Fifth Amendment

Revisiting Miranda

Posted on by Kenneth Ballard / 0 Comment

As a person who owns a blog that doesn’t really get a lot of hits, I tend to notice when one article gets a lot of hits over anything else. Recently, the article that has been targeted for readership is "Mirandizing Terrorists", which ended with this line:

When we start drawing lines on who should not be informed of their rights, pretty soon the number of people who are informed of their rights becomes a minority. This should not even be up for question: Mirandize everyone who is apprehended by civilian law enforcement, citizen or not, regardless of why they are being arrested.

And I still stand by that sentiment.

The search terms bringing people to the article basically asked the question of whether Timothy McVeigh had been read his Miranda rights. Given that McVeigh was tried in a civilian Federal Court, he was at some point read his Miranda rights – whether it was at time of arrest I do not know. Contrary to popular belief, the police do not have to Mirandize you at time of arrest, but must do so prior to any questioning.

Not really understanding immediately why that article was attracting a ton of interest, I remembered that the FBI recently confirmed apprehension of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, one of two suspects in the recent Boston Marathon bombing, the other suspect, his brother, having been killed in a shootout with law enforcement.

Last night, April 19, 2013, Senator Lindsey Graham tweeted this:

The Law of War allows us to hold individual in this scenario as potential enemy combatant w/o Miranda warnings or appointment of counsel.

And in a statement in which Graham and other Republican Senators joined:

It is clear the events we have seen over the past few days in Boston were an attempt to kill American citizens and terrorize a major American city. The accused perpetrators of these acts were not common criminals attempting to profit from a criminal enterprise, but terrorists trying to injure, maim, and kill innocent Americans. The suspect, based upon his actions, clearly is a good candidate for enemy combatant status. We do not want this suspect to remain silent.

There are a couple problems with this. According to all reports, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is a naturalized citizen of the United States, so the laws of war do not apply. He is not an enemy combatant because he is not a foreign national. There is no reason to believe that they were acting on anything but their own volition, and that the brothers were not members or acting on behalf of any recognized terrorist organization, foreign military, or with authorization or sanction of a foreign state power.

So why is he to be treated as an enemy combatant, again? Better yet, why is the government of the United States labeling its own citizens "enemy combatants"? Have we truly lost our sanity?

One thing that has become very scary is how willing both the Democrats and Republicans are willing to just presume that rights protected by the Constitution of the United States suddenly do not exist. The left is doing it with the Second Amendment, as I’ve written about repeatedly here and in other venues, and the right is doing it with the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Amendments.

We should all certainly be thankful that there were only three fatalities in the bombing, despite there also being 170+ injuries. But at the same time we should not find ourselves so willing to strip rights from others. And certainly we should not be treating every sensational circumstance as if it was an act of war on the United States. After all, we did not treat Jared Lee Loughner as an enemy combatant, nor did we treat James Holmes as an enemy combatant.

Again, this should not be up for question: everyone who is taken into police custody is protected by the Constitution and should be Mirandized.

Second Amendment

Open letter to Gabrielle Giffords

Posted on by Kenneth Ballard / 0 Comment

Madam Representative Giffords,

One thing I find incredulous, if not insulting, is the constant assertion by you, your husband, and other gun control proponents that the "gun lobby" is somehow acting in abeyance of the will of the people.

But before continuing with this response to your recent opinion piece in the New York Times, I must ask one question: have you read the amendments that were rejected on April 17? If you have not, then your opinion on those amendments is about the same as trying to review a book without actually reading it, going only on what other people are telling you.

You asserted that the Senate voted down "common-sense legislation that would have made it harder for criminals and people with dangerous mental illnesses to get hold of deadly firearms".

The votes on amendments that took place on April 17 covered seven (7) amendments that were offered for consideration. Two of those amendments came straight from Senator Feinstein’s "assault weapons" ban proposal (S.150), which was a rewrite and expansion of her previous "assault weapons" ban that was enacted in 1994 (herein called "AWB94") and expired in 2004. Please recall from history that even Senator Feinstein barely held on to her Senate seat in the 1994 election following that bill, and the Republicans swept both the House and Senate using AWB94 as part of their platform.

Unfortunately with President Clinton in office at the time, any attempt at repeal would have been worthless as they did not have the necessary majorities in the Senate and House to overtake a repeal veto. But the damage had been done. Political precedent had been set.

