Hanukkah 2025

In case anyone wasn't paying attention we got another example of what "Globalize the Intifada" means today.

Once again we see a terrorist attack on Jews on a religious holiday. This time in Australia. An Australian spox on TV said that at least one of the perps was on their radar, "although not for terrorist acts".

I also saw over on X that per Israeli TV, supposedly the Mossad warned the Australian government of an upcoming terrorist attack. See: https://x.com/yudapearl/status/2000197269858271283

On the eve of Hanukkah, the holiday in which we celebrate our triumph over the Greek invaders who desecrated the Temple, we are once again reminded that secular governments will not protect us.

Nobody, Jew or gentile, who is defenseless is protected from harm. The right to self defense is the most basic of human rights. A disarmed populace is deprived of its most essential right to life.

Make no mistake, gun control is EVIL. It disarms victims but never keeps their oppressors from hurting them.

As an American, and as a Jew, I am a Second Amendment absolutist*. I'm a an Endowment Life Member of the NRA, and a Life Member of Gun Owners of America and the Second Amendment Foundation. I've donated to the Firearms Policy Coalition as well.

I'm armed to the teeth -- as ALL good Americans should be. It's been a long standing source of frustration for me that too many of my co-religionists can't get their heads out of their asses on this issue.

There are many Jewish Americans who have woken up to the need to be armed. Not enough, but it's happening. 

As for Israel's gun laws, they are a major reason why I'd never consider living there, permanently or even temporarily for work. Israelis basically live in one of the shittiest neighborhoods on the planet, surrounded by people who want to exterminate them, and their government denies them the means for effective self defence. Fuck. That. Shit.

In the aftermath of October 7th I put together a PDF book, "Guns for Jews," which is available for free from my Google Drive: https://drive.google.com/file/d/18GXFERy8nH1iM6ERtLs-PXX3qXDo5C0K/view?usp=drive_link

*Absolutist, as in it is my belief that all Americans should be able to purchase military grade arms anonymously online and have them shipped to their door. Further, Constitutional Carry should be the law of the land.

Video: Guns Rights Supporters Must Speak Up

The Surprisingly Solid Mathematical Case of the Tin Foil Hat Gun Prepper

This piece from last year is well worth reading.

As gun policy discussions unfold in the wake of mass shooter incidents, they routinely end in three buckets. There’s the “tyranny can never happen here” bucket, which the left has mostly abdicated in the wake of Trump winning after they called (and still call) him a tyrant. There’s the “you can’t fight the army with small arms” bucket, which is increasingly unsound given our ongoing decade-and-a-half war with Afghani tribal goat herders. And there’s the “what the hell do you need an AR-15 for anyway?” bucket, which, by its very language, eschews a fundamental lack of understanding of what those people are thinking. I am not a prepper. But I know a few. Some of the ones I do know are smart. They may not be doing as deep an analysis as I present here, on a mathematical level, but the smart ones are definitely doing it at a subconscious level. If you want to understand the perspectives of others, as everyone in my opinion should strive to do, then you would do well to read to the end of this article. To get where we’re going, we will need to discuss the general framework of disaster mathematics.

...

If we look at raw dialectic alone, we reach dismal conclusions. “Do you think the United States will exist forever and until the end of time?” Clearly any reasonable answer must be “no.” So at that point, we’re not talking “if,” but “when.” If you don’t believe my presumed probability, cook up your own, based on whatever givens and data pool you’d like, and plug it in. The equations are right up there. Steelman my argument in whatever way you like, and the answer will still probably scare you.

...

Read the whole thing.

Some Facts About 3D Printed Guns

My G-d there is a lot of utter rubbish being spewed about 3D printed guns in the media over the past couple of days. Some facts:

1. You cannot "download a gun."

1a. On a related note, you cannot legally buy a gun off the Internet and avoid a background check. You can buy a gun over the Internet but it has to be shipped to a local, Federally-licensed firearms dealer, and you need to pass a background check before you take delivery. There is no "Internet loophole."

2. You can download plans, including 3D CAD files for various guns. Think of these as blueprints that can be turned into code for use by a 3D printer or CNC milling machine, which can be used to make a gun.

3. Speaking of which, it has always been legal under Federal law to make a gun for your own personal use. If you want to manufacture them for sale, that has been regulated for decades.

