Facing Charges

Remember Jamie Gilt? She was the gun activist who had images like this on her Facebook page.

Then her 4 year old son accidentally shot and wounded her. Ah, "responsible" gun owners...

Well, she's now facing charges which could land her in jail for up to 180 days. Here's to hoping she does the full stretch.

Pass Three Laws

Bindu Kalesan from Boston University has just released a peer reviewed study that concludes the following.

Of 25 firearm laws, nine were associated with reduced firearm mortality, nine were associated with increased firearm mortality, and seven had an inconclusive association. After adjustment for relevant covariates, the three state laws most strongly associated with reduced overall firearm mortality were universal background checks for firearm purchase, ammunition background checks, and identification requirement for firearms. Projected federal-level implementation of universal background checks for firearm purchase could reduce national firearm mortality from 10·35 to 4·46 deaths per 100 000 people, background checks for ammunition purchase could reduce it to 1·99 per 100 000, and firearm identification to 1·81 per 100 000.

This means...

Very few of the existing state-specific firearm laws are associated with reduced firearm mortality, and this evidence underscores the importance of focusing on relevant and effective firearms legislation. Implementation of universal background checks for the purchase of firearms or ammunition, and firearm identification nationally could substantially reduce firearm mortality in the USA.

Boom.

Done.

Poetic Justice

So, let's see here...mom brags on social media, "My right to protect my child with my gun trumps your fear of my gun" and then ends up accidentally getting shot in the back by that same child. 

Now she might be charged because Florida law requires guns to be secured from minors?

Poetic justice...

Mass Mass Shootings

What Drives The Gun Cult

I was recently asked to answer a question on Quora about gun rights activists. Here was my response.

There are several reasons why gun rights activists ignore gun control success in other countries and they all revolve around the reasons why they are passionate about their guns in the first place.

First, like any hobby, people love their toys. If there is a chance that they might be taken away, it's only natural that people would get upset. Seeing that the rest of the civilized world functions just fine with stricter gun control translates into the possibility that their toys will be taken away hence the emotion, temper tantrums, and willful ignorance of functional societies.

Second, gun rights activists are generally a very insecure lot who draw empowerment from their guns. It would be interesting to see a peer reviewed study on how many of them were bullied as kids because they've always struck me as having inferiority complexes. Seeing other people "disarmed" in other countries strikes deep to their biggest fear: being powerless. Ironic, for two main reasons. One, owning a gun makes it more likely that they will injure/kill themselves or others as opposed to protecting them against bad guys.

Two, having a few guns against a federal government who has drones/tanks/planes/battleships and thinking that somehow they are a force to be reckoned with is pure fantasy. Speaking of governments...

Third, gun rights activists believe that they are guarding against a possible, future totalitarian government. This is a very powerful belief that overcomes any positive news about countries with successful gun control. They disseminate propaganda that "proves" that countries with stricter gun control are subjugating their people. Here is an example...



Fourth, gun rights activists, like most conservatives, experience cognitive dissonance when confronted with objective reality. When they see how successful gun control has been in reducing violent crime in every other civilized country in the world, their brains react in such a way that the feel like they are under physical attack. Several peer reviewed neurological studies have shown this to be valid and are detailed in the following book.

Amazon.com: The Republican Brain: The Science of Why They Deny Science- and Reality (9781118094518): Chris Mooney: 

Books In many ways, this is the most direct and scientific reason why they ignore the precedent set by other countries. It makes them feel physically uncomfortable and this is due to the previous three reasons mentioned above.

A Gun That Offered No Protection

Today, I'm wondering if Trisha Nelson knew that when she bought her gun and got her conceal carry permit that she would up being shot with it.

He had served his sentence and was on probation when he shot Nelson. He most likely used Nelson’s gun, for which she had a concealed-carry permit, Padden said.

Having a gun increase, not decreases, your chances of being shot.

Deport These Free Loading Parasites

Solving Problems With Guns (Ground Stood Edition)

So, this guy named Marvin Lee done got his car stuck in a ditch in Charlotte, North Carolina. Jefferson Deavner stopped to help him push it out. Lee turned into a dick after this and when the police were called to help him out of the ditch, he shot Deavner and killed him.

Ground stood!

This story is a great example of what happens when you allow the fever dream of gun rights activists to take over a country. A person like Lee should never be allowed to own a weapon but he does because of his 2nd amendment rights.

How many thousands of Lees are out there being supported by the Gun Cult?

Cash or Charge

A Sharp Rise

Take a look at the mass shootings in this country over the last 50 years.

When the Gun Cult flaps their yaps about decrease gun violence, the above numbers show just how fucking tone deaf they are. No other country in the civilized world has problems like this.

We have these problems because domestic terrorists are holding our country hostage. If you support looser gun laws, you are offering aid and comfort to the enemies of national security. Gitmo is getting mighty empty these days and, considering we can't seem to close it, perhaps we should start putting some people in it who represent more of a threat than ISIL or Al Qaeda.

