Heh.
Reshared post from +Neil Hodges
Restart!
Category: Guns
RT @billmon1: Think we should …
RT @billmon1: Think we should skip all the statements about how we’re shocked, saddened, determined 2 prevent, etc. Because clearly as a na…
This is the way the justice system works
Ta-Nehisi Coates on the George Zimmerman verdict.
Reshared post from +Jay Gischer
Yeah. What he said.
It is painful to say this: Trayvon Martin is not a miscarriage of American justice, but American justice itself. This is not our system malfunctioning. It is our system working as intended. To expect our juries, our schools, our police to single-handedly correct for this, is to look at the final play in the final minute of the final quarter and wonder why we couldn't come back from twenty-four down.
The way that the law in Florida works is that if you kill someone somewhere where there are no witnesses, it is up to the State to prove that you weren't in fear of great bodily harm.
If you work this it, it amounts to "might makes right". I don't want to have to kill people to be able to prevail in court. So that makes me lesser.
Trayvon Martin And The Irony Of American Justice
In trying to assess the the killing of Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman, two seemingly conflicted…
Doesn't everyone like free magazines? Oh, wait
It is not, in fact, the end of our nation as we know it. But you wouldn't know from some of the "If I can't fire my gun more than 15 times without reloading, Tyranny has won!" rhetoric.
Paul LePage is a Dolt (Censorship! Freedom! Guns! Edition)
Dear Governor-of-Maine LePage,
Parliamentary gameplaying is not censorship. It's frustrating (when on the receiving end), and perhaps even rude (or perhaps not), but it's not censorship.
And a state legislator refusing to let you speak out of turn at a committee hearing has nothing to do with Benghazi. Or, for that matter, with the First Amendment.
'[LePage] was most animated when talking about the May 19 Appropriations Committee meeting. Toward the end of that meeting, LePage had requested the opportunity to address lawmakers but Senate Chair Dawn Hill, D-Cape Neddick, declined his request, prompting the governor to walk out.
On Wednesday, LePage said Democrats’ recent censoring of him is similar to the national narratives involving the Internal Revenue Service’s targeting of conservative groups, the September 2012 terrorist attacks in Benghazi and the U.S. Justice Department’s seizure of Associated Press emails.
Asked why the issue is so important, the governor replied, "It’s freedom of speech. You folks should understand that better than I. It is the First Amendment, then there is the Second and I love ‘em both." He later added, "The minute we start stifling our speech, we might as well go home, roll up our sleeves and get our guns out."
Yes, political tiffs at the Statehouse are just the right time to call for armed rebellion. Dolt.
LePage renews claims of State House censorship | The Portland Press Herald / Maine Sunday Telegram
Features news from the Press Herald and Maine Sunday Telegram. Serves southern Maine from Portland, Cape Elizabeth, Gorham, Falmouth to Lewiston-Auburn.
Okay, good to know that violent movies AREN’T bad for society
The NRA has in the past insisted that gun violence — like in Newtown — was due largely because of Hollywood's love of violent movies.
Which is why, of course, the NRA's "American Rifleman" magazine is listing the top 10 "Coolest Gun Movies" (http://goo.gl/d57vB), complete with lavish descriptions of the guns and "the importance of firepower" demonstrated in these cinematic gems.
(Note: I actually enjoyed a number of these movies. But I'm not the one suggesting — as NRA chief Wayne LaPierre did just a few months ago after Newtown — “Isn't fantasizing about killing people as a way to get your kicks really the filthiest form of pornography? In a race to the bottom, media conglomerates compete with one another to shock, violate and offend every standard of civilized society by bringing an ever-more-toxic mix of reckless behavior and criminal cruelty into our homes."
Yippee-kai-yay.
The NRA Thinks These Are The ‘Coolest Gun Movies’ Ever
The top 10 list is a far cry from the remarks NRA chief executive Wayne LaPierre made at a press conference a week after the Newtown shooting, when he decried Hollywood.
Bullets don't care if they're fired by good guys or bad guys
NRA head Wayne LaPierre insists that "the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun." The problem is, sometimes good guys get "stopped" by other good guys with guns. Whether it's kids accidentally shooting each other, or innocents caught by "friendly fire," guns can kill you just as dead if shot by a cop or a 5-year-old as by a thug or homicidal maniac.
Now that doesn't necessarily mean that guns should be banned. Risk assessment is critical in this kind of public policy, and anecdotes about innocents being shot are no less and more anecdotes about innocents using a gun to avoid being murdered or raped.
But the willful ignoring of the dangers of firearms, and the idea that if we just give everyone guns and make sure they are trained that everyone will be safe is … crazy.
