Advocacy Center

"It's a revolution, damnit! You have to offend somebody."

- John Adams, in the musical play 1776 about the American Revolution

• This is why Japan does not deserve, and will never get, a permanent seat on the UN Security Council.
• The sad state of Public Schools in the USA:
  • Here's an ignorant public school teacher (a tautology) who thinks that Linux is pirated software. As if we need any further proof that public school teachers aren't worth what they are paid, and most certainly do not deserve more money.
  • Here's a public middle school that thinks that it is alright to strip search a 13 year old girl after a boy, caught with prescription-strength Ibuprophen tablets, claimed that she provided him when them. Not that it should matter, but the girl was an honor student with no disciplinary problems. It didn't dawn on the mindless public school officials (another tautology) that, just maybe, the boy (already in trouble) said that in order to humiliate the class Miss Goody Two-Shoes.
• Buy More Bonds
• Information about Canadian gun laws for US visitors is here.
• Information about Mexican gun laws for US visitors is here.
• Things to keep in mind if you are a gun owner who thinks that "the NRA is too radical" and that it is possible to possible to compromise with anti-gunners by banning only the "bad" guns:
  • Your scoped hunting rifles are "bad guns".
    They are "sniper rifles".
  • Your shotguns are "bad guns".
    With the exception of .410, shotguns are all greater than .50 caliber. Shotguns are the most deadly of all firearms. Why do you think there would be an exception made for your shotguns?
  • Your bolt action M1903, Lee-Enfield, Mauser, etc. rifles are "bad guns".
    They are "military rifles, designed for killing people".
  • Your M1 Garands and M1 Carbines are "bad guns".
    They are "semi-automatic assault rifles, designed for killing people".
  Do I need to go on? Does it still make sense to you to compromise with gun banners? The only compromise possible with these people is nothing short of a complete ban on all private firearms. Of course, the police and military would still have guns. So will criminals; the UK and Japan are island nations with extremely restrictive gun laws, yet criminals in both countries have no trouble getting their hands upon guns (including handguns) that are totally banned in both countries.
  There are no "bad guns".
• Barack Obama, in his own words, about why he can't take away people's guns:
  • "Even if I want to take them away, I don't have the votes in Congress. This can't be the reason not to vote for me. Can everyone hear me in the back? I see a couple of sportsmen back there. I'm not going to take away your guns."
    - August 29, 2008, SCHOTT North America Inc. factory, Duryea PA
• Who is Obama's "middle class"?
  • Barak Obama says that he will cut taxes for the "middle class", which he says is anyone making under $250,000/year.
  • Joe Biden corrected that to define the "middle class" as "people making under $150,000 a year."
  • Now New Mexico governor Bill Richardson says, "What Obama wants to do is he is basically looking at $120,000 and under among those that are in the middle class, and there is a tax cut for those."
  So which is it???
• Joe Biden's version of history:
  • "When the stock market crashed, Franklin D. Roosevelt got on the television and didn't just talk about the, you know, the princes of greed. He said, `Look, here's what happened.'"
    - CBS Evening news, September 2008
  That's interesting. According to my history books, Herbert Hoover was president in October 1929 when the stock market crashed. Also, it would have been quite a feat to get on television at the time, given that it wasn't introduced until the 1939 World's Fair and didn't start taking off until 1949.
• Ted Kennedy, in his own words, about his intent to ban deer hunting ammunition:
  • "Another rifle caliber, the 30.30 [sic] caliber, was responsible for penetrating three officers' armor and killing them in 1993, 1996, and 2002. This ammunition is also capable of puncturing light-armored vehicles, ballistic or armored glass, armored limousines, even a 600-pound safe with 600 pounds of safe armor plating. It is outrageous and unconscionable that such ammunition continues to be sold in the United States of America."
    - Congressional Record S1634 (daily edition Feb. 26, 2004)
  The low-powered .30-30 Winchester cartridge was introduced in 1895 and is the long-time standard American deer cartridge. What his evil rotting brain wants to conceal is that all medium to large game rifle cartridges are capable of penetrating body armor, etc. This armor is intended to stop specific low-powered handgun cartridges. It is not intended to stop rifle cartridges, and was never intended to do so.
• Environmentalists, in their own words, about why they really wanted DDT banned:
  • "In Guyana, within almost two years, it had almost eliminated malaria, but at the same time, the birth rate had doubled. So my chief quarrel with DDT in hindsight is that it greatly added to the population problem."
    - Alexander King, Club of Rome
  • "Malaria was actually a natural population control, and DDT has caused a massive population explosion in some places where it has eradicated malaria. More fundamentally, why should humans get priority over other forms of life? ... I don't see any respect for mosquitoes."
    - Jeff Hoffman, environmental attorney
• Quotes to ponder:
  • Pacifism is objectively pro-Fascist. This is elementary common sense. If you hamper the war effort of one side you automatically help that of the other. Nor is there any real way of remaining outside such a war as the present one. In practice, "he that is not with me is against me". The idea that you can somehow remain aloof from and superior to the struggle...is a bourgeois illusion bred of money and security. [...] I am not interested in pacifism as a "moral phenomenon". [Those who] imagine that one can somehow "overcome" the German army by lying on one's back [may] go on imagining it, but let them also wonder occasionally whether this is not an illusion due to security, too much money and a simple ignorance of the way in which things actually happen. As an ex-Indian civil servant, it always makes me shout with laughter to hear, for instance, Gandhi named as an example of the success of non-violence. As long as twenty years ago it was cynically admitted in Anglo-Indian circles that Gandhi was very useful to the British government. So he will be to the Japanese if they get there. Despotic governments can stand "moral force" till the cows come home; what they fear is physical force.
    - George Orwell, Pacifism and the War
  • "Political correctness is communist propaganda writ small. In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, nor to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is to co-operate with evil, and in some small way to become evil oneself. One's standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to."
    - Theodore Dalyrimple
  • "This miserable argument, if persevered in, would be an eternal bar to the annihilation of evil. How is it ever to be eradicated if every nation is thus prudentially to wait until the concurrence of all the world should be obtained?"
    - William Pitt, answering critics who claimed that other nations must first agree before Britian could act to suppress the slave trade
• The complete military history of France is here.
• Pithy thought for today: The term "PETA kook" is a tautology.
• Gun Control Success Stories:
  • In the USA state of Delaware the state police protects its citizens by blocking an 81-year old woman with a flawless record (not even a traffic citation) from purchasing a .22 caliber pistol for the crimes of being old and female. It subsequently turns out that the Delaware state police illegally keeps firearms transactions records; state law requires that these records be destroyed after 60 days.
    - The News Journal via www.delawareonline.com, October 2008
    Glad to hear that Delaware's finest are protecting us against little old ladies with guns.
  • In the USA, the Washington Post newspaper whimpers that Washington DC "is not Dodge City in the 1800s", and thus should be allowed to continue its total handgun ban.
    • from 1876 until 1885, Dodge City had 15 homicides.
    • Dodge City's worst year for murder was 1878, when 5 people were murdered.
    • Washington DC had 169 homicides in 2006.
    So, yes, Washington DC is not Dodge City in the 1800s. Gun-banning Washington DC is far more dangerous than Dodge City was. But then again, what do you expect from a city whose former mayor (and current city councilman) was arrested for cocaine possession?
  • Since the UK outlawed handguns in 1998:
    • people in London are now 6 times more likely to be mugged than people in New York City
    • more than half of English burglaries occur when someone is at home (as opposed to 13% in the US)
    • with the exception of murder, violent crime in the UK is now far higher than the US. In Scotland, the violent crime rate is now 3% of the population; in England and Wales it is 2.8%. The US figure is 1.2%.
    • for the first time in history, British police are now routinely armed
    • has widespread availability of handguns among its criminals, including youth gangs.
    Gun crimes in the UK have more than doubled since the current Labour government took control. Recorded gun crime in the UK rose by 3% to 10,590 incidents in 2004 up to June, an average of 29/day, and a 14% rise in violent crime (265,800 incidents April-June compared to 233,600 in the previous year).
  • Since Canada passed its harsh gun control laws (among other things, outlawing most handguns) in 1995:
    • For the year 2003, Canada had 8,530 crimes per 100,000 (vs. 4,267 in the US). Of these, Canada had 958 violent crimes (vs. 523 in the US), and 4,275 property crimes (vs. 3,744 in the US). Canada is less safe than the US!
    • Toronto, once the safest large city in North America, now has more muggings, car thefts, and assaults per capita than New York City
    • Canada's overall crime rate is 50% higher than the US
    • 60% of US states are safer than any Canadian province
    • crime has risen in six of Canada's provinces and seven of its ten largest cities.
  • Japan, which effectively outlaws handguns (there are only 50 civilian handgun licenses allocated for the entire country, and not all have been issued), very severely limits rifle ownership, and has an elaborate licensing system for shotgun ownership:
    • has a higher murder rate than among the Japanese-American population in the USA.
    • has a suicide rate that is nearly double the USA's rate.
    • has widespread availability of handguns among its organized crime elements (the yakuza).
    Put another way, if you are a Japanese, you are less likely to be murdered or commit suicide if you move to the USA!
  • The tragedy in Mumbai, India, where ordinary citizens have no access to firearms at all, and the police have obsolete century-old arms that they can't use because they've never trained, much less practiced, in their use.
  Conclusion: gun control is very successful...in making a nation safe for violent criminals.

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