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Category Archives: Freedom

Quote of the Day–Me* 6/12/2013

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Good lord, that a lot of porn.  How could the NSA categorize it and make sure they have everyone’s kinks right?

Barron – Conversation

June 12th, 2013

[For context I read this article this morning which had this note in it:

Considering that, according to Cisco, the total world Internet traffic for 2012 was 1.1 exabytes per day…

My immediate thought was that was a whole lot of porn and bitching across the internet.  I then someone asked me why I said wow.  To which I informed them of the 1.1 exabyte estimate and immediately followed it with the quote above… It seems the prudent comment to make.

If you don’t understand why I would think that would be a prudent comment to make, I give you:

–B

*It’s my blog and I can quote myself if I damn well please!]

Quote of the Day–Brian Hauss(6/6/2013)

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To be sure, rummaging around through people’s personal papers may well turn up the occasional bad guy, but that is not the only consideration. No doubt law enforcement agents would also find it useful to walk into people’s homes at will, but we don’t allow them to do so because that would intrude on our reasonable expectation of privacy in our homes. And just as we reasonably expect privacy in our homes, so, too, do we expect that border agents will not base their decisions to search through our electronic information on a whim or a hunch. Put another way, requiring law enforcement agents to possess objective reasons for a search is a feature of our constitutional framework, not a bug.

(Emphasis mine.)

Brian Hauss – DHS Releases Disappointing Civil Liberties Report on Border Searches of Laptops and Other Electronics

June 5th, 2013

[For those who haven’t heard yet.  The DHS is claiming the following line of BS regarding searches at the border.

[A]dding a heightened [suspicion-based] threshold requirement could be operationally harmful without concomitant civil rights/civil liberties benefit. First, commonplace decisions to search electronic devices might be opened to litigation challenging the reasons for the search. In addition to interfering with a carefully constructed border security system, the litigation could directly undermine national security by requiring the government to produce sensitive investigative and national security information to justify some of the most critical searches. Even a policy change entirely unenforceable by courts might be problematic; we have been presented with some noteworthy CBP and ICE success stories based on hard-to-articulate intuitions or hunches based on officer experience and judgment. Under a reasonable suspicion requirement, officers might hesitate to search an individual’s device without the presence of articulable factors capable of being formally defended, despite having an intuition or hunch based on experience that justified a search.

Translation:  “We don’t need to specify a reason why we are seizing and searching your property.”

Now many may have forgotten so I will provide you an extra reminder of the area the DHS would like to claim as free from that pesky 4th Amendment.

For more on that go back and read my article on it (dated 2008).  So think about what the department of homeland security is claiming as within their legal abilities, and then think long and hard about that map where they can put up “border inspection points” at will.  Think your safe just because you don’t regularly travel out of the country?  Get real.

Listen folks, you either have these rights or you don’t.  They’re not predicated on some theory that you surrender them because you want to do X.  NO!  If the government wants to search my personal effects, they must present a case including evidence that I have committed a crime, or that I intend to harm another.  *Note I said harm, the war on drugs needs to go to!*  The only way you end up with this current view of the law is through twisted perversion and a lackadaisical attitude that say “I don’t care, what’s it matter?”

Just because I want to fly to visit my friends in Nashville, doesn’t mean I surrender my 4th amendment rights and agree to have someone fondle me and my wife.  It’s horse crap and frankly if we don’t stop it, it will just get worse.  There’s two options for stopping it, we get the courts to do their damn job, or well, use your imagination for the second option.

News flash folks, in a free land bad people some times end up doing bad things.  Its comes with territory.  Honestly though even in your perfect police state, the crazy guy can still do damage, even more so due to the delayed response.  Grow a pair, embrace the responsibility and with it experience freedom.  It’s freaking AWESOME. –B]

Quote of the Day–Tam (5/31/2013)

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A good start would be allowing everybody to serve as their own bodyguard because, when it comes right down to brass tacks, government can’t protect, only punish. Whether your assailant comes at you with ballistic missiles or butcher knives, all the .gov can do is retaliate after the fact.

