January 2013 – Underlore

2nd Amendment and Related Links

If you’re looking for hard data as opposed to ethics, logic, politics, and philosophy, read this instead or as well: http://rense.com/general76/mths.htm

“In laboratory settings, there’s no evident difference between liberals and conservatives in their propensity to believe what they want, evidence be damned. In one experiment, Yale law professor Dan Kahan showed you could get liberals to start doubting global warming (and conservatives to begin accepting it) by making clear that any solution would require geoengineering. In another he showed that both liberals and conservatives were more likely to rate someone an expert on climate change if they agreed with their conclusions. In a third, he showed liberals were about as resistant to evidence showing concealed carry laws are safe as conservatives were to evidence showing climate change is dangerous.” ~Ezra Klein

The left, whom I side with on 95% of issues, needs to quit playing into the right’s hands and leave guns alone regardless of their personal opinion unless they wish to admit they are obsessed with them to a self destructive degree. Why?

Setting aside all the logical and ethical reasons to do so, of which there are many, there is the strategic reason that when ignored leads to party impotence. By simply vowing to stay out of gun policy, either for or against, the left could secure enough one issue voters to secure a permanent majority in every nationally relevant context.

Now really, if the price of declawing gun owners (and be honest, that’s the objective) is the failure of all your other policy objectives, and you knowingly pay it, who is really the more gun obsessed?

Update: A message to progressive individuals and organizations from which I have been forced to unsubscribe.

Why did I unsubscribe from your progressive email list suddenly? Because you forced me to. I am steadily being forced to the right by this one issue which you refuse to process rationally, instead relying on a partisan checklist of prefabricated opinions designed to keep the system deadlocked for all eternity.

Any progressive that jumps on the anti-gun band wagon has proven their disinterest in logic and the constitution and has therefor become a mindless part of the system and problem.

Gun prohibition is as insane as Alcohol prohibition and Drug prohibition. Yes we regulate alcohol, but not remotely to the degree we regulate guns, and there is no good reason for it because a rag and a lighter turn booze into a horrifying weapon.

Incrementalist efforts to achieve gun prohibition under the guise of regulation, because they can’t be bothered to attack the 2nd amendment openly cannot be tolerated. Opposition to the 2nd pursued in this way is as is as underhanded as anything the right wing does to achieve its goals. It’s easily as bad as voter disenfranchisement under the guise of fraud protection for example. It’s simply another attempt to undermine any potential opposition to our continued enslavement to billionaires and their millionaire congressional minions.

The 2nd Amendment

“In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.”

~James Madison

The right to bear arms is not for defense or hunting, it’s to equip a revolt if needed, that’s why we’re allowed to field a militia as well. A militia with muskets was the equivalent of a battalion complete with strike craft, rocket artillery, and stinger missiles, in those days.

The whole point was to allow the existence of a force which could rival the army, not be the army.

It’s shockingly absurd to assert that the 2nd was somehow intended to protect the rights of the military, and that somehow the needs of the 2nd are met now by the military. To believe that is to believe that the framers of the Constitution didn’t have command of the English language or logic.

Arms escalation is an issue, and we were overtly warned on national television by the president of the United States of the dangers of the military industrial complex. This is one of them.

“My great objection to this government is, that it does not leave us the means of defending our rights or of waging war against tyrants.”

~Patrick Henry

The founding fathers did however make one critical error. They should have simply made, and explicitly stated that, it is our right to prepare for an armed revolt, as that was clearly the intent. Context makes it obvious if you take the time to look.

The whole point of the document was to establish a government that could be modified as the people saw fit, and tossed out entirely if that failed. But how could the people toss out a corrupt government if it was tactically powerless? It can’t, which is why we have the 2nd amendment. It was to create a government that was the slave of the people.

Both sides of the popular gun “debate” simply refuse to read the relevant documents. Perhaps that’s because both parties are owned by the same handful of people. (http://www.ted.com/talks/lawrence_lessig_we_the_people_and_the_republic_we_must_reclaim.html)

The purpose of the second amendment is to ensure that the government be barred from annihilating the population’s ability to prepare for and execute an armed rebellion.