But it wasn’t set by the gun lobby. It was set by the People of the United States. When even Senator Feinstein nearly loses her election following AWB94’s enactment, that sends a message to our elected officials that it was not something the people ever wanted.

Fast forward to January 2011. More specifically Tuscon, Arizona. I think you know to what I’m referring here: the day you very nearly lost your life, but where six people lost theirs, including a 9 year-old girl, a Federal Court judge and one of your aids. Your husband said in front of Congress that if Loughner had a 10 round magazine, as opposed to the 33-round magazine he did use in the first volley of bullets, that Christina Taylor Greene would still be alive. And it’s certainly possible.

But what your husband failed to consider is that a Glock 19, the firearm that Loughner used, is designed to be used with a 15 round magazine, specifically carrying 15 rounds of 9mm NATO ammunition with an extra round chambered. Reducing this to 10 rounds means that the firearm is no longer functioning as designed, but more importantly, it is now functioning quite differently from how it would with a 33-round club sticking out of the magazine well.

This difference in weight could put the bullet at just the right trajectory to have ended your life in an instant in 2011. That is what your husband fails to consider. A 9 year-old girl may have lived – or she still may still have been killed, we cannot know – but you also likely could have been killed as well. It is still possible to kill 6 people with 10 bullets – another fact your husband didn’t consider either.

Now let’s turn our attention to the expanded background check amendment also proposed by Democrats.

The National Instant Check System, or NICS, that is used to perform background checks is only as good as the information it contains. The amendment that was proposed intended to close the so-called "gun show loophole", despite there not being one as most any place that licenses a gun show requires all gun sales to occur only with licensed dealers. Democrats have routinely used the line that "40% of guns are purchased without a background check", something that has been debunked endlessly by numerous sources online, more recently by FactCheck.org among other sources, and by PolitiFact.com back in January.

Beyond this, one thing you need to realize is that the firearms used in the three major mass shootings in the last 2 1/2 years were all acquired with NICS background checks, including the firearm that put a bullet through your head.

The largest shortfall of the NICS system is the information it contains, or rather does not contain that it should. President Obama is evaluating his options to see what can be done to ensure the necessary information is provided to ensure that all persons who are prohibited under Federal law from owning a firearm are listed in NICS. This is where efforts should be focused first. After all, statistics show that less than 1% of criminals obtained their firearms through private transfers.

But still further, Madam Representative, is the notion of fairness here.

I am going to presume that you and your husband are law-abiding citizens. Your husband recently tried a political stunt to purchase an AR-15 he would have later been turning over to police to be destroyed. The attempt at the purchase was to allegedly show how easy it is to obtain such a weapon without taking into account two key facts: 1. he’s a former member of the military, a former commissioned officer at that, who was honorably discharged, and 2. he has no criminal record of any kind.

In other words, your husband is the kind of person who should be able to breeze through the background check system and obtain a firearm of any kind without any hang-ups. What you fail to see is that with expanded gun control laws, let alone expanded background check laws, your husband, with his record and background, would be presumed a criminal until the NICS check came back saying otherwise. The same with my father, a former Chief Petty Officer of the US Navy who served 12 exemplary years. Like your husband, my father should also be able to breeze through the background check system.

Further, what you also fail to see, is that gun control, the very idea of it, casts a shadow over all gun owners, you and your husband included. Those who are anti-gun already look upon law-abiding gun owners as if we are mass murderers in waiting. They think we are just sitting around waiting for the opportunity to kill people. Those who carry a firearm concealed and have gone through their State’s necessary process to obtain that privilege are also looked upon with similar light, that we want to carry concealed just so it’s easier for us to get our firearm to where it’s easier to kill a lot of people.

And I don’t know about you, but I have no desire to kill anyone. And I detest the very idea that I would be treated as if I do.

One of our founding principles in the United States is the idea that a person be presumed innocent until evidence and the proper legal procedures show otherwise beyond reasonable doubt. Yet your organization and the laws you are attempting to get passed instead want to treat every person who owns firearms or wanting to purchase firearms or ammunition as criminals, without a trial, without any evidence against us, purely on presumption based on the fact that we are or want to be firearms owners.

And that is categorically unfair.

