Good Words

From a gun owner on Quora...

A lot of noise. Any time there is a question like this there is a lot of noise. The truth though? We just don't know. Here are some other truths though that we should take into account. The odds of you using your gun to defend yourself or your family from a violent crime is many times smaller than the odds of your gun being used by a family member or intruder to shoot you. The odds of you using your gun to defend yourself are many times smaller than the odds of your gun being involved in an accidental discharge. The odds of you successfully defending yourself from an intruder are many times smaller than the odds of you blowing your own brains out in a suicide by gun.
 
Here is a Harvard study refuting much of the 'self defense' noise you hear all the time.
 
Gun Threats and Self-Defense Gun Use
 
Not that is it not a phony study like the John Lott Gun and Gun Crime paper which was not peer reviewed NOR was it a study but merely a self serving polemic by an avid gun aficionado.
 
You may next hear 'noise' about the UK or Australia. And ho their violent crime rate actually went up after gun control. It may interest you to know that the UK defines violent crime much more broadly than we do in the United States as they include simple assault and sexual assault (that does not have to be rape). Our FBI considers only four crimes in it's violent crimes calculations. Therefore we know right off the bat we are not comparing apples to apples.
 
The next noise you hear will be constitutional trumpet blowing ad some talk about a 'doomsday clause'. Will the first gun owner who defended my liberty from our own tyrannical government please raise your hand? No sorry David Koresh much as the government botched that raid, you were not defending anything but your own twisted beliefs at Waco. The founding fathers wanted Americans to be able to muster and form a well regulated militia, they wanted them to bring their own muskets and flintlock pistols, hell back in the day private parties owned cannon and frigates that could be issued letters of marque. We were a young country, relatively defenseless, it made total sense. Even then the founding fathers did not say, 'In order to prevent the Feds form getting too uppity citizens should own and carry around guns'. It is my belief , and I am no constitutional scholar, that future SCOTUS rulings will give state and federal governments more authority to restrict and control gun purchase and gun bearing and that this is entirely constitutional and would be a good thing.
 
Finally there will be noise about what a leftist fascist I am (not a possibility by definition but ok), and how if the Jews had some guns old Adolph couldn't have done what he did and maybe even how the U.N wants to get rid of guns and people in Europe are essentially slaves or victims.
 
To the above I have a few responses. I own two guns. I will probably but a couple more. I would gladly surrender them (for money of course) if everyone else had to and the government was collecting them. They are for me fun to shoot at the range and a relatively inexpensive ultimate insurance policy. Not for home defense on a regular basis, not for stopping tyranny (not sure my 10-22 Ruger will penetrate the Kevlar and ceramic plates on the FEMA storm troopers), not they are my insurance policy against a complete breakdown of social order-a descent in anarchy, the failure of the electric grid, a plague, the Zompacolypse, that sort of thing.
 
For those who feel bad for the Europeans, drag your butt over there and eat that delicious food, look at the smiles on their faces, soak up the Tuscan sun, dip your toes on the Amalfi Coast-then tell me about those poor stupid European slaves who compared to us really have no guns at all.
 
My last point is to bemoan the Jewish argument. If only the Jews had guns they could have....they could have what? The Polish Army had guns and training, so did the French, and guess what-the Wehrmacht rolled through them like a hot knife through butter. Guns weren't gonna stop Hitler from is insane designs on the world, not in the hands of scattered Jews or Romanovs or Slavs.
 
It's all just noise. It's ok to live having guns to feel like it's your right but please let's not pretend that we are defending the constitution-that's the militaries job-or that we are defending our family-from what? You think there are armed men out there just waiting to attack you? That is our police forces and courts job. They do a better job every year too as evidenced by declining rates of violence.

Very well said!!

Three Tour Iraq Vet Murdered By Gun Cult

Andrew Meyers served three tours of duty in Iraq and survived. But he couldn't survive a bicycle ride in Colorado Springs. He was one of the victims of Noah Haphram's shooting spree last Saturday. The shooting spree would likely have been stopped had Colorado Springs not allowed open carry.

Worse than any Islamic extremist, the Gun Cult gets blood like this on its hands every single day. It's time we stopped them as we would any other threat to national security and I can't think of any entity more equipped than the federal government:)

What Open Carry Does

Regarding the recent Colorado Springs shooting rampage...

Bettis said she recognized the gunman as her neighbor — whom she didn't know by name — and that before the initial slaying she saw him roaming outside with a rifle. She called 911 to report the man, but a dispatcher explained that Colorado has an open carry law that allows public handling of firearms.

Again...the Gun Cult is a more clear and present danger to our nation's safety than ISIL or any other terrorist organization. They must be stopped. Yesterday.

For a group that caterwauls all the time about Nazis and gun free zones being dangerous, they sure seem to be doing a great job of actually creating and supporting that type of totalitarianism.