The ‘well regulated militia’ line is the framers being specific about how they expected such a rebellion to come about if required. I.E. The government goes bad, the populace wants a new one, and forms an armed militia (or in today’s popular parlance a “terrorist organization”) to depose it. The concept of diffuse, headless, guerrilla warfare simply didn’t occur to them. They expected us to be able to organize. They did not anticipate the power of mass media manipulation and consent manufacturing. In short, wise as they were they couldn’t entirely envision the deep future.

A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. (emphasis mine)

It does not say the right of “the army”, (which it does mention explicitly elsewhere), it says the people. Gun control advocates when forced to comment at all seem to think the purpose of regulated militia in the context of the second is meant to fulfill a need now filled by the standing army. This is obviously false.

Firstly, as mentioned, the document makes overt reference to the army and the navy elsewhere in the document. The framers didn’t need a metaphor for the army, they knew the word and used it.

Secondly, think how absurd it would be to list a right of the army among a list of rights obviously meant for the people.

“There is no fettering of authority.” ~William Shakespeare

Think about what that implies. As if the ‘true/modern’ wording of the second should be something like this: “A well regulated army being necessary to the security of the state, the right of the soldiers to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” Obviously that was not the intent of the amendment. The Constitution is not an elaboration of government rights, it is a limitation of them. It is an elaboration of the people’s rights.

The whole assumption of the document is that left alone, government will seize all rights, which is what tyranny is. It doesn’t need a constitution for protection, the people do. If the point was to safeguard the army the question becomes safeguard it from what?

What government has ever fielded an army without weapons? Is an army even an army if it is disarmed? The whole notion that the military fulfills the intent of the militia wording is mind numbing ignorance and cognitive dissonance, at best. Normally I like to expose insanity of that sort with an exaggeration of some kind but I can’t think of one. The claim that “well regulated militia” == “military” is the very apex of nonsense.

But getting back to reality, it does not say security of the state but security of a free state. That taken with the fact that a militia with muskets was the state of the art in military technology of the day, the equivalent of tank divisions and gunships, it becomes crystal clear that the intent of the second is to safeguard the people, as separate from the government and the military, against a possibly corrupt future government and military, more so than any external foreign threat. Though enabling the people to defend themselves in the event of invasion, should the military be logistically barred, or too incompetent to do so at the time, was also a consideration.

This was all fresh in the minds of the framers given that they had just recently been a citizen militia perpetrating an armed rebellion against a corrupt government’s army. Note also that the wording says keep and bear arms. This means that simply allowing us to have them is insufficient, we must also be allowed to carry them. 90% of gun law (along with 99.999% of proposed additional gun law) is absolutely unconstitutional given these facts.

Now, an argument can be made that muskets aren’t readily concealed so the intent may not cover concealed carry, but it absolutely does cover open personal carry, or concealed carry within a vehicle, considering hiding a musket in a carriage or cart is absolutely possible and yet they didn’t feel the need to stipulate visibility. Think about it, when one bears their teeth, the point is to make them visible.

This is further defended by the word “infringe” as opposed to something like “prohibit.” Clearly the spirit of the statement is meant to prohibit regulation generally as well as an outright ban, being perfectly aware as they were of the incrementalist approach. This is supported by the context of the time, since the rebellion itself was begun not by overt decree but by stealthy stacking of oppressive regulation and taxation. Incrementalism caused the American revolution.

“[W]hen the resolution of enslaving America was formed in Great Britain, the British Parliament was advised by an artful man, who was governor of Pennsylvania, to disarm the people; that it was the best and most effectual way to enslave them; but that they should not do it openly, but weaken them, and let them sink gradually. . .“

~George Mason

Regulation is often used to produce the effect of a given sort of law without the actual intent being declared. Indeed one could argue that this is regulation’s primary use. Waiting periods and background checks and application fees add up to prohibitions and infringements without coming out and saying what they are. There is clearly an element in American politics that, openly or not seeks to slowly regulate firearms into effective illegality because the legitimate course of action with this intent would be politically impossible, a repeal of the second amendment.

Again, the framers were absolutely speaking about, and aware of, the potential to tax and regulate firearms to the point of an effective ban, which is why they used the word infringe. All gun regulation is unconstitutional.

The argument that regulation is needed to prevent crime is absurd. Crime is crime, regardless of the tools. Regulate the act, not the tool. (Which I why murder by hammer is illegal and yet hammers are legal.)