You might as well stand next to someone about to fill out the ATF form to purchase a firearm and ask them, "So who are you planning to kill?" Because that is what much of the new proposed ideas in Washington would do by proxy.

The reaction to the current political climate is what politicians were using in making their decisions this week. The shortage of firearms and ammunition is directly related to the fear of additional Federal regulations and restrictions. The people do not want what Washington has to offer, plain and simple. And that was reflected in the votes this week on the various amendments to Senator Reid’s bill.

You are blaming the NRA without realizing they have millions of members. And there are several other organizations out there similar to the NRA, at local, state and national levels, also with potentially millions of members. Millions of households in the United States and tens of millions of people own firearms. We do not want to see Washington enact further restrictions on all of us simply because there exist a few nuts out there.

Please understand this.

Further, please also understand that politicians in Washington and in many State capitols have already made it clear that the current proposed legislation is just the beginning. The question to be explored is what they have planned next. Personally, I’d prefer not ever finding out by never letting them get through what they have planned at this point.

Second Amendment

Feinstein’s bill fails miserably

Posted on by Kenneth Ballard / 0 Comment

Today in the Senate, seven (7) amendments were introduced for Reid’s gun control bill, S. 649 – the "Safe Communities, Safe Schools Act of 2013". Three of the amendments were introduced by Democrats, the other four by Republicans. All of them were rejected.

The votes were, by amendment number (60 votes needed to pass):

Of particular note is Amendment 711, which is Feinstein’s attempt to get her "assault weapons" ban tacked onto the bill. This amendment did not include the magazine capacity limitation, focusing only on "assault weapons". By the vote tally, 60 Senators voted against Feinstein’s bill. This basically tells you that the bill is politically toxic. Feinstein will likely view this as a complete defeat on her bill and likely will not try to bring it up again during the remainder of this Congress, but we must be vigilant and keep an eye out for it as any Senator could try to sneak it in.

Among the votes for Yay on that amendment included just one (1) lone Republican: Senator Mark Kirk of Illinois. Of the 38 Democrats that voted in favor of it, Senator McCaskill of my State of Missouri was included. I will likely be sending another letter to her office – and will likely receive a form letter in response.

Along with Senator Angus King (I-ME), fifteen (15) Democrats joined all other Republicans to vote down Feinstein’s bill:

  • Max Baucus (MT)
  • Mark Begich (AK)
  • Michael Bennet (CO)
  • Joe Donnelly (IN)
  • Kay Hagan (NC)
  • Martin Heinrich (NM)
  • Heidi Heitkamp (ND)
  • Tim Johnson (SD)
  • Mary Landrieu (LA)
  • Joe Manchin (WV)
  • Mark Pryor (AR)
  • Jon Tester (MT)
  • Mark Udall (CO)
  • Tom Udall (NM)
  • Mark Warner (VA)

They definitely deserve our thanks for voting this thing out. Again with 60 Senators voting against this, it should send a message to Feinstein that renewing and expanding the old "assault weapons" ban is not going to fly with the American people. The magazine capacity limit was reintroduced separately as Amendment 714, with 54 Senators voting against it.

So the full Senate has said in no uncertain terms that it does not want any part of Feinstein’s legislation. This is certainly good news for gun rights and for all Americans.

But this doesn’t mean we let our guard down. Feinstein or another Senator could try to bring it up again before the 2014 election, try to sneak it on to something else, so we have to remain vigilant. But if it’s not brought up again this Congress, fully expect it to be reintroduced in 2015.

The fight is far from over.

Economics

MMOs and economics

Posted on by Kenneth Ballard / 0 Comment

Recently Cracked.com decided to tackle the subject of MMO – massively-multiplayer online games – in an article called “5 Ways Video Games are Saving Mankind“. Point #5 in the article caught my attention: “You can learn fascinating things about the economy from MMOs”:

You wouldn’t think you could learn a lot about society just by watching a person play a video game (other than that some members of society just cannot play FPS games without continually jumping around like jackasses). But experts are finding that if you want to model economic theories, just find a massively multiplayer online game and follow the imaginary gold. Right now, there are economists who are actually being paid to study how the digital currency flows in the world of fantasy MMOs.