College Student Accidentally Shot By Good Guy With A Gun
Late last week, 21 year old Hofstra University student Andrea Rebello was shot and killed during an attempted robbery in a group house near the Uniondale, New York campus. But the initial assumption — that Rebello was murdered by the suspected robber Dalton Smith during a shoot-out with police — now appears to be wrong. […]
Bryan Fischer is a Dolt (Atheistic Counter-Terrorism Disarmament Edition)
Bryan Fischer is a Dolt (Atheistic Counter-Terrorism Disarmament Edition)
The idea that Obama's about to open up a new front in some mythical War on Christianity by classifying all faithful Christians as terrorists in order to have the justification to take all their guns away … well, is zany enough to provide good reason to make sure that Bryan Fischer doesn't have access to guns (or pointed sticks, or other objects with which he could hurt himself or others).
Fischer: Obama Plans to Forcibly Disarm Christians
American Family Association spokesman Bryan Fischer is convinced that President Obama’s pledge to “keep guns out of the hands of dangerous people,” a remark he made while speaking in
Glenn Beck is a dolt (but I repeat myself)
I would dearly love to ignore Beck, but since one of the nation's most powerful lobbying organization his having him speak at their annual convention, I guess he's still newsworthy.
In this case, Beck is all up in arms (so to speak) about his conviction that the "uber-Left" ran a phony gun incident, just like the Reichstag Fire, doubtless in order to justify Taking All Our Guns, or Declaring Martial Law, or Polluting Our Precious Bodily Fluids, or something equally zany.
And the NRA faithful will just eat it up.
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Beck On Houston Airport Shooting: ‘ I Could Guarantee You This Is A Set-Up’
Tonight, Glenn Beck broadcast his television program live from Houston, TX since he is in town for the annual NRA convention where he will be speaking on Saturday. During his opening monologue, Beck i…
A Dolt and a Wink
No, it's not the worse thing I've seen today. But it's pretty appalling.
Reshared post from +Think Progress
The worst thing you'll see today
Tennessee Commissioner Refuses To Apologize For Anti-Muslim Picture On Facebook
A Tennessee County Commissioner doesn’t see anything wrong with a Facebook post he put up that led to Muslims feeling threatened. The photo was posted to Coffee County commissioner Barry West‘s Facebo…
"Just one of those crazy accidents, amiright?"
I mean, what could possibly go wrong with giving your 5 year-old a .22 rifle — I mean, it's a little gun, right? And, who could guess that storing it out, sitting in the corner, could be a risk? And certainly not checking, and double-checking, and triple-checking to be sure there wasn't still a shell in it –well, that's just one of those zany, random things that happen, right?
I mean, who could possibly have predicted something fatal and tragic would occur? Go figure! Because this whole awful episode doesn't point to any greater issues are problems, as it was certainly. as Cumberland County Coroner Gary White puts it so eloquently, "Just one of those crazy accidents."
(h/t +Les Jenkins)
5-year-old boy accidentally shoots, kills 2-year-old sister in Cumberland County | Public Safety | Kentucky.com
A 5-year-old boy who was playing with a .22-caliber rifle accidentally shot and killed his 2-year-old sister in Cumberland County on Tuesday afternoon, according to a news release from the state polic…
The Government Is Stealing All Our Bullets!
Eek. Also, no, they are not.
We've already had this discussion (http://goo.gl/UJ4Vr), but the GOP leadership is blithely advancing with a conspiracy theory-inspired action to keep federal agencies from buying up all the ammunition in the United States (whether you believe it's gun-control-thru-ammo-control or you believe it's the next step in a federal government war on the citizenry).
So the big question is: are they actually zany enough to believe the theories? Or are they just pandering to some fringe of the base by fomenting more fear and loathing of That Man in the White House?
Also, for a party of Big Business, these guys seem to have little understanding of procurement contracts nor of the laws of supply and demand …
Reshared post from +Talking Points Memo
Republican lawmakers are pushing legislation aimed at combating a threat to gun rights that even the National Rifle Association has described as pure fiction.
GOP Battles A Threat To Gun Rights That Even The NRA Says Doesn’t Exist
Republican lawmakers are pushing legislation aimed at combating a threat to gun rights that even the National Rifle Association has described as pure fiction.
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Arizona gun buybacks must be resold
Lovely. Some municipalities try to reduce gun availability in communities by sponsoring gun buybacks — providing a certain amount of cash (or gift cards) for no-longer-desired weapons, and then destroying the unwanted firearms, the idea being that unwanted guns are removed from circulation.
That offends the good, gun-owning GOP of Arizona. So, with the NRA's support, they've now passed a state law saying that if a city or county government holds a gun buyback, they then have to turn around and sell those guns to the highest bidder.
