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“There have been a couple times that people have tried to sell smart guns that the gun store was almost put out of business. I think the Department of Justice should pay more attention to those things and consider anti-trust actions against organizations that are trying to use unacceptable practices against businesses.” – Mark Kelly in On Clinton Campaign Trail, Astronaut Mark Kelly Talks Smart Guns [at wired.com]

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85 COMMENTS

  1. Smells like desperation. So actual and potential customers decide to not patronize a business and that is now a crime in Kelly’s head?

    Donation to the Americans for Ripping off Saps slush fund…..er PAC must be down.

    • Just remember, Justice Roberts along with a majority of the supreme court agree that the government can force you to buy products whether you want them or not.

      • All actions of gov’t can be distilled down to force…

        Do X,Y,Z or men with guns will come get you… Or if you are amoung the lucky, you will only get a hefty fine, which if you don’t pay, then men with guns will come get you.

        Your disagreement or moral opposition with gov’t programs and/or actions doesn’t remove the obligation to pay or participate in them…

        Which is the moral conundrum present in the concept of gov’t, especially large gov’t, as a whole.

  2. Customers = organizations? The NRA never said to boycott these stores. It’s individual people in the market deciding for themselves based on knowledge of the law.

    • Maybe he means ‘organizations’ like the New Jersey, that created that mess. Nah, he actually means organizations like the American citizenry…

  3. Anti-trust violation? Under that reasoning, anytime any organization is behind a boycott of any business and that business loses money as a result, the boycotting organization would be hit with anti-trust violations. I am ashamed that he wore the same uniform as me.

  4. Kelly is totally opposed to the free market just as NJ and CA are. Bith states are using ‘product safety’ regulation to ban as many guns as possible. MA is almost as bad.
    Free market means gun store carry only what customers will buy. They are not forced to carry something that is unreliable, very expensive, and in NJ would make it illegal to sell any other type of pistol.

    • It’s no wonder that Kelly has problems with the free market. He attempted to make two gun purchases out here in Arizona to show the media “how easy it is to get a gun,” and was denied three times… and not by the NICS, but by the gun dealer. Once for being an ineligible purchaser (out-of-state license), and twice according to the dealer’s best judgment that under federal law he would be considered a straw purchaser. If you look closely at his eyebrows, you can still see some egg, though the media carefully airbrushes it out.

  5. So can somebody explain how the dept of injustice is going to go after public opinion? I don’t remember any groups calling for boycotting stores that had shown interest in selling smart guns. I do remember public outrage voicing concern that sales would mean no normal guns being sold in one state after the store did so.
    If Mark Kelly thinks he can sway the injustice dept into action he should be pushing for the arrest and indictment of a traitorous lying bitch who wants to be president. I could support him in that endeavor.

  6. This guy causes me to lose faith in Nasa. Maybe it’s best we let the Russians take us to space and keep morons like this off the controls.

      • They stopped using them? Oh, right, they just swapped places with the bureaucrats.

        Seriously, I have a tremendous amount of respect for NASA through the Apollo / start of Skylab programs, and the current unmanned-mission side of the house.

        The manned spaceflight side these days, though … How does that one song go, “If NASA hadn’t failed us we’d have cities on the moon…”

        • You sure you want to be giving the unmanned guys props? They crashed a probe into a planet because some genius forgot to convert units.

        • Pwrserge:

          Not to defend the mistake, but stupid mistakes happen in any field of endeavor. At least they’re out there and trying new stuff.

          Although … Have you ever tried working for them?

        • Worse, my company does a lot of business with them. Some of the stupidest questions I have ever heard in my career come from NASA PhDs.

        • I had a guy flat out tell me to my face that my devices could not possibly work the way I said they did because of High School optics. (Completely ignoring that said optics classes were a gross approximation meant to convey general rules rather than a 100% description of how optics actually function.)

          The idea of specular vs diffuse reflections, chromatic aberrations, and optical interference were completely lost on a guy whose job it was to design orbital telescopes.

    • NASA is a political statement wrapped in engineering achievement. Truth is maned space are a colossal waste of money and resources. The average long haul trucker travels farther in a day with more goods and services exchanged than an astronaut does.

      And please spare me the wonderful things that come from the maned space program. The only one of any significance is mylar used as a radiation barrier in space suits, which now is used in flexible film, to hold nitrogen in snack bags.