4. Some states do make it illegal to make a gun for your own use.

5. Most 3D printed guns are not undetectable. For example, if you 3D print the receiver for an AR-15 (the part that in the USA is legally the gun), you still need a lot of metal parts to have a functioning firearm. E.g., the barrel, bolt, firing pin, springs, etc.

5a. The exception to #5 appears to be the Defense Distributed Liberator, which is a single shot .22 pistol. Do you really think that a criminal is going to spend a shitload of money on a 3D printer so he can make an untraceable single shot .22 pistol? It's cheaper, easier, and faster to buy a stolen pistol like a Hi Point 9mm or even a Glock on the street.

6. For the most part, this hysteria about undetectable plastic guns is reminiscent of the BS spewed about Glocks in the 1980s. Despite what you heard in "Die Hard," Glocks are made largely of metal and stick out like a sore thumb if you try to pass one through a metal detector.

7. Even after Defense Distributed pulled their CAD files from the Internet in 2013, the cat was out of the bag. If you had a clue, they were not difficult to find. As per John Gilmore, the Internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.

Finally, gun controllers lie. That's what they do. They cannot make arguments based on facts, so they lie. For example, Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) recently gave a speech about undetectable firearms with a picture of an AR-15 next to him. A rifle with a few pounds of steel and aluminum in it is going to be undetectable? Not hardly.

Think about any topic in which you have in depth knowledge. Then consider how the mainstream media covers said topic, and how inaccurate they usually are.

This is just the latest in the American left finding something to be outraged about and stir up shit.

Reaction to the NRA and NRA-ILA's Joint Statement of October 5, 2017

Yesterday, Wayne LaPierre and Chris Cox issued a joint statement, which contained, inter alia:

In Las Vegas, reports indicate that certain devices were used to modify the firearms involved. Despite the fact that the Obama administration approved the sale of bump fire stocks on at least two occasions, the National Rifle Association is calling on the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (BATFE) to immediately review whether these devices comply with federal law.  The NRA believes that devices designed to allow semi-automatic rifles to function like fully-automatic rifles should be subject to additional regulations.

Link: https://home.nra.org/joint-statement/

We should know by now that when gun banners say, "We want a conversation about gun control," they mean we should shut up while they lecture us. We should also know that when they say we should compromise, they mean for us to give them something while we get nothing in return.

It is not acceptable conduct to this NRA Endowment Life Member for the organization to preemptively surrender any part of our rights by endorsing any new gun regulation. The NRA needs to protect all of our right to bear arms. 

Suggesting that the corrupt and incompetent BATFE get another chance to evaluate the legality of bumpfire stocks is particularly galling. Including a sentence in the press release calling for Congress to pass National Right-to-Carry Reciprocity doesn't balance giving in on one iota of other elements of the RKBA.

NRA, withdraw this statement. Do your damn job.

How To Lube Your AK

NRA-ILA Moneybomb This Thursday Night

Hanukkah, Jihad, and Gun Control

Tonight Hanukkah begins, in which we celebrate not just the miracle of the one night's worth of oil lasting for eight, but also the triumph of the Maccabees over their pagan Seleucid Greek oppressors.

Today, Jews in the West face a threat far more dangerous than the ancient Greeks, namely Muslim Jihad. After the events of the past few weeks -- the terrorist attacks in Paris, France and San Bernardino, California, only those Jews with their heads in the sand can feel safe from this threat.

The United States has historically been the safest place for Jews but with the Obama administration, this safety is being compromised every day. In his quest to "fundamentally transform" the US,  he is not merely failing to protect our borders, he is actively importing radical Muslims from the Middle East. As we saw with Paris and San Bernardino, it's not just fighting age males (who make up the bulk of the refugees) that we need to worry about. Indeed, many of their women are just as committed to Jihad as their men. These people are steeped in a culture in which they are taught from early childhood to hate Jews. They don't lose that by crossing a national border.

Jihad presents an existential threat to the West. Its adherents demand submission (which is indeed the meaning of "Islam") and do not differentiate between military and civilian targets. There is no compromise with a foe who believes that we must submit or die.

Although the US is not the only Western country which allows its citizens to be armed, it has the most robust gun culture. Jewish Americans should learn to embrace it. In doing so, they will find that many of its members are also staunch supporters of Israel.

I would remind you that "turn the other cheek" is not a Jewish concept. Western Jews must cast off their shtetl mentality and be willing to defend themselves with force, for Jihad may visit at any time, without warning. American Jews must get training, arm themselves, and get a license to carry so they can be armed at all times.

