every day, even in the most extreme oppression and danger, even the weak choose.

We are not weak or oppressed yet. We are still strong. Choose wisely while you’re still free and your choices may be less onerous later.

I’m grateful to have been chosen to blog here. Thank you.

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Defense Distributed and the spirit of resistance

The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it to be always kept alive. It will often be exercised when wrong, but better so than not to be exercised at all. I like a little rebellion now and then. It is like a storm in the Atmosphere. — Thomas Jefferson

The American Revolution had been over just three years when a group of Massachusetts farmers rose up against their state government and even tried to attack the (federal) Springfield Armory. Their reasons should have sounded familiar and noble to anybody who’d just lived through the revolt against England: unjust taxes and an unresponsive, corrupt, crony-filled government.

Instead of support and sympathy, however, Shay’s Rebellion was answered with outrage and hard-line crackdowns.

Thomas Jefferson was one of the few former revolutionaries who took the news of the rebellion with aplomb, even approval. While other former rebels (including the formerly rabble-rousing Samuel Adams) were calling for death for the Shaysites, Jefferson wrote the above words to Abigail Adams.

—–

I thought about Jefferson and the Shaysites (and for that matter the Whiskey Rebels) today after reading about Cody Wilson and Defense Distributed. This morning CW and DD announced a new product that authoritarians everywhere will hate and fear: the Ghost Gunner. As Wired puts it:

Continue reading Defense Distributed and the spirit of resistance

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