Attempting to deny criminals the tools to commit crime is a fool’s errand since fire, rocks, and fists can get the job done. Let alone the awesome power of biology, chemistry, and basic physics. The need to make a law that you can’t sell a gun to a crazy person is proof that there is a problem with health care, not gun law. A person crazy enough to be dangerous with a firearm shouldn’t be in a position to get hold of rocks or matches either. The sane solution is not rock and match law, yet that’s what we’ve allowed to occur.

Hitting someone with a rock should be illegal, not carrying a rock. Setting fire to someone’s house should be illegal, not owning matches and gasoline. Shooting people or robbing them with guns should be illegal, not owning them or carrying them.

Debates about crime reduction or hunting are completely beside the point.

Sidenote:

It occurred to me the other day why it is that gun control was chosen (by the 1%, those who own and orchestrate partisanship as a tool of statecraft) as the one and only issue the “progressive” side is to decide on dogmatically or ideologically as opposed to rationally.

The real reason democrats are to mouth foam in the face of facts when it comes to gun control and no other issue, is because while the 2nd serves the 99% as a last resort, opposition to it serves the 1% as a last resort as well.

Many people talk about what would happen if the tables tipped in their favor to the point of crushing tyranny resulting in armed revolt. (http://underlore.com/if-not-now-when/) But it occurred to me that no one really thinks about the other side of that coin. Further, no one thinks about the 1% thinking about that, and so on. Well, rest assured they have, and this seemingly irrational position on gun control taken by the “progressive” party strongly implies it.

You see I always assumed this mixing and matching of smart positions was entirely about making sure no party is ever allowed to really win, a tool to keep us bickering over trivialities while they train our children to endure and internalize the ethics of slavery, and it is that, but there is another bonus.

Opposition to gun ownership is their last resort just as ownership of guns is ours. Think about a total progressive victory. Banks regulated, healthcare offered, the playing field leveled, etc. For them, that is the equivalent of tyranny, that is the worst case endgame scenario. But, having tricked the progressives into adopting gun control as an immutable tenet, the resulting society would be a disarmed one, ripe for recapture or counter revolution.

A true critical thinker doesn’t just examine his enemies, but himself as well. If you oppose gun ownership and the 1%, ask yourself why the facts don’t matter to you, and be sure you know who gave you your opinion and why.

Ok, so lets say I agree, but we couldn’t ever beat the army right?

(From here: https://plus.google.com/+BrandonSergent/posts/UgnM1cvMZ8b)

“The notion of taking on a military that is unchallenged in the world is utterly absurd.”

Someone has been watching too much TV.

The statement made however radically misunderstands both the nature of American warfare and the kind of war the 2nd amendment anticipates.

A war of the military vs its citizenry would not be the same class of conflict as a war against foreign powers. Most clearly because that citizenry provides the material support that military needs to run.

Beans, bullets, and bandages. Who do you think supplies those for our military?

It would instantly be a guerrilla war also, and half of the military may well switch sides, many waiting to do so at critical moments.

Basically, defeating the US military for the US citizens would be an inside job and we could simply outlast them.

A general strike is implied in such a scenario and given the amount of funding, which translates obviously to the amount of domestic labor the American military relies on, that alone would be devastating.

Make no mistake the 2nd is doing its job.

I’ll be generous and say every last person in uniform is unified, that’s 2,927,754 military personnel.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_military_and_paramilitary_personnel

According to http://www.reuters.com/article/2007/08/28/us-world-firearms-idUSL2834893820070828

The American civilian populace is armed to the tune of 9 out of 10.

And that’s completely ignoring what we make and hold for government use, and what’s sitting on pawn shop and gun shop shelves all over the country. Every walmart in the south is an armory.

Population: 311,591,917 (2011) United States Census Bureau

That’s 280,432,725 people with a gun each 2,927,754.

That’s just about 99 to 1.

Frankly, we could take them even it they fuel air bombed the major cities, in advance. And they know it.

Update: 2016-06-13 0430 PM Orlando

Here we go again.

After months of the DNC/MSM (and MIC) positioning for a corporate coup via election fraud, we get one disturbingly well timed terrorist attack that checks all the hot button social boxes, LGBT, Muslim, guns, terrorism… and we predictably start begging to be disarmed like the trusting emotional irrational sheep we apparently are on the whole.
AGAIN. Do you people not recall how the war on terror started? Where the patriot act came from? Why it’s a bad thing in the first place?