Be Prepared: You will be your own first responder.

Tam – The government cannot save you.

May 31st, 2013

[As I’ve said before, and even put more succinctly here but it bears repeating.  You are the help, you are the rescue, you are the extraction team.  Accept it, learn it, love it.  -B]

I Don’t Think They Thought This Through…

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So Mom’s Demand Action, a wholly owned subsidiary of Michael Bloomberg, Inc. issued the following statement.  Most of note was this line:

The right of mothers to protect our children SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED.

Evidently in their twisted view of the world there are only a few acceptable means of defending your children.  One small problem with that, their statement in and of itself is full of hypocrisy.  Why?  Let me illustrate with 1000 words with help from A Girl.

DefensiveMom_2

A Girl and her daughter E.

You see, my immediate thought when I read that line of garbage, and it is garbage, was of her and E.  Immediately followed by my friend Laurel:

Image via Oleg Volk.

I could continue down the list of mothers I thought of who would stand opposed to what “Moms Demand Action” is claiming to be right.  Not only do they stand opposed, but the desires of Moms Demand Action stands as a direct infringement to prevent them from doing what they claim to be protecting.

No one is forcing you to pick up a rifle to defend your family.  If you don’t want to, fine, that’s your choice and your business.  If however someone does want to pick up a rifle to defend their family, no one has any right whatsoever to tell them they cannot.   Any attempt to tell a woman she cannot pick up a rifle to defend her children is an infringement on the right to protect their children.  As such, any attempt at gun control whereby arms are removed from the hands of law-abiding citizens is just such an infringement.

So I went through and fixed up their document while adding commentary:

A Mother’s Bill of Rights

We, as mothers, have the absolute right to protect our children families from harm. We have the right to know our children are safe from gun violence, from the moment they leave our arms in the morning until they return home later in the day.  (That sentence is false, see Warren v. District of Columbia.)  We have a right and responsibility to defend our families from those who might do them violence.  But the rights of Americans mothers are under attack by criminals, the gun lobby, and legislators and puritans  who wish to trample those rights while still sticking them with the responsibility are unable to stand up for common-sense gun reforms. The right of mothers people to protect their families our children SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED.

As mothers people, we have the right to…

 

  • Expect that assault weapons will remain in the hands of our military, not civilians that our right to keep and bear arms in defense of our families and children shall not be infringed.
  • Preserve our children’s innocence and shield them from gun any violence by taking any means necessary to stop it abruptly and swiftly without prejudice. in America, real and scripted(Really, scripted, why don’t you just turn off the TV instead of attacking Free Speech).
  • Demand that all public places remain gun-free zones;’ except private homes and shooting ranges allow the carry of defensive arms by those legally entitled to do so.
  • Know our children are safe in their schools: any school, anywhere, by allowing those who wish to defend our children the tools to do so.
  • Expect our teachers to be focused on teaching our children, not training to become armed guards.  (Because what a teacher does in their own time to defend themselves and your children is a bad horrible thing?)
  •  Demand that our government create the same strong regulations for guns as they have for toys, cars and food.  (Umm, did you miss the fact that firearms are more heavily regulated than all those things combined?)
  • Expect our leaders to put our children’s safety above the profit desire for power and influence of the gun industry those who hate and wish to deny us our rights and personal liberties.
  • Have access to complete, accurate information about the impact of gun violence on our families and communities personal responsibilities we have in ensuring our own family’s safety and wellbeing.
  • Hold our elected officials accountable for keeping our children safe from gun violence breaking their oath to support and defend the constitution.

Seriously, in what world does anything they wrote count as not an infringement.  You all keep using these words rights and infringements and I don’t think any of you on the other side really understand what a right is and what it means to infringe on one.

