Dan Crenshaw is no conservative

I said it. I stand by it. He may not be progressive/liberal/left in many things, but he is not a conservative. At least not in the American sense. 

I'm not a conservative either, I'm much, much worse. I'm a borderline anarchist. I'm a right-leaning libertarian who gives leftists nightmares, and the only thing we libertarians hate more than statists and commies are fake libertarians. 

Democrats and Republicans can both be libertarians and we love them, but what does it mean to be a fake libertarian? Well for starters, it means paying lip service to freedom while actively trying to undermine it. Like making it easier to take away firearms from citizens without due process.

Mr. Crenshaw has been trying to obfuscate and do damage control ever since he supported "red flag" laws like TAPS (which died in committee), and a version of it in the NDAA bill (page 293) which passed [Correction: the NDAA bill was passed by the House after that section was removed. My mistake. Still needs to pass the Senate, however]. More here, and here. Think of the red flag law in the NDAA as a closed beta test (active military), after which the general public will get the full release. [The red flag laws in blue states will serve as beta tests just fine, if they can avoid an honest court]

Naturally, this rubs me and many others the wrong way. Even if I didn't care about guns, I do care about the right to keep and carry them. And even if I didn't care about that, I do care about people having rights being taken away without full due process of law. Due process is precariously hanging on as it is in this country, why must we create paths around it?

We don't need to scrap due process, nor the 2nd amendment to meaningfully and effectively put an end to gun crimes. Failure to protect lives and liberty at the same time is a failure of imagination. Much like Crenshaw's gaslighting.

Firearm safety

It's not just for real guns.

You check, re-check, triple-check, and quadruple-check to see if the gun--real, fake, prop, imagined, rubber, plastic, balloon, stick, finger, whatever it is made out of--is not actually loaded if you do not intend to fire a lethal projectile. If it is out of your sight for more than 1 second, you repeat the process. You do not delegate this responsibility, it is always and only yours.

Even if you are an actor, whose job is to fire a prop gun loaded with some kind of prop ammunition, you still do the quadruple checks yourself and make damn sure whatever is in the prop gun is not going to kill someone. When in doubt, just stop, stop, stop. 

Alec Baldwin Fires Prop Gun on ‘Rust' Set, Killing Crew Member, Injuring Director

Actor Alec Baldwin fired a prop gun that killed the cinematographer and injured the director on the set of the movie "Rust" in New Mexico on Thursday, authorities said.

Santa Fe County Sheriff’s officials said Halyna Hutchins, cinematographer for the Western being filmed, and director Joel Souza were shot on the set in the desert on the southern outskirts of Sante Fe.

Hutchins, 42, was airlifted to University of New Mexico Hospital, where she was pronounced dead by medical personnel, according to County Sheriff’s officials.

Souza, 48, was taken by ambulance to Christus St. Vincent Regional Medical Center to receive treatment for his injuries. Actress Frances Fisher, who's slated to appear in the film, tweeted overnight that Souza had left the hospital.

Thursday blend

 It's finally Thursday. Thursdays are nice, just one more day after today.

The Bee: 'You'll Never Beat The Government With Just Guns,' Says Party That Also Believes Government Was Almost Toppled By Unarmed Mob On January 6

Pennsylvania Election Audit Shows Benjamin Franklin Voted For Biden

Woman Briefly Identifies As Man To Avoid Long Bathroom Line

Like many, I think our smart, totally-has-it-together, superlatively cognitively-abled president said something really stupid the other day (such an improvement over Trump!), and I'll just quote from Instapundit, who quotes Larry Correia:

This is bold talk from a military, and a government, that hasn’t won a war in my lifetime. Not even the War On Poverty . . . But the Transgender Awareness Training is up-to-date, I’m sure.

Seriously, this kind of threat is not just absurd and unseemly, but a disqualification for public office. One of many, I realize.

And I guess the ammo shortage will be back on.

ANOTHER UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Larry Correia: So you want to nuke Omaha? “For those of you who don’t know me, I’m a novelist now, but I retired from the Evil Military Industrial Complex, where I helped maintain those various advanced weapon systems you expect to bomb me with. Before that I was a gun dealer and firearms instructor. So basically I sold guns to the people you expect the people I trained to take them from.”

