Then there’s the problem of the 3,000 or so people Freedom Group employs. It does seem unfair for them to lose their jobs just because they help to make guns that kill people and animals. (Then again, maybe not.) Perhaps the moguls could also pony up for the cost of retraining these workers for other professions and for the cost of outplacement services.
Obviously, plenty of other companies would fill the manufacturing void left by Freedom Group’s demise. Yet the chance to eliminate from the face of the earth the largest gun manufacturer on the planet doesn’t come around very often, and presents those with exceptional means a rare opportunity to profoundly influence public policy in the current era of spineless amoebas inhabiting Washington.
But Ms. Feinstein is arguing that her bill will do more than just prevent future gun deaths. She and others believe that lax firearms control has harmed the reputation of the U.S. among its international peers, many of which impose much harsher limits on who can own guns and what types are sold.
“America has to bite the bullet of what these incidents mean to our people, to our nation and our nation’s standing in the world,” she said.
Psychological projection or projection bias is a psychological defense mechanism where a person subconsciously denies his or her own attributes, thoughts, and emotions, which are then ascribed to the outside world, usually to other people. Thus, projection involves imagining or projecting the belief that others originate those feelings.
Projection reduces anxiety by allowing the expression of the unwanted unconscious impulses or desires without letting the conscious mind recognize them.
An example of this behavior might be blaming another for self failure. The mind may avoid the discomfort of consciously admitting personal faults by keeping those feelings unconscious, and by redirecting libidinal satisfaction by attaching, or "projecting," those same faults onto another person or object. -- Wikipedia.
A thief will always suspect you of stealing from him and liar will doubt your honesty. But what are we to make of people who reject well-reasoned arguments by falling back on allegations of mental illness and latent criminality? A case in point is Joe Biden, for the New York Times warns us that Biden Is Back for a 2nd Run at Gun Limits.
Never much known for restraint, Joseph R. Biden Jr. did not hold back during a presidential primary debate in 2007 when a voter asking about gun rights in a recorded video displayed a fearsome-looking semiautomatic rifle and declared, “This is my baby.”
Mr. Biden, then a Delaware senator in a dark-horse bid for the White House, shook his head. “I tell you what, if that’s his baby, he needs help,” he said. “I think he just made an admission against self-interest. I don’t know if he’s mentally qualified to own that gun.”
The candidate’s blunt, dismissive remark cheered one side of America’s long-polarized debate about guns and alienated the other.
How many times have you personally been called a "gun nut" or had your sanity doubted by some hoplophobe? Personally, I've lost count. Once, when a guy called me crazy, I tired of the game and said, "Well, I'm still armed to the teeth so that just complicates your problem, doesn't it?"
What you must understand is that, for collectivists, projection is a part of psychological operations designed to shape the battlefield in their favor. From an essay entitled "What Soviet PSYOP Mirror Imaging Can Tell Us by James Melnich (found in Psychological Operations, edited by Air Force Colonels Frank Goldstein and Benjamin Findley, 1996):
Soviet propaganda was rife with allusions to the ultimate enemy, whether the enemy be world imperialism, Nazi storm troopers, supporters of SDI, Zionism, or religious activists in the Soviet Union. The ultimate enemy was usually portrayed as being antihuman and opposed to everything the Soviet Union stood for. For example, Zionism was defined as a "deadly enemy of the Soviet Union from its very beginning." There was usually a plurality of Soviet ultimate enemies, depending on the international situation. An ultimate enemy in Soviet propaganda was first dehumanized, then made part of an anti-Soviet worldwide conspiratorial network (i.e., Afghan freedom fighters became bandits fighting as agents of US imperialism; unofficial religious figures in the Soviet Union were linked with dark forces from abroad).
In attempting to describe the ultimate enemy, whoever and whatever that might have been at a given time, Soviet propagandists sometimes drew from actual Soviet acts of barbarism. Thus their disinformation, as a form of mirror imaging, reflected back into the pool of Soviet reality. For one example, I will draw from personal experience.
In the early 1980s, I met a Soviet emigre woman who was convinced that evangelical Christians in the Ukraine sacrificed babies by rolling them in barrels with spikes as part of some religious ritual. She, of course, had never witnessed such a thing, but said that she heard about these people when she lived in the Soviet Union. Obviously, she was the victim of very gross Soviet disinformation -- and there were other Soviet campaigns in which other religious groups were under attack by the state. One can find numerous articles accusing Soviet Baptists of drowning children or performing other dark and perfidious acts -- the whole purpose being to defame the targeted group and further isolate them from the general population.