Why He Quit The NRA (Good Words)

Reprinted in its entirety because it's just that fucking good.

I was a member of the National Rifle Association for more than 50 years. In 2012, I decided not to renew my membership.

My NRA was all about marksmanship, safety and responsibly. But the NRA today is off the rails. It’s being irresponsible, and it has been for years. NRA leaders should be sponsoring responsible gun laws instead of opposing them, in my opinion.

In 2006 my daughter was one of the victims in thes hooting at the Jewish Federation in Seattle, where a shooter killed one and inured five. My daughter survived, barely. After she recovered, she wanted to put the tragedy behind her, but she found that it was too life-changing. She started telling her story, and she began advocating for more effective gun-control laws in Washington.

I’ve always enjoyed shooting sports. As a Boy Scout and an Explorer Scout, I joined the NRA in high school. I then spent 20 years in the Navy, where I qualified as an expert in both rifles and pistols. I still own guns: four modern firearms and two old-fashioned pistols that are more than 100 years old.

But I strongly believe that being a responsible gun owner means supporting sensible laws to keep guns out of the hands of the wrong people. This belief was cemented by the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn., in 2012. The shooting in Oregon last week was another tragic reminder.

I feel that four things can help prevent such tragedies in the future. Requiring background checks on the state and federal level is the sensible first step. In addition, there should be penalties for officials of city, state and county governments who fail to enter people’s names in the database when they’re judged to be mentally ill, or a danger to themselves or others, or have convictions that would make them no longer eligible to own firearms.

Another safety precaution would be to make sure that when a protection order is issued by a judge, that person’s guns are confiscated until the order is lifted. Finally, no one needs high-capacity magazines, firearms capable of holding more than 10 rounds, for target shooting, hunting for personal protection. Not only should they not be sold, but their possession should also be illegal.

Many NRA members would agree that we need more common-sense gun laws: A 2013 survey found that about 75% of members support stronger restrictions on guns. The NRA leaders should listen to the members and do more to make sure that gun ownership goes hand-in-hand with responsibility and safety.

Gun-rights advocates often make the argument: “Guns don’t kill people; people do.” But the reality is: People with guns kill people. And there’s a lot more we can do to stop them.

What Part Of Infringed Did She Not Understand?

Four-Year-Old Fatally Shot in Head in Albuquerque Road Rage Incident: Police

Gallup: More Americans Favor Stricter Gun Laws

Tired of being held hostage by the American Taliban? Well, you're not the only one.  More Americans favor stricter gun laws and it's not just them. More gun owners want stricter laws as well. Perhaps some are beginning to see the writing on the wall...

The greatest threat to our national security right now is the fucking Gun Cult. As we have done with international extremists, our own local nutjobs need to be taken out. In many ways, this is a form of sedition and they need to be held accountable for their actions.

Responsible Gun Owners?

*10/11, SC: grandmother shot by 2-year-old grandson
*10/10, NV: 8-year-old boy fatally shot self
*10/10, MD: 75-year-old man fatally shot by 14-year-old boy 
*10/07, CA: 13-year-old girl shot self in hand
*10/02, OH: 12-year-old boy fatally shot 11-year-old brother
*9/26, IN: 18-year-old boy fatally shot by 15-year-old boy
*9/24, OR: 2-year-old boy shot self in leg
*9/24, MI: 6-year-old boy shot self in hand
*9/22, NY 24-year-old mother shot by 3-year-old son
*9/20, UT: 13-year-old girl shot by 11-year-old sister
*9/18, IN: 3-year-old girl shot by 13-year-old boy
*9/14, OK: 16-year-old boy shot self in leg
*9/11, NY: 15-year-old girl fatally shot by 15-year-old boy
*9/08, IL: 15-year-old boy shot self in head


And that's just in the last month...

Get Them Laid?

Last week, both Bill Maher and The Christian Science Monitor laid the blame for spree shooters at the foot of a heretofore unmentioned culprit: the male libido. Consider that all spree shooters are young men and nearly all of them have complained about a lack of sex in their lives. Both Maher and the Monitor posit that if these guys got laid more often...or at all...there wouldn't be as many spree shooters.

Of course, that translate into our society becoming massively less uptight about sex, including the legalization of prostitution. Honestly, our culture needs to unclench about sex and many other problems would go away as well.

Here's the Maher clip. It's the last new rule.

 

Yet Another Gun Cult Lie Exposed

The Gun Cult often likes to trot out the lie about how states with stricter gun laws have higher deaths. As is usually the case with them, they are lying to avoid the reality which is the opposite.

Check out all that red...

Good Words

My mother was an elementary school principal, not a Marine who signed up to be on the frontlines of a shootout. 

--Erica Lafferty, daughter of Dawn Hochsprung, principal of Sandy Hook elementary school.

