Category: Gummint

Government Efficiency

Crime, Gummint, Psychos

It’s a well-known fact that given any job to do, Government will do it a.) badly,  b.) expensively, c.) slowly and d.) with all sorts of unforeseen consequences thereafter.

And so it is with this sorry little tale:

The attorneys for Tennessee death row inmate Christa Pike said Tuesday that Pike is awake and speaking to her medical team after last week’s failed execution attempt, marking a development the attorneys described as “unprecedented.”

The attorneys said Pike is still handcuffed and that her prognosis is still unclear, according to NBC News. The development comes after Pike was on a ventilator last week after she survived two rounds of injections of the lethal drug pentobarbital.

Pike, who was convicted of killing former classmate Colleen Slemmer in 1995 when she was just 18 years old, was initially scheduled to be executed last week, but it was delayed after an appeals court stayed the execution. The Supreme Court later ruled the execution could move forward if it was carried out before midnight.

Tennessee Republican Gov. Bill Lee has halted a third execution attempt in light of the botched injections and has ordered a “comprehensive, third-party review to determine exactly what occurred.” The next attempt will not take place this year.

Anyone who has a brain could have told you that it was only a question of time before Gummint screwed up the only thing it’s supposed to do quickly and efficiently, and instead made a complete dog’s breakfast of a simple act, that of executing a cold-blooded murderer.

Most of this stems from the fact that public opinion has changed from “Hang ’em high!” to “Well, if you must kill them, do it as humanely as possible”, as though executing someone isn’t inhumane enough.

So in the old days, we did it through hanging (for centuries, despite even this being botched on several occasions), through decapitation, first with an axe or sword and when this was also cocked up, with the guillotine — which at least worked properly.

But oooh no, these were all too messy and bloody and stuff (albeit true), so we became more civilized and went on to the gas chamber (and cocked that up), and finally to lethal injections (ending up with the Christa Pike Situation).

What we should have done was follow the example of the military.

Now I know that the military itself has a long and storied history of inefficiency and stupidity [25,278 examples redacted], but the one thing they know something about is killing people — it’s kinda the entire reason for their existence, after all.

So:  firing squads.  Quick, simple, cheap, and very much deadly.  Proof?

Reviewing cases from 1890 through 2010, the Death Penalty Information Center found that lethal injection had the highest rate of botched executions: about 7 percent, compared to 5 percent for lethal gas, 3 percent for hanging, and 2 percent for electrocution. The rate for firing squads was 0 percent.

And just in case people may quail at the brutality of shooting a woman, let us review what this particular woman did that earned her a part in our discussion:

Pike, along with her friend Shadolla Peterson, 18, and boyfriend Shipp, enticed Colleen Slemmer to an abandoned steam mill on the University of Tennessee’s agricultural campus, deep in the woods.

Once out in the secluded spot, Pike made her true intentions known. While Peterson acted as a lookout, she and Shipp subjected their classmate to unthinkable torture using a meat cleaver and a box cutter. More than 100 injuries were inflicted in just 30 minutes.

Colleen’s throat was repeatedly slashed, and she was still alive when a pentagram was carved on her bare chest by Shipp. All the while, she pleaded for her life, as the attackers taunted her.

Tennessee Attorney General’s Office court documents state: “When Slemmer tried to flee, Pike sliced her stomach with the box cutter. … As Slemmer begged for her life, Pike repeatedly kicked her in the face. Pike then cut Slemmer’s throat as she begged for mercy.”

Pike would later tell of how they’d forced Colleen to remove her blouse and bra, to stop her running away, and that she’d tied a rag taken from her around Colleen’s mouth to stop her from speaking. She said: “It was harder to hurt somebody when they’re talking to you.”

Court records also show how Pike had asked a barely-conscious victim, “Colleen, do you know who’s doing this to you?” By this point, she was too severely injured to respond.

Colleen made one last desperate escape attempt, at which point Pike dealt the final fatal blow to the back of her victim’s head with a large piece of asphalt, smashing her skull. The trio then walked away from the scene.

By the time two UT physical plant employees discovered Colleen’s partially clothed body the following morning, the damage was so extensive that they initially believed they were looking at an animal’s corpse.

So now, somebody explain to me why this foul woman should be allowed to live.  Good luck.

As soon as she recovers from the earlier execution attempt — which seems likely(!) — she should be dragged out of hospital, tied to a chair and shot to death by a firing squad.  A military firing squad.  (I’m pretty sure they’ll find no shortage of volunteers [sic]  in the Tennessee National Guard.)

Here’s one example of how this works.  I bet they won’t screw this one up.

End of story.

Once Again, A Simple Solution

Government Thugs, Rights, The Gun Thing, Two-Minute Hate

We all knew about this disgusting abridgement of our rights, but here it is in black and white:

Rep. Michael Cloud, R-Tex., sent a letter on Tuesday to President Donald Trump urging action on a centralized registry of guns and gun owners that, according to Gun Owners of America (GOA), violates multiple federal statutes. 

