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Category Archives: Freedom

Quote of the Day – A Girl (12/18/2012)

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When I was mugged I blamed only 2 people. My attacker and myself. I can’t control him, so I looked at myself to figure out what I could do to put myself in a better position for survival should the element I couldn’t control decided to come after me again. I took responsibility. I didn’t blame the cops or the grocery store parking lot or even my parents. They had some influence as did society, but it was me who stood there and did nothing. It was me. I did not come after you or anyone else. I didn’t go to congress and ask for new laws to protect my lack of action. I took action. Law abiding, legal action and I took responsibility for my part in that day. I can tell you none of it felt good. I didn’t feel good after I picked myself up off the ground, I didn’t feel good as I hid in the bathroom and took care of my scraped up arms and back. I didn’t feel good when my so called friends turned their backs on me. I didn’t feel good when my daughter looked me in the eye and told me she didn’t feel safe because I didn’t stop the and guy. It didn’t feel good when I showed up in the park to learn how to defend myself. I felt anything but good. I felt sad and lonely. I felt lost and broken. I felt ashamed and confused. I felt scared and and hopeless. And I fought all of that everyday for over a year in order to take responsibility. In order to feel good again.

A Girl – Feeling Good
December 18, 2012

[First, go read the whole thing, it’s worth it and there were a few other quotes I almost put up first till I hit that one.

Now when I read that my immediate thought was, “No one ever said doing the right thing was the easiest route.”  I did a previous rant in the immediate wake and honestly her post and mine are intertwined together.

Feelings are driving the conversation for a lot of people right now, they want to do something, anything.  As I said before:

They want to be able to look at a physical object and blame it for what as happened.  They want to destroy the physical object and blame it for their grief.

They don’t want to admit that ultimately there was a person behind the gun.  They don’t want to admit no matter how hard they tried, they wouldn’t be able to control him.  They don’t want to admit all the efforts they took in advance to feel good in the wake of things like Columbine and other mass shootings in the end did nothing.  Not only did they do nothing, but the may have made it worse.

To them though that last thought is an impossibility   It is impossible that the actions they took to satisfy their feelings could have been counter productive.  How could they?  Their responses felt right to them in a previous time of emotional tragedy.

People currently forget that 11 years ago a group of men brought this country to its knees with a set of box cutters.  The tool is a tool and nothing more.  It’s use for good and evil rests entirely with the person holding the tool.

The principal, Dawn Hochsprung, gave her life ultimately trying to protect her students.  She was forced, by law, to be unarmed in that encounter.  The aggressor however broke numerous laws and had to actually steal the firearms to carry out his crime.  Think about that for a second, objectively.  We, as a community, trusted that woman, as well as the staff with the care and protection of our children.  We trusted that they would do what is necessary to keep them safe and educate them for the future.  We trust them enough to send our children there for a decent part of their young lives.  Yet we refuse to allow them the choice of carrying a firearm to defend our children should evil come before them.

We refused to allow the people immediately on the scene to respond to the threat posed against the children.  Instead the shooter was given 20 minutes to perpetrate his crimes.  He was given 20 minutes with defenseless victims.  Victims who were in the charge of responsible adults.  Those responsible adults, responsible for the children in their charge, were forcibly disarmed under the law.

The law in this case guaranteed the outcome.  We will never know what the outcome would have been had just one teacher been able to choose to be armed.  We can hypothesize given previous events, such as the Pearl High School incident in 1997.  But we can never actually know, all we can do is wonder.

It’s time to stop passing laws based on irrational emotion and examine a very simple and harsh fact.  When evil finally shows up, how can we react.  We focus too much on stopping evil out right and preventing it from ever happening.  While definitely a worthy goal, it is almost impossible to achieve since you cannot actually control the aggressor.  All you can do is react as quickly as possible and try to minimize damage.   What you can control to achieve that goal is yourself and your response, except in many cases the law has neutered that ability from the victims. -B]

Quote of the Day – Joe Huffman (12/17/2012)

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These people enabled the murder of dozens of people, mostly children, by a single person. If a private citizen had enabled these murders they would be facing massive civil liability and probably criminal charges. Government employees should not be exempt. If we don’t have the prison space for all of them then turn the drug addicts, prostitutes, and other “criminals” who committed victimless crimes loose and make the room. These public servants stripped people of their rights to keep and bear arms and then put signs up advertising “Gun Free Zone”. It’s bad enough to enable cold blooded murder but to advertise the fact they enabled it and to be proud of it is seriously sick and criminal. This can and should be used as evidence against them at their trials.