Nevertheless, the matter of the spikes continued to bother me: why such a particular disinformation image? Where did it come from? Did a propagandist simply make it up out of thin air, or did it spring from some other source? I have no final answer to this question, but a year or so later, when I was reading Michael Voslensky's work, Nomenklatura: The Soviet Ruling Class, a particular passage leapt out at me. Voslensky, in quoting a 1920s account about the Cheka (the earliest forerunner of the KGB), recounted various Cheka methods of torture and execution of their victims. One such method was reported this way: "at Voronezh they put their victims naked in barrels spiked on the inside and rolled them." This account and recent Soviet disinformation against religious groups are separated by more than one-half century. Are they somehow related, or did later Soviet propagandists simply make up the recent vicious accusation out of thin air? One cannot be certain, of course, but I would posit this as a possible example of a mirror image projecdted out of the past. (Pages 192-194)
The thing to remember is that this is what all collectivists do. Here's a thought: what if the new "assault Weapons Ban" floated by Diane Feinstein is simply a disposable red herring in order to facilitate an attack on private sales through the back door of "mental health"? The thing is, if you believe Biden and Company, all us firearm owners are crazy.
Just keep in your memory Melnich's phrase: "The whole purpose being to defame the targeted group and further isolate them from the general population." It explains a lot of what you're hearing these days, is a classic collectivist tactic and explains a lot of the "projection" going on.
Nobody knows precisely when and if this crisis will occur, but for now we'd do well to rely on the sagacity of one character in a Hemingway novel, who, when asked "how did you go bankrupt?" responds: "Two ways. Gradually and then suddenly."
I started out reloading with The Classic Lee Loader in .30 Carbine. It has been in production for over 50 years and still costs a modest 30 dollars (less if you can find a good used one at a gun show), and it works just fine. As the reader who recommended this link said: "Your group will need at least one." Here's the owner's manual.
After all, it's not like they just got caught with their hands in the cookie jar by facilitating the smuggling of semi-auto rifles to Mexican drug cartels, right?
Ooooh. This guy is so cartoonishly anti-American that if he didn't already exist, we'd have to invent him (sort of like CSGV). His confrontation with Larry Pratt has gone viral and he, with the help of Diane Feinstein, has done more to unite American firearm owners than anything else I've seen the past twenty years. I mean, why doesn't he threaten us with something we're scared of?
Personally, if he goes I will miss him. He daily reminds us all of the collectivist dangers we fight.
I read this article off American Thinker this afternoon, & thought I'd pass it on for you'all to post and pass on.
My 2 cents worth of thought -- anyone living in the areas affected by this "news"paper needs to go out and have a Boston Tea Party with this paper. Paint it, ruin it, cut it, rip it, destroy it, make it unreadable and unsellable. Unless the vending machines are the property of the "news"paper, leave 'em alone. They're the personal property of someone else trying to make an honest living. Same with stores, book stores, kiosks, and front porches - do not destroy. We want to keep the good will of the people with us.
Show this bird cage liner the meaning of "Play stupid games, win stupid prizes."
Others have suggested that perhaps a small window war is in order. Of course my previous record on the the topic of Sons of Liberty tactics is matter of fact. But what I think is that at the moment we don't know enough about the economic links of this rag to the wider world -- stock holders, advertisers, etc. Perhaps they would like THEIR personal information posted for all to see.
Regarding the newspaper boxes themselves, one tactic that has been used in the past is the use of crazy glue squirted in the coin slots of the machine. Another is the use of a plastic or metal key to open the box through the coin slot (USA Today used a curved plastic piece) and removal of all the papers. Folks who don't have access to a key can simply, for the cost of one paper, avail themselves of a volume discount and remove ALL the newspapers from the box, depositing them in the trash some distance away.
It will be interesting to see what happens, now that these collectivist ideologues have raised the ante. As my correspondent says, "Play stupid games, win stupid prizes."
The purpose of having citizens armed with paramilitary weapons is to allow them to engage in paramilitary actions. The Second Amendment is not about Bambi and burglars — whatever a well-regulated militia is, it is not a hunting party or a sport-clays club. It is remarkable to me that any educated person — let alone a Harvard Law graduate — believes that the second item on the Bill of Rights is a constitutional guarantee of enjoying a recreational activity.
My post on the C-47 below generated some email, including these pictures:
Resupply of Bastogne, December, 1944.
Restored C-47 at airshow.
C-47 interior.
C-47s towing WACO CG-4A gliders.
Another view of C-47s towing on single ropes (they could pull up to four with VERY careful piloting in all craft.
Walter Cronkite, who went into Holland in a glider with the 101st ABN, described the experience as a "life-long cure for constipation."
How the C-47 would fly in and snatch a glider off the ground to bring wounded and special personnel out of a combat zone.