Cloud argued the database violates the 1986 Firearm Owners’ Protection Act and congressional spending bans on centralizing records or searching them by name.

“No one in their right mind can look at ATF’s digital, searchable 1.4 billion record database of firearm transactions and tell me that isn’t a gun registry. Several federal laws prohibit gun registration, so it’s truly shocking to see how ATF has disregarded the will of Congress here,” Aidan Johnston, GOA Federal Affairs Director told Just The News.

According to Johnston, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’ (ATF) digital database, managed by the National Tracing Center in West Virginia, has surged to 1.4 billion records, a significant increase from the 920 million records reported in 2021. 

The database contains various forms of identifying records such as firearm transaction records, names, addresses, and serial numbers. The records are primarily digitized from paper forms when gun stores go out of business, which happened at an accelerated rate under the Biden administration due to its zero-tolerance policies.

The ATF hides behind a definition:

…the ATF claims this is a tracing system rather than a registry.

Of course it does.  This ignores (uh huh) the fact that it’s a de facto  registration device — just an unintended consequence rather than a feature rather than a bug.  And as for the database’s apologists:

The ATF did not provide documentary evidence that traces from these records have produced successful violent-crime prosecutions.

Needless to say, avoiding the danger of appearing on said database just requires gun owners to utilize ummm impromptu purchasing methods (e.g. the “Texas transfer” and going to a nearby ELGS*).

Not that I would ever do anything like that to avoid appearing on the ATF’s “tracing system”, of course.

You all know the “simple solution” of this post’s title, don’t you?

Abolish the fucking ATF in toto, fire (not transfer) all its agents and bureaucrats, and burn the National Tracing Center to the ground.

*ELGS:  Evil Loophole Gun Show (coined by Rachel Lucas)

Stay In Your Lane

Big Brother, Government Thugs, Rights

Here’s a little suggestion to the folks at ICE:  keep deporting the illegals (a Good Thing, that we voted for), and don’t get too big for your fucking boots (which we didn’t).

Is that a little opaque?  This may clear it up:

A federal court on Tuesday ordered the Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement to stop violating the First Amendment by threatening a Rochester man over a January email in which he criticized the then-director of ICE.

Details, you want?

In January, federal immigration agents shot and killed Alex Pretti, a Minneapolis ICU nurse, during a tense encounter. Outraged, Streever wrote a stern email to Lyons, entitled “What’s next” and calling the official a “monstrous human being” who will “go down in history as America’s Reinhard Heydrich, the butcher,” a reference to the infamous Nazi official.

He never heard back. Then, five months later, Streever was in Finland with his 7-year-old daughter when his home’s front-door camera picked up the presence of two ICE agents on his porch. The Nest video shows the agents, arriving late in the afternoon on a sunny Tuesday, walking past children’s toys as they climb the steps and repeatedly ring the doorbell. But nobody was home yet. Soon, though, Streever’s wife, an Episcopal priest, still wearing her clergy collar, arrived to find the agents still present.

One of them handed her a “WARNING NOTICE” directed to Streever that claimed, “YOU MAY BE IN VIOLATION OF FEDERAL LAW” for sending his email to the ICE director. The notice insisted that he should “promptly … discontinue” his “behavior,” threatened criminal prosecution, and warned that the notice will be “taken into consideration” if he “continue[s] to be involved” in “criminal activities.”

Streever’s wife told the agents he was out of the country and would return to Rochester that Friday — but federal agents did not wait. While Streever and his daughter slept off some jet lag at a New York City hotel before the last leg of the trip back to Rochester, a federal agent showed up at the front desk looking for him. He left a clerk a business card to give to Streever, whom the clerk called to inform that an agent had been by. Also that night, two agents repeatedly called Streever’s phone, leaving anonymous voicemails identifying themselves only as “Homeland Security Investigations.”

If agents showing up at his home wasn’t unsettling enough, the hotel visit greatly alarmed Streever. His wife hadn’t told authorities where he was staying. Homeland Security found him anyway.

On their train ride home, Streever informed his daughter about the possibility that federal agents might confront him. The girl broke down in tears, worried about her father’s safety. Streever then resolved to fight this abuse of power.

Here’s the thing.  I may not agree with the Streever guy’s verbiage in his email, and I certainly don’t think his email was warranted, given the facts of that silly bitch’s abrupt termination in Minnesota.

But the last time I looked, calling anyone a Nazi — even one as bad as Heydrich — is not a “criminal activity” —  and ICE didn’t even attempt to defend their decision to call the slur criminal, although they did use it as a pretext to deliver their little warnings, the bastards.

In case this is still unclear, here’s the executive summary.

There is a huge divide between threatening someone’s life and calling someone a Nazi.  Had Streever done the first to the ICE Director in his email, I’d be happy to see him carted off in an orange jumpsuit and chains.  But just calling the guy a Nazi?  Forget about it.  That falls under the pesky First Amendment’s protection.