How about the gun bloggers first? :)

Memo To Next President: Tougher Gun Laws

With the United States now accounting for 82 percent of all gun deaths among 23 high income countries, I was please to note that a new Reuters poll regarding gun safety had this to say.

Sixty-three percent of Americans overall said they would like to see the next president push for stricter gun laws.

Even better...

Respondents from both parties support more research into the causes of gun violence, the poll showed. Nearly 80 percent of Democrats and 66 percent of Republicans said they would support the next president, who takes office next January after the Nov. 8 election, pushing for more research.

Even Republicans are shifting...

Republicans are split on efforts to tighten gun control more broadly. Forty-four percent of those polled said the next president should work to tighten federal gun control laws, while 49 percent were opposed.

44 percent? Wow! I had no idea the number was that high. This is fantastic news and gives me a great deal of hope!!

Town Hall Frustrations

My initial thoughts on the president's town hall on gun violence are ones of frustration. While I am pleased that the issue is getting more attention and it appears that it's going to be a center piece to the 2016 presidential campaign, there are two core points that are not being addressed.

The first is illustrated in Taya Kyle's portion of this video. As Chris Mooney noted in his book "The Republican Brain," people let emotion drive their reasoning process and this was never more true than with the gun issue. I was hoping that Ms. Kyle would have learned the lesson that her husband and Nancy Lanza did not learn and that is that the gun culture creates a myopia. Neither Mr. Kyle nor Ms. Lanza used reason in their judgement regarding gun safety and allowed mentally ill people to operate firearms. The ideology of the gun rights activist (one devoid of reason and more rooted in paranoia and chest thumping emotion) is a chief cause of mass shootings and gun violence in this country.

Instead, Ms. Kyle spoke of needing a gun for protection and spoke of the hope of declining gun violence. The former is, of course, ridiculous as has been proven time and again by study after study. If you own a gun, you are more likely to kill/injure yourself or a loved one than protect yourself or a loved one. Believing the latter is, again, an emotional response driven by some sort of need for empowerment. The latter I found to be incredibly insulting to the families of the now weekly victims of mass shooting. How can anyone say it's getting better? This is especially befuddling behavior of someone who lost their own loved one to the myopia of gun rights ideology.

I think the president knows this because he's obviously an intelligent man. I get that saying something like this would be a bad PR move but it is the truth and we have to face the fact that this ideology is a threat to our national security.

My second frustration is that the NRA and other gun rights supporters are essentially getting what they want here: enforcement of current laws. Despite their faux protestations, they have successfully shifted the argument so far to the right, that "compromise" is something they've actually supported for years. They've been employing a political tactic that needs to be countered immediately.

Instead of allowing them to set the table with talk of totalitarian governments and dystopic futures (see: appeal to fear), gun safety advocates like the president should be talking about mandatory, minimum training, liability insurance, registration, and even altering the 2nd amendment so that only people who want to devote a considerable portion of their lives to community protection own firearms. These things may seem like a pipe dream now but gun safety advocates need to cease starting from a point of capitulation.

It's clear that the gun issue is going to have ongoing prevalence. I only wish that it wasn't due to the regularity of gun violence and our inability to accept what we need to do to solve the problem.

Here is the full town hall...

Wholesale Defeat

Looks like EJ Dionne is echoing yours truly.

Bullies are intimidating until someone calls their bluff. By ruling out any reasonable steps toward containing the killing in our nation and by offering ever more preposterous arguments, the gun worshipers are setting themselves up for wholesale defeat. It will take time. 

But it will happen.

The best part about it is they don't see it yet...:)

Exactly Why I Voted For Him

I voted twice for Barack Obama for two basic reasons. The first reason was to fix problems that we already knew we had. He's certainly done some of that. Getting bin Laden and literally saving American lives by making health care available to everyone are two of the biggest accomplishments.

But I also voted for him because he'd work to fix the problems that we didn't know about yet. The main problem I have with conservatives is they are very limp when it comes to new problems, especially if it's domestic issues. A great example of this is the gun issue. When the president took office, guns weren't really a top priority. We didn't have mass shootings every week and violence was on a downward trend. We did have the ongoing issues of gang violence and suicides but guns aren't necessarily at the root of those problems.

Then came Aurora and Sandy Hook and everything changed after that.

It certainly did for me. The chief cause of Sandy Hook was the Gun Cult. Nancy Lanza bought into their bullshit, armed herself to the teeth, and, like most "responsible" gun owners, allowed someone access to guns that should not have had them. As a result, first graders were shot in the face. Nothing was done to change our insanely loose gun laws and look what has happened since. Can anyone really remember all the mass shootings? I can't because they happen all the fucking time now.