Nice to see that whole "local government is most representative and responsive and should be given priority over higher government mandates" philosophy so eloquently ignored by Jan Brewer, et al.
Embedded Link
Ariz. bill requiring resale of buyback guns signed
PHOENIX—Arizona cities and counties that hold community gun buyback events will have to sell the surrendered weapons instead of destroying them under a bill Gov.
Jettisoning Amendments Left and Right
Jon Stewart reviews our Constitution and all the Amendments that folks seem willing to get rid of as long as it has to do with domestic terrorists and Muslims:
But rest safe, America! The pundits of Fox News have one Constitutional Amendment they’ll never suggest we suspend. Can you guess which one?
The Constitution and Bullet Backstops
I often hear Conservatives lament that Liberals have no trust in humanity, and thus feel obliged to shepherd them to some sort of mush-headed salvation in spite of themselves.
I'll balance that against this not-infrequent Conservative sentiment that shows no trust in humanity, and thus feels obliged to threaten to blow their brains out if they don't get their way.
'We need to let those who will come in the future to represent us that we are serious. The 2nd amendment means nothing unless those in power believe you would have no problem simply walking up and shooting them if they got too far out of line and stopped responding as representatives. It seems that we are unable to muster that belief in any of our representatives on a state or federal level, but we have to have something, something costly, something that they will fear that we will use if they step out of line.'
The same lengthy opinion piece in the Benton Co., Arkansas, GOP Newsletter (http://www.nogy.net/bcgop/Apr_2013/index.html, written by the husband of the party secretary, who publishes the newsletter), lamenting something about the state legislature acquiescing to (gasp) Obamacare, includes other references to "a quick implementation of my 2nd amendment rights to remove a threat domestic," but admits "I don’t feel the same way about the Democrats as bullet backstops as I do about the Republicans who joined them."
Y'know, it's funny — I keep looking at the Second Amendment, and while I see reference to "a well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state," I just can't find anything about how the whole thing is designed to make legislators feel continuously in fear of their lives. Can anyone help me here?
(h/t +Les Jenkins)
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Benton, Arkansas GOP: ‘2nd Amendment Means Nothing Unless Those In Power Believe You’d Have No Problem Walking Up And Shooting Them’
Taegan Goddard has the quote from the Benton County, AR Republican Party. “We need to let those who will come in the future to represent us [know] that we are serious. The 2nd amendment means nothi……
"A Gun Show That Never Ends"
On the one hand, it's certainly true that further regulating gun sales — e.g., mandating that all such transactions have a background check done with them — will never prevent all illegal gun transactions. On the other hand, right now the loopholes allow any felon to easily (albeit illegally) get a gun, with only the felon at risk; perhaps putting the seller at risk might make it a wee bit more difficult for guns to get into the wrong hands. Which, frankly, seems worth it to me (if not to quite enough Senators).
Embedded Link
Internet Gun Sites Ease Illegal Sales
A Times examination found that unlicensed sellers advertise scores of weapons on free classified ads Web sites where people legally barred from gun ownership can buy them.
Our Violent Nation
Charles Pierce draws lines between some dots — the report out this week on post-9/11 torture and worse, and the defeat of even watered-down gun control in the Senate yesterday.
'Make no mistake. That is what was determined down there this week among the bright, white buildings. There is a barbarism in the American soul and we must protect some of it by law. To root it out is to endanger our lives on the one hand, and our liberty on the other. We must tolerate the barbarism of the black sites to stay alive, and we must tolerate the occasional mass shooting in order to maintain our liberty. We will find the barbarian who killed and maimed the people along Boylston Street in Boston because his barbarism was not sanctioned, nor was it sanctified by law. That is the simple basic equation of where we are right now.'
The Violence We Live With
It has been a week in which, by means subtle and overt, the national government has determined which types of violence our society must tolerate in order to remain the freest country in the world. It …
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Tragedy, Liberty, and Making a Point Poorly
I'll assume Bob Davis is actually pursuing a coherent and even meritorious thought here, and not just spewing from the mouth or looking to grab some headlines. And that point is: To what extent does tragedy, and the desire to make it never happen again, trump the rights of others?
That's a non-trivial question, for two reasons:
1. Tragedy is a terrible driver for change. We get all caught up in emotions. We have a desperate need to fix it. We have a fear of it recurring. We want other people to Do Something. We completely lose track of risk analysis and rational discourse. And if anything raises an objection, then there's a litany of "Think of the victims!"
Of course, and unfortunately, tragedy is sometimes the only thing that penetrates past cynicism and inertia. Or, alternately, the only leverage available to shame others into doing the right thing (or Doing Something).
