Guns 'n' Ammo

I watched some of Maddow's one-on-one with HRC last night. Among a generally-quite-good exchange about guns, this bit jumped out at me at the time:

I am determined we're going to save lives and we're going to do it by taking on the gun lobby and getting common sense gun safety measures. But we're also going to do it by addressing the gun violence culture. Too many young in particular are turning to guns to settle disputes, grievances, resentments. We have got to help our young people understand guns are never an answer and there have to be other ways. And that's going to take all of us working in our schools, working through our churches and our houses of worship.

'Cept when they're the answer to every single international conflict, ever, right?

Mrs. Clinton's slightly-more-hawkish-than-Obama tendencies are one of the only things that bothers me about her being president. We're already way too deep in the world's shit, I'd rather not we keep jumping in new shitpiles every chance we get. I wish Bernie were as good at pulling her left on that as he seemingly has been on the economy.

An idea that's so stupid it just might work

Idea:

1. Trick the pants-pissing right wingers into passing some actual gun control law that applies only to Syrian muslims.
2. Obviously unconstitutional law will get challenged all the way to the supreme court.
3. Only the part about the Syrian Muslims gets stricken.
4. SPARKLEPONIES FOR EVERYONE!

I know, I know. But hey, a guy can dream.

Holiday Re-runs

No, this post is not about that racist fuckhead Santa and his shithead reindeer all ganging up on the shiny-nosed Montgomery Ward's mascot. No, this is just lazy blogging.

There was an anniversary recently. You know the one. Nothing's changed in two years, and I don't have anything more to add than what I did two years ago so I'm just gonna point you all to that and get back to our regularly-scheduled shittyness.

Happy holidays, I hope you don't get shot.

EVERYBODY PANIC!!!

Since I'm the world's laziest blogger, I'm just gonna take this comment I left over at Helmut's place and repurpose it here slightly edited.

---

[Ebola] is a nasty disease, but at this point it's just being used as a tool for panic. Hey, it keeps the rubes scared, so it's useful until the next shiny thing comes along. The CDC and the Texas hospital did some stupid shit, otherwise it would have been over as soon as it started.

Meanwhile, how many people have died of the regular ol' flu this year?¹ How many got vaccinated? How many have been gunned down?² Oh, no sorry, we don't talk about those things.

People are very, very bad at evaluating risk. Like, horrifically, comically bad.

The only thing I'd like to ever hear about ebola again is a report about who exactly is paying for all this expensive care. I can't imagine these poor folks getting flown around on special private ebola-jets are getting it for free, that'd just be unAmerican. We couldn't have that. I hope their surviving relatives are being billed [/snark].

---

Stay scared, America.

¹ More than 20 thousand people die every year in the US from the flu (get vaccinated, dumbasses).

² Approximately 32 thousand gun deaths a year. But let's not talk about that, because we may start wondering why there are so many fucking guns in this country. Oh look, a sportsball game is on!

Routine

noun

1. a customary or regular course of procedure.
2. commonplace tasks, chores, or duties as must be done regularly or at specified intervals; typical or everyday activity.
3. regular, unvarying, habitual, unimaginative, or rote procedure.
4. an unvarying and constantly repeated formula, as of speech or action; convenient or predictable response.

So, I guess this bullshit is just the sad cost of living in 'Merka (fuck yeah!) these days, huh?

This is fucking insane and needs to stop.

Update: Here's the live dispatch audio from the police responding to the shooting:

Fuck the NRA

And the creatures in congress that they own. Fuck them right in the ear, with the biggest example of one of the fucking guns they worship.

What a horrible, fucked up, shitty week.

Insanity

I've now received two copies of the following idiocy in my email:

Date: Wed, 30 Jan 2013 10:45:39 +0700
Message-Id: <201301300345.r0U3jdEh028401@siamnaliga.com>
To: [REDACTED]
From: Freedom@Network.net
Subject: Sandy Hook Shooting Didn't Happen

Excerpt from Muad'Dib's January 7th, 2013 Critical Mass Radio interview:

..They used a poster child for this to get everybody's sympathy and to get everybody's emotions up so that they could hopefully bring in a gun ban. They used a little poster child, a little blonde-haired blue-eyed six year old girl. She was the face, the poster child. She was supposedly killed along with the other 19 six year olds and seven year olds at Sandy Hook. Three days later Obama was there doing a photo op and she's sitting on his knee. She's supposed to be dead, used as a poster child, this little girl died - she's sitting on Obama's knee three days later. The same little girl. 

And then they have her parents interviewed. It shows that they're all actors. It never really happened, because the guy that was supposedly her dad, is shown in the video where he's to the side and he's laughing and joking with other people and then he's called up in front of the camera. He's off to the left. Then he's called to the center, to the focus of the camera to be interviewed and to give his speech about Sandy Hook and about his daughter. And he goes from on the side from laughing and joking with everybody, he comes up to the center and ... he takes the joking, smiling face off and you can see him physically trying to force his face to look sad and then he starts talking about how his daughter's been killed. They're actors. There were no bodies. 

It was a made for TV drama to try to ram through the gun control laws, because they want to kill the American people and they can't kill armed people. That's why Hitler disarmed the Germans, it's why Stalin disarmed the Russians, it's why chairman Mao disarmed the Chinese and they killed between them something like 120 million of their own people. And that's what they want to do in America and they can't do it because the people have the Second Amendment and they have guns. So they have to do all of this, and they'll keep doing it. There will be more incidents like this, which are made for television, until they manage to persuade the American people to give up their guns. And then they'll start killing the Americans. Because the Americans are the only people stopping them from doing what they want to do already. They know they can't put their next phase, which is reducing the world's population, they can't put that phase into operation whilst the Americans have got millions!
  of guns. 