Joe Huffman – Let’s have the conversations

December 17, 2012

[I’ve felt for a while that both the government and private entities shared culpability in mass shootings that occur within gun free zones.  The forcible disarmament of victims, especially by force of law, to me implies an assumption of responsibility for safety by the ruling party.

We all know however that the law exempts itself from such responsibilities  yet they create areas where the citizens are disarmed to be nothing more than defenseless victims for evil monsters.

I’m glad to see I’m not alone with these types of thoughts. -B]

Doesn’t Fit the Narrative

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So I’ve seen this a few places and figured I would post it since it deserves recognition.

“He was working on his rifle,” said Meli.  “He kept pulling the charging handle and hitting the side.”

The break in gunfire allowed Meli to pull out his own gun, but he never took his eyes off the shooter.

“As I was going down to pull, I saw someone in the back of the Charlotte move, and I knew if I fired and missed, I could hit them,” he said.

Meli took cover inside a nearby store.  He never pulled the trigger.  He stands by that decision.

The shooter however did see Meli and promptly took his own life ending the confrontation.

Now I bring this up because it has been pushed down the page.  Even if the events of Friday had not occurred it is still quite likely we wouldn’t know about the actions of Nick Meli from the national news.  Why?

We have a perfect example of a defensive gun use within a public setting.  We have an example of a concealed carrier acting responsibly and thinking about his backstop and possible innocent casualties.  Tell me, would a police officer restrained himself in that case? I highly doubt it and the New York shoot out provides a good solid example of that.  Especially since most officers will be protected from negligence by qualified immunity.

Our opponents are beating the drums, last night I had someone on twitter arguing how one just needs 911 and there’s no need for firearms.  As horrible as it is, now is the time we must remain vigilant and we must fight.  The media will do all they can to suppress things that do not fit their narrative, it is up to us to give those stories a voice.

h/t Sebastian and Dave Hardy

Quote of the Day – Oleg Volk(12/14/2012)

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Mass murderers use different methods (arson, explosions, knife attacks, shootings), but two coincidence just jump out at me. The first is that almost all mass murderers are men. The other is that they seek out locations where good people are disarmed by law.

(emphasis mine.)
Oleg Volk – Coincidences in most massacres
December 14th, 2012

[A post from Sebastian also rang and a worthy QotD:

 As gun owners, if we could just experience the grief and sorrow along with the rest of the country, instead of having it intruded upon by that impending feeling of doom about what the media, the politicians, and the people in society who don’t much care for civilian gun ownership are going to do to our lives, liberty and often times livelihood? If we could go through something like this without worrying how much we’re going to be the scapegoats?

Right now my heart weeps, sad that so many children will not get to live a full and happy life because of the actions of a mad man.  There can be no question as to why he chose that target.  He wanted his victims as defenseless as possible.  There is no better way to achieve that goal than to go after children.

While I would rather mourn, console, and otherwise comfort the families who’s lives have been turned upside down by the actions of an individual I have no choice but to look forward and prepare for the fight on the horizon.  Many will try to rush forward in the wake of this tragedy, forgetting rules that should be followed in the wake of something horrifying and disturbing as such as this incident.

Recently Obama gave a statement about the tragedy and stated the following:

“As a country, we have been through this too many times,” Obama said. “We’re going to have to come together and take meaningful action to prevent more tragedies like this regardless of the politics.”

Except there is no real 100% way to make sure that something like this does not happen again.  The only thing you can do is make sure the tools and abilities for those around who can most quickly and easily respond.  If you don’t believe me, look no further than this incident in China where a man committed the same atrocities with a knife.

