Why Gun Nuts Lie

David Smalley has a great piece up over at Patheos called "Why Gun Nuts Lie – I Know From Experience."  It is filled with many wonderful things but I'd like to start with two of the images from the comments.

Right. He was a carpenter after all:)

And fool them they have. Remember, a lot of these guys live in their parents basement and play video games all night so it makes sense. Here are some choice cuts from the rest of the piece.

Secondly, what if you were? I could hand you 50 AR-15s, give you 1000 illegal bombs, steal you a couple of tanks, and smuggle in some bazookas, and even let you fully train 500 of your closest friends. If the government wants your shit, they’re going to take it. You still wouldn’t be a match for even a single battalion of the United States Marine Corps. Not to mention the Air Force, Army, Navy, National Guard, Secret Service, FBI, CIA, and Seals. So stop acting like your little AR-15 is going to stop tyranny..

And you will give it to them without any sort of fight. Internet comments bravado is largely BS. Gun bloggers and their commenters like to brag about how they will never hand over their guns and would welcome a shootout with the federal government but they are completely full of shit. These are people who have families and children in their house and they will avoid any sort of conflict. And honestly, they are cowards at heart. The louder the protestation online, the quicker they will be the ones giving up their guns willingly.

The only reason you want to protect your second amendment now, is to justify buying an AR-15 or weapons for your home. I understand. I have them. But is it worth it? Does it really make you feel safe? If it does, it’s a false sense of security that statistically puts us in more danger.

Yes, it does. And, unlike the Gun Cult, I actually care about what happens to other people in my society. More guns mean more chances for accidents...accidents, btw, which happen more often than defensive gun use as study after study has shown.

Treat guns like cars. Mandatory licenses License renewals Mandatory training Mandatory insurance Operating laws Operating age limits Restrict some models Require safety inspections Mandatory registration Background checks. 

Amen. It's not all that I want but I'd go along with it for now to see how it would work.

Perhaps Smalley is the start of a trend and the ultimate defeat of the gun lobby will come from within. Isn't that what happened with tobacco? Reading this, I can see a few folks breaking ranks at first and then some sort of event will trigger a larger group breaking away. And then we might actually get some real progress.

Another Gun Rights Activist Goes On Shooting Rampage

Texas mom Christy Sheats liked to post stuff like this on her Facebook page.

Sounds familiar, eh?

Well, two days ago she called a family meeting and proceeded to shoot and kill both of her daughters before finally being gunned down by police. It turns out she had a history of mental illness but thank goodness she retained her constitutional right to carry a firearm.

Two beautiful young women are now dead and why? Because...ground stood!!

Banned?

Real Leaders

House Democrats, lead by civil rights icon John Lewis, are staging a sit-in on the floor of the US House of Representatives demanding a vote on new gun legislation that will expand background checks and prevent terrorists from acquiring firearms.

A live feed of the sit in is available here.

This is what real leaders do. They fight for what is right despite any minor discomfort they may feel. Poor leaders, like Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan, chicken out, refuse to call a vote, shut down the cameras, and go on summer vacation...while continuing to allow terrorists access to whatever firearms they choose.

Do Republicans really think they can fuck with this guy?

He's the one about to be cracked across the head on the Edmund Pettis bridge in Selma, 1965. Today, in 2016, he's doing it again.

Hold Them Accountable

When United States citizens are polled on guns, a majority (57%) want more strict gun laws and that includes Republicans. A massive majority (89%) want background checks on all gun purchases. A majority wants a ban on assault weapons (57%). With voting set today in the Senate on four separate pieces of gun safety legislation, keep track of who votes and how they vote.

Hold them accountable.

The Arrogance of the Gun Cult

Here's a great example of the arrogance of the Gun Cult.

“I think a lot of the fear comes from something [people] don’t understand,” said Maxwell. “They don’t understand that there is a sport that revolves around shooting. They just know that [the AR-15] looks scary on TV.”

What's not to understand? It's a toy. You guys like it a lot. And, like children, you don't want it to be taken away.

Further, it's not the gun that scares us, asshole. It's the mentality behind it...a mentality which continues to allow events like Orlando to happen on a regular basis and is directly responsible for murder.

An AR-15 Owner Has Had Enough

Daniel Hayes' recent piece says it all. He's an AR-15 owner and he's had enough. His solution?

There’s a saying that goes “when seconds count the police are only minutes away.” It’s meant to enforce the truism that we are all ultimately responsible for our own defense when the chips are down. But what it really reinforces is the importance of time. Time matters immensely when you’re defending yourself. You need time to do so. You need opportunity. Ban magazines over ten rounds. Give potential victims time and opportunity and in giving them that time we will deter murderers from attempting these mass shootings. They will fear that they won’t be able to kill enough to make their point before they are crushed by their chosen victims. They are cowards. Give them reason to fear.