How the fuck did I get on this person's mailing list?

What do you even say about this level of crazy? I mean we could examine the little details like how this massive conspiracy is necessary so the ebil gubmint can kill all its citizens. Because obviously if we citizens have our cute little semi-automatic rifles to protect us, we'll be completely invulnerable to the government's drones and vast stockpiles of biological weaponry. Right. But that's just the tip of the crazy, crazy iceberg in this one. Definitely not willing to examine this person's various issues any further.

The "author" (I'm being generous -- "screed spewer" is probably more accurate) closes with this:

This message has no links to help it get through spam blockers. If you are interested in the subjects being discussed, please search the Web for more information.

Uh, thanks, but no, really, I'm fine.

The Impossible Dream

I've seen a bunch of stuff all over the Intartronictubes about gun control this week. Mostly it's all: "guns are bad, get rid of them" and "bbbbut my farm, and hunting, and defending my castle from invaders!" -- I get it, honest. Up until this week, when this shit got way too personal for me (and I'm not going to detail that further than to just say teachers in this country aren't paid nearly enough to deal with the kind of shit they deal with), I really liked having my own personal arsenal around the house. But why did I like that? I never really thought about it.

I haven't shot any of my guns for a couple years now, but they're there, in the safe, ready. But for what? I don't hunt, so not that. Zombpocalpyse? Hmm, maybe I'll keep a shotgun. A home invasion? Yeah.... no.

I have not and cannot live in that kind of fear -- I've never had a loaded weapon by my bedside, and never will. How is a gun locked in the safe gonna help me in that invasion, exactly? Oh right, it won't.

"But I have a farm! I have to defend my chickens!"

Yep, I get it. I lived on a farm for a number of years, but the farm raised grass (not the fun kind) and xmas trees so predators weren't a big deal. Mostly we had to worry about gophers, rabbits, and coyotes, just as annoyances. We ignored the rabbits. The coyotes came around at night to try to eat the rabbits -- no biggy, ignore them too. I think a coyote got a cat once, but I don't really like cats so there's that. The gophers were a bit of a messy pain, and hard to shoot. I tried (and failed) shooting them but that is hard and wastes way too much time. Oh well, there were some holes in the yard. But yeah, I can see that. A nice small-bore bolt-action rifle and/or a shotgun should do just dandy if you really need them, so you should keep one of those. I'm cool with that.

I understand the rural hunting and guns-on-the-farm thing, really. I'm not a hunter, but I know many hunters and have lots of hunting weapons I inherited. I understand the appeal -- I've had fresh venison. Hunting or having a gun around to protect your farm does make sense to me.

But that doesn't mean we need the kind of ridiculous fucking gun culture we have in America.

Obviously, I don't think a full ban would ever fly in 'Merka. Just way, way too entrenched and way too much money spent convincing people they "need" guns. But I still think we have an oh-so-brief opportunity to do something.

Maybe.

That opportunity will, of course, be utterly squandered by our useless political class. Before it is, it would be at best constructive, and at worst slightly amusing, to imagine something that might work in the way of gun regulation. So I will. And please note again, I own many guns:

First, ban all semi-automatic weapons. Yes, all of them. (Note, this would require that I get rid of several of my own guns. I'm cool with that.) They serve no legitimate hunting purpose. If you need a semi-auto to hunt: UR DOIN IT RONG. Banning them all means no more quibbling over what an "assault rifle" is, which is critical.

B) ban all high-capacity weapons. Again, if you need more than a few shots for hunting: UR DOIN IT RONG. And yes, that means I need to get rid of more of my own personal guns (although high-capacity and semi-auto tend to go hand-in-hand, no surprise). Oh well.

3) no handguns. Yeah, people love them, but they serve no purpose. And no, once again, "self defense" is not a real purpose, and if you really think having a gun around the house will save you from the blahs coming to steal your white wimmens, go buy a nice simple double-barrel shotgun. Bonus: you can force the dude that gets your daughter pregnant to marry her while standing there like the patriarchic asshole you probably are.

IV) regulate, regulate, regulate -- like the sacred second amendment says! Guns are way, way, WAY too easy to get in this country. There are dozens of mundane things we all do day-to-day that take more work than owning a gun. Getting a gun needs to be at least as hard to deal with as it is to try to start a fucking legal brewery!

Fünf: Have all the fancy shit we just banned be available to play with at licensed, ridiculously regulated, private facilities. Shoot the hell out of those guns! Waste thousands of dollars on ammo! It's almost as good as Viagra after all.

Will we see an instantaneous drop in gun violence in this country and suddenly only worry about violent attacks from sparkleponies? No. Would it make a difference? Probably. I'm willing to try it to find out.

And yeah, I've completely glossed over the "how" parts in all of this "banning" talk. Gov't sponsored gun buy backs? Buy backs by private anti-violence charities? Ship them all to Somalia, along with the owners that refuse to get rid of them? Dunno. I'm sick and tired of thinking of violence and death, and thinking about how our useless goverment could manage to implement all the details behind this pipe dream is just too much right now.

I recognize that this is all a sad fucking dream. Oh well, a guy's gotta dream.