      • Another gun guy who hates science! ::Shocked::

        The moon landing effort was a bid to produce ICBMs and orbital nukes. Although we could argue that the world would be better off without them.

        • That was a broad brush stroke…

          It appears he was commenting more to the large amount of money and resources spent on “space exploration.”

          One can love science without jumping in with both feet on massive gov’t programs and the large amount of resources said programs consume, all in the name of science.

          Anyone who has worked for .gov can tell you, the G is really goodd about tearing through money and resource with a quickness.

        • I’m not anti science nor anti space exploration. The future and most productive return on our investment is space are all corms of communication satellites and exploration rovers. The simple fact of distance and hostile environment precludes maned exploration.

          I once worked with a engineer who was tasked develop antifreeze for spacecraft, even wrote a paper on it. I asked, was it ever used, the reply was no, but now we added to our knowledge. So we spent time effort and coin to find out what we’re not going to use to cool a spaceship.

          Build a craft that can drill through ice on a distant moon looking for life, I’ll sweep the engineers floor just to be around it.

        • “Build a craft that can drill through ice on a distant moon looking for life, I’ll sweep the engineers floor just to be around it.”

          *That* very mission was recently approved:

          “NASA has selected nine science instruments for a future mission to Europa. The selected payload includes cameras and spectrometers to produce high-resolution images of Europa’s surface and determine its composition. An ice penetrating radar will determine the thickness of the moon’s icy shell and search for subsurface lakes similar to those beneath Antarctica’s ice sheet. The mission will also carry a magnetometer to measure the strength and direction of the moon’s magnetic field, which will allow scientists to determine the depth and salinity of its ocean.”

          In fairness, this mission is the lead-up to develop the ice-drill lander, but it *is* happening.

          It wouldn’t surprise me if the lander will be close to those geysers they’ve spotted already…

          http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/europa-mission/

        • Nope. Not even close. Cooling hoses for space suits, F1 drivers were using it before astronauts. IC circuits weren’t used in Apollo moon landing. Fuel defusers on rocket motors, no practical purpose in the civilian word. What science experiment or drugs developed in space are used today, none. What we have learned throughout the years is human physiology suffers in space. Astronauts must exercise 45 minutes daily just to maintain a 12% loss in bone density. 90% suffer from retina damage. The the biggest problem of maned space flight is Management kills more astronauts than space does.

        • ” IC circuits weren’t used in Apollo moon landing.”

          *WRONG*.

          From ‘Digital Apollo’:

          “Still, the integrated circuits allowed a simpler, more
          elegant, and more modular design. One type of circuit, a two-input NOR gate, would
          repeat throughout the entire computer, rather than thirty-four different modules, as
          would be the case with the core-transistor logic.”

          “NASA was convinced, and in November 1962 allowed the integrated-circuit design to
          go forward. Integrated circuits were not limited to the computer itself, but also covered
          the analog circuits that brought data into the digital world. Hall soon added to
          the computer not only the digital NOR-gate IC, but also a new analog IC for a sense
          amplifier—to condition the analog signals from the spacecraft’s numerous sensors.”

          “The AGC (AGC is the ‘Apollo Guidence Computer,was in that doo-dad that landed on the lunar surface) gave a boost to the fledgling IC business. The Minuteman missile program
          also used integrated circuits, but over twenty types of custom designed chips. Apollo,
          by contrast, used a single, standard type of chip. By 1963 Apollo was consuming
          60 percent of the integrated circuit production in the United States. In 1964 Robert
          Noyce of Fairchild stated that the company had had shipped 110,000 ICs for
          Apollo. Noyce cited the Apollo computer as evidence of the reliability of the ICs he
          manufactured, and of their suitability for military electronics.”

          I highly recommend ‘Digital Apollo: Human and Machine in Spaceflight’ by David A. Mindell.

          http://www.amazon.com/Digital-Apollo-Human-Machine-Spaceflight/dp/0262516101

          It’s written for those with an interest in tech, it doesn’t go full Geek…

      • The NASA budget has been less than 1% of the Fed Budget for decades. Whaddya think that ‘massive expense’ is exactly? 18 Billion . That would run the DoD for less than 10 days. Or QE for about the same period.

        Big money to you and me. Absolute chump change to Fedzilla.

      • Silicon Valley, the Internet, integrated circuits, advances in miniaturization of electronics, computer software, advances in materials science, etc…the Space Program was arguably the greatest investment of money into research and development of science and technology in human history. There would be no TTAG without it.

