Standard Mischief

I saw this post by Jim Zumbo early this morning, thanks to the Xaviar. I was going to leave a comment, but noticed the fscking he was already getting. Then I saw that Tam had picked up the post. Coming back home after some errands, I noticed that Kevin is on board too. He had a link to Oscar Poppa, who seems to be keeping a blog post about co-bloggers all addressing the same topic. Perhaps the first mention of the whole mess was over at ar15.com, though that’s just a guess at that point.

Checking out Zumbo post again, and the browser slowed to a dead crawl. Thanks to a bit of *nix mischief, I used $ lynx -dump to save the text of the post to a file for processing. So there’s a total of 2207 comments so far, most of them from people willing to boycott Outdoor Life Magazine.

February 16 – 1 comment
February 17 – 193 comment
February 18 – 1997 comment and counting

My fscking to Jim, were he ever to show his face around my blog:

You may think your hobby is the sport of kings, but it’s no more deserving of protection that the military firearms collector. Those who would disarm us may save your kind for last, the snobby hunter with the expensive double or finely crafted bolt action rifle, but rest assured they want to disarm you too. They’ll see your firearms as dangerous, deadly-accurate sniper rifles. To paraphrase Uncle, if they come for your bolt action, I can’t help you because they’ve already got my cosmetically-challenged self-loading firearm.

The Second Amendment wasn’t written to safeguard your hunting hobby, Jim-Bo, it was written so everyone would have the military arms necessary to defend our nation from all enemies, foreign and domestic.

We can hang together against the tide of “useful idiots” that would divide and disarm us, or we can hang separately. Your choice.

I’d also like to say that I don’t subscribe to the NAACP philosophy. It takes more than one stupid and ignorant comment before I’m willing to ask someone’s employer to bring me someone’s head on a platter. I’d probably need to see an extra heapin’ helpin’ of hypocrisy against one’s own faith, some adultery, a few shady payments to shut someone up, and some hobnobbing with actual bigots before I’d write them off completely.

Please apologize and retract your firearms bigotry.

Comments to the swarm:

Pretty impressive. Too bad we couldn’t do this back when the father of the full-capacity magazine ban was still alive, eh?

DDoS explained, from Wikipedia

Update: Zumbo’s in full CYA mode, finds his AR-15 tecno-lust. Sample comment, slashdot style:

Coyote hunting trip – $1750.00
Single shot rifle – $300
Six-pack of beer after the hunt – $4.50
Drunken posting revealing your true feelings – Priceless

See that little light flashing on your dashboard? That’s the “Need New Job” signal.

Apology not accepted. You called me, a combat vet and proud gun owner, a terrorist.

Posted by: J.T. | February 18, 2007 at 04:31 PM

Total comments on that post, 409 within the first hour. Wow.

Naw, not likely. Thoughts like that would just give me a big head. But this is what I said, over at another blog, back in January 5th of this year:

I’ve been trying to organize my feelings on this for quite some time. I’ll bet that the NRA think they are all bad ass over http://www.givethemback.com/ , and it’s a pretty good site. But they don’t seem to be willing to post those shocking videos on YouTube so a zillion bloggers could embed those videos in their blogs. They ask for cash, and promise to send a full-length DVD if you send in $30 or more, but somehow I think they might make a bigger splash if they edited down an excerpt, perhaps about 30 minutes or so, watermarked the hell out of it, and legally put it up on Bittorrent. That way they could distribute a video for almost zero cost, while bypassing the mainstream media they always talk trash about and claim won’t sell them ad time. I’d be willing to seed that torrent.

…and then I said...

Also, more people are going to see Loose Change, (a full length, jumping to conclusions, tinfoil hat wearing, Predator-dronish ¹ look at some suspicious stuff that went off on 9/11), than are ever going to see the NRA’s in-depth look at the rape of the Constitution after Katrina in New Orleans.

That’s just sad.

So what goes up mere days later? This. Well, at least they are dangling their toes in the water. I’m still waiting for the Katrina ones.

According to this page put out by YouTube, this should be the NRA’s YouTube RSS feed. Gentlemen, start your aggravators.

Oh, and NRA guys, it might be a nice idea to name different videos different things. It kinda helps.

¹ Predator-dronish, of course, because black helicopters are so 1997.

I’m pasting in the full text of each.

From the NRA, published by hawaiireporter.com:

City of New Orleans, Mayor Ray Nagin, Once Again Found in Contempt of Court
District Court Judge to City Attorney: Conduct “wholly unprofessional”
By NRA, 2/13/2007 1:18:21 PM

Fairfax, VA-The National Rifle Association (NRA) and law abiding gun owners have won yet another victory On February 13, 2007, against New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin and former police chief Warren Riley.

Judge Carl J. Barbier, presiding over the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana, granted NRA’s motion for contempt against New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin and Warren Riley for “failure to provide initial disclosures and to compel answers to discovery” during NRA’s injunction against the City for their illegal gun confiscation of law abiding citizens following Hurricane Katrina in 2006.

