Pictures from Christmas 2007
Well, Xmas 07 was hosted by my sister Robin at her home in Lake Tahoe, CA. I was out there for a week, had a nice condo to stay in, got some skiing and showshoeing in and had an all around good time. Here are some pics:
Picture from my deck on Lake Tahoe
Deck with cool morning fog
Tree in Robin’s place
Tree using cool Sepia mode
Pictures of Squaw Valley, where we skied and Robin ski patrols
Group shot snowshoeing at Donner Lake (Right to Left: Me, Robin, my mom and her boyfriend)
Group shot at the River Grill in Tahoe City (Left to Right: Robin’s roommate Kendra, random guy, me, Robin’s roommate Iris, Robin)
Robin and her boyfriend Andrew
Robin and I at Emerald Bay
The teahouse out on the only island in all of Lake Tahoe.
Panoramic stitched from photos taken overlooking the lake just south of Mt. Rose
It was a great trip, hope you like the photos.
Unintended Consequences: The book Everyone should read.
Unintended Consequences is a book written by John Ross and published in small runs since 1996. I found out about it a few months ago and added it to my wish list, where Gingerkitty purchased it for me for Christmas this year. It came along with Wil Wheaton’s Just a Geek, which is also a great book.
I sat down on Saturday night to start the book around 10:30pm. 3:30am rolled around and I still couldn’t put it down. I finally passed out with the book still in my hands. I somehow managed to make it through Sunday and finally got back to reading it at 8pm. 2:30am I finally finished it. It has been years since a book so demanded to be read.
Summary:
The National Firearms Act of 1934, enacted in reaction to gang activities during prohibition. On the surface that’s what it was. But if you look a little deeper you find other reasons. BATF, which is a division of the Treasury department (tax men), finds itself facing the need to drastically downsize it’s workforce. Why? Because prohibition had just been repealed and they weren’t needed. So there needed to be something new to enforce. The NFA34 was a tax law. It basically said that machine guns, rifles/shotguns below a certain length, silencers, etc. had to be registered with the government. The registration fee was $200, payable at the time of initial purchase as well as any subsequent ownership transfer. Think about that for a second. A $5 shotgun that was too short, or a $100 BAR, or a $175 Anti-tank rifle were all subject to a $200 tax each and every time the ownership transferred. In today’s dollars according to the CPI that’s equivalent to ~$3000. Luckily the tax was a fixed amount, so in 2008 it’s still $200, but for the time it was potentially a 4000% tax. And since it was a tax law the BATF was responsible for enforcement. It was also a fundamental violation of the 2nd amendment to the constitution. The 2nd amendment eludicates that there should be no infringement on the fundamental right of every citizen of the US to have and carry arms suitable as a member of the militia. The generally accepted understanding of a militia (see Switzerland for a textbook example) is the civilian populating having the basic weaponry of the military, so that they are not only able to rise up in defense of their country (see the revolutionary war), but in defense of their own rights. Every genocide that has ever been committed in this world since weapons were invented was preceded by taking weapons away from the population to be exterminated so that they were defenseless. Now you may say, “the same as the military, so you want people to have nukes?” No, the basic weaponry in the civil war was the muzzleloader, in WWII it was the Colt and S&W pistols, M1918 BARs and M1903 Springfields and Thompson submachine guns, and today it’s the Colt M-9 pistol, the M16A2 rifle, the M-4 carbine and various other guns. That’s what the civilian population should have the right to own. But FDR was a socialist, and thought the federal government should have a free hand.
Henry Bowman grew up in the ’60s. His family and relatives had been involved in WWII. He grows up like a lot of American kids, myself included, shooting guns. But Henry really likes guns, especially large guns. Prior to the Gun Control Act of 1968, you could order machine guns and anti-tank guns out of the back of catalogs, not to mention all the guns that soldiers brought back from WWII and WWI. Henry is also very intelligent, he remembers almost everything he reads, and he quickly becomes an expert at guns, doing his own modifications as well as loading his own munitions. The GCA68 now put all kinds of limits on who could own weapons, age restrictions, background restrictions, mental health restrictions, as well as dividing weapons into classes and requiring licensing to sell, make and import any controlled weapon. Now all of a sudden you had to have letters of reference to buy a handgun. This was also a tax law, and the craziest part of this law is the following: After 1968, any NFA gun that hadn’t been previously licensed could no longer be licensed. So anyone who missed the memo was now a criminal for life because they could not legally register weapons that might have been in the family since WWI.
Henry grows up watching the slow erosion of the rights guaranteed by the 2nd amendment, but does his best to keep in line, he gets his class 3 license so he can deal in NFA weapons, and continues buying and shooting his weapons.
He watches in horror as poorly trained TAX agents shoot women and children without provocation over a suspected unpaid $200 tax (Ruby Ridge). Randy Weaver was a Aryan separatist. He didn’t want to live around black people, so he moved out into the wilderness away from most people. There was an Aryan Supremacist settlement nearby, but he didn’t want anything to do with them. The BATF approached him to see if he would infiltrate the settlement and spy for them. He refused. So they sent him to court for a suspected $200 tax evasion on a slightly too short shotgun. Only problem was, the BATF wrote the wrong date on the summons. So he missed his court date and they put a warrant out. So what do they do? The BATF spends more money than the intelligence efforts in Haiti in surveillance on his house for the next 18 months, and then moves in with a number of “tactical forces”. They approach in stealth on a random day, When the dog detects something they shoot it, then Weaver’s 14 year old son to death. Weaver’s friend Kevin returns fire with the rifle he’s carrying, seeing as they’re out in the wilderness, killing a marshal. Note that at this point there have been no announcements of who these people are, just a surprise attack out of nowhere that just killed a 14 year old boy. Kevin runs back to the house and as Weaver’s wife opens the door to let him in, a sniper shoots her in the head. She was nursing her baby at the time. Then a 14 day standoff occurs, with Weaver finally surrendering because Kevin was injured. All this over a suspected $200 fine.
Waco, Texas. 80 people are burned to death over the same thing, a suspected $200 fine. It was only after it was all over and BATF and the FBI realize they had a media nightmare on their hands that they invented the story about Koresh having sex with kids, etc. It may have been true, but the people who knew were all dead. Again it was a surprise attack, giving the people no chance to surrender or notification of who was attacking them. 80 people including women and children were killed. Again, by TAX agents.
Henry lives his life as best he can, until finally, in the present day, he and two friends are attacked by BATF agents looking to plant evidence of wrongdoing, counterfeit money, drugs, etc. so that they can shut them down. They are 3 of the biggest licensed class 3 NFA dealers in the US. Henry fights back, in the process beginning a guerrilla civil war to restore the right to bear arms and the defense of the person to the citizens of the US.
End Summary
Review:
I grew up hunting, fishing and shooting guns. It was a natural part of life, but after moving to the lower 48 I saw just how draconian gun laws were becoming. Take Missouri, where only the police are allowed to carry concealed weapons. I’m sure all the criminals are happy to know that anyone they attack will be unarmed. While I am not as involved in the “gun culture” as Ross terms it, I like guns, and I firmly believe in the right to own and carry them. This book codified a lot of thoughts and beliefs that I had been tossing around for a number of years into a cohesive picture. I don’t think a civil war is the way to achieve what is needed, yet. But something has to be done. Since 2001 we’ve seen our rights eroded away at a increasingly faster rate, similar to a river bank being undercut, and soon we will have no way of defending ourselves from our own government if needed. Everyone, whether you like guns or not, are pro or anti gun control, should read this book. No matter what your beliefs, I think you will gain something from reading it.