LP VP candidate William Weld displays his wisdom and constitutional acumen on gun rights.
Guess that leaves the presidential race wide open between SMOD and NOTA.
LP VP candidate William Weld displays his wisdom and constitutional acumen on gun rights.
Guess that leaves the presidential race wide open between SMOD and NOTA.
SMOD all the way!
Astounding. While I realize the opinion is at odds with a significant percentage of the commentariat, I find I agree with Thomas Sowell (as I almost always do) when he concludes:
“Voting for an out of control egomaniac like Donald Trump would be like playing Russian roulette with the future of this country. Voting for someone with a track record like Hillary Clinton’s is like putting a shotgun to your head and pulling the trigger. And not voting at all is just giving up.
Nobody said that being a good citizen would be easy.”
For the rest of his article, please see http://townhall.com/columnists/thomassowell/2016/08/02/the-political-picture-n2200760
constitutional acumen on gun rights
And he’s not so up on gun facts. I’d love to see him invited on YouTube to demonstrate how to “remove the pin” and fire an AR-15 full-auto.
Come to think of it, that would be an interesting series: Gun-grabbers challenged to demonstrate what they say a gun can do.
Definitely SMOD.
I spent the weekend with some liberal friends. They were insistent that I needed to vote for one of the offered candidates or I was not doing anything to advance my interests. On the contrary, I said,” I am talking to you. The candidates are meaningless, but what you think means everything to my future.”
Don’t vote for the lesser of all evils. Talk to those who will.
Boy, I *sure* didn’t see that coming from someone who has spent their life ‘serving’ the good subjects of Massachusetts. 😉
> Gun-grabbers challenged to demonstrate what they say a gun can do.
Heh. I’d love to see that. What was it I saw yesterday – something about the AR-15 being capable of 40 rounds per second? Wish I could remember where that was.
How long ago was a 5 round capacity standard military? Uh, ’98 Mauser?
True, that, LibertyNews. But didn’t Weld promise something about not embarrassing or betraying libertarianism? Didn’t anybody in the LP vet him to see whether his positions were even vaguely, you know, libertarian?
Not to mention … informed? Informed on the topic would have been nice. Sheesh, the guy nearly said “shoulder thing that goes up” or magazines that will go away when all their bullets have been shot.
Nicki weighs in with another v*te for SMOD.
https://thelibertyzone.us/2016/08/08/no-one-left-to-vote-for/
The word is clearly getting around the gunblogosphere and people are not happy.
How difficult would it have been for the LP have seen to it that Weld was either informed or had “evolved” (as he said of his views) into a genuinely libertarian stance on this all-important issue? If Weld wanted to hang on to his ignorant, anti-gun views, how difficult would it have been for the LP to choose a real libertarian?
This is major (and alas, unsurprising) malfeasance, not only by Weld (alas, unsurprising) but on the part of partyarchs and convention delegates. Pandering to the mainstream and throwing up a mainstream eejit.
I was a delegate at the LP convention when Johnson and Weld were nominated. There was substantial concern expressed over whether Weld was actually a libertarian. He barely won the nomination at all, and the only reason he did was because Johnson begged (literally) the convention to give him the running mate he wanted. In the end, that argument prevailed; we had selected Johnson (who was also far from a unanimous choice), and it seemed churlish to deny him the teammate he thought best. (But I will say that I voted for neither, on any of the ballots.)
To be fair, Weld did say some reasonably “libertarian-ish” things in his speeches, and certain things in his background gave him at least some libertarian color. Still, many of us were (and remain) suspicious of his libertarian bona fides, and worried that we were selecting another Bob Barr. But he’s only the vice presidential nominee anyway. I’m more concerned when Gary Johnson says stupid things (as he is prone to doing, such as his ignorant and nonsensical comments on the Hillary non-indictment). But at the end of the day, whatever their flaws Johnson/Weld is still by far the lesser evil.
Thanks for the insights from a conventioneer, Laird. Everything you say accords with what I’ve heard about the choice of Weld, but it’s still heartbreakingly awful.
LP aside, it’s amazing that we’ve come to a point where candidates for national office (and not just Weld) don’t even feel the need to inform themselves about some of the biggest issues. Some of my neighbors are better informed about firearms than Weld, better informed about global affairs than Donald Trump.