Not to mention it seems that they think some how their opinion is worth more merely because they are mothers.  Tell me, does the father’s opinion not matter?  Does the opinion of the desire of the husband to defend his wife count for nothing?  Just the same, does the opinion of the wife and mother to carry for the defense of her own family not matter?  No they would rather tell you, me, and everyone else how to live our lives.  Our opinion to them counts for jack.

It doesn’t matter we respect them and their decision not to carry firearms, but they want to force their decisions on the rest of us.  To them I say, “NO!”  I’ve had enough of you taking my cake and you will not get a single solitary inch until you give something back.  I am sick of “compromising” where I give up everything and you give up nothing.  GO TO HELL!  There’s a reason I get angry.

I think this version of the picture of A Girl with some additional text says it best:

Everyone has a right to choose their own tools.

Everyone has a right to choose their own tools.

h/t to Sean.

*If you’d like to use the spoof logo I created:

Moms Demand Action

Feel free to use this, just give me credit if anyone asks. 🙂

SSCC Colorado Springs

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A man who was wrongly detained by Colorado Springs police for carrying a holstered pistol at a gay-rights parade last year is suing the city and members of the Police Department.

James Sorensen, 24, was arrested July 21 in Acacia Park in downtown Colorado Springs under an outmoded law – repealed in 2003 – that made it a misdemeanor to carry guns into public parks. Police later acknowledged the arrest was made in error, and Sorensen’s ticket was dismissed in August.

I’m reminded of a bit from Ron White, “Ignorance of the law is no excuse.”

We cannot play dumb when it comes to us violating the law but they get a free pass to arrest someone and violate their rights because they don’t know the law.  If the people charged with enforcing the law don’t even know what’s legal or illegal anymore, maybe it’s time to reset the law because they’re obviously too much garbage on the books.

State Sponsored Criminal: CSPD

Because ignorance of the law can only be used against the otherwise law-abiding citizen, not the cop looking to abuse him.

Quote of the Day–Art Kellermann (5/16/2013)

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[I love it.  Let’s disguise total BS as “gun safety.”  Lets look at his two examples shall we?

– Magazine Disconnect

Means you have to load a magazine into an empty firearm to show clear.  Often if you go to a match of any kind and see someone with a gun with a disconnect, they have to carry an extra magazine to show clear after a stage.  Tell me, how does it make things safer to drop the mag, rack out the round and then have to reinsert a mag.  Guess that’s why it’s the one safety USPSA allows you to disable or remove.

-Chamber Indicator

Otherwise known as the excuse people use not to observe proper gun handling.  Instead of using your own damn two eyes, you rely on a mechanical device that can, and will eventually fail.  It will either result in your gun failing, or start giving false positives, or indicate empty when hot.

Even worse though is the idea, and there will be people who do this, that some people will use the chamber indicator to assume the weapon is unloaded.  Then they’re finger !%^* the damn trigger and act all surprised that they just ventilated someone because they violated god knows how many of the 4 rules because “the chamber indicator said it’s unloaded”.

Safeties are all well and good folks but lets be realistic here.  What do any of those two safeties actually provide?

Not a damn thing that simple education or proper storage couldn’t take care of.  Instead of education he wants to modify firearms, in such a manner as to aid in careless gun handling mind you.

This folks is why you don’t take advice from people who don’t know what the hell they’re talking about. –B]

Evidently I’m not an activist…

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Neither is Robb, Joe, or Linoge.

Then there are the people who are doing nothing for advancing the cause, and are simply engaged in an attempt to garner fame for themselves. They loudly proclaim themselves to be engaged in civil disobedience, get the spotlight focused on themselves, and before any serious consequences can befall them, they fold their tent and scurry away. They then spend a large amount of time patting themselves on the back, and demanding that others recognize the so-called huge ‘risk’ they took in doing absolutely nothing. They are doing nothing for the CAUSE, they are doing this for THEMSELVES and their over sized egos.

Where did this all come from?  Well Joe, Robb, Linoge, and I were hosting an extra copy of the Defense Distributed file pack.  Allowing a quick and easy method for others to grab it if they so choose.