Jewish Americans also need to stop supporting politicians who actively work to make us more vulnerable. Even before the blood dried in California, Obama called for more gun control. His water carriers in the media, notably the New York Times, echoed this call, including for actual confiscation of those weapons most suited to home defense. Presidential candidate Martin O'Malley called for gun control via executive fiat, including confiscation. Hillary Clinton doubled down on her calls for gun control. So did Bernie Sanders (someone who I am ashamed to note comes from a Jewish background).

Thankfully, the American people have as a whole soundly rejected the idea that gun control = crime control. This past Black Friday broke all previous records for gun purchases, based on the number of background checks performed. It is past time that Jewish Americans get more in tune with their countrymen and arm themselves for defense, since it's been repeatedly demonstrated that the state cannot do it for them.

Jihad presents the greatest threat to the survival of the Jewish People since Nazi Germany. If we are serious when we say, "Never Again!," we'll need more than words to secure our survival. Jews must be armed and willing to fight for our freedom and our lives.


For my 2004 and 2010 Hanukkah posts, click here and here, respectively.

The Framers of the Constitution Accepted Private Ownership of Fully Armed Warships

One of the canards trotted out by anti-gunners after every mass shooting is that the Framers could not have envisioned the power of modern weaponry, so that the Second Amendment does not protect civilian ownership of "assault weapons." All you need to refute that argument is that the Framers did indeed accept the private ownership of military weapons is to point out Article One, Section Eight, Clause Ten of the Constitution:

The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defense and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;
...
To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;

Emphasis added.

So what is a Letter of Marque and Reprisal? Essentially, it was a government license to attack, capture, and sell enemy ships. The letter of marque is what distinguished a privateer from a pirate. In order to do that, you need an armed ship yourself. Letters of marque weren't issued to US Navy ships, they were issued to the private owners ships who would outfit them for privateering, including naval artillery.

In the 18th and 19th Centuries, an armed warship was the closest thing extant to a weapon of mass destruction. And we haven't discussed the private ownership of artillery on land or inland waterways, which was common through the 19th Century. E.g., flat boat-mounted swivel guns used by fur traders in the West.

So can we agree that the Second Amendment does protect the right to own military weaponry, just as the First Amendment protects your right to spout uninformed bullshit on the Internet?

Concealed Carry Permit Holders Across the United States

Edit: Welcome Twitter users! Please poke around the blog. If you came here because of this post, you'll probably find something else of interest.

Back in 2004, I posted Percentage of Adults With Carry Permits in "Shall Issue" States. It's been probably the most popular post on this blog, and several times I've been asked if there's an update. Well, now there is.

Concealed Carry Permit Holders Across the United States is a new scholarly paper by John R.Lott, John E. Whitley, and Rebekah C. Riley. Here's the summary:

Since President Obama’s election the number of concealed handgun permits has soared, growing from 4.6 million in 2007 to over 12.8 million this year. Among the findings in our report:

• The number of concealed handgun permits is increasing at an ever- increasing rate. Over the past year, 1.7 million additional new permits have been issued – a 15.4% increase in just one single year. This is the largest ever single-year increase in the number of concealed handgun permits.
• 5.2% of the total adult population has a permit.
• Five states now have more than 10% of their adult population withconcealed handgun permits.
• In ten states, a permit is no longer required to carry in all or virtually all of the state. This is a major reason why legal carrying handguns is growing so much faster than the number of permits.
• Since 2007, permits for women has increased by 270% and for men by 156%.
• Some evidence suggests that permit holding by minorities is increasing more than twice as fast as for whites.
• Between 2007 and 2014, murder rates have fallen from 5.6 to 4.2 (preliminary estimates) per 100,000. This represents a 25% drop in the murder rate at the same time that the percentage of the adult population with permits soared by 178%. Overall violent crime also fell by 25 percent over that period of time.
• Regression estimates show that even after accounting for the per capita number of police and people admitted to prison and demographics, the adult population with permits is significantly associated with a drop in murder and violent crime rates.
• Concealed handgun permit holders are extremely law-abiding. In Florida and Texas, permit holders are convicted of misdemeanors or felonies at one- sixth the rate that police officers are convicted.

Well, that sure doesn't fit the president's or Bloomberg's narratives, does it? Especially the points about women and minorities.