Maybe it’s good that the mask of authority and expertise has been stripped away. Maybe it’s good that the days are gone when people like my mother respected “leaders” just because they were leaders and “know better than we do.” Still, it’s insulting that such a pack of morons and miscreants behave so nakedly badly while claiming the right to rule.
I watched the LP convention on CSPAN, it was rather painful because of the hope & expectations I had that maybe the new kid on the block Austin Peterson (not that I supported him but I did want to learn more about him) had a chance, BTW Austin gave Gary Johnson a pistol after GJ’s election and I understand it went into the trash. I found GJ’s acceptance speech mainly a plead for Weld and made GJ look like a begging pxxsy (as Clint would put it) to me but that is just me (& my wife). IMHO the LP convention & tag team is/was a complete loss of a great opportunity.
The way I look at it is voting for the lesser of evil is still voting for evil.
Methinks sooner or later folks we will have to address the fact this republic is just about over, we are not ruled by law but by the tyranny of our political parties (does anyone really doubt that both major parties are almost completely corrupt?), our constitution is being shredded on a daily basis, and IMHO what this 2016 election is about is which side gets to elect their dictator, I have found on my so called side there are many that really don’t have a problem with a dictator as long as it is their dictator.
Solutions to our problems don’t appear to be getting any closer nor better looking again IMHO.
It’s Trump or the end of the American Republic, and possibly civil war. Hillary will be moving to confiscate your guns for certain, with or without approval from Congress or SCOTUS (who won’t be able to do anything anyway at 4-4). That Thomas Sowell hasn’t processed that yet is disappointing…
“It’s Trump or the end of the American Republic,”
But it’s just as likely to be Trump and the end of the American Republic. Heck, that republic is already no more than a tattered illusion.
Sure, Hillary is grotesquely anti-gun. Sure, she’ll aim to stack the Supreme Court with shuddersome people. But believing that either mainstream candidate has any regard for law, the Constitution, due process, rights, economic sanity, American traditions, or the well-being of the American people, etc. is a sad mistake.
“It’s Trump or the end of the American Republic”
And if the American Republican hadn’t ended a loooooooooooooooooooooong time ago already (take your pick: 1787, 1789, 1861, 1913, 1933 …), Trump would be the end of it too.
Claire,
Let’s leave no doubt about this: We knew Weld was a snake when we picked him up.
Nobody with two neurons to rub together and form a synapse thought he was even remotely libertarian, and we all knew he was a lying sack of shit (by “we” I mean the national convention delegates).
Ten years ago, Weld ran for the Libertarian Party’s gubernatorial nomination in New York. He also sought the GOP nomination (New York is a “fusion” state where a candidate can appear on more than one ballot line). He was publicly — on camera — asked “if you don’t get the GOP nomination, do you promise you will continue to run as a Libertarian?” And he publicly — on camera — unequivocally said “yes.” He dropped out of the race and left the New York LP in the lurch within hours of losing the GOP contest.
This year, when he was announced as Johnson’s choice for the LP’s vice-president nomination, he was almost immediately asked about his record on gun issues. He said he had changed. Then the next day he went on CNN and said he hadn’t changed. Then at the convention, he said again that he had changed. And as soon as he had the nomination, he went out and started talking about how he hadn’t changed.
To their everlasting shame, the LP’s national convention delegates allowed Gary Johnson to WHINE them into nominating someone they knew was a lying, anti-gun, non-libertarian, establishment political hack, who Johnson wanted because he could supposedly raise gigantic money. Of course, all he’s done on the fundraising front since then is make excuses. Go figure.
Doesn’t the LP do this every four years? I seem to remember this “libertarian” named Bob Barr, who was roughly as libertarian as Bob Dole, followed by Gary Johnson and whoever, followed by Gary Johnson and whoever…
It’s like that guy in the Taken movies: He’s supposed to be this invincible badass, yet people keep kidnapping his damned daughter. At some point you have to wonder if there isn’t a good reason why nobody takes him seriously.
And may I say, that “Click to Edit” feature is absolutely cool.