Divermedic took great offense saying how dare we pull our links when we evaluated the risk – reward matrix being beyond our worth.  Evidently if we were true activists we would fall on our swords and simultaneously commit seppuku.

You’re missing my point. The point here is that hosting the file from the beginning was a risk. Joe had to know that, or else why post the file at all?
A lawyer will ALWAYS tell you not to take a stand. That is his job. The easiest legal case to win is one that you never get into in the first place, but this results in very little change.
You accuse me of driving from the back seat, but isn’t that what the entire blogosphere does? We all sit around and complain about the state of affairs, but very, very few of us are willing to take a stand.
This is the reason why I think that all of this big talk about the “line in the sand” for gun owners is just that: talk. Everyone wants to complain, but no one wants to actually risk anything. Including myself, Joe, and even you.

Evidently, the thought there are different levels of risk and different cards that could be played never crossed this poor soul’s mind.  According to our illustrious leader here the best course of action is to always follow the original plan, even if the enemy makes an unexpected move that can easily and most likely cause your total destruction.  Hey, at least you died on a hill for nothing while screaming “Shall not be infringed” like a true activist right?

If you think that Joe, Robb, Linoge, or myself hosted this file for attention, maybe you’re the self-centered egotistical asshole projecting his approach to life on others.  I do find it interesting that while he continues to criticize us he has yet to actually put his money where his mouth is and do a damn thing beyond open his mouth bitching about how we’re “posers”.  Because a poser runs out and donates time and money and supplies said information to a couple hundred people?

Did we take as much risk as we could have?  No, why? Because honestly there was no reward to continuing the risk.  So why do it, why choose that hill to die on given the weapon they brought to bear against us?  We’re not running around bragging about it, we’re defending our decisions to some pleab who didn’t take an ounce of any risk himself.  We’re defending our actions against a man who has quite literally done nothing other than complain.

What is really telling though is how he states we’re not activists.

A lot of Joe’s writing on the right to keep and bear arms which you can read on his blog… is writing that you really really need to read.

  • Linoge isn’t doing anything to advance the cause?  I guess his work on the graphics matter posts aren’t worth anything.  His work engaging in debate is pointless and not worthy of note either.
  • Robb isn’t doing anything to advance the cause?  So his work for Florida Carry does not exist?
  • I’m not doing anything to advance the cause?  I guess my time donated helping Joe doesn’t matter.  I guess all my writing doesn’t matter.  I suppose the time I spend at gun shows helping people contact their legislators is time wasted.  I suppose the time I spend on the phone with my own legislators working on the details of pro-gun bills coming up for sponsorship are moot.  I suppose the time I donate to support A Girl, Sean, OldNFO, Linoge, and Weer’d and ensuring their blogs work and run is nothing.  I’m also going to be supporting another Washington State Firearms group here over the next couple days.  At cost while donating my time, but remember I’m not an activist.

His claim is the following:

Look, the penalty for violating ITAR is a million bucks plus twenty years in prison. I GET it if you aren’t willing to risk that. I know I’m not, but that is no excuse to run around and brag about how much you did and how much of a risk you took. That does nothing but pull the focus away from the problem and place it on you. That is why I criticize people for this.

No, here’s what happened.  Divemedic came into Joe’s place and started acting high and mighty calling us pussies for pulling down the files after the risk was too high.  He gave us a line of shit when we actually did something while he sat in his own little world and did nothing.

Does he really think that none of us have distributed those files in any other means?  Does he realize that three of us write software for a living and are very skilled with computers.  Tell me, given the penalty, would we advertise any further involvement?  Especially when we could accomplish the goal anonymously to protect ourselves.

He misread the point of posting those files.  Neither Joe, Robb, or myself posted that after the ITAR letter.  We had posted the files to help spread them far and wide and make it simpler for some to make their own copy.  Not everyone uses bit-torrent or is familiar with its use and we were helping anyone and everyone find it and sharing our bandwidth and server usage to do so.  The benefit of doing so was when the primary server link was cut we were still immediately available until the alternative methods had made their way all the way into the public’s view.