As part of my research for Absolved, I did a lot of research on glider warfare, including interviews with former glider pilots and glider infantry. I have a copy of the original Army Air Corps training film for snatch operations. It is narrated by a young Ronald Reagan.
When I am asked why I need a magazine for my “assault rifle” larger than 10 rounds, the answer is “because soldiers carry magazines larger than 10 rounds.” The 2nd Amendment was written to protect the people from more than just criminals. It was also understood that each sovereign state in the union would need to depend on its citizen militias to project power as needed. That meant well-armed men . . .
Some aircraft seem to fly forever. A prime example has been the DC-3/C-47. The latest revival for this iconic plane is a refurb that creates a 13 ton aircraft with a rebuilt and lengthened fuselage, upgraded wings, new engines, and modern electronics. Called the BT-67, it is in use by eight civilian (including the U.S. Forestry Service) organizations and nine air forces (including the U.S. Air Force and the Chinese Air Force). The BT-67 is about a meter (three feet) longer than the original DC-3 and 1.5 tons heavier. Cruising speed is 380 kilometers an hour, compared to 240 for the DC-3. Range is more than twice the 1,600 kilometers of the DC-3. Typical load for the BT-67 (4 tons) is also about twice what the DC-3 would normally haul. The longer range made the rugged BT-67 capable of delivering airfreight to research stations in Antarctica, from an airport in South Africa. The BT-67s cost about $5 million each.
Here's the link for the Basler BT-67, and here's a photo of one in Antarctica:
“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?... The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin's thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If...if...We didn't love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation.... We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.” -- Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn
I suppose that this is the "Founders wrote the Second Amendment at the time of single-shot smoothbore muskets so that's all you're guaranteed" argument illustrated in pen and ink.
I look at it as the visual expression of every modern tyrant's fear. Ten minutemen are replaced in the cartoon by ten rounds, a third of the standard capacity of an AR or AK. In other words, a ten-man modern minuteman squad carrying ARs and just one magazine per has an immediate firepower available of 300 rounds versus 10. Can there be any better illustration of the fear behind the tyrannical eyes of the advocates of citizen disarmament? THIS is why they have been striving mightily to ban semi-auto rifles.
I doubt that the cartoonist intended that reaction from our side, but that's what I see in this -- A picture worth a thousand tyrant's fears.
"If I could have gotten 51 votes in the Senate of the United States for an outright ban, picking up every one of them . . . Mr. and Mrs. America, turn 'em all in, I would have done it." -- Senator Diane Feinstein, CBS-TV, 60 Minutes, 5 February 1995.
I was intending to do a column on this, but the Soldier Systems' piece is a good place to start. Here's the deal. The NFA is so shot through with errors and problems of administration with the relatively small (and since 1986, finite) numbers of items subject to regulation that to dump tens of millions of semi-autos into it would collapse the damn thing in a welter of lawsuits and recriminations that would demand repeated oversight hearings of the ATF. (Think cockroaches and bright lights.) And that's ignoring the non-compliance and resistance it would bring from Three Percenters. The congressional hearings up front on this particular point would be a field day for our side -- an absolute field day. Ramsey A. Bear would probably be called to testify.
This is one loaded cigar that the gungrabbers (and certainly the ATF) shouldn't want to smoke -- if, of course, they have the sense that God gave a goose.
(The Act) requires that grandfathered weapons be registered under the National Firearms Act, to include:
* Background check of owner and any transferee;
* Type and serial number of the firearm;
* Positive identification, including photograph and fingerprint;
* Certification from local law enforcement of identity and that possession would not violate State or local law; and
* Dedicated funding for ATF to implement registration
Also, get this: "Bans large-capacity ammunition feeding devices capable of accepting more than 10 rounds." Bans, as in, we catch you with those in your gun safe you're a federal criminal. Oh, yeah, DiFi, I can really see you getting away with THAT without starting a civil war. Or not.
The people who want to advance “reasonable” gun control in the United States are myth-makers, and they should not be confused with the useful idiots who subscribe to their myths. They know that a ten-round magazine limit or a ban on scary-looking pistol grips wouldn’t have prevented the deaths of those children in Connecticut. They know that nothing short of a nationwide ban on firearms possession, combined with a thorough and merciless seizure of the 300 million weapons in private hands already, could significantly reduce the chances of another Newtown shooting.
They don’t care. In the phrase “gun control”, control should be emphasized. Control is its own reward. Power, as Orwell noted, is its own reward. It needs no other reason, no other justification. There’s no reason to seek out the golden heart behind the iron fist of gun control. It doesn’t exist. The armed citizen is not fully under control, even if his “assault weapon” never leaves his closet. There must be control.