  7. “But gun control isn’t the only topic on which the former NASA astronaut and Clinton see eye-to-eye. “She believes in science and technology and innovation, and that is so imporant to me,” he says. “I have a very hard time with anybody who is promoting themselves to lead this country that does not believe in science.””

    *snort

  8. You either have to be willfully ignorant, massively stupid, or patently evil to misrepresent the SmartGun debate this way. I’m not sure which option is scarier.

  9. Mr. Kelly is hoping science can fix a problem, we didn’t know we had, in ways we don’t understand. Every attempt to reliability create a “smart gun”, does not work…I “anti-trust” the technology. Which begs the question, what does a smart gun do, that a reliable holster and a gun lock box already does?

  10. It’s called the First Amendment, Marky Mark, and it trumps both the Sherman and Clayton anti-trust acts. Besides, none of the tactics used by pro-firearm freedom activists even include those prohibited by anti-trust legislation. This is just another “I don’t like this, so the government should DO something!” outburst from a failed statist.

    • I heard him speak once at an event that had nothing to do with gun control or politics. He comes across as a really thoughtful, intelligent guy. I think of him like I think of a lot of celebrities that try to insert themselves into policy debates where they have no expertise: the man would be a decent American if he just stayed in his lane. Unfortunately he has instead chosen to leverage a personal tragedy to attain unearned notoriety and become a wannabe despot in the process.

  11. Ironically, it is Armatix which is attempting to collude with the gov to be the lone handgun supplier in Jersey soooooo yeah, “anti-trust…”

  12. I will take a smart gun that works. As long as the following are met
    1.) Reliable
    2.) Only I control the on/off switch
    3.) Other people aren’t forced to have one

    • 4.) All LEO at the local, state and federal level are required to use them in professional capacity for at least 5yrs with no known incident of failure.

  13. This is no different that Trump saying he wants to build a wall. Both Kelly and Trump are making stupid statements to appeal to the emotions of their base. Nothing more and nothing less.

      • I agree. Walls are needed.

        I have no issues with legal immigration, my issues are with illegal immigration – walls are used/needed to prevent the latter, not the former.

        • I’m exposed to illegal immigration every day. At least 30% of all workers in processing plants are illegals. If Trump wins, invest in concrete and steel.

        • I work in the industrial electrical sector in Texas, I’ve seen plenty of new construction sites, and know all about illegal immigrants in the work force.

        • The hilarious part is that if you activate a few combat engineering battalions from the National guard, they could have the walls built and perimeter mined inside a month.

    • I’m neither a Trump proponent or opponent, but I will say this, there was a bill passed in ’06, which was defunded (though the law remains) granting the power to build broader walls.

      Like it or not, the power to build a wall is well within the president’s authority. The funding to do so is the only legal road block.

  14. He is probably one of the anti-gun people that I detest the most. A retired career naval officer who graduated from the Merchant Marine Academy and an astronaut, you can be sure he isn’t stupid. So it’s particularly irritating when he spews forth partial truths and outright lies to score political points.

    A quote by him in the article: “I have a very hard time with anybody who is promoting themselves to lead this country that does not believe in science.”

    Well, I have a hard time with anybody who panders to an ideology by deliberately ignoring facts as he does every time he opens his mouth. Jackwagon.

  15. When does forcing someone to fight for their rights become a usurpation of their rights? When someone else (the person offended) says it does. When does that someone have to F your sh_t up to keep you from attempting to usurp their rights again/in the future? When you say it does. You just might not know that’s what you’re saying at the time.

  16. Clucking magnets, how do they work? And I don’t wanna talk to a scientist. Y’all mothercluckers lying, and getting me pissed. Word.

  17. They like to pretend the NJ mandate never existed, or are just too dim to realize its effect on the marketplace for “smart guns”. Without the mandate, though, there’s no rational reason to protest or care one way or another if someone brings a “smart gun” to market; the free market solution at that point is the same for anything else, don’t buy one.

  18. Wait, so if using market pressure to keep a store from selling a product you don’t want sold there is an antitrust violation, then antis’ efforts to keep box stores from carrying firearms are illegal. Didn’t expect the Clinton campaign to take THAT position!