I didn’t ask everyone and their mother to link that post and I certainly provided no statement that I would keep the file posted no matter what.  I implied that you can’t stop the signal and you can’t.  Even though Joe, Robb, Linoge, and I have removed the files to legally protect us, it continues to spread, and that’s the damn point.

*Corrections since he evidently failed reading comprehension 101 and didn’t bother to actually read the quote.

One of them even made claim that he believe John Adams when he said:

If men through fear, fraud or mistake, should in terms renounce and give up any essential natural right, the eternal law of reason and the great end of society, would absolutely vacate such renunciation; the right to freedom being the gift of God Almighty, it is not in the power of Man to alienate this gift, and voluntarily become a slave.

I guess he changed his mind and decided to become a slave…

I think you were confusing that quote with this one from Samuel Adams.

If ye love wealth better than liberty,
the tranquility of servitude
better than the animating contest of freedom,
go home from us in peace.
We ask not your counsels or your arms.
Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you.
May your chains set lightly upon you,
and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen.

Ok, first up, you still don’t have the file publicly posted so you have no room to speak as if you were issuing a call to arms for support.  You didn’t even post the damn thing to begin with.

Secondly, that John Adams quote states the following since you don’t seem to be able to understand, “The natural rights of man are non-negotiable and not subject to the laws over government as they are natural.”

I have not told anyone else to pull down that file, it is their choice to continue to host it if they so choose.  I support their right and free exercise of that right.  Just because I support that right doesn’t mean I must exercise it exactly that way.  In this case I choose not to exercise that right, not because I don’t think I should be able to, but because the trouble and risk far outweighs any possible positive benefit.  To put it another way, just because I support the legalization of weed doesn’t mean I want or have to smoke it.

In closing this isn’t the first time that someone from “our side of the fence” has decided to hate on me.  Frankly I don’t care, I’m just going to refer to myself as “The Third Tier non-Activist Gun Blogger with a Junior Internet Detectives Badge.”  Because honestly the behavior of Divemedic in this whole thing strikes me just like that Smoking Blunder ass hat.  He decided to try and use this as a wedge between members of our community and frankly anyone who acts or behaves like that I don’t consider a friend.  He thrives on badmouthing those on his side because they weren’t willing to continue to stand when he didn’t even stand to begin with.  I’m not trying to make this out to be some sort of bad ass move, but frankly he is criticizing people when he really has no right to.

Joe didn’t want to waste time on a response and frankly he’s probably right.  In the end though, he says that we were ego stroking in an attempt to gain traffic to our sites… That coming from the guy beating on the drama llama.  Honestly, why should anyone give a crap about the “opinion” of Divemedic?  Until this whole escapade I hadn’t even heard of him.

No, when I get a comment from Tam, Oleg, JayG, or Alan saying that I’ve done something wrong, I’ll perk up and listen, doubly so since they’ll do so in an appropriate manner and have earned their reputation and rightfully so.  As far as I’m concerned, this is a no-body bitching at a bunch of some-bodies because he felt like it.

Quote of the Day–Joe Huffman (05/10/2013)

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In the mean time an enraged narcissist who didn’t get his way with the legislature could conceivably apply the regulations to people posting YouTube videos on how to grip your pistol.

Joe Huffman – Faceless bureaucrats, not blue helmeted elk

May 9th, 2013

[Go read’s Joe’s post on the breakdown of how they’re attempting to apply ITAR regulations to stop our culture.  This isn’t a joke either folks, it is quite literally that simple, I just didn’t see how they could grossly apply it over anything firearms related. 

Well evidently some congress critter with a cranial rectal inversion, or more likely placing an Easter Egg, has created hell for us.  I’m not sure how we’re going to fight this one, but fight we must.  This is how they will destroy freedom and those who agree will support the tactics as long as it isn’t being used against them. –B]