Don't Paint The Camera

People are not being creative enough when they break the law.

I'm not saying anyone should go out and do this.  But I have decades of murder-hobo wrangling that cause my mind to think about crimes and both how to commit them and how to stop them (depending on the party's law abiding level). 

If one really wanted to cause issues with a Flock camera, one should do something that causes it to degrade performance over a longer period of time.

Problems have solutions.  Dilemmas are never ending. 

Like spraying the solar panel with a UV blocking, etching, clear primer.

This reduces the amount of power the panel provides and the etching makes them ultimately have to replace the panel instead of cleaning it off.

But they get days or weeks of trying to figure out why that camera is working intermittently.

Again: Don't do this!  It's a crime to vandalize or destroy private property.  The proper way is to get off your ass and start eliminating all of the elected officials who support this statist shit by electing better officials from dog-catcher up. 

Peele Was Right

The police are expending a lot of resources to figure out who's cutting their little cameras down.

And I say they are their cameras because Flock doesn't install them where there's nobody paying them.

The thing the cops need to recall is something Sir Robert Peele said:

"To recognise always that the power of the police to fulfill their functions and duties is dependent on public approval of their existence, actions and behaviour, and on their ability to secure and maintain public respect."

That sentence is almost 200 years old.

It's still true.

The cops wasting resources finding the people who are cutting these cameras down is undermining public approval of their existence at a time when half the body politic has been clamoring for their elimination.

Good show!

Getting back to Peelian Principles would go a long way towards mending the rift between the police and the citizens who've delegated their powers to them. 

This Is The Same Logic

One Florida sheriff is touting their relationship with Flock and how it helped them find a missing child.

The thing they are missing is they are, in essence, saying that it's OK to enter every house in their jurisdiction without a warrant to catch a child pornographer.

The huge question is, "Does the good outweigh the bad?"

Considering the contents of the Bill of Rights, no.

The founders were firmly of the idea that it's better to let a few criminals get away with it than to trod on the rights of the innocent to catch them.

Something we're going to have to address is the issue of private organizations collecting information and then selling it to the government(s).

I suspect that if we decide that if the government buys something they cannot, legally, collect on their own is forbidden; the collection of such data by private entities will stop. 

A Reply To The Help

It's Just That We Don't Trust You

Something I keep wondering about is if why do we even have things that can be abused by the government?

Gun registration lists cannot be used by the government to track gun owners if there is no list.

But they make a list and tell us they're not accessing it.  Because it's illegal.

I don't want it to be illegal to misuse a list, I want it to be impossible.

The only way for that to happen is for there to be no list at all and not collecting any information that could be used in a list.

Not even if a non-governmental entity holds the list, government will access it. 

Flock cameras are the same thing. 

Because it is possible for the government to use the information to violate my rights, they will do so.  "They have not done so yet!" is a very weak defense and Flock's own spokesman doesn't much reassure me that they won't enthusiastically assist government in fucking me over.

But if there are no Flock cameras... 

Flock

I did not save the link...

But it would appear that Flock's surveillance and its use by the cops was found to not be a violation of privacy because there weren't enough cameras in use to provide 100% coverage and thus the person surveilled could have routed around them.

There are Supreme Court cases holding that milder infractions are violations of our right to privacy.  The recent one about geo-fencing is one.

It would appear to me, reading the tea leaves, that even one use without a warrant is a violation and Flock is digging it's own grave by pointing out how many cameras they have operating.

Someone is eventually going to tie a penumbra to these cameras from the cyberstalking laws and the "we did it to everyone" defense is just going to increase the number of counts in the charges.

Because while government can use the "we did it to everyone equally" defense, they're not allowed to do it to anyone without a warrant.

"We did it to everyone," is not a defense a private party can use when invading someone's privacy. 

I Know Why

250,000 girls raped by Muslim rape gangs. A quarter of a million of your young daughters. And then kept secret by those meant to protect them. Then arresting people for speaking out.

Why Brits aren’t violently overthrowing their government as we speak I’ll never know.

— The Dank Knight 🦇 (@capeandcowell) June 16, 2026

 

They are referring to this.

It's because the people of Great Britain have been disarmed.

Remember When I Said?

This sure sounds like something, is this something?

He keeps saying "pogrom" but I keep hearing revolution.

Because the words that echo are, "That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness."

This is the portion of the social contract that has failed in Ireland and the UK.

Fascinating that it's the UK again that these words are appropriate about.

But this is the kind of thing that happens when you ignore the citizens and favor another demographic over them. 

It's What Happens

Most rational people aren't racist.

They really believe that you shouldn't punish groups for the crimes of individuals.

But when the police refuse to punish an individual because they are a member of a group, rational people start to become mistrustful of that group.

This is not because the group, as a whole, is bad; it's because they know that a small number of the members of that group will realize they can commit, virtually, any crime with impunity.

So they become rationally racist.  The rational part is what distinguishes them from bigots.  Bigotry is irrational racism.  It's both simple and difficult to tell the two apart.