Plus: “In something that I find profoundly troubling, when I’ve had this discussion before, I’ve had a Caring Liberal tell me that the example of Iraq doesn’t apply, because ‘we kept the gloves on’, whereas fighting America’s gun nuts would be a righteous total war with nothing held back… Holy shit, I’ve got to wonder about the mentality of people who demand rigorous ROEs to prevent civilian casualties in a foreign country, are blood thirsty enough to carpet bomb Texas. You really hate us, and then act confused why we want to keep our guns?”

In a U.S. civil war, the first targets would be politicians, and media figures, and they’re all soft targets. Which is odd, because they seem the most eager to get things started.

 And rest in peace John McAfee.

Update from the Bee (of course):

On the LaVoy Finicum shooting

I didn't really follow the whole Oregon occupier thing, much less support it. But I saw this video. About 9:00 minutes in, just before things go down. Then you see what looks like a man, clearly nervous, outnumbered, arms in the air, and shot.



If all it is to justify police shooting someone, is some combination of fear and/or hands briefly unseen, then we need to rethink things. Whether or not that is the legal standard, is, as I understand it, iffy, but seems to be de facto law on the more questionable police shootings.

According to the FBI, Finicum indeed had a pistol in his jacket. All good then, right? Hell no. There's almost zero chance any of the officers on the ground saw a gun on Finicum. Watch in full screen, slow motion if you have to, there is a snowflake's chance in hell either of those two officers saw a weapon.

So let's do a thought experiment. Let's say Finicum had no firearm that day. Which leaves you with two possible conclusions:

1. Finicum was shot because he may or may not have appeared to reach for something, and the officers feared for their safety--pretty much the go-to defense in every questionable police shooting.

2. Finicum was murdered, by the police.

Both of those are terrible, and it's ridiculous that in all too many police shooting cases we walk this ultra fine dichotomy between murder and virtually complete & guaranteed legal immunity for officers of the state.

If Finicum had actually pulled his gun, that obviously changes things and nobody would dispute the shooting. But he didn't. I know this isn't the fantastical Wild West with a gentleman's code of chilvarly, necessitating complete brandishing of deadly weapon prior to shooting, à la Tombstone. But we need something more than fear and subjective amounts of furtiveness. Otherwise we have no law, regardless of what's written.

That said, it'd be interesting to see the shooting officer's body cam footage, in the unlikely event it exists or will ever be released.

Tyler Cowen, you're talking out of your ass

Read this:

3. There are the libertarians, who hate martial culture on the international scene, but who wish to allow it or maybe even encourage it (personally, not through the government) at home, through the medium of guns.  They are inconsistent, and they should consider being more pro-gun control than is currently the case.  But I don’t expect them to budge: they will see this issue only through the lens of liberty, rather than through the lens of culture as well.  They end up getting a lot of the gun liberties they wish to keep, but losing the broader cultural battle and somehow are perpetually surprised by this mix of outcomes.

Okay. There are so many assumptions and loaded concepts here and in the rest of his blog post, that if he unpacked it so as to minimize the risk of significantly different inputs--and therefore outcomes--from his many different readers, it would be dozens of pages long, if not more. Such is the semiotic nightmare of politics, but it should be avoided, even, I daresay, in extemporaneous and pithy blog posts.

This image sort of works. Can't find who to credit however.

Cowen is generalizing of course, but still, it's god damn lazy to throw around the term "culture" and "martial culture" only to mix it in with broad categories of political philosophies and movements and end up with 2+2=everybody's stupid.

Maybe it's not the point. Maybe there is enough truthiness to his argument to where it has value when considering future foreign and domestic policy. I mean, it rings true, kind of, but only because you or I agree with the implied stereotypes and our input into those loaded words and phrases closely resembles Cowen's meaning.

But what the fuck is "martial culture"? What the fuck is "martial culture on the international scene"? What the fuck is "the lens of culture"?