2. We have a great example of this in our recent history: 9/11. The tragedy of that day, and the fear of its recurrence, led to loud demands to Do Something, and gave the national security apparatus and the executive branch the leverage to push through "remedies" that had been proposed and rejected for decades. It short-circuited our debate about privacy and security and civil liberties, and it trumped anything in its path.
Now, in this particular, I think Bob Davis is a horse's ass, both because, (a) to my mind, there is a massive difference between background checks and magazine limits on the one hand, and warrantless wiretapping, torture, indefinite detention, and all the other offenses against our liberties that we've seen post-9/11, and (b) his approach and language was asinine (unless he was simply looking for publicity, in which case it was evil).
But, Bob Davis and the merits of gun control measures aside, the underlying point that tragedy shouldn't be what drives us to fix things, particularly in a blind frenzy, no matter the cost, is a valid one worth considering, regardless of the particular issue in question.
Reshared post from +Les Jenkins
Stay classy, Bob Davis.
Conservative Radio Host To Newtown Families: ‘Go To Hell’
Minnesota radio host Bob Davis is blaming the families who lost children in Newtown that they can “go to hell” for working to make him “lose my liberty.” “I have something I want to say to the vict……
RT @scalzi: It all makes far m…
RT @scalzi: It all makes far more sense when you realize the NRA is a front for the Elder Gods, who demand the blood sacrifice of innocents.
The Government Is Buying Tons of Ammo to KILL US ALL!
And it’s the Department of Homeland Security, so clearly it’s a new national police force answerable only to Obama!
And they’re buying enough ammo to shoot every American citizen six times!
And it’s a bunch of other Government Departments, too, like Social Security, so obviously they’re stockpiling ammo to quell civil disorder when the economy / government welfare collapses!
And it’s hollow-point ammo which is outlawed by the Geneva Convention!
And it’s in huge amounts, so it’s obviously a way to create de facto gun control by buying all the ammo!
Or at least those are the reports passing around the Right Wing Blogosphere. It’s gun control! It’s civil unrest! It martial law! The only thing that hasn’t entered into it is preparing for an invasion from outer space.
Yet.
Okay, everyone … deep, cleansing breaths. Breathe in. Hold. Breathe out. Repeat.
Calmer now? Good.
So, the reports are, more or less, true. But the wild-eyed explanations are, to put it mildly, goofy.
- The DHS isn’t buying 450 million rounds of .40 cal ammo today. They have a purchase order (from last year) to be able to buy up to 450 million rounds over the next five years (a one year delivery contract with up to four option years, in government contact parlance). They don’t have to buy all of that. They might only buy 100 million rounds. But by making the commitment right now, when prices are (from what I read) very low, they lock in a good prices and fulfill the government “use it or lose it” budget requirement. Plus, it’s a consolidation of multiple previous contracts into one contract, which is a good, efficient, economical sort of thing, even if it means the final number seems big.
- Yes, that’s still a lot of ammo. But DHS covers an array of agencies, all with armed personnel — the TSA, Customs & Border Protection, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and the Secret Service. (They also cover the Coast Guard, but get their ammo from the Defense Dept.) There are a lot of armed agents (135,000 in Homeland Security). And those agents not only carry ammo, but they have regular requirements (at a minimum) for practice and re-certification. Not to mention the need to refresh their ammo over time. And DHS also operates the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center, which trains nearly all federal law enforcement officers (including shooting ranges and the like) in “90 federal agencies and also officers in state, local, tribal, and international law enforcement”; just their 11,000 students go through 11 million rounds a year.
- Hollow point bullets are banned in military action because of the injuries they cause (the point flattens/mushrooms, tearing through the body more brutally). But they are useful in civilian settings, as I understand it, because they don’t penetrate bodies nearly as well. So if you have to shoot that bad guy over there, you don’t have to worry (as much) that your shot will go through him and hit that civilian behind him.
- Yes, the Social Security Administration put in an order for several hundred thousand rounds. Same arguments apply. They have armed agents, too, as they are put in the position of arresting people, or of guarding facilities.
So, really, there’s not a lot of need to worry that the Federal Government is stockpiling ammo in order to kill all their enemies (that’s what drones are for).
Here are some articles on the above subjects (note that while the comments have just the kind of conspiracy theories one might expect, they also have some nicely sane explanations from folks, too):
- Why Is Homeland Security Buying 450 Million Rounds of Hollow Point Bullets? | Video | TheBlaze.com
- Why are so many of these federal agencies buying multithousands of rounds of ammo? – Yahoo! Answers
- PolitiFact Texas | Chain email says Homeland Security purchasing many bullets perhaps in anticipation of civil unrest or an invasion
- snopes.com: Social Security administration Ammunition Purchase