A corollary to the cops not enforcing the law, when the members of a protected group commit the crimes, is the rise of vigilantism.

Measures to put distance on the protected group become notable. 

The law needs to be colorblind, and what matters is the crime not the demographics of the perpetrator.

Otherwise the people will reclaim the power they delegated to the police and decline to recognize the legislation promulgated in their name by politicians they'd previously delegated to represent them. 

Then it won't be a republic any more. 

Worth Your Time

 

Quoted In Full

Devon Eriksen says:

If you don't own a rifle, your opinion is mostly irrelevant.

Everything humans do to interact and work together is a proxy for force.

Force is base-level communication, because it requires no common language or concepts, and it definitively settles every dispute. Problem with it is, it's risky, expensive, and mostly not very enjoyable.

So we developed proxies for it. First language, then persuasion, deception, negotiation, money, blackmail, fake news, advertising, psychology, etc, etc, it's all a proxy for the underlying asset... force.

So if you have no weapon, then your opinion is only relevant when it influences those who do, whether directly or through second and higher order effects.

This places you at a considerable disadvantage, not only because those who can wield force directly can cut through the abstractions and wield that force directly, but also because the threat, stated or implied, of doing so carries weight and can change how others wield those higher-level abstractions.

This is why Jordan Peterson is wrong.

Free speech, when available, can be used to defend many things, but when it is under threat, it cannot be used to defend itself.

The right to bear arms, however, can be used to defend the right to bear arms.

And that is the difference.

If you need a further example, look at what is happening in Britain. The masters do not want their slaves expressing certain opinions, and they are imprisoning them for doing so.

Their real plan of attack, for course, has little to do with the people being imprisoned. They only have the resources to do that to a tiny fraction of the population.

The real plan is heads on spikes. It's using the fear of being one of those people to shut everyone up. Everyone but them.

But ask yourself... if you were British, or French, or Canadian, or Australian (or perhaps you actually are), instead of having the outrageous good fortune to be American, what the hell would you do?

How would you use the right of free speech to defend the right of free speech? If you say this is wrong, they'll find an excuse to call it hate speech and lock you up.

And you consented to this, you morons. A few crazies shot a vanishingly small percentage of kids, and instead of locking up the crazies, like any sensible population, you let them take away your only capacity to resist them.

You cheered for it.

You begged for it.

You brag about it.

You try to snap back at us with it, saying that at least .00000000001% of your schoolchildren (in the ghetto) aren't being shot (by other feral teens in the ghetto), as third-world barbarians hack your little girls to death with machetes and rape your teenage daughters and your own government won't lift a finger to stop it, because they hate you and they want it to happen.

You don't want to admit that the primary civil right, the right on which all the others is based, is the right to be armed.

Because if you did, you would have to face three horrifying truths:

1. You've been wrong all this time, and the very thing you were smuggest about was your biggest mistake.

2. You are in a shit situation, because you now have to figure out how to bring down a government that hates you, can use force on you any time they want, and you can't stop them.

3. America, Switzerland, and the Czech Republic are the only free countries on Earth. Everywhere else is a police state.

Americans have always known that ultimately, no matter who you are, now matter where you are, no one is coming to save you. You must possess the means to save yourself, or at least to fight back, to make yourself expensive and dangerous to kill, so you can save the next guy.

This is the reason, the real reason, why Americans love guns.

We let you pretend it was because we were fat stupid belligerent rednecks who like power fantasies, because that lie seemed to make you happy, and it's not nice to take away the comforting delusions of toddlers and crazy people.

But now that delusion is hurting you, and, contemptuous as you have been of us, you are fellow human beings, fellow civilized humans beings, and we don't want to see you die, so we have to tell you the truth.

We love guns because they are not only the tool of liberty, they are symbol of our value, not as tools or slaves of regime, but as independent, free human beings of inherent worth.

In America, when I walk past a police officer on the street, he has a badge and a gun. But I have a gun, too. Right there under my shirt. And [mine] works just like his.

And that changes everything. Because now I am not the only one dependent on the rule of law. He is dependent upon the rule of law, too. Because if the rule of law is the only thing that prevents him from killing me under color of authority, then the rule of law is the only thing that prevents me from killing him in the act of resistance.

The deterrents exist on both sides, and we all have to play nice. And mostly, we do. Because those deterrents make sure we really, really want to.

They're not playing nice any more on your side of the big blue wobbly thing. They have guns. All you have is a mouth and a keyboard.

How that working out for you?

An armed society is a polite society. That's not just a saying. That's not just fiction.

And Terry Pratchett was dead wrong. It doesn't just last until "some twerp drinks out of the wrong mug or picks up someone else's change by mistake and five minutes later you're picking noses out of the beer nuts."

Only a person from a disarmed society, who has never lived in a armed one, could have been so profoundly, pig-headedly, disastrously delusional.