I identify with libertarians and consider myself to be one. But I could be wrong. It could be that most competently self-labeled libertarians would not label me such. I'm no anarchist. I'm not even really much of a minarchist if you want to quibble over the size of the state, or semantics, but I do favor a push in that direction... much smaller government and fewer, less cumbersome regulations. But that doesn't mean I don't want a powerful military. Or an "active foreign policy" whatever the fuck that means. Maybe that makes me a cardinal sinner of inconsistency. I'll see you in hell, pro-gay marriage, anti-drug war progressive nannystaters.

When I read words I try to avoid applying the simplest most idiotic meanings to and assumptions behind them. So when I read "active foreign policy" I think, well it could mean having diplomats all over the world, engaging with various other foreign officials, for whatever purpose, peaceful or otherwise.

When I read "active foreign policy" I don't think "GEORGE BUSH JINGOISTIC NEOCON INTERVENTIONIST IRAQ WAR FOR OIL JACKBOOTED RACIST IMPERIALISTIC FASCIST" nor do I read "martial culture" as "YEAH LETS BLOW SHIT UP! SEND OUR ENEMIES TO THE STONE AGE! TANKS AND FIGHTER JETS AND MACHINE GUNS WHOO 'MURICA!"

And then the politics are all wrong. Day-to-day politics doesn't mean anything, other than partisan hackery for the most part. Conservatives are winning Cowen says, because Obama wants to get all interventiony on Libya and Syria's asses. Obama must be a conservative and conservatives must like what Obama's doing overseas then, right? No that makes no sense. So lets ramp the complexity up to infinity by throwing in martial culture bullshit and tie it into relevant news by implying guns=martial culture.

For libertarians, Cowen is asserting that we can't have our cake and eat it too. With guns, comes jingoistic international militaristic adventurism (maybe imperialistic too?), or "martial culture" for short. Guns must be pretty powerful, so much so that they're indivisibly part and parcel of "martial culture" and perhaps only that culture. Can't get rid of one with out getting rid of the other. Which is utter crap.

Broadly or narrowly defined, culture is not a rigid, unmalleable artifact of humanity. Want proof? Try defining "American culture". Have fun and good luck. Even if Cowen is right, we can still have our cake and eat it too, even if that means we have to culturally appropriate and/or excise a few things.

I can look through the blurry cultural lens while still clinging to my guns and liberty. It's not hard; you should try it sometime Mr. Cowen.

Mass Shootings and Earthquakes

I don't mean to downplay the terribleness of the San Bernardino shooting, nor the value in seeking preventative measures. But let's state the obvious: this sort of thing has happened before and will happen again.

Despite existing laws. Despite new laws.

I am opposed to virtually all gun control, not because it's proven to be completely ineffective, but because they take away from all for the actions of a few (I understand this argument is meaningless when taken to extreme, but so is anything: why have freedom at all if people violently misuse it?).

So let's step away from the philosophy and the triggery politics, and maybe look at it with a cold, practical perspective.

Let's assume there are no deus ex machinas around (always a good idea), i.e., everybody will not magically agree to ban guns and destroy every last trace of lethal projectile weaponry; nobody will come up with a new gun control plan that everyone agrees with AND is super effective; nobody will cure or effectively prevent crazy from happening; etc.

That doesn't leave us with much. My view on this is that there are essentially two approaches to crime:

1. Stop bad people from doing bad things.
2. Empower good people to stop bad things from happening to them.

For most things, #1 is good enough. Reasonable law enforcement, jail, fines, prison, social pressure is enough to deter and prevent most crimes, or force restitution. We can live with a few burglaries now and then, knowing that burglary is out of the ordinary. Even most bad people will go along to get along if that means they stay out of jail.

For everything else that isn't easily fixed, there are no good collective/top-down solutions. You can't stop an earthquake, but you can prepare for it. I don't think that means making our kids wear bullet-proof vests to school, but I do think it means making the average citizen a higher risk target for potential mass murderers.

In most places people are defenseless, which is nice and all, and is perfectly fine 99.9% of the time. But nobody ever shoots up a police department. And that .01% (or whatever the number is, I'm guessing, but I'd imagine I'm fairly close) is a big deal. If more good guys concealed carry, the average citizen would be higher risk for potential mass murderers. And what's nice about concealed carry is that for 99.9% of the time, it looks and feels just like those nice defenseless places, except they're not defenseless.