Democracy is a sham, not just because stolen elections, but because you people are so easily manipulated into begging for totalitarianism.

Look at what you’re screaming.

“Please declaw us! Please child proof our lives! Please make us totally powerless to rebel! Please take away our rights in the name of security! Please distract us! Please rule us with fear! Please put us totally at the mercy of people who we know for a fact are corrupt sadistic murders with no mental limits on how far they’ll go for power and wealth!”

Do you people really want your front door to be like a TSA checkpoint? Do you really want to turn the whole country into an airport? Because that’s what it takes to make everyone “safe” this way. That’s where a gun-war executed like the drug war will take us.

Do you honestly think making a gun or a bomb is more complicated than making meth? By definition no since you can accidentally make a bomb while making meth. A gun is an order of magnitude simpler, even before 3d printers and CNC machines.

Begging for a new drug war over guns is suicidally stupid.

Freedom comes with risk.

Are all the other issues you rant about so trivial that you can forget them because of a single emotional shock?

Banning real effective guns would put us totally at the mercy of cops that kill blacks at will, a military that bombs hospitals by “accident,” a government that imprisons us in world-record numbers, and a string of presidents and elected officials that assassinate us by drone and trample all our constitutional rights. (Not just the one you are begging to have trampled.)

Are you insane?

Did you people just suddenly forget about the drug war? Did you not notice that murder is already illegal? Do you scream for the banning of cars or booze to cure drunk driving?

Do you really say we should ban anything that makes killing possible? Do you have any idea how surrounded by weapons you are?

Have you ever heard of an ied? What do you think will come after guns even if you could magic them away? The most lethal school killing was not a shooting, it was a bombing and it happened in 1927.

Mass murder isn’t new. And it isn’t caused by anything recent.

When did you stop caring about the constitution? When did you start cherry picking which of our rights really matter like the republicans?

Any liberal that’s against guns needs to shut up about:

Cops: Because they are now your only line of defense.
Prison: Because a new ban war means more prisons.
Militarized police: Because taking the guns away means civil war.
Police brutality: They’ll need lethal force to declaw America, and a lot of it.
Constitutional rights: Because you’ve made it clear you don’t care about the constitution.
The drug war: Because you want a new one that’s even worse.

Wake up. Gun law only protects the rich from us. They own the cops and the military. They don’t need guns, they have soldiers. This isn’t about crime and hunting. This is about future and present tyranny.

Think like a grown up from the real world for once.

The Filibuster 2016-06-16

And so in the wake of the tragedy that was preventable, in a thousand ways other than stripping us of a constitutional right and tyranny backstop, we now have the so called “progressives” in congress banding together to do just that. Seemingly fighting the good fight that they are unwilling to fight on any other front that matters.

Leftists are so stupid for cheering for this. Do they not ask themselves why this issue? Why now? They are neoliberals! HRC is under investigation and her actual hacked emails are being leaked!

You idiots. What they are doing serves their 1% masters. The rich don’t need the 2nd amendment! The rich are always served by tyranny.

Indeed the rich are the source of tyranny! Remember income inequality? Campaign finance reform? Climate change fueled by fossil? Who is at the root of those issues you’ve forgotten in your mad egotistical dash to virtue signal by way of stripping the rights from others?

So this is all it takes. Allow or create a problem, and then pitch once again trading freedom for the illusion of security. Gun prohibitionists are now falling into the same emotional trap as those itching to get “tough on crime.” And just like that debate, the real issue isn’t solved by more oppression, and more laws.

You can’t fix crime with prisons, prohibition, and police. Have you fools forgotten the drug war? Is stricter drug law the solution? Do you really want your entire life to be like a TSA checkpoint?

It seems you do. And via the arbitrary and corrupt terrorist watch list no less. Idiots. Cowards. Infants. Hypocrites.

Thorium Reactors and Nuclear Bombs

For the sake of argument I’ll stipulate it’s remotely possible to make a nuke with thorium reactors.

Why does that sound like a hypothetical?

Well let’s start with a comment made by Morio Murase of Thorium Now.