This is certainly quite true. Online games are a great way to model economic activity to see how people actually operate and how incentives influence people. In any economy you will always have people willing to work hard and those trying to get by with the least amount of effort.

pp_logo.en_.pngNow for me, one online game to which I’ve been relatively active over the last 7+ years is Puzzle Pirates. From Puzzle Pirates, it is clearly obvious that many of what libertarians have been saying about economics works and works well.

The Cracked.com article linked above said this:

And the libertarians out there will like reading about how, in all of these cases, the games’ libertarian/anarchic financial models caused their economies to recover from crashes much more rapidly than in the real world (as did things like, say, the lack of a minimum wage).

I think we can go one-step further: we can learn how to avoid many of the economic issues we are seeing today. Allow me to elaborate, again using Puzzle Pirates as the example.

Puzzle Pirates has a somewhat unique economic setup. Some of the base commodities in the game are spawned somewhat randomly, harvested by in-game merchant bots and transported to islands via bot ships. Some of the base commodities can be harvested from populated islands through commodities markets. There are players who actively go out and reserve product on the commodities markets and move it to other islands for profit. This is actually how I operated in the game, and it could be quite profitable if you know what you’re doing.

But everything else in the game must be produced by someone – i.e. real players operating shops and real players working in those shops to produce products. Ships, clothing, swords, even the fabrics and dyes, paint and rum must be produced somehow by someone.

The economy in Puzzle Pirates mimics pure capitalism in these ways. Shops compete with each other to not only sell their product, but also produce their product. Shops advertise their labor rates and prices. Competition reigns supreme not only with the shops, but also on the open waters between the islands.

Then there’s the in-game monetary unit, called the “piece of eight” or “PoE”. The money in the game comes into existence through only one source: pillaging bot ships on the waters between the islands. And it leaves the game (“sunk” from circulation) through numerous methods. This keeps the monetary supply more or less in line with production and consumption by the other players in the game. There is no central authority issuing the money through any means, such as through loans or any other means.

As such there is little, if any room for inflation to set in.

This means that you could earn and save up several thousand PoE, log off the game, and come back on several months later and find that the prices are still about where they were when you left. The prices for base commodities do not fluctuate much, and the competition for labor keeps the economy in relative equilibrium. A lot of products also eventually wear out, or “dust”, keeping a steady stream of demand for these products and the commodities needed to produce them.

As the generation of the currency is relatively automatic, and is scaled to how well players pillage on the open waters, money is tied to effort. And effort is necessary for the money to exist. If no one pillages the bot ships on the ocean, no one has money to spend.

Beyond this, in Puzzle Pirates and most MMOs, there is no recognized concept of a loan. You cannot walk into a bank and get a loan. You can ask other players to lend you money, but any such loans are purely on the honor system, and there are no mechanics in the game to enforce that loan.

Anyone familiar with how banking works in the real world knows that without loans, the concept of fractional reserve banking cannot exist. Without fractional reserve banking, inflation is virtually non-existent.

And yet without loans, without fractional reserve banking, there is still plenty of economic activity on each ocean. The economies are stable and at a relative equilibrium. In the years I’ve been on Puzzle Pirates, I’ve yet to see anything that could be called a “crash” in the economy. Prices fluctuate as supply and demand fluctuates, and the monetary unit is a relative constant within the economy.

In other words, Puzzle Pirates is a model economy from which a lot can be learned.

The company behind Puzzle Pirates does occasionally introduce new products – such as the monthly special class ships – but this does not change the economy much. If people want that new product and can afford to purchase it, they will. If they do not want the product or cannot afford it, they won’t. If they want it but cannot afford it, they will work however they can to gain the money needed to afford it. They are products that compete with all others for the existing money supply. And the system only determines what is required to make the product, not the price. The price of the product charged to consumers is determined by the shop keepers based on costs of production and is also subject to competition and availability.

Taxes in Puzzle Pirates apply only to consumption, with tax rates set by island governors – i.e. live players – and the tax rates are directly reflected in the prices. This creates inter-island competition. Shop keepers can move their shop to a different island if the government sets tax rates too high. And as taxes are reflected in final prices for items purchased at a shop, customers can shop at different islands to find what they want or need, which is helped on by the fact that a person can, by using the ferry, go between populated islands near instantaneously.

And shoppes that can compete succeed and continue to operate. Those who cannot do not.