The dreaded attacks on school children returned to haunt China on Thursday after 22 of them were injured besides an 85-year-old woman after a “mentally deranged” man, armed with a knife, went on a slashing spree at a primary school.

Other similar incidents have happened before, without a firearm.

There is evil in this world and the atrocities today illustrate and prove that.  There are animals who are such due to a lack of conscience, a lack of morality and not even the law will stop them.  Many would rather not have to see or deal with the evil that lies within these animals.  Even more than that, they think that inanimate objects are some how responsible for the evil.  They want to be able to look at a physical object and blame it for what as happened.  They want to destroy the physical object and blame it for their grief.

I can understand that feeling, it’s a very hard thing to be angry at something that is invisible and outside of your control.  No one likes the idea of someone else being in control of their fate, especially with regards to life and death.  They want to do anything they can to give them the illusion that somehow they do have control and they have made a difference, despite all evidence to the contrary.

Despite that feeling it doesn’t change where the responsibilities lie.  It doesn’t change the fact that a person an animal would do something like this.  The problem and responsibility lie within the head of the thing who felt this was the way to achieve his 15 minutes of fame.

I will not use this cowards name, I will not support his new-found glory supplied by the mainstream media.  I will not allow his fame to give the idea to someone else seeking their 15 minutes of fame.

How do you constrain or punish an animal  who at the end of their crime merely wants to take their own life?  They are escaping any punishment you might give them.  The only punishment that remains is one provided through faith.  At times such as this though, people with faith find it tried, often crushed.

Ultimately though, the best solution to this problem is to arm good men and women, I bow humbly to Edmund Burke on this one.

“All that’s necessary for the forces of evil to win in the world is for enough good men to do nothing.”

The disarmament of the good merely ensures their inability to act resulting in a triumph of evil.

All I really want to do right now is give comfort to those who need it.  Alas, I’m not even allowed that moment of grief in solitude without needing to deal with politics.  As Sebastian said at the end of his post though:

we may not be interested much in politics, but politics is very interested in us.

I wish I could effectively write something to help people grieve, but that is beyond my skill.  While there are times I am good at conveying emotion through the written word, this isn’t one of those times.  So I just leave you with this.

If you have kids, hug them and kiss them.  Remember that somewhere there is a Christmas tree with presents under it that will not be opened.  There will be an empty seat at the Christmas table without the glowing smile of a child at Christmas.  Embrace what you have and be thankful. -B]

Quote of the Day – Say Uncle (12/13/2012)

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Anyway, the correct answer to why do you need an AR-15? is because fuck you. Or, the more politically correct version because I can. You see, Piers, you don’t get a say in what I own or what I do. End of story.

Say Uncle – “Shut up!”, he explained
December 13th, 2012

[If you’re wondering what he was talking about.  It was this show down between Alan Gottlieb and Piers Morgan.

This is the same Piers Morgan from this recent twitter escapade.

Yeah, that’s the tweet Alan was bringing up when Piers went off the deep end.

Mr. Morgan, I do not have to justify my purchase to you, the government, or any other person.  It is called the “Bill of Rights”, not the “Bill of Needs”.

Tell me Mr. Morgan, why do you feel the need to open your fat mouth and spout drivel that is tantamount to blaming gun owners as a whole for the actions of an individual?  Because despite what you may think, collective rights are B.S. and here’s a nice piece from Oleg Volk to help explain it.  Here’s the abbreviated photo version.

Your claims that some how the youth of America can go out and purchase firearms willy-nilly is false and smacks of someone who has never been through the process.  It is worthy of note that in this latest incident the rifle was actually stolen, not purchased.  You claim that you want to stop the violence but instead focus on the tool and not the person and the act.

The choice of a firearm actually is a blessing despite what many people think.  If given immediate and proper medical attention gun shot wounds have an 80% survival rate, regarding hand guns.  (I highly suggest watching this video as it is a wonderful view into the world of terminal ballistics.  If anyone knows where to find a better copy of it, please let me know.)  Rifles have a different statistic but currently I am unaware of the actual numbers.  The bottom line is you need to hit a vital organ to cause terminal damage.  Rifles while more powerful and capable of more severe tissue damage still suffer from the issue of needing to hit a vital area.