Digging into the data, the state with the largest numbers of permits is Florida with about 1.4 million, followed by Pennsylvania with about 1.1M. C'mon PA folks, we're slacking.

If you look at percentages, the top five states are

• Alabama 12.64%
• South Dakota 12.3%
• Indiana 11.62%
• Pennsylvania 10.64%
• Tennessee 10.21%

From my post of 11 years ago, the top five states in 2004 were :

• 7.45% South Dakota 
• 6.79% Indiana 
• 6.76% Pennsylvania 
• 5.23% Connecticut 
• 5.12% Washington

If the Democrats are upset by this I have two things to say:

1. Good.
2. You have only yourselves to blame. You've been simultaneously beating the drum for more gun control, fanning the flames of racial tension, and tearing down our country's institutions. Don't be surprised when people decided they need to take affirmative steps to preserve their own security.

A 3D Printed Ruger 10/22 Receiver

Linky:

http://www.printedfirearm.com/3d-printed-ruger-10-22-rifle-step-by-step/

Some cleanup work was done on a mill, but given that the receiver is plastic it could probably be done with hand tools.

Edit: Welcome Twitter readers! Please poke around my blog. If you found this post interesting there's lot's more about guns, the Second Amendment, politics, and computing topics.

New Mini CNC Mill from Defense Distributed

Cody Wilson, the guy who made the antigunners piss their pants with a 3D printed guns, is at it again. This time, it is a mini CNC mill that will retail for under $1500 and come ready to go out of the box. It's big enough to do 80% AR15 lowers and 1911 frames. Of course, it's not limited to making guns.

The hardware and software are open source. The website says that it'll be shipping for "Holiday 2014," and it's available now for pre-order.

https://ghostgunner.net

This has the potential to be more significant for the right to bear arms than 3D printed guns. This will allow you to make the receiver (i.e., the part registered and controlled in the US) out of metal, from which the majority of guns are made. With many traditional designs you cannot simply substitute synthetics, due to engineering constraints.

Making gun control moot via technology will be one of the greatest advances for personal liberty that we see in the 21st Century.

New Affordable 3D Metal Printer

Remember my post about the 3D printed 1911? As predicted, 3D metal printing is coming closer to reality for home users:

Anyone with access to a welder and the Internet soon could make his or her own replacement parts or tools with a new 3D metal printer that can be built in any garage.

...

Now, scientists have built an open-source 3D metal printer that costs under $1,200, sharing their design and software with the maker community.

"We have open-sourced the plans," in the hopes of accelerating the technology by allowing others to build upon the design, said project leader Joshua Pearce, a materials engineer at Michigan Technological University in Houghton.

Link. Being open sourced, I expect this design to be developed rapidly. There's been a bit of stink raised recently by gun control advocates seeking to ban 3D printing of plastic guns because they are undetectable. 3D printing metal guns would make that moot.

This is a liberty enabling technology and control freaks like Schumer and Feinstein can't stop the signal.

The First 3D Printed METAL Gun

The smart guys at Solid Concepts have created the first 3D printed metal gun, a 1911 in fact. Here’s a video of it being test fired.

World’s first 3D printed metal gun

Yes, it had a few functioning issues. However, as a proof of concept they’ve done a fantastic job. Now it just needs a bit of debugging.

The technology enabling this is not yet affordable for the masses. Remember when personal computers first came out? Your smartphone has vastly more power at a faction of the cost. Or remember when the first Apple LaserWriter came out and cost around $4,000? You can now get a better laser printer delivered to your door from Amazon for around a hundred bucks. Even if 3D printers capable of doing laser sintering for additive manufacturing don’t drop to similar levels, they’ll come down in price to the point where you can go in together on one with a few buddies without breaking your bank accounts.

Combine affordable 3D metal printers with easily downloadable CNC drawings or even the G-code needed to run the printers, and the statist dream of unilateral civilian disarmament fails utterly.

Hey Feinstein, Schumer, Obama, Bloomberg, Cuomo? You can’t stop the signal!

AR15 80% Lowers -- At AMAZON

I think this pretty much cements the notion that AR15s are in "common use" per Heller.

80% AR15 lower receiver at Amazon.com.

'Merica!

Rambling Thoughts on the Ammo Situation

Over on Survival and Emergency Preparedness.

Forbes: Why 3D-Printed Untraceable Guns Could Be Good

Forbes is running an op-ed about why untraceable guns created on 3D printers could be good for the US.