I guess the question comes down to what balance are we comfortable with? If we encouraged and trained a lot more good people to carry concealed, I'm pretty sure mass shootings would occur less often and with fewer casualties.* That's something I would be comfortable and happy with. But maybe not for others. That's the discussion I think we should be having, not the same gun control debate that goes nowhere and is largely made for easy political points and/or virtue signalling.

*Unlike most crimes and the criminals who commit them, there are far less data on mass shootings & shooters, but there is some. Counterfactuals are hypothetical and sketchy at best, but the logic is sound and the scant evidence that does exist, suggests that good guys with guns tend to stop bad guys with guns (plus it's impossible to calculate, even fuzzily, the number of shootings prevented). I'm lazy so I'm just going to say don't take my word for it and do your own research.

America's guns: an international problem?

Assuming we're all okay with the idea of governments across the globe banning citizen gun ownership, the sale and spread of American guns can be seen as a problem. But the headline I wrote implies something more. As if the problem isn't just about governments overriding certain rights or being inept on crime, but rather it implies American law and people are what's wrong. Taken to the logical conclusion, such a headline and its implied argument suggests the 2nd Amendment is what is plaguing the entire world. I don't see it that way at all.

Just writing that headline made me feel dirty. Similar to how I imagine smart, but intellectually dishonest and disingenuous hacks peddling canards to advance their tribe might feel, if they had a conscience.

But maybe I give them too much credit. Maybe they're not so smart, and they really do believe their secular prayers. On the recent and horrible shooting of the Australian student in Oklahoma, Piers Morgan, celebrated gun control cheerleader, had this to say:



Some Australian officials are even calling for a tourism boycott of the U.S., echoing the knee-jerk assumptions about American guns being a global plague.

But let's get back to Piers.

When an innocent Australian student is shot dead in Oklahoma for 'fun' - America's gun crisis becomes the world's problem.
— Piers Morgan (@piersmorgan) August 21, 2013

I guess the good thing about Twitter is that it forces people to be pithy. But so many assumptions can be concealed in 140 characters. Going along with my premise that Piers and like-minded people are (in this case) not hacks, but sincere, they must think there are some specific laws that can prevent such horrible crimes.

Let's assume that the chief objectives behind such laws are to make guns significantly harder to buy, sell, and trade along with making it more difficult for more people to own them. That's pretty much their goal. Strictly and statistically speaking, fewer guns necessarily means fewer crimes committed with guns. So why can't we just pass some stinkin' gun control if it makes so much sense?!

Because the NRA, they say. Piers Morgan apparently thinks organizations lobbying congress on behalf of their members is immoral:

They bullied and traduced people in Washington and threatened them. They said "if you vote for these gun control laws, we’re going to drive you out of power," and guess what? Enough cowardly Democrats in particular said "OK. You're right, I’ll keep my mouth shut."

I could say the same thing about the AARP and Medicare/Social Security issues. So I don't think he wants to ban interest groups, which would raise serious 1st Amendment issues; rather it's that the 5 million strong NRA has too much sway. But there is little to be done about that. For the gun control advocates, the NRA is just an inevitable hurdle (a big one, albeit).

But let's go further and pretend the NRA doesn't exist anymore and Congress is ready and willing to pass some gun control. What kind of gun control laws would prevent shootings like the one that took place in Oklahoma? How about:

-Banning people under 21 from owning handguns?
-Requiring a license to carry a firearm?
-Banning convicted criminals from carrying firearms?
-Requiring background checks?

Don't those sound like commonsense laws that would limit the number of guns and possibly prevent such a crime? Well, we're going to need much more than that, since those are already laws in Oklahoma (and most of the U.S.). They didn't prevent killing "for fun."

Okay, so we're going to have to go further to follow the "fewer guns, less crime" slogan. Let's assume the Supreme Court Justices were personally hand-picked by the Brady Campaign. Let's also assume there will be no violent backlash, and all the law-abiding citizens continue to be law-abiding. Basically, lets give ourselves some optimistic, but plausible hope for new gun control laws.