I helped organize a Libertarian Party chapter in a large Florida city, and I was not impressed. Most of the people involved had one political idea in their heads — “Smash the State” — and not a clue how to accomplish that or what to do with the pieces afterward. The first official act at the very first meeting was to ban Roberts Rules as statist. When they decided to throw their support to Curtis Sliwa and the Guardian Angels, who were also organizing there, we parted company. To their credit, some of them looked me up to eat crow in later years, but I never got involved with the Party again. They say the best thing about banging your head on the wall is, it feels so good when you stop, and they’re right.
One of these days I’d love for someone warning me that this or that politician is going to take all our guns away would explain to me how that would work. They don’t know where the guns are. They can in many cases find out you bought them however long ago, but that’s all the dealer paperwork proves. How long would this process take? Who would be involved, and what happens to the work they would otherwise be doing if not seizing the property of 100 million gun owners? What happens after the first few days when all they find are empty safes and the occasional overlooked bit of brass? It’s not feasible, and I wish people would find something realistic to hyperventilate about.
Let’s say you used a gun that is outlawed to defend yourself guess who will be be the criminal, heck you might even be open to a civil lawsuit by the criminal too.
Outlawing guns will work just about as good as outlawing drugs but there does appear to be more than a few people in jail for drugs now a days, don’t ya know?
Historically there has been found to be a relationship between not wanting to be an outlaw and giving your guns up when the government says you have to and getting a free ride on a cattle car too!
Leaving aside for a moment that there’s a world of difference between simply possessing something and having to either grow it in easy-to-detect circumstances or import it across national borders, distribute it and sell it, have you noticed any difficulty whatsoever finding any outlawed narcotic substance you care to name, despite the penalties? Hell, I hear that Quaaludes are making a comeback and they stopped making those years ago.
Like I said outlawing guns will work about as well as outlawing drugs, BTW it ain’t hard to build something when you have the right equipment, lathes, 3D, etc.
The purpose of outlawing guns never has been about eliminating them but about control. Once all (which they really want) or some guns are outlawed, then you as an individual have a choice; do you become an outlaw, it’s a big choice, easy to be said but in reality a huge step many can never take.
Say you chose to be an outlaw, don’t give up your gun(s), now if you use it there will be jail or death most likely is in your near future, or say you have made an enemy once upon a time, get even time could just be around the corner, there might be those who would love to see you rot in jail or bleed out in your front yard, bounties on illegal gun owners gives incentives too.
Outlawing guns ain’t about getting rid of guns but about control, control of those who won’t conform or comply with the wishes of government. IMHO they will use these laws to pick off the vermin (only in their eyes) one at a time not in one big fell swoop. There will be pockets of gun owners just like there used to be pockets of pot growers but mostly gun owners will have to go underground to survive and if that day (which IMHO is fast approaching) the powers that be decide it martial law party time if those powers that be did a good job picking beforehand; resistance could be minimal. However I kinda look at it like picking blackberries (in my part of the country there sure are a lot of blackberries), berries that are easy to get are one thing but those that are not may have a pain quotation tied to it, since some of them(us) comes with a few stickers attached.
Unintended Consequences is a reality that can be counted on when the government gets heavy handed for sure, painful unintended consequences IMHO for everyone involved.
Again, who is going to do the enforcing? Compliance levels for registration and bans have been very low wherever attempted, and the math is obvious. Whichever side of the question they fall on, police and the military will know very well how many armed citizens have been made felons by fiat, and stripped of anything to lose. I predict a case of the Blue Flu that will make the bubonic plague look like the sniffles, especially if the word gets around among sheriffs that the best way to ensure that LEO in their jurisdictions have quiet, pleasant shifts is to refuse to enforce certain laws.
RustyGunner, I would add to your comment (with which I agree) that it is important that we elect Sheriffs who support the Constitution, especially the 2nd Amendment. Many do, and it is they who set the policies for their departments. Sheriff is the highest elected official in most counties in the country (although some states, such as Connecticut, have abolished counties altogether and with them their sheriffs), but their importance is often overlooked and those elections are frequently ignored by most people. Even if you don’t choose to vote in other elections you should consider voting in that one, and also helping (through contributions and campaigning) to elect good sheriffs and get rid of bad ones.
I hope you are right, RG.
I’m afraid we may get a chance to find out way too soon.