You seem to think that firearms are the only tool available for mass murder, except that is anything but true.  You know what is effective and honestly down right scary Mr. Morgan, fire.  Fire can be set and scheduled so the murderer miles away before anyone knows what happened.  If the Aurora shooter had used fire instead he could have killed every last person in that theater with a guaranteed success rate of 100%.  All he had to do was block the exits with fire first.

You complain about why would anyone need an AR-15.  You argue that there is no need for it.  Yet it is the most popular rifle in America.  Used for hunting, because we all know George Washington crossed the Delaware to get to his duck blind, sport shooting and even law enforcement uses the semi-automatic AR-15.  I use my AR-15 for competitive shooting as well as Boomershoot.

Ultimately though Mr. Morgan, I don’t have to give you any other reason than that of, pardon my language, “Because Fuck You, That’s Why!”  It is none of your business that I even have a firearm and it is not my responsibility to control the actions of others, much less be held responsible for their decisions or actions.  Besides, there’s a reason my feathers ruffle when you and your compatriots start banging on the war drums like you do.

Frankly Mr. Morgan I don’t give a crap what you think either because you’re nothing more than a gun grabbing Brit. Guess you missed the fact that gun crime went up 35% in Britain, that’s not including the overall crime rate.  Since you think that “Gun Deaths” are the only ones that matter.  The fact is that there is no correlation between civilian gun ownership and crime much less causation.  Which country has the positive slope on the trend and which has the negative slope?  Remember now, negative is better.  But as we can see in the video, facts don’t matter to you. -B]

Quote of the Day–Munchkin Wrangler(12/12/2012)

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Prohibition causes huge profit margins for dealers cause turf wars cause violence causes public concern causes calls to “do something” cause gun control. If you’re for prohibition, you are for gun control. That’s irrespective of the substance to be prohibited.

Munchkin Wrangler – do you hate a plant more than you love your rights?

December 11th, 2012

[Go read the whole post, it is seriously worth the time.  I wish more people would understand the interrelationships of personal liberties. Found vi Oleg. –B]

I know a couple people who this would fit nicely….

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IMG_0001

If you’re note sure who I could possibly want to give a couple of these to, you haven’t been following me that long.  Kurt has another design that you’ll have to run over to his place to see.

I will say it’s helping light a fire under my ass.  The wife and I came up with another idea recently to do a snake other than the classic Gadsden snake.  It’s a matter of getting the base image and running it through Photoshop.  God I have too many projects and ideas.

Now CSGV hasn’t called me an insurrectionist, but they have said I was most offensive.  Does that count?

Random Thought

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So some idiot sparked a debate on twitter.  The best part is, it is obvious I backed him into a corner with no way out.  He has been continuing to dance around the point once I illustrated the problem with his argument.

He absolutely refused to answer the following question and would dance around it.

Answer my question. Would you disarm the law abiding in attempt to quell crime. Yes or no?

He would give a response dancing around the question to which I would reply something along the lines of well why do police carry guns then?  He would dance right around it.

Now this individual wouldn’t admit that he wanted to disarm everyone.  His solution to self-defense? Martial Arts.  Evidently the thought never crossed his mind that his solution wouldn’t work for everyone.

This little jewel though actually made me laugh.

Now why would I laugh?  Well honestly because I’m quite happy in fact that the women in my life that I care about, for the most part, all carry concealed weapons.  From bloggers who I consider friends, to my wife, to local friends I hang out with.  The close women in my life who don’t currently are the in-laws and I’m working on that problem.  At least the father-in-law does.

There’s a running joke between my wife and I.  I’m not a big fan of nuts in my chocolate cookies.  So when someone asks, “I like my women like I like cookies, without nuts.”  I guess I need to abridge that to also state, “I like my women to be packing steel in their pants.”