The proliferation concern comes through the idea that you can irradiate thorium to get protactinium-233, extract the protactinium, wait 29 days, and presto, almost-pure U-233. The thing is, one needs to keep Pa-232 out of there because that turns into U-232, whose gamma emissions can really mess with someone making nuclear weapons. So you’d need to build the breeder reactor to deliberately irradiate thorium, and deliberately separate out the protactinium and possibly isotopically separate it if you’re going to make a U-233 bomb. No UN inspector’s going to be fooled by that, and if you’re going to go through all that trouble, you might as well burn both U-233 and U-232 and get some dirt-cheap power out of a proper reactor.

Another thing working against U-233 proliferation is the fact that the only bomb ever to have used it didn’t have the power the US military expected. If you’re going to go through all that trouble to make U-233 for a WMD, you might as well make plutonium instead. And that’s exactly what just about every nation that developed nuke weapons has done.

I conclude that yes, there is a proliferation risk in the thorium fuel cycle, but it is minuscule compared to uranium-238, and more difficult than what anti-nukes seem to believe.

It sounds like a hypothetical because one wonders if it were viable to weaponize, why then are there thorium stockpiles all over the world gathering dust and why thorium itself remains little more than a mining waste byproduct. I mean seriously, if it’s so dangerous it should be valuable and scooped up on that basis alone. Plutonium is absurdly valuable when you get right to it, dangerous and toxic as it is. And depleted uranium despite being nuclear waste also makes great material for bullets. Let that sink in. We found a kind of nuclear waste that’s good to throw at each other and we do it.

That no nation’s weapon scientists, including ours, have found a viable weapon use for thorium such that it literally sits in abandoned piles all over the planet, should make one question the notion of it being dangerous to any realistic degree.

It should be noted the one and only u233 bomb ever tested by the United States was actually just a plutonium bomb with u233 added, and as mentioned above its yield sucked so only India ever bothered with a pure u233 bomb.Which also sucked. Which in turn is probably why the US still has a giant stock pile of pure u233 which they are paying 500 million to destroy instead of it being in bombs.

Think about that for a moment as well. If it were a weapon material could they not sell it to a contractor to be converted into said weapon and bought back or could they not make them into weapons and then sell them to ally states?

So yeah, even if we pretend for a moment that thorium is useful as a weapon. Still the objection is a Nirvana Fallacy. Because when you get down to it all forms of power are lethal or can be weaponized under the right conditions. Indeed I can’t think of a single technology that couldn’t be used to kill under the right conditions.

Demanding absolute harmlessness is an impossible standard.

Electricity itself is lethal remember.

This line of objection completely ignores the massive positive offset of successful deployment of thorium reactors and incidentally the resultant counter motivation for war.

Any rational appraisal of a security decision has to consider the trade-off.

And one of the many effects of mass thorium reactor development and deployment would be a near total undermining of petroleum wars/tensions.

Thorium/LFTR deployment would undermine any weaponization risk of the technology by the impact of the technology. A competent appraisal must include asking why would a country want to make nuclear bombs if peace is suddenly and vastly more profitable?

Open response to The White House on gun control.

Recently in email I got a mass mailing from The White House entitled “If not now, when?” as I’m sure tens of millions of us did and here is my section by section response. Setting aside the rich irony of using that phrase in regard to both this website and political history. I have the following to say in response.

Hello —

Today President Obama announced a plan to help protect our kids and communities from gun violence.

Right away we have a problem. Why only gun violence?

Because it’s topical and politically expedient, that’s why. There is no other objective criteria which makes gun violence special. Would a bombing have been less painful for us? Gun violence is not the most lethal in terms of number of fatalities. Feel free to prove me wrong on this but I’m pretty sure accidents are still the primary causes of death for children at school especially if you count the trip there and the trip back and school related efforts at home. There are also many non-gun school related deaths if you count incidental exposures which lead to death like drugs and gangs that would not have occurred but for school, or activities which are managed by school resulting in death like sports fatalities.

So let’s admit something uncomfortable before we proceed. Something you won’t see/hear any politician admit. We as a society are ok with kids dying because of school. No one (but me) is suggesting closing all brick and mortar schools because of the risk they face on the commute alone, if not the hundred other excellent reasons. No one (but me apparently) looks at school and seriously says one death is too many. So before you play the emotional or moral card on me, face up to the fact that unless you are against school entirely you are ok with someone else’s children if not your own dying for school.

This is a numbers game. The goal for you and for culture obviously isn’t zero deaths. You must admit you are willing to sacrifice some kids to ensure that all of them are ferried to class, or you admit ignorance or deceptive agenda by failing to make the previous admission.