And Erica? They are beyond morally bankrupt. They are criminally responsible for what's happening in this country in terms gun violence and they need to be taken out.

We've done it in the past with previous totalitarian and ideological instransigent groups. The time is now to do it again.

A New Way to Tackle Gun Deaths

Nicholas Kristof has a great piece up about how we need to start thinking outside of the box on tackling gun deaths in this country. The stark reality of more Americans dying from gun deaths since 1970 than in all the wars we have ever fought in needs to be addressed and his ideas are sound.

The best one is engaging the CDC more to deal with this problem. They do on a whole host of other major causes of death so why not guns? If Americans were being killed at the average of 92 a day by ISIL or Al Qaeda, we would be acting immediately.

The fact that we aren't makes this problem a national disgrace.

Yet Another Gun Cult Member Responsible For Murder

Looks like we have another Gun Cult member directly responsible for murder. Laurel Mercer cared deeply about guns and wrote a series of online posts about them. In the link above she complains about the "lame" limits imposed on her regarding lock and loaded weapons in her house. She also indicated that her son was well versed in gun training and usage.

Yes, he was.

How many more Nancy Lanzas and Laurel Mercers are there out there? These people are no different than the extremists that want to kill US citizens. They are clearly a threat to our nation.

End The Love Affair

Until the United States ends its love affair with guns (and the belief that they solve problems), we will continue to see regular mass shootings and thousands dead from gun violence.

How Many More?

How Many More Mass Shootings Will It Take For Us to Act?
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Posted by Occupy Democrats on Friday, October 2, 2015

"We Are Answerable..."

"We are all answerable..."

The president summed up, in this one line, why I am not a conservative. We are indeed responsible for things that happen in our culture....ALL of us...especially something as horrendous as the now regular mass shootings.

Pretending that it's not our problem is incredibly adolescent.

And, Once Again, Another Fucking Mass Shooting

How much longer are we going to have to put up with this shit? Same bullshit, different day. The president has now delivered his 15TH address to the media on a mass shooting. For the general public, it's become routine. For the families who have lost loved ones, they get the to join the really, super special club of devastated people who got shit on by the Gun Cult.

There is one thing that is different about this case, though. Oregon has conceal carry and Umpqua Community College allows conceal carry on campus. MSNBC just interviewed a gentlemen by the name of John Parker Jr. who had a gun and did not draw it. So, plenty of good guys with guns and they didn't stop him. And the bad guy wasn't deterred. At the very least, we can now fully dispense with that bullshit lie.

I love my country but the fact that nothing is done while people are being slaughtered regularly makes me pretty fucking ashamed of it.

If only more of them would shoot themselves like this...

Road-raging Mercedes driver shoots himself in the leg while waving rifle and handgun at Florida family

GROUND STOOD!!!

Certainly saves us the trouble...

Cayman's Story

Cayman's Story
"Cayman was a really, really happy kid. He wasn't being bullied at school. He had no real girl problems. He had a happy family. There were absolutely no warning signs. He got an email about a homework assignment and probably 20 to 30 minutes later, my 13-year-old son took his life with a gun I hadn't thought about in years."-Farid, Cayman's father
Posted by Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence on Tuesday, September 8, 2015

The Loneliest Club

I find the Gun Cult's response (Fuck you! Don't Take My Guns!!) to the Loneliest Club to be appalling. Listen to their stories. 

Fix this. Yesterday.

Jefferson on Guns

I think Thomas Jefferson was most illuminating when he wrote...

Some men look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence, and deem them like the arc of the covenant, too sacred to be touched. They ascribe to the men of the preceding age a wisdom more than human, and suppose what they did to be beyond amendment. 

 ...I am certainly not an advocate for frequent and untried changes in laws and constitutions. 

 ...But I know also, that laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths disclosed, and manners and opinions change with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also, and keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy, as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors. 

And lastly, let us provide in our constitution for its revision at stated periods. What these periods should be, nature herself indicates.

 (Letter to Samuel Kercheval, Quotations on the Jefferson Memorial)

We are clearly at the point of revision right now when it comes to the 2nd Amendment.

We have 30K deaths a year due to gun violence. There is a mass shooting every single day in this country. Far too many people have guns that shouldn't have them.

So, it's time to reform the 2nd Amendment by focusing first on the "well regulated" part of the right. As in Israel, people should have to demonstrate a valid and rational reason as to why they want to own a gun. There should be universal background checks on EVERY SINGLE gun purchase. The law should require high amounts of liability insurance on every gun purchase. Parents of children who end up accidentally shooting themselves should have as stringent of punishments as we have with zero tolerance drug laws. Anyone with a criminal record or mental health problems should be denied gun ownership.

 As Jefferson noted, we are living under a regimen of our barbarous ancestors. It's time to move on...