  19. There have been a couple times that people have tried to sell smart guns that the gun store was almost put out of business. I think the Department of Justice should pay more attention to those things and consider anti-trust actions against organizations that are trying to use unacceptable practices against businesses.” – Mark Kelly in moron from outer space

    Sure. Millions of gun owners don’t want “smart” guns (that aren’t smart), and many don’t want smart guns for sale in a gun shop anywhere due to legislation in new jersey banning non-smart guns after smart guns become available. Somehow an “organization” is to blame for this and the millions of angry guns owners who fight it with their votes, their phone calls, and they boycotts – aren’t the reason for such stores “almost” closing.

  20. Mark Kelly is a callow and low individual. While his wife was still in hospital with a gunshot wound to the head, he just had to make a second trip on the Shuttle. His wife was not really “out of the woods”, but Kelly said they discussed it and he should go. An honorable man would have given up the opportunity to thrill himself, and stayed with his wife. One cannot expect anything useful of such a man as this.

    • He’s ex-Navy.

      You obviously don’t or cannot understand the mindset of the individuals who do do those jobs.

      Once you’re committed to the job (mission), you finish it.

      Full stop.

      I’m glad there are people out there who will have that level of commitment the jobs they do. Mrs. Giffords understood that comes with the job.

      2 Navy SEALs have flown in the shuttle, the same kind of mind-set that makes a good SEAL makes a good astronaut.

      • Kelly already “finished the mission” once. There are times when military must put mission before family, but with a wife near-death, the mission (which was/is not critical to defense of life, liberty or country) takes second place…because there was a backup team member just as qualified, and probably without any actual spaceflight experience. No, Kelly was/is into personal aggrandizement.

        As to Navy aviation, they promoted to admiral an officer who was a grounded pilot (grounded as in took his wings away). This officer had intentionally fired a live air-to-air missile at an Air Force F-4, while both were participating in “war games”. Both Air Force pilots suffered life-time injuries and medically retired. The “Admiral”, on the other hand, left the active navy and was a reservist when promoted. Navy’s excuse was that despite nearly killing to Air Force aviators, as a reservist the “Admiral” had done everything expected to obtain the rank.

        There is no equivalency between Naval Aviators/Naval Feathermerchants and SEALs, none.

        And yes, I am intimately familiar with demands of military service.

      • Doesn’t change the fact that he doesn’t want you selling your firearm to your family members or friends without a background check. You have way too much freedom in Kelly’s opinion. You need less freedom in these circumstances. Also:

        Once you’re committed to the job (mission), you finish it.

        Unless that job entails an oath that says you support and defend the constitution.

  21. “organizations that are trying to use unacceptable practices against businesses”

    So, Congressmembers and any organization that is anti-Constitution or anti-any-part-of-the-Constitution? is that what you were trying to say Mr. Kelly?

  22. If there were a smart gun chambered in a usable (for defensive purposes) caliber that could go bang 99.9 percent of the time, I’d give it a try. But I wouldn’t want to be mandated to that gun or class of guns being the only option available.

  23. You don’t have to go through any investigation into if you’re a completely mindless fascist buffoon in order to be a shuttle pilot. You just have to be a great pilot. I’ll trust him to fly and consider any opinion he expresses which doesn’t have to do with the fate of any shuttle flight I might be on as likely to be flawed in both spirit and substance.

    • He decries pro-gun organizations trying to pressure businesses…because those organizations are not supporters of whatever leftist/statist issue of the day. If you are “right-minded”, pressuring businesses is a legitimate use of the first amendment, otherwise not.

  24. Dept of “Justice” doesn’t have time for such The are too busy investigating Hellery and her emails. Deporting Illegals. Locating ISIS sleeper cells. etc.

  25. If Crazy Bernie’s supporters show up tonight (likely) then Hellery is going to get spanked. THEN you’ll see some spinning and panic at the DNC. Crazy Uncle Joe is waiting in the smoke filled rooms.

    In other Iowa news. I’ll predict that Trumpies won’t show up like he hopes/needs and Cruz wins.

    • “In other Iowa news. I’ll predict that Trumpies won’t show up like he hopes/needs and Cruz wins.”

      That’s exactly what I’m waiting to see.

  26. I’m with you 2-although I’m also hoping for a hilldebeast loss. And sure Markie-open up that can ‘o worms…

  27. Still waiting on that major police department to adopt smart guns for their officers.

    ….still waiting.
    ………waiting.
    …………zzzzzzz.

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