So when you read the rest of my responses, keep them in that context because by having this debate I’m assuming you are not with me on the school issue. If you are, then the point from the perspective of playing the political kid card is moot because at that point gun law becomes a universal debate, as opposed to one obviously triggered by political motives designed expressly to cynically exploit flaring emotions for more power and more money.

Further, it bears stating that I am not attacking emotion or disregarding the truly unimaginable suffering of parents who have lost children or anyone else obliterated by gun violence, I am simply saying that when discussing policy, I think even those who are suffering to the point of insanity would have at one point agreed, if they still don’t, that such discussion and planning should be done dispassionately.

If you approach this debate from a position of rage and suffering, in my opinion you aren’t qualified for it. It is undemocratic and unwise to let any special interest group, even if that group is one we all care for deeply, dictate policy which harms everyone else. All security policy is a trade-off. And this is obviously a problem America is already vulnerable to. We’re already ruled by a single special interest group. The 1%. And they hired the men and women who wrote this letter. And we already grossly over react to threats generally, especially politically divisive and politically useful ones. Please keep that in mind as well.

You’re going to hear a lot about it, but I wanted to make sure you got a chance to get the facts, straight from me.

Bull. This came from a speech writing team. I’m sure you had input Joe, (Do you mind if I call you Joe? You can call me Mr. Sergent.) but don’t act for a moment like this was anything but an administration and group effort. The vice presidency itself arose from the bureaucratic needs of the electoral college anyway, an institution most of us agree is completely antiquated. (This is also telling.) Maybe that’s why this email is not from the President who has a clear duty to uphold the constitution, including the second amendment, despite it being of zero importance to much of the democratic party. (I’m a registered democrat by the way and voted Obama both times. Yet I’m also a concealed carry permit holder. Yes we exist.)

After hearing from Americans from across the political spectrum, we decided to focus on some key priorities: closing background check loopholes, banning military-style assault weapons, making our schools safer, and increasing access to mental health services.

The first, second, and third suggestions intrinsically violate the 2nd amendment. Without getting to heavy into that debate (feel free to grab a copy of my book and read the 2nd amendment chapter) I’ll address them extremely concisely. (For me anyway, I tend to be long winded.)

1. Background checks shouldn’t be required at all because anyone walking around should be a fully trusted citizen. A check for warrants alone makes sense because people do escape custody from time to time, but arbitrarily denying some Americans their rights is clearly an infringement of an amendment which explicitly says “shall not be infringed.”

2. The phrase “military-style assault weapons” has no objective meaning on any level. All weapons are assault weapons and “military style” is an aesthetic issue. Besides which the entire purpose of the 2nd is to counter any military or government forces should they grow tyrannical. That many argue such a fight would be absurdly short due to the power of the United States military (I do not) is not reason for dispensing with the 2nd amendment, but rather to pare down the military. Indeed at least one person warned us about the danger the mushrooming (pun intended) of our military represents.

3. Notice the language of preemptive surrender. Safer not safe. This is an old song for the democratic party, and the responses are clear. Again, see also my book.

The ideas we sent to President Obama are straightforward. Each of them honors the rights of law-abiding, responsible Americans to bear arms.

As annoying as it may be for some, the constitution doesn’t merely protect “responsible” (however you choose to define that subjective place holder) Americans.

Some of them will require action from Congress; the President is acting on others immediately.

Which and how? This phrase renders the whole rest of the message vague and noncommittal. Surprise surprise.

But they’re all commonsense and will help make us a little safer.

Common sense is merely intuition and this issue is grossly more complicated than that. The claim of making us safer is both unproven, and beside the point. This goes back to a well known principal of evaluating the cost of security measures. I’ll dispense with the obligatory Ben Franklin quote and instead offer up this link to a much more useful exploration of that topic.

Now is the time for all of us to act.

It is never the time to act without wisdom.

Read about the events that brought us to this point, learn about the plan we’ve proposed to help protect our kids, and then add your name in support to help build momentum for this plan.

This link leads to a whole other smorgasbord of deception, equivocation, rhetoric, and glad handing. Which I do not have the stamina to address, right now at least.

Here’s what we’ve put together:

We’re calling for requiring background checks for all gun sales and closing the loopholes that allow dangerous individuals to make their purchase without going through one of these checks.