For a short while in the game, I did operate a shop – a distillery, which makes the rums needed by ships for their voyages. The shop turned a decent profit while I was running it, too. I have a business degree, so taking my knowledge of business and how to earn profits while avoiding losses worked out well for me. It took a bit of effort to pull off, along with at times switching up what I was producing to ensure I was earning the greatest amount of profit.

But then the open market of Puzzle Pirates is what really made it possible for me to do that.

In the end, I think that Puzzle Pirates is a great system from which we can learn a lot. But the one lesson we can learn from all MMOs currently is that the fractional-reserve system must be eliminated, or at least severely scaled back. Eliminate the fractional-reserve system and you will virtually eliminate inflation. Virtually eliminate inflation and the rest of the economy will likely fix itself over a short period of time.

Debt

Right step, wrong reasons

Posted on by Kenneth Ballard / 0 Comment

Oftentimes it is suggested that the first thing to do when starting a debt reduction plan, or repayment plan, is to obtain your credit report and credit scores. To many this seems like a logical step, and it is a good first step, but it is often suggested for the wrong reasons.

Recently I came across a blog article on credit.com called “The First Thing You Must Do Before Paying Off Debt” by Gerri Detweiler. The author recommends getting ahold of your credit report and credit scores, but bases the recommendation off some incorrect ideas. And all of this seems part of a greater issue of this reliance on the credit score, as if maximizing your credit score is the most important thing in the world.

But let’s tackle Ms Detweiler’s 3 reasons why you need your credit reports and credit scores before paying down any debt.

You’ll have a starting point

She starts off on fallacious footing:

Your credit report can help you identify who you owe, along with recent balances.

You may also find debts listed on your credit reports that you had forgotten about, such as collection accounts. Forget to include those in your plan, though, and your efforts may be derailed if those collectors suddenly decide to pursue you for payment but you can’t afford to pay them.

Plus, no matter which approach you choose to get out of debt, you’ll have to know what you owe. Your credit report can help you with that task.

Your credit scores will never show you the true magnitude of your debt. Same with your credit report. As such, relying on them as a starting point will give you a false start. Your credit reports will show two things, however: old accounts that might still be within statute of limitations, as pointed out, and accounts you never opened to begin with.

Getting out of debt would require first getting everything in order. This means taking care of accounts that might have been opened without your explicit authorization – i.e. fraudulent accounts. If you don’t take care of these accounts, they’ll have a bigger impact on you than just a hurt credit score. Why did Gerri not mention this in her article as it seems so blatantly obvious?

But again, never rely on your credit reports and credit scores to give you an idea of the magnitude of what you truly owe. A spreadsheet will do that quite nicely, created from all of the various statements for all of the accounts listed on your credit report. The statements for the accounts should be the single source of truth for the true magnitude of your debt bubble.

So once you’ve gotten the picture into perspective, gotten everything logged in a spreadsheet for easy reference and update, you might as well just ignore your credit score and credit report from this point out. Just focus on paying down your debts.

You’ll understand how your debt affects your credit

And the fallacy continues:

If you’ve been making your monthly payments on time, you may assume your credit is “good.” But, in fact, the balances you are carrying may be dragging down more than just your net worth; they may be hurting your credit scores.

You won’t know that by looking at your credit reports, though. Your credit report just contains information about your accounts, balances and payment history. It won’t analyze whether your debt may be too high.

If you’re committed to paying down debts, who cares what your credit score actually is?!? Your credit score should be the least of your concerns at this point in the game. Instead your concern should be getting your balances down. Worry about your credit score only after you’ve achieved your goal. It is worthless to you until that point.

You can track your progress

Ugh…

Paying down debt is usually a marathon, not a sprint, and most of us are going to need encouragement along the way. Monitoring your credit score each month is one way to get that regular dose of motivation. Over time, as your balances decrease, your credit scores will hopefully get stronger. But even if your credit scores suffer because you choose to settle your debt or file for bankruptcy, keeping track of your score can help you monitor your progress as you work to rebuild your credit and your financial life.

Yes paying down debt is a marathon. I’ve been at it for about 4 years now, trying to pay off a mountain of debt that caved in around me when was unemployed. But you know what I haven’t seen in those last 4 years? My credit score.

Your credit score won’t show you a track of progress on paying down your debts. But do you know what will? Your financial accounting system, for one, which should have the ability to track account balances over time. This will show you quite easily what kind of debt payoff trend you’re currently on. Having a summary balance of all of your debt accounts will also show your progress on getting out of debt.