As for ICE:  stick to the deportations, step away from the fucking Nazi behavior — the threatening bullshit, I mean — and we’ll all be happy.

Otherwise, O ye of the ICE Persuasion, you risk losing the support of the people who are otherwise cheering you on.

People like me.  And you can’t afford that.

Oppression By Bureaucracy

Anti-Gun Nannies, Foreign Affairs, Rights, Shootin' Time, The Gun Thing

It’s not often I get an email that creates both sadness and almost-ungovernable rage, but Reader Bruce sent me this:

Last week, on one of the saddest days of my life, I went to a local police station and handed over my three rifles for destruction by the “Commissioner of Police”.

They were nothing special: a B/A Savage 320D in .22 Hornet; an Anschutz .22RF 1451 Sporter (with custom fibreglass stock); a Savage Model 12 .223 Varmint heavy barrel (in a custom fibreglass stock). But they were MINE! to me, they represented something: that society had accepted me as a responsible human being. I obsessively hand loaded for the Hornet and .223, seeking the best performance each was capable of.

So why did I do the unthinkable?

Firstly, my wife and I “downsized”. We moved from a suburban 4 x 2 on a huge lot into a 3 x 2 apartment close to the river. And then came the first cruncher. By law, my firearms had to be kept in an approved gun safe, bolted into brick or concrete on two surfaces. And the only place for that in our new abode was in the lock-up roller door garage. Uh-uh … the law says it has to “be under the main roof” … and it isn’t. My safe was “grandfathered” anyway. Had I bought another firearm or had one of mine rebarrelled, I would have been compelled to buy a new “approved” and vastly more expensive safe. So I had nowhere to store my guns (or ammo, for that matter).

Secondly, I have been a competitive target shooter for 51 years, from air pistol to pistol to full-bore to rimfire. I am nationally qualified as a Range Officer. I was, until I let it lapse, a qualified Commonwealth Shooting Coach. I have been able to use my rifles competitively and for hunting, quite legally. Not so now. If I want to use them competitively, I have to get “another” licence category for them, and compete a regulated number of times per year. Once they are so classified, I can no longer use them for hunting or vermin control. The reason? Our the Minister for Police declared that target firearms are likely to have lightened triggers and are not “safe” to use off a range.

My dilemma. Give up plinking or bunny busting or fox shooting, or give up competition. OK, so I’ll just use them for the former and forego competition. Problem. I can only shoot on “approved” properties. My friend has a farm. I can shoot there, provided he registers me every year on an internet portal with the police department. If his neighbour wants me to shoot a few foxes on his property, I am not allowed to unless he also registers me electronically. Oh, and calibres are limited by the size of the property you have permission to shoot on.

And so I handed them in. I have owned a firearm (or more than one) since 1967. I’m pleased to say I’ve never done anything dangerous or even vaguely illegal with any of them. And to now be told that I can’t have them unless I jump through bureaucratic hoops hurts. Deeply.

My point? DON’T GIVE YOURS UP! Fight the bastards until you can fight no longer.

Note that gun ownership can be ended simply by incremental “reasonable” gun control regulation — e.g. guns must be stored in a safe —–> safes must be encased in brick walls (an almost impossible condition to meet for most people, which is the point of such bastardy).

Bruce, my friend:  if you ever make it to Texas, I’ll organize a Schutzenfest for you with some of my fellow Texans, at a place where we can bang away all day without fear or apprehension.  As for guns… let’s just say you’d be overwhelmed by choice.

Only For Me, Not For You

Gummint, Law and Order, Rights

Ah don’ theenk so, amigo:

Fresno County officials are pushing to let prosecutors carry concealed firearms after a shocking daylight stabbing of a senior deputy district attorney last week.

Supervisor Garry Bredefeld is working with Sheriff John Zanoni and DA Lisa Smittcamp on an ordinance allowing them to be armed on county property.

Sorry, but fuck you.  If the ordinary people living in your county can’t carry concealed guns to protect themselves, then nor can you.

Newsflash (for the elites):  ordinary people are just as likely to be victims of violent crime as you are, and depriving them of their Constitutional right to self defense, as so often happens in California, is bad enough — so you don’t get to benefit from some “exception” that you might carve out for yourselves.

“Our prosecutors come to work every day committed to pursuing justice, standing up for victims and protecting our community. They should be able to do that work without fear of violence.”

No more than anyone else who gets stabbed just because he was standing outside a convenience store minding his own business, when some mook decides it was time for a little impromptu knife action.

And yeah, I get it that because of their occupation, prosecutors are sometimes likely to become stabbees (as was the case recently)… and I don’t care, especially as California prosecutors are pretty much feral themselves when it comes to, for example, charging some hapless guy with murder just because he whacked a violent criminal in his own living room.

Follow the laws you support, assholes — and you don’t get any special treatment.  If you find that you have to change them, change them for everybody, or not at all, and live with the consequences, just like we do.