We’ve seen how you define “dangerous individuals.” Would that by chance include whistle blowers, journalists, and activists? If someone is truly dangerous then they shouldn’t be walking around alone at all. This is a classic shifting and evasion of responsibility. Are you going to ban chemistry text books as well? Because even if you genie wished your way into a society without gun powder and metal an educated/dedicated human can still kill an entire building, let alone the fragile apes inside it.

We’re asking for a new, stronger ban on military-style assault weapons and high-capacity magazines that allow a shooter to fire dozens of bullets as quickly as he can pull a trigger.

The arguments against that are old and nearly flawless.

And we’re asking Congress to help protect law enforcement by make it illegal for members of the public to possess armor-piercing bullets.

No one really expects a criminal who is willing to open fire on a police officer to respect a prohibition on what kind of bullets to use, do they? If the criminal world can build submarines, under ground farms, and chemical synthesis laboratories in their efforts to meet the demands of a black market, do you honestly think you’ll be able to stop anyone with access to hardened steel, Teflon, or lathes? Besides armor piercing ammo is already absurdly rare at crime scenes. Any ammo is armor piercing if it’s high enough velocity thus this tactic is at most just a way to jam the thin end of the wedge between us and our 2nd amendment protections, if it isn’t entirely superfluous and meaningless already in the context of reality and existing legislation.

We’re going to give law enforcement more tools and resources to prevent and prosecute gun crimes,

And we know exactly how they’ll use these new “tools” which any student of civil rights abuses in the last 10 years can accurately speculate on.

and we’re going to end the freeze on gun violence research that prevents the Center from Disease Control from looking at the causes of gun violence.

That is the only sensible thing suggested in this email, and I am willing to bet all my hair and teeth that it’s the first to go when the administration starts “compromising” with the republican congress. But I am 100% not afraid of legitimate objective scientific research into this issue. But studies can be poorly designed, executed, presented, and reported, all of which has happened to both sides of the gun issue many times, so keep in mind no single study is going to be sufficient to form real consensus. But still, more study is always welcome. More funding for science generally would be great while you’re at it.

We’re calling on Congress to help make schools safer by putting up to 1,000 school resource officers and mental health professionals in schools and ensuring they have comprehensive emergency management plans in place.

There are over 95,000 public schools in the United States. Now I’m well aware of the nirvana fallacy here, and sure any help is welcome, but given the resources and authority available to the sender of this message that number is laughably insulting if not completely insane.

And we’re going to increase coverage so that students and young adults can get access to the mental health treatment they may need.

Like you did when you torpedoed the public option? Under your watch funding for mental health care in the United States has plummeted. The state of healthcare in the United States is laughable. And the state of mental health care is an absolute shambles.

We know that no policy we enact or law we enforce can prevent every senseless act of violence in our country. But if we can save the life of even one child, we have a deep responsibility to act.

Again, there is a word for action without wisdom, and it is folly. Yes, something needs obviously be done, but starting a new and pointless prohibition war, while further trampling civil rights obviously isn’t it.

Now is the time to come together to protect our kids.

It’s always been that time, but protecting our kids was never the point, see above about ending school itself. Indeed our failure to end brick and mortar schooling is proof that no one ever really thought terrorism was a real threat. I mean seriously if we thought there were bomb wearing lunatics around every corner looking to strike fear into our hearts with a well placed suicide can you imagine a more sensitive and vulnerable set of targets than unguarded and disarmed buildings full of our children roughly sorted by age and income? The fact that our schools don’t suffer car bomb attacks yearly is proof that the threat of terror is grossly magnified if not an outright fabrication. And if you think this is because our war on terror is super effective, I have some unicorn repellent to sell you, guaranteed 100% effective.

Learn about the plan, then add your name alongside mine:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/now-is-the-time

Thanks,

Vice President Joe Biden

I already know the plan and no I will not.

What I want out of life most.

This is what I want. I want to be know as someone who is worthy of trust. Someone who doesn’t bullshit people.

I want other things as well, of course, but this is the primary thing in the context of other people.

http://www.amazon.com/Food-for-Rage-ebook/dp/B00AOY4WPQ/ (Free to download on the 15th.)

Guess I’m not Going Dark after all… Not entirely…

Month: January 2013