My only quibble is that non gun owners have, in fact, been calling for this for quite some time. So, a little bit of the gun owner condescension aside, he's right that this would make an immediate impact. Of course, we have to do more.

The State of Gun Violence in the United States

The video below is a fairly unbiased look at gun violence in the US. They do a great job of explaining the proportions of mass shootings to suicides etc while illustrating just how grave the problem is and how it's gotten worse.

Orlando Falllout

Omar Mateen pledged allegiance to ISIS, official says 

"In the beginning he was a normal being that cared about family, loved to joke, loved to have fun, but then a few months after we were married I saw his instability. I saw that he was bipolar and he would get mad out of nowhere. That's when I started worrying about my safety," she said.

When you support our nation's current gun laws, you allow someone like this to acquire a firearm. Thus, you are just as responsible as he is. Thankfully, there are members of Congress who agree.

“This phenomenon of near constant mass shootings happens only in America – nowhere else,” Murphy said Sunday. “Congress has become complicit in these murders by its total, unconscionable deafening silence. This doesn’t have to happen, but this epidemic will continue without end if Congress continues to sit on its hands and do nothing – again.”

It's bizarre, really, because we're talking about a threat to our national security and yet they do nothing. As a side note, it's interesting how the ISIL angle is being played up but not the mental illness nor homophobia. At this point, it seems like the ISIL connection was after the fact and merely thrown in as an excuse by Mateen in the hopes of denying his individual problems.

As mass shootings plague US, survivors mourn lack of change

"The deadliest shooting in modern U.S. history has people around the world wondering why mass violence keeps happening in America." 

Uh...because a third of our country (gun owners) has a totalitarian stranglehold on the rest of us, peddling ideological nonsense based purely on their need for empowerment?

Not Working

The 28th Amendment

I was planning on putting up a post this week on how a 28th amendment should be added to the US Constitution that rewords the 2nd Amendment. Today seems a good day to do so given what has happened in Orlando. Thanks in advance to John Paul Stevens, former SCOTUS judge, for the inspiration.

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, while serving in a militia, shall not be infringed.

Unless you regularly train for active shooter situations, other forms of combat, and get regular mental health and background checks, no guns for you. This would drastically reduce gun violence in our nation and would clearly have prevented this event.

I’m past the whole “shocked, outraged and saddened” tripe. Events like the Orlando shooting happen on a regular basis in the United States and it’s entirely the fault of the gun lobby and its supporters. Worse, international terrorist organizations are now exploiting this.

As a citizen of the United States, we are at continued security risks as long as we have a completely warped view of firearms. The shooter in this case was on an FBI watch list but because gun rights activists have used their power to maintain lax gun laws, this guy was able to procure guns.

The Gun Cult is, once again, criminally responsible for this. We need to stop them before they allow more  people to be killed.

Guns Save Lives!!

Great Answer!

I'm wondering why we have to continue to coddle gun rights supporters as if they were self entitled teenagers. We too easily give in to their nonsense and allow them to control the conversation. We should call them out for exactly what they are: paranoid liars who should find alternate ways to soothe their insecurity and inferiority...ways that don't cause the deaths of thousands US citizens every year.

Yay Hawai!

It looks like Hawaii is moving a more sane direction regarding guns. All firearms owners in Hawaii will now be in a federal database.

The bill involves an FBI database known as the "Rap Back" that currently tracks people who are in "positions of trust," such as school teachers and people who work with the elderly. Stephen Fischer of the FBI's Criminal Justice Information Services Division told The Associated Press. Hawaii would add gun owners to the list.

It's not too surprising that bowels are being blown in the Gun Cult. Oh well. Considering they fully support mentally unstable people acquiring firearms easily, they can fuck right off.

A New Approach to Gun Violence

Welcome To Louisville

The Greatest Answer Ever On Quora

The question asked was...

Is it true that there are some "no-brainer" gun control laws that should be passed?

And the answer was this...

I own guns. I like guns.  I can conceal carry (though may or may not).  I enjoy hitting up the range and shootin' 'em.  I do believe there exists a right to gun ownership in this country.

But I also think the ease with which one can acquire massive amounts of military-grade lethality in this country is flat-out stupid, and don't believe there's anything in the Bill of Rights that entitles me to purchase and own a .50 caliber sniper rifle loaded up with armor-piercing rounds.

Slippery slope be damned, there does exist such a thing as reasonable gun control legislation, just as there exist some very unreasonable guns.

For shits and giggles I went down to my local gun store the other day to see what they were up to as I expected there was some amusement to be had there post-Newtown.  Indeed, there was.