What new laws can we make, short of blatantly tearing up the 2nd Amendment? How about:

-Banning personal sales and trades of firearms (must go through licensed dealers).
-Establishing a national firearms registry.
-Requiring a license for owning any firearm.
-Requiring training prior to gun ownership.
-Establishing and/or extending wait-times for gun purchases.
-Requiring the reporting of stolen firearms.
-Banning "assault weapons" and high-capacity magazines.
-Significantly increase taxes on firearms and ammunition.
-Banning any with a "mental disability" or those with one in the same household from owning a firearm.

Stuff along those lines. Some states have laws very similar to these, but generallly speaking, most do not. [And again, these kinds of laws run afoul of the 2nd Amendment in my opinion, but it's just for argument's sake.] Would these laws prevent or significantly reduce criminal shootings? I think only slightly, and at great cost. Why do I think so?

Because we have very similar laws regarding drugs. And yet, if I wanted to get my hands on some marijuana, meth, cocaine, even heroin, I could. It's the story of prohibition. We saw it in the 20s, where the black market thrived and crime got out of hand. We see it today with drugs, gangs, and exploding prison populations--billions of taxpayer dollars spent, thousands of lives taken, a war waged and yet I can go down the street and get me some willy-nilly.

Why would guns be any different? You can't legislate what people want. They want guns. They want to protect themselves, or worse, they want to commit a crime and no law is going to stop them. If there is demand, there will be supply.

So maybe Piers thinks we will get a handle on the black market. Maybe he thinks saving a few lives is worth the significant cost of freedom we would give up. And this may only be attainable through a vastly bigger police force, and perhaps amending the Constituion. The onus probandi however, is on him.

If Piers wants to really restrict the availability of guns in the United States, to the effect it actually and significantly reduces gun crimes (counterexamples notwithstanding), he will have to demonstrate that the government will effecasiouly hinder all firearm-related black market activities, to a much further extent than it has the drug trade. And that all newly prohibited firearms in circulation are confiscated.

The kind of state power required to achieve such ends should give anyone pause. It would take something along the lines of North Korean style control just to put a dent in the number of guns in circulation. And even North Korea is having trouble with black markets. Even if you wanted the government to be your overbearing big brother, would you want to pay for it? It may just save a life!

I don't want to. But how can I accept a gun-friendly America, especially if it costs lives? Because we make these decisions all the time, and it generally works well. For example, a lot of Americans die every year from tobacco-related deaths, and yet we still allow it, even though it has certain externalities like 2nd hand smoke and additional costs on our healthcare system. Another example is the auto-industry. I can't say it much better than Milton Friedman:



If Piers Morgan and his fellow gun control advocates are sincere, then I pity them. The only way to achieve the desired result through more gun control, is to seriously curb the rights of millions of good citizens while expanding the cost, nature, and power of the state to an alarming degree (even moreso than now). That is part of why their side is losing. Their laws don't work, and the laws they want move us, however incrementally, toward that dystopia.

If Piers and his ilk are not sincere, then it's not so much about saving lives as it is about control, and I despise them. In either case, it is why our side is more passionate, more persuasive, joins interest groups like the NRA, and is more effective. That's why we have too much sway.

And things like this won't change anything.

Lyle Denniston Willfully Deceiving the Public

There is so much stupid in this article I don't know where to begin.

I suppose I'll start with what motivated this post. Lyle Denniston, famous for SCOTUSblog, wrote some weird editorial for Yahoo, in which he refers to himself in the third person, about the Second Amendment not being absolute, while implying Ted Cruz is an idiot for thinking otherwise. And almost immediately he takes a blogger better than he, and simultaneously Senator Cruz, out of context.

After summarizing Ted Cruz's questioning of Dianne Feinstein about the limits of Congress with regard to the Second Amendment, Denniston quotes Allahpundit of HotAir:

Harvard Law grad Ted Cruz is willfully deceiving the public into thinking the Second Amendment is more absolute than the Supreme Court says it is.