If you haven't trained with guns, owned guns, carried guns, you have no idea what they're like, or what you would do if you had one, or what everyone would do in a bar where everyone had one.

Because the answer, the real answer, to "[what everyone does] in a pub where everyone goes armed" is "not get their goohuloog heads kicked in by the police for speaking out against their masters".

It Bears Mentioning

I went to check the private messages at the SJGames forum where I'd confronted Sean "Kromm" Punch.

I got one message from the thread starter thanking me for speaking truth to power.

That makes it worth it to me.

I Voted!

 

I have fired off my ballot for the NRA board of directors.

Eyes firmly crossed that the reformers get firm control and actually manage to reform the place.

I'd happily see it changed from a lifetime magazine subscription to a powerhouse gun-rights organization.

Partially related, it came in my first issue of American Rifleman since Shooting Illustrated is kaput.

Just An Idea

I've read that that the Islamic Republic of Iran has banned the possession and use of a Starlink unit.

They have roving units that detect and triangulate the unit based on its RF emissions.

I have an idea for anyone in Iran looking for an idea.

Place the unit where it will be more likely to be detected by these roving detector units.

Then ambush them.

This eliminates the detection crew, and lets you remove their equipment from the game.

Hope this helps! 

He DID Say It

Lots of people are exulting that Charlie Kirk did once say, "I think it's worth it. I think it's worth to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights."

I've repeatedly said that freedom has warts.

Every liberty has a down side, but the upsides more than counter them.

Millions of defensive gun uses that saved someone's life more than counter the thousands of murders and suicides.

Even if all guns miraculously disappeared, there would still be murder and suicide.  There would still be a need to defend oneself from murderers and thieves.

It's not the guns that are the problem.

It's the rage that's been sold since, around, 2000, that the right wing are evil.

Rage that has led to violence that was unpunished.

Outright encouragement of violence against "fascists" was the norm.

Antifa and Black Lives Matter destroyed how much property?  Injured or killed how many people?

Yet, only the right saw any real punishment.  Isn't it amazing how they found everyone who entered the capitol building on January 6, but we can't find arsonists in any of the various places that Antifa rioted in?

It's not guns that told them to go do evil and assured them they would not be punished.

It's not guns that provided bail money and delivered bricks on pallets near where these violent protests would occur.

It's not guns.

It's also not the right that's been murdering people.

I, for one, am sick of being blamed for things I didn't do.

I am sick of being punished for things that other people did.

That's against the entire concept of individual liberty that this nation was founded upon! 

Fingers Crossed For Nepal

I'm reading there's an uprising in Nepal, triggered by the banning of social media of all things.

I hope it goes well for them, but the specter of Tienanmen Square looms large when West Taiwan is involved... and they are.

I Don't Think They're Thinking This All The Way Through

The Left keeps forgetting that, for the Right, violence is binary and not a continuous variable.

When they finally find the Rubicon and cross it I don't think they will care for it.

And I won't feel sorry for them.  Ample warnings have been given.

What really bugs me is how often in the last five years that the whackiest conspiracy nuts have been the most accurate about what's going on.

It's like using the National Enquirer for daily news.

Corollary

The corollary of "the police aren't coming" is "the police aren't coming."

Criminals haven't thought this all the way through.

Citizens in Italy, apparently, are ahead of the curve and vigilantism is getting a resurgence.

Fun fact!  Did you know the organizations we know as the mafia originate from vigilance societies?

So far the Italian police have been as ineffective in stopping vigilantes as they've been at stopping crime.

Vigilante is what you get when the government abdicates it's side of the criminal justice agreement.

There's solid reasons to have a neutral, not directly involved in the crime, party do the arresting and trials.

Not least of which vigilantes mete out "justice" when their blood is up and they have a tendency to snag the wrong person for lynching.

But it's not as big a percentage of those punished as you'd think.

Banned Books

h/t Technomad

You Know What Officer You're Right

Your job SHOULD be easy.

Yet...  There's that 4th Amendment in the way.  There's that 5th Amendment in the way.  There's that 6th Amendment in the way.  There's that 8th Amendment in the way.

Four amendments that are there, pretty much, solely to keep government from speedily and easily arresting, convicting and incarcerating us.

All of the Bill of Rights are about making the job of government harder because the liberty of the citizenry was thought to be more important than efficient government.

So, actually, Mr Spokesman of the Large Police Organization:  You are wrong.

Your job is supposed to be difficult.

You are supposed to work for it.  Earn it.

DEAL WITH IT.

Liberty does not come without warts, but you're supposed to exist in a world where us normal folk are in charge and giving you duties we want performed.  You're not supposed to be dictating terms to us and suborning our elected officials against us.

We'll, eventually, get those turncoats gone.

Then where will you be?

Can I quote someone whom you should be familiar with and emulating?

"[T]he power of the police to fulfil their functions and duties is dependent on public approval of their existence, actions and behaviour, and on their ability to secure and maintain public respect."

-R. Peel.

Learn it, love it, live it, Officer.