Your credit score, however, is worthless in that regard.

Marriage/Religion/Republican platform

Marriage was redefined long ago

Posted on by Kenneth Ballard / 0 Comment

In all of this talk about gay marriage, one thing I think a lot of the anti gay-marriage side seem to keep forgetting is simply this: the moment the citizens of the various States allowed their State governments to require a license to be married, they lost all claim to the word marriage and any justification for restriction.

Marriage is not being redefined with gay marriage because marriage has already been redefined long ago, namely back in the mid-1800s when the States took it upon themselves to be the sole licensing authority for marriage. It went from being defined as “religious construct allowing to be married whomever the religion says is allowed” to “construct of law allowing to be married whomever the politicians decide should be allowed”. See the issue with the latter. Does it not bother you that something like marriage is now subject to political will? Or does it only bother you that political will is swinging in a direction you may not want it to go?

Imagine a gay man and a straight man are having an argument that gets so heated a crowd forms around them to watch the spectacle. Then as the argument appears to be reaching a point where neither is willing to concede, the straight man appeals to the crowd, “How many of you think this gay guy should be able to marry his boyfriend?” Regardless of how many hands go up, why should the gay man’s ability to marry his boyfriend be subject to the will of the crowd? Or the political will of the entirety of society?

But that’s not the only concern.

Once government became the sole licensing authority for marriages, marriage and any applicable restrictions came under the domain of the Fourteenth Amendment. Had our previous generations resisted when their respective States tried to institute marriage licensing, we would not be having the debates and confrontations we are today, because there would be no need. They established the inevitability when they wanted to control marriage by preventing interracial marriages, overturned ultimately by the Supreme Court in 1961.

Then the State governments and the Federal government compounded the problem by establishing rights, privileges and benefits to married couples, further cementing the applicability of the Fourteenth Amendment, while simultaneously denying to certain individuals the ability to enjoy those benefits, rights and privileges by denying them the legal ability to marry a person of their mutual choice. This was the case with interracial marriage and remains the case with gay marriage.

In short, if you don’t want political will to work against you, then you should not work it against someone else — the golden rule applied to politics.

Firearms and Ammunition

Be concerned, but not paranoid

Posted on by Kenneth Ballard / 0 Comment

A lot of people in recent months have become quite attentive to the government’s actions and are questioning a lot of what the government is doing. This is certainly good. But unfortunately a lot of the conspiratorial mindset ends up seeping into this.

So too was the case when reports surfaced that the DHS had planned to purchase about 1.5 billion rounds of ammunition over the course of 5 years. On Facebook I said this about the report:

So 1 of 3 things is going on: 1. the DHS is trying to actively arm themselves in lieu of some domestic incident, 2. they are trying to secure a price on ammunition before ammunition prices go up (even a couple cent per round increase on that much ammunition is going to sting on an annual budget), or 3. they plan to hire and train several hundred thousand more officers over the next year or two…

A fourth possibility is just that they’re trying to siphon the ammunition market to make it more difficult for civilians to get ammunition. But I wanted to give the DHS the benefit of the doubt by saying that they were merely trying to secure a particular ammunition price or establish a delivery contract for a set price. If recent reports from the DHS are correct, that seems to be what they’re doing.

One thing a lot of people don’t understand or realize is just how much ammunition law enforcement consumes in a given year. They have to practice. A lot. I own a firearm that was formerly a police issue manufactured probably about 20 years ago. It has likely eaten a lot of ammunition in its active life as a law enforcement sidearm.

Now people have pointed out that the order is mostly for hollow-point ammunition. Hollow-points are carried by law enforcement and those carrying concealed for personal protection. The hollow point on the round ensures the round will mushroom or "fan out" and give it a much greater chance of staying in whatever it hits, whether it be an intended target, wall or floor, or at least expend so much of its energy that it may not have enough energy left to be lethal should it pass through whatever it hits.

In pointing out that the orders are for hollow points, they also point out that hollow points are not used for practice. Well not typically used for practice.

The fallacy of this notion comes with one simple thing that any firearms owner must know: you need to practice with the ammunition you intend to carry. This means if you’re going to be regularly carrying Remington Golden Sabre ammunition in your carry firearm, you need to also be expending that ammunition at the range. Why? You want to make sure that that ammunition will cycle through your firearm without any difficulty. And if it’s problematic, you need to change to something else.