While I was there, I literally witness shop staff taking the price tags off of AR-15s and other semi-automatic assault rifles, replacing them with significantly marked-up prices.  Ammo shelves were empty, save for the odd box of cheap range ammo.  Walls that had, a few weeks ago, been covered inch-to-inch by every imaginable type of assault rifle lay bare - people had come in and bought out every damn thing they could, certain they had to do so before the government swooped in to snatch up their right to do so.  You'd think the zombie apocalypse had begun (especially since all the anti-zombie explosive rounds had been among the first to sell-out).  At most, you might have found an antique rifle to buy.  Oh... and that actual .50 caliber sniper rifle that was selling for $15,000 and had been on the shelf for about a year?  Someone finally bought it just the other day.

I'm sorry, but while I don't doubt there are plenty of reasonable gun owners who genuinely enjoy the things for recreational purposes or even for what they represent technologically (as I like to consider myself to be), there are also some batshit crazy paranoid types far too eager to treat guns as the end all be all, along with some shamelessly opportunistic types giddy at the prospect of making money off the aforementioned crazies (the shop staff and owner, with whom I have rapport, admitted being near giddy each time a mass shooting takes place - they don't fear legislation because they know attempts at it usually fall apart, plenty of loopholes are left in place, and they sell out of every damn thing in the store no matter how much they mark it all up each time people freak out [such as after Obama first got elected, after Obama got reelected, after Aurora, after Newtown, etc]).

And I'll eagerly go on record saying that, when I went to take my classes to get my concealed carry permits, the overriding reason I ended up feeling like I wanted a concealed carry permit is because those other people in the class were going to have one.  While I primarily wanted them to make going to the range or out to the desert to shoot an easier affair, most everyone else there expressed genuinely feeling like they needed to conceal carry before the United Nations took away any opportunity to do so or Obama himself came kicking in their doors to take away their guns  (and wives and children, I suppose).

As much as some would like to say "the left" or the Feinsteins and Obamas are dictating the gun control debate and set to trash the Bill of Rights, the fact of the matter is the types of people I've described above, as well as the more sophisticated types taking advantage of the people I've described above, have actually been the ones dictating the gun control debate, passing the legislation at the federal and local level, and ensuring there's no shortage of truly devastating and lethal weaponry available and just about anyone can get their hands on the stuff.

Check out this guy:

This weapon doesn't seem like something anyone could carry around with them wherever they went. What if I told you, though, I could have it under my jacket in line behind you at Starbucks? A few seats down from you at the movies? In the car next to you at a stoplight? Walking alongside you at the mall? It's a Sig Sauer P556 "pistol" - yes, it's considered a pistol. One can carry it concealed (though it is almost 2ft long) as they would a pistol. Yet one can also use a 30-round magazine with 5.56 NATO rifle rounds and fire off those rounds as quickly as they can pull that trigger with that thing.

The average person would not look at that thing and consider it a pistol, much less suspect it's the type of weapon anyone would be allowed to "conceal carry" at will in public, but thanks to the ways laws are written and manufacturers work with those laws it is.

It's easier for me to go buy a .50 caliber sniper rifle than over the counter allergy medication; with a few easily-acquired attachments and accessories (that require absolutely nothing but money to buy) I can turn just about any semi-automatic assault weapon available (and there are tons available) in to one capable of firing at near fully-automatic rates; the only limit to how many rounds of ammunition I can acquire is how many I can afford, and I can feed those rounds in to weapons with belts and drums and high-capacity magazines that enable me to fire off dozens and even hundreds of rounds before having to reload. 

I can assure you the licensing process that allows me to carry multiple concealed weapons - such as the "assault pistol" in the photo - in most every state is less stringent than getting a drivers license and easier than getting a license to cut hair. And if I simply want to own assault weapons without attempting to conceal-carry them, there's really no licensing process at all. None at all. 

Sure, there's a 2nd Amendment. Sure, there are practical reasons to own guns. But to deny the absurdity behind how easily anyone can get guns and what types of guns they can get is irrational; to suggest no reasonable attempts at limitation and regulation exist is also irrational.  Existing laws are already insufficient and far too lax, and at the same time manufacturers are able to circumvent them so effectively they might as well not exist; pro-gun legislators and the gun-lobby have purposefully ensured states and municipalities either can't pass laws, or can't effectively enforce whatever laws they do manage to pass. 

Again, I don't doubt reasonable gun owners exist and, again, I hope to consider myself one of those people.  At the same time, however, after many years circulating among  gun owners and participating in that culture and network, I simply have to admit I've spent a fair amount of time surrounded by people I'd consider to be fairly irrational when it comes to gun laws and those people and the lobbies representing them have had a far greater impact on existing laws in place than anyone attempting to restrict ownership or what is available for ownership.