Today, the president issued executive orders that are going to expand universal background checks and allow doctors to report some mentally ill patients to the FBI to prevent them from getting guns. His speech was extraordinary and made me proud to be an American and have this man stand up for what is right. Here is an excerpt.

President Obama, tearing up about the Sandy Hook shooting: "Every time I think about those kids, it gets me mad." http://cnb.cx/1UtHVET
Posted by CNBC on Tuesday, January 5, 2016

Arrest The Communists!

When you embolden terrorists, they continue to take advantage of you.

That's a line we here all the time from conservatives and I actually agree with it, taking a harder line against those who would do us harm because of stark differences in ideology. Where conservatives and I part ways, however, is the definition of what is terrorism. For example, I view people that actively support gun rights and people who vote for candidates who actively support gun rights as aiding and abetting the murders of thousands of Americans. A stark example of this is domestic terrorist Robert Dear. Dear is another example of where I part ways with conservatives. No doubt many of them view him as a freedom fighter, crusading against the evil that is abortion.

Similar to their support of Dear is their support of Cliven Bundy. Recall that Bundy is the guy who thinks that all land belongs to the people, not the federal government (see also: communism) and has still not been arrested for grazing his cattle on federal lands. This inaction by the federal government has led to another incident in Oregon where similar minded people, including Bundy's son, Ammon Bundy, have now seized a federal government wildlife facility with no intention to leave.

The federal response to both of these incidents has been lackluster at best. They need to arrest all of these people and remove them by force, if necessary. I get they don't want another Waco but these people are in direct violation of the Constitution. They are committing and overt act of sedition and need to go to jail.

In the final analysis, they are honestly communists. Property, whether owned by a person or an entity, isn't owned by the people. How that works out to be conservative in their pea brains, we'll never know. Yet we do know that they are dangerous and it's way past time to take them down several notches.

I think a tank ought to do quite nicely:)

Weak and Paranoid

This piece from The Trace is the best gift I've received this holiday season. I had no idea that there was this much progress on the issue of guns in this country. Take some time to look through each of the stories on the 10 Americans and how they are helping shift our nation's attitude about guns.

I think my favorite was Chris Lane's fantastic post entitled "3 Reasons I Went From Being A Gun Nut To Supporting Gun Control." Choice cuts...

Americans aren't completely free in many ways, and most gun owners don't seem to worry about the many laws and social customs that place limits on other aspects of their lives. I'm not free to walk down the city street completely naked (have no fear folks, that's not something I want to do), yet there are open carry advocates walking around stores with AR15s on their backs.

People willingly submit to rules and limits on their personal freedom in countless ways; it's the price of living in a civilized society without being a huge nuisance to other people. One day I realized that nudity is controlled more tightly than ownership of deadly weapons, and that seemed absurd to me. 

Indeed. It is absurd. But one has to understand that people that feel this way aren't really rational. They feel powerless without their guns. It's pretty fucking sad when you think about it. Worse...

They seem to believe that the reason a lot of people are in favor of gun control measures is because they don't value freedom and are "Sheeple," somehow rejecting the fact that more and more mass shootings and gun crimes seem to be happening and worry the rest of us. 

Some of the hardcore gun owners I met were convinced that America is heading towards an Orwellian future where no one is free and the government controls every aspect of our lives. To many of them, the only thing standing in our evil government's way is their personal stockpile of AR15s. They seem to ignore the fact that if the government went to such an authoritarian extreme, it would have the resources to effectively vaporize any suburban "patriots" who decided to raise an armed resistance against it. 

Thinking the government is out to get them is a very simple and fairly stupid way of looking at things, and not something the majority of responsible gun owners buy into, but once I found myself encountering a bunch of those characters, I decided I didn't want to be part of that culture anymore.

Bravo! Way to deprogram yourself and wake the fuck up. Why would anyone want live their life that way? Gun bloggers and the commenters that post on such sites seem to lack the capacity to reason at all. They are so overcome with emotion that it astounds me they can even function in society at all.

Too often guns are shown to be totems of power, the only way to deal with a conflict, and as a symbol of masculinity. It's stupid. I personally began to feel less powerful whenever I carried a gun. Living in fear while going about my business just made me feel weak and paranoid.

Exactly right. And it's self feeding as long as they are armed.

I challenge all gun owners to stop living in fear and being weak and paranoid. It's no way to go though life.

Here's a much better idea.

Why Aren't You Working On White Men With Guns?

Yeah, why aren't we?

We're Exceptional!

Australia Enjoys Another Peaceful Day Under Oppressive Gun Control Regime

Local cinema attendant, Christina Upton can’t believe it has been a whole 19 years and 7 months since a heavily armed white Australian male decided to shoot at a crowd of unsuspecting Australian civilians for no reason. 

Fantastic piece.

End It Now

End The Gun Epidemic in America



What a fantastic call to action. The New York Times editorial board is sounding a lot like yours truly:)