Now, the fact the DHS is ordering over 1.5 billion rounds of hollow point ammunition is certainly concerning.

But taking everything I’ve learned over the last couple years about firearms and firearms handling into account, along with how much ammunition law enforcement typically goes through, I don’t find it entirely unusual. It sounds to me like they’re trying to lock in some kind of delivery contract or price – and given the current market for ammunition, I don’t blame them.

It wouldn’t surprise me if many law enforcement agencies are trying to do the same, and if one were to look back at past orders for ammunition by the DHS and other Federal agencies, we’d probably find similarities. It’s getting a lot of attention this time around because of what is going on in Washington and the attempts to enact greater gun controls. The DHS order running alongside the debates in the Senate on a gun control package – that is likely to die in the House of Representatives – makes it sound like the government wants to ensure they are armed and the people are not.

But while one certainly needs to be concerned about the DHS and other law enforcement orders for ammunition, some more thought needs to be expended to keep such concerns from becoming conspiratorial paranoia.

Second Amendment

The fight is far from over

Posted on by Kenneth Ballard / 0 Comment

Gun rights supporters can definitely breathe a sigh of relief. The Assault Weapons Ban of 2013 bill introduced by Senator Feinstein is out of the picture. For now.

This does not mean we can let our guard down. Far from it. There are plenty more parliamentary tricks that the Democrats can play to get what they want through the door. Namely the back door. They will continue to demonize gun owners and continue to assert that the blood of the Sandy Hook children and the Aurora theatre victims is on our hands.

Feinstein had been working on that bill for over a year before introducing it. The aftermath of the Sandy Hook massacre was prime opportunity for her to introduce it, trying to use the blood of dead children to score political points. Despicable. And she had to have known that there were going to be reservations among the senior Democrats in the Senate, let alone the House, with trying to get that through. Many of them were around when her initial AWB was signed into law in 1994, and they remember what happened: the Republicans swept elections in both the House and Senate.

Feinstein has also said numerous times that she doesn’t want to stop with "assault weapons". She didn’t want to stop with them back in 1994 either. Her goal is and always has been a full-out ban of all privately-owned firearms:

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.

Now one idiot tried to claim in a YouTube comment that Feinstein was only referring to assault weapons without taking into account that Feinstein made these statements after the 1994 AWB was signed into law. But that’s not the only thing she’s said that shows her true goal with regard to guns and the Second Amendment:

Banning guns addresses a fundamental right of all Americans to feel safe.

But the battle for gun rights is far from over. Not when there are politicians in power or seeking power with a political goal of seeing guns banned in the United States.

While attempting to enact sweeping gun legislation has proven in the past to be political suicide – except for politicians like Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein, that is – that won’t stop them from trying to go after gun rights. Their next move will be to take Feinstein’s bill and break it apart. From the pieces they will construct amendments and riders to be introduced to bills that would be politically risky for Republicans to oppose, such as the Department of Defense Appropriations Act of 2013, introduced as S.444 and currently in the Senate Appropriations Committee. Such a move will give them some political leverage which they will use to try to score political points.

And while the assault weapons ban might be out – for now – the magazine limitation might still be in play. And that would have far more devastating effects than the assault weapons ban ever could. This is especially true since Feinstein’s bill defines "large capacity ammunition feeding devices" as a

magazine, belt, drum, feed strip, or similar device, including any such device joined or coupled with another in any manner, that has an overall capacity of, or that can be readily restored, changed, or converted to accept, more than 10 rounds of ammunition

and further declares that

It shall be unlawful for a person to import, sell, manufacture, transfer, or possess, in or affecting interstate or foreign commerce, a large capacity ammunition feeding device.

And it exempts the government and law enforcement, but requires that all "high capacity" magazines made for law enforcement or the military to have a serial number. And also in compliance with the Constitution’s prohibition on ex post facto laws, the bill would also exempt the possession of "large capacity" magazines existing before the enactment of the legislation.

But all of that discussion is immaterial in the face of the possibility of the President going from President to dictator by using his executive order privilege to enact the magazine capacity limitation among other things. In other words, giving Congress a chance to give him what he wants before he does it himself.

By no means is the fight over. There are very dedicated people wanting to see the Second Amendment eviscerated.