The vast majority of weapons available today were designed to kill people.  Their express purpose is to facilitate and enable the effective and efficient killing of people.  Sure, there's the odd hunting rifle or shotgun round that kicks ass at bringing down ducks, but the measure of most any semi-automatic and fully-automatic weapon and round is how effective it is as "stopping", "neutralizing" and killing a person.  You won't ever hear the folks snatching up weapons down at the gun store touting a particular brand's ability to effectively put holes in paper targets or fly down range with true aim.  They sell that "double tap" ammunition (that actually fires two projectiles per cartridge) for your handgun so that single shot can put two bullets in a person; they sell "The Judge" - a revolver that fires out shotgun rounds - so one can still yield extreme force and lethality with as small a weapon as possible; they sell those high-capacity magazines so you can blast off round after round in rapid succession in the hopes you take out the bad guy, despite however bad your aim might be.  These weapons' and accessories' designs, techniques, methods and technologies were borne and perfected on battlefields for use between armies, and just about anyone can easily employ them on the streets here at home.

Existing gun laws are not only inadequate, but absurd; existing gun laws are not only failing to protect, but just about facilitating obscene amounts of violence as pro-gun lobbies go out of their way to ensure each contains loopholes and workarounds that render them obsolete; existing gun laws are not taking weapons off the streets but rather encouraging manufacturers and retailers to find creative ways to enable just about anyone with sufficient money (which often isn't even that much) and a pulse to posses killing power and destructive ability beyond anything the authors of the Constitution could have ever imagined.  And when some point to the failure of existing gun laws to effectively curb violence, don't let them convince you it's because gun laws stand no hope of ever accomplishing anything.  Allow yourself to consider the possibility that existing gun laws haven't done enough to this point because gun proponents have ensured they can't be effectively implemented, people can easily avoid any jurisdictional enforcement they don't like, manufacturers can easily work around whatever laws that might exist, and concerted efforts are made by groups like the NRA to make any legislation impotent as they then point to that impotence as a reason to not have the laws in the first place.

It's high time the militia gets well-regulated, and we acknowledge there are absurd degrees of firepower beyond easily accessible to everyone.

Number One answer in the question.

Over 62,000 views.

Over 1,000 upvotes.

Fuck you, Gun Cult. Your trolling and swarming will not stop the majority of the people in this country that want to live in a safer place. As Mr. Dunlap noted, we are on to you.

And we will never stop until you are completely fucking neutered.

Turning the Lens on the Gun Culture

I have noticed a trend occurring of late that I find most heartening. Researchers are turning their lens towards gun violence and gun culture. There are many reasons why they are doing this but the recent news that UT researcher Haril Shapira is going to examine gun culture and the future of American democracy is extremely interesting.

Shapira’s work investigates what drives people to join gun-owning communities and what this means for democracy. The communities, Shapira observes, not only shape and transform individuals drawn to gun culture but also society at large. 

“We are seeing individuals taking on the roles of government when it comes to self-defense and issues of enforcement of the law,” Shapira said. “What might this mean for democracy and democratic institutions? What does an armed society hold for the future of America’s democracy?”

Indeed.

I'm not sure what his research questions will be or even what form his research will take but I'm hoping he gets into the issue of empowerment. I've been asking friends of mine who are gun owners why exactly they own them and one thing I've noticed about nearly all of them is they have something in their lives that makes them feel insecure and weak. Whether they have some sort of long term health issue or have been bullied in their lives, having a gun makes them feel better.

I can't wait for Professor Shapira's book to be released.

Speaking Is Difficult

The filmmaker promises to keep adding his work. He will certainly have plenty of material with which to work.

Why, Chicago?

Every single day our nation hears stories like this from Chicago. Everyone across the cultural and political spectrum weighs in with their opinions and solutions which they are CERTAIN will work.

My favorite is the Gun Cult who harp continually about how "restrictive" gun laws prohibit ordinary citizens from defending themselves. This results in the "only criminals will have guns" meme which has always cracked me up. So, we make guns easier for them to get? And we allow more, untrained citizens access to guns? I guess the Gun Cult wants a return to this...




I suppose it makes sense since they are largely older, white men who grew up on a Hollywood western view of violence. Yet this on Chicago's ongoing challenges with crime (along with nearly all of them) fails to note the root cause.

Violence in Chicago is the direct result of slavery.

Consider that it was slavery (and the ensuing Jim Crow laws) which drove African Americans north to Chicago over the course of several decades in the 19th and 20th century. The result of such an influx of people resulted in a jolt of increased population density that was economically harmful to the area. With so many people vying for jobs, especially in times of economic contraction, many citizens of Chicago, newly arrive or long time residents, were bound to be disenfranchised economically. Invariably, this leads people to crime and it has continued on to this day with city officials endlessly trying to play catch up in a game they will never win.

So, we are back, once again, with being confronted by the great wound that our society fails to recognize. Violence in Chicago will not be mitigated until our entire country admits that slavery is still having a profound effect on the socioeconomic status of millions of US citizens of color.

We can't even begin to discuss possible solutions until we recognize the problem.