Yep, that's all he quotes from Allahpundit. One very brief sentence, which is uncharacteristic of this blogger, which is highly suggestive of something else going on we're not seeing. He then pivots from this to the meat of his argument. Classy.

Now let me quote the next few sentences from Allahpundit's post at HotAir:

Why, clearly, Harvard Law grad Ted Cruz is willfully deceiving the public into thinking the Second Amendment is more absolute than the Supreme Court says it is. He’s acting like Heller never happened! Like I say, that’s what you might think if you watched Cruz-versus-Feinstein and nothing more. If you watched the rest of the Judiciary Committee hearing, you know better. [emphasis mine]

Denniston even omitted the "Why, clearly" part. What a douche. I guess Denniston thinks he's pretty safe since Allahpundit can't really fight back for a few reasons: 1. Doing so on HotAir would seem petty and beneath the standards of that blog. 2. Allahpundit has to remain anonymous lest certain people find out who and where he is. I'll add he has legitimate reasons for remaining anonymous, as his pseudonym might suggest.

Well here at the Daily Mud, pettiness is something aspired to. As for Ted Cruz, what pray tell, was in the rest of the Judiciary Committee hearing? See for yourself:


Not only is Ted Cruz familiar with Heller, he was on the winning team.

And he correctly acknowledges such restrictions on the Second Amendment that Heller identified, such as the "current prohibition on fully-automatic machine guns." There you go. Ted Cruz just acknowledged that the Second Amendment is not absolute. Excuse me while I clean up this mess of straw Denniston so bravely fought.

And there's more.

Much more, but I'm just going to tackle one egregious deceit (or conceit, depending on how you look at it). Denniston claims that concerning the Second Amendment,

The almost universal understanding (until several modern scholars began questioning it) was that the right only applied to state militia organizations, like the modern National Guard.

Almost universal, meaning very, very few people understood it as a personal right to keep and bear arms. Until those modern scholars came along messing up the Constitution with their subversive ideas:

No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms.¹

Their swords, and every other terrible implement of the soldier, are the birthright of an American.²

Americans have the right and advantage of being armed - unlike the citizens of other countries whose governments are afraid to trust the people with arms.³

A militia, when properly formed, are in fact the people themselves...and include all men capable of bearing arms.⁴

Darn those modern scholars!

 I'm sure Mr. Denniston is a good guy, just not when he's lying and taking things out of context.
___________________________________________

¹ Thomas Jefferson, 1776
² Tench Coxe, 1788
³ James Madison, 1787
⁴ Richard Henry Lee, 1788

Colion Noir debuts on NRA News

So here's NRA News' new spokesman, Mr. Colion Noir, a lawyer and firearms enthusiast, making the case against more senseless gun control.

Pretty good. I like the part about the President suddenly caring about gun violence, as if Chicago never had such a problem.

Look at this truck

From the wrongful shooting that took place in Los Angeles the other day. Police apparently mistook the truck for the murder-spree suspect's.

This was an innocent lady's truck, and yes, she and a passenger were shot (luckily both survived) by seemingly neglignent police officers.

This wrongful shooting took place in what appears to be a neighborhood. And if you look closely at the truck, there are at least 20 bullet holes by my count, that have penetrated it. At least a few of those are at the very top of the cab.

Who the hell trained these guys how to shoot? Elmer Fudd? Elmer Fudd at least had the excuse of a legitimate and cunning target.

There are bullet holes all over that truck. If the police were aiming at all, they even aimed at the passenger! As if stopping the truck depended not only on incapacitating the driver. These women were not armed. Apparently identification of the type of truck is all that is needed to satisfy due process.

Maybe I'm assuming too much, maybe the driver of the truck tried to flee. But either way, the shooting pattern on that truck indicates some very poor control of fire. They're lucky no one else in the neighborhood took a stray bullet. If there were a good reason for gun control, this would be it.

I've circled the bullet-holes that were near misses on top of the cab, and several more apparently aimed at the passenger

I hope the driver and passenger sue.

Sigh.

You think Piers Morgan would have learned something, anything about rifles, or guns in general since he started basking in the anti-2nd Amendment spotlight. Sadly, no.