We have to continue to be vigilant, because they will continue to be just as vigilant.

Letters to politicians/Second Amendment

Form response from Senator McCaskill

Posted on by Kenneth Ballard / 0 Comment

I ask a simple question, and I get a form letter in response that is more evasive than anything else. All I asked is how she’ll be voting on Feinstein’s Assault Weapons Ban bill. Simple yes/no question. Jesus Christ…

* * * * *

Dear Mr. Ballard,

Thank you for contacting me regarding gun control policy and gun safety.  I appreciate hearing from you and welcome the opportunity to respond.

As you know, the Second Amendment to the Constitution guarantees Americans the fundamental right to bear arms.  I strongly support legal and safe gun ownership by law-abiding citizens and have consistently voted to uphold this constitutional right.  I welcomed and supported the recent Supreme Court decision in the District of Columbia v. Heller case that made clear that the constitutional right to gun ownership is an individual one.

At the same time, we have to make sure that guns do not fall into the hands of individuals who should not have them.  We should have sensible, constitutional controls on gun ownership that address safety in our communities, like preventing the mentally ill and criminals from possessing guns.

Recent tragedies, such as the mass shooting in Aurora, Colorado, and the horrific events in Newtown, Connecticut, have made it clear that our nation’s current gun laws should be reconsidered.  Efforts to close the gun show loophole, provide for universal background checks on all guns sales, and to ensure that those with court-determined, dangerous mental health diagnoses do not get access to guns are being considered.  While I want to closely study any proposal before I vote on it, I welcome these initiatives, because they represent sensible steps to keep our communities safe while respecting gun ownership rights.  Importantly, legal experts believe each of these steps is consistent with the Second Amendment.

Knowing that those responsible for some of the most prominent mass shootings in recent history have suffered from mental illness, it is equally clear that we must also consider mental health services available to our citizens.  A more robust mental health care system may help identify and treat individuals who need help before they resort to violence.  The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, commonly known as “Obamacare,” will substantially expand important mental health coverage when it is fully implemented in 2014.  I am hopeful that efforts to repeal these vital expansions in mental health care will come to an end, while new efforts will be undertaken to expand access to care.

Importantly, I firmly believe that an attempt to promote appropriate gun safety measures can be done without infringing upon law-abiding citizens’ right to own firearms or unduly burdening the hunting and sportsmanship culture of Missouri.

You may be interested to know that, in the past, my commitment to respecting the Second Amendment has led me to vote to permit residents of the District of Columbia to own and purchase firearms and to prevent funding for any international organization, including the United Nations, that places a tax on any firearm owned by a United States citizen.

While the debate over appropriate gun control measures is divisive, I believe there is middle ground here.  This nation can come together to support sensible laws that prevent the mass murder of innocent citizens — especially innocent children — while we continue to respect our constitution and its Second Amendment rights.  Please know that, as your United States Senator, I will keep your thoughts in mind as Congress considers gun-related legislation in the months ahead.

Again, thank you for contacting me. Please do not hesitate to contact me in the future if I can be of further assistance to you on this or any other issue.

Sincerely,

Claire McCaskill
United States Senator

Letters to politicians/Second Amendment

Assault Weapons Ban of 2013: Contacting Senator McCaskill

Posted on by Kenneth Ballard / 0 Comment

Madam Senator McCaskill,

As you are likely aware, Senator Feinstein’s bill, the Assault Weapons Ban of 2013, has been recommended to the full Senate for a floor vote. Can I count on you to be a “No” vote on that bill?

Please bear in mind that the current market for firearms and ammunition shows clearly and without any doubt that the People of the United States, and most certainly your constituents in this great State of Missouri do not want this bill to pass, and do not want any additional gun control measures enacted. Please take their voices into account before voting on the Assault Weapons Ban.

Your vote is supposed to represent the constituency of Missouri at large. It is clear that Missouri does not want this, as can also be seen by the representation in Jefferson City in the Missouri legislature. Take that into account before voting on that bill and any other gun control measures. Please faithfully represent Missouri by voting No on Feinstein’s bill and any other gun control measures that come up for a vote in the Senate.

So I ask you again, can I count on you to be a vote of “No” on Feinstein’s bill and other gun control measures?

Thank you,
Kenneth Ballard
Kansas City, Missouri