...
Although the technology is still in its infancy, Wilson’s innovation has already sparked heated debate. Some gun rights advocates (including Wilson) argue this means current gun laws will soon be obsolete. They welcome the fact that home hobbyists may soon be able to build functioning firearms without any background check or government record. Others are alarmed, concerned that this would enable criminals to more easily obtain firearms. Congressman Steve Israel has already stated his intent to modify current laws to ban such guns.
However, Congressman Israel may be too late. Once thousands of motivated hobbyists start downloading open source gun designs and posting their refinements, we’ll likely see rapid technical advances. But Cody Wilson’s real impact on America may not be technological but political — and in a good way.
...

Read the whole thing.

I agree with Hsieh. If there is one thing we can learn from 20th Century history, it is that governments cannot be trusted with a monopoly of force. While it has always been legal for Americans to make untraceable guns for their own use, 3D printing lowers the entry bar, especially since traditional shop classes have been on the wain in American schools, while a larger number of people have developed computer skills. 3D printing will make home manufacture of firearms more accessible to the masses, especially as the technology matures.

That said, for those like myself willing to learn basic machine shop skills, fully functional firearms can be made at home with equipment within reach of most of the middle class. Small milling machines and lathes are available at prices under $1,000 each. For a modest additional expenditure, they can be made more precise with digital readouts, and for another grand or so can by CNC-enabled.

To would-be tyrants like Steve King, Charles Schumer, and Dianne Feinstein: You can't stop the signal.

Dem Rep Lets the Cat out of the Bag

In this video, Democratic Representative Jan Schakowsky openly admits that the Democrats' end goal is not just an assault weapons ban, but a ban on handguns. So, for those of you who insist that "nobody is trying to take away our right to bear arms," or that they "respect the Second Amendment," how do you explain this?





This is why opponents of gun control cannot compromise and we will fight infringements of our rights tooth and nail. The collectivist gun banners have been using incrementalism for decades in their quest to disarm the American people. Thankfully, the Internet has given us a powerful tool to circumvent the mainstream media and expose their agenda.

We won't be the frog in the boiling pot.

Some Data on the Current State of the Panic

Surplus City Guns in Feasterville, PA is the shop that I've bought most of my guns over the past 10 - 15 years. Yesterday afternoon, they put this on their Facebook timeline:

This is got to be a record for our store for one caliber ( 5.56/.223 )
13,360 rds in bulk in under an hour today
50,000 rds in bulk in under 3 hours Wednesday
21,000 rds in bulk in under 2 1/2hrs Tuesday
and another 2000rds sold by the 20 rd box sprinkled thru-out the week
THAT'S EIGHTY SIX THOUSAND THREE HUNDRED AND SIXTY ROUNDS IN UNDER 7 HOURS .....GEEZ LOUISE GUYS !!!!
The crazy part is we could have easily sold 2 to 3 times that amount if we had it......Thank you for your patronage and we will do our best to keep you supplied at a reasonable price . Keep an eye on Facebook for any upcoming announcements .

Surplus City isn't some huge store. It's your average sized gun shop. Now imagine this going on at every gun shop in the country. This points out a few things, IMO:

1. DHS contracts are not solely to blame for the ammo shortage.
2. This is just 5.56/.223. Other calibers like 9mm, .45 ACP, and .22 LR are flying off the shelves as fast or faster. Ditto for reloading components and magazines.
3. A large part of the American people are arming themselves to the teeth. They are stocking up on guns and ammunition. Kind of like 1775 or 1860.

Anyone with two neurons to rub together knows that the current crop of politicians in Washington -- whether Republican or Democrat -- is incapable of or unwilling to address the problems rending this country in two. In fact, they and their willing accomplices in the mainstream media are doing everything in their power to feed the divisions.

This will not end well.

Letter From the Saratoga County Deputy Sheriff's Police Benevolent Association

I got this today from a cousin of mine who lives in Upstate NY. He's a former police officer, now disabled from an injury suffered while scuffling with some dirtbag. The link goes to a PDF scan of a letter from the Saratoga County Deputy Sherriff's Police Benevolent Association to Cuomo, a couple NYS senators, and the chair of the Republican New York State Committee. It really rakes all of them over the coals about the SAFE Act.

The letter is a PDF but was not OCRed, so to see it click on this link (shared from my Google Drive).

I'd say it hits pretty much all the points as to why the misnamed SAFE Act is a travesty.