 Hey Piers, aside from caliber and aesthetics, these two rifles are essentially the same. Neither of them are assault rifles, neither are machine guns, neither is more or less lethal (actually the bottom rifle has a larger caliber, so...). They shoot exactly the same way as each other, at exactly the same rate: 1 pull of the trigger = 1 shot fired and no more.



AR-15:

Remington Auto-loading:

"But, but you can modify those evil black rifles to shoot a zillion rounds per second with just a screw driver" you say? No, you can't.

Obviously, this is already illegal, but I must confess it can be done. Someone with enough determination and wanton disregard for the law can alter just about any semi-auto to become fully auto, if he had the right tools, skills, and knowledge. But a bad guy who does that is not about to be stopped by any gun law you can imagine.

Roundup of 'Obama gun memes'

Of the image variety:

And a few others for good measure:

I could post these all day:

Taft High School shooting

I don't want to dance in the blood of the victim(s), and thankfully there reportedly were no deaths. And yet the ignorant will, and already are using Taft as another example why we need more gun control:

Oops, That's Taft High in Taft, CA! False alarm yet still horrid. When is this gonna stop?! GUN CONTROL NOW and plain outlaw assault rifles

— michael john dimkich (@michaeljdimkich) January 10, 2013

Another school shooting? Yes, let's keep doing absolutely nothing about gun control. #Taft

— Alex Wickline (@WicklineAlex) January 10, 2013

Can we talk about gun control yet? Apparently not, since there's been yet another school shooting. #Taft

— Aura Bogado (@aurabogado) January 10, 2013

Reports: the Taft shooter made previous threats. How were guns accessible to him? If you think gun control is a dirty word, please wake up.

— J. Kitch (@MsJenKitch) January 10, 2013

The gunman in this case, used a shotgun. Not a semi-automatic pistol or an AR-15 with a 30-round magazine, but a shotgun.

Now think about that. Even if we all agree to these proposed draconian gun laws banning "assault rifles", high-capacity magazines, semi-auto handguns, ravamping background checks, and outright confiscation of such items; there still is the matter of the tens of millions of shotguns residing in a vast number of American homes.

Not only that, but revolvers, bolt-action rifles, lever-action rifles, not to mention knives and dangerous combinations of household chemicals.

The only way to prevent lunatics intent on acquiring guns, is mass-confiscation. Which not only is blatantly unconstitutional, but let's be honest, would be a cure more deadly than the disease.

I don't know about you, but I wouldn't particulary care to hand over any firearms I enjoy and spent good money on, nor am I going to let the police trash my house without good reason.

More gun laws = more stupid

This video goes well with Larry Correia's An Opinion on Gun Control.

These stupid laws aimed at inanimate objects lend themselves to analogy after analogy demonstrating how absurd they are:

How many people die from loose/untied shoelaces? Probably dozens! We should therefore ban or seriously restrict shoelace ownership. No need to consider the benefits of proper shoelace use or the rights of law-abiding shoelace owners, especially when people are dying.

via Kevin and US Citizen

Gun control: Is the fix already in?

So I was reading one of my favorite blogs, MyLittlePony, err Instapundit where I saw a little paranoid rant about Republicans caving to the media and Democrats (pardon my redundancy):

Any Republicans entertaining ideas of going along with any Democrat ban should realize that they’re being played by the Democrats and the media, again. . . . Republicans should realize that caving in to the Democrats’ ban demand amounts to party suicide.

Thank you Captain Obvious. But I must confess it made me go clicky. Where I found printed evidence of an iPhone email conversation that took place in 1978. I mean why, in the year 2012, would an electronic conversation be printed out and photocopied conspicuously askew, only to be scanned, re-uploaded and spread electronically again? That's like the Rube Goldberg of political communication.

And besides Debbie Wasserman Schultz's resume, who the hell refers to himself/herself as a political hack?

SEEMS LEGIT

This is all wrong. You guys are way stupid falling for this. It's obviously part of a deeper conspiracy to foster a military coup in which Justin Bieber is subsequently made Supreme Leader of the North American Union. I, for one, welcome our new Bieberlords. Ulsterman doesn't know the half of it.