“Once more, Mayor Ray Nagin and former police chief Warren Riley are held accountable for considering themselves above the law,” said Chris W. Cox, NRA’s chief lobbyist. “These men have had to be dragged, kicking and screaming, every step of the way in this process to return the lawfully owned firearms to their own citizens, and Judge Barbier rightly found them in contempt of court for their complete lack of respect for the rule of law.”

Furthermore, Judge Barbier concluded the delaying tactics by the City’s attorney, Joseph Vincent DiRosa, Jr, to be “wholly unprofessional and shall not be condoned”. Mr. DiRosa admitted in Court that he had “no good reason” to explain his actions and has been ordered to pay partial legal fees to NRA’s attorneys for their wasted time and money.

“Ray Nagin, Warren Riley and their attorney refused to provide vital information to the U.S. District Court for their unconstitutional acts in their city’s time of great need,” concluded Cox. “On behalf of the lawful gun owners of New Orleans, NRA is pleased with this outcome, we thank Judge Barbier for his swift decision and we will continue to press for the full return of all the city’s confiscated firearms.”

Established in 1871, the National Rifle Association is America’s oldest civil rights and sportsmen’s group. Four million members strong, NRA continues its mission to uphold Second Amendment rights and to advocate enforcement of existing laws against violent offenders to reduce crime. The Association remains the nation’s leader in firearm education and training for law-abiding gun owners, law enforcement and the military.

Obviously, the 700 pound gorilla of the freedom lobby does not need to share the spotlight with anyone.

Here’s the Second Amendment Foundation’s press release, published by prnewswire.com:

SAF Victory in New Orleans, Judge Grants Contempt Motion

BELLEVUE, Wash., Feb. 13 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — A United States District Judge in New Orleans has granted a motion to hold Mayor C. Ray Nagin and Police Superintendent Warren Riley in contempt for failure to provide initial disclosures and answers to discovery in a lawsuit filed by the Second Amendment Foundation.

Judge Carl J. Barbier issued a blistering rebuke to New Orleans’ defense counsel for conduct that is “wholly unprofessional” and warned that it “shall not be condoned.” Judge Barbier ordered defense counsel to reimburse SAF’s attorney $1,365. SAF is joined in the lawsuit by the National Rifle Association.

In his ruling, Judge Barbier noted, “Defense counsel has caused time and money to be wasted by Plaintiffs’ counsel and further admits that he has ‘no good reason’ to explain his behavior.”

“Throughout the past 17 months,” said SAF founder Alan M. Gottlieb, “our attorneys have acted professionally and they have been stonewalled or ignored by the city and especially its defense attorney. This seems to be the only thing that gets their attention, and it appears that Judge Barbier’s patience has grown as thin as our own.”

“We gave New Orleans every opportunity to act like adults and deal with this lawsuit in a professional manner,” Gottlieb said, “and they’ve acted as if this case didn’t exist. Judge Barbier’s ruling is a wake-up call.

“They seem to forget that we went to court over a serious civil rights violation,” Gottlieb continued. “In the days following Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans dispatched police officers and National Guard troopers to confiscate firearms. In many cases, citizens were disarmed at gunpoint, without warrant and without probable cause. Nagin and Riley, and every other official in New Orleans who was part of this outrage, need to understand that the Constitution may not be suspended in New Orleans or anywhere else by a natural disaster, or on somebody’s whim.

“This is the first step toward forcing New Orleans to return seized firearms to their rightful owners, and in our effort to find out who issued that illegal order, and hold them responsible,” Gottlieb stated. “We will
not rest until this case is resolved.”

The Second Amendment Foundation (http://www.saf.org) is the nation’s oldest and largest tax-exempt education, research, publishing and legal action group focusing on the Constitutional right and heritage to privately own and possess firearms. Founded in 1974, The Foundation has grown to more than 600,000 members and supporters and conducts many programs designed to better inform the public about the consequences of gun control.

Contact: Alan Gottlieb (425) 454-7012

SOURCE Second Amendment Foundation

As the unofficial surrogate brass balls of the NRA, I suppose they are obligated to mention the NRA’s co-support.

And I’ll try to put this succinctly.

There are some people who think that Federal law encircles the globe, while basic Constitutional rights only exist if they are explicitly enumerated, and in any event those rights stop dead in their tracks at the US border.

Thanks to Xavier, I found out that Ray Nagin has been held in contempt of court for his failure to follow court orders in the aftermath of those illegal firearm confiscations that he had maintained at one point never happened.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that “contempt of court” for Ray Nagin does not mean what it usually means for people like you and me. Meaning that I assume that Ray Nagin is not now cooling his heels in jail.

Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong.

Oh, and let me know if the NRA, (yet again) “forgot” to co-credit the Second Amendment Foundation.

This has been such a sick and twisted tale. Someone needs to put a timeline together or something.

Oh, and Ray? Give them back.